For the four assignments that you choose to complete throughout the semester, you will reflect on your takeaway from each. Do not copy and paste your assignments. Think of this space as a brief way to communicate how the assignment engaged you, how it was personally relevant, and reflect on how you learned more about yourself after completion. Each assignment recap will need to contain an illustrative picture. Examples will be provided.
ATA 3
Assignment 3 really made me think about something I feel like I innately knew but had never explored. The prompt asked us to watch a video of a man going on a racial rampage and asked if we thought he could have just been speaking racial slurs out of anger with no racial motivation behind them. To me, that is an obvious answer- of course he had personal connection and judgment attached to the words he was shouting. I just really do not feel like someone would so passionately scream emotional words like that without the purpose of inflicting pain. What makes them painful is that there is a deliberate choice in words and the only way he could do that is if he personally believed what he was saying. It is really difficult to convince someone of what you are saying with no personal connection behind it. The man in the stand up was referencing agreeing with the mistreatment of Black people in the past and the glorification of those mistreating them. It worked out in the comedians stand up because it directly applied to him and supported his feelings (in my opinion). He feels superior to Black people because he is white. This assignment also made me think of other “joking” behaviors to minorities. The main one that came to mind was the LGBTQ+ community; I have very close friends and family that are part of this community and I could never make a joke at the expense of their sexuality. It feels wrong to me, even if I said it and did not mean it. Attacking someone for something they have no control over cannot be done just out of anger. I truly believe people only highlight those topics and spew them spitefully if it is rooted in prejudice and discrimination. I believed that before this assignment but I really stopped and thought about it throughout this assignment. It really brought me back to the BLM movement. We have been dealing with this rooted racism that has been explained away and accepted for too long. It kills me to see people acting like this and making it part of a comedy routine, because no one’s life should be taken as a joke. Especially not the way that man presented it.
ATA 2
This assignment really made me look at myself from an outside perspective. It made me think about how I hoped I would present myself to others, how I actually was presenting myself to others, and how it lined up with how I thought I was presenting myself to everyone around me. I have taken a social psychology course before and learned how it researches relationships between people and their connections to others, and this assignment helped me to realize my attempt to connect to others through my preferred medium. As I have stated in my posts before, photos are how I record memories and what is important to me. Being able to express myself and use this medium to explain who I am was a privilege. I have learned that through my photos I can paint a portrait of myself the way I want to even if it is not necessarily the whole truth. I am the artist of my life and I can represent myself the way I want to and see fit! I have been asked in the past to “describe what it is like to be me” but this assignment was a nice refresher to understand how I choose to represent myself. I loved being able to look for specific photos to say who I am and why!
