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Presentations on Tuesday

I really enjoyed learning about Hannah’s game she is making for her final project, I thought using concept of vigilantism is super interesting because it is something that people seem to have a lot of opinions on and is also seemly more expectable in films. I liked that the game she is creating is like Cards against Humanities but with questions and fill-in-the-blanks relevant to what the director wants the audience to feel and/or get from watching the movie.

I am quite interested in Adriana‘s project about how TV Shows like CSI affect real world court cases because the jury has unrealistic expectations for how much evidence the prosecutors and defendants should provide and how quick the case should be solved. I hadn’t thought about how my perception on criminal cases is influenced by the movies and TV show I watch. It was interesting to learn about some example cases in which people were acquitted because the jury didn't think there was enough “hard” evidence against the person.

Nadeem’s final project about prisoners in for life and how the perception of them by society changes them was super interesting. I thought it was cool that she is creating a book for Lifers that will be a resource to helping them adapts and prepare to re-entering the outside world. It seems that this a population that could really use the guidance since these Lifers are constantly being told by the world around them that they are horrible criminals.

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Challenge Post 17: Normalizing Sociopathology

I believe that a very obvious fictional character that is a kind of glorified sociopath is Miranda Priestly from Devils Wear Prada. Since in the movie she is a fashion icon, she can pretty much do and/or get whatever she wants. Some of her characters trails that resemble sociopathic tendencies are she does not seem affected by hurting people if it benefits her, throughout the film she makes people cry and cares very little for the people working for her. Miranda also has very little tolerance for other people and is quick to anger and doesn’t mind gaining from other people’s loses. Although she is not a violent character or a killer, she still has a lot of sociopathic tendencies. 

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I was really shocked when I discovered that Jodi Foster was so young when Taxi Driver was made, she was 13 when the movie was released in the theatres. There is something about having the actress be the actually age of the character that makes it feel even more extremely wrong, it personally affected me more knowing how young and innocent she was.  

Jodie Foster on the set of Taxi Driver

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A website with resources for children and youth with incarcerated parents:

https://youth.gov/youth-topics/children-of-incarcerated-parents/tools-guides-resources

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Challenge Post 13: Spoofing is the Highest Form of Flattery?

Reservoir Dogs in The Simpson

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46 Facts About Aileen Wuornos

Considering Aileen died at the age of 46, here are 46 facts about her & the life she lived. 

1. Aileen was born in Rochester, Michigan, on February 29, 1956.

2. Her father, Leo Pittman, was incarcerated at the time of her birth. He hanged himself in prison in 1969. 

3. She had a brother, Keith, who died in 1976 & left her $10,000 from his life insurance. 

4. Diane Wuornos abandoned both of her children, Aileen & Keith, when they were just toddlers. She left them with their severely abusive grandparents, who soon adopted them. 

5. Aileen was sexually abused by her grandfather from a very young age; Lauri Wuornos would force her to strip naked before beating her. 

6. She did not discover that her grandparents were not her actual parents until the age of 12; the discovery made her distraught. 

7. Before she was even a teenager, Aileen started to participate in sexual acts at school in return for food, drugs, and cigarettes. 

8. She engaged in sexual activities with her brother during their childhood.

9. When Aileen was 14, she became pregnant as the result of rape by a friend of her grandfather’s. 

10. Aileen gave birth to a baby boy at a home for unwed mothers in March of 1971 (the baby was immediately placed for adoption). 

11. She dropped out of school shortly after childbirth. 

12. Not long after Aileen dropped out of school, her grandmother died of liver failure, leaving her & Keith alone with their abusive grandfather. 

13. At the age of 15, she was thrown out of the house by her grandfather, Lauri. 

14. To support herself after being thrown out, Aileen became a prostitute. 

15. For many years she lived in the woods near her old home, sheltering in makeshift forts. 

16. Aileen was arrested for the first time in March 1974 for DUI, disorderly conduct, & firing a .22 caliber pistol from a moving vehicle in Colorado. 

17. In the year of 1976, she hitchhiked down to Florida. 

18. Aileen married 69-year-old Lewis Fell in 1976; their marriage was later annulled after she hit Fell with his own cane. 

19. During & after the marriage with Fell, Aileen was arrested multiple times for assault due to altercations with locals at bars. 

20. On June 2, 1986, she was detained & questioned after a male companion accused her of pulling a gun on him in his vehicle, demanding $200. 

21. Before the murders, Aileen had been arrested a total of 7 times; she had also been detained twice for questioning, was once suspected of firearm theft, & had even received a restraining order from her own husband at the time, Lewis Fell. 

22. She met her future partner, Tyria Moore, at a gay club in Daytona in June of 1986. 

23. Eventually Aileen & Tyria moved in together, being financially supported by Aileen’s prostitution earnings. 

24. On the fourth of July in 1987, Aileen & Tyria were detained for questioning about an incident that involved assault & battery with a beer bottle. 

25. Aileen shot & killed 7 men in total. 

26. The body of one of her victims, Peter Siems, was never found.  

27. Aileen murdered all of her victims with a .22 caliber revolver. 

28. On January 9, 1991, Aileen was arrested for the murders. 

29. Tyria Moore drew a confession from Aileen during a phone call in exchange for immunity from prosecution. 

30. Aileen was arrested on an outstanding warrant at the Last Resort bar in Port Orange, Florida on January 9, 1991. 

40. For her crimes Aileen ultimately received 6 death sentences. 

41. She was executed in the Florida State Prison on October 9, 2002 by lethal injection. 

42. Aileen’s body was cremated; her ashes were given to a childhood friend named Dawn Botkins, who spread them beneath a tree in Michigan. 

43. Aileen declined a traditional last meal (anything she desired under $20) and instead requested a cup of coffee. 

44. Her last words were, “I’d just like to say I’m sailing with the rock, and I’ll be back Independence Day, with Jesus June 6. Like the movie, big mothership and all, I’ll be back.” 

45. Aileen requested that the song “Carnival” by Natalie Merchant be played at her funeral.  

46. Up until her execution, Aileen proclaimed her love for Tyria Moore. 

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Letters from the Zodiac killer

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It’s interesting how much this case seems to have inspired people or at least captured their interest enough to want to leave the Zodiac’ s symbol at the scene of the murder, it just shows the influence of the media.

The crime scene at Lake Herman Road, Benicia, California in 2017. This is the site where the Zodiac Killer shot his first two victims David Faraday and Betty Lou Jensen. The Zodiac Killer’s infamous symbol can be seen in multiple pieces of graffiti at the scene.

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The Central Park Five Now:

From the PBS article titled About the Central Park Five. http://www.pbs.org/kenburns/centralparkfive/about-central-park-five/

Korey Wise- 

Though he completed a high school equivalency program and started taking some college courses while in prison, his learning disabilities and hearing problems remain unaddressed. He speaks loudly and with an impediment that calls to mind the speech patterns of a deaf person; he still leans in when someone is speaking to him, trying to better understand what they are saying. His speech is jumbled and he often repeats words, struggling to express ideas more complex than his communication skills allow.

He is considered permanently disabled and lives on Social Security disability benefits. He lives in an apartment in New York City through a housing program called Urban Pathways.

Kevin Richardson-

Kevin Richardson lives in New York City and works in environmental services at a geriatric center. He's not satisfied there, but is happy to have a stable job with good benefits. He's still incredibly close to his mother and older sisters. They all gather every Friday at the apartment on the thirty-fourth floor of the Schomburg tower where Kevin grew up and where his mother still lives.

Raymond Santana-

Since his conviction was vacated and his record cleared, Raymond Santana has had better luck finding jobs and getting back on his feet. After spending hours lifting weights in prison, he was able to get a job working as a personal trainer and later assistant manager at a gym in New York City. He now works full time for one of New York City's largest unions and lives with his family in the same apartment in Harlem where he grew up. He's recently begun teaming up with the Innocence Project and speaking to young people about his experiences.

He has a daughter who was born in 2004. She lives with her mother in Brooklyn, but she spends every other weekend with Raymond in Harlem, and he visits her in Brooklyn on his off weekends.

Yusef Salaam-

Yusef Salaam is the father of five daughters, and continues to live in Harlem with his fiancee. His early interest in computers and how things work have translated into a career; he works for a New York area hospital, managing the wireless system that doctors and staff use to communicate throughout the hospital.

Antron McCray-

Antron McCray left New York soon after being released from prison, beginning anew under his legal name, which allowed him to find work without mentioning his time in prison. Though his conviction has since been vacated, few around him know anything of his past. He is married and the father of six children.

Antron works as a forklift operator in a warehouse, and though his job pays the bills, he is searching for a better career. He has applied to become a corrections officer and a police officer, but in both cases was told he would not be hired because of his conviction, though it should no longer appear on his record.

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Too Immature for the Death Penalty?

This is an article discussing the argument about the death penalty and juvenile delinquents. 

https://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/17/magazine/too-immature-for-the-death-penalty.html

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Juveniles Sentenced to Life Without Parole

There are currently over 2,500 people in America sentenced to life without parole were 17 years old or younger with the crime was committed. Here are just a few that I found interesting

Trina Garnett was 14 years old when she was arrested for setting a house on fire that killed two teenage boys. Tina, despite having a very low IQ, not being able to read or write, and being diagnosed with schizophrenia, was tried as an adult and sentenced to two life terms plus 40 years. 

http://www.wcjn.org/Trina_Garnett.html

Kuntrell Jackson was 14 years old when he and a group of teens attempted to rob a video store resulting in the death of the store clerk. Though it is unclear where Jackson was during the time of the killing, the defendants claim he was outside the store while the prosecution believe he was inside, he was not the one with the gun who killed the woman. He was tried as an adult and sentenced to life without parole. 

https://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/cert/10-9647

Evan Miller was 14 years old when he and another teenager murdered his neighbor Cole C. Cannon by beating him up with a baseball bat before setting his house on fire. Miller was diagnosed with a personality disorder, had drug problems, and attempted suicide multiple times. He was sentenced to life without parole. 

https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=6291421178853922648&q=Miller%2Bv.%2BAlabama&hl=en&as_sdt=806&as_vis=1

Sarah Johnson was 16 years old when she shot both of her parents with a rifle because she was afraid they would tell the police about her undocumented boyfriend. She was sentenced to two life sentences with an additional 15 years because of the use of a firearm.

https://www.crimetraveller.org/2018/06/sarah-johnson-parricide-case/

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Challenge Post 9: Big Brother: Security and Surveillance

The  idea of “big brother” like organizations and constant surveillance is prevalent in a lot of movies and TV shows. One of these movies that came to my mind was the movie Minority Report featuring Tom Cruise and Colin Farrell. This movie is about a futuristic society in which law enforcement uses three gifted humans with the power to see the future to stop and arrest murderers before they commit the crime. Although this movie gives quite a bit of commentary on the justice system and whether and not a person could be born a criminal, the presence of a system that is constantly watching the people is huge. The government in the movie is able to invade everyone’s privacy through the use of these spider-like robots that are able to enter anyone’s house, recording and watching whatever they want. Also in this movie, everyone is identified based off of their eyes and a retina scan. Advertisements are able to get all kinds of personal information about people by scanning their retinas and tailoring their message to be of interest to the individual people. These people have no control over what personal information the government and other people know because they can not control when their eyes are scanned. 

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Challenge Post 6: Meme-worthy quotes

When I think of movies that people continue to quote daily, the first movie to come to mind was The Princess Bride. This movie has a number of great one-liners that have been made into memes as well as simply referenced to often. I’m not should necessarily why this movie is so successful and loved but it not often that I meet people who have not at least heard some of the iconic lines. Here are just a few of my favorites and probably the most popular. :)

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Winter’s Bone

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Challenge Post 5: A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words

August Osage County is an Academy award wining film in which I believe one of the main characters is built through the film’s visual landscape. The movie is about a dysfunctional family that has to comes together after the disappearance and eventual death of the father. The widowed mother of three, Violet, is a drug-addicted, alcoholic, cancer patient who is simply awful to her children and everyone in her life. Throughout the film she progressively gets worse and worse getting sucked deeper into the drama of the family and becoming more nasty towards the people around her. The scene in which I believe there is quite a bit of character development through the film’s visual landscape is one where Violet is riding in the car with her daughters and gets them to pull over because she feels sick. After throwing up out of the car, the camera shifts to one of her daughters, Barbara, and in the back ground you see Violet starting to run into the fields behind the car. The clip with her running through the open field expresses a lot about her character. First of all, she is wearing all black in the scene compared to the very light background making her stand out as if she was lost and out of place. As she’s running, the way she moves adds a lot to what the scene is saying about her character. While she runs her arms are flailing and she is looking around confused. This is a pivotal moment for her character because it shows her trying to deal with her conflicts by running away as if she is unable to comprehend what needs to be done. It shows a great deal of weakness for the character.   

(The moment I’m talking about starts at about 1 minute) 

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Double Indemnity

This article I found really help me get a better perspective on the movie. As someone who has never studied film before it explained aspects of the movie and the way it was filmed that provided me with ideas of how to approach future film studies.

https://the-artifice.com/double-indemnity-film-noir-classic/