Blog 20: The Big Finale...i hope it doesn't suck.

Magaly Grados

English 103

The Basketball Diaries directed by Scott Kalvert

New York is an area that is often misjudged as a place filled with danger, glamor, poverty, and mostly located in Manhattan. The Basketball Diaries is movie that takes place in New York during the 1990’s. If someone from a different country were to have watched that movie when it first came out, that person would have thought that New York is a dangerous place filled with rotten teenagers and a lot of drugs. The movie makes life seem that the goal is to get high and play basketball. Although on some level it is true, it is not to the pure extent. These stories are real, but not that common. The movie was realistic in the social, economic, and political aspect to a high degree of extent.

            Basketball is a big sport loved by a big nation; it is just so ravishing and maybe eye candy show to some. The suspense, tension, and the adrenaline of the sport gets a persons heart jumping. Jim had his friends, or crew, who had a big passion for basketball. It was a big thing for them growing up as they watched the players in the world go from the streets to famous athletes. Their hearts were set to fulfill the dream. The feeling of invincibility mixed with adrenaline was making them who they were and they didn’t want to let anything stand in their way, until they got drugs of course.

            People had seen a sport such as basketball as a major opportunity. It was a career, and a lifestyle for most, to pick up the ball, make people happy, and make out the best of it. Since these kids were looking for scholarship opportunities, they were looking to be the best of the best, along with having all the fame and fortune.

The crime and drug rates in the United States decreased vastly. Especially in New York, the crime rate was dropping rapidly. There was a 15% decrease in shootings, and 8.1 percent in felonies since 1993. Most of these crimes were committed by teenagers/young adults from the ages of 16-23.  The drops in crime rates were somewhat surprising because aside from minor changes made to improve safety issues, it didn’t explain the rapid decrease. Some areas in Brooklyn remained the same while others dropped. Like mentioned earlier, most of these crimes were committed by teenagers so they were more spontaneous acts than those of someone over the age of 35 (Kraus, NYT 1995).

After the cocaine epidemic in the 1980’s, in 1990, the epidemic reached its peak. The number of people going to the hospital for cocaine affliction purposes dropped 4% since the beginning of that year. The only problem was that now the consequences of the epidemic were death. The number of deaths increased due to cocaine related deaths (SHENON, September 02, 1990).

The economy was somewhat improving during Clinton’s time as presidency. There were many budget cuts, but along with that came a lot of ideas for the growth of unemployment. According to the New York Times, “Unemployment, Job Growth 5.3 %, 2.8 million jobs Dropouts from the labor force will help keep the unemployment rate low.” The fear of deflation was arising in the 1990’s. According to J. Bradford DeLong, deflation would do more macroeconomic damage than inflation would. Deflation would mean reduction in costs, products, and employment.

            Teenage dropouts occur because of drug abuse, not knowing limitations as to what one is consuming. Growing up in the 90s to present, watching the epidemic of drug usage rise in high schools. Failing to find a rate from of a reliable source in New York I’ve come to share a point of view from my vision of this dilemma. It started from a young age as teenagers fall into a pit of failure as they look up to an outbreak of others. Teens felt the side effects of the drug cycle as they intake it resulting their brains to fry with different drugs, having their own effect.

“While alcohol use has remained steady since 1991, the survey indicates more teenagers are smoking.  In 1991, 27.5 percent reported smoking in the previous month.  That increased to 36.4 percent in 1997, and then dropped to 34.8 percent in 1999.  However, frequent cigarette use climbed from 12.7 percent in 1991 to 16.8 percent in 1999.”  Fri, 09 Jun 2000, Associated Press (http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v00/n775/a09.html)

As the war on drugs escalated and hard drugs moved into the suburbs, a new form of anti-drug education was born. It was becoming obvious that, as Gary De Blasio, Executive Director of Corner House Counseling Center for Adolescents and Young Adults, said, "Scare tactics don't work." Drug-abuse prevention began to center on education. Instead of giving kids the willies, new outreach programs such as DARE (Drug Abuse Resistance Education) and Partnership for a Drug-Free America (PDFA), began teaching kids how to make good choices -- the willies are temporary, the ability to reason is permanent.

De Blasio's group, based in Princeton, N.J., prefers to use factual information. "We provide kids with refusal strategies, problem-solving and emotional coping skills. We show them that they have choices, and that choices have consequences. They find they have options. Peer education is one of our most effective programs. High school students speak at the junior highs, junior high school students talk to elementary school kids. They tell them that they have alternatives, but what the kids in the audience see are the cool kids NOT taking drugs." July 9, 2002 by Jennifer Robison, Contributing Editor (http://www.gallup.com/poll/6352/decades-drug-use-80s-90s.aspx).

The Basketball Diaries is based on a true story that occurred in the 1960’s, although the movie took place in the 1990’s. The movie is basically about a teenage boy named Jim Carroll who plays in his high school’s basketball team and was actually a great player. He dreamed of joining the NBA. After the death of his friend Bobby he then starts experimenting with drugs with his two other friends.

 Starting off any regular day with some problems can eventually drive a person a little mad/crazy. Having everyday problems and dealing with whatever way possible is a more difficult task than it sounds.. The goal is to live life and make the best out of it.  Jim making the best out of it in catholic school and make it to the NBA. Having some problems in life is hard just as Jim did. Bobby was a friend of Jim’s and his buddies.   

The movie got more intense as his friend Bobby dies and Jim suffering with that fact. Not knowing how to get rid of the feeling of this tragedy, he got offered a drug that would take the pain away. Consuming the drug, known as cocaine, uplifted his mood. It affected his mind. Not knowing the consequences of the drug he continues consuming it and found a new way of injecting it afterwords. His life turned upside down as he became a guinea pig to the drug life. Addiction comes into play and away with his life of basketball, his career, and family. His life is on the street, living only to get high and putting his own self through the troubles of getting the drugs.

His friends who accompanied him on his search all fell one by one, getting arrested for their mistakes. All except for one. They see him on the television as a member of the all city team and Jim feels envious knowing that it could have been him being interviewed, living his dream. Left on the ground of a cold winter day all bruised up, the last person with hopes for Jim comes to the rescue. Reggie was the person who wanted to help Jim knowing the person he is capable of; Reggie did not want Jim ending up dead on the streets over the drugs. Reggie stayed up nights for Jim to get through his withdrawals over the drug and not run away. Just as Jim got a little better he relapses and ends up back on the street. Jim comes across this person Diane, a former drug user. Diane used to surf the street doing anything just to get a few dollars just to buy some drugs while Jim was pursuing his goal to the NBA. She would not give him any money so he starting exploiting himself for money just to get some drugs.   

Being his last resort, Jim heads over his moms house and asks her if can borrow some money. As a strong parent, Jim’s mother was left with no choice but to call the cops on her own son. The movie ending with Jim rehabilitated after his 6 month sentence in Rikers Island. Turning his life around and after living that life, Jim pursued his new career as an acclaimed poet, musician, novelist, and performer.

The movie was filmed in Manhattan and a lot of parts in Queens. The part that they made to be Staten Island was actually the neighborhood in Forest Hills, and the Staten Island school was Forest Hills High School. In Staten Island, the houses are bigger; more isolated, and have a lot of breathing rooms for the gardens. The area of Forest Hills on the other hand has smaller houses in comparison. Compared to the movie, the area looks exactly the same. Fifteen years have passed since the movie was released and the area hasn’t made much improvement.

. The production of the movie had plenty of mistakes which they constantly failed to cover up. This brought up some questions based on the realism of the film based on small and possible overlooked details. The beginning of the film starts off with Jim narrating and giving a brief introduction as to what is going on. As this is happening, you see the shot in which he is being brutally spanked with a tennis cricket bat on the butt by one of his teachers. The cricket paddle was made out of wood and the average bat weighs about 2 lbs. “The amount of strokes he gets are enough to cause severe bruising or at least serious redness of the skin, yet minutes or hours later, when Jim and the boys are mooning a public ferry from a cliff, not one single bruised or red bottom is to be seen in the row of nude boys. This is inconsistent with Carroll's own words in his book,” stated the writers in the Imdb website.

They also stated “The biggest fatal error was that the NBA ball signed by the players would not have been around at that time. Spalding didn't start manufacturing the NBA ball until 1982 or 1983…. While producing, there was a some equipment present of when “in the "dream" scene, when Jim is shooting his classmates, the one who gets shot in the back has a visible string attached to him which pulls him to the blackboard. When Jim has a vision on the basketball court and gets blown by explosion, the string is visible again. They were dream sequences, but it seems unlikely that he would dream of strings.” 1990-2011 IMDb.com, Inc. (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0112461/goofs)
            Jim Carroll’s apartment was a little too damaged. I haven’t lived in Manhattan apartments, but being that I have lived in a lot of poor areas in queens, I have never lived in an apartment with so much wall damage. It’s dangerous because lead is poisonous. It is definitely possible that the walls could have been peeling, but not to that extent.

Overall, the movie is highly realistic because a lot of kids just want to have fun and feel like bad-asses. They want that sense of freedom and the euphoric feeling after having so much pain. A lot of kids don’t really know what they’re getting into when it comes to experimenting with drugs. They start off by just wanting to try it and say “I won’t get addicted, I can handle it” but before they know it, they can’t get enough of it and throw their life away. If one were to talk about the movie based on the setting, however, a way to tell that the movie took place in the 90’s was by looking at the cars. The cars set a perfect tone to identify what time during the decade it was in. Basketball in the parks seemed to be the most popular thing to do back then

The movie depicts this whole situation pretty accurately as to how life works and how you point out the directions to head. It was a perfect example to show as to how people break no matter how strong one may be, physically or mentally. Jim’s life should be the perfect vision to one’s eyes as to how drugs manipulate their mind, thoughts, and actions. Eventually, it ruins the dream.

Work Cited

1)http://www.nytimes.com/1995/01/01/nyregion/new-york-city-crime-falls-but-just-why-is-a-mystery.html  “New York City Crime Falls But Just Why Is a Mystery” By CLIFFORD KRAUSS Published: January 1, 1995

2)http://www.mountaintimes.com/history/1990s/world.php3 “A look at some of the events that shaped the world during the decade.” ©2007 The Mountain Times

3)http://www.nytimes.com/1990/09/02/us/cocaine-epidemic-may-have-peaked.html
“COCAINE EPIDEMIC MAY HAVE PEAKED” By PHILIP SHENON, September 02, 1990

4)http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/Econ_Articles/deflation.html
“Why We Should Fear Deflation”  J. Bradford DeLong, April, 1998
5)http://www.nytimes.com/1995/01/03/business/outlook-1995-the-economy-some-economists-look-into-the-new-year.html
“THE ECONOMY; Some Economists Look Into the New Year”  January 03, 1995

6) (http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v00/n775/a09.html) “US: Student Drug Use Rose During 1990s” Fri, 09 Jun 2000, Associated Press

 

7) (http://www.gallup.com/poll/6352/decades-drug-use-80s-90s.aspx) “Decades of Drug Use: The '80s and '90s” July 9, 2002 by Jennifer Robison, Contributing Editor

8) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0112461/goofs
“Goofs for

The Basketball Diaries”
1990-2011 IMDb.com, Inc.

Blog 19: Reflection on Archives Essay

The archives essay was rather interesting and it was great to use primary sources for this paper, but at the same time I felt that I was very limited with sources. The introduction to the Archives section was really helpful and the lady made me feel really smart, I just thought that there weren't enough articles to use for this paper. I can't really say what was more difficult because for the major research essay, I felt that I couldn't find enough statistics to prove a lot of the points that I wanted to prove. Unfortunately, I couldn't find the time to go to the Archive room to look for articles from the 90's that may have been relevant to the movie I was watching.
I don't have any complaints about the paper really, I just had trouble finding reliable sources and most of my sources came from articles in the NYtimes. I really don't know how else to elaborate on this, everything was pretty straight forward.

Blog 18: Difficulties that i had during this essay

            I find the research paper to be actually pretty interesting and I enjoy looking up research for it, but the problem that I faced was looking for the information that I needed in a website that had a surplus amount of information. For this essay, most of my sources came from articles in the New York Times website. In the website, they categorize their articles in parts and dates, but i would have liked it to be a little more specific+. It would have been nice to also have the option to look through "ecomony" or "drug issues" instead of looking by parts in a month.
          I learned a lot about 1995, but i had trouble finding statistics on teens dropping out of school in the 90's. The information that was being given wasn't exactly reliable. I still need to go to the library and see if i can find more research based on how the economic standards were during the mid 90's because the information that i found wasn't too clear and a little shady.
          I incorporated some of the lessons learned in class, but not all of them. I am saving that for the editing part of my draft as soon as i get more information first. I worry less about the grammar until I have all the information I need. As for the down shifting, I still have ways to go.

Blog 16: The Basketball Diaries

                The film The Basketball Diaries was released in 1995, although the actual story took place in the 60’s. The movie stars Leonardo DiCaprio as Jim Carroll, and focuses on his struggle with drug addiction. Long story short, Jim is part of an undefeatable high school team but with all the pressure he faces, he starts to get addicted to heroin and other pills.  His best friend has leukemia and his team’s coach makes passes at the students. Eventually, the kids get caught experimenting during a game in the school and not only do they get kicked off the team, but out of school as well. The streets of New York become the place in which he can feel safe and go in search for more heroin and to rob. Their dream is gone.

                The streets of New York in the movie don’t look too different as it does now.  The movie had a few scenes in which they were playing basketball in the park. It seemed very common during the 90’s have a scene in the park playing basketball. The park didn’t look too different, but the ambience of it was. Maybe it had to do with the style of clothing, but also the cars and the buildings had a slightly different tone to it. It’s actually a little difficult to explain. It was not an exaggeration when the kids were trying to find anything that they could get high off. It was and still very common at this point. Overall from what I've seen growing up, the movie seems pretty accurate.

Blog#15: Minority Report Response

In the movie Minority Report, extreme security has abolished privacy. People are being punished before committing a murder and the government knows where you are at all times. I think that security is very important, but there is also a limit as to how intrusive the government when it comes to your privacy. I understand that it is for our safety but how long will it be until someone gets hurt?

What if someone from the law is so concerned about safety that they end up doing the most damage? For instance, lets say a police officer had a suspicion about something illegal happening in someone’s house, maybe a meth lab, but it is only a suspicion. If they didn’t have those little spiders from the Minority report, I bet that they would just barge into the house and destroy everything only to find out that their suspicion was wrong. What if there were children in there who got scared shitless because of people breaking into their homes while they were watching television? It would be ridiculous. If privacy is gone and no longer an option, no one would need a warrant to begin with to follow this hunch.

Privacy is already being reduced every year as technology advances. This doesn’t really bother me since I have nothing to hide and I find that everything I have on the Internet is very impersonal, but how long will it be until the government will be able to watch what we’re doing? I don’t like being watched or followed. It makes me very uncomfortable. If that were to happen, I’d be a mess and do everything wrong.  I also feel like things would be very corrupt. What if someone we disliked worked for the government and has access to our records? They can either 1) fabricate something to use against us or 2) find something from our past that we don’t want people to know about.

Violation of privacy is a very high price to pay. There is a line that cannot be crossed. I don’t want to have my eyes scanned every second of the day. I don’t want robot spiders interrupting a very serious argument I’m having with somebody or interrupting my shower. I feel like I’d feel less safe if privacy is destroyed. If I’m meant to get shot, then I’m meant to die. I won’t be happy but there would be nothing I can do. You can’t save everybody.

Archvive: Planned shrinkage

Slum life was not uncommon in New York City in the 1970’s. It was a time in which the “middle class” started to decline, the arrival of more immigrants, and crime started to increase.  All this led to an idea that would affect a lot of people living in poverty and improve the financial situation of the government. Rodger Starr started to lay down the tracks for “Planned Shrinkage.” Planned Shrinkage consisted of getting rid of a lot of area’s that were starting to decay and with really high crime rates. When it comes to morals, this is a bad idea, but for economical reasons it wasn’t bad.

                Planned Shrinkage was aimed towards Brooklyn, Harlem, and South Bronx. These areas in particular had a high crime rate and high poverty levels. Although the plan insisted on reconstruction, the main idea was to drive people out from these “slum” areas by cutting back the budget on firemen, police officers, and on health care plans. This way, a person who thought that this was inconvenient and a horrible place to live would leave.

                A lot of jobs were lost during planned shrinkage. From February-March 1976, 3,432 city jobs were cut in a month.  There was a 15% decrease in jobs from 1974-76. According to the Daily News dated back March 11. 1976, the most people affected consisted of police/fire department (which lost a total of 6,805 jobs all together), Sanitation department (lost 2,612 employees), Department of Social Security (lost 3,815 employees), Board of Ed/Higher Ed (lost 13,324employees all together), Parks and Recreation/cultural affairs (lost 1,097 employees) and Health hospitals Corp(lost 8,130 employees). All these jobs were lost within a 14 month period.

                With the war in Vietnam happening and the fall of revenues, the United States was in debt for 14 Billion Dollars. It didn’t help that with the increase in crime rate came along with a lot of damaged property. There were a lot of buildings being burned, especially in the Bronx. The Bronx had up to 120,000 per year. Over 40% of the public housing was destroyed.

                Rodger Starr, a housing administrator, promoted the idea of planned shrinkage. According to a Daily News article, he believed that a great way to save up money would be by cutting off a lot of these services offered to the “slum” areas to decrease the population of New York City. The money saved would then be used for reconstruction. There was a lot of anger amongst the people living in poverty. Instead of cutting off services from people who need them, why didn’t they cut them ones that were unnecessary? Since most of the people in poverty were minority groups, he was thought as a racist.

                People were taking this very personally, but his main goal was all about business. If he stopped to think about how people would be affected, the government wouldn’t get anywhere. Rodger Starr believed that people were not always good and decent.  He thought that everyone was alike. The problem is that he never took the time to get to know people before making them suffer to move out of their homes. It’s because of the cutbacks that a lot of the housing properties got destroyed in the 1^st place.

                In the end, I believe that his idea was a good one, but I don’t agree with the way that he set out to do so. If all people are alike, then why did he attack the minority groups? I’m sure that there were other programs that weren’t so necessary to the higher class people. According to his obituary, he got very “disillusioned by what he viewed as the flawed execution of good intentions.” To avoid this, he should have taken more time talking with others about a better solution to the economic crisis. Too many people suffered the loss of jobs around this time and they didn’t need this “cherry” on top of all the other shit that was going on in their lives.

Special Activity: MOMI

         At the Museum of Moving Images, I learned that the 1^st “motion pictures” looked kind of like toys and lanterns and that in order for a person not to see blurred images, the images need a moment of rest. That’s how we get to see clear images. In the case of camcorders, the shutter causes the moment of rest per frame. It was also interesting how the television sets looked like home appliances for women to use, even though the main goal was to get men to buy it. Some resembled washing machines while others looked like ovens.   

       Companies made a lot of money selling merchandises and their target audience was children. They sold lunch boxes, dolls, clothing with characters faces on it and posters.  

Blog 12: Response to Gattaca

            According to George Anna’s essay on genetic engineering, the genetically superior humans will seek and eliminate the “normal” humans and vice versa.  I actually have to agree on this. The movie Gattica is a good example to prove this point.

            Without giving it away, the movie is basically about how the future is when humans are genetically modified. Even if the humans are modified, they can still have some flaws and they are often discriminated against. 

            There is skepticism about this film and a lot of arguments against the fact that this will actually happen, but if we look back in history, it pretty much already happened. We had the Nazi’s killing off Jewish people because they practiced a different religion and because they didn’t look like the “ideal” human that Hitler was looking for. This consisted of blonde hair and blue eyes.  People were dying just because they were born a certain way.  African Americans were made into slaves just because their skin tone was dark and people related that to something bad.  And now, they are often looked upon as thieves and drug dealers because of the black stereotype.

            So being that all this has happened, what makes people so sure that it isn’t going to happen again? We can try to avoid it, but we have to think realistically when it comes to the idea of genetic discrimination. 

Blog 11: Amish Paradise not for me

            

If there is anything that Weird Al Yankovic has taught me, it is that the Amish are interesting and hardcore. I think it's pretty hardcore of them to live without all this technology. It's because of all their hard work and labor that I have a lot of respect for them.

As much respect as I have for them, I could never adapt to their lifestyle. Their lifestyle consists of practicing religion consistantly and women are not equal to men  when it comes to authority. I believe in God, but I do not believe that it is mandatory to be going to a house of worship every week. I do believe we should attend every once in a while, but not to the extent that extremely religious people believe. I don’t think I’ll go to hell for not attending church for a month. I show my appreciation to God by doing charity and being thankful for what I have.

Women not being equal to men is a serious problem for me. Unmarried Amish women are still under the control of their fathers and when married are under control of their husbands. Not exactly control, but men treat women unequally making the suffrage movements moot. I cannot stand being held down by anybody. If I want to go travel, no one should be telling me I can’t. If I want to work no one should be telling me I can’t.  I like the kitchen, but unless I’m a chef, I refuse to stay in there all day.

Another thing is that the Amish believe that children should be taken out of school before 8^th grade.  I love school. It’s a great excuse to get out of the house and I love to learn.  I wouldn’t want to be taken away from my right to an education.

I have a lot of respect for the Amish. I don’t agree with with most of their beliefs, but I know that they mean well and they believe in the rewards of hardwork. It’s a very admirable way of life but I couldn’t do that. Oh and I really love my Nintendo 64, can’t live without that.

Blog 10: Judgement *DUM dum DUM*

            There have been a lot of interesting things that I learned throughout my time taking this course. I also enjoyed looking back on some stuff that I did learn, but somewhat forgot about. I felt rather smart while working on the essay that we had to write on The Matrix because I actually came up with a lot of those concepts on my own. After doing research and seeing I wasn’t the only one that thought or noticed certain things, I was pretty proud because this meant that I wasn’t crazy.

            I enjoy writing in blogs because I feel like it is a little bit more personalized in terms of writing and designing the layout. I think it felt a little bit more like “home” than just a website we write our papers in. We might have been given subjects to write about, but I felt like they were very interesting. I wasn’t too fond of the prison house of language blog, but I felt better knowing that it was to show us that you can’t find everything on Google…. although I think that with all the blogs written about it, it might be easier to find now…. it was still a bitch though.

            I would actually like to continue learning more about mythology. It’s something that always intrigued me. I like to read between the lines and discover hidden messages/morals of stories or movies.  As for writing concepts, I would like to continue learning about using primary sources and incorporating text from a source into my essay without making it plagiarism.

            Judging myself as a writer is something that I’ve always had trouble with and always tried to avoid. It is basically like looking at a mirror: I’d rather ask people for their opinions than use them because in the end I have to use my own judgment. I guess my weakest point is coming up with an introduction and a conclusion paragraph.  My strongest blogs may have been blog 1 and essay 1. Those were the topics I guess I felt a little more comfortable in. Plus, I gave a lot of detail without going too overboard. It’s the size of the font that makes it look longer, but it also looks inviting to read.  Weakest blog may have been my response to allegory of the cave because I kind of explained my response in the summary. I just need to improve my organizational skills when it comes to summaries and responses. That’s about it.

Blog 8: Knowing too much can be a pain in the ass according to Oedipus and Neo

        The movie The Matrix and the play Oedipus the King share some common ground when it comes to Ignorance, Bliss and Knowledge. They say ignorance is bliss. There are a lot of different answers that arise when it comes to the question as to whether or not Oedipus and Neo would have been better off not knowing where they are from.
         They both share the concept of ignorance is bliss. Cypher (The Matrix) and Jocasta (Oedipus the King) both state that this and refuse to know any more than they already do. Trying to go back to ignorance led to their fall, and eventually, their death. Once you know something, there is no going back.
          Oedipus and Neo both continue to pry out any information they can about their origin.

Blog 7: Thesis and Bibliography

Thesis: Television does not influence violence upon children/people.


Sources:
Article: http://www.nytimes.com/1994/06/15/opinion/l-tv-causes-violence-try-again-403962.html

Article: http://reason.com/archives/1996/05/01/missing-links

Book:  Super Freakonomics by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner 

more research to be done. to be continued.

Blog 6: Prison house of Language

                The idea of the Prison-house of Language is when one questions the meaning of the meaning.  It is a debate between the analytical and dialectical understanding.  The meaning of a word can vary, depending on the person and the person’s perception. Let us say that someone in Italy uses the verb “mangiare.” This word means “to eat.” In a different country, it can mean something really different. In Peru, for instance, “mangiare” means to talk bad or gossip about someone. It’s a tough topic to understand, even after reading and rereading books on it.