Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Made in L.A.

I went to the Made in L.A. screening a week ago, and I was incredibly impressed with the whole event. I didn’t know that it was a community event, so I was a little surprised to see so many non-college students there. During the introduction of the event, Timothy Sandoval, who, if I remember correctly, is the director of the Bright Prospect organization, told the audience mostly about the hope that he has in the high school students in the program, many of which were at the showing, his belief in their leadership abilities, and the students’ potential to affect their community. Sometimes I feel like the discussions in this class, as well as in my sociology class, are so abstract and topics of social justice are handled in an almost sterile way. What I mean to say is that in class discussions societal problems are recognized and then analyzed like a math problem; the solution is the result of logic detached from any emotional repercussions. Listening to Mr. Sandoval speak about his pride for the Bright Prospect students brought those class discussions out of Cloud Abstraction down to a more emotional level. I could see the investment that he had in his students. This also kind of ties into the level of activism here among the Claremont Colleges students and the different ethnic communities that we were talking about in class today. Participation in racial, political, or social issues doesn’t have to be contained solely in the classroom, and yet it seems like for the majority of students it is.
Made in L.A. was really well made and definitely a worthwhile documentary. When Ms. Carracedo gave a description of the process of making this film she told the audience that it was supposed to be a five month project, but as she was filming she recognized a change in the three main women and so the documentary lengthened in order to reflect that. It was really apparent to see what Ms. Carracedo meant when she said that, and it was really amazing to see how those women’s lives and their involvement in the lawsuit against Forever 21 just naturally followed an archetypal model of the underdog story. Made in L.A. also added a more experienced and humanistic perspective to the class discussions. It made obvious, again, how books can sometimes render acts of dehumanizing and humiliating discrimination into facts used as background information to support a large-scale idea or pattern. Maybe I’m more of an audio/visual learner than I thought, but for me, the most striking aspect of this documentary was the women’s telling of their experiences as Mexican immigrants and garment workers and being able to see their reactions on their faces. Another part of Made in L.A. that really gave me pause was at the very end when Lupe, one of the three main women, said something along the lines of "The more I learn, the lonelier I feel". To hear about knowledge in that way, as a student, is a little disheartening. There are obviously circumstantial differences, but even connecting it to just Lupe and how her self-perception changed because of what she learned through her experience in the lawsuit against Forever 21, that statement undermines her achievements.

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