Post Freedom Writers

Recently, we class got to watch the movie "The Freedom Writers". It was interesting and very moving. I felt it meant a lot to us because the story was about this class of students that were our age but on the other side of the spectrum. An integrated high school with students that were involved in gangs, drug trafficking and more. These kids fought for their lives every day. They just hoped to live another day from where they came from. It brought a new meaning to life for the students of 5 Batai.

Our dear teacher asked us to write about some of the topics in the movie. First is prejudices found in the movie. One clear example was the fact these different gangs, cliques and races had a problem with each other. The Blacks prejudice against the Latinos and other races. This was without a valid reason or knowledge. It was just because they thought they were here first and "they" were invading their land. Many prejudices are still present in the world today like racism and sexism. A prejudice where you have to protect your own kind that Eva had to follow was also mentioned in the movie. Eva was instructed to protect the people like her father by him. She had lie to protect Paco from the
court of Law but in the end Eva did what was right. She may have had lost her family of Latinos but her classmates who were once divided, came together and showed her that they are her family and that she will never be alone.

Secondly, there was stereotyping in the movie as well. The perfect stereotype seen was when Miss Gruwell's husband said "I can't be your wife." after she asked him to support her like wives do. The stereotype of husbands go to work and wives stay at home to support the husband is still present in society. However, the people have changed and women have become more independent to get their own jobs. In some cases, the women achieve more than men and earn more than them too. Truthfully, in my opinion, this stereotype should not be upheld because it is all down to the mutual agreement of a husband and wife that keeps them together. In the movie, I feel that the husband should have gave Miss Gruwell a chance and told her how he felt about her working so late and et cetera .

Next up is the topic of discrimination. The whole movie was filled with discrimination of many sorts. Firstly, there was the example of discrimination - harassment. Inappropriate jokes, insults, name-calling was seen clearly in the movie. They also displayed behaviour where the would fight with other races just because the school was in chaos. There was also a cartoon drawn by Tito in class of an inappropriate cartoon on Jamal with big fat lips "kissing up" to Miss Gruwell. When Miss Gruwell saw the drawing, how raged she was. She mentioned the Holocaust and drawings of the Jews with big fat noses in the papers. She talked about the greatest gang in history which took over countries that did all those stuff to get rid of their enemies. This was to prove to the class discrimination was bad.  Other examples of discrimination in real life is discrimination in hiring, housing, sex discrimination and wage discrimination.

Lastly there were examples of segregation presented in "The Freedom Writers" movie. This is clearly seen in Eva's monologue at the start of the movie. She states that there are the different type of cliques "latino's, china town, the ghetto, and a white kid" in school. There are also cliques in my school but I feel that we are pretty united due to the flexibility of the students and open mindedness of the our generation. Then again, it could just be my year. People who are new have to try to fit in to a clique to feel welcome. This brings us to the psychological factor of wanting to belong. The movie really shows the big contrast between the class when they first started out and after Miss Gruwell brought them together. At the start of the year, the students came in and sat in their cliques but Miss
Gruwell changes that when she moved the around. I felt it was a good first step for her. In the end, you can see the class worked together to raise fund to bring Miep Gies to their school and were all united on bringing Miss Gruwell back for their Junior and Senior year.

In our world today, you still see all these - prejudice, stereotypes, discrimination and segregation throughout the society. The different levels of them in the various places. Relating to another movie "The Duff" (it is PG13 in US but was not shown in Malaysia due to certain parts of the movie), we should all learn to love ourselves and ignore the labels on us as well as the cliques we are in. High school is a vicious environment. With that I end my post, till next post! Cheers.