SELECT ONLY ONE QUESTION:
1. Bill Nichols discusses the film Who Killed Vincent Chin? by Renee Tajima and Christine Choy as the most important political documentary film of the 1980s. Discuss with specific examples how Tajima and Choy can evoke but not name particular instances of racism, sexism and class conflict (Nichols 165). Select your examples from Ebens and his wife’s statements, televised images, and testimonies from workers, from Lily Chin’s statements and any examples that strike you as important and which point to racism, sexism, and class conflict. YOU CAN SELECT EXAMPLES TO DISCUSS ALL THREE OR SELECT EXAMPLES TO JUST DISCUSS RACISM. YOU CAN USE EXAMPLES FROM NICHOLS ARTICLE AS WELL.
2. Discuss the film, American Revolutionary the Evolution of Grace Lee Boggs by Grace Lee. With specific examples discuss some of Grace Lee Boggs’ work in her community. Keeping Gail Presbey’s comments in mind, give examples of some of the projects that Grace Lee Boggs initiated and why these are important in a city abandoned by the automobile companies.
Whether or not it is the best overall strategy for a movement, the emphasis on starting small and local, building a community with an alternative lifestyle and commitment to each other is certainly part of what gives Boggs that daily feeling of joy and optimism. It serves as a base for involvement in projects of fighting the big powers as well. But larger project cannot be sustained without the life-giving oxygen of the more local and immediate involvements. And so, she supports arts and gardens, creative self-employment and open-ended conversation as well as resisting Detroit’s emergency management, and denouncing corporate destruction of the environment and U.S. government military incursions. And so, we would do well to learn from her example (Presbey 484-485).
