Daily Blog 11/5/18 - Political and Social Lenses

Today in class we discussed exactly what lenses are and the different types of lenses you can view a movie or text through. The definition for a lens that we came up with in class was something that alters your view of a topic, allows you to see clearly, think lenses in glasses. The two main types of lenses that we discussed in class today was a social lens and a political lens. A social lens is community values, financial class, race, etc. (groups of people). Social lens means to take the viewpoint of a different group. A political lens is about stuff like world events… but a political lens is mostly about POWER. Who is in power and who is subject to the person in power. Another thing we discussed in class is how we are going to use these lenses while watching the movie Get Out, which we started today, and while reading level 2 of Ready Player One. We will be applying a political or social lens to this portion of the book. We will also be answering the question "what does the text critique about contemporary American society or politics" in level two of Ready Player One. We should have 3-4 statements about this ready for when level 2 is due. We also briefly covered two other types of lenses:

Cinematic lens: links between product and craft

Environmental lense: links between product and environment

Example of a political and social lens:

Through a social lense: racism exists even though they are being told that there is no racism there, some groups say that it does not exist while other groups say it does

Through political lense: minorities have less power and are being suppressed

The tools that we learned today will be very useful outside of the classroom. Using lenses to see the perspective of others we may disagree with will help us understand others more completely, understand the viewpoints of others, and even win debates with others. Lenses will also help us understand the messages of other movies and books better in the future.