First Semester Extra Credit for Movies

1. Witness: 

In this movie, a Amish boy witnesses a murder while he is in a train station bathroom. For the rest of the movie, the boy and a detective named John (Harrison Ford), try to avoid the murder and his posey, eventually killing them. Throughout the movie, John is shown to become more Amish representing his transition from the way of popular culture to an Amish local culture. This shows how local culture can sustain itself against popular culture. 

2. Korean Drama- You Are The Only One: 

We watched episode 118 of the Korean Drama, You Are The Only One. It was hard to pick up, but in this episode we learn that Grandma Jo has had fraud committed on her fruit company, and her fortune and will be taken away from her. Meanwhile, dowon and his new wife are planning a honey moon and learn of the terrible news about Grandma Jo.  

3. Good Will Hunting:

 Good Will Hunting is a movie about Will Hunting's (Matt Damon) change in outlook on the world. In the beginning of the movie Will is working at a school at as a janitor, and solves a very difficult math problem assigned by a teacher. A good deal of the movie goes by, and Will is being put through personal therapy by a psychologist (Robert Williams). This movie represents a change in identity in Will Hunting. In the beginning of the movie, we are shown how tough of a life Will has been brought into, especially growing up as an orphan in the ghetto. Will is abandoned by the people that were suppose to love him most, which is why we see a defensive mechanism in his personality: his ability to leave people before they can hurt him by leaving him. We also see this in the form of him not revealing personal information to people that aren't his close friends, in other words, he feeds them lies. Throughout the movie, Will's identity is shaped by his girlfriend, Skyler, and his psychologist, in order to open him up to them, which represents his change in identity for the better. 

4. The Gods Must Be Crazy: 

The Gods Must Be Crazy is a comedy about a tribe in Africa called the Kalahari. This is a tribe about 600 miles north of a booming modern 1984 civilization, oblivious to modern technology. When an overhead pilot drops a coca-cola bottle from his plane, the Kalahari pick it up and are negatively impacted by it. The members of the tribe begin to fight with each other and the leader decides to throw the bottle off the end of the earth, eventually questioning the existence of his gods altogether. This coca-cola bottle represents popular culture invading the Kalahari's local culture, and turning the tribe members against each other.