Hotel Rwanda

Every movie includes a voice to deliver its message to the audience. I believe Hotel Rwanda definitely has a message, which is sent variously to each and many people. For me, Hotel Rwanda informed me of many historical and personal facts.
First, I got to acknowledged that there is actully a country named Rwanda in Africa. Secondly and unfortunately, I learned that there was a brutal genocide that occurred in Rwanda, because of ethnic and racial conflicts. (I thought genocides weren’t able to happen after WW2).
This movie spoke to me that we are responsible for knowing what is going on in other parts of our world, and not make the same mistakes we made in Rwanda again.
Hotel Rwanda’s intentional message is that genocides are still going around in parts of our world, that we don’t take seriously. Loss of myraid precious lives were reported, but the world had not taken strong and firm action in order to seize control of the chaos. It looked as if the situation was trivial and inconsequential. Why? Because the victims were Africans.
This movie tells us to be alert about what is happening in this world and look out for the trustworthy source, so we can do what we can to help that situation.
Hotel Rwanda had given many people a time of lamentation and introspection over those dead souls that we could have possibly saved.

RWANDA and media

I saw, "Hotel Rwanda," in 9th grade, either in geography class or in 10th grade US history class (can’t remember). Always being fatigued and exhausted from school work, that time I rolled my brain in order to sleep without being noticed by the teacher. As a result, I only have disconnected memories of that movie.
I thought, people with different ethnicities needs to settle their disdains and discrepancies within each other, and this kind of genocide should never happen again in our time of history.
Since it was the second time watching Hotel Rwanda, I didn’t feel any need to watch this movie again, and I thought I would have a pleasant time sleeping. Ms. Lilo said this movie had something to do with our media unit and I tried to view this movie from a different perspective and mind set from last year.
This time by focusing on the media’s role and coverage, I was able to observe subtle information.
In 1994, 800,000 genocide of Tutsis occurred by the uprising of Hutus, and while killing was going on, the world looked as if they were indifferent to this massacre. “Powerful” and ‘trustworthy’ U.N. being there to settle problems between Hutus and Tutsis were not very efficient in taking control.In the movie, the Hutu radio called the Tutsis, “Cockroaches,” and from the way the VJ talked, I could sense the hatred and discrimination toward the Tutsis.Many people today debates and questions, "How and why this incident happened and how could we have let that happen." One of the reasons why this genocide was kept untreated was that the media misinformed many people and even kept it secret. Mark Doyle, from his interview link said that for several weeks he had been misinformed of this situation and wasn't clear about what was happening until he interviewed the Red Cross and the U.N. soldiers. He couldn't use the word genocide because he did not have enough information.
People rebuked US for not using the word, “Genocide,” in their media, to not get their country involved in Rwanda incident. Anyhow, even though US is a strong country, I don't think they are not the only country who have the responsibility to help out and intervene conflicts.
From the sites that I’ve been through, the two main ideas that people threw out was, Responsibility to protect and foreign interventions. We have the responsibility to protect others who are in adversities and conflicts. So it is our duty to dig for the trustworthy media information, and bring it to action.

When You Are Old by William Butler Yeats

When you are old and gray and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;

And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

This poem is very serene, and it's filled with sweet memories. Persona, the grandmother, is now old and she recollecting her memories from the past. This poem had me thinking about what kind of things I would remember as memorable when I become a grandpa. I'm sure I'll remember TCIS as memorable.
This persona does not want to be any older, and she has fallen inside this hole of reminiscence, feeling sad and wanting to travel back in times when she was young.

We Wear the Mask by Paul Laurence Dunbar

We wear the mask that grins and lies,
It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes—
This debt we pay to human guile;
With torn and bleeding hearts we smile,
And mouth with myriad subtleties.

Why should the world be over-wise,
In counting all our tears and sighs?
Nay, let them only see us, while
We wear the mask.

We smile, but, O great Christ, our cries
To thee from tortured souls arise.
We sing, but oh the clay is vile
Beneath our feet, and long the mile;
But let the world dream otherwise,
We wear the mask!


When I saw this poem, and it immediately grabbed my attention because the title, We Wear The Mask, sounded attractive and wasn't tedious. Honestly, I do not fully understand this profound poem, but I think Paul Laurence, the author, is telling us about the unrevealed problems that's going around in the society that we live in. How people try to hide their pains and adversities by trying to handle it entirely by themselves or acting like nothing has ever happened to them. Those people may look fine on the outside with a smile and a mask, but there may be undivulged sufferings that are hidden inside. These days, the world is over picky of others’ mistakes and it pressures some people to put on the mask, and only show the fine and accepted side to other people.