American Dream from Ian Ruhter : Alchemist on Vimeo.
Friday, October 3, 2014
American Dream Blog Post
Watch the following video, "Silver and Light," and name two essential aspects of the American Dream. Please give at least one clear example for each of the qualities that you mention. The trick to this assignment is that you will not receive credit for mentioning a quality that has previously been mentioned in the comments stream. Please write using clear, grammatically correct sentences. No shorthand. No lists.
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Two essential aspects of the American Dream are self-confidence and to make the best of what you have. An example of self-confidence would be Oscar. He doesn't care what others think of him and doesn't let his disability make him something that he's not. The man on the street would be an example of making the best out of what you have. He seemed to like living on the street but didn't ale advantage of what he was given. Just as Oscar said, "I'm a firm believer that something good comes out of every situation."
ReplyDeleteI believe that the two clearest pieces of the American Dream in "Silver and Light" are taking advantages of the things you have and being able to overcome adversity and be who you are without people putting you down for it. The skater name David. He is an amputee of his left leg and he has no fingers to go along with it. His attitude on life is that he is not phased by his disabilities and what people think for it. But most of the people in the United States don't care about that and give him a chance to be one of them, or a "normal" person. The man who was also featured in the movie first was homeless. As he said, "A day it is sunny I'm happy". This man has an extremely positive attitude on life. No matter what gets in his way he will conquer it. That is what most Americans try to do and may not ever succeed.
ReplyDeleteIn the short video "Silver and Light" the American dreams appears many times in different ways. The main character Ian put his heart and soul into his art and to spread it. At one point he says, "I am gonna give it everything and if I fall straight down on my face in front of everyone, then so be it". In this quote he explains how he is driven to do this. Also David let this total stranger use his studio. David did not expect to get anything out of it, He just heard of what they were doing and he wanted to help others with their dream.
ReplyDeleteThere are many essential parts of the American dream. One essential part of the american dream is to stop wanting to accomplish the dream and overcome your fears and obstacles and start living the american dream. You can't start living the dream unless you try to live it. Like the guy with the special camera. He overcame being dyslexic and made his american dream come true. Another essential part would be to have a good outlook of the world, make the best of what life gives you and be grateful. The homeless guy on the street said "if the suns shining and it's not raining, i'm alright." He has a good look on the world because he's living on the street which isn't good but he's alright if its sunning. He's making the best out of his life and being grateful that's sunny. This is an essential part of the american dream because to have an american dream work out the way you hoped it would you need to make work and be grateful that you even get to try.
ReplyDeleteThe American Dream promotes the ideas of prosperity and success and balance. This comes from hard work, determination, and what Kenzie mentioned, self confidence. The idea of having a Natural aristocracy as well as an artificial one in tonight's reading shows that part of the dream, is to make a positive difference with what you have. This makes one prosperous- not always out of money and riches, but out of integrity and the happy emotion it brings to ones self to know they altered their country for the common good. "I wish I could be acquainted with the feeling and thoughts which must agitate the heart..." Crevecoeur comes to say in his letter of What is an American. These heart agitating feeling are what may make one prosperous from doing good. We see success within the balance of different political ideas that shape our country. We as Americas must seem confident in our government- as we have the perfect concoction between "Jefferson and Hamilton," or aristocracy rules and natural aristocracy rules. This as a government makes us a successful country which is one of the aspects American Dreams- if we can work hard and for a good cause, we as a government, country, and as Americans will prosper.
ReplyDeleteI think an essential quality of the American dream is perseverance. You need to persevere through all obstacles and doubts to do what makes you happy, but most importantly, you need to persevere through the ones you make yourself. There will always be that one part of your brain that is forever working up excuses and blocking you through doing something. As Oscar says in the video, "there''s always going to be something that isn't going to work, and if you just focus all of your energy on that, it gives you an escape route." I think a big part of pioneering and moving forward on the American dream is focusing your energy on what is going to work, what is going to bring you forward.
ReplyDeleteA fundamental part of the American dream is speaking your mind and allowing others to speak their minds. This video "Silver and Light" embodies that idea. This man is showing others how he sees the world, and while doing so he is spreading what other people think and would want the world to know. This ripples, the more and more you spread your voice, the more other people will want to help you. The studio just dropped everything to help him with his project. Another essential part of the American dream is that you have an opportunity to mold your life and do what you want with it. This video shows that some people end up living on the streets or in garages, however they know why they are there. Each of them can tell you the order of events that lead up to them being homeless. This is sad, and nobody would chose to live like that, however everything happens for a reason. Nobody starts on the same platform as anybody else, however in the American dream it is the people that persevere and work hard who succeed.
ReplyDeleteIn my opinion, the first essential aspect of the American Dream is self-knowledge, they all know why they are homeless and poor, they know why they are such abject like this, but they never complain that the God treat him unfairly,the things they do is to live happier and better than before. They know their current poor life is because of their previously fail, it's all their fault and they never blame the objective things. The second essential aspect of American Dreams is kind and happy to fell others, the example is that David Backer set up Ian and his group members after he see their videos. If he think that their actions is good for the society, he will help them so much.There are also many people to take Ian to their own studio and help them. I think this quality is really precious because there is no one can live on the world without others help. A kind heart is absolutely important to a people as a member of his society.
ReplyDeleteThe american dream in the "Silver light" basically is saying that you have to go threw the lows to get the highs or the highs to unfortunately get the lows and finding passion. The created Ian found his passion threw the lens of a camera. The man with the motorcycle had a wife and a nice house and it then all got taken away from him. The american dream can make you or break you.
ReplyDeleteAfter watching " Silver and Light", two important aspects of the American Dream that were highlighted were to judge your life based upon success and what you do with what you have, a lot or a little. Whether you are rich or poor doesn't dictate the success you have in life or make you a happier person. What success is based upon is if you are happy, and happiness can be judged upon making a living doing what you love and having everyone that would be essential to your life as an individual, whether that is a family or a mansion it is entirely up to you as a person striving to live the American Dream.
ReplyDeleteIan inspires and highlights what the American dream is to people in many ways in "Silver Light". One aspect of the American Dream that the people explained was to be grateful with what you have and you only can succeed if you believe you can succeed. The Homeless man that they showed in the movie spoke about how he messed up in life, but still had the motivation to live his life without a home or money in a positive attitude. The main character Ian talked about doing what he loved and not doing what society expected. His passion for photography made him believe in doing something for others and his success came off his ability to believe he would succeed.
ReplyDeleteThe video "Silver and Light" depicts perfectly how discipline and rewards go hand in hand. Hope is something we all share. We all want our hopes and dreams to come true. But without discipline, we would have no dreams. If all of our aspirations came true, there would be nothing left to hope for. So even though we may disagree to the fact that discipline is helpful, it helps us dream.
ReplyDeleteHope and inspiration is what droves the American dream. Self confidence and self finding drives people to explore every aspect of life and what appeals to us. Finding what appeals to us creates self confidence and self completeness. We feel that we need to be better and without exploration we would not improve who we are or what we do.
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