Welcome...and initial guidelines...

This blog will be used in the spring of 2008 by 80+ students at Drexel University to investigate the effects of Iraq on culture and the reverse. Our goal will be to better understand why the US is in Iraq, and to question whether literature can help us on this journey.

Weekly plans and other materials will always be posted in Vista, not this blog. So go to Bb Vista to get the discussion prompts and other instructions.

I intend this blog to manage our discussions and track our collective investigation.

You should have received an email from me inviting you to become a contributor to this blog. The email was sent Monday afternoon to your official Drexel email address.

Sunday, April 13, 2008

Traffic

The movie Traffic depicts many intertwining stories that are involved with drug trafficking. From the supplier to consumer and the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) The main players of each of these parties has a closer connection to the other more so than they think. For instance the head commanding officer of the DEA is strict within his family. His daughter isn't happy with her life at home and something like this may have been her reason for trying drugs and eventually becoming addicted to it.

This movie shows the close and sometimes frighteningly surprising relationship between cause and effect. How one thing leads to another, and how one thing can directly effect another. In real life this happens all the time. When you think you're solving one problem but actually causing another. I remember a lot of speculations that went out about the War in Iraq being all about oil. I even remember hearing on the news "Operation Iraqi Liberation" and saying to my self, "doesn't that spell out O.I.L?" And too this day the prices of gas hasn't gone down.

This is true within media as well. Some people think that making horror movies more grotesque would scare away customers, but some daring (or disturbed) movie makers decide to try and push the envelope on gore. More times than none this invokes and even greater audience, It's funny, people enjoy being freaked out and grossed out. How this works, we may never know. Just shows that things often turn out differently than one would imagine.

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