We watched a film about Gleaners last week, prior to that I had never even heard of that word. I thought it was actually very interesting to see a charitable act like letting gleaners pick from farms become a part of culture of the French and certain others in Europe. I didn’t think anyone really cared about whether peasants were able to eat or not. I also agree with the act of gleaning itself, there are so many times in our world that I have seen food be wasted. I am in an extremely poor household and I was taught by my mother to never waste food. Even though my family does not waste food I have seen friends of my family, such as my mother’s best friend and her family be wasteful. They would buy so much food that they end up just throwing out without even opening! it actually annoys me to no end because there are so many countries including our own with starving people who wish they had that food, but they just throw it out. Besides food, I’ve seen plenty of other types of Gleaning happen here in New York City, especially from the elderly. In fact, I’ve seen this old lady come to Queensborough Community College to look through all the trash cans multiple times during my time here. I used to judge her a little in my mind, like why are you looking through all the garbage cans? For bottles? You’re going through all that work to get some money from putting bottles into the machine? But really it’s smart and she probably finds all kinds of useful things besides bottles. Thinking about it, my grandma is the same type of person to glean objects off the street. I can think of times my mother said she has taken a chair or table from off the street. Makes you think really.
Author: Gilbert Davila
Nanking (南京大屠杀)
This is a film about the true event known as the Rape of Nanjing that was perpetrated by the Japanese to the Chinese during World War II. It uses actors to portray the actual foreigners that existed in the City of Nanjing. The film uses a documentary format to convey it’s information using extremely emotional testimonies of real victims of the time as well as the actors. I’m not one to usually cry during a film, and I didn’t even cry because of the atrocities that were done; that merely made me upset. What truly made me cry was how good the people were and how much they worked to protect the Chinese under their care. A really emotional moment for me personally was very late into the film. It was when John Rabe(The German) was discarded and left to be poor, all the Chinese people he helped pitched along and donated money and support to help him. I don’t know why, but I just started crying a lot over that because it was nice that a good person like John Rabe wasn’t left being punished and that he was helped by the same people he helped all that time ago. The film really made me despise war, there was no reason all of that extra violence and sexual perversion had to be done to the civilian population. I could only imagine if I lived in that time, working in China and seeing my significant other being taken to be murdered in cold blood like a dog. It makes me very angry and what made me even more angry was how some of the disgusting Japanese officers talked about what they did with a smile and laughter. How does this kind of thing happen in the modern world and how was such behavior so widespread? I truly hope we as a species learn from the atrocities of World War II and not allow for things like the Holocaust, the Rape of Nanjing, Unit 731, and more from happening in the future. If you end up watching this film, how did it make you feel? Did you know about events like this besides popular ones like the Holocaust?
