Book and Movie Reviews (Book Review Sample)

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Book and Movie Reviews
Review of the Movie ‘Life and Debt’
Cast: Belinda Becker, Buju Banton,  HYPERLINK "/name/nm1697777/?ref_=ttfc_fc_cl_t3" Horst Köhler, Michael Manley, Michael Witter, Stanley Fischer, David Coore
Director: Stephanie Black
Synopsis: This stirring documentary puts a human face on the effects of globalization on Jamaica’s economy. Based on information provided by Jamaica Kincaid’s ‘A Small Place’, it also includes interviews with informed people like Michael Manley, who is Jamaica’s former Prime Minister, and Michael Witter, who is an economics professor. The documentary also carries the opinions of farmers in the dairy and banana sectors, which have been severely affected by cheap American imports.
The movie, ‘Life and Debt’, is a stirring rendition of the afflictions that have been suffered by Jamaica due to the implementation of economic strategies proposed by the IMF and World Bank, which are foreign owned establishments, in regards to achieving free-market status. Stephanie Black first points out that globalization forces third-world economies to contend with unfair practices created by developed nations for their own benefit. In Jamaica, this has played out in virtually all sectors that have the potential to provide the nation’s citizens with a real income while developing the national economy. In ‘Life and Debt’, Stephanie Black incorporates interviews with individuals who understand the full extent to which Jamaica’s economy has been systematically destroyed by the long-term effects of IMF policies.
Stephanie Black uses shocking visuals, such as a disillusioned Jamaican farmer spilling a tank of fresh, unsold milk to make the viewer understand just how bad conditions are for ordinary Jamaicans. To emphasize the true, but unstated, objectives of the IMF, former Prime Minister Michael Manley poses the question, “You may wonder, whose interest is the IMF serving? Well, you have to ask yourself- who set it up?” (Life and Debt). While Stephanie Black is accurate about the IMF’s unfairness, she did not incorporate factors such as the role played by corruption within the Jamaican government in its acceptance of obstructive IMF policies into the documentary. The movie was clearly produced to enlighten young foreigners of Western extraction about the destructive policies supported by the IMF, and demonstrate how they affect the lives of ordinary citizens in Jamaica. However, the producer should have incorporated subtitles to make the views of Jamaican citizens with heavy accents clearer.
At the end of the movie, the narrator intones that, “once the shackles are removed, both the former slaves and their former owners revert to being mere human beings” (Life and Debt). This is a significant statement because it points to the quandary that befalls a society after it does away with an evil system. The reality is that it is easier to maintain what is evil than what is ethical. It would appear that in making this statement, the narrator is trying to imply that both slaves and slave owners are faced with great challenges after the eradication of slavery. While slaves may have to deal with monumental questions regarding their true self worth and definition as human beings, slave owners have to re-define multiple factors such as their own lives, beliefs about what is ethical or unethical, providing resources for ex-slaves to be able to exist, and finding other sources of income that are as lucrative or almost as lucrative as slavery. Either way, this will result in serious changes being effected in the society.
Review of the Research Paper ‘What We don’t Talk about When We don’t Talk about Service’
Davis, Adam. “What We Don’t Talk About When We Don’t Talk About Service.” The Civically
Engaged Reader: A Diverse Collection of Short Provocative Readings on Civic Activity. Ed. Davis Adam and Elizabeth Lynn. Chicago: Great Books Foundation, 2006. Print.
The Article’s Purpose: Adam Davis’ ‘What We Don’t Talk About When We Don’t Talk About Service’ is an article that examines the true motives behind the rendering of services to those who occupy lower social positions, professionally and personally, to the giver of the service. Adam Davis co-edited ‘The Civically Engaged Reader’, and directs the ‘Project on Civic Reflection’.
In his article titled ‘What we do not talk about when we don’t talk about service’, Adam Davis provides a fascinating account of the acknowledged and unacknowledged motives that exist in the rendering of all kinds of service. Davis first establishes the existence of organizations and institutions such as ‘AmeriCorps’ and ‘Teach for America’, which are purely based on the provision of free services to others. He then proceeds to underline the different reasons why people are moved to serve others. According to Davis, people will provide service to others because they wish to please God and follow His laws on good neighborliness, because they love their fellow man, because they identify with other people and wish to stave off any possibility of being afflicted at sometime in future by what has befallen others, to improve their own reputations, or to somewhat improve their own sullied reputations (Davies 2-3).
In his article, Davis addresses the existing definitions of what is considered as being ‘good’- pointing out that it is very possible for services to create an outcome outside of what is commonly assumed. In the author’s estimation, it is disingenuous for society to keep extolling assumptions about the real reasons for service. Davis theorizes that, “to speak about service, or really examine it would force us to closely examine inequality in society- which is an uncomfortable place for people to look” (Davis 5). Davis is, essentially, challenging national service programs such as ‘AmeriCorps’ to examine the real reasons why services need to be carried out for people in different levels in society. Davis also makes use of simple comparisons that are easily understandable in denoting how human nature can actually be a contributing factor to the subconscious disregarding of the true reasons for rendering services.
Review of Paul Farmer’s article, ‘An Anthropology of Structural Violence’.
Farmer, Paul. “An Anthropology of Structural Violence.” Current Anthropology 45.3 (2004):
305-323.
Purpose of the Article: Paul Farmer’s ‘Anthropology of Structural Violence’ details the systematic violation of Haiti by the U.S. as well as France, among other European nations, since the 17th century when slaves were exported to the island in huge numbers. Paul Farmer is a professor of medical anthropology who has, in this article, established links between the historical and present oppression of Haiti, and the virtual collapse of public healthcare, among other sectors.
Paul Farmer’s ‘Anthropology of Structural Violence’ addresses an issue that is rarely discussed. The subject of structural violence, whether implemented through racism or gender inequality, is a particularly difficult concept for citizens in the modern world to deal with, because it has already been widely accepted that individuals are solely responsible for their own destinies. Moreover, in the case of Haiti, it is evident that there was structural violence that was used to destroy the nation’s economy right from the days following Haiti’s declaration of independence in the early 1800s.
This article clearly identifies the role that was played by France, and, subsequently, the U.S., in destroying Haiti even before it could establish itself as a sovereign nation with functioning ministries. Farmer writes with such passion, when outlining the saddening realities that shrouded Haiti’s independence declaration in the early 1800s’, that the reader cannot help but empathize with the nation whose first citizens were liberated slaves. Farmer contends that “Haiti was forced to pay France 150,000,000 Francs for the loss of the slavery industry, which was a lucrative industry, when it gained independence” (Farmer 312). Naturally, the reader is dumbfounded by such a glaring lack of ethics in a nation that claimed then, and still claims to be a paragon of democracy.
Farmer begins his article by referring to the cancerous growth on the breast of ‘Anite’, who is a Haitian lady who has visited approximately 14 clinics without any of them providing her with a real diagnosis. His moving expose on how the United States, along with other European nations such as France, systematically imposed embargoes on Haiti to stop it from developing even the most basic healthcare systems in order to manage problems such as the A.I.D.S. crisis in the past, demonstrate the double-faced stance that is usually adopted by superpowers that wish to depict themselves as being champions of justice even while robbing other nations of their resources. While Western nations have a lot to answer for in regards to the deliberate impoverishment of Haiti, their errors in the past or at present do not remove from the Haitians’ their responsibility of owning their own human rights. This is a fact that is not addressed by Farmer.
A sense of sovereignty, and the determination to uphold national sectors, even if through many struggles, is not something that can be conferred upon a nation by surrounding superpowers; it has to be assumed. Moreover, Farmer’s message has powerful implications for globa...