Does the End Justify the Means?

Every where there is evil. In the movie Watchmen it takes place in an alternate 1985 where vigilantes roam the streets keeping the peace. Richard Nixon is still president and the US won the Vietnam War. The US and the Soviet Union are closing in on nuclear war. Throughout the course of the movie the vigilantes are being targeted. The remaining Watchmen are on their guard. Eventually they unite to fight against the assassin attempting to take their lives. They are shocked to find out that it is one of them.
In the end they are not able to stop his plan for attacking all of the major cities in an attempt to prevent nuclear war between the US and the Soviet Union. The plan works and peace is reached but at the cost of thousands of lives. This is a secret the Watchmen must keep in order to keep the peace. If the secret is revealed then nuclear war will happen and everything in the world would be destroyed.
If that situation ever occurs in our future will that be the only thing to prevent countries from wiping out the world? Would you have to kill thousands to save millions? Those are hard questions to answer. I do not know what I would do if I was in the Watchmen’s situation. I would like to think that I would tell the truth no matter what. But the truth would have worse consequences than if you hid it. The truth would mean the destruction of everything. While the secret means life. Also if you kept a secret of that magnitude would you be able to survive with the truth and the guilt of knowing everything.
I hope that nothing like this ever has to happen. The leaders of every nation must understand the consequences that will occur if there is a nuclear war. That consequence is the end of everything. The citizens of the world will have to make sure that does not happen.
The Comedian: …Our days are numbered. Till then it's like you always say, we're society's only protection.
Night Owl: From what?
The Comedian: You kidding me? From themselves.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0409459/quotes


Here is the trailer for Watchmen:



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2VLA0tg5yI0&feature=related

Topless Men

In the video we watched in class, Sexism in Multimedia, it showed the stereotypes that are usually portrayed in the media especially among men and women. Women are usually the ones being objectified by men. In some shows it is the men that are the ones be objectified.
Sex in the City is a good example of this. The four main women in the show (Samantha, Carrie, Charlotte, and Miranda) all talk about men as objects of their desire. They love them and use them all at the same time. The character who does this the most is Samantha. She is the sex crazed one who will use men for awhile and then toss them aside. Through out the show there are many times when the women will be walking by a man and everything will go into slow motion. (I guess for greater women audience enjoyment) An example of this is when Charlotte is going to change for tennis at her husband’s family’s estate. They have been having problems with their sex life. As she is walking down the path she spots the gardener, who of course has his shirt off, and the slow motion begins.
There are numerous more examples of this in movies and TV. The best in my opinion is in the movie Australia when Hugh Jackman dumps a whole bucket of water over himself. And of course he doesn’t have his shirt on.

Women in movies and TV have had the same experience for many years. At the beginning of cinema women were show in risqué clothes for the time. Today women have less and less clothes on. Many times for a woman to be considered sexy by a male audience standard, she has to be super skinny and with little to no clothes.

This trend of men and women being objects of the others desire will continue. The only thing that could be changed would be the standards of beauty. People could be judged on who they are and not how hot they look. Even though this is contradictory, it is nice to look especially if they are Hugh Jackman.

This is an example of women being objectified. This PETA commercial was banned from this years Super Bowl:

She's ugly enough, she wins

In the movie Dogfight, starring River Phoenix and Lili Taylor, the soldiers on the night before their deployment all get together at a bar. Upon entering the bar each soldier has to have a date. The catch is they have to be ugly and each soldier is being judged on which one of them has the ugliest date. During Eddie Birdlace's quest to find his date he meets Rose, a young girl working at her mom's coffee shop. Eddie talks her into going to the bar with him. While there Rose finds out about the competition and is crushed. Eddie tries his hardest to make it up to her. Along the way they fall in love. When Eddie returns from Vietnam he goes back to Rose.
Throughout the movie you get to see a young soldier’s mentality. When the soldiers get a chance to leave the base they let loose. All they want to do is get laid and drink till morning. The soldiers haven't been around a woman in a long time so that is the only thing they can think about. The dogfight is only encourages drinking and sex. The soldiers look for women who are most likely to sleep with them by the end of the night. Their whole training is to stay focused and complete their mission. When they are let loose in the real world the focus they had is on other things besides drills and how to stay alive.
On the other hand their womanizing and drinking is a way for them to get their minds off the horrors that await them on the battlefield. When they are in battle they see their friends get shot and blown up. Those are things that civilians will hopefully never have to see. So that brief escape might be the only way that the soldiers can keep sane.