Philadelphia Movie Essay

1. Why do you think so many people are diagnosed with mental illness in the criminal justice system? Why do you think so many offenders in the criminal justice system suffer from mental illness?

In the documentary “The Age of AIDS,” FRONTLINE examines the outbreak of AIDS since its first diagnosed case in 1981. The film investigates different medical, political and social environments under AIDS pandemic in the US and worldwide. The film not only focuses on the scientific research and progress in treating the disease, it also looks at the social stigma, government strategies and public campaigns around different countries.

The movie, And the Band Played On, discusses the origin of the AIDS virus and how it spontaneously spread across the world. It used the Ebola disease to foreshadow the forth coming of another serious disease. The world was not prepared to handle such a contagious plague. Doctors around the world assumed that the first cases of the HIV virus to be just an abnormality of a certain disease, their carelessness of this matter was the start to the spread of this disease. Throughout this movie, it illustrates different points, such as the beginning of HIV, the misconceptions it gave, and the panic it aroused amongst doctors and the common people.

The movie I chose to watch is Courageous. The precipitating event in this movie is the car accident that takes the life of Emily Mitchell. Her father, Adam Mitchell, and the rest of her family are traumatized by the sudden death of their 9 year old daughter/sister. In thinking about information that would be gained in the first contact with Adam Mitchell, one thing that stands out about his previous state of mind/functioning is that he was somewhat uninvolved with his children, taking them for granted. This fact can also be a trigger for how he processes this event, causing a crisis for him as he realized his

The year was 1991 when Mary Fisher tested positive for HIV. Fisher is the daughter of Max Fisher, a powerful and wealthy republican. She isn 't the normal face of AIDS, and in 1992 she spoke out of her disease at the Republican National Convention. Fisher 's speech, A Whisper of AIDS, is considered one of the top speeches of the 20th century. When Fisher gave her speech, she spoke to a crowd that didn 't believe AIDS was going to affect their lives. When listening and reading the speech, one must take into context the time period, during the 90s testing positive for HIV/AIDS meant death. At the time there were no treatments to help prolong those

The film Dallas Buyers Club is a biographical drama whose plot is based around the HIV/AIDS epidemic of the 1980s. Early in the history of the illness, cases of a rare lung infection were found in five previously healthy young men. In addition to that, the young men all suffered from various other infections which indicated that their immune systems were not functioning properly. The new illness was so aggressive that before a report by the CDC could be published, two of the five men had succumbed to the illness. Besides the similar rare cases of lung infection amongst the five, there was one other shared characteristic; they were all gay men. By years’ end, there were 270 reported cases in gay men with the same disease; of that 270 however, 121 of those individuals had passed (Timeline of HIV/AIDS,2011). It was now clear that there was a new threat to gay men besides social ostracizing; HIV/AIDS had made its presence known.

The camera focuses on a very physically depleted Andrew who is seeking legal counsel to sue the law firm that fired him because he believes that he was fired for having AIDS. He believes that his boss deliberately sabotaged the documents to make him look bad so they could fire him for incompetence rather than his illness. Many lawyers turned down his case. He sought help from an African American man named Joseph Miller and Miller turned his request down because he was gay and he was afraid of getting the AIDS virus from Andrew. During the time Andrew was in Miller’s office, Miller’s face was visibly fearful

The film Pleasantville directed by Gary Ross is about two modern teenagers, David and his sister Jennifer, somehow being transported into the television, ending up in Pleasantville, a 1950s black and white sitcom. The two are trapped as Bud and Mary Sue in a radically different dimension and make some huge changes to the bland lives of the citizens of Pleasantville, with the use of the director’s cinematic techniques. Ross cleverly uses cinematic techniques such as colour, mise-en-scene, camera shots, costumes, music and dialogue to effectively tell the story.

Although the “war on AIDS have contributed to the development of policies, one important aspect of the disease was the Ryan White Care Act that came about from a young men who at the age of 13 was diagnosed with AIDs through a blood transfusion. It was this movement that brought about much awareness that HIV/Aids can happen to anyone. He was the first teenager, the first with hemophiliac to have AIDS. At the time, there was no education or information on AIDS. Since, the life and struggle of Ryan White, there has been changes in helping those with the disease. His death has sparked a national outcry for those who suffers with HIV (human immunodeficiency virus) the virus that causes AIDS (acquired immunodeficiency syndrome). His legacy has left behind for people to receive better care and live a longer life.

Tom Hanks once said, “Sometimes a man just wants the impossible.” In his lifetime, most would agree that Hanks achieved the impossible through his acting career; he personalized many influential movie parts from a gay lawyer with AIDS in the movie Philadelphia to a dumb man who experienced many important events throughout history in Forrest Gump. This shift in the acting world happened on July 9, 1956 when a star was born. Thomas Jeffrey Hanks was born in Concord, California; his parents names are Janet Marylyn Frager and Amos Mefford Hanks. Tom Hanks lived with his father after his parents got divorced at the age of five. His two older siblings also stayed with him and his father while his younger sibling stayed with his mother; their names were Jim Hanks, Sandra Hanks, and Larry Hanks (Biography.com). Hanks’ father moved their family from state to state until they finally settled in Oakland, California where Tom attended high school. After graduating in 1974, Tom Hanks attended a junior college in Hayward California called Chabot Community College. During his time at Hayward, he read and watched a play called the Iceman Cometh by Eugene O 'Neill; this sparked his interest in acting. He decided to pursue a career in acting and transferred in the theater program at California State University in Sacramento (Biography.com). Tom Hanks’ humble beginning led to the rise of the famous actor within him who has won multiple awards for his acting and changed the world with the

Throughout the Age of AIDS film many topics that were related to AIDS were brought up that I did not know anything about before. I did not know that there could so many strings attached to a disease and have such an influence in people’s lives whether it was negative or positive.

The movie thirteen touched many important factors of adolescent’s development. Some of the ones I want to concentrate in this paper are: family system, developmental tasks, and peer pressure.

When the AIDS and HIV virus crept its way into the human-race, it quickly, and without warning, claimed the lives of millions. Then when its destructive wake had finally been abated, it left behind several untold mysteries. Throughout the course of this class, all the new material we have been exposed to has added some unique piece to the puzzle of the AIDS epidemic. Each puzzle pieces have ranged from speculations on how the AIDS epidemic had begun, to what exactly has the epidemic done. We have also tackled the question and how it forced a change in society. Our newest piece of the puzzle is the documentary “The Age of AIDS,” by William Cran. Although this documentary did not surprise me in its content, it did, however, affirm certain types

Ever since the first cases of what eventually came to be known as AIDS were diagnosed in the early 1980s, people with HIV/AIDS have been stigmatized. Over time, there have been many misconceptions about this disease. Even though there have been many discoveries, and treatments for HIV have improved over time, there are still many people who understand very little about this disease. This lack of understanding, along with fear, misinformation about how the disease is transmitted, and “moral” judgments made about the types of people who contract HIV, all have led to stigmatization of, and discrimination against, people who are living with HIV/AIDS. Understanding the stigmatization of people with HIV/AIDS is an important social justice issue because that stigmatization can result in people with HIV being insulted, rejected, gossiped about, excluded from family and social activities, fired, and even jailed. People with HIV are no different from people suffering from other chronic diseases. Instead of being alienated, they have a right to be treated with fairness, respect, and dignity.

Anxieties and misunderstandings in relation to AIDS began when the homosexual community was affected. Consequently, people started to believe that it was only homosexuals would contract AIDS and accused them of the cause of the disease. The public was not worried until some people who were not homosexuals got the disease. Because of this, the attitude of the public changed into the fear that anyone could get AIDS since it was an STD. Numerous of people were misled by the actions of the government. An example in the film shows one woman who started to become sick after her blood transfusion. She always believed that it was because of the surgery, however, she actually she got AIDS. The doctors were aware but did nothing to notify her. This triggered fear because the government was aware that the AIDS prevalence was increasing and being spread yet