In the previous posts there were significantly relevant videos presented. Three have shown scenes from the Mel Gibson movie the Passion of the Christ in contrast with the scenes of modern day frat-related violence. Another was about the poor children of the slum areas of the Philippines joining Lord Jesus Christ in supper. These young souls, if left uncared for by an insensitive privileged class, could someday become the next wave of young warriors of warring gangs as depicted in the Filipino movie Tribu. Yet another video has shown the efforts initiated by Gawad Kalinga to help solve this problem along with the culture of violence among fraternities by allowing fratmen to immerse themselves and help the poor in the real-life situation in slum areas where grassroots-gangs usually thrive.
The first person to be gravely affected by tragedies befalling children is the mother. In one video the mother of Cris Mendez was seen grieving for the death of her son. Just like Blessed Mary and any mother for that matter who had seen the doom of their children as a result of all forms of life's excesses the mothers of the victims of frat violence experience deep sorrow and pain. A mother's tears paint the picture of the loss of a son and the long years of hardships endured since the baby was conceived in the womb to mold the child into a young adult..
It is my desire to present these recorded images from the past and present realities to knock on the hearts and conscience of violent fratmen and those who are content of doing nothing to help solve these problems. Some of them who are still locked in the continuing culture of violence, as presented by the I-Witness Documentaries series - Brod Is Thicker Than Water , (watch more related videos on the links provided on the right-hand side of this page) lamented about the sad effects of frat violence and hatred and expressed helplessness in their captivity to the kind of culture of hatred that they have inherited from their frat elders forcefully instilled into them during initiations and indoctrinations.
To me they, who are still captives of this evil part of their tradition, need to see the bigger picture of society to be able to desensitize themselves from their violent culture and open their hearts and minds to the spiritual, social and moral problems at hand and to help and work to find genuine solutions.
Movies and multi-media are vehicles for works of art. And artists have a role tp play as expressed in the following quotes:
When power narrows the areas of man's concern, poetry reminds him of the richness and diversity of his existence. When power corrupts, poetry cleanses. For art establishes the basic human truth which must serve as the touchstone of our judgment.-- John F. Kennedy
To the artist is sometimes granted a sudden, transient insight which serves in this matter for experience. A flash, and where previously the brain held a dead fact, the soul grasps a living truth! At moments we are all artists. -- Arnold Bennett
In a certain sense every creative person is a reformer, but this does not mean that he must be in his work a propagandist for good roads, shorter hours, and a low tariff. All these are excellent things, but they need not be the concern of the artist. -- Heywood Broun
The artist has one function--to affirm and glorify life. -- W. Edward Brown
The defining function of the artist is to cherish consciousness. -- Max Eastman
In the artist's recreation of the world we are enabled to see the world. -- John W. Gardner
My role in society, or any artist or poet's role, is to try and express what we all feel. Not to tell people how to feel. Not as a preacher, not as a leader, but as a reflection of us all. -- John Lennon
Human life itself may be almost pure chaos, but the work of the artist is to take these handfuls of confusion and disparate things, things that seem to be irreconcilable, and put them together in a frame to give them some kind of shape and meaning. -- Katherine Anne Porter
The artist should be a seeing-eye dog for a myopic civilization. -- Jacob Getlar Smith
I am an artist. I am here to live out loud. -- Emile Zola
If art is to nourish the roots of our culture, society must set the artist free to follow his vision wherever it takes him. John F. Kennedy
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President John F. Kennedy: Remarks at Amherst College, October 26, 1963
The following is an excerpt from a speech given by President John F. Kennedy on October 26, 1963 at Amherst College in Massachusetts, in honor of the poet Robert Frost...
If sometimes our great artists have been the most critical of our society, it is because their sensitivity and their concern for justice, which must motivate any true artist, makes him aware that our Nation falls short of its highest potential. I see little of more importance to the future of our country and our civilization than full recognition of the place of the artist.
If art is to nourish the roots of our culture, society must set the artist free to follow his vision wherever it takes him. We must never forget that art is not a form of propaganda; it is a form of truth. And as Mr. MacLeish once remarked of poets, there is nothing worse for our trade than to be in style. In free society art is not a weapon and it does not belong to the spheres of polemic and ideology. Artists are not engineers of the soul. It may be different elsewhere. But democratic society--in it, the highest duty of the writer, the composer, the artist is to remain true to himself and to let the chips fall where they may. In serving his vision of the truth, the artist best serves his nation. And the nation which disdains the mission of art invites the fate of Robert Frost's hired man, the fate of having "nothing to look backward to with pride, and nothing to look forward to with hope." Continue here....
