Tow #28 - "Jesus Camp"

"Jesus Camp" is a documentary which lets the audience of the video see how people of the Evangelical Faith, a branch of the Christian Church, live their lives. It depicts children, women, and men all pledging their lives to spread the word of the Evangelical faith, and crush all who appose it. The documentary starts with a pastor, who seems nice and wise at first, telling the children of the church to love thy neighbor... as long as thy neighbor accepts the "correct" faith. The main focus of the film, however, is the annual camp the Evangelical Church runs to drive even more Evangelical ideas into the minds of the youth. Throughout the film the audience sees children transform from shy, naive children into wannabe pastors with monstrous ideas about other cultures and religions. The movie is truly a horror film that really characterizes the ever growing majority faith in our mid-west portion of the country.
The documentary includes one-to-one interviews and stunning clips of the Evangelicals in their church to truly paint the evil picture that is the Evangelical Church.
The interviews provide a personal connection with the leaders of the church. The audience really gets a feel of how horrible these people are. Some truly believe deep in their hearts that they are right in what they think, others, as the audience can see, do it for the power and influence. The interviews help the audience break away from the hysteria that is shown within the film's depictions of the Evangelical Worship Services.
On the other hand, the viewer can see clips of the Evangelical Worship Services and can see the mass group as a whole to truly sink in to how crazy this movement is. The clips show pastors crying talking about killing homosexuals, children imagining threatening non-believers and their mothers supporting it.
These two visual devices do the documentary justice. They help enlighten the audience about how terrifying people are when they blindly follow a leader, and how evil man can be if man is manipulated into thinking murder can be justified.

TOW #26: "The Neglected Suicide Epidemic"

 About six years ago, a man named Jonny Benjamin took a walk to the Waterloo Bridge in London, and prepared to terminate his life. The man was diagnosed by a psychiatrist with schizophrenia, and Benjamin had the premature assumption that his life was never going to recover. However, his life perception changed when a stranger walked up to him and told him that everything was going to be okay. Benjamin did not jump, stating: "When he came along it burst the bubble of that world I was in. I felt faith, like I could talk to him." Such instances occur many times a day, but unfortunately most of the time there is no Neil Laybourn involved, and those who are in trouble stay trapped in their own "bubble." Emily Greenhouse's article "The Neglected Suicide Epidemic" was written in order to raise public awareness of growing mental health issues and remind everyone that they can make a difference in one person's life.

Greenhouse supports her argument that everyone should take action in the so-called "suicide epidemic" by employing anecdotes. Along with Benjamin's story, Greenhouse wrote about Jerome Motto, a California doctor who tried several times to have suicide barriers erected on the Golden Gate Bridge, the world's leading suicide location. Motto mentioned that in the 1970s, he had visited the apartment of a suicide victim and found a note that read, "I'm going to walk to the bridge. If one person smiles at me on the way, I won't jump." This inclusion reminds Greenhouse's audience that they–ordinary people–can make a huge difference in one person's life: they can have the same effect on one person that Neil Laybourn had on Jonny Benjamin.

Greenhouse also supports her argument by including empirical information and quantitative statistics in her article. She notes that in America, the suicide rates in middle-aged men and women have increased by 30% in the last decade, and that suicide has replaced car accidents in the number one injury-related cause of death. She states that this is not just an issue in the United States: 90% of those who attempt suicide in developing countries battle psychological ailments that do have cures. These facts and figures emphasize the horrifying truth that suicide is a rising health concern, but they also do the job of reminding the public that these maladies do have remedies, and that they can even help in finding these cures.