In English, we researched a topic of our choice and wrote about it in a lyrical essay format. We learned to use different writing techniques such as narrative, expository, and poetry to create our message. After gathering our resources, I chose to write my lyrical essay about the perspectives of each individual.
Lyrical Essay
Seeing is Believing
By Alex Chen
As a newborn, you are like the body of a camera, a blank slate through which the world is seen. Your film has yet to be impressioned by the light through which you view life, just as your memory and your worldview have yet to be shaped into who you are as an individual. As you grow up and gain some awareness of the world, you are given a lens by your parental figures that frame the way you lead your life. Just as a tinted lens tranfigures your view, so too does a religious upbringing, or, say, a violent household. Positive and negative experiences in the home affect your early childhood development, crafting the ‘lens’ through which you see the world. One raised on the idea that all people are intrinsically good will act and believe fundamentally different things than someone raised on the idea that all people are corrupt and motivated by evil. However, the one thing that can change this lens is life experience. Eventually, through all the experiences that occur during day-to-day life, you gain the ability to adjust the settings to help capture life through the lens. To extend the metaphor one step further, many people start out with different equipment, and better lens or camera quality than others, just as the wealthy have a higher standard of living and access to better education that shapes how they walk their lives. In the end, cameras are cameras, and people are people.
Like films produced by cameras, there is a limit to what is presented within the lens, but there is always a more significant message outside of the box. Directors use a multitude of elements that come together to form a finished piece. Film is unique compared to other art forms in that, rather than solely visual experiences, film integrates music and sound, acting, lighting, story telling, and camera work into one large viewer experience. Film is not limited by anything other than the vision of the director, and its power to move the viewer is likewise unlimited. By engaging the sense of the viewers and manipulating factors such as suspense and dramatic irony, the film turns the story line to the viewer’s reality, plunging them into the world of the director’s creation. Storytellers have a way of methodically presenting a metaphor without explicitly revealing the message. So too do people who lie and manipulate aim to confer to you a reality that is falsified. The art of manipulation requires a mastery akin to that of direction, presenting a near true-to-reality version of events in order to cloud the awareness of the beholder. Although people experience the same events, not everyone will see the situation in a similar way. Everyone has their own beliefs that only their lens can capture, meaning that not everyone will feel the same way or be able to relate to the thought process of others around them. Just like a movie, everyone will see the same visuals, hear the same sounds, and even feel the same way, yet they will perceive information differently.
This difference in perception is what leads to people being prone to cleavages and blindspots. Differences between life experiences, values, and traditions often lead to a lack of understanding, which sparks animosity in many circumstances simply because something or someone is ‘foreign’ or ‘unconventional’ with respect to our own lens. Some people are biased against others and believe that some people are superior because of qualities that distinguish them from one another, qualities that they have been raised to believe are more sophisticated, more intrinsic to reality, and simple facts of life, the primary example of which being racism. This major issue stems from a long history of institutionalized and systematic oppression of others based on darker skin color. Passed down from older generations to younger ones, the ways of the world built on white superiority and black inferiority shaped the lenses of all Americans. The sight of lynchings and segregation sent a clear message of racialized conditioning to people of all colors, building the lens through which they operated in the world. Black children walked through white neighborhoods with fear, which white children strutted through every neighborhood without a care in the world, simply because their lens had been built upon the fact that their life was either disposable or carried value. Extending to the modern day, the fight for equality is fighting these same issues even today. The Black Lives Matter Movement has been met with strong opposition from various demographics of Americans who cannot escape their ‘black-eyed lenses.’ The black community experiences on a daily basis the fear that comes with police brutality, and have learned to act a certain way because it is such a prevalent issue. When it comes to getting pulled over, their lens, and thus their response, will differ greatly from that of someone who is not marginalized by police. People who do not experience this fear, this consuming fight for survival, will not understand the extreme reactions to the killings of young black men because they feel that for the police to go so far as to kill someone, it must have been justified, because the police would never treat themselves in such a manner. Their lens, their learned and experienced values, have shaped their view of the systems of the world, and how to navigate it. The solidification of these values makes it difficult to be empathetic to the other side of any issue, because you believe so strongly in your own worldview that when it is challenged, you stick to your conventionality at all costs, since it is safe, reliable, and comfortable.
In retrospect, I believe that people aren’t innately bad and filled with bad intentions, but have a cloud of influences that affect their actions and thus their perception of right and wrong. As a kid, the people considered always “right” composed of your family. They guided you in life and gave you the answers that seemed impossible to figure out. Eventually, you become a copy of your parents and think the exact same way because that was how you grew up and thought how people were supposed to act. Because strong morals and core values are developed at a young age, it is difficult to change which can often bring moral conflicts between people. That is why there is often so much opposition to seemingly black and white issues; any person or movement that challenges conventionality in society will be met with large opposition, particularly from older individuals who have been hardened by their life experiences and learned values, for whom redefining those views is difficult.
Intention Statement
“Seeing is Believing” is a lyrical essay about the different perspectives of individuals using the metaphor of cameras. Each person has their own unique story and point of view which makes them different from others, so no one person has the same exact way of seeing and thinking. I chose to write this lyrical essay in third and second person because this topic is relatable to all people. Everyone has a unique lens, allowing them to use their mind to take the information from different angles while still understanding the full message. I originally came up with this topic through socratic seminars in my English and history classes. We often argued about our own sides and why one should be better than the other. Teachers often told me that there was no correct answer but to express myself and argue about my beliefs. Because of my vested interest in film, I was always fascinated by the different equipment used in the film industry, especially cameras and lenses and the way in which they alter perspective. So, I decided to combine those ideas by connecting cameras to human beings. I formatted my essay like a braided essay as I intertwined the ideas of camera equipment and personal point of views. I used pictures to give a better representation of a visual idea of my message and tied it back to a real world situation like the Black Lives Matter movement. During peer review, my readers enjoyed my connection between the similarities of lens and personal beliefs, but suggested that I should simplify my idea as I wanted to include another wide variety of personal beliefs and why people make the decisions they make, like game theory. Focusing on one main idea was difficult as there were a multitude of directions my essay could have gone, but I liked tying my essay back to the idea of racism and why it has been so widespread for so long and why it is so difficult to overcome. As an Asian American in a predominantly white community, minorities like me often have their own experience with racism. As racism is one of the major issues in society, it is something that should not be forgotten about and should be constantly spreaded to bring justice for the mistreated. Justice for the mistreated should not mean punishment but should mean the comprehension of the individual’s personal views and the unity of understanding one another.