The Masquerade Of What We Would Be

The analysis of the ideas of the speakers offers the chance to understand what message the authors wanted to deliver to the listeners. The videos present the opinions about the problem of identity, power, discrimination, bullying, and stereotyping to show the prejudiced attitude of modern people towards the others and convince the audience in need to change this situation.

The video “To This Day” introduces the ideas about identity, power, and bullying using the description of the specific situations. The concept of identity is the central concern of the speaker. Koyczan alludes to the feelings and emotions of the listeners introducing the examples of the situations when the identity of humans is hurt by the humiliation and mockery of the others. For example, he describes the loving children appreciating the identity of their mother for her kind heart disregarding her appearance (Koyczan 00:03:03). Also, the poet presents the examples of power explaining how children tend to humiliate the others who have less money or worse status in society. He thinks that these attempts to show power influence the identity of humiliated people detrimentally. Besides, the examples of bullying help the speaker to make the listeners understand the problem and sympathize with the victims. Mainly, the girl is called ugly and humiliated by the school children (Koyczan 00:02:12). Such behavior shows the cruelty of modern society repressing the identity of people.

The other video “Fuck I Look Like” presents the concepts of identity, stereotyping, and discrimination alluding to the cruelty of modern society. Davis describes her life experience being an African American to show her resentment and complain about the tendency of the community to disregard the identity of humans. She claims that people’s personality should be respected, and the times of slavery should be left in the past (Davis 00:00:31). It means that the dignity and honor of individuals should be valued and appreciated by the others. This idea is connected with the concept of stereotyping. The speaker claims that African Americans suffer from the stereotype about their intellectual faculties because some think that they are not clever enough. As a result, the problem of discrimination appears because people still use stereotypes in their life. Thus, the speaker presents these ideas to explain that society is cruel and should start to think critically to make their ideas unbiased.

The piece of media about bike theft concerns the problems of identity and stereotyping revealing how the behavior and opinion of different people may change according to the situation. The concept of identity plays a crucial role in the video because it influences the biased attitude of the people towards the thieve of a bike. In particular, the white man does not seem to be dangerous to others. The African-American man, on the other hand, looks suspicious. At the same time, people think that the girl does not seem like a person being able to steal something (What Would You Do? Bike Theft00:04:20). The theme of identity is connected here with the concept of stereotyping. Mainly, the others assess the possible thieves according to their ethnicity or gender.

Thus, the pieces of media show different observations of the themes of stereotyping, identity, and discrimination to reveal that modern people are often prejudiced towards others. Besides, the makers of the videos attempt to convince the audience that these problems should be solved.