Reading Responses – Science Fiction (ENG 2420)

Akai & The Destroyer, Ronald Gordon

Victor Lavalle’s Destroyer is a story about a scientist who brings the dead back to life. However, Destroyer takes a different turn when compared to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein in an interesting way.

The story gives an exact detail of this by how it presents one of it’s main characters The Destroyer.

In the beginning of the book, Frankenstein’s monster was living alone in the polar ice caps, just minding his own business. But after one of the whales he swam with was killed, he was reminded of the cruelness of Humanity. The Humanity that outcast him and forced him into exile, the Humanity he though he had finally escaped from.

When remembering that The Destroyer was the original Frankenstein’s Monster, the one that was rejected and hated by even Victor Frankenstein himself, it’s only natural that the Monster would hate Humans and the world they built that excluded him. So he in turn sets out to destroy it and rid the world of the people that outcast him.

On the other hand, we have Akai. Dr. Baker’s deceased son whom she revived after him being killed in a police shooting. Akai is the exact contrast to Frankenstein’s monster, solely because of how he was received and brought up.

Akai isn’t the product of a Mad Scientist trying to make the perfect creation, and he isn’t something that was shunned by his creator. Akai’s revival is a product of grief and mourning that overtook Dr. Baker, who missed her son and hated the world for taking him from her. Akai was born of something that Victor Frankenstein didn’t have for his Monster, Love, and it’s shown with how he’s presented in the story.

Whenever Akai is mentioned or showed off to the other characters, he’s treated as not only a Human, but a spectacle. Something that hasn’t happened yet. Unlike The Destroyer, who was seen as a monster throughout his revival and outcast before he could even learn to speak.

Where Frankenstein’s Monster was molded into a ball of hate by the world around him, Akai was made to counteract him. Which in a way backfires in terms of Dr. Baker’s plans because of how she wanted a Destroyer of her own to repay the hate she was dealt by the world, yet she still accepts Akai for who he is. Her son, a creation she bought to life and loved enough to bring back from the clutches of death, not some Monster she created out of her own curiosity.

I enjoyed this contrast because of how it made this relationship between two characters feel. They’re both the only two things like them in the entire world, yet they couldn’t be more different if they tried. While one has spent years being isolated and alone, driven to hate and scorn the world it was birthed into, the other chooses to see the good in the world and the good they can bring if given the chance.

It’s also ironic to see that while Victor Frankenstein wanted something to cherish and call his own, Dr. Baker wanted something that would destroy the world she had grown to hate. Yet both wound up with the opposite of what they’d hoped for.

People’s Choice Posts #7: ‘See You Yesterday’

Thanks for all the amazing responses to See You Yesterday!

I know voting is on everyone’s mind this week (with the looming Presidential election!), and it’s time for one more vote …

Now’s the time to choose for your People’s Choice post, so get your votes in (complete with your chosen post–author/title/link, an excerpt from it + rationale for choosing it). This time around, comments are due by Sun 11/1. As always, looking forward to seeing your choices 🙂

Flailing and Failing

In the most upbeat, positive, life-affirming ending of See You Yesterday that anyone can conceive of, everyone still dies. The writers could take pains to show forgiveness and harmoniousness, healing and love — but as the credits roll, whether the audience acknowledges it or not, everyone, eventually, will die. And so will they.

See You Yesterday features a young woman who wholly rejects that premise. C.J. believes her intervention can stop the tragic circumstances surrounding the death of her brother, Calvin, and takes great pains to break the causal chain leading to his demise. This is fraught with peril; each change she makes in the past has cascading effects that affect the timeline in unexpected, equally tragic ways.

C.J., however, is undeterred. She is driven to change what happened. Equally, she is horrified by the prospect that she has a theoretical ability to help but a diminishing practical means of doing so. That horror leads to an inability for her to recognize the futility of her actions. She tries, again and again, with failure after failure, to right a colossal wrong. In the final scene showing C.J. running, it is less a run toward a problem that she has to solve than it is her running away from the ultimate reality of the matter: that death will always triumph.

While there are clear parallels between See You Yesterday and LaValle’s Destroyer, particularly the depiction of how some police officers behave violently toward young Black men, I think the strongest thematic parallel is between See You Yesterday and Asimov’s The Last Question. C.J. is trying to reverse entropy. Every death, every destruction of a beautiful human mind rich with information and experience, is humankind’s strongest association with entropy. It is just another example of how complexity will collapse and convert to a simpler state, whether it is a star going nova, a tree burning to ash, or a person’s entirety being erased by a hateful policeman’s bullet.

While See You Yesterday has that strong parallel to The Last Question, the former is far more pessimistic — and realistic. There is no Multivac. There is no god or godlike system with the potential to reverse the horrors of entropy. Through her actions, C.J. asks her question: “can I go back and fix this?” The universe does not offer the same, vague, kicking-the-can-down-the-road answer as the Multivac: “THERE IS INSUFFICIENT DATA FOR A MEANINGFUL ANSWER.” The universe, instead, in its utter, incomprehensible indifference, simply shows C.J. “no.”

Yet still she tries.

I don’t know if See You Yesterday was written to be a treatise on cosmic indifference and philosophical nihilism, but I think it’s hard to see it as anything else. I assume, if one were inclined, one could view the ending as a positive thing: as a brilliant, determined young woman hellbent on righting wrongs. In reality, though, there is no evidence for that. Each trip to a different timeline resulted in a new cascade of tragedies, whether it was the death of her friend and partner Sebastian or the hospitalization of an elder relative. C.J. flails, and fails, time and time again. This is a story that will not end happily. It is a story that cannot end happily. There is no salvation. There is no remediation. See You Yesterday, despite being a work of science fiction, reflects the reality and necessity of hopelessness.

Time Travel Under the Lens of Race and Police Brutality

See You Yesterday, directed by Stefon Bristol and produced by Spike Lee, is a film about two young black teenagers, C.J. Walker and Sebastian Thomas, inventing time travel (or as they call it, temporal displacement). During the movie C.J.’s brother, Calvin is shot and killed by police and CJ. spends the duration of the movie to try and undo her brother’s murder. See You Yesterday covers themes of race, police brutality, and moral questions of time travel, while occasionally referencing other works of fiction and even non-fiction.

This was my second time watching the film, the first time being a little over a year ago. This time I feel I’ve picked up on a few smaller details that I may have missed during my first watch through. An example being the books that C.J., Sebastian, and Mr. Lockhart (the teacher), are reading in the second scene (03:24). C.J. is reading Stephen Hawken’s A Brief History of Time, Mr. Lockhart is reading Kindred by Octavia Butler, a novel about time travel, and Sebastian is reading a graphic novel called Black by Kwanza Osajyefo and Tim Smith. When I first watched this movie I initially noticed the books that C.J. and Mr. Lockhart were reading, but did not recognize the book Sebastian was reading until hearing about it sometime after my first viewing of the film and having recently read the graphic novel myself. Black is a graphic novel where only black people have powers, due to a certain particle known as quarks. I think it’s interesting how it relates black people to having superpowers to how in this film two young black students invented time travel and can sort of harness that energy. In the film, they are the only ones who are shown using the machines for time travel. C.J.’s name is also in reference to Madame C.J. Walker, a famous black entrepreneur, and inventor.

Another detail within this second scene is the fact that Mr. Lockhart is played by Michael J. Fox who is famous for his role as Marty McFly in the Back to The Future films, which happen to be about time-travel. Mr. Lockhart even says one of the famous quotes from the movies, “great Scott”. After watching the film this time, I looked at some videos about the film with the main cast and director. In one interview, when responding to a tweet, director Stefon Bristol mentioned that “his [Michael J. Fox] role would be very important to reflect teachers in the classroom to pay attention to black students who are brilliant because they’re often over missed in the classroom”

See You Yesterday also analyzes some moral and philosophical questions that come with the development of time travel. Mr. Lockhart states that “If time travel were possible, it would be the greatest ethical and philosophical conundrum of the modern age” (5:02), which the movie explores using the topics of race and police brutality. After her brother, Calvin is shot C.J. wants to go back in time to prevent it from happening, but initially, Sebastian is against it as it changes history and messes with time. Time travel raises questions such as, should people be allowed to change the past? If so, on what scale? How will those changes impact the present? Will we create a different timeline? And if so, won’t we just be stuck in the same unchanged timeline whilst the other splits off with the changed effects? Then was is the point of it all? And are somethings, unfortunate as the be, are just supposed to happen?

I also find it interesting how See You Yesterday handle the continuity of time travel which can easily get confusing and complicated, and there are different ways that different writers, and stories, handle time travel. When going back the first time C.J. and Sebastian acknowledge that they cannot be seen by their past self since that would mess up events, and the second time they jump back they are aware that they have to avoid two past versions of themselves. If they kept jumping back like that, the past versions of themself that they would have to avoid would constantly increase, but they solved that problem by (I assume through all the jargon used) splicing the timelines and jumps of their former selves, therefore undoing previous jumps.

However, as C.J. stated, “everything great has the ability to be good and bad” (28:10). In this case, the good of time travel comes in C.J. being able to save her brother in one loop, however the bad is also shown when it’s at the cost of Sebastian’s life. This leads to her making more jumps back to try and correct errors in her plan.

Some similarities that could be made between See You Yesterday and Victor LaValle’s Destroyer are the themes of race and police brutality as well as having a black female lead for both stories. The allusion that is being made to society is how black women fight for and alongside black men when there is racial injustice. Stefon Bristol also mentions this in the aforementioned interview, and how C.J. is a representation of that, and instead of it being through the lens of a mother, it’s through the lens of a teenage girl. Bristol also talks about black people uplifting and caring for each other when referencing a line in the movie, “I love you, black man… I love you, too, black woman” – (C.J. and Sebastian 39:09).

The ending of See You Yesterday was noticeably abrupt and seemingly felt like a cliffhanger. It was left open-ended as to what happened that time C.J. jumped back. My initial thought was that C.J. would continue to jump back in time, unfortunately, never able to save everyone, as there would always be one casualty. Or she would sacrifice herself to save everyone. The ending didn’t exactly give any closure, but in a way, I felt that that was the intention. How often in real life do the families of victims of police brutality get closure? In the interview with Bristol, he mentioned how he intentionally left it open-ended “to have the ending wrapped up in a bow like that [a happy ending where C.J. saves everyone] it would be an offensive oversimplification of why this movie was made, of a tragedy that’s still happening today, and I refuse a simplified ending. Explanation of the ending is basically I want you to do something about it, you pissed off that the movie ended that way, we pissed off that it still happens” (3:19).

See You Yesterday, directed by Stefon Bristol and produced by Spike Lee, was an interesting movie incorporating science-fiction time travel, and race and police brutality. It covered some important themes and topics facing society today. It was also interesting to see a science-fiction film take place in a personally familiar area of Flatbush and East Flatbush, Brooklyn.

Grief and Unfairness

Spike Lee’s See You Tomorrow focuses on racial injustice and the use of time travel to fix it. Racial Profiling has been going on in our country for a long time and it’s interesting to see in this film if time travel can have an affect on it. CJ, with the grief of her brother’s death, went back to time to save him from cops shooting and killing him for a crime he didn’t even commit. Even though CJ had the ability to time travel and save her brother from getting murdered, this action caused more problems and at the end, Calvin is still dead.

As we see today with the black lives matters movement, police brutality is significantly an important topic to address and in See You Tomorrow, we see multiple scenes of racial profiling. In the beginning of the film, two police officers approaches CJ and Calvin as they see them arguing and asks Calvin for his ID. CJ and Calvin were just having an argument that wasn’t really that hostile for officers to approach them and ask for ID. In the same scene, we also see Dennis pulling out his phone to record the whole event happening. In today’s world, we see people pulling out their phones or cameras to record an event like this happning and it’s crazy to me how someone’s phones and cameras is something that can protect them from racial profiling or use it to seek justice. I’m wondering the amount of racial profiling that occurs when someone doesn’t record it and how no justice is served because of someone not recording the event. We also see today how recording racial profiling might not transition to justice being served. Later on the film, we see Calvin and Dennis walking and two robbers running past them. This transitions to two police officers assuming Calvin and Dennis are the robbers and murders Calvin. The officers stated that calvin was armed but a woman who saw the event take place said Calvin was unarmed. This brings me back to thinking about the importance of recoding an event like this as the police officers lied about Calvin being unarmed, but luckily there was a woman to see the event take place and speak out the truth. I do find it disappointing that people do need to record to seek justice and if the woman wasn’t there then the police officer would just get away with blatantly lying to protect himself. We all saw or heard about the George Floyd video that resulted to multiple protest around the country and helped all the officers to get charged for what they did. I’m wondering if that event wasn’t recorded in any capacity, would we see the same actions taking place now?

The grief of her brother’s death took CJ to the path of Time traveling multiple times, and each time doesn’t seem to end well. Sebastian did warn CJ multiple times about there being possible consequences for them time traveling and that is exactly what we saw. The first time CJ time traveled after Calvin’s death, she did prevent the death of her brother but not the way she wanted as Sebastian died during the process. The second time around CJ time traveled, Calvin was the one who dies while Sebastian lives. I feel like as many times as CJ time travels, something tragic will occur. I find it interesting how this police brutality scenario took CJ to time travel back to prevent it. There seems to be no solution of ending police brutality and using time travel to atleast prevent it from happening is something everyone would do but as we see, it ends up as bad as it used to be for CJ before she time traveled in the first place. This idea reminds me of Destroyer and how Dr. Baker’s grief of her son dying from a police shooting caused her to bring his son back but like CJ bringing her brother back, their are consequences as Akai is not completely human but more like the monster. I feel like CJ and dr. Baker took advantage of what they had in their hands to bring their love ones back and not might’ve felt a need of unfairness from cops taking their loves ones from them so they did whatever they needed to do to bring them back.

Overall, this film embodies the importance of using technology to prevent a love one from dying from police brutality. It’s interesting to think about the idea of advanced technology being used to stop an event like calvin dying from police officers for no reason because of the color of his skin. I really liked this film especially with the events going on in the world today. I think this film draws a good understanding of the real life events happening today and weather or not time traveling can be one solution to help with the serious problem of police brutality.

Temporal Relocation (Basically Time Traveling)

The movie “See You Yesterday”, by Spike Lee is amazing, I enjoyed watching it. I haven’t watched many time travel movies but this is one of the best ones I’ve seen. I do find time travel does get confusing because there’s so many different movies with their own rule of time traveling and how it would impact the new future. The movie takes place mainly in Brooklyn New York. Throughout the movie we see time travel, racism, and police brutality. While watching this movie I felt sympathy for those who have gone through or loss a family member because of racism and police brutality.

At the beginning we see two teen prodigies testing out their new invention, the TPR Mk1 but it ends up as a fail. During class we see that CJ is reading a book by Stephen Hawking, “A Brief History Of Time” showing how much she’s willing create a machine to time travel. Besides her throughout the movie is her best friend Sebastian. When CJ talks to her professor about her presentation, the professor then ask, “If you had that kind of power. What would you do? What would you change?”(5:10). This is a big question when it comes to time travel because anything you do can change the future. Later in the movie we see that Calvin, CJ’s older brother was shot and killed by an NYPD officer. Calvin and his friend were mistaken for two black men who robbed a bodega.

C.J is filled with despair that her brother just died but then she’s filled with hope when her mother says, “If I could go back and fix it, I would. But I can’t, CJ.”(33:22). The death of her brother enables her to improve the current TPR and go back in time to save Calvin from the police shooting. This is similar to what happened to Dr. Baker in “The Destroyer” where the character tries to bring back someone they love through means of science. CJ and Sebastian failed at their first attempt to prevent Calvin’s death. Then at the second attempt Sebastian is killed when they tried to prevent the robbery. Once again CJ is sadden but this time Calvin is alive and she tells him what’s happening. She goes back in time again but this time to prevent Sebastian’s death and try to get Calvin away from where the police would show up. But once again Calvin dies while trying to save Sebastian.

At the end of the movie we see CJ going back by herself running trying to save Calvin. The question I have is, is it morally right to bring someone back to life. This is similar to “The Destroyer” because Dr. Baker brings her son back to life from a police shooting. Once again we see racism and police brutality. But is it morally right to bring someone back to life? Some may say it’s playing god being able change one’s fate. But I’m hoping that she does save Calvin and everything is back to normal with no loose ends.

Time and Punishment

I saw spike lee’s “See you yesterday” when it first came on, but after seeing it again especially with recent events I noticed a few things that I had not before. In the movie these two smart Caribbean kids from Brooklyn named C.J and Sebastian build these backpack time machines. But after C. J’s brother Calvin gets killed by the police, they decide to go back in time to save him. But in the process, Sebastian gets killed in his place. Stuck between saving her brother and her friend C.J goes back in time to try and save them both.
In most science fiction whenever someone changes anything slightly, something just as if not worse can come as a result of it. Around (5:00) the prof. talks about “if you had the power of time what would you change?” and it is interesting to see how the use and rules of time travel can also play with current events. In terms of this movie, Calvin was profiled in an already volatile time for people of color, and while there could have been a chance to de-escalate the situation he got murdered. But every time CJ and Sebastian jumped by in time, they left little seeds that left drastic changes. If they get Jared’s arm broken by the car accident, they would not have gotten slowed down by him. If CJ never incited conflict at the corner store Sebastian would not have died. And if they never told Calvin about the robbery, then Calvin probably would not have had to sacrifice himself. Now with the ending being ambiguous how knows what could happen.

I love this movie but one thing I found annoying, however, was CJ’s temper and her stubbornness. A lot of events happen as a result of her messing with time and trying to fix everything. It pains me to see as smart as she is, she often doesn’t plan ahead very well. Around 1:00:00 in when CJ and Calvin were in discussing what happened in the car, he even calls her out for not having a decent plan to save both of them. Even in the last scene of while she says she knows how to fix everything, rather than letting Calvin go or meeting him around the barbeque to stopped him sooner, she stubbornly runs in headfirst and may actively make the situation worse. Overall, it is sad to see situations where innocent people of color get killed by police, but it’s even worse to see how people make bad decisions because of it. But the best thing we can do is hope for a better tomorrow and not mess with time.

What if Science can’t fix everything?

Time travel has always been one of those subject that no one truly knows how to handle, because of how difficult it is to comprehend. Travelling through time, if even only by a couple minutes can lead to all sorts of unforeseen consequences. One minor change in the timeline could lead to a catastrophic shift in the original timeline, and here we see that deliberately changing something can always lead to something else going wrong.

See You Yesterday is a Sci-Fi film that depicts the struggle of young girl desperately trying to do something that seems impossible. It all starts with the unjust shooting of her older brother. At first what seemed like a massive scientific achievement was turned and twisted into a grueling journey of two teens trying to change an unavoidable event.

Watching See You Yesterday made me question the possibility of what Science could and couldn’t fix. Even with all the power of a time machine at their disposal, Claudette and Sebastian couldn’t stop the death of Claudette’s brother no matter how many times they tried. It begs the question of if these events that happen in life are fated to play out a certain way.

A question that doesn’t cross Claudette’s mind throughout the movie. There has to be some way she can save him, or at least that’s what she thinks. Here we see the general conflict of Person vs Fate. Claudette refuses to believe that there’s nothing she can do to prevent the unjust murder of her brother by the hands of the police. So she repeatedly goes back to try and stop it, despite the grave consequences of her failures that always appear in each jump.

But Claudette isn’t the only one to notice these failures, which further reinforces the strange unavoidability of her brother’s death. During one of the jumps, the past version of her best friend and Companion Sebastian get shot by a pair of robbers. Upon this happening, the present version of Sebastian dies and everything shifted from her brother being killed to Sebastian being killed.

This was obviously a drastic change, so drastic that Claudette’s brother Calvin, who was now alive and well, felt like he should’ve been the one to die. Even the past version of Calvin, from when Sebastian is saved, starts acting off and feeling different because of how many times the day has come and he has been killed in the shooting.

Science is a dangerous concept that all of humanity has explored one way or another. It has cured things, and it has helped plan for things, but there is always the question of how far Science can go in terms of otherworldly things like Time Travel or interfering with time. Can science really fix any problem that humans have? Will Claudette ever find a true way to save her brother without sacrificing someone?

Was her brother’s fate sealed the day it happened, or is this thing we call fate unavoidable with every action we take?

The world may never know.

Price of a Life

Every second matters when playing with time. In “See You Yesterday”, we have a complex mesh of time travel, racism, police brutality and teenage drama. We have two teenage geniuses trying to prevent the thoughtless killing of one teenager’s older brother by the police. With the current state of the world, this could be a story that is currently happening.

The senseless murder of Calvin was the impetus for this story. Before it happened, the story seemed like any other teenage drama with C.J. and Sebastian trying to make a time machine for an expo. There was even a small cameo from Micheal J. Fox, the protagonist in the “Back to the Future” series. This all seemed to be a happy story about two geniuses and their time machine. But after some drama with C.J.’s ex, the story takes a sharp turn to the dark end with the reckless police shooting of Calvin. This sparks the protagonists’ to develop the time machine to try to save Calvin. The story begins to explore the racism and police brutality.

The ending felt off for how the story progressed. Towards the end of the story when Sebastian was shot instead of Calvin, we had potential point of character development. It seemed like Calvin help C.J. understand that messing with time was going to cause more problems than anything and that going back in time could have resulted into both of them dying in the past. It also almost seemed like Calvin convinced her that friends were important to help her achieve her goal. Calvin even says that he wants her to try her hardest to convince his past self but most important was for her to stay alive. But when we reach the ending, it seemed like everything that Calvin said was for naught. C.J. tries so hard to convince past Calvin and then sticks around for the police which is not what the future Calvin wanted. She puts both Sebastian and herself in danger again which causes past Calvin to sacrifice himself to protect them. In the very end, C.J. pushes away Sebastian to go at it again by herself which also goes against everything that Calvin was trying to convince her not to do. I felt like the ending should have been at least Calvin surviving or C.J. accepting that time is too dangerous to play with. If Calvin survived, we could have had a happy ending that would wrap up the story like a bow. If C.J. were to accept time was too dangerous, it would have re-established her character development and made Calvin’s sacrifice to save C.J. and Sebastian more meaningful. The scriptwriter’s choice to make C.J. go ahead to go at it alone seems off.

I think an interesting metaphor that appeared while watching this movie was the idea that time stops for the victim’s family of police shootings. Like for C.J., they relive the day of their family member’s death over and over. They grieve and think of ways that they could do differently that may have changed the course of event on that day. C.J. is givens chance here to actually experience the different possibilities to that could have been.

Great Scott!

As a fan of time travel and anything related to time travel, I thoroughly enjoyed this movie. From the back to the future cameo, in the beginning, I was already hooked. I had never really watched films produced by Spike Lee, so I wasn’t sure what kind of film it was going to be. After finishing the film I was emotionally processing everything I had just witnessed from police shootings to a bodega robbery. I had to think a lot afterward about what I had just watched and the direct impact it has on the world we are living in today.

The film follows two brilliant young black kids in high school trying to discover the technology that would allow them to time travel or in this movie they refer to it as temporal relocation. CJ or Claudette is the female lead and her temper and ambition have a lot of repercussions as seen throughout the film. Bash or Sebastian is the other lead and he has a more grounded personality and helps CJ through some of the tough times. The driving force of the plot is that CJ’s brother is shot by police when he was unarmed, so CJ and Bash use their technology to try to go back and change the past. In doing so, instead of her brother dying, bash is the one that gets shot trying to stop the robbery that leads to Cj’s brother’s death.

As the movie progresses after Bash’s death, the movie shows CJ trying to grapple with the loss and deal with the repercussions of her actions. Eventually, she figures out a plan with Bash’s good friend to go back in time to try to fix things, but in the end, her brother still dies. I feel that this was done intentionally to show that there are certain things in life that can’t be changed and how sometimes changing something or trying to fix it can lead to an even worse consequence. This movie emphasizes the problems of police brutality and the targeting of certain communities. The movie also focuses on how the police deal with situations in certain communities. CJ tried to call the police on the robbery, but because the police knew it was a certain neighborhood, they took their time to get there, and that ultimately lead to Sebastian’s death.

Overall, I feel that the film was created to reinforce the problem of police brutality and how it takes a toll on not just the families of the victims, but also the communities of those victims. Her brother wasn’t doing anything wrong, but the situation like many other situations in the U.S. lead to the cop feeling that discharging their weapon is the right choice. I also think that this film uses time travel as a mechanism to show that going back and changing one moment won’t fix the overlying problem. Sebastian was there to lay down the dangers of traveling through time and the major implications it could have on the future and the dangers it posed to them.

Cassandras(CJ’s) Phenomenon

In the movie, “See you yesterday,” by Spike Lee is close to the lives lived in New York. Not only was the after school scene to the train (Bedford Park Blvd Lehman college) a few blocks from where I live, but there was scenes that truly displayed the lives of many New Yorkers. The movie focuses on many aspects of live in the city, from how young people have to become strong on their own to how the world treats them due to being physically young.

In the beginning we are introduced to Claudette (CJ), Sebastian, and Eduardo, who are students of middle class struggling to get recognition to go to prestigious schools such as MTI and many more. This issue that is introduced is to familiarize them as actual people, and make the character relatable to those going to High School. As they arrive to Flatbush the story is then expanded into introducing community problems, however the first problem introduced in Flatbush is still connected to making the characters relatable. CJ is confronted by an Ex that she once had named Jared, they go into Carlitos’ store and cause a seen. This connection of the neighborhood not only expands on the location of which they live in, but the ambiance they must endure.

Another major conflict that is encountered is the outcome of their time travel, which is causing ripples in their timelines this not only affects their own lives but those around them. Ultimately causing the loss of Calvins life, CJ seems to be worn out by such loss that they do not attend the fair in which they would have introduced the time machine. This conflict truly shows that CJ is very close to her brother and would much rather attend his event than what her previous desires, she would have gotten the opportunity to get to the school she wanted to and much more. This causes her to travel back once again to save her brother, however fails due to being behind on their time. She tries once more and this time saves her brother at the cost of Sebastians life, she continues to not see that her conflict is not with her decisions but that there will be a price for everything she changes.

Ultimately, in the movies second to last attempt it is revealed that there is a social pressure she was not taking into account, the social injustice that police have placed people of her skin color under. Due to this fact even though her brother tried to do the right thing he would ultimately loss his life due to the police mans racism, as well as the police mans inability to take time to talk and peacefully settle a problem.

In conclusion, the movie has many conflicts that it touches on, from social injustice to science fiction problems. The movie tries to touch upon all these points in many narratives to show the viewer that peoples lives in lower income, or middle class communities are socially and politically not likely to have the desired outcomes. As well as the difficult lives that people live due to these injustices, all in all the fact that there was time travel was a good touch to add more ambiance to the setting.

Category: Reading Responses