Since starting college I have taken up watching
a lot of different things of Netflix. Most of the time I watch TV shows and
movies that I like or think might be interesting. I have also watched some
documentary films on Netflix’s as well. I’m not sure on how many documentary
films I have watched, but there was a few. The few that I did have the pleasure
to watch was because I thought the topic was interesting, or I was bored and
had nothing else to do; most of the time it was both. I do not have a favorite.
I do not have much of a favorite of really anything. I either love it, like it,
or don’t like it. I have never really liked picking a favorite because how can
u pick one when you know later, somewhere down the road it is going to change.
And when it does change, like it always does, what happens to the old favorite.
Do you give it boot out the door telling it to “take a hike”, or do you place
it in the doghouse with all the other old favorites, while you bring home the
new puppy. So you see picking favorites is a messy business. That and I liked
the documentaries for different reasons. Picking one would just be demeaning to
the reasons why I liked the others.
Documentary films come in so many different
subjects that they help everyone learn about so many different topics. Everyone
should be able to find a documentary to keep their interest. Documentaries also
so have the amazing power of making the audience think of something that they
would not have thought about otherwise without making too hard to understand. They
also can show more than one point of view to the subject. Sometimes documentaries
even show more than just two sides of the argument. Watching documentary films
will help not only writers, but people in general, grow as individuals as well
as in there writing by making them think about different subjects that they normally
would not be exposed too.
For the Documentary Film Project I decided that
I was going to watch something controversial. So I chose to watch the
documentary “After Tiller”. No matter where you stand on the subject, you get
to see these people making the hardest decision of their life. In the film, one
the staff members in one of the clinics said the question is not only about the
life, but of the quality of that life. The Doctor of that same clinic also surprised
me by saying that “no-one wants an abortion”. The Doctor also mentioned to her
16-year-old patient that there is only three options; birth the baby and taking
care of a baby, birth the baby and give it away, or abortion. The one thing
that really surprised me by the end of the film is that they never showed the
faces of the patients. Their bodies and maybe the side of their heads were
shown, but never the full face. The film brought into question where the patients
would go to if all of the states made these abortions illegal. And what would
happen to the quality of life for all those affected; what about the
emotionally affects.
What I would like to know is how did this help
or hurt the patients in the long run emotionally. How many looked back and regretted
it but remembered why they did it and the reason they were there in the first
place and still would do it all over again? What about the people that wanted
it but could not, for any reason, and regretted not doing it? One of the things
that were mentioned as arguments against abortions was the argument of fetal
pain. I would like to research that a little more to see if I think it has any
weight to it. The most problematic concept that I came across in the film is
that with the ever increasing restrictions on legalized abortions, how many
more woman will go to extreme lengths to end their pregnancy.
At certain part in the film “After Tiller” I
had to stop watching and walk away from it because it was just getting too
emotional for me. It was during one of the parts where the woman’s baby had an abnormality
that was going to kill the baby painfully. So she decided that she was not
going to let her baby suffer any more than he need too.