We hope to examine the cultural interactions between tourists and native New Yorkers. Prevailing stereotypes suggest that New Yorkers are brash egomaniacs while tourists are cumbersome roadblocks. A palpable divide exists between the two groups. Almost 50 Million tourists visit New York annually and the number is poised to rise. By facilitating tourist-native relations, we may ensure the mutual satisfaction of both parties and promote a kinder, more gregarious city.

Our group will visit three tourist hotspots: Rockefeller Center, Times Square, and Grand Central Terminal, and film both tourists and natives to examine their modes of behavior. We will conduct interactive workshops designed to introduce tourists and natives; commonality of location will prompt conversation and establish common interests.

Group Members: Sharon Lin, Mark Stone, Camille Studer, Abhinaya Swaminathan

We would like to know what you guys think about these aspects of our production:

1)   Were our choices of locations appropriate?

2)   Did we capture stereotypes accurately? In other words, are these the prevalent stereotypes or did we miss anything important?

3)   What would have made our portrayal more effective?

Welcome to our Mockumentary/Public Service Announcement about racism. We try to combine special techniques/effects, and acting + cinematic shots to make our video believable and informative. Our target audience is the general public.

We are showing how ignorance and stereotyping lead to mental stress and produce negative psychological effects i.e. the emotional pain suffered by the victim.
We want to explore why people commit these verbal crimes and how they can be settled. We are giving insight into the reality of racism and discrimination.

All of us have witnessed and suffered these stereotypes and we want to show how just how hurtful they can be. Personally, each of us encountered a situation concerning stereotypes. Kenny – walking down the street and being called offensive racial slurs i.e. General Tso. Sion – walking down the street and being called a dirty Jew. Quan – walking down the street and being asked to do math homework. Ngawang walking down the street and being called Chinese when in reality he is Tibetan.

We are writing an original script in which we devise different scenarios of how verbal racism is used and how do victims react to it.

Our questions are:
1) How is our acting? Believable?
2) Do you think we had enough integration of “different languages”?
3) Is there anything really distracting to our main point?

#FoodSwag: Michael Zaslowsky, Simon Toybis, Devon Khan, Isadore Betesh

The theme behind #FoodSwag’s video is to portray interaction through food.  We start at Ray’s Pizzeria, then we transition to a halal food cart and end with Shake Shack.  Pizza, halal food, hamburgers, and fries are all common foods that every New Yorker eats, unless something prohibits us from doing so.  Throughout the video these limitations are noted through geography and religion.  However, as New Yorkers, we don’t actually realize the limitations of food that some people have to go through.  By eating with different people we realize the limitations that others face.  The video touches on a few things, but there are many more limitations.

Pertaining to interaction, New Yorkers fail to realize how much food serves to help people interact with each other.  When we go to eat, we usually eat with other people and end up taking and hour to eat our meal because we are spending fifty minutes speaking with each other.  Our group, #FoodSwag took meal conversations a little deeper and portrayed different ethnicities and religions through our meals.  This just shows the scope of conversations that revolve around food because food is the one thing every culture can speak about.  People love food.

Even though New Yorkers in the city eat out a lot there are many places they haven’t gone.  Some people don’t know what halal is and some still haven’t been to other well known places like Shake Shack, Five Guys, Two Bros, and more.   For this reason, New York can always be an adventure and a new place, which is why we decided to make our video seem touristy.  There can only be a handful of New Yorkers that have been all over New York, and because New York is so ethnically diverse we are always experiencing new things.

As New Yorkers we fail to realize the role food plays in our lives other than the purpose of keeping up full and sustaining our lives.  Our group, #FoodSwag, stresses the role of food through conversations and learning about each other.  The range of food available in New York is unbelievable, which is one of the reasons New York is a great place to live in.

Questions the group has:

Is it clear, through the video, what points #FoodSwag are touching on?

As New Yorkers can you relate to any of the characters?

Are there any times where the video isn’t believable?

Our group, #FoodSwag, is doing our project on the different foods of NYC. We will go to three famous NYC food locations; 53rd and 6th Halal, a famous pizza place (Not yet determined), and Shake Shack. We will taste the foods, analyze the cultures they come from, and analyze the impact they have on our society. We chose this subject because we are food connoisseurs and love exploring the different places to eat in NYC. Other people can learn from our experiences about where to eat. We will bring our different cultural expectations of food to these foods. We will explore the taste and cultural significance of these places.

#FoodSwag- Devon Khan, Semyon Toybis, Michael Zaslowsky, Isadore Betesh

We hope to examine the cultural interactions between tourists and native New Yorkers. Prevailing stereotypes suggest that New Yorkers are brash egomaniacs while tourists are cumbersome roadblocks. A palpable divide exists between the two groups and we aim to soften relations and foster a more amicable dynamic.

Almost 50 Million tourists visit New York annually and the number is poised to rise. By facilitating tourist-native relations, we may ensure the mutual satisfaction of both parties and promote a kinder, more gregarious city.

Our group will visit three tourist hotspots: Rockefeller Center, Times Square, and Fifth Avenue, and film both tourists and natives to examine their modes of behavior. We will conduct interactive workshops designed to introduce tourists and natives; commonality of location will prompt conversation and establish common interests.

Group Members: Sharon Lin, Mark Stone, Camille Studer, Abhinaya Swaminathan