Better life, no crime

“Better life. No Crime. This is what everybody wants. ... We sometimes waste money on people that don’t belong here.” The party ‘Better Life, No Crime’ is stating in these previous quotations that all the problems of crime are actually caused by immigrants or ‘people who don’t belong here’. I fully disagree with this statement. Who are the ones that don’t belong here? Do they have anything to do with crime at all?

On the 6th of November in the dutch debating television show, ‘Het Lagerhuis’, mr. Verhagen, author of ‘Hoe zo mislukt’ (‘Why unsuccesful’), claimed  that the crimes in the Netherlands are not an intergration problem but a socio-economic issue. The problem lies with the youngsters and not the immigrants. Although we’re talking here about an issue which occurs in the Netherlands I think this concerns America too. Those in financially less favorable positions are more likely to commit a crime. It won’t make any difference if we tighten the rules in the immigration policy. The amount of crime among youngsters will not reduce.

At last, America is a ‘melting pot’, a land of plural races and ethnicities, with a multicultural context. Just a little walk in the city of New York or Chicago, for example, would make any foreigner realize the presence of people of various races walking down the street: probably Caucasians, Hispanics, African, Americans, Asian, and so on. Who are ‘the ones that don’t belong here? The britisch who colonized the Americas in the late 16th century? The ones who I think only belong in America are the Indians. We can not claim that the british are the ones that ‘belong’ in the United States of America. Africans, for example, are the direct descendants of captive Africans who survived the slavery era within the boundaries of the present United States. African-American history starts in the 17^th century. These are american citizens too. Or do the African-American not belong in the United States?

African, Hispanics, Caucasians, ‘Americans’ they all belong in the United States of America, because the United States of America is a melting pot. We can not blaim the immigrants for the crimes that some immigrants and citizens commit. We can not solve crime by reducing the ammount of immigrants. This is a serious socio-economic issue and not an integration issue.  

Personal Response Romeo and Juliet

The modern version of Shakespeare’s world-famous play ‘Romeo and Juliet’ by Baz Luhrmann can be considered quite succesful according to me. 

This modernized version of Shakespeare’s famous play still retained it’s original dialogue. The charming lines revealed the romantic tone of the play. But, according to me, the original tragic lines which were used by the modern characters from the movie ‘Romeo and Juliet’ (by Baz Luhrmann) sometimes didn’t match quite well. These tragic lines ensured that the emotion put into the play, especially by Romeo, was ridiculous excessive. The tragic scenes could not be taken serious by me anymore. This was for example the case in the scene when Romeo was banned out of the country.

However the background music fortunately upholds the tragic message of the story. Without the music the ‘Death scene’ for example would have been more comic than pitiful.

The costumes and props were the only things which really modernized Romeo and Juliet’s ‘world’ in Baz Lughrmann’s version of the play. Instead of using swords the characters in this modern play used guns. And another great example of the costumes and props used in this movie is in the ‘death scene’, when Romeo is wearing a beach shirt and Juliet, at the end of the scene, comits suicide with a gun.

The morals of the original play and the language used in Shakespeare’s play remained the same. Although these aspects have changed quite massively the past fourhunderd years. 

My own visualised prototype of Romeo and Juliet before seeing this movie resembled the actors Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes as Romeo and Juliet perfectly. Juliet portraited as an innocent angelic character, and Romeo: able-bodied and still very romantic.

Baz Luhrman’s succesfully renewed the more than fourhundred years old romantic and tragic play, Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare.