The Occult in the United States. 

The occult is something that is part of everything in the U.S. today. Movies, TV shows, books, anything you can think of, there will be something to do with supernatural things. I think that America is so fascinated by it because it's just simply awesome and unexplained that it quenches the curiosity of people in the U.S. Supernatural instances has been part of America since America was even started. We've grown accustomed to it and it's just part of out everyday lives and culture. Of course to many people it might be fake or real but it's the entertainment that comes along with it. America lives to be entertained. We have football to keep us entertained, zombie apocalypses to keep us entertained, why not make a zombie football movie so we can just be overwhelmed with entertainment?

We use movies for instance to show the fascination of the occult. One movie that shows a good view of how people love the occult and just crazy scary things is A Nightmare on Elm Street where Freddy Kruegar, the guy who kills everyone, is just simply an act of supernatural tendencies. I find him super cool because he can just enter people's dreams and scare them to the point where he kills them in the dream and in the real world. To many people he's just an awesome bad guy who has awesome powers but in the real world he's just as vulnerable as anyone else. I find him to be a supernatural piece of work because, who can just jump in a dream and kill people? Even though he's a bad guy people still love to see him in movies. If a movie came out today in 2014 with him starring people would go see it because they're so obsessed with the supernatural work on a madman. 

I think America is lives with the fact of supernatural occurrences and is so obsessed with it because no matter how much fear there is to these things, Americans know that it isn't real one bit. We live in an age where science solves everything and if science can solve it, it's fake. Science hasn't proven anything to do with the occult to be real, so why should we believe that it is? Our eyes haven't ACTUALLY seen it but on the screen or books we have. It's all in our heads so who's to say that everything we see isn't just made up, or real? *inserts devil emoji* 

This shows that American culture has grown accustomed to the occult. Everything that goes on in America has something scary to go along with it. Teenagers love scary and weird things that's why there are so many things that have to do with vampires and werewolves out there to watch on TV and watch in movie theaters. But the truth behind it all is because we all know, it really isn't real, we just like to pretend that is for the entertainment of ourselves.  

-C.Leal

Is doing wrong things for good, right?

One anti-hero that I've been watching since I was a kid is known as Dominic Torreto, one of the main characters in the popular film Fast and Furious. The 6 movies that have been made about this one man along with others is all about cars, money, family, racing and did I mention the best part? Cars. Every move he makes when it comes to getting out of a sticky situation to accomplishing something he needs or wants tends to be in an illegal way.

The first movie created was revolved around a young agent, Brian O'Conner, who goes undercover as a street racer to bust the big case of "who's been stealing all the cargo from 18-wheelers." In the movie he meets Dominic Torreto and befriends him to later find out (spoiler alert) that he is the one who has a team who hijacks 18-wheelers for the cargo. Later it comes to surface that Torreto uses the money for the good of his crew or "family" who has close to nothing. 

Ichabod and Torreto have things in common when it comes to getting what they want in anyway possible. Their greed for wealth is similar in how Ichabod wants the money for himself although Torreto wants the money for himself and his "family." Both are also similar in being very sneaky and convincing to get out of sticky situations. 

Although Ichabod Crane is a self-centered greedy man, Torreto is the same as him when it comes to greed and being very convincing in sticky situations along with thinking on their toes when it comes to quick problems. Torreto comes to be one of those anti-heroes who do things for the better of people and we are quick to love him. I remember growing up wanting to be a cool bad guy like Dominic Torreto. 

-C.Leal