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What is a good, non-generic example of tolerance?

upsguy27

upsguy27

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Jun 25, 2007
1,210
19
Utah
I'm in the early stages of planning out a short film to submit into a film festival, and the overall theme is required to be that of tolerance. I've already come up with a general outline for the movie; since I have access to a radio station I was thinking of having a man break in, turn on all of the equipment, and begin broadcasting a message of some specific kind of tolerance.

I would put flashbacks at certain points throughout the short film, showing the specific incident that prompted the man to broadcast the message in the first place. But I'm struggling with what that message would be, I don't want it to be something sappy, cheesy and cliché like racism, sexual orientation or bullying.

So what would be some creative, not normally done, and interesting examples?
 
Way way back there as a SciFi short story.... name escapes me - that dealt with aliens landing on earth. I forget the main parts of the story, but the part that stayed with me was that throughout the entire book humans were making jokes about the aliens.... using the same jokes that were commonly used to put down Irish, Polish, Black, Italian, etc etc.... Just rewritten to use the Aliens as the target.

Not sure how that might apply in your scenario, but maybe this will spark an idea.

I think one of the hallmarks of truly being "tolerant" is that no-one really makes a big issue of it. You live your life... I live mine.

If you have to start measuring to see how tolerant you (or a society) are, then you aren't.
 
Here's a non generic example,

In the Macosrumors forums, the admins/mods tolerate theads put up by *LTD* and Woloshin (or however it's spelled).

:D
 
What about the behavior you see here--both good and bad--among people who use Mac and Windows, iOS and Android?
 
What about all those little annoyances that trigger people to go mad?

loud neighbours
Tailgating
talentless music practice
dog without a leash
burning leafes / loud leafblower
double parking
trashing
facebook
lactose intolerant
empty batteries
baby crying in a public place
bumping into people (think about that videoclip of The Verve - Bittersweet symphony
 
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If you ask me, everyone is inherently intolerant. Of people who act differently, dress differently, talk differently, live differently. Pretty much of anyone/anything that differs from their 'norm'.

If you want to stay away from obvious sexism/racism ideas, how about tolerance of new/different ideas? For every every crackpot idea/belief/ideology , there's someone who believes in it, sees the logic in it. Rather than dismissing and ridiculing it, why not try to understand the idea, and listen to the reasoning of the person behind it. Hey, breaking into a radio station and broadcasting a message of tolerance might sound crazy to some, but this one guy must have had his reason.

Great idea, by the way! :)
 
How about something like mental illness or foster care? I work with these populations daily and I can tell you they are consistently faced with discrimination, abuse, etc. etc.

The lead character in your story could even have been a foster child and the flashbacks are of positive and caring foster parents and friends that tolerated his acting out behavior that resulted from his childhood trauma.

I tell foster parents that what they are signing up for is to be a punching bag for the children that they allow into their home. The trauma and abuse these children have faced often comes out negatively as they struggle to work through what has happened to them in life. If a foster parent wants to truly help a child they must commit to being there for the long haul all while tolerating whatever that child brings with them. It's consistency over time that truly makes the difference and in order to be successful in that parenting style it requires a lot of patience and tolerance.

Just a thought... Whatever you decide I hope your movie project is a success. :)
 
Ask a teacher. They have to put up with from students, parents, administrators, and so on. I'm surprised so few of them go ape*bleep* crazy and beat the stuffing of the kids. Try teaching someone who won't learn and dealing with people who think it's YOUR job to teach their kids to behave.

If I was a teacher, duct tape would be my best friend.
 
"Tolerance" is a funny word. It's really saying that you don't *like* the thing, but you tolerate it. Hardly the same thing as "acceptance," and hardly an admirable goal, in my opinion. Better than intolerance but still.
 
I'm writing a thesis atm about how the breakdown in immune self tolerance to citrullinated peptides results in rheumatoid arthritis. Think you can pick anything interesting outta that? No? Me neither.
 
Okay, so here's what I've come up with as an outline over the past day or two. I know this is turning more into a general feedback thread on the short film idea itself, but there's still the theme of tolerance in there. I took whooleytoo's idea of tolerance of ideas and kind of worked it into the original outline I had. So, what do you guys think?


Tolerance: Idea that people need to tolerate what the kid has to say; shouldn’t just immediately shoot him or anyone else down because of who they are or what their stereotype is portrayed to be

MESSAGE IDEAS
- Kid has a great idea of how to do something better or some way something should be done in the community that would benefit everyone

THREE POSSIBLE OPENINGS

- Kid breaks into radio station, goes into dark studio
- Pulls off blanket covering equipment; blows off dust
- Various shots of kid turning on equipment, things lighting up, “on air” light comes on
- Kid starts broadcasting by testing microphone
- Cut to shots of people hearing kid

- Opens on man broadcasting in radio station – normal broadcast
- Shows kid listening to broadcast
- Kid gets up, split scenes of kid racing to get to studio and man broadcasting – audio of broadcast over whole thing
o Kid is racing to get there on bike/foot
- Kid gets to building, runs up stairs and into the building as the audio of the man broadcast draws nearer and nearer
- Kid busts into studio, cuts off broadcast as man basically says “what the hell”
- Shoves man out of the way, starts to broadcast message
- Cut to shots of people hearing kid

- Combination of both openings?
- Kid breaks in to studio using opening from second opening
- Kid gets into studio, goes into vacant studio adjacent of man broadcasting in live studio
- Kid turns on equipment, takes off blanket – intercut w/ shots of man broadcasting and kid doing actions in background
- Kid switches broadcast audio away from man’s mic and to his, begins to broadcast
- Man notices that he isn’t on air anymore; looks over and sees kid broadcasting
- Man tries to stop kid, but finds that studio door is locked
- Shots of man outside of window trying to get in, pounding on window and possibly calling cops
- Cut to shots of people hearing kid


Idea of audience not being able to hear the message the kid broadcasts, has to figure out what it is from clues as story progresses

- Kid gets in trouble for breaking into the studio and broadcasting the message
- Even though the actual message was good and his intentions were pure, he’s still passed off as a delinquent teenager
o Because of this people immediately dismiss what he said without listening to the actual content of the message
- Kid realizes what he did changed nothing, and the very problem he was trying to bring to light still very much exists
o Low point of film, as kid is disappointed in what little his plan accomplished and also whatever trouble he got in with the law
- Some more stuff happens that will translate into….
- Local news station runs story on kid, but points out that his message was a good one
- This leads people to pay attention to the original message, community as a whole realizes they’re guilty of exactly what he’s saying in his message
- Community effort to get kid out of whatever trouble he got in w/ law
- Kid realizes that he actually did some good after all
- NON-CHEESY ENDING WHERE MESSAGE CHANGED SOME THINGS, BUT DIDN’T MAKE EVERYTHING PERFECT AND AMAZING AND NOW EVERYONE LOVES EACH OTHER
o NON-CHEESY


As you can see, I'm still struggling with some of what will fill up the middle and, of course, the ending. I don't want to go with anything overly cheesy and feel-goody for the ending and that's all I can think of right now.
 
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