Ethnic Notions

This movie was very troubling. If you didn't find it troubling, you trouble me as well. This films dealt with the evolution of derogatory depictions of African-Americans from the Civil War up to the present day. It also dealt with the psychology behind those who enjoyed these grotesque forms of comedic entertainment known as "minstrels." It was argued by many in the South that the Blacks were animals who enjoyed servitude to White Masters, and were meant to be domesticated by the Whites. When Slavery was abolished by the Constitution, the backlash hit the blacks which depicted the Freedmen as wild rampant wild animals, as seen in "Birth of a Nation."

All this seems like a horrible, yet past ordeal. It is quite horrible, but unfortunately it can't be said that it's passed. This movie made me think of a different film I saw at the Orpheum about 5 years ago, called the "Confederate States of America." It was a strange satire of America told through a mockumentary about the Confederacy winning the Civil War and continuing to the present day (not a great film, but at least a noble effort). It was meant to be very dark comedy, and products such as "nigger hair cigarette" and other racially charged products were joked about surviving to the present day. Some instances like these were so ridiculous, the audience couldn't help but give uncomfortable laughs. In the credits, these products made reappearances with captions that told when they were actually from. I was highly to disturbed to find a good chunk of products, including "nigger hair cigarette" were actually sold as recently as the 1970s. I think this fact illustrates perfectly the point of "Ethnic Notions," which is that this stereotyping will take a very long time to completely wear off this society.

This film made me think a lot, and proved to be very troubling in thought as well as the simply disgusting images. I wish the we had a bigger discussion on this as the class, but we are short on time, so I can't complain.

Caucasia Part ii: What do you Think?

I was a bigger fan than most toward the beginning of this book, and my support was admittedly pretty lukewarm when the plot was early in its development. However, now that Birdie has found everyone again, I'm pleased to say I appreciate a few things that seemed to take ages at the beginning of the book. Everything had its place, once you could tell the breaking point was about to come in Birdie and Sandy's refugee lifestyle in New Hampshire country.

Danzi Senna did too good of a job at making raw domestic conflict as realistic as it turned out to be. I thought the eventual divorce was pretty heavy until I read of Birdie's overly hostile attitude toward Jim and her mother's descending into a sort of depression. The scene that struck me most in this part of Caucasia was the incident with Samantha's family at the grocery store when her mother slipped up by calling "Jesse" Birdie, and Birdie slipped up by revealing that she was half-black, and not a non-practicing Jew. Senna did a great job at capturing the panic here to the point of making me feel a little panicky.

I loved the last section of the book: it was a bit cliche, and multiple motifs were used ad nauseum, but nevertheless it still had moving moments that brought the novel full circle and answered many questions that I had. The encounter with Dot was both touching and tragic, her encounters with both her grandmother and Deck were both rather off-putting and depressing, and the meeting with Cole was rather predictable for the happy moment that it was. The ending itself was annoyingly anticlimactic, a point that I would go into more had I something more constructive to say.

Caucasia was not a perfect book, but it lived very well in its touching moments (which were very touching, if I might say). I felt very sorry for all characters involved, for Senna did a superb job at showing that everyone was going through their own tragedies. I don't know about you, but I liked it.

Caucasia Part i: Writing Style and Aging

I'm not generally negative toward this book. Were it not last quarter of Senior Year, I'd probably be a lot more into it. Caucasia took a while to pick up, but once it did, I came to appreciate the extensive character building that later made Birdie's trip to Boston and the San Francisco Area all the more memorable and moving. It wasn't the story itself that tending to fail at this task. I firmly believe it's the writing style that Danzi Senna takes.

Although it's supposed to be Birdie looking back on the past, she failed to make this apparent, and it just struck me as the voice of a 20-something-year-old from age 10 to 17. I didn't see it until Birdie grew older, and looking back, her childhood seemed rather mature. The conversations between Cole and Birdie sounded rather developed and adult, not developing at all throughout the novel. Her observations of the people throughout Dot's house at the beginning (the bit where Birdie is shown the guns, presumably a Black Panther-esque situation. Even "elemeno" failed to reach credibility for me. Little kids often do have long-lasting habits and even alternative social structures, but this form of language seemed almost a little too sophisticated for me for it to sound at all believable to come out of 10-year-olds.

Senna structured the conflicts well- the arguments and senses of paranoia suffered throughout the novel were structured the point of nearly making me feel uncomfortable and miserable with the situation. However, I just couldn't get the fact in my head that Birdie had changed ages in the book. This did detract a lot of the book from me.

Killing Us Softly

The lecture was rather interesting, and rather disturbing. I essentially agree with Kilbourne, and I thought it was one of the best close-readings of anything that I've seen in a Kunkle class as of yet. The point about the emphasis on childish innocency to be equally mixed with sexuality was what stood out to me the most. I agree that this is a very degrading affect, which is even more emphasized by the magizines that we looked at yesterday with scantily clad women popping in rather irrelevant advertisements. I think there were times when she made some overgeneralizations--some of those ads just seemed creepy to the point where they are probably part of a magazine that's just as creepy as the ad. Or so I think. However, for the most part, these were recognizable media outlets that to this day will make me feel a little more troubled about magazine advertisements.

Kilbourne and I both agreed on what was the most tragic and revealing image in the whole slideshow, which was the little boy and the little girl already taking on the stereotypes of being innocent and rather obedient to the boy who is already seen desperately trying to give a masculine aurora to his surroundings. This image, more than others, signifies to a society and these stereotypes are both morally right and normal. Obviously, I don't think any of us consciously think it's true. However, we see this so much I think many people do think this subconsciously. I don't look at advertisements on a regular basis, nor do most, I believe. However, people are influenced by everything they see to an extent. This proves the effects of advertising. The more striking the image, the longer we remember it. Advertisements realize this, and that is how they thrive. Therefore, I can't say that I'm not completely uninfluenced, for I don't think I know.

I'm very glad that we watched this in class, although it was rather troubling.

A Northern Light

When I was assigned "A Northern Light" by Jennifer Donnelly, I saw the cover and thought-- oh dear: it looks like a chick flick, and the cover is troublingly Twilight-esque. Luckily, I was more troubled by the later, and this is definitely no literary atrocity by Stephanie Meyer. It is indeed a bit of a chick flick so far, but that doesn't bother me so much. It reads fast, and it has an interesting literary structure. The beginning seems to be non-linear, which I think is really interesting. I like the abstract feeling the book has, jumping between Maddie's defining moments in the Adirondacks. "A Northern Light" takes place in 1906 on Big Moose Lake in the Adirondacks. Maddie works on a farm with a struggling Father, who seems rather tired of life after some past family strife. Maddie the creative type living in a conservative town, which makes it rather tough for her-- conservative in this sense meaning she's encouraged to inherit a family farm and reject higher education which is unfortunate, as she's been accepted into Barnard College, but can't pay for it. The plot starts to get interesting when the influence for the book, a domestic murder by Charles Gillette on Big Moose Lake in 1906, appears within the plot. Maddie ends up getting involved with some love letters between the future killer and victim, which end up becoming trial sensations. (For those who don't know, Charles Gillette and the future victim Grace Brown were lovers and Gillette murdered her apparently because she became pregnant). I see lots of potential for this book to become increasingly interesting, and it's already happening. Not to mention that it's a remarkably quick read, which any fourth quarter senior can enjoy.

Del Toro's comments

Thank you, AP Comp test: I've missed the ending of Pan's Labyrinth due to thou. Luckily, I've had it ruined for me. I liked the combined aspects of mature film and the rather simplistic qualities of fairy tales used in this Del Toro film. I never got to understand the analytical aspects of these tales of Spain until today most notably, the importance of the number three. 3 sisters, 3 trials, 3 chances, 3 doors. In this film, the pairs of 3 are certainly noticable. There are 3 doors that Ofelia can open with the key (although she ends up botching that up well), the fascists came in pairs of three (didn't notice that one), there are three tasks Ofelia must perform, and the rather nasty incident where the Captain forces a stutterer to count to three without stuttering to escape torture. However, the pairs of three within this film were different in the fact that it played with my perceptions of fairy tales. For me the signs had changed. By the end of the film, I was trained to believe the signs of 3 ended up being anything but good news. True, I probably can't talk because the last thing I saw was the captain's face get mutilated. However, it only resulted in Ofelia being abandoned to the real world, the death of the stutterer, and waking up a thing with funny eyes on his hands. Del Toro said he wrote this film with a purpose of staying within convention of the traditional "heroic journey" narrative. However, that was only the feel. The heroic journey was followed, but it broke smaller norms on the way. Congratulation, Del Toro.

Persepolis

I was never a big fan of the comic book scene. Something about them never really grasped my interest, but Persepolis has made me think twice about that. The illustrated autobiography of the journey of an Iranian adolescent struggling through the 1980 Revolution proved that graphic novels do indeed have a place within the teaching cirriculum. The aspect that it reads very quickly is certainly appealing to most high school students, but that notwithstanding, Persepolis is one book that I most certainly do not regard as a waste of my time.

It is primarily the depictions of conflict and metaphors in Persepolis that strike me as being characteristic of this graphic novel. For example, the rather literal, morbid, and graphic image of the graffiti slogan "To Die a Martyr is to Give Your Blood to the Veins of Society" really can't be described in words. I myself won't try to do so because I've already stated that it simply can't be done.

It's primarily a story regarding a particularly turbulent journey of growing up, and yet it can't help but bare some of the political tensions that surround the controversial Middle-Eastern nation. The allusions are enough to make you think deeply, but not enough to completely drown the entire point of the book, which I like. I've found myself unconsiously reading "Persepolis" in class, not due to boredome, but because I want to find what happens next. It's habit, however, that I shall have to break.