Video for Movie Scene Analysis

The scene I am using is the first couple of minutes, up until 2:09.

(As a warning, upon first pushing the "play" button, a pop-up will come up for whatever advertisement is behind it. The types of sponsors vary.)

Movie Analysis Proposal

Movie: Serenity

Scene: Opening scene directly after "Universal" logo

Scene Length: 1:45

Description: Scene starts off with zooming up on the planet Earth from the "Universal" logo where large flashes come from locations of prominent cities in the United States South and Mexico, where it is shown that spaceships have launched. The voiceover describes the situation surrounding humans' leave of Earth. The ships that launched from Earth arrive at planets in a new solar system and the voiceover describes the solar system as having dozens of planets and hundreds of moons. A new shot of an industrial, futuristic building in a hostile environment of snow and fast-moving clouds. The voiceover explains that each of the new planets and moons had to be terraformed so that they could each become a new Earth, friendly to humans. Another planet of grass and sleek, futuristic buildings with small ships flying around. Voiceover says that the central planets formed The Alliance, which is governed by a parliament and is the apex of society. Yet another planet is shown, this one more of a desert, similar to the Southwestern United States. Voiceover describes the more savage planets as not being as enlightened as The Alliance and that they refused Alliance control, which caused a terrible war. A large shadow of a space ship moves over the settlement as the war is mentioned. A long-shot of a desert planet from space is shown which later zooms out to an electronic representation of the planet and its orbit as well as those around it. The voiceover says that The Alliance's victory ensured a safer universe. The voice is revealed as a woman standing in front of the electronic picture of the solar system. The woman says that everyone can now take advantage of being part of true civilization. The shot changes so that it shows the woman as a teacher standing in front of a class of children sitting on the ground at futuristic, wooden desks. One boy, about 13, asks why The Alliance even chose to fight the Independent Planets and why they wouldn't want to become more civilized. The shot goes to a girl of about the same age answers that she has heard that the inhabitants of those planets are cannibals. It cuts to another boy who replies to the girl that she's talking about Reavers. It cuts again to another girl who exclaims that Reavers aren't real but the boy quickly says that they are. It goes back to the boy who first mentioned Reavers and he starts talking about all of the horrible things that he has heard of Reavers doing to settlers. The camera goes back to just the teacher who calls the class to attention in Chinese while raising her hand. The class falls silent except for birds chirping in the surrounding gardens. The teacher explains that dangers are real out on the outer planets. The shot goes to behind a girl who is using a double ended instrument to tap on moving lights on her desk while writing down complicated equations on her pad of paper. The girl looks up at the teacher who says that it would be unreasonable for the outer planets to fight The Alliance who has all of the social and medical advances. The girl in the back with the equations interrupts by saying "We meddle." The teacher calls on her by saying her name, River, to hear the rest of her explanation. River looks up from her desk to say, "People don't like to be meddled with. We tell them what to do, what to think. Don't run, don't walk. We're in their homes and in their heads and we haven't the right. We're meddlesome." All the while River is talking, the teacher is slowly walking towards her with a condescending smile on her face as if correcting a young child's mistake. She finally gets to River's desk where she bends down and gently takes the double-ended instrument from the girl before saying, "We're not trying to tell people how to think. We're just showing them how." The teacher quickly takes the tool and moves it in a stabbing motion at River's head while still smiling and just before impact, it cuts to another scene.

May 12, 2009

Character: Creon from Oedipus the King

Creon's motivation in this play is to help Oedipus get to the bottom of the mystery surrounding Thebes' woes, which Oedipus is glad to accept. When Tiresias tells Oedipus of his fate, Oedipus turns on Creon, believing he is setting it all up so that he may get the crown. Creon's motivation to find the answer to the mystery causes him to go into a self-defense mode because he feels he is being unjustly accused of something he is not in fact responsible for and this pushes him away from Oedipus and the effort to solve the problem.

May 7, 2009

Cast of Characters

Role: Antigone

Actress: Kiera Knightly

Reason: she's capable of being quite girly but also being harsh and slightly deceptive at times and not afraid to break some rules.

Role: Sentry

Actor: Samuel L Jackson as Jules from Pulp Fiction

Reason: He would be confident in any message he was relaying from his watch and a man who would be intimidating as a sentry of any city-state.

Role: Ismene

Actress: Julie Benz with brown hair and darker complexion

Reason: She's timid but she can be strong when she needs to and can play the vulnerable one well.

Role: Haemon

Actor: Michael C Hall

Reason: He's not especially well spoken but he isn't completely beaten and put in his place.

Role: Creon

Actor: Denzel

Reason: His anger isn't easily evoked but when it is, it can be quite powerful and scary

Role: Leader

Actor:

Reason:

April 27, 2009

Journal: Role of the gods

The gods come off as all knowing and infallible beings, but in the case of the prophecy of Oedipus killing his father and marrying his mother, the people are trying to defy the same gods that they believe to always be right. The people who are able to talk with the gods are just the oracles at the various temples of each god, but anybody is able to just cry out to a god and shout "But why?!" at any time they so please. The dependence upon the oracles means that people have to go back and forth to them when they get a prophecy because first they have to get it, then go tell all of their friends and family who want to know the answer, then go back to tell the oracle that the message was wrong and then return once again to everybody to tell them that the oracle told them the exact same thing a second time. With all of this trekking back and forth, it doesn't appear that people do anything else except for getting messages from the oracle and contesting them with the help of their friends and family, rather than taking care of their actual duties of being the king or an efficient intercity messenger.

April 23, 2009

Oedipus-Sophocles Journal

Summary:

Oedipus addresses his people asking why they are so worried and while doing so, he helps an old man to his feet, showing his compassion for the normal person. The priest responds to Oedipus' inquiry by explaining that the reason for all the woe is that everyone in the city is weak and the gods do not appear to be helping. The priest then asks if the king has any extra knowledge or power bestowed upon him by the gods that helped him to defeat the Sphinx and if so, if he would help to right the wrongs of society. Oedipus explains that he is unable to help the city because he is weak from worrying about everyone all at once rather than just for himself individually. Creon arrives with news that he believes Oedipus would prefer to hear in private instead of around the priests but the king tells him to do it there anyway. Creon reveals that Apollo wants the killer of Laius, the king before Oedipus, to be brought to justice with the "eye for an eye" method of justice. Oedipus then questions Creon for information about the former ruler's killer but Creon tells the king that the only witness who was not killed is unable to recall anything from the event. Oedipus learns that Laius was killed by a band of thieves outside of Thebes and the people of the city had not gone out to find the killers because the Sphinx had convinced them not to. Oedipus declares that he is ready to find the killer, acting as Apollo's champion and employing the help of the priests to find the culprit so as to end the plague besieging the city. The townspeople are in the temple, chanting to Zeus, Apollo and Athena asking the gods for their help in curing the city's woes. The Chorus describes the sickness that spreads throughout Thebes, getting stronger as more people die and spread the illness, showing why the gods need to step in and help. The Chorus continues to ask the gods for help, but this time single out Zeus, Apollo, Artemis and especially Dionysus to solve the various problems that face Thebes all at once.

March 19, 2009

Propaganda

Image from here

This poster was one aimed at the American people as a whole and trying to keep them from being swayed by German or Japanese propaganda. It's somewhat insulting to the American people though since it sends the message that they shouldn't be duped by the other sides' propaganda, just their own since that's the one that doesn't harm them and can in fact help them. It's a believable idea since the religions mentioned on the poster were the big three of the time and therefore directly applicable to the vast majority of citizens of the country. The idea of the slogan, that the enemy is trying to play the people against one another, would stay in people's minds but not necessarily the actual word for word slogan. Rather than making the target audience feel manipulated by the poster, it would have made them feel that they were actually being released from the manipulation by the Nazis and Japanese and that the people could then see what the "truth" of the matter really was.

We-Patterns

In Yevgeny Zamyatin's We, there is the obvious pattern of geometric descriptions of everything in D-503's world. D-503 even describes sounds as having shapes in "He looked at me, laughed sharply, javelinishly" (Zamyatin 80). This pattern is used to exaggerate the dependence the society has on math, so much of one that even abstract ideas or non-tangible items must be condensed into an easily understood, definite, mathematical idea. If this mathematical need wasn't there, D-503 would not have been able to describe it as "javelinishly," giving it a definite shape, but instead could have said something such as, "it pierced me" with it still having the sharp connotation, but remaining abstract.

March 11, 2009

Dystopian Journal #1: Topic C

In We by Yevgeny Zamyatin, the idea that math can be used to explain everything in the universe is pushed to the extreme in the sense that the fictional society starts to believe that math should be used to explain everything. Not only is everything to be explained by math, but everything has geometric descriptions: face like an X, O shaped mouth, etc. This hyperbole of a civilization is shown to be the result of mathematical growth from today's society. Everything lately has been in terms of numbers such as the economy where everything depends on formulas and figures determined by other formulas and figures and so on. Zamyatin is not telling people to abandon math, the society functions just fine using it, it is just an extremely boring one if it is relying solely on arithmetic properties. The main character, D-503, even starts out loving the preciseness of math and how he is able to use it to explain anything he wants using a formula, so clearly the reader is not supposed to despise math and all of its results, just realize the lack of excitement it brings with it. Zamyatin suggests an alternative that math is an acceptable tool for areas of life that would require it, such as engineering, science and architecture, but indirectly related areas should be left clean of it. In general, life should be full of spontaneity and unpredictable events rather than cold and calculated numbers dictating exactly how everything will function for years upon years to come. If everything is able to be calculated from information of the past, those calculations would be able to predict what would happen in the future and the point of having a future is so that one can go into it not knowing what will come next.

-Word Count: 300

March 3, 2009

Journal: Meursault's Conclusion

By the end of The Stranger Meursault comes to the conclusion that he doesn't in fact care about any part of his life once he has accepted the idea that he is going to be executed. Camus most likely did not intend for the reader to come to this same conclusion unless under similar circumstances where inevitable death was coming quick and even then, probably not. Most likely, Camus intended for the reader to feel sorry for the man who had but a few days left to his life and would make nothing of them except to be completely apathetic about every aspect of his dwindling time. Camus wanted the reader to realize that in the last days of his or her life, he or she should make the most of what is left instead of giving up after accepting the fact.

March 2, 2009

Journal: Thesis Statement

Although many regard Albert Camus' The Stranger as a purely existential work, it is shown that, through use of symbols, character foils and the author's tone, the theme is in fact that meaning to life invades one's being no matter how hard it is resisted.

February 25, 2009

Journal: Personal Philosophy's Effect on Reading

Since my personal philosophy can be somewhat hard to fulfill completely in trying to find a book, I often go with more contrasting angles to at least one of the main points of my beliefs. In doing so, I often find out more about how I am unlike the characters of the books I read and I can see more of how other people may choose to live their lives. When I do find a book where the protagonist is quite a bit like myself, I can find myself bored with it because I already know what it is like to live that life and therefore I don't have much to learn from that book. If the protagonist is my polar opposite, I am often much more entertained, as long as it is pulled off well by the author, since it is much more fun to learn about something new in this world than it is to repeat what I already know, especially when I know it because it also applies to myself.

Journal of Sun and Other Image

Sun:

1) "We took a minute to watch the freighters in the harbor, which was ablaze with sunlight" (page 25). The image of the sunlight reflecting on the harbor uses the word "ablaze" rather than something such as "illuminated" to give a sense of Meursault's inner thoughts actually being more emotional rather than the indifferent outside appearance he has most of the time.

Rooms:

1) "He has only one room too, and a little kitchen with no window" (page 28). The symbol of rooms in a person's living area representing the complexity of the individual's mind shows that Raymond's mind is just as simple as Meursault's.

February 24, 2009

Journal: Mariposalism, My Life Philosophy

- Good things happen when a person does good things.

*Why: rather than being a seemingly magic occurrence, I believe that if a person does something good, will inspire someone else who will then pass it on and it will eventually return to the original person.

- Religion is there as a moral base for people, not a thing to live for.

*Why: all religions give unique, yet valuable moral codes to live by, but a person needs to just use that as a base so as to develop their own ideas for their morals. Many cultures in the past have lived and died for their religion which they were unmoving for and such horrible things are not acceptable for just enforcement of one group's beliefs over others'.

- Tolerance of other individuals' ways of life is important for accepting oneself.

*Why: If one's own belief system is the only correct one, then that person is under the impression that they're the only one who should be allowed to exist. As humans are creatures that require community to get by and mentally function correctly, such a belief encouraging solitude is inefficient.

- Wrong doing against another is wrongdoing against all, which is wrongdoing against oneself.

*Why: To do harm towards another human being is damage upon all of the human race as a whole. This damage to the whole as well affects the doer of the actions as they are also a member of the whole. Doing the harm to another person also reflects inside a person and if it does not emotionally distress them, it makes them wickeder and therefore worse off.

- Artistic expression is the best way of releasing stored emotions.

*Why: Rather than using the pent up anger, for example, to hurt someone who may or may not be in some way responsible for it is an inefficient use of energy. Through artistic expression to create something, the person releasing the emotions can get them out, not hurt anyone and have created something that they can be proud of.

- True loss only occurs when an individual loves something more than himself or herself.

*Why: If something does not matter to a person as much as he or she does, then they do not realize the depth of the situation, the person is able to say "I still have myself." If what or whomever they have lost mattered more than himself or herself, the individual does not have himself or herself as a fallback plan, they are hit with the full intensity of the loss.

- To learn more is to provide oneself with the means to lead a happier, more fulfilled life.

*Why: By learning more possibilities for directions in which to take life, a person is able to realize which ones are best for him or her. With an increase of possibilities, a person is not stuck in a place where he or she is unhappy and cannot figure out how to fix the problem.

February 23, 2009

Journal: Meursault's Actions

Through chapter 1, Meursault goes to his mother's funeral, where he keeps vigil over night with the other elderly people who lived in the home with his mother. In the morning, he goes with them to the village about 2 kilometers away for the service and burial. Once his mother is buried, Meursault returns home to Algiers and falls asleep. In chapter 2, he wakes up on the following Saturday and decides to go swimming where he meets up with an old acquaintance whom he decides to take on a date and spend the night with. The next day after she leaves, Meursault is stuck in his apartment spending a bitter Sunday alone, watching the activity of the street from his balcony.

Throughout both chapters, Meursault is constantly taking notice of everything that is happening around him except for his mother being dead, unless that fact happens to slip in with some other detail of the moment. Much of the time, he has a bitter tone as if this is something that he considers a complete waste of his time that he is only going through so that he can appear as a mostly normal person. Meursault's lack of attachment to anything emotional that is going on is able to convey a great message of what the idea of existentialism means to the author. Camus creates this protagonist so that he is able to show what it is like for a person to live with existential beliefs and how they think and feel through their life with its tragedies and joys, which end up not being much different from one another.

February 17, 2009

Journal: Structure

The beginning of the book starts out with Janie coming into town after everything has happened and in the end it finishes by going back to Janie telling her tale to Phoeby. Not only does that coincide, but the structure of a dialogue between two people with no "she said" in there is consistent as well. This lack of breaks in speech keeps the text moving, making it more real since in real life, most times a person doesn't have to stop and realize who it is that has just said what had been spoken, they're able to figure it out just by paying attention to the speaker. The last chapter also digressed from the long story that Janie had been recalling into the situation of the present where Janie is actually with Phoeby, as Hurston had done in the opposite order at the beginning of the book. The structure in chapters as well as the general one of the entire book always returned to the same line of thought as it had been on in the beginning, which caused more emphasis on what had been at the beginning and end since it was not noticeably enough revisited for it to be a motif, but just the right amount so that it stands out to the reader.

What be These "Techniques" You Speak of?

Journal: 3 technique usages & why

Page Number: 116

Technique: Personification

Quote: "The train beat on itself and danced on the shiny steel rails mile after mile."

Why: This personification gives the train to Jacksonville the positive human aspect of dancing to accentuate the feelings that Janie was experiencing as she boarded it. At the time, she was on her way to meet Tea Cake in Jacksonville to wed and as yet, it was the happiest moment of her life and even the train was joyful for her occasion.

Page Number: 134

Technique: Motif

Quote: "The men held big arguments here like they used to do on the store porch."

Why: This sentence continues the motif of community supported by the porch, where in Eatonville it was the store porch, now in the Everglades, it's Tea Cake's and Janie's house porch. This motif is continued to show that Janie is able to fit in to whatever place she has ended up in for a few months and the community tends to gravitate to wherever she is staying or working.

Page Number: 133

Technique: Situational Irony

Quote: "So the very next morning Janie got ready to pick beans along with Tea Cake."

Why: In past relationships, Janie had had to work because the husbands had made her work for them. In this case, Janie was actually choosing to go out to the fields and work with Tea Cake not because he made her do it, he had actually said that he only wanted them to spend money that he himself had made and none of hers, but because she wanted to spend the day out in the fields with him so that neither would be lonely. This development was unexpected because of the past work that she had had to do and because Tea Cake had promised her that she wouldn't have to work as long as they were married, that he would be the sole income provider so she could rest at home all day.

February 11, 2009

Journal: Janie's motivation & change

For these two chapters, Janie is motivated by having to prove that she and Tea Cake truly like, if not love, one another. In chapter 11, she has to prove to herself that he only likes her and doesn't have another woman he fancies. Through chapter 12, Janie is proving to Phoeby that she and Tea Cake are in a situation where marrying is alright since they are in love and that he isn't just after her for the money left to her after Jody's death. For both instances, she has to fight determined resistance: first it was herself trying to be convinced that she did not in fact like Tea Cake enough to care that he might have something going on on the side; second it was Phoeby's determination that a 12 year age gap could only be possible if one or both were after something unrelated to love, such as monetary gain.

Janie has clearly changed from the beginning of the tale, where she had to bend to the will of her slave-days grandmother and marry Logan. She has yet again rushed into another relationship with a man and wants to marry him, but it's different since Tea Cake didn't just pull her in with words as Jody had, he used concrete actions to prove that he wanted the best for her instead of just wanting to control her. With Tea Cake, Janie only takes directions from him involving the colors of her clothes, whereas that seemed to be the only instruction that Jody didn't consistently give her while he was alive.

What is This Blasphemy?! Oh, my Mistake, it's Just Mimicry.

Journal #4

Then Frieda learned to revel in Life. Life, the fickle entity with discriminatory tendrils who reached across oceans and plains. The shapeless mass who rents a tenement in every being's heart, though always keeping his belongings packed. Where does Life recede to upon its exit? He listens like a labored lackey that has been worked hard for days. Listens to no man's pleas with his withdrawal at the ready, attentive for his rent to expire in one of his servants. Has listened vigorously with his skillful attentiveness. She had been wanting to come across a vine from the elusive creature's reaches hidden in her garden with a moment's notice. She became joyful yet bitter. Unfortunate Diego! He vuz having to lay in zehr sans his compatriots. Frieda fretted for Hector forayed in to request a moment of happiness, though Diego decided against. The townsfolk vere incompetent in matters of dead life, though they connected with this instance of Diego. He could find what he was looking for once the ferryman had pushed off without him. He would continue his push through life. This is where they all had their minds. Though Hector recited a different tune, and she grasped the situation. As well had he not, upon her return she could have discerned, as villagers wanted to pay respect in the courtyard of red bricks and contrasting marble pillars. Individuals who could not have dreamt to congregate among the bricks and pillars until now swept through and did not venture towards the dwelling. Simply brushed and leaned against the pillars and glanced. Melancholy, that branch-free shade-tree, had shown light upon the folk.

P.S.: In sentence 2, the phrase "who lived way in the West" was an allusion to the Egyptian god Osiris traveling across the sky with the sun and going down to the land of the dead at sunset which is in the West.

February 5th, 2009

Journal Entry #3: Literary Terms

1) Page Number: 27

Technique: symbolism 

Quote: "Janie said nothing except, 'Ah'll cut de p'taters fuh yuh. When yuh comin' back?'"

Why: The "p'taters" as it is said in the dialect are a symbol of the busywork that the women of that day were left at home to do while the men went off on their own business. The use of the p'tater symbol is to better develop the atmosphere between the characters with the woman doing the domestic work while the man is off doing business as it seems it should be done. With that atmosphere, the understanding of the characters is increased giving the reader a better sense of the era's gender roles.

2)Page Number: 29

Technique: Figurative Language

Quote: "He did not represent sun-up and pollen and blooming trees, but he spoke for far horizon."

Why: This description of Joe is used to show the man's great importance he has to Janie and the thrill that he brings her when he is with her. He is also a representation of what lies beyond the area of land and life that Janie knows which has a sense of mystery to it as well as the great importance.

3)Page Number: 30

Technique: Personification

Quote: "The thought put a terrible ache in Logan's body"

Why: At that moment, the thought is personified as putting an ache into Logan's body in order to convey just how heavy it had been to him. If it had been of lesser importance, it could have been said as "with that thought, Logan's body began to ache" but instead it was written as it was which showed that it is a key piece.

4)Page Number: 31

Technique: Simile

Quote: "Logan looked like a black bear doing some clumsy dance on his hind legs."

Why: The simile of Logan resembling an awkward black bear doing a dance is used to further contrast him to the seemingly amazing qualities of Joe from earlier in the chapter. Joe is described as being a wonderful man worthy of desire whereas Logan continues to be seen in a worse and worse light as the story continues. The black bear is chosen for the simile instead of something more docile as it conveys more of a malicious tone about Logan coming from more than just the way he speaks to Janie.

5)Page Number: 32

Technique: Simile

Quote: "The morning road air was like a new dress."

Why: The feeling of the air as she ran away being like a new dress communicates the idea that even the air feels new as she begins a new life. The fact that even the air is new to her also hints that in her new life only what is in her mind will remain of Logan, his demands for her to chop wood and peel potatoes and to drop everything that she's doing just for him.

February 4th, 2009

Journal Entry #1

The narration differs from the dialect of the speech in that the narration has a very educated tone to it, whereas the dialect is more of a typical Southern African-American drawl of seemingly less educated folk. The effect of this contrast is that the people talking are of a lower level of knowledge than the intended reader but the consistency in the intelligence of the narration supplies the source of the reader's continued curiosity into this story.

Journal Entry #2

Since the novel is set in the American South in the first half of the 20th century, the characters' motivation is less of superficial purpose as many African-Americans there at that time sometimes struggled just to get by. As well, the atmosphere is influenced by it just being the second generation after the Civil War, so the idea of Black slavery is still relatively fresh in the people's minds. The sense that it is in a small town through the use of the gossip about Janie's return contributes to the development of the atmosphere of the text as well.