Clack, clack, clack. Heads turn, a path forms and disappears once she’s passed. Make way for the captain of the cheer leading team, the most popular girl in school. A toss of her long blond hair, a flashy white smile here and there, and an ever-present smirk on her face because she knows everyone wants to be her. She rounds the corner and her puppy dog teammates follow on her heels. Around another corner and the puddle of pink and priss penetrates the circle of jocks in their letter jackets. She looks around expectantly, and furrows her brow in frustration at not finding what she’s looking for. Her boyfriend, the quarterback, the guy everyone in school looks up to, wants to be or date, the ultimate cool guy. “Where’s Jason?” Nobody says anything, dead silence as everyone looks around trying to find him first, and so reap the reward of that brilliant smile being directed at one of them. But Jason was nowhere to be found that day, or that week, or that month. No one knew what had happened to him, where he was, or if he was even still alive. No one answered the phone when it rang through the seemingly deserted house. A piercing reminder that all was lost, a new star had to be found, and an aching heart had to replace a missing lover.
I am alone. There is no one here with me, the house is empty save a mattress and a cell phone and a small fridge. Everything is gone, sold for money to feed my need. Now there is nothing left, no money, no electricity, no heat, no clothes but what is already on my back, and no drugs. I shake in a cold sweat every night, alone, wild eyed and crazy. No one knows I'm here, no one knows that I'm alive, no on knows my secret, and so I hide. I was supposed to be the cool guy, the one that everyone looked up to, the big superstar, role model for the incoming freshmen of this college. but now I am reduced to nothing, I am worthless, and always have been. The only way I could be "cool" was to feed my cravings so that I wouldn't become what I am now, this huddled mass, this shell of a person. I came to this school on a football scholarship, which is by now void. I don't know when I started to run out of money, all I know is that one day it was gone, the bank revoked my credit card, and there was nothing in my account. That's when I started selling my belongings. Piece by piece until it was as though I had never been there, it looked the same as when I had first moved in at the beginning of my senior year. The phone by the mattress stopped working a few weeks ago, I guess my phone plan ran out. It used to ring non-stop in the beginning, constantly flashing "Belinda" or "Mom" or sometimes even "Dad", and once or twice "Rick" or "Carl", from the team. But I think everyone eventually gave up on me, and found a replacement, probably Rick, he used to be my best bud, he was a junior and Coach always said that when I graduated, Rick would become the quarterback for his senior year. I guess his dream came true early, although I wouldn't really know, I haven't left the apartment in almost three months, except to go out maybe once every two weeks to scrounge up some food somewhere. It's painful. Very painful. Loneliness is a very dark and curious state of being. And I say it is a state of being because I do not feel alone, I am alone and so therefore I am living in loneliness, unable to contact anyone other than myself. I am certain I have gone insane since there is no one to talk to, and so I am always talking to my self mumbling, arguing, yelling, comforting, and just plain rambling on and on about nothing in particular. I don’t know what makes someone special, or what makes life worth living for, but I do know that my life has been a lie for so long. Everyone telling me how wonderful and gifted and talented I am, and how much respect they have for me. Respect! HA! I laugh at that, if they could only see me now, a bug under the lens of society, scrutinized and fried under the beam of hot light. Only there is no one here to look upon me and judge, I have successfully dropped off the face of the earth without actually going anywhere.
This is not ok, very not ok. How dare he not pick up his phone, I’ve called him about 15 times now, and still no answer. And no word from anyone, no one knows where he is. I’m worried. It’s not like him to not show up for school, and not tell anyone about it. Especially when it is right smack in the middle of football season. I should stop worrying; it’s bad for my complexion and mental health. Breathe in, and breathe out, and breathe in and breathe out. Much better. Now there has to be a logical explanation for all this, let’s see. Jason has been acting weird lately but I assumed he was just anxious to play our rival in the semi-finals next week. And he has been wearing the same outfit everyday this week, not like him at all; maybe I should have talked to him about it. But now it’s too late, how could someone like me not have a boyfriend? I mean I am the most popular girl in school, head cheerleader and gorgeous. But yet I am alone, and when I’m alone, I feel empty because Jason is missing, and no one else can take his place. I love him, and I wish I could have told him that before he left. Everyone thinks I’m superficial and don’t care about anyone but myself. But that’s not true, I mean it is, but it isn’t, I care deeply for Jason, for who he is as a person, not just because he the quaterback on the football team. He and I have a lot in common, but a lot of differences so we never get bored of each other. Without him I am incomplete and unchallenged. Rick asked me out the other day, as I suspected he would, since I’m supposed to be so “shallow”. But I barely even heard him as I continued walking like a zombie down the hall, I heard myself saying “yeah, sure, whatever”, and then the vague sounds of high-fiving and slapping of asses and whatever else it is that guys do when they “bag”. I hate that, “bagging”, what the hell am I? Groceries? A product? I think that’s what they see me as, a product of society, tagged and categorized in my aisle, by the society I grew up in and the social group I am a part of. Aisle 21, rich, pretty, popular, dumb, blonde, cheerleader, “help yourselves, there are some more of those ones being shipped in tomorrow”.
I remember when I first met Belinda. I thought she was one of those wannabe mean girls that you always hear about. The one that thought that since she was popular and you were popular, that it automatically meant you were dating. But when I agreed to go out on a date with her, just because I thought there could be a chance she wasn’t what she seemed, I found that there was a lot more to her then I’m sure she’d ever let anyone else see. She was kind, and funny, and surprisingly shy, although she could be very vain at times. I remember being completely blown away that this knock out of a girl had such a personality. She liked the same types of movies as I did, had the same kind of romantic fantasy as I did; a long walk on the beach as the sun is rising, holding hands as the cool deep blue water laps at our feet, our footprint leaving their mark in the damp sand only to be swallowed up by the tide, as though we were never there. She truly surprised me with her ability to hold an intellectual conversation without having to talk about paint nolish. After 4 months of going steady, I could tell that she was the one, and that I was falling in love with a girl I had originally judged to be the complete opposite of the closet I’d ever come to perfection.
I remember thinking that Jason would never ask me out. I was after him all of freshman year, before he become the “official” quarterback, and during my “just another cheerleader” stage. Until finally one day, I guess my persistence paid off, and he asked me if he took me on a movie date, would I please leave him alone? I replied, “Trust me, once you get to know me, you’re never gonna leave my side”. I winked and spun around and my girls and I went to go pick out the perfect outfit for tomorrow night. And as it turned out, that’s exactly what happened, we become inseparable. Always together, but never quite that typical couple who you wanted to kill for being so “cute”, you know the couples who dress alike or stick their hands in each others back pockets, ick. Anyways, I knew we were going to be together forever, even after college. And the weekend before he left, Jason had surprised me. In the long abandoned cafeteria, at around 3am on a Sunday night in May, he had set up a table for two, with a red table cloth, almost touching the floor, two candles, slowly burning in the center of the table, a rose laid delicately across my plate. He held my chair for me and pushed it under me as I sat down. As I picked up the rose, something slid down to my fingers, and when I saw what it was, my heart stopped beating. He took my hand and said “Baby, I love you, there is no one else in the world I want to spend the rest of my life with, except you. Belinda” he looked straight into my eyes, with his wonderfully mesmerizing soft green eyes “Will you marry me?” and I hate to say it but I fainted. When I came to, 2 minutes later, I started crying and he said “are you ok”? I said, yes, yes I will. And I couldn’t have been happier, ever. And now he’s gone. But where? And why? He gave me no notice, not warnings, he just up and left. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to understand, even if he came back and explained to me in detail the reasons for he behavior.
What makes someone special is a person’s ability to overcome his or her own internal battles despite the impossibility of a hopeful situation. Seeing these people grow and change and flow into a new person is what makes life worth living because it is then you know that you are never truly, all alone. Sometimes the truth hurts, and you can never redeem yourself because of the extent of the damage your behavior caused. But, you will always have your memories, of love and of pain, and dreams of a better tomorrow, and a hope that maybe one day, life will build itself back up again, and maybe, just maybe, paths will cross again.
Friday, June 6, 2008
Final Draft
A trope is a familiar thing of element that is repeated in different ways and used over and over. For example; every story is a story about good versus evil, in its simplest form. Any movie, book, play, TV show that you have viewed, has a villain, and a hero, the good guy, and the bad guy; a reoccurring theme, used over and over through the ages. There are different types of tropes, like the one we are studying in class, the revelation trope. The revelation trope is elements of a revelation that occur repeatedly. The revelation trope has 8 key elements starting with the ignorant masses. The ignorant masses are the people who are easily manipulated, or molded to be what you make them, they will believe anything. An example is high school kids, our teachers mold us, they fill our brains with information, and we believe what they say without question. The second element is an unacceptable or oppressive situation in which people are harmed. The third element is the prophet, the revealer, the "good guy"; the one who tries to share a message, the fourth element. The fifth element is the prophet connects the dots in a new way. The sixth is that the prophet also offers their vision of a "redeemed" world. The seventh is that there is opposition to the message; these people are usually considered "villains". The eighth and last element is the occurrence of drama.
In Foxfire Angelina Jolie's character chides a group of girls for letting a teacher sexually harass them, and tells them that if they just stand by, then they are just as bad as the teacher himself. The message is that the girls "are the assholes" and that they can fight back if they stand up to him together. In the matrix Morphius opens Neo's eye to the fact that he has never actually lived, he has been inside his head own head his whole life. That the world he "lives" in is something created to cover up the real world. So basically a revealer comes and alters how a person or how people see the world. The prophet offers you a vision, something new, something different, and you have to make a choice to give up everything you know, and take a walk on the wild side sometimes. Like in the Matrix Neo has to choose between the red pill and the blue pill, between seeing the world as it really is and going back to his “normal” life as it was before.
I would choose the red pill, the one that takes Neo into reality, because he has been wondering what the matrix is for so long, and now he has the chance to find out what it is, and for me, getting the answer to something that seems unanswerable is without doubt the way I would go. I know they say curiosity killed the cat, but I can’t help it, I’d just be desperate to learn the answer, to see something new, to have a change, to get away from my robotic lifestyle. When Neo takes the red pill he is symbolically reborn into the real world, he breaks out of the embryonic sack, then is transported down the birth canal. Revelation removes the cover up that hides the truth about something. And in this case the revelation is that Neo has been living in a fake world all his life, he’s never actually used his body before, and now in the real world, he sees that no one is free in either world, even though Morphius keeps saying that they are free now. Cypher says that even in the real world they are trapped because they have to wear crappy clothes, sleep on hard beds, eat bad food, and hide from the Agents, so they are never really free. I wouldn’t give up any revelations even if I could. Everything is an experience, something you learn from, something that opens your eyes. Even though I sometimes say I wish I could change the past, I never can really say what about the past I would actually change, so I guess in the end I’m just happy with the way my life is going, even if there have been bad parts, the bad parts bring about something good later.
But while I don’t actively seek revelations, I would definitely be open to any that came my way. After watching the Matrix I started thinking about my own life, about how this could all be fake, about how I never really know what is a dream and what is my reality. When we make a revelation, do we ever stop to think when we started to take notice of this occurrence? I’ve realized that you can't go through life trying to be better than everyone else. You are who you are no matter how much you try to be someone else, and only you can satisfy yourself because no one knows you better than you do. I've also started to try and live more the way I want to live, and more according to what makes me happiest, like going out with my friends on the weekends. This doesn't necessarily make me more successful, but he makes me happy and it satisfies me to be doing what I want to do. I want to experience as much as I can get my hands on because I will only be the age I am now, once, so I want to take advantage of each moment.
My revelation theory would be that we are not aware enough of each other of nature or our surroundings. We take so much for granted, like Central Park is a huge GREEN SPOT in the CENTER of the city and most people feel like it's just supposed to be there, like we never really appreciate it. But think how much we'd miss it if it disappeared. And as children we are constantly reminded not to talk to strangers. I understand that yeah some people are creepy. But not everyone is, so as adults no one talks to each other, no one touches anyone else if possible, unless they know each other. But why? I've had a few interesting conversations with strangers, and after the conversations I feel a little happier, like I feel satisfied, maybe it's just because I am I guess "addicted" to meeting new people. I'm always up for my friends bringing their friends because it broadens my horizons, and can open new doors, and can also introduce me to more new people, even if I only ever see these people once, it's still fun to just get to know someone new. I suppose meeting new people is in a way like taking the red pill, because these new people have the potential to offer you a revelation or even inspire you to do something you never thought you would ever want to do.
In An Enemy of the People, those who follow the main character, and also the prophet of the story, Dr. Stockmann, support him, but don't fully understand what he has to say because he says a lot. They believe what he says, but do not completely understand what it is he is telling them. His message is that the baths are contaminated and that they are the reason why the town is getting sick. After the message is revealed sometimes it doesn't get through to everyone, or it takes a while to completely "click" in the followers’ minds. So maybe if the play continued, eventually the people that supported Dr. Stockmann would begin to fully understand what he was saying. Maybe Dr. Stockmann's followers are part of a separate ignorant mass because they don't seem to really understand what they are standing up for, but they fight for it anyways. They are like sheep being corralled, if one gets out of line the dogs go after it. Whereas in the community anyone who supports Dr. Stockmann and strays from the public opinion is attacked (loses job, respect, etc.). I think there are different types of revelation stories; some of them the prophet gets the full public opinion, and helps a whole community make a revelation. But sometimes the prophet gets shut down, and shunned, and can't get the message across and so few or none get the message, and another is where there is a pre-revealer who shows the prophet who s/he is, and then the prophet goes out and tries to show the message to others through the hero's journey trope. The mayor, who happens to be Dr. Stockmann’s brother, tells him that if he goes away and then comes back and makes a public apology stating he was wrong, he could possibly get his job back. In the end thought, Dr. Stockmann decides to ignore the authorities and stays, but takes his boys out of school so he can teach them to be open minded, and tells his boys to get other boys off the streets so he can teach them as well.
In They Live, the main character’s message is that we are all asleep, and we need to wake up. The main character finds these sunglasses that show him his world in black and white, literally. It shows the true meanings behind the posters and magazines that we read and consume everywhere. How a poster with a hot girl and alcohol on it really means get married and reproduce. And it also shows him these alien type monster creatures that are living among us. No one else can see them, only him and whoever else wears the glasses. But it turns out there are four types of people in this story. The humans who are asleep, the humans who are awake and can see the truth (those who wear the sunglasses), the humans who are awake but are working with the aliens, and then the aliens who control our world by making us sleepwalk and live according to their needs. The main character’s friend resists his message at first because he thinks he is crazy and so won’t put on the sunglasses. But once he sees the truth, he is amazed and seems to get a headache from all the information he is taking in. And then the woman, she seems to be a normal person, but she works at the headquarters of the aliens. We aren’t sure about her because she seems to go over to the side of the humans who are trying to fight against theses aliens, but then at the end he kills the friend and tries to kill the main character himself, so she is like a double agent, resisting the message even though she can see the truth, and knows what the aliens have planned for us.
In Feed, the prophet is Violet. Titus, the main character, falls for her because she sees everything in a different way. She talks about things no one else talks about, like the environment, and the government and how the chips in their heads, their feeds, are the government’s way of controlling everyone. She says that they are trying to make us all as similar as possible because then they can just advertise to a general population because everyone will just buy whatever the feed tells them to, no questions asked. Also she takes Titus to places that most people stay away from, like the meat farm. It is literally a farm where they “grow” meat, not animals, meat. It is like a huge tendon of meat that might occasionally grow an eye or a heart. And she talks about how the environment is making everyone sick because the air is so polluted; there aren’t even any animals anymore. Her message is that we have to fight the government and that we have to wake up and see what they are doing to society. A very similar message to the guy’s in They Live. In Star Wars, Luke is the disciple, and a very young clueless one at that. Obi Wan is the prophet who finds him and reveals to him that not only did his father not die in an accident, but he was also a jeti knight. And so he trains Luke to fight the evil government, the death star. Obi Wan dies in order to distract Darth Vader from Luke so that Luke and his friends can escape and then come back and defeat Darth Vader when they are ready. And the form of battle involves the penetration trope. The scene, in which Luke shoots into the weak spot of the death star, looks like sperm entering the vagina. Which is a contradiction in a way because it symbolizes fertilizing death with life, when they are trying to destroy death. But that just shows that you can never get rid of death. Death and Life go hand in hand, which is symbolized by the fact that Luke’s father is Darth Vader, the root of all evil, the “master of death”. In contrast, the prophet in The Matrix does not die. Morphius though, like Obi Wan, trains a protegee, or “the one”, Neo, whose name can be rearranged to spell the word “one”. Morphius shows Neo the truth of the real world, that he has literally been sleeping all his life, and living only in his mind. So when he wakes up he has to be taught all these new things, how to move, how to fight, and how to use his power against the bad guys. Agent Smith is a government robot who is trying to destroy the small group of rebels so that they can’t wake anyone else up. Neo is the one who can defeat Agent Smith though, the one who can lead the rebels and wake up more people. When Morphius is caught by Agent Smith and tortured to tell him how to get into his base, Neo saves Morphius and the goes on to defeat Agent Smith. The ending song in the movie is literally saying "Wake Up!" as Neo flies off screen after telling the authorities that he was coming to get them and show everyone the truth.
But the second part of this class was to deconstruct things, such as binary oppositions. According to Levi Strauss binary oppositions are created by cultures so that everything has its place and so that reality makes sense. They are the boxes that people put ideas into, such that one box would be the idea of good and what we describe as good, and another separate box would be evil and what we categorize as evil. There are many, binary oppositions, in our culture such as male and female, old and young, pretty and ugly, gay and straight, republican and democrat, etc. One binary opposition is considered to be the “wrong way” while its opposite is deemed socially acceptable. But what deconstruction does, is it shows how these descriptions contradict themselves and how the boxes actually cross lines and share certain descriptions. The thin borders that we create to separate these binary oppositions can be broken, it’s just that people are almost always afraid of change and so they pretend not to see the crossing of the boundaries.
I mean if you think about it, how do we know for sure that we are not asleep when we are "awake", or awake when we are "asleep". What is the real reality, and what kind of reality do we live in? The binary opposition of "awake" is to be conscious, and aware, both of yourself and your actions and of what is going on around you and of the interactions made with others. To be "asleep" usually means, to be unaware or unconscious. Or to be oblivious or naive to what is going on in the world around you. But In "They Live", there are some people who are "awake", who know the plan of the robot people, yet they go along with it, so in that sense they are actually "asleep". To be awake, but to be oblivious to the actual reality of what is going on, still means that you are "asleep" because you are not conscious of what is going around you. You can never tell what the true reality is, even when it is handed to you on a platter. Like in "They Live", the glasses that the people wore showed them the truth behind the propaganda, but even some of the people who tried on the glasses, and were in collaboration with the robots, still continued to live in what they believed to be reality, even though it was just a world controlled by the robots. It's as though they refused to accept that what they lived in was fake, so they'd rather just pretend or ignore the robots, and live as though everything was normal and in check. While the main character, realized that he was living in a fake world, and tried to show as many people as he could that everything was not as it seemed, and in the end broke the illusion of control over the world, and everyone saw the robots for who they truly were.
When we do make a revelation, does it really make a difference in how we go about living our daily lives, the way it seems to in the movies? To me, it really doesn't, unless you make a conscious effort, all the time, not just once or twice and then give up. In order to actually change your own reality, you have to accept the revelation, and work to make it a part of your redeemed world. In the movies, the characters always just incorporate the new information into their lives as if it was nothing, little resistance and everything they need to accept the revelation conveniently at hand. But in the real world, change is more difficult to work into what makes you feel comfortable. People don't change very often, and when they do, it is only when they "wake up" and try to redeem themselves according to what new information has been shown to them, that people truly accept revelations and make a difference in their lives.
In Foxfire Angelina Jolie's character chides a group of girls for letting a teacher sexually harass them, and tells them that if they just stand by, then they are just as bad as the teacher himself. The message is that the girls "are the assholes" and that they can fight back if they stand up to him together. In the matrix Morphius opens Neo's eye to the fact that he has never actually lived, he has been inside his head own head his whole life. That the world he "lives" in is something created to cover up the real world. So basically a revealer comes and alters how a person or how people see the world. The prophet offers you a vision, something new, something different, and you have to make a choice to give up everything you know, and take a walk on the wild side sometimes. Like in the Matrix Neo has to choose between the red pill and the blue pill, between seeing the world as it really is and going back to his “normal” life as it was before.
I would choose the red pill, the one that takes Neo into reality, because he has been wondering what the matrix is for so long, and now he has the chance to find out what it is, and for me, getting the answer to something that seems unanswerable is without doubt the way I would go. I know they say curiosity killed the cat, but I can’t help it, I’d just be desperate to learn the answer, to see something new, to have a change, to get away from my robotic lifestyle. When Neo takes the red pill he is symbolically reborn into the real world, he breaks out of the embryonic sack, then is transported down the birth canal. Revelation removes the cover up that hides the truth about something. And in this case the revelation is that Neo has been living in a fake world all his life, he’s never actually used his body before, and now in the real world, he sees that no one is free in either world, even though Morphius keeps saying that they are free now. Cypher says that even in the real world they are trapped because they have to wear crappy clothes, sleep on hard beds, eat bad food, and hide from the Agents, so they are never really free. I wouldn’t give up any revelations even if I could. Everything is an experience, something you learn from, something that opens your eyes. Even though I sometimes say I wish I could change the past, I never can really say what about the past I would actually change, so I guess in the end I’m just happy with the way my life is going, even if there have been bad parts, the bad parts bring about something good later.
But while I don’t actively seek revelations, I would definitely be open to any that came my way. After watching the Matrix I started thinking about my own life, about how this could all be fake, about how I never really know what is a dream and what is my reality. When we make a revelation, do we ever stop to think when we started to take notice of this occurrence? I’ve realized that you can't go through life trying to be better than everyone else. You are who you are no matter how much you try to be someone else, and only you can satisfy yourself because no one knows you better than you do. I've also started to try and live more the way I want to live, and more according to what makes me happiest, like going out with my friends on the weekends. This doesn't necessarily make me more successful, but he makes me happy and it satisfies me to be doing what I want to do. I want to experience as much as I can get my hands on because I will only be the age I am now, once, so I want to take advantage of each moment.
My revelation theory would be that we are not aware enough of each other of nature or our surroundings. We take so much for granted, like Central Park is a huge GREEN SPOT in the CENTER of the city and most people feel like it's just supposed to be there, like we never really appreciate it. But think how much we'd miss it if it disappeared. And as children we are constantly reminded not to talk to strangers. I understand that yeah some people are creepy. But not everyone is, so as adults no one talks to each other, no one touches anyone else if possible, unless they know each other. But why? I've had a few interesting conversations with strangers, and after the conversations I feel a little happier, like I feel satisfied, maybe it's just because I am I guess "addicted" to meeting new people. I'm always up for my friends bringing their friends because it broadens my horizons, and can open new doors, and can also introduce me to more new people, even if I only ever see these people once, it's still fun to just get to know someone new. I suppose meeting new people is in a way like taking the red pill, because these new people have the potential to offer you a revelation or even inspire you to do something you never thought you would ever want to do.
In An Enemy of the People, those who follow the main character, and also the prophet of the story, Dr. Stockmann, support him, but don't fully understand what he has to say because he says a lot. They believe what he says, but do not completely understand what it is he is telling them. His message is that the baths are contaminated and that they are the reason why the town is getting sick. After the message is revealed sometimes it doesn't get through to everyone, or it takes a while to completely "click" in the followers’ minds. So maybe if the play continued, eventually the people that supported Dr. Stockmann would begin to fully understand what he was saying. Maybe Dr. Stockmann's followers are part of a separate ignorant mass because they don't seem to really understand what they are standing up for, but they fight for it anyways. They are like sheep being corralled, if one gets out of line the dogs go after it. Whereas in the community anyone who supports Dr. Stockmann and strays from the public opinion is attacked (loses job, respect, etc.). I think there are different types of revelation stories; some of them the prophet gets the full public opinion, and helps a whole community make a revelation. But sometimes the prophet gets shut down, and shunned, and can't get the message across and so few or none get the message, and another is where there is a pre-revealer who shows the prophet who s/he is, and then the prophet goes out and tries to show the message to others through the hero's journey trope. The mayor, who happens to be Dr. Stockmann’s brother, tells him that if he goes away and then comes back and makes a public apology stating he was wrong, he could possibly get his job back. In the end thought, Dr. Stockmann decides to ignore the authorities and stays, but takes his boys out of school so he can teach them to be open minded, and tells his boys to get other boys off the streets so he can teach them as well.
In They Live, the main character’s message is that we are all asleep, and we need to wake up. The main character finds these sunglasses that show him his world in black and white, literally. It shows the true meanings behind the posters and magazines that we read and consume everywhere. How a poster with a hot girl and alcohol on it really means get married and reproduce. And it also shows him these alien type monster creatures that are living among us. No one else can see them, only him and whoever else wears the glasses. But it turns out there are four types of people in this story. The humans who are asleep, the humans who are awake and can see the truth (those who wear the sunglasses), the humans who are awake but are working with the aliens, and then the aliens who control our world by making us sleepwalk and live according to their needs. The main character’s friend resists his message at first because he thinks he is crazy and so won’t put on the sunglasses. But once he sees the truth, he is amazed and seems to get a headache from all the information he is taking in. And then the woman, she seems to be a normal person, but she works at the headquarters of the aliens. We aren’t sure about her because she seems to go over to the side of the humans who are trying to fight against theses aliens, but then at the end he kills the friend and tries to kill the main character himself, so she is like a double agent, resisting the message even though she can see the truth, and knows what the aliens have planned for us.
In Feed, the prophet is Violet. Titus, the main character, falls for her because she sees everything in a different way. She talks about things no one else talks about, like the environment, and the government and how the chips in their heads, their feeds, are the government’s way of controlling everyone. She says that they are trying to make us all as similar as possible because then they can just advertise to a general population because everyone will just buy whatever the feed tells them to, no questions asked. Also she takes Titus to places that most people stay away from, like the meat farm. It is literally a farm where they “grow” meat, not animals, meat. It is like a huge tendon of meat that might occasionally grow an eye or a heart. And she talks about how the environment is making everyone sick because the air is so polluted; there aren’t even any animals anymore. Her message is that we have to fight the government and that we have to wake up and see what they are doing to society. A very similar message to the guy’s in They Live. In Star Wars, Luke is the disciple, and a very young clueless one at that. Obi Wan is the prophet who finds him and reveals to him that not only did his father not die in an accident, but he was also a jeti knight. And so he trains Luke to fight the evil government, the death star. Obi Wan dies in order to distract Darth Vader from Luke so that Luke and his friends can escape and then come back and defeat Darth Vader when they are ready. And the form of battle involves the penetration trope. The scene, in which Luke shoots into the weak spot of the death star, looks like sperm entering the vagina. Which is a contradiction in a way because it symbolizes fertilizing death with life, when they are trying to destroy death. But that just shows that you can never get rid of death. Death and Life go hand in hand, which is symbolized by the fact that Luke’s father is Darth Vader, the root of all evil, the “master of death”. In contrast, the prophet in The Matrix does not die. Morphius though, like Obi Wan, trains a protegee, or “the one”, Neo, whose name can be rearranged to spell the word “one”. Morphius shows Neo the truth of the real world, that he has literally been sleeping all his life, and living only in his mind. So when he wakes up he has to be taught all these new things, how to move, how to fight, and how to use his power against the bad guys. Agent Smith is a government robot who is trying to destroy the small group of rebels so that they can’t wake anyone else up. Neo is the one who can defeat Agent Smith though, the one who can lead the rebels and wake up more people. When Morphius is caught by Agent Smith and tortured to tell him how to get into his base, Neo saves Morphius and the goes on to defeat Agent Smith. The ending song in the movie is literally saying "Wake Up!" as Neo flies off screen after telling the authorities that he was coming to get them and show everyone the truth.
But the second part of this class was to deconstruct things, such as binary oppositions. According to Levi Strauss binary oppositions are created by cultures so that everything has its place and so that reality makes sense. They are the boxes that people put ideas into, such that one box would be the idea of good and what we describe as good, and another separate box would be evil and what we categorize as evil. There are many, binary oppositions, in our culture such as male and female, old and young, pretty and ugly, gay and straight, republican and democrat, etc. One binary opposition is considered to be the “wrong way” while its opposite is deemed socially acceptable. But what deconstruction does, is it shows how these descriptions contradict themselves and how the boxes actually cross lines and share certain descriptions. The thin borders that we create to separate these binary oppositions can be broken, it’s just that people are almost always afraid of change and so they pretend not to see the crossing of the boundaries.
I mean if you think about it, how do we know for sure that we are not asleep when we are "awake", or awake when we are "asleep". What is the real reality, and what kind of reality do we live in? The binary opposition of "awake" is to be conscious, and aware, both of yourself and your actions and of what is going on around you and of the interactions made with others. To be "asleep" usually means, to be unaware or unconscious. Or to be oblivious or naive to what is going on in the world around you. But In "They Live", there are some people who are "awake", who know the plan of the robot people, yet they go along with it, so in that sense they are actually "asleep". To be awake, but to be oblivious to the actual reality of what is going on, still means that you are "asleep" because you are not conscious of what is going around you. You can never tell what the true reality is, even when it is handed to you on a platter. Like in "They Live", the glasses that the people wore showed them the truth behind the propaganda, but even some of the people who tried on the glasses, and were in collaboration with the robots, still continued to live in what they believed to be reality, even though it was just a world controlled by the robots. It's as though they refused to accept that what they lived in was fake, so they'd rather just pretend or ignore the robots, and live as though everything was normal and in check. While the main character, realized that he was living in a fake world, and tried to show as many people as he could that everything was not as it seemed, and in the end broke the illusion of control over the world, and everyone saw the robots for who they truly were.
When we do make a revelation, does it really make a difference in how we go about living our daily lives, the way it seems to in the movies? To me, it really doesn't, unless you make a conscious effort, all the time, not just once or twice and then give up. In order to actually change your own reality, you have to accept the revelation, and work to make it a part of your redeemed world. In the movies, the characters always just incorporate the new information into their lives as if it was nothing, little resistance and everything they need to accept the revelation conveniently at hand. But in the real world, change is more difficult to work into what makes you feel comfortable. People don't change very often, and when they do, it is only when they "wake up" and try to redeem themselves according to what new information has been shown to them, that people truly accept revelations and make a difference in their lives.
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
Personal Revelation (add on)
I know that there is supposed to be some prophet type person who hands you revelations, but I have been making a lot of my own revelations lately. Most of them are based on what other people have said to me or the way people act, but no one has really offered me a revelation, I seem to just be making them based upon my own thoughts and theories. They are based mostly on internal battles I have been having lately, like my most recent revelation has been one that I feel I shouldn't have had to have in order to realize i need to change some things. after a recent event, i really hurt and scared one of my closest friends. and it wa after talking to her and one other person, that i realized; i know who and what is important to me, and who and what is MOST important to me, but my actions don't reflect this. I knw what the right thing to do is, what i should do, but i choose to do the opposite, and i usually end up hurting the people i care about. And this most recent event really just slapped me in the face and made me realize that i basically have to kick myself back into shape, and force myself to start doing what i know i should until it becomes like second nature again, because i don't want to be this monster shadow of a person anymore.
another revelation i've had is that authority is all in our heads. I recently got into a fight with my mom, i stayed home from school because i didn't feel too well, but i was going to go to soccer practice and she told me i couldn't. i asked her why i couldn't go. she said because i didn't go to school. i said, "so, why can you tell me what to do?" She said "because i'm your mother" and i yelled that i didn't care that she was my mother, i could make my own decisions, and choose on my own, because i'd have to be doing that soon anyways. and she said fine, do what you want. I didn't end up going to soccer because one, i didn't end up feeling any better and two, i realized that while authority can be defied, you should have respect for those who deserve it, and i know my mom deserves my respect.
And i made a revelation that i do really want to go to college, but not just any college, i want to get into the schools that i want to go to. but the way i've been acting lately i might as well just go to a community college. i guess it is better late than never to realize that i need to stop procrastinating and slacking so much, but still, that leaves me with so much work to do with so little time. hopefully it's not too late, but my downfall is that i always expect things to stay the same and turn out alright, because i've never had a problem before so i just expect certain grades and certain consequenes now, which leads me to be careless.
another revelation i've had is that authority is all in our heads. I recently got into a fight with my mom, i stayed home from school because i didn't feel too well, but i was going to go to soccer practice and she told me i couldn't. i asked her why i couldn't go. she said because i didn't go to school. i said, "so, why can you tell me what to do?" She said "because i'm your mother" and i yelled that i didn't care that she was my mother, i could make my own decisions, and choose on my own, because i'd have to be doing that soon anyways. and she said fine, do what you want. I didn't end up going to soccer because one, i didn't end up feeling any better and two, i realized that while authority can be defied, you should have respect for those who deserve it, and i know my mom deserves my respect.
And i made a revelation that i do really want to go to college, but not just any college, i want to get into the schools that i want to go to. but the way i've been acting lately i might as well just go to a community college. i guess it is better late than never to realize that i need to stop procrastinating and slacking so much, but still, that leaves me with so much work to do with so little time. hopefully it's not too late, but my downfall is that i always expect things to stay the same and turn out alright, because i've never had a problem before so i just expect certain grades and certain consequenes now, which leads me to be careless.
Monday, May 26, 2008
3rd story draft
Clack, clack, clack. Heads turn, a path forms and disappears once she’s passed. Make way for the captain of the cheer leading team, the most popular girl in school. A toss of her long blond hair, a flashy white smile here and there, and an ever-present smirk on her face because she knows everyone wants to be her. She rounds the corner and her puppy dog teammates follow on her heels. Around another corner and the puddle of pink and priss penetrates the circle of jocks in their letter jackets. She looks around expectantly, and furrows her brow in frustration at not finding what she’s looking for. Her boyfriend, the quarterback, the guy everyone in school looks up to, wants to be or date, the ultimate cool guy. “Where’s Jason?” Nobody says anything, dead silence as everyone looks around trying to find him first, and so reap the reward of that brilliant smile being directed at one of them. But Jason was nowhere to be found that day, or that week, or that month. No one knew what had happened to him, where he was, or if he was even still alive. No one answered the phone when it rang through the seemingly deserted house. A piercing reminder that all was lost, a new star had to be found, and an aching heart had to replace a missing lover.
I am alone. There is no one here with me, the house is empty save a mattress and a cell phone and a small fridge. Everything is gone, sold for money to feed my need. Now there is nothing left, no money, no electricity, no heat, no clothes but what is already on my back, and no drugs. I shake in a cold sweat every night, alone, wild eyed and crazy. No one knows I'm here, no one knows that I'm alive, no on knows my secret, and so I hide. I was supposed to be the cool guy, the one that everyone looked up to, the big superstar, role model for the incoming freshmen of this college. but now I am reduced to nothing, I am worthless, and always have been. The only way I could be "cool" was to feed my cravings so that I wouldn't become what I am now, this huddled mass, this shell of a person. I came to this school on a football scholarship, which is by now void. I don't know when I started to run out of money, all I know is that one day it was gone, the bank revoked my credit card, and there was nothing in my account. That's when I started selling my belongings. Piece by piece until it was as though I had never been there, it looked the same as when I had first moved in at the beginning of my senior year. The phone by the mattress stopped working a few weeks ago, I guess my phone plan ran out. It used to ring non-stop in the beginning, constantly flashing "Belinda" or "Mom" or sometimes even "Dad", and once or twice "Rick" or "Carl", from the team. But I think everyone eventually gave up on me, and found a replacement, probably Rick, he used to be my best bud, he was a junior and Coach always said that when I graduated, Rick would become the quarterback for his senior year. I guess his dream came true early, although I wouldn't really know, I haven't left the apartment in almost three months, except to go out maybe once every two weeks to scrounge up some food somewhere. It's painful. Very painful. Loneliness is a very dark and curious state of being. And I say it is a state of being because I do not feel alone, I am alone and so therefore I am living in loneliness, unable to contact anyone other than myself. I am certain I have gone insane since there is no one to talk to, and so I am always talking to my self mumbling, arguing, yelling, comforting, and just plain rambling on and on about nothing in particular. I don’t know what makes someone special, or what makes life worth living for, but I do know that my life has been a lie for so long. Everyone telling me how wonderful and gifted and talented I am, and how much respect they have for me. Respect! HA! I laugh at that, if they could only see me now, a bug under the lens of society, scrutinized and fried under the beam of hot light. Only there is no one here to look upon me and judge, I have successfully dropped off the face of the earth without actually going anywhere.
This is not ok, very not ok. How dare he not pick up his phone, I’ve called him about 15 times now, and still no answer. And no word from anyone, no one knows where he is. I’m worried. It’s not like him to not show up for school, and not tell anyone about it. Especially when it is right smack in the middle of football season. I should stop worrying; it’s bad for my complexion and mental health. Breathe in, and breathe out, and breathe in and breathe out. Much better. Now there has to be a logical explanation for all this, let’s see. Jason has been acting weird lately but I assumed he was just anxious to play our rival in the semi-finals next week. And he has been wearing the same outfit everyday this week, not like him at all; maybe I should have talked to him about it.
((I want this to be my last line, but I’m not done yet))
What makes someone special is a person’s ability to overcome his or her own internal battles despite the impossibility of a hopeful situation. Seeing these people grow and change and flow into a new person is what makes life worth living because it is then you know that you are never truly, all alone.
I am alone. There is no one here with me, the house is empty save a mattress and a cell phone and a small fridge. Everything is gone, sold for money to feed my need. Now there is nothing left, no money, no electricity, no heat, no clothes but what is already on my back, and no drugs. I shake in a cold sweat every night, alone, wild eyed and crazy. No one knows I'm here, no one knows that I'm alive, no on knows my secret, and so I hide. I was supposed to be the cool guy, the one that everyone looked up to, the big superstar, role model for the incoming freshmen of this college. but now I am reduced to nothing, I am worthless, and always have been. The only way I could be "cool" was to feed my cravings so that I wouldn't become what I am now, this huddled mass, this shell of a person. I came to this school on a football scholarship, which is by now void. I don't know when I started to run out of money, all I know is that one day it was gone, the bank revoked my credit card, and there was nothing in my account. That's when I started selling my belongings. Piece by piece until it was as though I had never been there, it looked the same as when I had first moved in at the beginning of my senior year. The phone by the mattress stopped working a few weeks ago, I guess my phone plan ran out. It used to ring non-stop in the beginning, constantly flashing "Belinda" or "Mom" or sometimes even "Dad", and once or twice "Rick" or "Carl", from the team. But I think everyone eventually gave up on me, and found a replacement, probably Rick, he used to be my best bud, he was a junior and Coach always said that when I graduated, Rick would become the quarterback for his senior year. I guess his dream came true early, although I wouldn't really know, I haven't left the apartment in almost three months, except to go out maybe once every two weeks to scrounge up some food somewhere. It's painful. Very painful. Loneliness is a very dark and curious state of being. And I say it is a state of being because I do not feel alone, I am alone and so therefore I am living in loneliness, unable to contact anyone other than myself. I am certain I have gone insane since there is no one to talk to, and so I am always talking to my self mumbling, arguing, yelling, comforting, and just plain rambling on and on about nothing in particular. I don’t know what makes someone special, or what makes life worth living for, but I do know that my life has been a lie for so long. Everyone telling me how wonderful and gifted and talented I am, and how much respect they have for me. Respect! HA! I laugh at that, if they could only see me now, a bug under the lens of society, scrutinized and fried under the beam of hot light. Only there is no one here to look upon me and judge, I have successfully dropped off the face of the earth without actually going anywhere.
This is not ok, very not ok. How dare he not pick up his phone, I’ve called him about 15 times now, and still no answer. And no word from anyone, no one knows where he is. I’m worried. It’s not like him to not show up for school, and not tell anyone about it. Especially when it is right smack in the middle of football season. I should stop worrying; it’s bad for my complexion and mental health. Breathe in, and breathe out, and breathe in and breathe out. Much better. Now there has to be a logical explanation for all this, let’s see. Jason has been acting weird lately but I assumed he was just anxious to play our rival in the semi-finals next week. And he has been wearing the same outfit everyday this week, not like him at all; maybe I should have talked to him about it.
((I want this to be my last line, but I’m not done yet))
What makes someone special is a person’s ability to overcome his or her own internal battles despite the impossibility of a hopeful situation. Seeing these people grow and change and flow into a new person is what makes life worth living because it is then you know that you are never truly, all alone.
Big Essay Add on (Deconstruction)
A trope is a familiar thing of element that is repeated in different ways and used over and over. For example; every story is a story about good versus evil, in its simplest form. Any movie, book, play, TV show that you have viewed, has a villain, and a hero, the good guy, and the bad guy; a reoccurring theme, used over and over through the ages. There are different types of tropes, like the one we are studying in class, the revelation trope. The revelation trope is elements of a revelation that occur repeatedly. The revelation trope has 8 key elements starting with the ignorant masses. The ignorant masses are the people who are easily manipulated, or molded to be what you make them, they will believe anything. An example is high school kids, our teachers mold us, they fill our brains with information, and we believe what they say without question. The second element is an unacceptable or oppressive situation in which people are harmed. The third element is the prophet, the revealer, the "good guy"; the one who tries to share a message, the fourth element. The fifth element is the prophet connects the dots in a new way. The sixth is that the prophet also offers their vision of a "redeemed" world. The seventh is that there is opposition to the message; these people are usually considered "villains". The eighth and last element is the occurrence of drama.
In Foxfire Angelina Jolie's character chides a group of girls for letting a teacher sexually harass them, and tells them that if they just stand by, then they are just as bad as the teacher himself. The message is that the girls "are the assholes" and that they can fight back if they stand up to him together. In the matrix Morphius opens Neo's eye to the fact that he has never actually lived, he has been inside his head own head his whole life. That the world he "lives" in is something created to cover up the real world. So basically a revealer comes and alters how a person or how people see the world. The prophet offers you a vision, something new, something different, and you have to make a choice to give up everything you know, and take a walk on the wild side sometimes. Like in the Matrix Neo has to choose between the red pill and the blue pill, between seeing the world as it really is and going back to his “normal” life as it was before. I would choose the red pill, the one that takes Neo into reality, because he has been wondering what the matrix is for so long, and now he has the chance to find out what it is, and for me, getting the answer to something that seems unanswerable is without doubt the way I would go. I know they say curiosity killed the cat, but I can’t help it, I’d just be desperate to learn the answer, to see something new, to have a change, to get away from my robotic lifestyle. When Neo takes the red pill he is symbolically reborn into the real world, he breaks out of the embryonic sack, then is transported down the birth canal. Revelation removes the cover up that hides the truth about something. And in this case the revelation is that Neo has been living in a fake world all his life, he’s never actually used his body before, and now in the real world, he sees that no one is free in either world, even though Morphius keeps saying that they are free now. Cypher says that even in the real world they are trapped because they have to wear crappy clothes, sleep on hard beds, eat bad food, and hide from the Agents, so they are never really free. I wouldn’t give up any revelations even if I could. Everything is an experience, something you learn from, something that opens your eyes. Even though I sometimes say I wish I could change the past, I never can really say what about the past I would actually change, so I guess in the end I’m just happy with the way my life is going, even if there have been bad parts, the bad parts bring about something good later. But while I don’t actively seek revelations, I would definitely be open to any that came my way. After watching the Matrix I started thinking about my own life, about how this could all be fake, about how I never really know what is a dream and what is my reality. I mean if you think about it, how do we know for sure that we are not asleep when we are "awake", or awake when we are "asleep". What it the real reality, and what kind of reality do we live in? When we make a revelation, do we ever stop to think when we started to take notice of this occurrence? And when we do make a revelation, does it really make a difference in how we go about living our daily lives, the way it seems to in the movies? I’ve realized that you can't go through life trying to be better than everyone else. You are who you are no matter how much you try to be someone else, and only you can satisfy yourself because no one knows you better than you do. I've also started to try and live more the way I want to live, and more according to what makes me happiest, like going out with my friends on the weekends. This doesn't necessarily make me more successful, but he makes me happy and it satisfies me to be doing what I want to do. I want to experience as much as I can get my hands on because I will only be the age I am now, once, so I want to take advantage of each moment. My revelation theory would be that we are not aware enough of each other of nature or our surroundings. We take so much for granted, like Central Park is a huge GREEN SPOT in the CENTER of the city and most people feel like it's just supposed to be there, like we never really appreciate it. But think how much we'd miss it if it disappeared. And as children we are constantly reminded not to talk to strangers. I understand that yeah some people are creepy. But not everyone is, so as adults no one talks to each other, no one touches anyone else if possible, unless they know each other. But why? I've had a few interesting conversations with strangers, and after the conversations I feel a little happier, like I feel satisfied, maybe it's just because I am I guess "addicted" to meeting new people. I'm always up for my friends bringing their friends because it broadens my horizons, and can open new doors, and can also introduce me to more new people, even if I only ever see these people once, it's still fun to just get to know someone new. I suppose meeting new people is in a way like taking the red pill, because these new people have the potential to offer you a revelation or even inspire you to do something you never thought you would ever want to do.
In An Enemy of the People, those who follow the main character, and also the prophet of the story, Dr. Stockmann, support him, but don't fully understand what he has to say because he says a lot. They believe what he says, but do not completely understand what it is he is telling them. His message is that the baths are contaminated and that they are the reason why the town is getting sick. After the message is revealed sometimes it doesn't get through to everyone, or it takes a while to completely "click" in the followers’ minds. So maybe if the play continued, eventually the people that supported Dr. Stockmann would begin to fully understand what he was saying. Maybe Dr. Stockmann's followers are part of a separate ignorant mass because they don't seem to really understand what they are standing up for, but they fight for it anyways. They are like sheep being corralled, if one gets out of line the dogs go after it. Whereas in the community anyone who supports Dr. Stockmann and strays from the public opinion is attacked (loses job, respect, etc.). I think there are different types of revelation stories; some of them the prophet gets the full public opinion, and helps a whole community make a revelation. But sometimes the prophet gets shut down, and shunned, and can't get the message across and so few or none get the message, and another is where there is a pre-revealer who shows the prophet who s/he is, and then the prophet goes out and tries to show the message to others through the hero's journey trope. The mayor, who happens to be Dr. Stockmann’s brother, tells him that if he goes away and then comes back and makes a public apology stating he was wrong, he could possibly get his job back. In the end thought, Dr. Stockmann decides to ignore the authorities and stays, but takes his boys out of school so he can teach them to be open minded, and tells his boys to get other boys off the streets so he can teach them as well.
In They Live, the main character’s message is that we are all asleep, and we need to wake up. The main character finds these sunglasses that show him his world in black and white, literally. It shows the true meanings behind the posters and magazines that we read and consume everywhere. How a poster with a hot girl and alcohol on it really means get married and reproduce. And it also shows him these alien type monster creatures that are living among us. No one else can see them, only him and whoever else wears the glasses. But it turns out there are four types of people in this story. The humans who are asleep, the humans who are awake and can see the truth (those who wear the sunglasses), the humans who are awake but are working with the aliens, and then the aliens who control our world by making us sleepwalk and live according to their needs. The main character’s friend resists his message at first because he thinks he is crazy and so won’t put on the sunglasses. But once he sees the truth, he is amazed and seems to get a headache from all the information he is taking in. And then the woman, she seems to be a normal person, but she works at the headquarters of the aliens. We aren’t sure about her because she seems to go over to the side of the humans who are trying to fight against theses aliens, but then at the end he kills the friend and tries to kill the main character himself, so she is like a double agent, resisting the message even though she can see the truth, and knows what the aliens have planned for us.
In Feed, the prophet is Violet. Titus, the main character, falls for her because she sees everything in a different way. She talks about things no one else talks about, like the environment, and the government and how the chips in their heads, their feeds, are the government’s way of controlling everyone. She says that they are trying to make us all as similar as possible because then they can just advertise to a general population because everyone will just buy whatever the feed tells them to, no questions asked. Also she takes Titus to places that most people stay away from, like the meat farm. It is literally a farm where they “grow” meat, not animals, meat. It is like a huge tendon of meat that might occasionally grow an eye or a heart. And she talks about how the environment is making everyone sick because the air is so polluted; there aren’t even any animals anymore. Her message is that we have to fight the government and that we have to wake up and see what they are doing to society. A very similar message to the guy’s in They Live. In Star Wars, Luke is the disciple, and a very young clueless one at that. Obi Wan is the prophet who finds him and reveals to him that not only did his father not die in an accident, but he was also a jeti knight. And so he trains Luke to fight the evil government, the death star. Obi Wan dies in order to distract Darth Vadar from Luke so that Luke and his friends can escape and then come back and defeat Darth Vader when they are ready. And the form of battle involves the penetration trope. The scene, in which Luke shoots into the weak spot of the death star, looks like sperm entering the vagina. Which is a contradiction in a way because it symbolizes fertilizing death with life, when they are trying to destroy death. But that just shows that you can never get rid of death. Death and Life go hand in hand, which is symbolized by the fact that Luke’s father is Darth Vader, the root of all evil, the “master of death”. In contrast, the prophet in The Matrix does not die. Morphius though, like Obi Wan, trains a protégée, or “the one”, Neo, whose name can be rearranged to spell the word “one”. Morphius shows Neo the truth of the real world, that he has literally been sleeping all his life, and living only in his mind. So when he wakes up he has to be taught all these new things, how to move, how to fight, and how to use his power against the bad guys. Agent Smith is a government robot who is trying to destroy the small group of rebels so that they can’t wake anyone else up. Neo is the one who can defeat Agent Smith though, the one who can lead the rebels and wake up more people. When Morphius is caught by Agent Smith and tortured to tell him how to get into his base, Neo saves Morphius and the goes on to defeat Agent Smith. The ending song in the movie is literally saying "Wake Up!" as Neo flies off screen after telling the authorities that he was coming to get them and show everyone the truth.
But the second part of this class was to deconstruct things, such as binary oppositions. According to Levi Strauss binary oppositions are created by cultures so that everything has its place and so that reality makes sense. They are the boxes that people put ideas into, such that one box would be the idea of good and what we describe as good, and another separate box would be evil and what we categorize as evil. There are many, binary oppositions, in our culture such as male and female, old and young, pretty and ugly, gay and straight, republican and democrat, etc. One binary opposition is considered to be the “wrong way” while its opposite is deemed socially acceptable. But what deconstruction does, is it shows how these descriptions contradict themselves and how the boxes actually cross lines and share certain descriptions. The thin borders that we create to separate these binary oppositions can be broken, it’s just that people are almost always afraid of change and so they pretend not to see the crossing of the boundries.
In Foxfire Angelina Jolie's character chides a group of girls for letting a teacher sexually harass them, and tells them that if they just stand by, then they are just as bad as the teacher himself. The message is that the girls "are the assholes" and that they can fight back if they stand up to him together. In the matrix Morphius opens Neo's eye to the fact that he has never actually lived, he has been inside his head own head his whole life. That the world he "lives" in is something created to cover up the real world. So basically a revealer comes and alters how a person or how people see the world. The prophet offers you a vision, something new, something different, and you have to make a choice to give up everything you know, and take a walk on the wild side sometimes. Like in the Matrix Neo has to choose between the red pill and the blue pill, between seeing the world as it really is and going back to his “normal” life as it was before. I would choose the red pill, the one that takes Neo into reality, because he has been wondering what the matrix is for so long, and now he has the chance to find out what it is, and for me, getting the answer to something that seems unanswerable is without doubt the way I would go. I know they say curiosity killed the cat, but I can’t help it, I’d just be desperate to learn the answer, to see something new, to have a change, to get away from my robotic lifestyle. When Neo takes the red pill he is symbolically reborn into the real world, he breaks out of the embryonic sack, then is transported down the birth canal. Revelation removes the cover up that hides the truth about something. And in this case the revelation is that Neo has been living in a fake world all his life, he’s never actually used his body before, and now in the real world, he sees that no one is free in either world, even though Morphius keeps saying that they are free now. Cypher says that even in the real world they are trapped because they have to wear crappy clothes, sleep on hard beds, eat bad food, and hide from the Agents, so they are never really free. I wouldn’t give up any revelations even if I could. Everything is an experience, something you learn from, something that opens your eyes. Even though I sometimes say I wish I could change the past, I never can really say what about the past I would actually change, so I guess in the end I’m just happy with the way my life is going, even if there have been bad parts, the bad parts bring about something good later. But while I don’t actively seek revelations, I would definitely be open to any that came my way. After watching the Matrix I started thinking about my own life, about how this could all be fake, about how I never really know what is a dream and what is my reality. I mean if you think about it, how do we know for sure that we are not asleep when we are "awake", or awake when we are "asleep". What it the real reality, and what kind of reality do we live in? When we make a revelation, do we ever stop to think when we started to take notice of this occurrence? And when we do make a revelation, does it really make a difference in how we go about living our daily lives, the way it seems to in the movies? I’ve realized that you can't go through life trying to be better than everyone else. You are who you are no matter how much you try to be someone else, and only you can satisfy yourself because no one knows you better than you do. I've also started to try and live more the way I want to live, and more according to what makes me happiest, like going out with my friends on the weekends. This doesn't necessarily make me more successful, but he makes me happy and it satisfies me to be doing what I want to do. I want to experience as much as I can get my hands on because I will only be the age I am now, once, so I want to take advantage of each moment. My revelation theory would be that we are not aware enough of each other of nature or our surroundings. We take so much for granted, like Central Park is a huge GREEN SPOT in the CENTER of the city and most people feel like it's just supposed to be there, like we never really appreciate it. But think how much we'd miss it if it disappeared. And as children we are constantly reminded not to talk to strangers. I understand that yeah some people are creepy. But not everyone is, so as adults no one talks to each other, no one touches anyone else if possible, unless they know each other. But why? I've had a few interesting conversations with strangers, and after the conversations I feel a little happier, like I feel satisfied, maybe it's just because I am I guess "addicted" to meeting new people. I'm always up for my friends bringing their friends because it broadens my horizons, and can open new doors, and can also introduce me to more new people, even if I only ever see these people once, it's still fun to just get to know someone new. I suppose meeting new people is in a way like taking the red pill, because these new people have the potential to offer you a revelation or even inspire you to do something you never thought you would ever want to do.
In An Enemy of the People, those who follow the main character, and also the prophet of the story, Dr. Stockmann, support him, but don't fully understand what he has to say because he says a lot. They believe what he says, but do not completely understand what it is he is telling them. His message is that the baths are contaminated and that they are the reason why the town is getting sick. After the message is revealed sometimes it doesn't get through to everyone, or it takes a while to completely "click" in the followers’ minds. So maybe if the play continued, eventually the people that supported Dr. Stockmann would begin to fully understand what he was saying. Maybe Dr. Stockmann's followers are part of a separate ignorant mass because they don't seem to really understand what they are standing up for, but they fight for it anyways. They are like sheep being corralled, if one gets out of line the dogs go after it. Whereas in the community anyone who supports Dr. Stockmann and strays from the public opinion is attacked (loses job, respect, etc.). I think there are different types of revelation stories; some of them the prophet gets the full public opinion, and helps a whole community make a revelation. But sometimes the prophet gets shut down, and shunned, and can't get the message across and so few or none get the message, and another is where there is a pre-revealer who shows the prophet who s/he is, and then the prophet goes out and tries to show the message to others through the hero's journey trope. The mayor, who happens to be Dr. Stockmann’s brother, tells him that if he goes away and then comes back and makes a public apology stating he was wrong, he could possibly get his job back. In the end thought, Dr. Stockmann decides to ignore the authorities and stays, but takes his boys out of school so he can teach them to be open minded, and tells his boys to get other boys off the streets so he can teach them as well.
In They Live, the main character’s message is that we are all asleep, and we need to wake up. The main character finds these sunglasses that show him his world in black and white, literally. It shows the true meanings behind the posters and magazines that we read and consume everywhere. How a poster with a hot girl and alcohol on it really means get married and reproduce. And it also shows him these alien type monster creatures that are living among us. No one else can see them, only him and whoever else wears the glasses. But it turns out there are four types of people in this story. The humans who are asleep, the humans who are awake and can see the truth (those who wear the sunglasses), the humans who are awake but are working with the aliens, and then the aliens who control our world by making us sleepwalk and live according to their needs. The main character’s friend resists his message at first because he thinks he is crazy and so won’t put on the sunglasses. But once he sees the truth, he is amazed and seems to get a headache from all the information he is taking in. And then the woman, she seems to be a normal person, but she works at the headquarters of the aliens. We aren’t sure about her because she seems to go over to the side of the humans who are trying to fight against theses aliens, but then at the end he kills the friend and tries to kill the main character himself, so she is like a double agent, resisting the message even though she can see the truth, and knows what the aliens have planned for us.
In Feed, the prophet is Violet. Titus, the main character, falls for her because she sees everything in a different way. She talks about things no one else talks about, like the environment, and the government and how the chips in their heads, their feeds, are the government’s way of controlling everyone. She says that they are trying to make us all as similar as possible because then they can just advertise to a general population because everyone will just buy whatever the feed tells them to, no questions asked. Also she takes Titus to places that most people stay away from, like the meat farm. It is literally a farm where they “grow” meat, not animals, meat. It is like a huge tendon of meat that might occasionally grow an eye or a heart. And she talks about how the environment is making everyone sick because the air is so polluted; there aren’t even any animals anymore. Her message is that we have to fight the government and that we have to wake up and see what they are doing to society. A very similar message to the guy’s in They Live. In Star Wars, Luke is the disciple, and a very young clueless one at that. Obi Wan is the prophet who finds him and reveals to him that not only did his father not die in an accident, but he was also a jeti knight. And so he trains Luke to fight the evil government, the death star. Obi Wan dies in order to distract Darth Vadar from Luke so that Luke and his friends can escape and then come back and defeat Darth Vader when they are ready. And the form of battle involves the penetration trope. The scene, in which Luke shoots into the weak spot of the death star, looks like sperm entering the vagina. Which is a contradiction in a way because it symbolizes fertilizing death with life, when they are trying to destroy death. But that just shows that you can never get rid of death. Death and Life go hand in hand, which is symbolized by the fact that Luke’s father is Darth Vader, the root of all evil, the “master of death”. In contrast, the prophet in The Matrix does not die. Morphius though, like Obi Wan, trains a protégée, or “the one”, Neo, whose name can be rearranged to spell the word “one”. Morphius shows Neo the truth of the real world, that he has literally been sleeping all his life, and living only in his mind. So when he wakes up he has to be taught all these new things, how to move, how to fight, and how to use his power against the bad guys. Agent Smith is a government robot who is trying to destroy the small group of rebels so that they can’t wake anyone else up. Neo is the one who can defeat Agent Smith though, the one who can lead the rebels and wake up more people. When Morphius is caught by Agent Smith and tortured to tell him how to get into his base, Neo saves Morphius and the goes on to defeat Agent Smith. The ending song in the movie is literally saying "Wake Up!" as Neo flies off screen after telling the authorities that he was coming to get them and show everyone the truth.
But the second part of this class was to deconstruct things, such as binary oppositions. According to Levi Strauss binary oppositions are created by cultures so that everything has its place and so that reality makes sense. They are the boxes that people put ideas into, such that one box would be the idea of good and what we describe as good, and another separate box would be evil and what we categorize as evil. There are many, binary oppositions, in our culture such as male and female, old and young, pretty and ugly, gay and straight, republican and democrat, etc. One binary opposition is considered to be the “wrong way” while its opposite is deemed socially acceptable. But what deconstruction does, is it shows how these descriptions contradict themselves and how the boxes actually cross lines and share certain descriptions. The thin borders that we create to separate these binary oppositions can be broken, it’s just that people are almost always afraid of change and so they pretend not to see the crossing of the boundries.
Friday, May 23, 2008
Personal Revelation
I know that there is supposed to be some prophet type person who hands you revelations, but I have been making a lot of my own revelations lately. Most of them are based on what other people have said to me or the way people act, but no one has really offered me a revelation, I seem to just be making them based upon my own thoughts and theories.
Monday, May 12, 2008
2nd Story Draft
Clack, clack, clack. Heads turn, a path forms and disappears once she’s passed. Make way for the captain of the cheer leading team, the most popular girl in school. A toss of her long blond hair, a flashy white smile here and there, and an ever-present smirk on her face because she knows everyone wants to be her. She rounds the corner and her puppy dog teammates follow on her heels. Around another corner and the puddle of pink and priss penetrates the circle of jocks in their letter jackets. She looks around expectantly, and furrows her brow in frustration at not finding what she’s looking for. Her boyfriend, the quarterback, the guy everyone in school looks up to, wants to be or date, the ultimate cool guy.
“Where’s Jason?”
Nobody says anything, dead silence as everyone looks around trying to find him first, and so reap the reward of that brilliant smile being directed at one of them. But Jason was nowhere to be found that day, or that week, or that month. No one knew what had happened to him, where he was, or if he was even still alive. No one answered the phone when it rang through the seemingly deserted house. A piercing reminder that all was lost, a new star had to be found, and an aching heart had to replace a missing lover.
I am alone. There is no one here with me, the house is empty save a mattress and a cell phone and a small fridge. Everything is gone, sold for money to feed my need. Now there is nothing left, no money, no electricity, no heat, no clothes but what is already on my back, and no drugs. I shake in a cold sweat every night, alone, wild eyed and crazy. No one knows I'm here, no one knows that I'm alive, no on knows my secret, and so I hide. I was supposed to be the cool guy, the one that everyone looked up to, the big superstar, role model for the incoming freshmen of this college. but now I am reduced to nothing, I am worthless, and always have been. The only way I could be "cool" was to feed my cravings so that I wouldn't become what I am now, this huddled mass, this shell of a person. I came to this school on a football scholarship, which is by now void. I don't know when I started to run out of money, all I know is that one day it was gone, the bank revoked my credit card, and there was nothing in my account. That's when I started selling my belongings. Piece by piece until it was as though I had never been there, it looked the same as when I had first moved in at the beginning of my senior year. The phone by the mattress stopped working a few weeks ago, I guess my phone plan ran out. It used to ring non-stop in the beginning, constantly flashing "Belinda" or "Mom" or sometimes even "Dad", and once or twice "Rick" or "Carl", from the team. but i think everyone eventually gave up on me, and found a replacement, probably Rick, he used to be my best bud, he was a junior and Coach always said that when I graduated, Rick would become the quarterback for his senior year. I guess his dream came true early, although I wouldn't really know, I haven't left the apartment in almost three months, except to go out maybe once every two weeks to scrounge up some food somewhere. It's painful. Very painful.
“Where’s Jason?”
Nobody says anything, dead silence as everyone looks around trying to find him first, and so reap the reward of that brilliant smile being directed at one of them. But Jason was nowhere to be found that day, or that week, or that month. No one knew what had happened to him, where he was, or if he was even still alive. No one answered the phone when it rang through the seemingly deserted house. A piercing reminder that all was lost, a new star had to be found, and an aching heart had to replace a missing lover.
I am alone. There is no one here with me, the house is empty save a mattress and a cell phone and a small fridge. Everything is gone, sold for money to feed my need. Now there is nothing left, no money, no electricity, no heat, no clothes but what is already on my back, and no drugs. I shake in a cold sweat every night, alone, wild eyed and crazy. No one knows I'm here, no one knows that I'm alive, no on knows my secret, and so I hide. I was supposed to be the cool guy, the one that everyone looked up to, the big superstar, role model for the incoming freshmen of this college. but now I am reduced to nothing, I am worthless, and always have been. The only way I could be "cool" was to feed my cravings so that I wouldn't become what I am now, this huddled mass, this shell of a person. I came to this school on a football scholarship, which is by now void. I don't know when I started to run out of money, all I know is that one day it was gone, the bank revoked my credit card, and there was nothing in my account. That's when I started selling my belongings. Piece by piece until it was as though I had never been there, it looked the same as when I had first moved in at the beginning of my senior year. The phone by the mattress stopped working a few weeks ago, I guess my phone plan ran out. It used to ring non-stop in the beginning, constantly flashing "Belinda" or "Mom" or sometimes even "Dad", and once or twice "Rick" or "Carl", from the team. but i think everyone eventually gave up on me, and found a replacement, probably Rick, he used to be my best bud, he was a junior and Coach always said that when I graduated, Rick would become the quarterback for his senior year. I guess his dream came true early, although I wouldn't really know, I haven't left the apartment in almost three months, except to go out maybe once every two weeks to scrounge up some food somewhere. It's painful. Very painful.
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