Dumb and Dumber

The dumb and dumber trailer has lots of elements that make it funny and a comedy. Some of them are the bright colors and bright-lite scenes, upbeat music and constant sound/laughter. The way that they change it to be a horror trailer is first they made it black and white. The absence of color is just dark and cold and make its more suspensful and horror-like. Then, they had to slow down what they were saying and pause on certain words and phrases so it sounded as if they were being creepy and murder-like. They also would pause the sound and put loud thumping noises that are meant to create fear and suspense. I think they were sucessful in making it a horror trailer. Ways they could have changed the genre even more would be to change different elements. To create a romance they would have to add in romantic music or love songs and just give scenes where Jim Carreys expressing his love for the girl. They would also want to keep it in color and keep the slow scenes to make it seem like they are in love. If they were doing an action trailer they would want to keep the scenes as fast pace as they could and maybe even speed them up from the original. They would add in action music and upbeat intense sounds so that its quick and the scenes are constantly changing.

Halloween

In this scene there is a boy and a girl sitting on the couch making out. They are aboutto go upstairs and we see them through the window outside, seemingly through someone else's eyes. The teenagers go upstairs and we then enter the house. We can't see the person who's eyes we are looking through but we see them go into the kitchen and pick up and large, sharp knife. The boy then comes down the stairs and leaves and the camera starts walking upstairs. Through their eyes, we walk into the girl's room where she is sitting there naked and we see her die. Whats interesting about it is the point of view is as if we are in the scene. It creates for even more thrill and suspence because the viewer feels like they are in the house and could potentionally be harmed as well. The camera then goes back downstairs where it gets turned around and we see the killer is actually the girls younger brother. I think this type of movie is exactly what King is referring to when he argues that everyone is a little bit insane. People who saw this movie went to the theatres to see a girl being murdered by her own 5 year old brother. That is such a sad and grotesque image that most people wouldn't categorize as 'fun' to watch. Even the character himself defends King's point because this little boy is obviously not fully there mentally.

Why We Crave Horror Films

In his article, Stephen King is trying to persuade readers the reasons that we go to see horror films. He gives different reasons, one of which is because seeing a horror film reassures us of how normal we actually are. He goes on to say that we all have this innate cruelty within us and when we go to see a film like this we can watch that malice behavior. He says that if we share brotherhood, "we all share insanity of man." We go to the movies to watch acts that would otherwise be criticized in the real world. He talks about how at a young age we learn the different from right and wrong and how we are both positively and negatively reinforced and/or punished for bad behaviors. These horror films give into the small part of your brain that wants to do bad, cruel things. These movies are satsifying our evil side without any outward ramifications afterward. I think he has a valid argument. It makes sense that there is a part of us that craves evil or else we wouldn't enjoy watching people being cut up and murdered in scary films like these. We see these movies in the dark, not only because it intensifies the suspense factor, but because we are somewhat ashamed of finding thrill and fun out of watching other people (although obviously not real) struggle to survive.

What else are they keeping?

An article posted on CNN's website entitled, "Parents shocked to learn examiner kept son's brain" was one that really shocked me. The article is about a kid named Jesse Shipley who was a 17 year old boy that died in a car accident. His parents had mourned his death and Jesse was buried, when 2 months later something horrible happened. The high school that Jesse had attended went on a school field trip to the morgue where they found a jar with a brain on it labeled 'Jesse Shipley'. Obviously, these kids were shocked and utterly confounded and when Adre and Korisha Shipley heard the news they were simply horrified. From this incident, there is an ongoing debate on whether the medical examiners should be forced to tell the family if they are keeping any remains of a body after an autopsy. The controversy lies in if you tell the family, the person you tell might be connected with the reason the person died in the first place. It also further upsets a family during such a hard time. Personally, I think that the family needs to know no matter what. Burying your child, loved one or family member is hard enough and when you do so you want to believe that they have all their organs inside them and in tact. Also, figuring out months later that the morgue lied to you just makes the healing process that much harder. The family is suing the city and I hope they get a settlement out of this because I could never image how horrifying this would be. 

Pan's Labyrinth

Wow. Whats going on in this movie is theres a girl who is being told certain directions. She is told to use the chalk to create a door and once she goes through the door she has the amount of time until the last grain of salt drops from the hourglass to get back. She then enters this fantasy world where there are little fairies telling her what to do and an evil Voldemort-like character who is seemingly dead. The mood of this scene is very suspensful. The music is dark and intense so that we are on the edge of our seat. We don't know whats going to happen and we are awaiting the climax of the scene. The fantasy world that she goes into is dark and creepy. It is like a dungeon of some sort that is eery and cave-like. She walks over to the table and its full of fruit that she wants to eat but the fairies tell her not too. She eats it anyway and it summons the creepy demon guy who gets up and sticks his eyeballs into his hands. That wasthe creepiest part to me. There were holes in his head for his eyes but he put them into his hands and places his hand to his face so he could see. Why did he do this? Why couldn't he just have put them into his head and then been able to use his hands as hands? Also, who was the voice telling this little girl what to do?The lighting is very dark and gives off a scary mood because we can't see everything in the picture and we don't know if somethings going to pop out at us and scare us. I think the genre would be considered some kind of suspense/fantasy movie because these creatures are obviously not real. The climax of the scene is after she accidentily summons this evil creature it runs after her and chaces her to the exit. She runs as fast as she can and the hourglass stops and the door closes. She then pulls out her chalk and creates another exit for herself in the ceiling and escapes the monster. But if the hourglass stopped shouldn't she be stuck there? How could she make another exit for herself? Doesn't that defeat the purpose of the hourglass alltogether?

Pleasantville

The plot of the scene we saw of this movie was of a husband and a wife having an intense discussion. The man is telling his wife what to do. He is telling her she must go to a meeting and that every night she must be home at 6 with dinner ready for him on the table. The conflict arrises when she doesn't agree to these terms. She defies him and tells him that he can heat up his own dinner, and that she is leaving. The lighting is intresting in this film because the husband is in black and white but the wife is in color. This comments on the emotional state of these characters because the woman is freeing herself from the ties of her controlling husband. Her dress is bright blue and we can see her flushed face and red lipstick. There is no music in the scene and is just of the two of them talking quietly. It makes the scene even more intense and brings strength to the characters conversation. The costumes go along with the era that this movie is portraying/made in. It definitley of the olden-days, probably around the 50's or so. The woman is wearing her hair perfectly up, with her makeup done and her dress tight and tidy. The genre would probably be a considered a classic or a drama. The body language is also intresting to note because the two characters are never on the same level. If they are both standing up, he sits down, and after she stands up. This is a symbol of how they aren't ever emotionally on the same level and they disagree with certain subjects.

Film Study

Film is an expressive type of literature in a way that we can see it. Film is video and sound, something we can both see and hear. The conventions of film are directing, producing, acting, creating, writing, screenplay, point of view, lighting, pre/post production. The other components are those similar to the conventions of song and music video which are genre, mood, tone, theme, etc. The director and producer are very important aspects of a film because they create everything we see. They chose the angle in which to catch the actor and actresses and they portray them in a way that best suits the need of the film. We read film by first watching it and pulling out the meaning. We look at the film's overall message and theme and then pick out which components (lighting, symbolism, etc) best express the theme of the movie or film. To me, films are very important. There are many older films that have such great messages and really give off true meaning. Today (although there are some) most films and movies are about stupid topics that are just meant to create humor and not to inspire.

Thesis #2

Christina Aguilera's song Beautiful critques American societies obsession with humanly perfection through the music, lyrics and images portrayed in her music video.

music: tempo, beat, repitition, instruments, melody and strong vocals
-all helps to enchance the meaning of the video, makes the video empowering, like a declaration of what shes trying to say

lyrics: the music is a metaphorical declaration and the lyrics are the physical declaration of what she is saying about everyone being loved no matter what they look like/feel

images: gay couple, anorexic teenager, bullied teens, transexuals
how all these situations comment on how the world is different and were made to see them as bad and those people in those situations are insecure because the media deems them as abnormal, were not meant to accept them

Paper #2 Prewrite

For my second paper I am going to write about Christina Aguilera's video for her song 'Beautiful.' The song is abut how everyone is beautiful in their own way and expresses that its okay to be different. Its a really slow song which helps to enchance the meaning of the words and make it more dramatic. The video shows her singing to a bunch of different kids. Theres a girl who is looking at her body in the mirror who is clearly battling anorexia. Theres also a gay couple that is kissing and then a boy who is being beat up and bullied by other kids. The song is directed towards them because she is referring to issues like body image and things that make kids different and make them not appreciate their own bodies. She is telling them its okay to be different though and not everyone is perfect and beautiful and skinny like the media portrays. I think the bigger message she is sending out is about the media and how they influence children. Shes commenting on how our society has this obsession with being perfect: beautiful, skinny, heterosexual, normal, etc. But in reality (what she portrays in the video) is that everyone is different and should be loved and appreciated all the same no matter how differently they look on the outside. The song is definetly a message to the world that we need to step back and reasses what we put out as entertainment and how that affects kids who are always surrounded by the same images of beauty. Her lyrics are saying "now and then i get insecure" and "i am beautiful no matter what they say." The "they" she is reffering to in this is the media. Because they gossip about her every move and it starts to eat away at you and saying that even when you are beautiful and skinny and famous you can't get away from feeling insecure because they'll still make you feel bad about being different or famous.

Beware New York

This article on CNN is titled, “New York gubernatorial candidate apologized for remarks about gays.” The article is about the New York canadate Carl Paladino and how he had to apologize for a comment he made that offended the gay community. He is a republican who said that he didn’t want children “to be brainwashed into thinking that homosexuality is an equally valid or successful option.” His opponent obviously criticized this comment and is what made Paladino apologize for it afterwards. What bothers me is that Paladino is not sorry for saying that. His apology basically means he takes back what he said, but in reality he wouldn’t of said it if he didn’t mean those things. He isn’t an advocate for gay rights and if not, he needs to stand by that no matter what type of criticism he gets for it. The article later says that he said if he was “elected governor he will fight for the rights of all New Yorkers.” He is being hypocritical. If he doesn’t believe in same-sex relationships then he should stand by that decision and not make a fool out of himself. If I were a New Yorker, I definitely wouldn’t elect this guy.

http://www.cnn.com/2010/POLITICS/10/13/paladino.apology/index.html 

Replacements Analysis

This song's plot has very minimal things going on. The whole video is just staring at the stereo while the song is being played. There is one character who comes in but we can only see their legs, as the angle is being pointed down towards the stereo system. We see this character sit down and listen to the song on the couch while he puts his feet up. We also see him take a cigarette and smoke it. And then at the end he gets really angry for some reason and removes everything on top of the stereo and the music stops. The song doesn't really have a climax because the peak of the video is the end when he smashes it and the music stops which is the end of the music video. The video as a whole i think is trying to say that the band members or instruments or what they think about the song is irrelevant. All that matters is the music and nothing else. Its about sitting there with a cigarete (a symbol) in your mouth and enjoying the song while relaxing. I think its trying to say that there isn't really a larger picture or bigger meaning to the song but just simple the song is what it is and to enjoy it, not anaylize it-like im doing right now.

Prodigy Analysis

This video is crazy. The plot of the video is about an ambigious person going about their nightly routine of getting up, drinking and going out to a bar. The setting begins with their house and bathroom and goes on to a few different bars and stripper clubs, and ends back at their house in the bedroom. The entire video is in the point of few of this character. We cannot see them but we can only see what they see. We are in their head the entire time. When the character begins to be extremly intoxicated, we as the viewer also feel intoxicated because we cannot see straight. Our view becomes skewed and everything is blurry. The only real character is the one's whos eyes we are looking through. All the other characters are more backround characters, like the men and woman at the bar. The themes in the video are about sex, drugs and alcohol. The entire time we either see the presence of alchol or drugs and if not either of those, we see naked women or 2 people engaging in sexual acts. I think that the video as a whole comments on our stereotypes of these type of people. The entire video we are watching this person get drunk, vomit everyone, become ridiculously intoxicated and have sex with a prositiute. Because of all these actions, the viewer automatically assumes that the character who's eyes we've been livnig through the entire video is presumably a male. But, in the end of the video the directed throws us a curveball and as we see this persons reflection in the mirror, we realize the person who we thought was a man was actually a woman. We automatically related all the types of behaviors that were portrayed with the acts of a guy. The woman who were yelling were screaming "asshole" and we just assumed that the person they were yelling at was a guy. After we figure out it was a girl all along, we have to rethink our assumtions and how we stereotype these behaviors and didn't even think for a moment that the person could be a girl. The song itself would be considered some time of electronic/techno musics. The entire song has barely any lyrics, and the only lyrics it does say are it's title which is "smack my bitch up." Even the title is confusing because it leads us on the track of believing this is a guy who's talking about his girl or about a girl, but we fell into their trap by not considering the gender of the main character at all. The video is very graphic in every way: violence, sex, drugs, alcohol, nudity. It condusive to the message of the song which is commenting on how we put assumptions to everything without thinking twice about it.

Angels or Sluts?

This advertisement is for the Victoria’s Secret heavenly perfume. The ad is of a blonde Victoria’s Secret model that is completely naked. She is wearing nothing but a white angels wing. The woman is holding her hands over her breasts and kneeling down so that her vagina isn’t being shown. She is in a very sexual pose and her facial expressions are very seductive and sexual. The advertisement is aimed towards woman because it is a woman’s scent but the ad seems to be getting the male’s attention. This ad was also found in a gossip magazine, which isn’t usually going to be read by men. The ad is contradicting in this way because what it’s selling physically is for females, but what its selling in the sexual way is for men. The ad is telling women that if you wear this perfume then you will look as beautiful as the model in the photograph. It is misleading because obviously wearing a certain scent cannot change your outer appearance. The ad is also telling woman that you can be sexual but still be considered an angel. The angel wings she is wearing add a certain sense of innocence to her image, even though she is in such a seductive pose. 

In class outline

Outline

Title: Elite Colleges, or Colleges for the Elite?

I.                    Introduction

a.       Hook:  Today’s populist moment allows for an opportune time to examine high education’s biggest affirmative action program, for the children of alumni.

b.      Backround Infortmation:  Legacys affect larger numbers of students than the number of minority students

c.       Thesis: Alumni prefrences should be banned

                                                               i.      “Unlike the issue of racial prefrences, advantages for alumni children- who are overwhelmingly white and weathly-  have been the subject of little scholarship, no state voter initiates and no Supreme Court decisions.”

II.                  Point #1: Unfair advantage: How being an alumni gives you a greater  chance of getting into a college.

a.       Being a child of an alumnus adds the equivalent of 160 SAT points to one’s applicationàincreases chance of admission by 20%

b.      Legacies make up 10-25% of student body

III.                Point #2: Unsupported justification for the program

a.       Accepting more alumni will sustain tradition and increase donations

                                                               i.      7 universites that dropped legacy prefrences, the alumni kept donating

IV.                Point #3: Legal Action

a.       The issue of legacy prefrences haven’t been properly litigated, could be illegal

b.      Violates the equal protection clause of the 14^th Amendment

c.       Also may violate the 1866 Civil rights Act

d.      Controversial policies

                                                               i.      Anti-discrimination: can’t classify by ancestry

                                                             ii.      Anti-subordination: must address a brutal history of discrimination

V.                  Conclusion  

a.       Greater Meaning: Confress should outlaw almni prefrences at all universities and colleges receiving federal financing

Music Thesis Statement Revision

Lady Gaga's Bad Romance challenges the stereotypical conventions of a love song to propagate this new ideal of love for a new generation through her reasoning of love within her lyrics, the upbeat and fast tempo of the song, and the happy mood it inspires.

 

 

Music Thesis Statement

Lady Gaga challenges the stereotypical conventions of a love song in Bad Romance through her reasoning of love within her lyrics, the upbeat and fast tempo of the song, and the happy mood it inspires.