I waited until after watching the movie of "A wrinkle in Time" to blog. I had an idea somewhere in the back of my mind that it couldn't be as bad as everyone was making it out to be. Well, I was wrong in the most extreme sense. It was not only a terrible movie, but it ranked with Napoleon Dynamite as being one of the most meaningless, annoying and poorly done movies of all time.
There were several annoyances that made the movie much worse than it had to be. It they cut the time it took the children and "ladies" to "tesser" the movie time would have been shortened by what felt like a half. With many of the characters (Aunt Beast, Mrs. Whatsit as a seraph), they tried to come as close as possible to the creatures described in the book. However, this simply made to movie weird. The characters turned out to be revoltingly ugly and unbelievable. If they had just made Mrs. Whatsit a centaur instead (with wings of course) it would have been much more aesthetically pleasing and the majesty of the animals described in the book much more apparent.
Far from trying to stay close to the book in the dialogue area, the movie strayed dreadfully. What was probably most damaging to the movie was the fact that they removed all religious content and this defeats the purpose of the book. There is no more interplay between religion and science, no more subtle and clever allusions. There is absolutely nothing to talk about because there really is no hidden, deeper meaning. It is simply a story about a girl, whose brother is really smart, and some boy who no one really knows why he is there, and a father who got lost. Really the only "lesson" left to learn is that it is good to love.
This was a disappointing adaptation and should be banned.
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
Tuesday, June 15, 2010
Slippery Vocabulary
The discussion in class today was somewhat unsettling today. It was the use of the word "clone" that made me have a somewhat sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. While reading the book "Never Let Me Go" by Kazuo Ishiguro, the word "student" left no jarring after thought, and no feeling of unknown. Even when the clones are experiencing something completely unknown to you, you do not feel that they are horrible or unnatural, but simply someone living differently than you do. The use of the word clone in our discussions today produced a completely different result.
"Clone" is used twice in the whole book and never refers to a student directly. By calling them students, Ishiguro normalizes them and makes it easier for us as readers to process. He makes it a less jarring read, but perhaps this is the intent. By normalizing the clones, he makes it easier for us to accept them, and believe that they are real and this is what is happening to them. He does so in such a way however that we do not realize what is really happening to them until it is too late and we feel that neither they nor we have done a proper job in fighting off this terrible and heart-wrenching ending.
Perhaps this is what the world does to us as a society. Slipping morals are made to seem normal and we never look deeper to see what the real or far reaching consequences of our actions are. Scientific advances are made to look like only that: an advance that will help society. If you stand in the way of this march you are in the way of human betterment and elimination of suffering. If you oppose any forward movement in science, even if only for some time to think, you become a monster, alienated and persecuted by humanity. On the surface this, like the advances may seem true. However, what will our society look like in only a few decades if someone does not stem the flow temporarily to consider and provided for the ethical consequences of these advances? Who will be given the authority to say "this is too far"? Is this even a possibility in a world who's ethical laws lag behind in an ever increasing gap?
Ishiguro's novel introduces all these an innumerable other questions so subtly and yet so glaringly that it is impossible for it to be an accidental conincidence. Authors such as these provide us a glimpse of what our world would look like if we let our world and society progress into a world with no morals or considerations that run any deeper than self.
"Clone" is used twice in the whole book and never refers to a student directly. By calling them students, Ishiguro normalizes them and makes it easier for us as readers to process. He makes it a less jarring read, but perhaps this is the intent. By normalizing the clones, he makes it easier for us to accept them, and believe that they are real and this is what is happening to them. He does so in such a way however that we do not realize what is really happening to them until it is too late and we feel that neither they nor we have done a proper job in fighting off this terrible and heart-wrenching ending.
Perhaps this is what the world does to us as a society. Slipping morals are made to seem normal and we never look deeper to see what the real or far reaching consequences of our actions are. Scientific advances are made to look like only that: an advance that will help society. If you stand in the way of this march you are in the way of human betterment and elimination of suffering. If you oppose any forward movement in science, even if only for some time to think, you become a monster, alienated and persecuted by humanity. On the surface this, like the advances may seem true. However, what will our society look like in only a few decades if someone does not stem the flow temporarily to consider and provided for the ethical consequences of these advances? Who will be given the authority to say "this is too far"? Is this even a possibility in a world who's ethical laws lag behind in an ever increasing gap?
Ishiguro's novel introduces all these an innumerable other questions so subtly and yet so glaringly that it is impossible for it to be an accidental conincidence. Authors such as these provide us a glimpse of what our world would look like if we let our world and society progress into a world with no morals or considerations that run any deeper than self.
Tuesday, June 8, 2010
Impossible to let go
The title of the novel "Never let me go" is perhaps the best and most accurate description and summary of the book itself it is possible to compose. Because the book is told by a narrator looking back over her life, this feeling of never letting go is very prominent. Over and over the narrator gives beautiful, meaningful and in depth account of scenes from her life. I novel gives the feeling of a well refined thought process, like Kathy has thought over her life a million times and narrowed the memories and remembered perfectly all the important things. Even when remembering should be unpleasant, she not only does so, but lives never letting go of her initial impressions.
There are several scenes in the novel which illustrate Kathy's inability to move on or create a new life or even idea of life. After she learns from Miss Emily what Hailsham really was and what the gallery was really supposed to mean, she seems to take it all in stride. She is not much disturbed. She seems to be content with the way her life has turned out. Even though she knows that all she worked for was a waste and she has been lied to all her life, she accepts it and continues to live as though it mattered. She does not respond to the information given her. She continues to hold on to her importance as a carer and as a donor in the future.
In a way, Hailsham has completely succeeded in what is was set up to do. The students (all except apparently Tommy) accept that they are different from non-cloned humans. They accept without a struggle that they will be butchered in their prime and their organs given to a shadowy stranger. In another way however Hailsham has failed completely. In one part during her meeting with Tommy and Kathy, Miss Emily praises them for the adults they have become "Look at you both now! You've had good lives, you're educated and cultured." Again there is irony when she says "...we demonstrated to the world that if students were reared in humane, cultivated environments, it was possible for them to grow to be as sensitive and intelligent as any ordinary human being". Are these "students" really well adjusted and as human as they could be? It is normal not to fight for your own life? Is it normal to accept and willingly go to your death at such a young age? Tommy certainly displays some rebellion, but it is momentary and soon buried. Kathy on the other hand, even when she knows at least part of the truth from Miss Emily has no desire to rebel and claim her life as her own. She has no desire to dig deeper, no desire to fight for herself or anyone else.
Kathy is never able to let go of the illusion created for her in her childhood at Hailsham. She accepts as unchangeable fact everything the guardians tell her. Even after she has watched all those she loved die, she is never angry. She mourns quietly but never rebelliously. She never realized that just as all the lies and half-truths she had been told as a child piled up and made her life just like the barbed wire fence at the end. All the lies collected and multiplied. The truth in the end was just another piece of garbage. Instead of washing away the lies, it just added to the pile and therefore wasn't really noticed or dealt with.
There are several scenes in the novel which illustrate Kathy's inability to move on or create a new life or even idea of life. After she learns from Miss Emily what Hailsham really was and what the gallery was really supposed to mean, she seems to take it all in stride. She is not much disturbed. She seems to be content with the way her life has turned out. Even though she knows that all she worked for was a waste and she has been lied to all her life, she accepts it and continues to live as though it mattered. She does not respond to the information given her. She continues to hold on to her importance as a carer and as a donor in the future.
In a way, Hailsham has completely succeeded in what is was set up to do. The students (all except apparently Tommy) accept that they are different from non-cloned humans. They accept without a struggle that they will be butchered in their prime and their organs given to a shadowy stranger. In another way however Hailsham has failed completely. In one part during her meeting with Tommy and Kathy, Miss Emily praises them for the adults they have become "Look at you both now! You've had good lives, you're educated and cultured." Again there is irony when she says "...we demonstrated to the world that if students were reared in humane, cultivated environments, it was possible for them to grow to be as sensitive and intelligent as any ordinary human being". Are these "students" really well adjusted and as human as they could be? It is normal not to fight for your own life? Is it normal to accept and willingly go to your death at such a young age? Tommy certainly displays some rebellion, but it is momentary and soon buried. Kathy on the other hand, even when she knows at least part of the truth from Miss Emily has no desire to rebel and claim her life as her own. She has no desire to dig deeper, no desire to fight for herself or anyone else.
Kathy is never able to let go of the illusion created for her in her childhood at Hailsham. She accepts as unchangeable fact everything the guardians tell her. Even after she has watched all those she loved die, she is never angry. She mourns quietly but never rebelliously. She never realized that just as all the lies and half-truths she had been told as a child piled up and made her life just like the barbed wire fence at the end. All the lies collected and multiplied. The truth in the end was just another piece of garbage. Instead of washing away the lies, it just added to the pile and therefore wasn't really noticed or dealt with.
Tuesday, June 1, 2010
Nights vs Geeks
Out of the two novels we have read so far, Angela Carter's book was a more fulfilling read and said more than "Geek Love"could ever dream of. Carter wove her storylines perfectly winding them to tell so many different stories within the story of Fevvers and Walser. Feminism, consumption, American domination, oppression, and marriage are just a few of the subjects the book dives into.
I have been thinking about why "Nights at the Circus"was such a more enjoyable read. I think it is because it kept you guessing all the time. After reading "Geek Love"I was not expecting the happy and boisterous ending we are given in "Nights at the Circus". Every switch in voice and scene was important because it introduced a new theory and though of Carter's. She used the story to give her own opinions and in some places in the book it is almost as if she forgets this.
Another thing that was surprising and held the reader even tighter was simply the way in which Fevvers spoke and the language she uses. At the beginning of the book when she is explaining how she was born and raised in a whore house so of the language is so eloquent even it leads you to question even further "is she fact or fiction". For example when Lizzie, who raised Fevvers and apparently worked in a whore house for most of her life says,
"Oh, that Toussaint!" said Lizzie. "How he can move a crowd! Such eloquence, the man has! Oh, if all those with such things to say had mouths! And yet it is the lot of those who toil and suffer to be dumb. But, consider the dialectic of it, sir, ' she continued with freshly crackling vigour, 'how it was, as it were, the white hand of the oppressor who carved open the aperture of speech in the very throat you could say that it had, in the first place rendered dumb, and-''
Nights and the Circus pg 67.
I have been thinking about why "Nights at the Circus"was such a more enjoyable read. I think it is because it kept you guessing all the time. After reading "Geek Love"I was not expecting the happy and boisterous ending we are given in "Nights at the Circus". Every switch in voice and scene was important because it introduced a new theory and though of Carter's. She used the story to give her own opinions and in some places in the book it is almost as if she forgets this.
Another thing that was surprising and held the reader even tighter was simply the way in which Fevvers spoke and the language she uses. At the beginning of the book when she is explaining how she was born and raised in a whore house so of the language is so eloquent even it leads you to question even further "is she fact or fiction". For example when Lizzie, who raised Fevvers and apparently worked in a whore house for most of her life says,
"Oh, that Toussaint!" said Lizzie. "How he can move a crowd! Such eloquence, the man has! Oh, if all those with such things to say had mouths! And yet it is the lot of those who toil and suffer to be dumb. But, consider the dialectic of it, sir, ' she continued with freshly crackling vigour, 'how it was, as it were, the white hand of the oppressor who carved open the aperture of speech in the very throat you could say that it had, in the first place rendered dumb, and-''
Nights and the Circus pg 67.
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
Birds, Forxes, Man and God
"Al always laughed at stuck houses. He hauled out his only bit of scripture to deal with houses. "The birds of the air have their nests, " he would announce as though it were a nursery rhyme, "the foxes of the ground have their holes." And he would raise one finger and jut his eyebrows forward in his teaching way, "But the son of man hath nowhere to rest his head"" (Geek Love, pg.320)
This quote in the book comes from Matthew 8:20. Al is quoting here the words of Christ. The "son of man" should actually be written "Son of Man" because Jesus is referring to Himself. In many ways, Al, perhaps without realizing it believes himself to be a god. He may not be aware of how much he is "playing God" just as he is saying the words of the verse, but is interpreting the meaning incorrectly. In this verse, Christ is explaining to a would-be follower that the road of Christ is not an easy one filled with comfort and pleasure, but is instead a hard and trying journey.
Al takes full credit for creating his children the way they are with their survival and provision ensured simply by being themselves. His use of this verse may be a foreshadowing of the disaster to come. Al's children will never have a place to rest their heads. They will never feel safe or at peace anywhere. Even within the confines of the traveling circus the rivalry and fear created within and between the siblings leaves them all without security. The betrayal and manipulation practiced by all of the siblings, especially Arty, will eventually destroy the family and all they worked for from the inside out.
As for the "outside world" Oly alone experiences, she says it best. "I hadn't understood before that anything about me needed explaining. Its all very well to read about houses, and to see the houses from the road and to tell yourself , That's where folks live. But its another thing entirely to walk inside and stand there." (Geek Love pg. 320)
This quote in the book comes from Matthew 8:20. Al is quoting here the words of Christ. The "son of man" should actually be written "Son of Man" because Jesus is referring to Himself. In many ways, Al, perhaps without realizing it believes himself to be a god. He may not be aware of how much he is "playing God" just as he is saying the words of the verse, but is interpreting the meaning incorrectly. In this verse, Christ is explaining to a would-be follower that the road of Christ is not an easy one filled with comfort and pleasure, but is instead a hard and trying journey.
Al takes full credit for creating his children the way they are with their survival and provision ensured simply by being themselves. His use of this verse may be a foreshadowing of the disaster to come. Al's children will never have a place to rest their heads. They will never feel safe or at peace anywhere. Even within the confines of the traveling circus the rivalry and fear created within and between the siblings leaves them all without security. The betrayal and manipulation practiced by all of the siblings, especially Arty, will eventually destroy the family and all they worked for from the inside out.
As for the "outside world" Oly alone experiences, she says it best. "I hadn't understood before that anything about me needed explaining. Its all very well to read about houses, and to see the houses from the road and to tell yourself , That's where folks live. But its another thing entirely to walk inside and stand there." (Geek Love pg. 320)
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