twenty 4

Reflection

The past short week in class, we were finishing the presentations of the tragic hero posters and were slightly introduced to Dante's Inferno. My group presented on Tuesday this week, which I was nervous for. I actually ended up feeling good about our presentation and the points we made. My piece of presentation was the hubris and hamartia of John Dillinger in the movie Public Enemies. I feel as though I really understood my piece and presented it well, I really took a lot of time to look into it. Simone wasn't there to present her part, so there was a bit of a gap in the unity and understanding of it.

I really liked some of the posters and presentations this week. I have been meaning to see the movie "Seven", which was one of the groups. I loved their poster with the pictures on the paper clips. The blood dripping from their letters looked really realistic. The plot of the movie sounded really cool, I really want to see this film now. The introduction to Dante's Inferno was a little confusing, but the concept was very interesting. Religion and ideas like heaven and hell are very interesting to me. I don't really believe in either, but I'm interested in all religions.

Hell

Hell would be a place that you were always in constant discomfort and without happiness. It would we full of ignorant, arrogant people with no concept of respect. You can't escape hell, if you ever deserved to be there, you should stay there forever. I don't believe in heaven or hell, I believe when you die you're dead and there is nothing more. But of course I could be wrong, and in that case, most people deserve to be in hell, in my opinion.

1. What do you have to do to get into your hell? To be in my hell you would have to be ignorant.(Either in general, or specifically like racist, sexist, agist, ext.) It is a quality I cannot stand, especially when mixed with arrogance, and a triple threat when both are accompanied by apathy. I know too many people who think they are better than all people around them, who constantly put people down and make fun of them without knowing anything about them or about life. These people would be in my hell so fast, and not come out. Things like abuse or rape would easily get you into my hell; harming animals at all or people for the wrong reasons, especially if you do these things without caring or to feel powerful (arrogance). The other worst thing is lying. You will be in my hell so fast being a liar.
2. Punishments of hell would be the loss of happiness. If you could take away someone's happiness without even caring at all, you are sick and don't deserve happiness yourself. If you inflict yourself in someone else's life for the worse, especially without knowing anything about them, you deserve the worst of punishment. You should have the same things happen to you that you have done wrong.
3. It is hard to say what my hell would look like. It would make most sense for it to fit each person to be a place of discomfort. If it were to be discomforting to me, it would be cold and windy, with irritating sunlight. Not the cold you can enjoy, like when you're skiing or it's dark and beautiful and snowing or raining. None of these luxuries. It would always be dirty and unorganized. The worst commercials will constantly be playing really loud, like that Snickers on with Robin Williams, and the awful Greatness Awaits Playstation one.
4. No one can escape hell. If you ever deserved to be there, you don't get to come back. If you would be released, you would somehow go back to your old ways. That's just the way I think people are. Maybe I'm wrong, but these are my experiences. Letting people out of hell would just fuel their arrogance.
5. A symbol of my hell might be the sun. It seems nice but you get to know it better and it burns you. Maybe a little, maybe enough to get skin disease or cancer. The sun can be the worst most uncomfortable weather. It hurts your body in so many ways, but we think we need to be in it. People are like this too.
6. A lot of people I know would be in my hell, unfortunately. I guess I don't have a ton of good people surrounding me. As I said before, people with qualities like ignorance, apathy, and arrogance. These qualities are found as a triple threat in a lot of the worst people. Once you add lying to this list, how could it be worse? I won't give specific examples.

robbin williams commercial

One of the worst qualities a person can have

Playstation Greatness Awaits commercial

Lying

Hard Work & Dedication

This week has been a little crazy. Working on our poster didn't go as smoothly as I had hoped, and last minute changes had to be made, which made me a little anxious. We finally finished on the last day with seconds before the bell rang. I think the poster actually turned out really well, there's really deep analytical components to it and the presentation looks really good. I'm excited to present because the movie shows really good examples of all components of Aristotelian tragedy and looks amazing. My favorite part of our poster is the money falling out of the money bag. The hundred dollar bills get more and more burned as the go along, until its crumbs and pieces of blackened money. I also really like how the tragic hero's name, John Dillinger, is moge-poged in one hundred dollar bills and is falling down as well.

The posters that have been presented have been really cool. My favorite was definitely the one for Seven Pounds. The poster was beautiful, and the movie is so sad and perfect for a tragic hero. The present on their poster were really cool, representing the organs he gave away, and how the ribbon got darker and darker until it was the black present, his heart. I also loved the jellyfish on their poster, it looked real and added a lot of emotion to the poster, for it being his cause of death. I also really liked the poster for the Great Gatsby. The gold designs on the tops looked so cool, as did the way Gatsby was written in tin foil in the cool letters. The daisies on the poster that got more and more tattered and destroyed were sad and beautiful.

Sinking Ship

This past week in class has been a struggle for me personally. Missing class on Tuesday was hard because I missed the Titanic tragic hero video, and felt like I missed out on a lot that would have helped me to plan for my essay and the poster. My group spent all of this week planning our poster. I think we're having a hard time coming up with the right ideas. I'm not sure if the rest of my group feels the same way, but I really want our poster to look amazing. I hope it will come together beautifully, the way we plan. It's been hard to plan or get anything done when someone from out group was gone everyday. I've definitely been feeling the stress. However, I do feel better now that I have gone ahead and bought some materials and things for our poster and started the first stages of my essay.

This week I also watched the movie for our poster, Public Enemies. I'm not sure if I like the film, it's very dark and heavy. There is so much violence and blood, and so many guns. If you can see past this surface, I think there is a really emotional side to this movie. My feelings for the main character, John Dillinger, are really conflicted. He is a criminal, a bank robber and has killed people. But Dillinger is so hurt, so broken underneath the surface. He is self-absorbed, but underneath it all, he doesn't love himself. He might even loath himself. If he truly loved himself, he would not be so careless, almost like he wanted to get caught.

Oedipus Rex Research

Sophocles
Sophocles was a celebrated ancient greek tragedian who lived to be 90 years old (496 BC- 406BC). He wrote 123 plays in lifetime, but is best known for only a few, especially Oedipus Rex. He competed in around 30 dramatic competitions in Athens, believed to have won 24, and was never judged lower than second place. He is also well known for his works Antigone, Oedipus at Colonus, Philocetes, The Women of Trachis, Electra, and Ajax. 

Oedipus Rex (man)
Oedipus was the greek king of Thebes. His name means "swollen foot" because of the legend of his birth parents nailing his feet together. He is the king of Thebes who unknowingly married his mother, Jocasta, and killed his father. This causes disaster in his city. All of this is his prophecy which he is expected by gods to fulfill. 

Oedipus Rex (play)

The play of Oedipus Rex is a famous Greek tragedy written by Sophocles. The play premiered in 429 BCE. The premiere was in the Theatre of Dionysus in Athens. It was originally written in the language of Classical Greek. It was apart of the Theben Series written by Sophocles. 

Oedipus Rex (myth)

The myth of Oedipus Rex was well known. Much of what is considered the myth itself takes place before the opening scene of the play. The myth of Oedipus says that Oedipus was born the son of Jocasta and Laius, queen and king of Thebes. The Oracle of Apollo consulted with them and told Laius that any son of his would kill him. When Jocasta had a son, Oedipus, they pierced his feet together and sent him away. He later returns to continue his myth and marry his mother.

Aristotle

Aristotle was a Greek philosopher born in Stagirus in 384 BCE. His father, Nicomachus, died when Aristotle was a child and he lived under a guardian's care. When he was 18 he joined Plato's Academy in Athens and remained there until he was 37. His writings cover many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, linguistics, politics, government, ethics, biology, and zoology.

Aristotelian Tragedy

According to Aristotle, reversal of fortune must be caused by the tragic hero's hamartia, which is often mistranslated as a character flaw, but is more correctly translated as a mistake (since the original Greek etymology traces back to hamartanein, a sporting term that refers to an archer or spear-thrower missing his target). According to Aristotle, "The change to badfortune which he undergoes is not due to any moral defect or flaw, but a mistake of some kind." The reversal is the inevitable but unforeseen result of some action taken by the hero. It is also a misconception that this reversal can be brought about by a higher power (the law, the gods, fate, or society), but if a character’s downfall is brought about by an external cause, Aristotle describes this as a misadventure and not a tragedy.

Hubris    

Aristotle described hubris as shaming the victim. It is not revenge or injuring the person because of some past, and it is not because of anything that happened to the person. Hubris is the shaming of a person for the injurer's arrogance and satisfaction. People think that by ill-treating another, it makes them more superior. 

Greek Theatre

Greek theatre was an important part of entertainment and society ancient Greece. The prestigious theaters in Athens would be visited by the wealthy of Greece to view plays of famous playwrights, like Sophocles. Types of greek theatre include tragedy, drama, comedy, etc. 

Dramatic Irony

Dramatic irony is the type of irony is the device of giving the audience an item of information that at least one of the characters in the narrative is unaware of (at least consciously), thus placing the spectator a step ahead of at least one of the characters. An example of dramatic irony is Romeo and Juliet (picture at left), in which Juliet does not know that Romeo is not dead, but the audience does. 

Teiresias

In Greek mythology, Tiresias, or Teiresias was a blind prophet of Thebes, famous for being transformed into a woman for seven years. He was the son of the shepherd Everes, and the nymph Chariclo. Tiresias participated fully in seven generations at Thebes, beginning as advisor to Cadmus himself.

Fate

Traditional usage defines fate as a power or agency that predetermines and orders the course of events. Fate defines events as ordered or "inevitable" and unavoidable. Classical and European mythology features three goddesses dispensing fate, known as Moiraiin Greek mythology, as Parcae in Roman mythology, and as Norns in Norse mythology. 

blessing

The documentary Baraka exhibits important aspects of first semester.  The most prevalent is the idea of compassion and how it is felt through the arts (literature, film, etc.). Such as seeing the images relating to the Holocaust and genocide of Kuwait. My own personal heartache came from the burning of the baby chicks' beaks, and how you could see the pain in their face. I was overwhelmed with that same feeling of compassion, and wanting to change it. This idea is heavily what first semester and our final essay was focused on.  The wonderment  referred to by Brussat was seen in many images as well. The Balinese tribe doing their dance and the African tribe with their jewelry included in their rituals was beautiful to observe. It was amazing to see that sacred ritual take place, evoking the feeling of wonderment and curiosity for myself.

I found certain images more impactful and memorable. The baby chicks at the egg factory being thrown, sorted, burned, etc., were very powerful. They make one realize how much our society turns a blind eye to the truly horrible things that take place every day. Other moving images were those of the abandoned concentration camps of the Holocaust and genocide of Kuwait. It made me realize I had almost no knowledge of the genocide in Kuwait, which was saddening and powerful. The piles of bones and skulls still sitting there was the most moving. Other images not mentioned by Brussat that were very impactful to me were those such as the monkey in the spring near the beginning of the film. The zoom into his serene, relaxed face showed his resemblance to a laid-back man. The monkey was enjoying himself and the nature that surrounds us, something modern humanity lacks. The old temple or ruins with trees and vegetation growing through them made an impact as well. It was nature taking itself back, growing roots and trees directly through the old ruins. Some might have looked at this image as beautiful, to me it is sad and also powerful that the earth is trying to recover.