Wednesday, April 14, 2010
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This is our space for posting (1) any further thoughts left over from lecture/section conversations, and (2) what we notice about adaptations and "cultural borrowings." Until we can enable everyone as an "author" on the blog, you can only post comments (and we can try to group them into logical clusters if it gets too cumbersome).
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Sirens Make Frog
ReplyDeleteHi, I can't figure out how to not post as a comment, but here you go.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ODlmEjZ8UFA
-Reilly Nelson
I've noticed that modern adaptations often use technology as the primary adapting tool. For example, in the recently released versions of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Alice and Wonderland, the visual effects of film were emphasized. In these instances the adaptation signifies a different time period because the main difference between original and adapted work is a form of technology that could not have existed during the age of technicolor and simplistic animation. Through technology, modern adaptation addresses temporality to differentiate between two versions of a story.
ReplyDeleteIn a scene from the TV movie Band of Brothers, the soldiers can be heard singing a revised version of "The Battle Hymn of the Republic." The entire song as Easy Company, the featured WWII paratrooper company in the Stephen E. Ambrose book and the movie, knows it can be found at: www.menofeasycompany.com/home/index.php?page_id=152
ReplyDeleteWritten by an unknown author or authors, "Blood on the Risers" is not their forefathers' optimistic, pious battle hymn. The paratroopers' anthem describes in detail all of the ways a parachutist's equipment can fail him, using as much specialized parachute technology, including "risers," as the author could fit into the stanzas. It then describes a young soldier dying a painful, graphic death.
"Blood on the Risers," then, is an accounting of all of a paratrooper's worst nightmares. However, the chorus goes: "Gory, gory, what a helluva way to die (x3)/ He ain't gonna jump no more." While singing directly about their fear and grief, this song allowed them to make fun of their the same feelings so as not to be debilitated by them. The words of their forefathers' battle hymn were not relevant to the WWII soldiers, but the rousing melody survived to serve another generation's survival needs.
I don't know if I can leave the adaptation on this post or what but I thought we were supposed to find adaptations or allusions that have to do with things we've already discussed in class? If so I found this link about an allusion to uncle tom's cabin in the book Fahrenheit 451...
ReplyDeletehttp://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20090517161546AAXkvMo
I don't know if this is the right place to post discussion questions for section, but I had a question on the Werner Sollors reading. Would the implementation of a "english plus" policy really have a significant affect on the economy and of society? How would implementing a multitude of languages be a benefit? And who is to say which languages are to included in this english plus policy?
ReplyDeleteI don't know about the effect of "English plus" on a society's economy, but I feel that being monolingual has divorced me from my family's culture. My first and only language is English. I was born in the Philippines, but my parents chose not to teach my siblings and me their dialects because they thought we would have a hard time learning English when we came to America, or that we would be made fun of at recess as the kids who couldn't speak English. I never thought much about it when I was a kid, but as I get older, I feel how weird it is to not speak the same first language as your parents. I have also felt like Filipino culture is a foreign culture; I identify far more closely with my white friends, yet I feel like I don't completely fit in with them, either. I cannot communicate with my huge extended family, including my one living grandparent, because I never learned how to speak their dialects.
ReplyDeleteIf I had grown up in a school system that, as Sollors proposes, promotes native languages, I could have learned Tagalog & etc. as a child, and, along with the language, an understanding of and appreciation for Filipino culture.
The better an individual knows who s/he is, the better s/he can participate in society.
I had a really good one, but my comp. screwed it up :( hopefully I can reconstruct it...
ReplyDeleteI was interested in the Chacon reading, and how -harping on a theme Prof. Gruesz has been bringing up -it complicates what we might traditionally conceive of as "American literature." The story itself seems decidedly ..."Old World?" with its preoccupations with social class and Catholic piety, as well as the duel-ready macho troubadour culture it presents, which, as Chacon makes us aware, seems to have been nurtured through the European Romantic literature tradition (Luciano is obsessed with Byron.) This notion is enacted in an interesting way by the mention of the wall originally erected to protect the town from arrow attacks. Something about the America outside
Once again I'm not sure this is the place to post and I don't see a new topic. But I was interested in the way that Lily thinks that she's alone because when she is fooled into going to Gus Trenor by herself she says she feels alone (117) and when she is at Gerty's after this event she says she feels alone (131), but then right after she finds out she won't inherit her aunts money say says that for the "first time" she feels alone (174). Then, when she gets back to her hotel she says that this is the "first time" she feels alone (177). After all these times that she's felt alone, how can she think that this is the "first time" she is feeling alone without us as readers thinking that Lily doesn't really understand herself very well? Maybe this relates to what Professor Gruesz was explaining to us in class about Lily seeing herself through certain metaphors and then being horrified by them later? Perhaps this is another instance in which we see that Lily is not sure of who she is or how she views the world?
ReplyDeleteRE: what Reilly wrote -
ReplyDeleteYeah, I agree -I think we're being made to question the extent to which Lily understands herself. Specifically, I've been thinking of Lily's sense of subjectivity in terms of W.E.B. DuBois'(contemporaneous, interestingly enough-Souls of Black Folks was published two years earlier) notion of double-conscious, that is, one's own understanding of self being mediated through/predicated upon how one is viewed by others -having to see and understand yourself through someone else's eyes,and reconcile that with how you view yourself, in other words. While DuBois was describing the experience of being african-american in an extremely racist society (of which many of the characters in HOM could very well be a part of)the notion of double-conscious nevertheless seems to speak (to a certain extent) to Lily's condition of objectification, having to take into account how others view her outward appearance/gestures to such an extent that she seems only able to understand herself as existing in regards to her social circle's perception of her. I'm specifically thinking of an episode on p.131, where Lily articulates her anxiety over how she is viewed by others to Miss Farish: "Can you imagine looking into your glass some morning and seeing a disfigurement-some hideous change that has come to you while you slept?" The crux of this fear seems to be the social eye's perception off her (following this hypothetical sexual exploitation at the hands of Mr.Trenor, unless I'm horribly misinterpreting this) encroaching on her own perception of herself (i.e. her face in the mirror.)
I agree on how Lily is not sure of who is and how she views the world. I think she doesn't know who she really is because she lets money and the desire for upper-class to drive her life instead of her own desires. She cannot make her own decisions which ultimately will destroy her. Also, the topic of feeling alone has to do with how much wealth she has. When she has no money or no one to provide her with money, she doesn't feel secure about herself because she isn't part of high society, and in turn she feels left out and alone.
ReplyDelete