After an intense wait, and not hearing from our group mate Tish
until just a few minutes before the official start of our exam period, we
finally got the relief of seeing our magazine for the first time that morning.
It was well past 1 o'clock at this point, and all other presentations were
coming to a close with everyone seemingly anxious to see us present so they
could start their vacation. It was an unbelievable morning for me to say the
least, and while I quite literally can’t recall myself ever being caught in
such a clench of a situation during the whole of my academic career, things
worked out quite ok at the end.
Our classmates did a great job presenting the
material associated with their magazine, and it was obvious that all of us were
familiar with our end product and content to an extent that required almost no
notes or cues. It really was nice to see everyone maintaining such a high level
of eye contact and commitment to their presentations. While some last minute
realizations on the missing of some of my content in the final magazine led us
to make some quick improvisations on our presentation, we managed to coordinate
the use of pc and projection stand effectively. I have to say though that when I
realized my creative element was nowhere to be found in the magazine, I did
start to panic, which left me feeling quite guilty as Ms Newsam had to remind
us to remain quiet and attentive during the presentations of others. After all of us had gone on to present, I felt
that the class concluded on a very positive note, which probably had much to do
with Ms Newsam’s joyful announcement that she was indeed pregnant. I for one
had not considered that to possibly be the reason for her absences at all , but
we all know us men can be very oblivious to these types of things, as many of
my classmates had been expecting this for some time it seemed.
I’m glad to see
how things turned out, happy with my progress though out this class, and definitely
happy for Ms Newsam. With the fifteenth of December, our English 102 class has
ended, and I can honestly say that while it was my hardest class this semester,
it was also one of my most enlightening, a combination that often goes together
in life.
Today marks the day of our final magazine presentation, and our complete magazine is due and to be handed in today at noon. The way this day was supposed to go was that I and my two team members, Amber and Tish where to meet up and review our project one last time, possibly discussing our presentation and making sure everything is in order. All of this was supposed to start this morning at 9:30, yet I find myself sitting here with Amber, at 11:20am, waiting for Tish who has our project. She however has not responded to any phone calls, messages, emails and face book comments at all today. Amber and I are in a situation of absolute disbelief, we're sitting here literally without option, we have no project to hand in or present, we have nothing without Tish showing up, and that is driving me insane just thinking about the idea that I will surely fail this course without completing this project. I don’t want to make any assumptions on where Tish might be, I really hope she has some kind of valid excuse for not answering any of our calls or messages. To leave your team members hanging for a final project of this weight, and leaving them without any hint as to where you might be, or what might have happened that you cannot respond is something I could never in my life do. I have honestly never been faced with a situation like this in my entire educational career, and right now it seems as though I will not see a happy end in this dilemma, all the work for this could have been for nothing...
With meeting in the library until late into the night, and
working countless hours at home creating, shaping and finalizing texts and
images it seems that we are finally concluding the work on our magazine
project. We had gone though many different versions and considerations while
creating this project, and it seems that we have such a volume of visual and
textual media that we could create a few different versions of this magazine at
the moment. While the bulk of our text has been finalized to a point where we
have narrowed it down to its best so to speak, we find ourselves with 2
extremely nice cover pages as well as table of content designs, along with several
extra creative elements and ideas.
The only problem with such a nice accumulation
of media is that a team can be differing in their opinions on which to use, and
so while I would have liked to change a few of the designs we used, I do
realize that in a team effort there have to be sacrifices in the compiling of
information to a final product. After all the hard work on this project
however, I am quite proud of our finished magazine, and I look forward to
presenting it soon. My team mates Amber and Tish have definitely been helpful,
and both of them have been very committed to the project. Me and Amber
especially were able to correlate a lot on our work, and often ended up
emailing each other back and forth, drafting away at things like our creative
elements to generate something we would all agree was worthy of being in our
magazine.
While we still need to think about the presenting of our material, I
feel as though with a finished magazine we should have no problem finding 15
minutes worth of presentation in our content. With that our project has been
finalized, and we have just the final exam period on the 15th to worry about,
which will hopefully go as smooth as most of the progress on this magazine.
With that, i will leave with a sneak peak at one of our alternative designs for a table of contents, created by yours truly.
Class has been busy, and with the completing of our last major presentation
assignment, and just before the beginning of our magazine project, it seemed
like a good point to look back and see how this class has shaped up so far.
English 102 started out as a class of decent size, it soon started
shrinking, and after our first essay assignment, past October 9th which was our
last day to drop, the class had equalized its self with only a core of upper
class men remaining. Being a freshmen, I cannot deny that this was quite
intimidating for me, I was often left feeling like I’m not ready to handle such
a speaking and presentation oriented course at this point of my education.
Although I've always enjoyed debate, and consider myself somebody that is very
much in touch with today’s global issues, the individual part to this course,
like preparing effective high level presentations had me struggling. My first
essay left me very disappointed, as even though I worked considerably long on
writing it, it still never came together and felt incoherent to me. This was
also very apparent in my confidence when presenting my LRRH comparison. After
this project, I was confused and frustrated to an extent, as I felt that I just
was not able to produce quality work on this topic even though I worked much
longer on this presentation than usual. This left me motivated to do better
next time on one hand, but also intimidated, as the overall quality of
presentations given in class was very high from what I could tell, and
presenters like Joseph, Gwyn and Matt left me questioning myself in whether I
would ever be able to produce something with that level of quality and
thoughtfulness. Luckily I was not facing this trouble in my participation in
group discussion, the generally high level of education and understanding that
our whole class often displayed during our discussions was impressive and had
me very eager to join in on any topic at hand. This was my favorite part to
this class, the fact that we would be able to reach a very high level of
analytical and interpretational understanding of any given discussion, and
always left us short for time in our detailed perspectives of the topic. My
greatest achievements so far would have to be my gaining in confidence when it
comes to presentation skills, I feel that although I am far from perfect, I
managed to improve and now feel as though I can connect with an audience better
than before. I also feel that our rigorous attempts to uncover what lies
beneath any given subtlety has allowed me to be generally much more analytical
when it comes to televised and other forms of media, I constantly find myself
interpreting even the most undertone commercials and clips, something I really didn’t
do before taking this course.
With that said, although the course has not ended, and my grade is probably
far from what I would like it to be, I still feel a good sense of
accomplishment, and it’s easy for me to say that English 102 was by no means a
waste of my time, teaching me many new analytical and presentation concepts.
After our last day of presentations on tuesday, november 24, we were all done presenting our topics and a few trends were recognizable. Alot of us chose to work with the topic on gender shaping in young children, and this included myself.
Although the other topics seemed thoughtful and possible to research, it seems that the many discussions on disney movies and their role throughout the years in shaping young childrens imaginations led most of us to work with this topic. Although disney has changed their image alot over the last decade and has shown through movies like "Enchanted" that they are well aware of the stereotypes their movies used to make, the childrens movies we grew up with, such as cinderella, beauty and the beast and snow white all appear more and more controversial when we look at the imagery and plot today. Its clear that society has grown not just alot more tolerant towards all races and genders, but we have also uncovered and dealt with alot of stereotypes that have been around for a long time and have previously remained untouched. Through our accepting and dealing with these issues, it is obvious that our perceptions of racial and gender equality have not been so clear and recognized in the past, and have led previous generations to overlook these controversial aspects of disney movies, deeming them as appropriate for children. Would this be the same case today? Although these movies would most probably still make it through a ratings review without much of a problem, I would imagine that issues like unrealistic portrayal of female characters in movies such as Cinderella would be a topic that would be mentioned in a review or critique of the film.
Thus although we may not have become more dismissing and restrictive in what we watch, and choose to let children watch today, It seems that we have just grown to accept these stereotypes in entertainment media of the past, and have learned to appreciate these materials the way the were supposed to be appreciated at the time of their release, and not through the eyes of current media standarts regarding what we deem as good or bad. If this wasnt the case, many great works of art, like the classical disney movies would be discarded simply because of their inability to stay current with societies values as they shape and adjust in constant flux.
I thought Amber’s presentation on gender roles was interesting, and it was nice to see a different topic being presented as well. I thought her presentation was well researched and I liked the use of a handout to get our attention using a cartoon on an interesting gender role stereotype. While her argument was well organized and the presentation went by smoothly and with good support by the presenter, I felt that her thoughts on the male role in gender relations today seemed a bit off. I don’t personally feel as though men are negatively influenced by the prince charming ideal, today more than ever. While I’m not arguing that today’s men aren’t kind and respecting of women, it seems the idea that men are noticeably influenced in a negative way by fairy tale ideals in their every day lives and how they treat women seems far fetched to me. To me, the idea of incorporating a prince charming attitude into the way I treat and behave around women seems like a good idea, and is something I currently do. While its true that men should not be led to believe that they need to aid their woman in every step she takes to the point that she is left without much influence on her own life. I still think its good to have ones own interpretation of these values so that we can help our better half as much as we can in dealing with today’s stressful society. It’s about finding and interpreting the moral that the often vague prince charming character makes, lessons on a natural sort of kindness that men should have towards women, being generally helpful when we can, and understanding that we should put our woman first in our decision making.
I found Gwenn’s presentation very well researched and executed. She seemed very confident in her information and timing, and it was easily noticed how much effort went into her work. I especially liked her thoughtful ending, and the examples she gave on our modern-day prince charming. When we look at the powerful figures she presented us with, such as Donald trump and Hugh Heffner, its apparent just how powerful money is in today’s world. These men have such might in their respective industries that it seems quite normal to see them in the company of such polarizing and attractive company as Ivana or Melania Knauss-Trump. Is this only valid for men of such power though? It would seem that this is true for people with money and might in general, no matter what their gender may be. With that said I have to say that Gwenn seems exemplary in her presentation skills, I hope that I will gain that kind of dedication throughout my college experience.
I presented my research topic on Thursday, the 19th of November, and although a few people had already done my topic as well, I felt that I managed to add a few interesting facts as well. I started my presentation with a long and thorough introduction, so that I would have the rest of my time to present the various images of toys, costumes and decorations available for each gender. In doing so I managed to save a good bit of time to really cover my pictures and see what the class thought. It was nice to see that my presentation went a lot smoother than my LRRH comparison, that had me stuck in my notes and feeling very unprepared. Although I sacrificed eye contact this time, which is something I need to work on, I managed to organize my thoughts more efficiently and with the help of my 7 note cards was able to present a much more organized topic that left me feeling confident in my analysis. Although I wasn’t sure if the layout of my presentation would really work as I intended, with such a large chunk of information in the beginning.
After completing my first draft however, it looked as though it would suit the given time slot of 10-15 minutes well when I reviewed it, and so I took a bit of a risk and went with the format. I really wanted to mention my thoughts on the idea that so many of the toys, costumes, decoration and other merchandise is available simply due to advances in globalized production and the increased efficiency in large scale manufacturing, such as injection-molding and things like hydro forming for the plastic and metal industry respectively. This in my mind is largely the reason we see such intricate and complex toys and costumes as we saw in the presentations being sold for tolerable prices. This in no way means to say that this merchandise is cheap, I find it quite over-priced still actually… but I’m sure that these same toys and costumes would have been much more expensive to produce not too long ago. Although I skipped this thought in the concluding thoughts, I felt it would still make a fair addition to my journal.
With that i have our next presentation day to relax and watch the remainder of the class present on what I hope will be a day as interesting as the first few days have been. Over all I have to say that these presentations seemed generally better than the last ones we had, its nice to see all of us grow throughout the class, and hopefully it will leave us well prepared for our next assignment.
With watching “Mickey Mouse Monopoly,” it became very clear
to me just how many people have been negatively influenced by the racist
portrayals many Disney movies seem to make. Tales like Peter Pan seem quite
obvious in these notions, portraying the Native Americans extremely
stereotypically as the “red man,” where as other movies like Tarzan have a more
subtle message, that, while the viewer might not recognize as easily, is still
quite obvious when analyzed in further detail and one notices that the white
Tarzan seems to know the jungle better than its inhabitant dark natives.
Indeed, one finds many stereotypes on Blacks, Latinos and Asians in characters
from the Hainas in the Lion King to
the Siamese cats in Lady and the Tramp.
While these characteristics stand out once one analyzes the supposed racist
undertone some of these movies have, one has to wonder if we as viewers are
just over-analyzing this media, and how we can basically find these undertones
in almost anything we watch on TV or DVD these days. When one looks at this
picture from a flipped perspective, one can find many stereotypes on the white
race in these movies too, like the lost boys in Peter Pan appearing as overweight, rather helpless and possibly
even genetically incapable, hinting at the overweight American youth. It may
seem then, that no matter how Disney portrays race, we will find something
racist or stereotypical in it, no matter what the tale might be.
In this area,
Disney movies will always seem controversial, and its up to the viewer to
decide whether some of these movies are indeed suppose to portray a racist or
stereotypical image at the time they were made, or if some of these Disney
films were simply created at a time when what we perceive as offensive in them
today was not seen as biased or judgmental back then. At the core of this
question one has to wonder If the Disney Institution is as visionary and
revolutionary in their portrayal of race and culture as in their animation and
ability to entertain young and old alike.
Throughout our class and dealing with many Disney stories and aspects of the corporation, I kept having to think back to what I used to read as a child, one thing that always had me filled with anticipation as a child growing up in Germany was the magazine “Mickey Mouse,” this was a fun filled little magazine that came out every week and included a few stories with popular characters like Mickey mouse, Pluto and Donald duck, but also had a little explorer section and came with a little toy every week, sometimes relying on a few previous issues to complete a more complex toy. There was also a comic book that came out every month or so, with about a hundred pages of fresh Mickey Mouse and related character material.
While these were things I grew up with, I never really saw ether of these here in the US. Now that we have dealt with Disney so much throughout our course, and the many influences it has on American society, it left me curious as to how Disney represents its self differently in other countries. Through doing some research on the topic and wanting to find out who is responsible for the comics and magazines I had as a child in Europe I found a few publishers and media companies that are independent from the Disney we know in the US, and are primarily working to publish material In certain European countries. The Danish publisher “Egmont” is responsible for one of the largest Disney comic productions in the world. This company publishes magazines every week in many Nordic Countries, and exports much of its material to other countries as well. These independent publications first started appearing during the 1960’s, and clearly shows how Scandinavian countries actually much prefer Donald Duck over Mickey Mouse, with many tales centering around Donald as protagonist, and Mickey only making an appearance once in a while. In Germany, Mickey Mouse has been popular since the 1920’s, and although during WWII and while the Nazi government was in charge there were no comic books being published, after WWII this changed. Now a subsidiary company of the Danish publisher Egmont started producing the magazine I mentioned, Mickey Mouse. This magazine is still published today and is thus Germany’s longest running comic magazine. Ironically, although the magazine is called Mickey Mouse, it follows the same format of Danish magazines, as Like in Scandinavian countries, Donald Duck Is much more popular than Mickey Mouse in Germany, and most stories are based around his adventures.
In Conclusion, it is interesting to see how comic magazines and books based on Disney characters managed to flourish and become so popular in Europe, while the Nazi government imposed a great handicap to the German comic industry, it still did not keep Mickey Mouse from becoming Germany’s longest lasting comic publication.
Walt Disney and his company created what can only be
considered as a media empire, with huge amounts of influence on some of the
most crucial aspects of modern society, the development of our children and how
they perceive the world and its ever growing complexities. The documentary
“Mickey Mouse Monopoly” takes a close look at the Disney phenomenon and what are supposed to
be images of innocence magic and fun,
yet seem to bare many great underlying messages on today’s society and how
Disney potentially wants children to perceive it.
The documentary, based on the
thoughts of great minds like Dr. Henry Giroux of the Pennsylvania State University
deals with how Disney movies tell stories on race, gender and class under the
disguise of innocence, that seems to disguise some of the often alarming
messages one can take from the movies when seen in a more analytical point of
view.
Walt Disney has long been a corporation that to me, stands solely for the
clever entertainment of kids, giving them an entertaining piece of animation,
filled with basic life lessons for children on one hand, but also intelligent
often humorous undertones for the entertainment of the adults accompanying the
children. Yet after watching “Mickey Mouse Monopoly,” I was left with a whole
new image of Disney, one in which a sole emphasis on peaceful child
entertainment takes a backseat to incredible levels of corporate influence and
marketing. Indeed over the last century, the Disney company has established an
empire far beyond the regular scopes of media influence. With the purchase of the
ABC network and expanding into many other fields of marketing and production.
The Disney company has gained unprecedented amounts of leverage and power, that
really leaves them in a certain sense “too big to fail.”
This phenomenon can be
seen in Disney’s complex copywriting system and the way they protect the Disney
name. This results in many authors having great trouble publishing anything
dealing with Disney and its movies. Thus often times, authors are left unable
to use the word “Disney” in a title and many times won’t be able to publish
certain pictures or other visual material. This often presents writers with
great difficulties in properly documenting and analyzing the many aspects of
Disney tales and movies and has led to numerous dilemmas in the past. The great
power of Disney also shows with how they make a profit through there many
projects. While a lot titles like
Cinderella, Beauty and the Beast and the Lion King turned out to be a huge
success for Disney, other movies like Hercules
could not solely rely on being a box office hit. This is where Disney shows how
entangled it is with other forms of media and production, as they often end up
drawing a huge profit from marketing strategies, like including Hercules
figures in happy meals, releasing a film based video game, or designing a line
of costumes for kids. In this way the Disney Company manages to spin and twist
any project to allow it to become profitable to the extent they had envisioned.
In conclusion we see that just with the few aspects touched on in this blog,
Disney moves from being a genuinely peaceful source of family entertainment to
a more corporate like phenomenon, where things are often far more capitalistic
than one wants to believe.
Our in class discussion of fables was very interesting, and started with Joseph giving a well interpreted presentation on the subject. We went right into one of the most important topics regarding this comic, one that was also discussed in close detail in our E-Reserves article on Corporealizing fairy tales. The idea of the originally vague fairy tale characters coming to life with detailed personalities and desires, giving them a whole new level of depth and individualism. Fables puts characters like Snow White into a whole new perspective, and especially in her case we are left with a completely new interpretation of the character, once the singing, cheerful beauty in charge of keeping things tidy for the seven dwarfs in only the most un-sexual of ways, we now see her as a very active character, with a definitely present sexuality about her and in charge of Fabletown as deputy mayor. We move away from her innocent fairy tale character and find her adapted to a new complex environment. As a class we argued that these transformations where necessary to allow for a more realistic and detailed flow of events in Fabletown. The original fairy tale characters were used as templates, to set them up with a certain background in the tale, without having to introduce them individually in terms of where they came from originally.
Many times when reading through this volume of fables, this offers a way of recognizing the characters, as Snow White is presented to us as a very pale figure, with strikingly red lips and raven black hair, just the way she was initially portrayed in the tale by the Grimm brothers. Essentially we saw what a commonly known fairytale character would be like if they were placed in this New York City setting, and how their characters would have to differ to deal with the complexities of such a vast environment. This is where we saw the idea of a properly rigid “happily ever after” fade away in the story. Where the original tales left its characters vague and open to interpretation so that one would not get distracted from the clear cut plot and easily recognizable moral of the tale, Fables presents us with a very complex setting, with its characters facing real life financial and personal problems, and making their individual situations much to intricate to resolve in a clean happily ever after way with all good prevailing and all evil being eliminated by the end of the tale.
In Conclusion, Fables is a noteworthy piece of entertainment, specifically aimed at introducing adults to the world of comics, through a relatable and intelligent way of bringing recognizable fairytale characters together in a new setting, and focusing on how each one of them would prevail in a dark society like the one portrayed in Fables.
Fables presents us with a comic book unlike anything before, when I first got my envelope from the unc bookstore and pulled this book out from it, I thought it was sent to me by accident. Indeed the idea of something looking so comical to be used as academic material seemed a little strange to me, and although I knew I was still missing the book, and remembered the title to be Fables, I had to double-check the syllabus just to make sure it was the right thing. The idea of a comic book to me has always been a bit of an alternative in entertainment, something that strongly appeals to a certain group of people, but is generally disregarded by most as a major form of entertainment. But who are these people that read comics, and why is it the ultimate form of entertainment for some, while it leaves other people uninterested and rejecting its values.
To understand this, we have to look at what a comic essentially is; traditionally, we commonly find two kinds of people, ones who like to read, and ones who like to watch movies. While these two kinds of personality have become more and more intertwined, and many people accept and use both forms of media more equally today, it used to be a bit more split up traditionally. So a comic book then seems to mix both of these together. It follows the concept of a book, with clear pages and binding, yet it also relies on images to convey the scene the text is currently dealing with. One could argue then that the reader gets the best of both then, with a quality comic presenting the reader with a thoughtful piece of text along with an intelligent and often artistic representation of material. But is this what the reader wants?
Many people argue that to read gives one the chance to utilize their imagination, to read a passage and use one’s own mind and experience to form the adequate picture the book is trying to portray. Yet many people have accepted movies and TV as a more common form of entertainment and storytelling, as one doesn’t need to sit down and read for hours and hours under a reading lamp, but can simply hit a button and let the information flow into the mind through sound and visual stymulus. Someone who reads comics then would have to be somewhere in-between, willing to read a plot but also interested to see how this plot would look visually the way the author intended it. It follows more the idea of a script, and many movies utilize comic like plots to first draft individual movie scenes, especially when dealing with fantasy based movies, or ones that rely heavily on portraying certain aspects visually. So are comics then mostly read by people that think in a director sort of way? The audience for comic books is interesting, and it would be fun to see what kinds of personalities one would find in searching for the ultimate fan and supporter of comic based entertainment.
For our research based presentation I chose to go with the topic
choice of how gender is shaped in young children through the fairy tales they
are exposed too. I found this topic particularly interesting as I see it as
something very dynamic, and influential. In my mind, ever since the successful Disney
interpretations of Beauty and the Beast
and Cinderella, which for the first time presented children with relatable
characters in often mesmerizing and magical outfits, that, for those who were
familiar with the original tales put protagonists like Belle, Snow White and
Cinderella into a depicted form that often leaves little girls dreaming of
being a princess dressed in beautiful outfits like those we see in Disney
Films. While movies like Cinderella have been around since the 1950s, a major
change in the industries related to the designing, producing and marketing have
flourished over the last 20 years, exploiting yet another consumer niche
through the magic of globalization, exports, and rapid development processes we
have established in today’s society.
It’s evident that children make up a good part of today’s
consumers, and it’s not hard to see why; on one hand children are generally
exposed to very similar forms of media as they grow up, watching Disney movies,
and possibly being read some of the fairy tales we have deemed as acceptable
over the years. On the other hand most parents today are very concerned with their
child’s well being and happiness, and although most parents don’t want their
kids to end up spoiled, when compared to standards of forty years ago, most
children would probably appear to be. This is largely due to the fact that
society has grown so materialistic, which doesn’t just say something about our
changing habits and values, but is largely due to our advancements in production
techniques and ever growing globalization. It used to be a tedious and costly process
to create a dress that would look as fancy as that worn Disney’s Cinderella,
nowadays however it has become an intelligent, cost effective process, that has
evolved from great powers like the textile industry. Synthetic fabrics like
nylon, polyester and spandex are to thank here. These fabrics have become immensely
cheap and easy to manufacture all over the world. And with today’s impressive
import-export systems these dresses can be manufactured for close to nothing in
certain countries like Egypt, where I was personally able to observe this at a
wal-mart sewing plant. Along with the latest technologies in computer aided design,
a dress could go from concept to production in no time, and with minimal
development costs.
We can observe these changes in any clothing store today,
shirts with detailed print designs and several different types of fabric can be
purchased for five dollars or less at times, something that would simply have
been impossible through sheer production costs just ten years ago. So we really
have expanded in both ways, and it’s hard to say who is more responsible for this
growth in gender shaping today, on one hand we as consumers seem much more
willing to give our children whatever they desire, on the other hand it has
become much easier faster and cheaper to manufacture and develop all these toys
and clothes for children, giving parents a whole new array of products to
choose from.
Today's class gave the remaining students a chance to present, and that included me. I was very surprised to see that most people chose to present a comparison of Little Red Riding Hood. I thought that I would be one of the only ones, if not the only one to present on this topic but never the less it was another interesting set of presentations.
Although most of our presentations focused on a similar topic, I found Josephs presentation particularly well presented and researched, and to me it stood out as one of the best so far. His analogies on the importance of the color red with respect to the tale was interesting, and it was great to see how he interpreted the color through his research, and how it represented so many contrasting things, like love or the devil. He made me see that the tale really is two sided, making notions on the importance of advice and listening to ones elders, as well as certain rebellious acts like Little Red Riding hood disobeying her mother in straying of the path. I feel like he had a good point in mentioning that this respect for the elderly and the wisdom associated with age is something that has remained relatively unchanged throughout history, something that is quite rare when one looks at the drastic differences in today's world and that of the sixteenth century.
Overall I felt that our group presentations went very well, and although I was not happy with my own presentation, as a class I think we did very well, certainly better than any other class I can compare too.
Our class today consisted of seven oral presentations, we started with a presentation by Gwyn, who compared Cinderella and Donkeyskin in terms of appropriatness for children. Her topic was well presented and I agree with her that donkeyskin seems generally inappropriate for children, the notions on incest, along with the general absense of magic and great amounts of trickery would leave children unentertained and with a wrong moral.
The soundtrack analysis on Beauty and the Beast was my favorite presentations, it was very well researched and displayed a great knowledge of how the music attributed so beautyfully to the story and ultimately led to receiving an acadamy award. The individual clips of music were very intersting, and i was intrigued by the explanations of each motif. Like the enchantment motif and the use of a fluid woodwind sound, or the low brass notes of the beast motif. My favorite part was the west wing, as it used no dialogue and was all instrumental. I've always been a fan of transmitting emotion simply through sound, in the past this was only possible using orchestras or complex instrumental arrangments, but electronics have led us to great lengths in being able to generate this type of content from our own personal computers. electronic music really has revolutionized this idea and user generated instrumental music has allowed us to convey emotions through many new styles of music, like house or electro.
We also had two presentations on Snow White, which were also well researched and led me to agree that the grimm version of the tale seems most suited for kids, as it portrays a more clear moral and is generally less violent.
I have to say that most of the presentations were very well thought out and executed, and I'm hoping that mine will go as smoothly as the first seven we saw.
I've recently been doing a bit of research on Japanese Folktales for another class of mine, and after a presentation on the concept by a few of my classmates in my Japanese Society class, it became strikingly clear to me that the Japanese have a very familiar folktale structure to the one we as westerners are used to. Many of the tales ive explored are remarkably similar in their moral and virtue, some so similar they directly relate to tales we have analyzed in class.
In Japan, folktales are referred to as Otogibanashi. These tales have received strong influence from Japanese Shinto and Buddhist beliefs and often deal with supernatural beings like kami's, the many gods the japanese have interpreted from nature throughout past centuries. The Japanese also distinguish between 3 basic types of folktales, with the Namidabanashi tales dealing with sadness, Obakebanashi tales focusing on ghosts and Ongaeshibanashi tales dealing with repaying kindness. The tales always tell a story based on distinct factors of visual and emotional beauty, and there are many more categories to be found in Japanese folktales, but these three do represent some of the most common tales found today.
A tale that i certainly found similar to our version of Bluebeard was the tale of Uguisu no Sato which translates to something like "a bush warbler and the house". It tells the tale of a woodcutter that stumbles upon a beautiful house in a hidden grove. Inside he found a beautiful woman that is busy and wants the woodcutter to take care of her home while she goes out. She instructs him to never look in any of the reception rooms during her absence but as in our tale, curiosity overcomes the woodcutter and he dares to look in the other rooms, where he finds many riches and beautiful furniture following a theme of the four seasons, along with three eggs which he accidentally breaks . At this point the woman returns, complains about the mans insincerity and transforms her self into a bush warbler. She then flies off singing "i miss my children," at which point the woodcutter suddenly finds himself in a field with the house and everything valuable gone.
I was stunned at how similar this tale was and although its hard to determine when exactly this tale found its origins, it still seemed as though Japanese folktales are remarkably similar to the ones we have in our society. Although these similarities are very clear, it seems that the Japanese have a much larger emphasis on portraying natural beauty and their concepts of "wabi sabi" or basically the concept of finding beauty in the imperfections of nature. This seems to make the tales I've read more peaceful in their nature, although they can often be just as graphic as our tales from Perrault and the Grimm Brothers.
Our critics discussion really turned out interesting today as our e-reserve articles turned out to be quite political as well. The discussion questions led us from analyzing the plot of the story to examining these aspects more broadly with regards to past as well as present media and politics.
Our first discussion question dealt with Belle and how her being an outsider left her more predisposed to accept Beast. The class seemed to generally agree with this idea and I my self thought so too. The tale was set around a small french village were being different was bad and although belle was most beloved by her neighbors and village for her beauty and unjudgmental innocence, she herself was isolated and without a true companion besides father. This in my mind definetly left her predisposed to eventually accept the beast for who he truly is inside.
Gaston was the topic of my last blog and he was also a main focus in the discussion questions. We talked about his role in the story and how he potentially aids in delivering Disney's message on external versus internal beauty. I found that Gaston was well utlized as a character and the idea of having him portray a contrast to the Beast seemed to work too. As i found out from researching his character, he was specifically redesigned to reflect less of a classical macho and instead was supposed to look charming and handsome to make his evil personality particularly shocking. This concept should be perceivable to children although they might not be fully aware of this, if at all.
The last discussion question we dealt with had to do with expectations of men and how these might have changed over the past two decades. As a class we seemed to feel that much more emphasis is places on a deep sense of character, and being not just a great strong man but also having a sensitive and compassionate side that others can identify with and potentially exemplify such behavior. This trend seems to appear in many aspects of society, even with respect to the newly elected predisent of the United States, a man that is arguable more of a family oriented and sensitive individual, very educated in all aspects of his leadership and also notably the first president of african descent. But its not just in the political world that we can observe this, popular movies are no longer focused around a great big, perfectly chizled white male protagonist. Instead we have seen great characters like Denzel Washinton emerge to be characters that as we mentioned in class truly make a movie and not the other way around. I feel as though society has grown bored of the stereotypical white male characters and we are all craving for new creative ideas to emerge out of the huge pool of media that has evolved over the last few decades.
In conclusion, although our class has shrunk to only fifteen remaining students, our discussions are still strong and the Beaty and the Beast critics class was no exceptions. We analyzed the questions well and ended up drawing quite valuable information on how society seems to have changed and indeed is changing ever so fast into a world were race, gender and origin no longer effect judgement, and we are free to experiance the full palette of talent that our world as a whole has to offer. This phenomenon in my mind is long overdue and has sadly been greatly restricted in the past. People of all origins have been oppressed through overpowerful religions and corrupt political policy and it has crippled our society with rediculous stereotypes and great amounts of indefensible bias. I will finish my blog with a particularly hideous picture of Germany's potential next Foreign Minister, a man who is openly gay, married to his partner and wears lots of pink ties. None of these things however have kept him from having a successful political career based on his actual skill and experience, without being rendered completely irrelevant and uncompetitive because of his sexual preferences. I think this shows a step in the right direction and exemplifies a future that is hopefully free from such bias, and relies on actual skill, knowledge and experience instead.
The articles chosen for our critics class on Beauty and the Beast included an article entitled Yep Gaston's Gay and although this is an interesting topic on its own, it got me interested in why Disney choose to add this character to the story in the first place.
After doing a bit of research on the character, it seems that Disney added Gaston to the film in order to give the tale a sense of danger and to present an even greater contrast to the tales theme on inner versus outer beauty. The supervising animator responsible for initial drawings of Gaston portrayed him as an arrogant man, heavily built and having a mustache. Jeffrey Katzenberg, who was in charge of Disney's motion picture division at the time insisted that Gaston had to appear more serious to add an element of "don't judge a book by its cover."
The idea of adding to the tales already sharp sense of inner beauty vs outer beauty through a character like Gaston was a smart move in my opinion. It gives the tale a character that is truly opposite to the Beast, very handsome to look at, but evil inside. The revisions made to Gaston to properly suit the tale shows that the creators really wanted to make a statement with this character, and thus made him more appealing to a modern audience, effectively giving him a soap opera charm rather than portraying him as an old fashioned Paramour.
This once again shows that Disney is not afraid to add many layers of new characters to the original tale they are revamping. They really seem to have mastered this art and are able to more effectively make a point on theme and moral by generating these specific provocative characters.
Today's class started with the realization that none of the
three groups that were supposed to present were able to as all the presenters
seem to have dropped the class. It really has started to scare me a little to
see how many people dropped the class. Nevertheless after reviewing Ms Newsam's
newest additions to our blackboard page we went on to start a short class discussion
on The Beauty and the Beast.
We
mainly focused on the "Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont" version and
the Disney version today, and tried to underline some of the key differences in
both of these tales. We first talked about why characters like Lumiere and
Cogsworth were added to the tale in the Disney version. This brought us to
discuss several concepts on how these characters were used as communication
aids between Belle and the Beast, as they really were not able to spend much
time together otherwise. We also argued that it might be useful to have such
characters in order for children to better grasp the moral of the story, they
allow the tale to be narrated by several different characters, helping young
ones follow along with the tale without being overly confused by it. In my mind
not only do these characters serve as means of clarifying the tale, but they
also help make the story more exciting and fluid ensuring that children are
kept entertained and watching.
This
really led us into a good discussion on how children today are so over
stimulated with visual inputs and media information, it seems that especially
over the last decade these industries have evolved way beyond what they were in
the early nineties when this movie was released. One would think that if this
movie was made in 2009 it would greatly contrast the original, a film that was
only released in 1991. It really does drive generations apart, and one gets the
feeling that children, and people in general are constantly presented with more
vivid forms of entertainment, causing our desire and threshold for more
excitement in everything we do for fun to grow more and more. The age of
Videogames and constant streaming information really has taken over, and
hopefully this wont effect us negatively in the future.
When
talking about the original tale, published in the late seventeen hundreds we
all thought that although it wasn’t as filled with characters and imagery
stimulus, the tale its self seemed more elegant and developed, in terms of its
characters, like Belle and her sisters, who seemed better introduced and
appeared to have greater depth in the written tale. Most of us felt that
although today's children might find the Disney version of the story more
entertaining and easier to follow, as a parent the original tale should be
considered as it offers many other interesting aspects that could very well
leave a child just as mesmerized.
Today's class was focused around the criticism on Bluebeard. It was my turn to present the criticism, along with my discussion partner Stephanie who took care of today's discussion questions. Our criticism was based around the article "Anti-housewives and ogres housekeepers the roles of Bluebeards female helper," in the e-reserves section, and talked about the importance of the so-called female helper in the story, and what the importance of this often vague character really was.
We mainly focused on Charles Perrault's version of the tale, In which the female helper is actually the wife's sister. referred to as "Sister Anne" in the tale, Perrault left this character out of the tale till the resolution of the story was required, at which point she helped the wife spot her brothers and signaled them to hurry. As a quote in our critical text points out, "the heroine’s brothers are “summoned” by Sister Anne to save her sister’s life, but this is not strictly true. The brothers, by a mighty coincidence, are already on their way. Sister Anne merely signals them to hurry up-- she’s helpful but not that helpful”(Tatar, 210). We came to the conclusion that sister Anne was an element to the tale that helped execute the resolution of the story, but was left so undeveloped by Perrault so that she would not interfere with the plot otherwise. This seems to be the reason Perrault made her appearance so brief, and why he chose to leave her so uninformed and vague as a character.
Our discussion then carried on to try and put the tale into perspective with relation to the time it was written, and what possible symbolism might be involved to leave a distinct moral to the reader, in particular with reference to sister Anne. We figured that while sister Anne is by no means a character Perrault spent a lot of time with, she still seems to portray a message of family importance, and being able to rely on family members in otherwise hopeless situations.
We spent a good deal of class discussing possible relations to medieval times and as Ms. Newsmen mentioned that an estimated six million women were murdered due to witch trials and other beliefs of the time, I commented that I get the feeling we really weren't humans at the time with how evil and judgmental our acts used to be. Matt then pointed out how we as humans are still so inclined to such evil today and he felt that we really can't be considered human for the things we do in the present. I have to agree with him on that, although I feel that there have been some great changes since those times, changes that thoroughly altered us as human beings and how we perceive ourselves on this planet. In medieval times, people for the most part had no idea why they were on this planet, and were forced into religious belief to offer an explanation.
Since then however, we have made great discoveries that have led us to understand that we are no different than the rest of the animals on this planet. Although many people still believe in creationism, I feel that our advancements in science have to be the single greatest achievements in human history. Without science I don’t think times would be any different than they were back then, and we would still be burning witches and punishing women for preposterous reasons. If it wasn’t for such bright minds like Galileo and da Vinci that were pushed by their curiosity to disobey the church and in turn made some of the most fundamental discoveries in the history of science and research. Although science has been abused just as much as anything else in history, it's never the scientists that created the processes or theories that are abusing these powers, but the political figures that are in my mind just as evil today as they were in medieval times, leading me to agree with what matt said in that we still have much of the same cruelty and unjustifiable evil going on today as we did back then. Time for a social revolution if you ask me…
Today's class was all about Bluebeard,
and with all guys but me and Andrew absent, the boys really had to watch out
what they added to this discussion. All the childishness aside however, it
seemed that although today's discussion was all improvisation we really got a
good sense of the tale and really managed to go into detail on some of the
aspects of the tale, like its overall moral, the general audience and the
reasons why this tale is so unknown to most people.
The long list of discussion
questions really helped all the groups pick out some of the most interesting
key elements to the tale. Selecting the discussion questions was quite
competitive, and I was definitely hated on for keeping the whiteboard marker to
myself for too long... silly me. We started off trying to figure out whether Bluebeard
really could be considered a fairy tale, which left us a bit baffled and we
decided that while the story might not fit into the classical fairy tale image
we have become accustomed with, it was still a verbal tale of the time and so
in some sense can be considered a fairy tale. We then moved on to figuring out
who this tale really addressed, as it really seemed to complex in its moral and
characterizations to be considered for a children audience. Indeed the tale
does bring up mixed emotions in the reader, with Perrault's version especially,
the reader is left feeling sympathetic towards Bluebeard for being so
unaccepted by society, and later on taken advantage of by neighbors and
friends. Of course the reader generally feels as though Bluebeard is the dark
killer and thus much of the tale seems to portray how evil serial killers can
be through the misery each of his wives suffered from their curiosity.
The question whether this tales
purpose was to portray a different, extreme image to marriage for its child
audience seemed to leave us in doubt too, as it really portrays an outcome that
is far too extreme to be considered a normal occurrence in a marriage.
undeniably the whole idea of trying to make a sensible statement on the dangers
curiosity can bare to a child through such a horrific tale filled with gory
imagery and death seems odd and out of place. It seems a tale that was to teach
a child would be written on something entirely different, with fewer characters
to distract from the moral and a more rigid plot without complicating elements
like marriage.
As a class we seemed to conclude
from all this that the tale was probably meant for women, teaching them on the
dangers of curiosity in marriage and asking women to be obedient in following
their husbands wishes. This is perhaps the main reason this tale seems to have
slipped between the cracks in the assortment of tales that people are most
commonly familiar with today. The morals one takes from the story just seem to
vague and unjustifiable when trying to either teach a child or further educate
a women. The great amount of gore that even the Grimm brothers choose to leave
very much intact in their interpretation was certainly another element to this
story disappearing from modern fairy tale collections. Bluebeard was an interesting tale for me, and
I was very surprised that I had never heard of it, as I thought I was familiar
with a lot of the Grimm brothers work. while the tale was an interesting read
and great fun to discuss so far, it's obvious why this tale hasn’t reached as
great of an audience as some of the other tales by Perrault or the Grimm
Brothers. I'll end today's post with a classic image of "Blau Bart."
Today’s fairy tale was that of Blue Beard, who in Charles Perrault’s
version of the tale was a hugely rich man who had only the finest
horses along with many other riches. He was however cursed with a Blue
Beard that left him feared and isolated, unable to find a wife.
This
tale was another classical moral based fairy tale by Charles Perrault,
specifically targeted at women. The main moral at play does seem quite
universal this time, applying much the same way today as it did in the
17th century when Perrault’s tale first came about. He once again
leaves us with his details on the moral at the end of the tale,
explaining that curiosity can lead to serious regrets, and then leaves
us with yet another moral saying that from a sensible point of view a
story like this would no longer happen and that the original tale took
place many years ago. While his tale was quite gory and brutal at
times, and can seem exaggerated in its cruelty, I feel as though a
story similar to this could very well take place today. Especially in
today’s overly materialistic world, an unsuspecting or naive woman
could be lured into terrible things through a keen rich man’s cunning.
The Grimm Version of the story seems again based heavily on the
Original by Charles Perrault. While the moral of the tale seems much in
line with that of Perrault’s tale. The Grimm brothers once again change
the tale, and eliminate certain details to suit the story to their
liking. The portrayed Bluebeard as a sorcerer who would disguise
himself as a poor man to capture his "girls" as they were called in the
story. While they weren’t his wives in the Grimm version of the tale,
the sorcerer still killed his women in equally terrifying ways, and the
Grimm brothers don’t fail to emphasize on the gory aspect to this,
painting a gruesomely bloody picture with chopped up bodies and blood
filled basins.
While many elements of the tale were once again tweaked by the Grimm
Brothers to create there version of Charles Perrault’s tale, they
follow a very similar framework of events that leads the much related
moral of these tales. Perrault’s version does seem to come across as
more moral oriented and appears more specific in its flow of events,
with the Grimm version seeming a bit dull and underdeveloped, using
very basic magic to bring two of the girls back to life. Overall I
found the Perrault version of the tale better to read and more clear in
its vision.
Alot of us came to class on thursday and had to realize that class was cancelled for the day, most of us hadn't checked our e-mail before class and didnt know about this. We were going to have a peer review session of our papers, i was a "number 2" and my first draft was roughly 6 pages. I choose to write my paper on Little Red Riding Hood, in particular the Perrault and Grimm versions of the tale. It would have been nice to have my paper reviewed by the class to see some of the things other people have come up with, and the paper really isnt that great yet so it would have helped...
I hope we get the chance for some peer review before we have to hand in the final draft, but I'm keen on reworking many of the aspects of my paper over the weekend, hopefully improving on its quality.
Today's class was all about the Disney version of the story, and how the many characters, themes and events were reshaped to reflect Walt Disney's vision of the tale. The discussion once again brought up many ideas and concepts, and seemed very successful overall. I'll try and outline some of the key points we discussed in today blog, many of the concepts were touched on in great detail and left us discussing till we had to be stopped for lack of time.
It's obvious that the original story of Cinderella needed to be adjusted in order to be viewable for children. Walt Disney needed to change many formalities to make this a Disney movie, often these changes can be subtle and go about unmentioned throughout the story. An example of this would be the birds that would wash Cinderella in the morning, and how they had to all be female so the story would not seem perverted or false in its moral. Other changes Disney made to the tale do stand out however, and all reflect the classic image we've come to know Disney movies for. These are things like the visual presentation of the characters, and how imagery could be used to really sketch out their individual personalities. Like the many harsh angles and penetrating looks of the evil stepmother, or the gentle, soft and harmonious Cinderella, so beautifully in touch with nature. He really did do a good job that way, creating the right image for each character, and tastefully displaying the innocence he wants us to see in Cinderella without coming across too sexual.
Then came the characters that are classic to Disney movies however, and that really does require a whole separate paragraph as there are always many repetitive details unique to Disney stories. In a way these characters create a sort of familiarity with Disney movies as a whole, although a child might not perceive these, they are recognizable. Examples of this would include the typical Fat/Skinny duo found in so many other Disney movies, in the story of Cinderella we found these characters in Guss and Jack, one being the calm and collected skinny fellow, often bailing out chubby Guss from his outbursts so typical to the overweight character. In a way these stereotypes can be seen as harmful to a child's perspective of people in real life, and might lead them to believe that all overweight people might behave in such a manner. This is a stereotype that is often found in entertainment though, not just in Disney movies. The king and his portrayal in this story is a bit different, today a fat person is not necessarily associated with wealth so much as with unhealthy eating habits and high triglyceride levels. Back in the sixteen and seventeen-hundreds however, an obese man could be seen as wealthy, able to feed himself and others as much as he desires, and in turn being a good provider for a family too. So the kings obesity really is supposed to portray his wealth and not his size.
We then asked the question why Walt Disney chose to portray the moral of Cinderella's story? How a good hearted hardworking being will have good things happen to them eventually. We argued that this message really doesn't fit well with today's society, and that women in similar positions should stand up for themselves and take initiative to control their own lives. So why then did he choose to tell Cinderella's story knowing that he could possibly give many young girls a wrong idea of how to succeed in life. We argued that this movie, being from a large corporation like Disney really can try to set the ideals they would like the end consumer to perceive. With the large audience they reach and the influence they have especially on children, perhaps portraying a moral like that really can benefit corporations in being able to market their products, and attracting the consumer towards what's beneficial to the corporation. Humans however also like to be able to visualize what the past might have been like and how things used to be, otherwise we would not have so many Historians, and so in a way I feel as though these fairy tales are just part of society and the long history and progress humans have documented so far.
Another interesting topic in our discussion was how Cinderella supposedly had a velvet shoe in the untranslated version of the story, whereas in the English version, it's a glass shoe. It seemed as though that translation had some meaning to it, as though we were suppose to perceive the shoe as Cinderella's innocence and purity, effectively her virginity. Using a glass shoe seems to make a more clear notion towards a girls virginity and how a glass shoe, when broken could never be perfectly restored no matter how hard one tries. Furthermore, when she dances with her Prince at the ball, it is he who guides her so gracefully and protectively through her first dance, also giving us the image of how a woman needs a prince charming to truly give her safety and stability in life.
In conclusion one can really see just how deep these stories can be when analyzed in their full detail, our discussion could have carried on for several more hours, and once again left me appreciating just how useful and educated discussion is when trying to understand the grand scheme of things, especially a story so complex and reworked as Cinderella.
