The Literary Merit of Music Videos

I have not read anything or watched anything of extreme literary merit lately. We were going to rent a movie this weekend, but that didn't work out. I didn't watch TV yesterday when I was out because my mother had the weather channel on the whole day. But, I did watch four music videos because I do love music, and I thought three of them in particular were quite good.

I usually go on BBC's Radio 1 to see the top charts of music. This is usually the way I get my music. Lately, things have been lax in the music department on Radio 1's charts but there have recently been some good new songs. 


The first song I listened to was Endorphins by Sub Focus. The music video featured a dystopian society where music was outlawed. There were various shots of a SWAT team coming in a taking people's sources of music. The first was a group of people dancing to a stereo system, their faces and movements similar to those of various protest movements, especially the kind of psychedelic feel of the hippie movement in the late 60s. The SWAT team was also all white men, and there were mostly black and asian protesters. I don't know if that was a conscious decision to provide similarities between music movements in the sixties with Civil Rights movements, taking music, a love of all human beings and comparing it to rights that all human beings should be able to enjoy that are taken away. The second shot was two people sitting under a blanket tent, a mother and a daughter, the mother giving the daughter an ipod to listen to. The SWAT team came in, took the iPod and arrested the woman and daughter. The blanket tent simulated childhood, and perhaps the way oppression affects childhood and how that suppression travels through the psych later on in life. The third shot is of two elderly people dancing to their gramophone. The SWAT team comes in and breaks the gramophone and arrests the couple. This describes the taking away of tradition; the fact that music has been an underlying part of human beings since the beginning of time and the fact that this SWAT is taking it away is appalling. At the end of the music video the SWAT is shown listening to a confiscated stereo. This says the way humans in oppressive societies are held to impossible standards that they must enjoy themselves. It also says that everyone deserves the same rights, whether it be universal music, or other rights. Perhaps this is a subtle commentary about current civil rights movements, as all humans have a common love for music, music is a medium that bridges gaps and makes people understand each other.

Endorphins: People without music

The second video was Easy by Porter Robinson. It was a commentary on pop culture, whether specifically Japan's pop culture is debatable. The heroine was receiving a call from her manager again and again while looking at a picture of a mountain and cherry blossoms, perhaps Mount Fuji or some other mountain in Japan. This describes the decline in the natural environment and the way things once were with increased technology, in which Japan leads. She went out onto the balcony of her apartment and saw herself plastered on countless advertisements around the city (citing the obsession with beauty and the overtake of corporate monopolies, the drop in diversity across the planet with increased communication and corporations reaching into every part of our lives) and finally threw her phone over the edge, went out of her high rise apartment, got on her motorcycle, left a bomb in the middle of the city, and detonated it. The city was filled with blinding light and then the film took on a strange, 'spirit' world feel with the lines made of meshed color and everything else white. This faded out to the girl in the environment of the picture she was viewing at the beginning of the video, describing her freedom. Perhaps the bombed city will return to its natural environment and things will return to the way they were. The song was talking about how 'loving you is easy', so perhaps it's commenting on how taken the human race is with technology, beauty, and such things that were described in the beginning environment of the movie. Perhaps the 'heroine' felt the only way to erase this 'love' was to blow it to smithereens.

Easy: Heroine riding through Neo Tokyo on motorcycle

The third video was So Good to Me by Chris Malinchak. In it, a girl was looking for her pet giraffe which had gotten away and was playing hide and seek. the film hid the fact that she was looking for a giraffe, making the viewer surprised when the giraffe snuck up on the little girl in the end and nuzzled her face. The two friends then played hide and seek. The song has a strange feel to it, between fantasy, childish imagination, and the adult world that children live in. Most likely set in South Africa, it describes how friends can be found in the most unconventional places, and sometimes the awkward, unlikely friends are the best. Also, the girl was tiny and the giraffe was huge. This difference in size also describes how friends can be extremely different from each other. The girl might have been judged for her pet giraffe, but "all the skies are blue as long as you love me", as the song said. The giraffe was also adorable, and the video was very cute and smart. The song is also very low key and sweet.

So Good to Me: Girl and her pet giraffe

I will attempt to put all three music videos below for your viewing pleasure. I have analyzed the crap out of these videos, so you will all be grossly over thinking them the next time you watch them. Wait, it's not showing up on the youtube thing. I will put the links instead.

Endorphins: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3CYKXBEtf0

Easy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=at3FPJaAwoY

So Good To Me: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KrMl32cuC2A

A Look At the End Of Celluloid (Updated with Fantabulous Pictures)

We were viewing a documentary on the different types of film in the 90's, at the end of celluloid. The 90's heralded in the beginning of the digital age for film, and this lost the more organic style of filming that has dominated from the beginning of film history.

Through the Olive Trees

The story began with an Iranian director who was trying to create the most organic, realistic film experience by eliminating such things as lighting, and most interestingly, the director. In his first film, he was filming the life of a young boy. A while after the movie was filmed there was a natural disaster in the area. He went back to find the little boy and instead encountered a man who interested him and filmed him. During the shooting of this film, the director fell in love with an actress in the film but was rejected. His next film was about that experience, and during the filming he encountered the young boy from the first film all grown up. This strange coincidence literally brings around the cycle of the films. The Iranian films I have seen have always been very quiet and take a lot from real life experiences. Little or no music is used, only natural sounds are heard. It seems that the Iranian culture supports less of a 'story' and more of a look into life.                                                                                                                          

The Ring

The next category was the Japanese film makers who in the 90's were busy making horror films that capitalizes on their fear of technology and women (haha). The director of The Ring was heavily influenced by an old Japanese film from the 30's about a female ghost. I cannot find the name of this film ANYWHERE, but I know it had Monogatari in it and it was in black and white.                                                       

La Haine

The most interesting part by far was the French film portion. The film stated at the beginning that France was one of the original origins of film. They discussed a few films, L'Haine and Beau Travail. L'Haine is the story of three ethnically diverse boy living in the French projects. It was filmed without music and in black and white to represent the bleakness of city life and the quietness of the story of the three seemingly faceless boys who were the protagonists of the story.

Beau Travail

It reminded me of the grey imagery through The Road and how it represented a dying road. In L'Haine, it was the opposite. The grey was ironic to the amount of life in the city, demonstrating the degradation people outside the inner city see versus the life within it. Beau Travail was a reimagining of Billy Bud by Herman Mellville set in Djibouti in a French Foreign Legion outpost. A new recruit enters and immediately makes the head officer jeleous. In the end of the film there is a beautiful scene implying impending suicide. The last shot of the scene was a close up of a pulsating vein in the man's arm representing how precious life is. The last scene of the movie was a metaphorical dance of the man's last dreams before he died. The whole documentary was very interesting and captured perfectly the bittersweet ending of celluloid, the living camera, and the beginning of the digital age of camera.

Below are clips from the movies, tried to upload them but oddly enough they would not come up when I tried uploading them from youtube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=okQJPUTQMqA (La Haine)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aKDWk3dgjDs (Beau Travail)

Creative Post: Red Riding Hood

Oh, Roxanne, with your 80's name and your yellow color palette.

I will begin by stating that I watched most of Red Riding Hood last night, in between dinner and after dinner when I was supposed to be socializing with a family friend. Instead I holed myself up in my room and settled into an interesting viewing experience.

Immediately, I was impressed by the Skyrim-esque fantastical setting. The mountains and stuff surrounding the village were gorgeous, and there were expansive landscape shots like the ones in the beginning of the Shining, except with different font and color credits and semi- non creepy music. Then, it goes to Little Red, who's name is Valerie. She lives in a French mountain village that is plagued by a wolf.

Some history on the story, apparently French peasants told it to their children in the 10th century. There were also werewolf trials during the medieval times in addition to witch trials when the Catholic Church was trying to regain control of Europe. That would explain Gary Oldman's character in the movie, who was a Catholic leader of some sort who came to deal with the werewolf problem. Also, on the Gary Oldman subject, he was wearing a very purple outfit, and I didn't think that that color purple was created until the 1800s. I may very well be wrong though, as scarlet could be derived naturally from plants. The blue used for the grandmother's dress was very questionable too, as that color blue was also created in the 1800s. Roxanne's green cape was pretty darn green, too, I might add. It seemed that the pivotal characters were all colorful.

So, onto the original Red Riding Hood story again. In the original medieval versions, the girl walks through the woods to deliver food to her granny. In the old story, the antagonist can be a wolf, ogre, or a werewolf. The wolf usually leaves the grandmother's meat and blood for the girl to eat. In some stories, the wolf eats Red, and in others, she manages to get away. In one of the stories, the wolf is filled with stones which cause him to collapse and die when he wakes up and tries to run away from the woodcutter. Oddly enough, the Charles Perrault version is what introduced the red hood. In the story, written for the French Court of Louis XIV, the protagonist is attractive, and is led into a trap by the wolf, climbs in bed with him, and is promptly eaten. The audience of these tales were frequently entertained by prostitutes in extravagant parties, and the moral of the story was that the gentle wolves are among the most dangerous. I can just see those powdered, white wigged gentlemen chortling and winking at each other with beady narrowed eyes. No wonder the French weren't too fond.

All of these little tidbits are incorporated into the movie, including an awkward 'dance' party scene, which had excruciatingly obvious allusions to the story of the three little pigs. There was also a strange 'wolf' dance that the people did. There was a love triangle between Peter, Valerie, and a fellow named Henry. There was scandal. There was an attempt at the horror genre. There were quite a number of laughs. It didn't come together very well, and I did skip over a few parts due to boredom, but all in all, it wasn't completely horrific. Don't pay for it, though, for god's sakes.

The protagonist of this Oscar worthy production.

Amanda Seyfreid attractively tripping on a log.

.

Children's Book Recommendations!

So, we've been cleaning out the bookshelves in our house and throwing away any old books that we didn't want anymore, and I have started looking at books I read as a kid that I loved again. It was interesting to remember all the nice times reading those books. So, I will share my favorites with everyone- so someone else's kid might have the privilege of enjoying them too. I'll start with books for the younger child- not tiny, tiny, hard books, but still picture books.

The first is East of the Sun & West of the Moon. This book was lavishly illustrated by Mercer Mayer, adapted from a Norwegian folktale of the same name. The main draw of the story for me was always the art work, I spent hours staring at the pages when I was a kid, especially the one with the tea cup that fell into the water. But I won't spoil it for you. Instead, I'll give you a different preview picture. 

Isn't that just bloody gorgeous?

The next book I will speak about is Heckedy Peg. This book has absolutely gorgeous drawings, it has got a healthy dose of peril, and it has a great story. I think this one is adapted from an old tale too. It's by Audrey and Don Wood. 

This witch scared the hell out of me as a kid, but heck I loved the story anyway because of the heroine. 

It is a great book to teach kids not to open the door to strangers in a creative way, while also feeding a kid's imagination. 

The third kids book is a gentler foray into the children's literature category, and it is also by Audrey and Don Wood. I guess that authoring group was just a staple in our family. Anyway, the Napping House is the not so regular goings on in a house while it is raining. Beautiful, and it also goes in a poetic sequence, which seems to be a winner in children's books. 

The color combination in this book seems to be blue and yellow, which for some reason seems like a strange combination that might be slightly unsettling to the eye. Or maybe I am just crazy. 

I think Audrey and Don Wood liked to experiment with their styles and color palettes in their children's books. Anyway, onto the next one. The fourth is By The Light of the Halloween Moon.

This one might be a tad bit creepy for the really young ones. But it's still good anyway.

This one is a scarier one, but it is so creative and poetic that I have to recommend it. I think I was scared of it as a kid, so you might want to screen test this one. 

The next is the Frog and Toad Treasury, or any of the individual stories, by Arnold Lobel. This is actually for a tad bit of an older audience, I think, and the pictures are very good. 

And very lastly for the picture books, is The Escape of Marvin the Ape, by Caralyn and Mark Buehner. The main appeal for this book was the sequencing, and there is a bit of where's waldo in there, with hidden images of bunnies and emus, etc. It is a fun picture book that utilizes story and pictures together. 

Now. Onto the chapter books. I'll try to go from youngest to oldest. There are only six of them here, but there are many more good ones. These are just some of my favorites. The first happens to be Which Witch? by Eva Ibotson. It's about an evil wizard- Arriman the Awful- trying to pick a witch of equal evilness to marry. So there is a contest to see who is the most evil witch to marry. The plot sounds ridiculous the way I explain it- but the book is very good for a grade schooler. 

Another good one by Eva Ibbotson that I enjoyed as a kid, probably a little bit more than Which Witch, was The Secret of Platform 13. It's about a forgotten door on an abandoned railway platform, which is the entrance to a magic kingdom. When the prince of the island is kidnapped by Ms. Trottle, a band a strange creatures is sent to rescue him. 

This is another book for the grade school age. A lot of people love Eva Ibbotson, but a lot of people don't like her, either. I read The Secret of Platform 13 in 4th grade and Which Witch in 5th. The biggest appeal of these books is the imagination in them. The plots are so fantastical that it seems only a kid could understand it. The Secret of Platform 13 is an imagination book! I read these books late, so I would say these books could be read as early as the 2nd grade. 

A book for the 5th graders would be Coraline, and even The Graveyard Book, both by Neil Gaman. Coraline can be read as early as 4th grade, it's a little creepy though. The Graveyard Book is even creepier than Coraline in my opinion, and should probably be read in 5th grade at the earliest. 6th would probably be better. 

I think we all know what Coraline is about. It's artfully written, the imagination is definitely there, and the drawings are stunningly disturbing. The Graveyard Book is Neil Gaman's ode to the Jungle Book, a novel he was fascinated with as a child. It is a great book, but again is very creepy in some parts. 

And this isn't even one of the creepiest drawings. Some of the drawings in this book were seriously creepy.

Different style of illustrations here, but still very good. More flow-y it seems.

The fifth book, one of my all time favorite books, is Howl's Moving Castle. Again, some people won't agree that this is a great book, but I loved it very much. It's about a girl named Sophie, born the eldest of three sisters, who lives in a fairy tale sort of world and accepts the fate that she is destined to have the most boring life of her three sisters. But in reality, she is wrong! This book is about not accepting fate that is given to you, and making your own way! It's imaginative and exciting! 

The very last book I will speak about, which is probably for the oldest kids, is The Ear, The Eye, and The Arm. This is probably for the 6th and 7th graders, I think that that is when I read it. It was an easy read for me then, it was fast paced, exciting, and different. Set in a future Zimbabwe, it is the story of three wealthy children who run away from home, are kidnapped, and then continuously kidnapped. Three super powered detectives go in search of them- the ear, the eye, and the arm (the arm being my favorite). This book didn't settle well with some people because the plot was apparently 'weird'. I disagree! It is again, imaginative and interesting!

So, those are the twelve I am recommending. Some people might say that these books are not 'great' because they might have improper character development, or some parts of the plot are convoluted, etc. But they all have such fantastic imagination and mystery that they are great reads for a young kid trying to make sense of the world around them. I think modern realistic fiction (The Perks of Being a Wallflower, Perfect, Speak, etc) is to help kids get through late middle school and the beginning of high school and help figure out who they are as individuals, the classics are to help older kids get a sense of language and how to utilize it, how to love it, but the books for the youngsters should be about developing that imagination. Because a world without creativity is no world at all! Rant over. 

Other great books: Treasure Island, Lafcadio, Sans Famille, The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle, The Egypt Game, To Kill A Mockingbird (these are all fantastic and acclaimed reads that I also loved as a kid, perhaps excluding Lafcadio, I don't know what awards if any that won, but it is by Shel Silverstein, a master lyric, and an interesting poet) 

Handmaid's Tale: Mayday Activity Reflection

The Mayday activity was very interesting. There were high strung, intense moments in the game and people actually thought I was an Eye!

Sweet Canada, with your fluffy sweet birds! 

I for one was trying to find out for myself who the mayday rebels were, and I was sure that Sheridan was one. But, in the end, alas, I was wrong. Completely wrong! It was Jordan and Tori. Too bad I didn't get to go to Canada. I have unbelievably bad luck when it comes to the important things. If I was in this world, one day I may find a left over cake in the fridge or something, a different experience than the usual meals of eggs butter and milk (creepy when thought about) and that would be my stroke of luck. But when it comes to Canada, I'm not going, because I don't have that kind of luck. I shall wallow for a moment. Anyway, people had the audacity to think I was an Eye because apparently I was 'keeping quiet', when really, I was just trying to figure out who was who! They said maybe I was an eye, and I just got quiet, because what else do you say? If you say 'no I'm not!' they'll think you did it, and if you say nothing, they still think you did it. You can't win! But, it doesn't matter now...

The two english students circle. One senses an opening, and pounces! Little does the magnificent creature know that its companion is going for the low attack...

I'm watchin' you!

A bit of drama when a certain someone slapped another certain someone, and then some more drama, but I did not see one bit of it! I was inside being a handmaid. My reflection of the activity found that we all had zero intuition. I would have never suspected the Eyes of being Eyes, and I would have never suspected the Mayday rebels of being Mayday rebels. So, my intuition and the intuition of the rest of my classmates are practically shot. We would have no hope in the world of Gilead.
I don't really know what else to say. The thing is, there wasn't much to the activity. I didn't really want to condemn anyone, so I didn't really vote for anyone to be done away with. I don't know why I didn't. If I had it my way, I would have done a full on investigation. But seriously, how can you figure out something like that? I knew early on that we'd never figure it out, it seemed so impossible. How can you just 'decide' who did what based on reactions? It's like the Salem Witch Trials! When in doubt, condemn! And that just ain't right. But, I suppose the activity copied the direness of the situation in Gilead, so that's that.

Lion, Lamb, Serpent, Angel

Alright. Today, our class participated in an activity to see what our propensity to kill and lie was. There was a spectrum- more like a compass, to guide us off of. North was the Lion. South was the lamb. East was the Serpent, and West I guess was the angel. I may be wrong though. The point is, you gridded a point where you thought you were off the axes (what is the plural of axis?) and I was in the venomous (serpent) lamb range, meaning I had a greater propensity to lie than the average person, but I had a lesser propensity to kill than the average person. In my class, most people were concentrated in this area.

If you look close enough, you can see it's fangs...

I fully support the right to lie if it is not hurtful to a person. If something doesn't need to be said, it doesn't need to be said. Honesty can be hurtful. If it is constructive, I would probably support honesty. But if it's just mean, why say it?

Ah, so beautiful... 

Example. If someone asks if a dress makes them look fat, I personally will not say, 'mayday! beached whale' or something awful of that nature or any near it. I will say 'It looks alright, but it's really not your color', or maybe say nicely 'it looks kind of stretchy across the abdomen, maybe if you got one with a little more breathing room you'd be able to dance easier'. Anyway, point gotten across, hopefully.
Example two. If I stole the cookie from the cookie jar, I will plead innocent by disassociation. I will not blame my brothers. I will simply say 'I don't know'. Though, if we are speaking in non metaphorical circumstances, I will definitely come clean about eating all the cookies. I'm honest about food. It's some of that other stuff that you let slip by. Disassociation did not always work when I was younger, though, because I would feel guilty enough to crack and tell the truth.
On the other hand, killing, I would not do. I don't know, I just couldn't kill someone. Or maybe I could. The fact is, something that crazy, I wouldn't be able to say whether I could do it or not unless I was in the situation. Maybe I would kill a person who was trying to kill me if they came upon me unawares.
If I was to analyze it, I would say that if given the active choice of saving someone in place of myself, I think that I would be able to hand the towel in (that sounds terrible, by gum...) but if someone snuck up on me and tried to take me out, I would probably fight for my life. I don't know. I don't know. The fact is, that one is really hard. It's a matter of honor, I suppose.

The Handmaid's Tale vs The Crucible

"Oh God, I pray... is this what you had in mind?"(Atwood 92)

The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood paints a picture of a religious society that has gone too far. In an article she wrote describing the after effects of The Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood discussed how she believed "much of the church's behavior and doctrine during its two millennia long existence as a social and political organization would have been abhorrent to the person after whom it is named"(the Guardian, 2012). The whole society revolved around an interpretation of a bible passage, in which Rachel cannot bear Jacob a child. Jacob becomes angry, and she decides to give her maid to her husband in order to 'bear Jacob children for her'. In The Handmaid's Tale, this passage is followed nearly word for word.
In the book, there was some sort of nuclear disaster that rendered many American women infertile. Apparently, Serena Joy, already having been a gospel singer, spearheaded the new movement to make repopulating the planet easier. But, in chapters 15 and 16 Serena Joy finds out that the movement she helped begin has become more than she bargained for. The interesting thing of the book is the twisting of strange bible passages to give reason for a society that demoralizes and oppresses women. It seems as if this is a look back at the condition of women in an earlier time.
The choosing of a Puritanical Society as Margaret Atwood's base makes sense. Puritan's were among the first settlers in the colonies. Their form of religion was unhealthy, because in their search to be perfect people, they became obsessed with seeking out the damned and condemning them. This is the basis for The Crucible by Arthur Miller. In Puritanical society, it was believed that most people were going to hell, and at some points nothing could be done about it. Perfection as a responsibility was thrown on over paranoid people who were scared of what lay beyond. This lead to mass paranoia in villages like Salem Village, where the Salem Witch Trials took place. The inhabitants were constantly looking for evil in everything that went wrong for them. Mrs. Putnam, who lost a number of children, couldn't deal with the possibility of being infertile, so she blamed her midwife, Rebecca Nurse, for killing her children. This lead to Mrs. Nurse being hung. This was similar the the role of the Eyes in The Handmaid's Tale, who kept everyone on their toes, in paranoia, ready to attack each other. A god who was supposed to be a 'savior' for the people was used as a weapon for oppression in the Handmaid's Tale, as it was in Puritan society.