The loose orange earth slid beneath our boots as we made our way up the scar in the side of the hill up towards Dante's View across from the Griffith Park observatory. The sight looked strange. Sort of like seeing a family member for the first time in years after he had suffered a severe accident that left him scarred and disfigured.
For years my uncles and I had made a routine of hiking up the mountain up to the observatory, then to Dante's View or our little "oasis" that refilled our waterbottles, and finally down a rough path that was mostly spent rolling on our asses before we made it to our parking spot beside the bird sanctuary.
For years we had been doing this. Then two of my uncles got married and had children and little time remained for weekly hiking trips and that sort of thing. I went about once a month after that with my best friend or my girlfriend (whenever it wasn't too sunny or hot and as long as I was the one who carried about 5 bottles of water in case she got dehydrated). Then the fires happened and it sort of stopped completely.
After the park was reopened and people were allowed to hike again my oldest uncle and I went back for a weekend hike on a Saturday morning.
We talked mostly about his career and funny things his daughter has done since the last time I saw her. You know, that sort of thing. We talked about cool books we've read and cool games that have come out that was followed by a discussion about how it would be funny if the makers of Guitar Hero came out with "Keytar Hero" featuring all Keyboard oriented 80's hits like Flock Of Seagulls and funny 80's bands like that. My uncle suggests Sitar Hero featuring classic Indian hits and I just laugh and look at him quizzically, "Sitar Hero???"
"Hey I was just kidding. You're the one who was all serious about Keytar Hero. I was only going with the flow."
I only laughed.
That was the sort of the thing we talked about. Then we reached the peek where we saw over the cliff and our conversation sort of died down to a slow crawl punctuated with the sound of a hawk's cry and the cascading of loose earth and rock as lizards zoomed across rocks and brush. The view was like something out of Mad Max Throughout Thunderdome. Uprooted trees were lying roots facing up to the sky like a dying animals outstretched blackened claws.
I know alot of the fires start with freak accidents involving a thrown cigarette that some jon doe tosses carelessly into the bushes without realizing the dry brush is like a piece of coal drenched in lighter fluid under the hot sun. However during the fires there was alot of reports considering arson as a cause. Of this I ask Why? Why when so many people consider these places that burn up like a match doused in gas a look at their past and of a look at their younger selves. I see old men hiking and women carrying their newborns on their back in one of those cool baby backpacks and I wonder, How many of them have come here for years? Even when they were young? How many see these hills blackened by the fire and the soil covered in orange fire retardant that smells like hay, and totally disfigures a memory of their past?
And still I ask why.
Sunday, December 16, 2007
Saturday, December 15, 2007
Media effects on society and the likes.
I was recently over at my aunt's house hanging out with my eight and ten year old cousins. I turned on the tv and began surfing the channel menus. That's when I saw that HBO had a movie I really wanted to watch. When I tried changing to that channel, it was empty except a small box that said 'Parental control, please enter password.' That got me thinking about how media (tv, movies, videogames) affect us. There have many cases that sued media companies for creating shows or games that created a negative effect on their children. For example, the Doom case. Parents of the students responsible for the Columbine shooting believed that it was because of the Doom videogame that made them so violent. They said that the kids were using the game as a practice run of what they would do the day they brought the guns to school. Or another case, the Seven Dirty Words Case (also known as the Pacifica Case). As a father was driving his son home from school, a comedian revealed curse words on live radio and the father sued for damaging his child. That was when safe harbor was created. Material inappropriate to children could be only played from 10pm- 6am. How do we define what is appropriate or inappropriate? Does parental control help save kids from hearing what they will most likely hear in school? Does the violence on the tv or video screen make them want to do the same things? Could it possibly be also cathartic, by playing violent video game, they don't need to express it in reality? Can media be a positive influence as well, such as showing the poor and making people feel more fotunate?
Tuesday, December 11, 2007
Notes on Titus Andronicus
Here's some key ideas, though, that might be of use on the final.
Titus Andronicus does not have as many little nuggets of beautiful phrasing as a lot of Shakespeare, so it's harder for me to quote a few lines to give a prompt. The play does have its share of dynamic ideas, however, especially as filmed here. They come out in the extremity and complexity of both the play and its presentation on film. I may present characters and/or scenes and ask a question for each prompt. So it may be worthwhile to think of how that happened.
For the production -- the play itself involves a clash between clans -- cultures, generations, classes. That's in part carried in the movie by relation to visual and aural fashions, partly of the 20th Century. So, for instance, Titus Andronicus, for example, is an older character with a kind of Old Testament kind of morals. We find him in battle gear that reminds us of ancient Romans and Greeks. He's generally accompanied by music that sounds classical and formal -- violins, heavy sounds, choral sounds. The conflict between Bassianus and Saturnius uses a lot of Fascist imagery. Their costumes may be placed around the 1920's and 1930's. Scenes were shot in and around Mussolini's palaces and so forth. His celebrations and orgies flow with hot jazz arrangements and costumes. Tamora's kids are rockers who at one point would have had posters of Sid Vicious or Billy Idol -- probably not serious enough for the Clash, but you know the era. You see the costumes, even the 80's-early 90's graphics on the video-game consoles. And so the leather pants and so forth. There's a convenient confusion between the tattoos of Roman-era northern tribes and those of contemporary youth that's taken advantage of broadly here, but partly in the sort of exotic set of costumes for Tamora and Aaron.
All of these things -- setting, music, costume -- related meaningfully to the content of the written play and to intent in performance.
Now, the Taymor production also makes a big deal of the point of view of the boy, young Lucius. He gets that whole extra scene at the beginning where he's playing, then the last frames at the end where he walks into the rising sun with Aaron's child. That and the odd march at the beginning and the odd scene at the end where the camara pulls back from old Titus' table to show the coliseum and then what appears to be a film audience are a modern addition to the Shakespeare, and seem to provide a symbolic or at least significant bracketing to the rest of the film. Taymor's making some point or points about the viewing of the film and the viewing of violence and the effect on the younger generation, but what?
A lot of the conflicts in the play proper are built on astonishing apparent contradictions in the characters, and if you go through the play character by character and isolate what appears contradictory, why the contradictions exist, and what they tell us about human nature and principles, that will stand you in good stead. Here are a couple of the more obvious examples.
Most of us find Titus Andronicus good. He's sacrificed 21 sons to Rome at the beginning. He's modest enough to turn down being an emperor, for crying out loud. He tries to be fair: he even kills one of his own sons when he feels the son is a traitor, so he seems the ultimate patriot. But at the same time, he's willing to cut off his own hand for his sons, and even tricks his relatives to get his hand cut off before theirs. Would I hesitate so little? And yet, he has Tamora's son killed and his entrails burned in front of her. Now, if that happened at a local park on a Sunday afternoon, what would we say? Alright, this is "to appease the Roman gods," granted, but what are the Roman gods that they may be so appeased? On top of that, it's not like this son was the first who was killed. Titus lost 21 sons, but he won the war. What did the Goths lose? There's no reason here to believe that the Goths had been violent towards Rome. Rome invaded them, cut them up for something it calls glory. So what's good?
Aaron, on the other hand, can be pretty well described as evil. His last dying regret is that he may have inadvertently done something good. I won't even list the vicious things he does in the play just because they're painful and I assume you remember them well enough. On the other hand, doesn't he seem to be the only person in the whole play who demonstrates anything like defensible family values? A lot of people see Tamora's rage as righteous because she loses a son, but she herself is willing to kill her own son, and foolishly gives Aaron orders to see that it's done. Not even poor Lavinia can be described as altogether innocent. Recall her praise for her father, Titus, as he buried 21 of her brothers for the priviledge of slaughtering Goths. And what about her and Bassianus' threats towards Tamora when they found her sporting with Aaron in the woods? They surely amounted to a death threat, since Saturnius would surely have executed Tamora had he found her unfaithful. So, if the Roman and Goth societies are thus, and and if they have the prejudices towards Aaron's race that Lavinia, Bassianus, Lucius, the Andronichae, and the nurse all show at points, can we not make a case that it's not so bad of Aaron to bedevil them all?
If you can get a pretty good sense of these things for the main characters and think of them in terms of your own values and in terms of events you're familiar with, you'll be in good shape.
Titus Andronicus does not have as many little nuggets of beautiful phrasing as a lot of Shakespeare, so it's harder for me to quote a few lines to give a prompt. The play does have its share of dynamic ideas, however, especially as filmed here. They come out in the extremity and complexity of both the play and its presentation on film. I may present characters and/or scenes and ask a question for each prompt. So it may be worthwhile to think of how that happened.
For the production -- the play itself involves a clash between clans -- cultures, generations, classes. That's in part carried in the movie by relation to visual and aural fashions, partly of the 20th Century. So, for instance, Titus Andronicus, for example, is an older character with a kind of Old Testament kind of morals. We find him in battle gear that reminds us of ancient Romans and Greeks. He's generally accompanied by music that sounds classical and formal -- violins, heavy sounds, choral sounds. The conflict between Bassianus and Saturnius uses a lot of Fascist imagery. Their costumes may be placed around the 1920's and 1930's. Scenes were shot in and around Mussolini's palaces and so forth. His celebrations and orgies flow with hot jazz arrangements and costumes. Tamora's kids are rockers who at one point would have had posters of Sid Vicious or Billy Idol -- probably not serious enough for the Clash, but you know the era. You see the costumes, even the 80's-early 90's graphics on the video-game consoles. And so the leather pants and so forth. There's a convenient confusion between the tattoos of Roman-era northern tribes and those of contemporary youth that's taken advantage of broadly here, but partly in the sort of exotic set of costumes for Tamora and Aaron.
All of these things -- setting, music, costume -- related meaningfully to the content of the written play and to intent in performance.
Now, the Taymor production also makes a big deal of the point of view of the boy, young Lucius. He gets that whole extra scene at the beginning where he's playing, then the last frames at the end where he walks into the rising sun with Aaron's child. That and the odd march at the beginning and the odd scene at the end where the camara pulls back from old Titus' table to show the coliseum and then what appears to be a film audience are a modern addition to the Shakespeare, and seem to provide a symbolic or at least significant bracketing to the rest of the film. Taymor's making some point or points about the viewing of the film and the viewing of violence and the effect on the younger generation, but what?
A lot of the conflicts in the play proper are built on astonishing apparent contradictions in the characters, and if you go through the play character by character and isolate what appears contradictory, why the contradictions exist, and what they tell us about human nature and principles, that will stand you in good stead. Here are a couple of the more obvious examples.
Most of us find Titus Andronicus good. He's sacrificed 21 sons to Rome at the beginning. He's modest enough to turn down being an emperor, for crying out loud. He tries to be fair: he even kills one of his own sons when he feels the son is a traitor, so he seems the ultimate patriot. But at the same time, he's willing to cut off his own hand for his sons, and even tricks his relatives to get his hand cut off before theirs. Would I hesitate so little? And yet, he has Tamora's son killed and his entrails burned in front of her. Now, if that happened at a local park on a Sunday afternoon, what would we say? Alright, this is "to appease the Roman gods," granted, but what are the Roman gods that they may be so appeased? On top of that, it's not like this son was the first who was killed. Titus lost 21 sons, but he won the war. What did the Goths lose? There's no reason here to believe that the Goths had been violent towards Rome. Rome invaded them, cut them up for something it calls glory. So what's good?
Aaron, on the other hand, can be pretty well described as evil. His last dying regret is that he may have inadvertently done something good. I won't even list the vicious things he does in the play just because they're painful and I assume you remember them well enough. On the other hand, doesn't he seem to be the only person in the whole play who demonstrates anything like defensible family values? A lot of people see Tamora's rage as righteous because she loses a son, but she herself is willing to kill her own son, and foolishly gives Aaron orders to see that it's done. Not even poor Lavinia can be described as altogether innocent. Recall her praise for her father, Titus, as he buried 21 of her brothers for the priviledge of slaughtering Goths. And what about her and Bassianus' threats towards Tamora when they found her sporting with Aaron in the woods? They surely amounted to a death threat, since Saturnius would surely have executed Tamora had he found her unfaithful. So, if the Roman and Goth societies are thus, and and if they have the prejudices towards Aaron's race that Lavinia, Bassianus, Lucius, the Andronichae, and the nurse all show at points, can we not make a case that it's not so bad of Aaron to bedevil them all?
If you can get a pretty good sense of these things for the main characters and think of them in terms of your own values and in terms of events you're familiar with, you'll be in good shape.
Romeo and Juliet Characters and (quick) Plot
We open with a TV announcer. "Civil blood makes civil hands unclean:" - TV & magazines, signs at the gas stations, buildings, personalized licensed plates try to update the old "chorus" of Greek antiquity.
Montagues vs Capulets
Casa Capulet
Rough Wedding
Plots foul
Philosophical denoument
Main Characters -
House of Montague
House of Capulet
Various
Montagues vs Capulets
- "the boys" w/swords - Shootout at the gas station.
- Prince threatens families
- Romeo moons for Roselyn; folks worry, send Cousin Benvolio to spy on the boy
Casa Capulet
- Costume party to marry Juliet to Paris
- Romeo's chums drag him along.
- R sees Juliet forgets Roselyn .
- Balcony, love, promises.
Rough Wedding
- Romeo goes to Friar Laurence to marry; he hopes they'll turn their famillies' "rancor into pure love"
- R promises J's nurse he'll marry J; the nurse reports.
- R&J secretly wed
- R refuses duel, finally kills J's cousin Tybalt.
- L sends R to J, then to Mantua; will arrange union.
- Capulet offers J to Paris.
- R leaves J @ dawn. J refuses Paris, fairly near disowned.
Plots foul
- Father Laurence offers Juliet a drug to feign death.
- Laurence's letter does not get through to Romeo.
- R hear's J's supposed death, gets poison, returns to Verona, drinks poison.
- J sees R dying, kills self.
Philosophical denoument
- Families relent
- All are Punishèd
Main Characters -
House of Montague
- Montague
- Lady Montague
- Romeo, son to Montague.
- Benvolio, nephew to Montague, and friend to Romeo
House of Capulet
- Capulet
- Lady Capulet, wife to Capulet.
- Juliet, daughter to Capulet.
- Tybalt, nephew to Lady Capulet.
- Nurse to Juliet.
Various
- Escalus, Prince of Verona.Here the police officer.
- Paris, Count, kinsman to the Prince, Cap's choice for J.
- Mercutio, kinsman to the Prince and friend to Romeo.
- Friar Laurence, Franciscan and herbalist
Romeo and Juliet
I'll take the lack of questions about Romeo and Juliette to mean that a few of you are pretty certain that you're in good shape for the final, but that others may not be certain just what questions might be framed. Since we missed some important discussion when I missed class last Friday, here are a few common points about the play and the production.
First, a correction -- I thought more was shot around L.A. than was. I recognize a few scenes for certain, but much of it was apparently shot in Veracruz, Mexico.
Some themes you might think about include the following
A very good exercise might be this. Go through the plot of the play in your mind or look at a synopsis. Note what the motivations were for the different characters, and how the characters were wise and unwise.
First, a correction -- I thought more was shot around L.A. than was. I recognize a few scenes for certain, but much of it was apparently shot in Veracruz, Mexico.
Some themes you might think about include the following
- Love, particularly love-at-first-sight. Is it possible? Is it reasonable? How does it relate to conditions we might consider opposite, like a marriage of convenience? For instance, if love-at-first-sight is not valid or wise because one does not consider the inconveniences of life with a potential spouse, does that mean that a marriage of convenience, where these are taken into consideration, is true love? Or what about Romeo's condition with Roselyn at the start of the movie? We're tempted to say that he's "enamored" or "in puppy love" or "thinks he's in love" or use any of a large number of similar expressions to describe him. But how are these different than love itself?
- What is the role of reason in love? Is unreasonable love really love? For that matter, can reasonable love really be love, and what does this mean? People say "Love is blind," but Mercutio says it must then "miss its mark."
- What kind of control should parents have in kids' romantic lives?
- What responsibility for Romeo and Juliet's problems do the different characters have? (Try the heads-of-houshold, the prince (chief of police here), the priest, evern apparent innocents like Mercutio or Juliet's maid.
A very good exercise might be this. Go through the plot of the play in your mind or look at a synopsis. Note what the motivations were for the different characters, and how the characters were wise and unwise.
FINALS
Students from either Friday or Sunday classes may take the final test with their own class or with the other class. Times and places will be as follows:
Friday: 26A 321 10am-2pm
Sunday: 26A 370 8am - 12:15 pm
In both cases, the instructor will arrive at or before the hour, and the student will have the entire time to write. Prompts will be given out at the hour, before if possible. Students may bring books, notes, dictionaries, electronic spell-checkers or translators, or laptops.
Our Friday final is a decidedly odd situation because for the first time in my experience, our day and time is not included in the updated finals schedule. Fortunately, it is easy to deduce an appropriate time, since none of you can be in a Friday 8 AM or 1:20 PM class. I will show up at 9:45 as usual, and I am almost (not completely) certain that our room will be free before 10, so anyone who is worried about time has an almost certain chance to start at 9:45.
Friday: 26A 321 10am-2pm
Sunday: 26A 370 8am - 12:15 pm
In both cases, the instructor will arrive at or before the hour, and the student will have the entire time to write. Prompts will be given out at the hour, before if possible. Students may bring books, notes, dictionaries, electronic spell-checkers or translators, or laptops.
Our Friday final is a decidedly odd situation because for the first time in my experience, our day and time is not included in the updated finals schedule. Fortunately, it is easy to deduce an appropriate time, since none of you can be in a Friday 8 AM or 1:20 PM class. I will show up at 9:45 as usual, and I am almost (not completely) certain that our room will be free before 10, so anyone who is worried about time has an almost certain chance to start at 9:45.
Saturday, December 8, 2007
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