Post B. week 5

I think I'll make this post about the Golden Compass/His Dark Materials series. One might be wondering: "what on earth has got this guy so excited about this book?" There is only one answer for that, and it is: Its Awesome! Its even better then Potter, hands down. How could that be possible? It has some key differences. Harry Potter was written with the idea of it appealing to the biggest audience possible. And one of the biggest reading population in America is... children. So throughout the series, J.K. Rowling tones down the more mature material that she could have easily added. So although it is a very clever series and its not completely void of dark occurrings, in my mind, it seems a little childish. The His Dark Materials on the other hand doesn't go into intensely gory and romantic scenes, but it alludes to sex and a twelve year old boy loses a finger (I can't tell you who, but he appears in the second book at some point). Also, this same boy witnesses his father's death knowing what is happening while it happens. Harry Potter on the other hand, can only remember glimpses of his parent's deaths because he was a baby when they were murdered. The Golden Compass also includes much more depth to the characters, where as Potter had some depth, but it didn't' really take much analysing to reach the bottom of the characters depth. The plot line requires more in depth analysis to completely understand what the significance the different scenes hold. If you haven't read the His Dark Materials series, you must. And even if you have, read it again, because trust me, its worth it.

Theme week 5

The major theme that I can find in these set of chapters is that everything is not what it seem to be at first glance. What I mean by this is people in general.

Quote week 5

"It's unbelievable how many black men and women have let the white man fool them into holding an almost romantic idea of what slave days were like"(245). This is the most startling quote in the whole book in my opinion. Its amazing how the black community is controlled so much by the whites, that the whites control what the blacks think their history was like. The fact that they can barely believe what they are hearing when Malcolm starts preaching to them what actually happened, sickens me. The fact that we fought a war to free African Americans from slavery, only to cover up the horrendous things we did, is just plain disgusting.

Appeals week 5

1. "This white man's Christian religion used to brainwash us black people! We have accepted it! We have embraced it! We have believed it! We have practiced it! And while we are doing all of that, for himself, this blue-eyed devil has twisted his Christianity, to keep his foot on our backs... to keep our eyes fixed on the pie in the sky and heaven in the hereafter... while he enjoys his heaven right here... on this earth... in this life" (231). This is an emotional appeal because it is a speech Malcolm's religious leader gave to stir up the black Muslim populace.

2."And each time we went, we were honored with dinner at the home of Elijah Muhammad. he was interested in my potential. I could tell from things he would say. And I worshiped him"(230). This is a factual appeal because it shows what how Elijah believed he held potential for being a good recruiter for the Muslim community. The passage also shows how influenced Malcolm was by another person.

3. "In years to come, I was going to have to face a psychological and spiritual crisis"(242). This is an emotional appeal because you want to know why after the whole chapter being designated to how strong his faith is, he says that he is going to have a crisis spirtually.

Post A week 5 vocab

Allah(215): A word for God, however in the book it is used for Islam.

Nationalist(251): a person fighting for national independence.

Post B week four

As I mentioned in my theme post for this week, the main theme in these chapters is white hate. It partially scares me because Malcolm X becomes one of the most influential African Americans in his time, and the religion his family wants him to join is teaching that whites were savages when they were first created. If he had started to teach this to all the people who listen to him, social peace would never have become possible. This confuses me a little because even though I haven't reached the part of the book that he starts to become influential, it doesn't seem likely that he wouldn't teach something that he learned when he was first introduced to his faith. So maybe I've missed something about his character that allows him to change his views on race extremely. I am curious to find out the exact details, and I will post them next week. Now I want to talk about religion and how people can interpret it to justify killing or hurting other people. Its easy to say when you see killing in the name of religion: "wow, those people are monsters." and not go any farther. Now I'm not saying the idea you can kill people because of how you interpret your religious text is justified; not at all I think the whole idea is sickening. But you need to ask what would cause people to want to kill others. When people die from the the attacks of religious fanatics, its almost certain the attackers believe themselves to be doing the right thing, because it was what they had been taught. But almost every religion that these people claim to be apart of starts off believing killing is a negative. So somewhere along the line, someone interpreted that it allowed you to kill other people. What caused that thought? I believe its pressure from another society in a forceful way. And the people they want you to kill are the people who belong to the society that is pressuring them. This explains why Malcolm is learning to hate white people from a branch of a religion composed of only blacks. The reason why I'm bringing this up is because this is a very wrong thing to do, but its not just the people who kill who are responsible, almost always another group of people is pressuring them.

Theme week four

The most reaccuring theme in these chapters is: blacks are superior to whites, and whites were originally savages where blacks were intelligent.

Quote week four

"When the Bible says "Moses lifted up the serpent in teh wilderness," that serpent is symbolic of the devil white race Moses lifted up out of the caves of Europe, teaching them civilization" (193). I find this quote extremely important to the understanding of how Malcolm thinks because he is joining a religion that teaches white hate. I understand why a branch of religion would incorperate this, but it doesn't help create peace and understanding between blacks and whites. If anyting it will hurt the community more.

Appeals week four

1. "In one generation, the black slave women in America had been raped by the slavemaster white man until there had begun to emerge a homemade, handmade, brainwashed race that was no longer even of its true color, that no longer even knew in true familty names. The slave master forced his familty name upon this rape-mixed race, which the slavemaster began to call "the negro" (188). This is an emotional appeal because Malcolm is claiming that the white man forced a race to be born that isn't black and is brainwashed.

2. "The very enormity of my previous life's guilt prepared me to accept the truth" (189). This is an emotional appeal because he is trying to get you to understand that depth that he messed up in life.

3. "On the island of Patmos was nothing but these blond, pale-skinned, cold-blue-eyed devils- savages, nude and shameless; hairy, like animals, they walked on all fours and they lived in trees" (192). This is an emotional appeal for me because this is part of a story explaining the existance of white people, and it basically makes us monsters.

Week 4 post A Vocab

Masonry (186): The craft or occupation of a mason.

Satan (181): The great adversary or humanity.

400 Blows review

Authority’s View on Cages:
After a half-hour of reflecting upon the movie, how I should answer the first question finally came to me. I nearly shouted: “Eureka, I have found it!” but as that would have raised the eyebrows of my parents, I refrained. My opinion of the film was that it was very effective in conveying how Francois Truffaut felt during that time in his life. He constantly creates a negative mood whenever an authority figure was present. For example, his teacher was constantly yelling whenever Antoine was in school, which didn’t exactly give you a happy feeling. He similarly made the mood much lighter when authority wasn’t present by adding music in some parts, like when his youthful self was playing hokey with Rene. However, the movie wasn’t effective in the sense that I need to question how accurately the brutality of some of the authority figures was portrayed. The one person that sticks in my mind is the teacher. I guess it is possible that someone could be so cruel to a bunch of boys, but I have trouble believing it was that bad for Truffaut. Granted that this is a memoir so it is acceptable for him to exaggerate, but it takes away from the film (in my opinion) because it hampers the knowledge of how life really was back when the movie was made.
Truffaut’s emotion and values are portrayed best by the themes he chooses to incorporate in the movie. For example, the theme that authority can never understand that a child needs to be a child, shows just how he thinks authority acts. In the observatory center, he portrays the people in charge of him as insensitive, almost monster like humans. They place children so young that anything they could have possibly done to put them in a jail was done so with innocence enough to excuse them. The characters he creates also help illustrate how he feels about authority. The teacher is an extremely unfair, strict, almost cruel person who is always bullying Antoine. He punishes him for being a kid and he takes away the one thing a child his age needs when he is in school: recess.
The dramatic aspects of the film generate thought and understanding of what Truffaut was thinking. The casting of the characters was well done in the sense that they portrayed what was necessary. What I mean by that was they showed his opinions of what type of person they were and what their opinions of him were. For example, his mother had affairs with men other then Truffaut’s stepfather, and she was only nice to Truffaut when she thought he liked his father better than her. Claire Maurier (who played his mother) looked like how I imagined her and she played her role so well that she made the move more interesting because you began to wonder what the mother’s ultimate goal was. Georges Flamant did a good job of acting very angry and disgusted with the boys at school. He also looked like someone who would be grouchy; he wore suits that looked old and he had an attitude that made him defer only to the principle. Jean-Pierre Leaud made the understanding of how Truffaut thought very clear by acting like a child who was mischievous. When he was smoking, he always had a smug look across his face which told the viewer that he was very pleased with himself. The lighting of the scenes played a critical role in expressing how Antoine thought about the people around him. When he is in the school with the teacher who always yells at him, the lighting is darker. When he is skipping school, the scene is much lighter because he enjoys the companionship of Rene.
The camera movement and the duration of the shots were critical to the expression of Truffaut throughout the movie. For most of the scenes, the camera maintained a certain distance from the characters it was filming. An example of this type of shot is when Antoine and Rene are walking together when they are going to school. It is not too close to them, but it focuses only on what they are doing in the scene, everything else in the scene is trivial. So when Truffaut wants to emphasize something he thinks is important, he breaks this pattern of camera distance and usually zooms in on someone’s face. The duration of the shots played an important role in the movie because the longer the shot, the more freedom Antoine is experiencing. For instance, when Antoine is running away from the observatory, Truffaut takes two back to back scenes of just him running away. Both these scenes last at least two minutes! This shows how important Antoine’s running away is to him. The scene where the mother is kissing her boss is short because it provides a little more characterization of the mother, but more importantly Antoine loses a little freedom because now his mother knows he is not in school.
The 400 Blows and Black Boy are similar because both Richard and Antoine rebel due to the fact they feel that they are being cornered. Because of this, they feel that authority can never understand them and they basically start to do what authority doesn’t want them to do. In Black Boy, Richard rebels against his grandmother by writing a short story that she thinks is “the devil’s work”. In 400 Blows, Antoine rebels by trying to run away and live on his own. But Antoine’s way of rebelling is the barrier that separates him and Richard. Antoine tries to rid himself of authorities stare by running away. Richard on the other hand can’t bend himself to kneel at the feet of authority and doesn’t take flight either. He tries his best to live side by side with it.
I believe that if someone is looking for a film that expresses emotion and opinion without cheesy lines or over-the-top characters, then I think you might like this movie. It incorporates ingenious usage of basic features of film making to express emotion and opinion. It also shows how good acting and pretty straightforward plot line can be used to narrate an excellent story even though it doesn’t have the special effects we had today.

Post B week Three

These chapters focused alot on how messed up his life was. He bounces back between how he can't have a legal job and earn money, and how he stays high all the time when he is awake. I find, to my surprise, myself pitying Malcolm. I normally wouldn't pity someone who is in this situation because it would be possible if they truely wanted too, to change their life style. However, due to white supremecy, Malcolm can't really change what he is doing to survive. Its this or living on the streets. Malcolm realizes this, and he will occasionally critize white people. For example: "I have also read recently that groups of white couples who get together, the husbands throw their house keys into a hat, then, blindfolded, the husbands draw out a key and spend the night with the wife that the house key matches. I have never heard of anything like that being done by Negroes, even Negroes who live in the worst ghettoes and alleys and gutters"(141). Now I don't disagree with him in the sense that this is immoral, and considering in the previous paragraph he metions that whites think Black's have worse morals then they do, this quote is justifiable. But I don't think that just whites are capable of actions on this level, instead I think that maybe Black's didn't do this exact thing, but can do something like it. Basically what I'm saying is that its not the color of your skin that decides your morals, its the society you've grown up in.

Theme week Three

Basically the theme that reaccurs the most in these chapters is how messed up his life is because of the society whites force Blacks into.

Quote week three

"Through all of this time of my life, I really was dead-mentally dead. I just didn't know that I was"(145). This quote is important because it shows how Malcolm thinks of how he acted and thought when he was younger. I wonder what happened to make him think this.

Appeals week three

1."The dealer let me have loose marijuana on credit. He saw I was so high that he even helped me roll it-a hundred sticks"(151). This is an emotional appeal because it shows how messed up Malcolm was, and in me it generates disgust.

2."For a hustler in our sidewalk jungle world, "face" and "honor" were important. No hustler could have it known that he'd been "hyped," meaning outsmarted or made a fool of"(147). This is a logical appeal because it shows that Malcolm is in grave danger due to the fact that one hustler he barrowed money from, thinks Malcolm ripped him off. It shows how tedious life is for Malcolm.

3."A .32-20 is a funny kind of gun. It's bigger than a .32. But it's not as big as a .38. I had faced down some dangerous Negroes. But no one who wasn't ready to die messed with West Indian Archie"(146). Emotional appeal because your not sure if Malcolm is going to be shot or not.

Vocabulary week three

Hoodlums (141): Gansters

Hustler (152): a person who employs fraudulent or unscrupulous methods to obtain money

Post B week two

"I was able to keep that cracker stripping of clothes until he stood there drunk with nothing on from his pants up, and the whole car was laughing at him, and some other soldiers got him out of the way. I went on. I never would forget that- that I couldn't have whipped that white man as badly with a club as I had with my mind" (90). The thing I find important about this quote is how Malcolm X is almost being racist and sterio typical about whites. Not to say we weren't doing that exact same thing back then, but this could have easily have happened to a black man. The thing that bothers me about this is just how easily he thinks whites are not all that smart.
"I got my first schooling about the cesspool morals of the white man form the best possible sourse, from his own women. And then as I got deeper into my own life of evil, I saw the white man's morals with my own eyes. I even made my living helping to guide him to the sick things he wanted" (106). Again stero typing whites as perverted people lacking decent morals. For someone who is trying to promote racial equality, he doesn't seem to be doing a good job of it. He constantly complains about how, for example, the white man doesn't have any morals concerning prostitution. But later on in the same chapter, he talks about blacks doing the same thing but without any protest about them.

Theme week two

The most recurring theme throught these chapters is that in order to survive as a black in New York City, you pretty much needed to break the law.

Quote week two

"The white woman with a Negro man would be with him for one of two reasons: either extremely insane love, or to satisfy her lust"(111). I think this quote is important because of how it shows that inter-racial marriage between whites and blacks happened, but mostly it was because of lust, not love.

Appeals week two

"Every man without a woman on his arm was being "worked" by the prostitutes. "Baby, wanna have some fun?" The pimps would sidle up close, stage whispering. "All kinds of women, jack-want a white woman?" And the hustlers were merchandising: "Hundred dollar ring, man, diamond; ninety-dollar watch, too-look at 'em. Take 'em both for twenty-five" (87). This is a logical appeal because it gives a good idea what life was like at night in Harlem, New York in the 1940's.

"There were many more reefer smokers around there, but these were a cheaper type, this was the worst of the ghetto, the poorest people, the ones who in every ghtto keep themselves narcotized to keep from having to face their miserable existance" (118). I am classifiying this as an emotional appeal. You feel rather bad for those who spend all their lives getting high so they don't have to face reality.

"Finally, right in her own house, with her family away, she threatened a Negro man who worked for her father that if he didn't take her she would swear he tried rape" (103). This is a logical appeal because until this point of the book, you only really see white men taking advantage of blacks. But this opens your eyes at how even white women would take advantage of their skin color to get what they want from blacks.

Vocabulary week two

Pimp (102): A person who solicits customers for a prostitute in exchange for money.

Conk (90): A hairstyle in which the hair has been chemically straightened.