Literature Through Film Post #3: Responding to "To Kill a Mockingbird"

       In this mysteriously interesting movie, we go over the experiences of Scout, a curious and lovely young girl who pretty much is the definition of innocence, is faced with challenging life experiences that prove to be contributors to her growth. She naturally challenges the standards set by her archaic society and questions the silly logistics that have overtaken the minds of the people in the past. Everyone seems to be just mindlessly following racist and sexist standards without ever stopping to think about them, but Scout is always questioning why the world around her is rotting and the people around her are so negligent. Scout questions, why does she need to wear a dress to school just because she is a girl. She clearly isn't allowed to do what makes her comfortable which in return makes the world around her a more hostile place for her. She witnesses the hatred of white people towards black people, and see how unfair and unbalanced the justice systems were are the time. On the way, she also saw how manipulative and destructive people can be when Mr. Ewell abused his daughter and still managed to convince her to say that a black person did it in court. All throughout what I managed to see of the movie, I was afraid that Atticus would be killed by the people who accused Tom Robinson of a serious felony because of the scene where Mr. Ewell snuck up to his car and seemed threatening to Atticus' kids. He also called Atticus a "nigger lover" which is what the people in Selma called the white people who helped the black people in the civil rights movement before they killed them.

Literature Through Film Post #2: Responding to "Precious"

       In this stunning emotional roller coaster, viewers constantly find themselves making that "ouch,," expression as they witness the abuse and mistreatment that the main character, Precious, experiences. One of the most interesting displays of film abstraction (at least that's what I would call it), is when Precious is seen in an illusion in which she is in a happy place while she is experiencing a considerably scarring experience. When she is getting raped by her father, when she was assaulted in the street, when she was running away from her mother, all of these scenes seemed oddly out of place and didn't hold any immediate meaning to me when I saw them. I found myself troubled trying to understand what message is being sent out every time Precious is in one of these illusions, and I couldn't come up with anything. After reflecting on it for a while, I've decided to believe that these illusions are Precious' coping mechanism that allow her to move on with her life and give off the strong appearance she does all throughout the movie without breaking down and crying. I wondered all along the movie how could precious possibly go on with her life. Reality is, she can't, not on her own. These illusions and dreams of happiness are the reason she is still attempting to set her life on track, and this reveals that she is a strong character that has managed to live through situations none of us could possibly imagine ourselves going through by ourselves.

Literature Through Film Post #1: Responding to "Monty Python and The Holy Grail"

        In this marvelously hilarious display of criticism of the darker aspects of the middle ages, we as viewers were granted information that is only heard of seldom when talking about the middle ages. This information was delivered to us in such a clever manner, that even the senseless killings of women during witch-hunts were hilarious to us. How did Monty Python manage to do this? To put it simply, by highlighting stupidity and really making clear how much we have developed as humans. This brilliant appeal approach is the "Monty Python" touch. All of their films appeal to their viewers by creating this feeling of achievement through the very detailed highlight of stupidity from the past ages. The effect this has on the viewers is evoking a feeling of joy because the viewers have now made aware that there are people so stupid that compared to them, they might as well be gods. The stubbornness of the black knight, the desperation of the virgins, the thirst for blood that the villagers possessed. All of these details add up to the image of what we used to be. Logically, this would bring shame upon the viewers, but upon the realization that these things don't happen anymore (or at least not as often or as explicitly), a feeling of improvement overcomes then, and these dark stories suddenly becoming entertaining and even educational. This entertainment approach is brilliant and I wish it was used more often in modern films. Sadly, all we see is the same love story with different Barbies and different Kens nowadays...