MyEnglish101WeeklyJournalEntries
Was the purpose of “The Matrix Interactive” entertainment, or was it designed with a greater objective?
When most people go to the theatre to watch a movie, they have one purpose in mind: entertainment. I believe that the purpose for “The Matrix Interactive” was not only to watch a cool movie, but to maintain a level of light-heartedness to keep our attention, as well to encourage viewers to think of ways the movie The Matrix can be applied to our own lives.
Watching The Matrix with actors in front or behind the screen trying to humor us, kept my attention much longer than watching the movie alone one, late Tuesday night. For example, in the scene following Neo’s instruction to “follow the white rabbit,“ an actress in “The Matrix Interactive” walks in front of the screen wearing a short skirt and rabbit ears followed by an actor pretending to beg on his knees. Simple plays on the movie filled “The Matrix Interactive” keeping the laughter rolling and our attention just a little while longer.
As we all know, The Matrix can be applied to everyday life. The interaction between the skit and its viewers helped us to consider various questions like: what would it be like to live in The Matrix? is this reality? what would I do if in their shoes,? etc. While walking into the gym students were handed a plastic spoon with two jellybeans on them, one red, and one blue. During the scene where Morphous poses the red pill verses the blue pill question, students had to choose which pill we would take if asked the same question. Through this aspect of interaction, I actually had to consider the consequences of both pills: to remain ignorant and live each day wondering if there was something more or to actually “see how far the rabbit hole goes.”
The presentation
of “The Matrix Interactive” served its purpose well. It encouraged me to
think about the consequences of “living inside the Matrix,” and due to
constant laughter I didn’t fall asleep the second time.
Response:
Stan
Vlademar Journal entry 1
In his journal
entry, Stan applied truths learned through The Matrix to his spiritual
walk with God. (I personally thought the spiritual insight was great.)
He has a great point/connection between "seeing the light," heaven, and
intellectual enlightenment. Stan proves that there was more than meets
the eye in "The Matrix Interactive" because he applied it to his spiritual
life. Thanks Stan.
Douglass refers to the way that he is transported from the Deep South to Chicago as the “merest accident.” Douglass uses the phrase in almost sarcastic manner. He acknowledges Providence in his situation knowing it was more that just an accident. From his “merest accident”, Douglass is placed in the home of a woman who teaches him the alphabet. “The A, B, C” is the phrase Douglass uses when he is referring to the alphabet. From “the A, B, C”, Douglass goes on to learn to read and write. His education in these areas allows him to gain his own freedom as well as help other slaves to do the same. From his “merest accident” and “the A, B, C”, Douglass earned his “pathway from slavery to freedom.”
Similarly in The
Matrix, Trinity is not part of The Matrix by a “merest accident.” The
movie does not say where she came from, but it is assumed that she was
born in Zion or some place outside The Matrix. It was a “merest accident”
because she did not do anything to gain the privilege of going against
The Matrix, but instead her social standing was a gift bestowed upon her
by fate. Trinity then went on to learn “the A, B, C” of living outside
The Matrix. She had to have computer programs loaded into her brain to
learn to fight and other activities needed to combat The Matrix. From learning
“the A, B, C” Trinity was able to gain her “pathway from slavery to freedom”
because she could go into The Matrix and fight the Agents. Like Douglass,
Trinity used her skills to help rescue others, Neo, from The Matrix.
Both Douglass and
Trinity had to go through certain steps in order to gain their freedom
from slavery to men or a computer generated world. Through the “merest
accident”, learning “the A, B, C”, and following the “pathway from slavery
to freedom” both were able to serve as protagonist in history as well as
the fantasy world of the future.
Throughout Zeltser’s selected pieces, he offered a description and explanation of how each piece related to the book The Bacchae. He related the two different styles in Greek culture, Apollonian and Dionysian, to his pieces. He described Apollonian music as structured, precise, clear, and repetitive. The Apollonian pieces had a clear pattern of notes that was almost predictable. In The Bacchae Pentheus seems to be a person with Apollonian tendencies because he does not let his emotions get in the way. Pentheus is the personification of Apollonian music because both the man and the music are very rigid and do not tend to deviate from what is set up as the norm.
On the other hand, Dionysian pieces tend to display diversity, change, and distractions. Zeltser’s performance of Dionysian pieces put pictures in my mind of a colorful butterfly flying without restraint high above the earth. The Dionysian pieces did not seem to follow a set pattern much like the women Dionysus charmed did not follow the convention of staying at home and taking care of the children. Dionysian piano pieces reflect the revelry, lustfulness, and freedom of spirit displayed in the god Dionysus.
Mark Zeltser showed
maturity and excellence in his ability to be able to adapt to the type
of style the composer called for and to do it quickly. This man's ability
to be able to play both styles with such skill absolutely blew my mind.
Hopefully, the other F.Y.E. events will be as entertaining as Zeltser’s
performance.
According to the
British Liver Trust Association excessive drinking has these effects on
your body:
• stomach disorders
• depression
• high blood pressure
• vitamin deficiencies
• sexual difficulties
• problems with
the brain
• problems with
nerves in the limbs
• inflammation
of the liver - hepatitis
• cirrhosis
• cancer of the
liver, mouth, throat and gullet
If students were allowed to drink whenever they wanted to, simply traveling from one party to the next, some definite health problems could develop as a result of excessive alcohol consumption. While we are adults and can make our own decisions, as a whole we are stupid and do not consider the consequences of drinking when handed a beer.
Also students, in
general, lack the self-control necessary to stop the partying and start
studying. Because of this fact, our grades as a whole would drop. This
is proven by the number of people found studying in the library on the
night of a frat. party on campus. In conclusion, the consequences imposed
on our student body by alcohol consumption are not worth the "extasy and
freedom" we would feel. After all, I get a maroon jacket and you just get...
well, I don't know what you get, but I can assure you that I would not
like it.
Click here to readElizabeth
Carter's journal about the debate. We
have similar view points about drinking on campus.
Greek tragedies are great! It would not surprise me if the writers of today's soap operas copied their scripts directly from a Greek tragedy written some 2400 years ago. There always seems to be a high climax followed by an anti-climax, a certain level of revenge, and basically just good verses evil. Two elements that were similar in the Greek tragedy Electra and the soap opera "Guiding Light" were that both contained a large amount of theatrical irony and soloquies. Soap operas and Greek tragedies contain both of these elements in order to keep us sitting on the edge of our seats as well as to let us know exactly how a character is feeling.
On Friday September 21, the soap opera Guiding Light aired an episode that contained many segments that made you want to yell at the characters to clue them in on what ill-fate is about to befall them. Most of these instances are examples of theatrical irony where the audience knows an important piece of information that a character does not. For example in Guiding Light, a man is knocked unconscience by falling debris and has a memory lapse. A homeless woman trying to remove his money clip from his pocket awakens him. When he comes to, he believes that the homeless woman trying to steal from him is his long lost Beth. The audience knows this woman is not Beth, but the guy with no memory has no idea. Similarly in Electra, Electra is told that her brother Orestes is dead. What she doesn't know is that it is actually her brother, Orestes, who has come to deliver an urn supposedly containing his own ashes. The audience is well aware of this fact while poor Electra is left in the dark.
Soloquies are also very popular in today's soaps because they give a character the chance to say what's on their mind without letting any of the other characters know what they are really thinking. In Guiding Light, a woman named Carmen leaves a family party to reveal to the audience that she "will get her family back." Electra commonly laments about how her mother and stepfather have wronged her and her father, of course, out of earshot of the other characters.
While Greek tragedies
and soap operas are characterized by many other similar elements, these
are just two. Both are used to keep ratings or attendance high. Knowing
that all-important piece of information that your favorite character does
not, holds the viewer in suspense from week to week just to know how the
story will play out. Soloquies help us to relate to the thinking of a character
on stage. With these two elements combined, audiences will always keep
coming back for more.
Another interesting idea brought into the light by Shoham was that the Nazi church tried to stamp out Christianity because it suppressed the pagan ethos of wine and wild women. Before Constantine declared Christianity the official religion of the area, the Germanic tribes lived by their pagan ethos. They were forcefully Christianized when Constantine took the throne. Because they were forced into this religion, the pagans always viewed Jesus Christ, the person/God worshipped by Christianity, as oppressive. All this is brought back to modern day by the wife of a German general who was a priestess of the new Nazi Church. In this church, the first principle was that they have to do away with Jesus, then Austwitch will be possible. When they were able to get rid of Christianity with its morals and feelings of guilt, they could revert to paganism where there are no convictions on wrong actions. Consequently without a guilty conscience, the Nazis were able to commit atrocities against Jews.
Shoham began to close with the statement that the absence of light is darkness. While this seems to be a superficial statement, a deeper look reveals truth. In the case of Hitler and the new Nazi Church, the absence of the light of morals allowed them to kill thousands of innocent people. Should we also be so quick as to get rid of the light and reason brought into the world by morals? I don't believe so.
A single cloud breaks,
dancing in the sun,
Butterfly floats
landing soft on flowers.
Cannot stay too
long, must fly into wind.
Crazy pattern dances
flight unhindered,
From flowers homeward
bound she glides.
Wind rushes through
my hair as I observe
The unrecognizable
outline of flight.
No one can see
what lies hidden in wings.
Creation's model
shows us how to fly.
The core of who
she is, is a dancer.
Click here to read
two really good and light-hearted iambic pentameter poems written by Rita
Coolidge and Lauren
Norris. I really enjoyed these two girls poems because they were fun
but still covered the assignment well. Good job girls! =)
Coming back to Centenary, I did not want to face my alarm, my Biology test, or my Chemistry homework due on Friday, but because I was able to go away and come back refreshed, I could face hours upon hours of studying with a little more enthusiasm.
Jonathan
Ferrell's response to this journal was very
interesting to me. I can just here Jonathan giving a pep talk very similar
to King Henry's. I agreed with his concluding paragraph. He stated, "Sometimes
the hardest things to connect are already fussed together, but in order
to see the connection you have to be made to." I really do appreciate writing
these journals because they have made me a better writter and deeper thinker.
Seeing the cast
run into the audience or call for a battle cry helped me to understand
the concepts of Elizabethan drama, as well as the play, better. This is
so unique in presentation because most plays operate behind a "fourth wall,"
where actors and audience members do not interact at all. Also, talking
with the cast members outside of the normal parameters of cast/audience
member relationships was a new experience for me. I was able to eat lunch
with the character portraying the Chorus. Much to my surprise, he was actually
a normal guy (not that I don't like drama people, but some of them can
be a little over the top.) Seeing the play performed by people who were
completely visible in all aspects, on stage and off, helped me to understand
King
Heny V and to put it in the context of a true Elizabethan drama.
Interestingly enough, Williams goes on do describe Jenny, a "middle-aged, English-Nicaraguan, the sole medicine for eighty miles." I traveled to Guatemala on a medical mission with a church from my hometown. We too were the sole medicine for many miles. We opened our clinic at 8 a.m., many times greeted by people who had walked for five hours earlier that morning just to receive medical treatment. They are so desperate, so hungry.
I refer to this place as "home" because it is where I found out who I really was, and what I am called to do for the rest of my life. I was face to face with starving, innocent children. How can I see such a thing and do nothing about it? The answer is I can't. Their brown, hungry eyes motivate me to do all I can with my life in order to help poverty-stricken people.
For two weeks of
my life, I was home.
(Note: I plan to
load some pictures from my trip soon. Please come back and see them.)
The works Gods and Monsters, Abbott and Castello Meet Frankenstein, and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein are like three rays, a scientific term used to descibe a beam of light that starts at a central point and goes out indefinitely from that point. All three of these works focus on the idea of releasing a "monster" into an unprepared society and branch into three different works from that point. These works differ in plot, setting, and their relative closeness to the original book.
Gods and Monsters focuses on the director of the original movie, Frankenstein, and the relationship between the creation and creator. In the movie, James Whale, an elderly film director, manipulates his gardener, Clayton Boone, similarly to the way Victor manipulates his monster. Whale lures Boone into becoming his "friend" by pretending to draw his picture. Whale and Boone quickly become friends, but their relationship is cut short when Whale tries to come onto Boone. The movie ends with fist-fight between the two men and Whale's suicide. Throughout the movie, Whale plays with Boone's mind, and turns Boone into a monster. In the end, Boone realizes that he has been manipulated by Whale and tries to kill him screaming, "I am not your monster!"
Abbott and Castello Meet Frankenstein was a slapstick comedy about Jim Abbott and his many run-ins with Frankenstein and Count Dracula. In this movie the monster, Frankenstein, was portrayed as a six-year old child in an 8 foot body that muttered choppy, unintelligible sentences. The monster in the book has eloquent speech patterns and is far from an overgrown idiot. The only thing Frankenstein in the movie and the monster in the book have in common is they are both perceived as scary creatures that should be avoided.
I found it very interesting that three works could be based on the same concept, but have nothing else in common. One dark, one comical, one introspective; they could be termed perpendicular. There are no parallels.
Just a note: Gods and Monsters was so perverted/disturbing/disgusting it seriously gave me nightmares. Can we at least be warned about these things?
MLP's presentation of Electra was splendid! The acting was superb, especially by the character of Electra. To add, the set looked realistic, especially when it began to rain the last scene. It was such a pleasant surprise because I have never seen it rain on stage before. This would have been the best play I've ever seen, except for the fact that I do not like the plot of the story. To me, Electra lamented and screamed just a little too much. (Can you imagine dealing with that for ten years?) My question in all of this is: what is the purpose of using a bicycle in the opening scene of MLP's presentation of Electra? Why the bicycle, a twentieth century device, in a play that did not appear to be set in the twentieth century or have other twentieth century props?
As I walked into the playhouse, I was awestruck with the elaborate set before me. The aged wood and the dark, dungeon-like feel made the play appear to be set in a time before Christ, possibly Roman/Greek days. Maybe just maybe, the directors of the play wished to save money by borrowing a bicycle instead of buying a man-powered handcart. A wooden cart of some sort would have seemed to fit better with the set. The crew of Electra attached a two-person cart behind a bicycle to portray the idea of a cart pulled by a servant. I got the picture, and I am sure that it would be less expensive than renting a cart from a theatre company. Because the play did not specify the use of particular props, the directors could get away with this substitution. After second thought, I support the directors for their choice on this matter.
I am a spoiled, eighteen-year old white girl who has never been discriminated against based on sex, religion, or color. I know nothing about war. I don't even know what it's really like to be hungry. I can only imagine the anger they would feel watching friends and family murdered all because they were Jews! I think my blood would boil.
Growing up, my father instilled in me a strong sense of making things I control fair and just. Naively, I expect the rest of the world to comply with this strong sense of justice, and sometimes find myself wanting to scream, "But that's not fair!" What would I do if the government in power slowly took away my father, husband, sister, brother-in-law, then came in the middle of the night to get me? At this time, I would be suspicious, but I would have no idea the atrocities I would suffer before dying or barely surviving. I believe I would have grudgingly went with the policemen, but would not have resisted captivity like 98% of Jews at that time.
What would I have done after they shaved my head, bathed my in cold water, and gave me no soap or towel? What would my starving body and depraved mind have done as they tattooed my arm #62511? On the inside I would be screaming, "I'm Human! Stop! That hurts! You can't do this to me; I HAVE RIGHTS!" But to be honest, I believe fear would allow me to be herded like a scared animal. After watching people face certain death in ovens and gas chambers, my husband die of typhoid, and everyone I love slowly disappear, I think I would become a very cold, bitter person.
On the other hand, I remember that hardships have the ability to bring out the best in people and build superhuman strength like no other. Enduring a concentration camp would certainly drive a religious person to their knees begging for the mercy of God. What faith one must have after surviving over a thousand days (three years) of asking God for one more day, one more breath. What strength and character these survivors must have to not become cold, bitter people. My gosh, I can't even survive the end of a relationship without becoming jaded about the whole issue of dating. I have such a limited perspective. It's time to open my eyes and thank God for every day that I don't face injustice and starvation. What a small world I live in.
I visited the art exhibit “Art and Soul III: Elvis, The Early Years on Tour in the Deep South.” This exhibit features twenty-four images of Elvis Presley taken in 1956 by Jay Leviton. Letivon captured young Elvis “at local diners, unloading musical equipment, and comforting fainting fans behind stage before the days of police escorts and bodyguards.” The thing that struck me most about the exhibit is the man in the pictures is not the man that modern-day media has made him out to be. Through his photographs, Leviton captured his youth as well as this beautiful, down-to-earth quality about his personality that I never knew existed. Elvis did not appear cocky, but just like a regular Joe who liked to sing and play his guitar. Note that these pictures were taken prior to his days with “police escorts and body guards.” By comparing these twenty-four candid shots to his media image of being “The King of Rock ‘n Roll,” fame and fortune appear to have changed Elvis Presley for the worse. It is said that show business has a way of doing this sort of thing to young people, and I think Elvis is a prime example of this. He appeared so humble in these pictures; I felt that I was actually looking at a man and not an icon.
Similarly in Maus I and II, events in people’s lives, namely the Holocaust, drastically change people’s perception of the world. Elvis went from a young, hopeful singer to a drug addict driven to the edge by fame and too much media attention. Art Spiegleman went from a wealthy man in love with Anja to a border-line OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder) driven to the edge by memories of lost loved ones and the mistreatment of those people. Single events had such an impact on these two people's lives, completely transforming both of them.
Both Maus I and
II and “Art and Soul III: Elvis, The Early Years on Tour in the
Deep South” gave visual images of things I have always heard or read about
but have never encountered face-to-face. While I may not have actually
seen either of these people or events, I now feel like I have seen more
of them. Both the cartoons and photographs bring to life these somewhat
dead subjects and help their viewers to feel like members of an screaming
audience of teenagers or as beaten members of the Holocaust. Both of these
artists should be commended for their ability to do so.
One word: Wow! I
was obviously impressed with the Centenary College Choir’s performance
of Rhapsody in View on November 3, 2001. Rhapsody featured the student
choir and over 400 alumni on stage for this “choral feast.” The choir apparently
spent large amounts of time in perfecting their performance and the separation
of choral parts (alto, tenor, etc.) The songs with rounds were my favorite
because you could hear each choral part (I know nothing about choir, so
that’s probably not the right word) distinctly. The first half highlighted
the college choir’s singing ability in songs like “Glory a Dios” and “Homeland.”
Between the first and second half, the audience was entertained with solo
performances by Sterling Allen and Sara King. A man named Verhelio
Davis also sang “Shadrack,” a song and dance I found most entertaining.
He had the audience laughing hysterically with his facial expressions and
voice inflections. He was quite the character. The second half of the performance
was lead by both the current choir members as well as some 400 alum. The
fist opening of the curtain brought a gasp and “ahh..” to the audience.
The sixtieth anniversary of the choir brought back alum to Centenary and
united them in one huge singing sensation. It was amazing to see that many
people on stage at one time. The second half was a bit lengthy, but
I really enjoyed the singing and their selection of songs. They sang
a few oldies, like “My Girl,” which I thoroughly enjoyed because I could
appreciate their performance without having to know anything about music.
Rhapsody in View made for a wonderfully entertaining evening of music,
even for those of us who are musically challenged.