In defence of Holden Caulfield.

I know what you're thinking. Omg, Catcher in the Rye. What a dumb, boring, whiny piece of literature.

Well you're wrong. But I'd like you to take a moment and appreciate how lucky you are to be wrong.

For me, Catcher is one of my favourite representations of depression. It's not a glorified work about the beauty of the wilting flower and the triumph of Man's Eternal Spirit. It's about a teenage boy who's lost in the big wide world of adulthood. In my experience, depression does not go away just because you want it to or will it to. You can't just 'get over' depression in the way that most people suggest that Holden does. It's a slow upwards struggle that is neither glorious or triumphant.

Depression doesn't need a reason to hit you.

Depression doesn't care if you are young or old, rich or poor.

I read Catcher both before struggling with depression, and afterwards. At first I "didn't get it" but now I do. I know what it's like to be failing classes for no good reason, to be in an empty room with no one to call and no one to turn to. Depression is isolating, and it makes you very insular in your thinking. I didn't know where the ducks had gone or what I was going to do with my life, just like Holden didn't.

It's a truly horrible feeling, and that's why I'm partially glad when people 'don't get' Holden. Because it means that they haven't been through what we've been through.

But it also upsets me when people dismiss Holden's problems, or tell him to 'get over himself'. Mental illness is like a physical disease. You don't tell someone with cancer to 'get over themselves' after a few days of bed rest yet both problems can be debilitating and suck the life force out of you. Holden's cure was specialist treatment, not a spiritual journey. Telling someone with depression to 'cheer up' doesn't help. It just invalidates their feelings and exacerbates the problem, often with tragic results.

The Great Gatsby and why it's so great. Part one.

When you become known as someone who's enchanted with literature, so much to the point of perusing a degree in lit, you often get asked a question by people who don't quite know what they're getting themselves into.

What's your favourite book?

Now, I've read a lot of books. And I've enjoyed a lot of books. I've read books that have made me happy, books that have made me sad, and books that have changed me so profoundly that I owe who I am today to them. So I don't understand why I receive weird looks whenever I start rattling off a list that is being revised as it's said. But if I had to choose, at gun point, knife point or wand point, I would choose Gatsby.

Even though I grew up at Hogwarts.

Even though Holden stopped me from committing suicide.

Even though Augustus Waters made me cry for 20 minutes

and even though Julia Forester made me see what a real heroine was like.

Gatsby's my book. My favourite. My Gatsby.

And with the movie coming out next year as well as there being so many hate posts about it, I want to explain to you what makes Gatsby so Great.

First what it means: Symbolism and what we can take from this book. Then we'll do some proper close reading.

 If you're on the anti-lit brigade (Metaphres are stupid! OMG that's not what the author intended! Everyone is just making stuff up! This has no value in the real world!):

This is John Green. This is an author. He puts symbolism in his books. He thinks that critical reading is important. He loves Gatsby as much as I do.

From here:

You often hear in high school English classes, for instance, that thinking about symbols is dumb or useless or “ruining the book.” But underneath it all, this is why we have language in the first place. We don’t really need language to share the news of your back pain: You can point at your back and grimace to tell me that your back hurts, and I can nod sympathetically.
But to explain to you the nature and nuance of my grief or pain or joy, I need abstractions. I need symbols. And the better our symbols are, the more clearly we’ll be able to communicate with each other, and the more fully we’ll be able to imagine each other’s experience. Good symbolism makes empathy easier. 

So why the strings? The strings inside a person breaking struck me as a better and more accurate abstract description of despair than anthropomorphized symbols (broken heart, etc.).
And this is very important to remember when reading or writing or painting or talking or whatever: You are never, ever choosing whether to use symbols. You are choosing which symbols to use.

You are the composite of a hundred thousand different symbols. Every word, every gesture. The food you eat, your clothes, your hair, your make-up. All of it is symbolic. All these things add up to who you are and how you'd like to been seen. Your gender, your sexuality, your class and your taste and how you relate to others. Nothing you do is not symbolic in some way. It might seem like it isn't because the meanings of what you are doing are so indexed into society that they are transparent, but trust me, they are. And most of these are symbols that you choose.

But how does this wishy-washy liberal arts shit help you love The Great Gatsby?

Because, as Nick Points out, in chapter three, "most affectations conceal something eventually". 

 All the characters have affectations, all the characters are hiding something. Gatsby has his "old sport" to try and hide the fact that he's New Money. Daisy has her cool, melodic exterior to hide her inner discontent. Jordan acts haughty with her head thrown back, to show the world how cool and unaffected she is by life, her confidence hides her cheating and carelessness. Nick stays silent and polite to hide his disgust with the crowd he goes along with.

Tom... well Tom doesn't hide much. But Tom is also the biggest asshat on the planet.

And that's a point that can be brought up in this book. Is it arguing that everyone on the inside is just as ugly and unbearable as Tom? Certainly the character's inner selves do not serve much as role models. Can we project that to our lives? Underneath our clothes and hair and choices are we all bitter Daisy Buchanans and arrogant Toms, careless Jordans and prideful Nicks?

That, my dear reader, is up to you. I'm not going to tell you what to take away from a book or how to view humanity.

But as Nick says, and as John Green points out, Gatsby has an "extraordinary gift for hope". I take The Great Gatsby as a novel about hope. The ending is irrelevant, to an extent. "All lives end. All hearts are broken". That's life. It's a sad part of life, but it is inescapable. It's what you make of life that matters, not how much money you have, and that's something which provides contention in the book.

It's also the American Dream. That we can all be successful, no matter our class or standing. Except, as shown in the book, if you measure success by monetary value, things don't turn out too well.

Gatsby, to me, is a hopeful book that faces the human condition with a simple honesty. How do I come to this conclusion? Because of Nick.

 “And so with the sunshine and the great bursts of leaves growing on the trees, just as things grow in fast movies, I had that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer.”

We are all the narrators of our own stories. We all go to mystical places, like the party at Gatsby's. We all experience such strange and wonderful things. And sometimes they end. But it's not always the end. The difference between Gatsby's death, Tom and Daisy's evacuation and the break up with Jordan is the way that Nick feels about them after they have gone. He's not going to see any of them again, so they all might have died, for all the good that them being alive does for Nick. In his mind they are all dead. But Nick is not. Nick moves on, his life starts again.

Just like Gatsby did after the war. He rebuilt and kept on going in order to soothe his aching heart.

And we can take these things from the book. That we need to look behind peoples affectations to get to know them. That life starts again. That we are all broken little fools, but we can achieve so much, can rise to such greatness. "That tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out out arms further.... And one fine morning -

so we beat on, boats against the current born ceaselessly into the past."

Classics study 2012: 1 - Lysistrata.

Okay, Pathetic Mortals, let me give you the run down on Lysistrata.


This play was written in 411 BC by a dude called Aristophanes. And he was a sick minded puppy (but in a good way). He is the biggest name in 'old comedy' basically because we have no other plays. There was this one other comedian called Cratinus, but none of his full plays survive.  


Now, why is Aristophanes considered the Father of Comedy?


Because he used:

• Puns
• Witty dialogues
• Physical comedy
• Funny costumes
• Fart jokes
• Sex Jokes
• Poo jokes

Like, in one of the choruses for one of Aristophanes' plays, he actually got them to throw actual poo at an actual poet that he didn't like. 

But we're talking Lysistrata here, so I'm just gonna focus on the sex.

So, Lysistrata is set in some alternate universe Athens, which is just like normal Athens, but things are craaaaazzzyyyy(!!!) But, like the Athens of the readers, it's set behind a wartime setting.

So we get this group of women from many different parts of what would eventually become Greece. 

Audiance: AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA WOMEN calling a meeting?!?!

And this chick, Lysistrata (name meaning "defeater of Armies") stands up, all heroic like and proclaims:

I'm going to stop the Pelopenesian war and UNITE GREECE (even though there isn't a Greece yet) WHO IS WITH ME?!

And naturally, all the women are behind her, who wouldn't want to stop their children dying and bring their husbands home?

So they're all like "Yeah, okay, but how are we meant to do that?" to which Lysistrata replies

BY GIVING UP SEX. 

And there's naturally only one response a woman would ever possibly make in this situation:

OH HELL NO.

But, eventually the women agree, and one Choral fight, several speeches and one almost sex-scene later, things are getting desperate.

I'd just like to take a moment here to remind ourselves of two every important facts

1. All the parts in these plays were performed by men
2. All the costumes were designed to exaggerate the body, eg. butts. which means that
3. All the men were walking around with gigantic phallus's (because the women would not have sex with them) "Who are you? A man or a walking Phallus?"

So yeah. The Spartan Herald comes all rearin' to go, and the Athenian men realise that they're not so different after all. Enter an actual female prostitute all naked to please the audience and viola! One happy ending for all. 

Main Characters:

Lysistrata: Leader of the Women. Strong, resourceful, and strategic.

Cinesias: Husband of Myrrhine, name is a pun meaning to strike or to fuck  he's kind of a leader of the men, although he really only tries to stop the war because his wife says she won't have sex with him unless he doesn't.

Myrrhine: Said wife of Cinesias. Refuses to have sex with her husband, which is apparently a really big thing and we should all applaud her self control.

Lampeto: Spartan warrior. funny and bad ass.

Magistrate: Misogynistic pig. Doesn't like the women folk nor does he believe that they can run Greece. 

There were really only 3 actors in these sorts of plays  a volunteer if they could find them. There was the chorus of around roughly 12 people, this time split into a men's and a women's chorus. These people were sponsored by some wealthy dude to dance and sing. The Ancient Greeks were big on dancing and singing. As well as sex and alcohol. 

You've also got to realise that this play presumes a few things. Like 1) The men could only have sex with the women to whom they were married. In reality there were slaves, prostitutes and even each other to have sex with. Also I don't see why they couldn't have just done it themselves, they obviously had masturbation, there's even a remark made by one of the females that they "haven't even seen one of those six-inch leather jobs that helped us out when all else failed". And 2) Why were the men so effected? They were out at war, therefore they really shouldn't be this effected by the strike!

Oh, also I need to make a point about feminism in this play:

It doesn't really exist. Sorry.

I mean I know a case may be made for it, with the lead character being a female who stops this massive war, but really about 80% of the humour came from the fact that a woman (of all things, how modern) managed to stop it. It's like a miniature poodle standing up to a Doberman. That being said an argument can be made for that because it was a woman who ended the war, that it could be Aristophanes sending out a message that if a mere woman can end violence, why can't all these big men in the real world do it?

But really, we try not to presume much real-life meaning inside if Aristophanes' Lysistrata. Just sit back and enjoy the show. 

Review: Chronicle

So I saw Chronicle last night. Yeah, the one with the really annoying ads everywhere.

Trailer:

Personally, I was expecting some funny but eventually serious "Oh hey we have superpowers, let's be HEROES!!1!!" movie, but I was actually quite surprised when it turned out to be quite dark and deep.

Okay, so before I go any deeper:

You have been warned.

From a Media/English student point of view, this movie is actually really good. I kept getting distracted by the pretty shots and the interesting way that it was filmed almost entirely by hand held cameras.

Using hand held cameras has several interesting effects on the movie. It draws the viewer in to the movie, for one, and it also helps us to bond with the main characters, giving us an American Beauty-esqe type of voyeuristic look into their world. But a window is still a barrier, as the main character says, when he is questioned about constantly recording his life.

And it raised a good question of why it's weird that he records things, why we feel so uncomfortable when we are being filmed. Could it be  a link to George Orwell's "1984" where the constant scrutiny stops people from rebelling? Is is that we are just afraid to fully commit to our actions? Anything that we do wrong will die with us and all that remember it. Anything that's recorded stands forever.

Which in return relates to modern day society where celebrities are constantly under scrutiny, just like our (hahahaha) protagonists. 100 years from now people will still know how Brittany shaved off her hair, but they won't know about that time you stole something from the corner store or got a perfect score on minesweeper.

The other interesting thing about this movie is the theme of "power corrupts"... except when it doesn't. This movie was cool because only 1/3 of the guys with telekinesis abused that power. I mean sure they mucked around, but  only one guy, surprisingly the main guy, actually went bad with it.

And by bad I mean he killed people to save his mum, and then sort of went on a power hungry psychotic rage when he was foiled in his plan to kill him abusive dad. It was done in such a way that you could forgive the guy up to a point.

So yeah, Chronicle is a pretty cool movie, and definitely worth a watch.
4/5

American Beauty: Look Closer.

For English this year, we get the 'joy' of studying the 'classic' film. American Beauty. 

In short, this 1999 movie goes like this: (taken from IMDB.com)

Lester Burnham, a depressed suburban father in a mid-life crisis, decides to turn his hectic life around after developing an infatuation for his daughter's attractive friend.

It's a kinda weird movie, and I'm not sure if I like it or not, but it's what our teacher chose to make us study.

So in this blog post, I'm going to closely examine the two dinner scenes in the movie.




But before I do, let me put this in:

According to James Truslow Adams the American Dream is “‘that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement’....It is not a dream of motor cars and high wages merely”.

Fuck you, Tom Buchanan. Dick

(Sorry, I'm still pissed over the Great Gatsby).

Of course, there is nothing uniquely American about this dream, it's just that America likes to think that it is.

Alons-y!

Dinner scene one:

This is the first shot we get of the scene. Notice the frame created by the doorway, giving it a "picture-like" quality. This is intentional. The cinematographer, Conrad Hall, slowly zooms in past the door frame in a "slow push in" to create a voyeuristic feeling. American beauty comes with the tag line "Look Closer" and that's exactly what the shot does. We look past the perfect "American Dream" picture that is created to see that the family is neither perfect, nor dream-like.

Now, look at that Mise en Scene. You can see by both the pink and yellow lines that Lester is at the bottom. Both his wife and daughter think he is a "giant loser". His posture is slouched and he looks defeated. Carolyn is obviously the head of the family. She sits properly in her silken blouse (which she changed into especially for dinner). Carolyn set up the table and cooked the dinner, she's the one that puts the effort into the facade that the Burnham's are actually living the American Dream. Look in the green circle - there's two glasses. For a simple family dinner. Jane is in the centre of the table. There's a spotlight behind those roses to light up her face. Jane is set up as the Madonna figure in the family, she's the only one in this family that has a hope of escaping the "mania of owning things" - thanks for that line, Walt Whitman. There's a triangle formed at the table. Lester's being pushed down, Carolyn's the supporting corner and Jane is headed for the top. The music playing (not that you can hear it) is Peggy Lee's Bali Ha'i, almost ironically undermining the "perfect" scene:

Most people live on a lonely island,

Lost in the middle of a foggy sea.

Most people long for another island,

One where they know they will like to be.

The Characters of American beauty are isolated from each other, there is no communication in this family, they all are unhappy and long for a better life, one quite similar to the one that Peggy Lee offers. The Burnhams might not know it yet, but they want the original American Dream. They want freedom and the diagetic music symbolises this.

See what happens when we "look closer" at a shot?


Also notice the arrows. What colours are they? That's right red white and blue. Do you know what else is those colours?

Yup. And it's not unintentional. These colours appear in NEARLY EVERY SCENE. And I'm not even joking.




But why?, I hear you ask.




Well, it's for the same reason that the table's set up so perfectly. Mendes' want's us to look at the Burnham's and go "look at them, they're living the American Dream"

And then let us go through the film and this "Hey look, they're not actually living the american dream"




Sam Mendes wants the audience to see what the american dream has become, how it has evolved from the original James Truslow Adams one. As John Green, award winning author, said "There is no them, only facets of us" and by looking at "American Beauty" and seeing the shallow lives that the characters live, we are forced to look at our own lives, and evaluate what is important to us.




Now, let us compare this with the second Dinner Scene. Once more into the breach, dear friends!
(Save it for "Othello" Tash, save it for "Othello")




Dinner Scene Two:

 Okay, so we still get the image of the door frame, but there's actually no slow zoom in this time. At almost half way through the film, the audience has already been established as voyeurs. Instead Hall uses a series of quick cuts to build up tension. We know that Carolyn's having an affair. We know that Lester's just quit his job and blackmailed his boss for thousands of dollars. The quick cuts keep the audience on their toes, we don't know what's going to happen, or how anyone's going to react.




There's a drastic change in costume in this dinner scene. Carolyn's in a soft pink blouse, Lester's wearing a casual shirt, the roses are gone. The triangle is pretty much gone, all the characters are on an equal level, neither being pushed down or raised up.


The second dinner scene is where Lester Finally stands up to his controlling wife: "I am sick and tired of being treated like I don't exist". Lester wants his place back, but interestingly enough, Lester doesn't want to be the head of the family, he just want's an equal share. "And another thing. From now on we're going to alternate our dinner music. Because frankly, and I don't think I'm alone here, I am really tired of this Lawrence Welk-shit".

After throwing the asparagus at the wall, Lester leans forward into the light. He does not slouch, nor does he mutter to himself and leave the room. He faces his wife with his face level to hers.

After Lester's dramatic revelation about how he hates classical music, Hall presents us with another shot of the dining room, once again from the outside looking in.

As you can see by the yellow line, Carolyn and Lester are equal, and Jane is slightly lower than her parents, as she should be. The scene mocks the image of the "American Dream" by presenting what, at first glance, could be a rather tense, yet normal family dinner. But if you look closer at the scene, you can see shards of pottery by Lester's chair, and a single slice of lemon sitting above the picture frame. Lester has broken the families perception that they are living the American dream, symbolised by the broken pieces around him. 

And there you have it. This is what I have to write an essay on tomorrow. I hope you've learnt something.

And remember, 'There is so much beauty in the world"

Review: The Hobbit.

Author: J. R. R. Tolkien

Synopsis: 13 dwarfs, a wizard and a hobbit go to find treasure and defeat a dragon. Bilbo gets into trouble and Gandalf saves them, except for that one time he didn't. Repeat for almost three hundred pages.

Now, I'm not a Lord of the Rings fan. The movies are okay, but I found that the books just dragged on too much for me to happily read. The Hobbit's not really an exception. Most of my thoughts when  reading it went like this:

Gandalf, you dick.


Bilbo you whiner.


What use are dwarfs anyway?


Gandalf, you dick.


Okay, Gollum's actually kinda cool


Finally Bilbo got some respect. 


Gandalf, you dick.


Eagles? Awesome!


Gandalf, you dick.


What the fuck did Gandalf say? Stay on the path!

Bilbo, you are finally a bit BAMF


Thorin has swag.


Smaug is totally my favourite character.


Tolkien, why did you just kill Smaug?

Thorin, you dick.


Bilbo, are you sure about this?


Gandalf, you dick.


Now, now, I know that "The Hobbit" is a classic and the basic building blocks of any fantasy journey book. And let me tell you, I know a lot about my fantasy. I'm also pretty sure that Tolkien had a few sleep overs with Vogler. The Hobbit seems to be an almost perfect example of "The Heroes Journey". which is supposed to symbolise the quest within ourselves and blah blah blah.

Yes. I can see how "The Hobbit:", is a good story about conquering your fears and becoming a better person, and how bravery is in all of us, even if we don't know that it's there. I just find is stupidly boring. The plot is quite slow compared to what I'm used to and not all that compelling. The cast, I felt, was too big to maintain accurately and a few of the dwarf's characters were a bit inconsistent.

Also, have a mentioned what a massive dick Gandalf is? I mean seriously, all he does is act like he's better than everyone else in the book. It's like he saves them just so he can show everyone how clever he is. Also, if Bilbo was happy not going on an adventure, why couldn't he have just let him not go on an adventure? He was happy enough without you putting him through several months of misery so he could be "a better person".

But that's all personal opinion. Maybe if I had read 'The Hobbit" as a younger child, or as someone without such a large background in fantasy, I would have enjoyed it a lot more. I know by now that if the main character is kidnapped in chapter eight, twelve, fifteen and twenty, they're not going to die if the book ends in chapter thirty.

Also, is it bad that I was disappointed with the fact that no one died? Well, no one except Smaug, but I liked Smaug. He was a fascinating character, and I would have liked to see more of him.


So, should you read this book? Well, if you're under the age of twelve, yes.
If you're over the age of twelve, and don't read a lot of fantasy but now want to, sure.
But even if you are under twelve and do like fantasy, you still should read it. It's not a bad book as books go, but be prepared to be a tiny bit bored in place.

Rating:
3/5

I'm now going to take a moment to brag about how nice my edition of this book is. Fourth edition, printed in by George Allen & Unwin publishers in 1978, this edition is hardback with a deep red background and gold border.

Why I think English is important.

It's funny. I'm one of the biggest promoters of English that I know, yet I don't think I'm going to take it at university.

Why? Because I'm lazy. But also because you don't need someone to tell you what the symbols in texts mean. Once you've done a high school level of it, you really can figure all this stuff out on your own.

But why is English important? I hear you ask. Perhaps you are even scathingly throwing me the old "English teaches you how to think" line in a very sarcastic manner. Don't worry, I'm the first to disagree with that. How can you be taught how to think? It's a rather ridiculous notion. I do, however, like to argue that English teaches you how to ask questions.

And I do believe that English makes you a better person. This is a short list of why:

1) English helps you to understand other people.
The reason we can never fully understand another person, no matter how hard we try is because we cannot live inside their heads. It is impossible to hear every single thought that runs through their mind, even if they do have a Twitter account.

Yet books allow us to do exactly that - get into another persons head. When we read books, especially first person books, it allows us to see the innermost workings of the narrators mind. We see how they see, feel how they feel and think like they do. Books allow us to access another person's mind and gives us another perspective on the world. It brings us out of our own head and opens us up to another person's emotions.

Take "The curious incident of the dog in the night-time" for instance, where the main character has Aspergers. People without Aspergers cannot even begin to understand what it must be like to have that condition but by reading about it, we gain insight and understanding into other people's lives. Same can be said for Khaled Hosseini's "The Kite Runner", which is set in Afghanistan to the purpose of trying to dispel the notion that all Muslims are extremists.

It's only when we gain perspective into other people, that we can accept that people think and feel in the same way as we do.

2) Books provide insights into the past.
Let's face it. We will never know what it's like to be citizens of Ancient Rome. We will (hopefully) never know what it's like to be alive during WWII and as we move further and further into the future, we will forget more and more of what the past generations were like.

Hell, I can't even remember a world without internet!

When we lose our perspective on historical events, we forget what the past teachers us. How can we learn from our mistakes if do do not remember them?

"The book thief" is a classic example. It's about a young German girl growing up in suburban Germany. It's an unusual premise for a holocaust book, but, to me at least, it made me think about how the Nazi's were people too, how a lot of them were just doing what they had to do to survive.

This does undoubtedly tie back into my first point, but I do feel that the Holocaust has received the Hollywood treatment far too much. There's no sense of how personal it was, how it affected the whole world.

Literature can also be a direct response to world events and can tell you a lot more about how the world was feeling at that time, rather than some text book.

Like this:

This is the cover for the 9/11 Spiderman comic. I dare you to read this and say that a text book has a bigger emotional feel than any recent textbook. This issue was released right after the attack and was created by the writers, most of who lived in New York.

You know things are bad when even Spiderman, defender of NY has no answers for you.

3) English teaches us valuable lessons.
You know how when you read children's books, there's always a message in them for the children like "don't lie" or "look both ways before crossing the road"? Well big kid books, and adult books do the same thing.

"The Chronicles of Narnia" Teaches kids about many things, bravery, loyalty, honestly. In "Voyage of the Dawntreader" (my favourite) I still remember how Eustace was turned into a dragon because of his greed.

In more 'adult' books, "Blue Moon Rising" had a great deal of being yourself and triumphing over a world that wanted to crush you by being yourself. Rupert received his heart's desire, which in the end, turned out not to be money or authority, but a way to defeat the darkness.

Even in non-fantasy books, the Great Gatsby teaches us about the folly of money, and how it really does not buy us happiness.

And to draw it up to my favourite saying, we learn all these things by asking questions. If we do not ask ourselves why it is wrong for Amir to sacrifice Hassan, we will never realise why it is wrong. If we do not examine  why Holden Caulfield wears the red hunting hat, we will never know that it's the same colour as his dead brother's hair so he uses it as a security blanket, hoping that if he can keep the hat by him, he can keep his brother alive and stay in that little place of innocence.