Media: The Mind Manipulator

The Danger of a Single Story:

Plenty of times have I realized that people only receive through media a single story of the beautiful country in which I have the privilege to live in. Two of this have engraved themselves in my mind. 

The first happened the first time I traveled to Europe. I had the priviledge to go to France with the Colombian Ambassador in France, and he took us to an amusement park. His son was probably my age (I was 10 at the time) and we where in line for a roller coaster. We where talking in Spanish and two older men asked us where were we from, I proudly raised my head and answered “Colombia”  this men, who where probably 20 years old each gave us the finger and said that ours was a country plagued with “terrible deaths and a thousand drug dealers”. My dad told them to shut up and leave us kids alone, but I will never forget the hate in the men’s voice.

The second time happened when I moved to Italy, my English had refined before that and I could fluently speak it with confidence and almost seem American. My first day at ISF, several teachers asked me to introduce myself: “what is your name? how old are you? Where are you from?” I answered them without trouble in the first couple of classes, but then when I got to my Math class and I answered them I heard the boy behind me ask, “ And where did you leave the Cocaine?” I was furious and wanted to yell at him but instead I answered in a serious voice  “In your Mom’s drawer.” Soon enough people stopped talking about things they didn’t understand and I learned a lot about different cultures.

Like the old saying “Don’t Judge a book by it’s cover” ,  today we should encourage people to not only see the “Media” side of the story

Bananafish, The Fog, or The Horror?

Survivor’s guilt, an insight into Kurtz’s character:

When I first came to CNG I had an English teacher, which every boy in my class considered astonishingly beautiful. Her name was Mrs. Lawrynowicz, and she made us read short stories in order to help us analyze literature better. One day she handed to us a short story the tittle read “A perfect day for Bananafish” , and told us to read it for our HWK. I read it a thousand times over and couldn’t really assimilate it inside my head. Suddenly it clicked in my head. Something I had read in a psychoanalysis essay, something about survivor’s guilt.

After that I had another English teacher. His approach to literature was quiet different, and he had us read Kesey’s “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest “ I have since then assimilated Mcmurphy’s character with that of Seymour Glass, the main character in “A perfect Day for Bananafish”. About Seymour’s character I am only going to say that what he has in common with McMuphy is that people looked up to him to be a hero. This little girl Sybil walked up to him everyday in the beach because he was her personal story teller, he was her separation from the unjust world in which she lived in, a world in which both her parents where absent. McMurphy had the entire ward looking up to him, because they needed someone who was stronger than them to guide them trough.

When I first read about Mr. Kurtz I saw him as Marlow saw him. Better than him, stronger, greater and by the end of “Heart of Darkness” Kurtz has become a symbol of heroism and standing up to what you believe in even if must people brand you mad for believing that.

That is one thing that this three characters have in common. People who look up to them, standing up for a cause and last but not least an unpleasant death. Glass kills himself, McMurphy is chocked by Chief, and Kurtz dies, living in his regrets.

HEART OF DARKNESS

Impersonation and lack of names

As reading the first part of Conrad’s Heart of Darkness I realized that only two characters are identified with names: Marlow and Mr. Kurtz, what Conrad achieves by only naming this two characters is to accentuate their importance and make the reader understand that they are relevantly important.

Through his story telling Marlow gives up his own personality, but from every other character that pops up he only gives a random fact that helps us identify the person almost distinguish them, but barely, from the bunch. (The lawyer, the accountant, the director, the manager and the man with the big moustache) This lack of names is an impediment for the writer to connect to the character because they cannot give them a face, overall they cant give them a personality.

A shadow of evil hiding under the light of good: Villains in our world today.

“Evil is a point of view.”

ANNE RICE, Interview with the Vampire

Villains hide between shadows, not only in comic books, but also in real life. In some hidden dark ally where murder and rape take place these villains find some comfort for their hearts. There are also public villains, people that have the power to kill whoever speaks too loud. Most villains had a treacherous dark past, some experiences that changed them, while others are born sociopaths or psychopaths. Villains can be placed in history, in the form of country leaders, or in comic book as the archenemies of our favorite superhero, but at the end we like the bad guy despite what his motives are. We like him because, he is what gives a reason for the heroes to exist, for there to be some justice in the world. As for who created evil, we can say that evil is a state of mind, in which men could not bare perfection without it. We see it since the beginning as in when God expelled Lucifer from heaven and send him to hell, the thirst of power is just a form of villainy. It is hard to believe that those villains who hunt our nightmares, are human too. 

The ability to control the mind and the thoughts of others is the power of many super villains in comic books, and novels, Bram Stoker's Dracula who poses telepathic and hypnotic abilities, or Shakespeare's Iago who uses  the fears of his adversaries against them. Another fantastic example of a Villain using fear against her adversary is Ken Kessey's, Nurse Ratchet. 

Ratchet's character, has a complicated personality. Most women would grow up to be motherly like, sweet and kind. But Ratchet is the total opposite and she reminds the reader more of a remote control robot with a woman's body rather than  a woman herself. This robot like first impression is given to the reader at the beginning of the book when Chief describes her meticulous perfection. McMurphy is the complete opposite of, he is loud, messy, big, and in comparison to her nothing about him "runs smoothly."

Ratchet's character develops slowly throughout the novel, at first she seems unbreakable, stiff, strong, with an infinite patience and no need to raise her voice. But then McMurphy comes into the ward and their conflicting personalities clash,  showing how terribly vulnerable she can actually be, and so the hero of the story proves to be the strongest and she proves that no villain is invincible because even the manipulation of fear ends at some point in which not even the most broken mind is going to distort reality any more.

Women, and power and the Deep Fear of Men Towards Women

 “What is the importance of women in One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest”

Matriarchy |ˈmātrēˌärkē|

Noun (pl. matriarchies)

A system of society or government ruled by a woman or women.

The Definition of Matriarchy is as stated above “A system of society or government ruled by a woman or women.” In his novel "One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest", Ken Kessey portrays women as the dominant sex, them being stronger than men and having entire power over the guard.

The main female character is of course Nurse Ratched (ratchet |ˈraCHit| A device consisting of a bar or wheel with a set of angled teeth in which a pawl, cog, or tooth engages, allowing motion in one direction only.) She has always reminded me of a sort of robot, controlling the central machinery of the combine making sure it runs smoothly and eliminating those who don’t fit in  society. In this point of the book we have talked about the topic of Emasculation, which literally means to make (a person, idea, or piece of legislation) weaker or less effective. Which is exactly what Ratched does at the Guard, she makes people (no matter in which state they come in) weaker and less effective. In another point Emasculation also means to castrate a man.

The significant role of women is clear throughout the book “Year by year she accumulates her ideal staff: doctors, all ages and types, come and rise up in front of her with ideas of their own about the way a ward should be run, some with backbone enough to stand behind their ideas, and she fixes these doctors with dry-ice eyes day in, day out, until they retreat with unnatural chills.” Ratched is the only reason why the guard functions and runs smoothly, besides without her influence there would be no one running a guard for the insane.

The Fog

Every time I read Ken Kessey's masterpiece "One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest" I can't help but ask myself What does crazy look like? Is crazy really something that you can label under stereotypes and give it funny and complicated names? "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" gave me a different perspective of crazy and led me to decide that a crazy person is only what society makes him.

I think that the so called fog is a schizophrenic delusion, created by Chief Bromden  as a safe guard that he creates around him to make himself invisible; But also I see the fog as a kind of isolator that Nurse Ratched uses to isolate the Inside world from the Outside world, because she knows that they are not ready to cope. And I also think it represent McMurphy's strength because once he gets to the guard the fog dissipates, slowly from Chief's mind and it is thanks to McMurphy's strength and power to laugh.

Finally I think that the Fog represents the outside world unknown and strange for most, and hiding you from staying out.

Waiting For Godot: Film

So in class we watched a short clip from a film adaptation of Becket's existentialist play "Waiting For Godot" and we where supposed to do some "Reading" on the filming, scenery and staging, and draw conclusions as on why was the movie recorded in one way or another.

In the short clips there is a huge importance given to the scenery, specially Estrogen's boots at the beginning of the movie, and the tree throughout it. Also something else  that I thought was important was the lack of color throughout the movie, which kind of implies the mood of the movie itself, specially during Lucky's speech everything is very gloomy and dark.

I think the film was a great chance to see the play through someone else's eyes, in this case the eyes of the director and how he interpreted Becket.

Waiting For Godot: Blog Response #1

After I finished reading waiting for Godot, I found myself wandering about much, which I think is Becket's purpose with his Absurdist play. I found myself wandering about the characters, about why where they even waiting for Godot, and more than anything who was Godot. But later that evening I learned that Becket said on an interview that if he had known more about his characters he would have written it on the play. This makes me ask myself, How much can a writer actually know his own characters?

Even now I think that Becket left this gaps in the text in order for the reader to interpret whatever he said, in whichever way they wanted, which reminds me of something else he said on an interview "Why do people have to complicate everything?" And it made me analyze my way of thought as a reader, how much do we complicate what a writer says and why do we complicate it? Because words cant just be words, they must have a deeper meaning. Looking back at what I know about Becket I understand why he hates labels, because not only are they labeling him, but they are also labeling parts of his text as "Symbolism" or "Imagery", which limits the ability of the reader to just wonder without having to give the text an exact meaning.

Becket made a really extraordinary work on his "Waiting for Godot" he could have left and entire page BLANK and leave it without a conclusion and it would still be fantastic!

Blog Response #3: Introduction to existentialism

 Existence is essentially absurd:

Why does God exist? I am pretty sure someone most have asked that question sometime before me, probably not sitting in front of a window wondering how to write the introduction for their English assignment but surely someone must have asked it at some point. For me after thinking about this subliminal question I've come to the conclusion that human beings need a reason that supports their existence, and that is why God exists. Because for most of us we cannot just be here, there most be a reason for our existence. If not it is essentially pointless, and it doesn't make a difference whether we are dead of alive. For me this is a topic highly brought upon in the novel "The Stranger" by Albert Camus, in the second part of the book after he has been sentenced to the Guillotine, Mersault expresses that death is just a great new adventure, he thought of it as a fresh start, so for him it didn't really matter if his execution came today or the day after for he was ready to embrace death as an old friend.

"Mother must have felt like someone on the brink of freedom, ready to start life all over again. No one, no one in the world had any right to weep for her. And I, too, felt ready to start life all over again. It was as if that great rush of anger had washed me clean, emptied me of hope, and, gazing up at the dark sky spangled with its signs and stars, for the first time, the first, I laid my heart open to the benign indifference of the universe." (pg. 75)