Regarding Art...

What is art? Can and should it be limited by a definition?

Childrens' Movies For Adults

In this BBC article, a BBC news reporter analyzes a new target in modern film which was previously directed at children... By broadening the audience spectrum, are producers signaling the demise of naive childrens' films in the traditional sense?

CHILDREN MAY NOT NOTICE...

The Lion King: echoes of Hamlet

Chicken Run: loose parody of The Great Escape

Wall-E: Wall-E and shiny white robot Eve make noise like Apple Mac booting

The Incredibles: discussion of dangers of baddies 'monologuing' and allowing hero to escape

Up: the old man is styled to look like Spencer Tracy

Finding Nemo: seagull scene echoes Hitchcock's The Birds

A Helpful List of Cliches...

http://www.bored.com/findcliches/sciencefiction.htm

Orwell's Vision Of The English Language

1. Argument: Everyone is corrupting the English language, making it become a set of prefabricated clichés by the use of ambiguous phrases and jargon and euphemistic words for political ends.

2. Examples of Irony:

· The fact that Orwell ends the Operators or False Limbs section with “and so on and so forth” after saying that such anticlimax endings are to be avoided is ironic.

· Orwell begins to write political writing after fallaciously alleging that it is definitely bad writing is ironic as well.

3. Definitions:

· Dying Metaphors: These are worn-out metaphors which have lost their original meaning and merely exist to spare people the trouble of inventing original phrases for themselves (ex. Play into the hands of).

· Pretentious Diction: Scientific impartiality to biased judgments through the use of words like phenomenon, exhibit, element. International politics makes use of words like epoch-making, epic, and historic. Words to glorify war are based on archaic language like realm, throne, chariot, while foreign words and expressions (e.g. cul de sac, deus ex machina) are used to give an air of culture and elegance. Also, the replacement of Saxon words by Greek and Latin words for scientific terms because they sound more “professional”.

· Meaningless words: Words like romantic, plastic, values, and human are as meaningless as the word Fascism (as something not desirable) and democracy (as something good).

4. Some Habits Of Highly Effective Writers:

· What am I trying to say?

· What words will express it?

· What image or idiom will make it clearer?

· Is this image fresh enough to have any effect?

· Can I put it more shortly?

· Have I said anything that is avoidably ugly?

· Avoid lack of precision.

· Avoid staleness of imagery.

· Avoid the not un- formation.

· Let the meaning choose the word… not the other way around.

· Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.

· Never use a long word where a short one will do.

· If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.

· Never use the passive when you can use the active.

· Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.

· Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

All Hail Whitman

In poems 11 to 20 of Leaves of Grass, Whitman is inclusively mimetic: He attempts to represent everyone’s reality. This purpose is epitomized in poem 15, where the author, or everyone, is describing everyone’s reality without trouble because all reality is his reality; from the “pure contralto [who] sings in his organ loft” (15), to the “old husband [who] sleeps by his wife, and the young husband [who] sleeps by his wife” (15), the author, or everyone, as he so explained in the first poem, is everyone and everything and every possible situation at once.

I perceive the image that the author promotes of himself as being of an omnipresent being, who exists in all always. He also describes the unity of everything, much like Hinduism does. At the same time, he has a romantic air, for he celebrates the American landscapes in some of his poems such as number 16. What is his purpose in doing so? Is a purpose even required? Why would we require it?

The Perfume

For an indispensable book of poems such as Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, it is prudent to give scrupulous attention to the first part. It is an introduction to what is to come, demonstrating Whitman’s style and themes so that we may be prepared for what is to come: Whitman is inclusive when he begins by saying that “What I shall assume, you shall assume;/For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you” (1). He connects himself with the reader, whoever he may be, by saying that they are one and the same. When he says “I celebrate myself” (1), he may be, according to the fact that we are all one, celebrating that very connection. The fact that he is celebrating implies a social gathering designed to praise a person or event.

A predominant theme can be seen: nature. I don’t mean nature per se, but rather the detachment of society into the silence found in nature. There is another theme: nature, which promotes loafing. Society requires haste and occupation. Everyone is in constant contact with everyone. For that, he says that “the distillation would intoxicate me also, but I shall not let it” (1), which means that being engulfed in the hive that is society is addicting and pleasurable, but, for that, all the more dangerous. Then, he praises loneliness, but without the lonely part, for he will “go to the bank by the wood, and become undisguised and naked;/ I am mad for it to be in contact with me” (1). The disguise he mentions is that of the image he must (and in turn, all of us as well) maintain when part of society (as is the theme in Patrick Suskind’s The Perfume, which is adequately titled, considering the mention of perfumes in this poem, which I believe play the same metaphor: Perfumes are disguises, or inauthentic images created by society’s individuals for themselves). He praises genuine silence and freedom, which only nature can offer.

Beauty And The Bird

Gustave Flaubert’s description of objects and settings is utterly breathtaking: “He was called Loulou. His body was green, his head blue, the tips of his wings were pink and his breast was golden. But he had the tiresome tricks of biting his perch, pulling his feathers out, scattering refuse and spilling the water of his bath. Madame Aubain grew tired of him and gave him to Felicite for good” (Ch. 4). This description never tells the reader what to think of the bird: If you think that a green body with a blue head, pink wing tips, and a golden breast is ugly, then so be it. However, there is something about the description that makes us think of the parrot as beautiful, even if Flaubert doesn’t say so. Flaubert simply describes the characteristics of the bird and expects the reader to create their opinion of it. However, are we responsible for viewing the bird as magnificent, or is Flaubert sending a subliminal message to sway the reader to have an image of the bird? I believe in the latter. People appreciate exotic, uncommon things. This is why a multicolored bird appeals to the reader.

In the sentence, “But he had the…”, the word ‘but’ is demonstrating how the bird’s habits of “biting his perch…” opaque its beauty. Using only one word, Flaubert signals the existence of a positive trait by hinting the possibility of its corruption through bad habits. But while these hints are ingenious (Flaubert, anyone?), they force the reader to have to close-read most of the text, in search for these subtleties. The density of such text contrasts with the simple plot and characters of the story, like with the simplistic personality of simple Felicite.

Tricky, Tricky

Flaubert’s subtle yet excruciating illustrations are but a mere detail of his style’s components in Un Coeur Simple. He manages to depict Felicite’s naïve and extremely forgiving personality without actually saying so. He lets the reader make his own assumptions about the character without being told anything about his/her characteristics. The following is an example of this, where I was surprised at how the unimportance Flaubert gives to an event emphasizes the same unimportance that Felicite gave to another event: "Oh, yes, your nephew!" And shrugging her shoulders, Madame Aubain continued to pace the floor as if to say: "I did not think of it.-- Besides, I do not care, a cabin-boy, a pauper!--but my daughter--what a difference! just think of it!--" Felicite, although she had been reared roughly, was very indignant. Then she forgot about it” (Ch. III). The last sentence forces us to hastily forget the event. It is also a very simple sentence, which can be assimilated to the ease with which Felicite absolved the occurrence.

In this way, Flaubert characterizes Felicite without telling us anything about her personality, and is ironically urging the reader to have Felicite’s same softhearted personality. Flaubert, of course, knows that the reader will catch on to his trickery, which is ultimately what he is trying to show. Flaubert attempts to show us how subtle his deception can be. If we would not become aware of this, then Flaubert’s work would go unappreciated.