Harold and Maude

This movie was very perculiar but ironically I loved it for this exact reason. This movie was ranked in the top 100 movies of comedy, romance, and inspiration. It found the movie to be extremely comic but not in the same way that I would usually consider a movie to be comic. Harold would consistently kill himself ( hanging, cutting his throat,setting himself on fire, shooting himself in the head, cutting his hand off, etc) to get the attention of his mother but I never quite worked. These acts of attempted suicide was hilarious in the light that his mother would always dismiss his suicide attempts but he still contiuned to do it even after he met Maude and fell in love with her. The one question I have about Herald's numerous suicide attempts was he literally killing himself or was it a figurative statement? At one point in the movie, it seemed as though he was going to kill his mother when he pointed the gun at her. That scene was not expected and ironically, hilarious. I am still trying to figure out why did Herald turn the gun on his mother. Maude was a magnificient character. She was an older lady who lived her life to the fullest, probably more than an average teenager (stealing cars, driving recklessly, exploring the outdoors). She was young at heart, free-spirited, and enjoyed nature. When Harold first met Maude at the funeral, you begin to see a change in him, he began to enjoy life's simplicity and joy and he literally, in my eyes came to life. The change in Herald is most apparent when he actually goes to his mother and tells her that he is going to marry Maude. This is very unexpected of him because prior to this he would let his mother control his life and decided everything for him.

Herald had no happy life of his own, it was his motherr who decided everything for Herald even if it was something that he absolutely did not want. Maude inspired Herald to live his life and be happy and this is probably why Herald fell in love with Maude, she made him realize and do things that he would have never had a chance to experience. In the end of the movie, Maude kiills herself and Herald was heartbroken. This was the only part of the movie that made me sad and I don't quite understand why Maude kills herself. A classmate of mine mentioned that she killed herself because he was young she was old and wanted him to live his life. I guess I can see her point. In the last scene, we see Herald speeding and turning his car in a winded path furhter up we see the end of the path lead to a cliff. In my mind, I was convinced that Herald would really committ suicide but he did not. He ran the car off the cliff and walked away from it. I believe that was the perfect ending to this movie. Although Herald was feeling extremely low due to the loss of his love Maude, he decided to continue to live is life the way that Maude would have wanted him to. She inspired him to live his life.

Love is Pleasure and Pain

I must say that I really like the idea of the lecture but the delivery of it was not as appealing as I would have liked or expected it to be. The discussion was excellent. What I really found interesting was the fact how its human nature to create an image of the perfect soulmate. Is there such a thing? And if so, how often does it happen? I would bet not often. Nonetheless we all have this idealized, romanticized image of our perfect soulmate and we compare this image to those we are in a relationship with, not realizing we are setting ourselves for failure and oh yeah, pain. I am guilty of this, big time. I have been with my boyfriend for quite a while (June will make it 5 years) and I have always tried , unsuccessfully to adjust who is to fit my perfect soulmate image. The pain of love is a very paradoxical statement but its very true. If we know creating the perfect image of a soulmate is setting up ourselves for failure, why is that we continue to do it? Is it perhaps the stories of Cinderella, Beauty and the Beast, Sleeping Beauty, and Aladdin, that was engrained in us at a very young age and we get this idea that love is perfect and we can find a perfect soulmate. When we grow up, we see that these love stories hardly occur but the idea of being happy all the time, complenmenting each other, and feeling complete is associated with the perfect most-of-the-time non-exsistent soulmate so were steer towards this direction because it is better to have the hope of the perfect image than to be alone.

Rape is NEVER Funny, so should they be made into jokes?

Let me just take this moment to say ...Wow!!!!!!!

I thoroughly enjoyed the lecture/discussion about rape jokes. It was very interesting to see a different perspective because in our society we typically see and focus on women getting raped than men and I think this was a great way to shed some light on the fact that men get rapped too and it is just as traumatizing experience as it is for women.

I think is particularly psychologically tormenting for those men who were raped because not only do they live in a society that where it is believed it is only women who really get raped and men who do get raped rarely come out and admit to it because they fear they will be laughed at, viewed as weak or feminine, or not believed, but there are jokes out there about these rapes in all forms of media (television, radio, newspaper, Internet) that constantly remind them of that terrible event. As a society, we need to realize that although rape jokes can be funny and are not , for the most part, intended to hurt those who have been raped, they still do hurt the rape victim and bring back terrible flashbacks.

Two wrongs don't make a right is all I can think about when the movie who stars Rosario Dawson was mentioned in the lecture. In the movie, the main character, who is a female, was raped by a male and retaliates against the man who raped her by getting one of her male friends to rape him . The message may be that women who have been raped should do everything in their power to fight back but I feel as though the set up of the movie is basically saying its perfectly okay to rape someone to get back at them. Where do we draw the line? When is rape okay? Rape is never okay and I am not saying that if a victim is raped that the perpetrator should not be punished. What I am saying is that if the assailant was raped, then we are basically telling him or her that it is okay to go back and rape the victim again. The other French movie about rape (the name also escapes my mind) should be viewed by all those people who casually make rape jokes because they will get a vivid and graphic glimpse of what it really feels and looks like to be raped . When someone one is raped, those nightmarish memories are forever etched in their brain and any joke or movement can quickly trigger a panic attack. Finally, I really want to watch both of these movies to get a better sense of what went on in them.

Requiem for a Dream

I must say this movie takes on a completely different perspective of how drug addicts face or better yet ,fall into their addiction. Also, the way in which the director decides to depict the addicts when they taking drugs was eye-opening, literally and figuratively. Watching this movie made the Nick Sheff book, Tweak ,come to reality. I found the many things Scheff explained in his book when he was high and what he did to get high were pretty much the same. Things like selling his body, stealing, selling drugs, and participating in all types of risky behavior were present in the movie. Addicts more than just physically dependent on their drugs, they are emotionally/mentally dependent on them and they use it to get away from the reality they don't want to face. I can remember someone asking why didn't Harry look after his mother when he found out she was popping pills? I would argue that if Harry could not bring himself to stop sniffing drugs how could he possibly persuade his mother to do so. As a matter of fact, after finding out that his mother was popping pills, Harry started to cry and took his on drugs to get away form the situation. Addicts feel as though they have no control over what causes them pain when they are sober and ironically, when the take their drugs they get a great sense of control, freedom, and are willing to do anything but in actuality, this supposed control is an illusion that they believe to be reality. This movie is true to the reality of a addict in the sense that those who do not find ways to cope with there addiction, end up like Marion, Harry, his mother and friend. In the end of the movie, we do not see no happiness.

Dealing with Loss and Pain

As I read the four essays, I was intrigued and shocked.  All of the stories painted a vivid mental image and I felt as though I was feeling what the authors were feeling.  All of these essays dealt with  loss in some kind of way.  The essay I liked the most was Love of My Life by Strayed.  Strayed didn't only have a very interesting story to tell but she made some interesting agruments.  She argues that there is not an single, set way of going through grief and that it is not right to make it seem as all losses have the same emotional impact from one individual to the next.  As a matter of fact Strayed, didn't go through the prescribed stages of grief she simply fucks to deal with her grief and say outright that she would replace her moms lost with someone else who wouldn't be missed as much as she misses her mom. In Beard's essay, I found the relationship Jo Ann had with the dog was a little bit odd.  I don't know maybe because I am not a big fan of dogs.  It seemed as though when I was reading her story,  I found myself reading it over again because it was like she was going from an awake state to a dreaming state.  I was shocked how Beard's story turned out, I had no idea.    The Fishing story reminded me of a movie I once watched called The Family That Preys and I was the least interesting out of all the readings. All in all, I liked these four selections because they allowed  me to see how different people with different experiences deal with loss.  

PUSH

I must say that this book was a very compelling and graphic. As I was reading this book, I had a hard time convincing myself that this book was a work of fiction. Ironically, I found this book to be equally inspiring as it was unfortunate.

Precious had alot of anger and pain boiling inside of her and it made her confused, aggressive, rude, and doubt her self-worth. And to read about her complete turn around when she started to go to the alternative school ,was a suprise as much as it was inspiring. After going through the terrible things in her life, she was more than committed to bettering herself and the life of her two children.

What really bothered me was when she expressed hate for her father for raping her but at the same time found it to be pleasurable. This was a major conflicting feeling that made Precious confused and hate herself. Having two children by her father, one at twelve and the other at sixteen; being abused, neglected, and molested by her mother; and getting HIV from her father would drive me right over a cliff. Precious was a very strong girl.

Sapphire did a great job transforming the words on the pages to an undeniable, vivid mental image and letting the reader walk in the shoes of Precious.

Songs of Pain

Well, I must say : I'm guilty of liking all those songs. As a listened to the variety of rap, rock,and hip hop selections, I found that there were reoccurring themes of violence, drug use, relationships, crushes, sex, and break-ups. I would say that this songs use pain and those themes to achieve popularity with teenagers and young adults, such as myself. During teenage and young adult years, the processes of finding oneself is achieved by heavily the music you listen to. Most of the music that caters to teenagers and young adults, are those that have the message of conflicting ideas ( such as "Come As You Go"), a sense of urgency, and the "Say and Do Anything attitude". All these messages are some of the obstacles teenagers and young adults face, so composing a song that has these messages gives them a feeling that there is something they can relate to when there is no possibilty to relate to parents or peers.


Four songs stuck out to me: Bleeding Love, You Oughta Know, F..k It, and F.U.R.B. These stuck with me because they were particularily graphic in their description, language, and images. In Bleeding Love, she describes her love by cutting open her veins and bleeding love;it is a very vivid and graphic image, to say the least. In You Oughta Know, there is explicit sexual behavior, profanities, and a frankness in the lyrics that quite honeslty might excite a teenager or young adult rather than make them cringe. The F..k It-F.U.R.B. rebuttal is quite hiliarioius. This back and forth promotes the idea of "getting even" and uses profanity in almost every line as well as sexual behavior. There is alot of emotion, anger, and pain jam-packed in all these songs that it is ALMOST hard to fathom.