Post 2, Group B "Fall of the House of Usher" by Dianesa Sanon

The Fall of the House of Usher written by Edgar Allen Poe is a short story that starts off with the narrator going to visit his old friend who is expecting the death of his twin sister. Upon arriving the mansion the narrator describes it as a "mere house" with a "simple landscape" and goes on about how the ambience of the house chills him to his bones. Alongside the house, which is really important later, is a fissure crack that creeps up the siding and the ground as well. Within the house is Roderick Usher who is beside himself with anxiety due to superstitious thought. The heavy curtains are drawn, the rooms are poorly lit and somewhere inside the mansion is Roderick's twin sister who was dying a slow death. The master of the Usher Mansion, in his haste, lays to rest his sister, Madeline, down to rest because her pallor had made it seem as if she had passed. Plot-twist! She wasn't dead yet. She ends up coming up out of her burial place, causes the narrator and Roderick to essentially poop themselves in terror and she essentially takes her brother to death along with her. The house is swallowed into a fissure in the ground that seals once the mansion goes under.



The short story encompasses the fear of anxiety of looming death of a physical life and a more importantly, a name."Roderick's ambivalence toward death... his individual consciousness fears." (Stahlberg) The narrator makes it a point that the remaining siblings are the last of the Ushers. Madeline falls sick and Roderick is pacing around making himself sick when he realizes that her days are numbered and he'll be the only one left. The narrator stays with his friend after being called out there. Roderick Usher is so scared to be alone after having to live in the same house with what he believed to be the corpse of his sister was really wracking his nerves. The narrator talks about how his friend muttered to himself mournfully "I feel that the period will sooner or later arrive when I must abandon life and reason together, in some struggle with the grim phantasm, FEAR." (Poe, Fall of the House of Usher) Poe smartly foreshadows the death of Roderick without letting on exactly how it will take place.

Before Madeline seemingly raises up from the dead to take her brother into death with her the suspense of her coming is present from her ghoulish figure in the doorway to her pounding on the door that was sealed to keep her from leaving her death room. In Fall of the Shouse of Usher, Poe uses words to build the suspense from the very beginning when he describes the outside and inside of the Usher's home caused the narrator "an utter depression of soul" which could not be "compared to no earthly sensation." (Poe, Fall of the House of Usher)
Again Madeline represents death when she raises from the dead to find her brother who had prematurely buried her. To Roderick, all of his anxious ponderings since his sister fell ill, all the pacing and staring into nothingness, all of the "FEAR" he feared would kill him was symbolized through his sister literally taking him to hell with her.

Coincidentally, maybe not- we're discussing Edgar Allan Poe here, the two siblings were the last of the Ushers so that with there death there really is a fall of the house of Usher- hence the name. At the end of the story, the mansion is swallowed up into a hole in the ground after crumbling into nothing. If you aren't careful enough to catch the double meaning and if you just read without understanding you'll miss that the physical crumbling to the ground of the house of Usher isn't all there is to it. Roderick Usher's family previously had all fallen sick with some disease that caused their deaths and when things boiled down to just him and his sister. For the narrator, the suspense began when he arrived at his friend's home but for Roderick Usher, it began with the first death of an Usher that dominoed the last two standing. With his sister's death, he was sure he would follow soon after. The crack on the side of the mansion is symbolic of the near crumbling of the foundation and in the end, the mansion is split by that fissure and the ground opens up by it as well to swallow up the remaining Ushers.







References
Stahlberg, L. (1981). The Source of Usher's Fear. Interpretations: A Journal Of Ideas, Analysis, And Criticism, 13(1), 10-17

Post 2, Group B - Adolf how it works by Jacob Bothell

             Recently I had the amazing opportunity to work with a man named Pip Utton. He is a ‘fringe’ actor that tours around the world doing productions that involve impersonating a historical figure. When he visited Kansas City at the Metropolitan Ensemble Theater under the Central Standard Theater Company he performed three different pieces: ‘Maggie,’ ‘Bacon,’ and ‘Adolf.’ The last of these productions was not only awe inspiring and beautiful, because of his talent, but also quite terrifying.

The show opens with Pip dressed as Adolf Hitler speaking to the ‘higher ups’ of the German government telling them that the invasion of the Ally powers is imminent and they should probably go into hiding so they can continue their work elsewhere. The next portion Hitler is speaking to the ‘lay man’ of Germany informing them of the invasion and telling them that they should stick together but we understand if you cannot. Then the play takes on an odd turn; Pip takes off his costume (wig, moustache, and jacket); gets a beer from a plant, someone who he put there to perform the task, in the audience; acquires a cigarette from me; and has the tech, me, turn off the light on the Nazi banner. Aside from the audience being very confused, trying to determine if the show is over or not, they are put into a state of comfort with Pip being himself. At this point Pip begins to talk about current affairs and politics and the ‘current state of things.’ From my perspective I see the script say “IMPROMPTU” and the next line saying “Kill the Jews, kill the blacks […]” and I have no idea how he is going to get to that nor what its purpose in the production is… His point is to show that the confusion/comfort paradigm that the audience is now experiencing is much like Germany was feeling in the 1930’s and the current events/fears of the time are somewhat similar (unknown future, seemingly poor living, unhappiness with current government) and they can be bent and shaped, very easily, into the same thoughts as Hitler much to the horror of the watching audience.

I think this play is an interesting look from multiple perspectives but the one of manipulation and how can it be achieved to such extreme ends. I think a different view from the conventional of Hitler’s rise to power is in order first. It is enumerated by Graham Darby in “Hitler’s Rise and Weimar’s Demise” that the government of Germany at the time, the Weimar Republic, was not really in danger of collapse at the point of the Nazi ‘revolution’ though it was vulnerable and that the publications of the Nazis had little to do with their rise. Their rise according to Darby, and I agree with this, is that Hitler was telling people what they wanted to hear but more than that they were not a part of the Republic that the public felt had failed them on multiple occasions. And to tie this to Pip’s production he did not really do anything extraordinary, other than impromptu the shit out the performance, but he took the current thoughts and told people that he wanted to do something and he was going to do something that was NOT what was currently being done. And that seems to be the interesting way that he was able to manipulate the entire audience. And here in lies the HOROR of the situation. From the infiniteness of things that can be done about a situation an extremist must simply not be what the current course of action is…

Darby, Graham. "Hitler's Rise and Weimar's Demise." History Review, no. 67, Sept. 2010, pp. 42-48. EBSCOhost, proxy.library.umkc.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=53995851&site=ehost-live&scope=site.

Post 2, Group B - The Dangerous Politics of Isolationism; Black Panther by Kenneth Butcher

I had the opportunity to watch Black Panther over the weekend and since it was still pretty fresh on my mind I figured I could use this opportunity to talk about the films portrayal of Wakanda. Wakanda is a fictional city in Africa in the film that boasts a technological prowess and innovation far beyond and of those in any country in the world today because of it's monopoly on a substance called vibranium. Which is an alien metal, with radioactive properties that allow it to absorb kinetic energy on impact. The story of Blank Panther sees a young T'Challa taking the position of king of Wakanda in the wake of his father's passing in Captain America Civil war due to a terrorist attack and trying to fend of the "colonizers" (*the films terms) from trying to steal the vibranium their country has to do with what they want (which in this case is to create powerful weapons). The main colonizers of which are Ulysses Klaue a black market arms dealer and  N'Jadaka / Erik "Killmonger" Stevens son of T'Challa's, Father's, brother and a U.S. black-ops soldier who seeks to overthrow T'Challa for the express purpose of arming black people all over the world with vibrabium weapons so they can stand up to their oppressors. What I want to focus on is how the city of Wakanda's politics are portrayed (and are not portrayed a some instances) And how those politics lead to the creation of people like Killmonger and Klaue. As well as how their political stances and social framework are bad for a countries overall longevity.

First of all I would like to establish that Wakanda is a Afro-Centric, Ethno-State; which is a political unit that is populated by and run in the interest of an ethnic group. In this case the group is the entire country of Wakanda and the ethnic group is the Africans whom reside their. Wakanda is also the only place in the world with access to vibranium, the most valuable mineral in the world. This alone puts them in a very interesting situation especially in the increasingly globalist world of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Because they are the only ones who have access to a material that has a variable cornucopia of uses they facilitate the creation of an even greater market demand for a product that would have been in high demand even if it weren't walled off exclusively by one country. And If there's anything that history teaches us time and time again (both in the real world and in the MCU) it's: Limiting access to a highly sought after resource almost ensures that less that reputable points of contact for access to that resource will increase because there would be a huge market for it. Limiting access to a sought after resource doesn't diminish the demand for that resource generally as much as it just makes the acquisition of that resource require more work. Which in turn allows people who are in the business of acquiring that resource to up the cost the consumers have to pay for the resource to see any sort of substantial return because the cot of accusation goes up. This is how and why black markets spring up and see a huge clientele base in both the real world and the world of Black Panther. The affects of this can be particularly greater in capitalistic or globalized nations. In the film these are the conditions that lead to creation of someone like Ulysses Klaue who sees a small fortune to be made in the business of acquiring and selling the most valuable material in the world (vibranium) even though it poses a huge personal risk because it involves stealing from the most technological advanced countries in the world. Real world equivalents of this are the gangs and speakeasy's that popped up during the Prohibition era in the 1920s and the nuclear arms black market the rose to prominence after the first Vietnam war. This is one example of how having an isolationist mentality when it comes to sought after resources can be potentially damaging to your country. Or in this case was actually damaging to Wakanda because it directly resulted millions in property damage and collateral as a result of T'Challa and his subordinates trying to get their vibranium off of the black market. A cost I can only assume Wakanda is stuck in a perpetual loop of having to constantly pay because of this practice, that I can't imagine being good for their economy.

The second example I want to look at is a little bit more subjective and that's Wakanda's social hierarchy and the rules that govern it. Namely their reliance on the primitive "might is right" philosophies when it comes to choosing a king/ someone to uphold the moniker of "Black Panther". And how its is so heavily contradicted by the fact that their is oligarchy in place. I think this creates a weird social dissonance because what it implies is that one can become king if they best the old king in combat but they are initiated as king to a royal council of T'Challa's relatives. It helps to foster a perception of a leadership group that is only self contained and interested, particularly when they aren't seeing the specific needs of their people. Having a sort of royal family in charge almost insures that in the wake of any socio economic crisis the blame will fall on the entire house of leadership and allegations of inner family conspirators will be brought to the table. Which is why I think T'Challa's friend W'Kabi is so quick to side with Killmonger after he "kills" T'Challa and takes over as king after Killmonger brings him the body of the man who killed his parents, Klaue. This is purely speculator but I think communication with the outside world would lead to them getting more ideas on how to run their governmental hierarchy in a way that doesn't create social dissonance or facility an almost arbitrary form of dissent so easily.

Looking at the broader social impact the film has had in our society and amoungst black Americans specifically; I'm reminded of a quote I read in Elizabeth Reich's essay entitled A Broader Nationalism: Reconstructing Memory, National Narratives and Spectatorship in World War II Black Audience propaganda. Which was: "Along with these mainstream movies, the government also called for propaganda films celebrating black soldiers. The result was three films (two of which were produced outside of Hollywood) developed through intensive collaboration between black and white artists and marketed solely to black audiences. These unusual films – Marching On! (Spencer Williams, 1943), We’ve Come a Long, Long Way (Jack Goldberg, 1943) and The Negro Soldier (Stuart Heisler, 1944) – directly addressed black anxieties about the war by employing the figure of the black soldier to deliver a pro-war message and redress the absence of black representation in nationalist narratives. As propaganda films, aiming to persuade a particular historical demographic, the films demonstrate powerfully how black artists imagined black viewing audiences during World War II, and how they used the figure of the black soldier to reach the minds of black America." (Reich 2) I believe were starting to see some remnants of that in today society except instead of soldiers it's happening with the Black/African Diaspora and Black identity politics. And Black Panther's meta narrative about isolationism is one of the factors that is playing into it.

Source: 

A broader nationalism: reconstructing memory, national narratives and spectatorship in World War II black audience propaganda

Elizabeth Reich

Screen, Volume 54, Issue 2, 1 June 2013, Pages 174–193,https://doi.org/10.1093/screen/hjt001

Published:

 

01 June 2013

Post 2, Group B - Building Suspense From Minute One, by Jared Islas

Jurassic Park is a 1993 film that tells the story of an amusement park filled with genetically engineered dinosaur clones. There’s blood, guns and giant dinosaurs eating men in one bite. The movie is dark, it’s quiet, but loud at the same time. It’s set on a remote island that resembles a jungle that also happens to be at the heart of a tropical storm. The characters scream and the dinosaurs roar. Despite all of these horror film tropes, Jurassic Park is not considered a horror film but rather a sci-fi adventure film.

The director, Stephen Spielberg relies heavily on building suspense as well as these common horror tropes to heighten his audience’s fear. All of this comes together to create thrilling experiences throughout the film’s second half. In my opinion, the most recognizable scene from the film (and maybe the entire franchise) shows this technique off the best. This of course the T-Rex attack scene.

Interestingly enough, Spielberg is building up to this scene from the beginning of the movie as it is the first scene in which the dinosaur vs. human action that audiences had been waiting for comes into play. So far up until this point in the movie, there have been no clear sight of dinosaurs except for a sick herbivorous Triceratops lying on the ground (which comes 50 minutes into the film). The T-Rex attack is also one of the most prolonged sequences in the film. Spielberg takes at least ten minutes from start to finish.

The scene’s immediate build up begins when the main characters, including two young children, board self-driving tour vehicles that will drive around the park’s grounds showing them different dinosaurs. Tension begins to rise when nothing is being spotted. During a quick scene back at the park’s command center, the audience learns the impending tropical storm is nearing and the park’s security system has been disabled by a man working to steal genetic data from the park. 

When we cut back to the tour vehicles, it has become night, began down pouring and the cars have come to a stop. Three men, and two children have been stranded in their tour vehicles in the middle of a dinosaur infested jungle.

The young girl says to her brother, “Don’t scare me,” not knowing that what’s about to come next will be so much worse. A full hour and two minutes into the movie, loud booming steps are heard, glasses of water in the cars begin to ripple, and a goat that was placed into the pen in order to attract dinosaurs goes mysteriously missing. 

A minute later, the goat’s bloody severed leg drops from the sky onto one of the cars and the T-Rex appears. Another minute later, the T-Rex tears out of its pen and onto the path where the parked cars are, before letting out a few loud roars. These roars break the scene’s eery silence and constant sound of raindrops in a way to let the audience feel just as terrified as the characters in the car. 

When the T-Rex comes face to face with the two children who are alone in their car and roars once more, the kids scream. The T-Rex then demolishes the car trying to get to them. Spielberg carries this portion of the scene out for a good minute or so before Alan (a man in the other car), comes to the rescue and attracts the dinosaur away from the kids. I think that all of this comes together to really emphasize the fear that the two kids and even the adults in the scene are facing. 

In Robert Baird’s article, Animalizing Jurassic Park’s Dinosaurs: Blockbuster Schemata and Cross-Cultural Cognition in the Threat Scene, he states that “…threatening dinosaurs were explicitly depicted for only 8 minutes and 36 seconds, while they were offscreen or significantly occluded through masking or metonymy for 26 minutes and 48 seconds” (Baird 95). This statistic is crazy to me. In a two-hour movie about a dinosaur amusement park gone wrong, threatening dinosaurs are only on screen for eight and a half minutes? Spielberg was able to make this work exceptionally well by using suspense from the start of the movie and then “cashing it in” when the dinosaurs finally arrive on screen. The shock and fear of these moments is therefore extremely complex, fun and well deserved.

Works Cited

Baird, Hobart. "Animalizing Jurassic Park's Dinosaurs: Blockbuster Schemata and Cross-Cultural Cognition in the Threat Scene." Cinema Journal, vol. 37, no. 4, Summer98, p.82. EBSCOhost, proxy.library.umkc.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=f3h&AN=1060017&site=ehost-live&scope=site.

Post 2, Group A: The Better Story, By: Aly Hernandez

The Life of Pi is an epic novel written by Yann Martell and later adapted to film by Director Ang Lee. The story depicts Piscine Molitor, known as Pi, an Indian young man with a genuine curiosity for the spiritual and the exotic zoo animals of his father’s zoo. Shortly after his families’ immigration to Canada began, the ship they were traveling in sinks after a difficult encounter with a storm leaving Pi on a small lifeboat with a dangerous Bengal Tiger. Although there is major criticism about movie adaptations of novels, this is one of the few gems that break away from the stereotype.

What makes this novel and movie captivating to the viewer is the story and the challenges it rests upon the audience. Where the spectacular story of Pi’s 227-day survival on a lifeboat with a Tiger is certainly filled with adventure, the audience is challenged by the underlying question: Okay, what really happened? With the screen play and the context, that is exactly what the directors and the author intended. They chose to let the audience decide the ending to the story that they liked most. The better story being the one where Pi miraculously survives the shipwreck and the lifeboat with the tiger and other deadly exotic animals while astonishingly living day by day or the one where he simply survives, the animals were imagined incorporation's of his mother and other passengers, and he waits out his rescue. The better story is the one that challenges the unbelievable and here is why.

With the use of Computer-generated imagery (CGI), the director attempted to compel the audience to pick the better story and did a wonderful job. In one of the most notable scenes throughout the film, the CGI effects work to visualize the spiritual nature of Pi’s situation. Rachel Wagner writes in her article Screening Belief: The Life of Pi, Computer Generated Imagery, and Religious Imagination that “The most beautiful, awe-inspiring moments in the film—including the impossibly gorgeous morning scene on a “completely still” ocean—are digitally rendered.” Wagner’s statement holds true. The magnificent effects introduce the idea of interconnectedness. While the CGI effects are not "real" or "true", the director and author try to convince the viewer  and reader that "reality" is beside the point. Everyone chooses what they want reality to be.  

 In that moment Wagner describes that we, the audience, do not know where the sky meets the sea because we are seeing Pi as he lives and experiences this moment of wonder and connectedness to the world around him regardless of his situation. We are compelled to join in his mystical experience. By merging the sky and the sea we, as spectators, see and feel the joining of the everything in the universe. The idea of interconnectedness stems from Hinduism, one of the three religions that Pi practices throughout the film. The fact that Pi practices three distinct religions only rectifies his point that there are many truths in the universe just as there are two different stories yet both have the same ending similar to many religions.

 Many more scenes, different in context and similar in intent, compel the viewers to pick the better story. Another such scene takes place at night when Pi is in the luminescent sea. The glorious whale that jumps out of the water and the glowing sea life enhance the already mystic nature of the film. Everything below the water is alive and thriving, each with their own purpose yet connected by the same ocean and the same distinct beauty.

As in the book, the film portrays the other story as short and to the point; where the better story is over 200 pages the other story is 30 and the same applied in the film. We, the audience, are so fixated with endings in order consummate our inner need to know what happened.  Endings serve to put the puzzle pieces together so that nothing is left imagined or unanswered because we simply must know. Now what would the audience do if they didn’t know?

The true question that Yann Martel asks is this, “What do you believe really happened?”. If the endings are the same, what would make the better story? Ang Lee is simply our captain guiding us through the voyage for us to pick a side, preferably the better story.

Post 2, Group A: Hypermasculinity in Military Movies by Bailey West

I watched the movie Sand Castle to analyze it for this blog post. It takes place during the Iraq war and contains a lot of themes regarding fear, death, and masculinity. In the movie, a U.S. platoon is assigned to fix the water supply of an Iraqi village. The water supply location was destroyed during a bombing by the U.S., so as a good publicity move they were assigned to fix it and bring water back to the village. Faced with an enormous task, the platoon tries to enlist help from the locals. They run into a variety of problems regarding who to trust and fear. The platoon members utilize hypermasculinity to cover their fear of the war, death, and instability they encounter. This shows in times of fear when they portray an effort to cling to traits of hypermasculinity: sexualization of women and objects, show of violence, and a lack of pain.

The movie opens with the main character, Ocre, admitting to the audience that he didn't join the army for some idealistic cause like fighting for freedom and defending rights. Instead, he joined because he really didn't know what to do with himself. He proceeds to slam his hand in the door of a Jeep over and over until it is bloodied and broken. This is presumably so that he can get sent home for medical reasons. However, the doctor doesn't buy his act and he is sent to another assignment. By choosing this as the first scene it sets the tone for the rest of the movie. It shows how scared they are, so much that some are willing to hurt themselves to get out of it.

After the tone of fear is set, the audience is hit by examples of hypermasculinity. As Ocre is walking around base camp, another soldier comes up to him looking very proud and asks him to come look at something. Behind him is a big military tank where, on the gun turret, the soldier painted "Pokey Mirra Loma". He explains joyously that it's his porn name because he's "going balls deep in Iraq". This ties in two traits of hypermasculinity: sexualization of objects and demonstration of violence. As they prepare to depart for their various assignments the soldiers probably feel nervous and fearful of what might come next. In order to cope with it and cover it, this soldier exemplifies hypermasculinity to draw the focus away from his fear. He sexualizes the situation as a form of dominating the situation and his fears. He also uses violence to dominate the situation by bragging about how much destruction he's going to cause.

Another example of hypermasculinity occurs later after the platoon searches a building. One of the soldiers got shot and another soldier picks him up, carries him down the stairs and says, "Quit your bellyaching, you're fine. Just a little gun wound". He says it a bit sarcastically with a chuckle because it's obvious the man is badly hurt. However, he's trying to wave off the pain and injury. This is a trait of hypermasculinity- to not show pain. It's being utilized in a stressful situation where they don't know if this man will live or die. It's just easier for them to cope with the fear by masking it.

In her book Masculinities, Violence and Culture, Suzanne Hatty states that "the raw and unfinished business of 'becoming a man' sometimes comes at great cost," (110). Hypermasculinity has its drawbacks and that's being recognized more and more. However, I think it's interesting to look at it as a coping mechanism when men are faced with high stress and fear. Overall, this movie was very interesting and it brought up some pertinent themes. I think it's important to recognize how people cope with things, especially in war. War is a display of violence that has such an impact on the soldiers. I think it would be useful to learn how they cope and why so that we can better help soldiers when they come back and have to readjust to society. This was a good movie that is still relevant today and has some important things to learn from.