Sunday, December 19, 2010

Blog Entry 5.0 : Final Reflections

   
I came to LaGuardia Community College to learn and improve my style and techniques in both film and digital photography. My main focus is photojournalism that records and helps me make sense of the world I live in, makes me feel part of it, and possibly contribute to a better world through my pictures. In order to be a photojournalist, I realize I have to get very good at writing. So I am looking forward to every English class, because I know it will benefit me in the long run. But this class has proven to be one of the best ones I’ve ever taken.
This class has been fun and very interesting from the beginning. I still remember our first day of class when Prof. Smith showed up in class and started telling us about the syllabus and the main theme of our class.
First of all, there was no pen and paper required. It could be a great thing for some people, or not so great for others. Well, I still used pen and paper to take notes in class and to write the blog drafts at home.
Then we found out that we don't even give in essays and we have to make blogs. The sound of that wasn't very appealing. I am not a public person when it comes to the internet; I don't even have a Facebook account, and even if it is a blog for English 102 class, initially I didn't like the idea. And I also thought that some people might not be so good with the computer and this would be a disadvantage for them. But then, this is the end of  year 2010 and we live in one of the most advanced cities in the world. Everybody should know how to use a computer.
And then we were told about the other rule and probably one of the reasons why we had to create a blog: to separate in teams and work together and review other people's work and give feedback. I am trying to imagine the same system with the teams and peer evaluations in a regular class. It would be too much. First of all, too much paper going around back and forth. And then, the noise; it would definitely be much, much noisier.
I have learned a lot of new things in this class; archetypes and the hero’s quest can definitely help one demystify the structure of a movie or novel. I am the type of person that shares with people outside of school the new, interesting thing I have learned about. Lately, I’ve been getting complaints from friends and family. Some of them say I talk too much about archetypes, Joseph Campbell and the monomyth in movies or literature.
This semester I feel my writing has truly improved.  What I really loved was that Prof. Smith explained everything to us with strong arguments and examples until everyone understood. There are not many professors out there who would do something like that.
            Overall I feel the class has been very influential towards my writing.  Obviously I’m not the best writer, but I feel I have learned ways to fully extend my ideas onto paper. I had some problems with the Radiohead song I chose. It was very haunting for me to work on that because of the dark lyrics. I wanted to revise it for a better grade, but after going back to read the lyrics again, I decided against it. I think I did a good job on the Blog 3 entries. I really enjoyed analyzing the photograph of Patrick Stewart from “Macbeth” and the video of the animation. My last essay was probably my best work, but it was my best not just because it was the accumulation of all my writing experience, but that it had a great interest in the topic. I love movies (and I hope someday I will direct one) and Donnie Darko is obviously, one of my favorites. On the other hand, it  is fascinating to me how Richard Kelly’s other movies are so bad.  I hope he will be able to make other great ones in the future.
            From all of my classmates, from the beginning, I was very impressed with Rianna’s writing skills. Her command of words is very remarkable and she was very consistent in every blog entry. Her final essay about Alice in Wonderland was very good, as it related to everything we have learned in this class. And I have to admit that I wish I would have thought about writing the paragraphs in different colors. Such a great idea, and it makes the reading more pleasing.
            I am about to conclude this essay about my thoughts on this class, but not before I thank you, Prof. Smith, for your dedication and a great style of teaching. I am also interested in teaching someday and you are a great inspiration for the type of professor I want to be.

Tuesday, December 7, 2010

Blog Entry 4.2: Final Project


                                           The Hero’s Quest in  Donnie Darko

Donnie Darko is a film released in 2001, written and directed by Richard Kelly, starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Drew Barrymore, Patrick Swayze, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Noah Wyle, Jena Malone, and Mary McDonnell. It is a science fiction thriller involving a schizophrenic young man, Donnie Darko, who experiences the effects of a collapsing universe. Donnie takes a 28 day journey in October 1988 through time to figure out how to save the world from destruction. This journey, like many in film and literature, follows the structured monomyth, a theory explored and developed by Joseph Campbell, which traces the hero through his or her experience.
Stage 1: Departure
The Call to Adventure
At the beginning of the movie, Donnie Darko meets an “imaginary friend”, Frank. Frank in this story represents the supernatural aide that gives guidance to Donnie through his journey. He is a product of Donnie’s schizophrenic identities. Throughout the movie, Frank is dressed in a rabbit costume with a skull-like mask and speaks to Donnie in only few words. This happens because he is a product of Donnie’s imagination; so, he has a psychological connection to Frank and the tasks he must accomplish.
As the hero in this journey, Donnie Darko’s archetype changes throughout the movie. On the other hand, several other characters have established archetypes that mostly stay the same throughout. Frank is a ruler in most situations of the movie. He is able to manipulate Donnie into performing the necessary tasks so that the world will not end.
Donnie’s call to adventure is represented by his first visit from Frank. He tells Donnie that the world will end in 28 days, 6 hours, 42 minutes, and 12 seconds. This is the time that Donnie is given to stop the world from ending.
Refusal of the Call
To combat Donnie’s schizophrenia, he is seen regularly by his psychologist, Dr. Fisher. He goes there to talk about his encounters with Frank and tries to make sense out of the events that have been affecting his life. He is hypnotized into his alternate persona to talk about Frank and how the world will end, however this offers little help in dealing with his problem.
Crossing the First Threshold
The first threshold that Donnie crosses is when he decides to follow Frank into the “future” in the middle of the night. This refers to how Donnie and the world will experience a secondary universe until, if or when Donnie saves the world, the end of the countdown. Frank will guide Donnie through this universe so that Donnie can ultimately save it. He will force Donnie into situations that will guide him to his ultimate goal.
Belly of the Whale
During Donnie’s first outing with Frank in the middle of the night, he is drawn away from his house which is the site of a freak accident. During the night, an unmarked airplane engine falls out of the sky and crashes into Donnie’s bedroom while Donnie is away. The FAA cannot identify the source of this engine. In reality, this engine came from the future, which is an indication of the end of the world because of a corruption in the time-space continuum. This initiates the countdown to the end of the world.
Stage 2: Road of Trials
Road of Trials
As mentioned before, many of Donnie’s personal experiences in the movie are intended to ultimately guide him to saving the world. Most of these are guided by Frank while one is seen as water-like projection coming out of his chest.
In Donnie’s second meeting with Frank, he takes an axe and breaks the school’s water main and puts an axe through the steel statue of a lion in front of the school. He spray painted “he made me do it” on the ground around the statue. These events parallel a short story that Donnie reads in his English class called The Destructors by Graham Greene (Wikipedia).
Later, Donnie follows the water-like projection that comes out of his chest. This projection reflects him seeing into the future, as to where he will go and what he will do. This leads him to finding a pistol in his father’s closet.
Finally, Frank appears to Donnie in a movie theater. This is one of the greatest, most powerful scenes I've ever seen in a movie. Frank takes of his mask and reveals a young man with a bullet wound through his eye. When he asks Frank what happened to his eye, Frank replies “I’m so sorry.” Frank then leads Donnie to the house of a local celebrity, Jim Cunningham, who, to Donnie, is a fraud.
Jim Cunningham in this story is both a creator and a destroyer. People would buy into Jim’s characterization of life as a simple division between love and fear. It was later recognized that Jim is a destroyer, as he is involved in a child pornography ring, which is damaging to both the community and society.
Meeting with the Goddess
During the school year, a new girl moves into town named Gretchen. She becomes Donnie’s girlfriend and they spend a lot of time together. Gretchen’s father also had mental problems “like Donnie”; he stabbed her mother several times in the chest. The actual reason she moved into town was because her father was never caught by authorities, so she had to move away with her mother and change their names.
Gretchen acts somewhat as an emotional anchor to Donnie, as they have both been victimized some way or another by mental sicknesses. Later, Gretchen comes to Donnie saying that her mother was gone and thinking that her father has found them.
Gretchen reflects the orphan archetype as she has been abandoned (or abandoned) her father. She seeks dependence with Donnie as recognized by her immediate willingness to go out with him.
Atonement with the Father
During a Halloween party, Donnie once again begins visualizing the water-like projections that come out of people’s chests. They show him that he must go visit an senile old woman, Grandma Death, also known as Rebecca Sparrow, who wrote a book on time travel many years ago.
Grandma Death is the Sage of this journey, her books provides Donnie with some wisdom and knowledge that helps him make conclusions about the situation and recognize that she is the only person that can help him resolve this situation.
While sneaking around Grandma Death’s house, Donnie and Gretchen are jumped by bullies trying to rob her (which again references the story the Destructors by Graham Greene). While fighting with the bullies outside, the living, non-imaginative version of Frank is driving his car down the street wearing his rabbit costume. He swerves to avoid hitting the senile Grandma Death who is standing in the middle of the road, and instead runs over Gretchen, killing her. Frank gets out of the car and confronts Donnie as a real person for the first time. Donnie responds by taking out the gun he found in his father’s closet and shoots Frank in the eye. Donnie does not consider the consequences as the world would be ending in a matter of hours.
Refusal of the Return
Donnie walks Gretchen’s body back to his house and drives it to a lookout. While he is watching the world begin to end, he hears Frank’s voice saying “28 days, 6 hours, 42 minutes, 12 seconds. I’m going home.” Hearing this, he realizes that he can bring Frank and Gretchen back to life, as all of the requirements of time travel, described to him earlier by a professor, have been met.
Stage 3: Return
The Magic Flight
While on his way back home, there is a flashback montage of all of the people and events, both good and bad, that he has influenced since the jet engine has crashed into his room. However, most important of these events are the deaths of Gretchen and Frank.
Crossing the Return Threshold
The final threshold is when Donnie gets back into bed, where the jet engine will crash. Because Frank at this point is dead, there will be nobody to draw Donnie away from the crashing jet engine in either universe. Now, he has accepted to sacrifice his life in return for saving the lives of Gretchen and Frank, and healing the pain that he has caused people in the past 28 days.
Freedom to Live
By being killed by the jet engine, he rerouted the divided universe back to its original, linear path before it was corrupted by the wormhole with the engine. The remerging takes the first universe, which was experienced before the engine crashed into his bedroom the first time, and the secondary universe, which was experienced for the rest of the movie until the engine killed him at the end of the movie. By remerging the universes, which were bound by the jet engine, into a singular event, he prevents the universe from collapsing.
Finally, the movie goes back to the beginning, except this time Donnie is crushed by the jet engine. There is a montage of all of the characters in the movie being awakened by the crash and looking as though they have just experienced the events of the secondary universe as a dream.
In the end, the world returns to the way it was before the corruption in the time and space continuum, except this time without Donnie. However, most importantly, Gretchen has to live her life without Donnie. This leaves an open end to show the reality of life while also showing how it only takes one person to make a difference.
Donnie Darko is a very interesting movie which uses a teen movie genre to explore many interesting themes, including those of destiny and death. There are not only characters and archetypes which are used in this movie. Donnie Darko uses any elements which have symbolic meaning.
First is the obvious motif of the Rabbit – the ‘Frank’ character – that guides Donnie through his story. The rabbit is a nocturnal creature, and in the film Donnie only meets the rabbit at night. In mythology the rabbit is very often associated with the moon, and the shapes on the moon’s surface have often been interpreted as a rabbit. The association with the moon links the symbol of the rabbit with the phases of the moon, and the rabbit’s reputation for fertility adds to this so that the rabbit comes to symbolize death and rebirth.
The time that Donnie has to live during the film is about the interval of a lunar cycle, 28 days. It is also worth observing that at the end of the film, Donnie’s youngest sister sits on the airplane holding a toy rabbit.
Another symbol in the film is that of water. Water, or being underwater, is a symbol of the unconscious, and rising out of the water is related to coming into consciousness in some way. The first act that Donnie does is the releasing of water in the school, symbolizing a release from the unconscious. The rabbit is also often seen next to water in the film.
Donnie inserts an axe into the head of a bronze dog on the school grounds. The dog has an ambiguous role in as a symbol, often representing fidelity, but also ignorance in the sense that the dog follows blindly. The symbolic overpowering of the dog can therefore refer to the overcoming of ignorance in the journey into knowledge.
Cherita is a guardian angel; in all of her scenes she is close to Donnie and often behind him, except when she plays an angel in the school play. Donnie wears a skeleton T-shirt at his party, referring to his own mortality. There is a repeated use of the number 8 throughout the movie.
             Donnie Darko is a fantastic film that is so thought-provoking, it made some people run the other way. Only those interested in something beyond the ordinary stayed to ponder and analyze its meaning. However, it has been somewhat of a victim of its own cult success. The limited release of the film occurred during the month after the September 11 attacks. Despite its poor box office showing, the film began to attract a devoted fan base. In March 2002, the Pioneer Theatre in New York City's East Village began midnight screenings of Donnie Darko that continued for 28 consecutive months, despite being available on DVD. Also, at the end of 2008 the same theater closed its doors for good and the last public screening was a Friday midnight showing of Donnie Darko.



Works Cited:

“The Pearson Archetypal System.” www.herowithin.com. 7 December 2010.
< http://www.herowithin.com/system.htm >
“Destructors, The.” www.wikipedia.com. 7 December 2010.
< http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Destructors>
“Donnie Darko.” www.wikipedia.com. 7 December 2010.
< http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donnie_darko>
“Richard Kelly.” www.wikipedia.com. 7 December 2010.
< http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Kelly_(director)>
Donnie Darko. Kelly, Richard, dir. Pandora Cinema. 2001

Wednesday, December 1, 2010

Blog Entry 4.1: Update

I managed to get two copies of "Donie Darko", one of the theatrical version, and the other of the director's cut. I watched both of them and took notes during the movie, noticing symbols, themes, archetype and trying to develop the description of the hero's quest. I started doing research on the internet for background information and interviews of the writer and director of the movie, Richard Kelly.
Although lately I' ve been very busy with my other classes, I don't anticipate any problems with finishing the essay by the beginning of our next class. So far everyhing is going according to my plans and I will be working on it every single day, as much as time will allow me.
I was able to create a draft already and I want to constantly build on that and develop it into the final essay.

Tuesday, November 23, 2010

Blog Entry 3.5: Hero’s Quest in "Coraline"

             Joseph Campbell explored the theory that the most important mythological stories from around the world, some of them thousands of years old, share a fundamental structure, which he called monomyth. In laying out the monomyth, he described a numbers of steps or stages along this journey.
 Coraline by Neil Gaiman is a children’s story about a girl who is ordinary and imperfect, yet has the role of a hero on a quest. The story follows the classic pattern of a hero’s quest story.Coraline is not special. She’s an ordinary kid with ordinary parents living in an ordinary home. She’s just a girl whose curiosity leads her to an adventure, the consequences of which demand heroic actions from her.  Although the writer of the book, author Neil Gaiman, said that he started The Hero with a Thousand Faces, but refused to finish it, there are obvious elements and stages of the monomyth structure in Coraline.
 Coraline has just moved with her parents into a flat in an old house. Her upstairs and downstairs neighbors are kind and eccentric older people who can't get her name right, but encourage her curiosity and explorer's instincts. One rainy afternoon, wandering around bored out of her mind (as young explorers are wont to do on rainy afternoons), Coraline opens a locked door in her living room and finds her way into the mysterious "vacant" fourth flat in the house. Surprisingly, the apartment is far from empty, and Coraline comes face to face with two creatures who claim to be her "other" parents. In fact, there appears to be an entire magical "other" world through the door; there are amazing toys to play with and neighbors who never mess up her name.
 Soon, however, Coraline realizes that this world is as deadly as it is enchanting. The "other mother" wants to keep Coraline there forever, and her intentions are hardly loving or parental. Coraline meets the ghosts of several other children who had been kidnapped hundreds of years ago, and she realizes that her both her body and spirit are in danger. She has to use all her intelligence and exploratory prowess in order to defeat the horrible "other mother."
 The first stage of the monomyth, The Call to Adventure, begins after Coraline is not allowed by her parents to explore outside on a rainy day and discovers a bricked up wall behind the drawing room door “which opened to a brick wall”(pg. 13, electronic ed.). Later as she visits her neighbors the crazy old man gives her a message from the mice warning her not to “go through the door”(pg.27) and the retired actresses, Miss Spink and Miss Forcible, tell her she is “in terrible danger” (pg.34) after reading her tea leaves and give her a stone with a hole in it for protection.

 The next day, Coraline opens the door and finds a passage to the other world. Although she finds the other world to be better than her reality, she goes back to her world because the other mother wants to sew buttons into her eyes, in order for Coraline to stay in the other world forever. Coraline wanting to go back to her reality is The Refusal of the Call.

 The Supernatural Aid is represented by the stone received from Miss Spink and the black cat who is talking to her for the first time in the garden.

 The Crossing of the First Threshold stage happens when Coraline returns to her world and finds her parents missing and although she is frightened she goes back to the other world to rescue her kidnapped parents.

 The Belly of The Whale stage begins when Coraline is not being able to go back  to her own world because the other mother has locked the door and has the key in her possession. When she refuses to stay, the other mother locks her behind the mirror as punishment, where she meets the three ghost children.

 Coraline decides to play a game with the other mother in order to win her freedom and the freedom of her parents. She proposes a finding game and she sets off to find the souls of the three ghost children and of her parents. This game symbolizes The Road of Trial stage.  

 As the other mother opens the door Coraline grabs the snow globe, throws the black cat at her in order to distract her and escapes back to her world with the key. This is more dangerous to Coraline than going there because the other mother is trying to keep her in the other world in order to steal her soul. Coraline’s escape back to her world represents The Magic Flight stage.

 The Crossing of the Return Threshold is of a crucial importance for her quest and is represented here by the dream Coraline has in which she meets the three children before they move into the afterlife. They warn her that she must destroy the hand because it wants to steal the key in order to open passage between the two worlds and let the other mother get her. Coraline then sets up plan to lure the hand into the well in order to get rid of it forever. Freedom to Live is the last stage , when Coraline returns home victorious and prepares to go on with her normal ordinary life.

             According to a statement of Joseph Campbell, The Hero’s Journey was developed for men. Its whole purpose was to show cultures how great men distinguish themselves from ordinary men. A book like Coraline, aimed at children, can actually have significant impact on the culture. It normalizes the idea of a girl on a quest by simply showing one without making an issue of her gender, without making her an exception to the rule that girls can’t quest. It is important for the readers to understand the archetypal quest because it helps them to have a better understanding of the various symbols and themes of the work.


Works cited:
Gaiman, N. (2002). Coraline. Electronic edition.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monomyth
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Campbell

Monday, November 22, 2010

Blog Entry 3.4: My Project

        My final project will be a research paper on the cult movie Donnie Darko (2001), written and directed by Richard Kelly. First, I will introduce Richard Kelly and write about his background. I will write a general analysis of the movie, but focus mostly on the hero's quest, and identify the themes and symbols. To sum it up, write about everything we did in class over the semester.
        I will mention the difference between the Director's Cut and Theatrical Version, elaborate on the director's interpretation and about the movie's soundtrack. I also want to write about the writer and director of the movie.
        IF time allows, I will create a short theatrical trailer using the stop motion technique, done with my Digital SLR camera and a lot of editing. If I don't have time to do it myself, I will post a trailer from Youtube.
      

Tuesday, November 9, 2010

Blog Entry 3.3: Final Project Ideas

       My first thought for the final project is a research project about "Fight Club", a novel written by Chuck Palahniuk in 1996.  I am still thinking if I want to use the "Fight Club" movie instead of the book. I liked both of them, but more people are critical of the movie, especially the "nonsense" violence in it.
        I am also thinking if I would do a multimedia project (I am a Photography major student). First thing coming to mind is a timelapse video of a scene from it, but I think my resources would be limited, having to depend on the availability of the models for the project and shooting locations.