Blog Post #23: Week of Feb. 10-14 Reflection

Last week, we swiftly wrapped up our tragic hero unit with our poster presentations. These went very well and they were very interesting and well done. I particularly liked the Alex Supertramp poster from the movie Into the Wild. This group did a great job of decorating their poster and adding symbols and meaningful items. For example, they wrote the hero's name in twigs, and had flowers around this. These items make the audience feel the wildness of the movie and lack of society that is the premise. I liked these presentations and I think they helped me get a very firm grasp of the topic that I would not have gained unless exposed to this many examples.

On Thursday, we shifted gears and focused on another very dark topic: hell. We will be studying Dante in the following weeks and his in depth description of the nine levels of hell. This includes who can be placed there, and what punishments are included in the package. Looking at a map of Dante's Inferno, some of the punishments are very gruesome and terrifying. For example, I would hate to have to live eternally in a pit of boiling tar and pitch, with flying demons hooking me with sharp barbs. This will be an interesting topic and although it is very dark, I hope to gain something out of it, as I'm sure I will.

Blog Post #21: Personal Hell

The first question on the assignment page is: What is hell? Before I can answer this, there are many interpretations I can take. The first is the hypothetical idea of hell that is traditionally thought of in the Christian faith. This direction leads me to think of it as a fire-filled place underneath the Earth where every second is agony and torturous. The devil roams and instills fear and pain in unimaginable magnitudes. My personal hell leads my onto a completely different thought line. While equally as torturous, my hell has no fire or devil. It is bare and enclosed, with no one around and no noise. I am pitifully alone and hate every second of it. Meanwhile, a sideshow in my head instills fear into my mind with memories of all the pain I have gone through, to make me feel it all over again. I become very vain in my hell, and I can't help but think that there are others that think bad things of me, and consequently make me feel terrible. This mental torture seems to have no escape or reprieve.

1. My hell is a punishment, as could be expected. It is a punishment for the bad things I have done or not done. My hell can come at any point, really, and is not restricted to the afterlife or any such thing. Whenever I feel really bad about something I can sink to hell, and it is awful. This is usually a result of self-criticism, and an I-hate-myself felling. These feelings are not merited but yet something in me brings about this personal hell.

2. The punishments of my hell are many different methods of mental torture. In my hell, the mental aspect of life trumps the physical aspect, and so no cuts, bruises, or breaks befall me. I am tortured by my own mind, telling me that I am worthless and pointing out all my flaws. And I believe it for some reason. My mind resembles that of a dreaming mind, where anything that comes along, inextricable as it may be, is not only believable, but completely accepted as fact. All my mistakes are flashed on the walls of the box I am trapped in as some kind of subliminal messaging, and its purpose is to convince me of my infinite inferiority.

3. My hell is white, and lonely. It may be one of those cells used in insane asylums. The ones with padded walls and no windows. This means there is no emotion going out to others, which I believe is the reason for emotions in the first place. It is all coming back to me, and they are negative in nature, wearing my defenses down and making me unstable, and insane. Pictures and scenes are displayed on the walls as in a slideshow presentation, but there is no projector. These scenes tear at me with their sharp claws of self-deprecation, giving me no rest or rescue.

4. There seems to be no end to my hell. There is no escape, at least for me. But that is the point of a personal hell. It is meant to be the worst-case scenario, the most terrible situation imaginable by that specific person. If someone else were placed in my hell, that person might have a chance of escaping, by denying the attempts of the pictures to gnaw at his or her mental stability. I don't think any one's personal hell should be escapable, and if it is, it is not their true hell.

5. A symbol for my hell could be a straightjacket. I am restrained in my hell and have to take whatever it throws at me. I can't get out of it and, although not claustrophobic in the real world, I freak out in my hell trying to get free. But these attempts are futile. Everything is futile in hell. The idea of being restrained or having no options generally scares me, and the straightjacket would be perfect to terrify me in my hell.

6. Absolutely no one is in my hell. That, for me, is worse than having a devil or person I dislike. There may be ghosts or ethereal wisps of people I love, though. This is because they are not really there but they would be noticeable and torturing. I would more than anything want to talk to them, or to hug them, but it would be impossible. Humans were made to group together and form communities, as we have been doing for all of time, so being alone goes against human nature and is complete misery. That is why it is intrinsic to my hell.

Blog Post #20: Reflection on Week of Feb. 3-7

Unfortunately, I was terribly sick four of the five days this past week, and was not able to join my classmates in 7th period LA. I know, though, that we worked on our tragic hero posters most of the time. I was in school on plan day so I am excited about our poster and I think it will turn out quite well. We have incorporated many of the many symbols from the movie into our poster. We have the name of our hero written in electricity, as this is the main attraction of the magician's act that leads him down his terrible path. We also have a ball that bounces down on our pictures that represents his tragic fall. This also signifies his tragic flaw, which is obsession, and jealousy.

The next step in this project is the inevitable presentation. We started this on Friday and will continue this week. I am not all that concerned with this part of the assignment because I enjoy relaying my knowledge and explaining something others may not know. This was a really cool and interesting movie (The Prestige) and I have a want to present so that others may become interested in it as well. I have enjoyed the presentations so far and, like I wish to do, I have become interested in some of the films and will now seek to watch them. All the posters look very well-done an artistic. I think our class worked very hard on these projects and it looks as though our work has paid off.

Reflection Week of Jan. 27-31: Post #19

This passed week we were introduced to the classifications of Aristotelian tragedy, and then moved on to our projects with an example of a tragic hero. The first two days we were tasked to listening and paying attention. We listened to Aristotle's calculated break-down of every part of a tragedy, and then watched gloomily a mash-up of all the terrible parts of the Titanic, bringing the class to an unhealthy state of depression. But nevertheless, this mash-up breezed over all the intrinsic aspects of a tragedy in a condensed amount of time so that they cemented into my mind very effectively. This is important because we were then assigned the project, where we have to mash-up the intrinsic properties of a tragedy of our choice not in a video, but a poster.

The two days we had dedicated for projects were very fruitful. I feel like my group were smart and planned most everything out before we even got the black sheet that would be our final canvas. I am excited to see how it turns out in the end because we have a very good idea and many powerful symbols that relate effectively to our film, The Prestige. This film is definitely a tragedy and throughout the entire two hour 15 minute span, the audience does not know who to root for or who is the "good guy" or the bad guy. It is a very interesting, brilliant movie, and I hope to capture its essence in my final poster.