Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness

Set in the 1900s, Heart of Darkness introduces a topic that would probably be hard to swallow today: the Caucasian male and the native savage. Knowing that this classic book was on our reading list, I was a bit underwhelmed by the book's topic considering all the acclaim for it. Perhaps I was not in the right mind set to read this piece of literature or perhaps Heart of Darkness has lost the language to communicate with the average reader. However, it is worth noting that Heart of Darkness has inspired many great works in all media (i.e. Apocalypse Now) so maybe the fault is not in the story but in the media it was told.

Let's begin with the narrative. Immediately, the reader are distanced from the setting by the language; words like "a cruising yawl" for exploration boat among others. We are then slowly introduce to the crew: the Captain, the Lawyer, the Accountant, Marlow, and our Protagonist. The pacing of the story continues in this manner: a slow reveal and little action.

   

A Journey to Remember

"Once in a while, a game comes along that blows your f*cking mind away"

                                                                                                                   - Anonymous

Journey is director Jenova Chen's latest work that let players immerse themselves in a story through gameplay. Chen is the designer of the award-winning games: Cloud, Flow, and Flower, and is co-founder of Thatgamecompany. Chen's work uses the wide, open space to convenient the vastness of his world. The beautiful setting compliments his method of storytelling thereby giving players the full spectacular of the immersive world. 

Players are welcomed into Journey by the silent protagonist, a red-cloaked character with a long scarf, who must travel to the distant mountain. Immediately, the setting welcomes the player to explore without much communication or directions because the pantomime and environment informs the player where they go and what they should do. Each stage of the game is stylistically different with a small cut-scene dividing the maps so players will never have to worry about getting lost or if they met the objective. 

Along the way, players are introduced obstacles and subtle story elements of the world. However, they are never alone when facing these challenges for the game has a multi-player element to each stage where experienced players may help new players. However, both players cannot communicate with each other through words but pantomimes and body language to keep true to Journey’s universe.    

When players enter the final stage, the whole story is revealed to them via extended cut-scene and an invitation to play the game again for extra treasures are displayed. 

At its core, Journey is an experience; it is a flight of exploration as well as an appreciation of beauty. To the Millennial Generation, Journey could possibly be the next chapter to global communication. It is universal, for players do not need to understand another language or culture to appreciate Journey’s story. 

So, whether you are curious because of this review or have a few hours to spare, Journey is an adventure not to be forgotten soon.

Waiting Forever Godot

 Waiting for Godot was truly a blast from the past. Years ago, I watched this film for History of Film and the first shot of the film instantly grabbed my attention and held on tight. So, it pains me to say that watching this again was a little underwhelming in that I did not recall it being this long and redundant in some parts. However, the overall quality more than makes up for a few flaws.   

There is only one setting for Waiting for Godot but this simple set had several tones ranging from haunting to comical depending on the way actors used the stage. The notion of the dead tree, a seemingly endless, pebble road, a cold winter morning and two figure waiting for someone who they do not know. If there is something that could leave an impression on the viewers it, it would definitely be the vivid imagery.

Whether you are seeing Waiting for Godot live or on film, another impressive element of this drama are the actors. The two protagonist converse in ordinary topics while waiting for the mysterious Godot and often times these conversations would go on for 20 minutes. That's got be hard to memorize. And yet, the actors don't make the conversation feel force, after a while you really believe that these men are just having a normal exchange about their day. That is, of course, until the conversations start to become boring to the viewers.

One question that is often asked of Waiting for Godot is: Is there a meaning? In the end, our two main protagonist does not meet Godot and thus nothing happened making all the waiting meaningless. The debate of whether or not everything should have meaning is rather complicated, and can last for an eternity. (Fortune for me, I only have a few sentences to explain.) To me, Waiting for Godot is like life it contains small moments of meaning that paints a bigger picture. Our two protagonist might meet Godot the next day and we'll never know for sure because that is the next moment, which the original screenwriters did not want to share with us.   

An Overview of Wes Anderson Films

This is really a quick post to remember the films. (Not a full essay yet)

Wes Anderson's Film:

• Rushmore (1998) 
• The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004)
• Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009)

Picked Rushmore because it is one of his earlier films and it shows Anderson's developing cinematographic styles. 

Picked The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou because it was his lowest rated film and an artist is only as good as their weakest piece.

Picked Fantastic Mr. Fox because it was his highest rated film.

Anderson tends to center his films around highly ambitious characters. In these three films, this character lives in an orderly society but they find themselves in a situation where they want more out of life or they believe that they're are destined for greater things. This leads them to do outrageous things to prove themselves worthy. However, their end goal is something entirely different that neither the character nor audience could have predicted.

Setting wise, Anderson does not like the fourth wall in sets and often time film his movies without them. In each of the three movies, there is at least one scene where the set looks like someone sliced it with a giant knife leaving the room dividers open for filming. This technique shows the grand scale and openness that Anderson often conveys in his movies.

Speaking of openness, there is a lot of atmosphere building in his films. This is very effective because the slow pacing and quietness gets you invested in the story and its characters. Anderson knows how to use imagery to tell a bigger story and the proof of that comes from the fact that these movies caught my attention from beginning to end.   

They Became What They Beheld

The young package their message in media that fit their messages, that is, they create new media to fit their message.

- Edmund Snow Carpenter

A Prose by Any Other Name

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“You may notice that a book’s first sentence can often tell 

you what sort of story your book contains” 

– Lemony Snicket

Indeed, the first sentence of a book can tell a lot about its content, which is why the first sentence of Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita can be quite overwhelming for some readers. It’s not often that a book welcomes you with an extended foreword, which is clearly there to showcase the writer’s literary achievements:

"Lolita, or the Confession of a White Widowed Male," such were the two titles under which the writer of the present note received the strange pages it preambulates.”

Alas, poor Readers! The worst has yet to come. For you see, not only is the title of this article shamelessly ripping off poor William Shakespeare, but it is also the style of writing that Nabokov has chosen to tell the story. Knowing this, you ask yourself: Do I want to continue reading this book? If you managed to survive the Foreword without using the book as firewood, then there is still hope. The story starts in a similar pacing found in the Foreword, with Humbert Humbert, our unreliable narrator, expressing his affection to a woman named “Lolita”. After a while, the reader starts to realize that dialogue does not exist in this universe and all the events that happened is told from Humbert’s erratic perspective.

In fact, you can say that this entire book is unreliable. The long, over-exaggerated and extravagant prose gives the setting of a Dickensian England, but in reality this was set much closer to 1950s America. It is hinted throughout that Humbert is addressing a court; he used words like “Ladies and gentlemen” and “Your Honor” but actually, it’s a memoir; a long confession letter written when he is in his dying hours. Readers must keep in mind that reading “Lolita” is similar to reading a personal diary in that memory a flimsy concept. Events jump around, so nothing is in a linear timeline.

The characters would often misread each other’s actions and intentions, for instance: Charlotte assumed that Humbert married her for love, when really he did it to be closer to Charlotte’s daughter “Lolita” (or Dolores), and eventually had a sexual relationship with her. Action and pornographic images in this book are very tamed because they are either mentioned in a quick verse or fragmented throughout the paragraphs. Humbert’s recalled events are not boring per se; rather the amount of description is sometimes unnecessarily poetic. For example, Humbert’s thought on drowning Charlotte in the lake are highly romanticize but in the end it amounted to nothing because he dismissed the thought after forming it due to conviction. Readers can interpret this as sets an ironic mood or pointless.

Overall, “Lolita” is a love story gone wrong. Readers with great interest in poetic writing will highly enjoy this story. But to those who cannot even read past the first sentence: Expectation is the root of all heartache. I hope that fireplace keeps you warm.  

Where the f*ck was Amy?

Greetings, fellow Lit and Media scholars! This week I played a producer, took a look at Chasing Amy's screenplay, and ripped it to shreds. How exciting! I tried to give as much direction to the tone and build up as possible but I did go off to some rants here and there (mostly at the end). Nevertheless, please enjoy another opinionated literature:   

This story’s theme is either surprises or deceiving the audience. At first, I saw this as a story about two artists, Holden and Banky, and their struggling lives with Holden as the major focus of the two. However, it became a love story when he eventually meets and falls in love with a woman (Alyssa) who turns out to be a lesbian (or bisexual?). After the reveal of Alyssa, the film quickly jumps into serious LGBT discussions between these three characters with Alyssa as the median to explain to Holden and Banky that “gender standards” is not necessarily a solid way of living. In a way, this is very consistent as a whole because the twists and turns are the fun parts of a chase (Chasing Amy—get it?).   

Set in New Jersey (or at least the Tri-state areas), the atmosphere of the film feels like a slice of life movie. Settings from this script range from a typical bar scene to swing sets in a park to generate a “small town feel”—highly recommend Middle to South New Jersey. Music accompaniment to their scenes could be something complementing but not too overbearing on the characters—heavy metal for Alyssa and jazz for Holden, maybe? 

There are hardly any action but the dialogues are heavy in each scene. Perhaps a shot-reverse-shot is not recommended when filming because repetitive composition could destroy the mood and the character development of the scene. There are a lot of sexual scenes in in this film, some of which are flashbacks; highly recommend using very unique compositions to frame the character’s dialogue or act out the scenes that the characters recall.

Rain is the ultimate deux ex machine for drama; if you need an audience to cry buckets make the skies cry too. However, I failed to cry of sadness (or happiness) at this scene, rather I’m angry and frustrated. I had thought the script would begin it’s descending climax here, with Alyssa rejecting Holden’s confession and stick to her morals that she preached throughout the film. But no, she gave him a chance of a relationship thereby tossing everything she stood for in the first and second act out of the window

In retrospect, this probably would have gone with the motif of the film: surprises and deception but to me it was a road to predictable failure. And I was right!  From the moment Alyssa and Holden met each other it was obvious that their relationship (platonic or otherwise) was doomed to fail: he is insecure and wants everything to have a concrete affirmation while she is confident and would like an undefined view of the world. The two cannot be more polar opposites—and no, opposites rarely attracts, especially with this big of a gap.

If I were watching this film, I would have left at the confession scene, which is ashamed because the movie’s title is explained several scenes later. The “Chasing Amy” explanation has a lot of dialogue too; perhaps some visuals here? Or at least have clever framing if the budget is low.

The ending is bittersweet but well deserved. Still questioning why Alyssa gave up her values in the first place but at least she snapped out of it and returned to being Alyssa in the end.