Newsworld

In class we had a guest Todd James Price the author of New World. In the reading done in class, Todd managed to tie together two really different but really American happenings, the terrorist attack of 9/11 and the theme parks.

In class we all shared our reactions as 13 year olds children finding out about the terrorist attack and not really understanding much about it. As an international student I believe I can’t relate as much to the impact of the attack but it defiantly also influenced my life, having my mother living in the United States at the time it also became a big event for me. It was interesting to hear about all the experiences from people that were actually near by it. One thing that we had in common it was the young curiosity of how it happened how it feels and what would happen now question, which is also what the characters in Price’s piece were feeling.

Theme parks have also interested me in a not so positive way I have also really despite the idea of theme parks the fake recreation of something else, and four years ago I founded myself deciding that I was going to go live in Florida, the land of the biggest theme parks. Having gone to a few theme parks by now, I still find something really terrifying about them, it’s like an attempt to live a reality that never happened or that it is far-gone. In class I got to found out even more things about theme parks, people that actually live in theme parks. In the story there is a theme park of a destroyed land, which I found an incredible idea creating more the terrifying aspects of theme parks.

When I red the story for the first time I found the kids desire to feel 9/11 in the theme park a little bit creepy, and to an extend disrespectful and even disturbing, to look at this really important event when many people lost their life in a “theme park matter”. But after reading the story again and talking with the author and the rest of the students, I see that this is a way of representing and getting to the American audience in which theme parks plays a huge role on childhood. It represents really well this curiosity that we all had in an everyday place, a theme park.

You: The Novel

You the novel by Austin Grossman is about a video game designer, the dangers that he faces to look for truth and personal challenges in the competitive world of game design involving dormer friends.

Personally I had never been exposed to computer games and much of the vocabulary was completely unknown to me, unlike many in our school I am game illiterate and so I got really lost in the reading of this book. Because of my lack of knowledge in the field I also didn’t get too enthusiastic or hooked about the book, especially in certain parts. This book talks about a reality which is relatable for many people but not to me.

Moreover the book is narrated in first person and lets the reader be inside of the character and in this way really involved.

Another aspect that I find interesting about this book is the exposure of the negative side of his former friends and the giddiness involved, it shows the competitiveness of the field and the unexpected roughness the design of a game, a new technology and entertainment.

There is also a personal journey in the main character mind, Russell’s encounters changes personality and how he fits in the world; it seems like Russell never fitted unlike his former friends that created the successful game until now. Suddenly, after his friends dies and Darren leaves the company, Russell comes in this really prestigious gaming company, and he finally found his balance in personality; unlike all what he had tried before, here he felt comfortable. But as he becomes really committed and he feels better about himself, he starts the search for the reason of the death of his friend, which leads him to see another side of the gaming industry, and puts his job in risk. This duality of his positive self-realization with the danger of the field and the dark side of it creates an interesting tension that kept me reading the book.

Long form TV

Since young I didn’t have a television in my house, my parents thought it was better to for me and my brother to play with each other and to read than to watch TV. I have never own a TV and from my childhood I had the idea that TV was mainly a commercial devise that didn’t let children or adults develop intellectually or creatively; my parents and my older sister used to refer to the TV as “the stupid box”. TV was for me for stupid viewers who are being fooled and convinced easily, and that ate people’s life away, TV was an addictive bad thing, almost like cigarettes. Cartoons were OK, sometimes, but besides that nothing was acceptable under my parents eyes or even mine at a time.

As expected, in the US the TV culture was even bigger than at home which made me even weirder in comparison with everyone else. I had never seen really seen a long form TV before 2 years ago, it never felt worth it and it was eating my friends time and life, so why would I want to watch it? Almost like an accident I started watching Grey’s Anatomy from my roommates laptop. Grey’s Anatomy is a series about medicine residents in The Seattle Hospital, watching it over a period of time made me believe that I knew the characters, and that I was learning from medicine. From watching that show I got introduced to the TV culture, many of my friends argued that it represented much of today culture and that I could learn a lot from it, it was still a foreign concept to me by then. Since then, two years ago, I have been “hooked” into a couple of different TV shows, each of them really different from each other. Unlike what I had learnt, this shows related the audience in a challenging way, making me feel for the characters but also think about it, watching it only once a week gave me a lot of time to think about them and make my mind about my position towards their acts.

Since many of my friends were watching it and we talked about it in class, I decided to watch Orange is the New Black, the Netflix TV series. This more independent driven show has been a clear sign to myself of the power of long form TV and an elevation to a form of art, like I had seen in movies before. I believe this show is a great new idea, to show prison in the female side, unlike what is has been shown of jail in the past in TV, cinema and literature, creating an intriguing side of incarceration, the duality between the expected softness of women and the roughness of this women and the fact that they are in jail.  I also see in this show a clear representation of today’s society in many ways, the show is multi racial, but approached from a really realistic way, respectfully showing the difference of each group it really represents the Unites States we live on, with White, Black, Latinos, Asians and others. Furthermore I really admire the director’s choice of showing homosexuality and transgender that is also defiantly part of our society.

Besides the great representation of today’s society in a usually unseen location, I believe the way it is told is also revolutionary. Every episode introduces a different character or a different aspect of their life, told in different ways, even though the main character Piper is usually narrating, this gives importance to every character present in the show and it hooks the viewer to keep watching and find out the story of each character. This individualized module lets every episode be independent from each other and different enough so that they can become a little film by itself.

Even thought I still believe that our society is too exposed to TV and entertaining media which is not necessary and many times it has a negative impact on the viewer, now I see that they are certain things on TV that deserve to be watch and that tell a lot about our generation and our time, now I see the movement to long form TV as something overall positive and creative.

Remix

Remix culture
our culture

Remix by Nicolas Jaar Heaven http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tId5I7WYZpQ song by Kasper Bjorke

This is a video of him performing in NYC http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IUjWumGIqe8

Nicolas Jaar is a well known recognized musician and he is also part of a band Darkside
This is another of his remix https://soundcloud.com/otherpeoplerecords/csp06-nicolas-jaar-essential

Mira Nair

Mira Nair

I decided to watch three movies by the Indian filmmaker Mira Nair: New York, I love You ( 2009) in which Mira Nair directed the second segment of the movies “ Kosher Vegetarian” about a jewish lady and hindu gentleman; Mississippi Masala(1991), based on a screen play by Soni Tarapomevala was one of her first directed movies and it is a romantic drama about racial relationships and conflicts through a romance between an African American and an Indian American born in Africa; and Monsoon Wedding(2001) written by Sabrina Dhawan that tells a number of romantic stories in a traditional Punjab Hindu wedding.

From the storyline there is a basic link between all of this movies and the filmmaker, the cultural background, she is an Indian filmmakers and all this movies are greatly influenced by indian culture. Mira Nair comes from a conservative Indian family but has been exposed to international exchanges and has lived abroad. Her movies do not only include the Indian cultural element; but also the intercultural mix, the understanding, the cultural shock, and the complications behind the integration, she addresses the issues of the global village, globalization and clashes of cultures, in a personal level, which are all more and more relatable to a greatest part of the population in this hyper connected World. On Mississippi Masala the female main character Mina has to struggle between her own cultural identity and her parents traditions as well as her boyfriends racial fights as a black young boy in the Mississippi. Both of this characters struggle with a racists society and conflicting family interests. This movie can be really related to Mira Nair herself who is married to a Ugandan professor but both live in New York. In Monsoon Wedding, even though is set in Indian and it’s an indian family, many members of the family live abroad and have international background, creating this “multicultural setting” in a traditional indian wedding. 

In New York I love you, it’s clearly even more international since the two characters are in one of the most international cities, but that also they keep the strong and orthodox and traditional lifestyle. 

Beyond the story itself, I think Mira Nair depicts her own personal experiences to a great extend in these movies to the everyday aspect, not only in the plot of the story but also on the development of the relationships and all the details of the family life. One aspect for example is the bilingual or trilingual conversations, the natural change of language and the comfort of an understood cultural mix. In New York I Love You for example, they are speaking in English but also secretly speaking in Yiddish and Hindi both knowing that they understand each. And in the other two movies, inside the family they speak Hindi and English to different extends in different situations. Another aspect which I can also relate to her life and myself, is the understanding of the minorities and strong cultures between themselves; once abroad even if the cultures are completely different there is an understanding of being the minority or discriminated in a new place which Mira Nair captures really well; in Mississippi Masala the African Americans that had been discriminated for years and the recently migrated Indian Americans that are also being discriminated to an extend; and in New York, I Love You the hasidic Jewish and the Hindus, even though there is no cultural similarities, there is a bonding and understanding of strong cultures and traditions and the minorities that goes beyond the culture itself.

The last aspect which I want to comment on about this three movies and the author is the multilayered aspects of them all; to an extend there are always more than one story happening at the same time, all related in a way or another; In New York, I love You, the two stories run parallel to each other, the wedding of the hasidic woman and the memories of the Hindu; and in Mississippi Masala the stories of the two families also run almost independently of each other. And in Monsoon Wedding, there are many stories happening at the same time, the servants, the uncle, the broom and the bride and others. I am not sure if it can be directly related to the director’s life, but I do believe that by living in many places and many situations she might have started to realize the many aspects of one story. By growing up in Orissa with a civil servant family to later study in a prestigious university in New Delhi, to then transfer to Harvard to then live in New York and travel a lot has given her the opportunity to not only see many cultures but also see and pay attentions to the many layers of society in one culture. 

Re Interpretation Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vo1wxCXMk4s&feature=youtu.be

Generation Y

Generation Y

Defining our generation, I think one of the keys is the meaning of sharing the necessity to always let other know. There are many consequences of this constant sharing, a self-promotion; the use of thousand tools to share what we want other people to see. Past societies had always want to show themselves in a way, dressing in a certain way, behaving with certain manners, but at the end there were many things that could not be hidden. With our generation today, we get to “know” a lot of people and facts through technology, the malleability of this medium, being able to decide fully how we are being seen take the self-presentation to another level, a complete control of how people look at us.

I believe this aspect of sharing has only been so extreme in the last 5 or 10 years, and therefore I haven’t encounter any literary work that explores this topic of technological self-presentation and it’s role on our personality and society in general. I actually believe that some twitter pages might be even a “literary work” that defines the Y generation. Twitter has a larger out rich that many of the great books done today. There are also many collaborative writing sites and even writing apps that I believe creates literature today.

https://twitter.com/humblethepoet or even my friend https://twitter.com/billellispoems are strange signs of literature in today’s generation.

Moreover when I get down to what literary work defines and tides my generation, I cannot relate that deeply to any of the above and it might be because they are so new, and I might relate to then in a neat future. But now when I look back the only literature work that I think tides all of our generation is Harry Potter, the main character is our age, he is an unfortunate kid that lost his parents, but yet he has this magic world behind him. Having red the books for the first time in Uruguay, and going to Singapore to find out that there it was also something that everyone red really gave me the feeling of a global village tied together with literature, no matter what language we spoke how we red it but we all could relate to it.

Even more surprising coming to the US showed me this fact even more, playing Quidich, going to Harry Potter land and drinking butter beer; Harry Potter is defiantly a literary work that is borderless and belongs to our generation.