Director John Hughes

I chose to discuss the work of John Hughes.  I picked the films The Breakfast Club, Ferris Beuller’s Day Off, and Home Alone.  Hughes career is typically categorized under teenage rebellion/coming of age comedies.  He is clearly interested in this moment in his own life as well as the particular set of years between high school and college that teenagers go through.  He draws upon subject matter that we have all experienced and immediately can pull some type of connection or memory from.  If you haven’t made it to high school it might be an environment in which you base your perception off of.   When thinking about his own authorship it is difficult to pinpoint specifically a character in his films directly seeming more as a relatable blend of each person he has come across.  There are archetypes of rebels, slackers, bullies, prom queens, nerds, and jocks, roles not missing from any high school film ever made.  A difference you with Hughes’ films though as you continue watching though is that you began to empathize with each and every character.  There backgrounds and believability feel real and there is no reason to deny they aren’t that way for a reason.  It is clear that Hughes was just sitting back and observing everything for all his formative years, witnessing these clicks first in his own life. 

The main character, although not as easily identified in The Breakfast Club, seems typically adventurous with a little bit of a devious side.  They are out to stir something up.  There are characters in states of suicidal breakdowns and the parents hardly seem to exist if at all.  I think John Hughes has got to be a fan of Charles Schultz.  Even further the kids are nearly abandoned from parental figures.  The idea plot of Home Alone revolves around the parents leaving their child behind so he can essentially prove he doesn’t need them.   A certain importance that makes John Hughes films works of art has to do with the availability of each role he leaves for the viewer to fit into.   He is able to construct an environment of nostalgia and general respect for those coming of age years we’ve all had growing up.  As Cameron’s father’s priceless car roles backwards off the cliff we remember that time we broke an expensive vase at a friends house or popped our mothers exercise ball.  As Kevin is swinging from a window to his tree house or driving his video camera remote control car around we are reminded of building forts and playing spy.  He creates relationships and dynamics that bounce of each other, characters that need each other in order to keep themselves balanced.  Hughes seems optimistic about youth, he seems to believe in young people and ultimately is young at heart.   In Death of the Author, Barths said that the essential meaning of a work depends on the impressions of the reader, rather than the "passions" or "tastes" of the writer; "a text's unity lies not in its origins," or its creator, but in its destination.”  John Hughes takes inspiration from everything he has witnessed.  Hughes may want the film to be received a certain way or mean a certain thing but it is in fact what the viewer can take away and how they are affected.  The role of an author and his role as a director is to create the template for the audience to mold.

Lolita (PT 2)

“I would be a knave to say, and the reader a fool to believe, that the shock of losing Lolita cured me of pederosis. My accursed nature could not change, no matter how my love for her did. On playgrounds and beaches, my sullen and stealthy eye, against my will, still sought out the flash of a nymphet's limbs, the sly tokens of Lolita's handmaids and rosegirls. But one essential vision in me had withered: never did I dwell now on possibilities of bliss with a little maiden, specific or synthetic, in some out-of-the-way place; never did my fancy sink its fangs into Lolita's sisters, far far away, in the coves of evoked islands.”

No one can directly know for sure whether or not Humbert loved Lolita.  In class we of course discussed the morality in the work.  That is undoubtedly the ultimate question and the one that will be argued again and again.  Its doubtful anyone would firmly say that this novel is morally decent most completely write off Humbert as a monster.  He even says so himself.  Lolita is not even near an appropriate age to be in any kind of romantic relationship

Lolita cannot simply be written off as a novel about a twisted pedophile in pursuit of a child.  There is much more going on here.  My roommate and I had an interesting discussion attempting to decide whether or not Humbert was a victim himself.  The backstory is presented when we discover the childhood affair between him a girl, both 14.  They immediately fall in love and spend their days wrapped in each other’s arms, exploring the bases of young romance.  Humbert’s happiness is cut off as his first love tragically and suddenly dies of typhus.  They had apparently fooled around, but never slept together.  He never had closure, this of course does not validate his actions, in no circumstance is a grown man ever allowed to have intercourse with a twelve year old; but we become aware why he is so stuck on innocent young girls.  The argument that he is in fact a victim, didn’t refer to his illness, it refers to the way Lolita treated him from the very start.  She teases him, flirts with him, touches him and acts in a maturity level unfathomable of a child.   She is extremely inappropriate for a girl her age and it could not work any better for Humbert.   He is in fact helpless.  Just in the way that is unorthodox for a man to be attracted to pre pubescent girls it is unordinary for a girl to flirt with a 30 something man.  I not sure the argument is stable though.  Not even a man with morals, a man chemically should not have any desire to be with a twelve-year-old girl.  Regardless of the fact that she flirts and plays with his heart, no matter the ability Lolita had to affect his emotions, Humbert should refuse them.  It comes back to his past and inability to let his first love go.  He has been trying to find this experience ever since and Lolita is exactly what he was looking for.  Regardless of her actions, Humbert is truly just a victim of his condition and the tragic loss of his first love, a victim of himself.

The question must then be asked can love based out of a sickness, can a complete destruction of all morality in a man still be something real? I really don’t know the answer.  I think that is a question Nabokov is aware of a puts it out there for our own discussion.  The reason this book is important is because it pushes these boundaries and challenges what love can actual between two people, written in the 1950’s there is still nothing quite like it today.

Interactive Gaming

I don’t have a major relationship with video games.  I’ve had my share of time with friends huddled around some game console but I’ll always be the first one to get bored.  I never cared to actually buy a game and finish the journey and win all of the gold tokens.  I have spent many hours with one of my good friends though discussing video games and their importance beyond a way to rot your brain or procrastinate writing a paper.  His name is Fred.  Fred is less concerned with the graphics, character design and environment in gaming, and more interested in an actual connection with the viewer beyond aesthetics.  This seems to be very relevant when playing some of the games linked on the lit and media BlogSpot.  The creators want the viewers to experience something while playing, they seem interested in connecting some sort of memory the player has back with the game.  If you notice, the games are pixel games or flash games.  They are not rendered meticulously for four years while rigged up to monster servers with 2500 employees doing lighting effects.  In fact, plenty of the games on the blog were created by just one person.  There is obviously no right or wrong, a game with near photorealist humans can still have a story line and it still even shoot for something more than expected. 

There will still always be the demographic who continue to spend sixty dollars each year on the new call of duty or Madden 2013 on release night to witness the new graphics, the new guns, the new levels and the new draft picks, never wanting to admit they’re playing the same game from last season for sixty more dollars.

In class it was mentioned that certain video games, probably some of the ones I mentioned, are now getting the budgets of Hollywood movies to make a minute in a half trailers to hype up all the gamers. 

Then there are dinky little flash and pixel indie games, created by gamers at home.  The creators seem most invested in evoking some type of reaction with the viewer or making them reconsider certain things that maybe the creator has experienced.   They don’t look perfect, often times terrible but in a sense aren’t they trying for so much more? 

RomneyObama

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWiSFwZJXwE

Perhaps this videos strongest point comes at the very end when the man that began the commercial now nearly in tears brings up Romney’s most notorious flub of all, after describing the destruction of his career.  “He’s so out of touch with the average person in this country, “How could you care? How could you care about the average working person?’  Since those private tapes of Mitt Romney have been released the Obama campaign has jumped on the ideas of Mitt Romney’s total lack of interest in half the country therefore being “out of touch”.   The Obama campaign very effectively in this ad with the use of interviews and a dramatic musical score portrays an evil man only focused on money and power.  I’m having difficulty finding the opposing side in this video.  There are always some fabrications though:  Romney was not managing the plant he just made the initial investment.  He was still working with Bain though not quite in Salt Lake City.   It was also said that without the initial Bain investment the plant might not have been able to stay open as long as it did. 

Wizard of Oz

L. Frank Baum, had said that The Wonderful Wizard of Oz was written "solely to pleasure the children”.  If he in fact said this, we must believe him.  There is no question though that everything he had experienced and read prior to writing Oz seeped out through his consciousness and into the literature, providing adult readers with much more than an average children’s book’s text.  The fact that Baum chose to cast Dorothy, as a strong, young, female, lead character is probably the most important entity in this work.  Dorothy a little girl helped to free the Lion, Tin Man, and Scarecrow of their own self-consciousness and pity, growing herself as a young female.  The male characters in Oz are notably sillier and smaller minded then Dorothy herself.  This is now seen in almost every sitcom on television today, from Homer Simpson to Ray Romano, to Joey from Friends. 

From the beginning Dorothy possesses this kind of power and invincibility.  The men need help, the men are dim witted and helpless, even doomed without her.  This is still interesting today but especially the time period of the 1900’s when L. Frank Baum wrote The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.  The great Oz himself turns out to be a pathetic man hiding behind a curtain.  His does prove his magic, but only with the help of their believes.  Baum was clearly using his power as the author to mold the reader’s minds maybe without them even knowing it.  Baum used the classic children’s book setup of pushing morals onto the kids but brings it into a more important dynamic of role reversal and identity, all done while still playing off a common adventure story archetype. 

Eyes Wide Shut Directors Review

After reading Stanley Kubriks screenplay for Eyes Wide Shut the theme seems to be the powers of sex.   In more detail, the narrative deals with right and wrong or wrong and wronger, the truth and its consequences, and most importantly, escape into alternate lifestyles and worlds.  I think this movie examines a contemporary marriage and the boredoms and impulses that arise between the couple.  An interesting element in this film is tension in the characters marriage beginning immediately with the film, opposed to slowly rising and then erupting near the end.  There is a climax to come but Bill also begins flirting with models as Alice flirts with an older man minutes after arriving at the party.  It is clear right away that they are both unable to stay entirely faithful and sets up a tone for whats to come.  A very interesting aspect of this movie is when Alice continues to admit to always thinking of Bill each time she daydreamed and fantasized about another lover.  Alice once explains feelings of sadness and tenderness towards Bill as she views the Naval Officer from the balcony.  Even saying she loved him most that very moment.  Another is that until almost the very end while they neither one of them actually did anything physical with someone else throughout the film the idea that they would have acted upon it given different circumstances and timing is the issue. The characters certainly wanted too.  At the very end Bill caves in at the and tells Alice he will confess everything he's done.  The next morning comes and Alice addresses the night before.  Initially I thought they somehow tried to give the reader a happy ending and act as if they had resolved their marriage even after all Bill had done.  In fact though the script ends with you realizing Bill never told Alice about his love affair at all.

Lolita

Lolita is a true romantic novel.  The obvious questions arise about age of consent and of course morality versus immorality but the most interesting and important question to be asked of Nobakovs work is if this is in fact love.  Humbert’s displays of affection and lyrical description could be read as lust and it is often times still confusing to pinpoint whether or not this is in fact just lust.  This lust displayed is a product of Humbert’s fetish.  Young prepubescent girls specifically enchant him, and nothing more.  He tries marrying off with woman nearer his age but the marriages undoubtedly fall apart.  I recently read an article about a now infamous ex Penn State football coach named Jerry Sandusky now charged in prison for molesting numerous numbers of boys.  The doctor being interviewed makes the point that he believes after studying pedophiles, that pedophilia it self is a sexual orientation and is not decided upon at some point in life.  Lolita is certainly to young for Humbert, no matter how smart, perceptive or seemingly willing she could ever be towards him, Humbert’s love is tragically wrong.  Morally wrong.  The impressive thing is that Nobakov took something so disgusting and off putting and created a love story. 

“I would be a knave to say, and the reader a fool to believe, that the shock of losing Lolita cured me of pederosis. My accursed nature could not change, no matter how my love for her did. On playgrounds and beaches, my sullen and stealthy eye, against my will, still sought out the flash of a nymphet's limbs, the sly tokens of Lolita's handmaids and rosegirls. But one essential vision in me had withered: never did I dwell now on possibilities of bliss with a little maiden, specific or synthetic, in some out-of-the-way place; never did my fancy sink its fangs into Lolita's sisters, far far away, in the coves of evoked islands.”

In this passage Humbert very interestingly outright addresses his pedophilia, and inability to change.  This passage in particular makes me sympathize with the narrator who is just simply unable to deal with his circumstances.  With Lolita gone he still finds like he has his entire life himself completely consumed with lust over young girls.  This is not far off the way most males minds behave regularly the sole problem of course is the target age of the girls he happens to be attracted too.  It is simply just not right.  I think Humbert knows this.  The viewer in this passage can understand the sickness that Humbert possesses and hopefully his helplessness.  Humbert’s love can never be accepted, appreciated, moral and so it seems reciprocated.  In reference to the article I read and sexual orientations of heterosexuality, homosexuality, and bi-sexuality, Humbert’s orientation seems to fall under pedophia-lity and he is forever trapped in his position.