Showing posts with label Research project. Show all posts

Saturday, August 25, 2018

I Made my Choices- Where do I go from here?

An Amazing Film!

I've picked my critical approach (shame theory) and my film (Black Panther), but I'm not sure how to get going with this.
From what the Critical Model Packet says about shame theory, it seems that it could work pretty good. In the movie, once T'challa learns what happened to his uncle, he feels shame because of what his father did to him. Also, it looks like Killmonger is totally motivated by shame from many sources (father's death, history of slavery, Wakanda's failure to help end racism), but his anger makes him want to rule the world. I can see already that this is going to take a lot of thought, once I know what to do next.

A few relevant articles:

‘Black Panther’ is on the hunt for a best picture Oscar, no matter what happens with the ‘popular film’ prize

https://www.postbulletin.com/entertainment/black-panther-is-on-the-hunt-for-a-best-picture/article_e607bdfc-543f-5eb7-8348-df1de330877f.html

Black Men: Stigma, Status and Expectations https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2012/03/12/young-black-and-male-in-america/black-men-stigma-status-and-expectations

Slaves of History

https://aeon.co/essays/how-descendants-of-african-slaves-are-stigmatised-for-life

Tuesday, March 7, 2017

People who never grow up should never have lethal weapons

Secrets of the Jedi (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Lotsa new secrets coming soon!

When I first saw Star Wars: The Force Awakens (and from now on, I'm calling it SW:TFA), there was a moment that stayed with me, mostly because I thought it was disgusting. It's the scene where Kylo Ren returns to the interrogation room and finds that Rey is gone. He throws a major-league, no-holds-barred tantrum, even using his lightsaber to bust up the joint. Saturday afternoon, my sister Rebbie came into the room and started watching with me just as the scene where Rey tries out using the Force on her guard. It works, and she escapes. So, when the Kylo Ren scene started, I was watching Rebs and the screen at the same time (well, actually I kept looking at one then the other). Here's the fun thing: when he started to erupt, she winced and made the universal disgust face (which you can see on the Tomkins Institute website). I had to laugh, and she wanted to know what was so funny. "You should have seen your face," I told her. She said, "well, I forgot that was going to happen right then. Just like that brat I babysat that time, except this guy has a deadly weapon when he goes off."

to be continued . . .

Yes, there was a draft in there.

Comic on the quality of different methods of peer review (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

We had our peer review for the draft of the lit review/definitions essay, and I got some good feedback (especially for the introduction: I had forgotten to introduce the overall research project, so the rest of the draft didn't make much sense). I was working on the revision this morning when I suddenly thought of this blog. I was really shocked when I saw how few entries I had.

One thing that I should have blogged about happened last Saturday. I usually have to work on Saturdays, but I put in 38 hours last week, so I couldn't have any more hours (if I hit 40, they'd have to give me benefits, etc.). I worked on school stuff for a few hours, and then I decided to watch Star Wars: The Force Awakens again. I needed to settle on the scenes I'm going to use in the research paper. I'll talk more about this in my next post.

Saturday, February 18, 2017

Looking for articles, I found a gold mine

Got my proposal back yesterday. B+. Since I never wrote a proposal before, I think I did really well. Now I have to get cracking on the research; the definitions essay and the annotated bibliography are coming up fast. I did some searching after class and found a few things that the prof mentioned during the shame theory lecture. I started with Silvan Tomkins (she called him "the father of affect theory"), and it turns out that there is a Tomkins Institute. From the website, it's kind of obvious that he really was a big deal. The entry page has what I guess is a mission statement, and I have to quote it:
"Silvan Tomkins’s theory of innate, biologically-based affects describes the internal reward system that powers human motivation and explains the systematic, incremental development of emotion, learning, personality and ideology. We at the Tomkins Institute are devoted to testing, advancing, and applying this powerful Human Being Theory."

Maybe it's me, but that seems pretty intimidating. I read a few things from the "What Tomkins Said" section of the site; my favorite is "The self lives in the face.” Anyway, this site is a gold mine-- there's lots of people talking about shame in a way that's a bit easier to understand than Tomkins himself.

About the articles below: I gave Zemanta the keyword "embarrassment," and most of the articles they suggested had something to do with Donald Trump. I certainly didn't go looking for stuff about him.

Tuesday, April 12, 2016

Writing about War is Hell

The "Heroic Age" roster of the Avengers. Cover art for Avengers vol. 4, #12.1, by Bryan Hitch. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Can't sleep again. I was just flipping through channels on tv, stopped for a minute on Troy (about the only movie that I thought I could scan), and heard Hector telling his men about his warrior code, which reminded me that I'm still 5 posts behind.

I had a scheduled conference yesterday with the prof to talk about how she wants me to revise my research paper draft. She gave me some ideas about how to fix the wording of my thesis, and told me to quote both my sources and the film a lot more. Luckily, she thought the scenes I chose from AAoU (I'm kind of tired of typing out Avengers: Age of Ultron. Hey, I just did it again) worked, so I don't have to start anything over. It's going to be a lot of work.

Friday, April 8, 2016

A Great Book, Finally

I know I said I'd post this a few hours after my last post, but it turned into almost a month. And, no, I haven't been stalling. I just forgot! With all my coursework and getting my research paper draft going, this was the last thing on my mind.

Today is the second anniversary of my mother's death. I woke up thinking about her, partly because I had a dream about her, in which she told me to "get cracking on that homework." Since I'm just about up to date on everything else, I figured that this was my subconscious telling me I was missing something. That was when I realized that I hadn't been posting. So, here goes.

The book that has helped me the most with my paper is The Code of the Warrior: Exploring Warrior Values Past and Present, by Shannon E. French, who is a philosophy professor at the U.S. Naval Academy. Since she works in a military setting, it was probably only natural that she would want to write about this topic, and she obviously had access to plenty of current and former "warriors" to flesh out the research she did on warriors of the past. One of the things that helped me is that it seems that the people (virtually all men) she consulted or quoted seemed to be able to detail the codes that governed their behaviors as members of the military, which fit what I saw in Avengers: Age of Ultron. I'll talk more about that in my next post.

Anyway, it's a terrific read; I couldn't put it down. Check it out.

Tuesday, March 15, 2016

No More Stalling

English: Basic morphological diferences between bacteria. The most often found forms and their asociations. Français : Formes bactériennes les plus courantes et leurs associations. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Have I been stalling? I don't think so, but I'm 3 posts behind. I turned in my annotated bibliography and the definitions essay last week (I'm on spring break now. Yay!), so I've been pretty busy. And, I'm still trying to recover from the antibiotics I took for the sinus infection-- did you know that it can take up to two years for your "intestinal flora" (read: bacteria) to recover after one course of antibiotics? I didn't, but apparently my intestines are aware of the problem, because I feel icky.
I want to talk about a wonderful, useful, great find of a book for my project, but I'll save that for my next post. Since I'm not stalling, it should be up in a few hours (I'm hoping to get some sleep).

Tuesday, February 16, 2016

Coming up with a research schedule

I'm not really sure how to schedule my research, but right now I plan to spend an hour a day searching until I have enough for the annotated bibliography and the definitions essay. I will probably go to the library tomorrow after class, assuming I get the okay on my proposal. So, that's as much as I can say about that right now.

I'm still thinking pretty hard about my movie (oops- got to get used to using "film" when I'm working on this project). Avengers: Age of Ultron has several scenes I'm thinking of using. I'm definitely going to use the scene near the end with Clint and Wanda, where he lays out what it means to be an Avenger, and I'm looking at Tony and Bruce deciding to use the staff for Ultron, but I also need Cap chewing Tony out for not sharing info. I think. That's as far as I've gotten on my primary research to date.

Monday, February 1, 2016

Men's Studies and Avengers: Age of Ultron

Captain America and The Avengers
(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Today's lecture was on men's studies, and I've decided to use that for my approach to Avengers: Age of Ultron. What interested me most was behavior codes, specifically warrior codes. Watching the film again had me noticing all sorts of things I didn't think about when I first saw it. For example, it's kinda obvious that they've all been working together a lot, since they have developed team moves, like Thor hitting Captain America's shield with his hammer and knocking out a large group of soldiers at one time with the shock wave. What struck me the most, however, was when Captain America talked about losing "together" if it was necessary. The basic cause of the action is Stark wanting to work alone or just with Banner and wanting not to even discuss his plans with the rest of the team. Is this just because he's so used to getting his own way he can't stand to be thwarted? Or is it that he isn't sure that he wants to be part of the team when they're not actually fighting? Either way, the code of the group seems to involve being a group and being open with the group about things involving the group.
I've got a lot of thinking to do, and a proposal draft due on Wednesday, so I'd better get to it.

Wednesday, January 27, 2016

It’s Later, so Here’s the More, as Promised

Ultron takes over Iron Man's armor.
Cover of Iron Man vol. 3, #48.
(Jan. 2002) Art by Udon.
(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Only the second week of classes, and I almost fell behind already. I forgot about this blog. I remembered about 10 minutes ago while I was brushing my teeth. Not sure if there’s any connection there. Anyway, about the lesson I had in not naming names. A person of my acquaintance (is that vague enough?) recently lost his (could be her, but I’m going with him for convenience’s sake) job because of comments he made about the business that employed him. No, he wasn’t complaining about them. He was kind of bragging, and gave away a hint about something new coming from them. They took this as him giving away their “secrets,” and that was that. I don’t think he knew that they were reading his blog. I’m going to be very careful from now on. And yes, this entry counts, because it’s about writing and audience, and I’ll get to my project in the next entry. I’ve pretty much settled on Avengers: Age of Ultron, but I’m not sure about my approach.

Wednesday, January 20, 2016

Starting my research blog

English: A panorama of a research room taken at the New York Public Library with a Canon 5D and 24-105mm f/4L IS. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Welcome to my research blog for my English 102 class. I’m a first-year student at a community college that I’m not going to name because I just had a lesson in why you shouldn’t name names (more about that later). I did okay in 101 (I think the prof liked my grammar more than my writing; he went on and on about how he appreciated not having to mark a lot of mistakes. But he didn’t have much to say about WHAT I wrote. He did ask on one paper that I try not to use so many parentheticals. I guess he had a point.).

Anyway, this term I’m going to be writing a research paper, and the materials I got on Blackboard make it sound as though this is a much bigger deal than I expected. I mean, I’ve done research papers before, and they got good grades.

I’m already over my 100 words, and I still haven’t said much about myself. I’ll save that for my next post.

Monday, October 27, 2014

Fantasy films and Political Thrillers

In my last post, I mentioned "another difference" between films like Divergent and other political thrillers, and I've been trying to come up with a good way of explaining it. Thanks to a classmate who is working on a different film (one of the Harry Potters), I have a good quotation from a source she found, a book called Fellowship in a Ring: A Guide for Science Fiction and Fantasy Book Groups, by librarian Neil Hollands, who says that "Some of the best political fiction written is speculative fiction. By devising political and sociological systems in alternate worlds or by hypothesizing alternative events in our own world, authors can create a fictional laboratory in which to explore any political question" (233). Yeah, what he said.
When I was trying to think of how to put this, I kept coming back to how Divergent and other stories like it work is by setting up a kind of closed system. It almost makes Hollands seem to be referring to Divergent, which is, after all, about a social experiment gone bad.

Sunday, September 21, 2014

How Scary is Scary Enough?

A very scary Angela Lansbury in
The Manchurian Candidate

My entire family has been pushing me to post ever since my last post. The fact is, well, it's been a rough couple of weeks. My uncle is having spine surgery this coming week, and from what his doctors are saying, his whole life is going to change, and not in a good way. At the same time, my oldest aunt got a bad mammogram last week, and she's having surgery on Tuesday to remove a lump and some nodes (I'm not sure what those are, and I'm afraid to ask).

The strange thing is that they all have been asking me about my research project, and not just the usual "hows-school-going" kind of questions everyone asks when they see me. Rebbie says that they're trying to think about something besides what's going on, so if it helps, I'm up for it. Obviously, it's going to help me, anyway, and I can't think of anything else I can do to help them.

My aunt actually led me to a question I should have been asking. She sees Divergent as a horror film, not a political thriller. And her question is: "aren't political thrillers a subgenre of horror?" She made a good case, using The Manchurian Candidate and V for Vendetta for examples. After seeing The Manchurian Candidate, I can see why she said this. It is totally creepy, especially considering it was made right before JFK was assassinated. And the Kate Winslett character is a lot like the one Angela Lansbury played in TMC, so maybe the horror connection is not too farfetched.

I need to think more about this, and I need to use this in my research into genres.

Tuesday, September 2, 2014

What's wrong with long hair?

This is not funny

A couple of nights ago, Rebbie loaned me her DVD of Divergent, which I'm going to use for my research project. I saw it in the theater when it was first released, but I didn't pay much attention to details outside of how it "diverged" from the book. Anyway, I watched it again, and I think I've got an idea to get me going. The first fight Tris has is with another initiate, Molly (I think that's her name), a really tough-looking woman about her age, and she (Tris) gets beaten up. What I noticed this time was their hair. Molly's is about chin length, but Tris's is pretty long, and it's usually in a ponytail just below the crown. It suddenly struck me that this said something strange about her.
A couple of years ago, when Rebbie was starting college, our folks signed us up for a basic self-defense class that was taught by a couple of police officers, one male, the other female. After their lecture about how to avoid trouble in the first place, they did a quick demonstration of an attack with one of the other students. I mention this because it turned out that they picked her for her long hair (in a ponytail). The female officer grabbed her arm and used her other hand to grab the ponytail and pull her head back. They pointed out that not only is having a ponytail giving an advantage to a mugger (or worse), you can be injured, possibly badly, depending on how hard the attacker pulls. She suggested that we might want to think about changing our hairstyles.
I just thought of something else about this. I'll be back in a bit once I've given it some more thought.

Saturday, August 25, 2018

‘Black Panther’ is on the hunt for a best picture Oscar, no matter what happens with the ‘popular film’ prize

Black Men: Stigma, Status and Expectations https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2012/03/12/young-black-and-male-in-america/black-men-stigma-status-and-expectations

Tuesday, March 7, 2017

Related articles

Related articles

Saturday, February 18, 2017

Related articles

Tuesday, April 12, 2016

Related articles

Friday, April 8, 2016

Related articles

Tuesday, March 15, 2016

Related articles

Tuesday, February 16, 2016

Monday, February 1, 2016

Related articles

Wednesday, January 27, 2016

Related articles

Wednesday, January 20, 2016

Related articles

Monday, October 27, 2014

Sunday, September 21, 2014

Tuesday, September 2, 2014