Well, It's Not a Musical . . .But What Is It?

Regarding my last post-- I decided to give up on the hair idea, even though I'm sure that in Tris's position, I would cut my hair immediately.  Not cutting it makes her seem vain, to me at least.  I looked at it again, and that didn't really take me anywhere.

So, I've decided to do my project using genre criticism.  Once I started thinking that way, I realized that Divergent (and a whole bunch of similar films) doesn't quite fit into any of the established genres, except broadly.  You could call it an action film, or a political thriller, I guess, but neither of these is a comfortable fit.  
I'm thinking it's a subgenre of political thrillers at this point; there's not enough action (it's not a "non-stop thrill ride," which seems to be mandatory lately for action films), and it's more about political ideas than anything else.

As I understand genre criticism, I need to identify the characteristics of political thrillers and then figure out how Divergent sets up a set of additional characteristics that amount to a subgenre.  The most obvious other member of this category is The Hunger Games, and I'll be doing some thinking about what other films fit, too.  For now, I have enough to start my research into the overall genre, and I've got a good (I think) draft of a proposal.  

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.   

Rackin' up the Nerd Points! or, How I Spent the Last Week of my Summer Vacation

Paul McGann as the nearly forgotten
 8th Doctor.  Q:  Who played the Master?

This blog is for my English 102 class.  I saw the assignment in the course syllabus on Blackboard, so I thought I'd try to get it set up.  I'm not sure what we will be writing about here, but at the moment I'm still processing the last week.  My older sister, Rebbie (short for Rebecca.  Don't call her Becky!), and I have been spending a lot more time together since our mom died a few months ago, and she has been taking/dragging me to many places I never thought of going before:  a renaissance fair, her cosplay group (I will never tell what they did to me, so don't ask), a comic book swap-meet (MiniMiniConMadness--I bought a couple of old She-Hulks for my dad; he used to be a fan, he says, but he still is), just to name a few that will probably make you think that Reb is a nerd princess (we went other places, too).  She isn't, but even if she were, there's nothing wrong with that!  She has a couple of friends who are heavily into it.  Her main sf/fantasy interest after Dracula is -- wait for it!---Dr. Who.  I confess, I like Dr. Who, too, but I'm pretty much on the fringes of the fan culture. I don't really have a main interest in this area. 

Tonight we're going with her Whovian pals (yes, I speak some Who) to see the season premiere of Dr. Who (which we already watched on tv last night) at a theater in Woodridge.  BBCAmerica was running old episodes non-stop all this last week, and we saw most of them.  Rebbie says she is going to give me a test later.  I'm ready-- the answer to the question under the picture above is Eric Roberts.