I am a huge horror movie buff, yet I had never seen George Romero's "Night of the Living Dead". I feel like that can be seen as blasphemous by others who also love horror movies, but I really just don't care for zombie movies, so it never really interested me. I'm glad though that this class has given me an excuse to finally watch the film. It pretty much re-affirmed the fact that I am not interested in zombie narratives, but I feel a little better about my stance as a horror buff now having seen it.
When thinking about this film in relation to Hall's essay on representation, two points stand out to me most. The first is one that I touched on in my review of "Scream" last week - the idea that no one in horror movies reacts normally to the events happening around them. Obviously, the events are absurd and people can't take the time in the film to grieve and mope around, but I note this for a different reason than I did in "Scream". In "Scream", no one but the heroine cared about the murders happening around her. In "Night of the Living Dead", the characters actually did react in a more realistic way. Barbara is completely haunted and horrified by the death of her brother and appearance of zombies around her. She can't function properly anymore after going through her ordeal. Ben, while less emotional, takes on another realistic character, that of someone attempting to do all they could to survive. While that character is more common in horror films, I'm actually shocked that Barbara was as emotional and affected as she was. It is just so rare to see that in films. This reminds me of Hall's essay because it is an actual representation of real life, far more realistic than the partying teenagers in "Scream", despite the completely unrealistic events happening around her. I actually really appreciated Barbara's character because I know that if I were to ever be in the situation she was in, I would react in the same way as her, and not like the typical characters you find in horror movies.
The other notable point I'd like to bring up is the idea that the lead character was played by a black man. Obviously, that's completely common now, seeing a person of color as a hero wouldn't cause someone to have a second thought. But, back in 1968 when the film was made, that would be far more unheard of. I feel like at the time, this would have completely shaken the audience's views on representation. It made the colored community more visible, and once again, more realistically represented society, as being a hero is not just left up to the white man. Romero claimed that the actor who portrayed Ben got the job because he was the best for the part, but intentions aside, it definitely caused a stir, and I think that's a positive thing.
While I may not be the biggest zombie fan, I am glad that I finally saw "Night of the Living Dead". It had the gory elements that we are used to in horror films today, but it was done in a completely different way. It's absolutely a staple in the history of horror.
Monday, February 27, 2012
Sunday, February 19, 2012
Scream
For this week's blog assignment, I chose to watch the movie "Scream". I won't lie, I've seen Scream more times than I can count. I love this movie, I've loved it for years. I could probably quote a good majority of the film to someone if they asked me to (for whatever weird reason). I think I saw it for the first time when I was about eight or so (thanks to having an older brother who let me watch tv with him). Obviously, my views on the film have changed over the years. My overwhelming consensus is that I still love it. It remains one of my top three films I have to watch around Halloween time.
What I love about "Scream" is that it's both scary, but also hilarious. The lines are ridiculous. Stu, my favorite character in the film, at one point says "liver alone", as in "leave her alone". It is stupidly funny, but also gets me to my first point when thinking about this film in terms of Hall's "The Work of Representation". That line is in response to the main group of characters discussing the murder of two fellow classmates. What I never noticed about this scene, or most of the film in general, when I was younger was just how ridiculously apathetic almost every single character is to what has happened. No one seems to care at all that these two students were gutted. When the news is breaking at the school about it, there seem to be no mourning students. No one even seems upset. Only the main character, Sidney, shows any concern, and this is only because her mother had been murdered almost a year earlier. Apparently, because no one else had any direct experience with murder, no one seems to care that these students have been killed. I see this as also being a take on society. Terrible, horrible things happen every single day, and we just pass by them without a second thought. Unless something happens directly to us, we aren't affected by it in the same way, if at all. That's completely what was happening in the film. It took me several times watching it to really see that absolutely no one but Sidney and the school principal show concern. When school is announced as being closed for several days after the murders, the students celebrate by having a party. When the principal is murdered and then hung from the football post, all of the drunk students decide to drive and check it out, rather than being scared for their lives or even remotely upset. It really, in my opinion, does reflect how we as a society deal with certain situations. Unless it happens to us, we don't care.
Something else in the movie that has always stood out to me, and I personally love, is that one of the killers (SPOILER ALERT) declares that he has no motive for why he killed, other than "peer pressure. I'm far too sensitive". This always stood out to me because there are serial killers out there who really just kill for what seems like no reason to others. It is just out of the sheer desire to murder. The other killer has a clear reason, but the other one has no backstory for his madness. This just makes me think about how in our society, we want reasons and motives for what happens, but in reality, there sometimes just aren't logical ones. This isn't as closely related to Hall's work, but it just always stood out to me in the film, so I felt like adding it to my blog.
All this said, I think "Scream" is one of the best made horror movies in the past 20 years. It is smart, socially aware, and a ridiculously clever take on the horror genre. Every character knows every convention of horror films, and all of them succumb to them. It's humorous and twisted, and I love it.
What I love about "Scream" is that it's both scary, but also hilarious. The lines are ridiculous. Stu, my favorite character in the film, at one point says "liver alone", as in "leave her alone". It is stupidly funny, but also gets me to my first point when thinking about this film in terms of Hall's "The Work of Representation". That line is in response to the main group of characters discussing the murder of two fellow classmates. What I never noticed about this scene, or most of the film in general, when I was younger was just how ridiculously apathetic almost every single character is to what has happened. No one seems to care at all that these two students were gutted. When the news is breaking at the school about it, there seem to be no mourning students. No one even seems upset. Only the main character, Sidney, shows any concern, and this is only because her mother had been murdered almost a year earlier. Apparently, because no one else had any direct experience with murder, no one seems to care that these students have been killed. I see this as also being a take on society. Terrible, horrible things happen every single day, and we just pass by them without a second thought. Unless something happens directly to us, we aren't affected by it in the same way, if at all. That's completely what was happening in the film. It took me several times watching it to really see that absolutely no one but Sidney and the school principal show concern. When school is announced as being closed for several days after the murders, the students celebrate by having a party. When the principal is murdered and then hung from the football post, all of the drunk students decide to drive and check it out, rather than being scared for their lives or even remotely upset. It really, in my opinion, does reflect how we as a society deal with certain situations. Unless it happens to us, we don't care.
Something else in the movie that has always stood out to me, and I personally love, is that one of the killers (SPOILER ALERT) declares that he has no motive for why he killed, other than "peer pressure. I'm far too sensitive". This always stood out to me because there are serial killers out there who really just kill for what seems like no reason to others. It is just out of the sheer desire to murder. The other killer has a clear reason, but the other one has no backstory for his madness. This just makes me think about how in our society, we want reasons and motives for what happens, but in reality, there sometimes just aren't logical ones. This isn't as closely related to Hall's work, but it just always stood out to me in the film, so I felt like adding it to my blog.
All this said, I think "Scream" is one of the best made horror movies in the past 20 years. It is smart, socially aware, and a ridiculously clever take on the horror genre. Every character knows every convention of horror films, and all of them succumb to them. It's humorous and twisted, and I love it.
Sunday, February 12, 2012
On Watching the News
As a grade A procrastinator, I made the mistake of waiting until the last minute to watch some news programs. This is really a mistake today because of the passing of Whitney Houston last night. That is all the news is focusing on, so I didn't get a full affect of how the news really reports and on what topics. Also, I don't think Hall's "Work of Representation" applied as much to what I saw. I do not usually watch the news. I know how important it is to get information about the world and also the local community, but the news just bores me and I find most of the stories misleading or fluff pieces. I probably feel that way because that's essentially all the news is.
For this blog assignment, I decided that I wanted to check out three different sources of news. I looked at Fox News, CNN, and then local news reports to see how their stories and reporting differed. I discovered what I had forgotten to be true since the death of Michael Jackson in 2009: celebrity, especially celebrity deaths, triumph all. Both Fox News and CNN were filled with stories of Houston's death and how that would be affecting the Grammy Awards. I found myself sitting and waiting for the real news to be reported on. Don't get me wrong, I find the passing of Houston extremely upsetting. She has had a very troubled past decade or so, maybe even longer, but she was an amazing talent and there's no denying that. However, I didn't feel it was appropriate for so much of a show to be focused on this one story, when literally every other station I turned on had stories about it also.
I will give Fox News credit, which it kills me to do because I really really hate Fox News, that they at least did more coverage of other events and news topics than CNN did, during my time watching both stations. Fox News at least also talked about the president's mandate that health insurance providers for companies offer birth control coverage for employees. Also, they discussed the Republican GOP race. These topics made sense for Fox News, but I was actually shocked at how unbiased the reporting was. I was expecting the stories to completely be right-sided and minded, but the stories were more just told. I realized that it's because I was watching the coverage of news, rather than the specialized news programmers hosted by the likes of Bill O'Reilly, that are at the base of my hatred for Fox News.
The only place I found some distance from the death of Whitney Houston were the local news programs. Yes, her death was clearly covered, but I got to see stories that had no connection to her at all, also. I did notice, though, that there was a level of fear built into the stories on the local news. For example, a big topic of interest on every local station I turned on was of the weather. It is going to be extremely cold in these upcoming days, and the meteorologists and news anchors were making sure the audience was completely aware of that. Multiple stories in each program revolved around the upcoming cold. It honestly made me nervous about how cold it was going to be and what that's going to mean for the environment and everything that the weather has been switching so frequently.
Other than this, though, the main focus was on Whitney Houston. I think that I didn't notice how much this kind of news gets in the way of other stories because when Michael Jackson passed away, I was very invested in what had happened, since I am a bigger fan of his than Whitney's. Also, it makes me think about the fact that this death gives the news yet another excuse to not cover footage of the war, or on different problems happening all around the world. I feel like celebrity ultimately comes first, over so many topics in this country. As others have discussed in their blogs before, we are far more fascinated by the lives of the rich and famous than those in need or similar to ourselves. And I really think that we need to readjust that.
Also, as a way of trying to look at it through Hall's work, I guess we could say that the media constructs the portrayal of the celebrity who has passed away. The news could be saying all they wanted before Houston died about her drug abuse and toxic lifestyle, but after she died, the story could either be twisted to make her the poster child for what drugs will do to ones life (even if drugs had nothing to do with the death, we won't know for another six to eight weeks), or they could make her out to be a complete hero for the music industry, which seems to be what they're doing. It is all about how the media wants to twist and present the story.
For this blog assignment, I decided that I wanted to check out three different sources of news. I looked at Fox News, CNN, and then local news reports to see how their stories and reporting differed. I discovered what I had forgotten to be true since the death of Michael Jackson in 2009: celebrity, especially celebrity deaths, triumph all. Both Fox News and CNN were filled with stories of Houston's death and how that would be affecting the Grammy Awards. I found myself sitting and waiting for the real news to be reported on. Don't get me wrong, I find the passing of Houston extremely upsetting. She has had a very troubled past decade or so, maybe even longer, but she was an amazing talent and there's no denying that. However, I didn't feel it was appropriate for so much of a show to be focused on this one story, when literally every other station I turned on had stories about it also.
I will give Fox News credit, which it kills me to do because I really really hate Fox News, that they at least did more coverage of other events and news topics than CNN did, during my time watching both stations. Fox News at least also talked about the president's mandate that health insurance providers for companies offer birth control coverage for employees. Also, they discussed the Republican GOP race. These topics made sense for Fox News, but I was actually shocked at how unbiased the reporting was. I was expecting the stories to completely be right-sided and minded, but the stories were more just told. I realized that it's because I was watching the coverage of news, rather than the specialized news programmers hosted by the likes of Bill O'Reilly, that are at the base of my hatred for Fox News.
The only place I found some distance from the death of Whitney Houston were the local news programs. Yes, her death was clearly covered, but I got to see stories that had no connection to her at all, also. I did notice, though, that there was a level of fear built into the stories on the local news. For example, a big topic of interest on every local station I turned on was of the weather. It is going to be extremely cold in these upcoming days, and the meteorologists and news anchors were making sure the audience was completely aware of that. Multiple stories in each program revolved around the upcoming cold. It honestly made me nervous about how cold it was going to be and what that's going to mean for the environment and everything that the weather has been switching so frequently.
Other than this, though, the main focus was on Whitney Houston. I think that I didn't notice how much this kind of news gets in the way of other stories because when Michael Jackson passed away, I was very invested in what had happened, since I am a bigger fan of his than Whitney's. Also, it makes me think about the fact that this death gives the news yet another excuse to not cover footage of the war, or on different problems happening all around the world. I feel like celebrity ultimately comes first, over so many topics in this country. As others have discussed in their blogs before, we are far more fascinated by the lives of the rich and famous than those in need or similar to ourselves. And I really think that we need to readjust that.
Also, as a way of trying to look at it through Hall's work, I guess we could say that the media constructs the portrayal of the celebrity who has passed away. The news could be saying all they wanted before Houston died about her drug abuse and toxic lifestyle, but after she died, the story could either be twisted to make her the poster child for what drugs will do to ones life (even if drugs had nothing to do with the death, we won't know for another six to eight weeks), or they could make her out to be a complete hero for the music industry, which seems to be what they're doing. It is all about how the media wants to twist and present the story.
Sunday, February 5, 2012
Bowling for Columbine
I have seen Michael Moore's "Bowling for Columbine" before. I've actually seen it, or at least parts of it, several times. It is definitely one of the most informative documentaries that I have seen that is completely relevant to the culture of the United States, and I think it would benefit a majority of Americans to watch it.
What I really remembered from seeing it years ago was Michael Moore's interviews with Marilyn Manson. The Marilyn Manson interview really stands out to me because of how "normal" he comes off, and also completely informed and rational, yet we see him as such a "freak" in our society. He sounds far smarter to me than half of the people interviewed for this movie who claim they understand what the "problems" in America are. He himself acknowledges that we are taught to fear and consume. I completely agree that it is all too easy to blame those in the entertainment industries for the "problems" with youth in this country. Those boys from Columbine who shot up their school didn't do it because they liked Marilyn Manson's music. They did it because they had a lot deeper problems than we'll ever be able to understand.
This really is seen when Moore goes to Canada to check out the violence there. People are so much more trusting of their neighbors, their news isn't covered in stories about violence and anger, and yet the youth still go see the same movies, play the same video games, and listen to the same music as the youth in the United States. Clearly, this is a United States problem. It is also apparent when the statistics about gun violence in Europe, Japan, and Australia are listed. The highest gun crime rate for all three is in Germany, and it was roughly 300-something crimes a year. Yet in the United States, we have over 1,000 gun crimes a year. If this isn't proof that the United States has a gun control problem, then I don't know what is. It seems blatantly clear to me, and just aggravates me that others can be so blind to this issue.
What has always stood out to me about this documentary is how the NRA and Charlton Heston kept going to towns that had been directly affected by massacres and school shootings, almost immediately after these attacks had happened. I just always can't believe the level of disrespect that both Heston and the NRA are demonstrating when doing this. It's like adding insult to injury; while community members are grieving those lost and injured due to gun violence, Heston and the NRA are glorifying the right to own and use guns. It's just absolutely ridiculous and completely insensitive. I also find it ironic, as should everyone watching this film, that the NRA was formed after the KKK was deemed illegal.
The accessibility in this country to guns is appalling. The fact that youths can go to KMart in certain areas and buy bullets for such a cheap amount, and that you can get a free gun when opening a bank account, is just insane. There is no way, to me, that anyone can say the United States doesn't have a problem with gun control. It is blatantly out there. We are promoting this violence, glorifying it, and claiming it is our right. I find this absolutely irresponsible on the part of so many Americans and feel we absolutely need to fix this problem.
What I really remembered from seeing it years ago was Michael Moore's interviews with Marilyn Manson. The Marilyn Manson interview really stands out to me because of how "normal" he comes off, and also completely informed and rational, yet we see him as such a "freak" in our society. He sounds far smarter to me than half of the people interviewed for this movie who claim they understand what the "problems" in America are. He himself acknowledges that we are taught to fear and consume. I completely agree that it is all too easy to blame those in the entertainment industries for the "problems" with youth in this country. Those boys from Columbine who shot up their school didn't do it because they liked Marilyn Manson's music. They did it because they had a lot deeper problems than we'll ever be able to understand.
This really is seen when Moore goes to Canada to check out the violence there. People are so much more trusting of their neighbors, their news isn't covered in stories about violence and anger, and yet the youth still go see the same movies, play the same video games, and listen to the same music as the youth in the United States. Clearly, this is a United States problem. It is also apparent when the statistics about gun violence in Europe, Japan, and Australia are listed. The highest gun crime rate for all three is in Germany, and it was roughly 300-something crimes a year. Yet in the United States, we have over 1,000 gun crimes a year. If this isn't proof that the United States has a gun control problem, then I don't know what is. It seems blatantly clear to me, and just aggravates me that others can be so blind to this issue.
What has always stood out to me about this documentary is how the NRA and Charlton Heston kept going to towns that had been directly affected by massacres and school shootings, almost immediately after these attacks had happened. I just always can't believe the level of disrespect that both Heston and the NRA are demonstrating when doing this. It's like adding insult to injury; while community members are grieving those lost and injured due to gun violence, Heston and the NRA are glorifying the right to own and use guns. It's just absolutely ridiculous and completely insensitive. I also find it ironic, as should everyone watching this film, that the NRA was formed after the KKK was deemed illegal.
The accessibility in this country to guns is appalling. The fact that youths can go to KMart in certain areas and buy bullets for such a cheap amount, and that you can get a free gun when opening a bank account, is just insane. There is no way, to me, that anyone can say the United States doesn't have a problem with gun control. It is blatantly out there. We are promoting this violence, glorifying it, and claiming it is our right. I find this absolutely irresponsible on the part of so many Americans and feel we absolutely need to fix this problem.
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