Blog 3

Blog 3 01-25-10

Poetry and Pop Culture

In the machinimized version of Langston Hughes’s “Suicide’s Note,” clips from the video game Halo are used to portray the suicide scene supposedly depicted in the poem. It could be just a person washing their face in the river if one had not known about the title, but it would not be called “Suicide’s Note,” would it? The scenes of the player on the cliff’s edge, looking down, and perhaps contemplating whether he should live on or not, greatly enhances the tone of the poem. In addition to the scenes, the music adds to the meaning of “Suicide’s Note.” Gary Jules’s “Mad World” also depicts thoughts of suicide, which makes the tone even sadder. These enhanced effects from the machinimized version connect deeply with the words and makes it clear to what this poem means.

The scene that really connects the poem and the video is where the player is about to jump, while at the bottom, the text read “asked me for a…” Then as the player jumped, the poem finishes the line with, “kiss.” The maker of this video carefully placed these frames together to create a metaphor to which why a person would want to jump off to their death in a river. In the poem, the river “asked [him] for a kiss” represents the action of a suicide because one can infer that some person is coming in contact with the water and conclude that they drowned themselves from the kiss of death.

The scenes that depict “the calm, cool face of the river,” stay true to the picture, displaying a calm, serene river that the player jumps to his death in. However, the calmness of the river in the video kind of detracts the vision of the river that is supposed to be depicted in the poem. In fact, the whole brightness of the video should be turned down a bit to stay true to the tone. One would imagine the poem’s scene to be gloomy and tired, like this scene from PS3’s Flower:

http://blog.landofthegeeks.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/flower-playstation-3-ps3-069.jpg

The song “Mad World” sets down the mood. It sounds sad, and it describes how one gets tired of life and how one wants to “drown in [their] sorrow.” It is a nice match to the tone of the poem because it also depicts suicide. The lyric’s dark tone enhances how the video as a whole feels. Without it, the video by itself would have seemed humorous because it just shows a video game character falling down into a river for no reason.

A reference to poetry in pop culture occurs in The Whitest Kids You Know, where “Hamlet” is being acted out on stage (although it is not in iambic pentameter, and not even in its exact words). This skit is more about what really happened to Abe Lincoln. The president and the people of his time may have been watching “Hamlet” in its dramatic form, as plays were popular back then. Here is a clip of the skit:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7VwMBn37qM

Blog 2

Pro-Tech or Anti-Tech?

Richard Brautigan's "All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace,” describes nature and technology together in some sort of fashion. It could be noting that technology is becoming one with nature and living in complete harmony with it. It is also possible that the poem is completely dipping into total sarcasm, hinting that technology is taking over nature. The way one can interpret if the poem has a pro-technology message or an anti-technology message depends on how one wants to construe the evidence.

If this poem has an anti-technology message, it states the message completely sarcastically. The lines “(the sooner the better)” (2) and “(right now, please)” (10) hint technology is growing way too fast, and technology is taking over the natural ecological system. In the first stanza, he wants to “think of a cybernetic meadow/where mammals and computers/live together mutually/in programming harmony.” This could note that nature and technology cannot live perfectly with each other because it is either one or the other; in this case, it could be that technology is overrunning nature. The “cybernetic forest” the speaker is talking about “where deer stroll peacefully past computers” could be talking about an e-waste dumping site, but I’m not sure if they existed back then.

If this poem has a pro-technology message, it could not be more obvious. Lines 2 and 10 note that the new technological world is growing, and the speaker is ready to welcome it in. The last stanza could be saying that technology is becoming part of nature, being “joined back to nature” (19). One would say that it is so becoming part of nature that everything is being “watched over by machines of loving grace” (23). Since technology is so powerful, it can "watch over" life.

I would say that the tone for the poem would be against technology because not all of nature can be in harmony with electronics. Animals, plants, even some humans are not “tech-savvy” and/or cannot keep up with the newer and ever-growing technology. If e-waste dumping sites existed, they would be “part of nature” in a “cybernetic forest filled with pines and electronics.”

Blog 1

Casabianca by Felicia Dorthea Hemens

Symbols and Images: boy, burning deck, FIRE, father, death, ship, flag, wind, thunder, fragments, sea, heart

The first stanza of “Casabianca” describes a boy who seems like he is in a whole heap of trouble; everyone fled or is dead, and fire is surrounding him (literally speaking).

Fire in “Casabianca” could represent the overwhelming feeling of taking responsibility once the father died or left. The boy was so used to his father’s or anyone’s help that the “wreathing fires made way” (28) because he could not take it. However, this interpretation seems too “cowardly” because at the end, the boy died a noble death.

In the last line of the second stanza, it seems that this boy had pride although he was still a child. This could leave the impression that he may have acted a bit rash and that the “flames rolled on” (9) and took the best of him. This hypothesis seems a bit cowardly too.

Another hypothesis would be that the boy was in trouble and he desperately needed his father, but he was not there. The fires that surrounded him could represent the trouble that the boy had. He was deciding whether or not to stay with the ship, his pride, and die with it, or flee and survive.

In the last stanza, it seems the boy perished with the ship. From that, he made that decision by himself. He would rather be faithful to his pride or something equally special than flee like a coward. In stanzas four, five, and seven, in his final moments, the boy asked his father for advice on what he should do. He knew that his father was dead already, but as the son, he wanted to seek advice from him one more time.

p.s Hope to see you guys Thursday. Out today from food poisoning. :(