SOPH Journal #2: Nature as a teacher, soother, and healer

The Romantic artists of the 19th century viewed nature differently from their neoclassic predecessors. To the Romantics, Nature wasn't just an orderly scientific force to be studied and predicted. The Romantics worshiped the beauty, the strangeness, the evolution, and the wildness of Nature. They looked to Nature as a teacher (To a Waterfowl), as a soother (I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud, a poem linked in the text below), and as a healer (Thanatopsis--WC Bryant's meditation on death).

What has been your experience with Mother Nature? Choose to write about  ONE of these four topics (minimum of 250 words).

1. I learned a thoughtful lesson from this incident observing or experiencing nature
2. This natural experienced solaced me
3. This natural experience exhilarated me (click here for Jim Cantori's "thundersnow" experience)
4. I have no such natural story. I prefer the indoors, and I'll tell you why

Need some brainstorming help? Think about your experience with animals, maybe your pets. The animals around your house. Your vacations at the beach, camping in the mountains, or just hiking through the woods. Nothing is too insignificant to write about. English Romantic poet William Wordsworth wrote about viewing a field of daffodils (see link) and then writing how his imagination can still dance with the daffodils.

DUE FOR CLASS, MONDAY MARCH 2. 

Creative Writing Journal # 1: Cheesy Movie Dialogue

This is your first blog for the second semester.Complete before Thursday's (2-19) class:

I'll proudly pronounce that no melted real cheese tastes better than Velveeta, the processed food substitute that to me, out cheeses the real thing. You could slop on that velvety yellow goo on anything, even broccoli, and you'll get my taste buds standing at attention. Put it on a Geno's cheese steak in South Philly, and well, my buds are marching while my jaws are munching.

My plebeian, if not bad, taste, does not begin and end with food. Quote Shakespeare if you want to impress the OTHER English teachers 'round here; I'm a sucker for a cheesy movie line. The cheesy movie line, like its  Velveeta counterpart, isn't so REAL, but boy is it so GOOOOOOD.

Come on. Admit it. When you're watching a movie for the umpteeth time, you patiently wait for your favorite cheesy bits of dialogue as you smile, or roll on the floor in hysterics, or maybe even grow sad for a moment, or pump your fist with emotion. It doesn't matter that the lines seem so unrealistic, so contrived, so "cheesy." They're infinitely satisfying.

So you say you need some examples? Well, from my era, I've got ...

"No one puts Baby in the corner!" (Patrick Swayze says this to Baby's dad in Dirty Dancing) Swayze continues to heap on the sauce: "I do the last dance every year, and I'm going to do it again this year. Except I'm going to do it my way." Swayze has fallen in love with the young city rich girl and now wants to protect her.

"I'm the King of the World." (Leonardo DiCaprio in The Titanic) This is Leo's cry to show his love Rose that even a poor cabin boy can dream big dreams.

Even so-called "real" mobster movies aren't exempt. In The Godfather, for example, a chubby hit man by the name of Clemenza blows out someone's brains and then instructs his gang, "Leave the gun, take the cannolis" (an Italian dessert pictured above). The line shows the mobster's callousness and lack of compassion. Who could eat after killing someone? Clemenza could.

Dialogue in movies, drama, and prose, for that matter, isn't always very realistic. That's the great illusion. No one WE know would ever talk as they do in the movies, or even as they do in novels, but given the boring alternative, we also know that we want our characters to talk EXACTLY as they do.

Good dialogue may sometimes get a little cheesy, but at least it is NOT ordinary. To me, the trick is to write extraordinary, fascinating, or at least, interesting dialogue, and make it SEEM entirely natural for the situation. The pros, in any profession, make the difficult look easy: Steph Curry hits a three pointer as Luciano Pavorotti used to hit the high notes--with ease.

So when you read a novel or story, watch drama, film, or TV, listen carefully to the dialogue and then think about its purpose within its scene. Dialogue can create character, conflict, dramatic tension, move the plot along, or make us laugh, cry, and get angry. It sounds real although we know it's completed fabricated.

Assignment: Write about your favorite movie lines, their cinematic origins, their speakers, and then explain why you love them so much in 250 words or more. Focus on how each movie line "works" effectively within the movie. I would think that if you came up with a list of your TEN favorite lines complete with 20-30 word explanations, then you would have completed the assignment. 

 Here's a link to someone's 100 Best Movie lines if you need some help. 

Modern American Themes: The Making of a Disney Channel Star

Watch this satirical video that criticizes, among other things, science and Disney Channel stars gone too far. You may choose to do up to two videos in place of writing two of your satires. But if you do make a video, you won't get points "just for trying hard." So make it good or don't make it at all.

Sophs--Breakfast, Anyone? More Stock Characters!

THIS POST IS NOT A JOURNAL ASSIGNMENT, BUT IT WILL HELP YOU TO UNDERSTAND THE CONCEPT OF THE STOCK CHARACTER.

First listen to the video with the sound muted. As each character appears, try to identify the teenage movie stock character. This won't be too difficult, despite the somewhat laughable fashions of the 80s. The sad truth is that everyday we will also stereotype so quickly, often just based on the way someone dresses, walks, or talks.

The Breakfast Club, a 1985 John Hughes written and directed film, first builds up its characters' stereotypes and then shatters them to pieces. We, like the characters within the movie, see how all of these contrasting "types" are really more similar than they are different. And it only took two hours of being locked into a room for a Saturday morning detention. Could life be so easy?

My capsule review of the movie? The critic in me, no longer a teen or even a young hip teacher, says that much of the movie dialogue today sounds so unreal, so exaggerated, so silly. And yes, the repeated use of the F word bothers me (I'll never get used to hearing teenagers curse). However, I have to admit that it (the dialogue) and the rest of the movie are never boring. Even in the preachy long monologues (and there are many), Hughes' characters make us care about them.

The lesson is this: stock characters are OK in literature and film, but stereotyping in real life is dead wrong, and probably responsible for creating every hateful ideology known to mankind. Watch the PG version of the film to learn that a man (or woman) shouldn't be judged by his clothes or the company that he keeps.

SOPHS Journal #1: The Stock Character

POST BEFORE FRIDAY MORNING, February 6.

A stock character is a character type, often a stereotyped character, used repeatedly in genre fiction (like horror, sci-fi, moral tales) and of course, movies and television shows that like to use these character types. Examples include the mad scientist, the blond airhead, the femme fatale (sure, look it up if you don't know what this means), the rags-to-riches hero, and the conniving villain. 

In The Devil and Tom Walker, Tom Walker exemplifies the stock character known as The Miser, one who would value money over everything. You should know the Greek tale of King Midas, a miser who learned, as many do, that wealth isn't everything. Go to this link to read the Midas tale. Tom Walker's wife is the stock shrew, the nagging wife who browbeats her husband.

You've read enough (and seen enough TV and movies) to recognize stock characters, so tell me ...who is your favorite "stock" character?

Define the stock character type you choose and then give me some details about your specific character that proves that he or she is, indeed, "stock." Of course, tell me why you enjoy your character. Choose a character from books, movies, short stories, and television shows. As always, respond with a minimum of 250 words.

I've provided an example for you, namely Ebenezer Scrooge.

Ebenezer Scrooge is a miserly misanthrope (he's a miser--all about money--and he's a misanthrope--a "hater of mankind") in the Charles Dickens' classic, A Christmas Carol. His love of money and disdain for Christmas characterizes the original Scrooge. Note that the wordscrooge to denote characters like him is now regularly used in our vernacular. Scrooge overworks and underpays his loyal employee, Mr. Bob Cratchit. Cratchit, a good and holy family man, has bills to pay and a crippled son (Tiny Tim) to take care of, but he faces his trying responsibilities with Christian fortitude. He even refuses to admit to his poor family that Mr. Scrooge is a bad man. You might say that Cratchit is a stock character himself, the "poor but happy" fatherly figure whose diligence and Christian piety keep his family in food and clothes.

Back to Mr. Scrooge, who grudgingly allows poor Bob to stay home on Christmas Day, but orders him to arrive earlier the next. He greets holiday well wishers, like his kind nephew, with a "Bah, humbug" that of course, is now universally recognized as the reply of the Christmas Scrooge. Suddenly, however, his world is turned inside-out when he is visited by the ghost of Jacob Marley, his former business partner and a scrooge like himself. The forlorn ghost, who now does penance by walking the earth in heavy chains, money boxes, and keys, warns Scrooge to mend his ways, lest he suffer the same fate.

Scrooge is shaken, but falls asleep. During the rest of the well-known story, he is visited by three Christmas ghosts. He then undergoes a miraculous change. The new Christmas-loving Scrooge sends a huge turkey to the Cratchit home, raises Bob's salary, and becomes a surrogate grandfather to Tiny Tim.

This Christmas tale is a story of faith, redemption, and the goodness that lies within us all. These qualities were once buried in Ebenezer Scrooge, but were unearthed in the joyful end of the novel.

Seniors Modern American Themes:Journal # 1--Man vs. Society

Both "Why Don't You Look Where You're Going?" and "Harrison Bergeron" deal with the conflict between man and Society. "Why ...Going?" was published in 1950, so it's about Post WW II Western Society. The war in the "Why?", however, is not between the Axis and Allied Powers, but between the insignificant and unheralded nonconformist/Flying Dutchman and the omnipotent Society/ocean liner. Kurt Vonnegut's "Harrison Bergeron" was a 1961 Cold War era warning at what a Big Brother communist totalitarian government might look like in a dystopic America. The stories' publication dates belie their present-day usefulness for serious discussion. And that's where you come in. You should write a (250 word minimum) paragraph here in which you relate any theme, character, plot event, conflict, etc. to a modern counterpart. In other words, write about how the story is still relevant today by comparing parts of the story to parts of our modern world.

We'll talk about these stories in class, of course, for you to get some ideas. Write your response here before Friday, February 6.