jounal 12 Kung Fu Panda vs Matrix..... Daoism again

Ok so this is going back, but I randomly watched Kung Fu Panda last night; it just randomly came on and I didn’t even know what it was until I recognized the Daoism-like theme it had. Then I saw the big panda getting his butt kicked by some other gangster animals and I thought this had to be the movie the class was talking about. The whole movie was pushed on the theory of belief. Anything you believe is basically true, and anything that isn’t true is only not true because you don’t believe it. This is pretty equivalent to the Daoism way of thinking. It makes me wonder if the writer of the movie had Daoism in mind while writing it. I’ve heard that the maker of The Matrix, the other movie example of Daoism didn’t think of Daoism either, but both demonstrate it as best as my understanding can handle. The panda was much less than a warrior but really wanted to be one really bad. He had action figures of all the other kung fu characters because he looked up to them and what they did. The panda is the parallel to Neo in the matrix; both of them were the one to defeat the bad guys in the end but as the movie began nobody would have known. Although he was the worst kung fu student Master Shifu ever had, he was meant to be the dragon warrior because he was the only one who had the ability to defeat Tylon. Originally, nobody believed this other than Oogway, who is the parallel to Morpheus, but since Oogway was something like an ancestor to the rest of the animals. One difference between Kung Fu Panda and Daoism is that in the movie Tylon was the best and most dangerous warrior, but he was the bad guy. He was the one coming back to take the scroll from the village because he believed he was the dragon warrior. And in the beginning master Shifu also thought he would be as well and trained him from his youth to be so. In Daosim they don’t believe in right and wrong or good and bad. So if this was based on the real Daoism theory then Tylon wouldn’t have been a bad warrior he would have just been equal to everyone else and nobody would have thought any different of him. Also I think that since anything a person believes, or animal in this case, is reality and can’t be stopped by anything else. So if Tylon was so much of a better warrior and he really believed it I don’t see why he had to lose. We all seen what kind of warrior the panda was before his father reveals the truth to him with the scroll. The parallel with the scroll with absolutely no dragon warrior truth in it can be compared to the conversation Neo had with the fortune telling lady when she didn’t tell him at all that he was the one but what she did say made him think enough about it to know that as soon as he believed he was the one that he would be the one.

Journal 11Iago and the root of all evil

Today I would like to state my opinion about Iago’s motives for causing havoc in everyone’s life. In the discussion we had in class last Thursday, we came up with many possible reasons for it such as revenge for not getting the lieutenant promotion, maybe he wanted show Othello what it feels like for a person to mess with his girl, someone even stated that maybe he was gay and desired Othello himself. All these things can be backed up with info in the story, but Mr. B had the idea that I agreed with the most; he said what if Iago is just one of those people who causes trouble just because…. There is no evidence that he is one of these people stated, but we all know people like this and I think we are all like that at some point in time. Iago could have simply been very good at it that his hobby made such a big deal that a story was made from it. The twist behind my opinion that makes it different from Mr. B’s suggestion is that I think that is just how things got started and after things began to get complicated and require real thinking he was pushed by money. As he was doing his everyday routine getting under people’s skin he ran across Roderigo who was madly in love with Desdemona. At the same time he was already disappointed that he was denied the promotion. And while all this was going on he had no anger towards anyone nor did he have plans on getting anyone in trouble with anyone. The real trickery began when Iago was offered money from Roderigo and then things got serious and he began to game plan. He had to make a way to take every penny Roderigo, his new business partner possessed which he did because Roderigo sold all of his assets just to pay Iago. We mentioned in class how Iago tells the audience that he was looking for money in the opening conversation with Roderigo, and he brings it up many times throughout the story to prove his desires. Iago made things easy on himself by killing two birds with one stone, literally. He brought two situations that had nothing to do with each other and made it into one story; he made the person who beat him out of the job the same person supposedly getting in between Othello and his newly wedded wife. The genius behind the idea is while Cassio was getting played like a pawn he doesn’t even know. In fact nobody in the whole story knows they are being used and they all get a piece of Iago’s manipulations, but Cassio is the biggest piece to the operation. I think if it wasn’t for Roderigo offering money there would be no big plot. Iago would just still be bothering people for no reason at all and nobody would have died because he wouldn’t have had a reason to go as far as he did into other people’s lives.

Jounal 10 the first of Othello

I have started reading Othello and I like it so far. It is a good drama written by Shakespeare. I read a little ahead and read online as well to compare how other people viewed Othello with to my opinion of it so far. I personally like it a lot but I don’t believe it should have been called Othello, although he plays a large role in the story I believe that Iago is easily the main character. He does the most stuff and starts all of the conflict and is responsible for a lot of the dialogue. I did not know until yesterday that Iago has the second most lines in all of Shakespeare’s writing following behimd Hamlot who also has a whole story written about him. You can probably argue that Roderigo is more important than Iago because he’s the one who sets Iago up to do his deeds, but you would lose. Roderigo stays out of the whole situation and doesn’t really get his hands dirty in the story, since he’s rich he can do that. It’s mostly Iago who is the sneaky, suspect character that the audience watches closely in the story for amusement. A lot of Iago’s actions in the story create dramatic irony because we know what is going on but the people he is tricking do not. We know Desdemona never cheated on Othello with Cassio, or anyone for that matter. We know Cassio is well deserving of his rank (at least in Othello’s opinion) and there was no real reason for him to doubt that. We know all the motives behind why Iago does the things he does because he tells us. We know all of these things and, outside of Iago, none of the other characters know all of this info.
I really wish I would have posted this journal entry before the start of last class because it was almost done and we talked about pretty much everything I wrote in class. To add on to the class discussion, nobody brought up the idea I was thinking that I don’t think there is an active hero figure in this story. Nobody does any saving or spectacular non-human like activity, but I do think that Othello could have been considered a hero if he would have held his ground and done things differently. Instead of killing his wife he should have dug deeper into the statements delivered against her. He could have also prevented all of the deaths as well, including Iago’s, the only person who somewhat deserved to be persecuted. I always seem to compare a lot of characters to Gilgamesh, here, I see that he and Othello are the same because they get the glory of the story being named after them without putting any work in. Othello isn’t even the person with the conflict. Roderigo has the problem in the story which is not having Othello’s girl Desdemona. And he uses Iago to try and get her which makes it interesting, but what compounds the situations is that Iago is already upset about the promotion Othello has given to one of peers instead of him. Iago uses that one person, Cassio, to tear down both relationships and I’m going to leave off there so this doesn’t turn into a summary.

Jounal 9 The thirteenth Warrior

After watching the rest of the 13th warrior, I understand why Mr. B loves Beowulf so much, he is a pretty cool hero. In this blog I’d like to discuss the confusion I had with the movie. I got a pretty decent grasp of everything now that we have finished the movie but a few things are still a little bit shaky in my mind. Before I start that I want say that I plan on watching the movie again on my own time because I admit one that I didn’t start reading the poem until the same day as we started the movie and that I didn’t quite pay full attention to the first part of the movie.
While watching the movie I had to read it like a move and at the same time compare it to what I read earlier that day. It was hard for me to recognize who was the main character and who was actually Beowulf. I expected them to be the same person and I don’t believe that was the case, but I second guessed that thought through the movie so I’m not completely sure. I also expected to be able to distinguish Beowulf from other characters by his appearance; I wanted him to be more macho and look like he the strength of 30 men in each arm (whatever that looks like). I’m still not completely positive who the outcast character of the movie referred to in the book nobody in what I’ve read seemed to be that different than others that they were picked on. And I don’t really recall someone being that much smarter than all the rest of the warriors. He was so smart t that he learned their language all in one day. I think that’s what happened because at first he was the only one who spoke English and then once they said he learned their language everyone spoke the same. That was a kind of drawn out part that confused me for a second.
Compared to other movies, The Thirteenth warrior stayed on track pretty well, a lot better than most other movies of books. Though it changes the names of most characters it follows the plot accurately. It also keeps the Anglo-Saxon background the book demonstrated. And the Viking like ways of the Danes. I don’t rememeber all of the descriptive words that tells us what any of the characters but when watching the movie you don’t need that because it is given to you automatically. The creatures inside the cave where they had to kill the woman at the end of the movie were real intense. If this movie was more modern I know the graphics and the costume would have been twice as descriptive, without using any words at all. On the other hand, many people like the descriptive words in a book rather than what is given in a movie simply because it is given. At that point you can’t use your imagination anymore and since movies usually come after the books Ideas are already formed. If you watch the movie and the picture the director paints doesn’t live up to the picture you painted in your head, the movie is not as good as the book. In my opinion the movie is just as good and it helped me to understand the book more.

Journal 8 Beowulf and a small comparrison with Gilgamesh

I got so caught up writing my background paper I neglected reading for about a week and because of that I got very behind with reading Beowulf. Since we are watching the 13th warrior in class I got a chance to catch up with my reading this weekend and I’m glad I did. Finally, another story with a lot of action and fighting, egos, and all the other things I enjoy as a guy that have somewhat been left out since Gilgamesh. First we have a perfectly fine city that dreads the most gangsta evil villain they had ever seen. He came through the Danish people’s spot repeatedly slaying folks left and right. They say Grendel was made of barbwire and couldn’t be harmed by any weapon just to prove his evil authority. But of course the mighty, powerful, all-knowing Beowulf gets the word from thousands of miles away and comes to the rescue like a true hero should. Beowulf’s name lives on from his father which gives him the respect to walk right into Hrothgar’s mead-hall and handle business. What I like is how confident Beowulf was about killing Grendel when he came that night, there was no doubt in his mind that he wouldn’t have trouble with the demon or even that he would need to use armor while doing it. Beowulf being the hero he is killed Grendel and hung his arm in the mead-hall where they celebrated the victory for the city. I somewhat think that Beowulf is kind of cocky about his heroics, which isn’t a problem at all because the people still love him. He brags a lot and even reiterates how he would fight Grendel without any armor. He is the biggest and best thing that the Danish have going for them and he lets them know that. Comparably, Gilgamesh was also the best hero of his story and could boast for himself but he did it in a different way. He took charge and bullied the people in his story and didn’t care how they felt about it. They are alike in many ways; they both went on journeys to take on new competitors and make justice. At the same time they are very different, the difference between them is though Gilgamesh did a lot, he wasn’t always loved by his people. Not only do Beowulf’s people love him now Hrothgar and the other Dannish people love and appreciate him as well. Another difference is that Gilgamesh a partner to help him along his journeys, and his friend kind of stole the spot light. Enkidu came into Gilgamesh’s story for the purpose of the people so he was bound to steal the show anyway. Hopefully as I finish up the reading this story Beowulf won’t offend anyone or make a huge group of people hate him because he is a very likeable hero and I don’t want him to blow it like other heroes in past readings.

Journal 7 More Wife of Bath in Canterbury

I wrote my paper on the background of the whole Canterbury Tales since we read a story from it which was the wife of bath which I blogged about yesterday. Doing my research I found some interesting things about the very diverse section of a bunch of tales and The Wife of Bath in particular is the best of the best. I found that out of all the many tales, the reason The Wife of Bath is one the most impressive is because of how full its story line is compared to the rest of the tales. Out of the very different plots and characters in the Canterbury Tales, The Wife of Bath has a little bit of everything to make it great such as a righteous knight, a long journey (the infamous year and day), fairies and secular minded characters. These things are found throughout all of the tales which make the whole collection good but also makes The Wife of Bath Stand out. That was what I read about the story; I personally thought they all had a lot different aspects to them that was specific for the particular story and not found much in all the other tales. Besides, all the stories are about journeys from a place going to Canterbury and are set in King Arthur’s Court and most share the same characters so I didn’t really see how this one is so highly recognized. Maybe the fact that I have only read this one and partially looked in to skimming through a hand full of other tales plays apart on why I don’t see the value of the work, but like I said as of right now, knowing what I know about the whole collection they are all about the same to me.
I personally hate prologues because I think they can add that into the story instead of giving me two different things to read and they’re usually not even the same type of language or feeling of literature. Nevertheless, the majority of Canterbury stories had to have a prologue as far as I know because I have yet to find one not having one, but the prologue for this story is a lot different than the others. Chaucer took twice as much time preparing the story to be read in the prologue because it is twice as long as the story given to us. People think that Chaucer put a lot of work into making this story and the characters in it as well. He got the ideas from over half his stories from an older work written by Giovanni Boccaccio. I wonder if this tale is part of that percentage because he gets a lot of credit for creating this incredible, strong, female character and placing her in the story in a way it makes sense and is acceptable to the time era and people hearing the stories. No doubt in my mind that he deserves credit for all he had done, but was it all on him? As far as we know, that character could have been the exact same or even more complex before Chaucer got to it and translate it to what his people could read.