AAAS 272 REACTION PAPER #2
By: Wei (Elaine) WU In responding to this Reaction Paper assignment, I would first like to begin by summarizing my argument. This story is typically an example of Nativist fiction, or we can called it Hsiang-t’u fiction because of the following four reasons: regionalism setting, medium-low hierarchy characters, little one’s psychological exploration and the challenging of the moral stance. After discussing each of these four reasons, I will conclude by noting three ways in which the time period represented in this story accurately reflects actual events then taking place in Taiwan society and economy. As mentioned above, the first reason this story represents an example of Nativist fiction is its regionalism setting. At the very beginning of the fiction, the author presents the great background of this story: Tongan Street, earliest home in Taipei, especially the residential community around the tailor’s shop. The second reason this story represents an example of Hsiang-t’u fiction is its medium-low hierarchy characters. I will analyze Oba-san, Little one, mother, the woman in dressmaking shop and the office worker these five main characters in this paper and draw more words on Oba-san and main character ’Little one’. Oba-san is a typical Taiwanese rural woman, broad tanned face, bare feet with ten stout toes, talkative even gossipy. But she attached importance to the education. Her one word do touched me a lot “I was born
The vision Christopher Nolan had for The Prestige (2006) was to add to the outbreak of street magician film, whilst playing a large dramatic subplot equal in grandeur to the magical performances within the film. In the final sequence of the film, I will analyse how the cinematography and sound resolves the plot so that it summarises the themes present in the film, whilst also invoking a response from the audience. Nolan predominantly uses close up shots, non-diegetic sound (music) and dialogue collaboratively to convey the dramatic, personal subplot of the characters and their relationships, whilst appealing to the audience bringing forth an emotional response from the audience. The heavy, slow, dramatic atmosphere of the ending sequence uses various techniques to summarise and uncover the underlying mysteries of the events throughout the film and consolidate themes introduced during the exposition.
What were Edwin S. Porter's significant contributions to the development of early narrative film? In what sense did Porter build upon the innovations of contemporaneous filmmakers, and for what purposes?
They are afraid, that the “Canadians” will assume that they are poor. in the poor village in china in which grandmamma grew up, searching through the garbage was acceptable, but in Canadian it is frowned upon. Therefore, Choy identifies that these two generations have different perspectives about Chinese culture, and fails to grasp important information about the norms and cultural views. While the children attempted to fit in, their father and stepmother were determined to hold on to their Chinese roots. It shows that as the younger generations, integrate into the American culture, individuals move forward, and the definitions of “Chinese” as older generation alters, for younger generations. It also portrays that the older generations politically need to adapt need to adopt with the “Canadians”, because as time progresses, identities culture and traditional perspectives will begin to change with the Chinese-Canadian culture. It demonstrates that culture will have to integrate into an Canadian society in order to be inclusive
Trainspotting presents an ostensible image of fractured society. The 1996 film opens, famously, with a series of postulated choicesvariables, essentially, in the delineation of identity and opposition. Significant here is the tone in which these options are deliveredit might be considered the rhetorical voice of society, a playful exposition of the pressure placed on individuals to make the "correct" choices, to conform to expectation.
“Insidious” is a 2010 horror movie centralizing around the lives of protagonists Renai (Rose Byrne) and her husband Josh (Patrick Wilson). The movie mainly focuses on the supernatural activity going on within the house, and it is later revealed that the cause of the hauntings is due to demons attempting to take over the body of their unconscious son, Dalton (Ty Simpkins).
The film Pleasantville directed by Gary Ross is about two modern teenagers, David and his sister Jennifer, somehow being transported into the television, ending up in Pleasantville, a 1950s black and white sitcom. The two are trapped as Bud and Mary Sue in a radically different dimension and make some huge changes to the bland lives of the citizens of Pleasantville, with the use of the director’s cinematic techniques. Ross cleverly uses cinematic techniques such as colour, mise-en-scene, camera shots, costumes, music and dialogue to effectively tell the story.
How do the respective narrative forms of Double Indemnity and Magnolia construct their characters and provide different critical perspectives on social values? Discuss in your essay some of the various narration types and the formal narrative construction of the films' characters. However, do not simply provide a list or catalogue of the narrative differences between the two films. A critical and necessary part of the assignment is for you to argue how the narrative construction in each film provides critical perspectives on social values.
In the novel A Daughter of Han by Ida Pruitt, the readers are taken through a journey of one woman through her life’s highs and lows. Through the eyes of Ning Lao T'ai-t'ai, readers can truly understand the life of a working woman during this time period. Although life may not have been easy at times, Ning Lao shows the determination and passion she had for her family and for their lives to be better. The life of a working woman is never an easy life but adding in the social rules and opium addiction that effected each part of Ning Lao’s life made it much more difficult.
The biographical connection that the author “Amy Tan” draws in her short story “Two Kinds” with her main character Jing-mei, crosses in more than one side. First of all, they both are Chinese American whose struggle in their identities with their Chinese immigrant mothers. “Due to a cultural conflict and lack of proper understanding of each other’s perceptions” (Priya 1), and as a big gap developed between the two daughters and their two mothers, in which resulted a complex relationship between them.
The movie, The Shawshank Redemption (1994), is based on a character Andy Dufresne. Andy is a young and successful banker who is sent to Shawshank Prison for murdering his wife and her secret lover. His life is changed drastically upon being convicted and being sent to prison. He is sent to prison to serve a life term. Over the 20-years in prison, Andy retains optimism and eventually earns the respect of his fellow inmates. He becomes friends with Red, and they both comfort and empathize with each other while in prison. The story has a strong message of hope, spirit, determination, courage, and desire.
In The Woman Warrior, Maxine Hong Kingston crafts a fictitious memoir of her girlhood among ghosts. The book’s classification as a memoir incited significant debate, and the authenticity of her representation of Chinese American culture was contested by Asian American scholars and authors. The Woman Warrior is ingenuitive in its manipulation of the autobiographical genre. Kingston integrates the value of storytelling in her memoir and relates it to dominant themes about silence, cultural authenticity, and the cultivation of identity. Throughout her work, Kingston reaches a variety of conclusions about the stories her mother told her by writing interpretations of her mother, Brave Orchid’s, “talk-story”. Brave Orchid’s talk-story is a form
In the collection of anecdotes, Record of the Listener, Hong Mai used his stories to reinforce the Chinese tradition of respect for one’s ancestors and to demonstrate the notion of favorable or unfavorable reactions to a person’s character. In Mai’s collection, unexplainable events are commonplace and are linked to a root cause in either a person’s character or to another deceased entity. In the tale of “The Wife of Xie Seven”, the daughter-in-law seals her fate by her lack of empathy towards her elderly mother, and the zealous Buddhist monk. As the daughter did not distribute the white rice adequately, her transformation into a cow was not described as being a terrible experience. The transformation is displayed in a way that it was a justifiable
This education, seen from the other side of the cultural gap, is what makes Lena see her mother as a weak person. Lena has a job, an American husband, she lives an American life, unlike her mother, who is attached to weird old disused Chinese traditions. But she herself is not happy, as her mother can see. Her husband is not as good as he might be: he exploits her, paying her a too low wage, never recognizes her contribution to their success as architects,... On the other hand, Ying- Ying marriage, although imperfect, is based on firmer grounds of respect and goodness towards each other than that of Lena.
In the personal essay “My Mothers Tongue” (1990), Amy Tan, widely known author explains her insights on language and culture identity using details and memories from her own life experiences. Tan conceals that the language in which her mother used with her “was the language that helped shape the way [she] saw things, expressed things, made sense of the world” (1208) and in the process it made her who she is today as an author. Tan illuminates the euro centricity of the Master Narrative by retelling stories of her mother being treated poorly because of her “broken” or “limited” English. She recalls many past experiences where her mother suffered from bad service and treatment from restaurants, stockbrokers, and even hospitals. Using examples from her personal life Tan gets her point across about language and culture characteristics in order to show how Chinese culture is affected by the master narrative and also encourages others to include a variety of cultures in order to overcome bias opinions. Tan’s apparent audience can be ranged from the child of an immigrant to a doctor and offers an authentic and rich portrayal of Chinese history through her conflicting experience of her Chinese and American cultures.
Edmonson, J. (2009). Let's be clear: How to manage communication styles. T & D, 63(9), 30-31.