Essays, Not Rants! 229: Meaning Upon Meaning Every movie monster in the book has some sort of sociocultural commentary associated with it. Zombies are the embodiment of a fear of conformist consumer culture, vampires are the elite rich who drain the life of the poor, werewolves are your neighbor’s double life, Godzilla is nuclear terror made real. A lot of fun can be found in figuring out what these all mean. Is Zombieland about the isolation that comes as a result of being the only people special in a world of copies? Or is it a celebration of life in a post-consumer society? That’s one thing I love about fiction is that there are as many meanings of it as there are people watching. You see this particularly science fiction and fantasy which, by virtue, often deal with some embodiment of the unknown/other, and thus can really explore the parable-ness of stories. But like I said, meanings. I see The Force Awakens as a story about identity and finding belonging (which makes it different from the original Star Wars despite hitting many of the same plot beats), Firefly is a story fundamentally about family, and Iron Man 2 is about embracing mortality. You could disagree and you’re more than welcome to because, again, the joy of fiction. …show more content…
While discussing children’s books, CS Lewis wrote in Of Other Worlds: “No book is really worth reading at the age of ten which is not equally (and often far more) worth reading at the age of fifty(…).” It’s how you can enjoy Prisoner of Azkaban as a kid for its magic and scary monsters, then years later love it for its wonderful take on depression; or how Justice League remains intriguing if you’re twelve or
The article “Dead man still walking: Explaining the zombie renaissance” by Kyle Bishop is about the revitalization of the zombie genre. The article talks about the inception in the late 1960’s, the category of zombie films has had its roller coaster ride of ups and downs, starting with its decline in the early 1980’s with the release of Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” video. Furthermore, during 1990’s, due to the shift in the cultural consciousness that came with the Clinton Administration and the countries isolation from global tragedies, the popularity of these films continued to decline. Cultural consciousness refers to the understanding and awareness a shift in feelings, sensations, thoughts, of not only our own culture, but adjoining cultures.
1. There are numerous reasons about why Miss Narwin’s opinion of reading books differs from Philip’s opinion. The first reason is that Miss Narwin is a mature adult, who can understand literature better than children. Miss Narwin also has a love for classic literature, which not everyone shares. The second reason is that Philip would enjoy books that were written when he was growing up; it would be easier to understand and relate to for him. I concur with Miss Narwin’s point of view, as I love to read and some older books have a deeper meaning to them. I also agree with Miss Narwin, for I believe that more classic literature should be spread, so that classics won’t be forgotten. Philip’s attitude might be considered a self-fulfilling prophecy since most children would not have such a deep love towards classic literature. Children also appreciate books that they can understand and relate to.
This book, based solely on appearance, looks best suited for younger readers. Having read the book, I still feel that this a very good book for younger readers based on the font size of the book and the added illustrations present. However, some of the content presented in the book could easily be supplemented in an advanced mathematics course in high school (such as Calculus).
The novel “Firewing” by Kenneth Oppel is a good book for anyone aged between 8 and 88 because everything is set in a certain way that makes it very enjoyable and understandable. The main message is that “you should never judge a book by its cover”, by that I mean never judge anyone they could be very different from what you expected them to be like. “Woah!!” Shade exclaimed as he was being sucked down the giant pit following where Griffin had been. He descended with a bang. Abruptly Shade was shrouded“Stop right there!” an illusory figure says. Shade and his friends back away from the now clear Vampyrum* bat. “The name is Murk, I want to come with you to the tree…” He said. “ I can protect you lot of bats from any Vampyrum attacks, so
Starting first with Romero’s Night of the Living Dead, the most obvious social commentary aspect to the film is the ending. While everyone else has been killed by the undead, Ben survives the night in the basement, only to be shot by a member of the militia the next morning. This moment as well as the grainy newspaper photo montage reminds the audience of the race relations of the time, in particular, between southern police officers and black men. In addition, we see the subversive critique of 1960’s American society. Romero’s zombies have no cure; the good guys don’t win at the end, and the zombie apocalypse cannot be stopped. This shows the reflection of the shattering 1950’s optimism. The film takes on a pessimism approach; society is on the verge of collapse, and the authorities cannot be trusted or are too inept to deal with the
All literary works are written from a specific standpoint. This standpoint originates from the mind of the author. The author, when creating his literary work, has a specific diagram/plan and vision of what the story is supposed to convey. However, not all readers will interpret the literary work in the way that the author him/herself has presented it. Many times, in fact, the audience will perceive the literary work as having an entirely different meaning than what it was meant to have.
Authors have deeper meanings to the events and people in a book because they want a certain idea to be understood, the events in the book to be related to more important or relevant people to the readers, and to show the way these character and
Fiction has been around for centuries, feeding the imagination of young and older minds. Usually when people read a fictional story, they don’t think about the connotation the story tries to convey. But every story has a message, and whether it be big or small, it takes a complex, deeper thinking to be able to find that message. It is apparent that the reason we study fiction is to be able to find that deeper thinking within ourselves and enrich our imagination.
We all lose friends as we go through life but, how we handle it is what truly matters.The book Backlash teaches people to think through what you do before you do it because it could spiral out of control and end up hurting people.
There’s a recent New York Times article I came across that laments how the rise of the superhero genre has conflated actor-stardom with character-stardom. The article itself doesn’t really chase down the points too well, but the central gist (as far as I can see) is that in the recent slate of films, characters have come to trump actors. As Wesley Morris suggests in the article, when you watch Oceans Eleven, it’s George Clooney doing all the cool stuff as Danny Ocean; but when you watch Rush, you don’t see Chris Hemsworth as James Hunt, you see Thor as James Hunt. And as more big name actors get roped in to superhero films (Cate Blanchett’s gonna be in Thor: Ragnarok!), it’s more actors being roped in to playing a specific character.
Which is still a good idea today because some book aren’t meant to be read by the youth. Mark Twain gave advice to the youth in his era but it is still relevant
The author Chuck Klosterman really does explain the meaning of zombies. I don’t know about the accuracy of it because I don’t really know much about them. Zombies and vampires aren’t alike, yes they are both not alive anymore but zombies are the ones that relate to AIDS not vampires. As a zombie you look like you had a really bad disease that messed up your whole body inside and out and then died. As a vampire you drink vampires blood die and come back still beautiful and young but also strong and fast (based on The Vampire Diaries). Chuck Klosterman thinks that slaughtering zombies is a lot like modern life in the way that you fill out paperwork just for more paperwork to come just as
People had a fear of the mysterious and unknown thing because they could not predict the consequences of getting hurt, so, zombies can be considered as a type of the other in the horror movie. Many people believed that the zombies were a threat to humanity. In the article “Death Man Still Walking: Explaining the Zombie Renaissance”, Kyle Bishop mentioned that “They possess merely a rotting brain and have no real emotional capacity.”(20) In the movie, the zombies were the walking corpse. Unlike a human, zombies did not have any conscious and people could not communicate with them.Usually, the zombies attacked to human and ate human’s brain. People turned into zombies after they got bitten by a zombie. Also, zombies represented from the death and they were a dead body. Many people feared to death because people could not control the death. People did not have fear when they lived in a peaceful society. Bishop said that “monsters would not prove much of a threat if they appeared in the modern-day world.”(21) In the civilization, people felt safe because the government made some law and created a military to protect the citizens.For example, the police officers tried to stop the crime and prevented the chaos. When people dialed the emergency number, the police went to the location immediately and helped people to solve their problems. Because all the rules broke out after the society collapsed, people could do everything. People could express their emotions and act freely in the dystopian world. During the apocalypse, lots of zombies occurred and they attacked to the living things.When the society changed, people needed to find a way to adapt the environment. Perhaps, for the survivors, using violence was the best way they used for self-defence. As a result, people were hopeless and afraid when they stayed in an unfamiliar
The zombies are used to represent the mass panic of a containable situation, and the government is portrayed as safe keepers of people, but also critiquing the government’s actual response time and effectiveness to situations. Both the story and the movie utilize zombies as a substitution for a more real and occurring matter. The nationwide panic that is represented through a zombie apocalypse can be interpreted as a problem that the country is facing or may have faced before. The fact the most zombie apocalypse has one person who was infected and that person infected someone else and so on shows that most of these occurrence could have been prevented, but due to the response time of related officials, problems arise quicker than they can
Although the book might seem only for kids, but it can be read and enjoyed by individuals of all ages.