“There Will Be Blood”

From the very start of the film, the absence of dialogue was noticeable. The first minutes had me wondering when, if ever, someone would start talking, but once I got through the movie, the reasoning was more clear. Firstly, the lack of dialogue, especially in the scene while they were drilling for oil, portrayed the tension of the situation very well. The fact that the workers were down in the well engulfed by the sounds of the oil pool around them and that they were at such a distance from the workers outside the well, it presented a situation were help was unavailable if they needed it. While watching the scenes, I could feel the nervousness of the workers and the danger they were in because of the changing sounds, often going from loud to dead silence. In most films, there would be excessive screaming and frantic dialogue, but the way that both the sounds of the scene and the sound of the orchestra were used, strong emotion was brought onto the viewer.

Similarly, the way that Daniel Day-Lewis acted in the lead role seemed to fit the movie perfectly. His speech was very powerful, but his facial expressions were often the most telling. While watching it, I could see the emotion in his face perfectly at all times. His sarcasm came through exquisitely at times, particularly when he is getting baptized at the church. He seemed so passionate, but there was satire that came through in almost all of his words. At the time of the scene, this sarcasm seemed to have no reason, but once it was revealed that his son was an orphan child, the baptism scene became the most powerful scene in the entire movie. It was not due to what he said, but the way the camera would focus on the look in his eyes, or the was his mouth moved. I feel that in movies, normally, the speech of a character is used as the most powerful tool of expression, but the way that facial gesturing was used in this movie was much more powerful. It was even more evident in the ending scene, when Daniel Plainview and Eli were discussing Eli’s lack of money. Almost from the beginning of the scene, you could see in both of their expressions that they were having mental breakdowns. There was obviously something wrong from the very beginning of the scene, yet their words told differently until the moments of the film.

American Identity

Both Henry James and Edith Wharton comment on the way that the identity of an American visiting Europe becomes threatened overseas. They look at the misconceptions that Americans have about Europe and it’s culture. Often, this is brought about using a theme of ignorance among the Americans, addressing the idea that they have no true knowledge of what Europe is like, only what they have heard or misconstrued among themselves.

Henry James’s ideas are mostly portrayed through Daisy. She is described throughout the story as a typical female American tourist. She is uninterested with sight seeing when Winterbourne inquires about it, and she has no desire to learn about the history of the countries she is in. She is mostly fixated on material things and how others see her. This attitude reflects a generalization of American’s ideas of Europe. When Daisy tells Winterbourne about the conversation she has with Miss Featherstone about England and hotels, she is not impressed at all. She believes that she knows all that is to be known about Europe: “She was not disappointed–not a bit. Perhaps it was because she had heard so much about it before. She had ever so many intimate friends that had been there ever so many times. And she had ever so many dresses and things from Paris. Whenever she put on a Paris dress she felt as if she were in Europe.” James is commenting how Americans believe that second hand experiences and a “Paris dress” is all they need in order to understand Europe, which is obviously a misconception.

Edith Wharton comments similarly through the way that Mrs. Ansley and Mrs. Slade views Rome and Italians. They see Rome as a romantic place where everything is done so elegantly and royally because that is they way that it was described to them in New York. When talking to one another early in the story, Mrs. Ansley says, “I think those young Italian avitors we met at the Embassy invited them to fly to Tawuinia for tea. I suppose they’ll want to wait and fly back by moonlight,” to which Mrs. Slade responds, “Do you suppose they’re as sentimental as we were?” Mrs. Ansley finishes by saying, “I’ve come to the conclusion that I don’t in the last know what they are.” This conversation is blatantly showing how they view these Italians. She admits to knowing nothing about them, yet assumes what they do through what she has heard. In the authors perspective, this is a typical view of American tourists and the way they try to instill their misconstrued ideas in Europe.

The Spanish Earth

Viewing the film “The Spanish Earth” was an interesting experience. I have rarely, if ever, viewed such an old film. The fact that it was a documentary brought it to an entirely different level as well. The experimentalism with the documentary genre made the film very applicable to the documentaries today.

The thing that stood out the most was the narration by Ernest Hemingway along with the rest of the audio. Hemingway’s narration was very limited. Most of the film had no narration to it and was left simply to be viewed. This is compared to the documentaries of today, which are narrated almost constantly. I think the lack of narration made visual aspect of the film much more powerful. The scenes seemed to be picked carefully by the producer to give the effect that he wanted, which was to instill a feeling of sympathy for those on the republican side. Hemingway’s narration added to this, by making every thing he said seem poetic and decisive. Never did he say anything that could be taken two ways, or go against anything done by the republicans. Everything he said sounded like a fact, and once his voice was gone, the visual was left to make that fact even stronger.

The fact that all of the audio was dubbed into the film after the actual filming presents an interesting notion about the bias that the film had. The sounds that stood out the most were the sounds of machine gun fire going off in the background of some scenes. Even when there was no apparent battle or military action going on, there would often be dominating sounds of machine fun fire. I think these sounds were dubbed at these times to try to show that the villagers were in constant alert and panic.  This may not have been true at times, at it sure didn’t seem like it if the sounds were taken out, but it shows how bias is always in documentaries. What also added to this was the sounds of bombs exploding when images of destroyed houses were shown, even though there was no actual sighting of what caused the destruction.

The Yellow Wallpaper

“The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is a story that is centered around a theme of female repression. To begin with, the narrator believes that she is sick due to the ways that she is views by those around her. She constantly refers to the things she does through John’s eyes. She continually says  “he said” and “he believes” throughout the beginning of the story. This is a message about the female figure at the time Gilman is writing this story. Women were always seen as possessions of men. If men didn’t see them favorably, they didn’t see themselves favorably. Sadly, many (and most) women were so conditioned into this mindset that they truly believed it, and it ruined their lives. That is how the story continues. The narrator’s constant fixation on the way the world sees her drives her insane. John doesn’t want her to go out because he knows that she is not the perfect female, and he wants to keep her in his control. 

         The woman in the wallpaper represents the culturally repressed female. The narrator becomes one with this figure because she subconsciously realizes she is become one with it. This eventually does happen in the end when they, in my interpretation, morph together into one brain-dead human being. The ugliness she finds in the wallpaper is a representation of the way that society has destroyed the souls of women. “Then I peeled off all the paper I could reach standing on the floor. It sticks horribly and the pattern just enjoys it! All those strangled heads and bulbous eyes waddling fungus growths just shriek with derision!” The “heads” and “eyes” represent both features of the actual wallpaper and the pieces of women that are left in the wall. They are the aspects of themselves that women have lost to the expectations of society—expectations such as beauty being the most important, and intelligence being of lesser importance. Eyes, traditionally, represent a persons soul, and because the eyes have been lost to the wall, so has women’s souls. Similarly with heads, they represent the mind and intelligence, and they have been lost to the wall as well.

Bartleby

I believe that the relationship that the narrator has with Bartleby is the most important piece of the story. The two men are polar opposites of one another. The narrator is a man who has seen success in the common workplace. He is a lawyer who’s business is steadily improving — so much so that he has decided to expand it to hire more employees. This is where Bartleby comes in. He is hired and soon becomes a very unique presence to the narrator. Bartleby’s constant responses of “I would prefer not to” and never leaving the office show how he has become a man that has been chewed up and spit out by the working world. As it is revealed in the end, Bartleby worked at a dead letter office before he worked for the narrator. As the narrator says, “Dead letters! Does it not sound like dead men?” Bartleby, in essence, has seen the world for what it truly is. He has witnessed the hopes and emotions withheld in these dead letters go into the fire to be burned. The narrator sees this in Bartleby, even before he finds it out in the end, and this is why he is so intrigued by him. He cant put into words this fascination he has with Bartleby the first time he tries to get rid of him. The narrator explains, “I strangely felt something superstitious knocking at my heart, and forbidding me to carry out my purpose, and denouncing me for a villain if I dared to breathe one bitter word against the forlornest of mankind.” The narrator feels that Bartleby’s life could have easily been his. They are doppelgangers, of a sort, in this way. We can see their similarities in things such as their shared apathy. The narrator is slow at taking care of obligations, he hires workers to do work he has become tired of, and he strays away from confrontation. This is similar to the way Bartleby refuses to do work and refuses to leave. Their similarities develop the point that Melville is trying to make. The corporate world can make two similar men into two completely different people. In the narrators case, it is a successful lawyer. In Bartleby’s case, it is a depressed, scarred man who’s tormented life eventually leads to his death.

Pico Iyer’s “The Joy of Quiet”

Pico Iyer’s article entitled “The Joy of Quiet” touches upon very interesting points about the path our society is going down. His ideas relate to the “information revolution,” as he calls it, and how it has taken over people’s lives so much so that people are beginning to move away from it. What is astounding is that it has happened so quickly. Even Iyer admits that he is “barely one generation removed” from the technology craze, and he is already trying to move away from it. It is not as if this technology boost has been occurring over a very long period of time. The recent technology from the past few decades is responsible. What are we doing to distance ourselves from it though? Iyer explains that people are taking it upon themselves to stop using the internet, cell phones, and television for extended periods of time. He writes about people taking “internet sabbaths” where they will not use phones or internet for an entire weekend. Iyer also explains how people “seem to be turning to yoga, or meditation, or tai chi;” in order to cope with the clutter of technology in their lives. He even cites hotels where people will pay extra just “for the privilege of not having a TV in their rooms.” This is the “future of travel” according to Iyer.

I would definitely agree with the claims that Iyer is making in his article. With the information he gives such as “the average American spends at least eight and a half hours a day in front of a screen,” and “the number of hours American adults spent online doubled between 2005 and 2009” I cannot help but feel that people are in desperate need of time alone. This time alone that Iyer writes about is time that is spent only with your thoughts, away from anything that will distract you, or make you anxious. I try my hardest to take time where I am alone with myself. I think that people have a very hard time doing this today because they are so used to all the noise, distraction, and overload of information. This is why Iyer’s claim makes sense to me. As time moves on, people will realize how bad all the stress and distraction of technology is, and with the world so populated and urbanizes, solitary times, and areas, will become much more valuable.

Cotton Mather

Cotton Mather and William Bradford greatly differ in the way they write about the people around them that they encounter. Bradford looks at the natives in the area as just plain enemies that the Puritans have the responsibility to defeat. The Puritans have God on their said, and the natives don’t, and that’s all the explanation that Bradford needs. On the other hand, Mather refers to the natives as “the devil” and the land that the Puritans inhabit were once “the devil’s territories.” Unlike Bradford, he sees the natives as a big threat to the Puritans well being because they are incarnates of the devil. The same goes for the supposed “witches” that are living among the Puritans. This can probably be accounted for, in part, to the depression and sadness that Mather had experienced in his life, as described in the beginning of the reading. When one’s life is surrounded by such negative events, one’s view on society is often changed because of it. Instead of seeing the greatness, and graciousness of God, he only saw the hatred and sin that is brought on by the so-called presence of the devil.

Compared to the deviant described by Bradford, the deviant in Mather’s writing seemed to have a much more extensive criminal trial. The man in Bradford’s piece was killed without much choice. The witch trials described by Mather seemed to give those on trial a chance to explain themselves, yet they obviously didn’t have much chance of people siding with them. The witch trials often remind me of many of the trials involving black Americans over the history of the United States. In court cases such as Dred Scott v. Sanford, the trial was made to seem like a fair trial, yet it was obvious that Dred Scott, being black, had no chance to win.

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