The Falling Man

This picture has haunted the minds of most Americans just as frequently as have the other images associated with September 11th, 2001. It is iconic of the despair felt by the nation; the image of the lone man leaving behind one terrible fate only in order to embrace another one. The picture stirs up all kinds of feelings for myself as well as most others that witness it; even those few people that weren't in either tower at the time of the attacks tend to feel the vibes of helplessness and sheer desperation that most of those trapped inside surely felt. This picture, like others of its kind that represent the largest times of suffering for humanity, inspires plenty of emotions and feelings that one can't help but endure. The feelings and thoughts running through my mind, however, are clearly different compared to those voiced by Esquire magazine.
While Esquire doesn't hesitate to paint this man as something more than he is, as a sort of symbol of American freedom, I have to point out some obvious facts. According to Tom Junod, the writer of the article, this man didn't choose his fate- but at the last moment he clearly "embraced it." Junod also doesn't hesitate to mention that at the last minute this man epitomizes the spirit of rebelliousness. The man is fighting physics, a law that can't be broken, in a fight he is destined to fail, but damn it he is still doing it.
After a bunch of fancy wordplay and imagery, I have to call shenanigans. While this image is certainly iconic, and represents the attitudes and sheer chaos and destruction that walks hand-in-hand with the attacks committed on September 11th, I feel like the writer of the article for Esquire is tarnishing this man's image. He is being painted to be some kind of American hero, as some kind of rebel-without-a-cause. James Dean meets world tragedy. In all honesty, all the writer seems to do for me is demean the man's memory by building him up to be something he is not. He is a man that jumped off of the WTC building to die in a preferable way to the alternative. He isn't someone who found himself where he was and decided to accept his fate while still not giving in. "Arms cocked rebelliously" turns into a man plummeting towards the ground in the last seconds of his life. He wasn't trying to make a statement, so why turn him into one?
No wonder the family responded so angrily. Because the writer tried to turn this man into something more than what he was, the last image and memory anyone has of him is false. Not only is it false, but it is a country-wide lie. While I do agree that the American people needed a hero to turn to during this time, changing a man's final memory to fit other purposes isn't right.

Harold and Maude

Harold and Maude is a movie for the ages. Typically when I think of seeing old movies, I tend to immediately expect disappointment. I do not know where the bias came from, but for some reason there it is. This time, much like the other times I watch older movies, I was pleasantly surprised. Harold and Maude set out to teach the audience the things they are missing about their life. Watching this movie is meant to allow people to acknowledge everything about their lives and embrace them. Pain should be embraced, as well as pleasure. Death isn't the end, and nobody should let it be that for them.
The biggest thing that caught my eye was the different scenes with the various authority figures in his life, with pictures of THEIR authority figures behind them. The reasoning for this was as clear as day to me. This movie had a political message, there was no denying it. The fact that this movie was made in the seventies makes it even more obvious, when every time anyone did almost anything it was supposedly representing some "higher message"- which at that decade meant it was against whatever politics were going on. The crippled uncle who makes a fool out of himself every time he tries to salute and be patriotic had a picture of Nixon on the wall behind him; the creepy and overly sarcastic Priest had a picture of the Pope behind him, and Harold's overbearing psychiatrist had a picture of Freud behind him. The reason for each of these is to accomplish multiple things. First of all, it gives the impression that this boy - this young, free spirit - is stacked up vs the rest of the world. He is alone, overwhelmed, and outnumbered six to one. The other reason is because it is meant to show how different Harold is. While each of these three people are spouting the belief system of the people more powerful than they are, Harold bows down to nobody. He makes his own decision. And finally it comes down to the final thing; the depiction of how each of these men has one father figure who they embraced, and as such believe that Harold will embrace them as his missing father figure. Clearly we see that it doesn't happen, so the pictures are there to show, again, the big difference between Harold and society.
This movie was funny, deep, and quick witted. It was well done overall, and it went ahead and showed the way of life followed by many back then. Live life, don't fear death, and grow from the pain you experience.

Requiem for a Dream

Requiem for a dream is one of my favorite movies of all time. It bring the issues related to drug and alcohol abuse to light in more of an intense way than movies had done before this. I think that is one of the more interesting aspects of the movie, aside from the whole flick itself; the fact that it was willing to push the envelope in order to get a statement across.

That's the other thing I noticed about this movie: it is very rare nowadays that a movie comes out that has an explicit moral or lesson. When movies like Superbad/Pineapple Express/Tropic Thunder are some of the biggest and most popular films it seems like the audience wants fewer and fewer lessons to be preached at them through their method of big screen entertainment, and more and more random laughs.

While I did enjoy the hell out of those movies, it really is kind of refreshing to get hit with a healthy dose of "here's something to take away from watching this" without having to resort to "survivorman" or "dirty jobs". The message in this movie is, to my understanding, do not lose sight of what is important whatever you do. The drugs they use throughout the movie do nothing other than provide a new focus for these peoples' lives to go on, or they make it so the people get so dependent that they can't even experience what they want to experience without the assistance of medication. Do not lose sight of what is important in life, and live every moment like it's your last. That's what I got from this movie anyway.

It's weird, but before I took this class I would not have thought that the utter abuse of alcohol and drugs could even get to the extent that the movie depicted; after reading about some of the things people have done, though, and after watching and talking about some of the things we've gone over in class my eyes have been opened, so to speak. The fact that people can get to that extent is now definitely something I'm more adjusted to, even though I haven't necessarily experienced it myself.

Push by Sapphire

This book absolutely blew my mind. As soon as it started I had to reread the line about having her father's child a couple of times just to make sure I understood it correctly. Needless to say, the book got more intense from there.
The thing I thought was interesting was how Clarice seemed to be able to take control of parts of her life even though she was so hopelessly out of control when the story started. It seemed like her way of dealing with people was almost identical to the way her mom would treat people that she didn't like (for example Clarice), with either threats of violence, acting out and not putting up with anything from any other people, or demeaning people in her head where they can't hear her. I feel like talking to herself is probably one of the first ways she learned how to defend herself from the ritualistic savagery she was dealing with at home.
The way the book is written, oddly enough, is one of the reasons why I feel like I can truly connect with Clarice. Although the things that have happened to her and her general way of life are so completely the opposite of my own, the characterization of her through the writing style allow me to really put a more humanized outlook on what I read. I get the idea that this is someone to whom life has been nothing but abusive, but at the same time she really doesn't understand it because it is all that she knows.

Pain and Music

I feel like the relationship between music and expressing pain is a tough one to boil down. Going by what I get from pop culture nowadays, a lot of the modern artists I feel exploit the idea of "the suffering artist" in order to amass a larger fan base and sell more albums. In some ways, one might say, you have to respect that as well. The artists that do this to make a buck are enough in tune with the pain and suffering some people can go through in order to write a song that everyone can feel related to, so that has to count for something, right?
Not so much, in my personal opinion. Nowadays, in our culture, I would argue that more people know of various types of physical and emotional pain rather than actually feel that way, thanks to various pop culture movements and the art of making cookie cutter movies. In my opinion, it is this knowledge, followed by the "fear of pain" that causes us to relate to the first embodiment of that pain we actually see, and it is that knowledge of how we are supposed to react to pain (thanks to songs, movies, etc) that then dictates how we actually react. Which then, in turn, leads us to buy more albums from that one artist that just totally gets it. This self perpetuating cycle is seemingly endless, and kind of depressing if it is true. But while I am cynical, I also can think of it from the other point of view.
On the flipside, there is no denying that there are artists that use music as a mode of self expression. Hell, they ALL might even do that, but I don't entirely buy that there are no artists out there faking pain to make a buck. Back to the point, though; some people, like Kurt Cobain from Nirvana, were generally messed up. Music then most likely became a way of letting those few people put their experiences and feelings into words; in a way, like the transition from the Chaos Narrative to the Quest Narrative. These songs are essentially the artist's journey through a painful experience, and when they are all put together they seem to provide a self-medicated storyline that almost anyone can listen and connect to.
Clearly the situation changes with the artist, song, and topic, but I feel in general that it is one way or the other.

Tweak

Nic Sheff's Tweak is a book that is difficult to read. Not because the wording is particularly hard to understand, or because he says things I find it hard to relate to; on the contrary, it is disturbingly easy to follow where he is at in this book and recognize how he got there. It is a fantastic book, and it makes me want to read the one written by his father so I can get a perspective on his story from the man Nic has the utmost respect for.
It is not too difficult to connect with Nic in this story - I haven't gotten to the point he is at and I don't have any issues with addiction, but I see the reasoning behind what started him on that path and I can connect with it. The feelings he had and his life around him resonates a lot with the way I felt growing up and the lives of some of my friends, and it is not difficult to see myself or others in a completely different place and state of mind if we had reacted in the same ways he had.
Nic seems to be a man that is just trying to run from life, and from the normalcy he saw himself heading towards. He talked about wanting to excel at almost anything, and that his desire for attaining perfection drove him to start doing the things he did. It is interesting, because you hear about the stories of addicts a lot nowadays thanks to half the shows on TV and most celebrities being very open with the things they do - a lot of these people seem to do it more because it was convenient, or because they had a really crappy home life and didn't know how to handle it; most of Nic's life growing up, aside from dealing with a strenuous relationship between his birth parents, was spent doing fairly well for himself. Great at school, surrounded by friends and family but still feeling like an outsider, eventually he needed an escape from the life he had built up around himself and it led to to his addiction. This story is, without a doubt, easy to read - this combined with how simple it is to connect to on many levels made it difficult to put the book down.

Saw V

Saw V, the newest movie in the cash-magnet franchise, is not exactly a big deviation from the concepts set forth by its predecessors. While the movie's twists and turns are definitely out there, and in some cases might even be getting a tiny bit redundant, the real draw power of these movies comes from the mind twisting torture scenes and the idea that people could be put through these demented sort of games in order to be taught a lesson.
It is a kind of guilty pleasure for both myself and people I know to go to the movies and see a man being cut into multiple pieces in a sort-of "Pit and the Pendulum" style moment. Granted I wouldn't do this to anybody else, and you can be sure I don't want a draft going through my midsection, but there is without a doubt a sort of perverse fascination with scenes of typical people doing these types of things to each other. I think that the reason people can't get enough of things like this comes from the fact that we really can't see ourselves or other people doing these sorts of things, so when the images are put forward in front of our eyes we are forced to associate with these acts in ways we never really wanted to - essentially it allows us to live vicariously through the movies and characters portrayed on the big screen.