Terrorist?

I have encountered more examples of the frustration aggression theory that has haunted me this semester. The article, Fighting Terrorism Can Terrorists Be Defeated Militarily, I was provided in my Political Science class, was dealing with ISIS and I was required to comment on whether terrorists can be freedom fighters. I personally see this as a yes, depending on the majority that agrees, I do not agree on the killing of their mass murders of the civilians to achieve a desired goal. ISIS sees this act as justified and would fit into the idea that violence is necessary. I realize even more how lucky we are as Americans to be part of democratic government when I read articles like this. I feel discussion would be a great start to a more efficient start to achieve desired goals, but what happens next is the bigger question.

Pursuit of happiness

Okay ,first and foremost, I would like to inform you that this is off topic from zombies but it relates in a way.

I am a man governed  by his own ambitions. I am sure some of you are the same. The pursuit of happiness is not an easy task.  I can admit, I have bitten more then I can chew at times. Have you ever felt that lifes burdens have become too troublesome? When did living become work? They say if you love what you do, you never work a day in your life.

I agree. I also like to add that is not true for most people though. The majority of people work to live. If only we existed in a world free of that burden. Free of  violence. Free of worry. Free to live our dreams out to the fullest. Free to pursue your happiness.

The point here is I am sure some of you feel a little overwhelmed. Not to worry, your not alone. We are all in this swimming pool together. Personally, if I could get a lifeguard, I would, but you know thats the crazy thing about it. Life doesnt always have a guard, and you will have to rely on those around you. Just like survivors in a Zombie outbreak.

Anyways,

Have a good weekend!

The Lazarus Effect

Lately I have been seeing commercials for the new movie, The Lazarus Effect. I recall earlier this semester we discussed that Lazarus and Jesus could be considered as zombies because they were previously dead and came back to life. The movie would not be one I would consider a zombie movie, but some would because of the dead coming back to life.

The idea of bringing back the dead has seemed scary and unnatural to me. I always wondered if the person or creature would be the same and if they went to the afterlife for the time they were dead. If they go to an afterlife, bringing them back would cause them to have a personality change. Would they remember the afterlife? Is it possible to be the same person after dying? How would a person be able to cope with such a colossal event, such as coming back to life?

Here's the trailer for The Lazarus Effect

What about your movie?

Warm Bodies was a lot better than I thought it was going to be. It has lots of cheesy 80’s music at perfectly timed moments, and gets its point across without being too graphic. There is nothing wrong with graphic movies, but sometimes it’ just nice to see a film where the message was more important than the box office rating and the director and actors didn’t fear being outside of the normal zombie film ideals. I was expecting to see pretty much a zombified Romeo and Juliet, but other than their names and some of the details, the story is nothing like Romeo and Juliet.  I also think it’s fascinating that most people want to believe it is just a love story, but I think there is more.

What about your movies? Were you expecting something different from your film? Were you surprised at some of the ideas that people took away from the movie? Were you disappointed in your movie? Are there any major things you would’ve changed if you had directed the film yourself?

kicking homework's ass.... Eventually

Alrighty, here I am a week later than and still as unorganized as ever. But coming from a student perspective, being midterm week and all, I have gotten pretty good grades and… I may be becoming an RA in the VERY near future! While this isn’t about zombies or anything, I just want to put this here because it is very exciting for me!!!! I am really hoping to work with freshman and be able to change or make a difference in someone’s life. In a sense I like bringing the “dead” to “life”. I will know today if I got accepted or not so cross your fingers for me!!!!!

            In the term of essay, I have been pretty dead. Today I feel much more motivated than before but hopefully I can kick homework’s ass this weekend and become the old Sabrina all organized and well prepared! So here I come essay, get ready to be AWESOME!

            I hope everyone has a great weekend and gets some rest! A great writer also is a great dreamer! 

A Really Dedicated Viewer

In my research for articles relating to my gun control topic, I was forced to widen my search to general weapons use in zombie movies. Because of this I found a really awesome website that highlights every death in The Walking Dead by character who killed the zombie, method of the killing as well as what season it occurred in. The article was linked in another article which was arguing that the message of gun control in The Walking Dead takes a very moderate stance. I found this rather interesting considering the amount of violence and importance placed on weapons in the first season. The characters of Andrea and Shane value their guns over most other things. I can see how they are made to be the "bad guys" that the viewers are meant to dislike, but what I don't understand is how the author of the article believes that portraying these characters as the gun toting radicals is a moderate stance.
Graphic Stopping the Dead - the zombie kill break down
This brings me to an even more interesting website that I found: The Internet Movie Firearms Database (IMFD). This website is set up like Wikipedia, but all of the entries are list and graphics of all the weapons used in a certain movie. While I am not going to be able to turn it in for my annotated bibliography, I find that it will be rather useful for my essay's argument. It was amusing to see only 5 weapons were shown in an entire zombie movie, while other zombie movies that I looked up (such as Zombieland) gave me carpal tunnel from all the scrolling.
Good luck to everyone else on their papers. I hope that y'all are not having as difficult of a time finding sources as I am.

Professor Rooney

This has been weighing heavy on my mind lately and I thought this would be an appropriate place to pay some respect. For those of you that werent already informed, one of the communications professors passed away on Saturday the 21st from cancer. This woman just happened to be my Comm 202 professor. When I heard the news, I was kind of in shock. I am fortunate enough to never have had anyone close to me pass away before besides my grandpa. But I was too young to remember. Professor Rooney was such a patient, kind and understanding woman. As I said before, I had her this semester for Comm 202. We had a few classes together and I delivered to her my first introduction speech. Professor Rooney always made us feel comfortable while speaking in class which I appreciated more than she will ever know. I wish we would have had more time together because I feel that I could have learned a lot from her. Rest in peace Professor Rooney. Communications will not be the same, I feel sad when I'm in the classroom now. But you are in a better place and I'm sorry we didn't have more time together or for you to see who won the Bachelor as we talked about in class. For any of you who had her previously or know of her, here is the link to her obituary. You can leave a comment if you want, http://www.dbthompsonfuneralhome.com/mindex.php?id=532897&type=obit

New look?

After our discussion in class today, I played around a bit with the blog's design template. What do you think of this one? Another alternative is to use the same template as I use for my other class's blog. Which do you prefer?

Bechdel Test

Here's a clip describing the Bechdel Test, something we talked about in class today. It's very interesting!

Movie in Context

So, I didn't intend on rewriting my entire paper, but for some reason my thoughts were effortlessly flowing last night. That nearly never happens when I'm writing about a paper, so I'm pretty jazzed up about it. I would like to hear your guys' opinions on my guiding question, thesis, and sources. I would seriously appreciate some feedback on this, and I will absolutely do the same for any of you; if any of you would like to send me your rough draft or thoughts at any point and time, feel free to email me @ lknock01@rams.shepherd.edu. Sometimes all you need is to get some ideas bouncing around in order to be successful!
______

Alright, so my movie is World War Z. I find it quite difficult to pick out issues from this movie that aren't so broad, because as it goes, the movie is pretty diverse. Austin already seemed to take a liking to the whole Israel bit from the same movie, so I definitely won't write about that, and save Hanrahan the boredom of reading two similar papers. Instead, I am writing about sexism in the movie.

My current guiding question is:
A question repeatedly provoked throughout the movie is whether or not Forster’s film is as sexist as it appears to be, and why exactly he reverted to “traditional” gender roles.

My thesis is:
The clear imbalance of male dominance verses female dominance in World War Z shows the lack of charge in diversifying strong female lead characters, and in turn, reverts back to the standard gender roles of the fifties and sixties, as well as contributes to an already male dominated movie genre.

The sources I'm using for this movie (for the annotated bibliographies) as of this far, are:

1. Max Brooks original novel on World War Z, and the evidence of him listing around 46 characters to speak about the zombie outbreak, and only 5 are women.
2. An online Business Insider article about the Bechdel test, which proves sexism in movies by three simple rules, and explains how action movies are predominately male hero involved.
3. A book about Altruism, which shows kind of the historic reason as to males willingly sacrifice themselves for the greater good.
4. A TED talk from Malala's father, Ziauddin Yousafzai. Evidence shows he is for the equality in men and women alike, and a powerful direct quote shows that they are not as equally treated in the world today.

Now, I think the hardest part about this essay are the two questions that Hanrahan poses. I can't tell you how many times I've had to look back at these.
***How does context/kairos give us a deeper understanding of the film’s message? And how does storytelling, itself, allow the filmmakers to speak about a complex issue, when doing so through other means would be difficult?


The context including sexism gives us the same ideals about how gender roles are stitched in to basically everything relevant in today's society, for the most part.
The most difficult question I had to answer was how filmmakers speak about the issue.
The issue ITSELF is how the movie features a white, male, hero, and really doesn't showcase any powerful women, just women needing to be rescued.

Tell me if my conclusion sounds like it answers these questions!

In the end, the main point of the movie and story alike is to promote the notion that if a zombie apocalypse were to happen, there would be heroic individuals to help save the day. Unfortunately, like the large majority of action movies and Bechdel tests show, the typical dominate male would more than likely be the bread winner transitioned into a hero. Women are frequently shown as needing to be saved in action films as either the backup plan for reproduction, or as damsels in distress who need saving. These gender roles are repeatedly brought to the viewer’s attention throughout World War Z by showing the quick thinking on Gerry’s part towards the aversion of the rape of his wife, and the near death of Segen, a military official. Forster repeatedly, perhaps unintentionally, brings up gender roles and uses real world situations and reactions such as impromptu amputation, or wide spread city panic, in order to apply a sense of realism to the film. The complexity of Forster putting gender roles on display in such a worldwide viewed movie shows that he is inadvertently bringing attention to the large problem of sexism itself, while still grabbing the attention of traditional action movie viewers, and forcing everyone as a whole to view the problematic nature of sexism in movie genres.


Thanks for reading!

Love,
Laura