Category Archives: Language & Literature

Movie Magic: Cinematic Elements

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In this unit, we learned film terminologies and actually demonstrated each terminology briefly with a collage, short videos, and storyboards. In the analysis specification, we analyzed and took notes about the cinematic elements in Edward Scissorhands directed by Tim Burton as a class. Then, each of us chose an individual film to analyze again. My movie was Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, also directed by Tim Burton. Finally, we chose three cinematic elements to compare and contrast from both films.

From this unit, not only did I learned how cinematic elements are used in films, but also the reason behind why the director chose to use a specific element. Specific cinematic elements are used to achieve the desired effect the director wants the audience to feel. Moreover, the same element can have different impact on a scene. They can be used for different purposes and therefore have different effectiveness. Though cinematic elements sometimes could be hard to notice in film, they can have a significant impact on the audience’s feelings. Despite the greatness of the elements in film, it all comes down to planning and writing the storyboard pre-filming.

Immortal Cells: HeLa

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Summary

In this unit, I read The Immortal Life of Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot, annotated the book using Snapchat, which prepared me for my group discussions, one-pagers, TIEAs, and verbal analysis.

Group Discussion:

TIEA

Blog Posts on ILOHL

1. What Could Terribly Go Wrong for Personal Benefit?
2. Misunderstanding and Its Cause

Verbal Analysis

Unit Reflection

Misunderstanding and Its Cause

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Misunderstanding is simply where communication fails to achieve its purpose. In my life, misunderstanding of someone and the misunderstanding of me happens a lot. Most of the time it happens because of me, and I know this because I know from what came out of me is hard to understand. Misunderstanding is a misconception of the meaning of the message, which, in my opinion is much better than miscommunication. To understand a message from another, communication has to happen. By not communicating, or miscommunication, the message is basically not being sent.

In my personal experience, a simple example of misunderstanding that happened in school was that an appointed meeting with a teacher to discuss how my grade for the course can improve went totally wrong. Originally, my goal of the meeting was to discuss an improvement for my assignments in the future, but the meeting became a lecture about why I’m having the meeting. The main problem was not misunderstanding, but miscommunication. Everytime when I had something to ask, the teacher told me to listen first, and told me he/she has got an answer for me. The concept that was misunderstood was the question (message) I had that was never sent, and the teacher thought he/she had it. I soon realized that this was no discussion nor meeting, but a lecture. Therefore, the true problem is the communication that never happened.

Communication by d7o0om s via flickr / All rights reserved

In The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot, misunderstanding is caused by language, education differences, and race barriers. The communication between Henrietta and her cells and Doctor Gey never happened and misunderstanding occurred to Deborah about Skloot’s purpose of writing books. HeLa cells had made the world terrified of cancer. Moreover, this resulted of scientists’s selfishness and nervousness all show up at once.

In my opinion, misunderstanding could be resolved simply be a clarification or a double-check about the concept being transferred and received. The hard part for me, and probably most of the misunderstanding is the miscommunication, because with communication, lots of concepts could get straighten up.


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Bibliography:

  1. Skloot, Rebecca. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. New York: Broadway Books, 2010. Print.

What Could Terribly Go Wrong for Personal Benefit?

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In The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot, a poor black woman named Henrietta Lacks has some cancer cells that were unique: ones that could continue cell division forever. Renamed after Henrietta Lacks, HeLa cells quickly became a new field of study. However, without the acknowledgement of Henrietta herself, her cells were taken into research and study all over the world.

“Henrietta knew nothing about her cells growing in a laboratory” (Skloot, 42).

This is just the beginning. A field of study suddenly created and extremely popular wouldn’t take long to let Henrietta figure out about what was being done with her cells. The irony here is: even if she knew sooner, there’s nothing she could do. Just like that, she soon died of cancer. But the progress never stopped, as well as the growth of her cells. Her family faced the same problem, powerless. Now we see how terribly privacy could be handled by even doctors for personal benefits. The immortality of her cells costs her life, but her life costs nothing but cells that made other people famous.

“The internet made the world a smaller place, but has the internet made the world a safer place?” (Al Jazeera).

The more people are connected together by internet, the more privacy are exposed. This is meant to take each internet user’s digital footprint into consideration in big data analytics to better understand their program for the better. In other words, considered as benefits to them.


“Internet” by John Schnobrich via Unsplash

This is evidence that the issue of progress vs. privacy does not only occur in the past, they reappear with another form in the present day–with the same reason. We should all be careful of violating others’ privacy and also protect ourselves’.

Poetry in Motion

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I really enjoyed this poetry unit because I had the opportunity to create my poem under support and variables we practiced in class into a product. I learned aspects to make my poetry writing better and understood how literary devices and structure in poems could help improve self expression and voice.

Unit Reflection:

Compare and Contrast TIEATIEA+C Paragraph:

Poem Performance:

Personal Poem & Memoir Poem: My Family & Our Time has Just Begun:

Dramatic Reading
“Braiding” (171-172)from The Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo

The Poet X Discussion (Part 2)

Poem Annotation:

If I’m A Witch, You’re A Witch

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In this unit, we read and analyzed The Crucible written by Arthur Miller, a tragedy play that took place in Salem written and performed in the 1953. The play itself includes a lot of themes and connections between characters’ relationships and the story setting. Therefore, we gave extra effort to really go above and beyond. First, we had a dramatic reading summative that allows us to get into a character’s tone, emotion, actions, and communication. Then, we analyzed a prompt given to us by the TIEA format, which allows us to think deep and take evidence from the play write to support our message. Lastly, we composed a blog post that shows connections on a theme in the play write to either text, self, or world.

Dramatic Reading

TIEA

Blog Post
The Disjoint OR Mutually Exclusive Characters

The Disjoint OR Mutually Exclusive Characters

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When two events are disjoint, they have no common outcomes and cannot occur together. Have you wondered how this definition plays a role in The Crucible?

For two disjoint events, the probability that one or the other occurs is the sum of the probabilities of the two events. In The Crucible, Judge Hathorne and the Deputy Governor, Judge Danforth, are the two characters that serves as foil for each other.

In Act 3 in The Crucible, Judge Danforth holds and displays the power and dominance he has in the court. However, this makes his anxiety clear that he centers on his reputation to the majority. Therefore, it makes his decision biased, or that his decision can be altered easily based on the majority’s opinion.

Judge Hathorne doesn’t worries about his reputation because he has the majority’s trust. The minority who does not agree with him doesn’t matter. However, he does not trust the accuracy of his opinions. As the service of foil, Danforth trust himself as a fair-minded, which allows the court to be processed. Even though the two characters have completely opposite character traits, it allows the play to rise in plot, but doesn’t cross the line. If they have the same character trait of Judge Hathorne, the purpose of the court serves nothing. If they have the same character trait of Judge Danforth, there will be arguments arising between the two judges and the dominance control over the court.

“Power and Dominance in the Court” by quimono via Pixabay

HATHORNE, astonished. She have robbed you?
PARRIS. Thirty-one pound is gone. I am penniless. He covers his face and sobs.
DANFORTH. Mr. Parris, you are a brainless man! He walks in thought, deeply worried. (117)

The emotion and context Harthorne and Danforth serves is completely different in the court. Hathorne doesn’t make much opinions about the case while Danforth bursts out his thoughts.

HATHORNE. Excellency, she is condemned a witch. The court have–
DANFORTH, in deep concern, raising a hand to Hathorne. Pray You. To Parris. How do you propose, then? (118)

The power and dominance of the court surely is being hold by Danforth, that he has the power to cut off Hathorne’s words.

The connection to characters that serves as foil to each other, isn’t necessarily disjoint about the characters, it’s about their character trait. To me, each and every family are disjoint because they each have different ways of doing things and things that they are used to do. Family members are complement to each other which also serves as foil to each other about their placement in the family. Some family members take up more and the others will receive less, but the probability that one or the others occur is the sum of the probabilities of the all the family members, 1.

The definition also allows the rule that one cannot entirely take over the other, in other words, to replace. If Judge Hathorne doesn’t have Danforth, he will have no control over the court, because nobody’s in control if Danforth’s gone. In another perspective, if a family member takes over another’s spot in the family, it’s not a family because someone is there but stands zero in the probability of 1.

MLA Citations:

Miller, Arthur. The Crucible: A Play In Four Acts. New York : Penguin Books, 1976. Print.

Hypocrites in The Crucible

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Beliefs doesn’t only show the problem of witchcraft in the play but also are an important theme in the time period and in the city of Salem. As beliefs can represent a person’s value, people that value their reputation a lot will try to use the belief as a tool to make themselves look more noble and righteous.

In The Crucible by Arthur Miller, John Proctor is a hypocrite because he uses the belief that is popular to make his reputation look good. And to preserve and protect his reputation, he presented himself in the guise of others and often made basic violations in life. As Reverend Hale interviewed Proctor at late evening, to present his thought about religion, Proctor showed trouble in answering the basic 10 commandments. Moreover, describes this most important part of religion to be a small fault.

PROCTOR, counting on his fingers: Thou shalt not steal. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s goods … With some hesitation: Thou shalt remember the Sabbath Day and keep it holy. He is stuck. He counts back on his fingers, knowing one is missing. Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image.

HALE: You have said that twice, sir.

PROCTOR, lost: Aye. He is failing for it. (Miller, 63).

Image by Jondolar Schnurr from Pixabay

After deep considerations about what is being violated, I agree with Proctor, what he said. As for what he did, is obviously wrong.

PROCTOR, as though a secret arrow had pained his heart: Aye. Trying to grin it away—to Hale: You see, sir, between the two of us we do know them all. Hale only looks at proctor, deep in his attempt to define this man. Proctor grows more uneasy. I think it be a small fault. (Miller, 64).

I do not agree with what Proctor did here, in other words, he has great reputation, only because he is known religious, which is a betrayal of his person. However, compared to other hypocritical characters such as Reverend Hale, the spiritual leader of the community, he violates the commandments by his greedy and selfish trait. Compared to what Proctor said, “it be a small fault” is what I agree on. If religion is so important and righteous, these conflicts and arguments wouldn’t occur. It is because these people are too dependent on religion so that all actions will be connected with religion and conflicts would occur. I suppose these characters will get better along without religious belief, and if not, referring back to what Proctor mentioned, don’t depend too much on it.

Works Cited:
Miller, Arthur. “The Crucible.” New York, Penguin Classics, 2003.

Making Connections With The Crucible

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There is always blatant lies someone tells and everyone else believes, and even worse, it affects the other’s reputation in ways more than one.

In The Crucible, the most significant scene that played is that after Abigail led the witchcraft practice in the forest with the girls, she accuses Tibuta to be the head of all of it after being confronted by Reverend Hale. In Tibuta’s perspective, I can really notice her feelings from her tone and emotion, first having fun dancing in the woods, together doing the same thing, but when troubles come, one jumps out to blame the other as if first come first serve.

“Abigail: Don’t lie! To Hale: She comes to me while I sleep; she’s always making me dream corruptions!
Tibuta: Why you say that, Abby?” (Miller, 41).

It is significant that Abigail lies by telling Tibuta to not lie, and Abigail really took hold of this dialogue trying to convince Reverend Hale about his original accusation, knowing that he just wants someone, anyone to take blame in this trouble. The character traits are completely different and somehow opposite, in Abigail’s perspective, she basically wants Tibuta to die at this point, because the false accusation already gave it away and Abigail knows that it’ll never go backwards. Tibuta, still in shock of all of this sudden accuse, doesn’t know how to fight back as Abigail has taken hold on this conversation. Finally, with some physical support from Reverend Hale, Tibuta helplessly took the accusation.


“Believers”
Courtroom via Visual Hunt / CC0 1.0 Universal (CC0 1.0) Public Domain Dedication

“Hale: You have confessed yourself to witchcraft, and that speaks a wish to come to Heaven’s side. And we will bless you, Tibuta” (Miller, 43).

It is always frustrating to clean up after someone, or to be accused of something that I never did. As the one being blamed often, I always ask myself “how can people believe lies when the truth is so obvious?” and become so frustrated about why I have no one to blame if it seems so easy for others. In The Crucible, death penalties were everywhere, and that’s why the people in Salem are afraid that they have no one to blame because accusations and playacting will keep coming.