Thursday, November 20, 2008
Showtime
I really did not want to perform. If I had known I would have to act back in august when I signed on for this class I may have passed on it. I know that at least one person dropped the class when they found out there would be a performance. I stayed because I think it is important for people to get out of there comfort zone and try new things. When you are young people are always telling you what to do. You didn't want to play the piano, you where no good at piano, but though, here is a piano. Play it 30 minutes everyday. When you get older you get to control what you do. Someone asks you to dance and you hate to dance and feel self-concious when you dance so you don't dance. You have a job and maybe you're pretty good at your job but you don't try new things because they are a little uncomfotable and you don't really grow that much. I was very nervous going into the play but I just shit my pants and dove in. Maybe my performance was flat and I flubbed my lines but I fought though it and gained unique public speaking expereince that I would not have gotten anywhere else.
Sunday, October 12, 2008
Beau Kriedermann
Blog Paper
10-13-08
Reading is not something I do in my free time. With 60 hour workweeks and 10 credits of classes, I just don’t have the time for recreational reading. When reading the material for this course I looked at it as a task to check off as completed rather than a chance to grow as a reader. When approaching the material this way, it is improbable to achieve significant growth during the semester. After analyzing reading for my entire academic career, a single half semester is unlikely to make a huge impact on my reading development.
Before the semester started, my stage of reading development averaged out to just above the text-other texts stage. Occasionally, I would think about the text as it relates to the rest of the world and, if I wasn’t very interested in the text, I would sometimes just look at the text only as it relates to me.
The last book I read for pleasure was probably back in eighth grade. Thinking about that fact now seems a little strange as that was ten years ago. Back then I used to read quite a bit. My favorite authors were Robin Cook and Michael Crichton and I made great use of my library card. When reading Crichton’s Jurassic Park I understood the effects of man playing God written in the text. In Crichton’s Rising Sun I thought of racial relations and how it relates to business. I was reading the books I was interested in so I would often think in terms of the text and how it relates to the world.
In high school, reading was reserved for book reports and textbooks. This is where reading became a chore to check off the list. I would find out what the teacher was looking for and I would read that into the text. My reading development level probably hovered around text-self and text-other texts. I wasn’t interested in what I was reading so I didn’t think too much about the text. Just read it and get the work done as quickly and efficiently as possible.
In college I have made more of an effort to think about the text as it relates to the world. I work a little harder to understand the text. Still, if that relation doesn’t appear to me quickly, I won’t do a whole lot to go out of my way to find it.
As of today I’d rank my reading stage development as just a bit above the text-other texts stage. My blog entries contain mostly that middle stage averaged in with some text-self and text-world thinking. My first blog entry dealing with a text shows my thinking in this stage. The entry deals with the acting analysis of Luhrmann’s Romeo & Juliet. I write: “In this scene Romeo goes from excited and hopeful for good news to devastated by the knowledge of Juliet’s death. The movie chooses to extend the part where Romeo first reacts to the news. In the written play there is no break in the dialog from where Balthasar tells Romeo to where Balthasar exits.” Here I am describing the difference between the Shakespeare text and the Luhrmann adaptation which puts this entry squarely in the text-other texts category. I am only describing the difference between the two works and not offering any reasons as to why each artist did things their way. There is no speculation about potential social, religious, psychological, or other reasons for the artist’s choices which would have put me in the text-world stage of reading development.
A few entries later, the first entry for Titus Andronicus, I exhibit the text-self stage. “I didn’t know anything about Titus Andronicus before I started reading it. Now that I know more about it I can’t say I am a fan of it. The actions of the characters don’t seem realistic to me. When Titus kills his son on a whim it just seems like violence for the sake of violence. I just don’t really care about the characters.” My writing here is all I-centered. It is all about my feelings on the play and not about how the play relates to other work or other aspects of the human condition. This can be attributed to the fact that I wasn’t very excited about the reading and therefore tuned out part of the message.
My latest entries had more of a Text-World stage of reading development. Here I am writing about the character of Aaron and his seemingly contradictory love of his son. “Still, it shows a part of him that isn’t seen elsewhere. Perhaps if circumstances had been different Aaron could have turned out more human. He does have the ability to care about something. Maybe it is just easier to be evil than it is to care about your life and end up being disappointed.” I display psychological thinking that isn’t written necessarily written on the page. The entry is about how the character is defined and the political circumstances that made him who he is.
To move to the next stage of reading development I will have to be more conscious of my reading development. Usually I read the words and that’s that. If a text-world centric idea comes to me I would recognize it but I would not be necessarily looking for it. If I were to keep the stages of reading development in mind when reading, I would be more likely to think in terms of text-world because I’d be looking for ideas outside the text.
Though my last blog entries were more text-world centered, I would attribute this more to learning the format of the blog entry rather than becoming a more proficient reader. Every experience with reading analysis will improve one’s skills but after nearly twenty years of reading and writing experience it is unlikely to make a substantial impact in half of a semester. I would say I have experienced a marginal improvement which I am very satisfied with as long as that improvement continues as I advance in my scholastic career.
Blog Paper
10-13-08
Reading is not something I do in my free time. With 60 hour workweeks and 10 credits of classes, I just don’t have the time for recreational reading. When reading the material for this course I looked at it as a task to check off as completed rather than a chance to grow as a reader. When approaching the material this way, it is improbable to achieve significant growth during the semester. After analyzing reading for my entire academic career, a single half semester is unlikely to make a huge impact on my reading development.
Before the semester started, my stage of reading development averaged out to just above the text-other texts stage. Occasionally, I would think about the text as it relates to the rest of the world and, if I wasn’t very interested in the text, I would sometimes just look at the text only as it relates to me.
The last book I read for pleasure was probably back in eighth grade. Thinking about that fact now seems a little strange as that was ten years ago. Back then I used to read quite a bit. My favorite authors were Robin Cook and Michael Crichton and I made great use of my library card. When reading Crichton’s Jurassic Park I understood the effects of man playing God written in the text. In Crichton’s Rising Sun I thought of racial relations and how it relates to business. I was reading the books I was interested in so I would often think in terms of the text and how it relates to the world.
In high school, reading was reserved for book reports and textbooks. This is where reading became a chore to check off the list. I would find out what the teacher was looking for and I would read that into the text. My reading development level probably hovered around text-self and text-other texts. I wasn’t interested in what I was reading so I didn’t think too much about the text. Just read it and get the work done as quickly and efficiently as possible.
In college I have made more of an effort to think about the text as it relates to the world. I work a little harder to understand the text. Still, if that relation doesn’t appear to me quickly, I won’t do a whole lot to go out of my way to find it.
As of today I’d rank my reading stage development as just a bit above the text-other texts stage. My blog entries contain mostly that middle stage averaged in with some text-self and text-world thinking. My first blog entry dealing with a text shows my thinking in this stage. The entry deals with the acting analysis of Luhrmann’s Romeo & Juliet. I write: “In this scene Romeo goes from excited and hopeful for good news to devastated by the knowledge of Juliet’s death. The movie chooses to extend the part where Romeo first reacts to the news. In the written play there is no break in the dialog from where Balthasar tells Romeo to where Balthasar exits.” Here I am describing the difference between the Shakespeare text and the Luhrmann adaptation which puts this entry squarely in the text-other texts category. I am only describing the difference between the two works and not offering any reasons as to why each artist did things their way. There is no speculation about potential social, religious, psychological, or other reasons for the artist’s choices which would have put me in the text-world stage of reading development.
A few entries later, the first entry for Titus Andronicus, I exhibit the text-self stage. “I didn’t know anything about Titus Andronicus before I started reading it. Now that I know more about it I can’t say I am a fan of it. The actions of the characters don’t seem realistic to me. When Titus kills his son on a whim it just seems like violence for the sake of violence. I just don’t really care about the characters.” My writing here is all I-centered. It is all about my feelings on the play and not about how the play relates to other work or other aspects of the human condition. This can be attributed to the fact that I wasn’t very excited about the reading and therefore tuned out part of the message.
My latest entries had more of a Text-World stage of reading development. Here I am writing about the character of Aaron and his seemingly contradictory love of his son. “Still, it shows a part of him that isn’t seen elsewhere. Perhaps if circumstances had been different Aaron could have turned out more human. He does have the ability to care about something. Maybe it is just easier to be evil than it is to care about your life and end up being disappointed.” I display psychological thinking that isn’t written necessarily written on the page. The entry is about how the character is defined and the political circumstances that made him who he is.
To move to the next stage of reading development I will have to be more conscious of my reading development. Usually I read the words and that’s that. If a text-world centric idea comes to me I would recognize it but I would not be necessarily looking for it. If I were to keep the stages of reading development in mind when reading, I would be more likely to think in terms of text-world because I’d be looking for ideas outside the text.
Though my last blog entries were more text-world centered, I would attribute this more to learning the format of the blog entry rather than becoming a more proficient reader. Every experience with reading analysis will improve one’s skills but after nearly twenty years of reading and writing experience it is unlikely to make a substantial impact in half of a semester. I would say I have experienced a marginal improvement which I am very satisfied with as long as that improvement continues as I advance in my scholastic career.
Thursday, October 9, 2008
Thursday, October 2, 2008
10-3-08 Hamlet: In Defense of Mr. Gibson
It seems that just about everyone in the class thought Mel Gibson’s performance in the Zeffirelli Hamlet was laughably poor. I was surprised to see people actually laughing out loud at the movie. I didn’t think it was that bad. It’s no surprise he didn’t win the Oscar for best actor that year but still it’s not as bad as people make it out to be. The performance isn’t memorable for being great or being awful. Gibson was 33 or 34 years old when shooting Hamlet so I don’t think his age is all that unusual for an actor playing a 20 year old character. He was overacting to an extent but I think that could be attributed to the movie being based off a play. Play actors actions are generally embellished so an audience can understand what’s happening. I think the criticism of Gibson’s performance has a large part to do with recent controversies surrounding his personal life. The DUI incident where he made several anti-Semitic remarks coupled with his most recent films of the Passion and Apocalypto that allegedly contain anti-Semitic and racist overtones. Not to mention the homophobia and Anglophobia from the past that was rehashed because of the recent controversies. Gibson has become a punchline. If Gibson wasn’t such a controversial figure and you had just watched Braveheart right before watching this, I think one would be much more lenient to Gibson’s performance. He is so loony in real life that maybe his portrayal of a madman on screen is the most accurate that has ever been done.
Friday, September 26, 2008
9-26-08 Titus, Aaron the compassionate?
Aaron is an evil character. He tells us so. He says more than once that if he ever committed a good deed in his life he regrets doing so. But then why does he care about his son? Is there really a heart inside the beast? Aaron is a man that claims to have no respect for human life and most of his actions would back him up on that. When the life of his child was threatened, he pleads that the child be spared. He cares for that life. It may be the only thing has cares about. Still, it shows a part of him that isn’t seen elsewhere. Perhaps if circumstances had been different Aaron could have turned out more human. He does have the ability to care about something. Maybe it is just easier to be evil than it is to care about your life and end up being disappointed.
Thursday, September 18, 2008
9-19-08 Titus Andronicus thoughts
I didn’t know anything about Titus Andronicus before I started reading it. Now that I know more about it I can’t say I am a fan of it. The actions of the characters don’t seem realistic to me. When Titus kills his son on a whim it just seems like violence for the sake of violence. I just don’t really care about the characters. It seems pretty obvious that Shakespeare was just playing to what was popular and what he thought would sell tickets. The whole thing is very campy. If you compared Titus and Romeo and Juliet with modern movie releases today Titus would be released in the summer as a mindless blockbuster while Romeo and Juliet would come out in the fall: Oscar season. I am playing Titus in our play and I will do my best to be the best Titus I can be but I’m not really a fan of the play.
Thursday, September 11, 2008
9-12-08 Romeo and Juliet Production Analysis
The film adaptation of Romeo and Juliet went over the top with everything. The director choose bright, vivid colors that make the scenes not only come to life but go past coming to life and go into the realm of fantasy. When you add the lively performances of the actors, the film comes off as almost a parody of the written play. The Montague and Capulet boys are nearly cartoon characters in their actions and dress. The modern setting adds a new wrinkle to the history of the play.
The production choices were probably made to appeal to a younger audience. The visuals are eye catching, the performances are in your face, and gun fights are more exciting than sword fights. All these techniques were used to keep the viewers attention.
The production choices were probably made to appeal to a younger audience. The visuals are eye catching, the performances are in your face, and gun fights are more exciting than sword fights. All these techniques were used to keep the viewers attention.
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