My Sunday was planned to be free all day, thanks to the relatively little amount of homework I was assigned on Friday, so I decided to watch the 2013 movie portrayal of The Great Gatsby. Of course, I had my comments, so I’ll just share them in chronological order. (This is going to be a long post – sorry)

The movie started out the same way that the book did – with Nick Carraway’s narrating voice: “In my younger and more vulnerable years…” (1). It immediately tied the movie very closely to the book, and the rest of the film did not disappoint in that regard. What struck me about that scene in the movie though, was how old and tired Nick sounded. And it occurred to me that this was possibly Nick recounting the story decades after it happened. But once the sanitarium came into view, it came to no surprise to me when Nick’s face appeared still young shortly afterwards – the memory clearly haunted him immensely. The movie made it seem that Nick was extremely effected by what happened, aging him decades in only a short period of time, while the book kind of plays off a sort of cool indifference on his part, especially during his encounter with Tom Buchanan years after everything happened.

Also, let’s take a moment now to appreciate this particular doctor’s handwriting, while still flowery, maintains a semblance of legibility.

Then, we enter Nick’s flashback to the very beginning of his New York adventures. But where the book contained archaic writing, the movie was able to portray the liveliness and magic of the “Roaring Twenties” with the old timey videos and energetic music. And the way Nick said “East Egg” really made it sound like a magical fairytale land – which, of course, we know, is not.

And then, Nick visits the Buchanan residence.

But first, Tom’s mustache.

OK, now that we have that out of the way, on to the magical quality of Tom and Daisy Buchanan’s majestic home. It’s definitely a sight to behold, what with the light filtering in through flowy curtains and hundreds of servants who seem to be dancing in sync.

Also, why is Jordan so tall? She literally looks like a giant next to Nick.

The next part is one of my favorites in the entire movie, because YASSSS pretty music. Please listen to it while you read the rest of my post (I’m listening to it while I’m writing this post). Not only will it make me immensely happy (because I probably wasted too much time looking for this on the Internet and will have something to show for it), you will be better for it, too. I swear, pretty music is good for you. (link here)

Next, on to the Valley of Ashes. It is almost literally a mass of gray – gray skies, gray buildings, gray people. Doctor T.J. Eckleburg is basically the only hint of color in the Valley of Ashes. This large pair of eyes was compared to the eyes of God almost in the very beginning of the movie, and alluded to many more times in the film, while in the book, Wilson only commented that “God sees everything” (126) after Myrtle’s death. The large billboard itself also appears many times in the film, which makes it seem like a more emphasized symbol than it was in the novel. And that’s due to the nature of the two mediums – unless something is stated in a book, either implicitly or explicitly, it doesn’t exist, but as long as the camera is able to pan over a landscape in a movie, everything exists.

Gatsby’s parties! 

They look absolutely crazy, something you wouldn’t be able to tell from the, once again, archaic writing of the novel. Of course, that’s not Fitzgerald’s fault, as it was the writing style of the time, but just the movie’s merit. So many things can’t be captured by just words on a page, such as the rhyme in “Broadway directors, morality protectors, high school defectors,” which wasn’t a part of the book but definitely adds to the enchanting effect, or the irony in Jordan’s preference for large parties because “they’re so intimate” (42) that you might have missed in the original if you read too fast, or the morbid foreshadowing of the lyrics of the song playing over the party: “a little party never killed nobody.” And of course, you’d never be able to see Gatsby the way he was at the party, fireworks bursting behind, glass held out in front, with as much vividness as the movie was able to provide.

And Nick and Gatsby’s friendship is portrayed in the movie in a way the book would never be able to. I love the part that Baz Luhrmann (the director) added after Gatsby mentioned “the confidential sort of thing” (68); when Nick said that inviting Daisy is just a favor, without compensation required, the smile that appeared on Gatsby’s face was truly heartwarming. And the part when Nick avoids answering Gatsby’s inquiry about whether the flowers were “too much.” And when Nick came into the house and clanged the pan around the sink to get Gatsby and Daisy’s attention. I’m really glad that Luhrmann decided to add those little moments that weren’t part of the book in, as it develops their relationship more.

And can we just take a moment to appreciate that Gatsby got his “old sport” habit from Dan Cody? When I heard Dan Cody say “old sport” I was like OMG! 

There are also the hidden innuendos that either couldn’t have been mentioned discretely in the book or just weren’t, such as the latin “ad fidelis finem” carved onto Gatsby’s gate. A quick Google search told me that that meant “faithful to the end” – definitely foreshadowing Gatsby’s “end.”

Also, swoosh, swoosh of the ladies' dresses. Too fancy. 

And while we’re on that sophisticated note, let me go crazy over music again. Listen please!! (link here)

The next scene was pretty intense, especially the whole thing with Gatsby trying to get Daisy to tell Tom she never loved him. But when Tom counters with his “I love Daisy, too,” I was almost convinced. And that’s the power of acting – good actors can get into character so well, that you can’t not believe what they’re saying. Of course, I experience this with books too, but I didn’t with The Great Gatsby. Of course, that may be due to the time gap between me and Fitzgerald, messing communication up a bit, but whatever the reason, the movie was a big help in that regard.

After Myrtle’s death, in front of the Buchanan’s house, I could see the disgust for New York City and the people living in it form on Nick’s face – I could see every step it took, I could see the final product, and I could feel it.

And of course, the death of Gatsby. I’ll just let you read my notes for that.

As you can probably tell, I was going through quite a few emotions while watching that scene. And I felt a hatred for Daisy that didn’t quite form with a reading of the book. And when Nick tried to call Daisy, I saw him looking down the stairs at her. Looking down at her. Condemning her. And when he ran down the stairs, yelling at everybody to “get the hell outta here!” I heard him yelling at her.

The last passage of the novel – “borne back ceaselessly into the past” (142) – was beautiful in and of itself. But there was a transcendence achieved through hearing it read by Nick that my emotionless silent reading couldn’t get even close to. It felt great to hear that last part being read aloud, and I thank Tobey Maguire for that.

Lastly, I really enjoyed the movie’s addition of the doctor. It gave context to Nick’s recount of his story, that he “wrote” Gatsby as a form of escape from traumatized memories, and in the process, realized how great the man was.

And there’s my super lengthy (sorry!) comments on The Great Gatsby, the movie!

"Daisy and Jordan lay upon an enormous couch, like silver idols, weighing down their own white dresses against the singing breeze of the fans." (Fitzgerald, 122)

This line conjured up an image of Daisy and Jordan as goddesses, leaning against a shining gold couch, with clouds rolling in, curling around their dainty feet, and then over the peak of Mt. Olympus, which could be seen in the distance. It would make a fine painting.

Quite the display of wealth and sophistication, if you ask me. It’s pretty obvious that that’s what Fitzgerald wanted to achieve, with his use of “silver idols” and “singing breeze.” It creates an image of beauty and power, and reminded me of Greek mythology. By likening Daisy and Jordan to Greek goddesses, Fitzgerald is also comparing the lavishness of the era to Greek deities’ radiance – the “Roaring Twenties,” no doubt, were a time of great prosperity.

But I think there’s a darker interpretation of Fitzgerald’s seemingly beautiful allusion, and knowing the Fitzgerald’s purpose – that is, to decry the hedonistic lifestyle of the 1920’s – it’s not that difficult of a conclusion to come to. The Greek gods were not only famous for their immortality and extravagance – they also possessed very fallible human qualities. By likening The Great Gatsby to Greek mythology, Fitzgerald is also criticizing the rampant materialism that existed during the era. And that’s apparent throughout the rest of the book, too. Despite Gatsby’s lavish parties and Daisy’s apparent exuberance, nobody’s happy. Everybody just wants more, and that eventually leads to tragedy.

I can’t say I was the most attentive student in APUSH last year, or that I took any extra effort to keep what I learned in that class in my brain, but the general feel of the 1920’s stuck with me – a decade of jubilance, with peace and prosperity and happy, dancing children. And, of course, women. Newly liberated women. They gained the right to vote with the 19^th Amendment. They kept the career mobility they found during World War I. They broke out of their traditional female roles, creating the flapper.

The flapper aptly represented the “Roaring Twenties,” seeking pleasure, fun, and risks in the ultimate hedonistic period of America’s history. It was akin to letting a bird out of its cage – the woman in the 1920’s was the image of freedom. Which is why it struck me as odd that Daisy – a supposedly liberated woman who should be enjoying life in the 1920’s – was so obviously trapped.

At a glance, Daisy looks pretty free. She’s affluent due to being married to the “enormously wealthy” (10) Tom Buchanan. But because of his infidelity, the best thing for her would probably be to leave him – and that’s where she’s trapped. She’s unwilling to leave his money and the comfortable life that comes with it, and would rather turn away and try to be “a beautiful little fool” (21).   

And I think that says something about the 1920’s as a whole. This hedonism that’s been seen as so-called “freedom” is actually just a vicious cycle of superficial materialism.

One stanza into “The History Teacher”, and I had to go back to the top and read it again. It seemed a little bit too ridiculous, that a teacher would need to protect his students from the concept of the Ice Age, and hide it behind a million-year-long sweater weather trend. I mean, people even made four kids’ movies out of it!

Ice Age - a series of popular family films

But as I continued to read along, the wry humor gave me a feeling of ambivalence. On the one hand, I wanted to laugh out loud at the well thought out puns and jokes, but on the other, I understood the heavy undertones of the supposedly lighthearted piece.

It’s quite obvious that Billy Collins is trying to warn against protection against the ugly parts of history, that we need to show children the consequences of them, lest (excuse me for the cliché) history repeats itself. He shows it as some sort of a communication disconnect – the history “teacher” is in class, thinking he’s doing the world a service by protecting these children’s innocence, but the children then turn around and act out less extreme versions of what they didn’t learn about on the playground, against “the weak and the smart.” And while the children do this, thinking all is right with the world, because they were never taught that all is not right, the history teacher turns his back and congratulates himself on a job well done, utterly oblivious to the damage he has done.

It’s quite the vicious cycle. On the one hand, they claim that we are “too young” to know about certain things, yet on the other, they stress the need to pass down accurate history in order to prevent more disasters (such as a World War III). And then they blame all the problems on the world on the younger generation. But they forget – who was it who covered our eyes as they had us roam the world? It’s no wonder we bumped into a few poles.

Anna - you're too cruel to us.

Last Wednesday, Mrs. Tuma told us about some new part of the Troy curriculum, in which all subjects needed to incorporate writing… or something like that. To be honest, once we learned that we would need to write in art, we all basically plugged our ears and refused to listen any longer. Writing should stay in the English classroom, we thought. The next day, we talked about art in English.

The subject of my first-sixth hour switch was Officer of the Hussars, a painting by African-American artist Kehinde Wiley, which Ms. Valentino had seen at an exhibition at the Detroit Institute of Arts, and had claimed to be “very provoking.” We proceeded to spend the next hour attempting to provoke some discussion from the painting. Needless to say, just like writing in art, analyzing the visual rhetoric of the painting was a bit awkward (it wasn’t quite like Maus – that was still considered literature. This was a different art form altogether).

We were allowed to use our phones to search up the painting in order to see it in more detail. When I googled Officer of the Hussars, however, the first thing that showed up wasn’t the photorealistic painting of an African man on a horse. It was this.

It’s realistic, I guess. But not entirely. It’s 19^th century realistic; the shadows don’t dig quite as deep, the details aren’t as articulated, the textures aren’t as naturally random as in real life. But Wiley’s painting (my artist self quivers in awe at the photorealistic-ness of it) – that’s skill. There’s just the perfect contrast between the lights and the darks, the right amount of detail in his veins, and the normal irregularity in the folds of his clothes. It seems to me as if Wiley cut out a picture and pasted it over the former Officer of the Hussars.

 Wiley borrows a large part of the original painting so people can identify that he’s fighting a war. But the two Officers of the Hussars are fighting different wars. Wiley's war is definitely more realistic, more concrete. There’s a larger contrast – a more distinct rift between the two sides of racism. There’s more detail – more intricacies resulting from the hundreds of years this conflict has existed for. There’s more irregularity – more confusion as to the reason of the conflict. It seems pointless, this hatred of skin color, but the war between acceptance and rejection exists nonetheless.

According to Price in “The Plastic Pink Flamingo: A Natural History”, one half of the flamingo’s success is due to its bright pink hue. She lists a plethora of “electrochemical pastels” (line 33) of the 50’s in lines 34 to 36. As an artist, I could tell you exactly what kind of dingy olive green you would get from mixing cadmium yellow and ultramarine blue, but I am ashamed to admit that I couldn’t imagine half of the colors Price references (I blame the generation gap). So I need to get my act together and figure these colors out.

Tangerine: This is one I know, and I think everyone will know. The color of the citrus fruit that is so amazingly soothing to consume if you have a sore throat. Also, kind of reddish. Like a dark coral?

Broiling magenta: Ah, magenta. The consensus color people default to when they get tired of debating whether Sarah’s shirt is pink or purple – we all know magenta. But broiling magenta? It sounds like a color used on a hot summer day. My verdict: a darker magenta. Like the pink/purple version of maroon. Doesn’t sound particularly “pastel”-y (line 33) to me.

Livid pink: Livid reminds me of that one crazy aunt everybody has, the one who finds faults in everything and is convinced the world is ending – and angry, always angry. Interestingly, this word that’s used to describe pink has a dictionary definition of “a dark purplish color” (Merriam-Webster). A dark mixture of purple and pink… isn’t this just broiling magenta?

Incarnadine: This one loses me. A quick Google search shows me… a dark pinkish-red. I don’t know, I kind of imagined “forward-looking” colors to be brighter, but they’re all pretty dark. But no matter. Moving on.

Fuchsia demure: Fuchsia, I know, is a pink. A fuchsia, I also know, is a redish, pinkish flower. And demure means modest and ladylike (which I didn’t know but the dictionary told me). I thought these hues weren’t “old-fashioned” (line 37)?

Congo ruby: Ruby is a dark blood-red jewel. I’ll just end it here.

Methyl green: Wow, a cold color in this lengthy list of warm pinks! And what a cold color indeed – methyl reminds me of my AP chemistry days, which could be considered the dark ages of my life thus far. Also, apparently methyl green is the name of an actual chemical compound. I must have forgotten that. In any case, Google Images shows me that this is the only remotely “pastel” color in the list.

Having done that research, I now feel slightly deceived. These mostly dark colors are, by any stretch of the imagination, not “electrochemical pastels,” “forward-looking,” or “sassy” (line 40). With an initial reading of the essay, I had the notion that America was obsessed with bright, joyful colors. I do have to commend Price for her artful manipulation of these colors – it just further proves her point that American consumerism was (and is) absolutely ridiculous.

I know of a friend who might be rejoicing after reading this post – maroon is her favorite color. I, however, am partial to brighter colors, and am now suffering from a saturation deficit. I’ll need to go find an essay about consumerism in the 70’s.  

Barbie has become a familiar image in mainstream society.

Nickolay Lamm's proportioniate Lammily doll. What a creative name.

Lammily's acne is the very epitome of natural beauty.

We’re done with week 2 of Maus, and increasingly, I am of the opinion that we have been overanalyzing it.

“Why is Maus split into different panels, and not one large image, class?”

I think when Ms. Valentino asked that, I came close to rolling my eyes and muttering “because that’s how comics are” under my breath. On second thought, I think I might actually have done it.

Many of the things that we talked about, we started off with “well, I think Art meant this when he drew Maus this way,” and each time, I would think “NO! He just accidentally did it that way for no particular reason!” I was, and still am, absolutely certain that Art, or any author/artist/composer for that matter, didn't purposely place deep analysis provokers into his work – it just turned out that way, and we 11 AP students, hungry to take a nice participation grade back to our parents, grasped at every small unintentional detail we could get our hands on.

But then again, that’s why English is so interesting. That we can create something out of the nothing that was meant to be there – there’s magic in that, I think. Art claims that “reality is too complex for comics” (Maus II), and maybe that’s the case. Maybe we use comics, or just literature and art in general, as a coping mechanism. We have to dumb reality down, simplify it, before we can dig into it and try to analyze our own lives. Maybe English is actually secretly a branch of the medical field, dedicated to finding a cure to the as yet unnamed I-can’t-make-sense-of-the-world illness. English majors are actually doctors.

So maybe Art used Maus as a coping mechanism as well. He had “some kind of guilt” about not having lived through Auschwitz (Maus II), so he needed to relieve himself of that guilt by reliving it through his father’s memories. That would be all fine and dandy if he kept it to himself, but then he presumptuously decided that he needed to relieve the world of the same guilt, too, and immortalized Vladek’s memories into Maus for the whole world to suffer. Including 11 AP students.

And there I go, committing the exact crime I call absolutely ridiculous. I guess it’s necessary, the innate function of humankind to overanalyze simple things in order to simplify their complicated lives. Art was right; reality is too complex.

This whole summer, while participating in Ride to Freedom, I’ve said “there is a peaceful meditation practice called Falun Gong that has been brutally persecuted in China since 1999, and it needs to stop” at least a couple hundred times, if not more. But since I’ve returned home, I’ve said that important sentence far too few times. When people ask me what I did over the summer, I say, “Oh, just a cross-country bike ride” without revealing even a bit about my motivation behind it. When people ask me why I’m randomly skipping school to take a short trip to Los Angeles, I say, “Oh, just attending a conference” without even mentioning Falun Gong and the atrocities committed against it.

I am a Falun Gong practitioner, but I often wonder why I try so hard to hide this part of my identity. My friend Kristine has been basically worshipped since she broke news of participating in Ride to Freedom. Is it because I feel like my friends and teachers don’t really care? My friend Flora has been relentless about spreading the word to everyone she meets – her teachers, her neighbors, even the lady she sat next to on the flight home – and has been welcomed by them all. Is it because I feel like I will come off as too pushy? My friend Borong has alerted numerous government officials and potential sponsors about the sequel ride in 2016, and has gathered much support. Is it because I feel like my words will be pointless?

I think mostly it’s because I feel like I won’t be able to express myself clearly and fully. There’s really so much that needs to be known – the accurate characteristics of the practice, the severity of the sudden crackdown, the efforts that are being taken to end the persecution – I’m not sure if I will be able to say all that I need to say without becoming excessively verbose. I can identify with the Spiegelmans of both generations. With the elder, the fact that “it would take many books” (Maus I) to tell the entire scope of the persecution. With the younger, the fear of creating a false perception equivalent to “the racist caricature of the miserly old Jew” (Maus I) by not telling enough.

But whatever I have been and am doing, or rather, have not been and am not doing, about it, I have no doubts as to what I should be doing. This genocide of Falun Gong practitioners at the hands of the Chinese Communist Party is akin to the genocide of Jews at the hands of Hitler. It’s a second Holocaust; I must pull my weight in stopping it.

Resources:

• About Falun Dafa
• Ride to Freedom
• Organ Harvesting

Eventually, I accepted that Kingston had taken liberties with Mulan’s story. But as I continued to read, I recognized more allusions to Chinese legends. There was the legend of the jade rabbit, in which a rabbit leapt into a pit of fire to feed a disguised deity. There was the story of Yue Fei, who allowed his mother to carve the words “serve your country loyally” onto his back before departing for war. There was the tragedy of Meng Jiangnu, whose husband was drafted to build the Great Wall (which Kingston accurately calls the “Long Wall” (Kingston) so props to her for that) and died, causing her to weep until her tears collapsed a section of the wall.

It’s quite evident that Kingston was also born into a Chinese household, and grew up with Chinese traditions and stories. What puzzled me was, why would she change them? Why would she combine them? People usually either follow the original story word for word, or make up a new story altogether. Before Kingston, I hadn’t ever come across people who took well-known legends and altered them.

But Kingston once “could not figure out what was [her] village” (Kingston). She could not figure out what she needed to save. After her version of Mulan’s story, Kingston continues to reveal to us her own life – which in comparison, seems pitiable. Maybe she was losing her identity – her Chinese identity. And to save that, she would need to make room for the “words… that do not fit on [her] skin” (Kingston 53), her past stories and present struggles — she needs to bend them, to change them, so they can fit.

Which makes me wonder – are there things in my past that I need to alter, so that they can fit into my future?

We hide in our cocoons of safety.

 People still try to revive individualism. Some attempt to force people to “breathe after [their] own fashion[s]” (Henry David Thoreau); others try to reduce what has become the “natural, hard-wired default-setting” of judging and blaming others (David Foster Wallace). Yet the world is still the same way, with the people who encourage individuality being the same people who hide in their own shells and bite at anybody else who is different.

And to be very honest, I have no idea what the cause is. Maybe notions of class and status create such a rift between us that to be any different, widening that gap, would be too much to handle. Maybe some alien species has taken over the human consciousness, altering our actions to be different from our words. Maybe we’ve just been misleading ourselves, and don’t even actually want to be different.

Anyway, whatever the reason, it’ll be interesting to see how things play out. Maybe there’ll be no apparent change in my lifetime, or in my kids’, or grandkids’, or even great grandkids’. This idea of individualism could be considered something from a fairy tale, or a quality only superheroes possess – yes, there are a select few who are intrepid enough to stand out. But those who truly don’t mind what others think are few and far between. In that case, maybe our species will always be this way, striving to be different yet forcing ourselves not to. But then again, maybe we will be able to somehow break free of our cocoons.

Who knows, really? 

During the Second World War, thousands of young Japanese men, known as the kamikaze, purposefully crashed their planes into Allied ships, slowing their attacks.  While the Japanese did, and still do, view these pilots as heroes, brave soldiers who would do anything for their country, much of the rest of the world sees them as “a whole generation of Japanese men [who] had been brainwashed into self-abnegation and blind obedience to the Emperor” (BBC). But despite all the clashes over the nature and motivation of these actions, one fact remains true: these men willingly sacrificed their lives for their country.

You don’t really see that type of devotion in American soldiers. In fact, in many cases, American soldiers don’t even believe in the cause that their country is fighting for. In his novel The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien bemoans that he was “drafted to fight a war [he] hated” (O’Brien 37). It’s pretty obvious that not everybody agreed with the wars America has fought, the Vietnam War that O’Brien fought in being one of the most controversial. However, seeing that America has been fighting in some war for over 90% of its existence (Washington’s Blog), this lack of commitment and patriotism is, frankly, quite scary.