Category: Weekly Reflections

This Post is “Hopelessly Devoted” to Grease

 

Hi everyone and welcome to another weekly post. This week, we’ve finished our scripts and are going to have our episodes out next week! For this week’s post, I decided to talk about the movie Grease. This movie came out in the late 70’s, but actually very well depicts what it was like for youth in the 50s: young love, drive-in movies, different styles (ie. greasers), dances, rock n roll, diners, etc.

The movie is a fun, feel-good movie with a few catchy songs but, if you were to
listen to it at this day and age, you might notice a couple things that would not be shown on tv today. 

Number one, some of the lines in the songs were quite inappropriate (such as the lyric “Did she put up a fight?” in Summer Nights). In my opinion, the likely meaning of this line would be if he tried to kiss her because we all know that
sex before marriage was extremely rare in the 50s. Another one relating to that point would be Rizzo being shamed for having sex, because of how rare it was. 

Number two, at the dance, the host said that partners had to be one girl and one boy. A lot of people have been hating on this line saying that it was homophobic. That doesn’t mean that that made that line okay, but you need to keep in mind of the context and when this movie was based in, the 50s, which was a completely different time. 

Number three, which was that there was absolutely no diversity in the entire movie. I decided to do a little research on segregation in schools which was a big thing in the 50s. But, later found out that it was actually forbidden in Pennsylvania (where the movie was based in), so there was no reason for them not to have any diversity in the film except for the fact that even in the 70s when this was filmed, that there was an obvious lack of diversity in media. 

Number four, the same people hating on the movie did not like the fact that at the end of the movie, Sandy drastically changed her personality and look for Danny. But, I personally think that she just reinvented herself, as a lot of teenagers even in this day do. And doing it for themselves, not to impress someone they like. She also sings the song “Goodbye Sandra Dee”, because she didn’t want to be a “goodie two shoes” who didn’t have as much fun, anymore. 


The first time I watched this movie was with my mom. She hadn’t seen it since she was in her teen years, so rewatching it as an adult caused her to noticed a few things that wouldn’t be as acceptable today, like the ones I had previously mentioned. She had then explained them to me and said to keep in mind that that was how it was in the 50s. 

In my opinion, I think that the purpose of the movie was made to be entertaining, fun and not to be taken so seriously. Most of those unacceptable parts of the film were there just for the purpose of showing what it was like in the 50s and how much society has changed in the last 20 years at the time (since it was made in the 70s about the 50s). The only part that I think the movie makers could’ve done better was have more diversity. On the other hand, if that were the case, would there have been racist comments made throughout the movie? And would that have affected how successful the movie became?

DisneyLand and 1950s Society

There is not one person in this world that hasn’t heard about DisneyLand or DisneyWorld. Disneyland first opened in the 1950’s, the years after war. People were in need of something more positive and happy after this bad time to get their mind off of traumatic and depressing things…enter Walt Disney. After Snow White, Cinderella, Alice in Wonderland and his own television show being a huge hit, he decided to open up a theme park, which was quite unusual at the time, but obviously a huge hit once again. 

Believe it or not, several of the rides that were there when DisneyLand had first opened, are still around today. But, over the last 70 years, some rides have had to be rethought, as the world was obviously changing. An example being the Jungle Cruise.

If you have been to DisneyLand before, I doubt that you haven’t been on this ride. The ride where you are on this boat with a group of people and a tour guide, and you are going through a river surrounded by forest. Now, the
“attractions” of what people on that boat see around them is what the problem was and where there were changes that needed to be made. 

In 2001, the ride skippers were “disarmed’ and no longer shot animals during the ride. And just this year, they have announced that they would remove any negative depictions of First Nations, since there were many. This recent change just goes to show how normalized things like racism were back in the 1950’s
(even diverse representation on screen wasn’t a thing).  

Another issue at the time was gender roles. If you look at the animated movie Cinderella, many “bachelorettes” were lined up to meet the prince, hoping he would ask for their hand in marriage. This, reinforcing the stereotypical belief at the time, that the ultimate life goal for a woman was to be married (and stay home, cook clean and take care of the kids).


It’s good to see how much the world has changed since the 1950’s, however there is still a lot of work to do. Today, gender inequality still exists. For
example, women’s right to vote (Pakistan and Vatican City). Racism is still here today (Black Lives Matter and Asian Lives Matter) and the belief system of many countries in the world has not developed very far from the fairytale life of Cinderella and the fake image of the “American life” that America has tried to put up since the 1950’s.

Did you know?

This week, my class has been working on For this week’s post, I decided that it would be a good idea to talk more about Romeo and Juliet. And to do so, I will be telling you 5 interesting facts that I hope you didn’t know about the play. 

Fact number one, the conflict between the Montagues and the Capulets wasn’t mentioned for the first time in the play. In a poem written by Dante Alighieri called “Divine Comedy”, but was written more than 250 years before Shakespeare was born. In the poem, the poet makes this reference:

“Come and see, you who are negligent, / Montagues and Capulets, Monaldi and Filippeschi: / One lot already grieving, the other in fear. / Come, you who are cruel, come and see the distress / Of your noble families, and cleanse their rottenness.”

Fact number two, another idea that isn’t very original on Shakespeare’s part was practically the majority of the story. There was a poem written in 1562 by Arthur Brooke titled “The Tragicall Historye of Romeus and Juliet”. Brooke’s poem is also set in Verona, Italy , is also about a rival between two families (Montagues and Capulets), and about the two star-crossed lovers,  Romeus Montague and Juliet Capulet. So, Shakespeares key ideas of the story may not have been original, but he did bring this poem to life. Plus, by adding his own touches to it.                                                                                                                              

Fact number three, it wasn’t until 65 years after the play was first premiered that the role of Juliet was played by a woman for the first time. Back then, or up until 1660, all stage roles were performed by men. The first woman to play Juliet was by a woman named Mary Saunderson in 1662. If you’d like to learn more about the history of women in theatre, click here

Fact number four, if you didn’t know already, there was a pretty big age gap between Juliet and Romeo (although it was pretty normal at the time the play was written). Juliet was supposed to be 13, Romeo somewhere between the ages of 16 and 21 and Paris (someone who her parents wanted her to marry in the story) somewhere between 25 and 29. 

Fact number five, the famous “balcony scene” supposedly didn’t involve a balcony in the original play. In the stage directions for Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare writes that Juliet appears at a “window”, but doesn’t involve a balcony. The reason for this was that Elizabethan England didn’t even know what a balcony was. So, the balcony scene was brought to life by Thomas Otway’s adaption of the play (1679), called The History and Fall of Cauis Marius. 

Anyways, that is all for now. I hope you learned something!


Work Cited: 

Bevington, David. “Romeo and Juliet, work by Shakespeare”. Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Romeo-and-Juliet Accessed Jan 25 2021. 

“Five Fascinating Facts about Romeo and Juliet”. Interesting Literature. https://interestingliterature.com/2016/01/five-fascinating-facts-about-romeo-and-juliet/ Accessed Jan 24 2021      

“12 Facts You Didn’t Know About Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet”. Paper & Packaging. https://www.howlifeunfolds.com/learning-education/12-facts-about-william-shakespeares-romeo-and-juliet Accessed Jan 25 2021

“Romeo and Juliet – 10 Things You Didn’t Know”. Course Hero.  https://www.coursehero.com/lit/Romeo-and-Juliet/things-you-didnt-know/ Accessed on Jan 25th 2021

Don’t Clone Your Pet.

In week 2 of our project on Romeo and Juliet, we’ve once again created a second co-hosted podcast episode. This episode was about adaptations, which is basically any form of media transformed into another. Or honestly, it doesn’t even have to be a form of media, it could be pretty much anything. My group in fact got into a discussion about animal adaptations and cloning, and what it can lead to, which is exactly what I am here to talk about.


 Pet cloning has struck popularity all the way in South Korea.

There is a lab team called “The Sooam Biotech Research Foundation”, who specialize in cloning dogs by injecting cloned embryos into the uterus of an anesthetized dog.

They typically cloned these animals for pet owners, but sometimes they are used for police agencies. At the time this article that I found was published (2015), this lab charged 100, 000$ for this process and was the only lab in the entire world to provide this cloning procedure on dogs (since there had been other procedures done on cattle, rabbits, mules and cats). But, I’m sure that after 6 years, there’s now way more labs that are also doing it, and for way less money. 


Cloning a dog sounds pretty cool right? Personally, my family and I just lost our family dog, Pender, and the thought of reincarnating him sounded quite appealing. However, I found these articles that stated how terrible of an idea it is to clone a dog, or any animal for that matter.

Aside from the process itself being extremely questionable, it also takes a lot of dogs just to clone one dog. Although the success rate is much higher now, the first successful dog cloning (Snuppy), had more than 1,000 embryos implanted into 123 surrogates, with only 3 pregnancies resulting from that, and only two surviving through birth. 

“You can clone the look of a dog, but you can’t clone the soul”   – Barbra Streisand

Barbra Streisand, the American singer had cloned her dog that unfortunately passed away. But she came to later find out that the two clones she created had completely different personalities from her original dog. Sure, they looked the same, and their genetics were the same, but that was pretty much it. 


It’s these very facts why cloning your family pet or any other animals has still not quite taken off. While it is popular, it is not mainstream; there’s a very extremely low chance that you know someone in your life who’s actually cloned their pet before. It is expensive, is a long process, and frankly, not really worth it. 

Additionally, governments are actually guarding against where these sorts of technologies might go or adapt to. For example, in Canada, under the 2004 Assisted Human Reproduction Act, “the creation of a human clone by using any technique and the transplant of a human clone into a human being or into any non-human life form or artificial device is criminally prohibited.” 

Anyways, that’s all for now. 

Bye!

 

Works Cited:

Stein, Rob. “Disgraced Scientist Clones Dogs, And Critics Question His Intent”. NPR.  September 2015.  Why Is A South Korean Doctor Cloning Dogs? : Shots – Health …www.npr.org › sections › health-shots › 2015/09/30 › dis… Accessed Jan 19 2021.

Brogan, Jacob. “The Real Reasons You Shouldn’t Clone Your Dog”. Smithsonian Magazine. March 1018. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/why-cloning-your-dog-so-wrong-180968550/ Accessed Jan 19 2021.

Gibbens, Sarah. “We Can Clone Pet Dogs-But Is That a Good Idea?” National Geographic. February 2018. Barbra Streisand’s Cloned Dogs Explainedwww.nationalgeographic.com › news › 2018/02 › barb… Accessed Jan 19 2021.

Isasi, Rosario and Shukairy, Maya. “6.3 Cloning”. Royal College Of Physicians And Surgeons Of Canada. July 29 2015. https://www.royalcollege.ca/rcsite/bioethics/cases/section-6/cloning-e Accessed Jan 19 2021.

Knock-Knock! Who’s there?

In case you didn’t know, I created a new episode this week. But, this one was a little special since it was actually an episode co-hosted by my classmates, Matthew and Noah. This episode’s goal was to help understand why the story of Romeo and Juliette is such a classic, and what exactly makes a classic. 

For this week’s weekly post, I decided that I wanted to go more in depth about something that my group and I were pretty proud of finding. (Quick story: mid-conversation, we were talking about knock-knock jokes and Matthew was curious to see when and who created this classic joke. And we found out that it was originally first used in Shakespeare’s MacBeth, which we just so happen to be doing a project on). So, I decided to extend a little more into this topic and learn more about the history of the knock-knock joke. After doing some research, here is what I had found. 

It is actually not for sure, but is said to be a possibility that Shakespeare’s MacBeth in 1606 was the source of this joke. In Act 2, Scene 3, the porter in the story was very hungover from the night before, and says “Knock Knock! Who’s there” in his monologue.

“Knock, knock! Who's there, i' the name ofBeelzebub? Here's a farmer, that hanged himself on the expectation of plenty: come in time; have napkins enow about you; here you'll sweat for't. Knock, knock! Who's there, in the other devil's name? Faith, here's an equivocator, that could swear in both the scales against either scale; who committed treason enough for God's sake, yet could not equivocate to heaven: O, come in, equivocator.”

The second time it had been used was in the paper for Oakland Tribune. Merely McEvoy talked about a style joke around the year 1900. Where the joke went something like: “Do you know Arthur? Arthur who? Arthurmometer!”

It was also used a couple times after that, but then, used once again in a newspaper advertisement in 1936 about book called Knock Knock written by a man named Bob Dunn: 

“Knock, knock! Who's there? Rufus. Rufus who? Rufus the most important part of your house.”

It was also said that Bob Dunn had invented the Knock Knock joke in that very book. 

After the year 1936, it started rising in popularity but then had gone down since people who loved the joke were said to have social problems. The format was well known in the UK and US in the 1950’s and 1960s before. Until it became a regular part on Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-in, which was a show that ran from 1968-1973. And after that, this joke has gone to what it is today, a classic. Anyways, please stay tuned for my next podcast episode and weekly post. Bye!

Work Cited: 

Barrie, Joshua. “The unlikely origin of the knock knock joke — and how it was first told”.  Mirror. April 28 2017. https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/weird-news/unlikely-origin-knock-knock-joke-10315103 Accessed Jan 11 2021.

“Knock-knock joke”. Wikipedia. Last edited December 26 2020. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knock-knock_joke. Accessed Jan 11.

“The Secret History of Knock-Knock Jokes”. NPR. March 3 2015. https://www.npr.org/sections/npr-history-dept/2015/03/03/389865887/the-secret-history-of-knock-knock-jokes Accessed Jan 11 2021.

 

The Book Thief

Hello and welcome back to this weeks reflective post. This week I decided to do a review on a movie I recently watched called “The Book Thief” for both my own enjoyment, to extend on my research and the perspective of youth in WWII. Now, before I get into the review, I need to warn you that there are going to be spoilers, so if you clicked on this post expecting to not hear any, you’ve unfortunately come to the wrong place. 

The movie first starts with a 12 year old girl named Liesel (Sophie Nélisse). Her on-the-run communist mother gives her up for adoption, since she can no longer care for her, shortly after her brother dies of tuberculosis. She’s taken into the home of Hans (Geoffrey Rush) and Rosa (Emily Watson). Her and her new dad click right away and develop a close bond. But with her new mother on the other hand, not so much. 

Aside from her new family, Liesel develops a cute friendship with a sweet blonde boy named Rudy (Nico Liersch). Regardless of the fact that she doesn’t know how to read or write, she has always had a love for books, and that love develops even more overtime after Hans teaches her how to read. Even after Hitler enforcing the destruction of all books, that didn’t stop her. She found her way by “borrowing” books from the Burgmeister’s mini library in his huge house. 

In the course of the story, Liesel also becomes closer to Rosa. As they start to warm up to each other, you see Rosa grow and break through her tough shell you see at the beginning of the film. 

During the holocaust, Jews would seek shelter with sympathetic people around the country, they would hide in cellars, floorboards, farm houses, or in this movies case, the basement. This part of the film started with a Jew named Max (Ben Shnetzer) arriving at Liesel’s family’s door. Max’s dad had saved Hans’ life back in WWI, so Hans had promised to do whatever it took to keep that man’s family safe, so they gave him shelter and food, despite the risk of them getting in very serious trouble. 

The movie goes through several subplots and numerous events as well, but it would be too much to write in just one post, so I suggest watching the movie (or reading the book) because it’s very much enjoyable. 

 

In the last 15 mins or so, the film puts you through a bit of a emotional spiral. First starting with the death of Rudy, Hans and Rosa, along with almost everyone in the small German village that was bombed. But, then in the end, Max comes back after the end of the war and visits Liesel, which made me feel a a little better. 

This was especially hard, because while watching the movie, you pick up an emotional connection to the characters, which makes this movie just that powerful thanks to both the plot and the amazing actors. However, I did find the narrator, portrayed as “death” to be quite confusing at times and didn’t really add anything to the story, so was quite useless. 

The film also helps give a better understanding, or visual representation of what really went down during WWII, and that it wasn’t easy, no matter what side you were on. Overall, The Book Thief is a very moving film, that shows examples of courage, love and friendship throughout.

Anyways, that’s all for now. Bye and see you in my next blog post!

ME TOO

Hey y’all and welcome back to another blog post. So, this week was a big grinding week. Doing interviews, recording our voices, preparing music and editing to put together our podcast episodes. But we had a couple in-class activities that I was pretty interested in and decided to look more into. 

One thing that we did this past week was listening to a podcast called “History of the 90’s” and the episode was titled “The one about Friends”. Friends, being the amazing sit com created in the 90’s and early 2000’s. Me, being a Friends fan for the last few years was especially interested to learn some random facts and stories about the show. We only watched about half the episode in class, so I decided to watch the rest of it back at my house. There was one story that they talked about in particular that I found a little more weird than interesting, but still interesting.

 So, so you that you don’t have to listen to the 10 min clip talking about the story, there was someone named Amaani Lyle that worked as a writer for about 4 months before they got fired. She then filed a dismissal suit against the writers and producers of Friends, where she claimed that she had been subjected to racial and sexual harassment and very dark suggestions to the show. 

There was a sign by more than a hundred film and television writers including Norman Lear and Larry David, stating that group writing requires an atmosphere of complete trust. Writers must feel not only that it is alright to fail but also that they can share their most private and darkest thoughts without concern for ridicule, embarrassment or legal accountability. In the end, the California Supreme Court sided with the writers and there was something created known as the Creative Necessity Defence. That became something that was integrated into HR paper work and basically any creative industry, education, journalism, etc. 

They also discussed that in this day, where you have to be a lot more careful about things like that and that this situation would’ve been handled way differently, especially with the whole “Me too” movement.

I actually didn’t know very much about the “Me too” movement other than the fact that it’s about sexual harassment and sexual assault, so I decided to do some research. 

So, after doing a bit of research, I found their website. They even have a healing series that is made to help survivors from sexual violence to help recover and a way for others to donate or do something to help the survivors. 

Here’s what I found on another website: “The “Me Too” movement, which focuses on the experiences of sexual violence survivors, has earned a large response in part because sexual harassment and sexual assault impact people every day. By sharing their own experiences, the movement’s proponents make clear just how common sexual harassment is. The hope is that, if people are more aware of sexual harassment and how casually it is sometimes treated, then tolerance for it will decrease and support for victims will rise.”

All in all, it is amazing that there is finally starting to be awareness spread on this subject, because it is very very necessary and long overdue. 

Bye! And I’ll see you in my next blog post!

Week One

Greetings fellow bloggers, welcome to week one of my many weekly reflections to come. As you can tell from the blog title, I am quite an expert at the Spanish language. Which also happens to be one of the two classes I am taking this quarter. Not to worry, I am actually doing pretty well in the class. 

Now let me introduce you to the project we just started working on this last week, it is called “The Greatest Canadian”. For our final product at the end of this project, we are to have created our first episode to our podcast that we just created a trailer for in our last project. This is because our podcast is going to be lasting throughout the whole year, tied into different projects.

Our most recent task was to come up with someone we could consider as “the greatest Canadian” but still connects to the topics of our podcasts. I’ve brainstormed quite a few ideas, but am still not too quite sure as picking out that person is going to be a little bit of a challenge considering my subject to sum up is about High school. I can’t exactly pick out someone who was or is considerably “great” in high-school because as a teenager, this is when you learn and grow into your future adult self. So, I decided that I could go with someone who maybe helps out teenagers now which makes them great such as a teenage therapist, which would actually fit very well with my podcast topic.

Here is an in-class activity we did about Canadian Identity.

 

But anyways, this project is off to a great start and I have a really good feeling that I will be enjoying this project a lot. Stay tuned to see my next weekly post and I’ll see you then!

 

Bye!