War, What is it Good For? Absolutely Nothing!!!

I think everyone can agree that war is a rather appalling thing, whether you believe that it is preventable or necessary. I don't believe any sane person would say that war is a good ole time. War sucks. It's painful, violent, intense, tragic, hopeless, the list can honestly go on for ever. Even though war can be described in these horrific ways, it can still be justified by the idea that all the pain and suffering is for a greater cause. This is how basically all war movies present war, Red Dawn included (even though it isn't technically about a real war). War is colored in this light that makes it seem horrendous while also making it seem like this great cause, something you should join to be a real hero.  Slaughterhouse Five is different because I this book war isn't quit as intense as it is everywhere else. War is viewed in the same absurd way that Billy Pilgrim looks at everything else. The whole point of Slaughterhouse Five is to make war seem childish, while Red Dawn has the over arching theme of fighting for your home. 

Though Red Dawn isn't about a real war and is so obviously not the best war movie out there, it has this great relatability to it. I have never had many strong opinions on war because it is a topic I feel quite ignorant about. I have never fought in a war and I don't experience it firsthand. This movie brought war to America, which in a way made it that much more terrifying, but for the first time in my life I felt like I understood war to some degree because "when you're fighting in your own backyard, and you're fighting for your family, it all hurts a little less and it makes a little more sense"(Jed Eckhert/Matt Eckhert in Red Dawn). This movie was so intense because it was a fictional war that in reality could happen at any moment. It portrayed a war that lives as the nightmare in the back of America's mind. This movie also presented the idea that war is okay when you are fighting for your home. This makes you wonder of there is justification for anyone who has been on the other side of any war involving America.  

Slaughterhouse is in no way as fear inducing as Red Dawn. Red Dawn isn't as brutal as the majority of war movies but, Slaughterhouse's portrayal of war is still laughable in comparison. While war movies show us death and gore in the most graphic way, Billy Pilgrim describes a scene of someone bleeding out as snow turning "the color of raspberry sherbet". War is still by no means portrayed in a casual way but it is meant to make war seem like a joke. War is shown in a way that suggest it isn't a noble thing to die and to kill others. War isn't necessary and all the violence and suffering is born of foolishness. 

There are a million answers to how war should be approached. Not I single one of them is necessarily wrong. War shouldn't be started but when it is we should make sure that it wasn't started in vain. We need to make sure all the deaths were worth something. The death of babies is never okay, but when there is greater cause it makes more sense and hurts a little bit less. 

A Defense of Acting

Thespians, according to the circumstances of the age and nation in which they appeared, were called, in the earlier epochs of the world, imposters, or oracles: an actor essentially comprises and unites both these characters. For he not only transforms himself to convincingly portray circumstances of the human existence, but he conveys messages of absolute truth, and his performances are the eyes of man, the mirrors to the soul that reflect the façade of life and the quintessence of daily struggles that come with the entry of breath into the lungs. Not that I assert thespians to be oracles in the gross sense of the word, or that they lips of divinity, a vehicle of godly communication: such is the pretense of superstition, which would make acting an attribute of celestial utterance, rather than celestial utterance an attribute of acting. An actor participates in the eternal, the infinite, and the one: as far as relates to his conceptions, time and place and numbers are not. The words, as well as the body language and facial expression which are a better received form of communication, are convertible with respect to the highest embodiment of acting without injuring it as acting; and the speeches of Moses, Socrates, and Martin Luther King Jr. would afford, more than any other dialogue, examples of this fact, if the limits of this essay did not forbid citation. The creations of dances, sculpture, painting, and music are illustrations still more decisive. 

Language, movement, form, and religious and civil habits of action, are all instruments and materials of acting; they may be called acting by that figure of speech which considers the effect as a synonym of the cause. But acting in a more restricted sense expresses those arrangements of communication, even that which is non verbal, which is created by the magical gospel of human nature. And this springs from the very nature of communication, which is something that has always existed even when language did not, and is susceptible of more various and delicate combinations, than color, form, or motion, and is almost more universal than the act of breathing itself. For communication is what forms the relationships that determine whether we are really living or simply existing, and has relations to thought alone, even more so than language; but all other materials, instruments, and conditions of art have relations among each other, which limit and interpose between conception and expression. The former has the depth of the ocean, while the latter is as shallow as a kiddie pool, the water of which both are mediums of communication. 

Thespians are the most successful con artist; the role models and deviants of society; the bridges which connect the world when language is a barrier unable to cross; the mirrors which reflect the turmoil of the past, present, and future; the inspiration of great beauty and great reform. Thespians are the underappreciated sustainers of passion in the world. 

The Lion King= Hamlet?

The Lion King, one of the better Disney movies of ones childhood, is a cartoon almost everyone is aware of. Almost everyone has some connection to this charming little film. Kids like the cartoon animals and the jaunty musical numbers that almost immediately put a smile on their impressionable tiny faces. A lot of people like the plot twist and the dynamic character as well as the spiritual undertones that suggest that we are all connected in this "circle of life". Some people feel that they have grown out of this silly film, but will still watch it when it happens to be on television because it reminds them of their childhood. It doesn't really matter why people like it or are connected to it, we simply are, which also means that we are connected to Shakespeare. 

Yep, the quirky little story of The Lion King is basically a happier , easier to understand version of Hamlet (As shocking as learning most horror movies are scarily similar to Hansel and Gretel, isn't it?). So Simba's father is a king which makes him a prince. Hamlet is also a prince though when the story begins his father has already fallen victim to fratricide, in TLK we get to watch the murder happen first hand (we knew one of Simba's parents had to go because almost no Disney character gets to keep both parents, don't be so greedy Simba). It is also important to mention that they both have insane uncles who kill their fathers, this is a detail that shouldn't be overlooked. Both princes are sent away from their homes. Simba spends his banishment in a jungle paradise while Hamlet spends his time depressed, suicidal, and a touch insane. The princes both see their dead fathers, though Hamlet's dad tells him to get revenge and Simba's dad tells him some cryptic crap about taking his part in the circle of life. Last but not least, both princes kill their uncle. Disney turned it into a happily ever after where Simba is a happy king. The Shakespeare version isn't quite so rainbows and unicorns (or African sunsets and lions if you prefer). Hamlet ends up dead as well as countless others. So TLK is Hamlet without the never ending tragedy of almost all Shakespearian stories, also it has lions which makes it cooler. 

Shakespeare is impossible to avoid. If you are sitting around and want to watch a rom com like 10 Things I Hate about You or She's the Man, you are still subjected to Shakespeare, more specifically Taming of the Shrew and Midsummer Nights Dream. Shakespeare follows us everywhere, but you have to admit the stories are quite entertaining even when half the character don't end up dead by the end. Shakespeare simply works. All the stories are timeless tales, adaptable to any time period and any species.  

Shakespeare is everywhere but I often wonder if there wasn't someone before Shakespeare, the real mastermind from whom Shakespeare got all his stories. Perhaps this stories originate from a source unknown yet we still give Shakespeare all the credit. Maybe Shakespeare is on the some level as every other writer that came after him, trying in vain to receive a portion of the original fame. 

There's Nothing New Under the Sun

How many times have I heard that one before? This rather drab and overused saying is a testament to itself. There's nothing new under the sun! That lovely thing adults tell children when we try to tell them they don't understand our modern day struggles. Not only is this saying annoying to hear from adults it's also seems terrifying for life in general. Nothing is absolutely original. Nobody is amazingly creative. This thought seems more horrifying the more you think about it, especially as an artist. You can't be completely original because you are always drawing from all other things you have seen, read, heard, experienced. Amazing ideas don't emerge out of nowhere, they come from the world that we live and breath in and nothing is never new. This is quite a depressing thought, until you realize that the stories that are appearing again are quite good. 

As someone who is quite addicted to reading, I find that the stories we read again and again are extraordinarily amazing. They are somehow so the same but delightfully different, different enough that we don't feel as though we have completely wasted our time by reading the same story twice. The characters are enchanting and as someone who's favorite people live in fiction I am always delighted too observe my old favorites just like Mr. Foster. Everything is the same yet somehow completely different. New variations that are actually the same. The more you think about it the more magical it becomes. The same thing is somehow life changingly different. The greats can now be seen with the mediocre. Shakespeare is everywhere, but then you can't help but wonder where he got it from. The greats are no different, they just get all the credit. This is a comforting thought. Nothing has ever been new. The great accredited authors, artist, academics, etc. aren't any more creative then the rest of us, they just knew where to find the good stories. If we, the normal mortal individual, can tap into this amazing story find talent, then we can achieve the status of the greats, we can be just as immortal.  

Now that we know that the same old stories are out there they are much easier to identify. Now that we know what we are looking for, the stories seem to pop out of nowhere. The parallels stand out as starkly as a naked person running and scream through the street. The brain cannot help but make these connection subconsciously. This chapter, Now, Where Have I Seen Her Before?, could have also been appropriately made Deja Vu because you can't help but eerily sense the similarities. It's amazingly terrifying and mind boggling. Unfortunately, the only way to find all the stories is to have read every story that has ever been written and told. It's an impossible challenge, never to be achieved but always worked towards. A goal that can always be held onto. Personally, I enjoy the challenge. Gives me something to live for.  

Let's Talk About Sex, Baby

Sex was, and sometimes still is, often depicted as something that needs to be hidden, covered up. Sex was dirty and vulgar, something no decent human being should ever talk about, especially not in public. Sex should be done behind closed doors and those doors should never be open. Yet it is the beginning of life, the reason we all live. Sex is more important than the act itself. Sex is everywhere, even when it seems like it's not, mostly when it seems like it's not. The more conservative the era the more sexual frustration seems to furtively ooze out of the art, the stories, from that time. With this need to hide all hints of sex came this symbolic revolution, this poetry that was most times more profound and intense and vulnerable than naked body parts could ever hope to be. Sex was now more than organs and acts, it was anything, it was everything, it was a part of life just as it had always been.  

                                                        Freud smoking a phallic symbol

Good ole Freud helped us uncover all the sex. He told the world how to find it and he helped the writers weave it into their work until the sex wasn't as easily seen in their masterpieces. Sex was all around but not shocking, it was now this really interesting art form. The innocent were protected, and everyone else was in on the joke, or the metaphor, or whatever. As the years have gone on, I feel as though the sex has been harder to decode but not because it's less there, but because it is more present than it has ever been. Sex is literally everywhere now, it isn't hidden, it is presented without shame for everyone to see. It's hard to uncover the sex symbols and the deeper sexual meaning that is needed to fully understand the author or one of the characters in a novel, because we are no longer really looking. No one has had to look for sex because it is shockingly there. No more poetry of trains going into tunnels, rocking horses, or breaking waves. Only body parts and organs and acts. Now sex sells, not sex symbols (unless they are painfully obvious). You don’t have to look for sex because there is uncovering that needs to be done. 

Chapter 16: It's All About Sex of How to Read Literature Like a Professor by Thomas C. Foster has reminded me that in real literature the poetry is still there. The sex still needs to be uncovered. It is still important and tells you about people, not just used as comedic fodder in movies (which is truthfully funny but not the poetry that could be and used to be). I can still find the sex without actually seeing the sex. The waves are still breaking. Curtains are still flowing in the morning light. The rocking horse is still frantically and rhythmically rocking. Obsessions with bowls still tell us the inner workings of a women's psyche and the train is still going in the tunnel.