Author Archives: ms116550
Posts: 4 (archived below)
Comments: 1
All the Whiskey in Heaven Digital Essay
The video is about All the Whiskey in Heaven by Charles Bernstein. Alex and I decided that we would show the emphasis on the literal interpretation and invert the images and videos to make the poem hold ground based on the constant “not” through the three stanzas. However, in the last stanza we changed up the video to portray the change in style that is seen in the poem. Additionally, in the end, we made an echo that we thought would give more emphasis into the ending of the poem but the resulting ‘again’ is without echo to show that he can carry his own weight in respecting the love.
Enjoy the video:
Never done this before but seems interesting
the idea of relaying my thesis statement in the form of a video sounds pretty interesting. Like the students before me have stated, I’m part excited and part scared because I don’t really know all the details on how to make such a video. In addition, I think finding the right poem to work with will probably make it harder because it sets back the whole project. Im done to three poems, one about love, one about mystery and the last about happiness. I know that it would make a lot of sense to use the happiness poem, being that the class is about happiness and all, but I’m leaning more towards the love poem. It just has something in it that for some reason, everyone can attribute a part of their life with it. It holds the readers interest and it’s pretty easy to analyze haha, but mainly it’s the interest that got me going.
All in all, I don’t remember the last time I was this psyched to do an essay. It’s kinda fun to think about. I guess we’ll see at the end of the semester who’s really got the best video and paper. Good luck guys, and if possible just drop a comment on what you’d pick: love, mystery, or happiness?
Response Paper 3 – Best in Show
Best in Show Critique by Mikhail Shimonov
According to the movie, Best in Show, happiness is a perception that apparently can only be achieved if one is victorious in whatever they choose to venture. The movie displays a group of owners that strive to be the best they can be in terms of how well they groom their dog, how they treat the dog and how well they train their dog – each trying to win in a certain contest and in the end the whole competition. Following in this pattern, it would seem obvious that in order to try to reach happiness you would have to be best, number 1, best than everyone else you’re up against.
This, however, is a post hoc fallacy because you would assume that winning would lead to happiness and therefore since a precedes b, than it would make sense that a caused b, but that is not true. As shown at the end of the movie, only one dog was chosen as the winner yet all the dog groomers inevitably became happy – even if they weren’t during the majority of the movie leading up to the final competition.
In conclusion, the argument of happiness being the outcome of victory is a complete hoax. It is simply not true given the scenario above. One can always achieve happiness from either being successful at something or simply because they finally they did something they liked, not always from winning competitions.
Response Paper 2
Mikhail Shimonov
While reading Beyond the Please Principle by Freud, it became increasingly apparent that there is a difference in respect to how Freud describes pleasure and pain from Gilbert. Although it is true that both study psychology, Gilbert studies positive psychology in which one would see events in a positive or optimistic light. However, Freud, not necessarily a pessimist, but rather crude and harsh in terminology and in relation to how he describes the game that his own grandson played as an infant – Fort Da.
The Fort Da game, being a simplistic form of expression of how Ernst would express his feelings and emotions in the form of ‘pain’ for when the toy was gone, and ‘pleasure’ for when it appeared. This is probably the reason why I feel a difference in the tone of both psychologists, one would experiment with his own grandson, while Gilbert would take his surroundings and other experiments run rather than on his own family (at least thats we know so far). But then again, it would seem irrational for one to be a psychologist and not try out experimental methods on his own family – I mean you would be able to learn so much since they’re right there.
