Category Archives: PaperAssignment

The poem that I wrote Paper #3 on was Frank O’Hara’s “Ave Maria.”  The poem basically encourages “mothers of America” to let their children go to the movies, but the bigger message is that parents should basically loosen up and try not to set such strict rules, restrictions and limitations for their children. I disagree with this mentality–children absolutely must have structure in their loves, otherwise they will not thrive as individuals. In my digital essay, I tried to show different movie/show clips that exhibit instances of bad parenting with children and then I showed adults on shows like Maury and Jerry Springer going crazy and doing outrageous things. The connection I’m trying to make is that these adults were not raised correctly when they were children, and did not have parents keeping a close enough eye on them, which is why they turned out the way they did.

The Importance of Good Parenting

The point I was hoping to get across with the video of Veruca Salt (from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory) was that parents who let their children have whatever they want become spoiled brats, and are impossible to deal with unless you give them exactly what they want, when they want it. Later on in life, those children don’t know how to accept the fact that they can’t always have all their wishes granted.

The reason I used the particular portion of the Flintstones clip that I did was because Betty tells Barney: “Barney don’t speak mean to him, reason with him.”  That is a perfect example of bad parenting. There’s no reasoning with young children. Maybe you can try reasoning with a 10-year old or a teenager, but it does not work with children younger than that.  A parent who reasons with his/her child will simply get taken advantage of, which is seen in the video when Bam Bam grabs Barney’s finger and begins slamming him around.

The rest of the clips I showed, like the ones with the mother and daughter who aspire to be prostitutes and the 42-year-old woman with a 14-year-old husband, were just funny examples of adults who  act completely ridiculous because they don’t know any limits–they just don’t know when to stop. I think that, had their parents given them more limitations, they would not have been on the Jerry Springer/Maury shows (assuming the Jerry/Maury shows are even real and not staged, which they kind of seem to be).

Sylvia Plath’s “words” is something so personal but yet general. The meaning behind the poem, besides her experiences of tragedies including her father’s death and her realization that death is humanities’ fate, is that words are powerful weapons just like an axe. It can be beneficial or forever haunting; it can keep a fire going or kill zombies.

In the Video, it starts off with Michael waiting for Calvin. He eventually receives a phone call that sounds serious and urgent. Michael then rushes over to the meeting spot. On the way there, he thinks about two things that can happen once he gets there; either Calvin is calling to break up with him, or take the relationship to a new level. These are two possibilities but there are always more, which helps to strengthens my argument. The video ends with them finally meeting. I had the video a silence video with just a few words was to show the endless possibilities words can have.

hope everyone enjoys

[kml_flashembed movie=”http://www.youtube.com/v/WlsvioVdd9Y” width=”425″ height=”350″ wmode=”transparent” /]

As you all know, I did my digital essay project on “The Electric Slide Boogie” by Audre Lorde. The theme is a basic precept
that states “when you fall, get back up, and keep moving forward.” I fleshed this theme out by creating a scenario where I’m seemingly at the end of my line, but then after doing some thinking about the situation, realize that once you hit rock bottom, the only way left to go is back up.  I supplemented this realization with the various texts scattered throughout the video along with a transition from grey scale to color. Another transition which i have made here is a shift in music. My first song is entitled “Vocalise OP.34, No.14.” by Hakase Taro & Kadokura Satoshi, and is seemingly an embodiment for melancholy, regret and despair. The second song is “Overflowing Emotions, Reunion” by Motoi Sakuraba, Shinji Tamura, and Motoo Fujiwara,  which goes from soft and slow in the beginning to grand yet mellow at the end. With regards to Windows Movie Maker, I feel that it has a very simple interface that makes issues such as timing a snap. Unfortunately however, I feel like because of it’s simplicity, doing anything complicated in WMM would be a nearly impossible task. But anyway, without  further ado, here is my digital essay.

[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/lri5dFUWF6I" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]