We deeply learned the idea of community from few Japanese literature works in our class, like Ihara Saikaku’s From Life of a Sensuous Woman and Ueda Akinari’s Bewitched. We recognize the Japanese community and especially its male chauvinism and economic stratification of society from those stories. In Bewitched, we observe that the men must be economically independent as they need to support his wife and his household. The men who fail to be financially supportive, like Toyo, would not be accepted by the family and social structure. And the women are considered to be solely economically dependent on the men. Also, in From Life of a Sensuous Woman, the girls from the poor families wager all their money on the intense competition of becoming the mistress of the domain lord.

The ideas of Japanese community, male chauvinism, and social class remind me a film called Memoirs of a Geisha, which I have watched few times. Imagine the scene that the geisha who are traditional Japanese female entertainers wear the gorgeous colorful kimono and walk gracefully in the streets of Gion, the house of geisha in Kyoto. However, behind the marvelous beauty of this traditional art, there are young girls’ years of hardworking training and practicing. Traditionally, geisha begin their training at a young age and some girls were even bonded to the geisha houses as children. Those young girls are apprentices of the geisha house and are bonded under the contract to their geisha house. As the training process is very expensive and they have to pay back the debts to the geisha house with the earnings they make. They are not allowed to work or live independently until their debts are fully settled. In other words, the geisha’s freedom is limited by their contractor or owner, the geisha house, even including the right of developing relationship or marriage. Beside paying back the debt by their own, they could also find and ask help from their sponsors to redeem themselves from the contract. Those sponsors are usually the power elite of the society, like government officials, military officers, and business owners. We observe that even though the geisha are the treasure of Japanese traditional art with quite handsome earnings, they are still considered as lower class of the whole social hierarchy.

Historically, the young girls who came from poverty families were used to be sold to the geisha house by their parents who did not have financial ability to raise the girls. And that is the plot in the film, Memoirs of a Geisha. Chiyo, a young girl from a poor fishing village along with her sister are sold to different geisha houses by their father. In the geisha house, Chiyo meets another young girl called Pumpkin, the mother of the geisha house, and the dominant working geisha, Hatsumomo. Chiyo and Pumpkin need to study together and compete with each other for the position of the mother’s adopted daughter and heiress of the geisha house. That is, the wining person then would have some security under her own name in her old age since right now all the earnings belong to the name of the house instead of themselves’. This is a cruel fact for the two young girls: they two meet each other in the same geisha house and become good partners at the early days by fate; when they two later realize that the only way they could own the asset to establish themselves in the small geisha house, in the geisha industry, or in the society, is to fight with their best and only friend. Beside the competition between the two young trainers, there is also conflict between Chiyo and her geisha sister, Hatsumomo. Hatsumomo is the house’s only working geisha and is famous for her beauty in the local area of geisha houses. She is jealous of Chiyo’s attractive grey-eyes and views the little Chiyo as her potential rival who will definitely affect her dominate status in the geisha house. Soon after Chiyo’s discovery of Hatsumomo’s hidden boyfriend, which is against the rules of the geisha lifestyle, Hatsumomo increases her anger towards Chiyo. In addition, the conflict between Chiyo’s escape from the geisha house and the mother’s later punishment towards Chiyo impresses me a lot. Not like other girls’ silence and accepting the reality, Chiyo rebels and runs away from the house to get her life back. Even though she eventually failed and is demoted from geisha training to working as a slave to pay off her debt to the mother, at least she has the desire of being free and independent, which are the basic ideas of feminism. That is, she is not a numb and she is not dead.

Geisha house in the film is like a golden cage and the young girls are like the canaries. They are trained by the best but strict art traditions, including manner, expression, tea ceremony, instruments, dance, and so on. And they are provided with food, clothes, rooms, and servants all at the expensive of freedom. Common people are easily attracted by the breathtaking beauty of the geisha and their eremitic lifestyle, but what we could not observe directly is the price the young girls pay. During that era and social class background, the geisha are deprived of their female rights or even the human rights. They are like to own the asset he commercials sold by their parents to the house, are the financial dependence of the mother, are the assets of the house, and the art works for the rich men to enjoy. This is the sadness and tragedy of that era and that social stratification system.

The language happens when the president of the factory gives order to the workers. Also, we observe the introduction title of each part of the film and the written word of the dialogues between characters and the articles in the film, for example, the warrant for the young female character. There is also some background music with the rhythm matching the plots, for example, the fleet music plays when Chaplin works in the pipeline. And we hear Chaplin singing his improvisational song in the cafe, which to me sounds like nonsense words. Most importantly, the grim voice of the president is as cold as the machines in the factory, which expresses the oppressed working environment. It shows Chaplin’s critique on the dehumanizing impact of industrialization on society, especially the lower class people. The miserable poor families become the victims of the social and political policy under of era of industrialization. We observe the conflicts between the workers living in poverty and the sole proprietorship industry, which could be interpreted as the conflicts between people’s struggling pursuit for the better life and the unbalanced society with high unemployment. The beginning of the film that workers rush into the factory and the livestock rush into the fence impresses me a lot. Workers’ dehumanizing treatment is same as or even worse than a livestock. Like Chaplin asking the warder whether he could stay in jail for a longer time, workers’ outside “free” life is much worse than being put in jail. Only in that kind of crazy era, people would even wish them to stay in jail rather than confronting the real and outward life. Overall, Modern Times is a silent and pantomime skilled film with limited but crucial use of language and voice to let the audience pay more attention on characters’ appearance, gestures, and emotional power.

Ballet Mecanique is a short black and white silent film without any main characters dialogue or clear clue of plots. The movements of the objects are dynamic and randomly cut. The screens are suddenly zoom in or out. Also, the shoots of figures are only part of the human body, for example, lip, eyes, or face. I could hardly tell or summarize this film by reasons that is beyond our ordinary film mode. The idea of this work could still be interpreted as a “breaking rules” casual creation, which could be understood by the Dadaist’s ideas. That is, to abolish the traditions, logic, rules, and structures. The director shares the impact of  Dadaist’s idea in his film making and shows his unique aesthetic way of understanding the art and world.

Un Chien Andalou is also a silent film sharing the ideas of surrealist, but this one no like Ballet Mecanique, has characters and plots going through. Still, I could not fully comprehend the meanings of each story that the director tries to express in this film. At the beginning, the man holds the shaver and steps into deep thought. I feel like he is going to hurt or kill himself or somebody and I wonder why it is a shaver not a knife. Later, he uses the shaver to hack the eye of a young woman with the interspersing scene of cloud blocking the noon. I guess this scene of night is just a metaphor of the female’s losing light. To be honest, I feel this part is sick and too real. The later appearance of the man wearing the housemaid like clothes, the man with ants crawling, and the dead monkeys shows the shock towards religion, sexuality, class, and traditions. Overall, the film expresses the conflicts between the old and new, and the cross between dream and reality.

The relationship between Georg and the friend is complicated and does not like ordinary friendship. There are significant differences and gaps between these two’s career and life, which are revealed by Georg’s internal monologues, Georg and Frieda’s exchange, and later Georg and his father’s conversation.

Georg inherits and operates the business from his father domestically, but not thoroughly takes control. The friend runs a business in a foreign country. We observe the objective living distance between they two. The friend has not come back to his home country for a while and the only communication method between them is through letters. Georg’s mother’s death was a turning point in his life. Before, he was the pride of the parents and was fully controlled by his father. Right after his mother passing away, he has been more resolute in tackling his business to gradually escape from his father’s control and to take over his father. And the business has been quite unexpectedly prospered during these days. Then, Georg has gotten engaged to Frieda, a girl from a well-to-do family. Quite contrary to Georg’s situation, the friend’s running business in Russia was once initially promising, but later was declining. The friend also has no real ties with the local colony of his compatriots and almost no social dealings with native families. He is stuck between the options of being alone miserably without friends in foreign country or coming back to the homeland to resume all the old friendship. We observe the sharp comparison between Georg’s success and the friend’s failure, which makes their friendship relationship unbalanced.

Georg’s success has become the obstacle preventing Georg from opening his heart to the friend. In other word, Georg has become anxious and “dishonest” to the friend. Georg always limits himself to writing to his friend about trivial occurrences so that his friend has exactly no inkling of his life, even not his engagement. Georg personally thinks that his friend would be embittered by his “showing off” success if he does share his stories with the friend. Georg’s intentional concealing about his engagement offenses his fiancee, Frieda. Frieda insists that Georg should invite his friends, including this peculiar friend in Russia. She thinks that there is no harm to share happiness with friend and true friend will definitely give benediction, which I agree with her. Georg’s response, “That is how I am, and that is how he must take me” reveals his arrogance towards his friend that in Georg’s inner thought, he considers himself superior to his friend.  After the exchange between Georg and Frieda, Georg decides to write a letter to share the good news and to talk to his father about this letter. Both the uncomfortable content of the letter and the conversation between Georg and his father reveal that Georg’s so called considerations for his friend are only excuses to hide his true thought. His father knows Georg well and unmasks him. Georg actually has no friend in St.Petersburg as he does not treats his friend as friend. Georg deceives his friend by writing dishonest letters. Georg is even sparing of sharing happiness with this miserable old friend, even though sharing is such a common and sweet exchange between friends. However, that Georg thinks sharing as strutting jubilant is all because he intends to show off.

In Edgar Allan Poe’s the Man of the Crowd, we observe that the man’s reviving from the verge of death during his convalescence is due to his yearning to the unknown and pursuit of the truth. The narrator is once enchained by a decrepit old man’s absolute idiosyncrasy and examines this mysterious man by following him in the dark streets of London. Eventually, the narrator realizes that he could never read this old man by observation and only comes into the thought that the old man with diamond and dagger “is the type and the genius of deep crime” and “he is the man of the crowd.” Here, the old man is the truth for the narrator. Poe shows us the way that the narrator tries to use reason to know the world, the limitation of reason’s ability, and the possible failure of pursuing the truth. However, this failure should not be taken as meaningless or irreparable. In fact, knowing his impossibility could teach us an alternative way to better approach truth. That is, by Baudelaire’s idea, a return towards childhood, to re-be the figure of child, to look at the world through a child’s fascinated eye with curiosity and interests, and to go back to the moment before we are taught reason.

Our group’s orature is about Malagasy Wisdom Poetry, Ohabolana and Hainteny.

For Ohabolana, in Malagasy word means “wise proverbs”, expresses cultural values and guides for living. It explains life, god, death, time, man, woman, and justice by relating the beliefs with fundamental objects, which are straightforward and vivid for people to understand, remember, and transmit. For example, “death is not a condemnation, but part of a tax.” Malagasy considers death as a payment of  tax to the life, which is same as we paying tax to the government. It is compulsory, but is not punitive. It persuades people not to fear death, but to accept it indifferently.

For Hainteny, in Malagasy word, means “knowledge of the words”, involving heavy use of metaphor. It deals mostly with the idea of love. It has four parts altogether: the first two parts together describe the initial understanding of love between one couple, the third part expresses the feeling of being apart and abandonment, and the last part deals with the bitter blame for the failing relationship. We observe that there are dialogues between the couple, as one continuously asks, “How do you love me?” And the other always responds by, “I love you as I love money, rice, water etc.”, like all the essential living materials. One would not be satisfied with those answers as she/he is searching for true pure love. For example, “I love you as I love the door.” If the relationship passively needs to be pushed as door, then it is not about true love. One is only once satisfied when the other says, “I love you as I love the ruling prince.” Then, it is truly loved, as the prince’s passage inspires awe and his glance causes me shame. In other words, true love should be like the love towards ruling prince, which is invisible without physical touching.

Overall, Malagasy Wisdom Poetry is different with other group’s oratures focusing on nationalism, slavery, and freedom. I choose to compare the Malagasy’s with the English folklore, Tom Tit Tot. Considering the historical background, we see that English folktale is for the sake of preserving its traditional English culture, as other dominating cultures at that time had wiped out too many its native traditions. Then, Joseph Jacobs aimed at children’s literature by gathering and editing stories so that the younger generation could absorb and inherit their national literature, For Tom Tit Tot, the plots are fairy and gripping that attract children to develop constant interests in it. Readers are nervously guessing whether the female character correctly guesses the name or not. Among the folktale, it also shows the social background that there exists severe class structure, The rich have all they like to eat, all the gowns they like to get, and all the companies they like to keep; while the poor even care about one single piece of fried pie. The tale eventually reveals that the staying power of the ancient superstition that to know someone’s name gives you power over that person.

With different objects and focuses, our oral poetry conveys traditional knowledge and deals more with common elements in daily life. This is because of Madagascar’s distinct social and humanistic background. Despite many waves of migration, there is no cultural invasion or conflict wiping out Malagasy’s original culture. Malagasy’s inhabitants live on large island and share cultural institutions and traditions. People there all enjoy life and pursue love, even including women. Despite the particular social structure, Malagasy women are comparatively free to pursue love. Perhaps this is also why we observe the dialogues between the couple in the poetry.

Percy Shelly is an English poet during the Romanticism period. During the Romanticism, the poets were resisting traditional expectations and inventing new poetic forms. And the dominant literary form was the lyric poem. Also, as nature becomes more and more vulnerable and valued, Romanticism is associated with nature. In addition, Poet is seen as a new model of expressive freedom, which is liberated from the constraints of reason and authority. It is not only a very foundation for a new kind of society, but also a foundation for human experience, Thus, Romanticism is associated with nationalism as well. It is defined as a rejection of neoclassical styles and a rejection of reason as the organizing principle for art and society.

If we want to talk about Percy Shelly and his poems, we have to take the history background into account. Shelly experienced the era when the British government had imposed heavy taxes to pay for the nation’s protracted wars with France, with the poor suffering especially from high taxes. For example, Shelly describes large-scale historical events, and expresses his resistance and rebellion towards the authority in his poem, England in 1819, like he said, “Rulers who neither see nor feel nor know” and “Burst, to illumine our tempestuous day”. Shelly believes that only poetic images can be like the “redemption” to reanimate the literature. Such renewal of words could become a means of upending social inequities and tyrannical authorities.

In Shelly’s a Defense of Poetry, he first relates poetry to the remarks in its elements and principles, such as nature, to tell us what is called poetry. Like he said, “Poets are not only subject to these experiences as spirits of the most refined organization, but they can color all that they combine with the evanescent hues of this ethereal world;” That is, poetry makes our words, feelings, minds, and imaginations, all immortal. He then states an application of the principles to the cultivation of poetry by relating the nationalism background. The poets use poetry as an accumulation of the power if communicating and receiving concepts about man and nature to struggle for civil and religious liberty against authority. That is, in Shelly’s belief, poets, respecting nature and human reason, instead of the authority, should be the unacknowledged authentic legislators of the world.

“What is enlightenment?” Kant defines it as “Enlightenment is man’s release from his self-incurred tutelage.” Self-incurred tutelage is because of laziness and is lack of courage. People are not dare to know and not dare to make use of their own reason but only slavishly obey the “guardians”, which chiefly in matters of religion instead of arts and sciences. I also have question about Kant’s “the guardians of the people (in spiritual things) should themselves be incompetent is an absurdity which amounts to the externalization of absurdities.” Compared with individuals, the public should enlighten itself more possibly, if only freedom is granted. Here, Kant uses a few sentences to explain why “the public can only slowly attain enlightenment.” I did not quite get why. Enlightenment requires a greater degree of freedom to make public use of one’s reason. That is, to be human, to argue as much as you will, to appreciate your worth, and to think for yourself. Human starts to see themselves, rather than gods or spirits. People should believe that guardianship could never be possible to shut off all further enlightenment.

If one wants himself or herself be enlightened, one must divest the human race of its tutelage and freely use his or her own light of reason. “Do we now live in an enlightened age?” I really like Kant’s answer. “No, but we do live in an age of enlightenment.” And I believe today we still live in an age of enlightenment, as we are still lacking critical thinking, are scared of challenging authorities, and are reluctant to argue why. For example, instead of thinking about how this mathematical formula forms, most students just automatically accept what the professor teaches and memorize how this formula works in those practice problems. Students are focus more on how to get a better grade on the exam rather than truly learning. I believe this is not what the education system wants to see.