As a rational being, he now places his behavior under the control of abstractions. He will no longer tolerate being carried away by sudden impressions, by intuitions. First he universalizes all these impressions into less colorful, cooler concepts, so that he can entrust the guidance of his life and conduct to them. Everything which distinguishes man from the animals depends upon this ability to volatilize perceptual metaphors in a schema, and thus to dissolve an image into a concept. For something is possible in the realm of these schemata which could never be achieved with the vivid first impressions: the construction of a pyramidal order according to castes and degrees, the creation of a new world of laws, privileges, subordinations, and clearly marked boundaries—a new world, one which now confronts that other vivid world of first impressions as more solid, more universal, better known, and more human than the immediately perceived world, and thus as the regulative and imperative world. Whereas each perceptual metaphor is individual and without equals and is therefore able to elude all classification, the great edifice of concepts displays the rigid regularity of a Roman columbarium and exhales in logic that strength and coolness which is characteristic of mathematics. Anyone who has felt this cool breath [of logic] will hardly believe that even the concept—which is as bony, foursquare, and transposable as a die—is nevertheless merely the residue of a metaphor, and that the illusion which is involved in the artistic transference of a nerve stimulus into images is, if not the mother, then the grandmother of every single concept.

(http://oregonstate.edu/instruct/phl201/modules/Philosophers/Nietzsche/Truth_and_Lie_in_an_Extra-Moral_Sense.htm)

I see language is used here in Charlie Chaplin’s film to represent an order and absolute power. Voice is used when the president gives an order to factory workers. The president’s voice represents rigid rules and strict orders in the film. On the other hand, Charlie’s silent pantomime is contradicting the presence of language. I think that the reason why there is no voice and word for workers including Charlie is it represents the opposite side of rational order. It, also, doesn’t have any power.

The president of the factory is sitting on the chair and seems like chilling while working. The only thing he does is trying to make more profit out of his workers by increasing work efficiency which is ridiculously harsh. On the other hand, factory workers including Charlie are working like a machine while standing. Workers are kept watch on the president and receiving an order from the president through radio.

Man and Machine are treated in the same way in the film because both exist to make profits for the factory owner. The salesman tries to sell a new machine that is invented to help workers to eat while working. This would result in increasing work efficiency because workers do not have to stop working for that lunch time. Therefore, I believe the only thing in the factory valued was profits.

One of the greatest accomplishments, industrial revolution, was not come from technologies. Normally, when we think about the industrial revolution, we easily believe it is all about technologies’ improvements, but actually it is not true.  It could be poetry, love story, romantic, and so forth. Therefore, we cannot conclude the industrial revolution within this general ideas. I know the revolution had changed many things like stream engine and diesel train, but it still surprised me that poetry affected that revolution too. During the 18^th and 19^th century in Europe and America, many revolutions: French, industrial, and European, brought different outcomes that not only implied human’s equality and right, but also inspired new ideas of poetry’s directions like Bohemian style. Briefly talk about Bohemian style, it is not limited and biased. Bohemian style indicates freestyle and free actions that they were always willing to do the new subjects like romantic poetry. According to the Harper Douglas’s Bohemian etymology, “Bohemianism is the practice of an unconventional lifestyle, often in the company of like-minded people, with few permanent ties, involving musical, artistic, literary or spiritual pursuits. The word bohemian firstly appeared in the English language in the nineteenth century to describe the non-traditional lifestyles of marginalized and impoverished artists, writers, journalists, musicians, and actors in major European cities.” Likewise, many revolutions inspired artists and writers to do something new or untouched subjects.

Among the best movies in my life, Moulin Rouge, is showing about love, romantic, poetry, tragic, and fun. This movie’s background is in Moulin Rouge in French during the 19^th century. The Main character, Christian, is a poet and writer. He is pursuing love story rather than old father’s traditional way. In the movie, Christian was inspired by Bohemian and industrial revolution that all his writings and poetries were tending a new romantic story. Of course, he had talent in writing skills so that he was able to attract the main actress, Satine. Although, Christian’s father wanted him to keep studying about something profitable works, the passion of Christian’s desire could not dampen his father’s old fashion mind. The most beautiful women in Moulin Rouge, Satine, was died by serious disease. She worked at Moulin Rouge gentlemen club and sold her virginally to males whom had a lot of money. This was doubt to me and questioned “what makes her to work in there” that I believed the circumstances and situations pushed her to die. Basically, in the movie, I see the materialism and elitism that it created typical circumstance and made people to believe “money and authority are the best”. According to the European Enlightenment, absolute monarchy was not able to stand anymore. People sought and fought for freedom and liberty. However, in the Moulin Rouse, it was rarely to see that actions. Maybe, I think Moulin Rouse was the most vulgar places in France.

Lastly, thinking about the movie Chaplin and Moulin Rouse, both have similar circumstances that both are seeking more goods and money. In the Chaplin, industrial revolution was essential and unemployment rate was dramatically high. Lower people must follow the upper class people like officers. Moreover, satires made the movie more fun. Much similar in the Moulin Rouse, all lower people are dreaming and thinking about new goods and money. Perhaps, in this movie, goods are women and money is the authority like power of duke. Also I felt more like musical when I was watching this movie that it made the movie more fun as well as Chaplin story.

As I mentioned above, revolutions: bohemian, industrial, French, European, were created something for new and better life for people. However, in Chaplin and Moulin Rouse movie, still problems were not solved and kept asking about money and power of authority again. Personally, I like both stories and it was great opportunity to compare these two movie in the close reading part.

Work Cited, References

Harper, Douglas (November 2001). “Bohemian etymology”

 

A couple weeks ago I saw a movie called “Pink” on Netflix and I began to think about how it tied back to our discussions in class. In this movie, three girls go out for a night of fun and encounter a group of men who invite them to their hotel for a couple drinks. The opening scene of the movie shows the three girls on a cab ride home looking horrified, and the silence that consumed the atmosphere was almost chilling. Throughout the movie the events that occurred that night are revealed in pieces. All the while the men are trying to get revenge, because one of the ladies attacked one of the them. The guy who was injured had to go to the hospital and got a bandage over his eye. He was from a well connected family and had a lot of resources, while the girls were middle class, average-working girls. The men felt embarrassed that one of them was attacked by a female, and so they set out to destroy their lives by making sure they lost their jobs, kicked out of their apartment, and shamed in public. The girls try to go to the police and reveal the men groped them and attempted to rape them the night they were all together. Because the men are so well connected the police disregards the accusations posed by the women and instead arrest one of them for attacking and injuring one of the men.

One thing that struck me about the movie at this point was how easy the men set their minds to destroy the lives of the three ladies. It was almost as if they didn’t even stop and think that maybe they were in the wrong. Another thing that struck me was that the police officer in  charge of handling the accusations from both parties was female, and yet in my eyes even she couldn’t be trusted. As the movie unfolds, it seems that everyone refuses to help the woman, and no lawyer is willing to represent them in court due to the accusations the men have told about them. A neighbor in the community, who happens to be a retired lawyer, comes out of retirement to help the ladies out. He points out in many occasions how society has let woman down, and how the word of a man with good connections and a deep pocket has more importance than that of a victimized woman.

One work that has reminded me of this is “The Rights of Woman” by Olympe de Gouges. Even though the movie is set in present day India and targets the flaws of Indian society and government, Gouges basically does the same thing by modifying the “Declaration to the Rights of Man and of the Citizen”, which was written in France in 1789. This year seems so distant yet the basic problems that arose in France at the time seem prevalent in our day and age. Gouges does a good job at pointing out that woman are completely disregarded in the previous declaration, and that they have rights just as much as men do. Gouges believes in a world where both men and woman would receive the same punishment for the same crime, without taking the sex of the criminal into account. She believes woman should be a part of the good and bad aspects of society, just like men are. Gouges also briefly advocates for other underrepresented minorities in French society such as children, the elderly, and people of other races/religions.

As I watched this movie, it was a cold reminder that woman still aren’t equal to men, no matter how much we would like to believe so. We do have a right to vote, and freedom of speech, and other constitutional rights that men have. But yet somehow we are caged in. In other societies as well as the American society, things like rape and feminine problems seem minuscule and unimportant, and are branded as taboo. Recently, and especially under our new administration, things like birth control and abortion are up in the air. There aren’t as many woman in politics as men, yet it seems like these kinds of decisions about a woman’s body are being made for her. There are still certain things woman have to fight for in society, even though we have come a long way. Gouges set a good example for woman and how they should express their need for equality, and the movie “Pink”was a good reminder that even though it’s the 21st century, we still have ways to go.

 

Nowadays, humans are standing at the point where the growth rate of next 30 years is exponentially not linearly, which may grow five times faster than the average of progress of past because of artificial intelligence. Recently, I read an article called ‘The dawn of artificial intelligence’ from the economists. Artificial Intelligence has become a hottest topic in 21th century with rapidly development of technology, being discussed in latest hit show “Westworld” and event that computers now can play chess better than humans. The fast development of AI urges people to concern and worry about threat of AI if they replace human’s job even destroy our world in near future. The author poses a question at the beginning of the article saying how to ensure the artificial intelligence outweighs perils if it reshapes human’s nature. The author argues that humans should concern the threat of AI with superhuman cognitive capacity and interests that conflict with human beings. This dilemma has happened before during the French revolution and industrial revolution during the early 19th century when science and technology were trying to dominate society. However, I reckon that robots and technology may never replace humans because AI do not have emotion, culture and ethics which we have discussed in Edmund Burke’s “Reflections on the Revolution in France” and Shelley’s “A Defense of Poetry”. Human have shared beliefs, ethics, love and beauty, while robots do not have human’s emotion and culture. People are concerning that AI will probably turf out whole regiment of workers, but it is almost impossible for them to replace poets, writers and decision makers because computers now do not have capacity to think like an ordinary human. In addition, robots can never understand the beauty of disorder things like Dadaism and surrealism we have discussed in the class, which against logic and rationality, but humans know how to enjoy it. Another reason that AI will not replace human is because our society have regulation and supervising system like the scene we have seen in the movie ‘Modern Times’ that president supervised workers anywhere. And all the laws and regulation are based on moral and ethics, so we should not worry about the threat of AI if we can regulate them well.

 

The author argues that scientists initially created robots in order to serve and help people, however if the situation had been reversed they would destroy humans. The author writes, “A car that drives itself better than its owner sounds like a progress; a car with its own ideas about where to go, less so.” In other words, the author argues that if AI does not follow human’s instruction and orders any more, it will become a serious issue. This reminds me of the importance of authority and law discussed in Burke’s ‘Reflections on the Revolution in France’, authority and law are valuable in maintaining terms of social hierarchy and power that have been handed down by our ancestors based on moral and ethics because they bring stability to community, otherwise AI would bring great harm if not governed by regulation. Consider, for instance, the power that AI brings to the apparatus of state security, in both autocracies and democracies. For example, AI can monitor billions of conversations and to pick out every citizen from the crowd by his voice or her face poses grave threats to liberty. Reminded of World War 1 happened in early 20th century, scientists and chemists use advanced technology to help patients, but large scale of chemistry weapon was used to demoralized, injure and kill people. This history experience told us the importance of moral and ethics standard.

 

We have discussed in the ‘Defense of Poetry’ that the ideal community should base on shared beliefs and love rather than rationality or science. In this article, the author mentioned that the scientists still could not find way to equip robots with emotions of humans, like autonomy, desire and humors. That is how humans distinguish robots. According to Nietzsche’s idea, there is no same leaf in the world and each individual have different ideas, while robots are same because they were made by same program. Also, when we watched the film “Ballet Mecanique”, although it is disorder and unreasonable, humans still can enjoy it as art. However, robots do not know how to read arts and disorder things. In Chaplin’s movie ‘Modern Times’, when Chaplin sang an improvised song which was nonsense, audience applause and felt happy. Robots could not improvise a song or a poet because their action were followed by a series program instruction. This emphasizes the importance of humanity and arts.

 

 

 

 

Worked Cited

 

Percy Shelley. ‘Defense of Poetry’. The Norton Anthology of World Literature Third edition, pp. 398-403

 

Edmund, Burke. “Reflection on French Revolution”. The Norton Anthology of World Literature Third edition, pp. 29-35

 

“The economists”.  ‘The dawn of artificial intelligence’

 

 During the end of the semester, I read the book of “Thus Spoken Zarathustra” by Nietzsche, which impressed me again because I have read the Chinese edition few years ago. Honestly, it was still not an easy task to fully understand the meaning of the book and somehow feel confuse about the book’s idea, though Nietzsche was undoubtedly an outstanding philosopher. Even nowadays, his philosophical thoughts (spirit) maintain the leading place in the philosophical realm, and continuously affecting our daily lives. Unlike other traditional philosophical books like Kant’s “Groundwork of the metaphysic of moral” or G.W.F.Hegel’s logic, the way Nietzsche express his masterpiece is more likely close to poems and verses. As a result, it takes the readers more time to fully understand the implications behind the words. In the field of philosophy, there’s a proverb saying that whoever wants to get closer to philosophy, you have to study the work of Plato, Kant, and Nietzsche together. However, here I only try to understand and express my idea through researching the writing of Nietzsche and Plato.

Nietzsche’s earth.

In the book “Thus Spoken Zarathustra,” Nietzsche states his idea about the human and world. “I beseech you, my brothers, remain faithful to the earth and do not believe whose speak to you of extraterrestrial hopes! They are mixers of poisons whether they know it or not… Now to desecrate the earth is the most terrible thing, and to esteem the bowels of the unfathomable higher than the meaning of the earth.” (Nietzsche, p16) Zarathustra told the residents when he found so many people gathered to see the rope walking. Every words from Zarathustra have profound implications, so that we will miss so many meanings of his words. He feels pathetic with human because they use all the entertainments that they can in order to forget their misery lives. At the same time, there’s an idea created by some religious people who believe in God, which is there existed another perfect world that human can live happily and heathy. However, in the belief of Zarathustra, the perfect world is illusions created by the people who have no faith in lives and have not conquer their own fears. Like what he said, no God will be there to lead us to a perfect world when we die since the saviors of life is ourselves. It is not a sacrilege in believing the inexistency of god. Indeed, it is a progress to self-recognition because only mankind can make a difference in their lives.

What the Zarathustra said reflect to the philosophy of Nietzsche- as known as “The will power. “The will to power” is about life and will; it begin with life and also end in life.” God is dead” (Part 1) “I teach you the superman. Man is something to be surpass. What have you done to surpass man?” (Part 3). What the God is dead is not meaning god is really dead. Nietzsche don’t believe the god theory back that time, he thinks God is just created by people who are unhappy with their lives and fear of death. In order for particular persons to rule the society and make people obey to the ruler, they created a god to bring people together with something in common. Moreover, Nietzsche disagreed with the theory of values and ethical that God make. He viewed religious and gods are only religious, because God is only existing in life and happiness is only resist in your praying. The god’s theory that people need perfect world is a behavior of ignorance and false, it only brings fear, fear of the unknown future. For human being, they are unknown animals, they need to learn “superman,” the superman is whom can recognize the reality that the current places that we are living in is the real world. We don’t pray or hope to transfer to another perfect world after died. Superman believes god does not exist. “All creatures so far created something beyond themselves,” (part 1) furthermore, mankind need over ourselves, make their better values and standards today’s life.  Zarathustra’s speech embodies Nietzsche’ idea about the “will to power”.  He believes even there is not god, but there is a “will to power” can make human being surpass the past, ignorant, and blindness and overcome themselves. In short, trust yourself rather than blindly follow the belief of the other perfect world and god.

Plato’s “Theory of the Forms”

Discussing mainly on the Plato’s writings, he also have a view of world that called “Theory of Forms.” The forms are courage, the good and beauty or something that people can sense but intangible. For example, we all know they are horses whenever the horses are small, have brown hair or white hair. The reason we know they are all horses is because we have a sub consciousness mind or “form” that telling us how a horse should be looked like, rather than sensing the appearance of horses.

There is a forms world. All forms are exist in a pure land created by god, before we born, we all live in this pure land. It means what men sense in this world it is not real, the form world is.

Both Plato and Nietzsche view worldly truth and truthfulness ethically, that is they view the measure and value of truth and truthful as a matter of our truth judgement make to life. Plato believes there are a perfect form world and it is the only true world, so he thinks people don’t learn from the living world, instead we learn the forms world. Meanwhile, he claims that the perfect form world is only learned go thought the senses and all our knowledge are also come from the perfect world, it so called recollection. “Theory of form” is an idea of a perfect world. It is a really good idea for the people who suffer in the living world. The ethical, eternal and perfect, they sound like a perfect ideal world. However, there are many weakness of the theory. According to the “Theory of The Forms” by Plato, a behavior of justice is moral, that because there is a moral behavior in the form world. Forms exist and do not rely on something else. However in our world, what is the justice? Justice is a behavior that must base on a policy or a behavior. What we want to see in the form world is not the behaviors of the justice, it just justice itself. So as the developing of the society, we know the theory is lack of common sense and principles.

Comparing to Plato and Nietzsche, I tend to agree with Nietzsche’s philosophies since he has more similarities on their theories. Base on Nietzsche’s words: “Mankind is a rope fastened between animal and overman-a rope over an abyss,” this is a most significant about his logic of philosophy. Firstly, the ideal about the overman. The greatest thing of mankind is they are a bridge, not a destination. Our lives are a process that never stop and it is unpredictable. However, human being can overcome themselves by self-affirmation and hardworking, then surpass the past and walk into a future. Secondly, there is not a so called god. The only god is the earth-ourselves. The system of the life values is not created by god, we created it by our own. Thus, we need to respect life, the best ways to grate it is use will to overcome ourselves and make the life more meaningful.  Finally, another aspect that I learn from Nietzsche is the faith. Faith is blind, so a blink man will not believe light, because he knows there is unnecessary. Plato describes a wonderful world that people dream for in his books, but it is not about who we are now, it about we just keep the faith to the another world and maybe god. Basically, they all say god is the faith. Not for Nietzsche. He wants human being has an own ethical standard and beyond the standards, human can be brave, be create and be strong. Human can make a different because they want, not just because god wants.

Words Cited

Nietzsche, F. W., & Kaufmann, W. (1995). Thus spoke Zarathustra: A book for all and none. New York: Modern Library.

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 French Revolution is regarded as one of the greatest revolutions in the history of the world. As for the political aspect, it raised the slogan “Liberté, Égalité, and Fraternité” meaning “liberty, equality, and fraternity”, which was deeply rooted in the heart of people. This slogan gave people courage and theoretical support to pursue freedom and democracy. In this way, the feudal system in France, even in the continent of Europe, was overturned. Economically, with the process of the French Revolution, capitalism was developed. As for cultural aspect, the French Revolution spread the idea of freedom and democracy. Also, there were many novels written based on the historical background of the French Revolution, such as Les Miserables. We cannot deny the greatness and the remarkably positive impact of the French Revolution in history, but did it accomplish all the requirement raised during the revolution, did it let people get real freedom and happiness? I believe that the French Revolution may not be that successful as people thought, because Les Miserables, as a historically cultural legacy, shows us what people exactly experienced in the middle of nineteen centuries in France and how disastrously they lived their life during that period, especially for lower-class people. The French Revolution didn’t help people to get happiness, equality, and fraternity.

First of all, people didn’t get happiness through the French Revolution, especially for lower-class people. During the French Revolution, with the development of capitalism, even though some people as free labor got much more opportunities to work, most people were pressed and struggling. As the society became money-oriented, the only focus in the society was on money and poor people’s life became even harder. If there was not enough money, it would be extremely difficult to gain a foothold. In order to earn money, people could do anything even losing their dignity, like Fantine, who prostituted to get money for her daughter; people would even lose morality and become greedy, like the Thenardiers, who took away almost all Fantine’s money and lay to ask for more. In this society, it seemed that the relationship between people was all about pecuniary interest. There was no kindness in the society. This was not what the French Revolution wants to pursue.

Additionally, there was still inequality in this society. For example, when Fantine was refusing a rude client and pulling and pushing each other, the new police officer passed by and indiscriminately convict Fantine. Was it right to optionally convict somebody just because he was a police officer? Shouldn’t his decision be based on legislative authority? Wasn’t there any legal procedure? The situation that the police officer declared Fantine’s guilty only based on his subjective assumption reveals inequality and imperfection of the law. Was there any difference from the feudal age? It’s just like what was written in the book, “If you ask what is equality, only is equal in front of death”.

Last but not least, the French Revolution didn’t achieve the requirement of “Fraternité”, which means fraternity. Revolutionaries were not really “fraternal”. They simply thought victory was a class to eliminate another class. However, this behavior could only instigate hostility and chaos in the society. What is more, the Thenardiers was not “fraternal” at all. This couple was a mixture of philistinism, utilitarian as well as ruffian. Fantine asked them to take care of her daughter, Cosette, and left a lot of money. However, they didn’t use this money to foster Cosette but used it to cultivate their own daughter and regarded Cosette as a maidservant. Not only that, they lay to Fantine that her girl was sick to ask for more money constantly. Besides, colleagues in the factory were not “fraternal”. When they found a letter from the Thenardiers to Fantine asking for money, they started to despise Fantine because she had an illegitimate daughter. These colleges allied the headman of the factory to expel Fantine. Afterwards, poor Fantine had to be homeless and lived on the street. These two parts show people’s indifference and non-fraternity, which are opposed to the slogan of the French Revolution.

All in all, the French Revolution is not fully successful because there was still severe inequality in the society during that period, and people didn’t live a happy life. The violent revolution brought France to a vicious circle, which consisted of revenge and harm. However, the truth of victory of a society is not a class to eliminate another one, but to maintain the whole society to be peaceful. Only in this way, people can enjoy their rights to education, employment, medical and old-age care, and housing.

Reference:

Hugo, Victor. Les Miserables. Trans. Charles E. Wilbour. New York: Random House Modern Library, 1992.

Reality and dream; rational and irrational; life and death; all those binary oppositions we learned from the course appeared in the film “The Discovery”. “The Discovery” is British-American romantic science fiction film directed by Charlie McDowell and written by Justin Lader and Charlie McDowell. The film talked about a man name Thomas Harbor proved the existence of an afterlife. He proved that part of our consciousness leaved us and traveled to a new plane by capture brain wavelengths on a subatomic level. People started to believe it and committed suicide because of it. Millions of people killed themselves. On the two-year anniversary of discovery of afterlife, Thomas Harbor’s son Will traveled to visit his father and brother. Later, Will saved a woman name Isla from committed suicide. Isla blamed Will for saving her life but later she changed her mind. Isla and Will became more and more closer. Thomas Harbor also invented a machine that can record dead people’s afterlife. They found out that the afterlife was not the same as they expected. The whole film’s storyline might not seem perfectly related to our course but some of their conversations and imagines made me recall things that I have learned from the reading Kafka’s “The Judgment”.  For example, the zero point, Death of God, madness, and logic of dream. In this article close reading, I will apply those terms to the film “The Discovery” to view this film at different angle.

The rational thinking eliminated the God. The film pointed out Death of God at the very beginning. When Thomas Harbor had the interview with the reporter, he said that “ I can’t comment on terminology like “soul” and “heaven” and “afterlife”, but what I can say with scientific certainty is that…”. This message pointed out that religious belief about afterlife (heaven) was wrong, the afterlife can be detected with pure logical machinery. In the end of the film, Will and Isla revealed that the afterlife of human being was just another alternative life that based on people’s desire and imagination. This perfectly fit to the point that Professor Rickenbach’s recap on Kafka’s The Judgment (Friedrich Nietzsche), which it stated that “God is dead and we are his murderers”. Another dialogue between Will and Isla, Will said that “ I think it’s our instinct to search for meaning, and when there is none, it’s our instinct to create meaning.” It gave me the feeling that God and Heaven existed in spiritual life because human were afraid of death or human could not interpret what will happen after death so we gave it a meaning (God and Heaven). When we discovered the truth behind death and life, the whole point of God and Heaven falls apart.

Suicide in Kafka’s Judgement represented that return to the zero point (unjudging). The point that we as child with wonder and fascination of the world that didn’t make any decision. In the film “The Discovery”, suicide was caused by discovery of an afterlife. Millions of people committed suicide because they believed in afterlife even they did not know what will afterlife looks like. They wanted to escape from the reality/life. They believe that they can restart their life (return to the zero point) by go to the afterlife. But reality is that afterlife is just people’s desire, imagination, and fantasy. There was no zero point as people expected for the afterlife.

Logic of the dream fit perfectly in the end of the film, which Will and Isla found out that afterlife was just people’s desire and imagination. As Professor Rickenbach mentioned in the Recap, “logic of Dream is not like logic we understand in real life. It is not based on logic of non-contradiction. The unconscious and Dream logic know only “yes””. In the film, Will and Isla understood that afterlife was what alternative life that people wanted (the world that people make up by him/herself). Things in their afterlife (dream) did not have to follow the logic. Tattoo in someone’s hand could be different from reality and people could go to places that they did not go before or did things they regret they did not do before. The afterlife was purely based on people’s unconsciousness, the id. The screen that display the afterlife was black and white only, the reality was colorful. It was like our discussion on the opposition, Life- Dream, Color—Black and white.

What I learned from the reading in this course can be apply into different literature, film, newspaper articles, TV show, games etc… Those ideas provided me the tools to view things at different angle and different prospective.

What is language? According to Weber dictionary, language is “the method of human communication, either spoken or written, consisting of the use of words in a structured and conventional way”. For me, it is a method to express humans’ emotion and ideas. Thus, it plays a significant and extraordinary sign in the silent pantomime. It makes people think about what we really need in our society.

In the movie “Modern Times” there are two scenes that language presents and impresses people. One is the supervisor in factory gives orders to his employees thought monitors. Another one is when Chaplin sings in the restaurant. In the first scene, it embodies the industry revolution. The factory and its supervisor are side of capitalism, the language (orders) that the supervisor gives to another side of society- proletariat, it presents a dominate relationship. The supervisor sits in his comfortable office wears a suit and doing nothing except monitors his employees. His voice and tone are full of unrespect and arrogance, Thus, the scene of language makes people feel unpleased and anxiety, just like what people feel about the machines in the factory. Also the pace when workers are working seems inhumane and unreasonable. Here, in this time of the machinery and technology, human resources are like machines in the industry for capitalism. The only value of them is creating the benefit. In the second language scene, it was the first time that people heard Chaplin’s voice. In the first, Chaplin works as a waiter and prepares to sing to customers, but he keep forgets the lyrics. At the end, Chaplin just made up a nonsense song. The song that Charlie sang was absolutely not fit the melody but it sounded so joyous and romantic, so nobody even cared and noticed what if the lyrics were right. Chaplin was so confidence when he sang and danced in front of the customers. That was the life should be look like, being confident and happy.

In this silence pantomime, the language is no long the factor to show us about the reality of the society, on the contrary, the silence is. The machines in the factory, the workers on strike, or the family on the starving all relate and reflect the unfair relationship of the classes in our society. The industry evolution is supposed to make humans’ life more comfortable and joyful, but it isn’t. Based on that, human beings need to rethink about the revolution.