Blog #5- Dystopia text selection Jovana Gama

The text/film Ive decided to chose for this assignment is the Hunger Games. I am still deciding whether or not I want to analyze the film version or the book version. I have seen the film version directed by Gary Ross. I may plan on doing my analysis on the book version written by Suzanne Collins.  I will be doing my paper based on the first book/film of the Hunger Games. The Hunger Games is a dystopia because there are different districts that are living in poverty,  within these confined grounds that look similar to concentration camps. One boy and one girl are chosen from 12 different districts and are chosen to fight to the death on a reality show. There survival all depends on a certain skill they obtain and on "sponsors". All the people chosen for the "Hunger Games" can range in variety of age. This is undesirable because it is not often thought as fun to engage in murdering, especially all for a show that others are watching as entertainment. The characters have to literally fight and kill in order to stay alive. The characters are dehumanized and thought of as game players on this show, and not thought of as real people. Life within the districts are a dystopia and those that live within the inner city are wealthy and view the Hunger Games as entertainment although all these "players" are fighting for their life.
I have yet to conduct any research on my text. As far as any analytical lenses or theoretical lens, I am still up in the air on details.

Dystopian Blog Chris Bertrand

The primary text I think I'll be going with is Lord of the Flies. I think everyone is pretty familiar with this text from high school, but the material previously covered was about symbolism or something of that sort.. This text is a good representation of a dystopia because the story line develops a chaotic, unruly group of kids who decent into a very unorganized, lawless group of kids. I'm leaning more towards a Marxist theory paper, I think this lense "fits" best. No research done yet bu I'm pretty sure there will be an abundance of sources to cite.

Dystopia Blog Trevor Coopersmith 4/28/13

The primary dystopia text I selected is the movie Idiocracy. Mike Judge wrote and directed this sci-fi comedy which gives a new meaning to the expression "people are getting dumber all the time." In 2005, Joe Bowers  is a soldier who was chosen to take part in a secret military scientific experiment. The expirement consisted of which he will be put into hibernation for one year, along with a woman named Rita, another main character. Bowers and Rita are forgotten when the military base where the experiment took place is closed down, and when they wake up in the year 2505, Bowers finds himself living in a society where intelligence has taken such a downfall that he's now the smartest man in the world.The specific features that make Idiocracy a dystopia is that it is a critique of American society currently in multiple ways. A professional wrestler is president, plants are watered with gatorade, and starbucks sells prostitutes. Idiocracy attacks consumerism, immortality with women, and sensationalism in politics. Idiocracy is another world used to point out flaws and compare society to others. Idiocracy is exaggerating the fact that many Americans believe everything they are told. Potential theoretical approaches include Feminism due to the mocking of women sexuality rights in the film and a Marxist approach due to the constant economic downfall and roles of people in society. So far I found a review of the movie Idiocracy by Sheri Linden. "Idiocracy" is hardly flawless; much like "Office Space," it delivers a socko premise but can't quite sustain the edge, lapsing into formulaic storytelling that dulls the payoff." I will continue to look for more scholarly sources and watch the movie again before I write the paper.

BLOG #5: Text Selection/Initial Analysis for Research Assignment (Due by Thursday, 05/02)

This one's pretty simple.

Tell me about the primary text you've selected. You should provide basic identifying information as well as a summary. Then: which features make this text a dystopia? Which theory(ies) will work well as analytical lenses? Have you settled on a theoretical lens?

Have you done any research yet? What have you found? List/link anything you've identified as a possible source here. 

I will try to comment on all of these. The more ideas/possible analysis you have, the more I can give you. Will be looking forward to reading these. 

Jennifer Sanchez: Oleanna Play Write up

In the live performance of Oleanna the audience would laugh when John and Carol would say something that "seemed" funny.  The play is suppose to anger the audience.  Which this live performance it made the audience laugh. It didn't get me mad and the actors didn't show emotion. Throughout the play they talked in the same tone it did not change.  It was simply plain, words from act one were changed.
Carol's shyness was there through her acting. There wasn't a change of self-conscious to being confident. 
I was happy that John threw her to the ground but not as satisfied when I saw it in the movie. John most of the time was sitting down and I expected him to be walking around the stage.

Blog Post #4 Oleanna Lee Bowen

When we first started watching the play Oleanna I didn't quite understand what the overall deal was with this student teacher complex. Carol wanted to talk to her professor about receiving a better grade but all John could talk about was his house and that they come from two different social classes. At first it seemed like he used that as an excuse to why she didn't get the grade she wanted even though she knew she had struggled throughout the class. Then he starts comparing her to himself as they go deeper into why she could't understand his style of teaching. Carol uses the claim of sexual harassment to try and get what she wants while making John look like the one at fault for everything. J.K Curry stating "The work obscures the issue of sexual harassment by suggesting that sexual harassment is really a ploy of militant feminists to disempower and destroy white, middle-class, male academics." Carol uses her feminism ways to try to make the situation favor her over the professor. Using this against him as a tactic in order to obtain what she desires is ultra sad.

Chris Bertrand Blog #4/ Q #4

I feel compelled to agree with Scholar Richard Badenhausen (“The Modern Academy Raging in the Dark: Misreading Mamet's Political Incorrectness in Oleanna"), when he acknowledges that “In discussing the 1992 debut of David Mamet's Oleanna, audiences and critics tended to highlight two features of the play: its indictment of political correctness on college campuses in America and its treatment of sexual harassment..” Political correctness on college campuses was an important topic, since there’s this ‘fine line’ of political correctness that administrators can’t cross but the professor in Oleanna most certainly did. The treatment of sexual harassment being a very important topic that was brought up in Oleanna as well, where again there is a fine line you shouldn’t cross, and again John did.  “ characters polarized not only in their gender, but physically, generationally, and educationally.” I agree with Richard Badenhausen here as well, you couldn’t have a found a more demographically polarized cast, unless the student was also a minority.

 It  was important to make these contradicting traits and touch on such highly controversial issues or else it would not have been as easy to explore “the perils of inferior teaching and the subsequent misreadings that necessarily follow in a pedagogical environment that tacitly reinforces (instead of collapsing or bridging) hierarchical differences amongst its participants.” And you see this time and time again, with ample context amplifying the shortcomings of the system at hand with the constant interruptions, the crossings of the ‘political correctedness’ and ‘sexual harassment’ lines, and their overall miscommunication due to pedagogical jargon.