my final hist243 essay.. done with much blood, sweat and heart

From Braveheart to Gladiator: what historical films teach us about history

A Beautiful Mind in 2002. Shakespeare in Love in 1999. The English Patient in 1997. It doesn’t take an extremely astute filmgoer to notice an interesting pattern occurring on an increasingly regular basis at the Oscars. Historical films are back in vogue. One just has to look at the number of historical films that have been released recently or are in pre- and post-production now that hark back to the days gone by to know that historical films are making their presence felt in the film industry. Just this year alone, audiences have been taken back to wars in Somalia (Black Hawk Down), Germany (Hart’s War) and Vietnam (We Were Soldiers), gotten a taste of father-son bonding (Road to Perdition) and unravelled a whodunit murder mystery (Gosford Park).

So what exactly is it about historical films that has captured the attention of both filmmakers and filmgoers alike? As sacrilegious as this may sound to most historians, historical films appeal because they offer a broader perspective than what history (of the written variety) has to offer to people now.

Films, more so than other forms of mass media, have become one of the best ways of disseminating out messages and information to the public. One just has to look at the rakings that films take in at the box-office to get a sense of their potential power not only to entertain, but also to influence and educate the masses. How many people are there who could name all the members of the ill-fated Apollo 13 spacecraft before the film premiered?

Thus, it can be argued that films, especially historical ones, can help bring attention to issues and events in the past that otherwise would not be discussed or known by the wider public. In fact, historical films are becoming increasingly credited with being the most effective and to a larger extent, the only method, through which people have contact with the past, other than through their history textbooks.

However, all this would sound like drivel to a confused person who might have been pondering life’s bigger issues – if historical films are about the past, then wouldn’t every film, except those projecting the future, be considered historical? In a sense, yes. But to prevent such existential notions from making our brains hurt from thinking too much, historical films shall be limited to the following categories: those that chronicle people’s lives, events and movements that occurred in the past and those that have fictional and/or real characters and plots and historical settings that are “intrinsic to the story and meaning of the work.”

Yet this definition of historical films raises another related question – what is history? To most people, it’s a boring school subject about dead people and wars that you had to take, however you might have tried to squirm out of it. However, this simplistic qualification, though relatively true about the state of history in schools, does not do justice to history, which is much more complex to quantify than that.

History, it must be stated, is different from the past – the two entities “float free from each other”. It is commonly assumed that the two are the same, however, this could not be further from the truth. As has been established by many historians, the past is a series of events that have occurred. There is no way that we will be able to rediscover everything about the past as it is over and many things that have happened have left behind nothing at all. Memory, which is essential and very relevant to this process of recording the past, is even more complicated an issue and will be discussed in more detail later. Thus, it can thus be reasoned that history (and here we refer to the written discourse) is essentially a historian’s interpretation of the past. Oakeshott explained it best when he said, “There is no fact in history which is not a judgement, no event which is not an inference.”

If we were to follow this vein of thought, that history is just a matter of interpretation and selecting what one deems significant, then historical films would also be able to be categorised as such. This view though obvious, is one that is not shared by most historians and people alike. They view historical films, as an inferior other, one that is whimsical and more about entertaining than informing. They “tend to use written works of history to critique visual history as if that written history were itself something solid and unproblematic.”

So what can historical films teach us about history?

If one were to rely solely on written history for an impression of what such a wide-ranging subject entails, the general impression would be that history is “in terms of narratives, sequences, dates and chronologies”. Though this view may be the most common one associated with history, it is certainly not the only one, nor the best. As historian R.J Raack himself conceded, “‘Traditional written history’… is too linear and too narrow in focus to render the fullness of the complex, multidimensional world in which humans live.” This is where historical films can provide a more balanced and perhaps, truthful, view of the past.

An innovative method that an increasing number of historical films is using is the concept of polyphony, where instead of one sole narrative voice, there is a variety, all offering different perspectives on the same issue. This process is clearly illustrated in Distant Voices, Still Lives, a British film set in post World War II about how a family copes with an abusive father. The film employs the use of evocative vignettes to show how the various characters remember the past. An example in the film would be when the characters are in a room remembering their father and the camera zooms in on one of the sisters and depicts her memory of him shouting at her and abusing her physically as she tries to scrub the floor. After the short scene, it returns to the characters in the room and presents another’s view, where the father is loving man who dotes on his child. This film thus shows how history can and should be more open to “the existence of other interpretations.” However, it must be qualified that certain voices will be privileged over others. Nevertheless, this should not deter people from realising that such openness provides an opportunity for more critical thinking. Other films with similar techniques include Courage Under Fire and Rashomon.

Another film that challenges the long-held assumption that history must be chronological and linear is Memento. The film centres around Leonard Shelby (Guy Pearce), who suffers from anterograde amnesia. Although he is unable to make new memories after an injury to his head, he can remember all events prior to the incident. This film interestingly reflects on the importance of memory, a mental process often taken for granted, to a person. Memento reveals the difficulties of living without the ability to remember anything – Shelby has to take Polaroid photographs of his worldly possessions (including his car, where he lives, etc.) and of people he encounters so that he will remember them the next time he meets them. The use of memory as a tool for recording events and more significantly, the past, is questioned through the notes that Shelby leaves for himself on the photographs to help him remember details about the person photographed. Although he might have written something earlier on it, he changes the caption occasionally after an encounter with the person in the photograph. An example would be when Shelby changes his note about Teddy (Joe Pantoliano) from him being a friend to “Don’t Believe his Lies” after he thinks Teddy has deceived him. Thus the viewer becomes aware of how ephemeral and fragile memory is. Shelby himself points this out, “Memory’s unreliable. No really. Memory’s not perfect. It’s not even that good… Memories can be changed or distorted and they’re irrelevant if you have the facts.” This arouses serious doubts about the role of memory in history, as many events in the past are based on recollections of survivors, witnesses and others involved in the past events. Thus as history has been perceived by some as “no more than an official memory”, Memento questions our reliance on it in the recording of history.

Besides encouraging us to look at history more laterally, historical films have also presented us with the notion of looking at things in different ways from which they are commonly perceived. JFK, the Oliver Stone movie that rekindled the discussion of conspiracy theories surrounding President Kennedy’s murder in 1963, proposed that Lee Harvey Oswald was not the sole perpetrator behind the assassination. Mixing fact and opinion together so that one never knows when something is factual or just theorised, the film generated much publicity, most of it bad, for challenging the veracity and widely accepted beliefs surrounding the episode.

Computer generated imagery (CGI) has also been credited for stimulating much change in this aspect. Jurassic Park, for example, forever changed the way that audiences viewed dinosaurs. Not only were they living and breathing at a cinema near you, they could be found in the most innocuous places, like the kitchen. Yet, this is exactly what history should be doing – challenging our deep-seated views of the world and questioning why and if we should hang onto them.

History has also been largely characterised as an exercise carried out by white, middle-class men to legitimise “the ideologies of the group or class in power”. While historians may contest this view, the fact that minorities were marginalised in the recordings of history can hardly be ignored. How many ‘Histories of the World’ include information regarding women, racial minorities, children, people with mental and physical disabilities or those that have sexual orientations that veer off the straight and narrow path?

This is one area in which historical films are definitely better than their written counterparts, which are essentially “the fruit of past politics”. Through historical films, international audiences have been introduced to past events and people that they would otherwise never have known about or been interested in. These films have also helped give a voice and face to the discriminated groups – an opportunity that was mostly denied to them by written history. They offer a different outlook on situations that have generally been perceived in certain ways. Empire of the Sun is a good example of this. Set in Shanghai before the start of World War II, the films tells the tale of a young British boy’s survival in a Japanese prisoner-of-war (POW) camp. The number of films made about the war and imprisonment in an internment camp are countless, but only Life is Beautiful comes to mind as a possible alternative also offering a child’s perspective on life during the war.

Yet this issue of showcasing the “[other’s side of the story]” also brings with it certain baggage that needs to be addressed. Considerations such as how best to present as balanced a view as possible and whether it is possible for a person outside the marginalised group to identify with and portray accurately the sentiments felt by them need to be thought through.

In a related topic, historical films can be used to effect that history does not always have to be about certain noteworthy (and usually heroic and patriotic) individuals or a medium that limits its recordings to events and not ordinary people also affected by the happenings. While the possibility exists that the historical film can become more about the individual and forget totally about the story’s historical significance (just one word: Titanic), it can also use that person to symbolically represent an entire group. As unlikely an example as a historical film as it may be, Rambo: First Blood Part II effectively illustrates this. Through John Rambo’s heroic (and not at all over-the-top) rescue of imprisoned POWs, he comes to represent the forgotten Vietnam War veterans. Sergei Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin and October also use this technique to much acclaim.

Like the ordinary folk, everyday life, landscapes and emotions are not points usually covered in most histories. Although it remains unknown how these qualifications arose, history has predominantly been about ‘famous’ people and written in a manner that leads many to believe that it should always be rational and based on clear-headed thinking. What about the womenfolk who wait patiently for their husbands and sons to return home from war and the strength of the common folk to continue going on, whatever the circumstances? Are these histories not important too? Thankfully, historical films are attempting to fill in these gaps left by written histories.

Besides presenting everyday life, historical films, in their capacity as a visual medium, allow us to “see landscapes, hear sounds, witness strong emotions as they are expressed with body and face, or view physical conflict between individuals and groups.” The evocative geographic landscape in We were Soldiers, the restrained yet passionate emotions of Joan in La Passion de Joanne D’Arc and the ordinariness of the lives of the Germans in Heimat as they experienced world events are just some examples. One has only to imagine writing down everything one sees in a scene in a historical film and compare it to its written likeness to understand the potential of historical films to present a more detailed and yet broader view of history. Thus, this presents us with the idea that history can be more than just about important events and people.

Through historical films, we can discover that there are always reasons for making a film or writing a history. Whatever the reasons, personal, political, artistic or otherwise, they show us that everything, be it a film or a written work, has an agenda. This is easily seen through interviews with the filmmakers and actors in the film. Sometimes, the message in the historical film is overtly didactic. Usually though, we do not notice the subliminal messages until we actively go and search for them, hidden as they are in plot and thematic developments. While Leni Riefenstahl may dispute the fact until the cameras stop rolling, it is widely believed that her 1935 film, Triumph of the Will, was a propaganda tool. The film served to portray the Nazis in a very favourable and attractive light and thus appealed to viewers, resulting in many of them “a close-minded acceptance of a set of ideas or assumptions” about Nazism. Therefore, as evident through historical films, we should stop ourselves from taking everything represented in written histories as the gospel truth and reflect for a while on the motivations behind them and how they influence the outcome of the product.

Postmodern theorists have been arguing that history is more about the present than the past. They substantiate their claims through the fact that written history itself is dictated by the period in which it is written. History being a selective process, the historian chooses, sometimes subconsciously, issues and events that are a reflection of the times at which the prose is written. This can be seen through the grammar and vocabulary used in the written work. Indeed, what one may deem as noteworthy at a certain point in time, another person from a different period in time may think frivolous. Thus, it can be proposed that “all pasts are constructions made out of the present”.

Historical films elucidate this depiction of both the past and the filmmaker’s present quite clearly and explicitly. The many filmic treatments of Joan of Arc over the years, in different languages, come to mind immediately as an excellent example. While different films on the subject may vary, each of these films definitely has the definitive moment where Joan is burnt at the stake. Just by looking at the various interpretations by the filmmakers of the scene, one gets the impression that each of them is highlighting different things. As the years pass, there is a noticeable change in what the filmmakers perceive to be crucial thematically to the plot. Issues relating to feminism and adolescent problems (including teenage rebellion) are increasingly present in the later film versions. In La Passion de Joanne D’Arc, for example, Joan seems to accept her fate stoically, without much of fight. Yet in The Messenger, Joan is portrayed as a brave and fearless, though slightly psychotic, warrior who battles to the very end. Moulin Rouge and The French Lieutenant’s Woman are also historical films that play with the past and present, mixing them up to simultaneously confound and intrigue the audience.

But all this talk about historical films is boring. In fact, it eerily resembles written history. Perhaps, history turns people off because it takes itself too seriously. The common perception of history is that it should always be discussed in hushed, reverent and formal tones and involve gigantic tomes of books that need to have the dust blown off their covers. Yet interestingly, historical films continue to pull the crowds in at cinemas. So what’s the explanation for this?

Historical films, like Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure (yes it can considered as one) and Raiders of the Lost Ark, are funny. Although they still present a view on past events, they recapture the moments in laughs and jokes. This opens up the possibility that history might not always have to be so uptight about itself and maybe can take a leaf out of the book of The Great Dictator. When did history get associated with formality and a no-nonsense sort of attitude? Can history not be funny and informal while simultaneously recording the past?

Nevertheless, for all their virtues, historical films are not perfect. In some ways, they pale in comparison to their written counterparts. It is impossible to cram in as much information in a two-hour film as a 500 page history book can. With a “world that moves at an unrelenting twenty-four frames a second”, there is not much time for one to reflect during a film. Before one can formulate a thought about something that interested him/her, the next scene draws his attention away from his/her earlier surmise.

But let’s not get too picky. We have to learn sooner or later that we just cannot compare historical films with written history because they essentially tell the same story, only in different ways. Instead of setting them up as opposites, historical films should start to be recognised as being of equal importance as written history. This perception of historical films scares people, especially to historians, because it potentially changes the ways that we view history. In fact, by presenting new ways to think about the past, historical films could be revolutionising and altering forever our relationship with the past. But who says change has to be a bad thing?

Bibliography
Cohen, K. (ed.), Writing in a Film Age: Essays by Contemporary Novelists (Colorado, 1991).
Davis, N.Z., ““Any Resemblance to Persons Living or Dead”: Film and the Challenge of Authenticity,” Yale Review, vol. 76(4) (1987), pp. 452-82.
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Hughes-Warrington, M., “Leni Riefenstahl: A Life in Black and White?,” Teaching History (September 2000), pp. 26-33
Hughes-Warrington, M., “Polyphonic Histories,” unpublished ms, 2001.
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Lowenthal, D., The Past is a Foreign Country (Cambridge, 1988).
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Rosenstone, R.A., Visions of the Past: The Challenge of Film to Our Idea of History (Massachusetts and London, 2000).
Scott, J., “History in Crisis? The Others’ Side of the Story,” American Historical Review, vol. 94(3) (1989), pp. 680-92.
Tosh, J., The Pursuit of History: Aims, Methods and New Directions in the Study of Modern History (2nd ed.) (New York, 1991).

In Search of ‘Gooks’:
The Representation of the Vietnamese in Hollywood Vietnam Films

Although almost three decades have lapsed since the last Marine helicopter left the United States embassy in Saigon, the Vietnam War remains etched in the minds of millions of Americans, who seem unable to accept the defeat to their technologically-inferior Asian foes. That the war generated such an indelible impression in many can be seen in the number of Hollywood films that have been created regarding it.

Films have always had the power to influence viewers into subconsciously accepting certain discourses that the filmmaker, consciously or otherwise, includes in the films. This is glaringly apparent in the Hollywood versions of the Vietnam War, where the American soldiers bravely battle against the nameless and ruthless Vietnamese. This essay intends to expand further on this idea through a critical analysis of three Vietnam films, Apocalypse Now, Good Morning, Vietnam and Rambo: First Blood Part II, and concentrate on how the Vietnamese are portrayed in Hollywood Vietnam films.

It is argued that historical films, of which the Vietnam films belong to, cannot fully replicate past events, however much they attempt to capture the “‘spirit of a period’”. But this does not imply that history itself is then capable of perfectly reconstructing the past. Instead, history essentially consists of a historian selecting information he thinks is most relevant to arguing his stand.

Nevertheless, historical films are becoming recognised as the most effective and usually, the only way that audiences are introduced to historical events, outside of the history textbook. Therefore, they play a crucial role in shaping the audiences’ knowledge about historical events and indirectly, their views of the people involved in them, especially when they come from other cultures and countries. Through the films, the audiences form impressions of these other people that they have not yet, and might not ever, meet and interact with. Therefore, films have an obligation to represent the truth as accurately as possible.

Yet, historical films often advocate certain views on past events. The depiction of the war in Vietnam, which lasted from 1965 to 1975, by American filmmakers, is a good example. Depending on whom one speaks to, the war is defined differently. In Vietnam, the locals call it the American War, while in the United States (and almost all of the rest of the world due mainly to Hollywood’s pervasiveness), it is the Vietnam War. For the purposes of this essay, it shall be referred to by its American term.

So how does one define Vietnam and her people in a Vietnam film? If one relies purely on the dominant Hollywood definition, Vietnam would be characterised by tall coconut trees swaying in the breeze at sunset as the local folk, dressed mainly in blue, brown or white and with their ubiquitous conical hats on, till the padi fields and use sampans to cross the rivers in the country. Members of the Vietcong, however, would not be depicted so saintly and gentle. They are usually very dirty, tanned and sweaty; dressed in army fatigues and are never given the opportunity to present the war and its consequences from their point of view. Even the South Vietnamese, who were the United States’ ally in the war, do not fare much better in mainstream Hollywood Vietnam films.

Apocalypse Now epitomises the representation of the Vietnamese in Vietnam films best with their almost total absence in the entire film. Francis Ford Coppola, the director, was ironically quoted as saying, “Apocalypse Now is not a movie about Vietnam. My movie is Vietnam.” Interestingly, Coppola was referring to Vietnam, not as the country, but as the experience of the United States troops in the country. Yet, Coppola seems to forget this important element of the ‘other side’ in his film, preferring to focus instead mainly on Captain Williard’s (Martin Sheen) journey to seek out Colonel Kurtz (Marlon Brando), whom he must kill “with extreme prejudice”.

In one of the first scenes, Kurtz is heard in a tape recording as saying, “We must kill them [the North Vietnamese], we must incinerate them, pig after pig, cull after cull.” Although this can be regarded as essentially only Kurtz’s opinion of the Vietcong, it nevertheless dehumanises them, who were also fighting for what they believed in, like the Americans. It is natural for antagonism to be felt by one’s enemy, but the quote in the film, when taking into consideration film’s ideological powers, perpetuates and bolsters the opinion of how horrible the Vietcong are, positioning the audience even more against these people.

After receiving orders from his superiors to exterminate Kurtz, Williard contemplates his mission. He reflects that although he has killed six people before (presumably Vietnamese), it would be different killing Kurtz, who is also American. Is the underlying message that it is easier to kill a Vietnamese than an American? Is a Vietnamese person’s life worth less than an American? One cannot help but grasp such a disturbing notion from the scene.

The local Vietnamese are depicted in Apocalypse Now as being rather passive and helpless, with the American soldiers disrespectful of them. They are easily shocked and scared, with some of them falling off a boat while fishing when Johnson (Sam Bottoms), one of the American soldiers, laughingly skis close to their vessel. Could the director be positioning the Vietnamese so that they appear cowardly, jumping at the slightest provocation? This idea of the Vietnamese not being respected is further developed when Lieutenant Colonel Kilgore (Robert Duvall) nonchalantly throws playing cards on the bodies of the dead Vietcong fighters. He also leaves an injured Vietcong fighter he was tending to halfway when he realises that Johnson, a famous surfer, is in his midst. This scant disregard for the Vietnamese, be they friends or foes, reinforces the already antagonistic sentiments most American audiences would have towards the Vietnamese, even before viewing this film.

As in most Vietnam films, the Vietnamese in Apocalypse Now are referred to derogatorily as ‘gooks’ by the American soldiers. Although this nickname may have originated from the actual war and thus add authenticity to the portrayal of the troops, it is nevertheless insulting and dehumanises the Vietnamese to being mere cariacatures. Throughout the film, the Vietnamese are also called ‘f***-ing savages’ and ‘motherf***ers’ by Kilgore and the American soldiers.

Another interesting view of how the Vietnamese are represented in the film is noticeable through the use of camera angles. As the helicopters swoop in to bomb a suspected Vietcong-friendly village, the Vietnamese villagers are shot visually top-down, from the point of view of the soldiers in the helicopters. While they appear “faceless and tiny” because of the camera angle used, the camera zooms in to focus specifically on one injured American soldier. Thus, the film not only marginalises the Vietnamese through inaccurate and stereotypical portrayals and Vietnamese-unfriendly dialogue, but also through the choice of camera angles employed.

The only time in the film where the Vietcong are highly regarded is when Kurtz tells Williard why he admired them. He relates an incident where the Americans had innoculated children in a Vietnamese village. The Vietcong, not trusting the Americans’ intentions, hacked off the arms of the children in an instance of extreme paranoia. He explained that it took mettle and conviction to be able to act in such a manner. Ironically, through Kurtz’s explanation of his admiration of the Vietcong, the audience would undoubtedly be repulsed by the extreme actions of the Vietnamese and align themselves against such savage behaviour.

In all the battles in the film, the American soldiers manage to win every time, provoking in the audience a “victorious rush”. The Vietnamese, armed only with guns and sheer determination, are simply no match to the technologically-superior American soldiers. Therefore although historically the United States lost the Vietnam War, the past seems to have been rewritten in this film, with them winning every encounter with the Vietnamese. Those in the audience unfamiliar with the history of the war might be thus misled into falsely thinking that the United States was actually victorious.

Rambo: First Blood Part II is another film that attempts to rewrite the Vietnam War to “create the illusion that the U.S. won the battle and in a sense the war.” This is evident through the apparent ease with which John Rambo (Sylvester Stallone) destroys a prisoner-of-war (POW) camp, defeats a band of corrupt Vietnamese pirates and bombs a peaceful Vietnamese village in which the enemies (the Vietnamese and the Russians) are searching for him. Is this revision of the past an attempt to increase its palatability and marketability amongst American audiences by allowing them to “win this time”, at the expense of distorting the truth?

Interestingly, unlike most Vietnam films, there is a female Vietnamese supporting actress in Rambo. Co (Julia Nickson) is an agent from an unspecified intelligence agency who aids Rambo in his quest to find the missing American POWs in Vietnam. Though she speaks relatively good English, she is characteristically of mixed parentage, with dark brown hair and eyes, to appeal to both Asian and American audiences. Why was an ethnic Vietnamese woman not chosen? Would audiences find it difficult to imagine a purely Vietnamese lady helping Rambo? While Co is portrayed primarily as the token romantic interest in the film, her role is actually representative of Vietnamese women, of whom a significant number were actively engaged in combat during the Vietnam War. Nevertheless, her allegiance to Vietnam is questionable when she reveals to Rambo her desire to migrate to the United States where she can “live the quiet life”. Is this depiction an accurate reflection of the sentiments of Vietnamese in general? Unfortunately, once she serves her purpose of furthering the plot, she is killed off.

However, the other Vietnamese women in Rambo do not fare much better either. They are mainly prostitutes, dressed stereotypically in short, tight cheongsams with long hair down their backs. This feeds directly into the Western male’s fantasy of exotic Asian women, who live only to pleasure men. By perpetuating this stereotype, it builds up in ignorant audiences an unrealistic expectation that all Asian women (especially Vietnamese) fit neatly into this mould.

While the Vietnamese women in Rambo are prostitutes, the men are corrupt pirates and North Vietnamese. Significantly, almost every single Vietnamese pirate is tanned, rather scruffy-looking and has a moustache. This creates an almost instinctive desire to distance oneself apart from them. Depicted as being mercenary and misogynistic, they are not very likeable. Thus they do not gain much sympathy from the audience when Rambo single-handedly kills all (except one, whom Co killed) of them. Would the portrayal of the pirates been more balanced had they been Anglo-Saxon?

The North Vietnamese enemies, however, are the most “stereotyped as [dehumanised] others” in the film. Not only does their dressing resemble World War II Japanese soldiers, they lock the POWs in a bamboo cage. They also torture Rambo so harshly that Lieutenant Colonel Podovsky, who leads the Russian contingency aiding the North Vietnamese remarks, “These people are so vulgar in their methods.” Such a one-dimensional depiction of the North Vietnamese means that the audience would find it difficult to relate to them at all and would be rooting for Rambo instead.

Out of the three films, Good Morning, Vietnam presents the most balanced view of the Vietnamese, to the point of patronising them to a certain extent. While the other two films centred around combat in the jungle, Good Morning, Vietnam revolves around American radio deejay, Adrian Cronauer (Robin Williams), who brings irreverence and fun to the airwaves in Saigon, Vietnam.

In the film, there has been a considerable attempt to replicate Saigon in the early 1960s – the road-side stallholders sell vegetables, food and flowers; children chase chickens and people travel by tuk-tuks. The prerequisite young Vietnamese women dressed in their national costume, the ao dai, and the friendly Vietnamese girls in the pub, Jimmy Wah’s (with the camera slowly panning across their thighs and rears) present an exotic and mysterious view of Saigon, playing once again into the Western males’ fantasy involving them. This stereotypical and rather sexist view of the Vietnamese women as objects of lust is epitomised by Cronauer’s enthusiastic pronouncement on first sighting them, “They’re quick, they’re fast, they’re small. I feel like a fox in a chicken coop.” From the quote, it is evident that these women’s appeal partly lies in their seeming ability to allow the Western male to show off his masculine side by protecting them. This inaccurate portrayal of Vietnamese women creates in audiences an idealised view of them as being the perfect submissive little woman, leading some western men to marry Vietnamese women based on this idea. However, this unrealistic fantasy is shattered when they discover that the women are actually quite feisty in real life. Unable to cope with this revelation, there have been a number of documented cases of spousal abuse.

In Good Morning, Vietnam, Cronauer befriends a young Vietnamese boy, Tuan (Tung Tranhtran). Their relationship soon develops into a true friendship, with Cronauer even calling Tuan his best friend. Through Tuan, the audience gets an insight into the Vietnamese viewpoint on certain subjects. Tuan is initially reluctant to introduce Cronauer to Trinh (Chinatara Sukapatara), his sister, as he believes that Cronauer will act like the other “phony” French and American men, who deceive impressionable Vietnamese girls into sexual relationships by winning them over with fast cars. This interestingly provides audiences with an alternative point of view on the situation that may be merely perceived as an attempt to get acquainted with a girl in western societies. Cronauer, through his friendship with Tuan, is also introduced to Vietnamese culture – he visits Tuan’s village; goes on a date with Trinh in the traditional Vietnamese style (with almost her entire family as chaperone); and tries out road-side hawker fare. Without the sustenance of their friendship in the film, the audience would be unable to see the more humanitarian side of the Vietnamese.

Unfortunately, Tuan turns out to be involved with the Vietcong. Cronauer is devastated to learn the truth and feels betrayed, but the audience does not completely hate Tuan as he saved Cronauer’s life once before. Moreover, in one of the rare instances in Vietnam films, Tuan presents the reasons behind his involvement with the Vietcong. “Enemy, what is enemy?... We not the enemy, you the enemy!” He recites the list of family and friends, including his mother and elder brother, killed by the Americans “Why? Because we are not human to them, we’re only … enemies.” Through this outburst, the audience is offered a rare glimpse of the war from the Vietcong perspective.

Nevertheless, the representation of Vietnamese in the film is not perfect. Always smiling and friendly, the Vietnamese appear easily amused by the slightest things – learning how to slang and swear the American way and play softball. This patronising view of the Vietnamese attempts so hard to portray them as non-threatening to the extent that it reduces them to being simple-minded people, readily embracing whatever American culture has to offer to them. Although the Vietnamese characters in the film are not fleshed out as complexly as would be preferred, their roles, in terms of character development and screen time, are still much more substantial compared to the other two films.

It is thus quite obvious, through the analyses of the three films, that there is a considerable dearth in accuracy and amount of representation of Vietnamese in Vietnam films. Possible reasons for this shortage could be due to the films’ underlying propaganda purpose to “boost morale…promote the necessity of sacrifice…bring the nation together or to vilify the enemy” or marketability problems with having Vietnamese in leading roles. However, there is also a lack of films about the war from Vietnamese filmmakers, possibly due to distribution and budgeting problems and a rather strict political environment. Balanced representations of both the Americans and Vietnamese in these films will only be achieved when the filmmaker is willing to accord equal amounts of respect to both sides’ interpretation of the war. Until this happens, the Vietnam films will continue to follow the vein best exemplified by Williard’s critical analysis of the Vietnam War, “We’d cut them [the Vietnamese] in half with a machine gun and give them a band aid.”

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Klein, M., “Historical Memory, Film, and the Vietnam Era,” in L. Dittmar and G. Michaud (eds.), From Hanoi to Hollywood: the Vietnam War in American Film (United States, 1990), pp. 19-40.
Ross, K., Black and White Media: Black Images in Popular Film and Television (United Kingdom, 1996).
Tomasulo, F.P., “The Politics of Ambivalence: Apocalypse Now as Prowar and Antiwar Film,” in L. Dittmar and G. Michaud (eds.), From Hanoi to Hollywood: the Vietnam War in American Film (United States, 1990), pp. 145-158.
Waller, G.A., “Rambo: Getting to Win This Time,” in L. Dittmar and G. Michaud (eds.), From Hanoi to Hollywood: the Vietnam War in American Film (United States, 1990), pp. 113-128.
Worthy, K., “Hearts of Darkness: Making Art, Making History, Making Money, Making ‘Vietnam’,” Cineaste, vol. XIX (nos. 2-3), (1992), pp. 24-27.

my forrest gump essay for hist243

A Historical and Historiographical Film Review of Forrest Gump

The story is simple enough: Forrest Gump (Tom Hanks), an intellectually-challenged boy from Greenbow, Alabama in the United States, makes it big through sheer hard work and a little help from Lady Luck. Along the way, he chances upon various momentous events in post-war America. He teaches Elvis Presley how to swivel his hips, shows former President Johnson his innocuously-positioned bullet wound and helps to notify the security guards at the Watergate building about the infamous break-in, amongst other things. However, the one thing that evades him to the very end is his true love Jenny Curran (Robin Wright), who is relentless in her pursuit of freedom.

After the film premiered in 1994, it was a spectacular box-office hit. Not only were the audiences lapping up every bit of Forrest Gump, the judges at the Academy Awards also showed their favour by awarding it six Oscars at the 1995 ceremony. This testament to its critical and mainstream appeal has made it an enduring modern classic.

The film owes its success partly to its innovative (at that time) use of computer-generated imagery (CGI). The depiction of Lieutenant Dan Taylor (Gary Sinise), who lost his legs during the Vietnam War; the amazing table tennis skills displayed by Forrest Gump; and the various meetings that Forrest Gump has with three former Presidents and celebrities, along with the other CGI sequences in the film, are integral to its plot. Without them, it would have been a very different story.

While the special effects were indeed impressive (the film did win the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects), they undoubtedly will “further rupture relations between the screen image and the real material world.”

Why does this prospect both frighten and excite movie-goers and those in the film industry? With CGI, filmmakers have been able to create realistic and believable sequences that were only imaginable in the past. The only limitations – their imagination and the film budget. Moreover, CGI allows them the opportunity to eradicate mistakes and accentuate backdrops in films. This translates into an even better viewing experience for an audience always eager for bigger and noisier special effects.

Yet, others are wary of the “possibility that this technology [CGI] might one day produce images that are so realistic it is impossible to distinguish them from objects in the real world.” This argument is especially relevant to the film at hand. The seamless weaving of Forrest Gump’s meetings with important political and entertainment personalities during actual filmed events has been likened to the misappropriation of primary evidence. The fear is that those in the audience ignorant of world events might be misled into thinking that the meetings did really happen. However, I believe that the majority of film-goers will be able to discern the difference between fact and fiction.

Actually, how important is it to know if a scene is digitally altered? I think the main objective in people’s minds when they watch a film is to be entertained and not to ascertain if a certain scene is indeed enhanced by CGI.

Another contentious issue regarding CGI in the film is why it was chosen over the use of look-alikes, as in the scene where Forrest Gump teaches an Elvis Presley impersonator to dance. Such a method, although cheaper, would definitely not have been as realistic and clever as CGI. The CGI effects in the film might have caused some in the audience to do a double take when seeing Forrest Gump at certain milestone events, but it was nevertheless impressive and a pioneer in doing so.

In the film, most of the CGI sequences are used in flashbacks, as Forrest Gump relates his tale to those waiting for the bus. Through the flashbacks, audiences are able to remember the past as the flashbacks not only “give us images of memory, the personal archives of the past, they also give us images of history, the shared and recorded past.”

Interestingly, historical events, like the anti-war protest at the Mall in Washington D.C, unfold in the background of the flashback sequences. While the emphasis is on the storyline, the film’s producers have ingeniously used these events as a timeline to chart Forrest Gump’s progress over the years. For example, the passage of time is visible through the changes in the United States’ presidency. All of these events have been strategically chosen such that the audience can tell when they occurred and the order in which they took place.

Nevertheless, this method, though ingenious, is vulnerable to criticism. As the film deals with past events, it is impossible to completely recreate the scenes as they would have happened at that moment. The film manages generally to achieve this, as Forrest Gump is usually at the event as it occurs.

However, one interesting anachronism I discovered dealt with Forrest Gump’s appearance on The Dick Cavett Show with John Lennon, where the former appears to provide the inspiration for Lennon’s single ‘Imagine’. Tom Hanks has gone on record as saying that he wanted Forrest Gump to only be in events that actually occurred. But when John Lennon did indeed appear on the talk show in 1971, it was to promote the aforementioned single. Thus, the actual event and the CGI scene were one of the few unsynchronised historical events in the film.

The music in the film, fortunately, could not be similarly faulted. Not only were the producers in tune with what was popular at that time, they cleverly chose songs that contained “intertextual jokes and puns”. It was ironic, for instance, that the United States’ national anthem, The Star-Spangled Banner, plays in the background as Forrest Gump alerts the security guards to the Watergate burglary.

One major event that Forrest Gump participates in is the Vietnam War. Noticeably, there is a “careful ambivalence about the turmoil of the 1960s” in the film. All the quotes about the war by Forrest Gump are non-political and non-judgemental – “We would take these real long walks and we were always looking for this guy named Charlie…The good thing about Vietnam was there was always some place to go … and there was always something to do.”

The film’s director, Robert Zemeckis, intentionally did this as he wanted to “present this generation without commenting on it or taking a position or explaining it.” Was this done to reflect Forrest Gump’s character, who is often ignorant about his surroundings, or was it purely a commercial decision by the producers to appeal to as wide an audience as possible?

While Forrest Gump remains noncommittal on touchy issues like the Vietnam War, Jenny is his direct opposite, taking a stand on almost every major development that occurs. She embodies everything that Forrest Gump is not, in a countercultural manner. Such a contrast effectively offers the audience the opportunity to view and understand the historical events from differing perspectives and come to their own conclusions.

Unfortunately, the anti-war protesters’ characters are not as fleshed out as the two leads. They are portrayed one-dimensionally, as if their only purpose in the film is to provide some laughs and an opportunity for Forrest Gump to meet with Jenny again. The audience is shown the tough decisions the protesters had to make for the cause they believed in and thus cannot relate to them. This shallow depiction of the protesters just perpetuates the stereotypical view of the protesters as free-loving hippies and directionless young people.

In general, however, the depiction of the various historical scenes is quite accurate. The film producers successfully manage to evoke the different eras through well-chosen clothing, make-up and settings. Why is it so important to get all the details correct? Would the film be lesser without this thorough dedication to historically-accurate detail?

The lack of detail might affect the atmosphere of the film in helping to conjure up an image of the past quickly. But is history not just an interpretation of the past, dependent on the person doing the inferring? Therefore, there is no one correct view of history and no exact object that must be included in a scene or attitude that must be held from that time period.

Although the film has been unique in managing to attract audiences across the different age groups, its target audience is most probably the generation of 69 million baby boomers in the United States, who were born between 1943 and 1960. As most of the dramatic highlights in the film occurred in the 1960s and early 1970s, it is a nostalgic trip down memory lane for this generation.

Why did the film’s producers decided to centre most of the story around this period, when they could easily have also focussed in on incidents at other times, such as the relationship between Jenny and Forrest Gump in the 1980? Baby boomers are generally not considered to be the largest or most frequent demographic of film audiences, so why this catering to them? Furthermore, it is noted that the film differed quite significantly from the book, Forrest Gump by Winston Groom, on which it was based. How did the producers decide which historical events from the book to include in the film?

The questions I have raised and tried to answer are just the tip of the iceberg for a richly detailed historical film like Forrest Gump. However, I think more importantly, we should be thinking about what lessons we can learn from this charming movie about a simple boy who believed in love and never gave up. “And that’s all I have to say about that.”

Bibliography
Anon, “A Gump in our Throat,” U.S. News & World Report, (1994, Aug 8.),vol.117(6), pp.22- (accessed via Proquest).
Anon, “Forrest Gump: Ignorance is bliss,” The Christian Century, (1996, May 15.), vol.113(17), pp.547- (accessed via Proquest).
Anon, “The Internet Movie Database: Trivia for Forrest Gump” (1994), http://us.imdb.com/Trivia?0109830.
Anon, “Lexington: Generation Gump,” The Economist, vol.332(7874), (1994, Jul 30.), pp.28- (accessed via Proquest).
Robin Baker, “Computer Technology and Special Effects in Contemporary Cinema,” in Philip Hayward and Tana Wollen (ed.), Future Visions: New Technologies of the Screen (London, 1994), pp.31-46.
Keith Jenkins, Rethinking History (London, 1991).
Myra Macdonald, “Stimulation or simulation?: how to deal with the historical in the new millennium,” Screen, Vol.41(1), (2000), pp.108-115.
Michele Pierson, “CGI effects in Hollywood science-fiction cinema 1989-95: the wonder years,” Screen, vol.40(2), (1999), pp.158-177.
Jeff Smith, “Taking Music Supervisors Seriously,” in Philip Brophy (ed.), Cinesonic: Experiencing the Soundtrack (Sydney, 2001).
Maureen Turim, Flashbacks in Film: Memory and History (New York and London, 1989).

harry potter rules! essay deux

“In a children’s novel, closure usually brings a sense that the experiences represented have been meaningful; fullest understanding comes only from the perspective of the ending.” Examine the effect of closure on meaning in ONE of the set novels.
In general, the word “closure” will be used instead of “ending… The former refers us better… to the functions of an ending: to justify the cessation of narrative and to complete the meaning of what has gone before.

Although J.K. Rowling intends to have seven books regaling the exploits of the wizard, Harry Potter, each book in the series is substantial enough to stand on its own and be interpreted in its own right. This is most apparent in Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, the first book in the series, where Harry discovers that he is a wizard and spends his first year at the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.
Harry Potter employs the use of the third person limited narration, where the narrator focalises through Harry. Thus, the reader is immediately positioned either for or against the characters that Harry interacts with in the text. Through these interactions and adventures that Harry gets himself involved in, the reader is able to interpret meaning from them. Yet it can be argued that the fullest understanding of the text and its underlying messages can only be obtained at the end of the novel. Nevertheless, whether there is complete closure in Harry Potter is debatable.

This ambiguity of closure is evident in Harry’s relationship with the Dursleys. Forced to take Harry in after he was left as a baby at their doorstep, the Dursleys have always tried to ignore his presence, “as though he was something very nasty that couldn’t understand them, like a slug.” They intentionally kept all knowledge about his past a secret from him and attempted to prevent him from going to Hogwarts as they “just didn’t hold with such nonsense.” It is only with a little intimidation and magical help from Rubeus Hagrid that Harry finally subverts the power structure between the Dursleys and him. Ironically, Harry feels most welcome and ‘at home’ at Hogwarts, the place where he encounters the most danger. Thus, the text interestingly subverts the commonly-held belief in conventional fantasy texts of the protagonist longing to return home (to the Dursleys, for Harry), where he can finally let his guard down. This theory certainly does not apply to Harry, who has to spend the summer with the Dursleys after a year at Hogwarts. Yet, Harry, instead of dreading how trying his time the Dursleys will be, focuses more positively (and mischievously) on ‘exhibiting’ his newly-learnt magical skills to them. Thus, the reader is left with the sense of optimism and happiness, that Harry will make the best of the situation, and in anticipation of further developments in his antagonistic relationship with the Dursleys in the next few books.

Initially, Harry feels pressurised by the expectations of others and is not confident of his abilities. “‘Everyone thinks I’m special…but I don’t know anything about magic at all. How can they expect great things?’” However, through his matches as a Seeker in the game, Quidditch, and his various altercations with Draco Malfoy and Professor Snape, Harry develops from being a passive character with the Dursleys to a more pro-active one at Hogwarts. He also becomes more in touch with himself, as evident when he begins to recognise that the pain he feels in his scar is an omen of approaching danger. Thus, he learns to trust himself and is prepared for his final showdown with Voldemort. As Harry matures through the various experiences, the reader would be able to infer that one can learn from even the most excruciating and trying ones.

Harry therefore, comes to epitomise the conventional hero, who valiantly disregards all danger to save the day. “‘I’m going out of here tonight and I’m going to try and get the Stone first… it’s only dying a bit later than I would have done, because I’m never going over to the Dark Side!’” Bravery, of a different sort, is also shown by Neville Longbottom. He stands up to Ron, Hermione and Harry even though they are his friends when he perceives them to be breaking school rules. “‘I won’t let you do it,’ he said, hurrying to stand in front of the portrait hole. ‘I’ll – I’ll fight you!’” Both are rewarded for their courage and bravery at the end of the text. Thus the reader could easily interpret this as being behaviour that should be encouraged and extolled.

The importance of friendship is also emphasised in the text, especially towards the ending when Ron Weasly and Hermione Granger, two of Harry’s closest friends at Hogwarts, risk their own safety and possible expulsion from school by trespassing Hogwarts’ third floor’s forbidden corridor, just to aid Harry in defeating Voldemort. Throughout the text, the three work closely as a unit to solve the mystery of the Philosopher’s Stone; battle a troll and study for their exams, amongst other things.

Harry owes their friendship partly to their all being in the Gryffindor house. In fact, Harry might have had a completely different experience at Hogwarts had he chose to be in the Slytherin house instead, where he could have been “‘great’”. Surprisingly, the Sorting Hat, which decides which house a first-year student gets designated to, listens to Harry’s plea to not be sent to Slytherin. Harry achieves much representing the Gryffindor house as its Quidditch Seeker; becomes close friends with others in Gryffindor like Neville and Seamus Finnigan and helps Gryffindor significantly to win the house cup. It can then be inferred that Harry succeeded in achieving so much because of his conscious decision not to be in Slytherin. Thus, the text can be interpreted as reflecting that “identity and social position can be a matter of choice”. The reader could thus infer from the entire text that nothing in life is pre-ordained; (s)he is the creator of her/his own destiny.

Draco, Harry’s nemesis, is one reason that Harry chooses not to be in Slytherin. Descending from a long ancestry of wizards, Draco represents the wizarding families that are “‘much better than others’” in terms of wealth, status and bloodline. Interestingly, Rowling seems to have intentionally developed Draco as an unlikeable character, who struts about arrogantly with his two sidekicks, Crabbe and Goyle. Instead, the reader, like Harry, finds comfort in the friendship of Ron, whom Draco disparagingly terms as “‘riff-raff’”. Though less well-off, Ron substitutes monetary wealth with his warm acceptance of and undying loyalty to Harry. Rowling’s critique of the class system is contrary to Fred Inglis’ view of class being “‘too obvious and too irrelevant’” to be discussed in children’s fiction. Through the two very contrasting characterisations of humble Ron and haughty Draco as representatives of the different classes in society, the reader senses that the author does not favour the elite, but the underdog. This partly evident through how Ron and the others help Gryffindor snatch the house cup away from an initially leading Slytherin by just ten points. Subconsciously, this underlying message to support the working class could be internalised by the reader.

Rowling has also constructed the text in such a way that the reader is immediately positioned against Voldemort, mainly through the focalisation of the text through Harry and the narrative which relates how the other characters refer to him only as “You-Know-Who” out of fear. It is clear from the beginning of the text which characters represent the good and dark side. Though Harry manages to defeat Voldemort eventually in the text, the reader knows that it is not the final battle between the two as Voldemort is “‘still out there somewhere’”. Thus although it can be read as that good will triumph over evil, the reader knows even at the end of the text that the struggle between the two forces is not completely over yet.

Harry Potter ends with Harry returning home to spend summer vacation with the Dursleys after an entire year of learning, adventure and excitement at Hogwarts. Through the encapsulation of all of Harry’s exploits, climaxing with his battle with Voldemort, the reader fully understands the themes and messages inherent in the text.


Bibliography
Krips, Valerie, “A Notable Irrelevance: Class and Children’s Fiction”, The Lion and The Unicorn, vol. 17 (no. 2), (1993), pp. 195-209.
Miller, D.A., Narrative and its Discontents: Problems of Closure in the Traditional Novel. New Jersey, Princeton University Press, 1981.
Nikolajeva, Maria, Children’s Literature Comes of Age: Toward a New Aesthetic. New York, Garland, 1996.
Routledge, Christopher, “Harry Potter and the Mystery of Ordinary Life”. In Gavin and Routledge (eds.) Mystery in Children’s Literature: From the Rational to the Supernatural. New York and Hampshire, Palgrave/St. Martin’s Press, 2001, pp.202-209.
Rowling, J.K., Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. London, Bloomsbury, 2001.

engl286 essayuno

Junior fictions often depict characters responding to the challenge of difference or otherness in creative ways. Compare and contrast the narrative strategies used to represent challenge and difference in two of the books listed here.

Children’s literature encompasses an entire spectrum of books from various genres, ranging from picture books with arresting illustrations to fantasy novels with out-of-this-world depictions. Despite the many varieties of books however, most of them share certain characteristics, which aid the child in understanding the text and interpreting meaning from it. Children are usually the protagonists in the stories; the language used is constructed to suit its target audience and the conclusions are generally resolved strongly (Winters & Schmidt 10).

These characteristics are evident in the category of books that come under the genre of realistic fiction. Realistic fiction consists of plots that centre around “familiar, everyday problems, pleasures and personal relationships” (Norton 458). Unique in that it does not attempt to sugar-coat touchy issues, realistic fiction honestly tells it like it is, warts and all.

Books in this genre appeal to children as they can relate to the situations that the books’ protagonists face. The books reassure them that they are not the only ones in that particular situation. They also act as “both mirrors and windows of life” (Cullinan & Galda 222), as they not only make children think about their own situation, they also present alternative lifestyles that the children might not actually personally experience in real life.

Two examples of junior fiction books that have the protagonists deal with everyday problems faced by children are The Wacky World of Wesley Baker and Hannah plus One. Wesley has to deal with acting in the school play, avoiding Agnes Potter-Higgins, who constantly declares her love for him, and performing up to his father’s exceedingly high expectations. Hannah, meanwhile, worries that she will be lonely once her mother delivers the new baby.

While Hannah plus One may be aimed at a younger audience than The Wacky World of Wesley Baker, both books relate the plots chronologically. The stories are developed progressively over the chapters, with both protagonists facing various little obstacles along the way that they have to overcome.

Both feature person-against-person conflicts that are finally resolved at the end of the stories. Hannah has to come to terms with her family that the arrival of her new sibling will not translate into her being neglected by the other family members and Wesley has to prove to his father that he can in fact be good at sports.

The reader is aware of the thoughts and feeling of the two protagonists through two different points of view. (S)he is able to get an insight into the minds of the two protagonists and understand the motivations behind their actions and behaviours. In The Wacky World of Wesley Baker, the story is told with Wesley as the main focaliser. The first person narrative reduces the distance between the reader and Wesley, so that (s)he can easily identify with him. It draws the reader deep into the story as Wesley directly communicates with the reader through the narrative – “She blows kisses at me. Can you imagine it?” (Kemp 3). The reader is convinced that the story is really narrated from the point of view of a boy, especially when the word “Beeeooooootiful” (Kemp 95) is spelt like how a boy would say it.

Hannah plus One differs by being told through third person limited narration, where the “subjective viewpoint of the first person [combines] with the objective distance of the third person,” (Nodelman 59). Interestingly though, the first page of the book is presented from Hannah’s point of view in a first person narrative. The third person limited narration only officially starts from the tenth page, where the narrator begins to express the thoughts and feelings of Hannah occasionally – “Hannah stops. More twins. She hasn’t thought,” (Gleeson 10). It is obvious that the narrator is focalising through Hannah when the narrative appears to resemble Hannah’s thoughts – “Above her, her mother’s belly hangs like a great blue whale,” (Gleeson 21).

In general, the voice of The Wacky World of Wesley Baker is more informal and lighter than Hannah plus One. The first person narrative of Wesley is witty and sharp, with refreshing and honest insights into the life of an ordinary British schoolboy – “Mr le Tissier explained what a theme was and by the time he’d finished nobody knew” (Kemp 12). The light-hearted tone of the narrator (Wesley) reflects his easygoing nature, which in part helps him to overcome his problems. The third person limited narrative in Hannah plus One inhibits much emotional response from the reader to it, as it is rather detached. Thus, though Hannah’s problems are surmountable, they will not be solved as arrestingly as Wesley’s.

Yet, the two stories would be boring and incomplete without the assembly of secondary characters, who exist to frustrate, support and challenge Wesley and Hannah. Nodelman notes that theorists have categorised characters into being either flat or round. Flat characters are, like the name suggests, one-dimensional while the round ones have more depth and complexity to them – they develop as the story progresses (51).

The majority of the characters in the two books belong to the second category. They are “not all good, or all bad,” (Winter & Schmidt 232). The characters who initially seem to be antagonistic towards the two protagonists have their redeeming qualities while those on the protagonists’ side are not completely angels either.

An example would be Hannah’s older twin sisters, Lena and Sue. In the earlier chapters of the book, it appears that the only purpose they serve in the story is to bully Hannah and make her feel left out. They tease her mercilessly about the imaginary friend they think she has and use rulers to hit her shins. However, when she is sent to detention, they offer their support to her and even seem protective of her, whilst she remains unaware of the change in them – “She hasn’t noticed that her sisters are walking with her and not ten paces in front,” (Gleeson 37).

Meanwhile, Wesley’s relationship with his father is a big source of tension and frustration for him. His father refuses to acknowledge that Wesley is not athletically-inclined and constantly harangues him for his lack of talent thereof.

‘Well, Wesley, you won something,’ cried Dad, handing us our ribbon. ‘But what a disappointing day.’
‘Dad, Dad, I’m sorry,’ I managed to say to him (I was puffed out). ‘But Agnes has done brilliantly.’
'I know,’ he said. ‘She didn’t let me down,’ (Kemp 104).

But Wesley, being the dutiful son, never complains and just continues to bear with the physical trainings conducted by his father. It is only when Wesley is hospitalised that his father realises that things need to be changed.

Wesley’s conflict with Agnes Potter-Higgins is also resolved by the end of the story. His attitude towards her changes drastically from loathing to mutual respect as he realises that the two of them are more similar than he had previously thought. Initially, he uses negatives adjectives and verbs to express his distaste for her by describing her as “a pain in the neck” (Kemp 2) and calling her ‘Dinosaur’s Armpit’. But as he interacts with her more, he begins to understand her better and even grudgingly likes her company.

Angry at being always left out in the family, Hannah starts lashing out violently, hitting a classmate and bashing a sunflower. She attributes her violent tendencies to her alter-ego, Megan. Through Megan, Hannah is able to vent her frustrations and express herself in ways she would not dare to as Hannah. But the need for Megan soon reduces after Hannah realises that she can handle situations on her own. However, interestingly, Hannah names her newborn sister, Megan, so that she too will have a playmate of her own as “Hannah + Megan = 2,” (Gleeson 74).

Hannah interacts mainly with her parents and twin sisters, though a late development in the story results in her doing detention for hitting the above-mentioned classmate. She feels left out in the family, as her parents have each other, just like the twins. This distinct line of separation is especially evident between the twins and Hannah.

“Whenever Mum wipes the dust off the bookcase, she puts the photos back together, arranging the frames as if they were a pair. Before they go to bed at night, Lena, Sue and Hannah move the photos: twins at one end, Hannah at the other. An invisible line divides them, the same as the one which divides the books on the shelves below, the clothes in the hanging space in the wardrobe and the tennis racquets in the corner behind the door,” (Gleeson 50).

However, the three siblings finally manage to bond through Hannah’s adversity. The two elder twins offer advice to Hannah regarding her detention punishment and wait for her after the session.

These two stories offer an accurate and honest view of problems that could be faced by any reader. Through them, the reader is able to gain a better understanding about the problems (s)he faces and the methods of resolving them by seeing them “from a different, more mature, and more objective perspective” (Nodelman 22). While the problems may be explained through various narrative strategies, these strategies are only secondary to the most important thing in a book – the story that the author has to tell.

Bibliography
Cullinan, Bernice E., and Lee Galda 1994 Literature and the Child (3rd ed.). United States: Harcourt Brace College Publishers
Gleeson, Libby 1996 Hannah plus One. Australia: Puffin Books
Kemp, Gene 1994 The Wacky World of Wesley Baker. England: Penguin Group
Nodelman Perry 1991 ‘The Eye and the I: Identification and First-Person Narratives in Picture Books’. Children’s Literature 19: 1-30
Nodelman, Perry 1996 The Pleasures of Children’s Literature (2nd ed.). United States: Longman Publishers
Norton, Donna E. 1999 Through the Eyes of a Child: an Introduction to Children’s Literature (5th ed.). New Jersey: Prentice Hall, Inc
Winters, Carol J., and Gary D. Schmidt 2001 Edging the Boundaries of Children’s Literature. United States: Allyn and Bacon

mbutterfly essay

“Fantasy is the … mechanism that structures subjectivity by reworking or translating social representations into … self representations” (Theresa deLauretis)
“It’s your fantasy isn’t it? The submissive Oriental woman and the cruel white man”
(Song Liling in M. Butterfly)
Could M. Butterfly be described as both a representation and a deconstruction of Western discourses and representations of Orientalism and of otherness? (In answering this question engage with the quotes listed above, and also with some of the ideas about race, gender, sexuality, subjectivity, otherness, discourse, deconstruction, and so on, discussed throughout the course.)

Based on David Henry Hwang’s play that was inspired by true events, M. Butterfly tells of the tragically-doomed love affair between René Gallimard (Jeremy Irons), a French diplomat, and Song Liling (John Lone), a Chinese opera singer. The clandestine relationship lasted almost twenty years before it was revealed that Song was actually a man, who had been disguising himself as a woman to obtain sensitive classified information from the French through Gallimard. While the film showed how the West generally exercised its domination over the ‘exotic’ East, it also interestingly offered an alternative reading that deconstructed some of the abovementioned discourses. This occasional schizophrenic meaning-making process is epitomised by the obvious problem of choosing the correct pronoun when referring to Song. For the purposes of this essay, I shall use ‘she/her’ to denote Song.

M. Butterfly has a few Western discourses at work, but none as pervasive as Western superiority over the East, which manifests itself in the construction of the Oriental ‘Other’. This can be seen physically, through the film’s settings, costumes and props, and thematically, through the inter-racial romantic relationship between Song and Gallimard. There are the quintessentially Chinese back alleys, ubiquitous red paper lanterns and locals riding bicycles and tending roadside stalls, amongst other things. The opening credits also give the reader, as the film can be considered a text, a prelude of what to expect in a film dealing with the ‘Far East’ with oriental sounding music playing in the background as images commonly associated with the Orient (by the West) like Chinese opera face masks, watercolour paintings and kimonos are shown.

However, these discourses can be deconstructed to expose “the hidden work of ideology in our daily experience of ourselves and our world”. It must be noted that such representations are not simply a reflection of the East. Instead, these images construct the reality associated with the East because they represent the exoticness and foreignness of the East, as perceived by the West, and in this case, the director, David Cronenberg. These dominant ideas of representations of the East are grounded in Orientalism, which generally serves to situate the East as “the West’s inferior ‘Other’”. This Western domination over the East allows the West to “understand, in some cases control, manipulate, even incorporate, what was manifestly a different world.”

In Orientalism, the West is perceived to be “rational, mature and normal”, unlike the East. The superiority felt by the West in M. Butterfly is shown through the disdain with which the French regard the locals. Gallimard pays scant disregard to Song’s maid, rudely brushing her off when he perceives her to be in his way. The French make jokes about the Chinese blowing their noses on the pavements and spitting onto passing car windscreens. By regarding such behaviour as uncouth and uncivilised, the French are subconsciously judging and disparaging the Chinese by imposing on them their own cultural practices, ignoring the fact that what the Chinese are doing is common in their culture.

It is arguable that the East is seen as “a mirror in which the West sees the rejected and disavowed parts of itself.” It can also then be suggested that the Orient is essentially a Western construct, which therefore reveals more about itself than the East. The issue of identity in the film thus builds upon this premise of the self and other. One’s identity is tied implicitly to what it is not. Furthermore, within these binary oppositions, there is a hierarchy, with one term valued above the other. In M. Butterfly, the West is superior to the East; the man above the woman and heterosexuality over homosexuality.

This is clearly evident in M. Butterfly, with Gallimard personifying the West and Song, the East. Their relationship, paralleling that of the West and East, has Gallimard in control “of power, of domination, [and] of varying degrees of a complex hegemony.” The hierarchy is further perpetuated along gender lines, as Gallimard is a man and Song, a woman (to Gallimard). Therefore, not only is Song subordinated on the basis of her race, she is also discriminated implicitly against by her gender.

Gallimard constructs Song as his perfect Oriental ‘Other’ – a submissive woman willing to “die for the love of unworthy foreign devils”. Initially she spars with him intellectually, challenging his views about the world. An example is when she questions Gallimard’s admiration for Madame Butterfly’s sacrifice of her life because of unrequited love. Song contests his fantasy by asking if he would feel similarly if it were a blonde cheerleader instead in love with a Japanese man. Insightfully, she echoes his thoughts, “Now I believe you would consider this girl to be a deranged idiot, correct? But because it’s an Oriental who kills herself for a Westerner, you find her beautiful?” This presents an interesting take on an Oriental character (especially a female one) by allowing her to have opinions of her own. However, it unfortunately does not last long. Soon, Song falls into the stereotypical role of a subservient and willing slave, eager to fulfil her master’s every desire. She waits patiently for him every night to visit her, submits herself sexually to him when he makes requests and never complains. Therefore, Song comes to be Rene’s Butterfly, the epitome of Oriental fantasies, with her as the “submissive Oriental woman” and Rene, “the cruel white man”. He has embraced the “social representations” of the Oriental ‘Other’ and used them to structure his own ideas about Song and what she would symbolise to him.

Yet it is worth noting that without the subjugation of the East (and Song) as the inferior ‘Other’, the West (and Gallimard) would be unable to substantiate its claims of superiority over the East – “the truth of the master is in the slave”. Moreover Orientalism, through shaping the East, also helps to construct the West, sometimes as inaccurately as its portrayal of the East. The depiction of the Westerners who spend their days attending soirees and dinners in M. Butterfly is an example of the stereotypical view that they spend more time socialising than working.

Interestingly, while M. Butterfly offers rather stereotypical views of the East, as conjured from a Western perspective, it also subverts the notion of the West’s (and to a lesser extent, masculine’s) insidious superiority. As the true identity of Song is revealed, the reader gets the impression that it is ironically the East who has the upper hand, at least in this film. “His Butterfly is not a victim of the colonial master, the “white devil,” or a passive object of his desire; Song Liling’s Butterfly is not guileless and not passive, not an object but indeed the subject – the conscious and willful subject – of a fantasy that sustains the agency of his own desire (“I invented myself just for him,” Song says at the trial).”

Thus, there has been a role reversal of master and slave; a destabilisation of the supposed hierarchy between the East and West; man and woman. Song has actually been consciously playing up her duplicitous role as the pliant Oriental mistress that is Gallimard’s fantasy. She perpetuates his fantasy of the Oriental woman being exotic by showing him the “ancient Oriental ways of love”. She boosts his ego and makes him feel superior to Chinese men by telling him that “they keep women down” because they are insecure and that it is “exciting… loving a Western man”. Song allows herself to be thought of as meek and helpless by Gallimard. When she tells him that she is pregnant, he offers to “love you and rescue you and save you and protect you.” Ironically, while Song is perceived to be the needy one, she is actually actively constructing herself in that role that she knows Gallimard desires.

Hence, the one in control in the relationship is Song (and the East), not Gallimard (and the West), who is tricked by her disguise. Even after Gallimard learns that Song is actually a man, he is more devastated because his fantasy of his Butterfly is over rather than because of Song’s actual biological makeup. When Song strips naked to prove that he is a man, Gallimard retorts, “You’re nothing like my Butterfly.” He hangs on to the idea of his Butterfly, which he constructed for Song, and of which she was a willing participant in the process. Thus, by choosing fantasy over reality, it allows Gallimard to continue to dominate and have power over the East, despite the true circumstances of the situation.

Unfortunately, the reason behind this deception remains unexplained in the film. However, the general consensus points towards Song being in love with Gallimard and dressing up as a woman as being the only acceptable method of continuing the relationship with him. This need for false pretences on the part of Song and the reception of it when all is revealed also presents a related issue relevant to this essay – that of sexuality and gender.

Song, by dressing up as a woman, has transcended the well-established boundaries of masculinity and heterosexuality. For undisclosed reasons, Song discards the gender attributes commonly associated with his biological sex and instead takes on the gendered identity of a woman. Aware of what constitutes Gallimard’s fantasy of the “perfect woman”, Song becomes the feminine and gentle Oriental ‘Other’. Trying her “best to become somebody else”, Song constantly practices her deception; even reading magazines that Comrade Chin (Shizuko Hoshi) deems as “decadent trash”. Song thus comes to represent the epitome of femininity with her long, flowing hair and acquiescent demeanour because “in the figure of Butterfly the performance of femininity actually comes to embody it, for both men, regardless of anatomy”. Yet while she is performing this role, she is actually subverting the discourse of femininity as she is essentially a man just acting the part. But as gender is considered a cultural construct and performative, it seems plausible that one can “learn to become a woman or a man, feminine or masculine”, like Song did.

The question of defining femininity and what makes a woman ‘woman’ is also raised in the film. Interestingly, the film repeatedly endorses that the concept of the ideal woman is a fantastic one – “only a man knows how a woman is supposed to act.” Therefore, no ‘real’ woman would be able to live up to this fantasy. Thus, it seems like only poetic justice that the woman that Gallimard should fall in love with is a man.

At the end of the film, Gallimard refuses to accept Song when his true identity is exposed. It thus becomes clear that Gallimard only approves of the relationship when it is a heterosexual one – between a woman and a man. Homosexuality is not even to be considered as a possibility by Gallimard. This point, that it is the fantasy of having an Oriental female lover that Gallimard wants and not one of mutual respect and love, regardless of biological sex, is reiterated when he rejects Song although even “under the robes, beneath everything”, it is the same person. Instead, Gallimard is in love with “a perfect lie” – his construction of Song as his docile Butterfly. It has been advocated that his disappointment lies more in the destruction of his fantasy than of Song being a man, though this fact is certainly also unacceptable to him.

Heterosexuality being the accepted and dominant form of sexuality in arguably traditional and masculine societies like France and China, Song’s sexuality, and consequently Gallimard’s, are questioned as a result of their relationship. Under the “sex/gender system”, their liaison would be categorised under ‘bad’ sexuality. For not only is it a homosexual one, it deals partially with cross-dressing and fetishes. Gallimard himself is aware the ridicule he faces because of his affair with Song that “made all of France laugh.” If Song was really disguising herself so that she could be with Gallimard, it is unfortunate and yet perfectly understandable why she would have to resort to such devices to continue the charade. It could thus be interpreted in this context that the most “forbidden of loves” Song is referring to earlier in the film is that of homosexual love. This reveals the absolute hierarchy of sexuality in society, with heterosexuality being superior while homosexuality remains something barely tolerated. However, the debate still rages over if the relationship between Song and Gallimard should really be considered homosexual, since Gallimard was always under the impression that he was indulging in a heterosexual one.

M. Butterfly ends with Gallimard killing himself while dressed up as a Japanese woman. It is the only way in which he is able to hold on forever to his fantasy of his exotic Butterfly. Meanwhile, Song gets deported back to China. The film, especially its ending, thus seems to be a cautionary tale – covertly dissuading readers from following the two men’s path, lest they want to end up broken like them. Thus although the film can be seen to represent and deconstruct Western discourses, it ultimately still supports, consciously or not, the dominant hegemonic ideologies prevalent in society today.

Bibliography
Bristow, Joseph, Sexuality. London: Routledge, 1997.
de Lauretis, Theresa, “Popular Culture, Public and Private Fantasies: Femininity and Fetishism in David Cronenberg’s M. Butterfly”. In Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 1999, vol. 24(2), pp. 303-334.
Derrida, Jacques, Writing and Difference [1967]. London: Routledge, 1978.
Lewis, Reina, Gendering Orientalism: Race, Femininity and Representation. London and New York: Routledge, 1996.
MacKenzie, John M., Orientalism: History, Theory and the Arts. Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1995.
Moore-Gilbert, Bart, Stanton, Gareth, and Malley, Willy (ed.), Postcolonial Criticism. New York: Addison Wesley Longman Inc., 1997.
Said, Edward, W., Orientalism: Western Conceptions of the Orient. England: Penguin Group, 1995.
Sullivan, Nicki, Text, Image and Culture (Cul 100) Week Five: ‘Representation’ lecture, Macquarie University, 30 Aug. 2002.
Sullivan, Nicki, Text, Image and Culture (Cul 100) Week Twelve: ‘Deconstructionism’ lecture, Macquarie University, 1 Nov. 2002.
Tyson, Lois, Critical Theory Today: A User-friendly Guide. New York: Garland, 1999.
Young, Robert J.C., “Deconstruction and the Postcolonial” in Deconstructions: A User’s Guide. Ed. Nicholas Royle. Hampshire and New York: Palgrave, 2000, pp. 187–210.

one of my first essays in uni...

“Meaning is constructed (made), not dis-covered”. Discuss this statement using at least three of the following concepts: signifier/signified, paradigm/syntagm, connotation/denotation, genre, intertextuality, discourse, representation, reading/writing.

According to Humanist theory, every text has one correct and true meaning, which is created by the text’s author. To discover the text’s meaning, the reader must decipher the author’s interpretation of the text. However, in this essay, I will argue that contrary to this Humanist belief, meaning is not derived from the author. Instead, every person reading a text will create his/her own meaning from it; there is no single, fixed and definite interpretation. To illustrate my argument that meaning is made and not discovered, I will use of the following concepts: genre, intertextuality and discourse; and a comic strip from ‘Non Sequitur’ by Wiley Miller.

In cultural studies, every object, be it living or inanimate, is considered a text. Each text has a meaning that changes all the time, depending on its interaction with other texts. While a text might be embedded with a certain original meaning that the author wants to convey, its meaning evolves and varies according to the text’s reader, who has already internalised various concepts that help him/her in the meaning making process.

Genre, which entails a system of classification and categorisation according to certain shared elements present in a number of texts, is one such concept. Although some texts may fit neatly into certain genres, most of them have characteristics that span an entire range of genres. The reader who usually expects a certain text in a certain genre to be constructed in a certain manner would be disconcerted. An example of the possible disorientation that could occur from relying on such an assumption would be having a romantic subplot in a text centring on the creation of the nuclear bomb, which is recognised to be in the realm of scientific discovery. Therefore, while genres help a reader easily gauge what a text would entail, they also set up boundaries that limit the possible interpretations of the text. Consequently, genres affect how the reader chooses reading strategies for different texts and thus how (s)he makes meaning from the text. Such an instance is shown in the attached comic strip.

Since their introduction, comic strips have entertained readers and made them laugh about a variety of subjects ranging from world issues to body parts. The comic strip is meant to provide respite from the day’s toils and put a smile on the reader’s face. Therefore, when the reader encounters a comic strip, (s)he expects to be amused by it and laugh. Through the concept of genre, the reader makes assumptions about the content of a comic and its potential meaning.

Interestingly, the ‘Non Sequitur’ comic does not contain the typical slapstick humour commonly found in the genre of the comic strip. Instead, by urging its reader to laugh at its wit, the ‘Non Sequitur’ comic can be further categorised into a subgenre of the comic strip – that of the parodic variety. However, as the comic has been recognised as belonging to the genre of comic strips, the reader immediately forms an impression of what the comic would entail and the potential meanings that could be ascertained from it. Thus a reader with the impression that all comic strips have obvious ‘ha-ha’ jokes would find difficulty in understanding the dry humour of the ‘Non Sequitur’ comic.

Genre also influences how we read language in a text and understand its meaning. One sentence can be interpreted in many ways, depending on the genre a reader thinks it belongs to. In the ‘Non Sequitur’ comic strip, the phrase “Another failed attempt in Ed’s quest to attain an aura of romance” can be read in different ways. In the satiric comic strip genre, it can be interpreted as being wry and witty. But if the phrase were thought to belong to the genre of romantic texts, Ed would just be seen as someone ignorant of the ways of rekindling a romance. Therefore, as the sentence can be read in many ways, the meaning made from it would also differ among readers. It is then evident that genres, while aiding in showing how meaning is constructed, also limit its possibilities.

The idea that a text consists of more than one genre is reflected most clearly in the concept of intertextuality. It involves juxtaposing texts against each other to reveal their “shared textual and ideological resonances”. This concept relies on the belief that “a text consists not of a line of words… but of …a fabric of quotations, resulting from a thousand sources of culture.” Therefore, meaning is constructed through this inter-relation of texts.

Intertextuality is evident in the ‘Non Sequitur’ comic strip through the phrase “Hark… what light from yonder doorway breaks? It is the east and Ed is the sun. Arise fair sun and kill the envious moon…on your way out with the trash.” The reader’s prior experiences with other texts and the associated learning strategies affect his/her reading of this comic strip. Thus, to fully understand the punch line of this comic strip, the reader has to read the text, or more specifically, the language used, beyond its literal meaning. (S)he must be aware that the author has paraphrased William Shakespeare from one of his most famous works, Romeo and Juliet. Therefore, the reader who is well-versed in Shakespearean literature would derive a meaning different from the reader unaware of the literary reference. Intertextuality thus comes into play here and aids in the meaning making process.

The reader can also construct meaning from the text through the discourses present in the comic strip. There are many differing definitions of discourse available, but for the purpose of the essay, discourse shall refer to the “network of statements, images, stories and practices by which certain beliefs or a set of ideas about a particular topic are circulated and sustained in order to naturalize these as self-evident or common sense.”

Through discourse, a reader is aware of the topics that can be discussed and those that should remain in the domain of secret conversations. In most cases, there are dominant discourses, held by the majority of people, affecting their interpretations of texts. Counter-discourses that subvert the perceived ‘normal and right way of thinking’ also exist, though to a lesser extent.

In the ‘Non Sequitur’ comic strip, there are several discourses present. The most obvious is that of romantic love. The comic strip clearly conveys the man, recognised through the woman’s ‘soliloquy’ as Ed, trying to keep the passion in his relationship alive, only to be rebuffed by her. She mocks his attempt at romance by paraphrasing the above-mentioned Shakespearean quote to include a request to remove the trash. The reader knows that the discourse of romantic love is being espoused through the following points – the use of lines from Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, one of the most recognised romantic literary texts; Ed’s outstretched arms, which seem to be reaching for his partner and the presence of the male and female characters. The notion of romantic love is also expressed as being between a man and a woman, or in other words, through a heterosexual relationship. This is clearly a reflection of the perceived norm of relationships that is being exhorted in present-day society.

Discourses about gender are present in the comic strip. The man is always portrayed to be responsible for manual jobs, as evident when the woman asks Ed to remove the trash. The man, who is shown with his arms wide open, is the one who attempts to romance his partner. It perpetuates the commonly-held stereotype that the man does the wooing and not the other way around.

The comic strip also reveals the discourse regarding age. Romance is perceived to extinguish in a long-term relationship, especially when the two individuals are middle-aged. It is commonly regarded that people in this age group dress in a certain manner, as evident from Ed’s attire, which consists of a singlet and polka-dot boxer shorts. Women at this age also tend to be portrayed in a rather unflattering light, as the comic strip shows. They wear oddly-shaped spectacles and are bossy and are generally not very nice people. The woman in the comic strip epitomises this through her unwillingness to partake in Ed’s little romantic quest. Instead, she makes fun of the entire episode.

All these discourses have already been internalised in the reader who has been repeatedly exposed to such ways of thinking through the various media. These ideals are regarded as the norm and thus, do not strike the reader as being worthy of analysis. However, the reader, instead of accepting them unquestioningly, should query the origin of such discourses and their resultant effect on the texts and the meanings derived from them. Consequently, the construction of meaning from texts would be based partly on the discourses that are known to the reader.

Every reader has been through different experiences in different cultural contexts that shape his/her perception of texts. They use all this prior knowledge and learned skills to help them understand a text. No two individuals read a text in exactly the same way, because while their life experiences may be similar, they are not identical. Thus, the meaning intended by a text’s author might not be transmitted fully to the reader, who would only find certain segments relevant. Rather, the meaning of the text would be constructed differently by each reader. Therefore, meaning is made (by each individual reader) and not dis-covered.

Bibliography
Barthes, R., The Rustle of Language. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986.
Giles, J. and Middleton, T., Studying Culture: a Practical Introduction. Massachusetts and Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1999.
Miller, W. 2002. The Non Sequitur Homepage. http://www.non-sequitur.com/index.php3?previous=1&inday=8&inmonth=8&inyear=2002 (16 Sep. 2002).
Payne, M., A Dictionary of Critical and Cultural Theory. London: Blackwell, 1996.
Pearson, W., Text, Image and Culture (Cul 100) Week Four: ‘Intertextuality and Genre’ lecture, Macquarie University, 23 Aug. 2002.
Sullivan, N., Text, Image and Culture (Cul 100) Week Three: ‘Humanism/Postmodernism’ lecture, Macquarie University, 16 Aug. 2002.
Sullivan, N., Text, Image and Culture (Cul 100) Week Four: ‘Reading’ lecture, Macquarie University, 23 Aug. 2002.

immortality, here i come!

as another sign of my increasing egotism and narcissism, i have decided to upload (oooh what a tecno-savvy word!:P) all my essays onto the net.. so if anything should happen to my laptop, i have a copy in posterity... though if anything happens to blooger, then i'm a dead duck.. so excuse my indulgence but, here goes!

cloggedup

oohhavebeensickforfourdays..egads..thisispathetic!isthisasignimighthavetoactuallysuccumbtoeating*shockshockhorrorhorror*VEGETABLES?

she's a lump, she's a lump, she's in my head