Response to The City of Tanfy

The story The City of Tanfy is telling that the narrator enters the poor and strange city Tanfy as an outsider. There has a special custom in the city Tanfy that people eat cold food. Contradictorily, the narrator realizes that there have many lavish women in the poor city. Then the narrator joins in a dancing party. In this party, he meets a butcher who gave hot meat to him. He eats the hot meat without considering. And at the end, he appears on the stage of the party and suggests people that they shouldn’t eat cold food but enjoy their life and get happiness.

I agree with the point that Alice proposed in our class. She said this story is similar to the Japanese film Spirited Away. The custom of eating cold food symbolizes cannibalism. Maybe the sense of Spirited Away is what the author really wants to convey, but we don’t realize this implied meaning as readers. This should give us more clues to show the implied meaning. The ending part of the story is worse than the earlier part.

Moreover, I appreciate the author’s method of describing. I enjoy reading the earlier part of this story because I think the wording is cautious, proper, and beautiful. The author gives us suspense clues to make us interest in the story. And he/she is good at making connection.

Visual Art Appropriation Assignment

  

The original image showed a kind mother figure of Elizabeth Louise Weirui. It shows the lovely and sweet scene of a mother hugs her child.

   The icon was Angelina Jolie Voight's face, internationally recognized as an actress who is the mother of six children. She has adopted three children and has given birth to three children. Her action of adoption is noble, kind and maternal.

Replacing Elizabeth Louise Weirui's face with Angelina Jolie Voight’s face has maternal and sexy effects because the original image has been replaced with something maternal and sexy.

Response to the Class of November 10th

Today, our class explores the Billy’s story from the movie Seven Psychopaths. The Billy’s story has gratuitous elements, unearned meaning, and unbelievable events. I agree with these terms. And I think there has many other elements wrong with this story, such as illogical elements, ridiculous events, too many layer and too many characters in this story.

Through Dr. J’s example，I get the knowledge about appropriation of visual art. We examined the famous painting “Portrait of Sir Thomas Moore”, and then we looked at an appropriation that is using the iconic image of Rowan Atkinson’s face. It includes the original image, the iconic element and mixing the iconic element to subvert the change the meaning of the original image.

Response to Billy's Story

The problems with this story:

1.     Ridiculous origin of the story: Jack O’ Diamonds waits for Mafia boss to give the dog back for peace at cemetery. Then there has shut-out. They die just for a dog and they kill others for a dog. Animal’s life is more important than human’s in this story.

2.     Strange location: the location (cemetery) doesn’t suit to ask for peace but massacre.

3.     Ridiculous process of the story: The process of the story lacks rationality. Psychopaths should be a united team because all of them are crazy. Kaya wanders in the cemetery when there happens shut-out which is not logical. She is shut many times and dies. And Marty was just watching the shut-out without mercy before but now he's going to revenge for Kaya’s death. Then the psychopaths die one by one. And at the end, the Mafia boss’s head explode, it is strange to make a head explode.

4.     Too many layers and too many characters at this story.

5.     The conclusion says “maybe there can be peace because that would be good. ” However, the “good” doesn’t show up in the whole story.

My story:

            Jack O’ Diamonds is waiting at forest with Bunny, and he arranges to give bunny back and has this whole thing end, because he really wants to get peace, like Gandhi or Jesus or other guy. He is sitting on wooden peg and waiting there for the Mafia boss who’s agreed to show up alone and unarmed.

            He thinks that Mafia boss can’t show up alone and unarmed because he’s a psychopath, and he is right. The Mafia boss brings his understrappers with guns. It seems like there is going to happen shut-out.

Then Jack stands up and says: “ throw out your guns, or the dog will die.” The Mafia boss loves his dog very much so that he orders his understrappers throw out all guns.

Dramatically, Bunny runs away from Jack’s arms at that time. Both of Jack and the Mafia boss want to pursue Bunny, but they fail. Bunny goes far away, and the Mafia boss gets angry so he wants to shut Jack. The Mafia boss aims at Jack’s head and prepares to shut. However, when he is going to shut Jack, Bunny runs back and ends up taking the bullet from its master’s gun. Bunny dies.

The Mafia boss begins to cry and loses his sentiment that he realizes it is the punishment from heaven because he did too many bad things. Then he releases Jack and dissolves his organizations. Finally, he gets into a mental hospital voluntarily. He really wants mental peace and physical peace.

What does the story want to be?

       In Marty’s story, I think he just wants to create a perfect typical psychopath. The Vietnamese revenger revenges Americans without mercy for the case of My Lai village. The revenger is angry and vengeful. And the woman character is awful that she is dumb and uneducated. The naked hooker doesn’t speaking correct English and her voice is terrible. The simple bloody plots just have the function to scare audience and show unending violence.

       In Han’s story, the characters are more complex. The hooker wears clothes so that she is dignified. And she is high educated and has intelligent speech. Besides, the Vietnamese revenger has sympathy at this story and he burns himself as a buddhist monk. Actually, he is selfless at this time. This scene stops his violence and hatred. Moreover, I think those plots convey an anti-violence idea to audience so that this story has more meanings.