Dr. Strangelove

The cover of Dr. Strangelove

Dr. Strangelove is a somewhat comical thriller. Every situation that should be serious in the movie isn't played seriously. The credits in the beginning look like a child could have written them. The Presidents phone call to Dimitri goes back and forth in a goofy and awkward manner. I'm not sure if it's because the movie is old or not but the plane looks like a toy and when Mandrake has to make a collect call, the entire call/situation is humorous. A U.S. General named Jack Ripper disobeys the rules when he commands his B-52 plane to bomb Russia. Ripper believes that communists are out to harm their bodily fluids. The other two settings in the movie are inside the B-52 where they frantically check to make sure everything is perfect inside the plane before executing “plan R” and in the “war room” where the President and many others try to get a hold of the B-52 and stop the bombing so that the Doomsday machine doesn’t go off. I found it rather strange that there was only one women in the film, showing a sense of alienation. When she's posted in Playboy the camera angle is down on her like she is below the men. Women were also not a part of the plan the one lady just carried information back and forth between the two men. It was a little ironic that love symbolism creates life but missiles destroy it and they were very related in the film. Camera angles that were very obvious were an aerial view of the war room showing openness and a poker game look, and also the camera angle would look down on Mandrake when he was with Ripper to show Ripper as more superior.

The war room set up like a giant poker game

STILLMAN

A majority of Stillman's analysis focuses on the cultural references that surrounded Kubrick at the time and how he used them in his film. Stillman suggests, “Kubrick would have easily had access to the 17 February issue of Time, and may have even been able to watch some of the East Coast television programs it recommended” (Stillman). That Time magazine issue had features on a missile gap flap. Stillman also brings up the similarities between Dr. Strangelove and the novel Dr. No. “We learn that the eponymous villain lost his hand, changed hs German name upon assuming U.S. citizenship, and wanted to force missiles off their intended courses and targets” (Stillman). This sounds very familiar to the character Dr. Strangelove who has a gloved hand and who also changed his name upon assuming U.S. citizenship, and also talked a lot about missiles. Kubrick also set up the war room table like a game of poker which relates back to Dr. No when Bond says, “It should be like a poker table: there’s the president, the generals and the Russian ambassador playing a game of poker for the fate of the world” (Stillman).

RICHARDSON

Richardson analyzes Dr. Strangelove and brings up amusing moments in the dark satire. He says “the opening sequence in which two bombers copulate in mid-air by means of a refueling tube while the song “Try a Little Tenderness” plays, is a brilliant, quick statement of the film’s manner and intention” (Richardson). Richardson’s main focus in his analysis seems to be about the characters and what humor they bring to the film. Richardson says, Jack D. Ripper is the most rounded character in the film because he’s “a paranoid Air Force General obsessed with his belief in Communist conspiracy against American “bodily fluids” (Richardson). He finds the actual character Dr. Strangelove to do strange things such as being able to rise and walk at the world’s end as creating “the sort of humorous abandon that is strained for but not quite reached in other moments” (Richardson). Richardson also finds the humor throughout the movie to be overplayed and he thinks the film lacks artistry. I agree with Richardson here. Some of the humor didn’t seem to fit where it should or there was too much of it when it was supposed to be more serious. Richardson referred to the humor as “a tired comic device, like banana peels and baggy pants” (Richardson).

The only female in the film

Kubrick, Stanley, dir. Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love the

Bomb. 1964. Columbia Pictures, 2009.

Richardson, Jack. "'Strangelove' and 'the Silence.'" The Hudson Review. 17.2 (1964): 250-255.

Web. 17 May. 2010.

Stillman, Grant. "Two of the MaDdest Scientists." Film History. 20 (2008): 487-500.

Web. 17 May. 2010.

YouTube Secrets That Lie Beneath

Distracted Driving

An obnoxious honk immediately brings your eyes back onto the road you were driving on when they abruptly widen as your vehicle is headed directly into oncoming traffic. Everything goes into slow motion as you try to break and swerve out of the way but you're too late. The details become blurred as you feel everything in your car fly forward and your body becomes numb. Screeching tires and screams from your children in the backseat are ringing in your ears while your nose fills with the smell of exhaust fumes and burning rubber. You become dizzy looking at the blur outside of your window as you burst into tears and scream. Your car flies sideways and instantly stops as it crashes into a telephone pole. Sirens are heard in the distance as you try to keep your eyes from closing. If only you had some sort of control over the situation.

Luckily, this wasn’t you, it was made up to prove the point that this scenario could have been prevented, easily. Where were the woman’s eyes when her focus was abruptly brought back to the road? Would it seem ridiculous to find out they were on her phone as she was texting her husband a funny story from her kids’ soccer practice? Laws are currently being passed to ban cell phone use while driving. As with any new law, some problems have been addressed. Some say it will be too difficult to enforce the law and some find it wrong to outlaw phones when we have plenty of other distracters when we’re driving that aren’t being banned. I believe that texting behind the wheel should be banned because studies have proven a higher accident rate when the driver is distracted, eliminating one major distraction is better than not eliminating any of the distractions, and it would be easy to enforce the law if we used our fast-growing technology and brought awareness to those who don’t know how dangerous it can be.

“Research has shown that motorists talking on a phone are four times as likely to crash as other drivers, and are as likely to cause an accident as someone with a .08 blood alcohol content” (Richtel A1). Virginia Tech conducted a “100-car naturalistic driving study” where they retrieved data from 100 individuals who volunteered to have specialized instrumentation installed into their cars for a 12-13 month period of time. The specialized instrumentation was discreet and it collected the data through 4 sensors, a machine vision-based lane tracker, GPS, accelerometers, glare and radio frequency detectors, and 5 channels of digital compressed video. It measured kinematic information and the vehicle’s state. The participants were not given any specific instructions by an experimenter they were simply told to drive around like they normally would. The data was collected and they discovered that 93% of rear-end striking crashes, 80% of all crashes and 65% of situations in which a rapid maneuver was used to just miss a crash were caused by the driver being distracted. This information made the study very interesting because it was previously estimated that only 25% of crashes were caused by a distracted driver. It was also noted that the use of a cell phone device was associated with the highest frequency for crashes (Box). Another study was conducted at Virgina State that involved putting video cameras inside the cabs of more than 100 long-haul trucks over a time period of 18 months and it also measured the time drivers took their eyes from the road to their phones. The data "found that when the drivers texted, their collision risk was 23 times as great as when they were not texting" and that in the moments right before a crash or a near-crash, "drivers typically spent nearly 5 seconds looking at their devices (which is) enough time at typical American highway speed limits to cover more than 400 feet" (Richtel). Even with this data that was collected from Virginia State, some state legislatures say they need more data to decide on whether or not they should pass the law to ban texting while driving (Richtel).

The Washington Post posted an article with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s facts on texting while driving. “The administration said that 5,870 people died and about 515,000 were injured last year in accidents attributed to distracted driving” (Halsey A03). You have to remember that these statistics are only on incidents where people admitted to or were proven to have been distracted right before the crash. The data collected could be lower and inaccurate because it’s hard to prove an accident was caused by a distraction, it’s not like there is a test for it, and it’s hard for people to admit they were at fault by not paying full attention to the road. Though they were accounting all distractions, the statistics they collected are extremely high and we should take any precaution we can to reduce the deaths and injuries. Even if the law is passed universally, like any law, not everybody is going to follow it. But the important factor is, there will be people who won’t want to pay the ticket and they’ll stop texting behind the wheel, which in turn could save their lives and the lives of others if they were to collide in an accident. There are already 14 American states that banned texting while driving while thirty-six don’t (Richtel).

Conductor Texting His Girlfriend Injures 49 Passengers

There was a subway accident in Boston during the May of 2009 that brought back the issue of passing a law for banning texting while driving. One of the operators, who was 24-years-old, admitted that he was texting his girlfriend when the crash occurred. The subway collision injured him along with 49 of his passengers. The crash resulted in damages costing 9 million dollars and they were guessing with lawsuits by injured passengers would increase the cost of damages even more. The head of the agency banned all operators from having mobile devices on the subway trains (Hamblen).

Bringing awareness to individuals is a great way to show people how deadly texting behind the wheel can be and how easy it would be to avoid texting until they were no longer in their vehicles. Many groups such as celebrities, and insurance and cell phone companies have already started campaigns or brought the issue to the public’s awareness. AT&T’s “Txtng & Drivng….It Can Wait” campaign has the theme “No text is worth dying over” and they show victim’s last text message they received right before they died (Copeland). A story was told about a certain AT&T focus group campaign. One of AT&T’s focus group leaders said, “‘everybody pull out your phone. Pull up the very last text you had before you came in here. Are any of those texts worth dying for?’ The air came out of the room. It went absolutely silent” (Copeland). Hearing analogies like this one, or ones similar to it, will allow people to realize the seriousness of the consequences and that it’s not worth the risk.

Oprah Winfrey has a Mission To End-Distracted Driving

Oprah Winfrey, who has been rated one of the most influential women in the world by Times Magazine, created an “End Distracted Driving campaign. Oprah tells audiences on her show stories of texting accidents hoping people will stop texting. The difference between many of her stories and regular stories in the paper is that she interviews people who have been dramatically affected by distracted-driving incidents. "It is my prayer that this show, this day will be a seminal day in your life," Oprah says. "Let it be the end, the end of you using a cell phone or sending a text message when you are behind the wheel of a moving vehicle. And until we as a nation decide we're going to change that, those numbers are only going to go up” (Winfrey).

9-year-old Erica before the tragic incident

The story that hit me the hardest was an emotional story told by a mother of three children. In November 2008, two days before Thanksgiving, she came home to emergency vehicles around her house and saw a child lyig on the street. Her husband said their 9-year-old daughter, Erica, had been riding her bike home from school and was about 30 seconds from being home safely when she was hit head-on by a 5,000-pount SUV. When she found out it was her daughter on the road she said she thought to herself, "Oh, she's unconscious. She's goinn to be ok...And they started cutting my daughter's clothes off and it was hitting me this is very, very, very serious." Erica passed away that night and her parents are now working hard to change Colorado laws. The mother states, "Get off the phone. Save a life. Don't talk and drive," she says. "You've got precious cargo in that car. Your life. Your children's life. They are not worth a phone call, a text, an e-mail. It's not worth it" (Winfrey).

Oprah has a web site titled the “No Phone Zone” that’s retrievable from her talk show site. Along with the stories that were told on her show she has a section where you can pledge to make your car a No Phone Zone to help put an end to distracted driving by committing to drive as responsible as you can. As of now there are 300,424 total pledge submissions. There is also an interactive map of the United States that allows you to click on states and see that state’s cell phone laws. Under the laws there is a link you can press to contact that state’s governor. Oprah is hoping this will make people involved in helping to pass the laws.

Nationwide Mutual Insurance Company also supports a nation ban on texting while driving. Bill Windsor, Nationwide’s Safety Officer, stated, “there is a growing body of research and evidence that suggests a ban on texting while driving will save lives and make our roads a safer place to drive” (Gillespie). Nationwide focuses on enhancing technology that will help reduce texting while driving crashes. “Nationwide began working with Aegis Mobility on a new, cell-phone based technology that will have a positive impact on reducing TWD crashes by advising callers and texters that the individual they are trying to reach is driving” (Gillespie). When this program is available, Nationwide is encouraging people to try it by offering a discount to those who sign up for it.

Some people have been arguing that banning distrations while driving would be possible to enforce. A writer from USA Today, George Runner, states, “…it’s next to impossible for law enforcement officers to prove a wreck was caused by a driver paying more attention to his hamburger than the road ahead” (Runner 8A). Runner argues that he understands there should be consequences for reckless driving, but he says, we should focus on current laws that already impose penalties for reckless driving. “Let’s keep the government out of people’s cars and allow the appropriate officials, such as law enforcement officers, to focus on keeping drivers safe” (Runner 8A). Others such as Trey Adams, an 18-year-old high school student who was interviewed in the Gadsden Times, stated, “If a law is passed, it’s not going to stop…People’s windows are tinted and you can’t see in. It’ll be hard to enforce” (Rogers). Las Vegas Metro Police Lt. Tom Roberts, believes there could be a problem with enforcement since there isn’t a training program for police officers to figure out whether people are texting or not. He also states, “The intent is to curb the instance of people while driving, and to educate tem. Our belief is that this bill would bring attention to the problem” (KoloTV). The truth is, with growing technology we can have a strong enforced law that people will start to obey. Every law is capable of being broken and every law is not always followed.

So far, Ohio does not have any laws banning texting or phone use while driving. However, I do know a girl who has been pulled over and questioned about texting. The officer took her phone and called the cell provider to ask if she just sent a message and when they confirmed she was, the officer gave her a ticket for I believe $50.00. When the girl told me this story I was shocked and realized that they could enforce the law. Being able to prove use of cell phones is the answer. Our fast growing technology is also key because we can discontinue the temptation to use our phones by not allowing any cell phone use (besides calling 911) while the car is turned on. If we could all agree and abolish our distracting phone habits while driving we could have saved the 5,870 people who died and the 515,000 who were injured last year. Is it worth it?

Alien 1979

Before watching Alien, I have to admit I was disappointed to find out that it came out in 1979. I sank down in my seat prepared to watch a low quality scientific film. The movie started playing and began with the first scene taking place on a spaceship. The lighting was dim and recognizable spacey “beep and boop” sound effects are heard within the ship. The camera goes around a white room with curved walls and lets the audience see the crew for the first time while they are sleeping in what looks like glass pods. Drama begins immediately after they emerge from their space beds. They find out their course has been disrupted because of an intercepted transmission of an unknown origin and that they are only half way to their destination. The title of the movie quickly comes back to mind and suspense starts to sink in.

The camera for the next scene is stationary in the sky while audiences are able to take in how big the spacecraft is as it slowly introduces itself on the screen moving forward on top of the screen towards space. The angle is astounding and it really makes you feel as if a giant spacecraft is flying over your head. As the ship nears a planet the camera’s perspective is further out in space and makes the spaceship look miniscule next to the planet. They disengage part of the ship and go towards the planet hitting some turbulence along the way. Immediately flashing lights and a shaky camera angle are used, and you realize that their bad luck is about to get worse.

Some of the men insist on exploring the planet even though Ripley, the dominate woman on the ship, is hesitant to put anybody in danger. The men don’t listen to Ripley, which becomes a reoccurring event, and we watch them open the doors and head out into an extremely windy and dangerous atmosphere. Of course, by them not listening, Cain is attacked by an alien. When he’s brought back on the ship, again, Ripley says it’s a bad idea to let him in, and they again, disobey. I quickly sensed the male dominance and thought it was ironic that the woman who was unheard was always correct and if they listened to her in the first place, the alien encounter would never have taken place. Mulhall agrees that there is a battle between femininity and masculinity. “The strength and orientation of Ripley’s instincts here are best understood as giving expression to her instinctive familiarity with her, subconscious inhabitation of, the conception of femininity in its relation to masculinity that underpins the alien’s monstrousness” (Mulhall). However, Mulhall believes that all the humans represent femininity and the alien represents masculinity. I disagree. I think that the ultimate battle is between Ripley and the men of the ship. As stated previously, the men of the ship never listened to her.

One of the most obvious instances was when Ripley and Brett were fighting on the lower floor. The pipes were blowing lots of smoke and were accompanied by very loud windy blowing. Brett and another man were teamed up and disagreeing with Ripley pretending that they couldn’t hear her over the noise. Ripley became fed up, and left the corridor. As soon as she left, one of the men turned off the pipes and it became silent on that floor. They could have easily turned them off to hear what Ripley said but decided her voice should go unheard. I think the Ripley represents the femininity and the men of the ship and the alien together represent masculinity. Though it may seem feminist I believe all the men ultimately kill each other. The men on the ship get themselves into the mess by not listening, thus killing each other, and the alien, who also represents a masculine figure, is the actual murderer and doesn’t care what the men, or anybody in that matter, have to say either. Though it was sad the entire crew is murdered, I loved that Ridley made Ripley the last survivor and thus the heroic figure. She overcomes the men and kills the alien who represented the superior masculine figure. Mulhall agrees, “Hence our sense that Ripley’s final, isolated confrontation with the alien is not accidental or merely a generic twist but more profoundly satisfying-something that she is fated” (Mulhall).

After seeing the movie, my initial disappointment was abolished. The loud sudden sound effects during suspenseful scenes made me jump, the close ups to people’s faces added suspense, camera angles and sound effects really made the spaceship seem high tech, and the actual aliens didn’t look like the fake low tech robots that I was expecting.

After Ripley saves the cat and kills the alien I still had a sense that she was still in danger. I remembered back to Cain and how the alien was inside of his stomach and questioned the cat. The eerie brass sounds start to play at the end that were always there when the alien was around. I found it interesting that Thompson had the same suspense when watching this last scene with Ripley. “Her brightly lit hand is posed rather oddly and prominently. It looks a bit like a face-hugger lying on her chest. At just the point where we might be likely to notice this resemblance, a dissonant trumpet note joint the soothing string music. Thus the narrative ends on a slightly portentous moment, hinting that Ripley might again be threatened by aliens” (Thompson).

Mulhall, Stephen. “Kane's Son, Cain's Daughter.” On Film. London: Routledge, 2002. 12-32.

Print.

Scott, Ridley, dir. Alien. 1979. Twentieth Century Fox, 2009.

Thompson, Kristin. "Alien." Storytelling in the New Hollywood. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1999.

283-306. Print

Pan's Labyrinth

Pan’s Labyrinth written and directed by Guillerimo Del Toro is an amazing film that captures the violence and cruelty between the Spanish after the war and a young girl’s fantasy world full of magic and mystical creatures. Watching the film was breathtaking in itself. The film is one of a darker nature and thus has darker lighting and mainly blue hues. I associate blue with coldness or feelings of sadness. I noted when the lighting was significantly blue and found it’s blue when the Captain murders the innocent rabbit hunters, when Ofelia is about to enter the magic world, and near the end of the film when the faun is trying to take Ofelia’s baby brother as a sacrifice to the Labyrinth. Ofelia is the main character in the movie. She was referred to being similar to Alice, as from the movie “Alice in Wonderland” by Kim Edwards. Edwards refers the Labyrinth to be similar to the “rabbit-hole” and says that Ofelia’s stepfather Captain Vidal is the white rabbit because he always carries a watch and is very punctual and task-oriented. Edwards mentions that the most obvious relation between Alice in Wonderland and Pan’s Labyrinth is the Mad Hatter’s tea party in the two dining rooms. “The hypocritical, greedy, devouring adults at the Captain's dinner table are visually doubled with the luxurious and horrific temptations of the Pale Man's banquet hall, complete with the two hosts at the head of the tables framed by fireplaces with leaping hell flames.” (Edwards 144) I didn’t realize the connection between the two movies until I remembered the faun yelling at Ofelia for breaking the rules and then disappearing into the background like the Cheshire cat from Alice in Wonderland.

During the time of the post Civil War in Spain gender roles are very obvious. Women serve the men and do not speak up for themselves. Del Toro had a rather ironic scene in which one of the female workers, named Mercedes, helped the rebels right under his nose and then overtook him in the torture chamber. She straight up tells him that he doesn’t pay attention to women and that’s how she got away with it.

Cinematography and camera editing is creative and interesting. As noted, “Del Toro tilts down from the tub to show her descending the fantasy staircase to the Faun’s lair, once more in a single shot. This technique of the masked cut is vital to the fluid texture of the film: the camera is always tracking behind tree trunks only to emerge unexpectedly in another place, another time.” (Smith 8) I noted that while Captain Vital is introducing his torture tools the camera is lower than him angled up, as if it were showing that he was superior or powerful.

Important scenes in the movie where the real world and fantasy world are interrelated are the feast scenes. The captain holds a large feast and Ofelia is not allowed to eat from it and then the next scene is in the fantasy world with the pale-man monster and Ofelia is again instructed not to eat from the feast. “The visual comparison of the two as brooding demons in hellish dining rooms relocates the site of true horror, for the war atrocities we witness are far more distressing than the fantasy monsters, and the Captain is revealed to be far more frightening and deadly to Ofelia than anything she faces underground.” (Edwards 144)

I noted a certain song that was played multiple times throughout the film. It was first heard when Mercedes was asked by Ofelia to sing a lullaby. Mercedes said she only knew one but forgot the words and proceeded to hum the lullaby. The lullaby is again heard when Ofelia dies and when she appears as a princess reunited with her family, ending the film.

Edwards, Kim. "Alice's Little Sister-Exploring Pan's Labrinth." Film as Text. 141-146. Print

Smith, Paul. "Pan’s Labyrinth (El laberinto del fauno)." 4-9. Print.

Ethos, Pathos, Logos

"But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate filled policemen curse, kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six year old daughter why she can't go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five year old son who is asking: "Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?"

Here, Dr. King is using pathos with his choice of words. The images he creates in the reader's eyes makes the reader have a much better understanding of how terribly colored people were being treated. Dr. King's use of specific examples give the reader gruesome and sad images in their minds and maybe even anger or astonishment. He references to upsetting a 6 year old daughter and a 5 year old son, which could persuade or appeal to any parent. He mentions the police killing his black brothers and sisters and mobs lynching mothers and fathers, this really hits home to everybody because everybody has some sort of family.

Dr. King is using ethos when he states, "I think I should indicate why I am here in Birmingham, since you have been influenced by the view which argues against "outsiders coming in." I have the honor of serving as president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, an organization operating in every southern state, with headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia. We have some eighty five affiliated organizations across the South, and one of them is the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights." He is in a credible position since he mentions that he is the president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the reader can respect him for that.

He also uses ethos when he is defining just and unjust laws. "Sometimes a law is just on its face and unjust in its application. For instance, I have been arrested on a charge of parading without a permit. Now, there is nothing wrong in having an ordinance which requires a permit for a parade. But such an ordinance becomes unjust when it is used to maintain segregation and to deny citizens the First-Amendment privilege of peaceful assembly and protest." He is credible since he mentions he in fact was one of the men who had been arrested for an unjust law and persuades the reader to agree that it was unjust.

"It is true that the police have exercised a degree of discipline in handling the demonstrators. In this sense they have conducted themselves rather "nonviolently" in public. But for what purpose? To preserve the evil system of segregation. Over the past few years I have consistently preached that nonviolence demands that the means we use must be as pure as the ends we seek. I have tried to make clear that it is wrong to use immoral means to attain moral ends. But now I must affirm that it is just as wrong, or perhaps even more so, to use moral means to preserve immoral ends. Perhaps Mr. Connor and his policemen have been rather nonviolent in public, as was Chief Pritchett in Albany, Georgia, but they have used the moral means of nonviolence to maintain the immoral end of racial injustice. As T. S. Eliot has said: "The last temptation is the greatest treason: To do the right deed for the wrong reason." Here Dr. King uses Logos to persuade the reader with logical reasoning. Dr. King knows that the police are enforcing discipline but for the wrong reason. He's showing the reader specific examples and a quote by T. S. Eliot that infers to the discipline the police are acting out with. This may also have a sense of pathos in it, because Dr. King is using words such as "wrong" and relating to morals which will give the reader the feeling of guilt.


I will be writing my first essay on the documentary "The Cove", which takes place in Japan. "The Cove" documents a special area in Japan where fishermen trap dolphins in a cove and kill a mass number of them. The subject of animal cruelty will allow me to use pathos in my essay by making the reader feel emotions such as sorrow, anger, and a feeling of disgust. Though I don't have much credibility I have seen the documentary and done a lot of research to have a better understanding of the subject. I could use logos in my essay by giving facts and statistics about the cove in Japan and detailed information on the cruelty that the dolphins undergo.