MaryF’s Blog

What are some elements/types of Early Comedies?

Since the beginning of the use of movies as a form of entertainment, comedies have been one of the most used genres especially in silent films.  Comedy is very easy to portray with out sounds through plots that are based on actions, not words.  One of the earliest forms of comedy, slapstick, takes full advantage of the lack of sound.  Slap stick is a type of comedy that uses exaggerated action, violence, and “sight gags” like pies in people faces.  Slapstick uses universal humor to appeal to anyone so these films were easily accessible to the many foreign immigrants coming to the US as this time.  As sound was added to films comedies were produced using these eccentric behaviors with witty dialogue and a more substantial plots.

What are some common elements/types of comedies today?
Romantic Comdeies

Gross out/goofball comedies

This week I’m still engrossed in reading the latest installment of the Eragon Series, Brisingr.   My worries that I focused on last week have long disappeared.  I’m finding myself searching for time or excuses to sit down and read this book.   As I am reading I am noticing the author use a tool that I find very useful especially in such a long book.  This is a common tool, but this author does it particularly well.  He brings little bits and pieces of information hinting towards a larger revelation to come.  I find myself so curious what it’s going to be that I have to resist the urge to flip ahead a few pages.  I know that this is a very common tool, but this writer does it particularly well.  What makes his use of it so different?  Since this is a fantasy book as a reader you don’t know much about the customs and common life of the people in the story.  You can tell something big is coming, but you don’t know what it is because it’s hard to predict the actions of people that live in a world where magic, dragons, and elves exist.  I also think the author revels the perfect amount of information letting you know enough to guess, but not enough to know what he is hinting at.  I think this is one of the main reasons I can’t put this book down and won’t be able to until I’ve finished.

I was excited to find out last week that Brisinger by Christopher Paolini had been released.  This is the third and final book in the Eragon series and I know it seems a little geeky to be so in to this series.  I say some people have their Harry Potter and more recently a lot of people have their Twilight, so leave me my Eragon.  Though I was very excited to get the book I had some precautions before I began reading.  Would the final installment of this series live up to the two previous books?  It had been since 2005 since I had read the second book.  I had read a lot of books since then, what if my perspective on what is good literature had changed since then?  A little nervous I dived into the book praying for the best.  Luckily I find myself in the same state of interest and excitement when reading as i did when I was 15.  The book proves to be gripping with intense plot twists and character enhancement just in the first 100 pages (the books around 700 pages).  I find myself can’t waiting to take time out of my day to read more.  I can honestly say I can’t remember the last book that I just couldn’t put down, probably not since I read  the Great Gatsby 2 years ago.  I’m not comparing their level of literary genus, but I am intensely interested.

I recently have been reading a book by my favorite author F. Scott Fitzgerald.  It is his first book “This Side of Paradise”.  Even though it is not as well written as my favorite book, The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald uses an interesting technique  switching between different styles.  Me moves from a chapter that he writes as a script to a chapter that flows almost like a poem to a chapter that reads like any old novel several times throughout the book.  I find this technique interesting, but some may find it jumbled or confusing.  I think it goes along with the unpredictable main character, Amory Blaine, who changes his point of view of himself and the world many times throughout the book.  I also think different experiences equal a different way to depict it.  I find this book quite interesting and love to see Fitzgerald’s genus developing in his early novel.

 Have you ever had a text book written by your professor? As a freshman I find myself in this situation for the first time and I find it quite surreal.  As I read through my Psychology book by Laura King (my professor) I can imagine her  of the lecture hall saying the exact same thing with the same examples (many of the ones in the book she actually uses in the lecture).  This makes me question, are we learning the actual subject or just the version our professor chooses?  Especially when your professor has written the book.  How am I sure she is giving all the points of psychology a fair share?  She expresses continuously throughout her lecture about positive psychology.  When i go to do my reading what do I learn about more….positive psychology.  I know this book choice bias isn’t exclusively for professors who write their own text books.  A professor is going to choose the book that reflects his or her ideas best, proving as students we will just have to live with what they want to teach us.

This is my second time taking a foreign language and I am finding the same problems that I did with the first: The book.  My textbook Espaces, written by Cherie Mitschke, Cheryl Tano, & Valerie Thiers-Thiam, provides a very vague guide to the language.  The question is does it actually aid in my learning of the language?  The textbook mostly offers the vocabulary, but it doesn’t always give you the proper context to use it in and even when it does do that it is very vague with few examples.  A language is obviously much more then the vocabulary.  It then expects you to do Lessons based off of what you have learned but how can you do these lessons without prior knowledge of the sentence structure they want you to use.  The book also offers readings about the culture in French, which would be a good idea if I could read French.  Yes this does teach yo to use context clues, but without much knowledge of the language it is very hard to get anything out of the reading except a few sentences.  The book also does a excellent job confusing you about what you are learning by presenting several different concepts in the same section with little or no order or cohesiveness.  If a person were trying to learn French from just this book it would be impossible.  This book leaves too many blanks for the professor to fill when teaching it that it becomes less of a textbook and more of a simple outline of the language.

These past couple of weeks I have engaged myself in a very interesting piece of literature: Watchmen.  This is a graphic novel written by Alan Moore and illustrated by Dave Gibbions.  I’m not usually a “comic book” type so this is a new experience for me.  I came into reading this book very speculative.  Could a graphic novel really measure up to other novels based on its literature?  I have been shocked to find out it is possible.   In most situations the pictures would outweigh the words, but without the words in this graphic novel there would not be a story, it would just me a mindless jumble of colorful pictures.  The words Alan Morre puts on the page create and shape the characters, set the mood, and reveal a complex story that could suffice for a novel without pictures.  At some points in the novel these words do hold their own without pictures as Morre creates a background story by adding in fictional articles and exerts from books.  Each chapter is complex and interesting with plot driven dialogue instead of action driven pictures proving that this truly is a novel.