Summary – Frank (Al Pacino) is a retired Lieutenant Colonel from the US army. He's blind and very stubborn making it a daunting task for others to get along with him. Charlie (Chris O’Donnell) is at school and hopes going to university. He is hired to look after Frank over thanksgiving. Frank's niece says this will be easy money, but she was not aware of Frank’s plan for spending his thanksgiving in New York. The trip takes the two across all kinds of experiences.
Gladiator
Genre – Action, adventure, drama, history
Summary – Maximus (Russell Crowe) is Roman general. He name is sung and honored by the people and the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius. Before his death, the Emperor chooses Maximus to be his heir over his own son, Commodus, and a power struggle leaves Maximus and his family condemned to death. The powerful general is unable to save his family, and his loss of will allows him to get captured and put into the Gladiator games until he dies. The only desire that fuels him now is the chance to rise to the top so that he will be able to look into the eyes of the man who will feel his revenge. (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0172495/)
Whatever Works
Genre – Comedy, romantic
Summary – An aged eccentric physicist, who received nomination for Nobel Prize abandons his upper class life to live like a bohemian. He is an arrogant iconoclast and rejects almost everything and unfathomably cynical. The man meets a young girl from the south and later with the arrival of her parents, the situation gets more weird and complex and actually funny.
Top 3 Novels
A Tale of Two Cities (Charles Dickens)
Genre – Historical fiction
Deception Point (Dan Brown)
Genre – Sci-fi thriller, adventure
Angels and Demons (Dan Brown)
Genre – Mystery-thriller
"Find out what's really out there. I never said to be like me, I say be like you and make a difference." (Marylin Manson)
Gender - the properties that distinguish organisms on the basis of their reproductive roles (WordWeb Dictionary).
It’s fascinating to see how social construction by man builds the reality of man that man holds to be true. Or at least they accept it disregarding its validity by never questioning. Gender stereotyping is another of countless constructs of man. By gender stereotyping, people are assigned with roles they are expected to play in a social setting. These roles are determined by their sex. Traditionally it applies to the male and the female. No specific role has been yet formulated for the third gender though. When a boy is girl is born, they see from the beginning what the older males and females do. They take this to be customary as they grow up into adults. Like that gender stereotyping sustains ages.
Bangladeshi society is also host to gender stereotyping. This stereotyping is ubiquitous and reverberates through various stratums of the societal domain.
Male stereotyping
1.Provides for family (the principal bread earner)
2.Generally the assumer of control in family
3.Expected to get educated, assume livelihood options, earn, marry, build lineage and look out for family members
4.More interested than females to participate in social events as concerts and sports events
5.Those capable or willing enough, pursue higher education in fields as science and business administration
6.Interest in sports (especially cricket) is comparatively higher than females
7.Shows much curiosity to females not in traditional clothing
8.Stares in utter bewilderment to females smoking
9.Clothing include T-shirt, shirt, lungi, punjabi, fatua, half-trouser, jeans, full trouser
10.Openness to convene as a group and spend time outside or at residence
11.Greater propensity to involve in criminal activities or domestic violence
12.More active in social welfare endeavors
Female stereotyping
1.Manages household
2.In charge of child rearing and taking care of them
3.The person in command of the kitchen
4.Very shy and hesitant
5.Zero tolerance against men with long hair
6.Seeks a very focused in life and competent partner (although in rural areas that liberty is not quite available to females)
7.Very aversive towards smoking and men who smoke
8.Envious in more occasions than a male would be
9.Bored by politics, history, perhaps philosophy, sports and a few other relative things
10.More studious than male
11.Those capable or willing enough, pursue higher education in fields as arts and social science
12.Clothing predominantly includes saree and salwar kameez.
13.More interested in convening as group at domestic places rather than outside at most times
14.More picky and choosy than males
15.Usually prefers to raise the hood of the rickshaw even when traveling alone
16.Females in Bangladesh are more sensitive to family values than males
Society has changed much in recent times. New ideas arrive and reform old structures and herald new possibilities. Today in Bangladesh, changes are visible and one cannot miss them out. The proliferation of revamped values and norms has given society a slight shift in tradition. Never before did we see women walking in the line of men in Bangladesh. From female news presenters to journalists, scholars, entrepreneurs, corporate executives, music artists, social workers to things we previously associated with males. Women have come out a long way and there are opportunities that are available to them which were not a decade back. In the rural setting, women have been somewhat empowered by various organizations and other programs which enables them to be small entrepreneurs. My statement could be erroneous because the media shares only the success stories and those could be the only ones! But as an urban dweller I do see changes in the urban sphere. Women who are in higher education pursue a career these days. They now do jobs and earn for families or for themselves parallel with men. Though men are still more privileged, and it’s only by its universality that the rule presides.
As for men, things are...... I can’t guess. We still like to talk about issues and gossip over tea and cigarettes and then stare at a female in closely fitted tops and jeans with a smoke resting firmly between her digits. Career was a 20th century invention and today’s Bangladeshi males are very much aware about its very importance. Life has just become more challenging!
It has to start somewhere
It has to start sometime
What better place than here
What better time than now
(Song: Guerilla Radio; Artist: Rage Against The Machine)
Power makes a man a demigod or something of similar nature. It’s fascinating to see how man worships his own creation. Power itself can be deified without an avatar or some other. From the dawn of human mores, they identified or rather heralded such a concept as power. The sun was the biggest epitome of power in archaic times. Today we consider it only the biggest source of energy. That’s all that have changed. But power is ubiquitous amongst human groups, communities, nations and continues to permeate the entire stretch of the world where humans exist. Thanks to some precocious minds that helped us to see beyond this mystified wall that guards the enigma of power. Foucault has certainly cracked the meat of the ice with his power/knowledge thesis. I’m feeling a little more powerful already! Knowing a little more isn’t so bad.
People talk about power and hegemony and how others are affected by it. They also say how heinous and saints people can become by using power. And some guy somewhere in the history of time said that ‘power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely’. I would have to disagree somewhat. Power is a means to an end. It’s the intent of the figure behind the power which can be heinous and corrupt or noble. Power cannot be blamed because it’s harmless in nature just like a firearm.
The Power Walk
1. Power over others – father over mom and brother, mother over my brother, mother over the maid, Mr. X on his driver, the restaurant manager on the employees, the senior employee over the rookie at the restaurant , the traffic police and sergeants over vehicles, the rikshaw pullers, CNG drivers and taxi drivers over desperate passengers, the doctor over the nurse, the security personnel over the beggar before a supermarket, teacher over students, dean over teachers and students, administration over students, band leader on band members, a public relations officer using his personal influences to call in a favor from an influential figure and so many more.
2. Cooperative power – garments workers against their employers, students against the administration of a university, students against a certain faculty member at university, mass demonstrations/protest rallies, juries in a courtroom, voters and etc.
3. Impersonal Power Relations – utility bills, mobile bill, internet bill, government announcement over the media that have direct implications on the people, warning notification letters from financial institutions.
4. Power to realize desires or needs - sleeping more than needed, taking bath four times a day, smoking or not smoking a cigarette, deciding whether to take the bus or not, watching a film, not attending a Public Relations related convention, playing the blue note instead of the regular interval in the minor pentatonic scale, staring at a hot chick or perhaps not, willingness to continue this write-up or not.
Quote of the week
You have begun to play a governing role on this earth. It is on your thinking and your actions that the future of humanity depends. You give impotent people with evil intentions the power to represent you. Only too late do you realize that again and again you are being defrauded. You must come to realize that you make your little men your own oppressors, and that you made martyrs out of your truly great men. - Wilhelm Reich
Below is the official logo of University of Liberal Arts. Logo is a symbol of an entity which in this case is ULAB. The symbol may be the representative of something bigger than the very obvious. The logo of ULAB upfront is a very normal computer generated image. But it stands for something more perhaps. Now I will attempt to deconstruct this symbol and extract its denotative and connotative meanings.
Denotative: the obvious as it is. The official logo identifies the university. Notice that there is anchorage both in English and Bangla text.
Connotative: time to bore through the mundane. The color blue and yellow is actually the official color of ULAB to my observation. In the heart of the image there is an icon of a nib. Now the pen is an object that has ‘soul-connection’ with the profession of being a student. Right behind there is a yellow circle. May be it’s imitating the sun. The sun is a source of light but here the analogy could be that knowledge is light. The blue fill-in inside the image could make me think of two things. The vastness of the sky and the view from up there. Knowledge is supposed to open our eyes and help us look objectively and critically. From the sky everything looks different than on ground, much more holistic. On ground things appear obfuscated because we can’t see everything. And thus we don’t see everything. Our biasness, inclination and judgment is formed based on little that we know or see. Perhaps an educated mind tend to see things from all aspects and then make an assertion. Lastly notice that outer yellow part has the shape of a U as well as the inner blue part. That someway further emphasizes the name of the institution. The little star was deliberate and doesn’t add I suppose.
VERSE OF THE WEEK
Society, you're a crazy breed. I hope you're not lonely, without me. Society, crazy indeed... I hope you're not lonely, without me Society, have mercy on me. I hope you're not angry, if I disagree. Society, crazy indeed. I hope you're not lonely... without me.
(Song: Society; Artist: Eddie Vedder; Film: Into The Wild)
Wag the Dog is a satirical film about the American politics and its media. It displays how the media plays a pivotal role for deluding the American people and diverting all their attention towards something absolutely fictitious. The consumers of mainstream media are nonchalant enough to not notice how the media is opening gaping holes of delusion and fantasia everyday. We humans are constantly constructing meanings from anything that come into contact of our senses. The mass media is one of the most traditional and trusted sources of information in any society. That is what the common belief is. It’s a cardinal duty of the media to reflect and make an account of the society it operates in. In doing so the media reforms, distorts, empowers, creates, terminates and does all kinds of stuff to influence how we make meanings out of everything. In doing so media infuses more construe into our perceived reality. Or think in line with the Plato’s cave theory. Reality is all that is projected in front of us. We don’t know what it absolutely is that we hold to be true and what is beyond. This film is a perfect example of how media can constructs the world of meanings around us.
Quote of the week
"It's better to light a candle than curse the darkness"
What are your thoughts on this course (Reading Media Text)?
I’m doing this course at the last hour of my undergrad and I’m glad. When I zipped through the list of topics that this course intended to cover, I thought I got the deal right then. I like the way we are encouraged and incited to stir our thoughts and react to topics such as reality and culture. Not to forget the classroom drills. It’s important for us to realize that society is a complex place. Reality is a construction of the human mind but consciousness is a gift. To see more than there is, we should see differently. This course reserves the potential to facilitate that.
What do you want out of this course?
How real is the reality? I remember studying debates concerning the argument whether or not film should be considered the ultimate art form because it captured reality verbatim (Film Theory). If reality is truly unknown then how can we claim that it’s real? Ask someone to describe a tree without language. Language is a construct that we utilize to describe and communicate. Now language is a social construction that is verifying reality to be real which in fact surpasses our comprehension. What the heck?
The media of today is a mass hysteria factory. It dictates, deludes, purveys and reinforces beliefs and values while debunking others. It chisels the mediation and perception of ‘our’ reality. I believe this course would be able to demonstrate how ‘is’ is actually ‘is’ compared to what is mediated and imposed and how we perceive it. It is imperative that I realize more than what is there to realize. I want to feel greater than what is there to feel. I would like to emancipate myself as if I did not belong. I would like to know and so tell me what you don’t know. That’s all.
P.S – From now on I am going to put a selected quote or song verse in each post. They will be like my quote or song verse of the week!
And you run and you run to catch up with the sun, but it's sinking
And racing around to come up behind you again
The sun is the same in the relative way, but you're older
And shorter of breath and one day closer to death
(Song: Time; Artist: Pink Floyd; Album: Dark Side of the Moon)
I wish I could see 'thoughts'. Analyze their chemical and physical properties and perhaps try to figure out how thoughts can be so overpowering. It is with thoughts that a mortal can become a God. My thoughts are like random extreme. Funny when I say that it is like a rubber ball shot off from a 'hydron collider'. So it travels fast and does not follow a certain trajectory. Thus my thoughts bumps on almost everything under the sun and beyond.
DEFINE THESE
1. Objectivity - fidelity towards facts rather than associating any judgments over something.
2. Subjectivity - a scenario where the object of issue is treated with judgments, bias or opinions.
