A Review of Nothing

This was not the first time I have used WordPress, in fact, I have been writing blogs since 2004. For me as an Iranian journalist writing the blog was an option to publish the stories and articles that I could not publish them in a newspaper.

Anyway, I started to use WordPress since 2007. At the time, most of the tools on the website were free and it was considered a great choice for journalists, especially the free option of uploading your own template which I was able to turn my blog to an online newspaper theme blog. But few years later they started to limit the free options, besides Google began to develop its blogger system which became a really amazing option. So I, like some of my peers, moved to blogger.

WordPress was a revolution 12 years ago, especially the fact that it was a CMS based on PHP and MYSQL (while many others were using the traditional HTML only), which made it easier blogging. The media management system of a blog was great, easy and reliable and the widgets and template designs were giving various options to create a good blog, but these tools doesn’t impress many of the writers anymore because Google started to give the same options plus being recognized by Google search engine that automatically brings good number of readers to a blog.

Anyway, this was a class project. I did it because I had to and didn’t add anything to the knowledge I already had or to work that I have already done. After many years of journalism experience, you learn where to publish your voice and where to do not.

Let’s take a quick look at the stats and get over this post.

My most popular week was the week of 10/19-10/25 which I had 20 views from 8 visitors.

Filmmaking is a Real Profession was my most viewed post with 25 views. It’s funny that criticism gets lots of attention. I criticized another blog in this post the guy tried to explain himself which anyway he was wrong, but that back and forth in comments raised some attentions.

Overall it was not surprising to me the low number of viewers because I did not try to advertise my blog and misguide my regular readers to a blog that is just temporary.

In the matter of social media, the most result came from Twitter and the reason is I have serious Twitter followers that the read everything I post. The rest of shared can be seen in the picture below.

There was only three entry from search engine and the low number is obviously because there is no tag in my posts.

A junction for Hemingway and Chekhov

An American man is traveling with his girlfriend. She is going to have an abortion to make everything right for her boyfriend. This is the plot of “Hills like White Elephants” by Ernest Hemingway. The plot, despite some differences in the action of the characters, has some similarities with “The Lady with the Dog” by Anton Chekhov. One of the most important aspects of the Chekhovian style is the setting, especially in the matter of location. For instance, in the “The Lady with the Dog” the plot could not happen in any city other than Yalta. Dimitri, the main character, in his 40s, is a Russian man unsatisfied with his marriage and goes to Yalta, the town that has been known as the city of affairs. The reputation of the city also justifies the presence of Anna, a young married woman who is on vacation in Yalta and is interested in talking to a stranger. It was not strange, in the late 19th century, for a young woman from a middle-class family, whose husband is a government employee, to use Yalta as a getaway city and try to experience something that would bring a little bit of color to her boring routine life. Chekhov’s stories are shaped by the location. Does this mean that the location is not important for the other writer? The answer is no, it is important. In most stories by Hemingway, changing the location does not change the plot. This means that location and setting are important. However, in many stories they are not the foundation of the story in that any small change in the setting can destroy the entire story, which is true in Chekhov’s case. “A Lady with the Dog,” cannot happen anywhere else because the city (cities) is also characters of the story. The specific appearance, culture, and atmosphere of Yalta and Moscow plus the face that summer and winter give to the cities, shapes the foundation of the plot. Hemingway takes this road in “Hills like White Elephants” as well, although he does not make it a required foundation of the story like Chekhov. He needs his American characters in another part of the world, in a country that has some signs of romanticism in its culture and its atmosphere can contradict with the purpose of the story. Somewhere that his characters even have some difficulty with the language, and a language that is poetic enough to draw a contrast to the story. This separates the characters from the environment around them. Then he gives life to the rail station by shaping it as another character. The junction, a spot where no one stays for a long time. The junction is alone, separated and sad. Hemingway tries to make a clear scene in his story, for his audience, which gives the story more visual power to increase the mood; giving life to the location and the symbolic use of the characteristic of the location is one of the most important aspects of writing that, possibly, Hemingway has borrowed from Chekov.

The center of the setting (location) in both stories is the same. Both stories are about the detachable connection in a junction. Yalta in “A Lady with the Dog” and the rail station in “Hills like White Elephants” play the role of a point where things are joined. However, the fact is that nothing, in either location, lasts forever. Yalta was the city for a summer vacation in the 19th century and it was a dead town by the end of the summer. On the other hand, the railroad spot, where the American and his girlfriend are waiting, is just a place where trains from Barcelona and Madrid would meet for only two minutes, “It was very hot and the express from Barcelona would come in forty minutes. It stopped at this junction for two minutes and went on to Madrid” (Hemingway 228). The writer has chosen the location carefully. Yalta and the train station describe the main characters of the story and their detachable situation. The love between Dimitri and Anna is taboo. They are both married. Their one-night-stand suddenly turns into something more serious. However, will they divorce their spouses? Is their love real or is it just a glancing lust? Chekov leaves his audience with no clear answer. The Same situation applies to “Hills like White Elephants.” The girl has to choose between killing her unborn baby and losing her boyfriend. The story does not make it clear that the man is a hundred percent sure that after the abortion will continue his relationship with his girlfriend, although he says everything will be OK after that, “We’ll be fine afterward. Just like we were before” (Hemingway 230). At the end of the story, Hemingway leaves the audience with same uncertainty that Chekhov does -he same uncertainty and temporality that the locations are based on.

Chekov has been a play writer for decades. His experience in theater brought a great power of visualization in his short stories as well. Chekhov immediately, from the beginning of the story, attracts the audience’s participation, “It was said that a new person had appeared on the sea-front: a lady with a little dog” (Chekhov 69). The phrase “it was said” brings ambiguity to the story. Who said? Why has he/she said it? In addition, whom he/she have said it to? The ambiguity appears after a few sentences in Hemingway’s story as well, “The American and the girl with him sat at a table in the shade, outside the building” (Hemingway 228). The assumption in both stories is that the audience knows the background of what is happening, or if the audience does not know, it does not matter. This is a theatrical approach to a story. Chekhov, according to his background as an actor and later a playwright, has a long history of using this kind of technics in his short stories, but it can be considered as a different approach in Hemingway’s style of writing. Hemingway does not stop there. He continues his story, “Hills like White Elephants,” exactly like a play. He uses short descriptions, structured by short sentences. The list of, mostly unclear, dialogues make the story much closer to the absurdist plays rather than Chekhov’s realistic approach with long and detailed descriptions. This makes a huge difference between the two writers, although both stories are full of performances and actions.

Work Cited

Chekhov, Anton. “A Lady with the Dog.” 2013. 40 Short Stories: A Portable Anthology. Ed. Beverly Lawn. 4th ed. Boston, MA: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2004. 69-84. Print.

Hemingway, Ernest. “Hills like White Elephants.” 2013. 40 Short Stories: A Portable Anthology. Ed. Beverly Lawn. 4th ed. Boston, MA: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2004. 228-232. Print.

Pawel Wysoczanski in Texas State University

Pawel Wysoczanski, the Polish award winner director, visited Texas State University on Thursday, Oct. 29. The pictures below are from his Q/A with some students and staffs at the Honors College.

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A bit of Dissapointment

Let’s take a short break of reviewing movies and focusing on something important. First let me tell you a little bit about myself. I have worked as a visual journalist for about two decades, I have traveled among more than 20 countries, I have been an actor and a director for almost 17 years now.

millions of people work in the world of journalism and film industry, in various countries, but still there is a great chance to know each other. Because the industry is all about networking. In addition, according to my experience of traveling within more than 20 countries, there is a giant family that no matter where are you coming from, you still belong to it. I had this vision until I moved to Texas, which I will explain why later.

Anyway, In the last couple of weeks I tried so hard to bring a great award winning Polish documentary filmmaker to the Texas State University. The attempt was not that sweet from some aspects and became amazing from some other points. My first approach was the Mass Communication and Fine Art Department. I am a mass Communication major, I am re-educating myself after two bachelor degrees ( it’s a long story that I will tell you some other times), and based on my understanding this kind of events are great to educate many students who do not have access to some sources out there, which more than 70% of film and media Student in Texas have no idea about the media outside of the United States. The attempt failed from the beginning. At the department, they did shut me down immediately. The request didn’t pass the first email, and I felt like I am pointing my finger on a taboo.

The story does not stop here. To me, it became weird after I understood that some departments, like English Department, philosophy dialogue group, international studies and the Honors College are so  interested in this kind of events.

I have to say I was not surprised. I had the same previous experience when I was studying and working at ACC, and I heard the same experience from my friends in other Texas Schools.  It seems to me that there exist a fear of international cinema in many communications, journalism and film department in Texas. Most classes you take are focused on Hollywood and even those are not, like the Film History, are giving just a snapshot of events to the students.

I wasn’t surprised, but I was disappointed. Not because I feel there is something wrong with these other departments, but Mass Communication is the major that people possibly will end up to create the content. It’s their responsibility to learn how to be accurate, wise and reliable, which in reality that’s not the case. The portion of the media society in the United States, that audience can rely on, is entirely independent. Directors like Woody Allan and Richard Linklater are belong to this society, which both suspended their education to be a filmmaker.

As an outsider, since I came to Texas the community didn’t give me the feeling that I can be considered as an insider, I see that fear, fear of losing a legacy, and I think it’s accurate. For the most part, Hollywood relies on an anti-intellectual approach to the cinema, while cinema in other parts of the world divides itself to two different approaches; a Hollywoodish style, which is a cheap, cliché  and just for profit style, and the one that defines as an intellectual cinema. The second one, in some countries, occupies the bigger portion of the industry.

It’s same with journalism. American journalism style, for the most part not all of it, leans toward entertainment. This does not surprise me that many people rely on some comedy shows to get the real news. Why not? If the news section exists to entertain the audience so in a flipped industry entertaining shows start to give some great information. It’s a shock that CNN, Fox News and MSNBC are entertaining the audience while John Oliver becomes a great example of true investigative journalism. It is funny that he did not study film or journalism either. He is an enlist major from the Cambridge University.

Filmmaking is a Real Profession

Here is my problem, looking at cinema as a hobby. Cinema is a profession, which needs, knowledge, hardworking and technic. There is a reason I brought the technic at the end because technic in cinema is like a flavor for a cook; it is great to have it, makes the food taste great, but it is not essential to the food. The blog, Mountain Ant, is trapped in this issue, which is entirely a common issue especially in the United States.

First, I have to admit it was hard to read, due to the small font he has chosen for his blog, but it was not even my entire concern. The blog is some basic information about the camera and light that you can find in any textbook. According to the blogger, he has extensive experience in filmmaking, which is hard to believe when there is no proof.

A blogger needs to gain trust of his/her reader. If the blog is about medicine, then the blogger needs to prove that he/she has some knowledge in that matter, or the person is writing from his/her personal experience. Choosing the second option includes the structure of sentences, which makes obvious that the information provided by the blog are just the opinions of the blogger not a common law. Same rules apply to a blog about the arts.

Overall, of the posts, I found out that the blogger of Mountain Ant does not have much experience in films. He references to some online magazine about part of the topic “Here is a link to The Beat, one of my favorite websites to get tips and tricks on filmmaking.” and another portion of the blog is about the courses he is currently taking, or have taken in the past.

This kind of approach to a blog makes the blogger unreliable. The question a blogger needs to ask, of himself, is why someone should read my blog instead of reading a book or an online magazine. It is important to understand the reason behind creating a blog on the Internet.

Blogs are doors to personal knowledge/experience of their bloggers. We do not read blogs to get everything that can be find in any books or other websites.
The blogger of Mountain Ant could talk about his mistakes or his personal experience as an armature in film. He is not a professional filmmaker and is good to share some mistakes he has made, which helps others to grow. A person cannot be a good filmmaker if he/she is afraid of talking about his/her errors. I hope this is not the case about this young blogger.

Finally, a piece of advice for my young fellow; cinema is about concepts and creative ideas. Technic, light, camera and tools are like a brush for a painter. It is good to have a brush, or even better to have a great expensive brush, but you can make a painting without brush too. In cinema, you can make a movie without the camera even, but there is no movie without an idea. Therefore, if your blog is about technics in cinema, then simply just you can call it “A blog about Technics of Films.”

Bad Feminism

On the Pretext of Production of a Movie adopted from Ashley’s War, by Gayle Tzemach Lemmon

“Just as I do not believe that women are inferior to men by nature, nor do I believe that they are their natural superiors either.”

Simone de Beauvoir, in 1976

According to Deadline.com Fox 2000 wins Ashly’s War to be adopted as a movie. In the following post, I have tried to review the book.

The first feminist movements began in 1872, in France and Netherlands. By definition, feminism is to describe any movement that protects (or demands) women’s rights in a male dominated society. It has been a contentious issue since it originated. Feminism suffered from four groups through its account. From one side, it agonized by the mannish society that could not consent any changes to the ordinances that were protecting the male privileges, and from the other side, extremism, opportunism, and misconceptions caused “Bad Feminism”; a 20th century’s perception, which has made the situation more complicated for ordinary low-class  women. The ones who carry, for the most part, the soreness of a society, and are only concerned about equality and respectful life without any controversy. There is no doubt that feminism after it began remained mostly a debate for the higher-class fragment of most societies because lower ones were too busy to make everyone else rich and could not afford some fancy ideas like the twisted feminism, not the real one.
In the modern society, the media has played a significant role to define women as the disqualified gender of the humankind by objectifying them. Lamentably, some women joined the oppositions, by throwing a curve to the path of the real feminism, for their own personal profits. Ashley’s War by Gayle Tzemach Lemmon is an obvious example, which objectifies the women based on their appearances to attract the audience. The book is a nonfiction story about the first female group of the Cultural Support Teams. In 2010, the U.S. Army Special Ops created a squad of female volunteer soldiers. The purpose behind the shaping the group was “to engage the female populations in an objective area when such contact may be deemed culturally inappropriate if performed by a male service member” (CULTURAL SUPPORT TEAMS).  The book follows the team of female soldiers through their training and their duties in Afghanistan.
Using women as some sex objects, instead of portraying them, as the valuable human being members of the society, has become an epidemic culture in media, literature, and the U.S. society. According to the research by United Nations Women, United Nations Entity for Gender Equality, in popular films across 11 countries, including U.S.  “Women are often stereotyped and sexualized when they are depicted in popular content” (L. Smith 2). This picture has been popular, almost forever, in the American literature and cinema. There are many examples like Fifty Shades of Gray, Daniel Steele’s huge bestselling collections and of course, Ashley’s War. Each one of them carries a cheap and outdated sentimentalism to target the broad unintellectual members of the society, mostly middle class, by touching their emotions and feeding them with nothing but touchy-sentimental  pictures. Lemmon follows all the requirements of the old sentimentalism school of literature. She creates scenes of sorrow and soreness, and relays on too many preventable details, like details about every aspect of the characters’ personal lives and she writes plenty of pages about pushups. She chooses to advance emotions rather than actions in the plot. All readers can see is the female character’s emotion of being members of the CST, while men, mostly, remain rational. It is a classic stereotype of a divided society where the men are rational, even if they are wrong they have a reason to be wrong, and women are sensitive and sentimental even when they are trying to copy some manly attitude.  The book is entirely the flood of many emotions, which contrasts rationalization, and questions the fundamental of the reasoning behind the writing. As the author says this book is “a review of primary research and documents,” (Lemmon Author’s note). It is not clear that how the overflow of emotions can lead the readers to the research and the documents, in the other word, it is impossible to comprehend the relationship between sentimentalism and a book that claims of being an academic/journalistic work.
Sentimentalism in the United States is the product of late 18th and early 19th centuries, which aimed to attract middle-class women who had more time to read. The writers were mostly females who their works, through the 19th century, caused the rise of Separate Spheres Ideology; “This ideology was always a middle-class and often a white phenomenon that encouraged the gendered identification of work with men and home with women” (Samuels). In another word, according to this ideology, women are just some objects to serve first-class citizens, privileged white males.
This is the exact style, which Lemmon uses in her book. She spends many pages on talking about the appearance of the female soldiers: “Tall with ice-blue eyes, walnut brown hair, and tattooed arms, she looked like a Harley-Davidson model” (Lemmon 19). Her characters are like Barbies in a battlefield, which obviously does not help those who have fought for years to achieve gender equality in the army. Lemmon is successful to draw images of the American Dream Barbies, “tall, fit, and blond, she looked more like a television anchor than a soldier.” (Lemmon 39), but her achievement does not help the situation of women in the army. By contrast, her Barbie images make a good case for chauvinists of the society to say:
“We told you! Women like these are poison for a battle zone, they can’t do it.”
A reader does not need to go too far to understand that she/he is knocking a wrong door. Almost two pages (43-44) of explaining how Leda meets Ashley, and then they go to a gym together, while the story is supposed to be a nonfiction about Cultural Support Teams. Lemmon has used the word gym 25 times in the book (five times only in Page 43), While the word Afghan women, has been used only 15 times through the book. In addition, the most important Afghan character in the book is Nadia, an Afghan girl who has grown up in the United States and has almost no attachment to her country of origin. This is why by the end of the book the readers are confused, lost and they have not gained anything valuable, even the sentiment of the Ashley’s funeral takes away the real pride that must have come from the work that she had done.
Women were engaged in battles, in the front line, since 1991 after “Congress authorizes women to fly combat missions” (History.org). This is the real story behind Ashley’s War. The story that the writer forgot to focus on while she was busy to create her own American Dream.  The female team’s duty, as the Cultural Support Teams, was to engage the female population of Afghanistan. The duty that we do not hear much about that in the book. We do not receive much information about their cerebral skills, problem-solving, Afghan language skills, weapons skills, leadership and stress under fire abilities. These soldiers are supposed to learn these skills and develop them to be able to approach and support the army and if is necessary provide humanitarian aids to Afghan women. Instead, we read pages about the fancy life of some of these soldiers, or the feeling they have of living inside a Hollywoodish war movie.
At last, a male dominated judgmental culture produces a misbelief about feminism, which is the direct result of the traditional conservative perspective. It gets worse when comes to some radical individuals or groups in a society who believe the relationship between male and female must sink to an animalistic common. The male has to be strong, powerful and demanding and female’s duty is to provide and to make the male feel good. In another word, women exist in this kind of society to be an object of joy for males. The bad feminism, which is the product to comfort the chauvinism, replaces real feminism. Unfortunately, some writers like, Daniel Steele, E. L. James, and Gayle Tzemach Lemmon fall into the first one. Maybe is appropriate to say the camel going to seek horns lost his ears. The writers above and many others like them tried to kill two birds with one stone. They wanted, or they pretended, to be known as dedicated feminist while they were giving up of the quality of work to reach a broader number of an audience by emotionally manipulating them. The problem is real feminism never fits into this kind of suits, which resulted in the books that are not valid, from the intellectual perspective.

Work Cited

“Cultural Support Team (CST) in Afghanistan.” Afghan War News. Web. 25 Sept. 2015. <http://www.afghanwarnews.info/women/cst.htm&gt;.

“CULTURAL SUPPORT TEAMS.” Army SpecOps Recruiting. Web. 25 Sept. 2015. <http://www.sorbrecruiting.com/SORB_CST.html&gt;.

“Time Line: Women in the U.S. Military.” History.org. The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation. Web. 25 Sept. 2015. <http://www.history.org/history/teaching/enewsletter/volume7/images/nov/women_military_timeline.pdf&gt;.

Beauvoir, Simone De. The Second Sex;. New York: Knopf, 1953. Print.

Heldman, Caroline. “The Sexy Lie.” Everyday Feminism. 8 Feb. 2014. Web. 25 Sept. 2015. <http://everydayfeminism.com/2014/02/the-sexy-lie/&gt;.

HAMILTON, KATHY. “Objectification of Women.” TodaysZaman. Feza Gazetecilik A.Ş., 3 Mar. 2015. Web. 27 Sept. 2015.

1. Smith, Dr. Stacy, Marc Choueiti, and Dr. Katherine Pieper. “An Invest I G at I on of F E M a Le Ch a R Ac Ters I N P O P U L a R Fi Lms A C Ross 11 Countr I E S.” GENDER BIAS WITHOUT BORDERS (2015). Print.

McCullough, Sgt. Christopher McCullough. “Army Female Engagement Teams: Who They Are and Why They Do It.” ARMY.MIL, The Official Homepage of the United States. 2 Oct. 2012. Web. 25 Sept. 2015. <http://www.army.mil/article/88366/&gt;.

Samuels, Shirley. “Sentimentalism and Domestic Fiction – American Literature – – Obo.” Oxford Bibliographies. Oxford University Press, 29 Aug. 2012. Web. 26 Sept. 2015. <http://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780199827251/obo-9780199827251-0015.xml&gt;.

Szymanski, D. M., L. B. Moffitt, and E. R. Carr. “Sexual Objectification of Women: Advances to Theory and Research 1 7.” The Counseling Psychologist (2010). Print.

Tanney, Alexa. “How Hollywood Is Misunderstanding And Misusing The Term Feminism.” Elite Daily. Elite Daily, 8 May 2015. Web. 27 Sept. 2015. <http://elitedaily.com/women/hollywood-objectifies-women/1019215/&gt;.

Tzemach Lemmon, Gayle. Ashley’s War: The Untold Story of a Team of Women Soldiers on the Special Ops Battlefield. 1st ed. Harper, 2015. Print.

Narrative of life: A review of ‘The Place Beyond the Pines

Despite all differences between this movie and the director’s previous films, it’s still a movie by Derek Cianfrance, who seems to have an invisible signature that puts his mark on every single movie he makes. The signature is nothing but a desert between relationships. His characters are all alone, maybe not literally, but deep down inside their soul and in their definition of love and life.
The film is about relationships, human connection, and a child who is involved in the middle of a relationship conflict. However, unlike “Blue Valentine,” which had hidden violence, here the audience is faced with justified violence that Cianfrance completely prepares his audience for from the beginning of the movie. The tattoos on Ryan Gosling’s arm, his job as an entertainer on a motorcycle, and the way he smokes at the beginning of the film, which remind viewers of the western Clint Eastwood movies, all tell us that we will see a movie that shows violence.
In “Blue Valentine,” the violence has been hidden under the acts of characters and has become a cold violence that still hurts but is not obvious. For example, the sex scene between Bobby and Cindy, which provides a disillusioned violence, leads to silence, a silence (suppressed violence) that covers the whole sky of the narrative with a giant dark cloud.
The scene at home between the mother, the father and Cindy confronts the same picture but in a different way. The father starts to complain about food and there is the silence that Cianfrance wants us to pay attention to when the camera moves toward Cindy. The violence finally opens like an old wound and Dean breaks and crashes everything, and after that again silence the silence that, as the audience, we cannot be sure of when it will start to be a storm again. In that scene, Dean seems to be vomiting the explosion of his anger. He is throwing up all the silence and anger that covered the whole atmosphere of the film. He yells instead of all the characters.
This role, in “The Place Beyond the Pines,” was assigned to the young Jason. When he points the gun, which was his fathers’, he does not yell or scream. He is looking at Avery with an anger that comes from all the characters of the movie, comes from all their loneliness and pain.
Guns are everywhere in “The Place Beyond the Pines.” They are playing an important role in the narrative of the film. Weapons in this movie are not just a symbol of violence, even though much of the violence in the film arises from them, but they also have characters. Each gun changes the personality of each character to turn him into an aggressive person, something that without a doubt can be called a living weapon. The guns bring regret, and lack of control for whoever the person became and an unknown future for each of them.
This is the reason that, unlike “Blue Valentine,” here we are not dealing with flashbacks. Characters are moving forward without looking back. Cianfrance, in an interview with Alex Belington, says that the movie is like a gun. When you fire the gun, there is no looking back on it and there is no chance to pause. The bullet goes forward as fast as it can.
The characters’ choice of life affects others’ lives, but not in a good way. Having many options, they have picked an aggressive one because they had to, even if we would say, as the audience that there could have been a cleverer choice. In those circumstances, there was barely another choice as the story has been set up.
“The Place Beyond the Pines” begins with violence, continues with violence but ends with silence. Cianfrance knows how to play with these two and take the audience wherever he wants. Like the previous movie, “Blue Valentine,” in the final scene, the character, like a lonely cowboy, leaves everything behind and turns his back to the camera and goes to an unknown future.

Banana, Banana!

Minions is a fantastic film. There are millions of people to back me up on this. It is a smart movie and gives a new window into the cinema that is neither overly sentimental, like Frozen, nor overly violent, like Kill Bill.

The key to success for the story is combining violence with the sentiment, softening the violence and pulling up the sentiment to something more believable. Yes, more believable, like the characters of the movie—the people of New York and London—who accept the minions as they are, without even questioning why they are small or yellow.

Everyone accepts the minions. People communicate with them easily despite the great language difference. The minions speak some kind of Italian language that everyone in the world, including the cave dwellers, French soldiers, Napoleon Bonaparte etc., have no problem understanding it.

We accept the small yellow creatures. We accept their lifestyle, their desire and their lack of situational awareness; because they are one of the most attractively created characters in the recent years. We accept them simply because they are the minions.

The movie tells the story of the minions’ evolution, beginning from a single cell to their full development as weird yellow creatures. The minions’ purpose in life is to serve the most despicable master, varying from Tyrannosaurus rex to Napoleon Bonaparte. The only problem is that Minions have a tough time keeping their masters alive. Their journey brings them to the North Pole where they live without a master for the first time. In the beginning, everything looks fine. They are happy, dancing and having a great time—but that does not last forever. Soon they realize that something is wrong—they are missing the only reason to be alive, a master. Kevin, One of the minions, devises a plan to journey along with Stuart and lovable little Bob to find an evil boss.

The minions’ story sometimes lines up with real historical events, but as soon as they arrive in New York, the downfall of the plot begins. The reason for its diminution is the lack of proper characterization of Scarlet Overkill, the vigilante. The character is a bad cliché. It is exactly like every single antagonist in Hollywood B movies. In addition, the story of stealing the queen’s crown is not an exciting one for the average minions’ fanatic.

Luckily, the movie’s jokes and funny moments are still strong enough to grab the audiences’ attention. However, the lack of integration between the jokes and structure of the story becomes a great disadvantage for the movie. The Minions are a lifeboat for the entire film, and without them, the movie will sink.

Minions without the minions would be a confused and disorganized story that cannot compete with good animations like Inside Out, but when you add the yellow creatures, with their Italian accents, to the movie it thrives.

Minions is not a bad experience and overall, the movie is not awful. It is a balanced combination of cliché and creativity. I hope the minions’ story will stop here if the directors do not want to ruin the experience for the entire audience.

If We Really Knew the Issue

If You Really Knew Me opens a case study that is not new at all but the fact that how much society has paid attention to the problem is another story. Discrimination, racism, bullying and vice versa seems to have some high effects in schools, even more than the adult society. The video has almost some good proofs about high school attitudes, how currently it is, and how must become in the future.
The show is about how far high school students are from the person who is sitting next to each of them, a collection of strangers who remain strangers almost forever. In the story, a group of people is trying to bring a change in the high school. They selectsome students and then take them to an experience that is going to open the students’ eyes to the truth behind of each face.
The students begin to talk and each of them tells a story about him/herself or his/her family. These stories bring up all difficult times they had or have in their life. Each person provides a new personality that is very different of what others think about that individual. This changes many things between them and as the football boy say they will try to make some change in future about their attitude toward others, but I do not think how these children think about each other is the entire problem.
Change never gonna happen if the roots of the problem haven’t been taking care of. I think any change made in that meeting at the video will be temporary because the main issue still exists. The first question, about this kind of behavior, is not what those children do; Or how they do it? The question is why, and where is coming from the idea about judging people without trying to get to know them.
In this case, we should not forget about the role of society and family. This role has a high effect on children’s behavior. They learn, believe and then act. Initially, their brain is a blank page and ready to accept anything that the world is providing. Parents are first writers who will begin to write on theses blank pages. Children copy their parents’ behavior, beliefs and judgments, and that will structure the basic characteristics of the children. During the time, which children are growing up, this role extends to friends and society (neighborhood at first) etc.
Therefore, after all we have some teenagers that their behaviors and beliefs have already been shaped during the childhood. Although this is not a formula, but we need to consider this process when we are talking about teenagers behavior. By considering this, there will be a concern that if these high school students go back to their family and neighborhood are they going to still believe what they experienced at that moment at school? Aren’t they under the effect of a sad moment that has shaken their heart for a moment? Is there any deep thought behind the enthusiasm for a change?
These questions and many other questions were my concern when I was watching the video repeatedly and again. I strongly believe any change, in this case, has to begin with children in kindergarten and at the same time working on families, society and other sources that provide behavioral models.
What I mean by whole this, is only with a TV program and some selected teenagers not only world not gonna change, but also this provides a model that only examines the surface of the problem, and doesn’t try to have deeper look.