The Hunger Games and Bowling for Columbine

We'll have time to discuss the opening of The Hunger Games in class, but most of our discussion of Bowling for Columbine will have to be done on the blog. Columbine is a documentary which explores what was then (1999, doc released 2002) the deadliest school shooting in US history (the Sandy Hook shooting was deadlier). The film is specifically about this, but it's more generally about the role of gun violence in American life at the end of the 20th century. How might you connect the hunger games (in the book) w/ Columbine (the historical event)? I'd particularly like you to think about the surveillance footage, much of which wasn't released prior to the release of this film. Also, I'd like you to think about how Michael Moore uses humor in the film for this very serious topic. How is he a "character" in this film?

Another question I'm interested in is the exploration of bullying and teen culture more generally in both films. Recently, a kid tormented by bullies in his Bronx classroom, killed one of his classmates and sent the other to the hospital. It's suggested by reporting on the story that much of the bullying arose from homophobic prejudice. Likewise, Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris who perpetrated the Columbine attack were victims of bullying and there has been much speculation about whether one or both of them, too, were gay or questioning of their sexuality. I think a lot of this bullying centers around simplistic ideas about what it means to be "masculine." In Goodfellas, Joe Pesci plays Tommy DeSimone who was actually a large man. However, it's not hard to imagine that if the real-life Tommy were Joe Pesci's size, that he might overcompensate in violent acts to prove how tough/masculine he was. I'm wondering if The Hunger Games explores ideas of gender and how that's related to violence? How about sexual appeal of minors? A lot is made of the beautifying of the "tributes" before they go into the arena. Why? And is it significant that the hero of this book is a girl and not a boy? That it's a girl who turns out to be the toughest and most dangerous person?

Moore has become somewhat of a public figure since this film, often being interviewed, and he recently had a limited engagement Broadway play called The Terms of My Surrender and just this past weekend got into a Twitter feud w/ our president. Based on the film, these comments, and anything else you know about Moore, what do you think his politics are and how do you arrive at this conclusion?

What a Wiseguy

You know for a guy who was around that “life” for as long as he was, he should’ve known and been more prepared for the worse. A true Gangster knows that if you have to go there are only 2 options: death or prison. He knew he messed up badly when he was arrested that last time because he knew everybody in the mob was going to turn their back on him because they couldn’t have any association with what he was doing or it was going to mess up everything they already had. In the end when he says that now he had to live life like a normal person he realized what that meant. He realizes that in life in order to live normal, you have to do the “right thing” and for Henry Hill it meant doing the worst possible thing you can do as a mobster and that is being a snitch. He hated the fact of what being normal meant.

                                                                            Average guy

                 Henry was always around the gang lifestyle so much so that he knew it in and out, what to do and what not to do. For him not only was the gang his life but it was also his interest. So to go from being partially the boss of the whole thing to just be another nobody and a puppet for the police must hurt him deeply. How he basically describes the average person as a shmuck, in his mind this is what he was forced to become a nobody and someone he looks down upon. He didn’t want to but he had no other choice.

  







  My reaction to the very last paragraph to me he sounded very arrogant, in the lines “I have to wait around like everyone else, I’m an average nobody”. He is referring to his luxury/gang life is now over and that seem to be a problem for him. He thinks being a regular person is boring and he can’t settle for that type of lifestyle. What an irony that all his life he used to look down on regular people and now he has to be one of them.

What Life Means to Henry

Henry is so used to his old way of living that the moment when it's the only option for him to live is turning himself over to the FBI agents, otherwise he would be killed by his best friends. His life was always at risk due to the works he used to do. But after he was caught by the police with all his tapes on their hands, it was the prime time in his life when he needed to think of safety consistently. He wasn't safe inside the jail because Jimmy might get him killed. He wasn't safe outside also because either Jimmy or Paulie might kill him because he got caught for drugs. When he was out with a bail, Jimmy already made the plan to kill him, according to Henry's view. At that moment, FBI made him turn himself and his family over to them, because his family and his life were in danger. Now when he was in safe zone, he is missing his old life, where his best friends are ready to kill him. It seems like if he lives his old life would be the best option for him to live like a real man.

Wise Guy With the Wrong Eye

     This wise guy had an eye for the wrong things in life, maybe not the wrong things but the things that matter the least. He was so enveloped by the lime life and his crooked way of living that he never got the real meaning of life which are relationships rather than"money, hoes and cloths" as Biggie Smalls would say. He was caught up with the wrong things and the wrong people. Those people and things got him fucked up in the end. No education, he got caught twice and now everyone he once called friends hate him.He is now a snitch who has to deal with the repercussions of his actions. That fast life doesn't last long and this is a clear example of that. Lucky that he even got the chance to be in the witness protection program. A schnook is a whiny baby like schnook.

Wiseguys ending

    With the ending of Wiseguys being a break in the narration, as well as the fourth wall, we see a fully realized Henry. There is a sort of revelation that takes place within Henry. Throughout the book, we read about the rise of Henry Hill in relation to the rise of organized crime in New York. The two mirror each other, almost. Then, at the end, we see Henry's fall from the life he has been so accustomed to. The way that the ending reads invokes a sympathy, as if Henry is a baby who just got his/her candy taken away. Us as readers can identify the lifestyle that Henry leads as something to not aspire to, since we're taught from very young that it is "bad." However, Henry never really had that, and when people such as his parents tried to open his eyes, Henry had already made up his mind. Therefore, at the end, Henry seems so defeated and lost because he doesn't know of any other life. He had reached his idea of a fulfilled life without realizing how temporary that lifestyle was. Henry sounds annoyed at the way he lost his "empire," as though he'd rather have died than to walk away from it. In his final reflection, there is also a sense of nostalgia as he mentions Jimmy's hijack spots and Atlantic City; he misses the life. Having now been removed from that life for a while, it's very interesting how Henry hasn't grown to see the darker side of the life he lead and still desires it.

Wise Guy

I think the ending of the book shows that he enjoyed the life to the fullest....He's reaching out to the readers while reminiscing about all the perks that came with that life and the fact that its come to a end sucks because hes going back to being a "schnook" like everybody else. Which is ironic because in the beginning he disliked people that lived as "schnooks".

 Edwidge Duval
10/25/17

                                                             Wiseguy



After living an entire lifestyle as a wiseguy it is really awful at the end of an only known career to
live as a schnook.  There was no other real life for Henry except he was living life safe. No more deal, drugs, roberries. I can imagine his life being a boring one since this was a life Henry really loved.  As for Karen I think she has enjoyed the idea of not living the thrill life. Now she can go about living life simpler and doing normal thing, such as owning her own little business.

What I got from Henry in that last part was him confessing how much he let himself down. Him going from living the life he always wanted to ending up living the live he never wanted. He had it all he was living the life as someone people feared & also respected and all of that got taken away. I think maybe if he had listen to Paulie in the beginning and not go through with narcotics he wouldn't be in the situation he is now in. all of this would of been prevented, I feel like in the end Henry got greedy and that is why he did so many different gambles & illegal things just to earn a buck. In a way I felt like he was Jimmy, in the end Jimmy was at his worse because of the hijacking and whacking everyone he became greedy. And that is what Henry did & giving up people he was close with. In the end when Henry refereed to himself as a schmuck he was referring to his father, a man that actually had to work for a living and that was always the life Henry didn't want. So i guess he felt like this was a punishment getting a second chance to live and to live the life he didn't want, a life of an average guy, i life with no more thrill no more excitement.

Wise Guy

The last scene in the book was good. You could feel Henry talking to you. You knew that he was going to have to change his life no matter what because he was not going to survive on the outside because his friends were going to turn on him. Henry is sad to be leaving all of this behind and he's going to miss it. But he knows that this change in his life is important. He has never had to support or take care of himself and his family as an ordinary person, which is a big change for him. He enjoy his active life as a criminal.  But I'm sure his change to an ordinary person went smooth and has come to terms with his new life.

At the moment transitions are the least desirable. It's hard to follow a lonely journey that your mind tells you to take. New desires smother old practices that were enjoyable since childhood. Transitions takes discomfort. It takes energy and persistence. It's lonely but, it's better than regret. Sometimes your destination doesn't lead to happiness.

:Ironies

I found two ironies here at the end. The first one is: Henry goes (back) to the life that we has not wanted to. He quitted the normal way to spend his life in his childhood. Since then, almost close to 30 years, he had spent the life the way unusual. However, at the end, he chose the life that is exactly normal, protected, safe. Because he wanted to survive. He mentioned firstly that he did not want to survive like the way he thinks it is already dead. But he chose the one that he did not want to, maybe because he became old enough and he got his own family. The second irony that I found is: Jimmy and Paulie went to jail because they tried killing Henry. Henry first tried figuring out whether they would really kill him, and Henry made a conclusion that they do. This is the main reason that Henry chose the Witness Program. What if they did not try killing Henry. Henry might not choose the program.

Koichi

Wise Guy Ending

I think the closing of Henry Hill's life as a wise guy is a bit of poetic justice. From the first chapter, he spoke a lot about not wanting to "work so hard for next to nothing", like his father and other families in his community. In the end he comes full circle, leading an average life and "wait(ing) around like everyone else".

Wise Guy: Conclusion

The very last paragraph has always struck me--from when I first watched the film back in the early 90s to when I read the book last week for the third time. That line: "I have to wait around like everyone else." It strikes me as really poignant and also kind of infuriating. It reminds me of the kids in grade school who felt they didn't have to wait their turn in the lunch line and would walk to the front. You didn't do or say anything b/c you'd get beat up, but every time they did it you felt terrible like they knew you were a sucker for waiting. I think that that's the way that the mobsters saw normal people, people like you and me. We're suckers for following the law. But if everyone lived like they did, we'd be in total chaos. They need us to follow the law so that they can circumvent those same laws.

Goodfellas / Wiseguy

Before we screen the movie, we're going to write about and discuss the book. However, over the course of the week, I would like you to discuss the film here on the blog (the film is long and we won't have time to talk about it in class). Here are some questions I have:

• In what ways does the book change as it gets translated from the book to the screen? We're going to discuss the ending of the book in class. Notice how Scorsese interprets the ending. We "break the fourth wall," a term from theater in which the actor begins speaking to the audience. What does this do in the context of the film?
• How does Scorsese use pop music in the film? 
• What place does food play? 
• The Lufthansa Heist is one of the heists of the century. Why does it happen off-stage in the film? 
• Violence is the topic of this unit and it's a central part of the film. The opening, in fact, is what you might call ultra-violence. Is the film glorifying violence? Is it glorifying crime? 
• Tommy (Joe Pesci) is a pretty awful person and Jimmy (Robert DeNiro) is not much better. But Henry is a mobster just like the other two. Why do we root for Henry and not the others? (Or am I wrong about who we're rooting for and who we're not?)

What other questions/comments do you have about the film and/or book? 

Book to Film to Wikipedia

Here are the links to the Wikipedia pages for the main characters in Wise Guy / Goodfellas (all except for Karen; she's got a page, but no photos):

• Henry Hill (played by Ray Liotta in film)
• Paul Vario ("Paul Cicero" in film played by Paul Sorvino)
• James (Jimmy) Burke ("James Conway," played by Robert DeNiro) 
• Thomas (Tommy) DeSimone ("Tommy DeVito" played by Joe Pesci)

Get Out Alternate Ending

Here's the alternate ending to Get Out:

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x5msq6s


Which is better? This one or the one that Peele used?

J.Cole- Love Yours

4 Your Eyez Only

La Negra Tiene Tomboa Album

Lemonade

Wise Guy

As Henry said, the Air France heist "made him." Can you talk about the details of how Henry and Tommy pull this off (getting the key, figuring out when to rob the store room, etc.) and how Pileggi makes all that compelling. Karen speaks dismissively about how Jimmy would cheer for the bad guys in crime movies (and he names his two kids after Frank and Jesse James, notorious outlaws of the Wild West). She clearly thinks that Jimmy is messed up. Are we "messed up" too if we root for Henry? Why or why not? What about after Henry is caught and sent to jail. How did you react knowing that they had a different version of jail for the wise guys?

Get Out

Get Out addresses both race/ethnicity and American violence from a different perspective. In some ways, it's a traditional horror movie with some of the tropes (stylistic effects) of the horror genre. But it's also got elements of the comedy (Jordan Peele's previous gig). Can you talk about the ways that comedy and horror overlap in the film?

Like Better Luck Tomorrow, Get Out is a postmodern film. That means it's aware of the genre conventions, aware of the cliches and it's trying to subvert them. What are some of the cliches that this film addresses regarding black/white relationships? How does the film upset our expectations? Or put another way, how does the film surprise our assumptions? Think about when Chris meets the white neighbors at the party or when the police car arrives at the end of the movie. How did you react before you knew the movie's secrets and how did you react after you had seen the conclusion? (The secret of a plot like this is it makes its viewers go back and revise the movie they've just seen.)

Selena!

Since Valeria and Jocelyn presented on Selena, I thought relevant to mention today's Google Doodle celebrating the anniversary of her first album:

https://www.google.com/webhp?hl=en&ictx=2&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjMyPigu_jWAhWFRyYKHcChCeUQPQgD

Here's some background about it:

http://www.billboard.com/articles/news/lifestyle/7998923/google-doodle-selena-quintanilla-exclusive

Better Luck Tomorrow (2002)

Justin Lin's film is interesting to think about in conjunction with Wiseguy (also, I think you'll notice that, cinematically, it owes a debt to Scorsese's adaptation). Some things I'd like you to think about re both texts:

• What is the place of race/ethnicity in these stories?
• What does the crime in these stories tell us about life in the USA more generally?
• What do they say about class/economics?

Unit II: Violence in the USA

For this second unit, we're going to look at several genres and several mediums which address the issue of violence in the USA. Our first reading is Nicholos Pileggi's true crime book Wise Guy. True crime has been an incredibly popular genre ever since Truman Capote's bestseller In Cold Blood came out in 1965. In fact, it's no longer just a book form, but also film (Zodiac, 2007), TV (American Crime Story, 2016), and podcasts. Wise Guy (1985) is about the Italian mob in Brooklyn and Queens and is the basis for Martin Scorsese's 1990 film Goodfellas. Some quesetions I have about the opening of the book:

• How does Pileggi manage to get us inside the mind of a gangster? Put another way, how is Henry Hill different than you?
• What part does ethnicity play in the lives of these gangsters?
• How is Karen, Henry's wife, an enabler of Henry's crime career? What is/are her role(s)?

This is not the exact video I presented i don't know why it's not coming up for me but this one is Selena singing live.

Kevin Abstract - Empty lyrics

Bob Dylan - It’s all over now, baby blue (live from Newport 1965)

https://vimeo.com/146437066

VH1's Ultimate Albums - Eminem: The Marshall Mathers LP (2002)

here is the entire marshall mathers lp documentary

Pearl Jam- Alive

Album Analyses

Koichi had the good idea that we share the links that we viewed last night in class. I would like you post a link to the video or song track you played in class last night (you'll get blog credit for doing so). DON'T reply to this post. Instead follow the directions below:

1. Click "New Post" at the top of the screen.
2. On the menu bar (that strip above where you type), click on the movie icon (to the left of the smiley face).
3. Click the tab that says "From Youtube."
4. Search for your video and double click on it and that's it. (Don't forget to click on "Publish" or we won't be able to see it.)

Koichi also wanted to see his classmates' album analyses. That's optional if you want to share yours. If you do, I will also give you blog credit for it. Just cut and paste it into a post.

Finishing up w/ Music

This is our last week w/ Dylan and music analysis, but lets keep this conversation going throughout the term. We'll be watching a lot of film and, although the visual is the primary sense for cinema, we can't forget how important sound--particularly music--is in the cinematic experience.

As we finish up, I invite you to make general and concluding comments about Bob Dylan as an artist, performer, and persona. How did carefully listening to some tracks off the album along w/ Polizzotti's book help you better appreciate and understand this artist? How did reading this book and the work we've been doing in class help (or not) you to write your own album analysis?

Re the reading this week: An interesting aspect of the Vulture articles has to do w/ age. We will listen to several songs tracing Dylan's career in class, but you can hear any singer aging if his or her career lasts more than a couple decades. Here is Paul McCartney singing "Blackbird"in 1968 at the age of 26:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mo_DMGc2v5o

And here he is singing in 2004 at the age of 62:

It's clear that McCartney is still much beloved by his fans, Dylan too. However, I'm curious: How many of those fans do you think are young? (I think we all know that young people are by far the major consumer of music.) How much are McCartney and Dylan's large concert draws (and high-priced tickets) about nostalgia? If they were new performers coming on the scene today at their current ages, even if they were releasing their biggest hits--"Blackbird," "Like a Rolling Stone"--would people be likely to listen? Why is it that the majority of our best selling artists are late teens to late twenties and, besides for a few exceptions, most careers start to stall when they move into their thirties? What does this say about our culture? What connections can you make between pop music and youth?

Donovan!

Like I mentioned in class, Donovan was huge, as big as Dylan at the point of Don't Look Back (though by the 70s and beyond he was dwarfed by Dylan's fame). Here are his two most popular songs:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hTuPbJLqFKI

As Henry points out, another popular song gets used in Goodfellas which we'll be watching in a few weeks. Notice how Scorsese juxtaposes violence in the film w/ Donavan's light-hearted music.