Blog posts to comment on: Mike J, Christina W, and Jenessa O

Although we'll talk about sustainability in more detail at the end of the semester, you may want to take a look at this website which provides some information on how you can lessen your impact on the environment.

Here are a couple other resources you may want to check out:

MPR recently explored the relationship between environmentalism and religion in Minnesota’s faith community. Find more information on this issue here.

I just stumbled across this collection of information on Gary Snyder, whom we'll be reading later in the semester. You can listen to an interview with Snyder or hear him read his poems here.

Kracauer pursues a similar train of thought, laying out its political implications, in his (earlier) essay “Cult of Distraction.� He claims that in distraction “the audience encounters itself; its own reality is revealed in the fragmented sequence of splendid sense impressions. Were this reality to remain hidden from the viewers, they could neither attack nor change it; its disclosure in distraction is therefore of moral significance� (326). But, he goes on to say, “this is only the case if distraction is not an end in itself� (326). Distraction, K suggests, can either mask disintegration, which distraction through film is particularly likely to do when it presents a false unity, when film aspires to be like theater, or it can expose disintegration. Now, if aiming for unity masks disintegration, aiming for something more openly fragmentary may well serve to expose that disintegration. Enter montage?

Howard Eiland suggests just that, in his essay “Reception in Distraction�: “Kracauer does not himself use the term montage in connection with the revue form that occasions a positive idea of distraction. But we have only to recall the references to "music hall and circus" in Sergei Eisenstein's discussion of the "montage of attractions" to grasp the pertinence of the term here� (58). Montage, for Eisenstein, presents a means of mobilizing the masses; montage operates as a political tool. If we can read in montage the realization of Benjamin and Kracauer’s theorizations of distraction, then distraction, for B and K, is not properly opposed to attention. Rather, as Eiland points out, “The opposition now would seem to be between mere distraction and, shall we say, productive distraction—between distraction as a skewing of attention, or as abandonment to diversion, and distraction as a spur to new ways of perceiving� (60).

The question I want you to consider is this: why did Thoreau choose the woods as the place to conduct his experiment? In your response, consider the differences between life as lived in the village and the life Thoreau lived in the woods. What becomes possible only by retreat to the woods, and why? Post a page long entry in reponse to this prompt by midnight on Wednesday.

Base your comment on the entry you have chosen to react to.
In other words, you need to have read the entry you are commenting on. Make sure you start your comment by reacting directly to something you read in the entry.

Here are some ideas that can get you started on your comment:
--Do you agree with the opinion of the author? Disagree? Why?
--Has the author of the post focused on something you didn't notice about the reading? What? What do you find intruiging about their observation?
--How does the post you are commenting on expand your thinking about the reading?

Be respectful.
Remember, the atomsphere of respect that is expected in our classroom applies to these blogs as well. The thinking and writing that will take place on these blogs is an extension of the discussions we are going to have in class, so when you are commenting on another student's entry, do so with the same level of respect you would use while making a comment in the classroom.

Do not comment on the same student's blog two weeks in a row.
These comments can be shorter than your own postings. However, this doesn't mean that you don't have the space to be thoughtful and articulate about what you are trying to express.

Your post needs to be roughly the equivalent of one double spaced page of writing. I recommend you create your entry in Word to ensure you have a posting of adequate length, then cut and paste it into your blog.

The purpose of the posts on your blog is to respond in writing to the readings on our syllabus. These responses are considered "informal writing" as they are not graded. This is space for you to use writing to explore your own ideas about the readings we are doing this semester. While your entries need not be as polished as the writing you do on your graded assignments, they, like your papers, require that you are thinking critically about what you have read.

Ocassionally, I will give you a question I want you to respond to in your entry. I will post these questions on this blog, so check this blog before you write your post.

Before you write your entry, consider your reaction to the reading. (This means, of course, that you need to have done the reading before you write about it on your blog.)

In your post, state and explain your position on the subject the reading addresses. Rather than simply stating that you liked or didn't like the reading, I want you to write about why you did or didn't like the reading. Then explore and explain the reasons behind your opinion.

Here are some ideas that can get you started on your post:
--Do you agree with the author's position? Disagree? Why?
--Have you had a personal experience that relates to the subject matter that was addressed in the reading? Relate your experience, and discuss its relationship to the reading.
--Choose one or two ideas the author has explored and react to them in your own words. Do your thinking on the page. Use the post to sort out what you think about the material that is being discussed in the reading, or the ideas that the reading provokes in you.

Optional: If you like, note the author's execution one of the techniques we have been discussing in class. Sometimes the authors of these articles do not do such a great job with some of the elements of essay writing we will be talking about. If you see something that you think could have been done better, make of a note of it briefly at the end of your post.

The subject matter of the readings we will be doing this semester form the foundation for the writing we will be doing. Keep this is mind when you are thinking of what you want to focus on in your papers. You might get some ideas for your papers through your blog postings.

First post: Post an entry on your blog.
The entry on your blog site and the link to an outside source need to be made by Wednesday each week.

Second post: Make a comment on another student's blog.
Your comment needs to be made by Thursday each week.

Come to this site to access the links to other students' blogs.

M argues for film as something more than a poor copy of theater, and to this end he relies heavily on the technical innovations possible with film, the way in which film can manipulate time and space (time-lapse photography, the close-up, etc) (11-13).

Of particular interest to M are the psychological processes which occur as an audience views a film, the state of mind of the viewer, the mental work the viewer does. M stresses the viewer's perception of depth and movement, both problematic as the film cannot really represent either. As M notes, the perception of movement and depth cannot be understood through reference to film itself. Rather, "a characteristic content of consciousness must be added to such a series of visual impressions" (26). More to the point, M notes: "Depth and movement alike come to us in the moving picture world, not as hard facts but as a mixture of fact and symbol. They are present and yet they are not in the things. We invest the impressions with them" (30).

Attention, memory, imagination, and emotion are all, according to M, both mirrored by film and directed by it (through the use of the close-up and the manipulation of space, flashback and the manipulation of time, etc). This means, for M, that film overcomes "the forms of the outer world, namely space, time, and causality" and adjusts "the events to the forms of the inner world, namely attention, memory, imagination, and emotion" (74). This it does for the purpose of telling the human story with the complete unity of art.

Film, then, moves us away from physical reality (because we are forced to recognize its constructedness at every turn, because we can't help but see the screen) and moves us toward the mental world (75). What this seems to mean, for M at least, and here we're back to his focus on audience, is that film, more than other art forms,can act on the minds of audiences. M refers to this aspect of film primarily in terms of the dangers of "low" films (which he, to some degree, dismisses) and the possibility, made available through higher order films, of "remolding and upbuilding the national soul" (96). Film, through its unique interaction with the mind (and perhaps because of its physical requirements--the audience's "suggestibility during those hours in the dark house") requires special attention both as an art form and as a cultural phenomenon.