Hunchback of Notre Dame – reheard
Rummaging through my enormous Disney collection, I decided to listen to the soundtrack for Hunchback of Notre Dame again. Perhaps it’s the grown-up talking in me now, but I started to wince at the amount of dark themes in this story, and it’s darker than any Disney film. The dark themes aren’t surprising, since it’s a Victor Hugo book during the Romantic movement, but I definitely appreciate more after listening to the songs again, instead of just humming along with the music.
The story starts off with a death and possible infanticide.
Quasimodo may or may not be suffering from hallucinations.
We are led to believe Esmeralda may fall for the main character of the film, but she doesn’t.
Frollo can’t keep his erection to himself and screams into a fireplace.
Quasimodo can’t keep his erection to himself and… rings a bell.
People die in this film.
We have a song that contains the lyrics “but the dead don’t talk/so you won’t be around to reveal what you’ve found”.
Esmeralda, Phoebus and Quasimodo nearly die.
Frollo dies screaming in a blaze of glory.
I found it harder to listen to “Heaven’s Light/Hellfire” this time around, because there were two polar opposites talking about the same stimulus – Esmeralda – and the idea that a woman can prove to be both demon and angel to two different men is very disconcerting. I don’t want to don my feminist hat, since the book made Esmeralda much more passive and Disney’s version, in comparison, makes Esmeralda look like a radical revolutionary (”JUSTICE!”). It’s poignant how Esmeralda can entreat the Virgin Mary for saving her people, and Frollo prays to the same Mary in killing off Esmeralda (and the city of Paris). Hunchback works on extremes – life and death, demon and angel, heaven and hell – and these extremes make all the themes more significant, especially since they work around very mortal (yet conversely) spiritual issues.
Latin lyrics all around singing about the day of reckoning, lust, asking for mercy from the Lamb of God… the music is dark, and I believe even Stephen Schwartz also said that Hunchback contained some of the darkest words he’d ever written. Confutatis.org was founded from the Hunchback soundtrack (”Sanctuary!”) and I suppose it finally deserves a mention here, 4 years after this website was conceived.
I suppose the happy ending had to be there. Pocahontas did a good job of having a very bittersweet ending – the movie ends with “I can’t leave you,” but Pocahontas and John Smith still don’t end up together, but Hunchback had such dark themes it was necessary to have something good come out of it. The hot guy ends up with the hot chick, the bad guy dies, and the ugliest man in Paris is still single but THAT WILL BE RATIFIED IN THE SEQUEL.
I remember the reasons why I loved Hunchback of Notre Dame – it was different from the usual princess stories. It contained religious elements, even addressing religious hypocrisy, sexual desire, social injustice, racism, and I don’t think any other Disney animated film details the fear of death as much as this one (the Beast died peacefully, and Frollo goes down terrified). Watching this as a child, I never picked these themes up, so I would personally say that no, Hunchback did not make me an atheist. What I did remember was the music, the happy ending with the message that ugliness wasn’t a bad thing, and Clopin didn’t look so bad (I could throw tomatoes at him in the CD game). In that sense, I think Disney has done its job successfully, and even more so when I can actually look back on this film and gain a whole new intellectual perspective.
Izgnanie (The Banishment)
I wanted to write about my teeth but I think this is probably slightly more interesting to read.
Anyone who’s followed this blog should know I am an enormous fan of the Russian film Vozvrashcheniye, also known as “The Return”. So when I heard that the director made his second film – Izgnanie (The Banishment) – and it was now being shown in Singapore, I snapped up the chance to go watch it.
I’m not sure what to think of it. The plot was based on a Pulitzer Prize winning book, but it really could be summed up in 4 words: Depressed Wife Commits Suicide. The book’s title was ironically named “The Laughing Matter”.
I suppose I still love Zvyagintsev for his masterful application of direction, but strangely enough, it’s the plot that throws the whole thing down. It’s beautiful scenery after scenery, with symbolism hidden in every nook and cranny – down to the choice of costume – and the scene setups are just absolutely breathtaking. The problem lies, I think, with attempting to be artistic while trying to tell a coherent story.
I’ve (briefly) mentioned this observation with another director, and I think it still falls quite true here. While Zvyagintsev’s techniques aren’t as invasive as Joe Wright’s, there always seems to be a clash between exposition and artistry. The ending in Izgnanie was an additional hour of flashback exposition stuck at the tail end of what-could-have-been-the-ending, which really didn’t make the movie “whole”, in a sense. It felt a bit like Lego – someone sticking a brick on an already completed piece and everything now looks lopsided.
Plot grievances aside, I did go in with high expectations and I was very, very satisfied. Despite the fact this was only the director’s second movie, you start to notice certain things that he enjoys sticking into his movies – the theme of water and life, for example, was very prominent in Vozvrashcheniye and is certainly prominent here, as well as the religious images and pieces of art he scatters through the movie. I absolutely love the techniques he uses to switch scenes (and time); it’s subtle, gradual and almost effortless. It doesn’t blast in your face like those spy thriller cop movies where the glaring subtitles go “2 WEEKS AGO, 11.30 AM, WHITE HOUSE LAWLZ”.
I know a lot of indie-type/art movies employ this, but what I absolutely love is the realistic acting. Emotions don’t get plastered in people’s faces like how Ilsa looked when she listened to “As Time Goes By”. I mean, in the real world, we don’t look dramatically wistful gazing off into the distance as we fantasize about how we could’ve lived in Paris with a dashing Christian Bale uh, guy, and movies that overdramatize emotions just look absolutely fake, in my opinion (see also: Dreamgirls. How the hell did that film get nominated?)
Alex, in Izgnanie, never has emotion on his face, even with he’s completely broken, and yet you still wholly throw your heart out to the poor guy. It’s not his face, but the actions he does that’s just heartbreaking – he stops driving in the middle of the street to pause for reflection; he sits outside his wife’s bedroom and stares at the door for eternity; he stumbles through the grass after he realizes his wife has had an affair. The only time his exterior breaks is when he discovers his wife is dead, and it’s so much more poignant (and so much more human).
I just ate dinner and I’ve lost track of what I wanted to say, but overall, I was impressed by the film, but just not as impressed as I was for Vozvrashcheniye. The plot in the latter, at least, could be analyzed (which I totally did for my Psychology of Personality class – the id, ego and superego anyone?) but this one was just ridiculously simple and dragged on for a bit too long.
Writing issues
For all my inability to communicate verbally and being unable to distinguish what’s sarcasm and isn’t, I’m incredibly sensitive to the way people write. It’s the way people phrase their words that ticks me off the most, and sadly, I’m never able to properly rationalize why a certain style of writing makes me so angry. It’s not a pattern of phrases or something that seems quantifiable… It’s just there. It’s not the content that makes me angry, but it’s just the way they write it.
I haven’t seen a pattern emerging yet, but what seems to be the general types that sets off my annoyance meter is 1. attempting to sound superior when you’re just wanking off on purple prose, and 2. the inability to understand your own phrases when you write and the general tone it conveys (usually a sense of smugness and ignorance).
Strangely enough, I’ve long since been numb to the “haizzzz…….. ~*i luv him worxxxx*~” epidemic that pervades almost any Singaporean teenage blog, and if actually given the choice, I would prefer to read that rather than someone who is incapable of understanding the choices she makes with her words and the negative impression associated with it (okay, that was a fairly long sentence). From my perspective, that style of writing, at least, lends itself to a stream of consciousness, and at least I can get a fairly decent understanding of what she is trying to convey. For the latter, stringing together a bunch of fancy words or unable to understand that the phrases you just used is indicative of your ignorance, it doesn’t make me understand you at all; you don’t understand those words, you don’t understand the tone those phrases convey, and I just get an incredibly bad impression.
I’ve had to comment block people on LJ of the simple fact that their way of writing (even just a meager sentence) made me irrationally angry. I choose not to read blogs like these because it’s not of what they write, but how they write it (yes, Azrul and Azrul-clone-stash-God-hides-in-his-cupboard).
Self-awareness: It’s a good thing, guys.
Class Participation and SMU
So Jac posted this documentary of SMU (made by SMU) about the issue of class participation. Or at least it meanders around this issue and never actually gets a point. I suppose it tried to find some balance in the entire thing by showing both the pro and con side (and sticking some predictable ‘think about it’ on the video site), but seriously, if you want to fit something as broad as ‘class participation’ into a 15 minute documentary, everything is going to turn out shallow. Pick one aspect of class participation and run with it, not fit the 5W’s into the whole thing.
I’m reacting a bit more aggressively than I should be doing, which is something much to my surprise… I guess this whole participation thing is something that I do take grave issue with, and the assumptions that people have about it. I don’t like the Singaporean way of thinking that speaking up in class = good thing for ‘personal growth’, whatever that means, because we’re still falling behind this idea that we’re obliged to do something not because of interest, but because we’ve gotten this assumption that class participation means… what do they call it? A better interview spot?
We’re paralleling this whole Science/Arts debate all over again. The general idea is that taking Science leaves one open for more opportunities while Arts closes them. So we take Science, not because we are genuinely interested in Biology or Chemistry, but because there’s always this threat that in the event you really, really want to be a rocket scientist, you don’t have to look back and say, ‘WELL, SHIT’. (I’m of the opinion that if you’re not interested in physics at 15, you sure as hell aren’t going to be interested in physics at 30, but there are always the obvious exceptions, etc etc).
I get it, I really do. My issue is that they’ve generalized ’speaking up’ so broadly it hurts to look at it. Has SMU actually read any data that shows a correlation between speaking up in class and doing well in interviews? Have they done any research that shows that speaking in class is a skill that, when successfully taught, that can be generalized to any situation? Have they done any research to show how reliable their assumptions are in determining why people don’t speak up in class? Do they really fare any worse or better, in a personal sense? Have they done any research that shows that SMU cranks out ‘different and/or better people’ (whatever that still means) than NUS or NTU? Have these people done any research whatsoever that the sole skill in speaking up actually influences their graduates’ hiring rate? (I also like the irony that, according to the SMU Wikipedia page, that all the statistics showing SMU to be the better school stems from SMU itself, and not a independent organization. Also, one of the links are dead.)
And the laughable surveys with the funny looking balloons are just… so incredulous to take seriously. What was the question asked? What was the sample size? Who were the people surveyed? Did you check for any bias, or did you just run around the school yelling for opinions and compiling them in Microsoft Excel? There were so many things they left out (partially because, yet again, it’s only 15 minutes. I don’t know if they were doing this on their own watch or maybe it was some class assignment thing, but whatever) that you just cannot take the data seriously.
I especially liked the bits where they interviewed professors and students alike, and everyone just pulled these assumptions out of their ass (I guess that’s why they call it assumptions) and threw their own theories as to why kids don’t like to speak up (DATA, PEOPLE, DATA. You have a damn Psychology department; get your information there!). I especially like the complete contradiction at the end where ‘being yourself’ means ‘if you’re introverted, you still gotta bypass that shit and SPEAK UP’, as if talking is some sort of inherent personality trait in everyone THAT NEEDS TO BLOOM LIKE A PRETTY FLOWER. I got so furious with Mr. American Professor Who Was Talking with Kirpal Singh because he spouted so much nonsense I wanted to punch my screen in (of course, this is only a matter of personal opinion and experience, and absolutely nothing to do with his pretentiousness).
… And yet again, we still hold America as the epitome of progress and whatnot. I don’t get the Singaporean system, quite honestly. We adopt a British education system for the first 12 years and then you except the students to automatically adjust to a system that is so radically and structurally different (read “Sponsored and Contest Mobility and the School System” by Ralph H. Turner if you’re interested in the differences between the American and British systems of education. In short, education is not an independent faction and is generated by the cultural values in any given society) in university. You cannot expect us to be raised in a culture founded on elite values (nitpick with me about this and I swear I will cut you) and then suddenly say ‘okay, we’re all equal and we always need to stay on our toes and be competitive!’ and expect us to change our ideas like that. I feel SMU seems to have meshed these two ideas together, except now you’ve generated a student population that competes with the world while believing themselves to be superior to their own people. Not exactly a good thing to discriminate against your own, sweets.
Yes, the professors can blast away on their high horses that Singaporean culture prohibits kids from speaking up, but I ask again: where is the data? Is there a correlation between being obedient and not speaking up in class? This in itself even seems to operate on the assumption that speaking up in a classroom environment automatically constitutes challenge. What about comments? Questions? The latter was addressed (albeit briefly) in the documentary, and this already shows that it’s not about ‘traditional culture values’. It’s ‘we’re afraid to look stupid’ – a societal value. Is SMU going to change a societal value by implementing an system exclusive to themselves?
I want to share my own experiences in studying in an American institution. If any of you know me, I was born an American, and predominantly raised in Singapore for most of my life. I do consider myself more Singaporean than American. As usual, there is always the obligatory disclaimer that these are my opinions and my experiences, and it cannot be generalized to anyone else. My TL;DR thoughts are my own.
Class participation, to me, is a load of bullshit. That’s the short answer. There is the extremely long, long, LONG answer behind the cut, so be warned.
Sexual Objectification
I wanted to post only after I finished up my new layout for the website (for some reason, it’s a brilliant shade of purple), but there’s this really pressing issue that’s been on my mind for some time, specifically the issue of sexual objectification. For all my feminist foot-stomping and expressions of disgust at how males have managed to internalize such notions, the same can be said for females, quite frankly.
Female-oriented (or any least, populated) communities seem to be the worst offenders of this. Any photo of a male celebrity would always be followed up with someone saying ‘I’d hit that’ and another swarm of other females agreeing, openly discussing their sexual fantasies with each other (also, Yahtzee). No one calls them on it, and yet these very females get on cases where males start saying the exact same things when presented with a female celebrity.
Of course, the usual arguments can be thrown around – females have every right to boggle at men’s bodies, females have had a history of oppression so we’re entitled to have revenge, the guys can do it so WHAI CANT I – but this isn’t about gender equality. This is about sexual objectification, in and of itself, employed by both genders. I personally find sexual objectification abhorrent, in all forms, male or female. I don’t support one or the other, and yes, I do condone my gender for it.
Just because women has had a history of oppression doesn’t mean we can subscribe to the same things men did. Frankly, I don’t think that this is even a valid psychological reason for the sudden surge of male objectification – it’s just another kneejerk “politically correct” answer as to why female objectification is condoned and yet male objectification is accepted. I frankly don’t think feministic revenge goes through the minds of 15 year olds when typing out ‘I WANT TO DO BAD THINGS TO THIS MAN’ on the Internet.
Perhaps the female sex drive was greater than I assumed. Perhaps I did subscribe to some form of projection bias; I don’t see the sexual attraction in men, I don’t gush on end, and therefore the rest of the female population have the same beliefs as I do. I’m wrong, obviously, but that doesn’t make sexual objectification any more right.
Should men be honoured by their sexual objectification status in the female community? With the evidence that men think about sex more often than females, it feels like men wouldn’t be as insulted as women are. But I’m not a man, so I don’t know. Maybe Johnny Depp does take comfort knowing that he’s in the sexual fantasies of prepubescent girls everywhere.
Between Dignity and Despair – First Impressions
I didn’t like this book very much. I thought it was a rather unique book at first, as Marion Kaplan compiled a bunch of anecdotes from Holocaust survivors together and fitted them into this book, giving us a truly realistic and personal view of the Jewish life in Nazi Germany.
The anecdotes are heartbreaking, touching and celebratory all at once. You cheer when you read a German standing up to a Nazi soldier during the 1933 Jewish boycott, or Germans insisting on continuing their friendships with Jewish friends. And then there are stories of Jewish women having to perform sexual favours in order to get their immigration papers, or how Jews were slowly excluded from the most basic of clubs. It’s incredibly interesting to read, and the glimpse into Jewish life is fascinating and truly different from a normal ‘historic’ book.
The problem is Kaplan won’t stop hammering it in on how ‘brutal’ or ‘cruel’ or ‘painful’ it was for the Jewish people. Kaplan uses the word ‘brutal’ 4 times in 3 paragraphs, and by the end of the Introduction(!) I was already screaming ‘Yes, I know Jewish life was painful; everyone knows that, so stop using all these loaded words!’ Kaplan doesn’t need to tell us that it was horrible to live in Germany in the 1930s; the anecdotes she collected speak volumes already.
The way she writes is weak, and the anecdotes are the only things that hold this book together. Firstly, for all her attempts to show that the Jewish experiences were diverse, she does a fantastic job in colouring the German side the same shade of evil. All Germans – be it a civilian or a member of the SS – behave the same. There are the occasional hopeful stories, but it seems like the Germans are never human. They are simply grouped into a single word – ‘Germans’. Coupled with the loaded words Kaplan loves to scatter in what moments she can spare between anecdotes, the whole thing just smacks of bias.
Granted, Kaplan writes the book wholly from the viewpoint of the victims in Nazi Germany, and after some thought, I could let the German homogeneity and loaded words slide. What I cannot forgive, however, is speculation, and getting horrendously biased sources.
At times Kaplan attempts to give us a brief summary of the events that happened in a certain year, and the aftermath of said event. No historian in their right mind can ever say “Well, I have no sources on this, but I can say that…” You can’t do that. You are not a historian if you speculate on events that you have no proof for. Kaplan, unfortunately, speculates so eagerly and explicitly, and she actually used the phrase “There are no sources, but…” She seems to want to capitalize on the Jewish suffering so badly she winds up adding on more theories of how Jews suffered when she even lacks the evidence for it. I can assure you that the lack of proof is not going to add on my sympathy for what happened in the 1930s. It makes me pissed that I’m reading a completely biased source and now I have to take all the anecdotes I read with a grain of salt.
Also, getting data from German sources about almost anything Jewish in the 1930s would be biased. Percentages will be skewed, attempting to show progress, or just for propaganda. The same thing can be said for Jewish sources. Isn’t there a possibility that the percentages might have overinflated? I can’t remember which year the data was published, but either way, there is a possibility that it might be biased, simply because you’re taking Jewish data for Jewish suffering in WWII. There isn’t any comparison to German sources or even independent sources for balance. I cannot just take Jewish sources as fact and leave it there. Once again, Kaplan seems to want to bludgeon us on the head with the phrase ‘THE JEWS SUFFERED IN WWII!’
I KNOW. IT HURTS BAD, AND YOU’RE NOT EXACTLY HELPING MY SYMPATHY ANY.
I don’t think Kaplan wanted this to be a historical or accurate source. She has provided us with anecdotes, and we all know how tricky the memory can be. I can accept that, but when Kaplan switches to a summary of events that everyone knows (translation: turns historian), takes percentages from biased sources and conjures theories out of thin air, I have reason to disbelieve anything she says.
