1/20-25 Reflection

This week, we started Ceremony, a book about a Native American who fought in WWII, has PTSD and is an alcoholic. He has many symptoms of PTSD, day visions, he collapsed in The Pacific after seeing a vision of his uncle in a Japanese soldier. After he got back, he stayed in a veteran hospital for a while to recover from "Battle Fatigue", he was sent back, but he collapsed on the train home. His aunt took care of him after that, reluctantly. After that he generally just drifted around and freaked out, cause you know, PTSD. He developed alcoholism after the war, to deal with his troubles, it didn't work and made it worse.

I relfect on Dances with Wolves

Thoughts on setting, plot and characters: I thought the setting was very appropriate for the type of movie they were making, if they filmed in Canada, the setting wouldn't of matched the plot so well, so it's good they chose the great plains. The plot was interesting, sort of, but I can respect it for the historical quality of it. The characters were interesting, I thought the internal conflict of John Dunbar .was very interesting, and that Stands with Fist's conflict about marrying John was interesting as well.
New History: I didn't know about the Sioux and the Pawnee, I just recognized their names from random snippets of history. I also wasn't aware of the fact that buffalo were already rare in the 1860's, I thought they were thriving in that time period.
Overall thoughts: I hated this movie, it was boring and I hated the analyzation of it. I'm just no good at analyzation, that's why I hate movies like this, because you have to see the deeper meaning of it to actually enjoy it, which is incredibly hard for me.

This week, we started the movie "Dances with Wolves" about a civil war soldier transferred to the frontier at his own request. He starts out with trepidation and evolves into someone who can bond with the natives on the frontier. This movie is interesting because it has a lot of interesting culture in it, the dynamics between the Indians and the white men, the Sioux and the Pawnee and what the whites thought of the natives. I found that the way this movie was shot really called attention to what was happening in the movie at the time, the music also reflected what the scene was trying to portray.
The way the director did the music was amazing, because it made fun of the old west movies where the Indians were always the bad guys, which is not entirely the case in this movie, there's a bad tribe and a good tribe. The way the Indians treat white people is almost the same as the white people treat the Indians, they both hate each other with some people trying to make peace.

1. This semester I hope that I can gain a new appreciation for literature. I also hope to gain new knowledge on how to write essays. I also would like to get some help for my college essays, which I dislike. But overall I would like to gain new authors to read.

2. I'm personally an atheist. I can understand why people want to believe in God, but I just don't myself. Unfortunately some religious people sometimes like to shove their religion in other people's faces, which I hate. I know many religious people, and most of them are really nice people, but every once in a while there would come a long one asshole who would screw it all up. I can appreciate the different religions too, I find their lore very interesting, however I find it unbelievable at the same time.

3. If we're talking about ancient Greek, Roman, Egyptian and Norse lore, than I'm very well versed in that. However, I'm not as well versed in the lore of the Americas. I'm familiar with the stories of almost every god in Roman and Greek mythology (considering they're almost exactly the same), as well as Egyptian gods too. The native american gods (from Mexico up) weren't really gods, they were more spirits of animals that they prayed to. The middle/south American natives however, were much more violent and their gods were usually people combined with animals and they sacrificed people to them.

4. The Internet is a combonation of servers, not completly owned by one country or company. It includes everything on the internet and is made of information. Social media is anything where people can connect with other people without speaking or being face to face, either under their own name or a proxy name. Technology has a wildly varying definition, if you're in the stone ages, a musket would be the height of technology, but now a days it's just a shitty gun that you can barely hit anything with. Technology varies between regions and when you are (like at what point in history you are), so the definition will vary with every change you make.

5. I hate analyzing films, I just wana watch them. I think it's stupid that we have to analyz films, it's always hard for me because I have trouble analyzing anything, I just take things as they are. No, I've never studied film and never plan to. I don't study film because I hate analyzing everything.

6. I don't want to analyze any films, I just wana watch them.