12 Oct Choose a film and offer an analysis of why it is an important film, an

Competency

Formulate, express, and support individual perspectives on diverse works and issues.

Instructions

You will act as a critic for some of the main subjects covered in the humanities. You will conduct a series of short, evaluative critiques of film, philosophy, literature, music, and myth. You will respond to five different prompts, and each response should include an analysis of the topics using terminology unique to that subject area and should include an evaluation as to why the topic stands the test of time. The five prompts are as follows:

1: Choose a film and offer an analysis of why it is an important film, and discuss it in terms of film as art. Your response should be more than a summary of the film.

2: Imagine you had known Plato and Aristotle and you had a conversation about how we fall in love. Provide an overview of how Plato would explain falling in love, and then provide an overview of how Aristotle might explain falling in love.

3: Compare and contrast the two poems below:

LOVE’S INCONSISTENCY

I find no peace, and all my war is done;

I fear and hope, I burn and freeze likewise

I fly above the wind, yet cannot rise;

And nought I have, yet all the world I seize on;

That looseth, nor locketh, holdeth me in prison, And holds me not, yet can I ’scape no wise;

Nor lets me live, nor die, at my devise,

And yet of death it giveth none occasion.

Without eyes I see, and without tongue I plain;

I wish to perish, yet I ask for health;

I love another, and yet I hate myself;

I feed in sorrow, and laugh in all my pain;

Lo, thus displeaseth me both death and life,

And my delight is causer of my grief.

Petrarch

After great pain a formal feeling comes—

The nerves sit ceremonious like tombs;

The stiff Heart questions—was it He that bore?

And yesterday—or centuries before?

The feet mechanical go round

A wooden way

Of ground or air or ought

Regardless grown,

A quartz contentment like a stone.

This is the hour of lead

Remembered if outlived

As freezing persons recollect

The snow—

First chill, then stupor, then

The letting go

Emily Dickinson

4: Compare and contrast these two pieces of music: see files attached below

Beethoven’s Violin Romance No. 2

Scott Joplin’s Maple Leaf Rag

5: Explain in classical terms why a modern character is a hero. Choose from either Luke Skywalker, Indiana Jones, Bilbo Baggins, Harry Potter, Katniss Everdeen, or Ender Wiggins.

Humanities Self-directed Assessment 03

Rubric Details

Maximum Score

4 points

· Grade for Deliverable

100% of total grade

· Analysis

0% of total grade

A – 4 – Mastery

Explains in great detail the topic using terminology common to the subject and references other ideas/works in that subject.

0

B – 3 – Proficiency

Provides a detailed explanation of the topic using terminology common to the subject.

0

C – 2 – Competence

Provides an explanation of the topic using terminology common to the subject.

0

F – 1 – No Pass

Provides an explanation of the topic but doesn't use terminology common to the subject.

0

I – 0 – Not Submitted

Not Submitted

0

· Evaluation

0% of total grade

· Justification

0% of total grade

· Coverage

0% of total grade

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165.80754

,

Critic of the Titanic

Humanities (SDA)

March 04, 2022

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Critic of the Titanic

The film I choose is Titanic. This movie was produced by James Cameron and released in

1997. It is a fictional story based on the sinking RMS Titanic ship of 1912. It started as a story of

an older lady recapturing her youthful years on an actual occurrence of love and death. This epic

historical romance and tragedy film captures my imagination after eighty-five years because her

story is like a great novel that happened. The passage of time has robbed it of its human face.

The movie started by taking us into the historical context and grandeur of the 'Titanic

ship.' It also creates an emotional connection amongst each character. It is a 'melodrama', which

is a style used in modern day filmmaking. Melodrama is defined by Collins dictionary online as

"a story or play in which there are a lot of exciting or sad events and in which people's emotions

are very exaggerated" (Collins dictionary online, n.d). The movie started by introducing the giant

RMS Titanic ship, a British passenger line that sank in the North Atlantic Ocean (Marsh, 1997)

in 1912 after a collision with an iceberg. The ship used mirrored the original sunk Titanic ship in

shape and interior design. The vessel was made up of decks with a lower level, which has four

individuals to a room with bunk sets. The lower-class were restricted to their decks. The first

class has a unique, beautiful upper deck with a great view of the ocean. The staterooms are

undeniably luxurious, and the middle deck set a standard too, more of business like for business

class, teachers, and highly paid workers. The rich stayed in their rooms; some come out in the

decks' lounge smoking cigars, sipping champagne, and drinking tea while having a chit-chat with

themselves.

It portrays two different social classes of people and the treatment meted to them.

Segregation of the lower class was the first judgment of this movie. The film centers around two

important individuals cast as Rose (Kate Winslet) and Jack (Ronaldo DiCaprio). Fate brought the

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two together as Jack, who was opportune to be in the 3 rd class of the ship after winning a poker

game, with Rose from an upper class traveling with her mother and her fiancé. Her mother is

super excited about the trip as it will be a way to maintain their high class if Rose finally gets

engaged to her fiancé, who is also an upper-class rich man. Rose is not happy with this

engagement and resorted to committing suicide but was talked out of it when she met Jack. The

ship struck an iceberg, opening a large wound on her side, some of her watertight compartments

ruptured. The great ship took a while to sink fully, and there was a great deal of time for human

stories and emotions to be played out. Disbelief, panic, courage, and cowardice were all

behaviors exhibited by the passengers. It was a profound tragedy as death separated Kate and

Jack.

Titanic defines and presents love in a unique way. It sees love as not just being restricted

to a particular ground or found in a specific area. Love can be anywhere. One other angle of the

film that stands out is its scenery. Titanic makes the viewer stayed glued to the TV screen all

through the movie. There were lots of background musical effects, different acts, and shows on

the ship. The visual effect was of a higher standard, according to Marsh, W (1997) interview

with the producer, the shot of people in the ship and during the accident was computer-

generated. Everyone in the shot was CG using motion capture technology to record a performer's

unique movement. This is an established technique as it re-creates an actor's face and physical

form in the digital realm. This technique was also used in Terminator. The water looks great,

with icebergs all laid out to depict reality. Rose's portrayal from the boring/quiet fiancée to a

young little lady and finally with her romantic side during the lovemaking scene. Rose met Jack

and cuts through all the class and money status and connected with something real and alive and

passionate in the soul, and this brought out the other side of Rose. Titanic evokes different

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emotions each time it was viewed while bringing about the same feelings of love. It is an epic

genre but focuses on sincere love brought about by fate but separated by death.

The movie running time was one hundred and ninety- five minutes and was nominated

for 14 Academy Awards and got the most Oscar nominations for the year with 11 awards.

However, the film is not without its critics as some people have a different opinion about love.

Love, to some people, should not be about dying. It should be about surviving.

How We Fall in Love

Plato sees love as a desire for the perpetual possession of the good. In his word, "love is a

desire." He believes love should bring about a yearning or longing for something he truly

admires. Plato thinks that by getting close to someone, we should be more like them to exhibit

our full potential. Plato’s ‘philia' is a true friendship developed from 'Eros' and feeds back into

the relationship to strengthens it. Plato thinks that everything in life should strive to attain some

good, and there must be full ownership. A man's life has strong feelings about what he wants and

needs a full acquisition of it. Plato's love is seen in the symposium, where Plato presents love of

wisdom as the highest form of love and philosophy as a refinement of our sexual urges, which

leads us to desire wisdom over sex. The symposium addresses Plato's mind in studying love, the

relevance of love as an element in human behavior, forms of romantic love, nature of love, and

his views regarding passionate love, objects of love and desire, and the ultimate goal of love

(Amir, 2001). Finally, Plato's theory of love shows we can move from sex focused vision of love

to love directed towards wisdom, truth, and goodness with the pursuit of knowledge and

philosophy.

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Aristotle, who is more of an 'objectivist', considers moral judgment a relevant part of an

effective relationship. His thought about love goes beyond Eros. He is much interested in

friendship can of love. Aristotle thinks of love and friendship are much more explicit and direct.

Aristotle's opinion is based on the goodness of human relations and how they react to his core

self is the true attribute of a person. In Qualitative Sociology Review (2010), Aristotle points out

that while any person may take part in friendships of pleasure and utility, only those possessing

virtuous, good, and honorable qualities can maintain friendships of virtue, as they hold a genuine

and unselfish concern for the others wellbeing. Acknowledging the enduring attributes of honest

relationships, Aristotle notes that those based on pleasure and utility are much more susceptible

to sabotage than are those of a more virtuous (trusting, caring) nature (Qualitative Sociology

Review (2010). Given this opinion, Aristotle opinion of love is a higher level of understanding of

self-love

Comparing and contrasting two poems

The poem love's inconsistency is written by Francisco Petrarch, focuses on Francisco's

love for Laura: a 23years old married lady. The poem's lines describe his pain and fear for loving

someone who cannot express the love back. "I fear and hope, I burn and freeze." He is unsettled,

and only he understands how it feels; nevertheless, his choice is to love, and his responsibility is

to stay. The author of this poem has an internal conflict of pain and joy but will be very happy to

see the face of his love and spend another moment with her. At the end of the poem, he wrote,

'and my delight is causer of my grief', which identifies that many others felt the same way to love

and relationship. The use of simile like .stone' signifies how heavy a man's desire can lead to

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pain. It still applies in the modern-day, when you love someone, and the person does not

reciprocate. In reality, love is full of ups and downs.

After great pain, a formal feeling comes by Emily Dickinson is about the stages through

which a person experienced great pain and suffering, and at the end of it all comes the still air of

peace. The 'formal feeling' suggests the protagonist's withdrawal from the world, which implies

criticism of those who have made her suffer. She thinks of a funeral, with the nerves acting as

both mourners and as a tombstone. The poem demonstrates the state of emotional shock that

served as a protection against pain. 'The feet mechanically go around" suggests the idea of

numbness, and there is no desire to change legs but move in the same circle. The numbness is

followed by the loss of the sense of time, then comes the great weight of depression, and finally,

the poet presents a poetic comparison to the experience of freezing to death in the concluding

line. The last line describes death, the poet doubt, and the heart questions whether it ever endured

such pain and if it was recent. Life had become aimless. She seems to be emphasizing that the

physical and mental state of a person who is going through a formal feeling of pain is highly

fragile. The poem focuses on dealing with loss and the healing process. The last line put this in

order by saying 'the snow, first chill, then stupor, then the letting go", which is the growing

intensity of pain and final relief. The poem has three stanzas, and the author uses some metaphor

to describe her though like 'nerve sits ceremoniously', 'heart questions' and she also used some

simile, like 'tombs', 'contentment like a stone' are all ways Emily adopted to give words to her

feelings in this poem. The poem strikes me like when a person is going through the various

stages of grief from denial to anger, bargaining, depression, and finally accepting.

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Both authors are going through varying life stages, and each used a different approach to

explain his feelings. Both aimed at letting go of what is beyond your control or power, and the

two poems express pain and despair.

Beethoven's Violin Romance No. 2 was composed by Ludwig van Beethoven in 1798 but

not published until 1805. This is a classical orchestra that runs for 9 minutes. It is set in rondos

form with principal lyrical themes that alternate with extraverted sections. It comprises of a five-

part rondo A, B, A, C, A, and coda. The delicate, youthful phrasing of the violin suggests a

composer finding some brief respite through writing music's escapism (Classic Fm, n.d). Maple

leaf rag, on the other hand, was composed by Scott Joplin and published in 1899 in a sheet music

form. This is a classical type of music with its genre as ragtime. It is a ragtime musical

composition, and it becomes a model for others to follow because it was one of the most popular

of all ragtime songs. Maple leaf rag is filled with collections of melodic motives with small bits

of tunes repeated to plat pattern, and the rhythmic pattern continuously occurs in repetition. A-

flat major is the key maple leaf rag adopts. Burgarin, A. (2014) stated in an online article that

“the impressive tempo and difficulty of the piece was his way of showing that ragtime was

legitimate as any other genre, regardless of its origin.” In comparison, both were classical songs

rendered in a uniquely beautiful way. They were both musicals of the 18 th century and delivered

through instruments.

The Hunger Games – Katnis Everdeen

A hero is someone who has shared their talents and brought a new vision to life. Heroes

are individuals whose attributes and behavior are worth emulating. Heroes show a positive

character trait in music, art, military, literature, religion, political, and all spheres of life. A hero

is someone who has shown bravery, courage, and the ability to create a path for others to follow.

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While growing up, my parents were my heroes before becoming a Christian, and now my hero is

Jesus Christ. I walk according to his call and leading. Heroes often face the worst fear of

opposition, antagonism but come out of it all victoriously. Katniss Everdeen of in Hunger Games

fits into the hero's journey. 'I volunteer as tribute' is the four words that she used to prove that

some things in life are worthy of getting hurt for in the process. Katniss put herself in her father's

role for her younger sister, and the event went above and beyond her preconceived limit for her

society/district. She could not sit on the sidelines, and single-handed put others' wellbeing before

hers, and does everything not to hurt them in the process. While her competitors are ecstatic to

compete for the games' glory, she is not interested in fame or fortune; her mission was just to

save her people. She hopes to free the nation in which she lives and be able to gain people's trust

without any form of manipulation, such as a hero's journey, and it exists in all human endeavors.

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References

Amir, L. (2001)-Plato’s theory of Love: Rationality as Passion.

http://www.society-for-philosophy-in-practice.org/journal/pdf/7-

2%2004%20Macaro%20-%20Aristotle.pdf

Burgarin, A. (2014) – Scott Joplin-Maple Leaf Rag.

https://prezi.com/jvrhkgngg7a3/scott-joplinmaple-leaf-rag/

Collins Dictionary Online (n.d)

http://www.collinsdictionary.com

Marsh, W (1997)- James Cameron’s Titanic. Harper Collins Publishers

Prus, R & Camara F (2010) -Qualitative Sociology Review (2010)- Vol 1, issue 3.

https://recur.msu.edu/archive/recur-may-2010.pdf

Classic Fm (n.d) Beethoven-Romance No. 2 in F.

http://www.classicfm.com/composers/beethoven/music/romance-no2-f/