a street car desire

A Street Car Named Desire

After watching the movie titled A Street Car Named desire, it gives me a clearer picture of the content of the play. While reading though printed text, I could not get the picture of the characters’ traits, especially Blanche’s. During the lesson in class, we have come out that Blanche is desperate for love. Unfortunately, I am unable to understand why she is given the character trait. After the movie, I reread the play again and found out that I need to read for several times to get the connotative meaning of Blanche’s character traits.
Since the movie is screen in black and white colour, it is quite boring. I only notice the actions of the characters. Blanche character’s traits are fully express through verbally and non-verbally. The actor who acted as Blanche has played a good job by bringing the character alive in the play. The facial expression that can be seen as well as her tone in speech clearly indicates that she is a liar, a desperate woman and has the power to control Stella. She is portrayed as a strong character in the play.
Through watching the movie, it also portrays that Stanley is a person who acted like an animal. In the text, Stanley is always portrayed as having animal traits through his actions. In the movie, the actor well portrayed his character where he does acted as describe in the printed text. In contrast of him been described like an animal, he is a handsome looking actor in the movie. Almost all my classmates were attracted by his appearance.
In conclusion, through watching movie and reading the text, both give me a different thought. From the text, I could not really analyze the characters’ traits although through deep analyzes. On the other hand, from watching the movie, there are also some elements that are different from the printed text. Hence, it is important to compare between the text with the movie.

Tragic hero

Tragic hero

According to Karl Beckson and Arthur Ganz “Literary Terms a Dictionary”, tragic hero is a person of stature who is neither villainous nor exceptionally virtuous, moves from happiness to misery through some frailty or error. Besides, tragic hero is considered as hamartia. In addition, the role of tragic hero is portrayed through Lear in the story King Lear and Creon in Antigone. Both characters are tragic heroes because they have changed due to their own decision made upon children.

In King Lear, Lear regrets upon his decision of divided his kingdom to the daughters who don’t love him and not to Cordelia. He thought the daughters who manage express the love to him in words would also fulfill the duty as daughters to take good care of him. Due to his wrong judgement, he lost his kingship and become mad, as he cannot face the reality of the treatment he received. Lear has changed from a king into a mad man as a result of his decision of distributing his kingdom.

In Antigone, Creon stubbornness has made him a tragic hero. He who was once confident of all his decision made cause him to lost all his beloved persons, Antigone, Haemon and Eurydice. Since he is firm with sentencing death upon Antigone caused Haemon to kill himself. In addition, Eurydice kills herself out of grief of losing Haemon. Creon has turned his family into a broken one. Furthermore, Creon is not given the chance to mend his mistakes, as they are all dead.

In conclusion, both stories portrayed tragic heroes. In King Lear, Lear who has his kingdom finally lost it to his daughters due to his silly action. While in Antigone, Creon loses his family members due to his stubbornness. Both characters develop towards despair and regret.

Teiresias and the Fool

Teiresias and Fool

The character of Teiresias is found in the story of Antigone, while the Fool is portrayed in the story King Lear. Both of these characters share almost the same character traits. They play the same role as the advisers or consultants to the king. They also provide the insight of the story to enhance the development of the story. Through their character, the changes of in the king can be clearly shown. For example, when the fool is advising the king on his decision made, through conversation, it portrays the tragic flaw of the king is going through. On the other hand, Teiresias’ advice upon Creon indicates the tragic that the king is going to dwelt in. Besides, through both characters, Teiresias and the fool, a lot of foreshadowing is embedded through their speech, it always tell the story development before the incidents happen.

However, in Antigone, Teiresias is given the character traits as a priest. While in King Lear, the Fool is an unknown person, there are no clear character traits except an advisor. This can be seen that Teiresias play a major influence to Lear. This can be seen through he gets Creon in rage. On the other hand, the Fool is just play a minor role in revealing the story progress and he is portrayed as the inner thought of Lear. In both stories, the plot develops clearer with the help of the Fool and Teiresias.

King Lear

King Lear

King Lear is a story written during ancient Britain. It is a story where the king of Britain, King Lear (Lear), has three daughters, Goneril, Regan and Cordelia. Lear wants to divide his kingdom to his daughters. He comes out with a childish question, asking them to express their love to him. Then, he will distribute the portion of property according to the amount of love the daughters can express.

This story portrays irony where the daughter who love Lear the most get nothing while the others who only greed and not filial get the biggest share of property. This can be seen through the speech of Goneril and Regan that shows greed and do not love Lear:

“Pray you, let us hit together: if our father carry authority with such disposition as he bears, this last surrender of his will but offend us.”

Cordelia is a responsible and filial child. When she knew that her sisters have cast Lear out of power, she return with army to help restore her father kingship. This can be seen that she is not greed of power or fame but the love towards father.

“No blown ambition doth our armys’s incite, but love, dear love, and our aged father’s right.”

Through analyzing King Lear, a lot of irony can be found. These include the death of Goneril and Regan due to jealousy. As well as, Edmund become the king and not Lear anymore. This story portrays the relationship of human in the stand of power, materials and love.

Mak Yong

Mak Yong

Mak Yong is a performance in Malay culture. It is performed mainly in the form of dances, songs and drama. It also can be consider as musical drama. Nowadays, this culture is getting less popular compare to olden days. During olden days, people take this performance as a source of income to support their family needs. By performing, they earn money and carrier. It has been a source of support in olden Malay society.

Mak Yong is an art where it portrays loads of Malay traditions, moral teachings as well as family basics. This can be seen through one of the Mak Yong performance that emphasizes on parents and children relationships. This traditional performance is highly embedded with morality to raise awareness among society.

However, as the country keeps modernizing, Mak Yong is facing the problem of being overtake. It is important to keep Mak Yong alive as it benefits and enhance new generation knowledge. If this tradition is without the support form society and younger generations, it will slowly die off and will soon be never exist before.

Simulated Teaching

Simulated Teaching

Simulated teaching is one of the assignments that students of TESL twinning program have to carry out. From the word simulated, it indicates that “not real but made to look, sound, or feel real”, Longman English Contemporary English. Thus, for this assignment, students take the role of a teacher and teach the class a topic. Students have to take this activity seriously as it is a practice ground to improve his or her future teaching.

During simulated teaching, student takes up the challenge as a teacher to instruct and facilitate the progress of the lesson of the day. The teacher has to be able to design appropriate activities. These activities should suit the students’ proficiency. In addition, students should have the capability in finishing the tasks. A successful simulated teaching is when the teacher is considered presentable, clear in giving instructions, creative and is able to raise students’ interest in class.

Hence, before carry out simulated teaching, a teacher should design his or her lesson. It is advisable that teacher write out a lesson plan as it is useful as a guide when he or she is teaching. In a lesson plan, teacher should be clear about the objectives of the lesson. It is also important to take consideration in the input and outcome of students by the end of the lesson. Therefore, designing a lesson plan helps teacher to analyze the appropriate activities and the rationale of the lesson.

As a conclusion, simulated teaching provides future teacher a stepping stone to become a successful teacher. It is important that future teacher is introduced to this task, because future teacher can foresee the task of teaching in class. Being a successful teacher is not only be a good teacher but also has the ability to carry out creative, affective, effective activities that help give input to students and help
students to practice and enhance their knowledge.

Pygmalion

Before watching the movie, i tried to read the printed text. I found that the printed text was difficult, especially the dialogue of Eliza. By looking at the printed text, Eliza's speech is printed without vowels. thus, when reading, a lot of interpretation need to be done. Besides, I need to reread the text to match my assumption into the correct situation. It was different when listened to the speech spoken in the movie, her pronunciation was much clearer and easier to understand/ comprehend.

After watching the movie, I got a clearer picture of the plot of the story. the setting of the exposition was at a pathway. it was raining and a lot of people gather together under shelter. The conversation printed in the text were quite confusing, as it involves many people speaking of different topics. A clearer picture is viewed as all dialogues are spoken by total different people, - different tone, pitch, thus this help me to differentiate who is speaking about which certain issue.

Besides, through movie, it takes up shorter time to view the changes that Eliza had went through. We can see the differences in her appearance of a flower girl changes into a higher class lady. In the text, i had to imagine the picture of Eliza before and after lessons. It was hard to imagine a flower girl of olden days. however, through movie, the image formed was visible.

As a conclusion, this story in printed text form and movie form portrayed two different views. While reading through text, students are able to read the printed writing and they need to use their creative mindset to get a picture of the development of the story. On the other hand, though watching movie, students get to train their listening skills and at the mean time get a clearer view of the plot of the story.

Macbeth

I had heard of Macbeth since i was young. besides, I had watched Macbeth quite a number of times, but, I just do not appreciate the art in it
When I watched it again, together with my friends and classmates, their facial expressions and reactions affected and influenced me. By then only I realized the violence, cruelness, greed and power that embedded in the movie. For the first time I watched this movie, the killing process had no effect on me. However, this time, it made a different. It just made me pray hard to God for mercy on them. In this movie, killing is just like a piece of cake. You will see heads dropping off, blood flow like river. The weapons that they used are sword, axe and dagger. most of the time, they pierced and struck the weapon on the victims and even axed on their back. When Macbeth was killed, his head is chopped off and hang on the castle. However, due to he is in tragic flow, spectators show no emphatic upon his death.
Besides, Macbeth movie also portrayed the role of women as clever, wicked and persuasive. As Macbeth's wife, she got to know the prophecy and thus influenced her husband to fulfill the prophecy.In addition, the three witches that appear to tell Macbeth the prophet, they are clever to predict the future. They also influenced Macbeth and arose his greed and desire on power. Thus, we can see that olden day's stereotyping upon women as helpless, soft are not true.
In conclusion, Macbeth is a play where it portrayed the power of one can have, and how violent people can turn out to be in order to achieve their motive.

Open text and closed text

Has anyone heard of an open text? Does anyone know about a closed text?
In literature, an open text is a text where reader can read in the way they wanted. It consists of dialogues that can be voiced by any characters. This is due to an open text has no name or gender of characters, it didn’t indicate that there must be two or more speakers. This makes an open text can have female, male, children, young or old characters play in it. Hence, this helps directors to play this play in any form, as he or she can interpret in any way. Furthermore, an open text has no specific setting; thus it has no stage directions. An open text has more freedom compare to a closed text.
Now, a closed text is just the opposite of an open text. A closed text is restricted in many ways; there will have no ambiguous stage directions. This can be seen that it has specified characters, as all actors have their own role to play. Lets look at the example, taken from "Now Read On" by John Mc.Rae and Malachi Edwin Vethamani, of an open text and a closed text:

Open text
What are you writing?
Nothing.
[They drink]
Not writing?
No.
Why not?
Nothing to say.
Doesn’t stop others. Written out?
Yes.
[They drink]
Now, what are you writing?
Nothing.

Closed Text

Jonson : What are you writing
Shakespeare : Nothing
[They drink]

Jonson :Not writing?
Shakespeare : No

Jonson :Why not?
Shakespeare :Nothing to say.
Jonson :Doesn't stop others. Written out?
Shakespeare :Yes.
[They drink]
Jonson :Now, what are you writing?
Shakespeare :Nothing.

When we are given an open text only, it will be obvious that we starts to interpret where the dialogue takes place, who are or is the speaker(s).
While discussing with my partner, we came out with all sought of settings and characters. We thought it might be taken place in a pub, classroom, canteen or at home. We even came out with the idea of the character is a busybody who wants to know what other people are doing. Besides, the characters may be friends discussing on their homework, students’ discussion. In addition, we also thought of how would be the tone of the speakers. For us, an open text is just so ambiguous.
As we got the closed text, then only we realise that it is a conversation between two journalists. Therefore, from the two extracts above, we can differentiate between an open text and a closed text.

Shakespeare Wallah

This movie is very boring. Through the process of finishing watching this movie, I had dreamt of fishing. At first, when the movie started, I paid lots of attention and interest into it. However, as time passed by, the movie began to confuse me more and more. The number actors kept growing until i am confuse in the role they are plating. Eventually, I need to seek help from my my course mate to retell me the story. then only i came to realize that the content of the movie is not as confusing as it seems.
Through my understanding of the story, the word "Wallah" refers to the Shakespeareans actors. In the movie, it is portrayed through a family, consists of MR. Buckingham, Mrs. Buckingham and their daughter, Lizzie. They are poor and most of the time,they just spend their time on rehearsing and acting. when they get tired, they just sleep whenever they can find a place for themselves.
As the story continue, Lizzie fall in on Sanju, husband to Carlo. from there, conflicts arises when Carlo got to know their relationship as well as it goes to Mrs. Buckingham. Carlo force her husband to leave Lizzie, while Mrs. Buckingham wants her daughter to go to England.. Therefore, Lizzie faces internal conflict, she has to choose to stay with her loved one or listen to her mother. however, things just happen as if it was planned, Lizzie found out that Sanju neither stop her from leaving to England nor follow her there. Finally, Lizzie comes to conclusion that she just left to England.
From the movie, I realized that performers that are not famous are looked down. they even face discrimination. This can be seen in Mr. Buckingham asking MR. Lall to have his family put on a performance. Br. Buckingham is turned down as Mr. Lall is looking for better educated young actors. In addition, Lizzie audience whistle at her while she is acting, this shows that they have no respect to actors who are acting. In contrast, looking at Sanju's wife who is a famous actor, she own a house and have a servant. when she went to watch "Othello" played by Mr. Buckingham's family members, she attracted all the audience attention and even the reporters. therefore, there is a contrast between famous actors and not famous actors.
In conclusion, Shakespeare Wallah has fully portrayed the life of actors. we can see the life-style that MR. Buckingham's family is living as well as the life-style that Carlo is enjoying. moreover, this movie also shown the actors ways of solving conflicts and problems they in life.