Police and Social Media Question: 4

Social media networks and have been dominating over the last couple of years. The majority of people nowadays have facebook and twitter and we are constantly texting, posting updates on how are day is going, where we have been, where were going, pictures, events, you name it. If you are hanging around the wrong crowd or got involved in some criminal acts of some sort, be careful what you post. Police departments have realized that people let everything spill on these types of sites, so why not take advantage of it? Police officers can investigate you without a warrant, it's a gold mine of information. If you are doing something you aren't supposed to be doing, they can catch you.

 The Stoughton and Randolph Police have a crime technology called "tipsoft" that allows you to text crime tips. They also have a Facebook page with over 1,000 follows. “Unfortunately, the days from the old type of community is fading away. This is a new type of community,” he said. “We’re trying to make it easier for people to interact with us without coming into the station.”

Totalitarian Leaders Question:2

 These three totalitairan leadears are the top worst leaders ever. I chose them for this post because even thought these leaders are no longer living, there are people just like them living today. 

- Mao Ze-Dong

Mao Ze-dong holds the record for the most people killed by any tyrant, in the whole. His killings make Hitler's 12 million look like nothing. Ze-dong killed between 49-78,000,000 people.

Mao Zedong did nothing except killing innocent people which include factory owners, successful businessman, landlords and army officers. He would lie to his people saying  that the west is evil, wouldn't let people go to the west and if they did they would be sentenced to death. The people had no freedom, if somebody says 'Mao Zedong is bad!', that person was sentenced to death, as for song writers, he only wanted songs that said wanted 'Mao Zedong is the best'. He also won't let people do business and earn money and he claim that people with no money is the best and he accused rich people are class enemy. And on top of all that wouldn't let the citizen receive good education. 

Mao also lead a campaign of ethnic cleansing against over two million ethnic Japanese and Chinese of Japanese origin in North East China. The casualties were appalling and it was one of the biggest peace time acts of ethnic cleansing of the century.

- Adolf Hitler

I'm pretty sure that many people realized that Adolf Hitler was mentally imbalanced. Like Van Gogh he was an artist, but instead of killing himself, he decided to kill others. He categorized them people, jewish, homosexuals, and the handicapped and stripped them of their basic freedom and confined them in the ghettos. Hitler built concentration camps, he had millions of women, children and men gassed to death inside of his camps. Men,women,children and elderly were forced to do manual labor and they were continuously starved, tortured and even shot at. Between the concentration camps and WWII he killed 12,000,000 people.

- Benito Mussolini

Mussolini's road to dictatorship took longer than Hitler's, Mussolini took years to achieve what could be defined as a dictatorship. He achieved of power after the March On Rome in 1922 when he was appointed Prime Minister of Italy. As a dictator he made bad decisions. Benito Mussolini was one of of the founders of Italian Fascism. He used a lot of censorship in school education, he did not permit studies of other political parties such as Communism , to avoid future riots against Fascism. His main idea was the creation of a new type of man, to lead Italy and Rome to the new imperial glories. In all his ruling Mussolini killed around 300,00 people between Ethiopia, Libya and Yugoslavia. Mussolini attacked Ethiopia several times, even though he denied it, they used poison gas and attacked Red Cross hospitals.By May 1936, Italy had conquered Ethiopia. The worst decision that Mussolini ever had was to ally himself with Hitler because this union brought Italy to it's destruction because Italy wasn't prepared for a war this big.  

Old Novels and Plays in Modern Day: Question 3

There are many reference made to the novel 1984, written by George Orwell. There was a Apple Macintosh commercial with a "1984" theme,depicting an Orwellian dystopia, directed by Ridley Scott. At the end of the commercial a young girl smashes the tele-screen and the commercial says " On January 24th Apple Computers will introduce Macintosh, and you'll see why 1984 won't be like '1984'. " Another media reference is Hamlet by William Shakespeare. His plays are quotes a lot in newspapers, movies, commercials etc. In the 1995 movie 'Cluless' Hamlet was quoted. 
Heather: It's just like Hamlet said, "To thine own self be true." Cher: Hamlet didn't say that. Heather: I think I remember Hamlet accurately. Cher: Well, I remember Mel Gibson accurately, and he didn't say that. That Polonius guy did. 
Hamlet was also introduced in a episode of the hit animated show "The Simpsons", they take the play and put their own humorous spin on it. 

Social Networking Banned in Totalitarian State : Question 8

    

       There are a couple of totalitarian countries where their citizens have used the internet and social networks to resist the government. For example, Egyptians were speaking their mind on websites such as facebook, blogs, and twitter. They would talk and plot in these social networks to end the 30 year rule of President Hosni Mubarak. Social networks have been a problem also with the uprising in Tunisia and ousted President Zine el-Albidine Ben Ali. Twitter was a main part of the uprising in Iran last year. Although all these things have been banned they have found a couple ways ways to go around the ban. For instance,they have been voice tweeting, "Anyone can tweet by simply leaving a voice mail on one of these international phone numbers ... and the service will instantly tweet the message using the hashtag #egypt," Google explians. "No Internet connection is required."

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern : Question 6

The video clip I  just watched is from the movie "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead". This film was made in 1990 it shows Rosencrantz and Guildenster's side of the play Hamlet. These two characters are sent for from the King of Denmark to spy on Hamlet, to find out what is bothering him. They are not the smartest people in the world, the remind me of  Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Dum from Alice in Wonderland. They are really silly, they are constantly misunderstanding eachother and getting confused, they don't even know their own names.  The King obviously did a bad job a picking spies because they are really bad at it, Hamlet figures what they are up to right away. I enjoyed this because it gave more of a comic relief. 

The Taming of the Shrew

(Lily Brayton as Katherine in a production of The Shrew at the Adelphi Theatre, 1904.)

It's pretty amazing how many Shakespeare plays have been transformed into modern day movies. For instance, Hamlet was turned into the Lion King, with lions and a happy ending. Another example is the play, The Taming of the Shrew. To make a modern version of a Shakespeare play one would have to have a perfect mix of similarities and differences between the two, incorporating elements of both worlds. The creators of  '10 Things I Hate About You' did a great job of adapting the play and making it so many teens would be able to relate to. They pretty much used the same plot and most of the characters have the same name or something similar to the characters of the Taming of the Shrew, they have very minor differences. 

The main characters Kat/Kathrine, Bianca, Cameron/Lucentio or Cambio and Petruccio/Patrick. Not only do they have the same name but they also have similar behavior and personalities. The basic plots of Taming of the Shrew and 10 Things I Hate About You both involve multiple men wanting to be with a nice, beautiful girl named Bianca, but Bianca has a mean, older sister named Katherine that no one wants to be with. In both of the stories, the father of these two girls demands that Bianca not get involved with anyone until Katherine has. The men pay one of their peers to act as if he is interested in Katherine so that they can have a chance with Bianca.

In 10 Things I Hate About You, Cameron pretends to know French to be near Bianca. In Taming of the Shrew, Lucentio disguises himself as Cambio and does the same thing. Another similarity is Petruccio marries Katherine for her money, in the modern version, Patrick is payed to go out with Kat. Both of these men act as if they are interested in these women so that Cameron/Lucentio can go out with Bianca.

Here are some of the differences, Kat is a teenager but in Taming of the Shrew she is a woman. There level of relationship is different too, Kat and Patrick are just dating where Katherine is married.

In the end, Katherine ends up willingly being with the man that has been paid off, and thus “tamed”. This is another difference, Petruccio and Patrick “tame” Katherine in different ways. Petruccio is mean and disrespectful toward her. He he deprives her of sleep, he scolds her for everything she says and when she finds out that he married her for money she starves herself. Patrick on the other hand falls in love with her and persistently tries to be nice to her. When Kat finds out that Patrick was being payed she ignored him. Both methods worked, but Petruccio’s method would have been unacceptable in today’s society. There were not any major differences between the two stories, but there were some necessary differences to be made to fit the time period.

The final scene is Kat forgives Patrick and get back together, and in the Shrew Katherine is finally obedient.

In the movie version there are a lot of Shakespeare references and quotes like: 

"I burn, I pine, I perish." 

Was said by Cameron. 

[Lucentio's line from The Taming of the Shrew Act I Scene 1] 

V for Vendetta vs. 1984

 V for Vendetta vs. 1984

 " Fear became the ultimate tool of this government".  - V 

 When reading the graphic novel V for Vendetta and the novel 1984 you start to see how similar the plots are. Alan Moore who wrote V for Vendetta based his graphic novel on George Orwell's 1984. The world in which V (the main character) lives in has the government controlling everything for the media to what people could eat. V is a strong character he is they type of person the wouldn't exist in the book 1984. He is an extreme rebel, he tries to destroy the government by making all the people living in London to go to a special rally on the 4th of November where he will make parliament explode. Nothing like this could have happened in the novel 1984, V would have been vaporized even if he breathed the wrong way. 
The secret police are quite different in 1984 and in V for Vendetta. In 1984, the secert police are extreamly loyal to the inner party and dont expresstheir behaviors like in sexual desires unlike the secret police in V for Vendetta on page 11, they try to rape Evey. (Evey become V's friend later on in the novel) The book 1984 deals with a man, Winston Smith, realizing that his government is not what it seems. There is something seriously wrong, they control your house with televisions that never turn off, your thoughts, and on signs saying " Big Brother is Watching You." 

Big Brother doesn't allow people to love but the government, so basically getting married to someone you love is out of the question. You're dead.  Even though the V for Vendetta was based on George Orwell's novel, i liked V better. In 1984 I thought that Winston was going to get somewhere, make a diffrence. Instead he is simply brainwashed in to loving Big Brother/ government. 

Stephanie Bolster

     Stephanie Bolster was born in Vancouver and raided in Burnaby B.C, she now teaches in the creative writing program at Concordia Universtiy.

     Stephanie Bolster is the author of three collections of poetry. "White Stone: The Alice Poems"(1988) won the Governors General's Award  and the Gerald Lampert Award. "Two Bowls of Milk" (1999) won the Archibald Lampman Award. 

"Pavilion", appeared with the McClelland & Stewart in Spring 2002. She is now simultaneously co-editing a collection of essays on Canadian poems, editing the "Last and Selected Poems of Diana Breber", working on her fourth book of poetry and her first novel.

PORTRAIT OF ALICE WITH ELVIS

Stephanie Bolster
From:   White Stone: The Alice Poems. Signal Editions/Véhicule Press, April 1998

Queen and King, they rule side by side
in golden thrones above the clouds.
Her giggle and wide eyes remind him
of his first young wife, and his twang
never ceases to thrill her, so different
from the prim accents of men she's known.

She sings for him, "Hound Dog"
and "Heartbreak Hotel," and he turns
the Mock Turtle's song of beautiful soup
campier with each performance, hip-twists
till her eyes stream and she melts with laughter.

Sometimes they leave their airy realm
to share a strawberry shake at Burger King
in Memphis, visit the Tate Gallery in London
solemnly to ponder the Lady of Shalott
alone and adrift in her rowboat.

In rare arguments over fame, he cites
the Churches of Elvis, the Vegas tributes,
while she mentions the Alice shop in Oxford,
the Alice ride at Disneyland. He says more books
have been written about him, but she insists hers
are of higher calibre, her words are quoted
much more often than his. He calls up wax figures,
she teapots and tarot cards. Both delight
in their limited edition collector's plates.

For dinner they fry chicken, make tea and scones,
tarts filled with peanut butter.
He runs her a lavender bubble bath,
washes her hair, greases his own.

She lays her head against his chest
during late night TV, murmurs of the man
who gave her fame, and he of the woman for whom
he won his. She wants to sway
to the beat of his heart in her ear, slow
as "Are You Lonesome Tonight." In sleep
their tear-blotched faces could be anyone's.