This is the embedding code
<iframe src="www.slideshare.net/slideshow/embed_code/32287030" width="425" height="355" frameborder="0" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" scrolling="no" style="border:1px solid #CCC; border-width:1px; margin-bottom:5px; max-width: 100%;" allowfullscreen> </iframe> <div style="margin-bottom:5px"> <strong> <a href="www.slideshare.net/Kazmania/unfamiliar-text-exam-freak-out-32287030" title="Unfamiliar text exam freak out" target="_blank">Unfamiliar text exam freak out</a> </strong> from <strong><a href="//www.slideshare.net/Kazmania" target="_blank">Karen Mills</a></strong> </div>
CONTENTS
Material on this page:
a) General literature resources
b) Macbeth notes; comments; you tube clips
c) Making Connections - resources, book lists, copies of poetry, articles about films and TV series Breaking bad
d) Shawshank Redemption film - notes
a consideration of the limitations of a man's life;
the shortness of time;
the 'play' called life;
our motivations and the influences on us;
how we see ourselves and how we present ourselves to others;
the balance of good and evil, God and the devil in humankind.
Macbeth -'valiant Macbeth', 'noble Macbeth' - allows himself to give in to 'vaulting ambition' and kills a king to become a king. In so doing he loses: friendship, his beloved wife, respect, honour and integrity and, finally, his life. The tragedy is in the potential for greatness he had. Once he chose to murder Duncan he chose destruction of the greatness and glory and goodness he could have had, he chose a path he could not come back from. His final soliloquy before he faces MacDuff shows us a man who has lost all joy in life, who is in utter despair and for whom life has turned to ash.
He feels regret immediately he has done the deed :
Had I but died an hour before this chance, I had lived a blessèd time,
"Wake Duncan with thy knocking! I would thou could'st!"
but this is just a small part of the suffering to come.
The Tomorrow speech is a masterpiece of poetry and playwriting. The first You tube clip is a wonderful interpretation of this speech by Patrick Stewart ( Star Trek Capt). The second clip below has a very young Ian McKellen (Gandalf) analysing the words of the speech and explaining the art of acting before delivering his version.
In this speech we see how his choices have destroyed Macbeth - emotionally he is dead - he has lost all joy in life.
Various online summaries and analyses are available. Some are quite superficial and none will replace your own thinking, discussing and writing about the text. I am inserting some links below fro you to go to to access these.
This task requires you to discussfour texts in terms of similarity of ideas or dissimilarity of ideas (=theme). You should be able to see the different ways a similar idea is presented (= author/director's role)or how certain actions on the part of key characters lead to similar or different consequences. You could discuss audience reaction (= how you feel/ what you think)
The task and instructions are on the document below:
The four aspects I feel would be most useful to discuss are these:
Choices and their consequences
The frailness/ weakness of mankind
Tragedy as a genre
The lure of power
Other connections could be
Man's innate savagery
Violence -
The good and evil nature of man is always at war with itself.
Make up your own statement around these thematic ideas for your own hypothesis
Some suggested texts to compare because either similar or different:
NOVELS:
Lord of the Flies - William Golding - a novel of savagery lest loose and choices
The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde This is also available as a film http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/174 = link to download book free from the Gutenberg Project - this is legal.
The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
MOVIES
Schindler's List - a film about a man who makes positive choices set against a backdrop of violence
The Kite Runner - movie version
POETRY- two of these will be discussed in class
OZYMANDIAS
by Percy Bysshe Shelley
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shatter'd visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamp'd on these lifeless things,
The hand that mock'd them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains: round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
The Road Not Taken
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim
Because it was grassy and wanted wear,
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less travelled by,
And that has made all the difference.
Robert Frost
The Dark Knight (film)
The link between this film and Macbeth is quite slight but it could be discussed with its links to ambition. Possibly the ambition to preserve innocence and honour that is wrongly directed and uses dubious methods to achieve good ends could be seen as just as destructive as Macbeth's selfish ambitions.What do you think?
This film has also been seen as an allegory of shifting moral standards in modern America post 9/11 terror attacks. The article below analyses the film in this light. Read this for interest :
The Dark Knight: An Allegory of America in the Age of Bush?
by Ron Briley Mr. Briley is Assistant Headmaster, Sandia Preparatory School.
As the news media prepares for its coverage of the political conventions and the selection of Vice-Presidential running mates, the conventional wisdom is that it is now time to replace such trivial concerns as the summer blockbuster at the local multiplex with a serious examination of Presidential and Congressional politics. A closer scrutiny of this summer’s film viewing, however, may reveal some troubling undercurrents within the culture which are worthy of more intellectual contemplation.
Both critics and film audiences have embraced director Christopher Nolan’s latest incarnation of the lucrative Batman franchise, The Dark Knight. The film’s opening weekend gross established box office records, and the film exhibits the potential to surpass Titanic as the most commercially successful film in cinema history. Critics have also lauded the film, suggesting that The Dark Knight is an action film worthy of Oscar consideration for its production values and performances, most notably the late Heath Ledger as the Joker. The Dark Knight also attracts younger, repeat viewers who are likely more drawn to the film’s special effects rather than character analysis and the pop psychology of good versus evil. Nevertheless, The Dark Knight’s popularity may also reflect a collective discomfort and ambiguity regarding the Bush administration’s response to 9/11 by declaring a war on terror and turning to the dark side of torture and rendition.
The film’s politics seem to suggest that Americans want to maintain the myth of national innocence but secretly acknowledge that the extralegal excesses of the Bush administration may be necessary to fight evil. Such a reading of the film raises disturbing questions regarding the future of civil liberties and freedoms long cherished by the American people and suggests that the failure of political campaigns to more directly raise issues of surveillance and torture may place our rights and liberties at peril.
In The Dark Knight, Gotham City is threatened by an organized crime syndicate seeking to gain control over the city’s financial institutions and money supply. These are ordinary criminals whose motivation is greed, and the authorities are seemingly able to formulate a response to this threat. The Joker is another matter altogether. His penchant for evil poses dire consequences for his partners in crime, the innocent citizens of Gotham City, the local authorities, and the caped crusader vigilante. There is no room to negotiate or reason with the Joker. The film portrays the Joker as an evil character whose motivation has no material basis; he simply takes delight in terrorizing others. He fits the Bush definition of Osama Bin Laden and Islamic terrorism. There is no justifiable critique of American foreign policy for imperialistic designs or expropriating scarce global resources while much of the world’s population lives in abject poverty. The only possible explanation for terrorism, in the eyes of Bush, is an irrational hatred and jealousy for American freedom. The terrorist is also blood thirsty. For example, the Joker captures one of the amateur vigilantes attempting to emulate Batman, and he proceeds to make a gory video of the man’s execution. Any correlation with the video beheading of reporter Daniel Pearle seems rather obvious.
The Joker as terrorist also assumes that everyone, when put to the test, shares his perverted values. For example, the Joker places explosives aboard two ships—one holds policemen and convicts being dispatched to a new source of confinement, while the other contains city residents seeking to flee the violence of the Joker. Threatening to destroy both vessels, the Joker asserts that if the occupants of either ship use a remote control device to detonate the other vessel, those passengers will be spared. This diabolical plan, however, is thwarted by the convicts who toss the remote into the murky water and a businessman who is unable to bring himself to destroy the convict ship. The Joker fails to understand such nobility, sacrifice, and innocence.
The film’s overall take on American innocence, nevertheless, is more complex and focuses upon the relationship among District Attorney Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart), Batman/Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale), and Police Commissioner James Gordon (Gary Oldman)—and to create an appropriate love triangle, Dent and Batman/Wayne are both in love with prosecutor Rachel Dawes (Maggie Gyllenhaal). Batman is a vigilante who works outside the law in order to combat crime; operating in the dark policy corridors to which Vice-President Dick Cheney alluded in speeches following 9/11. Gordon also believes that in order to fight evil it is sometimes necessary to make compromises such as maintaining some detectives with questionable backgrounds on his staff. Here, one might consider some of the authoritarian regimes in places like Azerbaijan which have joined the Bush coalition of the willing in Iraq.
Dent, on the other hand, is a firm believer that working within the system and adhering to strict moral standards is the best way to confront organized crime or the terrorism of the Joker. The courageous Dent appeals to the best instincts of Gotham City residents. These are the egalitarian principles espoused in the Declaration of Independence and for which Americans supposedly fought in World Wars I and II as well as the Cold War. To desert such principles would undermine our higher moral purpose and reduce us to the level of our enemies—a slippery slope of moral relativism. Yet, this is certainly the approach chosen by the Bush administration in Guantanamo, extraordinary rendition, and the culture of terror—although officially the practice of torture must be denied.
What is so troubling in The Dark Knight is that Dent eventually becomes convinced that terror cannot be fought by conventional means, and he goes over to the dark side. Dent’s moral descent begins when he is unable to save the life of Rachel. The Joker has an explosive timing device attached to both Rachel and Dent, whom he holds captive. Meanwhile, the authorities have incarcerated the Joker, but he refuses to reveal the location of his doomed kidnap victims. With time expiring, Batman attempts to beat the information out of the Joker who takes delight in the breakdown of the legal order. This defense of saving lives is, of course, presented by the Bush administration to rationalize the practice of torture. Nevertheless, many professional interrogators question whether such tactics really provide good information and save lives. And in The Dark Knight, the beating of the Joker is unable to prevent Rachel’s death and serious injury to Dent.
His face horribly burned, Dent, disconsolate over the death of Rachel, gives himself over to revenge. He learns that Gordon’s compromised detectives cooperated with the Joker, and Dent goes on a killing spree to eliminate these law enforcement officers. Only another vigilante can stop Dent, and Batman intervenes to prevent the deranged former prosecutor from killing Commissioner Gordon and his family. When Dent is killed, Batman and Gordon conspire to hide the crimes he committed. Batman explains that the illusion of innocence and good represented by Dent must be preserved as the people of Gotham City need to believe in the moral principles he espoused. Yet, in reality extraordinary means, such as Batman locating the Joker by gaining access to all telephone communications in the city, are often required to fight evil, but they should not be publicly acknowledged so that illusions of innocence may be maintained. Accordingly, Dent is buried as a hero, while Batman takes the blame for Dent’s illegal activities. The Dark Knight concludes with Batman pursued as an outlaw vigilante.
Reading the film as a political allegory may lead to the disturbing conclusion that the policies of torture pursued by the Bush administration represent the only means to combat the evil of terrorism. George Bush becomes the Dark Knight who is repudiated by the public but whose actions have saved us, and at some future date, his decisions, like those of Harry Truman in the Cold War, will be celebrated by historians and the public. The logic of this popular culture blockbuster film encourages American to embrace the post 9/11 journey to the dark side. But George W. Bush is no caped crusader, and the policies of torture employed by the United States lack the nobility of comic book heroes. More realistic investigations into how the American principles of justice and civil liberties have been compromised in recent years are presented in such documentary films as Taxi to the Dark Side and Standard Operating Procedure. Read as political allegory, The Dark Knight raises some troubling questions regarding America’s role in the post 9/11 world which we would all do well to contemplate during a Presidential election.
- See more at: http://hnn.us/article/53504#sthash.HIQBk4Ia.dpuf http://hnn.us/article/53504
Another poem by Robert Frost:
‘Out, Out—’
By Robert Frost
The buzz saw snarled and rattled in the yard
And made dust and dropped stove-length sticks of wood,
Sweet-scented stuff when the breeze drew across it.
And from there those that lifted eyes could count
Five mountain ranges one behind the other
Under the sunset far into Vermont.
And the saw snarled and rattled, snarled and rattled,
As it ran light, or had to bear a load.
And nothing happened: day was all but done.
Call it a day, I wish they might have said
To please the boy by giving him the half hour
That a boy counts so much when saved from work.
His sister stood beside him in her apron
To tell them ‘Supper.’ At the word, the saw,
As if to prove saws know what supper meant,
Leaped out at the boy’s hand, or seemed to leap—
He must have given the hand. However it was,
Neither refused the meeting. But the hand!
The boy’s first outcry was a rueful laugh,
As he swung toward them holding up the hand
Half in appeal, but half as if to keep
The life from spilling. Then the boy saw all—
Since he was old enough to know, big boy
Doing a man’s work, though a child at heart—
He saw all was spoiled. ‘Don’t let him cut my hand off—
The doctor, when he comes. Don’t let him, sister!’
So. But the hand was gone already.
The doctor put him in the dark of ether.
He lay and puffed his lips out with his breath.
And then—the watcher at his pulse took fright.
No one believed. They listened to his heart.
Little—less—nothing!—and that ended it.
No more to build on there. And they, since they
Were not the one dead, turned to their affairs.
What do you think the messages of this poem are?
How can this link to the play Macbeth?
BREAKING BAD TV SERIES (Note the first few series are Restricted 16 - the one series is Restricted 18) We will only watch the age appropriate scenes)
The clearest parallel with Macbeth is the innovative and acclaimed new series Breaking Bad. The central character is Walter White who starts as a very ordinary family man suddenly diagnosed with cancer. The treatment will be very very expensive. He is not wealthy. He teaches chemistry at a high school and is not particularly effective in this role. His brother in law is a policeman who is popular and successful. Walter finds a solution to his problems by deciding to manufacture drugs as he is a chemistry teacher and knows how to do it. The film is designed to be quite satirical and has a lot of black humour. Initial scenes show him being mocked by students, his wife does not think much of him, he seems frustrated and embarrassed by his own failings. His foray into the drug world is a farce to begin with - all sorts of dreadful and violent things happen but as time goes by we see him changing significantly. We may look at one of the initial episodes and then one where he steps really far over the line and makes a choice and after that read about the ending of the series so that you can discuss the effects of choices and the effects of violence on a man. By the end this is a very different person from the one who started out initially to provide for his family and save his own life. The "good" man is lost but enough of his original character show through in places so that we do not totally lose sympathy for him despite his terrible actions - a good point to compare with Macbeth.
Walter White at the beginning of his journey - muddled, desperate, fairly innocent
THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION directed by Frank Darabont
The link to the website below takes you to a summary article which details what happens and contains most of the key quotes you need as well as some discussion of themes and film techniques
External exams:
2.1 Written text(s) study - 4 credits(Reading and Writing literacy) MACBETH
2.2 Film/ Visual text study -4 credits (Writing literacy)
2.3 Unfamiliar texts - 4 credits Reading and Writing literacy)
Internal Assessments
2.4 Writing Portfolio (at least two pieces completed and achieving) 6 credits (Writing literacy)
2.5 Construct an oral/visual presentation 3 credits
2.8 Making Connections essay
2.3 Resources
Video about the use of language (warning contains some swearing)Euphemisms
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vuEQixrBKCc#t=151
Slide Share powerpoint on Unfamiliar Texts - hints and tips
This is the link
http://www.slideshare.net/Kazmania/unfamiliar-text-exam-freak-out-32287030
Slide share on terminology and effects
http://www.slideshare.net/Kazmania/unfamiliar-text-27904757?related=1This is the embedding code
<iframe src="www.slideshare.net/slideshow/embed_code/32287030" width="425" height="355" frameborder="0" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" scrolling="no" style="border:1px solid #CCC; border-width:1px; margin-bottom:5px; max-width: 100%;" allowfullscreen> </iframe> <div style="margin-bottom:5px"> <strong> <a href="www.slideshare.net/Kazmania/unfamiliar-text-exam-freak-out-32287030" title="Unfamiliar text exam freak out" target="_blank">Unfamiliar text exam freak out</a> </strong> from <strong><a href="//www.slideshare.net/Kazmania" target="_blank">Karen Mills</a></strong> </div>
CONTENTS
Material on this page:a) General literature resources
b) Macbeth notes; comments; you tube clips
c) Making Connections - resources, book lists, copies of poetry, articles about films and TV series Breaking bad
d) Shawshank Redemption film - notes
General literature resources
You tube rap clip on element of literatureRAP EDUCATION - Elements of a story
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c6I24S72Jps
MACBETH
A play about:
choices;
a fall from greatness to 'nothing';
a consideration of the limitations of a man's life;
the shortness of time;
the 'play' called life;
our motivations and the influences on us;
how we see ourselves and how we present ourselves to others;
the balance of good and evil, God and the devil in humankind.
Macbeth -'valiant Macbeth', 'noble Macbeth' - allows himself to give in to 'vaulting ambition' and kills a king to become a king. In so doing he loses: friendship, his beloved wife, respect, honour and integrity and, finally, his life. The tragedy is in the potential for greatness he had. Once he chose to murder Duncan he chose destruction of the greatness and glory and goodness he could have had, he chose a path he could not come back from. His final soliloquy before he faces MacDuff shows us a man who has lost all joy in life, who is in utter despair and for whom life has turned to ash.
He feels regret immediately he has done the deed :
Had I but died an hour before this chance, I had lived a blessèd time,
"Wake Duncan with thy knocking! I would thou could'st!"
but this is just a small part of the suffering to come.
The Tomorrow speech is a masterpiece of poetry and playwriting. The first You tube clip is a wonderful interpretation of this speech by Patrick Stewart ( Star Trek Capt). The second clip below has a very young Ian McKellen (Gandalf) analysing the words of the speech and explaining the art of acting before delivering his version.
In this speech we see how his choices have destroyed Macbeth - emotionally he is dead - he has lost all joy in life.
Patrick Stewart's version of the Tomorrow speech
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qNDWBWFrpjM
Ian McKellen explains the Tomorrow speech - a very good example of analysis
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zGbZCgHQ9m8
"Out out brief candle.."
Various online summaries and analyses are available. Some are quite superficial and none will replace your own thinking, discussing and writing about the text. I am inserting some links below fro you to go to to access these.
http://www.sparknotes.com/shakespeare/macbeth/
http://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/m/macbeth/macbeth-at-a-glance
http://www.shmoop.com/macbeth/
A discussion of various motifs/imagery from a website
2.8 Making Connections
This task requires you to discuss four texts in terms of similarity of ideas or dissimilarity of ideas (=theme). You should be able to see the different ways a similar idea is presented (= author/director's role)or how certain actions on the part of key characters lead to similar or different consequences. You could discuss audience reaction (= how you feel/ what you think)
The task and instructions are on the document below:
Click to open
Exemplars from NZQA
IDEAS
The four aspects I feel would be most useful to discuss are these:Choices and their consequences
The frailness/ weakness of mankind
Tragedy as a genre
The lure of power
Other connections could be
Man's innate savagery
Violence -
The good and evil nature of man is always at war with itself.
Make up your own statement around these thematic ideas for your own hypothesis
Some suggested texts to compare because either similar or different:
NOVELS:
Lord of the Flies - William Golding - a novel of savagery lest loose and choicesThe Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde This is also available as a film
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/174 = link to download book free from the Gutenberg Project - this is legal.
The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
MOVIES
Schindler's List - a film about a man who makes positive choices set against a backdrop of violenceThe Kite Runner - movie version
POETRY- two of these will be discussed in class
OZYMANDIAS
by Percy Bysshe Shelley
I met a traveller from an antique landWho said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shatter'd visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamp'd on these lifeless things,
The hand that mock'd them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains: round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
The Road Not Taken
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim
Because it was grassy and wanted wear,
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less travelled by,
And that has made all the difference.
Robert Frost
The Dark Knight (film)
The link between this film and Macbeth is quite slight but it could be discussed with its links to ambition. Possibly the ambition to preserve innocence and honour that is wrongly directed and uses dubious methods to achieve good ends could be seen as just as destructive as Macbeth's selfish ambitions.What do you think?
This film has also been seen as an allegory of shifting moral standards in modern America post 9/11 terror attacks. The article below analyses the film in this light. Read this for interest :
The Dark Knight: An Allegory of America in the Age of Bush?
by Ron Briley Mr. Briley is Assistant Headmaster, Sandia Preparatory School.As the news media prepares for its coverage of the political conventions and the selection of Vice-Presidential running mates, the conventional wisdom is that it is now time to replace such trivial concerns as the summer blockbuster at the local multiplex with a serious examination of Presidential and Congressional politics. A closer scrutiny of this summer’s film viewing, however, may reveal some troubling undercurrents within the culture which are worthy of more intellectual contemplation.
Both critics and film audiences have embraced director Christopher Nolan’s latest incarnation of the lucrative Batman franchise, The Dark Knight. The film’s opening weekend gross established box office records, and the film exhibits the potential to surpass Titanic as the most commercially successful film in cinema history. Critics have also lauded the film, suggesting that The Dark Knight is an action film worthy of Oscar consideration for its production values and performances, most notably the late Heath Ledger as the Joker. The Dark Knight also attracts younger, repeat viewers who are likely more drawn to the film’s special effects rather than character analysis and the pop psychology of good versus evil. Nevertheless, The Dark Knight’s popularity may also reflect a collective discomfort and ambiguity regarding the Bush administration’s response to 9/11 by declaring a war on terror and turning to the dark side of torture and rendition.
The film’s politics seem to suggest that Americans want to maintain the myth of national innocence but secretly acknowledge that the extralegal excesses of the Bush administration may be necessary to fight evil. Such a reading of the film raises disturbing questions regarding the future of civil liberties and freedoms long cherished by the American people and suggests that the failure of political campaigns to more directly raise issues of surveillance and torture may place our rights and liberties at peril.
In The Dark Knight, Gotham City is threatened by an organized crime syndicate seeking to gain control over the city’s financial institutions and money supply. These are ordinary criminals whose motivation is greed, and the authorities are seemingly able to formulate a response to this threat. The Joker is another matter altogether. His penchant for evil poses dire consequences for his partners in crime, the innocent citizens of Gotham City, the local authorities, and the caped crusader vigilante. There is no room to negotiate or reason with the Joker. The film portrays the Joker as an evil character whose motivation has no material basis; he simply takes delight in terrorizing others. He fits the Bush definition of Osama Bin Laden and Islamic terrorism. There is no justifiable critique of American foreign policy for imperialistic designs or expropriating scarce global resources while much of the world’s population lives in abject poverty. The only possible explanation for terrorism, in the eyes of Bush, is an irrational hatred and jealousy for American freedom. The terrorist is also blood thirsty. For example, the Joker captures one of the amateur vigilantes attempting to emulate Batman, and he proceeds to make a gory video of the man’s execution. Any correlation with the video beheading of reporter Daniel Pearle seems rather obvious.
The Joker as terrorist also assumes that everyone, when put to the test, shares his perverted values. For example, the Joker places explosives aboard two ships—one holds policemen and convicts being dispatched to a new source of confinement, while the other contains city residents seeking to flee the violence of the Joker. Threatening to destroy both vessels, the Joker asserts that if the occupants of either ship use a remote control device to detonate the other vessel, those passengers will be spared. This diabolical plan, however, is thwarted by the convicts who toss the remote into the murky water and a businessman who is unable to bring himself to destroy the convict ship. The Joker fails to understand such nobility, sacrifice, and innocence.
The film’s overall take on American innocence, nevertheless, is more complex and focuses upon the relationship among District Attorney Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart), Batman/Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale), and Police Commissioner James Gordon (Gary Oldman)—and to create an appropriate love triangle, Dent and Batman/Wayne are both in love with prosecutor Rachel Dawes (Maggie Gyllenhaal). Batman is a vigilante who works outside the law in order to combat crime; operating in the dark policy corridors to which Vice-President Dick Cheney alluded in speeches following 9/11. Gordon also believes that in order to fight evil it is sometimes necessary to make compromises such as maintaining some detectives with questionable backgrounds on his staff. Here, one might consider some of the authoritarian regimes in places like Azerbaijan which have joined the Bush coalition of the willing in Iraq.
Dent, on the other hand, is a firm believer that working within the system and adhering to strict moral standards is the best way to confront organized crime or the terrorism of the Joker. The courageous Dent appeals to the best instincts of Gotham City residents. These are the egalitarian principles espoused in the Declaration of Independence and for which Americans supposedly fought in World Wars I and II as well as the Cold War. To desert such principles would undermine our higher moral purpose and reduce us to the level of our enemies—a slippery slope of moral relativism. Yet, this is certainly the approach chosen by the Bush administration in Guantanamo, extraordinary rendition, and the culture of terror—although officially the practice of torture must be denied.
What is so troubling in The Dark Knight is that Dent eventually becomes convinced that terror cannot be fought by conventional means, and he goes over to the dark side. Dent’s moral descent begins when he is unable to save the life of Rachel. The Joker has an explosive timing device attached to both Rachel and Dent, whom he holds captive. Meanwhile, the authorities have incarcerated the Joker, but he refuses to reveal the location of his doomed kidnap victims. With time expiring, Batman attempts to beat the information out of the Joker who takes delight in the breakdown of the legal order. This defense of saving lives is, of course, presented by the Bush administration to rationalize the practice of torture. Nevertheless, many professional interrogators question whether such tactics really provide good information and save lives. And in The Dark Knight, the beating of the Joker is unable to prevent Rachel’s death and serious injury to Dent.
His face horribly burned, Dent, disconsolate over the death of Rachel, gives himself over to revenge. He learns that Gordon’s compromised detectives cooperated with the Joker, and Dent goes on a killing spree to eliminate these law enforcement officers. Only another vigilante can stop Dent, and Batman intervenes to prevent the deranged former prosecutor from killing Commissioner Gordon and his family. When Dent is killed, Batman and Gordon conspire to hide the crimes he committed. Batman explains that the illusion of innocence and good represented by Dent must be preserved as the people of Gotham City need to believe in the moral principles he espoused. Yet, in reality extraordinary means, such as Batman locating the Joker by gaining access to all telephone communications in the city, are often required to fight evil, but they should not be publicly acknowledged so that illusions of innocence may be maintained. Accordingly, Dent is buried as a hero, while Batman takes the blame for Dent’s illegal activities. The Dark Knight concludes with Batman pursued as an outlaw vigilante.
Reading the film as a political allegory may lead to the disturbing conclusion that the policies of torture pursued by the Bush administration represent the only means to combat the evil of terrorism. George Bush becomes the Dark Knight who is repudiated by the public but whose actions have saved us, and at some future date, his decisions, like those of Harry Truman in the Cold War, will be celebrated by historians and the public. The logic of this popular culture blockbuster film encourages American to embrace the post 9/11 journey to the dark side. But George W. Bush is no caped crusader, and the policies of torture employed by the United States lack the nobility of comic book heroes. More realistic investigations into how the American principles of justice and civil liberties have been compromised in recent years are presented in such documentary films as Taxi to the Dark Side and Standard Operating Procedure. Read as political allegory, The Dark Knight raises some troubling questions regarding America’s role in the post 9/11 world which we would all do well to contemplate during a Presidential election.
- See more at: http://hnn.us/article/53504#sthash.HIQBk4Ia.dpuf
http://hnn.us/article/53504
Another poem by Robert Frost:
‘Out, Out—’
By Robert FrostThe buzz saw snarled and rattled in the yard
And made dust and dropped stove-length sticks of wood,
Sweet-scented stuff when the breeze drew across it.
And from there those that lifted eyes could count
Five mountain ranges one behind the other
Under the sunset far into Vermont.
And the saw snarled and rattled, snarled and rattled,
As it ran light, or had to bear a load.
And nothing happened: day was all but done.
Call it a day, I wish they might have said
To please the boy by giving him the half hour
That a boy counts so much when saved from work.
His sister stood beside him in her apron
To tell them ‘Supper.’ At the word, the saw,
As if to prove saws know what supper meant,
Leaped out at the boy’s hand, or seemed to leap—
He must have given the hand. However it was,
Neither refused the meeting. But the hand!
The boy’s first outcry was a rueful laugh,
As he swung toward them holding up the hand
Half in appeal, but half as if to keep
The life from spilling. Then the boy saw all—
Since he was old enough to know, big boy
Doing a man’s work, though a child at heart—
He saw all was spoiled. ‘Don’t let him cut my hand off—
The doctor, when he comes. Don’t let him, sister!’
So. But the hand was gone already.
The doctor put him in the dark of ether.
He lay and puffed his lips out with his breath.
And then—the watcher at his pulse took fright.
No one believed. They listened to his heart.
Little—less—nothing!—and that ended it.
No more to build on there. And they, since they
Were not the one dead, turned to their affairs.
What do you think the messages of this poem are?
How can this link to the play Macbeth?
BREAKING BAD TV SERIES (Note the first few series are Restricted 16 - the one series is Restricted 18) We will only watch the age appropriate scenes)
The clearest parallel with Macbeth is the innovative and acclaimed new series Breaking Bad. The central character is Walter White who starts as a very ordinary family man suddenly diagnosed with cancer. The treatment will be very very expensive. He is not wealthy. He teaches chemistry at a high school and is not particularly effective in this role. His brother in law is a policeman who is popular and successful. Walter finds a solution to his problems by deciding to manufacture drugs as he is a chemistry teacher and knows how to do it. The film is designed to be quite satirical and has a lot of black humour. Initial scenes show him being mocked by students, his wife does not think much of him, he seems frustrated and embarrassed by his own failings. His foray into the drug world is a farce to begin with - all sorts of dreadful and violent things happen but as time goes by we see him changing significantly. We may look at one of the initial episodes and then one where he steps really far over the line and makes a choice and after that read about the ending of the series so that you can discuss the effects of choices and the effects of violence on a man. By the end this is a very different person from the one who started out initially to provide for his family and save his own life. The "good" man is lost but enough of his original character show through in places so that we do not totally lose sympathy for him despite his terrible actions - a good point to compare with Macbeth.
Walter White at the beginning of his journey - muddled, desperate, fairly innocent
Nearer the end - much more ruthless and controlled
But still touches of pathos and some of the "good side" coming through.
Three articles which discuss the links between Macbeth and Breaking Bad:
THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION directed by Frank Darabont
The link to the website below takes you to a summary article which details what happens and contains most of the key quotes you need as well as some discussion of themes and film techniques
http://www.filmsite.org/shaw.html