Gone Girl Extra Credit

Nick arriving home on his anniversary expecting to see his wife, Amy waiting for him but instead happening upon a scene of a struggle in his home. After the police are called it is concluded that Amy has disappeared, sparking a full scale search effort by the police, Amy’s friends and family,  and the entire town. As the story progresses the public turns against Nick and begin to accuse him of being responsible for Amy’s disappearance, the audience also begins to doubt him when it is discovered that he had been having an affair with one of his students for over a year. Throughout Nick’s struggle to discover the truth behind his wife’s disappearance we are given stories of Amy’s past with Nick, showing how they met and how their life slowly moved from one of perfect to one where she feared for her life. In Nick’s pursuit for the truth he follows the scavenger hunt Amy had left for him before she want missing and the story climaxes with Nick’s discovery that Amy was behind her disappearance all along and the audience gets to see the true Amy for the first time instead of the artificial Amy she had created in her diary entries to frame her husband. We then watch as Nick tries to use the media to get Amy to return to him because he knows without her return he will surly be prosecuted for her disappearance. Amy explains her masterful plan and we slowly see how she is deviating from it, and after she is robbed we see her lure in her former high school boyfriend to save her. We watch as Amy realizes she wants to return to Nick and we are aghast at the lengths she goes to in order to make herself appear as the hero upon her return, going so far as to slaughter her former boyfriend and frame him for her abduction. We are left with a queasiness as we see Amy return to her husband and pull of one final act of manipulation, artificially inseminating and impregnating herself, to forever assert her control over Nick and once and for all gain authority of the story of Amazing Amy.

This movie very closely followed the book, so much so that it even had the day count appear in the bottom left corner of the screen to show how many days had passed since Amy’s disappearance in each scene, similar to the chapter heading in the book. Both the movie and book had an amazing ability to warp the observer’s perception of the characters and force them to sympathize with certain characters through proliferating misconceptions and the facades of those characters. The movie took the contrasting entry’s of Amy’s diary and Nick’s experiences in the current day, that appeared in the book as back and forth chapter narrators, and beautifully followed this constant switching of viewpoint by showing scenes of Nick in present day and then having flashbacks of “Amy’s” past with her voice narrating the scenes and showing her writing the events in her diary. I am so happy that the movie successfully had the same climactic effect the book achieved with the bid revile that Amy faked her own disappearance, you could hear the audience gasp when they saw her riding on the highway in her run down car. My favorite part of the book that I’m very glad they kept in the movie was the candidness and attitude of Go. My favorite line of the book occurs when Go suggests what Nick should get Amy for their anniversary, seeing as the theme for five-year anniversaries is wood, saying, “You go home and fuck her brains out. Then you take your penis and smack her in the face with it, and you say, "There's some wood, bitch!" I almost couldn’t contain myself when the actress playing Go delivered this live perfectly, and throughout the movie she continued to portray my favorite character with breathtaking accuracy. Overall, I was very pleased that the movie followed the book so closely, but not totally surprised seeing as the author of Gone Girl got to write the screenplay for the movie.

            There were some differences, although small, in the movie compared to the book. The movie omitted the part of Amy’s scavenger hunt in which Nick visits the old town, and instead moves directly to when Nick figures out that the clue is leading him to his father’s house. This change does not really affect the storyline and was obviously made to save time so I have no qualms about the movie removing this excursion. Another small, and quite, insignificant difference is that in the book Amy cuts her wrists in order to get the blood on the kitchen floor to stage the crime scene, but in the movie she used a needle and siphons the flood out of her arm. Again, this is not a very important change and if I had to guess the change was made because the cutting of someone’s wrists is a more graphic and controversial image than using a needle and blood bags. Another piece from the book they omitted was the backstory with Amy and her high school “stalker,” this story was the first example of Amy’s plots to ruin the people closest to her and although I liked how it created a more in depth view of how long Amy had been manipulating and destroying people the movie didn’t seem empty without it. In addition they left out Nick’s drunken interview with the college reporter which in the book is influential in turning the public’s opinion in Nick’s favor, but this scene was obviously omitted to save time and further dramatize Nick’s big interview as his only chance to get the public on his side. Finally, I though the decision to make Nick’s lawyer black in the movie and completely omit his wife was an odd one because it seemed like they simply mixed the lawyer from the book, who was white, and his black wife, who was the one in the book who prepared Nick for his big interview. This change didn’t really affect the plot of the movie and therefore I was not greatly opposed to it, plus I in general was very happy with the actor they got to play the layer. Overall, none of the variations from the book were outrageous and the movie did an amazing job of adapting the text into visual scenes. 

Overall, the movie surpassed the book in its portrayal of the relationship and interaction between Amy and Desi. The movie emphasized Desi’s design to reform Amy and transform her back into his perfect image of her as a young girl. Similar to how Scotty forces Judy to change her appearance in Vertigo, by getting her new clothes and hair, Desi makes Amy return to the fictitious image of the cool girl she had played for so many years and had since had the pleasure of shedding on the run. Desi reinstituted Amy’s image by making her die her hair back to blond and cut it, buying her new clothes to wear around his house, making her stay inside so her skin would return to it’s pale homeostasis instead of it’s tainted tanned state, and depriving her of food so she could shed the weight she had gained in her hiatus. Desi treats Amy as a doll in his dollhouse that he can dress and manipulate to his deepest desires. Amy uses this obsession to lure Desi into her trap and seduces him into having sex with her so that she can frame him for her abduction and make it look like her bound her and repeatedly raped her. The final scene of Amy’s plan of fabricating this abduction so she can return to Nick, in which she has sex with Desi and then kills him is shocking enough in the book but the movie brings it to a hole new level. You see Amy take a butter knife and slaughter Desi, repeatedly slashing him, with his blood pouring and splattering everywhere, soaking her in his blood. This scene of horror was elevated in its cinematic representation and was the high point of the movie.

Although I enjoyed the movie very much overall the ending was not as satisfying as it was in the book. In the book you see the true perversion of Amy and the lengths she is willing to go to keep control over Nick and over the public’s perception of her. In the book you see Nick striving to build up evidence against her, working with the detective Ronda to gather evidence and writing a book with the entire account of his discovery of his wife’s insanity and her fabrication of her own abduction. Nick is ready to try and fight to bring Amy to justice when she pulls out a back-up plan she had put in place years ago, she uses the sperm he had frozen and had thought had been destroyed and artificially inseminates herself so she is carrying their child. Knowing that Nick will not risk the like of his child she has effectively assured her control over his actions and has silenced him forever guaranteeing that she is the only one with the power to create and propagate the story she wants the public to hear. The book does an amazing job of showing the masterfulness and villainous of Amy’s calculated action, but sadly the movie does not communicate this as well. In the book you are let into the perverted mind of Amy and are confronted with her desire to lead an artificial life with Nick in which they both act out the fictitious roles they promised to play in marriage and live “happily ever after.” Regardless, the movie did an amazing job of adapting the novel, Gone Girl, bringing you inside the twisted relationship of Nick and Amy Dunne, the couple who truly can’t live with or without each other.

The Black Cat Short Story Questions

1. Is the narrator of “The Black Cat” a reliable narrator?  How does it change the narrative if he is disqualified as a reliable narrator?

    I wouldn’t say the narrator of “The Black Cat” is a particularly reliable narrator because he is bias and favors rationalizing his behaviors as being completely ordinary, disregarding his freakish tendencies and making light of atrocities such as murdering his wife. Since he is disqualified a s reliable narrator the narrative must be read with the understanding that it is tainted by his viewing lenses, such as a warped sense of write and wrong, his high tolerance for violence, and his lack of guilt and sympathy.

2. Describe THREE major characteristics of the narrator that qualify him as a “freak”.  List a quotation for each characteristic.

    1. No Guilt: “The guilt of my dark deed disturbed me but little.” (19) Talking about his lack of guilt after killing his wife.

    2. Doesn’t Know Their a Freak: “Yet, mad am I not” (11) he states this in the introduction claiming that everything he is going to tell us is, “a series of mere household events.” (11)

    3. Violent: “One morning, in cold blood, I slipped a noose around its neck and hung it to the limb of a tree” (14) Talking about killing Pluto.

3. Why does the killer murder his wife?  Is it a crime of passion, an accident, or, on some level the fulfillment of something long desired?

    I though the murder of his wife is a crime of accidents because he is swinging to kill the 2^nd cat when she gets in the way of the weapon and it kills her instead of the cat. Although I do think it is odd that he shows more guilt and remorse after killing the first cat then after he kills his wife.

4. What is the significance of the fact that the story is about abusing/ killing a cat?  What does his willingness to harm a cat, whether he is under the influence or not, say about his character?

    A lot of physiologists site abuse of animals as a child as a tell tale sign of mental illness, lack of sympathy / empathy, and psychopathic tendencies. The hilling of an animal such as a cat tells of someone who wants to be in control and likes to prey on the week for small pets are not capable of putting up much of a fight and they genially trust you so they are easily deceived. The willingness to harm a cat tells us that he is willing to bring harm to an innocent and fabricate falsities about said innocent to rationalize him causing it pain and suffering.

5. What indications are there in this story to suggest that the killer had subconsciously desired to be caught and punished for his crimes?

It is indicated that the killer wanted to subconsciously get cause because even though he is home free with the cops he continues to talk to them and boast about the sturdiness of his walls and even hits the wall he made over just to show how confident he was, This over-sharing and bringing attention to where he hid his wife, all things that led to them finding her, show that he subconsciously wanted them to know what he had done, if this weren’t true he would have just shut up and he probably never would have gotten caught.

6. Discuss with a few examples how Poe establishes a mood in this story. What techniques of style or characterization allow him to create such a spooky mood?                                    Poe establishes the mood of the story by having the killer hurt the cat right away by injuring one of it’s eyes. Poe also eludes to the supernatural with things such as the smoke drawing of the cat in a noose after the fire burned the house down, the white fur in the shape of the noose on the 2^nd cat, the whole existence and appearance of the 2^nd cat, and the 2^nd cat’s role in getting the killer brought to justice by helping attract the police to where the wife was buried.

Oldboy Movie Review

     Oldboy is the story of a Korean man Dae-su Oh who is released, after being abducted and then imprisoned for fifteen years, and his mission to discover who incarcerated him and why so he can take revenge.

     Oldboy begins with the introduction of Dae-su Oh in police custody due to his public drunkenness. He is bailed out of jail by a friend, and then has him call his daughter because it is her birthday. After Dae-su Oh finishes talking to his daughter his friend takes over and that is the last his friend ever sees of him for he simply seems to disappear, leaving only his birthday present for his daughter, angel wings, deserted on the pavement. You then see Dae-su Oh live fifteen years in captivity, watching him slowly morph, get stringer, angrier, and more vengeful. You watch him slowly pick at his cell wall and make a hole to escape and then a day before he would have been able to break out through his hole he is drugged and dumped on the rooftop of a building. Having gained his freedom he is determined to take revenge on those who imprisoned him so he goes on a quest to find them. Along the way he meets a woman, Mi-do, who instantly entrances him, she becomes his aid in his endeavor for revenge, and his source of physical contact and sexual release, which he has been craving due to his extended solitary confinement. Dae-su Oh’s foe taunts him and challenges him to focus on figuring out why he imprisoned him instead of simply who he is. Dae-su Oh finally discover that his aggressor is someone from his high school named Woo-jin Lee, a boy who he had seen in sexual relations with his own sister; Dae-su Oh had started the rumor about their sibling insest and sadly this rumor ended in the sister’s suicide. When Dae-su Oh confronts Woo-jin Lee, Woo-jin Lee reveals what his true revenge was for Dae-su Oh, Mi-do is in fact Dae-su Oh’s daughter. Woo-jin Lee leaves Dae-su Oh with one final question, "My sister and I loved each other despite everything. Can you two do the same?" Subsequently Woo-jin Lee kills himself and Dae-su Oh pleads with the hypnotist,that originally tricked him, to erase his memory that Mi-do is his daughter so that they can live out the rest of their days happily ever after.

     The main theme prevalent throughout the movie is that of time. Throughout Oldboy clocks are used as transitions between scenes to emphasize the preciousness of time. Dae-su Oh spends fifteen years incarcerated, that time was stolen from him and he is on a mission to discover why it was stolen from him. Time is one of the only commodities that can never be returned for once it is gone it is lost forever, which is what makes it so precious. Another theme present the entire movie but only explained toward the end is the theme of incest and it’s consequences. Woo-jin Lee and his sister had sexual relations and that concluded with her death, while Dae-su Oh and his daughter are forced into ignorance and isolation. The story of Dae-su Oh and his daughter follows the Electra complex because Mi-do has sex with her father and although she does not kill her mother her mother is dead.

     Oldboy was greatly influence by Hitchcock, firstly is focuses on a man who is falsely accused. Dae-su Oh writes in multiple journals about his experience his cell and about who could have ordered his abduction and imprisonment. Dae-su Oh admits he has done bad things in the past but he is unable to remember a trespass that would warrant his punishment. He cannot fathom who is so hateful of him to impart such a punishment for he is simply unable to remember such a seemingly minuscule high school act that had such a large effect, so in his eyes he is the victim and he has the right to seek vengeance of his imprisoners. Another Hitchcockian theme present in Oldbot is that of frames within frames. This influence can most notable be seen by the artificial window with Dae-su Oh’s cell. This window portrays an illuminated photo of a farm with a windmill which eludes to a sense of freedom which is out of reach for Dae-su Oh. This intangible environment is a form of subconscious torture the prison contains for the place is just within reach but it is permanently unattainable.
     Overall, I really enjoyed watching Oldboy because it was so warped and ended by making you ask yourself the question of you could do what Dae-su Oh does and knowingly commit yourself to ignorance knowing that f you do so you will repeatedly be fornicating with you daughter for the rest of your life.

Vertigo Questions for Monday

1) Why does Scottie become so obsessed with changing Judy’s appearance to conform to his image of the dead Madeline?  What is the real image that Scottie idealizes?  

            Scottie becomes so obsessed with changing Judy’s appearance to confirm to his image of the dead Madeline to come to terms with his guilt for his hand in Madeline’s death. Scottie blames himself for Madeline’s death because he was unable to overcome his acrophobia and therefore failed to save Madeline from dyeing. When he found Judy, Scottie sought to have the opportunity to re-write history and this time save Madeline. Scottie forces Judy to embody Madeline in order to bring back the woman he loved and failed to save, Scottie does not love Judy but only idealized her for her potential to replace his beloved Madeline. The real image Scottie romanticizes is that of the fictitious Madeline that Judy merely masquerades as.

2) How do we as the audience feel about the way Judy looks?  What do we want her to look like?  What do you think this means?

            The audience sees Judy as a realistically pretty woman, while her Madeline persona is intangible and undeletable. The audience feels that Judy looks attractive and although Madeline is considerably more attractive she is only a fabrication of a man trying to kill his wife. We are introduced to the actress as she is masquerading as Madeline so we hold Judy up to Madeline’s impossible standards. Due to this initial appearance we subconsciously want her to continue this caliber of beauty, which shows the engrained shallowness of our society. Often we value appearance over character and our superficial nature is amplified by Scottie’s obsession with returning Judy to her initial appearance as Madeline.  

3) Discuss the resolution of the film.  Does Scottie resolve his issues by the end of the film?  In what way is Scottie still trapped at the end of the movie?  In what sense is he finally free? 

            Scottie resolves his issues by the end of the film when he finally is able to overcome his fear of heights and reach the top of the bell tower. In this very narrow view of the movie, as a simple story of overcoming vertigo, Scottie has full resolution for the movie is bookended by gaining the fear and conquering it. Yet at the end of the movie Scottie is still trapped by his obsession with Madeline for he is never able to accept Judy for who she is and make amends with her. He will now be forever haunted by his part in both covering up the true Madeline’s death and the death of his beloved Judy. The guilt he felt after he thought his Madeline had died shows his incapacity to deal with his failings and it is only logical to postulate that his part in Judy’s death would send him into another depression. Although by the end of the movie he is finally free of his vertigo and the object of his obsession, which ultimately brought him full circle to his life before the roof incident that the movie opened with.

4) Scottie tells Judy that she is his “second chance”.  In a movie that seems to be all about the present interacting with the past, what does this moment really mean?  Is it possible for Scottie to really get a second chance?  Why does Scottie repeat the refrain that “It’s too late…it’s too late”?
            In this moment Scottie reveals that he is using Judy as his opportunity to make up for his failing to save Madeline in the past, Judy is his “second chance,” to overcome his fears and be the hero. The entire movie does focus on the present interacting with the past such as Madeline fulfilling her ancestor’s past, Scottie re-living his vertigo, and Judy’s reverting back to her Madeline persona. Scottie has the chance to have a second chance with Judy but once he begins to change her into his fictitious Madeline he looses his chance for a second shot at love and dooms himself to re-live his past of being unable to save the one he loves. Scottie repeats the refrain that, “It’s too late, it’s too late,” because he has already been complicit in the murder of an innocent woman and his beloved is in fact only a fabrication that is not attainable.

Oedipus and Psycho Brainstorming

Two Paragraph Oedipus Response

Teiresias and Creon are correct that Oedipus “weaves” his own “doom,” in the sense that all of Oedipus’ decisions and actions lead to his demise, but the fact that all these choices were made in the attempt to avoid his foretold fate, Oedipus is also right in his claim that fate brought this curse on him. Unfortunately both Teiresias and Oedipus contradict their own statements, creating an underlying battle between free will and fate. Teiresias explains to Oedipus that, “it is not from me your fate will come / That lies within Apollo’s competence, / As it is his concern.” (Page 21) which conflicts his previous statement to Oedipus that, “You weave your own doom.” (Page 21) If Apollo has pre-decided Oedipus’ fate then how would Oedipus have the ability to have any hand in his own downfall, and how could he be held responsible. Can someone be held responsible for an evil they committed unknowingly, if so Oedipus’ ignorance would vindicate him. Teiresias further contradicts himself when he recognizes Oedipus’ sightlessness to the truth and the fact that a curse has been set upon him when he states to Oedipus that, “You do not even know the blind wrongs / That you have done them, on earth and in the / world below. / But the double lash of your parents’ curse will / whip you / Out of this land some day, with only night / Upon your precious eyes.” (Pages 22 – 23) Yet it is not only Teiresias who blurs the lines between fate and free will, Oedipus also sways between the two when recounting on the horror of his life.

             Oedipus continually insists that fate has brought a curse on him, blaming the gods for his fate. The instance where Oedipus questions, “What has God done to me?” (Page 71) shows that he blames God for what has happened to him rather than taking the responsibility for his own actions. Yet Oedipus contradicts himself in the Gods role in his actions with statements such as, “the god was Apollo. / He brought my sick, sick fate upon me. / But the blinding hand was my own!” (Page 72) in which he both places the responsibility of his fate on the Gods and takes ownership of his independent decision to punish himself. If the Gods and fate can be held accountable for the actions Oedipus’ took that led to him fulfilling his prophecy, then wouldn’t they also have to be responsible for his inevitable self-punishment, one that Teiresias even foretold.  Oedipus insists on taking ownership of his decision to blind himself, explaining, “This punishment / That I have laid upon myself is just.” (Page 73) yet this claim alludes to the existence of free will. Both Teiresias and Oedipus make statements for and against fate and free will leaving an ambiguity in the play over where the blame of Oedipus’ actions should be placed.  If free will exists then Oedipus can be held fully accountable for his actions, though a defense could be constructed based on the fact he was ignorant to the truth of his parents identities when he committed the trespasses against them. In contrast, if fate exists then all of the Gods planned all of Oedipus’ actions and therefore he cannot be accountable for any of his actions for the Gods are responsible for his decisions, and therefore responsible for the atrocities he committed. This fate verses free will debate is a prevalent underlying theme in Oedipus Rex and is the source of the uncertainty of who is to blame for Oedipus’ actions, Oedipus or the Gods.