Intro to Katie 101
You think you know, but you have no idea……..8 page projecto!
So I’m condensing my papers that I wrote these past few weeks. I have a bit more research that I want to do about the Bible “facts” to make sure I have them as accurate as possible even though the whole premise of my paper is that it is inaccurate…..confusing….it made sense in my head. My only concern is that it will sound like a thesis paper on religion instead of on Kevin Smith’s movie, but I guess that is the intended direction for our papers: To be more in depth than just a movie.
I’m finding that I want to include alot of some papers (mostly the latest ones we have written) and hardly any of other papers. I want to do some other research to fill in those pages. As of right now I have about 6 1/2 pages of stuff so I’m in good shape.
I’d like to get any feedback on how not to make it sound so religiousish and focus more on my question: Why he chose women to play the parts of God, and the last Scion. It may turn into an elongated thesis and include the prophets and the 13th black apostle too because they fall into the same category of changing ideas to create a twist in the religions. We’ll see. If you guys remember anything else of the movie or of religions that you think I should include, please let me know. Greatly appreciated! Good Luck writing!
Thesis Facts
Let’s make a list shall we?
Possible Thesis:
Kevin Smith portrayed the significant characters as women to inspire and show his own creativity and open-mindness toward the ideas of religion.
Dogma:
*God is a woman (Alanis Morisette)
*Doesn’t appear in the film until the end. She was trapped in a man’s body (ironic) due to a near fatal beating. She inhabited the body to take a vacation from Heaven to play skeeball at a boardwalk in Jersey.
*Does not speak because the voice of God can kill a mortal.
*Has a goofball personality and is shown doing cartwheels and headstands and giggles.
The Last Scion:
*Last decendant of Jesus Christ. Quote from 13th apostle says that she is the “great, great……….grand niece of Jesus.”
*She works at an abortion clinic and is unable to have children herself.
*Has been chosen because of her heritage to stop the renegade angels from getting back into heaven.
*Her name is Bethany….similar to Bethlahem.
*The Da Vinci Code makes reference to the last Scion.
The Muse:
*Created for the movie to have an origin for the inspiration of the story of the Bible.
*The Muse actually comes from Greek Mythology.
*Portrayed as a stripper with writers block.
The Bible:
*Depicts significant people as white males.
*Dogma is based on Catholocism which uses the New Testament alot because they are responsible for writing it.
*Many passages in the Bible are taken out of context or taken literally by many religions, not just Catholics, when many of those passages are metaphorical.
*The Bible has been translated more than 2, 000 times.
*(ooooh I just found a cool website with lots of stuff on it about interpreting scripture!!! Too many things to list…..)
And those are my facts.
Catholic Kevin
The articles that I came across while researching my topic were about women in the medical field, dogmatic ideas, or why they use women in porn……….so I went with a good old fashion interview with the director.
Michael Atkinson interviewed Kevin Smith, better known as Silent Bob, before the release of his film Dogma. The interview focuses mainly on the controversy that the film brings with it. They talk about how the movie is different and similar to other movies such as “The Song of Bernadette” and “Last Temptation of Christ.” They also discuss Smith’s own upbringing as a Catholic and how that fits into the film.
“Wasn’t the guy we based all this on pretty much a “love one another” guy? In fact, if Christ did anything, he ministered to the minorities, to the bungled and the botched. Christ didn’t hang out with the elite and the pious. He hung out with hookers and tax collectors and lepers.” – Kevin Smith
Good thinking. Especially since that is what the Bible story tells us, but many religions misconstrue what He did for us as more than just heroic. Religions put Him in a limelight that he never was or intended to be in. This explains the use of a black apostle, a stripper for a muse, and a woman as God.
“If the Vatican was smart, they’d endorse ‘Dogma’” – Michael Atkinson
I don’t think that this movie was meant to teach. i think it’s used for exactly what it projects: young adult humor. I think if the Vatcian used it for anything, it would be to ward its flock of the people seen in the movie.
How did Kevin Smith get the idea to make this type of movie in the first place? Did something happen to him to change his thinking or question his faith? Why did he choose the charcters he chose?
PS. This was a tough assignment!!
Inspiration of a Muse
To choose one scene to answer a focusing question is pretty tough when it comes to Dogma. Every scene has some sort of flip-flop (ha! a dash!) of what the majority of us have been taught to believe. My focusing question is why Kevin Smith used women to portray roles in the movie that are otherwise known as men? I think I’ll choose the scene when they meet the Muse because that particular scene really spells out what is going on up to that point.
Bethany and her entourage have arrived at a Strip Club, out of all places, to find a muse named Serendipity. She explains that she has come down to get credit for her inspirations, but finds out that she cannot use her inspiration for personal gain. So she finds herself a womanly host body and a job as a stripper because at least she can make a buck or two. When she meets her new found friends she gives an explaination as to why things the way they are. She starts talking and keeps using “She” in reference to God. She stops to explain that when she wrote the story of the Bible (remember she is the muse, so she didn’t physically write it) that she meant for God to be a woman. The men that she inspired to write the Bible were all men and took it upon themselves to change Her into a Him.
I think this will be a strong point to mention because not only was God meant to be a woman and is portrayed as a woman in this movie, but the last Scion is a woman, and the inspiration for all creation is portrayed as a woman, too! Alison made a good point as well. A muse is never mentioned in the Bible. It could be that Kevin Smith created one because society was taught that we were created from amebas, the Big Bang theory, or as the Bible begins in Genesis “God created Heven and Earth……” He may have wanted to create his own beginning to creation, but as with all projects, they have to comes from ideas. To keep with the theme of biblical anarchy, he made the inspiration of creation a woman.
P.S. I’ll try not to make this a super feminist paper……..
In the name of the mother? the daughter? and the womanly spirit?
First, we have the Bible; written by many, but the King James version is used more often. Then we have Dogma; written by stand up comedian Kevin Smith. Total opposites with alot of similarities. Now there are all sorts of directions I could go with this movie, but I’m only going to pick one.
How about a summary for those who have not seen it. So there are these two angels named Lokey and Bartlby (sorry if I totally spell these names wrong….I promise I’ll get it right for my paper). Lokey was the angel of death at one time. Bartlby didn’t like all the killing of sinful souls so he convinced Lokey to quit and seek something less bloody. Since he quit, God sent them to roam Earth with us insignificant humans until the end of time. If that wasn’t bad enough, when the world ends, they get to sit outside the gates of Heaven forever!!!! Well, they find a loophole that says if they become mortal and pass through the arches of a certain catholic church, then their sins are forgiven and off to Heaven they go.
Meanwhile, their is a woman who we find out is the descendant of Jesus Christ who must be saught out to stop these two angels. Why? Because there is a catch to the two angels walking through those arches. Somewhere in the Bible it says basically that since God’s word is the last word, that means that the angels getting back into Heaven would go back on God’s word. And because of that, the world would cease to exist. So this last kin, Bethany (haha….Bethany….Bethlahem…..get it?), has to stop these two angels.
The journey goes on and Bethany and God (played by Alanis Morisette) end up saving existance.
Now my focusing question is why does Kevin Smith’s interpretation of a biblical soap opera depict God, Bethany, Muse all as women? As most of us know, the Bible portrays God and Jesus as men. I like that Kevin Smith portrayed them as woman and Muse even said that she wrote the story of the Bible for those people to be women, but the male writers changed it so that they would be men. I think that is very interesting coming from a woman’s point of view as well as a catholics point of view. Growing up Catholic, this sure puts a cool spin on the story that was taught to me.
I think it will be interesting for me to find what other people think of this topic and I am very open to suggestion if anyone has any.
Muzak’s Music
I actually wrote about how the music in Raising Arizona created the characters in the film so it’s funny that it does the same with O Brother. And it does. Raising Arizona used the banjos and down home music to create a comedic tone for what was happening. For example, during the robberies, which is a serious issue, they played banjos like you would hear at a country line dancing convention instead of loud, fast-paced action music. O, brother uses alot of old hymn style music to show both happy and sad moments in the movie. During the end of the film when the three men were about to be hanged, the old men digging the graves started singing. They sang in a way that you would imagine a funeral and assume that these men were going to die. Now, at the very end of the film when you find Ulysses gets his happy ending with his wife and children the girls start singing. They sang in the same slow somber tone, but because of their girlish voices it gave the audience a sense of happiness and closure to the ending. The two groups of singers could have sang the same exact song, but because of who was singing at that particular point of the film, it changed the who tone of how that moment was perceived.
I also would like to point out some of the irony in the film, which I think is what I will write about now. Anybody else change their focusing questions a million times before writing?….I totally do. It’s really annoying. ANYWAYS……..I do find it funny that the leader of the KKK rally was the man who was supposed to lead Mississippi into a revolution and make it a better place: Homer Stokes. Anyone in their right mind knows that the KKK did the exact opposite and made the world a crappier place, but this was set during the depression era and people didn’t know any better. I also thought it was funny watching the rally take place because the first thing I thought of was the Emerald City guards in the Wizard of Oz.
I think that the sarcasm in this movie wasn’t as prominent as it was in Raising Arizona, but it was there. Lines like, “He’s bonefied!,” and “We’re in a tight spot” brought out the humor of serious situation when in a real life scenario people wouldn’t react that way. There are more, but I don’t want to write a 6-page blog. I’ll save it for the 6-page essay.
P.S. Sorry this is late. I had one of those nights where I was so tired I didn’t know I had fallen asleep until I woke up this morning….very weird sensation by the way…..
Raising Utah….no, Leonard Utah….no, ooooohhhh butterflies!!!
I never thought that I would be seriously analyzing how crazy and mentally disturbing a comedic film is. Do I necessarily agree that it’s psychographic or that H.I. is schizophrenic? Not so sure about that.
I would like to point out that H.I. talks about himself dreaming all of these moments in the film, but the audience never is shown a scene that is cut-and-dry that he fell asleep or woke up from such a dream. We do see that he lays in his jail cell and listens to his cellmate talk over and over again. Then we see the camera focus on him and his thoughts, so it seems to me that maybe it’s more of a series of daydreams. What I mean by that is dreaming usually involves your subconscious making things up for you and a daydream is something that you can control in that moment.
You notice that when H.I. tries to steal diapers he isn’t successful and wasn’t caught. Stealing the diapers was his thought process on taking care of his family the only way he knows how. He could be coming out of this daydream when he is sitting in his chair at home empty handed because this big chase scene never happened.
I definetly think that most of these events that go on in this movie are made up in the imagination of H.I. Things like nobody getting shot during the action scenes, the hole outside the jail, the calm demeanor of the characters that play a minor role in the film, all would never happen in real life. When you daydream and can control the situation you are able to solve problems and consiously struggle back and forth with yourself . I think that is what H.I. does by justifying his actions with characters like Smalls or creating the thought to have the law enforcement, Ed, steal the baby.
He wants to lead a good, normal life, but he needs to learn to do that considering he has had nothing to do but go in and out of jail. He does this by righting all his wrongs before getting out of jail so he won’t do all the wrongs that he has already daydreamed about. So, psycho? I don’t think so. I think that maybe he just goes through the same struggles everyone goes through by decided right from wrong. It just may seem a bit schizo to you or I because we aren’t repeat offenders with a 4th grade education,or have a name that resembles a common American greeting.
PS…..sorry this was so long 
By the way…….
I thought I’d let everyone know that before you go looking for something cool to add as your blog theme instead of the ones given to you by the website…….DON”T GO LOOKING FOR ONE!!!! I spent all this time looking for a cooler theme to put on my blog and found out that all the themes available on the internet are for wordpress.ORG and are not compatible with wordpress.COM which is what we are using.
Just thought I’d save you guys some time
Raising Arizona Discussion
After watching the movie Raising Arizona questions about morality, humor, and content were brought up. I think I’ll try and write this blog as if it were my rough draft…..a very rough draft.
My topic to write about is not the tone of the film, but how the actions of the characters create the tone of the film. The plot of the film is very simplistic. A convict and his wife steal a baby, find that they cannot raise the baby responsibly, feel guilty about taking him, then give the baby back to his rightful home. I took this movie as very character based instead of plot based because we learn a great deal about the characters and how they portray themselves throughout the film.
One obvious example that the characters portray is what I’d like to call “serious sarcasm.” Nathan Arizona, Sr. uses the press conference to promote his business and didn’t even know which baby was kidnapped, “Nathan, Jr., I think.” If this were to happen in a real life scenario a parent would be hysterical and know exactly which baby was missing and it sure wouldn’t make you laugh while watching it. Another example would be how the movie used the robbery scenes as humorous scenes in the film. In most films with robbery scenes, you would hear screams and feel a sense of anxiousness coming from the victims. In Raising Arizona, however, the victims calmly did as they were told as if this kind of event happens all the time.
Another point you could look at would be how the music is used to portray a character. The music used for H.I. consists of banjos. I imagine an old southern man sitting on his porch and playing the banjo calmly as he is watching H.I. being chased down by the police after stealing diapers. However, when the Bounty Hunter, Leonard Smalls arrives in the scene the music changes to dark, operatic music. It makes him seem very comical because he looks like something straight out of some western movie and he is now a charcter in a movie about stealing a baby.
There are several other examples, but I’ll save those for my paper tomorrow because trying to get all my thoughts to sound correct in a blog just isn’t going to happen.
KT
Hi everyone. My name is Katie Bronzini, I’m 24 and I’m taking this class to apply for the Veterinary Technology program here at Pierce for Fall ’10.
I grew up in California and moved to Washington state in 2005 to be closer to my family, who left California a few years earlier than I did. I commute about an hour to get to school from Oakville. Oakville is about 25 minutes southwest of Olympia. I hit the gym on my way home from school and bartend at the Lucky Eagle Casino in Rochester on the weekends. I’m a busy girl.
In my spare time I like to play with my 2 dogs named after a couple of the Little Rascals: Buckwheat “Bucky”, a rat terrier, and Stymie a Black Lab/ Australian Shepherd mix. I’m an Animal Planet junky which, I think, will benefit my major. I’m also a WWE junky, which will not benefit my major. I’ve always been interested in animals, but never thought about choosing a career in it until now. I have also danced since I was 5 years old. I am trained primarily in classical ballet, but have done everything from Ballet to Hip hop, but I can’t tap my way out of a paper bag! Other than that, I spend my time at home with my better half, do my homework, and catch up on sleep.
That’s me in a nutshell and I’m excited to learn about everyone else and their interests, as well! Good Luck in this class everyone!
