Zach- DMB

http://www.metrolyrics.com/funny-the-way-it-is-lyrics-dave-matthews-band.html

For this post, I would like to comment on one of my favorite songs produced by a fantastic band, The Dave Matthews Band. “Funny the way it is” is one of the hit songs on their album, “Big Whiskey and the Groo Grux King”. The lyrics is basically a list of dichotomies that present opposing ideas in the world. This is more on a global scale than America, per say, however I think the idea behind it can tie into my paper. There is a different conception of how life truly is to different people. I think that Dave Matthews speaks on the unfairness in the world, “funny the way it is, somebody’s going hungry while someone else is eating out”; which is an example of an opposing unfairness in the world. I’m not sure how exactly the lyrics will tie into the paper but I thought that the music made sense and is was inspiring to my thoughts.

Zach- American Dream in Literature

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/111892/the_american_dream_in_literature_pg2.html?cat=38

This is an interesting article that is most important in listing several pieces of literature, particularly novels that will be used in my research paper regarding the American dream. This includes Of Mice and Men, The Great Gatsby, etc. It also influenced my idea of what this “dream” can be defined as. Although it only provided a little insight, it was powerful in stating the conclusion as a question… “What is the American Dream”. I think that, truly, it is nobody’s place to define it, but rather, to show what it means to them. This concept is opening up my mind to many more ideas that were not originally going to be included in my paper.

Zach- Match Point

http://www.bing.com/videos/watch/video/match-point-trailer/91fee091cf3dba7f267291fee091cf3dba7f2672-764715008815?q=match+point&FROM=LKVR5&GT1=LKVR5&FORM=LKVR8

This is the trailer for the Woody Allen film, Match Point, made in 2005. It is a movie that shows a different perspective of the American Dream. Rather than working up the social ladder, the main character gets quite lucky and marries into the fame and fortune of a “Utopian-esque” lifestyle. Critics claim that it instills many ideas from Theodore Dreiser’s An American Tragedy. This novel and movie provides a different perspective than The Pursuit of Happyness because it shows how a great and fortunate lifestyle could actually end up initiating negative consequences. Lust and luxury becomes overwhelming and quite devastating to the lives of the character’s portrayed in both sources.

Hannah - Mean Girls Trailer

The comedy Mean Girls (2004)

Zach- The Pursuit of Happyness

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_xcZTtlGweQ

Here is a trailer of the 2006 biographical film directed by Gabriele Muccino. Chris Gardner (Will Smith) is a salesman for a dying medical product that he invested his life in. The unfortunate events that follow are of his son and his life down a path that is quite devastating. Eventually homeless, Gardner must strive to become a different man in the busy and sometimes unforgiving country that we live. His son is who inspires him to become this man and initiates his strive for a better and more successful life.

This film adaptation of true events is key in discussing my thesis topic of the American Dream in the modern country. Here is a story, that takes place in the 80s, of a man who endured both the worst and the best consequences of American life. He witnesses the effects of a failing business in a capitalist, free-market society, eventually releases the ingredients for success in a particular area of interest, works hard, and moves up to a ranking occupation that improves his family’s quality of life. This whole idea will be a great base for providing information on this topic.

Matt - Fight club

Brief Summary : Fight Club is a 1999 American film adapted from the 1996 novel of the same name by Chuck Palahniuk. The film was directed by David Fincher and stars Edward Norton, Brad Pitt, and Helena Bonham Carter. Norton plays the unnamed protagonist, an "everyman" who is discontented with his white-collar job in American society. He forms a "fight club" with soap maker Tyler Durden, played by Pitt, and becomes embroiled in a relationship with him and a dissolute woman, Marla Singer, played by Bonham Carter

Source : Wikipedia

 http://articles.latimes.com/1999/oct/15/business/fi-22483

"No one in Hollywood doubts that 20th Century Fox's "Fight Club," starring Brad Pitt and Edward Norton, will have a strong opening this weekend--estimates range from $14 million to $17 million. But many believe the movie will face an uphill battle sustaining itself in the marketplace and appealing to people beyond its hard-core audience of 18-to-30-year-old males due to its graphically violent content."

Matt - American History X Clips

Brief Summary: The film tells the story of two brothers, Derek Vinyard (Edward Norton) and Daniel "Danny" Vinyard (Edward Furlong) of Venice Beach in Los Angeles, California. Both are intelligent and charismatic students. Their father, a firefighter, is murdered by a black drug dealer while trying to extinguish a fire in a South Central neighborhood of Los Angeles, and Derek is drawn into the neo-Nazi movement. Derek brutally kills two black gang members whom he catches in the act of breaking into the truck left to him by his father, and is sentenced to three years in prison for voluntary manslaughter. The story shows how Danny is influenced by his older brother's actions and ideology and how Derek, now radically changed by his experience in incarceration, tries to prevent his brother from going down the same path as he did.

source: Wikipedia

http://dailyuw.com/1998/11/5/a0.americanx/

"Told from the perspective of the villain instead of the victim, it portrays the racist skinheads as more than just aimless, rage-filled punk, but rather as focused, deliberate punks. This is not to say that it's time skinheads got fair representation in the media, but it is interesting to see how easily these kids are made into racists. American History X allows us to understand them without actually sympathizing."

Robots-From imagination to reality

http://news.softpedia.com/news/Creating-Star-Wars-Inspired-Robots-149106.shtml
 The article basically outlines two types of robots that are under development today and based off of the similar 'bots found in the popular Star Wars films. The first bot being similar to that of the servant bot of C3P0 who interacts with humans and the objects around him. The second is a cable suspended bot that has the ability to scale cliff faces and is expected to be used in space exploration within our own solar system. The head of the project design, Dennis Hong, says that when he saw Star Wars for the first time he was amazed at the robots and that they captured his imagination. Now years later he is actually designing what has captivated his imagination since he was seven.

RL Iron Man

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=real-life-iron-man-exoskeleton

 Summed up this robotic suit is designed to enhance the users strength and in the case of amputees gain them back their missing limb. The suit draws similarities to the popular Marvel comic and film Iron Man. In which a famed weapons inventor named Tony Stark creates a robotic suit that aids him in fighting crime. Though this suit is years away form public usage it is a step in the right direction. Other companies of similar caliber are creating exoskeletons that also boost the strength of it user. 

Side note: The company developing the suit is name CYBERDYNE, the same name of the company the developed the fictional Skynet in the Terminator films.

Hannah - Media's Effect on Teenage Behavior (Blog)

http://ghroll.blogspot.com/2008/10/medias-effect-on-girls-body-image-and.html

Another link to a blog which cites research about how the media effects adolescent body image.

Matt - A Clockwork Orange - Trailer

                            

A Clockwork Orange is a 1971 darkly satirical science fiction film adaptation of Anthony Burgess's 1962 novel of the same name. The film, which was made in England, concerns Alex (Malcolm McDowell), a charismatic delinquent whose pleasures are classical music (especially Beethoven), rape, and so-called 'ultra-violence.' He leads a small gang of thugs (Pete, Georgie, and Dim), whom he calls his droogs (from the Russian друг, “friend”, “buddy”). The film tells the horrific crime spree of his gang, his capture, and attempted rehabilitation via a controversial psychological conditioning technique. Alex narrates most of the film in Nadsat, a fractured, contemporary adolescent slang comprising Slavic (especially Russian), English, and Cockney rhyming slang.
This cinematic adaptation was produced, directed, and written by Stanley Kubrick. It features disturbing, violent images, to facilitate social commentary about psychiatry, youth gangs, and other contemporary social, political, and economic subjects in a dystopian, future Britain.

Source: Wikipedia

http://www.visual-memory.co.uk/amk/doc/0012.html

"The problems really started when the press reported a spate of supposed copy-cat crimes. The first and most famous of these was the case involving a 16 year old boy called James Palmer who had beaten to death a tramp in Oxfordshire. As Edward Laxton reported in the Daily Mirror, in a convincing enough manner that the more reactionary reader might suspect that, A Clockwork Orange was terrible enough to influence even the most unassuming and hitherto quite innocent of young men, it was clear that the press were going to make the film even more controversial. "The terrifying violence of the film A Clockwork Orange fascinated a quiet boy from a Grammar School...And it turned him into a brutal murderer". Laxton continues, "The boy viciously battered to death a harmless old tramp as he acted out in real life a scene straight from the movie A Clockwork Orange"[31] "

Hannah - Little Miss Sunshine clip: "She Won"

http://www.vh1.com/video/movies/125269/she-won.jhtml#movieId=1522809

The film Little Miss Sunshine exemplifies the meaning of "beauty" associated with today's girls' perception of body image. The character Olive is a young girl who participates in beauty pageants because they make her feel important and she likes to win. Her desire to win is often pushed resiliently by her father who is falsely "winning" in his own career when he cannot "score the big deal" that he has been raving about, putting more pressure on the family's financial situation. Olive is not exactly the type of little girl you would associate with competing in beauty pageants and that is what makes the film's message so compelling. Olive has gnarly hair, wears big round grandma glasses, sports a sweatband on her head, is a little chubby, and doesn't have a sense of fashion. Olive is probably the most unique of all the girls she competes against and she never seems to get the message that she is not like the rest of them until the Little Miss Sunshine pageant. The girls who compete at the Little Miss Sunshine pageant are literally under the age of 10 and have fake spray tans of that nasty color orange that many girls in today's society aspire to look like (basically a health hazard in the making). The images of the other girls at the pageant are drastically different than what Olive is portrayed as. Olive becomes discouraged before her performance but realizes that it is what makes her unique that truly makes her a "winner". When she performs her talent everyone in the audience is mortified as she is dancing explicitly to Rick James' "Super Freak", a dance that her recently deceased grandfather had taught her. Olive is thus disqualified from the competition but her moral isn't affected.

This film really shows what the true perception of beauty is in the media today. If beauty wasn't hailed as being tan, blonde, skinny, and covered in makeup and accessories then why would these young girls in the pageants be dressing like future prostitutes of America? The answer is in itself, just look at how the sponge-like minds of today's youth react to the garbage they see and hear.

Hannah - CNN Blog About Adolescent Body Image

http://www.cnn.com/HEALTH/blogs/paging.dr.gupta/2007/08/pre-teen-body-image-issues.html

This blog post from a CNN Blog written by Dr. Gupta touches on the ever apparent body image ideals that young girls are expressing today...such as calling themselves fat when in reality they are not. In this post Dr. Gupta talks about how young pre-teens are feeling more pressure to be "thin" and that the root of the problem stems from what they see and hear from the media as well as what they hear and see in their own family dynamics. Gupta writes about how girls perceive body image as it is glorified in magazines, television shows, music videos, and other forms of popular culture.

Hannah - Seventeen Magazine "Body Peace Treaty"

Body Peace Treaty


Seventeen Magazine is a popular publication amongst the teen girl demographic. The magazine is not much different than the typical teen magazine which often is based around the usual teenage dilemmas, boy troubles, advice about school and family, and interesting stories about "girls like you." What makes Seventeen unique is the efforts that the magazine editors have taken in rallying up girls with low self esteem and making them believe that they actually are worth something. As teenagers, many girls' doubts and insecurities focus around their body image as it is apparent that the media targets us as a main source of business. The Body Peace Treaty brings girls together to accept themselves as they are and to move past the aesthetic aspect of being "what a girl should be" (aka what the media is telling us) and becoming comfortable in who we actually are.

Page from Seventeen Magazine promoting the Body Peace movement by showcasing female celebrities in today's media who are often associated with being strong women and demonstrating characteristics that deem them the type of women who "know who they are" and have confidence in themselves and their beliefs.