TRL-395 Movies, Worldwide Events, And Personal Circumstances
18.04.2006 17:24 MST

• Workshop - 2 cr. elective credits available (general or TRL major)

• 10-31 May 2006

• 10 May - Dr. Dale Johnson's Montana Symposium Program Suffering and Gratitude
  11, 16, 18, 23, 24, 25, 30, 31 MAY - 7:00 PM 10:00 PM

• Lounge I Ursuline Center

• Led by: Cedric L. Heppler, Ret. NCSU Raleigh, NC

PURPOSE

Of the three elements in the title of this workshop, I hope that each student at the end of the workshop will be able to realize a clearer understanding of her or his personal circumstances in today’s world.There are many ways in which a person may realize a clearer understanding of oneself and one’s circumstances.

Certainly, religion is one such way. And there are the disciplines of literature, psychology, and sociology, to name a few others. It is the assumption of the instructor that regardless of the discipline that is used to achieve a clearer personal understanding of oneself and one’s circumstances, that the basic structure of such understanding will be visual, or, what I like to call, “imaginary.”By “imaginary” I do not mean based on delusions or illusions.By “imaginary” I mean that most of what we learn and retain throughout life comes through the “images” that we receive and process and structure our lives by and for.

There are no longer any persons alive today who could remember a time before the “movies,” a word that rolls off our tongues today with little historical context. If we looked in the right places, we could find a few persons who remember a time before the “talkies.”When the “talkies” were invented, some found the talking to be a distraction to being able to follow the story.And, there were “casualties” among the actors and actresses, for example, some handsome, well-built “leading men” had effeminate voices or thick foreign accents, and some beautiful, sexy “leading ladies” had voices that were so low in register, that the audiences rejected them.

However, at the right intersection, the “talking” “movies” can bring home a message of profound insight to a person’s understanding as real as if the insight were coming in “real” life.I feel that each of the movies that we will view and discuss has a point where “reality” breaks through.I realize that each person viewing the movies might not respond the same as I do; yet, I feel there is a basic world of images that we share and that even in disagreeing over certain points we will find that we are achieving further understanding of ourselves.

There are two dimensions of this workshop beyond the viewing of the movies.First, there are a few readings. Second, for each movie there are some questions and tasks that I will pose for the students to research prior to the viewing of the movie.

READINGS

• There are some basic books that I want the students to be familiar with. There are two that I would like each student to read:
  • Karen Armstrong, A Short History of Myth.
  • Lewis Mumford, The Transformations of Man.
• The following works I have asked to be placed on “reserve” for the convenience of the students
  • The Brothers Grimm, Fairy Tales.
• Sir Thomas Malory, Le Mort d’Arthur.
• Robert Graves, The Greek Myths.

The Imaginary World of the Talking Movies

• 11 May - A Secret Sneak Preview
  This first movie is so rare that I do not want to destroy the mystique of its significance by “exposing” it.I saw it the first time by pure chance, or by my “personal circumstances.”I had just come home from a date.I raided the refrigerator, watched the closing minutes of the 11 PMlocal news, and waited for the “early late Saturday night movie” to come on.I consider myself lucky for having been at the right place and the right time.
  
  GUIRAUT DE BORNEILH, @ 1138-1200
    So through the eyes love attains the heart:
    For the eyes are the scouts of the heart,
    And the eyes go reconnoitering
    For what it would please the heart to possess.
    And when they are in full accord
    And firm, all three, in the one resolve,
    At that time, perfect love is born
    From what the eyes have made welcome to the heart.
    Not otherwise can love either be born or have commencement
    Than by this birth and commencement moved by inclination.
    
    By the grace and by command
    Of these three, and from their pleasure,
    Love is born, who its fair hope
    Goes comforting her friends.
    For as all true lovers
    Know, love is perfect kindness,
    Which is born--there is no doubt--from the heart and eyes.
    The eyes make it blossom; the heart matures it:
    Love, which is the fruit of their very seed.
  
  Questions/Tasks.

  • How many times can “boy meets girl; boy loses girl; boy wins girl” happen in a “simple love story”?
• How and when does “temporal love” become “Love Eternal”?Can you “imagine” it?You’ll get to see the writer/director’s “image” of it in this movie.
  Suggested reading: Denis de Rougemont, Love in the Western World.
• Why were songs like “White Cliffs of Dover,” “A String of Pearls,” “A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square” important for the Allied war effort during WWII?What was the significance of the Glenn Miller band for the Allied War effort?What happened to the Glenn Miller band?How did Palestine become a “Protectorate” of the British Empire?Did Lawrence of Arabia have anything to do with Palestine as a Protectorate?Who was General Erwin Rommel?Who was General Bernard Montgomery?What significance did the two battles of El Alamein have in WWII?Is love between two persons stronger than tradition?

• 16 May -
  A] The Game
  “The Game” is an episode of Star Trek, The Next Generation;
   B] The Ryan Interview
  “The Ryan Interview” is an “one act” play by Arthur Miller, commissioned by Actors' Theater of Louisville
  Questions/Tasks.

  • When does youth realize its vulnerability and finitude?
  • When does old age become useless?What do youth and old age have to offer each other?
  • What is the significance and meaning of the stories of one’s life?
    For example: why is it important for an old person, when telling a young person a story about hunting fox one night years before, to say, “One night, up there on that road, we were hunting fox.And we had a bright moon.It made me think of how they were bombing London, especially on bright nights. . . .”?Could it be that the old person knew, even thought he might not be able to articulate it if asked, that worldwide events and personal circumstances have something to do with each other?

  
  
• 18 May - Breaker Morant
  An Australian movie that didn’t go over too well back in jolly old England.
  Questions/Tasks.How did South Africa come into being?Who first “claimed” it----meaning which Europeans first claimed it?Who were the Boers?What was the Boer War all about?  When was it fought?What did it settle?
  
• 23 May - Ruby in Paradise
  1993 Grand Prize Winner: Sundance Film FestivaL
  “Thinking outside the box” is called for with this movie.It is so subtle, it is easy to miss.
  Questions/Tasks.How easy it to achieve personal integrity?What is a “Thou Art That” experience?What is a “Lord”?What is “everything”?How are these questions related?
  
• 24 May - Modern Times
  A Charlie Chaplin movie in which some reactionaries saw proof that Chaplin was subversive, because the Communist movement in the States at the time was growing.It is ironic that although this movie was released in 1936, nine years after the “talkies” came in, there are very few words heard in the soundtrack.Chaplin was an “imaginary” actor, producer and director.
  Questions/Tasks.What were the social, political and economic conditions in the States in 1936?How was Communism perceived?What were the general relations between the owners of industry and their employees, the workers?How were the unemployed viewed by the upper class? When Chaplin left the States in 1952 for a trip to Europe why was it impossible for him to return?Did he ever return to the States?If so, why?
  
• 25 May - Normal Life
  Can a person with a bi-polar personality and a person with a one-dimensional authoritarian personality live together or love one another?
  Questions/Tasks.
  • What is a bi-polar personality?
• What is a one-dimensional authoritarian personality?Which is worse?
• What is it about our institutional “safety-nets” that permits destructive and self-destructive persons stay in society without help?
• What is the best line that you’ve heard an actor or actress speak in a movie?
  I’ll raise this question again at the time of the showing of the movie.Put your recall cap.
  
• 30 May - The Spy Who Came in from the Cold
  Based on one of the earliest novels of John Le Carré.
  Questions/Tasks.
  • How did the Soviet Union become our ally in WWII and then so soon after the defeat of the Axis [Germany, Italy and Japan] become our enemy?
  • What was the “Iron Curtain?”
  • Who coined the phrase?
  • How and why did the Berlin Wall come to be built?
  • When was it built and when did it come down?
  • Who won the “Cold War?”
    
• 31 May - The Passion of Darkly Noon
  Questions/Tasks.
• How and why are “fairy tales,” “myths,” and the need for “quests” still a part of our western psyche?

• Why are “the deep dark woods/forest” so important in our “images” and in our attempts to overcome fear and danger?
• Wat are the functions of ogres, trolls, wizards and witches–those weird beings who live in the woods/forest?
• How reliable is the information that they usually give?
• Does the quest have anything to do with one’s inner self as well as fearful entering into the depths of the woods/forest?
• Can violence, both physical and mental, be overcome and transformed by a “formula” of words?How long would this formula be?
• Do you have any idea–or image–how such a formula would sound?

 

• Some thing to do in spare time - that didn't fit into the time we have - by arrangement with Prof. Heppler:

  • Tracking the Monster
  • Norma Jean and Marilyn
    Questions/Tasks.

• What is the significance and meaning of “stardom” and “celebrity?”
• Why, as a civilized society, do we think that creativity can be managed?
• Could a person as laid back as Spencer Tracy go to Hollywood and get an acting job today?
• Could a person as suave and sophisticated as Cary Grant go to Hollywood and get an acting job today?
• Should movies be about acting or about computer generated and enhanced pixels?
• Would you like to have an acting lesson that lasts only one minute and twenty-two seconds?
• If yes, then, you’ll be told what to watch for in “Norma Jean and Marilyn.”

• A] Love and the Goddess

  B] The Masks of Eternity
  These are programs Five and Six in the series: “Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth, with Bill Moyers

• Questions/Tasks.
  • How did the love of the western world come into being?
  • How easy is it to love?How hard is it to love?
  • Why is the religion of the Bible seemingly devoid of the feminine dimensions of the divine?
  • How did the feminine dimensions of the divine come back into western thought?
  • How is it so easy to miss seeing the divine when we engage it daily?
  • What is the significance of AUM, the great meditative syllable of Asia?
  • Can we be touched and changed by the “sound of AUM” in our lives
    
• Links and other resources
  • Map of the distribution of religions
  • ttp://www.wadsworth.com/religion_d/special_features/popups/maps/maps_f.html
  • ttp://highered.mcgraw-hill.com/sites/007248179x/student_view0/chapter4/web_map_1.html (smaller)
  • or first film: http://www.army.mil/cmh-pg/brochures/burma42/burma42.htm