Extra Credit

DELETED YAY!!!!!!!!!!!!

Why Climb Mountains at All?

As my former teen idol Miley Cyrus once said, "life's a climb but the view's great!" As cheesy as it is, there's a lot of truth to the statement. Now not all of us will be climbing literal mountains, but reading a story about doing so can reach each of us in an individual way. I'll use my blog to vent for a hot sec, that's what a lot of bloggers do, don't they? Life is a series of mountains. Sometimes you're at the peak, and other times you're stuck on the bottom. Some days even feel like a journey up and down a mountain. Like this one for instance. I feel like I've been wearing a "kick me" sign for the past twelve hours. Everything that could go wrong did go wrong, I've had a real Murphy's Plan kind of day. But in the greater scheme of things, it's just a few steps down the mountain. I know tomorrow and the next day and the day after that I'll start climbing up again and get to the top and realize how trivial it all was. Excuse my sappy rant...but it's all about the cliiiiiiiiiimb.

Translations Reflections

I have read plays in my English classes since about junior year of high school. Personally, I'm not a lover of plays. (Musicals, whole other story). I just find plays to be a little dry. I do believe they are more beneficial if you read and are able to see it acted out. If it were just one or the other, I think I get more out of a play when seeing  a live action performance of it. However, if you read a play, then get to see it live that is something very unique to experience. Seeing the stage directions written out in the screen play make you appreciate the performance more.

Film Response

I think Persepolis the movie was much more moving and dramatic than the film. I think of the things that contributed most to this was the background music. Music in a screenplay is one of the most powerful tools to use. It automatically makes you feel something. I'll digress for a second here, and talk about Grey's Anatomy (shocking). The other day I came across a Buzzfeed with a link to a Spotify playlist about moments in Grey's Anatomy that were defined by the songs behind them. I'll share the most recognizable song, that even a person who is not a fan of the show might recognize. In the season two finale, Chasing Cars plays as Izzie's fiance dies in the hospital. The opening notes of the song invoke tears, and now whenever I hear it I am immediately brought back to that moment of the show. The same things happen in movies. The music behind big moments let us know that we are supposed to be feeling something, or that something is of higher importance. When just reading the book, I think certain events can be interpreted differently depending on the reader. When a book becomes a movie, you're sort of forced to interpret the events how the directors, actors and production team want you to see them.

Current Events

I think automatically the word "ban" gets a bad reputation. Personally, I don't think Persepolis is appropriate for seventh grade students to read. The fact that I'm reading it for the first time at twenty years old, and still find some topics a little hard to chew, I can't imagine a twelve or thirteen year old reading it. When I was in seventh grade, we read the Diary of Anne Frank. I remember there was some controversy because some kids bought the unabridged version, and that was not what we were assigned to buy.  The unabridged version had a little more graphic detail than the other. The Diary of Anne Frank has become a staple on reading lists in the American education system, and I think Persepolis could be too, if there was an edited kids version. The message of learning to think for yourself is a lesson all adolescents should learn, however I think twelve years old is a little too young to be reading about selling drugs, torture, and sex.

I think freedom of speech kind of negates the idea of book censorship as a societal factor. However, there are some things that are appropriate for the classroom and others that are not. I think teachers should have some say in what they're going to teach. But especially when working with children, they need to be extra cautious of the gravity of the topic they are teaching. They could even pull certain chapters from the book to read, and that would be fine too!