In our recent theory lessons we have been looking at the German film 'Die Welle' (The Wave) which helped to explain why we were trying to be a collective identity, instead of a media class. The Third Wave is an experiment designed to highlight the appeals of facism, and was experimented in Germany by a teacher of contemporary history. He was trying to show his class how Germany had been so easily brainwashed by the Nazi's. He started a collective identity called The Wave and tried to convince them that democracy was not neccessary. The motto of the group was "Strength through discipline, strength through community, strength through action, strength through pride" The teacher started with making the students sit with people who they would not usually asociate with, he then proceeded to inforce a strict class room dicipline that included having to stand up when talking to the rest of the class - making them think that the purpose of this was to increase the bloodflow in their bodies. The name third wave came from the idea that the third in a series of ocean waves was always the largest and most powerful. The experiment ended on the fourth day instead of the fifth, as the teacher felt it had been taken out of his control, he then explained to the students that they had been part of an experiment to highlight facism. In the film a student that had become too involved in the project then took out a gun and shot a fellow member of his class and himself, in real life this did not happen.
As a class we were unsure what was happening when we all recieved an email from Mr Smith saying we needed to become a collective identity. There were 5 rules we had to abide by;
-Students must sit one space apart from one another and face the front.
- Students must stand up to ask or answer questions.
- Students must stand up whenever another member of staff enters the room.
- Students must answer questions in three words or less.
- All response must be prefaced with "Mr. Smith."
We were also told that any and each infringement of the above rules will result in a 5 minute detention.
In class we had to write down things that made us the same, rather than things that made us individual, after thinking about it it was clear that there were more similarities that we had than differences.
At the end of the lesson we had to write down something that made us individual and stick it on the board, next we each had to pick a different anonymous post-it and create a poster showing different images that relate to the person we had chosen, without including their name. I found this really interesting as it allowed us to see what other people think of us, and how we are viewed.
This week in our theory lessons with Mr Ford we have been looking at memes in more detail, in groups of 2 we were required to come up with a presentation about the meme we had chosen. I worked with Caitlin and we chose to look at 'Fat Kid on a Rolercoaster' which we had both already seen. This is our presentation..
In our theory lessons we have been studying Pulp Fiction, and the elements of it that are post modern. Here are some examples...
-
Mia Wallace draws a rectangle with her fingers in the air, a white rectangle physically appears on screen
- Deliberately bad backdrops when characters are in cars, here when Butch runs away after his fight he gets into a 1940's taxi and the outside of the car appears to be black and white
- Mia Wallace has the same hair cut as Louise Brookes in Pandora's Box (1928), at the time she had this short bob style it was seen as adventurous
- Reference to Psycho (1960, Hitchcock) when Butch is in his car waiting at the cross roads and has his path crossed by Marcellus Wallace his boss. In psycho the same happens to Marion Crane and her boss.
- The scene in the restaurant 'Jack Rabbit Slims' showing lots of famous people from popular culture such as Buddy Holly, Maralyn Monroe, James Dean and Elvis - all of these died at young ages
Also, while Vincent and Mia are eating dinner the waitress dressed as Monroe stands on top of a fan, this blows her skirt up as in the film The Seven Year Itch..
