Response to The City of Tanfy

       The narrator entered the city Tanfy, and he was considered as an outsider. People lived in Tanfy have strange customs such as eating cold food. On his way to the room, he met many lavish women dancing. Then he ran out of the dancing party, and met a butcher who gave him the hot meat to eat. After eating the hot meat, the narrator came back to the stage of the party telling people that they should enjoy their life instead of eating the cold food. 

       The good place of the story is the beginning of the story. The author describes a city named Tanfy where things seem to be different from the normal world. Eating cold food, the way of digesting food and other customs make audience curious about the city. And the acts such as the consumption of meat and dancing in the party are a little bit threatening, which make me think about the cannibalism. In addition, the appearance of the butcher is good because it is a turning point of the story. 

        By contrast, there are some places that the author needs to fix out. The first problem is about the transition. The scenes shift quickly so that audience cannot see the relationships and will feel confused. The second problem is that the narrator is not totally involved in the story. We don’t know why and how he comes to the city. His intent is not clear. Finally, the model of the story should changed. 

Appropriation of Visual Art

       The Original Piece I choose is the Portrait of and Unknown Woman created by the Russian artist Ivan Kramskoi in 1883. The woman in the piece sit sideways in the carriage looking down at the society, and her eyes are so proud and haughty. She was dressed in the all black, a black coat with fur,  a black hat with ornament and a pair of black gloves. Her postures make a strong contrast to the pale background, which seems that she is a woman that dissatisfy with the society at that time. Nobody knows who the woman is, and many people think that the woman is like the Anna Karenina which written by the Lev Tolstoy. The unknown women represents the ideal image of the women in Russian new era.
        The icon I select is Kim Kardashian, a very famous American television show and social media actress. Many people especially young people have crazy chase to Kim Kardashian because of her fame, body and money. However, many people argue that Kim Kardashian is the icon of the "sick society". She represents the a decline value of civilization including obsession with wealth, narcissism, opportunism and effortless celebrity.
  The two characters in the original piece and the new one have different features and symbols. The new meaning of the image is to show how the icons affect our life. It also created to persuade people not to blindly worshipping stars, and make them keep balance under the advertisement.

Report for Our Journal Discussion on 10.28

       I’m very glad to be one of the general editorial staff in fiction group. Three general editorial staff in the fiction group are responsible for reading  fictions, picking up good fictions and discussing with the fiction editor. 

       Before we read those submissions, it’s very important for us to make clear what is a “good” fiction and what makes “good”. So, our fiction group members set a few criteria to choose good fictions. Following are the five principles:

1.     The author shows the story rather than tells the story (using setting, character, and tension rather than description to illustrate action & create sequence)
2.     Good fiction should show the motivation of the character (focus on why & how).
3.     Good fiction should impart knowledge or wisdom (it can be shown in many forms such as give information about a place or teach sth)
4.     Good fiction should show the understanding of human nature (explain humanity, understand the world, what makes people who they are etc. so that readers could have space to imagine)
5.     Good fiction should entertain readers (entertaining means that it takes readers on a journey, arouses readers’ feelings such as making heart soar or sink, transport them from the normality of life for a short while before releasing them back to reality such as open a new world for a while)
       In addition, we also decide our target audience. They are people who under 30 years old. But the decision of audience is not the final result. We need to talk to other groups and make us have the same target. 

Response to Class On November 10

       In today’s class, we were assigned to fix the Billy’s story in the movie seven Psychopaths. Many students among us do not like Billy’s story, neither do I. Billy’s story is so convenient and so simple. He just put all characters he knows into the story, letting them involve into a battle with gang leaders. His story is added to many gratuitous elements that make no sense at all. Gratuitous elements are useless issues that do not adapt to the plots. Kaya’s role and some of psychopaths are considered gratuitous. They just appear for  several seconds and disappear soon. The ending of the story make us feel confused. We can totally understand that billy want to create a warm ending with bright blue sky, but the whole story is based on the dark plot such as graveyard and death. Although the story is really absurd, it can make us laugh and feel happy. 

       Besides Billy’s story, we also discuss about the appropriation of the visual art. Appropriation means to take something for our own. For example, I use English “Hello” to greet, which is an appropriation because I take the language from others. There are three things that we have learned today about the appropriation of visual art including the original image, the iconic element and mixing the iconic element to change the original images’ meanings. 

Response to Billy’s Story

       After watching the Mary’s and Hans’ story, Billy’s story is a kind of ridiculous. Following are the problems: 1. The setting is not good. Returning a dog in the graveyard with shootout seems to be absurd. Some plots are not real. How could one’s head explode when he get shoots? 

2. All characters are “simple” because of simple emotion. All people feel angry and kill others. Everyone eventually dies except Marty and Hans. 

3. Characters appear suddenly such as the vietnamese and Marty’s girlfriend. 

       Although the story is a little bit moving, it should be turned to the reality and be more complex. 

       Jack diamond decides to return the dog to the gang-leader in a night club which owned by the gang-leader. He knows that the gang-leader is a psychopath, so he calls the seven psychopaths together  to let them rescue him if he does not come out of the club after twenty minutes. The gang-leader keeps in silence for a moment when he get his honey dog, and then he begins to laugh. Suddenly, he takes out the gang and shoot one of the servants saying: “It’s definitely something worth celebrating.”

       The seven psychopaths heard the shot and burst into room to have fight with the underworld. They are worried about Jack’s condition and try to find Jack. All of them use the gun to have battle with the bad guys. People in the club are so scared that they run out of the club. Kaya, Marty’s girlfriend, is one of the people in the club. She rushed to Marty when she saw a bullet directing to Marty, and she died in Marty’s arm. Marty is going to be crazy. The vietnamese realized that he killed so much people, which is the same as what American do to his family. He burns himself in the club, which shocked all the people. The gang-leader stopped to fight, and kneels on the ground. He starts crying, and the cry did not stop until he was shot by Marty. Eventually, Marty and Hans are two people survive eventually. They find every corner, but there is no Jack. You know what, Jack is fine. He has already escaped from the club when the seven psychopaths burst into the club. 

Response to Class On 11.3

       In today's class, we discuss that a good editing should make the stories grow organically instead of making it synthetic or manipulated. Our discussion is based on the movie "Seven Psychopaths", which contains two different versions of the revenge of the vietnamese. 
       In Marty's story, there are two characters including the vietnamese priest and the hooker. The vietnamese is vengeful and full of anger. The hooker is naked and objectifies. It seems that she is not intelligent at all because of his terrible voice and wrong English speaking. This characters in this story are very simple. The woman lacks depth of emotion, and is very awful. The man just has one feeling, and finally kills lots of people. 
       By contrast, in Han's story, despite of the same characters, there are some changes. The hooker wears clothes and gains the respect. She has intelligent speech with the vietnamese and conveys her voice in reason. The vietnamese chooses to burn himself as a buddhist monk, which leads the violence direct inward to show the extreme selflessness. 

       The Han's story is more complex than Marty's. One reason is that the characters have more emotions and are more complicated. In addition, there is a turning point in Han's story. The woman's voice transforms the story into reality, and then the scene changed. The vietnamese realized the reality and then has the self-immolating. The  combination of these two stories promote the quality of stories, which sets up a good example for us. 

Response to the Class on 10.27

       In today's class, we focused on the story Manners of Dying and had a deep analysis of it. Following are the characters: the warden as the narrator, Mr. Barlow as the recipient, Kevin as the prisoner, Father Preston and the doctor who provides the medicine assistance. The genre of the story is the epistle letter, which is conveyed to inform the manners of Kevin and to comfort the mother. The story includes different versions of how Kevin face his execution in the last 12 hours.
       The story reflects the emotional truth rather than the actual truth. Actual truth is talking about why and how the actual event really happens, while the emotional truth is talk about the same events but arouse various feelings of the audience. Fo example, as we discussed in the class, when someone is throwing a mark to you, you make have different responses such as happiness, depression, and surprise. Also, the story Manners of Dying makes us feel in different ways of Kevin's different manners. Kevin is a jerk; he is calm; he has a sense of humor; he is thoughtful, spiritual; he is also timid, nervous and afraid.
      If you asked me whether or not I believe that one person has so many personalities in the same time, I will say "No". What I mean is that these version are parallel  universe or stories instead of different templates. Each of them is true and is from the reality in our life. The author attempts to gathers the various manners of dying into one person to make us have deep thinking about the reality.