Discussion 10. THE VERY LAST ONE.

Comment:

 

The best film you screened was......... because.......

DISCUSSION 9: Jan 24 STORY OF TEN DAYS

COMMENT

In a previous discussion (The Leopard) I asked everyone to analyze a small DETAIL, a small aspect of the film that captured your attention. I kept emphasizing "small detail": instead a lot of comments were about how long the film was and how great the customs were.  Those are not exactly details.

Try again with STORY OF TEN DAYS.   Avoid repeating something that was already mentioned by a classmate. Find the small detail (or a quotation) that meant something deeper to you, that to you has deep symbolic value.

REPLY    Choose a comment that opened your eyes on something you had not noticed but that "makes sense" when you put it side by side with the detail you chose.

DISCUSSION 8: Jan 24 THE TRUCE

COMMENT

What aspects of the film did you find particularly touching.

What scene meant the most to you personally?

And REPLY

DISCUSSION 7: La Grande Guerra (The Great War) JAN 23

Use numbering to answer the "technical" questions.

1) The film is from 1959, when color was the norm. What do you think about the director's choice to use B&W?

2) Subtitles: too many, too little, distracting, engaging?

3) This film's genre is called "tragicomedy."  Does it work for this kind of subject?

4) Whose ACTING you liked the most in the film? (This is not a question about the character you liked the most.)

COMMENT

Giovanni represents the free spirit and a philosophical anarchist (nominally an Bakunian anarchist). His only allegiance is to his circle of friends and loved ones.
Are his arguments against war legitimate? Of is he a lone wolf howling in the wind?

AND REPLY!

UPDATE: I removed "1900" from the list of movies

As I explained in an email, the English-language version is a crime. This happens often when films are planned and shot with post-production dubbing.

The Italian version was actually much better, for technical reasons.

In English, the film was unwatchable. My fault for not checking it before assigning it.

I actually expected you would see the Italian version with subtitles. But it doesn't exist.

 

Anyway. If you did screen it, let me know, and I will find a way to give you extra credit.

Explaining the ITALIAN Catholic church and nepotism

My best high school friend had an uncle, his father's brother, who had achieved a prestigious position in the church hierarchy. My friend war formally an atheist, a member of the communist youth organization (and later party member and even candidate for the senate from our province.) We both attended Milan's public university. As soon as he graduated, he miraculously got a paid position as research assistant in the department of contemporary history at Milan's CATHOLIC University (The Sacred Heart.)
How? I didn't need to ask.

Not only. In those days military service in Italy was still mandatory, 50 weeks or something like that. It was common to get student deferrals until we completed our degrees. One day he told me that his uncle had called him out of the blue and told him to go to the local military recruitment office to pick up his discharge papers. Just like that. All our other friends, yours truly included, did our 50-week stint.

A couple of years earlier, my sister, after finishing high school, decided she wanted to get a physical education degree. She was a top gymnast in Italy. The most convenient school, distance wise, was the Catholic University of Milan. But it wasn't easy to get in. Good grades etc. did not suffice. It was necessary to get a push. Since we didn't grow up Catholic, we didn't know anyone directly who could give her the push. So I mentioned it to my friend. Actually I asked point-blank. No problem: he called his uncle, his uncle wrote a letter to the admissions office, and my sister got in.

So, nepotism, favors etc. BUT, the clergy has no power to promote a family member or a friend INSIDE the clergy itself. Even if my friend had become a priest, his uncle would not have been able to help him in any way climbing the hierarchy ladder.  The clergy's influence extends into civil society, but inside the church the only criterion for advancement is meritocracy.

One additional fact. The church will accept into the priesthood only men in excellent health. You will never see a priest with a birth disability of any kind. One may feel the call, beg and cry to become a priest, but if HE is not in top shape, no chance. The official reason? It's a tough job, requires a lot of stamina, and in order for one to devote himself completely to the church and the needs of the believers, one must have the necessary physical and psychological strength.
And the call from God? Answer: "There are many other ways to serve Him". Women are very familiar with this answer.

(Dozens of other similar anecdotes upon request).

PBS Frontline 2014 Secrets of the Vatican    https://youtu.be/q7mmL1djtcY

 Holy Money - Vatican City Corruption - (CBC News - Canadian Broadcasting Corp.)
https://youtu.be/EPdEJZ3IH8Y

DISCUSSION 6: Jan 19: "The Leopard"

COMMENT IN TWO SEPARATE PARAGRAPHS:

 

1) What is the most interesting aspect/scene in this film? [Choose a small details that, most likely only you noticed, but that made you think. DO NOT CHOOSE A MAJOR SCENE OR THEME: just a small detail (clothing? habit? lifestyle? whatever you want but SMALL.]

 

2) Same but the opposite: Something you found annoying or distasteful. SMALL DETAIL ONLY.

 

REPLY: read the comments, one from a classmate who wrote a comment before you, and another of someone who wrote a comment after you. Choose comments you tend to disagree with and explain the reasons.

DISCUSSION 5: The "Church" and Italians (Jan 18)

Let's make it clear that there is a very sharp distinction in the minds of Italians between RELIGION and FAITH on one side, and the institution that administers and controls access to heaven  (where every believer wants eventually to end up) on the other.

 

The INSTITUTION is the CHURCH. It has been intertwined with the CIVIL authority since emperor Constantine in the IV century included it in the power structure (still disputed by historians is whether he named it official state religion.)

 

My emphasis on the presence of Christianity in the history of Italians derives from the fact that the CHURCH is the only permanent institution, still in existence. Empires, states, city-states, popes, kings, emperors etc. were ephemeral and transient. Not the church. And it exercised profound influence on every aspect of life. As such, the "Church" is often feared and mistrusted as are the men who run it. This is attributed to the failings of human nature, however: the message is divine, the principles are  sublime, but the men and their methods are repulsive.

 

This is exactly how Luther's reformation movement started. He rejected the kind of practice that had developed and the men who invented it,  not the fundamental idea of redemption and salvation.

 

Play this YOUTUBE about the role of the church in the culture of Italians.

 

https://youtu.be/H63dcwxX4cs

 

COMMENT: find a fact or hint that piqued your interest and that you would like to explore/research more in depth. Choose something original and truly meaningful to you. And if you don't find anything worthwhile, tell us why.

REPLY to a comment (written after yours) that really captured your interest.

DISCUSSION 4: Renaissance, Gutenberg and Luther (JAN 17)

The Renaissance opened the minds to the idea of individual identity (even paintings started representing Jesus, Mary and saints like real people with a personality.)

The era of explorations chartered ocean routes toward other worlds.

Gutenberg opened the floodgates of information.

Is it really surprising that a revolution (an intellectual revolution) would be the result of these forces combined together?

COMMENT AND REPLY to a classmate that posted a comment after yours: "What is the single aspect or detail that really filled a hole in your knowledge about this historical period?"

(Suggestion: keep the comments short. You want to grab attention with something original and sharp, not with a long dissertation.)

Take the poll (right-side column)

You can also add a comment here, if you want.

By the way, I come from a shithole country too.

Not long ago, someone with Trump's enlightened vision, would have called Italy a shithole country. In the same category would be other countries, for instance, Ireland, Scotland and all Eastern European countries (most of all those that "sent" to America their Jews).

Canada? A shithole too: that's why we tried to invade it in the war of 1812.

Spain and its colonies (Philippines etc.)? You got it: all shitholes.

If we went back far enough, even Germany would qualify (Benjamin Franklin wanted to stop immigration of Germans. Too many! And they want to speak German! Can you believe the nerve?)

So, to summarize: most of us or our predecessors came here from a shithole country.

And here is a column by someone who freely admits he came from another obscure shithole, and now lives in a country (ours) full of people from shithole countries.

 

Proud to Live in a Nation of Holers

Bret Stephens JAN. 12, 2018, The New York Times

As tourist destinations go, the Republic of Moldova — tucked between Ukraine and Romania — probably isn’t on anyone’s bucket list. It’s the poorest country in Europe, with per capita G.D.P. barely exceeding Sudan’s. Sex trafficking and organized crime are rampant. My memories of the place, from a visit 17 years ago, include roads that vanished into deep snow, Transnistrian border guards in Soviet uniforms, and an impoverished Holocaust survivor’s tale of a bleak life under Romanian, German and Soviet tyrants.
Let’s not mince words: Moldova is a hole. Modify with any four letters you wish.
I mention Moldova because it’s where my paternal grandfather was born in 1901. An anti-Semitic rampage in his hometown, Kishinev, soon forced his family to leave for New York, where my great-grandfather labored as a carpenter in the Brooklyn Navy Yard for eight dollars a week. Low skills, low wages, minimal English, lots of children and probably not the best hygiene — that’s half of my pedigree. The other half consisted of refugees.
I’m not alone. America is a nation of holers. It is an improbable yet wildly successful experiment in the transformation — by means of hope, opportunity and ambition — of holers into doers, makers, thinkers and givers. Are you of Irish descent? Italian? Polish? Scottish? Chinese? Chances are, your ancestors did not get on a boat because life in the old country was placid and prosperous and grandpa owned a bank. With few exceptions, Americans are the dregs of the wine, the chaff of the wheat. If you don’t know this by now, it makes you the wax in the ear.
Donald Trump is the wax in the ear.
Some of the fury — and most of the apologetics — surrounding the president’s alleged remark about “all these people from shithole countries” concerns the nature of the countries themselves. Liberals can be squeamish about calling poor countries bad names, while conservatives such as Mark Steyn chortle that “nobody voluntarily moves to Haiti.” Which, let’s be real, is basically right.
Yet that’s beside the point. We are not talking about Haiti, El Salvador, Nigeria or any other country on the president’s insult list. What counts are the people from these countries, both those who are already in the United States as well as those who wish to come. Why should the president think they are any less fit to become Americans than the Norwegians he seems to fancy?
The obvious answer is racism, the same “textbook” case that Paul Ryan spoke of in June 2016 after Trump called a federal judge’s fitness into question on account of his ethnic heritage.
What about the argument that people from poor countries bring their national baggage with them — the dysfunctions and prejudices that help account for their troubles back home?
But immigrants are more likely to be fleeing those dysfunctions and prejudices than they are to be bringing them — just ask Dorsa Derakhshani, the international chess master from Iran who came to the United States last year because, as she wrote in an op-ed for The Times, the mullahs “cared more about the scarf covering my hair than the brain under it.” Vietnamese boat people did not bring fratricidal hatreds with them to America. Soviet refuseniks did not bring a Soviet work ethic.
This should go without saying, except that the age of Trump is also the age in which restatements of the obvious have become necessary for civilization. Also obvious is that immigrants don’t steal jobs. They fill jobs Americans won’t do or create those that haven’t been invented. They don’t bring crime to cities. They drive out crime by starting businesses and families in shrinking cities or underserved neighborhoods.  They don’t undermine American culture. They feed, enrich and reinvent it, not least through their educational ambitions for themselves and their children.
This is true of most immigrants, but perhaps more so of the so-called “holers.” As Michelle Mittelstadt of the Migration Policy Institute notes, sub-Saharan Africans have “among the highest college-completion rates of any immigrant group.” As for Haitians, MPI found they had a higher labor participation rate than the overall work force, and had median household incomes of $47,200 — lower than the overall U.S. median, but robust by any developed nation standard.
How can this be? It shouldn’t be a mystery. Immigrants self-select. They have a broader perspective. They know their luck. They want it more. The miraculous in America is mostly invisible to those who’ve known nothing else. To really see it clearly, you must first rise up from a hole.
Donald Trump has not, to say the least, risen from a hole. But he is sinking into one. It may be that it won’t damage him politically — Republican Party leaders, increasingly unshameable, will mumble mild disapproval until the news cycle turns — but it does damage the country. We have a president even more ignorant of America than he is of the rest of the world.
Maybe there really is something wrong with the president’s head. Modify with any four letters you wish.

GUTENBERG

The "invention" (rather, the introduction to the West of the Chinese technology of "movable types") of the printing press changed the Western world with consequences for the entire globe.

The most conspicuous change was the Lutheran and Calvinist Reformation.

 

The Internet is the true new revolution.

What will happen in the future (and is already happening) as a result of this "invention?" (Mumford Lewis and Marshall McLuhan among the many, had predicted that

something like the Internet was inevitable. Thus, in the abstract, it had already been invented.)

 

What kind of changes will happen?  THINK BIG!

 

COMMENT AND REPLY ad-libitum.

From the REGISTRAR

(MY) misery loves company.

"Recently, a major upgrade took place with DegreeWorks that has caused various problems within the system here at Brooklyn College and at colleges across CUNY. We have been working diligently to get these glitches resolved. Currently, CUNY is in contact with the software vendor to fix these issues. We will inform you once this matter has been rectified.

Thank you for your patience while we address this matter."

COMMENT: an "OK" is enough. But if you want to add more, please, don't hesitate.

What is your preference?

Do you prefer discussions with required REPLIES  by your classmates, or without?

If REPLIES are not required, should I add a reminder that they are always encouraged and welcomed?

More about "art and dream" in Decameron

The final quote is: "Why realizing a work of art when a dream is more beautiful" (quoting from memory.)

The operative word is REALIZING, as in MAKING. This is a question by the artist about his own art and art in general. Not incidentally, it comes at the end of the film.

Also, the painter has completed only two parts of a triptych. The last one is still blank. And yet everybody celebrates the completion of the job.

These are the only two heavily symbolic moments in the entire film, a film that emphatically embraces realism, not symbolism.

Any thoughts about these observations?

Your comments purely for intellectual amusement. OPTIONAL, NOT REQUIRED.

Looking over my comments to your writing assignments

Are there comments to your assignments that you found USEFUL?

 

Please, this is not the place to dispute or bring up the inconsequential comments I wrote. I want you to honestly choose only those comments that can help you improve your work, and share them with your classmates.

 

If there are concerns or if I wasn't sufficiently clear, THIS IS NOT THE PLACE TO BRING THEM UP.

 

If you didn't find anything useful, just say so and leave it at that.

 

If you find that a classmate reports a comment that works for you too, REPLY and let everyone

know.

 

YOU MUST FINISH THIS TASK BEFORE MOVING ON TO THE NEXT DISCUSSION.

DISCUSSION 4 - due JAN 10 : philosophy of life in "Quo Vadis" "The Name of the Rose" and "Decameron"

Start by watching this video-lecture

 

https://youtu.be/WPYpMtq6Kd4

 

COMMENT: 

Are these movies about good and evil?

Or are they about our very human tendency to give themselves the right to decide who is good and who is evil?

Or are they about our irresistible attraction for sanctifying ourselves and condemning those who don't share our ideas, way of life, beliefs, mores....?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Calendar of Blog Discussions

The deadlines for blog comments ARE NOT THE SAME AS the deadlines for writing assignments.

 

Comments are meant as an opportunity to express your unfiltered opinions, and to exchange opinions.

Writing assignments are meant to be an opportunity for SELF REFLECTION, about your emotional responses, your ideas, your self-questioning.

DISCUSSION 3: DECAMERON (Mon. JAN 8)

Pasolini, Decameron's writer and director, played the part of the painter hired to paint a fresco in a Franciscan church. (The painter is described as being one of Giotto's disciples.)  

At the end of the film, he has one last cryptic statement. In your opinion, was the statement about creativity and art in general, or was it a specific reference to the film he just finished shooting?

What aspects of the film, in your opinion, reach the level of "art"?

Write your COMMENT and keep it original. This means do not repeat the same thing others have already mentioned.

REPLY to the comment posted immediately AFTER yours.

 

[GIOTTO is credited with having brought back into Western art, the device of PERSPECTIVE. His most famous masterpieces are the frescos in the basilica of Saint Francis in Assisi, representing the salient moments of S. Francis's life.]

DISCUSSION 2: QUO VADIS (due Mon. Jan 8)

This is one of history's most obscure and least understood phenomena: a minor Jewish sect, led by an unknown preacher who left no trace in CONTEMPORARY HISTORICAL RECORDS, became in a  short time a fully-established new religion and a very powerful institution.

 

What kinds of questions does Quo Vadis raise about the appeal of this new religion at the time of Emperor Nero?

Based on the film: is it clear what kind of deep-seated spiritual needs Christianity satisfied in those times?
Or is it a case where the author knew that the audience would fill the blanks with predictable answers?


COMMENT:  based on the questions above, what do you think is the relevance (and chance of success) of the film's message for today's audience and in particular for your generation?

REPLY: wait until at least 10 comments have been posted, then choose the comment that most clearly formulates an original idea or argument. You may even admire something you disagree with (although, frankly, it's almost superhuman.)

Writing Assignments: PROBLEMS WITH SOME SUBMISSIONS

I received 12 submissions. Several of them did not follow my directions, namely, the text was typed directly into Bb, rather than in a WORD document to be uploaded to Bb.

 

Was it an oversight? Whatever it was, check your submission and, if necessary, resubmit in the correct way.

 

If you are are not sure what to do, ask a question here using your COMMENT, or look up youtube. Use the search string "blackboard student upload assignments" or something similar. Something will show up.

 

 

COMMENT: confirm that you read this post.

Decameron: it looks like the server is finally working.

Test the link please, and report if it works yes or no.

 

 

 

DECAMERON
CLICK THIS LINK

http://bcmedia.brooklyn.cuny.edu/modlang/fgc/pasolini.dec.sottotitoli.JAN18.wmv

WARNING: spelling of "foreign" words and general sloppiness.

I have seen the name Caesar spelled in a dozen different ways, plus other sloppy mistakes. That's not good.

 

You are dealing with a foreign culture and you are expected to pay attention to the correct spelling of words that are new to you.

 

Spelling accuracy and proper punctuation (use of capital letters where required, commas and periods) must be the default mode for your comments. The use of paragraphs is also important to enhance the efficacy of your communications.

Review your previous comments and identify the aspects that need improvement.

Write a COMMENT to this message with a critique (positive or negative) about your blog work so far.

 

Problems with video files, email, Blackboard etc? Ask here or suggest a solution.

Here you can describe your problem and ask if anyone can suggest a solution, a number to call or someone to contact via email, to solve it.

Discussion n. 1: JULIUS CAESAR (due JAN 3)

Which character emerges as the most credible (or, at least, the least devious), considering that every single one of them is driven by thirst for power -- which in Shakespeare's time, and presumably in imperial Rome as well, was a perfectly legitimate and even "moral" pursuit?

1) Post your own comment (we are not interested in what Shakespeare thought: we are interested in YOUR personal thoughts.)

2) REPLY to one of your classmates' comment: choose a comment that is particularly revelatory to you, something you had not thought about.