Lady M's Netflix List

The Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl

This is the first of the Pirates of the Caribbean series, and it is focused on the Captain Jack Sparrow, a mutinied pirate captain who wants to get his ship, the Black Pearl, back.  He and Will Turner, an intelligent blacksmith, team up to save Wlizabeth Swann, the Governor's daughter and Will's love when she is kidnapped by Captain Barbossa, the pirate who has control of Jack Sparrow's beloved ship.  Barbossa and his crew are cursed to be undead when they mutinied and marooned Sparrow on an island and used all of the cursed money that he had revealed the location of.  The crew goes to Isla de Muerta to take back the last of the cursed coins and break the curse with a blood sacrifice.  Only a relative of Bootstrap Bill, a dead pirate who sabotaged Barbossa, can make the blood sacrifice.  Elizabeth is rescued by Will, who is revealed to be the son of William "Bootstrap Bill" Turner.  He is taken by Barbossa to do the sacrifice and maroons Elizabeth and Jack on an island.  Elizabeth creates a bonfire out of the cache of rum on the island and is saved by the British navy who is looking for her.  Together they go to capture Barbossa's pirates.  This all ends with Jack Sparrow and Barbossa battling it out, Sparrow becoming immortal by using a cursed coin,the undead pirates ambushing the Navy ship, and Will breaking the curse.  The now mortal pirates surrender, Barbossa is shot by Sparrow, and Sparrow is taken back to the UK to be hanged.  Elizabeth ends up saving herself by implementing a parley at the beginning to make sure Barbossa cannot kill her, saves Jack and herself by creating a smoke signal on the island, saves Jack's crew who helped him find the Pearl and who were captured when they met Barbossa, by sneaking into The Black Pearl, and saves Will and Jack when Will tries to rescue Jack from being hanged.  She also kills two cursed pirates and ends up with the guy she wants: Will Turner.  Lady Macbeth would appreciate the cleverness of Elizabeth, her killing of guards just like Lady Macbeth, and her achieving her goal of getting together with Will.  Manipulation, murder, and power over who she has a relationship with all sound like Lady Macbeth's cup of tea.

Brave

This is a Disney movie that doesn't actually portray the usual prince-saves-princess cliché.  It is about  Scottish Princess Merida, a kick-butt, feisty girl who doesn't want to do anything but shoot arrows at targets and ride her horse.  She actually defies her own suitor competition when she wins the archery contest.  She makes a deal with a witch to change her fate (just like Lady Macbeth did when deciding to get Duncan killed) and make her mother change so that she does not have to become a proper, married woman.  Well, that spell turns her mother into a bear, so then it is up to Merida to break the spell, battling a demon bear and keeping her mother safe in the process.  The curse is undone when Merida realizes that she needs to fix the tapestry she ripped when she and her mother were fighting.  Everything ends happily, with Merida and her mother having a strong bond and Merida continuing with her unladylike ways.  Though Lady Macbeth might appreciate a more proper main character, she would certainly love the way Merida took everything in her own hands throughout the entire movie, defying gender roles and being strong and smart.  Merida echoes with Lady M's desire to be a man, trying to change her fate, and fixing the consequence (the one thing that Lady Macbeth did not do).

Scandal

This is a very popular show about a woman named Olivia Pope who works at her own crisis management firm, Olivia Pope and Associates.  She is having an affair with the President Fitzgerald Grant while fixing disasters before they take place.  The series flow from focusing on one case to the President's conspiratorial election and Pope and her father fixing the accusation that she is having an affair with the President to Olivia's evolving love life and political murders and cover-ups.  Lady Macbeth would be impressed by the poised main character who fixes everyone else' problems and struggles to fix hers, and  this shows what Lady Macbeth eventually becomes.  She tries to fix her and Macbeth's problems by telling him to kill Duncan, then attempts to stop Macbeth from killing others and create more problems.  While losing power in her relationship, Lady M can't fix her own issue of guilt for starting Macbeth's murderous desire.

Alien

This 1979 movie depicts Warren Officer Ripley, a female astronaut who, along with six others, is in space and discovers sinister alien eggs.  An egg attaches itself to one of the astronaut's faces, and, with Ripley the only one unwilling to let him in, an alien comes out of the man's stomach inside the spaceship, killing him and releasing the creature into the Nostromo.  The crew attempts to flush the alien out of the spaceship, but a traitor (an android, nonetheless) is ordered to keep the alien in the ship to kill off the other crew members.  Ripley is saved from being strangled by another crew member, then interrogates the traitor and incinerates him.  The remaining two crew members (not including Ripley) are killed while trying to get supplies to abort the ship and go on the shuttle.  Ripley is on her own, and, when discovering that the alien came with her on the shuttle, she opens the capsule and forces it out into space.  Talk about a resilient, intelligent female character!  Lady Macbeth would love this movie because everyone dies except for the female, showing that females are more important than men and can withstand more than men can, in her opinion. Her "Unsex me here" speech is not even needed because this movie shows that females are higher in capability than their male counterparts.

Macbeth, Macbeth...Oh How Far You've Come

 Macbeth is regarded as a hero when he is introduced in the play.  He defeated a "merciless Macdonwald" (Macbeth, 1.2), and is described as a "brave...valiant...worthy gentleman" (Macbeth, 1.2).  How did Macbeth devolve into a crazy guy who gets the king and his best friend murdered?  The deadly sin of greed can answer that.  Greed for power, money (a form of power), love, religious or political importance, etc. are the primary means that people go from honorable, morally correct citizens to jealous, morally wrong people who endanger others.  Macbeth has no reason to become "evil" in the beginning of the play, but when the supernatural witches tell him and Banquo of a mysterious prophecy where Macbeth and Banquo's sons will be kings, Macbeth is enticed into a dangerous game of moral conflict.  Macbeth and Banquo at first say that they will not do anything to influence fate, thus the prophecy.  However, they react differently to the prophecy--Macbeth asks,"Do you not hope your children shall be kings" (Macbeth, 1.3), before saying "If chance have me King, why, chance may crown me / Without my stir" (Macbeth, 1.3).  Banquo, on the other hand, responds to Macbeth's question by saying that "oftentimes, to win us to our harm, / The instruments of darkness tell us truths, / Win us with awful trifles" (Macbeth, 1.3).  Macbeth is already tempted by the prophecy and is trying to see if Banquo is in agreement with him.  Banquo uses many words with negative connotations--"darkness", "trifles"--to demonstrate his caution to Macbeth, and Shakespeare uses the appearance vs reality concept to further convey that, though the prophecy may appear to be positive, bad things lurk there and draw people in by giving them possible truths.  Macbeth is, then, when looking deep into language usage, already at a lower moral standing than Banquo in the beginning of the play.  Though Macbeth is seen to come to a revelation like Banquo's, his initial reaction to the prophecy is hope (spurring action).

Macbeth is drawn by the prophecy, by the promise of power, by the deadly sin of greed.  Lady Macbeth convinces his him to actually act.  Her strong, confident character and mocking tendencies are no match for Macbeth's feeble attempts to fend her orders off: "Wouldst thou have that / Which esteem'st the ornament of life, / And live a coward in thine own esteem, / Letting 'I dare not' wait upon 'I would,' / Like the poor car i' th' adage" (Macbeth, 1.7).  She uses her excuses against him, until he finally relents, and, that night, kills King Duncan.  But, oh how he feels terrible.  He is practically hyperventilating as he exclaims, "Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood / Clean from my hand? No" (Macbeth, 2.2).  He refuses to go on and frame the guards or do any other action to ensure the prophecy.  However, he did the deed.  Persuasion by Lady M, and desire for power led him to take the first steps into evil-dom.

When Macbeth sends two (or three; the third murderer could represent the supernatural influence on everything regarding Macbeth's actions) murderers to kill Banquo, he is truly succumbing to greed and jealousy.  Instead of being happy that his friend's sons will have the chance to have power, he is angry that Banquo's sons will easily rise to power and not have to murder someone to do it: "For Banquo's issue I have filed in my mind; / For them the gracious Duncan I have murdered; / Put rancors in the vessel of my peace / Only for them, and mine eternal jewel / Given to the common enemy of man, / To make them kings, the seeds of Banquo's kings!" (Macbeth 3.1).  That long-winded exclamation, using metaphors ("vessel of peace," "eternal jewel") to represent his damaged moral code, his thirst for power, conveys Macbeth's true descent into evil.  Anyone who is in his way is an enemy, and isn't that evil--not caring who the person is, but smashing them down if they are an obstacle?

"Mr." Macbeth :) is not impervious to remorse once he kills people he respects and admires.  Multiply his little freak out session after killing Duncan by 100 and you'll get his reaction to Banquo's ghost in Act 3, scene 4.  He at first doesn't notice the ghost (could this represent another facet of evil, the fact that the murder is out of his conscious mind already??), but when he does, he is horrified.  Shakespeare uses a lot of exclamatory punctuation to contrast when the ghost is in the room or not, and this helps characterize Macbeth's reaction as severe and a little crazy.  Macbeth is going through an internal conflict: should he really have killed his friend to satisfy his own desire, or should he have not ever done anything at all?  This internal conflict is outwardly shown when he yells at the ghost: "Take any shape but that, and my firm nerves / Shall never tremble.  Or be alive again, / And dare me to the desert with thy sword." (Macbeth, 3.4).  Macbeth is telling the ghost to be any organism but his Banquo human form, and he won't feel terrible and anxious.  He then expresses his wish that Banquo were alive, and that Macbeth would be in turn be punished for the sins he has committed. 

Macbeth was introduced as perfect, then quickly descended into a greedy man desperate to make his part of the prophecy come true, simultaneously feeling intense guilt and having the side effect of slight insanity.  Macbeth could have remained with Banquo, content with letting fate happen on its own, but instead chose the morally wrong, paranoid path.  Macbeth made crucial mistakes in the first part of the play, and it will be interesting to see what he becomes as the play comes to an end.

Aquamanile Ram Pictures

Aquamanile in the Form of a Ram

This artwork is called "Aquamanile in the Form of a Ram" and was created by an author dubbed Unknown (strange name:) in England.  Being a glazed earthenware product (the dimensions are 9 7/16 x 11 1/2 x 5 1/4 inches), and using luminescence dating
( http://daybreaknuclear.us/bortolot_faq.html ), this ram was created circa 1300 and was most likely made in the Scarborough area where a plethora of kilns were found there at the time.  Though it is apparently in very good condition, the ram's horns are missing, and a great deal of paint, especially on the other side, has flaked away. 


So...what's so cool about this dilapidated clay ram?  Well, if you notice, there are two holes in the ram: one is a large opening at the top by the head, and a smaller one is where its mouth would be located.  This ram is no ordinary artwork, rather serves a practical purpose as well: it's an aquamanile
( http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/ewer ).  There is the top, larger opening where water is poured into, and the mouth opening where it flows out.  I chose this piece of art for this reason; it shows that art can have an aesthetic or deep meaning to it, but also a functional aspect


The earthenware piece is more rounded and abstract than an actual male sheep, and there are two possibilities as to why this is so.  First, the artist may have chosen to create the most space as possible to hold water in the vessel.  Second, the abstract, not-completely-clear quality (from what we can see) of the ram shape could make it more aesthetically pleasing, thus more likely that a customer would buy it.  The deep, rich and shiny green that the ram was painted with could additionally increase the chance of a sale.  And notice the ridges on the sides of the piece: this could either add to that unique viewpoint of the artwork, or the artist could be attempting to conform slightly, to make the audience connect the ridges of the clay animal with ridges of traditional pottery bowls and the like.  Why the artist would do this, other than to better sell the practical artwork, is unknown.


What does the aquamanile ram mean to us today?  Rams are not very significant to the general public today, as then it was known that rams were needed to reproduce more sheep, whose wool was an important trading tool.  Around the exact same time that the artist was creating the artwork, Great Britain began exporting sheep wool to Italy.  Without rams, there are no sheep, which means there is not wool.  So then, sheep were important, as were (but no as much so) the rams.


It is extremely important to keep in mind, that, though the artwork does not create a direct, or deeper emotion in the modern-day audience as perhaps the as it did in the general public in the 1300s, the general idea of this work is that there is value in art of the broadest sense: a pitcher or any other useful item can be art.  The fact that a ram is in the form of a pitcher reminds the audience of the two unseemingly different things.  A ram could provoke further thoughts from the audience, such as livestock and animals used for human demand, as to what we, as luxurious and pompous human beings, don't realize that we need, (like wool then and now, though other items along with this one now are extremely important). Many people do not take time to acknowledge the immense amount of things that are necessary to us.  A ram, a symbol or strength and possibly even wealth in the trade-centric Great Britain, serves the purpose of functional ability and visual pleasure.  The ram today tells us humans that art is such a wide range of ideals, contexts, and visual qualities, and they all overlap to make one art piece.

Freebie for Blog #4

I'm lovin' GLUTTONY

McDonald's, being a fast food restaurant, loves to promote gluttony so that it gets more revenue.
This advertisement is no different:
http://ryanspoon.com/wp-content/uploads/mcdonalds-angus.png

This ad shows a perfect, enormous Angus beef hamburger from McDonalds, based in Oak Brook, Illinois.  According to the restaurant, the burger is "AWESOME" and deserves "your full attention."  The burger, being so large, already captures the attention of the regular working, fast-food-eating public for whom the advertisement is directed to.  The hamburger itself is very colorful, with culinary highlights showing all of the ingredients: bun, angus beef burger, cheese, tomato, lettuce, pickles, onions, mayonnaise, and mustard.  There is a description of the quality of the burger's ingredients at the bottom, saying that the bun is "bakery style," the vegetables "some of the freshest toppings around."  The toppings, having the positive connotation "freshest," imply that the burger is healthy and increases the overall persuasiveness of the ad. Finally is the sentence that shows the true sin of gluttony: "Write an email using one finger.  Revel in the delay."  The burger is inferred to be so large and delicious that a person will need to use one finger to do an activity, and will not care of the delay.

Gluttony? Check.  Sloth? Also check.  Gluttony is prominent in the ad, featuring the large hamburger packed with supposedly healthy ingredients (it is well-known, however that fast food is not healthy compared with a lot of home-cooked and restaurant meals).  Eating something so big and with so many unnecessary calories is encouraged by McDonalds--gluttony is glorified.  As for sloth, using one finger to do most activities when one can use both hands is considered lazy.  In this case, the other nine fingers are being used to eat the burger, because it is suggested to take first priority over important matters such as email.  Can a person eat their burger, then write an email? Yes.  But by saying, "revel in the delay," McDonalds is implying that something with a usually negative connotation ("delay") is positive and should take precedent over efficiency when eating their product.  These two sins are used extensively in the ad to persuade the audience to buy the product and be slow for work (inferred by the word email) as a result.

This ad uses bold colors, placement of the burger, and heading of the popularly used word "awesome" as an attention grabber to the audience.  The audience is the United States working public, as the language is in English and McDonalds is most prevalently found in the country it was created in.  The talk of typing an email is, in American culture, correspondent to having a job where such action is necessary for communication.  As for their socioeconomic background, since McDonalds is known to have cheap food, the ad most likely is for the lower to middle class.  Paired with the email reference, the audience is further narrowed down to the non-blue-collar public who has no administrative duties.


So overall, McDonalds is using two of the seven deadly sins to advertise unhealthy food to the working class.  Putting in my own bias, yeah that sounds like them.

What's in a Name?!?

My name is Olivia Frances Merritt, if you didn't already know.  I love my name, all three of them, because each of them is a piece of me and my family.  Olivia means olive in the Spanish and Italian origins, and peace (of the olive tree/branch) in the Bible.  I LOOOVE olives, and that is well-known in my family; it helps that I grew up in a Spanish-American household.  As for peace--the Bible is irrelevant in my naming but I really like its meaning--I, along with many people, believe in peace and am a peaceful person, and I am all for nonviolence and no war (even if that's naive).  I really like the olive branch/peace meaning, and as a small girl I would think about it, and it helped shape my values of peace and its importance in that, yes, war has to occur sometimes, but peace and discussion should be first and foremost in my daily life and in diplomatic affairs.  My child brain put that into more basic thoughts, but my name helped me reach that conclusion.

Now for my middle name Frances.  If I was given another name at birth, I would choose the name Francesca, because it is a beautiful name in my opinion and I read a series once where an awesome old ladies' name was Fran, and it would be cool to be called that when I got old.  Frances comes from my grandfather Francisco on my mother's side, who was a strong, stubborn (he had to be given the family he married to :) ), and caring person.  I am honored to have my middle name after him, and will always cherish that part that comes from my grandfather.

Merritt is the last name on my dad's side of the family, though my grandmother on that side's maiden name was Sykes, which is the part of the family I associate myself most closely with because of the multiple family reunions I have with them every year.  Merritt as the name does not have as much of a significance for me as does my first and middle name, but I like the way that it has two r's and t's, and is a homophone of merit.  Also, my family and I love a singer whose name is Tift Merritt, and she was raised in Raleigh, so that adds a few cool factor points to my last name.

The "two me's" is my life.  Having Vanessa for a twin is amazing and I would never change the twin relationship I have with her.  However, I am constantly called by her name, which would be fine except people then associate me with her and eliminate the concept of me as an individual.  Because my sister and I are together a lot and people mix us up, it is as if we are the same person for them. Some people don't care to distinguish us as separate people at all, they just talk to me when I know they don't know who I am, but since they act like we are the same person, their comments to me don't change if they knew I was Olivia and not Vanessa.  It is really frustrating to be viewed by so many people in this way.  To people I am very familiar with, Olivia and I are the same thing, but to everyone else, Olivia and Vanessa are the same thing.

Under normal circumstances, Vanessa and I will meet someone for the first time, and the person will ask, "Awww are you two twins?"  And, under normal circumstances, we will say yes (under circumstances of extreme annoyance or sarcastic moods we will say, "No, we just met each other," or "No, we are cousins"). This basically results in an automatic categorization of my sister and I as one being, one set of interests, one type of person, or one bad, one good; one sweet, one mean.  The positive side of this is that this realization affects the relationship as a whole and ensures that our friends are truly awesome in general, along with aware of us as separate people.  The down side is that the part of community that we know and aren't good friends with regard us as one person.  I am me, the smart, pondering yet outgoing person to myself and friends, and I am us, the smart, over-achieving, slightly socially awkward person to society. I choose Olivia and Vanessa.

Eat: A Look at a Wing Young Huie's Photograph

http://photos.wingyounghuie.com/eat/e58670c0a

This photograph, taken by Wing Young Huie under the "Eat" section of his collection, is simplistic at first, clearly portraying a reflection of the room.  The two lights, table, and portrait create a mirror-like and basic effect, while the two people at the table also mirror each other in hand movements.  The obvious disruption to the reflection image is the black and white subjects of the photograph.  Though they are both male, one is a middle-aged white man and one is a teenage black boy.  The white male is eating a salad with white dressing, and the boy is eating a rice dish with what looks to be Tabasco sauce.  This is an example of othering because of the contrast of normalcy between the two males: the mundane appetizer of salad with dressing and the strange mixture of Tabasco sauce and rice.  This suggests that white people's eating habits are what is "normal" and catered to in the real world.  The portrait is also noteworthy because it is of a black man looking disapprovingly at the white man.  This could indicate the photographer's own disapproval with the concept of white superiority.  Contrasting these negative views of the racial implications in this photograph is the fact that a white and black male are eating together in a house.  It suggests an intimacy that does not occur anywhere besides a home, and the combination of man and teenager is also unique and adds to the progressive ideologies of the photograph. 
The Handmaid's Tale and this photograph present othering in, overall, different ways.  They both show both sides of the power spectrum (the extremely powerful males and the subordinate females and the while adult and black boy).  The females in Handmaid's Tale are explicitly treated as inferior, but the photograph is much more implicit.  The slightly tilted view of the photograph represents othering; illustrating the superiority white people believe they have over black people. In reality they are just two people, whether eating at a kitchen table or otherwise.  The two sitting at the table in the same positions show this perspective, and this is never seen in Handmaid's Tale, for even Moira, the extremely independent, rebellious woman in the novel, falls to the power of the male.  Othering is also countered in this photograph because of the mirroring quality, as well as the idea mentioned earlier of black and white male coexistence--living together and eating together.  In Atwood's novel, the men and women live together, but the women are treated as "containers, it's only the insides of our bodies that are important" (Atwood 124). There is no coexistence, there is solely use of women.  Though the stereotype of black and white men normally not being together is proven time and again, this picture shows the opposite, rejecting some othering aspects.  In The Handmaid's Tale, othering is seen so much that it is clearly rejected by the author, and, like Huie, conveys to the audience a major issue that Atwood feels must be addressed.
Citation: Atwood, Margaret. The Handmaid's Tale. New York: Ballantine Books, 1985. Print.