Rush 8: Homecoming

In this final rush post, your task is to apply the gram you selected from the first half of Empire of the Sun to a quick consideration of the film's relation to one or more of the aspects of epic narrative we've been exploring this semester.

As explained in last week's rush topic description, a "gram" is the part of a word or image that allows it to link to other such signifiers in practices such as poetry (and in film making as well).  In other words, a gram is an instance of signifying "husk" (a particular letter or sound, for instance) that prompts a link between two or more words or images.

Grams link otherwise unrelated contexts--so when we used our selected objects a few weeks ago in order to explore connections between two otherwise unrelated movies, we were already using grams. (We just weren't using the term.)

Use your selected object to establish and explore one or more links between the epic tradition at large and Steven Spielberg's Empire of the Sun.

For full credit, post your response on your blog by 11:59 Monday April 30.

CS

Rush 7: Dil Se and the creation of a "gram"

Your rush task this week is to use the object you selected from Del Si as a “gram”: the word used by certain philosophers and media theorists to describe the same portion of individual words or objects that we described earlier in the semester as  a scene’s “husk” or “rind” (the container, the part  used merely as an arbitrary means of conveying your actual meaning). 

In our earliest rush responses I asked you to locate portions of “husk” or “rind” within particular scenes of the films we were viewing. For instance, I focused on the rocking chair that appears in front of the family hearth early in The Searchers---an element of the movie could easily have been “thrown away” (like a husk) by simply moving the dialogue in question back to the dining room table.

By focusing on such “throwaway” components of individual scenes, we were able to recognize links between otherwise unrelated shots or scenes (and even between otherwise unrelated films).

The task in this rush response is to make a similar move at the level of one of the specific words bound up with your selected object.  Here’s how to proceed:

1.     Think about the object you selected from Dil Se in class last week, and make a short list of words associated with this object (including the most common synonyms for this object, for instance). 

2.     Selecting one of the resulting words, think about the various meanings associated with it (including altogether different words that happen to share the same letters or sound).  

3.     From the various meanings coming to mind through step 2, select one—preferably a conceptual context seemingly far removed from the film’s concerns.

4.     Find a way in which the context you’ve arrived at might be used as an analogy for one or more of the issues explicitly or implicitly addressed or engaged in Dil Se (including national identity, terrorism, sexual identity, the evolving function of family, the evolving function of  spirituality, etc.). 

For full credit, post your response on your blog by 11:59 on Monday, April 23.

CS