Painting.

As an activity of the course, we had to make a painting based on the text "Los de abajo" by Mariano Azuela and it is a surrealistic painting. Mariano's work is about revolutionary times, it shows us how big was the injustice that people lived during this period and the conditions how they lived. Then, that's why we decided to paint the upper class above the lower class. They share trees showing that the upper class didn't care about the lower class while the people belonged to the lower class were always working for others.

Movie Trailer.

Hello everyone,

Here is the trailer of the movie we had to do for the final project. I hope you'll like it.

Final Reflection.

Hi everyone,

As an activity for our class we have to make a reflection about what we learned in the course and the skills developed, so here it is.

First and foremost, my favorite genre was drama because it is were we can play to be someone else, create stories including poetry or whatever people want and it allows us to express our thoughts and feelings being ourselves but also playing being someone else which I really loved, indeed. Also, it makes possible that people transmit to others what they see, the way they see things and the way they are too.
Secondly, I think that the autor I liked the most was Jean Paul Sartre because he had a special way to see the world and to think about it, because anyone could think that the human being is special and that he can do whatever he wants but Sartre used to think more about how fragil it was and how easy life could end because there are a lot of things that we cannot control and that are stronger than us and that's what captured my attention the most because I could have never thought about life the way he did.
To continue, during the course we did a lot of activities but I would like to say that the one that I enojoyed the most was the movie or our final project because it was very draining but at the end, the results were good and also my team was good, so though I was tired it was easy and funny to work with them. We all cooperated on it's production and we learned about the autor and also about the story and the genre, then it was a very good experience.
Finally, in individual work I consider that the best part was that I was the one that decided the rythme with the one I was going to work and had no problems on arguing with anyone about my ideas, but the worst part was that I had to do all the job. For all the activities that we had to do in pair work I made them with my classmate Allison Tenorio and she is also my friend so the best part of this sort of work was that it was funny when we did our jobs and we divided the work so it wasn't a lot but the worst part was that it was complicated to concentrate when we were together and we spend too much time because of that doing them. For the collaboraive work, the best part was that I had good coworkers and that it was funny when we were together to do the job but the worst part was that it was difficult to agree on a day and time where everyone was available to make it, so that was complicated but after all, it was all good.

Movie Poster.

Hello everyone,

For our class, we had to make a poster about a movie we made and here is the photo. The movie we made is an adaptation of a story of Gabriel García Márquez.

Final Partial Essay.

Hello everyone,

In this essay I worked again with my classmate Allison Tenorio.

“Freedom"

This essay pretends to analyze the works “The Wall” and “Erostratus”, both works of Jean Paul Sartre with the objective of comparing and contrasting them, characters and plays in general, finding similarities and differences among them. Connecting topics such as existentialism, it means, trying to understand the way he saw life and death too, and trying to explain through these works one of his phrases which said: “It is just necessary a man hating another one for hate to reach humanity”. This handwritten tries to interpret these two works of Sartre for getting closer to know him and to understand better what he felt and what he thought that took him to write jobs like these ones.

In our last partial, the class had the opportunity of analyzing the works mentioned behind, which is very interesting because both were made by the same author and so it allows to have a perspective of how he was, what he thought and what he felt for being able to make those jobs. First, both stories have something to do with dead and with the perceptions that humans have among this fact. In the video of “The Wall” it shows a locked man (Pablo Salinas) who is threatened with being killed if he doesn’t tells something and he has to pass through a lot of time alone with his thoughts just expecting the moment where the police officers are coming just to shoot him in the head and kill him. Despite that, he prefers it than telling them where his friend (Facundo Ramos) is hiding. Unfortunately because of a matter of destiny, bad luck or something like that, Salinas tells the officers a fake location of Ramos but at the end he discovers that the location was not fake, he betrayed his friend, indeed.

While in “Erostratus”, the story is totally different because it is about a man (Paul Hilbert) who can’t be with people, who is a killer and is scared that others know this fact, because he is aware that it is bad to wish to harm others without a good reason and Paul believes that he won’t be brave enough to kill anyone else without getting punished by society. Then, he decides to plan his crime in such a way that he would be able to get away without being recognised and without dealing with people reactions, but then when he finally finds the courage to do it, he is so excited that his plan changes completely and ends getting caught at a public bathroom.

Although the context of this two stories is very different, they are very similar in their core because in both it is shown the existentialism of Sartre showing us the fragility of the human being, how easy life can end and how this is totally out of our control. Also, in this works it is appreciated a lack of freedom and a desperation of trying to get it, unfortunately it is just obtained in “The Wall” because as it can be seen in “Erostratus”, the main character is caught and so he doesn’t make it but in the first one, the main character ends by getting its freedom at the expense of his best friend but he didn’t had the intention that things ended the way did, but might have been because of bad luck.

Secondly, in both works the main character is frightened about the fact of the death and because it sees that its death is out of its control. Also, as Sartre thought that existence is just for those who live free and in this works the main character is trapped, in different ways, but it is not free and then the author is able to express the lack of existentialism in both characters. Both main characters feel impotency when they get caught and when they can’t do anything to change their situation but Salinas at the end gets what he wanted and is not killed but he is sad when he notices that he is the responsable of their best friend’s death, while Hilbert reaches his objective too but finally isn’t successful with his escape. Also something that both characters have in common is their name, both are named Pablo just in another language.

Finally, it is easier to discover things from a person by knowing the way they think and what they desire than by asking personal information, which is good in this case because otherwise it wouldn’t have been possible to know all these incredible authors without their works, plays and stories for sharing them with society and for value them as treasures, because that is what they are treasures for humanity. By analyzing these stories it is proved that our main target was reached which was knowing better the way Sartre thought, what existentialism meant to him and connecting these two facts with his stories observing that both have his signature.

“Man is condemned to be free, because once he is in the world, he is responsible for everything he does”.

- Jean Paul Sartre.

References:

·         Anonymous, (2009), “Jean Paul Sartre Phrases”, Proverbia. Recovered from: http://www.proverbia.net/citasautor.asp?autor=894

·         Anonymous, (2008), “Biography of Jean Paul Sartre”, Thoughts and Phrases. Recovered from: http://www.frasesypensamientos.com.ar/autor/jean-paul-sartre.html

·         Suárez, P. (2013), “Jean Paul Sartre”, Philosophy on High School. Recovered from: http://www.webdianoia.com/contemporanea/sartre/sartre_filo.htm

Second Partial Essay.

Hi everyone,

Again, for this essay I worked with my classmate Allison Tenorio.

Is love what is missing. Just love!

            This essay pretends to analyze the works “The Battles in the desert” by José Emilio Pacheco and the other one “Lovers of the Arctic Circle” by Julio Medem with the objective of comparing and contrasting both, characters and plays in general, finding similarities and differences among them. Connecting topics such as the traditional and contemporary fiction novel and trying to explain through these works the phrase by Benjamin Disraeli which said: “The magic of our first love consists on our ignorance that it can be endless”. This handwritten tries to interpret the cause why authors wrote the way they did connecting it to the time where they lived and the phenomena that occurred to make them see the world the way they did.

In this partial, the class had the opportunity of analyzing two different works, one was “The battles in the desert” from José Emilio Pacheco and the other one was “Lovers of the Arctic Circle” by Julio Medem. Both stories talk about the first love of a child, they present the emotions that a child feels when he discovers for the first time that is attracted to someone else. Also in both stories there is an issue, which prevents them from being together, in the story of José Emilio Pacheco, the kid can’t be with Mariana because there is a very big difference of age between them so his love is not reciprocated but besides that, his parents prohibit him to talk to her because she was a woman of “low life” and then he never sees her again; while in Julio Medem’s work, it talks about two children whose parents start to live together and they become step brothers so here again they cannot be together because according to their parents they should see each other as a sibling but at the end they fall in love.

Between these two works, there are also so many differences starting from the context and the setting where they take place, it is completely different. “Battles in the desert” takes place in Mexico when Miguel Alemán was the president, then the economy and the society was in a very bad status, in this case the story is about a child that is getting into the adolescence and falls in love with his friend’s mother and also the language used in this work is more colloquial. On the other side, the movie “Lovers of the Arctic Circle” has its setting in Spain and the economy of the country is better than the one presented in Mexico, actually the economic situation of the father of one of the main characters gets better during the story, in this one the step brothers fall in love and try to be together but at the end is the death who separates them and the language used in this one is a little more formal than in the one of José Emilio Pacheco.

The characters in these works are very different and equal at the same time because for example in the “Battles in the desert” Carlitos is a child whose economic situation is not very good but despite that he goes to the school and his siblings go too, one day his friend Jim introduces him to his mother and Carlitos falls in love with her because of her personality but their parents are catholic and think he is doing something too bad that needs to go to the church and receive help. Besides, Carlito’s family was close-minded and received education which taught them to follow rules, not to question them, to be discrete and to do what the church told them. His family tried to make Carlitos this way but he couldn’t control what he felt. Also, Mariana is a very pretty woman who had a child being alone and without having a job and despite this she wasn’t an arrogant person and always had a smile for everyone, she was a woman who fought to make her son’s life better than what hers was.

Otherwise, in Julio Medem’s movie the main characters are Otto, who’s a child that starts to feel attracted to a girl and for coincidence or destiny his father starts to live with this girl’s mother and as they lived in the same house they continued feeling this love and attraction but the problem now was that they were step brothers and life goes on and Otto decides to start a relationship with his step sister, Anna, he was shy, kind and honest. While Anna, who was also in love with his step brother, is a determined, honest, bold and intelligent girl that wanted to be with Otto all the time but when she was trying to find him, she was so concentrated on the boy that she didn’t see the bus coming and she dies in the street, in the exact moment for Otto to watch it all.

Also, when analyzing the way they write, in the work of Emilio, the narrator is omniscient because Carlitos besides being the main character is narrating what´s happening in the story and makes several descriptions of other characters so it could be associated with the characteristics of a traditional novel. Moreover, in the film of Julio, the narrator is not present and everything is implied by the actions of the characters. Although it isn't a novel, it should be noted that sometimes the films are based on novels, if so it could be considered a contemporary novel although this is not the case.

Concluding, to compare jobs is something that helps more to improve understanding and analyzing better the structure and aspects that influenced their elaboration than if they are only read or seen. In this case it helped to appreciate that this two works have differences and similarities. Both help to explain the quote of Benjamin Disraeli about first love mentioned before, and heartbreak rather. In both there exist a situation where two people want to be together but they can't in one because of the age and influence of other characters and in other because the brotherhood relationship that the characters have. Although characters were immature, they fall in love so depth and can´t afford their love isn´t possible. Despite this, they never tried to forget this love, instead of that they continued looking for that special person. This shows that love is a feeling that is present in people of all ages and is something unexplainable for many of them. At the end this jobs ended in tragedy, Mariana disappears and Anna dies hit by a bus.

Although the thematic is similar, as mentioned earlier, the context in which they develop change, the kind of narrator is also different and although they aren't novels they have some of these features.

The works suggest that love is a universal feeling which consists in estimate and feel affection towards another person. In both, the book and the movie, we can identify kinds of love, such as love to the family or the "first love", that is the one with more importance in this case. Love is a feeling that has existed since the origin of humans and is present in the contemporary world. "Battles in the Desert" was published in 1981 while "Lovers of the Arctic Circle" was released in the year 1998 and the feeling, the approach that is given to it still the same.

The sort of this kind of works help to strengthen this feeling and value in society because sometimes love it's what's missing in the world to live better, is what motivates many people to continue living and enjoying every day. So just love.

“You know you're in love when you can't fall asleep because reality is

finally better than your dreams.”

― Dr. Seuss

References:

§  Anonymous. (2009). “First love”. Proverbia. Recovered from: http://www.proverbia.net/citastema.asp?tematica=682

§  “Lovers of the Arctic Circle” [movie] Directed by Medem, J. 1998 (Spain)

§  Pacheco, J. “The Battles in the Desert”. México: 1981

First Partial Essay.

Hi everyone,

For this essay, I worked with my classmate Allison Tairi Tenorio Saucedo.

“¿La realidad un limitante?”.

El ensayo pretende analizar los textos “Casa Tomada” de Julio Cortázar, “Aura” de Carlos fuentes y la película “El Ángel Exterminador” producida por Luis Buñuel con el objetivo de comparar y contrastar tanto a los personajes como a la obras en general encontrando las similitudes y diferencias entre ellos. Vinculando el surrealismo a las obras y tratando de encontrar explicación o interpretar dichos eventos tomando en cuenta lo que dijo Salvador Dalí acerca de esta vanguardia artística “Que no conozca el significado de mi arte, no significa que no lo tenga”. También se pretende explicar el motivo por el cual los autores escriben de esta forma relacionándolos con la época.

El objetivo principal de este ensayo es comprobar que a pesar de que el surrealismo se dio principalmente en los años 1920-1930, este movimiento siguió influenciando obras en las décadas posteriores.

Las tres obras son similares en cuanto a surrealismo porque todas incluyen hechos inexplicables incluidos a la realidad cotidiana de los personajes: en Casa Tomada se muestra cuando no se describe qué o quién fue lo que “ocupó” parcial y totalmente la casa, ya que en realidad ni si quiera se tiene la certeza de que la casa haya sido tomada puesto que nunca se presenta una prueba contundente de ello, sino que más bien los personajes asumen eso y por consiguiente, el lector también; en la película “El Ángel Exterminador” no se explica qué hecho sobrenatural los mantiene dentro de la sala, ni por qué hay ovejas y un oso rondando por la casa, ya que al parecer no tienen algún papel en la obra; y en el texto de “Aura” no se aclara la identidad de los personajes principales, la relación entre los mismos  es confusa y es algo que supera la realidad, debido a que incluye suposiciones acerca de la brujería, así como escenarios irreales. Además la forma de narrar y/o presentar los acontecimientos no sigue una secuencia lógica o explicable.

Esto puede estar relacionado con la época en la que vivieron los autores ya que las tres obras datan de los años 1950 aproximadamente. Casa Tomada (1946), Aura y El Ángel Exterminador (1962). No se sabe cuál es la intención del autor con ello pero las tres obras pueden explicarse a partir de un lenguaje metafórico. En el ángel exterminador, no podían abandonar el lugar donde se encontraban, pero al parecer los personajes ni siquiera hacían el intento por salir, peleaban por evacuar después de otro y como nadie salía entonces todos permanecieron ahí hasta que alguien notó que ya podían lograrlo. Tal vez el autor quiso dar a entender que muchas veces no se hace el intento o no hay interés de convertirse en líderes para lograr llegar a una meta, conformándose con la situación en la que se encuentran sin hacer el esfuerzo por salir adelante. En el cuento de Julio Cortázar los protagonistas atraviesan por una extraña situación y aunque no se sabe qué es lo que en realidad los alejaba de cierta zona de la casa hace alusión a los miedos u obstáculos que la gente tiene durante su vida, por lo que en ocasiones por miedo a lo desconocido no los afrontan y terminan perdiendo una oportunidad, en este caso pierden la casa que había mantenido a los hermanos juntos. Por otro lado, el cuento Aura puede interpretarse como el amor que se tienen los personajes como pareja, tanto que quieren que sea eterno y consideran a la juventud un regalo que debe de aprovecharse, por ello es que por medio de “hechicería” fue creada Aura.

Las obras difieren en la forma de redacción de los autores. Los sucesos en las tres suceden cronológicamente, “Casa Tomada” está narrada en pasado y “Aura” rompe con la cronología de los hechos cuando el protagonista lee las memorias del general y va presentando acontecimientos del pasado y del presente a la vez. Además esta obra está escrita en segunda persona, incluyendo al lector en la historia con el fin de que imagine los sucesos como si le sucedieran a él, “Casa Tomada” esta narrado en primera persona donde los personajes relatan lo que les va sucediendo y en la película todo se presenta a partir de los diálogos de los mismos.

Respecto a éstos, son similares en su actitud, se encuentran confundidos y no comprenden la situación que atraviesan. Felipe Montero siempre tuvo dudas respecto a la verdadera identidad de Aura y su relación con la señora Consuelo, en “Casa Tomada”, Irene y su hermano (el narrador) no están seguros de quien tomó su casa y les da miedo averiguarlo y en “El Ángel Exterminador” los burgueses permanecen dentro de la casa ignorando el motivo por el cuál no pueden salir. Difieren en el contexto de cada historia, pues las relaciones son muy distintas: en Aura se presenta la idea de una pareja que rejuvenece por medio de la brujería, mientras que en Casa Tomada se muestra la relación existente entre dos hermanos que viven juntos. Por otro lado, en El Ángel Exterminador se ven diferentes relaciones entre un grupo mayor de actores. Otra diferencia significativa entre las tres obras es que tanto Aura como Casa Tomada son obras escritas, sin embargo, en la producción de Luis Buñuel se presenta una obra visual que favorece a la comprensión de la historia e igualmente atrae con mayor facilidad la atención del espectador, en cambio, con las obras escritas se encuentra un mayor grado de dificultad en este aspecto debido a que de ellas se pueden generar diversas perspectivas y posiblemente éstas nunca coincidan con la del autor. Finalmente, también se nota la diferencia dentro de las personalidades de cada personaje.

Concluyendo las situaciones surrealistas que se presentan en las tres obras si tienen un fin y una forma de interpretarse pero esto puede no ser igual para todos, dependerá de las experiencias e igualmente de la perspectiva de cada quien, lo cual enriquece este tipo de arte. De acuerdo a la época los textos van cambiando y los autores adquieren distintos estilos y vertientes que pueden estar influenciadas por otros autores o por el contexto en el que se desenvuelven. Se comprobaron las diferencias y similitudes presentes en las producciones incluyendo parte de la trama de las mismas. Se aprecia que la tesis fue comprobada ya que se muestra la influencia y efectos que dejó el surrealismo en las historias anteriormente mencionadas.

Finalmente se invita a hacer una reflexión sobre la siguiente frase: “El surrealismo es destructivo, pero destruye sólo lo que considera que limita nuestra visión” -Salvador Dalí.

Referencias:

·      Anónimo, (2013), “Las 25 mejores frases del genio del surrealismo, Salvador Dalí”, TeInteresa.es, [en línea], recuperado de: http://www.teinteresa.es/cultura/Salvador_Dali-surrealismo-pintura-catalan_0_918509447.html

·      Ulloa, S., (s.f.), “Surrealismo”, Poeasías.cl, [en línea], recuperado de: http://www.poesias.cl/reportaje_surrealismo.htm