Hello Everyone!
Sadly it is our last day. We had so much fun in this class
didn’t we? I am going to miss everyone, but hopefully we will see each other at
school. We learned so much stuff, even though we complained so much. We learned
and explored the relationships between American life and popular culture. We
did class projects which included advertising, movies, music, even Barbie, and
new media in American life. We became aware of how pop culture permeates
society and how popular culture relates to folk culture. Through the study of
popular culture, we became familiar with criticism, academic analysis, and
research. Also we improved our critical thinking and our English by online
discussion, writing and doing presentations. Thus, I learned so much and I
thank to our teacher, who spent so much time to teach us something new, and I
thank to everybody who helped me during the class. Good Luck!
1.
Barbie Project: She took
the world by storm, surprising toy critics at New York's Toy Fair in 1959. With
her good looks, charm, and charisma, she won audiences over in record time.
Soon, little girls across America, and later, the world, were singing her
praises. In the coming years, both adults and children would collect her in
record numbers. Today she remains one of the hottest selling toys in the world.
Her name is Barbie. This is her story. She began like any other great
invention. Ruth Handler, co-founder of Mattel Toys, was watching her daughter
Barbara play with paper dolls and imagine them in grown-up roles when the idea
hit her - why not make a teenage doll that little girls could play and dream
about the future? Ruth recognized the value of helping children realize their
dreams and goals through play. After researching Ruth confirmed that while
there were plenty of baby dolls available, there were no three-dimensional
teenage dolls. She then resolved to create such a doll through her own company,
which she co-founded with her husband Elliott Handler. Ruth and Elliott
unveiled Barbie doll, the teenage fashion model, at New York's annual Toy Fair
in 1959. Initially, toy buyers were skeptical. Never before had anyone seen a
doll so small, yet so sophisticated. As a teenager, Barbie was completely
unlike any of the baby or toddler dolls popular at the time. Critics posed the
question - Would anyone buy her? Barbie quickly caught the attention of little
girls across the country. She soon became a worldwide sensation, and remains as
popular as ever today
2. Film Project: Last Samurai Review: This movie is about a young American
soldier goes to Japan to train Japanese army that opposes traditional samurai
warriors. But after being captured by the samurais and spending some time with
them, he realizes what he was doing and what he thought about them, in fact was
wrong and eventually he creates strong relationship with the tradition samurai
life style by learning their marshal art and establishing strong bond with the
people. This makes him to take a side with the samurais towards his previous side
which is new Japanese government supported by the American government. At the beginning of the movie he
appears lost and struggled by the memory of wars he had been and alcoholism.
But, after spending time with the samurais and their family, he finds ultimate
goal and desire of life. Also, this movie is about friendship of two man that
are very different in terms of their custom, tradition, and the way they were
raised, yet they bond very well because of their desire of life. One of the
interesting things about this movie is that it expresses Japan very accurately,
in terms of historical facts, custom, and tradition. This movie did not only
intend to be entertainment, it is actually a window to History of Japan and
people called Samurais. I thought this movie was executed excellently in all
aspect. Acting was superb, every actor felt very real to me and they were
suited for their roles in that movie. The actors appeared to have excellent
chemistry (Tom Cruise, Timothy Spall, Ken Watanabe,
Billy Connolly, Tony Goldwyn, Hiroyuki Sanada). In fact, I’m gland that
Ken Watanabe who plays the head samurai in the movie was nominated for
supporting actor at the Academy awards, But I’m very disappointed because Tom
Cruse was not nominated for anything. Another cool thing about this movie is
that there are actors from different countries and share same goal to make this
movie. This is obvious the
director (Ed Zwick) of the movie had very clear idea of this movie. I cannot
find any other way to make this movie this good. Background and stage were so real and beautiful; they must
have spent millions of dollars to make that. Soundtrack was awesome; it made
the movie very strong and emotional.
Personally I really like this movie and it is one of my favorite movies
of all time. I even saw it two times. First time I cried my eyes out and second
time felt very strong power from that movie, I learned many valuable lessons
such as respect, honesty, honor, power of friendship and many others.
3. Song Project: Black Eyed Pease made its song Where is the love in
September 23,2003. Since the song came out, it inspired so many people around
the world. I haven’t heard a lot about Black Eyed Peas, but when I heard the
song I really liked it. This song addresses to today’s world issue. The current
negative issues such as war, racism, badness that taking place in our world and
how messed up the world is. The song is putting out different issue, apart from
drugs. This song includes present war in Iraq, hunger, killing, and people who
living on the streets, and racism, which we still have in our world. At the
same time, the song is about bringing peace and ending negativity and asking
what is wrong with our world that we living in. This song demonstrates how bad
it can be when people hate one another, just because of their look, race, or
sex, and so on.
4. Bibliography Project: Charlize Theron: Before becoming one of the most
popular and one of the hottest young actors in Hollywood, she was little girl
whose dream was dancing and having passion for movies. She comes from South Africa where she
studied ballet and modeling. Charlize Theron was born August 7, 1975. She was
raised on a farm in Benoni, South Africa. She is the only child in her family.
She lost her father at age of 15 when her father attacked her mother;
Charlize’s mom shot him in self-defense. He died, and she was not charged in
the incident. Then at age 16 she went Milan to pursue her modeling career. Her passion was dancing and movies. She
started dancing ballet at age of six. After studying at boarding school in
Johannesburg then she took modeling job before moving to New York to dance
ballet. In 1995, she stopped her dancing career because of a knee injury. Then
her acting career started, when her manager John Crosby discovered her in bank,
when she had a problem cashing a check. She first appeared in a movie called“2
Days in the Valley”. Also in 2004 she
won a golden globe as Best Actress and she won an Oscar playing in “Monster”. She gained 30 pounds to play in the role of a
serial killer Aileen Wuornos in a biographical movie.
5. International festival: International Festival was a nice
experience. I got to see different people and I had so much fun. There were
many talented people, and I also learned square dancing, which was fun too. I
was surprised when the deaf people danced, they were so amazing and danced so
nice. Also, the women singing made me feel like I was in opera. Playing piano,
reading poems, and me dancing with others was great experience. And I hope all
of you had great time at the Festival.
