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The importance of secondary texts. Yep!. You can and should use some material from class:. What articles, films or other ideas have we discussed in class that relate to the Context: ‘Whose Reality?’
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You can and should use some material from class: • What articles, films or other ideas have we discussed in class that relate to the Context: ‘Whose Reality?’ • Share with the person next to you one resource that you have been using consistently in your writing.
Transition: texts • Paul Bunchheit’s blog on mental frames: “to claim true objectivity is to deny the truth.” • Lieutenant Hiroo Onoda: “it became a cycle of disbelief. Isolated from the rest of the world, everyone appeared to be an enemy.” • Thomas Hoepker’sphotograph of September 11: “life does not stop dead because a battle or an actor of terror is happening nearby.” • “History is not a heroic story, nor memory a block of marble inscribed with imperishable words of grief and rage.” • “Changing channels is what humans do.” –We can’t focus on tragedy for too long, it is a coping mechanism.
Links to Leunig: • Go back over your notes from class. • Clear links to ‘Blood, Guts, Violence and Death’, subjective perception (are the people in the image really ‘callous’- one man said he was in a state of shock), the importance of being authentic, the power of a ‘dictator’- conformity (Lieutenant Onoda).
Plato’s Allegory of the Cave • Plato's Allegory of the Cave is relevant to the Context, 'Whose Reality' as it explores the nature of human perception andexperience. Plato was a rationalist and believed in 'a priori knowledge'; that is, a kind of knowledge that is known independentlyof experience. (Like Descartes, he questioned whether or not we could trust our senses and truly 'know' something based purely on experience. For example: how do we know that we are not being deceived?). The Allegory of the Cave asks us to question the natureof our reality. Can we ever truly know that our experience is 'real'? Plato believed that as human beings we should seek the truth,through philosophy (thinking and questioning), rather than always blindly believing that what we experience is 'real'. He argued that not everyone would be able to cope with the truth. Some people who left the cave would be too frightened of the sun, which is metaphorical of the truth: enlightenment, and would instead run back into the familiarity of the cave. Others would accept the truth and be eager to share their enlightenment with the people still left behind in the cave. What does this suggest about the nature of reality? Is it something that we are all capable of accepting or does this allegory explore why some people refuse to 'see' the truth or are incapable of dealing with it?
Links to Leunig? • You could link this is to Leunig beautifully as he too believes in the importance of the truth above all else, being an informed citizen and standing up for your convictions. (Look into Socrates for an example of someone who paid the ultimate price for standing up for his beliefs).
War Veteran Article- used with ‘Blood,Guts, Violence and Death’ Ideas: • How the experience of war influences our perception of reality and of what is important in life. • How an experience can change our views eg. many veterans become anti war. • Many of us want to deny the dangerous and violent nature of our reality. eg. the soldier who had to force his troops to repeat, “I will die in the country of Iraq.” • How people in powerful positions can be cruel to others in order to benefit their career. “I need to deploy to move my career up” so it is not surprising that this often involves overriding medical decision. (putting soldiers who are clearly suffering from trauma back into the field)
Links to Leunig? • ‘Blood, Guts, Violence and Death’- a great essay! • ‘the refined and educated Western man’ who has no direct contact with violence, yet ‘can sign with an elegant golden pen the document that unleashes the cowardly invasion and who can then go out to dine on claret and lamb cutlets.’ • ‘I had held the theoretical view that if you eat meat you had better be prepared to kill the animal. Perhaps in my youthful sensitivity I felt betrayed and isolated because I was being cast into something that I felt all meat eaters should face but were mostly refusing to…’ • He is Anti war- Why? Do some thinking!
Peter Singer • Or use your own example of a non conformist- there are plenty! • Consider why they feel so passionately about their views and what consequences they have faced. • What social pressures have they had to face and overcome?
Link to Leunig? • ‘Swimming Against the Tide’ • The importance of authenticity- you have to explain why he values this so much. What does it lead to? • Go back to ‘Hello Welcome to our Drought’- the symbolism of the foal and its ‘unique peculiarities’.
I LOVE THIS ONE for the importance of authenticity!! • ‘Hello, Welcome to our Drought’ p.4 “To be indelibly splattered with one’s own uniqueness and irregularity and to let it show and live by it is to court a difficult life- but not to do so is to invite a feeble existence filled with a big, stupid silicone implant to keep it up.” • “We have fantasy and delusional versions of individuality but do we have the stomach for the real thing?”
Dove Beauty Campaign/Jen Hawkins/ The Media in General Ideas: • We are put under pressure from the media and our obsession with celebrities and reality TV to look and be a certain way. • This is further emphasised by peer group pressure. • Sometimes people pose as being ‘real’ but a lot of the time their images have still been photo shopped.
Link to Leunig? • Leunig suggests that we “have never lived in so much fear” before. It is the fear of being unattractive and abandoned, of rejection and failure. This links to Leunig’s recurring argument that we are delusional about how much freedom and individuality we have. • Many of you write about this well but make sure you demonstrate knowledge of some other Leunig ideas as well. ‘Thou Shalt be Attractive’ should not be the only essay you use (whether it is explicitly or implicitly).
Riots and Protest • The Cronulla riots 2005 • Aboriginal Injustice – the tent embassy, inequality across the board
Link to Leunig: • Ideas about the importance of ‘embracing’ diversity in both ‘A Picture of Innocence’ and ‘Our Flagging Enthusiasm’. Not just ‘tolerance’. “We would be wise to stop staring out to see and turn and face the facts of the land.” “It is wrong and futile to to imagine we can make newcomers conform and be more like ‘us’.”
Art reflecting reality • Guernica • The Scream • Your choice
Personal anecdotes • It needs to relate directly to the prompt. Great for the beginning of your intro, instead of just ‘fluff’. Should relate generally to BIG IDEAS about ‘Whose Reality?’ which means it could fit many prompts- you need to mould it and your examples to directly relate them to the prompt. • My friend’s sister who believed Big Brother was watching her.
SECONDARY TEXTS: • You need to find a few different things that you can draw on depending on the prompt. If you want to use a film look at the ones already on the Wiki. Go to mine or another teachers home page: Scrapbook and there are films that last year’s students have written a little caption about. Choose one which interests YOU and that YOU will have something to say about. Some people are already doing this well. • Find an article that relates to one of the ideas you are already exploring but need some more evidence to back it with. Eg. art reflecting reality, negative impact of the media and reality TV, negative effects of war, mental health impacting on one’s reality....
EG> Negative effects of reality TV • “Reality TV is dishonest – it pretends to show “reality” but it actually distorts the truth to suit the programme makers. The shows are not really “real” – they are carefully cast to get a mix of “characters” who are not at all typical.” • Reality shows send a bad message and help to create a cult of instant celebrity. These programmes suggest that anyone can become famous just by getting on TV and “being themselves”, without working hard or having any particular talent. • All I did was google: articles negative effects of reality TV It takes two seconds and you get some good quotes! Make sure you acknowledge who said it and explain the quote. The stuff above was found at: http://www.idebate.org/debatabase/topic_details.php?topicID=823
Remember.. • We are not obsessed with ‘The Lot’. We like it and we will use it’s ideas in our work, either explicitly or implicitly. • We ARE obsessed with the BIG IDEAS of ‘Whose Reality?’ and this is why we need a range of secondary texts that explore those BIG IDEAS. • It is okay to have paragraphs where you discuss ‘Whose Reality?’ and a secondary text(s) on their own, as long as you your knowledge of Leunig is apparent in other parts of your essay.
HOMEWORK: • Over the weekend focus on your secondary texts. Read/view them. • Write one paragraph about one of them on your choice of prompt. No connection to Leunig- just deal with the BIG IDEAS and the prompt. • Write another paragraph about a different secondary text and its BIG IDEAS and link it to Leunig (on the same prompt).
