HRC Scavenger Hunt

The first image, showing an elongated girl, is one of the original illustrations in Lewis Carroll’s novel Alice in Wonderland. The illustration can be found near the middle of the novel, where Alice experience several physical transformations on her body shape. Though the narrative is showing physical change, it is metaphorical in how Alice is confused about her identity.

The second image is that of a flower and even though a flower is a very generic familiar item found anywhere, it can be easily related to Carroll and his imagination. In the sequel novel, Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There, Alice meets a group of flowers that range from lilies to roses to daisies. The entire exchange was one of the highlights in the novel that every Alice in Wonderland film adapted it –again, the scene is from the sequel, not the original, and yet they choose to include it anyways. Now only does Carroll have a fascination to plants but mostly animals as well. In both of his novels, he explores the relationship between humans and animals by developing animal characters that contrast the human characters.

When it comes to digging a bit deeper into Carroll, human-animal chemistry is definitely one of the more popular topics, which brings me to my third picture. The picture shows a man riding his horse in a race-like event. We can tell that it’s a race based on how the man is dressed, with those pants and that familiar hat. This brings up the question of whether or not these horses are treated well, since they are used for entertainment. Granted, there may be some examples of horses who are trained by the same person who raised them, but there must be outliers. Remember the entire Entertainment section of the documentary Earthlings? They included circus elephants and racing horses. Surely this is a topic that Carroll hints at throughout his novels.

Climate and Capitalism

Most of Naomi Klein’s talk was about climate change, its effects on the world, and what can be done to combat it. Instead of hearing many familiar words, Klein rephrased some expressions that sounded more convincing or ethical. She described how climate change is “the key to global reparations,” how it is another way to “fight global injustice.” This is a very moral-driven way to convince people to take action, and that’s admirable on the speaker’s part. Unfortunately, many people need to be persuaded first that global warming and climate change is a real thing instead of a myth. The worst part is that we have passed 1 degree of Celsius warming and yet we still have taken very little action.

I have read articles on the web before that state how even if we combat global warming, we will lose, and that there is really nothing we can do that can prevent it. That may be true, but it is our duty as earthlings to keep the planet inhabitable for as long as possible. Klein informed us that “2011 was the hottest year,” leading to a “massive crop failure with 8 billion dollars lost.” We even had an Academy Award winning documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, released as early as 2006.

This all reminded me of one of my favorite episodes ever from The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. In the video, link provided below, Jon praises the march for global warming while asking the question of why a march is even necessary. He then points all his fingers at the United States House of Representatives Committee on Science, Space and Technology. He uses phrases like “pushing a million tons of idiot up a mountain” to describe the whole affair. Jon even uses a glass of water with ice to make the problem as clear as possible, asking if we have to make a volcano with baking soda to convince people that global warming is real.

The Daily Show – Burn Noticed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPgZfhnCAdI

Natural Science Museum

Outside the museum, I looked at the building with curiosity but distracted daze as a beagle. It appears welcoming as a building that is softly surrounded by trees and bushes. I skip inside and the first thing I see is a ginormous bone!

The bone is a fossil humerus of a bird, I mean, flying pterosaur. It’s called the Quetzalcoatlus, and it lived 65 million years ago. When my mind is in the present, I think about how that bone is looks intimidating since it is something I would normally want. But knowing that it is just a small piece of bone on a much larger flying creature, I feel terrified but glad that the creature no longer exists. For my views on the species homo sapiens, I would think that they are smart and skilled for their ability to find a bone that is so old.

Next I came across the tail armor of a glyptodont. At first impression, this looks like an awesome shelter and home for a beagle. But after careful analysis, I realized that it is a thick plate covering the entire back of the creature, like a turtle shell. I would credit the species homo sapiens once again for being able to find and hold onto a part of an animal that is older than their time. I like the idea of preserving items to remember a certain animal’s existence.

Then my thoughts go a little south when I came across dead birds and models of their homes. Even though I started thinking about how homo sapiens treat dead animals by putting them on display, I was too distracted by what the display was trying to educate me about. Unlike myself, who sleeps on the floor, on the Earth, those birds design their homes on ceilings, hanging down. I was impressed at how the homes were able to support the birds’ weight. There is no way I can build a home that can support mine, that’s for sure.

On the fourth floor, I saw something peculiar. It looked like strange mutated dog food at first, but after reading the signs and labels, I was told that the model is of a virus cell. So these things can be found inside our bodies, huh? Any species can have these? I guess that just shows how homo sapiens is just one out of millions of animal species on this single planet.

In the end, my impression of homo sapiens is that they are a much more sophisticated species than others, since they have created mass exhibits that help them learn more about other animals. Though the measures they take to create such exhibits can be questionable, they are undoubtedly a very curious species.

Blanton-Franks exhibit

The painting I chose was clearly related to the fairy tale of Little Red Riding Hood. Near the center of the painting is the back of a figure dressed completely in red, an interesting approach since she normally has a big cloak. Facing her is a demonizing wolf in bed, wearing a pink skirt of some sort.

Being from an Asian culture myself, I couldn’t help but feel like the wolf’s design in this painting is very Asian. You can see whiskers on the side of its mouth, like those of a Chinese dragon. The teeth are oddly sharp and long too, along with the pointy ears and the hair around its neck, resembling that of a lion’s mane. These are all qualities in classic paintings of Chinese dragons, like the one shown below:

Another clear feature is the big painting on the wall right behind the wolf, showing a woman looking in dissatisfaction or disappointment. Perhaps that woman is Grandma? Mother? What if she’s actually Little Red looking at herself, signifying a sense of impending doom for our protagonist?

Other minor details – the statue on the left resembles a demon gargoyle of some kind, yet has the appearance of an ox. The model tree behind that looks like a fancy-looking bonsai, which is also a Chinese plant, like the one below.

It is great to see a different take on a familiar story. Natalie Frank, the artist, described how “it is [these stories’ mysteries] that make us return to them over and over again, inviting us in, drawing us closer.” These tales allow other artists like Frank to expand on the world we love to read about –in line with how I have written about how Alice in Wonderland evolved over time.

Grimm-Franks Talk

After hearing Kate Berheimer talk about fairy tales, how similar and lurid they are, and the future of fairy tales, the one thing that stayed with me was when she asked us to think about how fairy tales are done today and how they’re different.

My immediate reaction went to Tim Burton and Guillermo Del Toro. I think both filmmakers’ imaginations fuel the fairy tale genre today, keeping the “language of fairy tales” alive. When it comes to movie genres, fantasy is one of the big names, but “fairy tale” is arguably a genre of its own. This is because fairy tales over time have received a large faithful cult audience. Almost every film by Burton and Del Toro can be called a fantasy cult film. Films like Beetlejuice and Edward Scissorhands come to mind for the former while titles like Pan’s Labyrinth and Hellboy come to mind for the latter. This year, Del Toro directed another film that I would count as a lurid fairy tale, Crimson Peak.

I wrote in my P1 and P2 about the evolution of Alice in Wonderland and the evolution of the fantasy genre; one of my conclusions was “fairy tales still sell.” Even when Kate brings up how Disney “sanitized” the original novels by making the colors brighter and more appealing for children, history has shown that filmmakers would still go back to the fascinating dark places of the genre. Just look at Tim Burton’s rendition of Alice in Wonderland. Or the upcoming Alice Through The Looking Glass.

Fairy tales are not going away, because there is always an audience for it.

Earthlings

• “It all comes down to pain and suffering. Not intelligence, not strength, not social class or civil right. Pain and suffering are in themselves bad and should be prevented or minimized, irrespective of the race, sex, or species of the being that suffers.”

This was near the very end of the documentary, and this was where I learned that the documentary and the event hosting it have two different messages. Earthlings focused on how we are all creatures of this planet and yet we show no sympathy towards the killing of inferior species. Also, like humans, animals express degrees of emotions ranging from loneliness to pain and suffering. It promotes a humane peaceful way of thinking from the audience, asking us to open our eyes and be more aware of what the system is doing.

• “[…] it’s no wonder that Mad Cow Disease … Foot and Mouth Disease … Pfiesteria… and a host of other animal related abnormalities have been unleashed on the human public. Nature is not responsible for these actions. We are.”

Earthlings brings up another interesting subject in the quote I provided. Even though the documentary’s main focus is about emotion, the health and environmental impact can be further studied in the documentary Cowspiracy. The idea suggests that our process of killing animals is the cause of several harmful treatments to the environment, and therefore, new diseases are created. This is absolutely possible from a scientific standpoint. However, a scientific problem must require a scientific solution, not an emotional solution. If we wish to prevent these diseases from forming, we must go straight into the horrible industry practices that are being done, instead of looking towards the food-eaters and asking them to not eat. The consumers make little influence in this big picture. You wouldn’t try to combat global warming by asking people to not drive that much. No, you would instead cut carbon emissions.

One of the most conflicting things I had with Earthlings was that it doesn’t really have a stance or an argument. It keeps bringing up terrible things for us to watch without really suggesting a call to action at the end (The call to action CANNOT be “Therefore you should not eat meat and be vegan instead”). Over time, as I kept thinking about it, though, I concluded that it’s alright that Earthlings doesn’t have a call to action. This is because its *only* agenda is to inform. There is a common saying: “The first step to solving any problem is recognizing there is one.” I’m happy that Earthlings serves well as the first step.