C Block Crime, Media and Society 12 - Today we'll finish our look at the big picture of crime, media and society 12. Today we'll watch Patrick Jane's "antics" on the Mentalist. We'll watch "Paint it Red" from Season 1 in which a business tycoon's son-in-law is found dead near where a $50 million painting once hung in his father-in-law's office. Jane and the CBI try to find out how he might have been involved and who else is responsible. From TV tropes:
Possessing exceptional knowledge of human behavior, extensive meditative and hypnotic training, a refined memory and superhuman deductive skills, Patrick Jane is one of the most valuable agents of the CBI in the fight against crime. Though technically he's not a cop, just a consultant.
He does have that "Sherlock Stare" that we talked about yesterday in class and he confounds his team members and keeps them in the dark about his plans until Voila...crime solved. So to end what can we deduce (Sherlock) from the three crime media dramas we watched this week?
Does the media merely reflect society's beliefs that the police are incompetent or does it create an image that we but into? Should we care - is it fine to turn the critical parts of our psyche off and merely be entertained for 44 minutes?...or should we try to find meaning in the message?
D Block Geography 12 - Today we'll watch the Disney/Pixar movie WALL-E. Chris Barsanti wrote an article on Popculture called "Consumer Apocalypse: WALL-E". In the article he says,
Wall-E unfolds
some seven centuries from now, when the Earth has undergone complete
environmental collapse, a sort of fatal and global toxic shock. The planet is
all dirt-brown vistas and dead cities, and not a living creature to be seen. Wall-E is a robot who’s spent untold centuries puttering
around a poisoned Earth, busily compacting the mounds of detritus left by a
big-box-shopping culture and turning them into neat little cubes that he then
stacks into futuristic obelisks of waste. There’s no end of work for him to do,
because as the film’s mostly silent opening makes clear, the humans that
blasted off from the planet in 2100 were a frighteningly wasteful lot.
The message is clear
and all the better for its utter lack of subtlety: This is a planet destroyed
by overconsumption, aided and abetted by a sickening web of
consumer-industrial-complex propaganda, where passivity is purchased by
shoveling as much junk food and unnecessary purchases into humanity’s maw. Too
much stuff for too many people who don’t need that stuff results in
ecosystem-shattering levels of pollution and garbage; Earth is killed by
shopping.
Although director Andrew Stanton claims the movie does not have environmental overtones and that it is merely a love story about two robots, it is really hard to miss the overt messages about environmental stewardship and about conservation. So we'll see how WALL-E fits in with our topic we've been covering in Geography 12. Thomas Hartmann ends another really good documentary Crude Impact by pleading for us to "personally wake up to these issues, and be an instrument of change, if only for one other person...Tag, you're it!".
So it is too late to be a pessimist. Go out in the world and get angry about what you see but then go do something about it...Tag, you're it
A Block Social Studies 10 - Today you have your Western History unit final test. If you studied and are prepared then I'm certain you will do fine. You have assignments due today...please do not give me any "My dog ate my homework" or "My computer crashed with all my work on it" excuses; your economic sectors of BC analysis is due so turn in your work today please. You do also have a project to hand in to me on Tuesday. It is crucial that you get your Family Heritage assignment handed in to me. If, for some reason, you cannot get your assignment in to me Tuesday you must come and talk with me to avoid a zero. Considering this is a major project I hope you realize the importance of its completion. Good Luck on the test today.
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