Words From The Wise

Alain de Botton's claim that humorists serve a vital function in society because they are able to say things that other people maybe cannot say is definitely in effect all the time and true. Most people have heard of Jon Stewart, who hosted Comedy Central's "The Daily Show" in 1999. People like Jon Stewart used their popularity to bring about issues that maybe weren't really talked about as much as they should have. In Jon's case, he was one of the top political comedians in America, and he used this to his advantage. He was able to bring to talk issues he was passionate about, all the while being comical about them. For some people, political topics and/or debates can be found as boring. But humorists like Jon Stewart bring humor into these topics which bring in more listeners to the topics discussed. This is a big plus in society because many of these people may feel motivated to act upon a certain issue that was spoken about. In this way, Jon Stewart almost

Irony is the expression of one's meaning by using language that normally signifies the opposite. In class, we looked at different ironic situations-- what made them ironic and what their stance on the topic was. There are three different types of irony: dramatic, situational, and verbal. Irony in modern day culture is mostly found in movies and plays in order to hook and drive their audience to continue watching them. For example, take this older movie called Alien: Resurrection . It's about this girl named Ellen who, 200 years after her death, comes back to life as some sort of human robot/clone sent out to defeat the space aliens and stop them from reaching Earth. SPOILER ALERT!! What makes the movie ironic though, is that the survivors in the movie aren't who you would expect in any other action movie. For example, in most Marvel and DC movies, the superhero's are usually the ones to win and the evil guys are the ones to lose. If the characters from Alien: Resurrec

In class, we had done a cold read and Socratic Seminar on the piece written by Judy Brady called I Want a Wife . It talked about the stereotypical things that is expected/needed by a wife from a husband. After we discussed the piece we were asked the question of what else could be written about, instead of the wife, such as a husband, teacher, student, etc. That's what got me thinking, as I had recently watched the Disney movie How To Build A Better Boy . In the movie the two girls, Gabby and Mae, hack into Mae's dad's work system in which he has created a robot prototype. Mae had wanted to build the perfect boyfriend for herself- hence the name of the movie- in which Gabby helped partake in by hacking into the robot. When Mae was describing what she wanted of a boyfriend, it was very similar and stereotypical in the way that Brady described what is wanted from a wife. Of the personality characteristics of her perfect boy, Mae programmed him to b

I was very interested in the way that Deborah Tannen introduced 'marked' and 'unmarked' human beings in society through her piece, There Is No Marked Woman . After reading the essay, I found that she had written it back in 1933. This shocked me, as I made connections about certain styles that she had seen then that I notice in modern society today.  I decided to dig deeper in searching for basic styles that we see today that compare/contrast with Tannen's piece. Tannen explains how business men's hairstyles go unmarked with "no hair, standard length of hair, parted on one side, and colors of brown or gray or graying" (paragraph 12).  By researching hair styles of the early 1930's, I found images that mostly looked like this: Even today, this type of hair style would still classify as 'unmarked' but you can clearly see that the styles of how men dress and do their hair has changed.  The image seen above is what anyone would see