What Nightmares May Come

What Dreams May Come is pretty similar to Dante's Inferno. What Dreams May Come follows a man as he journeys through hell to find his wife, Inferno follows a man as he tries to find his mistress. The difference is that Chris Nielsen (What Dreams May Come) Only Goes down to the seventh level of hell while Dante goes through hell, purgatory, and heaven. The movie has some inclusion of the book in it in the other circles of hell. One difference in punishment is that Chris's wife, a suicide, had a punishment based on her imagination. Inferno gave everyone the same punishment, suicides were trees being picked at by harpies. 

Note that this boat in heaven has a similar look to the one 

Annie was sailing when she met Chris (Red Triangular sails)

Some similarities are that Chris and Dante both had Guides, Virgil and The Tracker. They also both had similar reasons that they traveled through hell, to find their women. Also, they both came out of hell alive, which is pretty rare biblically. there is significant symbolism in colors and other things in What Dreams May Come water plays a big part in the movie. They meet in a lake, riding boats, and Then chris's heaven has that same lake where he can walk on water, breath underwater, and the he eventually travels to hell on a boat. what i think this could symbolize is that although blood is thicker than water, water can help us reconnect with our blood and be just as important to us. The tracker, who was really Doc, supported Chris through his journey to hell to find his wife, Chris also thought that Ian was Doc by his appearance. And he Treated doc like family, so water can be just as important as blood.

This part made me really sad for some reason, 

Just the fact that his name is Ian and my worst fear is 

having a bad relationship with my dad.

I got 99 problems, but a sin ain't one

Another week of dante presentations. They were pretty interesting this week, my favorites were the 9th circle of hell and the eight circle. In the eighth circle, there are many pits and ditches in which different sinners are placed, one is for flatterers. Their punishment is to live in a river of human waste. The contrapasso in this is that everything they said in their mortal life is a load of crap, they told people bullcrap for their own gain. I think that they are pretty deserving of the punishment. I believe in working toward what you want, not achieving it through easy manipulation.

In the 9th circle are the traitors. They are frozen in the river in the deepest circle of hell with satan. I don't think the treasonous deserve to be the lowest of the lowest. Sometimes there needs to be defiance against the government, otherwise we would become a totalitarian society, where no freedoms are permitted. A good example is Edward Snowden. The government says he committed treason, but he has opened the eyes of the american people to the governments infringements on our rights.

Disco Inferno

Presentations begin. Inferno cantos I-IVII have presented so far. Overall I think that the presentations are turning out pretty well. The visuals are going good, very interesting interpretations of each canto. Mine was pretty cool as well, I did a video that, I thought, gives one the same emotion that one would feel whilst reading the canto. I included pictures from My Dad, Misha Gordon, Sally Mann, and Giger airbrush artwork.

some Giger art

I felt like the video  point got across really good. the pictures flashed with enough time for emotion to come but left before one could process the images themselves. Which is key in trying to get into someones emotional side. and they all played to a creepy tune by Abearica with a girl muttering in the background. The pictures were interrupted by me reading an ominous verse from the canto in darkness.

Set Fire to the Rain

This week we are going to do a massive project in Inferno, by Dante Alighieri. I got canto XVI which describes Dante going through the third ring of the seventh circle of hell. Where the sodomites are. people who are violent towards nature. Which I suppose includes homosexuality and beastiality. Which are, of course, highly disputed topics. dante describes their punishment as fiery flakes raining down on hot sand where sodomites were forced to walk lest they be punished.

Dante first recognizes three florentines, all three of them renowned for their skill in battle. They had their hands joined to form a wheel. Dante wanted to go down with them and embrace them. But he didn't for fear of the pain and heat of the boiling hot sand and flakes.

Your Own Personal Satan

        My personal hell would be a place of deep suffering. I would be hung upside down by my ankles and punched in the testicles repeatedly endlessly. It never becomes monotonous, each punch feels just as bad as the last. All the while listening to a Nicki minaj song featuring lil wayne. People admitted into this hell are people who have committed adultery, intentional murder, incest, and other unforgivable sins. Hell is designed for the sickest of the sick. Therefore the punishments will be the sickest of the sick.
        In order to get into hell one must commit a sin of massive proportions. This can be intentional murder, theft, adultery, incest, gluttony, rape, greed, fraud, and other major sins. These sins are unforgivable and deserve the punishment of hell. Minor sins may be partially forgiven. With some time, minor sinners may repent and finally reach heaven. But the Major sinners are never forgiven.
        The punishments are more psychological than painful. Although physical pain is present. Hell will look into your mind and find your psychological weakness, and use it as a tool for your misery. Whether you are afraid of heights, insects, snakes, spiders, tight spaces, or loneliness. Hell is infinite and inescapable. It is the ultimate, and final punishment.
        Hell's environment adapts to each persons punishment. It could be a steamy hot jungle filled with insects and vicious creatures. No life supporting resources, so you feel pain of hunger and thirst, yet you cannot die. It could be being forced to crawl through a cement pipe, with barely enough room to crawl. Nothing to bandage your hands and knees which are constantly torn open from the crawl. Hell adapts to each individual.

        No one may escape. Hell is for the ones who have committed sin to the point of no return. For the ones who can never be forgiven. Someone who deserves hell deserves the eternal torment. Those who has the heart to do something that would put them in hell deserve their heart to be broken down in pain and tortured

        A symbol to represent my hell would be a hydra. Because of the multiple different types of pain coming at you at once. A hydra's number of heads vary from 5 to 100, depending on who you are reading. The hydra represents multiple threats converging on one target. which is a good analogy to the multiple levels of pain and torment in hell.

        

         The evilest of the evil are in my hell. Vicious people who have no desire other than to watch the world burn. People who think the best way to perfection is the mass murder of a people. People like Hitler and Pol Pot. People whose views are so corrupted that they think killing is the way to utopia. People whose "happiness" involves taking others's happiness away.

reservoir doge

This past week we worked on our tragic hero posters, ours featured a gun taking up the top and left part of the poster. The rest we filled with blood, pictures and duct tape. The overall process of making the poster was pretty good and efficient, we all brought supplies and did our part. And the end result, I thought, was good.
The movie, Reservoir Dogs was a pretty good fit for the tragic hero format, Mr. Orange starts in a place of semi-status, he's an undercover cop that's very cocky. His Hamartia is his pride. His reversal of fortune is when he gets shot by a civilian. His reversal of intention is then when he shoots that civilian dead. The entire flipping movie is a scene of suffering. Catastrophe occurs after everyone shoots each other in a mexican standoff

Shoot me in a dream, you'd better wake up and apologize

This week we are starting our group posters. I finally watched my movie, Reservoir Dogs, I thought it was really good. It takes place in the aftermath of a diamond heist in an abandoned warehouse, where a character lies dying of a bullet wound. One gangster goes insane and tortures a cop to Stuck in The Middle With You, and four kill each other at once in a rather climactic ending. Overall, it was a good movie, I thought it was going to be a more macabre movie than it was, but I'm okay without much gore.

The Tragic hero we chose was Mr. Orange (they had been given color names so as to not give up their identity). He was an undercover cop who ratted out the heist, but his plan went sour when a civilian shot him in the gut during a hijack. He spent the third quarter of the movie unconscious and having flashbacks to his undercover training. and finally in his dying moments he confesses to Mr. White, his only sympathizer, that he is in fact a cop.

WARNING: Video contains severed ears, poor dancing, and spoilers