Showing posts with label Folktales. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Folktales. Show all posts
Friday, April 19, 2013
Thursday, February 14, 2013
Beasts of the Southern Wild
One thing that I really loved about this movie is how it featured the culture of the people in that particular part of Louisiana. They celebrate everything-births and deaths, creation and destruction. When talking about the town on the other side of the levy, Hushpuppy remarks that 'they only have holidays once a year.' Even if something terrible happens to the little town, they celebrate what they have. They have a strict rule: no crying. Tears won't change anything.
While I was watching Beasts of the Southern Wild, I noticed that their clothes weren't anything special, and they were often very dirty. The girls didn't do anything fancy with their hair, and didn't wear any makeup. These people aren't afraid to get dirt on their clothes, being a part of the nature around them is part of their way of life. Hushpuppy goes out into the wilderness near her home wearing nothing but a t-shirt and underwear, but that's all she needs. There is a freedom about it because no one is watching her except maybe her Dad or any animals nearby. I think it would be wonderful to live in a culture where keeping up appearances didn't matter so much.
In the beginning of the movie, Hushpuppy's teacher shows her a tattoo of prehistoric beasts that used to live in The Bathtub. After that, whenever something bad happens that makes her scared, she thinks of the beasts. When her father collapses because he's sick, she imagines the ice caps melting and the beasts coming out from inside of them as a way of explaining things that her six year old mind can't understand. That made me think: what if Wiley's way of understanding his father dying was the Hairy Man?
A clip of a good part from Beasts of the Southern Wild:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqzWdcoq1Lc
Saturday, November 17, 2012
The Dozens
Here's a couple paragraphs about a game we could use in 'Wiley': (source, www.louisianafolklife.org)
"The Dozens" are an elaborate insult contest. Rather than insulting an opponent directly, a contestant derides members of the opponent's family, usually his mother. The dozens has its origins in the slave trade of New Orleans where deformed slaves--generally slaves punished with dismemberment for disobedience--were grouped in lots of a "cheap dozen" for sale to slave owners. For an slave to be sold as part of the "dozens" was the lowest blow possible.
In an effort to toughen their hearts against the continual verbal assault inflicted on them as part of the "dozens," they practiced insulting each other indirectly by attacking the most sacred "mother" of the other. The person who loses his "cool" and comes to blows loses the contest. The person who outwits and out-insults the other while keeping a "cool" head is the winner
I think as far as the script goes, we haven't really established what Wiley thinks of his Pappy, and if we had him play the dozens in the beginning, we could find out. Wiley asks Mammy about the things the things everyone else says about Pappy (sleeps while the weeds grow higher then the cotton, etc.), and we could integrate those lines into a game of dozens that Wiley plays with a friend.
If Wiley really loves his Pappy, then he could get upset little by little as his opponent says all the things that Wiley asks his Mammy about, and if his opponent says something about his Pappy not being able to stand up to the Hairy Man, he could explode and lose the game.
Just an idea!
"The Dozens" are an elaborate insult contest. Rather than insulting an opponent directly, a contestant derides members of the opponent's family, usually his mother. The dozens has its origins in the slave trade of New Orleans where deformed slaves--generally slaves punished with dismemberment for disobedience--were grouped in lots of a "cheap dozen" for sale to slave owners. For an slave to be sold as part of the "dozens" was the lowest blow possible.
In an effort to toughen their hearts against the continual verbal assault inflicted on them as part of the "dozens," they practiced insulting each other indirectly by attacking the most sacred "mother" of the other. The person who loses his "cool" and comes to blows loses the contest. The person who outwits and out-insults the other while keeping a "cool" head is the winner
I think as far as the script goes, we haven't really established what Wiley thinks of his Pappy, and if we had him play the dozens in the beginning, we could find out. Wiley asks Mammy about the things the things everyone else says about Pappy (sleeps while the weeds grow higher then the cotton, etc.), and we could integrate those lines into a game of dozens that Wiley plays with a friend.
If Wiley really loves his Pappy, then he could get upset little by little as his opponent says all the things that Wiley asks his Mammy about, and if his opponent says something about his Pappy not being able to stand up to the Hairy Man, he could explode and lose the game.
Just an idea!
Friday, November 16, 2012
The Hairy Man and Big Foot
from the blog "A Central Coast Paleontologist" by Doug Shore
http://accpaleo.wordpress.com/about/
America’s fascination with Bigfoot began in 1958 when a bulldozer operator found strange footprints on his construction site in Bluff Creek, California. One Ray Wallace later claimed to have faked the tracks and skeptics claim that this proves Bigfoot is not real. But what about stuff that predates the Bigfoot craze? There are reports from the late 19th/ early 20th centuries (including one by Theodore Roosevelt, an avid outdoors-man ), but again, science disregards eyewitness testimony. So this is where the archaeological record comes in. If we found precolumbian art that depicts tall hairy humanoids, would that lend support to the existence of large, bipedal apes living in North America? Let’s find out.
The first artifact in our investigation is the “Hairy Man” pictographs (their Yokut name isMayak datat, which translates as “hairy man”. They have another name for the creature: Shoonshoonootr, one of the few natives words to literally translate as “big foot”). This set of rock art in east central California seemingly depicts three of these hairy giants. They are believed by some to represent a male, female, and juvenile Bigfoot. It’s easy to see why: The male is drawn with a tall body with long arms attached to a broad chest. The female has short arms but is nonetheless tall. The baby is proportioned like the female with short arms and a tall body. This creature is counted among animals when humans had not yet been created.
Could the “Hairy Man” in fact be based on a real animal, a creature who looks like a hairy human? Of course, mythical animals need no basis in reality (though sometimes that is the case. Centaurs, half human half horse, are thought to have originated when a people encountered another people who rode on horseback, believing the horse and rider to be one creature (that’s certainly the impression the Aztecs had when they first saw Spanish cavalry). Also, it is thought that the myth of the Cyclops, a one-eyed giant, was inspired by ancient discoveries of mammoth skulls). Just because real animals are featured doesn’t mean that this “Hairy Man” is something in our world as cultures the world over often gave everyday animals supernatural powers. But the similarities of these human-like creatures across the vastness of Native American culture certainly can’t be a coincidence. Whether they describe an upright primate or are the product of cultural exchange or racial memory will require more study.
http://accpaleo.wordpress.com/about/
America’s fascination with Bigfoot began in 1958 when a bulldozer operator found strange footprints on his construction site in Bluff Creek, California. One Ray Wallace later claimed to have faked the tracks and skeptics claim that this proves Bigfoot is not real. But what about stuff that predates the Bigfoot craze? There are reports from the late 19th/ early 20th centuries (including one by Theodore Roosevelt, an avid outdoors-man ), but again, science disregards eyewitness testimony. So this is where the archaeological record comes in. If we found precolumbian art that depicts tall hairy humanoids, would that lend support to the existence of large, bipedal apes living in North America? Let’s find out.
The first artifact in our investigation is the “Hairy Man” pictographs (their Yokut name isMayak datat, which translates as “hairy man”. They have another name for the creature: Shoonshoonootr, one of the few natives words to literally translate as “big foot”). This set of rock art in east central California seemingly depicts three of these hairy giants. They are believed by some to represent a male, female, and juvenile Bigfoot. It’s easy to see why: The male is drawn with a tall body with long arms attached to a broad chest. The female has short arms but is nonetheless tall. The baby is proportioned like the female with short arms and a tall body. This creature is counted among animals when humans had not yet been created.
Could the “Hairy Man” in fact be based on a real animal, a creature who looks like a hairy human? Of course, mythical animals need no basis in reality (though sometimes that is the case. Centaurs, half human half horse, are thought to have originated when a people encountered another people who rode on horseback, believing the horse and rider to be one creature (that’s certainly the impression the Aztecs had when they first saw Spanish cavalry). Also, it is thought that the myth of the Cyclops, a one-eyed giant, was inspired by ancient discoveries of mammoth skulls). Just because real animals are featured doesn’t mean that this “Hairy Man” is something in our world as cultures the world over often gave everyday animals supernatural powers. But the similarities of these human-like creatures across the vastness of Native American culture certainly can’t be a coincidence. Whether they describe an upright primate or are the product of cultural exchange or racial memory will require more study.
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