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world-cinema-research · 2 months

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"A Hard Day's Night" Blog Essay

By: Jillian Arnold

“We know how to behave! We've had lessons.”

“A Hard Day’s Night” is a fun and slapstick humor movie that allows fans to have a deeper dive into the Beatles, more personal side rather than professional, and shows a different, boyish wonder side of them. The plot of this movie consists of a routine event that the stars of the Beatles, John Lennon, George Harrison, Paul McCartney, and Ringo Starr, deal with in their stardom. It shows the stars running away from their obsessive fans to play a live concert along with other side quests such as Ringo going to jail, John criticizing the TV Director, George being mistaken as an actor, and Paul McCartney taking care of his grandfather. It shows that the Beatles had good time management in their professional life in their personal life and it shows that the stars were human like their fans, but also made their fans laugh with their hilarious plot.

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A trailer for the movie, A Hard Day’s Night. Just this trailer shows the highs and lows of fame; affecting thousands of your fans with music but also never getting time away from thousands of fans. This clip shows a compilation of the members of the Beatles, John Lennon, George Harrison, Paul McCartney, and Ringo Starr, running away from obsessed fans.

The film is well received by audience members and has earned an 89% acceptance rate in an audience score and a 98% with the Tomatometer on Rotten Tomatoes. Although it is not as well known as other classic films, it is an important one in our history and just shows that sometimes all we need is a little humor in our lives. The film was also loved by fans because it came out during the peak of the Beatles' careers when they had thousands upon thousands of fans. This movie has been nominated for three awards, which just shows how good and popular a movie it is.

Ironically, a huge event that happened the year the movie was released was when the Beatles came to America. On February 7th, 1964, the Beatles touched down on American soil before they made their live U.S. debut on the Ed Sullivan Show two days later. At the time, the Beatles were huge in the UK and were so famous, so then performing in America made them huge as well in the States. They were one of the first bands to have popular music in the States from other countries, which contributed to the Beatlemania happening in the UK and the States.

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Here is a scene from the movie, starring George Harrison. The scene is about George being mistaken as an actor auditioning for a TV show. The humor in the scene allows fans to connect with the scene and love the actor even more.

The film was shot using a cinéma vérité style, which is a French film movement of the 1960s that showed people in everyday situations with authentic dialogue and naturalness of action. I think this style of film shooting was done because they wanted the fans to see the authenticity of how the band acted and wanted them to see that they were real people just like them also since this film had some of the biggest music stars at the time in it, it brought popularity to the French film movement since so many many people watch the movie because of their favorite stars.

This film is both conventional and unconventional. It is conventional because it stars the Beatles and their feature film debut when they were at their peak of fandom. It is unconventional due to the documentary style of filming and it being filmed in black-and-white since colored films were the norm in films at the time.

Here's a poster of the film. Its bright colors and fun letters attract people’s eyes to the movie, making people want to see it. It also shows the iconic faces and hair of the stars of the movie, which people also recognize and love.

This film allowed fans to connect even deeper with their favorite music stars, who will be forever known for all time. It also allowed the band to reach out to their fans by providing them with laughter and fun. Overall, it is a fun and classic movie that everyone should watch, especially huge fans of the Beatles.

"Now you'll like these. You'll really dig them. They're fab and all the other pimply hyperboles."

#Youtube

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strwbrymoonchild · 4 years

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How Residue Illuminates The Complexities of Survivor’s Guilt and Gentrification

Written and directed by Merawi Gerima, Residue tells the story of Jay, a screenwriter who returns from California to create a movie about his old neighborhood on Q street in Eckington, Washington, D.C. The film has a semi-autobiographical feel that offers an impressionist yet raw look at gentrification in Northeast D.C. 35mm shots of kids playing, and the unforgettable sounds of cicadas, windchimes, go-go music, and police sirens guide us through Jay’s childhood memories and provide a sense of nostalgia. Fireworks—which could easily be mistaken for gunshots in his neighborhood—stands out as a significant recurring motif. Flashbacks to the Fourth of July foreground themes of liberation or lack thereof, and the hypocrisy of celebrating Independence Day when Black people are still struggling for freedom. To highlight this, Gerima jarringly intersperses documentary-style footage of protests and police brutality in the neighborhood throughout the film.

Gerima’s unique take on survivor’s guilt shows us that you don’t have to be white to have a savior complex. In the opening scene we hear Jay’s inner monologue: “Did you really think a script would save us?” Art and storytelling are key parts of Black survival and liberation because they allow us to archive and spotlight our experiences, to amplify causes we care about, and to construct better worlds where freedom is possible. Nevertheless, this film offers honest and reflective commentary on the limits of storytelling. Yes, making art is part of the work. But so much of the work remains off the page. Poet and activist Nikki Giovanni said it best when she wrote For Saundra in 1968 after Nixon was elected: “it occurred to me/maybe i shouldn't write/at all/but clean my gun/and check my kerosene supply/perhaps these are not poetic/times/at all”

Jay’s savior complex is further exposed when he runs into an old neighbor named Delonte while in search of his childhood best friend Demetrius. Jay explains to Delonte that he wants to make this movie to give a “voice to the voiceless.” Offended, Delonte quickly pushes back asking, “nigga who’s voiceless?” Later Delonte retorts, “you only care about yourself and your motherfucking movie.” This perspective on what it looks like to have an old friend swoop back into your gentrified neighborhood to try to save the day after years away is imbued with not only raw honesty and resentment but also a sense of accountability and understandable distrust of Jay’s potential ulterior motives.

“Those experiencing survivor’s guilt are paying the very real price of upward mobility, which often means moving into isolating predominantly white spaces, adapting to the social norms of those spaces on a steep learning curve, losing connection with one's sense of self and culture, and struggling to maintain support networks of friends and family”

Does Jay only care about telling his community’s story to launch his filmmaking career? Is he exploiting the lived trauma of his friends or does he genuinely care about raising awareness of police brutality and gentrification? Perhaps both. At the same time, those experiencing survivor’s guilt are paying the very real price of upward mobility, which often means moving into isolating predominantly white spaces, adapting to the social norms of those spaces on a steep learning curve, losing connection with one's sense of self and culture, and struggling to maintain support networks of friends and family. This can be extremely taxing on one's mental health and self-esteem. Jay may be going through his struggles that remain unseen in the film, nevertheless, we can’t help but sympathize with Delonte for distrusting Jay’s intentions.

This theme of distrust towards law enforcement persists, during a subtle moment in the middle of a conversation between Delonte and Jay, sirens blare and the two stop talking to look around anxiously for cops in the area. The unsettlingly long silence between them is almost as loud as the sirens and it speaks to the constant fear Black people have of being surveilled and targeted at any moment. The scene escalates further when a Black police officer interrupts the conversation between Jay and Delonte to sniff around for intel on gunshots that have just gone off in the neighborhood. Delonte lies and says it wasn’t him and Jay refuses to dignify the officer with a response. Interestingly, the cop knew that Jay wouldn’t trust him and decided to leave him alone instead of pressing further, driving home the point that not all skin folk are kinfolk. Instead of producing tired Black copaganda like other socially conscious films such as Queen and Slim, Residue subtly yet intentionally reinforces the notion that all cops are bastards—even Black ones— and that any individual part of this system is not trustworthy because the system affords them the power to enact brutal violence on civilians and shrouds them in the privilege of turning a blind eye to such violence even if they don’t participate—which ultimately amounts to complicity in the corrupt policing system.

In addition to commenting on larger systemic issues, Gerima surgically zooms in on the microaggressions that litter everyday interactions in his rapidly gentrifying neighborhood. In one scene, a white girl walks her dog and it poops on Jay’s mother’s lawn. The dog-walker doesn’t see it as a big deal because she plans to pick it up, but Jay’s mother, Lavonne, insists that the droppings will “leave residue” a nod to the film’s title and an allusion to the literal filth that dog-walking D.C. gentrifiers leave in their wake. Jay is poised to put the white girl’s boyfriend in his place after he calls Lavonne a bitch, but his mother promptly reminds him that the system is just waiting for Jay to slip up and produce an excuse to lock him up. She coaxes him away saying, “Look you can’t fall for that shit! He’s a decoy, Jay, those are the decoys!” This poignant line illustrates the surreal video game/simulation-like nature of living through systemic racism as a Black person. Within this system, Black people are not seen as humans, but are instead sweepingly reduced to existential threats against whiteness and portrayed as supervillains or superpredators with “no conscience [and] no empathy.”

“It’s maddening to acknowledge that at almost every turn, many Black folks are just one small misstep away from poverty, or incarceration, or death. Watching all of these isolated incidents back to back leaves the viewer gasping for some sort of respite from racism.”

Throughout the film, Gerima continues to show that there are so many landmines Black people living in gentrified cities must tip-toe around: the cheap cash offers of predatory white real-estate investors; the righteous indignation towards white boys making a killing selling weed instead of serving prison sentences (like Jay’s friends)— you can’t even defend your own girlfriend against Black catcallers spewing misogynoir lest onlookers not only call the police but begin to cry, “Black on Black crime.” It’s maddening to acknowledge that at almost every turn, many Black folks are just one small misstep away from poverty, or incarceration, or death. Watching all of these isolated incidents back to back leaves the viewer gasping for some sort of respite from racism. Throughout all of these encounters, Gerima makes the conscious choice not to show the faces of white people committing microaggressions. In interviews, Gerima has shared that this was partly a logistical choice because he couldn’t find white actors for the film. But more than that, this visual effect makes white people seem less like people and more like the artificial decoys Lavonne described. Even the white person who tries to be neighborly to Jay does not get face time with the camera. If these people remain faceless, the viewer can’t normalize or humanize them as his neighbors or his friends. Instead, we’re visually forced to see them as faceless outsiders who are inserting themselves into the neighborhood. They behave as though they are passive, laidback fixtures in the landscape who are entitled to space when in reality they’re invasive gentrifiers choosing to displace Black people from their neighborhoods.

Perhaps the most spellbinding part of the film is the way Gerima weaves elements of magical realism into the story as both a sinister hex and a palliative balm. Jarring footage of blood running in the streets due to stop and frisk laws in D.C. transitions into the camera angle flipping upside down to reveal a shot of gentrifiers at brunch, oblivious to the bloodshed on the streets they’re occupying. This juxtaposition drives home that there are two Americas; and that this stark, depressing state of duality will only become more violent as the repercussions of redlining and housing discrimination in Washington D.C persist. The indifference and indulgence of these privileged brunch-goers enable Gerima to make the statement that these people have blood on their hands, and at their feet.

Later on, after years of ignoring his friend Dion’s letters, Jay works up the courage to visit him in prison. Rather than taking place within the prison walls, the majority of the conversation occurs in a sunny lush green forest that the two freedom-dream together. In this scene, magical realism is used as an enchanting portal into an imagined version of Black liberation. Dion and Jay trade sweet anecdotes and childhood memories. At the end of the visit, Jay apologizes profusely for failing to respond to Dion’s letters. Dion brushes off Jay’s contrition and says, “fuck them letters,” proving that it's never too late to reach out and that while we live under this oppressive racist system, the thing that keeps us human and sane is our connection to each other. This breathtaking scene asserts that Black people are not just residue to be wiped away through a social cleansing strategy of systematic displacement, purported public order maintenance, and violent erasure— but vibrant, resilient souls who will never stop caring for one another and will never stop telling our own stories to each other and the rest of the world.

Otito Greg-Obi is a poet and aspiring screenwriter based in Washington D.C. Her poetry appears in "small poems for the masses," a quarterly zine by Post Ghost Press. She is a former member of The Excelano Project, a poetry collective in Philadelphia. When she’s not writing you can find her slow-mo milly rocking in the pouring rain to MorMor, baking sourdough bread, over/underwatering succulents, or knitting something cozy. Her favorite color is mint green, and she’s obsessed with pop culture and with television (particularly dramedies and dystopian sci-fi). You can find her on Twitter at @otweetoh

#film #residue #filmmaker #netflix #merawi gerima #realism #magical #raw #gentrification #survivor's guilt #D.C.#washington #DMV #racism #systemic racism #mass incarceration #gun violence #police brutality #acab

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rowanwhittington · 3 years

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Research Links

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/jehovahs-witnesses-religion-christianity-religious-group-what-it-a7214966.html

The article recounts points made by a former Jehovah’s Witness on a Reddit post where users could ask him about his time in the religious group in Poland, which he describes as a cult that “tries to control emotions, thought, information and behaviour of a person.” He mentions the extreme lengths members will go to ostracise those who have choose to leave, with one man’s announcement that he’s losing his faith leading to so much pressure from the group that “he jumped into a river and killed himself.” Those who do manage to leave are “disfellowshipped”, whereupon members cannot talk or interact with them from that point on. From the perspective of my project I found this interesting as it is common practice in cults, particularly those based on religious or spiritual texts, that members who leave are banned from socialising with those within the group after. This makes it an extremely hard decision to leave; one that can tear apart families and friendships. Unfortunately, this also means that a lot of women suffering physical and sexual abuse within these cults will stay in them due to the social and religious pressures of the group.

In regards to women, he states “she should be submissive to her husband, who is the head of their family and it is he who makes all the important decisions”, “women cannot teach in the congregation, they cannot deliver talks or say public prayers. When they conduct a private Bible study or say a prayer with another person, while a man is around, she has to wear a scarf on her head as a sign of being submissive.” The woman is “a complement for a man.”

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-44613932

In an interview with BBC Scotland, former member of the Children of God, Verity Carter, explains what it was like growing up in the cult in 1980s Scotland. The cult was founded by David Berg in the 60s, with one of his mantras being that “God was love and love was sex, so there should be no limits, regardless of age or relationship.” Verity says this this “actively encouraged sexual activities among minors as young as two or three years old.” A point I found interesting was that it was worst for those who had been born into it, as many of the adults didn’t see how extreme the behaviours had become due to it happening “a step at a time.” She also says “there was sexual abuse for myself from the age of four, not just from my dad who got convicted, but from various other members of the cult, some related, some not,” and that “I was punished a lot because I was never able to stop asking questions.”

I definitely want to look further into the Children of God, now known as The Family International, as they are one of the cults that lead to me choosing this project. I have previously watched a documentary about them and remembered how it was essentially founded on sexual abuse and how the cult is still able to thrive today despite this.

https://www.marieclaire.co.uk/opinion/children-of-god-586410

Christina Babin, an ex-Children of God member tells of her childhood growing up in the cult in America.

“There was no limit to how far the adults in charge would go.”

“Such abuse was followed up by hugs.”

“I learned to cope by taking whatever ownership I could. I remember staring at an adult abusing a friend and thinking, ‘I’ll remember this.’”

“It was about physically preparing us to be an army for God.”

“Female cult members had to go out and have sex with men to convert them. In truth, this was prostitution and the cult took the profits.” - in relation to ‘flirty fishing’.

“A letter arrived from the Children of God leader, ‘Moses David’, encouraging adults to teach children how to have sex, claiming it was healthy and good. And so the sexual abuse began. I was violated in this was from the age of 12 too many times than I care to remember, but sex was encouraged with children who were far younger.”

“For a year and a half, I never stepped outside the gate of our compound, which was surrounded by armed guards. In effect, like the other children there, I was a slave.”

“I had taught myself to read but had no education, no idea how to speak to anyone and was scared after a lifetime of propaganda.”

https://www.thelily.com/i-narrowly-escaped-life-in-a-misogynist-cult-heres-how-i-fight-against-everything-i-was-taught-as-i-raise-three-daughters/?

Brianna Bell grew up split between her father and ‘The Truth’, and her freethinking independent mother.

“With hunters of us gathered we could have easily been mistaken for a ‘Little House on the Prairie’ fan club, right down to the old fashioned was that we spoke. The women dressed in modest homemade dresses and wore their hair back in severe buns, and the men wore vintage trousers with pressed shirts and suspenders.”

“I grew up valuing purity and virginity. Today, it’s left me with feelings of shame.”

“We drove home in tense silence - because the radio was the work of the devil.”

“Former members spoke out against the rampant sexual and emotional abuse within the church, particularly the abuse of young girls and women.”

“It felt like my mother sacrificed a piece of herself to free me from this life.”

“While I narrowly escaped being raised in a cult that wouldn’t have allowed me to cut my hair, my mother’s side of the family required women to be meek and subservient.”

“It was challenging to be surrounded by people who thought women weren’t as valuable as men, because I was raised solely by a woman.”

“My first baby was a girl, and I felt a pang of sadness when I found out. I wasn't going to have a firstborn boy, and something felt wrong about that.”

“As soon as I became a mother I had started paying more attention to the imbalance between men and women.”

“My efforts to be a ‘good girl’ and please men would never amount to enough.”

“What I found most troubling wasn’t the sexism of my surroundings, but the deeply rooted misogyny inside me.”

https://www.history.com/news/charles-manson-girl-account

An interview with Dianne Lake, who spend time with the Manson Family as a teen.

“’People were smoking pot in on the street. There was all this free love. And I’m lost. Because the counterculture did not have a place for a sexually active 14 year old. I was jailbait.’”

“Lake was introduced to Manson and quickly became the 33 year olds lover and acolyte.”

“’We might have had a desire to have Charlie to ourselves - I know I did. But that was secondary... We were there to serve Charlie, and we formed a sisterhood.’”

“’LSD was given out like a sacrament. We took turns taking each other’s clothes off, in a circle... He orchestrated all of it. He even arranged the partners.’”

“’Charlie asked me to cut the umbilical chord with my teeth.’”

https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/cults-are-terrifying-they-re-even-worse-women-ncna862051

“In a cult, the ability to decide if and when to have a child, perhaps the most basic decision in a woman’s life - is taken over by the leader as a demonstration of the leader’s control and in an attempt to undermine the attachment between mother and child. The goal is to focus all feeling of attachment on the leader or group, and on them alone.”

“Women’s sexual lives, their lives as mothers and their ability to control their own reproductive choices are all untended within cultic organisations.”

“Former members from both Scientology and the New York based political cult the Newman Tendency have reported women being forced to terminate pregnancies so as not to interfere with their duties to the organisations.”

“Cults such as Children of God controlled reproduction by forbidding any form of birth control whatsoever.”

“Many groups separate mothers and children for long periods of time, or raise them communally.”

“Thousands of cases are being exposed of child abuse and sexual abuse of women in the JWs [Jehovahs Witnesses], where the organisation refused to take judicial action against the accused unless victims could comply with its ‘two witness rule’ - a horrific rule that states that abuse could not be proven unless the victim could provide two eyewitnesses to the same abusive event.”

“In the Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints, young women were married off to older men who already had up to 60 or 80 wives. [...] Meanwhile the ‘extra’ boys left over as a result of these plural marriages were booted out of the cult and left on the edge of the highway in the Arizona desert to fend for themselves.”

“The Children of God simply pimped women as prostitutes for ‘the Lord’.”

“This type of sexual abuse is often sold as way to become closer to the spirits or to god; it’s represented to adherents as not really ‘sex’ at all, but as a form os spiritual practice.”

“At a certain point, it becomes easier to simply give in, stop thinking and accept the new norms.”

https://qz.com/1739043/the-resurgence-of-the-witch-as-a-symbol-of-feminist-empowerment/

http://www.womanthouartgod.com/sexandreligionwmb.php

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letscomplainaboutshit · 4 years

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Cannibal Holocaust: My unfiltered reaction.

Hey all,

I just watched this movie (the one titled above) with a few friends and was like “HOLY FUCK”. With this reaction alone I decided to talk about it.

Due to this movies themes (sexual abuse, animal abuse, gore, animal gore, literal rape, etc etc) I will simply put my reaction underneath the cut. This movie is not for the faint of heart or easily triggered. In all honesty its not for most normal people. I am not kidding here. A muskrat gets disemboweled on screen (and yes it does scream) for 2 minutes and that is not by any means the worst thing shown on screen. It is very graphic. DO NOT WATCH THIS if you are sensitive to animal abuse, rape, gore, and subjects of that nature. You have been warned.

Ok? We good? Good. Welcome to the opinion section.

So the plot of the movie is about a rescue team going into the deep jungle to find a group of lost filmmakers, discovering their film canisters, and watching the found footage while the debate of “should we really show this to the public” is constantly thrown back and fourth between A professor on the rescue expedition and a group of TV executives. In the words of a friend I was watching this with “You have this movie to thank for found footage horror” since this was the first to do this sorta thing, and 50% of the movie is actually the found film canisters being played to the audience. The whole movie itself is some Italian man making a jab at the morality of shock films/documentaries while simultaneously making one of his own. Gore, violence, rape, and other shit like that are so present within this film it was actually mistaken for a legit snuff film. He was actually taken to court over the matter and was nearly arrested if he did not cough of the secrets of the films special effects!

Not to mention all those animals I mentioned earlier, those where 100% real! Those animals actually got mutilated and died on camera! Keep in mind this movie was made in the 80s. There was good special effects that would of eliminated the need for actual death to occur! As both an animal lover and reptile owner, the deaths of all of these animals greatly angered me and honestly gave be the vibe of cheap shock horror rather than proving a valid point. Sure they ate the Muskrat and turtle for food, but in all honestly was actually killing one really necessary? Actors in this directors movies (which btw the director insisted on killing live animals for this) have actually walked out before! If your wholeass crew is telling you not to do something because its fucked up, and you do it anyway... that does not make you “creative”. It makes you a sociopath. Again, I think I have a natural bias against this sorta thing but I am deeply disturbed. Not because of the film subject matter, but due to this 1 lone fact. Especially since the movie was shot in the amazon, those animals may have very well been endangered or extincted by now. The complete disregard for life for the sake of film/art is not to be praised, rather in my eyes to be ridiculed. Its just sick.

As for the rest of the movie; despite my obvious problem(s) with it, it does bring up a rather good point about morality and what we should show on TV. For years we have constantly pushed out documentary after documentary inorder to simply shock the public. Super size me: look Americans, your slowly being poisoned and McDonalds hates animals. Kony 2012: Look, little African children are dying because of a warlord and its up to YOU to free them. And there are probably many more I have not personally watched that follow this same pattern. They are simply made to shock the masses while not actually accomplishing anything. They are all made from a western perspective and often dont take in differing cultural norms or the like into account. Its all American/west influenced film made to offend the viewer. In all honestly who is the really in the wrong in this documentary/film? The Natives that have been separated culturally and geographically from everyone else for thousands of years? The ones who operate via a set of religious principles moral principles that differ from our own due to their separation. Or the western filmmakers who disregard their culture, force their ways upon others, and rape and pillage simply because they can for the sake of the film and for shock value. Its funny how when you really think about it, despite the things the natives do, they are not actually in the wrong here. The ones who in canon of the film were making the documentary were the ones who actually caused the most net damage. They burnt down a village, they raped a random native woman who was later killed as a result, they did not bother to understand the cultures of the cannibalistic tribes they were trying to document. And notice how the TV executives wanted to show the footage regardless what was on it to the public untill they themselves saw the film makers rape a woman and then get disemboweled later on ON FILM.

Was this a bit of a thought provoker, yes. Yes it was. But was this message distracted from for me a bit by the animal brutality and sounds of woman having rocks stabbed into their Vaginal cavity... Yes. A lil bit. I suppose these movies just are not my thing. I was never one to enjoy horror movies, or just movies to begin with... so Idk why I thought this was going to be different. Would I watch it again, no. Would I recommend it, no. Does it have a meaningful underlying message, yes. I dont really know how to feel about it besides “holy fuck, that made me feel something. Idk what I am currently feeling but im feeling something”.

So yeah... that.

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