Modern Day Cinderella?

After reading Cinderella I tried thinking of a modern-day version of the fairytale. I immediately thought of a girl desperately wanting to go to the prom, but for whatever reason she couldn't. Then I realized this is how the movie "10 Things I Hate About You" starts. THEN I realized that movie was based on Shakespeare's play 'The Taming of the Shrew." This just proves one of the reoccurring themes of the class: all stories are retellings of another story. For those of you who haven't seen "10 Things I Hate About You" the film is about this girl who wants to go to the prom, but the father won't let her unless her introverted older sister goes as well. The younger sister's love interest pays Heath Ledger to woo the older 'shrew' to ensure she goes to the prom. Just like the Cinderella stories, the story is centered around a special formal event/dance and the heroine goes from being unloved and misunderstood to loved.

Even after recalling this "10 Things I Hate About You" mess, I still wanted to recreate my version of Cinderella. I enjoyed the German version the best because of the heavy schadenfreude laced in it (schadenfreude means the satisfaction or pleasure felt at someone's misfortune). My version will also have plenty of schadenfreude in it as well.

Cinderella and the Fat-Bellied Step-Sisters

Once upon a time there was a girl named Cinderella who lived with two very selfish and conniving step-sisters. Cinderella was constantly teased for wearing off-brand clothing and reading novels instead of Cosmopolitan. The only thing Cinderella and her sisters had in common were their love of a certain band, The Jonas Brothers. The two step-sisters already had plans to go see them in concert, but Cinderella's step-mother, Christy, wouldn't let her go because she despised Cinderella. Cindy always loved her own two daughters much more than her step-daughter and purposely showered them with gifts in hopes of crushing Cinderella's self-esteem even more.

The night of the concert arrived and Cinderella luckily snuck in to the concert without a ticket because security was incredibly poor. She was wearing a Jonas Brothers t-shirt anyway, so she looked the part of a hormone-enraged fan. After the concert, Joe Jonas personally invited her on to his tour bus and made out with Cinderella. Cinderella suddenly realized it was past her curfew and she left in a mad dash. What she didn't realize was that she had lost her bellybutton piercing on the floor of the tour bus.

The next day Joe Jonas couldn't remember what Cinderella looked like, but he had found her piercing and assumed it was hers. From their one brief night of passion, he knew Cinderella was the girl for him. Even though the brothers had to leave town for another concert gig, he decided to stay and quit the band. He desperately combed the town and went door-to-door asking each girl to try to stick the piercing in their bellybutton. He got to Cinderella's house and the two step-sisters jostled to the door. The first sister ripped out the piercing she already had in and tried to wear Cinderella's. Joe Jonas put two and two together and told the girl she was lying. The next sister didn't have her bellybutton pierced, so she ripped a hole into her stomach, causing massive amounts of blood to drip on Joe's shoes. After close examination of the blood, Joe decided this sister was lying as well. Just as he had finished washing off the blood, Cinderella casually walked by the entryway. Joe looked at Cinderella's face very carefully and even though this was the girl he fell in love with, he still wasn't sure she was the one. He asked her to try on the bellybutton piercing and to everyone's surprise, it fit! The couple lived happily ever after.

The two step-sisters later tried to barge their way on to the Jonas Brother's tour bus, but were quickly arrested for assault and trespassing. They spent the rest of their life in the state penitentiary.

Class Notes 1/29

Here are the notes I wrote down in class:
- Timmy half-heartily tried to use his partial Shakespeare line on both Garret and Lena. He says he'll memorize the whole thing by next Friday.
- Mr. Sexson went over the class schedule for the next few weeks.

• He noted that there are only 4 copies left of the Brothers Karamazov at Barnes & Noble
• He said everyone needs to have a copy by Monday
• In the event that he asks on a quiz, "Who is Arnold Friend?", the answers 'the devil' or 'death' will result in an F. You need to state that he is the imagination, the devil, death, and all that in order to receive full credit

-Homework for the weekend: Watch Groundhog Day

• Some of you may be thinking, "I don't have time to hunt down a copy of the movie." I'll do everyone a solid on this one and give you the streaming video link.
• Video link:http://www.megavideo.com/?v=STHVXKDP (better link)

-Homework for February 2nd: Keep a 16 hour VERY DETAILED journal starting at 6AM on the morning of 2/2/10

-Reading for weekend: 3 Cinderella stories

Smooth Talk was not so Smooth

So after watching roughly 15 minutes of the movie Smooth Talk, I decided it was a movie that completely mutilated Joyce Carol Oates wonderfully crafted short story of "Where are You Going, Where Have You Been?". I think one of her main intentions for ending her story the way she did was to leave the readers hanging and filling in the gaps on their own. Smooth Talk not only extended the story, but they changed the Connie character completely. Only an idiot Hollywood producer would expect us to believe that the fifteen-year-old girl, that just got raped, would be soothed by the melodies of James Taylor and the companionship of her sister. Sexual assault is not a matter that can be treated lightly and a real life Connie would need serious counseling for the rest of her life.

The viewing of this movie also brought to mind other film adaptations of the stories similar to the story of Connie. Almost all movies that retell the stories of the 'Monsters and Heroes' section of our book end happily. How can a story about MONSTERS end well EVERY SINGLE TIME. Films like Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Little Red Riding Hood, Alice in Wonderland, and the Wizard of Oz all end on a happy note for each fortunate heroine. In real life and in some literature the monsters end up killing the girls. There is no "whew, it was just a dream" realizations, but instead a nightmare from which they will never return. The girls in the 'Pied Piper of Tucson' never awoke from their nightmare. In Emily Dickinson's Because I Could Not Stop For Death, she confronted the fact that, although people may not like it, death is always around the corner. Ultimately, dark and gruesome movies entailing a young girl's death with no happy resolution is not what sells in Hollywood, but for many poets death is an endless canvas to draw from.

Wolf Whistles and 3oh!3

In class we discussed wolf whistles and their origin in the story of Little Red Riding Hood. I immediately thought of the recent hit pop song by Katy Perry and 3oh!3, Starstrukk. A wolf whistle can be heard multiple time throughout the song and I feel like many others in class thought of the song during the wolf whistle conversation. The lyrics I felt most relevant to the class are:

Tight jeans, Double D's makin' me go [whistles]
All the people on the street know [whistles whistles]
Iced-out, lit-up make the kids go [whistles]
All the people on the street know [whistle whistle]

CHORUS:
Cause I just set them up, just set them up, just set them up to knock them down
Cause I just set them up, just set them up, just set them up to knock them down


I think I should know how to make love to something innocent without leaving my fingerprints out now

L-O-V-E's just another word i never learned to pronounce

how, do I say I'm sorry cause the word is never gonna come out now
L-O-V-E's just another word I never learned to pronounce

The song itself is a retelling of Little Red Riding Hood, only in a sexed up and modern version.The first verse is sung by a male member of 3Oh!3 while the chorus is sung by Katy Perry. Just like many of the monsters we've been reading about, the male singer feels entitled to whistle and harass whomever he pleases. Katy Perry, however, realizes she draws these sleezeball characters to her, but sees it as a problem that all women face at some point in their lives and she chooses to "knock them down."

On another note, this song touches on the quote "How do we know what we

think until we see what we say?" in the lines "L-O-V-E's just another word i never learned to pronounce" and "how, do I say I'm sorry cause the word is never gonna come out now." Perry is simply noting how actions speak louder than thoughts or concepts in one's mind. She is not in love nor is she sorry until she actually tells someone, just like we are not contributing our reactions and thoughts to class discussions until we speak up in class or blog about it online.

Monsters-Oates/Dylan

Both Bob Dylan's song "Baby Blue" and Joyce Oates's story of 'Where are you, going, where have you been?' are about travelers and the worst-case-scenario demons people meet along the way. Dylan jarringly describes the nightmare of an orphan with a gun, seasick sailors, and empty-handed army men which are all nightmare specific situations. In Oates's story the heroine meets an equally nightmarish individual who ultimately takes her away in a gold jalopy. Oates pairs this mysterious man with a mysterious car to strike fear in Connie's mind. She has no idea where he has been or where he is going.

Dylan alludes to the highway as a dangerous place that's "for gamblers" and talks about "vagabonds rapping at your door." It's likely that Oates and Dylan felt this way about strange men with strange cars from Charles Manson and his chilling escapades in the 1960's. As many of the stories went, Manson, a crazed lunatic, accumulated followers and roamed the west coast in a school bus. Mason's cult grew and eventually followed out murders and other monster-like things under his watch.

2nd day of Class

Mr. Sexson did a very impressive job of remembering everyone's names. He even noticed I shaved and that some people were wearing a hat on picture day.

Upon scanning all 1500 pages of our book, I noticed a water stain on the back-cover since it was a used book. There were also notes scribbled by the previous owner intermittently throughout the book. The owner spelled deciding, "desiding".

I stumbled upon the authors biographies towards the end of the book. I find it amusing that the more famous the poet, the more dark and depressing his or her life was.

1st

1st post for Sexmans class.