Lesson 29.3 - academic articles and essays

For this weeks lesson we were supposed to find an article connected to a subject we wanted to write an essay about. I also finished the night before an essay about last weeks Prezi-presentation, which I were supposed to write due to an earlier lesson I missed.

It feels a bit exciting to write an essay about a subject connected to our studies. We can choose anything in our field and write about it in English, which I'm not all used to. The essay isn't that long, so I don't need to worry too much about it. That is why the length is an influence on my eagerness, too.

However, I must confess: I had some difficulties finding the article. I wasn't sure how I would get it to Moodle, since all of my articles I got from my courses was in paper-form. I decided to use Nelli (http://www.nelliportaali.fi/V). In my studies I have somewhat become familiar with Nelli, although all results don't have a link to the whole article. I started with searching for a subject about nordic literature, but I didn't find that much in English. So I decided to look through different writers and books I knew about and that I knew were researched. I tried searching words and names like "Ian McEwan", "Camus", "The Outsider", "Jane Eyre", "Stieg Larsson", "popular literature" and so on. At last I tried with Dracula and found some good articles.

During the lesson we started preparing for our essays by reading through the articles we chose. I found out that my article was actually a book review and way too short for any use. I immediately started looking for a new article on Nelli and found one I'm really happy with: "The Narrative Method of Dracula" by David Seed. It is a 14 pages long article which I'll use writing my essay. I don't feel at all nervous about the essay, I feel it is going to be useful to write an real essay in English about my own subject. Reading the article was not that hard, there were some words I didn't recognize but I don't except myself to understand every single word of an academic article.

It was nice to prepare for the essay during the lesson, I found myself concentrating much better than home. Afterwards it feels easier to continue with the draft and the real essay. For next lesson, after the Easter holiday, we are supposed to be ready with our draft for the essay and we will have some group discussions. I am one of the discussion leaders, and hopefully I will get some inspiration for a topic everyone in the group will be interested in. I have never been a discussion leader to a small group, so I am both excited and nervous.

About the past weeks and Prezi

Here is some thoughts and updates about the lessons the past few weeks. I'm not that sure how many lessons there has been, due to illness and trips to Norway.

Anyhow, the subject of the last lessons has been Prezi. What's that?

"Prezi is a cloud-based presentation software that opens up a new world between whiteboards and slides. The zoomable canvas makes it fun to explore ideas and the connections between them. The result: visually captivating presentations that lead your audience down a path of discovery."

We were supposed to make a Prezi-presentation in groups. I found myself in a group called "Linguistics" and so the thoughts about the presentation surrounded that subject. We thought about the way kids learn languages and such, until we came up with a subject I were happy to do a presentation about: how English influences the Finnish language. After a week our group of two expanded to four and we had even more ideas. After some meetings with the group (a Saturday and a Tuesday) we had our presentation all done, without any much stress.

I took care of the everyday examples - what are examples of words in Finnish that are in English or influenced by English? I read some articles both in Finnish and English and also took some inspiration from a course in Norway I attended just a week before the presentation! There we discussed about languages and also how English affects many nordic languages, and whether it is an issue or not. Turns out it's a bigger issue in Finland than in Sweden, and that Norway has just the same problem. We were told that many nordic youngsters think they are actually better at English then in their own native language! As our lecturer, Bodil Aurstad (http://dsn.dk/om-os/medarbejdere/bodil-aurstad) pointed out, youngsters today ARE better in English than ever before, but not as good as they think. Wonder why?

Anyways, that's what our presentation was about. Some of my examples I used were "grape" (today called greippi even on the labels of soda bottles), "printer" (printteri), "mail" (meili, sounds just the same to us in Finland) and last but not least I presented some sentences which are clearly influenced by English. One is by the famous Mika Häkkinen : "Kun sä oot nopeempi kuin muut, sä voitat" which means "When you're faster than the others, you win". There are actually youngsters that have been influenced by this and uses this frequently; I was shocked to hear that. For me it's obvious not to use it, it would feel weird. Even though it's perfectly normal to me in English. It was fun to see how clear this is to me while there are many occasions that I have compounded Finnish/Swedish and English.

The process making the presentation was nice and at the end we all learned to use Prezi, although some problems in the beginning. I learned to like Prezi really much, and will probably do my coming class presentation as a Prezi-presentation.

I want to thank my group for the great job and fun meetings we had doing the presentation, I did enjoy the time. Even though it all felt unsure in the beginning everything turned out really good.

-Anni

Norway in five days

Last week I was on a trip to Oslo, Norway. A vacation? Not officially, but it sure felt like it.

Thanks to my friend (a real inspiration to me sometimes) we were on a course in Norway for five days. We were 14 students, all women, who travelled with our Norwegian teacher to join some lectures and have a good time. This was actually my first time in Norway, the land known for skiing and its hills. We travelled there a Monday at 5 a.m, after two hours of sleep. We arrived after one hour of taxi-driving to a beautiful conference-hotel called Voksenåsen. The view was amazing and the hotel was really nice.

Every day (except Wednesday) we attended lectures which were in different ways connected to Norway: the languages here, the folk-tales and their heritage, everyday life and finally the movie-industry in Norway. I felt the lectures and discussions were interesting, even though many of them were connected to the studies in linguistics. Most members of the group are in the field of linguistics and pedagogy, except me and my friend.

Tuesday afternoon we met a Norwegian author and talked about her novels. This program was closest connected to my own studies in literature, and I was really excited. The author had her own way to talk to us compared to the other lecturers. She discussed with us in such a personal way and with obvious consideration. In general they were all good, I enjoyed every single one.

Wednesday was a typical "tourist-day", we were driven around in Oslo in a bus, with a tourist guide. We visited the Ski-museum, the Viking-museum and looked at some ski-jumping places. The tourist-trip didn't feel that special, I'm not a fan of those things. But at least I know Oslo a bit better.

Officially the trip was a course in Norwegian. Our whole group could talk Swedish and we were almost perfectly understood and we learned to hear Norwegian around us. During the lectures we discussed about the languages in the nordic countries (how they are linked and what similarities there are) and the Norwegian culture and myths. It was all interesting, no matter if the subject was about languages and their politics or movies in Norway.

What else? The hotel was awesome, with plates of fruit available for everyone and coffee machines all over the place. The hotel surely deserved the four stars. It was such an opportunity being a part of this course and being able to stay at the awesome hotel with the interesting conferences, the view and our beautiful room. The whole course was greatly organized and I am happy that I was a part of this trip.

Movie review: Jarmusch: Down by law & Coffee and Cigarettes

Original text in my other blog: http://nayene.wordpress.com/

For the past weeks I’ve watched a few movies that I would like to share with you. Down by law from 1986 is the first movie that introduced me to the great director Jim Jarmusch. His simple, minimalized shots are strong and mostly, they are enough. I still wonder how Jarmusch with such small details is able to show me something that I’m still so excited to talk about.

Jim Jarmusch: Down by law (1986) and Coffee and Cigarettes (2004)

Down by law is a story about three men that meet in a Louisana prison. There’s Jack, a small-time pimp that got set up, Zack the unemployed DJ that was caught driving a stolen car, and a strong-willed Italian tourist called Bob. Like Tim Holmes describes:

“Though they are unabashed lowlifes, Zack and Jack have been incarcerated for crimes they didn’t commit, while Roberto, hardly the criminal type, has accidentally killed a man in a brawl.”

I remember the shot in Down by law where the three men lean against the jaildoor and Zack, believeing he and Jack are the true bad guys, asks with an ironic tone: “so, Bob, what did you do?”. Bob answers absent-minded: “Killed a man”. The two other men get uncomfortable and don’t know what to say.
Terrific.

Jarmusch is not about the story itself. The story in his movies doesn’t need to be complicated, what makes his movies great is the way he builds up such great profiles of the characters and his talentful shots. Somebody told me:

“It’s just amazing how Jarmusch can make a film where every shot is like an artistic picture, like a painting I would like to have on the wall.”

What I remember most from Down by law is the great black and white shots, the funny, realistic moments and especially the last picture in the film. In the beginning of Jacks’ and Zacks’ friendship they try either to provoke or avoid each other. But in the last shot, when they have escaped jail and are literaly going different roads, they have an unspoken friendship left hanging in the air. After all they’ve been through, it’s understandable. This last, realistic shot doesn’t feel like a made-up happy ending, it feels like one of the moments in life that makes it special.

I think Jarmuschs movies and short films are unique since he doesn’t follow a certain script, it’s more about spontanity. What Jarmusch emphasizes is playing with dialogues and to just see what happens. I think it’s a great talent to make short films so consistent even though they’re not throughly planned. Jarmusch did this in his eleven short films in Coffee and cigarettes.

One important source for Jarmuschs spontaneous moments is an italian actor named Roberto Benigni; when he met and joined Jarmuschs movies Benignis English wasn’t that strong. What’s better then let him act an Italian tourist (Bob) in Down by law?
In the first episode of Coffee and Cigarettes ever made Benigni plays himself. In the episode Benigni and Steven Wright are silently drinking their coffees with shaking hands (stating the need and addiction for coffee). Suddenly Benigni asks Wright:
“Do you know my mother?”
Wright stumbles for a moment and answers:
“Do I know your mother? I don’t think so.”
“Oh, very good.”
And they return to drinking and smoking.
Jarmusch explains:

“And after the take, Roberto said: “I am so sorry. I forget all English…. Suddenly I can’t think anything to say except ‘Do you know my mother.’” So things like that happen, and I like to leave those in.”

And so this random comment is in the clip and makes everything in the episode even more unique, random and fun.

The first episode of Coffee and Cigarettes was shot shortly after Down by law in 1986. Not much is needed in either of the films. Both are in black and white, in every episode just a few people are in front of the camera, discussing something or just sitting. In Coffee and Cigarettes the only thing combining every episode is – surprise – coffee and cigarettes. In every episode they discuss that drinking coffee and smoking is such a bad habit. Still, all the people in the film either drink coffee and smoke or has done it in the past.

One of my favourite episodes in Coffee and Cigarettes is ”Somewhere in California”. In this episode the legendary musicians Iggy Pop and Tom Waits “smoke cigarettes to celebrate that they quit smoking, drink some coffee and make awkward conversation.” The film was made in 1993, it’s 12 minutes long and gave Jarmusch the Short Film Palme d’Or atthe Cannes Film Festival. In this episode Iggy Pop has arranged a meeting with Tom and he is excited, but their conversation just doesn’t get past the awkward part. Their attempts end either in a silent moment or a misunderstanding. Their most successfull discussion is about quitting smoking and celebrating it – by smoking:

“The beauty of quitting is, now that I’ve quit, I can have one, ’cause I’ve quit.”

(Tom Waits)

And I must add, the awesome music that is played in Down by law is by Tom Waits, “Jockey full of bourbon”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=54YhQZN5Uq8&feature=related

The shot where the three men lean against the jaildoor inDown by law can be seen here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kHboNFi_zPU

From THE JIM JARMUSCH RESOURCE PAGE:
http://www.jim-jarmusch.net/

“In his book, “The Art of the Short Fiction Film: A Shot by Shot Study of Nine Modern Classics”, Richard Raskin devotes chapter 2 to a close reading of “Coffee and Cigarettes”, which is available online as a pdf file here:
http://www.mcfarlandpub.com/excerpts/0-7864-1183-X.Chapter2.pdf”

Down by law (1986)
Starring Tom Waits, Roberto Benigni, John Lurie

Coffee and cigarettes (2004)
Starring Roberto Benigni, Steven Wright, Iggy Pop, Tom Waits, Renée French, Alex Descas, Cate Blanchett, Meg & Jack White, Alfred Molina, Steve Coogan, Bill Murray and so on.