I'm changing the world with cookies

Wow! I have to admit, "Stranger Than Fiction" turned out to be one of the most intriguing, well-done movies I've ever seen. The dialogue was incredible, a mix of fate and ... well ... fiction. But, my favorite scene/line/philosophy of the whole movie was Ms. Pascel's passion to "change the world with cookies." I love the idea of believing so strongly in something, big or small.
As for worldview, the movie is obviously postmodern. Full of metaFICTION, fragmentation, relativism and question of existence...who chooses our fate? Us or the universe? Both? Is my life a comedy or a tragedy? Maybe we'll never know...In many ways this movie reminded me alot of Rozencrantz and Guildenstern with its witty dialogue with more philosophical layers than initially expected.
Overall, I really enjoyed the movie :)

Why Tales won...or didn't.

THENDYWAMPS: The Game.

It was just that wasn't it? A game. But for as long as I can remember all the games I've played have had a goal and usually that goal is to win. Sure, the teams got excited when we came up with a clever and inventive new rule to add to the list, but the whole idea of making up your own rules along way has never been worked into Clue, Sorry, Apples to Apples, Uno, yes, even the game of Life. I suppose maybe Milton & Bradley never read Rozencrantz and Guildenstern. The point being, there is no point. No goal. No meaning. No winning. And most assuredly, NO rules. Just as Guildenstern has been trying to convince himself there is meaning throughout the play by deconstructing and comforting himself with fate, each of us could go on to deconstruct the game and comfort ourselves with the idea that we won. The truth is, we all won. But we all just as easily lost. Mrs. Kirk was not a judge or the banker, because in a postmodern world there is no control. In a postmodern game their are no rules. I won, my team won, not because we had more points (because we didn't-we lost-besides points don't really exist in this THENDYWAMPS game, if we are truly playing by the rules of postmodernism). We did not win because we came up with more clever rules, because those don't really matter either. We won because if we each individually decide we won, we do. We can choose our truth for ourselves and my truth is: we won. That may be the only rule to all this: once you decide, it's truth. You only get frustrated when you ask, why?
We are all players in this game of Life.

"We are actors..."

Player: We're actors...We pledged our identities, secure in the conventions of our trade, that someone would be watching. And then, gradually, no one was. We were caught, high and dry. It was not until the murderer's long soliloquy that we were able to look around; frozen as we were in profile, our eyes searched you out, first confidently, then hesitantly, then desperately as each patch of turf, each log, each exposed corner in every direction proved uninhabited, and all the while the murderous King addressed the horizon with his dreary interminable guilt. (64)

The player is turning out to be one of my favorite characters. He appeared comical and easygoing at first, but the more his part is revealed in the play the more eerie and mysterious his character becomes. He has an omniscience about him and that gives him both an advantage over Rozencrantz and Guildenstern but also a hopelessness about the text in which he is stuck.

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Guil: Where are you going?

Player: I can come and go as I please.

Guil: You're evidently a man who knows his way around.

Player: I've been here before.

Guil: We're still finding our feet

Player: I should concentrate on not losing your heads.

Guil: Do you speak from knowledge?

Player: Precedent.

Guil: You've been here before.

Player: And I know which way the wind is blowing. (66)

Wow. I got goosebumps the first time I read that scene. What marvelous metafiction! I love that Stoppard references the quote from Hamlet on the direction of the wind.

____________________________________________

Player: Why?

Guil: Ah (To Ros.) Why?

Ros: Exactly.

Guil: Exactly what?

Ros: Exactly why.

Guil: Exactly why what?

Ros: What?

Guil: Why?

Ros: Why what, exactly?

Guil: Why is he mad?!

Ros: I don't know! (68)

Stoppard is definately employing the "W" of THENDYWAMPS: Word play and Word killing. That's what makes this scene so hilarious. Rozencrantz continue to go along with it, still playing the game. Where as, Guildenstern is still searching for answers, meaning, control. The Postmodern aspect of this whole scene is cued with Rosencrantz exclaiming "I don't know!" There are no answers. There is no meaning. And we will never know.

Obama...inaugural address

This article convicted me to the core, because I actually did not get to watch the inaugural address!!! I was in class!!! I feel like a bad American.
Well, after reading the article and the opinion of Gerson, it sounds like it wasn't quite as inspiring as maybe...Abraham Lincoln (my favorite president by the way) but that it was a good next-step, realistic, focusing speech for America. And maybe that's what we need right now...speaking of good speeches, I saved the little cardboard that wraps around Starbucks coffee (is there a name for this?) just because it had a quote from Abraham Lincoln on it...i told you, he is my favorite ever. In fact, it says here that this was taken from HIS inaugural address, how fitting:

"With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds (ooo. nice metaphor), to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations..." President Abraham Lincoln, March 4, 1865, Inaugural Address

amen to that.

Rozencrantz and Guildenstern are blowing my mind.

Okay, Stoddard is officially one of my new favorite playwrights. He's up there with the big guys in skill: Shakespeare, Sophecles, Euripedes, Aristophenes...he might need to get a cooler name though...but still. I have been blown away by this play! I think it's because there just aren't an rules and the rules that he sets within his play are unstable (i.e. the flipping coin ends its cycle in the end of Act I). Everything is so unpredictable! I think Charis definately got it right with her impersonation of me the other day. POSTMODERNISM...Carly: "sigh...this is so cool!!!" Haha. I'm loving it. I really enjoyed hearing the question game played out by Ben and Blaine in class. I was really confused when I read it on my own...especially with the score keeping... one-love, two-love. Now, that I have heard it acted out I think that was a great touch. Especially since in the midst of thier "game" (representative of life being a game) Guidenstern still insists on finding the meaning behind it all! Where as, Rozencrantz (whom we characterized as a puppy) is just in it all for fun and entertainment. hmm.
Also, I was a bit convicted by the challenge from this Act: are we actors or prostitutes? and wrestling with where we are as Christians. I have two very good friends, both very involved and passionate about the theatre and the arts. One has been involved in drama all through highschool and spends most of his time after school rehearsing and preparing for the new, upcoming play. He mentions, though, that sometimes the drama kids, in an attempt to make their character realistic and believable, will act in character the entire practice and sometimes quote thier lines in everyday conversations around school. Even Blaine did that one day back in the Fall. Mr Montegue asked his students to pick a character and remain in character all day. I guess that just seems odd, because they can practice and stay in character, but they will still be themselves at the end of the day. Is there a point where you convince yourself you are somebody else? I honestly don't know where I'm going with this...just thinking...asking questions that I don't necessarily have answers for right now haha. But isn't that what this play is all about especially that last scene? Life is just a bunch of unanswered questions. Some just have fun with it and turn it into a game. Some Some prostitute themselves to the world and try to be an answer to someone else's need or question for life. Some take a leap of faith and step out in doubt. Some just act. After all, "life is a stage." I guess, as a Christian I should ask, since I am claiming to "play the part" of Christ in this world, my "script" is his Word, and my "director" is the Son of God himself...if all this is what I claim...is my role believable and genuine to my world audience? is it realistic? Am i getting my lines right, straight from my "script"?

Heads...heads...heads...

I admire how Stoppard incorporates deep insight and the pondering of our existence with humor. It definately adds character to Rozencrantz and Guildenstern and paints some color to his piece. There is just so much to unpack from these first few pages alone, its unbelievable. Stoppard already is dealing with purpose and probability, fear and faith, faith and fate, the law of diminishing returns and the law of six monkeys (previously discovered today in class to go by the title of The Infinity Monkey Theorem haha), syllogisms and the supernatural...all in seven pages of script and witty banter between two very complimentary but different characters.
I was most convicted personally, however, by Rozencrantz's (or was it Guildenstern's? ) long speech on probability and the idea that when things are going well, we have no real reason to doubt and are perfectly "content and happy" with flipping coins all day. Yet the second the winds change and our worldview seems to fail us, we turn to others for answers, WHY becomes a very vital and common question. From a Christian perspective, I was convicted with the fact that I, too, don't generally pray as much or dig into the Word as deep when life is going hunky-dory. But the second things start getting rough that all changes. I don't think this is how it should be and it rather bugged me in class and I wrestled with it a bit the rest of the day. When life is good and calm I should be even more attentive to God's word in an act of thankfulness for his provision and steady hand in my life. Ya, I'm going to work on this.
I loved this quote: "Fear! The crack that might flood your brain with light!" Hmm. So fear helps to reveal truth in our lives? Fear shows things as they really are?
The slapstick humor between the two men as one sits back and collects his bet while the other stands in awe is very entertaining. I'm enjoying the play thus far its very clever.
Is it a double-sided coin?

to be or not to be

Throughout the course of the play, Hamlet begins to doubt his faith, question the afterlife, and attempts to reason through all of chaos in his life. Shakespeare informs his audience that Hamlet and his best friend Horatio attend school in Wittenburg, a Protestant school. Although, the majority of the other characters are Catholic, the audience is led to believe that Hamlet holds to protestant teaching and heaven as an afterlife. This religious position would deeply question the ghost that appears right off the bat, starting the play. As the ghost beckons Hamlet to follow, Hamlet says, "Why, what should be the fear? I do not set my life at a pin's fee, and for my soul, what can it do to that, being a thing immortal itself? It waves me forth again. I'll follow it." Although Hamlet's schooling would have taught him to be skeptical in such an encounter, Hamlet is curious and has a "what have i got to lose" attitude. Even before his encounter with the ghost, Hamlet questions his worth and wishes he could die if only "the Everlasting had not fixed His canon 'gainst self-slaughter!!!" He says in his first soliloquy "O, that this too too sullied flesh would melt, thaw, and resolve itself into a dew!" In response to his father's death and the marriage of his mother to his uncle, Hamlet wonders why no one else considers the situation bizarre. He is emotionally fragile to the point where he wishes he could commit suicide.

Although Hamlet expresses such a range of emotions, he admits himself that he can't understand why those emotions can't be turned into action. Especially after he learns of his father's murder by his uncle, he suffers inner conflict in not being able to bring himself to kill the king. In Act Two, during the play, Hamlet ponders, "What is he to Hecuba or Hecuba to him, that he should weep for her?" He questions why an actor can express his emotions so freely and passionately over a simple play, while he can't even when his is reality. Hamlet continues to question the after life during his famous "to be or not to be" speech in Act Three. This speech seems to sum up Hamlet's emotional state throughout the play in a simple and short phrase. He is torn between his chaotic life on earth and his death, forever loomed over by uncertainty.

During Hamlet's iconic conversation with Yorick's skull, he seems to come to terms with death. He talks to the skull with humor and wit, very much an example of dark humor. He comes to accept that all people die. All people will one day be a skull in a graveyard. No matter what mistakes you make in life, don't really matter, because the Divine is sovereign: "There's a divinity that shapes our ends, rough hew them how we will."

In the end he admits his love for Ophelia after learning of her death by suicide. Their love story is another subplot within the play, another example of Hamlet's continual emotional battle. He loves her, than he pretends not to, breaks her heart, then claims to love her more than "forty thousand brothers." Obviously her suicide creates tension and raises many questions among the other characters. I think that when it comes to his death, Hamlet goes on to heaven. He understands and accepts protestant teaching, even though he may face life pessimistically.