Significance of the Earth and Sky in the Film Yellow Earth
Yellow Earth is a foreign film that takes place in China. Although the film was made in the 80’s there is a timeless feeling to the movie, as if the events could be happening at any time. The movie follows a soldier, referred to as Brother Gu as he travels China’s poorer regions recording folk songs. During his travels he stays with a family. While witnessing the poverty of their daily lives, Gu begins to speak about the benefits of the army he is with, the Communists, for the commoners. In the movie we see two arranged marriages contrasted against the Communist city where a woman could marry who she wished or join the army. In the end we are lead to believe Cuiquao, the daughter of the family Gu stayed with, has died trying to reach the Communist army who she believes will save her from the marriage she was forced into. We also see Cuiquao’s younger brother Hanhan running to Gu when he returns. Hanhan was in a prayer meeting where all the villagers where praying for water. When we see him running to Gu we get the impression that Gu, or rather the Communists, will save the villagers. These two events affirm that this is a political film trying to portray the Communist party as the savior of the people of China.
There is a particularly poignant shot where the Father, Gu, Cuiquao, and Hanhan are eating outside after Gu has helped the Father plowing. During this shot we see the four characters sitting on the ground eating. We then see the Father stand and talk about life and the harvest. While he is talking we see mostly sky in the background, but the sky is all white giving a very closed in impression. The father then sits back down and we then see an aerial shot with them eating and the majority of the frame is taken up by earth. The earth in this frame looks like a mountain or cliff so that it appears that the earth has been cut open and we are seeing a slice of the inside of it. We then see two more frames of the family and Gu eating.
On the surface, Chinatown is a film about the political corruption surrounding the conflict over water rights in Southern California in the early 20th century. But really, it is a film that gives the audience a bleak and pessimistic view of humanity as it sheds light on the deep moral bankruptcy of which humans are capable. The opening scene of Chinatown gives the audience a taste of the human immorality to come and also hints at some key themes that continue throughout the film.
As one of the earliest films to come out of communist China’s new film schools in the 1980s, director Chen Kaige’s Yellow Earth reveals much about the Chinese communist party’s interpretation of the years before 1949 (the year of the Communist victory in China). Yellow Earth takes on the appearance of Communist propaganda films as the plot and themes develop. The minimalist mise-en-scene technique effectively illustrates the activities and rituals of daily rural Chinese life throughout the film. Nowhere in the film is the effectiveness of this technique more apparent than in the final scene when Han-Han struggles against the crowd to return to Gu.
Frame in the Movie Yellow Earth The movie, Yellow Earth, focuses on images that use mise en scene aesthetics. Bazin advocates the use of mise en scene rather than using montage. In mise en scene, the director takes account for everything that appears in the frame. The director also takes the effects in the onstage space of the frame. Some examples of effects in the frame are lighting, setting, costume, and character behavior.
The movie is essentially a series of flash back. The movie begins with a prison train full of war criminals going to a prison in 1950s Manchuria. Piyu took the throne from the empress when he was three years old. He was treated above everyone else this is apparent when he met his brother at ten and later at fifteen when he met his wife. Throughout the entire movie there is a sense of rich kid never grows up and cannot fend for himself. Even in his forties when he is delivered to the prison-camp he cannot even tie his shoes. Arranged marriages is an evident tradition in Confucian culture. The changing China from Imperialism to a republic is portrayed well. One example of the revolution was Reginald, the tutor going to the Forbidden City and the car is surrounded by revolutionaries gathering outside the walls of the Forbidden City.
Color symbolizes a lot in the story. In the story you see excessive use of colors. The first most clear color symbol is white which doesn't express the purity but the false purity and goodness in the people. The next is gray, valley of ashes, which expresses the lack of spirit in that area. The green shows the hope of a new start, or to work for something. Red is death , or blood. Yellow expresses the corruptness in society and dishonest behavior in society. Also yellow represents the coward image of characters.
“Noah and the Flood” depicts “the Lord” creating a new generation because of his actions. God decides to destroy all life but he saves Noah, “I have decided to put an end to all flesh...” (61). God’s ultimate decision to decision was caused by humanity. In God’s eyes humans have become corrupt and wicked so he takes it as his duty to punish them. Noah is a fair man and God values him thus saving Noah and his family. Noah’s righteous thoughts and actions save him and every creature on the boat. God promises to Noah, “...I will maintain My covenant with you: Never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of a flood...” (63). The flood was a great disaster, but it also paves the way for a new generation. Noah, his kin, and the animals are pioneers to a new dawn of civilization. God can control this new civilization by preventing evilness and creating a code of law for people to follow. The flood is often view as a mechanism of destruction, but it is also a chance to start over and rebirth.
It is comparable to the proclaiming of Napoleon as emperor in 1802. The film is a dramatic representation of Mao Zedong’s beginnings, his role in the establishment of the People’s Republic of China, and is centered on his greatness as an almighty leader. The play ends with the Internationale signifying the importance of taking Maoism and spreading it to the world. The East is Red is the official establishment and announcement to the world of Mao’s iron fist and cult of
Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story, "The Yellow Wallpaper," is the disheartening tale of a woman suffering from postpartum depression. Set during the late 1890s, the story shows the mental and emotional results of the typical "rest cure" prescribed during that era and the narrator’s reaction to this course of treatment. It would appear that Gilman was writing about her own anguish as she herself underwent such a treatment with Dr. Silas Weir Mitchell in 1887, just two years after the birth of her daughter Katherine. The rest cure that the narrator in "The Yellow Wallpaper" describes is very close to what Gilman herself experienced; therefore, the story can be read as reflecting the feelings of women like herself who suffered through such treatments. Because of her experience with the rest cure, it can even be said that Gilman based the narrator in "The Yellow Wallpaper" loosely on herself. But I believe that expressing her negative feelings about the popular rest cure is only half of the message that Gilman wanted to send. Within the subtext of this story lies the theme of oppression: the oppression of the rights of women especially inside of marriage. Gilman was using the woman/women behind the wallpaper to express her personal views on this issue.
“The Yellow Wallpaper” is a short story written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman in 1892. The short story speaks of a young mother (narrator) who is suffering with post-partum depression and is given the treatment of “rest cure” by her over controlling husband/physician. The narrator is kept in a nursery with yellow wallpaper in the couple’s summer home. As the story progresses the narrator becomes immensely intrigued by the patterns in the yellow wallpaper. The narrator begins to pick and scratch at the wallpaper because she sees a women behind it, a women trapped in the patterns. The narrator becomes so obsessed with the wallpaper she loses complete touch of reality itself. The woman trapped behind the wallpaper represents the narrator. The narrator
The time planned before the flood happened gave Ea time to prepare Utnapishtim of the upcoming flood. And when the flood had finally came, it was so strong and so terrifying that it even frightened the gods. The storm scared them so much that they ended up hiding from the storm themselves and started to regret their decision of flooding the earth. ¨For six days and six nights the winds blew, torrent and tempest and flood overwhelmed the world, tempest and flood raged together like warring hosts. When the seventh day dawned the storms from the south subsided, the sea grew calm...¨ (Kinsella, Kate, et. al., 27) This quote directly from the text explains thoroughly how strong and the big the storm was and how it progressed throughout its
Son of the Revolution, an autobiographical novel by Liang Heng, shows the Cultural Revolution and other Communists Campaigns in context with how the Chinese people dealt with a Mao Communist China. Liang Heng was born in 1954 in Changsha, Central China, five years after China’s Communist Revolution. Liang Heng had parents that were considered intellectuals. His Father was a newspaper reporter and his mom was a cadre with the local police. A cadre is a militant high ranking officer like person. Liang Heng is the youngest child with two older sisters with his oldest sister being in the Red Guard for some time. Liang Heng’s mother had distant family that left for Taiwan at the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949. This would put a dirty stigma and social view on Liang Heng’s family for most of their lives. During the Hundred Flowers Campaign, Liang Heng’s mother was labeled a rightist because she was “asked” (forced) to say things that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) were doing wrong (kind of like teacher evaluations) but it was all a dirty trick. After his mother was labeled a rightist, Liang Heng’s father separated from his mother before she went to be reeducated. When she returned home, Liang Heng’s father divorced her and forbid his children from seeing her to try and distance the family from being labeled a rightist. This would not work, as Liang Heng’s father would later be labeled as an intellectual and Liang Heng was given the stigma of an intellectual’s son, which, contrary to how it sounds, was not a good thing. Liang Heng loses his grandmother to famine during the Great Leap Forward. During the Cultural Revolution, Liang Heng’s family is split up and sent to the countryside. Liang Heng would eventually joi...
In the 19th century society was from different from what it is today. Women were not in the workforce, could not vote, or even have a say in anything. Women were not permitted to give evidence in court, nor, did they have the right to speak in public before an audience. When a woman married, her husband legally owned all she had (including her earnings, her clothes and jewelry, and her children). If he died, she was entitled to only a third of her husband’s estate. Charlotte Perkins Gilman wanted to change this. She wanted people to understand the plight of women in the 19th century. In her short story The Yellow Wallpaper she tries to convey this to the reader not just on a literal level, but through various symbols in the story. In The Yellow Wallpaper the author uses symbols to show restrictions on women, lack of public interaction, the struggle for equality, and the possibilities of the female sex during the 1800s.
Chinatown is an American neo-noir movie. The movie is inspired by the dispute that went on in California over water at the start of the 20th century. Jake Gittes, a former officer now specializing in marital investigations. If hired he will investigate your spouse and find out if whether or not he/she is cheating. Hired by who we believed was Evelyn Mulwray, he is sent to investigate her husband, the builder of the city's water supply system. She believes that her husband might be seeing another woman. As Jake began his investigation, we later find that the woman was an imposter. She wasn't the real Mrs. Mulwray. So it's no wonder that when Mr. Mulwray is found dead, Jake finds the need to keep investigating. As he starts uncovering
--- "Noah’s Flood in Context: Legend or History?" Schauffler Library NMH School. 2002. Accessed December 16, 2013. http://streaming.factsonfile.com/PortalViewVideo.aspx?xtid=30092.
The narrator in The Yellow Paper was a mother and a wife who was trying to free herself from the prison her husband had put her into. She lived in a male-dominate world whereby she was to be a wife who never questioned her husband’s authority. She suffered from a severe postpartum depression case, yet her marriage depressed her too. The narrator was in a marriage whereby her husband dominated and treated her like a child. Her husband was the sole decision maker and since she lived in a society whereby women were never allowed to question their husband’s decisio...