February 18th, 2008—February 24th, 2008

1. Haiku Hinckley
2. Halo II
3. Stardust

Haiku hinckley

Home— ceased, frozen glass

Drops of Rain, rings: perception

White Eclipse— New Leader

Halo ii

Context/Description:

I decided to try and play Halo II with my cousins Brandon and Logan. The game has three player mode and we played for about 45 minutes.

Analysis:

I grew up with Nintendo for “Shoot the Ducks,” Sega Genesis for “Sonic the Hedgehog,” and Play Station for “Tomb Raider” along with other games. I’ve never so much as seen and X-Box Live except on television commercials. Halo II in Campaign Mode against each other is not as violent as I expected. I’ve heard awful things about the game in the past—and perhaps the regular game mode is—but the arena I played in was pretty tame.

The game lets you, as a player, see the action from a first person point of view with hands holding weapons. Thus players can feel that they are the extension to those hands & it makes the experience more intimate for players. Basically you run around, scout around, or hijack alien crafts to cruise around and find your opponents and take them down. The controls are reversed so up is down and down is up (ect) and if you die in the face off mode you get a number of resurrections.

The game has a popular appeal to the teenage culture & a select group of adult players. It is currently one of the top five best-selling video games on the market in the United States. Its popularity led to the demand for and creation of it’s sequel Halo III.

Lesson Plan Ideas:

As a future English Teacher I recognize that English must be taught within historical and other contexts. There is a fair amount of WWI and WWII literature and poetry required for study in secondary schools. In conjunction with a War Unit, teach students about the glorified and unglorified versions of war (Pre and Post War perceptions and misconceptions). Have students engage themselves in a video game in your library computer lab (that is educationally approved; Halo II might not be the best candidate for this, but could work here with parental permission), and have students use strategies to thwart the alien enemies/ect. After the exercise teach students a lesson about dehumanization or impersonalizing. Explain that just as in Halo II (or any other game like it) where you try to conquer the aliens, in war you often try to view your enemies as “alien.” It dehumanizes the situation. Stess the tolerance and acceptance of all human beings and that many realizations like these often poignantly emerge in war literature and poetry.

Stardust

Context/Description:

My roommate, her fiancé, and I decided to watch the movie Stardust together this weekend. I had never seen it before and they had rented it. I had only seen the previous trailers before the film officially entered theaters.

Analysis:

From the previews I’d seen, this movie presented itself as a fantasy/adventure story—and it definitely was that—but to a slightly twisted edge. This movie is about a young man named Tristan who was born of a human and a magical Princess on the other side of the boundary “Wall” between both worlds. The Princess is enslaved to a witch who will not let her keep the baby. The Princess sends the baby to it’s father in the human world on the other side of the “Wall.” Meanwhile in the magical world a king dies leaving his sons to quarrel over the kingdom till one finds a special necklace. The necklace is with a falling star girl. For brevity, Tristan & the Star girl fall in love and end up ruling the kingdom together.

The movie does a fantastic job of treating the theme of true love versus media love but fails to go beyond physical love in general. For not having been based off of a book, the script was well adapted and impressive for it’s originality—although at the end, it implies a mythic connection to the stars Tristan and Lamia in the sky, if I am not much mistaken. Overall the film is great, but there is graphic slaughtering of people and animals in the film by the king’s sons and the witches.

Lesson Plan Ideas:

In the movie it is “The Wall” which keeps the two worlds apart. Show students a clip of the “Wall” portal being guarded by the old man. Follow this viewing with some of the following questions: What real or imagined boundaries do we construct in our own lives? What walls (physical or figurative) keep other people, countries, and nations apart? What does a wall do? What is its function(s)? Emphasize that we all have boundaries that are on personal, community, local, national and other levels. Use this “Wall” exercise to move into a discussion about the Berlin Wall (or any other historical wall; the Wall of China for example). Bridge symbolic theory to historical reality in literature and other forms of media.