theMazed

Science is the branch of knowledge concerning systemized observation and research. This knowledge bank is always trying to introduce us with modern technology, new mechanism, new things, new existence and new ideas. With in these invention or discovery some are very familiar to general people and some are strange to people which make people bit worried. With the aim of presenting the science in the movies directors represent these strange and familiar issues or thing in the film and this is why we will try to clarify how these issues are represented by the director Barry Sonnenfeld in “Men in Black” and by the Robert Zemeckis in the movie “CONTACT” in this writing. In the “Men in Black” the genus of science fiction are presented through two men character Agent K (Tommy Lee) who played the role of science fiction and Agent J (Will Smith) who played the role of new learner like normal people. On the other movie “CONTACT” describes how eagerly Elie Araway (Jodie Foster) tries to make contact with alien and finally how her confidence and believes take her to the destination. Through out these plots of movie we will be introduced with some strange and familiar alien, strange activities of secret agent and Elie, extra ordinary communication system and will be brought in with scientific technology.

In discussion we are going to find out all the strange and familiar things that are combined in the movie “Men in Black” and how people take them. Even though some issues are not scientific still they are considered here as they included in the science fiction movie.
The key strange thing what is brought out in the movie is the existence of Alien. As like as Agent J we the general people have no idea about alien and sometimes we might believe that they stay in the outer world but Agent K told wills smith that alien does exist and near about 1500 stay around us. It is really surprising that they are working like man and sometimes they take the form on human which was shown when a bug like alien taken that body cover of the farmer Edgar. In the movie sometimes we found them on human image, sometimes on dog image and some times on their own repulsive looking face which is unfamiliar because people normally thinks alien should have different looking face with different characteristics. Agent J was astonished when agent K was talking with dog-shaped alien and the other people was surprisingly watching this conversation. . We have seen another interesting and eccentric invention of science is MIB’s neutralizer, which is used by the agent to zap the memory of alien from human mind. It is such an unbelievable thing that one person forgetting specific event for certain period of time and as it was a silly thing from general point of view, Agent J was angry on Agent K when he was using that for the doctor. The agents in the movie “Men in Black” used a fake considerable vehicle, which can fly and can change its shape by the blink of eye. It is considering fake, as it has no physical existence in the practical life till now. A good relationship between the bug of our human world and alien is exposed at the end of the movie and this is odd looking to common people, if anybody has cockroaches in house he/she will be scared after watching this connection. This relationship was cleared out when Agent J was trying to keep the alien busy by killing his relative cockroaches and these insects always try harming human as like as that extraterrestrial.
We can see some familiarities of science as well as strange things. Alien life is presented as like as human like. People normally think every group or sects should have some good member and some would be awful and we saw these similarities when some good alien was working in the MIB office to help the human, on the other side we saw the farmer covered alien who was awfully killing people. One of important, educational and familiar clue is portrayed in the movie, that is in science size doesn’t matter for destructive things. Some dim people like Agent J thinks only the bigger gun can destruct more and this why he was bit upset when agent was giving him the short gun to get prepare for operation but later on we find him that even he was not strong enough to take care of the small one as it was very dangerous. Last familiar things what I would like to illuminate here is the space ship. Space ship is normally used to go to the outer world and it normally kept on high position and its shape was similar with space ship what we normally see.

“CONTACT” is much more realistic and brought out some very good concern about science and god. Director tried to portrayed alien life, human life and human beliefs through some strange and familiar pictures.
We are shown the alien world in the movie and surprisingly it was look like human word. We the general people think outer world would be completely different from our world and should be look strange to us. We found mind blowing beach view, green nature and as the director portrayed it differently people take it strangely. The other thing what looks bit odd is the appearance of Elie’s dad as alien, according to general view alien appearance will be grisly looking and will be bit scary. Instead of scare Elie was feeling save after meeting with that alien, which was sort of strange thing. The most important things what made us confused as well as the Government council is the Elie’s journey to alien world. Every body watched that Elie’s space ship was displacing and she was senseless for couple of minutes but we found her to travel alien world by this small period of time, the video camera that was in the space ship was showing that it had been recording for 18 hours what raise a big question to the audience. In this movie we can see a spaceship, which is totally different from the typical space ship and this is why lots of people were gathered to watch this ship and the journey.
One of familiar concept which is come through this movie is aliens have different world and they don’t live with us in the world. The most interesting thing is as our believe alien doesn’t want to harm us, they would like to lead their own life and this is why father shaped alien sent the Elie back to the world with out doing any impairment on her. One of constant truth, which is explored in the movie, is contribution of religion to science and peoples are very familiar with this term. As a scientist Elie shouldn’t believe any thing with out proof but after her last journey she was compelled to trust that there might happened something which doesn’t have any explanation, it just have to believe as it done by God.

The aim of this discussion is to find out all the scientific strange and familiarities that are described in the movie “Men in Black” and “Contact”. From the discussion part of those movies it is come out that both of them have some similarities and dissimilarities in concept. In “Men in Black” alien’s are shown as world inhabitant and shown some good and bad alien, on the other side “Contact” says about another world of alien, they are our well wisher and there are some people in the world who always try to block the progress of science as like as terrorist priest. So if we consider both of the movie it is clear to us some dreadful people or alien might exist in world or outer word, which always try to keep us behind. The “Contact” would help people to clear the relation between religion and science. Even though directors present the aliens and their survival in two different forms, they are still success to give us information about alien in genus of science fiction.

References:

Ellis J, n.d, online “Contact: A Illusion review”, viewed 15th February 2004, http://www.rottentomatoes.com/click/movie-1078021/reviews.php?critic=all&sortby=date&page=5&rid=779622

Brussat, F, Brussat, M, 2003, “Contact: movie review”, 14th February 2004, http://www.spiritualityhealth.com/newsh/items/moviereview/item_816.html.

“A Better Tomorrow” probably will be one of the best examples of expressing hybrid culture in the movie. Basically this is an action film that follows Western shooting style for violence. At the same time it contains Hong Kong’s cultural values, comedy, music (choreography of violence) and many others. “A Better Tomorrow” is a ‘doing’ genre or we can consider it as male melodrama. In the movie ‘Ho’ promises to his father not to continue his underworld activity anymore and after that he meets with his brother ‘Kit’ in the police academy. In that scene we see how much ‘Ho’ loves his brother, which express his internal sufferings and that is a melodramatic scene as separation with a loved one. Masculinity theme is obvious in action films. In “A Better Tomorrow” man’s masculinity is expressed in a new way where ‘suffering’ and ‘doing’ genre works together. We see the visible masculinity sufferings when ‘Mark’ is badly beaten by new gangster ‘Shing’. Then we see how ‘Ho’ revives ‘Mark’ from the suffering that shows their strong bond of friendship instead of showing any gay appeal like American buddy film of the 1990s and again we see how ‘Ho’ and ‘Mark’ express themselves as a strong opponent for the gangster leader ‘Shing’. “A Better Tomorrow” also shows us how the images (pastiche) put together to express the best feelings. When ‘Ho’ is surrounded by the police, he then decides to surrender. Just before surrendering ‘Ho’ thinks about his brother ‘Kit’ and his father. Here he does no lose his masculinity but it shows how a hero suffers for his loved one. That means he could do the opposite if there was no obligation of give up underworld.
John Woo’s masculinity film express historical crisis through emotional ‘doing’ and ‘suffering’ of the heroes. Which is a historical evidence of Hong Kong’s uncertainty in 1984.

Reference:

Stringer, J. 1997, ‘Your tender smile gives me strength: Paradigms of masculinity in john Woo’s A Better Tomorrow, screen, pp. 25-41.

Retailers of SIM cards and vendors of the private mobile phone operators have started charging higher prices for SIM cards in the city markets (Dhaka, Bangladesh) following the Finance Minister’s proposal to impose duty on those. Some of them were also seen refraining themselves from selling SIM cards. more

Online service is considered as the most convenient way to access any organization or event. For the lacks of resources people are unknown about plenty of places those are inaccessible. Online is the great opportunity to let the people know about the places and event and also very useful for those who are not capable to visit there. The National Cultural Network will provide an important outreach service for the cultural and heritage institutions, particularly those in the rural and remote areas. A number of states and territories already set up such technology named Virtual Cultural Center in Western Australia more and Vicnet for Victoria vicnet.This organization will provide a range of recourses and information linked to countries heritage. A fund of $10 million more will be spending in next three years for to spread the cultural network in schools, libraries and cultural institutions. They coalition believe that people should not deny the opportunity of participating cultural activities to resident of the capital cities. Thus they will spend an amount of $7.5 million for establishing a regional arts fund to make the arts more accessible to Australian’s in rural and regional areas, which is a great attempt for the sake of cultural development. This fund will provide assistance and provide education to the rural arts centers, museums and arts organization.

Festivals are the events to identify a nation through social occasions. It might be cultural or economical. “Each Festival was long preceded by a historical and cultural search for roots and authenticity”. (Hutchinson, 1992). Festivals reflect on the culture to give a clear overview on the nation. These festivals keep the identification of the nation years after years. Festivals are conveying the culture to the new generations from the early age. The new generations can learn the culture form the festival easily. Festival inspires everyone to keep the culture through some occasions. There has been number of festivals of a different kind growing recently. They have been mainly cultural in purpose. These festivals held around the country after establishing the festivals in style and popularity by influence. The life of Bengalis is full of different festivals. The effect of festivals in Bengali life style and their traditions are vital. Bengali celebrates different festivals through out the year. Festivals have always played a momentous role in the Bengali life style. Those are the parts of Bengali culture and tradition. The celebrating of those festivals shows the existence of Bengali culture. The purpose of this essay is to discuss the growth of festivals as a vital appearance of Bangladeshi cultural identity. It also demonstrates some examples of the festivals and the reasons why it happens. It signifies how these festivals influence the life style of Bangladeshis and their social lives, and their advantages and disadvantages.

Festivals have a central theme, which gives rhythm to everyone, to celebrate it according to their own culture. “Pohela Baishak” – Bengali New Year is an example where people follow the central theme of their culture to celebrate the New Year festival. Through this festival the Bengali culture can be recognize. The “Pohela Baishak” festival is the huge gathering of people celebrating the Bengali New Year. The concept came from celebrating the first day of Bengali New Year as a traditional Bangladeshi as to remembrance the real culture of Bengal. The “Pohela Baishak” festival reflects the most important cultural influence on the Bengali society. The importance of this festival does have greater impact as in the day of this festival the whole nation reacts with the consciousness of Bengali cultural tradition with literacy, music, arts and poetry. As Bengali culture does have the rich background of such activities, every single soul of Bangladesh wants to share that great flow of cultural activity. The reason behind such celebrating might be to memorize the tradition for whole year by participating it in the first day of the year. Such superstition still ongoing into peoples mind that the whole year will follow the first day. Although this is not happening because greater western influence is swallowing the Native culture and peoples are adopting that quite happily. “Modernization could accelerate in the coming years and decades, a process likely eventually to weaken traditional Tibetan culture by breaking its link with the society, which feeds it” (Mackerras, 1999). To avoid such contradiction into peoples mind the government and the social workers are pushing the nation into the ideas of being Bangladeshi by celebrating own culture. Thus when the events come, everyone can gets into it and participate it with full rhythm. The celebrating “Pohela Baishak” starts with “Provat feri” where “Provat” implies the sunrise and “feri” implies walk, creating meaning for walk onto the sunshine. The whole nation gets early in the morning and gather in a place called “Ramna”, which is the centre of this festival. When the sun rise everyone welcomes the first day by singing the song “Aso he aso he Baishak” means welcome Baishak. Baishak is the starting month of the Bengali year. The festival celebrates by everyone all over the country but Ramna is the central located in the nation’s capital Dhaka. The people perform the song “Esho he Baishak” written by Nobel winner “Rabindranath Tagor” as he has greater influence on Bengali literature. This festival reminds us about our rich tradition over the centuries to be a part of a great nation and the coming new days. more

Floating Life is movie that is all about Australian identity. It tells a story, which shows us the process of ‘othering’. National identity and self-identity is not the same and national identity relates to the process of ‘othering’ through discourse. Australia is a multi ethnic country. Immigrants from different countries migrated to Australia many years ago and then Australia questioned its national identity. Questions such as where am I? and who am I? Floating Life shows us how the immigrants from different cultures are supposed to be in Australia, what might be their identity and how they should act. Through the globalization process national identity has become hybrid identity. Like in the movie, in Germany, Yen (Annette Shun Wah) finds her identity and cries before sleeping at night. She finds her root and her relation with her root. On that image we get a clear view of how every different migrant is continuously thinking about their identity but at the same time they are following other cultural identities by speaking German, living in Germany and so on though they do not belong in it.

In the movie, Pa (Edwin Pang) tells Ma (Cecilia) about an offence that had been done by a 12 years-old boy in America and just after that Bing (Annie Yip) gives her younger brother Chau (Toby Chan) a hard time about his clothing and says to Ma about her concerns. This concern actually indicates Western and Australian culture, though those cultures have been Other. The Chan family finds their identity in Australia but simultaneously they are ‘self-whole’. And again according to Mark Roxburg “the members of the Chan family are Other because of the way they understand their difference from the absent Australian self”.

In the movie, white masculine landscape acts as a symbol for cultural identity. It reminds us about bush legends, mate ships that are some Australian national identities and in the same way when we see the kangaroo in the movie it reminds us that we are in Australia.