Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho

Who hasn't heard of Alfred Hitchcock? He is an iconic director with a fantastic eye for suspense that nearly anyone can recognize. He was the father of the modern horror movie, proving that less is more in the gore category. He instead created a terrifying world where there didn't need to be buckets of blood in order to truly frighten an audience.

Perhaps best known for the 1960 film, "Psycho," his use of cutting the point of view at a rapid rate gave a sense of anxiety and fear for the subject at hand. In the famous shower scene from "Psycho" only a bare minimum of gore is shown to solidify the effect of the fright and horror.




His shots became iconic, the slow zoom away from Marion Crane's dead eye was a looming reminder of the her last moments and the fright she felt just before she was murdered.

Hitchcock liked to make movies about disturbing events or disturbed people. He himself having many fears and being obsessed with fear. He was supposedly afraid of police, authority, his own emotions, and sex. He liked to make movies about such fears as these as well as making movies that include bits of himself in a way. It is said that in "Rear Window" there is a character who is both a Peeping Tom and a voyeur. It has been noted that this is one of Hitchcock's alter-egos. While that is rather odd, Alfred Hitchcock did fantastic work and set the bar incredibly high for all filmmakers after him.

"No Useful Work" is quite enlightening

Rabindranath Tagore's "The Man Had No Useful Work" speaks about an overly efficient community where the residents are concerned only with their busy work. A man who has no "useful" job to do finds a busy woman carrying a pitcher. He wants for the woman to lend him her pitcher. She declines, and he persists. After several days of this, she finally gives in. He then draws patterns and lines all over it. The girl goes home and ponders the meaning of the artwork. She comes back the next day demanding to know what need there is for it. He assures her that there is none. She is confused, seeing as this is the first time she has encountered something without underlying meaning. He then weave ribbon into her hair, simply for the enjoyment. The elders of the community are unhappy with this new business. They send the man back to where he came from, and now the girl wants to join him.

Tagore addresses a problem that most societies face. There s busy work everywhere, but so few open minds and creativity in the world anymore that, when one comes upon it, we barely recognize the genius there. Not everything has to happen for the sake of something else. If you were to live that way, is there any end in sight? There is no enjoyment in that life, no appreciation or beauty. This sound like the question asked at the beginning of the course. Why do we take Humanities? We should learn to appreciate the beauty in the world so that we can be well-rounded human beings. The individuals in this specific community are not well-rounded. While they may be good at their craft, they have nothing else to fall back on. When someone shows up who may upset the calm, they feel intimidated. In this case, they force the people who are different out of their community.

Though it is the elders who have chosen to force out the man, the girl goes of her own accord. This goes to show that once shown other options, not everyone will choose a certain life. I understand this girls point of view, growing up to math and science classes. Then when I tried theatre, it changed my whole way of thinking. I now live for enjoyment along with the needs of society, instead of missing out on so much.

Sartre spot-on

"Man is nothing else but what he makes of himself." -Jean-Paul Sartre (Fiero 76)

Most philosophers for hundreds of years have been blaming actions and choices on external forces. They all compel you to look back at your childhood or the bible for answers, many stating that the things you do you cannot control. This is why Jean-Paul Sartre is so interesting to me. After doing some research on Sartre, i was ultimately faced with two questions.. "How had i not heard of this man before?" and "Which way is he looking?" Despite his squirrelly eyes, Sartre produced a very valid ontology.

I would have to say I admire Sartre more than any other philosopher I've studied. Instead of placing the blame, he realizes that the blame is ours. Many would like to deny this fact, wanting a way out. With cries of "The devil made me do it," or "He triple-dog dared me!" there are few people who will take responsibility for their own actions. Sartre says that we have no predetermined nature, we act free and independently in our choices, and we create our nature and values as a result of these choices. You may think, what if you grow up with a horrible childhood, completely outside of your control? Sartre would suggest that you must take what you can from your experience and make the choice to learn what not to do and how not to live your life. This takes away all outside forces, leaving us with the bed we made, and the choice to lie in it, or do what we can to change it.

Of course Sartre realizes that this much responsibility would certainly impact humans. He says that it instills anxiety and despair. The anxiety being from the thought that we are responsible for every one of our choices with nothing else to blame. The despair comes from seeing the world around us that we cannot control, realizing that it is determined and that we hold little to no power in changing the external world. We are  restricted to only what is in our control.

So what keeps us from going out and stealing or anything else for personal gain? Sartre explains that when choosing our human nature, we choose what we would like to see in the world. The old "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" applies. We know that, if everyone chose to act in an undesirable manner, the world would be chaos. Instead, we act as we should in society so everything operates smoothly. Sartre's philosophy is one of the only ones, in my opinion, that is really worth believing in.