Artist Statement

How does your film analyze the themes and/or characters in Hamlet?

In our film, the theme and character we chose to analyze deeply in Hamlet, was Hamlet himself and his progression throughout the play changing and becoming crazier every new turning point the play is drawn to. Hamlet's unusual and strange behavior began with the death of his father, and the sudden marriage between his uncle and mother, Queen Gertrude. In the Michael Almereyda film, they portrayed Hamlet as depressed and loner person who really did have a care to anything much. At some parts suicidal. "O, that this too too solid flesh would melt. Thaw and ... resolve itself into a dew! Or that the Everlasting had not fix'd His canon 'gainst self-slaughter! O God! God! How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable, Seem to me all the uses of this world!"(1.2.5) Here, Hamlets thoughts are suicidal and emotionally unstable because he describes his desire to have his "flesh melt" and dissolve into "dew" in reaction to his fathers death and the marriage between his uncle and mother. The gross thoughts that Hamlet played out in his mind are those of a suicidal and unstable person who do not respond easily to an emotional issue. Which only a crazy person who found that their flesh burning satisfies their unstable emotional problem.

Confused and unstable, Hamlet is met by his father in the form of a ghost to relay the tragic news about his death. Hamlet is told that his uncle, now King Claudius had killed him and Hamlet becomes furious. Here , Hamlet plans his next steps to avenge his father but in a strange way. After Hamlet is met by the ghost, Hamlet's friends come to check-up on him and Hamlet's responds to them comforting him as "How strange or odd soe'er I bear myself, As I perchance hereafter shall think meet. To put an antic disposition on." (1.5.58) In the Almereyda film, Hamlet is quick and moves back and forth portraying himself as a madmen who cannot control himself. Weird. Why would you tell your friends that you are going to put on antic disposition, when they are trying to comfort you? Maybe because he is becoming a madman! Which an "antic" is basically; "A clown or a performer playing a grotesque role"(http://www.shmoop.com/hamlet/madness-quotes.html)

Hamlet playing his role of lunatic goes on displaying himself to everyone his crude remarks and unusual behavior. One who has taken note of Hamlet's disturbing behavior is the father of Hamlet's lover, Polonius. In the Almereyda film, Polonius is presented as a caring father to his daughter, Ophelia who is pursued by Hamlet which he takes caution too. "He knew me not at first; he said I was a ... fishmonger: he is far gone, far gone: and truly in my youth I suffered much extremity for love; very near this."(2.2.8) Polonius explains here that Hamlet is far gone and is out of control. He compares him to a fishmonger "which is slang for "pimp."(shmoop.com) Hamlet references the fishmonger comment because he feels that he uses his daughter as if a pimp would use a prostitute. And even before compares Ophelia "[to a] dead dog [that] breeds maggots."(2.2.5)

Hamlet pretending to be a raving lunatic throughout the play began with his father returning to him as a ghostly figure. Once more the ghost of his father had returned to Hamlet after the confrontation with Queen Gertrude and the death of Polonius. In the Kenneth Braunnah version, this scene was built around Hamlet's demise as a sane individual because of figment of imagination creating his father's ghost.  "(Hamlet):How is it with you, lady? (Queen Gertrude): Alas, how is't with ... flame of thy distemper. Sprinkle cool patience. Whereon do you look?"(3.4.18) The ghost of Hamlet's father is once again visible to Hamlet and only seen by Hamlet and not even Gertrude. Which is pretty interesting because before Hamlet was told by the guards and his friends that they were seeing a ghost earlier, but now is only visible to Hamlet. A figment of imagination? Indeed it is because why else wouldn't anybody else see this ghost, if in the beginning everyone else could? Now Hamlet is loosing his mind and him pretending to be a madman has taken over him.

"The Stranger" 2nd thoughts

My current reaction now to the book "The Stranger" are confusion and belief. Meursault, a strange main character where in the beginning is considered heartless and emotionless now shows signs of feeling and limitation. In the beginning of the book, I felt meursaults reaction to the world and to other others were careless and meaningless because of how he described the type of situations he was in. For example, when he told us about when he found out his mother died, he nonchalantly grieved about and went off to thank it because it gave him days off from work and his obsession with avoiding bright lights. This gave me the impression that Meursault was a dark character and in order for me to connect with myself, I would have to detach myself from reality. Detachment is a big theme in this story and I believe the book's name "The Stranger" exemplifies the meaning because strangers are people you usually do not associate with, and therefore. one could categorize them as detached from society.


Recently in the book, Meursault commits a murderous crime and is sent to jail. Here, meursault feels limitation and is opened to expression of feelings. I say this because before, Meursault freely thought about whatever he was doing or freely observed the things that surrounded him. But in Jail, it's a whole different story. In jail, he is not able to access the freedom he is so use to and I feel that this punishment of not easily accessing this detached freedom, unlocks his being of expressing feelings.

There is one scene in the book where Meursault is confronted by a priest and the priest acknowledges his dark detached feelings and preaches to him until Meursault feels uncomfortable. "...no man was so guilty that god would not forgive him, but in order for that to happen a man must repent and in so doing become like a child whose heart is open and ready to embrace all." says the Priest and Meursault reacts with how "..hard [it was] to follow his reasoning...and also because he was scaring me a little." I think this scene explains how Meursault could no longer express himself as detached and careless because fear was in play, and being afraid is a feeling that in this case was unlocked by having Meursault open up even if it was a little bit.

My last questions for this book is basically, what is going to happen at the end? What is Meursault going to do with how confused and afraid he is? What is Meursault's next move? This book is a very good read because prediction is almost impossible which has kept me intact with this book and I am not a big fan of reading.

Who is this guy? The Stranger

My reaction to the book "The Stranger" is confusion among the complex narrative plots that stray away from what happened in the beginning of the book to where I am at now.  The author, I believe is purposefully doing this because he wants us to feel the detachment the main character, Meursault feels to the world.  In the book I feel he has a meaningless care about the people and setting around him for example when he was describing his mothers funeral,  I felt he did not care because of his sidetrack thoughts about his job and thanking his mom's funeral for a little vacation off work. A non-caring meaningless person would do that.

I also question what the future of the book would be if, Meursault would break through his non-caring phase, or for the entire book, we will be experiencing detachment from society through analyzing Meursault's actions.

In "Feed" characters have the ability to "know everything" due to a chip in their head that they can refer to answer questions.  But I feel because of their digital attachment they are more detached to the world itself then they are to society, which spreads around gossip, trends(most of the things we do as teenagers).  In "The Stranger"  I feel Meursault feels the same way they do, detached from the world and viewing people more from a 3rd person.

My personal connection with Meursault and the book entirely so far is very weak.  But I find it interesting to get insight on the mind of a person who thinks everything is meaningless, as to the opposite of what I feel, Everything is meaningful.  I even think that meursault could be categorized as a meaningful person because he must care to the fact that everything has to be meaningless.  He believes that everything is meaningless, therefore caring for his belief.  Although that was I believe the author is portraying.

Comment on Blog Post #3

To Larche G

christian said...
In your post I like how you broke down the existentialist point of view of happiness beause it gave me an idea of what you might be comparing it with. your on life.

I agree with you that happiness is very important to find it in ourselves, but finding happiness from the external world shouldn't be a problem at all. If we could not find happiness from the outside world, then our daily lives that we commit too would be horrible, enjoying the big or little things would be a waste of time.

I look foward to reading more of your blogs on happiness and freedom and your thoughts on it.
October 4, 2009 5:55 PM

I Heart Huckabees

"I Heart Huckabees" varied from many myriad situations of questioning life, existence and who we are to completely going insane and lost. It was interesting to see how you could analyze life either through "everything being connected or nothing being connected at all." For myself, I found that questioning my existence, I was at lost with words on how I could describe my existence on earth and what I live for. Crazy.

In our society, we humans compete with each other comparing and seeing who is the better man/women. We do this by buying the newest phone or laptop, expensive cars, houses and popularity. In "I Heart Huckabees" Dawn, the beautiful model, a icon for Huckabees corporation, stopped caring about her appearence after confronting the existentialist. She realized that her career depended solely on her appearence and being beautiful. Therefore she rebeled against her dependence on being beautiful by wearing overalls and a bonnet. Through this, she became her true self, but was looked down upon even though she stopped conforming to people's trends about being beautiful. This made me think about how in our society we are always conforming to new clothing styles, musics, sports, etc. but in the end we also try to be real to ourselves, but is that really being true to yourself?

In a world, that not all the time makes sence, I believe that "everything in the same, even if it's different" because of our dependent attitudes towards items/materials we need. Everyone has brain, we all use it differently though, no one thinks the same thoughts at the same time, but everyone still has a brain. Everyone has ears, but some are smaller then others, we still have ears. This is why i believe the world we live in makes sence, because everything one individual may have, another person may also have too.

Another reason why i believe the world is meaningful and makes sence is the fact that if I believe that everything matters, I too must matter. This also leads to how I can exisist in a meaningful world because "if nothing matteres, how can I matter?" Well if nothing I think matters then how in the world do I matter, because in the end nothing to me is important, or woth my time caring about, which I believe is what matters, "believing."

Banachs Lecture IV

"Are we free?" I would like to believe we are free but to society we are imprisoned by its surrounding structures and rules.

Physically we are not as free as we choose to be because of the laws, limits and rules our bodies cannot follow such as flying by growing a pair of wings, or running super fast and becoming the president without some elite education, etc. But I think we are free mentally. Who is it to tell us what to think, they can't be our brains. We freely allowed to think whatever we like because it's our minds and ours minds abide by only "our" rules.

Even though I say we are mentally free there is still people who put things in our head to make us think. I still think all together we are not free until it is "unlocked." How to unlock it? Death. Dark thought isn't it. But maybe it is true. Russian Novelist Fyodor Dostoebsky met freedom after facing death. Just before waiting his turn in execution in a Czar camp "he got a reprieve. It turned out that he was to be sent to a labor camp instead and that this had merely been a cruel joke." You might imagine that after facing death, the next thing you can think is "freedom." And for the one minute, one second he felt it. The value of freedom and what freedom cost.

Please don't go out there and try to kill yourselves to feel this thought of Absolute Freedom, its only for a minute anyway.

Banach's Lecture continued..

"Are we living freely or made to think freely?" A complex question with probably no exact or correct answer. I believe we are both, but that's the easy way to answer it.

In Banach's Lecture "The Ethics of Absolute Freedom" he addresses existence and freedom. The lecture consist of freedom of choice and opinion made by self, in physical, political and mental ideals that are possible and impossible. I think we are allowed to think freely more then we are to live freely because of the boundaries that surround us. I am not free to allow myself to "close my eyes right now and find myself in the Bahamas when I reopen them" but I am allowed to freely think that. In other words its physically impossible. But what about the possible? The possibility in change is freely expressed in situations that require us to act different. Its the fact that "freedom is [a] necessity of pulling ourselves together at each moment out of the myriad different influences" says Banach, and I agree entirely with.

Another thing I agree with in Banach's lecture is the fact that change is inevitable, we are freely made to think and physically able to change ourselves because "we all know the power of good editing, of the creative juxtaposition of determinate elements. It can transform experience; make the ugly beautiful and the ordinary, sublime." and because of that we have history being made such as our first black President, Barack Obama. Which also shows progression which was caused by the freedom of change people made from the 1900's to the 2000's.

Society also plays a roll in how our freedom is monitored because of the influences and types of style that past judgment among us. Its almost as if "I [was] a puppet, my body and its actions completely controlled by some malevolent master..." says Banach and it can be completely true because of how society portrays things; such as how women should do more cooking and cleaning and men should be the one bringing in the only income.

In the end, Banach lecture covers and answers that living freely can only be made by possibilities but impossibilities can be thought freely.