Saturday, 26 March 2011

Psychoanalysing Steven Spielberg

Ok so I've dug out my psychology notes and compared them to what Paul told me about Steven's past and his films, which I looked up on IMDB (is that a valid source??).

Firstly, he is an Orthodox Jew and experienced a fair bit of anti-semetic abuse when he was young, and he was also a target of a white supremacist terror plot in 2002 (this is info from wikipedia so I need to back that up...). This may well explain his interest and involvement in Schindler's list among other films and he even produced a few documentaries (these films and documentaries include Band of Brothers, Broken Silence, Price for Peace, Eyes of the Holocaust, Survivors of the Holocaust, Letters from Iwo Jima, Flags of our Fathers). It's mostly the documentaries he produced that focus on the holocaust (the operative word being mostly), even his other WW2 films show his religious and personal background influencing his work. Anyway, what I was trying to get at is, that is a fairly obvious influence which will be good to include once I back it up.

He uses children in danger a fair bit, and as Paul pointed out he uses families with divorced parents or with the father not being around, the latter may well be a reflection of his childhood. He also shows alot of unremarkable people doing or discovering remarkable things (eg. Jurassic park, E.T., Casper, Men in black, back to the future etc etc). which might be a reflection on how he felt about himself, he was an unremarkable kid who has gone on to be this amazing director and producer.

However, NONE of this is psychoanalysis. It's difficult to describe on here, but Freud's theories are all about how your upbringing affects the development of your personality, and fair enough what I've said above is about how his upbringing affected his career. However, because we don't know anything more than basics like the fact that his dad wasn't around much...we can't say much more than that.
Freud is all about the id, ego and super ego being developed in the oral, anal and phallic stages when you're a baby....then defences such as repression, projection, sublimation and reaction formation are developed by your ego to protect your id....none of which really apply.

Anyway, I'm rambling....my point is, I've found a bit but possibly not what you were after. Is there anything else anyone thinks is relevant that I need to look into further etc? And is any of this stuff even useful??!

I'm also a little worried we're not looking into the whole time machine aspect of this enough....

aaaaaanyway let me know what you think :D


Monday, 14 March 2011

Hey Guys, so we should probably decide who we're going to do our presentation on?
I think they'd both be really interesting ones to talk about, but Rowan Atkinson might be more entertaining? I vote him....


I looked on his Imdb page - this has obviously got all of his work on there. A lot of them being his own sketch shows, the iconic series' that is Blackadder, films like Mr Bean, The Lion King, Johnny English and Keeping Mum.
He also was on A Bit of Fry and Laurie, the origins of which were made into a documentary on GOLD on the TV a couple of weeks ago (theres a clip belowww). This was actually quite a good programme- it had loads of other comedians and acts talk about them and how they had inspired their work. Maybe these guys would be a good one to research instead? just another idea... 














if we used a comedian we could go into the history of stand up comics? charlie chaplin etc... how its evolved to what it is now, whoever we pick's early career, what they moved onto... who they inspired, what they are doing etc.


just some ideaaas :) but we should probably have a meet up soon and decide :) xxx

Thursday, 10 March 2011

Rowan Atikinson




I was wondering if Rowan Atkinson might be an interesting one to do? I'm not sure how easy he'd be to research, but he's done a lot of very different things...TV, stage, film....Blackadder, Mr. Bean, Rat race, Johnny English, Keeping Mum, his sketch stuff and he did Oliver in the west end...I just think that there are a lot of genres we can track back...


Brilliant invisible drum sketch: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_kloG2Z7tU


what do you reckon?


Tuesday, 8 March 2011

Research Symposia 2

Hi group 3,

As you are aware we have a new presentation to research and put together. I've had a little think about it, what are your thoughts on Steven Spielberg? There will be tonnes of info on him in the library and we can structure it around the history of film, what influenced him, how he has influenced cinema, ie summer blockbusters like Jaws, ET, Jurassic Park etc etc...


Just a thought and open to any other ideas....

Tuesday, 1 March 2011

Presentation Structure

Intro(Jenny)

 2.5 minutes comprising of:
  • Clear introduction, Encyclopedie (ou Dictionnaire des Science, des arts...) etc etc.
  • Our 5 published sources ( Habermas and Modernity, Encyclopedia plates extract Diderot, Adriana's book. We need two more MINIMUM for killer quotes / images etc)
  • Dictionary definition of Encyclopedia etc.
  • History of The Encyclopedia (Ancient Greece e.t.c)
Main Body

1st (Jo)

2.5 minutes comprising of:
  • Diderot, who was he? general background etc.
  • Key events in 1700
  • The enlightenment movement and it's links to the encyclopedie

2nd (Andriana)

2.5 minutes comprising of:

  • Evolution of the Encyclopedia to Wikipedia (pros and cons)

3rd (Paul)

2.5 minutes comprising of:
  • Enlightment, Links to the original Encyclopedie
  • What will be the next step for Encyclopedia's? Future ramifications?

  • Bullet point conclusion

  • Bibliography and Illustration list.