Metal Reviews

I suppose you can say it's pretty basic. More or less, all you have to know is how all the different chords are built, and all the different nonharmonic tones. I'm sure there are deeper levels of analysis, but we're not there yet. Still, macroanalysis is a pretty essential thing to know.

+1.

I know bugger all about the content, but I can give you some tips on your writing.

As an English teacher, I think it's great. Just a few minor things to consider. Avoid emotive language, particularly when you speak of Dawkins. All academic writing must be objective unless specifically stated in the task. The other thing is avoiding the dreaded "we, I, and us" words. These come off as broad generalisations that have no academic significance whatsoever. Just minor tweaks to those things, and I'd give you an 'A'.

A language teacher and you don't know Kafka? For shame. Thanks for the tips though, everyone. I got the essay back with full marks


EDIT: Where did I use "we", "I" or "us"? I can't find 'em in the text. And I think it's pretty objective, what instances aren't?

So here's another piece I wrote. This time it's a creative piece based Marquez's 100 Years of Solitude. I tried to imitate the author's style as much as possible, incorporating magical realism as a vehicle for symbolism. Hope you enjoy it.

To Carve A Life Like Wood


Based on 100 Years of Solitude,
By Gabriel Garcia Marquez

The signs had been there for a long time, it was just his faith in fate that kept him from taking any sort of preventive measures. As it was, the method still managed to surprise him, and for the first time in his life he indulged in meanderings of a philosophical colouring as he lay on his side watching his own blood flow between the cracks of the plaza and questioned the nature of free will. Earlier that day he had argued forcibly to increase the funding for municipal maintenance in the town, and the irony of this only struck him when the torrent of vitality flowing out of him had shrunk to the size of a brook. However, he did not have time to berate himself for ignoring the warnings before he fell into the state of apathy that generally comes with death.
They had been subtle, initially, involving no more than a slip and a cut during shaving, something he never did. The blood splashed onto the mirror and no matter how hard he rubbed it refused to come off, leaving a red stain in the centre of the ashen cross that was indelibly marked on his forehead. He left the blood there, where it provided a source of frustration and curiosity to the maid who all day long tried to clean it, using every magical product she had purchased in her gullibility from the travelling vendors, gypsies and arabs; until to her great astonishment it crumbled and dissolved of its own accord the moment the last drop of Aureliano’s blood flowed out of his body. Annoyed at such a barbaric use of craftsmanship, he spent several frustrating moments attempting to remove the marvellously engraved throwing-axe that was lodged in his forehead, while being careful not to splash around in the pool of blood that was slowly settling down around the cadaver, and no longer hungrily lapping at his face, as if trying to re-enter the body through its orifices. He finally gave up trying to remove the axe, and directed his attention to the watch he had bought from Bruno Crespi’s shop, wanting to make sure it wasn’t damaged by the blood, forgetting that it had been irreparably broken earlier that day.
It had started going in reverse sometime about 8:37 that morning. Aureliano was sharpening his carving tools when he had the sudden urge to retrace his steps out of his workshop into the plaza, where he wandered around in circles, looking into every single store that opened up onto the plaza, while creepers from the swamp slowly seeped onto the stone, only to recede when he walked by them. Aureliano marched in circles staring at his watch, which by now had reached 7:40, for whenever he looked up he saw cannonballs with crosses etched into them floating and would immediately return his attention to his watch lest one of the levitating orbs notice his gaze and proceed to plummet upon his head. Later, the townspeople would search in vain for the cannonballs, of which witnesses had said there had been 17 of, eventually finding one that, dirtied with blood, had somehow rolled itself to the top of the Father Nicanor’s Church’s spiral.
Aureliano managed to find his way back into his workshop after his 22nd circling of the plaza by grabbing onto a protruding stake and smashing his watch against it. Dizzy from his exertions, he staggered back to his workplace, with the intention of finding solace in his work from his visions and inherited premonitions that plagued him. With a forceful conviction of normality, he resumed the sharpening of his carving knife. The steady vibrating of the blade in his hands soothed him even as gripped it ever tighter until the grindstone was coated with a cascading flow of blood and iron that splattered around the room, hitting the toys from Bruno’s store, the golden fish he had received as a gift from Ursula, the ragged curtains he had installed to avoid being blinded with sunlight as he was carving, and ran out into the plaza where it began to evaporate in a steaming pillar of crimson. It rose up into the sky, where it tinged the clouds and spattered the horizon with shades of shapes which reminded the some of the witnessing villagers of Nostradamus’ persecutions, yet to many the shapes in the red clouds meant no more than the wagging of a dog’s tail, for dead eyes see no future. It was said that many months later it rained blood in the capital, and every drop that fell upon a conservative hit him with the force of a bullet, disintegrating the body and leaving nothing but a pummeled mess on the ground that not even the dogs would approach. This story was told to the people of Macondo by Francisco the Man, and no one really knew whether to believe his tale. Those who had been active supporters of Colonel Aureliano Buendia and the liberal party upon hearing the story experienced a sensation they would have defined as Schadenfreude, had they known the word, especially those who witnessed Aureliano’s slow, trancelike walk into the plaza, straight into the assassin’s line of fire.
Aureliano, upon witnessing the symbols painted on the sky, dropped his discoloured knife on a scale in his workshop that had been measuring the weight of little golden doves. The balance began to slowly tip as the blood got thicker and thicker, weighing down the tray with the knife against the pile of solid gold. With every step Aureliano took towards the column of vapor, the scale tipped one more degree to the knife. And when he finally reached the center of the plaza and stared at the last of the steam rising up, the scale collapsed; the golden doves fell into a pool of blood on his floor and drained along with it, and Aureliano, who was staring at the sky and wishing he could join the crimson symbols in it, was still contemplating how to carve a life like wood when the axe hurtled out and struck him dead center in the forehead.

No one read it? Come on, it's awesome writing.


Anyway, applying Freudian psychoanalysis to literature is fun.

It pisses me off that Frigid is Transylvanian or whatever and he has such a good grasp os English.

I'm Swiss, thank you very much. My mom's American and I've always read and talked to my parents in English. I developed my vocabulary in English. I honed my writing skills in English. But thanks, it's one of the few things I pride myself in.

How'd you like the story?

It's obviously well written but I just found it to be a bit too wishy washy...I prefer reading without it feeling like I'm reading, if you see what I mean.

I get what you mean, the narrative doesn't really flow. Well, in my defense it's REALLY hard to write like Marquez.

I don't even know who the fuck he is, I like Stephen King.

Read 100 Years of Solitude. Like, now. The man's brilliant.

Erm, OK.

*lie*

It'll make you smart.




Well, no. But cultured!

Interesting essays, Frigid. I think everybody else here pretty well evaluated them (and I'm too mentally drained now to really critique them), so I'll just say that I find them to be quite fascinating.

So I just wrote this paper for my Gender Studies course. It's on the gender role of Patrick Bateman from American Psycho. I was proud of my thesis but I thought the writing sucked. She gave me an 'A' on it though. She asked me to include background info which kinda pissed me off. I like critical analysis papers to be succinct and focused on the thesis. I should've edited it more but I turned it in right at the deadline.

The film American Psycho is set in the 1980s and it directs its focus towards the upper class, business professional yuppie culture. The viewer witnesses lavish meals, swanky suits and countless other aspects of bourgeoisie culture, all of which are described in immaculate detail. The viewer not only witnesses the material excess but also what underlies that supposed success and prosperity. Underneath the chauvinism, homophobia and materialism, Bateman is a cold-blooded killer. Bateman attempts to present a façade of concerned, cultured capitalist yet often times it collapses and the viewer witnesses his cold, brutal personality whether it be when he lashes out at his fiancé or as he cleaves a man’s jaw off with a pristine chrome axe.
The original novel that the film was based on was written by bisexual author Bret Easton Ellis. The novel had difficulty being initially published due to its graphic depiction of violence and rape. Once it was published, outcry ensued. Ellis received death threats and hate mail. Feminists were outraged by its treatment of female characters as only sex objects and things to be butchered. However, the film was directed by feminist film director Mary Harron. It received respectable reviews and many saw Harron as making the film relevant to the culture of the present as compared to the 1980s which the story was set in. Harron was able to shift the attention from the graphic violence and towards the character Patrick Bateman’s gender role in the 1980s’ casino capitalism environment. Her interpretation of the film leaves it not as just another slasher horror film, which it still is, but something more substantial with a vast wealth of social critique and satire laced throughout. Slasher films are, when done properly, bursting with theoretical queries and concepts and American Psycho is one of those films that does it right.
Throughout the film with its prevalent focus on Bateman at work and with his work colleagues, Bateman’s job is rather a mystery to the viewer. What his job entails is never explained to or witnessed by the audience. Class statuses and positions are so well demarcated that it doesn’t matter what his workload consists of. Bateman has established himself to such a degree that his success is self-perpetuating. It doesn’t matter if he tells a girl in a club that he is into “murders and executions” since she will simply hear it as mergers and acquisitions. The idea of him having to actually work is so absurd that all we witness him do in his office is watch Jeopardy! and do crossword puzzles. It doesn’t matter if he is late to work since he was exercising because his status is already defined; what he does in his office doesn’t matter and nothing he does can change his status. When Evelyn, his fiancé, asks him why he still works his answer is simply “he wants to fit in”. He has triumphed over the business world that wages are no longer important; everything he has achieved is instilled in the idea of him having that position. Bateman is the epitome of the male business elite.
The upper class business environment is male dominated. The only female characters within the film are Jean, Bateman’s secretary, and the plethora of women being used for sexual pleasure by Bateman and his colleagues. Even the men’s wives, fiancés and girlfriends are treated like property insofar as all are being used by at least two different men for sexual acts in some convoluted web of sexual affairs. Bateman’s relationship with Jean is interesting though. She is the only woman he is able to prevent himself from killing. Even if he was able to control his urges, whether out of compassion for Jean or for some other reason, it doesn’t stop him from being rather disrespectful towards her. At one point, Bateman tells her that she is too pretty to be wearing pants and from now on should only wear skirts or dresses. Something as trivial as wearing a pair of slacks leads him to criticize her and reassert her status as a woman. Any possibility of her challenging his sexism is circumvented by his status as a wealthy bourgeoisie and her status as a woman, a secretary who is struggling to go back to school. Women simply aren’t allowed to enter their realm of finance capitalism and if a woman did, she would have to be ugly in order to be successful.
Bateman’s status as a business professional is wrapped into his status as a male and vice versa. Male culture has sought to establish a set of unwritten rules which every man should abide by as most other subcultures tend to do. Keep one urinal’s distance apart in public bathrooms and don’t talk to someone whilst using a urinal are two examples of the unwritten etiquette of men. Due to his success, Bateman expects certain rules and standards to be respected. When comparing business cards amongst themselves, Bateman is taken aback that his card wasn’t seen as the best. Bateman asks that they take a look at Paul Allen’s card. Allen is a successful colleague of theirs who seems to top Bateman at everything. When Allen’s card is ultimately seen as the best, even by Bateman himself, Bateman begins to appear physically sick. Paul Allen has transgressed what Bateman has set as the standard of which to live by. His watermark is a personal affront to Bateman. Bateman expects his card to be seen as the best. The fact that the others don’t recognize it flusters him and what finally pushes him over the edge is that Paul Allen’s actually does outdo him. His colleagues’ tastes can be ignored due to idiocy or ignorance but Allen commits a fatal error when he unknowingly challenges Bateman’s stability and respectability.
Bateman has dinner with Paul Allen soon after that. Allen doesn’t actually recognize Bateman as himself and constantly refers to him as Marcus Halberstram. That doesn’t seem a major transgression because that is commonly done in the film. Characters are often misrecognized and everyone seems to go along with it. It’s as if once you are in the business elite circle your name no longer matters, your status is solidified as long as you can maintain the appearance and play whatever part people expect you to play. As the two are eating dinner, Allen is criticizing “Halberstram’s” choice of restaurant and insisting that they should’ve went to Dorsia, a restaurant that he could get them into if they wanted. Bateman calls Dorsia, the newest chic restaurant, several times throughout the film and fails to get reservations; the maître d’ even laughs at him at one point. Their conversation leads to tanning; Bateman goes to salon while Allen has a home tanning bed. Bateman brings a heavily intoxicated Allen to his apartment where he proceeds to bash in his skull with a chrome axe, splitting his face open at the jaw.
Before the ensuing carnage, Bateman described to Allen his favorite Huey Lewis and the News track, “Hip To Be Square”. Bateman praises the song on its positing of the importance of conformity and following social trends. These comments are Allen’s condemnation. Bateman doesn’t kill Allen for being a cocky, self-important prick; Bateman kills Allen for challenging Bateman’s status and self-importance. Bateman’s role is secure. He has the required fiancé; he has a mistress; he has friends, wealth and good looks; most importantly, he has his job title. Paul Allen is challenging everyone at Pierce & Pierce’s stability and security as successful men. They are impressed by his ability to get reservations at Dorsia and they are impressed by his business card. He transgresses the standards that they’ve established amongst themselves and is therefore challenging the rules of the male subculture. Bateman’s act becomes a reactionary outlash against anything that challenges his gender role. In the dominant role, it becomes an imperative to Bateman that Allen be murdered.
Even beyond the grave, though, Allen’s success haunts Bateman as Christie the prostitute comments on how Bateman’s new apartment, i.e., Paul Allen’s apartment, is much nicer and has a much better view. The climactic final murder scene has Bateman chasing after Christie with the chainsaw through Paul Allen’s apartment. She scrambles to get away from him but is lost within Paul Allen’s labyrinth-like apartment. Any façade of cleanliness or compunction Bateman might’ve presented is stripped away as we see this apartment covered in blood, laden with body parts and packed with corpses. As quickly as Bateman’s inner grotesque is exposed is how quickly Bateman’s status due to his gender can deteriate. Bateman works excessively hard to establish his own prominence alongside his peers, to put down women and to project an outward appearance of success to everyone. What this ultimately leads him to having to do is killing exactly what he is in order to maintain his own status. The words “die yuppie scum” smeared on to the wall are not materialism’s shallowness creating angst within the character but are actually the contradictory nature of arbitrary distinctions of class and status. In order to nurture and perpetuate his own self image, he had to destroy anything that could represent a threat no matter how closely it resembled his own selfhood.

Really interesting. I saw American Psycho just the other day, and I totally missed that aspect of the movie.

Don't you mean Batman Trapt?

*gets coat*

Really cool piece, trapt. Makes me want to go see the film again and watch out for all the things you mention.

Styllistically I like it too; your writing is very succinct and expresses hard ideas in a simple way.

I guess I agree with your tutor about the background. Specifically, you say something like "when done right, the slasher film is full of ideas and concepts" but don't back this up, except in reference to your case study. Seems to me like that would have been a really cool way to start the piece; a paragraph very briefly summarising the ways in which horror films have been interpreted as societal critiques over the years. You could also mention the fact that they very often appear extremely, burtally sexist; which is obviously a key theme of your essay and of American Psycho.

You're probably right. Slasher films are amazing when it comes to gender studies. I think it was Nightmare on Elm Street 3 where Freddy comes to a barbeque and hot dogs start swelling up and then beer cans explode shooting streams of white foamy stuff into the air. Not to mention the stereotypical survivor girl having to adapt the ruthless killer instincts of the male serial killer. You're right I should've included stuff like that.