ELS Autoblog

Sanjuro, the protagonist of Yojimbo, is the quintessential cowboy of classic Westerns. He is a wanderer, drifting into defunct towns to help the helpless and defeat the unjust. His demeanor is stoic, seemingly asexual, pure and noble. Once the dynasty that held him in employment dissolved, he is left to exist on his own, and forge his own meaning. In most Westerns, or Western-esque flicks, the motivation of the main character coming to town and saving the day is clear. For money, for love, for revenge, you name it. So what is Sanjuro’s motive for intervening in the town divided by equal, opposing forces?It first appears that Sanjuro has simply found the perfect situation in which to make the most of his skills as a warrior and make a profit. After all of his playing hard to get, he gives the 30 ryo to the family of the woman held […]

Original post by cdame2of

This is really stating the obvious, but our dear Knight of the Cart is (what a coincidence!) the epitome of our chaste girly-knight. He lies with the damsel strictly out of a sense of duty, suffering internally all the while. This virtuous knight is not only obeying our rules on love, but also obeying the theory put forth in a prior reading that this courtly literature relies heavily on unrequited love to suit its purposes: the knight grudgingly lies with this damsel out of a sense of duty, despite the fact that his heart belongs to another.
It would seem then, that this particular work is placing duty above even love, and perhaps this also follows the idea of literature of this tradition actually serving as a critique of love for anything other than one’s God. During this time period especially, one’s God goes hand-in-hand with one’s duty. It is because of duty alone […]

Original post by jordan

Oblique strategies is a deck of cards that you can look at when you’re in the middle of a problem and do not know how else to go about solving it. I found a neat website that had online oblique strategy cards that you can click through the cards. My favorite one was “repetition is a form of change.” I found this one particularly interesting because it can mean so many different things. For example, if the same sentence is used throughout a story, the sentence is obviously the same each time it is written, but the meaning also changes with each setting in which the sentence is used. And as Dr. C said on the subject tonight, “repetition is a change in changeability.” Another one I found on the site was “emphasize repetitions,” which is pretty much along the same lines as the […]

Original post by Ashley

Sooo last class we spent a lot of time talking about time and how humanity responds to it since it is our inevitable fate to grow old, have young people think you suck and smell bad, and then die. First of all, young people, when I was your age we respected our elders…or stuck it to them because they were the man. One of those. Anywho, the greatest revenge for old people is when arrogant young whippersnappers themselves pass through the threshold of youth and into their golden years. Which in itself is a weird term. “Golden years”: When you have to take pills everyday to hang on for a few more years and all your friends start dying. Depressing. Gray years. Dammit. Moving on…
Yes, we talked about the problem with time. Our society is built on thousands of years worth of information that has been passed on through writing, […]

Original post by georgestreet

As I told Dr. Kennedy this morning, I wanted to see Arabic influences in the description of Camilla’s tomb in Eneas. While this may or may not be reaching, the description of the elaborate jewels and materials used to create the tomb, as well as the exotic fabrics adorning Camilla in death seem to have an Arabic flair to them. In fact, they reminded me much of the elaborate descriptions we have already encountered (time and time again) in Arabian Nights, not only in the actual physical detail, but also in the over-the-top rendering of the tomb. This brings to mind a reading from last week– it may have been one of the first chapters of Menocal– that talked of Arab culture as being characterized as over-the-top, the very definition of excess, and recalling Arabian Nights illustrates this concept.
More interesting, to steal from Dr. K, is that this Arabic-influenced scene is […]

Original post by jordan

Just about the first thing I notice when watching a movie is its soundtrack. For me, I believe that the difference between a good movie and a great movie is its soundtrack. I think that a great soundtrack can be listened to and enjoyed on its own as well as an aid in telling the story. In my opinion some of the best movie soundtracks are, “Last of the Mohicans”, “Pirates of the Caribbean”, “Glory”, and anything John Williams touches. While I’m not prepared to add “Yojimbo” to my favorites list, I can’t seem to get it off my mind. While perhaps the Yojimbo soundtrack is not one I would listen to on my ipod, I do believe it was a very engaging and effective way to enhance the story of Yojimbo.
Moving on…while reading other blogs, I noticed I am not the only […]

Original post by kcannon

I am so friggin’ confused about the reading right now. I’m not sure what is due tomorrow but I read “The Sodomitic Moor” and “Chaste Subjects.” Hopefully they were the right choices. If not, meh. I’m going to read Eneas tomorrow morning since my eyes are starting to cross again.
To begin with, “TSM” made Spain sound like one of those angry kids in highschool who beat up all of the gay kids because he himself was gay. The two cultures seemed to get along for a while until Spain freaked out about its cultural instability. I love that it is the homosexual’s fault for all of Spain’s problems. But the real ringer was the idea that homosexuality was a “Virus Oriental” and therefore curable. Now where have we heard that before?
What strikes me as odd is the fact that some Arabs were just as disgusted with the idea of same-sex intimacy […]

Original post by badspellar

Last.fm is a UK-based internet radio and music community website.  Last.fm was established in 2002.
Last.fm is an amazing website to show others what music you listen to, and find others with similar music interests. You can discover other bands and singers with a similar sound to the bands you already listen to.  It’s one of the best ways to discover music that you’re almost guaranteed to like.
Once you download the recommended system, “Audioscrobbler,” Last.fm builds a profile automatically that reflects the users music preference.  The profile data is displayed on a personal webpage.
My Last.fm 

Original post by Amanda

origin – In the first chapter from this reading Menocal makes it obvious from the outset that the origins of the modern vernacular lyric has a much debated history. One in which many Europeans theorists have accounted for the rise of courtly love poetry as a phenomenon and ignore the elements that were almost certainly intertwined with that of literature from Andalusian, Hispano-Arab influences. The arabic precursors of the troubadour poetry exhibit many of the common themes such as unrequited love and the role of gender. But the unwillingness of western scholars to give credit where it is due has led to a constant debate between those who support the Arabist theory and those who refute it; creating what Menocal refers to as, “…the problems of the origins and formal characteristics of the vernacular lyric.” Menocal both questions and condemns the nearsighted views of western […]

Original post by bford

Alright. I’ve written my first Newsvine article, Cultivating intellectual discourse on the Internet. This is largely in response to the aforementioned article. I added a huge chunk of my Urbis post to the second half of my article, but the article in toto is a lot more detailed. I encourage you to please read the article, give feedback via Newsvine comments and vote if you really like it. That’ll help move it “up the ‘Vine.”
So far I’m impressed with Newsvine. It manages to weed out the spammers by having all new members prove their worth, which I am trying to do now. People have incredible insights posted, and its reputation system is almost exactly what I have been looking for. Check out its Leaderboard to see what statistics they choose to measure.

Original post by humanisticmystic