Henry Ford Notes

 Notes on the documentary: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1EFTa1kT2XX8lrlAbyhpMGgroew8vB24U/view?usp=sharing

Metropolis Notes

 Notes on Metropolis: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1aWp9Go1Ap0r4l2jdv-6ANNya0bEVgnZe/view?usp=sharing

Mock IO fragments

 Fragment A - “Lemonade” - “Daddy Lessons”

Yee-haw
Ooh
Texas, Texas (Ooh) Texas

Came into this world, daddy's little girl
And Daddy made a soldier out of me (Ooh)
Daddy made me dance and Daddy held my hand (Ooh) And Daddy liked his whiskey with his tea

And we rode motorcycles Blackjack, classic vinyl
Tough girl is what I had to be
He said, "Take care of your mother Watch out for your sister"

And oh, that's when he gave to me

With his gun and his head held high, he told me not to cry Oh, my daddy said shoot
Oh, my daddy said shoot
With his right hand on his rifle, he swore it on the bible My daddy said shoot

Oh, my daddy said shoot
He held me in his arms and he taught me to be strong
He told me when he's gone, "Here's what you do
When trouble comes in town and men like me come around" Oh, my daddy said shoot
Oh, my daddy said shoot


Fragment B - “A Dry White Season” - Part two, chapter five

"We get along perfectly." In the obscure golden gloom of the lamp, surrounded by everything familiar to her, she seemed to shed her reticence more easily. "You see, he was nearly fifty when he came back from the War and married my mother in London. She was – oh, years younger than he, the daughter of old friends. And after a romance of only three weeks - when he'd known her before the War, she'd still been a child, he'd never paid any attention to her - they got married. But she couldn't adapt to South Africa and just a year after I was born they were divorced. She went back to London and we've never seen her since. He brought me up on his own." She sipped her brandy, smiling with all the generosity of her mouth. "God knows how he managed, he's the most unpractical man I've ever seen." For a while it was quiet, except for the cats purring, and the rustling sound of her chair as she moved her legs. "He studied law to start with," she said. "Became an advocate. But then he grew fed up with it and dropped everything and went to Germany to study philosophy. It was in the early Thirties. He spent some time in Tübingen and in Berlin, and a year in Jena. But he got so depressed by what was happening in the Third Reich that he came back here in ‘Thirty-eight. When war broke out, he joined the army to fight Hitler and ended up spending three years in a German camp."

"What about yourself?"
She looked up quickly, studying him for a minute. "There isn't much to say about me." "What made you become a journalist?"
"Sometimes I ask myself the same question." She fell silent again, her eyes large and mysterious in the dusky room. Then, as if she'd suddenly made up her mind, she said: “All right, I'll tell you. I don't know why, I don't like talking about myself."
He waited quietly, aware of a growing relaxation, an openness made possible by the increasing darkness outside and the gentleness of the old house.
"I was brought up in a very sheltered way," she said. “Not that he was possessive - not openly, anyway. I think he'd just seen enough of the mess the world was in to want to protect me as much as he could. Not against suffering as such, but against unnecessary suffering. And later, at university, I took a nice, safe course. Literature mainly. Hoping to become a teacher. Then I got married to a man I'd met at school, he'd been one of my teachers. He adored me, carried me on his hands, just like Dad had done." She moved her head; her dark hair stirred. "I suppose that was where the trouble started."

Mock IO bullet points

 

1. Context to works: marital infidelity as generational issue, repeated in different forms; part of conversation about childhood, fatherhood
2. Texas cultural context: masculine, patriarchy, macho. Tough upbringing and tough model of masculinity
3. Positive childhood experiences: “Daddy made me dance…” “Daddy’s little girl”
4. Protector of the family: “Take care of your mother” Southern tradition
5. Paradoxical warning against “men like me” - Biographical context of Beyonce’s cheating father/husband.
6. Peaceful and comforting descriptions of father and mother - melancholy sentence structure/ imagery
7. Model of masculinity: intellectual, not typical ‘macho’, still strong and respected
8. Sheltered childhood: protective/possessive of daughter, dismissive sentence structure
9. Positive experiences with father vs. negative experiences with father-like husband
10. Differing cultural context, models of masculinity, protecting vs. protected; Similar marital adverse experiences, strong and impactful father-daughter relations

"Sorry" Headpiece

 

Brink Homework

 Part III, section 6

1. Write down three or four most important points of Ben's confrontation with Colonel Viljoen.

1. - Ben accuses Viljoen’s men of “waging a campaign of intimidation against [him] for months on end”. He brings up that there was a search in his home and that they were questioning his friends and colleagues as well as how his telephone and mail are being messed with. He also brings up how his car and house are being vandalised, how he keeps getting anonymous phone calls, and how he finds insults written on the board in his classroom. He accuses Viljoen’s men of being behind this abuse and asks him to leave him in peace

• Ben asks why Viljoen wants to stop Ben’s investigation into Gordon Ngubene so badly and if he isn’t haunted at night by what happened to Ngubene.
• Ben brings up the evidence that was deliberately kept from the court, to which Viljoen accuses him of being involved in dangerous activities. Viljoen threatens Ben to stop his investigation, but calls it just a warning

Part III, section 7

2. What is the advice that Melanie gives Ben early in this section? What does she want to protect him from?

2. Melanie tells ben to give the investigation over to the Afrikaans press in order to retain his safety. She tells Ben how soon they may “try to silence [him] altogether” if he keeps working it privately, and that publicizing it and letting the press handle it is the way to protect himself from the SB.

3. Who is Audries Lourens, and how does he react fto Ben's proposition? How does he justify his decision?

3. Ben goes to meet Andries Lourens following Melanie’s advice to pass the investigation over to the press. He meets with Lourens to convince him to publish the investigation in order to give it more publicity and reach. Despite the fact that Lourens works at a progressive Afrikaans paper, he is still reluctant to publish Ben’s findings. He declines Ben’s proposition and justifies his decision by claiming that he would lose even more readers, as they would accuse the press of turning against them. He claims that it is not the right moment to publish such a case and that he will come back to Ben when the time is right.

4. What does Cloete accuse Ben of in this section? What allusion he uses, and how is that significant in the context of what we earlier said of the Boer religion & sense of identity?

4. Cloette accuses Ben of selling his story out to the British press in order to gain fame, money and publicity. He alludes to the biblical story of Judas by asking ben if they paid him “Thirty silver pieces”, which is what Judas was paid for betraying Jesus. Through this comparison Cloette accuses Ben of being a traitor and betraying the Afrikaans people.

* 5 (optional). Please identify the paragraph in which Ben identifies his chief/ ultimate enemy. What makes this paragraph so powerful?

• “Today I realise that this is the worst of all: that I can no longer single out my enemy and give him a name. […] What is set up against me is not a man […], but a a thing, a something, a vague amorphous power that inspects my mail and taps my telephone[…]”

• Ben realises that he can no longer blame one person for the injustice that has happened. He realises that Stolz is just a part of the systemic injustice that is an integral part of apartheid. He realises that he is in the losing position, and that there is nothing he can do as he is only one man against the entire racist system that has the ultimate advantage and control over what happens. Ben realises how naive his hope of success was.

Part III, section 8

6. List 2-3 most romantic moments in this section (Ben& Melanie).

6. - When Ben asks Melanie “Why don’t we build us a little hut up there too?”. In a sense, through this question Ben proposes a future together with Melanie. To which she replies “You can teach the children”, which is a confirmation to his proposition. They both are talking of a common shared future where they have children and live together.

• Later in the evening Melanie and Ben talk about their lives and what love means to them and what it is really about. Ben confesses his love to her and they spend the night together at the fireplace.

Part III, section 9 

7. Explain the nature of Levinson's betrayal.

7. Levinson fled the country and was granted political asylum in London. He took all the files and documents with him and intended to publish them as a book, using the money from the deposits by black clients, Ben and Melanie’s newspaper fund.

Part III, section 10 

8. Why does Stanley interrupt Ben's Christmas dinner? What events lead to this situation?

Stanley interrupts Ben’s Christmas dinner because he is drunk and shaken up from finding out that Emily committed suicide. What lead up to that was the fact that her eldest surviving son Robert was killed while crossing the border to Mozambique.

Notes on "Lemonade"

Freedom

 Just like ‘Formation’, the song is political in nature and touches on issues such as systemic racism, as well as its consequences from the times of slavery up until today’s times. Lamar touches on the issue of police brutality in his verse:

•  Seven misleadin' statements 'bout my persona/Six headlights wavin' in my direction/Five-O askin' me what's in my possession/Yeah I keep runnin', jump in the aqueducts

This can be an allusion to how earlier in the film we saw black mothers holding pictures of their children killed by the police.

Freedom is also an empowering, motivational message of hope. The overwhelming notion being that black people will overcome these brutal issues and that liberation is within reach.

• Hey! I'ma keep running/Cause a winner don't quit on themselves

• I'ma riot, I'ma riot through your borders/Call me bulletproof

Overall, Freedom encourages action and promotes taking control of ones future. Just like beyonce takes control of the narrative of her affair and marital crisis, she prompts black people to take control of their narrative and power through any hard situation and make the best of it.

Just like the last line of the song says, spoken by Hattie White, one should take their hardships and turn them into power. 

• I had my ups and downs, but I always find the inner strength to cool myself off. I was served lemons, but I made lemonade.

This is an obvious reference to the name of the whole album. Beyonce was presented with a hardship- so called lemons, and came out with a powerful surprise visual album that lets her process her emotions surrounding the affair and channel them into her work. She turned the lemons into lemonade.

Resurrection:

We hear a voice of a black woman speaking about the importance of love and loving the lord. Love is supposed to be the future of the next generation- a leading force. Just like Beyonce’s love to her partner leads her forward. (the poem literally blends into the song “forward”) She speaks of her faith and how jesus is the answer to getting out of a hard situation. When youre stuck against the wall, you have to call jesus because he's your only hope.

Something is missing. I’ve never seen this in my life. So many young women, they tell you, "I want me a hu (husband)  — see, all them make me feel better than you." So how we supposed to lead our children to the future? What do we do? How do we lead them? Love. L-O-V-E, love. Mm-mmm-mmm. Hallelujah. Thank you, Jesus. I just love the Lord, I'm sorry, brother. I love the Lord. That's all I got.

When your back gets against the wall and your wall against your back, who you call? Hey! Who you call? Who you call? You gotta call Him. You gotta call Jesus. You gotta call Him. You gotta call Him 'cause you ain't got another hope.

You are terrifying ... and strange and beautiful. 

Magic.

The poem blends into the song “forward”

6 Inch

The three main characters featured in the track are Beyonce, her partner, and the stripper. Instead of making his mistress the villain, Beyonce empowers her by showing how she ‘works hard for the money’.  Beyonce herself acts the part of the mistress in the video, swinging a red ball on a chain around the house, symbolising a destructive power, possibly a homewrecker. Instead of antagonising her, beyonce sympathises with her by one; playing her part herself, and two; associating her character with the colour red, the colour of lust, sex/ love , power, anger

, six inch heels that symbolise the grind and hustle of strippers and exotic dancers, as well as the limousine which is a symbol of wealth and power/class. We see beyonce sit in the back, where a person of power usually sits when being driven by a chauffeur .

Fire is another major part of the visual side of the music video. Beyonce first sets the door on fire, while walking away from, exhibiting power in her expression, as well as in her stance and gait. She wears a white lace outfit, very reminiscent of a wedding dress. Then, the entire house catches fire. It is the same house where we see a bed lit in red lighting for a few split seconds in the video, as well as where beyonce swings the red ball around on a chain, again exhibiting her power in dim red lighting. The fire itself can be seen as a symbol of burning down and destruction, as well as enlightenment and renewal. Beyonce herself does not burn, she walks away from it, letting the house burn down, symbolically leaving a chapter behind and letting it burn. While beyonce stands calmly in front of the burning house, we see flashing camera lights, observing her and putting her life on display, just like beyonce felt the affair was on display. Her home and her relationship are on fire, and its all on display for the world to see.

Hold Up

In the music video for “Hold Up” Beyonce alludes to Oshun- an Orisha of the Yoruba religion. Orishas are deities sent by the gods and Oshun is one of the most powerful and the only female spirit. She is associated with the color gold, rivers, fertility and womanhood, as well as sensuality and love. She is one of the most powerful orishas while still retaining her human traits such as vanity, jealousy, and spite. She is benevolent and sweet, however when hurt or betrayed she can be fierce and spiteful. 

Beyonce channels the goddess Oshun and unleashes her rage as she walks through the streets of New Orleans with a baseball bat, smashing the surrounding cars. Just like Oshun, she is dressed in gold as she steps onto the streets barefoot, accompanied by a river flowing from the building. 

Through channeling the Yoruba goddess, Beyonce can feel empowered and powerful. The similarities between Beyonce and Oshun are not only referenced on the visual level. Beyonce, just like Oshun, is a mother, a lover, and a woman who is severely hurt. She fiercely lets her rage known by bringing destruction. Just like Beyonce, she can still dance and laugh while taking revenge on those that have hurt her.