Willie Mears: Blog 1

It’s always funny when you’re in class and there is a discussion going on and you have literally no idea what the heck anyone is talking about. When those situations happen, and believe me it does quite often, I am torn between how to act. On one hand I could avoid eye contact with the professor and try to not get called on, a much safer bet but then your teacher knows you’re oblivious, in a sense you are rolling over and admitting defeat. The other, much bolder option, is to go the exact opposite route and look super invested in the discussion, look as though you understand it in its entirety (relative to your classmates) but don’t talk because you are too busy thinking of concepts way above the rest of your class. It’s a gutsy move to say the least. Now I was faced with total obliviousness in class last Monday after watching The Seventh Seal, and when I say obliviousness I mean it. There may as well not have been subtitles. But watching that Swedish masterpiece made me realize a few things, I think that as visual effects have gotten better, movies have gotten worse. Movies today are full of either amazing visual effects or crude humor; at least the ones I am interested in are, and are beyond simple in their plot and meaning. Take 300 for example, extremely popular movie and pretty sweet effects, but not a whole lot of stuff going on below the surface. Now I can’t be certain, but I’m willing to bet there wasn’t a whole lot of latent narrative going on with Leonidas and the gang. On top of that it was one of the most historically inaccurate movies ever made, so not only does it not make you think, it makes you dumber by giving you inaccurate information. That, I think, is why I disliked The Seventh Seal at first, I have become accustomed to watching movies that don’t make me think. Visual effects are awesome, but they are making me dumber. I bet Lodnidas doesn’t even know how to play chess.