Interpretive Leap

I chose Gene Kelly’s song ‘Singing in the Rain’ to analyze. The song is originally in the movie of the same title. This happy love song is also very famous for being in the movie ‘A Clockwork Orange’, a movie that is very far from being happy. In the movie ‘Singing in the Rain’, Gene Kelly sings the song after he meets ‘Kathy Shelden’, a woman who he loves. Since it is a love song sung by a man in love, the song is really straightforward. The lyrics repeatedly say how happy he is. It says ‘I’m singing in the rain’, ‘I’m happy again’, ‘I’m ready for love’, etc. In the movie ‘Singing in the Rain’, the song and the scene beautifully matches and makes perfect harmony. So, just like the movie which is filmed right after the World War 2, the song tries to make people happy. In the movie ‘A Clockwork Orange’, the main character ‘Alex’ sings ‘Singing in the Rain’ when he beats up Mr. Alexander and rapes Mrs. Alexander. So, the song is not really fit for the scene. By putting a happy song in a terribly violent scene, the song emphasizes the violence of the scene and the insanity of the main character, Alex.

From Flappers to Rappers

The movie “The Great Gatsby” successfully mixes 1920’s jazz and modern hip hop. It seems to be radical to put off-the-time music in a movie, but the sound tracks are perfectly fit to the music. Some might say the sound tracks used are awkward, but the blend of classical jazz music and modern music makes the movie more dynamic and modern. By balanced use of 1920s music and modern day hip hop, the movie becomes classical in some scenes and modern in other scenes. Actually, when Fitzgerald wrote the novel, jazz music had been treated just as the modern-day hip hop is treated nowadays. It was considered as ‘new’ and a lot of people were not used to such kind of music. Now, just like Fitzgerald featured the new music in his novel to make it more dynamic, the movie puts the modern-day hip hop to make the movie more dynamic and the hip hop music perfectly matches the time period in the movie, when the gangsters were wild and illegal moves are widespread.

The hip-hop music perfectly matches with the movie. The beat makes the scenes more thrilling, and the music makes the party more exciting. The modern-jazz such as ‘Back to Black’ fits in the 1920s mood, however it also sounds modern. Although the movie is based on 1920s, the party scenes and the flappers are completely different from those in the black-and-white photo. They look really modern, just like they were in that time period, and lively.

The mood of movie is quite critically affected by the modern music. 1920s jazz sounded really radical, adventurous and racy at that time, however, it sounds really old-fashioned or even boring today. Putting those music in the movie would have make the movie more realistic, however, it wouldn’t really sound dynamic and adventurous to nowadays’ audience. So the modern-day hip hop is a really successful rhetoric choice, because, it makes the movie a little bit anachronistic but ironically restores the mood of 1920s more realistically. 

Process and Product

The various methods of essay-writing I learned in Unit 1 helped me a lot to be a better writer. One of the best lessons I have learned was writing quick-and dirty rough draft. Before learning this, I used to try to write a completed essay at one time. Since English is not my first language, correcting grammar errors in my essay is always one of the biggest concerns in my writing process. I tended to focus on writing sentences that are grammatically correct, so it took relatively long time to write each sentences and it often caused me to forget what I was trying to write. As I began to write a rough-draft, I could ignore the grammatical errors first and focus on my ideas. Also, by putting every one of my ideas in paper first and then organizing it, I could write more smoothly and think of more ideas. Also, the advice ‘Put your unconscious on the job’ helped me a lot. When I write essays, I often lose track of my ideas. Now when I feel I’m lost, I do other things instead of desperately thinking of ideas.

                Required tasks of rough drafts and workshop helped me a lot. When I get an assignment, I tend to procrastinate as long as I can manage finishing it. The regularly-assigned drafts helped me not to postpone drafts and thus helped me to write a better essay. The workshops and peer reviews helped me to see the things I didn’t see and find new ways to make my essay better. Without those mandatory tasks, I would begin writing essays probably like one week before the due date. So I think the draft assignments and workshops helped me to keep track of writing and helped me to write a better paper.