Choi Mardi Gras

The word ‘carnival’ generally carries a positive vibe, and the people of New Orleans has indeed proved to the world that Mardi Gras is an occasion of joyful celebration where everyone gets to shed their worries off and enjoy the present.

I went to the uptown parades this Mardi Gras and sure enough, I had the greatest time with my dearest friends. Having no carnival or parade experience at all, I did my best to get the most out of the first carnival of my life, screaming like a mad man in front of floats for beads. That was quite the enjoyable experience to say the least, but the happiness I felt from acquiring the beads was only skin-deep.

I think the true soul of Mardi Gras lies within the heartfelt happiness and the positive energy that everyone carries and willingly shares. Such flow of energy within the crowd enables strangers to become friends, creating the ultimate carnival experience. The affection and friendliness of New Orleans can be deeply felt from the smallest things. For example, a lady gave me beads when I didn’t get anything from one of the floats, and I jumped on to the edge of one of the float-towing trucks and sparked up a conversation with the driver, who was nothing but friendly despite my rather blatant behavior. Any city in the world can create flamboyant, eye-catching floats, but no other city can recreate the kind of honest energy that New Orleans carries.

On the other hand, we always have to keep in mind that New Orleans is a beast. It can either treat you very well, or bring you down hard and fast if you don’t look out for yourself. One night I was at a bar called One Eyes Jacks, located half a block away from Bourbon, checking some music out. At the very same time, 4 people got shot in Bourbon, which I was totally oblivious to. One other potentially dark aspect of carnival is its abundance of freedom. A lot of people that I’ve talked to over Mardi Gras shared one common feeling – that they are allowed to do whatever they want to do. Such excessive freedom can be detrimental to some people, as their moral boundaries may temporarily be blurred, making them do things they normally wouldn’t do. Although freedom can be an excellent way to enjoy carnivals, there is a need for people to constantly re-evaluate and check if they are crossing their own moral, ethical boundaries.

And Bob Dylan is right!

Overall, my first Mardi Gras experience has been a very positive one, but I’ve also realized that things can go down if you don’t have control over what you are doing. There is a fine line between having a lot of fun and having way too much fun, and unpleasant things can happen if we don’t have a good concept of where that line is. Will I join Mardi Gras again next year? Yes, most definitely. It’s so much fun!

Choi Edward Scissorhands

The world today is full of violence that comes in many different forms. People exercise violence against other people not only in real life, but also through Internet, phone and other means of telecommunication. Because modern technology made the world more connected as a whole than ever, it has become that much easier for people to abuse such connectivity and exhibit violence against others. It seems, in these modern days, that people are being violent just for the sake of being violent, without much sense of purpose or morality involved.

Tim Burton did an excellent job at criticizing such aimless, irrational violence of the contemporary world through Edward Scissorhands. Edward is abused and exposed to violence in several ways throughout the movie, being taken advantage of by people around him. Joyce used Edward’s innocence to sexually manipulate him, and Kim’s boyfriend, Jim abuses Edward’s exceptional lock picking skills to break into his own house, leaving Edward behind when the alarm went off.

Burton’s hatred for suburbia is also cleverly integrated into the movie. Although the neighborhood the story takes place in seems neat and clean on the outside, people are incapable of thinking or behaving independently, and blatantly follows what everyone else is doing, just like sheep in a herd. Such downside of suburbia is clearly portrayed in the scene where all the men goes golfing at the exact same time, with the exact same outfit and the exact same cars. The women in the town is very caught up with gossiping, with exception of the religious fanatic Esmeralda, and are easily manipulated by words of others because they don’t want to feel like they are falling behind, and they want to belong in a crowd. In other words, the residents of that neighborhood don’t like or want changes, and no one wants to be the odd one out.

Furthermore, Burton showed how contemporary technology could be abused to aid violence. Most of the women in the story are always on the phone gossiping and spreading words that might not necessarily be true, and later on the movie such misuse of telecommunication contributes to the widespread misunderstanding of Edward’s ‘misdemeanor’.

Shredding dat hair....!!

The town’s un-accepting attitude towards change and difference made Edward into a ‘monster’, and such reckless silent violence showed the audience that the only lesson that can be learnt from this contemporary violence is non-violence.

Choi Batman Returns

This guy would have been hell of a mayor

Penguin and Batman are very different characters and yet, the stories of their lives show striking resemblance with each other. Batman’s parents were shot dead by bandits right in front of his eyes when he was only a kid, and Penguin was abandoned by his own parents at birth due to the disfigurement of his hands. Bruce Wayne and Oswald Cobblepot both seek an outlet, a way to compensate themselves for the trauma they’ve experienced in their childhood, and try to achieve their goals through their alter ego, Batman and Penguin. Each of those alter ego represents the hidden, dark side of their true selves, and the times they wear their ‘masks’ are the times they struggle to find an answer to that one simple question that everyone has: “Who am I?”

While both Bruce and Oswald are on the quest for finding their true nature, the trajectory of their ‘career’ turns out to be quite different. Batman serves as the ‘dark knight’ of Gotham, fighting criminals in the dark alleys of the city, trying to prevent heinous crimes that devoured his entire life. On the other hand, Penguin tries to impose the pain he suffered onto other people by drowning all the first-born child of Gotham in the sewers. As can be seen, the conflict in Batman Returns arises from two people with different mentality dealing with similar problems. Batman tries to prevent others from suffering what he had been through, but Penguin wants people to suffer the same fate that he was forced to suffer.  The conflict between Penguin and Batman may seem like any other hero vs. villain story, but the fact that they both have similar, if not almost identical, underlying personal traumas makes their binary opposition all the more interesting.

As mentioned, Batman and Penguin carries out their introspective journey in very different ways. Batman is more focused on getting self-satisfaction through fighting crime, when Penguin constantly seeks approval from other people. For example, when Penguin sabotaged Batman, the citizens of Gotham starts turning against the caped hero. However, Batman does not actively try to redeem his public image, because he knows that his way of introspection lies within fighting crimes and preventing tragedies, and not within the love he gets from the people. On the other hand, Penguin seeks praise and approval from the public, and this becomes immediately apparent when he stages the saving of mayor’s baby to rise as Gotham’s ‘hero’. This clearly shows his desire for love and attention, especially since he was abandoned since he was a baby.

It is Batman and Penguin’s difference in personality created by similar life story that brings about the interesting conflict that occurs in the movie. If both of them were like either of them, such interesting story would not have been created.