Wednesday, May 2, 2012

Star Wars and its Influence on America


“A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away...” These are the words that we have all come to know so well. Saying these words gives us right away images that we have seen so many times. These ten words are the opening of a movie that has had such a huge influence on our culture, Star Wars.


Star Wars is a science fiction movie about good vs. evil. It is futuristic, yet to be placed a long time again.  The movie is placed in space, showing many different planets where, Jedi knights fight The Dark Side. Many characters are put within the different episodes (episodes is what they call each movie.) Anakin Skywalker is a jedi, Darth Vader,who turns evil through hate with the Sith lord's help. In the sixth episode the Dark side is defeated and the rebels ( against the dark side) had won the on going battle.


The Star Wars uses this conman line in every movie over and over again, "May the force be with you." This line is what it is known for, also it says a lot about the worldview of the episodes A New hope or episode IV was the first movie to hit the theater. The following is the original trailer that came out in 1977.







The Following is a summary of the very first movie that came out, Episode IV Star  Wars: A New Hope.

“Palpatine, an evil Sith Lord, has overthrown the galactic Republic and become emperor of the new Empire. The Jedi Knights, an ancient peacekeeping order empowered and guided by the Force, have been eradicated.
Princess Leia Organa is a member of the Rebel Alliance, a group fighting to defeat the Empire and restore the Republic. She’s on a mission to bring Obi Wan Kenobi, an exiled Jedi living on Tatooine, to Alderan. The mission fails when her spaceship falls under attack by an Imperial star cruiser. Leia hides stolen schematics of the Empire’s Death Star, a powerful new space station, inside R2D2, a small droid, R2 and another android, C3P0 stow away in an escape pod and jettison to Tatooine.
The two droids are found by Jawas and sold to farmer Owen Lars. Owen’s young nephew and farmhand, Luke Skywalker dreams of leaving Tatooine and becoming a pilot like his late father. While cleaning the small droid, Luke stumbles across a partial holographic message for Obi Wan Kenobi. Intrigued by the beautiful young woman in the holograph, he thinks the message may be for Ben Kenobi, a hermit living on the outskirts.
When Luke discovers R2 missing the next morning, he and C3P0 search for him in Luke’s land speeder. They locate him, but encounter the hostile sand people. Ben Kenobi rescues them, and Luke learns Ben is actually Obi Wan Kenobi, a Jedi Knight. They watch the holograph in which Princess Leia implores Obi Wan to deliver theDeath Star technical plans to her father. It’s hoped a weakness in its defenses can be found. Obi Wan tells Luke that his father, Anakin Skywalker, was also a Jedi, and he was betrayed and murdered by Darth Vader, Obi Wan’s former apprentice. Vader was seduced by the dark side of the Force and now serves the emperor. Obi Wan tells Luke he must learn the ways of the Force and go with him to Alderan. An incredulous Luke refuses, but agrees to take Ben to nearby Mos Eisley to findtransportation. Realizing R2 and C3P0 could be traced to his family, Luke rushes home only to find his aunt and uncle murdered by Imperial storm troopers searching for the droids.
Luke now wants to become a Jedi and goes with Obi Wan. In Mos Eisley they meet Han Solo, captain of the Millennium Falcon, and Chewbacca, a wookie and Han’s first mate. Han, a smuggler with a bounty on his head, agrees to fly the passengers to Alderan for a hefty fee. Just as they’re about to depart, storm troopers swarm the hanger, and the Falcon barely escapes.
Meanwhile, Princess Leia is captive aboard the unfinished Death Star. Darth Vader demands the location of the rebel base camp, but Leia resists. Death StarCommander, Grand Moff Tarkin plots a course for Alderan, and threatens to destroy Leia’s home world if she refuses to reveal where the rebels are hidden. Unable to sacrifice Alderan, she provides coordinates, but Tarkin blasts the planet to demonstrate the Death Star’s full power. The information Leia gave Vader is false, and he schedules her execution.The Millennium Falcon arrives in the Alderan system, only to encounter the planet’s shattered remains. Han spots an Imperial fighter near a small moon, but Obi Wan realizes too late that it’s actually a massive space station. As they attempt to retreat, the ship is caught by a tractor beam and pulled towards the Death Star. There is no escape, but Han has a plan.”
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Star wars is not just an epic movie, rather it is six epic movies, or even two trilogies. The Star Wars Trilogy and the Prelude Trilogy. It is different from other movies because it did not come out in order rather it came out in episodes IV, V, VI, I, II, III. As has been written above Star Wars.

 A New Hope: Episode IV, was the first movie to come out in 1977. To which made America is awe of the technology shown through this movie.  

The Empire Strikes: Episode V, was the second movie to come out in 1980. Only three years later due to the success of the first one.

Return of the Jedi: Episode VI, was the third movie to come out in 1983. Other then the order they came out, this is the last movie, ending the story.

The Phantom Menace: Episode I, was the fourth movie to come out in 1999.  There was a big gap between the two trilogies because the creator wanted to have the effects be far more real then in the past which took more time to do .Link
Attack of The Clones: Episode II, was the fifth movie to come out in 2002. This was the first film that used high definition.  Link

Revenge of the Sith: Episode III, was the sixth movie to come out in 2005. This movie was the last of the movies. 
        
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There truly was a difference between the first and second trilogy in the effects alone. Times had changes within the few years and we had become far more technologically advanced. The time difference not only made the pictures look more realistic, it also, changed the character. Take Yoda, the Jedi master, for an example.
This Picture is from the first trilogy.

This picture is from the second trilogy, which is much more realistic. 
George Lucas truly was the mastermind behind Star Wars, creating the scene visually and verbally. He created a new phenomenon, that has changed america for better. With 20th Century Fox, he was able to finally produces his space film he was hoping to create after being turned down by many others. His ideas for this film, though it was very different from anything else, was inspired from Flesh Gordon and Lord of The Rings. Link




"Besides his directorial and production work on movies, Lucas is one of the most significant contemporary contributor to modern movie technology" Quotes Source. A New Hope had won many awards for its special effects. The movie was far beyond its time with the technology it introduced. For example the light saber, droids, fighter plans, clones, and even the death star. It gave American's a whole new idea of creativity when it came to technology.

 Star Wars has left a big influence on our country, and even other countries for that matter. There  is everything star wars, for a lunch box to a shirt, to a phone cover. MacDonald's toys were sold with Happy Meals. The special effects change other movies, because they had to then match Star Wars as a product. However, it was not only the visual that it gave but it was also,

 Star Wars toys in and of themselves are huge, there are action figures, life size life sabers, and logo fighter planes. It soon seemed that every boy had at least one of these items. Video games were huge when it came to Star wars, it gave people the change to live out their favorite movie.




Something else that gave Star Wars fans a chance to love the story out is my STAT TOURS. This is on of many Star Wars themed rides. Source


"One of Reagan's controversial proposals was the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), a system intended to make the U.S. invulnerable to nuclear missile attacks by the Soviet Union. By stationing those defenses in outer space, the U.S. was able to circumvent the United Nation's Anti-Ballistic (ABM) Treaty."Quote's Source Through cold war we had been afraid of the Soviet Union building a better atomic bomb then us, so we kept building. ( The weird thing about it is how much alike atomic bombs and the death star look alike.)  The more we built the more they would build. Until missiles came into the equation which took it into a whole new level. President Reagan then put together a program in space to help defend our country. A speech was also made about this in 1983. Because it was having to do with space they were called Star Wars.



Star Wars we will find is everywhere that we go. It has a huge influence on our country in that many products were made because of it. With the Cold War going on, they went together very well. The technology changed america because they saw these products and thought if they would have them in the future, almost as if the technology would then be expected to happen. one thing is gore sure though. Star Wars still has as many fans as it did in 1977.
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Wednesday, February 8, 2012

The Tale of Dr. Seuss






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When one thinks of Dr. Seuss, we all think of these wonderful books that we all grow up learning to read from, and continuing that reading even after we could read. He was a genius when it came to entertaining children with cleaver literature. His books are filled with adventures, rhyming, humor, and fun, they are what might call whimsical. Also, they are known all around the world, being translated in little over fifteen languages. However, We will soon find out that Dr. Seuss was much more then an amazing children's author.

Theodor Seuss Deisel, Dr. Seuss only been being his pen name, was born to Theodor Robert and Henrietta (Seuss) Deisel. He was born on March 2, 1905 in Springfield, Massachusetts. His family supervised their local pubic park, which later came important for his first book.
Theodor, was clearly a character as seen through his life's work in written form. However, this did not start from the age of an adult. For his college years where something to remembered. He went to Dartmouth College, being part of the class of 1925. Clearly being a written he was part of the Humor Magazine, in time he was not only part of it but he because the editor in chief of this magazine for his school.

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Something very important to note is that, the time the young man that Theodor was at the time, was the time of the Prohibition . Meaning that not only was it against the college's rules to drink, but it was currently a law of the united states until it got repealed in 1933. Keeping this in mind, Theodor and a few of his college buddies had a party that included a lot of alcohol. The Dean of the college had punished him by removing him from everything but the necessary classes he needed to take.
Now, for Theodor to stop writing for his humor magazine was not an option, in his opinion. This, is the beginning of the so well known Dr. Seuss's pen name started. In order to keep writing he started signing his works “Seuss.” Theodor transferred to Lincoln College, Oxford. Here we studied literature and philosophy. After a time there, he found his studies to not be relevant, so he did what any young man would do that was creatively smart, he dropped out. However, he did find his first wife at this college, Helen Palmer. Who just happened to turn out to be another children author.
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Theodor was not just a children's author at this point. He was writing scripts for plays and movies at this point. He was also writing humor for a few different places. He started illustrating for other peoples works. He was drawing cartoons, Theodor was even in a advertisement. Just as we have commercials today that become every popular and everyone is quoting it, this is exactly what happened to his advertisement. At this point in his life he was making more and more of the Seuss that we know and love today.


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These are of the many things he did to support himself and his wife during the war, one his best known books was written, that is still read today, this is his first children book he wrote and published. Getting this book published was no easy task for it took twenty seven attempts to get someone to published it. Not knowing what they missed out on he went to the twenty eighth place, Vanguard Press. (take note that the number of times this story was rejected will change from source to source, this being the most conman source)

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The book is called, “And to Think I saw it on Mulberry Street.” This is a very well known book to all of those who grew up reading his books. Remember how his dad worked for local public parks? Well one of these just happened to be on Mulberry street. What Seuss did, was he wrote about a boy who imagined all these going down the street. This street was a street in the Springfield, the town that he grew up in. Dr. Seuss, for all his creatively and imagination surprisingly pulls a lot of his ideas from his own personal life and experiences. This was published in 1937.
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The time period that heavily effected his writing was World War II. Not only did Theodor keep writing and illustrating his own children's books during the war, but he always wrote about four hundred political cartoons. Clearly there was much more to Dr. Seuss then writing cleaver children's books. Geisel, very much was a Democratic and supporter Roosevelt's decision as president. A majority of his cartoons were about Hitler, his doings, and our response to his acts and a country. However, he did quite often poke fun at the congress not supporting them. He supported the war act by his works for publicity. One thing that Dr. Seuss did very wrong was he was very racist against Japan and it was made every clear in his war cartoons, even as he was anti-African Americans racism and anti-semitism, Not only did he draw cartoons for the war effort he joined the army as a captain, here he wrote films for the army, these that he did even won awards. After the war, he published his political cartoons in a book called, “Dr. Seuss goes to war.”
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After the war was over, him and his wife moved to La Jolla, California where he wrote most of his books for children. When Dr. Seuss saw that the kids were not learning to read well and did not enjoy reading, he saw this as a challenge and took it. He started writing simple books that had only around two hundred and fifty words in the whole book. These books were those such as, “Cat and the Hat” and “Hop on Pop.”

“On October 23, 1967, suffering from a long struggle with illnesses including cancer, as well as emotional pain over her husband's affair with Audrey Stone Dimond, Geisel's wife, Helen Palmer Geisel, committed suicide.Geisel married Dimond on June 21, 1968. Though he devoted most of his life to writing children's books, Geisel had no children of his own. He would say, when asked about this, "You have 'em; I'll entertain 'em."” On September 24, 1991 he passed away of throat cancer, leaving is legened to carry on.
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As a child growing up and reading book after book writen by Dr. Seuss, they are just adventure after adventure, intertaning story books that are fun to read, and let us face it, they have some really awesome pictures to look at. As a child he is just thought of as the guy with the funny hat and cool stories. However, we have found out that his tale has so much more to it. He did not just write random stories, but these stroies has points to them. ( most to which being politcal. ) Horten hears a who is all about anti-racism. In a way, it is him taking about just judgment about Japan by saying, “A person is a person no matter now small.” This book was also, a way to introduce his ideas about profive and supporting it with the same famous quote. The hat that his trademark wore, the cat in the hat was the hat that many people know as uncle sams hat. The grinch that stole Christmas was to call out materism. He used a lot of books to encourage equal rights after the war. He even used a lot of famale roles to encourage equal rights bewteen men amd women.
We have found out that there was much more to this man then just cleaver writing, but rather that he was so much more. He was an artice, cartoonist, polical man, a screen writer, and a play writer. Not using mindless stories, but using his stories to use his points and what he believed in. Remember, “A person is a person no matter how small.”
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We still honor him by reading his books in schools, learning from them sharing them down from generation to generation. Moveis are made out of this books, and there has even been a play after his book “Hortan hears a Who” called Sessical the Musical. We celebrate his birthday every year as a holiday, March 2nd. In honor of him it has become the Read Across American Day.
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The following is the forty four children's book that he wrote over the years.
And To Think That I Saw It On Mulberry Street (1937)













































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