Hi guys,
I am still a bit unsure of what I want to do for my re-write.
I have two main ideas at the moment...
I thought I would do a re-write of two main scenes from the book "In my fathers den" by Maurice Gee. I read this book last year for another English paper and really enjoyed it, also watched the movie they made. I thought it would be good to re-write a few scenes and change some of the story and plot around..
Or, my other option is to re-write some of the movie "Pearl Harbour" as I really love this movie and it is one of my favourite but I thought it could be a bit difficuilt to do...
I thought both of these options were ok because they have important underlying plots or purposes in the story.
Whihc option do you guys think would be better to do for my re-write. Once I have decided which option I will do I will do another post of the option and a more in depth analysis about the novel or movie.
Ashleigh Lack
6 comments:
Hi Ashliegh,
I think both your choices are great choices. However like you i am a huge fan of Pearl Harbour or maybe Ben Affleck, anyways i lived in Hawaii for a while and i remember talking to my Husbands uncle one time and he was talking about how one of his parents was Japanese (can't remember which parent)and how badly they were treated, real mistrust even though they were actively helping the americians and then they all got shifted off to concentration type camps as they were considered a threat. This might be a nice sideline you could take. Goodluck
Hi Ashliegh
I like both options. The idea of rewriting Pearl Harbour would probably provide you with few more avenues to pursue in the storyline, and possibly be easier. However, I loved In My Father's Den and would be interested in how you would tackle a rewrite of this. Good luck with your decision and writing.
Hi Ashleigh, I like both of your choices as I have read "In my fathers den" and have seen "Pearl Harbor" in the movie. But I think you will get a lot of attention from the readers if you rewrite "Pearl Harbor". This is from my point of view anyway. I'm looking forward to read your re-write.
Yea~ both stories sound good to me as well. For Pearl Harbour, you could change the point of view and re-interprete the story as Rachel commented. To me when I read In My Father's Den, well... I'd found few parts that were not quite understandable or acceptable (?) in Asian culture... I mean... this character would do this, not that or this would happen after this not that.... in my culture. You know what I'm saying? ^^~ I think it'll be also interesting if you can re-write this novel according to your cultural aspect.
Hi guys, thanks for your comments.
At the moment I am swaying toawrds the idea of doing Pearl Harbour and thanks Rachel for your idea it sounds good. I am planning to get the movie out this weekend and watch it to see what other ideas I can come up with and then I will post them to get some feedback from everyone
Thanks again for the feedback, it really helps...
I tend to agree with the others that Pearl Harbour would provide more opportunities to address the kinds of issues we're looking at + it's actually part of popular culture which IMFD ain't quite, though Gee aspires to be a popular writer (though Yuna puts forward a good case for IMFD).
Unlike Rachel and others I'm not a fan of Pearl Harbour because its so historically flawed (demonises the Japanese by showing them doing vicious but militarily senseless things like firing on civilians) and valorises the Americans as perfect honourable heroes (those who invaded Hawaii and stole it off the indigenous Hawaiians, by the way). Isn;t the US air base itself a site of imperialism plonked in the cradle of the Pacific). For an intro to some of the heap of crap embedded in the movie see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pearl_Harbor_(film)#Inaccuracies
There we read: 'Many Pearl Harbor survivors dismissed the film as grossly inaccurate and pure Hollywood.[2] [The movie was also criticized for the way it "distinguished Americans from Japanese, including the wearing of black clothes, the lack of a social life, family, or friends, and the devotion to warring, juxtaposing these with the portraits of Americans[3].'
There's even some evidence the US Govt knew the Japanese were coming but needed a pretext to get the isolationist US public and Congress behind a war effort in the Pacific in order to stimulate an economy weakened by the Great Depression and to pave the way to American hegemony of the Pacific and Asia. If so, it worked, with the US controlling the Pacific to this day. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pearl_Harbor_advance-knowledge_debate for a starting point.
So the movie PH is itself a 21st century imperialist text, framing a colonialist (American) outlook. Don't forget the time of its release, too - 2001 - and cultural reception. Ie: Pearl Harbour = 9/11 and justifies the subsequent invasions of Afganistan and Iraq by way of historical parallel, right?
Plenty of stuff to look at here - go for it!
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