SNOW WHITE - A TALE OF TERROR

SNOW WHITE – A TALE OF TERROR

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Snow White: A Tale of Terror is a 1997 horror film based on the Snow White story. It stars Sigourney Weaver and Sam Neill. The original music score is composed by John Ottman. The film is marketed with the tagline "The fairy tale is over."

SYNOPSIS

Lilliana Hoffman is the birth mother of the young girl, Lilly, who is later known as "Snow White". Lilliana Hoffman dies in a carriage accident. Her husband, Friederick Hoffman, is forced to perform a c-section to save his unborn daughter. The story then picks up a few years later, with the young Lilly Hoffman playing on the grounds of the Hoffman castle. She is brought inside to meet her new stepmother, Lady Claudia, whom Lilly instantly dislikes. Claudia gives Lilly a small bird and a small dog, both of which become monsters and turn against Lilly later after Claudia decides to kill her.

Claudia and Lilly vie for Friederick's attention and affections, and as Lilly grows into womanhood, Claudia deliberately keeps her dressed unbecomingly and the tension between the two women continues to grow inexorably. After Lilly tells Claudia what she thinks of her, Claudia gives birth to a stillborn baby boy, for which she blames Lilly. The doctor informs Claudia she can never have another child and the evil hidden deep inside Claudia comes to the surface. Claudia orders her mute brother to kill Lilly in the woods, but he fails and hides the truth from Claudia. When Claudia learns the truth she destroys him for his failure. Lilly escapes into the forest where she is found by seven roughneck and combative miners who grudgingly give her shelter. Their unofficial leader, Will, also manages to woo and eventually fall in love with Lilly.

When Claudia discovers that Lilly is still alive, she uses sorcery to try and kill her off, all the while keeping Friederick infirm, finding a way to resurrect her son, and afflicting the entire palace entourage with the plague by poisoning the food.

Claudia transforms herself into the kindly-seeming old peddlar woman who gives Lilly the poisoned apple in the woods. The story culminates with Lilly being found by her former fiancé, Dr. Peter Gutenberg, and led back to the castle. Claudia kills the doctor and again attempts to kill Lilly, while holding her newly-revived baby boy. Lilly manages to find Claudia's weakness, destroying the evil mirror, and thus her stepmother. Lilly leaves the castle, alive, with Will and her father.

ISSUE : UN NATURAL MOTHERHOOD

An adult version of the fairytale. Very dark and seductive and sometimes a little sickening. The tradtional tale and a deeper look into the character of the evil stepmother/witch and a little more realistic then the cartoon version. Mentioned the word Snow White and immediately we focus on the wicked and dreadful stepmother. Although there were many versions of Snow White available, in majority of the cases the storyline was linear to the one tailored by Jacob Grimm and Wilhem Grimm in 1902 and the adaptation of the movie 'Snow White- A Tale of Horror was consistent with the writing of both the author which evolves on the unnatural motherhood.

THE SENTINEL

THE SENTINEL

"The Sentinel" is a short story by Arthur C. Clarke, famous for being expanded (and extensively modified) into the novel and movie 2001: A Space Odyssey. Clarke actually expressed impatience with the common description of it as "the story on which 2001 is based."

BACKGROUND

The story deals with the discovery of an artifact on Earth's Moon left behind eons ago by ancient aliens. The object is made of a polished mineral and tetrahedral in shape, and is surrounded by a spherical forcefield. The first-person narrator speculates at one point that the mysterious aliens who left this structure on the Moon may have used mechanisms belonging "to a technology that lies beyond our horizons, perhaps to the technology of para-physical forces."

For millennia (evidenced by dust buildup around its forcefield) the artifact has transmitted signals into deep space, but it ceases to transmit when the astronauts who discover it breach the forcefield. The narrator hypothesises that this "sentinel" was left on the moon as a "warning beacon" for the possible intelligent and spacefaring life that might develop on Earth.

This quotation illustrates the idea, and its ramifications:
"It was only a matter of time before we found the pyramid and forced it open. Now its signals have ceased, and those whose duty it is will be turning their minds upon Earth. Perhaps they wish to help our infant civilization. But they must be very, very old, and the old are often insanely jealous of the young."
In the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey, the operation of the sentinel is reversed. It is the energy of the sun, falling for the first time on the uncovered artifact, that triggers the signal that creatures from the Earth had taken the first step into space.

2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY

2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) is a landmark, science fiction classic - and probably the best science-fiction film of all time about exploration of the unknown. It was released, coincidentally, at the height of the space race between the USSR and the US. It appeared at the same time as NASA's exploratory Apollo Project with manned Earth orbiting missions - a prelude to orbiting and landing on the Moon with Apollo 11 on July 20, 1969. And it prophetically showed the enduring influence that computers would have in our daily lives.

Director Stanley Kubrick's work is a profound, visionary and astounding film (a mysterious Rorschach film-blot) and a tremendous visual experience. This epic film contained more spectacular imagery (about what space looked like) and special effects than verbal dialogue. Viewers are left to experience the non-verbal, mystical vastness of the film, and to subjectively reach into their own subconscious and into the film's pure imagery to speculate about its meaning. Many consider the masterpiece bewildering, boring, slow-moving or annoying, but are still inspired by its story of how man is dwarfed by technology and space.

The film is composed of four episodes. Three of the major sections are subtitled:

The Dawn of Man A primeval ape man makes a breakthrough - becoming endowed with intelligence after experiencing a mysterious black monolith.

(The Lunar Journey in the Year 2000) - untitledEons later, a similar monolith is discovered on the lunar surface in the 21st century, sending its signals to Jupiter.

Jupiter Mission, 18 Months Later [(in 2001 or 2002)] A futuristic, 18-month journey to Jupiter.

Jupiter and Beyond the InfiniteA mystical experience in another time and dimension.

BEINGS OF INTELLIGENCE


There are two elements of non-human intelligence form as the central focus of masterpiece. First, the intelligent beings who trained the man apes and left behind the big black slab on the moon capture the imagination of the humans who discover TMA-1 and, ultimately, develop a space project aimed at further exploring them. Second, Hal is an intelligent being created by Man. Not only can he can essentially control a space shuttle flight, but also he can converse with a human, almost as if he were one himself.

Both of these elements force humans to put their own intelligence into perspective. On the one hand, they are not uniquely intelligent, as they can no longer conceive of themselves as supremely special. Secondly, Hal shows the limitations and potential harms of intelligence. If Hal been a little less intelligent, he would have never rebelled and the death that resulted from his rebellion would not have occurred.

Further, both of these types of intelligence demonstrate the limitations of human knowledge about intelligence. First, those who left the black slab behind are far more advanced than humans could imagine. They display a different and more advanced intelligence than we can fathom. Second, Hal's malfunctioning represents a limitation on the understanding of those who created him. They did not realize that the intelligent machine they were creating might eventually become self-conscious. The destruction that follows because of this could have been averted if Hal's developers had a greater understanding of artificial intelligence and they had been able to create a machine that could perform all of Hal's functions without becoming self-aware and developing "free will."

HEART OF DARKNESS - ANALYSIS & REVIEW

Heart of Darkness
( reviewed by Leszek Berezowski )

At the threshold of the twentieth century, when exploitation of colonies was still widely spread and the problem of abuse of natural resources and native inhabitants was largely ignored, Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness invites us to reflect on and ask ourselves when does progress and expansion become rape.Joseph Conrad presents us with this, unfortunately, ageless book. It sheds a bright light onto the inherit darkness of our human inclinations, stripped of pretense, in the middle of the jungle where those savage tendencies are provided with a fertile ground.

The combination of greed, climate and the demoralizing effect of frontier life brought out the worst in people. They were raping the land, practically stealing the ivory from the natives, whom they were treating like slaves, or even worse than slaves, for slaves in America were an expensive commodity and therefore it was in the best interest of slave-owners to keep them well fed and healthy; these poor chaps, however, were allowed to starve to death once they fell ill.And this was the place where some of the helpers had withdrawn to die. They were dying slowly - it was very clear. They were not enemies, they were not criminals, they were nothing earthly now, nothing but black shadows of disease and starvation, lying confusedly in the greenish gloom. Brought from all the recesses of the cast in all the legality of time contracts, lost in uncongenial surroundings, fed on unfamiliar food, they sickened, became inefficient, and were then allowed to crawl away and rest. These moribund shapes were free as air - and nearly as thin. (Conrad 14)

The natives were cannibals, but in contrast, had higher moral standards than some of the raiders, who were plundering their country and even though they were paid "royally", for their services, with useless wire with which they were expected to procure food, they did not stoop so low as to threaten the lives of the pilgrims, even when they were bordering on starvation.

They had given them every week three pieces of brass wire, about nine inches long; and the theory was they were to buy their provisions with that currency in river-side villages. You can see how that worked. There were either no villages, or the people were hostile, or the director, who like the rest of us fed out of tins, with an occasional old he-goat thrown in, didn’t want to stop the steamer for some more or less recondite reasons. So, unless they swallowed the wire itself, or made loops of it to snare the fishes with, I don’t see what good their extravagant salary could be to them. ... - ... Why in the name of all the gnawing devils of hunger they didn’t go for us - they were thirty to five - and have a good tuck in for once, amazes me now when I think of it. (Conrad 37)

Technology and progress, in contrast with simple existence of the indigenous inhabitants of the land, afforded the colonists a God-like powers over the natives. Hidden behind a veil of lofty ideas like expansion and progress, colonists were committing unspeakable atrocities, not unlike the treatment of Native Americans in our own country.But there is hope. At the time when racism wasn’t even a pejorative term and belittling attitude toward the "savages" was just an ordinary fact of life, you can see the change taking place in Marlow’s attitude toward the natives; he misses his helmsman, a man, whom he called "improved specimen" (Conrad 33), who was watching the steam boiler of the boat and who was killed by Kurtz follower’s spear. Marlow surprises himself thinking of this man as his equal.

Many of us, today, would benefit from just such a change of outlook. It seems as though time is standing still and even today, we are ridden with hate and prejudice toward each other based on foolish ideas and ideals.

SYNOPSIS OF COMRAD'S TEXT

Heart of Darkness is a novel of indescribable horrors and actions that lie outside the human mind. It describes a mans (Marlow) voyage on a west African river to find an a man named Kurtz. The actual journey truly is towards the “heart of darkness”, where it takes Marlow by evidence of European indignity towards the natives. He wants to see this land for himself, he does not quite believe in himself of what is really there.

This story hints at horrors that Marlow is incapable of describing, which leaves the reader to imagine actions that are outside of normal everyday life. The voyage that Marlow has taken has been long and exhausting. It’s an adventure for him. He has experienced a great deal of confrontation with the natives, jungle dangers and savagery. There is no interest of the humans who live here and they are extremely mistreated. To them this is normal human behavior. Nothing has been done differently. Nowhere did we stop long enough to get a particular impression, but there was general sense of wonder. “It was like a weary pilgrimage amongst hints for nightmares”. This describes Marlow’s voyage to the “heart of darkness”, the literal heart of darkness: Africa. He was fully warned and well-aware of the evil he would encounter, however he chose to ignore that in effort to satisfy his curiosity.

The author is also saying something about human nature. Human curiosity about an unknown place can make him cross the line of civilized human behavior.

Theme

Heart of darkness which at the same time is the main theme of Comrad's masterpiece, tries to deliver and tells the experiences of the main character, Marlow, during a journey up the river Congo in Africa as a commander of a steamer for a Belgian trading company. The experience he tells itself to different levels of interpretation. The darkness of the title, in fact, refers both to the physical journey into Africa and to a journey into Marlow’s unconscious, whereby the more he penetrates into Africa the more he gets a deeper understanding of himself and the world surrounding him.

There are several themes and issues which are highlighted in both his text and the movie.

1). Collonialism

We can approach the theme of colonialism in Heart of Darkness from different starting points. First of all, the novel can be analysed as Conrad’s personal point of view about colonialism because the plot itself develops from Conrad’s personal experience in Congo in 1890, when he was given a job as a pilot of a steamboat up the River Congo. What Conrad experienced during those fifty days shocked him profoundly and shook his view of the moral basis of all exploring and trading in newly discovered countries and indeed of civilization in general. He discovered the nature of his own personality and came to a pessimistic conclusion about the nature of the civilized human being, which is almost what happens to the major character of the novel, Marlow. Marlow can be the projection of the author, as it can be figured out from a passage at the beginning of the novel, which is almost a transcription of a passage from A Personal Record by Conrad’s.

The novel says:Now when I was a little chap I had a passion for maps. I would look for hours at South America, or Africa, or Australia, and lose myself in all the glories of exploration. At that time there were many blank spaces on the earth, and when I saw one that looked particularly inviting on a map (but they all looked that) I would put my finger on it and say, “ When I grow up I will go there”.

Personally, I belive that, Kurtz really personifies colonialism and its paradoxes. Living at the core of darkness, he has become a murder (it is significant on this point the description of the natives’ heads on the stakes) but through the novel he is described to Marlow by various characters as a first-class agent; a remarkable person, an emissary of pity, and science and progress, a gifted creature, a man who made people see things. All these expressions are given by people who share his original point of view on the colonialist cause. It is also very significant the following sentence: his mother was half English, his father was half French. All Europe contributed to the making of Kurtz. It means that Kurtz is merely a product of Western culture and consequently all his brutal actions are justified in a way, because they are the consequences of the Western ideals about colonialism. He is not only a man, but a whole culture.

2). HORROR !!!

In Conrad's Heart of Darkness, Kurtz's final words as he lay dying are, "The horror! The horror!" (pp. 1415) Some interpret these final words as the horror of one culture decimating another in the name of religion, civilization or greed. Others may believe that Kurtz had at that moment fully recognized what he had become, "the expression of sombre pride, of ruthless power, or craven terror..." (pp. 1415)

I believe that Conrad tells us what the real horror is-life. "Droll thing life is-that mysterious arrangement of merciless logic for a futile purpose. The most you can hope from it is some knowledge of yourself-that comes too late-a crop of unextinguishable regrets..." (pp. 1415) To the very end Kurtz was proud and unrepentant. It was not the recognition of just his wrongs, but the recognition of life's wrongs, terrors, and disappointments that caused Kurtz to cry out. The recognition of life's horrors is what Marlow terms "a moral victory". (pp. 1416) In the course of Marlow's travels, he saw countless people too dull or too blinded by their greed or their "cause" to take the time to stop and think about who they were becoming; about what they were doing to others; about why they were doing the things they were doing. Kurtz's identification of "the horror!" is the "moral victory". He had plundered and killed and destroyed, but in the end he acknowledged the cruelty of life and had judged it-more than can be said about the countless others that die daily in the "heart of darkness".

CONCLUSION / PERSONAL COMMENTS

All in all, in Heart of Darkness I believe that Conrad tells us what the real horror is-life.The "heart of darkness" is the unexamined heart of man. Through the narration of Marlow, Conrad challenges his readers to examine themselves to gain the "moral victory" before it is too late.

submitted to
ENCIK AIRIL HAIMI B. MOHD ADNAN
TSL 570 Course Tutor,UiTm Perak.