Classwork...(Brother Can You Spare a Dime?) Different Versions

(Brother Can You Spare a Dime?) Different Versions:

1.       The Rudy Valle version: it had a lot of instruments and was very clear and it was more understandable and felt the beat a bit better and the words were very powering and a bit rough and harsh.  It sounded more like a joke, but you could relate to it

2.       The Bing Crosby version: it was a little slower, so it made the words more clearer and you could feel the instruments in the background.  it made it easier to understand the lyrics and the sound was smoother. 

Paper #5

                                             Book Review – Money: A Suicide Note

One might find Money: A Suicide Note to be disturbing; not in a horror kind of way, but in a way that, as unimaginable as it might be to some, there are these types of people out there; ones that go about wasting their money without holding back and do not care as to what they spend it on.  Even though it stays true to its title, the author decided to go in a different direction when writing this book.  Yet, it shows what effect money can have on a person if he or she does not use it properly and spends it foolishly.  John Self is a foolish spender and all he wants and thinks about is money and spends his money whenever he feels like it.  The story revolves around the one constant question; would you spend your money on whatever you want or spend it wisely and save up when needed and not make it your only way of finding happiness?

Money is a 1984 novel by Martin Amis, which appeared on the TIME 100 and at #90 on the Guardian 100.  The story is of John Self and his insatiable appetite for money, alcohol, drugs, porn and more.  Director John Self is a self-admitted loser who smokes too much, drinks too much, irresponsible and has an addiction to porn and prostitutes. But he's got money and when he has money, he spends it carelessly.  That is not all; he is waiting for the financing of his next film to come together so he can keep on wasting his money in London and New York.  Leapfrogging back and forth across the pond, he leaves a shambled trail of self-destruction in his wake.  It is to show how live can be lived without restraints and whether that is the way one should live their life.    

Narrated by John Self, Money tells the story of a man who is all he cares about is money and what it provides.  Money begins with a note from author, Martin Amis, describing the book as a suicide note from the main character, John Self. The book is serving as a record of Self's possible last days on earth. However, he does not know if Self will actually die by the end of the novel.  Self, who is a director of commercials, is a drunken, drug abuser, junky, pornography loving, pill popping, and money-loving slob.   Fielding Goodney, a film producer, invites him to New York to shoot a movie called Good Money, which he later wants to change to Bad Money.

He then learns Selina is cheating on him with Ossie and Selina leaves him.  He then starts dating Martina, but Selina orchestrate  a meeting and Martina catches her and John in bed.  John Finds out he is broke and the Fielding Goodney has been using John’s mony to pay for the film as part of a revenge scheme.  John returns to London, where he learns the man he though was his father, Barry Self, is not, and a man named Fat Vince is.  He finds a new girlfriend and moves on with his life.

This whole book is just a whole saga about money.  It all revolve about money, from him getting the directing job for the film to his girlfriend Salina to him being used out of all his money for the film.  At the end of the novel, he is learning to cope with what has happened and learns to live a “normal” life and finds it actually peaceful.  He is at peace with himself by the end and finds out that he does not need money to make him happy.

Unlike the book Money, Book one of Plato’s Republic shows that the primary value of money is to allow one to die with a clean conscience. Money keeps one from having to lie and cheat, and it allows one to pay one’s debts and perform sacrifices. He believes that one should use money to please God and make sure that he is not in debt to anyone before he or she dies.  Unlike Plato, Self does not care about who he is indebted to or how he is in the eyes of God.  He does not seem to care about the consequences of his actions.

Socrates sees money as a use to make more money. Socrates also think in market-place money is required as tokens for purposes of exchanging. He connects money to problems of justice and says justice’s ability to use money in certain ways, particularly when you are doing nothing with it.  This is the opposite of the thinking of Self in Money, where he just wants to waste his money on what pleases him instead of thinking of the future.  He does not want to invest his money or think about the future; he wants to live in the now and worry about the future when it comes.

         Throughout the novel, John makes his preoccupation with sex and money well known.  He is frequently thinking about the money he is spending, the money he has, and the money other people have.  When he is not thinking about money, he is visiting strip joins or pornography shops or picking up hookers.  John lives his life to excss, not worrying about how he spends money.  He equates money with sex in his mind, and so do some of the people around him.  When he is dating his girlfriend, Selina, he says that they talk about money while having sex. 

John is searching for some kind of happiness in his life, but he does not know where to look properly.  He puts all his efforts into finding peace through sex and money, but does not understand why he is not satisfied.  It takes the fact that Fielding Goodney tricks him and loses all John’s money to snap John into reality.  At first, John tries to commit suicide since he cannot live without money. However, when he is unsuccessful, he eventually learns that he can be happy without money and finds that living moderately has its pleasures. 

         When John finds the truth about the film that he was going to shoot that it is no more since the financing was gone.  He finds out the Fielding Goodney has managed to get his hands on his money to fund the film.  John does not understand what he could have done to Fielding. Martin suggests that John has actually done nothing to Fielding and the Fielding has another moritvation for ruining him.  Martin becomes a source of reassurance for John, helping him through this problem.  Martin even offers to give back the money John paid him, indicating that money is not a motivating factor for Martin. 

This shows that money should never be the only think a person should rely on.  We see that John almost committed suicide when he found out that his money was all gone.  That might be the case for anyone, even if they do not rely on money heavily. But a person always needs another reason to live.  A person always needs another thing or person to lean on when it gets tough.  Money should never be the driving force for anyone and it should never be the motivating force as well.

Class Work - Difference between three performance of Money (That's what I want)

Money (That’s What I Want): 

1. The Barrett Strong version: the singer has a deeper voice, so it made it very jazzy.  It was very ironic because of the race, him being African American, and money was what they longed for.  He is the only one singing the song.
2. The Beatles version: It had more of a younger voice to it, so it made the sound more cleaner and clearer.  It was more catchy, but it didn't really make that much sense because money wasn't what they longed for since they had a lot of it, which could also be ironic.  
3. The Jerry Lee Lewis version (1969): It was more dirty because he used money to mean sex and drugs, which made it a little wild.  Using the piano gave it a more artistic sound to it, which was very catchy also. 

Paper #4

                                                The Counterfeiters Movie Review

Even though disappointed to be tricked into watching this movie because the title, it was actually one of the rare foreign films that can be watched by people all over the world.  The movie is not about a bank robbery or any robbery for that matter, but about the Nazis? Also, on top of all that, it is foreign?  As boring as one might think this movie will turn out to be, it is not.  It is not like the history movies that are being watched in middle or high school, but one heck of a way to show the Nazis’ plan to try and flood England’s economy.  Yes, it had to do with money and not, not entirely at least, the holocaust. This movie asks the questions of whether it is morally wrong to exchange services that help the Nazis in return for a less cruel life or not.  

The Counterfeiters is a 2007 film written and directed by Stefan Ruzowitzky.  It tells the true story of the greatest counterfeiting operation in history, Operation Bernhard.  Operation Bernhard was a secret operation by the Nazis during World War II to try and flood the British and American economies with fake cash.  The film was based on the memoirs of a Jewish concentration camp survivor Adolf Burger.  The Counterfeiters received high praise from film critics, winning an Academy Award for best foreign language film and the 2007 Best Foreign Language Film Oscar. The major theme of the film that will be focused on throughout this review is the notion that the value of Salomon’s labor to the Nazi’s is the sole reason for his survival.

Salomon Sorowitsch, the counterfeiter, is caught by the police and first imprisoned in a hard labor camp and then in a concentration camp near Linz. In an effort to secure himself protection and some comforts at the camp, he turns his forging skills to painting portraits, which then attracts the attention of the guards, who make him paint them and their families in exchange for extra food. 

His talents bring him to wider attention, and he is transferred out of the concentration camp and brought in front of the police officer who arrested him in Berlin.   He finds himself put together with other prisoners with artistic or printing talents, and begins working in a special section of the concentration camp which is devoted to forgery. The counterfeiters are kept in relatively humane conditions, with comfortable bunks, a washroom and adequate food, although they are subjected to brutality and insults at the hands of the prison guards. 

While some of the prisoners are content to work for the Nazis to avoid the extermination camps, others see their efforts as supporting the German war effort.  The reward for their labors is clean bed linen, running water, decent food and, most importantly, the privilege of not being exposed to life "out there". Should they fail in their task, however, the gas chambers await. Sorowitsch tries to blank out the sounds coming from the other side of the wall – the everyday routines of shooting and torture – and most of the time succeeds. "One adapts or dies," he tells a fellow prisoner.  Yet even Sorowitsch cannot remain blind forever to the devil's pact the counterfeiters have entered: he knows by their skills they are helping to prop up the Reich's bankrupt economy and prolong the Nazi war effort. And what if Germany is victorious? It is all too likely that the counterfeiters will be killed like other Jews once their usefulness is at an end.

While watching this movie and writing this paper, the only thing that kept popping in my head is the time the prophets and messengers were sent to their people to preach to them about God and people would not listen.  After a while the people told them that if it is wealth and power that they are seeking then they will give it to them.  Knowing what waited them after their death is a far greater reward than what the leaders of the town are offering, they kept on preaching to believe in God alone and not associate partners with him.

This is what every prophet and messenger was sent with and had to deal with. Yet believing that there is only one God who revealed to them the message, they knew that nothing that the leaders will offer them will change their mind. They were harmed and mistreated throughout the whole time they were preaching and yet they did not stop because they were offered a better life.  That is what I thought about while watching the movie. No matter what the Nazis were offering, is it really worth selling your soul for?

The major objection of the film for me is how the Jewish prisoners were able to feel at peace with themselves for working with the Nazis to help them win the war.  It is understandable as to why they did it, but it still feels like it is the wrong thing to do.  When you see your family and friends being tortured and killed and to go and give your enemy a hand in that torture and killing, metaphorically speaking, is something that I cannot understand.

Knowing that if the Nazis win, they will probably be killed as well, since there is no use for them anymore, and still willing to go through helping them for a little time of comfort is unacceptable.  Being able to be okay hearing others being killed while you believe what you are doing is right is definitely wrong.

Toward the end of the movie Salomon intentionally gambles away all of money and explains to the female that he could always make more money. This scene represents the fictitious nature of money in the most overt sense. Salomon can literally create money through counterfeit, but I cannot help but see a parallel to the invented and socially accepted tale of money.  This takes me back to the first day of class where you mentioned that the money is just paper and has no value, but just the value that we give it. 

He was able to counterfeit money like it had no meaning and that is the value he gave it.  Money to him did not matter because he did never needed to work for it.  He needed to work to make it but did not do the work to deserve it.  This really shows that money at some point can have no value. If a person is no working for the money, then it has no value to him or her because he can always either steal money or make it.

The movie’s theme gives both sides as to whether one would sell his soul to devil or die in order to maintain faithful.  Those who worked with the Nazis for comfort had their reason, which was the comfort they received and not being killed, and those who opposed had theirs, which was to not help the Nazis win the war.  From both point of views, it is an understandable decision by either side.  Stefan Ruzowitzky is an Academy Award-winning Austrian film director and screenwriter.  Adolf Burger is a Jewish Slovak typographer, memoir writer, and Holocaust survivor involved in Operation Bernhard. The film The Counterfeiters, based largely on his memoirs, won the 2007 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.

Paper #3

The Money Changer and His Wife

                         The Moneychanger and his Wife is a Flemish painting from the early 16^th century, widely used to illustrate economic activity. There are two different versions: one by Quentin Massys, 1514, and another by Marinus van Reymerswaele, 1539. The one that will be used for this writing is the one by Quentin Massys. 

                        The Moneychanger and his Wife depicts a man counting his money (coins) while his wife is looking on.  In this painting, Massys shows rich and reflective colors and light and well-balanced shadowing to model his figures.  He is working the colors and shadows with great dexterity. His figures are individualized in detail; slender and long fingers and noses, wide set eyes, rather youthful faces. The costumes are contemporary and understated and the fabric folds are expertly rendered. While the room and its decorative objects reflect the status of the subjects.  The husband and wife in the painting are showing now emotions whatsoever to what they are doing.  The husband is counting his coins with not expression while the wife is simply observing, with no emotion and no expression, her husband’s activities. Both are dressed neatly and modestly, with no ostentatious flair; other than the use of grey fabric and fur on the husband’s clothes and the red fabric on the wife’s clothes (only wealthy Dutch could afford such colors).  Massys has used light to gently illuminate the daylight scene. No one person or object is under the spotlight.  This painting is considered a commentary on Dutch values and mores as they reflect the secular; in this case, financial means, which often times distracted Christians from their religious duties. Here we see his wife by his side, with an open bible before her, but, she seems more interested in the money counting and changing than in reading and devoting herself to her bible; thusly her religious studies. Massys further represents the North’s apparent departure from extreme piety by including in the background, seen through an door ajar, several people are either in a conversation, maybe making a trade of some sort, or it could be one robbing the other of his or her money. The circular mirror on the money counting table at the bottom of the painting, we can see the tiny figure of a man wearing a turban reading a book while looking out the window. This could show that despite having, what could seem like, a bible in his hands, he is more intrigued by what this world has to offer than what God has to offer.  There are many allusions to the need for piety and religiosity and despite the paintings more secular composition, religious symbols are present all over the painting.

                        During the era in which this painting was made, the Netherlands was considered the Florence of Europe. It had become a major commercial center and was amongst the most advanced and prosperous European countries. It was also close to the center of the Reformation movement. Those Dutch citizens who converted to Protestantism affected the arts resulting in a corresponding decrease in large-scale altarpieces and religious works. Much of the work completed during this era reflected the everyday lives of the various members of society, from the rich to the poor, capturing their daily activities, environments, and values. In the Money Changer, we see a reconciliation of daily life with a hint of religion.

                         This painting is the perfect painting to depict the concerns that is facing money today. In the 1500s, Netherland got greedy and choose money over God.  The same thing is happening now, people are getting greedy and do not care what the outcome will be.  We already saw what happened during the subprime mortgage crisis and that was the outcome of greed.   People are not looking to God for help, but are focusing on making as much money as they could. We see the same thing happen during the National Football League, NFL, lockout where you had two successful and well-paid sides fighting over more money that they cannot really handle. People call themselves believers yet do not believe that God can get them out of any mess or any situation that they can get themselves into; rather they believe that money can solve those problems.  Greed is name of the game in this society and people will never learn from their mistakes.