Flash-Mobs and War Chants

Flash mobs, it's that thing of it being so many people, and suddenly the few bystanders find themselves caught up in something magical, the surprise is there but plays really a minor part, is temporary, ushers in the magic of the moment. What I find more touching, more moving, is that there I am, that bystander, caught up in this performance by so many people who have obviously given lots of thought and practice and hours of preparation into the whole thing, and it's there for me to enjoy, to be touched by, to takeaway as a precious moment, the many doing a special thing for the few.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bO3kFno6gB0&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ARwZ3scXQ7U&feature=related

And what you see is dance and song, performance of physical ability, mass synchronicity of movement. There's always been this kind of thing, think of the dance routines on B/W American movies.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&feature=endscreen&v=9OawiTae0bA

it's people feeling freedom, a break out of unexpected behaviour
breaking out of expected behaiour
breaking free from the social norms

Flash mobs are used as political tools

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdxTcaCS65Y&feature=related

The crowd gatherings of old, Martin Luther King,

And its the normalness of the people, the age range that is presented, it's the non-agressiveness, peaceful protest, creative conflict,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujlkqLoV5Ng&feature=related

Of course, the clichees of video present
get entangled, post production editing and cutting, the pretence of continuity, the pretence of being a milling passerby,

and yet, you see the smiles on people's faces, the joy that is released, the occasions when others, the uninitiated dare to join in the festivities,

I mean you have to endure the comments on youtube,


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8GfrfDmXDb0

The freeze ones I don't get on with so much, but now they are such a phenomenon, they are relatively known as a phenomenon, a bit like planking really, something although that operates on a different kind of level, there is this proliferation of them of flashmob videos to choose from, and so the choice of title becomes prominent in the selection process for people who are intrigued andinvestigating, or know there is enjoyment to be had from observing them and the processes, the faculties of adjudication come into play, of what I like, what I wnat to see, what makes for a good flashmob, a bad one, one that I want to wathc, that attracts or dupes people into watching it,





There are different ways to run with this, looking at other traditional forms of group display,
LSV march out Haka
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-rDoV0EBu44&feature=related

which moves easily into rugby hakas

a consideration of what it does for the performers,

military parades a country showing it's molitary might, but then

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnY4dhzZdAU&feature=related

the use of youtube to recontextualize by soundtrack to downright subvert

the original intention of miltary parades

the pretence of spontaneity as a necessary thing, typically the one person stepping out in a crowd, in an open public space and doing something unexpected

other phenomenon of ordinary people getting a chance to have a public stage, for example, Britain's Got Talent,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSrAJsWvEIc&feature=related

aha, singing again, an ordinary person doing something remarkable

the post talk by the judges


switching back to rugby and the all black haka, the haka as war dance intended to intimidate,

how do people respond? Wales
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ncu6SzmHe3E&feature=related

these preliminaries to warfare, to sporting action as the modern day equivalent of warfare between two tribes,

the natural world's approach of pre-fight procedure to see if a dominant party is found and violence avoided


rugby league in southern hemisphere, oz v all blacks old enemies

all blacks v france

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6g3QbH_i2VU&feature=related

¿ and how does it relate to a christian context ?

so, first, what is the protocol of the haka?

¿ if this is a show of strength, what is it for a christian to be strong ?

¿ if this is a connection with their god, how does a chirstian connect in this way with their god ?

¿ if this is a sign of respect for their enemy, what place does this have in christian worship today ?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bmSNN7vZt_o&feature=related
"he was planking" comment at the start

and the reaction of the chicks

¿ performing in front of a crowd, what is enough ?

the text for the New Zealand Haka and some explanation

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tdMCAV6Yd0Y&feature=related

loud chanting, aggressive body movements, fierce facial expressions, Taringa whakarongo! Listen up with your ears!
Kia rite! Prepare yourself! x2
Kia mau, hi!(long) Hands on hips, bend the knees!
mix match this to the sequence - do as part of the air thing,
Ringa ringa pakla! Slap the hands against the thighs!
Waewae takahia kia kino nei hoki! Stamp the feet as hard as you can!
¿ What happens when you do this, how do actors prepare before a performance, how does anybody prepare before a performance ?
Kia kino nei hoki! As hard as you can!
Ka mate! Ka mate! Ka ora! Ka ora! I die! I die! I live! I live! x2
Tenei te tangata puhuru huru This is the hairy man
Nana nei i tiki mai Who fetched the sun
Whakawhiti te ra And caused it to shine again
A upa … ne! ka upa … ne! One upward step! Another upward step!

¿ which is the most spine tingling part of the Haka for you ?

A upane kaupane whiti te ra! An upward step, another … the sun shines!
hi (long) rise/dawn

some people complain about flash mobs not being flashmobby enough

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pEmCh8dF1hM&feature=related

haka is a challenge, and a way of firing themselves up

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=omftL4fWRHs

samoa v all blacks

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cUP3v1xgObQ&feature=related

19:30

Search for a rose

Looking really for a bit of something to do with roses to go into a session that has moved around gardens, gardening and flowers.

Surf bits

There are several short stories knocking around to do with roses

don't read the description as wikipedia always has spoilers

find the text somewhere!

A Rose for Emily - William Faulkner

8 page story

love, logic, nightingale

Oscar Wilde

The Nightingale and the Rose

post up any materials/tasks made for this

interesting short story of love and a test that has shifted across the centuries

there is some analysis and literary comment

this rewrite spins things around

be useful for more advanced students with a literary bent

Rose by Guy de Maupassant

similar length to Wilde's, 

fair amount of dialogue

news of the New Rose short story competition

the official announcement

the winner, 

Because I Was Too Much

hans christian andersen

the elf of the rose

but now this has drifted off of a useful track for me

thinking of famous people called rose or rosa, 

there's a civil rights rosa

La Vie en Rose

Edith Piaf

lyrics in French & English

lyrics in German

Rose Reneé Roth

played supporting roles in many krimis, but no English text of her available - maybe a task to research and write one,

also appeared with Loriot - here in the scrabble scene, which is nice, but in German

Rosa Roth

krimi set in Berlin

video compilation from BBC Dr Who re relationship between Ten and Rose, put to soundtrack of The Chemical Brothers' Famous Last Words

Ten/Rose on YouTube

Epictastic - in comments

My Chemical Romance

Famous Last Words

Famous Rose Quotes

As you walk down the fairway of life you must smell the roses, for you only get to play one round. - Ben Hogan

Some people are always grumbling because roses have thorns; I am thankful that thorns have roses.  - Alphonse Karr

Louis MacNiece

Snow

another EFL session that is tricky to realize

scratching at nothing now, not really relevant for any of my groups, time to stop procrastinating

Reading Room at the British Museum

Reading Room 
Description at the British Museum website

The Reading Room stands at the heart of the Museum, in the centre of the Great Court. Completed in 1857, it was hailed as one of the great sights of London and became a world famous centre of learning. It was restored in 2000 and ... (more)

The 100 greatest non-fiction books
The Guardian have come up with this list of the best ever factual writing.
(Found via i love english literature)

from Vladjesul on Flickr

Jumping off point for the first few threads of what follows was an enotes entry on the British Museum Reading Room.

20 of the World's Most Beautiful Libraries
bizarrely part of: China Political & Defence Forum - Global Times Forum - Discuss China, Discuss the world > ≡ World Affairs & Defence ≡ > World Affairs, and also on

This image also features in bourgeoissurrender's post on Louis MacNeice, who wrote a poem entitled 'The British Museum Reading Room' in 1939.

Arlindo Correia has a page on Louis MacNeice, and don't miss out on material he's collated about other writers.


Opening scene Possession by A.S. Byatt is set in the Reading Room of the Bristish Museum.
Possession by A.S. Byatt on Amazon


Guardian book club: writing Victorian verse
Week three: AS Byatt on knitting Possession into a satisfying whole
Four part series featuring AS Byatt and Possession


Official trailer for Neil LaBute's Possession on YouTube


The British Museum Is Falling Down (King Penguin)
von David Lodge

Guardian podcast interview with AS Byatt re Posession


The British Museum Reading Room features in Hitchcock's Blackmail:
Hitchcock's Blackmail (1929) - The British Museum pursuit scene on YouTube


AS Byatt interviewed by Michael Silverblatt for Bookworm on KCRW

With his novel New Grub Street, George Gissing is recognized as the first to use the Reading Room in a work of fiction. Use Amazon's 'Surprise me' search function to find all the passages that refer to the Reading Room in this work about an aspiring author.

Ed Reardon's Week, a sitcom on Radio 4, links to Gissing's novel. The most recent programmes are on the BBC site, couldn't find anything in the BBC archives for older ones though.

And so to Virginia Woolf, and her description in A Room of One's Own (1929) of entering the British Museum Reading Room:

The swing doors swung open, and there one stood under the vast dome, as if one were a thought in the huge bald forehead which is so splendidly encircled by a band of famous names.

As Ruth Hoberman foregrounds in her Women in the British Museum Reading Room during the Late-Nineteenth and Early-Twentieh Centuries: From Quasi- to Counterpublic, the bald forehead and absence of female famous names suggest that

... as a woman she exists only as perceived by the male mind and that the very shape of the room itself, as well as the books it contains, conflats knowledge with masculinity.

 The reading room serves Woolf as a conveniently vivd representation of women's exclusion from the public sphere.

 Hoberman continues with Habermas' on the term 'public sphere'.

Siân Cleaver's summary on Bookdrum highlights Woolf's view that being gender aware presents difficulties to writers of either sex, with the aim being to be able to truly write as onself, to be 'incandescent'.

Bookdrum in itself looks very interesting

 Book Drum is the perfect companion to the books we love, bringing them to life with immersive pictures, videos, maps and music.