In Transit

This post shares its title with my first York-based snidget on the right sidebar of this page and on my YouTube channel.  Check it out if you haven't already.

I got to York and survived the trip with grace, I like to think.  The first day was grueling, getting through to the end with the lack of sleep, but I did pull through, and the next two days proved to be pretty successful as well.

I put up some pictures on facebook, and those of you with an account there (who are friends with me, or friends of my friends) should be able to see them easily.  For those of you without facebook, I've created a flikr account too, and you should be able to see that without an account for anything.  That can be found here. 

We went to Whitby harbor and abbey today.  Quite enjoyable.  Great fish and chips.  And Black current tea!  Yum.

Today is over for now, tomorrow is an adventure.

<3 spadeALLcross

All I know is that the world looks beautiful, the world look so damn beautiful...

I didn't do any of the things that I said I would do...Big surprise there.

Things are getting exciting in my life.  In four days, I'll take an eight-hour plane ride and lose five hours of my life that I won't get back until June.  This is my last weekend in the only world I've ever known...to put it dramatically.  Well, it's 12:32 am.  Who isn't overdramatic right now?

I'm pretty psyched by now.  It took me a long time to get to the psyched: I was mostly scared up until a couple weeks ago or so, and I was worried and sad last week, but all those things have mostly shed by now to properly reveal the excitement that's been there, waiting in the wings for the past year and a half.

The United States has a lot of things and people that I'm going to miss.  For instance...do they sell mozzarella sticks in the UK?

Anyway, in order to keep up with the people over here whom I love and will miss, I'll be trying to keep at least a semi-regular travel-vlog on YouTube (a practice that is evidently requisite of all college students studying abroad these days...?).  I've already got a few trial episodes up there, just testing out soft- and hardware and trying to figure out what I want to use the thing for...but you can't see those unless I've already shown them to you.  Sorry about that.

But I'll probably have one up by next week, and I'll try to at least semi-update this blog every time I upload a video, so you can keep updated on those.  My YouTube account is "PKsDancingGirl," so feel free to subscribe (if you've got a google account).

Anyway...

A lot of the excitement is flavored with a bit of...I don't know what to call it.  An oversimplified way to put it is "fear of the unknown," but that's not wholly it.  Like I said, I'm not really scared anymore, not worried so much, but I just feel so unprepared, and I don't particularly like that feeling...ever in life.  My element is a rather small cave with a very narrow entrance that opens to an eternally stormy inlet, and when I get out of my element, I quickly feel uncomfortable.

Basically, I'm just warning you, that if the culture shock is bad, there might be a few angsty posts during the first few weeks.  Probably no reason for alarm.

I'm not making any promises on the vlog or blog, by the way: I plan on living my life...though I do love the internet.

<3 spadeALLcross

The power is yours!

So, I'm taking a class this month about film noir, primarily those movies that came out the forties and fifties in America, but we'll be touching on neo noir and some foreign films as well with the same overarching themes.  Today, though, we watched Christmas in Connecticut, which, if you've ever seen it, you should know it's definitely not a noir film.  Ironically, it came out a yearish after Double Indemnity (which we watched in class yesterday), which is generally considered to be one of the archetypal noir films, and Barbara Stanwyk played the leading lady in both movies.

In both movies, Stanwyk played a woman who was weaving a web of deceit around her in order to better her own situation: either to be alone and rich and comfortable, or to have a mink coat and a job.  The parallels aren't perfect, but they are there, and it's kind of unsettling to think about them.

Because were it not for the bright lighting, happy music, all the stylistic differences, and the last ten or so minutes of the movie, Christmas in Connecticut could be a noir film.  Terrible things are going on, a flimsy lie is falling apart all over the place, people's livelihoods hang in the balance, and no one is in control, least of all the people who think they are.

Isn't that interesting?  A classical hollywood film so close to tripping over the line of the dark, painful hollywood tragedy, the noir.  But that's all classical film ever does...the conventions of the happy ending, the comical spin on ridiculous events, the tricks of light and sound...that's all that's keeping Meet the Parents from turning into a murder suicide.

In one style, people are considered to be generally good on the inside.  In the other style, they are considered totally depraved.  That's the fundamental difference: the way we look at the people, the way we're made to think about them and their lives and their motivations.  Are they good natured or cruel at heart?

My question to you, my dear readers, is does this apply to real life, too?  In what ways are the arguments between optimism and pessimism the same as the arguments between classical film and noir?  In what ways are they different?

<3 spadeALLcross