Thursday, February 13, 2014

Culture

      As you're growing up you are at a situation where you are to want to stand out of your culture and just be yourself ,but it isn't that easy because it goes hand in hand with respecting your parents. For me my family is very proud to be a Korean so they want me to be more like them. There is still a way to honor your culture and still can express yourself..


      I came to Houston when I was only 5 so I never got really experience to learn or read Korean I grew up to speaking English ,but I still try to talk to my parents in Korean even if I don't use the right terms of words or even sound disrespectful because i don't know the right words to use for instance i'll try to tell my dad would you like some drink or something ,but it comes out as like if i'm talking to my friend and my dad really hates that ,but he understands that i'm not trying to disrespect him.

     I became really into the hip-hop culture from the way I dress and how I express my self as a person. My parents till this day they still hate how I dress because its not how they dress where they want me to wear sharp clothes like a clean polo and no ripped pants, but the main one is sagging they truly deep down want to just not want to be seen around me because i look like a "thug" so when it comes to going out with the family I dress the way they want me to ,but I still wear my kicks because my shoes are my identity it sets me apart from any other person.




     Another American culture I adopted and embrace is skating, it breaks racial barriers, there is no Asian, Hispanic, Black, only the identity of being branded a skater, and i love the freedom behind that. I can be myself and still represent my family without looking like a stereotypical Asian.



     


Tuesday, February 4, 2014

     Most horror movies and horror stories are very simple and easily detected when it comes to what is going to happen next but, not for Edgar Allen Poe in " The Fall of the House of Usher " He uses distinctive details where it plays with your mind like you think you know whats going  to happen but, then you realize the whole time you didn't know. If I were to create a haunted house story I would use Poe's tactics 













     Poe uses imagery in ways such ways where it makes you feel like you're in the story rather than just reading a book because when you're reading you want to picture the details of the story, which is shown in Poe's writings as he describes the details of the ways the trees move to the sounds that are created by even the way a person walks.

    In most horror stories you know who killed who ,but in House of Usher who would have known that Roderick killed his own sister see these are the type of things where it just blows your mind. This is another way it gets the reader's attention and makes them keep wanting to read.

   The scene creates a dark and mysterious setting it's one of the things that should be in a horror movie or a story it's the thing that gets everything intense where your in the edge of your seat or gripping onto the book.

   Last , but not least the conclusion as they finally flee out the mansion and Roderick is dead the mansion crumbles into the ground they realize everything they witnessed is now gone and no proof of what happened.
This shows what happens now? Many times the ending it's always the innocent person wins ,but in this story it's a different twist even though they survived the story didn't end the way it should have.

  

Tuesday, January 28, 2014

   The U.S seems to have a huge interest in horror and the occult. It's usually seen as a means of entertainment through film, music, literature, and television. Many authors and producers capitalize on our obsession, just so proving the fact.

   The 80's brought a wave of punk music, the movement was very anti authority. One of the staple bands of this era were The Misfits. Perhaps one of the reasons they were one of the bands that left a legacy among the many was because of the subject matter of the songs, from infanticide to just general horror. They were under the sub-genre horror punk with good reason. Their image and subject matter influenced incoming bands.

   The ouija board dawned as early as the late 19th century. It came from the cultural phenomenon of spiritualism, the belief that we could talk to the dead. Even in early America we had a interest in taboo subjects, it's weird when looking in retrospect, how this was advertised as a game during that time, and now it seems as if we're opening the underworld.

   As Americans we ask ourselves if this is a bad thing, in reality, it's just what defines us as being inhabitants of the U.S, just like other countries have their own set culture and beliefs. That's all it is, American culture. It's evident from the Salem Witch trials all the way to horror television shows and films.