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Is Sampling All That Bad?

  “You know they bit that part off Kraftwerk,” I said. “Bit what off who?” Marcus asked. “That part right there.” I hummed along. “Kraftwek is this German band that pretended to be robots. They have this song, ‘Trans-Europe Express,’ that has that ‘Da Dah Da’ part.” “Afrika Bambaataa didn’t steal anything. This is their song” (Whitehead 75-76). This conversation was one reminiscent of many I’ve seen online in comment sections. To a lot of people, the idea that an artist ripped part of another person’s song can come off as a bit shocking, and as seen in Marcus’s reaction, an insult to Afrika Bambaataa’s artistic integrity. But in most cases, I’d disagree, and I feel like having a more robust understanding of what sampling entailed helped shape my opinion. After initially reading this scene, and then hearing the clips in class, I wanted to dive a little bit deeper into the history between Afrika Bambaataa and Kraftwerk and how sampling worked in their case. But what is sa...
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Jason Navigating Bullying

          The discussions in class about how Jason dealt with bullying in the moment stood out to me as I feel like it’s not something that's usually talked about. At least from my experience, people only tend to talk about bullying after the fact, so it’s not often you hear the victim’s perspective and thought process as it’s happening. Bullying tends to have a direct relationship with response, and it can only continue if it has a reaction to feed off of. It can’t be that simple though, and I think Jason’s experience helps convey that nuance.            The relationship between bullying and reaction was particularly seen when Jason fell in a puddle. Ross Wilcox and everyone else around laughed and pointed at him, and it humiliated Jason, causing him to lash out: “‘Oh really blinking funny Wilcox’ … ‘that’s pathetic–’ But on ‘pathetic’ my voice squeaked like my balls haven’t dropped. Everyone heard. A fresh bomb of laught...
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A Bandaid for a Broken Leg

          In Fun Home , I noticed a theme of the characters having roundabout ways to deal with their problems. A lot of them seemed to stem from the lack of room to do so in a healthy way–healthy as in attacking the situation head-on–so they sort of just let out their pent-up feelings through other, more harmful means.           Alison’s father, Bruce, is without a doubt the most apparent example of this. Bruce was a closeted gay man, and he was forced to hide that part of himself. He had a wife and children in a small town, and if his more authentic identity were to get out, it would’ve spread like wildfire–not only his sexuality, but also the fact that he was a pedophile. Because of this, their relationship grew quite cold and distant, with Alison saying there was a lack of a “margin for error” and that “showing affection for [her father] was an even dicier venture” (Bechdel 18-19). Bruce used his passion for architecture an...
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The Importance of Clarity

               While reading The Bell Jar , I found the shock therapy scenes to be particularly striking, more importantly, Esther’s reactions and the contrast between her experiences with Dr. Gordon and Dr. Nolan. Though the nurses seemed to be the ones to actually perform the treatment, they were under the instruction of the scenes’ respective doctors, and her reactions subsequently affected her perception of the doctors.                Going into her first shock treatment, Esther didn’t seem to fully understand exactly what was going to happen (When she was first told about shock treatment, she said she was curious about what it was). And, leading up to treatment itself, it still wasn’t explained; she was only told it was normal to be scared, “‘Don’t worry,’ the nurse grinned down at me. ‘Their first time everybody's scared to death.’ I tried to smile, but my skin had gone stiff, like parchment....
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GOTCHA, CATCHER!

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                 I was honestly quite intrigued when Mr. Mitchell mentioned the whole fiasco J. D. Salinger had with the press, so I decided to do a bit of a deep dive on it. It was quite interesting how much J. D. Salinger himself reflected Holden, or at least, how Holden would react if he were in the same situation. There were two particular instances where Holden commented on fame and entertainment industries, the very thing Salinger hated to deal with. He said his brother was “out in Hollywood … being a prostitute” (Salinger, 2). Later, he commented on the reception and recognition Ernie got for his piano skills, saying he’d hate it if he were him: “You would've puked. … I swear to God, if I were a piano player or an actor or something and all those dopes thought I was terrific, I’d hate it. I wouldn’t even want them to clap for me. People always clap for the wrong things. If I were a piano player, I’d play it in the goddam closet. …...
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