Films, A Smart Man’s Tool to Show Reality

10Jan09

Assalamu Alaikum (Peace be with you),

I am currently taking a high school class called ‘Journalism I’. I, who happens to have an interest in film, have been seeing more and more deeply into movies this past week. We’ve discussed so many movies and how metaphorical each one is. You’d be surprised how every film includes some metaphor. Allow me to first exemplify:

Wall E, More than just what meets the eye

I bet that anyone who saw a preview for this movie thought, “Oh, a Disney movie, how cute that little robot is…I’ll take my daughter/son/niece/nephew/young child acquaintance to see it.” However, I’m sure that anybody who saw it knew that it was much, much, much more than just a cute little movie. From some reviews, this movie represents human obesity, abortion, laziness, human dependence on technology, creation vs. creator, and more. Even the fact that the lady robot’s name was ‘Eve’ was looked at as a biblical (which by the way is also a Qur’anic) reference to Adam and Eve, a tree which we can’t eat from. Even animation has become an art form comparable to classic literature.

~~

Shrek-alienation embodied

Shrek! Even Shrek! Well, let’s really think about it, because I know you don’t think in that movie theather seat (no offense to anyone who does). The first movie, he was an ogre that was rejected and feared by all. Unfortunately, he’d accepted it and grown to believe in the labels he’d been given. If we think deeply, this un-friendly ogre can be taken, as I’ve grown to take it, to represent me. It can be taken to represent my family. It can be taken to represent a certain family trying to get to Disney world. Muslims in America are truly Shreks. Maybe we’re not as bad a case as him in that we haven’t accepted these labels put on us, but we are definitely him. The way that people are feared by this ogre that supposedly  would terrorize the town at his first chance. It is also representative of any people in America who were the minority. The Japenese, African Americans, and more have been discriminated against. I’m just thankful that we’re getting discriminated against in a “politically-correct” world rather than a world of openly expressed racism (I’m just about to finish reading To Kill a Mockingbird and I’m gonna see the film in school, too, soon). Another metaphor would Donkey, the loud, obnoxious voice (which I hope to be) that tries his hardest to get Shrek to stop making bogus reasons to justify the discrimination against him and realize that he is who he is and nobody should judge him.

~~

I’ll just mention one more film that seemed like NOBODY (at least the teenagers in my class) liked. My observation was based on the fact that people had expectations of a horror movie and to their dismay received a classic M. Night Shyamalan metaphorical masterpiece, and because it wasn’t what they expected, it became what they rejected. However, I love this movie. I didn’t at first, but after a day to think it over, I loved it.

The Happening--How more generic of a title can you get?

Just want to say I like the tagline at the top of this poster. If you didn’t catch the wordplay, it refers to M. Night Shyamalan’s previous films (Sixth Sense, Signs). Now I’ve heard many different interpretations of what this movie meant. I first took it to mean that the environment is going to hurt us, BAD. However, I couldn’t quite put the puzzle pieces together, but I got all the corners and sides to make a up a frame (with no middle). There’s just something about the fact that the first thing you lose by this virus (this happening) is your speech, your voice, your method of communication. The next is disorientation. And the last is fatal. More specifically auto-fatal (If that’s a word, I just made it up using my knowledge of prefixes). We kill ourselves. This maximizes and it really hit me in the scene where the Jeep slows down in the middle of the street, then picks up speed and hits a tree. Now, my next thought about what this movie meant was that this ‘happening’ could represent something like 1984. The totalitarian government takes away our speech, takes away our rights until we’re theoretically dead inside, and then it turns out that we finally let this ‘happening’ of a takeover occur, so in essence it is us that allows this to happen, so what happens to us is actually what we do to ourselves. Another article said this movie was about abortion. I didn’t fully understand that article but I won’t get into it. I’ll just leave it at my interpretations. One more paragraph to go:

~~

So my point in this little (not-so-little) blog article is that I now see how powerful the art form of film really is. I realize how amazing it can be. How amazing it has been. How amazing I hope to make it. However, I feel that I have a bit of an edge as compared to some, because I am a Muslim. However, I still am a person. Therefore, my films (ambitious amateur, ) may directly relate to Muslims, but in essence relate to all people. Thanks to a reminder from Peter Men (Take Zer0), I see that even with all the fancy cameras, microphones, special effects, and actors, none of that can matter without one main thing: the idea. Ideas are what projects are based on and projects are what accomplishments are based on. I see I’ve been admiring some amazing equipment as I reflected on the words of Baba Ali (Ummah Films), in a blog post by Belal Khan (Leechon Films), “Ideas come a dime a dozen,” and that real people find success in actually acting on those ideas. However, now that I’ve been revived, I will balance my focuses and right now, focus on ideas and writing powerful messages that will hopefully touch any audience in a way that I intend to.

A Smart Man’s Tool!

p.s. It’s 12:21 am, just saying… :p

Filed under: Film/Video, Miscellaneous/Other, Online Discovery, Poetry/Writings   |  3 Comments
Tags: College, Creation, dawah, film, Film/Video, insight, JaKaTTaK, jawaad, journal, khan, movies, muslim, poetry, productions, reading, Video, words, writing