Writing Workshop

Dear All,
Welcome to the second part of the year! 

I guess you all know that the last time we met for Language IV, we worked on different paragraphs taken from the essays you wrote. Students got in pairs and reviewed a paragraph each, making sure they were not the authors of that particular paragraph. The idea was to benefit from the revision of a classmate's paragraph, and at the same time get a thorough review of the parargraph you had written. 

The students that were present have already worked on some paragraphs, so I ask you to edit the document I am sharing, so those who were not present can choose those that have not been reviewed yet. The idea is that you can work in these revisions during these weeks, so you can also use them to bring your second version finished the first class we meet. 

Access the paragraphs here! 

Late!! Sorry

http://mentalfloss.com/article/554245/facts-about-do-the-right-thing-spike-lee

10 Things You Might Not Know About Do the Right Thing

A shot in the arm of American consciousness, Do the Right Thing—Spike Lee’s incendiary profile of racial tension and police overreaction—bristled in the veins of moviegoers when it landed in theaters in the summer of 1989. Taking its title from a Malcolm X quote, Do the Right Thing rumbled with youthful energy, dry comic wit, boombox-blasted politics, and an operatic magic unique to New York City.

It’s a fierce polemic. It’s a snapshot of stereotyping. It’s a chill hangout movie. It was also a showcase of Lee’s directorial know-how, just when experience was shaping his raw creative talent. Crank up the AC and the FM 108 We-Love Radio. Here are 10 things you might not know about Spike Lee's Oscar-nominated joint.

1. IT WAS INSPIRED BY A REAL-LIFE INCIDENT THAT HAPPENED IN 1986.

On December 19, 1986, four black men—Michael Griffith, Timothy Grimes, Curtis Sylvester, and Cedric Sandiford—were traveling when their car broke down. They walked three miles to the predominantly Italian-American Howard Beach neighborhood of Queens, New York, where they got into an argument with some white teenagers before heading to New Park Pizzeria for a meal and a telephone. When they left the eatery, they wereaccosted by a larger group of white men, including the ones they’d encountered earlier. Sandiford and Griffith were beaten; Griffith tried to run but was chased onto the Belt Parkway, where he was hit by a car and killed. The incident was such a part of Do the Right Thing’s DNA that Lee wanted to open the film with his character, Mookie, shouting “Howard Beach!” while defacing Sal’s Famous Pizzeria.

2. IT’S DIFFICULT TO FIND SHOTS THAT DON’T FEATURE THE COLOR RED.

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One of the most impressive feats of the movie is how powerfully you feel the heat of the summer day. Besides placing Sterno cans near the camera to keep the air wavy, color was the filmmakers' most important tool in transferring the temperature to the screen. “I did a lot of research on [color usage’s] psychology and worked on a controlled palette that pretty much stayed in the warm range—yellows, reds, earth tones, ambers—and tried to stay away from blues and greens, which have a cooling effect,” cinematographer Ernest Dickerson told The Guardian. That rule extended to costuming, set design, and props, which is why almost every scene has at least one red element in it.

3. SPIKE LEE ORIGINALLY WANTED ROBERT DE NIRO TO PLAY SAL.

Oh, what might have been. It’s a no-brainer that Lee would have wanted Robert De Niro for the role of the brash Italian-American pizzeria owner, which eventually went to Danny Aiello (who scored an Oscar nomination for the film). “What young filmmaker wouldn’t want him to star in their film?” Lee said. “So, I gave him the script and he liked it, but he said it wasn’t for him.”

4. IT CONTAINS NODS TO A FEW CLASSIC FILMS.

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An avid cinephile and a student of film history, Lee is such a massive fan of Charles Laughton’s chest-thumper Night of the Hunter that he dropped part of it into the middle of Do the Right Thing. Radio Raheem (Bill Nunn) carries the knuckle ring version of Robert Mitchum’s Night of the Huntercharacter’s “Love” and “Hate” tattoos, and he explains their existence using almost the exact same monologue.

Lee and cinematographer Ernest Dickerson also turned to classic noir The Third Man for its use of disorientingDutch angles; you can watch as the camera angle gets more and more aggressively tilted leading up to the riot.

5. LEE TOOK THE MOVIE TO ANOTHER STUDIO TO AVOID A SAPPY ENDING.

It’s hard to imagine it, but Paramount executives dropped a bomb on Lee close to the end of pre-production, demanding an unrealistically uplifting ending. “They wanted Mookie and Sal to hug and be friends and sing ‘We Are the World,’” Lee told New York Magazine. "They told me this on a Friday; Monday morning we were at Universal.” Obviously, he did the right thing.

6. ROSIE PEREZ’S DANCE SEQUENCE TOOK EIGHT HOURS TO FILM

Even the opening credits of Do the Right Thing are iconic. Rosie Perez’s frenetic, emotional dance to the bowel-shaking bass boom of Public Enemy’s “Fight the Power” sets the stage as well as any of Shakespeare’s prologues.

“Spike didn’t tell me he needed anger and angst and exhaustion,” Perez explained. “Instead, he just said, ‘I need you to kill it.’ I thought, okay. I thought I killed it in the first hour. Freakin’ eight hours later, this freakin’ man had me still dancing. I had tennis elbow, my knee was swelling. So, I forgot about the lyrics, the original words—you know, Elvis, John Wayne? To me, it was all 'Spike, Spike, Spike, I hate you, I hate you, I hate you!' And when rage and hate just poured out of my body, pure exhaustion, he went, ‘Cut, print it! We got it!'"

7. LEE HIRED THE NATION OF ISLAM’S PARAMILITARY AS SECURITY ON THE SET.

The production descended on a Bedford-Stuyvesant street in late summer 1988, building Sal’s Famous Pizzeria and painting murals, but largely leaving the neighborhood in its natural state for the shoot. To ensure safety, they hired members of Fruit of Islam, then run by Louis Farrakhan, to act as on-set security. One of their first jobs was boarding up known crack houses and guarding them to deter drug abusers from returning.

8. CLOTHING REINFORCES THE RACIAL LOYALTIES.

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Lee and costume designer Ruth E. Carter bolstered certain characters’ attitudes by dressing them in racially-coded clothes. The white, brownstone-owner cyclist (John Savage) who scuffs Buggin’ Out’s (Giancarlo Esposito) shoes wears a Larry Bird Celtics jersey while Buggin’ Out’s sneaks are Air Jordans. Mookie also wears a Jordan jersey and a Dodgers jersey with Jackie Robinson’s number. Plus, while the racist Pino (John Turturro) wears all black in classic villain fashion, he wears a white undershirt while at work in the pizzeria, signaling his racial allegiance in the neighborhood in contrast to his open-minded brother Vito (Richard Edson), who wears a black undershirt.

9. IT WAS DIRECTLY AIMED AT HURTING A MAJOR NEW YORK CITY POLITICIAN.

There’s no mistaking that Do the Right Thing is an overtly political movie that spoke to complex, large-scale issues like gentrification, systemic racism, and police brutality, but parts of it were also aimed at one politician in particular. Blaming Mayor Ed Koch for the deaths of black men and women like Eleanor Bumpurs (one person to whom the movie is dedicated) at the hands of an overly aggressive police force, Lee included graffiti that said “DUMP KOCH” next to an image of Mike Tyson punching Koch and Jesse Jackson campaign posters that say, “Our Vote Counts!”

“We had this plan because the film came out in August and that fall was the Democratic primary [between Koch and David Dinkins],” Lee toldNew York Magazine. “So, throughout the film, you hear Mister Señor Love Daddy, played by Samuel Jackson, telling people to vote, vote, vote. And Dinkins won."

10. BARACK AND MICHELLE OBAMA SAW IT ON THEIR FIRST DATE.

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“He was trying to show me his sophisticated side by selecting an independent filmmaker,” Michelle Obama said, reflecting on seeing Do the Right Thing on her first date with her future husband—and the future president. On the 25th anniversary of Lee’s film, Barack Obama recorded a video message thanking Lee for helping him impress Michelle. Other options for that first date? Batman and Honey, I Shrunk the Kids were still in theaters, and The Karate Kid Part III came out the same weekend as Do the Right Thing.

Segregation in Films

Hi there!, as you know we`re seeing something about racism that the United States and South Africa have suffered. When I made the research for this topic, I couldn`t stop thinking the films that I`ve watched related with it. Now, I seen these movies with other eyes and I can understand them better. For that reason, I want to recommend you one of my favourite films called “Life”.

Life

It`s an American comedy-drama film (1999). It starts Eddy Murphy as Ray Gibson and Martin Lawrence as Claude Banks.

Plot: In 1932, two different young men are joined by curious circumstances which led them to be wrongly convicted of murder. They will have to spend the rest of their life for a crime they didn`t commit.

Despite this is a comedy film, it deals with racial segregation and homophobia issues in the United States during the 20^th century.

I know there are many other films that treat Apartheid better like “Mandela: Long walk to Freedom” (2013), “Invictus” (2009), etc. However, I haven`t recommend you because I haven`t watched them yet. They are more serious than “Life”, but sometimes it`s good to watch the same subject in different ways. To end up, I hope you can watch it. It`s available on Netflix. So, this is my little contribution to improve our understanding of this subject.

Life - Trailer

Music that impacted the anti-apartheid movement

I would like to share with you the story of Sixto Rodriguez, a Mexican-American songwriter who was very famous in South Africa, but he didn't know it. 

How did Rodriguez impact South Africa?

South Africa during the Apartheid Regime was an incredibly oppressive regime. For years, the government censored all material that was deemed a threat to them. All media outlets were state run and in many cases, South Africans did not have a television. South Africa housed a massive collection of songs which talked about sex, drugs and anti establishment over the years that were forbidden to be played by radio stations. In fact, playing such songs was practically impossible as they had destroyed many of the tracks on vinyl.

Rodriguez was the first musician that spoke about standing up against the oppressor that got heard in South Africa. Much of this was made possible to the bootlegging of his albums which could partially explain why he was unaware that he was famous in South Africa. In the film “Searching for Sugarman”, a man named Sugar Segerman explains how Rodriguez’s songs, including “Sugar Man” and “I Wonder” became anthems for the country’s white youth who began to stand up against Apartheid.

The first anti-apartheid movement groups derived from rock musicians listening to his words. His songs were leading these people to really wake up to the problems in South Africa. The story of Sixto Rodriguez is an incredibly unique one. For a man to have such an influence on a nation and not even be aware of it sounds like it is made up. For many years South Africans believed Rodriguez was dead; many different stories had circulated throughout the country in the last 30 years. The most difficult thing about Rodriguez was that he was a complete mystery to South Africans. In 1997, Stephen “Sugar” Segerman set up a website, called ‘The Great Rodriguez Hunt’, with the intention of finding any information about the mysterious US musician of ‘Cold Fact’ fame. In the same year Brian Currin established ‘Climb Up On My Music’, a tribute site to the life and works of Rodriguez. In 1998, when Rodriguez was discovered, alive and well and living in Detroit, by Sugar and Craig Bartholomew Strydom, the search was over. South Africa had finally found the man responsible for inspiring many South Africans during a very troubled time.

(Source: https://jryantheaed.wordpress.com/2015/08/04/sugar-man-empowering-anti-apartheid-south-africa/ )

The documentary "Searching for Sugar Man" tells the story of how this musician who failed to succeed in his own country, became so famous in South Africa. And the most interesting thing is that he didn't know this for more 25 years! I highly recommend this documentary! I'll leave the trailer for you to see it and one of his most famous songs during the Apartheid, which is considered the  anti-apartheid anthem. I hope you like it!

"This is not a song, it's an outburst: or the Establishment Blues"

The mayor hides the crime rate
Council woman hesitates
Public gets irate but forget the vote date
Weatherman complaining, predicted sun, it's raining
Everyone's protesting, boyfriend keeps suggesting
You're not like all of the rest

Garbage ain't collected, women ain't protected
Politicians using people, they've been abusing
The mafia's getting bigger, like pollution in the river
And you tell me that this is where it's at

Woke up this moming with an ache in my head
Splashed on my clothes as I spilled out of bed
Opened the window to listen to the news
But all I heard was the Establishment's Blues

Gun sales are soaring, housewives find life boring
Divorce the only answer smoking causes cancer
This system's gonna fall soon, to an angry young tune
And that's a concrete cold fact

The pope digs population, freedom from taxation
Teeny Bops are up tight, drinking at a stoplight
Miniskirt is flirting I can't stop so I'm hurting
Spinster sells her hopeless chest

Adultery plays the kitchen, bigot cops non-fiction
The little man gets shafted, sons and monies drafted
Living by a time piece, new war in the far east
Can you pass the Rorschach test?

It's a hassle is an educated guess
Well, frankly I couldn't care less

Searching for Sugar Man trailer

Hi everyone, I have found an interesting documentary about graffitis in New York. Those sprays were painted after Spike Lee's film "Do the right thing". People considered it as vandalism and this news was published in 2014.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qkONacaFmCQ

Five Minutes for Hanif Kureishi

Hello Everybody! This is the video I wanted to show you the other day.

Here's a reflection on Do The Right Thing 30 years later!
30 Years Later: Do The Right Thing