25. Billy Elliot

The art of ballet by Photochiel made available under Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial- No Derivative Works 2.0 Generic License

There's quite a famous movie named "Billy Elliot" that has some connections with one of our main themes, gender. It's interesting that it not only includes the differences between genders but also highlights the constructed, repressive "system" of gender roles. That is, society forces you to become a person they have "preformed". For instance in a scene, dad tells Billy what he should be doing: "All right for your Nana, for girls. No, not for lads, Billy. Lads do football... or boxing... or wrestling. Not friggin' ballet."
However, Billy refutes the pressure on him, and gradually becomes a successful ballet dancer rather than continuing the family tradition of being a tough and strong miner, arguing with his father in the process.
In the end, though, we see a happy ending, and the idea of "freely being yourself" is underlined.

It's not important to be briefly summarizing the movie but to talk about the ideas behind it. Do we have to define masculinity or being a man with your habits? Why are we supposed to be like the majority? Are our possible habits really decided before we even get to know about them? These questions can be multiplied in succession, each one with a potential to be a discussion topic. All in all, this movie, even if you like it or not, provides a great example to personal liberation.

24. The Full Monty

I had planned to blog about our presentation movie "The Full Monty" next week but a "trailer" may be a nice ad =)

In fact I literally planned a trailer by cutting one or two scenes from the movie and put it here - I'll try doing so (it may end after the presentation :( ).

The most interesting thing about the movie is that it makes you laugh but in my opinion it is not a comedy at all - the emotional and "life-conditional" aspects play far more important roles.

Anyway...

Sit back, read the subtitles below the snapshots, and enjoy both the movie and the presentation!

23. Donations

The 19th post of Sonja had more importance than any other one - I don't quite know if anything is done till now but there are no comments to begin with. Anyway, it's not that people should react "online" to the post, it's our responsibility and sensitiveness that counts, guys. Of course my blog is not as popular as Sonja's, so if anyone is reading this post, then s/he probably already read the original one, but maybe one more post helps helping.

I personally am going to donate 10 English reading books (nearly 7% of total number of books that are in Kabul Unv.) this Tuesday, and will ask for more. So, if around 14 people among us (13 more!) donates 10 books each, the number of books will double! It shouldn't be that hard. The thing is, when you make a donation, you feel much greater and even happier than when you know you have this and that book in your personal library. The opportunity has come so near us that all we need to do is to bring something (even an extra pencil!) to a place that we already go to.

Some things in life are worth taking seriously.

Just a personal suggestion - maybe an in-class announcement about this might be more helpful...

22. Pub Quiz Then

Menu by mag3737 made available under Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.0 Generic License

Everyone is writing something about the pub quiz, including Sonja, so as a proud member of the high scorer group ( =) ), I thought I could utter a few words as well, this is the reason why this post is entitled "Pub Quiz Then".

First of all I really think we need more of this with or without a prize, it was helpful. Of course it's nice to have an extra increment bonus =)

I was almost sure that we were going to be asked "who wrote the article "why reality tv is good for us" because spelling counted and Poniewozik is probably the hardest name we saw in eng101, but that never happened :(

I also realized you had to show everything you know about the asked thing. When explaining what foreshadowing meant, I was so sure we were talking about literature that I couldn't think we had to indicate it as well. It was an "informative foreshadowing" for me maybe for the final essay - I'll try to explain everything related I know bit by bit =)

In short it was an "eglenelim & ogrenelim" kind of stuff that quiz, I enjoyed it. Süleyman Hurma rocks!

Congratulations to my teammates (yes, including Emir) and to the Çarşı team =)

PS: There's a group in Flickr called Pub Quiz! This "pub quiz" activity has to be really popular abroad!

21. The Ultimate Question

20. Error Connection

17/365 Pet Peeves by mrsruggle made available under Creative Commons Attribution- No Derivative Works 2.0 Generic License

By giving this assignment of error connection as a blog post, didn't Sonja store up some trouble, as now she'll feel she has to write a new post? =)

To talk about the image, I think "quick" is an adjective and "quickly" is an adverb. The cat can move in a double-quick time, or it can move quickly, or it can make quick movements. Et cetera =)

Anyway, I looked at the wrong sentences and tried to correct them...

• Firstly, it's not THE Jim Hawkins, it's Jim Hawkins.
  

• As far as I know, a person cannot be lack of self-confidence, I think it should be "he lacks self-confidence."

• The noun form of the word poor is poverty, not poorness.

• Success is a noun, not a verb. One can say "He couldn't succeed in being a man" or "he couldn't manage to be a man" alternatively.

• If you open the TV, you may be talking about its mechanics, I mean, for example if your TV gets broken down, you may open the TV to see what's wrong, know what I mean? (Sonja-style writing) So, if you want to watch TV, you turn it on.

• I don't know if I'll be able to express what I think but behave is a "one-dimensional" word. You cannot behave to someone, you can behave only on your own, or a person can behave on his/her own. Your behaviour can be "bad" sometimes, and when that happens, you behave yourself. You can treat someone badly.

• If you have a husband, it (hopefully) proves you are not a male =) It normally means that you are the wife of your husband, who's a male, and you yourself are a female, and in this case, since we are referring to Lessing or Tannen, it should be her husband. Sometimes we think of the person we're talking about when we use those words, since we know husband is male, we unfortunately tend to say his, him etc, but it then becomes French. For instance, regardless of your gender, if you're talking about your sister, you say ma sœur. ("ma" in French is the feminine version of "my" in English)
  

• People do not grow their children. They can grow a plant. Children grow up and gradually become adults, but they are raised, or they are brought up.

• You listen to somebody.

• Marie Winn can appear on a quiz show with the name "Dotto". She can also be present in a quiz show which is or was called "Dotto".

• Again as far as I know, there isn't a noun called wearing. There's an adjective called wearing that I know of, which means tiring, hard, etc. For instance working for the process essay for a long time can be wearing. I didn't clearly understand what was meant there but we can simply say "the things we wear" or stuff.

• One cannot talk about men with similar dresses. Those men can be dressing in a similar way (it is a verb here!). If you are a male, you can dress in white, for example, or you can dress your child, but hopefully you do not put on a dress! The noun dress is a clothing for women ( wimin=) ), it is elbise in Turkish, not kıyafet. Only to put more alternatives - you can talk about men with similar clothings.
  

If I made a mistake at any point, I am looking forward to learn about them! =)

19. Gender in Language

Zine Study XIV: [language] by Shawn Econo made available under Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.0 Generic License

Gender issues are not limited to social life and status. The languages we use hide a vast amount of masculine/feminine differences. Turkish and English are relatively more gender-neutral compared to French and German which have masculine and feminine articles and even nouns. I don't know whether the word blog is a male =) Anyway, I am more concerned with English (that's what I'm supposed to do!), which seem to be "uninterested" in this issue but it is not the case indeed. For instance, until a few years ago, there was a word called "spokesman". Nowadays especially with the work of feminists who claim that job isn't peculiar to men, the word has become "spokesperson". It is not the only word struggling to find its identity. Feminists are now endeavoring to change the word history (his story) to herstory, but that is exaggerating and exploiting the concept I think.
To think more generally, in older times (sometimes today as well) people used to think of "being man" as a value - that is, being a man meant being a righteous human being. This is a bit more masculine than needed, surely. Also, bear in mind that we still use the word "mankind" to talk about all human beings. So, the Mr. Mrs. Ms. Miss things that were talked about in Marked Woman were not the only possible examples to be given. It is widely used, although often without purpose.