Supplementary Material: Retreat from the Global (1 Viewer)

[McLake]

I am starting threads that will contain a definitive list of supplmentary material. Feel free to add to the list. NO QUESTION IN THIS THREAD PLEASE, only suggestions.

From now on all "what texts should I use?" threads will be DELETED.

Retreat from the Global Supplementary Material:

NB: This list is compiled from the posts below. There is no need to read throught this whole thread.

Novels

-- Ondaatje's
--- The English Patient
--- In the Skin of a Lion
-- Dirt Music (Tim Winton)
-- Life of Pi
-- 1984 (George Orwell)
-- The Heart is a Lonely Hunter (Carson McCullers)
-- Tomorrow When the War Began
-- Wake In fright (Kenneth Cook)
-- Heart of Darkness (Conrad)
-- Epic of Gilgamesh

Film
-- Fight Club
-- Erin Brockovitch
-- Empire Records
-- Basketball
-- Cold Fever (Icelandic movie i got off SBS, directed by Fridrik Thor Fridriksson)
-- Sophie's Chocie
-- Moonsoon Wedding
-- Brigadoon
-- The Matrix
-- The Beach
-- Minority Report
-- Nell
-- For Richer or Poorer
-- Shrek

Poetry
-- Henry Kendall
-- Lawson
-- Dorethea Mackellar
-- The Domesticity of Giraffes (Judith Beveridge)

TV
-- Seachange
-- Futurama: Futurestocks (http://www.geocities.com/theneutral...on4/3ACV21.html)
-- Northern Exposure
-- Always Greener
-- Worlds Apart (on ABC - take american families and put them in villiage communities in places like kenya, venuzwayla and papua new guinea)
-- Monarch of the Glen
-- OC Episode "The Escape" http://tvtome.com/tvtome/servlet/Gu...60/epid-257227/

Song
-- Imaginary (Evanescence)
-- Numb (Linkin Park)
-- Big Yellow Taxi (Joni Mitchell and/or Counting Crows featuring Vanessa Carlton)

Games
-- Harvest Moon (Game Boy Advance/Gamecube)


Articles:
--http://www.boredofstudies.org/community/showpost.php?p=907610&postcount=20
and the accompanying notes
http://www.boredofstudies.org/community/showpost.php?p=907610&postcount=22

--http://www.boredofstudies.org/community/showpost.php?p=924908&postcount=28
--"Locally speaking, Global is good" by Mario Vargas


Important Notes (care of ujuphleg)

• Pick texts which are late 20th century
• Make sure they are substantial enough to talk about a variety of themes and techniques to be linked with RFTG
• Stuff on critical theories/theorists are favoured by markers as they demonstrate "wide reading" EDIT: and as Ziff said, they fit in with the criteria of 'ways of thinking'
• Make sure you have TWO related texts of your own choosing!!
• If possible pick texts which are different, original and a little unique but make sure you can link them!!
• Don't use the same texts as a group/class and discuss it in the same way because it makes the markers think you have been spoon fed and thus, not an OWN related text of YOUR OWN choosing.

 

[ujuphleg]

Dirt Music by Tim Winton
Seachange
poetry by Henry Kendall, Lawson or Dorethea Mackellar
will think of more and post here

 

[Ziff]

Futurestocks (Season 4 Episode 9?) of Futurama.

 

[ujuphleg]

Dirt Music is a novel. although there is a CD of music to go with it though too...

also with Retreat, I've found that its easy to relate a lot of Australian things to it (ie, like Dirt Music etc.) but taking into consideration that the prescribed texts are American, people should pick texts which are on a variety of things.

Finally, the notes from the Marking Centre state on page 7...
"For the "Retreat From The Global" elective, many candidates appeared confused over the relevant historical period and made poor selections of 'other' texts (and) as a consequence, limited the scope of their responses."

page 15 with specific regards to this module (but i'm talking here only about Retreat)...

"Critical theories and theorists were well used in the better responses in supporting candidates arguments..."

This stuff on Critical theories and theorists are referring to things lik Fukuyama (the Japanese dude who accepted globalisation) but due to the nature of this elective, it isn't difficult to find stuff which can be very unique as globalisation is all the hot topic at the moment.

page 15 as well...

"The selection of texts of their own choosing affected the quality of responses...a large number of candidates either ignored or wandered away from the 'particular historical period' they should have been focusing on as referred to in the syllabus rubric for this module....those studying 'Retreat from the Global' need to show and understanding of the late 20th century and discuss texts within that particular context."

another very important point on that same page:

"The better candidates were able to draw on a range and variety of texts and provided a fresher, more original and individual response to the question....However... many candidates referred to only one text of their own choosing.... There were also a number of centres where all the candidates not only used the same texts 'of their own choosing' but discussed them using identical phraseology."

and finally on page 17 with specific disucussion about 'Retreat' was:

"The selection of texts of their own choosing was alsot a factor which affected the quality of responses to this question. Again this year, some candidates chose to use, for example, brief magazine or newspaper articles (sourced as late as 5th November).... which were often not complex or susbstantial enough to develop a strong argument or effectively discuss the composers techniques."

In summing up guys:

• Pick texts which are of late 20th Century
• Make sure they are susbstantial enough to talk about a variety of themes and techniques to be linked with Retreat from the Global
• Stuff on critical theories/theorists are favoured by the markers EDIT: because as Ziff said, they fit in with the criteria of 'ways of thinking'
• Make sure you have TWO texts of your own choosing!!!
• If possible, pick texts which are different, original and a little unique but make sure you can link them!!
• Don't all use the same texts of your own choosing and discuss it in the same way.

Hope this helps!!

 

[Ziff]

Just a note about that, the use of "critical theories" and the theorists satisfies the criteria in the syllabus about "ways of thinking" and "paradigms". This is probably why it's a good idea to include them.

 

[ujuphleg]

http://www.geocities.com/theneutralplanet/transcripts/season4/3ACV21.html

thats a site on that Futurama epidsode

fight club is a good film for RFTG as is Erin Brokovitch

and heres a quote from the other RFTG thread which i shall attribute to Gregor Samsa...:

"I haven't read any of his works, but Heidigger was a 20th century phenomenological (Philosophy of experience) thinker..

As for Fukuyama, he's most famous for 'The End Of History And The Last Man', a text in which he attempts to 'prove' that through capitalist, liberal democracies, history in the sense of societal transformation has reached it's final stage. It's actually a synthesis of Hegelian dialectics (A logical progression within which a governing system or principle is discarded when a fatal internal contradiction is revealed, progressing until a system without any contradiction is created..) and concepts such as the logos [I believe Fukuyama uses a Platonic division of the soul to explain 'progress'..). Has been about eight months since I've read it though...

He loses points with me for being quite the ardent 'expansionist'. (Was heavily in favour of war in Iraq, and I believe he's associated with right-wing think tanks such as 'Project For A New American Century'..). Not sure how he relates to Retreat From The Global though, unless it's because he believes that the only political 'progress' that will be made is in those countries which aren't capitalist, liberal democracies towards that system [I believe it's quite close-minded to think that all progress is at an end.. To make a glib comparison, many people under Feudalism would have seen no better system imaginable), and that as such, 'history' will become without grand events, thus resulting in humanity attempting to define themselves in existence, thereby retreating from the 'global' concept [I like the definition of 'Global' as a Modernist conception] into the personal..."

So theres some stuff on theories/theorists for you

 

[glycerine]

hey, I don't do this elective, but my mum teaches it and here's some of the stuff she's used:

Northern Exposure (tv show)


these are speeches she has bookmarked so I assume you can use them, I haven't read them myself tho so I take no responsibility for their validity!

http://www.petergarrett.com.au/speeches_behindclosed.html
http://www.petergarrett.com.au/speeches_fort.html

 

[Komaticom]

Harvest Moon (Game Boy Advance). You can't get more unique than that.

 

[Tredanse]

One of the best I've come across is the short film "The Belfast Boys", which is available on that free Tropfest 2004 DVD that came with the Sun Herald a few months ago.

It relates very well to Heaney's poetry, as it's about political unrest in Northern Ireland.

Basically, a Protestant man is in love with a Catholic woman, and neither of their families can know. They meet at a bar where she tells him she's pregnant, and plan to run away (IE retreat) ...

But in the end the Protestant man's older brother (an Ulster Volunteer Force terrorist) bursts into the bar and shoots everyone, unaware that his younger brother is there.

It fit well with an assessment task I wrote using the essay stimulus "Global society threatens to overwhelm and destroy those who inhabit it."

I cant remember the director, sorry... write to the Sun Herald, they may still have copies of the DVD. Th movie runs for about 8 minutes.

 

[Komaticom]

Potential text?
Letter to the editor. SMH:

[EDIT: This is an actual word-for-word transcription. Thus it is a valid additional text.]
IMPLICATIONS OF TRADE MISUNDERSTOOD

Mark Vaile appears not to understand the implications of the trade deal he negotiated with the US (Letters, June 30). He insists: "There is nothing in the FTA which will undermine Australia's ability to continue to nurture our culture, or ensure that Australian stories and voices are available on both existing and new forms of media." This is not true.

New media- an area growing exponentially and which in years to come may account for our greatest access to programming - has no local contact protection. There is, though, a clause that Mr Vaile has negotiated that suggests that in the future if there is little or no access to Australian culture via new media, the Government only then can raise this with the US and only then ask if it is willing to negotiate any increase. I think I know what the response would be.

As an actor who has been extremely fortunate to work in both the US and Australia, I am not anti-American. I am, however, pro-Australia.

American programming on pay TV in the US accounts for 98 per cent. Australian programming, by contrast, on Australian pay TV accounts for 3 per cent. Mark Vaile suggests under the free trade agreement an Australian government could potentially double expenditure quotas for Australian drama stations. There is no provision for this expenditure to be spent on new Australian programs. Quite simply, the money may be used to buy and screen programs already seen or to be seen on free-to-air TV.

The free trade agreement is a win-win for the US and will pass with flying patriotic colours through the US Senate. The Australian Government tells us the free trade agreement is good for Australian culture. It is not.

David Wenham
Sydney, Jun 30
SMH

 

[ryan011086]

more texts

related texts i have got are:

'The Domesticity of Giraffes' by Judith Beveridge (local forced into the global) - (poem)

'Cold Fever' - Icelandic movie i got off SBS, directed by Fridrik Thor Fridriksson (good luck finding it...but it is a FANTASTIC text to use, if u can get it use it, it has sooooooooooo much stuff its not funny)

'Imaginary' - song by Evanescence, retreat into self from the chaos of the outside world

'Basketball' - Movie

'Always Greener' - TV series

'1984' - novel by george orwell

'Empire Records' - movie

'Life of Pi' - novel (i love this book)

'Dirt Music' - Novel

and just one other thing, i do not beleive that all of the related texts need to be from the late 20th century, i mean look at Heany, he is not late 20th centuary and yet he is one of the core texts we study

n e way, hope u all find ur stuff

 

[Lindy]

RFTG Related Suggestions

I'm using the following rm its pretty full of stuff for RFTG and its easy to get a hold of as well
- The Heart is a lonely hunter [Novel - Carson McCullers]
- Sophie's Chocie [Film - Meryl Streep is in it]

 

[ryan011086]

another poem

another one is the poem entitled 'the domesticity of giraffes' by judith beveridge

 

[ryan011086]

just thought of some more stuff

moonsoon wedding - movie

worlds apart - tv series on ABC (take american families and put them in villiage communities in places like kenya, venuzwayla and papua new guinea)

brigadoon - movie

the matrix - movie

the beach - movie

minority report - movie

tomorrow when the war began - novel

monarch of the glen - tv series

Nell - movie

thats all i can think of at the moment, ill get some more when i can find the list my old teacher gave to us b4 she left. we have had 5 teachers for eng ext 1, and the one we have now has no idea. it so sux. well n e way, i hope these are of some help

ryan011086

 

[Atticus.]

animatrix

has anyone seen the animatrix? the second renaisannce? or program?
do u reckon thats a good one to use as a retreat from the global text and does anyone have any stuff on it?

 

[glitterfairy]

I read in an article that Ondaatje's books are good to use. These include English Patient and In the Skin of a Lion.

I know that ITSOAL is on the prescribed list for Adv English - Writing between the Margins - which I also study, but theoretically, we should be able to use it. There's a lot in there that's not only concerned with marginalised migrants, but also political as well - which everybody loves.

Another text is Conrad's "Heart of Darkness". And possibly, even "My Place" - Sally Morgan. Theoretically both should be able to be used, unless something states that we're not allowed to use prescribed texts from other modules Eng Adv/AOS (I haven't looked over any "Rules" so i'm blatantly ignorant of anything I'm not allowed to do).

I know that it's been said that we should use texts from the late 20th century but studying RFTG from a post-colonial perspective is just as important as studying it from a colonial perspective. I've used - and my friends have used - colonial texts such as Heart of Darkness, which has been encouraged by our teacher - Mr Eldridge - who wrote the darn module in the first place. (We're also encouraged to quote him in our essays, but no-one's done that... yet)

Summary of texts listed above and others off top of my head:

"Numb" (song) Linkin Park
"Big Yellow Taxi" (song) - Joni Mitchell and/or Counting Crows featuring Vanessa Carlton
"Heart of Darkness" - Conrad
"My Place" - Sally Morgan
"English Patient" - Ondaatje
"In the Skin of a Lion" - Ondaatje
"Epic of Gilgamesh" - goodness knows

 

[Atotoi]

"Wake In fright" - by kenneth cook

ABout a city teacher who is sent to the bush to work and then loses all of his money and dignity.
the movie is even more disturbing..

 

[McLake]

I know that ITSOAL is on the prescribed list for Adv English - Writing between the Margins - which I also study, but theoretically, we should be able to use it. There's a lot in there that's not only concerned with marginalised migrants, but also political as well - which everybody loves.

Another text is Conrad's "Heart of Darkness". And possibly, even "My Place" - Sally Morgan. Theoretically both should be able to be used, unless something states that we're not allowed to use prescribed texts from other modules Eng Adv/AOS (I haven't looked over

Do not use ANY text on the prescribed Adv list, as far as the examiner knows, you studied that text, and so it does not look good to use it.

 

[glitterfairy]

Hmm. Dunno -

I asked my teacher (good old Mr Eldridge) and he said it was fine to use any of Ondaatje's work, including ITSOAL and English Patient.

But hey, to each there own - there are pros and cons to using anything. If you don't feel comfortable doing someone someone else is, then it's all good

 

[Komaticom]

Here's a potential RFTG text I found in the Daily Telegraph: (the article is copied WORD FOR WORD from the newspaper.)

Daily Telegraph, 6 Oct,04
Style File
“Requiem For A Pipe Dream” - Bianca Dye ("presenter for Nova 96.9")

Heading home in a taxi on a rainy Friday afternoon, mobile phone in one hand, Palm Pilot in the other, I was making appointments for a week that hadn’t yet begun while dreaming of the quiet life in a sleepy town by the sea.

It does have a cosy feel about it doesn’t it? I love this city, and everything it has to offer and as a big city girl I’m the first to be right amongst it. However lately, I have to admit, there are times when the “quiet life” doesn’t seem so much like the “isolation” I’ve always dreaded but more like the solitude and relaxation that I strive so hard to achieve in my yoga class. My heart palpitates and my chest gets tight and I sit back and wonder if it’s all worth it. When I mention this to a few friends I am surprised at the number of people who suffer from this anxiety too but just keep quiet about it.

We are living in a highly stressful time. Work hours have become longer in the pursuit for success. Careers and high goals are the order of the day and down time is harder to come by.

To unwind we go to drinks after work or hit the gym and lately, for me, spend an hour surrounded by other stressed professionals trying to relax. The very fit and chilled instructor tries to make me forget about last week while I’m secretly thinking about this week, next week and the week after and also trying to succumb to my ancient Indian relaxation techniques.

Breathe girl, breathe.

Holidays are just not enough anymore. How many times have we heard a work mate say “by the time I started to relax, it was time to come back”. Sound familiar? So what are the options? Pack up the car and find your own version of the ABC’s Seachange? Actually, yes.

It’s comforting to know I’m not alone in wanting to shun the crazy city life. Australian Bureau of Statistics figures reveal that some 40 000 people left the big smoke in 2001 for a new life in regional and coastal NSW. The trend has continued in the last two years.

Droves of city people everywhere are packing up their life in the family sedan and heading up or down the coast or inland on their own personal quest for the “simple life” (although perhaps not Paris Hilton style).

Whether it’s the search for a long-lost sanity or a return to old-world family values, it’s a trend that has gained popularity and as I’m still sitting in stinky, peak hour traffic I’m not surprised. We dream of a calmer life but city life is like a drug isn’t it?

I can’t help but think that for better or worse I’m addicted to his pace of life. I actually thrive on the buzz this city generates and for now I couldn’t even contemplate being away from it.

Speak to me in a year. I may just have moved to a farm in Byron Bay. Or at this rate, I may still be sitting in this damn taxi.
-------------------------------------- (end of article)
If someone gives me a positive rep point I'll post all my RFTG notes on this article.