Monthly Archives: September 2016

Bing (HUM415)

Judge Hope: Speak!

Bing: I haven’t got a speech, I didn’t plan words, I didn’t even try to. I just knew that I had to get here, to stand here and I knew I wanted you to listen; to really listen, not just pull a face like you’re listening, like you do the rest of the time. A face like you’re feeling instead of processing. You pull a face and poke it towards the stage and la-di-da we sing and dance and tumble around and all you see up here, it’s not people, you don’t see people up here, it’s all fodder. And the faker the fodder is the more you love it because fake fodder’s the only thing that works anymore, fake fodder is all that we can stomach — actually not quite all. Real pain, real viciousness, that we can take. Yeah, stick a fat man up a pole and we’ll laugh ourselves feral cause we’ve earned the right, we’ve done cell time and he’s slacking the scum so ha ha ha at him. Cause we’re so out of our minds with desperation we don’t know any better. All we know is fake fodder and buying shit. That’s how we speak to each other, how we express ourselves is buying shit. I have a dream? The peak of our dreams is a new hat for our doppel, a hat that doesn’t exist. It’s not even there, we buy shit that’s not even there. Show us something real and free and beautiful, you couldn’t. It’d break us, we’re too numb for it, our minds would choke. There’s only so much wonder we can bear, that’s why when you find any wonder whatsoever you dole it out in meager portions, and only then til it’s augmented and packaged and pumped through ten thousand pre-assigned filters, til it’s nothing more than a meaningless series of lights, while we ride day-in, day-out — going where? Powering what? All tiny cells in tiny screens and bigger cells in bigger screensand fuck you. Fuck you, that’s what it boils down to is fuck you.Fuck you for sitting there and slowly knitting things worse. Fuck you and your spotlight and your sanctimonious faces and fuck you all, for taking the one thing I ever came close to anything real about anything. For oozing around it and crushing it into a bone, into a joke, one more ugly joke in a kingdom of millions and then fuck you. Fuck you for happening. Fuck you for me, for us, for everyone, fuck you…

From http://genius.com/Charlie-brooker-bings-speech-lyrics

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Due 9/22 (HUM220)

Typewritten. 1.5-2 pages double spaced. Complete sentences. Use your own language. Name/date/course#. Due Thursday 9/22.

Select a substantial passage from Celebrated Cases of Judge Dee that you can argue provides a telling insight into the social context of China. Examine the passage carefully and attempt to extrapolate to a more general insight about Chinese society– i.e., what social, political, cultural, economic truth or circumstance does the passage imply/suggest/invoke/avoid? Which specific formal elements such as character, image, dialog, setting, or action does the passage employ? How does it do so? Finally, how does the passage relate to the novel as a whole?

Your Prompt (HUM415)

Typewritten. 1.5-2 pages double spaced. Complete sentences. Use your own language. Name/date/course#. Due Thursday 9/22. You can call this ICW3.

Select a substantial passage from HTGFRIRA that you can argue either provides a telling insight into the contemporary world or misses the mark in this regard. Examine the passage and attempt to extrapolate to a more general insight about “society”– i.e., what social, political, cultural, economic truth or circumstance does the passage imply/suggest/invoke/avoid? Which specific formal elements such as character, image, dialog, setting, or action does the passage employ? How does it do so? Finally, how does the passage relate to the novel as a whole?