Loud Words

Urban Art. 

Here is the link to our Documentary. 

Camila Pastrana
Manuela Rodriguez 
Beatriz Preciado 

Graffitis Done By: Juan David Sanchez 

Music: Asomate- Violadores del verso 
Fever- Death Grips

He Is a Professional Hooligan

Since we are little they try to teach us how bad alcohol is for the brain, and for your body. Nothing good comes out of being drunk, yet in Among the Thugs Mick is always “drunk with considerable speed”(26). Mick always drank “lager” he “continued to buy rounds, and the wad never seemed to diminish”(27).

I don’t know why he would want to be involved in that world. He is an American and he knows barely anything about football or the hooligans. “I wanted to meet a football thug, but to my untrained eye everyone around me looked like one”(19). Maybe it’s because I have never been involved with football that I don’t understand people’s passion. I don’t understand how someone would be willing to follow a group of hooligans, especially if it’s illegal.

But everyone does have passions. Of course if it were to be my favorite band I would do everything to go see them.

People dedicate their life’s to this sport, and they spend a lot of money everyday in contribution. He thought that Sammy was a “professional hooligan”(29). When he in fact was a “professional thief”(29).

When they get to England they start singing with so much pride: “Glory, glory, Man United”(43). I understand, because I have traveled outside my country that when you are elsewhere in the world the passion for your country heightens because you can feel the passion, and you feel the need to spread the love you have for your country. This is what the Hooligans are doing when they get to Turin.

I am curios to see what will happen next, because after a very hectic trip there is going to be something that will explode! Can't wait!

Don Juan the Trickster

High School Play: Don Juan 

Since October, Eugenia has been talking about the play non-stop. I went very eager to the play Don Juan because I really wanted to know what it was going to be about. I thought it was going to be some boring High School play, just like the ones I went to when I was in Paris. All serious. No laughing etc. This was nothing like it.

I went with my close friend Andressa, and we didn’t stop laughing, I don’t know if it was that we knew all the actors or just a mix of the situation.

Don Juan was full of rhetoric, the main character himself, was a genius with the ladies!

He definitely mastered the art of the greatest player! He made all of them fall in love with his charm. He was able to charm the ladies, and the audience.

I laughed hysterically in two parts of the play:

One, when the woman in the beach with the baby started shouting at Don Juan’s servant. And then, the baby was placed in a bucket and she was even more furious. She was able to show the audience he frustration and my reaction was to laugh.

The second time, of course, Eugenia. Don Juan’s mother, which clearly had a very strong character (Ethos) she was very religious. When she found out about everything that her son was doing she just flipped. She started shouting and there was nothing that could stop her. There we could see how her character reflected on the actions of his son, and how she was able to transmit that energy of anger/frustration to us.

Side note to self:

I attended the same performance as many of the teachers, including Mr. Viscardi who took pictures during the whole play and he was also laughing constantly. He worked in Mexico before, so to him it was also very familiar as it was to us, since we share a lot of different aspects from culture. Maybe not the accent, but the way of speaking and expressing ourselves. 

Among the Thugs

Among the Thugs by Bill Buford is an account of something that is very visible in soccer stadiums and venues every time there is a match. As I read the title I thought it was going to be about just simple thugs from the street but I had no Idea that the book and Buford himself were going to immerse me in the life and actions of soccer Hooligans.

 As I’m not a fanatic of the sport I don’t understand how it creates so much passion and emotion to the point of mayhem but as the book recounts this “thugs” take soccer and specially their city team as a thing of live and death. I have heard of this violence happening in stadiums in Colombia, even in Bogota where the matches between Santa Fe and Millonarios have already taken multiple lives.

  The reality is that these sporting events mean much more than just an entertainment to some people. They say that their soccer team is something they carry in their bloods, but I don’t understand how someone can be so addicted to a team.   Yet in the first few pages I get the feeling that to the guys Buford deals with the outcome of the game is not nearly as important as keeping their masculinity higher than the fans of the rival team. The real competition is not scoring goals but who beats up more fans than the other group.

  As I read the first few pages and understand what Buford is trying to do I feel a little uncomfortable with the savagery of these soccer fans that I feel don’t even care about the game more than what they care of getting the rival team’s fans a beating. Just by looking at the guy in the cover of the book pone can get a sense of the type of guys Buford deals with in his study.

  I am curious about if this book is just going to be the story of the Hooligans or is he trying to do something else more profound. How does soccer games create so much violence and how can people get so aggressive in a sporting event they aren’t event being part of? Is being part of a Hooligan firm similar to what people try to get from gangs? Acceptance and a sense of being backed up? These are some of the questions I get from reading the First few pages of the book.

Truman and Clutter

First of all, before I start writing about what I read, I want a point out a few things. The first thing I do when I get a book is look at the back part of it. I did. At first it looked like some boring old book, but then as I continued reading it got interesting by the second. It was only a matter of time I started flipping the pages to get to the “good stuff”.

Okay, so first book we read in class: a boy attempts to murder himself, second book I read: young girl tries to kill herself, third book: five people actually get murdered.

It starts off so well.

I was eager to read.

Second, I’d like to point out how Truman Capote dedicates his book to Harper Lee, she wrote one of the classics of all times, and one of my all time favorite books to read. To Kill a Mockingbird.

Now, let’s go to the book. Of course, the author starts describing Kansas like a place we should never go to.

It is just “out there”(3).

A building with the sign DANCE on it, “but the dancing has ceased”(4).

It makes us wonder what happened in this town to make it the way it is. No American could tell you where Holcomb is, until “one morning in 1959, had ever heard of Holcomb”(5).

“But”(5). Something disturbed that nights peacefulness. It was the sound of “four shotgun blasts that, all told, ended six human lives”(5).

It was the Clutter family. The head of the family, was the “most widley known citizen”(6).

In class we had already analyzed in a timed writing the first few pages of the book, and we were left in suspense, not knowing what in fact had happened in the book. We find out shortly after. But even if we know what it is that happened we have no apparent details of the situation.  We know something but in reality we know nothing.

Got until page 10 of the book. I can’t wait to continue reading. I like these types of books. I shall continue reading.

Let's GO, George Orwell!

Shooting an Elephant is an essay by George Orwell published on 1936. It is a story that is seen as a metaphor for British imperialism.

Every day I learn more and more about rhetoric, Heinrichs has taught me well. There are fallacies when you talk, in TV commercials, in speeches, and now I can say that there are fallacies in essays too. They weren’t easy too find, but that’s what is so interesting!

We never really find out who the protagonist of the story is, but it is said that it probably is George Orwell himself. Orwell is looking for us to sympathize with his story, what he did (woops, or the protagonist, the police officer).

I found two. 

Hasty generalization

“No one had the guts to raise a riot”

or

“As a police officer I was an obvious target and was baited whenever it seemed safe to do so.”

Here he generalizes and uses “no one” he is not sure that in fact no one will, he generalizes assuming he knows no one will, then he says that since he was a police officer he was an obvious target, but not all police officers were targets, that’s for sure.

 “I was only an absurd puppet pushed to and fro by the will of those yellow faces behind.”

Above, another example of a generalization because here they explain how they were making him shoot, he had an audience, and that there were a lot of eyes on him. He says everyone wants him to shoot, but not everyone does.

Tautology

“It seemed to me that it would be murder to shoot him.”

He repeats the premise. Of course if he shoots him, he will murder him. It is obvious that it doesn’t just seem to him it’s common sense. 

Winston Wins Fallacies

Sir Winston Churchill once said, “Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” This is not in the speech above, but is a clear example of fallacy of antecedent. Anyways, let’s get to the speech.

On march 18^th 1931 Winston Churchill gives his famous speech in Albert Hall, he talks about what exactly is British rule in India and to what extent is the duty of them in India.

Right now, I’ve read two very famous speeches and both seem to have the many questions fallacy, it seems to be a very popular technique in terms of rhetoric.

The first fallacies I spotted in his speech were the many questions. In about the fourth paragraph of his speech he starts asking a lot of questions which he doesn’t really give the answer to. He concludes something with a question to prove his previous conclusion. In this case he presents several questions in one single sentence.

He starts of with something more simple, in which the editors note says is an allusion to the great amount of people that filled the building that day.

“Is it not wonderful in these circumstances, with all this against us, that a few of us should manage to get together here in this hall to-night?”

Then he continues with many questions, “What spectacle could be more sorrowful than that of this powerful country casting away with both hands, and up till now almost by general acquiescence, the great inheritance which centuries have gathered? What spectacle could be more strange, more monstrous in its perversity, than to see the Viceroy and the high officials and agents of the Crown in India labouring with all their influence and authority to unite and weave together into a confederacy all the forces adverse and hostile to our rule in India?”

Notice how he starts both of his questions with “What spectacle could be more ‘sorrowful’ and the next one ‘strange’” was that alliteration?

“If you took the antagonisms of France and Germany, and the antagonisms of Catholics and Protestants, and compounded them and multiplied them ten-fold, you would not equal the division which separates these two races intermingled by scores of millions in the cities and plains of India.”

Why did he suddenly start talking about France and Germany and Catholics and Protestants, maybe to make a comparison which the audience could relate to, but also to use the Chewbacca defense, he did exactly that, he brought up and irrelevant issue to compare it to his.

He then heads towards the straw man technique very sneakily to avoid a very controversial topic, he starts a new topic instead of going further into the one he was in. He was able to dig out of that hole. “we cannot recognize their claim to the title-deeds of democracy.”