Next Week
Hi there,
I’ll be lecturing on June 3rd — and talking about your Final Exam, as well. There is nothing necessaryto prepare for that day except your feedback papers for the third panel discussion last Thursday.
We have one presentation left in our course! That’s this one:
June 5th: What Will Tomorrow Look Like? — The Fifth Element and Brazil
Sang Woon Hong, Sun Jun Choi, Yu-hwa Han, Minjoo Yu
Please make sure to see both those movies.
For June 10th, I ask that you watch the film Blade Runner — we’ll be looking at parts of the film in class, but not the whole thing. There’s a new director’s cut that supposedly is the best ever – I’m hoping we can see that one.
And for June 12th, we’ll be discussing the influence of science fiction — an important part of American popular culture, and my speciality — on general culture. In preparation for this, I’m going to ask you to watch Jon Ronson’s documentary Crazy Rulers, which is available on Google video:
Crazy Rulers is a bit long, but pretty weird and entertaining. Please make sure to set aside some time this week to see it, since next week you’ll be too busy with studying for exams!
UPDATE:
Oh no! The Jon Ronson videos seem to have gone offline. There are some small excerpts from them, though, available. Here are some short clips from the documentary: please watch these and I’ll give you a small bit of Ronson’s book to read if the files don’t come back online:
Two clips on the “First Earth Battalion” (1, 2)
And here is the text of the crazy First Earth Battalion handbook that is discussed in the documentary. Read it, but be careful not to lose your mind!