Hannah's HON 255 Blog

      I thoroughly enjoyed watching Blade Runner, and I thought it was really interesting how the movie revolved so much around the significance and symbolism of one's eyes. The opening scene depicts an eyeball with a reflection of a city on fire. I think that focussing on an eye in the opening scene introduces the importance of eyes throughout the film and alerts the audience to pay close attention to eyes throughout the movie. I interpreted the burning city in the reflection as a "look" into the future of the city. The city is already shown as dark and majorly polluted, if the industrialization of the city and robots were to continue then life as the characters knew it would change right before their eyes. This stresses the importance of stopping the Replicants from inhabiting Earth and that danger is on the horizon. This scene opens up the use of symbolism through the eyes that is utilized throughout the movie to represent identity, perception, and is the main fac...

      2001: A Space Odyssey illustrates the evolution of mankind using the monolith as the catalyst of progression. In the beginning of the film, apes are living amongst other animals near a watering hole. One day, they wake up to a black monolith and they all gathered around and touched it. Shortly after, the apes gained the intelligence to start using bones as tools and weapons. Interacting with the monolith helped the apes progress as a society, thus beginning the advancement of the human race and human intelligence. Although this evolution is seemingly good and helps progress the society, Kubrick also highlights the violence that the apes are capable of and how the apes began hurting each other after they started using animal bones in their lives. I noted this as some sort of warning that Kubrick was trying to relay that violence is human nature and the advancement of technology can bring that violence out in people.   ...

     "Pop Squad" was my favorite episode that we watched from Love, Death, and Robots because the premise of the  episode is incredibly fascinating to me. This short was created by Jennifer Yuh Nelson and is based off the short story by Paolo Bacigalupi. The separation of classes is illustrated by the wealthy literally living above the clouds on top of the lower class, where they are left to live in the nearly uninhabitable part of the world underneath the wealthy city. The different perspectives of life also highlight how different the two classes are. The wealthy are willing to give up having kids and hunt down any "breeders" of unregistered children in order for themselves to live forever. I believe the wealthy realize that by living forever and not allowing more people joining the society, they have frozen society and will stay rich forever.       The episode opens with Briggs eliminating two unregistered children, but he is followed by the me...

I thoroughly enjoyed watching Metropolis and analyzing the religious symbols, as well as the historical context, that is utilized to make a social commentary on how technology can further separate classes, age groups, and society as a whole. The fact that the robot's name was Hel is conveying a message of how artificial intelligence can be manipulated to spread evil. Maria was the character foil to Hel, she was an angelic character who glowed, wore light clothing, and was surrounded by crosses and candles. When Hel took on Maria's form, it deepened the contrast between these two characters because we are now seeing Maria in two different forms. We see the angelic Maria that preaches peace to the workers and protects children, and we see the Hel version of Maria who is incredibly lustful and encourages violence. I believe this contrast is very important in highlighting one of the main messages being communicated throughout the film; how advanced technology corrupts an...