Re-evaluating Pan's Labyrinth

What argument is del Toro, the director of the critically acclaimed movie Pan's Labyrinth, trying to make with his part fantastical, part reality movie Pan's Labyrinth? Is he really trying to change our minds about what we perceive has real and fantasy, good and bad, right and wrong, obedience and disobedience? My previous argument about his movie was based on that very same assumption; that he was trying to rattle our cages and get us to think outside the box society has placed us in. But, as I look further into the movie, I wonder how I could have thought such a thing. His movie is purely an artistic expression, a form of entertainment. The world del Toro creates in Pan's Labyrinth is one that is black and white, and would never exist in reality, therefore it cannot be analyzed as an argument of any kind.

The messages about the inherent nature of the captain, Ofelia, Mercedes, and Ofelia's mother are painfully obvious: Ofelia, Mercedes and Ofelia's mother are all good and the captain is very bad. Ofelia hardly does ANYTHING wrong. Yes, she disobeys the faun by eating the fruit in the room with the pale man but she is immediately sorry. She takes no joy in disobeying like we expect a bad person to. Her disobedience isn't something that causes harm to anyone (the fairies being eaten don't count because they're alive in the end when she's being accepted as the princess of the Underworld). Mercedes does nothing wrong except inflict physical pain on the captain who is dubbed as the bad guy, therefore making him conceptually acceptable to hurt. Ofelia's mother does nothing wrong ever. The captain is evil inside and out. Everything he does exudes "bad guy". He kills innocent farmers, disregards his wife's health for that of his son's, and murders a young girl in cold blood. Nothing he does can be perceived as good because everything he does is for his own benefit; to uphold his ideal of perfection. There is no such thing as a real life version of these characters. That's not how the world works. Good people do awful things and bad people do good things.

For example, I have a friend in the army right now. His name is Dillon and he's overseas right now in Iraq fighting the war. Him and I video chat on Skype all the time. Like in a normal conversation, I used to ask, "Hey what'd you do today?" or "What are your plans for the day." Nine times out of ten, he couldn't definitively give me an answer. That made my mind wander. What was he doing? Dillon, this sweet, loving, passionate boy I met almost 5 years ago, could be killing people when he's not talking to me. Who are these people that he could be killing? They can't possibly all be bad enough to need death as a punishment. "Bad enough" for death doesn't even exist in my mind. I'm one of those people that doesn't believe in the death penalty or war of any kind or violence. What if those people have families to feed so they joined their country's army purely for money? Dillon is a good person but he is doing bad things.



That being said, obviously del Toro's world is a creation for entertainment and entertainment only. To try to use it as an argument to make people reevaluate their perception of good and evil, right and wrong, would be to assume his world is one that can be compared to the real world. If there is no way to compare the two, then there is no argument to be had.

Picture credits:
Army men - http://www.baseops.net/militarybooks/army_7.jpg

Purdue OWL Website

I love how tech savvy the world is. I remember when the original Gameboy came out and every kid wanted one. Then the first cell phone came out and every adult wanted one. Now, even the President is known as a tech savvy person. People sometimes complain about how technology is isolating people from each other but look at the good technology does. Without the Purdue website, there would be many students at a loss for what to do when they need help with their writing.

The website offers much more than I thought it would. Other OWL websites I remember seeing (back in the day when I needed to use one, which wasn't very often) weren't so varied in the resources they offered. Not only can you learn how to write using MLA format, which I'm sure most students go to this site to learn, you can learn how to write other useful things like a resume. I fear some college kids get lost in parties, socializing, and the immediate work they have to do instead of thinking about how their lessons will help them in the future. After college comes real life and a career. Learning how to write a resume is critical and it's awesome this website teaches you how.

My favorite part of the website is the link to learn how to write a creative piece. It's amazing to see that the site teaches about not only all the technical and academic pieces but the more imaginative ones too. I find that people forget they have imaginations after they've been shoved into the generic school system for the 12 or so years before college. We have to write about history, our goals, scientific experiments, classwork, etc all the time. When we finally get the chance to use our imaginations, sometiems even then we need a guide. The Purdue OWL website actually provides that guide.

I would certainly recommend this website to other GU students. This site teaches you how to write every important type of paper there is. It even teaches you the basic writing process! For those who need support, this site provides everything a writer would need. Each kind of paper is broken down and those broken down parts are explained in language that connects with the everyday person. There's no stuffy language to get tripped up on. That simple fact puts the whoever's trying to learn at ease because everything is laid out for them in a language they can understand.

Picture credits:
http://owl.english.purdue.edu/

Pan's Labryinth: My Impression

For some reason I had this movie confused with another movie that had to do with a girl talking to fairies and being a part of an imaginary world. So when I began the movie, I had the plot of that movie in my mind. That movie WAS a childrens movie. This movie definitely isn't. Wow is it intense. Almost everything in the movie can be picked apart and debated about. Everything has multiple meanings. Was it real or imaginary? Did good or bad win in the end? Is disobedience always the answer? What IS perfection and why do people strive for it?

Let me tell you one thing: I really, REALLY hate the captain. He brings all of the violence into the movie. Even from the very beginning, you can see he's a time bomb ready to explode when Ofelia's mother doesn't want to get into the wheelchair he provides for her. She was like, "No I want to walk" but he pretty much demands it when he says, "Please do it for me." And the second after, Ofelia goes to shake his hand with her left hand but he roughly grabs it and says, "It's the other hand Ofelia." How rude! She slips up just once and his idea of perfection makes him totally act like a jerk. Very soon after, the true beast in him comes out. I couldn't believe it when he smashed that man's face in with a bottle and shot the man's father. They were telling the truth about what they were doing in the woods but before truely searching for the right answer, he killed them! Totally unnecessary. Why does he think his idea of perfection is the right one and what in the world does he think he'll gain from striving for it? "Perfect" sounds very boring to me. I've always loved people's imperfections and mistakes. They make you who you are! Maybe I shouldn't hate him so much...I remember him saying he wanted his son to be born into a "new, clean Spain." Perhaps his intentions are all wrong. He thinks his actions are for the good of his son when really he's destroying his soul with all his killing. Can we blame him for trying to do what he thinks is right for his son?

Something that really hit me was the fact that, by the end, Ofelia is the princess of the underworld. The underworld isn't usually associated with innocent, good hearted people. The underworld is a place wretched souls go so why does Ofelia, the girl that sacrificed her LIFE for her newborn baby brother, become the princess of such a place? This is the place we're rooting for her to get to but it's suppposed to be a bad place. I'm sure Del Toro did this on purpose to make people think about the difference between good and bad. You would think that she'd rather stay on earth instead of becoming the princess of the underworld...and it's such a bright place too. When she gets there, she's wearing red and white, the king and queen are wearing bright colors, and it's very well lit. Whenever I think of the underworld, I think of a dark, dank place similar to the inside of a cave. Del Toro really thought of every last way to make us reshape our ideas of good and bad.

Del Toro also played with my idea of normalcy and convention in the small detail of the story Ofelia told her little brother while he was still in the womb. Her mother asked her to calm him down with a story and the story she came up with was one that I would never tell a child. She told him a story about a beautiful flower that couldn't be reached because it was surrounded by poisonous thorns. Because the flower was unreachable, it wilts and dies. What a sad story! Normally, this wouldn't be a story told to a young child because the child would either get sad or not understand what's really being sad. I think that Ofelia herself shouldn't understand that kind of sadness...

Oh and one small thing: I think it's interesting the tree that Ofelia's white flower grows on looks like the head of the Faun. The way the branches split off look like horns...

And I really think all of you guys should read this blog: http://www.overthinkingit.com/2008/09/10/fixing-pans-labyrinth/

Picture credits:

1st pic of a version of the movie cover
http://jackasscritics.com/images/movies/pans_labyrinth_01.jpg

Captain
http://www.ugo.com/movies/best-death-scenes/images/entries/pans-labyrinth.jpg

Ofelia
http://www.overthinkingit.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/pans-alice.jpg