A Movie Review about Women's Rights

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Hello Megan,
Thank you very much for your detailed explanation of our questions! After reading your explanation and guidance, we understand what you mean and how to change our article. Indeed, as you said, the tone in a film is an important tool for rendering the atmosphere and side expression of the character's inner world. The cold tone in And the Spring Comes shows Wang Cailin's inner entanglement and despair and the Mona Lisa Smile shows the American retro tone in the whole film, which has the traditional characteristics of the United States in the 1950s, it places viewers in the traditional atmosphere and Catherine's behaviour in the later episodes happens to conflict with the "tradition" expressed by the tone, expressing the protagonist's strong desire to break tradition and yearn for equality between men and women. Your suggestion gives us a good inspiration! We will continue to revise the article on this basis. In addition, we have a small question for your advice. Some of our paragraphs are too long and difficult to read, but separating the paragraphs may seem messy. Do you have any good suggestions?
Look forward to your reply!(*•̀ᴗ•́*)
Guo/Liang

[mnc5223]

Hi Guo and Liang,

I'm happy to receive your reply. I agree that paragraphs can be lengthy but breaking them up might be confusing. My advice would be to cut back on any non-essential information. I do this in my own writing. I ask myself "does the reader need this information to understand my point, or would they understand my point if this information wasn't in the essay?" Most of the time, you will find some unnecessary sentences that can be deleted.

Also, headings might be helpful in your essay. It will help the reader stay organized when reading each section and you may feel more comfortable breaking up paragraphs if you decide to include headings.

These would be my suggestions, I'm not sure if they are the most helpful, but they are the things I would personally do if this was my essay. It may just take some time to see what works best for your essay.

Megan

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Hi,Megan,
Thank you for your advice!
We will consider the suggestion you mentioned and use subheadings to divide long paragraphs. Subheadings can also give readers some reading tips while dividing paragraphs. And we will read our articles again, reduce the semantic repetition of sentences, and shorten the length of paragraphs without changing the general idea.
You mentioned that you would think from your point of view when giving us advice. In fact, this is what we think of as the meaning of transoceanic interaction-mutual promotion and mutual improvement. There is an old saying: fresh eye never hurts. Because the author is not so aware of the shortcomings of his own article, but the readers see it very clearly and can provide effective feedback.
And we all agree that you are a good partner who can give effective feedback. From our many exchanges, we can feel your strong writing skills and unique perspective.
Thanks again for your advice!
Guo/Liang

[1528156245]

Dear Guo，Liang,
Thank you for the messages. We will answer your questions.Yes, as you said, for those people who haven't seen the movie, the plot of Catherine and Betty's third quarrel is really necessary. We think it may help you to simplify the paragraph by changing the complex sentence pattern into simple sentence. But will this make you unable to express your thoughts completely? As you said, highlighting the key sentences may have effect. If you have any problems, you can let us know at any time.
Cao Biqin
Li Boxin

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Hi, Cao and Li,
We are glad to hear from you.!
We have also considered the problem that changing complex sentences to simple sentences will change the original meaning, and we will carefully consider it before we find a solution. Thank you again.
In the communication with other students, she mentioned that the use of subheadings to divide long paragraphs can not only reduce reading difficulties, but also make the content of the article clear at a glance. We all agree that this is a good idea! We would like to ask your opinion on this!
Look forward to hearing from you.
Guo/Liang

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Revised Essay:

A Movie Review about Women's Rights
The film "Mona Lisa Smile" depicts the United States in 1953, when times are changing. Katherine, who graduated from the open-minded University of Berkeley, went to Wesleyan Girls' School to teach art history. She has revolutionary leading consciousness and is full of ideals and enthusiasm, boldly challenging the outdated teaching system to change a group of extremely smart female students who take marriage as their ultimate career. The film "And the Spring Comes" tells us that Wang Cailing, who is as an art suitor, constantly suffered setbacks and blows from reality on the road of pursuing her ideal, and finally had to succumb to the cruelty of reality.

These two films are both about dream and reality, exaggerated as heaven and hell. Surprisingly, the two heroines in the film are both revelers with feminist temperament. They all give us a perfect presentation of one person's war. The role orientation of women has always been the focus of attention, and female's pursuit of freedom and equality is a timeless topic.

The film "Mona Lisa Smile" reflects the consciousness of female's pursuit of self-consciousness and value on the eve of the American sexual liberation movement. In Wesley, a girls' school known as "ivy without men", their education spreads to students the idea that "women should serve men" and defines students' future marriage as the standard of educational success. Like Betty, a loyal defender of traditional etiquette in the film. Her goal is to get married and become a housewife.In fact, she was suffering from marriage. When she poured everything into her husband, the flirtatious husband soon had a third party. In the face of betrayal and her mother's education to stick to her womanhood, Betty chose silence and forbearance at first, but in the end she was the first female in a group of students to break through the old tradition.

"And the Spring Comes" shows the awakening of early Chinese female's self-consciousness. After repeated failures in love, Wang Cailing realized that "they (married women) all seem to be used as mirrors" and became the winner who rushed out of the "iron house". She broke through this limitation, got rid of her masculinity and married herself. For thousands of years, women have always been a vulnerable group deprived of the right to speak, and their fate is dominated by men in the patriarchal society, no matter who can escape this fate. So we think Katherine and Wang Cailing have given the most firm answer whether to yield or resist.

The excellence of these two films lies not only in the interpretation of feminism, but also in some well-designed artistic techniques worthy of attention. Firstly, in terms of light, the film as a whole has chosen dim light, showing a deep atmosphere of anxiety and helplessness and predicting that Wang Cailing was obsessed with her dream and finally defeated by the cruelty of reality and ended in failure. However, some of them chose softer light. For example, the scene in which Wang Cailing played bubbles with her adopted daughter Xiao Fan was a soft orange light, which seemed to indicate that this would be the beginning of Wang's new definition of life. Although this is not a perfect ending, Wang Cailing strived for the maximum of her women's rights, and it can be said that she has been successful at that time. Additionally, in the use of the film music, it fully reflects the narrative requirements of the story, and uses more slow and quiet music to make the music coincide with the tone of the film, the narrative tone of the long shot and the rhythm of the editing. Moreover, many lyrics and melodies of the opera also seize the opportunity to set off the theme and mood. Therefore, this film is a work with excellent ideological and artistic quality, which is worth digging and savoring carefully.

However, “Mona Lisa Smile” is good at hinting and contrasting with the plot, and shows its language art with the confrontation between Katherine and Betty. For example, the first confrontation : Katherine showed her students a work of art that was not part of the syllabus and asked her students to express their views. The dialogue between Katherine and Betty was actually a battle between modern and traditional. This conflict defined the positioning of the two characters for the first time, and also laid the groundwork for the promotion of the later plot. The second confrontation: married Betty took the class for the first time after missing many classes. A large number of parallelism sentence patterns push the conflict between the two to a new and most exciting part. In this conversation, Katherine conveys a dissatisfaction with the tradition that Betty adheres to, and Betty firmly conveys an unchallenged arrogance of authority.The third confrontation: the students make an exception to invite Katherine to join their secret group. Betty believed that Katherine interfered with Joan's choice, but in fact Betty kidnapped Joan in a traditional, ostensibly good manner for Joan and thought that any deviation is incorrect, which is the bondage of the traditional old thought. However, Katherine opened Joan's world view of looking at problems from multiple angles, but how to choose still needs to be decided by Joan, which is a kind of liberation brought by new ideas. Through these dialogues, the ideas conveyed by the film unwittingly permeate the audience’s consciousness. Sometimes, a good film does not necessarily need ups and downs of the plot or the character expression, like the film, the language seems te be more memorable.

It is often said that a good film should not only have a different artistic approach, but also have a theme that is deeply rooted in the hearts of the people. In our opinion,"And the Spring Comes"and “Mona Lisa Smile” precisely meet this standard. The unique use of color contrast, the ease of switching between long and short shots, and the ingenious setting of the plot are the professional techniques carefully designed by the director everywhere. Both films show the awakening and contradiction of self-consciousness and the struggle against the traditional vision. The protagonists are all female characters with distinct personalities. There is no need to discuss the final outcome, because their struggle process has shown the light that belongs to them, although short but also dazzling. We think these are what the films bring to us—the professional techniques hidden behind the screen and the life thinking behind each protagonist.

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Reflection
We all agree that this is a good learning opportunity!
Through this transoceanic interactive activity, first of all, we can communicate with native speakers. This activity shortens the gap between us and American students, so we all cherish and attach importance to it! Secondly, it is because of the communication with native students that we can feel more authentic English expressions compared with our stiff English. This is of great help to our study. From some words and sentence patterns, we can see that American students pay more attention to whether the language is fluent and the meaning is clear, while we pay more attention to whether the sentence patterns are complex and diverse. Also, in the exchange, we all made suggestions to each other in order to make the article better. American students have seen a lot of shortcomings in our article and put forward practical suggestions. This is a learning process.
We feel that this communication process is the exchange and collision of two cultures. Based on different cultural backgrounds, our ways of thinking are also different. So when we talk about the same thing, there are a lot of new discoveries. Just like Yi and Li in Confucian culture mentioned by Megan in her article, and the Chinese food culture written by Heidi in her article. We do not live under the same background, but we are curious about different cultures, and we are willing to understand the bright culture under some cultural symbols. And this is the meaning of exchange activity, with the film review as a microcosm to talk about the culture we are familiar with and understand the culture we are interested in.
In the end, we’d like to say that our American partners are good partner to give effective feedback. And we hope we can communicate more and promote each other in the future.
Thanks again for their advice！