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If We Can’t Always Defeat the Destiny
– My Critique of Mona Lisa Smile and And the Spring Comes

180102 孙祯 Zhen Sun

To be or not to be, that is the question. When striving to realize your ideal, you may feel you can’t break off the dilemmas which you have begun fighting against in your destiny. Which alternative, to keep on or to give up, would you make? The movies Mona Lisa Smile and And the Spring Comes give us a valuable answer.

The confrontation between ideals and real life is a theme in both movies. In Mona Lisa Smile, Miss Catherine Watson tried her best to defeat the obstacle of breaking the shackles of the girl students’ thought in Wellesley college. And in And the Spring Comes, Wang Cailing dreamed of working as a soprano in Beijing and refused to marry a common man without artistic talent. However, after too many unforeseen events, she adopted a girl and made a commoner living, though she still didn’t lose her original dream.

Differently, I felt warm, relaxed and inspired when I was watching the former movie, which actually talked about a serious topic in modern age while I felt oppressive when I was watching the latter one.

As independent films, they are attractive both in their social-historical backgrounds and their genres of films. Their aspects are worth being contrasted.

In the two films, their stories happened in the last century and focused on social problems at that time. Mona Lisa Smile, a story in 1950s, was based on the issue of women’s rights and interests in American society. At that time, Western woman had just begun to pursue their own rights and interests, but in the upper class, woman’s minds were still in the limelight. As a woman, you had to accept your marriage like Jane rather than applying to Yale; you had to accept the university’s so-called indecent warning to you as Watson did and just a few people would support you; and you even had to accept the concept that it was enough to be a housewife for a woman like Betty rather than pursuing other dreams. Even now, this social and historical problem is also a controversial issue.

Different from this movie, And the Spring Comes focus on an easily overlooked part of the social history. It was based on the last 80s, the time some parts of China were trying to turn to environment of market economy while lots of the regions were still in that of planned economy. In those small towns, not only did people like Huang Sibao who didn’t have enough art ability to enter any academy of fine arts, but also people like Wang Cailing who was obstructed by her household registration to become a soprano in Beijing, although she was talented. Just like the words Gao Beibei had said to Wang Cailing as an apology, “… but we came from the small towns. How can we get the assess to win in Beijing? That’s too difficult.”, in the age of inequality of opportunity, it is difficult for people to become successful who come from conservative districts.

Both of the movies have shown the same idea that you would better not give up at the beginning when you meet with those intractable problems in your destiny. Why not fight for yourself in this hard time?

However, based on different historical background, they focus on different kinds of social and historic problems, linking to different film genres.

Obviously, the former is a feminist film. It stands on the angle of a woman to break the social bias against women. But the latter is a realistic film, reflecting the pain and helplessness of a commoner’s struggle for his or her dream.

The protagonist setting in the former movie is more idealized – Miss Watson never had been of no assistance when she met the dilemmas and she always stood up immediately after being hit down. She even had the choice to leave this college whenever she wanted to earn her living in Europe! However, Wang Cailing didn’t have too much choice in her life just like other commoners in the society such as the jobs, the neighborhoods and even the help she could gain when she was in the dilemmas. The former protagonist setting gave the audience more sense of hope since it had mounts of idealized parts of life. But the latter, more common with an ordinary person, would give audience more rational considerations on themselves.

Under the comparison of their genres of the films, the use of lighting deserves discussion. The light in Mona Lisa Smile is soft and bright at the most of the time, while the light in And the Spring Comes is either dim or highly contrasted with the shadows. Since Watson attended the opening ceremony in the paeans, the whole hall looked roomy and made the film viewers feel free. The shadow in the view was very light. There even was no shadow in the shot of the large copper clock. These meant that this movie was possible to be shot under the artificial light source, including the key light, the fill light and the back light, aiming to create a more relaxing and more hopeful atmosphere. This is also consistent with the more idealized plots of this movie. But in And the Spring Comes, the film viewers can easily find the gray sky, cramped teaching buildings and the pale light with obvious large-scale shades when Wang Cailing was talking about the marriage with Zhou Yu at one night, even then there still were some shots with bright lights in this movie. Comparatively, it was easy to understand that the light probably used in the latter movie – natural lights were more similar with that in those negative scenes of our daily life, creating an oppressive and mundane atmosphere.

Their plots also contributed to their own film genres. “A girdle to set you free. What does that mean?” and “… I would be challenging… What did it say? ‘The roll you were born to fill’.” Watson interrogated loudly in her class, just having received the article criticizing her. Not to limit yourself in a small case. She used Van Gogh’s Sunflower to convey a brand-new concept to her students. At last, Betty changed her mind of aggrieving herself in the romance. “Mona Lisa is smiling, but does she really happy?” When her mother tried to persuade her to forgive her husband having an affair, she interrogated to her mother too. Not to accept a piece of marriage that you haven’t prepared clearly in your mind and not to aggrieve yourself in one existing in name only. There are what the movie Mona Lisa Smile want to express to the viewers – Be yourself, and strive for your rights and freedom if you are a woman. But concordant with the protagonist setting and lights used in this movie, the plots were more similar to people’ life in And the Spring comes: Wang Cailing and Zhou Yu expressed their love but finally both were refused, Hu Jinquan broke the law on purpose because of the prejudice of homoerotism and ballet art, Wang Cailing was cheated by Gao Beibei so that she lost the chance to work in Beijing… Finally, Wang Cailing started to make a commoner living with raising a daughter. Its realistic theme was expressed by these natural lights and daily plots – Not to give up easily in your hardest time of achieving your dream, but if you really cannot achieve it, why not make a commoner life? It is the current living that is more indispensable than the dream.

With their focus of social history and film genres, each movie conveys its impressive answer that whether you should carry on fighting against your destiny or not. Although the two aspects they focus on are different, they express this valuable answer if we compare them: When you feel that you can’t break off the intractable dilemmas you have begun to fight against in your destiny, please keep on fighting it. However, if you really cannot defeat it, you may consider compromising with yourself since the current living is more indispensable than your original ideal.

Zhen Sun

I am a fan of Shakespeare but I am not really sure if that quote flows with the theme of the paper that well. I understand the difficulty of learning a second language especially when the two languages have extreme differences. I think throughout the paper you tried to be to grandiose, and it had a negative effect because it made the paper very difficult to read from a grammar perspective. In reference to the paper I noticed a reoccurring theme that the larger paragraphs that made up most of the paper were mostly summaries or descriptions of what happened in the movies. In the smaller paragraphs is when you give some sort of analysis but you did not go to in depth. It would of been nice if you broke down the meanings of these two movies more and gave your perspective and talked about what they meant to you.

Matthew Koval

Dear Zhen,

I found that beginning with the ideal "to be or not to be" set a framework for the essay. I think you do a nice job of explaining in the first paragraph how "to be or not to be" ties into whether one chooses to keep going or give up. I feel as though throughout the rest of the piece you lose the tie back to your overall reference and example. While the explanation of genre and plot examples are interesting, I think it would be beneficial to refer back to your overall claim as you conclude an example or thought. Additionally, because this piece is research/viewer based, I think it might be helpful not to include "Obviously" because you don't want to assume your reader has the exact same reactions or viewpoints as you.

You might consider focusing on "how" the individual characters kept going or gave up through the lens of the genre. This meaning, try to look at the way in which the "how" or examples were presented about pushing through life through the different genres of each film. In doing this, you may be able to achieve a stronger opinion/research piece concerning the two films.

Overall I think you present unique ideas and it has left me wanting to read more! I would love to see you work with in those ideas from the first paragraph to really tie the whole thing together.

-Kate M.

Dear Matthew

Thanks for your letter. I will focus on my expression in my composition in the last version. I am very grateful to you for understanding the difficulties between two languages.

In fact, I haven’t known that my expression has such problems. When we are in middle schools, sentences were usually written in these patterns in our English texts. I think that is the reason why I haven’t known my expression is not easy to understand.

And you mentioned the problems of the analysis and the examples in the letters. I reread my composition and agreed to your suggestion. I really paid close attention to the summaries and the descriptions but not further analysis.

After reading the question of the quote in the letter, I have been thinking whether it is fit the theme well, but I still haven’t found out the answer in my mind. When I writing the composition, I quote this verse in order to raise the question of “keep on” or “give up” since both of them are the alternatives in people’s lives. Maybe I need to think of this question more time to ensure the answer.

Thank you for your letter and sincere suggestion! I will try my best to revise my sentences and the relation of the examples and the analysis. Wish I can find out the answer of the quote.

Yours
Zhen

Dear Kate

Thanks for your letter. After reading it, I understood that the parts of the genres may leave the overall claim to my readers.

In my thinking, I wanted to analyze 2 parts – social-historical backgrounds and film genres to lead to the answer of “keep on” or “give up”. In the latter part, I analyzed the questions of the protagonist settings, the lighting and the plots. I wanted to contrast their protagonist settings and their lighting to make a conclusion that Mona Lisa Smile is more idealized while And the Spring Comes is more near to those native circumstances of our real lives. “So, based on our real lives but not in an idealized story, we should also put the existence problem into the consideration of ‘keep on’ or not.” This was what I want to express through these two analyses. And it is also the condition to analyze the plots to get the latter half of the answer. (The former half of the answer is gotten by the analysis of social-historical backgrounds.) I am sorry that I didn’t write the hidden relationships between the parts of the protagonist settings with the lighting and the part of the plots clearly in my composition.

And thanks to your suggestion that I can consider focusing on "how" the individual characters kept going or gave up through the lens of the genre. It is a good idea. But it is more likely to be used in the “plots” and the “protagonist setting”. Since the “lights” is used for the scene, the appearances of people and some concepts, it may not likely to put this suggestion into this part. But I will try to use it when revising the parts of the protagonist settings the plots.

And I agree to you that it is unfit to use “obvious” in the transition section you mention.

Thank you for your letter and sincere suggestion! I will try my best to revise my composition.

Yours
Zhen

My review composition:
If We Can’t Always Defeat the Destiny
– My Critique of Mona Lisa Smile and And the Spring Comes

180102 孙祯 Zhen Sun
To be or not to be, that is the question. When striving to realize your ideal, you may feel you can’t break off the dilemmas which you have begun fighting against in your destiny. Which alternative, to keep on or to give up, would you make? If compared by we viewers, the movies Mona Lisa Smile and And the Spring Comes give us a valuable answer.

The confrontation between ideals and real life is a theme in both movies. In Mona Lisa Smile, Miss Catherine Watson tried her best to defeat the obstacle in Wellesley college – breaking the shackles in the girl students’ minds. And in And the Spring Comes, Wang Cailing dreamed of working as a soprano in Beijing and refused to marry a common man without artistic talent. However, she adopted a girl and made a commoner living at last, though she still didn’t lose her original dream after experiencing too many unforeseen events.

Differently, I felt warm, relaxed and inspired when I was watching the former movie, which actually talked about a serious topic in modern age. But I felt oppressive when I was watching the latter one.

As independent films, they are attractive both in their social-historical backgrounds and their genres of films. Their aspects are worth being contrasted.

In the two films, their stories happened in the last century and focused on social problems at that time. Mona Lisa Smile was a story in 1950s. It was based on the issue of women’s rights and interests in American society. At that time, Western woman had just begun to pursue their own rights and interests, but in the upper class, woman’s minds were still in the limelight. As a woman, you were restricted by social customs. You had to accept your marriage rather than applying to Yale like Joan. You had to accept the university’s so-called indecent warning to you without people supporting you publicly as Watson did. And you even had to accept the concept that it was enough to be a housewife for a woman like Betty. These shackles of women existed in the whole daily life in this college. Miss Watson didn’t have the way to change these rules in the unfair battle, but she did fight in details continuously. She refused the propose from the man she was not sure whether she love him and fought back to Betty’s censure with words and dignity. Maybe she exactly understood that she could hardly change all the social customs, but she did not stop endeavor to influent other girls. I was deeply impressed with her: How great her determination and courage were to support her keep on fight for her goal in such hard situation?

Different from this movie, And the Spring Comes focus on an easily overlooked part of the social history. It was based on the last 80s. At that time, some parts of China were trying to turn to environment of market economy. But lots of the regions were still in that of planned economy. In those small towns, some people want to aspire their dreams of art. Some of them hadn’t enough art ability to do it. And the others were talented but obstructed by their household registration to leave here. Huang Sibao was one of the former while Wang Cailing was of the latter. Both of them hadn’t the opportunity to achieve their artistic dreams in this small town. Just like what Gao Beibei had said to Wang Cailing as an apology, “… but we came from the small towns. How can we get the assess to win in Beijing? That’s too difficult.”, in the age of inequality of opportunity, it is difficult for people to become successful who come from conservative districts. And in these conservative districts, people didn’t have enough chances to contact with artistic life. People would be either common or still dream of art. To the latter, their artistic dreams would be considered as unreality in the former’s minds. They even usually were ridiculed and excluded by these common people. All of these made several chains to tied these dreamers like Wang Cailing. However, she tried to get rid of these chains. When she was refused by the art group’s leader, she still sang the rest of the song fondly. After being abused in public by Huang Sibao, she chose to jump off a building in her costume. These announced her determination to achieve her dream clearly, even knowing she almost had no chance to achieve. If she didn’t have the access to touch her own dream, she preferred to die with her dream rather than fall into commonplace. By the way, she finally didn’t die in suicide.

Both of the movies have shown the same idea that you would better not give up at the beginning when you meet with those intractable problems in your destiny. Why not fight for yourself in this hard time?

However, based on different historical background, they focus on different kinds of social and historic problems, linking to different film genres. And analyzing their genres, we can add more content of the answer.

In my view, Mona Lisa Smile is a feminist film. It stands on the angle of a woman to break the social bias against women. But And the Spring Comes is a realistic film, reflecting the pain and helplessness of a commoner’s struggle for his or her dream.

The protagonist setting in the former movie is more idealized – Miss Watson never had been of no assistance when she met the dilemmas and she always stood up immediately after being hit down. She even had the choice to leave this college whenever she wanted to earn her living in Europe! However, Wang Cailing didn’t have too much choice in her life just like other commoners in the society such as the jobs, the neighborhoods and even the help she could gain when she was in the dilemmas. The former protagonist setting gave the audience more sense of hope since it had mounts of idealized parts of life. But the latter, more common with an ordinary person, would give audience more rational considerations on themselves.

Under the comparison of their genres of the films, the use of lighting also deserves to be discussed for the condition of idealized and real. The light in Mona Lisa Smile is soft and bright at the most of the time, while the light in And the Spring Comes is dim. Or it is highly contrasted with the shadows. Since Watson attended the opening ceremony in the paeans, the whole hall looked roomy and made the film viewers feel free. The shadow in the view was very light. There even was no shadow in the shot of the large copper clock. These meant that this movie was possible to be shot under the artificial light source, including the key light, the fill light and the back light. It might aim to create a more relaxing and more hopeful atmosphere. This is also consistent with the more idealized plots of this movie. But in And the Spring Comes, the film viewers can easily find the gray sky, cramped teaching buildings and the pale light with obvious large-scale shades when Wang Cailing was talking with Zhou Yu at one night. Even then there still were some shots with bright lights in this movie, most of the shots used both kinds of light mentioned above. Comparatively, it was easy to understand that the light probably used in the latter movie – natural lights were more similar with that in those negative scenes of our daily life, creating an oppressive and mundane atmosphere.

Comparing both features, the circumstance of the leading actor is more idealized than that in the latter. The real lives probably contain negative situations. When cogitating what to do in the soup, we should also put these into consideration.

Their plots, also contributed to their own film genres, give the answer of people’s choice in different situations. “A girdle to set you free. What does that mean?” and “… I would be challenging… What did it say? ‘The roll you were born to fill’.” Watson interrogated loudly in her class, just having received the article criticizing her. Not to limit yourself in a small case. She used Van Gogh’s Sunflower to convey a brand-new concept to her students. At last, Betty changed her mind of aggrieving herself in the romance. “Mona Lisa is smiling, but does she really happy?” When her mother tried to persuade her to forgive her husband having an affair, she interrogated to her mother too. Not to accept a piece of marriage that you haven’t prepared clearly in your mind. And not to aggrieve yourself in one existing in name only. There are what the movie Mona Lisa Smile want to express to the viewers – Be yourself, and strive for your rights and freedom if you are a woman. But concordant with the protagonist setting and lights used in this movie, the plots were more similar to people’ life in And the Spring comes: Wang Cailing and Zhou Yu expressed their love but finally both were refused, Hu Jinquan broke the law on purpose because of the prejudice of homoerotism and ballet art, Wang Cailing was cheated by Gao Beibei so that she lost the chance to work in Beijing… Finally, Wang Cailing started to make a commoner living with raising a daughter. For her, she had suffered too many blows in her life. She really wanted to achieve her dream, but the pressure from the real life pushed her to cogitate the possibility of get rid of her present life. In the last shot, she dreamt of the vision that she was singing in the theatre. All of these meant that she didn’t lose her original dream, but the decision she adopted a girl was her concession to the reality. Its realistic theme was expressed by these natural lights and daily plots – Not to give up easily in your hardest time of achieving your dream, but if you really cannot achieve it, why not make a commoner life? It is the current living that is more indispensable than the dream.

With their focus of social history and film genres, each movie conveys its impressive answer that whether you should carry on fighting against your destiny or not. Although the two aspects they focus on are different, they express this valuable answer if we compare them: When you feel that you can’t break off the intractable dilemmas you have begun to fight against in your destiny, please keep on fighting it. However, if you really cannot defeat it, you may consider compromising with yourself since the current living is more indispensable than your original ideal.

Zhen

I am sorry for the late reply but just wanted to say one last thing. In your reply you talked about since middle school you learned one particular way you have been learning English. I am not saying this is right or wrong but one thing my professor has been talking to me about and maybe this is the goal of this assignment but maybe there is not a right or wrong way to communicate in English. Even just noticing our two writing styles are different but that does not make them right or wrong just different. So maybe that is just something for you to think about in the future as you continue to develop your english skills.

Matt

My thinking of this activity:

During this activity, I revised the sentence patterns I used in my composition. I tried to do it after thinking of the meaning in the letters Matt told me about my expression, but I was not sure whether my understanding was what he suggested me. And I also added the part of the relation between the protagonist setting’s and the genres’ analyses with that of the plots since I realized that Kate didn’t understand “the circumstance” I wanted to conclude by the former. At the first time, I didn’t realize that my readers may misunderstand my logic. I also added some further parts of analyses followed the examples and focused on “how” did the chief characters keep doing and gave up. But I didn’t delete the quote in the first paragraph, since both the question in the quote and that fellow the quote were alternatives. In my thinking, I quoted this verse in order to elicit the question of “keep on” or “give up”. Maybe the latter was not a question of life and death, but they were similar at one point: the emotion and the feeling of the moments to choose one of the alternatives. The quote I chose was to elicit a topic to discuss but not mean the topic have to be the same as the quote. So, I finally decided to continue to have this quote.

Before this activity, I wanted to understand some characters of American writing, and realize how should I improve my writing. I thought I had known some differences of American writing and Chinese writing. I also understood how should I improve if I want to step closer to the authentic English writing.

But when I was in the activity, I felt a little bit solemn(严肃), which was different from the feeling I read other groups’ letters. I thought maybe it was because the first letters sent by me and Tong W. were written too formal. At that time, I was worried whether my expressions were disrespectful. Only after reading the letters of other groups did I realize I should have been more relaxed in the first letter.

When it comes to suggestion, I think maybe the time was a bit urgent, maybe we can expand the length of the time of the activity, so that we can write letters after thinking more.

Finally, I wanted to say thanks to Matt and Kate. You gave me lots of valuable suggestion and raised my thinking. I tried to revise my composition with your suggestion. I was not sure whether I understood your thinking correctly, but I sincerely tried my best. Thank you very much!