Twilight
May 2, 2007
I just wanted to start by saying the the actress was absolutely amazing. She was so believeable that there were moments that I forgot that it was her acting. I just remember the movie ending and suddenly remebering that it was one lady who acted out this entire hour and a half film. There were times when I believed her accent and her posture. It was like she was really Rodney King’s Aunt or the asian woman. It made me think about the following questions that we touched upon in class: To what extent does one have to perform the other in order to understand the other? Can one never fully perform the other because one can never be the other?
I just imagined her sitting there studyign the trancripts, watching the videos, and trying to pick up their mannerisms. Everytime she stutterred a word or got really excited about what she was saying I just pictured the person she was portraying as having those mannerisms as well. I believe the th eperformance helps one th understnd te other to a certain extent. I still feel like one can never fully understand the other because they will never actualy be that person. I do believe however that it is possible to get extremely close to understanding the other.
May 2, 2007 at 4:30 pm
I agree, the acting was great. (And apparently the people on imdb.com think so too.) From an English 69 point of view, I found it interesting how she was constantly passing. More specifically, how she passed just by changing her clothing and her accent and the sorts of things she said. Of course, she didn’t pass in the sense of sustaining a “false” identity for an extended period, but she did, for a time at least, “become” the person. That plasticity contrasted much of the rest of the movie, which portrayed racial barriers as very real and not so easily traversed (see, for instance, 1:21:30 into the movie when the Korean woman talks about how the blacks are too different for her to engage their community. I think there was a Hispanic woman who said something similar, though I could be imagining it.) It did, however, fit in very nicely with the last section (“Twilight”).