For my assignments this week, I have already completed a writing assignment so I decided to pick an assignment from the visual assignments. As someone who sends gifs in the middle of texting to express my reaction, I was intrigued by the “Say it Like the Peanut Butter” assignment which essentially instructed me to make a gif.

The instructions said to make a gif from a favorite movie of ours. I immediately thought of the movie, 10 Things I Hate About You. It’s one of my favorite movies simply because of the main character, Kat Staford.

I went on Youtube to find a video of my favorite scene then I used Makeagif.com to convert it into a gif. I gave the gif a caption to give the gif some context and I shared it on my Twitter page:

The movie, 10 things I Hate About You was actually an adaptation of Shakespeare’s, Taming of the Shrew, which is actually why I love the movie so much. The main character, Kat Staford who is an adaptation of Katherine Minola from the play, is one of my favorite characters of all time. She is very outspoken and fearless in how she expresses herself. She is very rebellious against things she doesn’t like about society like the patriarchy.

This clip does a phenomenal job of depicting the essence of her character. She is seen tearing down a school poster about a school dance that she taught was stupid and superficial.

This gif that I created reminded me of how I felt reading the email that was sent out from the university earlier this week. UMW sent out an email saying that to comply with Governor Glenn Youngkin’s policies, UMW is no longer mandating vaccines for faculty and no longer COVID testing non-vaccinated faculty members.

I found this so enraging. The fact that COVID is only on the rise and the fact that faculty members come in contact with so many students EVERY SINGLE DAY. To no longer require they be vaccinated seemed so irresponsible to me.

Therefore, I decided to incorporate my gif into my Twitter Feed and make a post about how I felt. This is the “Joy of Painting.” Our course’s theme essentially suggests that the work we complete is not like other assignments for other classes where we just complete a task to cross off of our to-do list. Instead, to view the work we do as pieces of art. With that being said that is the joy of DS106, the Joy of Painting, the joy of art. It allows us to use things we use in our daily lives as an outlet and as a form of expression. A simple gif that you’d send to your friend in a normal texting conversation can be art if you choose to make it so.

I see why this assignment is “a classic DS106 assignment” it allows you to think and create a story and make connections from what you see, what you feel, what you are instructed to do, etc. This assignment allows you to be creative and tell a story in such a simple and fun way. That is the Joy of Painting to me. The way you’ll grab a canvas to paint feeling like you’re gonna create something beautiful, the same can be said when you grab your laptop to complete a DS106 assignment.

When I think “pivotal movie moment,” I instantly think of this scene from Avengers: Endgame. The build up to this moment and the helplessness followed by triumph make for an incredibly epic moment. There isn’t much more to say about it other than the fact that this moment on opening night in the theaters was INSANE!

I have actually seen La Jetee before!
The first time I watched it was because I used to really be into stop motion movies. I tried to find the only I made in 6th grade but I couldnt Anyways I have always felt that it was a super cool and interesting plotline to fit into 30 minutes. I particularly like his decision to stay with the woman in the past because I feel like all humans can relate to that. In the future (maybe near? @elon musk) decisions like this will have to be made. When watching it a second time i did feel a sort of a disconnect because a fair bit of the narration is in first person which I found to be weird since there were no mouths actually moving.

The Road

I really enjoyed this movie. It had me on the edge of my seat the way only a apocalyptic fiction can. Particularly I really enjoyed the scene where they are hiding in the woods from the bad guys in the beginning of the movie. That is why I chose to make it into a gif. When watching the movie, I had many near tear experiences. It seemed like the movie was a constant cycle of starvation, near-death experiences, and The Man finding ways for them to survive.

I think the first time I almost cried was right before they found the apple orchard and they were literally about to starve to death. The father-son dynamic that was on full display there was truly heart-breaking. It was like any movie where the father has to promise hope and survival in a time where he is not even sure of it himself. Oh yeah, that made the part where HE DIES so much worse. Really… just rip my heart out at that point. I could see that the director/ author of the movie strategically chose to kill of The Man when the audience felt like he had taught The Boy enough to survive.

I really hated the ending… call me a pessimist but I am not a fan of overly happy endings where there is (too) much hope on display. After and entire journey and The Man dead, The Boy finally finds decent people? How convenient and upsetting. They Boy kinda aggravated me the whole movie anyway, he was the epitome of being UN-self-sufficient in the beginning.