Link to our project!!

Hi, everyone,
Here is the link to our project: Man VS. Woman.
Enjoy~!!

Fun Home

Fun Home was not a real "fun home" at all. The family in Fun Home experienced various of crisis. Father was dead, Daughter was lesbian... How can we call such a family "fun home"?

I have to say I don't really like Fun Home, not only because I'm not interested in the topic, but also because the style Alison drew. I feel very hard to figure out what she was trying to tell us. There are so many words on each pages, which is not normal to see in a comic book. Usually, there would be more painting than words in comic book, but in Fun Home, I think words also played a very important role. Because there were so much information, I always got lost when I was reading it. I have to go back and forth to check precious information.

For the topic, I'm not against homosexuals, but I don't like the way she present it to us. On page 214, there are 3 pictures showing homosexual activities, which I think is too much and unnecessary. I don't think Alison wants reader to dislike homosexuals, instead, she showed support to homosexuals sometimes. But in the way she presented it, I don't think most people would like to see it. If she can just take out the last two pictures, it would be much better to accept homosexual relationship.

Although I don't really like it, I still think it's a good novel. I just don't think it's a good comic. The story was touching. To me, it's more about how daughter finally understands her father rather than homosexual oriented. Love between family members are the most valuable one. It will never fade away.

SKIM

Unlike the Japanese comic, Skim seems to be more realistic.

When I was reading it, I can easily imaging how they communicate with each other and why they were doing so. At that certain age, I guess girls all seem to be dramatic. We think we are different, unique. We think something special happened to us, or we look for something special and make it happen to us. In the comic, either Lisa, Kim, or Julie, they all think the world is going around them, they just showed it in different way. Kim tried to be a witch to show her difference from others, and she always think other girls are "stupid", all the things they did were "stupid". She tried to avoid to be similar as others. At the mean time, she doesn't want to stand out either. She just want to be a "cool girl". I think it's because she is afraid to get hurt from others. She had such an awful experience that being invited to the party dressing like a bear, but end up being left outside of the house in the dark. I believe this experience affected her badly, which made her not trust others anymore. That's why when Ms. Archer showed her friendliness to Kim, she felt so happy and over estimate about the "happy ending".

If it's a Japanese comic, those girls will be more romantic, and there will always be a special ending. However, although I'm a big fan of Japanese comic, I also like Skim, because it's such a realistic comic and everyone can find their shadows somewhere in the painting. We all had similar experience like that, maybe not that dramatic, without those experience, we wouldn't become the person as we are. Skim reminds us the time we experienced those confusions. It might not be the most wonderful time, but it's always the most memorable one for every body.

I found these pictures and the clip from youtube can represent some of the key terms of our class, such as body image, Barbie, make-up. I can see these image everywhere. The reason why I chose some Asian girls image is because I want to show you how we changed. In Kinky, Oriental Barbie says Asian Barbie have smaller breast, well, that was in the past. As Asian know more about western world, they want to be like a westerner. Now, the Asian models all have big breast and tiny waist. Also, they want to look like you, like you have Roman nose, deep eyehole, and small face. So you can see that they either make up to look like you, or have plastic surgery. I personally feel sad about it. I think we have oriental standard of beauty and you have western standard of beauty. We are different, that's why we can enjoy variety of beauty. If we all look like the same, I think I will get tired of this type of beauty. I prefer natural beauty. As long as I'm healthy and confident, I'm beautiful.

Late post of BJD...Sorry~ :(

I might have amnesia... This work should be done a long time ago but I just "kept forgetting" about it... If you see this, please introduce a good doctor to me... Thanks~
I'm just kidding~ LOL But I'm really sorry to have it done so late. Anyway, here I go.
For the two version of BJD, I like the movie better. One of the reasons is that I originally like movie better than book because I'm too lazy.. I prefer some one telling the story to me rather than explore it by myself. Another reason is that I think the movie did a good job to keep the form of diary. It's really hard to make a movie based on a diary because diary usually contains some routines and have a slow process of what's going on. The director cut a lot of routines and make the process a little bit quicker than the book, but nothing important was lost during this transform. The actors and actress were very professional. I saw a serious but gentle Mark Darcy. I saw a charming but flirty Daniel Cleaver. I saw a silly but delightful Bridget Jones. All the characters are kept as they appeared in the book. However, I do noticed a difference. In the book, Bridget Jones was the only main character, because it was her diary. Other people were just supporting roles. But in the movie, it seems like Bridget and Darcy were the main characters while Daniel was a very important supporting role. This change made the movie have a clear topic, which is the journal of finding true love for Bridget Jones. I like this change.

Kinky

Before reading it, I thought poem should be difficult to understand. However, Kinky is like casual essay in a poem form. Although it's still kind of hard for me to understand all of them, I can understand most. That's far better than I thought. :)
It's my first time read poems about Barbie. The poems I read before were about love, environment, and other noble stuffs. Barbie is just a toy(to me),which I never had one because I preferred Transformer toys better when I was young...
Although I'm not a fan of Barbie, I still like those poems, they are vivid. I can imagine the scene when I was reading it. When I read about "she could come from Japan, Hong Kong, China, the Philippines, Vietnam, Thailand, or Korea. The little girl who plays with her can decide", I saw the scene that two girls arguing about what country does the Barbie come from. One might prefer Japan, the other might prefer China. Guys may never understand why girls argue about such "boring" stuff, because they don't understand how important it is. If the Barbie comes from Japan, she can wear Kimono sometimes, but if she comes from China, she might need to wear Qipao instead. It's different culture. When we play with dolls, we are serious about it. We will fit the doll into a typical kind of culture and treat it like a human being. The author did that too. In her poems, Barbie is not only a doll, she is also a human, sometimes a woman and sometimes a girl. Because she is a human, she also have emotion. I was impressed by "Bisexual Barbie". The author was so thoughtful, she created all kinds of Barbie, made it like real world. Why can't Barbie be a lesbian? If she is a female, then there is some possibility that she could become a lesbian. Just because we never thought that Barbie will like woman instead of man, doesn't mean she can be so.
I think Kinky is very humanistic, because in Kinky, Barbie can be anybody. She can be a lesbian, or a girl fell in love with her brother,or an Antichrist girl. Kinky is also sort of feminist, because Barbie began to be aware of her body and she was not the girl that everyone want her to be. She can be the girl she wants to be. The girl who don't like difficult math class, or the girl who needs a therapy. She's not the girl only stands for sexy, grace beautiful, and skinny, but also the girl stands for all the other girls. I like realistic Barbie more than the traditional one because she can share my feeling now, not like the old days when I saw her and thought:"It might be the right time for me to keep fit."
Well, I do have a question: Barbie is considered to be a underage girl's toy, but the author wrote so many "adults contents", so who are the target reader of Kinky?

Cover Songs

I really like Cold Play, especially the song Yellow.
Here is the lyric:
Look at the stars,
Look how they shine for you,
And everything you do,
Yeah, they were all Yellow.
I came along,
I wrote a song for you,
And all the things you do,
And it was called Yellow.
So then I took my turn,
Oh what a thing to have done,
And it was all Yellow.
Your skin
Oh yeah, your skin and bones,
Turn into something beautiful,
You know, you know I love you so,
You know I love you so.
I swam across,
I jumped across for you,
Oh what a thing to do.
Cos you were all Yellow,
I drew a line,
I drew a line for you,
Oh what a thing to do,
And it was all Yellow.
Your skin,
Oh yeah your skin and bones,
Turn into something beautiful,
And you know,
For you I'd bleed myself dry,
For you I'd bleed myself dry.
It's true,
Look how they shine for you,
Look how they shine for you,
Look how they shine for,
Look how they shine for you,
Look how they shine for you,
Look how they shine.
Look at the stars,
Look how they shine for you,
And all the things that you do.

Because this song is so famous, there are a lot of cover songs. Among all of the cover songs, I would like to introduce you the Chinese version and another English version sung by a Singapore singer.
First, I would like to share the Singapore version with you. The singer is a female, named Tanya. I love her voice. Her version is more quiet than the original one. She didn't change the lyric, but she changed the way of singing this song. When I listen to Coldplay's Yellow, I feel a strong power from a man. I feel like he is in love with a woman and he wants her to know how much he loves her. It's active. Compare to Coldplay's, Tanya's version is so quiet, maybe it's not liked by male audience, but I'm sure woman will like it. Her version is like telling you a story about how she loves a boy but the boy doesn't know. It's passive.
I like both of the version. Although they are telling the same story, yet it's from different aspect. I like Coldplay's power as well as Tanya's quiet and gentle.

Now, it comes to the Chinese version. It's sung by a male singer, named Jun Zheng. It's also powerful. The power not only came out from his masculine way of singing(it's the typical way of singing in Mainland China), but also came out from the lyric. The lyric contains a lot of culture background. For example, if Americans love some one, they will say "I love you". However, if the same situation comes to a Chinese, he/she probably will say a long sentence to compromise the other rather than say "I love you". In the lyric, the author use meteor as a metaphor of her lover. He expressed his desire to be the meteor that can fell into her dream and flow in her river. This shows his deep love for the girl he loves. Because I found it won't make much sense if I translate the lyric into English, so I gave up trying.
Although the lyric is beautiful, I still prefer Coldplay's version and Tanya's version. I don't like the voice of the Chinese singer, but I think he did a good try to cover English songs.

Difference in man's magazine＆ｗｏｍａｎ'ｓ ｍａｇａｚｉｎｅ

　Ｔｈｅ　ｔｗｏ　ａｒｔｉｃｌｅｓ　Ｉ　ｒｅａｄ　ａｒｅ　ｆｒｏｍ　Ｍａｎ'ｓ　Hｅａｌｔｈ　ａｎｄ　Wｏｍａｎ'ｓ　Hｅａｌｔｈ．　Ｔｈｅｙ　ｂｏｔｈ　ｔａｌｋ　ａｂｏｕｔ　ｈｏｗ　ｔｏ　ｄｉｅｔ．　Ｔｈｅ　ｄｉｆｆｅｒｅｎｃｅ　ｉｓ　ｔｈａｔ　the article ｉｎ　ｍａｎ'ｓ　ｍａｇａｚｉｎｅ is about how to diet not only to lose weight but also keep the muscles. But the article in the woman's magazine is only about losing weight. Ｉ　ｆｅｅｌ　ｌｉｋｅ　ｍａｎ　ｃａｒｅ　ｍｏｒｅ　ａｂｏｕｔ　ｈｏｗ　ｔｏ　ｍａｋｅ　ｔｈｅｍｓｅｌｖｅｓ　ｓｔｒｏｎｇｅｒ　ｔｏ　ｓａｔｉｓｆｙ　ｔｈｅｍｓｅｌｖｅｓ　ｗｈｉｌｅ　ｗｏｍａｎ　ｃａｒｅ　ｍｏｒｅ　ａｂｏｕｔ　ｈｏｗ　ｔｏ　ｂｅ　ｓｋｉｎｉｅｒ　ａｎｄ　ｂｅ　ｍｏｒｅ　ａｔｔｒａｃｔｉｖｅ　ｔｏ　ｏｔｈｅｒｓ．Because woman like various kinds of man but most man like skinny woman... 　　　　

I'M NICOLE

HELLO~Every one!
I'm Nicole Bai, from China. My home town is called Shenzhen, which is a big city near Hongkong. Actually, my name is Xin Bai. But since it's difficult for you to pronounce and hard to remember, I just name myself Nicole, because I love Nicole Kidman.
My major is Communication Studies and I'm already 22. Before my 22nd birthday, I always thought I was 19... I felt like I just suddenly turned into 22... Fortunately, I'm in U.S now. 22 means I can drink and buy alcohol~ Although I don't really like drinking, I still enjoy to be "old" enough to buy drinks.
I'm the single child in my family. But I grew up with my cousin. She's 2 years younger than me and she's studying in Carnegie Mellon(in Pittsburgh). I almost forgot that I'm a transfer student. I spent 2 years in a Chinese university and I was studying Law at that time. However, I don't think that I can be a lawyer or a judge, so I change my major and transfer to Ohio University. Before I came here, I didn't expect that there would be so many Chinese students. I thought I would be surrounding by local students. Now, I feel like you guys are surrounding by us(Chinese)... Maybe it's a good chance for both of us to learn how to communicate between culture. Hope it can help you to have an international career~
I'm not doing to tell you all about me in this post. That would be too long... Anyway, hope you can know more about me through this post. :)

HELLO!!

Welcome to my mixed-culture&language blog~
!~HAVE FUN~!