While I can choose more relevant movies such as Gary Fleder’s ‘Runaway Jury’ or more recently, David Dobkin’s ‘The Judge’ and Courtney Hunt’s ‘The Whole Truth’ in related to storytelling, I decided to talk about a sci-fi thriller – ’10 Cloverfield Lane’ instead.

Imagine after getting in a car accident, you are held in a shelter by this man who claims the outside world is taken over by aliens. He acts weird, especially the fact that he has storages of supply and everything prepare as he claims that he knew this day would come.

Why am I in this room? What’s this place? How did I get in here? Who’s that creepy yet somewhat reasonable guy?

Questions after questions as the guy who claimed he saved you becomes more and more suspicious. Is he lying to keep you trapped in his place? Is he doing this because you looked like his daughter who is not with him anymore?

Director Dan Trachtenberg was playing the audiences’ mind throughout the whole movie. This is the difference between a horror movie and a thriller. A thriller creates a psychological type of fear that make audiences think and wonder how the characters are going to find their way out. It wasn’t until it was revealed that the guy who sounded insane was actually telling the truth the whole time, that the audiences start getting their questions answered.

The overall screenplay structure and outlining had been very well written in a way that it demonstrates how powerful storytelling can be, especially how it can play with the audiences’ mind.

Watch Dan Trachtenberg’s ’10 Cloverfield Lane’ trailer here:

Absorbing Power: The Courts and Hate Speech

In Judith Butler’s ‘Burning Acts, Injurious Speech’, she references the case of R.A.V. v. St. Paul to illustrate the ways in which the courts reabsorb power to incite violence. In this case, a white teenager from Minnesota, burned a cross in front of a house occupied by an African-American family. The defendant was charged and eventually convicted, by the St. Paul City Council in 1990, making it an offence to communicate racially offensive messages. The United States Supreme Court reversed the State Supreme Court decision. One of the most baffling aspects of Butler’s comments on this case, relates to the way in which the court’s use of language transformed the act of burning the cross on an African-American family’s property to the following – “Let there be no mistake about our belief that burning a cross in someone’s front yard is reprehensible” (the words of the majority opinion of the court). This transformation of language strips away any contextual meaning, and denies the racist history of the act of cross burning. John Onyando stated that “there is growing evidence that the government is using prosecution for hate speech as a tool to silence its opposition critics”, and I would have to agree with this. Butler’s example, serves as a constant reminder, as with all of the themes discussed throughout the LW928 module – the imaginary, legal fictions, and performativity, that law’s power reigns. In law’s quest to punish those who spread racist, transphobic, or otherwise out-of-fashion speech, it denies the weaker members of the community e.g. the poor, political minorities, and women, of the protection it claims to afford.

The Divine Comedy is a literary masterpiece wrote by the genie of Dante Alighieri in the first half of the 14^th century (1306/1307 and 1321). The Comedy symbolises humankind’s journey for redemption through the three afterlife kingdoms: Inferno, Purgatory and Paradise.
While Purgatory and Paradise are embedded with theological and philosophical considerations, Inferno is a testimony of the political corruption at that time. Italy was the battlefield for the political fights between the Pope and the Emperor. It was one of the most merciless ‘Games of Thrones’ in medieval history.
Through his journey in the ‘infernal burella’, Dante tells the story of many political and religious figures, who – blinded by political ambitious – committed murders, cannibalism, treason, and suicide all in the name of ‘worldly power’.

In a sense, Dante’s Inferno is the first attempt to challenge the dominant social imaginary through storytelling. Dante is aware that unless humanity achieves spiritual redemption, his world will be forever lost in the wood of sins and corruption.

Each girone (the circle that constitutes Hell) introduces characters that embed a specific characteristic of the dominant imaginary that needs to be criticised. The only exception can be found in Canto V (chapter V), in which – only on this occasion- Dante took pity of two condemns: Paolo and Francesca di Rimini.

“Love which quickly takes a gentle heart, took him for my fair shape.

Love which does not allow not to love back, took me for him.

Love lead us to one single death” (vv. 103-105, Canto V, Inferno)

Canto V is the testimony of Dante’s powerful narrative technique that triggers empathy in the readers. Even though Paolo and Francesca committed adultery and therefore had to be put in the circle of the lustful, their love story is so moving that the readers conceive them as the innocent victims of a dreadful/unjust fate.
Francesca di Rimini was a beautiful noble girl – destined to become a nun – but she was kidnapped and forced to marry the violent Gianciotto Malatesta, Paolo’s older brother. While living together, Paolo and Francesca fell in love. Unfortunately, the brother discovered their affair and killed the two lovers, condemning his brother and his wife to an eternity in Hell. Nevertheless, Paolo and Francesca’ sin becomes secondary to the readers because what really matters is that their life was brutally interrupted. Paolo and Francesca can be finally together and free to live their love but they have to go through eternal suffering.
In this Canto, Dante uncommonly employs a sweet, romantic and poetic language. The tercets are characterised by a slow rhythm that creates emphasis and pathos to the story. The readers are capable of creating an emotional connection with the characters and cannot help identifying themselves with the pain and sorrow these two star-crossed lovers have to go through every day to be together.
Paolo and Francesca’ story is an outstanding example of the emotional power of language that may open doors to change and better justice.