A Comedy to Go Please

What's Stand up Comedy? It is not only a guy standing up for 2 hours talking about the fun part of life. It is actually a way of art that goes far beyond this century, it started on the club's on the USA, that where called the comedy club's. It continued expanding, more clubs where engaged in the business and TV started producing this shows. During the 1990's this art faced death when they where so famous and pretty much everywhere that comedians started resigning and viewers started to think of it as a normal thing. This was saved by the alternative type of stand up comedy which instead of a guy telling jokes, it became a monologue or a one person performance on stage. 

Acting a comedy such as the Cherry Orchard is just and inventive way to put more performers on the already known stand up comedy. It is not only one guy acting his jokes but many people falling into them and adding content. For example we can see how people will laugh with scenes such as this one, in which two actors make people laugh. 

In this scene we see how the characters use a common thing such as menopause to make people laugh about themselves which is the true meaning of a comedy.

In the Cherry Orchard, we see how Chekhov uses something simple as a marriage, a rent and a apparently crazy women to make the readers laugh at the situations this people where living through. It is true that it can be sad to sell your childhood memory to pay a bill, but when Chekhov plays with the emotions of the situation and says things such as "Now I am at peace, I am at peace" (Chekhov 343) he makes people think about how terrible situation can bring fun to your life, like when you are on a stand up comedy and laugh about the performance this guy or lady does.

Acting a comedy is a new way in which stand up comedy reflects to our society that each day is looking for more ways to entertain on the expenses of our sadness. 

Gabriela

"CHERRY RIDE" THE MOVIE

EDITED DIRECTED AND PRODUCED BY GABRIELA ARROYO
STARTING ALL MY DEAR FRIENDS
ENJOY!!!!!!!

Is It a New Meaning?

The article by the New York Times has made a revelation about the real life Huckleberry Finn. Although Twain shows him as a white kid, researches have seen that his way of speaking matches the one of a St. Pittsburgh black boy. The author of this article considers that this new discovery makes an impact towards the message Twain wants to transmit with his 1884 novel. 

Huck is the son of the St. Pittsburgh drunk. Thus, he has lived a life of insecurity and mistreating. His father goes missing every now and then. After Twain's first novel, The adventures of Tom Sawyer, Huck is adopted by Widow Douglas who has an attempt to civilize and teach him the values of their society. Quotes such as "But I reckon I got to light out for the territory ahead of the rest, because Aunt Sally she’s going to adopt me and sivilize me, and I can’t stand it. I been there before." ( Twain, 233) show how Huck is uneducated and aware of societies misunderstandings, misleading and contradictions about what it's true values are.

I think this discovery will make the novel to gain more meaning and it's main theme about Racism to have more impact. During this whole adventure, Huck learned that Jim was not like society said he would be. Jim was actually he same as he was, he was not as horrible and dumb as Mrs.  Douglas told him he would be. Huck learned that Black and white are the same and should be treated the same, with Huck being based on a real Black boy Mr. Twain is simply reinforcing his idea.

In conclusion, we can see how Twain is sending a message to its future readers, saying that our values should be based on equality between races and that we must not contradict ourselves like his society did, that we must see each other as equals and that racism must not be a part of modern society.

Gabriela

Stereotypes As a hidden Critisism

Black-face minstrelsy, clearly shows the relationship between a Minstrel show and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn's character Jim, which plays the role of "Minstrel Darky" in the King and Duke's  presentation. It shows this relationship as a stereotype, when while reading essays about Minstrel shows, the author started thinking about Jim as this character.

Minstrel shows where born in the 1830's when working class white men started mocking the Black slave's way to dance and sing. It became famous when our author Mark Twain said how he remember ed the "old time nigger show" (Twain). With this statement it also became Respectable and it started to be used as a way of entertainment for land owners. At the beginning white people would put make up on and act as Black people, it then started being actual Afro-American people until they where not permitted to be on stage after the civil war. This didn't stop them because they would act as white's playing as slaves. 

I think the author of this essay is wrong, because first of all as already said, minstrel shows where a way to mock the slave's way of life, singing and dancing forms.  Furthermore, It was a way to entertain and humiliate the Afro-American people in the United States after the civil war. It even included black people for some time which acted on this shows that mocked their own people. If it was a stereotype then minstrel shows would be an ignorant type of entertainment in which only white people would participate. On the contrary, minstrel shows are scenes in which they mock the way in which they see the slave's sing and dance, and during a certain time period even black people where part of this mocking. 

Twain used the minstrel shows to show the reader the way Afro-American traditions where seen at those times. An example of this, is when the Duke and the King used the character "Minstrel Darky" as part of their show. Slavery was not only the heavy work on the plantations but also the own entertainment form of the land owners.

In conclusion we can see how Twain uses minstrel shows to show how Black people where mocked by society. Secondly, it is a mistake to show it as a stereotype, because it is a way that even the black people make fun of slave's traditions. Finally we can see that although minstrel shows where respectable, they where a manifestation of how landowners mistreated and humiliated black people.

Gabriela

Should The "N-Word" Be Banished?

The article, New Huckleberry Finn Edition Censors the 'N-Word' talks about how the new edition by NewSouth books, wants to errase the word Nigger from this 1884 novel. This word shows great disrespect in the modern society, and it appears constantly in the novel. For instance, this word appears in Pap's speech in which he tells how "There was a free nigger there from Ohio – a mulatter, most as white as a white man" (Mark Twain, 6).

Even though this word has a negative meaning in modern societies, the word Nigger was considered a complement. Based on the definition of the web page dictionary.difference.com nigger comes from  different misunderstandings. First of all, it came from the word in Spanish "negro" which said by an English speaking person sounds the same way as nigger. Not only but also, this word was a clear misunderstanding of the word Niggah, which before the civil war meant a positive term between African American people. This are only two examples of where this word came from. 

I think that Dr. Sarah Churchwell is correct when she says that "that word is totemic because it encodes all of the violence of slavery." (Churchwell). Twain uses that word to criticize how slaves where different from the land owners, and how this ones used the word Nigger to mock and humiliate this ones. If the publisher takes out the word and changes it with a word like slave,  the tone and meaning of the novel would change completely.

In the same way, the publisher has to take into the account the context in which the author lived. During this time, the word was used to call the slaves which where African American. Nigger on those times was the word Nigger was used to mock the way of talking of slaves and a way to call African American people. Taking this word out of the novel would cause the context to change, meaning that the reader would be mislead. 

In conclusion we can see that the word nigger is a misunderstanding of the Spanish and pre-civil war language, that the land owners used to mock their slave's language. Second, we see that Twain uses this word as a way to criticize how the white people uses this metonymy to humiliate African American people. Finally we can say that taking this word would be a big mistake because it would change the whole context and meaning of the story.

Gabriela