Category Archives: language

Let’s corrupt the youth!

Posted on by under aprenda inglês, Aprender inglês, Aprender línguas estrangeiras, Arte, Career advice, edtech, education, language

They were right after all. We are seeing a comeback (were they ever really gone anywhere?) of some of the old theories about learning and how teachers should conduct their lessons. Edtech is making possible the practical application of the Socratic method, of Paulo Freire’s pedagogy, of Vygostky’s studies and experiments. All the other pedagogues who have advocated more direct involvement and participation from the students in their own learning are being vindicated and having their theories confirmed and validated.

Some of the methodologies we see in use today are becoming possible because of the realization of individualized learning. It boils down to a student facing her app alone in her bedroom to start with. And from there we can exploit the use of questions (Socrates) to lead that student further and further on the path to the right answer, or, even better, to her own answer in the case of a more abstract problem (such as moral, ethical or political issues); we can personalize teaching to make the context more relevant for each of the students, and therefore resonate with them (Paulo Freire); and we can flip our lessons, having students reconvene in class afterwards to cooperate in solving problems (Vygotsky), after having spent time alone in their homes doing research, reading, watching TEDs or other relevant videos on YouTube.

The Death of Socrates. Rosa, Salvator.

The Death of Socrates. Rosa, Salvator.

We have always known that personalization, cooperation and inductive approaches worked fine.  They have the power of grabbing the students’ interest and attention, keeping the findings longer in their memory. We’re clever teachers after all, we do our homework as well, we went to college and were fascinated by Plato and his dialogues, we felt invigorated by the potential and possibilities of the pedagogy of Freire; and we could easily see that pairing off weaker students with strong ones who would pull them along zones of proximal development made total sense.

But we lacked the means to make it happen. How to apply these exciting methods to classes of more than 30 students (or even more sometimes)? How can a single teacher dedicate enough time to the needs of individual students in these conditions? How much time is there outside the class for teachers to mark essays and homework, to create interesting lessons, to prepare the long  – and possibly very boring (for the students) – lecture to present on the following day?

The good news is things are changing. More and more, the new technology being created will allow us to go back to the masters and make the most of their wise insights and theories. Few teachers doubt that learning is up to the student. It’s their direct responsibility. Teachers are important channels and organizers of the different methods students will have to use actively themselves on their way to discoveries.

Let’s not be afraid of using apps, audience response systems, flipped classrooms and LMSs  in our schools to recreate the necessary conditions to hand learning back to where it belongs: the students! Socrates was sentenced to death for doing exactly that. They called it “corrupting the youth” back then. Well, “Toto, I’ve a feeling we are not in Kansas any more”. Let’s corrupt them!

NOTE: You might want to check out our eBooks available  from AMAZON.COM: 

TEACHING ENGLISH WITH ART: MATISSE.    Click here for more info: http://wp.me/p4gEKJ-1kP

TEACHING ENGLISH WITH ART: PICASSO.    Click here for more info: http://wp.me/p4gEKJ-1lA

Au revoir,

Jorge Sette.

The Old Man and the Sea

Posted on by under art, E-books, filmes, language, Literatura, movies, Writing

What’s all the fuss about this little tale of on old Cuban fisherman on the hunt for a huge marlin in the blue seas of the Gulf Stream, and his fight against the sharks that try to steal his spoils of war on the way back home? I needed to find out.

In his deceptively simple writing, Ernest Hemingway expresses all his concepts about life, old age, the meaning of victory, friendship, cooperation and masculinity in the fewer than 130 pages of this unforgettable story.

It’s a book with layers of meanings, and the right one for you will emerge and resonate deeply and fast – depending on your age and the point of life you’re at.

The Old Man and the Sea. Illustration by C.F. Tunnicliffe and Raymond Shepard.

The Old Man and the Sea. Illustration by C.F. Tunnicliffe and Raymond Shepard.

 

The powerful narrative of Hemingway will make you put yourself in this old man’ shoes (or lack thereof). You will feel the fishing line cutting through your hands and your back while you try to keep the marlin hooked, as the huge fish swims forward fighting for freedom, pulling your skiff along for endless hours out to the deep sea. The old man’s thoughts will be your thoughts – although I suspect his love for baseball will surely be replaced by your passion for soccer if you don’t live in the USA; his endurance and respect for life will sink profoundly into your heart. His recurring dreams of lions walking on a distant African beach will duplicate all your yearning for naturalness, beauty, purity and strength.

The Old Man and the Sea made me realize three great movies I’ve watched recently have strong references to it, without my noticing them at the time: Life of Pi, Captain Phillips and All is Lost, the latter featuring Robert Redford from the height of the dignity of his 77 years of age. The same themes of endurance, self-reliance and the power of dreaming reverberate through all of them, resolved in different and exciting original artistic forms. And, of course, they all go back to Melville’s Moby Dick.

I don’t expect anything else from a work of art: give me something beautiful and simple – throw some ocean into it, if possible – test my hero to the limits of his physical and mental strength, put me in his head as he struggles, and the artist will have managed to take me to places I have never been before, and, as a consequence, made my life richer and a lot more meaningful.

Au revoir

Jorge Sette.

5 Intriguing Business Lessons from Amazon’s Jeff Bezos

Posted on by under aprenda inglês, Career advice, content marketing, E-books, language, marketing, sales training, Writing

If you haven’t had the chance to read Brad Stone’s THE EVERYTHING STORE: JEFF BEZOS AND THE AGE OF AMAZON, reach out for your Kindle and download it right now. It’s an exciting account of the creation and development of Amazon into one of the most unique companies in history and the life of his peculiar founder Jeff Bezos.

IJeff Bezos and the Everything Store

Jeff Bezos and the Everything Store

Amazon.com started as an online book retailer and grew to become a company where you can purchase virtually anything, from apparel, to art to web services. It originated the concept of cloud computing service and was the first company, through the Kindle,  to turn online reading into a reality for thousand of hundreds of people on the planet. In addition, it claims it will be launching rockets into outer space soon.

If Amazon puts the client first – and, as customers,  you and I can certainly attest to that – working for Bezos looks like it’s not a lot of fun. Amazon is supposed to have all the depressing and Orwellian political atmosphere and red tape of huge corporations combined with the lack of resources of a startup. Many of his ex-employees are said to suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, and the ones who remain there live under constant pressure and fear of getting fired before the end of the day. Bezo’s explosive personality is not very different from that of another difficult boss – Steve Jobs. It is kind of sad to think Nature tends to offset their kind of genius and creativity with a terrifying temperament and underdeveloped interpersonal skills.

Despite these drawbacks, you may find below a number of interesting lessons and facts about Jeff Bezos and his company. They are all based on info I got from the book. You may either try to apply them in your own business or, at least,  enjoy these points as mere trivia:

1. Monitor your clients more than your competition. Of course Amazon has always kept a close eye on Walmart, Apple, Barnes and Noble,  and Google – their main competitors. But he has always been much more likely to create or optimize processes that, rather than simply emulate these companies breakthroughs in terms of profitability, would actually benefit the client. For him, the client experience has always come first. Short term profit has always been an afterthought.

2. Frugality. Bezos is obsessed with simplicity and adept of an ascetic life style (in this he was not very different from Jobs either, by the way). He has always kept his staff on a very tight budget, cutting all kinds of extra costs with the aim of investing in the clients’ experience. His mantra was low prices everyday (just like Walmart’s), and he would go out of his way to make this happen, keeping his margins to a minimum or even giving them up altogether, such was his confidence in a business model that, if trusted by the client, would payoff in the future. Bezos would carefully  consider the need of every extra expense or cost and try to connect it directly to a benefit to the client. Lack of resources, according to him, would spur creativity and imagination from his staff.

3. You may learn more from fiction than non-fictional books. His favorite novel is Kazuo Ishiguro’s  The Remains of the Day. I was very happy to hear about this, as I love reading novels and this is certainly one of my all-time favorites. However, I don’t really think you can learn the hard facts about being an entrepreneur from the likes of Philip Roth or Machado de Assis. Fiction in my opinion will help you deal with the human side of business, and will probably keep you from having to resort to antidepressants when you struggle to work under bosses like Bezos, get sabotaged by coworkers or even fired.  But,  in my humble opinion, only the actual experience and the study of technical reading material will help you grow in your career. The most interesting thing about this aspect of Bezos’s personality  is  that his love for books boosted the launch of the Kindle, whereas Steve Job’s passion for music  – especially Bob Dylan’s and the Beatles’s – was a strong inspiration in his creation of iTunes. Do what you love and you are more likely to succeed.

4. Think very long term. Entrepreneurs need to persist in seeding. The payoff never comes immediately. Especially now, in this fast-paced, ever-changing technological landscape. Appreciate the little victories you achieve every day and fight on. Celebrate every little step towards a moving target you don’t even know if you will ever reach.

5. Be ruthless in the negotiation with your competition. For Jeff Bezos “win-win” was an unamazon way of thinking. You need to score an advantage over your opponents. Think football during these times of World Cup.  A draw is not acceptable. Do not even be afraid of disrupting your own business model in your pursuit to win. Do everything to destroy it and create something new instead. If you don’t do it, others will. Cannibalization is OK.

You may not agree with every tip Bezos has to offer, but remember where he got to by using them. Of course, you should always take successful entrepreneurs’s  and  gurus’ advice with a grain of salt, for, as Malcolm Gladwell explains in his brilliant book OUTLIERS, there is always a lot more to success than meets the eye. A set of special conditions not available to all is always present in the these Cinderella’s stories of ash to riches, so look out for them.

What is your formula for success? Please share it with us (if we are not competing with you).

NOTE: If you are interested in TEACHING ENGLISH WITH ART, you might want to check out our successful series of eBooks available from AMAZON.COM (KINDLE STORE). Just click here: http://wp.me/p4gEKJ-1lS

Teaching English with art

Teaching English with art

Au revoir

Jorge Sette

Gabriela, Clove and Cinnamon: a must-read novel

Posted on by under Aprender línguas estrangeiras, Aprender português, Career advice, E-books, Escrita, language, Literatura, movies, storytelling, Writing

I’m planning to eat a moqueca today, a typical Brazilian dish consisting of salt water fish stew in coconut milk, onions, garlic, tomatoes, coriander and dendê oil from Bahia. This will be my way of celebrating having finished the delicious novel Gabriela, Clove and Cinnamon by Brazilian writer Jorge Amado.

Despite the fact that our literature is not very well known outside the borders of Brazil, chances are the reader will have heard of Amado and his homeland, Bahia. He is one of our most popular writers of the XX century, and his books have been translated into more than 40 languages throughout the world.

Many of his works have been turned into famous Brazilian soap operas, miniseries and movies, but, of course, the experience of watching Amado either on the big or small screen does not compare to the much deeper pleasure of embarking on the deliciously funny, poetic and encompassing canvas of his writing.

Gabriela – Image generated by ChatGPT.

Jorge Amado treats the reader with a wealth of unforgettable characters from the lowest to the highest echelons of the provincial cities of the northeast of Brazil, who intermingle in a network of politics, friendships, romance and violence.

Gabriela, the novel, is a dream of humor, poetry and cultural information. As a Brazilian, it felt great to be transported to the Ilhéus (a town on the coast of Bahia) of the first decades of last century, when the booming of the cacao exportation was making changes in the town and its customs at a pace never seen before. Progress was threatening the lifestyle and status quo of the families of the first farmers who got hold of huge expanses of land by force, with the help of their armed jagunços, never hesitating to use violence and murder in constant ambushes against their opponents. But now times were changing, with the arrival of technology and progressist businessmen, who came to those backward towns attracted  by the riches generated by the cacao.

Jorge Amado delivers his prose in a light, funny and detached tone, packed with irony, yet showing great warmth and understanding towards his characters. He depicts prostitutes, rich farmers (the so-called “colonels”), their minions (“jagunços”), churchgoing  and gossipy splinters, lonely concubines, small time businessmen and pathetic pseudo-intellectuals, against the backdrop of the geography and culture of the small provincial cities of the early decades of the 20th century. His prose will stay with you for a long time after you close the book (or switch off your Kindle), such is its power and universality.

Moreover, “Gabriela” is a very sensual text, filled with the colors, smells and tastes of Bahia. It’s a book that celebrates life and the liberation of minds, especially women’s, from the colonial chains and obsolete traditions of a male-dominated society. It’s a radical hymn against machismo, opening up doors to the possibility of freedom.

Gabriela, the protagonist, represents the essence of Brazilianness, in her beauty, simplicity, lightheartedness and pleasure for life. Of course, both the main characters of “Gabriela, Clove and Cinnamon” and “Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands”, another famous Amado novel, are deeply associated in our minds with the image of Brazilian actress Sônia Braga, who portrayed them both in famous movies and soap operas during the seventies. Of course, I was too young at the time to fully enjoy them – this, however, does not stop me from putting the face of Ms Braga to the wild Gabriela of the pages of the novel. After all, Sônia Braga was an icon of Brazilian sexuality and beauty in her day.

Jorge Amado is a pleasure to read. His stories will certainly make a profound mark in your life and deepen the awareness you may have of Brazilian culture. I strongly recommend you have a go at it.

Au revoir,

Jorge Sette.

Should you have a blog as a marketer?

Posted on by under art, Career advice, content marketing, Escrita, language, marketing, sales, sales training, storytelling, Writing

Should you have a blog as a marketer?

Click on the image for the full text.

Should you have a blog as a marketer?

Posted on by under art, Career advice, content marketing, Escrita, language, marketing, sales, sales training, Writing

“There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.” Ernest Hemingway

As we all bloggers know, Hemingway did nail the writing process in his quote above. Yes, it’s hard; yes, it’s time-consuming; no, it’s never right the first time around. Writing is rewriting. For a 1000-word blog post, I would say the average blogger would write at least 10 drafts before he is reasonably satisfied with the result. He is lucky if he has an editor to help with the polishing, but that is not usually the case.

However, in this day and age of content marketing, you would be crazy as a marketer if you did not sit down at least once a week to create or repurpose some  written content to post on the Internet. Let me highlight in this post the features of good blog posts and how your business could benefit from them.

Figure Writing Reflected in a Mirror by Bacon, Francis, 1976

Figure Writing Reflected in a Mirror by Bacon, Francis, 1976

1. Search engine optimization: provided you offer useful and original content, employing the relevant key words, blogging will help your business show up on the SERPs (search engine results pages) of your prospective clients. I don’t know many people today who will not go to Google at some point during the buying cycle to do a search before actually purchasing a product or service. So, to be available, to show up, it will help to have a carefully SEOed (search engine optimized) blog to pop up on the first page.

2. Answer your customers questions: the buying process – the cycle your prospects go through before committing to a purchase –  consists of the the following phases: first, the prospect needs to identify a need or problem; second, they will try to learn about possible solutions; third, they will start shopping for the ideal solution; afterwards, when they are ready, they will look for directions to actually buy it (online or offline); finally, when they start using the product, they might have problems or questions about it, so you need to offer them prompt customer service. Your blog needs to account for each one of these phases and provide the appropriate answers to help them at the stage they are, moving them along the sales funnel. It takes close communication between Marketing, Sales and Customer Service to identify the customers most frequently asked questions and issues, and try to solve them through your blog content. So it’s time to cooperate (there’s no need to tell me how hard this can be, but it’s worth trying): salespeople and customer service professionals need to develop their marketing skills, while marketers should learn more about the customers from sales and customer service so they can provide qualified leads.

3. Thought leadership: by covering content that speaks to the different needs of your customers at the different stages of the buying process you will soon develop a reputation of an expert in the field. Even if you don’t get conversions in terms of sales at the first moment, your customers will grow to trust your opinions and respect your points of view. When the time comes for them to make a buying decision, who do you think they will turn to?

4. Style: your blog is not supposed to be a work of art if you are a marketer. So write as simply and elegantly as possible, as if you were actually “talking” to the prospect. A marketer’s blog is not a piece of literature, so tone down your message, and be objective and direct. Of course it would help to be aware of the reading level of your audience, but “according to many reports (including the U.S. National Center for Education Statistics’ 1992 Adult Literacy survey), the average reading level is the 7th or 8th grade. Combine that with reports of increasingly low-attention spans of Internet users who require even milder language and you’re looking at a reading level of the 6th or 7th grade”  (http://blog.ezinearticles.com/2013/10/ezinearticles-asks-what-reading-level-should-you-target.html) . If you really wish to fine tune your text’s level of difficulty, there are some tools on the Internet (try the Readability Test Tool, for example, http://read-able.com) that will allow you to measure it.

5. The title: the importance of a catchy title to crown your blog post cannot be underestimated. This is the first impression you will make on the reader, and you only have a couple of seconds to entice them. So think carefully about it. Putting yourself in the shoes of a journalist may help, after all, this is your headline. Research says that questions are a good way to go, as they tease the reader into looking for the answer in the text.

6. Promoting and Repurposing: to make the most of all the effort you put into writing your piece, promoting your blog is a must. Use your social media channels with this objective. Putting links to your blog post repeatedly, however,  may not be the solution (although you’ll have to do it occasionally). Be careful not to make your audience feel spammed. Another solution is to repurpose your content and distribute it in different formats to suit the different social media channels: write a summary of the content as an image (for Instagram); use the photos you put in your blog post with a link to it (Instagram, Facebook); write a headline for your blog with a link to it (Twitter); turn it into an infographics poster (Pinterest); use the main points for a slide presentation (slideshare), etc.

As with most things in life, practice makes perfect. Some people say they blog everyday so they can improve.  Research indicates that to be excellent at a skill you need to have spent at least 10,000 hours at it (read Malcolm Gladwell’s “Outliers”  for a deeper explanation on this). Maybe you don’t have that  amount of time available anymore, but I would say it’s never too late to get started. What you can’t afford to do as a marketer is NOT to have a blog. How about starting today?

Au revoir

Jorge Sette

What are Your Favorite Works of Art?

Posted on by under art, Ensinar com Arte, language, Mythology

Living in São Paulo is an advantage for those who love what is usually called High Art, as we have a fair number of museums in the city. Of course, we lack the spoiling infinite choices of those who live in places like London, Paris and New York, but things could be worse.

However, going to a famous exhibition in Sampa is not without its frustrations and annoyances, as there are usually long lines on the weekend and the facilities are far from excellent. Besides, I’m quite addicted to audio tours, which, unfortunately, are not very common in Brazilian museums. I can’t stand guided tours, so I never join those little groups of people who follow a uniformed museum employee listening in awe whenever the guide decides to stop in front of a painting of her choice to spill out all the memorized knowledge in artificial intonation. I tend to run in the opposite direction.

So it’s not surprising that my best experiences in art viewing will have taken place abroad. The objective of this post is to share and discuss with my audience four of the great masterpieces I’ve already had the chance to see in person. I don’t think there is anything wrong in admiring pieces of art through apps, books or video, but I’m sure we all agree that the experience of standing only a couple of centimeters away from a great sculpture or painting in a beautiful museum can not be beaten.

The pieces I chose to write about here are not necessarily listed in any special order. They represent some of the art I feel most moved by – either because of their sheer beauty, or because they may be related to a special moment in my life. Two of them are based on stories I may have read or heard: I love pictorial representations of mythology. They are among my favorites. Also I did not have to think long and hard before selecting the pieces for the post. They are the ones that first came to my mind:

1. Samson and Delilah, by Peter Paul Rubens: I first saw this painting while roaming through the rooms of the National Gallery in London last time I was there. My eyes were immediately drawn to it for its vibrant colors, strong subject matter and unique distribution of lighting. You can see Samson, of biblical fame, sound asleep on Delilah’s lap while his hair, source of huge strength, is being treacherously cut off. The Philistines are already waiting there on the doorstep to take him away and blind him. The painting by Rubens is highly sensual and yet poignant, and, to me, its relevance can also be traced to my childhood, when I first heard the story and was deeply impressed by it.

Samson and Delilhah, 1609, by Peter Paul Rubens. National Gallery

Samson and Delilhah, 1609, by Peter Paul Rubens. National Gallery

2. The Lady of Shallot, by Waterhouse: I have a funny personal anecdote about this painting. I had discovered it on an app about art and fallen in love with its bright colors and hippie-like atmosphere (although it was painted almost 100 years before the “flower power” movement). I have always been a fan of the romantic sixties and its music. Pre-Raphaelites, therefore, with their drama and romance, feature among my favorite painters. Well, a couple of years ago, I was in London for work and had an afternoon off. I decided to invest the time visiting the Tate Gallery, with the sole purpose of seeing this particular painting. My surprise was that, as I entered the museum, for some reason, I marched straight up to the room where the picture was hanging, without ever having been there before.  I had passed other rooms on my way into the museum, but somehow this was the first room I got into, after making a left off the main passageway. I could only interpret this, of course, as fate. The Lady of Shallot, just like a magnet, had dragged me to the place. She probably was as eager to meet me as I was. The painting itself is a bit too high on the wall and the colors are somewhat faded in comparison to the copy I had on the app. But still it’s impressive, and remains one of my favorites of all time.

The Lady of Shallot, 1888, by John William Waterhouse, Tate Gallery.

The Lady of Shallot, 1888, by John William Waterhouse, Tate Gallery.

3. The Thinker, by Rodin: In my teenage years in Recife my mother used to introduce me to her friends who came to our house as “the thinker”, the son who would spend hours either reading or staring into the void in front of our backyard garden with his mind going places she could not fathom. When I was still in high school, she gave me a little marble figurine in the shape of Rodin’s The Thinker, which she had acquired as a souvenir in Europe. This little gift is one of my most treasured objects and I keep it in my living room to this day (see picture below). Therefore, years later, I teared up with emotion when I first laid eyes on one of the versions of The Thinker, brought to the Pinacoteca in Sao Paulo as part of a huge Rodin exhibition in the mid-nineties (we had to stand in line for hours, and, once inside, needed to rush through the pieces as if in a car race, so many people attended the event everyday). A couple of years later, however, I could indulge in as much Rodin as I wanted too, roaming freely around the rooms and gardens of his Museum during a sunny summer day in Paris.

My little version of THE THINKER by Rodin. My living room.

My little version of THE THINKER by Rodin. My living room.

4. Mars, the God of War, by Velázquez: The pressures against growing old  – or really, the prejudice one confronts after reaching 30 – are mounting in today’s infantilized society, and it’s hard not to feel progressively inadequate and afraid. Obviously one keeps postponing – for himself – the cutting off date after which you should be considered old: it’s usually at least 10 years ahead of your current age. Therefore it was with a warm feeling of relief and reassurance that I came across this riveting Velázquez’s painting at Museo del Prado in Madrid: it dares to show the god of war, Mars, as an emaciated and tired middle-aged man, with his stunning shield lying on his feet. My conclusion was that, if even the gods need to confront the aging process, it should be OK for the rest of us.

Mars, God of War, 1640, by Velázquez. Museo del Prado.

Mars, God of War, 1640, by Velázquez. Museo del Prado.

There are many more pieces I’d love to write about. I promise my loyal readers to get back to the subject in future posts. For now, I believe this will give you a preview of my taste in Art.

What about you? What are your favorite pieces of art? Share them with us.

NOTE: You might want to check out our language and art eBooks available  from AMAZON.COM. Click here for further info:  http://wp.me/p4gEKJ-1lS

 

Teaching English with Art

Teaching English with Art

 

Au revoir

Jorge Sette.

Heart of Darkness: the horror, the horror

Posted on by under art, E-books, filmes, language, movies, storytelling, Writing

After meeting Colonel Kurtz in the powerful portrayal given by Marlon Brando in “Apocalypse Now”, when the movie first launched, I always wanted to get to know the original character he was based on: the mysterious Englishman lost in the jungles of Africa created by Joseph Conrad in his novella “Heart of Darkness”. If you, like me, are into dark themes and water (be it sea or river), this is the book for you.

For many years I hesitated to start the book. The  language on the first page looked obscure, and I was not sure I had the energy to go through it. I even downloaded  it in different versions (I believe they were free). The copies lay on my iPad for a couple of years now. Then I came across it in the beautiful voice of Kenneth Branagh, as an audiobook, but, for some reason, I kept losing my concentration whenever I reached Parque Villa Lobos – a nice recreational area in Sao Paulo – on my bike, and could not follow the story from then on. Well, the audiobook at least showed me that if I got past the first couple of pages, with their detailed description of ships coming and going on the Thames at dusk, things would get more interesting. So I resumed the book. And did not regret it.

Brando_Apocalypse Now

Marlon Brando as Colonel Kurtz in Apocalypse Now.

Although the novella is written in prose, as you embark in the story within the story, which tells of seaman Marlow’s time as a captain of a French steamboat  working in the business of ivory trade somewhere in Central Africa, going up the Congo river, “a mighty big river, that you could see on the map, resembling an immense snake uncoiled, with its head in the sea, its body at rest curving afar over a vast country, and its tail lost in the depths of the land”,  it turns into a somber and gripping poem which becomes hard to put down. Although the book is short, the reader’s experience is very deep and lasting.

Marlow is in search of a tradesman named Kurtz, who seems to have lost contact with the ivory trading company they both work for. He was famous for having been an excellent employee, sending tons and tons of ivory down the river back to the headquarters. But for now, rumor has it something may have happened to him, as all communication seems to have ceased. Is he dead? Could he be ill? After all not many white men remained healthy, physically or mentally, after a couple of months in those desolate and warm latitudes.

Of course, as with all great works of art, the book lends itself to many interpretations and can be read on many levels. I believe that, at some point, Conrad was even accused of racism for the use of  the word nigger many times, and also for treating the natives as an indiscriminate living mass, not considering them as human individuals in the story. For today’s ears, it is certainly uncomfortable to read the word nigger inserted without any qualification or explanation within a passage, but let’s not forget the story is told from the point of view of Marlow, the seaman we don’t know much about. We know, however, that Marlow is aware that even London, “the biggest and greatest town in the world”, started off as a dark and uncivilized place, and that the Romans must have gone through something similar to what he is going through right now, floating on that snake of a river, in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by looming trees and sighing vegetation, under a scorching sun.

The book explores this fascinating encounter of a civilized man with the primitive world, which seems to exert a powerful pull over him, making him reconsider the values White Europe stands for. Therefore, it’s a harsh criticism of the barbaric colonialism in Africa, which, under the guise of a civilizatory mission, invaded and exploited those virgin regions of the world for pure material profit, causing a lot of destruction and pain along the way. The book questions what really is civilization and what terrible energies get unleashed when Paris and London clash with the Congo in the figure of Kurtz: “the horror, the horror”.

Others say that the book is about the battle between good and evil (stay in the boat and be safe or go on land like Kurtz and lose your soul to corruption due to lack of restraint). Whatever interpretation you lend to the story, the fact is that Heart of Darkness is one of the most poetic books I have ever read. Its account of a boat trip along that methaforically muddy river in the primitive jungle that pulsates like an alien heart will stay with me for years. It also made me appreciate the boldness and creativity of director Francis Ford Coppola, who transported the story to a totally different context (the Vietnam war in the late sixties and early seventies),  managing to make the themes and topics of the book even more relevant in a new era of barbarism.

Have you read the book?  What did you think of it? Share your opinion with us.

Au revoir

Jorge Settte.

 

 

Why Maleficent doesn’t work as a fairy tale

Posted on by under Aprender inglês, art, language, movies, Mythology, Writing

Maleficent, the new Disney movie that tells the story of Sleeping Beauty from the point-of-view of its original Nemesis – the evil fairy godmother – had all the potential to awe audiences, going way beyond its stunning visuals, if they had decided to work on more complex and original levels, paying closer attention to how mythology and its archetypes (typical characters) sustain great storytelling.

One can’t help but think of Wicked, that, first as novel, and then as a successful Broadway musical, also narrated the backstory of an evil character, the Wicked Witch of the West, of The Wizard of Oz fame, from the difficulties she had as a (literally) green child all the way to her adulthood, when she gets to meet Dorothy and her shoes. Although both Maleficent and Wicked chose to tell the story from the point of view of the alleged villain, the latter accomplished a lot more artistically.

Maleficent as a character is carefully construed to represent a strong role model for girls. Angelina Jolie looks stunning in the role, and will visually fascinate girls and boys alike. Boys, however, will surely be more entertained by the great number of superhero-like action scenes and predictable visual effects. It’s unfortunate, however, that the story is too weak to replace the original in children’s imagination, as it’s a lot less dark and scary in its connotations. Fairy tales are not supposed to be watered-down versions of their originals, and it’s a shame that Disney progressively goes in this direction with every new version they produce.

These are some of the problems that weaken Maleficent (Spoiler alert: you may want to watch the movie before reading the following):

Angelina Jolie as Maleficent

Angelina Jolie as Maleficent

1. The hero/heroine archetype of the story keeps shifting (is it Prince Phillip? Aurora? Or Maleficent herself?) Stories need a well-defined hero with a clear objective. The hero can and should be flawed (so there’s nothing wrong with Maleficent’s rage and wish for revenge from a dramatic stance). However, the whole story should be about her journey, and the transformation she goes through along what is commonly called the dramatic arc. Maleficent the movie does not really have any of its characters growing or changing through experience in its almost two hours of storyline. In this version, Maleficent has always been a strong and benevolent fairy, protective or the moor and its creatures. Then she makes one mistake led my revenge or jealousy, and spends the rest of the movie trying to fix it. This does not a good story maketh.

2. I’m sure that, for young moviegoers, the three little “good fairy-godmothers” are visually enchanting and can even be funny at times (especially the one played by Imelda Staunton), and they dutifully fill the role of tricksters, an important kind of archetype, providing the comic relief every story needs. However, adults will miss the irony and wit usually delivered by such characters in more sophisticated versions of kids’ movies.

3. Diaval, the raven, is too weak as a mentor, another essential archetype in effective stories. Maleficent, both as a movie and as a character, would have benefited a lot more if she had a more intriguing, wiser, and possibly older tutor to rely on. It would have given the movie a much stronger structure.

4. King Stefan, who starts off as Maleficent’s first love, does not have a clear archetypal role in the story. He’s too lame as a shadow/nemesis, and not very convincing as a shapeshifter (archetype usually filled by the heroine’s romantic interest). Similarly, young prince Phillip fails to awaken the sleeping princess with his cold teenage kiss: I don’t think we need to say anything more about his role in the story after this flop. Therefore, the movie really relegates male figures to totally secondary and pathetic roles.

5. Aurora’s role also does not fit in within the mythological structure of effective storytelling, being neither a hero nor a shadow, or any other essential archetype. She roams around the moors, beautiful and wide-eyed, without any specific dramatic function. The couple of scenes in which both Aurora and Prince Phillip, at different moments, unconsciously float in the air in the wake of Maleficent clearly indicate that these characters lack what is fundamental in archetypes of more importance: agency. Frankly, these levitation scenes boarder the ridicule.

6. The movie climax, packed with action and pyrotechnics, does not look any different from the last superhero movie you may have watched. The grand finale depicts lots of deus-ex machina solutions ( “Into a dragon”, orders Maleficent, before her loyal raven becomes a fire-spitting monster. Well, that is an easy way out, right? Worse: he fails! Maleficent will need to get her creepy dead wings back to succeed.

Speaking of those wings: at first, the scene in which they are cut off looked like this was going to be one of darkest and best moments of the movie, and could easily stand for all the feminist and environmentalist metaphors the movie repeatedly uses. However, the fact that they fly back and reattach themselves to their owner in a climactic scene at the end spoils all the dark beauty and menacing effect of the former scene. Now the wings are just another deus ex-machina-kind of solution employed by poorly-creative scritpwriters. Besides, one wonders why the wings did not decide to do this years before.

Now it’s your turn. Share with us your opinion on Maleficent.

For more on storytelling I would suggest you read two other posts in this blog:  “The Power of Storytelling – The Mythological  Structure ” (http://wp.me/p4gEKJ-F2) and “More Storytelling Tips for Marketers” (http://wp.me/p4gEKJ-UK).

Au revoir

Jorge Sette.

Under the Skin: ET for adults

Posted on by under art, filmes, language, movies

What does Earth look like through the eyes of an alien? If you ever wondered about it, now you have a plausible answer: it looks like Scotland! The language is weird, humanity is mostly friendly and naive, and the views are breathtaking. It’s a cold  and lonely place in general, but you will have plenty of opportunity to be on the receiving end of much warmth: especially if you look like a dark-haired and full-lipped Scarlet Johansson. However, the place can have its dangers.

After using only her sexy voice to play an operating system with which Joaquin Phoenix’s character falls deeply in love in the academy award-nominated  movie Her, the actress takes on another risky role in director Jonathan Glazer’s Under the Skin. Now she’s nothing less than a predator alien in the shape of a beautiful woman, who spends most of her time driving along desert streets on the hunt for lonely men – who cannot believe their luck! Only, contrary to the preys’s idea, the plan is not sex, but to turn them into ET food.

Under the skin, the movie

Under the Skin, the movie

Under the Skin is not a movie for the masses. It’s slow at times and there’s hardly any dialogue. Just like 2001 a Space Odissey in its day, it does not explain everything you want to know: I guess you would need to read the novel it’s based on to find out all the details. However, Scarlet Johansson has enough star quality to carry the movie on her spotless shoulders. And the viewer will see a lot more than her shoulders, as the movie features a great number of explicit nude scenes.

The plot is also not without flaws, as, in my opinion, the change of the main character from alien predator to traveler open to new experiences and excited about discovering a new world is too sudden. However, the movie lasts the right amount of time, it does not drag and finishes exactly when it should.

It’s worth pointing out, as well, that it portrays one of the most poignant scenes in movie history: an abandoned toddler crying on an amazingly beautiful and desolate beach, waiting for its parents to come back from the sea. In addition to this, the underwater scene which shows men being turned into alien food is also very original.

Kudos to Ms Johansson, who does not play safe or shies away from challenging endeavours. I wonder what her next role will be.

Au revoir

Jorge Sette