Tag Archives: readingresponse

Week 12: The Water Will Carry Us Home

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In Gabrielle Tesfaye’s stop motion animation, “The Water Will Carry Us Home,” the scene depicting the throwing of stolen Africans off a slave ship during the Middle Passage followed by their transformation into mermaids serves as a poignant exploration of sacrifice, transformation, and spiritual liberation.

The act of casting the stolen Africans off the ship carries profound symbolism, reflecting the brutality of the transatlantic slave trade and the disregard for human life and dignity. The description reveals that this act is a ritualized sacrifice, echoing the harrowing experiences endured by countless individuals forced into the horrors of slavery. It signifies a loss of hope and humanity, as the enslaved are cruelly discarded into the depths of the ocean.

However, amidst this tragedy emerges a moment of divine intervention and transformation. The presence of Yoruba Orishas dwelling in the water saves the spirits of the enslaved Africans, preventing their demise and offering them a chance at redemption. This supernatural occurrence signifies a spiritual awakening and liberation from the chains of bondage and suffering. The transformation into mermaids symbolizes a return to ancestral roots and a reclaiming of identity and power.

The scene’s visual imagery, coupled with its emotional weight, leaves a profound impact on the viewer. The juxtaposition of violence and spiritual redemption creates a powerful narrative that resonates deeply with the audience. It invites reflection on the enduring legacy of slavery and the resilience of the human spirit in the face of unimaginable adversity.

The Sea is History

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This week, I wanted to focus more on the poem, “The Sea is History”, by Dereck Walcott. This is by far one of the most interesting poems I have ever read. It focused mostly on the transportation of the slaves during the slave trade. This poem made me realize how heavy words can be when used properly. This poem almost seems like an act of rebellion to the way history is normally told. History is generally taught through the perspective of Christianity, more specifically in Europe. This poem constantly references the Bible. Stories like Exodus, the Ark of the Covenant, and Genesis are talked about, which are stories about great migrations. I think that talking about these stories with the slave trade amplifies the importance of the already heavy topic in a tasteful way.

The brutality of the wording is absolutely necessary in order to induce empathy in the reader. One of the lines that I found to be extremely interesting was when the narrator comments on the “men with eyes heavy as anchors, who sank without tombs” (Walcott 8). This line implies that suicide is much more preferable than living as a slave, and comparing eyes to anchors is a beautiful yet heartbreaking use of a simile. The idea that there is no tomb, just the ocean, implies that life is not the only thing being taken, but culture is being taken as well. Almost every culture has some type of ritual for death. The slave trade took that away for Africans, just as they stripped them of their entire culture. I thought this was a heavy line but it was extremely interesting to think about.

I also wanted to comment on how interesting it was to consider the ocean the “grey vault” that holds African history. The ocean is almost like an omnipotent being in this poem, the way it has so much power and history. I believe that this is a prime example of why history should be taught more through world literature. The way history is taught is extremely biased, but through world literature we can learn to gather information and truly learn from the past.

Week 12: The Water Will Carry Us Home

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This week’s stop motion animation left me curious but also fascinated with the art that was used. There were a couple of details that stood out to me but watching the short video I couldn’t help but focus on the key that was used. When the key is first showed it is to unlock the story of slaves were being moved through the ocean on ship and those who had fallen into the water eventually came to be mermaids, and the key is later then showed again as it is locking up the story again. The key shows a way in which there are beings that are able to hide or make visible stories about the ocean but it’s a “pick and choose” which they believe should be told, this going back to the story that was showed about African American merpeople first coming to be which is unusual in history as it has been portrayed to be only white merpeople. The key is also showing the way in which stories are told from different cultural backgrounds, in this short animation we are viewing the origin of merpeople through Yoruba Orishas who helped cause this phenomenon to happen. Stories like these are ones that aren’t heavily present in any sort of history, so I think it’s interesting that there are even stop motion animation to tell these stories as they are important not only to the history of mermaids but to the history of Ocean. The Ocean is a fluid place with so much history and with that history holds so many different stories for so many cultures that it’s not easy to think one version of a story exist, to think that multiple variations of a story exist as it translated differently throughout cultures.

week twelve… the water will carry us home

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ok professor… where did you find THIS

anyways this short film was so intriguing and sad. how the water was a vessel that took the african people away from their home but then later became something of a sanctuary to those who fell overboard…

I think this speaks a lot to how people view the ocean. Because for some people it was used like a tool, a sort of road, something that didn’t have life. Something that took life (as evidenced by the people “dying”). But to others it gives life, it provides safety, as shown by the big merwoman transforming all the people (pregnant people I may add) into merpeople and saving their lives. The way people interact with the ocean probably also impacts how they see it.

There’s something to be said about having a surface level view of the ocean- how people only seem to focus on the top of the water, where humans can survive, rather than below, which is normally hostile to humans. It probably also speaks to our fear of the unknown, which makes sense as the ocean IS pretty mysterious. But in this the ocean is comforting and secure, but there’s also respect for it as an entity, as seen in the ending portion of the short film where it cuts from stop motion to real life.

Week 12: The Sea Remembers

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One thing I found really interesting in Derek Walcott’s poem “The Sea Is History” is the notion he introduces that, as humanity developed and began spreading its territory on land, the sea remains this immovable force that is ever present throughout all these eras of turbulence. It seems to act primarily as an observer, only stepping in to swallow that which gets lost in it. One line from the poem that got me to read and reread it a couple of times over reads as such,

“Then came the men with eyes heavy as anchors
who sank without tombs,

brigands who barbecued cattle,
leaving their charred ribs like palm leaves on the shore,” (Walcott, lines 26-29)

These lines gave me chills.

It paints the picture of the ocean being used as a macabre means of waste disposal. We’ve seen the ocean (or any body of water, at that) being used as a means of body disposal in countless movies, TV shows, books, etc. – like the old Mobster term “sleeping with the fishes”. The act of throwing a body in water to sweep it under the rug and leave it somewhere where it won’t be traced is a familiar yet sinister practice to us surface beings. The poem does a good job of reminding us that discarding something in the ocean doesn’t erase it from existence. The ocean remembers. It holds onto our waste like a ledger mapping the geological reaches of our control and depravity. The next bit about the barbecued cattle and the comparison between rib bones and palm leaves just filled my head with images of shapes along the coast, dripping with seafoam and obscured by a marine layer. The poem is a very good read.

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One of the components of the Sirenomelia film project that really stood out to me was the way each section of audio helps to mentally transport the viewer into desolate landscapes displayed on screen. The first 15 seconds of the project are filled with white noise as the word ‘Nowness’ appears on a simple white background. The lack of sound feels strange and a bit jarring because of the lack of auditory input. This absence helps to center the viewers focus before the sound abruptly starts on the 16th second. The sound that begins to play is eerie and unsettling which adds to the desolate and isolating feeling that the vast snow covered island imparts on the viewer. The project states that the sounds being recorded come from quasars that come from a Norwegian Observatory. Quasars are not found within the deep ocean but are still found within another desolate and unsettling landscape, outer space. The sound feels almost otherworldly and inhuman, as if the audience is not supposed to hear it. This specific sound lasts for more than a minute before it reaches a crescendo that sounds like a far off cry being distorted, increasing the feeling of unease within the viewer. At around the two minute mark, you can slowly hear the sound of water rippling on the surface emerge from beneath the mechanical/unnatural sound before the sound of the water gets overpowered again. In less than 30 seconds, this distortion continues and it sounds like a human voice is being projected to the viewer rather than the sound of the quasar. Although the noise sounds vaguely human, it’s difficult to discern if there are any words being spoken at all or if it’s a trick being played by the viewers brain.

week 11? Sirenomelia

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professor where did you even find this

anyways it was really uncanny, with all of those shots from under the surface of the water. And then the mermaid(?) swimming amongst the human structures, and then later in the middle of the ocean… it felt so out of place and yet so natural..

I think it speaks to how humans are somewhat out of place in nature, just as the mermaid was out of place amongst the structures. All of the shots of the quiet stillness in the ocean and in that tundra area sort of spoke to how nature sort of coexists with itself. That mermaids are a sort of extension of nature in a way, because we see the mermaid in the water almost all the time (naturally).
the film kind of implies that mermaids are indeed the link between humans and the ocean because the mermaid interacts with bare, isolated nature and the equally empty human structures. There’s also a bit of curiosity as the mermaid explores the structures, it could be a nod to how humans are curious about the ocean and explore it slowly.

Post-human Mythologies

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Like most of my peers, the noises and sounds in the background of this short film caught my attention. While I was watching it surprised me how it felt strangely peaceful instead of the eerie or haunting feeling. It reminded me of whale sounds and how people use these to help them fall asleep. Aside from the noises, I enjoyed the scene right before the last clip of the mermaid swimming in the open ocean—the one where the mermaid creature is swimming in a sort of canal-looking thing. I think the contrast between the two scenes was fascinating, one moment the mermaid is swimming in a confined man-made space with water in between allowing the mermaid to inhabit and live in this area. This interested me because it shows the duality between “nature,” humans, and man-made objects. While it shows this balance between entities, the next clip is a lot more freeing. Comparing these two clips to each other in my perspective allowed me to appreciate both realities. The one in the canal was a reminder of the world and environment we live in today, where nature and creatures have sort of adapted to all our man-made creations. On the other hand, the last scene in the film felt captivating, because the mermaid was in a big open space, and in my eyes, it looked more natural, but also led me back to the discussions we have had in class about what is versus what is not natural.

Another thing worth pointing out, when doing some research on the director of the film, I found the description of Sirenomelia which included, “Sirenomelia links man, nature and machine and posits possible post-human mythologies.” I thought the post-human aspect was interesting since I was watching with the lens of humans and mermaids co-existing in this universe, but it seems as if it was made in the vision of a post-human environment. I related this posthumanism idea with our climate crisis and the notion that with global warming and climate change, our planet independently will survive, humans on the other hand, may not. On top of this, I thought the concept of this film being directed in a post-human reality was really interesting and I definitely would not have thought about this if I hadn’t read the description from the director.

Earth’s Second World and The Right to Understand

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Good evening Class,

Did anybody else get goosebumps reading the introduction to The Ocean Reader? Because those measurements made a shiver run down my spine.

It wasn’t until very recently that I’ve been able to better accurately visualize distances and lengths mentally – because of this newfound ability, I had to do double take after double take when reading the introduction to The Ocean Reader. I do all of my mental measurements in yards because its easy for me to visualize the length of a football field in my head than a kilometer. So if one kilometer is 1,093, and some change, yards long – or a little less than 11 football fields – then that means the Mariana Trench is about 27,887 football fields deep… please, somebody tell me I’m not the only one freaked out by that idea.

To think that a majority of the Earth’s crust is underwater is baffling. This means a majority of OUR planet is not easily accessible by any means. I’m personally conflicted by this. I see myself as a part of Earth – I believe that just because I can ask questions about how the world operates and what life means doesn’t necessarily mean I’m entitled an explanation. I do not want to meddle with the natural order of the planet just to scratch any philosophical itch I may conjure up. I WAS content with living in a world full of mystery and I DO enjoy looking at the sky and day dreaming about the universe and its plethora of mysteries. But seeing just how much of the world is underwater (and really being able to visualize it) has made me a little more curious than I was before. The ocean is truly another world existing within our own, and this realization is becoming more and more apparent to me the more we read in this course.

EDIT: I think I might have gotten my calculations wrong. My bad, everyone.

The Ocean as an Unconquerable Place

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In this weeks readings, one of the things we read was the introduction chapter of the book “The Ocean Reader” by Eric Paul Roorda. This introductory chapter aimed to introduce people to the idea that despite the ocean being something people may consider an obstacle people must cross to reach new lands, the ocean is still a place with a lot of personality and history. I found this reading to be extremely interesting because, while it may be shameful to admit, I don’t know a lot about the ocean at all. As I follow this class, I think about how society acts towards the ocean and its qualities, but I am realizing that I am part of the problem simply by not thinking about or researching the ocean. While people may not drive to the ocean to dump their trash, a lot of people are not conscious about how even littering can pollute the ocean. The ocean takes up around 70% of the world, and polluting and ruining it will undoubtedly affect the rest of the world. By keeping people uninformed, we are letting ourselves not only disrespect the ocean and its history, but we are allowing the ocean to be polluted.

Roorda makes his point clear that although we have named several different oceans, ultimately, “There is one ocean… they all connect into one ocean” (2). Naming different oceans as if they are countries is the most humanity is willing to do in order to navigate the oceans better, but when it comes to treatment and care, humanity refuses to do anything because different countries feel they have no gain. While it is important to look out for yourself, looking out for the environment directly correlates to looking out for not only yourself, but your species. One thing I want to comment on that might not be directly relevant is how fascinating it is that I am now wondering why people are so ignorant about this, but until I took this class, I was mostly ignorant about this.