-- "To me education is a leading out of what is already there in [students'] souls.
[. .. Putting] in . . . something that is not there. . . is not what I call education. I call it intrusion."
Spark, Muriel. (source) Do you agree?
I don't, as I believe that there is a way of receiving knowledge not as intrusion or imposition: to open ourselves to learn and to interact with what we have learned.
This take-home exam aims to help you recollect and interact with what you have learned.Postmodern City Texts: Toronto, Montreal and Taipei
2010 Fall
Final Exam* Instructions:
1. Four altogether: Altogether you should answer four questions, two from Part I, and two from Part II.
2. Group and Individual work: You are encouraged to answer orally (with a written outline) one of the four questions with your group or some members from the group. If not, be ready to present your answers in class.
Note: A group's answer is to be presented orally and with an outline which shows the group's job division. On your final exam file, please also indicate in a few sentences which topic you have answered with your group and the part you are in charge of.
3. Fair Coverage: In your final exam answers, there should be a fair coverage of the important elements of our class.
In other words,
1) you should be engaged in
-- both theoretical discussions and fictional texts, and
-- the texts set in Taipei, Montreal and in Toronto.
2) You should avoid using the same text to answer different questions.
There will be grade deduction if you do not follow the two principles of fair coverage listed above.
I. Close Analysis
(3 paragraphs) choose two from the following film stills and excerpts to discuss
1) their meanings and how these meanings are presented;
2) their significance in their contexts, and
3) whether you can find examples similar to or contrary to them.
A. --> BA. 1)
The bridge goes up in a dream. It will link the east end with the centre of the city. It will carry traffic, water, and electricity across the Don Valley. It will carry trains that have not even been invented yet.
...During the political ceremonies a figure escaped by bicycle through the police barriers. The first member of the public. Not the expected show car containing officials, but this one anonymous and cycling like hell to the east end of the city. In the photographs he is a blur of intent. He wants the virginity of it, the luxury of such space. (In the Skin of a Lion 26-27)
A. 2)
She [my mother] was one of those Western Canadians of profound good will and solid background, educated and sophisticated, and acutely alert to conditions in eery part of the world, who could not utter a syllable of French without a painful contortion of head, neck, eyes, and lips. She was convinced that the French language was a deliberate debauchery of logic, and that people who persisted in speaking it did so to cloak the particulars of a nefarious design, behind which could be detected, by anyone with even a first grade education, the gnarled, bejewelled claws of the papacy. ("North" 212)
A. 3)
西門町，日本人歡樂街。殖民地圖上這麼說。
西門町，位於早拆掉的西門舊址，附近有末廣町、壽町、築地町、新起町、若竹町。
你上一次來，可能是大學畢業後與服兵役休假的男友約了看電影。男友告訴你，在他等候你的十分鐘裡，有兩批人馬分別來向他拉過客，其中一人見他穿軍裝，好心的安慰他：｢嘿排仔無關係啦，樓底還一個中校仔
。」要他這小小的少尉軍官放心。
你沒告訴男友，你晚到的十分鐘為了要擺脫一個老頭的殷殷邀約，他不死心的從要收你做乾女兒到吃餐中飯到不然送你一雙鞋就好等等等。你覺得西門町可憐透了。不再是你們做學生時候的歡樂街，第一次，你才看到它的衰敗，髒兮兮、臭哄哄、小攤的零嘴看了就很難吃，滿街都是Bee Gees的週末狂熱，服飾店裡亮閃閃的劣質狄斯可舞衣更凸顯得它像個塗了濃妝看能不能拐兩個客人的老妓女，你同情極了，不願再去，這是你唯一能為它做的。
你讀著書上的漢字，原來你從未進去過的萬國戲院是純日式的演劇館「昭日座」，台灣劇場是現在的中國戲院；芳之館光復後是美都麗戲院，後來是你們看了好幾遍《教父》的國賓戲院；新世界戲院原來就是新世界館......（〈古都〉p.218）A. 4)
...These are people who are used to the earth beneath them shifting, and they all want it to stop -- and if that means they must pretend to know nothing, well, that’s the sacrifice they make.
But as at any crossroad there are permutations of existence. People turn into other people imperceptibly, unconsciously, right here in the grumbling train. And on the sidewalks, after they’ve emerged from the stations, after being sandpapered by the jostling and scraping that a city like this does, all the lives they’ve hoarded, all the ghosts they’ve carried, all the inversions they’ve made for protection, all the scars and marks and records for recognition -- the whole heterogeneous baggage falls out with each step on the pavement. There’s so much spillage. (What We All Long For 4-5)A. 5)
當然, 日常中你並不樂意將
自己的臉龐對著馬桶冥思
你清醒的時刻
會將雙腳均衡地踩上他圓滑的磁框
蹲踞在上頭
就像任何階級的人類後裔
就像一隻腔腸動物的變體新種
不, 就像一隻更巨大的
腔腸動物的一具器官
或者零件
(〈馬桶〉林燿德 p. 77)
--> B
