J70 FINAL EXAM.

Natalia Munoz Carpintero 204099666

1. How does the genre of the manifesto work as a prototype for either The Factory Ship or Minamata: Its Victims and Their Worlds?
Manifesto is a genre quite undefined yet that usually is a declaration of principles for a group or community. Minamata documentary has got several elements that relates it to the genre of Manifesto mainly because of the argumentation, tone and role it wants to play as a audiovisual piece. In the effort to document and show to the audiece the reasons and the struggle of the people affected by mINAMATA DISEASE, the discourse turns into a passionate speech of the lives and the suffering of the people. Manifesto genre is usually polemic, and in this documentary the polemic is given by the main topic of the problem, how a factory can screw people lives, how food and water, the most basic elements we have for living can kill and permanently damage lots of people. Manifsto genre is also combative, form that is represented in the documentary showing all the efforts of the Minamata people to reach the congress and politicians who may be able to help them to get response, compensation and actually can stop the Minamata disaster in that region, we see some images where the rage of people is shown, usually expressed in the literary genre through passionate writing style. Manifesto form is always related to the actual context, and if we analize it, teach us about the problems on modernity, in our actual society. This is completely given by Minamata, even though we may not live in Japan, nor being affected directly by the disease (in the case we are the effect increases) but we are learning about the society related to political burocracy, the injustice and the importance of money more than people, health and justice. Manifesto is also usually related with an art context, this I would say is given by the filmmaking aspect of Minamata, the visual expression sometimes is really powerful (recalling the octopus-disher, and the shots of the death octopuses waving in the water) and it completely enhances the effect and the fixing of the images in our memories, bringing emotion to us and therefore feeling more connected to the story through the emotion art generates. The point of manifesto is to express, to scream, to make known, to bring a collective represented within a simple expression. What is in common and particular to all manifestos is their theatricality, they show violently, they have the function of making visible with a rhetoric that's difficult to avoid. Written manifestos are usually a compliment between different media and texts; in this case Minamata compliments manifesto form and documentary; while the type of texts moves between documentary and art.
All the information about manifestos and what they are and aren't where extracted from the paper of Galia Yanoshevsky Three Decades of Writing on Manifesto: The Making of a Genre from the Bar-Ilan University.

2. Based on what you have read and seen this semester, what literary/cinematic genre do you feel is most effective for cultivating a relationship with food? What is that genre, and what is the relationship it cultivates? I believe in folk tales as fairy -cultural- tales as an effective way to generate an important relation with food, as folkloric stories are a crucial way to develop strong arguments arranged in a society, building personal identity and beliefs and commitmens that are permanent through a person's life. Folk stories are characterized to be told generation by generation to children in order to explain the origin of their environments, to differenciate the good and the evil and to explain and show the importance of complex moral values; folk stories build strong symbolisms adapted to kids mind that are able to address their concerns and interests so they can analog this narrative to their lives and take important lessons for their lives. A very important part in the acquirement of a folk story, is how is it told, by whom and the teaching and explanation the older-one gives to their children, children pay attention to this stories and therefore they imagine the worlds narrated and explained, seing themselves reflected in the heroes and in this way, confronting the obstacles presented as they are presented in their daily reality. As long as the kids grow up, the folk stories told in their childhood are still with them in their memories, most of them having left an important mark and teaching in their lives. As the folk tales are often permanent within the same society, the story is being retold all the time and therefore consistently present as long this kids lives, allowing them to revisit the stories, being able to re read, re feel and re understand what was told, everything combined generates this everyday new understandings and a feeling of growing up with the protagonist of these famous stories, creating an emotional an social connection with them, as long as they review their feelings about these stories over and over again. This life-long relationship since we are kids with folk stories, allow us to be able to perceive this stories everytime in a way different, creating a sort of commitment with them and therefore create concepts very rooted in our minds, including a broad variety of references and simbols, important as they build our global perception unconciously that later will manifest forever in our lives. This is also given by how they teach each person how to reach solutions to their problems by themselves, by us realizing this makes the folk tales more important and talk about them as relevant. Resources consulted:
http://simplymulticultural.com/2011/11/the-importance-of-folktales-from-around-theworld/ http://www.answers.com/topic/psychology-and-fairy-tales http://www.folkstory.com/articles/onceupon.html http://books.google.com/books? id=TW7lHYwXhS4C&pg=PA171&lpg=PA171&dq=folk+tales+and+mind&source=bl&ots=4

lsaVjELMZ&sig=CCfZmH1HtHAT7uKbelvui--NMSs&hl=en&sa=X&ei=M5ZbTXREOTgiAKxpL2kCw&ved=0CGAQ6AEwCQ#v=onepage&q&f=false The Japanese Mind: Understanding Contemporary Japanese Culture symbols of inner experience that provide insight into human behaviour