Midevil artwork comparison

The first thing that catches my eye is the symmetry in the Gothic era compared to the chaos in the Romanesque era. The Gothic is not perfectly symmetrical but its all pointing to the center.  This center implies the monotheistic belief in the Gothic era, compared to the polytheistic belief in the Romanesque era. There is obviously one divine being everyone is looking up too. The Romanesque artwork seems to be much more detailed and is telling many stories with the art form of language and scenes. The gothic era looks to be portraying one grand picture that puts Jesus Christ as the center of the faith.  The figures in the Romanesque piece seem to have more of a monstrous overtone; making specific human features dramatized almost looking inhuman. In the Gothic era everyone looks very similar to each other and shows a more realistic approach to religion. Within the Romanesque piece, there are a lot of extremely ambiguous positions that could be interpreted in many ways. In the Gothic piece, they are all uniform and giving a clear example of praise to the figure in the middle of the piece. This piece uses the tool of making the most important figure the biggest to show order of importance. We can also see in the Gothic era a very clear form of hierarchy of who is most important and who is the “masses”. In the Romanesque piece, though there is one who is biggest, it does define a clear picture of importance, and seems as if the figures hold equal weight. Overall, the Gothic era shows a much more organized, symmetric, and realistic approach to the religion they are trying to portray. Whereas the Romanesque artwork shows a little more chaos, giving a more open minded approach to the religion of the Roman people.

Roman Woman

          It always amazes me how cyclical human behavior can be. We think ourselves advanced in thought, morality, and reasoning, but when reading passages such as these I am reminded of our foolery. When reading the arguments against women in Livy's article of Rome I repeatedly thought of our own women;s right movement and the arguments that were made at the time. Though they were less extreme, the principle idea behind women were the same, they were emotional and did not have the self control of men. Therefore, they should be stripped of power and treated as property. Why we continue to rotate back to these ideas is beyond me.
              I also find it interesting that the women of Rome and the women here in America used the exact same protesting method to change the ideas of men. Physically putting themselves in the street and yelling out their rights. Men are visual creatures and often don't listen until you get right up into their face and force them to realize your point of view. This is a sad flaw for my kind. Yet, it proved to be effective and the laws were overturned as reason set into their hearts and saw the foolishness of their ways.

In studying the comparisons between Gilgamesh and Joseph I see a lot of similarities between their characters. For one, the main characteristics I see between the two are the strength that they show in the craft that they choose to do. Gilgamesh is considered the strongest male in the land, giving him a sense of dominance over all those around him. You see this same characteristic with Joseph as you follow him through his journey to the King's hand. Though he is young and powerless, he is the best at whatever he does and this gives him an edge in any situation he finds himself in. Because these two show so much strength, yet in very different ways, we look up to them and want to be like them, even if they have character flaws. Another characteristic the two heroes show are their relationships to the higher being. They are both very close to the higher power of their civilization. We as readers question this mysticism and look at it with awe, giving these two a sense of mystery and valor. We also see the two triumph obstacles in their life that is usually in the form of a journey in trying to find true meaning in one self. We as mankind can strongly relate to this trait because we all have to go through it at some point ourselves. These two both start out with humble beginnings, knowing they are searching for something greater than themselves, and ultimately tell a very impacting story once they triumph  their journey's. These three characteristics can be argued as the three most influential aspects in creating a hero. Creating someone who triumphs above all, someone who is spiritually in tune to whatever God they have, and conquering a personal obstacle that all of mankind can relate too.

For the DocUtah film festival I chose to attend Garwin with my father. Garwin was a documentary about a man by the name Richard Garwin who was considered a very highly respectable scientist from the time of president Eisenhower to recent days. He helped with the initial plans of the hydrogen bomb, was part of a panel(known as the "Jason's") that strategically planned many attacks in the Vietnam war, and also currently owns 43 patents on current technology one namely being the touch screen. The film was about his life and his accomplishments throughout the past 50 ears. I really enjoy films like these because getting even just a glimpse of these geniuses is always an exhilarating experience for me. Garwin was worldly renown for simply being a genius and was asked to participate in many worldly events for that mere fact alone. I find that very fascinating and I'll take any opportunity I can to get as close to it as possible.
      Though the story of Garwin was fascinating, the direction of this film was very poor. Ten minutes into the film you wanted to leave. It didn't develop the story well, the scenes were mostly long dramatic pauses of Garwin staring off into the snow, and they never actually noted any of the contributions that Garwin made to the projects, they just stated that he did. It was filmed with Garwin narrating the whole film while he went around and visited the old places he had lived while he was making many of his accomplishments. They would interview neighbors and colleagues that basically said over and over again just how smart he was. We got to see the apartments that he lived in while making the hydrogen bomb and the storage in which they kept the early forms of the bomb. Though we got to see all these interesting places, we never really got to know Garwin and the actual material that helped him in finding these many achievements he had in life. Although it was slow and boring, they did make a point to really illustrate the atomic bomb crisis and what the leading minds of the world had to say about it. Being that it was around seventy years ago now, we don't often here the political and moral arguments surrounding the conflict of whether America should use the atomic bomb. Obviously e chose to move forward in dropping the bomb, there were many scientist, even those who created it, that ere strongly against it actually being used in war. At the time of war Garwin was initially for the dropping of the atomic bomb, but in his later years he takes the stance that we should all eradicate atomic bombs as a whole and no longer let them be a factor on the world stage.
         The film itself did not make any point to give an opinion one way or another, they mainly interviewed many of those surrounding the events. Although Garwin grew to disagree with the use of the atom bomb many of his colleagues did not. There's one point in the film where one of the interviewed men states that all his high school friends had died in the war and if he had the chance to drop another bomb on the Japanese, he would do so. It definitely opened my eyes to the surrounding emotions this event must have evoked. I respect this style of documentary above all else, the form of simply interviews, stating facts on both sides of the issue, and coming to no common conclusion. Ultimately, letting the viewer decide what he or she thinks.

About me

My name is Braeden Guter and I was raised here in southern Utah. After I graduated high school I chose to attend a missionary program that lasted six months, three being in training up in Montana, and three being in the country of Morocco where I can apply what I had learned. I chose to move to California from there and tried to go to school. Due to expenses and costs, I came home to attend school here at Dixie State University. I was very reluctant to come home at first, it was definitely not my first choice, but since then I have grown tremendously and realized it's simply what I need to do to get to the next step in life that I want to get to. I want to be a Psychologist ultimately and am getting my major in psychology. In high school, I did a lot of theater and specifically Shakespeare so I really enjoy older artworks and the skill of bringing them to life in the 21st century. I'm excited to take this class because I believe that the people of old far out understand many simple life questions that we have today.

Morocco

Kazba

 Very Common Moroccan door