Wow, just came out from the most stimulating tutorial I had so far in my life (and I'm sure there are much more engaging tutorials in time to come...)=P
The culprit - European Studies 102 tutorial.
We just spent the entire 50 minutes talking about Three Colours: Blue, the symbols and their (many) meanings.. freedom, especially on the question: "What does it mean to be free?"
Like, we can say that Lucille (the prostitute) is free because of the nature of her job.. but she's definitely not alone. Lucille says: "I can never spend a night alone." She's free if we consider that she is not attached to anyone and she professes that she doesn't wear any undies. lol.
Then we see Julie visiting her mother. Her mum does not recognize Julie but instead thinks she is Marie-France, her (Mum's) sister. Julie's mum is suffering from Alzheimer's - the classic example of having no connection, no shared experience. When Julie is at her mum's place, the TV is showing an old man who is attempting to bungee-jump. Here, you can see it as either 1) bungee jumping as the ultimate expression of freedom or 2) no one can have ultimate freedom because even when he jumps off the mountain, he is secured by the rope.
And how towards the end of the film, when Julie finally re-connects back to the society (by listening to Lucille's woes, finishing the Concerto).. we see that in the chorus, she changes the word "amour" (passionate love in French) to "agape" (Greek word for love, and it encompasses brotherhood, love for humanity) - and how it all fits into the bigger picture, if we see that the Concerto is meant to be played simultaneously in 12 different European cities during the formation of the EU.
Like, gee. I'm so in love with film and France right now.
Btw, Liza (PS tutor) randomly picked the roles that we are to play for the UN Stimulation Exercise on "creating a multi-national peacekeeping in Iraq" and I'm supposed to play France. T4, probably in the next two months, you'll see me poring through French foreign policy, politics and national interest.
Ooh. Not to mention the PS lecturer, Dr Yasmeen is forever playing Bollywood music in her lecturers which is damn cool! She does it in the hope that everyone will settle down and keep quiet but because the music is so catchy, nobody keeps quiet cos we just want the music to go on and on... then she'll turn off the music and go "ssssh" or she'll open a blank powerpoint document (which is reflected on the big wall) and she'll save the document as "PS102_noisy.doc" and everyone will be laughing away.. cos it's quite lame and funny. She talks a lot about Pakistan (cos that's where she comes from), Osama Bin Laden and curry diplomacy (Kissinger visiting the Pakistani leader for a visit, but when Kissinger's supposed to appear at a conference, the Pakistani leader (whom Dr Yasmeen says is a womanizer, and elaborates his philandering ways to great detail) comes out and said that Kissinger is sick cos he had a tummyache after eating too much Pakistani curry. In actual fact, Kissinger went to Beijing and announced that Nixon would be visiting Beijing the next year, the formal establishment of US-China ties. T4, US made use of Pakistan as a means to establish diplomatic r/ns with China - hence, curry diplomacy.)
I'm going back to sleep. The tutorials are over for this week.. tmrw there's only History and Anthrop lecture. :)