The Darjeeling Limited

I'm sure everyone must have a lot of questions about The Darjeeling Limited. I myself wondered what "gaslighting" meant and had to look it up. What new vocabulary did you get from this film? What words (and scenes) do you still not understand? What else do you want to know about the film, the actors, the soundtrack, or anything else related to it? Looking it up on the Internet Movie Database I learned that it did open in Japan in March 2008, but since "I'm not There" didn't get north of Sendai it may not have opened anywhere near Hirosaki. There is, however, an official Japanese site for the movie.

By the way, at least according to Wikipedia, there is no such train as The Darjeeling Limited, which really doesn't surprise me.

The Situation of Women in Japan

This is the article for the case of Japan. Data is kind of old, though...

causes of gender wage gap

This is from the Census Bureau:

Previous studies of the gender wage gap show that wages are generally lower for men and women in occupations that have a higher percentage of female workers (Bayard et al. 2003; Boraas and Rodgers 2003; Roksa 2005).

This analysis shows that the same holds true for work hours. Although sex is a significant predictor of work hours, both men and women work shorter hours in occupations with a higher percentage of female workers even after controlling for the effect of sex, showing an interaction between work hours, occupation, and percent female.

In other words, much of the gender wage gap is a result of men and women working different occupations, at least in the US.

Makeup class?

No, that's not a class in makeup, it means we have to make up some more classes we will miss.

Please add comments here about when you are free and when you would like to have the makeup classes. Maybe in the evenings?

a new information for discussion

I found this PDF file to discuss gender wage gap again.

This file uploaded in March 2010 so I think we can treat this information as nowadays situation.

http://www.iwpr.org/pdf/C350.pdf

Ayumi

Articles for discussion

I think there are some problems at women's perticipation to the society in Turkey, for instance, women's employment, gender gap in employment rates, and gender wage gaps, after I read the brief which Mifuru put on. And I found articles that I think it's related to these problems.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6903021.stm

http://www.todayszaman.com/tz-web/detaylar.do?load=detay&link=174285

These are not statistics but I think it might help us to know what's going on in Turkey now.

Ayumi

Documents for our dicussion

According to the information that mifuru found, more than 70% of women are in paid employment in the Nordic countries.
I found some documents about women's specific situation in their countries.
They are produced under the support of European Commission within the framework of the Socrates.
http://www.women-employment.lt/situation.htm

These are information for our discussion.

I found information for our discussion.
I don't think this is enough, but this helps us to understand the fact about women's payment.

When you click URL below this, you can see information.

http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/23/31/44720649.pdf

This is "Gender Brief" prepared by the OECD social Policy Division.

I hope it will be useful.

After watching "The Color Purple"

Movie, " The Color Purple" impressed me so much. After watching this, I could know how was the women's position at that time. I thought Celie's life was not good because she was treated as like a slave. In contrast, her sister Nettie was in the good position. For example, Nettie could go to school and have good education. Also, she couldn't have to have children with her father who was not her real father in fact. I mean Nettie had lots of difficulties in her life of course. However, comparing to Celie, Nettie could have better life than Celie. Well, I don't know what kind of life is the best. That depends on you.

Moreover, I was interested in Shug, who was singer in this movie. She is so powerful, sexy, and outgoing. But she had also many tough things in her life.

In sum, this movie lets me think about women's position and women's independence like Celie. I want to see this movie again, then I can understand more deeply!

Mifuru.

statistics on women and men

This is the link to women's wages relative to men's of the United Nation Statistics Division.

about the color purple

This film made me think about discrimination against women. I was shocked to see how cruelly women had been treated in those days.Celie was like a slave for Albert.
Compared with the case of Celie, the situation of Sofia was just the opposite. As women had been fighting against men in her family, they hadn't been treated as Celie. I thought it was so complicated society.

In addition, I became interested in Afro-American English. I noticed that there were the use of "ain't" and the deletion of the auxiliary verb like " What you doing?". To see this film, I came to want to know more about Afro-American English.

questions to the movie

I have some questions to the movie.

#1: Does the sign Celie made when she got away from Albert's house have a special meaning?

#2: Why were Celie's son and daughter with Netti? (How did Netti find them?)

#3: What was Albert trying to do with the letter of immigration stuff? In the last scene, I saw the guy with the horse, and I am sure he was Albert, but why didn't he do anything? (he just thought he couldn't break the sisters apart anymore?)

comment - First, this movie was so moving and interesting. I could see the situation of women living at that time. It was a really difficult time for women to live. Especially, Celie was apart from Netti, her loving sister, so I can imagine her agony. When a man said, "The dead has risen.", I felt the time has come for Celie and everything changed. Celie also could rise from the dead, I thought.

yuya

questions about the color purple

Thank you for putting on nice picture and the author's interview, Mr. Philips.



We watched this movie until the part that Shug came back from her tour to Albert's place.

So far, I have some parts I did not understand in the movie.



First, I did not really get the first part around when Celie was giving birth to her baby. After that, a guy (her father?) took her girl away. Why did he do that? Was he going to give the baby to other people? Also was she raped by her father? If so, that's too horrible...



Second, Conversation between Celie's father and Albert at a scene which Celie's father visited Albert was difficult for me. I just could not understand what they were talking about.



Third, Nettie could read but Celie could not. I think that's why Nettie went to school. so why Celie could not go to school?



Questions about the color purple is that's all so far.


I'm looking forward you to explaining about my questions!

Ayumi

So, how's the movie so far?

If you've seen the first half or so of The Color Purple you should have some questions. It's a complex, long movie that deals with a lot of difficult and controversial themes. I hope you didn't just pick it because it was the only Spielberg movie I brought. You should at least have questions about some of the dialogue you may have had trouble understanding.

By the way, I notice that the Internet Movie Database (IMDB.com) recommends that if you like this film you'll probably also like "Gone with the Wind", that classic of Japanese culture. (^_~)

Next class - watching a movie

On May 6th and 11th(over the two classes), we will watch the movie called "The Color Purple".

According to IMDb(Internet Movie Database), this movie is about the life and trials of a young African American Woman.

It might be hard to catch what they say, so we will put English subtitles.

Also, it might be good if you look up some information about this movie beforehand on the Internet!

In addition to that, we should decide which topic we will discuss or debate, so you may give a boost to the blog by commenting someone's article and so on!!!

By the way, Enjoy your golden week!!

The topic for discussion/debate

Hi, this is Sayako.

The following URL is the article that I have found for discussion.
The title is "English language education in Japan" from About.com.
It says that there are some reasons that Japanese sudents are unable to speak or to comprehend English even they have learned it for at least 6 years.

So, I would like to discuss what kind of things are required for English language education especially in public school in Japan.
This would be the key to solving the problems which English language education is facing with.

http://japanese.about.com/od/japanesecultur1/a/070100.htm

By the way, sorry for late posting.
See you later.

Hi guys!

Hi :) This is Ayumi Sato. I know it's too late to introduce myself on this blog... but, let me do that.
I'm a junior in faculty of humanity, international society course, Oceania seminer student. I want to improve my English skills with having fun with you all. Nice to meet you =)

I also want to put my article which I introduced you in the last class.
http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/org/JLC/articles/HiraganaTimes-222-16to17.pdf

As professor Philips said in class, this article doesn't talk about japanese who get international married in the other countries with foreigner spouses. so we can discuss about that people with that article, I think.

That's it! I hope you will like my article:)

The topic for discussion

I'm sorry to be late.
I found this article from THE JAPAN TIMES.
It sais that women's earnings are still lower than men's one.
Especially in Japan, despite laws regulating fair pay and gender equality, social progress is still so slow.

I want to discuss what we or japan should do to make gender equality in Japan.

The topic I found for discussion

This is the article I found for discussion.
The title is "Indonesian group calls for flexibility in Japan nursing exam".
It says that the number of foreigners who could pass this year's nursing exam in Japan was only 3 among 254.
Through this, I want to discuss the need for foreign nurses, because nursing shortage is one of the serious problems in Japan.

http://www.japantoday.com/category/lifestyle/view/indonesian-group-calls-for-flexibility-in-japan-nursing-exam

possible discussion topic

This is the article that I found on the Internet!
Although it is kind of long, please take a look at it.


http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/05/28/what-will-globalization-do-to-languages-a-freakonomics-quorum/