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Symbolism of Hands
Whenever you’re watching a documentary which anonymises its subjects, the camera often tips down to emphasise the hands. What are the hands doing? Picking at fingernails? In a tight grip? Relaxed and open? This close up on the hands is clearly meant to say something about emotional affect. It’s also interesting to take a look…
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Looking Out To Sea
In stories, if a character is looking out to sea they’re frequently experiencing epiphany. In art, too, there’s no shortage of characters gazing out to sea. The guy giving the sermon below clearly understands the epiphanic power of the ocean, especially in combination with the higher altitude of a clifftop.
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The Bridges Of Madison County Film Study
The Bridges of Madison County is a 1995 American one-true-love romance. The film is based on a 1992 best-selling, terribly written novel by Robert James Waller.
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Witches’ Cats In Art and Storytelling
Illustrators frequently depict witches in two mutually exclusive ways: erotic and alluring, or as ugly as the dominant culture can possibly proscribe. Here are some ugly witches dancing around a fire.
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Three by the Sea by Mini Grey Picture Book Analysis
Three By The Sea is a 2010 picture book by British writer-illustrator Mini Grey. This storyteller comes from South Wales, which is somewhat evident in the setting. The most widely borrowed picture book from Mini Grey is the wonderfully metafictional Traction Man series. This one has metafictional elements also, and offers plenty of picture book…
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Resources For Teaching The Black Death
This list includes non-fiction, historical fiction (some based on true stories) as well as podcasts, TV shows and even a song. I’m including resources for all ages in this list. HOOKS Ring a Ring o Roses Nursery Rhyme Ring a Ring o Roses, or Ring Around the Rosie, may be about the 1665 Great Plague…
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Women Without A Voice: In Fiction And In Life
For some characters, self-reliance and a refusal to silence their inner voices strengthen their public voices. For others, art provides a metaphorical expression of voice. Often characters recognise the dialogic nature of voice: their voices exist only in dialogues with other people. … They recover their voices because they recognise the power of language. ……
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One Point Perspective Picture Book Houses
The one point perspective house is commonly when children draw when they first start drawing houses. Here’s an example from my own kid. I think they were about 8 years old when they drew this one.
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Germans At Meat by Katherine Mansfield Short Story Analysis
“Germans At Meat” (1910) is a short story by Katherine Mansfield, and opens her first collection (a series of journalistic travelogues). The collection is called In A German Pension. Mansfield later regretted these stories and did not want to republish them in 1920, three years before she died. She considered them ‘immature’ and ‘a lie’.…
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Open House on Haunted Hill by John Wiswell Short Story Analysis
“Open House on Haunted Hill” is a Nebula Award winning short (ghost?) story by John Wiswell, published in 2020. I’ve recently immersed myself in ghost stories from the 18- and 1900s. But how does one go about writing a contemporary ghost story? Listen to this story read by Levar Burton on the Levar Burton Reads…
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The Signal-man by Charles Dickens Short Story Analysis
“The Signal-man” (1866) is a ghost story by iconic English author Charles Dickens. If you’ve ever fantasised about leaving your open office or customer service job to work alone in a tiny box in the middle of nowhere, unbothered and free to get on with your straight-forward but very necessary job, this might be the…
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Tips For Men Writing Women
Can men write woman and femme-presenting characters? Men can, do and may. William Trevor did it well. Apart from an excess of crying, Larry McMurtry also did it well. Ian McEwan is also right up there. Content note: This is a gender binarist topic. Non-binary genders exist and continue to be invisibilised the vast majority…
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The Bus by Shirley Jackson
I once read an article about why so few commuters were inclined to take the bus. This would have eased congestion in my home city. New Zealanders are notoriously wedded to their cars (which have only gotten bigger and bigger since the aggressive marketing of double-cab utes). Sure, we like our cars. But there’s this…
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Pink in Illustration
In the last half century or so pink has increasingly become femme coded. This wasn’t the case before the second world war.
