Thursday, July 17, 2014

Wildlife Crossings Needed in Connecticut


 
Much of the world has been creating wildlife crossings (underpasses and overpasses) on their roadways in order to alleviate collisions with wildlife. Parts of CT are in desperate need of these crossings for our wildlife to be able to safely cross the roadways, and to keep passengers safe.

CT was recently ranked as having some of the worst roads in the country. As we work toward making our roads safer, wildlife crossings must be on our agenda. In areas of the country that already have these structures there is as much as a 93% decrease in collisions in the area that animals have access to a crossing.

The Merritt Parkway, and certain parts of I-95, are ideal places to start due to the amount of wildlife that surround and often cross these highways. A combination of underpasses, overpasses, fencing, and stricter protocol on speed-limit violations will vastly reduce the amount of collisions happening with wildlife on these roadways. These implementations will not only save many animal lives but human as well (and millions of dollar’s worth of damage).

Habitat fragmentation (roadways) leads to the increase in collisions between vehicles and animals –sometimes fatal for humans, often fatal for the animal. Wildlife crossings should be standard in all future road development to keep the problem from getting worse.
 
 

Costs and Benefits

One study estimates that adding wildlife crossings to a road project is only a 7-8% increase in the total cost of the project (Bank, 2002)

A study completed for the Virginia Department of Transportation estimated that underpasses for wildlife become cost effective, in terms of property damage, when they prevent between 2.6 and 9.2 deer-vehicle collisions per year, depending on the cost of the underpass. Approximately 300 deer crossed through the underpasses in the year the study took place (Donaldson 2005).

In the United States, traffic accidents with deer alone account for $1.1 billion in vehicle damage (Donaldson 2005)

Of the options currently available, wildlife crossings have been found to be the most effective at reducing the occurrence of road collisions. Countries such as France, Germany, Netherlands and Australia have been using crossing structures successfully for decades to alleviate wildlife and human deaths on the roadways. These crossings are becoming increasingly common in Canada and the United States, and are helping to keep populations of endangered animals like the Florida Panther and the Black Bear from becoming more dangerously low.


....To be Continued. Stay tuned.

Thursday, November 1, 2012

TITANIC: Themes and Ideas

TITANIC:

Important Themes, Motifs, and Ideas

       Entire books have been written on this film and its impact on our society. For real in-depth look at the film I recommend Titanic: Anatomy of a Blockbuster or Titanic by David M. Lubin. In this blog I’m just going to explain themes and ideas that either I have picked up on while watching the film through the years, or have read in essays and agree with by writers, critics, and fans.

Time:





     The utmost important theme and backbone to the film is the reoccurring focus on time. Past and present, shifting between the two, and transcending both are pointed out over and over again. Clocks and hands are shown symbolically throughout the movie to re-enforce this idea of Time. When the ship begins to sink, Time is as tangible and heavy as the iceberg. The amount of time left is ever-present. Throughout the film, images of hands reaching, and clocks ticking are repeated to stress this idea.
       The framing story is an ingenious plot device that constructs a bridge between two time periods, and in the 3.25 hours we walk seamlessly back and forth on this bridge that Rose makes for us and her two different times, her past and her present--- 1912 and 1996.

      The ship itself also symbolizes time in its silent and dignified decay at the bottom of the Atlantic, juxtaposed with Rose’s memories of it as white and new with china that had “never been used,” sheets that had “never been slept in.” Time both stands startlingly still and simultaneously decomposes before our eyes in the wreck of the Titanic. The beginning of the film expresses this through showing us the objects. The real objects, the real place. It was imperative that Cameron should go down to the actual ship and film it. In this way we sense the actual presence of Time and the Place. We see both personal and functional everyday objects, as well as the knowledge that there are precious objects that had to be left behind, and are still there. But time guarantees they will not be there for much longer.



      A boot that is still tied, but empty, signifies its owner wore it for an extended period after they died. A doll’s face tells us either its child died here, or didn’t have Time to take it with her. The safe tells us similarly that precious things were here and may still be here, dependent upon Time. Did they have time to take what was important? Has it been too long? Is it all decomposed? Or has the safe sealed it from Time?

"The key scene in the film is the dinner scene where Jack joins the upper class for a brief time. To their credit, everyone, except for Cal and Ruth, accept his presence and interact with him graciously. Jack then dazzles them with his philosophy of life in response to Ruth's aggressive questioning. '... To make each day count.'" 



         "Soon after this, Jack gives Rose a note as he kisses her gloved hand. It reads: "Make it count. Meet me at the clock." What is IT? It is Time itself to which Jack refers, the symbolism reinforced by the location of the request... " (Why People Hate Titanic)



The Reinvented Male Body in Titanic:



      One of the most noticable things about Leonardo DiCaprio as the hero Jack Dawson in Titanic is that he doesn’t really have a body. What you notice is his pretty face. Very, very pretty face. This is in strong contrast to the action films of the 80s and 90s that James Cameron was a shaper of--- Terminator, True Lies, etc. Schwarzenegger, Willis, and Stallone-type heros were the norm when Titanic was being filmed. The other popular movie concept at the time was “love stories that …appeal to a fantasy wherein a working-class man awakens sexuality within an attractive, upper-class woman.” Why did Cameron shift so far away from the strong, tanned muscled-man trope that he had practically invented? Not one moment in Titanic is Jack’s body on display, not even the love scene.
Instead there is a focus on his eyes, his face, and his personality.


In “Something and Someone Else: The Mind, The Body and Sexuality in Titanic”, Peter Lehman and Susan Hunt state:

           
Titanic refashioned the body and characterization of the working-class lover and the male action hero in such a manner that a type of character that teenage girls normally cared little or nothing about suddenly became intensely attractive to them.” (p 89)

       This means that, in regards to action-adventure movies, and love stories of the 80s/90s such as The Piano (1993) Dirty Dancing (1987) and Bridges of Madison County (1995) Cameron used neither popular male embodiment for his hybrid love story/action flick, but instead created a new trope with DiCaprio. This has been called the “you are very pretty” version of female fantasy.


Again Lehman and Hunt say:

“Cameron here shifts away from it, and does so within a film that not only critiques the notion of the awesome spectacle of phallic male power, but does so through the eyes and mouth of a desiring woman who mocks that very ideal. Thus, this love story simply could not have been told with Arnold Schwarzenegger or even Bruce Willis in the DiCaprio role… Titanic, then, seems to be an action-adventure love story with a different kind of male hero. One who lacks the excessive body-focused spectacle of impressive phallic masculinity.”



       This is particularly interesting in a movie obsessed with size. The Titanic was enormous. That was her mass-marketing appeal in 1912. She was huge, and unsinkable. Throughout the first half of the film her grandeur and size are pointed out, over and over. Not until she starts to sink do we suddenly realize how tiny she is in the middle of the Atlantic ocean. Perhaps man’s obsession with size in this film is one reason why Jack is so utterly unconcerned and un-muscular?

       He is instead more sprite, and androgynous. What we notice about him is that he is a freedom-seeker, and has a playful, boyish personality that instantly attracts Rose who is trying to escape phallic masculinity and strict Patriarchy. Her fiancĂ© is strong and masculine, but also arrogant, a misogynist and a class snob. He attempts to buy her affection with a priceless diamond, and when this doesn’t work becomes abusive. He overturns their breakfast table to intimidate her, verbally abuses her, slaps her, and ultimately tries to kill her when she refuses to leave Jack.


From "Something and Someone Else":

“Cal’s impulsive brutality is similar to that of the industrious New Zealand colonist Stewart (Sam Neill) in The Piano. His wife, Ada (Holly Hunter), is an accomplished pianist, but he chops off one of her fingers with an ax after he learns of her affair with Baines (Harvey Keitel).” – Lehman and Hunt, p 95


        In stark contrast, Jack doesn’t seem to have a temper. The only time he loses it, it is not geared toward Rose. When he does lose it, it makes him more human than anything else. Jack also seems to be free of any desire for wealth, and holds no bitterness toward his lot in life. He rather “makes each day count” and is grateful for the air in his lungs and a few blank sheets of paper. Cameron is playing here with the Artist Bohemian, and Jack’s role as an artist is a focus throughout the film.

       There was originally one scene in which Jack gets in an actual fist-fight with Cal's henchman. Pre-viewers of the film hated the idea of Jack as being aggressive and literally wrestling with a man in the water that Cameron cut it. This male hero of an action-love story was not meant to show brute strength, and clearly it's not what women wanted.
        This bohemian freedom and lack of pretension are what Rose wants, she is “impressed by Jack’s energy, his playfulness, and his sense of fun. (p.97)” Jack, like the stereotypical “body man” in love story films from the 90s, lives outside community and family, and prefers the company of “the other”. The prostitutes he draws from, the homeless old woman he befriends, and in general Europeans, working class people, and artists. Cal, in contrast to this, is only friends with other wealthy, white males, preferably of Old Money.

        In addition, this freedom of self also brings with it a theme of “trust your gut” and not over-thinking life. Several examples of this are when Jack repeatedly asks Rose if she trusts him. She responds yes, and this trust between them implies no questioning the other, or thinking. Only an instinctual and firm trust. When Jack urges Rose to dance, she says “I don’t know the steps,” to which he replies, “Neither do I. Just go with it. Don’t think.”
        As a guest at dinner in first class, he makes “a banal statement denigrating critical thought: ‘You learn to take life as it comes at you’.” Rose tells him that when the ship docks, she’s getting off with him. He says “this is crazy,” and she responds in a manner that echos his ideas: “I know. It doesn’t make any sense. That’s why I trust it.”


         When Rose is in the lifeboat, leaving the ship, there is a clear moment when she realizes she has to stop thinking, and just “do”. Then she jumps out, and lands back onto the sinking vessel. When Jack reaches her, he says over and over “you’re so stupid Rose!” but the words are spoken in a way that implies he’s more happy and scared than he’s ever been in his life. Rose tells him “you jump, I jump, right?” “Right.” When you jump, you can’t think, or you won’t do it.

The Titanic as an Extension of Rose:

        There is a definite connection between the body of Rose and the body of the ship. They parallel throughout the film, starting in the beginning with the wreckage of the Titanic on the ocean floor, and the incredibly aged 100 year old Rose. Images of the deteriorating ship and the aging Rose’s flashbacks are shown from one to the other, and from Rose to the ship as they see each other for the first time in more than 80 years.
        As the ship departs from Southampton and Rose is boarding, she narrates that although: “outwardly, I was everything a well-brought up girl should be, inside I was screaming” there is an abrupt CUT TO: a steam whistle on board the ship literally “screaming” its call; and apparently this call is to Jack. The film cuts to him playing a game of poker with several other men in a pub nearby. It’s here he wins tickets for the Titanic and yells back in delight “I’m going home!”
        Peter Kramer states in his notes for the essay Women First, “As if the ship was calling him on her behalf, as if her relayed internal scream brought him into existence”.
        Soon after Rose threatens herself with the idea of throwing herself overboard. She’s placed herself at the very end of the ship, and it becomes Jack’s desire to not only save her from killing herself, but to bring her to her rightful place as the ships Figurehead, at the front of the ship.


Kramer goes on to say:
 
        
“The sinking of the Titanic, then, would appear to be an extension of Rose’s earlier death wish. Furthermore, the 
          two are linked through the motif of virginity. The Titanic is on her maiden voyage, and Rose is still a virgin; the 
          Titanic’s voyage comes to an end when she loses that virginity… The connection between her sexual liberation 
          and death is also hinted at by the peculiar postcoital exchange in which she points out to Jack that he is shaking, and
          he replies, as if he had been severly wounded: ‘Don’t worry, I’ll be alright’. In the end, of course, he won’t.”



        The Titanic, like Rose, is a prized possession among men, and is accordingly flaunted and bragged about. Titanic is commented continuously as being not only beautiful but also “the largest moving object created by man in all history.” Comments aside as to Kate Winslet’s “size”, she is also talked about as an object by the men in first class, as Archibald Gracie says to Cal “Hockley, she’s stunning” and his responding snicker of “Why, thank you”. She is, like the Heart of the Ocean, a valuable possession.





The Heart of the Ocean:


         Most symbolically heavy object in the film. It originally represents money-- but also male possession. Cal wraps this around Rose’s neck as a symbol of his ownership over her body. Rose re-claims ownership of her body by posing naked with it for a drawing of her, paying for this drawing with Cal’s money, the money that bought the object in the first place, and bought her.





       In deciding to model nude for Jack (or for herself, since she commissions the portrait), she aligns herself with Manet’s 'Olympia', and the stigma at the time of an “impure woman”, since no woman of her social standing would ever, ever pose nude, especially for a “poor person”. Cal later makes this clear to the audience when he says to her “well it is a little slut, isn’t it”? Taking away even her status as a woman, or a person, and then later calling her a “whore to a gutter rat”.

In reference to the drawing scene, Munich and Spiegel state:

“The scene neatly reverses the logic of the male gaze, as Rose shifts her position from model to purchaser of the drawing. In addition, Rose is no passive receiver of the male gaze. She is the erotic subject of the scene, not only in control of the events, but explicitly aroused. Again, reversing gender roles, Rose remarks ‘I believe you are blushing, Mister Big Artiste’.”
-'Heart of the Ocean: Diamonds and Democratic Desire in Titanic' (1999)

Also, it represents the ocean. The heart of the ocean. Which is the present-day Titanic. Which is where she must bring it to lie.



       It travels throughout the second half of the film in coat pockets. Both Jack and Rose don’t know they are concealing it. Again they are “given” it by Cal, first intentionally, and then unintentionally.

       In the end the diamond comes to represent something different from what it did when it first was introduced to us, placed on the figurehead of the ship. It represents what money cannot buy.







Money:

 

       In Titanic, money often seems to represent greed, selfishness, corruption, and cowardice. The penultimate moment perhaps being the depiction of the true-to-life actions of Mr. Ismay boarding a lifeboat when it was considered at the time to be an act of cowardice to leave your sinking ship. For the rest of his life Ismay was shunned and hated by others for saving his own life, after ordering the ship to speed unnecessarily through ice fields.

       When lifeboats begin to run out, Cal tries to buy his way into one. To which Officer Murdock eventually realizes, Your money can’t save you any more than it can save me.”



        At a time when the American middle class is growing smaller and smaller, "and the gap between haves and have-nots is growing wider, Titanic's romantic resolution of class may be pleasurable--- but it is hardly subversive. (Ship of Dreams p.171)" In Titanic, the 2nd class is nonexistant. Americans in 2012 don't have too hard a time relating to that. Our economy is increasingly split between the 1% at the top, and the 99% below. If we were all on the Titanic right now, who do you think would get those under-calculated lifeboats first? Who would be locked behind the gates?

        Money is also essentially what sparks the entire plot of the film, and the “treasure hunters” looking for the diamond said to still be on board. They desire money, and notoriety. Brock Lovett can think of nothing but the diamond at the beginning of the film. Money is all they talk about in Rose's social circles, and the "cigars and brandy" in the smoking room is another excuse to obsess over money. Money is why Rose is marrying Cal-- Her father died and left them without Money. In the end, Rose has to make the choice whether to care about Money like everyone else does, or to not.

Liberation and Proto-Feminism:






        One last important theme is that of liberation. As has been said, Jack helped to "save" Rose. She says herself in the film "he saved me in every way a person can be saved". Not just from her unhappy pairing with Caledon Hockley, but also from her deadening social world. "Tropes of entrapment and escape are woven throughout the narrative. Characters repeatedly escape from handcuffs, break through locked gates, lock and unlock a safe" and of course break through social and gender boundaries.

      One of the first things Jack and Rose do together is take part in lessons on how to "spit like a man". When Rose is with Jack, not only do social boundaries begin to crumble, but boundaries based around her sex as well. They talk of drinking beer and riding rollercoasters until they throw up, riding horses like cowboys on the beach, and chewing tobacco and spitting like men. She parties with him as an equal, drinking beer, smoking, and dancing. Later in the film she gives someone the middle finger—obviously something women weren’t supposed to do at the time, and considered incredibly obscene coming from a woman of first class.

This theme of freedom is visually expressed in the film best by the flying scene. This is the moment she chooses to reject her former life and to ally herself with Jack, and her own desires. The metaphor of a bird taking flight is obvious, but fitting and powerful. Another scene that can easily be argued as Rose’s moment of personal freedom is Rose as she stands beneath the Statue of Liberty after surviving the sinking, that this moment represents her ultimate liberation.


Lehman and Hunt suggest a “proto-feminist consciousness” present in Titanic, supported by the above scenes, and dialogue like; “Of course it’s unfair. We’re women. Our choices are never easy.”

A small motif probably only noticable to nerds like me is that her painting of a Degas' ballerina is always in the room when she's talking to either Cal or her mother. This is symbolic considering what little freedom the ballerinas at the time had. They were barely better off than indentured servants or slaves. A ballerina's life was, as Germaine Greer states, "a one-way ticket to prostitution."

When that ballerina sinks with the Titanic, so do Rose's chains, so to speak.




I could go on forever, but... let's end this with a quote from the film. For a movie known for its bad dialogue, it has some pretty great lines.

"Afterward, the 700 people in the boats had nothing to do but wait. Wait to die, wait to live... Wait for an Absolution, that would never come."