What Lies Behind Bane's Mask?

     For the last few weeks in the class, I have been working on this project, a writing project. The writing was focused on how language and meaning are shaped by culture and context. I have chosen to write about Bane's mask from The Dark Knight Rises using film review format.

     The Dark Knight Rises is the finale of the Dark Knight Trilogy by Christopher Nolan that came out in 2012. I personally think that this film is a great film and is a must watch. The film chose to slightly change the way they portray characters and that is why this film is one of my favorite. Throughout the film, Nolan hid multiple objects that can be use as symbol in the story but the one that got my attention the most seems to be the mask of our villain, Bane. There are multiple ways that this mask can be used as symbol and here are some ways that I can think of.

Masks, masks had always been something to use in order to hide the identity of the wearer, the usage ranges from concealing the identity of bandits to the people in the masked proms. It is a true symbol of mystery and it also work the same way in The Dark Knight Rises With Bane walks around in the film, never separated from his mask. The question is what does his mask stand for, why does he have to wear it all the time, what is it that he has to hide?

First thing we can spot about Bane's mask in the film is that its appearance does not look like the one in comic at all. The comic had almost always use the look of a luchador mask while this one had the look of a respirator mask, a dark, fearsome respirator mask. It is possible that Nolan might not want a childish looking luchador mask in his film since he had always applied darker theme to his Dark Knight franchise.

Being portrayed in darker tone, Bane had become something that is more of a monster than a man. This is because since ancient time, human had this belief of how darkness is associated with bad or evil. In other words, human fear darkness. Nolan exploited this part of culture and use it to enhance the looks of his characters.

     Now let's talk about the story of this mask. At young age, Bane was attacked by a group of people and was scarred and heavily traumatized. He also suffer from side-effect from the attack and this is where his mask came in. During the interview, “Nolan has revealed that Hardy's audio-muffling mask is actually pumping Bane's body full of anesthetic.”Bane is ravaged by pain from a trauma suffered long ago," he explains.” (Franklin-Wallis). Bane wears this mask in order to numb his pain. He said that it would be “extremely painful” to take off the mask.

  Though numbing the pain seems like a good reason to wear the mask, it surely could not be the only reason. Bane had been seen to successfully lead a crew to take over the Gotham City in order to “purge” it. With himself being no one but a person who came out of the pit, he needed something for his subordinates to look up to, he needs to be more than a man, and he needs ideal for his subordinate. “No one cared who I was until I put on a mask” mentioned Bane in the film. With his mask, Bane was able to create symbol, symbol that represents his ideal and he was able to use it to spread his idea and accomplish his task successfully in the film.

The Dark Knight Rises, the finale of the Dark Knight Trilogy of Christopher Nolan, though, is a very entertaining film, it also hides a lot of ideals and symbols in the film, one of that being the ideal of Bane’s mask. It is a very enjoyable movie and is a must watch.

Bilingualism

     In the class, we were discussing about three poems and its context about bilingualism. Bilingualism is the ability to speak two languages fluently. Different poems have different stances toward the bilingualism, some says that bilingualism is impossible, some says that its very beneficial. We discuss about it and how the context of poems is related to us and our identity. The poem I got is called the Bilingual Sestina written by Julia Alvarez in 1996. This poem is about a girl who grew up speaking Spanish, molded by it. She later learns English and related things she had learn with her childhood memories. She also talked about how Spanish has failed her sometimes to explain her meaning to the world and in the end, she said that even if she had grow up speaking Spanish, English is still her preferred language. This poem suggested that being bilingual can be very beneficial for the speaker and the poem encourage people to learn new languages as it can opens up a new point of view from the different culture to the speaker.
     The stance of this poem accurately matched my experience. Since I was a child, I was studying in Thai school so my only language is Thai. I could not read, listen or understand anything in English unless it is a small phrase such as 'Thank you'. At that time, my point of view was very narrow, I only see things the way Thai people see it such as playing games that Thai people plays, read Thai books etc. Later when I moved to RIST, I started to learn some English and was able to communicate with foreigners and discovered how differently their ideas are from the Thais. I begin to listen to music, read books and watch movies in English and doing so had expanded my point of view on to another level. I have learned more than language but also multiple cultures that are involve in English language and also identity of people who uses English. Being bilingual really give benefits to your life, not only just to be able to communicate but to learn and gain the experiences from different cultures that will help you later on in your life.

Language Symbol: Thai

This stone is a representation of Thai language. This is the inscribed stone crafted by Por Kun Ramkamhaeng Maharath who was the king of Thailand back in the Sukhothai Era. On this stone, he crafted the Thai alphabet on an artifact for the first time since he was the one who invented Thai language. This expressed the Thai cultural identity in the way that it has Thai alphabets crafted on to it. It is literally the first book written in Thai. In the present, this artifact might not be unique since we have discovered a lot of ancient crafted stones but back then when there are o communications, the ideas of crafting alphabet on to stones are not widely spread, it is one of the most unique thing in Thai history.

My Cultural Artifact

During class, all the students were assigned to come up with an object that represents them or in other word, is their cultural artifact. They were asked to add a picture of the object, explain about the cultural context of the language or the image detail of their object such as what does it says about the culture that creates it and lastly, they were asked to explain how they are identified with the object. Students chose different things due to the differences in interest, some chose musics, some chose movies, some chose social media and some chose sports. The length of the presentation varies due to different people chose different ways to present their works. For my artifact, I chose my cleats as something that identify me. The context of my object is that it represents the sport culture as it is the tool that is used to assist player while playing sports. The sports that I used my cleats to play with are Football and Softball. The cleats represents how sport is one of the biggest thing in human culture as people kept on organizing these sports events such as Olympics and kept producing the sports tools products. The cleats also demonstrate how people wanted to use the best tool in order to assist them in sports and that represents the competitive culture of human. I also talked about how different brand effect how people look at specific pair of cleats. I talked about how my old cleats are made by Pan which is Thai brand and are 600 baht and my new one are made by Adidas which is German brand and are 1800 with 40% discount. That shows how people actually values the name as something that worth paying for. These are the picture of my two pairs of cleats. The right one is Adidas Predator Absolado FG Yellow Light Flash. the left one is the Pan one, I am not certainly sure what version it is because it is pretty old. Though it is true that higher price cleats might give you slight advantage, it does not significantly improve your performance, leaving the only reason for buying more expensive cleats just for showing off. That also shows how money are playing big role in human culture.

Education from 2 Cultures

     First, let me introduce myself. My name is Pat and I am 16 years old, I am Thai and had been in Thailand my entire life but what makes me different is that I had been educated in two different cultures, by that I mean attended in both Thai school and International School. I spend most of my childhood in Thai school which is a pretty friendly place and my teenager years until not in an International school which is also as friendly. From my experiences, these schools have a lot in common and multiple differences. Talking about the similarities first, there are a few obvious things such as the uniforms are required in both school and the schedules are fixed for easier class arrangement but the most significant similarity would be how the schools will be teaching children from Pre-K to Grade 12. There might be different names for grade level but most schools will be teaching children for 15 years before sending them to college. Differences can be languages that the people from different school speak in such as Thai and English. The community and behavior of people is also different since people in International school are more influenced by American media as they understand English more. Thai school student will normally hang out in places like the mall or anywhere that has movie theaters while International students will hang out in varies places depending on their interests. It is not common to see Thai school students and International students hanging out in group. Curriculum are also different but it is hard to identify since different International schools also got different curriculum but basically, most International schools are involved with the IB and AP programs, some offers A-Level and IGCSE too. The class size is also different, Thai schools tend to have a really large class with about 40-50 students per class while International schools tend to only have about 15-20. Having a large class made it harder for a teacher to look after the students. That makes it hard for the student to get help when they have any problems with their education. These are just few of many the basic differences and similarities of education from Thai school and International school. Regardless of their differences and similarities, their goal is to offers the children the education they deserved.