2nd draft, catfish

           Humanbeings are social animals.This means that human beings can’t live without interacting with other people. As people interacted with other people throughout human history, the term “friend” evolved. To me, a friend is someone who I can really trust.

           As I watched the movie “Catfish,” I desperately began to think about “relationships” between people. The movie is about a woman, Angela who used a fake ID, Megan, to contact a man; Nev. Megan and Nev were interested in each other and had great time using Facebook, a place where it is possible to meet people without knowing them personally. Nev and Megan felt actual love and affection toward each other under the term “friends” on Facebook. A relationship without knowing the real identity of someone seems awkward, doesn’t it? On the Internet, we use the term “friend” to qualify someone we do not know. Like this, people tend to use the word “friend” more easily and lightly and lighter than before in modern society. This is why I thought about the meaning of “real friend” in our modern society after watching this movie.

           Before the age of Facebook, people met other people and gradually developed their relationships personally. Because people had to meet in a same place to communicate; it actually made people more accurately to determine who to be closer to or not. If person “A” wanted to be closer with person “B”, A and B should meet frequently. As they meet each other, they get to know each other because they talk. They talk about social problems, friendships, private life, etc. By having conversations with these topics, both A and B get close enough to know each other beyond just typing. And friend A could also read the inner emotion of friend B, because people see the emotional changes. So, real friends can really understand feelings and minds off line.

           But, in reality, it is hard to make or to find a real friend. This is because the atmosphere of modern society is “competition.” People mainly think about their own interests, and less about others. So, it is hard to find a friend who can really understand other people.

           Not only the atmosphere, but society has changed into a place where people easily contact other people. For example, in a Facebook friend list, there are many people who I don’t know. We just push a button that says “friend” to ask to be “accepted.” Because, Facebook is the largest part of Internet society, there are no limitations with time or place to meet other people. This means that people can easily find a “friend” who isn’t able to meet in real world. This situation led people to stay in their home lowering interactions between people. As people have many friends in online, it decreases the preciousness of each real friend that we establish offline.

           In the movie, Angela was so bored with her life that she wanted a man who can play and chat with her. She needed a “friend” who can make her life fresh. But Angela, not reliable but according to the movie, love Nev. This shows that on-line relationships are not limited to friendships, but also love. This shows another part of the problem; although, she was married, she felt love with another person that she doesn’t know. As people can be easily friend with other people, the relationships between people were weakened. This led people to blind their eyes, which made the people hard to find and satisfied with real friends.

           What made Angela’s life so bored and barred. Because I don’t have lots of information with Angela’s life; it’s hard to answer, but I believe that Facebook can be an answer to this question. According to “Catfish,” she didn’t go outside very much, because she was busy on doing her domestic works. Instead of going outside, she tends to use Facebook to make friends. As she continued this life pattern, she had no offline friends.

           This movie, Catfish, makes us to think about relationships between people that are established by social network system. Due to social network system, the meaning of friends was diluted. Not only the meaning, but it made people insensitive to real friends. Catfish is a great example that shows these changes on relationships.

brainstorm

           When I first take this topic which is three sides story, I instantaneously thought about love triangle. I was going to write about love triangle, but this topic that I chose seemed banal. So, I thought about other situations that three people can make tension and emotional bursts. As I think, themes for this assignment were narrowed down into sports: baseball and soccer.

           Not all baseball or soccer games are full of tension, so I have to create specific situation to make a good three sides story.

           So for a baseball game, I make the game as a final round of the World Series at 9^th inning with 2 outs. One runner is on the 3^rd base, and a clean up man is on the batter’s box. Then, I am going to write a story on pitcher’s perspective, catcher’s perspective and hitter’s perspective.

           Or in a soccer game, I make a penalty shoot-out situation which one player failed to make a goal. So, the score is now 4 to 4, and the only one kicker is left and trying to make a shoot. Then, I will focus on goal-keeper, shooter and the player who failed to make a goal in a penalty shoot-out. 

2nd draft, Wal-Mart

              On May 22nd, 2006, a massive super store firm, Wal-Mart, withdrew from South Korea. Before Wal-Mart, another massive super store firm, Carrefour, also removed itself from South Korea. However, both firms are successfully operating in other countries, and they are a very big global brand (NY Times, pars. 1-2).

But in Korea, these superstores were replaced with a firm called “E-Mart.” E-Mart has a similar operation system with Wal-Mart, which pursues a low price orientation to dominate the discount retail sector. Then, what are the reasons of their failure in Korea? Another dubious question comes to mind: Can Wal-Mart get any bigger? Unfortunately, yes.

             Before stating the reasons of failure, we should know the characteristics of Wal-Mart in the United States, which is successful. The tactic that Wal-Mart used to expand in the United States was building a huge, warehouse look store in rural areas, and then, spread out its store to nearby cities to form retail clusters. So, Wal-Mart used the same tactic in Korea, making huge stores in suburbanized areas. The places Wal-Mart chose to make stores did not match with Korean consumers’ life style and shopping habits. Korean consumers prefer to purchase small amounts frequently instead of buying large volumes at once, because they want fresh food and beverages other than dry goods (Renee B Kim vol. 3). So, Korean consumers prefer to go to a department store, where it has good accessibility. This means that people like to go to department stores which have a convenient transportation system. And urbanized areas do have good transportation systems. Wal-Mart did not learn the shopping customs of Korea. 

             Not only the tactic but also bad timing made Wal-Mart to choose bad locations in Korea. Other major retailers, E-Mart and Homeplus, had already built their stores in urban areas. They blocked Wal-Mart to build their stores in commercial areas. This situation is also seen in Germany, where Wal-Mart also failed to succeed. In Germany, the Aldi chain occupied favorable places for department stores; eventually, Wal-Mart could only earn undesirable places. Wal-Mart purchased Wertkauf and Interspar, but saddled those stores in unfavorable locations. For example, one of outlets was located nearby couple of sex shops (NY Times, pars. 7-9). James Bacos, a director of the consumer goods at Mercer Management Consulting, said “These were some of the least attractive of the big-box retailers out there.” Also, Wal-Mart does not care much about its foreign stores carry the name derived from its founder. For example, in Japan, Wal-Mart took over Seiyu, but keep using name Seiyu, instead of using Wal-Mart. Over all, Wal-Mart is still expanding outside the United States (Times Magazine, pars. 12).

Bad timing was a problem for Wal-Mart in Korea and Germany; but, we could also know that Wal-Mart was only interested in expansion without having enough information on each market.  

             Wal-Mart failed in Korea, because it did not concern about differences in each countries’ cultures. The vice chairman of Wal-Mart said, “As we continue to focus our efforts where we can have the greatest impact on our growth strategy, it became increasingly clear that in South Korea’s current environment it would be difficult for us to reach the scale we desired.”

When we see the cases of Korea and Germany, it seems that Wal-Mart can’t expand anymore. However, actually, it can. Wal-Mart can expand their industry in China, Mexico and Brazil, which have big markets. For example, there are 295 stores in Brazil which is ranked third in the market of Brazil. This shows positive effect of a Wal-Mart policy which doesn’t change names of the stores that are integrated into Wal-Mart (NY Times, pars. 23-25). Not only in Brazil but also in China, Wal-Mart has been successfully operating.

Wal-Mart’s changes came too late for Germany, but they could help it crack other markets, like China, where it already has 60 stores and 30,000 employees. Far from being chastened by its setbacks, Wal-Mart is forging ahead with an aggressive program of foreign acquisitions

(NY Times, pars. 10).    

             Wal-Mart is a huge retailer. It has become a main topic in social, economic and political debates. But in this essay, expansion of Wal-Mart is a main topic. Although Wal-Mart failed to succeed in South Korea and Germany, it expands its foreign market. According to NY Times, Wal-Mart has been successfully operating in Brazil, Mexico and China. Base on these facts, Wal-Mart can expand its economical territory until Wal-Mart occupies all world markets.  

Works Cited

“Can Wal-Mart get any bigger?” Time. 5 January 2003.

< http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,404212,00.html>

Cho Sang-Hun. “Wal-Mart selling stores and Leaving South Korea.” NY Times. 23 May 2006

 < http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/23/business/worldbusiness/23shop.html?_r=1>

Mark Landler and Michael Barbaro. “Wal-Mart finds that its formula doesn’t fit every culture” NY Times. 2 August 2006

< http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/02/business/worldbusiness/02walmart.html?pagewanted=all>

cat fish

Human beings are social animals. This means that human beings can’t live without interacting with other people. As people interacted with other people, a term “friend” came out. To me, a friend is who I can trust, really.

           As I watched a movie “catfish,” I desperately needed to think about “relationship” between people. The movie “catfish” was about a woman, Megan, who used fake ID to contact a man; Nev. Megan and Nev were interested to each other and had great time in Facebook, a place where it is possible to meet people without knowing them. Nev and Megan felt actual love and affection to each other under a term “friend” in Face book. A relationship without knowing real identity seems awkward to me, doesn’t it? In Internet, we use a term “friend” to whom we do not know. Like this, people tend to use a word “friend” easier and lighter than before in modern society. This is why I thought about the meaning of “real friend” in our modern society after watching this movie.

           Before the age of Face book, people met other people and gradually developed their relationships into friends. Because people had to meet in a same place to communicate; it actually made people easier to determine other people who want to be closer or not. If a person A wanted to be closer with a person B, A and B should meet frequently. As they meet each other, they get to know each other because they talk each other. They talk about social problems, friendships, problems, private life and etc. By having conversations with these topics, both A and B get closely enough to know each other than using just typing. And the friend A could also read inner emotion of the friend B, because people see the emotional changes. So, real friends can really understand feelings and minds.

           But in reality, it is hard to make or to find real friend. This is because the atmosphere of modern society is “competition.” People only think about their interests not others. So, it is hard to find a friend who can really understand other people.

           Not only the atmosphere but the society has changed into a place where people easily contact other people. For example, in Facebook friend list, there are many people who I don’t know. We just push button “friend” to ask for friend and push button “accepted” to accept the friend request. Because, Facebook is Internet society, there are no limitations on time or place to meet other people. Many friends decreased the preciousness of each real friend that made hard to meet real friends. It is hard to find people who think real friends are needed.

Real or un-real, catfish-from Internet

The possibility that this documentary has been faked – or semi-faked, or restaged, or sneakily improved in the edit – is infuriating. It really is an intriguing modern tale of communication, intimacy, self-knowledge and the web: a great companion to The Social Network. Even if it were presented as fiction, it would still be startling, but had the film-makers Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman pitched it that way to a hard-faced Hollywood executive, he might have sunk it just by wondering about the absence of Skype. Of this, more in a moment.

1. Catfish
2. Production year: 2010
3. Countries: Rest of the world, USA
4. Cert (UK): 12A
5. Runtime: 94 mins
6. Directors: Ariel Schulman, Henry Joost
7. More on this film

Cinema audiences have recently experienced Joaquin Phoenix's hip-hop career in I'm Still Here, and the startling pop art works of "Mr Brainwash" in Banksy's tongue-in-cheek film Exit Through the Gift Shop, so can be forgiven for scepticism. There's actually a night-time sequence in Catfish, during which scary things are picked out with crude directional lighting in pitch-darkness, clearly influenced by that famous docu-style horror The Blair Witch Project. Yet this is a question of style, not substance. One must be careful of naive cynicism: stranger-than-fiction things happen all the time.

Catfish has been produced by Andrew Jarecki, whose directorial feature Capturing the Friedmans perhaps resembles this in that we seem ourselves to witness the directors following their noses and finding the story. This turns out to be a disturbing tale which also reminded me of Amir Bar-Lev's 2007 documentary about child art, My Kid Could Paint That. The star is a handsome, good-natured guy called Nev (pronounced "Neev") Schulman: a New York-based photographer and documentarist, specialising in filming dance theatre; in late 2008, he was sharing office space with his brother Ariel and Henry Joost, who were on the lookout for new projects. A startling package addressed to Nev one day appears to have inspired Ariel and Henry to pick up their digital cameras and start filming. Who knew where this might lead?

The package contained a painted copy of a photo of dancers Nev had published in a New York paper. With it was a note: the painting was by an eight-year-old girl called Abby, who lived in Michigan. Charmed, Nev wrote back to thank her; a Facebook correspondence began. But just when we might worry about this being inappropriate, these worries are neutralised – possibly – by Abby's mum getting in touch, and then Abby's twentysomething sister Megan, via Facebook. Nev is soon incessantly in contact with them by phone, instant-messaging and Facebook – no webcam stuff though. Perhaps because, at some level, he still does not take this extraordinary situation seriously, or believe that it is really happening, or because he is excited by its very randomness, Nev has not so far insisted on seeing his mysterious correspondents face-to-face. But when he decides to journey out to Michigan with Henry and Ariel for a visit, the story lurches in a strange, scary new direction.

Communication technology assists and obstructs the movies in different ways: the anonymous phone call has been a staple of the thriller for decades; yet now thrillers all need some panicky character to say: "Dammit! I can't get a signal!" before an otherwise traditional plot may proceed, and our increased visibility and traceability in the web age have arguably hindered storytelling still further – it will perhaps nurture a new boom in 1980s period pre-internet movies. Catfish is full of design touches taken from the web: Google Maps and Google Earth show the leading figures' respective locations in New York and Michigan. We zoom down on to the streets and see what things look like with Google Street View. The internet is theoretically making Abby and her family vividly and instantly real even though they're hundreds of miles away, but it's precisely because an elaborate, visually detailed reality can so easily be conjured up via the web that it is so treacherous.

David Fincher's The Social Network imagined the genesis of Facebook as a painful breakup experienced by its inventor, Mark Zuckerberg, and shrewdly suggested that Facebook's popularity lies in allowing its users to regulate their contact with other people, to present and manipulate an image of themselves in ways previously available only to celebrities. This is the creepy side of Facebook and the web in general, amplified in Catfish. I don't think Catfish is a fake: the hidden story is all too plausible. But I do get the sense that Nev and the directors suspected or maybe even discovered the exact truth far earlier than they are letting on here. But never mind. Catfish keeps you on the edge of the seat, and it's an eerie introduction to a new web-driven emotion. Staring into the computer picture of other people's lives is like gazing into an abyss: you get digital vertigo.

Mr. Yoon's 1st assignment

Do Hyun Lee

Professor Yoon Seung Gil

American Literature

29 February 2012

The Snow Man: After report

             ‘Cold, cold, cold and snow’ is a scene of snowy winter that people think of; eventually, we think a tree covered with the snow. They can’t see “the nothing” of the winter. Regardless of the time, we always thought a tree covered with the snow as a scene of the snowy winter. People also reformed the sound of wind to the sound of wind that is full of misery, the wind that was “the nothing,” changed to “something.” WHY? It is because human kinds create “something” they want to, “something” that is fixed. This fixed thought, a prejudice, is hard to change. This poem is made to criticize human kinds’ behaviors, which are limited by the prejudices. People can’t see the nature as it is. People should work hard to hear or listen to the wind as it is, not to think of any misery in the sound of the wind.  

Another basic problem for human kinds is that people aren’t interested in the nature itself. Pine trees, junipers and spruces have a similar feature: ever-green tree; but, they are undoubtedly different kinds of trees. However, people aren’t interested in each of them. Because of this disinterest, people can’t see “the nothingness,” but they only see “nothing.” 

These two obstacles block people from watching “the nothingness.” Then, how can people overcome these two problems? An answer for this question is “we can’t.” We can’t never ever abandon our prejudices; regardless of the time we spent to erase them. A speaker failed to behold the junipers shagged with ice, the spruces rough in the glitter; although, he spent much time during the winter. But, there is an alternative: imagination. For accurate imagination we should be a good listener, not the people who behold the winter. We have to listen and imagine the scene of winter. Because people don’t exist at that place, people can imagine the place as it is. This means that people can see “the nothing” in that place. This means that people can be snowmen, the snowmen which form harmony with the nature itself.

“The mind of winter” is the mind that snowman only can have. This mind can be only held by the imagination.

Parallelism and repetition are used in this poem. First and the second stanza are parallel; for example, “to regard” and “to behold” are parallel, and “junipers shagged with ice” and “the pine-trees crusted with snow” are parallel too. And the term “snow” and “winter” is repeatedly used in this poem. By these rhyme schemes, readers could feel that this poem is interlocked with each stanza. The interlocking feeling hints the readers that each stanza is connected and inferring other meanings.

Also, much imagery is used in the poem. I believe that the poet used imagery to emphasize the importance of imagining, not beholding. “Of the pine-trees crusted with snow” and “To behold the junipers shagged with ice” are examples for the imagery.

There are also a phrase and word that involves emotion; for example, “Of any misery in the sound of the wind” and “to regard.” These show that human kinds are using their brains to make “nothing” to “something” by emotionally empathizing. 

MLA format

useful link
http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/01/

useful citation link
http://www.openc.k12.or.us/citeintro/citeintro.php?Grd=Sec

A synthesis essay: Wal-Mart

             On  May 22nd, 2006, a massive super store firm, Wal-Mart, withdrew from South Korea. Before Wal-Mart, another massive super store firm, Carrefour, also removed from South Korea. However, both firms are successfully operating in other countries, and they are very big global brand:

If there's no Wal-Mart store near you, just wait. If you shop at Wal-Mart, expect your store to get bigger or a new store to open even closer. The chain plans to expand from 3,400 U.S. locations today? half of them in the South? to a nationwide network approaching 5,000 stores in five years.

Carrefour S.A. is an international hypermarket chain headquartered in Courcouronnes, France. It is one of the largest hypermarket chains in the world (with 1,395 hypermarkets at the end of 2009, the second largest retail group in the world in terms of revenue and third largest in profit after Wal-Mart and Tesco.)


But in Korea, these superstores were replaced with a firm called “E-Mart.” E-Mart has similar operation system with Wal-Mart, which pursues a low price orientation to dominate the discount retail sector. Then, what are the reasons of their failure in Korea? Another dubious question comes out on mind: Can Wal-Mart get any bigger? Unfortunately, yes.

             Before stating the reasons of failure, we should know the characteristics of Wal-Mart in the United States, which were successful. The tactic that Wal-Mart used to expand in the United States was building a huge, warehouse look store in rural area, and then, spread out its store to nearby cities to form retail clusters. So, Wal-Mart used same tactic in Korea, making huge stores in suburbanized area. The places, Wal-Mart chose to make stores, did not matched with Korean consumers’ life style and shopping habits. Korean consumers prefer to purchase small amounts frequently than buying large volume at once, because they want fresh food and beverages than dry goods:

Wal-Mart and Carrefour, which entered the country in 1996, put off South Korean consumers by sticking to Western marketing strategies that concentrated on dry goods, from electronics to clothing, while their local rivals focused on food and beverages, the segment that specialists say attracts South Koreans to hypermarkets.

So, Korean consumers prefer to go to a department store, where it has good accessibility. This means that people like to go to department stores which have convenient transportation system. And urbanized areas have good transportation system. Wal-Mart did not concern shopping custom of Korea. 

             Not only the tactic but also bad timing made Wal-Mart to choose bad locations in Korea. Major other retailers, E-Mart and Homeplus, had already built their stores in urban area. It blocked Wal-Mart to build their stores in commercial area. This situation is also seen in Germany, where Wal-Mart failed to succeed either. In Germany, Aldi chain occupied favorable places for department stores; eventually, Wal-Mart could earn undesirable places:

Germany also provides a lesson in the perils of buying existing chains. Wal-Mart’s purchase of Wertkauf and Interspar saddled it with stores in undesirable locations. The Wiesbaden outlet is worlds away from a squeaky-clean American Wal-Mart: nearby are a couple of sex shops. “These were some of the least attractive of the big-box retailers out there,” said James Bacos, director of the retail and consumer goods practice at Mercer Management Consulting in Munich.

Bad timing was problem for Wal-Mart in Korea and Germany; but, we could also know that Wal-Mart was only interested in expansion without having enough information on each market.  

             Wal-Mart failed in Korea, because it did not concerned about differences on each countries’ cultures. The vice chairman of Wal-Mart said, “As we continue to focus our efforts where we can have the greatest impact on our growth strategy, it became increasingly clear that in South Korea’s current environment it would be difficult for us to reach the scale we desired.”

When we see the cases on Korea and Germany, it seems that Wal-Mart can’t expand anymore. Actually, it can. Wal-Mart can expand their industry in China, Mexico and Brazil, which have big market:

Wal-Mart did not change the names of the stores, which range from neighborhood grocers to large American-style hypermarkets. But with 295 stores in Brazil, Wal-Mart now ranks third in the market, after 
Carrefour of France and the market leader, Companhia Brasileira de Distribução.

\

Also, Wal-Mart does not care much about its foreign stores carry the name derived from its founder. For example, in Japan, Wal-Mart took over Seiyu, but keep using name Seiyu, instead of using Wal-Mart. Over all, Wal-Mart is still expanding outside the United States:

Seventy percent of Wal-Mart’s international sales come from outlets with names like Asda in Britain, Seiyu in Japan or Bompreço in Brazil.