Rewrite:The Orator.

I thought this visual text would be a perfect idea for my rewrite, since it's a definite post-colonial based Movie as well as the fact that the main character in this movie himself is very Quiet in a lot of ways. The movie is all in Samoan, based in Samoa and is produced and directed by a Samoan as well. Saili, (main character) is given a hard time about being a Dwarf and the size he is in the village. However he shows throughout the movie that he is not intimidated at all by others , with the help and encouragement from his wife who unfortunately passes away towards the end because of a bad sickness she had. After being anointed to become one of many chiefs of the village , he didn't step up to his title until the day he went to his wife's family village to claim her body back respectfully for himself to bury at their home. A lot of cultural aspects is taken into place in this movie but what I wanted to re-write about particularly were parts where Saili would sit down quietly and just think to himself. I will , if possible bring out what his thoughts are during those times.    

An Ideal Husband rewrite.

Oscar Widle in this peice of literature addresses the negative (and somewhat hypocritical)
effects of Moral society. In the play Morals are upheld as being of utmost importance. One character however, saves the marriage of the protaganist (Robert Chiltern), by convincing his wife that love should previal over her high moral standards of "an ideal husband". Though this seems honorable and revolutionary to an extent, I want to re-write this in the modern time, reversing the situation.

In 1895 (the time of the play), Morals were everything. Oscar Wilde critiques this, by writing from his Aesthetic standpoint, with the idea that love conquers all in this play.

In 2013, which is when my re-write is set, Aesthetics (pleasure) is everything and means everything.

My goal for this text is to critiques Wilde's views and accept that though he had important points, An ideal is found in a balance between living by Aesthetics as well as Morals.

I will come from a Postcolonial standpoint in my writing, accepting that Wilde thought that his ideal was better than that of morals. However, when Aesthetics takes over, we have seen widespread discourse (eg, binge drinking culture). Upon my post-colonial reflection, I have deduced that niether extremes are ideal.

In my re-write I will flip the characters around. Lord Arthur Goring was the one who represented the Aethsetic. He will become an upright, moral member of society.

Here are my planned characters:

Lord Goring: Morals and Pleasure in balance, but doesn't really fit in with many people becuase he focuses on his job etc.

Lord Caversham (Goring's father): Drunken, womanising father who is disapointed in his son becuase he believes he is a too uptight. He verbally abuses his son.

Robert Chiltern: Gorings best friend. He is in a de facto relationship. He lives for pleasure, but it actually makes him feel worse becuase he is in a deep debt. He is a local body politian.

Gertrude Chiltern ( Roberts wife): Hippie, drugs, alcoholic

Laura Chevely: Tries to seduce Goring and bring Chiltern down.

Not sure if I will change the names yet. The post-colonial ideas that I will tackle in my re-write are those of Moral high ground, versus living for Aesthetic pleasure, and how society really turns out when everyone is all on one side.

Appreciate any and all feedback.

Hi,

For my re-write I was thinking of doing Shakespeare’s play of King Lear. I want to write from the perspective of Cordelia, Lears youngest daughter, who is banished by his father for not properly faltering him. Cordelia is only present for the introduction and conclusion of the play I would like to write what may have happened during her banishment. Some ideas I could write about are her feelings of rejection from her family, jealousy of her sisters and her choice to return to her father.

I always felt sorry for Cordelia she only did what was right and was continually punished for it.

Any ideas?

Brief 1 Re-write: Manga plot

Hello all,

Hope we all going well with our rewrites.

It really took me a while to learn about what post-colonial is and I'm still not sure if I'm going the right way.

In general, post-colonial is about resisting place and culture alienating (people who were brought from their "home" to new places they've never been to), reviving native cultures that were once suppressed and so on. From a point of view of a descendant of a colonised country, this post-colonial theory raises considerably amount of awareness upon reading a piece of literature. I tried to recall my memory of stories, fantasy fictions and movies that may trigger the theory but I can't quite say what the oppressed wanted to say. Newspaper is said to be another source that post-colonial can appear but I haven't got the hang of it.

As of now I chose to go with the manga called SHINGEKI NO KYOJIN (Attack on the titan). It's original can be found here.

So then, the idea here is there are a bunch of titan-transformers in the middle of the human and they are quite alienate themselves and their human friends. I decided to give them a say based on their feeling about the place and the people (who only look at them as monsters). On another hand, the walls which protect the minority of human is actually made from titans, this mean the titan-transformers may end up the same or wipe the humans out themselves as other titans other than them seem to be witless and only move on instinct.

My idea isn't complete yet. Let me know if you have any suggestions, I'll be more than happy to hear it. :)

Simon

Of Mice and Men Rewrite

Just finished watching the Of Mice and Men 1992 film (if you haven't seen it, it is a great watch!) and am leaning towards my original idea of being in George's head a little more and and share the process of how/why he decided to shoot his best friend and how it effected him in the future.
After watching the film and being part way in reading the book, i find it really interest the link between candy and his old dog also being shot in the head to "stop him from hurting it's self" and Lenny.

Thinking George too felt this way about Lenny, that he's no good to himself and instead of being hurt and misunderstood constantly (Lenny) that it is better to him not to ever be hurt again... I find it very interesting the love George shows through out the novel to Lenny but then takes this 'sudden' action.

I think using candy in the story as for shadowing the ending (ie dog) can be continued when i add to the ending of the novel. After Candy's dog was shot for a few days he was down and out, but then hope became  his 'crutch' some may say. He focused on the house him, Lenny and George were going to buy, specially now he doesn't have to bring his old dog anywhere. It's almost like he can start doing things that he could before because he always had that dog with him. Maybe we will see the same with George, doing things he couldn't do before because of Lenny... And maybe strive to get that house more than ever to keep him promise to Lenny.

Anyway those are my thought thus far.

Holly Adams

Rewrite Idea... Bible story?

As an aspiring Christian writer, I wanted to rewrite a story in the bible.

It actually sounds pretty blasphemous... but never fear, I will do a lot of research here.

My idea is about the "Woman at the well"

She doesn't have a name, all we know about her is that she had five husbands and lived with a guy who wasn't her husband at a time which considered this most scandalous.
Oh. She was also a Samaritan, which meant Jews refused to talk to them, plus she was a woman - which meant men did not talk to them.

So... she's a victim of three things. One: Sexism Two: Racism and lastly: Level of sin?

The fact that a lone lady is coming to a well in middle of noon, the well being the focal point of gossip and social interaction, shows how much she was scorned. Probably because of the above description of her. But why? What gives these other well ladies the right to scorn her? They have never sinned in their entire life? I felt pretty strong about this part. This self given right is always the root of all oppression. "Men are better because Female sinned/ Men are better because we are stronger etc" "Jews are better because Samaritans believed the wrong bible" "I'm better because I sin less than that woman"
So! I thought this would be a great opportunity to show the views of these oppressed people from the woman's eyes.

The interesting thing is: After she meets Jesus, she becomes the key figure in leading the Samaritans to Jesus. So... she must have a pretty strong personality to live through all that and have the courage to gather/save people who scorned her in the past.

So my rewrite will focus on power paradigm. Drawing a parallel line between the oppressed colonizers and oppressed woman back in the days.

I'm playing with the idea if I should make the guy who she is in a relationship with but not husband: into a woman. But perhaps putting ANOTHER reason why she is oppressed is a little too much for the poor lady.

My direction is:

Show the horrible treatment of woman/race/sin level(?) she suffers.
She fights through all the hardship and believes what she wants despite the opposition.
Perhaps the guy she's living with is a wonderful man and she is fighting for happiness with him?
In the end, glimpse of hope as she gets to the well? (where the bible story starts)

This is probably going to change alot, but here's the first planning! :)

Weeks 1-2: Start of an Idea

 It has taken some time for me to come up with an idea for Brief 1's Re-Write, and much of that time involved exploring my literary interests. My interests are quite sporadic since I read whatever grabs my attention, however I do tend to read crime/legal fiction & non-fiction, autobiographies, coming-of-age stories, and a bit from the horror mystery genre. I read often so newspapers, newsletters, magazines, blogs, newsfeeds, online articles/essays make up for the time when I'm not reading a book.

I'm not going to dwell on the exploration process but I settled on basing my re-write on two canonical texts, (The Adventures of ) Sherlock Holmes and Aesop's Fable, The Lion and The Mouse. I'll be integrating The Lion and The Mouse into the Holmes' re-write narrative, as an allegory of the relationship between Holmes and the island of Samoa - set on the southern coastline 18 months after the 2009 Tsunami. The plot will be of a crime mystery nature and it'll be told from a Samoan/Traditional perspective, with the purpose of challenging the British Empire that the characterisation and adventures of Holmes embodies.

Over the coming weeks, I'll be looking into the theories and themes explored in the assigned texts for this paper (Jean Rhys' Wide Sargasso Sea, J.M. Coetzee's Foe) as well as those within the canonical texts (including other relevant elements), plus research on events during and after the 2009 Samoa Tsumani that will help with developing my re-write.

There's more to come in regards to the storyline, since it's still work in progress. Not to worry - I'll have it posted up very soon in detail.


Katie