This is somewhat of weird week in English for us considering we won’t even be in class tomorrow. Anyway, our assignment, for basically the whole week, is to read the first act of Macbeth. Then today we talked about the history of England behind Macbeth. Even though I dread going to A.P.U.S.H this year and literally just stare at the clock the whole time, I found today’s class really interesting. Maybe it’s because to me, it wasn’t so much history we talked about, but politics, which I find to be incredibly fascinating. If you think about it, Chicago could be a little England. Now obviously, Rahm Emanuel isn’t going around chopping people’s head off because or they’re not catholic, or I guess in our case Jewish. However, I do think the idea of Henry the VIII wanting a son so badly to be his successor that he made his own religion does very much apply today to politics. You have Lisa Madigan who the Attorney General and her father Mike Madigan in the House of Representatives. Then there is Joe Berrios and his daughter Toni. You have Richard Daley, then Richard M. Daley, our mayor before Rahm. On an even larger scale there’s George Bush and then George W. Bush as president. I guess the point would be that even though Chicago isn’t a monarchy coming from a very politically involved household, I can say it very much is made of political machines and corruption just like England was during the English Renaissance. It also, in it’s own ways, has sons and daughter as successors; and while they won’t behead you if you don’t comply with the machine, they will cut you off and turn on you and I can say that from experience too.
Last week in class we had a very real conversation on labels and today in class we talked about gossip. Now, the biggest high school clichés are that “it’s the best time of your life”, “girls in high school are mean” and that for some weird reason you’re going to find your soul mate during that time too. Labels, gossip, jocks and cheerleaders, being clubs are all things that just naturally go with being in high school that have now become just clichés. Now here’s another cliché: “everyone is unique.” Now don’t get me wrong, I fully believe that everyone is different and unique, but if we’re being perfectly honest with ourselves we’re all really just walking high school clichés. We all gossip with our friends about that really hot guy who’s finally single and we all label each other, in one way or another. The title of this blog post is from a movie called “Struck by lightening” and it’s said by a character, who is possibly the most cliché high school mean girl cheerleader EVER. But the point is that she and the rest of her friends (who are also meant to be incredibly cliché characters), that don’t want to accept the fact. The fact that they are walking clichés. If we’re being honest with ourselves, I think some of us can admit we’re high school clichés. I think most of us can also admit that we ALL gossip and we ALL label each other. That’s that. Now that’s just my opinion but hopefully even though some of us or maybe even all of us are clichés we can be just a little bit different.
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