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Iwt1 Task 2

In: Film and Music

Submitted By jmox
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Weird Al’s song “It’s All About the Pentiums”, the movie “Live Free or Die Hard” and the poem “Praise Song for the Day” by Elizabeth Alexander each have a common theme that relates to the computer industry in which describing the need to continually advance towards the future. The poem “Praise Song for the Day” was written by
Elizabeth Alexander in 2009 as a tribute to President
Obama’s inauguration. There is a lot of directions this poem can go, as far as whom it relates to. The main point is that people are here to help out each other.

This is a song in the music industry provided by the artist Weird Al Yankovic. This song is a remix of the Puff
Daddy song “It’s All About the Benjamins. This “nerdcore hip-hop” song was released on the album “Running with
Scissors” in 1999. (Wikipedia, 2012)

Lyrics to Weird Al - "It's All About the
Pentiums"

The action film Live
Free or Die Hard was released in 2007 about computer hacking terrorist and the fight against them. Starring Bruce
Willis as a NYPD Detective fighting alongside the FBI to stop the cyber attacks in the
United States.

(Wikipedia, 2012)

Elizabeth Alexander, born in 1962, wrote the poem Praise
Song for the Day in 2009 in regards to the Obama inauguration.
She speaks about how people go about their normal daily business noticing each other. Everyone is fixing and/or creating something, all while talking with each other in different ways and thinking about what one has said. We remember how we got here and what has occurred in the past for us to live as we do to this day. We speak or sing towards a brighter future. To some this is considered a prose poem. (Adams, 2009)
Techniques used to differentiate this poem from others were:
 Realistic
 Conceptual
 Repetition

Weird Al’s song It’s All About the Pentiums, released in
1999, was a parody remix from the Puff Daddy song It’s All
About the Benjamins. With keeping the beat and tone of the Puff
Daddy song, this songs lyrics and theme are all changed to be computer related. Pentiums, hackers, HP, hard drives and other computer hardware are mentioned in a clever improvisation in this song. The song title “It’s All About the Pentiums” is fitting because this explains how slow “Your Windows boots up in what, a day and a half?” and old computers were and how quickly computer parts can be upgraded to make them faster
“Upgrade my system at least twice a day”. The chorus uses different pitch “It’s all about the Pentiums”. This motif also refers to what Pentium you have in your computer as to how fast it will be.
Lyrics to Weird Al - "It's All About the
-Song lyrics can be found on Pentiums"





Beat and tone – Weird Al uses an upbeat and fast tone to keep the audience interested and moving with the song. He keeps his voice at an even tone throughout the song as well.
Motif and theme – Weird Al uses rhyming in his lyrics combined with computer jargon. He also uses brand names in his song to relate to the computer industry as part of his theme. The motif in this song is the chorus repeating “It’s all about the Pentiums” multiple times throughout the song, which helps get the point across of what this song is really all about.

The action film Live Free or Die Hard was released in 2007.
Starring Bruce Willis as John McClane, this movie was about a
NYPD Detective, McClane, helping the FBI fight cyber terrorists against hacking the FBI. The film title was derived from New
Hampshire’s state motto. It was also based on an article written for Wired Magazine in 1997 called A Farewell to Arms by John
Carlin (Wikipedia, 2012). This film used practical reality to keep scenes as real as possible and limiting the use of computer generated images. They did have to use a digital environment as well to create the more dangerous scenes through the use of a bluescreen. Sound and music played a key role by enticing the audience to pay attention during the more active scenes by making the sound/music much louder and intense. Point of view shots were used often to show the feelings of different characters. In the scene of the movie where McClane drives his truck up the ramp and jumps onto the plane, the director uses all four elements of film.

Cinematography is shown by using tracking shots that follow the vehicle McClane is driving as well as a crane shot off the bridge to catch a glimpse of the plane and action of the vehicles.

Point of view is used in many ways, such as in the vehicle while
McClane is driving to get a low angle POV to shifting outside traveling up the bridge beside the vehicle and again shifting off of the bridge to capture the vehicle and plane from a farther view to show what witnesses would see.

Sound and music are implemented in a way to build suspense of the action occurring. Fast upbeat and loud get the audience engaged with the intense action occurring getting louder as it gets more dangerous for McClane.

Editing is used mainly with jump cuts going back and forth between inside the vehicle with McClane and outside the vehicle to off the bridge in order to get all views seen continuously as the action happens.

This poem has a few different themes, some more offensive than others. Praise Song for the Day speaks quite a bit in regards to the African American population from their past to present, but ends trying to include all Americans. Is this what
Elizabeth Alexander meant to portray in her poem? Did she mainly create this poem in regards to the African Americans? It also has quite a bit of a biblical theme to it as far as reciting some lines religious lines “love thy neighbor as thy self”. Was she holding any regard to the nonreligious Americans reading this poem? Does she expect all Americans to follow the bible codes? I feel Alexander is only reaching out to a few certain types of
Americans instead of everyone. It makes me feel as if only the
African Americans had a long hard life and need the Bible to look toward the future.

Weird Al turns Puff Daddy’s song into a comical parody and invites all the computer “geeks” into the hip hop world by changing the lyrics to suite them. I feel this was a great idea to expand the audience from one type of music. Keeping the tone and beat the same helps me expect what is coming next which makes the song more exciting. Using clever and funny lyrics in relation to computers is easy for me to understand and get a laugh out of. This computer theme is something I can really relate to and find the humor in. The way Weird Al explains in his lyrics how quickly technology can change and make you realize how slow the older technology was is something anyone using a computer can understand, especially this day in age. In his official music video, he dresses as a hip-hopster, why wouldn’t he have dressed as a computer nerd to portray his lyrics more?

A division of the FBI had sold cyber code which allowed the terrorist to breach the FBI computers, in turn resulting in the terrorist attempting to assassinate all those involved from the FBI. Why would the FBI still try and save their own coworkers after being betrayed like that? It makes so much more work and risk for the FBI to make their network safe again. Why would the people of this division work so hard to make a safe network and then compromise it by giving away code to breach it?
Everything could have been prevented if they had enough good morals to just turn the terrorists in before handing out top secret coding. Were they threatened with their lives from the terrorists? There is a theme of morality and the difference right and wrong can make.

“Praise Song for the Day” and “It’s All About the
Pentiums” both have a common theme of past and future.
Alexander writes about how the African Americans had worked so hard in the past to make something they would be living in and keeping up with now “built brick by brick the glittering edifices they would then keep clean and work inside of”
(Graywolf Press, 2009). While Weird Al also sings about old technology that we have created and used which lead us to create newer technology that we now use. We have reasons for building and maintaining things because they leader to bigger and better things in the future. They both conclude with the joy and ambition of what is to come of the future. Although being true, Weird Al’s song is more based on humor than the dark and light theme posed in Alexander’s poem. The amount of seriousness is the major difference between these two disciplines. “Praise Song for the Day” and Live Free or Die Hard have a common theme of working toward building something great and maintaining it in the present and future. The African Americans build the houses and life that they need to work and clean up. While the FBI division builds a computer security network that they need to keep secure from terrorists. The biggest factor attributing to the difference in these disciplines is the amount of room there is the a film to express many more themes and moods because of its length. Live Free or Die Hard was able to heighten the mood much more than Alexander’s poem.
The braveness of one man, McClane, can give an entire different outlook to the film as well.

Live Free or Die Hard and “It’s All About the
Pentiums” have a common computer theme. They both involve hackers and coding in their works. The major difference is which direction each discipline takes their computer theme. Live Free or Die Hard emphasis’s on the networking and security portion while Weird Al’s song tries to stick with the speed and rate at which computers are upgradable. There is more a humor mood to the song rather than the film, which is more serious and action based. The poem “Praise Song for the Day” sheds light on the hardship and past life of African Americans and the type of life they lived to get where they are today.
Everything they build up and fixed to continue to work and maintain it all in the future. The feeling of looking to something greater, God, and living by His codes to have a brighter life are some of the ways human condition was shown in this poem. I relate to this poem by reading about the building and repairing process these people have done.
I will be building and maintaining computer networks just like their brick by brick houses. This knowledge is helping by changing my perspective when coming to a difficult task by changing into something I can visualize better, like building a house or patching a blanket, string by string.

The song “It’s All About the Pentiums” has a strong theme of how necessary it is for us to continually upgrade technology. The mood of dealing with slow technology in this song is embraced through sarcasm and irrational comparisons.
Most of the sarcasms used were meant to try and make their computer faster or show how small the storage space was. I can relate to the use of these sarcasms in my profession because most of the people I am out there to help have older computers needing upgraded or fixed. Their complaints may sound just like the uses of sarcasm throughout this song. I feel it is always good to enable laughter and fun in the technology world to make the sense of this work environment enjoyable for both me and the customer. Sarcasm is a great way for us both to express our feelings and goals in what is expected of the technology we use. The theme of the movie “Live Free or Die hard” is about the bad morals of someone who gave special coding to terrorists which allowed them to harm a lot of people and cause trouble. This is important because actions like these can effect many people in many different ways. Local businesses to national security could be at risk based on good morals and actions of the people with expert information. My profession will allow me to have the ability to work in these type of situations, so it is extremely important to use my knowledge and expertise in a productive and secure way. Mistakes and personal fortune is in no way an excuse to sabotage someone’s secure network. It is important for there to be a trust between me and the company I will be working for.

All three of these forms of art have similarities and differences in which relate to the computer industry. The themes and ideas presented through the art and humanities help a person view different ways to approach situations that will present themselves in life while on the workforce. From good standing morals to the use of laughter and sarcasm to comparisons to building blocks of life, all these themes help push through tough situations.
Each situation may put you in a different mood depending on how hard something may be to accomplish, so different approaches of art may be necessary to focus in on.

“Live Free or Die Hard” is an excellent source of thinking of what a small mistake or bad judgment can produce in the future. While, It’s All About the
Pentiums” may be used more for a smaller issue and dealing with the local home offices. “Praise Song for the Day” however will definitely help with networking issues and designs by picturing something not of technology, like building houses and what not.

Comparisons are a great way to picture what you are trying to achieve. These forms of art, although do not really flow together because of their differences, all have wonderfully chosen forms to get their point across. The uses of repetition, pitch, realism, improvisation, etc. are used widely in the art world and worked well for getting the points across in these forms of art.

It is a big help to be able to relate a movie, song and poem to my work profession whether having to do with the computer field or not. Working their meanings and themes into my current or future situations in work and life are meant to ease the difficulties I approach. This not only helps me but it can help the customers as well!







Wikipedia (September 3, 2012) Running with
Scissors(Album). Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Running_with_Scissors _(album)
Adams, Nordette (January 26, 2009) “Praise Song for the
Day” Reloaded(Attack of the Inaugural Poem). Blogher http://www.blogher.com/praise-song-day-reloadedattack-inaugural-poem Graywolf Press (February 6, 2009) Praise Song for the
Day. Poets.org http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/205 45

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