Richan B Anderson

     Hello everyone! My name is Richan Anderson and, as you probably already assumed, I am in DM 115 with Professor Leeper. I have never had any experience with blogging before, in fact my Twitter account consist only of retweets of simi-famous people. So with that thought in mind, lets get started!

     Professor Leeper's lecture in class last Thursday was extremely insightful. I especially enjoyed the video of the little  girl in the red dress. (I greatly regret not writing down the names of the films as we were watching them.) The beauty of the still shot of the young girl paired with the slow motion footage of her dancing, created quite an unsettling atmosphere.The child was completely unaware of, not only the horror in her performance, but also of her natural beauty. As the filmmaker distorted time, he/she (I really do wish I had written the information down) was able to make the child look guilty, like she had intended to create that horrific image. Through this portrayal the filmmaker showed us that the child was guilty of creating any atmosphere, whether she was aware of it or not. This revelation causes us to rethink the term "innocence." 

     We have all heard the cliche "the innocence of a child," but have we ever really considered its meaning? Usually people use this phrase after a child does something wrong, but they have never been taught that it was wrong because they were believed to be too young to need that instruction. However, the age of the child does not truly affect whether or not they are guilty. I believe this message was deeply portrayed in the video in question. The child was beautiful and very young, the picture of innocence, yet she created something horrifying, without being aware of it at all. Even though she was unaware of the filmmaker's intentions, she still did what she was asked to do, and was therefore 'guilty.' So the true question raised through this film is, "What is innocence?" Does innocence truly exist? Surely it must, for I am innocent of murder, because I have never killed anyone... that I am aware of. What if, we are all guilty of crimes which we have no knowledge of? 

     So, in closing, I would like to ask you to leave any opinions you have on the matter in the comments! I am truly interested in this topic now, but for now, I leave you with some seemingly (mostly) innocent looking children. I would also like to hear if you know who they are, so if you figure it out, please leave your answers in the comments. Bye!