An Unnecessarily Serious(?) Analysis and Critique of "What Makes You Beautiful" by One Direction

(Lyrics taken from  http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/onedirection/whatmakesyoubeautiful.html)

[Verse 1]

[Liam]

You're insecure,

Don't know what for,

You're turning heads when you walk through the door,

Don't need make-up,

To cover up,

Being the way that you are is enough,

Analysis:

There is girl who suffers from self-esteem issues. However, Liam asserts this does not mean she doesn’t have value. She can be beautiful by just being herself. She doesn’t need to change her appearance or personality, as implied by the verb “are”, a conjugation of “to be,” which implies that the way she acts or presents herself is enough to be beautiful.

[Bridge]

[Harry]

Everyone else in the room can see it,

Everyone else but you,

Analysis:

Just because she is unaware of her beauty does not mean that other people do not see her beauty.

[Chorus]

[All]

Baby you light up my world like nobody else,

The way that you flip your hair gets me overwhelmed,

But when you smile at the ground it ain't hard to tell,

You don't know,

Oh oh,

You don't know you're beautiful,

Analysis:

The girl in question is radiantly and uniquely beautiful. Though she suffers from self-esteem problems she has a certain level of personality present in her hair flipping. However her shy smiling at the ground betrays her body image issues and lack of confidence. She is unaware that she is beautiful.

If only you saw what I can see,

You'll understand why I want you so desperately,

Right now I'm looking at you and I can't believe,

You don't know,

Oh oh,

You don't know you're beautiful,

Oh oh,

That's what makes you beautiful

The speaker sees a beauty in this girl that she herself cannot see. And if she could understand what he sees then she would not have her self-esteem issues. However, her beauty appears to stem from her humility, implying that this beauty is not entirely physical, though the vagueness of the line still allows for that.

[Verse 2]

[Zayn]

So c-come on,

You got it wrong,

To prove I'm right,

I put it in a song,

I don't know why,

You're being shy,

And turn away when I look into your eye eye eyes,

Her self-esteem issues are a failure for her to understand her own beauty. However, this man seems to think that by singing a thought he makes it true. This is a logical fallacy so intense it brings the rest of his argument into question. Putting that aside for now though, he ends this rather week stanza with a declaration of his bafflement at the girl’s self-esteem issues. Perhaps he is ignorant to societal standards.

[Bridge]

[Harry]

Everyone else in the room can see it,

Everyone else but you,

The repetition of this line calls attention to the importance of the fact that everyone else is aware of her beauty, even if the girl is not.

[Chorus]

[All]

Baby you light up my world like nobody else,

The way that you flip your hair gets me overwhelmed,

But when you smile at the ground it ain't hard to tell,

You don't know,

Oh oh,

You don't know you're beautiful,

If only you saw what I can see,

You'll understand why I want you so desperately,

Right now I'm looking at you and I can't believe,

You don't know,

Oh oh,

You don't know you're beautiful,

Oh oh,

That's what makes you beautiful

See previous chorus analysis.

Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Na

Na Na Na Na Na Na [x2]

I believe this sequence serves to fill up extra time in the song, but may also serve to be a repeated denial of the girl’s self-esteem issues in the hope that she will begin to see her inherent beauty.

[Middle 8]

[Harry]

Baby you light up my world like nobody else,

The way that you flip your hair gets me overwhelmed,

But when you smile at the ground it ain't hard to tell,

[All]

You don't know,

Oh oh,

You don't know you're beautiful,

[Chorus]

[All]

Baby you light up my world like nobody else,

The way that you flip your hair gets me overwhelmed,

But when you smile at the ground it ain't hard to tell,

You don't know,

Oh oh,

You don't know you're beautiful ([Zayn:] Oh),

If only you saw what I can see,

You'll understand why I want you so desperately ([Harry:] Desperately),

Right now I'm looking at you and I can't believe,

You don't know,

Oh oh,

You don't know you're beautiful,

Oh oh,

You don't know you're beautiful,

Oh oh,

[Harry]

That's what makes you beautiful

Rather than repeat my previous analysis of the last paragraphs, I will summarize my critique now. Though this song suffers from a few weak points, such as vague points and the entire stanza sung by Zayn, it has many strong point and appears to be working to encourage girls to not fear that they may be being judged as ugly or invaluable and instead to focus on their inherent beauty, which could well stem from a physical beauty or from an inner beauty. The overall message and theme of this song is a positive one. Girls, don’t live your life in constant fear of judgment or being called “ugly.” You are beautiful whether you know it or not.

In conclusion,I think this song has a pretty decent message, one that girls need to hear more often in a world populated by Usher and LMFAO. Also, though I try my hardest not to enjoy this song, it's too catchy for me not to like it. Here's a link to my favorite covers so far, as well as the original.

A New Article and an New Direction for My Blog

Howdy y'all. I ave recently develped a bi' of a southen accent. Ok that's not true, but I am in an exstatically extaticaly? Ecstatically? Aha! That's it. Anyway I am in an ecstatically good mood for a number of reasons. Reason number one:
       I have started watching the vlogbrothers youtube videos and they are just so awesome. So they have put me in a hyper static good mood. I don't even know what that phrase means but it is most definitely true.
Reason number two:
       This weekend, I not only acted in a student film for one of my fellow film students, but co-wrote and co-directed a film with my friend Ryan that we entered into a 24 hour film race competition. I'm not allowed to share either of these films with you guys yet, but as soon as they are done you can expect a large increase in the amount of videos linked in my blog. Man that was an awkward sentence.
Reason number three:
        I am now the guest movie reviewer/entertainment article writer for a website called SidewalkOnline Magazine (that link goes to the first article I wrote for them on Why Legend of Korra is so awesome).
As a result of this last one I have decided to write my major movie or TV articles for SidewalkOnline and to start using my blog here mostly to rant like this and to write short stories based on things I encounter during my week. This week's story will be the mystery of what happened to a letter to a dude named Greg. More on that later this week.
     
        So yeah, I just thought I'd update you guys and let you know about the content shift in my blog. Also I just really wanted to express my excitement today. Woohoo! I'll talk to you all later this week.

The Best Burger I May Have Ever Had

So I have never reviewed food before so this will be a little difficult for me. But I think the deliciousness of this burger is so great that I must share it. So today my friends and I were chatting about where to grab dinner. We had a lot of vegetarians with us so we were thinking something veggie friendly like Thai or Chinese. Then my friend suggested Mick's Karma Bar. Which is a burger joint. We laughed at him then said, yeah ok. So we went to this burger joint (Mick's Karma Bar, I'm gonna plug this places name as many times as I can so you guys go there), which is located in the restaurant section of one of those blocks filled with big businesses like Wells Fargo in Irvine, CA. Anyway we get there, and first off, the environment is just awesome. There are some weird modern art benches around this giant pond and a whole bunch of outdoor seating cafe style.  It feels totally unlike Irvine; it's pretty; it smelled good; it felt like there was actual culture (in case you can't tell I really hate Irvine). But so after discussing and agreeing that the outdoor seating was quaint and attractive, we entered Mick's Karma Bar and took a look at the menu. 5 burgers.

They had some other stuff that I'll probably never try
cause I'll always want the burger

5 burgers. I got the Karma Burger, their staple, some steak fries and a strawberry lemonade, all for a little less than ten bucks. It only took about ten or so minutes for us to get our food, and when we did. Oh my gosh. Everyone at our table had some sort of food induced orgasm. Even my vegetarian friends (you can sub a veggie patty free of charge) demanded we come back. I have had a lot of good burgers in my day. I'm a bit of a burger enthusiast. But this burger. Something about this burger - No . EVERYTHING about this burger was perfect. Amazingly high quality meat. Not cooked till after I ordered it (I know I chatted with Mick a bit after my meal). Cooked to literal perfection. Not tough nor crunchy. All the vegetables were fresh (how did they get tomatoes so perfectly plump and easily bitten into?). Good bread. Even the fries and lemonade were phenomenal. My point is the food was damn good. And then on top of all that the staff was friendly and helpful. Mick was insanely passionate about his burger joint and how important quality was to him. All in all it was just a wonderful experience. The best burger I've ever had, with great surface, and a great environment. Next time you're in Irvine and you're craving a burger, search this up on google and find it. It's worth the little money it costs and definitely worth the effort you have to put in to finding this place. And this, is the burger:

The 3 a.m. Whistle: A Short Story by Scott Spears

So I didn’t sleep last night and thought writing this short story would be a better use of my time. It’s not like my usual content, but really this is my ninth post so I don’t even have a ‘usual content’ yet. Sorry it’s still not that review I keep promising you. I will get that to you guys eventually. In the meantime, please enjoy.

The following is a true story. 

Except for pretty much everything after tenth sentence.

The Man sat down in his usual spot. Nestled in his corner of the couch, he began to peruse the web that so entertained him. Cruising through thechive.com's early morning posts: daily morning awesomeness and a low, dirty good time. It was late, or early depending on whether you were waiting to sleep or just now welcoming the day. For the Man, it was neither. See he had been working on a television pilot lately and the invigoration of writing at night had left his sleep schedule as tattered remains. As a result he could not – no – must not sleep this night, if he had any hope of ever returning to a sleep schedule in which he could wake up before 2 p.m.

Thus he began his unwitting journey. For every night since the massacre of his sleep schedule he had begun to notice a reoccurring event. At 3 a.m. every night a sound so horrifying, so piercing, so grating that it can hardly be described within the English language as anything other than a whistle. Every night upon this sound assaulting his ears, the Man’s blood would begin to curdle within his veins so that he might serve as some sort of vegetable side dish for the health conscious vampire.  On any and indeed every other night the Man would have ignored this screech. Yet on this night he chose to act upon the sound, for on this night, he suffered from an incurable boredom and was unable to shake the thought “eh, why not?”

The Man’s search began at the apartment acrossed from his, as he was sure he thought the sound may have come from over there. Though not a stranger to the complex, the Man was unfamiliar with this apartment, so he was justly surprised by the horror he found upon his arrival at its front step. Now dear readers, to aptly give you a mental image of the horrors of this dwelling, if it could be described as such, we will need to pause in our hero’s quest. But fret not, for we will return to the Man’s gruesome tale. This hovel, for it is more accurate to describe it thusly than as the apartment it once was, appeared in a state of complete disrepair. Upon the door hung an advertisement posted by The Irvine Company dated three days old. The windows were coated in a thin layer of dirt as if they hadn’t been washed in what may have been as long as a week. The blinds were in shambles; one window even missed a blind. The welcome mat sat askew on the front step, a corner hanging off the edge, and this author can’t help but connect the symbolism of the collapse of this mat to the gradual collapse of the apartment. To the Man it seemed that this apartment could no longer possibly serve as a home, unless the sole inhabitants were insects and rodents of various unusual sizes. And yet, a light burst forth from one of the windows even while our hero was pondering this! Someone was inside the apartment! “Perhaps they knew the source of the whistle, perhaps they were in danger from whatever ghastly villain haunted this place,” the man thought to himself. He reached out his hand to the door. Slowly gripping the knocker attached to the door, his hand, quivering, as if acting of its own volition, lifted the piece of metal which despite its small size seemed to weigh 5 pounds.

He knocked.

He knocked again.

It was at this very moment that the blogger writing this piece finished his waffles and had to rinse off his plate. The door creaked open on hinges that had never been oiled. A chain caught the door inside stopping the door from opening more than six inches. But even this gap was enough to expose the horrors inside. The light fixture had a bulb flickering, as if screaming in pain and revolting against what its light had to reveal to the world. Mail was strewn about the counter. Shoes littered the floor just inside the door. A spider had begun the insect’s take-over of the apartment, setting up camp in a web near the doorway. Dust had settled on the kitchen floor. After the second it took for him to regain his sanity after being exposed to such horrors, the Man took stock of what little he could see of the person who suffered daily from the poesque environment. He was a middle aged man with brown hair and eyes to match. The same brown hair peppered his face in unshaven stubble. He had the sullen appearance of a man who’d given up, or perhaps had just woken up at 3:30 in the morning.

“What?” the man groaned.

“I was wondering sir, if perhaps you knew the source of that atrocious whistle that invades our humble community every evening at 3 a.m. sharp?” our hero, the Man, enquired.

“Oh yeah, sorry. My dog ran off and I whistle for her every morning around that time cause she’s normally awake around then. Am I bothering you?”

Relieved and overjoyed that the whistle was not some apparition sent to deprive our hero of his sanity, he whooped and ran off without additional response. He returned to his apartment with a renewal in the hope of safety within his life, secure in his apartment, where he nestled back into his corner of the couch and continued his sleepless night. 

Why You Shouldn't Freak Out About the Frame Rate for The Hobbit

So odds are if you’ve been on the internet at all today then you’ve heard that at CinemaCon, which is a convention put on by cinema owners, Peter Jackson recently revealed ten minutes of footage from The Hobbit, which he presented at 48 frames per second (The Hobbit will be the first Hollywood movie released in 48 fps). And if you’ve seen any of these posts about this footage, you’ve probably also read an article saying how everyone thinks the footage looks awful, like a soap opera or live broadcast. So before I get to why you really don’t need to freak out about this, I’m gonna go into a little detail on WHY Peter Jackson has committed this apparently atrocious sin and what it actual means as well as what the haters are hating on. 

Other than these guys:

History! For Fun!

So real quick for those of you who don’t know what 48 fps means, fps stands for frames per second and is the amount of images that flash on the screen each second so as to trick your eye into thinking it’s seeing one continuous image. The human eye blurs together images at about 16 fps and movies are traditionally shot and shown at 24 fps. So 48 fps second then is twice as much information for your brain to process while watching a film. Peter Jackson asserts that this increase in information results in a far more detailed experience in its higher quality footage and less strenuous 3D viewing experience, which many of us would be thankful for. However that’s not the reaction people seem to have had.

People Don't Like Revolution!

People are freaking out. Here, here, and all these here. No journalists seem to be happy with the footage they saw. People have been freaking out about this so much you’d think Peter Jackson added an aquatic elf that was a really bad parody of black stereotypes. Honestly based on some of these articles I’m surprised there wasn’t a sudden influx of journalists thrown in prison on charges of assaulting Peter Jackson by flinging their own feces. The basic agreement seems to be that it looked weird. A common argument also is that the quality of the picture is so high that things like sets and CGI (which, if it’s anything like The Lord of the Rings, are two things really heavily used in The Hobbit) are really obvious and look out of place.

Hold On to Your Feces!

I know there's a joke here about Andy Serkis
as a monkey flinging poo but I can't find it

Now I haven’t seen the footage, so I may be wrong about what I’m about to say and if so I’ll be the first to throw my poo in reaction to the destruction of my beloved Lord of the Rings series, but I honestly think people are overreacting and we really don’t have anything to worry about. Here are a few reasons why. One, before the footage, Peter Jackson said that it isn’t finished yet. It is partially completed footage. I’m gonna say that a third time just to make it clear; he’s not done editing the footage. That means that they could still have stuff to do like color correction, lighting correction, CG imaging and rendering, all of which would make the footage a whole lot more immersive and complete looking. Two, as some of the articles mention, people complained primarily about the little snippet scenes that they didn’t get to see extended footage of.The long clip featuring Gollum (Andy Serkis) and Bilbo (Martin Freeman [who I am really excited for in this role by the way]) having a riddle competition was fine and not as off-putting as the other footage was, which suggests that perhaps once our eyes have adjusted to the new frame rate it might not be as big a deal, especially considering we’ve only been experiencing 24 fps for the entire history of cinema. 

This doesn't even need a punchline.

Or maybe more complete footage such as this scene will look better and the only problem with the other footage was that it was incomplete. So in conclusion, let’s hold off judgment until a 48 fps trailer is released with some completed footage, keep our feces in toilets for now, and just not freak out. Again, I haven’t seen the footage yet but really, let Peter finish the film before you freak out.

P.S. Sorry this isn't a review of Starkid's Holy Musical B@tman! But I felt this article needed to be posted sooner. I'll post the review in the next week. As an apology please accept this random and hilarious picture I found while googling 'Andy Serkis Poo':

"I Wish I Could Understand": a poem

So I don't write poetry often. In fact this is the first thing I've written that wasn't a school assignment, but it was on my mind and I'm late on a post this week. So please enjoy this poem until I get up my review of Starkid's new play "Holy Musical B@man":

I don't understand how I can detest someone so much and miss them terribly at the same time.

I don't understand how I can mean it telling someone "I love you," and scream at them for destroying the person I love most.

I don't understand how someone can declare love for me and defile that which I hold most dear.

I wish I could understand.

Cause if I understood, maybe I could do something. Maybe I could escape somewhere. Maybe I could move on somehow.

I wish I could understand.
But I can't.

By - S.G. Spears

5 TV Shows You're not Watching That You Really Should Be

So I watch television sometimes. Ok many times… every day. Just today I watched an episode of Glee, an episode of Smash, an episode of How I Met Your Mother, an episode of Hey Ash Whatcha Playin (though granted that’s a web show and is only about 3 minutes long), and a ten minute clip of 30 Rock bloopers. So I realize that is an excessive amount of television for one day and if you’re at all like me you might be asking a fictional version of me in your head, “But Scott, don’t you have classes to attend and homework to do in your very busy college life?” Yes, yes I do. But also, I am a film major, so I tend not to do any of that. But regardless of how much I watch TV, there are pretty good odds that you also watch a lot of TV. A statistic I’m making up now for the purpose of this article says that Americans now spend roughly 55% of their waking hours watching TV. So in order to help support your addiction I have the top 5 TV shows you’re not watching that you really should be. Watching. Yeah. [Please note that with the exception of Smash and Thundercats, which are new shows this season, the ratings are pulled from the season-wide ratings from last season. As for the first two shows, these are the ratings of the most recent episode. For what rating actually are: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nielsen_ratings#Ratings.2Fshare_and_total_viewers]

5. Smash                                                                                                  Ratings: 2.1/5

Smash is the charming tale of Karen (Katherine McPhee) trying to make it in New York as an actress. And the less charming tale of the seedy reality she finds there when she joins the cast of a new musical about Marilyn Monroe. Joining her in the cast are Debra Messing and Christian Borle as the musical’s writers (both of whom play their characters phenomenally), the always wonderful and dickish Jack Davenport as the show’s director, and relative new comer Megan Hilty as Karen’s rival for the part of Marilyn. The show is sort of like Glee in that it is more or less a backstage musical, that is all the singing is in rehearsal or otherwise grounded in reality (again only mostly though). Unlike Glee however this show is not in the mode of comedy and mostly serves as a guilty pleasure cause, really, who doesn’t like a little melodrama now and then? Why else would General Hospital, ER, and House still be on TV?

It's lupus. (That's an over used joke)
Well that's not even a picture of Hugh Laurie
(Yeah I know that's sorta the point...nevermind)

4. Thundercats                                                                                     Ratings: 0.4/1.3

This show is the most lame-looking awesome show ever

OK so really the only reason the ratings on this reboot of the classic 80’s cartoon are so low is because it’s on Cartoon Network and not one of the major networks like everything else on this list, but still. This show is awesome. The voice cast features such great talent as Will Friedle (Kim Possible and Boy Meets World) and Emmanuelle Chriqui (Entourage and You Don’t Mess With the Zohan). And you get to watch a whole bunch of cat-human hybrids beat the crap out of some lizard-human hybrids, including Mumm-Ra (Robert Atkins-Downes, who just has a stupid amount of voice work under his belt). So whether you watched the original cartoon, or were like me and refused to watch the original cause you found the amount of kitten nudity a little disturbing, this show is for you. Cause it’s awesome.

3. Happy Endings                                                                                Ratings: 2.1/5

Image taken from some website that took it from Entertainment Weekly

Who here has seen Friends? Every one of you should be raising your hands. Who here now feels dumb for raising their hand at their computer? Now ever since Friends became basically the most successful sitcom ever, every network has tried to copy it. Every single one. Every new season a whole slew of Friends clones come out and most of them suck. However, occasionally a gem pops out. In 2005, that show was How I Met Your Mother. In 2011, that show was Happy Endings. This show is the most hilarious traditional sitcom I’ve seen since HIMYM’s second season. From Adam Pally’s slob of a gay man Max to Damon Wayans Jr.’s eccentric token black dude to Elisha Cuthbert’s – you know what I’m gonna stop there cause otherwise I’ll just go through the whole cast. Just trust me, it’s good; any show that throws out the joke “Even I think that’s gay and I had sex with a dude last night” in the first episode deserves to be watched.

Remember her? She's in this show. Watch it.

2. 30 Rock                                                                                               Ratings: 2.6/7

I assume you all know what 30 Rock is so I'm using
this as an excuse to share this lovely picture of Tina

To be fair you probably know what 30 Rock is. You probably know it has won more Emmy’s than any show should ever win. And you probably know that Tine Fey is the most awkward combination of hilarious, hot, and clumsy-librarian you’ve ever seen. That being said, why does this show have such low ratings? I am unsure why but I feel like it probably has something to do with reality TV…or medical dramas…or reality TV medical dramas. Regardless of the cause, a show like 30 Rock, which even when it sucks is funnier than some of the other (pardon my use of the word shit) shit that networks are trying to pass off as comedies.

Silly NBC, when you take a crap it goes in the toilet,
not all over Laura Prepon's career.

1. Community                                                                                         Ratings: 2.0/6

If you're thinking "Hey! that's that dude
from The Hangover 2," then get off my blog.

Hello internet. I realize I’m preaching to the choir. Cause the internet community is where Community thrives. But guys. This show is absolutely brilliant. Despite its attempts early on to shove a whole lot of content into way too little time, this show has consistently provided me with a huge set of laughs in every episode. It reference a million films a minute, it’s meta-humor rivals that of even 30 Rock, and it’s characters are vastly superior to any in any other sitcom currently on TV. So why internet, has NBC not yet decided on whether to keep the show for a fourth season or not? The answer, I think, is that you all are like how I was: just watching the show online wherever I could find it. But here’s the problem, NBC, doesn’t get money for that. And if they don’t get money from the show they won’t keep green-lighting new seasons. So I’m asking you, no I’m begging you. Help me. Watch this show on NBC. DVR it. Watch it on Hulu. Any of those will increase the show’s ratings and maybe guarantee us that fourth season. #sixseasonsandamovie

Final words

Please watch these shows. If not for your own enjoyment than do it for me so that I can keep watching them and have the motivation to continue my life and keep writing mediocre articles and internet lists like this one. And if you can only do one, please make it Community. Cause really, writing about that is pretty much the whole reason I wrote this article.