{"id":23,"date":"2017-10-23T18:14:37","date_gmt":"2017-10-24T01:14:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/silaslatchem\/?p=23"},"modified":"2017-10-23T18:18:12","modified_gmt":"2017-10-24T01:18:12","slug":"week-8","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/silaslatchem\/2017\/10\/23\/week-8\/","title":{"rendered":"Week 8"},"content":{"rendered":"

This weeks video made me think of the famous line from The Dark Knight<\/em>: “You either die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain.” While certainly not from the world’s most profound movie, the line seems to resonate with some of the revolutionary themes mentioned by Professor\u00a0Dawson. The lasting popularity of Poncho Villa and Emiliano Zapata as revolutionary figures, could be attributed to the fact they both died before, as Dawson puts it “they could disappoint.”\u00a0It is also worth noting that\u00a0even in life, both figures\u00a0bordered were almost mythical.\u00a0Given that they were romanticized to such a high degree, their deaths, despite being in itself a reminder that they were human, prevented the inevitable let down that all heroes, revolutionary or otherwise, seem to put their followers through. It begs the question; once a revolution has been started, is its leader of more use dead or alive? In a practical sense, a living human can still fulfill tasks that may be vital to the continuation of the revolution- planning, fighting and the like. But if we consider the main importance of a leader is to act as a figurehead for what his\/her\u00a0struggle represents, dying may seal their legacy as a martyr and lend only more conviction to their cause. After all, if we measure our dedication by our sacrifices, it is hard to go beyond giving up ones life.<\/p>\n

Building more on the first point, which is death before disappointment, Dawson provides example the example of The Death of Artemio Cruz<\/em>, a novel on the passing of a soldier & revolutionary who has rather outlived his charisma. It is revealed, both through his own account and through various audiotapes that he lead a very corrupt existence.\u00a0One of Dawsons\u00a0lines in particular that caught my attention regarding the deaths of Villa and Zapata was “by being killed by a revolution that many Mexicans came to see as corrupt and cynical, they’re the early victims of a process that is ultimately becomes like spoiled milk.” Despite the two individuals personal involvement in the revolution, and despite the ultimate feeling that the revolution was corrupt and cynical, being seen as victims of it absolves them of any crime, by association or otherwise. It seems to me that the ideal leader for a revolution is one who stands up for what they believe in, then promptly dies.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Thanks for reading<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This weeks video made me think of the famous line from The Dark Knight: “You either die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain.” While certainly not from the world’s most profound movie, the line seems to resonate with some of the revolutionary themes mentioned by Professor\u00a0Dawson. The lasting […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":53174,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2892616,2540,2900640,44913,2079],"class_list":["post-23","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-emiliano-zapata","tag-mexico","tag-poncho-villa","tag-revolution","tag-week-8"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/silaslatchem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/silaslatchem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/silaslatchem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/silaslatchem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/53174"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/silaslatchem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/silaslatchem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/silaslatchem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23\/revisions\/25"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/silaslatchem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/silaslatchem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/silaslatchem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}