My Fair Lady

My Fair Lady follows the story of a young Cockney-speaking flower girl, Eliza. After hearing her ghastly misconstruing the English language, Professor Higgins claims he can transform her into a duchess. The fact that Higgins assumes his dialect of English is correct and every other one is wrong suggests that there can only be one "right" or "true" language and all others are inferior. The claim that correcting Eliza's language can turn her into a duchess implies there is a connection between proper English and high society. Wanting to be more than a common flower girl and run her own shop, Eliza seeks Higgins and dares him to make good on his offer.

Threatening her with starvation, Higgins forces Eliza through countless, insensitive drills to refine her speech. Among these were constant repetition of her vowels, "the rain in Spain stays mainly in the plain," "in Hertford, Hereford, Hampshire, hurricanes hardly ever happen," and general speaking with marbles in her mouth. This harsh and unnecessary treatment is a caricature of the hard work and suffering that goes into learning a new language. Once Eliza has "mastered" the language, Higgins and his colleague take her out to the races - a taste of real high class society.

Restricted to speaking of weather and health, Eliza stumbles her way through her first "proper" conversation. She passes of her mistakes as the new small talk and manages to snag the attention of a particular Freddie Eynsford-Hill. However, once Eliza becomes involved and excited in the race, she unconsciously reverts back to her loud Cockney self. This illustrates that once Eliza actually felt something, she went back to the language that she felt comfortable expressing herself in.

At the end of the film, Eliza is passed off as a duchess but she remains unhappy. Although she looks the part, there lacks substance. The movie as a whole suggests that gaining a language to fit in with society is not all positive gain. Eliza had to give up part of herself in throwing away her Cockney accent. The real question posed is whether the benefits of relinquishing a language or dialect outweigh the consequences.

Our Green Future: America’s Young Environmental Leaders Speak Out

Three Brower Youth Awardees were featured in the second of the two-part USC "Speaker Series," presented this past week.

First up was Rachel from Berkeley. She started off with poor footing, showing students a video produced by UCLA about USC's C+ sustainability grade. Most of her presentation dealt with her and her accomplishments, complete with the "ra-ra, if I can do it, so can you" pep talk. I wasn't really surprised at USC's grade, seeing as places such as New/North don't even have recycle bins easily accessible. However, problems such as these have a fairly simple solution. I do agree with her statement claiming "we are the most powerful stakeholders on our campus."

Next up was Billy from Yale. Of all three speakers, I feel as though his was more organized and informative. He started with a shocking fact: A certain glacier in India could be gone by 2030, a glacier that 5 million people rely on for their source of fresh water. I liked that he actually defined all of the "go-green" terminology, whereas others often throw this jargon at their audiences and move on. He spoke of the building blocks needed to rebuild the green economy:
-Reinvesting financial capital
-Preserving natural capital
-Maximizing human capital
He was an interesting presenter, probably aided by his use of powerpoint.

Last but not least was Erica from Stanford/Oxnard. Her story was a bit more compelling, perhaps due to its personal connection to her life. She brought up several interesting points, such as the fact that voices are more powerful than money. She spoke a lot about finding your voice, and how educating yourself is the first step. Finally, she mentioned that small things make a difference in thinking globally.

Overall, I feel like this presentation was much more informative than the first. The speakers were younger, which made their speeches easier to relate to. Even though I feel like I learned a bit more about the efforts being made to strengthen the global economy, I will continue to reduce, reuse, and recycle and consider my civic duty complete.