Monday, February 22, 2010

"Puppet Show" A Misdirection?

Puppet Show supposedly defines xenophobia.  Is this true?  What do you know?  What do you think this story is arguing?  Base your response upon the Socratic Discussion and your personal thinking.  Please complete your response during class today 2-22-10.

26 comments:

  1. This story leaves a lot of room at the end for interpretation- what happens next? have the humans passed the test or failed it? Who is the real master race?

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  2. I would agree that Puppet Show defines xenophobia. I know that in the story the humans are afraid of things that are different and unknown to them. The story is argueing that something unusual will tend to frighten or turn away many people as shown with the burow and the giant alien guy.

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  3. This isnt true because the humans werent afraid of the extraterrestial, or the talking donkey. I think that the author was trying to send a message to aliens that we arent afraid of them and they can feel free to contact us at any time and enlighten us with thier knowledge.

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  4. I believe that the way the story puppet show addresses and defines xenophobia is by given many examples of it.seeing a big red man you think is an alien so being xenophobic of something completely unknown to you, to something that is not as it appears to be like a prospector and finally to something you thought you knew to being something completely different then what you thought. I think the story defines xenophobia quite well. Even if the talking donkey was a little out there.

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  5. I don't think it is. They humans are not even afriad. They talk to the unknown creature, but as we learned the test is more confusing then we know. I believe from the discussion that the final test could be anything and it all depends on how you think and react to the text. but over all I don't see this being Xenophobia, because it is fear of space alains and the unknown and they are not really afraid of any of that.

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  6. Puppet show defines xenophobia literally in the text, and figuratively as well. I think its arguing that people shouldn't be afraid of foreign things, but it shows how sometimes people are more accepting of certain things than others. In the story the blue/red man is shown hospitality and offered a drink and his demands to speak to these people are met, when they find out the prospector is controlling him they all let out a sigh of relief. When the Burro comes forward as the puppet master, everyone kind of freaks out at the talking donkey. I think that I would be more accepting of the talking donkey than a man who is 9 feet tall and looks like his skin is inside out. Is there was a "lesser" life form controlling the donkey, like a bug or a frog?

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  7. this story can be made into a good story or it can be made in to a good story or also a bad story. but it just leves you hanging. to make your own ending maybe? but it also can have its own special end that you must understand better. but for an odd story is not bad but needs more beef.

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  8. I think this story does define xenophobia because the people didn't seem afraid when the alien because thats what people thought aliens looked like but when they found out that the alien was a donkey they were afraid because nobody had ever thought that a donkey would be an alien. I think what the story is arguing is that we could know what one thing is and know all about it but when theres something new about it we might all be scared because were not used to something different than what we already know about it.

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  9. The stroy talks about how humans pretend to not care so much about the large blue guy, but when it was revieled that he was being controlled by a man who was thought to be human. Then, when it was revield that the man was a puppet being controled by a donkey, the true nature of xenophobia is shown. This story shows how xenophobia is in all of society, even if it is hidden from view. The use of a donkey is an extreme, but affectful, way to get the point of xenophobia in society accross. It symbolizes the senselessness of societies fear and exploites it creativly.

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  10. Basically what I got out of this stoory was that people are more afraid of irregularities in everyday surroundings than they are of crazy, abnormal things they've never seen before. I suppose that we sometimes think we know everything about where and what we are, but when we find out we don't, we are afraid. I think that's because we like to have a sense of control and we don't like to feel powerless. If there happened to be extraterrestrials on Earth in the future, and they planned to take over, they would be smart to camoflauge themselves as ordinary animals or children because humans think they know everything about everything. The things which we most neglect or ignore seem to be our downfall in the end.

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  11. Puppet show defines Xenophobia as fear of the unknown in the text. However, the ending connotates that xenophobia includes fear of the uncanny. The uncanny is something that is knows, but with an unknown twist. The talking burro would be uncanny because humans know a lot about burros, but nothing about talking ones. Perhaps this class' generally accepted definition of xenophobia is too narrow.

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  12. I think "Puppet Show" does define xenophobia. The story shows how people think and react when faced with something new and unknown to them. I think that this story is arguing that xenophobia is present in everyone. It may not be obvious, but it is in everyone to a certain degree.

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  13. I think that this story is arguing that Earth is not ready to be a part of this federation yet. Humans are not comfortable enough to trust strange races that might not resemble humans. I wonder when the aliens will come back if the humans have failed the test.

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  14. I do not think that this story represents xenophobia. The deinition of xenophobia that we took was the fear of the unknown. However, in this story, the people were not afraid of the unknown. In fact, the people seemed more interested rather than afraid of the alien. The townspeople seemed more afraid of the change. Yes, the burro talked. But throughout the years, the people had learned to accept the burro in their society and to depend on it. We never knew if the burro had been that way for all of it's life or if it was a prospector that changes for each system or what and I think if it was the same, the xenophobic ideas are not illuminated. I think that ultimately, the people might have felt betrayed by something known spying on them for this union that nobody has ever known about.

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  15. I think that Puppet Show demonstrates xenophobia in the fact that it changes our assumptions of what we think is diffrent and unknown and throughs us for a loop. We must reprocess what is really unknownn and this creates fear. Puppet also shows us xenophobia in the fact that it changes our thoughts on what we know as being a lower thinking animale to being a higher more dominate creature. We have our thoughts of what aliens look like and what they act like and when it turned out to be completly different than what we thought there was panic

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  16. i think the story is a good way to show that everyone is xenophobic about something. In this story, at first, everyone is afraid or somewhat disturbed by the red alien at the beginning of the story. In the middle of the story when everyone realizes that the alien is fake and the man was actually being controlled by the man the people around seemed to be more comfortable at the idea. However, when the man turned out to be a robot and the donkey was the one who was controlling everything, it made the reader surprised. This misdirection causes the reader to think about what people are really xenophobic of. I think the overall point of this story is that what really makes people afraid is when something they never would have second guessed turns out to be the thing they should really be afraid of. When something inside our comfort zone makes us feel uncomfortable, then we tend to feel more xenophobic about everything else around us.

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  17. I think that the story Puppet Show definitely defines xenophobia. We are afraid, suspicious, and/or curious about things that are unknown to us. But I think that the story is also trying to get across the point that we fear the known that unexpectedly changes into the unknown even more. Because in the story, while all of the people are paying attention to the aliens and asking them questions, the burro is being completely ignored. But the burro is supposed to be the height of the people's interest. Going along with that, I think that the story is saying that humans take what they are given first and don't think about anything beyond that.

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  18. I think that the question; "What is the master race?" is the basis of this story because the donkey seems to be ordinary turns out to be a smarter better, is the true master of the human race. But the donkey has a race that could be better than it and there is where we ask the question mentioned at the end of the book.

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  19. I think the message at the end of the story was that humans are under the misconception that somewhere out in the universe there's a master race. But really all life is equal in value.

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  20. Xenophobia is fear of foreign or strange things. The definition that I extracted from the story is that when something we think we know turns out to be something else, we are frightened. I see this story as a giant symbol for the civil rights movement. The higher ranked humans are afraid how everyone will react when they find out that something overlooked so long, can be just as good as us. The author is addressing our nation's xenophobia of equal rights for blacks. At the time, equal rights for blacks was a foreign idea, and the donkey (unnoticed and discounted) represented blacks.

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  21. I think Puppet Show did define xenophobia but it did it in a unique way. By showing how something that we are used to like a donkey can be frightening because we saw it do something unusual like talking. I think the story is arguing that we are more afraid of something we have seen and know it's there than something we have no clue about. I think this argument might be true if we saw an animal we have seen before do something unusual like talk we would be very frightened.

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  22. I think that we are afraid of mostly anything that we thinks is abnormal, a=or a little different, if we were to talk to unidentified species then we all are alittle afraid

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  23. I agree with the how the story defines xenophobia. IN the story they are frighttened to things that are unkown to them. Thats why, I think, that some of us don't like new ideas and back away from them because we like the knowing the similar and repeating routines and when it changes we become afraid. Like the story the donkey and and alien guy they turn away many people.

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  24. I would agree that xenophobia is defined in "Puppet Show" because you really don't know how to react to someone different or odd looking compaired to what you're used to. I think that the story is very open ended and leaves the reader wondering at the end. What happens when they find out the burrow is the true alien? What happens after that? Who is the true master race?

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  25. This conversation was way over my head. I struggle with the concept of xenophobia. But from my brief understanding I would argue that other thinks we are xenophobic towards everything. I feel we have to be xenophobia or else there would be a lot of chaos in society.

    Doonster=joe smith

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  26. I'm think that Puppet Story really defines xenophobia because while hating another species is definately xenophobic, I think the tendency of one race to prefer itself to others is also the basis of xenophobia. The concept of a "master race" seems to run contrary to the underlying concept of peace and community that unities the Federation. I think Robert C is right when he talks about how humanity may be unready for the Federation because it still wishes to be the dominant species, even if they aren't open violent against alien races.

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