Have you watched the new Jurassic World trailer that came out yesterday? You should. After watching it, I was not only hyped about seeing dinosaurs on the big screen, but also thoughtful about the disastrous learning abilities of human beings. We know from the trailer that there are two important lessons Jurassic World is trying to make us understand. Number 1: Hey, new generation of kids! Please love dinosaurs as much as your creepy big siblings and parents and make them buy you loads of valuable dinosaur merchandise. And number 2: Human beings never learn anything. I mean we all know what happened last time, right? Everybody knows what a terrible idea it is to put people and dinosaurs in an enclosed space. This time however, there’s a twist: A genetically manipulated super-dinosaur that kills other dinos for sport. The super dinosaur isn’t only an antagonist and an excuse to make Chris Pratt ride a motorcycle with raptors (what a complicated mix of feelings of “whadup” and “wtf”). It is an intertextual reference to Frankenstein’s monster and a big, teethed, warning sign about not learning from your mistakes in time. Much like Frankenstein creates another, 2.0. version of his monster, the scientists in Jurassic World up the game by creating this super dinosaur. The fictional characters are trying to tell us important lessons about not repeating the same mistakes we seem to make all the time.
Books, films and television series tell us about us in the most naked and grim ways. It is not surprising that in a time where social media is giving us the impression that other people’s eating and exercising habits, their appearance, and sexual habits, are somehow our business, television is defecating reality series where nothing is sacred. It is impossible to tell, which one of these phenomena came first, but one thing is clear: it creates horrible side products (see e.g. revenge porn). Entertainment products not only reflect our society, they also work as cautionary tales about everlasting themes, such as learning from history. That is why, entertainment is a dead serious topic that needs to be broken down and analyzed.
I long for the ability to learn from history when I look at the results of Finnish parliamentary elections. When we’re scared because of the economy, we turn to conservative values. The problem, then, is that we don’t know what we’re buying into when we rely on violent argumentation and conservative members of the parliament. We might think that since “Koti, uskonto ja isänmaa,” a common phrase in Finnish culture (“home, religion, and fatherland”), sounds familiar its modern form doesn’t involve values such as segregation, racism, and economic stagnation. We have seen that during times of recession, some people seek scapegoats and when public talk about the economy sounds too forbidding, we seek blame in our fellow human beings. We move away from values that should be self evident and unquestionable. Instead of what we should do as civilized human beings, aspiring towards values such as equality between genders, or people with different sexual orientations, we are fooled to think that rights are similar to pies. Whenever you give someone a piece, you don’t get to have it.
We need stories such as Jurassic World (and tons of other great movies with a more serious exterior) to remind us to remember. We need art students and academics to tear them apart, put them back together and go “See?,” thus helping us understand their possible meanings. We also need poetry, dinosaur movies and stories to help us forget our current state and BTSB is here to help you with all this.
This is our second to last issue of this spring and boy, what an issue it is! Ile and Elizabeth are serving us very original fiction pieces, Juho and Inka poetry, Jesper shares his break-up story with Twitter, Ari shows the Alien trilogy in a brand new light, Esko interviewed SUB’s new president, and Laura gives an account of trying out new sports.
We’re over-the-moon happy to present to you our new lovable editor-newbies, Eve, Sampsa and Milla, who share their brilliant thoughts and experiences on Finnish sauna culture, the national meeting of English students, and cleanliness, respectively.
We’re also so proud to give you Nely Keinänen’s speech from SUB’s anniversary dinner party.
