The 36th Chamber

When we first put the film on in class last week, I was confused. I was expecting this straight forward video where someone would tell us for 2 hours about what it meant to be an art student and how hard we had to work to attain the goal of success. When Rubens put on the film however, this wasn't the straightforward message I read. The main character, San Te, is a young school boy who's heart is suddenly filled with retaliation after his family members and friends have been beaten and killed by the Manchus. San Te flees finds himself at the Shaolin Temple where he tries to train Kung Fu. At first the monks are weary of allowing an outside party in their Temple but once they agree to it, San Te is the quickest to accellerate through the program. At the end of his training, San Te pleas with the monks to start his own place of practice, the 36th Chamber. This is not welcome by the monks at first but then they discretely agree to it and San Te breaks away from Shaolin.

After watching the film, I really did see a lot of similarities to this plot line in comparison to being an art student. Right now, I'm tired, I'm beat up and I'm worn down by the Shaolin (my teachers and professors). Every day I find myself asking the question, "why are you doing this to yourself?" My only options are to quit or keep trucking through, working hard to achieve that goal. In the end, the person who get's the success is the one that pushed through the fatigue, the harsh crits and all the other challenges we face as students. More often times than not, we fail to realize that we need to work for what we want, it's not just going to come to us. Maybe that's what success is.

I'm posting a video. It's a collage of interviews with Will Smith that I watched last week, too. Although very different genres, both this clip and "The 36th Chamber" scream the same message to me, and that message is "You've got to want it."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2k74r1aoMc0&feature=player_embedded