The Christian Coulson Final Exam

[Sampaguita]

I was cleaning out my folders for the start of the new quarter, and I came upon the prompts for one of my final exams(dance/movement and visual studies). It's actually quite interesting because I realized that I could sorta make it applicable to the Christian Coulson Experience. Here's the CC version of the prompt written in the form of a letter (I'll post the original after it... and my prof also structured it like an e-mail):

I'm totally writing you this letter to tell you that Christian Coulson totally rocks! Thank you so much for turning me on to him. I've been watching all of his mpeg performance files for twelve days straight. They totally fired me at the book store, but I don't care.

Anyways, I was watching him in CoS for the umpteen-billionth time and I noticed that whenever my eyes follow him around the screen, I tend to feel myself moving with him. I feel like I , myself, am part of his environment-- like he's close enough to touch. What I don't get is why does it feel like this if I'm sitting here, and his moving image is only on the screen. How can I be "connected" to him!? I know that it's a cinematic-screen thing, but it also feels "live" to me. How can the two happen at once!?
__________
The original prompt:

To: Dance 170 E student
From: your buddy (professor) Derek B.
Re: Tomb Raider

Dude! I'm totally writing you this letter to tell you that Tomb Raider totally rocks! Thank you so much for turning me on to the game. I've been playing it for twelve days straight. They totally fired me at the record store, but I don't care. All I want to do is play! Dude, I would totally invite you over, but I haven't showered in, like, a week, so it's kinda rank over here. But we should totally hang soon. [Derek's undergrad slang kinda sucked... and he purposely made this campy.]

Anyway, I was playing the game and I noticed that whenever I move Lara Croft around the environments, I tend to feel myself moving with her. Dude, sometimes I actually DO move, kind of twitching to the side or "looking" around a corner. What I don't get, bro, is why I am doing this if lara Croft is a chick and I am a dude!? Please help me, like, get this, because you're, like, smart and in college and stuff. How can I be "connected" to her!? I know that it is a digital thing, but it also feels "live" to me. How can the two happen at once!? Dude, do you have any books that will explain this problem to me?

I have included a video about the game that I picked up at the game store where my girlfriend works. Check it out! Dude!
_________
It was a funny prompt in that, by the time we got to the final, the class was made up entirely of women. This is actually the only prompt that I didn't write about during this in-class final because I didn't read any of the "digital" performance theory. (And I had an A+ going into the final, too... that devious Derek.) I should have BSed about "liveness" and cinema theory but I didn't...

But yeah... I thought this would be funny to re-do as a Christian Coulson final... And I am interested to know your opinions about how Christian "feels live" to us... because judging by what some of us have written, sometimes he does feel live.

[Mandragora]

You know what, I just wrote one, loved my first few sentences, got carried away, sent it, got informed that my post exceeded 5000 characters (or words?), got instructed to press the 'back' button, I pressed the 'back' button, and guess what, my post was GONE

Augh, I kinda loved what I just wrote, but then I am just too exhausted and depressed to do it AGAIN.

Maybe when I got my energy back. It's quite a nice exercise, a great writing breather from annotating stupid pictures ALL DAY.

[Mandragora]

Okay, let's see then.

To: My Other Pesonality
From: The Mandragora
Re: THAT CREEP CHRISTIAN COULSON

It was simple. Theater. Darkness. Popcorn on the floor and spilled soda under my shoes. It was artficially cold and still I remained warm. Fying broomsticks, whipping wands and sputtered spells. It wasn't my world, but then I was born in that dark enclave of cinematic spectacles as lead by that kid with the scar, the comic redhead and the chipmunk-gal. Then there was that dark strange figure by the stairs.

Tom Riddle. A name that needs to be guessed, a name that could be a part of a riddle. At that moment, with his far-away look, I started guessing myself: what could he be looking for?

A stretcher passed him by, and his gaze lingered at it. It penetrated through me. I was the deadened figure on the stretcher. It was his gaze that made me want to get out of the sheets and stare back at him. I wanted to cry out how I could have drained of life when such a gaze would jump the blood in my murdered veins?

He walked up the darkness and then I heard the initial tone of his voice. It was an inquiry. He was talking to ME. He was talking about ME. And how I realized I was more than deprived of air that would have carried his noises to my ears.

A pair of running legs on the dim hall, he was a collection of shadows searching for shadows. I trembled upond my death and I realized I would be turning into a shadow to join his cloak of darkness. He was running, he had work to do. All I had was time for my waiting wake.

It was madness and anger and I saw the beauty of it in his eyes, and I was terrified. Yes, as written, beauty is terror. We tremble before it .* I was trembling at the rest of the spectacle. It was a show. In celluloid. But how could a moving picture move my every bit of flesh, I have no idea.

That remains to be a riddle I dare not guess.


*FIN*