Dear Reader:

Batman has been an iconic character through this past few decades, just like Mickey Mouse or Superman are. Ever since I was a little kid I always loved Batman and all the movies and all the television shows. I liked the camp the Batman movies of the late 1990’s had when I was little. When I got older I got to experience and analyze the depth and seriousness the character is capable of having. Batman is a very interesting, dark, disturbed character who follows his own rules as long as he doesn’t endanger the lives of people around him.

I chose Batman as the subject of this work because I think he has a lot of history and depth and people don’t know that. People only know Batman because of his movies and maybe to a lesser extent the TV shows. Not many people have read the comics or know other things besides the origin story of why he became Batman. I think you will enjoy and learn a lot more of Batman thanks to this research paper. I also believe you will thoroughly enjoy my genres because it shows different aspects of Batman and expand on the idea of this iconic figure.

My genres will make you appreciate the character whether it’s in his ups or downs. It will help you fuel your vision on what Batman is and how much he has evolved from that first comic book in May 1939.

Finally I believe this multi-genre paper will show Batman on his past, present and possible future. And with this information you will be able to see why is that comics have been around for a long while and still have not died down.

Introduction

Batman was created on May 1939 by Bob Kane and writer Bill Finger (Goulart). This fictional character first appeared in the comic book Detective Comics issue number 27. The company responsible for creating Batman was DC Comics, who also had created Superman a year before in the comic book series Action Comics. After Bruce Wayne, his alter ego, had seen his parents shot and murdered in front of him by a petty thief called Joe Chill, he swore to never let that happened to anyone else ever again (DC Encyclopedia 38). His alter ego is a billionaire playboy who has his own company called Wayne Enterprises. Batman introduced the idea of sidekicks in the comics with Robin and Batgirl. This was established so that children would be able to associate with Robin and enjoy the comic books even further.

By the 1940’s Batman became a very popular character with youths which later spawned a radio show and two serials on the big screen. The phenomenon continued, but by the end of the 1940’s the comics were getting a bit ridiculous and it was being accused of having homosexual tendencies. The whole Batman craze died down a bit over the course of the 1950’s and got a big boost when Adam West portrayed Batman in the television show “The Batman” which debuted on ABC in 1966. Adam West brought humor and silliness into the Batman character. This idea was then passed over again to the comic books and even the animated television shows such as Batman with Robin the Boy Wonder. The humor in the comics kept being introduced in hopes of gaining more sales and more audience, but instead where losing them. The Adam West show helped with selling merchandise but it was also selling a fake image of what Batman represented in the 1940’s.

After the show was canceled different cartoon shows spawned showing us the same silly Batman we all came to love in that decade. It wasen’t until 1986 that DC Comics showed us a darker and more serious Batman. It started with Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns representing a dark future with a very old Bruce Wayne still fighting for justice as Batman. The four story arc showed us his struggles and battles against the Joker and even Superman himself (Miller). After this comic was released, most if not all DC comic book heroes got darker and more serious. Frank Miller’s comic book also spawned other dark and more serious Batman stories like Batman Year One which shows us the origin and the first year of the “Caped Crusader” (Mazzucchelli). This comic book was used in Batman Begins, an origins Batman movie made by Christopher Nolan. Batman: A Death in the Family also was a four story arc showing us the death of the second Robin, Jason Todd by the hands of the Joker. Darker Batman stories where coming out and comic sales where rising up, but now the targeted demographic was teens and even adults. All this revamp of what Batman was suppose to signify concluded with the release of Tim Burton’s Batman.

Tim Burton was starting off as a director only having Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure and Beetlejuice when he was assigned to direct Batman. It showed us a dark and gothic Gotham City, with a very serious and mysterious Batman and Bruce Wayne. It was a critical and commercial success and it won an Academy Award for Best Art Direction proving that comic books are far from ever being dead. The success of Batman brought more sequels, one which was directed by Tim Burton and the last two were directed by Joel Schumacher. Batman Returns was bigger and better than the first but at the cost of staying away from the established mythology of Batman and just putting him darker and even more cruel than before. The company distributing the films, Warner Bros., saw this and decided to go for a lighter Batman for the children to enjoy. Joel Schumacher then proceeded to make Batman Forever, which was a good balance of light and seriousness, and Batman & Robin, which was a commercial disaster.

On the course of the 1990’s Batman continued to show a serious and psychologically interesting character, but with the disaster of the last two Batman movies, it showed losses in comic sales as well. A fifth Batman movie was announced; promising to be darker, but never surfaced because of the flop Batman & Robin was (Jett). Over the course of the 2000’s, Warner Bros. was hoping to make another Batman movie. It wasn’t until 2005 when Christopher Nolan was hired to direct Batman Begins. The movie was a mild success and Nolan was given a green light to a sequel. In 2008 he made the second highest grossing movie of all time, The Dark Knight, showing us that Batman is far from being just another super hero or pop culture icon.

Finally in 2009, DC Comics took a shocking turn to the readers, and just like they did with Robin, Superman, Green Lantern and others, they killed Bruce Wayne a.k.a. Batman by the hands of Darkseid (Morrison). But just like the latest movie showed us, you can’t just kill off one of comics best and most famous superheroes for no reason. DC Comics is planning to give Bruce Wayne a triumphant return to the comics next year. This shows us that superheroes are a part of our childhood and a part of our history, since we see them as we grow up and we will keep seeing them everywhere until we die.

Annotated Bibliography

Goulart, Ron. Comic Book Encyclopedia: The Ultimate Guide to Characters, Graphic Novels, Writers, and Artists in the Comic Book Universe. New York: Harperentertainment, 2004.

This book helped explain further the whole history of Batman. It also pointed out that Bill Finger helped Bob Kane create Batman in the comic books, a little something most people probably didn’t know. This encyclopedia also helps you understand other superheroes as well like Superman, Wonder Woman, The Flash and others. Even older comic book characters are included like Felix the Cat. Other information regarding the origin of superheroes can also be found in this encyclopedia.

The DC Comics Encyclopedia Published 2004 by DK Publishing, Inc. 375 Hudson Street, NY NY 10014.

This encyclopedia also helps expand on what I already knew about Batman, some of the gadgets he used, more about his origins, and his villain gallery. It also talks more about the characters exclusively to the DC Comics Universe; where as Comic Book Encyclopedia only touches the surface of them. A great book if you’re interested in other DC superheroes as well.

Janson, Klaus, Frank Miller, and Lynn Varley. Batman: The Dark Knight Returns. 10 Anv ed. New York: DC Comics, 1997.

This comic was the beginning of a whole new era of comic books. This proved once and for all that comics are not for little kids. It shows us that comics can be smart, sophisticated and profound, not just funny and silly. The comic shows us of an old and defeated Batman who struggles against a new threat and with the help of a female Robin he achieves victory.

Mazzucchelli, David, and Frank Miller. Batman: Year One. New York: DC Comics, 1997.

Batman: Year One shows us a darker origin story of Batman and all the struggles he faced. The secondary characters get fleshed out and become more three dimensional unlike before where they stayed in the background. An important side note is that this was used to create the script for the movie Batman Begins, directed by Christopher Nolan. The movie was heavily influenced by this comic and it clearly shows, especially with the relationship between Jim Gordon (Commissioner) and Batman.

Morrison, Grant. Final Crisis. New York: DC Comics, 2009.

These comic book story arcs created by DC Comics which end in “Crisis” are considered one of the most important ones since they always try to make it as epic and shocking as possible. Past “Crisis” story arcs included the death of Supergirl, The Flash, and now more recently Batman. I really recommend looking these up because the writers do come up with great ideas and interesting stories that makes the reader stand still until he finishes reading the last page.

Jett. A History of BATMAN 5: What It Is and How It Came To Be. BATMAN ON FILM. February 4, 2005. December 1, 2009. <http://www.batman-on-film.com/opinion_jett_b5history.html>

This article helps the reader understand what happened after the flop of Batman & Robin and how we came to get Batman Begins. It shows how many ideas Warner Bros. rejected, some which are good, some which are horrible. It also showed you how Hollywood works and how hard it actually is to give a dead franchise live again.

Multi Genre 1:

Map with Legend of the Batcave

Multi Genre 2:

Collage

Multi Genre 3:

Movie Review

This will be a series of short movie reviews starting from Batman (1966) starting Adam West and culminating with The Dark Knight (2008). I will not include the serials made in the 1940’s and 1950’s because I haven’t seen them and probably you haven’t either.

Batman (1966)

Now this could possibly be the most recent Batman movie I saw, since I bought it for 10 bucks on Borders. This is pure Adam West and 1960’s references all over the place. This is camp at its finest. Now I don’t like Batman being portrayed like this but since it was released at that time, people needed laughter and fun. Adam West makes the funniest Batman you will ever see, and it was such an impact it created a Bat-craze during that time. The movie’s plot is silly, I’ll give a brief summary. Joker, Catwoman, Penguin and Riddler all capture this captain and hold him hostage as they come up with ways to make Batman miserable. While Batman is trying to solve the crimes and puzzles, the four villains are also making a device which dehydrates and turns people into sand, which then they can add water to them and re-hydrate them(Dumb, I know).  A pow, bam and kapow later Batman and Robin defeat the villains and save the day.

It’s a fun, nostalgic movie. I can’t give it a 0 because you know it wasn’t trying to be serious or profound; it was trying to be fun for the whole family. It does that very well. I liked it and if you want to see a different side of Batman you can’t see now a day, go check it out.

Rating:

3/5

Batman (1989)

This Batman is darker than its previous incarnation and it shows. The city is all dark and gothic, the characters look deteriorated to a certain point, the evil and cruelness is shown everywhere. This is the Batman that is portrayed in the comics by Frank Miller and such. This is the Batman fans wanted to see for a while. The plot is basically the origin story of The Joker with the Batman sort of starting out becoming the Batman. Then we see through the whole movie the conflict between Batman and The Joker which climaxes in the Joker being defeated.

The Joker, portrayed by Jack Nicholson is evil and crazy as hell and it shows. Michael Keaton does a great job at demonstrating how serious and dark Batman can actually be. He shows us that Bruce Wayne IS the alter ego and Batman is his true persona. The sets are beautiful and very realistic. The climax is amazing and heart pumping. This is a great restart of the Batman series after Adam West had his shot. My only gripe could be that we don’t see much of the origin of Batman until halfway, and the screw up of the origin of the Joker. But other than that great Batman movie, if you haven’t seen it, go check it out.

Rating:

4.5/5

Batman Returns (1992)

The people had spoken and made Batman (1989) the highest grossing movie of that year, so Hollywood green lit the sequel. Obviously after the tremendous success of the first one, Tim Burton got creative control of the movie, which was a good and bad thing. The good aspect was the introduction of the new villains was excellent and how they were handled was great. The climax of the movie was also spectacular and very dark. The bad thing? This was a Tim Burton movie with Batman as the main protagonist. This meant that Batman wasn’t the Batman you knew from the comics, he was too dark, killing people left and right, the introduction of new characters that weren’t from the Batman mythology. This movie was good, but those things ruin the whole moment. Also the fact that this movie was hated by fans and parents for being too dark didn’t help much either. The main performances where good, especially by Danny DeVito who was excellent as the Penguin.

This movie wasn’t terrible, but it just wasn’t Batman anymore. It moved too far away from the mythology and for me that ruined the experience. Also the plot wasn’t that amazing either, only the Penguin’s scenes it’s what makes the movie good.

Rating:

3/5

Batman Forever (1995)

This was my actual first Batman movie I saw in theaters, so it will always hold a special place in my heart. After what happened with Batman Returns, Warner Bros. decided to go to a more light Batman adventure, so they hired Joel Schumacher to direct. The plot is basically the origin story of The Riddler, Two-Face and Robin. Even though people disliked it for not being like Tim Burton’s version I think it was the perfect mix of seriousness and lightness. Val Kilmer was a great Batman but Two-Face could have been handled differently. It was a waste of a character since Two-Face has such an important role in the comics. It also didn’t help that he was like a cheap version of the Joker with all the laughing. JimCarrey’s Riddler was good and very interesting seeing how he transformed into this character. This movie was, for me, superior to Batman Returns but inferior to Batman (1989). It’s a very good movie and if you want a good mix of light and dark, go see it. Sadly the same cannot be said for the sort of sequel…

Rating:

3.5/5

Batman & Robin (1997)

Horrible, Skip It.

I mean it, skip it…you want a reason? Fine…

This movie shows you how to screw up a perfectly good franchise and leave it dead for 8 years. Nothing works in this movie, not even George Clooney who tried to sort of save it. Mr. Freeze is horrible, saying literally one ice pun in every sentence he spoke in the whole movie. Poison Ivy, for me was sort of ok, but could definitely been handled better. Bane was a total waste of character. BANE BROKE BATMAN’S BACK AND LEFT HIM PARALIZED IN THE COMIC BOOKS! How can ANYONE screw such a kick-ass character like that?! The whole plot is that Mr. Freeze wants to make Batman & Robin’s life miserable by stealing crystals which he is planning to use to freeze the whole city and world…just because. Poison Ivy is there to use her scent to make Batman and Robin fight between each other so Mr. Freeze can continue his plan. Batgirl was poorly introduced as Alfred’s (the butler) nephew! This movie has more silly moments than you can imagine. It tried to be serious, but funny, like Batman Forever, but failed miserable.

I saw it as a kid and I really liked it, but come on, I was 7 after all. When I re-watched this I was so amazed of how dumbed down and stupid this movie really is. Not even if this was released in 1966 would it have been a success. Horrible, don’t watch it.

Rating:

-2/5

Batman Begins (2005)

After the disaster of Batman & Robin the whole franchise took a hiatus for 8 years and let a whole bunch of comic book movies steal the show for a while. Then this movie was released. This is an excellent origin movie because it’s about BATMAN’S origin. It’s about how he was developed into the character we know and love. The plot is the main battle against Ras-Al-Ghul and Scarecrow. I love this movie because a lot of the things of the comics are brought here such as: Jim’s relationship with Batman, how Batman shows us Bruce Wayne is his alter ego, the crime ring in Gotham City and how the city is really deteriorated and infested and so on. The director took a wild approach into making this movie real in a sense. They made it so Batman’s gadgets seem plausible, his batmobile and equipment came from military experiments, Scarecrow is just a normal dude with a mask, Ras-Al-Ghul instead of being immortal it shows that they just have many Ras-Al-Ghul and when one passes the other comes. I really liked this approach and it shows us how plausible could it be to have a Batman in real life running about. I really liked this movie a lot and I recommend you see this since not so many people know of this movie’s existence.

Rating:

4.5/5

The Dark Knight (2008)

This Is Batman. Plain and Simple. Like most movies, they get worst by each sequel, instead this movie perfected it’s predecessor in every possible way. It’s amazing visually, the story is gripping, and the characters are interesting. The Joker and Two-Face shine in this movie. Harvey Dent’s transformation into the evil persona he will eventually become was perfectly handled. While Batman isn’t that much amazing in this movie, it does make sense since he already had his origin story, it was time to flesh out his villains rogue. The interrogation scene is one of the most interesting and gripping scenes I have ever seen. The tension and the dialogue is pure comic book come to life. This Is the True Batman movie. If you haven’t seen it, see it as fast as you can.

Rating:

5/5

Multi Genre 4:

Wanted Posters

Multi Genre 5:

Fake Trailer of Batman & Robin

Will be posted very soon, had problems with Youtube

Epilogue

I had a lot of fun writing and thinking creatively on ways to explore this fictional character. I’ve always loved Batman and thought he was a great inspiration to people, just like Superman. I like this type of research paper where it’s not only talking about a certain theme or idea, but fleshing and exploring the idea further and thinking of different ways of expressing the same thing. I hope people learn about Batman and about the origin and how he has developed through these past seven decades. In the end it’s all a journey, we all have to pass a journey and we will have our ups and downs, just like Batman has and will have until the end of times.

Sony Vegas Pro 9 is a very good editing program, probably the best you can get on a PC. It costs about 500$ so it’s a bit pricey but definitely worth it. This program let’s you do the basic functions of an editing software plus edit how the shot moves, the color, the music, sounds, etc. The user interface is very friendly and easy to navigate. Don’t be afraid of the million buttons, at the beginning you wont be using many of them. In the end, the best you could get for a PC.

Rating: 4.5/5

Final Cut Pro 7 is exclusively for Mac users only. It’s basically the best in the business for all your editing needs. The user interface has a lot, a lott of windows but you can get costumed to them as you practice more and more. You will probably need two monitors to edit because you might have more than 6-7 windows opened at the time when your editing and tweaking your scene. You can do anything you could possibly imagine with the shot. This comes at a steep cost, at least for me. Each time you put a video in the timeline you MUST render it before you can view it, this can take up a lot of editing time and interrupt your creative thoughts because you have to deal with the rendering. For those who don’t know rendering is converting the video so you can view it, whether is in a timeline or the finishing product. It’s an amazing editing software but if your not gonna tweak that much your videos I suggest sticking with Sony Vegas or even iMovie.

Rating: 4/5

In the end I do like Sony Vegas Pro 9 more, I don’t know if it’s because I am more costumed to it, but I truly think it’s faster at editing and does most of the functions of Final Cut without the rendering every video aspect. In the end, it’s all your choice.

Every end of semester, all around the globe most schools, universities have their finals week. This means staying up late, finishing work, studying for tests the day before. I think this is wrong and sort of unfair to put the students up to this task. I will admit a lot of the students are irresponsible and do leave everything till the last moment but some of the blame could go to the professors for thinking their class is the only one. No one will get their work done peacefully if we both don’t give our part to make this week as smooth and easy as possible. We the students and the professors should build a system over the course of this last week so we can both work more efficiently. Students will be able to obtain higher grades and study better and professors will be able to grade papers, tests easier and more peacefully.

In Conclusion:

Pros:

Faster than Vista

Better Handling of the taskbar

Much more efficient than the Dashboard on Mac OS

Much Less Crashes

Cons:

Still prone to viruses and crashes, since ofcourse it’s Windows

Not as pretty as Mac

Still not on par with Mac OS almost perfect, no crash, no problem, no fuss operating system

So when you Get the chance, get Windows 7 if you are still using Vista, it’s much better and you won’t get so much headaches like you do with Vista.

Now, I did not and will not see New Moon, but I know the basic plot and the basic idea of the movies. The whole point of this movie is eye candy only. Fine, it’s not ALL there is too it, but it’s mostly the eye candy marketing strategy we see in the trailers. When you see the trailer we see a total of 6-7 guys without shirts, showing their abs, a dumb vampire who thinks that the logic to protect someone is by leaving them alone in the forest with a killer vampire and an emo girl who tries to kill herself on hopes of being with her vampire. This is obviously directed to girls and some guys who are fans of the books, but mostly it’s to see the hot guys without shirts. And Hollywood hit the jackpot, again. The movie has grossed close to 200 million and will eventually surpass that. Hollywood has a similar success they did back in 1997 with Titanic, and tried to mimic it with great success. The thing is that the fans will not realize the director probably butchered New Moon if not Twilight, but they don’t care, because with hotties like Robert and Taylor, who needs and interesting plot? Besides, if you went the first few days you could even barely hear the dialogue with all the girls screaming every five seconds, not even the Harry Potter fans scream that much. 

On that note, this brings me to my other problem, Robert Patinson. While I think he is capable of being a great actor, not by Twilight, but by Harry Pottter, it saddens me to see him waste his talents on a movie that girls only go to see to look at him. Robert Patinson is the new effeminate guy of the industry whom everyone loves. Remember Orlando Bloom? Wasen’t he the hot effeminate guy a few years back with Lord of the Rings and such? What happened to him? Exactly, and the same fate will lie on Robert Patinson unless he breaks off the spell of being that vampire guy and do some other roles. To his defense he has tried but failed miserably, because he is becoming that vampire guy, he will always be remembered as such.

On a last note, I’m really mad that New Moon broke one of the many records of The Dark Knight. I might be a fan boy but you cannot argue that The Dark Knight is superior to New Moon. And I know that you can’t compare, but in terms of fantasy film, action film, it is much more that New Moon will ever be. So for everyone who might think it is capable of being compared to The Dark Knight, it won’t ever bee even close to it.

This idea of memory card implantations on the brain has been in the early stages for years. It has finally been made public a few months ago, but only a few selected people have been chosen for this project. Dr. Javier Bardem says in this recent article of Implants Bi-Monthly, “The world is evolving; our implants will allow us to tap into that 90-95% of the brain we don’t use. We will be able to do things once thought imaginable, even sustain more memories”  (Bardem 78). Dr. Bardem even created a site for the usage of explaining further the whole project and getting people to sign up to be tested at their home page www.implantsarethefuture.org. While many scientists support the pro-implant approach at learning more efficiently and tapping into unimaginable grounds, there are others that disagree.

In Dr. Bruce Wayne’s book “Study vs. Laziness” he explains that implants would only make people become lazier that they already are, and that we would all be equally as smart as the other. Also that the teachers would be out of jobs because students would learn everything via SD cards (Wayne 98). Implants would also cost a lot of money and not many people would be able to afford it. Economist Peter Jackson says,

In the first couple of years these implants would cost nearly 100,000 US dollars, and in this already decaying economy, only the rich would be able to afford this and not the students, which is mostly where these implants are being targeted to. (Jackson 47)

Some religious people also thought of the moral implications of having implants saying they would be unlocking things in their brains humans are not suppose to have the knowledge of, claiming that this scientists are playing God (Nolan23).

The scientists of the pro-implant supporting side agreed that the cost might be a little high when the implants launched, but if they are able to get more supporters and sponsors they will be able to cut down the cost by almost 80% of the suggested price. This would mean that students would be able to afford this. Psychologists on the pro-implant side, especially Dr. Wes Anderson explained that students would not be lazy at all, they would use this free time to explore new things they wouldn’t be able to since they wasted so much time studying (Anderson 34). Dr. Kubrick, a very important and renowned scientist, explained on this website that teachers wouldn’t necessary lose their jobs because they could create some sort of system to make the students go to class to get their information of the day, like they used to do, only class would be much shorter, to have more free time available for everyone (Kubrick).

The world is evolving, like Dr. Wayne suggested, we should be able to learn more efficiently so we can become better workers in the future. The whole idea of better learning is something professors have been trying to achieve since day one, now it is closer that we can ever imagine. We should be able to make the right choice, depending on what you believe, and be able to move forward instead of being stuck in the past. These implants are the first step into the future, if we allow this to be accepted, imagine what else we are capable of doing.

Work Cited

Anderson, Wes. “Why Implants on students is effective in their studying.” Orange News 17 October 2009. 33-38.

Bardem, Javier.  “About Us.” IATF 2009. 1 November 2009. <http//:www.implantsarethefuture.org>

—. “The SD Card Implant: The Way of the Future.” Implants Bi-Monthly (June-May 2009): 76-86.

Jackson, Peter. “Pro-Implants?! Sure, if You’re as Rich as Bill Gates!” Money Money Money (March 2009): 45-52.

Kubrick, Stanley. “Why go Pro-Implant?” ProImplants 2008. 1 November 2009. <http://www.proimplants.org>

Nolan, Christopher. “God never said anything about Implants.” NewspaperDaily. 25 August 2009. 23-28.

Wayne, Bruce. Study vs. Laziness. Batcave: Gotham City, 2009.

2012 is the newest film by Ronald Emmerich. This is basically his third disaster movie and promises this will be the last one, since he will move on to other projects. His other two disaster flicks were Independence Day and A Day After Tomorrow. In this new movie it shows the destruction of the world as it was predicted by the Mayan Calendar. The plot itself was cheesy, cliche and sort of predictable. Some of the jokes were bad as well, although they were served because Hollywood thinks the mainstream likes dumb jokes, like they did with Transformers 2. Where this movie shines is in the CGI special effects. Everything in this movie gets obliterated and we see every inch of detail of whats happening. This is the type of movie you HAVE to see on the big screen to observe every detail. The ending for me could have been handed better, it was also horribly cliched as well. This is a movie that if you go see, just free your mind and just watch the special effects.

Rating: 3/5

Those who have been following the gaming world, you all know about the huge anticipation for Modern Warfare 2. Well the numbers are out. 550 Million dollars in just 5 days. That surpasses every box office movie release for the exception of Titanic, which I bet it’ll pass soon enough. This is very good to see because we are living in very bad times. Since we live in an inflated economy we think the logic is to not spend money. This is incorrect. I’m not saying go out and buy random things but we need to get the economy flowing or else prices will rise because no one is buying any products. If we go and buy things, inflation will decrease, which means there will be a balance created in the economy in which we wont have a high Unemployment rate because the economy is flowing.

So what do you guys think? Am I right? Am I nuts?

P.S. As an extra I’ll post this hilarious episode of South Park depicting the whole idea about economy: Click Here!

You can go inside from two places, whether it’s on the back or on the side of the parish. Both of these openings have two large wooden doors, like a castle. Inside we have benches, fans so we don’t get too hot and places to kneel when you want to pray or participate in mass. On the walls around the parish we see miniature figurines depicting the travel of Jesus to his death on the cross. On the wall across the door of the parish we see the altar in which the priest delivers the mass. A big relief of the famous Last Supper of Jesus and his Apostles stands on the wall behind the altar. But probably the most important aspect of this parish is the priest.

Father Santiago Rivera Allende is our current priest. He is an older man in his mid 70’s. He does look younger than this though. He has been the new priest in the church for no more than a few months. The last priest was there for almost 20 years, something that it’s not possible since priests are suppose to stay no more than three years in the same parish.  A very curious thing about Father Santiago is that before he came to our parish, he stayed in his church for 25 years. So in a way he is very much attached to his old church, just like the priest before him. Amazingly he has only been a priest for less than half his life, 27 years, because he used to work for 13 years before a priest friend convinced him that it was his vocation all along. After that moment he left his job and started preparing to become a priest. One of his stronger skills is how well he can deliver a mass.

The mass in the parish has a different style according to each priest, and Father Santiago is no different. His masses are longer because he talks more on the sermon about life lessons and such and gives extra prayers so we can enrich ourselves and learn more. His sermons are what make him special; he delivers them in such an amazing and unique way. He gives examples of his own life to explain the Bible, how to apply the Bible to our daily lives. He also shows us distinct stuff in the Bible we wouldn’t have been able to observe by ourselves. He also shows different interpretations we haven’t seen before. His other trademark is that he tries to make it a more personal experience. He achieves this by asking people by name to say a prayer or when he gives the communion he tells them the prayer and ends with their name making this a more personal experience. This is something that not many priests tend to do, because they have bigger temples and it’s harder for them, but because this is a small temple Father Santiago can achieve this. After mass he goes outside and talks to the people, I took this chance to learn more about him, since I knew there was more to him than just his way of preaching.

I had a chance to have a one-on-one with him, so I asked him questions that normally people wouldn’t even bother to ask. The three questions I asked were: what he does besides mass, how much does he earned; and what his best and worst experiences were. “Assisting the sick and elderly, helping and praying for them to get better. Hearing confessions is also a very important and basic job for a priest and being the director of a school” answered Father Santiago. I was amazed with how much other things he did, I thought how was it possible he could find the time to do all this. Then he went to say how much he earned as a priest: “750, a month…tell your friends it’s not easy being a priest, you really can’t make a living off of this, and it’s a sacrifice I was willing to make.” I stared in shock, but he was totally right. I checked online and it said: “Diocesan priests’ salaries vary from diocese to diocese. According to the National Federation of Priests’ Council, low-end cash only salaries averaged $12,936 per year in 1998” (Roman). So if you multiply his earnings per month he makes even less per year than most high priests, or priests from other places. The answer to my final question was one that really surprised me, not so much by his answer, but by the way he answered the question. He looked and said: “Best experience is easy. Helping the people in Moca, help build an elementary school and raise money to rebuild this church.” After this he stared at the wall in silence. I was looking at him afraid he might have gotten mad with me for asking his worst experience. After about 6 minutes he looks at me, very sadly and answers: “The worst experience was that I couldn’t help more people and leaving the parish in Moca after 25 years of hard work.” I stared in silence and I stood up, shook his hand and left.

I guess not many people see that priests are people too, they are not all depicted the way television or movies depict them. They have real feelings like we do and they suffer a lot too. I think Father Santiago and our last priest do have a lot in common. Somewhere our last priest must be feeling the same way as Father Santiago. It ought to be hard to leave a community which you grew to love and care for after many years. It also must be tough not being able to help everyone, but this is a feeling we all share.  We all wish to help everyone and make the world a better place. Maybe we and the priests are not so different after all.

Work Cited:

“Roman Catholic Priests” Roman Catholic Priests March 30,2000. Bureau of Labor Statistics.  October 4, 2009. <http://www.umsl.edu/services/govdocs/ooh20002001/248.htm>