Memory Lane

By Yixiao, Xu (Coco), Sihan Chen (Aaron)

The Fallen Music Superstar

Beethoven, one of the famous European musicians and composers, made great contributions in the field of music. During his lifetime, he created thousands of masterpieces that were admired by the world, which also opened up new musical paths and perspectives for the future generations. After his death, his work, experiences as well as his story often told by the world. Nevertheless, beneath the surface of his success, there was also a miserable past...

He had experienced numerous setbacks and difficulties. He also failed, but the failure he encountered is not failure we familiar with. It is more about the physical. One of the failure he had was the failure of part of the body, deafness.

Around 1790, the hearing of Beethoven already started to malfunction and mutter to varying degrees. He had suffered a great depression and sadness. Under this situation, he cannot act as normal people, hearing every notes bouncing on the keys. As a musician, it was a great misfortune. However, he didn’t give up. Even though his hearing ability was weakened, his burning heart would never had diminished; he continued to create and to produce numerous of works. Just as the famous saying goes, “When God closes a door, He opens a window.” In turn, when God opens a window, he will close a door. The “window” the God giving him was the extremely musical talents, while God took away the part he needed most, his hearing. What unfortunately was that he lost his hearing, completely, in 1802. With the appearance of “permanent failure”, he had thought about giving up. He might think about hurting himself; he might consider to end his own life, but the power of music pulled him back from the abyss eventually. For him, instead of succumbing to deafness, he chose to face it, to overcome it.

It is unfortunate that he, simultaneously, had a miserable childhood. Beethoven was born in a poor family. He had six siblings, and he was the second child of seven. However, his oldest brother died, and thus, Beethoven became the eldest son in his family. His father was a choir tenor who was idle all the day. He often goes home drunk late at night, and had a bad temper. His mother, in reverse, was a kind and docile woman, while she died when Beethoven was 17. The losing of mother also brought a lot of pressure for Beethoven. Beethoven had to live with his inhumane father who had never even asked whether the family had enough food and clothing. His father even forced Beethoven to practice piano until midnight. Whenever Beethoven made a mistake, his father will punish him. Very often, neighbors often heard the child sobbing and falling asleep due to fatigue and pain. His father placed a lot of hopes and expectations on Beethoven as a world-famous musician, but this cannot be a reason for child abuse. A child who lives under such a state and situation is unfortunate; his father was a failure, and his childhood was a failure. It is possible that this failure became the stepping stone to his success, promoting him to achieve the achievement of what he fulfilled now.

During his 57 years of life, he has created more than one hundred works, including symphonies, orchestras, piano concertos, violin concertos, piano sonatas and so forth. His compositions were full of vitality. Due to the special experiences Beethoven had, his music fully expresses his intense feelings and passions. Many times, the audiences will be moved by his music and the strong spiritual power in his emotion meanwhile. Combining with the musical talent and superb skills, Beethoven has created many unprecedented masterpieces in the world. The failure he had did not prevent him from reaching the success, which is the quality that many people are fail to reach.

Birth of the Cosmos

Marvel Comics was originally a comic company called "Timely Comics" founded by Martin Goodman. The company was originally a vulgar novel company called "Red Circle Comics". Things changed in 1941; Marvel created Captain America, a superhero by killing Nazi soldiers and beheading the head of Nazi. World War II was about breaking out, and people urgently needed heroes to escape from reality; the appearance of Captain America established Marvel’s position in the industry. In 1944, Timely Comics was renamed "Atlas Comics"; However, due to the gradual prejudice against comics and heroes after World War II, Atlas faced bankruptcy and finally relied on the distribution channel of its arch rival DC Comics to make a living.

In the late 1850s, Atlas Comics began its revival plan through the vigorous development of the U.S. economy. In the early age of sixty century, Stan Lee revised the name of company “Atlas Comics” to “Marvel Comics”, and he made an revolutionary change which had a great significance to Marvel today. In the late 1960s, it changed the traditional hero setting, brought "heroes also have defects" and "realistic parallel universe" into the cartoon, and created many famous super heroes including Hulk, Ant Man, Black Panther, etc. In 1968, Marvel caught up with DC and became one of the two giants of comics; In 1972, Marvel Comics even surpassed DC in sales, and Stan Lee became the CEO of Marvel Comics.

On a certain day in 1978, Stan Lee left the position of editor-in-chief, which was handed to Jim Shooter. To be honest, the first opportunity for Marvel to dominate the comics industry completely occurred in 1984 when DC was facing the trend of bankruptcy and it decided to sell the ownership to Marvel while Jim Shooter refused the purchase with an arrogant attitude. Ironically, DC company later poached many of Marvel’s extraordinary artists, which led to Marvel eventually went to downhill.

What unexpected was that Marvel acquired by New World Pictures in 1986 while was sold to Ron Perelman, an American businessman, due to the debt problem in 1989. He led Marvel come into the market with his control and the understanding of the market in 1991. He used a unique marketing strategy to increase the sales of Marvel comics, putting different cards in the plastic cover of each comic book. This strategy attracts more customers who want to collect the cards. If one wanted to collect all five different designs of cards, he/she would purchas the same card multiple times. However, the advantages of this marketing method did not last long. Soon after, in 1996, the sales of comics and cards fell sharply, and Marvel was burdened with huge debts simultaneously. In this case, Ron Perelman filed for bankruptcy protection in order to reorganize Marvel.

In 1997, Marvel began to acquire intellectual property rights that had been sold. and this was a personal property owned by an author, the product of one's own creation. In 2005, Ike Perlmutter took office as CEO and began to buy back the major intellectual property rights of Marvel Film Universe. Marvel Film Universe began, and Marvel Comics became a giant in the area of comics and film productions. Today Marvel is the largest comic production company in the United States, and each film creates great profits.

It is not difficult to see that behind those remarkable successes, there are always unforgettable and inevitable failures. The history of these failures has constructed one of the largest comic giants in the United States and one of the strongest film production companies in the world. Without those failures, the children all around the world would not enjoy this tremendous success of marvelous Marvel. Failures, whether subtle or catastrophic, do not need to be the “end all be all”.