Disney movies are excellent. Watching them again now that I'm older I'm realizing just how good they are. I'm catching jokes and references I never did before and even more wonderful, I'm noticing beautiful and complex themes and messages I totally missed out on before. I was watching Hunchback Of Notre Dame tonight and there was a beautiful song I wanted to share. The video of it is here. These are the lyrics:
Esmeralda
I don't know if You can hear me
Or if You're even there
I don't know if You would listen
To a Gypsy's prayer
Yes, I know I'm just an outcast
I shouldn't speak to you
Still I see Your face and wonder...
Were You once an outcast too?
God help the outcasts
Hungry from birth
Show them the mercy
They don't find on earth
God help my people
We look to You still
God help the outcasts
Or nobody will
Parishioners
I ask for wealth
I ask for fame
I ask for glory to shine on my name
I ask for love I can posses
I ask for God and His angels to bless me
Esmeralda
I ask for nothing
I can get by
But I know so many
Less lucky than I
Please help my people
The poor and downtrod
I thought we all were
The children of God
God help the outcasts
Children of God
I just think those lyrics are so beautiful. We should not be praying for selfish things, things we don't need. We should instead be praying for others, and working to Mak sure they have what they need. I love that the people who appear to be Christians (the parishioners in this scene) are the ones being selfish and unchristian while Esmeralda, accused of heathenism and such and not the picture of a so called 'good christian girl' (she is a gypsy after all) is the one being selfless and displaying the true heart of Christianity. I guess saying I like this is less the truth than I like that it shows that faith and Christianity is not about appearances or what's on the outside but rather what is on the inside, what is in someones heart. We should not judge people. Even Jesus didn't judge He said "I did not come to judge the world, but to save it. (John 12:47) if Jesus, the only sinless man to ever walk the earth, does not judge people then who are we as sinful, fallible humans to judge each other. We should instead follow in his footsteps and try to help, love and save each other.
Sunday, June 7, 2009
Sunday, May 31, 2009
Terminating the Soloist
I'm kind of a movie nerd. I like movies, what can I say? And recently I've seen some movies that have had moments that really touched me. I wanted to share a few.
First off, a few weeks ago i went and saw The Soloist. It was an excellent movie, one of the best I've seen in a while. There was one scene in particular that I really loved. I don;t want to ruin the movie, but in this scene Jamie Foxx's character is sleeping on the streets in an area jam packed with homeless people. As he drifts of to sleep he recites the Lords Prayer. As he speaks the words most of us have heard and spoken a million times the camera pans over the homeless, the impoverish, the hurting and the broken. The contradiction between the words being spoken and the all too true images on the screen stuck out to me and really tore at my heart.
Our Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name.
Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done, on Earth, as it is in Heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.
Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
For Thine is the Kingdom and the power and the glory forever and ever, Amen.
How are we following God's will when we allow this kind of poverty and brokenness to run rampant not only in our country but around the world. We should be loving these people, giving whatever we can to aide them, living simply so that they may simply live. A lot of us, myself included, live with far more than we could ever begin to actually need, while millions of people are starving and freezing to death every day. Millions have diseases they will die from because they can't afford medical attention. They are left alone to die because we are to comfortable in our lives to make sacrifices to show them love and support. It is blatant hypocrisy to speak the words 'Thy Kingdom come thy will be done' when we sit and do nothing about the gross injustices happening all over our war torn, poverty and sickness stricken world and i am as guilty of it as anyone.
The trespasses we ask forgiveness for have two meanings in this scene. One, we should ask forgiveness for the sin of allowing such injustice to happen to our fellow human beings, for not loving the poor and the homeless, the broken and the destitute, for living lives of comfort and luxury while others suffer and die with basically nothing to call their own. We should ask forgiveness for our hatred and violence, for giving into the myth that revenge solves problems and redemptive violence works. We should ask forgiveness for not loving the world actively and unconditionally as we should. Again, I am guilty of this. The second trespasses being asked forgiveness for are the sins that the poor and broken are driven to in order to survive, when they feel like they have no other choice left, and as they ask forgiveness for this they are also asking for forgiveness for those who have put them in that possition, those of us who are not loving them as we should.
The words give us this day our daily bread remind me of my favorite proverb: "Give me neither poverty nor riches, but give me only my daily bread. Otherwise, I may have too much and disown you and say, ‘Who is the LORD ?’ Or I may become poor and steal, and so dishonor the name of my God." - Proverbs 30:8-9. Give me only my daily bread. Give me only what I need to survive, to truely live, no more and no less. I feel that alot of the sins in the world come from having to much or to little, the tention between have's and havenots and the desire to always have more-more wealth, more power, more than we need. As Gandhi once said, "There is enough for everyone's need, but not for everyone's greed."
This scene was beautifully done and shows how much more we need to start loving people. We need to let go of greed and comfort and make sacrifices for other people. Which brings me to my next movie.
Last night I went with some friends to see Terminator Salvation. I didn't actually know if I wanted to see it or not. I haven't seen any of the others and I didn't know that I would like it. I found it, however, to be a very well done movie. There were a couple things I really liked about it. Again, while attempting to not give away to much of the plot, there is a scene in the movie where two of the characters talk about whether or not people deserve second chances. Later in the film one of those characters decides to give up their life to save John Connor, the main character for those who don't know the movie. When asked why he is willing to die for Connor the character (I wont say his name and ruin the movie) says something along the lines of "I'm taking my second chance." His second chance at life is not to live, per say, but to die so someone else can live. In this way he is truly living in that he his dedicating his life (quite literally) to showing love to someone else. I absolutely loved this part because in dying this character truly lived his life. He had a second chance at life and took it, using it in the best way possible, at least in my opinion. After all, there is no greater love than to lay down one's life for another. Someone pretty smart said that once. :)
There is another part in the movie where John Connor makes a speech (that i can't remember all of or find anywhere on the Internet. fail.) about how the difference between humans and the machines is that the machines can make cold calculated decisions about sacrificing this many people to save that many and so one, where as humans should not. we are to fallible to be able to make a decision like that. We can not look at the situation objectively enough, we are too human, and therefore, John says, We should try to dot he human thing and do our best to save everyone, not sacrifice some for 'the greater good.' Who are we as humans to place that kind of value on human life? Instead we need to love people. All people.
Also, baseball players should wear their socks up to their knees, none of this long pants craziness. Just a thought.
First off, a few weeks ago i went and saw The Soloist. It was an excellent movie, one of the best I've seen in a while. There was one scene in particular that I really loved. I don;t want to ruin the movie, but in this scene Jamie Foxx's character is sleeping on the streets in an area jam packed with homeless people. As he drifts of to sleep he recites the Lords Prayer. As he speaks the words most of us have heard and spoken a million times the camera pans over the homeless, the impoverish, the hurting and the broken. The contradiction between the words being spoken and the all too true images on the screen stuck out to me and really tore at my heart.
Our Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name.
Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done, on Earth, as it is in Heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.
Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
For Thine is the Kingdom and the power and the glory forever and ever, Amen.
How are we following God's will when we allow this kind of poverty and brokenness to run rampant not only in our country but around the world. We should be loving these people, giving whatever we can to aide them, living simply so that they may simply live. A lot of us, myself included, live with far more than we could ever begin to actually need, while millions of people are starving and freezing to death every day. Millions have diseases they will die from because they can't afford medical attention. They are left alone to die because we are to comfortable in our lives to make sacrifices to show them love and support. It is blatant hypocrisy to speak the words 'Thy Kingdom come thy will be done' when we sit and do nothing about the gross injustices happening all over our war torn, poverty and sickness stricken world and i am as guilty of it as anyone.
The trespasses we ask forgiveness for have two meanings in this scene. One, we should ask forgiveness for the sin of allowing such injustice to happen to our fellow human beings, for not loving the poor and the homeless, the broken and the destitute, for living lives of comfort and luxury while others suffer and die with basically nothing to call their own. We should ask forgiveness for our hatred and violence, for giving into the myth that revenge solves problems and redemptive violence works. We should ask forgiveness for not loving the world actively and unconditionally as we should. Again, I am guilty of this. The second trespasses being asked forgiveness for are the sins that the poor and broken are driven to in order to survive, when they feel like they have no other choice left, and as they ask forgiveness for this they are also asking for forgiveness for those who have put them in that possition, those of us who are not loving them as we should.
The words give us this day our daily bread remind me of my favorite proverb: "Give me neither poverty nor riches, but give me only my daily bread. Otherwise, I may have too much and disown you and say, ‘Who is the LORD ?’ Or I may become poor and steal, and so dishonor the name of my God." - Proverbs 30:8-9. Give me only my daily bread. Give me only what I need to survive, to truely live, no more and no less. I feel that alot of the sins in the world come from having to much or to little, the tention between have's and havenots and the desire to always have more-more wealth, more power, more than we need. As Gandhi once said, "There is enough for everyone's need, but not for everyone's greed."
This scene was beautifully done and shows how much more we need to start loving people. We need to let go of greed and comfort and make sacrifices for other people. Which brings me to my next movie.
Last night I went with some friends to see Terminator Salvation. I didn't actually know if I wanted to see it or not. I haven't seen any of the others and I didn't know that I would like it. I found it, however, to be a very well done movie. There were a couple things I really liked about it. Again, while attempting to not give away to much of the plot, there is a scene in the movie where two of the characters talk about whether or not people deserve second chances. Later in the film one of those characters decides to give up their life to save John Connor, the main character for those who don't know the movie. When asked why he is willing to die for Connor the character (I wont say his name and ruin the movie) says something along the lines of "I'm taking my second chance." His second chance at life is not to live, per say, but to die so someone else can live. In this way he is truly living in that he his dedicating his life (quite literally) to showing love to someone else. I absolutely loved this part because in dying this character truly lived his life. He had a second chance at life and took it, using it in the best way possible, at least in my opinion. After all, there is no greater love than to lay down one's life for another. Someone pretty smart said that once. :)
There is another part in the movie where John Connor makes a speech (that i can't remember all of or find anywhere on the Internet. fail.) about how the difference between humans and the machines is that the machines can make cold calculated decisions about sacrificing this many people to save that many and so one, where as humans should not. we are to fallible to be able to make a decision like that. We can not look at the situation objectively enough, we are too human, and therefore, John says, We should try to dot he human thing and do our best to save everyone, not sacrifice some for 'the greater good.' Who are we as humans to place that kind of value on human life? Instead we need to love people. All people.
Also, baseball players should wear their socks up to their knees, none of this long pants craziness. Just a thought.
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
Beauty and the Beast
So this morning I was watching Beauty and the Beast (yes by my self. Leave me alone, Disney movies are great) and I was thinking about haw great of a film it really is. Seriously. It's all about grace and forgiveness and love. It reminded me of 1 Corinthians 13:1-3.
"1If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. 2If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. 3If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing."
The prince has everything the world can give, he can do basically anything he wants, but without love he really has nothing. He is an ugly beast inside and eventually that ugliness shows itself on the outside too (though i submit that the beast looks better as a beast than a prince, but this is really irrelevant). His ugly selfishness and hate, his sin if you will, keep him angry and alone until he learns to both love and be loved. both are important and I liked that Disney showed the importance of both. We are relational beings, we were created that way because our God is a relational God (the trinity, the very essence of God, has three parts. Love and relationship has existed since before time). Loving others is quite obviously very important and we are meant to act on that love (after all, love is a verb, not a feeling). But we also need to find people who love us, people we can count on and who can build us up and cheer us on. We are not meant to live this life alone. The beast falls in love with Belle, but it is not enough to break the spell. She must love him in return. And she does, the spell is broken and in true Disney fashion they live happily ever after together. Key word, together.
I also really like that the beast doesn't kill Gaston at the end. He easily could. He has GGaston at his mercy, hanging over the edge. But he chooses to save him instead. The beast does not give into the myth of redemptive violence the world tries to feed us. He saves his enemy, showing love and empathy rather than anger and hate. Of course, Disney kind of cops out about 30 seconds later when Gaston falls (of his own fault) and goes plummeting off the edge of the castle into a huge pit that I'm pretty sure did not exist in the movie before this moment. So the 'bad guy' probably dies. But then Disney characters have been known to survive such impossibly high falls before, so you never know. Perhaps Gaston survived, saw the error of his ways and learned to love himself less and others more.
...erm...maybe not.
Anyway. Just some things I've been thinking. Thought I'd share them.
"1If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. 2If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. 3If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing."
The prince has everything the world can give, he can do basically anything he wants, but without love he really has nothing. He is an ugly beast inside and eventually that ugliness shows itself on the outside too (though i submit that the beast looks better as a beast than a prince, but this is really irrelevant). His ugly selfishness and hate, his sin if you will, keep him angry and alone until he learns to both love and be loved. both are important and I liked that Disney showed the importance of both. We are relational beings, we were created that way because our God is a relational God (the trinity, the very essence of God, has three parts. Love and relationship has existed since before time). Loving others is quite obviously very important and we are meant to act on that love (after all, love is a verb, not a feeling). But we also need to find people who love us, people we can count on and who can build us up and cheer us on. We are not meant to live this life alone. The beast falls in love with Belle, but it is not enough to break the spell. She must love him in return. And she does, the spell is broken and in true Disney fashion they live happily ever after together. Key word, together.
I also really like that the beast doesn't kill Gaston at the end. He easily could. He has GGaston at his mercy, hanging over the edge. But he chooses to save him instead. The beast does not give into the myth of redemptive violence the world tries to feed us. He saves his enemy, showing love and empathy rather than anger and hate. Of course, Disney kind of cops out about 30 seconds later when Gaston falls (of his own fault) and goes plummeting off the edge of the castle into a huge pit that I'm pretty sure did not exist in the movie before this moment. So the 'bad guy' probably dies. But then Disney characters have been known to survive such impossibly high falls before, so you never know. Perhaps Gaston survived, saw the error of his ways and learned to love himself less and others more.
...erm...maybe not.
Anyway. Just some things I've been thinking. Thought I'd share them.
Sunday, May 24, 2009
Thoughts to chew on
So I started this blog as an assignment for my Literary Theory class (hence the title) and I loved blogging so much that I think I'm going to have to keep it going. You see I have a lot of opinions, on almost everything, and i enjoy the idea of putting them out there where anyone could read them, even if no one ever does. Right now I just wanted to let anyone who might read this know who I am and what I stand for, and also leave you with a few quotes I've been chewing on lately.
I believe in love. I believe in hope and healing and relationships.And I believe that when you believe strongly in something you have to fight for it. I want to change the world, to help and love people who are hurting and broken, to spread God's love and be the hands and feet of Christ. I want to always remember the simple beauty of a sunset and to help remind people that even the darkest of nights must eventually give way to the dawn. I want to help create a world full of the beautiful products of love rather than the ugly carnage of war. I believe that peace is possible, but that it takes courage. Hate is easy, but love is painful and scary. I believe that letting go, not holding on, takes the most strength and courage. I believe in the hope for a better tomorrow and that we must be the change we wish to see in the world. I believe the world is full of mystery and wonder and beauty, and that laughter is the best medicine. I believe there is true good and beauty in every person and that hate, violence and war will never solve things the way love, forgiveness and patience can. That is where my heart is and that is what I'm living for.
"But what had lasting significance were not the miracles themselves but Jesus’ love. Jesus raised his friend Lazarus from the dead, and a few years later, Lazarus died again. Jesus healed the sick, but eventually they caught some other disease. He fed the five thousands, and the next day they were hungry again. But we remember his love. It wasn’t that Jesus healed a leper but that he touched a leper, because no one touched lepers." -Shane Claiborne
"Preach the gospel always. And use words if necessary.” -St. Francis of Assisi
“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket- safe, dark, motionless, airless--it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.”
-CS Lewis
"Love thy neighbor" is not a piece of advice but a command. That means in the global village we're gonna have to start loving a whole lot more people. His truth is marching on....Where you live should not decide whether you live or whether you die [...] God has a special place for the poor. The poor are where God lives. God is in the slums, in the cardboard boxes where the poor play house, God is where the opportunity is lost and lives are shattered. God is with the mother who has infected her child with a virus that will take both their lives, God is under the rubble in the cries we hear during wartime. God, my friends, is with the poor and God is with us if we are with them. This is not a burden, this is an adventure. Dont let anyone tell it cannot be done."
-Bono
So anyway, thats all for now!
~Aimee
I believe in love. I believe in hope and healing and relationships.And I believe that when you believe strongly in something you have to fight for it. I want to change the world, to help and love people who are hurting and broken, to spread God's love and be the hands and feet of Christ. I want to always remember the simple beauty of a sunset and to help remind people that even the darkest of nights must eventually give way to the dawn. I want to help create a world full of the beautiful products of love rather than the ugly carnage of war. I believe that peace is possible, but that it takes courage. Hate is easy, but love is painful and scary. I believe that letting go, not holding on, takes the most strength and courage. I believe in the hope for a better tomorrow and that we must be the change we wish to see in the world. I believe the world is full of mystery and wonder and beauty, and that laughter is the best medicine. I believe there is true good and beauty in every person and that hate, violence and war will never solve things the way love, forgiveness and patience can. That is where my heart is and that is what I'm living for.
"But what had lasting significance were not the miracles themselves but Jesus’ love. Jesus raised his friend Lazarus from the dead, and a few years later, Lazarus died again. Jesus healed the sick, but eventually they caught some other disease. He fed the five thousands, and the next day they were hungry again. But we remember his love. It wasn’t that Jesus healed a leper but that he touched a leper, because no one touched lepers." -Shane Claiborne
"Preach the gospel always. And use words if necessary.” -St. Francis of Assisi
“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket- safe, dark, motionless, airless--it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.”
-CS Lewis
"Love thy neighbor" is not a piece of advice but a command. That means in the global village we're gonna have to start loving a whole lot more people. His truth is marching on....Where you live should not decide whether you live or whether you die [...] God has a special place for the poor. The poor are where God lives. God is in the slums, in the cardboard boxes where the poor play house, God is where the opportunity is lost and lives are shattered. God is with the mother who has infected her child with a virus that will take both their lives, God is under the rubble in the cries we hear during wartime. God, my friends, is with the poor and God is with us if we are with them. This is not a burden, this is an adventure. Dont let anyone tell it cannot be done."
-Bono
So anyway, thats all for now!
~Aimee
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Holder of Slaughterhouse - Five
So this week, while reading Holder of the World (and writing an 18 page research paper) I was also reading Slaughterhouse – Five for FYS. It struck me how very similar they were at times, especially on the issue of time. If you haven’t read Slaughterhouse – Five I suggest you do so because it’s super good. Really, it’s quite genius. I won’t give away too much of the plot because I think you should all go read it for yourself but the story is about a man named Billy Pilgrim who has “come unstuck in time.” Basically he time travels (seemingly both at will and at random) back and forward through different times of his life.
Billy’s time travelling was what first struck me in comparison to Holder of the World. Obviously, Venn is working on a time machine in the novel, and while Billy’s time traveling is not done with the aide of a machine the Tralfamadorians (aliens Billy is convinced he was abducted by) say that all things (plants, animals, people, etc) are machines because we have no free will. So in that sense they are both time traveling by means of machine—one a man made machine, the other a man machine. The other part of the time traveling that was similar in both books was the jumping between present and past (and in Slaughterhouse – Five’s case the future as well). Holder of the World jumps between Beigh’s story and Hannah Easton Fitch Legge’s (haha) story and they become interconnected. In slaughterhouse - Five there is a quasi base story of Billy going to fight in World War II, and then it jumps around all over the place from his birth to his death to his wedding night, etc. I see this jumping between times technique as a very post-modern style of writing. There is a story within a story within a story and there are back stories and side stories and seemingly random and jumbled up stories. This is very unlike books from before post-modernism in which there was a story and you followed it from start to finish.
The concept of time is also examined in both books (both with time travel and with out). In Holder of the World Venn says Hannah married Gabriel Legge because it was her time to get married—a very determinist way to look at life. If Hannah got married because it was her time then this displays a belief that everything is predetermined and things happen when they do because that is when they were supposed to happen (determinism). In Slaughterhouse – Five the Tralfamadorians teach Billy that we are all machines and have no free will or ability to make decisions. They also show Billy that time is kind of a concept of the human mind and all time exists at once. So it’s kind of like you die, but you are still living in every other moment of your life. This is also in its own way determinism. Just as Venn looks at Hannah getting married as her ‘time’, Billy is living ‘times’ of his life—his time to go to war, his time to get married, his time to die. This even affects the way the tralfamadorians (and Billy) look at death. Any time someone dies in the novel (be it thousands of people, a horse or a glass of Champaign) the description of the death always ends with ‘so it goes.’ It is as if they are saying ‘it was there time, nothing you could do about it.’ Hannah get’s married: so it goes, it was her time. Thousands die in the bombing of Dresden: so it goes, it was there time.
The books also examine agency in similar ways. In Holder of the World Gabriel Legge is described as having no equal in Salem. He get’s this agency from his experiences, from the places he has been, things he has done. These are places and things the rest of Salem has not seen or done. So Gabriel get’s higher agency. When I was reading Slaughterhouse – Five I was wondering why Billy was so quick to believe everything the tralfamadorians told him. And then I realized that they, like Gabriel, had agency from experience. They had been places and seen and done things Billy couldn’t even imagine. And so it follows that he assumed they had superior intelligence from their experiences. Experience = knowledge = agency.
Basically it worked out quite nicely that I ended up reading both of these books at the same time because they were both very good and they complemented each other well. I found it rather handy. Go read Slaughterhouse – Five if you have not and good luck on finals everyone!!
Billy’s time travelling was what first struck me in comparison to Holder of the World. Obviously, Venn is working on a time machine in the novel, and while Billy’s time traveling is not done with the aide of a machine the Tralfamadorians (aliens Billy is convinced he was abducted by) say that all things (plants, animals, people, etc) are machines because we have no free will. So in that sense they are both time traveling by means of machine—one a man made machine, the other a man machine. The other part of the time traveling that was similar in both books was the jumping between present and past (and in Slaughterhouse – Five’s case the future as well). Holder of the World jumps between Beigh’s story and Hannah Easton Fitch Legge’s (haha) story and they become interconnected. In slaughterhouse - Five there is a quasi base story of Billy going to fight in World War II, and then it jumps around all over the place from his birth to his death to his wedding night, etc. I see this jumping between times technique as a very post-modern style of writing. There is a story within a story within a story and there are back stories and side stories and seemingly random and jumbled up stories. This is very unlike books from before post-modernism in which there was a story and you followed it from start to finish.
The concept of time is also examined in both books (both with time travel and with out). In Holder of the World Venn says Hannah married Gabriel Legge because it was her time to get married—a very determinist way to look at life. If Hannah got married because it was her time then this displays a belief that everything is predetermined and things happen when they do because that is when they were supposed to happen (determinism). In Slaughterhouse – Five the Tralfamadorians teach Billy that we are all machines and have no free will or ability to make decisions. They also show Billy that time is kind of a concept of the human mind and all time exists at once. So it’s kind of like you die, but you are still living in every other moment of your life. This is also in its own way determinism. Just as Venn looks at Hannah getting married as her ‘time’, Billy is living ‘times’ of his life—his time to go to war, his time to get married, his time to die. This even affects the way the tralfamadorians (and Billy) look at death. Any time someone dies in the novel (be it thousands of people, a horse or a glass of Champaign) the description of the death always ends with ‘so it goes.’ It is as if they are saying ‘it was there time, nothing you could do about it.’ Hannah get’s married: so it goes, it was her time. Thousands die in the bombing of Dresden: so it goes, it was there time.
The books also examine agency in similar ways. In Holder of the World Gabriel Legge is described as having no equal in Salem. He get’s this agency from his experiences, from the places he has been, things he has done. These are places and things the rest of Salem has not seen or done. So Gabriel get’s higher agency. When I was reading Slaughterhouse – Five I was wondering why Billy was so quick to believe everything the tralfamadorians told him. And then I realized that they, like Gabriel, had agency from experience. They had been places and seen and done things Billy couldn’t even imagine. And so it follows that he assumed they had superior intelligence from their experiences. Experience = knowledge = agency.
Basically it worked out quite nicely that I ended up reading both of these books at the same time because they were both very good and they complemented each other well. I found it rather handy. Go read Slaughterhouse – Five if you have not and good luck on finals everyone!!
Thursday, April 16, 2009
"What You Want"
So this evening I was in my car, racing back to campus to try (alas, in vain) to be on time for a floor meeting, and I had my IPod on shuffle (a tactic to keep my eyes on the road and off the IPod screen that has proven to be rather difficult for me because I tend to want to skip songs I’m not in the mood for. It’s frustrating because I can’t; I’m driving). The song “What You Want” from Legally Blonde the musical came up. As I was singing along (another car habit) I realized that it (both song and the musical itself) totally pertained to strategies and tactics. Eureka: a blog topic!
Wednesday morning we decided as a group that a goal is what you want to accomplish (duh), a strategy is a generally idea of how you want to go about accomplishing the goal and a tactic is an actual action that you act out in order to achieve the goal. So basically a tactic is a more specific, acted upon part of a strategy. For example we looked at the tea bagging protests that happened Wednesday. The goal was (if I am not mistaken) to lower taxes. The strategy was to rise up the people and inspire and spark protest. The tactic was, well, tea bagging. The twitter, facebook and TV promotions could also be called tactics.
But how does Legally Blonde fit in? Elle Woods, the stories protagonist, has a clear goal, a strategy and tactics that are shown within the play. For those of you who haven’t seen the musical, it basically follows the same plot of the 2001 movie version. If you haven’t seen the movie version, go shoot yourself in the foot. Everyone has seen that movie, get with it. But for now, here is a plot synopsis.
Elle’s goal is fairly simply. She’s been dumped by the man she believes to be ‘the one’ – Warner - because she’s not serious enough for the future Harvard Law student. Elle’s goal is to get Warner back and to make I'm realize that he still loves her. Her strategy is to prove she is serious. She has several tactics to accomplish this. One tactic is to get into Harvard law. This in itself is also another goal with its own strategy and tactics. Elle’s strategy to get in is “What [Harvard] Wants”. Her tactics to prove this are as follows. First Elle must get her parents to agree to pay for the expensive education (technically also a goal, but really this could go on all day so we won’t go there). After this she must get a good enough LSAT score (“of more than 174”) to be even considered by Harvard, which she accomplishes by studying rather than going to parties. To top it off she’ll “need a killer essay” to even be able to hope to get accepted. Rather than writing an essay (because after all “an essay’s so boring and so much does not fit”) Elle and the entire UCLA marching band descend upon the office of the Harvard acceptance committee and insists that she is exactly what they want.
I suppose all of these tactics are also in their way minor tactics to reach the major goal: operation ‘get Warner back’. They are like tactics to accomplish a tactic. Once Elle’s first major tactic to get Warner back (get into Harvard) is accomplished, she must then succeed in getting his attention. For this she tries several friend suggested methods including “shaking her junk” and “getting a chip on her shoulder”. Eventually Elle realizes that she must actually get serious in order to prove to Warner that she is serious. Her tactic is to actually study. Do homework and try in her classes. Elle’s final tactic is to win an actual court case that no one believes she can win (which she does using a finely tuned ‘gay-dar’, the always handy ‘bend and snap’ and her knowledge of hair care). Her strategy, and the tactics that puts it into action, succeeds because in one of the last scenes of the show Warner proposes to Elle. Unfortunately for him Elle’s journey of strategies and tactics has led her to discover that she deserves better and she doesn’t need him and her answer is “Thank you, but no.” Denied.
But despite the fact that Elle’s original goal was not the same as what she realized at the end she wanted, her series of strategy and tactics clearly worked. Elle, along with a group of trusted friends, planned out (and admittedly fumbled through) a strategic plan of action (tactics) and in the end achieved their goal (Elle does in fact find love, though it’s not Warner). Like Klein and Juffer show, it is all good and fine to have a goal, but without effective strategy and tactic that goal goes nowhere.
Wednesday morning we decided as a group that a goal is what you want to accomplish (duh), a strategy is a generally idea of how you want to go about accomplishing the goal and a tactic is an actual action that you act out in order to achieve the goal. So basically a tactic is a more specific, acted upon part of a strategy. For example we looked at the tea bagging protests that happened Wednesday. The goal was (if I am not mistaken) to lower taxes. The strategy was to rise up the people and inspire and spark protest. The tactic was, well, tea bagging. The twitter, facebook and TV promotions could also be called tactics.
But how does Legally Blonde fit in? Elle Woods, the stories protagonist, has a clear goal, a strategy and tactics that are shown within the play. For those of you who haven’t seen the musical, it basically follows the same plot of the 2001 movie version. If you haven’t seen the movie version, go shoot yourself in the foot. Everyone has seen that movie, get with it. But for now, here is a plot synopsis.
Elle’s goal is fairly simply. She’s been dumped by the man she believes to be ‘the one’ – Warner - because she’s not serious enough for the future Harvard Law student. Elle’s goal is to get Warner back and to make I'm realize that he still loves her. Her strategy is to prove she is serious. She has several tactics to accomplish this. One tactic is to get into Harvard law. This in itself is also another goal with its own strategy and tactics. Elle’s strategy to get in is “What [Harvard] Wants”. Her tactics to prove this are as follows. First Elle must get her parents to agree to pay for the expensive education (technically also a goal, but really this could go on all day so we won’t go there). After this she must get a good enough LSAT score (“of more than 174”) to be even considered by Harvard, which she accomplishes by studying rather than going to parties. To top it off she’ll “need a killer essay” to even be able to hope to get accepted. Rather than writing an essay (because after all “an essay’s so boring and so much does not fit”) Elle and the entire UCLA marching band descend upon the office of the Harvard acceptance committee and insists that she is exactly what they want.
I suppose all of these tactics are also in their way minor tactics to reach the major goal: operation ‘get Warner back’. They are like tactics to accomplish a tactic. Once Elle’s first major tactic to get Warner back (get into Harvard) is accomplished, she must then succeed in getting his attention. For this she tries several friend suggested methods including “shaking her junk” and “getting a chip on her shoulder”. Eventually Elle realizes that she must actually get serious in order to prove to Warner that she is serious. Her tactic is to actually study. Do homework and try in her classes. Elle’s final tactic is to win an actual court case that no one believes she can win (which she does using a finely tuned ‘gay-dar’, the always handy ‘bend and snap’ and her knowledge of hair care). Her strategy, and the tactics that puts it into action, succeeds because in one of the last scenes of the show Warner proposes to Elle. Unfortunately for him Elle’s journey of strategies and tactics has led her to discover that she deserves better and she doesn’t need him and her answer is “Thank you, but no.” Denied.
But despite the fact that Elle’s original goal was not the same as what she realized at the end she wanted, her series of strategy and tactics clearly worked. Elle, along with a group of trusted friends, planned out (and admittedly fumbled through) a strategic plan of action (tactics) and in the end achieved their goal (Elle does in fact find love, though it’s not Warner). Like Klein and Juffer show, it is all good and fine to have a goal, but without effective strategy and tactic that goal goes nowhere.
Wednesday, April 8, 2009
Anging Backwards
“While, everyone else was aging, I was getting younger... all alone.”- Benjamin Button, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. This weekend I went and saw Benjamin Button on campus. While there I ran into Amy, who jokingly told me to blog about the movie. But funny story by half way through the movie we both realized that blogging about it was actually a legitimate option this unit. I know. I know I’m blogging about another movie. So shoot me, they’re good examples. For anyone who does not know the movie is about a man who is born an old man and gets younger as he grows older. His body is getting progressively younger while his mind is growing as a normal mind would. This is a perfect example of time and space and how people’s circumstances and so on can drastically change the way they relate to and think about time and space. Throughout the movie there are many instances where this relationship is displayed and examined.
The movie opens with the story of a clockmaker who was commissioned to make a clock for the new train station. Before the clock is finished his son dies in the World War 1, devastating the clockmaker. On the day the new clock is unveiled we find out that he made it so that the hands move backwards. The clockmaker says that he did this on purpose, that his hope is that time will move backwards and bring his son, and all the other young men lost at war back home safely. This brings up the movies first interesting point. When we have suffered a loss we tend to dwell in the past, wishing we could go back and change things or not take people for granted. Rather than moving forward we. Like the clockmaker, will time to move backwards instead. We fight a losing battle against time because it will never do what we so wish at those times that it would. Sometimes we are like the clockmaker and let that battle consume us, becoming almost unable to function because of our anger, frustration and pain caused by time trudging forward no matter what happens to us, no matter how much we wish to stop it or make it go back.
Later in the movie we meet Benjamin, who was born shortly after the clock was unveiled. We are left to assume that his backward aging is somehow connected to the clock. As Benjamin grows up he has to start facing the truth that he is different, that time and space mean something different to him than they do to others and that his relationship with other people. When Benjamin is about 10 or 12 he meets a little girl about the same age named Daisy. They become close friends because despite what Benjamin looks like on the outside, they are both children. It is clear that Benjamin is able to relate more to her than to the older people he lives with and looks like. One night the two sneak downstairs when they should be sleeping and sit under the table and talk, like a fort. Daisy’s grandmother catches them and harshly scolds Benjamin for getting so close to a girl Daisy’s age. Benjamin’s mother comes to console him and explains that people don’t understand because he is a ‘man-child’. Benjamin’s outward appearance and the way time is moving for him (backwards) is affecting where he can go and what he can do. His space is limited and different from everyone else’s.
Benjamin’s relationship with Daisy is severely impacted by his growing younger. It is fairly easy to tell that they are in love for most of the movie. But a relationship at the beginning of the movie when they meet is not exactly socially acceptable because of the apparent (though false) age difference and at the end of the movie it becomes impractical as Benjamin becomes a teenager, then toddler, then baby. So in order to have the relationship they desire they must meet in the middle for the few years there ages are close both in appearance and actuality. There time together is limited. Unlike a normal couple they cannot grow old together, nor can they raise children together. When Daisy becomes pregnant Benjamin feels forced to leave because he wants his child to have a father, not a playmate and as he says, Daisy cannot raise both of them. Daisy eventually marries someone else and they agree it is for the best. Benjamin’s time with the woman he loves and with his child are both limited because of his reverse aging.
Time itself is a completely different thing for Benjamin than it is for us. Most of us don’t know when we are going to die and could live to be very very old. But Benjamin, being born in the body of a man in his 80’s has a limited time. He is almost like a ticking clock. He can only live until he becomes a baby, and in that way his entire life is limited to a certain possible time span. The quote I opened with makes a big point. He was going through all of this alone. Benjamin was the only one growing younger, the only person whose time and space is affected in that. This puts him in a different space than everyone else. He is alone. Kind of a bummer. But it shows how just one factor can totally change how someone relate to time and space. Like Juffer and Klein both point out, time and space are by no means constant or universal. They are different for everyone. And yet at the same time they never really change. Only our relationship to them changes. That being said, I’ll leave you with a quote from the trailer (you know, one of those things they show in the trailer but you realize later was never in the movie…):
“Life can only be understood looking backward. It must be lived forward.”
The movie opens with the story of a clockmaker who was commissioned to make a clock for the new train station. Before the clock is finished his son dies in the World War 1, devastating the clockmaker. On the day the new clock is unveiled we find out that he made it so that the hands move backwards. The clockmaker says that he did this on purpose, that his hope is that time will move backwards and bring his son, and all the other young men lost at war back home safely. This brings up the movies first interesting point. When we have suffered a loss we tend to dwell in the past, wishing we could go back and change things or not take people for granted. Rather than moving forward we. Like the clockmaker, will time to move backwards instead. We fight a losing battle against time because it will never do what we so wish at those times that it would. Sometimes we are like the clockmaker and let that battle consume us, becoming almost unable to function because of our anger, frustration and pain caused by time trudging forward no matter what happens to us, no matter how much we wish to stop it or make it go back.
Later in the movie we meet Benjamin, who was born shortly after the clock was unveiled. We are left to assume that his backward aging is somehow connected to the clock. As Benjamin grows up he has to start facing the truth that he is different, that time and space mean something different to him than they do to others and that his relationship with other people. When Benjamin is about 10 or 12 he meets a little girl about the same age named Daisy. They become close friends because despite what Benjamin looks like on the outside, they are both children. It is clear that Benjamin is able to relate more to her than to the older people he lives with and looks like. One night the two sneak downstairs when they should be sleeping and sit under the table and talk, like a fort. Daisy’s grandmother catches them and harshly scolds Benjamin for getting so close to a girl Daisy’s age. Benjamin’s mother comes to console him and explains that people don’t understand because he is a ‘man-child’. Benjamin’s outward appearance and the way time is moving for him (backwards) is affecting where he can go and what he can do. His space is limited and different from everyone else’s.
Benjamin’s relationship with Daisy is severely impacted by his growing younger. It is fairly easy to tell that they are in love for most of the movie. But a relationship at the beginning of the movie when they meet is not exactly socially acceptable because of the apparent (though false) age difference and at the end of the movie it becomes impractical as Benjamin becomes a teenager, then toddler, then baby. So in order to have the relationship they desire they must meet in the middle for the few years there ages are close both in appearance and actuality. There time together is limited. Unlike a normal couple they cannot grow old together, nor can they raise children together. When Daisy becomes pregnant Benjamin feels forced to leave because he wants his child to have a father, not a playmate and as he says, Daisy cannot raise both of them. Daisy eventually marries someone else and they agree it is for the best. Benjamin’s time with the woman he loves and with his child are both limited because of his reverse aging.
Time itself is a completely different thing for Benjamin than it is for us. Most of us don’t know when we are going to die and could live to be very very old. But Benjamin, being born in the body of a man in his 80’s has a limited time. He is almost like a ticking clock. He can only live until he becomes a baby, and in that way his entire life is limited to a certain possible time span. The quote I opened with makes a big point. He was going through all of this alone. Benjamin was the only one growing younger, the only person whose time and space is affected in that. This puts him in a different space than everyone else. He is alone. Kind of a bummer. But it shows how just one factor can totally change how someone relate to time and space. Like Juffer and Klein both point out, time and space are by no means constant or universal. They are different for everyone. And yet at the same time they never really change. Only our relationship to them changes. That being said, I’ll leave you with a quote from the trailer (you know, one of those things they show in the trailer but you realize later was never in the movie…):
“Life can only be understood looking backward. It must be lived forward.”
Thursday, March 26, 2009
Single Mothers and Retelling Bible Stories
So there is this new show on NBC called Kings that I am absolutely in love with right now. Seriously, anyone who talks to me on a frequent basis knows I won’t shut up about it. Incase people don’t watch it (go do so!), it is basically about what America (or rather an American-like country) would be like with a king, and it is based off the biblical story of King David (and King Saul as well I suppose). I think one of the things I enjoy so much about it is being able to catch all the parallels to the Biblical story because it’s fun to see how they modernized the events and it just makes me feel smart. The main character in the show is David Shepherd (the biblical David was a shepherd) who is the youngest of 8 sons (as the biblical David was). David’s mother is a single mother named Jesse (the name of the Biblical David’s father). The king’s name is Silas (counterpart – King Saul), his son’s name is Jack (nickname for john or Jonathan—Saul’s son and David’s friend) and his daughter (with whom David is beginning to be ‘romantically involved’) is named Michelle (counterpart – Michal, Saul’s daughter and David’s wife). The reverend at the palace is named Reverend Samuels (counterpart – The prophet Samuel). The plot also closely follows that of the biblical story, though obviously with modern twists. It’s a smart, well thought out story line and I am tragically addicted already. There is a plot synopsis (albeit very poor—it’s Wikipedia after all) here, But I’d suggest watching the show.
Now to the point. The part of the show I’m going to focus on is David’s mother, and more specifically the choice to make her a single mother. While I found the choice to turn the Biblical David’s father into a single mother intriguing from the get go, I think this is an especially interesting concept in light of reading Jane Juffer. Juffer talks about how less than two decades ago politicians were running around saying that single mother we’re more or less evil and caused all of society’s problems and so forth. She then points out how in the last few years this image has shifted. She sites Gilmore Girls and Bush’s talk of single mother’s being heroes. This show, this choice to turn a formally male role into that of a single mother (much like the movies we talked about in class such as Invasion of the Body Snatchers) goes right along with what Juffer is talking about.
But I find myself asking why. Why the switch from a (presumably) married father to a single mother? It’s not that I’m opposed to the switch, I’m simply intrigued. Is it merely an attempt to make the show have more modern relevance? The shows writer Michael Green did say that the wanted to take the story and “re-conceive it while still being faithful to the original material but at the same time exploring the themes, modernizing it in every way.” And a single mother does add a very modern, very non-biblical twist (not to say that the Bible is against single motherhood, just that it wasn’t a popular thing in those times). With the percent of single mothers seeming to be constantly on the rise this certainly seems a valid reason for Jesse to be a single mom. Or are the show’s writers trying to make a statement about single mothers being sufficient parenting for a child? David certainly seems very polite and well brought up where as Jack for example, brought up by both a mother and a father, seems to be prone to selfishness, rudeness and materialism. This points out that it may not be about the number of parents but who the parents are that impacts a child more and also seems like a valid reason for Jesse’s switch. Or are they following Bush’s proclamation of the single mother as a hero, showing her as this woman of strength who raised 8 sons after the tragic death of her husband in a war. She does appear to be a woman of strength and virtue, proud of her son’s accomplishment (watch the show to find out what) but weary of politics and fame. So perhaps this is the reason they chose to make Jesse a single mom.
Maybe it is a combination of the above or something I have not thought of. I guess it’s hard to tell exactly why they made that particular decision until there are more episodes and we see the character evolve and such. And even then it’s often hard to tell exactly what someone’s intentions were. But I think it is a very interesting choice and one that I am excited to see grow as the season(s) progress. One more plug for the show, because I am truly overly excited about it: Watch it Sunday nights on NBC at 7pm! :]
Now to the point. The part of the show I’m going to focus on is David’s mother, and more specifically the choice to make her a single mother. While I found the choice to turn the Biblical David’s father into a single mother intriguing from the get go, I think this is an especially interesting concept in light of reading Jane Juffer. Juffer talks about how less than two decades ago politicians were running around saying that single mother we’re more or less evil and caused all of society’s problems and so forth. She then points out how in the last few years this image has shifted. She sites Gilmore Girls and Bush’s talk of single mother’s being heroes. This show, this choice to turn a formally male role into that of a single mother (much like the movies we talked about in class such as Invasion of the Body Snatchers) goes right along with what Juffer is talking about.
But I find myself asking why. Why the switch from a (presumably) married father to a single mother? It’s not that I’m opposed to the switch, I’m simply intrigued. Is it merely an attempt to make the show have more modern relevance? The shows writer Michael Green did say that the wanted to take the story and “re-conceive it while still being faithful to the original material but at the same time exploring the themes, modernizing it in every way.” And a single mother does add a very modern, very non-biblical twist (not to say that the Bible is against single motherhood, just that it wasn’t a popular thing in those times). With the percent of single mothers seeming to be constantly on the rise this certainly seems a valid reason for Jesse to be a single mom. Or are the show’s writers trying to make a statement about single mothers being sufficient parenting for a child? David certainly seems very polite and well brought up where as Jack for example, brought up by both a mother and a father, seems to be prone to selfishness, rudeness and materialism. This points out that it may not be about the number of parents but who the parents are that impacts a child more and also seems like a valid reason for Jesse’s switch. Or are they following Bush’s proclamation of the single mother as a hero, showing her as this woman of strength who raised 8 sons after the tragic death of her husband in a war. She does appear to be a woman of strength and virtue, proud of her son’s accomplishment (watch the show to find out what) but weary of politics and fame. So perhaps this is the reason they chose to make Jesse a single mom.
Maybe it is a combination of the above or something I have not thought of. I guess it’s hard to tell exactly why they made that particular decision until there are more episodes and we see the character evolve and such. And even then it’s often hard to tell exactly what someone’s intentions were. But I think it is a very interesting choice and one that I am excited to see grow as the season(s) progress. One more plug for the show, because I am truly overly excited about it: Watch it Sunday nights on NBC at 7pm! :]
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
On Visa commercials and poor song choices
So last night I was watching TV (not a movie by the wayJ) and the commercials came on. Again. Being generally fed up with the absurd amount of commercials in television normally I found it especially unnecessary for there to be a five minute commercial break in between each and every contestant on American Idol. So when the commercials came on for the umpteenth time I got up to check my email, anything to avoid yet another ‘Hefty’ garbage bags add. But as I was walking away from the TV I heard the opening riffs of a song I knew and loved. I stopped dead in my tracks and looked back to see what company could have possibly chosen ‘Tuesday Afternoon’ by The Moody Blues (I know I know, I’ve finally broken out of my movie rut and now I’m stuck in a Moody Blues rut. But what can you do?)as the song for their commercial. At first I thought perhaps they were on tour and coming to the area—and exciting notion indeed—but upon watching further I realized it was a Visa commercial. Here’s the link to the commercial if you want to watch it.
Basically the commercial starts with part of the song and has fish and such swimming around in the background. Then a voice comes over saying “When was the last time you went to the aquarium – pause– with your daughter – pause– on a Tuesday?” As he is saying this the fish in the background form the word ‘go’. He then goes on to explain how Visa card are faster and more convenient than cash or check (as a former employee at McDonalds and someone who has handled all the forms of paying many times I feel inclined to ask “faster and more convenient for whom?” Certainly not the cashier let me tell you) and how thousands of people are ‘going place’ with Visa. After realizing what the commercial was about—consumerism, buying things in order to be happy, essentially ‘money (or credit cards) can buy happiness’—the song choice really struck me as odd. It does not seem to fit the feel of the commercial at all. In order to illustrate this I will deconstruct the song and what the Visa commercial is saying.
Tuesday Afternoon (Full lyrics here)
Now I'm on my way – Not going
It doesn't matter to me – Worry
Chasing the clouds away, the trees are drawing me near (Nature) – Material/man made things
I'm looking at myself reflections of my mind – looking into other things/the world
So gently swaying through the fairyland of love – Um, industrial world
If you'll just come with me you'll see the beauty of Tuesday afternoon – Beauty/happiness in material things, things you can buy
So in essence the song has always seemed to me to be very…pure I guess, for lack of a better word. It’s all about finding joy peace and happiness in the simply things—clouds, trees, a Tuesday afternoon—things you don’t have to pay for.
Visa, to me has a very different message. It’s hard to deconstruct Visa as it does not have lyrics or what have you to do so with, but I can give a general message that Visa projects that will illustrate why it clashes so horribly with its song choice. In essence, as I said before, Visa is all about buying happiness. They hide behind notions of family time (going to the aquarium with your daughter, etc) and taking time to relax and be alone, but in essence they are all saying the same thing. They make it seem as though you need a Visa card in order to obtain these simple pleasures. And why would you need a Visa card if you did not have to pay for these things. So what Visa is saying is that in order to be happy or spend time with your family you have to spend money. The exact opposite of what The Moody Blues are saying in ‘Tuesday Afternoon’. The song and the commercial are like oil and water. They simply don’t mix. It is consumerism vs. simple, costless pleasures. It is finding joy in watching the clouds vs. paying for entertainment. Therefore the central argument or message of the song is not the central message or argument of the commercial, even though it is essentially what the commercial is all about. In a way, the center is not the center, though perhaps that is a rather lose analysis. It makes me wonder what Derrida would have to say about Visa’s poor song choice, an interesting notion indeed.
I would advise Visa to be more careful about their song choices in the future, because although I love to see The Moody Blues recognized (something that rarely happens because they came from—though were not limited to—a decade so vastly monopolized by the Beatles) I hate to think of how horrendously different the two messages in the commercial are and would prefer they had just left the Song alone. If the band were dead I have a feeling they would be turning over in their graves at the use of their song in such a way. As they are still alive and kicking that is not a valid opinion so instead I am going to chose to say that they are in all likely hoods not the commercial's biggest fans.
Basically the commercial starts with part of the song and has fish and such swimming around in the background. Then a voice comes over saying “When was the last time you went to the aquarium – pause– with your daughter – pause– on a Tuesday?” As he is saying this the fish in the background form the word ‘go’. He then goes on to explain how Visa card are faster and more convenient than cash or check (as a former employee at McDonalds and someone who has handled all the forms of paying many times I feel inclined to ask “faster and more convenient for whom?” Certainly not the cashier let me tell you) and how thousands of people are ‘going place’ with Visa. After realizing what the commercial was about—consumerism, buying things in order to be happy, essentially ‘money (or credit cards) can buy happiness’—the song choice really struck me as odd. It does not seem to fit the feel of the commercial at all. In order to illustrate this I will deconstruct the song and what the Visa commercial is saying.
Tuesday Afternoon (Full lyrics here)
Now I'm on my way – Not going
It doesn't matter to me – Worry
Chasing the clouds away, the trees are drawing me near (Nature) – Material/man made things
I'm looking at myself reflections of my mind – looking into other things/the world
So gently swaying through the fairyland of love – Um, industrial world
If you'll just come with me you'll see the beauty of Tuesday afternoon – Beauty/happiness in material things, things you can buy
So in essence the song has always seemed to me to be very…pure I guess, for lack of a better word. It’s all about finding joy peace and happiness in the simply things—clouds, trees, a Tuesday afternoon—things you don’t have to pay for.
Visa, to me has a very different message. It’s hard to deconstruct Visa as it does not have lyrics or what have you to do so with, but I can give a general message that Visa projects that will illustrate why it clashes so horribly with its song choice. In essence, as I said before, Visa is all about buying happiness. They hide behind notions of family time (going to the aquarium with your daughter, etc) and taking time to relax and be alone, but in essence they are all saying the same thing. They make it seem as though you need a Visa card in order to obtain these simple pleasures. And why would you need a Visa card if you did not have to pay for these things. So what Visa is saying is that in order to be happy or spend time with your family you have to spend money. The exact opposite of what The Moody Blues are saying in ‘Tuesday Afternoon’. The song and the commercial are like oil and water. They simply don’t mix. It is consumerism vs. simple, costless pleasures. It is finding joy in watching the clouds vs. paying for entertainment. Therefore the central argument or message of the song is not the central message or argument of the commercial, even though it is essentially what the commercial is all about. In a way, the center is not the center, though perhaps that is a rather lose analysis. It makes me wonder what Derrida would have to say about Visa’s poor song choice, an interesting notion indeed.
I would advise Visa to be more careful about their song choices in the future, because although I love to see The Moody Blues recognized (something that rarely happens because they came from—though were not limited to—a decade so vastly monopolized by the Beatles) I hate to think of how horrendously different the two messages in the commercial are and would prefer they had just left the Song alone. If the band were dead I have a feeling they would be turning over in their graves at the use of their song in such a way. As they are still alive and kicking that is not a valid opinion so instead I am going to chose to say that they are in all likely hoods not the commercial's biggest fans.
Sunday, March 8, 2009
What the greatest 60's band has to say on 'lack'.
Looking back I noticed that three out of my four blog posts have been about movies. This makes it seem as though I do nothing but watch movies. However; contrary to how it may seem I do many other things in my free time. It occurred to me that I should find something other than movies to write about. One thing I enjoy doing other than frequenting Parkwood 18 in St. Cloud is listening to music. One of my all time favorite bands is a band that originated in the 60’s (no, not the Beatles). The band is called The Moody Blues and to me they are the greatest band the 60’s produced. No offence intended to any Beatles fans :). My favorite album by them is Days of Future Passed, their second album, released in 1967. On it they teamed up with the London Festival Orchestra to create an album that goes through a whole day in song, starting at dawn and ending at night. On both the first and last songs of the album there are parts of a poem, written by Graeme Edge, drummer and song writer for the band.
The poem is about night time and the transition from night to day. It is fairly short so I will put the whole thing on here rather than a link:
Cold hearted orb that rules the night
Removes the colors from our sight.
Red is grey and yellow white,
But we decide which is right.And which is an illusion?
Pinprick holes in a colorless sky,
Let insipid figures of light pass by,
The mighty light of ten thousand suns,
Challenges infinity and is soon gone.
Night time, to some a brief interlude,
To others the fear of solitude.
Brave helios wake up your steeds,
Bring the warmth the countryside needs.
...
Breathe deep the gathering gloom,
Watch lights fade from every room.
Bedsitter people look back and lament,
Another day's useless energy spent.
Impassioned lovers wrestle as one,
Lonely man cries for love and has none.
New mother picks up and suckles her son,
Senior citizens wish they were young.
'Cold hearted orb that rules the night
Removes the colors from our sight.
Red is grey and yellow white,
But we decide which is right.
And which is an illusion?
As I was driving back from my spring break trip I was listening to this album and once again struggling to decide what to write about for my blog. But as I was listening to the words in the poem I noticed how it examined lack, or more specifically the relationship between ‘lack’ and ‘have’. Lines 16 to 21 all focus on differences between people: people who have youth vs. people who are old, people who have love vs. people who do not, etc. this then reminded me of our discussion in class about how we define ourselves and how one way is by what we are not. This poem hits on that exact relationship or method of self definition. As Jacques Lacan said in The Agency of the Letter in the Unconscious "I think where I am not; therefore I am where I do not think." In other words, I think about what I am not and therefore I am the things I don’t think about. In terms of the poem, when the senior citizens wish they were young they are focusing on what they are not (young) and they are what they are not thinking about (old). The ‘lonely man’ cries for love, thinking about what he does not have/what he lacks—love—while being/having what he is not thinking about—loneliness. In the same way we often seem to go through life ‘thinking where we are not’. We are defining our existence through what we are not rather than what we are; because for everything you are there is a whole list of things you are not.
After I started to look closer at the poem I also noticed another relevant part. The line “Night time, to some a brief interlude, to others the fear of solitude” made me start thinking of what Lacan said about the unconscious. The same signifier (night time) is to some nothing more than an interlude between days, but to others it brings out the fear of being alone. Lacan would say that this difference has to do with eh persons unconscious—made up of experiences, fears, desires, random thoughts, etc—and would work to help them become aware of their unconscious through psychoanalysis in order to better understand themselves and why the same signifier makes them feel this way instead of that way.
Finally, I started to think of other Moody Blues lyrics and how they might pertain to Lacan. After giving it some thought I realized that the song ‘Nights in White Satin’ (also off Days of Future Passed) is also defined by lack. I won’t put up all of the lyrics because it is too long, but here is the link to them. In the song there are lines like “Nights in white satin, never reaching the end, letters I’ve written, never meaning to send”, “Beauty Id always missed” and “Just what I’m going through, they can understand” are all about lack—lack of beauty, lack of end, lack of understanding and so forth. Just as ‘I Can’t Get No Satisfaction’ was dictated by what the writer lacked, so is ‘Nights in White Satin’ dictated by what the writer lacked. As I said before, so much of how we see and define ourselves is dictated by lack, what we are not, ‘where we do not think’. This is not necessarily good or bad, simply an observation on how society defines itself. An observation that Lacan says in key to unlocking and understanding the unconscious.
The poem is about night time and the transition from night to day. It is fairly short so I will put the whole thing on here rather than a link:
Cold hearted orb that rules the night
Removes the colors from our sight.
Red is grey and yellow white,
But we decide which is right.And which is an illusion?
Pinprick holes in a colorless sky,
Let insipid figures of light pass by,
The mighty light of ten thousand suns,
Challenges infinity and is soon gone.
Night time, to some a brief interlude,
To others the fear of solitude.
Brave helios wake up your steeds,
Bring the warmth the countryside needs.
...
Breathe deep the gathering gloom,
Watch lights fade from every room.
Bedsitter people look back and lament,
Another day's useless energy spent.
Impassioned lovers wrestle as one,
Lonely man cries for love and has none.
New mother picks up and suckles her son,
Senior citizens wish they were young.
'Cold hearted orb that rules the night
Removes the colors from our sight.
Red is grey and yellow white,
But we decide which is right.
And which is an illusion?
As I was driving back from my spring break trip I was listening to this album and once again struggling to decide what to write about for my blog. But as I was listening to the words in the poem I noticed how it examined lack, or more specifically the relationship between ‘lack’ and ‘have’. Lines 16 to 21 all focus on differences between people: people who have youth vs. people who are old, people who have love vs. people who do not, etc. this then reminded me of our discussion in class about how we define ourselves and how one way is by what we are not. This poem hits on that exact relationship or method of self definition. As Jacques Lacan said in The Agency of the Letter in the Unconscious "I think where I am not; therefore I am where I do not think." In other words, I think about what I am not and therefore I am the things I don’t think about. In terms of the poem, when the senior citizens wish they were young they are focusing on what they are not (young) and they are what they are not thinking about (old). The ‘lonely man’ cries for love, thinking about what he does not have/what he lacks—love—while being/having what he is not thinking about—loneliness. In the same way we often seem to go through life ‘thinking where we are not’. We are defining our existence through what we are not rather than what we are; because for everything you are there is a whole list of things you are not.
After I started to look closer at the poem I also noticed another relevant part. The line “Night time, to some a brief interlude, to others the fear of solitude” made me start thinking of what Lacan said about the unconscious. The same signifier (night time) is to some nothing more than an interlude between days, but to others it brings out the fear of being alone. Lacan would say that this difference has to do with eh persons unconscious—made up of experiences, fears, desires, random thoughts, etc—and would work to help them become aware of their unconscious through psychoanalysis in order to better understand themselves and why the same signifier makes them feel this way instead of that way.
Finally, I started to think of other Moody Blues lyrics and how they might pertain to Lacan. After giving it some thought I realized that the song ‘Nights in White Satin’ (also off Days of Future Passed) is also defined by lack. I won’t put up all of the lyrics because it is too long, but here is the link to them. In the song there are lines like “Nights in white satin, never reaching the end, letters I’ve written, never meaning to send”, “Beauty Id always missed” and “Just what I’m going through, they can understand” are all about lack—lack of beauty, lack of end, lack of understanding and so forth. Just as ‘I Can’t Get No Satisfaction’ was dictated by what the writer lacked, so is ‘Nights in White Satin’ dictated by what the writer lacked. As I said before, so much of how we see and define ourselves is dictated by lack, what we are not, ‘where we do not think’. This is not necessarily good or bad, simply an observation on how society defines itself. An observation that Lacan says in key to unlocking and understanding the unconscious.
Friday, February 20, 2009
Horror Films as a Synecdoche for Societal Morality
So last Sunday night I went to see Friday the 13th (which I would actually recommend. As far as horror movies these days go it was pretty good. It had some legitimately scary moments, especially when my cell phone vibrated at a moment of intense suspense. But I digress.) After the movie my friends and I were talking about it and speculating on how good of a chance we would have of surviving a horror movie. We figured it was a pretty good one because we would never, for example, enter and old abandoned cabin in the middle of the woods in the middle of the night. Whether that makes us smart or a bunch of pansies is irrelevant. The point is we would probably not die. But soon the discussion turned a little deeper. We started looking at who died and what they were doing when they died. We noticed a trend.
In horror films there is a trend that I believe is a metaphor for how society views the world, or at least morality. In horror films most of the people who die are the people who are drinking, doing drug/other illegal things and having pre-marital sex. Think about it. Look at who died in the last horror film you saw. Take Friday the 13th as an example. Four people die while or right after having pre-marital sex, 4 die while doing or looking for drugs and drinking alcohol, one dies while driving a bout he stole and another dies while wakeboarding (topless I might add, adding insult to injury) behind the stolen boat. Or look at the Saw movies. Jigsaw (the killer) targets people who are drug dealers, murderers and rapists for his twisted style of justice, and most of those he targets don’t survive. Now look at the people who survive horror films. It’s usually the person who spends the whole movie trying to help/protect others. It is the brother out day and night on his motorcycle looking for his missing sister or the girl who has spent the better part of the last few years caring for her sick mother. There is a definite trend through-out horror films regarding who lives and who dies.
And then it hit us. This is not a coincidence. There is a reason behind all the naked women (though never naked men…but I digress again, as that is for a whole other blog post) and the partying. There is deeper meaning and insight on society hidden behind all the gore. Though we tend to view society as a whole as ‘enlightened’, ‘tolerant’ and beyond what I will call ‘religious morals’ for lack of a better term, I think horror films show differently. Analyzing horror films shows us that we as a society have not really moved to far in what activities we think are moral/admirable and what activities we think are immoral. Clearly we have not really moved past these so called religious morals. Because the moral of these horror films seems to be ‘doing these immoral acts will bring bad things’. The ‘bad guy’ in a horror film—such as Jigsaw or Jason—can almost be seen as an almost god-like figure, albeit very loosely. Perhaps they are better likened to Satan in that they do not so much judge as punish those who have been judged. I guess it is kind of a mix of God and Satan. They become both judge and punisher.
This realization turns horror films into a kind of synecdoche. They are a smaller part of culture/society that represents the morals of society as a whole. The ‘bad guy’ and the graphic deaths are a metaphor for the coming judgment and punishment for people who do these immoral things. It is as if the makers of the films are saying “drink, do drugs and have pre-marital sex and doom is imminent.” So pay attention next time you watch a horror film. Watch who lives and who dies and think about how that shows societies true thoughts on morality, whatever the popular perception about our morals might be.
In horror films there is a trend that I believe is a metaphor for how society views the world, or at least morality. In horror films most of the people who die are the people who are drinking, doing drug/other illegal things and having pre-marital sex. Think about it. Look at who died in the last horror film you saw. Take Friday the 13th as an example. Four people die while or right after having pre-marital sex, 4 die while doing or looking for drugs and drinking alcohol, one dies while driving a bout he stole and another dies while wakeboarding (topless I might add, adding insult to injury) behind the stolen boat. Or look at the Saw movies. Jigsaw (the killer) targets people who are drug dealers, murderers and rapists for his twisted style of justice, and most of those he targets don’t survive. Now look at the people who survive horror films. It’s usually the person who spends the whole movie trying to help/protect others. It is the brother out day and night on his motorcycle looking for his missing sister or the girl who has spent the better part of the last few years caring for her sick mother. There is a definite trend through-out horror films regarding who lives and who dies.
And then it hit us. This is not a coincidence. There is a reason behind all the naked women (though never naked men…but I digress again, as that is for a whole other blog post) and the partying. There is deeper meaning and insight on society hidden behind all the gore. Though we tend to view society as a whole as ‘enlightened’, ‘tolerant’ and beyond what I will call ‘religious morals’ for lack of a better term, I think horror films show differently. Analyzing horror films shows us that we as a society have not really moved to far in what activities we think are moral/admirable and what activities we think are immoral. Clearly we have not really moved past these so called religious morals. Because the moral of these horror films seems to be ‘doing these immoral acts will bring bad things’. The ‘bad guy’ in a horror film—such as Jigsaw or Jason—can almost be seen as an almost god-like figure, albeit very loosely. Perhaps they are better likened to Satan in that they do not so much judge as punish those who have been judged. I guess it is kind of a mix of God and Satan. They become both judge and punisher.
This realization turns horror films into a kind of synecdoche. They are a smaller part of culture/society that represents the morals of society as a whole. The ‘bad guy’ and the graphic deaths are a metaphor for the coming judgment and punishment for people who do these immoral things. It is as if the makers of the films are saying “drink, do drugs and have pre-marital sex and doom is imminent.” So pay attention next time you watch a horror film. Watch who lives and who dies and think about how that shows societies true thoughts on morality, whatever the popular perception about our morals might be.
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
Ideology and learnign that 'He's Just Not That Into You'
Last night I went to the new movie “He’s Just Not That Into you”. I won’t give away too much of the plot if you haven’t seen the movie, but I’ll give a general overview. The movie begins with a 5 year old girl named Gigi who is pushed and made fun of by a boy her age. To console her, Gigi’s mother tells her that line we’ve all heard before. He’s mean to you because he likes you. We’ve all heard it, seen it portrayed in movies and TV shows; we may even have believed or hoped it was true in our own lives. But years later Gigi has to come to terms with the fact that sometimes if a guy is mean to you, doesn’t call you back, or doesn’t seem to notice you, he’s just not interested. He’s not too intimidated, he doesn’t think you’re too good for him and he did not lose your number or get hit by a taxi. Yet we are all fed this line at one point or another, or ones like it. We are told things that make us feel better about ourselves, we hear stories that are the exception, but we take them to be the rule. Why? Why do we continue to listen to these types of idealistic sayings and stories that often never come true?
Think about it. All of those romance novels and chick flicks depict fairy tale like circumstances that have just the right amount of drama but always end the way everyone knows they should (and will). That is not real life. Most of the time relationships don’t work out as picture perfectly as movies and books depict. Yet we continue to read them and buy them and dream of our own prince charming who will come sweep us off our feet in the perfect way. Or look at music. Songs like Love Story by Taylor Swift, where the guy is super romantic and the girl is swept off her feet by the perfect worlds, teach us the same things about life. Things that are nice, and do sometimes happen, but are not the norm.
And it’s not just romance that is romanticized (ha!). Look at movies and books in general. Though the main characters may go through some rough patches and so on, the good guys almost always come out on top. But that is not how life always works. Sometimes the bad guy wins. Sometimes bad things happen to good people. Life does not always work the way we think it should.
As I was thinking about the movie (and other cultural influences) today I realized that that is what Jeff and Susan talk about in there chapter on Ideology in The Theory toolbox. In the chapter ideology is defined as “something that’s false or misleading because it’s mystifying.” It is an idea or thought or concept that sugar coats truth if you will. It tries to make whatever situation seem better or more positive. So if a guy doesn’t call you, he lost your number. If he’s mean to you, it’s because he likes you and wants to get your attention. We say these to our friends and ourselves because we want to believe them. They are much happier than the alternative option. But they are not (often) true.
But is this bad? Is it bad to be ideological? I don’t think so. To a point at least. At the risk of sounding like a broken record, I believe that it is about balance. I think it can be very harmful to live in a constant state of ideological thinking. It creates a delusional perception of reality that is probably not healthy to walk through life with. It seems like almost too far to fall from, and I believe a firm grasp on reality is healthy. As Fyodor Dostoevsky said, “For, after all, you do grow up, you do outgrow your ideals, which turn to dust and ashes, which are shattered into fragments; and if you have no other life, you just have to build one up out of these fragments. And all the time your soul is craving and longing for something else.” However what is wrong with seeing the best in people and the world and focusing on that. What is wrong with being hopeful, even if what you hope for is a long shot? There is nothing wrong with hoping. For as Emma Goldman once said, “Idealists...foolish enough to throw caution to the winds...have advanced mankind and have enriched the world.” We need a balance of reality and hopeful ideology, faith and reason, fear and courage in order to be truly successful.
Think about it. All of those romance novels and chick flicks depict fairy tale like circumstances that have just the right amount of drama but always end the way everyone knows they should (and will). That is not real life. Most of the time relationships don’t work out as picture perfectly as movies and books depict. Yet we continue to read them and buy them and dream of our own prince charming who will come sweep us off our feet in the perfect way. Or look at music. Songs like Love Story by Taylor Swift, where the guy is super romantic and the girl is swept off her feet by the perfect worlds, teach us the same things about life. Things that are nice, and do sometimes happen, but are not the norm.
And it’s not just romance that is romanticized (ha!). Look at movies and books in general. Though the main characters may go through some rough patches and so on, the good guys almost always come out on top. But that is not how life always works. Sometimes the bad guy wins. Sometimes bad things happen to good people. Life does not always work the way we think it should.
As I was thinking about the movie (and other cultural influences) today I realized that that is what Jeff and Susan talk about in there chapter on Ideology in The Theory toolbox. In the chapter ideology is defined as “something that’s false or misleading because it’s mystifying.” It is an idea or thought or concept that sugar coats truth if you will. It tries to make whatever situation seem better or more positive. So if a guy doesn’t call you, he lost your number. If he’s mean to you, it’s because he likes you and wants to get your attention. We say these to our friends and ourselves because we want to believe them. They are much happier than the alternative option. But they are not (often) true.
But is this bad? Is it bad to be ideological? I don’t think so. To a point at least. At the risk of sounding like a broken record, I believe that it is about balance. I think it can be very harmful to live in a constant state of ideological thinking. It creates a delusional perception of reality that is probably not healthy to walk through life with. It seems like almost too far to fall from, and I believe a firm grasp on reality is healthy. As Fyodor Dostoevsky said, “For, after all, you do grow up, you do outgrow your ideals, which turn to dust and ashes, which are shattered into fragments; and if you have no other life, you just have to build one up out of these fragments. And all the time your soul is craving and longing for something else.” However what is wrong with seeing the best in people and the world and focusing on that. What is wrong with being hopeful, even if what you hope for is a long shot? There is nothing wrong with hoping. For as Emma Goldman once said, “Idealists...foolish enough to throw caution to the winds...have advanced mankind and have enriched the world.” We need a balance of reality and hopeful ideology, faith and reason, fear and courage in order to be truly successful.
Sunday, February 1, 2009
Excpectation, interpretation and dance team
Yesterday I went to the Section 4AA Dance competition at Sauk Rapids High School. I was on my high schools dance team and they were competing to go to the State Tournament two weeks from now, so I went to cheer them on. After all the teams had danced both High Kick and Jazz/funk there is about a half an hour break while the judges tally the scores. During this break a lot of the parents asked me how I thought the scores were going to end up and who would place high enough to go to State (in our section the top 4 teams go in kick, top 3 in jazz. It’s different for every section, based on the number of teams in the section, and results in 12 teams competing in at State.). While I did give the parents that asked my prediction (1-Cathedral 2-Sartell 3-Apollo and 4-Roccori for kick, same for jazz minus Roccori [only the top 3 go in jazz, remember] in case you were curious) I also warned them that I was extremely biased in favor of Apollo because I danced for them. They were my team. In the end the scores ended up being 1-Cathedral 2-Sartell 3-Roccori and 4-Apollo for kick and 1-Sartell 2-Cathedral and 3-Sauk Rapids in Jazz.
As often happens when judging doesn’t go my way I was moderately frustrated that the judges didn’t see eye to eye with me. Couldn’t they see that though a girl fell in Cathedral’s jazz dance that it was still far stronger than Sartell’s and they still deserved first? Didn’t they understand that though Apollo and Roccori were almost neck in neck for kick skill and execution wise that Apollo’s dance was more difficult and more original? And why, in the name of all that is good in this world, couldn’t they see that Apollo’s Jazz was simply better than Sauk Rapids’?
And then I started thinking more deeply about it. Perhaps my bias was so strong in favor of Apollo that I couldn’t judge clearly. Maybe I expected Cathedral (last years State Champions) to be the best team simply because they always were. And what if I expected Apollo to beat Sauk rapids because they had been all year, not because they danced better this time? When I thought about the dances I could kind of see the bias and the influence of expectation. When I was watching Apollo or Cathedral dance I would almost turn a blind eye to any flaws. They were miniscule, not worth a second thought I told myself. They didn’t take enough away from my internal scoring probably because I didn’t want or expect them to. When I watched other teams compete, particularly one’s we had had big rivalries with when I was on the team or teams that provided a bigger threat to my teams chance to go to State I was a much harsher judge. If they had the same or similar flaws to the ones I had deemed unimportant for Apollo or Cathedral I now deemed them inexcusable and hoped and prayed the judges would think the same. My personal bias, expectation and fierce desire to see my team win made me an incredibly unfair judge.
As I was thinking this it reminded me of Stanly Fish’s essay. Fish made the argument that expectation and personal/societal bias play a large role in how we view a work. Fish’s example was the list of names that his poetry student’s read and interpreted as a religious poem because that’s what they expected it to be. Likewise I expected Cathedral to take first in both because they always had. I put Apollo ahead of Sauk Rapids because that had been the way the scores had gone all year, never mind the fact that this was a new day, a new competition, new judges and a new chance to shine or to fail, to have the best performance of the year or to fall or screw up somewhere you never had before. My expectations and hopes influenced how I watched each dance and how I believed the scores would add up.
In this regard I would have to agree with Fish. I think it is important to understand our own expectations, biases and hopes—our soul if you will; the part of us that makes us who we are—in order to truly read o work of writing, look at a painting, judge a film or even watch a dance competition. Though I think there are other aspects that go into how we view the world and works of art and do not think that we should overestimate the effects of expectation and bias, I also feel with absolute certainty that we can never underestimate them either. Again, it is all about balance.
As often happens when judging doesn’t go my way I was moderately frustrated that the judges didn’t see eye to eye with me. Couldn’t they see that though a girl fell in Cathedral’s jazz dance that it was still far stronger than Sartell’s and they still deserved first? Didn’t they understand that though Apollo and Roccori were almost neck in neck for kick skill and execution wise that Apollo’s dance was more difficult and more original? And why, in the name of all that is good in this world, couldn’t they see that Apollo’s Jazz was simply better than Sauk Rapids’?
And then I started thinking more deeply about it. Perhaps my bias was so strong in favor of Apollo that I couldn’t judge clearly. Maybe I expected Cathedral (last years State Champions) to be the best team simply because they always were. And what if I expected Apollo to beat Sauk rapids because they had been all year, not because they danced better this time? When I thought about the dances I could kind of see the bias and the influence of expectation. When I was watching Apollo or Cathedral dance I would almost turn a blind eye to any flaws. They were miniscule, not worth a second thought I told myself. They didn’t take enough away from my internal scoring probably because I didn’t want or expect them to. When I watched other teams compete, particularly one’s we had had big rivalries with when I was on the team or teams that provided a bigger threat to my teams chance to go to State I was a much harsher judge. If they had the same or similar flaws to the ones I had deemed unimportant for Apollo or Cathedral I now deemed them inexcusable and hoped and prayed the judges would think the same. My personal bias, expectation and fierce desire to see my team win made me an incredibly unfair judge.
As I was thinking this it reminded me of Stanly Fish’s essay. Fish made the argument that expectation and personal/societal bias play a large role in how we view a work. Fish’s example was the list of names that his poetry student’s read and interpreted as a religious poem because that’s what they expected it to be. Likewise I expected Cathedral to take first in both because they always had. I put Apollo ahead of Sauk Rapids because that had been the way the scores had gone all year, never mind the fact that this was a new day, a new competition, new judges and a new chance to shine or to fail, to have the best performance of the year or to fall or screw up somewhere you never had before. My expectations and hopes influenced how I watched each dance and how I believed the scores would add up.
In this regard I would have to agree with Fish. I think it is important to understand our own expectations, biases and hopes—our soul if you will; the part of us that makes us who we are—in order to truly read o work of writing, look at a painting, judge a film or even watch a dance competition. Though I think there are other aspects that go into how we view the world and works of art and do not think that we should overestimate the effects of expectation and bias, I also feel with absolute certainty that we can never underestimate them either. Again, it is all about balance.
Thursday, January 22, 2009
The Role of an Author as Seen in 'Nim's Island'
For a long time I had absolutely no idea what to blog about. I have opinions on everything including the topics we’ve discussed this week, so writing is usually no problem for me, but how to tie the topic in with something in culture? Then out of the blue a movie came to mind. The 2008 film Nim’s Island has an excellent example if the balance between an author completely detaching themselves from the work they are writing (as Eliot says they should) and needing to put some of themselves—some honesty—into it (as seems generally excepted today.
In the movie there is an author, Alexander Rover. She is a famous adventure novelist who happens to be an agoraphobic and never leaves her house. In this respect she must detach herself from the books she writes because there is no way she could do the things and go on the adventures that her hero—Alex Rover—does in all her books. She can’t even walk ten feet outside to her mail box, let alone trek across deserts or through jungles. But Alexandra (Alex) is able to write such convincing novels that no one realizes that she is really a middle aged, agoraphobic who carries around several bottles of hand sanitizer at all times. The main character, Nim, even emails Alexandra for help when she gets stuck alone on the Island her she and her father live on. She does this thinking that Alex Rover is really the adventure hero from the books. As T.S. Eliot said in his essay Tradition and Individual Talent “The progress of an artist is a continual self-sacrifice, a continual extinction of personality.” Alex Rover the author’s personality is nothing like Alex Rover the adventurer’s, yet her books are no less convincing for it. Alex is able to—or in a way has to—push out her own feelings, fears and weaknesses in order to write about things she could never do, thus confirming Eliot’s theory. Or so it seems.
But Alex has a problem. Her next book is due soon and she cannot finish it. It may seem at first glance to be a simple case of writer’s block, but I think it goes deeper. In the past Alex has been able to push herself out of her writing and write widely successful books. But now it seems that Alex’s limited supply of ideas has run dry because she has no experience and none of herself (save perhaps an inner longing to break free of her fears and have an adventure) to draw from and thus cannot continue writing. Alex must face her deepest fears and go on an adventure of her own. She must put herself into her writing, to be real and honest within the text. In doing this she not only breaks free of her fears but also fulfills that inner longing in order to finish her latest novel. She can at last be honest, to poor part of herself out onto the page because she has something to draw from.
This film is an excellent example of balance. In my opinion balance is the key to most things in life including, as the film clearly shows, writing. An author must be able to both detach themselves and their personality form their writing in order to write about concepts, characters and events of which they have no personal experience or similarities, but they must at the same time be able to make their writing real and honest, as Alex does in both facing her fears and having an adventure and also in her deep longing to break free of her fears. These very real emotions and experiences have a definite and prominent place in Alex’s writing, as does the ability to detach herself from her writing. Balance. Ideally there is balance between diet and exercise, work and play, rationality and feeling and in the same way there must be balance between emotional detachment and emotional attachment. Life and writing are best when they are balanced.
In the movie there is an author, Alexander Rover. She is a famous adventure novelist who happens to be an agoraphobic and never leaves her house. In this respect she must detach herself from the books she writes because there is no way she could do the things and go on the adventures that her hero—Alex Rover—does in all her books. She can’t even walk ten feet outside to her mail box, let alone trek across deserts or through jungles. But Alexandra (Alex) is able to write such convincing novels that no one realizes that she is really a middle aged, agoraphobic who carries around several bottles of hand sanitizer at all times. The main character, Nim, even emails Alexandra for help when she gets stuck alone on the Island her she and her father live on. She does this thinking that Alex Rover is really the adventure hero from the books. As T.S. Eliot said in his essay Tradition and Individual Talent “The progress of an artist is a continual self-sacrifice, a continual extinction of personality.” Alex Rover the author’s personality is nothing like Alex Rover the adventurer’s, yet her books are no less convincing for it. Alex is able to—or in a way has to—push out her own feelings, fears and weaknesses in order to write about things she could never do, thus confirming Eliot’s theory. Or so it seems.
But Alex has a problem. Her next book is due soon and she cannot finish it. It may seem at first glance to be a simple case of writer’s block, but I think it goes deeper. In the past Alex has been able to push herself out of her writing and write widely successful books. But now it seems that Alex’s limited supply of ideas has run dry because she has no experience and none of herself (save perhaps an inner longing to break free of her fears and have an adventure) to draw from and thus cannot continue writing. Alex must face her deepest fears and go on an adventure of her own. She must put herself into her writing, to be real and honest within the text. In doing this she not only breaks free of her fears but also fulfills that inner longing in order to finish her latest novel. She can at last be honest, to poor part of herself out onto the page because she has something to draw from.
This film is an excellent example of balance. In my opinion balance is the key to most things in life including, as the film clearly shows, writing. An author must be able to both detach themselves and their personality form their writing in order to write about concepts, characters and events of which they have no personal experience or similarities, but they must at the same time be able to make their writing real and honest, as Alex does in both facing her fears and having an adventure and also in her deep longing to break free of her fears. These very real emotions and experiences have a definite and prominent place in Alex’s writing, as does the ability to detach herself from her writing. Balance. Ideally there is balance between diet and exercise, work and play, rationality and feeling and in the same way there must be balance between emotional detachment and emotional attachment. Life and writing are best when they are balanced.
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