Reflections

I know that a few people have already written their farewell blog posts, so I guess I will just be adding to the collection, but I have to say, I think that my favourite assignments this year were the ones on The Matrix and on the poem "My Life Had Stood - A Loaded Gun." All of the assignments through the year challenged me, but I found myself intrigued by how deeply I could probe into the content of the two that I mentioned specifically, and by how many small details there were to pick up on, also by how many different perspectives classmates had about the pieces and by how many directions they could take the literature in.

I enjoyed all of our class discussions and when Prof. Pound or classmates challenged or added to our views, I know I was always able to further develop my criticisms with the extra pushes, and was grateful for it. It was exciting to walk out of class knowing that I had learned and ACTUALLY retained information.

If nothing else, then from Professor Pound this year I learned at least this: Nothing is ever what it appears to be. And for one last example, Salvidor Dali, although upon hearing this surrealist painters' name you automatically understand that what you see is not going to be true... but then again, it could be....

SWANS REFLECTING ELEPHANTS

Thanks to all for following my blog, and so long to a great year!! HAPPY SUMMER!

"Before the Earth Was Round"

I think the band Ok Go is really cool, and their song "Before the Earth Was Round" kind of put the transcendence from medieval or even literate ages to the now post-literate era into perspective for me. Here are the lyrics and below those is a link to the song. Enjoy! :)

Before the earth was round,
There was no end to things
No one tried to measure what they knew

Everything was warm
And everyone would love
And every contradiction was true
The sun worked twice as hard
And the moon was twice as far
And the sky was still honestly blue

The sky was still honestly blue

But when the time came
Everything spiraled in
And everyone forgot what they knew

War became a job
And love became a mystery
And heart and head were bent out of tune
Fear and doubt began
And God threw up his hands
And the sky didn't know what to do

The sky didn't know what to do
The sky didn't know what to do.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MB_zzxcQ86I

It Is Inevitable

I thought one part of The Matrix interestingly related to the media we are talking about in class now and how our world is in the post-literate era and how most humans now rely on media and technology.
In The Matrix, the agents, or machines can jump into any persons body. Because the agents can be anyone, you never really know what you are seeing, or if it is real or a mirage (but who can define what is real now anyways. ?). There is no individuality if the agents can mold each person to take whichever form they choose, and the humans have no say as to whether the agents enter their body or not; the humans cannot fight the technology.
Just like in this digital era, it seems inevitable that eventually no human will be able to live without technology.
It is amazing the capabilities we have now because of technology, but it seems such a sad, sad world we live in that we are so dependant on media that we have a hard time functioning on our own without technology.
I remember report cards back in elementary school, we would get letter grades on how we functioned in the class independantly. Now we would all fail!? This is just one example, and I know that there are people who are still very good with numbers, but you should see how easily people like my Nono (grandpa) put together numbers, just because they didn't have calculators when he was growing up in school. Now I am not even sure if kids these days know what math class is without a calculator...?

Who is Professor Pound, and Is he Really Our Professor?

I remember saying in class: " So then you're not our Professor. ?"
How does Baudrillard's theory of simulation and the hyperreal work for people?
Is he really suggesting that our Professor is not Actually our professor, and that he is a simulation of what a professor might be?
It is easy to see how people are not really what they are in The Matrix, but not so easy to tell with life outside the movies. For me anyway.
The only way I can explain that Prof. Pound would not really be a professor is by showing that he is a professor, and a dad and a son, a husband, friend, athlete, etc. So therefore which is the REAL him? And since the definition of all of those roles can be conditional and are constructions of our society, those roles could in fact be something other than what they are defined as, and since the terms could be something that they are not, then nobody IS what they really think they are . ? Haha that seems really confusing, but am I on the right track with this? I am not sure if that is exactly how the hyperreal works for humans, or if the hyperreal is not something that can describe humans but only a thing that humans get caught up in.?
Any comments or ideas?

"No, That's Not Expensive Enough For My Kind Of Taste. That Is Soo Last Season. Hellooo, Ever Heard Of A Brand Name?!..."

How true it is that so many signs or symbols now do not represent their original signified. As with brand names, I know so many people who get sucked into the fashion trend of consuming whatever someone else, or a magazine tells you is "In." I have witnessed the tragedies of people strutting their stuff in outfits that were completely unflattering for their body type, but it was easy to see that everyone else seemed to be wearing the same, so obviously they wanted to wear it as well whether it looked good or not. Another instance would be myself looking at a friends clothing and finding a certain piece and telling them, "Oh, you like that?," thinking to myself that it is the ugliest thing I have ever set eyes on, with their response to be "Yea!? It's Gucci!" Their excitement over the piece only resulted from the name on the tag. Or what about when you have two articles of clothing beside one another, practically identical, one is a no name brand and dirt cheap, while the other has a popular label on it and atleast three times as expensive but consumers choose the more expensive one simply for the label.

These brand names are all social constructions, and sometimes the more expensive items do hold better quality, but it still does not change the fact that logos no longer represent what they were meant to. Take the label Billabong for instance, originally created as a label for surfer products, but most of the people who I know that wear Billabong apparel have never even seen a surfboard in real life. I have to admit that I have been subject to the brand name shopping frenzy a few times but there are becoming more often cases that sit at the extreme. For example, I remember a girl I went to school with in grade 7 that liked to shop in the extreme, and as this was years ago you can imagine how greatly corporate logo fetishes have increased since then.

All of the girls in my grade 7 class, including myself, were in the locker room after gym and I remember saying to one girl, "hey, that's a nice shirt. Where did you get it?". She followed with a thank you, and proceeded to say she received it as a gift and didn't know, so she asked someone to check her tag for her. After she realized the shirt was purchased at Walmart she began to shriek. She ripped the shirt off and threw it on the floor and stared at it with disgust... I hope noone minds me bluntly saying that after that display I stared at her with disgust for her pettiness. I don't criticize anyone for wanting to look nice, or be fashionable, but what is the necessity in spending more than would be required to do it.
The following is an insert from an article by Angela Orend called "Corporate Logo Tattoos: Literal Corporate Branding?." It refers to brand name logos and people who literally tattoo them on their bodies, she also tackles the issue from a Baudrillardian perspective. Enjoy! (p.s. Sorry, I know this is a long one)


"Corporations present products as being representative of certain personalities and lifestyles, consumers fetishize the brand, not the product itself. With brand fetishism, brands represent and become equated with lifestyles as brand awareness and advertising become more important than the product itself (Vanderbilt 1997). In applying the notion of brand fetishism to corporate logo tattoos [literally people who tattoo (that permanent ink stuff) company logos on their body, often in return for payment, or free lunches from that restaurant for the rest of your life for example], the tattoo is an expression of what the brand represents, not necessarily a loyalty to the superiority of the product... Baudrillard insists that we are consuming not the object of the sign, but rather the system of implicit meanings that the object of the sign represents, but the meanings are simulated and meaningless. Within the logic of consumer capitalism, the collective "carnival of signs" prevails as everything becomes a commodified product embedded with meaningless social symbols. If Baudrillard is correct and postmodern consumption is the "active manipulation of signs" where the commodity-sign proliferates, corporate logo tattoos are nothing more than a fashion accessory in the hyperreality of postmodern consumer culture. The human body becomes a multi-dimensional billboard representing another simulated hyperreality. Corporate logo tattoo consumers are not interested in the product or duped by capitalism, they are simply expressing various simulations of reality and have fetishized the social meanings of the brand and commodity-sign logo."("Corporate Logo Tattoos: Literal Corporate Branding?" by Angela Orend).

Gibson Tells Freud and his Penis Envy to Eat It

I know this is going back a while, all the way back in the term to the beginning of Freud, but something the other day made me think of a line from the movie What Women Want. It puts a comical spin on the idea of women being in a constant lack (no offense intended towards any males, this is only a quote from the movie). For those of you that have never seen the movie, Mel Gibson, who is for the most part a Patriarchal prick (for lack of a better word haha), gets electricuted and can suddenly hear the thoughts of all women. Here is it:

-(Mel) And another thing.
This thing about penis envy.
-(male Assisstant) Yeah.
-(Mel) Not true. No.
They don't envy it.
Halfof'em
don't even like it.
You know who has penis envy?
We do.
That's why we cheat and screw up and lie,
because we're all obsessed with our own equipment.

The Sentimental Tradition and Boys Don't Cry

Those of you who have or have had a Children's Literature class will probably understand where I am coming from with this blog pretty quickly.
I was planning an essay I was going to write on Black Beauty the other night and suddenly everything I was thinking about seemed to correlate with the movie Boys Don't Cry.
To me, it suddenly seemed as if the movie had been directed under the influence of the Sentimental Tradition - The era that thrived on misfortunes of the misfortunate, weak and the minorities. Sentimental literature tried to bring to attention the mistreatment of these groups; the sentimental tradition looks for change, but never a change that is too drastic that it completely throws off the social order.
We discussed in class how Boys Don't Cry obviously reaches out to the audience to adopt a transgender gaze and sympathize with Brandon Teena, but then just as it seems there could be progress within the social order, Brandon seems to accept his feminine name Teena, and a lesbian scene occurs to bring the complicated movie back down to a level that society can understand better than they could a transgender relationship. Atleast with the lesbian scene, society is able to specifically label that relation as homosexual, whereas a transgender relation is more confusing.
And then in the end, like all active/unpassive characters within the Sentimental Tradition, because Brandon calls attention (even though it is unintentional) to himself and is threatening to disrupt all the norms that society has built, Brandon has to die (Just like Ginger and Seedy Sam in Black Beauty).

It Is All An Illusion But the Countess del Carpio

It has come to my attention that the notion of the world being completely arbitrary has been around for a Very long time. I have to wonder why it took me so long to realize it. Anyway, to the point, I was looking in my Visitor's Guide book of the Louvre yesterday and came across an enchanting Spanish Painting, of whose caption caught my attention as well. A quote from the artist reiterates perfectly what we've been learning in this class, but instead of learning it in a classroom, he must have discovered it another way, after all the man lived from 1746 to 1828.

The quote is as follows:

"The world is a farce; faces, clothes and voices; the whole thing is an illusion. Every man wants to seem something he is not, everyone deceives, and no one knows himself." - Goya (All you feminists out there try to give the guy a break for using only the masculine pronoun and just focus on the concept of what he is saying :) )

Never the less, despite his belief in the world as an illusion Francisco Jose de Goya y Lucientes was able to capture perfectly the Countess in the Portrait of the Countess del Carpio and "communicate the strength of character of this charitable, cultivated woman, who was still young but very unwell and, knowing herself to be terminally ill." For entertainment and curiosities sake I will post a clip of the painting (Although I wish it could be clearer and smoother to understand its beauty better :(.. oh well).

The F-Word

Just as the terms and meanings of "sex," "sexuality," and "gender" (along with basically all of the others that make up our world) are social constructions and are entirely susceptible to change, I realized that so are the terms that go along with these statuses.

The attached episode of South Park, which in my opinion is fairly comical (*note: the video is mildly controversial, but it is not my intention to upset or insult anyone by adding it), is a validation of my previous statement in the form of a satire. They point out that the term "fag" was used by labourers, and in more recent times has been used as a disparaging term against homosexuals. Homosexuality receives a fair amount of jabs because it is seen as the unnatural sexual preference (which we in Intro. to Lit. Theory class now know to be untrue). "Fag" then became used as a common insult on heterosexuals intended to mock those of "abnormal" sexuality. As of late, "fag" has become an invective, or sometimes even a jesting between friends, word against anyone deemed to be upsetting, or a "loser," without any purpose to harm homosexuals. According to the South Park's "The F-Word" episode, heterosexual "losers" are called "fags," while homosexual "losers" are specified as "gay fags."

Obviously the "f-word" can still be hurtful to homosexuals who have felt its wrath in the past, but this video just shows how arbitrary the term "fag" is and it's insolidity as an insult. So if you have about 20 minutes to spare, check out this link and let me know if you agree with what I am saying :).

http://www.xepisodes.com/southpark/episodes/1312/The-F-Word.html

The Quickest Cure to Racism!

So many times I have sat and listened to my friends day dream and fantasize about how life would be if we could live it a different way. I have often heard them say, "man, how cool would it be if you were a dog. I wish I was a dog, that would be the life."

Being free of duties and responsibilities, having all of your meals prepared for you, and running and playing all the while that you do not spend sleeping; these are the ideals that made the dogs life seem so enticing to my friends.

Just a night ago I was thinking on this idea, while I lay with my own canines, and thought of another reason being a dog might be so nice. As I watched the short Westie, the little Yorkie, the Shepherd/Boxer puppy and the Border Collie mix all play together with indifference to the others' colour or type, I realized that they were free from any bias against each other despite their differences. Now wouldn't that be delightful, to live in a world that is ignorant of race or racism. It is a shame we cannot simply all have four legs and a tail. haha :).

Who Carries the Legacy?

One of the connections I found in Emily Dickinsons, "My Life had stood - A Loaded Gun" really resonated with me, and I thought I'd blog about it to see if anyone else had any similar thoughts:

Throughout the poem I connected the woods as a Patriarchal society (I don't think I need to go into detail on how I found that.?), and the Mountains were men because of their big and strong appearance as well as their high position in the Patriarchal society. So when I got to the third stanza where Dickinson compares the firing of the gun to the eruption of Mount Vesuvius, I thought Vesuvius had to be a man as well if it was a mountain. I took the pleasure filled explosion of a man (Mount Vesuvius) to mean the male orgasm. And for many reasons I took the firing of the gun to be the voicing or publishing of the thoughts of the female writer.

I found it interesting, if my assumptions about the symbols are correct, that Dickinson would say that a woman's voiced opinion is as satisfying as a man's orgasm: "It is as a Vesuvian face Had let its pleasure through - ". Men and women need eachother to procreate in order to continue the human race. Men need women to bear them children to carry on the male name and legacy in a Patriarchal society; to conceive a child a male orgasm (Vesuvius' eruption), or sperm is needed to fertilize the female egg (I'm sure you all know by now that babies don't come from storks, so sorry for the complete break down, I just wanted to go through this step by step so I don't miss anything).

IF Dickinson is saying that the writer or woman's thought is as powerful as a man's orgasm, then the woman has found a substitute and no longer needs the man. As the last stanza to the poem describes the gun, or writer's works as "Without - the power to die -" she implies that the writer's (female) works are immortal. If the writer's thoughts are immortal then this enforces the woman no longer needing the man because her works will carry on her legacy for her and they will be creations entirely of her own, as opposed to bearing children to carry the legacy. In saying that women can survive through time without men to aid them, women are shedding their need of Patriarchal societies.

Feminism Banns Psychological Violence

I was cooking in the kitchen the other night with the radio playing not really paying attention to it, but my subconscious must have been listening because suddenly something they were saying came to my attention. Because we have been talking about feminism in class, when I heard that word said on the radio my ears automatically piped up so I further investigated it and found there was a new law passed in France banning psychological violence between married or cohabitating couples. A person could end up with a criminal record for insulting their spouse. This was part of the article I found in the daily mail for the UK:

“The law is expected to cover every kind of insult including repeated rude remarks about a partner’s appearance, false allegations of infidelity and threats of physical violence.
Police are being urged to issue a caution in the first instance, but repeat offenders could face a fine, a restraining order or even jail.
Critics said the measure was a gimmick produced in response to lobbying by feminists and would be impossible to implement.
But French premier Francois Fillon, who announced the law, said: ‘The creation of this offence will allow us to deal with the most insidious situations – situations that leave no visible scars, but which leave victims torn up inside.’”

I just thought this was an interesting instance of feminism that I could share.