EN 170 Summer 2009: Introduction to Literary Study

The Tell-Tale Heart

2009-07-30T17:48:00.001-04:00

Psychoanalytic literary theory or criticism concerns mainly the unconscious mind. The actions and responses of a person or character in a story or even the way a reader interprets a story. According to Ross C Murfin it could be said that the psychoanalytic approach started with Freud. A psychoanalytic critic like Freud would think of literary works of fiction as something that resembles a dream. Freud thought of dreams as repressed wishes and fears. The same can be said of literary works of fiction. The symbols in a fiction story can interpreted as a writer’s repressed wishes and fears. “Not what the story is really about, but what it makes you keep on thinking or wanting to say.” (Adam Phillips) The reader might also pick up on the symbols and interpret them in a way that fits their own wishes and/or fears.

Edgar Allan Poe is an American writer best known for his gothic works of fiction usually dealing with death. One of his best known and popular works is called The Tell-Tale Heart. The story is told by an unknown narrator. It is unclear in the story if the narrator is man or woman but many assume the narrator to be a man. “Language, the system of difference which articulates identities” (Lacan). The choosing of the gender according to the reader can be of great interest to a psychoanalytic critic because in choosing a man or a woman as the narrator can reveal some of the readers’ thoughts, wishes and fears, repressed or not. The narrator seems to be confessing (also to an unknown) about what he does with the old man that the narrator lives with. The narrator claims to have loved the old man but the only thing that bothered, scared and drove the narrator crazy was the old man’s “pale blue eye with a film over it”, that resembled a vultures eye. The narrator calls it the old man’s “evil eye”. The way the narrator calls it the “evil eye” is interesting because you can almost say that the narrator is scared of the eye. Why? Perhaps because this person (narrator) might have done something that he is ashamed of and he/she may think that the “evil eye” sees right through him, to the truth.

The eye causes the narrator such distress that he/decides that it is time to get rid of the eye by killing the old man. Every night for a week the narrator went into the old man’s room and took a lantern which the narrator used so that “that a single thin ray fell upon the vulture eye” of the old man. On the eighth night the narrator went in as usual but this time he noticed that the old man was awakened by a noise. "It is merely a cricket which has made a single chirp." Yes he has been trying to comfort himself with these suppositions ; but he had found all in vain. ALL IN VAIN, because Death in approaching him had stalked with his black shadow before him and enveloped the victim. And it was the mournful influence of the unperceived shadow that caused him to feel, although he neither saw nor heard, to feel the presence of my head within the room.” The old man is clearly scared and this seems to excite the narrator by the way he tells it.

This story is filled with ambiguity which would be very interesting to a psychoanalytic critic. The relationship between the narrator and the old man is unknown. This man could be anyone to the narrator like an uncle, grandfather, father, or even a friend.

Dune

2009-07-30T16:44:00.000-04:00

Psychoanalyzation is an extremely hard process. It requires intimate grasp of the workings of the human mind in all of it’s states, and knowledge of the people or things being studied. It stands to reason, therefore, that psychoanalyzation is a valid form of literary criticism; on that is convoluted, and often misunderstood, but a valid style nonetheless. Take, for instance, a science fiction or fantasy novel like “Dune”, which is ripe for interpretation.

Frank Herbert’s “Dune” is a book set in the distant future. It is about a young noble whose father, after the entire family gains a duchy to a desert planet responsible for producing a life-extending spice, is assassinated by his cousin, the boy’s uncle. After escaping the assassins, the boy and his mother retreat into the deep desert, only to find that the people who live in the desert have been waiting for them, deeming the boy a messiah who will transform their planet, Arrakis, into a plentiful paradise, where water is bountiful and the spice is produced only in the deep desert. The boy, Paul, realizes his power, and begins the process of changing the planet around to the state intended by the desert people.

Herbert intended to use the story as an allegory for Iraq and the oil it produced and hoarded, but if one actually takes a deeper look in the novel, the author employs the idea that the Kwitzas Haderach, the messiah, has the ability to look down a path that “…women cannot see”, including being able to actualize dreams to become prophecies. This is only an entranceway to the ability for mankind to explore their psyche. Even Paul’s hard trip down the road of the mind of mankind is mirrored by his descent from his lush home planet to the desert planet, Arrakis, where the true potential is realized only by entering the most dangerous parts of the planet.

In his essay titled ‘The Dream-Work”, Sigmund Freud attempts to explain that dream interpretation is key to understanding a person; that through the three ways of understanding dreams, one could see a person for what he truly is, or at least how his mind works. Not only that, but he also proposes that while most of these “latent…(and) manifest”, or the underlying desires and their manifestations in the mind, occur in dreams, they also “…play a part in the production of some slips of the tongue”, crossing the border of sub-consciousness and consciousness. When Paul tries to force his visions onto the world of Arrakis through both political and physical channels, he needs to do so through subterfuge, crossing under the fences.

Another interesting tidbit that could be interpreted is the utilization of the Voice, commanding or suggesting in a frequency or tone only available to those trained from a young age to use it, such as the book’s Bene Gesserit witches, a school of thought of which Paul’s mother is a part. Freud, in his essay, insists that the nuances of language is imperative in the dreamwork, that languages must be torn apart and understood in order to understand dreams, and thus the mind. Paul’s use of the voice, a commanding language of which the target has no choice but to listen, seems to translate Paul’s transcendence of the dream-realm, that he can not only conquer the planet, but mankind’s consciousness, and gain full control of both his humanity and mankind around the planet.

Freud and The Temperature That Burns Books

2009-07-30T16:39:00.001-04:00

In “Psychoanalytic Criticism and Jane Eyre”, the author notes that “what Freud did was develop a language that described, a model that explained, a theory that encompassed human psychology. Many of the elements of psychology he sought to describe and explain are present in the literary works of various ages and cultures, from Sophocles' Oedipus Rex to Shakespeare's Hamlet to works being written in our own day.” Therefore, when one reads Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, one notices the book burning and obsession with pleasures that the average citizens partake in; this is mostly a book against censorship and the increasingly hedonistic desires of society. The protagonist, Guy Montag, watches his world – actually, his country – devolve into a chaotic, anti-intellectual society governed by what’s on the wall (their form of television) and by extreme acts to cure boredom, such as vehicular manslaughter. In this case, you can use Freud to read Fahrenheit 451 critically and be able to understand the author, Bradbury, and his unconscious desires.

When Bradbury wrote this book, it seems that he was very against the increasing television fanaticism and wrote this book to show a projected future - in a similar way that 1984 showed a world with a projected future of Communism. In any case, the argument that Bradbury tries to make is that with the collapse of intellect in society the “beast” in man takes over and overcomes the self-control of the peoples. In terms of examining Fahrenheit 451 according to “Psychoanalytic Criticism”, the best concept involves “the study of the psyche”, which involves the unconscious mind in the following ways: “much of what lies in the unconscious mind has been put there by consciousness, which acts as a censor, driving underground unconscious or conscious thoughts or instincts that it deems unacceptable”. Of course, the purpose of this novel is to consciously condemn television and its corruption on the humanity of people.

In Fahrenheit 451, society finds pleasure in surrounding itself in pleasure and unintelligible activities, such as vehicular manslaughter. Examples of daily routines involve racing jet cars up and down the streets, occasionally running people over, and watching spectacles involving “firemen” on television. Bradbury’s unconscious is linked to a primitive urge to find amusement in death and pleasure as well as a dramatic decrease in attention span and intelligence, which is exemplified by the main character, Guy Montag, who is a fireman. In “Fahrenheit”, firemen represent the hatefulness that society has for intellectualism; this is caused by the increasing influence of television on the human mentality, according to Bradbury. While this is a perception gleaned from “Fahrenheit”, there are certain aspects of Bradbury, unconsciously inserted in the book, has about the world of intelligence.

“The fact is that the total form of the body by which the subject anticipates in a mirage the maturation of his power is given to him only as Gestalt, that is to say, in an exteriority in which this form is certainly more constituent than constituted, but in which it appears to him above all in a contrasting size (un relief de stature) that fixes it and in a symmetry that inverts it, in contrast with the turbulent movements that the subject feels are animating him”, writes Jacques Lacan in The Mirror Stage, a decidedly Freudian essay. I interpret this statement by Lacan to be that the person’s unconscious occasionally surfaces to confound and confuse the mentality of that person. What happens is the needs of the person are muddled with the wants of the person. To apply this to Fahrenheit, one notices that the fervor of Bradbury’s language seems to reveal his confusion with the truth of his own intelligence. The main character, Montag, could be read as a confused and highly hedonistic unconscious of Bradbury while he writes and speaks in an intellectualized way that he fears will be rejected in the future.

When Guy Montag discusses the real values of books with an old English professor named Faber, he desires to know what reality can be found in books (“My wife says books aren’t ‘real’.”). Uncharacteristically, Faber describes that books don’t become real unlike television (“…It becomes and is the truth.”) and describes it as a “claw”. Profoundly, Faber (mirroring Bradbury) counters that “books can be beaten down with reason”. Likely, this means that he’s merely afraid that his writing will eventually be lost and forgotten in the lesser intellectual world of televisions. Another thing lost in the Montag’s world is that people don’t “refract your own light to you” – a phenomenon that Clarisse, a young girl he spoke with twice, opens his eyes to. We get a feeling that he fears that if society (and him) were to fall in this trap he illustrates, that we would not only lose our own humanity, but be unable to distinguish others’. Unconsciously, I believe that Bradbury feels that humanity is not only in the actions we do of ourselves but also to others and how we communicate with those others. In Montag’s society, that particular aspect is lacking (e.g. when Montag’s wife chides him when he accuses the TV family of not being people – “My ‘family’ is people. They tell me things: I laugh, they laugh! And the colors!”)

In the beginning of the book, Guy Montag represents the Average Joe of the society that Bradbury creates and portrays: disdainful of the intellectual works and focused narrowly on spectacles to create pleasure. He is a fireman and his job is to burn books because they are looked upon unfavorably. This indicates to me that Bradbury is afraid of the devolution of society based on its need for instant gratification and he represents it as the burning of books and the exultation of mass media entertainment. According to Freud, this phenomenon is called displacement, where relatively trivial actions (book burning, manslaughter) are hidden allusions to the whole of society breaking down. To sum up his fears, Bradbury projects onto Montag the following internal dialogue: “What did you give the city?” “Ashes.” “What did you give each other?” “Nothingness.” Finally, “Psychoanalytic Criticism” states that “according to Freud, all of us have repressed wishes and fears; we all have dreams in which repressed feelings and memories emerge disguised, and thus we are all potential candidates for dream analysis.” In “Fahrenheit”, Bradbury looks fearful of a future where he may be useless and disrespected.

Notes from Underground

2009-07-30T15:58:00.000-04:00

In Sigmund Freud’s early work on the Psychoanalysis of dreams, he posited that the manifestation of dreams in an adult is a product of latent experiences as a child. In Freud’s model the ego, the sense of “I”, in an individual is clearly delineated by the preliminary experiences as a child and the establishment of relations between those experiences and the basic emotions of the id. Jacques Lacan expanded on these ideas further such that not only are these experiences crucial to the resulting psychological disposition of the adult, but also of great importance is a period of childhood development, which he referred to as the “Mirror Stage” where the child establishes relations between itself , abstract representations, and its surroundings. These concepts form the basis of the Psychoanalytic method of literary criticism, where a text is viewed as a kind of “lucid” dream-like expression of the author. Drawing on parallels from Freud and Lacan, we demonstrate an elementary example of the techniques of Psychoanalytic criticism on Dostoevsky’s “Notes from Underground”.

Dostoevsky’s short narrative is partitioned into two parts, the first is styled into a “Manifesto of the Underground”, where the narrator, the underground man, delves deep into his own psyche and takes the reader along on the journey. The underground man is a profoundly inverted individual, and we see early on that this state of being explicably stems from a state of conflict. That is to say, the latent expression of the underground man’s demeanor is a direct consequence of his early development. We see this conflict often through out the novel, as the narrator criticizes himself and his writing, yet spitefully protests about changing his mistakes. The underground man has diverging relationships with his coworkers and former classmates, both being repulsed by them and admiring them at times. The reader is able to develop a deeper understanding for the underground man’s precarious state by recalling that he says he “had no home as a child” and that he was sent of to school by “distant” relations. If we consider Freud’s statement that “ the composite structure of the dream work is that of constructing a transitory new concept which is vague and has this comment element as its nucleus”, we see that the underground man’s inability to establish elementary familial bonds as a child (notice he says that he had no home, not house) have transitioned into his adulthood, leaving him incapable of bonding with his peers.

From the Lacanian idea that “we have only to understand the mirror stage as an identification,… the transformation that takes place when the subject assumes and image” we can further understand the mind of the underground man. He is an individual trapped in a perpetual mirror stage, failing to have properly established his own identity relative to his surroundings as a child. We understand this by noting the fact that the underground goes unnamed, that is unidentified, through out the entire narrative. His conflict also expressed this key point, as he frequently finds similarities, as well as dissimilarities, in his own personality and that of his peers. It is prudent to observe that the underground man is constantly seeing his reflection in the mannerisms of others, his identity then becoming a composite of each individual reflection.

The methods of Psychoanalytic criticism are often extended to authors as well. The observant reader will note that this approach has been omitted here. We have done so not only for the sake of brevity, but also because it is superfluous. If we assume, primarily, that the text is a transcendental expression of the author’s dream state, then we have examined the psyche of the author by looking closely at those of his characters. In this way may argue that the underground man is a projection of Dostoevsky and visa versa.

Brenda Gonzalez Assignment 4

2009-07-30T15:49:00.000-04:00

Psychoanalytic critique is based on the functioning of the human mind, focusing largely on unconscious feelings, thoughts and desires. Sigmund Freud was the pioneer of such school of thought and the analysis of dreams called the dream-work. Freudianism deals with symbols and metaphors for repressed feelings or impulses which is why some may call this feature archaic.

The story of Hansel and Gretel by the brothers Grimm involves a woodcutter married to a mean woman who forces him to desert and strand his own two children in the middle of the forest because there’s too many mouths to feed. The symbol of the father foreshadows the upcoming need for the children to be more self-reliant. Upon hearing his parents Hansel decides to collect pebbles as a means to leaving a trail back home, Hansel drops the pebbles on the “mossy green ground.” The pebbles are a metaphor for the obstacles they will encounter and the distress to come. The moss bears a slow growing nature and the patience that will be demanded of them in their situation is what it suggests. The children find comfort from a full moon that lights up the way through the pebbly-path back home – the mysterious light the moon exudes also shines upon the idea that something hidden and occult lies ahead. When they find their home once again they sneak in through a half open window which is indicative of their abandonment, they are not wanted inside – except by their cowardly father.

When she finds they are back the stepmother refuses to feed them and starves these poor children until the father once again takes them to the forest. Now Hansel uses the bread crumbs as a path back home but he forgot about the “hungry birds that lived in the forest.” The making of the crumbs conveys the siblings’ feelings of being left behind. While the hungry birds show the failure of their efforts. They have no choice but to spend the night in the cold, frightening shadows of the forest but they find some solace cuddling under a large tree which often is a symbol for strength and stability – what they’ve lacked in parental care. As morning comes they go on their way and stumble upon a cottage made of candy, a metaphor for indulgence, and forbidden pleasure as well as gluttony. Overeating can shed light on repressed feelings of dissatisfaction, and unfulfillment.

Starving, they brake off piece after piece of the cottage to eat. Breaking something represents a change of a current situation. And that it does, their circumstances go from great to horrible when an old witch opens the door, welcomes them in with an act of kindness and then declares “You’re nothing but skin and bones! I shall fatten you up and eat you!” The fact that the witch is a mean woman correlates to their horrible stepmother and old things need replacing as does their fathers’ wife. The witch’s cannibalism is a draining of energy and life, a destructive and forbidden desire that perhaps lies within the children themselves because why would it be that these children are not loved as they should be? Gretel smears butter on the witches’ glasses in an efficacious attempt to further worsen her eyesight. To “butter someone up” in an effort to ease unfavorable conditions is what Hansel and Gretel should have done long ago to not end up in such calamity. Gretel is ordered to light the oven for the old woman to cook her brother. The oven indicates the fears and worries the girl has about having her own children – she has obviously not had a very good role model to follow. Gretel saves her brother by deceiving the witch into getting close enough to the oven to push her in and lock it up.

Gretel shows great energy, and encouragement in succeeding to overcome these hurdles and help her brother as he has done for her – the abolishment of the evil female forces puts an end to the bad memories of women they’ve encountered. Locking the witch inside her fiery tomb is significant because it is where their repressed and hidden feelings of mothers lay. They find a large chocolate egg with gold coins inside of it and fill a large basket with the money and food they collect from the cottage to prepare for their journey back home. The egg is a symbol of happiness and wealth that has come with this victory while the gold represents what they’ve discovered about themselves and learned through their experiences, and the basket is made to hold things – perhaps they are holding onto the love for their father. When they arrive back home they are happily greeted with love from their father who is relieved to say that his wife is dead. The passing of the witch and the wife is a condensation for the passing of their struggles with maternal care and figures. The words witch and wife present loads of symbolism and power as well as some similarities and differences.

“Language, the system of difference which articulates identities….” (Lacan). Individuality varies too greatly for everyone to perceive equally. We can more easily dream, visualize, or feel things we can not put into words because they are limiting. Words often condense, displace, and hide the truth of what an individual is attempting to describe. Symbolism is relatively easy to manipulate – one word is often “loaded” with meanings.

Aimee Bender’s Motherfucker: A Psychoanalytic Reading

2009-07-30T15:45:00.001-04:00

Motherfucker, by Aimee Bender presents some characters and symbolism that can be psychoanalyzed using theories by Freud and Lacan. Freud’s Oedipal complex can be applied to both the character of the motherfucker as well as the starlet. Ross C Murfin writes, “According to Freud, all of us have repressed wishes and fears...One of the unconscious desires most commonly repressed is the childhood wish to displace the parent of our own sex and take his or her place in the affections of the parent of the opposite sex” (p. 504). The motherfucker focuses his sex life only on women who are mothers. Murfin writes “Freud used the words condensation and displacement to explain two of the mental process whereby the mind disguises its wishes and fears…in displacement, an anxiety, a wish, or a person may be displaced onto the image of another, with which or whom it is loosely connected through a string of association that only an analyst can untangle” (p. 507). In this case, the motherfucker’s mother is displaced onto the women in the story that he has sexual relations with. “I fuck mothers”, he said to anyone who asked him. “And I do it well” (p.75). He is playing out the repressed childhood fantasy of sleeping with his own mother.

Similarly, the starlet displaces her father onto the motherfucker when he mentions he was on a train. “He mentioned his train trip and she said her father had been a conductor for years” (p. 79). She associates that her father was a conductor on a train for years, she immediately relates him back to her father. Even Heddie from Butte calls him when her “father was mad at her about something that had happened four Christmases ago” (p. 80). She is displacing her feelings of needing her father’s approval onto the motherfucker. According to some psychoanalytics, all of these relationships in the story revolving around parent and child can give insight into the author’s own personal relationships or those of her readers.

According to Freud “A latent element is replaced not by a component part of itself but by something more remote – that is, by an allusion; and in the second, the psychical accent is shifted from an important element onto another which is unimportant” (p. 27). In Benders story, hats act as the remote object that replaces the latent object of women. “I love all women, he told himself. He liked to try hats on in stores” (p. 76). What he is really saying is he likes to try on these women by having sex with them. “The motherfucker told her he liked her hat” (p. 77). Later in the story before they have sex, the author states, “She is wearing a hat” (81). In John Haber’s web essay he writes, “Lacan was fascinated by Sigmund Freud’s earliest discovery – unconscious desires, as revealed through free associations and dreams. In other words, desires emerge through words and images. They speak a parallel to our own...He marveled at a word’s absence in oneself, a lack in life: desire. Lacan brought together Feud’s technique, of word association, with his subject matter, desire…One necessarily expresses desires in words, so every desire needs a symbol” (p.1-2). As shown above, the hat in this story symbolizes his desire for these women.

According to Lacan, “The individual desires to control meaning but this is not possible because of the nature of language. Language, Lacan argued, is not a matter of a one-to-one correspondence between signifier and signified. The signifiers of language cannot fix the arbitrary field of the signified; signifiers slide across the continuum hence the desire for mastery of meaning is unsatisfiable” (p. 182). Along with the hat, desire is also represented later in the story as a house as well as an angora sweater. “Desire is a house. Desire needs closed space. Desire runs out of doors or windows, or slats or pinpricks, it can’t fit under the sky, too large. Close the doors. Close the windows” (p. 83). Desire in the story is like Language as it is not truly containable. Once the windows are open it will flow out and take on new meaning. Different objects in the story can represent and symbolize desire but the true meaning cannot be mastered.

The Picture of Dorian Gray

2009-07-30T15:45:00.000-04:00

The Picture of Dorian Gray written by Oskar Wilde is about a young man, Basil Hallward, who has become friends another man named Dorian Gray. Basil’s other friend, Lord Henry, is a character that has major influences in the destruction of Dorian Gray. Lord Henry leads Dorian Gray to ruin himself be appealing to his inner desires and repressed feelings, which eventually causes his downfall. The way Lord Henry does this and the response that Dorian Gray is giving can easily be analyzed by a psychoanalytic perspective. A psychoanalytic analysis of a specific text consists of examining the characters and their actions and responses to certain situations. This analysis is the basis of which a critic can observe some psychological dynamics such as repression and projection. It can also give insight to the character’s consciousness and unconscious mind. This analysis can give explanations on human behavior which is depicted through the characters.

In the essay by John Haber Who is Jacques Lacan, it mentions that "The "unconscious" is just the part of us that others understand when we do not." The influence of Lord Henry leads, Dorian Gray to do various things that are also brought about from his unconsciousness; the mind which holds impulses and urges which may be too uncomfortable to acknowledge, which can also be referred to Sigmund Freud’s, id. Basil, Dorian's friend, being aware of Lord Henry’s character asks him to not be influential towards Dorian. However, Lord Henry does not listen and tells Dorian that his youth and beauty will fade and urges him to look for new ‘sensations'. This can be related to the psychological philosophy of how a person is always struggling between seeking pleasure and doing the morally right thing. This is projected in throughout the novel, when Dorian goes out seeking for new bodily and artistic pleasures, making him a hedonist, eventually leading to his own destruction.

With his unconscious desires unleashed, Dorian began ignoring his conscience. Dorian’s conscious is present, however not in his face but rather on a painting of him, which Basil had made. Desregarding his conscience, Dorian began to commit acts of cruetly. The painting itself changes each time Dorian indulges himself with immoral deeds. It ages and turns ugly, as Dorian himself remains young. His corrupted soul is reflected onto the painting itself. At one point Basil does question Dorian’s conscience and soul, to which Dorian says that he will show it to Basil. Eventually, Dorian hides the painting, because he does not want to face his conscious and realize what he is doing is morally wrong. Instead he is more focused on the unconscious id, by being hedonistic and pleasure seeking. Being this way also allows Dorian to remain young and aging is only shown in the painting rather than himself. This also brought about another repressed desire he had to remain young. At the same time his youthful and innocent-looking face was the face he wanted people to see and perceive; which possibly could have been his super-ego or ideal self. There is a constant battle within Dorian and the three-part psyche, which Frued talks about.

Three dimensions of Chekhov's Sea Gull

2009-07-30T15:25:00.000-04:00

Dreams, as well as literature and language, consist of characters or, rather, symbols; all three phenomena rely on signifiers that are compounded into structures. Thus it will not be a stretch to use the same tool of psychoanalytical analysis to proceed through the deconstruction of the works of all these three phenomena. “Something has occurred in the history of the concept of structure that could be called an event,” asserts Jacques Derrida, one of the seminal theorists of the poststructuralism, “What would this event be then? Up to the event which I wish to define, structure has always been neutralized or reduced […] by giving it a center, a fixed origin” (Derrida, LT, 196). Further Derrida reclaims a classical thought that the center of the structure is, “paradoxically, within the structure and outside it” (Derrida, LT, 196). To comprehend Derrida’s and other poststructuralists’ idea about the “structurality of the structure” we have to suggest what the center of each structure is. Along with Freud, I would argue that the center of the dream is the experience and the subtle wishes of the individual, the center of language is necessity to distinct the processes and things in the reality and the center of literature is the web of symbols directly tied to the author’s personality.
The play Sea Gull by Anton Chekhov is but one great metaphor that is announced by the author as early as in the title. In the play the world of provincial intelligentsia is depicted, and the major interest of this circle is focused in the literature and theater. On the first level the title corresponds to the name of the play that the family of Zarechny puts on the family stage; by that play the seagull is being shot. But on the inner level the image of the seagull is also referred to Nina Zarechnaya, who carries out the main role both in the home performance and in the Chekhov’s play overall. The association of Nina with the dead sea gull suggests that her partner in the family performance, that will become her lover, Trigorin sees her as victim, not a human being enough to feel sympathy to her when he ruins her life: “I rush from one side to the next like a fox hunted down by dogs. I see that both life and science keep on striding ahead, onward and forward. […] I feel that I have the ability just to describe landscapes, and that everything else is false – false to the marrow of my bones.” The dead seagull becomes the symbol of Trigorin’s poeticizing the ugliness of reality.
Events in Chekhov’s own life, as pointed out by biographers, coincide with some core elements of the play’s narrative. The image of the shot seagull was apparently connected to the episode in Chekhov’s life during a hunting trip, when Chekhov killed a woodcock that had been winged by Levithan, his close friend and impressionist artist. This event apparently became one of Chekhov's personal gestalts, and in order to close it he lets the characters to resolve it. When the character Trigorin sketches an idea for a story, “A man happens to come by, sees her and, having nothing else to do, destroys her like that seagull there”, the story seem to correlate to an actual event. Potapenko, the writer, and Chekhov’s friend, Lika Mizinova, had a love affair resulted into a birth of a child. But, as critics point out, some of the Trigorin’s features relate to Chekhov himself, rather than to Potapenko – for instance, the attitude towards art and craft of writing. Also, the names that Chekhov gave to his characters were thoroughly selected in accordance to their meaning and the characters to bear it. For example, Nina’s last name, Zarechnaya, incorporates in Russian the meaning “over” or “beyond the river”; thus the first verbal reference to Nina connects her to the water image in the play.
Freud has stated that “replacing something by an allusion to it is a process familiar in our waking thought as well […] jokes, too, often make use of allusion. They drop the precondition of there being an association in subject-matter and replace it by unusual external associations such as similarity of the sound, verbal ambiguity, and so on” (Freud, LT, 27). The play Sea Gull is stitched with allusions inside the play itself and the allusion tied to the Chekhov himself, although none of them are deliberately highlighted in the work.

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies

2009-07-30T14:55:00.000-04:00

In the novel, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, the popular Jane Austen literary work is remade by Seth Grahame-Smith to incorporate the undead. As the novel begins, an entire English village has fallen victim to the rise of zombies. The dead arise from their graves and attack the living. As the dominance of the undead begins to spread and infect, the entire Bennet family prepares to combat and protect their family. The Bennet sisters, under the encouragement of their father, are all well trained in martial arts and sword-fighting, and have become skilled- killers. Still, in spite of their possible infection and fate as one of the ‘undead’ much of their priorities are placed heavily on focusing much of their energy on their own social standings. Similar to the Jane Austen original, Mrs. Bennet is still very much consumed with ensuring her daughters are married off well suited men, badgering her husband to pursue certain acquaintances. The civilized interactions dominant in the original, are replaces with blood thirsty physical alterations, while meaningless social jabbers are replaced with intense zombie concerns. Verbal scoffs geared towards distaste for certain social obligations, or situations are replaced with vomit. While Elizabeth, renamed Lizzie, becomes an elite zombie-killer, and her verbal sparring with the overly confident and slightly condescending, Mr. Darcy is replaced with heavy and very intense physical zombie-slaying.

A psychoanalytic critic emphasizes the author’s repressed wishes and fantasies. By applying the Freudian concepts of id, ego, and superego, into the characters and into the descriptions of the characters, hidden neuroses are revealed. Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, though filled with blood-hungry zombies and zombie killers, and seemingly silly in content, reveals a clear distaste for the culture of the upper middle class. Using the growing presence of the zombies as a metaphor for the infectious and illogical nature of social obligations, Grahame-Smith, points to the unrealistic expectations presented by the upper class. The metaphor reveals not only the neuroses of the author but the audience as well. As a culture, our society is so helplessly consumed with meaningless social obligations and pop culture, that more significant issues are put on the back burner.

The zombie themselves serves as a metaphor for a conventional paradigm, that to Grahame-Smith is just as life draining as the undead, marriage. Just as marriage is “an endless curse that sucks the life out of you and just won’t die” (Grahame-Smith pg 319), so are the curse of the zombies. Though the infectious curse of the undead have drudged on for several decades, the characters represent our willingness to stand ground in spite of the life draining and grueling nature of their present situation. Much like the Grahame-Smith’s view on marriage, the zombies become not something to finally destroy and be rid of, but rather something one must ‘deal with’ or ‘learn to live with’. The character of Mr. Collins furthers Grahame-Smith’s views. Mr. Collins is far too self absorbed and stupid to notice that his wife is clearly transforming into a zombie, a common trait of most spouses. Rather than acknowledging his wife’s demise, Mr. Collins enjoys the oblivious nature of being a spouse and continues to ignore the obvious.

A Hotel and a Mind hold many Rooms

2009-07-30T14:50:00.000-04:00

The play “Hotel Columbus” by Ricardo Monti is a play about a body guard for the president named Custer. He finds himself alone in in the presidential suite after a short time he finds that a transvestite named Sarah is in the room with him as well. They seem to know each other and they begin to discuss the relationship that they have. But they play roles, Sara that of a movie star and Custer plays the President. It is then reviled to the reader that Sara is in fact a manifestation of Custer’s guilt surrounding the suicide of his son that was caused after he came home and found his son in his dead mothers clothes. When Custer found him he brutally smashes his sons face directly after that the son shoots himself. The sons cause for suicide steams from complexities that arose within the course of the sons Oedipus complex
Freud states that “ The earliest affection of the girl-child is lavished on the father, while the earliest infantile desires of the boy are directed upon the mother. For the boy the father, and for the girl the mother, becomes an obnoxious rival”. When taking this into account and examining what lead up to the sons suicide and why he wore his mothers dress it can be determined that since the mother had passed on that the bond that they had that was created by his dependence upon her as a child would now have to be shifted upon his father, his rival becoming his savior. So this would undoubtedly change the dynamic of the Oedipus complex into an its female counter point the Electra complex where in this case the son had no rival and begin to fill the role of his mother. “His face all made up like a woman he smiled with those big red painted lips…You think I caught him in the act? No he was waiting for me…he looked exactly like his mother” By dressing like his mother waiting for his father to catch him and smiling upon his arrival it is relived that the son was happy with what he did and wanted to show it to his father that he had begun to fill the role of his deiced mother in the way most young girls according to Freud will try to with there fathers “An eight-year-old girl of my acquaintance, whenever her mother is called away from the table, takes advantage of her absence to proclaim herself her successor. ‘Now I shall be Mamma; Karl, do you want some more vegetables? Have some more, do,’” But in the case of a typical family dynamic the mother is there to stand in the way of the daughter. But because she is not present in the sons case and because of that the feelings of the son have shifted from the mother to the father he goes as far to physically fill that role using transvestitism. To the son this moment would have been fulfilling all his fantasies of his Electra complex. He had replaced his mother at this point within domestic roles “the kid would cook he had a knack for it” along with now he was physically filling that role by wearing her clothes and makeup he had achieved the role he had strived for. But when in response to this proud fulfilling moment Custer reacts with violence the complete opposite of the loving reaction he strived for it shatters all that his son has believed about there relationship. He rejected his son in every way even causing him physical pain to match the sons physical manifestation of the Electra complex. Rejecting the whole of the love the son had developed for him this shatters the son and then drives them to take his own life.

Hamlet on Freud's Couch

2009-07-30T13:53:00.000-04:00

Hamlet is a work that has been analyzed by critics through many different lenses. However, I would say that by far a psychoanalytic criticism of the work is the most interesting when referring to theorists like Sigmund Freud. In our day and age it is weird to envision the possibility of a mother and son having a sexual relationship, but Freud brings some sort of rationale to this theory and applies it to Hamlet. A psychoanalytic critic would definitely analyze the relationship between Hamlet and his mother. Most famously a critic would say that Hamlet is suffering from the Oedipus complex. According to Sigmund Freud, one of the many repressed unconscious desires we have “is the childhood wish to displace the parent of our own sex and take his or her place in the affections of the parent of the opposite sex” (504). With the absence of his father, Hamlet is very resentful towards Claudius, his uncle that his mother Getrude marries after his father’s death. Hamlet claims his mother’s marriage to his uncle prompts his resent because it is a detestable act that disgraces his father’s honor, but a Freudian would believe that Hamlet has desires to be with his mother and that Claudius is “taking his shine”. In a scene where Hamlet confronts his mother about her actions the wrath of his anger comes forth. Not only does he speak to his mother rudely with lines such as, “you are the queen, your husband’s brother’s wife and would it were not so! -you are my mother” but he also kills Lord Polonius.

The appearance of Hamlet’s father’s ghost is also something a psychoanalytic critic would note as essential. The ghost tells Hamlet that Claudius killed his father and urges Hamlet to avenge his death. A psychoanalytic critic would question whether or not Hamlet is going crazy as when speaking to his mother he “sees the ghost” and speaks to him. Freud might say that after the ghost first confronts Hamlet, he begins to act in accordance with his superego. “The superego almost seems to be outside of the self, making moral judgments, telling us to make sacrifices for good causes even though self-sacrifice may not be quite logical or rational” (503). The ghost urges Hamlet to seek revenge and in a soliloquy it is questionable whether Hamlet will commit suicide or “self-sacrifice”.

Although Claudius is not Hamlet’s natural father, he technically holds the title through marriage with Getrude. A psychoanalytic critic would point out that Hamlet’s hatred of Claudius could instead be a fear of castration that Freud wrote about. “A boy-and it should be remarked in passing that Freud here concerns himself mainly with the male-may fear that his father will castrate him, and he may wish that his mother would return to nursing him” (504). Hamlet may have this fear that Freud describes and as a result represses this fear. In the famous scene with Getrude and throughout the text this fear, along with his repressed feelings for his mother overwhelms Hamlet causing him to explode. Freud would have a lot to say about Hamlet and although sometimes twisted, his theories maybe have some validity.

American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis

2009-07-30T13:38:00.000-04:00

According to Freud we all have parts of our conscious that help keep us balanced that being the Id, Ego and Super-Ego they are defined by Freud as "The uncoordinated instinctual trends are the "id"; the organized realistic part of the psyche is the "ego," and the critical and moralizing function the "super-ego." Patrick Bateman obviously has an issue with his conscious and is constantly battling. Throughout this story he is mostly delusional, critical of all around him and most of all I feel hates women.
A Psychoanalyst would view Patrick Bateman's cold yet anal department as his feelings of not wanting to lose control. He has very rigourus morning routines and rituals, he executes them with such perfection and yet it's so effortless for him. Even while he dresses there is ritual and precision, the whole first chapter is basically a description of his morning routine. Irnoically while he is getting dressed a talk show is on and they are discussing women with multiple personalities!
On Page 14 Bateman gives a speech which is meant to be an answer in regards to the dinner party conversation, this sppech is filled with what is wrong with the world and what we need to do to fix it, his ego is working overtime! This can be seen how he genuinly feels about what's going on in the world around them, since it was the 80's there was plenty wrong with the world! Yet no one at the dinner party takes him seriously and that would lead to his feeling like no one would understand his complexity thus anger might arise but he brushes it off.
Patrick Bateman is absoulutely nuts! His encounters with women are violent and very stomach turning, in one scene he tells a woman "I want to stab you to death, and then play around with your blood." Freud would look at this and quite possibly feel he has a very unhealthy relationship with his Mother; He might want to sleep with his Mother and since his conscious must be fighting over his feelings this would lead to the disgust he feels for women. I won't even get into the sadistic things he does to these poor women but let's just say Freud would definitly want Bateman as a study subject!
What would lead me to believe his ego's are fighting his howhe keeps his life in order, he maintains a job, has a fiance, yet he sleeps with prostitues and kills people around his he dislikes. He has enough sense to keep his life in order but his super-ego seems to be on a vacation. His super-ego would be responsible for telling him what he did was wrong and lead him to have guilt, only at the end of the book does his super-ego kick in when he calls his lawyer and is a bit nervous. He admits to killing people and whole LOT of them and almost looks to his lawyer as a child would look at their Mother if they were in trouble, he wants his lawyer to make it all better. What the real kicker is, is that you aren't sure if he is delusional or if there was some magical fairy who cleaned up the bodies for him.
He has no conscious that would tell him what he is doing is wrong as I've said before, this is especially disturbing while he is at the zoo and throws coins into the seal's areas when there is a sight that clearly states that coins can kill them. After he throws the coins in the tank, he scopes out a child and stabs him in the neck. While the child is bleeding, his Mother in hysterics, Bateman pretends to be a doctor and save the boy when all he is doing is giving himself a front row seat to a child's death. What is really unsetteling is that he does feel remorse about killing an innocent child. He thinks to himself that " It's so much worse (and more pleasurable) taking the life of someone who had hit his or her prime, who has the begginnings of a full history, a spouse, a network of friends, a career, who death will upset far more people whose capacity for grief is limitless than a child's world, perhaps ruin many more lives tha just the meaningless, puny death of this boy."(pg.299) He feels remorse but not the remorse a normal person may feel. He feels his kills wasn't worth wild, didn't give enough of the "wow" factor, meaning his ego's are all out of wack!
In the Jane Eyre writing there was this paragraph "During the mirror period, the child comes to view itself and its mother, later other people as well, as independent selves. This is the stage in which the child is first able to fear the aggressions of another, to desire what is recognizably beyond the self (initially the mother), and, finally, to want to compete with another for the same, desired object. This is also the stage at which the child first becomes able to feel sympathy with another being who is being hurt by a third, to cry when another cries. All of these developments, of course, involve projecting beyond the self and, by extension, constructing one's own self (or "ego" or "I") as others view one." Basically the child will learn to feel sympathy or remorse, this was probably Bateman's downfall while growing up. Lacan would suspect that during this stage something went terribly wrong and Bateman never had to compete for the "desired object" yes he does have a Brother who is just as screwed up as he is. Looking at thie from a Freudian/Lacan view he had the worst parents ever!

The Awakening

2009-07-30T12:26:00.000-04:00

A psychoanalytic critcism would focus on Freudian concepts such as the the Id and Ego; it would be based on how the Ego, logical and conscious mind, represses the Id, unconscious desires and thoughts. Authors would use this repression in their novels to reflect the universally repressed desires that is all within us. This is proven by a psychoanalytic critic Holland because he says "authors create works that appeal to our repressed wishes and fantasies" [p.508]. Kate Chopin's novel, The Awakening, explamplifies this clearly whereas the main character, Edna, goes through a series of struggles with her inner self. Edna was grown to believe the society's standard for a woman for she was just a classic housewife who meekly submitted to her husband and raised her children. This was all challenged when she met Adele, a woman who opened her inner eyes and Robert, who released her sexual, repressed needs as a women.

The time setting of this novel takes place when women did not have much power; their identity rested with their husbands and children. Therefore, Adele opens Edna's inner romantic and youthful desires because she is very open to romantic the supressed childish romance. After Edna started to think about herself and her desires within her, she started to act differently towards her husband. "She wondered if her husband had ever spoken to her like that before, and if she had submitted to his command". She started to question her obeidience to him and her identity without him.

Throughout the middle of the novel, one can really see how Edna fights her inner sexual and femine unconscious needs. Freud quotes "..that natural urges, when identified as "wrong", may be repressed but not obliterated..." [p.504]. This is proven through the reoccuring thoughts and violent actions after the realization upon her wrong feelings for Robert. She "takin[takes] off her wedding ring, flung it upon the carpet. when she saw it lying there, she stamped her heel upon it, striving to crush it."[p.70]. She fails to fight her wrong fantasies about Robert, and since the desire is still there, she takes it out violently on her ring instead. A psychoanalytic critic such as Freud would point out how she gets angry for these wrong and unconscious feelings. Through Edna, Chopin expresses this repressed feminine need. Women are such emotionally hungry creatures that one man's half hearted love is not enough to satisfy them. Every woman yearns to be longed for so much that they have the desire for an affair to receive that extra attention. It fills their human need for excitement and youth as well as their need to be captivate a man.

The Wizard of Oz

2009-07-30T08:36:00.000-04:00

The Wizard of Oz, by L. Frank Baum is a classic children’s fairy tale. Dorothy, the main character is a young orphaned girl who lives with her Aunt Em and Uncle Henry. It can be inferred that Dorothy’s adventure in Oz after a cyclone hit her house was a dream, as the author writes in the last chapter, “Aunt Em had just come out of the house to water the cabbages when she looked up and saw Dorothy running toward her.” (Baum, 213) Aunt Em was not frantically looking for Dorothy rather she was going about and doing her regular chores, assuming that Dorothy had gone off to play. Dorothy’s dream according to Sigmund Freud in his work, “The Dream-Work,” consisted of “transforming thoughts into visual images.” (27) Dorothy’s dream was a reflection of the thoughts and desires of her subconscious.

Of characters that accompany Dorothy on her journey, the Tin Woodman is a reflection of one of her buried desires. The Tin Woodman is going to the Wizard so that the Wizard will give him what he is lacking. “I want him to give me a heart [said the Tin Woodman].” (Baum, 88-89) In actuality, this is one aspect that Dorothy subconsciously realizes that she is lacking in. Subconsciously she recognizes the fact that she is not truly grateful to Aunt Em and Uncle Henry for taking her in. Before the cyclone hit Dorothy described her Aunt and Uncle as people that “never smiled” and “never laughed.” (Baum, 2) Dorothy projected onto the Tin Woodman her desire to gain a heart in order to learn to love and appreciate her Aunt and Uncle for what they gave her.

The central aspect of the story is Dorothy’s journey to the Emerald City to find the Wizard of Oz. As Dorothy tells the Scarecrow, “I am going to the Emerald City to ask the Great Oz to send me back to Kansas. (Baum, 26) When Dorothy arrives the Wizard tells her “if you wish me to use my magic power to send you home again you must…kill the Wicked Witch of the West.” (Baum, 104) This is one of the indicators of what Dorothy’s daydream is truly about. Sigmund Freud wrote in his work, “The Material and Sources of Dreams,” that a girl regards “her mother as a rival in love by whose removal she could but profit.” (5) Dorothy was an orphan but she thought of Aunt Em as a mother figure and Uncle Henry as a father figure. In this dream the Wicked Witch is a symbol for Aunt Em and the Wizard for her Uncle Henry. Dorothy subconsciously wanted to get rid of her Aunt so that she could receive all of her Uncle’s love. This idea is expressed when the Wizard told her that he could not help her until she killed the Wicked Witch for him. Dorothy rationalized the killing in her mind by portraying her Aunt as evil.

Sigmund Freud wrote in his work, “The Dream-Work” that “[one] endeavors to arrive at the latent dream from the manifest one.” Freud meant that one can look at the actual content of Dorothy’s dream in The Wizard of Oz and discover the true meaning behind the symbols.

What Freud would say about Hamlet

2009-07-30T07:46:00.000-04:00

Hamlet contains many aspects that Freud would find fascinating. The first would be Hamlet’s apparent loathing for his mother and uncle. A normal person would say that is because they are sleeping with each other, but a psychoanalyst would say that Hamlet loathed his mother for choosing his uncle over him, and that he loathed his uncle for being his rival. This is what Freud called the Oedipus complex. It is when a man has an incestuous desire to love his mother intimately. In Act three scene four, Hamlet accosts his mother in her bedroom, while Polonius hides behind a curtain. Hamlet berates his mother for her foul judgment in marrying Claudius. He says that Claudius is not half the man his father was and a murderer on top of that. Here, Freud would say that Hamlet only says this about his father because he is already dead and can no longer be a rival for his mother’s affections.
Another happening in this scene is the appearance of the deceased king’s ghost, which only Hamlet can see. The ghost tells Hamlet that he has to stay focused. He says that his mother is not the guilty one, that Claudius is. It is he who needs to be killed. Freud would say that this ghost is a manifestation from Hamlet’s unconscious mind. It is like a waking dream. Freud’s theory discusses both the latent and manifest dream. The latent dream is the hidden meaning within the manifest dream. The manifest dream is your dream at face value. In this wake dream Hamlet sees his father telling him to kill the true guilty party. This is the manifest dream. The latent dream could be that his father is actually him telling himself that his mother is not the one who deserves his rage but the true murderer and his own rival, Claudius. But according to Freud’s own theory of displacement the dream could just as easily be about his mother having an ear infection. This theory talks about an allusion that “are connected with the element they replace by the most external and remote relations and are therefore unintelligible; and when they are undone, their interpretation gives the impression of being a bad joke or of an arbitrary and forced explanation dragged in by the hair of its head.” One could say that Hamlet thinks his father was poisoned through his ear and that ears get infected and that his mother may be in pain because of it.
There are other scenes in Hamlet where he has these wake dreams. In the very first act he sees his father’s ghost and it tells him that he was murdered by Claudius and that Hamlet must seek revenge. But Hamlet only looks at the manifest dream and not the latent dream which is why he has so much trouble throughout the play. If a psychoanalyst had the chance to talk to Hamlet and interpret his dreams then maybe people wouldn’t have thought him mad and listened to what he said about his uncle.

The Outsiders

2009-07-29T22:55:00.000-04:00

Having been published nearly 50 years ago, S.E. Hinton's The Outsiders has become an easy favorite for many young adults and teens. Much of the appeal lies in the novel's central protagonist, Ponyboy Curtis who as the youngest in his gang, struggles to find his own identity and place all the while trying to find approval from the rest of the group so that he may fit in.

Ponyboy is the youngest of 3 brothers, all now orphans (after their parents died in a car crash) but yet the brothers still maintain some similarity to a family unit. Ponyboy is handled both as a child and as a brother within this family; his 2 older brothers, Darry (the oldest) and Sodapop emulate the now empty roles of mother and father. Early on in the book, Ponyboy decides to walk home alone, and Darry screams at him for this dangerous decision. Ponyboy narrates that there's no proper way for him to act around Darry and that he would be yelled at no matter what: “Me and Darry just didn't dig each other. I never could please him...He never hollered at Sodapop...He just hollered at me” (Hinton 13). Although neither Ponyboy nor Darry enjoy the role the play in the family unit, they both stick to it begrudgingly as if that is the only way it could work. Sodapop's constant stepping in provides a defense for Ponyboy and he consistently plays a nurturing, affectionate, warm, and caring role for Ponyboy. Darry on the other hand seems more concerned with Ponyboy's surface growth. After being scolded by Darry, Ponyboy is comforted by Sodapop much like a mother might comfort a hurt child: “'You cold Ponyboy?' 'A little,' I lied. Soda threw one arm across my neck. He mumbled...'Listen, kiddo, when Darry hollers at you....he don't mean nothin' (Hinton 17). Although Sodapop splits his time and attention between the two brothers, it would seem like Ponyboy would want that affection solely for himself. Darry provides the role of breadwinner, and Ponyboy would say he loves Darry as much as Sodapop, but his love for Darry is more out of respect. In Ross C. Murfin's essay “What is Psychoanalytic Criticism?” he refers to Freud's idea of the repressed mind: “One of the unconscious desires most commonly repressed is the childhood wish to displace the parent of the opposite sex” (504). The relationship between Darry and Ponyboy hints at Freud's idea of eternal strife and perhaps in Ponyboy's mind it would be easier to “remove him” rather than rival him for Sodapop's attention.

It is also Sodapop who essentially works to unite the two and keep the family together. In order to do this, Sodapop must downplay the roles each plays in the family unit so that they may more properly understand each other. It is through Sodapop that Ponyboy realizes that Darry isn't as unfeeling as Darry pretends himself to be and is somewhat like them: “I suddenly realized that...he wasn't so much older that he couldn't feel scared or hurt and as lost as the rest of us. I saw that I had expected Darry to do all the understanding without even trying to understand him” (Hinton 177). In order for the boys to live peacefully, it is necessary that Ponyboy not see Darry as a rival and authority and instead to acknowledge their similarities. Having lost the sense of rivalry, Ponyboy no longer feels any hatred or fear towards Darry. Murfin explains Freud's position on fear: “A boy...may fear that his father will castrate him” (504). Darry has not necessarily lost the ability to castrate, but Ponyboy at this point has lost his fear of castration and therefore can remove him and his brother from their eternal strife.

Hinton's book acknowledges that family units often function with gender roles in place, yet the story destroys the function of these roles and downplays their necessity.

Things Fall Apart

2009-07-26T20:21:00.000-04:00

Achebe's novel, Things Fall Apart, portrays many of the struggles and problems that arose during post colonialism. The changes the characters goes through clearly depicts the western influences in their society. A post colonial critic such as Edward Said would be interested in how this western power dominated these cultures and effected them. Said believes that “Africa [ is ] politically independent but in many ways dominated and dependent as when ruled directly by European powers.” This can be proven through many of the parts of this story because there were so many changes within important rituals that is crucial for their survival. For example, the techonology these Europeans brought threathened the harvesting and farming skills these people have developed over many years. This makes them potentially very dependent on the European's techonology because their skills and techniques will be forgotten and less deft with time.

Language is another danger that arises with post colonialism.. The Igbo language is an importantpart of their identity because it is a product of their history and their ancestry. It is something beautiful that was made within their people that is sacred and sentimentally valuable. As the Europeans arrive, English threathens the Igbo language. However, throughout the book, it can be seen that Okonkwo tries to perserve and use Igbo. Achebe purposefully writes beautiful lyrics of Igbo songs to show the beauty of their language and the struggles to perserve it. "Eze elina, elina! Sala" [p. 158].

A post colonial critic would also question the stuggles these dominated people go through to maintain their national pride and identity. He writes, "they do not simple accept what goes on in the imperial idea; they think about it alot, they worry about it, they are actually quite anxious about whether the can make it seem like a routine thing. But it never is." [p. 377]. Said recognizes that these people are constantly in crisis find their identity and maintain their innerself. This can be seen clearly in this novel whereas the main character Okonkwo is constantly challenged to have be strong for himself and his motherland. In the midst of all this technology, Christian, and language reforms, Uchendu asks what motherland means. Uchendu answers by "But when there is sorrow and bitterness, he finds refuge in his motherland." [p.133]; he considers their country to be their comfort and a big part of their hearts. He tells Okonkwo and his problems are nothing compared to what is about to come and what happens among other people during this time; he challenges him by asking him "you think you are the greatest sufferer in the world?...i have no more to say to you." [p.134]. A post colonial critic would be interested in these identity and cultural issues like these people face as European power arises within their society. They would recognize this techonology, language, and identity issues.

Postcolonialism in Milan Kundera's Unberable Lightness of Being

2009-07-26T17:09:00.000-04:00

Postcolonialism and postmodernism – the two recent literary trends have been strongly associated with each other since their inception. That is explained not only by the fact that they relate to the same time period in the literary process, but also because one outlines the development of another, or in other words, postmodernism became prism for looking at the postcolonial reality in literature. There are few concepts that postcolonial literature borrowed from postmodern critique: the opposition of center and periphery, free and oppressed, contemporary and old-stylish, banal and vanguard, original and loaned or propagated.
One of the works that embodies this blending is Milan Kundera’s The unbearable lightness of being. Although Czechoslovakia had never been colonized by any country, being in the so called Red Block (the groups of countries in Eastern Europe loyal to Soviets), had obliged the state and its citizens to be extremely loyal to the Communist rule. Unbearable lightness of being is, unarguably, the novel of political injustice and oppression in a specific place and time: Czechoslovakia in late 1960s and early 1970. Czechoslovakia at that time had been considered to be a periphery of the great territory of power of the USSR. A critique of Communist oppressive rule in the novel is conveyed through a bizarre analysis of affairs between Dr. Thomas and his beloved, Teresa. Kundera explores the nature of love, at least two of its facets that both characters experience – physical love and love the motherland. Because of taking a part in the improvised coup in 1968 (what referred to as “Prague Spring”, when Soviets invaded Czechoslovakia), Thomas loses the opportunity to practice his medicine skills. To make the living he becomes a window-washer. Teresa, also having taken a part in the uprising has to redefine her existence; after the coup she found herself in the photography, as her first shots of the tanks invading Prague, provoked a resonance among the bohemians of the capital. But, again, being spotted by the authority she cannot practice the photography freely. “The effect of mimicry on the aiuthority of colonial discourse is profound and disturbing” (Bhabha, LT, 381). As the time passes by, having lost their former positions, both characters have to refigure the sort of their further occupation, and have to leave the beloved country because it does not allow them to practice their vocation. “Mimicry is also the sign of the inpproriate, however, a difference of recalcitrance which coheres its strategic function to colonial power, intensifies the surveillance, and poses an immanent threat to both ‘normalized’ knowledge and disciplinary powers” (Bhabha, LT, 381) Both Teresa and Thomas chose to merge with the other indifferent population of the country in order to save their life and freedom of movement in exchange of being “mute”. “When I say “totalitarian,” what I mean is that everything that infringes on kitsch must be banished for life: every display of individualism (because deviation from the collective is a spit in the eye of the smiling brotherhood),”- claims author who is strongly associated with Kundera himself.
The oppression of originality and individuality was the primer principle of the Communist rule, yet this very notion was alien to the countries fallen under the Soviet influence after the WWII.

Passing

2009-07-26T16:59:00.000-04:00

Racism wasn’t an option it was a way a life in the time of post colonialism. Post colonialism is the period after colonialism. Post colonialism is a time when racism and segregation were at its highest points, especially in the United States. The book “Passing” by Nella Larsen, takes place during the time of post colonialism when racism was seen everywhere by the white Caucasian people against the African American people. In the book this was during the time when slavery had just ended in the United States.

In this classic American novel the main characters Clare and Irene are victims of their own skin. Clare and Irene were born unusually white for being of African American descent. The story continues with Clare running away with her young Caucasian lover Jack, who was not aware of Clare’s African American background. “My goodness, Jack! What difference would it make if, after all these years, you were to find out that I was one or two per cent coloured?’ Bellew put out his hand in a repudiating fling, definite and final. ‘Oh no Nig’ he declared, ‘nothing like that with me. I know you’re no nigger, so it’s all right. You can get as black as you please as far as I’m concerned, since I know you’re no nigger. I draw the line at that. No niggers in the family. Never have been and never will be.”

Clare was always very conscious about her African background and even though she was of white skin she suffered a great deal through her pregnancy. “No, I have no boys and I don’t think I’ll ever have any. I’m afraid. I nearly died of terror the whole nine months before Margery was born for fear that she might be dark. That goodness, she turned out all right. But I’ll never risk it again. Never! The strain is simply too-too hellish.” She was scared that her child would be born with dark skin, almost thought of it as a disease. The author gives you the impression that Clare was relieved that she didn’t have dark skin because if it were otherwise she would live in poverty and not be married with John (Jack).

Achebe quotes Conrad “we glided past like phantoms”. It is interesting that Conrad uses the word phantom because the conquerors are white people, the narrator seems to emphasize how different, how dark Africa and it’s people are. This is how John Bellew though of himself in the book Passing, greater than any African American even better than his wife once he found out that she was half African. "So you're a nigger, a damned dirty nigger!' His voice was a snarl and a moan, an expression of rage and of pain." (This describes John's reaction when he found out his wife's secret.) Clare had one caucasian parent and one African parent which is why her skin color came out like that of a caucasian person.

Postcolonialism and Postcolonialism in Casablanca

2009-07-26T16:54:00.000-04:00

Through the course of world history, humanity has witnessed a dynamic evolution of Imperialism in varying degrees and forms. In more recent history, the colonial aspect of many of the dominant Western Imperialist societies has declined significantly. This rapid decline has caused a discernable measure of conflict to arise, between the progressive dominance of colonizing society and the reemergence (often amalgamated) social identity of the colonized population. This cultural phenomena is known as the Postcolonial Culture (or rather the development of) of the society in question. It is often useful to employ Postcolonial theory as a method of literary critique. To demonstrate this, the following analysis of the 1942 film “Casablanca” is presented.

The setting of “Casablanca” is the French controlled Morrocan city bearing the same name, during World War II. Despite the fact that Casablanca is unoccupied, France itself has fallen to the German Army, and the social hierarchy is established early on in the film based on this fact. We see this from the arrival of a German officer, Major Strasser. He arrives in Casablanca to capture a German fugitive and the local prefect, Captain Renault is forced (albeit reluctantly) to execute his orders. The French population of Casablanca is clearly agitated by the presence of the Germans, both locally and in France. They struggle to keep their social identity clearly delineated from that of their German subjugators. This is demonstrated in Rick’s lounge when a group of German soldiers begin reciting their national anthem and are made inaudible by the vociferous recitation of the French national anthem by the local patrons. To understand why this small German garrison has reaffirmed the German influence over Casablanca we recall, from Edward Said “On Culture and Imperialism”, ‘westerners maintain their colonies abroad as markers on an ideological map, over which they rule morally and intellectually’. The German occupiers must enforce their idea of law and morality to demonstrate its superiority.

We must also play close attention to the fact that the French are themselves occupying the Morrocan city of Casablanca. This fact is indisputable as Morrocan characters do not even appear in supporting roles through out the film, as well as the fact that French is the language of discourse when English is not being employed. The French culture is superimposed over the Morrocan individuals. We see this when Ilsa is being “merchandised” in a Morrocan open air market. The Morrocan speaks with a French accent (as do all the Morrocans) and he petitions her for an exchange in Francs, not the local currency. However, it is prudent to make the observation that his manner of dress is distinctly Morrocan. This scene underscores the conflict of “mimicry and mockery” put forth by Homi Bhabha: “it is the ambivalence of mimicry [and mockery] which fixes the colonial subject as a partial presence. By partial we mean both incomplete and virtual”. From this, the uncertainty in the Morrocan culture, due to French influence is established.

The duality of Postcolonialism in “Casablanca” serves as an excellent platform for the analysis of all cultures and as a method of literary critique. The setting and plot of “Casablanca”, as well as the Postcolonial duality, demonstrates the interplay between the colonized and colonizers and how their conflicts can be “pulled backed” to prior events in history.

Post Colonialism in Things Fall Apart

2009-07-26T16:48:00.001-04:00

Post colonialism deals with cultural identity in colonized societies and the ways in which writers articulate that identity. Chinua Achebe’s novel Things Fall Apart is a narrative that follows the life of an Igbo tribe at the time when the wave of colonization washed over Africa. The story tells of a man named Okonkwo who had always dreamed of being well known and respected throughout his village and neighboring villages since he was a child. He didn’t want to end up a failure like his father and he worked tirelessly until he achieved his goal. However, although he was able to reach his goal at an early age, his life began to “fall apart” when Okonkwo's tragic flaw, the fact that he is terrified of looking weak like his father, takes over. As a result, he behaves hastily, bringing trouble and sorrow upon himself and his family.
“The white man is very clever. He came quietly and peaceably with his religion. We were amused at his foolishness and allowed him to stay. Now he has won our brothers. And our clan can no longer act like one. He had put a knife on the things that held us together and we have fallen apart.” This quote shows how Okonkwo is doomed to lose the traditions he cherishes as his society slowly falls apart. He is opposed to change and he desperately tried to hold onto the traditional values and practices of his society. He does so in the midst of an alien European invasion which ultimately results in the disintegration of this traditional African society.
Achebe takes the reader through the daily lives of the Ibo people in part one of the story and in part two he introduces us to the European missionaries. When reading this novel it almost feels like you are part of the clan and then it is almost as if you are feeling the change yourself when you read part two and the missionaries come in. Part two shows the affect that the missionaries have on the members of the Ibo clan. The missionaries are able to take over and transform the once Ibo tribe into a Christian one. One example was when Oknonkwo’s oldest son, Nwoye, converted to Christianity which was the white man’s religion. This was very upsetting to him because Nwoye was his oldest son and Okonkwo had great expectations for him.
Things Fall Apart is a novel that serves as a reminder of what Nigeria once was. It shows how a society can deal with change, how change affects the individuals of that society, and how subtle a change can be; so much so that the people themselves are surprised at the change.

Hotel Rwanda

2009-07-26T16:30:00.000-04:00

Hotel Rwanda takes place during a time of turmoil, where social strife has lead to the point of genocide. It is after the Belgian colonists have left Rwanda, leaving the Hutus and the Tutsis to do their own bidding. The Hutus and Tutsis are both Rwandans, the only difference is that the Tutsis are people that were chosen by the Belgian colonists to maintain control in Rwanda. They were simply chosen by physical appearance, whether it was because they had lighter skin or because they had a narrower nose. Using the Tutsis the maintain control of the population, the Belgians maintained power, and once the Belgian colonists left, the Hutus felt the Tutsis were traitors and had to be exterminated.

The ex-colonized in this case are represented by these two social classes, the Hutus, who are the majority of the population, and the Tutsis, who are the small minority that were in power. Once the Belgians left, the Tutsis are left with no real power behind them, allowing the Hutus take power and do as they please. The movie follows the main protagonist, Paul Rusesabagina, a Hutu hotel manager, who manages to shelter Tutsi refugees in his hotel, as they are being hunted down and killed by the Hutus.

Immediately after the colonizers are gone, a power struggle begins between two social classes, as the Tutsi rebel faction attempts to fight off the Hutus who are in power, mainly because of their large population. As the fighting escalates, all people who are not Rwandan, mainly whites, are being evacuated by the U.N., at the same time no help is given the people who are being oppressed. Once the Belgians have left, no western power is willing to fill in the empty void left by them. Even the U.N. was unwilling to help evacuate the innocent victims of Rwandan civil war.

This empty gap of power, left by Belgians, is possibly one of the main factors of the social strife. One might argue that Rwanda would’ve been better off if the Belgian continued their colonization, but if they were, the Hutus would still be under their oppressive rule. However, if Belgian rule were never to be, then the two social classes would not have existed. The Tutsis were created out of random picking through physical appearance; therefore the Tutsis are no different from the Hutus.

Disgrace-J.M Coetzee

2009-07-26T16:20:00.000-04:00

Disgrace written by J.M Coetzee focuses on the downfall of a white professor in Cape Town, David Lurie. Set in modern South Africa, this novel gives the readers an intense depiction of a post-colonial and post-apartheid society. It portrays the land which was previously white-owned which is slowly taken back by new powerful farmers. Analyzing it from a post-colonial perspective, the novel exposes the race relations after the power has been shifted.

David Lurie, a divorced, 52 year old college professor is left unemployed after a sexual scandal with one of his students named Melanie. He then flees the city and stays with his daughter Lucy in Salem. There, he volunteers with Bev Shaw at the animal shelter. Things in Salem also go wrong. After a violent attack against David, Lucy is raped by two men and a young boy.

In Edwards Said's essay Two Visions in the Heart of Darkness, he states that "Domination and inequalities of power and wealth are perennial facts of human society." The fact that Lurie rapes Melanie shows his incapability to adjust to changes in power after apartheid. Under the apartheid his position of a white male was superior and dominant under the power structure of South Africa. However, post-apartheid, he still is unable to change and forces himself upon the colored girl, even when she says no. He does not have any morals or principles and simply assumes he can do whatever he pleases without caring or feeling responsible for his deeds. He is selfish and in concerned with fulfilling his desires. His superiority is also shown after the rape when he is refuses to acknowledge his accusations publicly and to take counseling. Lurie actually says “I’m not prepared to be reformed. I want to go on being myself.” This statement clearly shows that Lurie is not at all ready for the change that is happening. Mentally, he still considers himself to be better than the blacks and fails to truly see what he has done wrong.

After the crime against Lucy, she does not report her rape to the police. Lurie does not understand why Lucy doesn’t report to the police. She says she wants it to remain private. However, Lucy’s silence can be analyzed by a socio-political standpoint. She understands the justice system that South Africa and also their position in society. She does not hold any improbable outcomes of the prosecution of the crime and therefore she does not report it.
The crime agaisnt Lucy was according to her and her father, done out of hate. In Said's essay Tw0 Visions in the Heart of Darkness, he also stated that, "A new...appalling tribalism is fracturing societies, separating peoples, promoting greed, bloody conflict, and uninteresting assertions of minor ethnic or group particularity." This statement describes some of the things that were done to the whites, which by post-apartheid were considered minorities. The ex-colonialist were then being oppressed due to the shifting of power.

In the end of the novel, Lucy finds out that she is pregnant because of the rape and then exchanges her property and accepts the humiliating position as Petrus’ third wife for her protection. Petrus was an African who worked for Lucy, but after the drastic social changes in South Africa, he gained land and became a wealthy farmer. Although she does not want to marry Petrus, she seems to have no option and takes herself down to living ‘like a dog.’ Now that the power has shifted the white South Africans have to start from nothing and learn how to accept their status. After years of prior unjust policies against the blacks there is a great deal of hatred in them against the whites. Both Lurie and Lucy do eventually have to give and realize that life will not be as it was before.

Brave New World

2009-07-26T15:27:00.000-04:00

Most post-colonialism critics like to concentrate on novels in which a colonizer descends into the culture he is trying to colonize, and shows the steady decline from the colonizer as a civilized person (by his own standards) into a helpless being in a non-colonized, or partially-colonized, area. In Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World”, the exact opposite seems to happen; set in the mid-2500’s, the futuristic society is a technologically advanced one in which there is no shortage of food, expedited world travel is as simple as taking a bus, and where children are cloned and decanted instead of born naturally, which has been made illegal. John, a ‘savage’ from a reservation, where people still follow ‘old ways’ such as natural reproduction by sex and marriage and follow deities, has stumbled out into the ‘civilized’ world by way of an invitation to do so by two of the main characters of the book. So how would a post-colonialism critic read this book, in which the character that is apparently being colonized appears in the colonizer’s life?

In ‘Brave New World’, the world as a whole is governed by a group of top-ranking officials, so the utopia exists in every corner of the globe. For those who want to go back to the old ways, however, there are reservations scattered throughout the world that keep to old ways, sort of like the Indian reservations we have nowadays. This is where John, the protagonist of the story, comes from; he has never had a true brush with society, aside from the fact that his mother used to be in a high position in London before she moved to a reservation.

After John gains contact with civilization as the rest of the world knows it, he first finds it pleasing and joyful; at one point, when Bernard, the person who visited the reservation, tells him some of the finer points of the outside world, John quotes Shakespeare – “Oh brave new world that has such people in it.” (Huxley 130) As time goes on and he sees what he views as corruption, he turns this utterance, which he meant as a blessing, into a curse and a mantra against turning into one of the ‘civilized’ (Huxley 190). By the end of the book, John has been turned into a curiosity, exiled from the cities but still allowed contact; John, though, cannot live with his new understanding of civilization, and hangs himself, much to the chagrin and excitement of the civilized populace.

The demoralization of John due to his ‘ascent’ from a seemingly unstructured society to one of great advances is an issue that could be analyzed with post-colonialism criticism, if looked at from an opposite point of view. The colonized, or in this case, John, being forced into the colonizer’s world, and having world views pressed upon them, is almost more catastrophic than if it were the other way around, which is the run-of-the-mill post-colonial literature. Imagine Tarzan being torn from the jungle and placed in New York, or a 12th century bard trying to understand modern rock; it’s post-colonial literature, but from the viewpoint of the stranger in a strange land.

Postcolosims and the outlaw josie whales

2009-07-26T15:26:00.000-04:00

A need for Hegemony has created many different situations in many different societies in which one group takes power over another colonizing them using there land and goods ruling over them. This type of imperialistic society tends to fall into major or permit strife because “If while sitting in Oxford, Paris, or New York you tell Arabs or Africans that they belong to a basically sick or unregenerate culture, you are unlikely to convince them. Even if your prevail over them, they are not going to concede to you and your essential superiority” (LT 369) This kind of situation between conquers and angry conquered creates a type of critique for stories about situations like this know as post colonialism examining how when the situation changes and the colonized demand fair treatment how within the story the ex colonized are presented, How the power of the ex dominant is continued, what happens when the dominant group leaves, . A film in which deals with the many different levels of post colonialism in a country that it self had many different phases of colonialism is the Clint Eastwood film “The outlaw Josie Whales” The film takes place during the Civil War after the surrender of Josie’s confederate unit he refuses becomes an outlaw and meets different people who are displaced now by the system that of the former and current colonized such as two Native Americans and the town folks of a now dried up mining town.
As the title of the film states after the group after the surrender of the colonized are seen as out laws they are tracked down by bounty hunters and the union army. They are seen as murders and criminals not as victims of the atrocities of the war and regime change. As is the case of Josie his family is brutally murdered in a union raid of his farm and he is seeking justice for the murder of his way of life along with his family. But that changes and he becomes an outlaw murderer. This also happens to the two Native Americans he travels with. They are no longer seen as people part of a once great society but as dumb and in the case of the female native as property. An example is when a sales man is trying to sell a tonic he says “Here chief this will solve all your problems” so now the white people watching will drink it the chief responds to this with “you drink it” The second female native when we first meet her is actually being sold to a white man who proceeded to try and rape her.
The power that both sides posses but in the case of the union and government in the story is held up by two different ways within the story. The first is consent the confederates agree to surrender and give up there arms. Secondly guns once it is agreed they will no longer fight anyone who disagrees is hunted down.
“We mimic men of the New world… with its reminders of the corruption that came so quickly with it new”(LT 383) When the old regime leaves in cases like this it will lead to corruption and strife as is the case in the town the outlaws find themselves in at the end of the film. When the government there that was driven on mining gold leaves for a better mine all that is left is a few trades men a show girl and bartender. They fight among each other and have nothing to due until they begin to harbor the out laws because they bring goods a supplies to them and start to get everyone farming but they are attacked by the new union movement and troops and they are also attacked by the native Americans in the area.

Notebook of a Return to the Native Land

2009-07-26T14:55:00.000-04:00

Postcolonial theory spans generations, nations, and classes, but is guided by a few central principals. Like feminist theory, postcolonial theory is concerned with trying to find a new identity (or in some cases to re-establish one prior to colonization) and a new language that has not been laced with Western thinking and ideologies. In his long poem titled “Notebook of a Return to the Native Land,” Aime Cesaire simultaneously tries not only to destroy the remnants of colonization that distorted his native land but tries to find a new identity that is not like any before it.

Cesaire writes that in whiteness, there was nothing that truly was his nor that he could take from the experience. To leave whiteness behind is a quest itself, one he feels alone in: “what is mine / a lone man imprisoned in whiteness / a lone man defying the white screams of white death / a man who mesmerizes the white sparrow hawk of white death” (Cesaire 16). However Cesaire does not greave for the loss of a white identity, but it rather emboldens him in his new identity. Cesaire is also thinking of his brethren, who are still imprisoned in whiteness whether it be figuratively or literally, but until they realize they have nothing from that world, they will remain imprisoned. Writer bell hooks supports the idea of a new identity, removed from the white world although admits that it is difficult: “Given a pervasive politic of white supremacy which seeks to prevent the formation of radical black subjectivity, we cannot cavalierly dismiss a concern with identity politics” (hooks 364). Again like feminism, black literature has struggled to find its place as it has either been seen as oppositional, or not worthy of recognition according to white institutions. Few have given it the chance to discover what is a new and unique identity within it.

Cesaire also makes it clear that he is not attempting to further generalizations about his people and is aware of the implications that this creates: “Or else quite simply as they like to think of us! / Cheerfully obscene, completely nuts about jazz to cover their extreme boredom” (Cesaire 25). While Cesaire doesn't necessarily find fault with liking jazz, his idea of a new identity is completely radical and unfounded in tropes of what constitute the values of a society. He must step outside of everything to see what has been wrought on the people of his land.

He wishes to be a guide in rediscovering a new black identity, which had been oppressed and removed for countless years and now must find its way: “Make me resist any vanity, but espouse its genius as the fist the extended arm! / Make me a steward of its blood / make me a trustee of its resentment / make me into a man for the ending / make me into a man for the beginning” (Cesaire 37). He had earlier remarked that black societies had never been known for exploration, nor their inventions, nor their discoveries. Yet that does not make them a culture of no inherent value, rather Cesaire believes it is the fact that black societies have loved the earth and sky for what it was that makes them unique. While black culture was rooted in strength and purity, white culture has been guided only by the ideas of control and domination. In her essay, bell hooks suggests that both in critique and in society, the scope of black culture has been consistently limited: “We have too long imposed upon us from both the outside and the inside a narrow, constricting notion of blackness” (hooks 366). She would agree with Cesaire that there is an untapped and rich history in black culture, but it is necessary to look at it from a different frame of mind rather than what white institutions would value. One does not determine the other.

Both Cesaire and hooks agree that black culture must determine itself, it can never be rooted in the values of white men. Cesaire is in love with his identity and is hoping others will embrace this same way of thinking, as though it is important to see the consequences of colonization, it is also important to notice that it only worked as a limiting factor and never worked to empower the spirit.

Post-Colonialism and the Travels of Michael Crichton

2009-07-26T14:45:00.000-04:00

Evidence that post-colonial uncertainty and tension exists is evident in Michael Crichton’s Travels. The book is essentially an autobiography of Michael’s journey through adulthood, facing first some medical school disillusionment, then life reorganization, and finally - the largest portion of the book - worldly exploration. In his travels to particular former colonies of major European powers, such as Jamaica, Mexico, and New Guinea, he describes his visits and interactions with the local populace. Although he has some understandable conversations and dealings with the locals, it’s those unusual and mind-boggling communications that strike him enough to record in his book. As far as I can tell, some ex-colonials have issues with independence, either with the visitation of the oppressing race, or with the need to find a new identity while keeping traditions.

“As everybody knows, Conrad is a romantic on the side. He might not exactly admire savages clapping their hands and stamping their feet but they have at least the merit of being in their place, unlike this dog in a parody of breeches. For Conrad, things (and persons) being in their place, is of the utmost importance”, writes Chinua Achebe in “An Image of Africa”. I believe Achebe wants to say that even if a white visitor, such as Conrad (who wrote “Heart of Darkness”) seems to have been, visits this profound and “savage” world of Africa, he would enter with expectations of some fixed, pre-historic culture and lifestyle. In Travels, Crichton describes these feelings in an interesting portion of his trip to New Guinea, which was once part of the German and British empires. He states, “I am here in New Guinea wrapped in layers of romance…” which he divides into the “romance of the anthropologist” (talking to the natives to learn their ways), the romance of the “visiting sophisticate” (examining how they conduct their lives in a scholastic manner), and the romance of the “pastoral primitive” (seeing people unencumbered by materialism). It seems that Crichton’s views on all of the above were shattered by the manners in which the traditionalism of the culture and modern materialism collided.

An example of misconstrued or warped notions during Crichton’s visit to New Guinea is when he first discovered a “primitive” bow and arrow. His guide on this trip, a native named Hebrew, urges him to try shooting a bow. Initially, Crichton had a glamorous view about bows and how superbly lethal and accurate they were. When he saw his first bow, he was confused; he was confused by the weak-looking nature of the weapon. Then when the native guide fired his arrow, it was like an epiphany of the romantic and deadly nature of primitive hunting to Michael. Another example of this “natural” tradition of a hunter-based nomad clashing with the modernity is when the tour bus driver told Crichton that he came upon a tribal war while driving a group of tourists: “One man who drove tourists in a bus told me on a certain day he had come upon a tribal war, and all the tourists – they were Italians – piled out of the bus to take pictures. While they were taking pictures, one warrior beheaded another with an ax. Right there in front of the tourists!” (Even more ironically, the tourists didn’t notice, since they were entranced by the colorful war costumes.)

Another interesting concept Achebe notices in Heart of Darkness is that “Conrad did not originate the image of Africa which we find in his book. It was and is the dominant image of Africa in the Western imagination and Conrad merely brought the peculiar gifts of his own mind to bear on it. For reasons which can certainly use close psychological inquiry, the West seems to suffer deep anxieties about the precariousness of its civilization and to have a need for constant reassurance by comparing it with Africa.” I would like to take this time to actually examine the concepts that Achebe revisits in his study of Heart of Darkness and, mostly, his desire to get into Conrad’s mind. As I read Achebe’s “Image of Africa”, it seems he has a desire to deconstruct the mind of Conrad and how the white race, particularly Europeans, seem to use Africa as a laughingstock and “the antithesis of Europe” while not actually truly understanding the peoples. Crichton affirms and supplements this sentiment when he visits the Yucatan peninsula in Mexico to visit the ancient Mayan city of Uxmal. He goes on to describe the various buildings located in this once great city of the Mayan Empire, but notes that even though the buildings are given names (of a modern variety), historians and archeologists do not truly know what happened or who lived in these buildings. “Nobody on vacation wants to walk through a great ruined city and be told, ‘We know nothing about this place’… But the truth is, we don’t know.”

One thing that Achebe does not mention is the attitudes of the ex-colonials, although the tone of the writing suggests some feelings (it seems he is hopeful that white people will change their perceptions of other races, particularly the African ethnicities). Crichton notices in his trip to Jamaica, which was part of the British Empire, is the silent dissatisfaction towards the visiting ex-imperial white race. “While the attendant filled the [gas] tank, several loitering black men came over and stood around the car, peering at me, and at Terry [his fiancée at the time]. Their expressions were sullen and angry. They just walked around the car and looked… One of the men kicked a tired in front of the car. The others looked to see what we would do. We didn’t do anything.” It seems that some countries still hold grudges against not just the imperial conquerors, but also that particular race in general. It is such a distrust that prompts an alienating attitude towards white people, and it may have been passed down from generation to generation. While Achebe did not touch upon the colonial angst experienced and passed down through each generation, Of Mimicry and Man: The Ambivalence of Colonial Discourse by Homi Bhabha states that “a desire that, through the repetition of partial presence, which is the basis of mimicry, articulates those disturbances of cultural, racial, and historical difference that menace the narcissistic demand of colonial authority. It is a desire that reverses ‘in part’ the colonial appropriation by now producing a partial vision of the colonizer’s presence”. It was hard for me to understand at first, but I believe that this statement is really talking about how the colonized peoples after independence require a form of continued mentality that they are oppressed by that same race, even if they’ve attained a de facto independence (i.e. Jamaica).

Twice in his chapter of Crichton’s trip to Baltistan, which is in northern Pakistan, he states how inconceivable the world those peoples lived in must seem: “I stared at him. He was completely serious. He was thinking about the best way to kill people. I was surprised that his perceptions of this landscape could be so different from mine.”, and later in the chapter, “These aren’t really people; they don’t have the same thoughts and feelings as we do, and they won’t understand what we’re doing.” When we as Americans think of foreign non-white countries, it always seems there’s a barbarism or this mystique of foreignness that we just can’t grasp and that subtly we look down upon. I’m not really sure any group of people really understands another, and that we just make generalizations that fit, while making excuses when they don’t. Sometimes white visitors with all of their western modernity and complexity do not simply understand the basic and raw nature of foreign peoples. Achebe concludes in his essay that “[P]erhaps a change will come. Perhaps this is the time when it can begin, when the high optimism engendered by the breathtaking achievements of Western science and industry is giving way to doubt and even confusion. There is just the possibility that Western man may begin to look seriously at the achievements of other people.”

Post Colonialism points in Narrative of the Life by Olaudah Equiano

2009-07-26T11:03:00.001-04:00

Narrative of the Life by Olaudah Equiano is a story of his captivity as a slave in both Africa and then later on ships by Europeans. A post colonialism critic would have points about racism, language and power struggles presented throughout his story. Most writings that would be criticized in this way present blacks as ugly and savages that are cannibals while presenting whites as the desired race. In Equiano’s story he purposefully goes against this practice to reverse the racism. “I asked if I were not to be eaten by those white men with horrible looks, red faces, and long hair” (Norton Anthology American Literature Volume A 683). Since it was rare that non-white people had the skills to read, this was geared towards whites in order to create a shame in the reader and return the image that you are not the ideal.

In addition, as Achebe points out in his essay An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, it is also common to make black women out as savages as “she fulfills a structural requirement of the story: a savage counterpart to the refined, European woman who will step forth to the end of the story” (ACHEBE 4). Similarly, Equiano also goes against the grain in this regard. He writes of white women “Their women were not so modest as ours, for they ate, and drank and slept with their men” (NA 682). Again he is demonstrating to the reader that there is the possibility that being white is not the best thing. This also goes along with Homi Bhabha’s theory on Post colonialism in his essay Of Mimicry and Man: The Ambivalence of Colonial Discourse. “A desire that, through the repetition of partial presence, which is the basis of mimicry, articulates those disturbances of cultural, racial, and historical difference that menace the narcissistic demand of colonial authority. It is a desire that reverses ‘in part’ the colonial appropriation by now producing a partial vision of the colonizer’s presence” (LT 383). “This process by which the look of surveillance returns as the displacing gaze of the disciplined, where the observer becomes the observed and ‘partial’ representation rearticulates the whole notion of identity and alienates it from essence” (LT383-384).

Other points a post colonialism critic would make would be to discuss how Equiano is renamed with white European names multiple times to their liking as if his African name is not good enough. “In this place I was called Jacob; but on board the African Snow, I was called Michael.” Postcolonial critics would point out how the whites retained their power in the story which such as promising him his freedom repeatedly in almost what would have been considered an impossible way. In his story, his owner admits at the end he only promised him that because he thought it was unattainable. Equiano is demonstrating how he is aware this is how slaves were kept under control. He also debunks what the Europeans say about how slaves don’t make enough money to cover what they cost to purchase. Another way they retain power in the story is the slaves are told if they work harder they will be treated better.

Religion is also imposed on him and he becomes known as the “black Christian” as there is a limit to what they will allow, he can’t simply be a Christian. He was also forced to speak English. “I could now speak English tolerably well, and I perfectly understood everything that was said. I not only felt myself quite easy with these new countrymen, but relished their society and manners. I no longer looked upon them as spirits, but as men superior to us; and therefore I had the stronger desire to resemble them, to imbibe their spirit, and imitate their manners”. This is how the Europeans maintain control. According to Homi Bhabha, “partial reform will produce an empty form of ‘the imitation of English manners which will induce them (the colonial subjects) to remain under our protection’” (LT 382).

According to Edward Said in Culture and Imperialism “However else it might have been historically understandable, peremptorily withdrawing ‘the West’ from its own experiences in the ‘peripheral world’ certainly was and is not an attractive or edifying activity for an intellectual today. It shuts out the possibility of knowledge and of discovery of what it means to be outside the whale” (LT 376). Equiano’s text does not continue his life after his freedom is acquired. It would be hard to imagine that he would be able to go back to any form of life he had before. “Many of the most interesting post-colonial writers bear their past within them as scars of humiliating wounds, as instigation for different practices, as potentially revised visions of the past tending towards a new future, as urgently reinterpretable or redeployable experiences, in which the formerly silent native speaks and acts on territory taken back from the empire” (LT 379). Equiano writes of his experiences and of his scars and also of other slaves and their treatment at the same time going against stereotypes that have been created by European writers and views up until his time.

And the Dogs Were Silent

2009-07-26T05:24:00.000-04:00

In And the Dogs Were Silent, Césaire attempts to decolonize his mind, interestingly using the language of the colonizers’, French, do it. The Rebel in Césaire’s play murders his blue-eyed master. He is forced into the colonial prison until he is punished for his crime by a public death. Césaire reenacts the universal suffering and sacrifice of the colonized black individuals with the play’s colonial prison, the Lover, as well as the Rebel himself.

Césaire describes the colonial prison to depict the arrival of the whites in Africa using the chorus chants to signal their landing. The resulting slave trade is depicted through the verbal exchanges of the colonial administrator and the bishops. Césaire uses this scene to point out the absurd justification of European invasion. “Ah we are alone, and what burden! To bear alone the burden of civilization!” (pg 5 Césaire) The whites’ invasion took place for greedy purposes, but justified as the whites’ gift of science, and thus of civilization, to the ‘natives’. “My name is Discoverer, my name is Inventor, my name is Unifier, the one who opens the world to nations!” (pg 12, Césaire) With science as a tool, Europe had taken over the Caribbean. Whilst doing so, the Europeans justified their invasions and taught the enslaved and themselves, into believing their actions as a gift to the colonized nation.

The chorus’ cry for “death to the whites, death to the whites” (pg 15, Césaire) serves as a reenactment of the black revolution and the emotions that carried it. “Ah here comes the worthy messenger of this greedy race. Their pallid complexion woven out of gold and silver. Waiting for prey has hooked their bestial noses a steel gleam nests in their frigid eyes. Ah, a race without velvet” (pg 44 Césaire)

The Lover’s desperate urgings represent the compromise blacks had previously taken on for the sake of survival. The Lover begs the Rebel to consider their son in an attempt to sway him away from his self sacrifice. The Lover is used to voice the reasons behind blacks’ compromises, while the Rebel’s response is meant to challenge her compromise and to voice Césaire’s opinions against it. “Ah that is what destroys all of you and the country destroys itself by wanting at any cost to justify accepting the unacceptable.” (pg 34 Césaire)

Many times, colonized nations are often viewed as “’the other world’, the antithesis of Europe and therefore of civilization. A place where a man’s vaunted intelligence and refinement are finally mocked by triumphant bestiality.” (Achebe, pg 1) Using this sort of logic as a weapon, Europe had taken over the Caribbean. Whilst doing so, the Europeans justified their invasions while leading others, and quite possibly themselves, into believing their actions as a gift to the colonized nation. In fact, colonialism is the incomplete gift. It is the gift that requires the receiver, in this case ‘blacks’, to give back more than he is given. As Achebe questions whether a novel which continues the traditions of the age long attitude of dehumanizing Africa and Africans, can be considered a great work of art, once must also consider why a novel that questions and challenges this practice is not held high standard.

Post-Colonialism

2009-07-25T17:54:00.000-04:00

Graham Greene's, A Heart of the Matter takes place near the coast of Africa during World War 2. During this time, British officials are keeping an eye on security affairs throughout, making sure nothing suspicious might be going on. Scobie, the main charachter upholds a specific moral standard that his fellow officers seem to fall short of.
We see this immediately within the first chapter while Harris and Wilson are discussing their time in Africa. Harris states "I hate this place. I hate this people. I hate the bloody niggers. Mustn't call 'em that you know." It appears that Harris is justifying his language by admitting he knows it's wrong to talk about people like that. Wilson, who is sitting next to Harris, is not very phased by this language at all-he merely suggests that his"boy" is all right. Each soldier or official has a servant that attends to their needs, they are either Black or West Indian. At this point they see Scobie walking down the street talking with a Black official and they immediately start gossiping about how Scobie sleeps with Black women. They speak about sleeping with Black women as if it's the worst thing on Earth, they consistently use degrading language. A Post-Coloinal critic would see this as the another way people are being "kept down" and they are exactly correct. Scobie really sets the example of seeing people for who they are and treating them all the same. He speaks about his servant Ali, as if he were part of the family.
Although how he speaks with Ali is very short and curt. Ali calls Scobie "massa" and his wife "missus." when they interact their sentances are no more than 3-4 words and the replies are mostly 2 words. When Scobie comes home and sees his wife laying in bed, he asks Ali "What's wrong with Missus?" Ali replied "Belly Humbug." This continues on and it seels Scobie uses broken language to talk to Ali. I don't feel he is doing it to be degrading but it just might be a way to speak to a servant since they may only know very little English.
Throughout the book Scobie seems to just fall short of everything, He was passed over for a position in the very beginning due to "being a wonderful man for making enemies." It seemed there had been many rumors of him consorting with Black woman and taking bribes. It almost has a feel of being in a viscious cycle of hate. All you need is a few people to not like your ways and they pass rumors about you to keep you from getting into a top position. This could be another example of post-colonialism since the Commisioner knows why Scobie is being passed over and really can't do anything about it. He admists he doesn't like the powers to be have spoken and they don't agree with Scobie's ways. Scobie's wife is really no better since she has almost a Marxist approach to how people would view her since her husband was passed over for a promotion yet he's been there for so many years.
During this novel is't hard not to feel that the people who are not from Africa feel they are a bit smarter and maybe hint towards being less savage. although you mostly get this feel from Harris and Wilson. With Scobie you feel he is the one being outcasted and being mistreated. It doesn't appear to be as if Greene is making a mockery of the people of Africa since he has a disclaimer in the begginig of the novel.

Brenda Gonzalez Assignment 3

2009-07-25T17:27:00.000-04:00

ASSIGNMENT #3

Unfortunately most countries and their cultures we know and inhabit ourselves have undergone such tumultuous experiences like forced colonization and restructuring of those cultures. Postcolonial theory deals with the outcome of this power struggle, where and how the colonized pick up after the colonizers have left, and the scars or impressions left on the people who’d been dominated and oppressed on their own soil. There are many literary works where a postcolonial scene presents many notions that come with the exhibition which of course lead to a great drama filled with turmoil.

Based on Disgrace by J.M.Coetzee the post colonial theories that stand out more readily are the racist undertones, the separation between races due to language and other reasons, and the protagonists’ view of these parts of South Africa. After living with his daughter Lucy on “the farm” and encountering more callous individuals (than him) with different perceptions, and lifestyles than what he is used to David Lurie makes strong comments about South Africa. After he and Lucy get attacked by 2 men and a boy – all of which are black, obviously underprivileged, and undereducated - he reflects “it happens every day, every hour, every minute…in every quarter of the country. Count yourself lucky…A risk to own anything. Not enough to go around. Too many people… Not human evil, just a vast circulatory system, to whose workings pity and terror are irrelevant. This is how one must see life in this country…” These risks (that wouldn’t exist in a healthy country) of owning rights exist only because of the oppression the colonized (the Africans) have felt; now they are free of restraint and are no longer watched over so closely – crime is much easier under such conditions. In Frantz Fanon’s 1952 book Black Skin, White Masks he says the Black Subject has, as a result, acquired an inferiority complex, which very well can explain why such vandalisms and acts of hatred as well as power have come to be so common. It’s apparent that -whether or not Lurie or Coetzee actually are racist - there is certainly an understanding or knowledge of a separation of races. The white characters, Coetzee, and the narrator describe many of the Africans as uneducated, weasels or rats, there’s uneasiness toward them. “Of the absent Petrus, Ettinger remarks darkly, ‘Not one of them you can trust.’” Where on the other hand Coetzee writes the white “country folk” into the book as friends (or a type of friend) or confidants, people Lurie enjoys and trusts to an extent – but he still belittles them “country life in all its idiot simplicity.” In Yearning: Race, Gender, and Cultural Politics bell hooks states “Postmodernist discourse are often exclusionary even as they call attention to, appropriate even, the experience of ‘difference’ and ‘Otherness’ to provide oppositional political meaning, legitimacy, and immediacy when they are accused of lacking concrete relevance.” and “The idea that there is no meaningful connection between black experience and critical thinking about aesthetics or culture…” Disgrace certainly depicts Africans like Petrus as not having critical thought, he thinks in simple terms – family obligations override even if they rape or steal or murder, even if it affects a close neighbor – in this sense the Africans can in turn be seen as racists. Why had those men and that boy decided to choose Lucy of all women to rape, she certainly feels they did it more out of hate than any other reason.

Exploring post Apartheid issues of a country are the postcolonial theorist’s main goal. Postcolonial literary critics search for meaning between the lines of a work of literature set in such a time period and area experiencing the difficulties that com along with the culture struggles. Picking peoples brains based on their works of fiction does however present a difficult subject.

Cry, The Beloved Country

2009-07-24T13:12:00.000-04:00

The novel, Cry, The Beloved Country, is set in South Africa in the 1940’s after the English who were in power departed. Alan Paton, a South African, writes this novel about the occurrences of the post-colonial period. It is clear in his book that he agrees with the post-colonial theorist Edward Said. Said, in his essay, Culture and Imperialism, writes that the nation of “Africa [is] politically independent but in many ways [is as] dominated and dependent as [it was] when ruled directly by European powers.” (369) In the novel, the main character, Stephen Kumalo sets out to bring his sister and his son back to his village from Johannesburg. To get to Johannesburg, Kumalo has to take a train. “Kumalo climbed into the carriage for non-Europeans, already full of the humbler people of his race.” (Paton, 43) There was still a separation between the native Africans and the Europeans even though the Europeans were not the rulers any longer. Also the mention of the “humbler people” gives the reader the impression that the Africans were still viewed as inferior to the non-Africans. A sense of dominance by the Europeans was still in place.

Another instance in which this is seen is when Kumalo asks his brother John to phone the textile factory where Kumalo’s son was last known to be working. John laughs at this request and says, “what for…to ask if Absalom Kumalo is working there…they do not do such things for a black man my brother.” (Paton, 70) The Africans were seen as lower than the white men and did not have the same privileges that the white men had. Even though the Europeans were not in charge, the native Africans did not get the rights they deserved. Edward Said wrote, “ independence was for whites and Europeans; the lesser or subject peoples were to be ruled.” (374) This statement clearly describes the situation occurring in South Africa in the 1940’s.

The white men’s fear of the Africans is apparent in this book. Policemen were at a rally where John is telling the crowd that Africans should get an equal share of the money for the work that they do for the white men. The policemen think to themselves, “what if…the people rise…with thoughts of power and possession...pictures of Africa awakening from sleep.” (Paton, 218) Even though the Africans were the majority they had not awoken from their slave mentality. They had not yet realized that if they united together then they would gain the power to overthrow these “rules” that keep them at a lower level in society. As Paton writes, “[the white men] fear not only the loss of our possessions, but the loss of our superiority and the loss of our whiteness.” (110) The European men were terrified at the prospect that they would lose their dominance over the Africans.

Even though the British rulers physically left the country and no longer claimed South Africa as their own, they left behind a mentality which did not allow South Africa to progress and the natives to form a nation of their own. This point was expressed by Said when he wrote, “[the English] continued to rule…intellectually.” (374) The book, Cry, The Beloved Country, clearly depicts the challenges of a post-colonial society.

A New World With the Same Old Problems

2009-07-24T13:04:00.000-04:00

In Sula, mostly all of Toni Morrison’s characters are African-Americans that were brought to the United States through or because of colonization. Although the characters themselves may not have been directly oppressed, their ancestors were slaves. This is something a post-colonial critic would probably point out. The acquiring of the land in which the black people of Sula live is another important aspect. “A good white farmer promised freedom and a piece of bottom land to his slave if he would perform some very difficult chores” (Morrison 5) and this is how “The Bottom” was established. However, the master tricked the slave into thinking the land he would be receiving was fertile, rich, and good for farming. Instead, because the master did not want to sacrifice any land, he granted the slave “hilly land, where planting was backbreaking, where the soil slid down and washed away the seeds, and where the wind lingered through the winter” (Morrison 5). A post-colonial would notice this because due to oppression the slave was not able to cultivate his own land to sell, but had to settle for what was given to him. Those who colonized the land and enslaved the native people were established as superior and so could do what they pleased.

From his work Culture and Imperialism, Edward Said states, “in the late twentieth century the imperial cycle of the last century in some way replicates itself, although today they are really no big empty spaces, no expanding frontiers, no exciting no settlements to establish”. Edward Said might notice that although Sula does not contain a lot of information on settlement and how the inhabitants of the Bottom were culturally transformed due to outsiders, it is a text that has post-colonial issues. In addition these issues are replicated from what happened a long time ago in places like Africa. He goes on to say, “a new and in my opinion appalling tribalism is fracturing societies, separating peoples, promoting greed, bloody conflict, and uninteresting assertions of minor ethnic or group particularity.” Edward Said’s idea of a new sort of “tribalism” in society between people of the same kind is somewhat highlighted in Sula between lights and darker skinned blacks. For example, Nel is described as “the color of wet sandpaper-just dark enough the blows of the pitch-black truebloods….” (Morrison 52). Toni Morrison even says that if Nel were any lighter she would need her mother to escort her to school. Sula’s dark skin was deemed acceptable in the black community whereas Nel was more of an outsider. A post-colonial critic would explore and write about this theme.

Finally, a post-colonial critic would focus on how the Bottom is a somewhat shared community between the blacks and a few Irish residents. Although the Irish children harass the blacks to feel superior, Morrison shows that they are both pretty much on the same level. Most of the blacks may have had no choice but to live in the Bottom and the Irish “had come to this valley with their parents believing as they did that it was a promised land-green and shimmering with welcome” (Morrison 53). Morrison goes on to say, “what they found was a strange accent, a pervasive fear of their religion and firm resistance to their attempts to find work” (Morrison 53). The only place the Irish could find work was in the Bottom, but they had to taunt the blacks in order to have some security that they were superior. A post-colonial critic would highlight this relationship because both the Irish and Blacks were treated unfairly by a more “superior” power and had to struggle to survive.

SAVAGE INEQUALITIES

2009-07-10T01:06:00.000-04:00

Dinova C. Castaneda
English 170W Summer 2009

JONATHAN KOZOL
SAVAGE INEQUALITIES

Savage inequalities a book written by a teacher that when expose to teaching in the public school system was devastated to see how segregated the classrooms were. The whole book gives multiple examples of the poverty of the communities and the unfortunate conditions that he experience when visiting and teaching in a lower income neighborhood.

Jonathan Kozol was assigned to teach a fourth grade classroom with 35 children that had a string of substitutes all year around. When he have them their first test the results were seen. The children had a second grade reading level and first grade math ability. In effort to resuscitate their interest, he decided to read them poetry and he was fired because he didn’t follow the list of poems that fourth grade teachers were obligated to follow. According to school official the poems he read were very advanced. He then started teaching in a suburban system west of Boston and quoted that the shock of going from one of the poorest schools to one of the wealthiest cannot be overstated.

From a Marxist point of view we could critic the social impact the children could have by receiving education in such poor conditions, analyze what role they will play in our future society and how the differences in class have such great influence in our society. Quoted from Antonio Gramsci all men are intellectuals, one could therefore say: but not all men have in society the function of intellectuals. In the case of these children we could argue that any individual good be smart, but don’t necessary have the right place is society to make it.
In 1988 while in a two year journey, Jonathan Kozol visited schools and spoke with children in approximately 30 neighborhoods from Illinois to D.C and from New York to San Antonio. He quoted, what startled me most-although it puzzles me that I was not prepare for this-was the remarkable degree of racial segregation that persisted almost everywhere. Most of the urban schools that he visited were 95 to 99 percent nonwhite. We could intrepid that when Kozol was puzzle by the degree of segregation that persisted makes us realize and connect what Marx quoted; that it is not the consciousness of men that determine their existence, but their social existence that determine their consciousness.
The way East St. Louis, Illinois is described in the book really gives you a sense of the lack of interest and funds giving to a poor community. East St. Louis might suggest another world. The City of 98 percent blacks, has no obstetric services, no regular trash collection, and few jobs. The city, which by night and day is clouded by the fumes that pour chemical plants. It is crystal clear that the amount of poverty and neglected that children in this neighborhoods are facing are not setup to help them be the next generation of intellectuals. Quoted from Antonio Gramsci; in the modern world, technical education, closely bound to industrial labour even at the most primitive and unqualified level, must form the basis of the new type of intellectual. We could intrepid how Gramsci express himself about primitive and unqualified level in the modern world as the new intellectuals and make a connection between the children receiving such poor, limited education and living in poverty communities also almost a another world.

7.9.09

2009-07-09T17:06:00.001-04:00

As of now, no more postings will be accepted for credit. Have a fine weekend.

White Tiger Tiffany Nicasio

2009-07-09T17:03:00.000-04:00

"The White Tiger" by Aravind Adiga takes place in modern day India. Our protagonist, Balram Halwai aka Munna aka The White Tiger, speaks to us through several letters he is writing to the Prime Minister of China, Wen Jiabao. Balram happened to be listening to the radio, a source that he claims to be comically unreliable, when the lady on the radio announced, "Mr. Jiabao is on a mission: he wants to know the truth about Bangalore." Upon hearing this, Balram's "blood froze, [because according to him], if anyone knows the truth about Bangalore", it's him. In writing these letters, Balram Halwai intends on telling the truth about Bangalore, a truth that only a man in his position from having lived his particular life can possibly tell.

For many years Balram Halwai was without a name. With his mother having died at his young age and his father working to death as a rickshaw puller, there was simply no time to name him. And so he was called Munna, which means quite literally, boy. It wasn’t until Munna’s teacher was required to register the names of his students that Munna received his official name, Balram, and later on, the White Tiger. Balram’s last name, Halwai, literally means sweet maker, and this is appropriate since he comes from a long line of sweet makers – his father being the exception. Balram’s father decided to fight against his fate through Munna; in becoming a rickshaw puller he would have more time to pour into Munna all he would need to become the successful man who would bring wealth to his family his mother had prophesized he would be before she died.

Unlike most of his peers and quite like his father, Munna or Balram dreamed of being more than what his last name said he was and would be. This was also an unlikely occurrence in India since ambitious dreams were simply progressive illusions that almost never came true. The most a dream could ever rationally amount to was “I hope my boss gives me just a little more today so I can have something for myself, instead of sending everything to my family.” Balram dreamed of becoming a driver, wearing the uniform and the whistle around his neck, and having the responsibility of taking people to and from their destination. Such aspirations were usually never achieved by a sweet maker, but with the help of his grandmother Balram was able to pay for driving lessons in exchange for more than half his wages. This was not without its own set of difficulties, because who would be willing to teach a sweet maker how to drive – a task deemed impossible. Such a progression within his class was unheard of. Fortunately, with just the right amount of money, Balram was able to find someone willing to teach him and landed a job working for the wealthiest and most powerful people of his home town.

It was during this era of his life Balram realized the web, the intricate trap, in which both the laborers and their masters played a part in, and how this intricate web would never allow him to be more than a worker - Balram realized he would never be his own master. Having spent so much time with his own masters, he began to learn what a real man who owned his life truly was; he realized he was less of a man, and this worked out well for his family, for his master – everyone else, but him. No man was hired without having been thoroughly checked of his family’s whereabouts. The location of his family and how obedient that family had been over a significant amount of time were necessary factors in assuring that nothing would go wrong for both parties. Balram’s poor family would be his mater’s assurance, their security, that Balram would never dare commit treason of any sort against his masters, because such an act would ensure the death of not only himself, but that of his family as well.

All this is revealed to us within the first two chapters, in which the typical Marxist would be quick to recognize the class division between the working class and those they serve, and how that contributes to many aspects of the worker’s life, through culture, which includes the naming their children. A Marxist would also be able to identify the illusion of progression for Balram and the thousands like him. Because this illusion is passed down from one generation to the next through culture it simultaneously creates the assumption that such cultural institutions are as natural a premise of man as the right to liberty. In India, there is only room for Balram to sink lower, to fail, and very little room for him to be anything other than a sweet maker or a driver. One may argue, as his family had, that Balram was at least able to progress from being a sweet maker to a driver but both of these are working professions, and neither would allow Balram to own his life. While many would accept these facts and realize that one man alone, especially a driver from a long line of sweet makers, cannot change the ways of an entire culture in which both the worker and the master benefit from its system, Balram refuses once again to accept his fate.

Balram Halwai realizes that he must make difficult choices that require certain sacrifices many would not dare make. Upon one of Balram’s usual tasks of driving his master to and from his destination he decides to=2 0slit his throat. This act has a number of consequences: (1) Balram is a wanted murderer, (2) his family is as good as dead, but (3) he is a free man at last. With the millions his master had been carrying in the backseat, Balram escapes, creates a new identity, and establishes a successful driving company.

"Harry Potter" and the Intercourse of Marx

2009-07-09T17:00:00.000-04:00

J.K. Rowling’s novel Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone is among the most-read books written in recent memory. As with any cultural touchstone, its success relied heavily on timing, but was not a complete fluke. The novel is so widely enjoyed because it addresses issues common to human experience, despite variations in culture. These experiences necessarily include class, power, and labor, issues of particular concern to a Marxist critic.

Given the novel’s placement among the children’s literature genre, it is hardly surprising to find the most basic elements of the dominant capitalist ideology reinforced, or generously, the dominant ideology subverted in outlandish ways. For example, one of the characters, Ron Weasley, is a member of a large family that must stretch the income of the breadwinning father. The mundane issue of family budgeting seems ironic juxtaposed with the intrigues of the magical world. In this way, Rowling acknowledges a limited amount of class consciousness.

Writing that poor people are poor is hardly interesting, but Rowling goes a step further in the creation of "magic"- an additional metric that determines an individual's societal worth. Marx and Engels posit that “the difference between the individual as a person and what is accidental to him is not a conceptual difference but a historical fact” (19), and Harry Potter’s accidental magical acumen is a prime example of such an historic fact.

Magic exists in a similar capacity to physical appearance, albeit greatly exaggerated: In the world of Harry Potter, one’s magical aptitude is an essential trait. It is also suggested that magical aptitude is inherited, further likening it to the power structure created by bloodlines. As power is consolidated in aristocratic families, so too does stratification occur in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone: There are overt references to “blood purity,” the degree to which one’s family has exclusively incorporated wizards. Since one of the novel’s most eminent young wizards, Hermione Granger, is a “Mudblood”- a wizard with no magical relatives- this concept seems to be a social construct entirely without merit.

Marx and Engels affirm that the social existence of labor is “as yet concealed: for instance a nobleman always remains a nobleman, a commoner always a commoner, apart from his other relationships, a quality inseparable from his individuality. “ For as long as labor has carried social connotations, there have likely been stories created that oppose this cultural rite. In this sense, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone is not much different from the stories of Horatio Alger in the 19th Century. Alger’s stories, also widely popular in their era, similarly contradicted the typical trends of labor relations by suggesting that a commoner need not remain a commoner.

While Alger’s protagonists relied solely on hard work and determination, Harry Potter deviates a bit: He shows pluck and determination, to be sure, but is also benefited by the accidental magical potency he possesses. In fact, the titular hero is treated as a miracle for having his “rightful” status restored to him. Hagrid, one of Harry’s wizard mentors, explains the class distinction to Harry’s non-magical uncle as thus: “[Harry’s] name’s been down ever since he was born. He’s off ter the finest school of witchcraft and wizardry in the world. Seven years there and he won’t know himself. He’ll be with youngsters of his own sort, for a change.” This sort of disdain is usually portrayed negatively in children’s media, but here, it is spoken from one of the most sympathetic characters. While it is in bad taste to speak ill of those whose economic class is lower, there is no such etiquette governing those who don’t use magic. “I don’t know how the Muggles manage without magic,”Hagrid later sighs.

Marxist Analysis of "Of Mice and Men"

2009-07-09T16:59:00.001-04:00

Although everyone has a dream that they hope to execute, dreams are no always possible to attain. In John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men the two main characters are George and Lennie who are two ranch hands. Lennie is a troublemaker and inadvertently causes them to be run out of all of their previous jobs. The two finally find work in Salinas Valley and hope to accomplish the dream of having a small farm of their own. Throughout the story we realize how unattainable dreams can really be.
In “Intellectuals and Hegemony”, Antonio Gramsci states that, “All men are intellectuals…: but not all men have in society the fuction of intellectuals.” In Of Mice and Men, it is clear that everyone on the ranch is in a constant power struggle; some people have the power and others don’t have the power and are trying to obtain it. George’s character appears to have some power. He is constantly ordering Lennie around, and the people at the ranch all have some respect for him, especially Lennie. This is evident in the way that Lennie seems to get so excited at the smallest thing that George says. For example when George is explaining to Lennie that the other people on the ranch “ain’t got nothin’ to look ahead to” and Lennie is excited and asks him to “tell it how it is with us.”

Slim appears to have the most power on the ranch, although he is very reserved about it. He goes about as a normal member of the ranch and that is probably what makes it appear as though he has even more power. Everyone’s goal is to be like Slim; he didn’t have to say or do much to get the respect that he wanted, and everyone listened to him even if they disagreed with what he said.
Curly always wanted to have power. He displayed this every time he yelled at someone and every time he bossed people around. He was constantly angry and I think this was his way of trying to show people that he had power. However for him this was to no avail because the other ranch hands didn’t respect him, and actually hated him because of his hostile ways. Another way you can see a power struggle is between him and his wife. He is so overprotective of her that he keeps her locked up inside the ranch despite her dreams to become a Hollywood star.
Often I wondered why it was that no one else could have power in this novel. Gramcsi states that “The problem of creating a new stratum of intellectuals consists therefore in…modifying its relationship…towards a new equilibrium.” In this case, I realized that someone like Curly’s character couldn’t be put into power because everyone’s way of thinking would have to be altered. The society would have to become more subordinate to a leader’s thoughts rather than rebellious like they already were. And of course they would not consent to this because Curly’s manner of talking and interacting with people was all wrong.

Marxism in Fairytales

2009-07-09T16:52:00.000-04:00

“Once upon a time” these are the words you hear for many fairytales. Some of the more popular fairytales are those that were adapted into film by Walt Disney are especially interesting to a Marxist. Fairytales like Cinderella, Snow White, Beauty and the Beast and Aladdin are works that a Marxist would like to look at more closely.
When you read or watch a fairytale on TV you will know that the protagonist or hero of the story is going to win and be rewarded in the end and not only because you know the story will likely end with a “and they lived happily ever after”. It’s interesting how this happens and a Marxist would criticize this because the heroes or heroines end up looking and receiving for self glory. Take for example a story like Cinderella; she was a girl who was basically the house servant, constantly meeting the needs of her rich and pampered step sisters. You know she would be rewarded because she was described as if she were a person of the lower working class and she just has to be rewarded by letting her up the ladder. Something else that this implies is that poor people like Cinderella are humble and understanding people. This could also be said of the mice in Cinderella because after all they were depicted as refugees in the house of Cinderella’s stepmother.
In the end of the story Cinderella ended up climbing the social ladder and unbelievably (not for a fairytale) got all the way at the top of it. Cinderella became princess of the empire just like Aladdin ended up becoming a prince after being a thief who had nothing. This self glory improves dramatically the class or status of a hero or heroine in a fairytale.
Aladdin is also a story in which you knew that Aladdin would end up getting self glory. Aladdin is a young thief who steals according to the story out of need. This young man meets the princess falls in love with her and they get married bringing Aladdin up the social hierarchy. Heroes like Aladdin and Cinderella seem to maintain their social structures instead of bringing about a social revolution.
In Snow White the main character is already at the top of the social ladder. In the film Snow White is depicted as this lovely white female who is a princess that has finest things and has everything she wants. As opposed to her later friends the dwarfs who are depicted as short, stubby, humble and of the working class. Snow White always dressed appropriately for her class shows the dwarfs’ things like washing their hands before dinner. A thing like this seems to imply that working class people have poor hygienic habits and they need to be taught by the right person who in this case is the princess. Fairytales like this show what Marx would say “a nobleman always a nobleman, a commoner always a commoner”.

F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby; A Marxist Reading

2009-07-09T16:43:00.000-04:00

The Great Gatsby, narrated by Nick Carraway, a wealthy young bachelor, tells the story of Jay Gatsby. Throughout the novel Gatsby tries to pursue his true love, Daisy Buchanan (Nick's cousin and the wife of Tom Buchanan). Although Daisy is married he still tries to get her to come back to him through the use of his wealth.

Gatsby resides on the West Egg which is where the 'new rich' live, while Daisy resides on the East Egg, where the aristocratic families and blue bloods live. Blue blood is a term used to express a person who is noble or wealthy by birth. Although Gatsby has the same amount of wealth as Daisy, there are clear differences between the two, even within the same class. Because Gatsby was not born into wealth and power, which Daisy was born into, it makes him unable to fit into the upper class.

The first clear difference that is shown between the two is the way that Gatsby dresses. Nick, who was born into the riches sees Gatsby for the first time and notes that he is dressed in a fancy tasteless suit. He clearly sees the difference between himself and Gatsby. Gatsby's use of language also sets him apart. Although he tries to talk like the aristocrats, he cannot. Nick notices his repetitive use of 'old sport'. There was also an instance in which Tom invites Gatsby for dinner just to be polite. However Gatsby doesn't realize that it was said out of manner and insincerely rather than genuinely and then accepts the invitation. Gatsby fails to understand the social rules of the blue bloods.

Another thing Gatsby does to prove himself worthy of being just as good as the blue bloods is that he lies about his wealth and education. He says he went to Oxford University and was awarded various times after the war which led him to riches. He tries to get to the level of Tom and Nick by lying about his education. The aristocrats are educated in Ivy League schools just like Tom and Nick were educated at Yale. However Gatsby was not educated at a top university, but to fit in, he lies.

Everything Gatsby does is to flaunt his wealth. He throws lavish parties and buys lavish furniture just for the sake of showing off. He doesn't realize that the wealthy aristocrats have class and do not flaunt money the way he does. He is too preoccupied in showing off and trying to reach the level of Daisy that fails to see the social rules and ways that the aristocrats live by. This is the main distinction that differentiate the two groups that are within the same class.

Gatsby fails to realize that Daisy will never be his. During their love affair (before Daisy was married), Gatsby goes to off to war and Daisy promises to wait for him. However Daisy breaks her promise and marries Tom, who is also a blue blood like herself. Gatsby doesn't see that she will never take herself to a lower status even for love. Even though Tom cheats on her with another woman, Daisy still stays with him. She could’ve gone to Gatsby, her true love, when he waited outside her house; however she stayed with Tom. Tom even stated during his confrontation with Gatsby, that he and Daisy have a 'history' unlike her and Gatsby, and also that she will never leave him for Gatsby. Daisy demonstrates that clearly wealth and class are both important rather than just wealth or love. She is cold-hearted and doesn’t realize that Gatsby worked to become wealthy and worthy of her, however she would rather stick to what she was born into rather than go to someone who worked for his money.

Gatsby also represents the American Dream through his quest for wealth and love. He was not born into the riches he had but instead had to work for it even though it was through some illegal activity. He represents the ideology, that hard-work and diligence will eventually lead a person from nothing to wealth, love, and respect. Despite the fact that he does become rich, he does not get the love or the full respect, which he deserved. In fact he was ridiculed and pushed down by Tom because he wasn't born rich, or went to an Ivy League, or understood the social rules of the blue bloods. According to Antonio Gramsci in ‘Intellectuals and Hegemony’, he writes "The “spontaneous” consent given by the great masses of the population to the general direction imposed on social life by the dominant fundamental group; this consent is “historically” caused by the prestige (and consequent confidence) which the dominant group enjoys because of its position and function in the world of production.” This also shows the position in which Gatsby is in. Gatsby does not fight back for the sole reason because in some way, he has given his ‘consent’ to Tom. Tom is a position which Gatsby idealizes to be in but cannot. It showed clearly that the ones who are at the top economically and socially push those who can be considered socially different but at economically the same; that even within in a class there are certain distinctions on who's higher or 'better'. Gramsci also asserts that “…the supremacy of a social group manifests itself in two ways, as ‘domination’ and as ‘intellectual and moral leadership.’” This statement can be looked in context of this novel, because Tom declares his ‘domination’ over Gatsby, simply in by what he says. He is considered an ‘intellectual’, a born noble, and clearly shows his power over Gatsby and leaving him to say little.

The Kingdom of This World

2009-07-09T16:35:00.001-04:00

In The Kingdom of This World, Alejo Carpentier details a story of the time spanning from Haiti’s liberation from French colonial rule through the eventual overthrowing of the black regime. The black king was able to initially achieve his throne by identifying himself with the French or European culture rather than his own, while the Haitians were able to survive its first century by replicating French European culture. Just as the white French slave owners were able to achieve financial success and security at the expense of black Haitians, the black kingdom under the rule of black Haitian King Henri-Christophe is only able to find success using the same system of labor he was meant to replace, slavery. It is only after this imitation is unaccepted and fails that the black king is able to embrace his African roots.

In Carpentier’s literary work, the European rule and Henri-Christophe’s inadvertent attempt to validate his power by identifying with the French illustrates the concept of the perceived difference between intellectuals and non-intellectuals, by presenting clear examples of the notion of spontaneous consent, and the apparatus of state coercive power. According to Gramsci, “When one distinguishes between intellectuals and non-intellectuals, one is referring in reality only to the immediate social function of the professional category of the intellectuals…” (p.2, Gramsci) In this case, the perceived intellectuals appear as the Europeans, or more specifically the European ideal, while the non-intellectuals are represented by those enslaved.

Gramsci states “The ‘spontaneous’ consent given by the great masses of the population to the general direction imposed on social life by the dominant fundamental group.” (p. 4, Gramsci) In The Kingdom of This World, the masses, in this case those enslaved, ‘agree’ to slavery as the main method of labor, or production. Though the initial European rule is eventually overthrown and replaced by the rule of the black king, Henri-Christophe, the same means of labor is reinstituted. Thus, the masses after overthrowing the European rule, once again consent to the same system of labor set in place to exploit them. In turn, by choosing the ideals and the behaviors of the Europeans in both his palace décor and labor of choice, Henri-Christophe unconsciously solidifies the idea of ‘historical prestige’ belonging to the intellectual Europeans. The black king is able to achieve his throne by identifying himself with the intellectual Europeans rather than his own, non-intellectual black Haitians. Even the decoration of King Henri-Christophe’s palace, Sans Souci, oozes with Europeanism in its designs and décor. “…The statues of naked white women soaking up the sun on their scrolled pedestals among the sculptured boxwood hedging the flowerbeds…” (pg 122, Carpentier)

In conjunction with the spontaneous consent of those enslaved, state coercive power is also used as a means to “enforce discipline on those groups who do not ‘consent’ either actively or passively” (p. 4, Gramsci) During the occasions when spontaneous consent is ineffective or has failed, the use of ‘legal’ discipline, represented in Carpentier’s work as physical repercussions, is employed to command consent. “The colonists… had been careful not to kill their slaves, for dead slaves were money out of their pockets. Whereas here the death of a slave was no drain on the public funds.” (pg 123, Carpentier) The state’s enforcement motivates those who may spark revolt to fear the repercussions, and as a result squelching any possibility to overthrow the social structure.

Social Hierarchies in Madame Bovary

2009-07-09T15:52:00.001-04:00

The first thing Marx would note after having read Madame Bovary is the main character Emma’s palpable desire to climb the social ladder. The social hierarchies in this book are distinguished by where the characters live. The city that they reside in depicts there social class. The people of the lowest class are found in the first city of Tostes. It is a small town in the middle of nowhere, where our protagonist Emma meets and marries her husband Charles (who is a doctor). Because Charles is a doctor his status is slightly raised above everyone else in the town of Tostes and he and Emma are invited to go to a grand ball at the Vambyessard. Here Emma gets a taste of the good life and decides she is too good for a place like Tostes and demands that she and Charles move.
Charles then takes her to Yonville. This is the next step on the social ladder. People who live in Yonville are slightly more connected with the rest of the world. Here Emma is temporarily happy. So they situate themselves there and Charles meets and befriends the local pharmacist in town, Homais, figuring they will work together as doctor and medical supplier. To prove to his wife Emma that he is worthy of her and to elevate his own economic status, Charles and Homais read up on a popular and supposedly effective method of curing club foot. Marx and Gramsci would both have found the clubfoot incident in the book fascinating because to test Charles’ skill at the operation they perform the procedure on one of Homais’ servants. The only reason he agrees to this is because of what Gramsci says in his essay, “The ‘spontaneous’ consent given by the great masses of the population to the general direction imposed on social life by the dominant fundamental group; this consent is ‘historically’ caused by the prestige (and consequent confidence) which the dominant group enjoys because of its position and function in the world of production.” Because the doctor and pharmacist are on the highest level of social status in Yonville the servant believes it is in his best interest to have this experimental medical procedure performed on him. He does not even consider that these superior men have absolutely no clue what they are doing.
After her husbands constant disappointments Emma finds herself in need of a distraction. She buries herself in two hobbies; reading romance novels and shopping. The shopping is her ultimate downfall. Our merchant in the town of Yonville is Lhereux. He is also useful in explaining how Gramsci and Marx would interpret this book. Gramsci says that “All men are intellectuals… but not all men have in society the function of intellectuals”. This concept cannot be more clearly portrayed than in the example of Lhereux versus Charles and Homais. The doctor and pharmacist would be considered the intellectuals in society with the function of intellectuals. However, Lhereux does not have the function of an intellectual in society. He is a mere merchant but he is also the one to bring our main characters to ruin by the end if the book. Intellectual or not, he is the one with the highest status at the end of the novel.

Scrooge McDuck animation stories as a fair reflection of a capitalist relationship in the modern society

2009-07-09T15:45:00.000-04:00

Being extremely altruistic, light-hearted bachelor Donald Duck leaves the civilian society for the sake of serving in United States’ Navy. The little brothers Billy, Willy and Dilly, left without a care-taker, are trusted to an old miser Scrooge McDuck, who turns out to be their uncle. Drake’s main feature is the itch for money; it drove him throughout his entire life, leaving him old and rich, but single and miserable in his solitude. He tries to cultivate some capitalistic values in the kids: extreme thrift, preference of high-quality goods and “useful” friendship. He builds up the process of upbringing on the strict discipline, some hardship (in spite the money that he has gotten is abundance), and some other minor sufferings. His nephews do not quite believe in his educative genius, they question his life values, and insist on hiring a baby-sitter. Not surprisingly, there are a lot of “gold-diggers” that would be flattened to serve in the house of famous millionaire. But he prefers blatant and conservative applicants to a mature Missis Cluedia, whose only wish is to live with the young boys at the same household. The irony is that being concerned with the non-materialistic side of upbringing process, she turns out to be the only person who can constrain the kids from various dangerous adventures that McDuck was unable to do using the power of money.
This animated story tries to reflect the disposition of the society actors in the American, and perhaps generally Western context. McDuck represents a tiny portion of the population that is endowed with different powers and is able to influence some economic processes in the society (his monetary reserve looks more like a state treasury rather than his honestly gained life savings), but it is unable to coup with some phenomena of social discontent (he is regularly being robbed by a band of deviants). The “organic phenomena” of the richness of McDuck gave “rise to socio-historical criticism, whose subject is wider social groupings” (Gramcsi).

BRENDA GONZALEZ ESSAY 2

2009-07-09T15:24:00.000-04:00

ASSIGNMENT #2

Brenda Gonzalez

Eng 170W
7/9/09

Literature is an endless array of opinions and viewpoints written into a beautiful language of stories. The purpose of Karl Marx’s literary theory is purely one of socio-economic and political conception. The beauty found in such analysis is that it could be applied to a text it would never otherwise been imagined pertaining to. Edgar Allan Poe is famed for his true talents in writing wondrous fiction filled with symbolism and refreshing characters such as “The Murders in the Rue Morgue”(1841).
Dupin, the main character is an affluent, intellectual Frenchman – previously an aristocrat – with a serious knack for analysis, reexamination, and abstract thought. The narrator knows him only due to their mutual love for reading; reveres him and believes “the society of such a man would be to me a treasure beyond price.” The narrator embodies a middle classman climbing the societal ladder of hierarchy with Dupin as his role model. Their home “furnishing in a style which suited the rather fantastic gloom of our common temper, a time-eaten and grotesque mansion…and tottering to its fall in a retired and desolate portion of…” This equal depiction of a shared country, per se, between two separate walks of life and societies permits a sense of symmetry despite their contrast. Their shared taste in luxury (books) brings them together – they go “seeking…infinity of mental excitement which quiet observation can afford”. What they chase is only that of an intellectual's goal.
Within the text there’s redundancy in explaining the “murderers” “unusual degree of strength, and activity” as well as an “unequal voice.” These descriptions parallel that of lower, working class peoples whose opinions and decisions don’t effect political movements like the higher classes. This monkey embodies our ancestral, feral past in which we correlate more readily to those of low status, morals, manors, and knowledge – the more observing, inventive, functional, and adaptive a group is, the more evolved those individuals must be. This Orangutan belongs to a sailor who is - despite that this animal is his- innocent. We do know this man is very poor and he is lured to Dupin via a note written (complements of Dupin) about the capture of a loose Orangutan – with no mention to the Rue Morgue murders. The fact that the man follows up on the retrieval of the monkey after the atrocities it had spent in his masters’ presence suggests an inability to detach the two characters from one another. So with that idea in mind, the sailor as the “owner” and of very low socio-economic class represents a man and a monster in one. He’s further developed than the monkey, but is aware of his ancestral impulses and even with the adaptation of reason and morals is fearful of the possibility of the animalistic nature inside of him. Poe writes of the sailor’s account “occasioned by the intractable ferocity of his captive…lodging it safely at his own residence…not to attract toward himself the unpleasant curiosity of his neighbors, he kept it carefully secluded.” The sailor seems quite embarrassed by the idea of his little “secret,” monstrous, wild tributary unleashing upon society. The importance of the monkey’s mimicry of his “master” shaving is that the entire fiasco had materialized and been produced by the man himself, because it was learned. A condition of “self-activity” has become a true “fetter” to the innocent sailor.
The events within the story are entirely dependent and interconnected by the characters of Dupin, the Orangutan, and the sailor. So you see, if Dupin hadn’t of been in good economic standing and then brought down he would not have solved the Rue Morgue case, the sailor if not a sailor wouldn’t be a metaphor for human hostility, immature nature, and fear of those attributes. Such a mystery couldn’t be of any other explanation but a supernatural one if the Orangutan hadn’t of been in Poe’s mind. Dupin is necessary for the juxtaposition and specialty of his character compared to the narrator.

Marxism in Miss Peck’s Promotion

2009-07-09T15:12:00.000-04:00

Miss Peck’s Promotion, by Sarah Orne Jewett distinguishes class structure and also separates intellectualism. According to Gramsci’s theory of Intellectuals and Hegemony, “The Category of ecclesiastics can be considered the category of intellectuals organically bound to the landed aristocracy” (p .1). Miss Peck is aware that she is unequal to the minister as “she was going, not only to a house of mourning, but to a bereft parsonage. She would not have felt so unequal to soothing the sorrows of her every-day acquaintances, but she could hardly face the duty of consoling the new minister” (p. 5).

According to Marx and Engles in The German Ideology, “In the real community the individuals obtain their freedom in and through their association” (p. 21) and “In the estate this is a as yet concealed: for instance a nobleman always a nobleman, a commoner always a commoner, apart from his other relationships, a quality inseparable from his individuality. The division between the personal and the class individual, the accidental nature of the conditions of life for the individual, appears only with the emergency of class” (p. 22). Miss Peck is very aware of class and how people are shaped through production and intercourse. She mentions that “Them big factory towns is all for eatin’ and clothes.” She is glad she was raised in a “good old academy town”. She mentions how her widowed sister in law had the title of “The Colonel’s lady” and “that’s what sp’ilt her. She never could come down to common things, Mis’ Colonel Peck!” (p.3). Then she goes on to speak of how the widow’s new husband’s name was a terrible accident because it is much less respectable.

Miss Peck grew fond of the idea of becoming the Minister’s Wife and all the benefits and change in class and power it would provide. “Yet the capable, clear-headed woman was greatly enticed by the high position and requirements of mistress of the parsonage. She liked the new excitement and authority, and grew more and more happy in the exercise of powers which a solitary life at the far would hardly arouse or engage” (p. 10). Gramsci also states “its necessary to distinguish organic movements (relatively permanent) from movements which may be termed ‘conjunctural’ (and which appear as occasional, immediate, almost accidental). Conjunctural phenomena too depend on organic movements to be sure, but they do not have any far reaching historical significance; they give rise to political criticism of a minor, day to day character, which has as its subject small ruling groups” (p.5). Miss Peck had a conjunctural movement in her status when she went to help out the Reverend in his time of immediate need. She had much influence and even funded activities of his parish. However, there was no Organic movement as he did not marry her, she did not get her “Promotion” (i.e. marry the Reverend).

According to Gramsci, “When one distinguishes between intellectuals and non-intellectuals, one is referring in reality only to the immediate social function of the professional category of the intellectuals, that is one has in mind the direction in which their specific professional activity is weighted, whether towards intellectual elaboration or towards muscular-nervous effort.” Although Miss Peck is educated and passionate about books “if ever a mind waked up with joy to its possession of the world of books, it was hers” (p.8). She is still not considered to be an intellectual because she is a farmer.

Although Miss Peck has the makings of an Intellectual, she is not because of the surrounding economy and social structure. If she did get her “Promotion” she would be an intellectual because of her association with the Parsonage. “She made many sacrifices of personal gain, as every good soldier must. She had meant to be a school-teacher. She had the gift for it, and had studied hard in her girlhood. One thing after another had kept her at home, and now she must stay here – her ambitions were at an end. She must “stand in her lot and place” (p.3). In the end, she goes back to her farm and her old life. This is her spontaneous consent.

The Matrix

2009-07-09T15:11:00.000-04:00

The Matrix, written and directed by the Wachowski brothers came out in 1999 when America’s economy was soaring due to technological advancements and confidence in the role of technology in the future marketplace. Yet The Matrix created a stark image of what this high mark in capitalism looked like beneath the surface, a system based on deception, exploitation, and oppression rather than free will, free market. From the moment it starts, the film leads the viewer to believe that they live in a false reality that has been put in front of their eyes.

The image we’re given of the 1999 setting, which is actually a program known as the "matrix" is not a perfect world but certainly a tolerable existence. Within this world, the protagonist Mr. Anderson (aka Neo) lives a dead-end job that he could probably do better than if he applied himself more as a good capitalist. Instead he pursues his skepticism in discovering the truth behind this world and finds it to be a dream that humanity is submerged in. In the real world outside the matrix, humans function literally as a resource providing sustenance for advanced machines that have seized control. Humans have been stripped of all that was theirs, the clothes on their back, any and all freedoms, and most importantly, their consciousness.

Morpheus, Neo's mentor upon entering the real world explains why the matrix was created: "It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth...[the truth] that you are a slave Neo, like everyone else you were born into bondage." Marx and Engels illustrate that although a class is composed of individuals, it is not in this regard that they participate within the class: "...a community to which these individuals belonged only as average individuals, only in so far as they lived within the conditions of existence of their class - a relationship in which they participated not as individuals but as members of their class" (21). Humans participate in the dreamlike matrix as individuals of free will, but they all ultimately belong to a slave class in the real world which they are members of and cannot escape from. The real world appears as the fullest realization of an industrialized world: very efficient, fully exploited, and with those in control vs. slave "workers" functioning as the sole classes with nothing in between.

The ruling class is represented by the idea of the agents, a small group of men dressed in clean suits who appear educated and well above the rest. They work to maintain the matrix by preventing others from being unplugged and continuing to hide the reality of the situation. The agents also freely exploit their position of control, literally seizing the bodies of people in the matrix for themselves despite this possibly leading to a human death. The image of the agents functions to contrast that of the rebels in the real world. Whereas the agents live untouched in the paradisical matrix, never struggling to survive, the rebels meanwhile live in a polluted, gray world where each day their survival seems uncertain. The worker class poses no immediate threat to these ruling agents and they fully exploit this.

Being that plugged humans represent the working class, Neo and those like him function as the rebel proletarians. According to Marx and Engels, the individual bears no possibility of shifting in class as it is fully restricting and therefore must removes themselves from a position of labourer in order to do so. The only way of accomplishing this however is with revolution: "In order, therefore to assert themselves as individuals, they must overthrow the State" (23). Though the idea of individual strength is mainly seen as a capitalist ideal, Neo and company use their individuality to revolt as Marx and Engels would suggest and overthrow the existing conditions. In full The Matrix critiques the capitalist, industrial world where lower classes are fully exploited and bound to their class, hoping on a dream that they can somehow rise above their class state.

George Orwell's 1984

2009-07-09T14:53:00.001-04:00

The novel, 1984, follows Winston Smith in London, during a time when a totalitarian government is in power. In this era, freedom is nonexistent because the government, represented as ‘Big Brother,’ enforces everyday life, through psychological and physical means. Posters of Big Brother are placed throughout the city, with the caption “BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU,” which is literal, through technology known as telescreen. Located virtually everywhere, it helps keep an eye on everyone, and when someone is found to be breaking the law, they are arrested, tortured, and likely killed. These crimes include independent thought, free speech, and anything the government feels is a threat to their society. Telescreens, at the same time, project government propaganda to help enforce their ideology on their people. Gramsci describes it as “the apparatus of state coercive power which “legally” enforces discipline on those groups who do not “consent” either actively or passively.” And it is the ‘Thought-police’ that help maintain order in the novel. They are responsible for capturing and torturing anyone who is believed to have ideas that do not coincide with the establishment. It is through the Thought-police “a social group dominates antagonistic groups, which it tends to ‘liquidate’, or subjugate perhaps even by armed force” [Gramsci].

In 1984 there also exists a new language called ‘Newspeak’ for the sake of more control. It is a version of Standard English where many words are omitted to make the language simpler. The purpose of the language was to be able to control language itself, which hopefully narrowed the ability to create new ideas among Big Brother’s population. This may be a reference to the communist party in China, during the 1950s, which also created a new, simplified writing system, which to this day remains as the standard written language.

The novel also includes a social caste system, where the ‘proles,’ short for proletariats, are on the bottom rung of society’s ladder. They are not cared for whatsoever by ‘Big Brother,’ and it is displayed in the destitution by which they live. With meager meals and dilapidated housing everywhere, even Winston Smith, who is not a prole, barely lives properly. Winston is characterized as a white-collar worker, with a desk job, for the government. Part of the ‘outer circle’ of the government, a lowly employee, he is one of many people responsible for altering information in the media for the sake of government propaganda, and also, to keep the general population in the dark. Above him are his superiors, the ones that belong to the ‘inner circle’ of the government, such as O’Brien, who live comfortably in large houses, and are in control of the society itself. Gramsci explains, “The function of organizing social hegemony and state domination certainly gives rise to a particular division of labour and therefore to a whole hierarchy of qualifications in some of which there is no apparent attribution of directive or organizational functions.” Even as Orwell attempts to portray a situation where socialism is the dominant force, there exists a caste system where groups of people are being exploited.

Into the Wild

2009-07-09T14:37:00.000-04:00

"Two years he walks the earth. No phone, no pool, no pets, no cigarettes. Ultimate freedom. An extremist. An aesthetic voyager whose home is the road. Escaped from Atlanta. Thou shalt not return, 'cause "the West is the best." And now after two rambling years comes the final and greatest adventure. The climactic battle to kill the false being within and victoriously conclude the spiritual pilgrimage. Ten days and nights of freight trains and hitchhiking bring him to the Great White North. No longer to be poisoned by civilization he flees, and walks alone upon the land to become lost in the wild." This is one of the infamous quotes from the movie "Into the Wild a movie about a college graduate who is looking for more than just the social norms out of life. I feel what Gramsci is trying to convey in his overly worded essay of Intellectuals and Hegemony is what Chris McCandles believes., that there are social positions and you are destined to be "stuck" with them. There is one instance in the movie when he is talking about society in regards to how violent, judgmental and controlling it really is. He was trying to live his life without having to deal with that since he seems to have tried it already. He graduated college tried to see what life would offer him if he "followed the rules" and he ultimately rejected it along with all the material possessions. When he graduates college, he goes into a speech about how his parents lived their life and how it seemed to be a big mistake when he really was reading a passage by Sharon Olds. You immeditatly get the feeling he's the kid that walks to his own beat and questions life.
Besides the in your face signs that he rejects society by burning his social security card and money there are many subtle signs that he doesn't care what society or his peers think of him. When he's in the restaurant with his extremely stuffy upper class family they are telling him they are getting him a new car as a gift. Chris rejects it right away and asking his parents if their worried what the neighbors will think about his crappy car. He states that everything about their life is about "things." His definition of "things" is most likely all the items that society makes you feel you need like a new car, or fancy clothes when all he feels you need is to be free to do as you please and experience life!
Chris felt money and power were an illusion to make peoples lives better, he also thought college was absurd, you understand this when he says "Mr. Franz I think careers are a 20th century invention and I don't want one." Gramsci would have a field day with this, in his essay he states in his first paragraph "catergories of intellectuals already in existence and which seemed indeed to represent an historical continuity uninterrupted even by the most complicated and radical changes in political and social forms." Chris doesn the exact opposite of what Gramsci feels we should do, he throws a wrench into societies plans by rejecting a career and getting back to nature. What I understand from Gramsci is that there is always some one who is above you in a more authoritative position than you and what you're supposed to do is follow, almost blindly. As you said in class, why do we follow this, why do we allow people to get away with this? Chris didn't let the social pressure make him feel he had to do anything, he wanted to live free and see what it was like to live life without boundries. this is seen by this quote from Chris "So many people live within unhappy circumstances and yet will not take the initiative to change their situation because they are conditioned to a life of security, conformity, and conservatism, all of which may appear to give one peace of mind, but in reality nothing is more dangerous to the adventurous spirit within a man than a secure future."
Throughout the movie you see him sometimes imagining what his life would be like is he followed the rules of graduating college, getting a job, maybe getting married and he runs from it. Most of this fear probably comes from his own family life which had many bumps and twists within it's self. He saw what his parents lives had turned into and he didn't want that for himself. he went from an upper class person to a lower class "freeloader" due to him living off the land. Although Chris dies in the end of the movie from starvation in Alaksa by himself it was all worth it to him. He seems to have tested his theory that one can live life without conforming to social norms, I beleive Chris dies feeling accomplished knowing he touched every aspect of the world and rejecting society. A Marxist would see this film being filled with questions of why social positions are the way they are.

Malcolm in the middle and Marx in the end

2009-07-09T14:19:00.000-04:00

The television show Malcolm in the middle is one that explores the ideologies of Marxism and communism threw the guise of a lower middle class family and the struggles and strife of there daily life and how they get threw them. Examples of the unfairness of capitalism and its choke upon the family and there ability to survive and thrive is shown clearly threw the lives of the sons and main characters Reese and Malcolm. Reese and good hearted and fair thug who though not very bright always fights and stands up for his family and friends. Malcolm a boy genius who is cast out from his peers due to his intelligence and due to money concerns finds it hard to move forward in life
When Reese who is within the show is a veteran of the Afghanistan conflict returns home he finds himself looking for a job. He finds one as the school custodian but learns that he will only have a job for thirty-days. The reason that he will only have the job for that period of time is that the Union is corrupt and after thirty days he would have a permanent position with benefits and a 401k so they will fire him before that so they don’t have to pay even though he is very good at his job “You have a real knack for garbage”. This showing that the union in this case has become the upper class bourgeois dictating the intercourse of Reese and his labor. So even though he has the ability and drive to perform his labor he will be uses for the period of time until it is to expensive for the bourgeois to give him a fair wage for his production meaning the selling of is labor to them becomes to high the Union will create a situation that Marx would say “Appear first as conditions of self- activity (the creation of the union for this job) later as fetters upon it” Exposing the lack of care for the workers just simply the greatest way to exploit them for the union in this cases selfish needs.
“The contradiction of life forced upon him, becomes evident to him himself, for he is sacrificed from youth upwards and, within his own class, has no chance of arriving at the conditions which would place him in the other class”. (Karl Marx) This a case of the capitalisms class structure that holds one down as apposed to the fair distribution and ability for a person to reach there potential as with in communism. This is truly the case and point of the character of Malcolm. He is a boy genies about to go to college his test scores allow him to get into Harvard. Upon this between all the money the family has and grants from different places they are unable to afford his tuition. “Rich kids with half your brain are going to get a free ride” as stated by his father, along with the pulling of one of his grants to perform a study about kids who can’t afford college which they invite him to participate in. This exposing the class system of capitalism keeping people in there “place” and not letting someone who is in fact more gifted and capable even participate in a school which price and presage keep it out of reach of the working class and in fact keeps the working class from entering it so they can in fact move into the upper class. Malcolm in the middle is a show that is not straight forward in its Marxist views but reviles them threw its anti-capitalist views and exposing the people within this class as people who can be in fact gifted, intelligent, hard working, and loving. And that capitalism in fact hold these people down and by doing that in fact holds society itself down as a whole by not letting those more suited move foward.

A Women's Restaurant, from T. Boyle's "Descent of Man"

2009-07-09T13:32:00.000-04:00

"Comrades! Come quickly! The wall at Berlin has fallen! We must act now to preserve our ideology. But we need not create new doctrine to spread the values given to us by our brother Marx, for you will find all that he has taught us in literature, both past and present".

Read these words closely and what will you find? The seeds of socio-economic change? A line from an awful screenplay, perhaps? Whatever you take this monologue as, if you look closely you will find that these are not the words of Marxist critic. Marxist criticism is not the cornerstone of some underground revolutionary movement, but a method of analyzing any work of literature. In a most basal interpretation, the Marxist critic is essentially a careful reader; who bears in mind ideas of class, economy, and power when digesting any work. To motivate this definition, we look at T. Coraghessan Boyle's short story "A Woman's Restaurant" through the lens of Marxist criticism.

"[It's] A woman's restaurant. What goes on there, precisely, no man knows. I am a man. I am burning to find out."

A Woman's Restaurant chronicles the exploits of an unnamed male narrator as he tries to permeate the closed off world of a private restaurant/bar, run by Rubie and Grace, whose only patrons are women. The plot is ripe with the fruit of Karl Marx, with several connotations and allusions abound throughout the text. The premise which the woman's restaurant (which is also unnamed) is founded on, resonates with communist ideals. Primarily, as the narrator recounts; "I have watched women of all stripes pass through those curtained front doors: washerwomen, schoolmarms, gymnasts, waitresses,..." we see immediately that this diverse group of women is homogenized into a singular entity. They're social statuses and fields of employment dissolve when they enter the restaurant. Marx and Engels conveyed on the basis of communism, "..... strips them of their natural character and subjugates them to the power of the individuals united". From this vantage we can view the woman's restaurant as a microcosm for the communist state. By relinquishing the identities given to them by the larger more dominant society in which they live, the patrons empower the restaurant with a degree of authority none of them could express on their own. Dissension from the community is not tolerated. When a male companion convinces Rubie to allow him access to the secret chambers of the woman's restaurant, they are caught by Grace and Rubie is punished. The price for her penance - her hair. Her long flowing main is reduced to bald stub. She can not escape the authoritative grasp of the commune she helped create. When we read "[The] subsuming of individuals under definite classes cannot be abolished until a class has taken shape, which no longer has any particular class interest to assert against the ruling class" from Marx and Engels we see why the punishment fits the crime. The identity given to her by society at large is circumvented in order to preserve the structure of the restaurant.

While there are many more ways to dissect the text of "A Woman's Restaurant", from the point of view of a Marxist critic, we choose these two elementary examples to establish the method. The brevity of each case is not to be taken lightly. The values and ideals put forth by Marx and Engels shine brightly through this narrative. The women of the woman's restaurant restructured their roles originally given to them by society and in so doing completely turned the tables on it. They created a place where each aspect of individuality relinquished by each member compounded to form a single community, with a single message - the revolution will be televised!

Sula: Women of the Same Tree

2009-07-09T13:25:00.000-04:00

The Bottom, the setting of Toni Morrison’s Sula, is economically a homogeneous community. Mostly all of its inhabitants are of the working class and struggling to get by in a town that is situated ironically ABOVE a wealthier community. Karl Marx and Fredrich Engels state in their work “The German Ideology”, “only in so far as they lived within the conditions of existence of their class- a relationship in which they participated not as individuals but as members of a class.” A Marxist critic would point out the way the Bottom community is seen as a very tight-knight family. The Bottom residents live within their means and do not try to be more than what they are. Most of them are of the working class (while some are basically starving) and while the wealthier community has the upper hand, this does not stop them from participating as members of a class working together. For example, when the wealthier community tries to take over the land the Bottom community comes together to stop this, instead of striving for individual gain.
Another aspect of the text that a Marxist critic would notice are the societal and gender roles passed down through the generations of specifically the female characters in Sula. For example, Nel and Sula become best friends at a very young age while coming from families that are polar opposites. Nel’s family is middle class and conventional. Her mother (Helene) performs the duties of a caretaker and wife. A Marxist critic would say that Helene will pass on this role to Nel as it was passed down from her mother. Nel will not surpass this typical gender role or be anything more than a mother and wife. Helene inherited her rigid persona and expected gender role from her grandmother and later passes it down to Nel. Nel also goes on to live a very conventional life, while Sula lives a life of freedom and breaking social conventions. Sula comes from a low socioeconomic class that begins with Sula’s grandmother (Eva). Eva's husband abandoned her and although a good mother the town knows her daughter Hannah as “easy and loose”. She goes with many men, which is something we see later in the book happen to Sula. A Marxist critic would note that Eva’s behavior established what kind of individuals the Peace women would become. Eva may have taught her daughter how to survive but not how to become something more than a caretaker or a member of the working class. Growing up in a very loose and unstable home, a Marxist critic would not expect Sula (like her mother) to become anything more than a struggling black working-class woman.
In the introduction of the textbook Modern Literary Theory, the authors write that Marx and Engels were not the first to “invent the idea that human beings may only realize their full selfhood and freedom through a community”, but they popularized the idea. Sula’s wild lifestyle and readiness to break social norms later becomes the talk of the town. However, it is this “evil” lifestyle that helps improve the lives of the other residents of the Bottom. Her evilness makes them want to be better people, which samples Marx and Engel’s idea. Without a community (and the strange individuals within it), we are not able to achieve freedom or "selfhood". Ironically when Sula dies, so does the harmony of the community. Overall, Sula is very reminiscent of the piece “Girl” that we discussed in class. Characters like Nel, Sula, and the character from “Girl” are not expected by Marxist critics to be anything more than their parents and grandparents were.

Anne of the Green Gables

2009-07-09T12:50:00.000-04:00

Anne of the Green Gables, by L.M. Montgomery, is usually interpretated to be one of the classic romance novels. Ironically, it is also a great story that supports Marxism and it's main point on "accidental nature". In his text, Marx states that "the difference between the individual as a person and what is accidental to him, is a conceptual difference of a historical fact." [p.2]. The main character, Anne, and the supporting characters throughout the story examplifies this statement because they are all shaped by their family's history. They are all placed to be their class or family all by a "productive force" [p.2] that was beyond their control.

Anne is an orphan who was adopted by Matthew and Marilla Cuthbert, owners of a farm. She is born into an orphanage when other characters such as Diana or Gilbert Blythe, were not. They were born into loving families that cared for their education and future since the beginning of their lives. Anne is so full of spirit but lacks manners that normal kids have because she was never taught by parents. She causes trouble often and even got her best friend Diana drunk. She is misunderstood to be just a troublemaker and nobody believed her potential. Later on in the story, it shows that Anne is just as smart and capable of succeeding as all the other kids that were born with privileges. She was able to get into Queen's Academy like Gilbert Blythe and also attains Avery schloarship. However, Matthew Cuthbert has a heart attack and passes away which made Anne stay back and refuse her offer. This ending fully supports Marxism whereas she was born into her life by accident, and also forcefully stays within her life because of her family's past. "The division between the personal and class individual, the accidental nature of the conditions of life for the individual, appears only in emergence of class."; Anne is just as or even more capable than her classmates to achieve a higher education level, but the only thing that stops her is the family that she is placed with by a force beyond her control. A Marxist would agree that this story is a great example of the concept on historical fact and accidental nature.

This story is also a great example of Gramsci's marxist point of view on intellectuals; he states that "all men are intellectuals, one could therefore say; but not all men have in society the function of intellectuals"[p.2]. He believes everyone is smart and skilled in their own unique way. However, the society creates their own rules of defining intelligence and their uses; "there does not exist any independent class of intellectuals, but every social group has its own stratum of intellectuals" [p.5]. This is the same case in the novel as well because all the characters are all uniquely smart but is hard to value all of them equally. Anne is viewed to be naturally more spirited and smarter than Diana. Anne is recognized by her teacher and gets into Queens Academy with a schloarship. In that society, Anne fits the definition of intelligence. On the contrary, Diana is more skilled at presenting herself as a lady and has great manners, which Anne lacks. It is the society that decided Anne is smarter. Despite their differences of intellect, they are still best friends. In marxist view, Anne and Diana are best friends because they are equals even though the society would define Anne to be more intelligent.

Downsize This! by Michael Moore

2009-07-09T00:39:00.001-04:00

“Each man, finally, outside his professional activity, carries on some form of intellectual activity, that is, he is a ‘philosopher’, an artist, a man of taste, he participates in a particular conception of the world, has a conscious line of moral conduct, and therefore contributes to sustain a conception of the world or to modify it, that is, to bring into being new modes of thought.” Antonio Gramsci wrote these words in “Intellectual and Hegemony”, which discussed the ideas of a power elite, the social oppression utilized by the elite class, and what a common man’s intellectual could do. Michael Moore fits the bill of a Marxian intellectual in that he “participates in a particular conception of the world”, has a “conscious line of moral conduct”, and tries to contribute “new modes of thought”. This is evidenced in his book Downsize This! where he discusses the power elite of the corporate America and their socioeconomic dominance of the labor class, leading to the destruction of American jobs.

One particular example of how affected he is by what he perceives as social (and economic) injustice is: “My parents called yesterday to tell me that GM has announced two more plant closings in Flint (are there any left to close?). Another 3,000 lives will be torn apart.” He then goes on to discuss how many of these workers came from Oklahoma City after the Federal building was bombed, and then GM closed the factories in Flint, forcing more workers to another plant in Lansing. This describes what Gramsci wrote in his article: “The ‘spontaneous’ consent given by the great masses of the population to the general direction imposed on social life by the dominant fundamental group; this consent is ‘historically’ caused by the prestige (and consequent confidence) which the dominant group enjoys because of its position and function in the world of production.” I believe that Moore participates in a sort of Marxist conception of thought, where the underprivileged class that he is part is stuck in a cycle of poverty and misery due to the higher classes exploitation.

What I think Moore’s main message is that the labor class silently gives consent to these large economic and political forces to make policies that continually reaffirm the public conception of their lives. Michael Moore argues the policies and ideologies that have become the norm asking, “Why must we do it this way?”, and occasionally proposes solutions based on his beliefs of moral conduct that big business should follow. An example of a proposal that Moore came up with is “Prohibit corporations from closing a profitable factory or business and moving it overseas. If they close a business and move it within the U.S., they must pay reparations to the community they are leaving behind.” Some of his solutions are economically impossible, such as taxing profits earned at 100% when corporations and business leaders gain from social losses. I say this because those are the incentives to continue to build up businesses. Still, I believe Moore’s social conscience is the voice of generations of exploited American workers.

In our modern era, Michael Moore targets large, multi-billion dollar corporations in his perception of these dominant fundamental groups. Furthermore, Moore believes that “our union leaders let the right wing and corporate honchos take our country away from us, without a peep from anyone in labor”, which matches up with Gramsci’s belief that “the apparatus of state coercive power which ‘legally’ enforces discipline on those groups who do not ‘consent’ either actively or passively.” I interpret this statement as saying that Gramsci believed that the workers’ struggle is forcefully broken the major powers in the world of production. This is the notion I glean from the book; Michael Moore believes that modern homo fabers (in Gramsci’s words) have become dominated by such a large alliance of entities (such as labor unions and corporations), which could be likened to the “superstructures” described by Gramsci. The answer to this, Moore suggests, is that the labor class have the ability to change their plight by banding together and forcing the “juridicial” government to pass laws to further protect them since it is the natural right of a citizen.

In Downsize This!, Michael Moore tells a story of a rapidly shrinking American workforce, the negative effects of job-shrinking, and how the American Dream became the American Nightmare. One of the more interesting statements in Moore’s book is “You work hard, your company prospers, and you lose your job”. Moore deals with the fact that big corporations like GM are constantly cutting costs to increase the revenue, but at the expense of the workers. Much like how Gramsci described an intellectual and the world of production, Moore “participates” in a conception of the world where workers are treated unjustly and not represented in mass media. His strong moral compass and social perception drives Michael Moore’s anecdotal method of revealing injustices; his desire to change the way we think about the world around us is - not surprisingly - Marxist.

The Prince and the Pauper

2009-07-08T19:30:00.000-04:00

In the novel, The Prince and the Pauper, the author, Mark Twain seems preoccupied with the issue of social inequality. The Prince and the Pauper is a story of two boys who look alike, although one is a prince and the other is a peasant. Through an accident, they switch lives for a short period of time. Through the experiences of each boy, we can see the unfairness of the social classes. From a Marxist perspective, it is clear that this story takes on the idea that Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels stated in The German Ideology. They wrote, “their [the peoples’] personality is conditioned and determined by quite definite class relationships.” Each boy is who he is because of the station in life he was born into. In the novel, the first chapter discusses the birth of each boy. Tom Canty was born to a peasant family and was not wanted. On the other hand, Edward Tudor was the long awaited Prince of Wales and his birth was celebrated throughout the land. Tom’s family is poor and cannot afford to give him what he needs, while the Prince is lavished in silks and rich food. This disturbing disparity between the two births confirms Marx and Engels’ idea that the rest of a person’s life is determined by the class they are born into.

When Edward and Tom switch lives, Edward receives a real shock. Through his eyes, we see the troubling differences between members of the aristocracy and the lower class. Through Edward’s astonishment we can see that the ruling class gave no thought to how terrible the lives of the English peasants were. The upper class took for granted that they would get whatever they wanted because of their social position. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels state that, “personal freedom has existed only for the individuals who developed within the relationships of the ruling class.” This theory is portrayed in the plot when the soldiers of the palace threw Tom away from the palace gates because he was dressed in rags. Tom’s freedom to travel about and simply observe was restricted because he was a pauper. The lower class were viewed as inferior and were limited in their freedom even though their work significantly contributed to society.

Throughout Edward’s travels he comes to realize the inequality of the lives of those who were born into a lower class. When Edward tries to assert that he is indeed the Prince of Wales, everyone mocks him. This shows how there were extremely rigid boundaries between the classes. It was not thought as possible for a peasant to climb that high on the social ladder. Karl Marx and Freidrich Engels wrote that individuals “lived within the conditions of existence of their class.” The mindset of each class in the English society was such that they could not even imagine the potential for an individual to rise in status.

At the end of the story the Prince becomes aware of the inequalities in the English system and rules more compassionately when he becomes King. This demonstrates that when individuals are made aware, they realize of the unfairness of the way society is set up.

7.6.09

2009-07-06T07:02:00.000-04:00

You should see comments on your first weekly essay attached to your last post. Email me with any questions that you have, or stop by my office after class. While these weekly short essays aren't given grades, the comments should help you with the longer essay #1, which will be an expansion of one of these short pieces, is due in two weeks, and will be given a grade.

Also note that this week's assignment has been posted.

2009-07-05T15:54:00.000-04:00

Anyone having trouble printing the Anna Karenina excerpt on a b/w printer? I can barely read the text on mine and putting black levels to full didn't help much either.

Happy July 4th

2009-07-04T15:41:00.001-04:00

Happy Fourth everyone. Enjoy your weekend.

7.2.09

2009-07-02T17:10:00.000-04:00

As of now (5:10 pm on Thursday), feel free to post, but no more responses will be accepted for credit.

Not Another Teen Movie--Arron

2009-07-02T17:08:00.001-04:00

Every dictionary that I’ve come across has never given a single discrete definition of what genre means in definitive form. Rather, they have all gone on to denote thesaurus like listings of what words are actually synonymous to genre such as; type, sort, kind, field, variety, group, and etc. While all of these words are just collective specificities of the act of classifying, in my opinion they all continuously lack in meeting the objective of how to classify. Therefore, to see issues of how to classify in the real world is not surprising to me. For instance, the task of distinguishing between a myriad of forms of music and movies in media, likewise novels and plays in literature are all evident examples of why thesaurus word listing aren’t a sound enough basis for classification purposes. So was this the case in the movie I wish to talk about titled “Not Another Teen Movie.”

The film “Not Another Teen Movie’s” general purpose, as was implied by its promotional advertisements, was to be a comically inclined entertainment film. We’ve come to know and consider these types of films comedies. Indeed one can attest to this entire film being a hilariously entertaining comedy in all aspects as it banteringly toyed with promiscuous teenagers and pre-teens seeking sex, relationships, careers, undergoing peer pressure, and more in a comedic approach. For instance, Janie, the main character, was a typical nerdy girl whose passion in life was devoted to her painting found her self desiring the popular football jock named Jake. Jake could have any girl in school that he wanted. Janie wasn’t attractive to him, until she was given an extreme makeover and became the eye candy of every guy in school. Then did he begin to desire her but as a jock his reputation would being sabotaged if he were to began to date her. This situation between Jake and Janie develops into a romance where the two figures are in pursuit a relationship are hindered by opposing forces as in all romances. The oppositions being, one’s recent past image consistently reiterated and popular reputation respectively. Here is where we see a turn in the genre into a typical ‘romance’ genre or love story.

This unexpected veer into another film category deviates from the whole trained idea of what we’d normally consider a comedy. So now the question arise what categories should this film have been assigned to? Romance? Comedy? Or both? This apparently is an issue with defining genre. Therefore, I agree with Daniel Chandler when he quotes the writer/author Jane Ferur in his excerpt, “The problem of definition” saying, ‘genre as being ultimately an abstract conception rather than something that exist empirically in the world. In other words, this means if there is no clear cut definition of ‘genre’ as we’ve come to learn, that we have simply been classifying literature, media, and more on the basis of accepting what has been transcended time after time into our analytical endeavors rather than seeking out to develop a definition of genre in which we’d be able to accurately classify all categories.

The only way that we will ever be able to terminate this ongoing theoretical issue is to configure an international definition. Massive covenants leading to compositional frameworks, and eventually as intended, a written record will make eliminating related debates effective. Ultimately, no doubt will this transform all subjectively opinionated assumptions into objectively factual formal recognition of what ‘genre’ really is. Realistically, this may sound vey much ludicrous taking into consideration many opposing factors. Cultural, lifestyle, religious practices, and more act as hindering vices toward the conception of a international or ‘worldwide’ single definition of genre and its categories; eventually making this task even more arduous. Indeed, this may well be achievable if such a nation were to exist where all civilians within are all homo-cultured, religious, and practiced the same lifestyles. However, such a nation seemed fabricated rather than ‘realistic’. Assuming it where a surreal nation, would not a new issue arise pertaining to who would make these classifications of genres within that particular nation? And who and why where they deemed to do so?

Hitch, a Romantic Comedy

2009-07-02T17:00:00.002-04:00

Hitch, a popular romantic comedy released in 2005, has a story line that follows the usual course of its genre. The well-known man with all the solutions to any and all relationship related problems, the main character Alex Hitch, guarantees to help every well-meaning, but socially awkward man win ‘the girl of his dreams’ in just three dates. Gaining clients through a strict referral only policy, Hitch’s process and methods, almost flawless in its simplicity, is proven successful, a fact so clearly introduced in the film’s opening. As the story- line unfolds, Hitch is hired by the socially inept, and physically unappealing Certified Public Accountant, Albert. Albert hires Hitch to win over his dream girl who happens to be his attractive and ‘out of reach’ celebrity client, Allegra, a woman that just recently experienced a very public breakup.
Problems arise when Hitch himself also finds his dream girl in the cynical Sara, a reporter who happens to be covering Allegra’s public breakup story as well as investigating the identity of the ‘date doctor’, who happens to be the so-called cause of her best friend’s recent heart break. Albert’s relationship with Allegra as well as Hitch’s relationship with Sara become unraveled and tested through a series of awkward, humiliating, and nonetheless still very entertaining dilemmas, as both their ‘true’ identities come to surface while trying to win over their respective dream girls. Yet, both dream girls, Sara and Allegra find themselves hopelessly in love with their respective men, despite the circumstances.
Daniel Chandler notes that the conventional definitions of genres are based on the idea that each “constitutes a particular convention of content (such as themes or settings) and/or form (including structure and style)” (Chandler 2). Based on his theory of genres, the themes presented in a particular film and/or the structure or style of the film is the element that links Hitch to the genre of Romantic comedy. As expected by the viewer, Hitch presents a story line, or theme, that follows the guidelines of its genre; Boy falls in love with a seemingly attainable girl, and despite the obstacles manages to win the girl over, or vice versa, and live happily ever after. The only real difference in the case of Hitch, is that it is not just one boy winning over the girl. Instead it is one boy winning over the girl with the help of another who happens to be trying to win over his own girl.
The same can be said about the structure of the film, it also follows the usual guidelines of its genre; the boy meets girl, boy falls in love, hilarious and awkward situations arise, boy overcomes to finally win girl over. Though seemingly impossible at first both Alex Hitch and Albert are able to catch the attentions of their dream girls and begin the comical process of winning over their affections. The respective women, Sara and Allegra, find their deeply hidden soft spots for the men despite their side splitting antics.

2009-07-02T17:00:00.001-04:00

Brenda Gonzalez ASSIGNMENT #1 Prof. Henkle
Eng 170W

There seems not much to say about any genre besides what we clearly and distinctly realize and understand at face value, but upon delving deeper into the subject of genre theory there is a new world to think about when on the subject of any text. When you watch a movie, read a story, go to a play, or view a piece of art you expect to know what you’re going to get out of it unless you intimately, deliberately, and intricately get involved with the piece of work, in which case you may be surprised at what you find. Focusing on the genre of comedy what comes to mind first would be laughter, enjoyment, and feel good stories – but looking deeper into a text of that genre it’s possible to find other genres within it and a deeper perspective that the author was perhaps attempting to portray.
The film Pineapple Express, Dir. David Gordon Green. Prod. Judd Apatow, Seth Rogen, and Evan Goldberg.(DVD) Columbia Pictures. 2008, is one of the many pieces included in the string of hilarious movies that Judd Apatow and Seth Rogen have been involved in. This particular film evokes many moments full of laughter due to the script, and mainly the characters. There’s a very loser and silly type humor in three (Dale, Saul, and Red) of the characters and it seems to be a reoccurrence in the Judd Apatow films. Right before the climax Dale gets caught smoking in an alley after selling a bunch of weed to minors and as the lady officer approaches him she says “I’m a liaison officer for the school, and guess what? I just saw three students walking from back here with their eyes as red as the devils dick, you’re busted.” It’s foul language with an unconventional twist and often unheard pairings of words to form shocking and great sentences. Or it could be as simple as when Dale and Saul were in the woods and began to freak out because they thought they heard something. Then Saul thought he saw something and just bolts into the woods like a mad man, now Dale freaks and runs too; they both end up running until one trips, falls, and hits his head on a rock and the other runs into a tree. It’s always great to see slapstick humor where people unexpectedly get hurt.
In the very first scene of the film the viewer is brought to an underground, classified government facility in 1937 and there’s an experiment being done on the effects of marijuana smoking. This scene has a serious vibe and appearance except for Private Miller who was the test subject and high indeed – he was extremely animated with obscene hand gestures and singing and dancing, but very funny. This scene seems more of a political satire than anything else and perhaps that was the underlying substrate the writers wanted us to hold on and attach to. Dale actually makes a few arguments in the movie about the legalization of marijuana and it’s apparent to see he sides with the idea, if you didn’t already get that. On the radio he says “If marijuana is not legal within the next 5 years I have no faith left in humanity period. Everyone likes smoking weed, they have for thousands of years, and they’re not going to stop anytime soon. You know? It makes everything better…” This definitely reflects ideological concerns of today’s youth. Economically as well as morally people feel that legalizing such a drug like marijuana would not harm our societies but only make them better.
There seems to have been a kind of comedic revolution in such films since The Forty Year Old Virgin. In “An Introduction to Genre Theory” The Problem of definition, by Daniel Chandler states “genres change over time; the conventions of each genre shift, new genres and sub-genres emerge and others are ‘discontinued’.” When thinking of classical American comedy what comes to mind are The Three Stooges, The Honey Mooners, Charlie Chaplin, and even Mel Brooks. But what do they all have in common besides the fact that they made everyone laugh? ‘Their demarcation is always historical, that is to say, it is correct only for a specific moment of history’ (Bordwell 1989,147). I don’t believe such a film would have been accepted in the 30’s or 40’s, but perhaps the 60’s.

Sense and Sensibility

2009-07-02T16:59:00.001-04:00

The romance novel is a literary genre in which the primary focus is the relationship and romantic love between two people, “and must have an emotionally satisfying and optimistic ending.” It is believed that every genre has a purpose and according to Daniel Chandler, “How we define a genre depends on our purposes.” Romance novels have long been defined as a literary genre who’s primary focus is on the relationship and romantic love between two people, and must have “an emotionally satisfying and optimistic ending.” Contrastingly, a tragic novel is one in which there is so much sadness and disappointment and usually end in disaster for most of the characters. Chandler also states that, “There is often considerable theoretical disagreement about the definition of specific genres.” Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility could arguably be characterized by both genres.
The first very apparent emergence of romance and tragedy in Sense and Sensibility is in the very beginning. Mr. Dashwood had had two wives in his lifetime. With his first wife he had a son named John, and with his second wife he had three daughters named Elinor Marianne and Margaret. When Mr. Dashwood was on his deathbed, he had asked John who was his only son to take care of his half sisters. However, John had a very selfish wife, Fanny, who persuaded him that he had no obligation to “those girls”, so the Dashwood women were left with nothing. They had to look for another place to live. This is a tradgedy to me because imagine losing what was once your home, all because an in-law was able to persuade your family member against you.
The second emergence of tragedy and romance is when Elinor had fallen in love with her half-brothers brother in law, and Fanny’s brother, Edward. When Fanny heard of this she makes it clear that their mother, a wealthy widow, wants her son to marry a woman of high rank and great estate. It must be extremely unnerving to love someone and have their family member hate you. Elinor went through countless encounters where she was belittled and treated as though she wasn’t even a human being. She constantly had to keep her composure, which she was very good at, because even though she knew Edward loved her in return, sometimes it was hard to tell. The two marry shortly after they had a misunderstanding which brought them to the realization that they can’t live without each other.
One day Marianne had gone out for a stroll and got caught in the rain and sprained her ankle. This handsome man named John Willoughby saw the accident and took care of her. They dated for a while and he was going to propose to her, but then his aunt had heard of this and decided to send him away to London. This was devastating for Marianne who had loved him and was prone to becoming love sick. Eventually John runs off with another woman who is rich and had great status. Marianne is devastated and gets sick. After talking to her sister about how death because of sickness in love is suicide, she vows never to love another. Despite her efforts to keep her promise, she then falls for Colonel Brandon. Over the next two years, Marianne matures and, at the age of nineteen, decides to marry the 37-year-old Colonel. The Colonel's house is near the parsonage where Elinor and Edward live, so the sisters and their husbands can visit each other often. This is definitely the ending of a romance novel, however it is not so characteristic of a tradgedy.
This novel shows why it is impossible to have a concrete definition of a genre. So many different things come in to play when analyzing a work of literature that nothing can be so final.

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close- Jonathan Safran Fore

2009-07-02T16:59:00.000-04:00

The genre of Contemporary Realistic Fiction is one that takes place in the present day time period or in the recent past. One of the main characteristics of this genre is that the story or plot is one that can actually exist in real life. The events that occur in the novel are things that can happen in reality. The time and setting of where the story takes place is usually in an existing place. Other elements of this genre also include the characters. Their personality, traits and characteristics are ones that a person can have in real life.
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, written by Jonathan Safran Fore, is a novel which meets the expectations of the Contemporary Realistic Fiction genre. The fact that this story takes place in Manhattan, New York, is an element that makes this novel very ‘real’.
This novel is of child who has to cope with the death of the father throughout the novel. Two years before the story begins Oskar Schell loses his father in the attacks of September 11, 2001. Oskar then comes across a key in a vase that belonged to his father and a paper with the name ‘Black’ written on it. He then goes on a search for a person with the last name ‘Black’, which at the same time helps him cope with the death of his father. The plot of the novel itself is very believable. The fact that the author used September 11 as a basis to the storyline makes it very realistic. To read about a child who is deeply in remorse and pain because the loss of his father in that tragic event is something which has happened in the past.
Some of the other characters include his mother, grandmother, and grandfather. The author also tells the stories of the grandfather and grandmother through their letters to Oskar and Oskar’s father. These were people who had also experienced trauma. The bombing of Dresden, which was another historical tragedy the author used shattered the lives of these grandparents. Even though they survived it, they still lived a life of despair and pain. Through this historical tragedy the author conveys the emotions and sentiments of the characters very well. The feelings and dilemmas that these characters face while dealing with loss are indeed very relatable.
The way that the author writes this novel also makes it very realistic. His experimental style of writing adds much more to the novel itself. The use of letters helps put the story into context and conveys very powerful emotions. Fore uses visual dimensions which makes the novel more interesting and believable. He uses photographs, pictures and blank pages to help the reader get ‘inside’ Oskar’s head. This experimental technique actually provided more opportunities to understand the character better. Because Oskar is a child, adding pictures to the novel actually reinforced the sense of reality.
Although this novel’s genre is Contemporary Realistic Fiction, it also contains some elements that go against the genre. Oskar’s character in some ways does not seem realistic because of his personality. He is extremely intelligent, always wears white, a vegan, and has a witty personality. He seems much older than he is actually presented. For example there is one part in the novel in which Oskar walks from Manhattan to Queens to find a person with the name ‘Black’. That specific part in the novel exaggerates the abilities of a child and deviates from the genre.
There is no work of literature that strictly follows all the guidelines of a genre. According to Daniel Chandler, “it is difficult to make clearcut distinctions between one genre and another: genres overlap, and there are ‘mixed genres’…” This is true for every piece of literature. The word genre itself is hard to define. Chandler also states that “…some genres are ‘looser’- more open-ended in their conventions or more permeable in their boundaries.” This genre itself is also ‘looser’ than some of the other genres, especially the way it is presented in the novel. The author uses varieties of ways in which he demonstrates and presents the concept of ‘realism.’ The audience themselves can relate and understand the characters and the situations better especially because it was contemporary and contained a historical disaster that we can all relate to in some ways..

Assignment #1 Eng 170W

2009-07-02T16:57:00.000-04:00

Brenda Gonzalez ASSIGNMENT #1

Eng 170W

There seems not much to say about any genre besides what we clearly and distinctly realize and understand at face value, but upon delving deeper into the subject of genre theory there is a new world to think about when on the subject of any text. When you watch a movie, read a story, go to a play, or view a piece of art you expect to know what you’re going to get out of it unless you intimately, deliberately, and intricately get involved with the piece of work, in which case you may be surprised at what you find. Focusing on the genre of comedy what comes to mind first would be laughter, enjoyment, and feel good stories – but looking deeper into a text of that genre it’s possible to find other genres within it and a deeper perspective that the author was perhaps attempting to portray.

The film Pineapple Express, Dir. David Gordon Green. Prod. Judd Apatow, Seth Rogen, and Evan Goldberg.(DVD) Columbia Pictures. 2008, is one of the many pieces included in the string of hilarious movies that Judd Apatow and Seth Rogen have been involved in. This particular film evokes many moments full of laughter due to the script, and mainly the characters. There’s a very loser and silly type humor in three (Dale, Saul, and Red) of the characters and it seems to be a reoccurrence in the Judd Apatow films. Right before the climax Dale gets caught smoking in an alley after selling a bunch of weed to minors and as the lady officer approaches him she says “I’m a liaison officer for the school, and guess what? I just saw three students walking from back here with their eyes as red as the devils dick, you’re busted.” It’s foul language with an unconventional twist and often unheard pairings of words to form shocking and great sentences. Or it could be as simple as when Dale and Saul were in the woods and began to freak out because they thought they heard something. Then Saul thought he saw something and just bolts into the woods like a mad man, now Dale freaks and runs too; they both end up running until one trips, falls, and hits his head on a rock and the other runs into a tree. It’s always great to see slapstick humor where people unexpectedly get hurt.

In the very first scene of the film the viewer is brought to an underground, classified government facility in 1937 and there’s an experiment being done on the effects of marijuana smoking. This scene has a serious vibe and appearance except for Private Miller who was the test subject and high indeed – he was extremely animated with obscene hand gestures and singing and dancing, but very funny. This scene seems more of a political satire than anything else and perhaps that was the underlying substrate the writers wanted us to hold on and attach to. Dale actually makes a few arguments in the movie about the legalization of marijuana and it’s apparent to see he sides with the idea, if you didn’t already get that. On the radio he says “If marijuana is not legal within the next 5 years I have no faith left in humanity period. Everyone likes smoking weed, they have for thousands of years, and they’re not going to stop anytime soon. You know? It makes everything better…” This definitely reflects ideological concerns of today’s youth. Economically as well as morally people feel that legalizing such a drug like marijuana would not harm our societies but only make them better.

There seems to have been a kind of comedic revolution in such films since The Forty Year Old Virgin. In “An Introduction to Genre Theory” The Problem of definition, by Daniel Chandler states “genres change over time; the conventions of each genre shift, new genres and sub-genres emerge and others are ‘discontinued’.” When thinking of classical American comedy what comes to mind are The Three Stooges, The Honey Mooners, Charlie Chaplin, and even Mel Brooks. But what do they all have in common besides the fact that they made everyone laugh? ‘Their demarcation is always historical, that is to say, it is correct only for a specific moment of history’ (Bordwell 1989,147). I don’t believe such a film would have been accepted in the 30’s or 40’s, but perhaps the 60’s.

The Sound of Music

2009-07-02T16:56:00.000-04:00

Throughout his text "Introduction to Genre Theory: The Problem with Definition", Chandler addresses the controversial issue of defining and classifying genres. Since he defines genre to be a "distinctive type of 'text'"[p.1], he finds it impratical that a text or a movie can be categorized as one type for everyone at all times. He belives that a genre is "...an abstract conception" [p.2] because there is so many different ways to categorize films: by style, period of time, actors/actresses, etc. A story can fit into many of these categories which made him conclude on the concept of mixed genres. He states that "it is difficult to make clearcutt distinctions between one genre and another; genres overlap, and there are 'mixed genres'" [p. 4]. Lastly, Chandler writes that when some characteristics of a genre stays the same throughout time, it reveals the universal truth about humans. On the contrary, when certain characteristics/expectations of the genre change, it also shows how certain events during that era affected the everyone as a society.

A good example to support Chandler would be the movie "The Sound of Music". It is portrayed to be a romantic movie but is clearly a mixed genre. The plot itself follows a typical romance story whereas two opposing characters unexpectedly falls in love. The nun Maria and Naval Captain Von Trapp oppose each other from the very beginning; Captain criticizes Maria's dress and Maria firmly refuses to use his method of whistles. However, they end up realizing that they are perfect for each other like other romantic films. It also has a very typical climax because Baronness interefers with their love out of her jealousy and subletly encourages Maria to return to the abby. However, Maria ends up coming back after running away and they confess their love for one another. This is a very typical romance plot where there is usually something that separates them but the two characters end up confessing their forgiveness and love.

There are also amorous scenes that all audiences expect in a romantic movie. This film contains many expected scenes like when Maria and the Captain dance together outside the ball under the moon. They don't take their eyes off one another and eventually blush. Another enchanting scene is when they confess their love for one another under the stars by the lake. They sing to each other and kiss in this dreamy setting. Although these expectations are impractical, it shows that everyone fantasizes about this kind of love and ideas. It shows the human nature of people to want to love and idealize on the ideas of unrealistic romance.

The film has many of the romance movie's characteristics. However, the film supports Chandler's article because this is also a mixed genre. It also overlaps with other genre's characteristics and can be a catholic film, historic memoir, and a musical. Many of it's important scenes uses the church as a setting, such as for the wedding and as a hideout from the Nazis. Therefore, this can be also a catholic film because the Captain and Maria are both catholic believers as they briefly pray "God be with us" when they hide from the Nazis with the Mother at the church. Since this is a movie based on a real person named Captain Von Trapp, this is partially a memoir. It also shows the historic problems people had to deal with the Germans back then and brings a sense of reality. Lastly, from the beginning to the end, there is constant singing. The movie starts with Maria singing, continues with scenes that includes singing to show love for the Von Trapps, and ends with a song as a family.

Chandler states that the film should "embody the crucial ideological concerns of the time in which [it is] popular". This overlap of genre expectations show that the people during that time were involved with more than just romance. During this era, many people had suffered through the World War II and it's after effects. The catholic faith that Maria and the Captain held on to was something many people could have connected to; this era encouraged many people strengthen their faith in God and depend on Him like the Von Trapps did. It also shows how much people enjoyed music and dancing in those days; they used the song's lyrics to express their love unlike now where it's more about the song's appeal is so that it can be a top seller. It shows the difference between the people then where they used music for genuine purposes unlike now where it's more about the rhythm and money.

This story however, does not end like typical love stories. Although Maria and the Captain gets married, they do not live the normal happily ever after. The captain shows the patriotic Austrian pride that was very difficult to show during the reign of the Nazis. He stood up against the Germans and was soon unfortunately informed to prepare to leave for the German Navy which the Captain refuses to do. Although they escape successfully to Switzerland, they lose all of their material wealth. If this movie was watched among people raised now, it wouldn't portray the same meaningful ending as it did for people back then. This ironic unromantic ending shows that the people had deeper conflicts and therefore, a deeper meaning of happiness. For them, just being together with their family even if they lose everything is the best that could have happened. This surprising ending shows the differences in audience then and now.

The movie "The Sound of Music" clearly supports Chandler's article for various reasons. It is an example of a mixed genre, and also supports his idea that genre's characteristics reflect the people directly.

Dinova (English 170W)

2009-07-02T16:37:00.000-04:00

Dinova C. Castaneda
English 170W: Introduction to Literary Study

THE PROPOSAL

The film The Proposal is a romantic comedy intended for women. This film meets its expectations, because it’s the typical dysfunctional couple that in the process of going threw many differences they make it hilariously funny and surprisingly fall in love. For example there is a scene when Margaret one of the main characters played by: Sandra Bullock is running around in the backyard with the dog in her hands trying to get her cell phone back from an eagle and Andrew Paxton mother and grandmother the other main character played by: Ryan Reynolds thought she was bonding with the dog. This scene is really funny. When it came to romance there are a couple of scenes that met the expectations of a romantic comedy as well. There is a scene when Margaret starts to feel jealous when Andrew is talking to his old girlfriend while they are in Andrew’s home town. Margaret starts to realize that Andrew is a great guy and comes from a very loving family.

In most romantic comedies there is always a reason why they can’t be together or how something or someone is involve that makes is impossible for the couple to be together. There is also always a character that is ridiculously funny like the old grandma or single best friend. Towards the end of the film there is usually always a funny twist to the movie and suddenly everything is happy ever after. I think romantic comedies are intended mostly for women, because women enjoy talking and listening to stories. Women could identify more with relationship movies since we pay more attention to details. Many times we try to identify ourselves with other people relationship and make sense out of the situations.

Quoting from Chandler essay An Introduction to Genre Theory, according to film theorist, Robert Stam some genres are based on story content like a war film, but comedy borrowed from literature. Andrew Tudor argued that genre is what we collectively believe it to be. David Buckingham argues that genre is not simply given by the culture: rather, it is in constant process of negotiation and change. Abercrombie said genres change over time; the conventions of each genre shift, new genres and sub-genres emerge and others are discontinued, but to note that some genres seem particularly long lasting. Tzvetan Todorov argued that a new genre is always the transformation of one or several old genres.

As we can see the theorist all have a different but interesting point of view. I find that Abercrombie and Tzvetan Todorov seam to have similar points of view, which I find to be true. New films and books are combinations of old genres and repetitious stories. The only difference is that it’s intended for a newer generation and time period, which unfortunately involves more graphic bloody violent scenes and nudity.

"Dark City" as sci-fi/noir

2009-07-02T16:17:00.000-04:00

If generic conventions exist as a means of facilitating understanding, the 1998 film Dark City succeeds in provoking viewers through its appropriation of various genres. Broadly it is an action film, more specifically a dystopian science-fiction, and it is a detective film noir as well. It is not the first film of this nature: Blade Runner was released 16 years prior, and Total Recall shares many essential elements. Dark City taps a specific type of detective movie, the film noir, and makes use of other sub-genres besides.

Dark City’s film noir elements are the most immediately visible. The visual code of film noir is well-established and recognizable. The sets are reminiscent of the 1940s or 50s, the colors are sepia-toned, and the location is an unnamed metropolis. There are settings typical of film noir, from the film’s start in a seedy motel and leading to a detective’s office and a smoky lounge. Some scenes are cribbed from dozens of previous mystery and action films: The hopeless pursuit down a spiral staircase, shot from above and below. While Dark City’s villains are emotionless aliens, they do the audience the favor of wearing uniform black hats.

Archetypal film noir characters appear in a montage common to the action genre as a whole: The rookie cop yearning to impress his higher-ups, the passionate but wearied detective, and the good cop who just couldn’t take the stress. Perhaps most important is the film’s protagonist, a good guy framed for a crime he didn’t commit.

Despite these tropes, Dark City’s film noir elements serve mostly as a façade for the standard science-fiction adventure. After the title cards, the film’s internal mythology is dictated to the audience, as in Star Wars and other fantasies. Some of the science fiction tropes are very detailed in their execution. One of them is the coercion of the fundamentally good scientist: In Dark City, there is a scene in which a stammering doctor must explain to the menacing alien why the hero has not been sedated properly. Calling the scene predictable would be an understatement, but it is crucial in establishing the protagonist’s assistant as a conflicted character attempting to do the right thing. There is also the battle of wills or stand-off between the intrepid hero and the oppressive force, a back-and-forth that usually reaches its apex when the hero taps his superior emotional reserves.

This hero merits some examination. The protagonist is necessarily an everyman, if perhaps a more durable or athletic one. This is the advantage of the amnesiac hero: It further provides the predominantly young, male audience with a blank slate onto which they may project themselves. He is the definition of masculinity and supremely goal-oriented, even if he doesn't know or understand his goal at the film's start. By the film's end, he has asserted his identity and been rewarded, often with the love of an ever-present female interest.

Dark City is among a set of stylized science-fiction films that birthed The Matrix and has remained popular since. The films are produced with exceptionally high budgets, mostly spent on computer-generated effects. These effects are spectacular and pervade the film, often augmenting the cost of fantastic sets. The set of films of which Dark City is a member are anti-authoritarian and existential in tone, striking an odd balance between cerebral science-fiction and summer blockbusters. That is, while they may meditate on themes of reality and perception, they also feature heroes who can chew up scenery. These films, often released at the start of blockbuster season, are seen as perhaps more respectable than their less incisive counterparts.

It is its treatment of generic conventions that identify Dark City as a postmodern work. It is heavily intertextual, anticipating a fairly sophisticated audience able to derive more than just the spectacle presented to them. The viewer is expected to be familiar with the film noir convention, which is no easy task, considering how widely the form has fallen out of favor in the past 40 years. Ultimately, though, it is a film unlikely to be approved by critics or to curry its stars additional awards or acclaim. These films operate on a regular timetable, produced each year and released on DVD quickly. They are, generally speaking, not to be remembered, but Dark City's generic transgression makes it memorable (and for this purpose, useful).

The Dark Knight: Hero / Anti-Hero

2009-07-02T15:53:00.000-04:00

The second film in the ongoing recreation of Batman, "The Dark Knight", forces some interesting questions to rise. Of course, for those who have religiously (or semi-religiously) read the comics detailing all of Batman's heroics and not-so-heroics, these questions are placed in the movie as a visual aid to what was already known. The main question that Christopher Nolan, the director of both the first and second movie, seems to bring up, is thus: What makes a superhero movie, and if there is a set of rules to such a thing, is there a way to make an anti-hero movie? It just so happens that he answers such points in the movie.

For anyone who has not seen the movie but has seen the first one, The Dark Knight is about Bruce Wayne / Batman’s action trying to create a niche for himself as Gotham City’s vigilante hero. A new villain, the Joker, pops up, and shows Gotham City that to be a villain, all you need is some dynamite, gasoline, bullets, and some spark of insanity bordering on genius. He tells Batman in one scene that in order to stop him, Batman will have to “break your one rule”, and that rule is killing someone as a means to an end. The Joker is the perfect foil to Batman, and develops the idea that maybe, though seemingly doling out justice, Batman is not a hero, but an anti-hero, a “dark knight”, a direct reflection of the Joker.

Most superhero movies that people have seen, like the old Superman films, have a pretty clear-cut idea of what a hero is, and by proxy, what a film in the superhero genre should contain. But Daniel Chandler, in his “Introduction to Genre Theory”, says “…How we define a genre depends on our purposes;” that when we define something, it matters what we, or perhaps even the director meant when directing the movie; perhaps even the creation of a new genre. We’ve seen so many movies where the villain is vanquished or even killed, but what happens when we have a movie where the villain proves to us that our own hero, the one we’ve rooted for the entire time, may just also be a villain, or at least one step away from being one?

Chandler also says “…film theorists frequently refer to popular films as 'genre films' in contrast to 'non-formula films'. Elitist critics reject the 'generic fiction' of the mass media because they are commercial products of popular culture rather than 'high art’.” Both elitists and film critics loved The Dark Knight, both for their own reasons; the critic for it’s talented actors and edgy plot, the elitists for it’s uncovering the ‘truth’ about Batman’s personality and it’s vivid show of the Joker’s violence. However, these two types of critics would probably hold that the movie fits into two completely different genres. So who decides what genre it actually is?

In the end of all things, it both fits into and breaks it’s own genre, the superhero movie, at the same time. Showing Batman trying to save Gotham bit by bit shows us the dichotomy of a superhero who, though trying to serve justice, is really on the edge and just about to crack. There have been plenty of stories told in the comic book style where Batman does indeed break down, and one of his successors has to take his place. Perhaps that is what Christopher Nolan is trying to do; to create an entirely new genre based on the ‘humanity’ of a superhero.

What Genre is Ella Enchanted?

2009-07-02T15:38:00.000-04:00

The novel Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine is classified as a fantasy. There are parts of the book that make it very obviously fit into this genre. The fact that many mythical creatures reside in the story, the main character is cursed to follow every order she is given, and that throughout the novel she goes on a journey to overcome the adversity of having to live like a slave as part of the nobility. However, there are parts of the story that have absolutely nothing to do with the fantasy genre and much more to do with romance. The fact that she loves a prince whom she cannot have because of her curse even though he loves her too is purely romance and does not fit with the fantastic aspect of the novel.
The ways it does fit into the fantasy genre are the frequent use of the mythical creatures. According to Chandler in his essay “An Introduction to Genre Theory” he states that a certain approach to describing genres is prototypicality. He proposes that “According to this approach certain features would identify the extent to which an exemplar is prototypical of a particular genre. Genres can therefore be seen as ‘fuzzy’ categories which cannot be defined by necessary and sufficient conditions.” The prototype of a work of fantasy is the fairytale and myth. The source of all fantasy works originates from the stories our parents told us as children. They contain mythical creatures, curses, and adventures. In the book the main character Ella visits one of her favorite places in the kingdom the royal menagerie. This place contains dragons, centaurs, elves, etc. These creatures are an aspect of the prototype but do not define the fantasy novel. Chandler is saying that authors can follow the prototype as strictly or obtusely as they want.
The reason this book can be doubted as a fantasy is because aside from the plot there is a love story between the protagonist Ella and the prince. We can see this from the first time they meet at her mother’s funeral and her comforts her where no one else could. People could just as easily say this book is a romance novel even though that is not a part of the plot. However, later in his essay Chandler tells us that genres are not “fixed forms” but that they are “dynamic”. He states that “‘genre is not…simply “given” by the culture: rather, it is in a constant process of negotiation and change’”. This is completely true. Although the prototype of a fantasy is the fairytale that does not mean that it cannot have evolved beyond that point as people have evolved. If people choose to accept a romance as part of or compatible with a fantasy then there is no reason not to alter the definition in order to include it.
The term genre is human construct. It was created to help classify literary texts in order to help people find what it was that they wanted to read. Since people created it and people have a tendency to change their minds then so to does the definition of what a genre is and what fits into it.

by Lyuba Lazarev

Watchmen a new look at the super hero

2009-07-02T15:27:00.000-04:00

A genre is a group of diffrent works that exhibit similar characteristics to each other. These can be horor, drama, chick flicks, action, along with many others. But most works play with the rules of genre by crossing over to others or re telling a story from a genre in a new way while still leaving its base elements intact so itcan still be recognizable as that genre. A genre that has been part of almost all cultures is that of the super hero. A super hero is a tale of a man or a woman some times in costumes is is above the law and uses a great skill they posses to right the wrong that either the law is commiting or is unable to right. The graphic novel by Allen Moore "The Watchmen" is a story that fits into and would be known as a super hero story. It is about a group of people who dress up in costumes and fight crime trying to right what they precive as wrong using there diffrent skill sets. But unlike most super hero storys where the super hero is seen as the moral light of the story and it is unquestioned that they are doing this for good, Moore brings in the moral ambiguity of what is right, along with raising questions of the mental health of these people who dress costomes to fight crime.

The story includes super heros that strongely resmble ones that have already been established within the super hero genre. Fist is the comidian who is very patraotic he wheres a star and american flag emblems that can be easly associted with the all american hero captian america. He also works for the goverment like captian america did along with going to war like the character captian america did in world war two. But unlike the genre's typical hero of captian america who the viewer feels is morrally correct fighting fascism Moore sets the comadian in the vietnam era along with post vietnam conflicts. The viewer is shown gurrialla warfare that the comdian is engaged in he is shown buring people alive with a blow tourch gunning down a prenught woman along with helping topell south american regimes that had justifiablely setup there owen socalist goverments like chile in the real world. In most storys of super heros like captian america there is no doubt that his engament in warfare for the united states was the right thing to do he was morraly correct coragious and it was compeltely nessasary that he engaged in combat. Moore on the other hand has show a hero that was in warfare that the society had questioned weather it was nessary or justified and with in that warfare the reader sees that the acts that were commited would make any person feel the violence was just a act of murder. Another example of his use of existing heros from the genre is Rawshack who is resembles the hero Batman. He had a trublent child hood and is uncompomising he has no super powers and uses his dective skills to slove crimes along with his martial arts skills. But unlike Batman he was rasied by prostuite till he was put into a group home. He is almost illitarate and has terrable hygine the reader also discovers that his secret identity is that of a man who walks the streets holding a sign that talks about the end of the world. Lastley unlike bat man who always wins with his uncompomising attitude and seems to never to be able to be killed Rawshack meets his death for he is unable to compromise and is killed by another "hero" for if he spoke his mind he would cause more death and devastation. Moore showing the reader his childhood of a prostitue mother absent father (who he speaks of as if he knew) along with his secret identedy of what most would call a crazy person who yells about the end of the world shows the reader unlike most of the gerne that the mental health of someone who goes out and fights crime at night in a mask is very questionable

These Heros create a story that we are all very famialir with a group of people deciated to righting the wrongs of society or the world that the law can not do themselves but unlike the typical story of a super hero with in the gerne even though Moore makes his chacters paraell to those the reader knowes we see that he strayes from the typical making there moraltiy questionable along with there mental health

2009-07-02T15:02:00.001-04:00

The theory of genre is the method by which any expressive media is categorized. The skeptic reader will immediately recognize this statement as one which warrants closer scrutiny. Where do these categories come from? By what method are they defined? It becomes increasingly clear that the concept of the genre is abstract, and that the pursuit of clarity – the analysis of the genre – seemingly layers abstraction upon abstraction. In Daniel Chandler’s “The Problem with Definition” we are encouraged to both accept and challenge the abstract nature of the genre – “specific genres tend to be easy to recognize intuitively but difficult to define”. The most prudent way to understand any definition is by the construct and analysis of any (often many) relevant example. By example we say a relevant work. As such, we choose Quentin Tarantino’s 1996 film “From Dusk till Dawn”. We wish to say, for the moment, that this particularly example is a Vampire film. By the analysis of this example, we will show that genres force us to draw parallels with boundaries of what we “know” or “feel” to be true, while at the same time redefining those boundaries.

The Vampire film has been a staple of the movie genre since its inception and has changed as much as the movie genre itself. This is due partly to the veiled and mixed origins of vampire-lore. While there have been several adaptations of the Vampire film, the most notable have been based on Bram Stoker’s Dracula, with the vampire either depicted as highly romanticized or as a subhuman blood thirsty creature. Other prominent qualities include a centralized character – the vampire slayer – who usually auspiciously dispatches the vampire and various religious undertones.

Of the two common portrayals of vampires, From Dusk till Dawn employs the latter. The vampires use “The Titty Twister” as their den - a run down bar situated a top an old Aztec pyramid (adding further complication to vampire-lore). As for the slayers, there are four Seth, Jacob, Kate, and a young boy named Scott. They engage in an epic struggle for their lives and slay the vampires in the end. But are there any religious undertones? Yes, Jacob – a priest who begins to doubt his faith after the loss of his wife – is required to bless some water in order to help keep the vicious monsters at bay. It would seem that the criteria for the Vampire film genre have been fulfilled and that, presently, our original supposition stands in contradiction. However, From Dusk till Dawn has characteristics of a narrative as well. In fact the first vampires do not appear on screen until roughly two-thirds of the movie. Most of the film is spent developing the characters (a style of story-telling that Tarantino is well known for). Seth is no angel either – the informed reader knows that Seth and his brother, having robbed a bank and murdered several people (one of whom is Sheriff), are on the lam. The two have made plans to meet friends in Mexico in order to secure their freedom. They kidnap Jacob and his children in order to achieve this objective. Unbeknownst to them, they have chosen the feeding grounds of the undead to host their meeting.

Apparently, the movie inexplicably transitions from a narrative to a horror/vampire film, two genres which can, for the most part, be considered to be adjoint. The original claim, however, holds and the illustrative purpose of this analysis has been fulfilled. The intangible nature of genre serves not to confound our thoughts, but to guide them. As Chandler’s essay says, “traditionally genres tended to be regarded as fixed forms, but the contemporary emphasis is that both the form and function of the genre is dynamic”. We venture so far here as to say that genre is as dynamic and intangible as thought. Upon watching From Dusk till Dawn we know how the story should be told, but from the manner in which it is told we get an entirely new entity – that is to say, our boundary on the Vampire film is expanded. As for the question of exactly what genre the film “From Dusk till Dawn” actually is, we leave it to the reader to answer.

War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy as a genre of epopee

2009-07-02T14:44:00.000-04:00

Generally, the genre of epopee did not gain a vast popularity in the world literature, for the most part fading away with the decline of the antique period. It is hard to overestimate the significance of this genre in the ancient Greek or Latin world. At that point the epic novels often times were not even written and were hardly distinct from the drama: they could be performed at the stages as easily as they could be told. The characters of epic narratives were “walking” from one episode to another, and the reader – perhaps, we should rather call him a listener – could follow his life path in its fullest – thus, the epic novels are characterized by an unusual length, so that the most extensive life period can be observed. The thematic content of an epopee traditionally is a reflection on the great ideas of a human life and its sense; it may be a development of a historical, nationalistic or private and intimate ideas of the time; this reflection is represented through the prism of the life of the main epic character, who is often times overly positive, strong, multi-faceted, and thoughtful. Citing John Swales, Chandler claims that “the principal criterial feature that turns a collection of communicative events into a genre is some set of communicative purposes” (Chandler). Thus, with a certain degree of conditionality we can label Homer’s sequel Odysseus and Iliad as classic epic novels as the reader is exposed to numerous life obstacles of the main character of these two novels. The other examples of epopee genre could be Forsyte Saga by John Galsworthy, Human Comedy by Honore de Balsac, Jean Christophe by Romain Rolland, Rougon-Macquart sequence by Emile Zola, Les Miserables by Victor Hugo, The Bear by William Faulkner's, and War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy.
The latter is considered to be an epopee for a number of reasons. Firstly, the author himself had defined it as an epic novel: the cover page of War and Peace has a sort of explaining subtitle – novel-epopee. Secondly, it meets a genre frame, because it narrates the huge historical and social shifts through the shifts in lives of different characters (the most important ones – Natasha Rostova, Pier Bezoukhov, Andrew Bolkonsky). It touches upon very general and, at some point, eternal ideas of the war and its footprint in the people’s lives, the destination of the human life. It also describes an immense scope of significant events, such as the invasion of Napoleon’s army, some notable battles and great military figures; Tolstoy depicts being of different social classes and generations – from young aristocrats to elderly peasants. But what makes War and Peace an epic novel is the extent to which Tolstoy managed to dig into the human inner world of the emotions and reflections. The struggle of feelings of an individual in the novel is quite comparable to the military battles that the characters (Andrew Bolkonsky and Pier Bezoukhov) take a part in. Bolkonsky, wounded and supine at the Austerlitz battlefield, but at the same moment experiencing the great shift of the ideas and looking at the cloudy sky with the smell of gunpowder, became a great classic epic figure in the world literature.
Chandler argues that “literary […] critics […] have regarded ‘generic’ texts […] as inferior to those which they contend are produced outside a generic framework” (Chandler). As the genre of epopee tends to include a number of other genres within a text (some romance, war narrative, historical novel, etc), like in War and Peace, the epic novels are located sort of above some traditional genres on the academic scale.

No Reservations: A Different Romantic Comedy

2009-07-02T13:45:00.000-04:00

The 2007 movie No Reservations is filed away in the genre of romantic comedy. However, it is not all-around your typical “fall in love, live happily ever after movie”, as its bigger issue revolves around a chef who takes the responsibility of caring for her sister’s daughter after she dies. The movie focuses on this theme, but of course romance eventually surfaces. Despite tending to deviate from the expectations of a romantic comedy, the movie does meet many of them. For example, the two people (who eventually fall in love) are complete opposites and dislike each other, which ultimately sparks the romance. In this film Kate is an uptight chef who is not willing to change her style of cooking or let down her guard. Contrastingly her eventual lover Nick is free spirited, energetic and the only person able to connect to Kate’s niece Zoe. In several scenes of the movie Nick and Kate argue. Their opposition echoes romantic comedy and the audience can predict that they will soon fall in love. Also, in romantic comedies the extent of the couple’s love is usually not expressed, until one has to move half way across the world or a huge fight prevails. In No Reservations, Nick is offered Kate’s head chef job which fuels an argument begin the two. Kate believes Nick steals her job and because of this accusation he quits. Later Nick tells Kate he is taking a job in San Francisco. Despite Kate’s usual uptightness, days later she quits her job running to find Nick and tell him that she loves him. This scenario is typical of a romantic comedy and one of the most obvious expectations met.

Although there are ways No Reservations meets genre expectations, there are also ways it does not. For example, the romance of Nick and Kate is not really the central theme of the movie. It is more about Zoe and Kate being able to move past the death of their shared love one while starting a new life together. The character Zoe overall makes the film more unique to its genre. In addition, most romantic comedies exes return to cause trouble, but that is not found in this movie. Finally, the plot is very different from a typical romantic comedy. It does have the same cheesy plot and this is mainly because of Zoe and what she represents in the movie. Most romantic comedies do not begin with someone dying and changing the entire course of a person’s life. Instead this is usually found in the drama genre.

According to Daniel Chandler, “it is seldom hard to find texts which are exceptions to any given definition of a particular genre” (Chandler 3). In 2009 this is very true as most romantic comedies are usually the same and as an audience member we already know what to expect. However, No Reservations supplies a twist and a deeper meaning for the audience to unfold. He goes on to say that, “contemporary theorists tend to describe genres in terms of ‘family resemblances’ among texts rather than definitionally” (Chandler 4). I believe this is why so many romantic comedies are popular. For some reason we enjoy movies that contain the same patterns and follow the same conventions.

Bridget Jones Diary as a Romantic Comedy

2009-07-02T13:01:00.000-04:00

The movie Bridget Jones Diary meets expectations of the Romantic Comedy genre. Bridget is a single girl looking for love and writing about it in her Diary. The importance of her finding love is established in from the beginning as her Mother is always setting her up and she also reacts enthusiastically when she meets someone. For example, she hears wedding bells with Daniel from the very start. The music in the movie really shows the emotions of the scenes for example slow motion and fantasy music is used when Bridget meets Marc, or triumph music is played when an obstacle is overcome like she is determined to move on and forget about men.

Common to the genre, they pretend they don’t like each other as he is already setup as a middle aged bore from the very first scene and she also overhears him talking bad about her. Yet there are awkward moments between them as they each put their foot in their mouth or one sticks up for the other in a conversation making it obvious they like each other. They are always coincidentally running into each other when they are not together, also expected by the viewer as this sets up the “meant to be” aspect of the genre.

There are many obstacles to them getting together. However, Daniel provides the first and most important obstacle to their relationship. He lies and says Marc cheated with his wife leading Bridget to think badly of Marc. Then Daniel and Briget form a relationship prior to her getting together with Marc, which can also be found in many of these types of movie to show the wrong relationship. Daniel’s initial lie is a setup for the triumph moment at the end of the movie when she finds out the truth and set to the music of “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” and she goes to find him and declares her love through in front of entire party of people as a grand gesture. As also is typical, she arrives too late and he is engaged to someone else. This movie toys with viewer’s emotions in this way throughout so that you think they will get together and then they don’t. However, going along with the rules of the genre at the end he comes to find her. Once again you think she will lose him when he reads bad things she wrote about him in her diary. The fairytale ending finally comes to a close when his reaction is to buy her a new diary so they can start over. The final picture leaves “The End” like a fairytale, but its crossed out an they write “The Beginning” signifying it’s the beginning for this love.

Chandler writes that “embedded with texts are assumptions about the ‘ideal reader’, including their attitudes towards the subject matter and often their class, age, gender and ethnicity” (Chandler 9). This movie is obviously a “Chic Glick” and geared to women because besides the love story it includes moment that would only be understood by women. Examples are the showing of Fatal Attractions ending, growing old and being eaten by wolves, self help books about men. It also counters these with her taking charge and changing her jobs to get away from Daniel, throwing those books out getting books about being happy with men. She is taking charge of her life. The music here is “I’m every Woman” selected to make women feel good about what she is doing. By making fun of many of the singleton’s challenges in the world for staying single, I think that this movie says about our time that it is okay to be single. Her remaining single still wouldn’t be a truly satisfying ending due to expectations and so she gets the guy at the end. However, the movie still pushes acceptance of being single because I think less women today are settling for bad relationships just so they don’t have to be single.

According to Chandler, “The issue of difference also highlights the fact that some genres are ‘looser’ – more open-ended in their conventions or more permeable in their boundaries – than others” (Chandler 4). After consideration of this movie and many others, I believe that Romantic Comedies may even have the loosest boundaries of all genres. Love stories have endless possibilities of setting, character and time. This fact goes along with their whole point of love being meant to be or it can happen to anyone.

Shaun of the Dead

2009-07-02T12:24:00.001-04:00

Shaun of the Dead can be called a zombie movie, but it’s mostly satire of a zombie movie. Still what makes a zombie movie a zombie movie?

Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright wrote the script for the movie based on their mutual enjoyment of zombie movies and based it mostly on the George Romero’s Living Dead series. There are tons of zombie movies and while each type of zombie is a bit different, the basic idea is the same: reanimated corpses, (mostly) slow, and killed by destroying the brain. So we’ve defined the basic zombie, but what about the zombie film?

Well, I believe the most basic question is: what’s a spoof/satire of a film genre? Spoof is parody, according to Wikipedia, and Merriam-Webster defines a parody as “a literary or musical work in which the style of an author or work is closely imitated for comic effect or in ridicule”. This means that in order to really laugh at a work or genre, it must be as close as possible to different aspects in that genre. So by this definition, and Chandler’s idea that “a genre in any medium can be seen as embodying certain values and ideological assumptions”, we can start by dissecting the idea of a zombie film.

The reason Romero made the Living Dead series was not only to make horror, but also to tell a parable of human existence. For example, Diary of the Dead was produced in an era where the world is just discovering the freedom of alternative media, such as blogging and YouTube, in ways like Tweeters are doing in Iran at this time. The government’s covering up the zombie epidemic, but the Internet is awash with some truth, some speculation, and some insanity. So George Romero seeks to discuss different issues as they come up and in which era, which fits Chandler’s beliefs of genre. The zombie movie seems not just about scares, but also a bit of sociopolitical commentary… well, at least the good ones are.

Right… now to the subject at hand: if Shaun of the Dead is a zombie film parody, then it should be fairly close to the zombie film genre.

- So we start off analyzing the zombies, which are essentially the main actors; they’re not intelligent, killed by destroying the brain, and terribly slow. Because as Simon Pegg remarked, “Death is not an energy drink”; so these zombies fit the bill.

- It must be some sort of epidemic, where zombies overrun all of civilization, and it does seem that way (except the ending, but then again this is a parody). Zombies are seen everywhere, especially locked rooms to quarantine the infected (a reference to Dawn of the Dead). In Shaun of the Dead, we find the undead locked in a back room of a pub as a measure of quarantine.

- The survivors seek refuge in some sanctuary against the tide of the undead. Which they do in Shaun… in a pub because someone needs to smoke.

- Why there’s an epidemic is due to the fact that people turn into zombies from being bitten by a member of the undead, provided that their brains haven’t been obliterated, then dying from infection. Many people have become zombies in this film – no question about it. I believe someone in the remake of Dawn of the Dead said it best: “[They’re dead] in the sense that they all sort of, uh... fell down... and then got up... and started eating each other.”

- Zombies are not called zombies, or no one says the z word. The cause of the zombie invasion is never mentioned, either. Ed, who calls them zombies, breaks this rule; causing Shaun to say, “Don’t say that!” And where the zombies came from is hush-hush.

- There is a group of people who are slowly whittled down to two or three people, usually a male and female, supported by nearly all the George Romero movies and several “generic” genre pieces (e.g. Night of the Living Dead). This occurs (somewhat) in Shaun of the Dead where the last two survivors are a guy and girl, Shaun and his ex.

- At least one loved one will receive a mercy killing usually after they’ve turned into a zombie (e.g. Dawn of the Dead). In this case, Shaun’s mom had her zombie brains blown all over some bar furniture.

- At least one person, usually an annoying person, will be vivisected or eaten to death by a horde of zombies (e.g. Dawn of the Dead). In this case, David is casually ripped into edible chunks by the rampaging horde.

- The climax of the film usually involves zombies breaking into the sanctuary either due to human stupidity or the sheer number of the undead. In Shaun, they break into said pub because the number of zombies just multiplied exponentially. This is usually where the survivors are killed off (well, they can’t be called survivors anymore, can they?) one by one because there’s simply nowhere to run.

Finally, it must be said that Shaun of the Dead does comment on social issues, even if the message in itself is just a rehash of Romero’s beliefs that mankind has become zombified and lives day to day in routine. Shaun so illustrates this in the beginning of the film where he is shown to follow the routine and somehow gets zombies to believe he is one of their own. (There’s a cool scene where the group tricks the zombies into believing they’re zombies by acting like zombies; I don’t think Romero zombies are THAT dumb.)

Shaun of the Dead could fit into disaster, action, comedy, or drama based on what you look for as well. But since we’re examining whether Shaun of the Dead is a zombie movie, then it mostly fits the bill. However, since Chandler also states that “film theorists frequently refer to popular films as 'genre films' in contrast to 'non-formula films'”. Shaun of the Dead is a popular film; so popular it might garner cult film status. Nevertheless, the genre may just be defined by its worst elements. (House of the Dead, anyone?) It seems, then, that Shaun of the Dead is just a very good zombie film.

Pride and Prejudice

2009-07-02T08:25:00.000-04:00

Classic novels have always included those of the romantic genre. This genre though has changed over the years as Daniel Chandler says, “On-going genres and their conventions themselves change over time.” Romance novels of the past portrayed woman as passive individuals because that is how they were viewed in society at the time. A twenty-first century woman would be more forceful in obtaining her desires. Chandler also states, “mass media genres from a particular era [can be seen] as reflecting values which were dominant at the time.” Scandals of the past, such as a man and woman living together without marrying, are not viewed today as radical. Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen, is a popular and well-respected love story that appeals to people throughout the past century despite the noticeable changes within the genre of romance itself. The pattern of love story plots remains the same regardless of the apparent changes in society’s values. This pattern is what draws readers to these novels.

The first key moment in a romance novel is when the man and woman meet. Their initial meeting gets off to a bad start and they usually end up disliking each other. Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy are the two main characters that go through this romantic journey together. At an assembly dance, when Mr. Darcy is asked by another to dance with Elizabeth, his reply is, “She is tolerable; but not handsome enough to tempt me.” Elizabeth as well, does not show any affection for Mr. Darcy. The next path that the novel follows is that of the conflict. Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth are thrown together a number of times, whether it was due to her sister’s illness and they were both residing in the Bingley’s house or when Elizabeth goes to visit her friend Charlotte and Mr. Darcy is staying in the area as well. Mr. Darcy begins to fall in love as we see when Elizabeth notices, “ how frequently Mr. Darcy’s eyes were fixed on her.” Elizabeth on the other hand grows to dislike Mr. Darcy even more after she hears that he told Mr. Bingley not to court her sister. When Mr. Darcy comes and declares his love, Elizabeth dismisses him and they part on angry terms. The turning point in the novel is when circumstances cause the other character, Elizabeth, to come to realize that she does indeed love Mr. Darcy. Elizabeth realized she erred in her judgment of Mr. Darcy, as she tells her sister, “ I must confess, that I love him.” Mr. Darcy has never stopped loving Elizabeth and when they meet again, he proposes. Elizabeth accepts and they live happily ever after. This ending is crucial to that of the romantic genre.

Although, this seems to fit the romantic genre very well, there are circumstances where it veers off the path. These occur in the smaller stories within the novel. One of the most obvious incidents in Pride and Prejudice is when Elizabeth’s friend Charlotte marries Mr. Collins. Charlotte married him because she wanted to have economic stability. This goes against the idea of a romance where the characters marry only for love.

Although over time, people’s values change and society’s views may shift the genre of romantic novels, the basic pattern of these stories remains the same. This model makes it apparent that one is reading a novel from the romantic genre.

28 Days Later

2009-07-02T04:46:00.000-04:00

Most zombie films follow a formula. They often begin by explaining how the epidemic of brainless cannibals came about, which is usually through means of witchcraft, tampering with biohazard material, space aliens, etc. In a movie like 28 Days Later, the very first scene shows activists freeing monkeys from a laboratory. Unbeknownst to them, the monkeys are infected with a zombifying virus called the “Rage Virus.” As soon as they open a cage, the monkey attacks and infects an activist, who in turn, attacks and infects the other members. From there, as in most zombie movies, it rapidly spreads. However, some people argue that the creatures in 28 Days Later are not technically zombies. Zombies are the living dead, meaning they would have to be dead already and then re-animated back to life. 28 Days show normal people receiving the viral infection through blood transmission, whether they were bitten or the infected blood enters their system, and then immediately turning into mindless, cannibalistic murderers. There is no stage of death in between the transition. They are simply not zombies, but the movie begs to differ. In a scene involving a captured zombie, an army officer observes it, and remarks, “he’s telling me he’ll never bake bread, farm crops, raise livestock. He’s telling me he’s futureless.” He’s implying that the zombies are indeed dead, because only the dead have no future.

Zombie films often follow a group of people trying to survive amidst a zombie apocalypse. As we watch as the survivors try to trek across an infested terrain to reach a safe zone, many zombies are slashed, shot, or burned down. Not all members of the group reach the safe zone, due to zombification or being eaten alive. These safe zones range from fortified army base or a boat, used to escape land itself, because the zombies may not be able to swim. In the case of 28 Days Later, we watch a group of four head for an army base that has been sending radio signals out, to alert people of its existence.

The composition of the survivors also varies, from children to senior citizens, but there is usually one bumbling fool who ends up dying, and in the process, making life difficult for the others. 28 Days happens to have omitted this character, though the main character does make a silly mistake; he lights a candle in the middle of the night, attracting zombies to attack them. Still this does not make him that specific character, because he survives the incident and continues on until the end. Another typical character found in zombie films, is the psychopath, or someone who becomes mentally distraught because of the ensuing chaos around him. This personality is displayed in 28 Days as the whole squadron of soldiers at the safe zone. They become obsessed with the idea that they have to repopulate the earth, and try to take the two female protagonists by force, at the same time attempt to execute the male protagonist so he is our of the picture.

Of course other motifs exist in the zombie genre, which are included in 28 Days Later too, such as the inner conflict of having to kill a friend or family member because they have turned in to zombies. In this movie, a girls father falls victim to zombification, simply because a drop of infected blood falls in to his eyes. Obviously they have to kill him, otherwise he will infect or kill the others, but while debating whether or not to do it, the father transforms and begins to attack, which at that, moment military personnel appears and saves the others.

World War Z by Max Brooks

2009-07-02T02:05:00.000-04:00

If someone were to lump in Max Brooks' World War Z along with other zombie books, more than likely he wouldn't be insulted. Zombies give the plot its general structure, starting with Patient Zero, the resulting global outbreak, and their eventual downfall after the living finally figure out ways to contain the situation. Brooks rarely breaks from the stereotypical zombie characterization in the story; their mindless brutality, eternal search for live bodies, and inability to negotiate, all these characteristics are perfectly intact and unchanged. He takes it a step further by making advanced military weaponry all but useless against the zombies, it's instead the classic decapitation/shotgun blast to the head or letting the zombies freeze over the winter that prove effective. Chandler would be satisfied with World War Z's classification as a “zombie book” because any reader who picks it up expecting to find bloodthirsty zombies and shotgun blasts should be more than pleased with the general product. He writes: “Since it [the genre] is also a practical device for enabling individual media users to plan their choices, it can be considered as a mechanism for ordering the relations between the two main parties to mass communication.” The zombie genre does a good job in conveying the content within the story and that was the predominant reason why I picked it up,but in the end I found it to be much more than a story on zombie outbreaks.

It strays from genre conventions however due to its massive scope and the way in which the story is told. In World War Z, each chapter serves as a separate interview (conducted by the author himself) with different individuals across the world who play all sorts of roles in the global Z War. They range from a soccer-mom mayor in Montana, to an astronaut on the International Space Station, to an officer of the Korean Intelligence Agency. And from the moment the story starts, Brooks creates this facade that the book you're reading is a collection of accounts created after the war, which itself was very real, and absolutely devastating. The story is typically told with extraordinary detail and is written in a way that events unfold in a plausible and realistic manner. This is no Dawn of the Dead, where the survivors are isolated in a mall with a conveniently placed gun shop and endless supply of food. Instead, the few survivors must dangerously scavenge for food, struggle to keep their cities alive or retreat, and eventually build their own sort of war-economy as their prepare to fight back en masse for the first time.

What this bizarrely realistic war serves to do is to provide social commentary on troubling issues across the world. The story makes attacks on the potentially dangerous dependence on technology worldwide, the uselessness of bureaucracy in times of crisis, nuclear tension between Pakistan and India, and what forced isolation may well do to many nations across the globe, among others. In Dawn of the Dead, Romero criticized American consumerism, but these types of social commentary have generally been the exception rather than the norm. Chandler quotes Steven Neale who illustrates how changes in context can impact a genre and vice-versa: “'a genre develops according to social conditions; transformations in genre and texts can influence and reinforce social conditions.'” World War Z uses its genre framing to play with social conditions, and differentiates itself from the vast majority of zombie works while attempting to evolve the genre.

It's difficult to say what it is about zombies that allows the genre to continue to survive over the years. Being a destroyed version of humanity, their mindlessness and destructive nature reminds the audience what humanity may very well succumb to if they give into complacency. The zombie symbolizes a human who has completely lost his individuality and become one of many who has mindlessly given in to the world around them. Yet they selfishly only think about their own survival, meanwhile mankind is composed of individuals who must band together in World War Z and think selflessly before they are able to successfully defend themselves and survive.

The Alienist by Caleb Carr

2009-07-01T20:19:00.000-04:00

What constitutes a mystery? Most people would agree it is a story that keeps you in constant suspense with characters who are experts in figuring out such obscure details that it makes you have the "why didn't I think of that moment". Certain mystery novels with have a character that is sometimes filled with such useless knowledge it becomes useful! Also the story must have lots of twits and turns and even a few predictable moments.
In Chandler's essay he notes that "genres can therefore be seen as "fuzzy" categories which cannot be defined by necessary and sufficient conditions." The Alienist by Caleb Carr is one of those books! It can be labeled as mystery but also have many sub-genres. The cover of the book itself leads the reader to understand that this is going to be a very dark and mysterious novel. After three short chapters you are pulled into the story with the description of a very grotesque crime scene. The "detective" team each contribute their own talents and specialties that help solve the murders. As the story carries on you find out more and more clues that lead you in twists and turns leaving the reader in constant suspense; filled with guesses of how to solve the murders.
The story keeps the reader on the edge of their seat and that's what a mystery should do, same goes for movies.I don't want to categorize this book as a "typical" or a "generic fiction" as Chandler states. I feel if one is writing a mystery there can't be much deviation from the "rules of a good mystery. It goes with the old idiom of if it ain't broke don't fix it!"
Although if you look at mystery novels from the past to present they seem to be a bit more graphic in the present day. My guess as to why this is, can be due to our generations movies and books becoming more graphic to keep people interested and possibly to pay attention. Also as our technology advances so do our ways to solve the crime. One can see more forensic science in present stories as compared to Caleb Carr's story which takes place in the mid 1800's. For example there are a pair of scientists in The Alienist that suggest a person's eye can take a mental picture of the last thing they saw, needless to say they fail to see any pictures when they examine a person's eye. If this was present day or even future technology that was being written about they would see the whole murder!

6.30.09

2009-06-30T12:03:00.000-04:00

Please note the change to the readings for Wednesday, and think about how the O'Brien stories fit and undermine their particular genre, and the same thing for the Poe. You'll be asked to write on this at the beginning of class. The Thursday reading is changed as well.

Also, while we will talk about this Thursday's paper tomorrow in class, realize that the paper is essentially to give the same sort of analysis we did today to Purpose of this Creature Man, to a work of your own choosing. First show your reader how and where your work meets and deviates from the conventions of its genre. Then try to discuss to what degree can we determine, as Chandler suggested, what this says about the 'ideological concerns of the time in which (it is) popular.' To choose one example at random, first you might show how the Twilight books fit and break from the vampire/monster genre. Then you would try to discuss the following question: why (that is, what it says about us) the Twilight books are the vampire books of today, while Bram Stoker's was the vampire book of the late nineteenth century?

Stranger than Fiction

2009-06-29T17:24:00.000-04:00

I'm not sure if this is where you want ideas for the class blog, but here goes...

In "Stranger than Fiction" (the film), the main character's (Harold Crick, played by Will Ferrell) life is narrated by an seemingly protagonist-omniscient voice who able to speak about Harold's life and adds color commentary. When Harold finally gets annoyed by this voice, he first consults a psychologist, then consults a professor of literature (played by Dustin Hoffman) who goes through 23 questions to decide what kind of story Harold's life has become.

I just thought that it was an interesting concept for a movie to play on a character knowing his own fate (in a way) and in a similar way to which we would guess the action and direction of a movie.

Introduction

2009-06-28T12:42:00.001-04:00

(read this post in its entirety)

As the class site for EN 170W at Queens College, this site will be our primary means of general communication. Be sure to check it after every class, as much of the time this will be the only place to learn about the readings and assignments due for the next meeting (that is, don't assume that my not mentioning anything due next class means there isn't anything due the next class).

In addition, you will be required to post here a weekly short response of no less than (and not much more than) 500 words. These will be due by 6pm every Thursday, and are central to your grade. This cannot be stressed enough--if posts are not here by 6p.m., this portion of your grade will suffer. And if you cannot work that much writing into your schedule, you should consider another course.

You'll find a link to the syllabus to the right, and the provisional schedule to the right. It is here that I will make changes to your assignments, look there and to my postings for changes and adjustments to the course.

For Tuesday, read the first section of the Chandler on Genre ('The Problem of Definition'), and 'The Purpose of This Creature Man' by Lee K. Abbott. For class, be prepared to discuss how Abbott's story fits into expectations of its genre. Be able to write a few paragraphs why you think the work fits the genre (you'll be asked to do this in class). That is, what expectations of the genre does it meet, and in what was does the work seem to vary those expectations, do things we don't expect of a western? The more specifically you can discuss the work, the better. Remember to bring printed copies of all readings to class.

Post all responses as separate posts, not comments to my post.