Spiderman and His Inner Woman May 3, 2007

According to Judith Butler, we are instilled with our specific genders through the process of time.  Men are expected to act a certain way, as are women.  If we act differently than our allotted gender allocates, then we are looked down upon, and shunned from society.  In essence, we are acting out our genders.

            In the movie trailer for Spiderman 3, the acting out of specific gender roles can clearly be seen by the two lead characters.  Peter Parker, better known as Spiderman, is the real life version of a comic book hero.  However, he performs two different roles.  As Peter Parker, his role is more feminine, and he is seen almost as a wimp by others.  In the trailer for Spiderman 3, Peter Parker can be seen crying, which is generally not an emotion that is “acceptable” for a man.  He is breaking from the traditional gender that he has been programmed to be.  According to Butler, “Discrete genders are part of what’ ‘humanizes’ individuals within contemporary culture; indeed, we regularly punish those who fail to do their gender right,” (2500).  While Parker isn’t physically punished for his feminine behavior, he is “punished” in the way that people don’t respect him.

Yet as Spiderman, he plays the role of a very masculine superhero that saves those in trouble throughout New York City.  “As in other social dramas, the action of gender requires a performance that is repeated” (2500).  His masculinity is seen through the stereotypical hero character as he swings through the city, battling enemies and rescuing those in need of help.  This action is repeated through the form of all superheroes.  People stand in awe of him as he flies by on his way to save someone else.  This is how his gender is “supposed” to perform in society.  They are supposed to be big and strong and save the day.  Peter Parker as Spiderman exemplifies this.  As seen in the trailer though, he takes it to the next level when MJ asks him to let her help and he tells her he doesn’t need her help.  He is acting out the role he has been taught, the role that says men don’t need help from women.

            MJ as the lead female character of the movie, has a strong side to her.  She is strong-willed, and yet, still feminine.  Her flaw though, is that while she tries to help Peter, she inevitably ends up needing rescuing.  She puts herself in the damsel in distress role, a role than many young girls are taught through fairy tales and other ways of learning.  She fits the mold and plays her gender well.

            Butler might say that these two are playing their genders well, with the exception of Peter Parker being a more feminine character than he should be. 

A Blog about a Borg April 24, 2007

Well what can I say about Donna Haraway? She’s crazy, insane, nuts, not to mention hard as hell to understand. I have to admit that of all the readings we’ve had, this was one of my least favorite. At the beginning of the semester a lot of the information was over my head, now I’m able to get a grasp on what I’m reading. This though, was as if I were starting over at the beginning of the semester. On that note, let’s begin.

 

I’m going to start with the fact that my first image while reading this was of Star Trek. My dad used to watch that show all the time when I was younger, and being the daddy’s girl that I am, I would watch with him. So all I could think of was the Borgs that appear on the show. (Yes, I still remember what happened, I’m sad, I know.) “A cyborg is a cybernetic organism, a hybrid of machine and organism, a creature of social reality as well as a creature of fiction,” (2269). Yay! Apparently Haraway also watched Star Trek. That really doesn’t make me feel better about myself, especially after I read the rest of her essay.

 

So the essay began with, “This essay is an effort to build an ironic political myth faithful to feminism, socialism, and materialism,” (2269). Right there, that made me want to stop reading. Did anyone else want to throw our lovely text book out the window?

 

I thought an interesting quote from Haraway was, “The self is the One who is not dominated, who knows that by the service of the other; the other is the one who holds the future, who knows that by the experience of domination, which gives the lie to the autonomy of the self,” (2296). She goes on to say that the One is all-powerful and all-knowing; in short, the One is God. Yet to be the “other” they are frayed and without boundaries. To me, this sort of goes against her talking about “Within this framework, teaching modern Christian creation should be fought as a form of child abuse,” (2271). She says how Christian creation should be fought, but yet in the other sentence she talks about how there is a “One” who is all powerful. This confuses the hell out of me here.

 

I felt that while Haraway was intelligent and well educated on the subject she was writing, boy was she boring and confusing as hell about it. I thought when I was going into the piece and it was titled “A Manifesto for Cyborgs: Science Technology, and Socialist Feminism in the 1980s” that it would be really interesting. She lost me at the first sentence.

 

Jean Baudrillard April 18, 2007

Okay, so after being pretty sick with a stomach bug part of the weekend into yesterday, I am really glad to be moving again.  On the other hand, coming back to read theory wasn’t really the best way to recover.  But I’ll take this over puking any day.

 

I would like to state first and foremost that Jean Baudrillard needs a good smack upside the head for writing The Precession of Simulacra.  I read the first two pages and was like, what?! Empire, fable, inverted, imperialism, it all seemed to be a bunch of gibberish to me.  But, learning from past experiences with theorists in this class, I know that if I don’t get something, I should probably read it again.  I’m not going to lie, the first section still made no sense to me, so I moved on.

 

I felt like Saussure had come back to haunt us in this piece due to Baudrillard’s discussion on how nothing is really new, but we are making signs up for reality.  “Signs, signs, everywhere a sign.”  A little help from Five Man Electrical Band.  But I digress.  I feel that this renewal of the old, a repetitive sign of what has already been, could be seen in society today.  If you look on MTV or VH1, when they show videos at least, any female performer looks like she could be a clone of another person.  How many Lindsey Lohans, Hillary Duffs, and Jessica Simpsons do we need?  If I had my way, they’d all be gone because they all suck.

 

I think someone is a little bitter toward Walt Disney.  Wow, he just constantly slammed Disneyland, which, having never been there, I’m assuming is similar to Disneyworld.  “By extraordinary coincidence (one that undoubtedly belongs to the peculiar enchantment of this universe), this deep-frozen infantile world happens to have been conceived and realized by a man who is himself now cryogenised: Walt Disney, who awaits his resurrection at minus 180 degrees centigrade,” (1740).  Wow.  This is harsh. And yet, when he says “infantile world” I can’t help but think of Michael Jackson.  I did find this line pretty amusing though compared to the rest of his rant on Disney.

 

The line here that worried me the most was, “The contrast with the absolute solitude of the parking lot-a veritable concentration camp-is total,” (1740).  He compares the parking lot of Disneyworld to a concentration camp?   I think I understand what he is trying to say about how Disneyland is not even an escape from reality, it is a false reality which destroys what is actually real.  I don’t know if that makes any sense.

 

I felt that the Rameses discussion could play into this false reality.  He discusses how Rameses is to us as the Native Americans were to Renaissance Christians.  It is something completely new and fascinating, something that we don’t see every day.  Because we don’t see it every day, we are interested and can let ourselves be swept up in the history of mummies and Egypt.  Similarly, we can let ourselves be swept up in the fun of our altered reality in Disneyland.

Horkheimer and Adorno April 16, 2007

I’m not sure why, but the blog I posted last week for this reading didn’t show up. I didn’t realize it until tonight when I went to go write next week’s blog. So I apologize to anyone who was wondering where it was. So now to recap what Horkheimer and Adorno were all about.

Ah, Germans and their poorly-structured sentences.  This piece was an interesting one to read in my point of view.

They state, “If most of the radio stations and movie theaters were closed down, the consumers would probably not lose so very much.  To walk from the street unto the movie theater is no longer to enter a world of dream; as soon as the very existence of these institutions no longer made it obligatory to use them, there would be no great urge to do so,” (1230).  They feel that the movies that are created are no longer that different from reality.  They were supposed to be for pleasure, to help people forget, but now they are too life-like and if they were taken away, it wouldn’t matter because they depict real life instead of dreams.

I did wonder in the next couple of sentences how why they talked about the dim-whited and then went right into discussing a housewife.  This made me a little angry, but then I remembered they were writing this back in the 40s.

Like we discussed during class last week, it seems that we are told what is popular and what is not.  I know that we talked about how movies are reproduced plots that bore us, and yet we continue to go see them.  Why?  It’s comforting and we know it.  I brought up the point that if Oprah says one week that “place book title here” is going to be her new book club book, then guaranteed the next week it will be in the top 10 on the best sellers list.  It might be a good book, it might not be.  But, because Oprah thinks it is the masses rush out to buy it.  Individualism has been crushed here.  What ever happened to someone going out and finding a book on their own and liking it because it’s well written?

Now, I’m not going to lie. I’ll admit that I’m as guilty as the next person for liking trendy things.  I’m a big Harry Potter fan (I don’t dress up though, don’t worry!) and I enjoy the X-Men movies and other ones of that nature. (I blame my boyfriend).  But, I do still hold a sense of identity and singularity.  It kind of reminds me of that old saying that parents tell their kids all the time when they say, “But everyone else is doing it!” “Well if everyone jumped off a bridge, would you it too?”  People need to realize that we are blending ourselves into one giant mediocre society.

I’m the One That I Want April 4, 2007

Okay, so Margaret Cho is not what I was expecting to be watching for our theory class. Honestly, I don’t think I’ve ever had something this fun to watch for any class. That being said, I’d like to try to digest the hour and a half I spent in front of my computer watching this video. (Thank you Joei for finding the movie on Youtube! I’m poor and couldn’t afford to rent it!)

I was talking to my dad online when I started to watch it. (Yes, I know, my parents have figured out AIM, and it’s scary.) When I told him what I was watching he told me that she was hilarious. So I went into this thinking it was going to be great, and I wasn’t disappointed at all.

I was slightly nervous when she started off using faggot repeatedly at the beginning, but then she settled into her routine and I learned to deal with it. I’m not sure that her using it as much as she does in the beginning is really effective, but it shows that she’s not afraid to say what’s on her mind.  And can I say that a fan made of spoons sounds awesome, haha. I loved her discussion on gay men and how they will leave you at the bar if they find a guy to go home with. The part where she said when she was little she wanted to be surrounded by gorgeous guys and she said “I am, but I should have been more specific.” It was awesome.

Her depiction of gay men, and then her girl friend were hilarious, but I felt like Butler’s commentary on gender could have come into play here. Cho overemphasizes the ditziness of her female friend, making her out to be a super girly, super dumb, woman. The way that Cho was dressed for the movie also could be discussed through gender. She was where a nice sweater and skirt, but also pants underneath the skirt. The part of this section that I felt stuck out with Butler’s gender questions was when she came back from the cruise. I loved when she was said “Am I gay? Am I straight? Then I realized, I’m just slutty. Where’s my parade?”

The racial issues that she faced reminded me of Fanon’s work. It just proves that we are still constantly grouping people into what they’re “supposed to be.” The fact that on her own show she was forced to take “Asian Lessons” from someone so she could be more Asian was just wrong. Another factor that played into her show was her weight. She was forced to lose a ton of weight in order to play herself on her own show. Does that make any sense? And then she went and added in the Jesus Christ, Superstar reference, which was hilarious. “You’re doing arms, and cardio.”

Favorite quote that dealt with the racism that she faced as well as the Ku Klux Klan was, “Is there like a KKKmart that they go to?”

I was surprised that she made fun of her family, as well as Asians in general as much as she did. There was so much prejudice she had faced, and I guess that by making fun of what was held against her, made it easier to explain.

The mother’s phone messages were hilarious - Grandma and Grandpa are going to die. I just wanted to tell you so when they die you’re not surprised. My favorite one was when her mother called her after the cruise and left her the long message. “Are you gay? Are you gay? If you don’t pick up phone, you gay.”

As you can see by the following clip, one of the most awkward, yet hilarious parts of this video was, “Hi, my name is Gwen, I’m here to wash your vagina.”

 

 

I believe Margaret Cho is my new hero. She took many very serious topics and problems she has faced in her life, and mixed them evenly with comedy. At times I felt that the mood got a little too heavy, but I had to realize that she was sharing her life with all of us, and not everything she was going to say was going to have us in stitches.

I think that it was kind of long, but it was still pretty funny throughout the whole video. I honestly think that my neighbors must think I’m crazy. I live in a single room in my house, and I had turned the tv off, so the usual background noise of my room was gone. But then I’d randomly laugh out loud during the video, and then it would go back to dead silence in here. I really think that they must have been like, “Well Meg’s finally lost it and is laughing alone in her room.” So worth having people think I’m crazy though!

Butler and the gender issue April 4, 2007

I was pretty surprised when I read Butler. She was kind of a breath of fresh air to me. I read her piece, and actually felt like I came away from it with something. I felt I grasped more of it than I questioned. This made me happy. Yay!

So what did I think was the most interesting part? It’s hard to say. There were a lot of good points. Was gender biological? Can we look at gender without looking at the biological parts of humans? There were so many questions that we could ask about this piece. But the part that I seemed to grasp the most was when she discussed drag shows. I understood when Butler said, “Discrete genders are part of what’”humanizes’ individuals within contemporary culture; indeed, we regularly punish those who fail to do their gender right,” (2500). From this, I took away the idea that when people do not perform the normal functions for their designated gender, they are looked down upon by society. Take a man who decides to dress up in drag for fun. It may feel right to him to wear women’s clothing instead of men’s. When this happens, society tends to look down up them because they are not performing the “norm” for their gender. They are expressing mix-gender signals.

Butler also says, “Because there is neither an ‘essence’ that gender expresses or externalizes nor an objective ideal to which gender aspires, and because gender is not a fact, the various acts of gender create the idea of gender, and without those acts, there would be no gender at all,” (2500). I feel that this would mean that there would be no gender if people did not doing certain things to define it. If people were to act all the same with what gestures they did, then could we really say that there were more than one gender? Something to think about.

What I want to know, is that if you cannot look at the physical aspects of a person, or to better state it, the biological aspects of a person, then how do you determine that there are two gender?. In order to look at gender, I feel that you have to look at biological aspects of people, because if you didn’t, what’s to say that a man is not the female gender? Is that what Butler is trying to say here? Are we all just a uni-gender that takes on different roles depending on who is looking at us? This personally kind of creeps me out. I know that I am a girl. I have been raised like a girl my whole life. I was given dolls as a child, and taught how to act properly for a young lady. But what if my parents had decided that I was really a boy in a girl’s body? Would I have turned out like a boy? What would my gender be? If I displayed characteristic traits of a boy, would I then be male gendered? Or would I still be female gendered because I am a girl? I’m sorry if I’m just talking in circles. I feel like it’s an interesting thing to think about though.

I don’t know if I am correct with any of these comments, but I really enjoyed trying to figure things out.

Fanon and The Symposium Tempests April 2, 2007

I chose to compare Frantz Fanon’s theory with the first segment of the English Spymposium. In this segment, Dr. David Morrow’s ENG 370: Literature and Empire class chose to act out a scene from William Shakespeare’s, The Tempest. They also acted a counterpart scene in Aime Cesaire’s A Tempest. In both of these plays, the ideas of race and colonialism are the main theme. In the plays, the Europeans have colonized the island, making the only black man on the island, Caliban, their slave and taking what was his from him.

 

Fanon states, “As long as the black man is among his own, he will have no occasion, except in minor internal conflicts, to experience his being through others,” (109). This is true in the plays. Caliban had been born and raised on the island by his mother Sycorax, and he was the owner of his domain. He never saw any problems with who he or his mother were, and he was content when he inherited the island after his mother died. When the Europeans came, however, he was immediately looked down upon as being a “savage” or a “monster.” The Europeans taught him to speak their language, only to use it against him and make him do their bidding. Until the Europeans came, he never saw himself as a servant or slave. They put that into his head.

 

Fanon believed that there was no real way for a black man to escape his “blackness” in the eyes of white men. He was put into the position of the “other” so long ago, and this cannot be undone. Within the two plays that were acted out, Caliban goes through some changes in the way that he is portrayed. In Shakespeare’s play, Caliban has been enslaved through magic by Prospero. He is made to do the European’s bidding, and when he meets the characters of Triculo and Stephano, he jumps at the chance to work for them instead of Prospero. Shakespeare’s Caliban appears to be ignorant and unknowing about how his enslavement is unjust. In Cesaire’s play, however, while Caliban still tries to strike up a deal with Trinculo and Stephano, he knows that he will not serve them, but merely try to take the power away from Prospero.

 

Caliban’s way of life was completely wiped out upon the colonization of the island which once was his. Fanon states, “His metaphysics, or, less pretentiously, his customs and the sources on which they were based, were wiped out because they were in conflict with a civilization that he did not know and that imposed itself on him,” (110). Caliban did not know what was coming when the Europeans first landed on the island. He wanted to help them find food and water to survive, and yet they took advantage of him and enslaved him on his own home island.

 

Fanon’s theory, while expressed in Cesaire’s play, shows that the prejudice and ideas of Shakespeare’s play are still happening, and most likely will always happen. No matter how hard our society tries, we will always see that there are differences between peoples. We are pegged as white people only because other cultures have seen us as so. There will always be black people because we have put them in that category. Shakespeare’s representation of Caliban as being ignorant to this does not necessarily transfer to today’s African Americans, but it shows that there are still separations within our society.

 

The significance of this application of Fanon’s theory to the two Tempest plays is that we need to be aware that we are still forming a separation within our society. We see blacks, whites, Hispanics, Asians, and many other races within the United States. Yet, we are all Americans, and we fail to see that. Instead we see each other by color because we have been forced to do so for so long. It started before Shakespeare’s time, but was amplified within his Tempest. The idea that colonization has separated us permanently has continued through Fanon’s writings, his theory, and into Cesaire’s play. We, as literary critics and writers ourselves, need to stop creating these types of work that further separate the different races. We are all humans. We are all Americans. We need to stop finding ways to classify each other.

I’m Bringing Sexy Back…haha March 26, 2007

He said sex…hehehehe. For all of us with the minds of twelve year olds, I think that this was the exact reason that Foucault wrote this. When we were younger, sex was not something we talked about, or if we did, we were embarassed by it. It was taboo. It was censored.

One main reason Foucault gave for the censorship of sex, is the Catholic Church. “But while the language may have been refined, the scope of the confession-the confession of the flesh-continually increased. This was partly because the Counter Reformation busied itself with stepping up the rhythm of the yearly confession in the Catholic countries…” (1649).   We are taught from an early age in the Catholic Church that you do not have sex until you are married.  You don’t do any act that is similar to sex, and you do not ever engage in the act yourself.  Strict, huh?

Then I thought back to high school.  Sex ed was lacking where I went to high school.  We had a health class that we were required to take to graduate, but it didn’t really focus on sex ed.  Instead we got to wear beer goggles and learn about not drinking and driving, and various other health concerns.  We did spend a few days on sex education I believe. (It was 10th grade so I’m trying to remember 5 years ago).  I remember we got to watch the movie, The Miracle of Life, for a few class periods.  I also remember being creeped out that my teacher wanted to bring the movie home to watch with his wife, who was one of my other teachers.  I was lucky enough to have had parents that talked to me from an early age about lots of stuff, sex being one of them, and explained that I could ask them questions whenever I needed to, rather than getting info from friends.  It was nice to know that I didn’t have to worry about getting yelled at for asking about it.  But it makes me angry that high schools don’t have sex ed. or if they do, it’s only taught that you cannot have sex.

Take good old Saint Rose for example.  We’re not allowed to give out condoms or birth control on this campus because it promotes sexual promiscuity.  Wow.  We’re in college.  We’re adults.  We can think for ourselves.  By not providing us with safe ways of having sex, I’m betting a lot of people on this campus have been down to planned parenthood to get tested.  We need to move into the 21st century.  We’re no longer a Catholic school, so why should there be a problem with keeping out students safe?

The end of Disgrace March 26, 2007

As I finished Disgrace, a theme appeared to stand out during most of the book.  That was that the idea of animals, mainly dogs, that was a reoccurring theme throughout the book.  On page 78, Lucy says to David, “‘Poor old Katy, she’s in mourning. No one wants her, and she knows it.’”  To me, this is the beginning of the connection between Katy and David.  It is apparent that David is not wanted either by anyone or any place.  He was kicked out of his job and left Cape Town because he isn’t wanted there.  Then he came to see Lucy, and, while she accepts his presence there as her father, he really isn’t wanted there either.  Katy is the old dog that no one wants; David is the old man no one wants.

Another connection between the two was when the attack on the house and the rape of Lucy occurs.  David is spared, why, it isn’t made clear, but he survives.  Of all the dogs, Katy is the only one that isn’t shot.  She poses no threat to the attackers like the other dogs do, and is left alive.  David poses no threat either, and so he is left to live, though he is attacked.

The final way that David and Katy are connected happened when they meet Pollux and beat him up.  The fatherly instinct in him finally comes out, and the guard dog in Katy is let loose as well.  The two fight him together to take back the damage he has caused.  Even though they cannot truly take it back, they can at least take their revenge on him.

I found this connection between the two characters pretty interesting.  Two completely different characters, one human, one animal, were able to share the same emotions throughout the novel.  Through his connection with Katy, and later the older dog he gave up to be put down, David was able to finally connect with himself I feel.  He was completely disconnected with the world around him before coming to see Lucy.  After, and once he had started to learn from the dogs, he was able to communicate better with others as well as himself.  It was a disturbing book to read, and even though it was easy to get through compared to other theorists, I am looking forward to getting back to the Norton.

Disgrace Part II March 21, 2007

I have to say that I thought the beginning of this next section started off pretty nicely.  David  leaves his job at the university, and travels to live with his daughter Lucy.  She greets him warmly, and they talk about her life at the farm that she’s been living on.  They actually seem like a father and daughter.  I think my favorite line is on page 61 where he says, “Curious that he and her mother, cityfolk, intellectuals, should have produced this throwback, this sturdy young settler.  But perhaps it was not they who produced her: perhaps history had the larger share.”  I thought that this was an interesting line because David feels that even though he and her mother were from the city, knew nothing but city-life, they were still able to produce a child who took to the land and left the city behind.  History’s pull on people to work the land and to expand to new lands was too strong on her, and their life was not what called to her to stay.

So it started off all nice and happy the first couple of pages.  But, I kept myself wary because I knew that bad stuff was coming.  Then, we finally got to the rape scene.  I don’t know if it was just me, but I was sketched out by the three men from the very beginning.  Why Lucy went inside with one of them really confused me.  She seems so smart after living on the farm by herself for so long.  So it surprised me that she would let her guard down like that.  Maybe she just didn’t pick up on the bad vibe I was getting.  The entire scene was a little confusing to me.  Everything seemed to happen at once, and then all of a sudden David’s hair was on fire.  I was just like, wow, how did that happen?

 

This whole section made me very sad.  After the rape, Lucy seemed to retreat into herself, and I don’t blame her after what she was put through.  I was upset with David for not understanding why she wouldn’t tell anyone about it.  I feel like the men took her power from her, and the only way for her to retain any sense of her former power, she needs to keep what happened inside of her.  I obviously cannot say how she feels because I don’t know, but I understand that she is scared and scarred from what has happened to her and does not need to relive it by talking about it.