Ma Vie en Rose + Irigaray & Schiavi

What is the significance of Pam in Ma Vie en Rose? "From what we see of her life, Pam also lives outside plotting. Of only a few minutes' duration, her show seems to involve no more than a survey of her colorful landscape, Ben's proposal, and her swooney acceptance... Pam presents only the glamour of femininity and the excitement of courtship itself."(Schiavi) Pam represents the female realm of hopes and desires... what little girls want to be when they grow up. In this way, she represents not only what Ludo dreams of becoming (a bride) but also what he is up against (gender roles). His will be a continual struggle of finding his own narrative within such a strong adversarial and widely accepted gender prototype. Girls want to grow up and get married (like Pam) and therefore so does Ludo.... but he is only mentally feminine and thus creates the shield of difference from societal prototypes.

What bigger issues does Pam's show display? "Woman, in this sexual imaginary, is only a more or less obliging prop for the enactment of man's fantasies. Than she may find pleasure in that role, by proxy, is possible, even certain. But such pleasure is above all a masochistic prostitution of her body to a desire that is not her own, and it leaves her in a familiar state of dependency upon man." (Irigaray) Pam's sexuality (large breasts) and desires (to get married) fall into place with what men desire. It is not just a representation of what women want but also an enactment of how feminine desires are really only a continuation of male desire transposed onto feminine ideal. "The beginnings of the sexual life of a girl child are so 'faded with time' that one would have to dig...beneath the traces of this civilization... the vestiges of a more archaic civilization that might give some clue to woman's sexuality." Irigaray even goes so far as to say that "extremely ancient civilization would undoubtedly have a different alphabet, a different language. . . Woman's desire would not be expected to tspeak the same language as man's." Pam's world though it is a supposed ideal for young girls (Ludo included) only representst their sexuality and identity only inasmuch as it fits within a male world.

Far From Heaven + Fanon

I appreciated the fact that this movie took place in the 1950's even though it was made in 2002. What could be the significance of this choice? This really allows the film to separate itself from the current time just enough to talk about it. Far From Heaven brings issues on race, class, and sexuality to the surface and the time separation works to show how much hasn't changed. How much we still judge each other, what people have to sacrifice just to be themselves and the way society considers certain things taboo. Raymond is a college graduate who has his own business, but still isn't able to move up socially in the world because he is black. Kathy's husband views his sexuality as wrong, as a "sickness", and Kathy and Raymond both suffer because they are friends (and want more) because they are not the same skin color. We are fooling ourselves if we don't think these issues still exist today. Fanon writes that "The black man among his own in the twentieth century does not know at what moment his infereiority comes into being through the other.....In the white world the man of color encounters difficulties in the development of his bodily schema. Consciousness of the body is solely a negating activity. It is a third-person consciousness." How could this be the case if race is not an issue? I think Far From Heaven works well to show Kathy and Raymond learning about the issues of race, in ways they didn't know existed. Raymond begins to see in his friends' reactions at the diner how biracial relationships are viewed, and at the art gallery Kathy realizes that her friends are extra critical of whatever conversation she may have with Raymond simply because he is black. Watching characters learn something about the reality of their own surroundings prods us to look at our own surroundings. When we step outside of our media-saturated world for a moment we realize our world and the world of Kathy and Raymond aren't that far apart.

Speaking of media... What is the significance of the cameras in Far From Heaven? Kathy is constantly being questioned for the magazine, gawked at by neighbors for being "Mrs. Magnatech", and there is always an event in her life to either organize or attend. She seems busy fitting into an image. An image that was created by the very cameras that are now documenting her life as a mold. The cameras seem to make statements about mass media and its effect on society. (Not that it is the sole problem but that it contributes.) I wonder if there would be any issues as far as Raymond and Kathy are concerned if it weren't for the fact that the community had bought into the messages and images portrayed through the media.

Dancer in the Dark + Marx + (a little) Freud

What is the significance of the musical sequences in "Dancer in the Dark"?

The musical sequences seem to work to support Marx in multiple different, but not mutually exclusive ways. On page 298 Marx writes, "the fact that labor is exernal to the worker, i.e., it does not belong to his essential being; that in his work, therefore, he does not affirm himself but denies himself, does not feel content but unhappy, does not develop freely his physical and mental energy but mortifies his body and ruins his mind. The worker therefore only feels himself outside his work, and in his work feels outside himself." The musical sequence at the factory really works to show this statement. Selma steps out of her work and into the world of her mind where she is able to develop her mental energy. Here she is able to escape the world of alienated labor and recognize her true self so to speak. The sequence allows the mundane and depressed atmosphere of her work situation to be even more obvious when compared to the imaginitive communal scenes that happen in her mind.

Why is Gene so important to Selma?

It would be far too simplistic to answer this question by simply saying that Gene is her son. According to Freud, Gene would be much more than a son to Selma. Freud writes that after a girl realizes that she lacks a penis, "she slips-- along the line of a symbolic equation, one might say-- from penis to baby. Her Oedipus complex culminates in a desire, which is long retained, to receive a baby form her father as a gift-- to bear him a child." Since Selma is female (obviously) Gene is not only her son, but her compensation for not having a penis. He is the thing that makes up for her femininity.

Looking at their relationship from a Marxist view brings about a whole new culmination of ideas. Marx states that workers are both alienated from their self and from other workers. This, to me sounds like a lonely state. When Selma has this baby, he represents the community that Selma is lacking. Gene is a means towards revolution. Gene represents the understanding by the Proletariat that the system is man-made, that it can be changed, and he is the unifying factor in our community of characters. He is what helps the workers move from isolation to community. He ties the group together after Selma's death, is the recipient of all she has worked for, and gives his glasses to her in the end. He is no longer blind to the system. Thanks to Selma's hard work, he can now see the broken system and is able to work against it.

Rear Window

What is the significance of Jeff's cast in Rear Window?

The cast (along with making him incapable of movement at the end) renders Jeff impotent. Since he is incapable of physical pleasure, he is left with visual pleasure. The cast allows him to be less creepy looking through the window; what else is there for him to do? It also compounds his emotion when looking through the camera. When Lisa is seen through the binoculars, she is enchanting. Scopophilia, as Mulvey describes it, allows Jeff to exercise his attraction to her. "In a world ordered by sexual imbalance, pleasure in looking ahs been split between active/male and passive/female... In their traditional exhibitionaist role women are simultaneously looked at and displayes, with thier appearance coded for strong visual and erotic impact so that they can be said to connote to-be-looked-at-ness." The cast exemplifies and compounds the already explicit male gaze by not allowing the readers to question any other pleasure Lisa may be bringing Jeff.

What is the significance of the fastforwarding of characters toward the end of the movie?

The speeding up of characters through Jeff's perspective at the end allowed the audience to feel the same rushed frenzy that was happening in Jeff's mind. He is afraid for his life, and unable to move because of the cast so while (aside from the fact that they were running) things were happening at a normal pace for the rest of the characters. However given his adrenalized state, everything seemed to be happening much faster. Benjamin writes that "with the close-up, spaces expands; with slow-motion movement is extended." Hitchcock sort of plays off of this thought, but does it in a different manner. He allows speed to represent reality and instead of slowing it down he speeds it up. Both Hitchcock and Benjamin recognize film's ability to break open the laws of the physical world, and both see the power of movement as being one of those areas.

Persepolis + White

What does religion seem to represent when looking at it's role within Persepolis? I began to question this pretty much as soon as I opened the book. On page six there is a picture of Persepolis as a baby, and it reads "I was born with religion." Then she proceeds to go into great detail about how she wants to be a prophet. This didn't seem like an active choice to me. It seemed more like an effect of environment. So, if it is an effect of the environment she is in (parents, etc.), and not necessarily a driving force in her life, then why would it be important for her to include this part of her childhood? I would like to suppose that really religion in Persepolis works to show her sort of developing her own identity. She is born with religion, but then on page 70 chooses to reject God. It works to develop Persepolis as an individual, and sort of guage where she is on her quest towards finding her identity.

I also wondered when listening to her interview and reading the book: what role does fear play in the development of that identity? Her interview stated the answer to this question explicitly whereas in the book it was based more on implication. In the interview on NPR she said (and I'm paraphrasing) "When you see your 13-year-old friend die you see also that you can die. Then you see also that your death does not matter. The moment your death does not matter you stop being scared." From a young age, Persepolis is confronted with death. On page 3 she is ten years old and girls on the playground are playing with their veils, one girl says, "Execution in the name of freedom," and is pretending to choke a classmate. She hears of the Rex Cinema being burned down with people still inside, and she is the last person to see her uncle before he is executed. She sees her mother try to hide her identity by dying her hair because she is afraid of being recognized. (5) At this point in the book, it seems she is simply absorbing everything around her and trying to make sense of it all. The point when her fear is most obvious is when she runs home because of the bombings. She is afraid her parents have died. She finds that her friend has died. Instead of hiding herself in fear (as she saw her mother do) she begins to speak out. She is no longer afraid. It seems that intense emotion brings about the creation of her newly forming identity. It is the sadness of losing Anoosh that causes her to denounce God, and the loss of fear from the bombing that allow her to build her new fearless, outspoken self. Really, the loss of fear is more important to the novel than the actual emotion of fear itself. It is also important that her fear does not cause her to hide the way her mother did. This is Persepolis coming into her own and responding to her environment in the way that she (not anyone else) sees fit.

Finally, I am curious as to the significance of these emotions and their relation to the history within the story. White writes that narrativization (and therefore moralization) and history are basically impossible to separate. I think that the narrativization of Persepolis happens through the emotions that in turn create Persepolis' identity. The emotions (fear, sadness, rebellion) give readers the ability to relate to Persepolis and also give Persepolis the ability to create herself. Identity, history, and narrative are all braided together to give the story of Persepolis.

Sleepwalk + White

I notice with Sleepwalk, that there is a sort of fixation with objects throughout the novel. White's article writes that authors choose what to put into a narrative, and what to leave out. So why is there a fixation on things outside the actual story within Tomine's Sleepwalk? For example, In "Echo Ave." readers are watching the wife make popcorn instead of focusing on the neighbor's wild sex, in "Lunch Break" the story is fueled by a sack lunch when really it is about Shelly's loneliness without her husband, and in "Pink Frosting" we are fixated on the cake and subsequent birthday rather than the fact that the guy is being brutally beaten in the street. In taking White's theory that the author chooses what is in the story, I assume that all of these tactics are intentional. My theory is that it is natural for people to turn away from the things that bother them and to focus on something else, a cake for instance. Tomine has chosen to employ natural human reaction within his stories. In doing so, he increases the drama and emotional pull in the reader. The events are ordinary, everyday scenarios, and the characters ordinary, everyday people, this allows for the emotional drama to play out powerfully in a relatable manner.

On the same lines, I also noticed in "Dylan and Donovan" that none of the characters make eye contact with each other. There is a sort of averted gaze prevalent through the story. Again, with White in mind, why would Tomine make this choice in his narration? The turned gaze, and distant focus throughout the story seem to alienate the characters from each other. Though they are family, and spending time together, they are not close. The way they don't make eye contact sort of shows how badly they are failing to communicate with each other and also works to heighten the sense of loneliness within the story.

Throughout Sleepwalk Tomine's characters all sort of exemplify loneliness in some form. We are shown characters that are pining away for ex-girlfriends, families that don't communicate, and a man who is alienated by some kids on the bus. The way that Tomine heightens the emotional pull by averting the reader's eyes and utilizing the gutter, and the way that he repeats this sense of perpetual loneliness throughout the stories give the book a very dramatic and sometimes deeply depressing feel. I wonder what the significance of this emotion is, and what Tomine is signifying by creating this book as his art. These questions led me to two conclusions that seem contradictory but not necessarily mutually exclusive. 1) We feel this emotion because we naturally relate to the stories of others and their hardships/frustrations. Especially when they respond in a realistic manner, like Tomine depicts them. 2)The repeated theme of loneliness and the fact that we relate to it shows how common an emotion loneliness is. The characters in the book are unified in their loneliness, as we are in our 21st century urban lives. The lives of the characters are outlandish at times, but always relatable through basic emotions.

White and V for Vendetta

I noticed in the section titled "Behind the Painted Smile" at the end of V for Vendetta, Lloyd writes that they knew there would be three books comprising the story. "The first sets up his world. The second, "This Vicious Cabaret," explores the supporting characters in greater depth and centres for the most part on Evie Hammond. The third book, tentatively titled "The Land of Do-As-You-Please," draws all of these desparate threads into what we hope will be a satisfactory climax." These three sections give readers a beginning, middle, and end and create the narrative arc that White proposes in the article we read for class. The arc is the means by which the authors are then choosing what to include and what to exclude. For example, we are not told why the war was fought but it doesn't really matter because the war does not fall into the three sections (narrative arc chosen by the authors).



I also noticed that the three sections could be loosely described as appearing in the same form that persuasive speeches/essays appear. The introduction of V also works to introduce the problem (the current government). The second section's focus on Evie then works to explain why the current government is bad (cannot live freely) and the last section poses a solution (take control of own freedom of choice). (Notice, that I am not saying the book says anarchy is the solution.) In the last section (page 187), V tells the people that they have three days of freedom. For three days they will not be watched or listened to. He tells the people of London, " 'Do what thou wilt' shall be the whole of the law."

I took these points (three persuasive sections, narrative arc, and V telling the people to Do-As-They-Please) and tried to figure what the artists were getting at. I came up with this sort of theory.... Could it mean that the authors are really just encouraging free thinking? Telling us to think, but not telling us how to think? They choose what to include (White) and that choice involves character traits that make V problematic (like his torture of Evie) and choose not to include things that would clear up the story (like whether anarchy really was the solution or whether it was a means by which to attain a solution). Since when V gives people back their freedom he tells them to simply act (not how to act as in "hey guys you're free, go bomb parliament!"), and since the authors have not made a cleam committment to anarchy as politically viable.... then are they simply providing a means for us to create our own thoughts? Are they giving us a situation full of problems and opinions so that we would try to create our own? Is that why the narrative arc stops when it does? Does this explain why they don't include another section showing whether or not anarchy solves London's problems? (If they did, it would mean they are promoting anarchy not necessarily inspiring ideas.) Is this why they took a character that is already thought of in one manner(Guy Fawkes), and created him into something else? I propose that the answer is yes. The book is created to persuade people to use their ability think freely, not tell them how to think. (This could also explain why everyone recieves different ideas/messages from the book.)