Jodie Mack: Yard Work is Hard Work

It’s hard to know what you want out of life. We are continuously swayed by our culture and the opinion of those around us but even if we tried to block them out it is hard to know how much of our own opinions are truly our own? The influence of others permeates just enough that we need to be questioning our motives in an attempt to figure out what is truly right for us. Jodie Mack’s Yard Work is Hard Work was a short animation film about two people who get married quickly and try to throw themselves into the American dream. Soon mortgages and other money problems mount up causing them to be miserable. They attempt to get out of their predicament by throwing more money at other things but in then end find that they are continuously in debt and unhappy.

We desire to not only have all of these material objects but we also contain this desire to be loved. To me marriage is a union between two people who agree to love each other no matter what. While it is pleasant to think that you’ll have someone forever it is a very selfish thing. It is hard to deny ourselves the benefits of an eternal love but sometimes it isn’t for the best and the commitment is only made because someone is scared. In these cases the comfort can end up causing us misery. We are told to grow up and get into college where we can find a nice educated boyfriend or girlfriend to marry. I know very few people in this college life that have any semblance of being ready for marriage. Yet too many of my peers are starting to freak out about not being in a serious relationship because they’re finally in their twenties. We push ourselves too quickly into situations that we think will make us happy only to find that they are not actually what we wanted. This is extremely frustrating because we actually work and fret to get to this point which ends up merely being a point of unhappiness.

One possibility of why we get to this point is because we are in such a rush to grow up. When we are under 13 we desire to be a teenager, when we are under 16 we wish to have a driver’s license, when we are under 21 we wish to be able to order alcohol, and so on. It is an exhausting process where we are never really happy with where we are. We spend too much time thinking that we’ll be happy in the future instead of being happy in the present. Rushing into buying a house directly after paying for a marriage ceremony just because you want one and it is the next step to make is never a good idea because you’re going to have absolutely no money and be in debt forever. By pushing things before we are ready for them we get into trouble.

Garren Small

Being transported between worlds that ranged from the quiet beauty of the mid-west to the boisterous passion of the New York subway system was definitely the highlight of my Tuesday. As Garren Small presented his life of simple words with complex emotions I was drawn into and mesmerized by his honesty and reflection. His poems are almost psychiatrists telling the world that to be cohesive we need to have conversations. It is extremely difficult to gain happiness in this world. We live lives that are constantly trying to stomp us down, where comfort isn’t even an option. If we could just have conversations we could at least work together to be there for each other. If we just tried to communicate and were able to open ourselves up a little more we could try to find the hidden happiness that seems to be so elusive. This inability to express ourselves leads to lost opportunities for love and relationships. The poem that Small read about two people having a failing conversation affected me the most because I saw myself so clearly in the situation. How many times have a opened my mouth to say what I really felt only to watch the words I thought someone else wanted to hear tumble out? My inability to stay true to myself at all times has kept me from showing someone who I really am and has created a fake reality that has fragmented me. In one situation I am one person but in another I have to change my façade.  Sometimes I think that talking is a burden, an ability that I have yet to hone into something worthwhile. Garren Small helped me to realize that maybe if I reflect on my words and finally exposed myself to someone I could be a happier person. 

Dr. Lucy Brown's Lecture

Love is such an abstract thing that it seems strange and almost wrong to break it down into something that can be quantified and analyzed. It is such an over powering emotion that it consumes us whether we want to or not. Words of love have been written into diaries and letters claiming that no one could ever feel the way that we do when we are in love. Love is historically expressed through arts and music in ways that show the audience that we are so consumed by love that we are unable to stop thinking about our beloved. In the lecture from Dr. Lucy Brown a clinical professor of neurology at the Einstein College of Medicine I learned that we all feel similarly in love and are chained into these feelings, whether wanted or not, by our own brains. Being overwhelmed by love is such a common thing that there is even a scaling system that has been determined by several psychologists to determine just how in love you are. Being able to quantify love in such a way tells us that we all feel these extreme emotions in similar ways.

To help analyze why we need love Dr. Brown and her colleagues performed brain scans on a population of people who looked at pictures of their loved ones. With this data Dr. Brown found that the area of the brain that was lit up was the ventral tegmental region. This is the area in the brain that deals with our subconscious and tells us to do things when we need to; such as drink water when we are thirsty. This means that we cannot control love. Love merely occurs and does what it can to keep our minds from being productive. We have a yearning for love when we are lonely just as much as we have a yearning for food when we’re hungry. This yearning can be harmful not just to your productivity but when the love is lost there are also uncontrollable consequences. The adverse effects of love have also been analyzed such as the pain from losing one that you love. This heartache from love is so powerful that it is manifested into an agonizing physical pain. It was found that the pain you feel after a breakup is equivalent to what one feels when the have a tooth ache. 

Dr. Anthony Reed

Cinema has always intrigued me with its ability to really transport the senses. The knowledge you can gain by being put into the shoes of another person is irreplaceable and our movies allow this interaction to occur. Yet, there is a bad side to this power. The director can attempt to cloud our senses. This can be done through the use of music and symbols which can enforce a pathos which makes us feel a certain way about what we are seeing on the screen.  This in turn makes us more susceptible to the opinion and views of the director whether it is historically accurate or not.

Dr. Anthony Reed, from Yale University, showed us that by looking at the basis behind slavery movies you can see that they aren’t that much about black slavery at all. The true intention of these films seems to be to make the whites feel better about their past. In the end of Amistad you are filled with a gratitude for John Quincy Adams who freed the slaves with his passionate words. You feel a gratitude that the white people allowed the slaves to go back to Africa. This sense of happiness prevails in the end when it is determined that the rich white folk are finally switching over the side of goodness. These emotions are being used to take your thoughts away from what is really going on with the slaves in order to make us feel better about ourselves.

The more recent film about slavery was done by Quentin Tarantino who directed Django. In this movie the story line is so covered in blood and action that the historical accurateness is completely disregarded. After talking about this film I found myself thinking about how this movie is actually racist. This is because it conforms into several stereotypes that were set up during that time period in order to justify having slaves. One such stereotype was that the black would be dangerous if they were let loose. This movie conforms to this by pivoting around Django shooting people up and being ruthless in order to get what he wants. Also, in order for Django to learn how to live he has to be under the tutelage of a white person who will show him how to survive in society.

These movies are important to show us how traitorous we can be but we should not sugar coat our past to make us feel better. We should use cinema as the powerful tool it is to educate people about ourselves and others but we should avoid any misrepresentations that may occur. Even while in the depths of a film the brain should still be working and trying to figure out what could be true and what could be false. The movie should be used as a starting point for our opinions not as the reason for our opinions by letting it do the thinking for us.

Steve Almond

Anyone can write a story about people addressing and going after their desires, few people can do it in such a real setting as Steve Almond. In fact, as I realized just how real he portrays his characters I didn’t expect to learn much from this lecture. I have to admit and apologize for the fact that I started this lecture with a prejudice set in my mind, this started when he first said the line “there will be fucking”. I saw a crudeness that blocked me from really feeling his words and looking beyond the imagery that was produced. He forced my mind to see two different scenarios in his readings. One story was about two people of very average appearance sloppily pushing together in the throes of passion and another was about skull fucking a girl without an eye. However, at the end of the first story you learn that part of the reason why the woman was so sloppy was the fact that she had a disease which impaired her coordination. This made me stop and think about what Almond was actually saying by putting these average people in a highly romantic situation with very really personas, desires, and looks. At the end of the second story with the question and answer session I was further relieved of my prejudice when he talked about how he wanted to give real emotions and feelings to a subject as private and taboo as skull fucking. Now I understand what Steve Almond was trying to teach me about how realness is nothing to be afraid of. We should not lie to ourselves by have unrealistic expectations towards any sort of life experience, especially sex. The beauty of his writing is in the reality.

The first thing I learned from Steve Almond, once I stopped feeling a prejudice was an awareness of myself. I learned that I had this prejudice which kept me from really listening to the story. I had a prejudice against normalcy because when he started telling us about an imperfect summer romance I stopped wanting to see the normalcy of the people, the extremely flawed people that made up this story. This prejudice showed me that I need to be more open to the fact that people don’t fit perfectly into my criteria of what is normal is not normal. When I believe someone to be below me I need to stop, figure out why I think that, and then stop thinking that way. These imperfect people are more normal than most of the images I strive to replicate when I usually watch a movie or read a book.

I also learned that I need to be honest about how I see the world. This is one criterion of the things that Steve Almond said makes a good writer, the ability to tell the world the truth even when most people don’t want to hear it. People don’t want to hear about the truth of life and how messy and revealing true desire and passion really is.  We want the fantasy where good writing doesn't matter as long as the girl gets to be with the boy and they find some sort of sanctuary in each other. Realistically at the end of a relationship you don’t look back at a perfect relationship that ended for out there, crazy reasons, such as they became a vampire or the got murdered. Usually you split up for normal reasons such as they expected too much from you or they weren't the prince charming you expected. It is normal look at past relationships as a lesson, a stepping stone towards your desired ultimate happiness (this usually occurs after all the depression, eating of brownies, and thinking that you’re going to die alone).  Although we love the unrealistic stories it is just not true that the supermodel is going to fall anyone who is below average looking and socially awkward. These fantasies ultimately only produce unhappiness from our normalcy. Steve Almond celebrates normalcy in all aspects; job, friends, desires, and love. There is something wrong with the fact that we are content behind our fantasies of perfection where sex is clean and love is pure.

Sexuality and the Police State in Ferid Boughedir's Halfouine

I literally had no expectations of what a Tunisian film could be since I have had no prior experience in either the film industry or with Tunisia. Although I must say that a love affair was not struck up between me and Tunisian films I found that a different perspective of movies did form. I was able to find a connection between myself and the movie through its integrated use of metaphors and its pivot around human sexuality. I’m very glad that the first Tunisian film I was able to experience was the film Halfouine because it was a very general coming of age film allowing me to compare it to the common American coming of age film. This movie did a good job at capturing your mind and I felt integrated into the Tunisian culture. It shockingly showed a very personal side of this country that I probably would never had been allowed to witness unless I had been a citizen.

            The Tunisian culture is very split between the sexes and this causes a rift in the sexual nature if its inhabitants. They seem confused and almost scared of their sexuality and have this need to harness it and at times even beat it out of the children. This was seen several times such as with the interaction with Noura and his father. As Noura goes on this journey where he discovers the sensuality that awakens around his age, you see him get almost perverse and inappropriate. When he tries to undress the house maid while she is sleeping is an act that is clearly wrong. However this peeping is his only way to focus his sexual nature and to try to figure out what is going inside of his body. This disconnect that the culture has with their bodies is a dangerous thing that leads to prejudices not only between men and women but also between heterosexual and homosexual individuals.

            The normal American coming of age film would have been about a kid going to school, having to deal with a bully, and succeeding at winning over his secret crush. The Tunisian film Halfouin was able to take several of those components and to exaggerate on them in a way that exposes you to the Tunisian culture and daily life. This film is a lot more personal than an American film where the emotions are dressed up and glamorized. I felt, especially in scenes such as in the bath house, that I was a part of Noura’s sexual mind and nature.

American films seem to pivot upon their soundtracks, the background sounds are what really make the scene. However, in the Tunisian film I heard very little music. The emotions that are usually expelled due to the music where instead created from the artistic use of the camera focusing on some sort of metaphor for a moment before returning back to the movie. Two prominent instances that this occurs were with the blood on the floor and with the bird trapped in the cage; two images that provoked powerful emotions in a very different way than I am used to.

Love and Desire in the Penny Press: 1830-1870

Although I've never actually seen someone buy a tabloid they are a continuous fixture in the checkout isles of groceries parading the latest gossip and fiction. Honestly, it would probably be embarrassing to purchase a newspaper that claimed that they had seen Elvis alive and shopping with the Big Foot in Manhattan. Maybe these papers are purchased because of the incredulity of the published statements, but some people really enjoy the reading whether they believe it to be reality or not. Somehow the paper is making enough money and is therefore allowed to stay for all of the waiting eyes to glance at during the check-out process. After Dr. Burt described the penny press papers of the past I kept thinking of them as these tabloids. Two of the things that makes the newspapers of today thankfully better from the 1800's penny press papers is that they mostly only go after famous people and that they have rules about what they can and cannot write and what proof they can use. Yet these old papers show that love and desire were two themes that still managed to hook people.

There used to be a lot less people in the towns and cities that allowed small communities to form between neighbors and friends. It was very easy to lose the respect of others and be banned from the community if you did not show yourself to be proper. With the dawning of the gossip filled penny press everyone was fair game to be ridiculed and mocked on the front page, especially the upper echelon of society. This would have made life a lot more difficult with the gossip being published in the very papers that everyone reads. If your name managed to make its way their either from gossip or fiction not only would you be frowned upon from your community but also from the entire city, as far as the paper was able to reach. As a woman this would be especially hurtful because it would not only affect your social life but possibly also affect the decision of who would be willing to marry you. 

I feel so grateful to be a woman living in this day and age. To be a woman in the 1800's is a condemned life where only those who marry well have some semblance of freedom, although it is still a freedom chained to a man. I personally know that my dream career of being a dentist would have been barred from me due to my gender. Even if you were lucky enough to get a job you would be stuck in a particular position that was deemed proper for women. In the journal world this was referred to as "the velvet ghetto". A place filled with advice columns on cleaning supplies and bake it yourself advice. 

Maybe it is different from back in the 1800's but now people believe nearly everything that is written in the popular newspapers. Therefore when a paper writes a scandalous article people will read it even more carefully and put more empathy into what is being read. In the 1800's several of the articles seemed to be fiction. How dangerous it could become if the New York Times started publishing fake articles that catered to their own beliefs and agendas. It is a dangerous path and I am so thankful that now sources and citations have to be used so that the validity of our news can be confirmed. Titles such as "Love, Despair, and Suicide" were rampantly popular for the penny press. Thankfully these heartbreak articles are usually only found as the title of the next melodramatic novel. The poor families and friends of the person who had committed suicide; having to deal with the horror of having to read and hear their personal lives from the tongues of the city. 

Dr. Freund's Lecture

We can only wonder what our future generations will think about our codes and symbols. How crazy will they think that they are when they see the dancing and singing purple dinosaur that guided us through our childhood or see how many hours we waste playing Legend of Zelda on our Wii. We are fortunate to have recording devices so that we can save some semblance of our perceived sanity by explain on television or in writing about our insane ideas and beliefs  This technological luxury is something the ancient people never had. They did not have any sort of permanent communication that we can review in attempts to understand them and their thought processes. We leave the guessing to the archaeologists such as Dr. Freund who believe that "archaeology is the study of pre-ideas". 

I have a new profound respect for archaeologists because when they look at something for the first time they have to put what they know behind them. They have to take a fresh look at even something is so common and everyday and be able to see it's extraordinary properties. By putting your personal ideals behind you, you can really get at the meat of what that image could have meant to the people of that time frame. An example of this was shown with a picture of an anchor. Dr. Freund explained that for a long time several people thought that this image represented a cross even though it was created well before Jesus's birth or death. Freund then pointed out that we now understand it to be an anchor. However, we should not blame the archaeologists for this mistake because when we see an image that has a large line with a smaller line intersecting it we automatically think, "it's a cross". Like this "cross" something are such a common part of our culture that we subconsciously are on the look out for these familiar things. 

By putting aside the prejudices that we have formed from our current culture we are able to understand another mindset better. We can see an astrological sign in a Jewish temple and understand that it was not put on the floor to be disrespectful but maybe because the people in the temple liked the image and believe in it. A mixing of ancient religions in the olden days was found to be acceptable because that is who they were and how they believed. They do not share our common day prejudices and we need to allow them to believe whatever they wanted, even if it goes against our own beliefs.

Our common practice of how we view love and desire as a culture is not so different from the ancient practices. The ancient people carried around statues of fertility and love to help them become fertile and turned on. Now people can take drugs to make them more potent and fertile. On the walls of a pubescent teen male are quite likely to be donned with some sort of half-naked woman, this depicts a current image of desire. Go back a thousand years and you will see such images as Zeus as the Eagle or with Ganymede on the walls of houses showing the, then vogue, picture of love and desire. Besides our technology we are not all that different from the ancient people. If we put aside our current prejudices it is possible to try to look back and understand them more as humans then ideas and what we wish to perceive them as.

Professor Miller-Ott's Lecture: Love After Marriage

            Dating is scary and stressful enough when you are alone and have the convenience of privacy. However, if you add an ex-husband, or the long term equivalent, and maybe a child then you get an arena of disaster. This formidable world of communication between exs entering the dating world again is an area of research that Dr. Miller-Ott has looked at extensively. After numerous phone calls to people in this demographic she has found that there is a lot of discrepancy between people in understanding what societal “rules” they should follow and what information they should share with each other and their family.

            Being the ex to someone means that you have been hurt and have “baggage”, it doesn’t matter how the relationship ended you are officially used goods. No longer are you able to keep up this persona of innocence that seems to be a high attracting factor towards men. This is especially hard when you have kids as well. Most people would do almost anything to have a clean break from their partner. They want to forget about the love and desire that they once shared so that they can be new, rejuvenated, and free. They wish to experience the world as themselves. This is impossible when you and your ex-partner shared kids together. As long as the kids are still around the other partner you have this permanent connection and reminder of your ex. Having had kids with your partner also makes your ex, whether you like it or not, an official family member. This means that they have to be communicated with and let in on certain subjects, such as who you are bringing around their children. This awkwardness is what makes the study of communication so interesting in these cases. It is impossible to know the right thing to say and in these situations it seems that the “right thing” doesn’t exist.

            It is difficult enough to tell your partner in the relationship your feelings towards them. You have to somehow convey very intimate feelings at a very non-intimate level. You have to communicate how you feel and future possibilities opening yourself up to get hurt by more than one person. You could suffer scrutiny from your ex, from your children, or even from the new partner. It is also impossible to know the order of who you should convey the information to first. If you tell your feelings about the partner to the partner first and they accept the feelings then you would be betraying your family by not letting them in on the “loop”. If you tell your ex first then they could not only resent you for these new feelings but feel like you are trying to hurt them. This could especially go wrong if the new partner rejects your feelings and then makes you feel like you told your family for no reason and are put in a very emotionally naked position. If you tell your kids first, so that the ex doesn’t have to hear about the partner from you, then they could possibly get even more upset that they have to learn about your actions through their kids. There is literally no winning.

Nothing is private in these scenarios. You might as well be a walking tabloid magazine because if you don’t feed the information to everyone yourself, then they will eventually find out about the relationship if it goes well enough. In these cases the information comes with feelings of betrayal. You are no longer your own self but a part of a larger picture that has to communicate with the world. It is sad to say, but it seems that eventually it comes to a point where you will have to make a decision that parallels you from your children. During these times you have to decide who you want to please more, yourself and your children.  

Professor Borck's Lecture

The notion of politics is usually one that would be brought into the realm of love and desire. On NPR all of the political talk revolves around the lack of bipartisanship and how the senators are all trying to defy either each other or the president. The desire for power seems much greater than any desire to establish even the premise of friendship. However, Professor Bork was able to merge my ideals between friendship and politics together. Our political system is divided up into factions, especially between Republican and Democrat. I used to think of these factions as exclusive clubs more than any sort of group of friends, but maybe that’s what the party is. Even outside of the white house it seems that if you are a Republican then you have Republican friends. If you are a Democrat then you have Democrat friends. There is very little intermingling unless you want to be looked at as a threat to both sides. Whether the politicians want to admit it or not, our current political leaders have taken a slight turn towards Karl Schmitt’s view of politics. They place themselves with their “friends” because they have similar views and use their “friendship” as a tool to get what they want. The reason why these politicians have these friends is to go against their enemies. Sometimes I see Schmitt’s point of view. The times when I most need friends are when I have enemies. If someone is making me feel bad then I don’t want to internalize the pain, I want to share it with a friend who can help stand against this common enemy.

            Dierda’s ideal of friendship and politics is much more of a fantasy. He feels that we should be friends with everyone and that it should be, “beyond concepts of homogeneity”. This goes against the typical thought where we should hang out with people of like desires because only they will be able to understand us. We usually pick the people we are around due to their agreement towards our thoughts and personality. It would be strange to say that someone is your friend because they make you question your ideals and because you get into heated arguments with them. If someone told me that they were always getting into arguments with someone I would think the pair to be more enemies then friends. Yet maybe this says something about be because Dierda points out that, “naming an enemy says something about the self”. The fact that we have this necessity to have an enemy, our own antagonists through life, says something about our lack of confidence in ourselves. We shouldn’t need these enemies to obtain power and influence. We should be able to live in a world where we can all be friends and still feel like we have a commonality.

Before Sunrise

Why do the most romantic movie scenes happen in awkward situations? We can look at the classic scene from Breakfast at Tiffany’s where Audrey Hepburn and George Peppard embrace in the pouring rain. Not only are the two soaked so that water is literally in their eyes and cascading down their faces but they are also holding a cat between them. For anyone who has never had to deal with a wet cat it is not a pleasant experience, not only are they extraordinarily grumpy and enjoy using claws at this point they also have a very pungent odor. Yet because of the misery of the situation we find it all the more romantic that they are so in love with each other that they want nothing more than to kiss each other. They don’t even care about getting dry, warm, and putting the cat down.

This romantically awkward situation is embodied in the movie Before Sunrise when two complete strangers decide to stick together and enjoy Vienna. There is some crushing between the couple, Jesse and Celine, going on before their escapade, but it was nothing that could truly be called love. How strange and awkward it must feel to suddenly be left alone in a strange city with a strange person next to you. You know nothing about this person, only that they are going to be leaving for a different city the next day. But this situation that most people would never dare to put themselves in makes for a highly romantic escapade. The awkwardness causes them to talk more openly to fill the space that people are afraid to leave empty.

Jesse and Celine have this blazing passion for each other as they find that you can tell someone who knows nothing about you anything, especially when there is such a huge chance that you will never see them again. The other person has no expectations, no previously laid out judgments. Therefore, spending 24 hours with a complete stranger allows them to open up. The setting helped Jesse and Celine open up. The first major fight took place next to the river; it was like they were caught in the current of life. Another setting that was used to open up Jesse and Celine was when they find themselves in the close spaces. At these times they don’t speak as much and the sexual tension was emphasized. Their first kiss was in the box of a Ferris wheel and when they almost had sex they were in the closeness that comes from darkness. Overall, they were put awkward settings, from grave yards to strange ally ways that fueled a love that inspired poets.

Annie Hall

We have a certain ideal before watching a movie that has been deemed a “romance”. We understand that there will be a story line that this movie, Annie Hall, fallows to a large extent. It always has a certain flow: boy meets girl, boy and girl want to have sex, boy and girl eventually have sex, boy and girl realize that the other partner is human, not just a sex machine, and has to deal with that fact. This flow allows for the viewer to sit back and relax no surprises, no sudden scares. Annie hall does break the mold when it allows us a more realistic and cynical view on what goes on in a relationship and inside the minds of the two genders.

Woody Allen did a wonderful job at challenging the perfect romance he went past the fluttering whimsical love that can be seen whenever two old movie stars are resting their cheeks lovingly together (i.e. Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman). Woody Allen decided to push the romantic ideal open a little more by having a view that is imperfect and human. His very opening is controversial for the romanticist of its day. In the beginning of a romantic movie one is supposed to watch one of the characters leading a miserable life. Alvy’s life seems miserable because he is always complaining but it is not from the lack of love, it is only from the excess of paranoia. He has a very fulfilling life. He enjoy the company of friends and has a relatively successful career where people somewhat remember his name. This movie also begins with Alvy and Annie arguing, foreshadowing an unfortunate love affair that is going to end badly. The romantic at this point would ask, “Why am I watching a movie just to see a relationship fail”. However, Woody Allen finds that there is more for the audience to gain from seeing the events of a failing relationship than one that ends happily ever after.

A romantic film usually juxtaposes the man and the women as two people who have very little in common, the women has one role while the man performs another. This juxtaposition of the genders in this film does happen but unlike in other films this exceeding difference between the two characters is broken by the fact that their character traits switch. Alvy tended to have a more grownup demeanor and embodies some pride in the beginning of their relationship, holding himself over Annie as the superior. Annie at this point is practically a little girl who can’t even hold her head up in public or talk to boys. This is the typical gender role that is usually seen for the man and the women. She needs narcotics to be able to participate in acts that are too grown up for her persona.

At the end of their relationship Annie is found to be the one holding the reins in the relationship. She is the one in control, with all the pride and sophistication that Alvy now lacks. Even the little things in the movie switch such as the ability to drive (or not drive) a car. On the first day that Annie and Alvy are together Annie is driving in a radical, extremely dangerous manner. On the last day that Annie and Alvy are together Alvy is the one driving and hitting all of the cars around him. A complete switch of the two genders is done and the gender roles are broken.