HON 394

Sittin in a field contemplating love...

[hannahdebray]

Perhaps the late Leguin is right and we are more animalistic than we’d like to think, or perhaps it is time for us to outgrow the rigid social constructs that still encase the more conservative people among us. This paper will focus on the advantages and lapses of both determinism and constructivism particularly concerning human love and sexuality, then end with an effort to link the two theories.

Here is my final research paper, if anyone is interested! I think the topic merits a deeper analysis, but I have done a satisfactory if cursory analysis of biological versus societal roots of gender dynamics.

[sonnetsareforlovers]

Challenge Post #17

Reflecting on our discussion regarding the difference between Lars’ love for Bianca and Margo’s love for her teddy bear, have you ever loved an inanimate object (a stuffed toy, a book, a certain blanket, a prized object from a loved one, etc.)? Discuss how that loved manifest(s/ed) itself and in what way(s) that object or your love for it impacting your relationship with yourself or others.

[hannahdebray]

When I was 8, I got really sick, and spent two months in the hospital with one major relapse. During my time there, I fell in love with a succession of stuffed animals called Webkinz, that my mother would get me any time she would take me to the hospital to get my antibiotics shot and my blood drawn or my PIC-line cleaned or something. These Webkinz were special; they cost 18$, first of all, and they came with a code for an online version of them at a website, where the owner could buy them houses and get them jobs and play little arcade games. I ended up with quite a collection of these; I had six horses, one tiger, one cheetah, two dogs, and a reindeer. I got these as a reward for suffering, but in some strange way I did love them, and they accompanied me to my bed and I would even play with them irl. They never did impact my relationship with others except when I asked one of my classmates to care for them while I was in hospital, and several of them got sick, so I decided that I hated her forever (and proceeded to make her life miserable when I returned to school, shitty kid that I was).   

[jonny-august]

The Normal Heart

[hannahdebray]

Amazing love story of two men during the first stages of the AIDS epidemic in 1981, New York City. The movie is brutally honest about love and loss, and the government’s heartless apathy during the first few years is shocking. I won’t lie, I cried a couple times watching this masterpiece.

[sonnetsareforlovers]

Challenge Post #16

Should cisgender actors be cast in trans* roles? Why or why not? What about straight actors in gay or lesbian roles? Are these even equivalent questions?

[hannahdebray]

I believe that if the movie/show is centered around the struggle of coming to terms with trans identity, and the problems that plague trans people, then it is imperative for the director to cast transgender actors as the trans roles. The movie Tangerine is that much more powerful for using actual trans women in telling the story of the red-light trans district in LA. But if the show has a larger role of portraying issues in relationships, for example, or questions about identity not just for people coming out but that every one of us asks ourselves, then it is less of a concern if a cisgender actor is playing the role of trans. Additionally, in the case of Transparent, the character is at the beginning of her transition, so it makes more sense aesthetically to cast a male cisgender actor as Maura, to exemplify just how much trans women need to alter their bodies to fit their identity. I think that too much political significance is attached to the choice of cisgender actors as trans characters, but there is definitely the issue that trans people are rarely called upon to fill roles of cisgender people in movies in general. I am unsure if this again due to an underlying bias towards masculine/feminine stereotypes (transgendered women would be too masculine, or trans men would not be virile enough) or if it is again a question of aesthetics, but Hollywood will eventually be forced to include and accept all types of people.

[hannahdebray]

The Tinder effect: psychology of dating in the technosexual era

The prevalence of dating apps is helping make dating more efficient, but this doesn't necessarily lead to long-term relationship success

Interesting article on the ability of algorithms to approximate real-world dating, and technosexuality! I would be interested to talk about dating apps in class...

[ilmiopezzomancante]

Atypical (2017)

[hannahdebray]

A mildly autistic person’s adventure with love is super cute and funny in this Netflix original (also, I wish I was normal too bruh).

[pucksandprosecco-deactivated202]

Why do you self harm? Is it because sometimes the pain inside has to come to the surface, and when you see the evidence of the pain inside you finally know you’re really here? Then, when you watch the wound heal, it’s comforting… isn’t it?

E. Edward Grey (as portrayed by James Spader) in Secretary (2002)

[sonnetsareforlovers]

Challenge Post #13

How does representing queer identity/love/relationships change in terms of any of the (primarily) American conventions of love/sex/relationships we’ve been discussing in class all semester when portrayed in an international context? Use either Happy Together or Unveiled to reflect on this question.

[hannahdebray]

In both international films, I got a very real sense of loneliness within the protagonists, even in the presence of their lovers. Fai seems to love the fact that he is often Po-Wing’s caretaker more than Po-Wing himself, and in scenes where they are together, inner monologues often populate the long silences. It seems like they have little to talk about, which contrasts with Fai’s friendship with Chang. In Unveiled, Fariba is even more isolated due to her precarious refugee status, and when she finally reveals herself to Anne, the police cart her off to Iran, presumably to receive her sentence. This feels much more realistic to me than conventional American rom-coms where the relationship is everything, and once the man or woman realizes how amazing the protagonist is, they live happily ever after. There is rarely a discussion of the internal conflicts that rage within people even after they “get the girl/boy.”

Another difference is the very subdued nature of international queer relationships in both films. Perhaps I have just watched too many campy American films, but I have come to expect queer men in movies to be extremely flamboyant and feminine and dramatic, and queer women to be the more masculine extreme. There is little exploration into the idea that gender is perhaps not so much a dichotomy and more a spectrum in conventional movies. But the way that each person in both Happy Together and Unveiled were quieter about their sexuality, perhaps born out of either familial or societal persecution, made each movie’s message much more powerful to me than if the protagonists had embodied the exaggerated stereotypes that the mainstream public knows them under.

[sonnetsareforlovers]

Challenge Post #11

(Sorry for the delay on this one!)

Use the romantic comedy conventions/beats/scenes we discussed on Monday* to analyze how your favorite romantic comedy (or your least favorite or one you’ve seen recently, besides The Big Sick) utilizes (or doesn’t conform to conventions in relation to) each typical plot point. *the convention romantic comedy “beat” (plot point) structure:

the chemical equation: setup

the meet-cute: catalyst

a sexy complication: turning point

the hook: midpoint

swivel: second turning point

dark moment: crisis climax

joyful defeat: resolution

[hannahdebray]

I think an interesting example of a destabilizing rom-com is the show Divorce on HBO NOW. This is one of the few of its genre that I found that I actually liked; I was introduced to it via my mom, who sympathized with some of the show’s gritty truths surrounding marriages. As far as the conventional rom-com structure, here is how Divorce tackles each of the outlined plot points:

Chemical equation:

A married couple that behaves like two insufferable children so that the audience is left wondering whether they are just too incompatible to have a relationship together. Both do terrible things to each other like cheat and lie about money, but there is a real feeling of attraction and affection that underlies the nastiness that husband and wife inflict on each other.

Meet-cute:

The “catalyst” of the divorce, the meet-cute so to speak, happens at Frances’s friend’s 50th birthday, where her husband makes a speech full of not-so-veiled insults towards his wife and a huge dog named Hannah as a birthday present, and a party which ends in the friend almost shooting her husband and causing him to go into cardiac arrest due to the shock. It was quite hilarious, but contained none of the cutesy conventions that these scenes should normally contain.

Sexy complication:

Frances cheats on her husband Robert with the sexy man with an indeterminate accent Julien Renault, and they end up fighting when Julien doesn’t want to commit. This causes Frances to go back to Robert with the intention of patching the marriage back up. Couples therapy ensues, which brings more ugly secrets to light.

Dark moment: 

The divorce is finalized, and the two lonely people are left wondering “What now?” 

Joyful defeat:

This is an ongoing phenomenon throughout the series following the divorce, where both main characters do their best to connect with their children maintain a half-resentful, half-affectionate relationship with each other.

I am still watching this show, and I recommend it to anyone who has HBO!

[davidsfincher]

Ben Platt as Blake on Will & Grace

[hannahdebray]

Thanks to HON 394, I am now embarked on a month-long binge of every single Will and Grace episode I can get my hands on (for better or worse)...The show raises very interesting questions on the queer community; already in episode 2 of the reboot, which features Will as the ‘daddy’ of a burgeoning relationship with a 20-year-old, the old definition of being queer is pitted against the 2018 definition, which I found immensely interesting. Will reproached Blake for his relatively painless coming-out story (his involved his grandmother coming down with rabies the same week), which I took as a commentary on the comparatively easier lifestyles of the queer community nowadays. To relate this back to the Wolf article, which hinted that the gay rights movement was getting suffocated by the mainstream (its appeal is the fact that it is a counter-culture, a rebellion of sorts, according to Daniel Harris, cited in the essay), being gay now has lost an element of suffering that people widely considered to be noble. I would be interested to hear people’s thoughts on this idea?..

[hannahdebray]

Most Googled Love Questions of 2017

I was listening mindlessly one morning to the new show that two of my favorite youtubers, Grace Helbig and Mamrie Hart, have just started filming, and one of the episodes on the most searched questions of 2017 jolted me to attention. Grace stated that some of the most googled love questions of 2017 were: How to make a long-distance relationship work? and What is a poly relationship? 

This is a very reflective statement on the evolving definition of love as we know it; as travel becomes more and more readily available (we are all encouraged to take a semester abroad in college, and anyone who hasn’t been backpacking through Europe or India by age 30 is in essence a relic of the 1900s), loved ones move across countries and people are trying to substitute technology for the physical presence of their loved ones. Though as many of us can attest, humans are primarily sensory creatures over cognition-oriented, and long-distance is notorious for NOT working…

About the poly relationship question, Mamrie Hart seemed very surprised during the show, then quipped something about how people who google this are either being cheated on or cheating themselves, and are simply trying to rationalize the betrayal in terms of this relatively new form of relationship. I myself have never known people in a poly-amorous relationship, let alone a successful one except maybe on Shameless (great show), so I am inclined to agree with her. It is hard for me to visualize someone that is able to control their jealousy with their partner, and that allows them to have sex with another person; this may stem from the fundamental idea that most of us have that only one person is capable of fulfilling all of our needs, and that we should not go looking elsewhere for sexual satisfaction. This is also one of the problems I had with She’s Gotta Have It, where it seemed to me that Nola Darling thought exceptionally highly of herself if she thought she deserved the company of three different people during different days of the week. 

[loveislack]

From what I’ve seen, the most common definition of a poly relationship is one that has more than two people but equal consent from all parties involved. That’s why I think Nola’s situation with the three men doesn’t really fit polyamory; what she wants could potentially be polyamory but the others each want an exclusive relationship. Romantic relationships are pretty much the only type of relationship that our culture considers exclusive by definition. Applying similarly exclusive parameters to friendships sounds odd; when you say, “it seemed to me that Nola Darling thought exceptionally highly of herself if she thought she deserved the company of three different people during different days of the week,” if we were instead talking about friendships it would seem totally reasonable for Nola to want more than one friend and to want each relationship to coexist with the other. It’s interesting to me that with friendships it’s generally considered more normal and positive to have lots of friends than only a few, which is the opposite of romance. Of course there are similar feelings of jealousy and desires for exclusivity where friendships are concerned, but having multiple friends doesn’t invalidate the love you feel for one friend in particular. I think we struggle with relationships that evade typical relationship structures because it disrupts the rules of interaction. A friendship that involves sex becomes its own category of friends with benefits, because the element of sex messes with our baseline definition of friendship and until it gets its own label it’s not clear what rules the people involved are supposed to follow. A while ago I was talking to a friend of mine who’s asexual about relationships and she said she would be fine with a poly relationship because of how few people are ace, and that beyond the issue of sex she didn’t think it made sense to think that we can get everything we need from one person. I think about that often; as we’re all different people with different minds, is it possible, or desirable, for us to understand and speak to every part of another person? @amoreeel just reblogged a post about resisting the urge to win arguments when you’re wrong and that healthy relationships should diminish ego rather than increase it. Instead of being demonstrative of an inflated ego, could the acceptance of polyamory represent putting aside the ego in recognition of the ways we will never be able to provide everything our romantic partners need?

[hannahdebray]

I appreciate your very eloquent argument, and if indeed polyamory represents the diminishing of ego (in a healthy way) and the acceptance that no one person can satisfy the needs of another fully, then those in poly relationships must be very open-minded and somehow above jealousy. And while it is true (and normal) to have a circle of friends that you love equally, usually there is a “best” friend in your social circle, someone that you feel closest to and can be at your most vulnerable with. This is a person that you are sometimes reluctant to share with others, and if it turns out that they share their feelings equally with another best friend, then it is hard not to feel jealousy. I am not saying that it is impossible to develop the kind of confidence and open-mindedness that a healthy poly relationship necessitates, I am just saying that many of us are fallible, weak, envious creatures that want all of our special person’s attention and love. 

I will end this post with one question that I struggle with; at one point does indulging all of one’s needs get overpowered by the hurt that one does to others? Is betrayal, is a guilty conscience worth acting on the deepest desires of the heart? 

[freshmoviequotes]

The Big Sick (2017)

[hannahdebray]

lol this part of the movie really bothered me (though I did dislike most of it anyways). Ray Romano says to Kumail, ‘You know you love someone only when you cheat on her,’ to which I responded much the same way as Kumail does here. I am wondering what the movie is trying to say about love? Is it portraying love as guilt? As fear of losing something good? Those don’t seem like the healthiest causes or definitions of love to me...

[hannahdebray]

Most Googled Love Questions of 2017

I was listening mindlessly one morning to the new show that two of my favorite youtubers, Grace Helbig and Mamrie Hart, have just started filming, and one of the episodes on the most searched questions of 2017 jolted me to attention. Grace stated that some of the most googled love questions of 2017 were: How to make a long-distance relationship work? and What is a poly relationship? 

This is a very reflective statement on the evolving definition of love as we know it; as travel becomes more and more readily available (we are all encouraged to take a semester abroad in college, and anyone who hasn’t been backpacking through Europe or India by age 30 is in essence a relic of the 1900s), loved ones move across countries and people are trying to substitute technology for the physical presence of their loved ones. Though as many of us can attest, humans are primarily sensory creatures over cognition-oriented, and long-distance is notorious for NOT working...

About the poly relationship question, Mamrie Hart seemed very surprised during the show, then quipped something about how people who google this are either being cheated on or cheating themselves, and are simply trying to rationalize the betrayal in terms of this relatively new form of relationship. I myself have never known people in a poly-amorous relationship, let alone a successful one except maybe on Shameless (great show), so I am inclined to agree with her. It is hard for me to visualize someone that is able to control their jealousy with their partner, and that allows them to have sex with another person; this may stem from the fundamental idea that most of us have that only one person is capable of fulfilling all of our needs, and that we should not go looking elsewhere for sexual satisfaction. This is also one of the problems I had with She’s Gotta Have It, where it seemed to me that Nola Darling thought exceptionally highly of herself if she thought she deserved the company of three different people during different days of the week. 

[sonnetsareforlovers]

Challenge Post #10

Time for the question I keep trying to ask in class! The idea behind the “burden of representation” is twofold (by the way, the idea comes, in part, from the cultural theorist Stuart Hall, to give credit where credit is due):

that if there’s only one token minority character (or very few) in a certain visual/media landscape or narrative, then that character bears the burden of representing all members of their community in terms of how the majority views that community (e.g. if most sitcoms feature white families and there’s only one that features an Asian family, it becomes easier to read that one, lone example as representative of an entire community)

that some people think media producers bear a certain responsibility for representing members of their own community or other minority communities in a “good light” in order to dispel stereotypes and negative connotations perhaps already associated (often irrationally) with that community

So, given that definition, reflect on whether or not the concept of the “burden of representation” applies to Tangerine. Should Baker have worried about issues of so-called good vs. bad representations of transgender sex workers or does that question (about representation) rest on a flawed assumption? In what ways do the characters (or the narrative) maintain or destabilize mainstream stereotypes around transgender sex workers?

[hannahdebray]

When I was watching Tangerine, it honestly took me about one hour before I realized that the narrative was following the typical love triangle story, and so I think that Baker handled the burden of representation very subtly. I felt that the movie offered a very candid, gritty look into the lives of those in this particular red-light district, and it did not portray trans women as necessarily good people, martyrs shown in a favorable light ( Sin-Dee is a violent and jealous girlfriend, and Selena cheats with her best friend’s boyfriend unscrupulously). The trans women are capable of a wide range of emotions throughout the movie, and facets of their personalities show up when they are with different people just like the complexities of real, human people. I liked the movie, and applaud Baker for his elegant and touching narrative, and his beautiful handling of the question of underrepresented minorities in media.

[acecroft]

[hannahdebray]

Look it’s Kylo Ren, but if Star Wars was played by millennials and set in New York! 

[hannahdebray]

A science-fiction exploration of gender on the fictional planet Seggri.

Here is an exploration by my favorite author into gender role reversals and even complete gender transformations by creating entire planets for these alien societies. Each short story concerns a different planet’s societal hierarchy through the fictional voices of various, very human-like aliens, but the one that captivated me the most was the collection of stories about a planet named Seggri. On this world, the women are the ones with the jobs and the marriages and the child-bearing and the world-turning, while the men are kept in castles and have only one purpose; impregnating women with sons, which are rare on Seggri. 

It is interesting to see how much of society stems from gender dynamics, and how seemingly slight differences in biology/fertility can result in such drastically different power structures, even though these are just fictitious, just the musings of a single author. 

[soopspoons]

The End of the F***ing World (2017–)

[hannahdebray]

This is a beautiful love story between two broken people, where the psychopath heals the rift between his emotions and his heart, and the wounded girl convinces herself that she is worthy of love again. *clap emoji*, Netflix.