Discover Top Posts Tagged with #kaylac

Here is my creative assignment. I thought Kayla F.'s was really cool and mine is kind of similar.

Reflection

Disliked: The Bloody Chamber, Alice in Wonderland, Agamben

I was really looking forward to The Bloody Chamber because I loved those types of retold stories as a kid and I was excited for the feminist angle. However, I was bothered by Carter’s diction and it did not resonate with me at all. I appreciated having several other options to choose from for the A2 text.

I didn’t get much out of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland because it was very challenging to start with, we wrote about it before discussing it, and the Agamben was puzzling, didn’t give much to go off of, and was hard to connect. I think these texts are definitely worth including, just later on in the semester.

Meh: True Blood, Princess Mononoke

I couldn’t go to the screening of True Blood and I’ve never seen it before, so I felt like I was missing a lot but it was still interesting. I thought Princess Mononoke would have been better for the middle of the semester when we talked about the soul a lot.

Liked: Zoo City, Maus, St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves, The Black Cat, Cat People, Foucault, Mbembe, Freud, Creed

Each of the three novels was completely different from what I usually read or pick for myself—South African mystery/fantasy, graphic novel, short stories—but they were very engaging, to the point that I want to reread them. They were complex and thought-provoking, but analyzing them did not feel like a chore. I wish we had read them earlier in the semester because each of the three has great potential for a seminar paper. I thought Cat People was the perfect mix of bizarre and entertaining, while still raising lots of questions. These four secondary texts were interesting in their own right and brought a lot out of the primary texts. I appreciated the chance to finally read Freud and understand that crucial piece of framework.

#KaylaC

Kaspar Hauser

I think I missed a post one week, so I’m writing about the optional film on the syllabus. I actually watched the 1974 version because Werner Herzog directed it, and I remembered how bizarre one of his other films, Aguirre: The Wrath of God, was when we watched it in 9th grade.

Kaspar Hauser was a German boy who allegedly grew up by himself in a dark cell on a floor covered with hay in the 1800s. The actor who played Kaspar Hauser was the son of a prostitute and spent over twenty years in a mental institution, but Herzog did not think he actually had intellectual disabilities. Kasper was not found until he was a teenager. In this scene in the movie, he is free but stands completely still whereas the cows and horses are tied up but constantly move. Growing up in isolation, he did not develop a desire for freedom, nor did he display aggression, yet the townspeople lock him up in jail. For another class, I’m looking at photo-documentaries of global mental health, and people with intellectual disabilities are still locked up in shacks or high-security jails, because others automatically view them as unpredictable and dangerous. Kaspar still learns to speak, read, and write. He picks up on sexism, questions religion, and even makes a professor look silly by solving his logic puzzle in an unconventional but simple way. He dies from a stab wound, but we only see ridiculously fake-looking blood gush out, not who did it. At the end of the movie, doctors autopsy Kaspar’s corpse, and a creepy one is very excited about identifying a few abnormalities in the liver and the brain, as if there is a purely biological cause for Kaspar’s differences. The other characters think their culture is completely natural, but Kaspar shows that how you were raised completely changes what is normal and how you perceive.

#KaylaC

Part 2 of SLHGRW

I was interested in the function of singing in the last two chapters, “Accident Brief #00/422” and “St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves.” The girls love to sing, but the boys hate it. At first, I thought Russell was sending contradictory messages about singing, but I thought about it longer because I didn’t think it was an accident that singing was prominent in these back-to-back stories. In Tek’s community, they like the nonsensical rhymes of “The Pirates’ Conquest,” which is their legitimizing myth, and most of all, “they like to see the evidence of our voices, even if they can’t hear them” (202). The song represents their culture’s power over nature and the natives. They do not appreciate expression of emotion or beauty in music. Once he is stranded and understands the sublimity of nature and the uselessness of the lost treasure, he needs his family more than ever but they cannot hear him, even if they were listening and not just looking at the avalanche. To the contrary, Claudette describes the chapel where they sing every morning as “the humans’ moon, the place for howling beyond purpose…not for anything but the sound itself” (239-240). The nuns might not agree, but for the girls, singing is simply a release and I think that many modern singers would agree. I think that one way we distinguish ourselves as humans is by our creation of and appreciation for music as a form of art, but maybe we have that in common with animals. After some brief research, it looks like “zoomusicologists” do not know much yet.

[Off topic but cool: some scientists are composing species-specific songs (for monkeys, for cats, etc.) in the right frequency range and tempo based on their resting heartbeat in order to excite or calm them. I’m definitely going to play this for my cats: http://musicforcats.com/samples/cozmo_air.mp3]

*****My cat is ignoring it and it is totally bumming me out. --Sam*****

#KaylaC

Part 1 of SLHGRW

These stories made me think of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland again, but there was no clear line between the real world and the fantasy world. From story to story, the animals could be part of either world. I was wondering about the role of the parents. They left their kids, sent their kids away, were naïve and extremely lenient, or completely preoccupied with their own problems. I thought it was depressing how lonely the kids were. Generally, they were far more perceptive than they were given credit for, but their loneliness led them to do stupid things, almost as if they want to be caught. Ollie’s story was particularly disturbing to me: Ollie feels disoriented, and along with Raffy, he is able to make the baby turtles feel the same way, and Petey and possibly Marta as well. It made me think of my Latin teacher’s claim that growing up is the first time you make a decision and feel genuinely guilty about it.

I thought that Jacob’s story was unique, because his father is a Minotaur. I thought this metaphor teased out the theme of gender roles, because his father is extremely masculine, literally carrying his family to the frontier but nearly working himself to death and risking their lives without admitting the problems. His mother is practical, but Jacob’s father makes Jacob laugh at her and believe in his dreams, despite what Jacob actually sees.

#KaylaC

Conference Response

I was surprised by how diverse the papers from my panel were. We talked about the slums, the scientific community in a Spanish soap opera, information technology, Puritans and Hollywood, and British nationalism, and wandered off to video games, anarchy, and Disneyland during the discussion. Surprisingly, these topics were related, although our theme of “The Dark Side” admittedly casts a wide net. Most of us dealt with individuals within different systems as well as ethical questions. I did not expect the extent to which we were asked to respond to each other’s work, but it was thought provoking to hear the audience’s perspectives on our papers and to consider how our ideas connected. The format of reading all the papers out loud was a little challenging for me in terms of following and processing the different ideas, and I found the discussion most valuable. I also attended most of Kayla F.’s panel, and our animal inside theme really seemed to dominate. The Freud reading was useful as a common framework for several of the papers. Again, the papers were diverse, yet all but one tied together well. Overall, the conference was much more interesting than I had expected and I really enjoyed it.

#KaylaC

The Conclusion of Princess Mononoke

I initially thought that the ending was sad. It seems like San cannot accept humanity, either within herself or within Ashitaka. She is a complex character: Moro tells Ashitaka that she will die with the animals, but I was not sure if that is because she is primarily an animal or because as a human, she is connected to animals and will die without them. The relationship between San and Ashitaka is also complex: it wavers between hate and love, pulling close and pushing away, and it needs resolution. I was expecting a clear, beautiful ending that would unite them. San rejects him, however, Ashitaka says they can live separately yet nearby. I thought this was a gentle breakup, but on a second thought, maybe it was not and they still have the possibility of harmony across their different spheres. The ending of the film feels ambiguous, not final. The final outcome depends on the characters’ future actions. Similarly, the relationship between humans and the environment depends on our actions. There seems to be positive momentum with the new life and growth, but the uncertainty remains. With a fresh start, naturally there is optimism and excitement over the potential to do everything perfectly, but we do not have that amazing launching point. We have to find that wave of motivation and ideals in the midst of flawed, depressing process underway, while Irontown is firmly established and natural habitats are dying.

#KaylaC

Maus I

Speigelman not only depicts the Jewish people as mice, but also depicts the German people as cats. They are not human, either. This made me think of another discussion about the motivation for Stanley Milgram’s experiments focused on obedience to authority. Why did the German people allow and even participate in the Holocaust? Are they in particular bad people—predatory cats by nature—or are they normal good people influenced into doing bad things? Just as it may have been easier for the Germans to differentiate themselves from the Jews and blame them, it may be easier for Westerners to differentiate themselves from the Germans and blame them so that we can reassure ourselves that we personally would not have let it happen.

I also thought the personal story in Chapter 1 that Spiegelman promised not to include was interesting. Vladek claims it is too private, but Speigelman insists that it makes the story “more real—more human.” This is so true: when I see the person behind the noble survivor, I have a deeper reaction. Earlier in the semester, I attended the talk with Eva Schloss, Anne Frank’s step-sister. She mentioned that Anne’s mother tried to teach Anne lessons while they were in hiding but Anne refused, and this reminded me of how my mom tried to teach me how to play the piano, under completely different circumstances. My mom almost decided to become a concert pianist, so it was very important to share her love of music with me, but I just would not listen to her as I would listen to an outside teacher. This is a relatively petty example, but I felt pretty bad and called my mom right after the talk. Generally, I think children tend to be annoyed by their parents’ attempts to teach them something important (such as language, culture, or religion), but when they grow up, they regret missing that connection to their parents. This tension is magnified between Art and Vladek, because the very thing that Art is curious about is exactly what makes Vladek so unbearable.

#KaylaC