LAAAAMMMMMEEEEE, deal with it.

Victoria's Secret is widely known for their sex appeal and their body sprays that all girls obsess over, but I find that when their commercials broadcast on televeision many girls compare themselves to what they see as "perfect" and destroy themselves to reach this goal of perfection that is rarely acheived.

maus...mouse?

http://records.viu.ca/~johnstoi/introser/maus.htm
http://www.history.ucsb.edu/faculty/marcuse/classes/33d/33dTexts/maus/JBrownMiceMemoryOHR1988.htm



To be honest, I did not read this fully and I looked through so many articles and it was hard to decide just one which is why I have included two!  They may or not be helpful but yeah, take a peep.  The first link is the one I will give a summary on though.  The article is basically summarizing aspects of Maus and the professor takes some interesting aspects on analyzing the text and he even includes some of Scott McCloud's work in his discussion which will probably be very helpful to our class because we have been talking about him recently.  I personally like this quote that is stated:

"Then, there's the figure of Artie, Vladek's son and the artist-author. Now, he is in many respects much more interesting and complex than his father, because he takes on the task of trying to make some artistic sense of his own pain, the emotional scars he carries as a result of his family's experiences. And this issue—the relationship between the artist and the story he is trying to create—appears repeatedly in the foreground as we witness the artist wrestling with his own feelings (with his wife and father and his psychiatrist, or by himself) and, more important than that, with the adequacy of the book he is trying to create in order to explore that pain."

I think this points out the issue that Artie went through a lot with his experiences with Maus and understanding things that had happened without really having experienced them.  I felt that Artie had to kind of detach himself from too many emotional aspects because he himself wasn't too emotional up until the point he had visited his psychiatrist and that was a huge part of the book also.  I think Artie kind of carried the weight of the world on his shoulders while writing Maus because he had to represent what you cannot represent.  I also found our postmodern articles very very helpful also.

:)

Cat's Cradle, literally.

Well to start out Modernism is all about the truth and finding one central grand narrative to live by and believe in.....while Postmodernism suggests that we as a civilization must deviate away from the concept of modernism because there is no one truth and trying to pursue that will only lead to chaos.  Trying to create conformity among the masses will create progress to some extent but it will also lead this "progress" down the wrong path. The book title itself, Cat's Cradle, represents postmodernism in all aspects.  As described in the book we come to realize that the Cats Cradle is the oldest game known to man, presenting no form or end to this mess of string the call a game.  The cats cradle is a representation of progress, which is always what people are trying to achieve; to work more toward perfection....which can never be attained.  Newt is often playing with this string and says "See the cat? See the cradle?" which is ironic because there is no cat or cradle in the string, its just a bunch of X's.  I see this as a metaphor for the absense of truth which is what Postmodernism is all about.  It's just a work of art to keep your mind occupied and makes you not focus on one central meaning; it allows you to broaden your thought process.  Opposed to Modernism which keeps you focused on the presence of truth, reason, and logic.  Postmodernism merely suggests that we should focus on more than what meets the eye, which is still an ironic concept proving that how can you focus on something you cant see?  We are all living this type of lifestyle unconciously.  Bokononism is a huge false religion that also has the masses in CC believeing in something thats "always being added to" there is no definite truth to anything we are living.  We just have to tell ourselves we understand to be comfortable with life. 

This is horrible.

:(

My many BNW thoughts. Im undecided.

I thought this was funny haha :)

So I came up with a lot of ideas for my Brave New World essay; way too many.  So I thought I would share a few of them and then in class I will choose which one will dominate. (F.Y.I. this will be informal and I will elaborate later; it will be a lot and sound very jumbled. deal with it.)

Truth and Happiness cannot coexist
Citizens of the world state have no idea what happiness is beause there is no truth.  They avoid daily life with soma which is said to be "Christianity without tears."  I firmly believe in this because God does not exist in the World State so they have to have something to believe in (my faith/religion brings me happiness, truth, and comfort) which is their drug soma that just represses daily life struggles and keeps them from being too stressed out from reality; therefore; soma is in place of God and/ or Religion beacuse it makes them happy.  People in the World State want immediate gratification which is a huge problem and draws many things out of that concept to prove that it is the total opposite of reality.  They want no feelings of empathy and the goverment tries to destroy all bonds of "human trust" such as friendship, love, and personal connections. Also, they influence to have multiple partners so that way you arent bonding or creating emotional ties to one person because that only creates instablility and emotions and no happiness.

The Grand Narrative of Stability
In chapter 2 we had a class discussion on this and it sounds very appealing to me. In BNW 3 types of stability exists: social, economic, and induvidual stabilty. The only reason they can attain all of this is by their conditioning all through out their lives. All of the population is developed through test tubes and treated a certain way depending on what caste they will be forced into.  There is virtually no freedom in the World State; they condition them to make them oblivious to whatever else they can experience and so they feel no emotion what so ever on anything they have to deal with. While in reality its a tough world. They "condition" the children to hate books and flowers (education and beauty) because that will only lead them to more knowledge and thoughts and "decondition" them; leaving no "aesthetic experience" to life as stated by Sir Ken Robinson. Also on the idea of conditoning they use hypnopedia to condition them even as they sleep "In their attempts to make unconscious material visual, dreams disrupt the kind of linear awareness that language requires. The visual figure-making nature of the of the unconscious, though at work within language, disrupts language, disrupts the rational philosophy and the arts" (Lyotard). They have all together abolished the concept of induvidualism and put conformity on a pedestal. In chapter 3 Huxley presents us with the water pipe analogy and "likens the channeling of emotion and desire to water in a pipe....many small holes produce streams of water.....family relationship, sexual repression, and delayed satisfaction of desire, goes against stabiliy." Overall social stability leads to which caste you are in and "is the highest social goal, and through predestination and rigirous conditioning, individuals accept their given roles in society without question"; economic stability is an obvious; and induvidual stability is obviously instant gratification and obeying by all laws in the World State.  Induvidual thought cannot exist! They also look up to Henry Ford because he was the master of  the assembely line and that contributes to stability and how everything needs to be in order and right judgement. That assemely line contributes to human life in BNW and the people and everything revolves around that.

Other thoughts:
In Lyotard's Postmodernism piece he suggests that "By attempting to present two impossibly different eras (The World State and The Savage Reservation), there is always an Other which cannot be truly represented." That kind of flows with how John was never accepted because he was different which led to all this chaos which also ties Bernard in because they both were rebels; they both had the knowledge there was something more to live for and had knowledge but has to repress it because it was not socially accepted.  I can write my essay on how rebels effect society or describe how the real world and the world in BNW are total opposites.

Honestly, there is so much to talk about.

I could go on and on about all my creative thoughts because im just such a boss when I want to be smart.
Until then I will continue to develop my thoughts more thouroghly instead of just blobbing them on a blog.

I promise I have more ideas.

Still waiting for this Brave World...

The one overall concept that binds Brave New World and Sir Ken Robinson's video together like glue is: Industrialization. In Brave New World we have massive amounts of clones running around supressing their emotions and daily struggles by taking soma which is quite similar to the video by watching the kids being "medicated routinely" with their ADHD pills because they just cannot stand to sit in class and be bored. This draws parallels by comparing the population of the World State by how they have to relieve their daily dilemmas with drugs just to make it to the next hour; furthermore, how kids in school must take their drugs to stay awake in class leaving no "aesthetic experience". Conformity plays a big role in industrialization because they are trying to standardize civilization and simply making them dumb and oblivious. Oh, but no fear, thats why the world has rebels. Bernard is an example of a student who is awake and is taking all of the world in and wants to create change (rebelling against the conformity) but cannot achieve that kind of mind set because he is living life in the factory production lane by having no say in how to shape society. He must obey and abide by the "assumptions of social structure and capacity." If you think about it, we are pretty much all conditioned, every single human being, to follow an example of something greater than ourselves and not to question but to accept it. As Bernard is going to get a permit signed by the director to visit the Reservation he comments, "I am not pleased with the reports I recieve of your behaviour outside working hours.....If I ever hear again of any lapse from a proper standard of infantile decorum, I shall ask for your transference" (Huxley 98). This reflects on the production you do in school if you aren't benefiting society by educating yourself or obeying rules; you're just wasting your time and the time of others so they will expell you or in some cases send you to Iceland. Society only wants productive members, if not, you are only going to influence others to do the same so they must fix that by enabling your thoughts and notions. You are't benefiting from these so called wonderful structures of life or improving your own being if you cant follow rules. Bernard feels rebelious knowing that he is conflicting with the norms of society and sometimes people are not comfortable with change if it goes against what everyone else is doing. We simply cant follow "production like mentality" because we dont have creativity and creativity is what is going to make the future prosper. Standardization is demolishing divergent thinking leaving narrowness and no experience to improve life. It causes chaos. People need to step out of the box to see change in the world but you cant achieve that by being told what to do or better yet, not even having the knowledge of knowing you can attain something better.

"Straight from the Horses mouth" What does that even mean?!?!

From my understanding of Chapter 3 I can presume that induviduals in Brave New World are made into workers that dont have the privlidge of asking questions because they are "content." Contentment obviously comes from them not knowing what else they are capable of producing with that knowledge they could have had (since lower castes are treated with alcohol and are oxygen deprived while being fertilized in a test tube). "Stability....the primal and ultimate need. Stability. Hence all this" (43). Order matters, someone is control is a dominate feature in BNW, they cannot attain knowledge because then they would yearn for something greater than "[turning wheels steadily]." Society is based on what caste you were born in: Alpha, Beta, Delta, etc. the Alphas and Betas are the more powerful and productive ones and they kind of oversee the working class. They need stability because they proclaim that "No civilization without social stability. No social stability without induvidual stability" (42). Social stability in my point of view are all the workers, they must sit there working all day to make sure they are producing more stability in society, thus creating more workers as themselves. Induvidul stability may be refeering to the higher castes such as the Alphas and Betas because they are the ones that must be organized and keep a firm grip on the workers; they are treated as their own person, meanwhile, the workers and treated as a group. (Hence "social"). Mustapha Mond is manipulating the children to believe that homes and parenting are awful and have "no air, no space; an understarilized prison; darkness, disease and smell" (37).  But these kids have never experienced a home so they have to take MM's word for it. Just like in 1984 when the goverment was always manipulating the news and in The Tempest how Miranda never had contact with other human beings but than of those that Prospero let her come in contact with. In BNW I also see how they are dehumanizing the lower castes by not letting them feel emotions and they must always have a look of contentment and for crying out loud they were treating so bad during the fertilization process! The desire thing comes in by the whole not seeing someone for too long thing, like Mr. D said "they need to go around the block a couple of times." And as quoted in the text, "Every one belongs to every one else, after all" (47).

This is MY understaning of BNW so far and I could ramble on but id rather talk about it than type about it. Haha.

Preparing for The Tempest

In discussions of "The Tempest", one controversial issue has been colonialism and imperialism. On the one hand, George Will, a political commentator, argues that we must view Literature in a political viewpoint. The piece of literature we are examining is Shakespeare's, The Tempest, and if you look through the eyes of Will you are going to see the direct meaning of colonizing countries and/or in this case, people, and see that Shakespeare was pro-colonization because he wanted to appeal his work to the audience which was the Queen and her loyals. In order to pay the bills Shakespeare had to be their puppet and I think that is why other people have different viewpoints on The Tempest because Shakespeare himself was confined to limited expression. Will wants you to dissect Literature as "this is how it is and you are going to like it." You have no induvidual thought in the matter and in my honest opinion, that is boring. As quoted in the article, "the transmission of the culture unites, even defines America-transmission through knowledge of literature and history-is faltering." This goes to show that we obviously have lost the creative thought process while we read literature. On the other hand, Stephen Greenblatt, Professor of Humanities at Harvard University, contends the view that we should take risks and have our own opinions on what we read while respectfully maintaining what the piece was put out there to be. This makes reading more interesting and makes you want to keep reading and gaining more insight instead of being like a political robot and accept whatever is being handed to you. He states that "critics want a tame and orderly canon," while as I can infer that he is opposed to that type of approach. Greenblatt wants us readers to go in depth and analyze reading from different viewpoints and share our cummulative knowledge. In that case we should view Shakespeare's writing as creative and accept different points of view on the play such as, Aime Cesaire's, A Tempest, which to my understanding is mocking colonialism. Greenblatt is simply suggesting to not get stuck in "the social cement" of literature and "take the risk of collective amnesia." You will never get to your full potential of understanding if you follow in someone elses footsteps. However, my own view will reside with Greenblatt and I will use some of his approaches to my understanding in creating an essay that will explore The Tempest in new depths and not "deculture" literature but merely broaden the potential the play has.



Hopefully this sounds okay :)