Author: ada

It seems that the issue of ownership and personal associations with 9/11, as echoed in the works and brought up by Josh will be a sure preoccupation in reading and talking about this week’s text.  While the “where were you when” phenomenon permeates some of our understanding of the events, another aspect of dealing with the aftermath is the question of “what did you do after?”  One response, in the case of Art Spiegelman, is to create a series of comix.  (Oh, and if anyone can please explain to me the use of the word “comix” as opposed to “comics” I would be very grateful)  Continuing in this vein, I am also interested in the coupling of visuals and text to create a tone, one that is at once very somber and serious, and on the other hand is inextricably linked to previous understanding and associations with comics- playful, fantastic, funny, other-worldly.  How does one approach the reading of a text such as In the Shadow of No Towers?  How did the media response to 9/11 affect our understanding of what happened?  What were the implications of the inability and the purposeful holding back of humor and laughter in the wake of the tragedy in popular culture mediums?  Art Spiegelman, in his text, has found a way to approach the issue.  His introduction to In the Shadow of No Towers may suggest that the impetus for this was personal catharsis, but then, as a public figure, one that sought out a venue for publication, how can this not be viewed as a joint experience with the reader?  Don DeLillo’s “In the Ruins of the Future” seemed to me to oddly echo some of the same sentiments, perhaps more having to do with his jumpy, breathy writings style, which is how I tended to read Spiegelman’s text.  And again, perhaps this is a fitting assessment- a hurried, emotion-ridden reaction (even the word reaction has some unintended weight to it), an attempt to vocalize our reactions to something that we still have a hard time comprehending.

With all of the discussion of the character of Marla in the film Fight Club and the comparisons to her representations in the book, I want to look at some of the other marginal characters in this narrative, namely Bob Paulson (played by Meat Loaf) and also Angel Face (played by Jared Leto). While we see Marla as an under-represented, undeveloped female character in the film, her presence is an essential part of the schizophrenic world that Jack/Tyler Durden lives in. She moves in and out of the scenes, in a way a filmic parallel to the movement of the narrative and she is also the first character we look to when searching for clues that betray the “surprise” twist. Just as she is a complicated character that we never get to really know, so are Bob and Angel Face. I guess that the root of my thinking is what these characters, particularly the two emasculated and feminized men represent or symbolize or how they work in the story. Bob’s testicular cancer has given him a body that is not his own, and yet, through the Fight Club, more so than at the meetings, Bob regains his masculine identity in violence. How would this work for Angel Face, who because of a perceived “beauty” is the object of jealousy, especially for Jack? This jealousy is so strong, in fact, that Jack seeks to destroy it by beating him to a pulp. His face through the rest of the film has become a form that is not his own, a bloody, broken mess. There are some elemental homoerotic underpinnings in the introduction of Angel Face as a character, in light of his interaction with Tyler, and yet, the hate and need to destroy that Jack feels may be driven by a more deluded jealousy, particularly since the attention of which he is jealous, the attention given to Angel Face, is his own.

Of all of the elements at work in the film Donnie Darko, I am often struck by the smaller details and the minor characters.  With all of the interwoven narratives, it is soothing to find a constant in the character of Donnie Darko, even if he is unreliable and off-kilter.  One of these minor characters which with each viewing becomes more and more complex is Cherita, the girl who is crushing on Donnie, who is the symbol of unrequited love and so much more. 

In my continued viewings of Donnie Darko, I find myself drawn to Cherita in a way that I think complicates and enhances my understanding of the film. Cherita, who is set apart and portrayed as completely different, through her ethnicity, her interactions and the way she is presented in scenes with other characters and then most importantly, in her interactions with Donnie.  They are more alike then they seem, I think, and their unique characters and the ways they are played off one another in the film, suggest a stronger connection.  Cherita, if you may have noticed, appears in several scenes, usually off to the side.  Her constancy suggests that she is perhaps a larger part of the narrative.  I would venture to say that she is very aware of what is going on this world of the film and that she may, on some level, move in the same time-traveling circles as Donnie Darko.

In a poingnant scene, the two time travelers share a moment.  Donnie and Cherita, awkwardly and fraught with fear, engage one another, somewhat one-sidedly to come to an understanding.  In this scene, after Donnie has left Karen’s  (Drew Barrymore) classroom, the camera moves in an eyeline match to Chertia, standing at her locker.  This reaction to her being there is similar to the reaction that Karen had when she discovered her at the sports field.  Surprised but not shocked, almost as if he expected or even wanted her on some level to be there.  The mobile frame shows Donnie as he approaches her, and she backs away.  When Donnie goes to grab her earmuffs and confront her, the camera moves into a medium close up.  Donnie says, “I promise that one day everything’s going to be better for you.”  This statement is, on one hand, Donnie reacting to what Karen had told him in the previous scene, when she was packing up her things.  When Donnie asked what he should tell the other students when they ask about her, she says, “Tell them that everything is going to be just fine.”  This statement, a bit dark and biting, is reflected in Donnie’s assurances to Cherita.  On the other hand, the statement is a true moment of understanding between the two, but the paradox of Cherita’s character is reflected in her reaction the moment- running away.  Cherita knows that everything is not going to be just fine and that everything is not going to be better for her one day.  This knowledge is shown in the way that she is filmed in the scene, running away.  Upon first approach, Cherita moves backwards, then when Donnie makes the statement, she hesitates slightly before turning to run.  In this hesitation she again utters the two words she say throughout the film, “Chut up.”  At this point, the “shut up” has lost meaning as an imperative, asking the other person to be quiet.  Instead, the shut up at this point is more, “I don’t want to hear it.”  She doesn’t want to be assured because she knows that things will not be well.  The camera follows her for a bit, but then cuts to Donnie and then to a close up of her notebook, the revelation of the crush.  The camera then cuts to Cherita running away.  It is stationary, having taken Donnie’s point of view.  As Cherita runs down the hall, she is framed by the lockers, and slowly shifts out of a clear focus.  When she gets down the hall, running out the door, she is haloed and also disappears into the bright light of the door. 

The shot of Cherita out the door dissolves into a shot of Donnie, walking with her earmuffs on his head.  The camera moves from a start at a high angle shot and in slow motion Donnie’s head becomes visible as he is walking, until he is at a medium shot.  In this scene the camera slowly reveals him, so that the viewer takes note of this moment.  The earmuffs, which he has now appropriated, signal to the viewer that he has reached an understanding. 

After working through this week’s readings I shrugged my shoulders then threw up my hands in a gesture of defeat.  I am boggled by some of the work seen this week, and am also excited to explore the implications of my experience because these works, more so than any of the previous course work, seems to align itself with the reader(watcher) response vein of analysis.  I would like to look at the idea of control as Kira brought up in her blog posting.  Giving up control is difficult, having partial control may be even harder to handle.  In relinquishing control, we are led through different modes of awareness.  In working through Hejirascope and Pax, I was struck not so much by the work itself, but instead, how aware it made me of more conventional modes of writing and communication.  I thought about paper and pens and the fact that I couldn’t make notes in the margins of these hypertexts.  I thought about a typewriter and a letterpress and the red pen of an editor.  I thought about the work that went into my copy of The Collected Poems of Frank O’Hara, and the way that I had worn through the pages, flipping from work to work, dog-earing favorites.  Sure, I tried to construct a narrative in the randomness and repetition of Hejirascope and I did try to focus on something other than the blinking eyes of the Pax characters, but was snapped out of the experience by the sheer awkwardness of it all.  My appreciation of these hypertexts and the analysis of their work comes from the experience I had outside of the texts, and the awareness that they elicited in my thoughts about printed work. 

Along with the many intertexual and historical elements that comprise parts of Jessica Hagedorn’s Dream Jungle, the question of translation also arises.  I am interested to see what you all think about the author’s decision to include un-translated words in several different languages throughout the text.  My first experience with Hagedorn was reading Dogeaters, in play form, which also had several words and phrases in different languages.  In this case, though, there was a glossary in the back, with the translations.  Do you think that Dream Jungle should have included a glossary?  I think that one of the major successes of the novel is that even without notes on translation, Hagedorn’s prose is lucid and evocative enough so that the reader can gain understanding of the words or phrases contextually and within the included sentences.  In fact, in some instances, I feel that the un-translated, italicized words were more effective in relating emotion, confusion, and sentiment.  The mix of Tagalog, German, Spanish, English and other languages intertwined the narratives of the individual yet interconnected stories.  It is interesting to note that language, particularly such a mix of languages, are that which binds the characters together.  Walter Benjamin, in his 1923 essay entitled “The Task of the Translator” asserts that translation is a mode, and therefore, one of the key elements in this mode is the original, and its meaning, particularly tied to the “translatability” of the original.  Then, because there is a temporal quality to the original and its relation to the translation, it is through the translation that the original work sustains and maintains a “continued life.”  Hagedorn’s decision to include in the text words that are un-translated echo Benjamin’s observations of translatability, not necessarily that the words cannot be translated, but that the text is better served by leaving the words un-translated, that their force as linguistic modes is more powerful in the original.  There is also the sense of a sustained life, in the telling and retelling of a tale in several translations, moving contextual and historical information to fit the language of the new translated text.

Walter Benjamin’s essay “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” moves between analyses of several creative mediums- from woodcutting to lithography, to painting to film. These mediums each have their own unique qualities that allow for reproduction, and because of this are viewed on different planes and places in the art world. Benjamin identified the advent of photography as the impetus for debate that looks at the reproducibility of an object that is inherently a refraction of the original. Though a photograph may seem the most tangible representation of the truth and yet, by the very nature of the process, it is an inversion of the image, let alone the factors that play into the set up of the shot. Photographic reproductions also come into play when thinking about the methods of reproduction that are employed. When thinking about postmodern art, the reassignment of objects, their essence and meaning, plays a large role in the presentation of the artwork. The original object, whether it is Jeff Koons and his basketballs in a glass case-Three Ball Total Equilibrium Tank (Two Dr J Silver Series, Spalding NBA Tip-Off) , Sherrie Levine taking pictures of famous photographs and presenting them with such titles as After Walker Evens #13, or even Andy Warhols Brillo boxes made to look exactly like the product, the recontextualization of the original intention of the object provides a great dialogue. (There is a great Andy Warhol exhibition at the Corcoran Gallery of Art, with a lot of stuff from the Warhol Museum in Pittsburg, I highly recommend it) Whether they are commodity critics or anti-aesthetes, some postmodern artists are aware of the modes of reproduction available in their work. They revel in this fact, and employ methods that both critique and rely on these techniques.
I would like to make an argument, tying in Benjamins assertions of art and mechanical reproduction, to look at an artist who in no way, shape, or form would be considered postmodern, and is in fact does not fall into any high art categories- Thomas Kinkade. If the cockles of your heart have not yet been warmed by his beautifully tranquil cottage scenes, or the magnificent renderings of light at dusk, please peruse his website. Thomas Kinkade Apart from the accessibility of the object of his art, Kinkade is also the ultimate in mass reproduction. His art sells in his own, individually managed retail stores. There are levels that a collector or his art can attain, depending on how many Kinkades one owns. The process of Kinkades work is where the reproducibility comes into play. An original, painted by the artist will fetch a good amount of money, though for the consumer, unable to drop that kind of dough, Kinkade has an army of trained highlighters who paint some colors, mostly accentual, onto poster prints of the work. These are ostensibly cheaper, and yet are a big part of the Kinkades goals of having his work present in each and every American household. There are echoes of this sort of process in Benjamins discussion of mechanical reproduction, when he states, the work of art reproduced becomes the work of art designed for reproducibility (224). In a very postmodern moment, in 2001, a community was built in Vallejo, California, with homes modeled after and furnished and decorated with the work of Thomas Kinkade. For about $425,000 (in 2001) you could buy a property in this Kinkade village and live in perfect tranquility, as if you were actually a part of the art work.

With all the different elements running through the narrative in Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon, it is difficult to find a place to start.  This text, which is so imbued with history, language, place and folklore, is almost too overwhelming to dissect, and yet, I found it to be the most approachable story that we have read/watched thus far.  Perhaps this is due to the numerous and evocative descriptions of place.  I am looking back at the recently posted blog by “zpeterse.”  Here, one reader of the text identifies with the sights and smells of a certain place, the south side of Chicago.  I grew up in neighborhood called Marquette Park in Southside Chicago, and am familiar with the amalgamation of smells that waft through the air (our house was blocks away from a Nabisco factory, and no they didn’t give free cookie samples, believe me, I tried). My ties to this place help to define who I am.  What is also interesting about this text is what a full spectrum of experience helps to define place and time.  Milkman, when he is in Shalimar, becomes homesick, not just for the familiarity of place, but also misses his family and friends.  The elements of folklore also present in this story – the myth of flying, the story of Icarus – also work to create the story of a family that is now named Dead.  Though at first Milkman is driven by the greed for gold to travel the country and find his roots, on his journey his sentiments change, and he is more interested and driven by the want to know about his family, his “people.”  The struggle of this journey is echoed in the complexity of finding African American family histories, which are not always readily available.  As an aside-I work in the Alexandria Library at the Local History/Special Collections Division.  We are working now to compile a database of Slave Births, for the years 1850-1864.  This index asked slave owners to register all slave births, with names, dates, and counties in Virginia.  As I am going through and entering the information, the lists are full of mistakes, misspellings, blank spaces.  This is but a small part of the issue, but it does show the precarious nature of tracing African American family histories through slavery and beyond.  Morrison, in Song of Solomon, creates a family epic, spanning generations, which seeks to explore both the history of the family and the future of their histories

In my second viewing of the film Memento, I was struck as to how many of the details in my first viewing I had glossed over, in order to make sense of the plot.  I blame this entirely on Guy Pearce’s hotness and my inability to focus, because he is so hot.  But I digress.  I would like to explore the elements of film noir echoed in Memento.  In the spirit of postmodern intertexuality and self-referentiality, Memento draws from the noir genre and reworks the elements to create a unique story.  The noir trope of the flawed protagonist is reflected in Leonard’s character.  Though, in this case, the flaw seems overwhelming, as Leonard’s auterograde amnesia, his inability to retain short-term memory, makes him a highly unreliable narrator.  This in turn complicates all of the relationships in the film.  I am reminded of Double Indemnity (1944), directed by Billy Wilder, both in terms of character types and mode of storytelling, and also in cinematographic details.  The narrative form of Double Indemnity is the real time confessions of Walter Neff, played by Fred MacMurray, played out with the flashback narrative, which tells the story.  The scenes when Walter Neff is talking into a dictaphone, confessing his crime, telling his side, seems to reappear again, reworked in the scenes when Leonard is on the phone in the hotel room, telling his own story.  These flashbacks are set off in Memento by black and white filming, setting this narration apart from the rest of the story.  These scenes also hearken back to noir, in cinematographic details, particularly having to do with light.  Leonard is in a hotel room, the scene is shot in black and white, and the play of light both off his face and in the room is reflective of concerns with light patterns in noir film, particularly ones cause by Venetian blinds.  This partial obscurity, caused by streams of light, emphasize the theme of noir film, that nothing is what it seems, that there are facts obscured and unseen by the characters and also the audience.  In Memento, the way that the light streams into the room, when Leonard is on the phone, casting shadows and illuminations, suggests that even this moment of confession, or telling, is somehow partially obscured.  Another element of film noir is the femme fatale- in Double Indemnity she is Phyllis Dietrichson, played by Barbara Stanwyck, who plots with Walter Neff to kill off her husband and collect insurance money on the double indemnity clause.  This character type is reflected in Natalie, who like Phyllis, is not entirely who she makes herself out to be, and in some way manipulates the protagonist.  Though, again, Memento, in its modern day reworking of the genre, complicates the already complicated by the unsteadiness and shaky ground established by Leonard’s inability to create short-term memories, and his sheer vulnerability to manipulation by strangers, from Burt issuing two hotel rooms, to Teddy’s murder-for-hire plots.  The intertextual details and unique plot sequencing make for an intriguing film.  The concern with seeking out the truth, the truth that is so sublimated and obscured, so seemingly unattainable, is offset by Memento’s depictions of the process of finding truth (even if it doesn’t exist), an equally important venture. 

bell hooks, in her essay entitled “Postmodern Blackness” confronts several key issues in postmodern discourse that address the African American voice, both critical and participatory.  I would like to look closer at her discussion of “yearning” and the ways that this “psychological state” plays a part in a medium, namely rap, that hooks identifies as a positive and creative outlet and public forum for African Americans.  She states that, “it has enabled underclass black youth to develop a critical voice…a ‘common literacy.’ Rap projects a critical voice, explaining, demanding, urging.”  If rap is identified as a postmodern music, with the sampling of beats and lyrics and assimilation of music genres and forms, then the freedom of the African American voice that hooks identifies as a part of rap, is a positive outlet and art form, even when dabbling in postmodern constructs.  hooks points to Lawrence Grossberg’s essay “Putting the Pop Back into Postmodernism” which states: “The postmodern sensibility appropriates practices as boasts that announce their own–and consequently our own–existence, like a rap song boasting of the imaginary (or real–it makes no difference) accomplishments of the rapper.  From the earliest roots of hip hop to the present day manifestations of the form; from the Bronx battles of Kool Herc and Grandmaster Flash to the flow of Notorious BIG, the ability to express and the want to boast has been a part of the scene.  As Grossberg points out, it made no difference that the boasts were real: BIG drew what he rapped about from stories he heard on the street, and not necessarily from his own life.  Yet, this form of music enabled the African American inner city voice to be heard.  It is also interesting to look at the way that graffiti, a part of hip hop culture, subsumes and recontextualizes the utility of the subway train, and in so doing, provides the canvas for another voice to emerge.  For an interesting discussion of the history of graffiti art, I recommend Taking the Train: How Graffiti Art Became an Urban Crisis In New York City by Joe Austin.  In looking at The Intuitionist, at the struggle of the African American voice therein, I go back to Kira’s discussion of the end of the novel, and the ways that Lila Mae attempts to reconcile the revelations.  Lila Mae, in stating, “Intuitionism is communication. That simple. Communication with what is not-you” (241).  In light of the book, the “not-you” is elevators, and the ways that they work and don’t work.  In a larger context, even within the text, Intuitionism can be a way of communicating with the “not-you” who is of a different race, cultural background, sexual orientation, and so forth.  Learning to navigate the difficulties of communication and finding the voice that allows that is the most important task.

I was flipping through Preservation Magazine at work and thought that this article would be interesting in light of our class discussion about Lathe of Heaven, utopia and Portland.

Though it is only an excerpt, the entire article is interesting in its assertions and concerns.

As the characters and, in turn, the reader travel through the multiple worlds that are the result of the dreams of Gregory Orr in Le Guin’s The Lathe of Heaven, the question arises as to the impulse for the changes and the mode through which the changes are enacted. In this text, language and the subtleties of meaning and expression play a key role in the development of the story and also contribute to one of the overarching themes- language is power and powerful and necessary and dangerous. Orr, the well-meaning, altruistic protagonist, is aware that the content of his dreams is “effective.” His role, at the onset, is passive, in the sense that, in the unconscious dream state Orr does not direct his dreams in one way or another, and thus does not actively change, through dreams, the paths of the world around him. He, in fact, attempts to suppress dreaming with drugs. Enter Dr. Haber, under whose care Orr is compulsorily placed. Once Haber figures out the gravity of the situation, he uses language, through persuasive statements uttered in the hypnotized state, to profoundly change the world around them. In a few instances, Le Guin expressively illustrates the subtlety of language and diction through example in the text. In Chapter 7, Heather Lelache hypnotizes Orr and states that he should dream that “Dr. Haber is benevolent…And you’ll dream that the Aliens aren’t out there on the Moon any longer” (109). In an eerie revelatory moment in the book, it becomes apparent that, because of Heather’s specific word choice, the Aliens were no longer on the Moon and now came to Earth. Another example of how language influences the passage of time and the realities of life, is when Dr. Haber implies in hypnosis that Orr should dream the elimination of all racial tensions. The result of such a dream is that people came in only one color- gray, which made them indistinguishable, and indicated that in the language of this world, the in-between was gray- the gray area.

Though not directly related, I am interested in the David Harvey reading, particularly in his presentation of Hassan’s “Schematic differences between modernism and postmodernism” and its juxtaposition of modernism’s concern with semantics and postmodernism’s concern with rhetoric. In analyzing the use of language as device in The Lathe of Heaven, one can see the suggestion of postmodern in the treatment of language as rhetoric. The definition of “rhetoric” in the Oxford English Dictionary is: “The art of using language so as to persuade or influence others; the body of rules to be observed by a speaker or writer in order that he may express himself with eloquence.” If one adheres to the idea that the postmodern text relies and revels in rhetoric, it seems that the subtleties of language and the effects it has on events in The Lathe of Heaven would exemplify such a conclusion.

The issue of the circular nature of narrative in The Crying of Lot 49 is poignantly addressed in Carolyn’s posting. I am specifically referring to the passage she cites, and then expounds through a closer reading of not just the content of the conversation, but the implications that such a circular though has not only in the book, but also as a mode of explication for the author. Carolyn writes, “In this passage, Pynchon could be seen as pointing out that all the basic storylines have been done, so they will just continue to repeat themselves. It’s the challenge of the creator to bring something new to them.” The idea that a conversation between two characters is not only a vehicle for moving plot, but is also a comment on the form of narrative and ways that an author addresses issues of originality, is one that looks at the text as something other and more than the text itself.
Along those lines, and working with the question of narrative form in postmodern works, I would like to address the issue of repetition. In Don DeLillo’s story “Coming Sun. Mon. Tues.” my immediate reaction to repetition and the use of “or” to indicate place and time is to view that as an indication of the arbitrariness of such details (where the characters are) and the implications of such an approach. DeLillo writes, describing the abortionist, “He has a moustache and long, elegant fingers” (392). Then a few sentences later describes a series of tall men, “He is interviewed by a series of tall men with elegant fingers” (392). Repetition is a literary device that can emphasize and draw attention. In excess, repetition can indicate the arbitrary nature of what is being repeated. I don’t think that in the case of the men with “long elegant fingers” in DeLillo’s story or the repetition in the circularity of Pynchon’s narrative indicates arbitrariness of what is being described, but instead as in Andy Warhol’s Campell’s Soup Cans, repetition allows the audience to decipher which of the elements, literary or artistic, are interchangeable, and which cannot stand one without the other and the other, in order to call attention to the object, person, thing.