Thoughts on Kifah Hanna

Dr. Hanna's lecture on contemporary levantine literature was a fantastic gateway for exploring societal views on sex and sexuality all over the world. While her work revolved around Arab countries moving from liberal views to ultra conservative she neatly contrasted these with differences seen in the western world. I found it incredibly interesting that past works that were considered unsavory were censored to make up for the Arab decline, I in a way I feel like very few countries could get away with this somewhat successfully due to the circulation of written works. Compare Greek culture to Arab culture for a brief moment, the Greeks couldn't try to cover up past works featuring homoeroticism if they tried because it was such an integral part of their culture however people exporting Greek works tried their hardest in most cases to cover up some of the more unsavory details behind the themes of their artwork. However in the case of Arab works revolving around homoeroticism the country has been very successful in censoring their own works while the rest of the world curiously wishes to de-censor the restricted works to better learn about the secretive culture. The Arab over compensation for the apparent decline of its own culture is very interesting that the first thing they turn to is repressing sexuality, prior to the introduction of the western world they were seemingly free to go about expressing themselves, whether or not that expression was taken seriously is another matter, however upon the introduction of western society the eastern Arab cultures learned shame and over compensated for their previously hedonistic ways by forcibly driving those cultural aspects into a veritable underground domain. Now on the flip side the Arab world is seen as being far too controlling and in comparison to the ever loosening hold on ethical behavior seen in the west, its like they can never win. The sexual ethics of the Arab world can be seen in  two lights, the first being overly condemning and the second being a different perspective. I supposed I see the Arab treatments of sexuality as being both highly restrictive yet refreshing in a way, they downplay sex but emphasize beauty, they downplay sexual distractions and sex work, yet allow it as a utilitarian mechanism for society to survive. While I do not believe love and desire should be seen as an unfortunate necessity in any society it is very interesting to see that even in the dark the works of the few brave writers can thrive and on occasion when the conservative control of society least suspects it it creeps through the culture little by little infiltrating the thoughts of many.

Jodie Mack: A Review

Jodie Mack was as vibrant as the short films she showed, and I was loving it. Not only did she draw in the biggest crowd out of all the lecturers but she did nothing but make good on her promise of wowing us with her art work. On a more serious note I'll start out with saying that the fine arts has always been a soft spot for me being that a vast majority of the people in my family are involved with the field in someway or another. Out of the two films that she showed us I have to say that I fell in love with "The Saddest Song" at first sight, I mean even though I don't believe that people can fall in love at first sight doesn't mean that a person can't fall in love with something at first sight right? I guess she caught me off guard by making her films kind of a one woman show, sure we went into it expecting nice art work and good creative vision but on top of that she did her own vocal performance and had fantastic themes throughout her works. The vocal performance (one of my favorite parts) was adorably well tuned, it fit the overall quirky, half-baked theme of things that came across in both pieces and kind of made me feel like I was at an open mic night at some off beat yet popular in the unpopular way independent coffee shop. While Ms.Mack's work spoke on the greater themes of love I felt more touched by her initial disclosure that her films speak of her inner desire to be loved in that silly sweet way. If only there were more disclosures like that in this world, after all it gave great insight to why she would pick the silly happy feel good themes that she did, and for that I am ever grateful. We haven't had many opportunities in this class to see the ultra positive side of love with just a touch of that saccharine sweetness that we all crave so this was much needed to say the least. Ms. Mack was able to convey some more serious themes about modern relationships such as confronting strain of money issues and being single but ultimately what I thought was going to be a more depressing film turned about to be adorably sweet. Going back to the artist herself during the Q&A session after the films Ms. Mack was asked about her film making process to which she responded that the division of work was hard to outline because her pieces are constantly existing in all states of pre-production, post-production, and production. I found this to be quite profound because her pieces exist in those states and revolve around some romantic themes while love itself always exists in those forms all at once. We are either looking for the next person, being caught up on the current one, and reminiscing about the past ones making love less of a cycle and more of conglomeration of parallel states none of which are tangible but all of which exist.

Thoughts on Garren Small

It's OK Mr.Small, I don't resent you for trying to call on me as I absent mindedly scratched my cheek after you read of one of your poems, and I certainly don't mind that you called me out on my apparent dismay at being noticed. Seriously though, that is something I am guilty of doing to my own audience members every time I have to give presentation and such. All kidding aside Garren Small was one of our most engaging and participation enthusiastic speakers that we have had the pleasure of hosting in this class to date. Having overheard some coffee talk before the lecture I was surprised that Mr. Small identified himself as having majored in political science, after all its not too often that we see a future politician turned successful poet.  Mr. Small was charmingly engaged with his audience, not seeing this as an opportunity to stand up on his soapbox in the limelight instead he actively tried to engage the audience in critique, open repertoire, and interpretations of his work and the works of his favorite poets. In short egocentric is the last thing that I would use to describe Mr. Small, after all it is incredibly refreshing to see such an established individual try so hard to interact with his audience, and on top of that be so amazed with the different off the cuff interpretations that his readings received. Mr. Small's work spoke volumes on the overall themes of our class, the title of his lecture "Fires Dared to Ignite" was something that he touched upon briefly yet deeply. According to Mr. Small the fires that are dared to ignite is the love worth pursuing, this imagery is not unheard of in any of the works that we've been exposed to. Its something about the unbridled force of nature, a burning flame, that inspires, scares, excites, and helps us relate to our own helpless emotions. A fire once ignited is not controlled, it can only be corralled to a point before it gets out of hand, much like the passion of one individual for another. You fall in love, you fall deeper in love, and then you get hurt, and you get over it, this cycle is like lighting a match and holding it between your finger tips, the flame first flickers to life, then grows to the point where it not longer is in danger of fizzling out, but then things get out of control and the larger the flame grows out of your control the closer it is to burning your finger tips. Eventually this cycle ends with the flame being forcefully smothered by the person holding the match or by itself if the person cant let go for some reason, either way it ends but it can begin again. However the cycle can never end or begin if it is the fire that wasn't dared to ignite, the love not pursued, the fall not taken, the chance not seized. According to Mr. Small being in love, falling in love, and opening yourself up to another person takes some courage,and that's why its a dare and not just a step or something spontaneous out of the blue.

For The Love of Brain Systems

Ok, so this was the lecture we've all been waiting for and may I say that it did not disappoint. Dr. Brown was a very enigmatic and clever lecturer, she presented her information with such a refreshing excitement that I couldn't help but to feel more engaged in the further she got along. I suppose its a strange way to look at things but like with Dr. Freund the more excited that she got about her own research the more excited I got for her after all its very rare that in the field of neuroscience that someone can get away with building a body of research on brain phenomena related to love and desire, its actually relatively unheard of.  What makes Dr. Browns research so interesting is the premise that its based on, it basically says love and desire are real things and they are important to the overall quality of human life, unlike many areas of science which like to water it down to a simple mating mechanism. So now that shes spent a majority of her professional career solidifying the science behind what makes us tick, what have we learned from it? From her studies in early stage intense romantic love or the honeymoon and courting period as I like to call it, I couldn't help but to wonder if there were better implications for this kind of research except dealing with late stage fading romantic love. For example the kind of stimulus and brain scans tests that she performed could be used to differentiate the traditionally different forms of love that we have all been taught about  (Philia, eros, stroge, and agape) and therefore might be used to better tailor marriage counseling techniques towards shifting the subconscious views of ones mate from a friend/enemy complex and back over to the passionate romantic love that we all want in our lives. Dr. Brown noted that there was an interesting overlap in some individuals in her studies of sexual arousal and romantic  love, but that it was a few isolated cases. I cant help but to wonder if that is the byproduct of negative conditioning around what is deemed the acceptable nature of love, a personality survey could help clear up some of that confusion, if the individuals stated views of love deeply involve sexual feeling then naturally they're brain scans will indicate both arousal and romantic love firing off at the same time. That area of her research could also be explored further to delve into the different kinds of sexualities, such as asexual individuals. If an individual is truly and naturally asexual (meaning not caused by some altering incident) then they should be capable of romantic responses but not arousal stimuli, and in a person with an aversion to sex for negative reasons their scans should indicate both mild arousal and disgust. Dr. Brown also stated that her findings indicate that the core system of romance is related to vital need and the reward and drive area of the brain, so my question comes to mind "could a stalker be created?" On a general research level there have been plenty of studies in which the hypothalamus of some poor lab animal is assaulted to simulate a condition called hyperphagia, or insatiable hunger, and this is done with relative ease in a lab setting. If a condition like hyperphagia can be recreated multiple times over then you could easily alter other areas of the brain that keep lovers scoring at the top of the passionate love scale from toppling down the dark side of affection. Therefore if the reward and drive area of the brain associated with romantic love and inhibition of social actions was altered then a stalkerish like behavior could be simulated and perhaps lead to the discovery of abnormal neural morphology in certain categories of sex offenders. So who said love research isn't valuable?

Thoughts on Slaverys Interior

Out of all the guest lecturers that we have had the pleasure of learning from and engaging with Dr. Reed certainly took the memo of think out side the box to heart. Yes, I will fully admit I was a skeptic when I saw the title of his lecture "Slavery's Interior- Cinema and the Performative Traumas of History" I mean how on earth was this supposed to relate to our love and desire class? Well he accepted the challenge and made it work. Dr. Reed presented a very original view on the subject of desire and how it applies to our world, in the case of his work desire was something people wanted to be in control of and still do. The way he put it was that the act of enslaving another individual was the act of keeping alive someone who would rather die. In essence this describes the enslaver as one who wishes to control the desire of others (his slaves) but ultimately is the victim of his own desires to control others, somewhat of a means of compensation for the lack of self control. In multiple ways the overall idea and theme of slavery can be applied in many ways, such as the traditional sense of slavery which Dr. Reed has analyzed through film for the purposes of his lecture and in the metaphorical sense which is what these films wish to appeal to. In these films on slavery the longing for freedom (the overarching theme of his talk) is the key representative of unfulfilled desire, film makers have been using slavery as a successful medium to capture the audiences longing for their own personal freedoms from self invented slaveries so to speak .To put it plainly after seeing a film like Amistad a mid level cubicle worker may feel justified enough to break free of the bonds of his deadend employment and pursue the finer things in life, however on the other hand you may have the exact same office worker return to his work the next day with renewed fervor for his previously undesirable employment. This train of thought follows suit with what Dr. Reed summed up near the end of the lecture that we see slavery where we want to see it and we also craft freedom where we want it. Just like love and hate can coexist in the same object simply based on the perspective of who is judging it (refer to the text Celestina where the differing views of Calisto and Sempronio on Melibea are examined in detail if you catch my drift) slavery and freedom can also represent a similarly skewed image dichotomy. What is a miserable trapped existence to one person is freedom and joy to another, it all depends upon the perspective, consider the role of Stephen (Samuel L. Jackson) in Django Unchained. By modern standards being a house slave to the same family for your entire life and being put in the position of having to discipline other people in a similarly unfair plight would be hell for most, but for Stephen he wanted nothing of any other life but his life long servitude. Perspective plays a larger role in desire then we think it does, although desire persists as something that we all experience it bears a new face in every setting, it can be wanting something badly or loathing something to an extent that you want to be rid of it.

Before Sunset Reflections

I suppose in retrospective that saying that Celine and Jesse would meet again but not under the promised pretenses would have been a safe bet to make in my reflection for Before Sunrise but I guess we can all be half right in our respective assumptions on whether or not we thought they would meet in the promised 6 month time span. I have to say off the cuff that I did rather enjoy the film, and while the ending was not what I would consider ideal or realistic in any stretch of the imagination we have to carefully remember that the story between the two lovers in nowhere near ideal or realistic, nor are the lovers themselves. If Jesse and Celine had to be grouped into a particular relationship archetype I would see them as the ones that almost got away, not quite the fated couple or the star crossed lovers but rather old flames that never died out fully.  While in Before Sunrise Jesse was seen as the bright eyed young adventurer and Celine the beautiful yet bored damsel in distress of her own making, the characters didn’t progress much in terms of moving beyond those roles in the sequel. Instead they are both seen as slightly older versions of themselves yet Jesse is still gallivanting across the globe, only this time as a successful writer, and Celine is still making her normal life miserable for herself despite her apparent success.  Celine is seen as having fallen into a sort of dormant romantic state, a strange mid ground between being in love and wanting to be loved; instead she wants to feel love on her end. To me Celine is facing the rare predicament of being the beloved, placed so high on the pedestal that she is isolated from experiencing the feelings that other have for her. She experiences an absence of feeling because being with Jesse for that short albeit intense 24 hour time span has effectively raised her threshold for what she sees as the ultimate high of love to the point where no one else can stimulate her feelings. However can the feelings that exist between the two really be referred to as love, perhaps it drifts dangerously close to the desire side of the boarder. In the café scene of the film where the two discuss desire I found it oddly reminiscent of the famous telephone scene at the restaurant in the first film, Jesse openly address what it’s like to be freed from your desires but Celine steadfastly counters that desire is a necessity for life most likely due to their predicament where Jesse has spent the last 9 years trying to let this girl go and she has spent the past 9 years being resentful about letting him slip through her fingers.

Steve Almond

On the 12th of March in the year 2013 an amazing writer named Steve Almond came to give a lecture about his writing on the themes of love and desire, and a certain prosthetics and orthotics major who attended his lecture would never be the same again. In all seriousness Mr. Almond was a fantastic lecturer and if given the chance I would most definitely attend another lecture given by him, he had an amazing presence and charismatic control of the audience which let it be known that this was an open forum for any kind of question. However keep in mind that it was no holds barred on his end and that if you asked a question you were going to get your answer regardless of whether or not you were really ready for the answer. Mr. Almond had the amazing ability to take 2 of the things in this world that make me the most uncomfortable, put them together, and make a rather nice story about called Skull. Based on my chosen field of studies you can assume one of two things about me, either A. that I am an amputee fetishist, or B. that I am terrified of amputee fetishists. I hate to spoil it for you but I fall in the latter category, anything involving that subject is incredibly uncomfortable for me, after all I'm trying to put them back together once they've been stripped down not strip them down and then put them back together. Therefore addressing that this is a unique career issue that people come across from time to time is something that I have wholly avoided thus far no thanks to Mr. Almond! The other factor to my discomfort was the graphicness of his sex scenes, graphic literary sex scenes are something that I have never been too keen on, after all when you follow a character you watch them grow and surmount obstacles, its like watching a dear friend progress through a period in their life, and do you really want to watch your dear friends describe sex on a brutally honest level? I certainly hope not. All of this being said I am glad that this happened because while he took me to a peak of some very extreme discomfort he didn't leave me there, just like the main narrator of his story, he took us there and back to the safe place of understanding without abandoning the reader or the character.  The way Mr. Almond treats his characters is the way a lot of people wish they could confront life, a gentle hand pushing them towards both good and bad but never ever abandoning them along the way. When he read Skull aloud I was shocked, but by the end of it once I had taken a moment to process everything I appreciated that Mr. Almond was such a fantastic writer, I wasn't alone in my experience, I was right there with the narrator sitting on his couch internally begging his buddy to not continue down the path of over sharing, and while we were both powerless to stop the experience (a feeling akin to watching a train wreck: frozen by the horror but its too good to look away) we are wiser people for it. The way that Mr. Almond applies the themes of love and desire to his work is amazing to put it simply,  He treats it as a challenge to himself as a writer to be able to successfully portray this complex set of human feelings. Sure he could have chosen a different set of equally complex feelings like grief and misery, but by portraying love and desire he challenges himself to work past the cliche fantasy of love that most art forms abuse. Just like he noted in his lecture that pornography is the fantasy of sex, I saw a parallel that most mediums in the art world are a fantasy of love but that desire has the unique ability to persist as something not quite artificial in either portrayal.

Sexuality and The Police State (Halfaouine)

Like  most films for this class I like to go in with a blank palate and an open mind so I try my hardest to resist the ever nagging temptation to just go ahead and look up all of the spoilers a girl would ever need, and in this case I am especially glad that I was able to resist that temptation because I feel like going into this film blindly really opened me up to not passing an early judgement on it. Halfaouine is an onion of a film if there ever was one, layers upon layers of different meanings, the film is still quite enjoyable on the superficial end of things, more risque on the innuendo level, and a serious allegory in the subtext, but overall I think that any open minded audience (generally the same population of viewers that don't mind subtitles) could find a good lens to see things through that helps relate the movie to their own life. Now granted without Dr. Lang's lecture I will be the first to admit that I would have missed out on the entire allegorical subtext that alludes to the change of power in contemporary Tunisia which was an incredibly powerful realization for me and it gave the film so much more of an impact. At first it came off as a slightly risque and goofy coming of age film with undertones of civil unrest. The undertones of civil unrest I felt were mirroring the unrest that adolescent Noura was feeling with his place in society, being too old to be privy to the secret lives of women yet too young to be able to run with the bulls so to speak. At that point in life Noura faces the challenges of gaining recognition in the eyes of male society while at the same time having to betray the trust that the female society puts in him as an innocent young boy, we see this when he steals his aunts bras and trades them to a local teenager, when he infiltrates the bath house to spy on the local girls, and when he tricks the young beautiful housemaid into some suggestive situations. Noura feels uncomfortable being in between these two worlds as we can see when he seeks maternal comfort after getting in trouble, yet I cant help but wonder is the maternal world being too coddling for Noura? Being the first born son in any culture sort of puts you at an automatic predisposition to be spoiled beyond all belief and from my view point his mother was too protective and too babying, while on the other hand his father was nowhere near the father figure that he needed. In a society where a young man can only prove himself as a man by being defiant and acting out sexually there is no real place for a 12 year old and Noura was forced to grow up too early in my eyes, however when portrayed by the film its clear that he didn't mind at all. To bring it all together Nouras coming of age reminded me oddly enough of the story of creation and the banishment of Adam and Eve. Where we can see God and the garden of Eden as the fruitful maternal nurturing private sphere of women where young Noura was safe, and then once tempted by thought of growing up and knowing the world of men Noura subsequently banishes himself from the women's world by gaining knowledge he was not yet meant to have and is therefore doomed to spend the rest of his young life toiling for the things he once had such free access too.

Love and desire in the Penny Press

As corny as it sounds I thoroughly enjoyed Dr. Burt's style of correlational research because this was the first time I had really seen it done in a proper and approachable way. In her presentation she outlined the exact way she went about doing the research in a manner that practically help our hand and guided us through the process. In most fields we are cautioned about correlational research because "correlation is not causation" said about 80 past and present professors of mine, however Dr. Burt used this style of research to its strongest advantage: the researcher cannot affect the trends of the data. Now while anybody can skew their data, historical research has the benefit of not creating an environment where the data will be altered due to the presence of an on going study. However that being said on to more important things like her presentation itself. Dr. Burt's presentation was very enjoyable, from my perspective it was like being taught the proliferation of "the rag", you know those of sub-par newspapers whose contents you might need a 3rd grade education at best to decipher its more complex stories. The wood block cuts and scans of old New York Times issues were like seeing early cave paintings that would evolve into US weekly, but I suppose the most interesting thing about her lecture was the view of a woman's place in the that day and time and thinking about it in retrospective I wouldn't have lasted a day. I guess its kind of taken for granted that nowadays we have the freedom to pursue higher education (or education of any kind for that matter). I cant help but to speculate if shortly after the time period covered by Dr. Burt did the readership of the penny press turn more sharply towards the female audience? and if so is this where the stereotype of the female gossip obsession stems from for America? Thinking about it now, if the only female oriented writing was about gossip then there wouldn't be much else out there for young women growing up, especially in the boring domestic sphere, in fact that kind of seclusion could have easily tailored the popular taste of women towards that kind of stimulation. While the sentimental writing was described by Dr. Burt as prescriptive literature used to teach moral values and act as examples and cautionary tales to vulnerable young ladies I can also see this kind of scintillating gossip rag being used as a different kind of prescriptive literature, the kind that cures boredom. As low brow as it may come across I believe that the popular literature among the working class american citizens in the industrial revolution offered a kind of romantic escapism for the women of the day, it was an accessible way to breath new life into old surroundings for those trapped housewives similar to the way Emma Bovary found her escapism in different affairs.

Ancient Love and Desire

I really fell in love with Dr. Freunds lecture, which was the whole point of this class right? all kidding aside I do have an openly known soft spot for Greek art so when he started linking the usage of some of the Greek artistic staples in the Jewish culture I was floored, to me the two worlds were never meant to meet and yet they did and it went quite swimmingly. The use of symbols and religious iconography is something that's been present for almost as long as religion has been around whether it was a physical artistic interpretation or a literary interpretation so touching on the roots and the taboo nature of such a thing is huge. The key points that really struck me in this lecture were closely related in my eyes, Dr. Freund left us with the open ended questions of why was Leda and the swan depicted on a Jewish tomb, and why was Zeus abducting ganymedes found on the frieze of a synagogue? My only speculative answers for Dr. Freund stem from my very light background in Greek art and architecture: They were warning signs. Yes, a popular theory I'm sure but it holds some merit. If the Jews believed that idols of Astarte could help with fertility and were allowable by their religion because they weren't really worshiping it and just using to as a good luck charm then they could have just as easily followed the same pattern with the horrific themes of Greek art. It was a very common practice for the ornate temples of ancient Greece to feature horrible creatures and monsters of folk lore such as the Medusa that was pictured directly next to Zeus and Ganymedes on the synagogue frieze. These images were intended to bar evil from entering the house of worship, sort of like an ancient form of a home security system, so instead of ADT protecting a suburban cookie cutter house you would have the gaping maw of Medusa protecting a sacred temple. I think the theme of the frieze was designed to stay within the themes of Greek culture because they were popular images, and perhaps did not violate the commandment that banned the creation of religious iconography after all according to the Jewish religion Zeus, Ganymedes, and Leda never existed. While Zeus and Ganymedes are not as horrible at face value I think the story could have easily been used a cautionary tale following along the lines of "That's something the Greeks would do, however we would never do something like that and here is a reminder to keep you on the straight and narrow!". I feel like the depiction of Leda and the swan on the tomb could be explained along the same lines, the image beautifully condemns 2 horrific acts at once: bestiality and rape. The image of the vulnerable woman and the attacking swan is both beautiful and terrifying, something that could be used as both protection for the dead and ornamentation for the living. In the back of my mind there is another simple explanation for the occurrence of the images: were the stories ever censored? while it may sound ridiculous it wouldnt be the first time censorship has occluded historys view of the world. Imagine if the graphic nature of these myths had been lost in translation? and that the stories were "simplified" to preserve the popularity of the art across cultures, if someone did come across the true story they might have been so shocked that they would have spread the word around and eventually Ganymedes and Zeus become a boy being protected by one of gods fiercely loving creatures, and Leda and the swan could have become simply the beautiful Leda having her purity artfully protected by one of gods most loving creatures. Now image if you you reviewed the images with that being your only background information, desire and lust are transformed into love and protection so easily it could fool you.

Lecture 2: Seeking love after divorce

I found Dr. Miller-Otts lecture this week very interesting because for once I could relate from a more personal level as many of my classmates could as well. After hearing the title of the lecture I was honestly expecting a very dry technical presentation of numbers and rough correlations, but instead I was treated to the most enthusiastic of lecturers and a relateable presentation where her research was very well thought out and presented from the human aspect. Several things from this presentation interested me to a fairly good degree, granted I have little to no experience with "social" research but the view points that she presented on her topic were very well put and opened up her ideas to further consideration. The key point that stuck out to me the most was the concept of selective disclosure between former spouses, here you have two people who have spent a considerable amount of time working up the courage to feel comfortable enough to tell one another everything and then that all is cut off very abruptly. The expected issues that would result from this are perhaps feelings of abandonment coupled with vulnerability due to information that you can't take back and followed up with little to no further disclosure. For example during my own parents divorce watching one try to communicate with other was literally like watching a dentist trying to pull teeth  from a patient with lockjaw, and even after it was finalized the amount of information that they were willing to disclose to each other bordered on what you would feel open enough telling the barista at your local Starbucks and what you might chat about with your gas station attendant. Now all of this being said I am not trying to generalize that all former spouses display this level of control over their right to disclose information but I did find that part of her research quite true to life. Social disclosure is something we all deal with regardless of being married at one point in your life, after all this is how we bond with people on a basic level and form meaningful relationships and we have all felt the consequences of learning the levels of appropriate versus inappropriate disclosure the hard way. Putting this all into perspective in terms of my own life makes me wonder how the different forms of love relate to the level of disclosure, considering that the amount of love could hypothetically relate to a "number" level of disclosure and the same could be said for a negative number, or the backlash of what occurs when the love is replaced by hate. On a conceptual level the amount of disclosure the average person is willing to commit to in any given relationship could be associated with a certain magnitude of love where the amount of actual affectionate love would be indicated on the positive side of the scale and the amount of disdain and hate would be on the negative side of the scale with complete indifference falling in the middle at a zero. While there is no true way to measure this kind of thing due to the subjectivity of its nature Dr.Miller-Ott went about her research in a similar fashion; doing the best to narrow down the core feelings of the participants to single out common occurrences in all of them. I guess it would be safe to say that I thoroughly enjoyed her lecture because we had not really had the chance to touch on what happens after love that doesn't end in some tragic suicide.

Dr. Borcks lecture on love and friendship in relation to postmodern politics was a very refreshing perspective that we have yet to see in this class.  When we discuss love and desire in this course and the coupled one that took place last semester we normally discussed these "issues" in the context of art, literature, and personal relations. When discussing love and desire we have put a strong emphasis on the image of the other created to ultimately fill a void in the self, however Dr. Borcks research brings to light the different kinds of love and pondered by Plato and it put a stronger emphasis on our concept of the other and where it comes from and why we can either love it or be threatened by it. While I'm sure most people, much like myself found the work of Carl Schmidt hard to stomach his principle piece, the concept of the political, brought to light that the other can fall into two categories: The friend and the enemy. While Schmidts points on this dichotomous relationship were valid I felt he put far too much of an emphasis on the enemy and the meaning of it, without developing the idea of the friend much at all. From one view point I can understand that defining one through knowing the other is a perfectly acceptable way of understanding a concept however in this case he fell very short only because the issue is so complex. When Dr. Borck discussed the view point of naming the enemy says something about ones self and that by doing so a fraternal kinship is created with the enemy due to a certain kind of common ground likeness it really struck a cord with me. This begins to enter the area of questioning that revolves around what is the opposite of love, the first answer is always hate, however from my experiences when asked to define hate we say that it is the opposite of what we love. Therefore the two halves share a strong connection, somewhat like a mirrored image, essentially the same yet the complete opposite and this is where our hate of the enemy is born. That fact that we see all of the faults we wish to see fulfilled within the beloved exaggerated and exposed in the "hated" only makes us resent them more, its like a magnifying glass for imperfections. To bring it back to more of "Schmidt" styled answer think about the world political situation, as a world super power the US has a habit of wanting to correct and develop other nations, mostly ones with poor infrastructure and a unfairly governing body, but why is this? according to this theory we wish to do that because we can identify with the nation, we were there once and we refuse to be there again. By fearing a return to some sort of totalitarian regime and the decay of all we have worked for we try and fix these problems when we see them in other nations, out of some sort of disdain and hatred for the ruling body because it reflects what we never wish to be. On the other hand we have our allies, the other world powers with stable economies and fair ruling systems that we wish to best be and by being among their ranks we feel better about ourselves. The fraternal kinship that is commonly associated with the allies also works strongly for our relationships with our enemies because when taken out of our everyday concept of brotherly love it also encompasses brotherly resentment and brotherly competition. 

Before Sunrise Reflections

Before Sunrise was a uniquely beautiful film, which may have restored my faith in the romantic comedy genre by being so different then all the other fluff that is out there. While that isn't supposed to be a jab sat the film industry the statement holds some truth, after all you rarely see a romantic film left with such an open end, and in this particular film the open ending where the lovers vow to reunite in 6 months could reinterpret the entire film in a different way depending on how the viewer feels. For example lets say the viewer is a hopeless romantic and believes that unlike Celine's summer love that she and Jesse will reunite because they have something meaningful, the film now endures as a romantic love type movie. On the other hand the viewer could be more of a skeptic and interpret their romance as a fling like Celine predicted in the park and decide that they will not meet again in 6 months because the encounter was not meaningful enough for them to overcome their own pride/doubts. In the case of the later the film would be better classified as a study of sudden desire and passions that struck two people so violently that they were able to escape the reality of their lives for 24 hours and indulge themselves. However leaving the overall interpretation of the film aside there are many other themes throughout the story that relate to love and desire but on a more subconscious level, one of these themes is setting. The setting of the film caught my attention, it takes place in Vienna, which fun fact is the 9th largest city in Europe yet the pair always manage to be intimately alone in the most public of spaces (public transportation, shops, outdoor venues, restaurants, etc). These places emphasize that the two lovers aren't really experiencing reality for 24 hours, its something more akin to a dream, after all it is pretty sensational to ask a complete stranger to explore a city with you, develop feelings, have sex, and promise to meet again. The intimacy provided by the traditionally none intimate settings produces an overall feeling for the audience akin to a heightened sense of closeness, so that not only does it seem like the two characters are closer then they should be but that you feel the spontaneous connection that could be interpreted as love at first sight. Now that being said this film is not an example of love at first sight which I would characterize as  an infatuation based on appearances but instead it stresses the concept of love through conversation. The entire film is based on these two people having an amazingly open flow of communication which at times makes them rather vulnerable but ultimately it brings them closer together in the short time span that they do share. A prime example of this is the restaurant scene where the first few shots are panning the crowed environment zooming in on people connecting through speaking to each other rather then physical actions, and it is in this scene that Jesse and Celine hold their mock phone call. The mock phone call exercise was one of the most interesting focal points of the film because they use role play, pretending that the other is an impartial friend and use it as a sounding board for any doubts that they are harboring about their budding feelings. By voicing their hidden fears so publicly they are almost freed from the conventions of general romancing and they also manage to use each other to learn more about themselves. While everyone is searching for fulfillment through another person Jesse and Celine find some form of self discovery through their chance meeting because they almost dare themselves to be brutally honest because they quite frankly don't care what a stranger thinks and by being so honest and voicing it aloud for the first time they gain insight on themselves. I think this method of self discovery is like a critique of your work, while you may have worked out every angle and kink to your piece and thought of every weak point to defend actually having someone there to scrutinize your product creates the ultimate critic out of yourself because you realize vantage points that you may not have ever considered until that very moment. Unfortunately for modern romance lovers cannot seem to see that the risks of being this honest are outweighed by all the benefits that can come from it, and it is because of this sense of eternal vulnerability that relationships constantly suffer from lack of communication.

Thoughts on Annie Hall

To me Woody Allen has always been an acquired taste, however that being said Annie Hall was an unexpected treat to the romantic comedy genre because it was able to both fulfill the basic needs of what the viewer desires in a romantic comedy (escapism through transference between the actors and the audience, a lack of complete realism, and a generally light tone throughout the film) however it was also able to challenge the traditional values of the what it is to be a romantic comedy. For example the film did not portray the stereotypical happy ending, it chronicled his unsuccessful history with women in an unflattering light (meaning that it inferred they were all nice girls and that he was the problem), and it showed that the relationship between Annie and Alvy did not fully adhere to traditional gender roles. Alvy's unsuccessful history with women is shadowed by his Groucho Marx quote "I wouldn't want to belong to any club that would have me as a member" which can be interpreted in at least 2 ways effectively the first being that he always wants what he can not have whether it be the girl with the great career of the girl with the great sex drive, he'll never get both at once. It can also be interpreted that Alvy is the type of person who can see right through himself and refuses to believe that someone can accept him flaws and all, for example consider the subtitles in the balcony scene. In that scene Alvy chastises himself in the subtext for his vapid comments on Annie's photography hobby, therefore when a girl falls for him he searches out what is wrong with her, and ultimately thwarting his own romantic escapades.  The difference in gender roles gave the relationship between the two a very interesting dynamic, Alvy came off egocentric in his complaints and dominated most of the dialogue between himself and Annie where stereotypically as the woman Annie would be portrayed as the chatty one. Annie's choice of dress was also outside the normal gender roles where she is often seen donning androgynous menswear to which Alvy has surprisingly no complaint. the way these roles differ from the norm add an unexpected layer of realism to the film, women aren't always girls and men aren't always the strong silent type. The first conversation between Alvy and Annie is also unique because Alvy who represents the average man in all respects of the word is seen as quiet and calm when presented with his beautiful new tennis partner while the beautiful new tennis partner is shy, forward, awkward, and bumbles over her words in a way that you might expect a High school boy to act when he gets his first chance to talk to the head cheerleader. Alvy is also seen as the more squeamish male when confronted with live lobsters running amok and is driven around be Annie. A film with too many challenges to the accepted structure of society can have a cold reception so while Annie Hall does challenge gender roles in many ways it also comfortably conforms to some of the more popular ones such as poor female driving, the female spender, the male pursuing sex and the women rejecting it, the educated male who needs personal space, and the male rescuing the damsel in distress in the spider scene. While most of these roles are far more flattering to Alvy they also act redeem his character and give him some depth while they give Annie some flaws that make her seem more achievable to the audience. By humanizing Annie it reduces the disbelief caused by the unfair distribution of looks in the relationship, it doesn't take much to see that Annie would be considered out of Alvy's league in most circles but they make it work quite successfully. To me the pinnacle of the film came from the scene where Alvy asks random passerby's about relationship, most importantly when he talks to the old woman carrying groceries and to the younger couple walking down the street. The young couple have absolutely no response for Alvy, they are dull shallow and seemingly empty of individual thought or personal opinion as they walk down the street linked arm and arm with sides pressed flush together. This is reflective of how people become when the start dating, the individual becomes lost to the unit, and the two individuals function as a less capable "we", and to Alvy and the audience it foreshadows that he'll be better off single in the end. This being said the old woman carrying groceries carried the main theme of the film with her as well, when Alvy tries to stop her she responds to him famously that  "Love fades." and as simply as that she sums up the film in its entirety, that relationships even the ones that already ended carry and good lesson and memories for those involved and that is why this film does not have the textbook happy ending, instead Allen finishes the film with the lovers reminiscing instead of getting back together.