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.