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.

Concluding thoughts and other things

This semester is definitely coming to a good end with our final discussion pieces.  While the new yorker article and Kissing Jessica Stein both playfully reflect the truth of the matter when it comes to our modern concept of dating  (and how it differs from the ancient concept of courtly love) the Kristeva piece is a much denser introspective journey through the overall themes that we have been exploring. Kissing Jessica Stein not only used comedy to breakdown the sexuality barriers that surround our concept of romantic dating but it was also successful in using a woman's perspective to portray this modern quest for love. While everyone around Jessica feels that they can give her the best information on how to find the love she desires in her life none of them are actually successful because the desire that fuels our quest for love and fulfillment ultimately comes from within therefore no one knows what we want in a partner better then ourselves. The same concept holds true in the new yorker article on the online dating services, the couples that found each other first in the real world and then tested their compatibility against the matching making programs found that while they did have an incredibly high level of computable compatibility they weren't being told anything they didn't know. Therefore is it completely necessary to listen to the rest of the world when you are undertaking a search for love? I don't believe so but I do see some promise behind meeting someone through friends after all we naturally base friendships on a different type of love and enduring compatibility which is found by straining out our social networks to find the few good deep connections. By going through friends to meet someone you are putting the odds of finding someone who you can tolerate more in your favor rather then randomly meeting them on a street. To go back to my earlier example from Kissing Jessica Stein she ends up blindly meeting Helen along with several men before her all of whom do not end up working out for her beyond brief dating, this can be chalked up to dating before personality and emotional compatibility. If you go on a blind date with someone the odds of success are somewhat akin to winning a prize on a scratch-off lottery ticket, to put it bluntly that means not in your favor. However if you are able to establish a friendship in which emotional and personality compatibility exist then the odds of being able to date that person are even greater because you are narrowing down the variables that must be taken into account for compatibility with them. Essentially this is what an online dating service does, it has a computer do the leg work for you as far as compatible likes and dislikes and possible differences in personality traits, as well as general attraction preference, and it spits out "matches" which are basically people who are least likely to disagree with you on which wine to order with dinner. As both the movie and the article comically illustrate dating is not that easy and when tied into the greater themes of love and desire it is the trial and error step to our end goal of fulfillment yet it is the most underrated step of the whole process. Dating is simply overlooked in the big picture, we talk about how people meet, how they solidified their union to one another, and how tragically it ended, yet we are bored to tears talking about the glacial pace at which they sifted through each others mountains of possible deal breakers and makers. In the New Yorker article there is a statement from one of the brains behind online dating schemes about how everybody desires their opposite and when they get what they want they love it but it also bring about an end to the love and bond that they form, such as in the case of the woman at the end of the article who enjoyed her passionate getaway with the man she was briefly dating between fighting with him horribly. That statement, similar to what Kristeva touched upon, was born of the real world gleaning of love and desire related experience that we have been studying in this course secondhand, that is to say that what we want out of other people ultimately does not exist and it never has outside of ourselves, what we desire is an image born of our own need for self completion that we project on the nearest available vessel and from this intense deception love is born. However love with too much desire will burn itself out and love with too little desire with fade away, it is a careful balance in which all human relationships are weighed upon the two element require each other yet at the same time oppose each other. These themes are what we have been building on for the entire semester by exploring every aspect from unrequited courtly love to the complex lover and beloved dynamic which can exist in many forms. This course has caused me to surprisingly have several breakthroughs which I never believed could take place being that I have the emotional sensitivity of a doughnut, but it is all for the better because I am beginning to be able to grow a deeper understanding for the human condition through an understanding of the force that drives us through life.

Simple Passion

Can I just begin with what a conundrum the title is? Lets think about this critically...does "simple passion" even exist? isn't Ernaux doing the whole concept of passion a major disservice by declaring it to be simple? I mean passion is what fuels lives, and ends them. Passion is the byproduct of desire and desire is our drive for life therefore can passion be simple? Conceptually no, it cannot be because it leads us to ask where does it come from, and why can we not control being over taken by this emotional wire puller? However physically it can be simple, its a feeling, a force beyond our control and for better or for worse we're just along for the ride, and this is what Ernaux cleanly demonstrates: the power and control of passion. Ernaux does not live her life in the present like most people do, she either lives it in the distant past or in the ominous future. She states "I would start expecting his phone call again, with all the more suffering and anxiety as the date of our last meeting receded." This passage encompasses her living in the past from when she last saw A and worrying about the future in which she may never see him again. To Ernaux time passing is a nuisance, if she is with A she wants to to go slower, if she is without him she needs it to go faster; to her the past is the only life that she would like to live and the future is where she wants to live. This mirrors the time she spends with A, her relationship with this man only exists in the past tense, she can dream about the possible future with him. but in the present he's a phantom. Ernaux has a unique writing style where she includes little autobiographical asides, but why include these? Not only do they help pushing along the story or provide vital background information but I felt they were included to develop herself more in her own anecdote. The way we are introduced to Ernaux is as the first hand perspective of being the other woman, and how dreary it is. She has nothing to gain from this situation except for being pawed at by a cheating drunk who will leave her hours later and yet this manages to be the only thing she desires for. While the asides flesh out Ernaux into being an actual human and not just some lifeless formless being, they also open up the readers to the possibility of a role change in the lover beloved dynamic. The lover wants to worship the image upon a pedestal, an untouchable icon of all the perfection their heart desires while the beloved wants to maintain that image and status, so is Ernaux the beloved or is A? In a way she is both, she desires A and worships him, she accepts all of his faults freely and still longs for him endlessly. However she can also be considered the beloved, after all she is the "other women" in the relationship, the one A is cheating on his wife to worship, the one He sees as an idol fair enough to return time and time again. This leads us to another question, can the beloved desire the affections of the lover as much as the lover desires to bestow their affections upon their beloved? Perhaps this is why they only spend limited time together, if not their mutual desire would surely collapse. Ernauxs portrayal of being the other woman is brutally honest and a bit gritty at times but I don't see it as a negative image on women as a whole, I see it as a negative portrayal of people in general. In this story both the man and the woman are seen in and unsavory light, she as an empty vessel of a woman only being able to feel desire for one thing in life, and he as a user with a single track mind in regards to women. The only thing people in this story are guilty of is being slaves to desire, Ernaux lives only for the moments that she is with A and A is only seen as alive in his past exploits with Ernaux. Yes, she lives through A solely but she is not the first and not the last person to love obsessively through their lover. While the story may not be representative of the entire population of lovers in the world it does represent a descent number of them, primarily the ones who suffer for their love because they live the most passionately through it. The depiction of the erotic film as related to Ernauxs writing is similar to the cathartic effect of theater. What she writes should not make you feel comfortable, or rather it should portray something so shocking that if you were to experience it in your own life either first or second hand that you would fear repercussions, guilt, anxiety, self loathing, etc. It should make the reader feels invited, unabashed to experience it through her. Like the erotica film watching two people have intercourse in detail while they know they are being watched is one thing, a curious guilty pleasure one can indulge in alone. Yet if you were one of the people engaging in the act and realized that it was later going to be publicized and watched by other the negative feelings flood into ones being.  This comparison invites us to experience through her what we would be too ashamed to admit or to experience on our own.

Love Song

"Oh, Maker"

I hear the drizzle of the rain
It's falling from my window
And in the corners of my mind
I hope that I'll get to see you again
La da die da die da die da die my friend

I hear the colors in the flowers
Just like the candle snuffed at dawn
You're here, you're near, you're there and then you're gone
La da die da die da die da die

Suffering in sinking sand
All the hurt
See I'm really lost baby
We suffered a rare, rare blue
So much hurt
On this earth
But you loved me
And I really dared to love you too
Perhaps what I mean to say is
Is that it's amazing that your love was mine

Oh, Maker tell me did you know
This love would burn so yellow
Becoming orange and in it's time
Explode from grey to black then bloody white
La da die da die da die da die

Oh, Maker have you ever loved?
Or known just what it was?
I can't imagine the bitter end
Of all the beauty that we're living in
Oh no

Suffering in sinking sand
All the hurt
See I'm pretty lost baby
We suffered a rare, rare blue
So much hurt
On this earth
But you loved me
And I really dared to love you too
Perhaps what I mean to say
Is that it's amazing that your love was mine

Lost inside a lonely world where lovers pay the price
Barely get the sound of music to love and go dance to
Now it's time for us to go and no one ever has to know
You're love's in my pocket and your eyes, eye's are in my
Eyes in my soul, no one will know it but me

The background story to this song is that it revolves around a forbidden love affair, one not sanctioned by the government, and upon threat of death the narrator has been forbidden from her lover. As she sits there without her beloved she reflects on the short time that they had together, and in the final verse she plans their escape.This is an all time favorite of mine which is actually fairly bittersweet when you think about it. "Oh,  Maker" is the song I want to be played at my wedding, and I'm not budging on that. To me having a song that is about this wonderful tumultuous love that was so great that you cant even regret it when breaking up represents exactly what I expect in a spouse, someone so amazing that even if the marriage were to fail I couldn't regret being with them for even a minute. In the lyrics she goes on about how painful it is to be without her beloved yet she cant regret it because the love was so incredible, and tying in with the title of the song she even carries on to question if God has ever experienced the highs and lows that she has felt. To me its a very powerful song and if you can convince yourself not to dwell on the fact that the relationship is over with you'll come to see that the song describes the greatest kind of love.

The Bad Girl: Part 2

¡Aye Ricardito! My heartbreaks for this poor deluded idiot. Which I suppose, in retrospect, is a sign of very good literature simply for the fact that the characters could evoke such strong emotion from me which is no small feat. All of my feelings aside the bad girl part two did not fail to deliver, while reading through the first half of the book there was a small creeping fear in the back of my mind that the whole story was going to be this cat and mouse game of deception until it reached some sort of dramatic and ultimately fulfilling end. Oh how wrong I was! The maturation of the relationship between Ricardo and the bad girl surprised me, at first they share this infantile lover beloved dynamic where Ricardo makes his affections too known and the bad girl shuts him down at any hint of commitment unless he can provide her some useful service, which in that case she'll humor him. The bad girl does an amazing job of leaving him wanting for more, even for years at a time she leaves an image of her perfection with him so powerful that no one else can compare. As the saying goes time heals all wounds but Ricardo seemingly cannot quit this dangerous girl, even worse are the personal extremes that he is willing to go through just to please her. He puts himself in financial danger, emotional turmoil, physical danger, and in a place that is detrimental to his career all for a woman who refuses to even pretend like she loves him. If this were based on a true story I would use it as a case study for the love as a mental imbalance theory, Ricardo has more then enough symptoms to be diagnosed with a handful of well fitting psychiatric disorders. He attempts to woe the same girl over and over again in the exact same way and receives the same result every time, but does this make him crazy? No, according to society he is just a man in love. However at the turning point of their relationship we notice that the image of Ricardos desire has begun to crack and for the first time he finds her unattractive, what does this symbolize? and why isn't his obsession with the bad girl done after he finally sees her for what she is? I believe that in a sick way this is love blooming, yes the whole time he claims to love her over and over again but if the image of love that you desire is no longer perfect then you no longer have the image to desire. Just like Narcissus touching his reflection in the pool of water, the image was disturbed, and realized for what it truly was but in Ricardos case he didn't die from lack of desire in fact I believe that it was the banishment of that very image of his own creation that gave birth to a form of love for the bad girl. Yes, there are supposedly many forms of love and none of them should be like this but this was not meant to be a fairytale, unrequited love does exist and it can prove to be a very powerful force. Although Ricardo pretends to take care of the bad girl out of obligation, the extremes of care that he goes through for her betray him, he never gets over her and he never will. He's like a duckling that had the ill fate of imprinting itself on the wrong parent, he is forever vulnerable even when it comes to her even when the dichotomy of there love finally shifts into his favor he is powerless to her. The shift in Ricardo becoming the hunted and the bad girl being the hunter highlighted the Celestina-esque plot twist where although it is known that he loves her, she too will secretly love him. This play on human desire turns the enigma of the bad girl into something so much more, we come to realize that even this kind of love of the image and desire is a reciprocal relationship in which the object wishes to be worshiped as much as the worshiper wishes to desire the object.

Bad Girl Part 1

It appears as if I'm having flashbacks to Celestina! A young boy hopelessly in love with a distant girl? Who rejects his advances yet welcomes his presence? No, I guess that doesn't sound familiar at all. All joking aside poor Richardo has fallen in love with a pathological liar, but in his reality she is not a pathological liar she is the beautiful, seductive, goddess on a pedestal that he has dreamed of his whole life and she only lives down the street. Richardo  represent a wonderful case study for this class, while he is fully aware of the unraveling lies of Lily he still pines away for her even when the rest of the world condemns his affection he seemingly does not care.

"You're like a calf Slim, You're turning blue, Slim, that crush is melting you, Slim"(7)
Everyone outside besides Richardo is fully aware of the ridiculous state that he's worked himself into over a girl he barely knows. A sane person does not ask out the same person more then 3 times in a lifetime, that should be a red flag indicating one of two things, the first being that perhaps the person that your asking out just is not that into you and the second being that you may have a chemical imbalance in your brain which is causing you to be irrational. In that passage his friends are displaying somewhat of a teasing indifference to his emotional state, they realize that he is too far gone to help but being the good friends they are they still gently try and warn the poor fellow. As we have discussed the first stages "love" can also be confused with the high of a drug, its not love at first sight its more of a chemically induced euphoria at the first or second sighting. Richardo has built up Lily in his eyes so much that he is blind to the fact that the rest of society thinks that she is worthless. Let it be known that I am not saying that I think the negative views of society should impact a persons love life but most of the time they serve to caution you against bad people, a lesson that Richardo should have heeded sooner then later.

With society looking down their noses at Lily and Richardo looking up at her Lily's only option is to preserve the image of her that Richardo idolizes to stay in some form of favor. Although we do not really hear her perspective of the whole thing the idea of her keeping the image for Richardo is echoed when she comes to  him as Comrade Arlette in Paris she knowingly half resigns herself to letting him chase her down for the rest of her life. "She hesitated a moment and, with a sigh, made a concession: "I might even end up falling in love with you.""(27). While she isn't happy and she still holds Richardo at a distance Lily is gently basking in his attention for her, she likes having him on the back burner because he offers her security and things she could never have on her own yet she knows the importance of preserving the false image for him. Even when kissing or making love she still makes herself emotionally unavailable to him. As was the case in Celestina the moment that Melibea gave herself over to Calisto his love for her cooled, I believe that the same will be for poor Richardo once he realizes that he holds all of the cards and his illusion is shattered.