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.