Moments

The following is the final post in this blog. It is an emulation of Mrs. Dalloway by Virigina Woolf. It focuses on the concept of a changing identity, and going through horrific events, and trying to rebuild.  While you are reading this, if you could follow this link and play it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRxJgbpdFMg (you may have to skip an ad):


Moments
After Mrs. Dalloway.


Part 1: "She did not pity him, with the clock striking". 
An alarm rang. It was annoying to be up at 8:05 a.m. How Adam savoured weekends; times where one could wake and not be bothered by anything else, not a family member, not an alarm clock, just peace. He only have a week left before this ended. But, he wanted it to finish now; he could not stand to sit around and keep waiting. Suddenly, his dog barked. Groaning he stood. He needed to feed his dog, so he set about making his way down the creeky staircase; into the dim living room. No one had cleaned the windows for years it felt like, and upon every surface lay a thin layer of dust. Invisible to him at this point. A magazine lay open on the table. A headline lazily read, an article skimmed. A book half finished sat on top. Another attempt at a story. Notes scrawled in the margin made the book look loved. It wasn't. He hated it. It was another story about stupid people drifting through life interrupted by impossible problems. Dealing with problems no one deals with; an unreal image of the world. He looked at the book and thought to himself, "What will people think of us when they uncover all of this? We didn't give them Shakespeare, or Homer? What, the fucking Jersey Shore?" He smiled at his inside remark. He face was tired, but still had some warmth left. He didn't smile often, all his friends said this. He was a sullen guy, he shouldn't be so grumpy. Quite frankly, in his mind, quite a lot of bull shit. He smiled when he was happy; he wasn't that happy very often.
A loud bark woke him from his musings and he continued to feed the dog; carefully giving him the right amount of food and water, then, after the dog had devoured the small portion it had been given, he let it out. The dog rushed into the light, quickly overwhelming Adam's senses. He sharply closed his eyes, and as he opened them again, he gazed the world as new once again; noticed a bee buzzing close to his door, a wind that blew a branch ever so slightly.  Flowers had begun to spread. He took his small notebook out of his pocket and began to note these things before getting frustrated. He whipped the notebook to the ground; furious with himself and observations that could not capture an entire moment, could not describe the buzzing of the bee and the smell of the flowers and the taste of the cold crisp air and the sound of the dog's panting or the light caress of the wind on his face or the million other things he felt at this moment. He whipped the door shut, and a tear rolled down his cheek. He would not be able to share this with anyone. He could not communicate...he could only observe...he could not act...only be acted upon. A clock struck loudly behind him. It was his mother's, a family heirloom in a grandfather clock, set next to the bookshelf in his mother's library. He did not want to think about that...but its incessant ticking always brought him back to it. Always grounded him in this old house he wanted to leave. He could never seem to cross this threshold and get away from the ticking. He heard it everywhere in the house and it followed him outside of the house. He hated the clock, but they didn't let him get rid of it. He just wanted to shut it off but they told him not to. Suddenly another loud bark shook him out of his dreams. A disgruntled dog had been left outside, and wanted to rectify this situation. He looked at his hand as he opened his door. It seemed too old to be his, too wrinkled to belong to an 18 year old...but perhaps because of what he had gone through...the clang of the alarm woke him once again, and he quickly went upstairs.
"Mixed in an ethereal way with clouds and wisps of smoke".


Part 2: "Mrs. Dalloway decided to get the flowers herself"
He did not want to be late. As he stepped into the shower, the torrent of water running down his hair into his face, drowning him, cleansing him felt wonderful. He stepped out of the shower, and staring at his face in the mirror was annoyed. He bent into the mirror, looking at a small blemish before opening the closet and taking some extra strength anti-acne cream to kill it. In all the photos he used to see his father had acne. He refused to accept it, and tried to cleanse himself constantly. The cream left scars on his face, which he began to accept as an identity of his own. Adam, the man who frowned, fed a dog, wrote and killed zits. He was proud of that title, at least a little bit...he had forgotten which stains on the mirror (which also hadn't been cleaned in far too long) were from water or bursts of pus from his face. He quickly dressed and looked at himself again. He felt like a different person; in different clothes, people are different. They can hide that way. When one is naked and alone, they are vulnerable, not able to protect themselves from themselves. One can hide blemishes with hairstyles, one can hide weight with clothes, one can hide a scar running up one's chest from their nape to their neck with a shirt. He wasn't Adam the killer of zits in clothes. He was Adam, the high schooler. Indeed, he looked the part. As he left the room, the clock crashed again. Louder this time, he thought. He walked out of his house, and into the small side street. Pebbles washed beneath his feet, the gravel street felt like a sinking trap. He didn't want to get caught in. The blaring of a siren at the bottom of the street sounded. His back stiffened. He did not like that sound, not since...the clock crashed again. Or maybe it was his imagination. Either way, his thoughts went back to the path and to the sun and the warmth. He left the small side street and entered a far bigger, busier street. Cars flew past and he felt invisible. In fact, he liked the invisibility, it made him feel safe. He could be himself, and no one would notice. If he cried right now, no one would care. He would not even notice himself... He pulled out his recently retrieved notebook to write that down. He liked the warmth of the leather in his hand as he felt the cover slowly. Then, he quickly opened past the first two pages, he did not like to read those anymore...and over to a later page. "I feel safe when I'm alone" he scribbled. He heard ticking and was reminded that he would soon be late. He finished writing his note, and raced across the park. He did not stop to notice flowers like he usually did, did not feel the breeze. He was late and he had something to do...
"Died up among the seagulls."

Part 3: "Fear no more the heat o' the sun"
The doctor was waiting...he sighed. He didn't like the next patient who was coming. He couldn't stand him, in fact. Ever since his parents had died...he had been difficult; years had passed, and yet the patient had not managed to move on. The doctor had gotten his profession to help those in need, but the patient wanted no help. He refused to talk, merely sat there for the hour and then left. The patient always made notes in a little leather bound journal the doctor had told him to keep. It must've been his fifth or sixth by now, considering how much he wrote. He noticed that he never wrote on the opening pages, or at least, never in public. The Doctor wanted desperately to help...but he could not. He drummed his pen against his hand. His patient was late...then, suddenly, as the church bell announced the time, the patient stormed into the room, looking wild frenzied. For the first time he opened up, almost shouting. "I want to be alone! It's safe! It's safe to be alone! I don't like others and they don't like me" with that, he spun on his heels, his shoulder length brown hair whirling with him. "Fear no more the heat o' the sun!" He shouted as he left the office. Adam spun down the stairs away from his doctor's office. He needed to get home. He burst home and the dog lazily greeted him. He stood in the doorway...heard a clock strike...stripped naked (he had no need to hide his identity anymore) and closed the door behind him.
"For there she was". 

Finality

As this will be my last analytical post to this blog, I thought it fitting to talk about endings.
I've been obsessed with endings my entire life. I remember reading as a child, racing through a book to get to the resolution: I just had to know how it ended. I would turn the last page of the book and be left with an overwhelming sense of sadness and loneliness. These characters were gone, I know knew their story, and I could never relive it as truly as I had previously watched it.
In my heavily annotated and marked up copy of Shakespeare's Complete Works, The Tempest comes last. Its last lines read: "As you from crimes who pardoned be, let your indulgence set me free," widely accepted to be the last line Shakespeare wrote. He asks to be set free. Bill Watterson remarks that "It's a magical world, Hobbes Old Buddy. Let's go exploring." as Calvin sleds off down a hill. The Odyssey ends with a declaration of peace by the gods.
I've been thinking about this theme as the year has drawn to a close. Many of my friends from Acting Class are leaving, having been older than me. People I have spent years working with are going to vanish next year. Classes are ending and we recently received our schedule for next year, and we can begin planning ahead.
Most notably in my search of endings is House, MD: a TV show that recently aired its finale. After eight years of absolute brilliance, it is drawing to a close. The last episode is incredible, and the last song, "Enjoy Yourself" by Gus Lombardo so perfectly encapsulated the show.
But, now on to Women's Literature. I thought it would be interesting to include the last lines of the books we've read this year, and then try to find trends and patterns, if there are any.
The end of The Handmaid's Tale, before the Historical Notes reads: "And so I step up, into the darkness within;or else the light." (Atwood, 307).
Jasmine ends with: "I am out the door and in the potholed and rutted driveway, scrambling ahead of Taylor, greedy with wants and reckless with hopes," (Mukerjee, 241).
The play, The Vagina Monologues ends with: "I was there in the room. I remember," (Ensler, 125).
The last piece of fiction we read, Mrs. Dalloway ends with: "For there she was," (Woolf, 172).
I see a trend of being unfinished. Leaving a story open ended. 2 of the 4 books end with a new journey beginning, and Mrs. Dalloway has the possibility of the same. None end with dramatic resolutions, as many plays do. None end with a definite statement. They all (other the The Vagina Monologues) talk about a new beginning. A future. A hope.
The final episode of House is called "Everybody dies". The end of the season has dealt with someone very close to House becoming terminally ill. I think this is true: everyone must die. Perhaps then, literature is the one thing that is able to stay alive. Clarissa will be forever walking down those stairs, listening to clocks tick. Offred will forever be in captivity, in love with Nick, trying to escape. Jasmine will always be between states, between identities. Hamlet will always question "To be or not to be" until the end of civilisation. Shakespeare, Homer, Woolf have all been outlived by their writing. It has made them, in so many ways, immortal. Made them memorable. Made them great. They have affected generation after generation, changed people's lives, transformed the world we live in today. They cannot die.

Calvin and Hobbes and Death

I've been putting this post off. A lot actually. I never really knew what to write, to properly talk about this, to say the right things...

Recently (about 2 weeks ago now), an ASL teacher killed herself. From what I gather, she had been depressed for a while and finally decided to kill herself. I didn't think much of it, except how sad it was for both her family and her students.

Suicide is a touchy topic for me. My second cousin killed himself when he was 6. I never met him, nor knew anything about him. I think I realised something had happened when my family stopped talking about him. There had been mention of him: going to Harvard, graduating, etc. in my home life for a while. Then it all stopped. My parents told me about it a few years later, when the decided I was "ready" to hear about it. My question soon became, is anybody ever... ready to hear that? Perhaps more prepared than others but not... ready. This is why one of my first thoughts jumped immediately to the kids. A grade of fourth graders had to be told and taught why their teacher was not coming into school anymore. Kids, no older than six or seven have to learn what suicide is. I was not ready for that lesson when I was seven, and I don't believe I am so much more ready at 17. But, perhaps I'm wrong, and you adapt. You have to be able to learn what is put in front of you. You have to be able to move on. Ms. Dalloway had to move on. She congratulates Septimus on his suicide, in being able to succeed where she could not. She thinks that "it was her punishment to see sink and disappear here a man, there a woman, in this profound darkness, and she forced to stand here in her evening dress" (Dalloway, 164). She was almost proud of him for throwing "it away while they went on living" (Dalloway 165). Septimus himself "did not want to die" but instead thought that "life was good" (Dalloway 132). This topic is so complicated and tough and...just... forgive my language but shitty to deal with.

I thought about my fourth grade teacher, Mrs. Sederjei, who I loved like a second mother. I couldn't imagine even now that I am 17 and haven't been in her class for upwards of 6 years, to be told that she killed herself would be too hard.

One last note about death. I recently was researching an acting project on Calvin and Hobbes. I came across a story that I had mostly ignored in my previous devouring of Watterson's work. It's called the raccoon story. It is beautiful and powerful, and magical. I just thought I would mention it and include the link. It has made me cry every time I have watched it. It is a masterpiece. Helped me to accept death. And life. And friendship. And family.
http://wintersonata13.wordpress.com/2008/10/05/calvin-and-hobbes-the-racoon-story/

I wasted time, and now time doth waste me.

This is a post about Mrs. Dalloway and clocks.

The unkinged Richard sits in prison. His cousin, Henry Bolingbroke has stolen his crown, and thrown him, unceremoniously in prison. He sits, quietly at first. Until he begins to hear music wafting into his cell. The music breaks time, and seems disordered. Richard remarks "How sour sweet music is when time is broke and no proportion kept." He pauses. "So is it in the music of mens lives / and I have the daintiness of ear / to check time broke in a disordered string." He begins to become more agitated. "But for the concord of my state and time / Had not an ear to hear my true time broke," he yells. Calming slightly, yet sadly he concludes. "I wasted time, and now time doth waste me / For now time hath made me his numbering clock / my thoughts are minutes and with sighs / they jar their watches unto mine eyes." He thinks about this further, and, in his insanity, begins with: "the sounds that tells what hour it is / are clamourous groans which strike upon my heart / which is the bell: So sighs and tears and groans / show minutes and times and hours but my time / runs posting on in Bolingbroke's proud joy / while I stand fooling here, his Jack o' the clock" At this point he whirls around to the window in his room and shouts "This music mads me; let it sound no more; / For though it have holp madmen to their wits, / In me it seems it will make wise men mad." This poor man has been driven mad by a ticking clock and some music. He has lost everything, and now, alone, loses his mind to the ticking of a clock. (This is one of the last scenes in Shakespeare's history Richard II. 

One image that is continuously recurring in Mrs. Dalloway is clocks. Virginia Woolf continuously refers to clocks keeping time. Clanging, bong-ing and ticking. Indeed, one of the central themes of the novel is the effect of time. It controls our lives. There is a sense, in the novel, of time being controlling. It dictates and connects the actions of the characters. For example, on page 82, Woolf writes:

"It was precisely twelve o'clock; twelve by Big Ben, whose stroke was wafted across the northern part London; blent with that of other clocks, mixed in a thin ethereal way with the clouds and whisps of smoke ... twelve o'clock struck as Clarissa Dalloway laid her green dress on her bed, and the Warren Smiths walked down Harley Street."

Not only is this a beautiful description of the sound of a clock, but it ties these two characters across London together. Woolf doesn't just use similar characteristics, but uses time to unite them.
Additionally, and the reason for Shakespeare being quoted at the beginning, is the maddening effects of clocks. There is a constant repetition, that I believe is supposed to remind the reader of the monotony, the continuous rhythm and the control clocks have over our lives. People's lives are dictated by these clocks, controlled completley, and it is enough to make "a wise [man] mad."

The Vagina Monologues 1

This post is about my opening reactions to The Vagina Monologues by Eve Ensler:

I think The Vagina Monologues is a brilliant play. Eve Ensler, the playwright, has managed to walk the line between funny, charming stories and side notes, to incredibly poignant tales. These are really eye opening, and in some cases, upsetting stories.

The Bosnian story, "My vagina was a village" specifically was shocking. It's position in the play, directly following two heartwarming stories about women finding love for their vagina, either due to a class or a man, was powerful, as it was so jarring and abrupt. From a happy home in the United States, you were dragged to another part of the world, and forced to witness horrible acts. This woman's vagina was turned from "green, water soft pink fields," to "a dead animal sewn in down there with thick black fishing line," (61-62). This is an incredibly powerful, and upsetting passage. This woman has lost a massive part of her. She lost something that, as described in the previous monologue is "who you are," (56). She has lost herself when she was tortured. She lost everything. She says that "My vagina a live wet watery village. They butchered it and burned it down," (63). She goes on to talk about how she lives somewhere else afterwards but "[She doesn't] know where that is," (63). Also, it is written in the most clever way. Jumping from the past to the present, only using italics to differentiate the two, there is the incredible sense of loss every time you go to another paragraph. Each time she begins to speak again in non-italic text, there is a slim chance of hope. A chance of reconciliation and peace. Then, it is quickly matched by more italic, upsetting text. Then, in the final few lines, she describes, in non-italic text, a finality to the destruction. It has happened, and this is the reality now. This process was incredible, and, sorry to be clichéd, took me on a journey with this woman.

"I was twelve. My mother slapped me" is a monologue about menstruating for the first time. This is a subject, that I, as an adolescent boy, was very unfamiliar with. I knew the generalities from health class; when it should start, what you should do when it does, etc. and what was actually, biologically going on. But, I had no idea about the physical, or personal impact that that event can have on young girls. That seems shortsighted and foolish now, obviously, it impacts your life, but I couldn't imagine it. I think that is why this monologue was powerful to me. It showed me a world about which, I was hopelessly misinformed. Some were funny and silly, the story of the girl thinking she was bleeding to death so she "rolled up [her] underwear and threw them in a corner. Didn't want to worry [her] parents," (39). It was a really interesting chapter, and, like Ensler says in the introduction, I too "got lost in the bleeding," (33). I think she wrote it well, because she didn't differentiate the girls, there was this overwhelming sense of repetition and shared experience. One woman was channeling all the others as the told these stories. This chapter illustrated how powerful this "coming of age", a shared experience for all women, was. I really had no idea.

Infantilization in Advertising

This is a post mainly about infantilization in advertising.

This was first brought to my attention by my mother, who, while we were walking through an exhibition of photography from the 1980's, told me how she mourned the loss of pubic hair. She echoed the sentiment of Alan Davies, her favorite comedian and permanent QI panelist, and how he "fondly remembers the days of pubic hair".
As Jean Killbourne says, in her film Killing Us Softly 4, infantilization of women has become the newest thing in ads. More and more photographs are showing models who look young, or dress like young women. They seem innocent and weak compared the dominant men photographed in advertising. This culminated in the most disturbing ad I've ever seen, which had a girl who could not have been over 12 holding her teddy bear. This line reads "Who knew innocent could be so sexy?". Its an ad for ointment.
I want to approach this in two parts. Firstly: Since when was it socially acceptable to say that 12 year olds are "sexy"??? Did I miss the memo, or has something changed. I thought that was pedophilia... but I could be wrong. Secondly, this is greatening the age divide even earlier: Know even 18 is too old, and you need this ointment to look sexy, because it is so restorative. This ad really makes me sick, and I believe it paints a horrible view of feminism. I hate it and everything it stand for. Its is disgusting.
Lastly, I was watching a song by the comic Tim Minchin, entitled "If I didn't have you" and one of the ways he describes a perfect women is one with neck down alapechia. Again, just... gross.

Funniest ad I've seen in a while

I wanted to take a quick second to describe an ad that I saw when I was in Greece last year. It will be fairly quick, because I laughed when I saw it, and have been confused by it's message ever since.

Location of the ad is important. It was a 20 foot tall billboard in the middle of the city. Proudly it hung by the acropolis and parthenon, symbols of society and culture for the last 2,500 years, now sullied by this ad.
The ad was fairly simple: A pair of women's breasts which were fairly large in a yellow bikini. In her cleavage rested a packet of cigarettes. When my brother pointed it out to me, we both burst into fits of laughter at the ridiculousness of the ad, it had nothing to do with the cigarettes, the woman was not smoking them.
I have, since then, been trying to figure out the target audience of this ad. Had I been able to understand the Greek underneath, I perhaps would've been able to solve this problem quicker, as a tagline sat underneath the breasts. Here is my confusion though: Is this ad telling women that if they smoke these cigarettes, they will have breasts like this, which is physically impossible? Or are they telling men that if they smoke these cigarettes they will get to sleep with women who look like this? Or, that men only want to be with women that have large breasts and smoke this brand of cigarette? Or even, that this is the cigarette for women with big breasts.  I have puzzled it over in my head for a while, and I can't figure it out. Both seem like very "valid" ways of advertising. Indeed in the film, Killing Us Softly, disembodiment is one of the central ideas in advertising: "we don't need to see the face, just the body", as the filmmaker says, because that is all that it is important.
Now that I think about it more and more, I realize that this ad shouldn't be funny, and my brother and I shouldn't have laughed when we saw it. Now that I understand the power that the media has, and what that ad taught people looking at it. It would've poisoned people's brains into killing themselves in an attempt to look beautiful. What was once the center of progress and democracy in the world is now home to these. Yet, I suppose this shouldn't surprise me, as the current centers of progress and democracy are full of these images as well.

Grandmother part 3: The face of feminism

This is part 3 of my 3 part series on my two grandmother interviews.

This post is about something very interesting that both my grandmothers alluded to, and which was also mentioned in The Beauty Myth by Naomi Wolf.

I asked Kevin is she considered herself a feminist. She responded with "No I wouldn't." She said that, although she believes in equality and most of the feminist agenda she did not want to be painted with that brush. She said that feminist were un-lady-like, bad people and generally awful "creatures" and that she didn't want to be that. She said that "I was beautiful, and successful, and I never wanted to be called a feminist to hurt my image". I find it incredibly interesting that a progressive, forward thinking, working woman did not want to be a feminist. Wolf points out the media turning the feminists into a bad thing. Nina said the same thing, that feminists artists were seen as "bitchy, complaining women" and that she could never consider herself a feminist. It's very interesting that the media was so successful. She also laughed when I asked her the question, "But I married a man... I'm not a lesbian". I was confused at first until I realised that she thought feminist meant lesbian.

Grandmother interview Part 2: Nina Bentley

This is part 2 of my three part series on my grandmother interviews. This one is focusing on the story of Nina Bentley.

My grandmother told me how, growing up her father was an undereducated italian stowaway. He married a younger woman who decided to work to support her carpenter husband. She describes how she used to cross streets to avoid walking by her parents, as she was ashamed of her parents non-traditional family structure. "All I wanted" she described, "was to be a part of a traditional family."

My grandmother told me how, when she met my grandfather, he was the perfect thing for her. She said that he was an army man, and a smart international relations guy.

My grandmother told me how she loved her husband, and wanted to support him in any way possible. He wanted a traditional wife, which was all she wanted to be. "We were well-fitted" she said. She became an artist and a mother, trying to raise her kids to be the best people possible. These two things dominated her life for a long time, and when she moved to Zurich she became part of the expat mothers community that dominated social life.

My grandmother told me how that both the expat community and the community in Great-neck where they had lived before required something of her, they needed her to be the perfect housewife. "I had to lay the perfect table, bake the perfect roasts, etc." She was happy to do it as well, because as she said "I wanted to be traditional".

Grandmother interview part 1: Kevin Garland

This will be a three part series about my two different grandmother interviews I conducted with my two grandmothers. This first bit is about my maternal grandmother, Kevin.

My grandmother told me about how she was named "Kevin" because her father had originally wanted a boy for a child, not a girl. She told me about how she had to work to put herself through college, because her father did not want to "waste his money on a woman's education".

My grandmother told me how she was a "Canadette", the Canadian version of a "rockette", and was, as my grandfather described it "incredibly beautiful". She was one of the chorus dancers for many years, including time into her motherhood.

My grandmother told me how, even after she was married and had my aunt, she didn't want to be a suburban mother, a typical 1960's woman. She thought, and I believe correctly so, that she was smarter than that. Even after having my mother, and my grandfather's growing success in banking, she did not want to stop working. So, she returned to graduate school, and received a master's degree in Urban Planning. She went on to work at many different establishments and become quite powerful in the business world of Toronto. My grandfather described how he was "pleasantly surprised" by her new initiative, because he "always wanted her to be [my mom], you know, darning socks, making food... a typical house-wife," but now he says that he "couldn't imagine a world without such a wonderful, driven, intelligent woman to share [his] life".

My grandmother told me about one of her most difficult decisions. When my grandfather was transfered to Zurich for work, she had to decide whether or not to go with him. A seemingly typical decision for the father at ASL to make, she said that few of her female friends had any idea what a choice like this might be like. She chose to stay in Toronto to continue her professional career, and spend every other week with her family. "It was tough" she said, "but I had to do it".

She is truly an inspirational woman who fought against great odds, and has inspired me personally. Although her struggles will be very different than mine, she will inspire me forever. She was recently put in the top 50 most powerful women in Canada, and indeed ahead of her time.

Madmen sexism part 2: Season 2

This is part of a series on the show Madmen, and its treatment of the issue of gender in the 1960's.

This post will focus on Peggy Olson and Roger Sterling, with some mention of Don. This may contain spoilers if you haven't seen the show.

Peggy Olson, who proudly graduated from a secretarial college is an example of two things in the 1960's. Firstly, her circumstances represent the tough situations facing women, and I believe her actions represent the very beginning of the re-birth of feminism. She begins as a secretary and is dominated by the men in the society. She has very little power in her society and is generally kept down, not only by the men who work at the office, but also by the women. When she doesn't mindlessly agree to Joan Holloway's requests, and tries to prove herself, she incurs Joan's wrath through subtle methods. Joan advises her, in a very pointedly mean statement that "This isn't China, there's no money in virginity" attacking her apparent  "purity". She becomes a copywriter at the end of season 1, and is quickly attacked by her old colleagues. For example, when a copy machine is bought by the building, the secretaries angrily store it in her office. She has to fight to get a new office that is her own, and is attacked when she does that. Furthermore, when she goes out to a bar, people expect her to go home with whatever guy asks her, because she is a woman. Yet, she has advanced in society. She has been able to gain power and raise her status in society, something which hadn't happened in since 1945 at Sterling Cooper.

Roger Sterling offers another interesting view into the 1960's. He is a misogynist generally. He is often dismissive of his wife, and has constant affairs with the young women who either work at the office or come to the office to audition. He uses women fairly constantly, to the point at which he has a heartattack. His then great heartfelt revelation to his old love affair other than is wife is "Look, I want to tell you something because your very dear to me and I hope you understand it comes from the bottom of my damaged, damaged heart. You are the finest piece of ass I ever had and I don't care who knows it. I am so glad I got to roam those hillsides." This is a fairly dramatic, and yet still sexist comment, and his great expression of love.

Don offers another interesting view into the sexism in the world. Don's affairs had, for a long time, been private and confidential, yet acceptable. When the later came to light, Betty felt betrayed and left him. It was only until she became pregnant that she accepted him back. I believe that this proves both bad and good things about the society. As a good thing, it shows that women had power in relationships and could do what was right. But, it also shows the female dependance on men, and how Betty needs Don to be able to survive.

The Beauty Myth vs. Madmen

Note: Sorry for the radio silence, I recently went away on a vacation, and didn't have access to the internet. All the following posts were typed on word documents throughout the trip. They were not uploaded until today because I had problems with Blogger.

This is part of a series on comparisons between the show Madmen and Naomi Wolf's The Beauty Myth.
I recently watched the first season of Madmen at my brothers recommendation, and for those of you who don't know, Madmen is an AMC TV series about 1960's ad executives on Madison Avenue. It paints a very interesting picture of the life for the wealthy in New York City in the 60's, and I think can open our eyes to some interesting aspects of the beauty myth.
At the beginning of the 1950's, women were supposed to be the homemaker, according to Naomi Wolf's The Beauty Myth. Wolf writes that the ideal self was the self that "aspires to be a good wife, a good mother, and an efficient homemaker" (66).  Before Vogue's Nude Look came into power, this was what was expected of women.
This is evident in Madmen, as Betty Draper, the lead's wife, does very little other than ride horses, raise children and cook for her husband, who often doesn't even come home for dinner. This is all going on, while Don goes into the city, goes to strip clubs and cheats on his wife. Indeed, these double standards are huge, as it is not seen as strange that Don is doing this just because most people are.
Another form of the myth taking place is in Peter Campbell's marriage. In the first episode it is revealed that he is going to marry a woman who he has never met. This lack of closeness in the relationship demonstrates that men were not generally interested in women's personalities but merely wanted a wife to take care of them. To further this, he cheats on her directly before and quickly after the wedding, with Peggy Olson, another worker in the office that he knows.
A further example of the Laissez faire treatment of women comes in the form of Roger Sterling. The generally misogynistic boss, who confides in Don to "remember, whenever god closes a door, he opens a dress". This idea that women were merely faceless opportunities to take a run at is followed by most members of the cast. When Roger declares his ever-lasting love for Joan Halloway, the office manager, she, acknowledging the treatment of women says "Just wait, I hear the 61's are almost in." By referring to women as a car to be bought and exchanged for a newer model every year, I believe that Joan demonstrates the feelings of many different people in the early 1960's.

Identity in Jasmine/TED talks

I recently watched a TED talk entitled: "The Universe is queerer than we suppose" given by Richard Dawkins in February 2003. At one point in the video Dawkins said that every molecule in your body was not there five years ago. We also know from copious amounts of studies that prove that memories are faulty, and that people re-remember experiences in the past. Then, the question remains. If you look at a photograph of yourself five years ago, is that really you? No physical part of yourself from the photo remains now, and chances are good, your memories of that time is faulty and inaccurate. Furthermore, the personality that you have is dissimilar to the one you had in the photo. What part of the you from the photograph remains in the you looking at it. Perhaps then, the person that is staring out at you from the photo is not indeed you, but somebody completely different, a shadow in your past.

This question of identity is a very important one in Jasmine. Her name has changed to represent her changing identity. She has had happiness and sadness in all of her lives, and changed drastically throughout. She often talks about how the version of herself now is not the same person as the she is now. She says that "Jyoti of Hasnapur was not Jasemine, Duff's day mummy and Taylor and Wylie's au-pair in Manhattan; that Jasmine isn't this Jane Ripplemayer," (127). She goes on to question "Which one of us is the undeteteced murder of a half-faced monster, which of us held a dying husband, which of us was raped and raped ad raped in boats and cars and motel rooms?" (127). Jasmine is struggling to differentiate herself, and find out when she became who she is now.

Jasmine believes that these things can happen that cause the "long playing record" of life to jump, and thrust new life into a "groove that was not prepared to receive it," yet this can only be caused by an extraordinary event taking place (127).  Dawkins seems to disagree, that change is a natural occurrence, and that in five years you are guaranteed to become a new, different person. One does not need a life changing event to become different. It is a law of nature. He also believes that "matter flows from place to place and momentarily comes together to be you," (TED Talk). This is similar to Jasmine's concept of life being pushed around, albeit more scientific. The idea of this constant change, guaranteed by the universe makes Jasmine's plight less dramatic in many ways. Perhaps, we all spend our entire lives changing, thus we are all trying to search for our identity. Perhaps Jasmine’s search through India to New York and later Iowa is a natural event that must occur in all of our lives, just, perhaps ours may be less dramatic than hers.  Perhaps our names also change over the years, and that Jasmine's is more a struggle of assimilation than of self-discovery.

Dawkins TED talk:

http://www.ted.com/talks/richard_dawkins_on_our_queer_universe.html

Jane as a mother

These will be a series of posts about Jane/Jyoti/Jasmine's roles in the novel, and what that tells us about her.
This will be a fairly short post about Jane's role as Du's mother in Jasmine  by Baharati Mukherjee.

She says that she is "A mother ... no older than a sister" (28) which creates an odd relationship between the two. In one way they are equals, and should be on the same level. They are both expats who have been absorbed into this family. They have both witnessed some kind of devastation, and they both lost someone close to them. We know for the opening chapter that Jane is a widow, and we know that Du made it out of a refugee camp but "his brother didn't". For all intents and purposes, these two are in a similar situation, and have dealt with similar problems in their lives. The dynamic between them, as a result, is not that of a typical parent child relationship. She is not quick to scold him about tobacco in his room, and is out quizzed by him.

Further more, they have both given up their identity. Jane says that "once we start letting go – let go just one thing ... the rest goes on its own down a sinkhole," (29). In this she notes that Du has tried to adjust and become the all American kid, and as a result has lost everything. The example she gives for this is the shrine, and the fact that he "gave it up" (29). This loss of identity is something that both Jane and Du share, and perhaps gives them a special connection. A connection that is not shared by the father.

The TV scene is another good example of the special connection, where Jane and Du watch the American troops arrest Mexican workers. They have both seen terrible situations and empathize with the Mexican immigrants, and as a result, Du swears. We see, though, a break in the connection, as Jane "doesn't know who the were the assholes, the cowboys or the Indians," (27). We see that she is more Americanized than Du is, and could be perhaps a bone of contention between the two.

Power and Freedom in The Handmaid's Tale Part 2

This is a continuation from the previous post.

The following will focus on the power that was given to the novel through the ending chapter, entitled "Historical Notes"

In the end of the Novel, Offred travels into the light or perhaps the dark; she doesn't know what to expect next. To clear up this confusion, Margaret Atwood adds a lecture explaining the existence of this manuscript, set approximately 200 years after the action in the novel. This chapter explains the existence of this story, and some information about the formation and fall of the Republic of Gilead.

I chose this to talk about because I believe it re-emphasises the power of language, referred to in the last blog post. We find out that this manuscript is the transcript of a series of recordings of a women's voice, done after the fact. This alone is interesting because it offers some solutions to the ending of the novel. Quite a bit of evidence is given that she did indeed escape, as she would have had to make these recordings at some point.

We know that someone spoke the words that we just read, and took the time to say them. They were not intended to be written down, but indeed intended to be heard. This was a form of protest perhaps greater than anything else that Offred, or any other had done. She recorded her story to be remembered and heard throughout the ages, and that her voice would resonate throughout time. Indeed, The Handmaid's Tale recordings outlasted Gilead itself, a seemingly indestructible thing. What is astounding is the truly indestructible power that these words ended up having. Could Offred have known that her story would've been told for the next 200 years? Would she have told it any differently?

Professor Piexioto, the professor administering the lecture, offers a series of explanations for this document's existence. He posits that the tapes were designed by a publisher interested in making a quick buck, but indeed the "super-imposition of the voice upon the music tape could not have been done in the last hundred and fifty years"(315).

Perhaps the fact that this is "post facto" (315) as Piexioto says offers an understanding into the novel. I find the idea of Offred reflecting upon everything that has happened, and recording her account in case she never escaped fascinating, and I believe adds a great deal more to Offred's narration. One always remembers things differently when looking back, and I believe that the post facto nature of these calls into question her validity. Further the manuscript is questioned as we know that the order is not necessarily correct, and we again must question what we just read. I was astonished by the power of a few words, and how that completely changed my understanding of the novel as a whole.

The concept of a pseudonym for Luke, Nick, Moira and Janine that were "adopted to protect these individuals should the tapes be discovered," (314) further forces us to question what we have just read. Names mean a lot to a identifying a character, and if these are not their true names, then we have even less knowledge of these few people. It radically changes our knowledge of the world of the book, which is odd for the last 10 pages of the book. It also has some resonance between the names that exist between the handmaids. The fact that Moira and Janine are probably pseudonyms shows that the narrator does not trust us, as the sharing of names in the Red Center was the first sign of trust.