Author Archives: ed047168

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Thoughts on “The Queen of Versailles”

What an interesting movie, that was first reaction when I finished watching “The Queen of Versailles”. It was a reaction that for me had no definite meaning, while I felt some disgust at this obscenely rich family “The Seigels” I realized that they were lost in their own world excess and consumption. I watched it a second time and found myself  moved towards the second half of the movie when the 2008 financial crisis hit the country and directly effected David Seigels company. I found the irony in David’s company selling  people time share, or dreams of owning for a period of time the lifestyle of a rich person. His empire was based on selling dreams, a dream he himself bought by borrowing cheap money to expand and maintain the cost of his enterprise. What moved be was how his wife Jacqueline dealt with the gradual loss of her lavish lifestyle.

The movie explains how she began as an software engineer working for IBM then moving on to  become involved in the pageant industry which would introduced her to her future husband David. Jackie is the star of the show; she manages simultaneously to pull off being a contorted emblem of the American dream, a spoiled beauty queen, and tragically compassionate. “I grew up in a one-bathroom, three-bedroom house, and I can remember I would have to wait in line to use the bathroom,” She meets David while participating in a pageant and after some courting got married. It seemed like the American dream, she married into money and her life changed. The movie goes to show how it all became easy for her, she became a big time spender, living her life in the “what is bigger is better” ideology. She had a large family, as Jacqueline herself would say “if it was not for the nannies I would not have been able to raise my kids”

But the man with the biggest slice of humble pie on his plate is David Siegel himself. Having his company Westgate expanding operations by building a large Tower in Las Vegas before the 2007 financial crisis seemed like a dream about to become reality. David would consolidate that dream by building building the largest single-family home in the country. The Seigels call it Versailles, after the 17-century French royal palace of the same name.  David refuses to turn the keys to his Las Vegas tower over to the bank, though it would mean his company Westgate could resume selling timeshares and that Versailles’ construction could restart. In a twist of unrecognized irony, David dedicates the Vegas tower to his deceased parents, whom his grown son Richard Siegel notes “were never wealthy [because] they lost their money in Las Vegas.”  The company then borrows from the bank against that mortgage at a much reduced rate from what they demand from their customers. It’s a profitable model when lenders are willing to dole out the loans; not so much when credit markets are tight or frozen. At one point David derides the bankers for making poor decisions, maybe not understanding that his own success was borne on the backs of securitized loans from subprime customers based on the false assumption of an ever-growing future. Soon the customers started to mirror the rest of the country going through the financial crisis by ceasing payments on their time-share loans Westgate’s situation became especially dire. That monthly cash flow was payroll for thousands of employees. For David there were no savings, per se, for the company, as unused capital was unproductive capital. Everything was tied up in the byzantine structure of multiple credit lines and properties in areas hit hardest during the recession.

Rather quickly the company’s staff is drastically reduced and David becomes effectively yolked to the whims of lenders that had made the whole operation possible. The Seigels begin the gradual demise from their abundant consumer lifestyle to a less privileged existence. While I felt bad for Jacqueline and her continual denial of reality I kept reminding myslef that this woman chose this lifestyle. She chose to be a trophy wife and marry and older wealthier David to reap the benefits, even her daughter admits this when she says “just because she is a trophy wife she does not deserve to be treated this way”. In a way she chose to give up some her dignity for the benefits of constant consumption. Her addiction of busying stuff  best be shown when we see the amount of bikes and other stuff she constantly buys. She might realize it but the maids just put the new bikes next to dozen or so old bikes that have not been used. Another Perspective is also wrought large by nanny Virginia Nebab, who gives viewers a tour of a playhouse, long abandoned by the Siegel children. Nebab uses the tiny structure as a refuge. David, for his part, is introspective; if he had to do it all over again he’d have fewer resorts, etc, but “No one is without guilt. I’m the same way” for getting used to cheap money. For all his introspection it was hard for me to sympathize with David. It seemed hard for him to not be in control. he was a consumer just like the rest of the family. He bought his wife, he wanted to build the biggest mansion, it was all about acquiring stuff. He seemed to have a hard time truly making a human connection, I could see this with his older son who worked for him. David game him an opportunity and means but they did not share a father son relation, it just seemed like a employer and employee affiliation. David’s relationship with his wife is properly portrayed towards the end of the movie when when a disappointing David says ” I feel like I am taking care of another child” .  He seems  bitter for the way things have worked out, at one point telling an interviewer that his marriage doesn’t make him happy. Jacqueline does seem childish in her obliviousness when the money started to dwindle. She confesses ignorance to the house being in foreclosure. She’s somewhat frustrated that her husband borrowed against the value of the land and house.  It is still difficult to reconcile my emotions on the subject matter of the film. The simple impression that, despite their great wealth, the Siegels are still human like the rest of us, with human faults, making mistakes and paying (slightly different) prices.  There is simply too much difference in wealth, or to be more precise in the adversity these people go through to make me relate to them in a human sense.  To me the differences matter more than the similarities and while the Seigels seem to be stuck in a loop of vicious consumerism their problems seem to material and unemotional for me to relate to them. I seemed to me that people like the Siegels really do play by different rules, the social chasm that income disparity had created became an unavoidable social norm and in “The Queen of Versailles” the cultural in-sensitivities of the ultra-rich are on full display. This can be seen when a cost-cutting Jacqueline earnestly asks the Hertz car rental guy, “What’s my driver’s name?”

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Final research Paper topic

 

After given some thought for my final paper I would like to focus in the development of language in children who migrate to America. To be more precise, it has been said that children pick up language quicker. The change of culture that migration can produce can vary. A total change of familiarity and structure can effect the development of language. In my own experience  I came to the United States as a child  knowing to read and write Spanish.  In the process of assimilating myself to American culture I gained the ability to learn the English language. The more English I learned and the more fluent I became in speaking it reduced my capabilities in the Spanish language  The most obvious difference was in my way of thinking.  Before my assimilation I would think and process the world around me in Spanish ,  the gradual change to thinking in English changed my perspective of how I expressed my ideas and conveyed them to others. The people who were closest to me were the first to notice, my family became aware and tried to explain the perceived distance and cold practicality I began to use in explaining my thoughts. In my paper I want to focus on what the change is between Spanish and English and if there is a loss of information in the process.

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Reactions to Ithkuil

After reading the New Yorker Article, I came away intrigued in the existence of “colangers”. What Quijada created in his language Ithjuil is an attempt that others have tried in trying to create an ideal language. The purpose of the ideal language is to be able to efficiently use complex system of communication to convey our ideas and be able to share our thoughts with others. How efficient or rather how complex he made his language is the very concept that left me intrigued. By using other languages to create Ithjuil, Quijada was able to encompass more flexibility in expression, even the written form of Ithujuil seems shorter that say English. This does not mean that is any less complicated, Uthiihuil conveys more information and meaning without using wasting any unnecessary steps. When Quijada meets with George Lakoff towards the end of the article Mr Lakoff mentions that the language is very efficient but lacks the use of metaphor in which he says “The metaphor isn’t in the words, it’s in the idea” . Mr. Lakoff also went on say that he thought the language might be impossible but if thought as an “conceptual-art project” it was fascinating. This is what I found most fascinating, in my own understanding I took this to mean that while Ithjuil was a very efficient in describing and conceptualizing everything we see and want to convey to another it lacks in giving the ideas you want to convey the  freedom of transferring meaning in a way that analogy or metaphors can do. Then again my idea of what i think this new language can do might be hampered by the very language that I am using it to describe it.

 

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My connection to Foreign Words

While reading foreign words the concept of association of words with a time and place in my life became more evident.  I cannot say that I connected with the author as he narrates the pain of loosing his father and how that experience served both as a catalyst as well as a filter for his perception of his experiences as the story moved along.  The connection I felt in the story was in his association of words to time and places in his life. He mentions how the same word in a different language, in his case French and Greek would mean the same thing but  to him the meaning would be different because he experienced the words at different points in his life. I could relate to this in my own experiences; when I came to this country I was fluent in Spanish. While the grammar is different in English, they do have some commonality in words. As I began to learn English I would easily see the similarity in some of the words such as doctor, invisible, local, municipal, social. But it was in the words that were not common were the connection to different points in my life became important. The word to love in Spanish is “Amar”  I can associate this word to my early childhood and to my mother, the person I would use the word the most. It was both very natural and very caring for me to say the word. Now when I learned the word in English it really held no special meaning at first since I would barely use it and if I was to use it in a meaningful way it would be in Spanish. It was in my early teens were the English version of the word began to have importance.  To love became an expression of my private preferences, the word became a tool that would help my teenage rebellion. With it I could define my self and define what others meant to me. What I loved became a private affair, to love a person became a burning desire. I did not really know love in itself was, but I wish to understand it and have more than anything else.  Even now as an adult the word invokes different emotions and different points in my life.

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The journey back home?

I was born in a different country and came to America when I was six years old. In the years that followed I adapted to american culture as I made friends and immersed myself in social activities.  Growing older into my teens I made return trips to my native country of Peru to visit family. In all the trips I have taken  I learned more about my native country and went to visit more places than when I was a child. Every trip was a new experience that I felt brought me closer to my culture. The trips became more infrequent as the years passed by. When I would return the sensation of kinship to my culture was replaced by distant detached experience. I began to realize that it was not jut from my own experiences  but the family members that I would visit would point the gradual cultural drift that was happening.  For my memoir paper I will mt experience with the gradual separation of the culture that I was born into and my transition to the culture that I grew up and matured into. I will use the trips that I took to Peru my native country as reference points to the changes I experienced how that affected the interaction of my family members.

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Folktale of the lizard and the rock

This is one of the folktales that I remember from my Grandmother… She is Peruvian and of Inca descent. To clarify her side of the family speaks fluent “quechua” the native language of Peru. It is an oral language that uses folktales to convey the values as well as history of Andean Culture.  This particular tale is not an old one, in fact my grandmother informed me that it’s origins derived from the extinction of a particular species of lizard  about a two hundred years ago that was prevalent in the mountains. It was during that time that American mining companies started to destroy the habitat to get at rich mineral deposits. The people in these habitats that were used to seeing these animals who were used for rituals and for medicine, witnessed their demise and derived a story to maybe explain or justify their quick collapse.

The Lizard is always colorful, it is always fast, it is always happy. He knows that under the sun no other has as many colors, he knows no others that can run and hide faster, he knows that he is happy because he can see others look at him with envy.  He would tell the turtle, he would tell the mouse, he would even the tell the hawk if he had a chance. “In my beautiful colors I can hide myself and blend in , with my fast quick legs I can run and hide from the heavens itself”.  All the animals grew tired of his talk, all the animals grew angry with his walk. Finally all the animals said to him. “If you are so happy with yourself that you remind us every day than go and be with yourself see if you can get the attention we won’t give you” and with that all the other animals ignored the lizard.

The lizard did not care, he continued to tell everyone his gifts, continued to show his bright colors. After a while the lizard began to notice that nobody got mad , nobody scolded or chased him. As time passed the lizard was sad, how can he be happy, how can he be bright, how can he be fast if nobody cared for his plight. Then one day as he lay under the sun and sky, showing his colors in the bright he noticed a sparkle in the rock that caught his attention. He went and saw the bright and shinny rock, it said nothing but it sparkled bright, it did not talk but only dazzled. The lizard finally said ” you are like me bright and colorful  but you say nothing and don’t move, are you not afraid of the hawk or fox?” The rock said nothing, it just shone and dazzled in the sun.

The lizard lonely and bored began to talk to the rock, after a while he found it pleasant for the rock did not get mad or chased him away but just sat there bright and gay.  Everyday the lizard went to talk to the rock and everyday they both sat under the sun, but the lizards every now and then had to run and hide away. The lizard began to grow envious of the rock as it shone brightly but was not afraid, it never had to run and hide away. He said to himself ” The rock does not hide, he is not afraid of the hawk during the day nor the fox at night”  Believing in his strength the next day, the lizard went to meet the rock and stay all day, with no fear and no running during his stay. Eventually the hawk came and looked for prey, the lizard saw this and with his many colors blended away in the mountains and rocks so the hawk could not see, the most slippery lizard in between the rocks. The Lizard now fell invisible and tall, for he had tricked the Hawk and even the fox. He bowed to the rock never to be afraid, that he would stay with him throughout night and day. They would together shine in the bright sun, sparkling their colors at the envy of all.

Then one day the other men came, the ones who hunt for rock and not prey. They did not care for potatoes or meat, all they cared was the bright gleam. They began to carve out the mountains looking for shiny rocks, all the animals began to go away all except the lizard who vowed to stay. They said to him ” Don’t be a fool, run and hide so you can shine brightly in the sun while on the run”. The Lizard responded ” I do not care for your fears, I vowed to stay by my rock for she did not turn on me and my colors” . So the animals left and yelled at him ” you fool, she does not love you, it is a rock who does not console you” The lizard stayed as the rocks were turned and broken, he hid and tried to scare the men with his hissing and bright colors. But all the men saw was a colorful little creature, they tried to catch him, but he was fast and agile , he could run and hide under the rocks. In the end they could not catch him, but the rocks he hid they all were turned and destroyed. The lonely lizard by his vow died, beautiful and bright by his rock never to be seen by man in the earth or stone, but shinnying brightly in the heavens were there are no rocks.