Author: do127604

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12/12/15

How 6 to 8 Black “Helpers” become Reindeers

On Ruining Christmas: Whitesplaining and Racism and Why I can’t celebrate anymore fake holidays

When Aisha Harris’ demands that our image of Santa be more appropriate and inclusive, she suggests we make find a penguin to represent the historically gift giving figure. I’ve heard a derivative of this argument before: through video games, researchers found that, humans relate more to non-human representations of ourselves (i.e. zombies and, by extension, other mutated forms of living things). For me, this resonates with the story behind Saint Nick in the Netherlands. In Six To Eight Black Men which sounds like David Sedaris in stand up, the author fails to recognize the evolution of Santa’s elves. Violent black bodies that perform at the behest of a weakly white man…sounds really racist and a lot like the literary byproduct of the stereotypes reinforced through colonialism. The story becomes more amiable in the 1950s when the relationship turns into a “friendship”: removing it from its original master-slave dynamic.

Sedaris, David. “Six to Eight Black Men”. St. Nicholas Center. Web. 12 December http://www.stnicholascenter.org/pages/sedaris/

10/20/15

Pleasure-Pain Principle

Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn vs. Model Boys
– bad/devil vs. good/angel

Our protagonist affects few sympathies considering the contradictions he embodies as a character. Tom Sawyer is a fundamentally oppositional figure: manipulative, deceptive but also weird. “”Do you love rats?” “No! I hate them!” “Well, I do, too—live ones. But I mean dead ones, to swing round your head with a string.”” (Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer) Young Tom is an early masochist who refuses to sever his active and voluntary tie to deviance.

Diametrically different is the group he’s termed the Model Boys. Unlike Tom, the Model Boys enjoy church and also distinguishable by their cleanliness, manners and discipline. However, there is an even more extreme manifestation of anti-Model Boy culture in Huckleberry Finn. Still, the text acknowledges that compared to their parents, the other children (most likely including Sid and Willie: the most exemplar of Model Boys) rather feel repulsed towards the company and comportment of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn instead explicitly covet it.

Yet, unlike Huckleberry Finn, Tom Sawyer has secured a faithful and demanding guidance in Aunt Polly. Although she admits “but he hates work more than he hates anything else, and I’ve got to do some of my duty by him, or I’ll be the ruination of the child.” (Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer) A combination of his boredom and spoiled upbringing have contributed to his destructive tendencies while Huckleberry Finn’s unruly nature is a direct result of his father’s alcoholism.

 

Source:

1.) Twain, Mark. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Irving: Saddleback

Educational, 1999. Print.

10/18/15

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s great-grand nieces: the Powerpuff Girls

The relationship between the subjects of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s The Children’s Hour is unclear. Yet in short, he illustrates that familiar time after a day’s “occupations” (school, job, duty, etc.) and before dinner in which those who share a living space acknowledge their neighbors. Although it is never disclosed explicitly whom the characters are to one another, their jovial affection towards the others presented in Longfellow’s few lines is palpable. We are introduced to the young girls’ “voices soft and sweet” and “their merry eyes”: this describes how the filial figure (presumably paternal) feels towards them. While “devour me with kisses, Their arms about me entwine,” 
conveys how the girls’ admire the narrator. The Children’s Hour ends with the image of a crumbling castle that outlives their sweet cherishing of one another as in till death do us part.

 

Like Cartoon Network’s the Powerpuff Girls, The Children’s Hour pivots on the analogous stories of three young women. Longfellow’s “Grave Alice, and laughing Allegra, 
 
 And Edith with golden hair.” foil animator Craig McCracken superpowered sisters Blossom, Bubbles and Buttercup. “By three doors left unguarded 
They enter my castle wall!” In both instances, it was misconstrued misfortunes that found path intersect among these 8 comparably star-crossed wonderers. I’m certain that these “three doors” are a euphemism for the same Chemical X that Professor Utonium disturbed before provoking the arrival of the Powerpuff Girls. In later episodes of the series, the dynamic between the characters develops through an identical swift paced competitive condition to that portrayed in The Children’s Hour. “A whisper, and then a silence…
They are plotting and planning together
 To take me by surprise…A sudden rush from the stairway, 

 A sudden raid from the hall!” It’s fascinating because the co-protagonists in either piece are girls who are adventure-seeking to the point of rebellious and unruly; they embody tomboy (age-appropriate masculine) features instead of the docility more traditionally associated with their gender.

 

Sources:

 

 

 

10/12/15

Messy Little Anne’s Ramble

How the narrator in “Little Annie’s Ramble” describes his ethnographic endeavor says more about himself than it does about the events of the day:

Adult vs. Child ~ Like Peter Pan, our narrator is removed from the features of aging – essentially, beyond his erroneous outward appearance, he still a child. Failing to have matured along side his contemporaries, his interests align closer to what might amuses Little Annie and that which they share symbolizes an inherently both feminine and childish position.

 

Straight vs. Gay/Masculine vs. Feminine ~ Admitting that “grown ladies” are incapable of captivating his attention also complicates our understanding of this character as someone who experiences a daily repression. The text is a consolidation of the narrator’s keen observations. He’s not shooting ducks or smoking cigars but instead soberly enjoying himself at a circus.

 

Foreign vs. Familiar ~ However, this is further complicated when the reader realizes that Little Annie and the narrator lack the genetic make-up to qualify their bond. While, it might be discernable for a father, brother, uncle or cousin to entertain the whims of their kin, the narrator’s behavior seems more predatory than benevolent.

 

Source:

  1. Hawthorne, Nathaniel. “Little Annie’s Ramble.” From Twice-Told Tales , 1837, 1851 By Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1804-1864. Eldritch Press, n.d. Web. 12 Oct. 2015. http://www.eldritchpress.org/nh/annie.html

 

10/12/15

“Make it last forever”

Blue is an ode to her daughter. Beyoncé, along with Jordan Cruz, employs the senses to depict the outer body experience of childrearing and the exchange of unconditional love associated with it. Not metaphorically but tangibly the effect of feeling or holding, seeing and hearing their offspring induces in the authors an uncommon sense of self as evidenced by their repeating the lines: “I feel alive” and “I’m so alive” in respect to their lives before parenthood. They also feel serenity as captivated in the peaceful yet rhythmic melody of the piece.

“Walls” with their ability to cave in and “words” that are void as their meanings become subjective and convoluted work as euphemisms of being in peril and requiring rescue. Children here are deemed to offer adults but especially those they care for a refuge from this chaos.

In the abstract, the lyrics of this song expand the traditionally portrayed maternal fantasy of children as immortal or unfazed by time. This nihilist realization that fragments the notion of youths as guardians and saviors with the perception of all living things as too ephemeral which might discourage anyone considering their odds of producing life.

Sources:

  1. BeyonceVEVO. “Beyoncé – Blue Ft. Blue Ivy.” YouTube. YouTube, 24 Nov. 2014. Web. 12 Oct. 2015. https://youtu.be/gSsMhQv6KZ8
  2. Knowles, Beyonce, and Jordan Cruz. “”Blue” (feat. Blue Ivy).” BEYONCE KNOWLES LYRICS. A-Z Lyrics, n.d. Web. 12 Oct. 2015. http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/beyonceknowles/blue.html
09/7/15

Humpty Dumpty: A Critical Analysis

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
All the king’s horses and all the king’s men
Couldn’t put Humpty together again.

What a Reader Is Asked to Know
About Life
– that this rhyme is about an egg?
– what a wall is
– what are men and horses and how they belong or are in relation to a king
– what is a king
– what it means for something to be put together ever or back again                       – the king’s men and horses are capable of overcoming many seemingly insurmountable achievements however saving Humpty Dumpty is not one of those feats
– that the Humpty Dumpty is both the name and a description of the main character signifying their clumsiness

About Language
– the importance of the melody that this form of entertainment relies on

What a Reader Is Asked To Do
– pick up the rhyme scheme and catchy tune
– recognize Humpty Dumpty’s ovalish shape that would increase its susceptibility irreparable injury and misfortune?

09/2/15

Row your boat

Row, row, row your boat Gently down the stream. Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, Life is but a dream.

 

Work cited: “Row, Row, Row Your Boat.” Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, n.d. Web. 02 Sept. 2015. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Row,_Row,_Row_Your_Boat