3:38-5:20

Two things that I have to talk about: the ambiguity of poetry and section 6 of Song of Myself.

I have never been much of an interpreter, or at least thought of myself as one who is good at interpreting. When I was in elementary school, I thought I really liked poetry because of its sing-song-y rhythm and rhyming words. But then I went to middle school and then high school, and poetry just got more and more confusing and I stopped being able to understand them because they weren’t those short and simple and straightforward lines about liking cats and hating bats or something like that. Poems became something too complex for my brain to wrap around. Sure I could read them, but I definitely couldn’t understand them because it really just sounded like random words put together to me. Other students would be able to pull analyses of single lines or whole stanzas out of thin air, it seemed, and I was just stuck in a fog of confusion. When I read interpretations of poems though, they make much more sense. For Song of Myself, I read two interpretations: one from Sparknotes and one from Shmoop, both having been reliable sources for book summaries in the past. It was then that I realized poems could be interpreted differently depending on who is doing the interpreting (duh!). The Sparknotes interpretation talked about how Whitman was describing the self in relation to everything around it, and the Shmoop interpretation talked about how egotistical the speaker of the poem was. Now, there’s no right or wrong interpretation, unless you can ask the author himself, but I like the Sparknotes one better because it’s more positive.

I’m not much of a philosophical thinker but I like the idea of a connection of the self to its environment, which leads me into the content of the actual video. Nick Courtright talks about Section 6 of Song of Myself — the one where a boy asks Whitman, “what is the grass?” Everyone lives and dies; everyone is part of the same entity; everyone is one. Everyone lived and ate from the earth and eventually returns to the earth when they die which feeds the things that grow in the grass which feed animals and humans which die and are buried again — a continuous cycle. Courtright says, “even when you die, there is still a long future ahead of you.” So death is short lived, as you will become a part of life again, and this is why Whitman says, “And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.” Death is not as bad as it seems because you will live again. If you think about it, we are made of the same atoms that were on this earth millions of years ago, and these atoms are just being recycled every time something decays. Humans are recyclable…?

~2:41

I have chosen this video because this person brought up Don Quixote’s relevance today as a parallel to reality television, video games, and celebrity culture. I had not realized this connection until I watched this video but now it seems so clearly obvious. Pop culture encourages people to idolize and become obsessed with these famous figures that we see on television. An extreme example of this parallel would be K-pop fans. Many K-pop fans are very young, some still in middle school, which makes them very impressionable. They are easily carried away by ideas and their devotion to idols is unlike any other I’ve ever seen. Most fans spend hundreds, maybe even thousands, of dollars a year on merchandise, including multiple versions of the same album, clothing, and novelty items. Not only do they spend a lot of money, but they also spend a lot of time. K-pop is appreciated globally so fans on the other side of the world will stay up until early morning just to watch live videos or wait for the release of a new music video or album. As one can see, this obsession affects these fans’ daily lives, and so many of them being young children, it isn’t good for their health. Actually, there are some fans that are so delusional to the point that they try to hurt the idols in order to get the idols to notice them — these are called “sasaeng” fans. Idols or idol groups hold fan meets in different cities in Korea so they can engage with their fans, which makes sense, but can also be dangerous because of the sasaeng fans. There have been multiple instances where idols have been poisoned or given disturbing gifts, such as messages written in blood. These fans are like Don Quixote because they are so obsessed with the idea of the idols that their perception of reality is actually distorted. I would also like to point out that K-pop culture is a huge industry in Korea. Entertainment companies train children from as early as eight years old (maybe even earlier) to become idols and actors so it’s no wonder that kids so young are obsessed with this. These companies use the idols and actors to exploit fans. They aren’t just selling entertainment — they are selling a fantasy. Idols and actors live for the fans; everything they do is for the fans. The fans know everything that the idols do in their daily lives because they post videos and pictures.  The companies basically control their lives, and this is because of the fantasy that they’re selling. These celebrities are usually prohibited from dating. Idols can’t date because they are “dating their fans,” or at least that’s what they have to say because if they don’t, the fans will get jealous and angry as if they really were dating them. This example of the parallel between Don Quixote and modern day pop culture shows how Miguel de Cervantes’s thoughts on idealism surpass time and space and is able to still be relevant today.