Author Archives: Betzalel Laudon
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Digital Project for Essay #3
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KOPt7ZL7_ac
My paper focused on the poem “Lady of Shallot” by Tennyson. My thesis discusses Tennyson’s motive as upending empiricist philosophy through his depiction of subjective and objective perspective of the main character.
The film opens with a shot of coins stacked high and in clusters. This are the towers of Shallot from within which the lady, imprisoned, looks out towards Camelot, the “towers” in the distance.
The rest of the film is seen through a bottle and is looking out a window overlooking the street. The image is unclear and deceptive, but at times glimpses of clarity are noticed. This captures the feel of the lady using medium (the mirror) to look out through the window and not being able to see clearly. Eventually, the scene zooms out and the color is added which has the effect of illuminating and clarifying the view, which is representative of idealist argument Tennyson is trying to make.
Basically, the idea of the video is to convey perspective in a skewed light, then with clarity.
Response Paper
Raymond Carvers “Cathedral” harbors much tension and an unspoken sense of menace. The tension is by purely sexual and sex is the unspoken threat lurking in the background. Its presence is elusive, sometimes coming to the tip of the literary tongue, other times remaining in the textual subconscious. We get a tingling sense of it when we hear about the wife’s face being touched by the blind man. Our senses are more aroused to delicate mention of his progression to her neck. And just as we feel we are reaching the climax of the truth, we are turned to other events.
The dialogue leading up to the final scene is one of jealousy and assertion. Both husband and wife want to be the center of attention and affection by the blind man. The husband does so as to detract from his interacting with his wife, and the wife for her own agenda. Meanwhile the blind man teases and further infuriates them both by not responding in favor to one or the other. Just when the husband concedes and relaxes his grip, he is seduced by the blind man. But the seduction is not directed solely to gratification of the blind man, but for the enlightening of the husband. The blind man wishes to take him to a place he has never been: a blind unseeing place but a place where non-the-less everything is illuminated from the fog and confusion of sex and love.
Showing Happiness
The question of happiness in “Best in Show” is ever present in the underlying theme. Are the characters happy as they are? Are they happier at the end? What does the transition do for them?
This film is all about the individuality of happiness. I think that the purpose is to underscore how some believe themselves to be happy but require a process of improvement, and how others are happy as they are and that the process simply makes them more so. The film is not trying to tell us that we are all unhappy or that we need a revelation to make us more happy. Rather, it is our perception of our own happiness and of objective happiness which it is trying to hone.
An interesting example of this was the couple form Illinois who were having therapy with their dog. They thought themselves to be perfectly happy. They did reasonably well for themselves and lived a nice lifestyle. They considered themselves happy because they fit the societal standard of happiness: their gourmet coffee, apple computers, designer clothing etc. We discover that they are really not happy at all. They project their personal issues onto their dog as a way of denying that they are in need of change. But even through the process of the show and realizing their mistakes, they never fully appreciate their wrong approach and subsequently end up artificially happy again. Their situation is no more improved because they see their dog as a vessel for their state.
The character from North Carolina, the winner of the contest, is another fascinating case of happiness. He seems to be relatively content with his life to start with. He may not lead the quintessential lifestyle of a happy American, but he most certainly is a happy fellow. He holds an inherently positive relationship with his dog, not one which is based on wining. And when he does not win the championship, he finds another way to improve his life.
I think that the most interesting example of happiness in the film was with the couple from Florida. Their dynamic is certainly one of a happy couple, but with many issues and concerns. The husband is jealous of his wife and they have problems with money, but they essentially love each other and are happy together. However, they certainly needed an intervention in order to make their happiness more productive and conducive to their environment. This is where winning the championship came in to play: it served as a basis for propelling them past their issues and forward into a better life where they were able to fulfill their potential.
The different stories in the film illustrate that happiness is different for different people and that the same events may not change everyone in their happiness. It illustrates the importance of recognizing inherent problems and focusing on essential issues of happiness, not just the apparent because the apparent is different for all of us. What is not different for all of us however, is the need to recognize our own situation for what it is and figuring out a way of working with it.
-Sol
Response Paper #2
In his work, Beyond the Pleasure Principle, Freud discusses the drives behind acts of compulsion. His first tendency is to apply his Pleasure Principle as the driving force behind compulsions. The basis of the Pleasure Principle is that humans seek to increase their pleasure and decrease their pain. But Freud rejects the application of compulsion as being driven by pleasure, instead asserting that compulsions are driven from a dark source described as a “root of fear driven by a demonic compulsion” (p. 44).
By asserting that compulsions are not a function of pleasure, Freud enters an entirely new realm of psychological theory. He asserts that instinct is the “tendency innate in living organic matter impelling it towards the reinstatement of an earlier condition.” (p. 44). This means that human beings want to go back to prior states regardless of happiness felt in the present or in the past. It follows that people may be driven to return to unhappy states which leads me to wonder how Freud views our purpose in life. Does he believe that happiness is an active factor in human development?
It seems that compulsions are not sensitive to happiness, but does this mean that the Pleasure Principle is correlated with happiness? Seemingly, if Freud is prepared to say that compulsions are not related to happiness, then pleasure is not necessarily related to happiness because happiness does not seem to be an underlying principle in Freud’s view of development.
I think that Freud’s denial of happiness as a major function in development is one of Daniel Gilberts’ primary motivators in his studies of happiness. Disregarding his philosophy of positive psychology, Gilberts relativist assertions in Stumbling on Happiness can be traced to Freud’s above ideas. It is important to ignore Gilbert’s prescription for happiness because if he believes that happiness is truly relative, then how can he say that one particular method will lead to it? This assertion in itself is not relativist.
Now that we have isolated relativism, let us approach it from Gilbert’s perspective in light of Freud. Freud views happiness as something more arbitrary than determined. He sees the struggle in conscious beings as the primary activity, and happiness is something which may or may not result as a bi-product of this conflict. This means that there is necessarily no prescription or core explanation for happiness. Whatever the situation, one can be happy or unhappy. If one is happy then he/she is so only relatively, meaning that it is not certain or definite because happiness is not by itself as an independent force, which makes it arbitrary. It also means that it can never be properly quantified or measured because of its arbitrary nature.
Gilbert relies heavily on describing happiness as being from an individual perspective: “All claims of happiness are claims form someone’s point of view” (p. 57). He describes this process through the use of charts to demonstrate semantic differences in the verbalization of happiness. This is in direct influence form Freud’s model of arbitrary happiness.
Although I previously attempted to discredit Gilbert’s assertions about positive psychology, I think that it is this relativist viewpoint which has led him to his conclusions. If happiness is indeed an arbitrary by-product of an unrelated driving force of human beings, then why not try and influence it consciously? Surely leaving it to the whims of subconscious activity will guarantee it no more then by actively pursuing its achievement. I think that Gilbert, while not fully believing that happiness is necessarily attainable through the methods of positive psychology, sees an opportunity for himself and his audience. It is this opportunity which may make all the difference in the end result of being happy.
-Betzalel Laudon (Sol)
