Read the short except The Stars by Edgar Morin and watch the movie trailers below. In the comment section, post 150 response to one of the trailers of the kind of Hollywood melodramas that Macabea loves (please make clear which one) as it pertains to her reality versus her imagination.  Discuss how Hollywood film creates a “dream of life” and how it reminds you of the relationship between protagonists Macabea and Rodrigo SM in Lispector’s The Hour of the Star.

from The Stars by Edgar Morin, 1957

In other respects Hollywood proceeds in a mood of optimism  in order to permit its public to forget the effects of the ‘Great  Depression.’ The happy ending becomes a requirement, a dogma. Most films are tinted with an agreeable fantasy, and a new genre, the bright comedy, is enthroned after Frank Capra’s It Happened One Night. New optimistic structures promote the spectator’s ‘escape’ and thus in one sense avoid realism. But in another, the mythic content of the movies is ‘secularized,’ brought down to earth.

Finally, already subject to the influence of the Crash (King Vidor’s Our Daily Bread) and subsequently to the progressive currents of the New Deal, the American cinema receives the full effect of social themes in all their realistic vitality (Fury, Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, The Grapes of Wrath).

All these factors determine the evolution of the film. But this evolution itself is controlled by a still deeper current, which is the increasingly middle-class nature of the cinematic imagination. Originally a mass spectacle, the movies had taken over the themes of the popular serial story and the melodrama which provided, in an almost fantastic state, the first archetypes of the imaginary: providential encounters, the magic of the double (twins, speaking likenesses), extraordinary adventures, oedipal conflicts with step-father or stepmother, orphans of unknown parenthood, persecuted innocence, and the hero’s sacrificial death. Realism, psychological awareness, the happy ending and humor reveal precisely the extent of the middle-class transformation of this version of the imaginary.

The projection-identifications which characterize the personality at the middle-class level tend to identify the imaginary and the real and to feed upon each other.

The middle-class version of the imaginary draws closer to the real by multiplying the signs of verisimilitude and credibility. It attenuates or undermines the melodramatic structures in order to replace them by plots which make every effort to be plausible. Hence what is called ‘realism.’ The resources of realism include fewer and fewer coincidences, ‘possession’ of the hero by an occult force, and comprise more and more ‘psychological’ motivations. And the same impulse that draws the imaginary to the real identifies the real with the imaginary. In other words, the soul’s life broadens, enriches itself, even hypertrophies at the heart of middle-class individuality. For the soul is precisely that symbiotic site where real and imaginary encounter and feed upon each other; love, that phenomenon of the soul which mingles most intimately our imaginary projection-identifications and our real life, assumes an increased importance.

Now, Voyager, 1942

Leave Her to Heaven, 1945

Imitation of Life, 1959

Splendor in the Grass, 1961

The Fault in Our Stars, 2014

Here is the full video and transcript we watched in class today:

…Words, English words, are full of echoes, of memories, of associations. They have been out and about, on people’s lips, in their houses, in the streets, in the fields, for so many centuries. And that is one of the chief difficulties in writing them today – that they are stored with other meanings, with other memories, and they have contracted so many famous marriages in the past. The splendid word “incarnadine,” for example – who can use that without remembering “multitudinous seas”? In the old days, of course, when English was a new language, writers could invent new words and use them. Nowadays it is easy enough to invent new words – they spring to the lips whenever we see a new sight or feel a new sensation – but we cannot use them because the English language is old. You cannot use a brand new word in an old language because of the very obvious yet always mysterious fact that a word is not a single and separate entity, but part of other words. Indeed it is not a word until it is part of a sentence. Words belong to each other, although, of course, only a great poet knows that the word “incarnadine” belongs to “multitudinous seas.” To combine new words with old words is fatal to the constitution of the sentence. In order to use new words properly you would have to invent a whole new language; and that, though no doubt we shall come to it, is not at the moment our business. Our business is to see what we can do with the old English language as it is. How can we combine the old words in new orders so that they survive, so that they create beauty, so that they tell the truth? That is the question.

And the person who could answer that question would deserve whatever crown of glory the world has to offer. Think what it would mean if you could teach, or if you could learn the art of writing. Why, every book, every newspaper you’d pick up, would tell the truth, or create beauty. But there is, it would appear, some obstacle in the way, some hindrance to the teaching of words. For though at this moment at least a hundred professors are lecturing on the literature of the past, at least a thousand critics are reviewing the literature of the present, and hundreds upon hundreds of young men and women are passing examinations in English literature with the utmost credit, still – do we write better, do we read better than we read and wrote four hundred years ago when we were un-lectured, un-criticized, untaught? Is our modern Georgian literature a patch on the Elizabethan? Well, where then are we to lay the blame? Not on our professors; not on our reviewers; not on our writers; but on words. It is words that are to blame. They are the wildest, freest, most irresponsible, most un-teachable of all things. Of course, you can catch them and sort them and place them in alphabetical order in dictionaries. But words do not live in dictionaries; they live in the mind. If you want proof of this, consider how often in moments of emotion when we most need words we find none. Yet there is the dictionary; there at our disposal are some half-a-million words all in alphabetical order. But can we use them? No, because words do not live in dictionaries, they live in the mind. Look once more at the dictionary. There beyond a doubt lie plays more splendid than Antony and Cleopatra; poems lovelier than the Ode to a Nightingale; novels beside which Pride and Prejudice or David Copperfield are the crude bunglings of amateurs. It is only a question of finding the right words and putting them in the right order. But we cannot do it because they do not live in dictionaries; they live in the mind. And how do they live in the mind? Variously and strangely, much as human beings live, ranging hither and thither, falling in love, and mating together. It is true that they are much less bound by ceremony and convention than we are. Royal words mate with commoners. English words marry French words, German words, Indian words, Negro words, if they have a fancy. Indeed, the less we enquire into the past of our dear Mother English the better it will be for that lady’s reputation. For she has gone a-roving, a-roving fair maid.

Thus to lay down any laws for such irreclaimable vagabonds is worse than useless. A few trifling rules of grammar and spelling is all the constraint we can put on them. All we can say about them, as we peer at them over the edge of that deep, dark and only fitfully illuminated cavern in which they live – the mind – all we can say about them is that they seem to like people to think before they use them, and to feel before they use them, but to think and feel not about them, but about something different. They are highly sensitive, easily made self-conscious. They do not like to have their purity or their impurity discussed. If you start a Society for Pure English, they will show their resentment by starting another for impure English – hence the unnatural violence of much modern speech; it is a protest against the puritans. They are highly democratic, too; they believe that one word is as good as another; uneducated words are as good as educated words, uncultivated words as good as cultivated words, there are no ranks or titles in their society. Nor do they like being lifted out on the point of a pen and examined separately. They hang together, in sentences, paragraphs, sometimes for whole pages at a time. They hate being useful; they hate making money; they hate being lectured about in public. In short, they hate anything that stamps them with one meaning or confines them to one attitude, for it is their nature to change.

Perhaps that is their most striking peculiarity – their need of change. It is because the truth they try to catch is many-sided, and they convey it by being many-sided, flashing first this way, then that. Thus they mean one thing to one person, another thing to another person; they are unintelligible to one generation, plain as a pikestaff to the next. And it is because of this complexity, this power to mean different things to different people, that they survive. Perhaps then one reason why we have no great poet, novelist or critic writing today is that we refuse to allow words their liberty. We pin them down to one meaning, their useful meaning, the meaning which makes us catch the train, the meaning which makes us pass the examination…

Watch this video of poet M. NourbeSe Philip reading her poem “Discourse on the Logic of Language” and respond. Discuss what the poem says about language, familial connection, and how slavery destroys human connection. Responses should connect the poem to any aspect of Frederick Douglass’s A Narrative of a Life.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EOcJwt8XB4M

The Discourse on Method by René Descartes is a book that transformed the way people think. The phrase “Cogito ergo sum,” or meaning, “I think, therefore I am” brings a new understanding of the way we interpret knowledge. “I think therefore I am,” gives light on the idea that if you’re thinking, then you exist. If you doubt then you exist also, because to doubt something you must exist. Descartes is giving reason to prove that existence is life. He is trying to explain a “mind-body problem” where the mind and the body are separate from each other and all things physical are all in the mind and can be understood by the soul if they truly exist.

Descartes agrees that it is not easy to evaluate all knowledge; “ I would not even have desired to begin by entirely rejecting any of the opinions which had formerly been able to slip into my belief without being introduced there by reason…”(Norton, 22) He is saying that in his evaluation to become capable of understanding everything, he must forget all opinions that he has had until they are proven to be true and reasonable. He must doubt everything he knows, to find the real reason they are the truth, and with his ability to think and prove, he is ensuring that he exists. He puts into place four methods that he will follow before he is to be given reason to believe that things are true and can be knowledge.

While reading The Discourse on Method, at many points during my reading I began to become frustrated. I was frustrated with the language and grammar it was written in, I was also frustrated that I could not understand multiple sentences the first time around and needed to continue to look more closely at what Descartes was saying and try better to understand him. While I was doing this, I realized that I am in the situation being described in this piece. The reading evolved me to realize exactly what I believe he was saying. The ability of understanding knowledge for what it is first comes with understanding why you are able to understand these facts. Unlike mathematics, which has proven final answers discovered by mathematicians, other subjects such as logic must be understood as “truthful” to be stored as knowledge. And to understand them as the truth, you must first prove why you are able to believe in them. The mere fact that I am thinking about what Descartes was saying in his book proves that I exist in my mind as well.

The idea of “I think, therefore I am” seems so simple to understand, however to attempt and look at it in a logical view makes the idea seem abstract from one persons regular way of thinking; To truly understand something you must forget everything you already know.

For this assignment, I am to describe what makes a great work for me. The way I see it, there are several dimension to a particular work. These dimension include contextual, emotional, and philosophical. A great work of literature would touch upon, and have a message regarding all of these dimensions. My explanation of a great work would be better understood with a work that I consider being great, it was an exhibition in the Museum of Modern Arts (MoMA) called “Untitled 1989.”I believe this work includes all the characteristics that discuss each of the dimensions.

Before I explain how this exhibition demonstrates a great work, I will explain what this exhibition consists of. There is a mid-sized room with a wedding dress, cat litter across the perimeter, and yellow wallpaper. Upon a closer look at the wallpaper, one can see a pattern of 2 drawings. The first drawing shows a black person is being lynch, and the other drawing where a white male is sleeping.

Every great work will provide some information of the context of time period it depicts. For example, the drawings in the wallpaper of the Black male being lynched tells us that the exhibitor wants us to think about he societal context of it. The fact that the second picture of the White male sleeping tells us that there is a social injustice theme to it. Perhaps this wallpaper wants us to think of the Jim Crow era when the Blacks were unfairly treated and were deprived of some the basic rights (in this case Right to Life.)

This exhibition also shows how the emotion of the person sleeping in the background wallpaper is suppressed despite the social injustice committed around him. So in this case, it is absence of any emotion rather, that the exhibitor wants us to think about. If this exhibition is interpreted this way, I am sure that the audience will make similar connection with our current situations. Are there any social injustices that are happening today that we deliberately ignore in order to go about our lives? Even if the wallpaper is not interpreted this way, the audience will have emotions to the wedding dress that is placed in the middle of the room.  Given that there is spotlight in the dress, it will invoke feelings that we associate with a marriage, such as joy, happiness, love etc. These feelings will eventually turn sour when the audience focuses on the wallpaper, which is rather grim.

The final dimension that I think this exhibition discusses is philosophical. Each of the objects in this exhibition shows something that has societal meaning to us even today.  By putting these drawings onto endlessly repeating pattern, the artist made an attempt to say, that this was not an isolated event and that in some ways, has become our country’s background. The sculpture of the empty wedding dress is a vase waiting to be filled. It represents the supposed white purity that often triggered or justified the violence depicted on the walls. It also represents a vessel that is ready to be filled with all of the optimistic hopes and dreams of marriage. And to many Americans, Gay Americans, it is a reminder of equality denied.

The sculptures of bags of cat litter are the link between the sadistic imagery and the wedding dress. Cat litter is said to both absorb the stench of excrement in this case being the wallpaper whilst allowing for domestic comfort. This may be similar to the narrow mindedness that many of us have when dealing with various racial groups.

In conclusion, a great work for me is one that discusses an issue or has a theme in three main dimensions, contextual, emotional, and philosophical.

When it comes to literature, the “typical” great work has a rather predictable anatomy. An author currently dead and very acclaimed probably penned it. He did so during one of those lofty historical times we now christen the Classical period, the Renaissance, or the Enlightenment. Perhaps it could be during the modern era, too, in which case the author should have garnered a Pulitzer or a Nobel Prize. The great work muses about the meaning of life and human nature, in the most roundabout way. The harder to discern the greater the great work is. Only scientists state their conclusions in an obvious manner; the great work better be subtle. The great work is something you reverently bind in mahogany-colored leather, study in school and quote often.

At least that is what I used to think before I read anything with which I would develop a personal connection. If my memory is not tricking me, two volumes are fighting for the title. The two works that I can truly call great because I felt moved by them as a kid in one of the early grades of elementary school in rural Poland are the Bible and a short novel by Roman Pisarski, never translated into English, About the Dog Who Rode the Train. These two unlikely companions are both great works to me, despite one having a huge impact on the Western civilization and the other being a relatively irrelevant story written from the point of view of a dog (although after some further thought, it was much like Jack London’s The Call of the Wild; maybe it was objectively speaking a great work after all).

I was exposed to the stories from the Bible everywhere: at home, in church, even in the public, but not secular, school. But that’s not what made it important. Rather, it was the first work of literature that made me wonder, ask and doubt. “Grandma, but why did they do that, couldn’t they just ask god to…?” As for About the Dog Who Rode the Train, it made me cry when the narrator-dog died crushed by a cargo train. It made me sensitive to the pain of those who normally do not have a voice. Only a great work could accomplish that, even if I was only eight years old and highly impressionable at the time of reading it.

It seems to me that anything can be considered a great work; it just depends on who is judging. When a work of literature allows someone to feel, understand, or experience something he or she would otherwise not have – why would the work not deserve to be called great? Anything can be a great work to the right audience. Sure, some extent of universal appeal, a universal message, a theme that can remain relevant in different times, places, and cultures (which I would have to admit would most likely be those musings about identity, life, meaning, etc.) are often the qualities found in a great work. But before it is all that, it has to be stirring, profound, evoking emotion and thought. Basically it should not leave you the same after you read it.

Great Works of literature are pieces that make you feel. They are relatable, not necessarily because we have experienced exactly what the narrator is saying, but rather because we understand what the author is depicting and it strikes a chord inside of us. Whether through beautiful fiction like The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, or through more reality-based nonfiction essays, the piece describes something, perhaps even quite basic, in a way that we have never thought about it before. It is the wording on the pages that captivates and entices, that makes us finish a book, and tell everyone about it, not allowing its words to escape our essence.

For me, one of these Great Works is Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer. What’s interesting about this novel is that it’s written through the voice of a 9-year old narrator named Oskar. The boy spends pages upon pages trying to uncover more about how exactly his father passed away on 9/11 due to the tragedy in NYC, and tries to reconstruct what his father has left behind. The boy has evidently been left saddened due to such a misfortune, and is a character who cannot stop thinking and thinking about everything around him. Oskar questions the world in ways that most 9-year olds would not, yet it is understandable that the death of his father has had an unresolved, profound impact on him. Interestingly, this book was relatable because of the distinctive manner in which Oskar questions his surroundings, as he tries to make sense of the world he lives in. It is exhilarating, exciting, saddening, confusing and beautiful to follow his story as he pieces together what is left of his father.

One relates to all the moments of discovery this boy experiences, as he learns what it’s like to be human, to think, to live, to love, and to deal with loss. Thus, it is impossible not to feel discouraged when Oskar questions why we have so many thoughts, “What did thinking ever do for me, to what great place did thinking ever bring me? I think and think and think. I’ve thought myself out of happiness one million times, but never once into it.” This sensation that he describes of overthinking situations is extremely common in life, and watching a young boy struggle with this makes us sympathize with the narrator that much more. Throughout Oskar’s journey, as he tries to make sense of some artifacts that his father left behind, he also meets a variety of characters that help him learn about love and life. By interacting with all these new people, he gets to see many different lifestyles and makes notable observations, wording them in ways that hit home with so many readers life experiences, “She wants to know if I love her, that’s all anyone wants from anyone else, not love itself but the knowledge that love is there, like new batteries in the flashlight in the emergency kit in the hall closet.” This last quote in particular displays why I adore the work of Jonathan Safran Foer. I am enamored with his ability to capture commonplace occurrences or desires, such as the want to be loved, and phrase them in ways that bring clarity and understanding to our own experiences.

Overall, this piece is evidently one that makes me feel. It is a gut-wrenching novel that takes the reader on a roller coaster ride of emotions, yet it is so worth it. When one finishes reading, they cannot shake the insight, the wording, and the questions that riddled every page, formulated, quite unbelievably, by a 9 year old narrator. It is a beautifully told tale of a boy searching, searching, searching… so relatable because aren’t we all looking for something? For keys, for friends, for lovers, but mainly for ourselves. Therefore, this piece is encaptivating, relatable and beautifully written; all aspects that I believe Great Works must possess to be truly brilliant.

Sources:

Foer, Jonathan Safran. Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close. Boston, MA: Mariner, 2005.