In Simon Critchley’s “Surfaciality” he states that poets uses poetry to simplify and help us to interpret. He mentions the benefits of poetry and how it helps us to interpret and understand things through the use of words. He states that poetry aims to makes things clearer “a sickness of the eyes” which he is saying that the world is simple and we tend to over analyze what essentially are just simple things. Critchley uses the body parts to talk about interpretation quite often “a sickness of the eyes” which he used to explain that by de-familiarizing we become familiar. He repeats the phrase “under our noses” which is also a way in which he’s saying things are made clear but we tend to look for some grand meaning for every aspect of our lives and then we fail to realize what’s right in front of us. I interpreted that Critchtley is saying that through the use of poetry we are able to make our lives less complex because poetry allows us to express ourselves through simplicity.

I would relate “Surfaciabilty” to Lispector’s “Daydreams of a drunk woman” in the aspects where he spoke about appearance. Critchley essentially wants us to look at the real appearance and nothing more “not as some deeper, but veiled reality but as real appearances”. Maria is a woman who clearly has a fragmented image of herself “Her eyes did not take themselves off her image… and her open dressing gown revealed in the mirrors the intersected breasts of several women.” Maria is having trouble with identifying with her real self. She’s a housewife and a mother but in her heart that is not what she wants so in looking at her appearance she fails to see the real her because the real her is not depicted in her everyday routines. I think that in her failure to realize her real self, that is where the complexities of her life come.

After reading Samuel Beckett’s play “Endgame” without context I was totally confused. Rereading the play with context and background of the playwright, it was easier for me to have a better understanding of the play which is ironic because there’s no real meaning nor context within the play. There is a reoccurring theme of overwhelming darkness and desolation. The characters are in constant search for meaning though as the play goes on there is no development in the life of the characters. Death is the only thing that seems prominent in the play.

Beckett’s nihilistic worldview is evident in this play. The setting for one is gray and dreary as is always described. He also makes the characters seemingly mundane lives even more mundane by the constant repetitiveness and pauses in every sentence. That is interesting because plays and stories uses more decorative language to keep the interests of its audience, but in this play, language wasn’t use to make it flowery, in fact language was just used in the most minimal way. When Hamm asked Clov what she saw and she replied “I see my light dying” shows the cynicism and pessimism as a theme. Usually in plays there’s a certain anticipation awaited by the audience. You watch keenly and await the big climactic moment to take away from it but there was none in this play. Instead there are pointless conversations between the two main characters. Seemingly unimportant things are discussed and the characters are obsessed with things that are irrelevant. Hamm questioned Clov and asked “Am I right in the center.” Although unimportant I think the playwright uses these pointless conversations to reiterate and show just how meaningless and absurd life is. There wasn’t any meaning or obvious reasons for anything the characters did but simply to past time while they wait for death to take them away.

I would think that the challenges the nihilistic tone of the play pose is that audiences tend to be drawn to more optimistic pieces. Things that are coherent and tries to define the meaning of life. However nihilism is the belief that life is meaningless. But i also think that can be the thing that may attract people to a piece with a nihilistic tone because it more similar to the realities of life.

Power, Responsibility and Morality are some of the most prevalent themes in “The Visit.” However, the pursuit of justice seems to be at the core. The super wealthy Claire Zachanassian has returned to her now decrepit and desolate hometown to avenge the wrong she felt was done to her decades earlier by one of her townsman. This betrayal that was done to her had a major impact on her life. It led to her being exiled and that in turn made her become a prostitute.

What is justice? The answer to that question depends on who you ask. In the play I would concur that Justice is depicted as whatever the person who has the most power or in this case the most money says it is. Justice for Claire will prevail if Alfred Ill, the man who betrayed her is killed. At first the towns people seemed morally outraged by her idea of justice. In fact the mayor had a dramatic response when Claire suggested that the only way she’d give the poor town a million dollars was if someone killed Ill. He said “you forget, this is Europe, you forget,we are not savages.” His response clearly showed that he and the citizens of the town had a different idea of justice and that they had a strong moral compass, though that quickly seemed to dissipate by their overwhelming need for a technological and financial boost to their hometown.

I think the Jacquees Ellul’s interview relates to the play with the sharp contrast I realized when he spoke about technology and the effects it has on people. The people of Guellen decided to take justice into their own hands and kill Alfred Ill. They did this act solely based on the financial gain from it. They wanted to their town to have a technological boom, reopened factories and other places of business would do just that. However it seems that while these people are longing for technological advances to their town, Ellul is arguing that technology confines us and to an extent conforms us as well. The Parisians example he used with the 3 million people driving to the Mediterranean alludes to the conformity technology causes. This shows the contrast with what technology actually causes and what the people of Guellen actually sees it has.

People often carry out technological task but neglects the human side of themselves. In the play, of course the towns people benefited from the murder of Ill. The town began to strive after they were given the money but at the cost of another human being.

Watching Un Chien Andalou and Ballet Mecanique from a normative prospective both films came off as very unconventional. These films are not the films I would usually watch and in that sense I would categorize them both as being weird. However watching these films from the prospective of the dadaist and surrealist movement, they inflicted the same ideas and thoughts those movements aimed to achieve. The surrealist movement of the 1920’s was founded in Paris in 1924 by Andre Breton. The aim of the movement was an attempt to discover super reality by interpreting dream and reality together. Surrealist were more intrigued by a “materialistic investigation of desire and irrational knowledge.” The Dadaist movement, which is similar to surrealism had no uniform characteristics and could be interpreted by whomever however they wanted to interpret it. Both videos invokes upon its viewers similar ideas of the dadaist and surrealist movements.
Un chien Andalou is a very unconventional film. As I was watching, I quickly noticed that there was no central plot. I was trying to make sense of what was happening, but I noticed that there wasn’t a particular setting. All the events that occurred in the film were random and didn’t seem to have any connection to each other. There’s a distinct scene that was especially grotesque, it showed a man cutting a woman’s eye in half and there is scene where ants are crawling over a human hand. Both these scenes had no correlation which was purposeful. I think surrealism is depicted in this film because it made me as a viewer constantly tried to find closure and meaning where there was none. There were a wide array of motifs and images that enticed me as a viewer to interpret which could have several meanings. In essence the film got rid of logic which is exactly what surrealism is,”free flowing thought with the absence of any control exercised by reason.”
Ballet Mecanique was very rhythmic. There was a lot of different sounds. At times it seemed incoherent but also weirdly had a sound pattern. There was a constant repetition of movement and it reminded me of the short film shown in class about dadaism. Dadaist themes are embodied in this piece because there was no order or meaning. Their wasn’t a traditional form to this film.

In the Essay, On Truth and Lies in an Extra-Moral Sense, Frederich Neitzsche states that intellect is merely human, and it fabricates the illusion of truth. “It is human, rather, and only its owner and producer gives it such importance.” Neitzsche is telling us the readers that truth is something creative, not factual or logical.”But if we communicate with mosquito, then we would learn that he floats through the air with the same self-importance, feeling within itself the flying center of the world.” Truth will take many different forms depending on who or what is it perceived by. I also feel that the writer is telling us to accept that truth is an act of human creation and not a fact, and that metaphors are as close to the truth as man can ever get which can be implied when he said “Truths are an illusion which we have forgotten are illusions; they are metaphors that have become worn out…”

A passage that interested me was the third paragraph. It seems that Neitzsche is saying that knowledge is a quest to understand the world. Knowledge gives humans a purpose and makes humans feel proud and distinguished from the rest of the world and the rest of the perspectives. But even with that said I also believe he wants us to focus on the fact that this arrogance in humans that results from revering ourselves with such superiority makes us blind to why we actually exist. In essence our arrogance shrouds any real meaning which we seek.

In this piece Sade sets out to answer the question of whether murder is a crime in the eyes of nature, he then uses philopsophical concepts such as logic and observation to reach his conclusion. Sade states that cruelty, though, usually considered a vice is not. He says that it is “the first sentiment nature injects in us all.” This means that cruelty is innate. Cruelty comes forth even before we are able to reason. He believes cruelty is natural and society uses education as a tool to change what essentially is suppose to be left in its purest form.

Sade favored freedom like other enlightenment thinkers but in the most extreme form there is. He saw no place for laws or rules. “Repeal your laws, do away with your constraints, your chastisements, your habits and cruelty will have dangerous effects no more.” If society doesn’t impose laws upon us, then we would be free to do as we please and in this case cruelty wouldn’t be considered barbaric, just natural.

Sade then goes on to decipher the act of murder and whether it is a crime. Given that cruelty aligned with nature are the same he compares man to other plants and he concludes that there is no difference. He alikes the fact that they both reproduce, rise , fall and that just like plants man are vibrant while young, but at old age succumbs to nothingness. He states that the parallels of mankind and animals are exactly the same so therefore there should be no discrimination between the two and if we conclude otherwise, it is nothing more than prejudice. With this conclusion Sade is saying that if there is no difference between the destruction of man or any other animals so there is no difference between killing either. Sade also believes that man doesn’t cost nature anything. He says that even if man does cost nature it wouldn’t be anymore than what any other animals or plants cost. In fact materials used by nature are from the destruction of other things in nature. He proclaims if everything live eternally, there would be nothing to create new life since the creation of new lives stems from the destruction of old ones. Destruction is apart of nature because transformation is brought forth by it. Death is proven to be as natural as life itself. Death caused by destruction is simply transmutation he states.

According to Sade’s logics there can’t be anything criminal about an act that brings forth new life and benefits nature. By destroying parts of nature it leads to the reconstruction of another part. If we didn’t destroy, it would essentially caused an imbalnce among nature’s natural occurrence. If nature is the force that causes us to seek out revenge and to exact acts that have been done upon us why would it be criminal to murder someone. Nature needs these acts whether its during wars or plagues or any other acts that causes death. He then concludes that how can one be guilty in nature’s regard when these acts are done to obey nature’s intentions.

Nature plays a very different role in this piece as compared to the role it played in the romantic era. We were accostumed to seeing nature playing the beautiful role of inspiration. However In this nature is being used to cause as the driving behind the acts of destruction because it is said that nature in fact needs the destruction in order to sustain its natural order.

“Some say plants don’t speak, nor fountains, nor birds, nor the wave with its swish, nor stars with their sparkle: so say some, but it isn’t true,” This manner in which De Castro choose to start her poem depicts how much she values nature and the importance of it. She is making it abundantly clear the beautiful aspect of nature in our lives though it may be regarded by many as insignificant. “There goes the madwoman, dreaming of the eternal spring of life and the fields, though soon enough, all too soon, she will comb grey hair, and shivering.” Though beautiful nature is, look at the “ugly truth” it whispered. Something as beautiful as nature should probably sugar coat the truth a bit but not in the case. To me this depicted one of the many binaries of life, nature which is revered as beautiful seems to be mocking her and making her aware of an ugly truth which is death. De Castro is trying to see the positive in nature but the negative aspect comes out, “poor soul, incurable sleepwalker, dream on and on of expiring life’s eternal spring.” Nature which is suppose to be an everlasting this is essentially telling her of her expiration date on life.