Woohoo for Fiction!

 “A cyborg is a cybernetic organism, a hybrid of machine and organism, a creature of social reality as well as a creature of fiction.” (2190)

If we take out the first part of that definition, “a hybrid of machine and organism”, we are left with the latter stating that a cyborg is a hybrid of social reality and fiction; Or, in other words, fantasy. Humans are always wondering what comes after our lives are over, after death. But, what about the select few people within society who believe in something else; something not entirely human, but not entirely farfetched either. As you probably figured from my picture, I’m referring to wizards and witches. Witches and wizards are human, but not only so. They are a combination of humanity and fantasy. Donna Haraway states that cyborgs are creatures of social reality (humans) and fiction (fantasy).

            “By the late twentieth century, our time, a mythic time, we are all chimeras, theorized as fabricated hybrids of machine and organism; in short, we are cyborgs. The cyborg is a condensed image of both imagination and material reality”. (2191) 

Vampires: A race of creatures that are neither dead nor undead. They are humans, physically dead to the world for their hearts do not beat, allowing the blood to pump within their body giving them the sustenance they need. Therefore, they feast on the blood of those who are “alive”, who’s hearts beat and circulate their blood and plasma, keeping them warm and awake to the world.

            I’m taking the completely fictional side with this theory because I think it’s pretty cool and interesting. No one knows what happens after death, and not everyone believes in a life after death surrounded by pearly gates and clouds. But what is there to stop us from believing in these fictional creatures? Do they not fulfill, in part, the very definitions of “cyborgs”? Are they not hybrids of imagination and material reality? Of social reality and fiction?

            Alright, so about this one: Iron Man. Again, completely fictional, yet he completely fulfills the entire definition of cyborg. He is human, with an electronic heart designed specifically to keep him alive and his heart beating. This being said, we can relate this to humanities continuing advancement with its dependence on technology; the next big breakthrough. Humans are so obsessed with getting the latest android phone, iPad, touch screen (insert object here). Tony Stark, a scientist and a genius, finds a way to create the next big thing in our world. Haraway’s definition fits like a perfect puzzle piece in our world’s struggle to connect ourselves with technology and how we are becoming the cyborgs.

            

Word Count: 443
Works Cited
Haraway, Donna. "A Manifesto for Cyborgs"  The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. W.W. Norton & Company; Second Edition. New York, 2001. Pages 2190 - 2220. Print

Feminism Theory Group Presentation

            The Feminism Theory group presentation was primarily a group effort all around. All of us found things in the media: advertisements, YouTube videos, music videos, literature, pictures, etc. Kelly was the one who put the PowerPoint presentation together but, it was a team effort. My part was to send in any media, mostly music videos, which belonged to a certain time period and emphasized feminism. My part in the presentation was to go over and elaborate on Susan Bordo’s piece on femininity: “The Reproduction of Femininity”. After everyone emailed all their findings, we got together and decided to figure out who was going to present on what and how we were going to go about presenting the theory as a whole, to the class. My other contribution to the presentation was working with the black box and making sure the presentation ran smoothly and functionally. 

Feminism: Unleash Your Inner Male

What is feminism? Well, feminism is the belief that there should be an equality of power between men and women. Yet, the importance or inclusion of intersectionality between gender and race, class, or sexuality are often times disagreed upon. Now, with that being said, feminism has been deemed with the stereotypical crazy woman who yells and goes berserk when something that is slightly demeaning towards a woman, albeit funny: such as a woman cooking in the kitchen while the man sits and watches a football game with his buddies and some beer;  a “traditional” aspect of things. But, that’s not all that feminism is about. Susan Bordo, in her book Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body: Chapter 5 “The Body and the Reproduction of Femininity” states that “The body—what we eat, how we dress, the daily rituals through which we attend to  the body—is a medium of culture.” (2240) Feminism is far beyond just a woman yelling at a movie scene because the woman is portrayed as the submissive type with no will power.

In the 1950’s and 1960’s, the media created an image of the “ideal woman”, which created a severe diversion in the image of women.  In order to subvert the desired burdening male view of women, Bordo claims three psychological disorders arose as a facility by which women could passively work through:

–        Hysteria: disables the body for both sex and work

–        Anorexia: drastic transformation of the body through hunger strike

–        Agoraphobia: refusal to leave the house to participate in a stereotypical female activity—shopping.

“Working within this framework, we see that whether we look at hysteria, agoraphobia, or anorexia, we find the body of the sufferer deeply inscribed with an ideological construction of femininity emblematic of the period in question. The construction, of course, is always homogenizing and normalizing, erasing racial, class, and other differences and insisting that all women aspire to a coercive, standardized ideal.” (2243)

Just look at the Olsen twins. 

In our society today, the media has dubbed this (look at the picture) the ideal of what women should look like. 

<<--This, is what society says is pretty. The Olsen twins are the best example for Anorexia and they live up to Bordo's claim about the body as a text, and how there has been a sever diversion in the image of women. 

Word Count: 394

Works Cited

Bordo, Susan. "The Body and the Reproduction of Femininity".  The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. W.W. Norton & Company; Second Edition. New York, 2001. Pages 2240 -2254. Print

Patrick Bateman Does Not Exist?

          So we watched American Psycho in class today. And we also talked about Postmodernism/Poststructuralism with a pinch of Capitalism. For those of you who aren't philosophers (like me) would have given a blank stare at how these two coincide. Well, let me tell you how. Postmodernism is the idea that nothing is real, or genuine; everything is an imitation of something that's already been done. Andy Warhol portrayed that beautifully with his Campbell's Soup painting. Warhol didn't come up with the company's logo or design; he copied it. He didn't take credit for the creation of the actual image because that would be copyrighting and that's not allowed. BUT, there's another side to postmodernism as well. Warhol's painting not really the Campbell's Soup logo. Why? Because it's not the actual thing itself. His painting is a copy, an imitation, of the actual can for Campbell's Soup. Now take this idea and put it with American Psycho. 
          "There is an idea of a Patrick Bateman. Some kind of abstraction. But there is no real me. Only an entity; something illusory. And though I can hide my cold gaze and you can shake my hand and feel flesh gripping yours, and maybe you can even sense our lifestyles are probably comparable, I simply am not there." This is probably the best example of postmodernism, and capitalism, there is. Postmodernism because the character clearly states that he is not real. Yes, he is flesh and bone therefore he is real but his identity is not. His identity, his character, is purely made up, something he has put together. It is constructed by the things he buys. Here is where capitalism fits in. You are what you buy. Bateman exemplifies everything that he purchases thus giving us a capitalistic view. Capitalism is a purely consumer based economy. Because Bateman is a copy, an imitation, of who Patrick Bateman is, or thought to be by his peers, he is a postmodern being; he is not genuine. Because he has created a persona for himself through his consumerism, he is a capitalist. 


Word Count: 346
Works Cited:
LionsGates Films. "American Psycho -2. "Morning Routine". Christian Bale. 9 May 2009. YouTube. 19 April 2011. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46-WNPlCYsg

Postructuralism/Deconstruction

Differance: Meaning is an endless chain of difference. 
Deconstruction: The meaning depends on the materials used to express it and the materials are always already contradictory.
Words are full of contradictions.

Alright, so I read Geek Love for my Theories of Fiction class and had to present on it. That being said, I delved into the world of Deconstruction, headfirst, and tore that book apart. It was the perfect example of what deconstruction is. Deconstruction is the idea that a text has more than one meaning, that a text conveys complex binaries and oppositions where the narration and story works to break down these contradictions. In Geek Love, Katherine Dunns, breaks down the absurdity of what we as a people consider to be normal and freakish. One of the major binaries in this novel is normal vs freak, born vs made. The characters cling strongly to the fact that they are different, that they are freaks and that they are born that way. What they fail to realize is that they were deliberately constructed; they were created with the help of methamphetamines, radiation and a number of other drugs. They were both born and made, normal and freak. Also, they are neither normal nor freak and neither born nor made. "Deconstruction isn't about identifying the binaries themselves, it's about what's in-between."

          Why am I summarizing this story? Think about it; deconstruction is the notion that everything is what it isn’t and what it is. Nothing is everything and everything nothing. YOU, the reader, the individual, make it what you want it to be; your mind creates what it wants.

          The characters in the book live within the real world. But, they are apart from the world at the same time. Their traveling circus, Fabulon, is a world within a world. They live within this world that they have constructed and have set themselves apart from the rest of it. The normal people always walk into their world to see the newest show but it works because the people know that these people are there for the purpose entertainment and awe. However, if the family of freaks walks into the real world, which they do, they get shot at because people can’t handle anything that doesn’t make sense to them.

          That being said, this goes hand in hand with simulacra; the imitation is the truth. What is there to say that this world does not exist? Why does it have to be one or the other? Why can’t there be both the normal world, the one that we have been programmed to understand and accept, and the world of freaks, of people, ideas and things that go beyond everything we know. If the imitation of something is true, then the imitation of life is true as well.

Word Count: 466
Works Cited: 
Mark Fullmer. "Jacques Derrida in 1 Minute". 5 July 2010. YouTube. 19 April 2011. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQbWOXxag-0&feature=player_embedded

That Bench You Are Sitting On is Fake

“The simulacrum is never that which conceals the truth –it is the truth which conceals that there is none. The simulacrum is true.”

                                                                                                                  Ecclesiastes

“If I had a world of my own everything will be nonsense.
Nothing will be what it is because everything will be what it isn't…

In contrary wise what it is it wouldn't be
And what it wouldn't be it would
You see”

                                                                                    Shinedown – “Her Name is Alice”

            According to Ecclesiastes, that which is an imitation of an untruth is really the truth. The truth does not exist because the imitation, or simulacrum, is not true but in actuality it is. The imitation is the truth; it is real. Have I confused you yet? Let me explain. Take, for example, the Gas Lamp District in downtown San Diego; it is modeled after the French Quarter. Odd? I think so. Why I think this to be odd is because there has never been any connection or influence from the French in San Diego. So, ask yourself; why is downtown modeled as such? Now, downtown San Diego has itself become a simulacrum. It is an imitation of an untruth but it is really a truth in itself. The French Quarter exists. It is real. BUT, why is there an imitation of the Quarter in a place that has no French influence?

            Also, a simulacrum, as stated before, is an imitation and according to Baudrillard “it is no longer anything but a gigantic simulacrum – not unreal, but a simulacrum, never again exchanging for what is real, but exchanging in itself, in an uninterrupted circuit without reference or circumference.” (1560) As confusing as this all may be, a simulacrum is also a simulation. When you walk into the Gas Lamp District you feel as though you have walked into the actual French Quarter. Deep down you know it all to be fake, an imitation of the real thing, but on the surface you forget all that and are immersed in the simulation of the imitation.

            Now, for the lyrics to Shinedown’s song. “What it is it wouldn’t be and what it wouldn’t be it would.” Think hard about what this is saying after reading my attempt at explaining what simulacrum is. Think of Lewis Carrol’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass and what Alice’s world is like. Her world lacks truth but really the world that she creates is true. Her world does not hide the truth but embodies it. Wonderland is an imitation of what Alice sees in reality but because she is a child she gives it childlike qualities and appearances. So, Wonderland is real. What you think is true, really isn’t and what you think isn’t true, really is.

Word Count: 500
Works Cited:
Baudrillard, Jean. "The Precession of Simulacra".  The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. W.W. Norton & Company; Second Edition. New York, 2001. Pages 1556 -1560. Print

Gasp! Something Else Pertaining to Marx....An Analysis

Communism is "not a state of the future, but the real movement which destroys the existing state of being."

                                                                        The German Ideology, by Marx

           

            When Karl Marx came up with his ideology he was probably envisioning George Orwell’s novel 1984 (to be written many years past his time). In a sense at least. Marx talked about socialism and how it came about because of the struggle between the class systems, constantly in contradiction with one another causing rifts and separations. After analyzing this system he came to the conclusion that capitalism brought about the oppression of the working class, or the proletarians that Orwell called them. These people are the ones that make up the majority of the population and are the ones that maintain the upkeep of the economy’s wealth and income.

            Althusser, a Marxist philosopher, proposed a new definition of philosophy as class struggle in theory. The struggle of the working class serving, living, creating, slaving, for the well being and selfishness of the upper class. The majority of the population is led to believe that they are happy to do things for the upper class, because the upper class are educated and smarter than they are and know what they are doing; the upper class wants the best for the working class and makes their decisions for them. Although the people in the working class are nothing more than a mere number in the work force, they are still thought about and are cared for…or so they believe. This same thing can be seen in George Orwell’s novel 1984. Big Brother is the big man in charge who makes the decisions for everyone who works for him and does what he says.

            But something went wrong in George Orwell’s world in the novel. One man decided to revolt against Big Brother and the people in power because he felt as though he was being cheated in life. Although the character in the book is actually a part of the upper class and is not revolting against the rich because he is not making just as much as they are, he is still revolting for something better. It’s a reversed revolution in the book but is still a revolution for the betterment of the self.

            Althusser uses the Marxist theory pertaining to communism and how the class system does not allow for any shifts in status. Either you are poor and in the working class or you are rich and in the upper class. You can not be promoted to the upper from the lower class. In 1984, we see this same ideology put into play. Those who are in the same position as the main character cannot go against Big Brother’s orders and creeds and if they do so and veer away from their positions and into that of the prole’s then they are to be punished. The character realizes that the life he has, has robbed him of his individuality and therefore decides to break away from it all; a sort of revolt if you will.

           

Word Count: 510

Oh Look...More Marx

             So, let’s recap. We learned that Marx believed that communism was the way to; to take down and destroy the class system and make everyone equal. He was all for massive rage revolution condoning such acts and giving the working class the ok-go and self-esteem they would need to carry out their plans. But, what else does Marx have to say about socialism, aka communism, and the class systems? Let’s all be happy…kind of.

            “Ideology as an instrument of social reproduction”…what? Let me rephrase; the worker bees are led to believe that the economic interests of the ruling class are the economic interests of the working class. The working class is taught that they are happy to work for the upper class, which is too lazy and snooty to do the work themselves and feel like they accomplished something. You are an important member of society. You help the progress of our economy, helping us help you. Lies! The hard working bee is going out into the world, where death awaits at every corner, risking his life to get to that pretty flower and collect his honey for a stupid queen who is too lazy to get up off her big heinie and get her honey herself. No, she is the Queen Bee and she has her peons to do her work for. Her workers are led to believe that the queen loves them and every task that they are given is for the betterment of their society, thus for the betterment of themselves. (I think not.)

Word Count: 275

Marxy Marx and the Funky Bunch

            Marxism is a political ideology that implements socialism; a worldview for how to change and improve society. Marx believed that social occurred because of the struggle between the different class systems within society who are constantly contradicting one another. His analysis led to the conclusion that capitalism leads to the oppression of the working classes, the proletariats, who make up the majority of the population. Not only is the working class the big chunk in the pie chart, it is also the group of people that brings home the money for the upper class, the rich snobs, the bourgeoisie.

            Marx, and his advocates, believes the only way to correct this inequality where the poor majority work and live for the rich minority (lazy pricks) is for there to be a revolution where the proles take over the government and hand over the benefits to their class. Private property is taken into government control, now run by the working class, and is transformed to benefit their class system. Essentially, this is a socialist economy, but Marx believed that this would eventually develop into a completely classless system, known as communism.

            There is one flaw though; everyone wants to be equal but this is not really true. Everyone wants to be better than their neighbor, make more money then them so they can have something better: a better product, a better house, a better income, a better life. So, communism wouldn’t really work because there would be a full on riot between coworkers, feuds between friends, etc. all for the sole purpose of being better than the other. Of not really being equal. 


Word Count: 271

Revolt Against the Institution!

            In his essay, Barthes criticizes the method of reading and criticism that relies on aspects of the author’s identity. Barthes says that that to give a text an author it imposes a limit on that text. In other words, if we look at a text and say that so and so wrote it then we automatically limit our perceptions of that text.  We limit ourselves to what we let ourselves take away from the text and what we allow ourselves to imagine.

            This being said, what he reader has to do is take away any and all ownership they have led to believe of that text, forget that they were told who wrote and in what time period, and read the text that way. Each piece of writing contains multiple layers and meanings. Barthes draws an analogy between texts and textiles saying that a “text is a tissue, or fabric, of quotations drawn from innumerable centers of culture rather than from one, individual experience.” The essential meaning of a work depends on the impressions of the reader rather than the passions or beliefs and tastes of the writer. A text’s unity lies not in its creator or origins but in its audience and its destination.

            Barthes goes on to say that the author is no longer in charge, taking away its “authority” and is renamed the “scriptor”.  The scriptor exists only to produce the work, not to explain it.  The scriptor is born simultaneously with the text and is in no way equipped with a being preceding or exceeding the writing. Every text is written in the here and now and is eternal because every time it is read it is alive once again because the meaning lies exclusively in the language itself and its impression on the reader. Many critics ask the question, “How can we figure out what the writer intended?” The answer is we cannot. We can never know what the writer specifically intended because we are not the writer; we do not know what was going in their head when they sat in front of a desk and wrote the story. The purpose of “killing” the author is for the sole purpose of removing the restraints that it creates on the reader and their interpretations of the text. For example: When I read the books in the series of novels written by Sherrilyn Kenyon, I don’t know what Kenyon’s intentions were. Was it to give the reader a new grasp on mythology? Was it to give the reader a sense of self confidence? Was it to turn the reader into a crazed lunatic thinking that they can become vampire hunters and get into fights, thus eventually killing themselves? Who knows? To each reader they moral of the story is different. Each and every individual takes away something else from the text. The language of the text “speaks” to the reader a different story and lets them conceive their own ideals.

            By destroying the author we open up a whole new world of reading and interpreting a text. High school English classes drill the students to analyze a text based on what they know and what research they have done on the text’s author. Although this allows for limited answers in a classroom and guides the students to certain definite answers, it doesn’t allow for interpretations beyond what the teacher has said. This method doesn’t allow the students to further examine what the text could possibly mean, therefore barring their development into how their individual minds work and how they as individuals perceive things.

Word Count: 597

Dreams Define the Dreamer

                In his writings and findings about dreams that he discusses in his book The Interpretation of Dreams, Freud analyzes his own dreams as examples to proves his of the psychology of dreams. He makes a distinction between the surface level or “manifest” dream content and the unconscious or “latent” dream thoughts expressed through the special language of dreams. He poses the idea that all dreams represent the fulfillment of wishes and on the part of the dreamer and maintains that even dreams about anxiety and nightmares are expressions of unconscious desires. Freud goes on to explain that the censorship in dreams causes a distortion of the dream content and that through the process of analyses the details that seems trivial and unimportant can be shown to express a coherent set of ideas. Freud proposes that the ultimate value of dream analyses may lie in the revealing the hidden workings of the unconscious mind.

            Taking what Freud has to say about dreams and the meanings that they hold in the dreamer’s subconscious mind, we can assume that when we have the most bizarre of dreams and wake up thinking My mind must be on ten levels of crazy to come up with that dream, our subconscious is telling us, or showing us, something that we wouldn’t have let ourselves perceive while awake. If someone has a nightmare about being chased around by a giant spider then that dream can either mean (in my own personal perception) that, obviously, the dreamer is deathly terrified of spiders and being anywhere near them or two, that the dreamer has a wish for adventure and thrill and the want to overcome their fear of spiders.

Word Count: 280

What Cezanne Speaks to Me

                                             




















Paul Cezanne
Still life with skull.


     He had just handed over the down payment of his new studio to the realtor who greedily took his money. He had waited a long time for this moment, when he could finally own a place to call his own, a place where his art could feel safe and at peace. Putting everyone away in their canvas bags and hauling them from place to place had taken it's toll on him; his paintings were his friends; Matisse, Dali, Picasso, O'Keefe, Cezanne. Each had claimed a place in his heart, forever. 
     The walls were bare and the floors dusty. There was no furniture, not even a side table, to occupy the magnificence of those four walls. He looked around and there, to his left, right below the ceiling-kissed window, he saw it: the perfect spot to hang his favorite friend. It was that spot on the musty wall that would forever be the permanent home to Cezanne. Forget furniture, forget cleaning up before the dust claimed his lungs, putting up that picture was the only thing on his mind. 
     As he stood there, admiring the beauty of his creative and awe inspired decision, he could not have come up with a better resting place. It was a depiction of his life, his work, his everything. The death of one that led to the birth of the other. 


     Before I begin my analyses I have to clarify that I am a Creative Writing major and writing a story, of any sort, in 100 words just can't be done. =P


     If we took a formalistic approach, all we would say was that there is no transcendent meaning to the discipline other than the literal content being created. In other words, there is nothing to this painting except the paint, the canvas and the actual picture created. There is no story behind the painting and there is no hidden meaning. Structuralism says otherwise.
     Structuralism is a theory in which human culture and various disciplines within it are analyzed semiotically (meaning they are analyzed as a system of signs and symbols). Structuralism argues that any specific domain of culture may be understood by means of a structure that is distinct both from the organizations of reality and those of ideas or the imagination. The reason for all of this ambiguity is because structuralism is largely known as a meta-thought process, which means it is a thought process behind the initial thought process. What I mean by this is that beneath everything in a certain discipline, the foundation of every system is its structure. For example, Foucault is employing structuralism when he analyzes sex during the Victorian Era as a linguistic function of repression. His main method is genealogy but the method behind that method is structuralism. The same can be said about a painting. 
     When creating a painting, every artist approaches the canvas and their colors differently. No one piece of art is ever the same, even when looking at works from the same artist. They have similar qualities throughout all their work but there is no imitation of one piece in another. They analyze what’s around them: politics, people, actions, thoughts, scenes; everything has been taken into consideration to create a painting. A picture paints a thousand words they say, and an artist does just that when they put all that they have analyzed onto a strip of canvas. However, beneath all that, beneath all the freedom in color, shapes and brush strokes and patterns there is an underlying structure ruling them all. The structure of painting, never fully observed in the colors and shades of the paint in the pictures, takes it’s backseat and lets the driver steer the wheel, or the brush in this case, wherever the artist pleases, but at the same time never leaving the boundaries of what that structure has set forth. With everything good and pleasant, there is an underlying system that sets forth the rules for what can and can’t be done to avoid chaos and in turn, creates beauty.


Word Count: 673

Welcome to the Sublime

"Amazement and wonder exert invincible power and force" (137) 

      Longinus's view on sublimity is that "nature is on the whole a law unto herself in matters of emotion and elevation." (137) He believes that when produced at the right moments, it can tear everything up. Sublimity is the creation, or acknowledgement, of an idea so pure generated from everything around us, that sets us apart and separates us from the standards of awe and transports us into a place of peace. If someone here’s something repeatedly and is left with nothing to reflect upon or does not impose its meaning unto that person, than it is not true sublimity. “Real sublimity contains much food for reflection, is difficult or rather impossible to resist, and makes a strong and ineffaceable impression on the memory.” (138) Longinus believed that the most productive source of sublimity was the power to conceive great thoughts. He wrote elsewhere that “sublimity is the echo of a noble mind” (139). A person with a noble mind is one whose thoughts weigh heavily and are not full of trivial expressions.

           

“Our thoughts often travel beyond the boundaries of our surroundings. If anyone wants to know hat we were born for, let him look around at life and contemplate the splendour, grandeur, and beauty in which it everywhere abounds.” (151)

            In this clip from Walt Disney’s “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice”, Dave explains his fascination with his tesla coil experiments. He is physics major and is using the tesla coils to generate plasma. He say’s, “I got so fixated on the technical aspects of it that I almost didn’t notice something kind of beautiful.” Here he demonstrates an aspect of sublimity; he is of noble mind by creating plasma from the high frequency sound waves from the coils. He is nature, with a little help from modern technology, to create a part of nature that is not seen every day. His moment of sublimity arises when he finally sees beyond just the technical aspect of his experiments and notices that the experiment itself is a kind of beauty. He takes a step away from physics and calculations and looks through different eyes at what the coils are doing, creating. “They’re making their own music and it was lost on me. I was never able to appreciate it”.

Word Count: 386

Leitch, Vincent B. The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. 2nd ed. New York: W. W. Norton &, 2010. Print.

“Tesla Coil Scene Sorcerer's Apprentice (Secrets - OneRepublic). Perf. Jay Baruchel. 17 November 2010. YouTube. 20 February 2011.

Bugger, bugger, bugger...

In “The King’s Speech”, Colin Firth plays King George the VI of Britain, who is plagued with a stammer. In this scene, we can use Aristotle’s system of argument (speech) and Aristotle’s theory as to why art is good.

            Aristotle believed that there were three different types of speech; deliberative, forensic and epideictic. Someone who is giving a deliberative speech is good at persuading their audience about what is going to happen in the future. A person who is giving a forensic speech appeals to the past and somehow relates it to what their argument is based on to give it merit. And lastly, a person giving an epideictic speech focuses on the present and appeals to their audiences ethos, pathos and logos; character, emotion and logic, respectively. In this short clip we see a moment in the film where the king is at another speech lesson with his therapist, played by Geoffrey Rush, and he starts throwing expletives left and right to get his anger out and calm his nerves so he can focus on improving his speech.

            For those who haven’t seen the film, or don’t know anything about it, Geoffrey Rush’s character is a commoner, and Colin Firth’s character is the king. And we all know that kings do not interact with commoners, let alone befriend them and ask them for their help. Geoffrey Rush makes a wonderful argument when the king, begrudgingly, comes to him for help. He acts all posh and upper class and like, well, royalty and Geoffrey Rush doesn’t take any of it. He treats the king like any other person, or patient; like family, like a friend. The king, at first is outraged but as the film progresses the two grow a special bond. In this scene, Geoffrey Rush is appealing to the king’s ethos, pathos and logos while giving an epideictic speech. He acts according to the king’s character (ethos) using words and mannerisms that will appeal to him and make him break down his mental walls: that he is here to help him get better at his speech. Rush also uses a tone of voice and tells simple stories and analogies that appeal to the king’s emotional state of mind/character; his pathos. To appeal to his logos, Rush finds ways to be strict with the king but also still friendly so as to not make the king overly upset and turn away, by making him realize that his tantrums will not help him help his improvement in his speech.

            Aristotle also believed that art was very important and important for the people. He believed that art was cathartic, creating a type of cleansing that lead to learning something about one’s self. In an earlier part of the film, (sadly I could not find the clip) Rush makes the king put on a pair of headphones and turns the music up very loud. He tells the king to recite a certain passage from Hamlet while the music is playing. The king complies, again begrudgingly, and begins to recite although not being able to hear himself at all. After becoming exasperated with the exercise he storms off home. Later, he plays the recording from that exercise and hears himself recite the passage with no hint of stammer. As he sits on the couch, he begins to cry as he realizes that there is hope for him after all, the he indeed does have a voice and the capability of speaking without stammering. This is a cathartic moment for the king where he learns something about himself that he didn’t know before, thus proving Aristotle’s belief that art is good for man.


Word Count: 609
"The King's Speech: The F Word Scene." Dir. Tom Hooper. Perf. Colin Firth, Geoffrey Rush. 02 February 2011. YouTube. 14 Feb. 2011. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ka2g2ehdLj0

Try and Persuade Me

     Alright, so today we had a guest speak for the majority of our class period. What did we talk about? The art of persuasion of course. As many people would call it, rhetoric. According to the Greeks, who only had two jobs in life; to fight in combat and risk the only thing they had in order to be a hero, and to open their mouths after working out and talk. Doesn't the latter sound like fun? It does, but only if you're good at it. During this time in the Greek culture you had to be very good at speaking; you're status depended on it. 

     

     Aristotle came up with three different types of genres to rhetoric; deliberative, forensic and epideictic. Future, past and present, respectively. He also came up with the three different appeals to persuasion; ethos, pathos and logos. The ethos distinguishes character or spirit of a person, group or culture. The pathos is the quality or power to arouse pity and the logos is the appeal to logic, the rational principle that governs and develops the universe. He believed that the center of all argument, persuasion, was syllogism; the assembling of sentences such that those sentences create an outcome, or conclusion, that could be generated as the only possible, or plausible, outcome. He also believed, that for those who could not think as critically, that the center of rhetoric was enthymene; shortened syllogisms. 

     When I think about this Aristotalian system of argument, or speech, I think of all the conversations that have been had, the scripts that have been created, topics of discussion that have been generated, and so on. I, honestly, thought I didn't know anything about theory: it seemed like such a foreign part of education to me that I would never come to understand. After hearing this lecture on Aristotle's system of rhetoric, I have realized that everything we do is based on this system; we just didn't know it, or at least I didn't. When we break things down, it's not that hard to realize that we use this system in our everyday conversations. For example: When we want to convince a friend that whatever is going on will turn out okay, we appeal to their logic, we put ourselves into their place and give examples from past experiences, thus appealing to the ethos and then we appeal to their ethos, by minimizing the power or affect of whatever is bothering them. We also go into deliberative speech, telling them what will happen if they do or don't do certain things; forensic, what has happened in the past with whatever given reason or decision and epideictic, whatever is happening to them due to whatever choices or circumstances.


Word Count: 454

Intro the Theory

     Gorgias, in his Encomium of Helen, states that "a man, woman, speech, deed, city or action that is worthy of praise should be honored with acclaim, but the unworthy should be branded with blame." (p 38) He explains the four possible reasons for Helen's departure to Troy: she could have been persuaded by the gods, by force, by love or by speech. He argues that if Helen was indeed persuaded by the gods, then those who blamed her for her crime should blame themselves for the will of the god's cannot be overcome by that of a mortal. Gorgias explains that by nature the strong rule the weak and the gods are the strongest of all beings, therefore they rule over the weak mortals that reside on Earth and Helen should be absolved from her reputation. If, however, it was by force that she left for Troy, then the aggressor should be blamed. If it was by love, then she would again be absolved of her crime because love is a god, and how could any weak mortal reject him? If it was by speech, Gorgias explains that he could clear her name from blame because "speech is a powerful master and achieve the most divine feats with the smallest and least evident body." (p 39)

     According to Plato, everything was imitation. As we saw in the video of Plato's Cave, the images that the prisoners saw was all imitation. They were shown shadows, replicas, of the real thing. This led me to think that, what, throughout all that we've learned, is real and what is fake? Because, whatever is fake, is an imitation of the true thing itself. Have all the things that we have been taught been real? The true things in and of themselves? Then again, what constitutes as real? To each person, something, anything, can be taken and applied to their personal beliefs and ideals to make it real. Give everyone in a classroom one idea, and see how many different forms of that idea are created. This does not mean that the idea is an imitation of the real one because it is not re-stating the exact idea, but turning it around so that it becomes real, genuine, in it's new form. Perhaps, what those prisoners saw in the cave were imitations. What if they were shown the real thing, but not given a name for it? What if, if they were released out into the world and they were to see those same images for themselves, in actuality, would they not give those images a name of their choosing? Each prisoner could give the same image a different name, but the basis that the object they see is the same thing does not change. So who is to stay what is real and what is fake, what is genuine or imitation?


Word Count: 473


Works Cited
Gorgias of Leontini. “Encomium of Helen.” The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism.
W.W. Norton & Company; Second Edition. New York, 2001. Pages 38-41 Print.

Major Critical Theories....sigh.

Well, for starters, my name is Ani, I'm a Creative Writing Major, a Junior, a fairly creative mind and theory, I have to say, kinda scares me. Then again, that's a good thing because if I wasn't scared of it, I wouldn't take the class. (It's a weird way of looking at it, but it makes sense to me.) Anyways, I’m currently enrolled in six English classes and I only have one word for you: No. I have no idea what I was thinking, thinking that I could take all these classes and manage. Apparently, my thought process isn’t all that great, because I’m sailing a ship where the hull looks like Swiss cheese and is mostly sinking, rather than sailing.

I love English. I couldn’t think of any other subject to study (besides Journalism, which is my second major) because it’s just so much fun. I love to read, and my ever growing library in my room is slowly expanding, causing me to upgrade my storage units every other year or so. (My wallet is so not happy with me.) My career goal is to become a copy editor, so I’ll be the first to read new and upcoming books before they hit the shelves. It’s an exciting thought. That being said, I think this class is definitely going to help me see books, and stories, and all types of fiction in a new light that will help with my future career. =)

I’ve never really thought critically and even if I have, I never realized it. If you ask me what it means to think critically, I’m going to give you the only answer I can think of: To think critically is to think philosophically, like Plato and Aristotle and etc, which to me is not that appealing because it’ll hurt my brain. BUT, from what we did in class on our first day, I think I’m going to enjoy this part of English because, come on, we watched a clip from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang: That’s just awesome. Another thing that’s really cool about this class, and this teacher, for me at least is that there are no wrong answers. I can say any response that comes to mind and even if it’s wrong, it’s okay because then we’ll learn from that and figure out why it’s wrong.

The theory that there are no wrong answers in this class is amazing, but when it comes to the actual moment where I want to give my response and not feel like I’m giving the most absurd answer ever heard on the planet, will be the moment of truth. Until then, I will remain a teensy bit skeptical and see how this all plays out. =)


Word Count: 488