Milton’s God

The professor—speaking on God’s sadistic behavior in Paradise Lost—called God “not a well person.”

One of my favorite lecture moments, ever.

Dorothea

Oh—

I came up with a reason why Dorothea Brooke is actually not the most perfect character to ever exist within a fictional universe.

She could never write satire.

So there.

A Quiet Day

It’s been a quiet day here in Queen’s wing—even though I feel like I’ve done a lot.

I started off the day early at 7am finishing my paper for my early modernists supervision. I was writing about The Ambassadors by Henry James. I finished that then went to my supervision at 12pm. In between, I ate some soup (Scottish broth) and drank some Dr. Pepper. I like Dr. Pepper.

After my supervision (which was good), I hung out for a while until it was time to go to my practical criticism supervision. My prac. crit. supervision is fun because I get to have it with real, live British students! No really! They are third years at Homerton and very nice.

My prac. crit. supervision is kind of far from Homerton—well, it feels far, at least. It’s at Lucy Cavendish College, which only admits women students.

After that supervision, I rode back to Homerton—and found out I got an interview with a famous screenwriter who went to Cambridge! Well, I suppose he’s as famous as screenwriters can be, which is to say not that famous in terms of name recognition.

My interview is on Wednesday, and I’m writing it up for The Cambridge Student, one of two newspapers here. I’m pretty psyched.

I typed up some interview questions, then went to Subway where I ran into the Australians.

That’s about it. This week I’m going to try to stay on top of my reading (yeah right). I have an essay due Friday on Aristotle’s four causes. I’m going to the Union sexism debate on Thursday.

And this weekend I’m hoping to get out of Cambridge and go on a trip somewhere! Maybe with the caving society. They’re going to Wales.

I feel like a tremendous weight has been lifted—probably because I finished my paper.

That’s it.

My Summer—a recap for the curious

I think what surprises me most is that I was able to do everything I wanted to do.

The summer was long, challenging, fun, instructive, emotionally taxing, frustrating, enlightening—

One theme in particular stands out:

The collision of theory with reality—or to borrow a British/English idiom–what’s on the tin with what’s in it.

To give an example: it’s one thing to examine the role of gender in Shakespeare’s As You Like It. It’s another thing completely to confront sexist interpretations of your own writing.

Here’s another example: filmmaking.

Now, to most people, filmmaking sounds glamorous and exciting. Think red carpet, Brangelina, paparazzi.

The reality? Filmmaking is tedious, hard, dirty work.

As a production assistant I washed dishes, made coffee (good job experience), picked up trash, cleaned food up off the floor, wiped up fake blood, etc. etc.

What am I saying? That I don’t want to write? That I don’t want to make movies?

No.

I’m saying the only reason to write or make movies is because you feel compelled—maybe even called.

Nothing else could be worth the crap you have to go through to get there.

And it’s all I’ve got.

My Day

It was a good day.

Jeremy and I cycled to the boathouse that Homerton College shares with Trinity. We were there to go “tubbing.” Tubbing is what you do if you want to row but can’t.

First, they put us on the erg machines to practice rowing form. Then we actually got to get in the river—the river cam to be exact.

I promptly forgot everything I learned about rowing form.

After tubbing, I went to the Pooh Society’s fresher’s tea. There, I met multiple Pooh enthusiasts. We drank tea (very good tea), ate butterscotch brownies, and read a story aloud.

After the Pooh Tea, I went to Mill road to buy a bike light (mandatory at night in Cambridge), but instead ended up in Sainsbury’s (grocery store) buying crumpets (sponge-like cake that looks like half an English muffin) and crisps (potato chips).

Then, I headed to Clown’s (restaurant/pub) to interview with a theatre company for a position as a fresher techie.

Then, I took the bus home.

I like Cambridge.

I got accepted to IHS!

Cinematic & Literary Traditions of Liberty, here I come.

It’s going to be an interesting summer.

I got my acceptance packet from Act One today!! They don’t mess around—five books and three scripts to read before the workshop begins. And TV shows to watch if I apply for the TV track—

Imagine—watching TV as homework.

I’m already sold.

The Problem with Bitter

Recently, Obama has been getting a lot of flak for calling small town Pennsylvanians “bitter.”

Apparently, no one really likes to be called that—

I wonder how that same statement would be perceived if instead of calling them “bitter” he had called them “angry” or “furious” or “pissed off?”

What’s so bad about “bitter”?

I think bitterness has to do with unexpressed rage—

For some reason, I think “anger” tends to be associated with men or masculinity and “bitterness” tends to be associated with women and femininity. Women, in this paradigm, either choose not to express or aren’t able to express (possibly because of cultural norms) a deep sense of being wronged by someone or something.

This tends to create bitterness and bitter people.

“Bitter” suggests that something is left unresolved—held onto—brooded over to the point of morbidity—a taste in your mouth that refuses to go away.

So, what’s wrong with bitter?

I think the problem with “bitter” is that it seems to mean a distortion of perception—

If you’re bitter about something, you can’t view it in a balanced, objective way—the poison has spread, the offense has grown in the gym locker of the mind to outrageously incongruous proportions—you are fundamentally prejudiced. You have let your emotions get the best of you.

You are not seeing things as they really are.

When someone is bitter—let’s be honest—we don’t always take them completely seriously or listen to what they have to say—

After all, they’re bitter—they’re bound by their subjective emotional experience.

Why else would we use the expression, “You’re just bitter”?

I think too, that bitterness might involve an aspect of self-deception. My bitterness might involve the need to blame someone else for my pain, because blaming myself (or God) is an unbearably painful option.

So of course no one wants to be bitter—and neither do they want anyone else to call them that.

But what if they are?

Do people have a right to their bitterness? Should we blow them (and their opinions) off?

I suspect that the pain is real. I suspect that the slight or offense that caused the bitterness is often real too.

Maybe if we let people get angry—I mean really angry—they wouldn’t become bitter (bitterness also implies a long-term commitment to the offense).

Maybe if we acknowledged the root of the problem, the root of the bitter fruit, some of the bitterness would dissipate.

Maybe we can’t solve people’s bitterness—

But maybe we can listen anyway.

My Summer–the revised version

May 2: Fly back to NC. Hang out with family.

May 13 – May 30: Summer school at UNC. I take a class on James Joyce’s Ulysses and hang out with my sister. Oh yeah. Maybe I audit a philosophy course too while I’m at it.

May 31 – June 20: Um. I don’t know what I’m doing. Reading! Yes, I will read. A lot.

June 21 – 27: Fly to LA to attend Cinematic and Literary Traditions of Liberty. Man, I hope I get accepted.

June 27 – July 11: Hmm. Maybe I could hang out in LA—or go up to Fresno for Summer Arts!! Summer Arts is awesome.

July 11 – August 14: Act One!!! I got accepted!!!! YEAH! Ok. Enough with the exclamation points, I’m excited. Way excited.

August 14 – October 1: Search for paid employment. Get a job. Work as a PA (I wish!). End up at Sonic somewhere serving limeades and curly fries. Hey, it pays the bills (unlike my other summer activities).

October 1: England. Cambridge. Again, the best year of my life (or so they say).

You may (as an astute reader) have noticed that I didn’t find a way to work math in here. But that’s ok. Math can wait. MATH is not as important as screenwriting and doing what you want.

Yes, according to me.

Don’t tell my advisor I said that.

The voyeur

If the news is any accurate indication, there appears to be a recent spate of teenage girls beating the crap out of each other—and recording it—in order to put the video on youtube or myspace.

I have several questions.

1. Why girls? Or more specifically, why girls in the age range of 11-18?

2. Why video? Apparently, inflicting physical and mental anguish on the victim is no longer enough—the goal becomes creating something of entertainment value for others.

3. Why physical violence? Girls are traditionally associated with emotional and social violence (see Mean Girls, 2004) while physical violence is traditionally the province of boys.

I also have several hypotheses:

1. Why girls?

I would note that both the perpetrators and the victims are female. Why for instance, aren’t groups of girls getting together to beat the crap out of a boy?

I would also venture that our culture—with its voyeuristic obsession with the female body—particularly the young female body—perpetrates a type of violence.

Might this violence (against a female body) represent a repressed violence against the ideal image of feminine beauty propagated by the culture? Or a repressed violence against the imperfection of the aggressor’s own body?

We are not surprised when a teenage girl, acting on hatred for herself and her body, cuts her arms or legs. We are surprised when she turns this hatred outward and gives another girl a black eye.

Another consideration—the image of the “girl fight” has become sexualized in our culture—and is almost always portrayed as comedy. Perhaps beating up another girl represents an effort to play into an appealing image of female sexuality (as defined by men (see also pretending to be lesbian)).

2. Why video?

I’m interested in the connection between violence and media. Specifically—does the very medium of video lend itself to emotional disconnection from the victim (object)? Does the intermediary of the lens (screen, viewfinder) give the pain of the victim a sense of unreality?

In my experience, shooting video causes both greater distance and greater identification (which seems paradoxical). When I’m shooting video, I generally feel a sense of emotional disconnection from whatever is happening at the time (for example, a friend’s wedding). At the same time, I also see things in ways I normally don’t see them. Editing video in particular can give you a sense of hyper-reality—I feel like I know people when I really don’t. I’ve spent so much time with their image that I feel like I do.

3. Why physical violence?

I mentioned some potential reasons for this in 1.

I would like to conclude by implicating the voyeur.

In a sense, at any one youtube beating event, there are more people there than just the ones doing the beating and the one being beaten.

We are there—the potential viewers—the target audience. Though the perpetrators do not exactly come right out and wink at the camera (they, at least, have a sense of theatricality and dramatic effect), they assume our presence, they play to our pleasure, and they appeal to our sympathetic participation (with them, not the victim).

I am struck by the irony of various news commentators expressing shock and horror at these things while replaying the video footage throughout a five minute broadcast.

What are you looking at?

Leggo my Ego?

In this post, I would like to discuss a not-so-rare species of human capacity called the “male ego.”

Genus: human capacity — specifically a human capacity located in the spirited part of the soul.
Species: male

Thoughts on origin:

Once upon a time, there was a caveman named Ug. Ug loved to hunt. He especially loved to hunt woolly mammoth. Ug loved hunting woolly mammoth so much that he hunted everyday, perfecting his mammoth trapping, mammoth baiting, mammoth spearing, mammoth skinning, and mammoth boiling, basting, and baking techniques to a pinnacle of mammoth perfection.

One day, Ug looked up from his mammoth skinning and saw a woman. Now, Ug had seen a woman before — in fact, he kept one in the back of his cave for cooking and cleaning purposes. However, he had never seen a woman in the vicinity of the mammoth hunting grounds. “That’s strange,” he thought.

Long story short: The woman is a better mammoth hunter than Ug. She humiliates him in front of his fellow cavemen with her massive mammoth take. He waits until nightfall–then uses a mammoth skin to suffocate her in her sleep. Ug is once again the best mammoth hunter in the land.

Maylin, why are you telling this story?

Well, once upon a time, I was really, really good at woolly mammoth hunting. I loved it. But one day in the mammoth hunting grounds I started getting weird looks from other (male) hunters. “Maylin,” they said, “what are you doing?”

“Hunting mammoth,” I said.

“You’re not doing it right,” they said.

And because I was tired of hunting alone, I said, “Ok.”

And they showed me how REAL mammoth hunters hunted mammoth.

But no matter how hard I tried, I just couldn’t get it right.

“No!” they said. “Ok,” I said. But I kept screwing up.

Finally, they took me aside. “Maylin,” they said, “you do not have what it takes to be a mammoth hunter. We have tried to teach you, but you simply won’t listen. Please take your spear and go.”

I took my spear and–

But what does this have to do with the male ego?

You tell me.