Homosexuality and Literature

Hanna's lecture, be it interesting, was also a little disconcerting. At least, to me. She spoke about homosexuality in literature, primarily written by women. Although male writers were discussed, it was minimal and their take on gay relationships differed greatly than the "norm" coming from female authors.

First of all, one thing I noticed was that lesbian relationships weren't even discussed at all. The second thing I noticed was that these homosexual relationships were highly romanticized to the point of almost being fetishized. Based on both of these points, it looks like make homosexuality is praised bit that female homosexuality is forgotten about. This can be because it's seen as more "acceptable" for men to express their sexuality where women take the back burner. The fact that more women are writing these novels in a very romantic way also may be due to them attempting to express their sexuality through other men. It's a stereotypical thought that men don't devote enough time/energy/commitment to a relationship than women. So, by women writing two men in a relationship, it turns into somewhat of a fantasy. Not for the author or women in general, per se, but for what they hope men to be.

Marriage is Hard Work

While this film was tastefully done and well constructed--as it had to have been for how long Mack spent on it, Yard Work Is Hard Work kind of made me angry. Even within half an hour, I felt as though the short musical summed up everything that was wrong with how the world views marriage and relationships.

Nowadays, people are so focused on proving that they love each other and what they have is real, that they get married quickly without realizing the consequences. Marriage is hard. Living with someone else, day after day, is hard. Even with a great relationship, and a lot of love and respect for your partner, it's still something you have to work on every day, and that's something a lot of people fail to realize.

The time in the movie, while condensed, I believe, still  attempted to highlight the quickness of a lot of relationships. This worked, and parallelled a lot with what we see all over the place from media, to books, to our own relationships.

Love Igniting

Poet Garren Small so thankfully shared some pieces relating, in his ways, to love and desire. Walking into the lecture, I was expecting the forced, overly-flowery poetry about sappy love. The weak, fleeting romances that everyone swears will last forever. Infatuation, I guess. Or, worse, "heart-wrenching" poems about love lost, the guy who couldn't get over it, the girl who hated the boy who broke her heart--that sort of thing.

I was, as it is, pleasantly surprised that these poems did not end up like this. They were about love, yes, but if you were really looked. Throughout class, we've looked at love as though we were the ones experiencing it. Or, at least, in abstract terms. Small offered us a different way of looking at things. By observing others in the context of their relationship. The father and daughter in the subway. The couple sharing a salad with plastic forks. If it's not our own relationships, if it's not in our face, we're judgmental. This came through in Small's work, perhaps on purpose. But it's good. Because it's real and raw and something happens all the time. We need to see relationships outside of just ourselves because while learning from experience is great, learning through observation is also necessary. That could tell us that we either want something or not, without having to go through it ourselves.

The Brain and Love

I'm currently taking a motivation and emotion class for my psychology credits. I'm honestly not fond of it, but some of the things we discuss have some sort of relevance and are interesting. In Dr. Brown's lecture, I noticed, it was eluded to that love isn't really a feeling but more of a motivational drive. Internally, I sighed, remembering a lecture just last week on different emotions and how they all have some sort of motivation going on, biologically. One of these, of course, is love.

There's different types of love, even though Dr. Brown mainly focused on romantic. Yet, they all have the same purpose. A close, intimate relationship with someone that most psychologists would argue is essential to a healthy and long life. It's weird to think of it like that. That we all sort of need love to survive. All this year, we've looked at love and how it could potentially destroy someone--make them go insane, lose their lives, ruin them. But when we delve deeper, it's more than that. It can hurt, yeah, especially romantic love but it's all so essential. We have a biological motivation to love, something that's literally part of our brain, close to the same parts that control our heartbeat, our breathing, our movement. All these vitals and then our capacity to build and maintain relationships with others. So it's not a fleeting thing or something that's casual. It's absolutely necessary and engraved in us from the most basic biological concept.

Slavery Portrayed

I was surprised at Dr. Anthony Reed's lecture, considering it was something we weren't used to in this lecture series. Besides side comments about the plot of Django Unchained, there wasn't a lot of mention about love and the topic was readily skimmed over.

Something I did connect, however, was how slavery related more to desire and less about love. Ironically, I wrote about something similar for this second opinion piece and I feel as though this was reiterated in a different light about slavery. People don't always have pure intentions with desire, and that's partly why desire exists in the first place. Some are wired to want "healthy" things, or at the least, things in moderation. Everyone desires a little bit of power. That's how we're autonomous, that's how things get done and that's how we lead our lives. Yet, for some, this desire for power goes further to the point of no longer controlling your own life but the life of someone else, which is how we get to slavery.

Before Sunset

The sequel to Before Sunrise was almost the same as the first. Both Celine and Jesse are infatuated with each other and this is glaringly obvious. I don't believe what they feel for each other is love or anything else but an intense, romantic lust. This is made apparent by the way that they have moved on with other people. Jesse, even, is married with a son. Even though this isn't a happy marriage, I believe that if he was really in love with Celine half as much as he claims he is, he would've waited until a time that he thought they could be together again.

What this movie says about love is that it's a fleeting feeling. Celine and Jesse both feel the same way, but they've only met twice. Both claim that they're in love, but they both live their own separate lives outside of each other and can go years and years without actually being around. This idea contradicts almost everything we've talked about in regards to love and changes it to ultimately be a feeling instead of a state of mind.

Sex and Writing

If there's anything I hate, it's popular romance novels. Not to out any authors (Nicholas Sparks, Stephenie Meyer, and Nora Roberts...) but love, sex, all of that is never like it is in those novels. Anymore, it's so hard to find a relationship how it actually is, confusing, messy and a little uneasy, to be honest. No wonder high school girls just entering relationships, growing up with The Notebook, Twilight and Lifetime movies, have unrealistically high ideals and standards for falling in love with--and eventually having sex with--another human being that's just as confused, messed up and uneasy as them.

Steve Almond's work is more something that I tend to look for in novels if they so happen to focus around a relationship. Instead of seeing your significant other through rose-tinted glasses, you should be with them for who they are, much like we've talked about all semester. The idea of sex and sexuality that was present in Almond's work was surprising, but only in that it was real. It wasn't all flowers and romance, candlelight and rose petals because sex is never like that.

At the same time, it's never meaningless, no matter how many people try to say otherwise. Raw and vulnerable, it's mental and emotional way more than it could ever be physical. For a story to portray the darkest parts of characters and not just the lovely parts of them during an intimate scene, we see the whole relationship for what it really is: whole, passionate and maybe a tad awkward.