Kissing Jessica Stein

The one thing I gathered from Kissing Jessica Stein was that relationships, all relationships, are built on the same foundation. Helen and Jessica's romantic relationship, to me, often looked platonic. They did pretty typical things like go out for drinks, or to movies, out to dinners or walks. All things that I've done with friends, and all things that people usually do with others they simply have relationships with. Two men had even mistaken them for being friends, and tried to pick them up.

In fact, the only thing that would make their relationship look more like a romantic relationship is if they were of different sexes. It's interesting that we make that connection, however. If I were to see two women or two men out to dinner or at the bar together, I'd assume they were friends who decided to get together and go out. But, if I saw a man and a woman out to dinner together, or at the bar, I'd automatically assume they were on a date, if not in a romantic relationship. Even if they actually were just friends. I think this speaks to the heteronormative view we have on people. Even though we're aware that homosexual relationships exist and happen, frequently, when presented with the actual thing (two men/two women seen together) we only think of it as them on a friendly, non-sexual outing. It's as though we don't believe that they love in the same way, or as if homosexual relationships look different. Although, it's not.

Something I took away from this class so far was exactly how love and desire relate to each other. Yes, on some level, I knew that they did relate. Obviously. But the idea that desire is wanting something you don't have and how that could lead to being in love, which means you're lacking something is an interesting concept.

Simple Passion

Time is an interesting concept in this autofiction. Annie speaks about waiting for A to come and visit her, even though it only lasts a few hours. Her obsession with him consumes her life to the point that she won't leave the house in case he'd call. She also avoided doing things that were loud, or would impair her ability to hear the phone ring. In fact, she seemed so hung up on A that she molded her entire life around the uncertainty that their relationship brought her.

She mentions not wearing a watch even though he does and that he would look at it discreetly. While he was counting down the hours until he had to leave, she was counting down the hours until he would come like he said he would. The fact that he would say "Only two more hours" "Only one more hour" etc, was shocking to me. If you enjoy being with someone, if you love them, generally, you're not really excited to leave them. For me, it felt like he was using her but she was so blind to it, only consumed with the fact that he was there.

Annie mentions that she was so caught up in the time aspect of their relationship that she asked herself "Where is the present?" Because in a sense, there was no present. It was constant waiting until he showed up. Then, once he was there, he was looking at the clock until he could leave and then it was her waiting again for the next time. She treats time as a burden, as something she has to get through instead of something she should enjoy.

Love Song--Bloc Party "Two More Years."

Bloc Party is a British indie band. The lyrics for the song "Two More Years":

In two more years, my sweetheart, we will see another view
Such longing for the past for such completion
What was once golden has now turned a shade of grey
I've become crueler in your presence

They say: "be brave, there's a right way in a wrong way"
This pain won't last for ever, this pain won't last for ever

Two more years, there's only two more years
Two more years, there's only two more years
Two more years so hold on

You've cried enough this lifetime, my beloved polar bear
Tears to fill a sea to drown a beacon
To start anew all over, remove those scars from your arms
To start anew all over more enlightened

I know, my love, this is not the only story you can tell
This pain won't last for ever, this pain won't last for ever

Two more years...

You don't need to find answers for questions never asked of you
You don't need to find answers

Dead weights, balloons
Drag me to you
Dead weights, balloons
To sleep in your arms

I've become crueler since I met you
I've become rougher, this world is killing me

And we cover our lies with handshakes and smiles
And we try to remember our alibis
We tell lies to our parents, who hide in their rooms
We bury our secrets in the garden
Of course we could never make this love last
I said of course we could never make this love last
The only love we know is love for ourselves
We bury our secrets in the garden.

I'm not exactly sure what will happen in the two years that they're referring to, but I think that's generally the point. Maybe two more years until graduation, until turning eighteen and being able to leave their home situation. Maybe two more years until a wedding or, really, anything.

What I took from this song was that it's hard to be with someone with depression. It's hard to make them feel worth it, to make them actually feel loved. And, on the other side, it's hard having depression, regardless of being in a relationship. Often, it's hard to make this sort of relationship work.

So, what I love about this song is that instead of the lead singer/songwriter, Kele, telling his partner to simply "get over it" or to "move on" from whatever traumatic event was experienced, he's saying that he knows they're sad, and that's okay. "This is not the only story you could tell," I feel, is an extremely powerful line to exemplify that. This song is uplifting and helpful in that he's recognizing sadness and saying that one day, at some point, it's going to be better. One day, it won't hurt so badly.

And here's the song.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kFtAvMCNm48

The Bad Girl--Week 2

This book sort of reminds me a little of 500 Days of Summer. The movie is often prided for being a fantastic love story. The male main character, Tom, loves Summer and wants a relationship with her. When she expresses that she doesn't want this, suddenly she's the bad guy for making him still want her. Tom, like the Good Boy, are both selfish. They want her, no matter what.

At the very same time, Summer, like the Bad Girl, is also selfish. By stringing the men along and giving them mixed signals, they're equally to blame. I don't think either of them can handle the relationship in The Bad Girl because I'm not even really sure if they know what they want from it. They're two different people considering she wants adventure and something new all the time, which is why she goes from man to man and from place to place. It seems he wants to be settled. He doesn't want to take chances. In order for them to have made anything work, one would have to change for the other. As we've seen over and over again with our other readings, that's not a good thing. If one had changed for the other, and it would have to be a drastic personality change, then no one would really be happy. They'll still constantly desire what they've lost be it the personality they changed, or the one they didn't really get to have.

Bad Girl--Week 1

Lily is surely breaking gender roles, isn't she? Instead of being a ruin-everything damsel in distress that just needs a man to save the day, she's more of a ruin-everything self-satisfied woman. Who doesn't need a man, but likes having one around anyway.

My impression of her was that she wasn't really interested in Ricardo. He was interested in her for that exact reason, just the simple fact that she didn't really care. She seemed to think he was pathetic and had absolutely no sympathy for him. She left him, constantly, and went to do things with her life. That's fine and all, and I'm not saying that she's wrong for having a life, but she's coming back because he's safe. She knows that Ricardo will just blindly love her anyway, regardless of what she does. If no one else wants her, and she's sure of that, she'll stay with him. Until then, he gets dropped as soon as someone else comes along.

Another thing that I found interesting was that she doesn't really seem to have a name. She's called Lily in the beginning, but Ricardo goes on to call her many different names, that typically have to do with status. A lot of them also have "ex" as if that's all she's really amounted to for him. Someone's who's just gone. Who does something, and then gets up and goes right to the next thing.To me, it feels like he's conscious that she isn't interested. And maybe he's not exactly thrilled to be with her either, but is just there for simplicity's sake as well.

I Am Love and Solaris

I Am Love:

It was obvious to me that Emma, like we've been seeing throughout the course of the semester, is dissatisfied with her life and is no longer in love with her husband. I feel that this is partly related to the fact that he had since left to take over a business. Yet, at the same time, I think it could also be her looking for something new. Her husband seems cerebral and somehow cold. Antonio responds to her and his interests lay in things that give off a nurturing vibe, like cooking.

Emma in and of herself is a complicated person. She's a woman who feels as though she deserves to be happy, to love who she wants. It's unfortunate that that person is not her husband, but she's trying to find what's best for her. At the very same time, this is parallel to her daughter who has recently come out and is trying to find her own happiness in a world that still isn't necessarily woman-friendly.

Solaris:

This film really speaks to desire and the loss of love in a different way, with an unearthly (ha, ha) chance at another go.

Chris wants what he can't have. Literally. His wife isn't human, and basically tells him that she feels fake. She feels like her memories aren't really real, and that she doesn't have any emotional attachment to him. Yet, after all that, Chris is just determined to keep what they have continuing, not wanting to lose her again. It could never happen, and she had more or less said that she's not even capable of being in love with him, but that thought just drives him further. He loses sleep over her, trying to help and thinking he could make it right. All the while, nearly everyone is telling him it's a lost cause, not even realizing that that was doing nothing but fueling his fire.

Eventually, he gives up literally everything to be with her, because he just can't imagine the possibility of not having her anymore.

Madame Bovary--Week 2

Medically, there wouldn't really be a cause for black liquid, necessarily  Unless she ingested something black recently, it wouldn't happen. Instead, it would be more of a green color. This is part of what makes the color choice so interesting. Black typically symbolizes, obviously, something that is unclean or maybe even bad. What the color could suggest is that Emma is unclean, or she at least feels that way, emotionally and now physically.

The black liquid that pours from Emma's mouth after her death is interesting. Emma, in my opinion, didn't think very highly of herself and certainly didn't think that she had amounted much to anything. She was depressed, it seemed. So, the black liquid could be metaphorical to her being as dark, or as gross, as she felt for a long time, manifested literally.

Madame Bovary--Week 1

The phrase "you never really appreciate what you have until it's gone" really rings true in this novel, thus far. Even though I think it's an awful cliche, we see this happening twice. First, and most obviously, with Emma. She marries Charles thinking that she can get away from her "boring" life but not really knowing how to be content with herself and what she has. I feel as though Emma would never be content, even if she got what she wanted, or what she thinks she wanted. Secondly, we see this with Charles. He was never in love with his first wife, and immediately felt a deep sense of passion and lust seeing Emma. But it's almost as far as that went. Charles desired her, but he was too struck by her beauty to even realize how unhappy she was in their marriage. Even if he did know and understand, I don't believe he would've done anything to change it--perhaps because he's not sure what he can do.

Again, with Emma as she begins her affair, she thinks that's what she wants--wild, passionate love with Rodolphe. Yet, once she has him, she rethinks how she feels about her marriage. We see a shift in her thinking. This is mostly due to Emma having such a desire for the chase, I believe. It seems as though she loves the idea of having someone, of escaping from her boring and predictable life, but once she has it, she doesn't care much for it and prefers what she had before (ie. her marriage after her physical affair with Rodolphe and her romantic affair with Leon.)

While their marriage isn't over, at least not right now, it's never going to be the same again. Especially if Emma continues to be so careless as to almost openly announce her affair.

Celestina, Week 2

The dichotomy between Celestina's essence of power and Pleberio's patriarchy mimic very much the stereotypical gender norms and roles in society. Women exist as pleasure to men, and Celestina is very much aware of that fact. She's in this business to profit, not because she thoroughly enjoys what she does. Because men desire women, and (as a stereotype) women desire money, or rather, men with money, may as well use it to an advantage.

Generally, at least for the times being written, men expect women to be victorious and pure, yet at the same time, they wanted them in a sexual way. It's a weird double standard in that, if men want to have sex with women--but women can't have sex for fear of not upholding her and her family's virtue, then who is he to have sex with? Man desires woman until she has been had.

These systems do play off each other in that men and women both get what they want. For men, it's the women. For women, it's the money. The systems working together is also exemplified in Celestina restoring virginity to young women to uphold that desire.

With Pleberio's ending speech, lamenting the loss of his daughter, reminded me--again--of Romeo and Juliet. It was as though he admitted to being wrong about what was important, and wished that he didn't have to face life alone with the death of his daughter.

Celestina, Week 1

The different characters in Celestina all have different views on love, it seems, and each one can be used to see "the bigger picture" in a sense. Maybe they're not all inherently correct in their thinking, but they're not necessarily incorrect, either. All of them could be used to form some other definition of love and desire.

The four characters that have a strong opinion on love, so far, would probably be Melibea, Calisto and Sempronio and Celestina.

Sempronio seems to have a misogynistic view on love and has a negative view on women. He finds them not trustworthy, and as though they act to get men in trouble, and have no heart. Sempronio tries to talk Calisto out of the idea of being with Melibea, because he thinks that she would end up like every other woman.

Calisto is driven by the concept of love, and reminds me a little of Romeo in a sense. Calisto, like Romeo, was more in love with the idea of being in love, instead of with someone in particular. This is exemplified by his own dialogue when he says that the more Sempronio insults women, particularly Melibea, the more he wants her. Calisto is acting in a very immature way, and is forcing himself to be in love, it seems, to prove a point.

Melibea is strong-willed and rejects Calisto, initially. It seems that the more Calisto chases her, the more she likes him, even though she's under Celestina's "spell." It's hard to say if she actually is in love with Calisto, or just infatuated with the idea of someone being interested in her.

Celestina puts things in a new light. With everyone focused on love, Celestina uses that to her advantage. As a prostitute, and the owner of a brothel, she knows that sex is often equated with love, perhaps incorrectly, and uses that to make a gain. In other words, she uses love to make a business transaction (like Valentines Day...) and understands that people desire things. Some desire just sex, and some--perhaps most--desire love. If she can disguise sex to look like love, then she ends up being a rich woman.

That Obscure Object of Desire

The themes of the movie correlate greatly with the essay. In the Žižek essay, it's said that there is a "shift from raw sensual coveting to elevated spiritual longing." This was made evident in That Obscure Object of Desire. An overarching theme of the movie was that the woman was something unattainable. She was essentially placed on a pedestal as an ideal, mainly due to the fact that she was a virgin and, in a sense, inaccessible.

From Ventadorn, "Ah, God! if only true lovers stood out from the false." only proves the main point of That Obscure Object of Desire that someone does not simply fall in love with someone, but only with the idea of them. Love clouds judgement and obscures vision so that the desired seems perfect, and as though they're flawless, thus fitting in with the lover's ideal. This is why Mathieu and so many others feel a deep sense of betrayal when their lovers turn out not as they expected. Not because they somehow changed, but because they are now disillusioned to the person they really are, which does not fit in with the ideal held in their minds.

1st blog post

1. The Song of Songs presents an erotic relationship between a man and a woman. This was made apparent with the use of certain words and phrases like “My beloved is to me a sachet of myrrh resting between my breasts.” “Let the king bring me into his chambers.” “And our bed is verdant.” The images created are all very lush and live, with use of words like “verdant” and talk of sweet smelling flowers. This is a take on love from a very passionate point of view.

4. Narcissus is not in love with himself, but with his seemingly perfect reflection. He is not focused on personality features like intelligence, sense of humor, kindness or empathy. Instead, Narcissus is caught up in how he himself looks. The myth backs this up by saying, “As he lay on the bank, he gazed at the twin stars that were his eyes, at his flowing locks, worthy of Bacchus or Apollo, his smooth cheeks, his ivory neck, his lovely face where a rosy flush stained the snowy whiteness of his complexion, admiring all the features for which he was himself admired.” What Narcissus is feeling is essentially lust and desire, which is typically present in the beginnings of a relationship, with “passionate love.” This myth tells us that, yes, desire and lust for the physical parts of a person is normal and to be expected. Yet, if one is too caught up in the physical appearance of their love, then it could have disastrous consequences.

5. “I” only exists as it relates to the rest of the world in a gestalt sense of the word. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts, and that could only happen if “I” completes a perception of reality. As someone ages, this “I” becomes more apparent, and yet also more unique as it relates to reality. I do see parallels between this and the myth of Narcissus. He has a sense of “I” but also sees himself as a completely different person separate from his mental state.