Sunday, September 19, 2010

Ethnography

“Radical romance” is much harder to come by in a public place than I anticipated.  I went to Disneyland to observe, and catch a glimpse of “radical romance,” but instead was surprised that much romance stayed in the realm of the status quo. What I mean is I used a “traditional” sense of romance: heterosexual and of the same race to define “traditional.” This was my criterion for trying to find “non-traditional,” which would go into the realm of interracial couples and homosexual couples.
            I decided to do my observation at Disneyland. In a park that boasts 50,000 guests on an average day, I thought that in an hour’s time there would be plenty of both “traditional” and “non-traditional” romance to abound. This was not the case.
            In the entire hour of observing guests walk by whilst I waited for a parade to start, I saw only four interracial couples and only one homosexual couple. Strangely, all four interracial couples were a Caucasian male and an Asian female. The other “non-traditional” couple was a lesbian couple that had three children with them. One was in a stroller and the other two were approximately the same age (around four years old). I could not believe that in an hour of observing people going back and fourth, only five couples were “non-traditional.”
            Moving on to the “traditional” side of romance, I wrote down notes on who was in charge of the children. I focused my attention on families with kids, paying close attention to who was taking care of the children. Unsurprisingly, with four families sitting around me, it was the mother who was running around after the children in all four instances while the father either stayed sitting or was only talking to the oldest (in a show of coincidence, the oldest in all four families was a male but none of them older than the age of eight).
            In analyzing why there was such a shortage of interracial couples, I looked no further than everyone’s favorite baby-sitter, television. A couple in either television or movies is rarely portrayed as interracial, and when they are, most of the times it is met with reluctance from either one or both families of the people in the relationship. Many of the times this reluctance is caused by the fact that the families just don’t understand the others culture.
Recently I saw a romantic comedy called “Our Wedding” where a Mexican woman was going to marry a black man. All the plans are going to hell because both families want to have a “traditional” wedding. By traditional, I mean, by their cultural customs. In real life this is a real obstacle for some. The fact is getting in a relationship with a person of your own race eliminates having to accept customs from a completely different culture, religion or race. When I dated a Jewish girl, her immediate family was cautious of me and the rest of her family was extremely worried that I was a gentile. My family (which consists of just my Catholic mother and I) was much more accepting as my mom’s bosses are all Jewish and I have always known about the Jewish culture through them. The point is, race is seriously much ado about nothing, until it get involved with your son or daughter.
The second point of analysis that I wanted to bring to light was the role of the woman, the mother, in the “traditional” romances. As Simone de Beauvoir wrote the “woman is a womb.” I noticed that the older children were all bonding with their father while the mothers all took care of the younger ones (either toddlers or infants still). At one point in my observation I noticed that one mother went to the restroom without having her two boys noticing (one was about 4 and the other about 6). When the younger brother asked, “where’s mommy?” the dad never looked up at what the boy wanted (the dad was looking at the Disneyland map) and the boy ran off. The older brother had to run after the brother as the dad unenthusiastically yelled for his son.
This is completely a guess, but in that family I perceived that it wasn’t the man’s job to take care of the little boy. Even when the mother wasn’t present, it was up to the older brother to calm the younger brother down and assure him that mommy was coming back. As I wrote in my notes, “Eventually the older boy spotted the mother coming back off in the distance which made the younger brother start jumping for joy. The father remained as unenthusiastic as ever.”
Another thing de Beauvoir wrote was “in truth, to walk with one’s eyes open is enough to demonstrate that humanity is divided in two classes of individuals whose… occupations are manifestly different.” In the case of the four families, the woman’s job was to care for the children and attend to them, somehow even when they are not present.
“Traditional vs. non-traditional” and man vs. woman in a relationship is adherent to our society now. Whether reinforced by the movies we watch or the ideals we pass down, changes are made, but they are simply superficial. There is still a clear divide between what is right and what is “right.” To view people and realize that the norm hasn’t changed much since the civil rights movement is still shocking, but I guess that is why when something is in fact out of the “ordinary,” it is regarded as a “radical romance.”

Thursday, September 16, 2010

The Romantic Comedy

As a guy, I can say that romantic comedies are not my best genre to be knowledgeable in. Or so I thought. Tamar McDonald says "a romantic comedy is a film which has as its central narrative motor a quest for love, which portrays this quest in a light-hearted way and almost always to a successful conclusion." Now, I can disavow any knowledge of ever having seen any romantic comedy such as "Pretty Woman," "27 Dresses," "Maid in Manhattan," and so on. In truth, critics call romantic comedies a lowbrow, none thinking 90 minutes of an excuse to get men laid for taking their girlfriends to watch it (okay critics may not say that, but they sure as hell think it). Romantic comedies are thought of as "cliché" films. They are films that you know what will happen before when you watch the trailer for it. Hell, sometimes just the poster gives it away.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/7/71/My_Best_Friends_Wedding.jpg
Sherlocke Holmes spent YEARS figuring out who the groom would choose!

The tagline says it all: Julianne fell in love with her best friend the day he decided to get married. Wow, there's a picture of Julia Roberts; she's removing the bride piece from the cake; and the title is "My Best Friend's Wedding." This movie cost $46 million to make and grossed nearly $300 million. Every person who entered that theatre knew the exact thing that was going to happen and yet it made more money then most cerebral films make.
There are many reasons people who continue watching this sort of movie. Mainly it helps us fantasize about an ideal that is technically unreachable, but who the hell would want to feel that. Who benefits from watching a film that you know the ending to? I'll cover that later. But trust me, somebody benefits and it isn't you miss dream wedding or mister I'm gonna get laid tonight (okay maybe him but for one night only).
Now, I'm being very tough on this genre. After all, this is a genre and a genre is only a word and as Saussure taught us, words are pretty arbitrary. At least connecting them to a specific something. As Derrida would further that, categorizing something is just plain futile. Are romantic comedies just brainless kinema? Is a romantic comedy always spewing celluloid of fantasy? Yes, but it doesn't ALWAYS have to suck. Enter the greatest romantic comedy every.

http://joemaller.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2007/10/beauty_and_the_beast_poster-1.jpg
Best. Movie. EVER!






Disney's "Beauty and the Beast" is so great that it is the only animated film ever to be nominated for "Best Picture" for an Academy Award. As a Disney fan, I can guess that if it has a princess in it, it is a romantic comedy.
Aside from the aforementioned definition, McDonald gives us other criteria for it to fit in the rom-com genre: visuals (a.k.a. iconography), narrative patterns, and ideology. I will try to show how the greatest animated film ever fits smoothly in adherence to those criteria and how, despite fitting comfortably into the rom-com genre, it still makes the genre a little more respectable.
First things first: what do we see. The visuals and iconography. In "Beauty and the Beast," Belle- the plain, intelligent, independent and most sought after woman in her town- is too busy being independent and intelligent to realize she is being sought after. Things happen and she winds up meeting a beast (the "meet cute" narrative pattern which will be spoken about shortly). But this beast is no ordinary beast, he's a prince.
Not quite.
 So they meet and there's everything that a modern day fairy tale romance needs: a castle, a screwy cast that is pushing the couple to be together (that happen to be animated inanimate objects), a man who wants to be with the girl, but everyone (including the girl) knows that hes not good enough for her, and most iconic of all from this film: the big first date with that special dress.
This lost to "Silence of the Lambs"      

We have our visuals and icons we are all use to, now the cookie cutter narrative pattern. This is called the "meet cute" pattern. It is "boy meets, loses, regains, girl." Now here's a curve ball since in this film you switch the roles of boy to girl. Belle meets the beast, loses him (when he "dies") and regains him (when she cries, him, another trope of the rom-com genre, and that somehow resurrects him). So far so good. The movie never veers of course from this, only adding the occasional Academy Award winning musical into the mix (suck on that Clarice).
Finally, the ideology. What is the purpose of this film? Remember when I posed that question earlier? Well, what can a 1991 children's animation film in the category of romantic comedy offer to us Americans? Well, aside from the fantasy of happily ever after, what else? The books says "at the heart of every romantic comedy is the implication of sex, and settled, secure, within-a-relationship sex at that." So mister I'm getting laid tonight, are you willing to commit? Miss independent, I don't need no man, wouldn't you rather feel safe and secure?
Well that's what most romantic comedies want to assure: one is capable of achieving a trusting, and aove all else, everlasting relationship. How does society benefit from watching a strong woman succumb to a gruff and tough monster of a man (literally) who abuses her, isolates her from her family and imprisons her in his dungeon and tells her to starve if she isn't willing to have dinner with him? Better yet, how does capitalism benefit from it? Well seeing as the woman tames her man and then gets a beauty golden gown, little girls and even grown women begin to think "I'd look damn beautiful in that gown." Yes, walking around Disneyland you will see that for the very low low price of $72.99 you too can look like Belle. And then that everlasting love for adults? Well, you're going to need a big diamond ring to prove love will last forever. about $2 grand? Then the wedding? Roughly $25 thousand. Your new apartment? $1,200 a month for rent. Realizing it isn't going to work out:


http://static.dailystrength.org/groupfiles/5/5/4/0/10000455/g_77365265.jpg
Capitalism seems to have it's own circle of life... different film tough.
So how can lowbrow, simplistic, cookie cutter storytelling cost you more than the cost of two tickets and some popcorn?  Well, it's suppose to, and it does it quite well. Next time you think a romantic comedy is harmless and mindless celluloid, remember, is it worth it? Yes. Yes, it is.

Friday, September 10, 2010

Has Anyone in This Family Ever Even Seen A Chicken?




Chicken! The word read out loud or to ones self brings an array or signified (conceptual) images to the head. Maybe a white chicken in a farm, or a chicken on a plate you're about to eat. Maybe even an egg.

Or if you're in the Bluth family, you've never even seen a chicken


 Ferdinand de Saussure laid it down pretty simply: either the the sound of the word (a signifier) brings up an image to mind or a picture brings to mind the word (signified). Both concepts together form a "Sign."
That's fairly simple to grasp. Complications do in fact arise as Saussure expected to. "This conception is open to criticism at several points. It assumes that ready-made ideas exist before words..." In other words, does something exist if we do not have a word for it. Is a tree a tree if we have nothing for it. This is similar to "if a tree falls in the woods and no one is there to hear it does it still make a sound.
For example, in Africa there use to be a legend of a human/monkey hybrid that would come from the mountains to kidnap humans to eat. It was rarely seen, but when it was, it was a ferocious and carnivorous creature the natives called "ngila."Of course they turned out to not be just things of myths and legends. These creatures do in fact exists. We just know them now as silverback gorillas. 
Ngila 
Now we may poke fun, now, since we know that A) gorillas are not fierce by nature unless provoked and B) they are herbivores. Yet, were gorillas real before we gave them the name "gorilla?" That all depends on your personal opinion. Yes, they physically were there, hidden from all human knowledge, but could one say they knew they existed if they didn't have a name? The described "ngila" is hardly a gorilla.
This brings us to the first principle, "the principle between the signifier and the signified is arbitrary." The example of the gorilla all but proves this correct. The way I remember learning this principle was we know something is something by what it is not. Though this too can get confusing.
A mass of people amass at Sunday Mass 
 About 70 years after Saussure  thought up this correlation of signifier and signified = sign, a Frenchman by the name of Jacques Derrida decided to rain on his parade. He called this spoiler of ideas "differance" just so he could mess with people even more. The idea is "differance ,ore properly refers to what in classical language would be called the origin oe production of differences and teh differences of differences." With this idea, Derrida basically said one cannot fully mean what they mean since what they mean always relies on what they do not mean and since what they do not mean is infinite from what they do mean, the meaning ultimately goes on ad infinitum according to what it does not mean.
http://notes-from-offcenter.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/bush_confused2.jpg
A confused ngila 
  Derrida specifically chose difference (but with an "a") since that word itself is "referring to differing, both as spacing/temporalizing and as the movement that structures every dissociation." He really wanted to bring his point home by making difference and differance homonyms thus showing that the word does not, and cannot always bring up the purposed signified as Saussure said. One would only be able to tell if they were reading it and physically seeing the word written down which would make it work only as a signified and not as a signifier.
Derrida may have stunned the world with this idea, but I still think Saussure had a point. Despite the instability of Saussure's definition according to Derrida, I believe it still works. Yes, a word is very limited and so is it's idea. For instance, the onomatopeia for a rooster crowing in English is "cock-a-doodle doo." It sounds natural since if you are reading this, I will presume you are English-speaking. In Nepal this same sound is "frooti-tooti tu." In Armenia it is "tsoo-ghoo-roo-ghoo."
Language itself is very unstable and Saussure had his fault in trying to oversimplify it, but it works for beginners. Derrida wanted to master language and thus his idea doesn't fly completely over my head, but is harder to grasp without simplifying it.  Whether we are trying to conceptualize an ape, a rooster's sound or what a chicken is, it is varied since we all have different ideas, despite speaking the same language.

Monday, September 6, 2010

I Think, Therefore I Am Unique Like Everyone Else I Think

If I have learned anything, and I assume I have, it is that everything is contradictory when it comes to culture and identity. As Chris Barker wrote in the text, Cultural Studies, "Within us are contradictory identites, pulling in different directions, so that our identifications are continually being shifted about."
Pictured: Identity
Nothing in our western culture remains stable for too long. It is ever-changing and what seems normative one second will be an oddity the next. Thanks to language, which seems to like making things even more complicated, we cannot even begin to describe who we are-because there may or may not be a word for that (but for some reason we have a word for that piece of metal between the wood of a pencil and the eraser).
As stated by Barker, "we learn to use a language that was in use before we arrived." Of course words are invented everyday. Sometimes this helps us articulate our feelings since there was no word for it before (bromance) and sometimes it just helps us embiggen our vocabulary by making a perfectly cromulent word up (embiggen, cromulent).
Hans Sprungfeld, better known as Jebediah Obadiah Zachariah Jedediah Springfield








Words, culture and identity are definitely woven together, interspersed to either compliment each pther or completely throw everything out of whack. For instance, the word "gay" has long since been forgotten to mean "happy," and in the 90s, when something was "the bomb" far be it from being a terrorist threat in today's post 9/11 world, but rather it was cool and hot, and they most definitely did not suck and blow (the 90s lingo was full of conundrums). Back to the topic, gay is a word used as a cultural identity, a social one in fact. Simply put, it is what makes you the same and different from everyone else. The problem is that social "norms" are what Barker calls "snapshots" of the time and place you are in. Wherein the 90s, currency in the schoolyard for me was a handful of pogs and slammers, now I would be hardpressed to find a nine year old who knows what they are. 
Luckiest kid ever!
Cultural Studies makes several things clear about culture and identity: they are not universal and they are definitely not eternal. 
For an example of the latter, just take a look at the picture above. Notwithstanding the popularity of pogs in the mid 90s, relevance is all but notional now. As for the universal part, the book gives a great example of identity standards not being universal when it comes to feminism. It talks about a film, Warrior Marks, which critiques clitoridectomies in Africa. I recall watching this film in the 10th grade in my History class. It was graphic, it was brutal and it was unforgettable. I remember think it was a cruel device for the women, but that was the silly westerner in me. As the book states "the adult African women in the film confidently defend clitoridectomies as a necessary part of their traditions and sacred practices." The truth be told, this will forever remain a fact. You cannot make culture or identity global. As the book states, that would be "essentialist."
Descartes' quote "I think therefore I am" is used almost always to represent the awareness of self. Since "I" is universal, the social indications of it are not. In high school "I" was often mistaken for a Goth because I wore band shirts. "I" am most definitely not. What comes of social, personal, internal and external assumptions of the self is only an illusion so-to-speak. They are never going to be definitive, as with time, they will surely change.
Proof that the self is ever changing