Love and the Penny Press

I think Dr. Burt really worked to relate the field of journalism and communication to love and desire. One of the ways in which I thought her lecture connected with our class was how the penny press brought out the underbelly of love and desire. Dr. Burt first told us about the number of articles she found by searching via keys words such as wedding, elopement, etc. She then mentions she found a correlation between love and murder (179 articles) and love and suicide (150 articles) that I thought really tied into our entire theme this semester.  We’ve read books with very tragic endings, and agreed that they were interesting. Dr. Burt’s lecture proves that as Americans we’ve been fascinated with love gone wrong, since the 1830’s.  She gave one example in particular that I found interesting,  a wealthy man killed a young, poor girl and set the house on fire, but he was acquitted because he had expensive lawyers. 

I think that this goes into another aspect of love that we haven’t covered yet—problems that money cause in relationships. Maybe this topic was touched on a little when we went over Bad Girl, but I don’t recall discussing it in class.  The media in the 1830’s combined news stories and fiction regarding love in ways I think are seen less today. Perhaps today there are even less positive stories about love in the newpapers than there were in the 1830’s, because I always see this person is cheating on this person and this couple is getting a divorce. Rarely do I ever see happy stories about love in the media, and like Dr. Burt said, it’s because people don’t want to hear these kinds of stories. The article I mentioned earlier  set the tone for future stories that we see even today.

Love after Divorce

This lecture was helpful in getting to an understanding about the ever more common societal condition of divorce, and how men and in particular women move on afterward. To be specific, the questions and answers portion was most helpful. Many good points were brought up, but the one that really struck me was about how divorce effects children when the newly divorced parent moves on. It seemed to be an interesting discussion, how it used to be that parents would move on without even considering the children's thoughts or feelings on the issue, but now more and more the children are involved in the whole process. Some went so far as to say they bought prophylactics for their parents as a symbol, to show the parent they were not opposed to their establishment of a new romantic relation. The behavior was interesting to say the least, and was a good example of an overt show of love for their parents. While this is admittedly not romantic love, and instead closer to the "agape" love, I found the discussion quite relevant to the social foundation for a romantic relationship, as the latter mentioned form must be present in order to exhibit the former.

Politics and Love: Maybe not so compatiable

While Prof. Borck seems to be a genuinely funny and nice person, her lecture lacked in terms of relating to the class topic. Although a very good paper and lecture on friendship, politics, and democracy, she outlined in the beginning on how she would address familial love, but she never related her argument back to that original claim. I was actually very interested in learning a political take on familial love. Then when she began her presentation, I kept wondering when she was going to circle back to her original outline, but maybe she just forgot. She did a good job of analyzing new theories on Plato's philosophy on war and friendship from Plato's Republic; however, I was confused on the order in which she chose to present, saying that Plato was "responding" to Schmitt and Derrida's ideas of friendship and enemies and liberalism. I just don't see how someone who has been dead thousands of years can respond to work done in the 20th century. Again, her topic was very scholarly and interesting, and I could tell she put a lot of work into writing, but she failed to tie it into familial love, like she promised at the beginning of the lecture.

Before Sunsire: A unique take on love via conversation

So, the entire movie is a couple exploring a new place while exploring the inner lives and thoughts of the other person. The night is magical moving from a cemetery, to by the water, a picnic with wine, a fountain, a music shop, and a Ferris Wheel. I don’t the movie made huge distinction between love at first sight and love through conversation, because when they are on the “phone” with their “friends” they basically say that they fell for the person almost instantly, and by talking to them, they began to like them more and more.

In response to other blog post on how this movie was different from Romantic Comedies nowadays I say I don’t agree, but instead I think that it is a quite typical Romantic Comedy. Everything is wrapped up neatly at the end, they say goodbye and plan of meeting in six months. There is a passionate embrace. This movie is a much more typical Romantic comedy then was Annie Hall, which didn’t have a happy end, but it more raw and real. I guess these two people are living is a kind of surreal fantasy, which they mention multiple times throughout the movies.

 A big part of the movie is the beautiful, romantic setting, full wonder and mystery. A lot of lines in the movie seem very over written and fake. Like “I saw Grandma in the rainbow,” or “In Quaker weddings, no one speaks unless the Lord moves them. After an hour they are married.”  I think the movie portrays this fakeness at the end, when it flashes to all the spectacular places they visited throughout the night, now seem ordinary in light of day. There was something about the setting at night, and that is was only for night that made it seem special, but part that was their own perceptions and ideals they hold about romance and love.