Last Post: Hanna

Professor Hanna wrapped up the lecture series with a thought-provoking lecture on love and desire in the East Levantine area. During the lecture series, we have looked at love and desire from a variety of angles including heterosexual, physiological, philosophical, poetical, and historical aspects of love; however all under the assumption that through the medium of literature and film we can express and study love without bonds. Hanna demonstrated that not all geographical locals maintain that freedom. In places like Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Lebanon people are not allowed to write against the patriarchal society or a purely heterosexual union. Huda Barakut is one of the few books written recently on homosexual love.
The woman writer was sympathetic to the cause of gay people in the Levantine area, whose desires are dismissed as "boy love" and nothing more, but she also had she own agenda in writing. The women there are so suppressed by the men that any chance to destabilize their patriarchal structure needs to be seized if only through symbolic actions, such as the gay man raping the widow upstairs. Other women who openly wrote against men, like the ones who published emails about a trip to the mall where men were more focused on each other than the women in disguise, or Layla Baalbaki, who wrote against children as a perpetuation of male dominance over women, had to flee the country and had their books banned. I loved the fact that through literature women are able to express their opinions and raise awareness of inequality for both gays and women and in Western Europe and America about the injustice they are suffering. Like in the book 1984, how can people express homosexual love when the very word for it is taken away? Without literature and the ability to quickly spread ideas to other people and parts of the world nothing will change and the people who could help to make a difference will be left in the dark. In the past, books were a conduit for change and progress, and I believe they can still serve that same purpose today.

Mack's "Yard Work is Hard Work"

An amazing animator and artist Mack presented a video that was highly relavent to what we have talked about through out the year. In the beginning of the film, she questions the necessity of love and marriage, but has the main character marry because it is what everyone does. She lists a few romantic movies to prove her point of the inevitability of a happy ending. The style of animation she uses, implementing recycling materials such as magazines and newspaper clippings in order to tell a story, is what makes her film so unique. She contrasts the notion of a average romantic story by using a distinct medium to tell it. Through her film, Mack suggests that since we hear the same kind of love story again and again, the only way to make it new is to change the medium not the message.
To illustrate the lack of originality in love, she uses all types of women and pictures for the same character, which is a similar concept to the one presented in "That Obscure Object of Desire," where the female protagonist is played by two different actresses as the same person. Since the characters represent a larger idea of putting perfecting over reality, Mack can get away with using a plethora of women images to represent a single character.
She based the entire film on the one phrase of "Yard Work is Hard Work," and despite sounding silly and superficial, I think the phrase holds more depth than that. Mack chooses the song "Yard Work is Hard Work" to be the climax of her opera, so one can assert that it means more than just, doing yard work is difficult. I think she is referring to maintaining a certain image in marriage. In her story, the couple was so focused on making sure the exterior of their house and by extension their relationship looked perfect, that they were not connecting in the inward part of their relationship  They were so intent on fixing the house by making it green that the wife admits to her friend in the end of the film on the phone that her marriage is still a work in progress. I think Mack's film speaks to America's idealization of relationships in films and television, and her work rejects that by parodying the ideas presented as oversimplified and trite.

Garren Small

Mr. Small in many ways reminded me of a non-musical version of Bruce Springsteen adapted to a love and desire class. This sort of raw poetic style was refreshing, and it was quite a surprise when he mentioned that he modeled his poetry after a school of thought that when people speak to each other they really don't listen. The lack of communication in today's society is something I have frequently noticed as of late and it has been particularly concerning to me. I have never before heard poetry like his and it was really nice to see that someone is truly original in their poetic style. The conversational piece in the middle of the lecture in particular struck me, as at first I had no idea what they were doing and it was very confusing. After he explained what the premise of the exercise was it made a great deal more sense, and i appreciated his poetry much more, as it all began to make sense.

The Science of Love

Who knew that love was a science? I certainly did not before last lecture, which I found to be quite fascinating. All along people thought love was so evolved and exclusive, when really it is part of our more primal brain, the reward system, rather than newly developed structures within it. Dr. Brown’s research focused primarily on early stage romantic love, a stage in romantic love that is cross-cultural, universal phenomenon. In multiple ways, romantic love appears to be a disease more than an expression on affection for another human being.

For example, Dr. Brown gives symptoms of early stage romantic love including: intrusive thinking, overlooking faults, intense energy, difficulty to sleep, loss of appetite, mood swings, and an intense craving for the other person. These symptoms seem to be indicative of a new anti-depression drug, which is more true than false. People who break up experience real physical and mental pain and trauma afterwards, similar to a drug addict going through withdrawal.  Dr. Brown considers romantic love to be a more developed form of mammalian drive to pursue preferred mates and made a point to say there was a difference in the brain between sexual arousal and romantic love. Her research reveals that people do need love, because love is rewarding to people; they get high from it. She gives physiological proof from the reasons why Madame Bovary kept moving from one lover to the next, because when she would move out of the early romantic love phase, she would grow bored with the man and need to find someone new indefinitely. It also shows why the relationship between The Bad Girl and the good boy worked so well, because each time they would experience the early stage love again and again.

Dr. Reed

The way Dr. Reed spoke about slavery being a sick indulgence was very interesting. At first I had no idea what slavery in cinema had to do with love and desire and it was impressive to see him relate our society's desire for detestable content(involving slavery) to desire. I liked how he presented his thought that slavery was the "art of keeping those alive who would rather die", and that it was put in place as compensation for lack of control over one's own life. It does seem rather ridiculous that southerners at the time would have not known why the blacks didn't revolt, as in Django Unchained. Another thing that struck me about the lecture was how Dr. Reed mentioned that Hollywood seems to leave the perspective of the slave untouched, and solely take either the slave owner or the abolishonist's point of view/perspective. He also stated how freedom is not given it is our right at birth, but there are moments where it must be taken, which seems to be a very fresh perspective on the issue, and well thought out. In the subject of love and desire, this seems to suggest that by being in love, one must give up some of their freedom to attain what they desire.

Before Sunset

Jesse calls Celine, “An angry, manic depressive activist,” and Celine refers to Jesse as, “Just another married man.” They are really different people now. Their lives have taken turns that they never anticipated. Jesse is so stuck in the past he makes his living off of a book he writes of their affair together, and Celine tries to find love in other men and fails in all her relationships. They are far from the idealistic teenagers/young adults they used to be. Out in the real world, what they thought would be the “perfect life” of a career, spouse, and kids is unattainable in reality. After their brief encounter they never felt love the same way again, even Jesse says he does not love his wife, just his son. The sequel shows that love does fade over time. The two are very distant and awkward with each other, in a way they weren’t the last time they were together. Celine even debates whether to put her hand on Jesse’s shoulder to comfort him. The whole time they are together all they do is hug, and not even a lover’s embrace from The Notebook, but a tentative hug that is restrained. Their story demonstrates through character development that there is not always a happy ending. They both seem to have miserable lives, but they are just dealing with it, not even with a therapist but by themselves. This movie is not what most people expected. Like he said, if you thought they would meet up again that means you are a romantic, but if you do not then you are a cynic. Since they never do meet up until by chance ten years later, it means that the people who are romantics are naive and foolish, just like Jesse is portrayed in the movie. Celine who is disillusioned by love is also sad, but somehow her live seems better than Jesse, who can at least take solace in her cat.

Steve Almond

Skull was a captivating story about alternate love and desire, which I think is what this course is really about. We aren't interested in the fairy tale endings as much as were are in love gone wrong. Almond wasn't talking about love gone wrong, but love gone, well, weird. The eye was symbolic of everything in us that is flawed and unlovable, and her boyfriend's acceptance of this feature through intimate contact reveals his view of love as a process of understanding the significant others' flaws.

One thing I particularly enjoyed about his lecture was his talk of writing about sex. He said that sex isn't just a physical act, but it reveals the psychology and emotions of the person who is having it. This doesn't have to be applied to just writing sex, but reading about it as well. I thought of a series of books I liked written by M. C. Beaton and how when the protagonist has sex it shows something about their current psychological and emotional state. At one point she is ditched by her ex husband while that are on vacation together after she is accused of murder and her old friend Charles comes to visit her. They spend the day together and then split a hotel room, they've been drinking and he climbs into her bed. He kisses her and after all that time of being rejected by her ex she finally feels the love of another person and she likes it. Charles goes after her to piss off her ex husband who calls in the morning to see if she's ok, and Agatha does it because of her low self esteem. From this experience she learns a lot about herself, not to get suckered into a night in bed just cause you need to feel loved because you'll just feel worse in the morning and that she deserves better than her ex. I would've never thought about this story in that why had Almond not pointed out to us the psychology behind sex not the act. He said if the act is all you're concerned about then basically you're just writing porn. Sometimes I just thought sex was included in a plot to spice up the story, but now I realize in many cases it is used to reveal something about the two characters engaging in the act.