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.

Sexuality and the Police State in Ferid Boughedir’s Halfaouine

When I first watched the movie Halfouine, I did not pick up on the theme of homosexuality versus heterosexuality, so Prof. Lang's presentation really helped me understand different analytical viewpoints. Last semester I took an Intro to film class which did help me understand a lot of the film elements of the movie. I did pick up on two aspects of the movie before the talk: a boy's (Noura) awaking to sexual maturity and the problems with censorship in the country that block this sexual awakening. For example, when the boys tried to flirt with the women, a normal part of growing up, Noura's father beat him on the feet, altering his view of sexuality. Also, when Noura wanted to stay close with his mother, his father would tell him he needs to leave the "women's sphere," which Noura is reluctant to do. Most successful movie, about awakening desire, offers amusement, comedy plays on his youth and inexperience, move between the public and private sphere of men and women, seen through the eyes of a child in an adult

I found Prof. Lang's idea of the psychoanalytical theme of sexuality, when there is a rupture from mother, and how water is associated with mother and maternal sphere, very informative, because I did not pick up on this while watching the movie, but retrospectively I see it now. His desire for the women is lodged under nostalgia, like how they, the people of Tunisia long for the country to be a free state.

 The film shows us at the end a boy freed from the oppression of his father. The film’s central allegory—the father’s heavy handed authoritarianism, embodies the presidents, the steady erosion and loss in privacy and freedom, Noura represents the society, the final shots are pessimistic. He is never integrated into the men’s world. Seliah his role model was been unjustly imprisoned. 

I think it's kind of backwards that homosexuality is connected with the corrupt government in a patriarchal society where people are unhappy. I don't think that is something you see in most American movies. If there was, there would be a lot of negative reviews and controversy. In America, I think we try to celebrate equal love rights for everyone, and wouldn't use homosexuality as an allegory for corrupt government. 

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.

Annie Hall

I love this film's non traditional approach to the Romantic Comedy genre. The film was absolutely hilarious, but not in the expected, tired, and tawdry ways we have come to except from the genre. Woody Allen is witty and very perceptive in all his relationships. He has an uncanny ability to sense the exact point in the relationship where it is beyond any help, like in his previous marriages and then with Annie. The film does not just focus on the narrow scope of the relationship, but shows other factors like jobs, location, drug use, family ideals that all effect a relationship.

The cutaways provide a running narrative into the insights and concerns of the main characters, allowing us to actually know what they are thinking, not just forced to guess from dialogue and body language. It shows that there is a lot of underlying tensions under the surface of a relationship, giving this movie greater relevance and truth than most other romantic comedies.

That's what really bothers me about feel good movies like The Notebook or The Vow, they are not at all realistic. Annie Hall demonstrates that just because the audience may be rooting for the couple to make it work in the end, you can still produce a great movie, despite it having a sad, but realistic ending. Our culture is currently obsessed with the idea of a fairy tale ending every time and believes that it isn't good unless that is how it ends. I suggest to others out there to watch The Producer or Sunset BLVD, because these movies poke fun at this phenomena.