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.