society Vs intimacy

Ethics have played a large role in our discussion thus far,  particularly  for women. Heroines in the novels we had read earlier in the year all had to face a certain amount of consequence for shattering societies ideas of female roles in relationships. we talked about women who were open with their sexuality being deemed as a bad girl, or a tease and some could go as far to say that these women take on some masculine characteristics in order to match sexual drive. they played mental games and claimed control of the men they were involved with. during the lecture it as brought to light that levantine women have control inside of the bedroom and in the home but do not have the same freedoms or even the right to discuss and express these freedom in public. there is a similarity between more traditional societies and our own when it comes to ethics and desire in, there is a large focus on "the social context of relationships and not intimacy and affection..." as Professor Hanna had said in her lecture. in general people tend to look at relationships of others and size it up, see what each person contributes to the relationship  who "wears the pants", whether or not the relationship last and so on. this is why tabloids sell issues filled with articles about celebrities  relationships statuses. relationships are interesting, and in romantic relationships people are more vulnerable and its very easy to pass judgement about their character. in many ways our society likes to put people in pairs and fit each individual in to a stereo type of either masculine or feminine.  the focus needs to shift back to the intimacy between the couple, many more  people would be happy without the pressure of complying  to what societies equates to a perfect couple.    

"American Dream Dealer"

 The Animation created by Jodie Mack "Yard Work is Hard Work"  was an interesting take on commercialism and the toll it takes on our relationships.  Mack used magazine clipping as the medium for her animation which I had never seen before and I think really contributed to her message, what we see in the media play a large role in what we think we need to make us happy. In one particular scene a relater had said to the you couple "I am your American dream dealer" that line stuck out to me. we all have a personae that we want the world to see, built out of material things. these things become symbolic of who we want to be.  when something obscures the vision of who one wants to be it results in a feeling that what one is left with isn't enough. the stuff become the foundation when it shouldn't be that way. In reality the person we want the world  to see isn't who we are. The couple in this film are faced with this. they jumped into the american dream forgetting to build up there relationship, instead just building up there stuff. in the end the couple is left with financial strain and question of where there relationship stands. another line that struck me was one of the songs the couple sings, "I missed the place I've heard of but doesn't exist"  To me this signifies the "ideal" relationship  that has no place in reality but is very much ingrained in our minds.

fires Dared to Ignite

Garren Smalls poems are like little short stories capturing a moment of communication. he said himself he likes to write about people talking without really talking about anything of substance. at first, I was skeptical of his statement, but then I began to think about it i realized  it happens a lot more in life then I or anyone would ever really want to admit. he brought up a great point, he had said something along the lines of- people who are truly in love actually talk to each other-equal parts listening, talking and trying to understand what the other truly means. relationships that fail tend to fail because of  miscommunication.  We had also briefly discussed the difference in the means of communication between both sexes. in class it was generalized to: men tend to say what they want to say frankly when they want to say it, women say what they want to say in more subtle ways and these things are expressed with more frequency  I think there is some truth to that, that couples often times forget that men and women have a different way of communicating, so  instead of just expecting things one must actually ask the questions instead of just waiting for the answers. there were two poems I really liked that Garren Small read, one was called Along the Row and another ( I'm drawing a blank on the name) about a couple eating salad on a subway platform. the first, Along the Row explores the loneliness everyone feels and at different levels in different relationships.I have personally felt that the highest level of loneliness can, ironically, develop in romantic relationships, ones where one or both lovers are not invested and are together for the sake of being together. I liked the imagery in  the poem of the men walking along the road in New York  in "white shirts and orange ties." Mr. Smalls went on to explain that he wrote this to express the empty conversations men have about sports when there are far greater things to discuss. I think in general people tend to talk about trivial things to escape the deeper stuff and also because its hard to bring up such things and do it justice. one of the sections in the poem that caught my attention  was about the couple " he wants to explode it to her. he wants to whisper it to her. he wants to take her hand  in  hand."  I think these lines show that as much as we want to talk about things, scream it to the roof tops, the interpretation and the idea of rejection shatter the freedom to communicate freely, even with those that you truly love. the other poem about the couple eating salad on the subway platform, is an example of true romantic love. the couple was able to spend time with one another  enjoying each others smiles with out any kind on gimmick, no distraction, just a moment in time with the one you love.

Early-Stage Intense Romantic Love

One of the ideas Professor brown presented  that stood out to me the most occurred in her first few slides. she used particular terminology for the list of behavioral changes and emotions that occur upon entering early stage intense romantic love, she used the word symptom.  earlier in the year we had played with the idea that love can be an like and addiction, changing the way that we think. Dr.Browns hypothesis supports what we had discussed,  the idea that love is an ailment something that intrudes and messes with our psychological homeostasis. this is not only evident in Dr.Browns Hypothesis but it is ever present in the arts. Dr. Brown also told us that love is not an emotion, but rather is primarily associated with motivational systems in the brain.Branching off  from that idea, motivational drive/craving felt by people involved in early stage intense romantic love brings to mind the cliche yet partly truthful  phrase " distance makes the heart grow founder." This is present  in classic love stories like Romeo and Juliet and in more modern films like Before Sunset. With distance the craving becomes more intrusive, kind of like when one is thirsty and being deprived of water. The dopamine levels in the brain are directly connected to the level of excitement in the relationship. couples that engage in arousing activities that are new for both members in the relationship, can renew excitement in the relationship  its safe to say this directly relates back to the idea of distance causes a stronger longing, couples will have high dopamine levels if both are only allowed to indulge in the other within a limit. characters like The Bad Girl and Concheta had the right idea  when thy deprived there lovers of the "water" making their thirst that much stronger.  these women wanted to prevent the early stage intense romantic love from expiring. they wanted their men to continue to be addicted to their love. with that said, there is another question to be asked. In Dr.Browns study there were the participants who were later asked follow up questions and were no longer in a relationship;were they truly in love with the person or were are they purely interested in euphoric high?  these people lack the suppression of social judgement towards their partner and suppression of the concept of the self. did this people feel the attraction but maintained the relationship purely for the feeling of being in love but not for the love of the other person. Dr. Brown mentioned that not everyone has experienced love and not everyone will. There are people who look for love but do not seek to find what to love in another person. I deem these people love Junnkies, addicted to the feeling and will do anything to achieve it but actually falling in love. these are the kinds of people who go n the bacholor and break-up after the high goes away- because there is nothing left for them in that relationship. In the words of Mumford and Sons "How fickle my heart and how woozy my eyes..."-awaken my soul 

Freedom is not given... but there are moments when it must be taken away

The movie poster for Amistad had a quote that seems to contradict it self, but I think it reveals some truth. "Freedom is not given, it is our right at birth, but there are moments where it must be taken."  freedom can be loosely defined as the ability to decide ones fate without the intrusion of another. The lack of freedom usually has a negative connotation, along with it comes the idea that someone or something is committing an act of oppression. But the lack of freedom is not only in relation to slavery or dictatorial government but it can be found in relationships. This lack of freedom doesn't equate to bad, but it in fact can be good. relationships allow us to unselfishly make choices that effect the lives of others as well as our own. the lack of freedom to do what ever we please allows us to fit into society and develop good relationships. we desire to be with other people and in that moment we are surrendering our freedom to others. In love the surrender of freedom can be even more significant because your are trusting this person with your freedom. you are bound to them, becoming part of a unit and  making decisions for another person hoping they have good intentions for you as well. committing to another person involves surrender which is scary but it allows for revelations that can not be made without the new experiences the other provides.

Before Sunset: "pain and desire are synonyms of my pleasure "

During the final credits Juile Delpy's song Je T'aime Tant plays and one of the lyrics is "douleur et desir sont synonymes de mon plaisir" which translates to pain and desire are synonyms of my pleasure. this paradox  is a common theme in love and in desire. while love can breed fulling emotions such as pleasure,  it has a price, there must be a degree of suffering. That is often what fuels passion, the angst and constant wanting, but knowing its not a good idea to indulge in ones desires. the two main characters,Celine and Jesse, both held tight the memories of that night. Both are  involved in unfulfilling relationship knowing that the passion in their current relationship will never match the passion of there night together, but there is something that makes them stay.All relationships hold one unique quality that makes them worthwhile, no mater how badly it turned out in the end. Celine says in the movie "You can never replace anyone because everyone is made up of such beautiful specific details."  there is something about the beloved that captivates the lover in the beginning and that is often what keeps them captivated until the end. the collection of those details are hard to forget and will remain beautiful as long as the lover still has the skewed perception of the beloved. this movie proves that passion/desire is not bound by time and it has an everlasting effect like this quote from Madam Bovary states "An infinity of passion can be contained in one minute, like a crowd in a small space.”


 

Steve Almond response

Steve almond brought up a good point about the difference between real sex and pornography, the difference is much like that of love and desire. desire and pornography both breed fantasy changing from person to person, real sex and love work hand and hand and reveal a depth of the self and not all of it is pretty and perfect. there can be no love without desire but there can be desire without love, like there is sex involved in porn but real sex does not include the "gymnastics" as Steve almond had put it during his reading. when in love there is indeed fear, doubt, insecurities, hope and longing these contradicting emotions contribute to the overall feeling of arousal we all long for. without the mixed feelings and internal struggle passionate love turns into compassionate love. once there is less to be insecure about and the doubts diminish what is left is what will determine if the relationship can last. in the process of discovering new love there is the desire for ones partner to accept things about them that that have trouble accepting themselves  maybe if this person can accept them they are one step closer to accepting themselves. in Steve Almonds short story Skull when one of the characters, Zach, was explaining to the other, character Pete, the reasoning behind his odd sexual behavior with his girlfriend he said "You know, anyone can love the other parts of her. You've seen her, Pete. She's a beautiful woman. But to have a man accept that part of her, it drives her crazy. That's what we all want anyway, to have our lover accept the most damaged part of us, right? Am I right?" while love and contribute to the damaged parts of us psychologically, the partnership of  a relationship and not having to deal with things individually but together makes it worth the efforts. in one of my favorites films "Like Crazy' there is a quote that cam to mind " ...the wholeness was a rather luxurious idea. Because it's the halves that halve you in half. I didn't know, don't know, about the in-between bits; the gory bits of you, and the gory bits of me."love is  wanting to be part of something even if it can break you down, all in order to feel acceptance and perhaps to see that someone else is just as damaged as you.

Halfaouine

This movie explored the sexual coming of age for a young boy in Tunisia. At the age of twelve Nora is able to move easily between the world of women and that of the men. The women are more at peace with their sexuality then the men, which I thought was unusual but refreshing.  Nora was not allowed to truly explore his sexuality because he had to feign innocents with his mother and he wasn’t allowed to express his desire for women around his father. There were few male role models who expressed their desire for women openly and even fewer who did anything about it. Nora’s desire for women grew more and more each day but he had to hide in the night and undermine his own budding masculinity in order to get a taste of it. In Annie Ernaux’s Simple Passion she writes “these very constraints bred waiting and desire,” Nora’s inability to publically act on his desires made his chance for women that much more intriguing particularly because of the added risk of his father’s disapproval. Nora’s desires grew stronger because he felt inhibited.  Conchita, The Bad Girl, Celestina, and many of the other characters we looked at last semester all had an understanding of desire. The less you can have something the more that you want it.   These women used their desirability in order to gain more control of their relationships. Leading the man on but never giving to much because once their curiosity is satisfied they begin to lose interest.  For Nora he was experiencing a desire in a unique form he knew he could never indulge in the “delights” of many of the women he saw in the bathes, but he began to see the beauty in the human form. The desire he began to feel was  an awakening as opposed to  indulging in a habit like it will become for him upon maturity.

love and desire in the penny press

Even though these article were published decades ago there is a lot of similarities between what was published in the penny press  then and the kinds of things that are published now in tabloids and represented in reality TV shows. People looked to those articles to read about scandal and romance.  Women who were stuck in the domestic sphere and longed for something outside the home found the escape in these readings. This is much like Emma Bovary she had her views of love based on the things she read in books, but unlike Emma’s characters, the people in the penny press where real. So women who had ideal weddings with men they loved or at least successful and wealthy, created an ideal for young women and what- could- have been scenario for some of the married women also reading the penny press.   Throughout the lecture I couldn’t help but think of the movie Chicago- which is a film and musical set in the 20’s about female inmates and how a lot of them maintained publicity and fame the more scandalous their crime.  These women put on a show and the audience ate it up.  I feel like this was also present now, the scandal was the reality TV of today. Today so many people get so involved in the relationships and whims of celebrities. As Roland Barthes says “Nous Deux is more obscene than sade.” The kinds of things that wind up in tabloids are at times outrages and exaggerated but the masses eat it up because it shows something of humanity- the extremes of love and desire.

Love and Desire: Examples from Ancient Art and Archeology

I thought that this  lecture was interesting take on Love and Desire, particularly  because "Art is a natural part of how people express themselves," as Professor Freund had said in his article titled Ancient Religion, Art, and Archaeology:From Sinai to Szyk. I thought this quote really tied into some of the quotes we discussed last semester from Kristeva "love would be solitary because incommunicable." Art is one of the few ways people can express love truthfully, personally, and with no restrictions. Each individual has a unique way to express and interpret love due to past experience and desires for the future. The word love itself  is solitary, the only word in the English to describe the emotion with no variability in its meaning. saying "  I love Pizza" and "I love Bob",  the word love now retains a different meaning for each occasion. the love for Bob is almost undermined by the fact that the same word can be used to describe your favorite food. One piece of art on the other hand,  can be interpreted in many different ways with no limit. Professor Freund also talked about how art is prominent in religion, despite the fact that to some christian and Jews  believe the reproduction of earthly things in an image is a sin. in my own religious and overall experience with art, I believe it is a way to experience something beyond ones self.

Seeking Love After Divorce

I found it particularly interesting that 85 percent of people reenter a relationship after 1 year of divorce and 21 percent reenter a relationship after 60 days.  I’m surprised by these statistics because at the end of a long term relationships there is often a mourning period, time to reflect on why things didn’t work out and time to see the ex-beloved in a more human way. That idealistic view that the lover has of them is shattered, it no longer protects them when they make mistakes. There is a death of the person they once knew.

 I now wonder how many of these people have actually had a chance to mourn and how many just jumped at the opportunity to feel desired again. We have talked about the difference between love and desire. After being invested in something where ones heart is essentially on a chopping block,  I feel like a person would  want to run far away from that and leap into something that is consuming and certain- desire. Desire to be desired and to desire.  I also wonder how this effects the communication between ex’s, those who have a chance to mourn and then pursue a relationship and those who just jump into a new relationship.

Dr. Miller-Ott talked about the different forms of communication in her articles. There is some evidence present in her articles that those who have jumped into relationships sooner have less disclosure with their dating behavior.in some of her interviews people who dated more often feared giving their ex to much information would affect the level of respect and the amount of perceived responsibility they had for the other.

This topic has been very though provoking in an unexpected way. I think dating after divorce is about as close as one can get to the experience of starting to date completely. One has to shake off the identity they had with their ex and rediscover themselves- kind of like a new comer in dating, but they already have a clean slate. Those who are divorced and are co-parenting cannot completely drop the identity they had with the ex because they are still have little pieces of them in their everyday life, the children. And that is their greatest struggle, which is evident in Dr.Miller-Ott’s articles.

The Politics of Friendship

During the lecture there were a few things that stood out to me. when Professor Borck had said that by naming ones enemy it says something about the self and that one begins to feel a kinship with the enemy. This made me think of Before Sunrise  when Jessie says that the reason many people dislike themselves  is because they never have a moment outside of themselves. I think these two ideas connect Because  our enemy's are often the personifications of what we do not like about ourselves. maybe that a bit radical, but I have always thought that in order to hate someone you have had to trusted and perhaps loved them first. its  like seeing someone become the very thing you fear the most of becoming yourself. I think this is why these people bother us so much because we see so much of ourselves in them and the possibilities of all the bad things we can become.  I wouldn't say these ideas connect to politics entirely, because it involves a group of people with different perceptions and experiences with the enemy, but the ideas of Derrida and Schmitt resonate on personal level in some ways. Professor Borck also presented an idea that " I think therefor I am... the other" this idea relates to the idea that we all effect each other in someway and in friendship we see the good in ourselves and the good in others, our thoughts become intertwined.

before sunrise response

There is no such thing as love at first sight it is lust at first sight." love" at first sight can be defined as a feeling or connection through what you see- they feeling of wanting to go nearer to that person has nothing to do with 10 years from now but all to do with 10 minutes from now. that is  how it often plays out in a romantic comedy these days they two main characters feel a sexual attraction to one another and begin a flirtation and within the first half of the movie have had sex near the end of the film after the conflict has been resolved the two have fallen in love and live happily ever-after.  In this film the two main characters talked to each other  and got to know intimate details about the other and it wasn't until near the end of the film that topic of sex even came up. the conversation resulted in the discussion of what sex can mean and how it will change their relationship.  Celine says "Actually, I think I had decided I wanted to sleep with you when we got off the train. But now that we've talked so much, I don't know anymore. " this line completely encompasses the difference between falling in love through conversation and love at first sight. after you get to know someone you care about how your actions will effect them and want to prevent hurting them. With love at first sight  lust rules ones actions, the feeling of the other is less significant then ones selfish desire. That is why there is often a conflict in today's romantic comedy's  the selfish desire ending up hurting the other.  love is more then just a single moment when you first meet. that is never love that is desire love is what  Celine says "When you talked earlier about after a few years how a couple would begin to hate each other by anticipating their reactions or getting tired of their mannerisms-I think it would be the opposite for me. I think I can really fall in love when I know everything about someone-the way he's going to part his hair, which shirt he's going to wear that day, knowing the exact story he'd tell in a given situation. I'm sure that's when I know I'm really in love."  

Annie hall

" Well, I guess that's pretty much now how I feel about relationships; y'know, they're totally irrational, and crazy, and absurd, and... but, uh, I guess we keep goin' through it because, uh, most of us... need the eggs" 

Alvy says this after telling a joke about a man who thinks he is a chicken. the closing narration in the film speaks a truth about many relationships. so often we get involved in relationships  because at a certain age we feel that it is almost socially unacceptable not to be paired up with someone. we being a search for a companion before we even know what it is we want, only to decide later why the relationship isn't working. if the relationship is particularly bad  the person you spent all that time with gets reduced to their faults and maybe even get a nick name. some of my friends have reduced exs to names to things  like Guitar girl, the Lesbian, the Frat guy, and the Derp.  later the faults of the past relationships are used to propel us into the arms of  another, someone very different. we test out suitors  to see  if they could possibly be the  missing piece. often times its like forcing a square peg in a round hole. we continue to do it any way because we need the egg. we need desire and hope it will evolve into passionate love. Woody Allen's film is refreshing because the relationship doesn't work out in the end and neither is awfully heart broken but take a little something with them for when they enter  a new relationship. it is realistic and the complications and insecurities of   the two main characters  are relatable. they both constantly  wonder if there personality's mesh and if it will be worth the sacrifice to have to do things that are inevitably outside of their comfort zone.  the quirkiness  of the two characters allowed for the kind of pessimistic tone of the movie to be  lighthearted and for the message to seep into the audience  instead of hitting them in the head with it.