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.