Relative Relevance

As this class began, I was not very well versed in literary theory. I admit, along the way, there were points where I sat there thinking things like “what the hell does that matter?” and “that’s just plain wrong.” However, as we wind down, I have begun to grasp the impact of the many theories we studied. There are still some aspects I may not agree with, but I can see the value of them and why it is we study these theories.

Good Will Hunting is far and away my favorite movie of all time. It is entertaining, well-scripted, and makes me think about many elements of my life that would otherwise go unevaluated. Thus, I chose to evaluate it in a Marxist form as my essay topic. Doing so helped me comprehend not only Marxist theory, but also many of the other theories we studied that I had yet to grasp. I was amazed at how the movie fit into so many types of theory, and even more amazed that I had not previously recognized these theories seeing as I have watched it 9 billion times.

The lack of the self was by far the most difficult concept for me this year. I didn’t understand how people could sit there and say that a work was a product of society and not of the individual author’s originality. However, as I studied Good Will Hunting, I found this to be exactly the case. While Matt Damon and Ben Affleck (who wrote the screenplay) are both from the Boston area, their background in no way resembles that of Will Hunting. In fact, they could be described as being more closely linked to Professor Gerald Lambeau, who is seen as the “semi-antagonist” of the movie. Brought up in wealthy families, it does not seem like they would ever be able to relate to their characters in the movie.

So the question was, where did they come up with this brilliant story that would eventually win them Oscars for best original screenplay? After analyzing the story further, the answer was clear. It was a direct representation of our society. The views expressed in the film were not the views of two upper-class white kids (Damon and Affleck), but they were a direct result of the hegemonic forces in American society. While I may have lost a little appreciation for the innovative genius of Damon and Affleck, I definitely gained an understanding of literary theory.

As I started to write this post, I looked back through my notes. I turned to a list of the tenets of liberal humanism. If I had to pick a theory that I most agree with, it would be liberal humanism. This may be because it was the easiest for me to understand. Yet, one of the tenets seems particularly accurate to me. “Good literature is timeless and speaks to what is true of human nature.” As I read this sentence a few times, it reminded me of a passage that I read in one of the critical articles I used for my essay:

“Good Will Hunting presents a young man on an Odyssey. He is not Odysseus exactly, but he moves and talks like him and is lost like him. He fights battles and loses them, and then hoists himself up again, scarred and bruised. More importantly, he is here and now, and speaks to some of us in a way that Odysseus no longer can. We identify with Good Will. We feel his fears and desire his triumphs. If we are not able to do this - and give a rhetorical expression to how we do this - then we will have a hard time convincing our audiences that there is merit to our work, and that they should follow us.”
-The Good Will Hunting Technique by Todd Cesaratto

All at once, it made perfect sense to me. Good Will Hunting is a present day version of The Odyssey. I may enjoy watching it more than I enjoy reading The Odyssey, but this is merely because Damon and Affleck adapted their story to appeal to modern day hegemonic forces. It speaks to me because I share the same ISAs and everyday life. And so, for the first time, and possibly the last time, I begrudgingly admit that literary theory is indeed pertinent to my everyday life.

All Charges Dropped Against Duke Lacrosse Players

After a year of controversy and media frenzy, the Duke Lacrosse rape case finally screeched to a halt today. There were many issues and twists surrounding this case, including racism, sexism, and unethical behavior by the prosecution. Yet, when all was said and done, the case ended as expected.

People all over were outraged…not because three white upper-class males had raped a lower-class black female. They were outraged because this black woman had the tenacity to accuse them of rape, thus snatching the silver spoon that had been implanted in these lacrosse players’ mouths at birth. How dare this black stripper accuse wealthy white men of misconduct. The alleged victim had originally accused Reade Seligmann, Collin Finnerty and David Evans of rape. However, these charges were dropped in December “after she told prosecutors she could no longer testify that she had been penetrated with a penis, one of the defining factors of rape under North Carolina law” (CNN.com). Today, the remaining charges were dropped. The only case left to be tried is the one against Durham County district attorney Michael Nifong, who faces a number of ethics complaints.

After the dust settles, this case will be remembered as that of a poor, money grubbing stripper trying to rob three exemplary young men. These men were kicked off the lacrosse team. Two were asked to leave school, and the other surrendered himself the day after his graduation. How could someone be so horrible as to tarnish the lives of these three outstanding students? As the case was officially dismissed today, many expressed opinions of sympathy for these young men.

But wait…as it turned out, the evidence was inconsistent, leading to the dismissal of the case. Yet somehow, a case with insufficient evidence took over a year to dismiss. Even if this young woman made up everything she said, why do we feel so bad for these young men? They were on the brink of being kicked out of their housing already because of multiple misconduct complaints. Under these circumstances, they decided to have a stripper party. Maybe they didn’t rape the young woman. Maybe they didn’t touch her. But let’s not feel sorry for them because their perfect lives have been tarnished. Even if these men did nothing illegal, they certainly weren’t displaying good character or judgment

What's Your Use-Value?

I found Ken’s example of money to be extremely helpful when contemplating Baudrillard. The fact that we can purchase items imperative to our lives such as food and clothing simply by swiping a piece of plastic seems ludicrous when he breaks it down in such a way. Especially since this card is representing money, which essentially has absolutely no value except that which we assign to it. It seems ridiculous to assign value to something which has absolutely no use-value. So when we then use credit cards to represent this exchange-value, we are representing something with no use-value. This concept does however enforce Derrida’s point that language is nothing but signifiers and the signified. Just as how money would have absolutely no value unless we assign value to it, words have no value unless we assign meanings to them.

I like the concept of the simulacra. Since we are merely using a piece of plastic representing something with no use-value to buy important items, it seems as if they are almost free. I play online poker a lot, and when I make money it never seems to occur to me. I’ll just play for the enjoyment and to win. After I win and decide to cash out some of the money, they send me a check. Even when I knew I won the money, it does not seem real until I actually cash the check. I guess the concept that I can make money while playing a game on the computer just isn’t in my realm of reality. Therefore I can assign value to money and the check but not to my online account. I don’t think I am alone in this thinking, which is why our debt is at 4.7 trillion. We spend more money than we have because we do not assign the proper value to it.

Which ego am I using"

When reading Foucault, I was somewhat taken aback by the absoluteness of his assertion of the author function. When reading, I have often felt like I gain knowledge of the author and his/her viewpoints pertaining to certain matters. However, Foucault completely shoots this concept to hell. At first, I merely shrugged off Foucault’s declaration that the persona of a text stands “for a ‘second self’ whose similarity to the author is never fixed and undergoes considerable alteration within the course of a single book” (1266). However, as I contemplated this statement, it gained more and more credence. Foucault said that this “plurality of egos” was true of all discourse. In effect, while reading an author’s work may make you feel like you know something about them, but this is entirely untrue. Even looking back at my own writing, I realized that I have often written papers or stories that in no way signify my outlook on a subject. It seems that when writing, you can never be certain which voice will come out. The only aspect of this you can address with any certainty is the fact that the voice can not be looked at as a direct reflection of the author’s persona.
Blogs are a better representation of this plurality of egos than most texts. When reading someone’s blog, you often feel like you know the author and their method of thinking. However, the voice you are reading may be one of a myriad of egos that this author possesses. One of my favorite blogs over the past year was TonyHomo.com. This was a satirical blog written by someone acting as Drew Bledsoe, whose role as starting quarterback on the Dallas Cowboys had been taken over by Tony Romo. Meant purely for entertainment value, the author wrote as if he were Bledsoe, watching from the bench, ragging on Romo for every miniscule mistake with the malice of someone who has just had their job ripped from beneath them. After months of reading this blog, I certainly had no sense of the author’s actual persona, only of this vehement Bledsoe ego that the author took on. Dr. Jill Walker commented on Foucault’s author function in her blog http://huminf.uib.no/~jill/archives/blog_theorising/what_is_an_author.html. She also found Foucault’s view on authorship disturbing, stating: “Foucault wrote in 1969 that the idea of an author is merely a function of discourse, a necessary construction to keep fiction at bay. As an undergrad I thought of that as kind of fascinating but rather abstract, after all, there are living authors.” Dr. Walker views the blogworld as one nearing “authorlessness.” Yet, in my view, the blogworld is in fact going the other way. As Foucault said, author’s can have a plurality of egos. It seems that this blogworld has just widened the spectrum of these egos, as author’s have more freedom to use their different egos than ever before.

Oh wait, I'm allowed to be a person now?

Finally we have come to a point where it is acceptable to at least broach having an I. The individual is no longer strictly taboo. Yet, when we look at this I, it is deconstructed into the Id, the Ego, and the Superego. Either that, or it is the “I” – completely questioning the individual. It seems ludicrous that when we are taught from a young age that we must be an individual and formulate our own persona, theory does not see it fit to allow this. The only I we are actually allowed is an unconscious one, more concerned with taking the place of our father than of anything else. Freud’s representation of the I is as far away from the concept of an individual as you can possibly reach.
The Id is merely your biological urges, leaving you absolutely no chance of becoming an individual. The closest thing to being an individual would be your Superego, which regulates your Id so that you don’t look like the ass that you are in front of other people. This balance between your pure “asshole” self and your conscience is what people actually see, your Ego.
It seems odd that when everything Freud posits relies on your urges and unconscious, he would not have a larger reliance on the individual persona. I feel like when I have certain dreams, they do represent things as Freud says. But other times, I just dream of things that are important in my life. Likewise, when I am awake, I certainly believe my persona is more than just a mere balance between biological needs and the Superego.

Cocaine

My good friend Sean, who teaches at Bunker Hill Community College, introduced Freud by saying, "See you Monday. We'll be talking about Freud and why he did enough cocaine to kill a small horse." Now, as this statement would suggest, Freud was one crazy dude. However, his theories are quite interesting and humerous, which is more than I can say for some of the other theories we've studied. While people look at Freud's work with a certain skepticism, some of what he put forth is generally accepted. Yet, I do not understand how his theories are academically accepted. His notion of association is the concept that is most mindboggling to me. While I do believe that certain parts of dreams may be connected to your repressed feelings, giving critics the free reign to use this association in order to lend credit to their ideas is ludacris. You can use association to back up pretty much any claim you make, no matter how absurd it is. Using association is almost like playing Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon. No matter what, you can always come up with a way to connect how the text is representative of what you say it is. Therefore, doing a Freudian psychoanalytic reading gives you free reign to posit whatever you wish.

My Brother, the American Idol

Since this is a somewhat open week, I’m going to start this post off with a conversation I had tonight with my brother (who graduated from Yale and who I consider to be generally smart).

Me: You know anything about post-structuralism?
Him: Um, no. Do you?
Me: No, it’s quite the problem
Him: Not much of a problem for me, really.
Me: Hey, my problems are your problems; you’re my blood. (I heard some guy say that on TV once, then his brother laughed at him and called him a dumb-ass).
Him: Haha. I've read some poststructuralist works I think. If they're the ones I'm thinking of they're really confusing. Barthes is a nightmare. I never really had to read any of them for classes
Me: That’s horseshit.
Him: Guess you should have majored in music!
Me: So what are you doing?
Him: Watching TV. Damn it, I hate American Idol. It's bad enough on its own but also no other channel ever puts anything good on against it so there's just nothing on TV.
Me: It was on last night too. They canceled House for it.
Him: I swear it's on every fucking night just to ruin my life.
Me: Well, as you said earlier, that’s really not my problem.

I exited this conversation feeling that I’d ended up the winner. However, I quickly realized that his problem of having nothing to watch on TV was nowhere near my problem of having no concept of post-structuralism and having to now dissect Derrida (or is it?). The one thing that I took out of this conversation was that yes, post-structuralism is in fact a nightmare. Turning back to my book, a sentence caught my eye.

“The function of this center was not only to orient, balance, and organize the structure – one cannot in fact conceive of an unorganized structure – but above all to make sure that the organizing principle of the structure would limit what we might call the play of the structure” (196).

When I was looking for structure in my life, I contemplated joining the Army. I see the Army as the ultimate symbol of structure and discipline in our country. However, at this moment in time, if you ask any U.S. citizen if they think our Army is organized, they will most likely laugh in your face. This made me think that you could conceive of an unorganized structure, but after a moment of contemplation, I finally figured out that this is merely one extreme of what Derrida would call the play of the structure. We are only able to see that the Army isn’t organized because its center (normal organization) roots it in the definition of structure. The fact that this central organization is being pulled so far just means that at this point, there is a great deal of play involved. This all brought me back to our class conversation when we talked about the idea of a system being a rubber-band which can stretch one direction or the other. For a second I almost felt like I was beginning to understand, but then I realized that I was completely off my rocker, and that there was more of a chance of me finding something good on TV than ever internalizing Derrida. And so, I traded in one problem for another.