Untitled…how ironic… October 9, 2007

I feel that Untitled 255 and 257 were the most disturbing stills out of all of them.  Sherman has this way of seeming like she only wants to portray cliches which of course some criticize as her not being an original which I understand, but I do not feel like these two stills are more or less cliches but statements.  The both of them have an effect of uneasiness on the looker and like Hannah mentioned in class it is all about the women being looked or gazed at in a certain way.  I feel like almost every shot of Sherman’s makes me feel uneasy for ways I can not pinpoint, hello Lyotard.  But, besides that these 2 stills are beyond an uneasiness and more or less horrific because they are showing a realistic way of seeing women, that people view them as today.

255 is a mannequin, which alone scares the be-jesus out of me, but she is in a sexual position and is disturbingly naked.  I feel this shows that point of view where a woman is an object, nothing more, nothing intimidating at all.  These sort of angers me a bit because I know people out there really do continue to view women as objects instead of equal human beings which may even be the stronger sex that I know some argue.  Which brings me to Untitled 257.  It seems there are mannequin parts in this still as well because if you look at the man’s shoulder blades you see joints that are not connected, but the women is on top with a more dominant perspective then 255.  I feel Sherman did a good job of trying to transition and show the way women have grown in society.  Also, the man’s face being a true showing of horror suggests that he is greatly intimidated by this women dripping on him and I also know as well that there are many men out there afraid of the feminine gender which also kind of angers me because both of these stills are showing the extremes on the opposite sides of the spectrum where one the women is an object with no say and the other showing the women as the gender that is so dominant that they are overly intimidating.  I at first was turned off of Sherman’s photos merely because they made me feel to uneasy about myself but what she is trying to demonstrate really caught me and might possibly be included in my research paper

butt-wipe October 4, 2007

  I thought maybe I would try to unlayer a small theme that seemed present in the novel that we really didn’t talk about to much.  The maturity of the novel and everything about it.  Overall the gender role switching is a main part of the novel, where males have these unseemingly feminine characteristics and Marla is rather masculine while herself is a female. The males are trying to be seen as masculine so they go to a fight club and beat each other up and blow up buildings and make soap.  How mature is this?  When you are little your mother always says fighting never solved anything so why is that the backbone of this story is so elementary.

  The point I feel of the novel is to bring down capitalism to detroy things that have us set in history.  While these are not topics 8 year olds talk about but if you generalize it and ask say an 8 year old how would they get back at someone/thing that has angered them I’m sure a response would be beat them up, or throw something at them, this always seems to be the case.  So how mature are these men where they make explosives in a house and run around destroying things.  Is there no better way?

  Also the more humorous side of this maturity level found in the relationship between the narrator and Marla was actually touched upon in class.  Butt-wipe being the main nickname for the two does not show that these characters are more than 10 years old.  I actually quite enjoyed the suck ass use in the end of the book when Marla is mad at the narrator for hitting her.  Which still I don’t get the gap of what happened there but along the same lines, when you are being raised males in general are taught never to hit a girl and what happens in the novel, Marla is hit, even though she is one of the more masculine characters.  But all in all why is this book so full of impact, yet it is based on such childish and immature ways of going about things.  Beating each other up for fun, blowing up apartments and making soap, does not scream maturity to me at all.

Masculinity October 2, 2007

  I was in the masculine group and despite how obvious this theme is in the book it is really hard to pin point and define it.  We came up with many different points that we could actually reference to in the book that shows the way masculinity is shown but the hard part was picking just two and narrowing it down.  The definition came to be something of many different points.  That masculinity in this book is not a state a male more or less is but something that they are trying to show and prove throughout.  Like Bob and his bitch tits for example.  Despite that he is a male he still has that feminine characteristic about himself, his boobs and he has no testicles.  So, he joins a fight club and burns down buildings and fights other males, even though he wears a shirt and no one else does.  Its like masculinity is something that males need to show because they are the gender that needs to keep their emotions in unless they are in their secret underground group or in a support with other males that are dealing with the same thing.

  One link we made was to Winterson’s Written on a Body.  That book was all about keeping the narrator ambiguous so as to show that both genders can do certain things.  Fight club is like the opposite in where it makes the male gender more want-able, they are macho, they do the dirty jobs lower class men do.  The only real women character in the book is Marla, and she is disgusting and outspoken and no women in their right mind would want to be that.  It makes being a female something no one wants to be with the use of Marla.  Which in this case can link outside to Lost in the Fun-house because Marla is the opposite of Magda, but still not a character any woman would want to be.  Magda barely talks, and is idolized in Ambrose’s eyes, but who wants to just be a wall flower and have no say what-so ever.  It’s as if these two females are on opposite ends of the spectrum and both play up wanting to rather be a male character. Weird.

Clubbing up to 6 September 27, 2007

  I thought maybe I could lighten up a bit and provide some my humorouse way of linking Lyotard to all of this since I am an expert on him even though I still don’t understand him and this is kind of a reach but here it goes anyway.  Trying to understand every layer of this story is kinda of making my brain leak out of my ear which surprisingly is a sublime kind of feeling which really makes me feel nostalgia to the good old days where we could read DR. Suess and know what the good doctor was saying simply and there were no mysterious allusions to figure out. well I thought it was funny. well anyway…

  I feel everything in this book can link to what we were discussing early in the class with the idea of getting rid of the old to have new.  Also I feel like this has a link to Tyler’s odd-ball jobs and project mayhem.  It’s like yeah the project is taking down a museum or a credit card company building, but in a way even though it is a reckless thing to do, how much damage is it really doing.  It is taking out something old to make room for something new even though if you think about it, it is contradictory to call it new.  Like history, taking out the museum so you can make NEW history, that really doesn’t exist.  So I guess I still don’t fully understand the intentions of the project. But so far so good, I’m liking it.

um… September 25, 2007

 I almost got what we were saying today.  Well, actually I would think I would know what was going on, and then someone would ask a question and I would loose everything.  I felt like today was one of the hardest concepts we have had to encounter yet.  Granted they had many more pages to work off of then what me and Tammy had.  But I feel like Lyotard had more confidence in knowing what he was trying to say than Jameson.  But still, they did do a good job of summing all 50 some odd pages up in like 3 minutes.  By, the end of class I think I got maybe 70 percent of what Jameson was trying to get across I just don’t get why he would about all not like postmodernism and then decide maybe he’ll change his mind in the end.  Maybe that was what confused me the most, and maybe thats all wrong and I’m still confused. Yay for fightclub!

Fightin it up September 18, 2007

Let me just say how much I love and have always loved this movie.  It is so mind bending and entertaining, and the end it’s like sublime in a way.  It is horrible to see all of those buildings collapse but it is so awsome to see.  By the way Brad Pitt is very good looking in this movie as well, kind of trashy but not, he had my attention. But, the story line is amazing! How did the book portray two characters voices at the same time, how did they make the relization of what was really happening have the same impact as the movie?  I can not wait to read the book and really see the differences and get into the nitty gritty of the novel and its purpose and objective and Everything!

Expertise project September 18, 2007

According to Lyotard, a work can only be amodern if it is first postmodern.  Lyotard puts a postmordernist into the position of a philosopher, they are not restricted by form or the rules modernists use, but rather play off the rules as guidelines for their work.  Lyotard brings attention to the point that postmodern works inlcude allusions that are partly inconceivable, yet ungraspable, concepts.  He describes some allusions of actually being sublime because you get the pleasure out of the pain of not fully grasping what many postmodernists are alluding to.  Lyotard states on page 81 of What is Postmodern?, ” A postmodern artist or writer is in the position of a philospher: the test he writes, the work he produces are not in principle goverend by pre-established rules, and they can not be judged according to a determining judgment, by applying familiar catergories to the text or to the work.  Those rules and catergories are what the work of art itself is looking for.  The artist and the writer, then, are working with out rules in order to formulate the rules of what will have been done.”  This shows Lyotard’s theory because it states the use of pre-established rules as guidlines instead of restrictions.  Also, it includes how to use the guidelines to make their work their own and postmodern at the same time.

  Lyotard’s theory can relate with Lost in the Funhouse, by John Barth.  In this short story the fun house is alluded to being many different things besides just physically being an amusement structure for children.  This can be seen on page 237, the point of sumblime and the difference of virtual versus reality comes into place.   It states, ” He wishes he had never entered the funhouse.  But he has.  Then he wishes he were dead.  But he’s not.  Therefore he will construct funhouses for others and be their secret operator–though he would rather be among the lovers for whom funhouses are designed.”  You originally think a funhouse is just a ride, but it could be many things.  Possiblities include a place for lovers or the coming of puberty.

  We agree with Lyotard’s way of describing postmodernism, his examples of rules being guidelines and the fact that most points are only being alluded to help us understand the intentions of the writers to show that there is something behind the lines.  This is important in most postmodern works because it helps the understanding behind the work and what the creator is trying to show.  The allusion helps us see the bigger picture.  As of now, at this point, the only real theorist we can compare Lyotard to is Malpas.  They do not comtradict nor agree with each other, but it seems as if Malpas plays off a negative light on Lyotard when describing himself.

  Outside resources:

http://sun3.lib.uci.edu/indiv/scctr/Wellek/lyotard/A40_postmodern.html

http://books.google.com/books?id=W3UdToA7WP0C&pg=PA237&lpg=PA237&dq=lyotard’s+theory+supporters&source=web&ots=GhOM56POXS&sig=2AED65oggZgsKQ5TWKKzvPPfSjw

http://www.helium.com/tm/212718/would-first-establish-basic

http://www.vusst.hr/ENCYCLOPAEDIA/lyotard.htm

What!?! September 11, 2007

     Let me just say, EW to the whole bacon sandwich with grease running down Gail’s face scene. Also, just EW to Gail, and the ending of this book.  Why would Sam let her sleep over, rather sleep in the same bed, or have her over at all.  If I was Sam and Gail was all, like herself and just kept inviting herself over, I would kick her out so fast.  But, anyway to more pressing matters.

       In class we discussed how postmodernism plays up the autonomous self and turning people into objects.  The narrator to me definitely seemed like the person who was supposed to be autonomous.  Meanwhile Louise was defiantly the person that was turned into an object.  How is it that Sam could have possibly fallen so cliched in love her in 5 months?  Because Louise is the object, of affection could be said, and not just to Sam but Elgin as well.  Then again there’s Gail, I know yet again.  In class we mentioned how there is usually a lot of people which can be grouped into one person, and that person has control.  I think Gail is supposed to represent average, middle-aged, single women who have strong personalities since no one else in this story has one.  She is the opposite of the autonomous person, and while opposites attract I do not think Sam and Gail ever had a chance.  But this plays into the postmodernist writing much more than I thought it would.  With all the uncertainty and unexpected people in this book it plays into how postmodernists are into the whole everything not being able to be discerned and come out with all this unpredictability.

      The ending to this book is probably the most confusing part of it all, including the beginning.  It all goes back to the whole virtual versus reality thing that we discussed in class.  Did Sam ever hear about Louise?  Did the last third of the book even happen?  It all seemed like a blur of poetic nonsense really.  I wanted to know the end and just be put out of my misery, but when the last page came I was just like oh okay where’s the rest.  Overall, what a weird, obviously postmodern book.  Not one of my favorites.

#3 September 6, 2007

 Acccording to The Postmodern, “Sexual difference is not simply a physical difference that ‘clothes’ the a-sexual ‘I think’ in a physical body.  Rather, because of its cultural history and production, it is much more problematic than the idea of a straightfoward binary distinction between male and female would suggest.” (Malpas 71) Now does this possibly play into Winterson’s play on the gender of the narrator? Sarcasm of course, her saying what Sam is, is of course not straightfoward, which as frustrating as it is as the reader, really is playing into the postmodernist characteristics.  But, off that thoroughly beaten path, this story is almost predictable and the whole dream/reality, and trust issues are becoming more evident.  Sam talks about having a nipple pierced and chained BOYfriend? Real, or dream?  Seemed as if it was supposed to be real but how?  I guess Winterson is just trying to make figuring out what Sam is even more ambivilant because now we don’t even know if Sam is gay or straight, or bi-, more postmodern unpredictabilty.

  Dreams and Sam actually talking about whether something is real is happening even more in the book.  By, the end of the section the trust issue seems the most prominant.  Why wouldn’t Louise tell Sam about her cancer?  Is it really bad as Elgin says or is it not an issue like Louise is saying?  Or is she just trying to deny the severity so she can distance herself husband and not need to rely on him anylonger.  Did she go back to Elgin when Sam left?  Did Sam really leave? I don’t know what to believe or question.  Maybe all of this is straightfoward which would throw the reader off which would be a postmodern objective as a writer and Louise has cancer as Elgin has says and Louise just really doesn’t know about the severity and Sam actually did leave so that Louise would go back to her husband even thought it seems like Sam is going to die without Louise by his side.  But, I guess I have to keep on trucking and try to get through this book.

Written… September 6, 2007

   At first the writing style of the book confused me.  I wasn’t sure who “you” was, if the narrator was male of female, or where the story was going.  But, by page 11 I got the jist, which made me re-read the first couple of pages.  There are a couple of sentences within the first chunk of the story which really caught my mind.  When he first mentions the girl that kisses him to make a sort of sense of her illogical-ness actually made me laugh.  As a girl, this may be gender based, but I know I have definitly done this exact move when I know I was just being a goof and make no sense at all.  But the other quote mentions how we as the reader are even supposed to be able to trust him as the narrator, which I don’t.  In only a short amount of pages I got that some of the characteristics of this “fellow” aren’t very trustworth.  He always mentions all these girlfriends that he has had, which almost all have already been married, and how these girls cheat on their husbands with him.  Not once does he mention if he himself has ever cheated because it is a common trait for one wh is ok with another cheating to be with them is also okay with being the cheatee.  Another characteristic of the narrator indirectly shown is that he walks away from situations, he never seems to have closure, or discuss a matter towards a conclusion.  How do we as the reader know he isn’t doing the same in him telling the story, leaving out what he wants, picking up a new topic when he wants, or is never fully finishing one thing before another.  I like the story so far, it seems a little emotion driven, but that I think is the only thing pulling me in, just wanting to know how it ends really.