Meta-Blog Post, Second Quarter

Please look at the post Using Connections as Tools.

Blogging this quarter has been more difficult for me than the first quarter.  This is not a comment on my inspiration for blog posts, I believe that more and more in my daily life I am looking critically at the world around me, consciously trying to decipher why people make the decisions that they do.  But the difficulty has been with the transition from idea to coherent blog post.  I get inspired by the things around me but then I can't represent my ideas in writing on a post.  I really love the inspiration blogging gives me and how it lets me connect in my own personal way to huge issues, but the major challenge has been to represent that feeling, and to have others feel my same inspiration.
As for the transformation of my blog posts from first quarter to second, I believe that I have started to address some of the goals I set for myself.  In my meta-blog post from first quarter I said that "A change to my blog that I would like to see in the future is finding a news topic or article before linking it to class".  I believe that I have accomplished this well.  In my post Using Connections as Tools, Depressive Realism and Society and Harry Potter 7, I had the idea for the blog post from my every day life, before linking it to class.  I believe this shows a sophistication in my ability to draw connections to class from a preexisting idea or interest.  
Like last quarter, my favorite part of the blogging process has been the commenting.  If I am struggling to put my own thoughts into words then I will go and comment on another person's blog post.  I feel that commenting is very much an escape as well as a way to challenge the views of others.
My goal for next semester is to keep my blog posts consistent.  I have to make myself move past the difficulty of the transition process from idea to words and continue to write posts.  

Using Connections as Tools

In class on Friday we received our final exam prompt.  The question is whether or not anyone is ever NOT making things up and whether or not that mattered.  Lawrence Weschler, the author of the book Everything that Rises: A Book of Convergences, believes that it is not possible to see or imagine an object completely independently from something previously viewed.  He gave these two images as examples:

 above: Jasper Johns, Three Flags (1958); below: Joel Meyerowitz, Autumn Afternoon (2001)

He believes that Joel Meyerowitz saw and was channeling the Three Flags in his inspiration for the photo.  While I am not entirely sure that that was the case, I do believe that certain images that spark a connection can make you feel an emotion.  For example, in the above photo taken by Meyerowitz, the colors of red, white and blue pop out and, even if you had never seen the painting Three Flags, a sense of patriotism and America are immediately established. 

Another example occurred in my own life on Friday night.  I was babysitting and the kids wanted to watch The Incredibles, and I was probably as excited as they were.  But when watching the scene where Mr. Incredible was captured, the image stuck out to me.  

I know the image is rather fuzzy, but it was his position that inspired the post.  Upon looking at Mr. Incredible here, there is an immediate sense of his helplessness and persecution.  I realized that it was not only the content of this part in the movie that inspired the emotion, but the way that his pose seemed to link to that of the crucifixion pose.  Because the image of Jesus on the cross has been so engrained in my memory from years of Sunday School and Church, the bridge of the two sparked an emotional connection to what was being shown on the screen.  Just by seeing him in this pose, I had already determined a mental and emotional response to the character being shown.  The connection between the two was used as a tool by the filmmakers to spark a mental response.

To what extent does the repetition of familiar images spark an emotional connection?  And how does this change the way that way we perceive the art and media around us?  

The Power of A Word

In class we have been talking a lot about the new version of Huckleberry Finn.  The "n-word" used 219 in Mark Twain's classic has been replaced by the word "slave".  This change has caused much uproar.  Many people believe that it is a positive change and that it will allow more schools to be able to read the classic novel while others believe that the "n-word" is there to highlight the racism and spark an emotional response in the reader.  I agree with the latter argument.  The "n-word" even in today's culture holds a lot of weight.  Many people, including myself, do not feel comfortable or appropriate using or hearing the word.  The immediate emotional response to the word is used as a tool in Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn in order to highlight the racist society of the time and as irony.  I believe that removing this word does not provide a simply cleaner version of the book but makes the book lose a stunning emotional reaction associated with the word.

Human Ownership

In class we were asked to agree or disagree to the statement "Children are their parent's possessions".    Many of the class agreed to this statement saying that legally parents are in charge when their child is in trouble.  Another argument is that the mother has the baby in her womb and therefore is in complete ownership of the child.  I strongly disagree with these statements.  I believe that under no circumstances can a human own another human.  I believe that parents are responsible, legally, financially and otherwise, towards their kids, but never have the right to claim ownership over them.
During the class discussion Mr. Bolos and O'Connor brought up public displays of ownership.  Although not their original point, the class immediately jumped on the conclusion of leash babies.

We have all seen them and been sufficiently creeped out by them.  A direct claim of ownership over someone, the 'leash baby' is an iconic example of parent control and displays of ownership over their children.
When talking about the leash baby, a picture came to my mind from our World History class last year.  When studying Iraq, our teacher taught us about the torture prison Abu Ghraib and the photo from it was stuck in my memory (WARNING: there are frightening and graphic images here- if you choose not to click the links below, there will be little confusion through the rest of the post).  Abu Ghraib was a torture prison in Iraq.  The tortured Iraqi citizens were forced into sexual, painful and humiliating poses while the US soldiers working there snapped photos that were put on facebook and myspace.  The separate link of the photo shows a female US soldier holding a leashed, naked and tortured Iraqi.  The particular photo stuck out to me because of the sense of ownership and control so clearly exhibited through the leash.  The complete control that one human has over another is sickening and whether in a prison in Iraq or with a simple parent child relationship, a human being under no circumstances has ownership over another human being.

Depressive Realism and Society

In class today we talked about the moment when children become adults.  While many people threw out different ideas concerning age and maturity level, living on your own and being independent from your parents, we struggled to find a solid definition of adult.  Is being an adult a state of mind? Is it economic or social? Without the clear idea of what we were discussing, everyone's answers were personal.  Mr. O'Connor told a story about a boy who clearly knew the exact moment he became a man, age eleven.  The class, upon hearing this, immediately laughed thinking the boy was just juvenile and didn't know what he was talking about.  But he could name a specific moment when his father left leaving him as the sole man of the house, thus forcing him out of childhood.  When we first heard this and laughed our views of manhood where dictated by society; a certain age of 18, living solo and supporting yourself financially defined being a man.  Because this boy fit none of these he was immediately labeled as too young to fully comprehend what being a man meant.  The view of society shaped the definition.

While on StumbleUpon over break I came across an interesting phycology article on a concept called Depressive Realism.  It proposes that those people suffering from depression actually have a clearer view on reality than those whose views are skewed by feelings of optimism and personal success.  If this concept  is true and those who are depressed have a better perception of reality then why does society choose to accept the non-depression as sane?  Society choses all of our ideas of normal and sane.  The views of society control who is medicated and who is labeled sane. They chose the definition of being a man and control the views.  Without society's premeditated ideas on the definitions of these certain ideas, there would be no standard to live up to.  Is not having a clear and set standard of normal a positive of negative concept?  How would living without the normal change our views of those around us and require us to use personal experience to define ourselves rather than society?