Warm Letters from Home

1. What is the function of the letters in News From Home?

This prompt jumped out at me first because it is the question I puzzled over most throughout the film. Why is the viewer constantly bombarded with motherly commentary, when this mother’s child is never seen? At first, I thought we would see her daughter at the end of the film; because with each letter, the audience is given more information on this mysterious person. At the beginning, the mother simply refers to her child as “my darling”, so we are unaware of the sex of this person. But later on, she refers to her as “My little girl”. Also, we do not know why this mysterious person is in New York, especially since it seems that she moved there from her mother’s foreign country (possibly France), but later we are told by the mother that she is working on a screenplay. Oh, so she has moved to the big city to go into cinema, for her career. But even though we keep learning about this woman, she never appears. Why?

I think now that the purpose of the letters in News From Home are not to introduce us to the mysterious woman, but to introduce us to the idea of two disparate worlds being compared through the warmth of a mother’s voice. The world of the mother’s description contains family, friends, and familiarity. In fact, it seems less foreign to me than the bustling New York scenes shown beneath her voice. The phrases she repeats, such as “I know you are busy, but please find time to write me” are familiar requests we have all heard from our family time to time. This brings a certain personal aspect to the film because we can relate to the mystery woman. The warmth of the mother’s voice contrasts the cold hard city, and allows the viewer to be transported through the letter to friendlier place. As an outside listener, I can only imagine a comfortable home nestled away in the hills of France with loving family, far away from the hustle and bustle of big city life.

Whether or not this interpretation is correct cannot be determined by you or me; and I think that was the point. We are to create our own interpretations, our own meanings. While some of us may take in the information from this film and interpret it within our everyday lives, others may see it as completely foreign and incomprehensible. This comparison between our understandings closely follows my above idea of the comparison of two worlds within the film in that we are choosing either what is comfortable to us or what is cold and foreign. It is this disparity that leaves the film up for interpretation. What do you think?

In Class Activity 10/29

Warhol-

The internet is my companion. I wake up and consult it for my daily dose of Americana. I begin with Amazon.com. My head spins with commercial advertising. Crocs? What is this strange notion? A clog, purely Dutch, made of fur and plastic to integrate Americanism. People wear these? Everything on this site has been created to make our lives easier. The most disgusting of all, is an “Amazon Kindle”, shown at top center of the page, demanding our attention. Books are loaded into this thing so we don’t have to carry around a ton of them. This just further shows the laziness of us all. And this product idea continues, with IPODs, Blackberries (blackberries…painful thorns but delicious juice), cameras, watches, etc. All created to store information so our lives can be easier. Obvious sexuality is shown with an advertisement for Women’s Halloween costumes. This Princess Leah costume is so revealing she could be naked and it wouldn’t make a difference. But the Darth Vader costume covers men from head to toe. This disparity between male and female body image encompasses our culture. The thin tan woman with shiny skin looks at the viewer sexually as if wanting to create erotic thoughts. But the man comes at the viewer suddenly with a light saber. Ah, sex and violence. The basis of American humanity. And jealousy. The woman only looks the way she does because she is jealous of the way other women look, and how men view them. The man becomes violent at the viewer out of jealousy. “Don’t look at my woman!” And, we see new and exciting toys and technology all over the page because jealousy drives our nation to spend. I might be jealous that someone else has a newer, “cooler” phone than me, so I would buy a new one. Even a baby is dressed like Yoda to stimulate our “cute” sensors. I have a cuter baby than you. Sex. Violence. Jealousy. We find our identity as it is given to us.

Goldsmith

On the Amazon page, there uh are uh a lot of commercial advertisements. But, uh, there’s some truth to this. There is a, uh, device which holds thousands of, uh, books in it, so we, uh, don’t have to carry them ourselves. At, uh, the top of the, uh, page, there’s three pictures of what appear to be, uh, plastic clogs with fur in them, this way uh, gardeners can have warm feet in the uh, the winter. On the, uh, right side of the page there are some watches, which, uh all look very nice and shiny but uh, all show different times which is odd. Under the uh, clogs in the middle of the, uh page, uh, there are three types of phones, each, uh, a bit different, uh more advanced than the one to its left. This, uh makes me think about what we will, uh, have in the future.
Technology
Technology
Technology
Ever changing
Never ending
Technology. Its’ getting better and better now. It’s coming closer and closer. We will be are in the midst of it now and will be for the remainder of our lives. This storm of information, uh, consuming our lives. We are deep in it now, but, uh, it will get worse, more will come. We can now see Iphones and Blackberries, but, uh, what will come next? Acamera is seen in the page’s left hand column. It has 12.3 megapixels, but, uh, will that seem bad in ten years? Looking to the future, uh, I can see that we will be bombarded with even more of this ridiculous technology. Even our children are exposed to it. At, uh thebottome of the, uh, the screen, there is a “Fisher Price Kid-Tough” Digital Camera”. It is made for toddlers. So, even in single digit ages, humans are, uh, using technology, and learning that this equipment is not something of value, and does not need to be respected. Uh, feel free to toss your technology out the window. It’s uh, Kid-tough.

Andy Warhol Eats a Hamburger Video

yaaaay! I figured out how to post the video! Check this out.

Andy Warhol Eats a Hamburger

Ok so I can't figure out how to post this actual video to my blog, but hopefully you will be able to follow the link above. The video is titled "Andy Warhol eats a Hamburger" and it contains four minutes and thirty three seconds of precisely this. I thought it would be a good jump into our unit on Andy Warhol. If you take a peek at the work of Andy Warhol it is obvious that he focused on pop culture and modern art. He became famous for such Americanized works as a simple painting of the Campbell's soup can. This video is therefore a perfect representation of Warhol and all he stands for. Because the hamburger Warhol consumes is a fast food burger, it represents the fast-food nation America has become. The Campbell's soup work was the beginning of American food art for Warhol and his interest in this medium has now progressed to big-business fast food industries. The only words he utters in the video are "My name is Andy Warhol, and I just finished eating a hamburger".

Why should the American public take his earlier works more seriously than this one? I am interested to hear what my fellow classmates think of this video. Is it a commentary on the disgusting influence of fast food on American culture? Or merely a documentation of an important man consuming a quick meal. Anyway, I think it is definitely worth checking out. Similar to the surrealist film shown in class on Wednesday 10/22, it is repetitive and pretty annoying...but perhaps this is another connection to be made; between pop culture and surrealism.

p.s. - If the link doesn't work, just copy this one into your web browser:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jaf6zF-FJBk

Today's In Class Activity

The following is my attempt at looking at a picture and simply writing without stopping to correct my thoughts. Sometimes my train of thought goes in weird directions, but hey wasn't that what the assignment was all about? You can see areas where I tried to hard and other places where I just let my mind wander...an interesting synthesis I think.





It is surreal to see this large creature which once dominated the land as a mere carpet underneth a man. His dominance and frightening prescence have been taken from him, as only his skin lies on the ground. He has been displayed as if he is running, which would seem normal for his everyday life (pre-death). I imagine him running through the African Savannah (or is this an Asian elephant? Just one aspect we can no longer determine from his flattened body) with many other wild animals, yet here he lies alone, being grommed by the human race; the race which was most likely the cause of his downfall. Its funny that the man has placed himself between the elephant’s mouth and trunk, as if the elephant is about to pick uop the tiny man and devour him. Elephants are such a beloved creature of human kind. Nearly evey child I know has some sort of elephant toy. But isnt it ironic that elephants are also very deadly? I mean, you don’t see many kids with toy scorpians or stuffed snakes but they are equally lethal. Rogue elephants can trample a man in two seconds if he doesn’t like the looks he is given. These animals are puzzling. I think that man could not handle the fact that there was an animal more dominant and powerfull than him, so we took them down….as we have done with many large beasts…




Oh, how I wish life were still this simple. Playing in the lake with friends. But wait…the little boy is teaching the little girl something. Possibly how to fish? Could this be a symbol of male dominance in our society? Even the sand bar they stand on is an out rightly phallic image. But maybe its simpler than that. They children gaze at their reflections in the water and daydream. The boy pokes the water with a stick and watches the ripples in amazement. How does it all work? Why can I see myself down there? I remember doing this as a child, or even more precisely, attempting to skip rocks on glassy lakle surfaces. My dad always could skip a rock six or seven times, but I only ever got to 3. He tried to teach me, like the boy in this photo is trying to teach the girl, but I never could get the hold of it. Today I still cant skip rocks, but I am correcting his papers and showing him the ways of computers. I guess I am just trying to say that everyone is good at their own thing, and while it may start in childhood withy something as simple as skipping rocks, it advances in life to technology and love…I know that might not make sense, but my dad taught me about skipping rocks because he loves me, and I taught him about computers because I love him.



This image struck me because I am not sure what is going on here. It seems that young upper class white children are viewing a native american family representation behind glass. I wish I could go back in time and ask them what they’re thinking about. The Native Americans sit in ape-like positions behind glass as if they are being kept captive in a zoo. But what is interesting to me is that the white children don’t even notice their own reflection in the window. Its as if we are being shown that we are all on exhibition, we are all part of the world’s museum and are being watched everyday. The man who appears to be their teacher points at the Indians as if they were mere animals doing something interesting, and the class looks on. Is this how they thought was the best method of educating America’s future? By showing them racism from the start? As a kid we used to play cowboys and indians and my parents looked on, ignoring our racial gestures. Will we ever be a society clean of racism? I envy those who are. People usually say. “Im not racist, I have lots of friends who are____.” But what does that mean? Why would one want to hide that? The truth is that a little of our past remains within us, whether we like it (or practice it) or not. Honestly, I would like to go back to the way of life shown here, where man is one with nature. But industry, big business, and society in general have wiped out all traces of this peacefull way of living.

Perception of Holidays

Have you ever noticed how much vegetation we include in our holidays? I am not talking about what we eat, considering all of the sugary sweets associated with this time of year. No, even more obviously. Take Halloween for example. I went to the pumpkin patch last weekend with my family, where we tromped through fields of mud to find the "perfect" pumpkin. Then we took it home, cut it open, scooped out its guts, and carved it into an aesthetically pleasing figure and displayed it in our home. While the festivities of this holiday include much more than pumpkin carving, Halloween would not be the same without these emptied gourds shining bright on every doorstep. Why do we find it necessary to include this odd activity every October 31st?

My train of thought on Halloween led me to think about other holidays that include vegetation. What about the Christmas tree? We chop down trees and haul them into our homes so we can envelope them in lights and ornaments for a few weeks of the year. How crazy does that sound out loud?! I always thought my cat looked at me like I was insane when I was cursing at a tree too heavy for me to be shoving through my doorway, covering me in sap and needles. So, why do we constantly feel the necessity to bring the outdoors in? We display flowers in our homes for nearly every other holiday. Valentines Day, Easter, Mothers Day, even our birthdays! I would love to hear the thoughts of my fellow classmates on this random thought. Can you think of anywhere else that this is seen?

Apples to Apples

Today I sat down with my room-mates and played a rather hilarious card game called “Apples to Apples”. In this game, each player is dealt seven "red apple" cards, each having a different noun or noun phrase (such as "Madonna", "Canada", "The Spanish Inquisition", etc.). The judge (a chosen player) draws a "green apple" card on which is printed an adjective ("scary", "un-natural", "patriotic", etc.), and places it face-up on the table. From amongst their red-apple cards, each player (except the judge) chooses a card that they think is the best match for the green apple card, and places it face-down. The judge shuffles the red apple cards, reads them aloud, and decides which noun is the best match for the adjective. The player who submitted that red apple card wins the round, and takes the green apple card to signify the win.

The object of the game is for the judge to manipulate you into thinking like him/her, because you can only win if the judge chooses your card. You can even be as obvious as to put down a red apple card saying “my life” for the green card “luxurious”, because whenever a card reads “my______” it is referring to the judge. A red card player could also put down something specific to the likes of the judge. For example, one round I knew the judge loved steak so I put down “steak” for patriotic and won. However, the red card players usually pick something funny that doesn’t make much sense to them, but they know it will make the judge laugh and therefore consider it. For example, for the green card “neat” the chosen red card was “picking your nose”.

This idea has ties to the real world in that society tries to manipulate us to do what they think is best. The recent presidential election ads, for example, use harsh negative language chosen specifically to try and get you to vote for a candidate. If we decide not to follow the rules of society and vote for someone who may not be in the foreground of the election, our votes are tossed to the side, just as the losing red card nouns are in the game. Our ballots only count if they appeal to the “decider” (the same word George Bush used to describe himself).

The first person to reach five green cards won the game. Then, every player read whatever green cards they had acquired out loud, because it was supposed to say something about them (according to the rules). Some of my green cards were “Melodramatic”, “Natural” and “Mystical”, while one of my team-mates were “Mischievous”, “Sensuous” and “Juicy”. While I cannot determine whether these evaluations were true or not, it was still very entertaining. After a long day of work and school, my brain had a chance to relax with this silly game that allowed me to blow off some overwhelming stress. I think this was a great way for me to see that by sitting back and doing something fun for awhile I can lower my stress levels and improve my mental health.

Un Chien Andalou

OK, there is no way anyone could watch Un Chien Andalou and not want to talk about it. As a person who is very interested in Art History I have studied Surrealist art forms in the past. However, I remain baffled by this early Surreal film. While there is an underlying plot to this movie which can be excavated through analysis, I don't think that is what the artist who created this film intended. The whole point of Surrealism is to create art based on imagination or dreams, and while this film seems to not make much sense to the conscious viewer, it is ringing clear as day with our sub-conscious selves.

One scene in the film which registered with me was in the second half, when the man in the woman's bed awakens, and the woman opens her apartment door to another man who barges in and angrily strips the first man of his work attire and throws it out the window. The audience is thus led to believe that the man who barges in is the first man's boss, but we do not know because there is no sound and we are never allowed to see his face. As soon as I realized that this mysterious man never reveals his identity to us, I began to recall dreams in which the same thing occurred. I would have full conversations with someone, and while i might have had an idea of who it was, I never saw their face. I now understand that the person in my dreams was whoever I wanted it to be, the embodiment of anyone whom I desired to be in that position based on past experiences I have had with that person. Sometimes the character in this position would even change persona's multiple times during my dream, each time becoming someone closer to me.

I also have the feeling where my dream's setting suddenly changes out of the blue, yet it doesn't even phase me. I just walk through my house, into a jungle, and end up in a library, calm and unaware of the strange quickness at which I am able to travel. This idea can be seen toward the end of the movie when the boy is shot in the woman's apartment, and is suddenly lying in a park. Or, at the very end when the woman closes her apartment door, and instead of a hallway finds an endless beachfront. It is these oddities which make dreams so wonderful, and keep us hitting the snooze button every morning wanting more. It is therefore understandable why surrealist artists would want to focus on the subconscious mind, bringing dreams and imagination to life through their works.

...An interesting side note...when I watched Un Chien Andalou a second time at my house I forgot to exit out of my minimized blog which was still playing the techno music accompanying my slide show! I kept it on throughout the movie and it was actually a really cool experience. Mixing extremely modern music with old-fashioned film and surreal ideas...I highly recommend it.

Time Travel to Bothell Ruins

Our Lives Prescribed by Lefebvre

On page 34 of The Everyday, Henri Lefebvre ends his essay with a lingering thought, a chance for readers to participate in his cognitive brain storm.

“The more highly qualified and technical an activity becomes, the more remote from everyday life the time it takes becomes; and the more urgent the need becomes for a return to the everyday. For the housewife, the question is whether she can come to the surface and stay there. For the mathematician, the question is whether he can rediscover an everyday life in order to fulfill himself not only as a scholar (even if he is a genius), but also as a human being. And the ‘society woman’? No questions, your Honour. […]”

Well, let’s bite. Ok Kristina; put the book down and THINK.

Lefebvre’s notion of the housewife, mathematician, and society woman, is intriguing in the sense that In his eyes, we cannot be connected with the everyday if we are associated with only one of these “occupations”.

The housewife, constantly disconnected with the world outside her front door, is drowning in her ‘everyday’ while the world revolves around her, not reaching even the peripherals of a multi-tasking woman’s eyes. This, is quite possibly too much ‘everyday’. In Lefebvre’s words, “the question is whether she can come to the surface and stay there.” (random thought-This quote is similar to a Jenny Craig commercial I heard today announcing their customers would “take it off and keep it off”, which is humorous to me because the intended audience for this commercial is most likely the housewife, who is constantly striving to surface, and “stay there”).

The mathematician, with his head always in an equation, whether solving one on paper or contemplating the equations of the world, is therefore disconnected from his own everyday life because he has become so desensitized to the world around him. Unable to quit analyzing everything, it becomes impossible to lead a normal life. Almost oppositely, in the case of the ‘society woman’, while she does not lack global understanding she fails to peer beneath the surface of herself, others, and her societal resources. This “shallowness” would not lead to daily joy, but a life of unfulfilling material happiness.

So, how could the house wife, mathematician, and society woman escape their lives into a more connected relationship/understanding of the everyday? If a person can successfully balance a little of each of these occupations, would they then be more in-tune with their everyday life? As a student I live with my fiancé and cook and clean for the both of us (housewife), I attend classes and spend hours on my studies (mathematician), and I work two jobs (society woman). However, as I sit here in my home for hours on end, I have trouble agreeing with the fact that I have a greater everyday life than those who are out in the world doing what they love. Or, maybe the point is not to have the best life, but the best understanding of your life; an understanding that, while I am but one human being out of billions on this earth, I make a difference…to me.