It's Not a Crying Wolf Scenario

The poem "Barbie Doll", by Marge Piercy, brings to light the pressures placed upon women and their bodies. The Barbie doll is an image of synthetic, impossible, perfection.

Even though, as someone pointed out in class, women have made tremendous strides against discrimination and bias views based on gender, women still face pressures even today. At different points in time there were specific ideals of beauty that society as a whole placed upon women. With the changing of said times come the deletion, but also addition, of beauty ideals. Even in America, the land of the free, women, and just people in general, feel unsatisfied with themselves because they do not fit into what is considered normal. Piercy's other poem: "What are big girls made of?" brings up the notion that such discrimination against women's bodies, and bodies in general, is still (unfortunately) relevant. She points out the fact that in the past and up to today, women's bodies have been under the microscope:

"the 18th century:
century of the ultimate lady
fantasy wrought of silk and corseting.
Paniers bring her hips out three feet
each way, while the waist is pinched
and the belly flattened under wood."

Then we fast forward to modern times ---------->

"How superior we are now: see the modern woman
thin as a blade of scissors.
She runs on a treadmill every morning,
fits herself into machines of weights
and pulleys to heave and grunt,
an image in her mind she can never
approximate, a body of rosy
glass that never wrinkles,
never grows, never fades. She
sits at the table closing her eyes to food
hungry, always hungry:
a woman made of pain."

Even if you may have heard it over and over again, and are frankly sick of people playing any sort of card: the race card, or the gender card... it's still there. If we have made such "strides" into becoming more intelligent and more aware of biases, then we wouldn't be finding teenage girls becoming walking skeletons.... we wouldn't be seeing magazines plastered with article titles such as: "Flat Abs, Firm Butt, Lean Thighs", "Get a Sexy Body".

Piercy uses the straight facts in a witty tongue. She doesn't hype it up into fancy language to make the poem "prettier" or more "poetic". I absolutely love these two poems by Piercy. She has a message to convey and she takes her own spin on it and it is very enticing.

"If only we could like each other raw.
If only we could love ourselves
like healthy babies burbling in our arms." ~ M. Piercy

Dadaism

The "Fountain" sculpture that Professor Schacht discussed within his blog Don't p-- on that art! is an example of Dada Art. Dadaism was an art movement that started in the 1910's.

The movement's name had its own history of origin:

DADA: This word was seized upon by the Dadaists at the Cabaret Cafe in 1916 when a paper knife was found inserted into a dictionary pointing to the term "dada." This infant language for "hobbyhorse" was found appropriate for the group's anti-aesthetic creations and protest activities. ( Information on Dadaism.

This art movement included the art forms of sculpture as well as poetry. I read in some book back in my high school art class about an example of how Dada poetry was created. It is similar in how the Van Lingle Mungo song by David Frishberg was created using baseball players names. People would cut out the words from back of seed packets and patch them together in any combination that pleased them and read their creations out loud. It was Found Art in the sense that the words had already been written up on the back of the seed packets, but the art of it was that they created their own completed piece out of the random words.

So who are we to say that it isn't poetry, isn't art in general, just because it was there beforehand? The manipulation and composition of the objects/words is what sets it a part from what it formerly was. Found art is then the essential and primary basis on how all art is created, from using life to inspire artistic creations. It takes on a whole new meaning.

Narrating our lives

Barbara Hardy's view on stories and real life, the line between fantasy and reality, is interesting and true.

In An Approach Through Narrative Towards a Poetics of Fiction Hardy describes how narrative is used through the creation of stories.
Narrative- "is not to be regarded as an aesthetic invention used by artists to control, manipulate, and order experience, but as a primary act of mind transferred to art from life" (pg. 5).

We use narrative in our daily interactions, even during the night, while we sleep and dream. As discussed in class yesterday, life is the key inspiration to the art that surrounds us today, be it through literary works or paintings. And through those experiences being plastered where one can be free to see and take it in in their own interpretation, we start to emulate fantasy (which was a part of reality beforehand anyways).

Without narrative there would be no point to living. To quote, yet again, from Hardy: "In order to really live we make up stories about ourselves and others" (pg. 5). This creates a conflict between our false barriers of fantasy and reality because we cross back and forth from both constantly.

So imagination, fantasy, story-telling, is never really left behind in childhood. So what's with the stubbornness and determination to rid oneself of such "childish" thoughts once we enter into adulthood? There's no escaping it, it makes life more interesting anyways. Does it make one more mature to draw that line with a thick black permanent marker? Hardy theorizes a paradox with the act of reaching maturation: the paradox to be mature involves escape, non attachment to the self, which is perfected in death (pg. 6).

Another Jabberwocky video

Just found this weird 8th grade play to the jabberwocky poem:

Jabberwocky

Video of The University of Maine Singers performing Jabberwocky (first part is jabberwocky) While reading the lines of this song in Through the Looking Glass I read it aloud with the intonation of the song. This is because I remember performing this in my own high school chorus a few years back. It was really silly and everyone was confused by it. But do we need to understand something to enjoy it? With that said... enjoy:

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

Underneath all the confusing conversations and scenes in AAW, some seem to find metaphors and deeper meanings inside this grim children's story. By my curious nature I am drawn to look for the keys to unlock the puzzles within a story such as Alice's. By doing so, as asked within previous class discussions, am I ruining my experience of reading the story? If I read through this with an ignorance is bliss sort of mindset I think all the creativity that the author put into creating this story would be somewhat lost in fact, since I wouldn't wonder about why he altered reality in particular ways. Knowing about metaphors and whatnot is a good thing. It really does help enhance the experience of diving into the book's adventure it wants to take its reader on. If everything were point blank, then where is the originality in that? Where is the suspense? Also, by being knowledgable of such craft elements it keeps the story alive and fresh, especially if it is one's favorite book and they read it over and over again.