This week I used the SAT subject test as a way to avoid yet another epic battle with the Regal Popper. Sans popcorn grease burns, the weekend came and went with a crash of Indian music and spicy food--I danced and laughed until the next morning when Maestro Ludwig buckled under pre-concert pressure and nearly threw the Soprano at us (he is a very small man). Now I'm sitting here wondering how I can possibly connect my thoughts to Shakespeare.
I have been slightly disappointed so far in lit class. I feel little to no connection with our reading material, Madame Bovary aside. Shakespeare can't be to blame. But maybe that is the problem--Shakespeare is Shakespeare. I feel as though I have been conditioned to accept it. The only vestige of intrigue I find in the works of Shakespeare is the subtle-or-not-so-subtle touch of sexual humor. And I can't really expound on that either. Othello is dead, Desdemona is dead, Cassio is dead, Rodrigo is dead, Emilia is dead, and Iago gets away. What can I say about that? What themes can I find? Sure, trust, faith, look before you leap, yadda yadda yadda. It's all very didactic.
Connection, for me at least, comes rarely and sporadically. Which feeds into another annoyance with lit class--I believe pop-culture has just as much literary value as Shakespeare. Wasn't Shakespeare considered pop-culture back in the day? I just think that film and music is so much a part of us that I can't help but talk about it. This weekend I watched Blue Velvet, both versions of Clash of the Titans, and The Triplets of Belville. Blue Velvet honestly reminds me Of Mice and Men combined with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. I actually dissected Clash of the Titans for those "literary allusions" that we seem to endlessly search for. What I found is that Medusa could easily be related to Harry Potter's basilisk. The Triplets of Belville was this amazing pseudo-silent film with that old-school animation we all miss. It was reminiscent of the '20s and was so clever I couldn't help but laugh. Where does that leave me for literary connections?
So I do declare that this week's lit blog is about absurdist literature. We are reading Albert Camus's The Stranger in French class. According to Wiki, "The Absurd" refers to the conflict between the human tendency to seek inherent meaning in life and the human inability to find any. For example, in The Stranger, the main character's mother dies. He feels nothing, not sorrow or even relief (haha). He floats around complaining about the price of train tickets to his mother's funeral and wondering what his boss will think about his leave of absence. He watches a neighbor kick his dog daily and doesn't think it a slightly bit odd. I have a feeling that by the end of this novel nothing will have happened and that I will go on my merry way thinking how useless the world is. At least that will leave me some connection, unlike Shakespeare, which leaves me no thoughts at all.
Guessing I'm just tired and hoping writer's block will go away so that I can write about Madame Bovary--hopefully Invisible Man will speak to me this week.
Oh no! According to Wiki, what!?
ReplyDeleteDon't leave me hanging like that, meanie. Although I'm not sure how connection is something that you won't encounter again, but I have not read Madame Bovary.
That was a sentence fragment. Remove the "but."
ReplyDeleteSorry about that, I pressed control+p in hopes that it would paste a definition, but instead it posted my unfinished blog. Haha I hope I didn't just spam Ms. Marcy.
ReplyDeleteI suppose Shakespeare's works were considered pop culture back in the day, but their concept of pop culture was obviously a little different, no? I do get what you're saying. I mean, though half the stock of our new literary works contain romances+vampires, there is definitely some gems out there.
ReplyDeleteP.S. I hate writer's block. It's evil.
Pssstt, don't highlight my logical fallacies :)
ReplyDelete