It's a Small (Fake) World!

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“To all who come to this happy place: Welcome. Disneyland is your land. Here age relives fond memories of the past, and here youth may savor the challenge and promise of the future. Disneyland is dedicated to the ideals, the dreams, and the hard facts that have created America, with the hope that it will be a source of joy and inspiration to all the world.”

Walter E. Disney, July 17 1955 (ezmason512)

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Jean Baudrillard's critique of the postmodern world has referred to “the phenomenon of global financial speculation, ever-increasing tourism, and the frenzied stimulation of consumer desire through the media” (Baudrillard 1553). And what better example of all three of those things than Disneyland? In an excerpt from “The Precession of Simulacra,” Baudrillard discusses Disneyland as a simulacrum – an illusion or representation of something fabricated and somehow inferior to the original – was quite shocking to me. I never figured Disneyland in all its consumer splendor and flashing lights to be a false representation of the real world. Taking in part what was discussed in class, the concept that each of the “worlds” in Disneyland – Tomorrowland, Adventureland, Fronterierland, Fantasyland and Main Street – representing places, times and histories that never existed makes the theme park seem perverse and twisted. Where is the roller coaster that tells us of how the frontier folk slaughtered the Native Americans? Why aren’t there dead bodies piled up on the banks of the Jungle Cruise ride to represent the thousands killed by transmitted diseases from European conquerors? If Tomorrowland is the optimistic vision of the future, have the dystopian fiction writers like Huxley and Orwell been lying to us? Main streets exist in small and large towns all over the country, and yet none of them blend the home-grown, small-town feel with Victorian-esque attire that Disneyland’s Main Street has. As Baudrillard says, Disneyland encompasses American ideals, an “idealised (sic) transposition of a contradictory reality” (1565). Having Sleeping Beauty’s castle looming in the distance as visitors enter the park casts an unrealistic setting on the area, as if to say “here is where your boring real life ends; welcome to the fantastically wonderful and exciting dreamland of discouragement and unreal expectations!” for the perfect world that Disneyland claims to represent can never exist in real life.

Each cast member – and yes, this is what the park employees are called; they use show terms including backstage, on-stage and audience – is expected to be “on” all the time in order to keep up the illusion that this is how Disneyland is all the time. Last year, there was controversy when a Muslim park employee who was told she couldn’t wear her head scarf in observance of Ramadan because it wasn’t “part of the costume… [of] somebody in an on-stage position like hers” (Flaccus 1). While the Disney company is held in high esteem by mass culture, they have often blatantly ignored their own employees’ rights and individualism. I would argue that this directly opposes the Disney concept of a world of inclusion, equality and happiness, and thus voids the power that Disney holds. By identifying Disneyland as a simulacrum, we can understand that it is a fabricated, constructed and meticulously deliberate portrayal of worlds, cultures and people that never existed, as well as concepts (like equality) that are good in theory but much harder to put into practice.

If Disneyland is presented as a representation of American life, culture and values, what does that mean for reality? Because the truth of reality is covered up, toned down - there is, for example, no piles of trash blocking ride entrances from the overflux of overweight stroller-pushers - then Disneyland isn't based in reality at all. 

And don’t even get me started on the “It’s a Small World” ride!

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Baudrillard, Jean. “The Precession of Simulacra.” Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. Ed. Vincent B. Leitch. W.W. Norton & Company: New York, 2010. 1553-1566. Print.

ezmason512. “Walt Disney Speech.” YouTube.com. YouTube, 3 May 2009. Web. 18 April 2011.

Flaccus, Gillian. “Muslim Disneyland Employee: Park Banned My Scarf.” HUFFPOST: Los Angeles. The Huffington Post, 19 August 2010. Web. 18 April 2011.

Two Students, One Text.

Yes, I know that the title of this blog post sounds like the beginning of a horrible, possibly degrading literary joke, but I do think that the activity in class was useful in helping me understand reader-response theory and phenomenology. Attempting to convey in words where the meaning of a text was between two individuals was a great deal harder than it first sounds to be. For example, I came up with multiple interpretations: the meaning is in the text itself; the meaning is in each individual; the meaning is in each individual and the text itself. Additionally, I noted at the time of the activity that perhaps the text’s *true* meaning was if the two individuals – with different backgrounds, personalities and intellects – could agree, more or less, on one solidified meaning in the one text that they both read. “Would that make the text’s meaning universal?” I wrote, thinking at the time that it is the universal meaning that is most important. 

The more the class delved into discussion, the more I began to realize that perhaps the universal meaning isn’t the most crucial thing in a text. Just as each member of the class had a different opinion or thought about the activity, each individual would have a different interpretation or feeling about a text and thus to each person, that meaning would mean the most to him/her.

I think that we tend to only consider our own personal feelings about a particular text when analyzing literature instead of keeping in mind that there are multiple interpretations, and possibly something to learn from what other people think. I find that through communication, discussion and debate with others, I can better develop my own personal ideas about a text. A prime example of this is our class discussions: reading the text at home is much different than when I can listen to a number of other people speak about the same text. I find it helps me understand the readings more than just taking notes by myself (I think Wolfgang Iser is correct when he titles his essay “Interaction between Text and Reader”, but I also think we could expand this into something a little better: “Interactions between Text and Reader, and Other Readers”).

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Sublime Dreams

"Sublimity... produced at the right moment, tears everything up like a whirlwind, and exhibits the orator's whole power in a single blow." 

Longinus, On Sublimity  

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I must admit, this week’s discussion on the sublime, as well as the first group presentation using YouTube clips of examples of sublimity, was not only the most interesting class session so far, but also the one that made the greatest impact on me personally.

What I thought was the greatest point of discussion this week was the idea of something being sublime having vastly different explanations or set of examples for each individual person. For example, during our class discussion, one student mentioned that he couldn’t really see the sublimity in the clip from Akira Kurosawa’s film Dreams. Now, I’ve watched this movie before for a Introduction to Film class I took a few years ago, for which I did my final research paper on the New Wave moment in Japanese cinema, so I knew the context of just that short piece we watched during the presentation. Dreams is a series of eight short vignettes, which are based on stories and pictures actually dreamt by Kurosawa. Each shorter piece of the film incorporates particular New Wave elements – such as unresolved endings, little to no dialogue, and a focus on “showing” aspects of plot and character rather than “telling” – so there’s a greater emphasis on the “painterly” moments rather than a complex storyline.

Granted, I don’t think that movies were what Longius had it mind when he discussed sublime moments. Most of his arguments are based around aspects that have to do with spoken performance – i.e. great speeches and oratory moments that inspire and provoke the listener – or the great literature that moves the reader. For example, in On Sublimity, he raises the example of Sappho’s description of love, in which she says that “When I see you only for a moment, I cannot speak; my tongue is broken, a subtle fire runs under my skin; my eyes cannot see, my ears hum…. I am paler than grass; I seem near to dying; but all must be endured” (140). Longius points to this as a sublime moment because she “brings everything together – mind and body, hearing and tongue, eyes and skin” (140). She is using the written word to appeal to more than one facet of a reader/listener’s emotions, as well as invoking a number of different emotions rather than just a single one. Love is complex; it may make the sufferer giddy with joy, or burdened with longing, or depressed with heartbreak. Sappho, in just a short span, works to reference all these different feelings in order to describe to the reader the gut-wrenching, physical ache of being in love, and I agree that this is a sublime moment. Love is the disease that affects all men and women. Sublimity contains “much food for reflection… [it is] difficult or rather impossible to resist, and makes a strong and ineffaceable impression on the memory” (138) much in the same way that we could describe love.  

Returning briefly to Kurosawa’s Dreams and the clip with the little boy: within the right context (i.e. seeing the whole film rather than just the short section shown in class), I think it is a perfect example of a sublime moment. The other student in class claimed that the ending of the vignette “Sunshine Through the Rain” where the little boy walks off through a field of flowers to the rainbow couldn’t really be considered sublime because it didn’t really elicit any emotion for him. True, flowers, rainbows and an innocent in awe of nature are all cliché aspects of film meant to try to conjure up emotional responses from the audience members and I agree that just seeing that short piece perhaps isn’t enough to create such a moment that would be “sublime”. However, the little boy has been sent to that field in order to beg forgiveness from the fox spirits of the woods, after disobeying his mother’s orders not to watch their ceremony. She claims that he either must kill himself or seek out the foxes, and the last image of this small boy, laden by the fear he must feel on going out in the woods alone, walking off to rectify his impulsive actions is troubling, emotional and – dare I say it – sublime because it shows us the power of forces larger than our individual selves. I see the rainbow and I don’t immediately think “cliché” – I like to think “redemption, rejuvenation and restoration of honor”. And I think those actions say something about being human and making mistakes. To see a little figure in that great field walking towards the unknown – whether it’s his death or salvation – extorts strong emotional responses that are impossible to ignore.  

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Avarice is rectitudinous?

Or perhaps, simply, greed is good?

After attending Kevin O'Neill's disquisition on classical rhetoric in the age of Aristotle, it was much easier for me to appreciate why Plato and Aristotle wrote so eloquently and precisely on the art of rhetoric. More specifically, it helped that O'Neill began the lecture with historical context on why rhetoric was so important to all the citizens of Greece at that time. Because the city-states of Greece were self-contained and agriculture-based in nature, small communities flourished, while the larger complex central hubs of exchange like Athens were important for the overall growth of the country as a whole. Thus the average citizen (or perhaps I should more pointedly say, average MALE citizen) played a huge role in creating and maintaining the status of the community through dialogues and constructive criticism in the town square – the Facebook news feed of our time. 

Surprisingly, most Athenians could read and write, but their written discourses were burdened by the large sheets of parchment that made up the books of day. It was not so easy to walk around with heavy sheets of paper and so there was a greater emphasis and reliance on speech as the modes of discussion and information. Speech requires shorter, more precise lines of explanation and reasoning, and thus in order to participant in important dialogues like a good citizen, each individual had to be a good orator, well-versed in the languages and styles of rhetoric and persuasion. 

So, when later in class we watched the clip of Gordon Gekko’s “greed is good” speech from Wall Street, it made me think that this character’s dialogue was written in such a way that a man in Aristotle’s time might speak. Regarding the speech that Gekko makes in the movie, his knowledge and understanding – or at least the inspiration – of Aristotle’s ideas of rhetorics are clear. Aristotle “operates through analysis… [replacing] the literary approach with systematic expositions.” Like Aristotle, Gekko also identifies that there should be more than just labor, the concept of the dispensing of energy without employment of body and soul – like the 33 vice presidents who are doing little more than collecting a paycheck – and more of the action and speech that “turns the human body into a instrument of self-expression”, as O’Neill stated in his lecture. Additionally, Gekko speaks in a clear, precise form of delivery. He employs words and phrases that speak to the emotional part of the human condition. He is using forensic rhetoric, as it is a defense of not only his actions, but is attempting to persuade the listeners (the angry stockholders that make up the audience) to change their thinking by speaking to the pathos of each individual. He also makes sure that his presentation is clear, well-spoken and stylized in such a manner that nobody has a difficult time understanding him, or realizing that he is serious about what he is speaking about. He walks through the crowd, amongst the people, in comparison with the president and vice presidents who sit behind the podium, removed from the masses. He is not just a speaker lecturing; he presents himself as a normal individual, somebody just like his listeners.

O’Neill, Kevin. The Origins and Uses of Rhetoric in Classical Athens: Plato, Aristotle, and the Craft of Persuasion. California State University Northridge. Manzanita Hall, Northridge, CA. 8 Feb. 2011. Lecture.

The Power of Persuasion

"Shall we, then, casually allow our children to listen to any old stories, made up by just anyone, and to take into their minds views which, on the whole, contradict those we'll want them to have as adults?"

"No, we won't allow that at all."

Plato, Republic Book II

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Truth be told, upon seeing that Gorgias's "Encomium of Helen" and Plato's Republic were assigned readings for this week, I felt my head spin. I was afraid: What if I didn't understand anything? Made a fool of myself in class? Would it be a similar experience to when I tried taking Spanish in high school, where I couldn't comprehend anything because it was in a foreign language? All these large, looming frustrations and worries clouded my conscious. I guess I assumed, by signing up for a class titled "Major Critical Theories," that I'd instantly pour myself into all the -isms I've heard so much about (i.e. Feminism, Structuralism, Postmodernism, etc.), not try to slog my way through understanding Plato and the Socratic method. However, I am pleasantly surprised that I now understand why these readings were assigned, and didn't have too much of an issue relating them to the study of critical theory (although that cave video is still making me feel like I should be taking a shot each time the narrator says "and now suppose...")

"Encomium of Helen" turned out to actually be very easy to read and understand. I knew the story of Helen, and how she was the start of the Trojan war, but I’m surprised that it took so long in class for somebody to talk about the larger part of the myth, about Aphrodite’s promise to Paris that he would have the most beautiful woman in the world if he gave her the golden apple, as opposed to Hera or Athena, who promised him, respectively, a great king-ship or military prowess in battle(Atsma 1). Surely it seems strange to others beside myself that a great figure in Greek history would succumb so easily to the whims of the “fairer sex” rather than desiring great authority or unrivaled intellect? I know several students in the class protested that Helen knew what she was doing, but perhaps they cannot see past the stereotype that her beauty has oppressed her by, and cannot believe that she may not have gone willingly. Certainly there were forces at work who were stronger than one single individual; in Helen’s case, the will of blood-thirsty, libidinous men and vexation of cold-hearted gods drove her to her fate. For Gorgias to take up Helen’s honor, and defend her succinctly with powerful rhetoric was quite an accomplishment.

And as for Republic? Truthfully, it made my blood go cold. Some of my favorite books include dystopian fiction such as 1984 and Fahrenheit 451, and to read the actions that are fictionally portrayed in those novels argued so with such subtle precision and abounding passion by Plato’s fictionalized Socrates made me shudder. Now I understand why reading such texts will assist in the study of critical theory when applied to literature. If one knows the tools in which to distinctly and accurately argue one’s position, then it works to strengthen one’s assessment and analysis of literature, as well as the means in which to debate one’s interpretation.

Atsma, Aaron J. “Judgement of Paris.” Theoi.com. Theoi Greek Mythology. 2000-2008. Web. 7 February 2011.