Oh man an update! Mostly about things you don't care about, i.e. what I thought about on the bus this morning. Deal!
First off, there was a guy with the New York Times, and I happened to notice that the front page had a picture of one Barack Obama and one John McCain. Not exactly a surprise, given Current Events, but I was fascinated by the fact that each man was in profile, and each was facing a different direction. Obama (the top picture, perhaps incidentally) faced the right, and McCain the left. This might be random, but I'm sure the NYT had plenty of images of the candidates from which to choose, and I find this particular juxtaposition fascinating, because of something Art Spiegelman explained in his lecture Friday (I saw Art Spiegelman Friday, if you didn't notice in Twitter- he talked about comics, of course, and his development as a comic-making man, and it was fascinating and amazing and made me want to buy his new book, which is the purpose of a book tour anyway), about the visual vocabulary we're used to. He had a strip from Nancy up as a quintessential comic strip, and pointed out that we could tell Nancy was going into a store in one panel because she was walking to the right, and leaving the store in the next because she was walking to the left. This works because we read from left to right, so anything that goes opposite that direction is "backwards" or "inward-turning" and anything that follows that eyeline is "forwards" or "outward, away-turning." So, in our Obama/McCain images, we have one man facing backwards and one forwards. One towards the past and one towards the future? Ironically, McCain has often tried to distance himself from the past, especially the most recent past and the Bush years. In any case, there is your moment of "The New York Times has crazy liberal bias all over the place" for the day. Please do vote. If you aren't sure who to pick, you haven't been paying attention, but, if it helps you, I voted for Obama and I'd recommend it- it was a nice experience, bubbling in the circle next to his name on my absentee ballot. I'd do it again, but that's illegal.
I actually don't care that much about photos in the New York Times, and I care a lot about representations of minorities, masculinity, and sexual transgression in literature. I've been having Hampshire College Third Year Concentration Ennui for the past two months or so, just like all my friends, and I got super lucky and broke through it on the bus this morning. I'm very excited- I was so ready to quit school and had no idea what to do with myself, and now I'm excited about Things again, and so ready to completely rework my Div II just like every Hampshire student does. Carmen, of all things, is what finally got me excited again... we're reading it in Don Juan class right now, and I've been whining because I didn't see how it was all the relevant- just 'cause she refuses to settle down with one person doesn't mean she's at all like Don Juan, who prefers to have sex with every woman he sees, whether she wants to or not. But we had a great discussion about the similarities and differences between Carmen and Don Juan in class today, and I'm beginning to form ideas for my final paper about Dorian Gray (who actually bears more resemblance to Carmen than to Don Juan, but is definitely in the same tradition) and I actually care about something for the first time this semester. It goes like this:
All 3 are similar, first off, because of their sexual transgressions. It's the most salient fact about each character- Don Juan is defined in the popular imagination by his seduction of women, and by their sheer number. Carmen is likewise a lover above all else, and Dorian Gray is a breaker of many sexual taboos, among his other sins. The three also follow the same basic plot/character arc: a series of seductions and crimes against society are committed, a spurned lover (or more than one) vows vengeance, vengeance is enacted and the hero (anti-hero?) dies. The actual act of vengeance varies greatly between the three characters, but I'll get to that. All three characters are tricksters and liars of a sort- Don Juan is the most straightforward- he loves tricking people, and that is his main motivation, particularly in earlier incarnations. Carmen likewise uses trickery and charm to get what she wants, although she refuses to lie, and does use tricks to achieve her romantic aims. Dorian Gray is the least inclined to trickery, but it could be argued that the portrait is an elaborate trick on society- it is the ultimate act of pretending to be what one is not, and the perfect disguise for his life of debauchery. Just as Don Juan pretends to be interested in only one woman at a time, usually promising to marry his current fancy, Dorian Gray can pretend to be innocent and pure because of his beautiful, eternally youthful appearance. Carmen uses her beauty and charm for criminal purposes- she helps smugglers, and she spins fantastic stories to Don Jose to escape when he has arrested her. The use of charming words is essential to the Don Juan myth, and Carmen employs it, although she extends it to music- frequently she sings wordless melodies that are just as charming. I need to look closer at Dorian Gray to decide how well he uses charming words- he may be a more visual incarnation, and the charming speech may have been entirely passed to Lord Henry (who is a stand-in for Wilde himself, known to be a very charming speaker in his real-life Don Juanesque exploits). All three characters live for pleasure, pursuing it in complete liberty until they are punished for these pursuits. They are unapologetic in this pursuit- Don Juan refuses to repent, even when offered the choice to save his own life (or afterlife), Carmen refuses to back down from her commitment to personal liberty even in the face of arrest or death. Dorian Gray, who actually commits suicide, comes the closest to repenting, however, I might be able to argue that the portrait is actually the Don Juan of the story and Dorian Gray, person, is a victim of the portrait's libertine ways- the portrait, of course, remaining beautiful (unrepentant?) after Dorian's death.
The differences between the three are far more fascinating, as such things usually are. One of the first things I notice is that Don Juan is a very violent person- if a woman won't come willingly to him, he'll rape her with no second thoughts. Carmen never uses violence to get her men- this could be because of the gender difference between the two (women are apparently less violent?) but I'd rather see it as a fundamental character difference. Dorian Gray lies somewhere between the two- I'd have to actually read the book again with an eye towards sexual violence- he's hardly as pure as Carmen, but I'm not sure if he's quite as flippantly unconcerned as Don Juan. In class, we discussed the fact that Carmen seems to enjoy manipulating men much more than Don Juan takes pleasure in manipulating women- if women become jealous, Don Juan barely notices, but Carmen quite conciously makes men fight over her and uses their feelings of possessiveness to further her own goals. Much of this can be explained because, in spite of her apparent freedom, Carmen remains the property of the men she loves- Don Juan belongs to no one, and thus need not concern himself with their feelings. Once again, Dorian Gray is somewhere in the middle- he isn't all that inclined to manipulating others, but he isn't exactly a free man, either. His relationship with the portrait may be important here as well.
The act of vengeance or punishment is the key difference in the three, emphasizing all the other, smaller differences. Don Juan is punished by God, in the form of a statue of a man he killed. Don Juan's deeds have offended heaven, and heaven metes out justice before Don Juan's earthly accusers can punish him. Carmen, however, lives in a world essentially without God- she is an atheist (as was Bizet, creator of the opera), although she does believe in Fate. She is killed by Don Jose, one of her spurned lovers- an act she saw in the cards before it happened, and so considers fated. In some ways, this makes her more human than Don Juan- he needs the fury of heaven to be brought down, while a simple man can take Carmen. It also emphasizes that Carmen is not sinning- she sees nothing wrong with her acts, and her society (the gypsies and smugglers) even appears to support her, although they are unable or unwilling to protect her from Don Jose's wrath. In this way, Don Juan is an individual against the world, and Carmen is a story of two societies (Carmen's gypsy life and Jose's traditional Christian Spain) in conflict. Dorian Gray depends less on God than Don Juan's story, but Dorian Gray is most definitely a sinner, even in his society. Dorian Gray, however, is his own judge- he is the only one who knows the extent of his depravity (visible in the portrait), and ultimately punishes himself. Does this mean Dorian Gray is his own God? Is the portrait his God? What, exactly, is Dorian Gray's relationship to society? Does it even matter?
So I guess that will be a really nice final paper. And I can now begin to articulate what I've been trying to do since I came to Hampshire, but didn't know about. And it's not immigrants, and it's not Yiddish, but those are relevant. It's something more like how marginal people (such as immigrants, Jews, and queers, but there are so many more options, too) use the few tools at their disposal (such as sexuality and language) to subvert society and push boundaries, and how this then affects wider society- how these acts of subversion are punished or rewarded by being incorporated into the mainstream. And mostly I want to look at literature. And mostly I want to deal with male characters, and really understand what their maleness means in relation to these topics, which means also finding out what happens when we make them female instead. And, it turns out, I've been doing that anyway for a while, I just didn't really realize it.
Thanks for bearing with me. I have more visual things to post soon, maybe later this afternoon.
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