Bresland - The Seinfeld Analog

I viewed a few of  John Bresland's video essays. Each one was diversely different. Mangoes discussed his son and all the paraphernalia that arrives with baby. He called it "injection molded plastic". There was also the issue of the baby Bjorne vs. the 1985 Harley that his landlord owns. A Harley is viewed as masculine but the baby Bjorne aka papoose is viewed as "gay" if worn on the front of a man.  However, a man could wear it on his back and that would be fine. It was an interesting view from a man's POV about being a father to a newborn.

Dust Off  was another interesting video essay. This was primarily done using stark winter scenes describing the deaths of three young males who died by doing things each thought were great things. The voice telling the story really captured the starkness in the scenes. The fact that perhaps a loneliness caused these things, an isolation. Propellant inhalation, speeding without lights on at night, and erotic asphyxiation all doomed these boys to death. Interestingly enough the boy speeding at night was juxtaposed amidst a watery glare by a sun that rose and a plane crossing a blue sky.

The video essay entitled The Seinfeld Analog was the one that spoke volumes to me. Maybe it was because of the atrocity's that humans do to one another, but perhaps because it is so true in what George Costanza's character says, "We live in a superficial society."  How harsh is this saying?  But, how true is it?  While Seinfeld was slotted against 60 minutes it shifted 3 million viewers to become the #1 rated television show. 60 minutes covered stories about holocaust deniers and Hutu's that denied killing Tutsi's in Rwanda. Seinfeld covered stories on masturbation and other things that were easier to remember.

Maybe our society wants to focus on what's pretty and ignore the reality of life that's out there. Bresland's stated that the Hutu's killed 8,000 Tutsi's a day for 100 days. That it was equivalent to 9/11 happening two times a day from Christmas through Easter. "Genocide" can only be used by considering lots of factors. All you have to do is look at the video where numerous bodies were being washed along the riverside to understand what the factors are. The fact that the U. S. did nothing is disheartening. The Pentagon wasn't even sure of the groups names.

I think it is one thing to write about things, but to reflect them against a visual is that much more moving. Maybe that is why historical facts obtained on a documentary are easier to remember. They are more etched in our brain. Maybe video essay moves us past the page and evokes feelings that the page cannot. How much more do we feel an emotional pull when music swells and comes splashing down?  We feel it. Video essays seem to move more than the page. If that statement is true, where does that leave writers?  Could we be the 60 minutes of our day?

Stein and Change

I have to admit that when I read the first few pages of Gertrude Stein's The Geographical History of America I was thinking that it was a lot of nonsense.  That was the point, it didn't really make sense.  Who would write a book where Chapter One is repeated several times and appears as Chapter 1 or Chapter I or Chapter one.  It was like a series of riddles in which I was desperately trying to find the answer, but IS there really an answer?  The statements made about the human mind and human nature were dismantled and retold in a series of ways.  Sometimes it seemed to fold in on itself and then somehow straightened back out - only not completely. 

What I realized after reading more of it was there was a play with the words as expressed in "The human mind.  The human mind at play." or a Play, as in "Play I...Play II" (431).  I think Stein's ability to play with the language showed us some things about our language.  She addressed the human mind and human nature over and over again.  At times they have something to do with the other but more often than not the have nothing to do with the other.  And all of this talking about the human mind and human nature seems as an exploration to find out if they really have anything to do with the other. 

So while I was not initially impressed by the first third of the piece, I realized that she is actually doing something with the writing.  She is showing it fresh, from different perspectives and it means something different and somehow makes more sense as she goes on.  For instance, in the earlier part of the piece she writes, "What is the use of being a little boy if he is going to grow up and be a man."  She writes this statement a few times throughout the piece.  Then later she writes, "But what is the use of being a little boy if he is going to grow up to be a man.,  Do you see what a mistake it is to say that." (431).  That's the main point that I see throughout the piece - change.  Change affects language and the way we use it, change affects us as individuals and our identity, change affects the world around us and the geography of America.  Change shapes everything and molds the future into what it has yet to be.

So now, I don't think of it as nonsense at all.  To me this makes a lot of sense.  It makes me think and I like that.  It reminds me of a statement my husband said a friend made to him a long time ago, "You know, there are times I really worry about you and when I don't, I worry about myself."  I think this just may apply here.

Loop de loop and tornados

I don't know where to begin or where to end and maybe that is the beauty of Stein's work in The Geographical History of America. Within this piece the gentle breeze of "Human nature does not know this. Human nature cannot know this" (p 367) starts a funnel cloud of thoughts. Within the cloud is the human mind and little dogs and pieces of the American landscape. Peppered here and there other things are introduced that either do or don't have to do with the human mind or human nature of both or neither because at times they do and they do not have anything to do with another.

At times when reading I would begin to think that things were starting to make sense only to find that I was completely lost again. Maybe that's the point - that we never do know and everything is always changing like ourselves, the landscape, our identities, the size of dogs, our writing, how we tell those stories.

Our heritages in America have been handed down by stories. Some were written down and others were spoken. How does that impact our stories and how those stories are told in the future?  How does that affect us and who we are?  How will that affect our children and their children?  The America we experience today will not be the America we experience 10 years from now.

And even still how are we affected as individuals (if you can call us that) because it seems that is what we are striving for. To be individuals yet somehow have community and a common bond. Yet we live in a world that is free but how free are we really?  We live based in a starting point just like today it's a starting point. But tomorrow's point is totally different. Maybe that's the whole point and maybe it's not the point because maybe the do or do not have to do with human nature or the human mind. Because "all the human mind can do is to say yes."  (p 417).

Social Conditions and Violence

In Judith Butler's Giving an Account of Oneself she states "Whereas one might reserve ethics for the broad contours of these rules and maxims, or for the relation between selves that is implied by such rules, Adorno insists that an ethical norm that fails to offer a way to live or that turns out, within existing social conditions, to be impossible to appropriate has to become subject to critical revision (PMP, 19).  If it ignores the existing social conditions, which are also the conditions under which any ethics might be appropriated, that ethos becomes violent (Butler, 5-6). 

I find this piece interesting in the fact that anything we do, say, think, feel, etc. is largely based on the ethics, morals, or norms we are brought up with.  If we, say, lived in a different country where ethics, morals, and norms were different we would grow up with those as the basis of our being.  Even in this country, an older person can see the shifts that our country has had with the feminist movement, sexuality, education, etc. but these shifts are still based on the foundation for which these shifts occurred.  We could in fact say that the foundation changes for each generation based on the changes that happened prior to a persons birth.

I was brought up in a time where talking about ones sexuality was looked down on.  My mother and I had "the talk" and she provided me some books with more information, but it wasn't something discussed openly.  Nowadays we see magazine covers that cover these topics and I have overheard people openly discuss sexual issues right in the open, not privately behind closed doors.  I have seen shifts in graduating high school and marrying your high school sweetheart move towards getting an education before "settling down".  Yet, there was still a foundation on which these changes occurred.

If we threw out our foundation instead of making changes to the ethics/morals/norms we have now, our world be in utter chaos and turmoil.  Without ethics, rules, and laws all manner of violence would erupt.  So while change is good, we cannot forget where the change started from. 

I think this can not only be applied to oneself but to writing as a whole.  If you think of a piece you have written, you start off with perhaps a few notes, then a first draft, and then revision upon revision.  The final piece may be in fact different than the original version, but the original version is still there, lurking.  And as I know, a piece never feels quite finalized.  Somewhere it always feels like it could be perfected even more.

As far as an account of oneself, it evolves as well.  Who I am today, will not be the person I am tomorrow, and is not the person I was in the past.  Memory plays a part in this, as well as ways I have changed, may also impact those memories based on what I now know because I am today different than I was when these things actually happened.  So how do we really account for ourself if we ourselves are constantly changing? 
   

Can the page perform enough?

I had previously taken a Writing for Performance class in which we able to experiment with language and words and how they appeared on the page but also how they were performed. This increased what I had learned in an earlier class - the sense of words on a page being much more than that. Spacing and breaks allowing for words unspoken - to create a feeling within the work which was unable to perhaps be expressed in other ways. But now the words became the performance or as much of a performance as was possible for ink on the page.

This week we focused on reading the BathHouse guests work, Tisa Bryant and Douglas Kearney. Again, both these works allowed for expansion on my knowledge of what it means to explore the page and stretch it. When I went to the lecture on Wednesday it was a different experience because it brought performance into their work. Hearing them read and articulate things written added another element to the words. "Textual Orality" is what they called it and it took the work to another level.

Before the lecture I saw some of Douglas Kearney's book and it was more different than anything I had seen before - similar but different. It had a loudness to it. Perhaps it was the bold fonts, the larger than life brackets, the compilation of words in one area that one was unable to decipher. On Wednesday, the work came to life more so than it had on the page. How does one read his work? It is all over the page. Some nuggets here and there, some more linear, some angled and somewhat broken off. To hear about some of his processes, the layering, all added that much more to the work itself.

While Kearney's was a visual feast, Bryant's was more like a typical book that had words on the page. BEWARE - you cannot judge this book by it's initial flip though. When you read her work you find that she writes a picture or a movie. She pulls from what is unfocused and brings it to the front. They say "A picture can say a thousand words." Well, Bryant's work are those words and more. First off, I think it is very challenging to look at a picture or movie and literally write what you see. What do you start with first? Top to bottom, left to right, right to left, bottom to top. Second, she focuses in a way or on things within the picture that you might not see. It's like watching your favorite movie several times and then all of a sudden you see something new. She brings the new forward and speaks to that.

In some ways Kearney's and Bryant's works are similar. Where do you start? On one hand the where do you start is the reader's decision for Kearney's book. In Bryant's work she decides where it will start. After hearing them both in person, I realized that while the page does "perform" seeing it articulated is quite another. There is attitude and cadences that cannot be seen easily in the way it is written. Maybe some, but not as much as when you see it "live". So it makes me wonder - can the page perform enough?

Change over time

I think it is interesting how things change over time.  Not to date myself, but I took a computer class before there were windows, when dos commands were typed next to a > sign.  Technology has taken off and transitioned things that were once considered luxuries into common place must-have's.

Along with that we have seen changes in gay rights, the LBGTQ movement, as well as a number of other things.  In Halberstam's Gaga Feminism it states "We all know of the "protect the children" ruses that religious Americans have used to censor all kinds of materials that feature any kind of open discussion of sexuality" (xxi) that were evident in the 1970's.  I was raised within a religious family with all of the protection that my parents could infuse.  Over time we saw things change with the first occurrences of gays in television shows that were then viewed as bad.  But as things progress much like technology we find that things aren't as "non-normal" because over time they become normalized.  There are many programs that include gays and lesbians, instead of the few scant shows that were in the past.  Halberstam's article also notes that "this generation of kids - kids growing up in the age of divorce, queer parenting, and economic collapse - who will probably recognize, name, and embrace new modes of gender and sexuality within a social environment that has changed their meaning forever." (xxi)

I found it interesting in listening to a local radio show that the University of Toronto had a Key-Note speaker who was to speak on the sexuality of children.  The speaker is a professor at a California university.  He has written several books on children, sexuality, and pedophilia.  He has even claimed himself to be a "theoretical pedophile".  In listening to the show the host addressed the audience about this issue stating that we have seen the movement of gay rights and then posed the question, 'Do you think we may see the acceptance of pedophilia as an acceptable form of sexuality?  Email me your responses.'  So that makes me very concerned as a parent.  While I tend to be open minded, this, no matter how much the future may try to normalize this could never be right.  I just wonder how far will be too far before we realize that some thing like this cannot be normalized.  I am all for people having rights to be whoever or whatever they want.  That is their right.  We were all given free will.  I am also for the rights of the children.  I hope I never see the day come that pedophilia is normalized.  It may seem outlandish now, but we have seen things change over time as more things are introduced and lose their sense of "not normal".

Getting past the “norm”

I was brought up in an environment where normal was something you strove for. The father who worked; the mother who stayed home with the kids and volunteered time at the school PTA meetings; the house with the white picket fence and the 2.5 kids – well except for that as I grew up in a house where I was the oldest of four kids, but other than that, it was “so-called” normal. While we tried to maintain the “normal” status, behind closed doors it was more dysfunctional at best. Dysfunction threw me into a tailspin as a young adult. I struggled with the expectation that I was supposed to marry my high school sweetheart, have 2.5 kids, a house with a white picket fence, and be an at home mom. Instead my high school sweetheart left me as an unwed mother who worked outside the home and lived with my parents because my job didn’t afford a place of my own. I was not the “normal” child they had dreamed of – not by far. When I was 23 I met my husband. He wasn’t the “approved” model my mother and father had hoped for and vehemently told me not the marry him, but being the rebellious child I was, I did anyway. I ran away from the norm and ended up with a not so normal life. He wasn’t ideal for them, but he was ideal for me. He allowed me the freedom to explore things without a set of rules with which to apply them. He showed me how to break free from bonds that my mother still had over me – literally speaking she would withhold things from me like I was a child if I didn’t do what she said – like watching my son. He gave me so much that was not “normal”. Our roles in the household are not what my parents would consider normal. I work and my husband stays at home with the last of our five children. While he isn’t involved with the PTA, he oversees the homework aspect and the household duties. If anything, it is a bit of a reversal of roles. We have both struggled with finding placement in these roles because we were brought up with traditional expectations. Part of that struggle is an exploration of what seems to fit, what seems right. While we don’t have it down, we also have seen that we aren’t the only ones in this struggle of determining what are roles are. There are many families in which the traditional roles are reversed. There are other norms being broken as fathers are coming alongside mothers to do household chores as now they both work. I think struggle is a good word for transgenre, transgender, or anything that is not the norm. Struggle is something that comes from fighting against that which is common and comfortable, but struggle is what gets you to stretch and see what is possible. It’s an exploration, maybe to find what is you, maybe to find out what can be, maybe what is possible – maybe even that the next genre isn’t a genre at all but a freedom to do something without limitation. Writing is life and life is writing – that is sometimes how we find out what life is all about anyway.