Is inevitable not being nostalgic reading Anne Friedberg’s article “The End of Cinema: Multimedia and Technological Change”.  After she mentions the change that VCR, cable television and television remote control represented for technology and culture, I just want to add that those events also took an important place in my family live during 1980’s and 1990’s.

We did not have color TV until late 1980’s. My grandparents gave us a color TV as a present. I think this change was fundamental in the history of film, perhaps for Friedberg’s is not, but I think when my family and I started to watch in technicolor, the value of image increased a lot. Perhaps some of the readers of this blog did not have a black and white television, but when you pass from that gray and somber image to a new one in color, the relation with the image is other. I remember watching cartoons like Bugs Bunny, Tom & Jerry or The Flintstones in black and white, but when I started watching them in colors it was awesome! The color gave this texture that before it was impossible to determine, gave them character, personality.

We also had a VCR and sometimes we rented movies for a low price. The selection of the movie was a ritual: my sisters and I trying to agree about what children or pre teen films chose, and my parents trying to select one that both could probably enjoy, because we did not have  enough money for renting more. But it was a really good deal, if we think in economic terms: my father paid for two films the value of two movie tickets, so besides taking the whole family in a bus to the movie theatre and pay for five tickets, and for popcorn and sodas, we can just lay down in the bed, watch the film, and drink juice or 2 litter of Coke and make our popcorn. I say in bed because we usually did not have the TV on the living room, it did not was this “window-wall designed to bring the outside in” as Lyden Spigel mentions quote by Friedberg (810), but it was located in my parents bedroom. The film, that usually took place Sunday’s afternoon, after lunch, it was almost like the representation of the end of the weekend, the last rest before we starting to prepare for terrible Mondays. Usually, someone took a nap when the movie started ⎯there is nothing like napping when the TV is on⎯, and usually, after forty minutes or an hour that one who was napping, woke up and asked the question: “I missed much of the movie?”.

I remember, also, about twenty years ago, my dad brought a VCR camera to the house. I his work sometimes they have to record on video meetings or events, and the employees can borrow the camera for personal events, well in certain occasions. I remember my father recording an asado, a barbecue, with this huge VCR camera during a holiday time. He worked as a camera man and director looking for smiles, interviewing spontaneously  friends and visitors, taking funny shots from different perspectives. When we saw the film two or three days after the event took place, it was funny to note the faces, the attitudes of people in front the camera. But two or three years ago I was looking for a VCR video for my job and I found this one stacking within other. My mother started to watch the video with me and I think both of us watched everything with different eyes, perhaps we were a little shock: many of that people, young or not so young, children that day were dancing or playing with each other, have passed away during the last twenty years. It was very hard to see that, but also we saw a lot of the video trying to remember names, and figuring out what had happened with all that people.

What I want to say is perhaps not so critic. I just want to recognize that my memory is linked to technology that was developed during the last twenty five years. The objects that were part of that technology are not only history of the film but part of the cultural live of most of many people. The idea of seeing myself trough this old-fashioned apparatus let me know who am I, how I conceived the world according to the possibilities I had then and now.

To conclude, there are some films related to this topic: the unassailable pass of the time and changes of that technology produces, and the nostalgia for those days of VCR.  I present two examples: one of my favorite scenes from The artist, directed by Michel Hazanavicius,  the “sound” part:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1qvNfSwTAfE

and this scene from the movie Be kind, rewind, directed by Michel Gondry, a film about how to reconstruct a VCR world and what represented for communities (I could not found it in English or French)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DscBAc0zXUU

The trailer in English

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J0M9rSpjlDM

One of the most interesting readings I found for this week was Audrey Lorde’s selection of Sister Outsider. I discovered a particular voice that I did not seen in other authors so far. I just going to add some reasons why I enjoyed Lorde ideas and how she made me thought about our class.

First, I think that is definite important, as a theoretical critic, to determine where you are. When I read in the second paragraph “As forty-nine-year-old Black lesbian feminist socialist mother of two, including one boy, and a member of an interracial couple, I usually find myself a part os some group defined as other, deviant, inferior, or just plain wrong”(854), she really caught my attention since she stands up on her enunciation place and, in first person, she talks about her experience as human being, intellectual and part of ‘other’ group. This is the first voice that is not placed in an omniscient narrator, the objective watcher, that usually we have in our readings, since the analysis has to be distant and non charged of emotions. In Lorde’s I found a voice. Of course, is related to the feminism, but it is really interesting that someone could propose an emotive and critic approach to theory.

Second,  when she explains what to analyze about the differences:

“Certainly there are very real differences between us of race, age, and sex. But it is not those differences between us that are separating us. It is rather our refusal to recognize those differences, and to examine the distortions which result from our misnaming them and their effects upon human behavior and expectation” (855).

If we notice, all colonial discourse, marxism, psychoanalysis… are built on difference. Societies are unequal, no matter what we do or what we think, and they are going to be unequal for hundred, thousand of years because human being is attached to difference.  If we think, even the academic world is nurture of this difference, since we have to criticize literature or culture and we compare and establish differences to get some point (actually, our writing assignments are based on this idea: determine the differences). But what I really found valid of Lorde’s point of view is the idea of “examine the distortions which result from our misnaming them”.  So, probably is not the difference that we are looking for, according to Lorde, but how are we misnaming them for not recognize them. I guess there is a complex idea about what it is difference and maybe in our future thesis and papers every one will discover what is the difference that is important for her/him.

On the same topic:

“You fear your children will grow up to join the patriarchy and testify against you, we fear our children will be dragged from a car and shot down in the street, and you will turn your backs upon the reason they are dying” (857).

That really made think about Colombia, and in general Latin American societies. The huge gap between rich and poor is overwhelming. In the same city, in the same neighborhood, you see a tremendous building with sophisticated apartments, elevators and spectacular views, dwelled by executives and high class people, and a few blocks from there, you can see several persons who sleep on the street and do not have a meal. I think that kind of difference is also painful. Not recognize them, when I am studying abroad and I have access to education, it is unfair. Perhaps Lorde is pointing out that the differences maybe can help you out to understand who you are, what should you think about.

Finally, I think it is quite interesting that she talks about her experience as a writer. She notices that poetry was not a publishing material for some magazines and explains her experience as a novelist, including that is not only necessary “a room of one’s own” remembering Virginia Woolf’s book, but also that you need paper, a typewriter and time (855). And also, I think is quite important that this selected fragment includes one of her poems (maybe this was a decision taken by the editors), and that small portion of poetry evidences again that her creative and analytical writing are imbricated, they are not separable in her work. That made me think what the academy should have thought about her form and style. I believe, as a reader, that is valid to express yourself int his way if it is related to the topic, and if the think that you are talking about really touch you as an individual. However, is it valid for the academy world? Can I write a paper based on her model to analyze different topics? I open the question.

In The importance of living (1937) Lin Yutang (1895-1976) tried to approach Chinese culture and traditions to North American readers, at those times when internet did not answer every single cultural question that humanity has. Yutang, who lived in Europe and in USA, always maintained a strong bond with his origins, for that reason Confucianism and Taoist traditions are intrinsic parts of his ideas and discourse. In the book, there are many points that I disagree with, of course, we are talking about a book that represented particular values that maybe today should be argued, but I think at least that Yutang’s intentions were valid since is natural that a immigrant want to explain his roots and his point of view.

There is a part f the book that is called “The art of writing”. In this part, Yutang call to young writers to fell more than to think, and go deep in their selves and try to find something profound to say, to write, not be concern about grammar, but try to find deep inside a personal and natural reason to write. He also recommend to find a favorite author and read it very well, so you can fallow him or her as a Master. During the whole reading, he also offers some advise  so they can start to think as a writers. One of his observation is:

“Hay dos minas del idioma, una nueva y una vieja. La vieja mina está en los libros y la nueva en el idioma de la gente común. Los artistas de segunda categoría excavan las viejas minas, pero sólo los artistas de primera calidad pueden obtener algo de la mina nueva” ♣ ♠

I find interesting that we usually can discover this two mines in great novels. For instance, in Don Quijote de la Mancha, trough the voice of Sancho and through the voice of Quijote; or we can also hear them in Falstaff and Henry, in  Henry IV by Shakespeare.

Moreover, I can easily relate Yutang’s ideas with Bajtín’s. In this fragments of his readings (“Discourse in The Novel” and “Rabelais and His Word”) the Russian critic develop at least two concepts related with the second mine.

The first concept is dialogism.  The dialogism allows us to hear many voices on the novels, allow us to read and hear different cultural backgrounds and let us see the humanity that relies in the novel.  In that order of ideas, Bajtín is aware that novel, as an hybrid genre, should contain those different voices that represents different social class, and it could be a mirror of how society is built, and how the different sound registers implies that local or common languages establish, also, different types of communications. Bajtín, perhaps, is not saying that there are only two mines but many whence the novelist should nurture his writing. Later, the Russian critic explains how this dialogism is related to society:

“[…] language is heteroglot from top to bottom: it represents the coexistence os socio-ideological contradictions between the present and the past, between differing epochs of the past, between different socio-ideological groups in the present, between tendencies, schools, circles and so forth, all given a bodily form. These “languages” of heteroglossia intersect each other in a variety of ways, forming new socially typifying “languages” (676).

I also think that is really important what Bajtín notes about the carnival. Described, by Bajtín, the work of Rabelais becomes an important presence that let us remember in which conditions the society could be travesty through the laughter. The second concept to remember, therefore,  in these readings is the grotesque, like a possibility for different social classes to criticize, analyze the social conditions and laugh at itself. Laughing and the possibility of parody our reality, let us realize that the system is not fair and it should be questioned. So, is like a ironic laugh. But also laugh unifies, has Bajtín says, and in that way shows a society that, in way, could be seen more equal.

I know Bajtín’s objective differs a lot from Yutang’s, but when I was reading Bajtín’s ideas I thought that maybe some writers should read his analysis, and how the dialogism and the grotesque could illuminate a work of art. I know is not an easy task but is good to think about it.

Coda:

After reading Marx I was absolutely depressed. He noticed in the Nineteenth Century (!) that the reality of industrial era was unfair, unequal and how the worker class or proletariat was submitted to the capital and the market. Today, more than one hundred fifty years after his analysis, there are still slaves, unequal salaries, worker classes it the worst conditions, global iniquity… Are we really evolving or not? Is there a way for making a social change that in the future will represent something for this unfair society? I doubt it.

There is this place at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia called El Jardín de Freud (Freud’s Garden).  It is close to Humanities and Sociology buildings, so the majority of students that spend their time there are from Human Sciences. It is a green and wide zone where there are some trees and a grey and rusty bust of Freud. When I was studying there, I always found a lot of students hanging out, reading books, chatting, having lunch, playing football, baseball, smoking cigarettes, or some weed, or getting drunk there.  Sometimes, there are some students that talk about Freud. Sometimes they speak well about him; sometimes not. Sometimes, after weed takes effect and some hallucinogenic mushrooms lead the train of thought, they defend him even more, and better.

While I was reading his Interpretation of dreams (1900) I can not deny that I felt a little like in Freud’s Garden at Universidad Nacional: some things sounds logical, some others very “high”; some sounds like drunk thoughts, others like poetry. Actually,  if  I think about the incredible and magic project or “interpretation of dreams” some things have to sound very wear, unusual, “mushrooming”, I suppose. Well, and if we think that maybe some cocaine should affect the precise method of analysis of Freud, we should probably thank to God (I am not sure if I can say something about God when I talk about Freud because I probably will be interpreted as a narcissist, egocentric, uncanny… student) that maybe this great man sniffed one line or two of cocaine only for “medical and research purposes”.

Beyond the drug experience, the idea of create the possibility of read what is in the mind of other people is very interesting, but reading what is hide behind the dreams is really amazing. I mean, if we read him closer, I think his idea is closer to fiction to psychology.  And if we read him very close we can see some characteristics on his style that reminds a lot of fiction. For instance, I like how he recompiles the train of thoughts that let him to question the botanical dream and the concept of “dream-thoughts” it is like a fiction piece. Actually, that reminds me Virginia’s Woolf beginning of Mrs. Dalloway (1925). Also, I can see a connection between his job and Luis Buñuel film Un chien andalou (1929) that Molly Lewis presented last Saturday on the frame of “Metamorphoses” Conference (thanks Gaby and Anne Claire!). However, I think Bruno explained better this idea in his post (check “Psychoanalysis and narrative” in this blog).

Just to add something to Mr. Bruno, I really think that Freud style shows the process of writing, re-writing, drafts, notes… he created a work and you can see how his thought was developed thanks to this writing process. In my profound ignorance I see a writer more than a psychoanalyst, actually. Even, we can read how literature is important in his job. A lot of his examples (Oedipus, Electra, The Sandman…) are linked with Literature because, perhaps, he found an echo in Literature that was impossible to find in other Humanities or sciences.

Ironically, from the diverse theorists that we have read for this Theory Class, this is one where you can actually see that Literature is an important presence of his work. I do not know how to express it, but I really think that maybe if you do not know Euripides or Shakespeare, maybe if you read Freud you can get interested on Literature. I do not if you felt the same with Bourdieu, Saussure, Fish. Or Derrida (ayayay, Derrida…). For me, as a reader, this is what I am looking for in Literature: a door to make connections with other Literatures, a possibility to discover characters, story, situations that make me think about how life is always elusive but we can never stop trying to catch her and interpret her (I say her because I relate the term “life” with word in Spanish vida that is a word that belongs to the feminine gender in Spanish, but maybe I am taking the risk of being interpreted as a chauvinist, “baguette-centric”, repressed… student (if you want to get in deep about the over interpretation on Freud and “baguette-centric culture” check in this blog “Is it sex…? Is it dream…? No, it’s Freud!” post by the mysterious trinity974)), even if we try, as the very Freud tried.  Actually, I am not quite sure if the purpose of sociological or philosophical or literary theories that we have read in this class are so close to Literature than Freud’s. Anyway, is really helpful to find that Freud as a reader found in Literature some devices that help him out to develop his ideas. Is not what are we looking for as students, readers, writers? Maybe I am wrong. Maybe this walk through Freud’s Garden is affecting me.

To finish this walk for Freud’s Garden, there is something that is bugging me. It is the power disguised of writing. Yes, Freud is amazing, creative and developed his theories based on his own method, but, what could ever happened if Freud would have not written these experiences? As human beings, would we be able to create a similar theory? And, what about all these indigenous, african, aboriginal, asian… cultures that developed their own interpretation of dreams but did not wrote it.  Is not valid their knowledge because it was not written on paper but transmitted orally? What made Freud so important during the last century? Is not related with the idea that he is an European and we, as a “westerners” are completely cloud for our narcissism, delusions of grander, paranoid androidism? Is not the idea that a society sold us the perfect delusion that a dream has to be interpreted for not criticizing the establishment but discovering that is you and your sexuality the problem, that you as an individual have to solve the problem of yourself, is not Governments fault, but yours and only yours? Wow… this Freud mushroom is getting better!