Author: ELLIOTT S.

Why are Goneril and Regan so evil: A response

On By ELLIOTT S.In King LearLeave a comment

Another post on here, which I saw yesterday but forgot to save (so I can’t site it directly) wondered why Goneril and Regan were so needlessly cruel with no backstory for why they might treat their father this way. Now, on a narrative level, this is explained by the play just needing villains– although they end up getting their evilness upstaged by Edmund anyway. On a character level, it doesn’t make much sense, just because the average person in real life doesn’t do such horrible things with no real motivation. Goneril and Regan have already gotten their land and power from Lear. It would make more sense if they were scheming to GET power for themselves, Like Edmund does, but their cruelty is directed towards people that they don’t even stand to gain anything from, shown very clearly in the blinding of Gloucester.

However, when we look at these characters, we need to remind ourselves that they are not actual people. They exist to represent a theme or to move the story forward, rather than actually express the lives of nobility. As the audience, we don’t NEED the sisters to have reason for hating Lear, because they are representative of evil and the utmost perversion of control. Exposure to power often makes one hungrier for it– Edmund desires power so intensely because it’s constantly being shown to him that he doesn’t have power (at least, comparatively to those around him). The same goes for Goneril and Regan. Even once Lear has little actual power and the sisters have just about everything they can reap from their father, they still despise him because he represents power that they don’t have. They will never be called king like Lear is, or respected as he is because of their status as women. Thus, to fully gain control of their lives, they must be rid of him, or debase him to such a level he no longer has any personal power.

King Lear is full of villains that are incapable of true power due to their birthright. While Edmund’s motivations are very clearly tied to his background as a bastard, Goneril and Regan’s motivation to be seen as powerful is less obvious, but when we draw those parallels between the sisters and Edmund, their motivating rage becomes clear. Even though Goneril and Regan have clearly lived very privileged lives, they feel that they deserve more due to their proximity to power, and are being barred from it due to their womanhood. And while it’s not necessarily true that they inherently DESERVE more, they certainly are being barred from the power and respect that they would hold if they were men. Lear does not need to actively do something wrong to them for him to be in their contempt– all he has to be is a powerful man.

Finding New Meaning In Jumble and Swill

On By ELLIOTT S.In PoetryLeave a comment

Because we’re defining poetry as some expression of experience in a condensed form, using as little words as possible, I’d say that any music that invokes feeling can be poetry. The Nutcracker Soundtrack can be poetry. Actually, the Nutcracker Ballet can be poetry too, because it uses a VERY small amount of words to tell a story, which is no words at all. Music like that can give you that shiver down your spine just as well as words can– the swell of the instruments reaching their crescendo fills your lungs up with honey and your ears with teardrops. I’m only waxing this sort of poetic because I just saw the Prisms of Winter show at our school, which was awesome, and reminded me how much I love purely instrumental music.

But the thing is, poetry isn’t just using as few words as possible. There are definitely words in poetry. I think that’s pretty necessary. Instead, it just has a very high MPW: Meaning Per Words. Each word in a poem should convey something, and then another thing, and then another thing.

The song I chose for this assignment was chosen on a whim, and after listening to it closely I realized that the thing I find so emotional about it is the music aspect rather than the words. Saddening, but we still push forward! The song is “Say Yes” by Elliott Smith, and is kind of an inconvenient choice because it’s short, very straightforward, and it’s from one of my few favorite artists that I don’t know a lot about. So, I don’t have too much to work with, especially in the realm of context.

When I listened to the song, I pretty quickly thought it was about abortion– according to Genius Annotations, it’s not about that, and is just about having a break-up. I’m going to forgo that theory, even though it probably has more background information going towards it, because I heard something in the song that I found interesting, and I want to talk about it.

The first stanza starts off with “I’m in love with the world/through the eyes of a girl/who’s still around the morning after,” (1-3) which is repeated a few other times in the song. This is sort of a simile, because it compares the speaker to a theoretical girl who’s around the morning after, but I think it’s easier to just call it an immersive comparison. This can be seen as the speaker being hopeful (presumably about romance), because someone who stays around the morning after a hook-up typically is hopeful about a relationship, but I see it as the speaker seeing through the eyes of his partner. A few lines later (5-6) says “When I grew up, I didn’t know/I’d be around the morning after”, from the perspective of the speaker, so I feel like this tells the story of TWO people that stick around and end up staying with each other, even if they didn’t expect it. I also see these lines as a double perspective for the possible baby, because of the specific word usage of “growing up.” The song also implies that whatever happened was a bad decision with consequences, with lines such as “a happy day and then you pay/and feel like shit the morning after,” which seems pretty consistent to having a one-night stand with a woman and accidentally getting her pregnant. However, the speaker feels a change of heart, possibly realizing that the situation is actually good in lines 10-13 “but now I feel changed around/ and instead of falling down/I’m standing up the morning after.”

The line that cements the theory that the girl is pregnant is line 20-23; “She’ll decide what she wants/ I’ll probably be the last to know/no one says until it shows,” with the showing referring to being visibly pregnant. I see this as the woman gradually deciding on her own whether she wants to keep the baby, and the speaker being “the last to know” because him knowing would obviously put some more pressure on the woman to make a decision either way. Lines 24-25 continue that idea with “They want you or they don’t/say yes.” here, the “you” is referring both to the speaker and to the unborn baby. For the speaker, either the woman wants to raise a baby with him or doesn’t, and for the baby, either she wants to have it or doesn’t. The following line could go a lot of ways, with “saying yes” being something very connected to proposal, as in agreeing to marry the speaker, but the firmness of how it’s said could also imply a sort of coercion or desperation. The coercion route doesn’t really match with the rest of the song, but the speaker being desperate to be with this woman seems reasonable. The continued usage of the term “morning after” throughout this poem gives off a nonchalant and casual feeling, as it’s often used in the context of casual sex or one-night stands, but the speaker implies that it’s much more than casual with his warm intensity, as he ends the song by repeating the first three lines– implying that he will still be hopeful and in love regardless of the woman’s choice.

But apparently, the song isn’t about that at all, and it’s just about Elliott Smith’s breakup with Joanna Bolme. Still, it’s cool that even the simple words in this song can be warped into several different stories, and poetry is all about double meanings and offering multiple interpretations.

Variations in Reasonable Female Caricatures

On By ELLIOTT S.In Exit West1 Comment

I loved Trust when I watched it, which didn’t surprise me, and probably wouldn’t surprise anyone who knows me– I famously love nonsensical indie films. When I watched it, a lot of things made me uncomfortable. This, to me, is the sign of a good movie! But there were also things that made me uncomfortable that I don’t think were intended to make me uncomfortable. Or, maybe they were. Modern gender standards are different than they were in the 90s. What made me uncomfortable was the depiction of women– or, specifically, Maria. She started off as very annoying, in my opinion– she was stupid, entitled, slutty– marks of a typically useless woman. I didn’t mind this depiction of a woman, though. I love it when women in media are allowed to be annoying! But Maria didn’t stay annoying. Shocking: a character experiencing development!

What I found odd was HOW she developed. The new version of Maria was very much like a housewife, sort of Freudian, wearing Matthew’s mother’s modest dress (good alliteration there) and putting on sweet, bookish glasses. The un-slutification of Maria… And a woman like this isn’t BAD, of course. I just find it odd that she changes so utterly and completely to the platonic ideal of christian wives. She doesn’t keep much at all of her old character. What happened to her nasally, snappish tones? Her cigarettes? This new kindness and modesty doesn’t de-sexualize her at all. Instead it just takes away her unsavory parts, and leaves more “room to the imagination,” if you know what I mean. And why, as the audience, do we find this version so much more likeable?

Of course, there are other women in the film who don’t fit into the two variations of “slut” and “housewife.” Maria’s sister and the nurse COULD possibly fall into the slut category, but their distastefulness is treated with respect and almost admiration. Maria’s mother and the woman at the bus stop are both, by definition, housewives, but they’re both not exactly… ideal, to the male gaze. The bus stop woman steals a baby, for god’s sake. And Maria’s mother is rough, domineering, and man-hating, even more than she hates everyone on principle. Maria, though, is treated badly by the narrative when she falls into the first category, needing to be “fixed”, and is sweet, innocent, and hardworking in the second category. She remains complex, but not in ways that ruin that idealized version of a wife– she’s curious, odd, excitable and overly trusting, but that is all just lovely, because she’s so young. It never pushes into unsavory bounds, much unlike her male counterpart. Why is that? Why is her oddness never allowed to be dangerous or angry, like Matthew?

Reflection Without Malice

On By ELLIOTT S.In Stranger

While The Stranger isn’t in itself a racist book, it is set against the backdrop of racism, or specifically colonialism. During the time The Stranger was written and set, Algeria was colonized by the French. This is often off-handedly referenced by the characters. While a quick Google search reveals that Albert Camus himself was opposed to this colonization, clearly Meursault doesn’t feel the same. This is most evident in how he doesn’t refer to any of the Arab characters by name, even when he does know their names. The two major Arab characters are Raymond’s mistress and the Arab who Meursault kills. Meursault knows Raymond’s mistress’ name, as he realizes she’s Arab while hearing it, but he doesn’t consider it important enough to share with the audience, and while he doesn’t know the name of the man he shoots, he still considers his defining feature being Arab. Meursault’s racism is part of his character, although he doesn’t say anything obviously, horrifically racist. Rather, he exists in a colonized country as a colonizer, with little thought or care put towards the natives. The racism of the setting is reflected through the uncaring, blank-slate character of Mersault. The namelessness of the Arab characters reflects how Arab people in Algeria were treated– unimportant and disposable.

The Lesbian Tendency To Yearn and Ache

On By ELLIOTT S.In Short Stories

“Drinking Coffee Elsewhere” was by far my favorite story from the collection we read, excusing the work of George Saunders… This is almost certainly because of the queerness embedded in the text. Normally, I’m very uninterested in stories of normal people from real-life meeting other normal people from real-life, but I loved the absurdity of this work so much. And, of course, as a former lesbian (turned bisexual man), I am biased in other ways.

I’ve noticed in my consumption of queer media that people will never let fictional lesbians, be happy. One of the dies… one of them is straight… one of them experiences a horrifying corrective rape, et cetera. This story fulfills that trope, but in a way that feels real. These lesbians are certainly not the lesbians of media past. Traditionally, women-loving-women is an accessory to the male gaze, a porn category, blatant sexualization– or, a slightly more “progressive” stereotype of complete sexlessess and purity, with skinny white women gently kissing each other on the cheek while laying in fields of grain.

In “Drinking Coffee Elsewhere,” the women are raw. Our main character is angry and borderline insane. Her comfort in her body and nudity is not used as something for men to fantasize about– instead, it’s abrasive and makes everyone around her uncomfortable. Our love interest is pathetic, teary-eyed, and best of all, fat. Dina’s narration of being in love with Heidi is wonderfully queer and non-traditional, where she describes Heidi rolling around as a glorious whale.

There is no happy ending, but I can’t be upset with it. It’s not some “kill your gays” trope, and it’s clearly not because the publisher thought the blatant queerness of two girls ending up together would be “too much.” The lack of a happy ending almost makes it better. This story is about two fundamentally weird and unlikeable women, who yell and cry at each other. What kind of happy ending could they even have? I think it’s wonderful to have those sort of lesbians, who are messy and hateful and unattractive. It reminds the audience that they’re not some angelic figure of purity. It shows a type of yearning that is very familiar to me. It makes me ache in a way that’s real.