Entry for 3 August

I won't be in class, but, if I was going to be in class, I would've brought another movie. This sounds really cheesy, but this class made me think about "My Best Friend's Wedding" with Julia Roberts. I thought about it because of the day we were talking about women who like to be pursued and how there's rarely a narrative that involves a woman going after a man. I think this movie goes with and against some of the narratives we've been talking about. Most conspicuously, the woman as the pursuer is very different from the traditional narrative that we recognized where the woman wants to be pursued. What's ironic, though, is that it doesn't work in the movie because the man that she pursues ends up with another woman. So really, maybe it's not going against the narrative that much in the first place. Also, she does all kinds of sneaky, underhanded, manipulative things to try to win the guy over, which I think is in line with the image of women as, well, sneaky and manipulative. I also saw the narrative of the competition between women here because the fiance thinks she will never stack up to the Julia Roberts character, but the Julia Roberts character complains about the perfection of the fiance and how annoying it is that there's nothing annoying about her perfection. (That's not me being unclear; that's what they say in the movie. Anybody who has seen it will vouch for me.) Anyhow, that led me to think about the narratives of friendship between women and between women and men. I think that there's one narrative that says that men and women can't be friends because one will end up being attracted to the other, which is obviously the basis for this whole movie. But I can't decide if the movie supports that or not because, in the end, part of me wants to believe that the Julia Roberts character (Julianne) wasn't really in love with her best friend; his engagement just threatened the security that she found in their relationship. The images that the fiance and Julianne represent are also different ideas about kinds of women. The fiance is girly and giggly and a horrible driver and Julianne is a tomboy and hates PDA and other emotional stuff. Anyhow... those thoughts aside, there's a bunch of secondary women characters that represent other images of women like the two promiscuous cousins and even the women in the bathroom at the stadium who, despite their being dressed in less feminine ways and the slang they use that seems to represent a different class or type of women, still relate to the drama and competition between the fiance and the Julia Roberts character.

Response to reading for 31 July

It was a little slow for me getting started with this book. Maybe I was too tired when I started reading. In any case, the farther I read, the more I liked it and once I reached halfway, I realized I didn't want to stop. I did, though, to write. So here goes.
One passage that I found interesting not only because of the way it fit into this text but because of some of the things we've been talking about in class was when Charity is talking about whether Harney likes her or not and it says, "The signs of his liking were manifest enough; but it was hard to guess how much they meant, because his manner was so different from anything North Dormer had ever shown her. He was at once simpler and more deferential than any one she had known; and sometimes it was just when he was simplest that she most felt the distance between them." First off, this reminded me of Sula because of the misunderstandings between Nell and Sula that resulted because of their different life experiences. I also think that this passage stuck out to me because obviously people's homes are important. Charity's coming from the Mountain is obviously central to the story and her character builds itself around the fact... especially her being different from everyone in North Dormer. Harney is interesting to her because he's from somewhere bigger, more mysterious. I kept this passage in mind as I read and thought about their relationship, and it seems that the distance between them is maintained, at least so far, but that, as they build experiences together, it becomes more negligible. I think that this would fit well into our discussion about people being close even when they don't have to talk because of the way they interact and because of the experiences that they share. I don't know how the relationship with Harney and Charity will turn out. I hesitate to say I hope it's for the better for fear of having my own heart broken.
Another passage that stood out to me was when Charity determines not to go in to see Harney when she's spying on him in Miss Hatchard's. She says, "She did not know why he was going; but since he was going she felt she must do nothing to deface the image of her that he carried away. If he wanted her he must seek her: he must not be surprised into taking her as girls like Julia Hawes were taken...." I guess it initially stood out because relationships between girls and boys are so much different today, and this was a good example of a woman who wants to be pursued by a man and who sees it as her duty to maintain her purity, even if it means passing up a chance to be with him, so that he can decide to be with her. I also think it stood out because of how important she considers his impression of her and how she doesn't seem to care later when the town thinks they're sneaking around together. Mr. Royall says she's proud, but I think her pride may be a cover for the insecurity that she feels about her past, which comes out conspicuously when she overhears Mr. Royall speaking with Harney and at other points in time when she wonder where she came from or who her parents are. Anyways, I think it's funny that later she "sneer[s] at herself for not having used the arts that might have kept him." Good stuff.
Just for fun, another passage I really liked was when she started spying on Harney and it says, "He was there, a few feet away; and while her soul was tossing on seas of woe he had been quietly sitting at his drawing-board. The sight of those two hands, moving with their usual skill and precision, woke her out of her dream." I think it's scary how bad things can get in our heads when we don't know what's going on. Like the Morrison quote that Donna read during class. But this also reminded me of a discussion I had about whether being in love makes everything else in life matter more or less, which, in a way, relates to the whole "Make Me Better" concept. Some people say being in love is like being in a dream. Seeing Harney woke Charity from a dream. I think being in love can make life seem more important, can make you notice things like how beautiful his hands are and can make the whole world seem more beautiful and worth noticing. But apparently it also makes things worth worrying about as well....

Response to readings for 27 July

I guess some of the most obvious similarities were the emotions that the girls experienced because of the way they were treated for being "different." They were both scared, confused, and angry. They were also both bent on success, or it seemed that way. Like because they were treated as inferiors, they had to prove themselves. This was interesting to me because I think it's much more often the case that being treated as inferior makes people believe that they are inferior. In another one of my classes, we read a couple of books about kids from "bad" neighborhoods who were more than intellectually capable of going to college and/or getting decent jobs, but who didn't believe they had the ability because they were always told that they didn't. One of the differences that I think is important is that the Indian girl is of "pure blood" and comes from a family that is 100% ethnically the same as she is. Her mother has an idea of what she should do, which is return to her family, but she chooses not to, which results in her being rejected by her mother. Sui, on the other hand, doesn't have a real home in the first place. She is torn between two homelands, her mother's and her father's, neither of which she considers her own. Her parents seem to provide little guidance as to how she should feel about her nationality or what she should do because of it. Unlike Zitkala, she doesn't even have a starting point against which she could rebel. I think the differences between the two girls and the people around them were different too. Zitkala was one of a number of Indians, who stood in stark contrast to the missionaries around them. The differences between her and her surroundings were very pronounced. Sui, though, was mistaken for white, Japanese, and Spanish or Mexican in San Francisco. She didn't fit in, really, with anyone. I guess that's what leads up to her statement at the end about valuing the individual.

Response to readings for 25 July

"Seventeen Syllables": I think the story follows a romantic narrative. Rosie is obviously falling for Jesus but they're young and she doesn't know what to do about it. Then there's the whole second plot of how her mom didn't marry for true love and now she's trapped and stifled and all of that so she doesn't want her daughter to get married and end up like her. I think the thing that's different about this, at least when I read it, is that at the end, it seems to me that the whole time Rosie just wants some kind of love but she doesn't get it from her parents and now her parent wants to take away the prospect of Jesus's love. I think this text is interesting because of the way culture and class play into it. And because of the different characters' conflicting ideas of love. Rosie's mom turned romantic love into something bad because her experiences made it impossible for her not to. For Rosie, it's still something new and exciting and confusing, and I don't think her parents are helping to clear anything up.
"Men in Your Life": This piece is pretty funny. I think it plays into the traditional romantic narratives of loving somebody for who they are and for who you are when you're together instead of because of how they look on paper. I guess the interesting part of this story for me is how gossip-centered it seems and it reminds me of this "Would you rather" questions that asked if you'd rather sleep with somebody famous but not be able to tell anyone about it or be able to tell everyone you slept with somebody famous and have them believe you but never actually do it. I don't know if that made sense. Anyways... I guess this isn't really like that but I thought it was funny because she doesn't even mention Eddie for a while and it's almost like her thoughts only come out because she's telling them to somebody else, but they've obviously been there if she and Eddie talked about getting married. It reminds me a little bit of "Hitch" too because she likes Eddie for his little eccentricities even though he isn't the obvious choice to the world.

Movie blog

I have to do this one now because I'm positive I won't be the only one who picks it.... I'm not a huge fan of romantic movies, but last semester "The Notebook" was on TV every two hours or so during finals week so every break that we got, my roommate and I watched it and I ended up really liking it. I'm guess most of you know what happens in the movie. It's the story of a couple that meets during a summer (I think) and the girl is wealthy and the boy isn't and they're in love but then her parents make her move away and he tries to write to her but her mom steals the letters so they don't talk for a really long time and she ends up being engaged to this other guy but then she sees this article about how the other guy built the house she told him she wanted so she goes to visit him and they fall for each other again and stuff and they end up together. But the underlying narrative in the movie is this old guy in a nursing home or something reading the story of these two kids to a woman who has Alzheimers or something and it ends up that they are the two kids in the story and she had written it for him to read to her so she would remember their story. I think the reason I like the movie, aside from the fact that the whole Alzheimers thing is pretty creative, is because they don't pretend like their relationship is perfect. My favorite scene is when he's trying to convince her to stay with him and it goes something like this:
Noah: You're bored! You're bored and you know it! You wouldn't be here if there weren't something missing.
Allie: You arrogant son of a bitch!
Noah: Would you just stay with me?
Allie: Stay with you? What for? Look at us, we are already fighting.
Noah: Well that's what we do. We fight. You tell me when I'm being an arrogant son of a bitch and I tell you when you are being a pain in the ass. Which you are 99% of the time. I'm not afraid to hurt your feelings. You have like a two second rebound rate and you're back to doing the next pain in the ass thing.
Allie: So what.
Noah: So it's not going to be easy. It's going to be really hard. And we're going to have to work at this every day. But I want to do that because I want you. I want all of you, forever, every day.
I like it because it's more realistic than the romance shows that make you think love is nothing but happiness all of the time. In fact, I guess he says it's a pain in the ass 99% of the time....