I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon

Right away, this short story reminded me of Stanley Kubrick's film 2001: A Space Odyssey. It is a strange thought to think that Victor couldn't realize that when he actually arrived to his destination, he didn't think it was real because the computer kept playing him the image in his head of arriving there. Is this kind of like watching a concert DVD and then going to see the band and not being as excited had you not seen the DVD? Tool (one of my favorite bands of all time) refuses to release DVDs because they believe it takes away from the concert experience. I want a Tool DVD soooo bad, but at the same time, I've only been to two of their concerts, and the experience was incredibly surreal. I will go see them again if they ever come around.

"To live is not to have the answers, it's about asking questions"

I think this quote is a great representation of the worry of Herbert Blau the author of "Virtually Yours: Presence, Liveness, Lessness". The concern is that information is too readily available on the internet. "In an age of information virtually everything to be known is out there on the net for the asking...Yet the more we ask, the more demoralized we may be" (541 Virtually Yours). I agree with this because children are "plugging in" more then ever and will continue to do so. The internet is a great tool but it shouldn't be a substitute for things that happen in real life. Also it is dangerous because the media has been moving its focus to the internet as well, ads and pop-ups are all over the place, TV media already impacts every person, now with it spreading to the internet it is nearly impossible to find an answer on the net with out being faced with an ad. Blau says that nearly everything we do has been predicted or facilitated by the media and it will only get worse as the internet situation grows, because it determines the answers we get.

Cage

I want to focus this post on Herbert Blau's reference to John Cage in his essay. Blau wrote "The beginning of the end could be said to have occurred in that ur-setting of theatricality, the anechoic chamber at Berkeley, in which, through the absence of other sound, Cage listened to his nerves and heart, then thought of himself listening. out of which came the performance, itself canonical now, of 4'33"-a silence lasting four minutes, thirty-three seconds." I had a pretty hard time understanding the way Blau wrote honestly, but I feel that just because something is a sound does not mean it is music. If his intent was to have each listener experience something different, then he succeeded. If he wanted to create music then I think he failed. To compare this to the beautiful works of classical music is upsetting to me. I hear a slight hum from the speakers I have on right now, and I hear my keyboard typing, but it is NOT music. It is not even close to evoking any emotion from me. By technicality and definition, maybe anything can be considered music, but that is a very idealist approach, and not everything is black and white like that. Especially music and performing arts. I love silence, and I appreciate a lot of things, and I think John Cage seems like a nice man, but when I heard 4'33", it was not music and what I saw was not a performance.

"Darkness" by Lord Byron

Lord Byron writes about a world that we believe to be a place that is worse than hell. A place where the sun doesn't shine and where faith is no more. The poem was written in the summer of 1816 during the "Year Without a Summer". This time period was titled after the eruption of Mount Tambora casting enough ash in to the atmosphere to block out the sun and cause abnormal weather across much of northeast America and northern Europe. Lord Byron describes this place that seems to have lost all faith and live in a world of science. Maybe Lord Byron believes there is no G-D at all in this new, dark world. Byron also references a lot of Biblical items as well. He also mixes Biblical language with the apparent realities of science at the time.

Gender Constitution

In Judith Butlers essay "Performance Acts and Gender Constitution", she claims that "one is not born, but, rather, becomes a woman". I see where she is coming from, but I have a hard time agreeing with her. I have plenty of friends who are male and have many feminine qualities but do not want to be women, and are not considered a woman by my standards. I myself have a few womanly qualities, but it doesn't matter. People should just be themselves, and if that means acting in a way that society thinks your gay because you act like a woman and your a man then who cares? Are there certain instances when you feel you have to act like your gender is supposed to? If your a girl and your watching a romance movie with your girl friends do you feel you have to be emotional and really into the story just because your other friends are? If your a guy watching the football game with your guy friends who are really into it and your really not do you feel compelled to start yelling and screaming too just because they are even though you really don't care about the game?

Identity Crisis: What Constitutes Gender and Identity?

"Gender is in no way a stable identity or locus of agency from which various acts proceed; rather, it is an identity tenuously constituted in time -- an identity, instituted through a stylized repetition of acts."-- Judith Butler

In "Performance Acts and Gender Constitution", an essay written by Judith Butler, she attempts to show that gender reality is not dependent on the realization of ones identity but is rather a sign of ones body responding to "historical situations" and is "a manner of doing, dramatizing and reproducing a historical situation." This particular view of gender and identity really threw me off because it is completely outside of thoughts of what I have been taught. I believe that the gender of a person is simple: they are either male or female. It doesn't matter if you "act" more feminine or masculine in your mannerisms, you are what you are. In the dawn of the battle between sexual independence and the manifestation of people desiring to be the determining force of whether they are "male" or "female" (based off of the actions), I would like to pose this question: What Constitutes Your Gender and Identity? Do you feel that it is predicated on actions repeated in history or are you in complete control of who you are and the characteristics of your personality/image?

Behind A Mask

Alcott's thriller raises questions about masks, performance, and everyday life, in particular about gender and class. For Thursday, we'll add in theorist Judith Butler's ideas from "Performative Acts and Gender Constitution."