Haz Hungover-LOST ~FEELS
"Television distracts us from the onerous necessity of finding projects to construct in the vacuity of our frivolous lives: by beguiling our eyes, television releases our mind from the great work of making meaning."
The Elegance of the Hedgehog
My Podcast is recording the First Season Finale next weekend. And so... I have thoughts swirling right now...
Thought the first
Boone ---When I was listeing to our recording of "The Greater Good" I started thinking again about the bloody!Boone (before I compared the attention given to his body to porn - that the lingering shots of blood and gore made his body into a Symbol the way that our culture turns the female body into a Symbol) and going off of that - I was reminded of the poem "Goblin Market" by Christina Rossetti - and in it one of the women covers herself in the juices of the "forbidden fruit" so that her sister (who is addicted to the fruit and dying) can suck the juices off her body - this is somehow a cure. Now, I'm not really sure who benefits the most from bloody!Boone body (Jack or Locke - though Erin has suggested they are the same person) - but his body is COVERED in blood and he is a sacrifice in that sense - his body literally had to become the thing that they feared, he bathed in his own blood in order for.... well maybe in order to save the audience, in a way. Pants said that she was completely shocked that Boone died and was not prepared for LOST to be a show in which characters come and go - she didn't anticipate death. Maybe in order for the audience to "be prepared" or to get out of the presumed narrative - we had to drink the fruit off of Boone. Like the girl in the poem, who gives her hair for the fruit and then becomes addicted - we (the audience) walk into the show, we give our minds over to thsi narrative for an hour (or more) a week - and without thinking, accept the narrative as it is. TV audiences are passive. And this show, for the most part up until this point, has allowed us to be passive. Claire is the Damsel, Charlie is the Knight, Kate is the Tomboy, Jack is the Hero, Locke is the Wise One, Sayid is the Tortured Outsider, Hurley is the Fool, Sun is the ... well.... Sun is the Western Narrative Personified, Jin is the Romantic Lover... these people - we know their story. We *feel* as though we can anticipate their stories, their pasts, we understand the way their stories work because they are familiar. Bloody!Boone, I think, is the sacrifice to that. It is the epitome of Type - Boone the Red Shirt. We wanted a narrative we could understand, that we could read passively - and so they gave it to us. And it is brutal, it is hard, and it disrupts every expectation that we had. In giving us what we want, the text disrupted our security in what we think we know. AND! If I'm right - and this metaphor stems somehow from "Gobiln Market" - then there is gender reversal not just for Boone - poor Boone the Feminine sacrificed to Masculinity and a Patriarchal System - but also for the audience. If Boone's blood is the fruit that we desire - then we, the audience the camera, is FEMALE. And guys - woah - this never happens. The camera is ALWAYS masculine. :
Thought the Second
(Reflections on the Memoirs of a Geisha comment in the airport)
We've been (or I've been) discussing how Sun's narrative is very Westernized, we understand it because it is familiar. She's very much not even a heroine from a Korean drama (trust) and in this episode she is compared by a Western Woman to a Novel about an Eastern Woman. What I think is really neat, is that this just gets super muddled. Because the Novel is considered a Western tradition - we're quite proud of ourselves for this, we invented it, we perfected it - Westerners are prosy. ONLY WE DIDN'T. True story is: the first Novel in recorded history is The Tale of Genji which was written by a WOMAN. Fancy. That. So - this comment by a Western woman directed at/toward/for an Eastern woman about what she believes she knows from reading a Novel about an Eastern woman .... it's all so muddled. Is the Novel itself a West or East? Is the story itself West or East? Is Sun herself West or East? I really love this whole moment - because it makes it so painfully clear how just... confused the story of Sun is. She is the Outsider who can understand, but not express - she is a Woman who is fighting to be released from her own culture, who believes that others see her as stuck in her own culture - she judges herself and her narrative/her life/her love by an imposed Western standard - she reads her life the way that WE read it, the way that she believes that we will read it - and she is writting her own life under those terms. Which is what is happening with Memoirs - A Novel (a Western Novel) WRITTEN BY AN AMERICAN MALE about an Eastern Female. The Western mind that usurped (I may sound a little bitter today and I apologize... I'm not, it's just a theme going on) the Eastern tradition, and then used it to inform upon the culture that originally produced the form in the first place. So - what does Memoirs actually tell us about Sun? It tells us that she's fighting this fight: she's struggling to be "her own person" - but the narrative, the structure, the means by which she/we believe this will be accomplished are formed by the structure that JACK represents - that Western structure. Is Sun really becoming independent by falling into a Western narrative? Is the Western woman ACTUALLY more liberated than the Eastern woman? Or is that just another construct - just another way to make us *feel* like we have gained independence, that we have broken away from a structure that confines us. That comment from the woman that Sun "overhears" (though I'd argue that it is HIGHLY likely that the woman said nothing at all and Sun's perspective was judgement, her mind filling in the words on its own) is so fascinating because it is one Structure informing upon another. There is nothing about either of these women that is not completely determined by the structure that they belong to.... which is just... so interesting! Because it's right there - so simple. It looks like a character moment, but it really is a collision.
This time through I'm completely falling in love with Kate and HER ADORABLE FACE. Not really sure what's going on there, but I love it. Also. I ship Kate/Claire and make very little apologies for it.
So there's this whole problem where most of the time, I'm all talked-out about LOST. I literally talk about it for upwards of 6-7 hrs a week on average. And this week I was unable to record with my cast (I'm at Pants' house and haz no mic) so I just typed up some things for them to read while they record without me. Which means - that I wrote stuff. And since I never do that, I figured I'd keep the thoughts here, so that they are kept and I can go back to them. And also for yous.
The Elegance of the Hedgehog
My Podcast is recording the First Season Finale next weekend. And so... I have thoughts swirling right now...
Thought the first
Boone ---When I was listeing to our recording of "The Greater Good" I started thinking again about the bloody!Boone (before I compared the attention given to his body to porn - that the lingering shots of blood and gore made his body into a Symbol the way that our culture turns the female body into a Symbol) and going off of that - I was reminded of the poem "Goblin Market" by Christina Rossetti - and in it one of the women covers herself in the juices of the "forbidden fruit" so that her sister (who is addicted to the fruit and dying) can suck the juices off her body - this is somehow a cure. Now, I'm not really sure who benefits the most from bloody!Boone body (Jack or Locke - though Erin has suggested they are the same person) - but his body is COVERED in blood and he is a sacrifice in that sense - his body literally had to become the thing that they feared, he bathed in his own blood in order for.... well maybe in order to save the audience, in a way. Pants said that she was completely shocked that Boone died and was not prepared for LOST to be a show in which characters come and go - she didn't anticipate death. Maybe in order for the audience to "be prepared" or to get out of the presumed narrative - we had to drink the fruit off of Boone. Like the girl in the poem, who gives her hair for the fruit and then becomes addicted - we (the audience) walk into the show, we give our minds over to thsi narrative for an hour (or more) a week - and without thinking, accept the narrative as it is. TV audiences are passive. And this show, for the most part up until this point, has allowed us to be passive. Claire is the Damsel, Charlie is the Knight, Kate is the Tomboy, Jack is the Hero, Locke is the Wise One, Sayid is the Tortured Outsider, Hurley is the Fool, Sun is the ... well.... Sun is the Western Narrative Personified, Jin is the Romantic Lover... these people - we know their story. We *feel* as though we can anticipate their stories, their pasts, we understand the way their stories work because they are familiar. Bloody!Boone, I think, is the sacrifice to that. It is the epitome of Type - Boone the Red Shirt. We wanted a narrative we could understand, that we could read passively - and so they gave it to us. And it is brutal, it is hard, and it disrupts every expectation that we had. In giving us what we want, the text disrupted our security in what we think we know. AND! If I'm right - and this metaphor stems somehow from "Gobiln Market" - then there is gender reversal not just for Boone - poor Boone the Feminine sacrificed to Masculinity and a Patriarchal System - but also for the audience. If Boone's blood is the fruit that we desire - then we, the audience the camera, is FEMALE. And guys - woah - this never happens. The camera is ALWAYS masculine. :
Thought the Second
(Reflections on the Memoirs of a Geisha comment in the airport)
We've been (or I've been) discussing how Sun's narrative is very Westernized, we understand it because it is familiar. She's very much not even a heroine from a Korean drama (trust) and in this episode she is compared by a Western Woman to a Novel about an Eastern Woman. What I think is really neat, is that this just gets super muddled. Because the Novel is considered a Western tradition - we're quite proud of ourselves for this, we invented it, we perfected it - Westerners are prosy. ONLY WE DIDN'T. True story is: the first Novel in recorded history is The Tale of Genji which was written by a WOMAN. Fancy. That. So - this comment by a Western woman directed at/toward/for an Eastern woman about what she believes she knows from reading a Novel about an Eastern woman .... it's all so muddled. Is the Novel itself a West or East? Is the story itself West or East? Is Sun herself West or East? I really love this whole moment - because it makes it so painfully clear how just... confused the story of Sun is. She is the Outsider who can understand, but not express - she is a Woman who is fighting to be released from her own culture, who believes that others see her as stuck in her own culture - she judges herself and her narrative/her life/her love by an imposed Western standard - she reads her life the way that WE read it, the way that she believes that we will read it - and she is writting her own life under those terms. Which is what is happening with Memoirs - A Novel (a Western Novel) WRITTEN BY AN AMERICAN MALE about an Eastern Female. The Western mind that usurped (I may sound a little bitter today and I apologize... I'm not, it's just a theme going on) the Eastern tradition, and then used it to inform upon the culture that originally produced the form in the first place. So - what does Memoirs actually tell us about Sun? It tells us that she's fighting this fight: she's struggling to be "her own person" - but the narrative, the structure, the means by which she/we believe this will be accomplished are formed by the structure that JACK represents - that Western structure. Is Sun really becoming independent by falling into a Western narrative? Is the Western woman ACTUALLY more liberated than the Eastern woman? Or is that just another construct - just another way to make us *feel* like we have gained independence, that we have broken away from a structure that confines us. That comment from the woman that Sun "overhears" (though I'd argue that it is HIGHLY likely that the woman said nothing at all and Sun's perspective was judgement, her mind filling in the words on its own) is so fascinating because it is one Structure informing upon another. There is nothing about either of these women that is not completely determined by the structure that they belong to.... which is just... so interesting! Because it's right there - so simple. It looks like a character moment, but it really is a collision.
This time through I'm completely falling in love with Kate and HER ADORABLE FACE. Not really sure what's going on there, but I love it. Also. I ship Kate/Claire and make very little apologies for it.
So there's this whole problem where most of the time, I'm all talked-out about LOST. I literally talk about it for upwards of 6-7 hrs a week on average. And this week I was unable to record with my cast (I'm at Pants' house and haz no mic) so I just typed up some things for them to read while they record without me. Which means - that I wrote stuff. And since I never do that, I figured I'd keep the thoughts here, so that they are kept and I can go back to them. And also for yous.