Miscellaneous Package of Thoughts
It's strange how all of my courses somehow in one way or another relate to each other. In English class (Theory and Criticism, yucky course) the professor has a strong distaste for poetry, and often uses his witty and majorly chessy remarks to cover up his arguments against it, IF ANY. I wouldn't have such a problem with it if he wasn't to sarcastic about it and blindly believed what other writers said about poetry without actually formulating his own thoughts on the subject.
Plato said that representational poets are: 1) more like madfolk than rational, autonomous beings; 2) liars, misleaders of youth, and makers of false ideals/idols; 3) purveyors of unhealthy sensual pleasures; 4) imitators of imitations striving to pass off these fakes as real; 5) promoters of emotional self-indulgence; 6) destroyers of memory; and finally 7) creators of dangerous objects passed promisciously about.
I'd be happy to elaborate on the preceding list if only I'd read the article for the week. That class is so heavily dependent on confusing terms made up by authors to make themselves sound smart, as opposed to philosophers who make up terms that actually make sense.
In this afore-mentioned class I have an opportunity to defend poetry in the form of a Manifesto. However, I have not yet made up my mind as to the subject of which I will write.
The professor of this class gave a definition of poetry.
poetry - a spontaneous overflow/burst of emotions
So is constantly complaining necessarily poetry? What a terrible definition.
Today, we were introduced to some Dadaism stuff. Pretty funny, and in the end, entirely pointless. We discussed this in 2110 lecture also. In my intro to film class (for non-majors, I know, I know) we've been watching surrealist films, the avant-garde, and Expressionalist and Impressionalist films. They're confusing and angering to say the least. But an interesting concept arose from the tutorial of that class, that these types of films are connected to association that Sigmund Freud talked about. We had to read his "On Dreams" excerpt, which is very interesting, since I am semi-obsessed with dreams. It's the theory that a word or image is associated to another thing, which the individual is introduced to at some point in his/her life. That's not a great explanation, but here's an example that a buddy in my philosophy class told me last week; he was actually referring to Spinoza's Ethics. He told me that if you see a Lambourghini right next to a Chihuaha, the next time you see either of them you will automatically remember the other. I thought this was interesting. This links up to dreams as well, where only the individual can interpret his/her own dreams because of this association that one has with different symbols, images, and objects. By the way, I am of the opinion that dreams are in no way symbollic of anything, just a regurgitation of images, memories, ideas, desires, and vague plot created by the individual.
So in these movies, there are images and objects that supposedly force the viewer to associate them with other things or ideas, whereas 99% of Hollywood movies cannot do this even if they tried.
And somehow, that relates to the Jabberwocky poem that we discussed last week. There were some made up words in there, but they automatically spark an image in one's head (e.g. vorpal to me sounds like an adjective for something wavy and wobbly but powerful that makes woosh sounds - pretty loaded for a six letter word). This is like Dr. Seuss, where his books have dozens of made up words but they all sound like something that exists in reality.
Other classes of mine link up also but not in any significant way.
So, I'm off to read some Sigmund Freud, have some dreams, and plan out my Hallowe'en, and maybe Devil's Night too, who knows.
P.S. If any of you come across a movie called "Old Boy" - WATCH IT! Hunt that movie down if you have to.
Plato said that representational poets are: 1) more like madfolk than rational, autonomous beings; 2) liars, misleaders of youth, and makers of false ideals/idols; 3) purveyors of unhealthy sensual pleasures; 4) imitators of imitations striving to pass off these fakes as real; 5) promoters of emotional self-indulgence; 6) destroyers of memory; and finally 7) creators of dangerous objects passed promisciously about.
I'd be happy to elaborate on the preceding list if only I'd read the article for the week. That class is so heavily dependent on confusing terms made up by authors to make themselves sound smart, as opposed to philosophers who make up terms that actually make sense.
In this afore-mentioned class I have an opportunity to defend poetry in the form of a Manifesto. However, I have not yet made up my mind as to the subject of which I will write.
The professor of this class gave a definition of poetry.
poetry - a spontaneous overflow/burst of emotions
So is constantly complaining necessarily poetry? What a terrible definition.
Today, we were introduced to some Dadaism stuff. Pretty funny, and in the end, entirely pointless. We discussed this in 2110 lecture also. In my intro to film class (for non-majors, I know, I know) we've been watching surrealist films, the avant-garde, and Expressionalist and Impressionalist films. They're confusing and angering to say the least. But an interesting concept arose from the tutorial of that class, that these types of films are connected to association that Sigmund Freud talked about. We had to read his "On Dreams" excerpt, which is very interesting, since I am semi-obsessed with dreams. It's the theory that a word or image is associated to another thing, which the individual is introduced to at some point in his/her life. That's not a great explanation, but here's an example that a buddy in my philosophy class told me last week; he was actually referring to Spinoza's Ethics. He told me that if you see a Lambourghini right next to a Chihuaha, the next time you see either of them you will automatically remember the other. I thought this was interesting. This links up to dreams as well, where only the individual can interpret his/her own dreams because of this association that one has with different symbols, images, and objects. By the way, I am of the opinion that dreams are in no way symbollic of anything, just a regurgitation of images, memories, ideas, desires, and vague plot created by the individual.
So in these movies, there are images and objects that supposedly force the viewer to associate them with other things or ideas, whereas 99% of Hollywood movies cannot do this even if they tried.
And somehow, that relates to the Jabberwocky poem that we discussed last week. There were some made up words in there, but they automatically spark an image in one's head (e.g. vorpal to me sounds like an adjective for something wavy and wobbly but powerful that makes woosh sounds - pretty loaded for a six letter word). This is like Dr. Seuss, where his books have dozens of made up words but they all sound like something that exists in reality.
Other classes of mine link up also but not in any significant way.
So, I'm off to read some Sigmund Freud, have some dreams, and plan out my Hallowe'en, and maybe Devil's Night too, who knows.
P.S. If any of you come across a movie called "Old Boy" - WATCH IT! Hunt that movie down if you have to.