The Extreme Spectrums of Art: From Oversaturated Business to Pure Enjoyment

True West by Sam Shepard is a play that addresses many issues and ideas; however, I will be focusing on the theme of “Art as a Business vs. Art as an Ideal” in this blog post.

In the play, brothers Austin and Lee are depicted as two very different types of people. Austin is the sensible brother who has settled down and has a family of his own to take care of and support. He works as a screenwriter, and he is currently working on a script to present to a producer in hopes of gaining a large amount of money and success. Lee, on the other hand, is the “wild” brother who has been living on his own for quite some time, getting by only by stealing from others. When Lee meets the producer who has been working with Austin on his script, he tells the producer that he has an idea for  a western movie that will “knock [his] lights out” (Shepard 881). Lee only wants to tell his story and get it out there for others to see. He seems to have no interest in the money side of things, at least not in the beginning.  In the play, Austin, the sensible brother, represents “Art as a Business,” and Lee, the impractical brother, represents “Art as an Ideal.”

Real life examples of “Art as a Business” can be found in today’s movie industry. Sequels to movies are very common in the box office today. Many people might be wondering why this is the case. Simply put, if a movie has a great reception at the box office the first time around, producers begin to see the dollar signs that could come about if a sequel to the original movie was filmed. The movie industry is all about the money. In an article from US Today, film producer Lawrence Turman says that the movie studios “have learned that the biggest revenues come with the biggest cost, the most expensive risk. And if it worked once, why not a second time?” (http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2012/06/26/why-sequels-have-taken-over-the-box-office).

Recently, George Lucas sold the rights of Lucasfilm to Disney for a large sum of money (over $4 billion) so that Disney could produce new Star Wars movies. Although the original concept for Star Wars began perhaps as an artistic endeavor for George Lucas, we can clearly see that Star Wars is currently all about the money. Below, I have included a video that explains a little more in depth about the upcoming Star Wars trilogy made by Disney. At the end of the video, the money involved in the selling of the rights and the creation of these new movies is discussed. Below this video, I have included a parody video to the tune of Gotye’s “Somebody That I Used to Know” that expresses the upset that many Star Wars fans feel about the three movies that were recently released based off of the original trilogy. One can imagine that these same fans are not thrilled at the idea of even more movies to come in the near future. The fans represented by the ideas sung about in this video are perhaps more appreciative of the Star Wars movies as an art than as a money-making business venture.

I can use myself as a personal example of “Art as an Ideal.”  As I’m sure many of you have figured out by now, I enjoy listening to rock and metal music, and I attend concerts quite frequently. I never go to a concert without my digital camera because I enjoy taking pictures of the performers at the shows I attend. This picture taking is a hobby of mine that I thoroughly enjoy. I don’t try to sell my pictures or make money off of them in any way, and I have no desire in pursuing a career in photography of any sort. I simply take these pictures because I enjoy doing so. Being able to look at the pictures I’ve taken at past shows helps put me back in the moment when the picture was taken. This artistic outlet of mine is simply a hobby that I enjoy, even though I must say that some of the pictures I have taken are pretty impressive for a cheap digital camera that’s being used in the middle of the floor at general admission concerts. Metal shows can get pretty rough, so I take pride in the awesome photos I do manage to capture. I’ve posted some of my better pictures below.

Art is something that many people enjoy, but when you put pressure behind the art in order to try and gain money and success, art becomes a business and a job and often loses its artistic quality. Personally, I can relate more to Lee, the brother who prefers “Art as an Ideal.” I think that “Art as a Business” has potential to be successful, but when that added pressure is there to make money, the practice of making the art may lose its luster.

“Don’t Judge A Book By Its Cover”

Whether it’s subconscious or intentional, everyone is guilty of stereotyping. Therefore, those who are guilty of this “crime” are victims of it as well. Human nature causes us to judge others upon meeting them even before we know them, which is why first impressions are typically very important.

In the story “Good Country People” by Flannery O’Connor, “bible salesman” Manley Pointer is stereotyped by Mrs. Hopewell as “good country people” because of the way he presents himself when she answers her door. Manley Pointer makes a good first impression on Mrs. Hopewell, portraying himself as an honest young man who is selling bibles because he wants to “devote [his] life to Chrustian service” (http://ayersamazingwiki.wikispaces.com/file/view/Good+Country+People+Full+Text.pdf ).

Joy/Hulga is also guilty of stereotyping Manley Pointer, so she is surprised when she finds out the truth about Manley Pointer. When Manley Pointer and Joy/Hulga are alone in the barn, Pointer admits that he doesn’t “believe in that crap!” and that he’s been “believing in nothing ever since [he] was born!” (http://ayersamazingwiki.wikispaces.com/file/view/Good+Country+People+Full+Text.pdf ).  In fact, the bag that he carries his bibles in contains only two bibles, one of which was a fake bible that hid away a flask, an obscene deck of cards, and a box of condoms. When Joy/Hulga sees these items, she asks Pointer, “Aren’t you just good country people?” Pointer responds to this question sarcastically before admitting that he collects “interesting things” and only wanted to collect Joy/Hulga’s prosthetic leg.

As readers of this story can see, making judgments about a person before you get to know them can have negative consequences. This same ideal holds true in real-life situations. As I said before, all of us are guilty of stereotyping and have been victims of stereotyping at some point in our lives. This act of “judging a book by its cover” almost always brings about negative results.

Personally, I am most often stereotyped by the type of music I listen to. I listen to metal music, which is considered by many to be a type of music that only big, ugly, long-haired white men who don’t believe in God listen to. I am a Christian, and obviously, I’m not a big, ugly man, so I defy these stereotypes that are associated with metal music. Different genres of music all seem to have different stereotypes that go along with them, and the video below discusses some of these stereotypes and how different people feel about these stereotypes associated with music.

The type of music I listen to does not define who I am, just like the façade that Manley Pointer put on for Mrs. Hopewell and Joy/Hulga did not define who he was. Pointer turned out to be a dishonest non-believer after Joy/Hulga got to know him a little better. Maybe if people take the time to get to know me, they will see me for who I really am: a smart, friendly young woman who just so happens to like metal music.

Apprehensive Alfred: A Character Analysis of J. Alfred Prufrock

“The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” by T.S. Eliot is a poem about a man who is extremely insecure with himself. Prufrock has an “inferiority complex” of sorts, rendering him unable to enter a romantic situation with women. He not only feels anxious around women, but also feels emotionally distant from the rest of society, causing him to live an awkward, lonely life, full of depression and gloom.

As I read this poem, I couldn’t help but notice how concerned Prufrock was with his appearance. He is described as having thin arms and legs (line 44) and “a bald spot in the middle of [his] hair” (line 40). Prufrock has quite obviously been scrutinized about his appearance before, as made clear by the following lines:

For I have known them all already, known them all—

The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,

And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,

When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,

Then how should I begin

To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?

And how should I presume? (lines 55-61)

From these lines, readers can see that Prufrock knows what it feels like to be judged by women and that this scrutiny makes him very uncomfortable, thus making it difficult for him to pursue any sort of relations with women. He even asks himself if he has “the strength to force the moment to its crisis?” (line 80), and after some tears and deliberation, he admits that “in short, [he] was afraid” (line 86). He keeps telling himself that there will be more time, “And time yet for a hundred indecisions, / And for a hundred visions and revisions, / Before the taking of a toast and tea” (lines 32-34). Prufrock keeps trying to convince himself that he has plenty of time to seize his opportunity with women, despite the fact that he “grow[s] old” (line 120).

Prufrock is not just worried about scrutiny from women, but perhaps from all of society. He expresses feelings of estrangement from society throughout the poem, which suggests to readers that he has a very gloomy outlook on his life as a human being. He even admits that he “should have been a pair of ragged claws / Scuttling across the floors of silent seas” (lines 73-74). At the end of the poem, Prufrock even seems to identify more with mermaids than he does with humans. Readers can see this by his use of the pronoun “we” when referring to the mermaids: “We have lingered in the chambers of the sea / By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown” (lines 129-130). These lines suggest that Prufrock wishes to escape humanity and live among the mythical or supernatural. In the final line of the poem, his fantasy world is shattered by humanity and comes crashing down: “Till human voices wake us, and we drown” (line 131).

Every reader reads and interprets poetry differently. These different interpretations give us thoughtful ideas and insights that we might not have otherwise found when reading the poem for ourselves. For this reason, I am including a brief, ten minute video below of another man’s commentary on “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” in hopes that it will provide an interesting and somewhat different, if not almost opposite, “reading” of this poem than what I have provided here.

This man’s reading portrays Prufrock as a vain man who feels as though he is superior to the materialistic women described in the poem, and he seems to back up this idea with solid evidence from the poem. My reading portrays Prufrock as an insecure man who feels inferior to the women described in the poem and estranged by the society of his time, and I have provided the same amount of solid evidence from the poem to prove that my reading is plausible as well. No one reading of a poem is correct, which is exactly why I love literature so much!

   

 In any case, I still think that Prufrock suffers from an inferiority complex when it comes to pursuing relationships with women, and I think that he feels estranged by society and wishes to leave humanity behind in favor of something more “magical.” Of course, his wish to leave humanity cannot be fulfilled, and Prufrock is forced to deal with his lonely reality.

(Forever Alone)

**All poem citations are from this link: http://www.bartleby.com/198/1.html 

“And miles to go before I sleep”

Despite the fact that I’m an English major, I’ll be the first to admit that I am not a huge fan of poetry. I am a fan of straightforward and to-the-point, and in most cases, poetry is the exact opposite of straightforward and to-the-point. Although I typically do not enjoy poetry, on occasion, a poem will jump out and grab my attention, just like Robert Frost’s “Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening” did. On the surface, this poem simply tells about a man who stops in the woods for a moment to enjoy the scenery and soon realizes that he must carry on with his journey. Beneath the surface lies a much deeper meaning, one that I can definitely connect to.

I believe that Frost wants his readers to make more of an effort to “stop and smell the roses” every now and then and to just breathe and take a break from life’s chaos. This “poetical advice” is most certainly relevant to my life right now. This semester has been tough for me so far. Trying to juggle classes, homework, Honors Program activities and obligations, teacher observations, Writers’ Club, sleep, and so much more has proven to be a real test of my time management skills, as well as my patience and my ability to handle stress and lack of sleep. Sometimes I get so caught up in just trying to “keep my promises” to others that I forget to find time to enjoy my life in the present moment. Some nights, like tonight actually, I still feel as though I have “miles to go before I sleep.” I have a to-do list that is two pages long, and the more I look at it, the more things I think of to add to it. It seems as though most of my time is spent worrying about these “promises” and obligations that I “have to keep.” I enjoy being involved, and I want to make good grades, so I put a lot of pressure on myself to do everything to the fullest of my ability, often biting off a little more than I can chew.

I’ve been trying to find small things to do so that I can bring back some enjoyment and relaxation to my life while still “keeping my promises.” I try to read (for pleasure, not school) during my meals, and I spend some time every day listening to music. Iron Maiden, one of my very favorite bands, actually has a song that encourages people to live in the present and “realize you’re living in the golden years.” I’ve provided a link to the song below.

Music plays a rather significant role in my life. I enjoy going to concerts, and I listen to music on a daily basis. Music not only provides me with enjoyment when life becomes overbearing, but also helps make me who I am. Listening to music is my way of “stopping by the woods on a snowy day” and finding time to enjoy my present life amidst the chaos of everything else going on around me.

Modern Day Naturalism at Work: Into The Wild with Chris McCandless

 Although I had read Jack London’s story “To Build a Fire” before, I did not fully understand the concept of naturalism until this particular reading. Naturalism refers to a particular literary movement that began in the late 19^th century and continued through the early 20^th century. Literary naturalism is typically said to have four defining characteristics:

1. Pessimism
2. Detachment
3. Determinism
4. Plot Twists

Of these characteristics, the most important of these to understand in order to fully comprehend the meaning of naturalism is determinism. Determinism suggests that characters in naturalistic works have no free will and their fate has already been decided by internal and external factors beyond their control. Environmental elements are the most common external factors that determine the fate of these characters (http://www.buzzle.com/articles/naturalism-in-literature.html).

                While reading “To Build a Fire” for this particular class, I was immediately reminded of a movie I watched recently, called Into the Wild. The movie (which is based on a true story) is about a man named Christopher McCandless, a man who gave his college savings to charity and took off towards Alaska, where he planned to hike, explore nature, and experience what life was like far from the modern world.  After months of being out in “the wild,” Chris discovers that nature is “harsh and uncaring” and decides that he wishes to return home to his friends and family. Unfortunately, Chris discovers that the river he would have to cross to return had become much too deep and unmanageable to cross again. Chris is forced to return to the abandoned bus that he has been living in in hopes that someone will find him and rescue him.  After Chris runs out of supplies, he gathers roots and plants to eat, but he accidentally confuses these plants and becomes really sick. Chris McCandless soon dies alone in the bus that he had come to call home (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0758758/). Below is the official movie trailer for Into The Wild.

                This story is one that exemplifies the deterministic aspect of naturalism perfectly. Chris McCandless never wanted to die, but nature and other forces beyond his control determined his fate, just like nature determined the fate of the hiker in London’s story “To Build a Fire.”

                Chris’s story is one that has fascinated me since I first saw the movie. I can’t imagine donating all of my college savings to charity and deciding to travel “into the wild.” I can’t even begin to imagine what an amazing experience Chris had while he traveled. Other people who have become fascinated with the story of Chris McCandless have actually taken the hike out to the bus, which still stands along the Stampede Trail as a memorial to Chris and his adventure. Below is a video filmed by a man who hiked the Stampede Trail to see “The Magic Bus.”

                If any of you haven’t seen this movie, I would highly recommend it. The story of McCandless is truly amazing, and the movie does a great job of imitating what life for Chris must have been like on his excursion into the wild. Also, if anyone is interested, I have provided a link to the official website of Chris McCandless below.

http://www.christophermccandless.info/

W. E. B. Du Bois and Humans Rights Issues

 For class, we were assigned a group project on W. E. B. Du Bois’s The Souls of Black Folk. Our particular assignment was on chapter one: “Of Our Spiritual Strivings.” Each group was asked to creatively present Du Bois’s ideas from their assigned chapter to the rest of the class and to tell the class whether or not these ideas are still relevant today (and if so, how they are relevant today).

My group, which consisted of Grace Larkin, Kaytie Etheredge, and myself, decided to put together a video for our presentation. We think it turned out really awesome, so I’m hoping everyone else thinks so too!

Gilman’s Clever Use of Symbolism

     Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” is a story that I have read numerous times. In fact, this story is probably one of my very favorite works from American Literature. After this particular reading, I found myself wanting to learn more about Gilman’s clever use of symbolism in the story and how she uses it to portray the larger matter at hand: the oppression of women.

                                                               

     In the nineteenth century, women were often viewed as inferior to men, large in part due to the gender roles set by the society of that time. These women were typically stereotyped as weak, emotional, and completely irrational people who had to rely on men for everything (http://www2.ivcc.edu/gen2002/women_in_the_nineteenth_century.htm). Virtually the only responsibilities that women of this time period were given were to take care of the household and to have and take care of children. In Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper,” Gilman carefully uses symbolism to illustrate this stereotypical position of women in American society during the nineteenth century. Gilman specifically focuses on how a male-dominated society’s way of thinking can trap women in positions with little power.

                                               

     In this story, the narrator is suffering from post-partum depression. Her physician husband and her specialist both agree that the “rest cure” is the best way to help her get better. Her husband then confines her to a room that is covered in perplexing yellow wallpaper. The narrator is so fascinated by the wallpaper that she, in a sense, becomes controlled by the wallpaper, which can be said to symbolize the oppression of women by society.

     After living in the room with the yellow wallpaper for an extended amount of time, the narrator begins to feel even more trapped as each day progresses, just as most nineteenth century women presumably felt with each passing day. The narrator constantly writes about the wallpaper: about its patterns, about the shapes behind the patterns, and eventually about the woman trapped behind the paper. At first, she can only see this woman at night. In the daylight, “she is subdued [and] quiet,” but in the moonlight, she appears to “shake the pattern, just as if she wanted to get out” (http://www.online-literature.com/charlotte-perkins-gilman/2086/). This distinction might suggest that women of this time tended to go along with and obey the rules of society during the day, when people would see, and these women were more likely to “shake” some these rules at “night,” when the public eye was not watching.

     The woman who the narrator claims is trapped behind the wallpaper soon merges with the narrator herself, at least in the narrator’s deluded mind.  This merge takes place because the narrator has a connection of sorts with the trapped woman who is fighting to break free from the wallpaper. This woman behind the wallpaper can be said to symbolize all nineteenth century women who wanted to get away from the stereotypical gender roles in which they had been placed by the men of society. Just as the woman wanted to break free from the wallpaper, nineteenth century women had the desire to break free from the oppression they were facing during this particular time.

                          

Here is a short video of a news story discussing how far our society has come in terms of how gender roles affect our day to day lives.

If it weren’t for the nineteenth century women who wanted to break free of these unjust gender roles, women in America might still be oppressed today. Fortunately, the Feminist movement that began in the late nineteenth century has made it possible for women in America to live their own lives, virtually free of oppression by men.

I Like Her Style–Emily’s Eccentricities

     Emily Dickinson was a nonconformist. After taking only a glance at some of her poetry, one will see exactly how eccentric her style of writing truly was. The excessive use of dashes, the seemingly random capitalization, and the clever use of slant rhyme—combined with the use of common meter—leave some readers scratching their heads and groaning in frustration. All of the aforementioned quirks often make reading Dickinson’s poetry difficult, especially when one has to read the poetry aloud. While reading some of her poetry for myself, I found myself asking why she wrote in such a peculiar way, and after a bit of light research, I found many of the answers I was looking for.

     Although no one knows for certain, the use of the dash, as well as the seemingly random capitalization of words in Dickinson’s poetry most likely developed while she was preparing to attend Mount Holyoke Female Seminary. The grammar textbook used by Mount Holyoke allowed the use of dashes to replace other forms of punctuation, as well as the use of capitalization to “stress and personify common nouns” (http://www.emilydickinsonmuseum.org/ed/node/111).

     Almost all of Emily Dickinson’s poems follow the ABCB rhyme scheme, yet some readers may have difficulty seeing this rhyme. Her use of different types of rhyme, particularly the use of slant rhyme, makes seeing and hearing the rhyme difficult for readers. Slant rhyme is a type of rhyme that has only the final consonant sounds in common (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/slant+rhyme). In Dickinson’s poem “I started Early – Took my Dog,” one stanza reads:

And He – He followed – close behind –

I felt His Silver Heel

Opon my Ancle – Then My Shoes

Would overflow with Pearl – (lines 17-20)

The word “Heel” on line 18 and the word “Pearl” on line 20 are considered slant rhymes because of the same final consonant sound of the letter “L” in both words. Students are taught how to use perfect rhyme at an early age, so naturally this is the type of rhyme that is easiest to pick up on. Because readers are accustomed to the use of perfect rhyme, spotting slant rhyme in poetry may be somewhat difficult. So now we find ourselves asking why Dickinson would stray from the use of perfect rhyme in favor of slant rhyme. One source suggests that perhaps, because of her seclusion from the outside world, she tended to focus more on her own world, allowing for innovation and originality in her style of writing (http://www.americanpoems.com/poets/emilydickinson/index.shtml).

     One aspect of Dickinson’s writing that seemed to be more “normal” than the rest was the meter she used in her works. Her poetry is often written in four line stanzas (quatrains), and the lines of poetry alternate between the use of iambic tetrameter and iambic trimeter. This type of meter is also known as a type of hymn meter, referred to as common meter (http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/5814). Meter refers to use of stressed and unstressed syllables, and the type of meter used by Dickinson alternates between stressed and unstressed syllables, making the poems sound melodious when read aloud. The best explanation for her use of this meter is that the up-and-down flow of the words not only makes a poem easier to read, but it also makes it easier to remember.

     A really good example of hymn meter can be found in the song “O Little Town of Bethlehem.” This song is written in the exact meter used in Dickinson’s poetry, making it possible to sing her poetry along with the tune from this song. The video posted below is an instrumental of the song, so if anyone wants to try it, please feel free to do so. I, for one, will never be able to read a Dickinson poem again: I will have to sing it!

Allow Me to Introduce Myself: 10 Fun Facts About Me!

~WARNING: Since this is just an introductory post, I did not use a very formal tone or 100% proper grammar. I figured since I am just introducing myself, I should make an effort to show you all my personality with my words. I solemnly swear that each post after this one will be much more formal and grammatically correct. =)

Hello everyone!

My name is Lea Isbell, and I am currently a sophomore at JSU! Since all of you should be able to see my picture (I’m the cutie with glasses in the Iron Maiden shirt  \m/  ), and since I have a brief “about me” displayed under my picture, I decided I would just write an introductory post of ten random facts about myself to share with all of you.

1. I am a huge metalhead (as if you haven’t guessed already)! I actually listen to all kinds of music, but metal music just so happens to be my very favorite.
2. I get the hiccups when I laugh a lot. Honestly, it’s kind of embarrassing at times because I have no way of preventing it from happening. Once I get the hiccups, I begin to laugh even more at myself, which does absolutely nothing but make my problem much much worse. Apparently I’ve done it since I was a baby. This dilemma wouldn’t necessarily be a big deal if I didn’t laugh so much, but I am a typically happy person, so I laugh quite a bit. Hahahaha! =)
3. I am addicted to Days of Our Lives. No, this is not a joke. I haven’t missed an episode in ten years. Yes, this means I have been watching Days of Our Lives since I was nine. I blame my mother.
4. I recently went to China. In May 2012, I went to China with two teachers from the JSU English Department (one of which was Mrs. Christopher) and nine other students from the JSU Honors Program. The trip was nothing short of amazing, and if I could hop on a plane and go back to visit tomorrow, I would do so without hesitation.
5. I love football. I love high school, college, and professional football. I graduated from high school as a Lineville Aggie, but the two schools in Clay County recently combined, so this season, my high school team is the Central High School Volunteers! As far as college football goes…War Eagle and Go Gamecocks!!! As far as NFL goes, I don’t have a favorite, but I watch a ton of NFL football nonetheless.
6. I turn my TV on QVC when I need to do my homework. Yes, my TV is on QVC right now, and they are selling those really awesome Temp-tations dishes that my mom loves so much.
7. I am a Math and English person. You know how most people are either Math and Science people or English and History people? Yeah…I’m one of those oddballs who likes Math and English. =)
8. When I go to the movies, I put M&M’s in my popcorn. If the popcorn is still somewhat warm, it melts the inside of the M&M, making the combination absolutely amazing.
9. I have an Alice Cooper teddy bear. My first concert was an Alice Cooper concert, and they were selling little white teddy bears that had painted black eyes and were wearing mini Alice Cooper t-shirts…and of course, I had to get one!
10. I love to crochet. Yes, I love to crochet. I’m unique, what can I say?! (Unintentional Dr. Seussy sounding rhyme there…haha)

Now that I have shared a few completely useless facts about myself, it’s time to bring this entry to a close. I am very excited about this American Literature II class with Mrs. Christopher, and I am looking forward to learning about literature in a unique way this semester!