The Theory of Feminism - Subordination and the Undesirable Sex in “Mulan”

The issue of the oppression of women is a constant unraveling of what has been an establishment that has been forming since the beginning of time. The constant struggle for women to overcome their role that is considered the “weaker sex” is prevalent in our world history. Obviously the most impact and progress for women was during the civil rights movement of the 1960’s where women decided that they did not want to be told what they were supposed to be or do. For example, “For the women’s movement of the 1960’s and early 1970s the subject of feminism was women’s experience under patriarchy, the long tradition of male rule in society which silenced women’s voices, distorted their lives, and treated their concerns as peripheral” (Rivkin 765). Women were to be seen and not spoken to in many cultures and were good for only a few things in the culture…to procreate and serve the desired sex. For example when Mulan finds out that a few of the Huns survived the avalanche that she created with the fire cracker and tries to ask for help from the men of China she is not only ignored but pushed aside. For example, “Please sir can you help me the Huns are alive we need to stop them from taking the Emperor”. She responds to their indigence with a comment to Mushu, “Why won’t anybody listen?” Mushu replies with, “Cause you a girl again, remember. Nobody’s going to listen to you” (Mulan). In many cases women felt as if they weren’t even there, “To be a woman under such conditions was in some respects not to exist at all” (Rivkin 765). The theory I’m going to be talking about is that there is a desired sex and that subordination, oppression, and the silencing are an expression or extension of this theory.
My argument comes down to the fact that throughout history the favorable sex has always been the male. Men are physically stronger than women giving them already a dominant quality; men were educated while women were not, and having limited options to provide for themselves women were forced to depend on men to support them, leaving them no other option but to marry so that they would be taken care of. For example, “Banished from education and from public life, women writers had found refuge in literary forms despised by men, in diaries and letters and in sentimental fiction” (Rivkin 766). In the Disney movie “Mulan” you see this idea of the favorable sex throughout the movie. For example when Mulan ends up at the training camp for the Chinese army, as they are training you hear a number of degrading comments towards women, “Did you send me daughters? When I asked for sons.” (Mulan)

Implying that men are not only the more desired ore preferred sex but more honorable. Women’s limited roles in China are demonstrated with Mulan’s struggle to live up to her culture’s expectations. For example when she goes to see the matchmaker to set her up with a husband she is criticized for being too skinny for not being able to bare sons, “Too skinny. Not good for baring sons” (Mulan). Men are what is considered the desired position but you do not have a desired position without having an undesired position which is the role that women play. It is what makes it so great because when you are not a king or emperor without people to rule over, so the position of the subordinate is very important to the superior because it makes it what it is. You can’t have one without the other. In “Mulan” the position of man is glorified making it the ultimate seem what should be striven for. For example, “You’re the saddest bunch I ever met but you can bet before we’re through, somehow I’ll make a man out of you” (Mulan).
Adrienne Rich is a famous writer who helped in opening to the public eye the changes that were taking place not just in society itself but also in how literature was look or criticized of the roles that women play or played throughout history in her essay “When We Dead Awaken”. For example, “‘When We Dead Awaken’ seemed to Adreienne Rich a justified title for an address regarding women at the Modern Language Association in 1970” (Rivkin 766). Her role to inspire a look at women’s roles in literature and how they have affected women’s idea of how they view themselves guided her main arguments of women experiencing silencing in literature and taking on the role of the oppressed. For example, “…Rich inspired into life a school of feminist literary criticism that took the history of women’s oppression and silencing of as twin beacons to guide its work” (Rivkin 766). Even certain phrases within our culture have used women for the brunt of its insults because to mimic the undesirable sex would make one of lesser value. For example when playing sports a phrase that is often used to insult the skills of a player is, “You play like a girl”, tying women to the negative insult. Meaning to be a woman is an insult even for women themselves. Rivkin and Ryan talk about the impact of language and how it has affected Feminist theory. For example, “Feminist literary criticism moves with time from the criticism of writing by men and the exploration of writing by women to a questioning of what it means at all to engage with or in language” (Rivkin 769). Our culture has designed an ideal of what the woman’s role is to play so that everything works together to play out the roles in society that we are obligated to fulfill. Karen O'Brien talks in the magazine of the Cambridge University Press about Isobel Grundy’s book “Slaying Knights in Quest for Equality” addressing the issue of socially constructed roles that are created by society and that are pressed upon the genders to fulfill, which affects how women view themselves. They are trapped in a sense and do not or did not have the role models in society and in literature that would help them towards equality, “As philosophy came to define the human being less in terms of mind and more in terms of social organization, women became more central but not more equal” (O'Brien318pp ). With this need many out breaking role models for the women’s movement began to take place in a patriarchal society that was difficult to penetrate. Writers like Mary Wollstonecraft and Catharine Macaulay took on this role to try and change the view of women in society and in literature. For example, “Catharine Macaulay and Mary Wollstonecraft found they had to rewrite the accepted history of civilization before they could challenge the "cult of chivalric manners", the belief that woman was weak so that man might be not only strong but also generous and forbearing: in a word, civilized” (O'Brien318pp ).
In Mulan there is a section that talks about how men want a woman worth fighting for. Their very existence of masculinity comes from the comparing of what is feminine. They are in a sense using women’s role in society to build up their own sense of what is masculine in a patriarchal society and bounce and use that position of privilege to give themselves the superior position. Irigaray for example talks about this use of building up the masculine roles by using the feminine roles as somewhat of a stepping stool, “What she calls ‘feminine’ – everything having to do with matter and the contact between material planes – has to be subordinated to a masculine idealizing tendency that uses the feminine as a mirror for its own narcissistic speculations” (Rivkin 795). In other words you only have the masculine because of the feminine. It’s like you only have a king because you have the subjects. Not only were women told by society what was a woman’s role is in the movie, but Mulan discovers how shallow the men’s actual perspective on women are. There is a scene in the movie where they are all talking about what type of girl they would like and they all were talking about women that would do something for them, not a what they like in a woman. For example, “I want a girl who’s pale as the moon with eyes that shine like stars” and “I want a girl who adores my battle scares” and last, “I don’t care what she where’s or what she looks like, it all depends on what she cooks like” (Mulan). Mulan counteracts their comments with her comment about what she’d find attractive in a girl because she’s pretending to be a man, “How bout a girl who’s got a brain, who always speaks her mind” (Mulan). The guys respond negatively with a “Nahhhh” (Mulan). Demonstrating the limited idea of what a woman can be and that they are only there to please men. Irigaray talks about how even the language construction itself keeps women in the position of subordination compared to men because language was constructed under a patriarchal system. This causes the very utterance of words even used to combat the desired sex to become weak and have less of an impact because the weapons or tools used by the undesired sex have been made to favor the desired sex. For example, “An organization that maintains, among other things, the break between what is perceptible and what is intelligible, and thus maintains the submission, subordination, and exploitation of the ‘feminine’” (Rivkin 797). This handicap makes fighting what has been ingrained into the system very difficult to combat because there are not the tools to use to combat it, “This language work would thus attempt to thwart any manipulation of discourse that would also leave discourse intact” (Rivkin 797).
The use of not just language itself but the literature that has impacted society itself is affect by this idea of the patriarchal society. Gilbert and Gubar talk about the negative impact that literature has placed upon women because it has given women an image of what they should act and look like. Their argument was in order for women to move away from the patriarchal idea of what a woman should be or act like is to change the roles and the way that women are portrayed in literature in order to break the cycle. For example, “Their argument in this selection is that even the positive images of women in literature express negative energies and desires on the part of the male writers” (Rivkin 812). She’s basically saying that men cannot express women the women want to be expressed because they are the very source that has shaped the mold of what women should be in society. So in order for women writers to express positive images in literature they need to see positive roles themselves. For example, “Drawing on the work of Harold Bloom regarding poetic identity, they argued that women could not become writers and assume a writer’s identity until they found appropriate models for themselves in the tradition” (Rivkin 812). However, beginning a role model for those to come is a difficult challenge to overcome, like what Mulan faces in the movie. When she is discovered as woman the member of the emperor’s council completely disrespects Mulan once he finds out she is a woman. He is absolutely disgusted by her because she has taken on a role that is not hers to take and in doing so he degrades her by calling her a snake. For example, “Tis a woman….a trechurous snake” indicating that women are sly creatures that must be kept in their line or place because they are cunning and deceptive. To forge a way in a place that has not been forged is very difficult but Gilbert and Gubar are trying to say that change is not possible without sacrifice of those who pave the way.

Women in society also have enormous pressure to live up to what is considered beautiful, gorgeous, and sought after by me. This is another social construction by a patriarchal society in which the idealized woman is placed on a pedastool that must be mimicked and copied so that every woman should strive for this same idea. Gardiner talks about this in her on her brief article on a book review of Carol Dyhouse’s book “Glamour” that addresses these issues in society. For example, “Glamour has always been about women not knowing their place. From the late 19th century, when the word first gained currency with its undertones of sorcery, it has had an edge of opprobrium and envy” (Gardiner). This idea of a woman needing to fulfill her identity as a sexual object is something that has infiltrated many if not almost all. There is not a social equality in a sense that there is this idea pushed upon women to be what men want them to be, “It is about allure, about wanting and yearning, about transformation and the democratisation of desire” (Gardiner). Not only have women been infiltrated with this idealized look that they must attain but also a psychological idea of what true success is, to find and man and to live happily ever after. This illusionary idea put upon the females brain makes her feel the need to fulfill her dreams to be rescued by a prince. Women who strove towards the feminist thought recognized this fake reality of a dream that they had been fed as a child and realized as females they are given this idea of a fantasy lifestyle because they are female, “…feminist fiction chronicled the psychological and sometimes literal journeys taken by women who come to a gradual understanding of the ways that gender prescribes their lives” (Leonard). The efforts to try and deter women from this one track way of thinking that their one and only goal in life is to find a husband was through revamping of literature and the way women were portrayed themselves, “…feminist fiction tends to defamilarize and demythologize heterosexual romance, and in particular, the way it channels women into matrimony” (Leonard). Leonard talks about the dreamlike idea of what marriage will be someday because the culture has placed upon it this type of status. Many films including Disney create the ideal place for a woman to be in her life is when she is finally wed to her prince. Just look at all of the films that we have grown up with. “The gesture to turn a critical gaze on marriage was informed by rhetoric emerging from the Women's Liberation Movement, which often encouraged a rethinking of the coercive power of love and romance” (Leonard). In Mulan she does end up in the end with her prince and he does the typical going after her, but what is different in this case is that she realizes that she does not have to be rescued anymore in order to be happy. Sorry to make a cliché but it’s like she has found the hero inside of her. She does not need the matchmaker to honor her family anymore. She has broken the barriers of her culture. Ad although this contemporary sort of tale is told in an older generation where we could not see so much freedom to be given a woman, the positive impact on the female child is much more affective.


Works Cited
Gardiner, Juliet. "Glamour: Women, history and feminism." History Today 60.4 (2010): 59. Expanded Academic ASAP. Web. 17 May 2010.
Leonard, Suzanne. "'I really must be an Emma Bovary': female literacy and adultery in feminist fiction." Genders 51 (2010). Expanded Academic ASAP. Web. 17 May 2010.
O'Brien, Karen. “Slaying Knights in Quest for Equality: Women and Enlightenment in Eighteenth-Century Britain”. Cambridge University Press. Pg. 52 No. 1909 Web 3 March 2009.
Rivkin, Julie and Ryan, Michael “Literary Theory: An Anthology” Ed. Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan. United Kingdom: P, 2004. Print.

Analysis # 5 Post-Coloniality, "Borderlands/La Frontera", and "Walkout"

The critical theory of Post-Coloniality explains the text “Borderlands/La Frontera” by Gloria Anzaldua by demonstrating its ideas of combating colonialism’s enduring effects on cultures by challenging the indoctrination of the grand narrative, expressing the multiple voices, and showing the importance of language identity. Anzaldua talks about this in her essay and how she has felt that she has not been able to be anything else but what she has been told or taught to be. She recognizes the need for her people to be one of the many voices in the narrative of the United States in order to tell her people’s story also. She demonstrates this by giving examples of history and the civil rights movement. This is an example of challenging the grand narrative and the Mexican American people’s efforts in history to work towards adding their voce to the many voices in America, “Chicano’s did not know we were a people until 1965 when Ceasar Chavez and the farmworkers united and I am Joaquin was published and la Raza Unida party was formed in Texas” (Rivkin 1029). For the expressing multiple voices she differentiates ethnicity from being part of a country or coming from a country. She says she is Mexican because it is in her blood. She appreciates that part of herself that in innately inside of her and that is passed down in her family. For example, “Deep in our hearts we believe that being Mexican has nothing to do with which country one lives in. Being Mexican is a state of soul – not one of mind, not one of citizenship” (1029). She shows the pride that she feels and expresses it so the audience can know that being Mexican is not just where you are from. For the importance of language identity she continues Anzaldua goes into her essay of the need for her people to preserve their native tongue. she talks about how it is not just a language, just as how she had talked about how being Mexican is not just being from the country. She explains that being Mexican and the language are tied together. Language is not just and expression of their ethnicity. For example, “Ethnic identity is twin skin to linguistic identity – I am my language. Until I can take pride in my language, I cannot take pride in myself” (1027). She is urging her readers to understand the immense tie that there is between the two. Language is an expression of someone’s very soul and they take pride or should take pride in how they want to express themselves. For example, “If a person, Chicana or Latina, has a low estimation of my native tongue, she also has a low estimation of me” (1026). A combating of colonialism’s effects can be used through language. Anzaldua talks about her effort to learn a combination of Spanish and English that was created to rebel against the constant pressures of the colonialism efforts to speak correct English and her cultures expectations to speak proper Spanish. There is a lot of pressure on both ends but she comes out strong as ever with urge to want to feel the pride she wants to express. For example, “From kids and people my own age I picked up Pachuo. Pachuo (the language of the zoot suiters) is a language of rebellion, both against Standard Spanish and Standard English” (1025). There is this sense of empowerment here that she has created for her self and that she wants her readers to understand.
The power of language is demonstrated in this video from the movie "Walk Out". In the movie they are trying to fight for the respect from the government to create better school systems for the Chicano community. During this immense effort they learn to take pride in their ethnicity and language screaming "Que Viva La Raza" to motivate each other.

Group Project on Postmodernism

For my group’s presentation we focused on the Postmodernism theory where I contributed by explaining Deleuze and Guatarri’s theory, we used media to show differences between Modernism and Postmodernism, and a fun group activity to help the class be able to understand this idea better. Modernism set the stage for what postmodernism would soon come to fully develop into. In saying that we did a brief overview of what modernism was and what it affected. The idea of Modernism affected identity, authority, unity, and rejected the Enlightenment thinking and existence of an all powerful creator. After giving a brief summery of what modernism was about we gave an example of modernism by showing a clip of the 1960’s version of Romeo and Juliet.

We introduced Postmodernism by explaining what the movement was all about and how it affected society. Complete beliefs of societies were questioned and everything was affected by this new idea of viewing the world. After we discussed modernism we explained the main ideas of what postmodernism is and what it affected in society. It displays rejection of objective truth, and the grand narrative. There is an emphasis or focus on linguistics and language. What used to be comfort in discovery or seeking knowledge became distrust of science, skepticism, and separation. Here’s a definition I found in the online dictionary of what postmodernism looks like for a little more in depth look, “any of a number of trends or movements in the arts and literature developing in the 1970s in reaction to or rejection of the dogma, principles, or practices of established modernism, esp. a movement in architecture and the decorative arts running counter to the practice and influence of the International Style and encouraging the use of elements from historical vernacular styles and often playful illusion, decoration, and complexity” (dictionary.com).
My contribution to the group was to explain how Deleuze and Guattari’s essay “A Thousand Plateaus” also emphasized these main ideas of eliminating the grand narrative and old forms that people would look to for models. He instead went into these ideas into more depth of describing the new way of looking at things, or rather through the postmodern lens. For example, “Deleuze and Guattari…describe a conflict between two modes of social organization that coincide with two models of reality. One is arboresque (treelike) and favors order and hierarchy. The other is rhizomatic (rootstalk) and favors an undoing of all such orders and hierarchies” (Rivkin 378). H took these analogies to help his readers to understand the idea he was trying to convey. The first model of reality being called arboresque or treelike because it has more of a hierarchal aspect or look to it, compared to the rhizomatic or rootstalk which grows horizontally and has its roots and shoots sent everywhere. For example, “A horizontal, usually underground stem that often sends out roots and shoots from its nodes” (dictionary.com). Which gives you not the hierarchal feel that you get from the arboresque mode, where there are people on the top and people on the bottom. The rhizome displays that that everyone’s equal and also that in the case of the grand narrative that there are many mini narratives instead. The other point that I talked about was this idea that much of what was in modernism had a fixed quality and there wasn’t a lot changing, which Deleuze and Guattari called territorialization. However, deterritorialization represented the postmodern view of constant deconstruction. The idea is that everything has already been constructed so we must work on new material by deconstructing. For example, “History…alternates between moments of fixity and power that they call ‘territorialization’ and moments of ‘deterritorialization’ or undoing, when fixed orders fall apart and are transformed” (Rivkin 378).
We also demonstrated this idea of postmodernism by creating an activity for the class by giving them construction paper and chalk to so that they could interpret the work painting “The Birth of Venus” that we displayed on the screen. It was very enlightening to see the variety of interpretation and deconstruction of the painting that everyone shared once they were done. Everyone had a different idea of what they believed the painting was trying to express. This coincides with the idea that I explained earlier of the rejection of the grand narrative and its new emphasis on individual experiences and voices. At the end of the presentation to sum up, we showed the postmodernist version of Romeo and Juliet that was made in the 1990’s, which was a perfect example of postmodernism at work in our society.

Foucault's "Discipline and Punish" vs. "The Matrix"

In "The Matrix" Neo is pulled out of the simulated or dream world of the matrix into the real world of the rebellion against the agents or the machines that have taken over the planet. He has a choice to live in the dream world of the humans that is completely unaware of everything because they are blinded by the truth. The humans are watched completely by the agents of the world. This is very relevant to what Foucault was talking about in "Discipline and Punishment". In the essay it talks about those that are infected with this disease or plague are watched like the humans in "The Matrix". For example in the trailer agent Smith says, "Human beings are a disease. You are a cancer of this planet and we are the cure" (The Matrix). When they say they are "the cure" they really are what Foucault talked about as the syndics, intendants, or guards who survey the area all the time and make sure that those that are quarantined do not leave their houses. For example, "Each street is placed under the authority of a syndic who keeps it under surveillance; if he leaves the street, he will be condemned to death. On the appointed day, everyone is ordered to stay indoors: it is forbidden to leave on pain of death" (Rivkin 551). In the matrix these agents jobs are supposed to prevent people from leaving the Matrix, just like it’s the guards jobs in “Discipline and Punishment” to have those infected to not leave their houses. In Wikipedia they talked about the agents positions and abilities, “He is warned of the presence of Agents, fast and powerful sentient computer programs with the ability to take over the virtual body of anyone still directly connected to the Matrix, whose purpose is to seek out and eliminate any threats to the simulation” (Wikipedia.com).The houses that the humans are forbidden to leave represent the world or the matrix that is used to block the people from learning the truth about what is going on and the ability to leave the house. For example in the trailer Morpheus says, "The Matrix is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth" (The Matrix). With the gain of the truth in the real world Neo also learns that the technology of his body as a human was only partially being used. In this new state he discovers that the body has new knowledge and that he has the ability to conquer the physical inabilities he experienced as a human. For example, "there may be a 'knowledge' of the body that is not exactly the science of its functioning, and a mastery of its forces that is more than the ability to conquer them: this knowledge and this mastery constitute what might be called the political technology of the body" (Rivkin 549). In Wikipedia they talk about the abilities he acquires as, “Within the Matrix, they are able to use their understanding of its nature to bend the laws of physics within the simulation, giving them superhuman abilities” (wikipedia.com). In the trailer it shows them running from building to building and fighting in very precise slow moving actions.

Analysis # 3 - Marxism, Ideology, and "Great Expectations"

The theory of Marxism talks about the need to destroy the hierarchal class system that is structured on the basis of property ownership or economic wealth. For example, "In this sense, the theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property" (Manifesto of Communism 34). In other words, you are what you own. This theory can be applied to Althusser's text, "Ideology and the Ideological State Apparatuses" because it talks about how we view ideology only as say a group of ideas or beliefs but that they are also materialistic in that they are tangible for us to see. According to Althusser there is a dependence of the individual on their conditions of existence, that creates a material representation of themselves to the world that is represented through class structure and production in the economy. For example, "...'individuals' who live in ideology, ...representation of the world whose imaginary distortion depends on their imaginary relation to their conditions of existence, in other words, in the last instance, to the relations of production and to class relations (ideology = an imaginary relation to real relations). I shall say that this imaginary relation is itself endowed by a material existence" (Rivkin 695). Whole ideologies of cultures are shown through class structure and systems. A person is identified of their class position by their job, place of residence, and clothing. They are defined by the social strutures in which are built and the economies that are class separated. Those that are subject to the subjection (which are the proletariats) of the Bourgois give that subjection freely because they are given the idea that they are free, when the one freedom they do have is to submit their freedom. For example, "a subjected being who submits to higher authority, and is therefore stripped of all freedom except that of freely accepting his submission" (Rivkin 701). They are held captive to society's set position for them. Never able to penetrate the scale of the Bourgeois, the Proletariet becomes stuck or cemented into the position that has been given to them. Thus their lot in life is to fullfill that role that society has molded for them. Fullfilling the need for capital through their acts of labour. Marxism yearns to try and stop this act of exploitation of the laborer, "All we want to do away with is the miserable character of this appropriation, under which the labourer lives merely to increase capital, and is allowed to live only in so far as the interest of the ruling class requires it" (Manifesto of communism 36). What it comes down to is that the Marxism theory has good intentions to try and give more power to those who do not have much.
In the novel "Great Expectations" by Charles Dickens it shows the class differences and the subjection of the proletariet (Pip) from the Bourgeois (Estella). Estella is from a priviledged background and so looks down upon Pip because he is from the working class. She saysin the clip below, "But he is a common laboring boy. And look at his boots!" Insulting his appearance by his attire because he is not of the upper crust or the Bourgeois. She also points out his different dialect when he calls one of the playing cards Jacks instead of Knaves. "He calls the Knaves Jacks this boy! She's commenting on his use of slang words instead of the "Proper" wording, spreading the class difference even further. Then she also points out his hands that are rough which would signify those who had to work hard for their money. "What course hands he has". Finally she insults with the comment, "You stupid, clumsy laboring boy". Because of their class difference she is labling him as "stupid" and "clumsy". Using labels she may have learned from those around her. Later when Pip is in bed he ponders over her insults and thinks about what Estella would think of his family. What Joe does for a living, one of the common forms of labor, a blacksmith. "I thought of Estella and how common she would consider Joe, a mere blacksmith". Finally he thinks about in bed something as simple as his sister and brother in law sitting in the kitchen during the evening and how utterly lower class that would be to Estella. "I thought how he and my sister were sitting in the kitchen and how Miss Havisham and Estella never sat in a kitchen, but were far above the level of such common things". She has opened Pip's eyes to the attitudes and class differences that Marx talked about in a capitalist society and the exploitation of the Proletariet.


Works Cited

Rivkin, Julie and Michael Ryan. Literary Theory: An Anthology. Blackwell Publishing 2004

Marx, Karl and Frederick Engels. Manifesto of the Communist Party. Charles H. Kerr & Company. Chicago 1908

Lacan's "The Mirror Stage"

Lacan’s psychoanalytical essay “The Mirror Stage” goes into Freud’s development of the concept of the Id. The baby though possibly unable to move it’s body much at all, is able to notice its reflection. I found this quite fascinating because if you put an animal in front of a mirror they do not have that same sense of self awareness that a baby has, who can’t move as much as say a dog. For example, “The child, at an age when he is for a time, however short, outdone by the chimpanzee is instrumental intelligence, can nevertheless already recognize as such his own image in a mirror” (Rivkin 441). With this recognition the baby becomes somewhat captivated by its own image. Lacan’s definition of the mirror stage was that it was not just an infant looking at his/her own reflection and that was it. The baby’s perspective on himself/herself becomes what he calls subjective or a human being’s personal perspective on a situation. In other words we all see ourselves in a particular light and are biased with by how we see ourselves. There is a relationship between the Ego and the Body and also what is imaginary and what is real for a child. For example, “Lacan describes his concept of the self as a delusory construct plagued in its very constitution by imaginary identifications with a spurious sense of wholeness or unity” (Rivkin 442).

The "Oedipus Complex" compared to "Hamlet"

Freud delved into this idea of children desiring the parent of the opposite sex for themselves and hating the parent of the same sex because they take away the parent of the opposite sex. His idea of this psychosexual attachment of a parent, which is taboo in most societies, was later named by Freud “The Oedipus Complex”, after the play Oedipus the King, which was written by Sophocles, one of the great ancient Greek tragedians. For example, “At the core of Freud’s sexual theory is the so-called “Oedipus Complex”, something Freud believed all children experience as a rite of passage to adult gender identity” (Rivkin 391). In order to cope with this desire which is not acceptable in society these children learn to repress these feelings and identify with the parent of the same sex. This action allows these feelings to remain in the unconscious and to overcome this desire. For example, “The male child learns to give up his initial ‘pre-Oedipal’ desire for and attachment to the mother; instead, he identifies with the father…and learns to desire other women than the mother” (Rivkin 391). This is displayed in Shakespeare’s story Hamlet which shows the protagonist struggle with his desire for his mother once his father has been murdered and his uncle has taken his Father's place with the mother. With Hamlet's Father's role being retaken, Hamlet must relive all over again the psychosexual feelings that he has repressed for his mother since a child. Hamlet’s expresses this "Oedipus Complex" struggle in the scene where he goes to visit his mother in her bedchamber. The intimate quarrel that appears between the two during this scene seems to trigger about Oedipus’s already disturbed repressed feelings.

Freud's "Second Self" compared to "The Mask"

In Rivkin’s “Intro: Strangers to ourselves” I found the development of psychoanalysis by Freud in his research of the unconscious interesting because his research challenged the idea of the human mind and how it is not chained to its natural instincts compared to animals. For example, “The ‘cogito’ or thinking self defines our humanity and our civility, our difference from animals chained to blind nature and uncontrollable instincts” (Rivkin 389). This idea of psychoanalysis was to access the inaccessible through different means and ways in which had never been approached or analyzed before in the human psyche. The areas that were now looked at were people’s dreams and their neurotic symptoms, which could express repressed thoughts or experiences. For example, “His discovery was that the human mind contains a dimension that is only partially accessible to consciousness and then only through indirect means such as dreams or neurotic symptoms” (Rivkin 389). Freud talks about these repressed feelings which create in a person a double self. We conform to society’s idea of what is appropriate behavior or thoughts and in doing so have two sides of ourselves which creates another area of ourselves in which we do not recognize. For example, “Repression is essential to civilization, the conversion of animal instinct into civil behavior, but such repression creates what might be called a second self, a stranger within, a place where all that cannot for one reason or another be expressed or realized in civil life takes up residence” (Rivkin 389). Freud’s idea of the double self that people create with their repressed thoughts and feelings that are natural or instinct driven and that are not acceptable in society I think relates to the movie “The Mask” with Jim Carey. In the movie the main character fits this idea of an acceptable citizen in society who acts and behaves appropriately. Until he finds this mask in which he uses as an outlet to act upon his hidden desires or impulses. This alternate side to him self is not held back by societies’ idea of appropriate behavior or morals but driven by natural instincts and impulses. He is more animalistic in a sense because he is driven by his instincts and desires and pursues them with full force.

Defamiliarization

The extensive piceous compressed passage weaves in and out of the structures that appear in many different shapes and sizes. Most are box shaped but some are rectangle or round like a circle. Some are very very tall making them appear like they could maybe reach heaven they are so high. And in these different shaped structures many different size and shaped creatures go to and from them. Some very high, some low, some wide around the perimeter, and some threadlike around the perimeter. And besides the different amount of mass that these creatures possess, they also come in many different iridescence. Some are very aphotic in their iridescence, like they’ve been grazed from the golden sphere that sits high about the many shaped structures and many different masses of the multiple iridescent creatures. Some are almost lucent like they have never seen a day of the golden sphere in their existence. Others are a tinge between both, that appear to be somewhat grazed by the golden sphere above them. The creatures also have millions of fibers coming out from one side of the orb shaped ends of their frames. On the other side of the orb there appears to be two smaller orbs that vary in hues of each creature, just like the fibers and the outer covering of these creatures’ frames. The two small circles move around a lot, especially when the other creatures holler to them in their native language that involves a clacking and a clicking of the orb below these two colorful circles in what appears to be an opening. In which the creatures place many different objects into, such as other smaller creatures and substances that become larger, when liquid drawn from a body of hydrogen and oxygen is taken and descended onto the substances. And when the golden sphere spreads its irradiation upon the substance they evolve much faster. Above the opening on the orb of the creatures is an area of the creatures that protrudes outwards. It too contains two holes in which the creatures use to inhale the substances that appear from the crumbly dark entity below them.



Analysis # 2 - Sassure's Theory of the Sign

If Sassure were to view this blog on defamiliarization it would prove his theory of the sign. We all have a picture in our head of what a word means to us. We hear a certain word (the signifier) and think of an automatic picture (the Signified) in our mind of what that word means to us. The words I used in this blog such as creature (for human) and orb (for head) was not the usual signifier that we use to process the pictures of a human and a head that we associate with. Our associations of words and pictures make it so we tend to block out any other possible associations with the word. For example, “…it is clear that only the associations sanctioned by that language appear to us to conform to reality, and we disregard whatever others might be imagined” (Rivkin 61)

Formalism and its movements

The reading in Rivkin on formalism and how two significant movements in history during the twentieth century impacted literary criticism was very fascinating to me because I had not realized that language was not looked closely at. In fact I would have thought that language would have been the priority with all of the rhetorical influence of Shakespeare and many others authors before, compared to the content. It just would make more since that the priority would be on language structure and technique over content. However that was not the case apparently before these two movements. For the first movement they now placed literature as a separate entity from all the other forms of writing because it was not the same. Literature would now not be lumped in with all other writings but have its own separate means of criticism. For example, “The first movement was to attempt on the part of philosophers of science like Edmund Husserl to isolate objects of knowledge in their unmixed purity” (Rivkin 3). The second movement in criticism that changed was in looking at literature as a different kind of truth than the kind of scientific truths that could be measured by scientific methods. The idealist philosophers claimed that this kind of truth that literature provided was a kind of truth that could not be measured with scientific methods like they had tried to previously, due to the fact that they are what they considered connotative language. For example, “The second movement was the attempt on the part of idealist philosophers like Benedetto Croce to develop a new aesthetics, or philosophy of art, which would rebut the claim of science that all truth is grounded in empirical facts knowable through scientific methods” (Rivkin 23). These two major movements gave literature the respect that it deserved. It also developed the idea of defamiliarization which completely revolutionized the way of writing in that it defamiliarized the familiar words that we know by heart. This was accomplished by describing these familiar items and words in ways not done so before. Causing the reader to think harder to figure out what the author is trying to convey to his reader. For example, “Perhaps their most famous general claim is that literary language consists of an act of defamiliarization, by which they mean that such literature presents objects or experiences from such an unusual perspective or in such unconventional and self-conscious language that our habitual ordinary, rote perceptions of those things are disturbed” (Rivkin 4).

Analysis # 1- Aristotle's Aesthetic Theory

Aristotle’s Aesthetic Theory can be applied to the YouTube video “Fireflies” by Owl City through “…prescriptive criticism and description…whose object is to understand how poetry operates and the way in which it achieves its effects” (Murray xxx). It carries out this goal by invoking the audience that watches and listens to interpret or notice the world around them in order to really experience life and to question the dreams that we have so as to experience pleasure or pain. Aristotle finds our emotions that can be triggered by aesthetic appreciation of beauty as an advantage because we as human beings learn and grow through imitation or mimesis. For example, “…according to Aristotle, the ability to engage our emotions is an essential feature of tragedy, and one that is positively beneficial in its effects” (xxx). For example the singer is provoking the audience by saying “You would not believe your eyes if ten million fire flies lit up the world as I fell asleep” (fireflies). He is expressing to his audience the beauty that surrounds him that he is experiencing being apart of. Throughout the video everything is moving so quickly with the music as the chorus shouts, “That planet earth moves slowly”, maybe indicating to the audience that the singer is overwhelmed with life because it is moving by so quickly. The singer/songwriter is an imitator who has the freedom to express his/her ideas in many different ways that do not have to be exactly reality. In the video the singer is talking about his dreams that he sees and his thoughts which cannot be verified as real for his audience. For example Aristotle talks about this issue, “The artist can present things as they are, as they seem to be, or as they ought to be…hence what he offers is a re-fashioning of nature or experience rather than a straightforward copy” (xxxi)

Works Cited

Murray, Penelope. Classical Literary Criticism. Penguin Books: New York, 2004

Plotism

Plotism can be looked at in many ways. You should look first at where the information came from and whether the argument has valid information to back up it's claims. How the information is presented such as the language used and the grammar. Ask what the real message or point to the text is revealing. What does it really all boil down to? 

For example the information presented in "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang" is backing up the characters attempt to outwit or deceive the king and queen. They do this very successfully by appearing to be passing as large toys that were sent for entertainment. The language used in the song appears to include a hidden message of the protagonist's plan of deceiving the king and queen. Provoking the question "What do you see when you gaze at me"? Blatantly asking the audience to look closer at the situation. The hidden but growing love between the two protagonists is also in the song. What everything boils down to in the clip is the characters successful act of deception and for the audience to you Plotism to find out what the stories all about.