Course Blog

A keyword that continues to crop up in our class readings and especially in Culler is “culture.” This focus on “culture” signifies current literature studies’s self-consciousness in realizing that everything critics assert about a literary work is subjective, determined by the culture in which it was written and then read, and thus not a certain, all-encompassing answer. This point derives from many of the readings we have already discussed in class (Althusser, Culler, Mulvey who dwells on the symbiotic relationship between actor/screen and viewer) and it currently pervades the study of any discipline in which culture has an impact on the resulting creation – math and science are probably free of these effects, but the humanities cannot escape it. I think “culture” as a term deserves scrutiny because it is frequently used throughout serious academic writing and casual conversation, especially on the internet where a statement about culture can reach a substantial portion of the world’s population without any consideration for reliability. In this way, the definition of “culture” becomes muddled and requires distinguishing.

I have selected “culture” as a major keyword for my thesis research on food. In identifying “food culture” as my focus — rather than “food literature,” “food writing,” “food instructions/recipes” — I have pinpointed a preference to focus on the sociological, relationship-oriented dynamics that food engenders in our, or a, culture. I am intrigued by recipes, technique, ingredients, and national dishes, but not just because the process of making food compels me. For the purposes of my thesis, I consider these elements of food important because, for example, a culture’s popular recipes may act as medicine for an illness common to that region; a technique may have become popular because the tools needed were easily accessed or constructed, or because ancient populations perfected the technique and its modern use acts as ancestral remembrance and celebration; ingredients viewed as “indigenous” to a nation or “typical” of its food actually represent living records of colonization or, for instance, famine (in my Writing About Food class we have learned that Columbus brought chilies to India and tomatoes to Italy, which offers a revised perspective on deeming an ingredient “original” to a land). “Food culture,” for me — I haven’t conducted enough research to ensure this meaning is constant throughout academic writing — refers to human interactions with and because of food.

Culler’s statements in Chapter Three identify the dynamic I find so compelling about the interaction between a culture and its food, or food and the culture it spawns. “[C]ultural studies is drawn to the idea of a direct relationship, in which cultural products are the symptom of an underlying socio-political configuration” (Culler 51). More sparsely phrased, the field is about “how cultural productions work and how cultural identities are constructed and organized…” (44). This broad summary of cultural studies helps me understand why the term “food culture” felt relevant and apt for my thesis, even before I had considered what the phrase really meant: it focuses on the “thing’s” (i.e. food, literature, music, films in Mulvey’s case) relationship with its culture, or with cultures it has contact with. Culler employs literature to illustrate cultural studies, and I choose food. My interest in “food culture,” however, seeks not to express cultural studies through the lens of food, but to examine food through the lens of cultural studies. For me, food is not the tool; cultural studies is.

Javier Zamora’s “Let Me Try Again,” is concerned not only with the politics involved in the process of migrating but also with the politics of relaying a narrative about migrating. The poem begins with the speaker’s direct address to the audience: “I could bore you with the sunset, the way water tasted / after so many days without it,/ the trees, the breed of dogs…” (61). This introduction relays the speaker’s belief that the sensory details he lists will risk boring the reader—yet, the speaker’s consciousness of this ‘risk’ does not impede the speaker from listing them. What this reveals is that though the speaker is aware of his audience and of his storytelling, he is not necessarily invested in ‘convincing’ or swaying an audience; rather, the poem’s progression demonstrates the speaker’s own relationship to the very story he tells—both in what he tells and how he tells it. The poem’s structure is divided by addressing these two distinct aspects. While the formal structure reflects the speaker’s multiple attempts to tell the story, the poem’s narrative content is more invested in pointing to the multiple attempts migrants make to cross the U.S./Mexico border.

In connection with the poem’s title, the speaker’s awareness of audience in the first line indicates that this poem is not the speaker’s first attempt to tell this story i.e. this is a poem that is just as much about the speaker’s attempt to “try again” to tell the story, as it is about the speaker’s attempts to migrate. The poem’s final stanza illuminates further significance of the poem’s title, as the speaker reflects on the officer’s reasoning for advising the group: “He knew we would try again / and again, / like everyone does,” (62). The narrative within the poem leads us through the speaker’s journey and moves us from the specificity of his experience and consciousness of relaying it, all the way through to the collective experience he shared with other migrants. In the poem’s title, it is the “me” who will “try again” and the actual action here is left open to interpretation, while in the poem’s final stanza, it is the “we” who will “try again” and the action here unambiguously refers to crossing the border.

The poem’s first three stanzas reflect the speaker’s attempts to recall detail or otherwise to decide upon how he will relay this story. These three stanzas are marked by the speaker’s hesitation and confusion, as indicated by language like “I can’t say,” “I couldn’t remember / there were only five,/ or seven people—,” and “The rest…I don’t know.” The speaker’s flustered tone is reflected not only through this language but also formally through frequent enjambment and scattered spacing on the page. The stanzas are structured in such a way as to reflect the speaker’s own uncertainty about how he relays the story of what occurred during this moment in his migration journey. For example, “The rest…/ I don’t know. / They weren’t there,” progressively move in a downward diagonal pattern away from the page; the distance created physically on the page reflects the speaker’s distance from the thirty-six people from which he was separated, and perhaps also his distance from the full knowledge of what happened to them. It is not until the poem’s fourth stanza that the poem settles into a more direct, grounded storytelling pattern and adopts a more stable form. Although frequent enjambment and dispersed lines continue through the end of the poem, the stanzas are consistently two to three lines, which eases the narrative flow. As the poem stabilizes formally, the speaker’s tone shifts to encompass a wider political awareness as he analyzes the officer’s identity and how he defies the expectations of his occupational role in order to warn the migrants. The poem slows to enable further emphasis on instances of enjambment, as in: “He must’ve remembered his family / over the border,” which functions to give a double meaning to ‘over the border’ as it indicates both the family’s physical location as well as the officer’s prioritization of his family over his prioritization of his duty to the Border Patrol.

Works Cited:
Zamora, Javier. Unaccompanied. Port Townsend: Copper Canyon Press, 2017. Print.

In Goodbye Lenin!, the Kerners’ crisis symbolizes the people of Germany’s struggle to balance remembering and retaining parts of their past with embracing their country’s present after the collapse of the Berlin Wall. In particular, the scene in the film in which Laura and Alex are fighting while Alex’s mother, Christiane, is celebrating her birthday in the adjoining room is valuable to one’s understanding of this theme of past vs. present because it underscores the power of walls as both physical and psychological barriers to change and reality. Like the Berlin Wall that separated East Germany from the progress and influence of the outside world and enabled the government to have complete control, the four walls of Christiane’s bedroom also create an isolated reality because Christiane’s world is constituted solely by the actions and decisions made by her son. It is the ways in which these sets of walls, despite their differing scales and political purposes, are portrayed as having the ability to shift power, limit agency, and distort reality that connects the Kerner family to the history of Germany.

The staging and production of this argument scene highlights Laura and Alex’s differing views regarding the incorporation of the past and how reality can and should be constructed. As a whole, almost all of the visual focus is placed on Laura. Laura’s facial expressions are directly captured on screen and are portrayed through both her direct eye contact with the camera and her reflection in a mirror. This staging choice not only captures the severity of Laura’s disgust at the situation by illuminating her emotions and reactions, but also touches on her individual viewpoints regarding the past. In the same way that Laura looks at the Kerner’s unchanged house through the mirror, Laura is willing to reflect on her past and her existence as a former member of a communist nation, but is unwilling to accept the recreation of the past that has been created by Alex within his mother’s mind and bedroom. Laura is shown aggressively leaving Christiane’s room and shedding her old, eastern German clothes as if she is attempting to rid herself of her past identity and the discomfort that she feels on account of her and Christiane having their existences be altered and restricted in the Kerner’s house as if they are still members of a communist East Germany.

Conversely, the way in which Alex is portrayed in this scene highlights his dedication to the containment of the false reality within his home. Even though Alex is a central figure within this scene and dialogue, his face is almost always turned away from the camera. This staging suggests that Alex is not ready to confront the present time period within his country and actively decides to turn his back on the events taking place outside of his mother’s room. This decision to portray Laura directly and Alex indirectly is also significant because it reveals the psychological wall that has come between the couple on account of both the physical Berlin Wall ceasing to exist and the four walls that contain Christiane’s reality. Because Alex is committed to his created reality, he is constantly lying and creating deceptions, ultimately causing him to be slowly and mentally severed from the outside world, Laura, and his past self that was committed to the fall of the communist party. It is this disconnect between the couple that is embodied in their unparalleled portrayals within this scene.

One of the other dominating features in this scene is the way in which Laura and Alex’s fight is shown alongside the celebration contained within Christiane’s bedroom. Relegated to her room, Christiane is depicted as being a separate entity from that of her party guests and the argument between her son and Laura. Unlike her friends who are singing and celebrating, Christiane is only shown on screen as being quiet and alone, as if her bed serves as a wall between herself and other people. It is this decision to show Christiane as being disconnected from those in her room and from Alex and Laura that embodies her separation from the reality beyond her walls, as well as her isolation and loss of personal agency even in her own home. Like the people of East Germany who were trapped within the Berlin Wall and, consequently, lacked the power or the ability to explore life beyond their enclosure, Christiane is also mentally and physically trapped, leaving her alone in a past that no longer exists.

Judith Fetterley’s Introduction to The Resisting Reader is a strident statement of discontent with the way Fetterley feels the canon of American literature has been constructed. Fetterley begins by claiming that literature is political and sees it as necessary to inform her audience that this is “painful to admit” (991). This is confusing because she seems to be entirely motivated and fascinated rather than pained by political interests and self-interest. She includes a quote from John Keats supporting her assertion, and the time between the quote and her writing suggests that her assertion about political intents is not shocking or painful at all. Fetterley uses similar language throughout the essay and the first section of it, throwing terms such as “universal truths” and “confusion of consciousness” to make her statements seem more groundbreaking and revolutionary.

Fetterley relies more on the tone of her article than her actual argument to create that impression because her assertions are not revolutionary, and her demands are really just as exclusionary as the status quo she critiques. She creates a binary distinction between male and female, leaving out a plethora of excluded groups. She seems not to care about true inclusivity, but rather the inclusion of her narrative. Her seeming ignorance, based on its absence from her text, of people of color, gender queer, and non-binary individuals suggests a lack of reflection on self in preparation for writing this piece.

What “male” means to Fetterley is not expressly defined in this introduction, but that is almost as revealing as a definition would be. Because she chooses not to tell her audience what she means by the two identifiers her entire argument hinges, her writing exposes the ways she does exactly what she rebels against throughout the introduction. She assumes that her understanding of male and female is obvious, or as she likes to say, “universal” (991). That is not only ironic but suggests the lack of self-examination that becomes clearer and clearer as she continues her argument.

A moment that stuck out as relevant to my impressions was when Fetterley states, “To read the canon of what is currently considered classic American literature is perforce to identify as male” (991). This sentence reveals assumptions she has made about the nature of reading based on her individual experience. Fetterley believes that to read something and gain from the experience, the audience member has to identify with the subject or author’s sexual identity.

She says in her “Rip Van Winkle” example that, “universal desire is made specifically male. Work, authority, and decision-making, are symbolized by Dame Van Winkle, and the longing for flight is defined against her” (991). These, I would argue, are not the typical attributes stereotypically given to women and men. The stark contrasts she chooses to make support a reading of her as a binary and exclusionary thinker. She seems to see the term as a designated sex at birth rather than a spectrum. Much of this is a result of the time at which she was writing, but she also leaves out all racial identities aside from white, and that was not the only critical approach to literature in 1978.

Her focus on “female” inclusion in literary canon assemblage is not a fault, but her refusal to acknowledge any other group or identification that is left out of foundational literature (991). She also relies entirely on texts from long before she wrote this piece such as “Rip Van Winkle”, which forces her to pursue a negative argument in her opening that continues throughout the piece. She chooses not to argue for the merits of works including the female voice forces her to pursue an entirely negative argument. Rather than currying emphatic support, her rhetorical strategy and general diction choice led me and likely other audience members to have an echo reaction to her work, rejecting her narrow goals for the canon.

In the short story “Harrison Bergeron”, Kurt Vonnegut describes an America that finally embodies equality in the truest form, where no one person overshadows any other person, and all people who have any additional talents or good looks are stifled by the government’s stringent laws. This reading, both deeply dark and ironically satirical, captures a real-life critique of the core values that America prides itself on – and supposedly carries out in the most effective way – while pointing to the obvious flaws regarding some of these beliefs.

Vonnegut makes his satirical target very clear from the get-go, stating “the year was 2081, and everyone was finally equal […] they were equal every which way. Nobody was better looking than anyone else. Nobody was stronger or quicker than anyone else (1). It seems as though Vonnegut directly responds to the Declaration of Independence that America was founded on, which states that “all men are created equal” – and Vonnegut refutes that by saying that, some 300 years after this document was created, America has finally gotten it right and made everyone equal through extensive trial and error. Vonnegut indirectly reveals his thoughts on total egalitarianism through his tale revolving around Hazel, George and Harrison, pointing out that although an aim for true equality is understandable, a world in which everyone is leveled off under the same conditions could be dangerous. Vonnegut touches on this in the second paragraph, stating, “some things about living still weren’t quite right, though” (1). He starts the second paragraph off with this contradictory statement to undercut the happiness and thrill that one might feel about a place that embodies genuine equality to its most literal sense. The use of the word “though” reveals that, although at surface level, true equality might seem to be an ideal situation, there are severe downfalls to placing everyone on the same playing field in a functioning society.

Vonnegut furthers this outlook in the way he chooses to describe how equality is achieved in this futuristic society. He uses the word “mental handicap” (1) to describe how George, a superior man with above-average intelligence, was handicapped and unable to utilize his natural given talents because of this all-equal society that is America in 2081. He was “required by law to wear it at all times” (1) to ensure that he would never have more intelligence than any other person, namely his wife, Hazel, in this case. Vonnegut’s choice in diction emphasizes the unfair nature of this “handicap” that was mandated by the government and placed on people who were more capable – smarter, prettier, happier, etc. – and further emphasizing the issues with a truly equal society. The word “handicap” has a distinct stigma attached to it that implies a quality that hinders ones success and power to perform basic tasks to the best of one’s ability. By placing a “handicap” on people, like George and the performing ballerinas, the government is disallowing them to utilize their full talents and skills.

Vonnegut’s short story portrays a supposedly ideal culture of equality and balance between all people of society. Vonnegut inserts both his own personal outlook on egalitarianism, as well as the effects he projects would happen should this type of society be implemented. Through directed diction and phrases comparable to historical American documents, Vonnegut displays the problems with true egalitarianism and how that outlook could affect society in the long run.

An interesting “turn” that made an impression on me in Good Bye, Lenin (2004) was the celebration of German unification in the film with aesthetics of cultural liberation. While Alex is trying to distance his mother away from word of the unification, even he is can not help but get swept up in mass celebrations and gatherings. In fact, I counted three “parties” in the film. Alex’s “date” with Lara thrums with energy and extremely “out-there” costumed oddities. In between small-talk with Lara, Alex also narrates his observations on the fluctuating world of Berlin. I blinked though a whirlwind of images: abstract art, scenery, and a bombed-out apartment that looked abandoned since the Second World War. And would you believe it? This party scene is just roughly two minutes and thirty seconds, and I’m being generous by adding the last few beats of the previous scene. Honestly, if I was Wolfgang Becker (The film’s director), I would have been tempted to just cut this whole scene for being so short and out-of-place.  But it has a purpose. Not only for advancing the relationship of Alex and Lara, but highlighting how Berlin is celebrating German unification in the months after the fall of the Berlin wall.

So, let’s see how far I can close read into two minutes and thirty seconds: First, Alex’s sarcastic comment that “we finally had our first romantic rendezvous” which does a quick cut to the the loud costumed party has it’s own set of implications that Alex is interesting in flipping the old conventions of a date. He calls it a “rendezvous” not a “date”, implying this was meant to be a private date after meeting in a public place. Alex and Lara try to get away from the music and lights of the party through a series of rapid camera shots. While I’m no expert in cinematography, I can definitely appreciate how the rapid pace of the scene matches the mood of the party. Each member of the band looks unique, as two of them wear different styles of masks and the other appears to be half-naked in body paint. Their appearance is a reminder that neither their music nor their fashion would be allowed under the GDP, and that a gathering of this size would have likely been raided by police. Then there’s the graffiti room. This struck for one as an artist’s expression of how it feels to be bombarded by GDP messages, with the color displaying a polarizing effect on the people. One is either black or white, East or West. The party also gave an impression that these people maybe had little else to do after the government collapsed, much like Author Christian Mackrodt who wrote  Ostkreuz. Coming of Age during the Transition about feeling confused in post-GDP. In a few short months after the wall fell, the creative minds of East Berlin were free to make parties like Alex’s “rendezvous”.

When the Alex and Lara get to the top of the building, they find privacy in a bombed-out apartment that captured my attention. Alex discusses the transition of the city with hope, in that, “The winds of change blew on the ruins of our Republic. Summer came, and Berlin was the most beautiful place on Earth.” (2004) Since the two are in a ruined room with an open wall, the winds literally blew into the ruins. While destroyed, I could also find that this living room  had a pretty 1940’s aesthetic. It is possible it was never changed or demolished since the Fall of Berlin in 1945. The juxtaposition of old with new (the winds of change and the party around them)  in this scene connects especially well to Alex’s new relationship with Lara. I say this because Alex mentions, “We were the center of the world, where things were finally happening. And we went with the flow.”(2004)  This entire comment can be focused on the party, where celebration of unification brought life into parties in East Berlin. The popularity of open air parties meant spaces like this needed to be adapted to make things happen. At the same time, I also believe Alex’s new relationship with Lara felt to him like “the center of the world”, in which he feels fulfillment in his own life was “finally happening”. As a result, this party scene is not only about celebrating liberation and unification, it is about Alex as he discovers bond with Lara.

“The Sea of Sunset” by Emily Dickinson

This is the land the sunset washes,

These are the banks of the Yellow Sea;

Where it rose, or whither it rushes,

These are the western mystery!

Night after night her purple traffic/

Strews the landing with opal bales;

Merchantmen poise upon horizons,

Dip, and vanish with fairy sails.

I decided to close read a poem by Emily Dickinson called “The Sea of Sunset”. I chose it at random, and I had never read it before. The poem is only eight lines and two stanzas long, but its language is not abrupt or staccato, but flowing and a little flowery. First I read the poem a few times and jotted down notes, then I read Stanley Fish’s article about poetic language from his “Reader-Response Theory” and recorded my thoughts, then I read it out loud and did the same.

My first thought was that the poem has color. I couldn’t read it without seeing the “Yellow Sea” (line 2), “purple traffic” (line 5) or “opal bales” (line 6) in my mind’s eye. The poem reminds me of a fish’s scale, or a beautiful phosphorescent shell. You could probably find both of these items on “The Sea of Sunset”, even though she never explicitly mentions fish or seashells.  Dickinson’s words expand upon themselves in the mind without her having to use more than 8 lines to elaborate on the scene. The colors in the poem are given an ethereal sheen by her word choice, such as “fairy sails” (line 8) and the words “dip, and vanish” in the same line evoke an ephemeral feeling, as though this moment is simultaneously otherworldly and fleeting. This perfect moment on the beach can’t last forever. Even if she hadn’t named the poem “The Sea of Sunset”, I probably would still have pictured sunset as the setting. It’s perfectly evocative of the yellow and purple hues of the poem, the fairy-like fluttering of sails, and the sense that this feeling won’t last, that it will soon be dark.

Even though the language evokes a fairy tale, she uses some particular words that ground the poem in our reality. For example, the speaker says, “merchantmen poise upon horizons” (line 7).  Referring to humans sailing upon this effervescent sea anchors the otherworldly poem to the world in which we live. Additionally, she names the sea “the Yellow Sea” (line 2), capitalizing “Yellow” and “Sea”. If she had not capitalized it, I might have glossed by it as another colorful and picturesque phrase, but since she did choose to capitalize it, she named it. This grounded the scene in real life, even if she did not mean to refer to the actual Yellow Sea. The “real” Yellow Sea is the northern part of the East China Sea. However, I do not believe she meant to refer to this sea, because a couple lines down, the speaker wonders “where it rose, or whither it rushes, These are the western mystery!” (lines 3-4). The word “western” really sticks out to me. This “sea of sunset” could fathomably be anywhere; why is it a western mystery? “Where it rose, or whither it rushes” seems to be questions of origin, how it got there, and how far it flows to. Either the speaker is saying that the sea is itself geographically western, or that the questions of how the sea got there and where it flows to are specifically “western” questions. I’m not sure about which one the speaker means. Additionally, the question of “whither it rushes” forces us as readers to imagine the size of the Sea of Sunset, expanding our minds horizons as we imagine the vast and glittering sea.

After reading the Fish article, I wondered, what poetic qualities does it have? Fish says, “…you know a poem when you see one because its language displays the characteristics that you know to be proper to poems”. Immediately, the punctuation comes to mind. She uses commas and semicolons liberally, as do plenty of poets, but Dickinson specifically uses exclamation points in almost all of her poems, which is not as characteristic of a poem as are commas and semi-colons. The exclamation points give her poems a child-like, straightforward quality. This reminded me of the intentional fallacy. I think poems, by their nature, are probably especially susceptible to the intentional fallacy, because they almost always use “poetic language”, words with multiple meanings, or have meaning hidden in their form. However, I do not find this to be true with Dickinson’s authorship. I could be (and probably am) wrong, but I think a lot of her poetry is straightforward, or about what it seems to be about. After reading the poem out loud, it’s clear that it doesn’t all rhyme perfectly, but I think the length of the poem allows for that.

In the future, I want to examine the significance of the fact that she is a successful American female poet, perhaps in conjunction with Fetterley’s article about American female writers.

In one specific scene near the beginning of the film Alexander is walking with a protest group to promote, “the idea of walking without borders.” The protest group wants East Berlin to be connected with the West. Right from the start of this scene everyone in the crowd with Alex is wearing dark shades of clothing and no one’s shirt or colors seems to stick out to the audience. While Alex is protesting with the large crowd his mother on the other hand is sitting in a cab trying to get to a specific location but is forced to get out of the cab as the protestors and officers have taken up the streets. The protestors start getting more and more angry and things begin to get out of hand. While Alex’s mom gets out of the car, Alex is getting arrested by the police. When Alex sees his mother from across the street in a red and white outfit she immediately faints. Alex tries to help save his mother but the cops drag him into the large vehicle and then the car immediately drives away. Alex is forced to watch his mom lay helplessly there as he drives away into the distance.

This one scene shows an importance of love and how love is portrayed in the film. As the audience I was able to see two different types of love in this scene that was being displayed by Alex’s mother. The reason why Alex’s mom fell into a coma was not only the fact that she did not want to see one of her children being arrested but it was also seeing her country ripping itself apart that sent her over the edge. Alex always saw his mother as being connected with the East Berlin and once East Berlin began to destroy itself from the inside that was when he knew how fragile his mom’s life really was. In my opinion Alex’s mother loved her country dearly and she always tried to remain loyal to East Berlin as that was her home. However, by seeing two of the most precious things in her life being taken away from her all at once she was unable to take it all in at and because of it she fell into a deep coma. This scene is about love because without love in a person’s life, human beings begin to lose strength not only physically but mentally too. Overall, as Alex’s mother dies their country dies with her too.

However, while this scene shows Alex’s mother losing two of the most precious things in her life it does also show a transition of who Alex will love in the future. At the beginning of this protest scene Alex is eating an apple and he begins to choke on it. While he is choking on the apple a woman in the crowd comes up to him and starts patting him intensely on the back. Alex coughs up the apple and is immediately mesmorized by this woman. He essentially is speechless when he sees her. When the protest begins to get more out of hand that is when Alex and Lara are separated from one another. This brief encounter shows a transition of who Alex will begin to spread his love to as his mother’s love slowly dies with the falling of East Berlin.