Equus and The Pleasure Principle

Interesting parallels can be drawn between Freud's The Pleasure Principle and Peter Schaffer's play, Equus. For the sake of brevity, in this blog I will focus on the role that Alan Strang's "chanting" serves in the play and how this chanting can be related directly to the pleasure principle. To begin with, Alan's chanting is an obvious rewriting of Christian geneology, where horses have taken the place of biblical figures. This rewriting is also evident in Alan's replacement of Christian artwork in his bedroom with that of a horse. In the play, the source of Alan's relationship with religion is through his mother, and his morphing of religion into a form of "horse worship" can be related to his early childhood experience with a horse (which is sexually charged) and his father, Frank Strang, who brought that experience to a traumatic end.

Here, Alan's conflation of religion/horses/ sexuality/and the maternal can be read in terms of Freud's Oedipal complex. Alan is attempting to possess his mother and displace his father. The religious core of Alan and his mother's relationship (which excludes the father) shifts to Alan's worship of horses as a way to frustrate Frank's attempt to remove religion from the household, thus breaking the tie between Alan and his wife. Frank Strang consistently upsets Alan, even stopping Alan's chanting by "coughing" outside of his bedroom door.

The repetitive nature of Alan's chanting can be read in Freudian terms of Alan taking an active rather than a passive role in his relationship with his father. However, Alan's sense of agency through the worship of horses and his Oedipal desire to possess his mother is illusory, since he still believes that his father is always "watching." Frank is an authoritarian figure who, to Alan, seems "all seeing" and "all knowing."

A Brief Saussurean Analysis of I Love You, Man

After reading Ferdinand de Saussure's Course in General Linguistics, I felt that I had a basic understanding of his "sign, signified, signifier" concept, along with the arbitrary nature of these signs and how they are dependent upon their difference from other signs, relative to the language structure as a whole. I did, however, wonder how Saussure would explain other elements of linguistics; for example, signs that are homophones. We, as speakers and listeners, recognize the difference between a homophone like tear (as in "teardrop") and tier according to the context that the sign is placed in. I suppose that this fact emphasizes and supports Saussure's idea of the arbitrary nature of language in that signs can be exactly the same (a potential source of confusion), and we are still able to distinguish what is being signified based upon the signs difference when placed in various contexts.
I am uncertain how his system explains linguistic parts of speech like determiners, conjunctions, prepositions, etc., since these do not signify a concept; however, these are all members of a closed class that we have all agreed upon. I suppose that these parts of speech potentially represent concepts in that, for example, a determiner can "specify" or "generalize" a sign. In this sense, "specification" and "generalization" could be seen as concepts.
I thought that applying Saussure's theory of signs to the movie, I Love You, Man, would be a humorous way of examining a dry concept. For example, in the clip that I have included, the character of Peter Klaven is always creating "Klavenisms" or nonsense words in an attempt to impress the receiver. However, these Klavenisms consistently end in confusion and, more often the case for Peter, embarrassment. In this clip, Peter's conclusion of the phone conversation with the spontaneously invented term/phrase (?) "latersonthemenjay" is a good example of what can happen when we step outside of prescribed linguistic boundaries. While the receiver can glean the general meaning of "later" from Peter, the balance of Peter's linguistic creation is confounding, even to its creator, who is left cringing in the end. Humor is derived when we, as receivers, attempt to extract some meaning from "onthemenjay" and are left perplexed. It is interesting though, that we do indeed attempt to assign meaning to Peter's nonsensical "word." As funny as it is, Peter's shame shows us that it is risky and unadvisable to leave the accepted realm of the lexicon and established signs.

Is the "Carnivalesque" Politically/Socially Effective?

Bakhtin's theory of the "carnivalesque" presents us with a way in which dominant or oppresive regimes are subverted through "folk humor." While Bakhtin applied this theory to Rabelais, I would like to apply it to the modern day example of a political cartoon. As an example, I have included a political cartoon depiction of President Barack Obama. Certainly here in the United States we are given the license to criticize and mock our leaders; however, is the carnivalesque (here seen in the "folksy" form of a cartoon) a truly effective or dangerous threat to ruling powers? I would argue that it is not. I read these cartoons more in terms of being a type of critique, or the "safety valve" that we encountered in our readings, a valve that releases built up pressure and unrest amongst the masses. These cartoons help to suppress or quell discontent and to make us all complacent. Though the Stalinist regime that Bakhtin lived under judged the carnivalesque to be a serious threat to its own authority, I think that the modern day political cartoon does not hold the same power as a Rabelaisian play, which would be viewed by a large group of people who could immediately mobilize and rebel. Readers of a political cartoon in a newspaper are a much more fragmented population who are probably not likely to mobilize simply because of a cartoon.If anything, these cartoons subvert dissatisfaction since participators (the creators and readers of the political cartoon) feel a sense of satisfaction in the fact that their ideas are being expressed publicly and not stifled, as they would have been under Stalinism.

Our readings of "carnivalesque laughter" state that this laughter is directed at everyone, including those identified with the carnival, and this is definitely true in the case of these political cartoons. These cartoons cause us to "laugh away" discontent so that, ultimately, the joke is on us.

The "Sublime" Star Trek?

In class on Monday February 1st, I suggested that the intro to Star Trek, the original television series, was a possible example of Longinus' notion of the "sublime." I think that this example was good in terms of being thought up "on the spot"; however, upon further analysis I can see definite flaws inherent in my idea. For example, as stated by a fellow student, the sublime is supposed to be rooted in reality and a science fiction show is not reality as we know it, though it may certainly be a metaphoric representation of reality or a commentary on that reality. I do think that the Star Trek intro employs "grand conceptions" with its dramatic presentation of "Space...the final frontier" along with the inspired emotion of "boldly [going] where no man has gone before," but these ideas are problematic in terms of identifying them with the sublime. The sublime is supposed to "speak to all people at all times" and I think that the Star Trek intro falls short of this rule. The idea of exploring an unknown "frontier" and making that frontier "known" can be read as a notion particular to Western culture. The Star Trek television show does operate favorably due to the absence of imperialism and conquest, yet the idea of venturing bravely into the unknown may not resonate with everyone. What seems more likely is that my idea is a direct product of the culture that I have been raised in. In other words, I may see "striking out into the unknown" as sublime simply because I have been taught that that sort of behavior is noble, though that same behavior may not operate in accordance with all cultures at all times.

Additionally, the statement "where no man has gone before" is, of course, problematic in terms of its implied sexism. After all, didn't Lieutenant Uhura go boldly forward as well?

Is "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang" the product of a Misogynistic and Classist Society?

Hell0. My name is Larry Coulter and I am a student at California State University Northridge. In this blog, which has been set up for Dr. Steven Wexler's graduate class in Critical Theory, I will be discussing classroom and assignment-related topics. On our first night of class, we watched a film clip from the movie-musical "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang" and came up with a variety of critical approaches that could be used to analyze and read the clip as a "text."

I would like to use this blogspot right now to add further discussion related to Monday night's primary classroom focus. I believe that the scene from "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang" can be approached in relation to our readings of Plato's concept of "mimesis." For example, the mechanical female doll and the male doll, portrayed in the film by human actors, can be read as mimetic representations of an ideal, Platonic "doll." However, the fact that our class can offer negative gender and class-related interpretations of the "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang" dolls that point to societal inequalities reveals specific ways that these dolls have become corrupted through repeated mimetic representation. For example, while these "dolls" were being removed from their "ideal," they became more and more corrupted in transit. In this case, the dolls took on sexist and classist qualities found within our culture, which have been analyzed in our classroom. The "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang" dolls do not seem to offer their audience an Aristotelian form of "catharsis," or restoration of health, but instead seem to reinforce our own societal ills, namely misogynism and class-based discrimination.

Another issue at stake in our readings is the censoring of art. I believe that it is wrong to censor or ban artistic means of self-expression, as Plato believed his own society should do. However, in an effort to minimize societal ills while safeguarding the rights of artists, an audience needs to be educated and capable of reading the obscured meanings behind texts such as "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang." In this way, artists can be permitted to create and audiences can prevent themselves from being subliminally swayed by sexist and classist artistic representations such as those seen in the film clip.