It may not be daffodils, but it is just as beautiful.

                                            THE BUTTERFLY CIRCUS

I should probably tie this to the class...

What cinematic tools are used to help create the atmosphere of this movie?

Impressions of Beauty

In Lucy, I could not help but notice all the references made to beauty. Jamaica Kincaid presents images of beauty in the sun, flowers, and even other characters present within this novel. It made me wonder if the character of Lucy does not think that she is beautiful. She hates what is beautiful and simple (daffodils) but says that anything would have sufficed. Apparently she just needed something to hate.

If you hate what you are not then it makes sense that Lucy could be blind to her own beauty or has denied it in an attempt to hold on to her identity. She seems to think that beauty often only serves to cover up a deeper truth as with the daffodils being "made to erase a complicated and unnecessary idea". As an eighteen-year old adrift in a new society, being a stranger and therefore somewhat of an outcast seems to have adversely affected her opinion of the world around her. Therefore, it seems as if the true beauty of the world around her is hidden by her first impressions. However, it may in fact be possible that through being blind to beauty she is free to see the true ugliness of the situations around her.

A force to be reckoned with...

While watching O, an adaptation of Shakespeare's play Othello, i could not help but wonder what the significance of the name Odin was as intended by the director. For once I got to use my arcane knowledge, and assumed that Odin (as Othello) was meant to refer to the ancient god Odin, leader of the Norse pantheon.

I started researching this idea by comparing what i knew about Othello to what is known about the god Odin. The results were startlingly accurate.

Similar to Othello, Odin was a wanderer of the earth and would appear among men although they viewed him as a stranger and therefore as an outsider. Interestingly enough, the god Odin is associated with war, battle, wisdom and death (among other things) which Othello shares. Also, some stories say that Odin was tricked by Loki - god of deception - into killing someone he dearly loved. In addition it is said that Odin was deceived by his wife and her acts of infidelity, which led to his downfall. This is very much like the story of Othello in that someone versed in lies and manipulation (Iago) made him believe that Desdemona was betraying him and led Othello to kill Desdemona, even though he loved her very much.

And on the note of Desdemona, i found it interesting that "Desdemona" means "of the devil". This simultaneously points toward deception as the devil is associated with lies, and also to her love for Othello as devils are seen as dark creatures just as Othello is referred to as a Moor. As Shakespeares plays are filled with symbolism, I am led to believe that he chose this name knowing what it meant and found it very appropriate in lending depth and meaning to the character of Desdemona. 

Upon further research of Norse mythology, I found that the gods Odin and Loki were first seen as the same god - one of power and battle and of lies and deceit - lending support to the idea of Othello as the god Odin as Othello deceives himself through his doubts of Desdemona's fidelity. The idea of Othello as Odin is also supported by Odin's physical characteristics. It is said that the god Odin sacrificed one of his eyes to achieve the wisdom of the ages and therefore walks this earth with only one eye. This relates to our discussion over reputation and perception and equating that with the structure of an eye: how a person's impressions of you are not who you are but are colored by outside factors beyond your control. Similar to Odin, Othello does not have complete sight and is therefore not able to see everything that is going on around him and falls prey to Iago's lies.

Something that I found amusing was that Odin was accused of witchcraft even though witchcraft was considered to be a woman's work. Odin denied this accusation just as Othello was accused of witchcraft in the act of winning Desdemona's love and denied it vehemently. Also, Odin is associated with two ravens: Hugin (thought) and and Munin (memory) just as birds (both doves and hawk) are used for imagery within the movie O. Both are dark birds and lend support to the comparison of the two characters due to Othello's appearance and being referred to as a "Moor" within the play.

I began to wonder if Iago's adaptation within O also referred to the stories of the god Odin, as his name within the adaptation is "Hugo", very similar to Odin's raven. Perhaps - although this could be stretching the similarities a bit - he is named Hugo in reference to Hugin (thought) in the sense that it is his thoughts and actions that bring Odin down within the movie and Iago's actions that are the demise of Othello. Also, in decieving Othello, Iago simply opens the door for Othello's own insecurities to sow seeds of doubt and to take away all trust in his thoughts of Desdemona.

I have no way of speaking to the director and proving conclusively if this was the reason they chose the name Odin for Othello in their adaption of the play. However, upon taking everything into consideration, the facts seem to suggest great parallels between Shakespeares original character of Othello and the ancient Norse god Odin. Therefore, it seems safe to assume that the choice of names within O was indeed meant to suggest the great similarities between Odin and Othello. Perhaps - as I would like to believe - Shakespeare himself intended the similarities to be apparent and formed his character Othello around the stories of Odin. There is no knowing for certain if this was his intent, but I would certainly like to believe that Shakespeare was pulling from ancient gods in the formation of his characters and that the director of O noticed the parallels and brought them to the forefront.



websites used:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odin (used only points that were cited)
http://www.pantheon.org/articles/o/odin.html
http://www.astronomy.pomona.edu/archeo/scandanavia/vikings/norse05.htm
http://www.mythencyclopedia.com/Ni-Pa/Odin.html
http://www.behindthename.com

Cassio: "Oh, I have lost my reputation!!" Me: "Oh shush already."

It is truly amazing how much the people within Othello are enamored with this idea of reputation. Othello himself has built a reputation for himself, impeded as he is by being a Moor. Desdemona has a reputation of innocence and her father is the one who has spread this reputation around so that everyone thinks of her this way. However, Cassio seems to wonder what will become of him now that his reputation is soiled. It is fascinating to see how Iago consoled his 'friend' by saying that reputation is not who you are, but who people think you are.

Personally, I am fascinated with this idea of a reputation being more of a rumor; a colored glass through which people view your actions before they judge you. It is so true that the only thing a person can control is their actions. Once we do something, it is completely taken out of our hands. The opinions that people form from that moment on that will become our reputation are completely outside of our influence.

In a way, this idea is very liberating. Rather than worrying about how what you do will affect how people see you, this idea allows for you to relax and simply 'be yourself'. Although it can be frightening to realize how little control youa ctually have over your reputation, this means that the people who see you correctly will be the ones who are really taking the time to find out who you are; those who aren't content to just stop at the thin veneer of a reputation and call that a person's character. In the end - for all his faults - Iago makes a very valid point. What you do is not who you are, and your reputation certainly is not who you are. In the end, you decide who you are, and in so doing form your character. And that is who you really are. All else is simply a rumor.

WANGECHI MUTU

-MASK-

Wangechi Mutu is an artist originally from Nairobi, Kenya, who currently resides in New York. Having studied anthropology and fine art at Cooper Union and Yale, she graduated with her Masters of Fine Arts in 2000, and uses collage within her artwork. Mutu often cuts out her pictures from fashion magazines, national geographic, and magazines on African art in order to combine them in a collage showing a different perspective on beauty and feminism.

The piece above, entitled "mask" is a perfect (clean) example of her art style. She is very conscious of her own heritage and that of Africans all over the globe, along with the lies spread by the media in regard to the idealistic view of women. Within her art pieces, she actually criticizes these views, and so can be considered a true Feminist Artist. Often she uses her collage technique to distort the picture in the same way that the culture of our times distorts the ideas of what it means to be "beautiful".

It would be very fascinating to investigate her life story to see how that has affected her work, or to see how her work reflects her past experiences. Unfortunately, she seems to be very private about her personal life; choosing instead to allow her art pieces to act as her voice concerning world issues.

As far as this picture goes, it is a very interesting piece. In researching mask, I found that the image serving as her clothes is that of a voodoo doll, while the picture behind her is an image of a museum relic. What is intriguing is that the cutout of the voodoo doll covers part of her face as a mask, yet the rest of the image reveals more of her skin - arms and legs - as if she is both revealing and modest. Further yet,  the image of the voodoo doll seems to be cutting into her skin; this shows the restriction of the cultural image of beauty and perfection which limits the woman's self expression. Her body language is also contradictory. The legs suggest sexual prowress, or at least domination, while the position of the hands suggest submission. It is as if the very culture she lives in is tearing her in opposite directions between what it wants to see her as - an object of sexual desire - and who she really is.

Throughout her artwork, it is as if Wangechi Mutu is posing a question to each one of her viewers: What is it that you let define you? Do you define yourself, or do you adhere to the unfair and warped expectations of the society around you.

Website of Mutu's gallery in Las Angeles with Susanne Vielmetter

http://www.vielmetter.com/index.php?site=artists&fromlink=&a_id=63&detail=biography&artistname=wangechi_mutu

"Before me things created were none, save things Eternal, and eternal I endure. All hope abandon, ye who enter here..." -Dante

 ~*~

"The inferno of the living is not something that will be; if there is one, it is what is already here, the inferno where we live every day, that we form by being together. There are two ways to escape suffering it. The first is easy for many: accept the inferno and become such a part of it that they can no longer see it The second is risky and demands constant vigilance and apprehension: seek and learn to recognize who and what, in the midst of the inferno, are not inferno, then make them endure, give them space."    -Invisible Cities

~*~

When I first read this paragraph I was a bit confused about what it was saying. Fires and suffering, not to mention infernos that still are not infernos and how to tell the difference. It took a few re-readings before I fully understood what this paragraph was trying to say. Calvino packs a lot of information into this one closing paragraph in order to explain the entire point of this novel. It just required me to step back and view the book as a whole in order to get some understanding of it.

Through the entire novel, Marco Polo has been telling Kublai Khan fantastic and whimsical stories about his empire and the individual cities within it. These stories about an empire that Khan believes to be decaying into ruin depict instead a flourishing empire, one that is progressing towards a better version of itself. Which one is true then? Is the empire indeed as corrupt as Kublai Khan says it is? Or perhaps Marco Polo is right, and each city he comes across is alive and thriving, even if they are not going about it in the most wholesome way. It is possible that real life examples could answer this question.

In anyone's life, whenever there is a complication, that person can only see the problem at hand. Not understanding or seeing the entire context results in the problem seeming much more important than it actually is. In his story, Calvino illustrates that life is in fact cyclical; different scenes or problems repeat themselves, but our human free will allows for change, a permutation that can completely change the course of events. Like gears working together, to remove or switch one causes the whole thing to change. To be slightly melodramatic, one small mutation has the potential to completely change the entire fabric of space and time. Marco Polo's stories serve to show thousands of small permutations that have changed each individual city (or the same city) to change in countless ways. Within his stories, time means nothing; he disregards it for the purpose of showing how the different decisions affected the structure of that city. Each different story then becomes an example of how the city could progress towards a perfect version of itself, free of the decay that Kublai Khan so fears.


But then why an inferno? Any mention of fire usually calls to mind negative mental images. Getting burned, destruction, and even ideas of Hell are tied into the visual images created by an inferno. And yet apparently this is the entire point of the book. Perhaps the inferno is the passion of the book; the obsession that makes Invisible Cities a novel. When you are caught up in an obsession, you often do not even realize that you are trapped within one. The walls of addiction and passion are often disguised, making the one trapped completely ignorant to their presence. Khan, trapped by his obsession with the decay of his empire, was unable to even look past that to see the bigger picture just as the people within the individual cities were trapped by their passions of death, beauty, dreams, and so on. Being so ensnared immediately takes away some free will, as the group of people are forced into place, like tiny gears, by human nature, and have no choice but to blindly follow the path set for them. The worst part is that, once trapped, they forget that they ever were any different, and so make no effort to change. Their lives immediately become circular, with no possibility for either change or progress. This would be the suffering of the inferno, which indeed does call to mind images of Hell; being forever fixed within the same state of being.


If this was the end of the story, it would be a very dreary novel. Instead, Calvino actually answeres the question born out of despiration; how to avoid such a fate. Each of us is within an inferno of our own. Whether of our own making, or formed by the society we live in, we are dictated by the passions that hold sway over us. However, it is said that the strongest steel is forged from the flames of Hell. Therefore, within suffering, or even (to be less dramatic) within the trudge of everyday life can be found Truths, things that illustrate meaning when things seem pointless. Through Marco Polo's discussions with Kublai Khan, Calvino shows that to avoid a predestined fate is to step back from the endless circle of life's events in order to discover the cyclical pattern that runs through it all; to find the truth wherever it can be found, whether in an empire or within individual cities, to find the one invisible city, the perfect version of all of them combined, and to follow the ever-narrowing circles that lead us to it. For it is only in stepping back that we can fully grasp the complete picture.

Invisible Cities

- by Italo Calvino

   So far, this is my favorite text that we have studied. It is amazing how Calvino uses the book to describe entire landscapes and cities to us, without any set narrative voice aside from the italicized conversations between Marco Polo and Kublai Khan.
To me, this book is all about displacement. If displacement is indeed being forced to view a situation from the point of view of an outsider, then this story perfectly illustrates that concept. Marco Polo, having traveled to the court of Kublai Khan, has chosen to displace himself out of his normal surroundings of Venice, while Kublai Khan himself feels very displaced from his empire, stating that when you are an emperor, everyone is a stranger.

Calvino's book explores the idea of: how do you know and understand a place? Is it by the people? Or perhaps a place can be understood by its archetecture and what that shows about the people that live there rather than vice versa. In any case, if this entire book is in fact a story aabout one city and all the different perspectives of that one city, then it seems that the point is to say that the more you know, the more you know you don't know. In other words, Kublai Khan, who ruled over these cities which Marco Polo told him about had never seen them except through Polo's words. Without the explorer to tell him tales of the cities, Khan would have remained ignorant of them. Through hearing about a few cities, Khan realized how much he did not know of within his own empire.

Through the reflections of Marco Polo and the thoughts of Kublai Khan, this book emphasizes the idea of universal displacement; that no matter how powerful or learned someone is, it does not matter where they are or where they have been. The truth is that everyone feels displaced within their own situations, and this feeling changes how they see certain situations in the same way that Marco Polo's forced displacement within these 'cities' changed his perspective of them.