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feeling: slightly bored
listening to: "Heizoku Uchuu ni Fumetsu no Koutei" from Utena
I'm back in school. Moved in Sunday. I don't really mind being here, I just prefer being at home. More freedom there. I can watch TV/anime, listen to music without headphones, burp, act weird, and do lots of other stuff whenever I want, with only my mom and (occasionally) dad around to witness it. Not to mention my wonderful cousin and only real friend lives there, nearly 2 hours away. Here, I'm never alone. Always classes, meetings, public places, a roommate, and at the very least, neighbors and not-too-thick walls. Have to be near-silent and sit here bored most of the time. Oh, and I don't have to study or do homework at home, either. Not on long breaks, anyway.
I have Japanese 102, Linguistics 202, and English 367.01 - The American Experience this quarter. My observations thus far? Japanese is... *shrug* Japanese. Almost the same as last quarter, most of the same teachers, even... just new material. It was fun then, so I guess it's fun now. Linguistics proves to be quite interesting... I especially like that it's only 2 days a week and about a 2-minute walk from my dorm. Don't ask why, but language interests me, I guess. So this one seems cool. And then there's English. It's an advanced writing class, and the American Experience thing means it focuses on American literature. My class in particular focuses on the theme of monstrosity and questions like "What do Americans fear?". Based on the first day, my first real opinion was that this could prove VERY interesting... I'd never really thought about the concept of monstrosity until we were given our first-day assignment: read Cohen's 7 theses on monstrosity, pick one, and relate it to your own definition of "monstrous". That was the only essay I've ever written that I was PROUD of. Too bad time ran out before I could give it a decent conclusion... but luckily, it wasn't graded. Anyway, I apparently had reason to be proud, because when the essays were handed back yesterday, the comment the teacher had written on mine said, and I quote: "Becky - I think this is the best first day essay I've ever read! I look forward to your future writing. -Dana" (Dana being the teacher, of course). This, understandably, gave me a HUGE head for a few hours. ^_^ I mean, this is an ADVANCED college writing class... I expected the thing to be chewed to bits, even though I was unspeakably proud of it. Of course, Dana also seems to be pretty young... she can't have been teaching this class for too many years. :P
New paragraph, because I feel like it. Same topic, because I'm weird. Why did this monstrosity theme appeal to me so much so fast? Well, like I said, I'd never thought about it. Really, what do YOU think of when you think of the word 'monster'? Some big, hideous creature that makes icky noises and either eats or severely damages humans? Something like that, right? Yeah, me too, until I read those 3 theses. They made statements like: The monster's body is a cultural body. The monster always escapes. The monster is the harbinger of category crisis. The monster dwells at the gates of difference. The monster polices the borders of the possible. Fear of the monster is really a kind of desire. and The monster stands at the threshold of becoming. If you really THINK about these, they make so much sense in the context of our society. Like, the first one: monsters are born of metaphoric cultural crossroads - the embodiment of specific place, time, and feeling of a cultural moment. And the second: the monster (or the evil in general) always either escapes and returns later or is 'slain' but comes back later in the form of a new evil. Look at Dracula, for crying out loud. The third: a monster is something you can't stick into one specific, concrete category. There's always that one grotesque feature (or several) that just will not fit. To what genus does a creature that combines wolf, lizard, bird, and human belong? The fourth one: a monster IS difference embodied. This one's easy to fit into society: "...monstrous difference tend to be cultural, political, racial, economic, sexual". The fifth one: the one thing that keeps man from overstepping the boundary between possible (normal) and impossible (monstrous, abnormal) is the monster: the result of that abnormality, created by crossing the boundary and existing to show mankind what awaits them on the other side. How would you feel if everyone was scared of you and loathed you and it was your own fault? The sixth: desire. Oh, yeah. How could a monster result from the above-mentioned abnormality "across the border" if nothing enticed it to go there in the first place? Imagine this: every little kid is scared to death of the monster hiding under the bed, but how many can resist lifting up the blanket and taking a peek? Same in society: man is naturally curious, and he knows that he can dabble in these abnormal, monstrous fantasies all he wants, but he won't become a monster as long as he doesn't cross that line. "...Geographies accessible from anywhere, never meant to be discovered but always waiting to be explored". Finally, the seventh: monsters are our children. They can be pushed to the utmost, but they always return. When they do, they bear new self-knowledge, human knowledge. They ask us how we perceive the world, how we misrepresent it. They ask us to reevaluate our assumptions and stereotypes about culture, race, sexuality, and the like. They ask us why we have created them. And if you really think about it, you'll see that each of these ideas can be applied somehow to real-life human society, and even to your own personal life.
I really can't paraphrase this stuff here and do it right. If that made no sense, go look for Monster Culture (Seven Theses) by Jeffrey Jerome Cohen... or if you know me personally, ask me, and I'll loan you my xeroxed copy. Or re-xerox it for you or email scans or something, since my class syllabus is on the back of one page. You might not understand half the words, but you'll never look at aliens, Dracula, or the beasts under the bed the same way again.
I have to go to Linguistics class now. Wish me luck and safe travel on my 2-minute walk. It does involve a city street, after all. I could become roadkill. :P
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dragged from Becky's stream of consciousness at 1/10/2002 02:11:00 PM
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