E + I : The Story of a Ridiculously Dysfunctional Marriage

 

 

 

From the start, I knew I wanted my make-a-thing project to center around Iago and Emilia. But I felt like I was grasping at straws—after all, there is a lot that could be and has been said about them as characters and their roles in Othello overall. However, I knew that I wanted to do Emilia’s bravery and power justice, as well as Iago’s all-consuming psychopathy, because these were the traits that made me so interested in them.

To me, Iago is a black hole. He’s perfectly concentrated, focused energy that is bent on destruction no matter what the consequences are. He’s almost inhuman in his pure determination, even though no one knows what drives it. He gives us a laundry list of reasons behind his hatred, but none of them add up, none of them can fully spearhead that much rage. That’s what makes Iago endlessly interesting—even to the audience, who are made privy to his soliloquies in which he reveals his plans and true feelings, he is a mystery and his real motives can’t be neatly pinned down.

 Then there’s Emilia who, in the last scene of the play, blazes onto the stage like a fiery wrecking ball to bring her husband down. Throughout the play, Emilia read as a tragic hero herself, a woman trapped in an insidious and abusive marriage. She cannot escape Iago’s hate, so she copes with it by vying for his affections, desperately seeking to find a soft side to him. In her scenes with Iago, Emilia is almost pathetic in her quest for marital peace. But with her friend and mistress Desdemona, she reveals herself to be a very cynical woman mourning the roles in which the men in her life have forced her, just like Desdemona is now stuck in her role as the doting and dutiful wife to Othello. Desdemona’s loyalty to Othello even in the face of abuse is a disturbing mirror of Emilia’s own marriage, and when all the tension of the play finally comes to a head, she doesn’t seem surprised, only furious that men have yet again failed her.

Only this time, they also failed an innocent bystander, Desdemona. After discovering that Othello killed his wife, Emilia fearlessly challenges him, and as soon as enough witnesses arrive, exposes Iago for orchestrating the chaos. She dies at Iago’s hands, still defending her friend’s honor and damning the real villains with her last breath.

So, as for my far-too-abstract painting, I portrayed Iago as the gaping black hole in the background, like a mouth of darkness unapologetically swallowing everything in sight. But blazing before him stubbornly, in spite of all odds, is Emilia, a white-hot shooting star being spit from a maw of red fire. An unstoppable force for justice, both for herself and her Desdemona, who are murdered in the end because of Iago’s greed and Othello’s deep insecurities. They seem such unworthy things to die for, and Emilia knew it.

My painting was greatly influenced by a feminist article I read about the movie version of Othello we were watching in class. This article made me think about how much Emilia was influenced by her age, her assigned role in society, and her abusive marriage. All these tensions in her life finally exploded to reveal a woman just as pure in her bravery as Iago is pure in his hatred.

Here is the article: http://www.btchflcks.com/2013/01/classic-literature-film-adaptations-week-shades-of-feminism-in-othello.html#.VV393Xi9LCR

 



Exorcising Our Demons and Letting the Ghosts Move In

It’s hard for me to remember life before Tim Burton. My aunt, only nine years older than me, made sure that I was raised with all the campy classics, so it’s pretty impossible for me to pin down when exactly I first saw “Beetlejuice.”

“Beetlejuice” is easily the campiest ghost movie I can think of besides good old “Ghost.” But unlike “Ghost,” it’s pretty self-aware and there isn’t a shred of romanticism or real seriousness to be found. On the other end of the spectrum of wide-ranging ghost stories is Beloved. How am I going to thread a dumb 80’s black comedy with one of the most moving novels I’ve ever read? With a prayer. Here we go.

I never really thought much about ghost stories before reading Beloved. I’ve always been more into vampires, though I can’t imagine why. But now I can’t stop thinking about ghosts, and what it means that humanity’s imagination has always been grappling with the idea of them. What does it mean about our attitude towards death, that we can’t help but feel that lost loved ones are still haunting us? What does it mean about the importance of the past? Will we always want it to be exorcised or might we fiercely cling to our ghosts? With Sethe, two extremes are demonstrated. Her past is what she exorcises, though not in any real or permanent sense. Her traumatic memories are always lingering and resting just below the surface because she hasn’t dealt with them. However, when she accepts Beloved as the resurrection of her dead baby, she clasps greedily onto her.

I think this is because she sees Beloved as a chance to really get rid of the past once and for all, if she could just explain what she did, if she could just be absolved of the murder. If Beloved could just understand, the two of them could look towards the future.

But Sethe’s got it backwards, I think. Beloved, in the end, is what has to be exorcised because she becomes so all-consuming and destructive. But Sethe’s past is a part of her. It is the ghost that will always be with her, so she might as well let it make itself at home.

One of the many things this book has taught me is that we have to find enough self-awareness to understand the difference between a healthy relationship and a crutch, a distraction. Beloved is very much a distraction for Sethe because Beloved doesn’t allow her to move forward, even though she thinks that’s all that she’s doing. The actual vital and healthy thing for Sethe to do is to really look at her forgotten memories, to make sense of them. She has to visit with these ghosts, not that of her vengeful baby who only seeks to drain her.

“Beetlejuice,” surprisingly enough, takes my broad idea of demons vs. benign ghosts in a way more straightforward sense. There’s the deceased couple, the Maitlands—squares but romantics, young but somewhat stuffy and old-fashioned. To Lydia, the Goth teenage girl now living in their idyllic country home, they represent a past that should be respected instead of forgotten. And the rest of the world has largely forgotten the Maitlands. Their very house is now unrecognizable, thanks to Lydia’s yuppie parents. In the face of obscurity and void, the couple fights by the skin of their teeth to stay relevant, to stay present, to stay alive. In the article I read, “Beetlejuice: A Ghostly, Gothed-Out 80s Fairy Tale for the Ages,” Bridget McGovern made me really think about the film through Lydia’s perspective, which I never really had done before. The dead couple is Lydia’s necessary ghosts, who remind her about the value of life and simple happiness. I think we all know what her demon’s name is.

The main antagonist, Betelgeuse, enters the scene as the quick solution to the central conflict: the Maitlands don’t know how to scare their new roomies out of their house. But Betelgeuse quickly proves himself to be unstable and dangerous, and only by Lydia’s bravery and unselfishness is he successfully exorcised. In the end, the ghosts learn to live with Lydia and her family in harmony.

According to McGovern, “In the end, defeating Betelgeuse brings everyone together happily under one roof,” which, of course, isn’t quite what happens at the end of Beloved. However, all the crazy events leading toward the end have paved the way for future happiness and familial peace, because the devouring demon has been exorcised and the benign ghosts are here to stay—and I think that Paul D and Sethe are finally at a place where they can explore their shared history together, and finally build a real future.

Article: www.tor.com/blogs/2012/10/beetlejuice

Flash Fiction Story Inspired by Contradiction by Michael Cano

My name is Mother. My name is Proserpine, Ceres, Rhiannon, Frigga, Epona, Isis. I am encompassing and brutal, an ocean that covers all the world. I am the flame of life licking and dancing inside your fleshly heart, your throbbing brain. I am the softness of your mother’s embrace and the warmth behind her eyes. I am the singer of the song of the world—life, death, life, death. Over and over and over I spin in this heady dance.

            The cycle is everywhere, in everything, and it never ends. It never changes. And so I fell in love with you, you who are as inconstant as the dawn despite your own slavery to the cycle. You have loved me in return, returned my protection tenfold with fervent devotion. You gave me my names, my faces, the smell of blood and death curling up from your sacrifices.

            In the newborn spring, I like to be Proserpine, the maiden of death who comes back from the other world to bring life to the earth. I like to walk in the form of a beautiful girl amongst the green trees, my feet bare over the tiny, sprouting flowers. In this fashion, I met a man.

            He was beautiful and tall like a slender sapling, with black ringlets for hair and dark, pondering eyes set deep in his skull. And when he saw me, oh, how those eyes widened till he looked like a little fawn! How his brows raised till they were hidden by the fringe of his soft hair. He ran to me, overcome with the tumultuous devotion still lingering in the hearts of mortals. No matter how much the world changes, or how much they change, that need or us, for me, is always there. He took me in his arms like I was that harmless girl, and not the primal, ancient force behind the turning of the seasons. I melted into him. There is nothing like the pure warmth of human skin, their crushing, insistent love.

            I don’t know how long I kept him there. Perhaps an hour, or a century. Time means nothing to me. And yet I am always acutely aware of the seasons. And yet in his arms, I could not even feel the wind brushing past my face. I could feel nothing but the blood pumping in his heart.

            As all gods do, I got bored. You might think me cruel for it, but that’s only because you can’t fully grasp my nature. I am nature. I can love, but in the end I am only the wind, the earth, the rain. I am not a thing that can stay entranced by flesh and bone and warmth.

            I sank into the cool earth, the dark soil soothing and cool. I stretched, and I dozed, listening to the lullabies of earthworms and ants.

            Eventually, I awoke. I rose, and walked about the earth again. It was winter now, and everything was dead and silent. White glittered everywhere, blotting out all the colors of life. And by chance, it caught my eye again.

            The figure of a man, kneeling, keeled over, shrouded in dark, tattered clothes. He looked so bony underneath them. He didn’t move, his back didn’t even rise and fall with his breathing. And as I approached him, I realized that the curly hair had disappeared. Like everything else, there was only white now.

            Only the white of his skull. That is all that is left of my beautiful acolyte with the black ringlets for hair.

               

The Curse of Tyrion Lannister

Often our heroes are marked with a unique physical characteristic to set them apart and signify their importance. Sometimes that only mark is outstanding attractiveness, but it can be a bit more interesting. Frodo has the scar from his brush with the witch-king of Angmar which can never heal and pains him for the rest of his life. Although this mark brings him misery, he can at least easily hide it underneath his clothing. Tyrion Lannister of Game of Thrones is not so lucky. To the disgust of most of his family and the bleak world around him, he is a dwarf. Had he not been born into nobility, his fate would be to humiliate himself for the entertainment of others or serve as a slave somewhere across the Narrow Sea.
     So why did George R. R Martin make him a dwarf, when he belongs to a royal house and is such an important figure in the politics and drama?
     I kind of think it's to give him a hard time. Martin loves giving people a hard time. Well, I suppose I don't really think that. Perhaps Martin thinks that being part of an abised minority gives Tyrion insight and compassion he doesn't know he has, which is why he is so concerned with providing for the commoners during his short reign as Hand of the King. Maybe Tyrion's dwarfism gives him an edge that the other players don't have.

The World Is A Vampire

     When you think about it, there's something of a vampire in all of us. And rather than an undead monster that stalks the night for human prey, I'm referring to a dark, more primitive part of our nature that seeks to exploit others, to "drain" them of their vitality in order to take it for ourselves.

     Victorian literature saw an onslaught of gothic fiction, sensational stories of strange horror its readers had never come across before. And the monsters that continue to spook us today have lingered for years because of the many complicated, often inexplicable feelings they can evoke. Vampires, among other creatures of the gothic night, are sensual as they are dangerous and became so popular in part because they were the sexiest things you could read about at the time. Even though Dracula is a monster in every sense, he still has gravitating seduction powers that enable him to prey upon young girls and bring them over to the dark side. Symbolically, we're talking about an exotic older man who seduces innocent virgins and corrupts them, transforming them into creatures their rightful suitors can't peruse themselves. And so, Dracula is destroyed by a band of young, red-blooded Englishmen, the perfect foils for his otherworldliness.

     Vampires choose their living victims, drain their blood, and either leave them for dead or turn them into their undead fledglings. Every day humans, in turn, often prey upon each other in such a manner. Blood is a natural symbol for life, which doesn't have to be literal in and of itself. "Life" can simply mean virility and energy. Therefore, anyone can be a symbolic vampire rather than a murderous beast. Anyone can engage themselves in toxic relationships with "vampires." Now I'm referring to any relationship in which one participate is only engaging with the other in order to take something, which can be a physical, emotional, or even psychological.

     People will always be selfish, and this can sometimes even be helpful. But to exploit someone in order to rob them of something you don't have is an altogether darker thing, which is why monster stories from hundreds of years ago can still resonate with the modern reader.

Of Questing

    To open up this book, Foster has chosen a topic we see often and in many forms throughout literature: questing. Or, rather, a brief study of the true nature of questing, for the hero never aqcuires the "stated" object of their desire. The more important Holy Grail is discovery of the self.

     While I read about heroic quests all the time, I'm not sure if I was ever aware of this neat secret before now. I must have been on some level because the idea didn't surprise me at all. It makes plenty of sense: Frodo's quest for Mount Doom is also the search for personal deliverance from the evil of the One Ring, just as it is the search for all of  Middle Earth's deliverance. Another observation I had was that the journey awakens an inherent nobility and gritty heroism in the outwardly quaint and introverted hobbit. It becomes more apparent than ever how much Frodo belongs with the elves in their own, separate search for peace after the Ring is destroyed, so much so that he joins them across the western sea even though he's found a very happy little life once again in the Shire. So, while the Heroic Quest initially seems to permenately damage Frodo, marking him with an inexplicable yet ever-present state of depression that drives him away from domestic bliss with Sam in the Shire, I would also argue that it brought out amazing qualities in him one wouldn't expect to find: unstoppable inner strength, determination, wisdom, courage, ect. The Quest brought forth his true self.
     This makes the Quest that much more important, I think. After all, who really wants to read about a Quest that's only about a holy chalice or golden fleece or some small, rocky island you once called home? Although these objects may be of varying importance, what the journey brings out of the character is far more interesting and important. Characters are our little literary spies, working from the inside, keeping us in the know at all times. Naturally, we get to know them pretty well, sometimes even the entire geography of their souls. That's why I've come to believe in the significance of their inner-quests.
     Another inner-quest book I've read that I'm a little more reluctant to admit to reading (and enjoying completely ironically) is The Vampire Lestat by Anne Rice. Our hero this time is, not surprisingly, a vampire named Lestat. He's a character the world first encountered as the rather pathetic villain of Interview with the Vampire (which revitalized the vampire genre for better or for worse back in the 70's) but now claims to be a fabulous, swashbuckling hero who spends immortality traveling the world and searching for the origin of vampirism and the meaning of his new life. Unfortunately, even though he does discover what started it all, he leaves his holy grail empty--his immortality still has no meaning, and as humanity goes on, the literal evil of vampirism also loses its place in the world. And so, Lestat becomes more and more self-indulgent, reckless, and vain, rather like a teenager who feels like all the world's a not particularly funny stage, a transition I'm still struggling with myself. This of course begs the question of what I will find at the end of my inner-quest. Personally, I'm hoping for secret superpowers.