You gotta have faith.

It is criminal how many webpages I had to sift through to find out where each document went, and then what the actual addresses that I needed to send things to. The idea of spending almost $1100 on applications and spending so many countless hours on these applications felt suddenly overwhelming. I really hope I get in somewhere...

Qualify this!

I turned in my Qualifying Exam essays on Monday morning after a weekend of writing. Despite the craziness involved in the writing, I actually sort of enjoyed the process. Below are abstracts for both of my papers. I was going to make each abstract under 50 words, but I gave up.

"Trying Literary Men: Walter Pater, Walt Whitman, and the Libel Trial of Oscar Wilde"

This essay examines the aesthetic and social implications of Walter Pater and Walt Whitman's work and how the influence of these two 19th century figures manifested itself in the 1895 libel trial of Oscar Wilde. It argues that the 'ontological aestheticism' of Pater, Whitman, and Wilde were on trial more so than the question of whether or not Wilde was, in fact, "posing as a somdomite [sic]."

"Haunted History: Surfacing the Supernatural in Morrison's Beloved and Kushner's Angels in America"

This essay works from Derrida's Specters of Marx and examines the rhetorical and narratological functions of ghosts in Beloved and Angels in America. It examines the way these two novels use ghost figures to reflect on history, announce their own historical situatedness, and challenge and/or reconstruct existing metanarratives.

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I dont really have energy to write an interesting post. In other news, I have been super obsessed with MGMT's "Time to Pretend" for some reason. I used to hate the song. The video is interesting. I love the Alejandro Jodorowsky references.


Time To Pretend

MGMT | MySpace Music Videos

FML

**Note** This is NOT meant to be an emo "let's feel bad about Zach" post, but this is taking a turn toward the personal blog (with some cultural commentary mixed in).

Today I had a total FML moment. After class and lunch, I caught the number 14 bus back to my apartment, and because the Fates have a wicked sense of humor, I sat down next to the wrong person on the bus. Without realizing it, I sat down next to a guy that I messaged on OkCupid, a guy who did not write back.

I should back up for a second, provide a little context, and discuss the significance of this. Since Marcus moved to Spain, officially putting an end to whatever the romantic dimensions of our relationship were, I have decided that I do not want to seriously date anyone at the moment. It is just not wise. I hope to be accepted into a PhD program, and I will surely be moving next fall. I do not want to start something serious until I will be somewhere for a good 4-5 years. That said, I would like to date. I like people, and as much as I LOVE my English department colleagues, it really is important for me to develop relationships with people outside of the department, even if it is just dinner or coffee for a couple hours. Thinking about these things, I updated and reinstated my OkCupid profile and decided to message some people and maybe set up a couple dates.

The curious (and horrifying) part of OkCupid, though, is that you can see who looks at your profile. That means that if I message a guy, I can see if he looks at my profile and then chooses to not respond. This is not a good thing, especially for someone like me who tends to be fragile and paranoid anyways, and this is why the 5 minutes on the bus this afternoon were utter Hell. I was sitting right next to a person who I decided was worth the stress of messaging, who looked at my profile, and who decided I was not worthy of a reply. Naturally, this would occur on a day when I felt especially unattractive, after a stressful morning meeting, and just after consuming a chicken pita on campus which seemed overloaded with garlic. Amazing. Like I said, FML.

This experience definitely made me think about OkCupid's "Stalker" feature which allows you to look at who has checked out your profile. It is an interesting tactic, but it also seems strange. I think the initial appeal of online dating was that there was a level of anonymity involved in it. You could learn about people without them actually knowing that you were reading their profile and examining their pictures for evidence of positive relationship potential. It is interesting that several sites have begun moving away from this model to construct the process as much more transparent. This rhetoric of transparency is everywhere now. I hear it from the White House and from pundits, I see it in recent theories of pedagogy, and I see it manifesting itself in all sorts of cultural production--including internet dating sites. There is definitely something to be said for transparency, for knowing what is out there. Still, sometimes opaqueness can be a lot easier. That sand just might feel warm around my fragile little head.

(Post)Modern Family

"Modern Family works because it does something the network sitcom hasn't managed in years: It offers a comic equation for almost every audience segment, while never blanding out the characters for mass consumption. Its gift to us is a postmodern modern family"

                     -Ken Tucker in his EW review of Modern Family

Reading Ken Tucker's review of ABC's Modern Family, my new favorite show of the fall season, I couldn't help but roll my eyes at the last line. The overeagerness of reviewers and critics to describe everything in popular culture as "postmodern" frustrates me to no end. Such a label seems even more absurd when one looks at how much time Tucker spends discussing the complexity of the characters and the depth and "genuineness" of the show--characteristics which seem somewhat at odds with postmodernist aesthetics. Still, Tucker's review forced me to consider my own thoughts on the aesthetics of the show and the meanings behind the show's signifying practices.

Surely the most commonly discussed aspect of the show is its structure as a mockumentary, a genre that seems to be everywhere lately (crossing genres and media from NBC's new comedy Parks and Recreation to the recently released and well-received horror film Paranormal Activity). The mockumentary is interesting in its use as satire, but I think it is currently being revised to establish a sort of genuineness in much the same way that cinéma vérité functions in the Modernist film tradition. Perhaps the mockumentary is evidence of a sort of nostalgia, a way for postmodern texts to attempt to discover/point to a sort of Real. But of course, the only Real it can point to is its own constructedness, and I would certainly argue that this is the way the mockumentary fuctions in Modern Family. This metatextual quality of the show is interesting in light of the plethera of reviews that discuss its realistic depiction of family life.

The aspect of the show that I find most interesting is the casting. Because the show draws from a pool of actors so identified without other family sitcoms (Married with Children's Ed O'Neil most notably but also Shelley Long in a recent episode), the show almost feels haunted by the ghosts of family sitcoms past. Again, I think this reminds the viewer of the show's consructedness and its position within a tradition of such shows.

Likely because I am interested in representations of masculinity and sexuality in popular culture, I am fascinated by the representation of Mitchell and Cameron, the show's hilarious gay couple. I must say that I am thrilled to see gay characters who are overweight and not especially attractive. I really tire of gay characters who look like they walked off of an Abercrombie and Fitch photoshoot only to whine about how they cannot get a boyfriend because they are so unattractive. It is important to have a more complex and varied representation of gay men in popular culture¹. Still, I would argue that their very deviation from the stock A&F gay character reasserts the concept of the stock character in the viewer's mind. Though maybe this is a good thing; perhaps it does ask the viewer to confront such expectations.

I am not sure how to end this post. I guess that I will end by saying that I think that I agree with Tucker's use of the word "postmodern," but there is absolutely nothing postmodern about the families in the show. What is postmodern is the show and its structure. It is formally postmodern more so than thematically postmodern, and it is certainly not postmodern based on anything Tucker cites in his review.

That said, it is an incredibly amusing show. Like I said, it is my favorite show of the fall season, and I would encourage you to watch it. It is on Hulu!

¹ *Note* I am not unaware that in many ways these characters are still perpetuating existing and problematic gay stereotypes. I do not care. That is not the focus of this post. My comments about them have to do with their physical appearance; I am not discussing other aspects of their constructions as characters at the moment.

Saying when...

For Yellow and Pocha, two people who recently mentioned my neglect of this blog.

With the quarter only a couple weeks in, I already feel exhausted. I do not know if it is the cold I am desperately fighting or catching up from the conference a week before last or if it is the thyroid lagging behind. Whatever it is, I feel like I am constantly running somewhere, working on catching up, slipping, and falling further behind. It also doesn't help that the thyroid medication makes me feel hot and breathy and like I am literally running everywhere.

After climbing the hill up to my apartment and finishing the last of the comments on the latest batch of student writing, I decided that I needed to take a break. The importance of breaks is perhaps the most important lesson that I have learned since starting graduate school. I have had to learn how to say when. There are moments when I have to tell myself to step away from the student e-mails, to make choices about the reading I have to do, and to do something fun, something that will remind me that I am human. Below is tonight's list.

1. Order pizza (cooking is too difficult tonight).
2. Watch Smoke Signals (Yes, this IS assigned, but I also love it).
3. Peel apples and bake an apple crisp.
4. Watch Glee, Modern Family, and various other TV shows.
5. Blog
6. Listen to the song below on repeat.

"Intersting"

I just realized that I somehow mistyped "interesting" when I was setting up the domain for this blog. Amazing.

Thank you all for not making fun of me, even though I am sure that many of you noticed. ;-)

Oh well...

I still dont understand why "Bradley" is bigger than "Cooper"

Click to see a word cloud of the journal article that I submitted today.