As of right now, my Idea is to use The City and The City and Metropolis and use them to look at the idea of a dystopia. Why do we like the idea of dystopia in fiction? How does the time period affect the form of the dystopia? I think these two pieces work well for this topic because they are both pieces of dystopian fiction from far off time periods and different cultures. Comparing and contrasting ideas from a 1920’s German film and a 2009 English novel sounds fun. Depending on the direction I go what I actually research could vary quite a bit. I could look up historical research about 1920’s Germany and England’s status in 2009. I could also do some research on Fritz Lang and China Miéville and see what their personal political views were when these works were published. Alternatively I could also compare the dystopian themes in these two works to more recent works in popular culture, but this idea in particular would take the most time so I am a bit apprehensive. My biggest worries for this topic are the difficulty of the research, and the presentation portion of the project. This topic is a particularly loaded one and it would be easy to overwhelm myself with the research. I have no doubt that it could make an interesting paper, but I have no idea if it would be fun to sit through a presentation about it. I am hoping that this is sounding as interesting to other people as it does to me. Please let me know what you think. I do not want to end up giving a boring presentation.
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OED: Cajole
“Corwi, through cajoling, persuasion and computer expertise, got a hold of the information in a few hours” (Miéville 121).
Cajole is a real word. It is a verb that the OED defines as to get one’s way with delusive flattery.
The word is French in origin, with its first use being unknown. However the related French word cajoler — meaning to prattle on meaninglessly — first appeared in 1611.
The word is brought up when Borlú and Corwi are doing some investigating work into Khurusch’s vehicle pass. This section of the book conveys a few choice pieces of information to the reader. It first tells us the how much the person who stole the van must have been planning. It also further demonstrated Corwi’s skills as a data collector. The word itself is mostly used to accentuate the latter. It builds up how import an Corwi is to the investigation and shows us how big of an asset Borlú is losing when he travels across the Ul Qoman Border.
Essay 2 on the Silver Screen
The two films we have screened in this section — Manhatta and Metropolis — lend themselves nicely to comparison. Manhatta is an American film that frames industry and work in a positive nature, and Metropolis is a German film that frames it in a negative nature. Both movies also use a lot of the same camera angles and focus on a lot of the same topics. A good number of shots in both movies are filmed from a high angle to show the scope and size of the buildings. Both movies also have a lot industrial imagery — specifically steam — and have similar soundtracks. Why is it that two movies that are so similar are framed so differently?
Right now the best answer I can come up with has to do with the cultural differences between America and Germany. I need to do a bit more research to be sure, but if I had to guess right now I would have to say that Americans embraced industry and saw work as a good thing, and Germans were struggling economically and saw industry work as a bad thing. I would like to read more of Artificial Silk Girl before I lock down on a topic, but this one seems fun so far. The only major snag i am coming across is coming up with a concrete argument.
Blog Post Three (Some Self Observation)
Over the weekend I was in Arizona for my cousin’s bat mitzvah. She is my first cousin on my dad’s side of the family, and it was nice to see her again. Of course, I also had to see the rest of my dad’s family as well. I was standing around at Friday night dinner, occasionally being approached by someone and was asked if I remembered them. My answer would almost always be no but they would continue on to say the remember me when I was three, or — six years ago — from my own bar mitzvah. I fell into a bit of a semi-depressed stupor as I gorged myself on chips and salsa from a nearby table. Was I supposed to remember family from ten years ago at my brother’s bar mitzvah? The seemed to remember me — or just mistake me for my brother — and all had plenty of stories to share about me. When approached about my cold behavior, I would just say that I was tired from traveling — which wasn’t a complete lie — and that I would feel better after a bit of rest.
I find that I am always a bit of a sour-puss at large family events. Even though they are family, they still feel like strangers and I find it hard to talk to others in a big group setting. I know that I am a rather introverted person, and that I feel drained from being in large groups of people. I am fine in small groups and can talk up a storm if the need arises. If I am surrounded by a group of people I don’t know very well, I close myself off and start reflecting.
Out of all the pieces we read last week I feel my experience most closely relates to Djuna Barnes’ essay The Hem of Manhattan. It is not a complete one to one analogy, but it has some similar elements. The speaker in the essay has detached herself from the people around her and is viewing everything as an outsider. She is “one who must become a stranger in [her] own house” (Barnes 71) as she takes the yacht tour around the city. She is on the boat with others, but does not feel like she is one of them. She sees herself as a true resident of the city, but separates herself and views it from the outside. She is on vacation but is not having fun because there is “nothing beautiful nor pleasant to see” (Barnes 73). She and I are similar, but different. She distances herself for the pleasure of watching her city, and I distance myself out of stress.
Barnes, Djuna. “The Hem of Manhattan.” New York Morning Telegraph Sunday Magazine, July 29, 1917.
Blog Post 2
I chose Virginia Woolf’s Street Haunting. I love how she uses the mundane occasion of a walk through the city to show the beauty in little moments. Woolf’s main point concerning beauty is that we fail to see it because we are so overexposed to it and have “become conscious of satiety” (Woolf 2). My argument is that the theme of unnoticed beauty is prevalent throughout the entire essay and appears in some form or another in every example that the speaker gives. The speaker always stops to investigate seemingly insignificant objects and events such as the bowl for her keys or the lady shoe shopping. By framing these object and events the way she does, she conveys to the reader her mentality to stop and smell the roses.
Woolf, Virginia. “Street Haunting: A London Adventure.” About.com Grammar & Composition. Web. 15 Jan. 2014.
(For some reason I couldn’t get words near the bottom of the post to italicize, but I know that the website title should be in italics.)
ENG 195: The Literary Metropolis 