I've been trying very hard to keep up in my classes. So far I've been ok. But, I knew that I shouldn't have taken that rock film course. I am horrible at film analysis. It comes from having the worst sense of visual acuity and a penchant for getting really sick when watching films that shake and swerve. It's all from the advent of dolby surround sound. That puppy just kills me. Anyway, the reading load is intense for that class (which is what I expected), the films are great except for the fact that it takes me about 5 times to finally get what I want out of a scene or sequence. I frankly am concerned with what I am going to be writing my final paper on. Hmmm.
Well, so far, I've got some ideas for paper topics for my other classes:
- For my Cultural Studies course, I was considering an analysis of the television show Firefly (specifically the first episode) and how it demonstrates the conflict between the current politics which exist under the Bush administration and the ideal politics of the historical republican party. I also wanted to address the sublimation of the Chinese in these politics through the use of language in the show. It's interesting how the United States and China merged to form the Alliance government, yet there are hardly any Chinese in the show. It's also interesting how English is the primary language used for business and politics, yet Chinese is only used for profanity and other primative utterances. Why the difference if there is a merging of the two cultures? It demonstrates our assumption that we are the superior culture to China. I'm hoping my prof will be cool with this idea. Otherwise, I'll probably analyze shoes or something.
- For my 18th century course, I want to take The Mysteries of Udolpho and talk about the social class issues in the novel. Most of the time people focus on the gothic elements, but I think that there is a real key to social class concerns that arise throughout the novel. Over last summer, I read many of Radcliffe's novels for my masters project, and I found an intersting passage in Udolpho that discusses how Theresa the servant can't understand why Emily cannot marry Valancourt. Emily says it's because of her lack of esteem for him after she was told about his lascivious lifestyle in Paris. Theresa thinks there really isn't anything to the concept of esteem; to a poor person, esteem doesn't really matter if you love someone. That moment in the novel demonstrated a rift that exists between the lower and upper class folks. It is constantly demonstrated through Emily's gullibility, and how she is often convinced of the honesty from upper class people (until she learns better) and how she finds that lower class servants only speak idle gossip (again, until she learns better).
- I don't know shit about rock films, so I don't know yet. . .
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