even a pencil has fear to

So…I’ve graduated. Which means, I think, that I can’t use this blog anymore. So I started a new one! There’s not much there yet, but I promise there will be. You can check it out at: evenapencilhasfearto.wordpress.com Yes, the names of my blogs are the same. What can I say, I loved this one and wanted to carry the same feel to my new blog. Unlike this blog, my new one will not focus simply on film (although there’s already a film post over there!), but on novel, life, and just generally my thoughts and opinions on just about everything.

Now that I think about it, I don’t know why I’m posting this here, just in case, I suppose, if any of my former classmates LOVED my blog as much as I did and wondered if there was ever going to be more. And if any of you are out there, let me know if your have new blogs — I’d love to read them and keep up with what’s going on in the good ol’ classrooms of Combs.

So I had a really hard time writing this paper…er, blog post. Its not like I don’t have anything to say, its just the words just don’t seem to come out right. I think I might be a bit burned out, but I’m going to do my best here, so I apologize for a seeming lack of organization, or even focus, as at this point, I’m just happy to be able to put coherent sentences together. Now I’m happy I actually had something to say! Thanks to everyone who helped me shake up my writing process to get this done, and thanks to Dr. C who made this a blog post rather than a formal paper so I could just start writing.

 

I decided to write on Errol Morris’s Fog of War, because the film’s ideas interested me, but also because I own the movie, and with all the blocks I’ve been having, I thought being able to pop the disk in at any time would be really helpful to my inspiration and writing process. One of the things that really interested me about the way Morris filmed his interview of McNamara, which the film is primarily made up of, interspersed with some older footage of McNamara, Kennedy, Johnson, World Wars One and Two, as well as the Vietnam War. I wasn’t really sure why Morris had chosen to show McNamara in this way; in fact, I didn’t notice it until the third time I watched the movie. After reading Jean-Louis Baudry’s article “The Apparatus: Metapsychological Approaches to the Impression of Reality in Cinema”, I think I can answer that question, as well as shed some light on some of Morris’s other directorial decisions. Baudry refers to Plato and Freud’s ideas throughout his article, translating them to apply more to film. In looking at Plato’s description of philosophers in a cave, Baudry points out that they are all chained, not only by their feet, but also by their necks. Later in the article, he notes that they would remain chained even if they were given the opportunity to free themselves because it is the only life they’ve every known. Depicting only McNamara’s head and shoulders consistently throughout the film contributes to this feeling that he is chained, not, in this case, physically, but mentally. While, at the end of the film, we see McNamara walking down a street and later in a car, we never see past his head and upper torso. We know and see he has the freedom to move, but Morris still imposes visual restraint on how we view him, thus contributing to the idea that he is a prisoner, just like Plato’s philosophers. Of course, this also contributes to the feeling the audience is chained, just like Plato’s philosophers, by the beck. The viewer has no control over what they see, and cannot move their heads to see the rest of McNamara’s body. Throughout the article, Baudry focuses on the idea of immobility. Though he never directly ties this thought in with cinema, he does relate it to thought, and I believe, as the article is relating to cinema, the reader is to understand and make the connection on their own that this also applies to the way we visually see people in films.

Earlier in the film, Morris shows us a short clip of McNamara waving his arms violently/enthusiastically (maybe it’s a little of both?), and we then cut to shot of Khrushchev doing the same as he addresses an audience. While Khrushchev’s shot is longer than the one of McNamara, showing some of his legs, he is confined behind a podium, constraining him a way similar to the way the frame constrains McNamara. While Khrushchev was not imprisoned after the duration of his service in the USSR, he was carefully followed and watched by the KGB until his death. This actual physical restraint is depicted visually in the way he is framed in the film, and the connotation carries over the McNamara who, even after leaving the Johnson administration, is still under close scrutiny by the media.

On page 208 of his article, baudry notices, “the subject which Plato describes, the prisoner in the cave, is deceived…he is the prey of illusions.” Later, he makes the connection between the cave and the cinema, noting that just as the philosophers in the cave must remain, in some way, perpetual children, so “the cinematographic apparatus brings about a state of artificial regression” (219). In light of this, I think it is safe and fair to make a connection between the prisoner and the film viewer, but also, as Baudry says “the person who plays the main part in dream scenes is always the dream himself” (215), tying McNamara himself to the prisoner in the cave. In my mind, this works well, as both McNamara and we, the viewers, are at Morris’s mercy; he may pick and choose what he would like to show of McNamara, and we have no “means to act in any way upon the object of [our] perception, change [our] viewpoint as we would like” (220). This, along with Morris’s Interetron, which allows us to make eye contact with the person being interviewed, contributes to a feeling of solidarity between viewer and film subject; tying to the two together ensures we will feel more for and be more interested in the film’s subject (unless, of course, you are my fiancée, who hasn’t liked a single movie I’ve showed him…hope for his appreciation of film is slim, but at least he likes a good action movie every now and again…maybe I should start there). We know we are linked to McNamara, to continue Baudry’s analogy, chained with him, most notably in “Lesson Ten: Never say never,” when McNamara tells us, “never answer the question that has been asked of you, answer the question that you wished had been asked of you.” This not only keeps the viewer, or the question asker, in the dark as they never receive a straight answer, but also keeps McNamara in the dark, in his chains, as he can never enter into a true dialogue with others because he never answers them directly.

Very early on Baudry mentions something that interested me quite a bit, though I’m not sure how to interpret it. He notes, “both distinguish between two scenes, or two places, opposing or confronting one another, one dominating the other. These aren’t the same places; they don’t respond point by point” (206). After reading this section of the article several times, I’m still not entirely sure what Baudry is saying in the context of the article, but I think the idea ties over very well to something I noticed in The Fog of War: at several times, two particularly noticeable, Morris shows McNamara on one side of the screen, cuts, shows him on another side of the screen, cuts again, and then pans slowly to show him, once again, on the opposite side of the screen. For me, this technique seems to be a clue to the viewer that what we are seeing, or, rather, what we are hearing McNamara tell us, is not the truth, but what he, as a prisoner of the cave, has been deceived into believing (of course, this is contingent on Morris’s viewpoint – there’s no way of conclusively proving that McNamara is presenting what he believes is true or presenting a carefully constructed lie). So, during “Lesson 2: Rationality will not save us,” as McNamara is talking about his college experience during the Great Depression, McNamara recalls that he was privileged in going first to college, and then to graduate school, yet the Depression doesn’t seem to touch him or impact his life (only the lives of others). This is a small example of the way what McNamara says doesn’t match what was actually historically happening, and the first instance of it I noticed. Later, in “Lesson Five: Proportionality should be a guideline in war,” when McNamara admits both he and General Lemay were behaving as war criminals, the frame pauses and the camera slowly pans from right to left as McNamara talks about how Lemay did something he knew was wrong, but did anyway. There are two primary and important things going on here. First, as the frame freezes on McNamara, it captures him in the moment of admitting he did things that would, if he had lost the war, cause him to be convicted as a war criminal, keeping him as a prisoner in the frame and in the moment. Secondly, as before, the camera movement from one moment of close personal reflection, keeping McNamara more central in the screen, to moving to the farther left of the screen, shows he has moved away from introspection, and is now only analyzing the motivations and actions of others – saying things that do not accurately depict the truth.

These ideas tie into another thing Baudry points out, the prisoner “is led to place and to suppose between the projector, the fire, and the screen something which is itself a mere prop of reality, which is merely its image, its copy, is simulacrum: ‘figures of men and animals in wood or stone or other matters’ suggestive of studio objects of paper mache décor, were it not for the more striking impression created by their passing in front of the fire like a film” (211). McNamara uses his figures as a “mere prop of reality,” which allow him to separate himself from reality. Later, however, when he goes to Vietnam and hears the accounts of the soldiers there and sees the impact of the war first hand, he is no longer able to ignore reality, though he will not admit it to the press, only the President. Baudry points out the same is true in film, noting “in the case of all talking machines – one does not hear an image of the sounds but the sounds themselves. Even if the procedures for recording the sounds and playing them back deforms them, they are reproduced and not copied. Only their course of emission may partake of illusion; their reality cannot” (211). So, the images of McNamara’s trip to Vietnam mark a turning point not only in his thoughts on the war, but on the viewers’ as well, as we are now supposed to have moved from seeing the war in a more positive, necessary light, to a position where the war is too brutal to necessitate the loss of life the United States underwent. Despite this use of sound, I think the film uses printed words the most as an indicator of the truth, as something that cannot be copied or deformed. For example, when McNamara says he doesn’t want to suggest he was the one who advised the fire bombings of Tokyo, the camera shows a series of documents with his signature or recommendation that the method of attack be changed. This happens at several other points in the film; usually when McNamara is telling us something Morris cuts to newspaper articles or political cartoons that suggest McNamara’s viewpoint is either skewed, or, in Morris’s opinion, flat out wrong.

Throughout the film, Morris uses many of the tape-recorded conversations from the Cuban Missile Crisis, conversations between McNamara and Kennedy, as well as conversations between Johnson and McNamara. Sometimes these conversations appear in conjunction with images of the described events, and at other times we see them paired simply with a moving image of a large-reel tape player (I’m sure this has a real name, I just don’t know what it is). The first time we hear a recorded conversation paired with a tape player is when Johnson is telling McNamara he wants to address the Vietnam War in one of his speeches. For most of the audio clip, Johnson is actually reading excerpts of a document written by someone else. In this case, a distortion of ideas is possible, and they are certainly copied; yet, what we see and hear is not. The audio, paired with an image of a simple object that is clearly not distorted or marred, allows the viewer to think what they are seeing is the truth. Yet, we are reminded what we see is only a short portion of life, and may not represent the whole truth, as at the end of the clip, as McNamara acquiesces to Johnson’s request, the camera slides down the side of the tape player, showing a timer, and revealing that the conversation we just heard was only roughly two minutes and twenty seconds long, and thus cannot be seen as representative of the more than three year relationship between the two men.

Another thing that surprised me about the film were Morris’s interjections during McNamara’s interviews. After seeing The Thin Blue Line, I thought Morris only interjected or rather, included his interjections and comments in the final film, when absolutely necessary, as in his final interview with David Harris. In The Fog of War, I don’t think this is the case. Morris, at times, interrupts McNamara mid-sentence, which I didn’t think was necessary in an interview setting – in a conversational setting this would be completely appropriate, but I don’t think it belongs in an interview. After reading Baudry’s article, I thought this might be part attributed to Morris playing the man behind the curtain, but after watching a few scenes again, I’m pretty sure this isn’t the case. In my opinion, these are examples of Morris exerting his control over the viewer. As Baudry has already noted, the viewer has no control in a cinematic setting. Yet, Morris has control over all we see and hear, and to a certain extent, experience. He not only teases us by interjecting at times we wouldn’t expect him to (even if I might have wanted him to make that comment or ask that question, I don’t think all viewers would have) but also through the images he shows us. For example, after McNamara, in “Lesson Seven: Belief and seeing are both often wrong,” says they later learned the second torpedo attack didn’t actually happen, the camera “rewinds” or reverses the shot of a torpedo hurtling towards a ship. This teases us as films can change and manipulate reality, or what is seen, but the viewer can’t. I want to make clear what I mean when I say reality here – I don’t necessarily mean actual or historical reality, but immediate reality, or the reality of what we are experiencing. In this case, the film, and McNamara have both told us there was a torpedo attack, and we accept and take that to be reality, but the film quickly rescinds that, not only rewinding us to a place before the supposed attack occurred, but quickly moving us forward to a future where the attacks never even took place. We see this again in “Lesson Ten: Never say never,” when the fallen dominos right themselves, showing the viewer “what might have been.” This again teases the reader and reinforces the idea that we have no true control over out immediate reality and experience.

I also found Morris’s use of cutting to a black screen before resuming his interview with McNamara interesting. While I don’t believe Baudry’s article sheds any real light on Morris’s motivation for this, I have an idea I think works. Often, I believe these black screens are used as something similar to the modern novel’s interstices. For those of you who may not know (I didn’t until recently), an interstice is what you call the small space, or break if you will, between paragraphs or sections of a novel. In the novel, these serve to represent a space where the reader must fill in the blanks – ie: a relationship is consummated, someone has died, a length of time has passed, etc. Usually, I think Morris uses his blank screens in a similar manner – to either suggest that the viewer must fill in what has happened, to mark a time change, or to imply that a question has been asked of the viewer and they must take time to contemplate it. The first two uses of these blank screens, I feel, are pretty self-explanatory, so I’ll only give an example of his use of the third. The best example, I think, is seen in “Lesson Seven: Belief and seeing are both often wrong.” A film clip of Johnson speaking at the public event shows him asking if we let Vietnam go down the drain “what’s going to happen to all the other little nations?” At the end of this question, Johnson pauses, and the screen goes black before Morris resumes showing images from the Vietnam War. This implies that not only those in the audience that day, but that we as viewers, also ought to consider this question and the way it applies to both Vietnam and more modern day concerns.

This post in Ben’s blog is another good example of how Plato’s cave analogy plays out in Morris’s films. These people are blissfully happy despite the fact that things go horribly wrong for some because it is the only life they know; the philosopher’s aren’t unhappy in their chains because it’s the only life they know as well.

Here Tyler gets at my idea of immediate truth, or the truth seen in cinema as well as where the power in creating that truth or reality lies – with Morris – when he talks about how the truth is hard to find even in a documentary dedicated to finding the truth because days or weeks of testimony and interviews are boiled down to two days, and that can’t possibly reflect everything that’s happened, reflect the whole truth. Tyler says one of the flaws of the film is that we don’t see court documents and we don’t see Harris’s confession on tape. I think the omission of the court documents is a possible failing, as I think that plays the biggest role in The Fog of War in depicting the truth, but I don’t think not having Harris on video is a failing. After all, as I’ve discussed throughout this post, sound is the one element that can’t be reproduced or duplicated, its reproduced exactly as it is recorded (unless its edited, but its not in the case of Harris’s interview), and I think this is the part of the film that lends the most power and truth to the film.

Megs’s post points out some more great use of prison imagery, this time in Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control in the form of cages. As Megs points out, the audience at the circus is in a cage, but this also, I believe, carries over to another audience — the film’s audience, or, us. Megs also calls the world outside our cage a “trap,” something that works very nicely with DUDE’S article, because, as he points out, staying in the cave or cage is our choice, and Megs has provided a nice motivation for staying there — we’re afriad something bad will happen if we leave our known world. This is seen nicely in The Fog of War, where McNamara is afraid, decades later, to speak against the Vietnam, even when he is no longer connected to the administration of the US government.

Here,  Beth discusses the way Morris uses images of print media to make clear what he either believes is true, or what was accepted as truth. Carmen touches on the idea that we enter a movie theater ready to be chained, with minds open ready to accept what we see as our “immediate truth.” At the end of this post, she also touches on cinema’s ability to change and alter reality.

 

I’d like to close with a nice little note detailing why I’ve enjoyed this class this semester. No, I’m not trying to suck up, I just want Dr. Campbell to know how this class has impacted me, and I couldn’t think of a better place to put it than with my final blog post. As you know, I’m taking this class pass/fail, mostly because its my fourth English course this semester, and the other three are all novel-based classes (two of them required massive papers as well), so I didn’t want to feel super overwhelmed. Regardless of whether I took this pass/fail or not, I’m so very glad I’ve taken this class as it gives me hope for my intellectual life after graduation. I’m not going to Grad school, and as of now, I’m not sure what kind of job I’ll have, so my intellectual stimulation and community seems like it might be nonexistent right now. Or rather, it seemed nonexistent until I really got into the meat of this course. I’m excited to have learned that I can turn a movie on and be confronted with so many questions that get me thinking, and its even more exciting because film is more of a group activity than novels are these days. What I mean is that you can watch a film with a group of people and have a more immediate shared experience as you encounter the film at the same time and in the same setting, even if you don’t come to it with the same background experiences. So, even if I don’t make friends, and if I choose my films wisely, I’ll be able to have some really thought-provoking and intellectual discussions with my fiancée (and I’m sure I’ll make friends…it just might take some time). The technology aspect of this class also reminds me that I can find a “learning community” anywhere, and engage in discussion with people who may be a thousand miles away from me. I don’t need to be in a classroom, or even with other students to engage in this type of discussion. So, all I’ll need now to keep up with and continue with the academic analysis of novels, and now, films. I’ve come to love is a computer and a half-way decent internet connection.

So I was thinking a bit more about doubling, Madeline/Judy, Midge, and Scottie. Dr. Campbell said in class something to the effect hat Midge is her own woman and doesn’t need anyone to tell her what do to or how to be, while Judy/Madeline seems to ask to be molded. I don’t buy it. Midge presents herself as willing to be molded through the portrait, making herself into a Carlotta of sorts (she still retains some characteristics of herself, but the point is not that part of her remains, but that she is willing to get rid of parts of herself, slowly, not unlike Judy). Maybe I’m reading the scene wrong, maybe there’s some deep sarcasm in Midge that Scottie knows and recognizes while I don’t, but I think the scene shows she’s willing to mold herself into the image Scottie wants, but he won’t accept it. Besides, as we discusses in class, Judy/Madeline both offer themselves up to be molded. Interestingly, they both also resist Scottie’s transforming influence. For Judy, it is the repeated protests and changing yet another part of her outward appearance to be more like Madeline, while Madeline rejects Scottie’s encouragements to free herself from Carlotta’s haunting influence.

Oh! The doubling/tripling thing! Carlotta is essientally three people (four if you count herself): Madeline, Judy, and Midge. Five if you count the way she haunts Scottie, but he never really becomes her, which is the biggest difference I see.

So I’m at Caribou again, and after I finished the final proof of my massive (twenty pages of just text!) independent study paper, I decided to read some e.e. cummings. I am the proud owner of 100 Selected Poems, and I found poem 46 particuarly interesting to our discussions of both Portrait of Jennie and Vertigo. The downside to 100 Selected Poems is that it doesn’t tell you the year the poem was published in, so I can’t tell if this might have been an inspiration for Hitchcock or Nathan or if it was in any way inspired by them. In my knowledge of cummings, I’d say it probably served as an inspiration for one of the two, but I can’t say that conclusively.

love’s function is to fabricate unknownness

(known being wishless;but love,all of wishing)
though life’s lived wrongsideout,sameness chokes oneness
truth is confused with fact,fish boast of fishing

and men are caught by worms (love may not care
if time totters,light droops,allmeasures bend
nor marvel if a thought should weigh a star
–dreads dying least;and less,that death should end)

how lucky lovers are (whose selves abide
under whatever shall discovered be)
whose ignorant each breathing dares to hide
more than most fabulous wisdom fears to see

(who laugh and cry) who dream,create and kill
while the whole moves;and every part stands still:

I’ve been thinking about Vertigo quite a bit lately, mostly because I’ve been trying to find something decent to say about it. It’s been especially difficult as this is my first experience with Hitchcock, and it was everything I thought it would be and so much more. So needless to say, I really enjoyed it. Obviously there’s lots of doubling in the film, but there’s some tripling too, thanks to Midge and her portrait. Midge’s role is the one that intrigues me most, and I’ve been trying to figure out her role in the film. She starts out as a potential love interest for Scottie, but it quickly becomes clear she won’t fulfill that role. One thing I did notice was that as she’s leaving the hospital after Scottie’s mental breakdown she’s framed in front of a window with a large white building behind it. As the camera pulls out and looses focus, it looks like Midge is standing in front of a white tower, not unlike the “steeple” Madeline throws herself out of. The bars of the window also create a cross-like image, calling Christ and self-sacrifice to mind. This is particularly intriguing to me as we never see Midge again – this is her one big moment. So what’s the deal? Does she sacrifice herself for Scottie? Does her relationship with him push her over the edge like it finally does with Judy (though her final jump might not be his fault)? It’s hard to say as Hitchcock doesn’t give us much to go on, but I think this scene gives us something to go on. I’m not really sure what it’s implying though – I hope not that Midge throws herself off a tower, because I really like her.

Last night I went to a praise and worship service before the candle light vigil, and we sang a song called Isaiah 43 that got me thinking about Eben and Jennie’s relationship. I read on several other blogs that Eben and Scottie are pretty much the same character, but I think there is one major and important difference in the two of them – Eben thinks or knows everything is going to be okay while Scottie is devastated. Anyway, the lyrics were also paired with a photo of a storm, complete with some really bright lightening, not unlike the beginning of the storm scene in Portrait of Jennie, which is what originally got me thinking about this. Now, there is a clear religious tone to this song, and I think that works with the film because I feel it expresses some things that carry over to relationships with Christ. So the lyrics of the first verse are:

”When you pass through the waters, I will be with you
And the waves, will not overcome you
Do not fear, for I have redeemed you
I have called you by name, you are Mine”.

Here’s where I think the film is making an important distinction from the book – Eben is able to search out and find Jennie. She’s no longer the only one that can come to him, but he too can break the “time and space barrier” to get to her. Yes, Jennie comes once he is there, but he knows where she will be and seeks her out, which makes the relationship more reciprocal, but it also gives the viewer reason to believe that everything will be okay. If, in the end, Eben could find Jennie and “call her by name,” then he will always have her and always, in a way, be with her because by this point she has become a part of him.

In other news, I have no idea what to write my paper on. I’m inspired by the ideas many of the films express, but I’m either not captivated by a scene or the scene I am captivated seems to daunting or makes me feel like I can’t deal with it thoroughly and accurately (ie. I the scene interests me because I have no idea what’s going on). HELP!

So, I’ve been wanting to post here about the Virginia Tech tragedy, but as this is a class blog, I feel the need to balance that or somehow tie it in with Portrait of Jennie. I think I’ve been able to do that, or at least, it seems fairly balanced in my head.

For those of you who don’t know, from South Carolina, making me an out of state student. I learned today that Ben is also an out of state student. Its nice to know I’m not the only one, because it can feel like I’m the only odd-ball not from Virginia quite a bit on this campus. Anyway, Ben and I were talking about being from out of state, and he asked me if I felt removed from the tragedy at all; he did, he told me. And I do feel separated from it somehow. My roommates asked me if all of my friends at Tech were accounted for. “Yes” I said. I wanted to say “of course they are! None of my friends are at Tech.” I felt removed again today as everyone at Mary Wash changed their facebook picture to “today we are all Hokies. None of my friends from high school changed theirs, nor did they make any comment about it, and again I wondered how I fit into all of this emotional-wise. Its hard to feel connected to something you only found out about four years ago and still don’t quite feel connected to yet. But I also told Ben that in some ways, I feel much closer to the tragedy than I’d like. My fiancée is a Roanoke native and lives there now, and that’s where I’ll live after the wedding. He’s also a recent graduate of Tech’ mechanical engineering program, which meets in Norris Hall. Needless to say, we’ve had quite a few conversations about the shooting recently, especially as he’s still wondering which, if any, students and professors he knew. He’s also been quite consumed with wondering why it happened now, and thinking if it had happened a year ago, he would have been there, in that building and been involved. It’s hard to tell someone whose friends live in AJ (the dorm involved) that they’re okay, and that’s what’s most important to you. It’s also hard to keep moving from feeling distanced from the tragedy to feeling so closely linked on another, and in some ways I think that’s harder than either, navigating a world that feels so horribly and inexplicably real, and then feeling suddenly jerked into one where the only thing that matters is the grade you get on your latest paper.

In many ways, I think this is where the film adaptation of Portrait of Jennie fails; it doesn’t make us feel connected to the characters. I believe novels have an intrinsic ability to make us identify with the main character. Mostly, I think this comes from the knowledge we can put the book down and stop reading, but we choose not to, tying us to the story and its characters. A lot of times, I think films fail to carry this same feeling over. Maybe its because they don’t make eye contact with the viewer, maybe its because they show events from an “overhead” or omniscient view, which allows us to judge things without feeling connected to them. The film Portrait of Jennie certainly feels like this to me at times. At the same time, it has its moments where we feel tied to the characters and invested in what happens in their lives. For me, one of these moments was when Eben was talking to Spinney in her office/living room/whatever it was. But these moments thrust us in and out of a highly emotional state to a move ambivalent state, and that is worse than failing to make us feel at all – now we don’t know when to feel.

Also, I finally had time to sit down and watch Fast, Cheap and Out of Control. I think I liked it. I’m not sure yet.

So Dr. Campbell mentioned in class today that the film kind of blows the story at the end, and it reminded me of the secret dream I had while viewing the first 50 minutes of the film. What I secretly hope will happen, and please don’t laugh, is that Miss Spinney will turn out to be Jenny. Yes I realize this is totally dumb, because Jenny clearly dies in the hurricane, but it would just be fantastic. Because then, not only would Eben be reunited with his soul mate, but then we’d get to look at the question of whether or not age can influence if someone is your soul mate or not. If Miss Spinney turns out to be grown-up old lady Jenny, can she and Eben still maintain the platonic relations they previously had? Can they have a romantic relationship? Can they have a relationship at all? I do hope this isn’t what happens, but I do think Spinney has a thing for Eben.

I’m writing this at Caribou Coffee, so I probably won’t get a chance to post this to the blog for a while, so if someone else has already discussed these things, I apologize. It seems a lot of us have either experienced ourselves or seen, as Carmen has, a wonderful example of the power of soul mates. I too, have an example of the power of knowing you have or have had a soul mate. During World War II, my great aunt was engaged to man who fought in the war and died overseas. I learned this when I was about 10 or 12 and noticed, after visiting her, she wore a gold engagement ring on a chain around her neck – it was the ring the man had given her. My great aunt has several great male friends during her life, one of whom asked her to marry him several times, but she refused every time. No one, it seems, could fill the place her fiancée had left, and there never could be (or never was) another man. Sometimes she would joke about finding a man to marry at long last, but they were always jokes. After my grandfather’s death I was again reminded of the ring my great aunt wore around her neck, as my grandmother started wearing her husband’s wedding ring around her neck, marking him as the only man she would ever have. My great aunt hasn’t languished because her soul mate is no longer on this earth, but she has waited for over 50 years to finally be reunited with him.

Robyn brought up the relationship between Wilber and Charlotte in class, citing some of the characteristics of their relationship as some of those seen in a soul mate relationship. I think she hit of some important qualities, even though I still think romance, or a romantic, passionate love, is key to a soul mate relationship. Robyn said Charlotte takes some ordinary, Wilber, and makes him magical. But, Wilber makes Charlotte magical and extraordinary too, giving her a purpose and a reason to use her talents. Part of what makes the story so extraordinary is that Charlotte hasn’t spun words into her web before – no one has every seen anything like this before, yet Charlotte has lived on the farm for quite some time. These qualities exist in people as well, as we see in Eben and Jennie’s relationship. Serena said they are both selfish in their relationship, but what I think they’re doing is bringing out extraordinary qualities in each other, the other person’s true potential if you will. Jennie accentuates Eben’s creativity and gives him a reason to use his full ability, while Eben give Jennie a purpose in life, gives her something to look forward to and cling to. And, while their relationship might not always be equal, I think that’s a part of being soul mates, you give what the other person needs, even if, in Jennie’s case, its all you have and you might not be receiving something in the same proportion.

This constancy in face of disproportionate sharing reminds me of penguins. Yet, I know, Eben, Jennie and PENGUINS. But it works, I promise. I’m sure everyone knows that penguins mate for life, but also that the female penguin leaves the male to lay her egg. The male penguin, several weeks later, comes to sit on the egg and keep it warm while the female goes back home to find food. The male does nothing but sit on the egg; they never move, not even to eat. The female travels back into almost another world to get food. If she comes back, she feeds the male and her newly hatched chick. If she doesn’t, more often than not both the male and the chick die. This is not at all unlike Eben and Jennie; Eben needs Jennie and can’t do anything until she knows how she is, where she is, etc. Jennie, the female penguin, is forever on a quest to hurry and return to her man. This concept of leaving and returning is, I think, all over literature. Shakespeare talks about it, Donne writes about it, as does Milton, and even the Bible has stories about this – think about the New Testament, everything after the gospels is about what the disciples did after Christ’s ascension, and, we must remember, Christ was pretty much their soul mate. Oh, and there’s love there, agape love. Agape is frequently translated as “brotherly love,” but I think it is better defined as a selfless, self-sacrificing love. This is the love I believe is necessary to a soul mate relationship. It’s not erotic, or even necessarily romantic love, but a love that is willing to give everything to the other person. In light of this, I wonder if we can read Jennie and Eben as selfish, as Serena thinks we ought. If someone willingly gives you something, and that desire to give is inextricably linked to the nature of your relationship, is it selfish of you to take it, or are you just doing what your love, your nature says is best. Besides, if you don’t take what’s offered, the other person can’t be selfless, you can’t have agape love, and you can’t be soul mates.

While I was at Caribou, I met a woman and her granddaughter. We got to talking, and she told me her husband died when her daughter was three. Ever since, she’s been dating on and off, but she recently re-connected with one of her old high school classmates whose wife had also passed away. Even after years of dating, a re-marriage (which later ended in divorce), and several long-term relationships, after she spent five days with a man she hadn’t seen in 27 years, she said, “he was the first person who made feel like I didn’t want to be alone.” Soul mates? Maybe we ought to wait and see how things work out, but I think this is a pretty good, succinct definition of what soul mates truly are.

And now I just came back from my friend’s senior piano recital, where she played pieces by Chopin, Bach, Beethoven and performed in a jazz trio. Once again, I was stuck by the timelessness of art. Now, I will be the first to admit that not all art is timeless. I’ve been pouring all my time, energy and efforts into my independent study paper and research on the film Bridget Jones’s Diary. Do I think this will be important, considered art, or even watched 75 years from now? No. But I do believe 75 years from now we will still be thinking about Jane Austen’s novels, her social commentary, and the legacy she left the novel. We still teach our children “Ring a Round the Rosey,” a rhyme that comes straight from the time England was infected and overrun with the Black Plague. Maybe, originally, people taught the rhyme to their children so they wouldn’t forget how fortunate they were to survive the plague, but something about it has stuck around; this doesn’t mean that its considered great, but that there is something timeless about it, and, in my mind, proves that there is such a thing as timelessness.

Ha. As I’m adding to this post for the last time “Unstoppable” by The Calling came up on my playlist. If you don’t know the song, look up the lyrics; they’re pretty relevant to the discussion of love and soul mates and all that jazz. Also, I’m sorry this is so freakin’ long.

I finally finished reading Portrait of Jennie last night. What! I actually completed our work pretty much when it was supposed to be complete? Why yes I did. I happened to get some good feedback on my HUGE paper I’m presenting at the Creativity and Research Forum in 10 days, so it turns out I’m farther along in that than I thought, and had some extra time to spend reading Jennie. Plus, it’s a pretty quick read. I’m sad to see there are only three posts on Jennie so far, as I find this book fascinating from both a “story” and a “how are they going to adapt this into a film?” point of view.

I’m particularly interested in some of Carmen’s ideas about time and art in this book, particularly, as she points out what Mr. Matthews sees as a reflection of our time is Jennie, who is, it seems from another time. Perhaps what reflects the time in the portrait is the way Eben has painted her, putting in the past, present, and his hopes for the future, but all the while knowing he and Jennie will never truly be able to be together. Not that I know much about mid-century America, but it seems like that’s what he’s doing, and it seems likely Mr. Matthews would respond to the emotion in the piece over its subject.

I also enjoyed this post (sorry, I don’t know whose blog this is!), because I too got really excited when I hit the last 20 pages of the novel. I simply had to find out what was going to happen, and I couldn’t read fast enough. But I have to admit, when the hurricane came, I pretty much caught on to the ending, but I still enjoyed it. I’m intrigued by the terseness or somewhat minimalist quality the text often seems to have. As this post points out, the descriptions of the artwork and settings were really quite good, but the descriptions of the action were often quite simple. For example, “Even before I telephoned out to the school, I knew what the answer would be. ‘I’m sorry; there is no one here by that name,’ I didn’t ask them to go back over their files; I knew what the answer would be to that, too. So there it was.” (67) Ah, what? Obviously he has a handle of what’s going on and has pretty much figured out “how Jennie works,” but I haven’t! What was the answer? We know the answer wasn’t what Eben was looking for, and we know he can’t find Jennie, only she can find him, but we don’t know why and he seems to. And the thing is, why only Jennie can come to him is never explicitly stated. Anyway, I can’t wait till tomorrow to see how the film version handles this.

And in the meantime, I’d like to think this is how Jennie actually appears to Eben.