Last Class Post

Ah, it is the end of the year.  We have gotten to the ultra modern post 9/11 world, and maybe the most interesting part of class. There are a lot of people in this school that have experienced extreme prejudice.  I have only had one of these experiences; when I went to Israel the Tel Aviv airport is considered the safest in the world, but I tend to think it is just the biggest pain in the butt. And they are really suspicious of Americans.  They pull you over, and ask all these questions and if you can speak Hebrew it is usually fine, and I can but I was really nervous because I think security makes a lot of people nervous, so I couldn't do it (which probably means I need to speak it more) so they went through all my bags and asked me a bunch of security questions and I probably looked terrified but I didn't have anything with me so they let me go.  It scared me half to death, and this was just once.  Some people of certain descent in the US go through this every time they fly.  I am not sure how I would handle that.  It is so sad and I would feel so unsafe all the time.  I hope it gets better eventually, and I try to help, but there is only so much I can do.

The Rabbit Hole of Analysis

I read a lot of graphic novels, or I used to, anyway I really like them, and I think their authors are so talented.  What I think is the most interesting about them is how the compare to other books, if you read a book for class there is really only so much you can read into it without falling down the rabbit hole, but with a graphic novel so much thought goes into ever picture and word, because the dialog and writing have to be snappy to fit in a comic style layout, and you can really tell from the pictures the background and focus of the author.  There is so much perspective to uncover in a graphic novel or a comic book (if you want to go down that road please check out the article Superheros on my other blog).  It is so important to have both imagery and words to explain to us a situation, that is why we give children picture books, to explain to them things they do not have the experience to understand.  That is why Maus is so great, it makes us feel a part of something that we could not previously understand.  Not that we could understand the experience of being in the Holocaust, or being the child of two survivors in two short books (even if they are amazing), but at least we can get closer to understanding, and that is what art and writing are all about.

Tenuous Connections

Alright, at first I really did not like The Glass Menagerie.  I read the first chapter and basically thought "nope, this is awful. I can't do this."  I almost thought about cliff notes, but then I learned we were reading it in class so I thought okay I can deal with this, and it turned out, to my surprise, I am actually really liking it now.  I feel as if I am a kindred spirit to Tom in The Glass Menagerie, not only because I have a tenancy to narrate my life and am often pushed towards intense sarcasm, but also because of how he feels about his dreams.  For a long time I very much wanted to be a screenwriter, like Tom, and I felt the same way about it.  I suppose what I mean is when Tom expresses, or rather it was implied, that he feels embarrassed and foolish about his dreams.  Lets face it, that profession is not considered respectable.  Saying "I am a writer"  is in a completely different court in social standing than "I am a doctor"  or "I am a lawyer".  However, judging by the fact that Tom is the narrator and supposedly the "author" of the play he realized that doesn't matter.  Excuse my bluntness, but people who judge artistic professions suck.  I am not usually the inspirational poster type, but really following your dreams and what you want to do is a million times more important than what people think of you.  And if it is that important to you use an alias or something, because trying to spend your life doing something you are not passionate about isn't good for anyone.  You will hate it, you won't work hard at it, and you will never reach your full potential, so what is the point?

The renaissance, it is no longer just a period of time in history,  it is a description of a creative artistic golden age.  One of the most famous of these goes by the name The Harlem Renaissance.  This period of time is characterized by the movement of African American people northward to large urban areas of the United States during World War I, where jobs in factories, such as automobile factories, had opened up and employers were more eager to hire minority groups due to the draft of the white meb originally employed there.  As minority communities grew larger and closer knit they pushed out the upper middle class white people who had originally lived there.  This causes a boom in artistic creation in these areas.  what we must do when looking back is concider the implications of calling this a renaissance,  was it really a golden age of creation,  or was it simply when America got over its racism enough to realize there was creation going on and acknowledge it?