Intellect and Emotion
I just found a beautiful article by one of “my” women about the difference between intellectual accepting the equality of another race, but still needing to deal with the emotions that interacting with people of a different race arouses. I love these women…they think about things in such different qualities than the men-folk who’ve gotten more attention. But anyway (since I’ve said that before…and the add-in argument does get old), I’m wondering how I’ll fit this article in. Where will it go? This is the hard part about the next month. Yes, I have three or so chapters left and many choices about how to organize the material. I could run with the secondary sources and replicate what others have done, with a little extra smidge then and there from my primaries. Which is what I need to do. but then here I am looking through my pictures of the Womans Press that I copied last winter and hadn’t gotten to read yet (I read the earlier articles) and there’s this great article and it makes me rethink … something… but what it is just yet, I’m not sure.
I’m so drawn to this article because it so neatly encapsulates some of my own musings about beauty. I will quote those parts here (I’m skipping the initial part where she talks about the emotional difficulties of interacting with people from another race). I’m not giving her name because I’m trying to keep this blog anonymous, and this woman is so unstudied now, that if I gave her name, this blog post would shoot to the top of google for her, I imagine.
There is a quality about life that every little while touches some inner response in us and that small flame which is the self flares up as if the life element of its air were multiplied. This ecstasy may come in a word, in a face, some scene of nature, some revelation of inner gift, and the soul speaks first with its singing, and the word formed is: Beautiful. In a small way in youth and later with wider and wider compass we become receptive to this beauty-in-life. We find it in places where we did not think it was; and each discovery makes us assured that we shall more and more discover it.
But is there beauty in these people of another race? Here is line of face and form with which I am not at home; here is coloring different from the tints I associate with accustomed form. If there is beauty here, how shall I discover it?
How did I discover it in other things? Why is the sea only a vast water to one who has laughed at my sitting for hours on its shore watching every changing mood? Why is that old woman on the park bench with eyes unseeing and mouth screwed up in the intimate delights of revery beautiful! Why does the heart quicken to see the vacant windows and the overgrown paths of the old farm house? Because none of these things is looked at, but into. For beauty is an emanation, and what is most discernible on the surface is the least part of it; what is held within the greatest. This has been the teaching of the great from the beginning; they knew how to direct their vision to the end what true harmonies could be discovered. They looked not at life, but into it.
Let me, then, look at people who seem alien to me not with the half look of disfavor but with the whole look of questing. To my surprise I discover very shortly a most amazing fact–that outward beauty is suddenly pricked out and stands forth since I am no longer interested merely in that. here is one who is entirely unlike myself. I have been looking within for a combination of qualities that would quicken my feeling for this person. Suddenly I see the exterior again, as if I had never seen it before. It is beautiful. Not any longer a comparison with forms and colors dissimilar to itself, but a harmony of form and color all its own. Not all persons in this other race will affect me so, I am sure. Not all my own race, by any means, have achieved an inner and outer harmony that quickens my spirit, but the miracle is that I have discovered in and of itself a beauty living within and without these people who were odd, unlovely and even grotesque to me.
I tried to lead a study once on what beauty means to me, and most of the rest of the people there thought it a very shallow and/or annoying discussion. What do you think? Is the above as meaningful to you as it is to me? When I wander around in a foreign place, I’m constantly looking out for what is beautiful or dramatic or interesting, but not necessarily in a conventional way. It connects me to the place in a way that if I were just moving through like a tourist I would not experience. But I suppose, too, one could criticize the above for allowing classism–one would more likely be able to connect on this level if other experiences are similar, like character traits, personality traits, or class background.
**Later, I just thought of a great place I can put this! When she is up for the NAACP board, Du Bois criticizes her for being too diplomatic and too likely to give in to whites–too “YWCAish.” I can offer this as an alternative world-view that Du Bois would not have necessarily understood, but is independent and rigorous in its own right. Thoughts?
and so the countdown begins
The summer is over and the fall begins. I finally got to talk to my prof yesterday and we talked about timeline. What it breaks down to is one hell of a September:
–finish draft (I have three more chapters planned)
–write conference paper (end of September)
–start job apps (at least one is due mid-September)
–finish Michelle Obama encyclopedia article
scary change
A rational explanation of why Americans are acting insane when it comes to reforming the health care system.
tee hee
Ok, you know I’m not one to brag. If you’ve read this blog, you know angsty depression and self-hatred is more the norm. But I just counted up the number of pages I have in my dissertation in order to give a “What I did with my summer vacation” report to my profs. I have about 600 pages! Now, size does not mean quality. And some publishers would look at that with fear in their eyes and run the other way, but still I’m kinda excited. Last time I’d mentally counted up, I was around 300 or 400.
Good Old Fashioned Guilt
Several of my media sources recently reported on a scientific study about self-control. The scientists gave children an oreo cookie and told them that if they waited to eat the cookie, they would get two at the end of 20 minutes. Then the adults left the room and video-taped what the children did. Those children who could wait the longest were the most likely to succeed later in life. (I’m pretty sure that Radio Lab and the NY Times reported on this, but am too lazy to look it up).
Now, there’s an article in the NY Times to explain why someone like me, who probably would have eaten the cookie, still came out moderately success. I would have felt bad about eating the cookie. Yes, that’s right, my old friend and constant companion guilt is part of my success. Read all about it here.
Michelle Obama
My last encyclopedia entry (a last minute request) is about Michelle Obama. I found a biography, by an eminent journalist, and started there. I couldn’t even face a google search. But stopping in the middle of the book, I gave in. You know how google puts the most searched for terms at the bottom of a web page? I find it sad that these were the terms:
| michelle obama shorts | michelle obama wearing shorts | barack obama | michelle obama pictures |
| michelle obama speech | michelle obama whitey | michelle obama thesis | michelle obama racist |
**added later. I forgot to mention that the journalist’s book is kinda annoying me. It was written quickly, albeit skillfully, but all from the outside. I mean, of course that would be the way it is right now. And to some extent Condoleezza Rice was the same, although her biography seemed to get a bit more into her reasons for doing things, and into her personality. I feel like this book is written by the neighbor three doors down, peaking over the fences. The author interviewed everyone she could about Obama….but the interviews all took place during the campaign, so I can’t help but feel like at least some of them are from starry eyed friends, trying to increase their own importance.
Maybe this is why I can’t seem to focus on the book, even though it’s an easy read? And I don’t have the energy to swim through the chaff and nonsense that comes up in google. What do you suggest I do? Write the piece based on the information I can find…all of which is pretty well codified already…so it will be like an extended version of the white house bio? That would be easiest and probably close to the truth. It’s not like I can seek out Obama’s writings…only her speeches, given in the context of her husband’s campaign, during which she projected a certain image. Of course, maybe in a politician’s life, the image is as important as the “reality.” And of course, both the Obama’s have always seemed to come across with more sincerity than many politicians. But that doesn’t mean I find her white house bio particularly helpful or illuminating. I so want to know what she means by the statement that her primary identity is motherhood. Part of the reason I find her fascinating is because she has been a working mother. She has to some extent, and with a lot of help from her mother, balanced the two lives. She on her own has had ambitions and desires. I want to know what those were and are, truthfully….but maybe because I’m a pysch case, I always want more depth, more and more depth, than some people can or will give.
Damn Liberals
Tonight, the A2 library hosted a local theater company, which did one of their first rehearsals for the audience, then opened up for questions. This company was founded by Jeff Bridges, who still has a major role in the company. Bridges has written a group of three plays set in the UP. We watched the second rehearsal for the third play.
Now a smart woman who wants to be an actress would have sucked up to the artistic director of this theater company. A historian would get totally riled up about the horrible inaccuracies. Guess which one I ended up being?
The two main characters, UPers, were awesome. Great actors, great, funny script. Then, because??? because??? because Barack Obama is president, and we’re all good liberals here, Bridges decided to put an African American into the script. Coates made a good observation about criticisms that Mad Men should have more whole black characters–the point of view is from the upper class whites, who had black people all around in the 60s, but never saw them. So the show does the same thing. In other words, not every piece of art has to have a black person in it. There are different perspectives.
Anyway, the main thrust of the story is two guys meeting in a cabin, one going there to retreat from his life, the other a gregarious mountain man who barges in. Later the first starts to talk about his father’s relationship with a freedman in the middle of the Civil War. This man, BlackJack, is a native of South Africa who was slated for the slave trade, so a missionary taught him English. Then his master discovered he could read (and that he was allergic to cotton) and wanted him to read books to him every evening. When someone in the masters life told him to shoot BlackJack, instead he let him go. BlackJack was then creeping through a battlefield picking up clothes to warm himself during the winter when he stops in front of a wounded northern soldier and saves him, traveling with him to the north through swamps and on the underground railroad. His ghost then haunts the white man’s cabin, as the only home he wanted.
Now the young actor playing BlackJack was no match for the two older, excellent actors. So there is an element of cardboard character coming from the actor. But he wasn’t given much to work with.
If the soldier who BlackJack saved had been a Confederate, this would have been a picture perfect copy of a story from the propaganda days of the Old Glory. Perfect black man, happy in slavery, good master, saving a soldier. This kind of trope–the perfect, saving black person–is soooo common and so reviled by many as pure stereotype. Of course, it may also have been why Barack Obama was accepted as a savior coming to heal our wounds. Think about all the times an actor has played god in the movies lately–how often was that character black? Or similarly, there are a ton of black characters who play superior administrative roles to the major white characters in the plot–so that there is diversity in the cast, but not an actual main black character.
Then there were all the historical inaccuracies. Ok, so very few slaves came from South Africa. The slave trade was outlawed in the early 1800s and patrolled by the British. So a black child wouldn’t be automatically be slated for the slave trade, nor would a missionary teach him English … This is such an America-centric idea. The actor gave the slave sort of a “West African” accent (so said the artistic director, after the South Africa line). Now, someone did enough research to say that there was still a lot of smuggling going on, so BlackJack could have been from Africa, though it would be much less likely than someone born in the United States.
I raised some of this with the artistic director, some of the factual problems during the question and answer session, then some afterwards. He reacted to some of the facts like I was a Civil War specialist commenting on buttons. I mean, I’m not a slavery specialist in any way. This information (and others in the audience agreed) is like undergraduate level. Or even wikipedia level.
He reacted well to my description of how perfect black characters are as bad as completely evil black characters. But I must have talked too much, because by the end, he said that 80% of his audience would react well to the message. And I’m thinking, of course! Because they’re damn liberals! Who are oh so happy-go-lucky about race.
I mean, I’m more than happy to find actual positive interracial interactions. I’ve been looking through history trying to find some. But here’s the thing–they are always complicated. Lots of stuff going on. Not just a black man giving up his own chance at freedom to help an injured soldier (who should have had access to all the Northern army medics) get home. Then, despite the fact that Angus and BlackJack get separated, BlackJack doesn’t move into a black community, he seeks out the white man’s cabin to haunt. Maybe if there was some complexity to the relationship, but it’s not.
Now it is all filtered through Angus’ son’s memory…which could explain the extreme romanticism, but as one of the three black people in the audience pointed out, giving BlackJack an actor (instead of achieving the same effect through dialog) demands a fully embodied character.
diss update
Still obsessing over John Barrowman, Torchwood, and all things acting. Not really paying attention to my diss, even as I’m working while watching things on youtube. Is it because this chapter bores me? Or because I’m frightened by how far behind I am and how soon job market stuff is coming? Or because I’m in the deep trenches again, struggling for self-worth? Or because that yearning to be an actress is always at the core of my being, and I usually push it down, but being in acting classes this summer brought it out with a frenzy.
I’ve been reading monologues for women and have picked out a few I think I’ll work on. Not sure for what, but for something.
Girl in a Coma
Listened to this interview on Studio 360 of the San Antonio Indie rock band Girl in a Coma and picked up their first CD, “Both Before I’m Gone.” Quite enjoying the music.
