The Simpsons spoofs Trouble in River City

What If It Were Agreed that "Proper" Meant Wearing a Codfish on Your Head?"

In their essay "Introductory Deconstruction" from Literary Theory, An Anthology, Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan explain that one implication of Jacques Derrida's concept of differance is that it becomes very difficult to ground the notion of "truth" in any authority.  In Derrida's construction then, truth, as the authors explain, is a deferred presence grounded in representations.  Furthermore, its presence is "shaped by conventions regarding how those acts of representation work.  It must be haggled over and settled on through agreements" (261).

Tim Burton's recent adaptation of Lewis Caroll's Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass finds Alice pensively posing this post's titular question to her mother, while en route to a formal engagement party.  Alice's mother discovers that she (Alice) has failed to don the appropriate undergarments.  Angrily, she exclaims: "but you're not properly dressed!"

"What if were agreed" retorts Alice, "that 'proper' meant wearing a codfish on your head? Would you wear it?"  Pleased at her mother's befuddled nonresponse, Alice demurs "to me, stockings are like a codfish."

Burton's reproduction of Alice in Wonderland casts Alice in a role that contests the notion of what is proper and who has the authority to make such conventional agreements.  As such, she is a classically poststructuralist heroine who resists the meta-narrative of her proper gender role in three different but parallel strings.  First, there is the question of marriage--whether or not she will marry "Hamish," the effete aristocrat who proposes in the first scene.  Second, the notion of heroes and damsels in distress, which is turned completely on its head as Alice is called upon to be the White Queen's champion in battle against the Jabberwocky.  Finally, there is her deceased father's business which has been purchased by her would-be fiance's family.

Furthermore, there is the allusion to what amounts to a very queer,  (albeit heterosexual) attraction between the Mad Hatter and Alice.  Also Absolom seems somehow meant to signify Alice herself in her state of always "becoming".  This conflation of identities queers the gender narrative in the movie as well.

[Still in progress. Seems lately I finish nothing.]

Multiplicity and Semiotics: Testing Boundaries of Cultural Mythology.

This post combines some old work with some new work for me with semiotics.  In the older stuff I'm using a Peircian model rather than Saussure.  Although the two kind of blur and blend for me.  What was the difference again?  Someone thinks that there is no objective reality beyond the sign...Saussure, I think.  To be honest, I'm pretty vague on that notion myself.  Language is pretty darned powerful but I'm loath to make the broad claim that it is ultimately deterministic. At any rate...about Tara:

The following clip represents the opening credits of Showtime's award winning original series United States of Tara. Although Saussure's  Course on General Linguistics delimits the signifying medium as purely linguistic and thus temporally linear, I would suggest that the visual medium both signifies in a comparable manner to the linguistic, and expands the possibilities for semiotic analysis of the complex signifiers taking place in the show.  The use of a series of graphic images to introduce the show's foundational concepts illustrates this point nicely.  

As you will see, the show's title character, Tara, suffers from Dissociative Identity Disorder (more commonly known as multiple personalities.)  What is interesting about this disorder as represented in the show, semiotically speaking, are the ways in which Tara's various identities are constructed and performed by way of a complex of social signifiers. These signifiers include dress, vocabulary, behavior, and so on, and are simultaneously interpreted and judged both by the textual/fictional community in which Tara and her family are constructed, and meta-textually, by us, the viewing audience.

As the opening theme to United States of Tara suggests, Tara performs four semiotically constructed identities.  According to Umberto Eco, semiotic theory is implicit in all systems of interpretation, which is salient being that interpretation itself is the pivotal point on which semiotic analysis rests.  Other theories and critical viewpoints, however, provide the ideological lens by which an interpretation is made. The framework for this semiotic analysis of gendered ideology and performative identity in United States of Tara rests on the foundational semiotic theory of Charles Peirce, the body theories of Judith Butler, and Roland Barthes’s Mythologies. 

Peirce’s semiotic theory establishes the framework of sign systems, whereby a “signifier”—arbitrary in and of itself—suggests a “signified,” or an endowment of meaning; together, they constitute a complete sign.  Signs, then, accumulate to construct “sign systems,” which, in turn, compromise meaningful units of knowledge about larger concepts, phenomena, and so on.  One very significant aspect of Peircian semiotic theory is the notion that signfication, or the creation of meaning, is simultaneously interpretive, subconscious, and instantaneous. Peirce also gives us the notion that interpretation is accomplished through accessing the larger cultural consciousness, thus resulting in the creation of “knowledge” that is socially agreed upon. While important, this notion alone is problematic insofar as the phenomenon of interpretation is ambiguous and vague.  The “how” and “why” of that instantaneous interpretation remains largely evasive.[1]

Judith Butler’s “Gender Trouble” intersects with Peircian semiotics by applying the interpretive framework of socially constructed sign systems to the concept of gender.  Butler shows how gender is different than sex and encompasses a moray of social mores, behaviors and values that are constructed as masculine or feminine and enacted through the performance of socially agreed upon signifiers of masculinity and femininity.  Her work separates the concept of gender—a significant aspect of identity—from the body and deconstructs it, showing how gender itself is a semiotic construction reflecting communally agreed upon social signifiers.[2]  Still, Butler’s theory doesn’t explore in-depth the mechanism by which the interpretation of social signifiers occurs.

Roland Barthes’s Mythologies provides the link that explores the mechanism by which instantaneous, subconscious, and socially agreed upon judgments—in Barthes’s words, the “what-goes-without-saying”—that occurs in the interpretive process.[3]  These mythologies represent the cultural narrative constructed upon unspoken assumptions that are both the foundation for and the cause of the interpretations they produce.  They both constitute and enable a socially constructed interpretation of signifiers.  Finally, they embody the corpus of signifiers called upon to perform identity.  Mythology, perception, and performance interact perpetually to produce meaning.

Tara performs four semiotically constructed identities that explore alternative possibilities that are largely gendered and centered around the feminine ethic of care and the role of the mother. According to the premise of the show, Tara’s other personalities, or alters, compensate for Tara’s perceived deficiencies.  Clinically, the development of dissociative personalities is theorized to derive from trauma, particularly violent or sexual trauma.  The audience’s ready identification with a dissociative protagonist implies the correllation of trauma with socially imposed behavioral mores and proscribed roles—specifically those associated with gender and maternity. 

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[1]
Bergman, Representationism and Presentationism

[2]
Butler, Gender Trouble

[3]
Barthes, Mythologies, 11

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Nothing either good or bad, but Thinking makes it so...

this post is currently a placeholder.  holding spot for ingenious theorizing.  whence stricken by the muse.

(me: "oh, muuuu--uuuse...!!!!  masochistic student awaiting your puuuun-ish-meeent!!!!")

just to remind myself.  ingenious blogging was in reference to phenomenology. as a reaction to war, uncertainties and fear of dis-unity.  if a ghost visits the castle and demands vengeance from his son who vicariously then avenges his own oedipal urges...but that son isn't there to see it...does the ghost really appear?

mimetic musing: how far removed from reality
is a text-messaged blog post?

If Residency is Optional...Perhaps I'll Choose Exile

Something tells me that Plato would've seriously objected to these guys hanging out up

in the Republic. Commentary in progress...

What I'm interested in here--beyond the obvious coolness of Bad Religion in general-are the following lines:

"So have the told you how to think

Cleansed your mind of sepsis and autonomy?

Or have you escaped from scrutiny

And regaled yourself with depravity?"

I realize that Plato's Republic isn't so much about religion, per se, as it is a sort of military complex-y type thing. But Plato may just be the original instigator of this notion of religion being the opiate of the masses, what with his certainty that all the stories one young citizen will hear about the gods will irrevocably shape his/her worldview and morality. Can't have any contaminating elements in the mix. And no autonomy. A citizen couldn't possibly make an intelligent and well-considered evaluation of some fictional mimesis about the gods. The solution? Revisionist poesy, of course!

Mobile Blogging

Mobile Blogging...test 1 was a success. But it lacks one feature that I, personally, find Very Important: the ability to title one's posts! I must admit, I'm a bit of a title-whore.  Titles are a little peepshow preview into the mind of the text.  An opportunity to seduce the reader with promise of wit and wisdom.  The place for a proper bit of word(fore)play.  Like I said: Very Important.  So I'm not sure I'll be doing very much Mobile Blogging.

By the way, this post was originally posted via my iPhone.  I edited it later. To compensate for aforementioned shortcomings.

And the Supercilious Conceit Award goes to...???

Which is worse: Ion's naive hubris, or Socrates's passive-aggressive antagonism?  They're both arrogant jerks, IMHO.

P.S.  Yes, I get the point, Plato.  The ability to either create or interpret poetry is a divine intervention, a gift from the Muse...not a skill.  Was the whole song-and-dance really necessary?

Bad Etiquette?

Being new to the blogosphere I must ask, nay IMPLORE, my (perhaps non-existent) readers to tell me: is it Bad Etiquette to follow my own blog?  Manifest Narcissism, perhaps?

Hello. Nice to meet you.

This blog represents my official, active initiation into the blogosphere. Blogosphere being a term I bandy about only having heard it in others' conversations. And, to be perfectly honest, in a much more contentious sort of vibe than that I hope to foster here. I'll be posting about literary theory in the context of my journey through aforementioned course in the pursuit of my MA in English: Rhetoric and Composition. And whilst that may sound downright tortuous to many--though it's doubtful those masses have found their way to this description--I find this thing we call theory quite fascinating. In a brain-twisting, beat-your-head-against-the-wall, and epiphanous sort of way. And so, welcome, if you are so inclined. Enjoy.