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[aamoako3]

Love’s Disillusion

We have now arrived at the end of our journey…. our quest to figure out what love is. I can’t believe this moment has finally arrived! So...do I have an answer as to what love is? Well I personally don’t believe that there is one definitive answer as to what love is, but I must admit that this movie absolutely rounded out my perception of what is most important when it comes to love. Blue Valentine, right next to Moonlight and Phantom Thread, is definitely my favorite movie of the semester. This movie is a completely different vibe from every other movie we watched for class because of how alarmingly real it is. Of course everything that happens in Moonlight can truly happen but it’s targeted at a specific audience to relate to. Phantom Thread is a crazy take on love, but of course, hopefully I would never have to experience being poisoned by my lover OR poisoning my lover. With Blue Valentine, it was the most realistic story about love because it’s essentially not even about being in love, it’s about falling out a love: an experience that we’re all afraid could happen to us at some point.  A stubborn “love at first sight affair” that sadly turns into a depressing divorce.  One of the best feelings in the world is being in love, so the thought of it being taken away is heart-wrenching.

Breakups can be tough and since this movie sadly ends in divorce, the readings for this week detailed the trials and tribulations related to breakups. Although the audience never knows exactly what led to the deterioration of Dean and Cindy’s marriage, one of the readings for the week, Romantic Breakups, Heartbreak and Bereavement by Tiffany Field, talks about the physiological effects of a breakup. This got me wondering which effects Dean and Cindy both could have gone through once the bond in their relationship had been broken and their marriage started drifting away. In the reading, they explain that there are social regulators of bereavement in which the “loss of a significant other represents the loss of major social time cues” (pg 384). In the film, there was a scene where Cindy was late for their daughter’s recital because she had randomly found their dog, who’d they had been searching for. They already were disagreeing on how to handle the dog situation so having the dog end up dead was throwing another wrench in their broken relationship. Of course this wasn’t the only problem that they were having in their lives, but the loss of something so special to their daughter definitely didn’t help. This adds to the concept of internal disorganization that they both were probably going through. The author quotes from other researchers about how “losing an attachment figure means losing regulatory control of stable daily patterns, of tasks, attention, concentration, sleep, food intake and mood, such that they become fragmented, and the individual has a sense of internal disorganization” (pg 384-385). We don’t know how their sleep patterns have been or their concentration levels or the issues with their food intake, but we can assume that based on their moods and attitudes toward each other, that both Cindy and Dean were going through internal disorganization without having acknowledged it within themselves. They lost each other as attachment figures and when that happened, their entire relationship and their lives shifted in the negative direction.

The reading also describes a phenomena called psychobiological attunement or “being on the same wavelength” (pg 385). Well, let’s just say that Cindy and Dean were absolutely not on the same wavelength the way they were when they were younger. “Each partner provides meaningful stimulation for the other and has a modulating influence on the other’s arousal level” (pg 385). The point of being in a relationship is being able to thrive off of the positive energy that the other person brings to the table. You’re supposed to learn from each other, grow with each other and thrive off of each other. Dean seemed to be content living his life the way he was living it: not wanting to do anything more or less, not trying to advance his career or grow as an individual. He was content staying the same whereas Cindy wanted to see him flourish and try to push himself to be a better Dean than the one she was living with. They became out of sync: their psychobiological attunement toward each other became misaligned the minute Cindy realized that Dean didn’t want to do anything different with his life. He didn’t want to be better and she was not content with how content he was with this. Maybe they tried to talk about it, but they most likely didn’t. Cindy tries to address it but Dean shuts it down almost immediately. They never were able to take the time to actually talk through all the new things they wanted from each other as their lives progressed with one another. Without talking it through, this is when their relationship most likely began to suffer. 

In another one of the readings, Love as Illness: Poets and Philosophers on Romantic Love by Ruth Rothaus Caston, the authors describes how “philosophers compare love to an illness” that they believed was in need of treatment (pg 280). “The arguments that remove the troubling emotion are described as “cures” or “remedies” and the passions are said to be “torn out” or cauterized” from the body” (pg 281). Although these arguments are supposed to be philosophical arguments, in Dean and Cindy’s situation, this supposed “love” has not become just an illness, it has become a plague. They feel obligated to love each other for the sake of keeping their family together but they are constantly arguing and bickering to the point where real love could not honestly be seen between them. Their arguing and bickering can parallel the arguments that the philosophers use to “cure” the passions of love that they believe plague the body; that’s exactly what happened to Dean and Cindy. Their chemistry, their connection was broken for good. There was no salvaging it and that was clear to see during one of the last scenes when Dean causes a scene at Cindy’s job, getting her fired.

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4D20x3Pfg6E ===> This scene is the climax: the breaking point where all the pent up anger toward each other truly comes out as Dean and Cindy have one of their relationship ending arguments)

Cindy explains how she’s done being angry and Dean explains that she’s only even talking to him because he’s forced himself into her time. This is where I realized that time is truly important in a relationship. If two people can’t make the time to work through their problems, then there really is no fixing the relationship. When a relationship becomes this deprived of a commitment to making time, it should be known that the relationship needs to end. Even if one person is willing to invest in trying to make it work, it has to be a two person deal. Both parties need to cooperate and commit to doing so or else it’s never going to work. Ironically, this is a point that I brought up in one of my earlier blog posts! Here it is: (quotes by ME):

“Since she ends up by herself at the end of the movie, with no significant other, maybe the reason none of the relationships turned out the way she wanted them to was because she needed to accept herself before she would be ready for the journey of finding her other half. When you think about it, how can you find your other half if you haven’t found yourself either? Two lost people can’t create a whole person. This is an idea that I'll definitely add to my beliefs of love: you can’t find someone else to add to your completeness if you’re not already complete within yourself as is.”

They both started the relationship as two broken individuals who were trying to fill the voids that they had within themselves with each other. The problem with this is that you can’t use someone else to fill a void that you need to personally fill. It doesn’t work like that. Self-love is an important kind of love that was rarely talked about throughout this entire love journey and I think it is one, if not the most important kind of love there is. If you can’t find the love to love yourself, it makes it a lot harder to love someone else and in Dean and Cindy’s situation, this is exactly the case. Their story is so real; it’s so true and it’s so scary to think about the fact that this could happen to anyone. If you don’t want this to happen, then you have to put the work in. Time is work and commitment takes time and work. Love is a commitment to making time; that’s what I think love is

[aamoako3]

Love, Ownership and Antagonism

We’re back once againnnnnnn. Talking about L-O-V-E. This week, we watched a movie that I believe is one of the best movies we’ve watched in the class (very close to how much I liked Moonlight). Phantom Thread is amazing; it shows the drastic measures some people will take as a way to get the attention they want and feel like they deserve. It sounds crazy when it’s stated like that, but although it was an extremely messed up version of the concept of “taking matters into your own hands”, it also shows how important it is to make time for the person you want to stay in a relationship with.

From the get go, Reynolds is the one to make the first move on Alma; it wasn’t the other way around. The chase wasn’t long, but from the moment he laid eyes on Alma it didn’t seem as if he was intrigued by her personality. His fascination derived solely on her looks, as would be expected, especially as a fashion designer for women. While I was watching it, I didn’t realize he was trying to make a move on her. He had just indirectly broken up with his “girlfriend” through his sister/assistant Cyril, so I had assumed he wasn’t great at being the relationship type of person. But alas, he tells Alma that she “has no breasts”, that “you’re perfect” and boom: she’s smitten (Love, After A Fashion by Sheila O’Malley, pg 26). Within the reading Love, After A Fashion by Sheila O’Malley, the author discusses how “the lines blur between a Pygmalion/muse arrangement and something more intimate when Alma moves into the London townhouse, splitting her role as artist’s model and girlfriend” (pg 26). Of course there’s nothing wrong with working for someone and dating them...just kidding, of course that’s a recipe for obvious future tension. Reynolds is established as being a needy perfectionist and a workaholic, the reading describing him as a “successful obsessive” who has to adhere to his super specific everyday schedule (pg 26). Why he didn’t realize hiring his girlfriend as a model would probably derail his everyday schedule really confused me, BUT men don’t pick up on things like that. Being the workaholic that he is, on top of being strict about his schedule, it would mean that he couldn’t realistically fit Alma into his schedule, even if he had actually tried to. What he assumed was that by combining work with his girlfriend, he could get two for the price of one. Well, that ended up not being the case because obviously, he’s not obligated to give his other employees the same attention that he is supposed to give Alma because at the end of the day, none of them are his girlfriend, she is. But at the same time, he can’t fully treat Alma like his girlfriend because she happens to also be his employee. See...this is why you don’t date your superiors...it doesn’t work. Power dynamics. That’s all I have to say. Power dynamics.

The reading also brings up a question that I find extremely interesting: “can you be a muse and also have your own needs?” (pg 26). In my opinion, yes you can be a muse and also have your own needs, but if your needs are based on someone else who isn’t able to satisfy those needs, especially if you’re that person’s muse, chances are your needs will never be met. When your needs aren’t being met by the person who promised you that they would do so, that would obviously make any person unhappy. In Alma’s case, her needs aren’t being met based on the simple fact that Reynolds is not making time for her. His work takes up most of his life and regardless of whether or not he actually wanted to be with Alma, he has no intention of taking time away from his work just for her. I’m proud of my girl Alma for actually being able to see that this was her situation and that this was the reason they kept fighting all the time. Yet, she couldn’t get herself to leave on her own. The scene where she makes him a subpar meal (from the heart of course) which he gladly belittles was her way of trying to break down the wall that she knew stood between them.

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fn5dXUu_qxM ===> This heart-wrenching scene was Alma’s way of trying to do something nice and spontaneous as her attempt to spend more time with Reynolds. He doesn’t appreciate the meal: the dish is not prepared the way he likes it and he’s not understanding why Alma is going out of her way to make his meal “incorrectly”. He never once realizes, even before this, that Alma is feeling alone, unneeded and neglected. All she wants is time with him and he can’t even do that for her.)

At the same time, she said that she was waiting for him to tell her to leave. Why would she wait for that? That’s what I was asking myself as she was saying this, but after the fact I realized that she was waiting because she still had a sliver of hope. She was hoping that he would realize he was being selfish and irrational and that he would change his stubborn ways and make time to love her, but for some reason, which I STILL don’t understand, the thought of loving her was not enough for him. He was in love with his art, his craft; he loves it in a way he could never love Alma. Nor was he ever going to love her the way he loves his business and the way he loves his dresses. This is where the concepts of jealousy and envy come into play.

In the reading, Jealousy by Daniel M. Farrell, it talks about the subtle difference between what constitutes as jealous versus what constitutes as envy. What we don’t realize is that it is very easy to confuse the two for each other. The reading defines envy as “a two party case where one person has something...that another person doesn’t have but would very much like to have” (pg 531). Emphasis is put on the fact that you want something in its literal sense, like a trait or an object, and “it may very well be a matter of complete indifference to me whether or not you retain” this trait or object (pg 531). Jealousy, on the other hand, is defined as “not just that you have something that I want--namely, a certain person’s (or group’s) esteem--but that you have been given that affection or esteem by someone who is important to me and from whom I want that esteem or affection” (pg 532). The reading also brings up the notion that jealousy “arises only in what we may call a three-party context...something that one feels only when one has a desire to be favored by some other person (or by some group), in some respect, to some third person (or whatever)...” (pg 530). In Alma’s case, it’s hard to tell whether or not she is entirely envious or jealous throughout the film because it doesn’t seem like she wants to take all his time from everyone else. She doesn’t want him to give up what he loves doing them most, but at the same time by the end of the film, she has already poisoned him twice. Having said that she wants him to be vulnerable and weak so that she, herself, is the only person taking care of him, by the end of the movie, her love has obviously turned into a type of obsessive and toxic kind of love. I think she transitions from subtle envy to outright jealousy, the switch most likely happening right after he rejects the intimate dinner that she attempted to make for them to save their relationship and after successfully poisoning him for the first time. All Alma wanted was for him to reciprocate the level of commitment and love that she was putting in their relationship and the fact that for him to do so, she had to poison him twice before he realized that all she wanted was some precious time with him. This film is truly a recipe for an unhealthy relationship and it was fascinating to see such unfold.

[aamoako3]

The Disinterested Love of Humankind

Let’s off by saying this: a movie about an angel who wants to be human after falling in love with a human? It is such a magical concept to me! Kind of like when witches give up their powers to be with a human or a vampire gives up their vampire abilities to be with a werewolf. It’s all super romantic, until you realize this is such a silly concept. This week, we watched Wings of Desire and if I’m being honest, it was 40% about “love” while 60% of it was Damiel the Angel walking around contemplating whether or not he should become human for a human woman as he stalks this woman (whom he claims to be in love with but has no idea who he is). Regardless of whether or not I find this somewhat creepy, this movie is a perfect example of one of the readings that we had this week called Benevolence, Special Relations and Voluntary Poverty: An Introduction by John P. Reeder Jr. The reading describes benevolence as a “disposition to desire and act on behalf of the good of various parties (near and dear, strangers, and even the self” (pg 3). Being angels, their job is to adhere to the needs of all humans to try and make them feel good again when they feel any other emotion other than happiness. They are the checks and balances of the world without humans even realizing it. One of the readings for this week, The Altruism Reader: Getting Along (Chapter 25) by Frans de Waal expresses the idea that “an individualized society is doomed without checks and balances on aggression” (pg 247-248). Imagine if every single time someone became angry and upset, they stayed angry and upset for the rest of their lives? This world would be in utter chaos BUT in this movie, thanks to the angels that would never be the case. They sense these emotions from everyone. They read the minds of everyone and know what’s going on with them physically, mentally and emotionally. What I couldn’t figure out about the angels is whether or not they feel their own emotions or if they imitate the emotions of the human minds that they constantly are reading.

It can be assumed that benevolence is supposed to apply only to humans, yet angels seem to be the epitome of benevolence since they care for everyone and everything equally. Can this be love if the humans don’t even realize they’re being looked after in the most caring way possible? Throughout this class we’ve discussed reciprocity and whether or not one person can express love for another and if it can actually be constituted as love if the love they feel is not reciprocated by the other person. This is a very shady topic on my behalf, since I believe reciprocity depends on the situation, but for this circumstance between angels and humans, I don’t think it can actually be considered love. I wasn’t even sure if the angels could feel any real emotions until Damiel realized that he was “in love” with the woman from the circus. At first, I thought it was kind of ridiculous of him to fall for a woman he’s never actually met, but then it hit me. Since he can read the minds of all humans and see everything they’re doing, technically he has met her and actually he knows her well. He knows all her inner thoughts, which is usually the point of getting to know gradually know someone in person, but he got to skip all of the “getting to know you parts” and get right into seeing her on a deeper level. Angels don’t know what it’s like to be human, so did he know that what he was feeling was most likely the human equivalent of love? He probably subconsciously knew that he was supposed to be feeling love for the woman from the circus, but he wanted to actually feel it, which led to his desire to want to be human. No offense dude, being human is not all it’s cracked up to be. At the same time, I wouldn’t give up all the people in my life to be an angel either if it meant I could never feel human emotions again.

Damiel wanted to know how amazing it felt to have companionship/love/friendship/etc. He wanted to feel the emotions that come with being human and having these human relationships; he’s willing to give up his immortality as an angel to be with a person he’s not even sure will love him back...ORRRR, was he sure she’d love him back? He’s been watching and observing humans for centuries. He’s probably become an expert in figuring out what the clues are as to whether or not two people can fall in love. Maybe he thought he would be the perfect fit for her because he actually knew by experience that someone like him would be compatible with someone like her. Yet, when thinking from the human perspective, how does she fall for him as soon as she meets him? In general, and this happens in a lot of movies, why is the young gorgeous gal always falling for the old ugly guy she just meets? The central characteristic of the woman from the circus is that she is depressed and alone. Once again, in one of the readings of this week, The Altruism Reader: Getting Along (Chapter 25) by Frans de Waal, the author states that “we should be so constructed that we find comfort in companionship and seek it, and that we experience greater or lesser degrees of anxiety when alone” (pg 250). Maybe he knew she’d be desperate for companionship and would jump at the chance to be with anyone who offered to be with her and he made sure that would be himself. I’m not sure if I can consider this love. Of course all humans seek companionship, but it should happen naturally and through a connection, not because a strange man who was once stalking you as an angel has now come to be with you forever as a human. I know it’s a movie, but it was cringy, it was unemotional, I felt no real connection between the characters and frankly, it was highkey disturbing that he was just watching her from the shadows, which she had no clue about. Overall, I personally do not think this movie added or subtracted anything to my developing theory, so let’s see where the upcoming weeks take me on this journey...to find the true meaning...of what love is. <3

[aamoako3]

Friendship in its Complexity

Here we go again! Love. Love. Oh love. For the first time (from what I can remember), this is the first week where the film directly addresses the love possessed between two friends and what happens when one friend has feelings of romantic love toward the other friend, but it is unrequited. Upsetting to think about, but I can also appreciate when two people can remain friends after unrequited love has been put out into the universe. This week, we watched My Own Private Idaho, a film loosely based on Henry IV. It took me a while to realize why they were talking with a super Shakespearean dialect while also living in the 90s. It didn’t work for me at all, specifically because I didn’t feel the emotional effects that the movie was probably trying to convey to me. The modern visuals mixed with the Shakespearean dialect that didn’t match the period of the film really threw me for a loop and made it difficult for me to sympathize with other characters that weren’t Mike. As I establish my thoughts on the aspects of friendship love, let’s establish a foundation for what makes friendship love count as love.

Pertaining to one of the readings of the week, “Plato and Aristotle on Friendship and Altruism” by Julia Annas, although it seems like she’s overanalyzing things that don’t need to be analyzed, the author writes about the different ways to be able to recognize a person as a friend and establish a real friendship. The central idea of the reading is to compare the various analyses of friendship between Plato and Aristotle. The author discusses how Plato and Aristotle both consider the concept of the “nature of philia” and to feel philia for someone else means “for the sake of something and for a reason” (pg 537). Basically, it’s the notion that you care for someone else for their own sake and for their own well-being. The author also discussed Socrates, who believes that “to desire or feel affection for some person is always...to have some reason that has a reference to the agent’s own welfare” (pg 536). When considering both of these views in relation to the film, the relationship between Mike and Scott, in my opinion, seems to possess some philia. Although Scott chooses to live as a hustler and Mike, essentially, doesn’t have a choice, they are both in the same situation despite this. Scott could easily have been pushed back into the arms of his rich father and Mike and the crew could have simply shut him out, but they didn’t. They didn’t visualize him as the rich boy pretending to be a broke boy, they saw him as their friend Scott. On the other hand, although they never pushed him to go back to his father, this could have been because they didn’t know about his inheritance. The only person that knew was Bob, his mentor. Regardless of this, I believe that this means the friendship between Mike and Scott was completely genuine at the time and they cared for each other for the sake of caring for each other. Scott was always there for Mike when he’d have his epileptic seizures and always knew how to take care of him when it happened.

Based on how the story plays out, it becomes evident that Scott only cared for Mike and all the gang to fuel his source of rebellion from his father, so this is in relation to his “own welfare”. At first, I couldn’t figure out what Mike’s philia toward Scott was, but then I realized it was obvious that always having Scott to save him during his epileptic episodes was his way of feeling affection toward Scott for his “own welfare”, too. Although this is supposed to be in relation to friendships, Mike reveals his deeper feelings for Scott. Does he develop sincere romantic feelings for Scott because his philia for Scott was completely on the basis of caring for him for his own sake and for a reason? Would their relationship have developed differently on Mike’s end if he didn’t have epileptic seizures? The two of them were considered “best friends” of the group, but did Scott attach himself to Mike because he was the most helpless, thus knowing that Mike would become attached and somewhat dependent on him?

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MEmreSVR1NQ ===> Mike shares his romantic feelings for Scott, but it’s unreciprocated. Scott emphasizes that they’re best friends and always will be best friends, but was this ever sincere given the fact that Scott ends up turning on them?

If this is the case, then I don’t think this counts as friendship, nor did it ever, especially since Scott ends up turning on all of them (WHAT A SNAKE). In the second reading, “The Four Loves: Friendship” by C.S. Lewis, he discusses the difference between friendship and companionship. “...the companionship on which Friendship supervenes will not often be a bodily one like hunting or fighting. It may be a common religion, common studies, a common profession, even a common recreation. All who share it will be our companions; but one or two or three who share something more will be our Friends” (pg 66). I can’t tell how and if Scott was able to fake his friendship with Mike and his companionship with all the other hustlers. He related to all of them on the fact that they’re all hustlers and all struggling to make money (even though Scott could easily go back to his father and get some money, though he doesn’t so he can blend in with everyone). So, his companionship with all the hustlers was based on this, but Mike became the one person that shared something more with Scotty. The epileptic seizures and how Scotty takes care of Mike when they happen bonded them together in a way that turned their common companionship into a real friendship. I like this concept because it really does translate to real life.

We all have acquaintances and “in school friends”, and by “in school friends” I mean the people you love talking to in your classes but you would also never go out of your way to hang out with them out of class. It’s not to be rude, but it’s because you haven’t found the thing that would cause a connection to you and that other person that would invoke a real friendship. Maybe you want to be friends with them, but if you don’t have that catalyst, it’s not going to happen. There’s a quote from the Plato and Aristotle reading that perfectly sums this up: “wanting to be friends does not make you friends any more than wanting to be healthy makes you healthy” (pg 534). I’m sure Mike really wanted to have a bond with Scott, and it seems like they did, but because Scott ends up being a snake at the end, it further shows that true friendship can’t be one sided. It can’t be fake and if the friendship really meant anything to Scott, then the concept of sharing something with another person that pushes their companionship to friendship would have applied to him and Mike, but in the end it didn’t.

How can you know if the connection is sincere or not? You just have to trust that it is. I think that trust should always be a key aspect of friendship and, at least for me, I will trust you until you give me a reason not to. Maybe that’s good, maybe it isn’t, but I would hate to constantly have to be thinking about whether or not a person I think I’m having a deeper connection with is faking it or not. There are “five defining marks of friendship” that Aristotle discusses in the reading: “(1) we define a friend as one who wishes and does what is good, or seems so, for the sake of his friend, or (2) as one who wishes his friend to exist and live, for his sake...And (3) others define him as one who lives with and (4) has the same tastes as another, or (5) one who grieves and rejoices with his friend” (pg 540). It seems as if Scott and Mike possess all five of these defining marks of friendship until the very end when Scotty turns on them all. It’s evident that Scotty will never return to his “friends”, specifically during the end scene when they’re at Bob’s funeral at the same time Scott is burying his father. For one, Scott never felt any connection to his father so you would think that attending the funeral of a man who he’s specifically quoted as being a real father to him would be his top priority, but it wasn’t. The number five defining mark of friendship refers to grieving and rejoicing with said friends: he couldn’t even do that. All the five defining marks seems like the perfect baseline assessment as to whether or not a friend is truly a friend. Although Scotty possesses them at first, his character change completely ruins this. Is there a way to be able to tell when someone is faking the defining marks of friendship? I don’t think there is, but if anyone wants to somehow concoct a formula for finding out, please let me know :)

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W2htcO6OA6M ===> Let’s end this with the clip of Bob’s funeral. Whether or not the desire to be with his real friends was hidden, Scott has created a wall between him and them as he watches the funeral from his own father’s funeral (a funeral that probably doesn’t matter much to him). They probably would have been his truest, dearest friends but alas ...he turned on them. Friends don’t deceive friends.

[aamoako3]

Love and the Posthuman

Here we are again in what happens to be the most confusing week yet: love between humans and the posthuman. Even though I still don’t have a clear, definite interpretation of what love really is, I absolutely wouldn’t associate the love I have for my computer as being an example of “real love”. Regardless of what I think, technology is quickly evolving. It’s more than just the idea of a person being in love with their phone or their laptop, it’s about the fact that very soon, artificial intelligence is going to become extremely self aware. While reading “The Philosophy of Her” by The New York Times Blogs, it discusses whether or not a relationship between a person and a machine is possible. Consciousness is what deciphers a human from a machine, but in the movie Her, “Samantha can be conscious, for [she has] the same kind of minds as ours: computational ones” (pg 1). Although we’re not AI’s, our brains go through the same kind of thinking processes that AI’s go through. AI’s entail circuit boards and codes while ours consists of neurons and synapses. As of now, despite this, I don’t believe that technology can feel the way we feel. Can computational conscious possess genuine feelings? Not simulated feelings, real and true feelings?

In the movie, Samantha has seamless vocal expressions that make her sound incredibly human like; unlike how Siri on the IPhone or Alexa on the Amazon Echo sound like robots. Samantha is also able to express how she feels and gives her own opinions on questions that Theodore will ask her; unlike how Siri or Alexa can’t give answers that aren’t already pre-programmed for certain questions. So what does this have to do with love? Well, were Samantha’s feelings for Theodore genuine feelings or was she just such an advanced AI that she was able to simulate falling in love with him which resulted in him falling in love with her too?

Based on the readings for this week, Samantha’s lack of a body should have been a serious factor that should have deterred Theodore from being able to fall in love with her. In the reading of “Romantic Love and Reciprocity” by Phillip R. Kunz, “among the items considered as desirable...is some aspect of physical attractiveness” (pg 111). When falling in love with someone, most of the time you will see their physical state and figure out whether or not you’re attracted to them physically. Although this shouldn’t be the first thing we base it off of, our instincts as humans, who eventually have to reproduce, forces us to base our initial attractiveness on looks alone. Theodore didn’t have that with Samantha, nor would he ever, so does that mean the love between them that blossomed was an even more genuine love than it wouldn't have been if it had initially been based on looks? In this specific reading, the author tells the story of the lieutenant who wrote and received letters from a woman he had never actually met in person and was able to fall in love with her without ever seeing what she looked like. Even when he asked her for photos of herself, she would never send them, explaining that “if your feelings for me has any reality, what I look like won’t matter” (pg 112). He didn’t fall in love with her physical attractiveness, he fell in love with her solely based on her words just like how Theodore fell in love with Samantha. Let’s not forget the obvious fact that the woman in the letters was, indeed, a real person whereas Samantha is still an AI.

The reading also brings up the concept of the norm of reciprocity: “people should help those who have helped them, and people should not injure those who have helped them” (pg 114). Although for a few moments the lieutenant thought the person he was going to meet was actually going to be the middle aged woman he saw as opposed to the beautiful girl that passed him, the norm of reciprocity makes it evident that he needed to do the right thing and approach the middle aged woman, despite his desire to follow the young woman. Those who believed the story should have ended with him marrying the older woman was because of the “possibility of love being evident without the physical attraction -- a “deeper love” in the words of some” (pg 114). This was probably the case in regards to Theodore and Samantha’s relationship and I believe this could apply to love in the real world as well (not in a movie haha). If you had the chance to have a serious connection and fall madly in love with someone without looks having an effect on the outcome, wouldn’t you want that. And THEN if they’re cute, it just happens to be a bonus? If this happened, then the love would be authentic; it would be romantic, true and legitimate and I think that’s what everyone looks for when searching for their soulmate.

Theodore and Samantha connected in such an amazing way that Theodore didn’t even care that she didn’t have a physical body. Even when the “surrogate” showed up to represent Samantha, Theodore knew within himself that a physical form was never necessary for him to fall in love with her, so why should it all of a sudden be a factor in their relationship? He was fine going on dates with Samantha and being with her without a physical body ever being present. He loved her for her intellect and the connection they had and that’s all that mattered to him. Despite this, it can be argued that no matter how deep the connection is, the physical is always going to be needed to further a deeper connection. In another one of the readings, “Romantic Love and Loving Commitment: Articulating a Modern Ideal” by Neil Delaney, the author brings up the “ideal of romantic love [being the] desire to unite with another person in a profound psychological and physical way” (pg 340). “The basic idea is the following: people want to from a distinctive sort of we with another person, to be loved for properties of certain kinds and to have this love generate and sustain a commitment to them of a certain type” (pg 340). Based on this reading, the author makes it apparent that he believes forming the “we” between two people isn’t possible without the physical part of a relationship. Based on his opinion, the relationship between Theodore and Samantha wouldn’t be considered a relationship. I personally don’t feel like the physical aspects of a relationship are always necessary: it may seem like it when you’re a hormone induced teenager but there are many adults who remain selebate until marriage or physically can’t have sex or could be at the age where sex just doesn’t seem that important anymore. Sometimes it isn’t just a “dry spell” or the fact that they don’t find their significant other attractive anymore, they just don’t feel the need to express love in that way. Does the physical always imply sex? No, it probably doesn’t. For me, an embrace or a passionate kiss can count as one of the “physical” aspects, but the reading states that “central to any plausible contemporary romantic idea are mutual longings for sexual intimacy together with a more sweeping delight in each other’s physicality. The presence of such feelings in both yourself and your beloved are far more than mere add-ons to romance; rather, that you enjoy distinctively pleasurable feelings on seeing or touching your beloved” (pg 347). This super long quote comes to the conclusion that seeing and touching your partner in this incredibly initimate way is more than just “having sex”; when it is with the right person, it’s the most connected a person can be with their other half. I understand that for most people, sex is an incredibly serious and cherished moment that leaves you open and vulnerable. You have to put a lot of trust in someone in an intimate moment like that (and ironically, she loses his trust when he finds out she’s been talking to thousands of other people...yikes). In the movie, Theodore and Samantha could never have an intimate moment like this. They have sexual experiences together, but she’s not really there nor is she touching him or him touching her because that’s just not possible in their circumstances.

This next reading, “From Posthuman to Postcinema: Crises of Subjecthood and Representation in Her” by Donna Kornhaber, discusses the fact that even as Samantha does the most to ensure that she is considered as human as she can be, she finally “comes to acknowledge and explore the possibilities of her posthumanity, to see it not as limit but as potential” (pg 17). She has accepted her status as an object, regardless of the fact that she spent the entire movie trying to be as human as possible without having a body, but has been able to create a bond with a human despite this barrier. “Samantha tries to assume the position of a normalized subject and to render her posthumanness a mere technicality” (pg 11). She had possessed all the characteristics of a human: speech, feelings, opinions, emotions and all, to the point where the line between being an AI and being human became very blurred. The author states that “posthumans can make the best humans” (pg 13). What could this possibly mean? Does this mean posthumans could also love in a more sincere way than real humans do and is this because of the fact that the physical body isn’t deterring them from what is truly important? By the end of the film, “she is a new form of self unrestrained by and unconcerned with human needs and limitations...her very bodylessness becomes the source of her power whereas before it had been the greatest of her burdens” (pg 17). The idea that she shouldn’t have been able to have a real connection with Theodore because of her lack of a body is proven to be wrong as Theodore seems to loose apart of himself after she “leaves”. Whether or not the feelings Samantha had for Theodore were true or not, if they had been genuine and since she had been free from the physical attributions of it, I believe that this love is the most genuine type of love there could have been. Theodore loved her for her and Samantha loved him for him: it doesn’t get any more romantic than that....besides her cheating, but we’ll let it slide JUST THIS ONCE...since she is an AI (haha).

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZS8xBvgLaQ ===> The scene when Samantha leaves....heartbreaking...that’s all I’ve got to say)

[aamoako3]

Love as Conversation

This trilogy seems to be all the rage when I read the reviews and listened to my classmate rave about it (you know which classmate Dr. Ward haha). When I read the quick synopsis of what the movie was about, it seemed like a very romantic, yet pain-filled love story of two people who desperately want to be together but sadly, the stars never align in their favor. Of course, I expected there to be a little more drama mixed within the story plot, but it really consists of just the two main characters talking about the last time they saw each other and how much they mean to each other. Based on how the trilogy unfolds, their luck seems to never align throughout all three encounters they have as they rekindle their love only to separate from each other because of real world circumstances. To think about the fact that they could have made it work if they had both showed up six months later like they had promised each other or even if they had TAKEN EACH OTHER’S PHONE NUMBERS TO TALK ABOUT MEETING UP AGAIN! Of course, this is a film so they can’t take each other’s phone numbers since that would be too easy :/ . In this second part, I thought there would be some more drama because of the fact that he showed up at Vienna six months later and she didn’t, but it wasn’t the kind of drama that I expected to watch. Instead of screaming matches and revenge type of drama, they would get upset with each other and then quickly talk it through. The entire movie was basically a long conversation...and even though it bored me to an extent, I truly appreciated it. In The Erotics of Talk: “The Oldest Human Longing” in their Eyes Were Watching God by Carla Kaplan, the author describes narrative as “always a search for a fit listener” (pg 117). Throughout this reading, it talks about the story of a young black woman in search of an orgasm (with a deeper meaning of course), but in search of personal declarations about her inner self. Although the story is supposed to emphasize this and how her identity as a black woman has an effect on this, I feel like her desire for personal declaration parallels that of the two characters in Before Sunset. Both Celine and Jesse know that they’ve found each other to be the listener that they’ve been searching for and you can sense this just based on how they look at each other. In their eyes, there is a sense of desire, longing and understanding.

They both complain about their busy lives, how unhappy they are in their current relationships and life situations and the fact of the matter is, they’re both so attentive toward each other when they complain about it. It seems as if they both waited nine years to vent to each other because they knew that they are each other’s “listeners”. For certain situations, I personally think that there are certain people you can complain to about specific problems whereas there are other people you could never rant about those same problems . In their case, since they probably felt as if there would be no one else they could fall for the way they fell for each other, their current partners could never become the listeners that they are for each other. I guess in their circumstances, they could never replace each other because their connection was so profound and so real. The reading also talks about “the experience of conversation, the act of storytelling and self-narration” and how “only in telling her story…that Janie finally is able to satisfy that oldest human longing--self revelation” (pg 116). This is essentially what Celine and Jesse do throughout the entire movie: constantly having revelations as to why meeting in Vienna didn’t work or why they didn’t exchange information with each other to get in touch; or even pretending as if they didn’t remember certain parts of their rendez-vous together only to admit to themselves and to each other that they remember every single aspect of it.

The great part about this film is the fact that they could start a new conversation based on something so simple and it slowly happens to become a revelation about themselves or society or life in general. They seem to learn from each other; they work off of each other’s energy and it’s fascinating to watch. There was never any judgement; they were very understanding of each other and the life experiences that they went through over the past nine years. Another one of the readings for this week, Platonic Studies: The Individual as an Object of Love in Plato by Gregory Vlastos, Aristotle talks about how “persons who love each other should respond sympathetically to each others’ mishaps and triumphs, each should rejoice when his fellows have cause for joy and grieve when they have cause to grieve” (pg 18). They congratulated each other on their accomplishments, they were sympathetic to each other’s complaints when they needed to be and reminisced about a time when it was just him and her: no one else. That was the extremely upsetting part about the movie. They still aren’t over each other, nor does it look like they’d ever be, but just because she didn’t get to meet him back in Vienna, their love story came to an end. If only her grandmother hadn’t been sick! Imagine how much happier they could’ve been (even Jesse points this out).

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WPPUUvcO43A ===> This scene is where they LITERALLY talk about fate and the idea of misconnections. Jesse asks “what could have been?”. It’s hard not to think about that, seeing as they know deep in their hearts that they’re meant to be together. Jesse even admits that on his way to his wedding, he was thinking about her! Celine tries to validate everything that happened, but I’m sure deep down she was also thinking about “what could have been?”)

I think this also has to do with the concept of fate: whether or not they were meant to actually be there because if they were, why would her grandmother all of a sudden get sick at the same time she was supposed to meet him? What are the odds that they actually needed to get in contact with each other, yet they didn’t get each other’s contact information? Of course they longed for each other, but was it fate for them to even be together at all? I don’t think the universe would make it difficult for them to be together if the universe actually wanted them to be together...yet I guess we’ll never know, now will we?

[aamoako3]

Love in Society II: Gender

Here we are again to continue our mission of finding out what. love. is. We’re getting further and further into more diverse types of love based on race, sexuality and levels of humanity. This week we watched Pariah, the story about a young African American girl struggling to come out to her conservative parents. This movie is the perfect film to compare and contrast to Moonlight. For one, I love that both movies address homosexual love, especially since a lot of the authors of the readings don’t consider homosexual love as a way of loving. The family and community situations in both movies have their similarities and differences. In Moonlight, Chiron’s father is absent from his life and his mother is an addict who neglects him as he continuously gets bullied by the neighborhood kids for being queer, even before he realizes it himself. Although he has Juan and Teresa as his support system, he still falls victim to the pressures of hypermasculinity and becomes the street drug dealer that the neighborhood forces their young children to become. He never truly deals with his sexuality until the very end when he reunites with Kevin. The movie beautifully addresses how difficult it is for a black man to come to terms with his sexuality, especially when no one around him accepts him (except for Juan and Teresa, of course).

In contrast, Pariah is the first movie we’ve watched so far that addresses being a gay black woman. Although, statistically, the stigma around being a gay black woman is not as severe as being a gay black man, the protagonist deals with her own set of problems. She’s still judged by the neighborhood around her, she deals with a mother who subconsciously knows that her daughter is gay but tries to force her into being someone she’s not, she deals with a father who is there for her but only to an extent. Alike (the protagonist) has her parents and, although they support her financially, they don’t support her emotionally. Alike can’t get herself to come out to her parents because her mother is an extremely religious woman and she probably didn’t want to add to the fuel of everything that is resulting in the deterioration of her parent’s marriage. Unlike Chiron, Alike has a friend who serves as her support system, regardless of what everyone thinks. Kevin in Moonlight would never admit to being gay and when told to beat Chiron up at school, he does so under the pressure of wanting to fit in. In Pariah, Alike’s best friend Laura is not only openly gay, but wants Alike to express herself and encourages her to explore her sexuality. The concept of loving someone for the sake of them doing well for themselves is how Laura shows her love for Alike, even though Alike is oblivious to it at first. Both movies address the concept of black queerness, but one of the readings emphasizes an extension of that concept called the black ecstatic.

In the reading, “The Black Ecstatic” by Aliyyah I. Abdur-Rahman, the author defines the black ecstatic as “black queer attachments, affective dispositions, political aspirations, and representational practices that puncture the awful now with the joys and possibilities of the beyond (of alternate worlds and ways)” (pg 344). The author happens to use Moonlight as the example for the many details that are in relation to the black ecstatic, but Pariah also is able to mimic the black ecstatic problems associated with queer individuals and their families/communities. Just like how Juan and Teresa can be established as the black and queer family to Chiron, Laura and Alike’s father, to an extent, can be considered the black and queer family to Alike since they are represented as “both source of harm and source of healing”, which the author describes as being one of the “elemental structures of ecstasy” (pg 350). Laura is there for Alike from the very beginning; she never judges her, she’s caring and kind toward her and loves her for who she is. Whether or not this is just a strong friendship love or if Laura is somewhat romantically in love with Alike is a blurred line that I’m not entirely sure how to clear up. Laura becomes jealous when Alike starts spending more time with Bina than she is with her, but is it friendship jealousy or the jealousy of a lover? Jealous is a concept we haven’t fully talked about in class, so this could potentially be a very interesting topic. Earlier in the movie, she takes Alike out to a lesbian bar to try and aid her in becoming more comfortable with her sexuality, even wanting her to find someone to hook up with. If Laura wanted that for Alike, why was she so jealous of Alike spending time with Bina? Laura was probably hoping that Alike would meet someone who wouldn’t be looking for a personal connection to her so that she could continue to be the main support in Alike’s life. The idea of being committed to their love and the “evident importance of history” (pg 325, “Love’s Knowledge: Love and the Individual” by Martha C. Nussbaum) that truly resulted in the deepening of their relationship is the main way Laura shows her love.

Although this may or may not be unrequited romantic love, this kind of love is addressed through the toxic marriage between Alike’s parents. Audrey, Alike’s mother, does everything in her power to try and get her husband to notice her. She would spend every night making him dinner just for him to never eat, never notice her or even say thank you. There was even a particular scene where she made herself look super dolled up while pretending to sleep just so he would look at her (I wish I could find the scene to insert here, but I couldn’t find it)

In the reading of “Love’s Knowledge”, the author discussed romantic objects and platonic replies. One of the objects pertained to the idea of a “shared aspiration and similarity of commitment” (pg 327). From the start, it’s evident that Audrey’s commitment to Arthur, Alike’s father, is extremely strong, but not in a romantic way: a desperate way. She’s committed to trying to win him back, since it’s obvious that he’s fallen out of love with her. He essentially has no commitment to her, other than a commitment to providing and raising their two daughters. The platonic list stresses this objection, but they also stress that “properties that will be most valued in a beloved person are properties that are not shared” (pg 327). They obviously don’t share a commitment to their marriage, so what does that mean? They don’t share similar religious beliefs, since he never wants to go to church with them, what does this mean as well? Of course, these probably weren’t the kinds of properties that Plato would be referring to, but based on how their relationship is showcased in the film, they neither share any aspirations or commitment nor do they value the differences they have for each other.

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ePoygryCF_A ===> This scene showcases the obvious tension between Alike’s father and her mother. If they used to have chemistry, they no longer have it and it’s evident based their body language and even on how differently they react to Alike’s choice of wardrobe. They’re not in sync and although the mother is trying, the smart aleck responses from Alike’s father shows that he's not committed to doing so)

Would having this negative example of love affect the way their two daughters end up loving? The reading talks about the “unique, non repeatable properties [that are] essential to love” (pg 320) but seeing as Aubrey just tries to simulate what she thinks her husband wants from her, it’s not true love. For Alike, I think that not seeing a positive example of a loving romantic relationship hindered her from going out and seeking someone to love her romantically. Of course, her being in the closet was a huge factor in it, but maybe not having an example makes it confusing to understand how to love in that way. Regardless of this, I realized by the end of the film that she was never really seeking romantic love to begin with. She wanted the love and acceptance from her mother that she’s always been missing.

In the “Love’s Knowledge” reading, the author quotes that “the best kind of love, the kind that loves the individual for what he or she really is, is a love of character and values” (pg 331). Alike wanted her mother to love her for who she is instead of constantly trying to change her. Her Dad always showed his deepest love for her, even when he was wary about her being gay, but he eventually came around to accepting her. Her mother never comes around, but Alike finally arrives at a point in her life when the only love she was seeking to find was the love within herself. Self-love. That’s what she had been missing throughout the entire movie and by the end, when she chooses herself over anyone else, that’s her way of finally accepting who she is and finally choosing to put herself and her needs first. Without finding the love within yourself, it’s difficult to be able to fully love anyone else. That was my main takeaway from this wonderful movie.  

[aamoako3]

Realization of the Self Through Relationship

Hello there! Each reading before this week puts the idea of LBGTQ+ relationships on the backburning, which I wasn’t amused with, so I’m incredibly happy that we’re further addressing it: and with two great movies! I watched Call Me By Your Name and Moonlight a few times before this week and I absolutely loved both movies. I even talked about Moonlight in the blog post from last week, not even realizing that Moonlight wasn’t one of the movies last week (haha oops). They’re very different films from each other, but I liked that about them. What I didn’t realize was the deeper meaning behind both of them. Of course there’s the obvious difference in race and class between the characters of the two films, but I didn’t process the profound reasoning behind why this difference affects the way love is presented. Before taking this class, I really thought Call Me By Your Name was a movie that epitomized the struggle of coming out. In one of the articles, “But Seeing Through Whose Eyes: Call Me By Your Name and the Mechanisms of Love and Fantasy” by Miles Rufelds, the author explains how Call Me By Your Name is basically a “parade of bourgeois privilege” and replaces “any ostensible villain or antagonist with the insurmountable anxiety of a deadline” (pg 3). I never truly realized that until I watched the movie back to back with Moonlight. Compared to Chiron, Elio has it extremely easy. A summer filled with lying around, playing piano, having food served to him, sleeping by the poolside, playing volleyball all day and partying all night. This doesn’t mean that we should minimize how difficult or confusing it is for a person to come to terms with their sexuality. Yet, just as the author describes it, the film’s “idyllic setting, characters, dialogue, and narrative render its tale of affirmation and growth almost completely unrelatable” (pg 6).

With coming out stories, most people want to be able to relate to the character. If they can’t, is the story as effective? Well no matter what, every story will relate to someone out there. It’s not exactly relatable to a heterosexual person, but being relatable to a gay person when Elio isn’t going through even half of the obstacles that a gay person usually goes through? It might not be as effective as a story like Moonlight would be. So on the contrary, as described in the reading “Moonlight, Adaptation and Queer Time” by Pamela Demory, Moonlight is about “how real people live, people whose lives do not conform to the supposedly “natural” order of human life” (pg 98). Even though the film is extremely upsetting, Moonlight is incredibly more realistic and relatable than Call Me By Your Name could be received as. Chiron is bullied from a very young age, being called gay before he realized he was gay himself. They would make fun of him for “acting gay”, making Chiron associate “gay” as a negative attribution. He lived in poverty, surrounded by a toxic environment full of gangs and drugs with a mother who would steal from him and neglect him. Elio, on the other hand, is supported by parents who expressed multiple times throughout the film that they support him and that he can always talk to them about whatever he’s going through. He’s rich, white and privileged and that in itself is enough to make him unrelatable. Chiron goes through the terrible extremes of a situation where he is a gay black man in a horrendous neighborhood that never accepts him. A lot more people can relate to the idea of being unaccepted than the idea of being accepted. Although this is the obvious truth, in regards to love, I believe that both movies display this extremely well, but obviously in two very different ways.

Familial love and romantic love are present for Elio throughout his exploration of figuring out whether or not he’s gay. His family and friends love him unconditionally and they continuously reiterate that and assure him that this is true. With regards to Oliver, the article “Beating Hearts: Compassion and Self-Discovery in Call Me By Your Name” by Joanna Di Mattia, expresses the fact that Elio has found a person whose “kindness and warmth...provide[d] a safe space for [him] to be himself” (pg 7). Having someone like Oliver who willingly allows Elio to figure out who he is serves as the epitome of what loving someone entails. Allowing someone you care about to make mistakes and be “given the space and support to find [the answers]” without judgement or the fear of being ridiculed is what I believe to be an essential key to love. Although Moonlight presents it differently because of the circumstances that Chiron is living through, he is able to have his first sexual experience with Kevin without judgement as well. Kevin himself would never admit to being gay or bisexual, maybe he was or maybe he wasn’t, but he was comfortable enough with his identity to allow himself to be Chiron’s safe space while they were on the beach. Kevin allowed Chiron to have his one and only sexual experience as a gay man and because of that, Chiron was able to figure out that he was gay. It took him a long time to accept it and in the end, Kevin was the same person who allowed him to do so. Both Chiron and Elio had that one person: the person who allowed them to be vulnerable and who helped them figure out who they are. That’s quintessential to love.

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cd_H3JlAp0U ===> This is a part of the ending scene after Chiron and Kevin had dinner together and went back to Kevin’s apartment. Here, Chiron confesses to Kevin that he was the only man that has ever touched him, reemphasizing how much of an impact Kevin has had on his identity as a queer man, even though he still hasn’t come to terms with it 100%)

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_7dAL5QqugI ===> This scene, one of my favorite scenes in the movie was such a chill moment that showed how much more comfortable Elio is around Oliver now that he is slowly coming to terms with his sexuality. It’s a beautiful moment filled with intimacy and belonging)

Now, will there ever be a love story like Call Me By Your Name that involves a black couple or will a black gay romance always be subjected to the theme of poverty and unacceptance? Would the movies be as effective if the races were switched? Would one be more relatable than the other if the races and circumstances were switched? This shouldn’t even have to be a relevant discussion, but the fact is this: queer love is represented differently in film based on the race of the characters. If this can change in the near future, that’d be great; the last thing I’d want is for young black men who think they’re gay to assume the worst outcomes would occur if they decided to come out just because the worst outcomes are present on the big screen. That is truly heartbreaking to think about.

[aamoako3]

Love in Society I: Racial Dynamics

I’m backkkk! This week’s topic of love pertains to the racial dynamics of love. The movies for the week, If Beale Street Could Talk and Moonlight, were among my two favorites that we’ve watched so far because it addresses the effect that society and racism has on the ability to find love and happiness. I’m not sure why it still happens to this day, but the way black love is represented in all types of media is never as romantic as how white love is portrayed. Obviously it’s getting a lot better, which is why I love movies like If Beale Street Could Talk, but at the same time the black man still ends up in jail. Alonzo can’t be there for his child and he can’t love Tish the way he wants to because he’s in jail. Although I am clearly a week ahead of schedule, I want to somewhat compare this movie to Moonlight.

In Moonlight, Chiron faces the obstacles of poverty, abuse and drugs while also being a gay black man in a community that never truly accepts him. It made me realize there really are not many clean cut romantic movies with two successful black leads falling in love or an adorable romantic drama like The Notebook with a sad, yet beautiful ending. Why is that? While reading one of the articles of the week, “Love, Race and Sex in the Novels of James Baldwin” by Lorelei Cederstrom, the author brings up the fact that Baldwin likes to present a “fully-developed picture of black rage and the societal elements which have worked to produce that rage” (pg 179). Both movies address different aspects of societal elements that produce the rage within these characters. Alonzo being wrongfully convicted and forced into prison for a crime he didn’t commit all because a white officer didn’t like the color of his skin is the reason why he can’t further build his relationship with Tish. The fact that they could’ve had such an incredibly happy life if it hadn’t been for one incident really broke my heart. I believe it was fate that even brought them together, since they’ve known each other since they were little kids (isn’t that the cutest thing ever? They even played in the bathtub together!)

As the movie progresses and he realizes that he most likely is never getting out of prison, his love for Tish doesn’t falter, it changes. A relationship feels different when you know you have future plans to look forward to: getting married, having kids, moving into a house together, growing old together. All of this was dramatically cut short just because of one racist officer. In black romance movies, there always seems to be a factor like this one that prevents the lovers from actually being together. They’re always happy for about two seconds then BAM ...their world comes crashing down. The other article for the week, “Baldwin and the Occasion of Love” by Christopher Freeburg, the author talks about a very interesting theory, created by Baldwin, as to why the racial divide affects the possibility of two black people being in love and maintaining that. “...legal and social structures within the United States...reflect the white desire to maintain a fantasy of distance from blacks even though blacks and whites are actually connected” (pg 187). When thinking about the police officer who ruined Alonzo and Tish’s lives, was he threatened by their love? Did he think two young black people in love would threaten his chance of happiness and/or finding love himself? “...whites’ unwillingness to tell the truth about who they are connected to animates racial conflict” (pg 184) absolutely pertains to the situation in this movie.

Thankfully, race is not dealt with in this regard as badly as it used to be, but a good amount of underlying, if not open racism, still remains to this day. Is this why Hollywood doesn’t depict black love as much as they should? Things are changing of course, but it’s not moving as fast as it could be. Contrary to Beale Street, Moonlight deals with societal pressures based on community. Now that I think about it, there wasn’t a single white person in the movie that “influenced” any kind of racial divide like how it happened in Beale Street, the problem derived from toxic hypermasculinity. I love that a lot of the movies we’ve watched within the past couple of weeks have addressed homosexuality and this Moonlight tackled it beautifully. Although I do wish there were more positive movies in general that addressed being gay while being black, but I’ve also come to the conclusion that stories like these need to be told because it reflects on what is happening in the real world. Within “Love, Race and Sex”, the author quotes the idea that homosexual relationships are prone to being more peaceful than heterosexual ones because “the destructive elements of love occur only within a context of inequality” (pg 184). What do I think of this? Well, based on the movie, it’s obvious that a statement like this is far from true in this context. If we think about how Chiron’s own destructive elements of love came in the form of not being able to express his feelings, then yes this statement can be seen as true.

Throughout the weeks we’ve been continuing to build on our notion of love, many authors have diminished the importance of homosexual relationships and how it pertains to love. Either they don’t believe in it or they just don’t see it as being as significant as heterosexual relationships. Of course the significance of black love in Beale Street in the midst of distinct racism is just as important as breaking the stigma against queer black love, but like I said earlier, black love stories never seem to be truly “romantic”. A million obstacles are always presented to the protagonist, there’s always something. At the same time, I love that these movies bring awareness to the hardships that did occur, and still do occur, in respect to the racial dynamics of love. Although I hate always thinking about it, race does play a factor in our choice of love whether or not we subconsciously admit it to ourselves or not.

[aamoako3]

Love, Repetition and Obsession

Hi folks! We’re back with another addition to the evolving concept of what love is. Woohoo! The concept of this week is love, repetition and obsession and the movie for this week, 2046, definitely deals with some romantic cliches and, depending on the character, an obsession with the desire to either find love or push themselves away from it. If I’m being honest, once I perceived Chow Mo-wan as potentially being a player throughout the entire movie, I become very critical of him. I get that he was distraught over losing the love of his life, but every time he seemed to find someone who he could love, there always seemed to be some hurdle in his way, whether it was a hurdle he placed there himself or if it just happened to be a bad circumstance.

Pertaining to the idea of love, repetition and obsession, from the moment he sees the room number 2046, he instantly becomes devoted to anything and anyone that happens to walk through that specific door, starting with Lulu. He didn’t sleep with her (surprise, surprise), but the idea of romantic love being “mysterious, true and deep, spontaneous and compelling” and that “it can strike anyone” (pg 5; Romantic Love and Anthropology, Charles Lindholm) made me realize that she definitely wasn’t the one for him or else he would’ve had a longer interaction with her or would have tried to pursue some kind of relationship with her. Needless to say, the stabbing incident ensured that he wouldn’t make a move on her and soon after, Wang Jin-wen in. Her forbidden relationship with her Japanese boyfriend was very intriguing to me. Despite the language barrier and her father’s criticism, she was able to fall in love with him while constantly being away from him. A quote from one of the readings (Romantic Love and Anthropology) really came to my attention because it directly reflects the relationship Wang has with her Japanese boyfriend. “The wonderful thing about lovers is that you don’t have to sleep with them” (pg 12). Wang is thousands of miles away from her true love, so unlike Chow throughout the entire movie, her love for him is not based on sex. It’s based on the connection they have, regardless of the distance between them. They trusted each other to be faithful and loyal to each other while being far from each other. No matter how many times her father told her to end it, she tried to stay resilient. In my opinion, that is definitely one of the key aspects of being truly in love: not letting distance or disapproval from others get in between a connection that is truly there. She knew he was the one for her, despite her father’s constant disapproval. Wang did have a moment of weakness during her mental breakdown after breaking up with her boyfriend and having to be institutionalized; but when you think about it, the fact that the thought of not being with him drove her crazy can be seen, in a fantasy, fairytale type way, as being the epitome of love. One could argue they were obsessed with each other in the healthiest way possible. They had a true love affair: “a thing of surpassing beauty and value, implying absolute trust, mutuality and loyalty” (pg13). They were the couple who came closest to representing what true love is.

On the flip side, there’s the relationship between Chow and Bai Ling. Again, this is a continuation of his obsession regarding people who end up living in 2046. Whether or not he believed he and Bai Ling had any real connection, he made sure that sex was the only thing he wanted from her. It made me terribly upset to see that when she actually started having feelings for him, it was so easy for him to brush it off (or at least he made it seem like it was easy). I think this somewhat relates to the previous notion of a missed connection. She saw something in him that he clearly didn’t see enough in her for him to want to pursue an actual relationship with her. Could it have been because their relationship started based on sex? Plato is said to have described “sexual union as its aim [as being] the lowest kind of love, and achieves the lowest kind of immortality (the ultimate aim of love)” (pg 158, Plato and Freud Two Theories of Love: Two Theories of Love Compared, Gerasimos). I’d have to agree with Plato on this, but it's intriguing to think that Chow and Bai Ling, although experiencing the same actions together, did not have the same level of love for each other. I truly felt sorry for Bai Ling because she seemed to be at a point in her life where she really needed to have someone who loved her just as much as she could love them, and Chow couldn’t do that for her. She repeatedly would spend night after night with him, as if trying to convince Chow that he could be in love with her. Of course, this repetition didn’t work but she become enticed by the idea of being with him, which ultimately was very upsetting since even after he rejected her, every time he’d run into her she’d try to spark a connection they never truly had. By the end of the film, this helped me find pity for Chow (I’m still not a fan, but that’s besides the point). This poor man was using sex with mutliple women as a way to compensate for not being able to be with the one woman he really wants. “Romantic love cannot be bought and sold” (pg 5, Romantic Love and Anthropology): a concept that I believe holds a lot of truth and is the main reason why Chow and Bai Ling did not work out.

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U1kbAAf7238 ===> The ending scene of the film: Bai Ling tries to get him to spend one more night with her. She is still feeling an immense amount of love for him, but he refuses to stay. He doesn’t feel the same way about her and he finally got himself to move on from using her; whether he meant to do it or not)

With the idea that love can’t truly buy happiness, love fits into that happiness category and sadly, both Bai Ling and Chow Mo-wan were never able to truly grasp that concept. That’s probably why Chow never had a true connection with any of the women he slept around with. He was obsessed with the idea of being with someone, but once it came down to actually being with someone, he couldn’t do it. He did, however, have legitimate feelings toward Wang Jin-wen, but she was already invested in being with her Japanese. No true connection was ever really established between her and Chow. The fact that throughout the entire movie, the novel he’s writing is paralleling how lonely and isolated he feels proves that despite how much he tries to cover up his pain with multiple nights of repeated, unemotional, bland interactions with random women will truly never be the answer to finding romantic love. His obsession with wanting to be with someone and never actually following through with it also didn’t aid finding romantic love, because guess what? It’ll never be there.

[aamoako3]

Storge: Love and the Family

Let’s talk about love! Again! This week I read three different excerpts, the first being an excerpt from In Praise of Love by Alain Badiou called “Philosophers and Love”. The first thing I’ll say is this: old philosophers had twisted conceptions as to what they thought love was. Regardless of that, they made several points that I disagreed with and several points that I actually did agree with. There were ideas such as the “anti-love” philosophy represented by philosophers like Arthur Schopenhauer for which he expresses his belief that “he will never forgive women for experiencing a passion for love, thus making it possible to perpetuate a human species that was in fact worthless” (pg. 13). Absolutely ridiculous. Don’t men feel passionate love as well? Let’s not blame the ladies! Yet, there were also many beautiful beliefs, like the idea that “love is genuine and demonstrates its own seriousness. It is an eternal commitment” expressed by Mozart’s Don Juan (pg. 14). This is one of the ideas that I agreed with the most. If true love is indeed true love, there will be an eternal commitment to each other because now, you’ve made an emotional and intellectual bond with this other human being. It’s not easy to break that, and when you do, it hurts like hell. I don’t personally believe that marriage is the only way to push “genuine love towards its fundamental destination” (pg 14) since there are multiple couples who are madly in love who aren’t married and there are also married couples who are miserable in their marriages. After watching Paris, Texas, I can honestly say that sometimes, marriage doesn’t equate happiness. At the end of the movie, when you find out what really happened between Jane and Travis, how could you ever be able to believe that they were once happily married? That these two individuals who were once madly in love grew to hate each other? And what could have been so terrible that they had to let it affect the upbringing of their child? I’m not unhappily married and I don’t have a child, so of course I would never understand the circumstances, but there’s a quote in the reading that really struck a chord in my heart: “individuals pursue their own self-interest. Love is an antidote to that” (pg.17). For Travis and Jane, we don’t know what they were like before their marriage, but we can assume that they were pursuing their own self interests, as all individuals do, and I’m sure that getting married “cured” them of their selfishness. So when they both fell out of love, is that what caused them to neglect their child and leave Hunter behind without any explanations? Was their selfishness instantly turned back on once they fell out of love? In my opinion, I would think that it shouldn’t have because the relationship they each have with Hunter should’ve been separate from their personal relationship (since it’s not the same type of relationship), but OBVIOUSLY, this wasn’t the case.

The rest of this reading, in my opinion, doesn’t really reflect what happened in Paris, Texas, but while reading Conflicted Love by Kelly Oliver, despite how ludacris the stereotypes of maternity and paternity are, it made several points that really resonated with me and paralleled some of the major aspects of Paris, Texas. “The father is the representative of threats and power” (pg. 4). Throughout the movie, we never understand why Travis and Jane deserted their child and the life they had built together until the very end, when it is revealed that Travis was physically, emotionally and mentally abusive toward Jane. He asserted his power over her the minute he realized that she wasn’t happy and that she wanted to leave him. Based on the reading, it can be said that his alcoholism heightened his “natural authority” as a father and as the patriarch of the family because of his “naturally strong body” (pg. 4), regardless of him being an old man (How he got the gorgeous young lady? We’ll never know). The reading makes it seem as if this is a necessary step to ensuring that the child grows into the best person they can be, but this idea of the “natural authority” is the reason why Hunter was left without his mother or his father. These philosophers seem to thrive off of the idea that a child does not need their mother and that the child’s growth is based solely on the father pushing the child away from a relationship with their mother. What these old timers didn’t understand back then is the fact that a child needs BOTH their mother and their father, not one more than the other. Obviously, there will be certain circumstances where one parent isn’t capable of being a parent, but of course every child deserves to have both parents in their lives. Hunter wants both of his parents in his life and he expresses this throughout the entire movie. What made me truly upset by the end of the movie, after learning the truth about what really resulted in Travis and Jane leaving Hunter, was the fact that the home video they watched while at Walt and Anne’s house made Travis, Jane and Hunter look like such a wholesome, loving family. Although they may have been faking the love for each other, their love for Hunter was there and it was evident. It’s obvious that in the end, both his parents just want what is best for him, which is the reason why his father decides that Hunter being with his mother is the best thing for him.

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uAUruRr7Xpw ===> The ending scene where Hunter reunites with his mother; the embrace absolutely melts my heart. You can feel how much he’s longed for the safety of his mother’s arms and how much his mother has longed to have her baby in her arms. In the Conflicted Love reading, Lacan states that “the mother represents love and need” (pg 20). The reading also addresses the fact that a mother is an extension of her child and this embrace between Hunter and his mother look like they mesh together as one)

Whether or not they were both faking the happiness shown in the video, what I watched, and what they watched as well, was essentially a lie. There were three main quotes in another one of the readings, “An Alchemy of Mind: The Family Courtship Story” by Steven J. Zeitlin, reading family folklore and courtship stories. Everyone desires to have the super romantic love story that leads to a super romantic marriage and a super romantic happily ever after. We never want to admit that “...folklore in the family is often highly patterned and romantic while the circumstances and situations which lie behind it are far more emotionally complex and tumultuous” (pg. 31) “...folklorists are concentrating only on the sweeter side of life and that the hard realities which often constitute family life are ignored” (pg. 31). “A predominant function of family lore is to allow members to paint an appealing portrait of themselves” (pg. 31) These quotes all perfectly exemplify exactly what the home video in Paris, Texas really represented: a facade of happiness. Every couple and every family has their ups and downs and of course, no one wants to really show this aspect of their relationships because no one likes to admit that they’re having problems. We all want to display perfection when in reality, that is never the case. That being said, there will always be ups and downs to love--that’s the truth and there’s nothing wrong with that. 

[aamoako3]

TAKING OUR FIRST STAB AT ‘DEFINING’ LOVE

Let’s start with this stereotypical question: what is love? Love has many definitions; there are multiple ideas and various beliefs that different kinds of people will associate or dissociate with their notion of what love is. For me, at this moment, I would define love as a compassionate, honest relationship between two people, whether its romantic or platonic or familial, where both people can equally get emotional and mental support from the other person. Lifting them up as they also help to lift you up too. They aid in pushing you to be the best version of yourself that you can be. To me, that’s love. Now as we dive into other theories of love, I’m sure my belief of what love is will ultimately be altered somewhat: altered in a way that adds to my thoughts, but doesn’t change the fundamentals of it.

Watching Hedwig and the Angry Inch isn’t a simple movie to comprehend, unless you’ve actually read Plato’s Symposium or happened to know the myth regarding the origin of how every human yearns to find their other half. With the use of very impressive graphics and animations, the movie told the story (through song) of how human beings are all born with two faces, four arms and four legs. Apparently, cranky Zeus got very upset one day and decided to split humans into two which is the reason why people have two arms and two legs and why we always have a yearning to find someone to be with: our true other half. I’m not sold on the splitting apart concept, but the idea that everyone has another half/person they’re destined to be with is something I strongly believe. Hedwig sings about the origin of love and throughout the movie, it didn’t seem as if she was trying to search for her other half.

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zU3U7E1Odc ===> The Origin of Love Scene from Hedwig and the Angry Inch)

She obviously isn’t truly in love with her husband and he/she wasn’t in love with Hedwig either, but they held onto each other just for the comfort of having someone there. In Plato’s Symposium, Socrates’ states that “human being[s], possessing wealth, health, and strength, want to possess them also in the future, since at the present moment at least, whether you want to or not, you have them” (pg 29). The notion that humans want to hold onto anything that makes them feel any level of happiness even when it’s not healthy is essentially what Hedwig’s relationship with her husband is. Even when he tries to leave, she rips up his passport, which was definitely her defense mechanism at the thought of potentially being alone: which is ironic because she ends up along regardless. Could this have been a dysfunctional relationship because Hedwig’s husband wasn’t actually her other half? Does this mean it’s also the reason why it didn’t work out with the toxic American soldier who convinced and manipulated Hedwig to change her sex and move to the United States with him? That relationship made me incredibly upset. He was willing to ask Hedwig to completely change her sex just to be with him only for the soldier to ironically leave Hedwig for another man AFTER he’d already made Hedwig get the botched sex change surgery. This is the complete antithesis of what I believe love is. Love entails encouraging the other person to become a better version of themselves NOT to change them into the version of themselves that YOU think is better. How someone can categorize this as love baffles me completely, but at the same time I truly get it. If a person really thinks they’re in love, then they can become blind to all the toxic traits their lover may possess, even if they’re obvious. Denial is a crazy thing! Hedwig following through with the operation exemplifies Plato’s idea of wanting to hold onto something that makes you feel a certain way. Hedwig thought he was in love and he tied that feeling to his soldier “fiance”, blinding him from the subtle manipulation. Hedwig still can’t seem to catch a break because even though her relationship with Tommy Gnosis started off so sweet and innocent, it still ended with heartbreak. I don’t want to say that Hedwig somewhat caused Tommy to turn on her, but the dishonesty didn’t help in that regard. In The Ladder of Love by Allan Bloom, he quotes Socrates as saying “a man who claims he can teach erotics to young men would seem to be vulnerable to the charge of corrupting the youth” (pg56). Socrates also says that “knowledge of ignorance means that one’s life must be dedicated to finding out the things that it is most important for man to know” (p56). I’m not entirely sure what’s most important for man to know but in relation to the movie, Tommy is an incredibly young and ignorant boy. Hedwig is, as said by Socrates in Symposium, “always dwelling in need…[but] plots to trap the beautiful and the good” (p33). Hedwig is still recovering from her breakup with the man she thought she was going to spend the rest of her life with, so she was obviously looking to cling onto someone who could give her the love she craved. Hedwig become the resource for Tommy “finding out the things that is most important for man to know” and because of that, he became fascinated with Hedwig. He falls head over heels for her, but Hedwig knew she was never going to go far in the relationship with Tommy. She trapped him into loving her without realizing that she did. Or maybe she knew, I can’t honestly tell. She took advantage of his innocence and molded him into the person she wanted him to be. He gave her the love and affection that she needed, but her “angry inch” kept her from truly loving him back.

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lTdB2EzSpvk ===> When I googled “Hedwig and the Angry Inch -- Hedwig & Tommy Gnosis”, a perfect compilation of clips from the movie popped up. I think that these specific clips, along with the song “Beautiful Lies”, embodies the evolution of their relationship from the moment she cares and crafts him into her ideal lover to when they abruptly end their relationship; it’s ominous, yet has an air of beauty to it)

The sad aspect of the movie is the fact that Hedwig never finds the person that is supposed to be her “other half”. Basing this on the myth of the origin of love, Hedwig truly was left longing for her other half. Since she ends up by herself at the end of the movie, with no significant other, maybe the reason none of the relationships turned out the way she wanted them to was because she needed to accept herself before she would be ready for the journey of finding her other half. When you think about it, how can you find your other half if you haven’t found yourself either? Two lost people can’t create a whole person. This is an idea that I'll definitely add to my beliefs of love: you can’t find someone else to add to your completeness if you’re not already complete within yourself as is. That’s something that every single person should be able to do before they try to find the person they’re meant to be with forever: maybe that was Hedwig’s mistake.