Dissecting my Mother

My mother was born in 1950, the second daughter to a family of three. She is the typical middle child, being somewhat left to her devices while attention was lavished on the oldest, and youngest daughters. Not only was she the middle child, forced as Freud would say, to give up her mother to a stranger, a younger sibling, when she was only two years old, but she also missed out on any affection and bonding with her own mother. My grandmother was somewhat incapable of showing love, or nurturing, and in fact my mother was never told that she was loved when she was a child.
During the early forming stages of identity my mother must have searched for something to emulate, someone to identify and someone to long for as an object. Freud said that "it is clear that in their play children repeat everything that has made a great impression on them in real life, and that in doing so they abreact the strength of the impression and ... make themselves master of the situation"(433). My mother was lonely, so she created imaginary friends to play with alone in her room when she was little, taking the matter of her loneliness into her own hands. Her imaginary friends captivated her attention and alleviated her loneliness, and at that early age they seemed so real to her that even now it is hard for her to imagine they were merely a projection of what she wanted onto empty space.
Because my mother never received the type of identity-forming nurturing from her mother and father, two parents who really had no idea how to express emotions to their own children, she became stunted. This had a major effect on my mothers growth and development as she reached adulthood, because "anxiety about entry into an adult world perceived as threatening of a too fragile sense of self or anxiety that awakens either troubling memories or drive energies will propel some people to fixate at an early state of development. They will remain attached to early forms of emotional life and sexual activity.."(Rivkin 390). My mother has always suffered from a "too fragile sense of self", and this has resulted in numerous problems. (low self-esteem, drug addiction and alcoholism, inability to act selflessly, or be faithful, and problems relating to other human beings, including her own children, ect.)
So how has it affected me? Having seen my mother through eyes of a child and an adult now, I realize that I must have sensed that she was a fragile person. Whether because I chose to emulate my father, rather than my mother, or because I chose to emulate the opposite of my mother, I have tried to grow into a person that was almost too sure of self. It has always been important for me to at least believe that I am dependent and strong, but it is also possible that this sense of independence is some sort of counter I have invented to pacify myself. Maybe my mother was not the able-bodied nurturer either, because she lacked the example that she should have seen in her own mother. I am close with her, but because she never learned how to be a mother truly. she has instead always taken the place of a best-friend, someone I was very very close to but did not offer the unconditional emotional support. At times I've been angry with her because of this, but I realize her inability to truly relate to her children with unconditional love as their mother is not really her own fault, but the fault of her own family that never accepted her unconditionally.

"Part Five Psychoanalysis and Psychology." Literary Theory : An Anthology. Ed. Julie Rivkin. By Michael Ryan. 2nd ed. Grand Rapids: Blackwell Limited, 2008.

Every good story needs its antagonist and protagonist, just like every yin needs its yang. Without white, black does not exist. Without evil there can be no true concept of good. We as human beings require things to contrast, be opposites, in order to understand their values, or meanings. Just in the way that polar opposites are used to form one anothers' meanings, so are signs used to reflect back upon each other. They are capable of mirroring back an image of the sign that perhaps would be exist without its counterpart. As Saussure states, "The two elements are intimately united, and each recalls the other"(61).
Jennifer Aniston is America's good. She is our signifier for ideas of faithfulness, wholesomeness, and wrongly harmed. When Brad Pitt, the man of men, left Jennifer Aniston to begin his steamy affair with Angelina Jolie the world was aghast, and quickly sides were taken. The image of Jennifer Aniston as America's sweetheart was solidified in the eyes of the people, because she was no longer a woman who had everything we women wanted, but now she was a woman who had had it all and lost it -- and worst of all to that bitch, Angelina Jolie.
And thus Angelina Jolie's image was shaped. Stunningly gorgeous and seductive; these things had already been associated with her before the Brad hit the fan, but afterwards she became a signifier for the concept of a home-wrecker. We contrasted her dramatically with Jennifer Aniston, because she was not just another woman, she was her opposite. And this was not just a breakup, it was a battle between good and evil. And evil was winning, how could that happen? How did we craft Angelina Jolie into a representation of evil. and Jennifer Aniston the poster-girl for good, for the sanctity of marriage?
Not only was this a real life story, but these signs were adapted by the media. These women were perverted into a form of culture in itself -- now we could buy our "team Aniston" and "team Jolie" t-shirts, not to mention the near hundred of magazine covers that featured the face-off between these two ladies.
Angelina Jolie's image was corrupted to that of a homewrecker, because many of the public, especially women that had been jilted of cheated on by men, made her the signifier for all their worst enemies -- the women that their husbands or boyfriends had cheated on them with. Had Jennifer Aniston never been in the picture, would we have still rejected the relationship that Angelina Jolie has formed with Brad Pitt, or would we condone it whole-heartedly?

This image is very simple, and shows a high constrast shape of a man outlined in black and white. The man appears to be wearing tall boots, and trousers. The trousers are mainly white in coloration, but the upper half of his body is darkly clothed. Around the mans face is a bandana, covering the mouth but leaving the eyes exposed. His hair is short, and he wears a black backwards baseball cap. The man's eyes are narrowed, and he rests in a wide-legged stance. The shape of his legs form a triangle with the line of the ground, and one arm is extended forward, elevated to the level of the man's eyes. His other hand is behind him, holding the only colored object in the image. The image is a bouquet of flowers, wrapped in paper and composed of many different colors. Green, purple, yellow, pink, and lavendar are all brightly accentuated in only one region of the image.

For anyone reading the above description, we would assume the image is one of a man bringing flowers somewhere -- perhaps to a woman, a first date? But when confronted with the image we realize that Banksy, through his graffiti art, has completely "defamiliarized" the familiar. The image is obviously one of violence, because we automatically realize that the flower bouquet is a subsitute for something else. Perhaps what is missing is a grenade, or a molotov cocktail. The bandana over the man's face makes it almost more characteristic that this is some sort of attack. But why the flowers? It completely juxtoposes two images together. It almost trivializes them both, the act of bringing flowers and the act of violently assaulting in protest. We see an image of a man about to hurl a bouquet of flowers at some unknown target, and immediately we can recognize that this is a parody of another image, one of violence. Now the violence is unfamiliar to us, and it is through this that we are able to really be shocked by it.

"Putting on the Ritz" with Plato and Aristotle


Orators and sophists of the ancient times were welled versed in the art of rhetoric, or rather the art of being able to persuade. Persuasion can be a valuable asset to anyone; if wielded properly it can offer alliances, a community, and above all power. The methods behind persuasion can often be rooted in concepts that are entirely unknown to the persuadee, or ones being persuaded. These methods all come from one of the Aristotelian devices being logos (an appeal to logic), pathos (an appeal to the emotions), or ethos(an appeal from a community or an expert). In this scene, Dr. Frankenstein initially uses ethos to persuade his audience, reminding them again of their common interest in science, and as his role as a scientist. It is in this way that he gains their trust. However, he is essentially manipulating them into believing what he has created is something legitimate to be revered, not something horrifying to be shunned.
Dr. Frankenstein is a complex example of mimesis, or the art of imitation, which Plato claimed was practiced by all artists, orators, and poets alike. The doctor is imitating an orator, but his imitation goes much farther. He is an imitation of the people in the audience, using his rhetoric to align himself with them ethically and morally; he draws them out towards him. He is an imitation of God as well, or whatever name one would attribute to the source, or spark, of life. Doctor Frankenstein has created the creature, which he is presenting to the community with which he aligns, but he presents it to them in a theatrical way -- on stage in an auditorium. The attendees have all bought tickets as if it is a freak show they are attending, not a scientifically based pursuit. In this light, the scientific community could most be compared to Plato’s idea of a just society, representing all things that are logical and good. Plato would agree that this type of theatrics should be scorned, because it makes a mockery of the common morality of the people and incites in them emotions that are indecent -- fear and pity. Fear and pity are also used, according to Plato and Aristotle as well, in poetry to relate people to the characters. The poetry, or performance we are seeing however is ultimately an imitation of the situations represented, and thrice removed from the reality, or the Forms.
The Forms, according to Plato, were the true essence of everything that existed in the natural world, in it’s natural state. Everything that is created by man, in fact man himself, already exists in another realm as an absolute idea. Human beings are able to make multiple versions of a particular universal form in the real world, but the thing created will always be one step away from the truth because we will always be unable to fully capture the true essence of anything. In this way the creature, created by Dr. Frankenstein, is presented as further and further removed from the truth. He is created by a man, and therefore in an imitation of a human being, but the fact that he is paraded on stage, acting, makes him an imitation of himself, even further from the truth. This representation, according to Plato would be very dangerous for the people of the audience because they would be reacting to something that was not even a semblance of the truth. When the creature first makes his appearance on stage the audience gasps, women scream and stand up, almost ready to run from the auditorium but Dr. Frankenstein assures them they have nothing to fear. Fear -- one of the essential emotions that would be incited by witnessing theater or reading poetry.
The presence of the police in the auditorium are like Plato’s guiders of his Republic. They are the ones who will decide what is best and what is not, what the audience should see and what it should not. Interestingly, they stand behind the audience -- unknown and unseen while they observe the performance as well.
Aristotle wrote much about the difference between a comedy and a tragedy, but what is found interesting here could be the similarities. The scene is both comical, and tragic. The idea of the creature dancing and performing “Putting on the Ritz” for a house full of scientists is hilarious, but the fundamental ideas of the creature, being scorned and laughed at, and misunderstood, is a tragedy. If comedy brings out the worst in people, and tragedy the best, as Aristotle says, then it is clear to see that the creator here is the comical one, the base one, and the created is the tragic one.