Brilliant WebCT Posts

For a class that is supposed to be about romance, we spend a lot of
time talking about monsters. It's alright, since so much of our culture
is fascinated by the inhuman human. Popular characters like Sylar from
Heroes, Norman Bates, Dexter Morgan and of course Patrick Bateman all
reflect this frightened curiosity we have of the broken, the fragile and
the slipping psyche. Especially since all these reflect different
desires. Bates was a statement on pure evil often being so perfectly
cloaked behind a nice veneer, Bateman was a statement on the sexism and
social darwinism of the Regean era, Dexter is about the darkness and
vegeance we all have lurking inside us, and Sylar represents the mortal
seeking to become a God. None of these are particularly new ideas, but
they keep getting portrayed in entirely new ways. Someone once told me
there are no new ideas, just new colors of paint. Maybe, in some ways,
that's right. We all focus on the same questions about our universe,
but we never have an answer. It's interesting that my psychology book
explicitly stated what questions science is incapable of solving, since
we may never know if there is a God or if life has one specific meaning
or, to tie it back, what love should be. I tend to write these passages
very stream of consciouness, so my thoughts tend to evolve with the
length of my text. Just some ideas, looking forward to class.

The use of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof in this class was good,
though I have a lot of trouble getting into plays, and I wasn't able to
get my paws on the movie or see a live performance. So, I liked the
play, but it seemed kind of pointless. There's no resolution, no
answers to any questions. All you're left with is a bunch of half
questions and half answers about these highly unlikable people. It
wasn't all that great, but the stage directions were incredible. They
were almost more fun to read than the dialogue. There's one that I
found particularly telling/important: "Some mystery should be left in
the revelation of character in a play, just as a great deal of mystery
is always left in the revelation of character in life, even in one's own
character. This does not absolve the playwright of his duty...but it
should steer him away from 'pat' conclusions". This passage is very
important in revealing the whole idea behind Williams' view on writing.
There's nothing wrong with definate details, though! Mystery is
helpful, but having a bit of certainty at the end of a journey really
makes the trip worth it. To make a clever turn of phrase, this was more
a Cat with a Tangled Ball of Yarn. You get the feeling there's a hard
core you could poke at, but there's nothing keeping it all together.

I do not find Megan Fox attractive.
Just wanted to get that out there. I've been seeing way too many
commercials for 'Jennifer's Body' lately, and I would just like to say,
eh. Problem is, so many guy I know seem to just start drooling as soon
as someone mentions her. They begin to talk about her physical features
in a manner that would make Hugh Hefner cringe. Honestly, physically
and oh dear Lord mentally, she doesn't do it for me.
Now, on to why I mention miss Fox.
Every culture seems to define beauty in a slightly different way. To
us 21st century Americans, (apparently, and it saddens me so) Ms. Fox is
the most beautiful thing ever. In the 20's, flat chested women were all
the rage, and this could be linked to the move for equality of the
sexes. Men have also gone through a change. In the 20's, everyone
wanted the rich guy who had the whole world in his hand. Now...Oh,
crap, maybe not so much change on that front. But tastes are certainly
more diverse.
We seemed to be obsessed in class over the fact that men have become
more metrosexual. Maybe this isn't the right term, though. Guys these
days, and women to a lesser extent, have become more okay with the idea
that they have feelings. This is probably due to a rise in the science
of psychology, which, while still seen by many as a 'quack' science,
still brings people to realize there's more to the brain than we thought.
Is this new emphasis on feeling a bad thing? Of course not. Does it
diminish a man to admit he feels sad or lonely sometimes? Not at all.
Too much can be a bad thing, but the same thing with women suddenly
becoming too masculine. Can you honestly look me in the face and tell
me a girl who can throw a punch isn't at least a little hot?
What these romantic comedies do is play it safe. They don't try to
shake anything up, they just keep the status quo and hope enough
depressed housewives go see it. I may be too cynical about this, but
honestly, they're not taking any risks. When I see a non-satirical
romantic comedy that features an interracial couple, or a gay couple, or
shoots both middle fingers at the Bible Belt and makes one about an
inter-racial gay couple, then I might lighten up.
We all have different ideas on what the perfect mate would be. Are
any of us more or less right? With a few exceptions, no. And even if
our tastes are evolving, there will still be a few people that, like
Miss Fox, will never do it for me.

I thought it was interesting how we brought up homosexuality on
Friday, specifically the changing face of it. I have friends that are
all along the Kinsey scale, and their typical 'queeritude' as one called
it range from the BLINDINGLY obvious to the people who would tell you
and you'd laugh at for telling a joke. One of the main points of
interest about gay culture is that it exists everywhere; it's a random
shot, possibly influenced by genetics OR environment, that tends to
appear in about 8.5% of the population (A number I grabbed from my
psychology book, btw. The 10% rule has been proven mostly wrong, but is
still quite relevant given the fact that it was the first shot to try
and pin down a number.)
So how is the face of the gay population changing? Well, it's
possibly growing larger, for one. There's not so much fear about it now
as their was 50 years ago. Hell, back then gays were arrested for being
criminally insane. The only ones who could run the gay bars were the
mob, because they could keep the police at bay. Even before then, there
have been homosexuals. I know, it may surprise you that in a time
before appletinis and Broadway gays existed. But back then it wasn't
spoken of in the least, though there have been a few individuals who
were still out there (pun intended.) Why is it so different now? Well,
not being considered insane is always a plus. As more people besides
the above mentioned 'so obvious it hurts' come out, and show that there
is more to the gay population, breaking the stereotype and making it
'normal'. It's never going to be totally normal, but it can at least
become tolerated, then accepted. People use the example of gays as
'destroyers of the family' too much. One of the main arguments I've
heard against letting gays adopt is that kids adopted by gay parents are
more likely to be teased for that. Does anyone else smell the circular
logic? You make something more unusual, of course it's going to attract
attention, and if you stigmatize it like that you're just going to make
it worse for the minority.