Extra Credit

Extra Credit

Extra Credit

            I really believe that both medium of communication are significant and we should value both for what they bring to us.  I think it would be better to create boundaries that are limitless rather than to construct ones that hold either the book or the film at bay.  My attitude towards either is they are both helpful, useful in the proper arena. 

            Mr. Cunningham’s writing is focused, and concrete.  There is risk taking that is offset by the book's originality, it’s grace and its commitment to the one day storyline.  Everything a writer sees, feels, emotionally touches, physical, psychologically and etc. must be there on the page to be seen, felt, heard and etc., whereas in a film one must rely on the actor to convey those things in what is said, or body language, or music, or scenery that will get the same result as the author of the book had intended.   

            I felt that the time order in the film was used well.  It brought each new character forth in a way in which you really could not miss the where of it all.  The way that both the movie and the book dealt with cause and effect was remarkable. 

Mrs. Dalloway’s memory of her kiss from Richard was great in the book, I liked the way the book constructed it like a lovely verdant walkway. 

“You kissed me beside a pond.”  

“Ten thousand years ago.” 

“It’s still happening.” 

“In a sense, yes.”   

“In reality.  it’s happening in that present.  This is happening in this present.”

…”We’re middle-aged and we’re young lovers standing beside a pond.  We’re everything, all at once.  Isn’t it remarkable?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t have any regrets, really, except that one.  I wanted to write about you, about us, really.”   

            This was very climactic for me in the book; it allowed me to see Richard’s lovability and his vulnerability, his desire to give himself away to someone completely, wholly even to the memory of a kiss that he regretted not seeing where it could have gone.  The book seemed to maximize the emotional backdrop between the two of them; on the other hand the movie did not bring the vulnerable, desperately soft side of Richard out.  His dementia was more prominent in the book, that too was somewhat played down in the movie.  I think this writing about the past, the kiss, sharing part of their past helps to establish who they are in their own world now and how they might have been together.  Here I think the reflective writing was wonderful.  The personal questions, the purpose of examination, the voice of reflection spoke volumes.  I loved the way the movie along with the nuances made the reflections easy, no work, “here it is, come with me by body language, poses, facial expressions, the stop and think moments, we are all here let’s go further into the character.”   I believe Mrs. Dalloway’s attending Richard was duty, but their reflections upon each other and what they had that day and their questions were individuality.  

            There were other things in the book and movie that were really comparative, but both made me compare to other scenes for instance, all three women are interrupted in that day by two unexpected and one early visitor, all three had interest of death even Mrs. Dalloway was asked by Richard what she would do at his death.  Virginia Woolf lays her head down by the dead bird as if to examine it in death and Mrs. Brown dies a symbolic death with water covering her then awakens with a decision to walk away from the death she was living.  Mrs. Dalloway said, “When I am with Richard I am living, when not everything seems silly.”All three women were surrounded by books and even two of the men were involved with books.  Both the book and the film did well in establishing death and life.  Virginia’s death was her life and her husband’s life, Mrs. Brown walking away gave her life, and Mrs. Dalloway's life came after Richard’s death, Richard’s life would continue in his work.  I believe both the film and the book showed desire that was born and nourished in a deep passion, perhaps an imaginary passion and perhaps that is why it was so difficult to realize.     

            There were memorable places where the conflict of Person vs. Society was prevalent especially with Virginia Woolf and Mrs. Brown.  Fitting into and the responsibilities of a home, raising children, the responsibility of a spouse (whether male or female) can be difficult and can be unfulfilling.  Conflict for Mrs. Dalloway was more Person vs. Self both in the book and on screen seemed more challenging because she was in a lesbian relationship yet in love with a gay man.  First, I had to clear my own prejudices about such a relationship then it was easier to empathize with the characters of the story and understand the irony of it all.  Even the fact that we stick with our sexual identities when perhaps things might turn out better if we dropped the roles and just learned to go with what we really felt on the inside.

     

A Single Day/A Single Work Of Art

            I do believe that it is possible that a single work of art is capable of covering the enormity of human life in one day.  In fact, I believe that a single word can keep a person awaiting a hope, a dream for decades.

            Using Ms. Virginia Woolf’s style of writing, stream of consciousness, allowed Mr. Cunningham to write in depth, to expose the superficial to write the characters in a more intensified way.  The exposure gave the characters room to be natural in processing their thoughts, making some sense of their world.  For instance, on page 192 Mrs. Brown has picked Ritchie up from the sitter and they are on their way home, “Mommy, I love you…I love you too baby, …she can hear the flannelled nervousness lodged now in her throat, the effort she must make to sound natural.”  Most scenes or realities about mothers would never depict a mother making an “effort to sound natural”.  Most mothers are seen as perfect.  I think this was bold and different, but true to Mrs. Brown’s character, it is a peak into the character’s most intimate thoughts into her ill-ease with her child, her lack of nurturing skills, as well as awkwardness in being someone’s “wife”.    Thinking of the psychological level one is able to see past that one moment into Mrs. Brown’s being and understand that this is a part of who she is not just a moment she was caught up in time, but a real glimpse into her agitation with mothering and being a “wife”. 

            Sometimes intimacies are almost too privately valuable to share, but Mr. Cunningham makes this book work sharing loads of intimacies through these three women that otherwise would have died on the say “cutting board floor” had he not used a psychological realm to share them in.  A second intimacy is again Mrs. Brown who kisses Kitty in the sweetest and most intimate way, but then we find out that Kitty is the one who pulls away first.  What an intimate thing to know about Laura, she would take risks, her family, her position as that “wife”,  and that very friendship is on the line here and Laura accepts the “Laura is the odd one, the foreigner, the one who can’t be trusted.  Laura and Kitty agree, silently, that this is true.” 

            Mrs. Brown is currently reading Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway who is in a heterosexual marriage,  “…yet her most passionate memory is of a kiss shared thirty years earlier with a woman.”  It seems that Mrs. Brown is moving towards lessening constraints on herself as a woman, but there are yet anxiety driven intimacies that continue to stress life as one may want to live it.  Because Mrs. Brown has used Mrs. Dalloway as a source of strength to begin to move away from convention and to find some beauty even in her romance with death, she is using her to experience some shavings of life.  

            Mrs. Brown is locked into an asphyxiating marriage; symbols are used such as water, which allows a story to be told without the use of words.  Here we find water, the source of life, cleansing, and the center of regeneration.   In this part of the story Mrs. Brown is immerged in water, from which she awakens and decides to live.    To be immersed in water then to re-emerge without having been dissolved in the water is to return to the well-spring of life, to regain fresh strength, or to die a symbolic death.  Again, this is intimate to peer into a rented room and watch a woman caress her unborn, sit her method of death out (pills), and have her read her way into life at the same time as Mrs. Woolf has written her death out and is walking into a body of water to end her life, it is too intimate to watch.    But I believe this little delicious delicacies of intimacy are what makes the book so astounding.        

            Through the characters speaking to me, the reader, their internal struggles, loves, fears, anger, and confusion, I am allowed to taste (like the base of a good soup) the base of their lives, the things that matter most to them.  The captivation for me has been being a living (be)ing exposed to the deepest intimacy of other people’s lives.  The term (be)ing is important here to me because (be) to exist, to live now means my mind has not been on lock down while reading, but it has absorbed the undercurrent of life and death from my reading.  Therefore, as I am being alive while reading, I am also becoming a part of Mr. Cunningham’s story.  I know weird huh!  So, I find the book is capable of capturing more than the vastness of its characters lives in one day, I find it also capable of captivating me and changing my own life in one day.

Biblican References & Me

Biblical References & Me

            I am blessed that God pursues us, for some of us, pursuit into our secret selves.  I love the fact that God’s curiosity about us allows us as humans the freedom of our will thereby for some the freedom of choice, for others an acceptance of who we are born to be. 

            For instance, from the very beginning of sexuality in the bible, I mean beyond Adam and Eve, we have been taught that Sodom and Gomorrah was destroyed because of homosexual behavior.  When studying more closely, I find there is a discrepancy of a people who were without worship and were irreverent towards God and a people who were supposedly destroyed because of homosexual behavior.  How could one anomalous sexual behavior be any different than another?  Or how could a just God treat one sexual peculiarity any differently than another?   In Genesis 19:7-8 Lot is speaking to his friends, “…and said, No, my friends.  Don’t do this wicked thing.  Look, I have two daughters who have never slept with a man.  Let me bring them out to you, and you can do what you like with them.  But don’t do anything to these men, for they have come under the protection of my roof.”  In II Peter 2:6 “…if he condemned the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah by burning them to ashes, and made them an example what is going to happen to the ungodly.  The word for ungodly in the New Testament Greek is asebes; worship irreverent.  The word could be translated; they were without worship, making Sodom and Gomorrah an example to others.    Herein lies the problem, these people (mortals – gender was never written) Genesis 19:4 “Before they had gone to bed, all the men from every part of the city of Sodom – both young and old – surrounded the house.  The word men does not mean men as in male human, the word is ‘enowsh or (en-oshe’) which means a mortal, a person in general.  As stated above, there was no gender given, so does it mean that the women, girls, young boys and the elderly that were there were all homosexual? And if so, wouldn’t that mean that the women would have wanted other women, since they at that point did not know the gender of the angels?  II Peter 2:6 “…if he condemned the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah by burning them to ashes, and made them an example of what is going to happen to the ungodly; and if he rescued Lot, a righteous man who was distressed by the filthy lives of lawless men … if this is so, then the Lord knows how to rescue godly men from trials and to hold the unrighteous for the day of judgment, while continuing their punishment.”     

            A similar situation is found in Judges 19-20:22.  Judges 20:5 states, “During the night the men (Lord, Baal, Master) came after me and surrounded the house, intending to kill me.  They raped my concubine, and she died.”  Then in Judges 19 it states, “While they were enjoying themselves, some of the wicked men of the city surrounded the house. Pounding on the door, they shouted to the old man who owned the house, ‘Bring out the man who came to your house so we may know him ’.”  “The owner of the house went outside and said to them, don’t do this disgraceful thing.  Look here is my virgin daughter, and his concubine. I will bring them out to you now, and you can use them and do to them whatever you wish.  But to this man, don’t do such a disgraceful thing.”  They raped and abused his concubine throughout the night and at dawn they let her go.  She bakes it to where her master was staying, and falls down dead at the door.   The man takes his dead wife home then divides her body into 12 parts to the 12 tribes of Israel as a witness against the men of Gibeah then Gibeah is destroyed.  Gibeah is destroyed for idol worship, people who were without worship.  Deut.32:17 says, “They sacrificed to demons, which are not God—gods they had not known, gods that recently appeared, gods your fathers did not fear.”    Ezekiel 16:49-50 says,  …”Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy.  They were haughty and did detestable things (tow’ebah or commit idol worship) before me.  Therefore I did away with them as you have seen. “

            I believe that my relationship with God is just that MY PERSONAL RELATIONSHIP WITH GOD.  If I were to look at places in scripture where people were treated unfairly, women, I would be up-in-arms constantly.  But there is a place in me who trusts God and God’s integrity.  I must believe that status and gender are not what matters with God, but love and believe in God accordingly, otherwise, I would find too many excuses not to worship God.  I must be authentic as the Word of God has admonished me to be, I must worship God in Spirit and in Truth.  If I fix myself as a Sunday worshipper only and live Monday through Saturday as an intersexed lesbian I would be guilty of the same debauchery as Sodom and Gomorrah – worshipping the idol god status, compliance, condescension, and etc.  Instead I hope to become transformed by the renewing of my mind and trust that God is who God says He/She really is .  I believe scripture is given to us to help us to live decent lives, to give us a hope fresh and new each day.  To set us apart from unlovely things, Scripture is a place to set my dreams on, a place where I am free.