I had a conversation with my mother recently about the nature of reading. She said that kids being exposed to television makes them want to read less, but I don't believe that's true. My little brother, only 11 years old, knows who Janis Joplin is. Not because he's heard her music but because on his favorite show, Doctor Who, David Tennant says "Janis Joplin gave me that coat!"
I began to think about all of the things that I had read, because I was influenced by a TV show or Movie. (I had to finish each Harry Potter book before I was allowed to see the films.)
And I think this gives a new outlet for literary introduction, which is not a bad thing.
If we look at the Beats, artists from 50 years ago that many american high school students have never heard of. ( Sorry, but that's the nature of public school) So when Jess and Paris in Gilmore Girls are arguing about whether the beats were new-wave or just 'angry hippies' and he pockets a copy of Howl, they are introducing an entire new generation of readers work they may not have been familiar with. Work they may see and think "If Jess is reading that, then maybe I should..." My personal favorite example of this is when Lindsey in Freaks and Geeks goes on a rant about Kerouac and On the Road.
The Beats are credited for inspiring movements from Second-wave Feminism to French surrealist films, so how can it be bad that we are exposing young readers to this work, even if it comes in the form of television?
I asked my sister why she was reading The Longest Yard. She said "because I liked the movie." I asked my brother why he was reading a history book about sharks. He said "I like Shark Week." So maybe television isn't ruining reading for the next generation, but giving a new medium for literary inspiration. Connecting readers to books and artists they didn't know before because "she was reading it on iCarly," or "Anne Kendrick said it was good." So if I pick up City of Tiny Lights, to read before the movie comes out next fall, then perhaps television isn't killing the literary word, but helping it. Thoughts?
I thought it would be pertinent to talk about one of my favorite artists from the Beat era. Margaret Keane is the creator of "Keane Eyes" or "Big Eyed Waifs" and has been painting for over 60 years.
She was born in Nashville in 1927 and loved to paint as a child. The beginning of the popularity of her work was in San Francisco’s North Beach in the 1950s. Margaret’s work drew little accolades from art critics but was loved and admired by the world. Andy Warhol said, “I think what Keane has done is terrific! If it were bad, so many people wouldn’t like it.” Keane would soon be one of the most successful living artist in the early 60s.
Margaret’s art gained wide favor and started a big-eyed movement in the early 60s, "influencing a large crop of big-eyed artist such as Lee, Gig, Maio, Ozz Franca, Igor Pantuhoff, and Eve." Her designs also influenced a bunch of children's toys and cartoons, such as the Powerpuff Girls, and inspired many modern neo-artists like Tim Burton. One of Margaret’s favorite artists is Amedeo Modigliani, and his art has had a major influence in the way she’s painted women since circa 1959. "Throughout the years Margaret has also been influenced by Van Gogh, Henri Rousseau, Leonardo da Vinci, Gustav Klimt, Edgar Degas, Picasso, Sandro Botticelli and Paul Gauguin." Each of these artist have influenced Margaret’s use of color, dimension and composition. Along with these great and awe inspiring artist, Margaret’s own creative genius of Big Eyes and women has continued to influence and inspire countless artist today.
At one point she was asked to paint a portrait for the giant UNICEF gallery at the worlds fair, but the commissioners found her work to be too "haunting" for the public.
However what she is perhaps more contemporarily known for is the scandal with her husband, when they married in the 50's her husband insisted her art wouldn't sell because she was a woman. He took control of her art and her life, and it wasn't until after their separation, with the support of friends and family that Keane took her husband to court in 1990 to fight for the ownership of her work and her name. She was awarded both, as well as $4 million in damages, and has since then been commissioned by an overwhelming amount of people to paint for them. Last year, Tim Burton wrote the biographic film Big Eyes, at the permission of Keane, to recount her life as a mother, her art, and finally becoming the rightful owner of her work.
My mother is an artist and when I was little she use to show me portraits by her favorite painters and I would try to recreate them on my tiny easel with Crayola paint. Her favorites and mine were Georgia O'Keefe and Margaret Keane and it wasn't until I got older that I found out about the struggle she went through to get credit for her incredible work. I think she's a brilliant artist, and she still paints every day even though she's in her 90's!! https://keane-eyes.com/about-margaret/ http://www.boweryboyshistory.com/2014/11/robert-moses-rejected-this-terrifying.html
Juliana Spahr reading a selection from An Army of Lovers.
I think this book is a great and optimistic modern experiment with some of the beatitude concepts Rob touches on in his book Beat Attitudes. The novel seems to play with the idea of influx and efflux, a spiritual breath that brings the soul and mind together to beatific states when realizing the interconnectedness of all of existence; this cultivation of awareness and mental and spiritual bliss is then exhaled in a form of poesis. The efflux is seen by the end in the form of an army of lovers.
Okay guys, time to whip out the soap box before all chances are lost. I know many of you are still in it for another year or more, but many of my peers and I are just about done at UCSC, and with only a few days left, it is really easy to pop on into high school senior mode and tune out. And that is obviously fine - we have all worked pretty damn hard to get where we are. But here is my request - don't let that last.
Not a lot of UCSC students are from Santa Cruz originally. That is simply the fact of a university built in a small town. And many, like me, have made the 7+ hour jaunt up from Southern California to get here, more than likely several times a year. I myself have driven those roads too many times to count. I have taken just about every route and detour, as well. Historic route 1, wine country up the 101, the dreadfully boring I-5, and even the 99 for a quick stopover in Yosemite. And unless you have taken a plane for every single trip (which you really should consider driving one of those highways at least one time in your life), you have surely driven past the seemingly endless miles upon miles of fields. America's produce section is at our doorstep. Watsonville, Castroville, Fresno, Salinas, Oxnard, et cetera et cetera ad infinitum. Miles upon miles of them bursting with artichokes and strawberries and lettuce and grapes and almonds. Just about anything that grows is grown right here. So have you noticed them? Have you taken a good long look? Have you been guilty, as have I, of letting these fields so often turn into nothing more than one enormous green blur between here and the fields of Los Angeles gray?
My real hope would be that, as we all commute back to our respective homes across this state (or further), that we take some time in this next week or so to really LOOK at what we so easily take for granted. And some of you may be staying right here in Santa Cruz - take a short drive. I implore you. Not far; you don't have to go far. Ten or twenty minutes north or south along the Cabrillo Highway should suffice. Take a sunny weekend and drive down to Moss Landing. Elkhorn Slough is beautiful this time of year - chock full of otters and sea lions and seals - and the produce stands are a steal.
And that is the point, right?
Cheap food equals cheap labor, and it is right there in the open for us all to see. And when something is so open and obvious, it is a reflection of the society in which it exists just how well that really open thing is treated. If your neighbor was beating his dog, or starving him, or leaving him out in the sun for hours on end without access to water, what would you do? Would you hide yourself inside and do your best to never look into the next yard? I would like to think I would act - call the authorities or take it into my own hands to confront the indifferent owner. I would probably feel like some damn white knight savior. I would buy myself a beer.
So why do I care for the dog and not for the human?
Have I convinced myself that it isn't all that bad? That the labor is fair and the paycheck is good?
Then why aren't there any white folks out in the fields? Why don't I take a summer job picking fruit for my fellow man? Is farming not the exalted and pride-invested pursuit that it once was?
These are all rhetorical questions, of course.
While running the risk of becoming really preachy and holier-than-thou, I want everyone to take a second this summer to really think hard about the kind of world we want to live in. Do we really want equal opportunities and freedom for all, or just those of us lucky enough to be born on the right side of a fence? After two years in Santa Cruz, I feel like I know the average UCSC student. I don't feel qualms about saying that these are good people. Damn fine people. So if anyone in this country is going to become the spearhead that speaks for the ones who cannot speak, it is going to have to be the really damn good people. I've said it before and I will say it again: If university students aren't pushing these kinds of issues, who will? Politicians? Lobbyists?
Exactly.
And as you consider these things, remember that everything local is also typically global. The contado of America in the twenty-first century has no limits. It reaches all around the world and even into space. Yes, these are big and difficult problems to solve. But only we can do it.
p.s. I know this video is technically farm workings IN Mexico, but the imagery is pretty much the same, and I liked the quality on this better than the other videos I found.
This isn't explicitly connected to anything in the course, and is mostly a response to the previous post, but it may very well be the most powerful and introspection-provoking article I've ever read, and I wanted to share it with you all. It is also strongly connected to the themes and feelings of the Dharma Bums, speaking to the inner compulsions that drove Ray and Japhy into the solitude of the wild, and explaining why such an escape is becoming more and more discouraged in our modern society of interconnectedness. This article hit me hard, especially as someone trying to make a living out of creative pursuits, and because I saw a lot of what it discusses in my own life experience. This isn't the most cohesive post, but I'd encourage you to read the article, it made me much more explicitly aware of an ongoing struggle I find myself engaged in(and think most of us are engaged in) with myself and my social programming. The End of Solitude
It has been a number of months, but at some point before this quarter was underway, I recall reading an excerpt of Dave Eggers's newest novel The Circle. The story revolves around Mae Holland, a new hire at an enormous, monolithic social networking company that shares its namesake with the novel. She is excited and somewhat intimidated at first, but the balance quickly shifts towards the latter when Mae starts drowning within the all-encompassing nature of her work. At The Circle, everyone alive is ranked on a kind of social scoring database based on their social networking activity. As an employee, Mae is subjected to constant examinations and employee check-ins to push her to stay constantly and totally socially active. Parties become work and work is treated like some creepy kind of party. There are strong allusions to 1984 - "Secrets are lies. Sharing is Caring. Privacy is theft."
"The Circle" seems pretty clearly to be the dystopian version of the modern day tech corporation mega-campus a la the Googleplex. This is a rich topic, in part because not many of us outsiders have ever had a real good look inside this hermetically sealed bubble world. I would say that the idea of work blending with life is reasonably frightening. Corporations like Google have a stake in their workers staying at work - it helps the bottom line. But what is the result when we blend our social identities with our work personas so intricately? What is the future of individuality and personal freedom in a society so constantly entwined with their technology?
I clearly don't have these answers, and I can't say if Eggers does either, but this is a topic worth discussing. I know many people personally, both in and out of the liberal arts, who have already dedicated themselves to careers in tech and social media, at least for now. It seems to be increasingly the case that to live in the Bay Area requires some kind of daily interface, if not downright immersion, in the world of tech. And this world is expanding quickly. I don't mean to fear monger, because I probably love my technology as much or more than the next person, but being so near the heart of things, we owe it to ourselves to play an active role in deciding how to move forward.
I am really interested - is anyone thinking about going into the tech industry? If so, let us know what you plan to (or would like to) do in that field.
In terms of participating in political activism that can truly change current society, I am a firm believer that Hack-tivism as used by such groups as "Anonymous" is a strong and effective way to show those in positions of dominant power, the power of public community groups. I recently read an article that I will reference below about the vulnerability of the US Power grid to a cyber attack. The article quotes a report prepared last year for the President and Congress that "emphasizes the vulnerability of the grid to a long-term power outage" saying that "for those who would seek to do our Nation significant, physical, economic, and psychological harm, the electrical grid is an obvious target." I mean, this is insane. It is crazy to think that something that America is so dependent on in almost every aspect of public and private life is so vulnerable to attacks from outsiders and, if we are to believe everything we read in the media, America sure has some enemies. This notion of hacking into the grid goes beyond the FBI retaining personal information as it means an entire country could be at the mercy of another because of the accessibility of the power grid to those who know how to access it. I'm not going to pretend to know anything about hacking or code or computers so I will refrain from trying to explain but there is some pretty amazing stuff in the link below if any of you are interested.
Like many of my blog postings, this article and this idea of accesibility relates to the idea of the right to space or the claiming of space. Once you realize that something your society is so dependent on (the power grid) is so accessible, you realize that that having "right to space" is no more than a fickle human construct around which we base much of our societal constructs.
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