Just Another Quirky School Thing

After much discussion, the Fashion Show did occur, and there was Mrs. Kauhn with her increasingly alternative attire, and there was Mr. Viscardi with his flamboyant alligator shoes. 

The first rows are always the best to watch. A mixture between involved parents and lustful college freshmen, they give for the most amusing interactions. There is a kind of priceless look that a father gets when overhearing a conversation detailing her daughter’s gluteal muscles. He becomes offended at these commentaries, but he cannot speak up against them, because although they would be out of order in any context, not in this one. If his daughter is purposefully displaying her butt cheeks in front of an audience, who is he to prevent them from watching and commenting. That’s what they came for. That’s what she came for.

I googled it. Most of the best private schools have fashion shows. It seems so absurd, so surreal. Everything associated with fashion shows; sexual objectification (mainly) of teenage girls, unhealthy eating habits, aggrandizement of physical beauty, all seem to be things that go directly against the beliefs of modern north American educators. 

My opinion is that the American educational system has become a bit exaggerated on the conservative side of this type of issue (my parents had to come to my elementary school in Cambridge Mass. when I told a girl she was fat). But things seem to take a strange turn in Fashion Shows, because although most teachers loathe it, the event perdures.  

 

Under Sergio Fajardo, Antioquia banned Fashion Shows in public schools. In an interview done by El Tiempo¹ , Mr. Fajardo basically expressed my own point of view: Fashion Shows are awesome, but it is unreasonable to host them in a learning environment. And if we do host a fashion show, I don’t think it’s half as bad as some extremists make it sound, but what I really don’t get is why the administration permits it. 

*http://www.eltiempo.com/colombia/medellin/ARTICULO-WEB-NEW_NOTA_INTERIOR-12113743.html

So Disturbing

Toni Morrison makes a point out of being very blunt in showing the cruel realities lived by characters in a Song of Solomon.  At first I thought her motifs where exclusively African American, and it made sense, well, because both she and the characters are African American. Then I realized her appreciations are more universal, and although it is undeniable that most of her dissertations apply to this specific minority, the truly deep ones are much more general.  

 

One of them is about incest and strange sexual behaviors. It seems to me that Morrison is very Freudian, believing that eerie sexual tendencies are to some point present, weather in a latent or manifest form, in a good chunk of the population. 

Incest or hints of incest or incestuous thoughts are everywhere. Milkman was in love with one of his cousins.  One of Macon’s daughters always defended his actions and was very close to him, something Freud would have called the Electra complex. Milkman was breastfed by his mother until an old age, something that may or may not be morally wrong, depending on the context. In this one, things were certainly dubious, as proven by their reaction when caught: “Ruth Jumped up as quickly as she could and covered her breast, dropping her son on the floor and confirming for him what he had begun to suspect – that these afternoons were strange and wrong” (p.15).

Certainly, the most likely case of real incest is that between Ruth and his father. 

This first evidence that the reader has of this is given in Chapter 1, which refers to Dr. Fosters’ thoughts toward his daughter: “Fond as he was of his only child, useful as she was in his house since his wife died, lately he had begun to chafe under her devotion. Her steady beam of love was unsettling, and she had never dropped that expression of affection that had been so lovable in her childhood. The good-night kiss was itself a masterpiece of slow-wittedness on her part and discomfort on his” (p.23). Yeah. And that’s not half as creepy as when Macon finds her wife naked and suckling on the fingers of her dead father. 

Having to type "incest" into the google image search-bar in order to endow my blog with a picture,  definetely got me on the dark side of the internet.

This is just a specific trauma that seems to be imbedded in the Dead family, but there are others. Maybe in a future blog I will look at each of the members of this awkward family in the way a psychodynamic psychologist like Freud would have.

Much Ado About Nothing

Philip B. Corbett, the style manual editor for the New York Times,  blogged about some of what he calls the “grammatical lapses” of the recent NYT publications.

The author spent special care analyzing the dangling modifiers, phrases in which the subject of the modifier is not present immediately afterwards, leaving the modifier dangling.

One of the examples provided by Mr. Corbett:

 “While browsing through real estate agencies in New York City, a little déjà vu can be unavoidable”

Being a hardcore descriptivist, I see nothing wrong with dangling modifiers as long as the unintended meaning created by the modifier does not realistically contend with the author’s intended meaning. 

Lets’ use another of the examples given in the Times blog:

“Married to Nicole Rowe, they have three children, all conceived and born during his sentence.”

The author means to say that some man is married to Nicole Rowe. The dangling modifier makes the sentence mean that a certain “they” are married to Rowe. 

Here the unintended does not compete with the intended because it is reasonable enough to suppose that readers will have the ability to discern the correct from the incorrect. That’s the beauty of the human brain, we don’t process data like computers.

What’s up with the names in Song of Solomon?

The names of Characters in a Song of Solomon are strange and one gets the impression that all seem to have some sort of complex meaning.

Many of the names are taken from the Bible. Up to now, I have encountered three of these:  Pilate, Magdalene, and First Corinthians.

What is the purpose of this?

Well, according to the book, the tradition of choosing biblical names goes back to the late Macon Dead, who was illiterate and selected names at random by passing his finger through the Bible. This is the explanation he gave on account of naming his firstborn daughter Pilate: “That’s where my finger went down at”(p.19)

To better understand the connection between the names and the characters, I looked them up on Wikipedia:

Pilate

“Pontius Pilatus (Greek: Πόντιος Πιλᾶτος, Pontios Pīlātos), known in the English-speaking world as Pontius Pilate (pron.: /ˌpɒnᵗʃəs ˈpaɪlət/ or /ˌpɒnti.əs ˈpaɪlət/[1][2][3]), was the fifth Prefect of the Roman province of Judaea, from AD 26–36.[4][5] He is best known as the judge at the trial of Jesus and the man who authorized the crucifixion of Jesus. As prefect, he served under Emperor Tiberius.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pontius_Pilate

There are several possible interpretations for why this character was named after the man who sentenced Jesus. In any case, it is important to note that Pilate is a man’s name, and not a very flattering one. In some way, this reminds me of the colonial phenomenon that still takes place in Colombia in which humble families sometimes use very uncommon and actually undesirable names in an attempt to emulate those with influence.

                                                                                                                                 

Magdalene

“Mary Magdalene (original Greek Μαρία ἡ Μαγδαληνή),[2] or Mary of Magdala and sometimes The Magdalene, is a religious figure in Christianity. She has been called the second-most important woman in the New Testament after Mary the mother of Jesus.[3] Mary Magdalene traveled with Jesus as one of his followers. She was present at Jesus' two most important moments: the crucifixion and the resurrection.[4] Within the four Gospels, the oldest historical record mentioning her name, she is named at least 12 times, more than most of the apostles. The Gospel references describe her as a courageous servant leader, brave enough to stand by Jesus in his hours of suffering, death and beyond.”

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Magdalene

Being named after Mary Magdalene puts Lena on a two-way street. She can be seen a Jesus’s most faithful supporter or as something in the lines of a prostitute. In a more positive perspective, the name can also symbolize the successful escape from a dark past.  

First Corinthians

“The First Epistle to the Corinthians, often referred to as First Corinthians (and written as 1 Corinthians), is the seventh book of the New Testament of the Bible. The Apostle Paul and "Sosthenes our brother" wrote this epistle to "the church of God which is at Corinth", in Greece.^[1Cor.1:1-2]

This epistle contains some of the best-known phrases in the New Testament, including (depending on the translation) "all things to all men" (9:22), "without love, I am nothing" (13:2), "through a glass, darkly" (13:12), and "when I was a child, I spoke as a child, I felt as a child, I thought as a child" (13:11).”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Epistle_to_the_Corinthians

This is an interesting one. Basically, because she is not named after a person but after an Epistle. There are so many possible interpretations of this that one is left with nothing concise. Maybe that’s on purpose.