fairest of them all…

Posted on May 29, 2008 by jamie

A new book has been written/illustrated for the purpose of helping little girls understand why mommy got a nip/tuck. I’m not sure what offends me more: the message behind the story or the trashy illustrations… ok, it’s the message.

This book glosses over an important and dangerous decision of plastic surgery and placates the child’s curiosity with fluffy non-answers. It does not explain to the child why mommy is cutting up her nose, stomach, and breasts- creating a dangerous desensitivity to a potentially fatal surgery.

If a parent decides to go under the knife and a child wants to know why, would it not be better to be truthful and honest (at an age-appropriate level) about the realities of plastic surgery?

In the illustration below the little girl tells her mommy that she is “already the prettiest mommy in the whole wide world” yet mommy’s only response is to continue with the surgery- this enforces to the little girl that her view of beauty is WRONG and that she must conform to and accept what other people’s (magazines, advertisements, celebrities, plastic surgeons) view of beauty is.

plastic surgery is for dummies

Yuck. You can check out more of the nastiness here.

You who wronged

Posted on May 27, 2008 by jamie

You who wronged a simple man
Bursting into laughter at the crime
And kept a pack of fools around you
To mix good and evil, to blur the line,

Though everyone bowed down before you,
Saying virtue and wisdom lit your way,
Striking gold meddals in your honour,
Glad to have survived another day,

Do not feel safe. The poet remembers.
You can kill one, but another is born.
The words are written down, the deed, the date.

And you’d have done better with a winter dawn,
A rope, and a branch bowed beneath your weight.

Czeslaw Milosz, 1950

on erasing

Posted on May 14, 2008 by jamie

Last night in my visual arts class we had a one hour lecture on drawing, etc. My prof showed a couple quick drawings and tried to describe the difference between utilitarian and expressive drawings… I’m still a little confused about that one, so I’ll do some more research.

Until then, I had to post about one artist that really made an impact on me; William Kentridge. We saw a film about how he creates charcoal animations, and it was inspiring to say the least. He starts with a charcoal drawing, takes a photo, then makes additions/subtractions to that same drawing and takes another shot. When he erases an image it leaves an impression or trace of the past drawings on the page which seem to haunt and remind of the past….. interesting how sometimes life is/is not like that. Reminds me of a quote from one of the Hannibal movies: “Scars… have the power to remind us that the past was real.”

Needless to say I am enjoying class so much this summer :)

portraits

Posted on May 8, 2008 by jamie

“A portrait is a picture in which there is just a tiny little something not quite right about the mouth.”

- John Singer Sargent (1856-1925)

the summer semester begins- dramatically.

Posted on May 5, 2008 by jamie

My first class of the semester was Slavic studies 307: Literature and Film in Eastern Europe. The class started out with heavy material and I do not think it will get any lighter. Our focus is on Polish literature and film, with the holocaust as a main theme. Today we watched one film and discussed a poem.

“The Passenger” is an unfinished film directed by Andrzej Munk; the central theme seems to be about perspective and memory; it is haunting how a German SS woman remembers a story of one woman in Auschwitz. The film leaves many unanswered questions, but I am not too sure if it is to do with its unfinished state or not.

The poem is called “Dedication” and was written by Czeslaw Milosz. I think that it speaks volumes of the sensitivity of reduced language and the role of literature in the wake of something horrible.

You whom I could not save
Listen to me.
Try to understand this simple speech as I would be ashamed of another.
I swear, there is in me no wizardry of words.
I speak to you with silence like a cloud or a tree.

What strengthened me, for you was lethal.
You mixed up farewell to an epoch with the beginning of a new one,
Inspiration of hatred with lyrical beauty,
Blind force with accomplished shape.

Here is the valley of shallow Polish rivers. And an immense bridge
Going into white fog. Here is a broken city,
And the wind throws the screams of gulls on your grave
When I am talking with you.

What is poetry which does not save
Nations or people?
A connivance with official lies,
A song of drunkards whose throats will be cut in a moment,
Readings for sophomore girls.
That I wanted good poetry without knowing it,
That I discovered, late, its salutary aim,
In this and only this I find salvation.

They used to pour millet on graves or poppy seeds
To feed the dead who would come disguised as birds.
I put this book here for you, who once lived
So that you should visit us no more.

Czeslaw Milos, Warsaw 1945