Tuesday, March 29, 2011

Analysis 4: Marxist Theory

So Marxist theory deals with the value of labor and many criticisms against capitalism. I've always found it interesting to consider the kind of people that would despise Marxist theory and the kind of people that would embrace it. It's more likely than not that the poor people of a capitalist society will embrace it, considering they stand to gain something and hardly lose anything. In my current position in life (specifically financially) I think I stand somewhere in the middle when concerning what I have to gain and what I have to lose. I'd much rather look at the extreme in this case, particularly the poor, because in the United States we have such a problem with only every considering the rich.

The concerns of the rich are the concerns of all, but the benefits and consequences of the behavior of the rich aren't evenly spread. Considering the recent economic crisis, it can be argued that the rich benefited from their behavior while the poor reaped the consequences. It specifically makes me think back to a book I read, Germinal, by Emile Zola.

The story within this book deals with the lives of the poor working class that live in the area of the mines, toiling away underground in order to at least put food on the table for their family, while the rich become even richer off of all the poor people's work. Marxism comes into play here with the character of Etienne, who believes that the middle class need to be removed so that the working class can have their fair share and would no longer have to suffer the way they do. With the character of Etienne, Marxism comes off as almost being too ideal, like some kind of utopia that can be easily achieved if one only sets their mind to it. I think this is more or less the fault of the character for being naive in the way he sees things.
At the centre was still the idea put forward by Karl Marx: capital was the result of theft, and labour had the duty and the right to recover this stolen wealth. As to putting this into practice, Etienne had at first been seduced, like Proudhon, by the attractions of mutual credit, if one vast clearing bank that would cut out all the middlemen; then it hand been Lassalle's idea of co-operative societies, funded by the State, which would gradually transform the earth into one great big industrial city, and he had been widly in favour of this until the day he was finally put off by the problem of controls; and recently he had been coming round to collectivism, which called for the means of production to be returned into the ownership of the collective. But this was all still somewhat vague, and he couldn't quite see how to achieve this new goal, prevented as he was by scruples of humanity and common sense from enjouing the fanatic's ability to advance ideas with uncompromising convition. For the moment his line was simply that what they had to do first was to take power. Afterwards they'd see. (242)


I think that Marxism wouldn't really work regardless, though. You see throughout the book that even characters of the poor working class constantly strive to step on their comrades necks in order to get ahead, and I genuinely think it's a reflection of human behavior in the real world. You'd need a considerable amount of laws to keep everyone even and make sure that no one thought about finding a way to get ahead of their fellow people. I know many would argue against this, but I do believe it's slightly part of human nature to be competitive. I should explain that I think in a much smaller group, a set of people could work quite fantastically together to create a little village (or what have you) into something that resembles Marxism, but considering how large the world is, and how it's getting bigger by the second, I don't think something like that can be maintained on such a scale. In the larger scale, in other words, systems like Marxism just don't work. It's a shame, but I see the example of this in the way the United States is currently run. If we were incredibly smaller, then I'd believe much more strongly in the ideals of capitalism.


Works Cited
Zola, Emile. Germinal. England: Penguin Books Ltd. 1885

Wednesday, March 23, 2011

Marxism is so damn depressing.

That's right, Marxism is depressing. I have to admit first off that I personally don't know every single detail or variation of Marxism theory for several reasons but the one reason that specifically comes to mind more often is the simple fact that Marxist theory depresses me. It completely depresses the heck out of me because of the focus on the value of labor and production. My understanding is that too much value on the human being is placed on simply what product they can create, how fast they can do it, and how cheap they can be paid. I think of coal mines and I think of poverty for the working class, so yes, a bit depresssing.
This is of course not to say that I think the theory is wrong, in fact I think it's a little too accurate, which is why it depresses me. I dislike a world in which I am only worth the amount of pizzas I make and how quickly I can make them (I work with food in general). I guess I shouldn't say it's accurate, though. We in the United States are allowed to work towards showing our worth in producing something we genuinely enjoy producing. Authors have been made rich, so have film makers, and so have musicians. They aren't all working in a factory repeatedly making one small piece of a larger object day in and day out.
Unfortunately, we can't all be authors and musicians can we? I'm still working in food even though I'd rather be working with animals. At the moment though, that kind of production isn't found to be very valuable so it's not really an option. When capitalism is at its worst we really lose the beauty of being able to get rich out of doing something you love rather than someone that will benefit the majority as soon as possible. It will benefit the majority for me to work in making pizzas and sandwiches and so on, it won't really help them, at least not immediately, for me to work in animal rescue or what have you.
I don't believe that some of the solutions brought forward by Marxism are very ideal. Actually, the problem is that they're too ideal. In the end, our current system seems to work for the best, it's just got a lot of problems concerning priorities.

Tuesday, March 22, 2011

Analysis 3: Psychoanalysis and the Oedipus Complex



The above video is, I think, a great example of a well known film that uses a bit of the ol' Oedipus complex described in Freud's "The Interpretation of Dreams". Marty McFly gets transported in a time machine to the past where he meets his mother and his father before they've been begun dating. The problem is that Marty takes the place of his father at a crucial point in which George (his father) and Lorraine (his mother) meet. So instead Marty and Lorraine meet and Lorraine instantly becomes smitten with him. Marty is so very obviously uncomfortable with this, however he doesn't realize how serious the problem is until it becomes obvious that his mother is no longer going to fall for his father and is even at risk of being taken by another guy entirely. Marty is uncomfortable at the idea of taking his father's place but is also completely against the idea of anyone else doing so. Certainly the difference here is that in since this deals with time travel Marty and his siblings would be erased from existence, but I think overall this is an interesting take, possibly not a conscious one, on Freud's theory. What does it mean that Marty is completely disgusted with being physical with his mother? Does he experience guilt in thinking she's pretty, as he mentions at one point in the film? What does it mean that at some point Lorraine too recognizes that something's off? Is it a way to show that relatives share an unseen connection that goes beyond blood and DNA that all of us can sense even through space and time? Or is it simply a way to ease Marty's guilt at wanting his mom? I won't say that Freud was right in his theory that people feel this rivalry with their fathers regarding their mothers, but I do think that people find it to be an interesting scenario to be stuck in. I think many of us want to shun times in which relatives married each other by showing how modern day people would reject such an idea on all levels. It's interesting to consider, all in all.

Works Cited
"Marty McFly in Lorraines house" 31 July 2007. YouTube. 22 March 2011. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2YVxzBR7xMo&feature=player_embedded

Wednesday, March 2, 2011

Analysis 2: The Word Picture


In this painting, The Houses of Parliament by Claude Monet, we see the silhouettes of the houses of Parliament with almost entirely blurred lines and no sharp images. The setting is sunset and the two things that stand out the most is the tallest tower of Parliament and the sun. There are no color blocks, all colors blend in with each other and it is not easy to pick out any particular detail. The colors involve mostly blues, some oranges with some red and variations on those colors due to them blending out into one of the other colors. It simply shows us a blurred image of the houses of Parliament at sunset.

I believe it would be interesting to analyze this painting from a Formalist perspective, considering we could look at the minimum of what Monet offers to us here. The way he paints, you often want to look beyond what is simply painted to what the image symbolizes, but in using Formalism we'd have to think simply about what is there not what we think is intended in inspiration. So the focus here is the silhouette of Parliament and the sun along with a bluish background. I suppose we can focus on the choice of lighting, since art all tends to have lighting coming from somewhere, even if the source is not easily identifiable. The source of light is the sun here, and it is the only source of light almost directly above the center of the image. Monet has chosen to contrast his colors and he has chosen to blend them and make them complimentary. Artists often choose one or the other. He chose landscape rather than portrait, since that allows him to focus less on detail and more on the broader picture. Because of this and because he chose to blur the entire thing I think we're allowed to focus the three points I mentioned earlier only: the sun, Parliament, and the blue background. To me this says that this is all Monet wanted you to see, rather than for you to see the tiny details of the windows of the lines of the ground and so on.


Works Cited
McCrory, Jeremiah. "Claude Monet Prints on Demand"Art of Europe Web. 2 March 2011 http://www.artofeurope.com/