Jean Harlow (p. 123)
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(p. 16)
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Ginger
Rogers (p. 16)
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Fredi Washington,
"Imitation of Life," p. 67
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I. "Imitation
of Life"
A.
"I don't believe I ever did get over that. There I was, five months
pregnant, trying to look like Jean Harlow, and a front tooth gone" (123).
Mrs. Breedlove in her own voice.
B. Double
Consciousness:
The Negro lives in "a world which yields him no
true self-consciousness, but only lets him see himself through the revelation
of the other world. It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness,
this sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others, of
measuirng one's soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt
and pity. One ever feels his twoness,---an American, a Negro; two souls,
two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark
body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder."
For information
on Brown vs Board of Education, click here.
II. Interiorize:
"to make interior; especially : to make a part of one's own inner
being or mental structure"
vs
Internalize: "to give a subjective character
to; specifically : to incorporate (as values or patterns of culture) within
the self as conscious or subconscious guiding principles through learning
or socialization"
The
assertion of racial beauty was not a reaction to the self-mocking, humorous
critique of cultural/racial foibles common in all groups, but against the
damaging internalization of assumptions of immutable inferiority
originating in an outside gaze."
(Afterward, 210; emphasis added).
III. Satiric force in The
Bluest Eye
A.
The 1st-grade reader: juxtaposition as a source of
irony.
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The style of a first-grade “reader.”
Somebody’s reading, but no one is thinking.
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LOOKLOOKHERE COMESAFRIENDTHE FRIENDWILLPLAYWITHJANETHEYWI
LLPLAYAGOODGAMEPLAYJANEPLAY(192, ff).
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B. The novel's local ironic moments
●"Anger is better. There is
a sense of being in anger. A reality and a presence" (50).
●"They go to land-grant colleges,
normal schools, and learn how to do the white man's work with refinement
. . . his blunted soul" (83).
IV. Commentary within the novel
A.
"The pieces of Cholly's life could become coherent only in the head of a
musician. . . Only a musician would sense, know, without even knowing
that he knew, that Cholly was free. Dangerously free. . . . Abandoned
in a junk heap by his mother, rejected for a crap game by his father, there
was nothing more to lose" (159-60).
Compare
"Freedom's
just another word for nothin' left to lose."
JANIS JOPLIN - ME & BOBBY MC GEE
B. "All of our waste which we dumped
on her and which she absorbed. And all of our beauty, which was hers
first and which she gave to us. All of us---all who knew her---felt
so wholesome after we cleaned oursleves on her. We were so beautiful
when we stood astride her ugliness. Her simplicity decorated us, her
guilt sanctified us, her pain made us glow with health, her awkwardness made
us think we had a sense of humor . . . . We honed our egos on her,
padded our characters with her frailty, and yawned in the fantasy of our
strength" (205).
V..Pathos to Critical
Judgment
VI. Uses
of Morrison
A. Mos Def and Talib Kweli, "Thieves in the
Night" from Black Star
From Youtube "Thieves in the Night"
Lyrics
available here.
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"And
fantasy it was, for we were not strong, only aggressive; we were not free,
merely licensed; we were not compassionate, we were polite; not good, but
well behaved. We courted death in order to call ourselves brave, and hid
like thieves from life" (205).
And the version on the track:
"not strong, only aggressive/ not free, we only licensed/ not compassionate,
only polite (now who the nicest?) / not good but well-behaved/ chasin' after
death so we could call ourselves brave, still livin' like mental slaves/
hiding like thieves in the night from life/ illusions of oasis making you
look twice."
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B. Law
and Literature syllabus
"Law is
not the only force regulating social conduct. Social norms often play
an even more profound role than the law in governing society. . . .
Focus on the absence of law in [Morrison's The Bluest Eye].
Notice all the instances that would ordinarily invoke a legal response or
the protection of law: the delivery of the torn sofa to the Breedlove’s
home, the molestation of Pecola by Cholly, the fact that Soaphead Church
was a known child molester. What impact would you expect the law to
have in these situations? Why is the law so noticeably absent in this
story? If the law could permeate into this society, would it have
saved Pecola?
The novel also explores the internalization of norms of oppression."
C. Changing Lives
through Literature
"Judges
reading this story have often said that the story forces them to see offenders
appearing before their bench from a new perspective. Each offender has an
interior self, a complex story of his own. It makes judgment more difficult,
but more humane. It makes us all consider the difficult relationship between
compassion and judgment, mercy and justice."
"The father does
not recognize him, and Cholly cannot name himself, cannot explain to his
father his relationship to family or to the world at large. Cholly is, in
essence, without identity, without roots. Thrown into a junk heap by his
mother, rejected for a crap game by his father, he is now free to roam the
American landscape, free because he has nothing left to lose. He is a man
without context or meaning, a dangerous man."
GOOD LUCK ON YOUR FINAL!
HAVE A WONDERFUL WINTER BREAK!
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