How To Chronicle a Tragedy...Appropriately.

After hearing Ana’s presentation, I became fascinated with the idea of an online memorial. I had never thought that something like this website could exist, but with the increase in technology, it makes total sense. What struck me most about the website is how personal it is; our neighbors and fellow Americans can share their stories with the rest of the world. Unlike other memorials, this website isn’t just names carved into a wall—it consists of real people telling real stories about their personal experiences with the tragedy.

I wanted to look a little more into the ways in which the website is monitored. Since it can be edited by nearly anybody, I was wondering what sort of guidelines the website offered and how much opportunity there was for somebody to add every aspect of their story. On the website’s Community Guidelines page, I found the following rules:

WHAT TO DO

Be accurate and honest.

We are most interested in what you personally experienced.

Be appropriate.

This event and subject matter demand a certain dignity. Given the intensity of the event, some strong language may be appropriate in certain stories. But consider that this site will be used by people of all ages.

Be respectful of fellow community members.

Many stories on this site come from people who lost someone on 9/11. Please treat other users politely and respectfully. 

WHAT NOT TO DO

Don’t lie.

Say what matters, and we are trusting you to be honest. Don’t edit videos or images in a misleading way.

Don’t rant.

9/11 is a contentious subject, and we encourage people to participate in online and offline conversations devoted to 9/11’s causes and ramifications. This particular site, however, is not designed to support such conversations.

Don’t troll of harass.

Even if you disagree with someone, abusive or threatening behavior will not be tolerated and will result in banning.

These were some of the more interesting guidelines, in my opinion. I was happy to see that the site was taking some amount of action in keeping the site a respectful place. However, I still wonder how monitored the site actually is. I wonder how easy it would be for somebody malicious to post something—and not just something, but something hateful.

I think that an online memorial is a great idea; it’s an easy way for people to share their feelings, and it gives people access to unlimited reflection on a tragedy. However, I question the morality behind the site; I could see somebody abusing the privilege to reach thousands or millions of people still in despair.

Additionally, I wanted to ask the class: do you think there are any difficulties with the guidelines provided? Do you think any should be removed? Added?

Muslims treated like Jews?

This video is very striking! I found it while doing some research on my special project, and would like to hear my classmates' opinions on this.
I think the comaprison is rather extreme and to a certain extend appropriate ?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5uwjR8tQyY

Significance of the heartbeat

I am happy that as class we were able to read a play. Compared to the novels and other poems we have read in class, I realized the benefit the play out loud in class. Similar to a speech, the audience gets more out of the reading of the play if it is acted out or simply read aloud with other characters.

A dramatic portion of the play that I would like to focus some attention to is the idea of the subtle beats that are found throughout the play. An example would be in the first scene when Alice is degrading Bashir, in the second scene:

RHIANNON My gut. (Beat.) But my questions won’t work. If I want to understand someone, I need to dress like them, walk like them, talk like them. I need to  become them.

And in the third scene:

Bashir: I used to have Asthma

Rhiannon: (beat)  How’d you make it stop?

The beat can have many different meanings. It can be a signal to an audience about some type of foreshadowing. When there is important dialogue that beat occurs calling all audience members to pay attention.  It can also be a reminder of what it is to be human.

In the play as a torturer, Alice dehumanizes Bashir. She treats him like an object, an alien with no feelings. The beat in the play throughout the the dialogue the heart beat sound remind everyone we share humanity. The dignity of the human person is remembered through the heart beat.

I also think the heartbeat could be one individual person. For this reason I believe it the heartbeat of Rhiannon. She is the character that connects all the others through love. Obviously her parents love her, Riva loves her, and there is a special bond between her and Bashir. The heartbeat adds a dramatic effect to the play. An uncertain sound, an uneasy reminder, and a leveling medium.

Imagine: Invasion of Space by Male

After acting out the first scene of Lidless in class, I realized how graphic the actions and the dialogue truly are. I wanted to explore the dynamic of the Invasion of Space by Female act and explore the opposite: Invasion of Space by Male. First, before I dive into my whole spiel on double standards, I wanted to outline some of the more graphic parts. As you reread these parts of the play, switch the gender roles (and body parts) where necessary. Imagine a man saying these things to a woman. Then, after we can picture the flipside of this act, we can decide the morality—or lack thereof—behind the entire idea.

Here are some of the more graphic parts of the first scene:

ALICE   I’m touching myself. My fingers trail up my thigh as I think of all our bodies could do. I could sink onto your hard, hot cock. I could bury my face in your neck. You could hold me. You could move me. You could help me find light and redemption and peace.

And again:

ALICE   What’s the matter, Mo? Is the great Islamic sword too weary to rise today? (Beat.)Holy mother. Looks like I found your sweet spot. Right here. An inch beneath your left ear. Jesus. I could hang Old Glory on that pole. I’ve been wasting my time on white boys. It appears those rumors about Asian men are lies your ladies tell to keep you to themselves. Selfish bitches.

And again:

ALICE   Oh. I forgot to tell you, I’m bleeding, and there’s nothing shielding you from my twenty-five-year-old cunt, just red, red, red, staining skin already caked pus white and blue with bruises, making you the color of the flag I’ve sworn to protect.

Obviously, a gender reversal in for this scene seems absurd, disgusting, and beyond publication. If Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig had fictionalized the rape of a woman in this same manner, she may not have gotten the rights to publish it or the acknowledgement of her work. While that might seem extreme, the rape of women is a huge issue throughout the world today; however, the rape of men doesn’t seem so prevalent, so hearing something like this doesn’t seem so awful.

When I talked to some of my friends about this first scene, a lot of them seemed disbelieving. For them, they didn’t really understand how a woman can rape a man. They said, “If a man is not willing, then it won’t really work.” However, this type of mentality holds the same weight as the people who claim that certain women “ask for” rape by the way that they dress and their overall attitudes. This thinking perpetuates a double standard. If it doesn’t work for one gender, it shouldn’t be okay for the other.

Rape is a serious issue, and I think that, while Cowhig brings light to that, she does so in a very dangerous way. A simple imagining of role reversal borders on extremely inappropriate and offensive text. Do you guys agree or disagree?

Loss of Innocence in Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

I know it’s been about a week since we finished Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, but I realized there was one major theme in the book that we didn’t spend too much time on. That theme was the loss of innocence, experienced by Oskar.
Throughout the novel, Oskar puts pictures in his book called “Things that happened to me”. The images in that scrapbook showed terrible horrendous things, both dealing with 9/11 (the falling man) and other things throughout his life (Hamlet, Stephen Hawking, etc.). Not only would it be terrible for a kid to compare himself to a tragic hero like Hamlet, but he also thinks about other sad and scary things throughout the day. A number of times in the novel Oskar points out things he knows, or things he knows but that he wishes he didn’t. Oskar is presented as a boy who knows a lot, especially things a boy his age shouldn’t know.
So this got me thinking about my own 9/11 experience and how it could’ve affected my innocence. In my case, however, I wasn’t as exposed to the violence and destruction of 9/11. At my school, we weren’t told about the attacks during the school day, even though we weren’t allowed to go outside for recess on that clear day. My parents didn’t explain much to me. Even though the TV was constantly tuned to the news channel, I didn’t pay much attention. My 9/11 education occurred much later than for Oskar. Do you think this was the right way to handle the situation, instead of being thrust into the grown-up world like Oskar? Is this how 9/11 was handled for you? What’re your thoughts on the subject, if you were a little older than I was at the time?

Final Scenes

In the chapter “My Feelings”, Oskar’s grandma mentions frequently a dream she had the preceding night. In that dream, events from her life and history happened in reverse.  Eve put an apple back on the tree, collapsed roofs reformed, and tears ran up faces instead of down. Even as she was moving on from the past with Oskar’s grandfather, leaving the town and apartment she’d been stuck in for upwards of fifty years, she couldn’t help but recall that dream.
This is echoed in the next chapter when Oskar looks at his volume of Things That Happened to Me. He rearranges the pages so that the falling man falls upward. He thinks about the last night with his father, and how everything would’ve happened backward. He wanted to be safe with his father once again.
As I read these two passages, I thought about our discussions of mourning and melancholia. It seemed strange to me for two narrators to be thinking in this fashion. They both expressed a desire to want to go back to a time before the present. They wanted their tragedies to be erased. Even as Oskar’s grandma was working through her feelings in a letter, and Oskar had cried with his mother (both signs of mourning), they were reliving their tragedies. They seemed to be stuck in the past, even as they were showing some signs of progress. So, the question remains, where does melancholia end and  mourning begin for Oskar’s grandma, and especially Oskar himself?

Loyalty to the Dead

Since we began discussing grief both on the blog and in class, I have become completely fascinated with watching Oskar’s progress throughout his various processes of coping. Most interestingly, Oskar appears to feel a certain loyalty to his father that he feels frightened to break. As I read about his feelings regarding this loyalty—despite the fact that he never blatantly acknowledges it, he subtly includes hints and clues that lead the reader toward this mindset—, I began to wonder if Oskar still experiences sadness in regards to his father’s death or if he forces himself to feel sadness because he believes that he should.

A prime example of this appears in Heavier Boots, when Oskar straightforwardly questions his mother about her ability to laugh after the death of his father. After expressing how he misses his father, Oskar questions if his mother feels the same. When she says she does, he inquires, “But do you really?” and further states, “It’s just that you don’t act like you miss him very much.” Eventually, Oskar reveals that he came to this speculation because he “hear[s her] laughing…in the living room. With Ron.”

This discussion escalates. In response to Oskar’s questioning, his mother explains, “I’m trying to find ways to be happy. Laughing makes me happy.” Stubbornly, Oskar insists, “I’m not trying to find ways to be happy and I won’t,” and he eventually elaborates, “Dad would want me to remember him.” This scene ends with Oskar in a fit of rage, screaming to his mother, “If I could have chosen, I would have chosen you!”

Additionally, a scene with Dr. Fein reinforces Oskar’s desire to remain loyal to his dead father. Oskar recounts the conversation, starting with a question from Dr. Fein:

“Do you think any good can come from your father’s death?” “Do I think any good can come from my father’s death?” “Yes. Do you think any good can come from your father’s death?” I kicked over my chair, threw his papers across the floor, and hollered, “No! Of course not, you fucking asshole!”

Both of these excerpts show the loyalty that Oskar feels to his father and the absurdity he feels when someone presses him to break this loyalty. Since we have decided that it has been at least a year since the attacks, we can also conclude that Oskar has been grieving for quite some time. However, despite the lapse in time, Oskar remains held down by the obligation he feels to stay stuck on his father. Overall, such a scene suggests that Oskar only grieves as much as he does because he feels as if he should.

With that being said, I want to propose that Oskar truly is experiencing melancholia, as he has reached a total standstill in his grieving process and acts out when somebody suggests that he break his loyalty to the dead.

Additionally, I would like to ask anybody in the class who has experienced any part of the grieving process: have you ever felt this kind of loyalty to a loved one that you lost? What did it feel like if/when you broke that loyalty? Did you feel guilt? Freedom?