The Color of an Artist

The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain symbolically represented the consciousness of the Negro artist in America struggling for an identity. Like the new emerging black middle class, the ‘black’ artist faced a splintering of their own culture. The black middle class, with its Anglo indulgences and assimilation created confusion for the Negro artist caught between two cultures, uncertain whether to create art for the mass culture dominated by whites or stick to their roots, trapped on the lower side of town. Basquiat directed by the great Julian Schnabel is a film portraying this problem. Regarded as the ‘first famous black painter’ Basquiat was faced with the questions Hughes demanded the Negro artist be asked. His rise to fame leaves him vulnerable to manipulation and exploitation at the hands of the whites who hold the real power in the art world. These problems are surfaced in Hughes essay, as he writes: “The Negro works against an undertow of sharp criticism and misunderstanding from his own group and unintentional bribes from the whites” (1195).  Unlike Hughes desire for a strictly black artist separate from the white, Basquiat wished to transcend that realm. But as the film progresses and Basquiat’s fame escalates, the racial mountain Hughes depicted emerges as the whites try desperately to make Basquiat their own creation.   

Work Cited 

Leitch, Vincent B. Ed. The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. 2^nd ed. New York:

     W.W. Norton & Company, 2010. Print.

American Pie and the Sexual Discourse of Capitalism

            In Foucault’s The History of Sexuality, a western society is depicted in which sexuality has been taken out of the reach of the masses and turned into a sort of pseudo discourse monitored and hung high above the rafters. This shift in the societal sexual identity began in the 17^th century, according to Foucault, with the rise of the bourgeois: “From the 17^th century and the rise of the bourgeois, repression circulated and clouded sex, even at the level of language. Sex was taken charge of, tracked down as it were, by a discourse that aimed to allow it no obscurity, no respite” (1505). Sex was no longer amongst the people, but now another tool in the arsenal of those in power. Foucault writes: “Sex became yet another aspect of life to be ‘policed’ or regulated by the state” (1506). Fast forward these theories to the modern culture of American Pie and one can see this discourse embedded into the mainstream culture of Western youth. The film revolves around a group of high school seniors on the eve of their upcoming prom and graduation. The crew is a blend of girls and guys, jocks and nerds, fully encompassing the spectrum of personalities that permeate the halls of American adolescence. The main theme in the film is sex. But it’s an American sense of sex. The discourse embedded in the larger narrative and the language the characters use are both subsequently the creation of the western bourgeois whom Foucault writes of. This rhetoric imposed by the state and thus impose through popular culture shaped the sexual culture of these societies as the film displays. This American Pie, would be a different kind of pie in India, or China for example. It discusses the sexual identity of American youth in an urban setting with technology as its confidant. The characters face existential confusion and self discovery in a society shaped by the discourse of sexuality and indeed one who profits off of it. 

Work Cited

Leitch, Vincent B. Ed. The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. 2^nd ed. New York:

     W.W. Norton & Company, 2010. Print.

The Precession of Italian Upholstery

In light of our recent dive into postmodern thought and with Professor showing us perhaps models of post modern thought in context: (pictures of Disneyland, scenes from American Psycho), I thought it only fitting to introduce another piece of pop culture as pervasive evidence of our post modern decline. In relation to Baudrillard’s ‘simulacra’ and the repercussions of them within our lives, the scene from American Beauty which I have embedded highlights the disconnected behavior all of postmodern people’s are guilty of. The two main characters, man and wife are in the midst of a dying spark of romance in their withering marriage. As they rekindle the flame, inching closer to that old passion which brought them together long ago, the wife, Carolynn, ruins the moment for fear that her husband will spill his beer on the couch. This instance, already neurotic in its infancy to begin with, is the perfect precession of the simulacra that Marx warned of and that Baudrillard blasphemed. “Signs have now taken a priority over the things they have signified,” (1557) to Carolynn it isn’t just a couch as her husband puts it. And to the rest of our postmodern society caught in the strangle of simulacra it certainly isn’t either. It represents a certain class, a certain taste. It is shrouded in Italian upholstery, Carolynn argues. It is seen in its four thousand dollar price tag, “instead everything is capital,” (1559).  This postmodern poisonous mirage has detached us from anything real and dilutes our lives as Carolynn’s, making it increasingly harder to find pure joy; a pure joy where we can take happiness out of something as tangible and organic as a little afternoon delight and set aside our apocalyptic fears of a ruined fabric. 


Works Cited
Leitch, Vincent B. Ed. The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. 2^nd ed. New York:

     W.W. Norton & Company, 2010. Print.

The text is, a person?

The creation of a text is, according to the Phenomenologist’s we have studied, the creation of a living organism. Ideologies, emotions, all aspects of a thinking thing become expressed through this medium that is created for an audience. In the film, Stranger than Fiction, this becomes quite literal. Similar to Sartre and Barthes views on writing, this film becomes the literal embodiment of their metaphorical philosophies. Harry is a living, breathing text. He is the creation of someone else’s doing. He goes nearly his entire life without ever being conscious of himself as a text, until one day when he overhears his life being narrated by the author of what is essential his ‘novel’. This symbolism goes hand in hand with the Phenomenologist’s rhetoric and ideologies. Sartre stated that: “the literary object is a peculiar top which exists only in movement. The writer neither foresees nor conjectures; he projects.” The author of Harry’s novel isn’t writing, but projecting the feelings, the dealings, of his life outward unto him. It is the blend of them both, the partnership they manifest that brings life not only to Harry but consequently back to the text. Similarly, Barthes idea of the death of the author commences at the birth of the reader is perhaps another idea that is visited in Stranger than Fiction. Up until the onset of Harry’s discovery of the voice, the author has been writing nonstop and with success. Then comes the realization of Harry; the birth of the reader. With this awakened consciousness, the writer has now hit a block. She can no longer write- she becomes irrelevant. Her relevance was only needed up until the point of a conscious text. Once Harry has become aware of involvement he takes full control of the text. This not only brings the two together in a twist of textual collaboration but it consequently clouds the author and gives birth to the text.

Works Cited

Leitch, Vincent B. Ed. The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. 2nd ed. New York:

Progression, meet Postmodernism

The theories and theorists of postmodern thought and analysis came into modern culture with a sledge hammer and an arsenal of disdain for the preceding ideologies. They quickly contended that, “general human emancipation could not be gained through the Universalist strategies characteristic of both liberalism and communism”. Moreover, the age of the postmodern is the age of uncertainty. Unlike the theories before it in which nationalism, unity and a view of human oneness effected the political and cultural implications of the ages, the post modern movement strived for the respect of diversity between mankind and its creations. Postmodernism and its theorists attempt to ignore the implications of modernists ideas of our ‘progression’ and of our connected journey toward some utopian future; replacing them with not only a respect but of an appreciation for diversity, local differences and ultimately in the plurality of ways we as humans chose to live our lives. In defining the postmodern, Lyotard stated that the cultural and societal norms in which humans use to dictate their existent cannot be labeled as definitive rhetoric: “We cannot confidently declare one way of life or thought superior to another.” This idea of progress is hindered by the side effects it creates i.e. (damage to our ecosystem, weapons of mass destruction, etc).Through the lens of the modernist, the postmodernist attempts to violently shake off the old traditions en route to a new truly progressive model of variety. And in the struggle to achieve that, the idea of progression will have to dress its best. It must (through us) learn that progression has many limbs; that it isn’t a universal idea but varies from culture to culture, it will have to stand up to the age’s, past the smoke of the Industrial Revolution, and through the destruction of two world wars, and it will have to meet Postmodernism.

Work Cited

Leitch, Vincent B. The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. New York: W. W. Norton &, 2010. Print.

This is a commodities world.

The film, The Joneses, portrays a family built on the foundation of capital. What appears to be a super successful and thriving young family is really a marketing scheme undercover. They are not family members, but coworkers. Their purpose is to sell the life they appear to be living. Everything is for sale in their world, indeed, everything is a commodity. This film is an excellent portrayal of the capitalistic society Marx concentrated his writings on. Much like Marx’s writings, the film depicts a world completely constructed on the collection of things- the acquirement of commodities. The Joneses move into an upper middle class neighborhood and drive brand new cars. They have the latest toys and display their marriage and family life as healthy and thriving, all for the sake of a sale. The neighbors who surround them, trapped in the system of their materialistic existence, seek to replicate the Joneses happiness through the acquirement of similar or better commodities than they have in hopes of obtaining that mirage of content. But sadly, that day can never come. A capitalist system has one main focus-and so do the Joneses-capital. This relentless pursuit of profit leads the Joneses down a pit of estranged relationships, an end that Marx would very much attest to- an end that the capitalist system cannot escape.

Occupation precedes existence....

In our free market economy it is easy for the trained eye to notice the malignant forms of capitalism Marx and Engels had warned about. The detachment that the capitalist machine demands of the employer and the employee further alienate the human family and separates societies into unequal classes that clash in a bloody struggle to survive. With the state of the global economy in shambles and the American middle class spiraling down a turbulent tornado of unending debt and dried out unemployment benefits, one can turn to the communist writings and see this prophecy fulfilled over a hundred years ago. It is the inevitability of a corrupted system. I found these readings particularly helpful to my arsenal of societal scopes in which to view the various problems the world faces. Marx noted that: “Consciousness can never be anything else than the conscious existence and the existence of men is their life process,” (668). In other words and in opposition with previous enlightenment philosophies prior, our occupations constitute our existence. If a man works 15 hour days in a cramped cauldron of a warehouse with no room to grow and only enough free time to eat and sleep the bare minimum, where is his time for personal growth? Where in this day is he allotted the time to ponder and question within himself? Marx argued that he didn’t and this is one of the fundamental errors within a capitalist society. The man is defined by his work. It controls his being and if he is being exploited for profit, treated like everything else in the free market world; as a commodity, then it is not his existence that precedes essence but in fact his occupation that precedes his existence. It is the narrator of his state of mind and in an exploited economic system it can never lead to a happy ending.

Work Cited

Leitch, Vincent B. The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. New York: W. W. Norton &, 2010. Print.