#8

This week, I ended up thinking a lot about my project again.  I struggled really hard to think of ways for the pieces format on paper to reflect its content, and I wonder if perhaps the reason I have trouble with it is because I created a piece that isn't trans genre in the way this assignment may have required.  On the other hand, I'm still very proud of my creation, so I hope all the heart  I put into it still comes across in the writing.

I suppose the problem I now can see with the piece is that it's ultimately something of a standard narrative.  The story just follows a fictional character around from a first person perspective as he goes about a small chapter of his long ling life story, and while I tried to make that story as novel unique and original as possible, many of the strangest pieces we've studied in this class have eschewed formal narrative in the traditional sense, rather attempting more surreal and discordant forms of conveying messages through writing.  I worry that my favoritism for traditional narrative may continue to handicap me as I continue the class.

However, I do enjoy the touches I was able to come up with.  The Reaper character is a concept I created a year ago, based on the concept of what would drive someone with power over death to do the things that death is typically portrayed as doing.  Why would he appear at someone's bedside when it's their time.  To that end, I based it on an idea that omniscience changes a man so much, he's hardly a man any more, and would do things that the rest of us would think crazy.  The omniscience is what i hope really sets the character apart from other characters in first person traditional narratives.

Blog week #7

This week, after Mondays discussion on Gaga feminism, it finally began to hit me just how many different ways there are to frame the discussion, so that even if two feminists want the same result, the evidence they use to get there can be so different as to nearly make them enemies.  I'm noticing that because I frame my personal views on feminism so positively, I have trouble accepting other versions of it that are more aggressive.

Specifically, my main idea for feminism is that ultimately, there are still barriers that make Men, Women, and those in between different, and instead of focusing on treating everyone like their gender is irrelevant, I feel like it's more fair to frame it so that yes, there are differences, but because of the way the patriarchal system has oppressed all other non-conformers so brutally for so long, we should strive to respect everyone for what they want to believe, and we must strive to make things fair.  Compared to other theories that wish to proclaim gender as not existing, I feel like we arrive at the same conclusion, but ultimately disagree on a few points.

For example, the idea that Women buy things like shoes to be pretty ONLY because the patriarchal system has conditioned them to.  I agree that this happens and is mostly true.  I also agree that women shouldn't have to feel like they are weird for NOT wanting to buy shoes.  What bothers me are feminists who then say that buying shoes supports the patriarchal system, when in fact, a lot of women just want to buy shoes.  I think it is really hard to expect women to divorce themselves from the concept of gender as a form of freedom when so many still personally choose to identify as women.  I'd much rather frame it so that we make rules allowing women to buy as many or as few shoes as they desire, and do not chastise them for the feminine or masculine traits they may be exhibiting based on those kind of decisions.

I obviously understand the merits to such opinions, as an end to gender entirely would most certainly be a step towards ending the kind of inequality that women face.  In fact, the radical anti-feminist groups out in the world certainly justify the existence of nearly ANY kind of pro-feminist argument.  This is just something I struggle with, as I feel at it's core, feminism should be about making things fair for women and transgender people so that they can be happy.  It should be about allowing as many people as possible to get what they want out of life without having unfair boundaries put in their way.  I do understand that my perspective is limited, however, and I will continue to try and welcome in new perspectives on the subject.

Weekly blog post #6

This week, I found myself struggling to figure out what what exactly DuPliess was trying to say in her essay on essays.  She presents an interesting series of points about how an essay is such a unique place for text to exist, because of its powerful, almost fascist like attempt to control your emotions for the duration of the text.  You are presented an opinion, and you don't get to see any other side of the opinion that hasn't been filtered into just being more support for the argument.  It's very controlling.

Although, in a sense, all text is very manipulative.  In a fictional story, you can interpret things in a variety of ways, but the author is always trying to pull your emotions in very very specific directions.  You have choice, but you're strongly influenced.  In fact, even the choices are sometimes intended to manipulate you.  The ending especially tries with all its might to make you believe in the answer it has provided for the question that provoked the author into writing the story.  Very manipulative.

Week #5

This week, I'm starting to think about how I can frame my outside text presentation project as a piece of trans genre work.  My plan has been to present a Devin Townsend album called Punky Bruster-Cooked on Phonics, because of it's incredibly odd layers and structure.  However, a major nature of why it is so unusual is based on the artist who produced it, which has caused me to continue questioning exactly what constitutes a transgenre project, and what kind of parts of the creation must be taken into account.

Essentially, Devin Townsend is an experimental guitar player.  He got his start as a singer for Steve Vai and his hard rock guitar playing, but Devin eventually struck out on his own.  His first successful project was an extreme metal band called Strapping Young Lad, which was well known for pushing the genre incredibly close to just being noise, while simultaneously blending in very melodic passages.  However, he quickly used the success of Strapping Young Lad to fund a series of increasingly unusual solo albums, which ultimately would expand to cover nearly all genre's of music.  He has created metal albums, noise albums, sound-scape albums, pop albums, rock operas, folk inspired metal, and supposedly even has a country album coming out. 

All this being said, technically his first solo album was this Punky Bruster album, a sort of rock opera in which Devin tells the story of a death metal band who sell out to become the next Green Day. It mainly serves as a vehicle for him to eviscerate the idea of both rich punk stars, and other aspects of the punk scene in general, through a satire that gets increasingly vicious and hateful as the album goes on.

Ultimately, this means that when you listen to this album, what you are listening to is a series of punk rock tracks, made to sound like they were written for popular radio by stripping out much of the edginess the genre carried from its roots.  These sell-out punk songs are then supposedly being played by an ex death metal band, but are recorded mostly by Devin Townsend himself, who at the time was primarily a Metal musician.  So under all the other layers of being punk made for pop radio as made by death metal fakers, the songs are AGAIN influenced by the fact that Devin's skill set is based on something completely different from both death metal AND different from punk, under ground or popular.

Looking back on readings like Dictee,  authors often use much of their personal experience to create these trans genre projects, I am beginning to wonder if this might be the connecting thread that really makes it possible for every aspect of a piece to become trans genre while still having a uniting, connecting thread.  I'm interested to see what other trans genre pieces we will see in the future, and how many of those are also intimately connected to the authors experience.

Week #4

This week, turning in my first transgenre project was a bit stressful, but I finally feel like I understand how the transgenre moniker applies to different pieces of work.  Namely, I have come to decide that ultimately, as long as a piece heavily subverts the conventions of a genre, gender, or culturally enforced role or idea, then the work will be to some degree, a transgenre project.  By going against the conventions of modern society, texts become tricky, difficult, and they challenge people who read them.  This is an incredibly important service that literature must provide, as well as other arts.

However, looking back on my transgenre project, I can't help but feel that I didn't quite take advantage of all the creative freedom that was offered to me.  In hindsight, I feel I would have had a much more entertaining time creating some kind of narrative that subverts these convention instead.  I have thought of various ideas in this vein before, and I have realized that these kinds of narratives can be just as transgenre as the craziest of experimental poetry.  Even transgender ideas, which I used to struggle with the most, have become something I think I could still use my writing to talk about.

I realized this while discussing the transgender spectrum on Monday, as thanks to all that discussion, I had a realization I hadn't thought of before.  Namely, that physical biological gender and mental sexuality can be completely different, and that this allows virtually anyone to take part in the discussion.  In particular, just because someone is a straight, white male does not mean that they have to conform to all of the ideas and interests that are affiliated with that type of gender role.  In fact, it doesn't seem to me like it has to be a sexual discussion at all.  A story about a woman who seeks to avoid the various constraints of the societal gender roles placed upon her could be viewed through a transgenre lens, and sexual attraction or physical alterations to preconceived gender conventions do not necessarily have to factor in at all.  She could simply focus her life on a challenging career as a ship captain or such, and the unusual contrast of that situation can be set up to have undertones that subvert the ideas that gender roles are important enough to enforce.  I like this idea, as I feel like I have far more freedom bow than I did before.