argh (a popular title)

The show is keeping me really busy so I think weekends are going to be when I can update the most... I'm so very tired right now.

I've been doing a lot of reading because I spend at least an hour and half on the El going to and from rehearsal. I still have not let myself get heavy in Harry Potter because I need to finish other stuff first. I don't even know how I'm going to finish all the Greek stuff for Bud (Acting) in the fall. I guess those few weeks before class starts in September will be valuable.

I finally got around to reading the Laura Mulvey article "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema" this week. I'm going to find my favorite quotes on the El tomorrow so I can post in more detail. I recommend reading the article if you are intrigued by what I've been saying about movies. I still don't agree with everything she says about the "castration complex" and her analysis of certain films. But it is starting to make a lot more sense.

I was very happy when reading the article to find out I was not completely insane that night when I went ranting about Batman Begins and how my problems with it related to this article I read. The connection is in how hero movies are often written and shot through the man's perspective and the females in the story, although they may have a lot of screen time, are only auxiliaries to the story, put there to serve the protagonist. Movies told from the female perspective often are called "chick flicks." There is a quote in the article of Rudd Boetticher that says "What counts is what the heroine provokes, or rather what she represents. She is the one, or rather the love or fear she inspires in the hero, or else the concern he feels for her, who makes him act the way he does. In herself the woman has not the slightest importance." That's how I would describe the Katie Holmes character in Batman. Mulvey goes on to talk about the "buddy movie' which just puts in a male sidekick so that "the active homosexual eroticism of the central male figures can carry the story without distraction." (Mulvey) A little explanation of the sexual descriptions - Mulvey talks a lot about films in sexual terms, in terms of scopophilia, eroticism, pleasure, castration, etc. She also seems to have a proclivity to Freud which might explain some of this. It is what makes the article a difficult one to digest but essentially very interesting once it can be digested. As I have said before, I really didn't like this article when I read it in class last fall. It's funny how opinions change with experiences.

So that was more than I expected to write tonight. I'll do some more digesting tomorrow and see if I can explain better soon.

Erica's coming tomorrow! Yay! So that means I probably won't have time to even get near my computer again until Saturday or Sunday, when she is out with other friends. I'm looking forward to this weekend. Because rehearsal has been a little stressed due to multiple script changes and a cramped rehearsal schedule. Oh yeah, I dropped a flat on my foot the other night too, so that hurts some. It's really disappointing, though, because it only turned a pale brown instead of an exciting purple and red combination. That would have drawn more sympathy but instead it just looks like a weird foot tan line. Oh well.

That was a big non-sequitor. I like those. But I apologize if it snuck up a little to much on all y'alls (I learned that phrase in "Misss-ippi." Yay for ASB 2005.

Okay, its late, gotta sleep. BEHIV in the morning. Hopefully they will have tons of interesting stuff for me to do. Or enough brainless data entry to make the day pass by.

Goodnight.