Why Love is Evil

In class last Thursday, we watched part of a documentary of a Marxist philosopher named Slavoj Žižek. In one part of the film, he relates how creation is a cosmic imbalance, where everything exists accidentally, and the only way to counter-act this mistake is through love. He believes that love is evil and perceives it as an extremely violent act.

He argues that we are flawed because of our love of idealizing love. Humans basically glorify and externalize what they see to achieve a form of love that is highly unrealistic. This type of love I perceive as a form of infatuation which can be found within our highly materialized society where people like celebrities or politicians are idolized. This delusional, infatuated love can essentially be evil because it blinds society into exalting a specific physical image and leads into a destructive, imbalanced and irrational society.

Furthermore, I believe he is also arguing that when someone states, "I love you," that person is sharing a sentiment that it is presently happening now but though it is attempted, it is not eternal.
 When viewed within a world perspective, this statement can also be equated to political relations. For example, two countries may announce that they are at the moment in alliance, but it is not always constant for there is always an awareness of impending violence. When one states, "I love you," it is fixed upon the present, bounded within time. However, there it always that impending moment that those sentiments may be reversed, and may enact the opposite that is love, which is evil. Hence our existence is always imbalanced.

Homosexuality in Foucault's, "The History of Sexuality"

In Michel Foucault's, "The History of Sexuality," it mentions that in the nineteenth-century, "homosexual became a personage, a past, a cast history, and a childhood, in addition to being a type of life, a life form, and a morphology, with a indiscreet anatomy and possibly a mysterious physiology," when referring to the new specification of individuals (Foucault 687). In essence, what he is saying is that during this time, homosexuals were basically seen as a new species or "life form," that were evolving in humankind, whose body were of a new structure of the homo-sapien that had developed through our history.

I found this argument very significant when looked at what's going on today. The argument that homosexuals either chose to be gay or were born with it is still questioned in 2010, where there are people who are still arguing whether gay's should be punished for their choices. It is radical that Foucault who wrote this theory in the 1970s would state that homosexuality begins at birth, significantly, arguing that homosexuals do not have a choice as it is biological, something that is some religious beliefs state that it is untrue, as it considered that man and woman has always been together and should always be together.

Foucault's statement that homosexuality has been here since the nineteenth-century led me to relate to the film we watched in class, Shakespeare in Love. In the film, it is shown that in theater during the 1500s, women were not allowed to act, and instead young men who had not yet hit puberty would take their place. At the end of the film, when the crowd sees a real live woman on stage playing (gasp!) the character of a woman, they are silently shocked.

It is very intriguing that in the 16th century, it was considered okay to have men kissing men, acting, dressing and talking like a woman, yet outrageous to have a woman act on stage. It makes me wonder why "cross-dressing" was an appropriate act for men during a time when homosexuality was I think, not discussed about very much, and yet today, it is shocking to see two men kissing. In sum, though I do not believe homosexuality is a new form of "species," but has been with us for centuries, and though even today it is not completely accepted, it is slowly gaining support in America and in countries around the world through laws granting them their rights in society.



Foucault, Michel. "The History of Sexuality." Print. 683-91.

Response Paper

Professor Wexler
English 313 Popular Culture
14 October 2010


Response Paper; Self-reflexivity in My Big Fat Greek Wedding

The highest grossing romantic comedy ever, My Big Fat Greek Wedding is not only a popular film; it is radical for its significant characteristic of self-reflexivity. Tamar McDonald states in her book, Romantic Comedy: Boy Meets Girl Meets Genre, “ the major thematic concerns of the radical romantic comedy all derive from issues of self-reflexivity, a heightened consciousness of self” (McDonald 67). This process of self-reflexivity is notably used the throughout film by the main character, Toula Portokalos, a Greek-American woman who essentially self-reflects through the journey of finding love and her future husband, Ian Miller. Her love-less life before meeting Ian she describes in two short sentences, “Nice Greek girls who don't find a husband, work in the family restaurant. So here I am, day after day, year after year, thirty and way past my expiration date” (Greek). McDonald mentions that a radical film, within romance and satisfaction, seeks for realism in addition to classic love, declaring that “the radical romantic comedy acknowledges that its characters are in search of meaningful and satisfying relationships; and sometimes to the contrary, that they also seek romance” (McDonald 67). Toula is the contrary for she seeks to find a relationship and to experience love her throughout her whole life, meanwhile, being reminded of this by her father Gus Portokalos everyday, “you better get married soon. You're starting to look... old!” (Greek). Her “radical” need for romance is unique to female characters in romantic comedies that, in addition to a “meaningful and satisfying” relationship, McDonald proclaims women also want a “healthy relationships [to] provide sexual satisfaction” (McDonald 66).


Thus, these qualities are formed through the process of self-reflexivity, in which follows her success in finding love and forming the romance and serious relationship. Yet, in the film, even when she does find love, her father rejects it because he is not Greek; Ian Miller: “’May I please date your daughter?’ Gus Portokalos: ‘NO!’” (Greek). Toula’s father does not accept Ian because of his cultural identity, which is something that he holds very dearly, and the rest of the Greek population. Toula is very self-aware of this from a very young age.

In Hall’s anti-essentialist position, he regards cultural identity, “not as a reflection of a fixed, natural, state of being but as a process of becoming” (Barker 229). We see this when Toula struggles to incorporate the American identity that she’s desired her whole life, while fighting with her Greek identity that her culture demands. Although she wants to keep her Greek identity to satisfy her family’s wishes, she has also wanted her whole life to be like the American girls at her school when she was young, “When I was growing up, I knew I was different. The other girls were blonde and delicate, and I was a swarthy six-year-old with sideburns” (Greek). Finally, after being tired of her old identity of Toula; the daughter and waitress, she changes her identity to Toula; the career woman and girlfriend.

She achieves this by changing her appearance, changing her glasses to contacts, getting a new hairstyle and wearing more trendy and fashionable clothing. Suddenly, she becomes more attractive to men and very soon, finds Ian. This transformation can be analyzed by Winship’s argument that, “A woman is nothing more than the commodities she wears: the lipstick, the tights, the clothes and so on are “woman”’ so essentially, she has bought into this lifestyle and values (Barker 69). Thus, it can be argued if she has thrown her old Greek identity and bought herself a new identity as an American woman through this makeover? Yet, Hall argues, “Cultural identity is continually being produced within the vectors of similarity and difference,” (Barker 229). On that account, she had essentially merged herself with two identities, constantly shifting the position of her self within her Greek family and her husbands’ family.

Through the process of self-reflexivity in the beginning of her film and throughout, Toula discovers what she wants in her life, love and an identity. She finds this love through a makeover, essentially discovering a new identity. Within this film, the emphasis of the self carries across and produced into the final product of marriage and the passing of her new identity to her child, Paris; “Mom, I want to go to Brownies. Toula: “I know. I know. But I promise you this. You can marry anybody you want” (Greek).




Works Cited

Barker, Chris. Cultural Studies: Theory and Practice. Los Angeles: Sage,
             2008.
McDonald, Tamar Jeffers. Romantic Comedy: Boy Meets Girl Meets Genre.
              New York: Wallflower Press, 2007. Print.
My Big Fat Greek Wedding. Dir. Joel Zwick. By Nia Vardalos. IFC Films,
              2002.

Michel Foucault; Race and Gender

Michel Foucault proposes an anti-essentialist argument that has no "universal ahistorical subjectivities" where instead, he argues that gender is not an outcome of "biological determinism, or universal cognitive structures and cultural patterns", but historically and culturally specific (291). This argument is agreeable in my opinion in that, to think that our characteristics are predetermined at birth is senseless and illogical. This argument goes for both race and gender and whether women and men and all races are they way they are because culture has formed these social constructions. To delve into the matter more deeply, is culture important to race? Does culture determine how people think, feel decide on in life and form opinions or preconceptions of others?

During our discussion in class, a question was asked to the class."Do we identify race, or gender first?" My answer to that is, it depends on the situation. For me, I chose not to judge by looking at race or gender, but by surveying character and environment. For example, when I was in Paris, France, a city bursting with tourists visiting from all parts of our planet, what I chose to identify in that situation was in finding another Armenian or American like myself. In that hectic city, I heard many strange and unfamiliar languages and yearned to hear a language that I understood, so when I heard English or Armenian, it was like finding a piece of my home thousands of miles away.

I believe this desire to find people that you can identify to was formed from the tribe mentality. Though we do not live in tribes today, culture and language gives us that unique bond that allows us to form a unique group of people that we can identify to. In this situation, I identified race first, not because of any biological or learned response, but because of the environment of the condition that I was placed in. However, at night when walking to the hotel, my main concern is protection, and in the dark, the only identifiable characteristic is gender. Being a girl and short, I am an easy target an my main concern is to keep my eyes and ears alert. Identifying gender and race allows us to protect ourselves while also providing support in varying conditions. Culture may determine how we see the world, however, I believe it is the individual who ultimately chooses to make that decision whether to allow culture to determine our ideas.



Barker, Chris. Cultural Studies: Theory and Practice. Los Angeles: Sage, 2008.