Art and Rain
Immediately after waking up this afternoon, I went to the sliding-glass door to see if the rain let up. It hadn't. So I read some, watched a little French Open action, and then joined Cornelia at this place called the Tea Lounge to read. It's pretty nice. Couches, chairs, and coffee tables. And they actually have good coffee.
I've been in some places here where the coffee hasn't been up to par. Anyway, I got to sit next to a baby for a little bit. That was joyous, of course. At least it didn't cry. In fact, it was quite interested in my hand for some reason. Go figure. There was a woman sitting across from me. She was kind of weird. Actually, she wasn't as weird as the gentleman in his mid-20s who stood behind me in line with a piece of red rubber situated at the end of his nose with a small baby doll hanging out of his bookbag.
Yeah, he was weird. Anyway, the woman across from me was writing voraciously. I noticed that she had also spent some time drawing. It was a person. With glasses. I thought it was me at first because it would have been very easy given my proximity to her. But the figure's legs were crossed. I didn't have my legs crossed, so I figured it wasn't me. After we left, Cornelia started talking about her -- how weird she was. And then she told me that she had drawn me -- glasses, earrings, and all.She was convinced. Nice. I just found out today that New School is co-hosting the New York Lesbian and Gay Film Festival. I'm so proud of my institution of higher learning. I hope to attend some of the films. They're $6 each, so I have to choose wisely. I'm gonna try to hit the gender ones. And maybe some of the shorts.
Did I mention that I picked my classes for next semester? I think I have. Well, because I don't have anything to write about now, I will, instead, put descriptions of them. I'll do one a day, though, because you could get bored.
Class #1 (I saw this class when I still lived in California and was highly anticipating taking it this spring. But, when I got here last fall, I found out it was postponed. Now, it's finally mine.) Representations of Race and Gender in Modern American Popular Culture Margo Jefferson (She's a Pulitzer Prize-winning critic, by the way...) Gertrude Stein once said that the United States had virtually "created" the 20th century, thanks to the legacy of the Civil War and the commercialized mass culture that grew up after it. If Stein is right, then it should come as no surprise that similar factors have shaped the most popular forms of art in the 20th century. Remarking on the vogue for black styles of playing among white musicians in the Roaring Twenties, Zora Neale Hurtson put it this way: "Thus has arisen a new art in the civilized world, and thus has our so-called civilization come. The exchange and re-exchange of ideas among groups." Using the insights of Stein and Hurston, and also more recent studies by Michael Rogin, Paul Gilroy, Angela Y. Davis, and Judith Butler, we examine some key genres in American popular culture, including minstrelsy, melodrama, musical theater, and a variety of African American music, from blues to jazz to rock and roll. Among the artists examined are pioneers like Al Jolson, Louis Armstrong, Mae West, and Ethel Walters, and latter-day descendants like Elvis Presley, George Clinton, Madonna, and Queen Latifah. We also study the "purer" types of racial and gender representations: the epic white masculinity of John Wayne and Frank Sinatra; the brazen-yet-broken white femininity of Jean Harlow, Marilyn Monroe and Courtney Love; the "worthy" black masculinity of dignified stars like Paul Robeson, the middle-aged Sidney Poitier and Bill Cosby; the dangerous black masculinity of defiant and smoldering characters like the young Sidney Poitier, Miles Davis and Richard Pryor; the nurturing and desexualized black mammy, from Hattie McDaniel to Oprah Winfrey at the start of her career; and the nurturing, but sexualized black Mamma, from Bessie Smith to Aretha Franklin. I get to study Marilyn Monroe....sweet.
