Back to It

As I sit and stare at the 34 pages I've already written on my thesis, I'm wondering why it all came out so easily. I expected to come back from my vacation, make a quick list of things to concentrate on, and then just get to it.

Well, it's not gonna be that easy.  Technically, I pretty much have exploded onto the page everything I intend to submit at the end of this trip. I've written about the scenes I wanted to from Hedwig and I have in my head somewhere the main points I need to hit in the introduction. The other day I made an exhaustive list that would remind me later what it is I need to address and flush out in the stuff I have already written. I didn't know that this would be the meat of the deal. I've already got some meat in it, but, for instance, tonight was all about Plato.

I was/will spend more time on "Origin of Love," the song in the film that depicts Aristophanes' speech from the Symposium. I was on the train this morning, reading the speech for the third time and all this stuff jumped into my head. I was pretty pleased with it at first, but of course wondered if I was stretching things a bit. I suppose there's no such thing as long as I explain myself. This is the hard part. I realized this as I sat down to get it out. I remembered Snitow's example of leading folks on a tour. Or Elzbieta's likening such writing to being a detective. Neither really worked, although I didn't spend much time trying.

So, as I sit here staring at my "Origin of Love" analysis, I am actually working. Or trying to. I haven't really attempted much, and instead decided to procrastinate by writing about my process. Which isn't really making sense and which is getting me nowhere. But it's all about Aristophanes tonight and his tale of the three genders. I am likening this three-gender structure -- male, female, androgyne -- to the identity structure, specifically gender, that Hedwig is trying to navigate.

The androgyne, considered an outsider, an unlikable character, disrupts the existence of the categories "male" and "female." Although this story is about one's search for its other half, it also explicitly refers to gender. Which is what my paper is about anyway. So I will attempt to illustrate that there is a power, Zeus in this case, out of everyone's control (per Foucault) that has acted upon the structures that were in existence. They are disrupted and are frantically running around in their new, split, bodies trying to regain their cohesive selves.

I'm not sure how far I'll get with this analysis but it's something I've never considered before, so we'll just have to see. I imagine the struggle will be rewarding.