if you had to do an IO next week (you don’t), what texts would you choose and what global issue would you explore? What is the weak spot you need to think deeply about before we do this? 

 

I am considering pairing Carol Ann Duffy and Gordan Parks’s work for the IO. Seeing how they each represent women in their work prompts me to think about the global issue of art, creativity, and imagination. I’m inclined to discuss not only the differences in the representation of women in art/media, but also the reason for those differences. To bring this into my IO, I have to explore each artist individually and understand the context of their work. Understanding the implicit messages that Duffy and Parks choose to convey is crucial in comparing and contrasting their work in the context of this global issue.

One issue I have to consider is making the connecting between both texts and explaining why both texts fall under the same issue, despite their difference representations. To do this, I must include context on the identity and experiences of the artists, such as Gordon Parks’s experience with racism in 1950’s America as an African-American man, or Duffy’s experience as a female poet.

Task : Read through this piece and then have a go in your portfolio: write a 500-750 word Modern Love essay from the P.O.V. of a mythic or folkloric character. 

Myth I chose (context): Plot 

Perspective : Pygmalion

The Pygmalion effect

For the majority of my life, I hated women. I can already feel the judgment fume from my screen as I’m typing, but it’s true. I viewed that 50% of the population as a permanent, irremovable blemish in society. As a man, you would assume that I am either gay or a raging male chauvinist (or both). But neither is true, I am heterosexual, and I don’t believe men to be the superior sex. I just hated women. 

 

As an artist (a sculptor, to be specific) I saw no beauty in the female being, nor what it was said to represent: unconditional love, selflessness, giver of life, etc. These were all just excuses for artists to hide behind slabs of rock or large canvases, only to ogle at the same long hair and curved body in different shapes, colors, and sizes. 

 

My love life, therefore, was between me and my stone, in my small apartment studio that smelled of sulfur and petrichor. I knew it was a situation that deserved pity, but I couldn’t help but feel happier with no one but myself and my art to look after. 

 

One day–after a few glasses of red wine–I sat down and did something I swore never to do: sculpt a woman. 

 

If you ever need to distinguish a real artist from a superficial one, find out which one pines for challenge (that would be your real one). I expected this idea to land in my pile of flawed marble pieces that I would eventually use to frame my kitchen sink or prop up my bookends. I had to painfully dig deep into the stacked away memories I had of my interactions with women, their dainty fingers, overly-adorned necks, irritatingly-friendly eyes that detect the smallest traces of attention that they then pursue until their bellies are swollen and husbands are trapped. I had no doubt about the accuracy of work I would produce, but rather, shame in the fact that I had to surrender my values to subside the dull feeling I get when I have nothing to sculpt. 

Weeks went by, and the ivory had clearly transformed into a female. As I finished the lips and peplos, the most unexpected thing occurred.

 

I fell in love. 

 

I started leaving loaves of bread and olives near her feet and discarding them the following morning, like a widowed-man in denial of the fact that all that is left of his dead wife is a sculpture in her memory. Every stroke of hammer and chisel was soft and affectionate. Bread and olives became tunics and necklaces. I became so infatuated with her ethereal locks and milky-white skin, she became Galatea (she who is milk-white). 

 

I spent hours on end simply staring at her enticing eyes, praying for even the smallest twitch. That would have been enough to drop everything and devote my life to her (essentially what I had already been doing. The height of my ‘flaw-pile’ hadn’t changed in months, and my kitchen sink was still frameless). 

 

However, the pain of loving someone who could not love you in return, someone whom you had sworn to loathe, lived in me. It reminded me every once in a while with a rotting sensation in my abdomen, one that returned every time I reached out to hold Galatea’s faultless, apathetic, frigid hands. 

 

One day, I returned home after my seventh unsuccessful visit to the temple. My desperation had reached a level that–upsettingly–required divine mercy. I could feel her alluring presence as I entered. I bent down to pick up the plate I had left at her feet, and my heart skipped a beat. 

 

One less olive. 

 

“Pygmalion” 

 

Her voice was sweet and hypnotic, like ambrosia. 

 

“Pygmalion, my love” 

 

I looked up. Her lips were parted, her chest was moving up and down. Her eyes, partially-covered by a fallen strand of hair, gazed directly into mine. 

 

* * *

3 years later, I’m sitting here in my 2-bedroom apartment while Galatea is brewing her second cup of tea in the kitchen. We decided to move to a larger place in hopes of starting a family soon. 

 

I married a living, breathing reminder that reality is constantly negotiable, and the only thing preventing us from manipulating truth is expectation itself. 

Today in class we read the poem ‘War Photographer’ by Carol Ann Duffy. To summarise, it depicts the terror and sorrow of war through the perspective of the photographer, who is reminded of the trauma as he develops his photos. Themes/feelings such as sorrow, human suffering, and human morality (questioning the photographer, as his job is to distance himself from humans

In this poem, Duffy creates a tension between the horrific war setting that the photographer experienced and the safety and calmness of rural England, where the photographer is from :

“Home again to ordinary pain which simple weather can dispel, to fields which don’t explode beneath the feet of running children in nightmare heat”

The ‘pains’ of living in rural England are seen as minor and temporary to be reduced to bad weather, unlike the pains he witnessed during the war : death and fatality. This contrast is not only effective in describing the degree to which the war has impacted the photographer, but also, how the profoundness of the war has been reduced to a digestible size for the public:

“A hundred agonies in black and white from which the editor will pick out five or six for Sunday’s supplement”

The juxtaposing effect of ‘hundred’ and ‘five or six’ really exemplify how much the bigger picture has been shrunk for the sake of society, which the photographer begins to realise, is somewhat unjust, how the his career is dependent on this very suffering that the public aren’t exposed to, as though they must avoid contaminating the happiness and safety of daily life with the raw and violent nature of war.

 

when they consider all the Modern Love essays you’ve read, written by different people, how do the essays seem to converge (come together, share similarities —in STYLE, not subject matter) or diverge (go different directions from similar starting points)?

 

Essay I read : You May Want to Marry My Husband

One recurring style I’ve noticed in the essay’s I’ve read is the structure. They follow an introduction (author introduces themselves/their problem/event) and end with some sort of reflection/takeaway. Additionally, since these pieces are written about personal stories, the register is quite informal and casual. The short sentences and frequent paragraph breaks in most pieces show that the author is thinking or recalling as they write.

One way I’ve noticed how these essays diverge is through their different endings. Obviously every story has a different ending, but the resolution or takeaway in every story is not always positive. For example, in When Cupid Is a Prying Journalist, the ending is positive when 2 people who had a relationship in college find each other again and get married. In You May Want to Marry My Husband, although the story exemplifies the happy aspects of the author’s marriage through her perspective, before its devastating ending. Both of these essays begin with recollecting memories associated with positive feelings or loved ones.

The recurring idea in this book is how imagination and reality are in a constant state of tension and disagreement. Everything from Pedro Camacho’s serial stories every other chapter, to the similarity of between the story plot and Mario Llosa’s (author) real-life events, points to whether reality and imagination are truly opposites. Llosa’s work has challenged the idea that reality and imagination can exist without each other by implementing fictional storylines within his novel. The true fictional nature of Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter can be reconsidered once the resemblance between the plot and Llosa’s life is clear, making it a fictional story with elements of biography and memoir-style writing.

The first quote I want to use to support this is on page 123:

“I couldn’t have been more upset, and broke off my reading to inform her that what she was listening to was not a faithful, word-for-word recounting of the incident she’d told me about, but a story, a story, and that all the things things that I’d added or left out were ways of achieving certain effects : ‘comic effects’, I emphasised, hoping she’d see what I was getting at. She smiled at me, if only out of pity for my misery.

‘But that’s precisely my point, she protested vehemently, not giving an inch. ‘With all the changes you’ve made, it’s not a funny story at all any more.’ “

This quote is an example of how fiction and reality play supporting roles in the re-telling or transformation of information. Sometimes aspects of reality are left out and replaced by elements of fiction and imagination, as shown in the quote, to achieve a certain effect or message. However, this might clash with the idea that the reliability of information after being manipulated several times is diminished. It could be argued that the idea of reality being involved in an event is what makes it appealing or interesting, since it actually happened and therefore can happen to anyone, whereas fiction is simply a question of how creative one can be.

Second quote :

“What is realism, ladies and gentlemen–that famous realism we hear so much about? What better way is there of creating realistic art than by materially identifying oneself with reality? And doesn’t the day’s work thereby become more tolerable, more pleasant, more varied, more dynamic? “

Page 135

This is when Pedro Camacho, who become increasingly unstable as the storyline progresses, defends his practice of wearing the costumes of his cast when writing. This quote focuses on how fiction and reality cooperate and contribute to the bettering of daily life. Compared to the last quote, Camacho is arguing that fiction and reality are bound together despite having opposite connotations. This can be applied to the overall theme of the book, about how fiction and reality are at tension, but at time are both necessary to make life more ‘tolerable’.

In conclusion, the idea of fiction and reality being at odds is one that is explored by Llosa in Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter. Throughout the book, there were multiple examples where the author’s reality was the foundation that supported the plot, covered by a layer of fictional elements (eg : Pedro Camacho’s stories). Sometimes, reality is needed to make fiction more relatable to the reader, and fiction can be used to enhance and dramatise real events. Both techniques are adopted by authors to convey certain messages that otherwise wouldn’t have been conveyed as well if not for the incorporation of fabrication and legitimacy in conjunction with one another.