Initial Response: Haunted America

I like this essay a lot, but I am really sick of reading about the Native American/white settler conflicts...I mean it's taught in every single class, especially anthropology...American anthropologists never get sick of talking about it. I've heard every angle, I' ve actually read pieces on the Modoc war specifically. Frankly, I get it.

This essay was a little more interesting, or at least, like a few others I've seen, gives a better perspective of what was happening as a whole. I've had a few clashes with one anthropology professor in particular who really likes to make whites at the time look like insane bloodthirsty animals and the Indians back then as the noble, understood, but softly yielding to their harsh fate kind of Saints. Ridiculous. Basically some really horrible things happened on both sides due to larger mis-interpretations, cultural flaws, a general failure to "get along" and the numbers/firearms determined the winners. Also, if you're going to champion the cause..sure let's learn from the past, but what about current Native Rights battles? Write about that...something we actually can change. Sign a petition for the Native Claims Settlement Act, support the cause, man!

One thing I do really like is the short, simple style with the obvious comparisons, no hidden messages really. I've always felt that "unbiased" is impossible...enthnocentrism is present in every single thought you have and always in some way will be. Those universal truths may be out there, but because our perception of them is not guaranteeably a "universal perception" it won't happen...but considering that, relatively, this piece was unbiased. That sounds stupid really as I re-read that, I'm just saying the writer did a better job than most people at obtaining an entire view, but my judgment of that is based on my own ethnocentrism...so screw it. Nevermind, but I felt good reading it...didn't feel like I was getting a pitch really, until the end a little bit. Oh, and like the rest, it was too long. Are writers writing shit so long to discourage people from reading it who might otherwise have absorbed the idea and moved on, but instead got bored...to purposely keep it esoteric by making essays like dungeons you have to maneuvre?

I'm not sure if every Indian war would fall under his patterns, but a few I could think of have the same consistent themes....all that really tells me is that you're dealing with the same two cultures interacting though, and the writer doesn't really draw much further from that so you're kind of like "well, that was nice....what's your point?"

He does get into the mindset and the miscommunications, and all the difficulties that come together to make horrible atrocities happen. It reminds me of a Steinbeck chapter from Grapes of Wrath where he's talking about "the machine" as a metaphor for the bank, or really any large group of people, and how their ideas get misconstrued amongst themselves as the unit as a whole makes decisions, and groups of good or at least alright people end up doing bad things, in that case foreclosing on people, upsetting and abandoning the economy as a whole to make sure they (the banks) are okay.

Initial Response: Panopticism?

Wow, I've heard such good things about Foucault, I've read some of his other stuff that was recommended to me...his writing about how we shouldn't be obsessed with authors and their works should be static and unattached to the author's name...it was really intriguing. After analyzing his actual writing style and structure though, it's kind of annoying. He's really literal, there's no personal feeling in the writing whatsoever, just sort of a dry narrative, and it's so drawn out. I guess that's the really cool thing to do, use lots of obscure references, big words, crazy sentences that require a dictionary to get through, and slowly tie in a bunch of different points. It could have been summed up, I think, with a basic overview of the panopticon, the belief system that goes with it, and how that belief system is present in prisons, churches, schools, hospitals, quarantines, police systems and other crap. I mean that's all I really got from it that he was saying, plus 4,000 extra words.
At some points it kind of sounds like paranoia, the similarities are a bit too much of a stretch to really buy his point, also. I'm not really sure what else to say about it...it's wordy, a good point I thought originally...but now I kind of think he's just a tad bit silly and a lot of a talker. He's verbose, I guess, which sucks because he's so monotone...I can't imagine how boring the lectures he would give are.

Initial Response: Beauty (Re)Discovers the Male Body

Well to start: it'd be nice if authors left jokes out of essays. It feels like you're reading a magazine, and they're typically not very funny (well I guess that's debatable, I don't think they're funny thouh).
I enjoy the topic, not the writing style. It seems like you're reading an interesting topic being kicked around in the head of a ditzie blonde stereotype. However, it is easier to read and pay attention to than many of the other pieces. I think it's because of her lack of use of esoteric jargon and rigic, old-school "trying to sound brilliant" crap. It's nice to have some straightforward writing. I think that sums up my main writing philosophy. Probably because I'm so tired of pretentious debater's and philosophy major's semantics. Their trademark nasally tones come to mind when red "intrinsic entropy playig a suitable parody to one f nature's many paradigms."
I have to disagree on one not-so-relevant part of the essay. Inbasic classes like Physical Anthropology 101 we covered male mating displays in hominids and other species closely related to humans. She assumes because she doesn't know about it, or it isn't mainstream knowledge, that no one is talking about it.
Again with this essay, too many generalizations. People want hard answers, I guess. Statistics are the only other option (apparently?). It's disconcerting.
Yeah the parenthetical substitute "blacks or whites" on 177 is ridiulous. It's like saying "try adding not to the sentence and see the change."
I'm not sure what sort of change she is pushing for or what her major point is. If it's that we need more naked or sexually represented males in our culture, culture will take care of that. Kind of pointless to point it out.
As for the Calvin Klein part it would be more interesting for me to discuss Klein's marketing genius (I mean they're still the same briefs they used to be, but he realy did change things). And the ads were controversial, I remember hearing a lot about them at the time, but they somehow did play to both heterosexual and homosexual males. The subtle joke part the homosexuals get when watching it was very interesting. I mean they don't overtly play to heterosexual males, I doubt they were like "yeah wow he looks good." They probably noticed female's reactions to the ads and realized it might be a good idea to make the switch.
It is good that people can look at the male body as sensuous and overtly sexual nowadays. I remember Elaine from Seinfeld saying, "the male body is utilitarian, it's like a jeep." Kind of an understatement of the male body's potential, but still a very common belief. However, I'm still not really sure why she write so much about it.
The fragrance ad clip was hilarious. I emailed it to a few friends. Delightful.
This essay certainly goes on, I think authors are embarrassed in front of their colleagues to publish anything under 20 pages, or maybe it's pressure from their publisher...I don't know, they should focus on just getting their point across, done.
Then she references too much damn pop culture and again I feel like I'm reading something in Cosmo...this probably was originally published in a magazine. At least it's pretty good for a magazine article.
She does a poor job in her "cultural perspective" part, very thinly hiding that it's from her perspective of culture and then back to the main topic. Then she sort of slowly meanders over to the topic of African Americans, which could probably have been saved for a seperate essay, but why not throw it in I guess.
I really zoned out most of it past that, the essay ended with me sighing and shaking my head..maybe I have too short of an attention span.
Also, I had no clue until I read this that there is such a thing as a gay theorist? What does a gay theorist do? Theories of impact/origin/change in homosexual subgroups? I want that job.
In conclusion, this essay made me want to go to a gay bar tonight...that's about it.

Initial Response: Utopia Achieved

"America ducks the question of origins..."
I've been reading Lies my Teacher Told Me. I've learned from that book that America affectivelyl defines its history with a few bullshit lines about how great things were. I disagree when he says we have no past and no founding truth; we have one, it's just a distorted one (some notion similar to: George Washington and some other rich white guys were just sick of all the oppression so they decided to make their own slave state to stop the evil British fascists and love freedom forever).
That said, I hate generalizations, and this guy uses about 10 per sentenece. So many I wonder if he has the audacity to sum up te universe in a paragraph like so many ridiculous philosophers. I hate this lack of focus on individuals, ignoring the exceptions, because as people liks this often say: "there are always exceptions to the rule." A strange phrase, because it is used to ignore something because it is constant, omnipresent, as the phrase itself claims. Why ignore something that is always there? Either way, these people steer themselves off topic by summarizing cultures, histories, events, governments, and people in one sentence. These people are idiots <--irony.
Maybe its sa cultuar dissimilarity, but I find it hard to accept his point. How is it remotely possible for America to have a "zero culture"? We go to shops, Wal-Marts, whatever. There is culture there. Sterilized, corporate culture is still culture. To say we have no culture is a great insult.
I think he's doing more of a persuasive essay here, because he rarely speaks of any of contrary points and only briefly acknowledges them.
One part, early in the book, page 111 I think...when he says Americans negated colonialism, shows a slighted understanding of American history, which is rife with colonialism.
Also, when they say Why America was created was because we wanted to escape from history" is a little ridiculous, and my friends often accuse me of being too abstract. There's no psychoanalysis necessary to figure out why they made America. It's a large "unclaimed" (save the locals) area full of natural resources. That's keeping in mind largely Maslo's heirerarchy.
I chuckled when he said Europe owns surrealism. They can have it. He's right about one thing, if he's to exemplify the collective thought of Europe, they are outdated in their thinking. But I won't say that because I loathe such generalizations (I believe I mentioned that).
I do like the little bit about statistics, but that doesn't do much to redeem the piece.
One clue to why this piece sucked, may be when he dates the piece to the Reagan administration era, when people may have actually believed this crap about America (probably even more likely for a non-America to fall for it).
I got so bored in the middle of the essay I breezed through like three pages without realizing what I was reading. Then it ended...thankfully.