Animated Films

On Tuesday, Jodie Mack, a reputable filmmaker, came to the lecture to show us two of her animated films.  To start off the lecture, Mack expressed a few of the themes that inspired her films.  Love and desire are overall the general themes of her animated films, but she likes to divulge a little deeper than that.  The three main aspects of love and desire that she touches upon go as: the desire to be loved, which is debatably a natural instinct for every human being, the desire for eternal love, and how the media informs our view of love especially through music. 

The first animated film of Jodie Mack that I watched was “Unsubscribed 4”.  Unsubscribed 4 was heavily based on pop music to portray a sad love story.  The whole film stemmed off the initial phrase “Will you love me tomorrow?”  A young girl falls in love with a young man, and she is super happy and believes that it is great, but then the music turns into “ I got your boyfriend”.  From there, the film ends with the young girl being sad that she lost the person she loved.  Mack uses lots of different textiles and shapes throughout all of her film, but it was more pronounced in this short film because the music told the story more than the images as opposed to the film, “Yard work is Hard work” which I will discuss later.  In this short film, though, Mack used crazy shapes that would turn into hearts, but the images would move very quickly.  These fast images represent the craziness of when people first start dating.  In the previous lecture with Lucy Brown, she stated that the early stage causes people to become obsessed with the other person and constantly think about them.  Mack uses these quick images and quick lyrics to show realistically how that actually happens in a relationship.

The second animated film that Jodie Mack showed in the lecture was “Yard work is Hard work”.  Yard work is Hard work is a short film about a young man and a young woman.  It starts out with both of them talking to their friends saying they are not interested in dating or a relationship, but then they both met each other and they started to like each other.  As they spend more time with each other, they begin to fall in love.  From there, they decided to get married, and then they face the challenges that every newly wed couple faces.  They have to search for the right house, which they find, and then they have to move in and start paying bills and such.  Finally the mortgage and bills become too much, and they decided to enter a contest to win money by making their house “green” to save more money, but they do not win.  However, they still save some money and they work on their relationship. 

There are many aspects of love and desire in this film.  Especially since it is a story, we see the different stages of love and desire.  At the beginning of the film when the couple starts to fall in love with each other, they begin singing out how in love they are.  Even the music during this part is very joyful and innocent, and the couple mentions how it was “fate”.  This really represents peoples’ idealistic nature and their desire to be in love forever.  Everyone desires to meet the “one” and have it be magic, and especially in the beginning of meeting someone, this is how it can feel.  It’s like the couple is “high on love”, which in fact in Lucy Brown’s lecture is mentioned.  The beginning stage of love is very euphoric and is a natural high which can be addictive.  Also, when the couple searches for a different and unique house in a suburban area, they are trying to fulfill the “American Dream” by getting married, getting a house, and having a successful life.  This represents how the media changes our views because this is the type of traditional love that everyone imagines in America in order to be accepted by society.  Therefore in order to be truly happy and in love, it must be socially acceptable too.  Then at the very end, the couple constantly fights over every little thing because they do not know how to communicate towards each other when things become difficult and they do not have that much money.  This represents peoples’ desires for a “perfect love”.  So many people want to meet someone and be so blissfully and happily in love and everything will work out and they will live a trouble free and happy life.  This is not how love really is, though.  Therefore, Mack shows these fantasies people have of love that are not realistic to actual life.         

Fires Dare to Ignite

Garren Small, who is a very well known writer, spoke to our class on Tuesday about his poetry and how it relates to the theme: love and desire.  One of the initial questions Small's presented to the class is "Can love conquer hate?"  This is a universal question that people have been asking themselves for centuries.  Especially with the bombing at the Boston Marathon just recently, this question relates to whether hate will always prevail or not.  Through his poetry, Small ultimately answers the question by saying yes.  Yes, love can conquer hate.  While love conquering hate is a major theme in his poetry, he touches upon various other themes as well.  Small does write about love and desire, along with the concept of being alive, and committing to live your life the way you want to. 

One of the poems that Small read was "Brother and Sister".  In the poem, a brother and sister are having a conversation with each other because their mother just died.  Instead of a typical grieving conversation between the two, the sister rambles on about her sadness, whereas, the brother eschews the topic and changes the subject to other things like cars.  Through the poem, the reader gets the sense that the author (Garren Small) is more sympathetic towards the sister.  Because the sister feels helpless in the situation, Small views her as being the more loving and emotional one of the two siblings, and he views the brother as being indifferent, and he ignores his feelings.  Both of the siblings are having two separate conversations, which makes the reader question if they are really even talking to each other despite them both being in the same room because they are both very distant in their communication.  The separate conversations between the brother and sister shows how people do not communicate well with each other at all.  In order for people to truly communicate with each other, they need to listen to one another, which these siblings are not doing.  They are both caught up in what they are saying that they cannot see beyond that to have a deep conversation with each other that would allow them to truly connect.  Small describes this as being a "love loss" because they are missing out on a potential emotional connection because they refuse to listen to each other.  While the author is clearly more sympathetic towards the sister because she appears to be more loving, I do not agree with this.  I view the brother as being more loving the sister because he is unable to express his feelings.  I think that because he has been so damaged by the loss of his mother and the loss of love, that he has to separate from his emotions in order to carry on living.  I do not think that this makes him less loving, it makes him more.  When people invest more love into a relationship, it is harder for them to move on than it is for other people.  The sister is able to comfortably talk about the death, which I think makes her less sympathetic than the brother.  The brother is clearly very emotionally damaged by the death.

Another poem that Small read was "Along the Row".  The poem is about a couple, who are in love, but even though they are together and in love, they still feel alone in their relationship.  This brings up the whole question: "Are you better off being single than being in a relationship where you feel alone anyways?"  Just because two people are together does not mean they feel that way.  Love is very complex in the theme in this poem because it shows that sometimes love cannot take away the desire to feel a connection with another person.  The poem also shows that when it comes to people and relationships, there's always a little something more there that we will never get to.  This poem also touches upon desire and how it is very hard for people to express what they really want.  Therefore, this is why a lot of people stay in bad relationships because they are too afraid to say they want something else, and because communication is very hard for all people to do.  Very often, people are talking, but not actually saying anything.  This is seen with the businessmen in the poem.  They talk about superficial topics, but they are not communicating who they really are to each other.

Another poem that Small read was "One Day".  Small did not write this poem; in fact, it was read at President Obama's inauguration.  This poem is essentially a son thanking his parents for all the hard work that they have done for him.  This poem especially touches upon parental love.  The poet uses distinct imagery about his father's hands and how those hands dug trenches and picked sugarcane to provide a better life for his son.  He also writes about his mother ringing up groceries for twenty years for his son to even write this poem.  The poet forgives his parents for not being able to give him everything he wanted because he understands that his parents are only human. 

The poems that Garren Small read during the lecture all related to the theme of love and desire.  There are all different types of love: romantic, unrequited, parental, and many more.  There are also many types of desires that people want.  However, both love and desire cannot fully be expressed when people cannot effectively communicate them to others.  

Love and Desire Brain Systems for Survival and More

To begin the lecture, Lucy Brown started off with a quote by Mumford and Sons: “In these bodies we live; In these bodies we die; Where you invest your love, You invest your life.”  This quote is essential because it conveys how love is important for survival not only for a species, but also for an individual.  Love consumes everything we do because we want it to.

Brown began the lecture by asking the question that human beings have been trying to answer since the beginning of time: “What is love?”  While many people think of romance and infatuation when they think of love, there are many other types of love that people can experience.  There is maternal and paternal love, which is the love a parent has for a child.  There is companionate love, which is the love for a friend that is merely platonic.  There is also positive association love, which is when we assert that we love something such as a type of ice cream or movie.

Brown’s focus in her studies is the Early Stage, Intense Romantic Love.  This is when two people just meet, and are starting to get to know and like each other.  During this stage, and individual may experience intrusive thinking about the person they desire, special meanings of the persona and overlooking their faults, intense energy making it hard to sleep, loss of appetite, mood swings, craving to be around the person, and rearranging their daily plans to be around the other person more frequently.

Love is very complex in why people are so addicted to it.  However, love, at least the beginning stages, is a natural euphoria.  In studies where they examined the brain, the same parts of the brain lit up when someone was in the beginning stages of love, which was similar to when someone was craving cocaine.  Therefore since love creates that euphoric feeling, so many people crave it as if it were a drug because it is a “natural” addiction.  Another interesting factor about love is that it is a cross-cultural phenomenon.  No matter what part of the world you are in and no matter what the culture is, there is the desire for love in individuals in each culture.  This goes to prove that love is built in our brains for survival.

Romantic love is important because it is a mammalian drive.  It is used to pursue a preferred mate, to create a mating system, and it is a brain reward system.  There are three different stages in romantic love: lust, attraction, and attachment.  Lust is the physical and sexual aspect of love, and it is what gets individuals to put themselves out there in order to find a mate.  Attraction is the romantic phase and it is when you focus your attention on one individual and try to get to know them better.  Then the attachment aspect is what keeps a couple together because they have reached a higher stage of love.

For me, personally, I would like to believe in the concept of “love at first sight”, so naturally I wanted to know if there is something in the brain that can prove that it does exist.  While we did not learn of any definite aspects that would prove this correct in the lecture, we did learn about a study, which shows how couples were able to stay together.  In the study, the scientists studied couples in their beginning stages, and then they examined the relationships three years later.  What they found is about half the couples split up and half stayed together.  The interesting commonality between the couples that stayed together is that in their brains, they suppressed negative judgment and the concept of self.  Therefore, the couples learned to put the other partner first and not criticize their partner.  While this does not prove “love at first sight”, it does give insight on how to keep a lasting relationship.