Application 6
In this application, “The Outside Meets the Institution: The Carters’ ‘Apeshit’ Video” authored by Jenny Gunn discusses just as the title suggests, the infamous “Apeshit” video created by Jay-Z and Beyoncé. Rather than coming up with some basic way to assess and analyze this video, Gunn’s article breaks down the music video through “blackness” as stated by Gunn. In connection with this “blackness”, Gunn derives ontology, speculation, and aesthetics to further investigate the contaminants of the video. Throughout the music video are multiple images of renowned art works which are then imitated and recreated through black people and the use of their bodies. Symbolically, Gunn points out that the black people are merely portraying the objects in the original painting rather than the actual people in them: “Following Wilderson and Fanon, in the wake of the slave’s fungibility, the positionality of blackness in fact bears more affinity with the status of the art objects within the Louvre’s collections than with the subject they commemorate” (Gunn, 390). This draws back to the critical race theory; stating that the subject cannot become the object and vice versa. Through this ideology bears the idea that Jay-Z and Beyoncé have no right to be in the Louvre in the first place, nevermind film a music video. However, in the part of the article titled “Speculation”, Gunn explains that through the privilege belonging to the Carter’s they are then able to perform such an incredible feat, yet this privilege was most certainly earned as both Jay-Z and Beyoncé are self made billionaires. And, due to this hierarchy that Jay-Z and Beyoncé have created, Gunn uses this fact to promote the idea that Jay-Z and Beyoncé simply used the Louvre as one huge flex; showing everyone that through their hardships, experience, and excellence in their respective field they have become the public figures they are today, and that they are well deserving of their titles. Except, Gunn demonstrates that they are not in it only for the clout and fame, but instead they value opinion that black performance/black anything can never be compatible with art/hierarchy: “…Beyoncé and Jay-Z are not motivated merely by “swagger”, but rather they highlight the illegibility and incompatibility of black performance to the art historical archive, insisting again on a para-ontological relation to it” (Gunn, 392). Through the whole of the article Gunn attempts to dig out the hidden content behind the video. During the shot in the video where Jay-Z and Beyoncé are posted up in front of the Mona Lisa, Gunn implies that a comparison between the heavily secured painting and the vulnerability of the black community can be made; thus summarizing the entirety of the music video, as well as Jenny Gunn’s thoughts on the matter.
Application 3
Virginia Woolf has created a reputation for herself involving the idea that she is fond of creating pieces of writing based on objects. Woolf’s short story The Lady in the Looking-Glass: A Reflection certainly lives up to Woolf’s prestige. However, this reputation that Woolf has developed does not simply just describe her love of writing about objects, but it portrays a much deeper meaning; a meaning that can be derived from Graham Fraser’s Solid Objects/Ghosts of Chairs: Virginia Woolf and the Afterlife of Things. In this analysis of Virginia Woolf, Fraser depicts Woolf’s reputation as not just writing about or describing objects, but coming to understand life and death through such objects. It is said that Woolf’s ability to write and portray these different objects almost makes it so that one feels as if “inanimate objects have a soul”, as said by Michel Serres. Fraser explains that Woolf was not necessarily interested in the object in itself, but the state of the object while removed from human attention: “For Woolf, life is not exclusively for the living–in her writings the inanimate world is furiously, secretly alive.” (Fraser p. 81). Woolf most commonly portrays this idea that the inanimate world is alive through her personification of these objects; writing descriptions such as a room having characteristics and emotions: “… and the room had its passions and rages and envies and sorrows coming over it, and clouding it, like a human being.” (Woolf p.215). According to Fraser, Woolf is attempting to draw a connection between the animism and domestication of objects, drawing conclusions stating objects are essentially equivalent to that of a pet or zoo animal; essentially meaning that we as humans own the object, but the object is still its own entity/being. What Fraser attempts to tell us through Woolf’s story is that when we think of an object when we are not present, it forces us to think of our own presence, whether we are there or not. The lifelessness, or inanimacy of objects compels readers/the audience to truly think about life and death: “… we imagine not only the remaining table, but also our own absence, our own not-there-ness; we imagine our own death…” (Fraser p.95). If our population were to be asked their thoughts about life and death, not much thought would come out of it because it is not something most people sit down and think about which makes Fraser’s point of view that much more important. When you sit down and read a Virgina Woolf story about an object, you are not just reading about a mirror, you are being urged to come to senses with your beliefs and ideologies about a topic you might not have even considered. So, in the words of Andrew Ramsay, “Think of a kitchen table, when you’re not there”, think of an object when human attention is removed from it. Many will begin to think “does a tree still make noise when it falls and no one is around?”, which is a great start, but truly think and consider objects from both Virgina Woolf’s and Graham Fraser’s point of view.
Works Cited
Fraser. “Solid Objects/Ghosts of Chairs: Virginia Woolf and the Afterlife of Things.” Journal of Modern Literature, vol. 43, no. 2, Indiana UP, 2020, p. 80. https://doi.org/10.2979/jmodelite.43.2.05.
Woolf, Virginia, and Susan Dick. The Complete Shorter Fiction of Virginia Woolf. 1st American ed, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1986.
Application #1
Justyn Lopez
Intro To Lit. Theory
Prof. Frank
9/13/22
Application 1
The excerpt of Keat’s Sylvan Historian: History Without Footnotes by Cleanth Brooks dives deep into the literature and symbolism of John Keats “Ode on A Grecian Urn”. Brooks spends a majority of the excerpt explaining the overall paradox of the original poem and how each stanza either continues to use the paradox, or steers away from it. However, what seems to be the main idea behind Brooks’ excerpt is the attempt to prove that Keats did in fact know what he was talking about, and didn’t just throw in some lines at the end of the poem; “the poem is to be read in order to see whether the last lines of the poem are not, after all, dramatically prepared for” (Brooks p.142), and Brooks explains exactly how they are dramatically prepared for. At first, Brooks explains a few other critics’ evaluations of the lines. Most of which believed that the lines were simply a blemish, or defaced the rest of the “Ode”. Brooks on the other hand came to his own conclusion that the lines were indeed infatuated with the poem, and well prepared for. Many critics discourage the “Ode” for its openness to interpretation, yet, Brooks explains in depth that Keats was very sure of his words. For instance, the entirety of the poem revolves around imagery produced by the urn itself. Brooks utilizes these descriptions of the urn to further prove that the final lines “Beauty is truth, truth beauty…” actually make sense. Throughout the “Ode” there are a multitude of references towards beauty which simply need to be uncovered. For example, Brooks spends time emphasizing the lovers under the tree, the melodist, and the reference to the “happy boughs!” which will never be able to spring. “Keats is perfectly aware that the frozen moment of loveliness is more dynamic than is the fluid world of reality only because it is frozen.” (Brooks p. 147). It is imperative that as a reader we take these views into consideration or else we would interpret this “Ode” in the same way as the critics who believe the final lines of the poem are a “mere blemish”. Instead of trying to prove exactly how the lines do not fit into the poem, Brooks successfully concludes the opposite. In doing so, Brooks was able to provide another point of view which unites the entirety of the poem, rather than attempting to dismantle it due to a couple of lines. When referring to the lines, Brooks claims, “it can be derived from the context of the ‘Ode’ itself”. Hence the importance of Brooks’ approach towards the “Ode on a Grecian Urn”.
Works Cited
Brooks, Cleanth. Keats’s Sylvan Historian: History Without Footnotes. Cleanth Brooks, 1947, eng206-f22.uneportfolio.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/4242/2022/09/Brooks_KeatssSylv anHistorian_compressed.pdf.
Keats, John. Ode on a Grecian Urn. Poetry Foundation, 2022, www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44477/ode-on-a-grecian-urn.
