Category Archives: asynchronous sessions

Pauline

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Pauline Breedlove from the story “The Bluest Eyes” is a problematic character that suffers from a severe lack of self-esteem. Pauline’s problems stem from her time growing up isolated from her family. Pauline later develops a white supremacist ideology as she is susceptible to its influence. However, her pleasure of adjoining too white supremacist ideas would end up causing pain for her daughter Pecola Breedlove. 

Pauline’s first instance of isolation is caused by her limp from her family. “Her general feeling of separateness and unworthiness she blamed on her foot. Restricted, as a child, to this cocoon of her family’s spinning, she cultivated quiet and private pleasures” (111).  Pauline begins to blame her foot for her loneliness. However, she develops a passion for cleanliness and order. Her passion would soon progress into a cycle of misery in hopes of happiness. We see this through Pauline’s neglectful attitude towards her own family.

Pauline would grow up to be a maid for her a white family that she adores. She loved the respect that the family gave her for being a maid, yet refused to bring this attribute to her own family.“Pauline kept this order, this beauty, for herself, a private world, and never introduced it into her storefront, or to her children” (128). We can understand Pauline is absorbed by this idea of white supremacy and wishfulness to being included in the white family she works with. Her obsession with whiteness would be permeated on to her daughter. The difference between how she takes care of both households alone develops a twisted psychology for Pecola.

Another moment of pleasure for Pauline would be when she tried to look like Jean Harlow. Pauline even said, “White men taking such good care of they women, and they all dressed up in big clean houses with the bathtubs right in the same room with the toilet. Them pictures gave me a lot of pleasure, but it made coming home hard, and looking at Cholly hard” (123). We see Pauline’s family suffer from her white ideology even though it gives her momentary pleasure. Especially, when Pauline hits rock bottom when she loses her tooth. Her resentment towards her black family magnifies and grows. I believe this is one of the reasons she finds black people to be “ugly”. Pauline goes on to say, “But I knowed she was ugly. Head full of pretty hair, but Lord she was ugly” (126). Pauline’s white ideology affects her view of her newborn baby Pecola. In Pauline’s point of view witness and people who look like Jean Harlow is considered beautiful, while people that look like her are not. Which creates a hostile living environment for Pecola. 

Pauline Breedlove grows up isolated and self-loathing which coincides with the racist ideology of the country at the time. Pauline’s behavior resembles a dysfunctional character that suffers from a severe lack of self-esteem. Pauline’s development into a white supremacist only exemplifies the problem between her family as she is susceptible to its influence. Which ends up causing pain for her daughter Pecola Breedlove. 

Blog Post 5: In the eye of the beholder

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Rankine, in her novel Citizen An American lyric  puts the reader directly in the story by writing in first person. In the book, the reader isn’t just following along with the events that are occurring in the books they are in the books. When you put the reader in a position where the events you list directly occurs to the reader, the way the reader interprets the story, reacts, and feels, changes. The reason why Rankine decided to write in such a manner attributes to the fact that she doesn’t want the reader to empathize with the story, she wanted the reader to truly feel it as if it were happening to them; a feeling truly unique to the individual. In making the reader feel what is happening she makes the reader think the deep questions? Why does this happen? Why am I treated the way that I am? Why does my difference become my enemy? And what can I do stop it? Rankine wanted you, the reader, to feel what its like to experience racism and discrimination in the present time, even as a memory that’s so vivid  that you remember every detail because you don’t have the option to forget. Rankine not only writes in first person but she adds pictures. The pictures play a fundamental role in two ways, the addition of pictures further puts the reader as the story but giving them a visualization of what they would see, and it makes sure that the reader understands the setting of the story. When people read their imagination is limitless, because the story lies within their mind, but the addition of pictures limits that imagination because Rankine wants to make sure that her message gets across. The addition of pictures takes the imagination from reading and turns it into a reality, because the life that the reader experiences in the story is a reality for many to this day.

When someone plays a video game they play as if they are a character in the game because they are. When their character experiences sadness, happiness, or stress the player feels it too because they are in the game as well. Similarly, to Rankine’s decision of making her book in first person, the reader feel the emotion as intensely because the action occurs to them directly. The story would be different if it were in third person, you would empathize with the character in the story, but not in the same way when you are the character. In Rankine’s Citizen An American Lyric, unlike a video game, the reader has no control, they are put into the story without the option of choosing any of their actions. The reader can’t imagine the book the same way as imagining the book in third person . Why can’t the reader control what is happening to them? Why is it happening to them?  Rankine immobilizes the reader from committing their own actions, They have to stay within the actions that she tells the reader in first person, and when the reader asks questions on why they are treated so, they illustrate the feelings of many African Americans.

Is it harder to make an opinion of an image than it is to make an opinion of a statement? When you look at a statement or a description you use the information you gathered to form an opinion. Based on the information given the reader gathers what they think the statement means. Statements allow for many people to make various of different opinions on what they think the statement should be. For example, on Bombmagazine.org, it speaks about Lauren Berlant’s experience while talking to Claudia Rankin herself, Berlant states, “I met Claudia Rankin in a parking lot after reading, where I said crazy fan things like, ‘I think we see the same thing’. She read a book of mine and wrote me, ‘Reading it was like weirdly reading hearing myself think,'”( Berlant, para. 1). One person, who is also a fan, may think that Berlant’s experience is totally different from their own. This mostly stems from a personal experience from people who have been in a situation similar to the other person. Another may agree, but they never spoke to Claudia Rankin before, so they may never truly know whether Claudia Rankin thought in the same way. Another, may simply agree. Although, what the readers don’t know is that the imagery that Claudia Rankin puts in hers works illustrates the  massive effectiveness of imagery and how it makes readers think exactly the way Claudia wants her readers to think.

Looking at the image of the cover of Citizen an American Lyric, the novel already makes a statement. The Ink balls into a circle, almost perfectly, but as you examine the head more clearly you notice that it looks more like a skull. This shows the reader that its going to be about African American and their experience. The reader can’t deny that the image looks like ink, and once you realize that the cover of the image looks like a skull you can’t forget about the fact that it looks like a skull either. It automatically makes the reader know what they are about to be reading and what the story will be about.

Unfreedoms

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In Claudia Rankine’s “Citizen” there are different situations and those situations bring messages in different circumstances at a particular moment. The author tried to situate the readers in a certain position to reveal each situation of being justice and fairness. In the video Situation 5, Lucas and Rankine said “these are multi-genre responses to contemporary America. The videos exist around public experiences in individual lives. These experiences turn into situations that resonate with us not only as people but as citizens.” The author mentions that we as citizens trying to look into the specialized framework of specific events and also particularly trying to pay attention to how the media communicate to us. In the second poem about Trayvon Martin, the author Rankine continues to refer to “my brother, dear brother, my dearest brothers, dear heart.” When she uses the terms, she assumes to refer to her brothers as a narrative. The narrator is telling her memory with her brothers who used to call her name to wish on her birthday as “They do regular things, like wait. On my birthday they say my name. They will never forget that we are named. What is that memory?” (Kindle Edition. 458) When I see the term “dearest brothers” and I think she is referring to black people especially to those being treated differently. Rankine uses herself as the narrator to illustrate calling some fair facts by comparing it with calling out only one name on a normal birthday. She wants her readers to see past or present lives of African Americans are being discriminated against. The situation in this second poem is to allow readers to see the unfair reality and they are still being treated differently to this day. There is also a black and white photograph of many people were under the tree and also a man is pointing to the dark tree. In the photograph, there are two men also watch as a man pointed direction. (478) In this photograph, a black background represents a visual metaphor for the construction of blackness. The tree also can mean the decree that determines all life. The title of the fifth poem is also called ” Stop-and-Frisk.” This poem is about a police vehicle coming to a creaking stop, and the police force the narrator to get on the ground. The narrator thinks the stop is because of speeding but he didn’t. The narrator is told to do fingerprinting and stand naked after the charge of exhibiting speed is decided upon. At the end of the poem, there is a black and white photograph of black people. The photograph is not clear enough to see and it seems covered by black paint or something. The fifth poem’s situation tries to tell us that if hatred and resentment exist, no matter how right the speaker is, there is always guilty for something as “And you are not the guy and still you fit the description because there is only one guy who is always the guy fitting the description. This is all because he is only suitable for description and not criminals” (523). This is the message Rankine brings throughout her book, and that African Americans are expected to endure racism every day. There is a quote “Overcome in the moonlight” represents that they are conquering and discovering who they truly are.

Citizen and Normalized Dehumanization

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The second image in Rankine’s Citizen is fascinating as much for its layered meaning as its viscerally disturbing nature. The best way to describe it, superficially, is a human face mapped onto a deer or other small animal. The deer is in a vulnerable position, matching the face’s confused, troubled expression. The image is contextualized directly by the text that precedes it; Rankine discusses an ironically traumatic experience at the office of a therapist who “specializes in trauma counseling” (22). A reference to “deer grass,” specifically in her description of the moments before the screaming begins, implies a connection between the narrator and animal. This is furthered by the description of the startled therapist as “a wounded Doberman pinscher or a German shepherd,” which creates a predator-prey relationship where there should be one of openness and vulnerability; the mention of “rosemary” alongside deer grass becomes sinister, bringing to mind its food connotations (22). These elements are all combined into the form of the image on the next page, the uncanny animal becoming the image of a human victimized. The humanity of the animal is, of course, accentuated by its human face. The face is not a normal skin color, but the features seem to suggest that this is an African-American face mapped onto the animal. The racial implications of the interaction between the narrator and the therapist, if they were at all unclear before, become fully textual. The combination of animal and human can now be understood as an expression of the inhumanity to which African-Americans are often subjected. The narrator’s final words in the preceding passage, “I’m so sorry, so, so sorry,” feed into both this societal subservience and the nearly-wounded positioning of the deer (22).

The unsettling nature of the deer’s face is another site rich with multiple meanings. The unsettling nature of the artificial, Photoshopped face brings to mind the concept of the uncanny valley, the capacity for computer-generated images which look close to humans without fully achieving the effect look much more upsetting than more perfect or less precise representations. The dots on the face, the weird cropping, and the unnatural color make the face on the animal seem wrong, almost damaged or disfigured. Given the preceding text, it seems that Rankine is making a strong statement on the capacity for white people to perceive the humanity of Black people. The human-faced deer is unquestionably similar to the average human, but with enough visible alterations that a feeling of wrongness is created. It is as if someone made a clumsy attempt at hybridizing a deer and a human in Photoshop, which again stands as a good metaphor for the manner in which people such as the trauma therapist make attempts at helping others without unraveling their own fear and prejudice. A strange line, that “the bell is a small round disc that you press firmly,” is finally recontextualized from an odd description to an alien experience on the narrator’s end (22). She is so far removed from her environment that she can not even recognize a doorbell button, both herself and the therapist experiencing distressing strangeness, but with one of them able to retreat into the comfort of whiteness while the other must be constantly seen as an animal.

Tod Clifton and the Infamous Sambo Doll

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I want to say first off when I first read chapter 20 it reminded me of Alton Sterling. A man who faced the same fate as Tod Clifton for selling without a permit. How eerie is it that this problem is still persistent in our society…

Anyways, I want to say that I never even heard of a Sambo doll before. So I went to google and image searched it.

So I can understand the narrator’s feelings when seeing his close friend playing with one of these dolls in front of an audience. The doll is a disgusting caricature of black folk and its main purpose is to make fun of black people. Tod Clifton who was in the brotherhood and who wanted to help his community was participating in this show. The doll is a representation of a stereotype of a black street performer whose goal is to amuse white people. It was a cruel shock of betrayal for the narrator, who strongly opposes these ideas.

However, the narrator was more than just angry in this scene, he was furious. I think what really adds to the story is this minor detail added while the whole debacle was going on. He says, “I saw a short pot-bellied man look down, then up at me with amazement and explode with laughter, pointing from me to the doll, rocking ”(698). He was being made of fun by the result of Clifton promoting these dolls. Tod Clifton was essentially selling out his race for profit, which harmed everyone from the brotherhood to nonmembers. This doll symbolizes the system of oppression and hatred.

The doll is symbolic in many ways in combination with its cruel history. For an in-depth analysis, it should be noted that the doll is also controlled like a puppet with strings. This can suggest a deeper meaning behind the stereotype and could hint at a larger problem. For instance, the use of a black man using a Sambo doll suggests that he promotes these stereotypes. I envision that Clifton is being played around with the same strings that he is playing with. The doll is a powerful tool that has been ingrained in the minds of black folk that profiteering of racism in America is also perfectly normal. Clifton selling these dolls shows he is submissive to the pressure caused by society. Sacrificing his own morals just to stay afloat, it showcases desperation in its purest form.

Later we see the narrator take the doll as a souvenir and memento after Clifton is killed for striking the police. To unload the emotional impact of this on the narrator is devastating at the least. A man is used and abused by the system all in one chapter of the book. This perfectly showcases the problem of American society. Personally, I believe the narrator realizes Clifton was a tool by the system and pities him rather than hates him at the end. Lastly, we see the destruction of the doll (915). Maybe this proves that the power of the individual is key to fighting against these stereotypes. Which in itself promotes the overarching theme of individuality in the novel.