Alas! Woe! And other such exclamations. [stunt

Turns out my dorm does get Sci-Fi Channel after all - its failure to appear on my TV during my freshman year was some quirk of the television, not the college network.

This means I've been missing New Who and Sarah Jane Adventures and Eureka all this time and I didn't even have to. They were right there the whole time and I just never knew about it.

"Kicking myself" does not cover it.

(We still don't have BBC America, though. I checked.)
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In homework-related news, it seems that scholarly essays specifically offering a deconstructionist reading of Raymond Carver's "Cathedral" simply don't exist, which seems strange given the blatant sight/blindness binary in the text. Of course, the fact that I can't find full text for any of them doesn't really help. I suppose this means I'll actually have to read the thing instead of relying on other researchers. Le sigh.

Doesn't help that, as my attempts to explain what I was doing to my mother revealed, I don't actually fully understand what deconstructionism is. I know the basic concept of it - linguistic/conceptual binaries, and which member of each binary is valued or devalued, and reading the text based on reversing the hierarchy of binaries, etc. But I'm not sure what I'm supposed to get from doing that to a text, what interpretation this'll lead me to. And frankly, looking it up in literary theory dictionaries isn't helping, since those very quickly descend into theoretical technobabble that I don't understand and don't feel like dealing with.

I'm apprehensive about this English half of my major, really, because while I love reading and love writing and have grown to love picking at the layers of texts, dealing with actual theory occasionally makes me quite impatient. I enjoyed looking at the parallels between, for example, "Ligeia" and "The Cabinet of Edgar Allan Poe", for example, since that wasn't taken from a particular critical school - it was just looking at them both next to each other, seeing what did and did not match up, and wondering why. Once I actually have to conform to a single critical perspective - feminism, Marxism, historicism, the like - I find I have to spend so much time remembering what it is I'm doing and why that the fun's sucked out of it.

Possibly I'm overthinking this too.

I have a feeling this evening is going to end with me writing fic. Just a feeling.
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I realized the other day that if, I thought my teacher would let me do it, I would so write a research paper comparing the scene where the Fourth Doctor confronts Sutekh in Pyramids of Mars with the Tenth Doctor's climactic scene in "The Satan Pit". I'd love to look at the differences in the way that the old series and new series treat a very similar situation - the confrontation with a figure explicitly named as a kind of evil god or devil. You could look at the nature of the god-figure itself, the Doctor's status relative to said god-figure, the method by which the god-figure is imprisoned and, finally, defeated, what other religious imagery and/or themes make themselves known, and while we're here what does it say about both serials that...wait wait spoilers nevermind.

Why is it that I could really easily go on all day about the implications of a kid's science fiction show but it can take me ages to claw out a paper on actual proper literature?
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Also, Kayliesaur and Sweet Bean, I'm not making as much progress on this paper as I thought I was. I may not be able to do dinner tonight; I'd really like to get a bit more done.

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We still don't have BBC America, though. I checked.
This is a constant source of disappointment for me. I need my fix of British teevee, dammit!

We shall miss you at dinner; hopefully you'll be able to join us later tonight?

See? Five will threaten to shoot you with the laser-gun thingy if you don't finish your essay. DON'T BE THE CAUSE OF THAT. That is all.

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Noes! Do not threaten me, Doctor! See, look, I finished it ~~eventually~~! Please put the gun down...

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Well, Muppet, he knew you could do whatever you put your mind toward! I blame stress from dealing with the Master on that last uncharacteristic threat...

Most likely. But eh, I forgive him, the beige little stressball. XD

::giggleflail::

They were right there the whole time and I just never knew about it.
Hey, at least you realized it before the second half of your college career, right? Albeit just barely? :P

Oh, man...I wish you could have taken my class. Our final paper was almost literally "write about some aspect of theory any way you want," and if my professor was delighted with the idea of someone analyzing name significance in Harry Potter, I'll bet you could have gotten away with Doctor Who.

Good point. At least this way I'll know better and can schedule my evenings accordingly.

I'm just amused that your professor waw delighted with someone using Harry Potter. Most of my professors start to look at you funny if you bring up Harry Potter in class for any reason other than to discuss popular literacy. Of course, if I was taking media studies or some such thing I could probably get away with it...

*was delighted. I'm considering forking over money for a paid account just so I can correct my inevitable typos.

And the really amusing thing is that he hadn't even read the books. He was just generally delighted by a great many things about pop culture...like when he first heard Rihanna's "Umbrella" and came into class saying "Umbrella. Ella. Ella" for 3 days straight. You'd never know he was in his 50's.

Most of my professors start to look at you funny if you bring up Harry Potter in class for any reason other than to discuss popular literacy.
Aw, that's too bad. One girl in Shakespeare - er, it might have been the same girl, now that I think about it...I suspect she is in fandom -
related King Lear's "high rage" to the anger needed to perform Unforgivable Curses. And this was a perfectly viable line of discussion.

The image of a fifty-year-old professor singing along to "Umbrella" is sublime. XD Although I completely understand why it was stuck in his head.

One girl in Shakespeare related King Lear's "high rage" to the anger needed to perform Unforgivable Curses.

Goodness, she's talented. That'd never have occurred to me. And there was a whole discussion on this? Wow.

D'you know, the things like the historical significance of the names was what really hooked me on HP in the first place? Yah. /geekout

I wish I could've taken your class, too! (Though I suspect I could have gotten away with a mention of Harry in my Magic and Witchcraft class, which Muppet needs to take...)

Why is it that I could really easily go on all day about the implications of a kid's science fiction show but it can take me ages to claw out a paper on actual proper literature?

Because essays are work and Doctor Who is fun. I can almost guarantee that if you had to write sustained essays with evidence backing your theories up, footnotes and bibliography, you'd procrastinate, yes.

I know this because I am an evil Lit and Lang lecturer who created a module called Sci-fi: literature and screen.

Good point. :) Although actually, finding evidence and outside sources for this paper might have made it easier this time around. Beh.

I know this because I am an evil Lit and Lang lecturer who created a module called Sci-fi: literature and screen.

And everyone still turned everything in at the last minute, I assume?

Once I actually have to conform to a single critical perspective - feminism, Marxism, historicism, the like

Speaking as an English professor: you shouldn't have to "conform" to a critical perspective in the sense of treating it as the perfect interpretive lens to the exclusion of all others. I can't think of a single worthwhile scholar of literature who does that.

On the other hand, I do think it's vitally important to know the various critical paradigms and be able to use their methods.

Well, it's not so much "conform" as "be able to stick to it for at least one paper and look at a work through its lens". That probably wasn't the right word to use there.

The papers are really there to make sure we understand the critical approaches and know how they work, but maybe I'm not approaching them right. It's much easier for me when we're told to look at an aspect of a work (the rhythm and meter of a poem, say) but not given a specific critical approach.

I know how you feel. I've realized, a few weeks ago, that BBC Prime is now halfway through series 2 of New Who, and I could have watched it from the very beginning (the only Who material that was ever released in my country was series 1). *facepalm*

:( That's no fun. But at least you realized it now instead of at the end of the series, right?

Yes, there is that.

Ugh. I know how you feel. I'm an analytical reader by nature. But as soon as it becomes about categories -- just as much by nature, me and categorization don't understand each other -- it feels like I'm supposed to be imposing stuff onto the text rather than understanding the actual underlayers of it. I don't like the technical stuff. Let me get into the feel and the meaning; it doesn't need a bunch of terminology to exist. *headdesk*

See, I can deal with terminology if I'm allowed to find it on my own - I can go through a text, find something about it, and apply that to a critical model if I have to - but when I start out with a critical model as a prompt, it becomes too...fact-finding. Like you're just going through and picking out whatever makes sense instead of seeing what works with the text.

But it's done now, so hopefully that's the last of it I'll have to do till May. Not that May's terribly far away, of course.

stunt_muppet

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July