Hair

Delilah cuts off Samson’s hair in his sleep.  When he awakens, he has lost his physical strength.  Rapunzel’s hair is a stepladder for the prince to reach her.  It is her ticket to love and freedom from her prison in the tower.  The WB show “Felicity” saw its ratings plummet when its star actress trimmed her curls.  The WB changed their policy so that no performer could change their hair without permission from the studio.  We will take a magnifying glass up to hair and tease at the roots, the grays, the split ends.  Our hope is to examine the narratives of hair, its cultural caché, and the myths surrounding it.
This piece will feature montages of found and original footage of hair and hair commercials.  A voice-over will read an essay that weaves together the biology of hair, narratives where hair plays a key role, and other stories.

The Naming of Ourselves

Our names are at once everything and nothing.  They are arbitrary.  They reveal nothing of who we are.  And then they are how we identify ourselves.  Our brain waves pick up when we hear our names.  They link us and differentiate us.  People seem to grow into their names.  Elizabeth seems like an Elizabeth.  What is it then to purposefully change your name?  Does it alter your identity?  Does it reveal that you have something to hide.

This narrative will follow the stories of Hyatt Michaels, formerly Michael Hyatt, Shawn Wen, alternately Wendy, and Marilyn Monroe, formerly Norma Jeane Baker.   It will feature found footage, old photographs, and interviews with Shawn and Hyatt’s friends.

High Heels

an instrument for your feet

You hear them before you see them. The sharp clicks are unmistakeable.  When you catch a glimpse of the sleek shoes making music on the floor, the heels are hard to ignore. These shoes are made to draw your attention.  Lost in the illusion, we all feast on the aesthetic perfection the shoes create, but ignore the expensive price the wearers pay.
Though high heels have always projected a picture of glamour and beauty, they also work as a form of punishment for women. Through we will create an audio slideshow featuring images of shoes and interviews with their owners.  We hope to delve into the myth of heels and discuss them as a modern form of foot binding

The anecdote was especially relevant given the UDC’s adoption of contemporary mythology as the theme of our year-long project, using Roland Barthes’ 1957 text “Mythologies” as a guide and reference point for our experiment. Kara’s story raised a number of questions in my mind about the definition of myth. Can we assume myth is synonymous with falsity? Does myth obscure the “truth?” Should documentary play a role in attempting to challenge the falsity of myth, or is it enough to document the myth itself? How are myths created, and from where do they derive their power?

Prior to our class discussion, I would have defined mythology as a narrative technique used by a culture to explain something that is not understood, much in the way that ancient Greek and Roman mythology did. But myths can also serve as fables–morality tales intended to teach recipients about the social codes of a society. And deciding what the difference between mythology and folklore was proved especially difficult. In thinking about mythology and discussing the topic with some friends, I also came to realize that mythology is not seen as such by the society that has adopted and promulgated it; it requires the view of an outsider to assign the label of mythology. There is also a collective process by which myths are codified. It is true that one person can create a myth, but it takes a critical mass of people within a society to believe in and propogate the myth to ascribe it with any power. It makes sense to me that oral storytelling traditions are a key element of myth-making. The retelling of stories over a period of time and generations must have led to exagerrations, selective editing and the reimagining of narratives before they were ever written down and frozen in content. Kara’s experience seems especially relevant considered in this context, when no authority has recorded the story, and its ideas remain malleable. I don’t really have a clear idea how, if at all, these ideas and concepts gibe with Barthes’ definition of Myth.

So far the UDC members have been assigned two readings, the first being Walter Benjamin’s “The Work of Art in The Age of its Technological Reproducibility.” That was followed by an excerpt from Barthes’ “Mythologies.” I have never formally studied cultural or literary theory, and found both readings difficult, if not outright inscrutable. In approaching the material, my attitude vacillated between a genuine intent to understand the material, and hostility toward what I perceive as the intentional obfuscation of ideas. Coming from a background in print journalism, my attitude about conveying information is rooted in the idea that it should be conveyed as clearly as possible in order to be accessible to the widest range of people possible. Creating a barrier to the expression of ideas only serves to heighten class divisions. I’m also a little wary of the fact that I am forced to read English translations of the works, and am wondering how much of the nuance of the ideas is lost through that process. But I want to be careful that my attitude is not rooted in feelings of inferiority or defensiveness because I don’t really comprehend the texts. In that spirit, I went out and picked up Terry Eagleton’s “Literary Theory: An Introduction” on the advice of Christopher Allen. I also stumbled across another supplemental text, “Beginning Theory: An Introduction to Literary and Cultural Theory” by Peter Barry, which I am slowly working my way through. I was, however, gratified to learn that I was not alone in my trepidation regarding the pronunciation of the names of members of the pantheon of cultural/literary theorists.