Moretti, "Graphs, Maps, Trees"

In Franco Moretti’s article “Graphs, Maps, Trees” demonstrates an interesting and unusual way to correlate literature and graphs.  Throughout his article, Moretti places graphs that display information he has talked about, such as the number of novels written over time and the rise and fall of genres throughout history.  

            This method of displaying information has some advantages.  The graphs help people who learn visually to see exactly what Moretti is trying to explain.  Likewise, this is a great way to portray information in a more mathematical way, which can appeal to people who are more interest or better adapted to understanding graphs and charts rather than long paragraphs of texts.  This approach is also beneficial because it helps to point out important points by using the graphs, which can help the reader to remember these points better.  Using graphs and charts is advantageous to keep the reader entertained and interested by help break up long portions of the text into shorter paragraphs. Moreover, this technique of displaying literary trends in graphs helps to identify normally unseen patters in the literary history.  Moretti uses this identification of patterns as proof to the claims he makes about literary history.  

            While this technique of displaying graphs in an article explaining the trends throughout literary history has its advantages there are also drawbacks.  The graphs can get confusing, especially for people who aren’t used to seeing these types of graphs in literary text.  The reader can easily get lost in translation when trying to understand the graphs and how they correlate to what Moretti is trying to explain.  These graphs can also be very misleading because they only present the numbers and data and not a proper interpretation as Moretti points out in the article. 

            Another interdisciplinary project could be comparing literature and social science.  By looking at a combination of literature and what’s happening in society, we can see whether or not changes in society track with what has been written.  In other words did the changes in society come first or did society follow the changes in the different types of literature present at the time?

In regards to different way to approach SSTLS, you could look at the book from a standpoint of a specific genre such as dystopian literature.  Then as you look at books such SSTLS you can see if you are finding an increase in this type of literature available and if it correlate with any political changes.  For example, if a decade ago you had very few of these types of literature and now you have a lot of these types are you seeing more and more changes in politics at all? 

M Butterfly

In the movie, M Butterfly the French Rene Gallimard is living in China during the 1960s.  He goes to watch the play Madame Butterfly staring Song Liling.  In Madame Butterfly, Liling plays a Japanese girl who commits suicide after her American husband leaves her. After Liling's performance, Gallimard is infatuated with her and starts having an affair, even though he is married. In the end, it is revealed that Liling is actually a man and in response to this discovery, Gallimard kills himself.  This tragic love story has underlying themes of gender and ethnicity in the 1960s.

            After Gallimard becomes so obsessed with Liling, we see a forbidden love affair develop.  Gallimard becomes so in love with Liling he fails to recognize that Liling is actually a man.  Liling never takes off his clothes in front of Gallimard because he persuades Gallimard into thinking that Chinese women are very modest.  This persuasion is one of the events that highlights the stereotypical roles that men and women in this society play.  Gallimard plays the strong and independent man.  Gallimard is the breadwinner of the family and we see him go out into the world and achieve anything he wants, including snagging Liling.  Although he is having an affair, it seems he has absolutely no remorse and thinks that his actions are justified because he is so in love with Liling.  On the other hand the characters such as Liling and Gallimard’s wife play the stereotypical woman who is dependent on the man and weak without them.  Throughout the movie, Gallimard’s wife is expected to wait on Gallimard and must stay home and play the housewive.  It seems that her husband controls her just because he is a man.  This generalized take on a woman’s role is also evident in the relationship between Gallimard and Liling.  During their time together, Liling convinces Gallimard that he cannot take her clothes off because Chinese women are pure and modest.  While this is a ploy to prevent Gallimard from finding out Liling is actually a man it also represents how Liling believes women should act. 

            Another prominent theme through the movie was that of ethnicity.  Throughout the movie we see the Western society acting like they are more superior to the Eastern Asian society.  This is most directly seen when Liling explains that if the play had starred an Asian man and a white woman instead of the other way around, people would think that the story was idiotic and didn’t make sense.  We can also see this happening when Gallimard feels he must save Liling and protect him.  Gallimard feels that the best option is to take Liling to France because they are a better and more put together society.  This was also evident in the political issues that were taking place at the time.  The French felt that because they were a Western race they could claim dominance over Eastern Asian culture. 

            The movie of M Butterfly comes to a staggering climax first when we find out Liling is actually a man and when Gallimard becomes so depressed over this he commits suicide.  While the movie has a very twisted ending, it wonderfully expresses the themes of gender and ethnicity in the 1960s.

Living in a Dystopia

 

The definition of a dystopia is "An imaginary place or state in which the condition of life is extremely bad, as from deprivation, oppression, or terror." (http://www.thefreedictionary.com/dystopia)  While reading the book, there are not catastrophic and dramatic events that lead us to believe that where Lenny and Eunice are living is a terrible and scary place.  Instead, Shteyngart uses small, but detailed events to let the reader know that this society where the main characters live is a place of oppression where its citizens have little to no privacy and are constantly living in terror of the government.

"EUNI-TARD ABROAD: What thing in DC? The march against the ARA? 

SALLYSTAR: Yes. But don't call it that. Some of the profs at school say we shouldn't mention it on GlobalTeens because they monitor everything." Pg. 73

Most of us are so used to being able to say whatever we want, where ever we want, and when we want because our government has given us the right to free speech.  Here Shteyngart gives the reader a sense of the creepy big brother watching over the two girls conversation.  Without explicating saying it, Shteyngart is telling us that in this new world our government has begun to take away our freedom of speech and scare its citizens from being able to freely talk.  We are unaware of the consequences if “Sallystar” and “Euni-tard” are to get caught talking about the march, but the way “Sallystar” reacts to her sister commenting on the march makes us think that she could get into a lot of trouble for merely expressing her right to free speech.

“I’m learning to worship my new apparati’s screen, the colorful pulsating mosaic of it, the fact that it knows every last stinking detail about the world, whereas my books only know the minds of their authors.” Pg. 78

The apparati that everyone is required to wear gives every little detail about a person and we have seen previous examples of what data it holds on each person.  But here Shtenygart seems to contrast the old and new world.  The old world was one where the “books only know the minds of their authors,” compared with the apparati that seem to know everyone’s business.  Lenny seems to be upset and wishes that the world were how it used to be when not everyone knew everyone's business.  We see that this place has transformed into a dystopia, where no one has any privacy because the government has enforced the continual wearing of the apparati. 

“Men in civilian clothes zapped our bodies and our apparati with what looked like a small tubular attachment of an old-school Electroloux vacuum cleaner and asked us both to deny and to imply consent to what they were doing to us. The passengers seemed to take the whole thing in stride, the Staten Island cool kids especially silent and deferential shaking a little in their vintage hoodies.  I overheard several young men of color whispering to one another “deee-ny and im-ply,” but the older women quickly shushed them with bites of “Restoration ‘thority!” and “Punch you in the mouth, boy.”  Maybe it was Howard Shu’s doing, but somehow I got through the checkpoint without being stopped.” Pg. 82

There have been multiple examples of the fear and terror that the new government has put on its citizens and more specifically Lenny.  This passage is another example of this fear.  It helps to give us perspective on the totalitarian rule over the citizens and how the military have taken over.  This new dystopian world has given no rights at all to its citizens and they must always comply with whatever the government wants.  We see the fear that the older ladies have and the fear that Lenny has in the government.