I made this nice official website!

www.youwriteryouliar.com
www.youwriteryouliar.com
www.youwriteryouliar.com
www.youwriteryouliar.com
www.youwriteryouliar.com

It's hosted by Tumblr, so if you have a Tumblr account you can follow it and get all the updates of my writing and art on your dash!

How Society Destroys a Person: An Examination of David Lynch’s Lost Highway and Mulholland Drive

Decided to randomly post this thrown-together essay thingy about Lost Highway and Mulholland Drive because I'm pretty sure it's not very cohesive, especially if you haven't seen both movies, but I was asked to put it together for the Philosophy journal based on two posts I wrote for the a class's blog last spring, and I'm kinda on a David Lynch-high right now.

         Since Eraserhead debuted in 1977, David Lynch has made a name for himself as a filmmaker specializing in the disconcerting. This is so much the case that the word “Lynchian” has been added to the vocabulary of most film analysts, as it is the only word suitable to describe the surreal, often violent, usually disturbing, and always mystifying style that pervades most, if not all, of Lynch’s films. Often referring to them as “puzzles” or “mysteries,” Lynch’ seems to invite in-depth analysis of his works through his enigmatic style of filmmaking. For example, by applying Lacanian, Hegelian, Žižekian, and Freudian concepts to Lynch’s Lost Highway (1997) and Mulholland Drive (2001), one can arrive at the conclusion that the films are about society’s destruction of a man and of a woman, respectively.

In a scene from Slavoj Žižek’s 2006 documentary, The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema, which analyzes various iconic movies from Duck Soup (1933) to The Matrix (1999), Žižek looks at Lost Highway. His argument centers around the main character (played by Bill Pullman) Fred’s simultaneous fear of and fascination with his enigmatic wife, Renée (played by Patricia Arquette). Looking at the scene where the two have sex, particularly Renée’s “patronizing” pat on the back after Fred fails to satisfy her, Žižek argues that Fred kills Renée because Renée doesn’t respond to him properly. Žižek also argues that when Fred is arrested, locked in a jail cell, and transformed into Pete, he is entering into a fantasy world where his wife (now blonde “Alice,” still played by Patricia Arquette) praises him and does what he wants because he transformed into a different person (0ne that goes by the name “Pete”) who commands more authority over women. Thus, Žižek believes that because of the societal pressure on Fred, shown in the form of his failed sexual exploit with his wife, Fred is mentally destroyed and snaps, murdering his wife and then escaping reality by entering into a fantasy world where life is the way the he wants it to be.

Though Žižek’s argument suggests that Lost Highway is about the destruction of a man, I disagreed with his interpretation but arrive at the same conclusion through different means. I find flaws in the argument that the fantasy world that Fred enters after he’s arrested for killing his wife serves as an escape from Fred’s humiliation. The blonde “fantasy” version of Fred’s wife, Alice, aggressively goes out of her way to humiliate Pete/Fred and asserts more power over him, whereas his “real” wife, the brunette Renée, is passive, never giving Fred orders and generally only speaking when spoken to. In the first half of the movie, Renée is almost never referred to by her name. Renée’s name does not come up until Fred watches the third videotape and sees her mutilated corpse, which causes him to scream out her name.

Chik on Chik Fil A

This is what happens when I'm watching the presidential debates, and they don't talk about social issues.

Dear man in the Walmart parking lot,

Dear man in the Walmart parking lot who asked me if I like to party and then tried to win me over by spraying me with Ed Hardy perfume when I said, "Not with you,"

Ladies don’t like that.

Sincerely, 
Me

Thoughts on Jesus Christ Superstar

So, I saw Jesus Christ Superstar for the first time today. One of my good friends was in the ensemble/played one of the guards who flogged Jesus. He was so good in it! I'm so proud of him. In general, the play was amazing! King Herod was played by a faux drag queen who looked like Ursula from The Little Mermaid. The costumes were fantastic. Caiaphas had this awesome disco mobster Jew look. Some members of the ensemble (three really beautiful black women) were dressed in these awesome white Southern belle church-goer dresses with white sun hats and fans. Also, I had no idea that Jesus Christ Superstar is such a homoerotic play! Judas is just this sexually questioning homophobe who can’t handle that he’s in love with a dude…a dude who also happens to be the messiah. God, Judas, stop getting people crucified and accept that you like men. 

New doodles

Elephants never forget.

Male seahorses have the babies.

 

Tea time with Mr. Octopus

Now you know

In World War II, the Nazis forced gay males to wear pink triangles. "Asocial" people (this included feminists, lesbians, and women who did not perform the traditional roles of heteronormative housewives) were forced to wear black triangles. For these reasons, the triangle has been adopted as a symbol of LGBT pride.