Losing Touch with the Symbolic Order in Buffy the Vampire Slayer
In the Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode "The Body," the audience is forced to face the Real every time the director makes a shock cut to Joyce's dead body after each commercial break. Joyce's body reminds viewers of the materiality of the human condition as we see her zipped into a body bag, then examined by a mortician, and finally covered with a white sheet. By exposing viewers to Joyce's body, the creators of Buffy are treating the audience as another member of the Buffy diegesis. Like Buffy, Dawn, and Giles, we recognize the Real because the camera constantly returns us to the physical presence of her corpse. We understand how Buffy experiences the abject because we, too, experience the shock of seeing Joyce's dead body. One question that remains, however, is how do people deal with the abject when they know there is death but do not see the corpse. In "The Body," there is a sequence that explores this question. It is a scene where we see Buffy's closest friends deal with the loss of a mother figure, without seeing her corpse. Because they are not exposed the body, they try to hang on to the symbolic order through language and action. However, the abject is always present in their minds. Willow faces what Julia Kristeva calls a narcissistic crisis as she struggles to appear as a collected, supportive figure for Buffy. Xander practices transference as he looks for someone to blame for Joyce's death. Anya experiences her own breakdown of reality as she recognizes her own mortality. Through language and action, these characters try to cover their own fears of the Real without success.
Like many of the other scenes in this e...
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...d language; however, the Real and the abject cannot be repressed. Willow gives into the abject by crying out against Anya's tactlessness. Xander faces the abject by looking down at his bloody hand and realizing there is nothing left to blame. Anya recognizes her own mortality by comparing Joyce's physical condition with her own. For these characters, the loss of Joyce, a mother figure, causes them to realize their own human condition. Symbolic order and language, at times, fails because thinking about Joyce's death forces the Real to permeate in their minds. The desire to hold on to the symbolic order remains, however, in order to help them get through the loss of their loved one and to continue living.
Sources
Kristeva, Julia. Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection. Trans. Leon S. Roudiez. New York: Columbia UP. 1982.
His dangerous voyages challenge his fate and saw the truth about human life. He felt pain like everybody else and misunderstood things yet the people of Uruk admire their king and the community change. With great discipline and equality. Gilgamesh exceptional qualities of being an epic hero make him prove that with his people and the dangerous voyages he went to.
Chipmunks are omnivorous. They generally eat nuts, seeds of herbaceous plants, mushrooms, berries, corn, the flesh and seeds of some fruits and garden vegetables, Birds' eggs, insects, snails, earthworms, millipedes, salamanders, small snakes, frogs and young...
Princess Mononoke is the tale of a young prince, Ashitaka, who battles a demon bore, only to become possessed with its evil spirit. Ashitaka then travels to Irontown, seeking to find the reason for the bore’s anger and thus, a cure for himself. When he arrives, he finds that the citizens of the town, under the rule of Lady Eboshi, have been mining iron from nearby mountains and, in turn, disturbing the animal Gods of the forest. The animals and the humans have been in a constant battle over who has the right to the land and both have been lead to believe that the other species is purely evil. Ashitaka believes that the humans and the animals can get along peacefully through compromise and finds himself in the middle of their conflict. From each side’s perspective, the other seems inherently evil, but from Ashitaka’s perspective, and the perspective of the audience, neither side is truly corrupt and they are both just feeding off of each other’s anger. Although the animals seem evil and barbaric to the humans, they are just being protective over their land and are acting off of their fear of the humans. On the other hand, the humans are seen as evil by the animals because of their selfish use of resources, but they are just trying to financially support their community. For example, Lady Eboshi, the leader of Irontown, is seen as evil for orchestrating this exploitation of resources from the animals, but the humans see her as a compassionate, God-like figure. She does many positive and kind things for the human community, such as taking in women from the streets and brothels and giving them a place to live and work. Even though she is, in essence, destroying the animal’s habitats, she is saving the lives of many humans while doing it. The animal characters are also portrayed as compassionate in many respects. For example, when the leader of the wolves finds an abandoned baby, she takes her in and raises her as if she were her own daughter.
Karlsen, Carol. The Devil in the Shape of a Woman. (New York: Vintage Books, 1989), 2.
It is common for those experiencing grief to deny the death altogether. Many people do this by avoiding situations and places that remind them of the deceased (Leming & Dickinson, 2016). However, by simply avoiding the topic of death and pain, the mourner only achieves temporary relief while in turn creating more permanent lasting agony (Rich, 2005). In this stage, mourners will begin to feel the full weight of the circumstance. Whether the death of a loved one was sudden or long-term, survivors will feel a full range of emotions, such as sadness, guilt, anger, frustration, hopelessness, or grief. While many of these emotions can cause serious suffering, it is important for the survivor to feel whatever emotions come up and deal with those feelings, rather than trying to suppress any
The first part of the hero’s journey is the call to adventure. This is the voyage that the hero is asked to go on in order to accomplish greater good for human kind. This is the hero’s chance to help his or her community, family or friends by embarking on a long journey and challenging his, or herself. Gilgamesh does not go on a journey to help others, he goes to make himself look better. “ I have not established my name stamped on bricks as my destiny decreed, therefore I will go to the country where the cedar is felled” (page 70). This passage shows that the only reason that Gilgamesh wants to go on a journey is for fame and popularity.
The mind is a very powerful tool when it is exploited to think about situations out of the ordinary. Describing in vivid detail the conditions of one after his, her, or its death associates the mind to a world that is filled with horrific elements of a dark nature.
“I eat celery, I drink only water or diet coke, I do three hours on the Stairmaster everyday,” she said. “But despite all that, I have still got, like, these huge rolls of fat all over.” However, Fernandez could stand to lose a few pounds in nearly every area of her body, worst of all her arms. “I have got this totally disgusting flab on the back of my arms that swings back and forth when I move,” said Fernandez, wearing an oversized champion sweatshirt to conceal...
Wherein lies the odd attraction and power of the freakish? Just as often as it introduces us to expressions of common human experience, study in the Humanities also introduces us to the decidedly uncommon--to writers, artists and thinkers who push conventional limits of language and narrative, vision and imagination, memory and history, or logic and rationality. For our Freaks of the Core colloquium, we explored the outer limits of human expression and experience. What, we asked, defines the abnormal or the outlandish? the fanatical or heretical? the illusory or the grotesque? Why are we commonly drawn to the very uncommon? "Nothing, indeed, is more revolting," wrote Thomas De Quincey in his famously freaky Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, "than the spectacle of a human being obtruding on our notice his moral ulcers or scars, and tearing away that 'decent drapery' which time, or indulgence to human frailty, may have drawn over them" (1).[1] But De Quincey chose to tear away that drapery in his Confessions nevertheless, believing that his outlandish experiences with addiction, poverty and illusion would teach his readers valuable lessons that outweighed any offense. "In that hope it is that I have drawn this up," wrote De Quincey, "and that must be my apology for breaking through that delicate and honorable reserve, which, for the most part, restrains us from the public exposure of our own infirmities" (1). The essays below also tear away the "decent drapery" which covers the sometimes unsightly extremes of human experience, and they do so with similar hopes and reasons.
Wolff, Cynthia Griffin. "Un-Utterable Longing: The Discourse of Feminine Sexuality in The Awakening." Studies in American Fiction 24.1 (Spring 1996): 3-23. Rpt. in Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism. Ed. Janet Witalec. Vol. 127. Detroit: Gale, 2002. Literature Resource Center. Web. 19 May 2014.
In many literary works we see significant transitions in the hero's character as the story is developed. This is also true in the Epic of Gilgamesh with its hero, Gilgamesh. In this narrative poem, we get glimpses of who Gilgamesh is and what his purposes and goals are. We see Gilgamesh act in many different ways -- as an overbearing ruler resented by his people, a courageous and strong fighter, a deflated, depressed man, and finally as a man who seems content with what he's accomplished. Through all of these transitions, we see Gilgamesh's attitude toward life change. The goals he has for his own life alter dramatically, and it is in these goals that we see Gilgamesh's transition from being a shallow, ruthless ruler to being an introspective, content man.
The reading by Barbara Creed titled “Horror and the Monstrous-Feminine: An Imaginary Abjection”, is an in-depth examination on the role of women in horror films. Creed challenges the commanding patriarchal view, which frequently puts the woman in the position of the helpless victim. She argues that when the feminine is constructed as monstrous, it is frequently done in conjunction with its mothering role and function. Creed’s main thesis supports that the prototype of all cinematic definitions of monstrosity related to the feminine is linked to the woman’s reproductive body. Creed elects to use the term “monstrous feminine” instead of female monster, because for Creed it is the “femininity itself that is monstrous” (41). It has been unfairly
The transition in women’s roles in horror stories and the genre itself is a long and overdue process. Today society regards men and women more equal than ever before. The transition from Perrault to Flagg demonstrates that horror has evolved from a genre that portrays women as weak, and dutifully obedient to giving them positions of authority over men, who will cater to their commands, without supernatural powers.
McCloy, Kristin. "Highbrow Horror." Los Angeles Times Book Review (20 June 1993): 2. Rpt. in Contemporary Literary Criticism. Ed. Jeffrey W. Hunter. Vol. 212. Detroit: Gale, 2006. Literature Resources from Gale. Web. 14 Jan. 2014.
Although a scene of a funeral home might come to mind when a reader first hears a short story aptly named “The Dead,” the tale actually takes place in the festive setting of a winter dance at the home of the two aunts of the main character, Gabriel Conroy. James Joyce’s short story “The Dead” has a literal title, because its main concept is death – both physical death and spiritual death.