Time traveling.

[mrzachyboy]

Media has the ability to transport me. Perhaps that is why I enjoy studying it. There is something about encountering a text and about the way that each subsequent encounter pulls me back to the past at the same time roots me in the present.

Over the last couple weeks, Marcus and I have been watching Six Feet Under. He had never seen it before. I

Comments

[starmiranda]

I love this post so much. & I'm the exact same way with texts of any and all kinds- if I like/love them in any way, I can go back to them again & again & find something new each time, even if it's just half-watching an episode of a t.v. show that I love while I'm also writing in my journal or something like that- even half-watching gives me something new. I always pick up something. And that makes me really excited about texts & life in general. I'm always harping on my students about how "everything is a text!" I get really excited about that & they probably think I'm nuts, but oh well. It's wonderful, really.

[mrzachyboy]

hehe. I am so the same way! I definitiely subscribe that that Derridian maxim that "there is nothing outside of the text." I think it is such an exciting and enlivening idea. there is always something to discover, to analyze, to interrogate. I love it.

[starmiranda]

My sister-in-law, who is otherwise a brilliant, PhD-having, media-savvy scholar, hates Derrida with a passion. I don't really know why.

[mrzachyboy]

that just seems so strange to me. I mean, I guess that I can see why some people might have problems with some of Derrida's work, but it just seems very hard for me to disregard a lot of the main concepts that he articulated. I think that his work has become so foundational (it is so ironic/amusing to use the word "foundational" when talking about Derridian theory) to contemporary critical and cultural theory. I dont know. I just find his work so useful. hehe. we are such dorks. I love it.

[mrzachyboy]

Isn't it terrible that I have never read A Confederacy of Dunces? I really should remedy this.

[evilweevil04]

You are my favorite person in the world. I love anyone who cites scholarly articles in their blog posts.

Some of the books on my shelves definitely transport me back to the past, but sometimes it's a disappointing ride. When I was in middle school, the fantasy novels of Mercedes Lackey were my manna from Heaven. One of her series is about a gay mage type guy, and the casual and accepting way the character's homosexuality is dealt with helped me accept my own burgeoning sexuality. Now, though, while the series still holds some remnants of nostalgia for me, whenever I pick up a Mercedes Lackey novel, I'm more likely to notice her abuse of semi-colons and run-on sentences than anything else.

[mrzachyboy]

Hehe. I do try. hehe.

All of my "gay" novels definitely transport me. hmm. Oh, how I miss the days of innocence and excitment. I sometimes feel like I am so cynical and angry. I feel like I used to feel so hopeful. I used to want to be part of the "gay community." Now I roll my eyes at the idea.

I adore you.

[kosmokos]

complete with bibliography. you get full points for that.

I can watch, read, listen, to the same things over and over again; this is probably one of my more dominant traits. but the repetitions don't always evoke something new - though often they do - sometimes they just repeat the same initial pleasure.

there must also be some correlation between acquired information and repetition - I think the shift of my perception (of the same thing again) is proportional to the change of information (loss or gain) between repetition intervals. there's probably something to be said about the complexity of subject matter too - more complexity (in the perceived AND the perceivER) might afford more opportunity for different interpretations.

we should have a little party and make an algorithm for all of this. totally geek out.