{ I must go to fetch the water. }

[delga]

Last night, after the film, I came back, ate and then I totally did work for today's class. I read two of the three critical essays on reading; one was feminist and the other was Marxist (to some degree). The third one that I'm about to delve into is explicitly Marxist by the looks of things. The thing is, this stuff hurts my brain like a mofo. It's crazy dense and what's scary is that I then turn to look at my essays and I'm writing in the same verbose BS style. How annoying.

--

The movie - oh, the movie. I was strange and brutal, and to be honest, quite exhausting to watch. Between the terrors that could arise in Ofelia's imaginings and the terrors that arose in her life, it was one hell of a film. But so lovely too, and I will never get over that music. (It reminds me of the song at the end of The Jungle Book, you know father's hunting in the forest, mother's cooking in the home, and I must go to fetch the water 'til the day that I am grown. I'm fairly certain it shares melody.) The composition of the film is tragic, the stories and the not-so-subtle allegiances that you make early on carry you through so strongly. I was pleased to see the woman from Y tu mamá también again. She's a wonderful actress.

I recommend going to see this film. I think what you get out of it is worth it, and if you don't get anything from the story, it's still really beautiful to look at.

--

OK, I have to go and read, and then I have to finish that essay today (oh man) so that I can type it up tomorrow. I have seminars from midday to three (just got an email from the On Reading tutor) and then I have to come back and get my shit sorted out. Note to self: buy bread. And cereal bars, because you gave half of yours away.

--

edit: Half of the On Reading class is going to be a lecture to make up for yesterday's lost time so now I feel less anxious about that class. This is what happens when one of my classes gets cancelled - I stop wanting to go, heh.

Comments

[melliyna.livejournal.com]

Reading literary criticism often leads to one wanting to bang ones head against the wall (for me it often invovles screaming "you know the author might have just written that sentence for the hell of it, not because of some deep underlying meaning) even if you might have agreed with them in the first place. Anyway what I meant to say was that I sympathise.

[delgaserasca.livejournal.com]

And this is what my entire academic career has led to, heh. I must be learning something because the first thought that came into my mind when I read your comment was "Ah, but does it really matter what the author's intentions are?" which just shows how much Reader-Reception Theory has bled into my brain. I am turning into an automaton that churns out lines and lines of supercilious crap.



OK. End ramble. Need to finish typing this essay up! (Oh, question: do you still have The Duck?)

[melliyna.livejournal.com]

I"m a political science/history person but I very nearly became an English student and I'm recognising myself in this *g* (especially in finding the metaphorical symbols in everything).

I'm not sure about political science but for me being a history major means that you start talking about the way "*object* is a practiical demostration of the way in which the idea of kingship and power was exercised through *object* in *time period*"

I do stil lhave the duck. I was going to take her to New York and DC and then post it back to you if that was okay/the correct thing to do.

[delgaserasca.livejournal.com]

I think the best thing about English is how pluralised it is. It slips into most subjects/schools so I can maintain my bizarre obsession with time paradoxes, my bizarre obsession with couture fashion and a fascination with linguistics and still be a lit. student. We just bleed into the patchwork. (I'm heavy on the blood metaphors today and I cannot work it out.)

Oh my. That sounds like my essay on Marxist readings of texts. Don't you just love academia? (Actually, for all my bitching, yes, I do.)

Aw, yay. No, carry on. I'm just keeping tabs because I want most people to hang on to their ducks for 7-10 days and then send them on to their next destination. And no, don't send it to me, send it to someone else (with a copy of the note that you can find at duck_cheer). It's like spam forward emails, except in RL and with rubber ducks, lolz.

[melliyna.livejournal.com]

That's what I adore about humanities in general - just the fact that there are multiple meanings, pathways and answers (and none of them are neccessarily right).

Yep I do *g* One of my dreams in life (although not so much now) was to be a academic at Oxford or Cambridge and get paid to read books and talk about them.