It’s a truth universally acknowledged, that a girl between the ages of 14 and 99 years must be in want of a Mr. Darcy. It’s also universally known that about 4/5 of all texts related to Pride and Prejudice begin with some variation of the novel’s fist sentence, so I hopped in.
I should also explain that, while this generalization works just fine for aesthetic and stylistic purposes, it doesn’t exactly correspond to the truth. There certainly are bazillions of girls who do desperately look for their Mr. Darcy in some sort of imaginary world with which they dress the real one, but there also are quite a few who don’t, and they might or might not be very angry to be mixed in the same bunch as their opposites. In case they do get very angry, they WILL get VERY angry and defensive, something around the lines of not being submissive, being realistic and not following trends (a.k.a. social hysteria), but I’ll get back to this soon.
Anyway, I used to be part of the first group of the second group, the ones who don’t dream about Darcy and don’t get very angry. The thing is: social trends/hysteria is only worthwhile when it’s about the Beatles, and being independent and different can sound very cool, so I guess this accounts for most of the non-Darcy girls. But it was none of that with me.
I simply never managed to fall in love with Mr. Darcy. Two versions of the book read (English and then Portuguese), movie watched some thousands of times and still no sign of the slightest dreamy demeanor or starry-eyed infatuation. Nothing. No empathy shown, no sympathy developed; I guess this was it. Jane Austen, say what you will about her importance (and I won’t deny it), simply failed to create characters that could by any means make you feel drawn to them. At least when it comes to Darcy… Dude was built on nothing but other people’s NEGATIVE opinions of him and then suddenly you’re supposed to like the guy because he was, you know, decent! This changes his image as an asshole, but it doesn’t really suffice to generate instant noodle love. Ok, Colin Firth is kind of a looker, and Lord Larry was hot as, well, Lord Larry, but this still wasn’t enough to bring my head over my heels…
This isn’t totally important, anyway. It merely serves to show my own experience, which led to me writing about Fitzwilliam Darcy and the endless, timeless horde of worshipers that drag behind his wet footprints. There is an undeniable trend among the feminine portion of Modern society that seem to rely too much on the idea that this guy is a perfect prince and their ideal match, no matter what.
No matter how different everybody is, among ourselves and to Elizabeth Bennet, whom we’re left to suppose, by the end of the novel, to be Darcy’s ideal match. Perhaps, then, what was so much of a non-stimulant for me actually works as Darcy’s biggest appeal: he is not really much of a well-defined/developed character. We don’t really look at him as omnipresent buddies of an omnipresent narrator who called his chaps for a glimpse of the story. So not only can’t we trust much of what is said, we don’t get much of restraint. By the time we realized the little that was known of him was actually wrong, even more room appears for us, the readers, to think of him as whatever we want.
Therefore, Austen has created enough space for every girl to project her ideas of what an ideal match should be on an already good canvas (Rich, handsome, faithful, quietly kind, nice house and rich. Uhm.) A timeless, limitless piece of customizable hunk. The perfect guy made to meet your needs, and all that in such a subtle way you won’t even realize that most of him is just a projection of your own desires.
Ok, I might have gone a little too far on rhetoric and forgotten reality. It does sound a little bit creepy, and all girls seem to agree on his best assets: his so perfect and wonderful and like every guy should be. But that’s where I also find ground to my assumption that Darcy is totally customizable: perfect wonderful and desirable are much generalized concepts that exist in different shapes inside individuals’ heads and personalities. And to prove that this is so, I call upon YouTube comments on every possible Pride and Prejudice video, internet forums and many of my friends and family. Including two of my best friends forever (who have decided to marathon me with Darcy overload, btw).
But there are those who still don’t fully trust his gentlemanliness, faithfulness and righteousness. Now this is about the opposite trend, made interesting because it opposes a certain trend (duh), the one of the non-Darcy girls. If he is so easily adapted into perfection, why is it that some people simply don’t care? Well, maybe it is because some people don’t care for romance, or Regency Era, or idle gentry, or books at all. Or maybe these girls have a negative tendency when analyzing Darcy as part of a certain zeitgeist. And I do have a feeling, based on Historical documentation of women’s rights, costumes, clothes, occupation and thin cultural production, that no matter how romantic a man Austen’s narrative can make Darcy seem to very fertile minds, he was not, by any means, the kind of guy a woman of our day would like to have around…
So, being such an inherently patriarchal and perhaps even violent man, how come women get around this and create their own model of perfect prince on the Darcy structure offered by Austen? They don’t care about all what’s socially new and free? They don’t care about their jobs and liberty to do so much? Or do they think that their modern Darcy is not going to be like the Regency Darcy? Perhaps I could ask somebody this, but that would be awkward. Plus, I’m almost positive that no, what they want is someone who combines old-day politeness and smoothness with present-day openness, not a print copy of 200-year-old men.
It certainly is funny for someone to watch all this happen around oneself and don’t quite get it. As someone who didn’t really fall in love with him, who simply didn’t care to project her own ideas of perfection into Darcy (there are, you see, many other fictional characters around… ;) I find it extremely entertaining to feel all the mania that goes on with this old trend, but I can’t say it’s totally bad. Of course, some aspects of such deep idealization can be negative, but that happens with our without Darcy.
Mr. Darcy, plain as he may be, ends up reflecting a certain social spirit, anxiety and belief that is shared by many women at the same time they conserve their individual ideas THROUGH Darcy. And that’s awesomely interesting. Also, it has just struck me that he may be the most feminine of all imaginary creatures around, and somehow it does make sense that a man built by millions of women should end up being a little bit of a weird phenomena.
Sunday 1 August 2010
Saturday 31 July 2010
fact(oid)
I need to get used to facts. Looking for them, processing them into meaningful data and then using them to back arguments or even possibly come up with whole new ideas. That is important if I mean to communicate effectively and powerfully, but it is also important if I mean to develop plans and concepts within my own head (and then, perhaps, communicate it to others, haha).
I’m such a Sophist, and I assume that must be bad. My Sophism leads me to create numerous empty arguments to explain why this isn’t actually bad, but nah, the world doesn’t operate that way and if I want to work with everyone else, well, I ought to learn the (Socratic) rules of the game.
Damn. Creating funny arguments on silly topics just for the sake of idiotic mindfuck is such a cool pastime. Oh well, the wonders of being an adult…
(jk, there's a lot of fun in this sort of factual activity, too. Being a humble explorer isn't as empowering as being an absolute monarch, but it’s sometimes a lot more beautiful.)
I’m such a Sophist, and I assume that must be bad. My Sophism leads me to create numerous empty arguments to explain why this isn’t actually bad, but nah, the world doesn’t operate that way and if I want to work with everyone else, well, I ought to learn the (Socratic) rules of the game.
Damn. Creating funny arguments on silly topics just for the sake of idiotic mindfuck is such a cool pastime. Oh well, the wonders of being an adult…
(jk, there's a lot of fun in this sort of factual activity, too. Being a humble explorer isn't as empowering as being an absolute monarch, but it’s sometimes a lot more beautiful.)
Life on Mars (plus two other songs)
I sometimes wonder if there is life on Mars. And when I do, I hope there isn’t. I’d like to have a place and call it my own, all the rules and facts UNDER me. But maybe this wouldn’t be worthwhile and the forces that keep me going would disappear. Maybe I’m not enough for myself.
I have once wondered who I am. The girl with the mousy hair or the script writer? Am I a character inside some broader, incomprehensible movie, or am I the director with god-like powers to create my own small, ersatz story?
Perhaps, as George Harrison once sang (and many before him, but shamefully he’s the only one I care about), it is within me - it is myself - and goes on without me - bigger than me. But alas, these are two different things. I have totally shrunk Harrison’s meaning into my own self. It’s not about life, what I wonder. In the end, it’s just about individuality.
You can’t have one without the other, of course, they go together like the horse and carriage, because life as a broader movie is made of character-individuals, yet we won’t exist if there isn’t a life for us to live. But they are not the same, they are a couple, and none is bigger or more important than the other. They are two sides to a same coin, so then I wouldn’t survive on an empty Mars. There is no escaping, and that’s fine (when it’s not sad, but that’s just sometimes).
And if the individual’s inherent dependency is fundamentally necessary to its existence (through life), can’t we at least shyly wonder what it would be like to live as individuals who aren’t so essentially unique and distinct? Which part is designated to others inside the movie, and how do they write their own script? How do they do it, how do they perceive it, how do they feel?
I sometimes think that I’d like to see what others see, but I quickly shun these thoughts because they make me run away from myself. They lead way too smoothly into thoughts of living somebody else’s life, of abandoning my individuality and assuming that of someone else who exists inside the same movie as me. And that can’t be, I would never allow myself, being the iron fist ruler that we all have to be.
But I shyly wonder, still, and life would be a lot more chaotic, a lot less fluid and careless if we could jump from individuality to individuality. Some would fight for the right of being a certain other, and then they would be abandoned, and the movie would stop happening. If the movie ever stopped happening, individuals wouldn’t survive, to live and to be lived by others. Without the limits of self, characters can’t survive, and therefore they wouldn’t have a script to follow or a paper to write on.
If I could, just for a moment, ever know how is it that others live, then everything would go wrong. Even my problems, my wrongness, everything. So I just remain amazed, watching the multitude of others that exist around me, each one of them a life like mine, a character as me; each writing their own movie, living the same one. And no matter how much I can sometimes wish for a still Mars, all these strangers are what allow me to be myself. To be alone there, I’d have to be together with them.
I have once wondered who I am. The girl with the mousy hair or the script writer? Am I a character inside some broader, incomprehensible movie, or am I the director with god-like powers to create my own small, ersatz story?
Perhaps, as George Harrison once sang (and many before him, but shamefully he’s the only one I care about), it is within me - it is myself - and goes on without me - bigger than me. But alas, these are two different things. I have totally shrunk Harrison’s meaning into my own self. It’s not about life, what I wonder. In the end, it’s just about individuality.
You can’t have one without the other, of course, they go together like the horse and carriage, because life as a broader movie is made of character-individuals, yet we won’t exist if there isn’t a life for us to live. But they are not the same, they are a couple, and none is bigger or more important than the other. They are two sides to a same coin, so then I wouldn’t survive on an empty Mars. There is no escaping, and that’s fine (when it’s not sad, but that’s just sometimes).
And if the individual’s inherent dependency is fundamentally necessary to its existence (through life), can’t we at least shyly wonder what it would be like to live as individuals who aren’t so essentially unique and distinct? Which part is designated to others inside the movie, and how do they write their own script? How do they do it, how do they perceive it, how do they feel?
I sometimes think that I’d like to see what others see, but I quickly shun these thoughts because they make me run away from myself. They lead way too smoothly into thoughts of living somebody else’s life, of abandoning my individuality and assuming that of someone else who exists inside the same movie as me. And that can’t be, I would never allow myself, being the iron fist ruler that we all have to be.
But I shyly wonder, still, and life would be a lot more chaotic, a lot less fluid and careless if we could jump from individuality to individuality. Some would fight for the right of being a certain other, and then they would be abandoned, and the movie would stop happening. If the movie ever stopped happening, individuals wouldn’t survive, to live and to be lived by others. Without the limits of self, characters can’t survive, and therefore they wouldn’t have a script to follow or a paper to write on.
If I could, just for a moment, ever know how is it that others live, then everything would go wrong. Even my problems, my wrongness, everything. So I just remain amazed, watching the multitude of others that exist around me, each one of them a life like mine, a character as me; each writing their own movie, living the same one. And no matter how much I can sometimes wish for a still Mars, all these strangers are what allow me to be myself. To be alone there, I’d have to be together with them.
Friday 30 July 2010
I can make it. Or maybe I can’t. But I’ll have to try doing it, one moment or another, or else I’ll forever live with the feeling that I don’t know. That I’m not sure of what I can and cannot do, what are my limits, that tomorrow I’ll discover the truth. That I’m not yet ready and by no means sufficiently prepared to face the task.
Living is a serious business. Or maybe it isn’t. Some make a lifetime worth of profit out of it, others just can’t quite be as successful as expected (By others? By themselves? By certain standards?). It’s not definitive, though, so one has to wonder why it’s so serious. (The ant does die at some point, after all, no matter how much profit she has made during summer.) Perhaps it’s because life is so present, so offensively here and now that it becomes a serious burden.
Perhaps it’s because it’s so possible and blank that the one who has received it cannot fight the need to make something out of it, creating endless seriousness for said life. Perhaps, even, it is the fear that has faced the dream that makes living such a grave thing, this goddamn delta between two things that are outside the margins of our river. Life is a variable and no matter what others say or what evidence shows, it is always your responsibility to make something out of it. You, the jury, will judge and execute this. Such a serious business.
Other’s will screw me all over. Or maybe they won’t. Life really isn’t just ones business; everybody wants a piece of your success. And you always want a piece of theirs. The kiss is the eve of the spit, and kisses are so sweet it is impossible to go by without them. You are not your own judge, others will judge all the time, even if just inside your head. There’s something so weird about being someone, about having been given a life and carrying it around with so many others walking around you, their lives in hand too, nudging you gently – and not so gently -, from time to time. They are just like you, but they are themselves, and all what they take from you, they’ll give you back, somehow. All of it. Love.
I know myself. Oh, wait, I actually don’t. I don’t know my exact limits, perhaps they don’t really exist, but the truth is that I’m not yet fully acquainted with all my own details. I know how to be, to simply be, but I don’t know what being means, I don’t know what doing means nor do I really know what saying something is, not at all. But “simply doing” ain’t gonna cut it, it’s not enough. It kills the feeling of regret, of being completely lost, the buzzing “or maybe” inside my head. But it doesn’t explain shit to me, and that’s kinda not cool.
But I’ve GOT to do it. Because I can, because I want, because I said so. I need to do without explanation, test before analyzing, act without so much worry because this sort of thing eats you up at some point. No one ever has much time to actually analyze any of the tests, attempts, first trials, but all are (un)lucky enough to have others do it for them, dead or not yet dead. Not that this is important. Life really is serious, I can make it. Anyone can; everybody does, in fact. (And I’ll want a fancy tomb, too). But there’s this delta - dreams and fear, birth and death, others and self - that can be filled with kisses and spit; beauty at every spot.
Living is a serious business. Or maybe it isn’t. Some make a lifetime worth of profit out of it, others just can’t quite be as successful as expected (By others? By themselves? By certain standards?). It’s not definitive, though, so one has to wonder why it’s so serious. (The ant does die at some point, after all, no matter how much profit she has made during summer.) Perhaps it’s because life is so present, so offensively here and now that it becomes a serious burden.
Perhaps it’s because it’s so possible and blank that the one who has received it cannot fight the need to make something out of it, creating endless seriousness for said life. Perhaps, even, it is the fear that has faced the dream that makes living such a grave thing, this goddamn delta between two things that are outside the margins of our river. Life is a variable and no matter what others say or what evidence shows, it is always your responsibility to make something out of it. You, the jury, will judge and execute this. Such a serious business.
Other’s will screw me all over. Or maybe they won’t. Life really isn’t just ones business; everybody wants a piece of your success. And you always want a piece of theirs. The kiss is the eve of the spit, and kisses are so sweet it is impossible to go by without them. You are not your own judge, others will judge all the time, even if just inside your head. There’s something so weird about being someone, about having been given a life and carrying it around with so many others walking around you, their lives in hand too, nudging you gently – and not so gently -, from time to time. They are just like you, but they are themselves, and all what they take from you, they’ll give you back, somehow. All of it. Love.
I know myself. Oh, wait, I actually don’t. I don’t know my exact limits, perhaps they don’t really exist, but the truth is that I’m not yet fully acquainted with all my own details. I know how to be, to simply be, but I don’t know what being means, I don’t know what doing means nor do I really know what saying something is, not at all. But “simply doing” ain’t gonna cut it, it’s not enough. It kills the feeling of regret, of being completely lost, the buzzing “or maybe” inside my head. But it doesn’t explain shit to me, and that’s kinda not cool.
But I’ve GOT to do it. Because I can, because I want, because I said so. I need to do without explanation, test before analyzing, act without so much worry because this sort of thing eats you up at some point. No one ever has much time to actually analyze any of the tests, attempts, first trials, but all are (un)lucky enough to have others do it for them, dead or not yet dead. Not that this is important. Life really is serious, I can make it. Anyone can; everybody does, in fact. (And I’ll want a fancy tomb, too). But there’s this delta - dreams and fear, birth and death, others and self - that can be filled with kisses and spit; beauty at every spot.
Tuesday 16 March 2010
beaver love
Yeah, well, I got into the college I wanted to get. It feels as if I had to repeat it to myself all the time, because it really hasn't sinked in yet...
Never before had I felt this kind of happiness. (Are there TYPES of happiness, omg, just to make this life a tiny bit more complex, really?) I think I might be feeling calm, I think I might be felling excited, I think I might be feeling like a sailor about to go out on a ship that will travel many seas and visit many lands, I might even be confused!
One feeling, though, is quite constant: I am currently the world's smallest person. There is so much beyond me (actually, around, because this is not a linear feeling, it's a spatial one), so much that I can roam through and see and discover and do, so many things to learn and work to do. And also, I am small because I am not just myself, I was helped by so many people, it's never just me, it's always about others supporting me. And needing my support, or a payback for what I received.
This was a quite personal choice, to go for that one college. Probably partially a subconscious compensatory mechanism to deal with me pre-adult-who-needs-to-choose-a-future-and-go-according-to-some-rules-and-expectations drama. So it's a peculiar and fresh event, reaching a goal that was so uncommonly mine.
Uhm. I'm confused. And I'm sure the thrill for the prospect of both having fun AND working hard will temporarily leave when I go through a couple of nights without sleep. But, as soon as I can notice, it will already be nostalgia! Wow. Carpe diem does sound reasonable...
Yeah, I'm confused. CFOUNESD. But that's alright (Mamma) (:
Never before had I felt this kind of happiness. (Are there TYPES of happiness, omg, just to make this life a tiny bit more complex, really?) I think I might be feeling calm, I think I might be felling excited, I think I might be feeling like a sailor about to go out on a ship that will travel many seas and visit many lands, I might even be confused!
One feeling, though, is quite constant: I am currently the world's smallest person. There is so much beyond me (actually, around, because this is not a linear feeling, it's a spatial one), so much that I can roam through and see and discover and do, so many things to learn and work to do. And also, I am small because I am not just myself, I was helped by so many people, it's never just me, it's always about others supporting me. And needing my support, or a payback for what I received.
This was a quite personal choice, to go for that one college. Probably partially a subconscious compensatory mechanism to deal with me pre-adult-who-needs-to-choose-a-future-and-go-according-to-some-rules-and-expectations drama. So it's a peculiar and fresh event, reaching a goal that was so uncommonly mine.
Uhm. I'm confused. And I'm sure the thrill for the prospect of both having fun AND working hard will temporarily leave when I go through a couple of nights without sleep. But, as soon as I can notice, it will already be nostalgia! Wow. Carpe diem does sound reasonable...
Yeah, I'm confused. CFOUNESD. But that's alright (Mamma) (:
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