Love's Labor's Lost and Flirtation

The flirtation in Love’s Labor’s Lost is insane. Or is it? It actually doesn’t seem too far off from what women are doing nowadays. In Shakespeare’s time, women didn’t have very much power in a lot of areas, but they could get a sense of power from the way men reacted to them.

One tactic is playing hard to get. A friend and I talked about this not too long ago. We were somewhat disturbed how effective this was, even with us. Maybe it has something to do with worth being influenced by competition. When there is less of a product, the price/value for it increases. This means that even if two people were on the same level, the one who seemed like more effort would be the one to pursue.

Another flirtation is word games. The playful banter in Love’s Labor’s Lost excites and intrigues the men. While constantly fun and interesting conversation (contrary to popular belief) is not at the heart of a good relationship, it sure is good at beginning the attraction.

It’s humorous to watch, but if any of the flirty or lovey things we say today were put into play form, they would probably sound just as funny.

First try at paper video

I've been feeling not-so-good (hence not being in class on Wednesday), so excuse my odd voice and less enthusiastic nature--I'm trying. I only recorded once and just saw what happened. So it's about 2 minutes because I wasn't looking at a timer. Also, I've noticed that my attempts to be excited ended up making me move around in a ridiculous fashion. Hah.

Mikhaela--shout out to you in here.

Peer Reflections - Mikhaela & A Cate Kate

To Mikhaela--

As weird as this sounds, reading your paper was difficult for me. Not because it wasn't a good paper, but because it took almost the opposite side of the argument I was making. I said Kate and Petruchio were abusing each other; you said they strengthened one another.

If you were to revise your paper, something I would recommend would be to look at organization. Your central thesis is clear throughout the paper, but I wish there were more of a building feelings to the arguments.

Now, as for where to go from here, you have a couple really different options. The Taming of the Net sounds interesting. It connects to using things in their intended roles (Kate needs to act in her role/sphere of influence, and internet tools need to be used for their correct purposes). What do you think your audience for this would be? Teachers? Kids? Families? It might change the media you want to present it in.

And then your other thought on marriage counseling. I think you'd have to make some adjustments with this one because of the different gender roles in Shakespeare's time versus now. A woman that feels oppressed by her husband who then reads Taming of the Shrew is likely going to be offended rather than aided. You'd have to emphasis that the idea wasn't to follow Kate's submission exactly, but emulate the general idea that each partner should act within their role in the relationship. I think a blog series is one possibility for that, especially if you'd like to target women--they're all over the blogging community.

Thoughts on Media

While us students like to complain about the traditional research paper, I think it has serious merit in organizing and creating a thesis-driven argument (and in a way other media can’t). It’s not a stopping point though. As I thought about my topic more, the idea of stopping at a ten-page paper seemed ridiculous. It would be to an audience of zero, or zero people that actually needed to hear any of it.

So I started to think more about my audience: abuse victims, primarily women. A lot of the looking around I did didn’t end up anywhere near my paper because it wasn’t the right format. From what I’ve seen, women who struggle with abuse don’t go anywhere professional first. They go to Google and search.

And they find themselves in forums. Oh, sometimes people link to various blogs or sites they have dealing with the issue, but for the most part these communities exist in a space in between blogs and forums. The forum “questions” are often long enough to be blog posts, anyway. Certainly, no one is touching a link to a research paper.

How best to be useful, then? Well, first another observation. No one really wants to tell the details of their story, but they want to be validated by the details of someone else’s. Which leads me to think—what better story than one that, while detailed, belongs to no real person? I think that by taking a Shakespearean story of abuse and telling it in a modern way, a lot of women could be drawn in to the larger issues. So, start with the story, lead to the implications. Maybe by having the story as a forum post that links to a blog series? One thing I wouldn’t want is for it to seem deceptive in any way. Thoughts?

Post-Interview Post

I thought the title of this post was pretty good, with the two "posts" and all. Then I did that thing when you look at a word too long and it starts losing its meaning and you think you've spelled it wrong. ANYWAY.

I had my interview with Professor Burton yesterday. I was pretty worried about it because I didn't feel all that ready. I think I spent so much time researching that writing got started up a little late. This led to what I'm sure was a more interesting paper than a well-written one. A couple of things I would change in a revision ASAP:

1. The intro. It needs to be more interesting and explanation, and well, introductory. We came up with a couple ideas in the interview, one of which involves tricking the audience (always one of my favorites).
2. The organization. The list form is a better analytical tool than an argumentative tool. So reorganize and condense. My preferred way to do this would be to organize the evidences by progression (least troublesome to most troublesome signs of abuse).
3. Develop the idea of power plays more, which complicates any static roles of abuser and victim.
4. Work some Portia and Bassanio in there. She had power taken away from her by her deceased father, then she turns around and starts some power plays with her new husband.

I'm glad we're not done with these papers yet because I'm not ready to be done. This link is to my "final" paper as is:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1qFoUCCazURgET4ghAzlrssFA61FX-Lc3I5dAlHnqxyI/edit