Mary Rose > Recent Status Updates

In a world of people trying to popularize the (usually shallowly conceived) "female gaze" as an alternative to Mulvey's male gaze theory, only Laura U. Marks is brave enough to write about watching gay s&m porn and posit the "fag-hag gaze." Love

"Just because you own a weapon doesn’t mean that what follows becomes a formality. Where would the crime take place, then?"

""O Superman" is addressed to the pillars of the American dream. Superman, Mom and Dad, the justice system, and the military. It describes a world where conversations between family members take place through messages left on answering machines, and where attempts to resist the intrusion of technology into everyday life only result in further alienation."

"Tolerance—not assimilation—is the democratic litmus test for social equality."

"It is naive to think that these developers, who make a city space safe for one class of women by actively driving out another class [sex workers], have any concern for women *as a class*. The Times Square developers’ concern for women and women’s safety extends no further than seeing women as replaceable nodes with a certain amount of money to spend in a male-dominated economic system."

"As in the name of “safety,” society dismantles the various institutions that promote interclass communication, attempts to critique the way such institutions functioned in the past to promote their happier sides are often seen as... at worst, a pernicious glorification of everything dangerous: unsafe sex, neighborhoods filled with un-desirables..."

"Was commercial film pornography sexist? Certainly. Was it anywhere near as sexist as the legit films playing across the nation’s screens in the same years? Not unless you simply took sexist and sexy as synonyms."

"I don't see any reason that a woman... couldn't take any (or every) role I've already described or will go on to describe for any (and every) male theater patron...though it does unmitigated violence to the West’s traditional concept of “women.” But I believe it is only by inflicting such violences on the concept that we can prevent actual violence against women’s bodies and minds in the political, material world."

“Do not whine and be complex-ridden, because it is annoying.” Sorry Mr Eco sir forgive me Mr Eco sir

“But notwithstanding the caloric ecstasy of some of Rubens's personages, we shouldn't discount the extraordinary elegance of some of his painting.” What if I told you it’s the fatness that makes Rubens worth looking at

“It used to be that we studied history, including art history, in order to broaden our horizons, to challenge our preconceptions, to get beyond the narrow confines of our present-day culture. That is, we endeavored as far as possible to put aside our contemporary values and prejudices in order to understand the (often very different) world of the past.” Now Roger certainly you don’t actually believe that?

“It is amusing to contemplate what Courbet would have thought of Professor Fried’s interpretation of his work.” Does Roger Kimball really think academics should be writing poetic odes to good art and laying them at the feet of artists like crowns of laurels? Is that what he thinks scholarship is for?

Quoting perfectly intelligible passages of theory and then saying “Now what do you suppose that means?” makes you look like an idiot, Roger

“I see these reliefs as they have come down to us irretrievably altered in the unforgiving operating room of time; in this case, buried for millennia under tons of rubble. We are now conditioned to like them stone-coloured, and I do. So I don't long for colour any more than I long for the fortepiano in listening to early Beethoven; I like the sound of the modern piano, the instrument of my time.”

“One learns that these reliefs were once brightly coloured… I don't fret about this. I do not live in the first millennium Bc, but today, in my own time. I see these reliefs as they have come down to us irretrievably altered in the unforgiving operating room of time… We are now conditioned to like them stone-coloured, and I do.”

“To deprive a people of their history, or to construct one for them that immortalizes humiliation, is a conscious cultural act of the powerful.”

“As a woman, as a lesbian, as a Jes, I know that much of what I call history others will not. But answering that challenge of exclusion is the work of a lifetime.”

"She followed me home, and when it was clear
she wanted to stay, I began to feed her.
This had nothing to do with domestication—
I did not want a pet; she was not looking
for a hand-out or a master—
but you cannot fall off the earth
and you cannot fall out of love."

“Turner used the varnishing day (the time allowed for artists to make last-minute adjustments to their works before the exhibition opened) to add a small but conspicuous paint mark to his sea, which he then shaped into a red buoy. Constable, recognizing that this simple gesture made his own heavily worked painting look ridiculously overblown, famously declared that Turner 'has been here, and fired a gun'.”

“Twenty years of symbiotic exchanges between a system of social economics and the permutations and fruitions of 3,000 randomly assembled genetic patterns were catalogued and filed by library assistants employed on eight-month contracts to preside over the roaring silence of facts and lies that preceding assistants and technicians had been instructed and trusted to accumulate.”

“"I think it's really hard to comfortably separate talent from this unquenchable interest in the problem presented by the task," he [Michael Cunningham] said.”

"This is what Goth has given me. It didn't ask that I subscribe to anything definite in particular; rather, Goth was a way of looking at the world that I was already familiar with from the art, literature, and music of the past. It crystalized via punk into something I could believe in that held me in the bosom of darkness and at the same time set me free."

And it goes without saying that I am smitten by the Marina Abramovic standin

EA NASIR MENTION

It is very funny that the editor followed Derrida with an essay by Vilem Flusser that starts "A lot of nonsense has been talked about the world immaterial. But when people start to speak of 'immaterial culture', such nonsense can no longer be tolerated." It's like a very refreshing splash of cold water to the face

"The more I teach, the more I learn that teaching is a prophetic vocation. It demands of us allegiance to integrity of vision and belief in the face of those who would either seek to silence, censor, or discredit our words."

“Teachers who are wedded to using the same teaching style every day, who fear any digression from the concrete lesson plan, miss the opportunity for full engagement in the learning process."

“Fortunately, most of us, professors and students, do not face grave, life-threatening consequences if we speak out and engage in critical exchange. This is why it is of the utmost importance that we do not allow false notions of safety to interfere with creating a classroom community wherein students can learn how to engage in constructive dialogue, including discussion where there is intense disagreement."

“The more diverse a classroom, the greater the likelihood that there will be different levels of knowing and as a consequence professors cannot rely on a shared knowledge base to build community. When students learn about one another through the sharing of experience, a foundation for learning in community can emerge."

"I am grateful to have lived long enough to learn how much information we have been given and told was hard science or data was really a story, the interpretation of data and facts."