The Hours

It's human nature to know our lineage, as well as the lineages of others. We learn often about how vital family crests and histories were (and still are) in many cultures. We hear about Rockefellers and Carnegie-Mellons, about Sally Hemings and about scads of others who have begotten history. Human nature is to know your roots. The same can be said for books. We’ve discussed in other classes the lineage of some books, most recently Things Fall Apart giving birth to Purple Hibiscus, and how one novel picked up where the other left off.

Of course I understood that we were to look for parallels between The Hours and Mrs. Dalloway, because obviously you wouldn’t have one without the other. Even with the parental shadow of Mrs. Dalloway casting itself over The Hours I feel it is a separate from its mother. We talk often about the parallels between the two books, but I think that trying to tie The Hours too tightly to Mrs. Dalloway is almost unfair. It is a child respectful of its lineage, in full adoration of its mother, and yet the text is a child that knows itself well enough to have its own voice outside of its mother.

I was taken almost immediately by the Prologue with Virginia Woolf and her suicide, it is shocking and profound. The clear of the novel is to set an outright tone of sadness, of despair. These feelings seem to come slower with Mrs. Dalloway, only after some pages is the reader aware of the shocking feeling of swirling downward in a funnel. Using the direct image of Virginia Woolf putting the pig-head sized rock in her pocket, of walking into the river, is immediately a signal to the reader that this will not be a book like he or she has read before. I stand by the opinion that perhaps we sometimes try too hard to push The Hours into a place in which it will never fit, while it has undeniable traces of the preceding novel we are forgetting how much it is representative of Virginia Woolf. The Hours seems not so much a child of Mrs. Dalloway, rather it is a reminder of Woof, the true mother in this situation.

I am a great supporter of research. It is something I value and relish in, reading accounts of events and about the lives of people is intriguing. After a brief bit of research I found a collection of articles by I.M. Ingram, a psychiatrist in Glasgow who has put his research about Virginia Woolf’s psychiatric illness on the internet. In the article on her suicide he writes of what is now believed to be her bipolar disorder and creates an extensive, intense timeline leading up to her death. What is most interesting in reading this particular article is how her body was discovered. On April 18, 1941 her body was found in the river by children.

The section in the first part of this book that is most fascinating is when the Bell children find the dying thrush. It was compelling to me, the children’s innocence and Virginia’s fixation. I found myself thinking after about two or three pages that it was a gem that I hadn’t appraised properly. No author writes about the funeral of a dead bird for six pages without it having some special meaning. The soft bed of grass and the yellow roses in a oval around the small animal put me in the mind of Catholic medals, somehow I pictured it as some variation of a medal of the Blessed Mother. The children paid such close attention for a time, then sped so quickly onto the next moment. It was Virginia who kept going back, Cunningham shows her kindred spirit with the bird through their moments together.

Ingram’s writing about Woolf’s illness and suicide made the thrush funeral suddenly make sense. The Bells found the basically dead thrush, and I feel that the attention they pay to it is a beautiful juxtapositioning of childhood innocence next to death. Cunningham shows through the Bells the kind of reverence we should have for Virginia Woolf, we should lay her sweetly and gently into the grass bed and surround her with flowers, she deserved that respect if not more. Her writings and records of her death show us that even with her own tortures she was a woman of innocence in her own way, with a keen mind for the rights of everyone, with the curiosity of a child and the mind of a genius. This book is not an homage to Mrs. Dalloway, rather it is an homage to Virginia Woolf, the thrush of a woman lying in the leaves of grass.

Tell My Horse, or Why I Love Zora

I've decided to use this website to do some mildly academic writing about literature. Below is an essay I wrote for my World Literature class at Juniata College, taught by Judy Katz. Feel free to discuss in comments!

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I remember reading Zora Neale Hurston’s novels for the first time many years ago, the first, obviously, Their Eyes Were Watching God and after that I read Seraph on the Suwanee. While reading Seraph I decided to do some research on Hurston because I didn’t know much about her other than Oprah loved her and that many scholars considered her one of the greatest writers of her time. What I was surprised to learn was that Zora led an astoundingly interesting yet somehow depressing life. Thinking about it now I know she would not appreciate the sympathy that seems to well up in my chest; she did not seem like that kind of woman.

She was born in Alabama in 1891, but it wasn’t long after that her family moved to Eatonville, Florida and that was the home she remembers and writes about in “How It Feels to Be Colored Me.” When her mother died in 1904 Zora and her siblings were split up, sent to live in boarding schools and when that money ran out they were sent to live with family. She didn’t get along with her stepmother, and it wasn’t long until Zora left for the north to get her high school education. She went to Barnard College, worked with Anthropology professor Franz Boaz, and became immersed in the Harlem Renaissance. Hurston was a strong willed woman who didn’t seem to care much about people’s opinions, and was not always a darling of the Harlem Renaissance. Hurston and Langston Hughes wrote the play Mule Bone which became a point of contention, each author claimed rights to the script, and it ended their friendship. Richard Wright and other black writers criticized her work for not dealing more with racial issues, as well as her having white patrons like Charlotte Mason (who actually held the rights to Hurston’s work). At the end of her life Hurston was working as a maid and school teacher, dying poor and alone in a state home for the elderly. The biography on her official website said that a collection actually had to be taken up by the community to bury Hurston; her grave was unmarked until Alice Walker found it, lost among the weeds, and bought Hurston a proper headstone.

Hurston’s revival in the 1970s was what led me to believe she had been favored among her peers. It wasn’t until I had done the research that I had learned about how she was shunned by her peers for not wanting to engage the color issues of the times. With that in mind I thought it interesting that her short essay be placed next to Wright’s “The Library Card” in my World Literature course, it truly showed how different they were in mindset. Hurston’s essays completely exude her spunk and I think that she should be admired for not letting the racial tensions of her time hinder her love for life. Despite this I wonder if she is a caricature of herself at times, utilizing at times the “minstrel technique” that Wright accused her of. She talks in “How It Feels…” about her “gallery seat” of a front porch, and how she perched atop the front gate and talked to strangers. At one point she even acknowledges how the other people in her town didn’t appreciate her southern hospitality. “The colored people gave no dimes,” she wrote, “They deplored any joyful tendencies in me, but I was their Zora nevertheless.” The same could be said for her place in Harlem: she sat atop the gate and while her peers didn’t encourage her antics, they couldn’t disown her completely.

It’s easy, after reading the articles on her, to dismiss Hurston as a suck-up, as a traitor to her race, a white-lover. In her essay she wrote: “Among the thousand white persons, I am a dark rock surged upon, and overswept, but through it all, I remain myself. When covered by the waters, I am; and the ebb but reveals me again.” To me this proves that in Hurston’s eyes, race did not matter, it was the self that mattered. As a child she talked to anyone because she saw no color lines, and as an adult she was exactly the same. In Mary Crow Dog’s piece “Civilize Them With A Stick,” she wrote that “racism breeds racism in reverse,” racism breeds suspicion not only of others but of one another. Hurston embraced people, it seemed, no matter their color. She transcended the hate that hate breeds, while her peers fell into the pit. She loved life, no matter what the colors.

I’m torn apart by Zora Neale Hurston. On one hand, I crown her the Queen of Forward Motion. She wrote that “slavery was the price I paid for civilization, and the choice was not with me. It is a bully adventure and worth all that I have paid through my ancestors for it.” At the same time I guess I can’t help but wonder how she can so easily shrug off her plight. That’s when I remind myself of her spirit. Wright wrote in “The Library Card” that reading got him down, that he “felt trapped,” and that feeling would halt his reading. I think we all understand this feeling, but it takes a special person to overcome that feeling, to take in what they read and then put it to use. Wright was obviously special, but I love Hurston more because she was able to move past the hard feelings and lead a life. She died poor but at least she made her life worth it.

Copyright Katie Cibort 2009

My Response to you, sir.

I’ve decided that I cannot let this argument rest until I have properly defended a show that myself and my close friends consider one of the greatest shows ever known to grace the airwaves. [Below this blog is the series of comments left on my friend's Facebook wall about Arrested Development for those readers who have not been abreast of what is going on.] My original plan was to let fighting dogs stop fighting on Alice’s wall until I read your “Yeeeaaahhh! I won!” comment there. You, sir, did not win this at all. In fact, you have lost it because Alice asked all of us to stop harassing one another on her wall, yet you demanded the last word. That’s fine for you, maybe you have some sort of need for power, but it’s not fine for Alice and your smugness is not good for my blood pressure. So here I am, responding to your “comments” on Arrested Development (known as “AD” to the DIE-HARD fans, not the “lazy typers”).

I had first planned to ask you where your quotes came from, what your source was, but luckily for me an internet search for guest stars led me to Wikipedia. As I was scrolling to the bottom for the external links to do my research, I saw that every comment you used was from Wikipedia. I also noticed that you twisted each quote from Wikipedia to satisfy your own angry, mean needs. Every reader of this post should know that the article on Wikipedia is fair and balanced (but not in the same sense as FOX News, this article was actually fair and balanced), though I think it is worth reminding every reader that Wikipedia is not the greatest source for a whole argument.

First you mention that FOX has been known for “falling on its sword” and bringing back Family Guy. I think that any reference to Family Guy should just be thrown out because THAT is like comparing apples to oranges. I like Family Guy and, while it makes a lot of pop culture references like AD did, it’s references are solely to highlight some silly (or one might even venture to say “sophomoric”) action of Peter’s. While both television shows highlight absurdity, AD looks for the absurdity in people—Family Guy is only in it for the laughs. Also, Seinfeld was not a FOX television show, it was an NBC sitcom. FOX now syndicates it, but it was never on that channel.

The next quote you pull from Wikipedia talks about the rehearsal and rewriting that went into AD, and you say that it is not “fiscally responsible.” On the contrary, it is very responsible to do such things. I think you’ll agree with me when I say it is advantageous for any person, whether they are writing angry comments, term papers or TV shows, to have drafts of their work. You say repeatedly that AD was not a quality show but the sheer fact that you call it that leads me to believe you know nothing. What we saw on FOX or what we still see on the DVDs is a finely-tuned, well-polished show with double entendres, allusions to many generations of pop culture, and references to itself. Hurwitz says in an interview that while there is some improvisation the script is very tight, something that comes with a lot of rewriting and rehearsals. If you watch the commentary on Season Three for the episode “MR F” you’ll hear how much detail was given to every aspect of the show, right down to the hats Charlize Theron wore in the episode. “The Network hated the hat,” Mitch Hurwitz said about Theron’s raccoon skin hat, “so we showcased it in this episode.” After the raccoon skin hat, they “made the hats a character” even highlighting one hat at the end of an episode. The craft of this show is in the details, something you have missed by condemning it right away for not being as obviously funny as Scrubs or Everybody Loves Raymond. Some people don’t like to work for their laughs though, and that’s fine, to each their own, but don’t knock a show because it doesn’t fall into the same mold as every other show on television.

In an article on avclub.com, Mitch Hurwitz is interviewed about his style and how he developed it. He says this:

Did the shows you worked on before Arrested Development strongly influence your comedy sensibility or writing process?

MH: Oh, definitely. You know, The Golden Girls was a very unusual show to start on. I was young, and it was a show about old people, and it was a very traditional show, but it was also an amazing training ground for a joke-writer. It forced me to learn those skills. Larry Gelbart once said, "Your style is formed by what you can't do." When I was doing that show, I didn't think of myself as a hard joke writer, and that's what that show did really well. As a result, my style became more intricate storylines, callbacks to references earlier in the script, tying things together in unusual ways, all covering up what, at the time, I thought was a deficit at writing hard jokes.

Larry Gelbart, by the way, is the former producer of M*A*S*H and wrote comedy for many, many years.

I used that break-out quote because Hurwitz says explicitly that his style is what you seem to be condemning in your comment. If we look at the list of shows that are from the Wikipedia quote, we’ll see that most of those shows listed came after AD had paved the way for a “cutaway” format. With the exception of Family Guy and Scrubs, How I Met Your Mother and 30 Rock came long after AD was established. They all have the cutaway aspect, but none of them also use the documentary format, the only show that is comparable in this aspect is The Office (both the American and British versions). AD takes the documentary and weaves in the cutaways (or “cutoffs” for those readers who appreciate the humor) to make a new sort of animal. I stand by the idea that many were not used to the new format. Shows like the American version of The Office have made it through the thick of things because while they have a different format (documentary without the laugh track) they have relied heavily on slapstick humor and sometimes crude jokes to appease the masses. Again I cite the fact that AD was not like the rest, and maybe those other shows are still on the air because they give into the masses. AD would not sacrifice its quality which is something to be admired.

Your comment on Ron Howard was just base and rude. The “NOBODY” you speak of must just be you, because Howard is a well-respected actor, director and producer in Hollywood. He’s been nominated for national and international awards: numerous nominations and two awards from The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, numerous Golden Globe and Emmy wins, as well as awards from BAFTA and the Berlin International Film award. So I challenge you to again call “Opie” a washed-up child actor. He might not be acting anymore, but he is active in Hollywood and one of the most accomplished people there. Let us know when you win a major award and perhaps you can try to call Ron Howard a has-been again.

The epilogues at the end of each episode do not lead into the next episode, this is true. You point to this as some kind of a flaw, I see it differently. It adds to the wry humor of the show, and in Seasons Two and Three it is a jab at itself: would there be another episode of Arrested Development? The Network kept cutting them back, they were in danger of being cancelled, so setting up scenes in the next episode is a sarcastic look at its future. Sometimes they are funnier than the scenes in the episodes themselves and these little clips stay in line with the idea of “cutaways” that the show has established.

The density at which you approach the incestuous nature of the family is outstanding. Again you fail to see the painstakingly crafted look at the Bluth family, do you even understand the play with the name Lucille? I also see the incest as a bit of a joke on any upper-class family in any society: they stay within their own blood line because that’s all they know, and also they are trying to maintain their wealth. Incest, as well as every other characteristic of the show, all point greatly to literature along the lines of Shakespeare (who also had a great deal of social and political commentary in his plays). The complexity and self-referencing also shows a great deal of Shakespearean characteristics, I cite the line when Buster finds out that Oscar is his father: “My father is my uncle and my uncle is my father!” is a line almost exactly from Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Shakespeare also deals a lot with magic (GOB fills in there) and there are homosexual undertones (Tobias in AD), and evil women (Lucille Bluth). This points one more time to the quality of the writing and explains the critical acclaim, you can find many articles that reference AD and Shakespeare if you just do an internet search for the two words (at the same time).

Also, in that comment about incest, you decided to take a stab at Liza Minnelli. I will agree with you that she is rather “ick” worthy, but I think this is a good time to list the numerous guest appearances from well-known stars:

Henry Winkler, John F. Beard, Liza Minnelli, Judy Greer, Amy Poehler, Jay Johnston, John Michael Higgins, Ed Begley Jr., Charlize Theron, Dave Thomas, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, James Lipton, Scott Baio, Jerry Minor, Phyllis Smith, Ed Helms, Brian Baumgartner, Craig Robinson, Ben Stiller, Dave Attell, Rob Corddry, Christine Taylor, Zach Braff, Richard Belzer, Ross Gibby, Jim Cramer, Andy Samberg, Jack McBrayer, Jamie Kennedy, Andy Richter, Bob Odenkirk, William Hung and Rob Riggle.

You can find this list on IMDB, I added Phyllis Smith, Brian Baumgartner and Craig Robinson—they are cast members from The Office who have had bit roles on AD. Since you are forever the pessimist and insufferably defiant I am sure that you’ll tell me that these actors are all washed up too. I defy you to throw up at Charlize Theron and I find very telling that James Lipton, film critic and host of Inside the Actor’s Studio, was on Arrested Development. Oh, and would you look at that, Zach Braff, star of Scrubs, was on AD as well. If you don’t know who half of the people are on this list then you’ve not watched enough comedy, especially comedy on cable because a number of these stars were on The Upright Citizen’s Brigade and Mr. Show.

Finally, to bring it all back around, you cite the placement of AD against Monday Night Football as well as the 2006 Winter Olympics. Did you even read that quote? Sure, they put it on before Monday night football in the Mountain and Central time zones, but it was up against football. The people getting ready to watch football do not care about comedy, they care about football. And I don’t even think we should argue about the Winter Olympics. Seriously. Seems to any person with a brain (or any person who has watched enough Law & Order or CSI) that FOX put it up against these two events by the end so that it would have a reason to get rid of it.

What I think a great deal of this argument boils down to is definitely fan base and ratings, I will give you that much in spite of all your meanness toward me and toward the show. The fan base that watches AD now on DVD is a base that often picks up a book before a remote; they were not watching because they rarely watch TV, only word of mouth brought them to their sets. I’ve met many, many fans of the show and often they are avid readers who enjoy a thick plot and serious character construction—the more complex the character the better. If the fans watching were not particularly readers, they were at least appreciators of fast humor and the off-color joke (i.e.incest) that is often found in British humor and is sometimes found in sketch comedy. I wouldn’t be surprised, MB, if you’re not particularly a reader…a show like Arrested Development would surely bore you because you like your 30 minute time slot of funny and then it’s over. The rest of us know that Arrested Development was lost because it was ground-breaking, it didn’t fit into the mold that you and the masses demanded, so it was banished from network television onto DVD where it thrives today. You’ll never know what you’re missing, but that’s your loss. Seems you’ve prematurely shot your wad on what was supposed to be a dry run. Now I’m afraid you’ve got something of a mess on your hands.

Don’t ever talk down to Alice again, and don’t even bother fighting any more about this (or at least next time do better research). Like I said, I can talk you under the table.

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Fox has fallen on their sword before when they've realized they've canceled a quality show and decided to bring it back (Family Guy). There are quality shows that have attempted to go out on top (and slightly missed with a less than spectacular finale...Seinfeld). Now we have Arrested Development (AD for the lazy typers)... a show taht won awards (gasp) and critical acclaim (gee whiz)...and in the long run was canceled due to poor ratings. It was moved around to various time slots, sandwiched in between better shows hoping to glean off their success...but no, it still got horrible ratings because it is indeed a horrible show.

"Discussion which led to the creation of the series began in the summer of 2002. Ron Howard had the original idea to create a comedy in the style of hand-held cameras and reality television, but with an elaborate, highly-comical script resulting from repeated rewritings and rehearsals" ------> doesn't sound to fiscally responsible, does it?

"Arrested Development uses several elements that are rare for American live-action sitcoms. Like a documentary, it often cuts away abruptly from scenes in order to supplement the narrative with material such as security camera footage, Bluth family photos, website screenshots, and archive films. This is a similar but not identical feature to the cutaway segments which appear in comedies such as Family Guy, How I Met Your Mother, ' '30 Rock' ' and Scrubs."---->all shows that ARE STILLL ON THE AIR. with such a can't-miss style, how can a show so stupid and inept still manage to mess it up?

"An omniscient third-person narrator (producer Ron Howard, uncredited)"---->NOBODY cares about washed-up childhood actors. Opie should just die already.

"Almost every episode ends with an epilogue segment called "On the next Arrested Development," in which lingering stories are wrapped up or extended humorously. These segments portray events that do not usually appear in the subsequent episodes."---->hahhaha what a great idea! film stuff that we don't use so people can tune in and not see it. With such potential and such a mismanagement, It's a wonder it was ever released on DVD.

"Several of the major characters of the show are at some stage involved in a plot with incestuous themes"---> seriously? Are these characters so repulsive that they are unable to find some sweet loving outside their gene pool? And when they do (poor Buster), I don't think his choice really makes his case any stronger. Liza Minelli? I think I just threw up.

"For the third season, FOX positioned the show at 8:00 p.m. ET/PT and 7:00 p.m. CT/MT, directly opposite Monday Night Football in the Mountain and Pacific time zones, whereas MNF would not have started yet in the other two. Ratings were even worse than previous seasons. On November 9, 2005, FOX announced that the show would not be airing in November sweeps, and that they had cut the episode order for the third season from 22 to 13. FOX ended up showing the last four episodes in a two-hour timeslot — directly opposite the opening ceremonies of the 2006 Winter Olympics. As a result, the finale received only 3.3 million viewers."----->Again, bouncing it all over the place and yet still nobody will watch it. 3.3 million viewers? Infomercials have those kind of ratings...

So, there is my case, my reasons. I'm sure your band of merry misfits will join together with spears and flaming torches and hunt after the horrible beast that I am, but don't take out your poor taste in television on me. Get yourself some help. Get yourself some cable. Use this new year as a start-over, a mulligan. Deny the Bluth name that has held you down for so long. Get some fresh air. Go for a walk. Be good to others. Go to rehab if necessary. Give money to charity. Get laid. Dance like nobody is watching...and nobody should be watching crappy 'entertainment'.....such as Arrested Development.