The Home Page · The Integral Worm · My Resume · My Show Car · My White Papers · Organizations I Belong To
Technical Writing · Exposition & Argumentation · Grammar and Usage of Standard English · The Structure of English · Analysis of Shakespeare · Analysis of Literary Language
Advanced Professional Papers · The History of the English Language · First Internship: Tutoring in a Writing Workshop · Second Internship: Advanced Instruction: Tutoring Writing
Visual Literacy Seminar (A First Course in Methodology) · Theories of Communication & Technology (A Second Course in Methodology) · Language in Society (A Third Course in Methodology)
UMBC'S Conservative Newspaper: "The Retriever's Right Eye" · UMBC'S University Newspaper: "The Retriever Weekly" · Introduction to Journalism · Feature Writing · Science Writing Papers
|
 |
Non-fiction Creative Essay 1 · Non-fiction Creative Essay 2 · Non-fiction Creative Essay 3 · Non-fiction Creative Essay 4
Non-fiction Creative Essay 5 · Non-fiction Creative Essay 6 · Non-fiction Creative Essay 7 · Non-fiction Creative Essay 8
Non-fiction Creative Essay 9 · Non-fiction Creative Essay 10
During a brainstorming session while taking a non-fiction workshop we were instructed to write a few themes for possible essays and then exchange them with our neighbor to discuss them. I exchanged ideas with a gifted young woman who composed some intellectually stimulating essays and wrote in such elegant language, I considered her one of the better writers in the class. This young woman provided me with inspiration that I found impossible to explore at the time because I already had 12 other essays in my mind's queue. Two years later I have cleared those essays out of my mind and finally can consider her spark of inspiration.
I am at least twenty-five years the young woman's senior so most likely I'm her father's age. As with most fathers, this question probably would elicit an extreme emotional reaction due to the subject matter or that the inquiry would land too close to home to have a serious intellectual exchange. The subject matter dealt with relationships between men and women. She asked, "Why do men when they first see a woman they desire, look at her as if she was a piece of meat?" At first I thought she mean young men, but I dismissed this because this problem exists with men of all ages.
There is only one look but four different meanings to the look. Our heroine, Rita, in the English sit-com Butterflies said that there is one look but they have two different meanings. In one of her many monologues, Rita described love. "We are all children chasing butterflies. We see them, we want them, we chase them, and we try to catch them. Once you catch them you open your hand and there it lies, squashed in your hand." Rita also said there are two looks, but they both look the same. "The first look given by a married person says, 'Please rescue me.' A single person without love gives the second look, 'Please rescue me.' So how do you distinguish between the two looks?" Rita could not resolve the paradox and neither can I. But what she had not considered is two more looks exist, identical to the first two. The third look appears the same as the first two and is the look my classmate described, representing hunger and loneliness as the first two, but also contains wanton lust and desire.
Lust is a peculiar word that we think we know the meaning of but many do not and it has taken on two meanings in modern language. Most of us associate this word with negative connotations such as intense, unrestrained, obsessive, overwhelming, passionate sexual desire or craving. If one looks carefully at the words used in describing lust, these words only bear negative connotations if the person we lust for does not posses reciprocal emotions. Therefore, lust can also take on positive connotations if the person being lusted for shares the same strong desires as the person who lusts.
According to the Christian Holy Bible, Romans 1:21, "Lust, the origin of sin, has its place in the heart, not of necessity, but because it is the center of all mortal forces and impulses and of spiritual activity." Mark 4:19 says, "'lusts' are objects of desire." Therefore for Christians who follow their faith, lust is a sinful longing or the inward which leads to the falling from God. The biblical meaning is probably the meaning James Joyce's character, Stephen Dedalus in A Portrait of the Artist Young Artist as a Young Man, refers to even though Dedalus never comes out and quotes the biblical verse, when he uses the word lust.
The last look is the same as the other three but its meaning is misunderstood. A person who has reached intellectual maturity gives the fourth look even though it appears the same as the other three looks. Michael Savage, a talk show host on WCBM, presented an eloquent argument.
A man sees a vivacious eloquent woman in summer dress bending into the trunk of her vehicle in a short summer dress. Only a dead man would not notice her. The intellectually mature man understands she is not an object of possession or a butterfly that he must pursue in order to possess. Moreover, the pleasure derived from observing her is the same as the pleasure derived from observing the beauty of a passing cloud or a work of art. The man understands that he cannot posses the cloud or the work of art or the woman, but stands in awe of her beauty drinking in the image. All he may ever have is the enjoyment of admiring the woman and the pleasure he derives from a momentary snapshot in time. "This is a beautiful woman and within that beauty one observes God's divine inspiration within her. She establishes a connection with God enforcing the fact that God exists and she represents one of God's creations to be enjoyed and not for possession, for one can no more posses the woman anymore than one can posses God.
Stephen Dedalus in James Joyce's novel, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, develops a convincing argument as to what beauty is through his studies of Plato, Aristotle, Saint Augustine and Thomas Aquinas. Stephen notes that one must know whether the words in the argument are used in according to literary tradition or whether the words are used according to commonplace traditions. He notes a difference exists. The distinguishing difference between moral beauty and material beauty is that moral beauty is universal. It moves the emotions towards the spiritual and possess an element from the divine. Material beauty is relative and moves the emotions towards desire and loathing. Moral beauty represents the true beauty, which is what Dedalus chooses to explore in his argument. What my classmate asked me to explore was the look invariably generated by material beauty, hence the exploration continues.
Dedalus encounters a girl on the beach. Stephen is walking along the shore and encounters a girl enjoying the surf with her skirt hiked up to her hips. He describes her long hair as "touched with the wonder of mortal beauty, her face." Stephen continues and describes his own emotions upon observing her saying,
"...when she felt his presence and the worship of his eyes her eyes turned to him in quiet sufferance of his gaze, without shame or wantonness. Long, long she suffered his gaze and then quietly withdrew her eyes from his and bent them towards the stream..."
The girl blushes as she looks down. Stephen describes himself as turning away from her suddenly with "his cheeks aflame; his body aglow; his limbs trembling" and that he "sung wildly to the sea." Stephen said,
"Her image passed into his soul and no word had broken the holy silence of his ecstasy. Her eyes had called him and his soul had leaped to the call. To live to er, to fall, to triumph, to recreate life out of life... the angel of mortal youth and beauty, an envoy from the fair courts of life thrown open before him in an instant of ecstasy the gates of all the ways of error and glory"
This incident allows him to develop his premise. The encounter with the girl represents material beauty. Stephen later understands that his emotions moved towards desire and loathing. Loathing is the object we run from and desire is the object we run towards. Stephen says that these "feelings are excited by improper art and are kinetic" or in other words, by purely reflex reactions of the nervous system and without them propagation of the species would not exist. Therefore the beauty of the girl does not inspire "esthetic emotions not only because they are kinetic" or purely reflex, but that these emotions are "no more than physical." We run from that which we dread and "respond to the stimulus" of what we desire. Esthetic emotions are not kinetic but static. "The mind becomes arrested and raised above desire and loathing."
Plato developed what is known as The Theory of Forms. These forms are perfect structures, perfect arrangements or perfect blueprints of an idea. They are absolutes. Plato said there exists a perfect blueprint of the idea of beauty somewhere beyond space and time, meaning that the form or blueprint does not exist in the physical world. The Form of Beauty is perfect beauty and can only be seen by the mind through insight and not by the senses. An insight of beauty is a perfect mental view of beauty. Plato's concept of The Form of Beauty is equivalent to Dedalus' concept of Moral Beauty.
Plato argued that Beauty and Beautiful are not synonymous . Beauty is an absolute and only exists as an idea. When we say that something possesses beauty, what we actually mean is that something is beautiful, which is a relative. The object possesses qualities of beauty but it is not the perfect form of beauty. As an example, many people say Brittany Spears is beautiful. But the word "many" implies that there is at least one person on earth who does not consider Brittany Spears beautiful. Therefore Brittany Spears is not the ideal form or the perfect form of beauty. Brittany Spears is not beauty itself because Plato would argue that "pleasure in beauty is disinterested. Pleasure in beauty is desire-free. The girl Stephen observed falls into the category of beautiful and not beauty itself. Stephen found the girl agreeable, hence he felt desire in observing her.
James Joyce wrote his novel in 1916. Pornography existed but as an underground cult during his time. In our time, pornography exists everywhere and is easily accessible. This proliferation has perverted the look. This is the look my classmate referred to. It is this degradation of men and women that has created perversion in thought and action. It has been said that thought corrupts language and language corrupts thought. In this case, the visual media of pornography corrupts thought and makes the look a perversion.
The look the young woman, Michael Savage, and I are speaking about is not the same as the one Stephen Dedalus described. The look has gone through an evolution of sorts and not for the better. It has become a perversion or an abomination. So what changed the look? Actually this is a stupid question, because we all know what changed the look: Pornography changed the look.
Amber Sampson wrote a newspaper article entitled, "Pornography and Romantic Relationships are Mutually Exclusive," which appeared in the UMBC Weekly Retriever, I agreed fully with the views she expressed in her article. Sampson did miss a subtle point that pornography also demoralizes men. First, for men, there is a complete separation from intimacy. In pornography the sex act is always emphasized. Rarely is there any kissing or real exchange of affection leading up to the sex act which creates a disconnect from intimacy.
Secondly, all sex is distorted and perverted in pornography. What is shown in pornography is not what goes on in most bedrooms. Pornography is not normal human sexuality or human sexual relations. Therefore, many men get the impression from pornography that if their partner isn't clawing the paint off the ceiling, they aren't satisfying their lover. This leads to inadequacies on the part of men.
Many people are not as auditory as pornography would like us to think. This leads to another inadequacy that if we're not auditory, then we are not enjoying our lover's affections. There is also the physical appearance of the male, which also equates into the inadequacy equation. As a woman viewer may be comparing her own physical appearance to the actress, the same intimidation subconsciously goes through the male viewer's mind watching the actor. This creates further anxieties for men.
Last, there is a component of degradation that extends beyond the pornography industry. According to popular advertising, a man is inadequate if he's not ready 24/7 and thinking about sex every one and a half minutes. This in itself is an aberration and a misconception. Obviously, if sex was the only thing on a man or woman's mind then how would we have made the accomplishments we have made so far as a society? In addition, if this was true there would be no need for Viagra.
Viagra has two interesting implications about male inadequacy. One, that pornography has desensitized the male psyche to the point that many men are no longer simply turned on through normal human sexuality. The second implication is a man needs artificial stimulation to adequately satisfy his lover. Pornography degrades both men and women, therefore society in general.
The pornography in James Joyce's time was no where near as graphic nor was it as readily available as it is today. Pornography has infiltrated everywhere and into everything. Pornography is drilling down into an earlier and earlier age group to where most children by the age of nine have seen some form of pornography somewhere. The problem other than sexualizing children is this: the more commonplace pornography becomes, the more insensitive we become and the younger the person is when introduced to it, the more likely the mind is to accept that these are normal sexual relations. Pornography is not normal sexual relations nor is it normal human sexuality. The more it is pushed into the mainstream and the earlier its introduced into one's life, the more likely pornography is to become accepted as normal sexual relations.
It has been known for some time now that men are sexually stimulated through vision more so than women. Women tend to be more cerebral and rely more on imagination within the mind and rely less on visuals for sexual stimulation. Therefore, pornography is eye candy for men. Dr. Mary Anne Layden, of the University of Pennsylvania, on November 18, 2004, reported to a Congressional hearing that she had determined through her research that pornography mirrors the addition of crack and cocaine. Through the use of MRI brain scans, she determined that the orgasm in the male mind while viewing pornography is a higher high than that received from crack or cocaine. Dr. Layden Mary Anne Layden is the co-director of a sexual trauma program at the University of Pennsylvania.
When one half of society looses or in this case becomes perverted, the other half of society also looses. As more and more men's thoughts on normal human sexual relations become perverted through pornography, this places women in one of two positions. Either women have to succumb to the perversion and accept this perversion as normal sexual relations for intimacy's sake or women must search high and low for a man whose sexuality has not been perverted by pornography.
There is no problem when like minds meet, when either both minds have a normal view of human sexuality or when both minds have a perverse view of human sexuality. Bear in mind that the perverse mind thinks that their view is normal. When two opposite minds meet, the problem begins. The normal mind recognizes the perversion in their partner's mind and has either two choices, either become like the perverse mind or get out of the relationship. The perverse mind doesn't understand the difference because in their mind, the perverse view is normal to them. As with an alcoholic or a drug addict, no one can help them until they hit bottom and then they have to help themselves.
Obviously, my classmate is of the normal mindset, is well enough to recognize the look of the perverse mind, and knows enough to steer clear of the perverse mind. On the other hand, the mind that is normal but does not recognize the perverse look is drawn in thinking that it is healthy lust and not perverse lust and gets caught up in the perversion, thinking that this is normal human sexuality when it is not.
The problem with the perversion as Henry Miller said to Anais Nin, "Unknown pleasures give way to more unknown pleasures." It becomes a downward spiral as one explores further and further. The problem is similar a drug addict in search of the ultimate high. Many heroin addicts refer to the perfect high as the perfect kiss, or known throughout literature as the kiss of death. Michael Crichton in his novel, Rising Sun, introduced many readers to the perverse practice of the perfect orgasm, which is accomplished through mild asphyxiation. The lover either puts their hand around their partner's throat or uses a scarf to arrest breathing for a moment during orgasm to heighten the sensation of ecstasy, if they are lucky enough to survive the act.
The answer to the young woman's question, "Why do men look at women like they are a piece of meat," is that these men are of the third form of the look, the ones whose minds have been perverted by pornography. If you recognize this look, all I can say is walk away for this is not the place where you want to be for the rest of your life, unless you have a like mind.
The Home Page · The Integral Worm · My Resume · My Show Car · My White Papers · Organizations I Belong To
Contact Me · FAQ · Useful Links