Twisting His Words

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Self-Created Realities

As I read further into Reality Hunger, I've begun to understand what David Shields means by the title. The first chapters talked about imitation in language (mimesis), the recurring ideas in art along history, the changes and problems of art in the present and, finally, what reality is. The answer to that, as I've understood, is that there isn't a single definition. Reality is a blur that each of us defines. Shields, using a new genre, is trying to show that the typical ones (fiction, nonfiction, memoirs, etc.) are not enough and that we need a new type of art that helps us understand our realities. 

Did he really look like that?

G-blur
If there is something that I've gotten so far from Reality Hunger is that our defined genres have aged enough and do not work well for our societies. In chapter G, Shields introduces that fiction and nonfiction works cannot be categorized into only one category. In section 205 says, “The poles of fiction and nonfiction are constantly bouncing their force fields back and forth between each other." Although I hadn't thought of it ever before, now I really agree with Shields point. The modernist strict distinctions between genres have fallen apart and are now outdated for people's means of expression. A book nowadays isn't strictly of one of those two genres. 

I've recently read several of David Sedaris' memoirs or essay collections and a biography of Louis XIV. Supposedly both are nonfiction but they're truly just different ways of expression. In chapter G, Shields refers to genres saying "It's all in the art" (section 225), and think it applies to these books. Sedaris shows his reality were he portrays his family in a very biased way. Some books of his books show the same people in different ways. For example, in some personal essays his father is strict and close-minded but in others he is laid back and comforting, showing that there's not one reality. I'm sure that Sedaris works off from actual events but the absurd situations he often writes about include distortions from his memory and desire to make it funnier. His memoirs are fictitious nonfiction. As for Louis XIV's biography, the author constantly cites her sources or mentions facts. The author probably wants her book to be very historically accurate but if you compare her interpretations about the French king with others, you see that there isn't one right version. When someone writes nonfiction, he or she twists it into fiction simply by writing it. There isn't fiction or nonfiction as you would need a single reality to define what each genre is. 

H-now

We live in an age where facts, whether we perceive them as “real” or fictitious, are pushed against us. With the media and social networking showing us a version of what’s happening, and so making us doubt the truthfulness of incidents, we are becoming hungry for reality. I feel that chapters H and I began to introduce Shields’ idea of our reality hunger and what it means. In section 245, Shields presents people’s enigmas in the twenty-first century, which I agree with: 

The culture disseminates greater and greater access to the technology that creates various forms of media. "Ordinary" people's cult of personal celebrity is nurtured by these new modes of communication and presentation and representation. We're all secretly practicing for when we, too, will join the ranks of the celebrated. There used to be a monopoly on the resources of exposure. The rising sophistication of the nonexpert in combination with the sensory overload of the culture makes reality-based and self-reflexive art appealing now. There are little cracks in the wall, and all of us "regular" people are pushing through like water or, perhaps, weeds.

As the excerpt shows, technology clearly changes the rules of sharing. There are several points to note. First is the creation of the "personal celebrity." The superficiality nucleus of society previously seen in social magazines or journalism is now spread over everyone's life. With Facebook, Twitter and Instagram (among thousands of similar websites), everyone can watch their friends' lives and his or her own in a screen, as if everybody cared. Many people communicate with others showing it to everyone (through Facebook) and post everything that happens to them through tweets and, thanks to smartphones, to Instagram, as public figures in the past made public announcements. Now everyone worries about communication, many boost their egos and others destroy theirs.

The other point, the one I like better, is that everyone can share and access knowledge (if you have technology). It is evident that  by sharing new movements can emerge before anyone has time to even notice. People started the revolutions of the Arab Spring because they realized what their situations were and they carried out the revolutions by inciting them online. The twenty-first century will have a lot of social and artistic movements because technology will allow them to grow quickly. The barriers in art and society that were imposed in the past are not longer sustainable for people's necessities and with technology that allows every person to engage globally, they will not survive. Section 245 shows the scenario Shields has described about the rise of postmodernism. 

I-the reality-based community

"People like you are in what we call the reality-based community. You believe that solutions emerge from judicious study of discernible reality. That's not the way the world really works anymore. We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality (judiciously, as you will), we'll act again, creating other realities, which you can study, too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors, and you–all of you–will be left to just study what we do" (Section 253).

I agree with section 253 of Reality Hunger as it supports what I was writing about chapter G. As the world changes to become one in which every person can actually make a difference, art and society change. I do believe in the clichéd saying that everyone can make a difference in the world but only if you have access to technology. Shields mentions this "reality-based" community to show the change to postmodernism. The traditional society of the twentieth century has changed and so have our ways of expression. I suspect Shields will expand on that point specifically in art or literature. 

________________________________________

I read several of my classmates' blogs and I agree to some extent with most of their interpretations of the book. From those that I read, the only that I disagree with was Lina's explanation of section 188. The fragment she quotes says, "I like to write stuff that's only an inch from life." Lina condemns that writer as a liar but if you see it from Shields' perspective there are no lies in art. Just like there isn't fiction or nonfiction or one reality, art cannot be a lie. She sees "unreal" writing as something bad, caused by our bad memory and feelings. I believe that perspective is what Reality Hunger says we need to get rid off. I understood section 188 as an example of the blur in genres and how that's OK.

Ambivalent Writing

After looking back at my research paper, I can see that there were some issues in my writing. Mr Tangen wrote, "I think the paper could have benefited from more coherence, but given the wide scope of the assignment I completely understood," something with which I agree. I believe my paper was good enough but I tried to cover a topic too large for a six-page essay.

What I understood overall from Mr Tangen's comments is that I need to integrate better my ideas throughout my writing and improve my diction. As in most of my writing, I used awkward words that probably only sound OK for students in CNG or people who speak a Spanish-influenced version of English. A lot of times CNG students like me use words that are phonetic translation of words in Spanish but have different meanings or connotations in English. Many of these end up sounding too French or Latin, like in an 18th or 19th century book (as we learned that during that time some people tried to incorporate Latin roots to make English more sophisticated). However, writing like that only sounds pompous or incoherent, not sophisticated. As for explaining my thesis better, or having "more coherence," I think that as I read and write more, I'll improve that. My issues in writing could be seen as all right with a descriptivist point of view but for academic writing, or just writing for school, I do need to improve in those areas. I perceive that by reading and writing more I could improve the issues I had in my research paper. Mr Tangen's comments were very accurate in my opinion and helped me see where I need to improve. 

The Validity of Ideas

In the few chapters that I’ve read of Reality Hunger, Shields has begun to question what is plagiarism and whether we really should abstain from using others’ ideas. The whole structure of the book uses others’ work for his creation and he progressively (or the fragments he uses) talks more about what copying means. In chapter “D” he quotes, “When I worked at a newspaper, we were routinely dispatched to ‘match’ a story from the Times: to do a new version of someone else’s idea. But if we had ‘matched’ any of the Times’s words… it could have been a firing offense.” Shields shows that we are always using others’ ideas no matter what. Even if you are some type of genius, your knowledge has its roots in what other people have thought or discovered. Shields asks, if we are using others’ ideas, then why is it so wrong to use their words? Any work, as Reality Hunger shows, needs information or allusions from other works or people.

Chapter “D” was interesting because it dealt with memoirs, a genre we’ve discussed in class. Shield criticizes memoirs as they are accounts of information. Everyone in the US does them and becomes famous with them. He points out that we shouldn’t try to “frame reality” as even people who write about themselves make up things. Basically he says that all language is rhetorical so we should not look at it in such a restricting way.

JT Leroy

While reading the book I thought it was interesting that not even a person’s ideas are “OK” if they’re not properly presented, according to social standards. Shields mentions JT Leroy several times, and in one point refers to him as a hoax. I looked him up and found out that Jeremiah Terminator Leroy was a pseudonym for Laura Albert, an American writer. Leroy made public appearances and even signed documents, making everyone believe that he was an actual person that wrote in The New York Times, but as soon as Laura Albert was exposed, everyone began attacking her and she was even convicted of fraud. I found this interesting as it shows how superficial society can be with copyrights. It doesn’t actually matter whether Albert or Leroy wrote the articles. What should matter are the new ideas, if she had any, found in her writing. Society shouldn’t limit creativity by having compulsive rules because they destroy the development of literature and knowledge. 

Artistic Breakthroughs

As art progresses and changes, it moves in a spiral pattern that is always trying to go forward but comes up with similar situations that it had in the past. The way humans express themselves always changes as their cultures and societies change with history. David Shields' book, Reality Hunger, begins by describing how artistic movements seek to express ideas in a new way by breaking barriers of their communication of how they see the world. Shields introduces that art in the present (around 2010) is taking new forms like literary montage given that people like him, "needn't say anything. Merely show." People in the present are putting reality in their works by combining ideas together rather than saying them. The author describes this moment of history as a breakthrough in art but a hundred years ago, and in many other points in history, art also faced a point where it needed new means of expression. F. T. Marinetti in  "The Futurist Manifesto" excites a new artistic movement fueled by the technology and speed of modernity. Marinetti wanted to reanimate life and society in Italy in 1910 just like Shields wants to change literature in the present. Manifestos, as shown by the two authors, are calls for change and propositions of new ways of looking at things, in this case art. Both manifestos, "The Futurist Manifesto" and Reality Hunger, show how art is constantly facing moments in which it has to reshape itself to keep up with culture and ideas.

The two manifestos show different attitudes taken to solve the same problem: the need for new means of expression. While Shields proposes a technique that embraces others' ideas, Marinetti declares that he wants to separate from the past and create a new movement that does not "repeat those infamous words." Shields' perspective is somewhat similar to Borges' theory on writing. The Argentinian writer believed that his work was not much of an accomplishment as all he wrote was the product of someone else's ideas. In "The Circular Ruins" ("Las ruinas circulares"), Borges suggests that we are the synthesis of what other people have created. In another short story, "Pierre Menard, Author of Don Quixote," he suggests that literature is simply rewriting things as authors show them in their perspectives. Although he does not write literary collages like Shields, Borges does use a lot of intertextuality to show the same point. They believe that humans' art has always had plagiarism and elements taken from others. To accurately show reality through art, Shields suggests, we must put our ideas as we need to even if it involves using others' creations. Marinetti's manifesto shows how art in different historical situations requires different changes. In his time he felt that it needed to rejuvenate to catch up with the new fast-moving generation. The world was faster and better, according to him, so going back to the past was a mistake. The artistic movement that aroused after his critique sort of destroyed the ideas of the past, as Dadaism did. The two manifestos show how different scenarios require different types of art and different ways to change it. 

Speech Memorabilia

America is undoubtedly a melting pot, but for melting doesn't mean homogenization. Episode four of The Story of English explained the origins of Black English, while episode five showed how "American English" came to be. The former says that Africans contributed to English, while the latter states that the immigration of Germans, Italians and Jews, among others, "enriched American speech" (part VII, 1:18). This British production, which has identified all types of British speech as equally significant, oversimplifies dialects in America and refers to a specific American tongue. There is certainly an Italian way of speaking that is very different to that of African Americans, but neither can be referred to as the country's language. American speech has infinite versions and accents that may vary in frequency, but never can they be more correct. Languages grow to adapt to new situations in life and as the US is one of the most populated countries, it has had a lot of scenarios in which more ways of expressing oneself is needed. English has grown as it accommodates immigrants and people adapt to new technology and lifestyles.

As I watched the shows, I could see that a lot of the things that influenced what episode six defines as "American language" are still going on in different ways. The show mentioned that forty-niners (who were called like that even though the gold rush began in 1848) brought in new phrases to English, like referring to a good business as a gold mine, because new situations brought in new words into people's everyday lives (part III, 3:00).  Nowadays language is adopting new words that the technology rush is creating. In this moment I'm blogging, making me a blogger, different from tweeters who prefer microblogging. Bloggers write about all types of subjects; there are eco-bloggers, mummy bloggers and blogonistas. Everything is bloggable in the blogosphere. As people's lives change, language must progress for people to be able to express their ideas and communicate. In the present, if English didn't accommodate technology, it would die because people wouldn't be able to communicate what influences most of everyday life.

A dynamic language is also necessary for supporting people's identity's. Cowboys (or cowmans or cowhands) aspire to be called "hands" (part IV, 3:00), showing how new lifestyles expand language as new identities are formed. The hacker community has created new words that describe the types of technology people there are. 4chan refers to people as "newfags," "oldfags," "Amerifags," "moralfags," all terms that refer to different types of users. It might have started as offensive but as people discovered a necessity to use those words they just became normal 4chan slang.
As for cultural identity, episode six shows the life around Little Italy and how Italian filtrated into English in that environment. The American melting pot isn't only made up of white Europeans--immigrants from all ethnicities, cultures and regions of the world arrive to the US and contribute to its society. Italians aren't massively arriving to the US, but Persians (or Iranians), among many others, do continue to migrate. People are starting to recognize formally the persian neighborhood of Los Angeles as Tehrangeles, showing how America continues to accommodate new cultures and languages. "American English" has a lot of words from Persian, like "assassin," "alfalfa," or "bronze." English probably adopted these words from a long time ago, but it shows that all types of immigration have affected the language.


As the evolution of English in the US shows, language changes as people's lives change. When new cultural aspects begin to influence, language must change to allow its speakers to progress. If a language didn't progress and stayed in the way people communicated in the past, people wouldn't be able to engage in modern life and either they would use another language and have a static culture. By listening to American English you can see that it has taken in words from many cultures and historical situations.

Rhythmical Languages

Sub-Saharan Africans have had a distinct way of living throughout history that has been obscured by the more powerful civilizations that rule the world today. As the Western civilization started intruding the different African cultures, their social structure started collapsing and their history became a very violent one. The world, including isolated African regions, tends to see the Western type of living as the correct, and perhaps understands some aspects of other major civilizations, like the Chinese or Indian, but many features of African societies are misunderstood and wrongly observed as primitive. As I watched episode five of The Story of English, I noted how many African languages used singing and music as part of their communication. I remembered from a (boring) SAT practice passage I had read long ago that African music cannot be studied or understood as Western music is--it should be seen instead from a linguistic point of view. So I guess I'll try.

Around 70,000 years ago, Homo sapiens started to move out of Africa, making the story of humankind to begin bifurcating for the first time. The original population of humans divided into two groups: those who stayed and those who left. The ones who left eventually branched off to populate the rest of the world, but for a while, they remained as the groups which the powerful civilizations of the present may call ancestors. Those who left built their way of living as their migrated to different continents, but those who stayed in Africa didn't need to adapt much. When comparing genetics, there is Africa and then the rest of the world. I will refer to Sub-Saharan Africans as just Africans, which otherwise could include Northern Africans which came from those who left and then went back many thousands of years later.

The static circumstances of African culture kept people from needing something more of it. While in places like Europe more technology was necessary for surviving, simple tribal structures allowed Africans to live just fine. However, as most humans do, they did want entertainment. They did need to persuade others of political ideas or change their ways of living, but they did need to have some sort of  amusement and to connect with family members. The only thing that was needed from language was to be fun and to keep the communities together. I don't know the origin of music or singing, but at some point of African history it started to merge with language as it was a solution for what Africans wanted. Perhaps it was also like that outside Africa but other problems of live forced people to change their community life and eventually drop the importance of musical rituals. Most African languages are tonal languages, meaning that pitch is a part of their speech  and that it determines the meaning of words (like saying to present vs saying a present). Understanding this concept might be difficult for English speakers as the language is more technical and, for some time, less flexible. The way I get it might sound silly, but the original African languages were sort of chants that could mix well with music. Rather than having melodies, original African songs were simply methods of communication putting more emotion into the rhythm. The music of community rituals was speaking in a more artistic way.

The Gullah woman on The Story of English (parts I and II) makes her family sing and dance like slaves used to do as a way to pass on her African heritage to the next generations, using oral tradition as common in Africa. Just like African tribes used to gather around in musical rituals, the woman uses music as part of communicating with her ancestors. African communication goes way beyond the cold Nordic purely verbal relationships--it is about showing emotions vividly. As you can see in Colombia, regions influenced the most by Africans have warmer relations, like in the coast, but the far away mountain cities that didn't have slaves have a distant way of interacting, like in Bogota. I can certainly witness that interactions between Puerto Ricans are very direct, warm, emotive and use tone (and volume) as a way to show one's feeling. My mom believes she can justify yelling by saying it's her "Puerto Rican tone," one which allows you to talk mockingly, daringly and fervently.

As the TV series showed, because of the social circumstances in which African culture came into America, racist people burden aspects of its language. The whole structure of having a "superior" class makes   As I watched the Gullah people on the show, I remembered reading an article about the Melungeon, an ethnic group (with dark skin) of Southeastern America who were lately devastated to find out that they were not descendant of the Portuguese or Turkish immigrants who somehow might have arrived in colonial times. After having their DNA checked out, Melungeons found out they descend from Africans. How come?

The dislike of African Americans was pointless and didn't keep the immigrant culture from influencing the new one. The community musical traditions of many African cultures mixed together to form a new one that slaves did in plantations, as the Gullah woman says. African Americans brought a more musical way of living to the New World that eventually lead to new genres of music. Episode five showed African tribes' music and later on all the types of music that came from it (part II 3:16). American mainstream music through the past century has been greatly affected by Black artists. Just like The Story of English shows in parts V, VI and VII, the Harlem Renaissance and all the rap movement has had African influences. English wouldn't be what it's now if Africans had never gotten to America.



Source:

"Black on White." The Story of English. Wrti. Robert MacNeil, Robert McCrum and William Cran. MacNeil-Lehrer Productions and BBC, 1986. Youtube.