ellen gets all gushy yet intellectual
10.02.02 @ 4:42 p.m.
Shhhhhh..... I'm hiding out from my Nazi RA. There's a mandatory meeting tonight, you see, and I ducked out. The hall is eerily quiet. I don't want to get in trouble, but, damn, what can she really do to me? I'm too timid for my own good. Hey, what can I say? I don't want my shining Saunders-inspired Shakespeare-British-accent exuberhance (I just know I misspelled that) to be killed mercilessly by that bitch, Danae. I'm not community minded, I guess. I just don't fucking want to partcipate.
Damn. I'm not even there and this is harshing my "I have the greatest teacher EVER" buzz. DAMN HER. Damn my own cowardice, too, I suppose. Whatever the consequence... I'm not really here. Heh heh heh. I'm so stupid.
So, edited highlights from my bloody brilliant Shakepeare class. First, I'll say we're reading Titus Andronicus, which is kind of fun in it's mad orgy of violence. I keep noticing how many times the word 'hand' is used. Now I need to keep an eye out for the word 'honor' and Titus' death-driven ideals of nobility. This is the fucking greatest class ever. (And not just because my teacher frequently says 'fuck' in his charming British accent, though that adds a great deal to my own personal delight in the course.)
Aaron, says my prof, is the original badass. That's true (like I'm going to contradict him when I'm so clearly a flighty idiot when it comes to him?) (It is a monument to how much I enjoy this class that I took three pages of notes at least, and I didn't start right away until he gave us a pointed look and said "You might be writing this down..." This is not even counting all the notes I took while reading the text.
He did this fantastic rant about Saturninus and how his claim to the throne is that he is a first born son, despite the fact that Rome in this play is a democracy. He started shouting about how George W. Bush should not be president and how it goes against the very concept of democracy. Most students laughed heartily in a way that says "Very good, very over the top, we think this is funny because we agree with you." A real Republican would be offended, I think. A later comment on Marcus, Titus' brother, brought forth a quip about Jeb Bush not doing too badly himself.
The moral might be that good people get fucked over. How refreshing is it, after all the repressive years of high school, to have a teacher say 'fuck' all the time and talk very frankly about the sexual nature of what we are dealing with. (And this play is very clearly sexual, no doubts about that.) Aaron is a badass. He's this reviled object of racism, but his first speech (about Tamora) is basically "I've got this bitch on a string." Or, as Saunders put it, "She loves the Aaron Love Machine."
I know I sound like such an intellectual prig (count all the times I've gone all British on this entry... bad, bad, bad. It's only one short step to inadvertantly mocking my professor) by going on for an entire entry about SHAKESPEARE, but, well, I don't honestly think I have ever had a class I have so looked forward to attending. I have only to lament that it's a two day a week class rather than three. The reading isn't that tough (at least for me) apart from sorting out who's who. I did have a bit of a problem establishing who exactly was dead when Titus killed Mutius. Martius was still up and about, and I kept going "No, wait, he's dead!" etc. I might go all Jane Austen and start doing etc. as &c.
Speaking of Jane, I shall reward my diligent study of Shakespeare with some Austen fanfic, or at least I will once I make sure I don't have masses of Italian homework. And maybe I'll prevail upon myself to do some other things, like history and journalism reading. (I am a naughty, procrastinating girl.)
Hurrah, it sounds as if the dreadful meeting has broken up and I can emerge from my hole.
Previously
fuck it @ 08.01.05
fanciful imaginary sea voyages to come @ 07.20.05
*dies* @ 07.19.05
more ootp @ 07.17.05
harry potter: driving our children into devil worship @ 07.17.05
