Sunday, January 25, 2009

So, it's been hard to wrap my mind around this book, yet I'm not sure if I'm supposed to be able to. I surprised constantly by the behavior and lifestyles of the characters. Especially when the man uses frogs' eggs as lubricant and then Ali cums into a jar where the eggs turned into little frogs. I can't help but be disgusted by the idea of this actually happening. I fall into the pattern where I don't want to read anymore because it's so choppy and hard to understand, but I get lost in these chaotic missions or sections where the absurdity of the situations is unbelievable. I constantly compare it to our society and our lifestyles, and how what seems perfectly open and normal to these characters would be spat upon by our society. Our society constantly bears down the pressure that sex is sacred and supposed to be between a married couple. Yet, MOST people don't abide by those "rules" or don't admit to breaking them. Being promiscuous is considered a bad thing for a woman, but for a man it's not seen as a big issue. There are no women in the story, which is interesting to me and I wonder why that is. Perhaps if the characters were women our reaction as the audience would be different towards the character. Would we have an emotional connection with the woman and feel sorry for her because she was being taken advantage of? And we don't feel this way because the characters are male and we assume that they wouldn't let it happen if they didn't want to let it happen? The sex is so casual and there's no emotional connection between the people involved and its such a masculine way of looking at sex, if there were women in the story the dynamic would change drastically.

2 comments:

  1. If we are talking about intimacy--then isn't a text which gives you the illusion of emotions instead of real emotions even worse than this text in what it is trying to do to you?

    Looking at romantic films shouldn't we be appalled at the show of emotions between two characters in a film? If emotions are so important to us then shouldn't we be terrified by a film that makes us feel a certain way?

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  2. Why would we be terrified of something important? We get emotional when we're able to connect with the characters of a story and something happens to them. Bourroughs never allows you to relate to the characters so I never connect with them enough to become emotionally involved in what's going on.

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