[Dictator as in ‘Someone who dictates’, not the Castro
persuasion.]
I’m giving this the optional title of the Dictator’s
Manifesto because a) it’s funny and b) Andrea mentions The Dictator’s Book club
in her very first post so I wanted to pay homage to that.
While reading Andrea’s blog I found myself nodding my head a
lot. How wonderful! Someone who thinks like me. And then there were blogs that
I sort of turned my head like a confused dog because she was talking about
Medieval subject matter. But she did so in such an engaging way that I was able
to easily follow along. I thoroughly enjoyed this different perspective on the
subjects we’ve been discussing in class. Andrea has a wonderfully eloquent way
of expressing herself with carefully selected grammar and well-crafted
sentences. I do not have this gift. I often run out of patience when I spell
check, let alone check for good vocab usage. But, she proved me wrong in the
sense that… I find it damn near impossible to write scholarly and keep things
fresh and engaging. And she has. I suggest she start offering lessons. I’ll be
the first in line.
So, the blog. There are two elements that I want to focus on
in Andrea’s blog and that is her Initial Emotional Responses and her
Investigation of said responses.
When I first started reading the blog I found that our
thinking seemed very similar, in that she responded with how she feels. Her
most recent post that discuses Awkward Family Photos was fantastic. And what I
love about that topic, and something I’m interested in, is that the franchise
of the Awkward Family Photos is successful because of the Initial Emotional
Response that it creates with it’s audience.
I think it’s wonderful that as soon as an image loads on our computer,
no matter how long we wait for the Internet to load faster, we know that we are
going to laugh when we connect all the pieces of that picture. I’m interested
in this as a writer and how can we translate image to test and (as a playwright)
back to image. Andrea takes this one step further. She doesn’t just stop and
the reaction she has (which I assume was nothing short of hysterical laughter)
like I do. But instead investigates it further. She asks questions. She ends
her blog with the observation that it seems in Cosplay, men get more
opportunities while women seem purely sexualized. She brings up the issue of
race and why isn’t there a black family in medieval garb? (It’s not like
they’re going for accuracy.) So I appreciate immensely this further
investigation on reaction. It’s wonderful.
The moment that I fell in love with the blog though was
September 27’s post. The first sentence declares: “I hated Don Giovanni.” This
is the kind of writing that I love. I struggled throughout this semester with
the readings because I felt like I had to sift through so much to get to what
the writer was trying to tell me, what their opinion on the subject was. And
here, Andrea nailed it down. She hated Don Giovani. Period. End of discussion.
Yes, she goes into wonderful detail of all the factors that made her feel this
emotion… but at the end of the day, guys. She hated it! But again, this was
another moment that I could truly learn from Andrea’s style of blogging. She
didn’t just go on a two-page rant on how Opera is justifying this elitism in
art (like I did in my blog). She used her personal experience and justified why
she felt this way in a very sensible manner. She took everything to task. The
script. The characters. The actors. Even her seating may have had something to
do with why she disliked this production so much. It was a tremendous articulation on her
initial response.
As the blog continues I felt like I was sitting down with
Andrea. Her voice shined through that Blogspot with crystal clarity. Her
attention on her reaction to events (the man who needed a stretcher at the
lecture, 9/11, child actors, etc) was well versed and well focused.
This blog, I’ve come to the conclusion, is a great example
of how I wanted my blog to be. This is a class on performance studies. What
Andrea successfully has done in her blog is look at her reaction as an audience
member to certain performances and analyzed it. She studied the performance by
studying herself as an audience member. I did not do that. I acted purely as an
audience member and if I didn’t like something. I said it. And if I liked
something. I gushed over it. Andrea was able to extrapolate on this duality
that is within us all. She let herself have the reaction as an audience member,
and then, as a performance studies ‘investigator’, dissected her reaction so
she could further understand why she felt that way.
So Kudos, Andrea! For a fascinating and fun time. I was
learning and didn’t even know it. It was like Zoom! on PBS. (Do you remember
that show? Ah. That show was so cool. I wanted to be on it so bad.)
PS. There is so much that I didn't focus on that Andrea worked hard on in her blog. This connection between science fiction and Medieval garb fascinates me and I think the conversation they are in together is very exciting.
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