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I love Lord Byron and am piecing together a future post featuring him as the Byronic Hero, but for now this post will have to do.

Lord Byron was a British poet during the Romantic period (early 1800s), and was Romantic in every sense and breath of the word; in fact, he helped give it its definition. A complicated figure, he was often misunderstood, and was once described by a close female acquaintance as being “mad, bad and dangerous to know.” Critics cited him for being bold and crass because (amongst other things) he described feelings and actions that were taboo subjects during his time; but did he care? Pffft, no. He did what he wanted.

Here he is in his "exotic" Albanian attire. A lot of people thought this was really weird, but look at him, look at that face, he is owning this outfit.

Despite his obvious flaws, his writing propelled him into the national spotlight and he became one of Britian’s greatest celebrities. I wrote a paper for one of my English classes titled “A Rock Star’s First Kiss: Hedonism and Moral Reform in Lord Byron’s ‘The First Kiss of Love.’” In the essay I talk about why Lord Byron became such a huge phenomenon. His rockstar status got to the point where there were even Lord Byron collecter’s edition plates made–yes, this guy was a big deal; it is no exaggeration to call him one of the world’s first major celebrities.

In case you have ever wondered what exactly it is that an English major does during his or her four years of college, here is the introduction to my essay about Byron that I wrote last summer:

Often hailed as “the first rock star,” the Romantic celebrity Lord Byron’s fame came from both his literature and his life. In her essay, “Tainted Love and Romantic Literary Celebrity,” Clara Tuite defines celebrity as “the point at which the public figure engages interest at the level of private life,” and she establishes Byron’s celebrity through his notorious “love life” (60). Coined “Byromania” by his wife, Byron’s life and literature were peddled fodder to the gossip-hungry, scandal-starved British public. With the public’s interest engaged, his personal life entered theirs. In awe, his many critics (both in and after his time) have wondered what exactly it was about this man that ignited a nation’s—and eventually a world’s—avid interest. The answer: unabashed hedonism. Incubated in the liberal precepts of the romantic period, and schooled in the life of hard knocks, the Byronic Hero emerged, cranked up the literary volume, and shattered the mold of canty, prude prose perpetuated by the enlightenment, harbored by religion, and worshiped by tradition. One of Byron’s earliest poems, “The First Kiss of Love” (1806), written in his teenage years, evidences his budding hedonistic propensities and his brazen angst with the culture’s restrictive mores. Byron wrote during a period of great political, societal, moral, and religious change; and while his readers may not have openly shared his sentiments, they were enthralled and captivated by them. This captivation led to fanaticism, creating fans, and giving birth to the first “modern celebrity,” something Mark Bostridge equates to “the modern rock star” (1). As a result of his literature, the ensuing public interest in, and fascination with, Byron’s debaucheries exhibited a shift in social morality, and a tolerance for decadent behavior that was formerly unspoken taboo. A close reading of, “The First Kiss of Love,” not only establishes Byron’s unabashed hedonism, it hint’s at his generation’s moral restlessness, appetite for relinquished religiosity, and desire for a liberated life, even if it is to be lived vicariously.

Good stuff right? Now I bet you’re just dying to read the rest of the essay. In any case, Byron was awesome. Like one of my other favorite literary heroes, Oscar Wilde, Lord Byron was a unique individual that broke all of society’s rules, and in doing so he helped pave the way for progress. He was hated and loved by many, but he was talked about by all. He became a scapegoat for many of society’s problems, yet in doing so, he gave society permission to talk about those problems.

In my film class I learned that it is through conversation that we arrive at comprehension. The problems of anyone’s time are not going to be solved unless they are discussed. This goes with our personal problems as well. So often we feel that we have to conform to what we think society wants us to be that we lose sight of who we “really” are. How refreshing would it be to just do and say whatever you wanted? Not in some crazy “f*** you world!” fashion, but in a healthy way, one that promotes communication, honesty, and trust; a way that cultivates a culture of tolerance and un-jedgementalness, where we can be who we want and not fear the fiery wrath of our harshest critics: our friends and yes, sadly enough, our families. So, thank you Lord Byron for just being you, the good and the bad, because we learned a great deal from both.

We love you Lord Byron!

In my classic lazy-writer fashion, I will end with a quote. This is Lord Byron trying–like we all do–to describe what is quite often undescribable: himself. Like my other post on “life”where I quoted Emerson, here Lord Byron is explaining how he can and does change:

‘People take for gospel all I say, and go away continually with false impressions . . . I am so changeable, being everything by turns and nothing long – such a strange melange of good and evil . . . But there are two sentiments to which I am constant – a strong sense of liberty, and a detestation of cant, and neither is calculated to gain me friends.’

Lord Byron

The word “cant” as Byron uses it means “hypocritical and sanctimonious talk, typically of a moral, religious, or political nature.” The cant that Byron is referring to is that petty, judgmental small talk. The kind of talk that only seeks to label and destroy someones character, but it’s a talk done in a sanctimonious manner; often hypocritical, and always with the sneer of jealousy, insecurity, and trifling defamation. I know of one “culture” in particular that uses religion to justify criticizing others, as if it’s okay to talk about and slander them because they are an example of what not to do. Yes, let’s criticize them for their mistakes and label them a wrongdoer, that will make everything better! When really all is does it make us feel “better” about ourselves.

Returning again to the idea of change, or us being afraid or unwilling to change. So often we label change as bad. We have an idea about ourselves and the world that we perpetuate, “this is just how it is.” So we actually try not to change, and we stop others from doing it; yet, can’t change be good too? Don’t we have to change to evolve? Yes friends, yes we do, and evolve we will once we can free ourselves from the shackles of “self:” that person we think we were born as and have to be, the person that others expect us to be, that person we hate being sometimes, but submit in times of crisis to the phrase, “It’s just who I am.” That is rubbish. You are who you want to be: the good and the bad. And guess what, just like they did with Lord Byron, people will love you for you, the “good” and the “bad.” Because when it comes down to it, as humans, we are made up of both. But even just to use the labels “good” and “bad” feels wrong. So I will rescind my statement and say that, when it comes down to it, we are just one big grey area, a big grey area that really just needs and desperately wants to be loved and accepted for who they are, but quite often feels continually judged for being anything but white. Well, I’ll be the first to admit that I’m grey. Will you love me anyway?

(I thought it was appropriate that I end Byron’s post with a rhyme)

I have been busy and failed in my goal of posting daily, but perhaps that’s better, now I can focus on quality and not quantity.

As life passes events expire and I learn stuff. That’s just how it happens. Truthfully, a lot of the time I don’t even want to be learning, but life, like any good mother, makes sure I’m being fed. A combination of recent events brought on a feast of learning and now I am stuffed and lying in bed at one in the morning typing this post on my iPhone in a lazy attempt to regurgitate some of the knowledge.

While I can’t say all that I’d like to (mainly because my thumb is already getting tired), I would like to say this: life is what you make it. As Hamlet says, “For there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.” In this scene Hamlet is talking about how he feels like the city of Denmark is a prison to him, his friends disagree, and then he delivers that profound line above. Hamlet is aware that his unhappiness is a product of his mind–his thinking.

You would be surprised how little credence people actually give this idea. It’s not to say that there isn’t good or bad in the world, there is, but what Shakespeare is getting at is that the mind is both a prison and the key out. We shut ourselves up in our mind with our ideas about the world and how we think it is and should be. Once something comes along that challenges those beliefs we usually react in two ways: we either allow it to open our minds (acting as that metaphorical key) or we view it as a threat, something that is “bad,” and we immediately label it as such. In doing the latter we put ourselves in a (to complete the metaphor) prison of ignorance and unhappiness. Life is both the good and the bad, and there is learning to be had from both.

This doesn’t mean we go through life embracing the bad just as we do the good, but instead, we stop slapping our labels on everything. We slow down a moment and look at whatever it is we might initially see as “bad” straight in the eye and say, “wtf, I don’t understand you, but I’m going to try.” If we can resist our urge to instantly run off anything we deem “bad” with our judgmental shotgun of “good,” we might discover that things weren’t exactly as they had appeared to us originally. In labeling things we limit their meaning. If you think something is bad, then it will be bad.

Life is what we make it. People are what we make them. Our experience is neither good or bad, our thinking makes it so. The mind is a powerful tool for good, but far too often we allow it to trap us in the bad, and we lock ourselves up, like Hamlet, in our individual Denmarks.

Now my thumb really is sore; alas, I must stop. I will end with an excerpt from an essay by Ralph Waldo Emerson titled “Self-Reliance.” The entire essay is really long, and all of it is really incredible, but for the sake of space and your attention-span I have only included a few pertinent paragraphs. The point Emerson is making here is that far too often we limit ourselves because of how we see ourselves, because we care about how others see us, and because of our fear of breaking with conformity, or the popular or “normal” way to see something. Basically he is saying, to hell with your notions of what is socially acceptable or not, I don’t have to see it your way, I don’t have to adopt your notions of good or bad, I become great by using my mind to think and act for myself. If I want to change, then I will change, and I won’t let any notions of who I think “I am,” or who you think I am, stop me by limiting me and scaring me away from my personal evolution, my climb upward to a better, greater me. Enjoy!

“What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think. This rule, equally arduous in actual and in intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness. It is the harder, because you will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it. It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude. . .

“The other terror that scares us from self-trust is our consistency; a reverence for our past act or word, because the eyes of others have no other data for computing our orbit than our past acts, and we are loath to disappoint them.

“But why should you keep your head over your shoulder? Why drag about this corpse of your memory, lest you contradict somewhat you have stated in this or that public place? Suppose you should contradict yourself; what then? It seems to be a rule of wisdom never to rely on your memory alone, scarcely even in acts of pure memory, but to bring the past for judgment into the thousand-eyed present, and live ever in a new day. In your metaphysics you have denied personality to the Deity: yet when the devout motions of the soul come, yield to them heart and life, though they should clothe God with shape and color. Leave your theory, as Joseph his coat in the hand of the harlot, and flee.

“A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day. — ‘Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood.’ — Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.”

You want evolution? You want me to become something? I will, but on my terms. Because it’s not what I can show to the world, it’s what I can prove to myself. If I don’t believe I think on a higher plane then I never will. I’ll accept my “fate” like a gift and wear it like a badge. I might be proud of it even, but if that’s the case then I can’t see myself clearly. I can’t see how ridiculous I look parading around in that ill-fitted muscle-tee with Abercrombie & Fitch ostentatiously splashed across my chest.

Can these letters get any bigger?

Because who wears that stuff anyways, and why? Isn’t it just to show the world something? How rich, or stylish, or cool, or gay, or good-looking or whatever they think they are and want to identify themselves to the world as.

Yet if I’m to progress as a pilgrim through life and its vanity fair, I’ve got to get to that higher plane of thought. Yet higher in what sense? Higher than what? Than others? No, it’s not that. It’s not a competition. Competition smacks of pride and stinks of fear. This is better than that. This is higher in terms of my previous thought—my previous self. Higher implies progression: a vertical climb to better understanding. Just look at the definition of evolution:

[ev-uh-loo-shuh'n]
noun.
A process of continuous change from a lower, simpler, or worse to a higher, more complex, or better state: growth.

The opposite of this is a horizontal shift. An attempt to become what you see around you. This is not progression. It’s imitation. It’s stagnation. It’s an abomination of human potential. You want evolution? I’ll evolve, but I’ll do it away from the crowd, and into myself.

It’s 9:00 pm and I have two three-page papers to write as a take home midterm for my post-modern lit class that are due tomorrow morning. What does that mean? It’s time to write or die! First things first, light the St. Jude candle–the patron saint of desperate cases and lost causes–and then say the prayer printed on the back.

But first, a little bit about Saint Jude. I took this handsome little excerpt from ourcatholicprayers.com (Note their excellent use of logic proving prayer actually works):

Are you faced with a desperate situation? The prayer to St. Jude printed below helps remind us that nothing is impossible with God, even help when you’re at your wit’s end. Considering that thanksgiving notes appear in newspapers to this patron saint of desperate cases, praying to him must have some effect!

St. Jude was one of the twelve Apostles. Mark’s (3:18) and Matthew’s (10:3) gospels refer to him as Thaddeus (a surname meaning “amiable or “loving”), possibly in part to distinguish him from Judas Iscariot, our Lord’s betrayer! John’s gospel refers to him in the last supper as “Judas… not the Iscariot” (14:22).

Here is my Saint Jude candle:

St. Jude, not to be confused with that ignominious betrayer Judas!

Here is the prayer printed on the back of the candle:

Most holy Apostle St. Jude, faithful servant and friend of Jesus, pray for me. I find myself feeling desperate during this time of great need. I beseech you to bring me noticeable and prompt aid. I promise you Saint Jude, that I well ever be mindful of this great favor and I will always honor you as my most powerful guardian (concentrate on your desires). Amen.

Okay this is a blog post that I wrote a few weeks after my cage fight that took place EXACTLY TWO YEARS AGO on October 17,2009. I never published this post, so it is a never-before-seen blast from the past. My writing is ridiculous (thus the reason it was never posted), but keep in mind I had just been severely concussed and my brain was pudding. This being said, it has been long enough that I think it’s safe to take this out of storage, dust it off, and share it with the www on this very-special two year anniversary.

Fight Memoir

Its 3:13 am and I cant sleep. I thought of you blog.

I’ll tell you a story. So there was this time I wanted to be a cage fighter. I found a gym and I began training. Oh I trained hard. I would run everyday and spend a couple hours in the gym every night. I trained in boxing, jiu-jitsu, and kickboxing. It got to the point where I could throw a mean right. So I felt ready to fight. I signed up for the local “Smoker Bouts” at my gym which are amature fights that the gym hosts twice a year. The matchmaker called me and talked to me about potential matchups. Matchmaker matchmaker make me a match, find me a find, catch me a catch. Boy did she ever. I was matched up with this scrappy Mexican kid named Jeremy or Jason or some J name. Tough guy. We would see each other around the gym before the fight and he made it clear he didn’t want to be friends. He would glare at me and I heard that he was talking a bunch of beep about me behind my back. Saying things like “Im going to murder him” and “I feel sorry for him when they lock us in the cage.” Hes so tough. I wasn’t afraid though. I was taller and better looking, and I have a mean right.

Fight day arrives. I don’t eat all morning because we have weigh ins at 1:00. I weigh in at 157, two pounds over, ugh im so fat. Im supposed to be back at the gym by 3:00 because we are the first fight at 4:00 and I need to get my hands wrapped up and warm up. So I stop by Café Rio and get a burrito and head home. I didn’t know what to do with myself when I got there. I mean, when your about to fight someone in a couple hours, but you’ve got some free time to kill, what are you supposed to do? I got on FB and checked my email and ate my burrito and drank some water, started chatting with people then realized I should probably get a little more serious about what was about to happen. Again I wasn’t sure what to do, so I turned on a UFC fight and did crunches while I watched it. Im so fierce.

Got to the gym, wrapped my hands and started to warm up with my corner man. He is one of the fighters for Throwdown that I had never worked with before but he liked my mean right and gave me a few pointers on how to use it better. Okay so its fight time. No one tells me so the referee guy keeps calling my name over and over waiting for me to come out. Finally I get word and run out and they played the killers Mr. Brightside for me as my “walk-out” song. Im so fierce! I get in the ring and do the normal tough guy run around and shuffle and I hear my friends yelling my name so I find them in the crowd and do that cool guy point at them and close one eye thing. Im loving it. Im ready to fight.

Jeremy or Jason or whatever his name is runs out and joins me in the cage and the ref calls us to the center and goes over the rules and we head back to our corners then he starts the fight. This is where my memory cuts out, but fortunately my friend recorded it and the events from the next few minutes aren’t lost to me forever. As I watch the video I see that the fight starts and like any good fighter, I begin to feel my opponent out. This means to gauge my reach and his and get an idea of a good distance between us. I throw a curious left jab and he leans away from it. He throws a left jab and I back up, but it catches my left arm and that prevents me from stopping his right hook. All that this means is that he punched me in the face super hard. I was knocked unconscious immediately and he tackled me to the mat where I hit my head like woah. The ref pulls him off me and I just lay there unconscious with my face bleeding all over. Holden Caulfield was there and he said, “It was a hell of a gruesome sight, it really was.” Im out for almost a minute and when I finally do come to (not that I remember it, but from what people tell me) they kept asking me if I had any friends there that could take me to the emergency room, I kept answering no. I did have like 7 or 8 friends there that night though (I guess my subconscious doesn’t consider them very good friends?).

What I first remember is I’m in the passenger seat of my buddy Zack’s car and I’m looking at my lip in the mirror. Then it goes black for awhile and the next thing I remember is I’m sitting in the ER waiting room with Zack and he is telling me I got knocked out and I don’t believe him. Its not just that I don’t believe him about getting knocked out, but I don’t even believe that I was in a cage fight. I remember the feeling, I felt like all my training was just a dream and that I had never done any of it. I ended up losing that argument though when it finally started coming back to me and I remembered I had a fight that day. I started laughing so hard! It was hilarious to me that I had gotten knocked out and that I “came to” in an emergency room. I was giddy. I was a chatter box with all my nurses and the doctor that stitched me up. The cut on my lip was crazy! It wasn’t just on the outside, my lip was cut all the way through and I could put my finger through it! I got 6 stitches and an MRI and then I asked to have my ribs x-rayed too (I had a previous injury from a couple weeks prior where some oaf threw me down and landed on me and I thought one of my ribs cracked, but it didn’t).

I went home and took a bath then some of the friends that went to the fight came over and we talked about it. They said they were freaking out when I got knocked out because I was seizuring. Seizuring! Such a good night.

Well that’s my story. I wish I could say it ends there, but its never ending! Surprise! Apparently my concussion was pretty bad. I tried to go on with life for a couple weeks but when I couldn’t understand what I was reading in a textbook one night I knew I needed to get my head checked out. I went to a specialist and got Alex, a good looking concussion rehab doctor. He rides a motorcycle and has perfectly messy hair and talks like a mix between Dr. Phil and a surfer. I kind of hate him. I couldn’t drive for awhile and I had to do crazy things to my life like move home, drop classes, and not use my brian. Im still in rehab and Alex would kill me if he knew it was almost 4:00 am and Im still up. He wants me in bed by 11 on week nights. Oh Alex, it’s because you care!

Here is my story in pictures

Walking out to Mr. Brightside

I'm so ready for this

"You guys know the rules? Okay, touch gloves and lets have a good clean fight."

I can still win at this point

Unconscious-bleed-all-over-the-mat-sezure-time

The word to describe that wound on my face is "gaping"

I really don't know how this picture could be any more awesome

It's like it never happened!

Oh wait...

Oh no!

Here are five of my favorite albums from five of my favorite artists. These aren’t necessarily my absolute favorite bands or albums, just ones that I love and have found myself listening to a lot over the past few months.

In Rainbows by Radiohead. This may be my favorite album of all time, it’s definitely my favorite album by Radiohead. It’s just so beautiful and I love how every song feels like it’s a puzzle piece that fits perfectly into the overall picture that is the album’s theme. What is the album’s theme? Thom Yorke says the album’s lyrics are based on “that anonymous fear thing, sitting in traffic, thinking, ‘I’m sure I’m supposed to be doing something else’ … it’s similar to OK Computer in a way. It’s much more terrifying.” He also describes most of the tracks as his version of “seduction songs.” Too true Thom, I don’t know of too many songs that are sexier to me than House of Cards, which starts with the line: “I don’t wanna be your friend, I just wanna be your lover.” Ahh I love it.

Neon Bible by Arcade Fire. Again, one of my favorite albums of all time. I just love how dark and gothic it feels. I also love its themes of religion and American culture. Plus they recorded the entire album in an old church that they bought; yeah, yeah, I know, that’s super indie/hipster/whatever, but come on, you have to admit that it gives the album some awesome credibility, I mean its name is Neon Bible. One of my favorite tracks on the album is the very last, My Body is a Cage; about two minutes into the song the organ just explodes and it gives me chills every time.

Wincing the Night Away by The Shins. This is, in my opinion, one of the most underrated/underlistened to albums of the past decade. It just feels other-worldly, like you are actually transported to one of those bizarre planets on the album cover. Just listen to the first track on the album, Sleeping Lessons, if you want to know what I mean.

And glow.
Glow.
Melt and flow.
Eviscerate your fragile frame.
And spill it out on the ragged floor.
A thousand different versions of yourself.

My Dark Twisted Fantasy by Kanye West. Okay, I normally am not the biggest fan of rap/hip hop/whatever this is, but I just cant get enough of this album. Kanye isn’t a traditional rapper, he grew up in an upper-class Chicago suburb to well-educated professional parents (his mother was the chair of the state university’s English Department). This being said, Kanye’s raps are (dare I say) intelligent. I’ve talked about him briefly in my Why skit-soid? post. What he does so well is give such a bold and honest critique of society. He doesn’t skirt around any issues, in fact he faces them head on, and by doing so he wins. A few examples. A nude picture of him leaked on the internet, what does he do? Admit that he sent it to a girl and that it was a mistake.

She find pictures in my email
I sent this bitch a picture of my dick
I don’t know what it is with females
But I’m not too good at that shit.

Kanye wins! He owns up to social snafus in his songs and by doing this he gets the last word in. Another example is how South Park dedicated an entire episode to making fun of Kanye’s ego by having him not get a joke about fish sticks, but he doesn’t want to admit that he doesn’t get it because he thinks he’s a genius. The following lyrics bring it up, but they are also really smart and have a lot to say about his “genius” and his role in the “rap game.”

Is hip hop just a euphemism for a new religion
The soul music for the slaves that the youth is missing
But this is more than just my road to redemption
Malcolm West had the whole nation standing at attention

As long as I’m in Polo’s smilin’ they think they got me
But they would try to crack me if they ever see a black me
I thought I chose a field where they couldn’t sack me
If a nigga ain’t running, shootin a jump shot, running a track meet

But this pimp is, at the top of Mount Olympus
Ready for the World’s game, this is my Olympics
We make ‘em say ho cause the game is so pimpish
Choke a South Park writer with a fishstick

I insisted to get up off a this dick
And these drugs, niggas can’t resist it
Remind me of when they tried to have Ali enlisted
If I ever wasn’t the greatest, nigga, I must have missed it!

Helplessness Blues by Fleet Foxes. I must have listened to this album everyday while I lived in Scotland over the summer. It was a time of “growing up” for me, thinking about life, family, getting older, balding, death, etc. The album is about all of these things (except maybe balding) and so it spoke to me and I clung to its sentimental folksiness. Here are some of the lyrics from the first track, Montezuma, that typify the album’s ability to express real thoughts and feelings in a really real and simple way. Ahh its so good.

So now I am older than my mother and father
when they had their daughter
now what does that say about me

Oh how could I dream of such a selfless and true love
could I wash my hands of
just looking out for me?

Oh man what I used to be
Oh man oh my oh me
Oh man what I used to be
Oh man oh my oh me

In dearth or in excess
both the slave and the empress
will return to the dirt, I guess, naked as when they came

i wonder if I’ll see any faces above me
or just cracks in the ceiling
nobody else to blame?

Oh man what I used to be
Oh man oh my oh me
Oh man that I used to be
Oh man oh my oh me

Tonight in film class we watched Some Came Running (1959) directed by Vincente Minnelli and starring Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin (neither of which sing) (wait they can act?) (yes. well, Frank can; Dean, sort of). I absolutely loved the movie and highly recommend it. It is on the AFI’s top 100 movies of all time list if you need further assurance. Plus it will make you cry.

Note: "NOT SUTABLE FOR CHILDREN" In reality it would probably be rated PG in today's standards.

I wont go into a whole spiel about the movie. I will just say the characters are done so well that it’s like they are your friends (or at least TV show characters that you love) by the end of the film. PLUS it has two of my favorite kinds of characters, a “rake” and an “ingénue.”

rake /rāk/

A rake, short for rakehell, is a historic term applied to a man who is habituated to immoral conduct, frequently a heartless womaniser. Often a rake was a man who wasted his (usually inherited) fortune on gambling, wine, women and song, incurring lavish debts in the process.

The actual etymology of the word is from the Old Norse reikall, meaning “vagrant” or “wanderer.”

(Side note: Lord Byron is my favorite rake; he was so good at it that they even coined the term “Byronic Hero” after him—although a Byronic Hero differs slightly from the traditional definition of a rake; the hero is more about being moody and mysterious; like Darcy or Heathcliff.) Anyhow, Frank Sinatra’s character Dave Hirsh is this moody WWII veteran that also happens to be a writer (writers make the best rakes and Byronic Heroes by the way).

Drink rake drink!

He has been a drifting vagrant since he was just a teenager and is now overwhelmingly jaded. He eventually meets a cute little creative writing teacher named Mrs. French, the ingénue.

in·gé·nue /ˈanjəˌno͞o/

The ingénue is a stock character in literature, film, and a role type in the theatre; generally a girl or a young woman who is endearingly innocent and wholesome.

Mrs. French (First name Gwen) is a modern 1950s ingénue. She is educated and independent, yet innocent when it comes to the ways of love and men.

"I don't know how to love."

Dave comes along, that old rascal rake, and shakes things up. At first Gwen is attracted to him for his deep intellectualism blah blah blah; but eventually she sees him for what he is, a scoundrel. Through these characters we see how the gender roles for both men and women were beginning to change during the 1950s. Women were becoming more independent and men were losing some of the charm of their machismo.

This might seem like a giveaway for the film, but that is only a side plot. The real meat of the story deals with Dave and his off-and-on girl Ginny, played by Shirley MacLaine. She is a floozy type girl that follows Dave to his home-town after he gets drunk in Chicago and invites her. Once they arrive he pays her fifty dollars to leave again, but she ends up sticking around. Her whole character is just so depressing. She is like a child, and ultimately acts as a symbol of what men wanted the women to be in the 1950s: idiots. She has this stuffed animal rabbit purse thing that just kills me. It is all dirty and she drags it around with her everywhere. It’s so depressing—you have to see it. Towards the end of the movie though you love her with all your heart, and then she breaks it. You will have to see it to find out what I mean!

There she is holding that dirty old rabbit purse. This is when he tells her to get back on the bus and leave. Aww.

For my post-modern literature class I am reading The Feminine Mystique, written by Betty Friedan in 1963. She helped to usher in what would be known as the second wave of feminism. The first wave came in the 1920s when women pushed for the right to vote. The 1930s and 40s followed with increasing social rights for women: more attended college, entered the workforce, and pumped that iron of empowerment.

"To be real women we have to act like men!"

So yes women became empowered. They took on the role of MAN for a season. What eventually happened, however, is that the men came back from World War II and wanted their thrones back.

"GIVE ME BACK MY JOB!"

So as time passed on into the 50s the men began to dominate the social sphere once again. The writers and editors of magazines (which were all women read–who has the time or energy to read books when there is a house to clean?) were primarily men who forced their idealized image of a “woman” onto American culture. That perfect woman they had been dreaming about in the trenches: wife, baby-maker, cleaning robot, great cook with a great figure that looked just swell in an apron.

So, the women not only returned to their roles prewar, they retarded even further back into some primitive capacity akin to those in third world countries where men are the providers and women raise and nurture the young. This was not healthy. Technological advances made it so the nurturing of the young and maintenance of the domestic sphere no longer consumed all of a woman’s time or mental faculties. Consequently, they became perturbed.

"I'm not crazy, I'm just frustrated. Okay, maybe I'm a little crazy."

For a long time no one knew what was wrong. The men dismissed their wives as being bored or neurotic and surprisingly–or not so surprisingly–the wives agreed.

If a woman had a problem in the 1950′s and 1960′s, she knew that something must be wrong with her marriage, or with herself. Other women were satisfied with their lives, she thought. What kind of a woman was she if she did not feel this mysterious fulfillment waxing the kitchen floor? She was so ashamed to admit her dissatisfaction that she never knew how many other women shared it. If she tried to tell her husband, he didn’t understand what she was talking about. She did not really understand it herself.

For over fifteen years women in America found it harder to talk about the problem than about sex. Even the psychoanalysts had no name for it. When a woman went to a psychiatrist for help, as many women did, she would say, “I’m so ashamed,” or “I must be hopelessly neurotic.” “I don’t know what’s wrong with women today,” a suburban psychiatrist said uneasily. “I only know something is wrong because most of my patients happen to be women. And their problem isn’t sexual.” Most women with this problem did not go to see a psychoanalyst, however. “There’s nothing wrong really,” they kept telling themselves, “There isn’t any problem.”

What could the problem be? Everything was as it should be. Perfect little house with the dog and two nuclear children revolving lovingly around a strong masculine man-provider and a perfect yet soulless mother-nurturer-cleaner-cooker. Here is the problem with this picture (I put a star next to it in the book):

The material details of life, the daily burden of cooking and cleaning, of taking care of the physical needs of husband and children-these did indeed define a woman’s world a century ago when Americans were pioneers, and the American frontier lay in conquering the land. But the women who went west with the wagon trains also shared the pioneering purpose. Now the American frontiers are of the mind and the spirit. Love and children and home are good, but they are not the whole world, even if most words written for women pretend they are. Why should woman accept this picture of a half-life, instead of a share in the whole of human destiny? Why should woman try to make housework “something more,” instead of moving on the frontiers of their own time, as American woman moved beside their husbands on the old frontiers?

Betty, you are so right. This is only as far as I have gotten in the book (I am through chapter three), but look how much I have already learned! It’s now really late and I don’t have the time or energy to finish this post strong, so I will end with a funny picture. This is a real exceprt from Housekeeping Monthly May 1955.