Bowery Bugs: a Picaresque.

View Bowery Bugs: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CeUeN2sQeDo

In the spirit of English Major-y over analyzation, we watched “Bowery Bugs” in my English Novel 1 course, subtitled “The Picaresque”. Picaresque stems from the Spanish “Picaro”, meaning rouge or rascal (Oxford English Dic.) Following characters who live outside of societal norms generally due to social or economic stratification, the stories journey through a world of crime, morally dubious actions and trickery. The character must navigate this world as a fellow trickster.

Viewing “Bowery Bugs” as a Picaro parable was really fun for me. Having only covered this, Slumdog Millionaire and Lazarillo de Tormes so far in my course, my conceptual understanding of “The Picaresque” is still pretty superficial. Cartoons are easily dismissible as jejune but the chance to dig deeper into Looney Tunes was pretty exciting.

My line of thought centers around two things: 1) why does Bugs so persistently and blithely screw with Brody, what is his agenda? 2) What about these series of tricks is so jarring that is makes Brody attempt suicide? What does this signify?

Brody, by attempting to kill Bugs for a trivial good-luck trinket, a rabbit’s foot, earns Bugs’ ire. Bugs lives outside of town, removed from the riff-raff of the city, keeping to himself in his rabbit hole. Brody rudely interrupts his self-determined isolation and illustrates a desire to get ahead in life at the expense of others’. Not only that, he attempts to procure luck through an outside force. Instead of making his own way in life, he relies on the fortune of the rabbit’s-foot to earn success.

Bugs reacts to this with an appeal to Brody’s reliance on luck, offering him a series of lessons, masquerading as better sources of luck than a rabbit’s foot. Bugs is able to outsmart and finagle Brody through his mastery of deception and his abilities clearly come from hard work and determination–bugs is reliant upon himself and not procured luck.

This says two things: Don’t tread on someone else in order to gain fortune and don’t rely on luck for success, you’ll be outsmarted.

The end illustrates a world that Bugs creates to show Brody’s that his misfortune in life is bred from the abdication of responsibility over his own destiny. By relying on outside sources, Brody lacks control over anything. By relying on anything other than himself, he invites the whole world, full of Bugs Bunnies, to control his life. This metaphor culminates with the reveal that even Brody’s reflection and identity can be stolen if he allows it to be, this final realization causes Brody insanity and suicide attempt.

What else can one do when the world is something constructed to decimate your own sense of person? He is not clever to see through life’s deceptions and work outside of their framework. Instead, he attempts to defeat his own powerlessness by controlling the only thing he has left once life and identity is gone, death.

And that–I think–is the power of the Picaro that I’ve discerned so far. The ability to reject the deceptions in life as a fellow deceiver and carve out your own sense of worth and success. The world is full of people and characters attempting to form your reality for you. You, alone, have the power to reject those ideals and live contentedly with your own, so long as they are truly your own. Deception is merely a surrendering control of perception–it’s your job to be an even more clever deceiver.

Visual Metaphor for a Mid-January Afternoon Spent at Bridgeport Village Mall

Like Dali’s “Soft Watch”, a mid-January afternoon spent at Bridgeport Village Mall challenges the notion of time and its relative passing. Slowly melting and dissolving into disparate parts, diffusing into the  landscape of eternity, an afternoon here often feels removed from the conventions of reality. Chronology, duration, instants and infinities–all–cease to bear any sense of meaning or purpose.

Mitchell’s Winter Reading Suggestions – Modernity, Ethos and Reality.

I recently did a winter book list for the monthly zine that Nathan’s sister puts out E’lynn. Check out the whole magazine, it’s full of good stuff!

I just included some of my favorite pieces, ones that I thought were fun but also challenging in some way. All of these works confront ideas, or interrupt conventional narrations of modernity, ethos and/or reality in ways that are accessible and captivating. Feel free to take or leave my advice, just get out there and read something!

Pastoralia by George Saunders

Easily read over a long weekend, Saunders collection of short stories center around the absurd and bizarre—masked as the everyday and banal. Never relenting a shred of wit, he digs into how pedestrian and unremarkable utter nonsense can be in life. All of the pieces Saunders includes are perfect surrealist literature, but nothing quite beats the unrelenting cynicism and raw sarcastic potency that the novella, to which Pastoralia owes its name, provides. Following two actors that live as cavemen in an interactive museum display, the novella deconstructs ideas of modernity and the callous reality of 21^st century life by framing humanity, identity and existence as a series of performances. Never allowing the bleak to overwhelm his work’s tone, Saunders injects healthy amounts of humor and a quirky charm to his language and characters.

The Tao of Pooh by Benjamin Hoff

Written by an Oregonian and as much about philosophy as it is nostalgia, the compact The Tao of Pooh delightfully challenges the reader to slow life down in order to savor it. Embodied within our favorite honey-loving bear are ideals of simplicity, unpretentious appreciation of beauty and fineness, and an approach to life that relishes the journey as much as its outcomes. The message is perhaps best summarized through the book’s parable of the vinegar tasters: 3 men surround a vase of vinegar, one man’s face expresses bitterness, another’s shows sourness, and the third man beams a smile in appreciation of the sweetness. Using this image, Hoff contends, “sourness and bitterness come from the interfering and unappreciative mind. Life itself, when understood and utilized for what it is, is sweet.” Interconnecting Pooh’s appreciation for sweetness with a laymen’s version of Daoist philosophy, Hoff makes a lighthearted appeal to enjoy simple pleasures and to follow the road life takes you down.

The Photograph by Penelope Lively

A moment in time, a gesture, an expression and performance, all are encapsulated in something as simple as a photograph. Expectations are upended at the discovery of one such hidden photograph, masking—what appears to be—adulterous affections. The Photograph follows the journey of Glyn as he collects the pieces of his identity and life, shattered by the discovery of that single, illusory picture. As broadly emotional as it is deeply personal, Lively examines the psychology and concepts of beauty, intelligence, and happiness and how their intersection is not always how it appears. Nakedly examining the life of his wife, Kath, Glyn begins to realize that happiness and beauty can be used as facades to hide pain and listlessness. Photographs can only represent reality and in doing so, they obscure the real with untruth. In The Photograph, Lively asks what reality is, if not a well constructed lie.

Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell

Beginning with a series of stories and characters, interconnected tangentially at first, Mitchell slowly builds a rich narrative that is simultaneously engrossing and challenging. Getting past the first chapter, which follows the journal of a 19^th century seaman in the Pacific and is riddled with archaic, dense language is an initial struggle but it is completely rewarding to see it dovetail into the subsequent character’s lives. Spanning centuries, Cloud Atlas jumps into eras and decades ranging from a mildly dystopian near-future to the aforementioned past. Each character and period is so believably and masterfully portrayed that they seamlessly fold into each other, pulling you deeper into the ultimate narrative. Lauded as one of literature’s most recent masterpieces, and encompassing just under 500 pages, it’s an ambitious read but well worth the undertaking. The movie, directed by the Wachowski siblings, creators of The Matrix, and starring Tom Hanks, Hugo Weaving, and numerous other big names, is in post-production and seems as exciting as it is quixotic, given the sheer scope of this piece. Take a long weekend to dive into Mitchell’s dynamic, captivating world before it hits theaters for a wholly and uniquely realized work of art.

The E’lynn version of my article, pages 10-14 were edited, so they may flow a little better. Feel free to give me feedback, for example: did my recommendations stoke some interest in the novels? I love feedback, especially constructive criticism, please and thank-you!

Check out the E’lynn website too, Erica caters as well as putting out the zine and is one fantastic lady.