Heeeeey BYU: stop controlling my life.

Or rather, stop controlling my electronic life, because for some reason, I have a new class that assigns me to post rhetorical analyses of various things on my blog. Guys. This is not the purpose of a blog. The purpose of this blog is to write random things about my random life, and, as Jon pointed out the other day, professors might think they're being hip with the kids by having us blog assignments and crap, but they're messing up the format and purposes of "the blog" by making it into a freaking analysis. FYI: THAT IS NOT A BLOG. Anyway. I'm annoyed. GAH. So when there are random things that are boring posted on this blog, feel free not to read them, because they really are assignments that should be typed up and turned in, not randomly posted on a blog FOR NO REASON other than that BYU likes to control everything I ever do ever.

WHAT LARKS!

Anyway, lots of ranting in recent times because English 312 is boring and my D&C class sucks. This is because, for some reason, every religion class at BYU (basically) is like glorified seminary. HEY D&C TEACHER: stop making jokes about marriage! Stop inviting all of us to get married! Stop being so in-your-face and American! Stop making the D&C so damn trite!

These words were actually said in class today: "So go out and find that right girl or that right boy and get married! Now! As soon as you can!" Yeah. When his son brought home a girlfriend for the first time, this man taught an FHE lesson to them about temple marriage and then sat down with the girlfriend and talked to her about the importance of marriage. Can you say creeper?

Okay. End/rant. I will try to be positive and optimistic and all that crap, but it's a liiiittle tricky when your smiling old man religion professor keeps trying to shove marriage down your face.

On a happier note, even though I really, really do not want to be doing all this stuff spring semester, it is at least a little bit more chill, which means my life can go back to being all about tv! Making tv my life is maybe not so great, since there was lots of tv trauma this week (Joyce dying, Gabriel dying, House being emo. You know. The usual). However, I do so like it when my world revolves around television. This includes these people:



This person:



And perhaps these wonderful people, since I have been craving some good Sci-Fi recently:



Also, if this man dies next Thursday:



I will be seriously pissed.

Anyway.

In closing, this actual conversation was had in class yesterday. I wrote it down because I thought it was funny.

Student: "I just think it's important when arguing to remember that in this life, there is no absolute truth. We just can't find one absolute truth in this world, there isn't any ideal truth."
Teacher: "That's great. I think that's absolutely true."

...

KIDS I LOVE YOU I will go and do my oodles of D&C homework now and perhaps eat lunch. Maybe I'll have to take this down later because I don't want the teacher who grades my rhetorical analyses to see this. At least not really. Theoretically.

GO OUTSIDE NOW AND ENJOY THE SPRINGTIME SUN I mean the snow. :(

Ps when I hit "publish post" and it went to the splash page or whatever, there was an ad on the side for an online dating side for gay Asian singles. Alas, none of those terms apply to me, but I appreciate the ad anyway.

A JANE AUSTEN BLOGFEST!

Most people on BYU campus are familiar with this woman:



Contrary to popular belief, she is neither this woman:



Nor this woman:



She is, however, the authoress of these items, which, alas, many people on BYU campus are not familiar with:



However, many BYU students, particularly girls, are familiar with these items:



Lots of girls on BYU campus get together with their family members, friends, or roommates to watch the above films. In the research paper I wrote on this BYU ritual, I decided to call this phenomenon the "Jane Austen Movie Night."

Why do a research project about Jane Austen movies on BYU campus?



Lots of people all over the country watch Jane Austen movies obsessively, but I wanted to know why, specifically, Jane Austen movies appeal so strongly to BYU audiences. I concluded that BYU's fascination with Jane Austen movies has something to do with this:



I.e., MARRIAGE.

How do these three things (marriage, Jane Austen, and BYU culture) connect?
Well, this novel:



was written by a woman who lives in Utah Valley, and her novel describes the "Jane Austen Movie Night" perfectly. The story's protagonist, Jane, had

"first read Pride and Prejudice when she was sixteen…But it wasn’t until the BBC put a face on the story that those gentlemen in tight breeches had stepped out of her reader’s imagination and into her nonfiction hopes" (Hale 2).

Jane’s behavior mimics that of many Mormon female students at BYU or in Utah Valley, who frequently get together with their roommates, friends, or family members to watch Jane Austen movies and fall in love themselves with the film's versions of various Romantic gentlemen, like this man:



And like this one:



Jane watches Jane Austen movies because she sees in them the man of her dreams--i.e., this man:



Behavior like Jane's is also evident in many BYU students' behavior, particularly among girls. For instance, when this movie came out:



my friends and I went and saw the movie and obsessed over this beautiful man:



We squealed so much so that the woman sitting next to us at the movie theater asked us to be quiet. However, the movie theater was packed (mostly with women), and we were definitely not the only ones squealing during this scene:



We weren't BYU students then, although we all are now--we all grew up in Utah Valley, though, and were familiar with BYU's marriage culture. I can only speak for myself, but I know that while watching the movie, I was thinking about how much I wanted my own "Mr. Darcy" and a similarly romantic love story to play out in my own life, even though I was only 15. I wanted a boyfriend, dangit! I wanted to be kissed like Elizabeth Bennet in a dramatically romantic fashion!



I attribute my early obsession with marriage to the culture I grew up in. Even at age 15, I had already had a lot of lessons in church about the importance of marriage, and I knew a lot of girls who were only 19 who had gone to BYU or UVSC and had immediately gotten married. Based on this, then, it didn't seem like marriage was that far off for me.



I think the mentality that me and my friends exhibited through our squeals and rapture while watching various Jane Austen movies connects Jane Austen movies with BYU's marriage culture: BYU students watch Jane Austen movies on campus at least in part because they are obsessed with marriage, and watching the characters' romances played out on screen enables them to live out their own mental fantasies of marriage and romance, which, they hope, will eventually end in marriage.



HOWEVER, not all students are comfortable with BYU's marriage culture OR with BYU's perception of Jane Austen.

The girl on the left of this picture



is named Tiffany. She said that both Jane Austen and BYU

"put way too much pressure/emphasis on marriage and not enough on education and thinking before doing something stupid that will affect the rest of your life."

She thus sees a connection between BYU's obsession with Jane Austen movies, and BYU's obsession with marriage, and she doesn't particularly like or agree with the connection.

This boy



is named Jon. He is an English major at BYU. He said,

"I don’t think [BYU students] read [Jane Austen] correctly, that she’s misunderstood and misinterpreted by a BYU…she’s been like 'chickified' somehow and it’s turned into some sort of… teenage thing where everyone’s just 'yay Jane Austen yay!' and it’s funny and it’s cute and all the girls squeal and the social critique has sort of been lost."

He doesn't like how BYU interprets Jane Austen movies and novels. This doesn't mean that he doesn't like either marriage or Jane Austen, though. In fact, he still believes Jane Austen novels and movies are important to BYU culture and to understanding marriage and relationships:

"[Austen’s] stuff on relationships and how we see people and how we treat people and what is appropriate and inappropriate and everybody interacting with one another and why they marry or don’t and why they do or don’t like people is I think very important for BYU."

IN CONCLUSION:

I decided with my project that many people on BYU campus are a part of the "Jane Austen Movie Night," especially girls like me and my friends.



I also think that BYU's obsession with Jane Austen movies highlights its obsession with marriage.



However, many people are opposed to BYU's interpretation of both marriage and Jane Austen, which doesn't mean that they don't like marriage or Jane Austen--it only means that they have a different view of both of them.

BUT DON'T FEEL BAD, NO MATTER WHICH GROUP YOU'RE A PART OF!

The girl in this picture



is me. I believe that, based on my own experience, it's possible to be a member of both groups. I watch and like Jane Austen movies and I fantasize about marriage like a lot of girls on BYU campus. However, I also dislike parts of BYU's emphasis on marriage. For instance, even though I'm only twenty, lots of people I know ask me if I'm dating anyone and if I'm planning on getting married soon.



I don't know why they ask me this when I'm only twenty.



I also think there's more to Jane Austen than just marriage. Marriage is certainly an important part of her novels, but what she's saying about marriage--Is it always a good thing? Why do people get married? What makes a good marriage? Is love as important as wealth?--isn't always simple or straightforward.



What this project shows most of all is that Jane Austen was a smart, complex women. Her novels weren't meant to be merely "chicklit" or romantic fantasy; they were, and still are, deep novels with multiple levels of meaning--although they are, of course, romantic in their turn.



Congratulations, Jane Austen, on a job well done. Your influence is felt near and far, from England to BYU campus, and your books have changed a lot of lives--including mine.

In conclusion, if you are part of the first group (i.e., the whole-hearted Jane Austen Movie Night watchers), this video will make you squeal with glee. If you are part of the second group, or the anti-Jane Austen/BYU culture group, you will probably roll your eyes a lot. If you are part of the third group, who love certain parts of Jane Austen chickflickyness but criticized it at the same time (which, I believe, the majority of the people I interviewed were, including me), then you might outwardly mock this video, but inwardly squeal with joy. Alternatively, you might laugh while watching it but also say things like, "Oh, I love North and South! I love you, Mr. Thornton!!" and then, depending on who you are watching it with, feel embarrassed.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TOFps_Naytg

Works Cited:
Hale, Shannon. Austenland. New York: Bloomsbury, 2007. Print.

P.S.
A shout-out to Kris, who I also interviewed for this project and who would like it to be known that she finds this man



aka, Mr. Rochester, infinitely more attractive than these men:


these men:


or, alas, this man:






Sad!

It's okay, though. Rochester is, yes, pretty dang hot. Kudos to Kris!

Happy Poetry Month!

Ah, the blessed month of April. Fraught with windstorms, snow flurries, ice slicing up your cheeks, your red calves quivering in the wind and longing for sunshine and a good pair of shorts, and a month full of 40% off poetry discounts at the BYU Bookstore! I keep missing my office hours because I'm so distracted by the 40% off display table. It's okay. No one comes anyway. To kick of poetry month (six days late) and to distract myself from the task at hand, namely writing my African lit paper (due tomorrow), here's a snarky little prose poem that I find both pretty and fairly amusing in its own special way.

Metaphors

It is pleasing to know there are so many metaphors in this world. And I'm told the number is growing all the time. Last week an Asian newspaper reported that an immense metaphor surfaced just off the coast of India and was creating quite a stir. Christians and Muslims forbad the faithful to gaze upon it. Hindus showered it with flowers. Buddhists claimed it had been there all along. A single metaphor can upend the world and soon everyone is wearing orange or speaking in falsetto or weeping in the streets. Before they present themselves to mankind, most prophets spend years gathering metaphors in the desert, which is like an orchard where metaphors flourish without a trace of rain.

-David Shumate

Lame civ class. Poem of the Week.

I hate, hate, hate TAing for the civ class I am accidentally TAing this semester. I hate ancient civ. It's awful. And so boring. I REALLY DON'T CARE about ancient Greek dead people. Sorry. Except for some of them, like Aeschylus and Sophocles. Anyway. This is a lovely poem that is better than ancient civilizations and is much better than ancient philosophers, because really? Who cares. The end.

Etymology

Her body by the fire
Mimicked the light-conferring midnights
Of philosophy.
Suppose they are dead now.
Isn't "dead now" an odd expression?
The sound of the owls outside
And the wind soughing in the trees
Catches in their ears, is sent out
In scouting parties of sensation down their spines.
If you say it became language or it was nothing,
Who touched whom?
In what hurtle of starlight?
Poor language, poor theory
Of language. The shards of skull
In the Egyptian museum looked like maps of the wind-eroded
Canyon labyrinths from which,
Standing on the verge
In the yellow of a dwindling fall, you hear
Echo and re-echo the cries of terns
Fishing the worked silver of a rapids.
And what to say of her wetness? The Anglo-Saxons
Had a name for it. They called it silm.
They were navigators. It was also
Their word for the look of moonlight on the sea.

-Robert Hass



That was a picture I took of the place mat that the nice lady who owned the rockin bed and breakfast in Weymouth had at her breakfast table. I took a picture because I thought it was the prettiest place mat I had ever seen and I did not want to leave the ocean. I am spending a lot of time torturing myself because I WANT TO BE AT THE OCEAN and not here, where I need to write two papers that are due next week, since we only have one more week of school which is SCARY. To cheer myself up about not being at the ocean, here are some pictures that make me happy.


On the cliffs at that place where Arthur's castle was. What was that place called? The New Age place where Nicholas Cage randomly was. TINTAGEL. It was gorgeous there.


Jon, after surmounting the tallest peak of the epic Jurassic Coast.


Glastonbury is a beautiful place full of beautiful people.

AND IT'S ALMOST SUMMER SO IT'S ALMOST TIME FOR US TO GO BACK HERE! :



Here meaning Bryce Canyon, which is LOVELY.
And truly, it is almost SUMMERTIMES, which are exciting times.