@bangwhimper - We've been mostly using other schools as a reason why Williams has no reason to deny our requests. I don't know if neutral gender hiousing is prevalant amongst most schools, but I definitely know at least one of the schools I visited back on my college visits two years ago offered that. As for a Gender and Sexuality Center, a lot of colleges already have one of those. I know at least Harvard has a Queer Studies, but I don't know in terms of schools in general. I don't know how many schools have Queer Life Coordinators, so can't comment much on that. We just had the meeting with College Council and a lot more people showed up than I expected, including faces I didn't recognize. We were supposed to start changing Hardy House into the Center right after, but no one's showed up yet. Regardless, our demands have been sent and things are definitely rolling.

Heh, well, I actually really enjoy nihilistic and fatalist type of works, so long as it's done with a point; I find them pointless and irritating when it's just for the sake of being extreme. So, I might not be the best person to get an opinion from. I kinda don't want to say too much about it because I don't know if you want to be the one to unwrap it yourself and see the things you could pick up. So, whether to say some to start you out or just explain the whole book. Lemme know.

@bangwhimper - Hmm, if I had gone to IWU (it was my second choice), I might've been able to get things going. That's a nice enviroment to really lead someone. You get someone willing to make noise, knows what to do in interacting with others and getting people to do things, and basically knowledgable of information regarding to sexuality and gender, you could get things done. To be honest, I expected the vote. One of the things that is a kinda irony of gay history is that the modern gay movement came out of New York - and yet they still don't have marriage yet.

You have a point there. It's not really nihilistic (I was thinking nihilistic in terms of that reckless attitude, but that's not accurately correct). Basically, keep in mind that Nick is an unreliable narrator.

You must also know that for the time period the West (being new, compared to the East) represented disorder and disruption of class and race order; Nick comes from the West, if you remember. Also, keep in mind that it's West and East Egg.

The other aspect is Nick's sexuality. It's never really explicitly mentioned (which makes sense, for the time period), but remember the bedroom moment with the photographer he meets at the party where he first meets Myrtle?

Him and Jordan have some form of a relationship yet the language continually remains very seperate between them. There never seems to be full, engaging, and embracing language to describe themselves.

They both seem to use each other as "beards" (slang term). However, Jordan never seems to be really homoerotic. She still comes off as different, however. Versus Daisy, which is continually described as being very white, she's darker in skin color. When Tom speaks of the racial disruption after Myrtle's death, she has to mention, "We're all white here," almost as a defense. Further, she's a female athlete and a bit masculine - unconventional for the time period.

Going back to Nick for a second and his sexuality, you also have to know that what a lot of homosexuals during the time would do would be bachelors until about 30, then get married to a woman. Interestingly when he breaks up with Jordan, he says, "I'm 30 years old - I'm too old to lie and call it noble."

I'll leave you with that, see what you can do with it.

@bangwhimper - True. How're you handling publicity? That makes a big deal. Food, too. Also, sometimes just throwing something that people can just enjoy (and a lot of people), rather than engage helps to get people aware the club exists.

Yeah, that's how most schools handle teaching the book. But it leaves so much out and looking at Nick as gay (or at least havign homoerotic feelings) fills in a lot of the gaps (when adding the construction of class and racial order that was so important for that time and was disrupted by the Roaring 20s).

I would say you're right on his disillusionism. Though I don't know if he's exactly nihilistic. Maybe I need to read closer, though. He seems to be optimistic at times, with undercurrents of his own feelings of like things are falling apart and (obviously) describing really destructive behavior.

The thing to keep in mind is what was socially expected and how that's being upsurped. Obviously, Tom is against it. If that is what's happening, Nick must constantly pretend to be entirely straight, whites dominate blacks, and the rich don't associate with the poor or New Money (the definition of West Egg).

Think of the scene where they're driving in Gatsby's car and they see a car drive past with "two bucks" and a white driver. It's clearly racist language and there's something almost insiduous about the way Nick describes this upsurp of norms (a white driver for blacks would be utterly shameful then, as I know you know). And yet he ends it with "Anything could happen, even Gatsby."

Wish I could talk face to face with you with the book in my hands. Would make this so much easier.

@bangwhimper - Hmm, that's odd. I'm starting to think maybe that's just people. I can't remember if I've written about it on here much, but lately people have just been pissing me off. A friend of a friend posted this letter in a note on Facebook by some 4th grade teacher in NY who was complaining about Obama. The letter was riddled with historical inaccuracies and ignorance on the way our government works, so I left a comment going through and explaining how the person was wrong. A friend of mine commented under me, "This was great. I thoroughly enjoyed it." For the Lady Gaga video I listed above, a friend of mine had posted it on Facebook. I left a comment annalyzing the video (I'm such an English major). Under this full list of text stating things like "Lady Gaga is stupid", etc. Which, granted, I might have said before she put out something so surprisingly insightfull and intelligent. But I don't think people are willing to bother to engage.

They just aren't interested in pursuing knowledge or Truth or what it means to be human, etc. etc. And, I think you would agree with me, I feel that literature and its analyzation are ways to do those things.

I don't really hang out with a lot of English majors (I don't actually know a lot of my friends' majors) so I can't report on our stats. I do know there tends to be a lot of overlap, though. Like, I know a friend of mine who has two majors and yet took a lot of Africana Studies classes and attended a lot of the hiring sessions that were done for that major lately. Also, I know a lot of the people within the Queer Student Union (including myself) take a lot of Women and Gender Studies classes, regardless of our major. So I tend to find, say, if I want to talk with someone who writes or enjoys literature, I just need to find someone interested in that or who has taken English classes. Then there's the lit. magazine, but I kinda question what they look for in a work, sometimes.

I'm not sure if the idea of nihilism is the point of the book. Arguably, nihilism isn't what Fitzgerald is aiming for. If the book is wrapped up in the idea of social order and its possible collapse, that order is maintained in the end - Gatsby dies and Daisy and Tom get back together. I don't know if the book is necessarily satisfactory on the front of what you look for in literature, but you could argue it that it shows that we as humans try to construct and categorize and maintain forms of control (the majority, white, upper class, heterosexual and heteronormative gender roles over the minorities, colored, poor, non-hererosexual sexualities, and non-normative gender roles, such as masculine females or even sexes which combine traits of what's considered stereotypically for both genders).

No, I wouldn't say it was groundbreaking, particularly for the time. Remember that a gay rights movement was building at the time right before the Nazis came to power and most of the artists of the Harlem Renaissance were either gay or bisexual. There are ways to read possible homosexual desires in works such as Walt Whitman and Langston Hughes; if you look some posts back, I posted a Hughes poem with overt reference to sexuality. Gertrude Stein, too, definitely has that (I wrote a paper on her novella Q. E. D.). A lot of the writers of the time kinda hinted at the sexuality and didn't state it outright, very much like Fitzgerald, because of the acceptance, as great as it was before the plunge into the post-WWII age, wasn't enough for complete acceptance by the majority culture. Not to mention that it was still seen as a deviance and utterly seperate from Victoria morals that it was still characterized solely by the sex that was being had and commitment was not common.

So, in short, no, not groundbreaking - but authorities try so hard to censor any reference to any of it for these writers that most people don't know. Try convincing someone with a strong, "traditional" black identity that the Harlem Renaissance contained a lot of artists who were gay or bi; it'll be really funny.

@bangwhimper - Haha, yeah, I was thinking the exact same thing. I've missed this actual intellectual pursual.

Heh, well, there is some merit to Lady Gaga and her just dancing scantily (ever seen the Poker Face video? gah...). However, the contrast of this kinda hospitalized girl and her being so skinny as to see her spine clash with this idea of pointless sexy dancing.

The way I see it, at least one of the themes at play here is the subjugation of women and also countering the common arguments that they can reclaim themselves by taking power (so, to reclaim the power lost in the subjugation of the image of women in porn, make your own porn. If your sexuality is being abused by men controlling you based on your looks, use your looks to control them. etc.). So keep this in mind as I take you through.

The video starts with this kinda stereotypical image of power, with Lady Gaga sitting on the throne. As we get a close up of her face, she's pale and looks almost dead. You'll also notice her glasses are made out of razor blades. This reminds me of Self-Injury, something that could happen with pressure and expectations. It's kinda an awesome clash of thematic images.

The second thing that catches my eye after that is it says "Bath Haus". I know Lady Gaga refered to some of her stuff as Haus of Lady Gaga before, but the addition of Bath for a Bathhouse is interesting. Within this Bathhouse (which notably and oddly has a glass window to look into it) contains the alcohol that shows up throughout the video. I'm not entirely sure concretely what to make of it, but I have a feeling it is meant to represent the male hierarchy (remember that it also shows up in the scene where Gaga is being sold). I don't know what to make of the creatures that come out, though, or necessarily of the metaphor or symbolism of the Bath Haus in general.

Interestingly, though, the hospitalized (I think she is, anyway) girl is shown during the Bath Haus scenes as well. Notice she has kind of large eyes, which sometimes denotes innocense. I think she's supposed to be young girls who are naïve and yet follow and want the culture given to women (like my sister, who during the summer, at least, kept taking pictures of herself and putting on make up and basically just being very physical-look oriented; now, of course, I'm not her, so I will admit I easily could be in error but I do think it's because she was trying to get self-worth, on some level. This is what we teach our females). I think that largely because she's oddly wearing high heels in this bathtub, which doesn't otherwise make sense. Yet she's still sick because of this (her twitching hand at 0:52-0:53 is frickin' awesome). A friend of mine said the tape across her breasts has to do with not having her nipples show (which is likely true) but I still feel there's something rather connecting about a girl who looks like she's sort of hospitalized and sick having bandage looking objects covering her breasts.

The other thing I really like about this video is the perfect use of contradiction (though maybe that's also because I like the rather violent, extreme imagry as well). Right when the chorus hits, that's when the other two women attack this girl. So, on one hand, we have this rather catchy chorus and dancing going on while at the same time this girl is thrashing in this bathtub; her head even almost hits the side, which we see for only a second. I think it's awesome juxtaposition, coming off really powerful.

I'm sort of guessing, but I think the two women are meant to represent other women and how they tear each other down. They basically strip her, notably ripping off the thing that covered her chest (despite the argument that pulling off her bottom part on video, the breasts are far greater a place of objectification than the vagina in our society). Her body insulted and degraded, it's here that the images of her crying are introduced (I do think that the images shown, largely enforced by the fact that it cuts scenes all the damn time throughout the video, are shown together to represent something specific and then stop being shown when their relavence to the character's development ends). She's then being shown being forced to drink the alcohol.

If the alcohol does represent male hierarchy, it's interesting that it takes other women to force it on her. The innocent her is clearly wanting to partake in it and kinda mimics it, yet its only once these women assault her and force her into dancing for the men does she participate in it fully. It's at this point that she's dancing and performing for the men, being a spectacle and (in the most literal sense yet) being objectified. It's also at this point that she's shown in the shadows, seems almost in a sewer, crouched over and scarily skinny. It's right at that moment she sings, "I want your love" and the image (of what I think is meant to be anorexia) is then replaced by her stumbling, then determinately getting up.

Once again, we're given these clashing images at the same time that in a really extreme and alarming way deliver the message across beautifully. Right as she climbs on the guy and whispers, "You know that I want you" we're immediately given the image of her skinny shaking her hips. We can see her spine, she's clearly not healthy, yet the body is still trying to be "sexy". It rightfully is downright perverse.

The other thing I noticed is the whispered lines, "You know that I want you/And you know that I need you/I want you bad/Your bad romance" were said, first, at the beginning with the young and innocent girl. It made sense with the song and the basic point of the lyrics - she wants this bad romance (presumably, involvement in this distructive male hierarchy which objectifies and harms her). Yet this second time around, as she's straddling the guy, she shouts, "Because I'm a free bitch, baby!" over the "I want you bad". So it becomes, "You know that I want you/Because I'm a free bitch, baby!/I want you bad/Your bad romance". It sounds more like some seductive come on, similar to Poker Face, actually now. I think it's back to that idea of trying to defy the system while playing within the system. In this case, using her sexuality to use men. You know, sleep with who you want because you want to, drink and get wasted no matter what anyone says - that's the stereotypical image that comes to my mind. And, of course, the guy ups his bid and buys her as a result.

I think this is kinda backed up by the next image which shows her drapped in diamonds. It reminds of the song "Diamonds are a Girl's Best Friend" by Marilyn Monroe; in a sense, diamonds (one of the ultimate and most classic symbols associated with women) are a means for control. Expensive, the guy must buy them (thereby spending his money) in order for him to court the girl. Yet the image is of Gaga draped in diamonds - observed and objectified, even still, by the men. And don't diamonds, which are technically acsessories, get worn for you to look good? Who's doing the looking, though? Notably, when she's dancing for the guy before, her outfit is made of diamonds.

Here's where once again, musically, I absolutely love this song. The chorus from 2:47-3:18 has this almost powerful, overlooking, last-moments feel to it. It comes off as less a club banger than a building, dramatic piece. Coupled with these striking images of her being frozen while being watched has this almost nobly destructive feeling to it. It's even better the next time, but I'll explain when we get there.

Still going with that diamonds idea of still being objectified, the lines "Muah, Muah, fashion baby/C'mon, move that bitch ca-razy" are played as Lady Gaga walks in this almost constraining outfit which seems to be an exageration of fashion in general (those heels are insane). Once again, things which people try to reclaim which are still clear visuals that are objectified. Ironically, About.com said that the song was "best suited for viewing fashion designs and on the runway." Honestly, a runway doesn't get anymore observatory than that. Interestingly, it's towards the end of this scene that the younger girl is shown again. If we're supposed to assume that the forced humiliation of her body by the two girls resulted in her trying to take on a "I don't give a fuck" attitude and use these aspects of the male hierarchy against itself, this seems to say that she isn't any different than that innocent girl who wanted to join this hierarchy because it gave her a feeling of empowerment.

Back to the chorus again, this is where it sparks utterly brilliance. I remember thinking, disliking the ending, that a pompous attitude for this wouldn't suit it at all. Just listening to it, I thought I could hear that in the chorus (like I said, the chorus has this almost "I can see all and view it" feeling to it - it's just that instead of grave, it becomes snide and full-of-itself). Then I looked at the video and that's totally not it. It's the contrast of this powerful (and I mean powerful in non-wavering, full-sounding, almost like you can't stop it) chorus and then these images of destruction. As she walks toward the guy, she has a look of almost trying to stay stoic though hating it. After she sings the lines in French, she violently screams, "I don't wanna be friends" as she pounds the floor. And then the images of her crying, almost pleading, "...friends.../Want your Bad Romance!/Want your Bad Romance!" It's utterly emotionally jarring, which I think is downright fitting.

Now, like I said, so easy a dismissal of all of this heavy stuff with just "I'll burn them up" not only seems innapropriate, but rude and insulting to such a subject like this. I think this is one of the flaws of the video. In its defense however (I haven't quite settled this out yet), when she's laying on the bed next to the burnt corpse, her look isn't smug, it's almost lost and broken, while her pyrotechnic bra (again imagry of the breasts being broken) is sparking, which she's burnt as well. It's almost to say that a destruction of the male equals a destruction of her as well.

Now, despite the long depth of this analysis, there's still some stuff I didn't touch (there's just so much going on in this video, very little stuff too). Also, there are still some stuff I don't understand: I didn't address her being dressed in black at the beginning, or how about the fact that those guys clearly look like the Russian mafia and we know they sell women into the slave trade. That would also fit with chorus, "Rah-rah, ah-ah-ah/Ro ma, ro-ma-mah/Gaga, ooh-la-la" (something sounds rather Russian about it).

Finally, more than anything - was any of this even intended? Like I said, I wasn't anywhere near expecting this. I know she had a directer help with the video - how much was it his doing, his ideas? And that's the other thing - take away the video, and the beautiful specificity is gone. The lyrics don't contradict it - it's just that they're too vague to really address anything specifically (hence why I really didn't use them in the analysis, other than in some parts). Further, from what I've read about what's Gaga said about the song (check out the wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bad_Romance), it doesn't seem she did this on purpose. Which makes it all the more ironic because everyone seems to be seeing it on very surface like levels. What they think is so groundbreaking about it is that Gaga seems to be one of the few pop stars these days who really understands spectacle, fashion, shock, choreography" (some source I don't feel like respecting enough as to give recognition; it's in the wikipedia page). Basically, by Gaga's apparent expectations, it continues to embody why I despise pop music: superficial, all about simply entertainment with no real purpose (she's doing really random and extreme shit - it's art!), and then how people honestly give pop too much credit. They think she's really big when, what has she done? Like you've said, for most of her videos, just an excuse to act scantily. I remember in one of her interviews, when they were asking why she has to be so sexual, she brings up the image of a rock star, hand on his crotch, talking about how it's all about banging chicks, etc. She's just a rock star - but it disturbs them because she's a girl. While that's slightly true (the disturbance part), her analysis insults rock music. However, if it was the director's doing, it does take some skill to take a song given to you and then craft a message such as this with such tight specificity. Of course, I still need to figure out the loose ends. But regardless, the video itself is rather impressive and I like the message I can pull out of it, regardless if it was on purpose. I dunno, what do you think?

Cool, I hope you get a job you like and meet new friends. I almost want to say, I don't know what you mean, but I guess I do. I mean, most of my friends are like that, but that's because I don't go to them expecting to discuss books with them, etc. It all works as long as you have a balance, I've noticed. You need those friends to just joke around with and are absolutely great people, competant enough to hold a serious conversation with, but that you know aren't going to do it on a constant basis. But I do get you; like I said, I was on an intellectual drought before.

Yeah, we really need to discuss the book in person. It'll be a lot more fun, that way (and less confusing...). Heh, you and a ton of other people Kaz. I don't remember if I've told you, but I'm doing a gay history road trip during the summer just because of that. Haha, you know, I'd actually have to agree on my end too, come to think of it.... Might explain why we talk about them so often. I need to read more postmodern stuff, clearly, so I can have a more concrete idea when talking to you about this. I know we've discussed it before, but I work best in examples, etc. And yes, I'd have to agree, it is.