Is This What's It Come To?

My mother tells me that when I was little I would ask question after question - why do we have to drive over the bridge to get dinner? My dad would patiently answer, "because the restaurant is in San Francisco?" But why do we have to go to San Francisco to eat? "Because they have better restaurants than Marin." But why do they have better restaurants than Marin? And on it would go...

Other inquiries such as why Back to the Future did not win Best Picture at the Oscars, how come there are four balls in a walk but only three strikes in an out, and why Donruss baseball cards were worth more than Topps...would invariably include multiple follow up questions, generally beginning with "But why, but why?"

It must have been annoying.

The graduate school manifestation of this curiousity is that teachers commonly will respond to my question with read this book or that book.

Today, in addition to being recommended A Problem From Hell by Samantha Power, I was recommended The Pearly Gates of Cyberspace by Wertheim and The Geopolitical Aesthetic by Frederic Jameson.

The questions, you ask, that prompted these responses...let's see if I can remember...

1. Is there any type of work being done in International Relations looking at film and the way impacts global attitudes towards America? We (me and the assistant director of the International Relations school) went back and forth discussing the field from documentary film to narrative film and my reveal that indeed Bruce Willis was trying to put together a pro-Iraq film, which prompted her to recommend A Problem From Hell, an analysis of America's do-nothing policy with respect to the Kurdish population prior to 2003 - despite the genocide perpetrated by Saddam. We both concluded policy makers have tough jobs.

2. During a presentation a fellow student made about how spaces are changing in a digital environment, I asked a rather smarmy question - what's the big deal? I mean, all this talk about space and a new epoch of space, but we're in our bodies 24 hours a day, and we still place ourselves somewhere - whether it's our room or a movie, or a class...what's so different? I didn't mean to diss the guy's idea, I was actually asking more out of curiosity, but he sort of shrugged his shoulders and was like, "I dunno." The teacher cut in and told me to read The Pearly Gates of Cyberspace.

3. Lastly, I asked another fellow student about her project, making a short film with a cell phone. She talked about how narrative would be impacted, but I asked how will narrative be impacted - I mean, all evidence points to falling back into the same genre conventions as movies and TV, yet everyone keeps insisting on narrative changes. What makes the need for narratives to shift? Why did we start reading novels? Why are movies 2 hours? The teacher butts in again - read Fredric Jameson.

Okay.