New Found Skills
Winter quarter of Humanities Core was quite challenging, but rewarding. From lectures about the vast Incan empire by Professor Rachel O’ Toole, the dynamics and ambiguity behind the Shakespearean prose by Professor Jayne Lewis and the history behind India’s revolution for independence, I realized that language truly is a partner of empire when manipulating and dominating its people (Lewis). Last quarter, I was tasked with focusing on analyzing interpretations of imperial ruins to tell stories of just how they functioned. Whereas this quarter there was a great emphasis on literature, passages from revolutionaries and first hand accounts by participants of the harsh realities behind empire. If there is one topic i thoroughly enjoyed this quarter, it would be using my new found skills in analyses of paintings to find a deeper meaning behind the piece, “Matrimonio de García de Loyola con Ñusta Beatriz”, and write a six page essay detailing my findings. This process was tough but the end result was all worth the time i put into this essay.
Matrimonio De García De Loyola Con Ñusta Beatriz. Museo Pedro de Osma, Lima, Peru.
When analyzing the implications behind this particular painting, i wanted to focus on the characters/iconography that tell the story of “Matrimonio.” Surface-level many may find that this is just another painting that depicts two marriages taking place in a Peruvian plaza. However, without any prior knowledge of the power dynamics shared between Spanish elites and Peruvian kuraka’s (Andean nobles), viewers would never uncover the true narrative the painting wishes to offer. In my essay, i found that the two main women in this painting may have used these marriages to their Spanish husbands to their advantage in solidifying the Incan identity for decades to come and that this painting attempts to condemn the Spanish for their senseless acts during their conquest. I came to this conclusion after Marie Timberlake of the University of California, Los Angeles concluded in her entry to The Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies says that such artifacts found in the painting, such as the skulls held by the Jesuit priests, echoe the European virtue of memento mori implying that the Spanish would soon pay for their senseless acts (Timberlake 566).
Timberlake, Marie. The Painted Image and the Fabrication of Colonial Andean History: Jesuit and Andean Visions in Conflict in Matrimonio De GarcÃa De Loyola Con ÃUsta Beatriz. 2001.
After completing this historical analysis essay, I received a grade that i believe truly reflected the amount of time i had put into composing this essay. I remember moping around every night because i thought this particular essay was difficult when trying to find the appropriate sections to include my secondary resources or fearing that my interpretation of this particular piece would be off compositionally as well as historically. Realizing that I do have the skills to utilize secondary resources to develop my own theses of paintings and literature, i hope to take it with me coming into Spring Quarter. I would like to develop these profound skills into the realm of film analyses because i believe that movies are more than just for entertainment, they hold deeper truths to human nature and desires.
Before the winter quarter comes to a close, we were given one last essay to write which is a comparative literary analysis where we choose a modern interpretation of William Shakesepare’s The Tempest. Of course knowing how to analyze paintings, i thought it would be great to attempt to analyze Jack Bender’s civil war version of the play, but through film. One of the things i did before analyzing his movie was to look at other examples, in particular “film essays.” Avid film-goers have created these “film essays” in a way to analyze the composition, acting and scriptwriting so as to uncover the directors vivid imagination when producing the film. After watching a film essay on one of my favorite movies of the year, “Call Me By Your Name”, I truly got interested in analyzing Bender’s film and tried to do so in such a manner.
Jack Benders 1998 T.V. Movie: The Tempest
As with all cinematic interpretations based off of literary works, directors tend to stray away from the authors version of their works. This is to possibly speak on related issues that affect people today or to create a narrative that is different from the authors while keeping some aspects of the work intact with the film. Julie Taymor’s film of The Tempest is an excellent example in which she casts a female to play the lead of Prospero so as to make a political statement of women not being represented in film. For Bender’s version of the playwrights last work, Ton Hoenselaars of Utrecht University writes, “For the purpose of characterisation in this film, the director seems to have eschewed the Shakespearean complexity in favour of matters which have a local habitation and a name” (Hoenselaars). The “local habitation” would be the civil-war social climate with slavery and the racial tension experienced between whites and blacks. I believe that this movie could be one of the many interpretations that influenced Taymor to cast such a diverse cast for her film, in which Bender had casted black actors to represent Shakespeare’s imaginative characters as well.
This coming Spring, I hope to utilize film analyses and the aesthetics behind it as the main focal point of my research project. I believe that this quarters lecturers and assignments have equipped me with the necessary skills to conduct an interesting research project. By focusing on the aesthetics behind film, I hope to carry on my findings in this blog as well.
Works Cited
Hoenselaars, Ton. “Gone With The Tempest.” Shakespeare-Genootschap Van Nederland En Vlaanderen, shakespeare.let.uu.nl/bayou.htm.
Timberlake, Marie. The Painted Image and the Fabrication of Colonial Andean History: Jesuit and Andean Visions in Conflict in Matrimonio De GarcÃa De Loyola Con ÃUsta Beatriz. 2001.