Pygmalion

I read Pygmalion my senior year of high school.  We did a video project in which I was a terrible rapper.  My friend Matt claimed he could teach me to rap, and my friend Michael said he couldn’t before the talent show in a week.  Matt taught me, I won the talent show, and Matt won the bet.  It was fun and it got the general concept across.

For whatever reason, I’m a sucker for 90’s movies.  I love stuff like “Summer Catch”, “A Few Good Men”, and “Not Another Teen Movie”.  One of the movies that I liked was called “She’s All That”.  It was funny and it taught a good lesson, but I had no idea that it was basically a modern-day remake of Pygmalion.  It never registered with me that it was until I read Pygmalion in high school, and when I looked it up on Wikipedia out of curiosity one day, I saw that “She’s All That” was listed as an adaptation. 

This is actually one of the few instances in which I kind of enjoy seeing adaptations of a play rather than just reading it.  It certainly is not a boring play to read, but I it seems to me like the idea of betting on someone’s success is a more modern activity, so it feels natural to put it in a modern media display.  I think the best thing about the play is the theme of “collateral damage”.  Even though Freddy and Higgins didn’t mean to hurt Eliza, they did.

Orwell's Essay

I absolutely loved Orwell’s essay.  It was very refreshing to see that someone who is very well-respected also does not appreciate when people talk and write in a language that makes their point impossible to understand.  He said that all five of the passages he analyzed had either “stale imagery”, “dying metaphors”, or both.  The people that wrote them probably consider themselves to be writing in an elevated, sophisticated language.  In fact, they are simply combining complicated words with hazy meanings to their passages. 

It reminds me of a politician answering a question about an issue he was not prepared to discuss.  He searches for words that will sound good enough and make him seem intelligent, but in reality, he just spits out generalities.  A lot of times, I find myself wishing they (politicians) would just be straightforward, so no sentences of the like had to be used.  If he does not know the answer, let him say so, not fumble around for the right cliché. 

I also liked all six of Orwell’s points.  I certainly have been told the opposite of them before, but I think for the most part they would be good for us to follow.  Taking out unnecessary words allows us to be more precise and to-the-point.  Using the active instead of the passive keeps us in the moment.  The only disagreement I have is that sometimes, a longer word is more descriptive than a short word.  “I went to the store” is boring.  “I frolicked to the store” lets you know that I went merrily without a care.  

Feminist Criticism

Pickett’s observation of the two Catherines is very interesting.  She recites the Catherines that Lockwood observed in the books he saw and mentions how they all come about, except for Catherine Heathcliff.  Pickett presumes that identity reveals itself after both Catherine and Heathcliff’s death when they will together “wander the moors eternally”.  She goes on to talk about how Catherine’s decision with Heathcliff not only raises the question “What does a woman want?”, but also “What is a woman?”  During the course of the novel, Catherine made the transformation from simple to sophisticated for Earnshaw’s liking, but stayed the simple girl whenever she and Heathcliff were alone.  I found myself getting annoyed with the whole acting game and just wanting her to make her choice, whether it was the right choice (Heathcliff) or not.  She ultimately did, and I was not as relieved as I thought I’d be.  Certainly today, we would consider a “real woman” to be a variety of things.  If they aren’t proper, love fighting, and drink a lot, that’s all fine.  In the era in which Wuthering Heights took place, a woman was defined as sophisticated and proper.  She dressed nicely, spoke well, had a firm hold on her children, and a clean house.  Today, we embrace the idea that everyone is different, and they are, but in those times, different was likely to get you chastised.