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my 2023 like/hate list

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video #2: structures of feeling, the strength of vulnerability, and the comforts of impossible love

1960- Culture and Society a book by Raymond Williams

1977- Marxism and Literature a book by Raymond Williams

2003- Frank an Album by Amy Winehouse

2011- Cruel Optimism (Introduction) a book by Lauren Berlant

2017- Love Under Threat: The Emotional Valences of the Twilight Saga an article by Heta Pyrhönen

2023- Hermeneutic Labor: The Gendered Burden of Interpretation in Intimate Relationships Between Women and Men an article by Ellie Anderson

other resources:

Introduction: Raymond Williams and Romanticism

Art of the romantic era; romanticism, classicism, realism

Public Feelings Salon with Lauren Berlant

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"Fight to Live"

Sticker seen in Edmonton, Canada

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towards a new romanticism

It’s hard being a romantic these days. Those rose colored glasses just don’t work like they used to. The pretty distractions that once gave me escape have become the bright pink highlighters of my unhappiness.  I mean, when sorrow seems so inevitable it makes sense to just lay back and enjoy what you can. Only a little while of lounging though and I’m unimpressed with what’s left to ‘enjoy’. I watch a picturesque sunset because I’ve been moping in my room all day and should probably get some vitamin-D. I lay in the park next to some flowers to breathe and be seen, both of which have become very hard for me. I go to my favorite bagel spot so often I think they’re starting to get annoyed with me. It used to be my little special treat, but having a treat all the time really doesn’t make it seem so special anymore. I’m trying to live but it’s not working, I know I’m missing something. I miss red. Never constant in my life but always existing in my crayon box, always possible. Nothing new feels possible anymore, so sticking to what I know seems the best option. I treat myself some more, languishing in the fantasies of movies I’ve seen 100 times before, but I’m starting to wonder… What good are rom coms if I’ve given up on love? How can I make art when I’m worrying about being behind on rent? What use are flowers at a time like this?! 

I insist that I am a romantic, not an idealist. Love is real and truth is beautiful and optimism is necessary. The problem isn’t the roses, it’s the glasses. Wouldn’t it be nice to see and enjoy the world as it is? No pink potemkin village needed, a world with all its colors and insides exposed: true and beautiful. To realize this world we must start from an honest place, a real assessment of our circumstances and the state of life as it exists today; from there we can trace our history and begin to shape a new one. This world will require new definitions and conceptions of love and beauty and art, going beyond the confines of what society has prescribed as possible. The romantics of the past have been suckers for nostalgia, and so it seems the new romantics should be servants of the future. 

Throughout this project I’ll be exploring what it really means to be a romantic today. Through classic and contemporary culture and history, I’ll be assessing the good and the bad, the ugly and the beautiful, the rose and its thorns. Hopefully we’ll be able to look at the past, to understand our present more honestly, and to dream for something that is not just beautiful; but real and possible.

-Brooklyn

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video #1: lorraine hansberry, nihilistic intellectualism, and the responsibility to dream

references:

1939- Mother Courage and Her Children a play by Bertolt Brecht

1957- The White Negro an essay by Norman Mailer

1959- The Negro Writer and His Roots: Towards a New Romanticism a speech and essay by Lorraine Hansberry

1959- A Raisin in the Sun a play by Lorraine Hansberry

1959- The Blacks: A Clown Show a play by Jean Genet

1961- Genet, Mailer, and The New Paternalism an article by Lorraine Hansberry

1960/61- Les Blancs and What Use Are Flowers? plays by Lorraine Hansberry

1961- The Black Boy Looks at the White Boy an essay by James Baldwin

other resources:

To Be(come) Young, Gay, and Black: Lorraine Hansberry's Existentialist Routes to Anticolonialism an article by Cheryl Higashida

35 Images That Capture The Beatniks’ Heyday In New York City

Looking for Lorraine an article by Imani Perry

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Jenna Gribbon (American, 1978) - Midday Watch (2020)

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It is only our ignorance that leads us to think that the things we are used to can never change.

Alexandra Kollantai, Communism and the Family First Published: in Komunistka, No. 2, 1920, and in English in The Worker, 1920. (via commissar-bianca-blog)

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Sinéad O'Connor photographed by Kevin Cummins, 1992.

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A Raisin in the Sun (1961)

Director: Daniel Petrie

Cinematographer: Charles Lawton Jr.