Notions of beuaty in modern society are brought up, presented, and challenged by Zadie Smith. What happend when something acts like an omen of beauty. For example, the albatross in the Rhyme of the Acncient Mariner?
Do people fall in love with good luck objects? Think back to elementray school, when you might have thought that this one person liking you would have meant you were cool, life was great. Validation through relationships/liking, from this good luck object?
Trohpy wives, and the extnet to which peo[le we love becaome an obejct t us. Think, if someone we loved failed out of Miami, would we wstill love them? Yes, for better or for worse, but isn’t that part of the person that made them scuucedd here at Miami in integral part of them? To what extrent social standing a part of the person so much that if that thing changes, they are not the same person?
We are objectivifying when we define beuty, lookin gat models and such. We hav an impoverished notio of beutty: its about lines and juxtaposition and contours and such. In the novel, pay attention to the degree to twhich a notion of beituty (about looking anbd seeing, opposed to looking and seeing omens) are these two notions at war? A battle between beauty as objectivifying someone and beuaty as lines, SEEING, coutnrous, shapes, light, color. The latter beuty, when I read it back, makes me think more of a painting than a real person. When I look at a person, it’s really hard to see lines and countours and such, I just see the person as a whole. Laura’s veriosn of beuaty seems like ART more than physicality.
Women, mothers, sisters, daughters beauty. Jermone’s love for V is not from her beuaty like eveyrone else surpmises, but he falls in love with the beauty of the family. Thinking aout Kiki looking different now than she did, Zora’s notion says her mother “let herself go.” Calrene Kipps says Kiki carries her weight well. Why doesn’t Kiki get offended, by this women she has NO agreement with? Issue of beauty as it rips our culture, how does it do this? Two families of art critic/history men. Kik’s body is anatomized. This word anatomized keeps getting thrown around, but I don’t really understand it. Maybe it’s just the simple fact in thinking that beauty doesn’t necassarily have to be in the body, and by Carlene commenting on Kiki’s physical body, it means she has been anatomized.
Pg 56 – Kiki and Jerome runs into Claire and Warren. “Each couple is it’s own vaudeville act.”
The family goes to Mozart’s requirm. Howard, the parody machine, makes fun of Mozart and Kiki and the world. The “genius” discussion. Define genius! Multiculturalists say genuis shcmenius, stop valuing the author, stop engaging in Bardolitry. Kipps talk about andbeleive in genius. Carl, the new friend, points out that Mozart died while writing this and other people finished the Requim. Does this redefine genius as collaboration?
Can there be no great women artists about whom someone will examine their work because we are always looking at them as objects?
The Christian idea of marriage, and why someone would stay in a marriage. As Christians, being married is one body. SO leaving or getting a divorce would be like cutting off a part of your body.
What’s going in in terms of beauty, culture, intellect,etc and why does this new info make kiki so mad?
Just physically juxtaposing Kiki and Claire, Kiki is a big black woman and Claire is a small, fit, white woman. Culturally Claire is more beautiful, and perhaps intellectually more attractive to Howard. It’s not that Kiki isn’t as smart as Claire, Claire just speaks the same intellectual language as Howard. Claire in this meeting reveals her expensive American teeth, perhaps a comment about the British teeth, though stereotypically bad, are natural, and American teeth are fake and paid for.
Claire tells Kiki she should be in a fountain in Rome. Kiki therfore has beuaty roles, she doesn’t have modern beauty, just ebauty that was valued hundreds of years ago. ouch. When you are extreme, people porject all over you.
