On the Love of Nuance
If I had to sum up my evolution as a sociologist over the course of my graduate degree in a single word, I think I would have to go with 'nuance.' I realized this today after posing a question to my stats teacher, asking him 'don't you lose some nuance when you ________(insert boring stats concept I don't want to go into here).' Although I asked it very innocently (i.e.: not trying to be a mouth piece about quantitative methods), it served as a catalyst in prompting me to reflect upon my experience over the past (almost) year and a half.
As a young, undergraduate sociologist, I was taken by the 'expert' knowledge and organized, tight little schemata presented in my textbooks; I loved that I could speak about human behaviour, particularly crime, in broad, authorative terms to friends and people at parties. I loved it that I could field questions from people uneducated in criminology, particularly about sensational crimes largely reported in the media, such as the Karla Homolka and Paul Bernardo case. I'm a little embarassed to admit this now, but it's true. I also found myself embracing the explanatory 'power' of criminal behaviour theories, particularly Cohen and Felson's 'routine activities theory', as it probably provided me some sense of 'control' over the dark circumstances I could potentially encounter as a woman.
But....then came Contemporary Social Theory (Soci 633), and my whole world view was (fortunately, miraculously, and gloriously) shattered. Under the direction of our spectacularly brilliant professor, I abandoned my ill-founded roots and stretched in a number of frightening, exciting, and passion-driven directions. And all of these were driven by the concept of 'nuance' in sociology.
Given that I beleive that you cannot 'check' your sociological epiphanies at the 9th floor exit, I have found that this concept has rapdily expanded into all facets of my life, particularly in my choice of cultural representations in the form of music and film. Specifically, I thought about what I posted on my blog profile as 'favourites.' For example, I fell in love with American Beauty at age 18, because it represented opposition to narrow-mindedness, the dog-eat-dog tactics of corporate America, and the monoculture of suburbia. However, upon re-watching it recently, I noted that it accomplished this is an incredibly obvious way; the sweeping music plays in the background as Lester Burnham reflects in a voice-over about his spectacular epiphanies and methods of social resistance, and dies in the end in the most dramatic of fashions, thus representing the great tragedy that is our North American misguidedness. Contrastingly, I recently watched the fantastic and totally under-celebrated 'I Heart Huckabees', which accomplishes all of these themes with exponentially higher nuance, subtlety, and humour. Excerpts that come to mind include: the comment by Naomi Watt's to her bourgoisie boyfriend, 'we don't have to have children; we can just be ourselves, jet skiing, or whatever' ; the conveying of narrow and tragic Christian attempts to convert members of other religions, evidenced by the dinner table conversation centering around a suburban family's Sudanese 'son' who repeatedly apologized to his 'parents' for, essentially, just being his African self ; and the hilarious presentation of Jason Schwartzman's public misfitedness due to his love for, and activism centered on environmental issues. So, while this movie doesn't TELL you, or DEMAND you, to adopt leftist sentiments, it stills presents them to you in layers of nuance, complexity, and laughability.
Another fantastically subtle moment in film was found for me in 'Vanilla Sky,' when the deformed and devestated Tom Cruise dances with his mask on to Underworld's 'Cowgirl.' I thought this was so spectacular, since the movie centres on insatiable greed, ethics, the interference of science in human existence, and the uncontrollable desire for another human's complete devotion and love, and the lyrics to 'Cowgirl' are 'everything, everything, everything' repeated continuously, along with 'I want to give you everything....this is my machine, this is my beautiful dream....I'm hurting no one.'
The same goes for music. I once loved the politically charged music of Rage Against the Machine, whose 'Bulls on Parade,' 'Killing in the Name,' or 'Know Your Enemy' could completely fire me up. While I still enjoy their stance and driving--albeit simple--composition, I alternatively find myself now continually drawn to the poly-rythtms of Tool, the transendental sound of Radiohead (particularly that found on 'Hail to the Theif'), the esoteric poetic lyrics of the former Soundgarden ('Fell on Black Days' is an excellent example) and the gloriously tortured complexity of Rachmaninoff's piano concertos (No. 3 is arguably the most incredible song ever composed for the piano).
Overall, perhaps what I love about these cultural pieces is the fact that they challenge you to THINK about their message, rather than just deliver it for you in a slick package. Much of this line of thought was sparked also by reading Paul's amazing 'The Annotated Everything' (see http://qmass.wordpress.com/), which asserted in a comment on the new 'Borat' film that this type of work is IMPORTANT; it's not delivered as being 'huge,' 'earth-shattering', or 'monumental' film-making, but it is nonetheless in what it presents to viewers, who, if they could only think about it, will recognize it's enormous significance.
As a young, undergraduate sociologist, I was taken by the 'expert' knowledge and organized, tight little schemata presented in my textbooks; I loved that I could speak about human behaviour, particularly crime, in broad, authorative terms to friends and people at parties. I loved it that I could field questions from people uneducated in criminology, particularly about sensational crimes largely reported in the media, such as the Karla Homolka and Paul Bernardo case. I'm a little embarassed to admit this now, but it's true. I also found myself embracing the explanatory 'power' of criminal behaviour theories, particularly Cohen and Felson's 'routine activities theory', as it probably provided me some sense of 'control' over the dark circumstances I could potentially encounter as a woman.
But....then came Contemporary Social Theory (Soci 633), and my whole world view was (fortunately, miraculously, and gloriously) shattered. Under the direction of our spectacularly brilliant professor, I abandoned my ill-founded roots and stretched in a number of frightening, exciting, and passion-driven directions. And all of these were driven by the concept of 'nuance' in sociology.
Given that I beleive that you cannot 'check' your sociological epiphanies at the 9th floor exit, I have found that this concept has rapdily expanded into all facets of my life, particularly in my choice of cultural representations in the form of music and film. Specifically, I thought about what I posted on my blog profile as 'favourites.' For example, I fell in love with American Beauty at age 18, because it represented opposition to narrow-mindedness, the dog-eat-dog tactics of corporate America, and the monoculture of suburbia. However, upon re-watching it recently, I noted that it accomplished this is an incredibly obvious way; the sweeping music plays in the background as Lester Burnham reflects in a voice-over about his spectacular epiphanies and methods of social resistance, and dies in the end in the most dramatic of fashions, thus representing the great tragedy that is our North American misguidedness. Contrastingly, I recently watched the fantastic and totally under-celebrated 'I Heart Huckabees', which accomplishes all of these themes with exponentially higher nuance, subtlety, and humour. Excerpts that come to mind include: the comment by Naomi Watt's to her bourgoisie boyfriend, 'we don't have to have children; we can just be ourselves, jet skiing, or whatever' ; the conveying of narrow and tragic Christian attempts to convert members of other religions, evidenced by the dinner table conversation centering around a suburban family's Sudanese 'son' who repeatedly apologized to his 'parents' for, essentially, just being his African self ; and the hilarious presentation of Jason Schwartzman's public misfitedness due to his love for, and activism centered on environmental issues. So, while this movie doesn't TELL you, or DEMAND you, to adopt leftist sentiments, it stills presents them to you in layers of nuance, complexity, and laughability.
Another fantastically subtle moment in film was found for me in 'Vanilla Sky,' when the deformed and devestated Tom Cruise dances with his mask on to Underworld's 'Cowgirl.' I thought this was so spectacular, since the movie centres on insatiable greed, ethics, the interference of science in human existence, and the uncontrollable desire for another human's complete devotion and love, and the lyrics to 'Cowgirl' are 'everything, everything, everything' repeated continuously, along with 'I want to give you everything....this is my machine, this is my beautiful dream....I'm hurting no one.'
The same goes for music. I once loved the politically charged music of Rage Against the Machine, whose 'Bulls on Parade,' 'Killing in the Name,' or 'Know Your Enemy' could completely fire me up. While I still enjoy their stance and driving--albeit simple--composition, I alternatively find myself now continually drawn to the poly-rythtms of Tool, the transendental sound of Radiohead (particularly that found on 'Hail to the Theif'), the esoteric poetic lyrics of the former Soundgarden ('Fell on Black Days' is an excellent example) and the gloriously tortured complexity of Rachmaninoff's piano concertos (No. 3 is arguably the most incredible song ever composed for the piano).
Overall, perhaps what I love about these cultural pieces is the fact that they challenge you to THINK about their message, rather than just deliver it for you in a slick package. Much of this line of thought was sparked also by reading Paul's amazing 'The Annotated Everything' (see http://qmass.wordpress.com/), which asserted in a comment on the new 'Borat' film that this type of work is IMPORTANT; it's not delivered as being 'huge,' 'earth-shattering', or 'monumental' film-making, but it is nonetheless in what it presents to viewers, who, if they could only think about it, will recognize it's enormous significance.
posted by Soci Womyn at 5:10 PM
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