Woman and Philosophy: Another Broken Toy

©2010-2012 ~ZeTrystan---(Picture)

I want to write a short blog about this picture. I stumbled upon it a few months ago while writing my review of Run Lola Run and found it to be a very powerful metaphor.

I knew I wanted to blog about it but did not know exactly what I wanted to say until we read the latest section of Beauvoir. This drawing in a way represents what she was saying especially if we take it as losing one’s virginity. The picture could be about violent rape but it could be losing of virginity and rape—and to Beauvoir they are symbolically the same thing.

 This picture takes the romantic ideal parodied with the same symbols in the well-known film Robin Hood: Men in Tights, that the right guy is the “right fit” or even “the perfect fit”. Literally, we are obviously talking about the penis but if we delve deeper, more meaning can be found—essentially going back to the story of Aristophanes where sex is our search to find our other half—our “soul-mate”. The bloody key in this picture is a match to the key hole in the doll where the genitals normally are however, from the mood of the picture we can see that this was not the romantic “deflowering” she had in mind but painful, confusing, unexpected, and that in the process, this “toy” lost something she cannot get back. Physically this is her virginity but metaphorically, it is also her innocence and things like that.

Also the fact that the artists calls her a toy—the concept men have that women are things for their pleasure and amusement that they can “play” with and that, as with most people and their toys, will outgrow, become bored with, and\or move on to a new toy. Essentially that society (as in media and gender stereotypes) perceive women as disposable things—not people, that are transient and can easily be replaced, as the other part of the title of the piece implies—another broken toy.

What do you think of the drawing? Do you agree that these concepts are still real and present in society?

One beautiful day you will find...

The cute little doll.
A little girl easy to play with.
Beautiful little eyes. Beautiful little lips.
Her little heart beats, again and again.

You only have to use your key.
Find the keyhole and turn, turn.
Turn to hear her little voice.
Turn to hear her crying.

And then, you're bored.
You don't want to play with the little doll.
So you put her in the garbage.
Goodbye little broken toy.

...

And one beautiful day you will find...

©2010-2012 ~ZeTrystan---(Poem)

Music & Philosophy Blog 2

Ok, so I've been thinking about how to go about defining concepts that are a bit harder than simply dog or chair like art, music, etc. and here's what i've come up with, i touched briefly on how i feel about defining things in my extended Philosophy of Art paper which you can view at My papers/essays link on my main blog page. This blog may seem irrevevant at times or just a big tangent but bear with me.

To start with God: now in most cultures, God (or god or gods/goddesses) typically are simply summed up with three terms: omnipotent (all powerful), omniscent (all knowing), and omnipresent (everywhere simultaniously). Now, logically what this means is the God in most cases (esp in Judeo/Christan/Islamic terms) is infinite and limitless. Now there is a problem with defininf infinite concepts because language is finite and therefore no matter what, when you try to describe an infinite concept with finite language you are essentially limiting it and therefore the true message will not get across. for example refering to God as He, he, She, or she. Such is the problem with language: we don't always have the right words. This can also be said of absract concepts such as truth, beauty, freedom, justice, etc. The problem with refering to God comes into play with these terms because for the most part they are all subjective and have different meanings for different people and unless you are a Kantian and/or a Platonist/Neo-Plantonist,  there really is no objective concept of Truth, Beauty, Freedom, or Justice. and even if you do follow Kant or Plato, both of them still agree that as a single physical person, one will not truly know the full nature and objective meaning of these concepts. Therefore it can be difficult to define things like Music, Art, Dance, Literature, etc. You will end up limiting them and not taking into account all possibilites that exist or that may one day come along.

That being said, I also don't think it is a good idea to not have any base definition for these things either. I don't like the idea of opening floodgates so that anything can be anything. Definitons are important to an extent. I mean don't get me wrong, I'm not one of thsoe people who needs a label and classification for all things to feel safer and more comfortable with the world. This is something we all do to an extent as to not feel like we live in a world of chaos and uncertainties. However as I said, definitons are useful and helpful and they do weed out certain ridiculous or bad examples of a concept to be classified as such. For example. an iguana is not a cow. In the first place, an iguana isn't even a mammal so it fails even at the basic neccesities for being a cow.

Which bring me to my next point, once again, tangetn alert. I'm about to use zombies as a way to explain how to define music, Art, or art in general.:

Now at it's core a zombie follows certain things. Even before the days of George Romero who set the standard for the modern zombie, zombies were almost always previously dead things. I admit at times there were movies and books that had zombies as simply living people under hypnosis who did the bidding of the "zombie king" , the one who did the voodoo. But even if they were dead this figure was refered to as the zombie king. One, could look at these people in a trance as metaphorical zombies. the same way when parents say their kids are zombies in the morning. These parents do not actually mean their kids are zombies, undead, or being controlled by anyone. They know full well their kids are not among the walking dead.
So at our basis, zombies are dead that are somehow acting not dead. This is clear if we look at the synomyms for zombies: the living dead, the undead, the walking dead. See? Dead. Dead, dead, dead. Zombies are dead. More this, only the brain is typically functional. This means zombies don't need any of thewir other organs, which is why if you shoot or stab them in the chest or stomach they are not phased. it is the brain that still drives them and the only way to kill a zombie is to damage or remove the brain. now we all agree on this. But many many people have a tendency to label movies like 28 days later, evil dead, or i am legend as zombie movies. this is false. you can argue it anyway you want but in the end it comes down to whether they are dead or not. not only that but the writers of these movies usually clearly state their creatures are not zombies. out of those three films i listed, the only one that comes close to being zombies is the evil dead becuase in fact, the creatures are dead. but i nwill be going into a deeper argument about this in another post on debunking pseudozombie movies pretty much unrelated to this post but will recap and continue the specific discussion on the nature of zombies.

Anyway my point is if we don't somewhat close off definitons to at least not let in some things i feel we may be in trouble or else vampires could technically be zombies, cell phones could be works of art, computer system sounds of a laptop booting up could be music, etc.