Questions, Comments for Feb 18th

The New England Cemetery:

Looking at the Cultural Landscape surrounding an object can help us to better understand the object itself; it gives it context in which we can better understand the thing itself. It seems to me that this is an obvious statement, but in reality its usually the first thing that we forget to do.

I found it interesting to look at cemeteries as a way of learning more about patterns of life. Looking at the placement of gravestones in order to learn more about the social relations between those buried there and those who placed them made me wonder: What other types of resting places tell things about current society and relations that we are around every day

Do old historic neighborhood layouts have similar emotional undercurrents as New England cemeteries? Does the placement of kids at recess say anything about the culture that we are submerged in today? What patterns can we see in the placement of things and places today? Do unconscious or conscious decisions help us place homes, neighborhoods, districts or place of rest according to how we view our own cultural landscape?

Looking at the context of certain places today, what does that tell us about the time, space and form of the society and time period of when they were designed and built? Looking at those objects will certainly be able to tell us more about the context; it is hard for one to exist and speak without the other.

A Garden in the Machine: Reading a Mid-Nineteenth-Century, Two-Cylinder Parlor Stove as Cultural Text

Joel Pfister discusses the open hearth as a romanticized symbol of order and how the stove in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Fire Worship” “symbolizes the incursion of a fast-changing industrial world into the home”. I have to wonder, what would our generations equivalent be of the open hearth, and what would it say about “homes” of today?

Lucubrations on a Lava Lamp: Technology, Counterculture, and Containment in the Sixties

The author talks about the history of the lava lamp, and its apparent psychedelic ties to the 1960s and how its “orgiastic suggestiveness” stirs up sexual thoughts. She then goes on to say, “So the lava lamp seems, in fact, to merit its reputation as a sign of sixties psychedelia and its associated corporeal permissivness”. I have to wonder, however, for those of us who bought lava lamps when we were kids in the 1990’s, what did it mean to us? I certainly don’t remember looking at my purple and gold lava lamp and thinking, “what is sexual about this?”. I am curious as to what the lava lamp would mean to the next generation who enjoyed them?

The Light of the Home: Dialectics of Gender in an Argand Lamp

This lamp and other types of lighting from the 19^th century seem to show a family dynamic. Since the author feels like this lamp tells something not only about manufacturing and details of family life, I have to wonder if: if since we have moved away from such finely handcrafted objects such as lamps, what does that say about “family and home life” today?

Visual Pleasure and Narrative Culture

I don’t necessarily agree with the author’s last sentence, “Women, whose image has continually been stolen and used for this end, cannot view the decline of the traditional film from anything much more than sentimental regret”. I would challenge the author to at least give a counter argument on this.