No One Puts Baby in the Pro Sem

Well, it's been three weeks since I began my Ph.D. program, and I've so far learned two things (that don't involve heavy mass communication theory).

1. I am the youngest person on the planet.

Of the 11 new Ph.D. students who comprise my three classes, I am apparently the only one who went straight from high school to college to grad school without stopping to do something productive with my life like write a screenplay or work for a TV network. But it doesn't just stop with the Ph.D.s. On Thursday, I met a second year M.A. student who's THREE years older than I am!! Sooo, I was 23 when I was doing what he's doing as a 27-year-old.

Okay, so here's the stupid thing about all of this. Somehow, this doesn't make me a child prodigy. It just makes me a purely theoretical academic who has no basis in the "real" world of mass media production. Granted, I (and everyone who knows me) have always known that I live on my own planet--what Molly, my Sophomore roommate, called "Liz World, lalalalala!"--that's generally comprised of knowing more about the Korean War as a direct result of watching M*A*S*H than the current War in Iraq. But still...am I missing something by never having made anything and instead only having thought about things?

In short, maybe nobody puts Baby in the corner, but apparently she puts herself into a theoretical one.


2. As soon as you earn a Ph.D. in Mass Media or some related field, you turn into this:



There's this thing called a Professional Seminar that many humanities Ph.D. programs make their students take. At WVU, it wasn't for credit, and only involved writing a 30 page paper on a topic that was entirely arbitrary and assigned by the higher ups. If they didn't like the ensuing paper, you got kicked out.

So when I found out that I was going to have to take a Pro Sem my first TWO semesters at SIUC, I almost lost my mind. Having just finished a Master's Thesis, the thought of spending two more semesters right away writing papers that were going to destroy my brain and quite possibly my life all over again kind of made we want, at the very least, to die.

ACK!!!

Fortunately, as I found out a few weeks ago, SIUC's MCMA program is full of fluffy kittens, all of whom also happen to be professors. Essentially, every Thursday evening, two professors from the college come talk to us about their research so we can see what the academics are up to these days and decide whom we want on our various committees. So far, I want to work with everyone. Now I just have to get someone to approve having 50 professors on my dissertation committee instead of just 5. Hmmm.


So the thing I already knew before starting here, but no one else really understands, is what I'm doing with my life/research. I'm interested in psychoanalytic film theory.

Let me put that in English.

You know that dude Sigmund Freud (pronounced Frood for you excellent people out there)? Well, he's the granddaddy of psychoanalysis, which is the study of the subconscious, psychological workings of humans. Now, Freud said some really stupid things, like how all women suffer from penis envy, but he also said some brilliant things about the subconscious, pathological ritualization, and latency, among many, many others. And then there was this guy Jacques Lacan (pronounced Jack-Kwees for those of you who are into Shakespeare's angilicization of names) who picked up where Freud left off and said that the penis, or phallus, is really a symbol of power, and doesn't necessarily mean the literal penis. So when we suffer from penis envy (a phenomenon that was later amended to include everyone, not just women), we're really just thirsting for power. Groovy. I like power, too. But Lacan also talked about this phase of childhood called The Mirror Stage, in which a mother or nanny or hip, progressive, stay-at-home dad holds an infant up in front of a mirror and says, "This is you." This traumatizes the child, because s/he realizes that s/he is an individual separate from the rest of the world. This makes us desire a sense of wholeness, which is unreachable, because, basically, I'm not You. You're You, and I'm Me, and even if you were me, then I'd be you, and I'd use your body to get to build a sense of separate "I"ness. You can't stop me from being traumatized, no matter who you are! So anyway, this sense of Self (I) vs. Other (You) leads to desire that manifests itself in other ways, like dreams, or dating the same (and wrong) kind of person over and over and over again, or like the drive to buy things in our capitalist society that will "complete" me. (Really, those Minolo Blahniks totally ARE going to complete me.)

Okay, here's the complicated part. This process of desire also happens when we watch movies. We can't ever really BE in the movie we're watching or experience what's going on in the film, but it sure tries to make us feel like we are. And in the process of making us feel "whole" within the story, a whole host of psychological and technical things go on, like framing that hides the fact that it's a film to start with.

Okay, those are the quick and dirty basics of my work. But the big question I know you're burning to ask is, "What the hell does this have to do with reality or anything that goes on in the actual world?"

Ummmmmmmm.

In theory, my works serves two purposes. First, if we can fully understand the ways in which cinematic representations function in relationship to our culture and our brains, then we can make movies more effectively, i.e. filmmakers can screw with our minds better. And second, the whole point of psychoanalysis is to understand the long-repressed moment of trauma that influences our subconscious decisions as our desires drive us through life, then learn how to better cope with that traumatic moment. So one way that we can do this is by figuring out how the experience of watching a film works in relationship to that process. Thus, film theory is really a part of a larger process of becoming healthier, better-functioning people.

Well, here's the problem: there are like 6 psychoanalytic film theorists on the planet right now, one of whom is my advisor. Soooooo, that also means that, with the way academia works, only like 6 people are ever going to read my writing on this subject. You see, academics tend to be stuck in their own little worlds (Liz World, lalalalala!), writing only to each other in language that only other people with advanced degrees and research can understand. So even if I should happen to discover exactly how to reach and cope with the moment of trauma through the cinematic experience, no one's going to know.

Here's where it gets cool.

I've decided to start a revolution.

I think the problem with academics is not just that we're snooty. We are, and we know it, and the outside world contributes to it. (I just can't tell you how many people are supremely impressed by the fact that I'm in a Ph.D. program, while it just kind of feels normal to me. Seriously, it's no big deal. Unless I get to be a child prodigy. Then I'm going to have business cards printed up with that a my job description.) So what's the one thing we do that could, conceivably, reach a larger audience? We write! Hello! But the problem is that our writing style is cold, impersonal, and overly technical. So instead of just distancing ourselves, why not write so we become PEOPLE who are accessible to OTHER PEOPLE!?

Seriously, I can write a blog that all of you normal (if horribly traumatized) people can read, yeah? And we can teach esoteric bullshit to 18-year-olds in our classrooms. And a lot of us function in society, with our spouses and children and so forth. So why can't we just write a paper that a normal human could read?

Okay, we can. And some of us have. But other academics look down on us for doing it. But why? Because they can't write like that? No, clearly not. Because we're giving all our little academic secrets away to the planet is why. But I'm in Mass Communications and Media Arts, for crying out loud! We study people and the way they get their information! Soooooo why can't we use that to talk to actual people about what we've found out?

Okay, that's my rant. And my job. And, really, my whole bloody life. I swear I'm totally a lot of fun at parties.