Blog Post #7

I really enjoyed doing the presentations as well as learning from them. It was a fun and creative way to learn different types of analytical theories using our own methods. They were all very well done but the two that stood out to me was New Historicism and Queer Theory.

I wasn't sure at the beginning of the presentation what the difference between New and Old historicism was but the group did a very good job elaborating and explaining the differences. I like how New Historicists perceive history as subjective and try to acknowledge different points of views rather than the Old, which views history as concrete. The example referring to the Nazis and the Holocaust really stuck with me. As we all know, the Nazis commited horrible acts but with a New Historic point of view it really opened my eyes to the possibility that many of them probably resented what they were doing but were either not in the right state of mind or so bound by fear to do anything else. The group did a very good a job at engaging the audience which made things easier to understand.

I enjoyed how the Queer Theory group incorporated the use of the film in order to help us understand different parts of the theory. During the first scene when they kiss, was a great example of double-consciousness. On one hand they live their lives as cowboys with the "macho-man" reputation with a wife and kids and on the other hand they are homosexuals that are in love with each other. They cannot mix their two lifestyles together because of conflicting issues as well as the fear of how society would view them. This can be seen in the second clip when he tries to get a job, he is denied because his boss knew about him being gay, although he had previously worked their and was more than capable of doing the job.