Margaret Kerry

            On Sunday morning I finished memorizing “Le Vide au Coeur” (The Empty Heart) by Serge Gainsbourg and started working out the chords.

            I washed three pairs of underwear to dry in the apartment so I won’t have to do laundry until after my Tuesday exam. 

            I washed another section of my kitchen floor up to about 35 cm from the front of the stove. One more session and I’ll be there but it’ll have to be maybe December 23 before I get back to it since I have my exam on December 22. 

            For lunch I had Triscuits and cheddar. 

            I researched some more of the key terms for my Canadian Literature exam: 

            New Woman. The term was coined in the late 19th Century to characterize women who’d achieved some degree of independence from men, who traveled, lived and worked on their own in more than just labour or clerical work. Many of the heroines of Henry James’ novels were new women.

            Politics of representation. Representation is Successfully speaking in the collective voice of the culture one is trying to represent. By doing so one gives that culture a voice that can stand up for that culture. The politics part comes in when there are conflicting representations. 

            Postcolonialism is literature inspired by the experience of the vestiges of colonialism. If there are no vestiges there is only literature. It would be like calling a literature “Literature by people that don’t keep chickens”. 

            Postmodernism is defined by skepticism, irony, with less of a belief in absolute truth. Postmodernists think truth is socially constructed. The literature is self conscious, irreverent, parodic, absurdist, includes cyberpunk, a mixing of styles, self criticism, playfulness, vagueness, a rejection fair of absolute truth by people who are absolutely sure of themselves and of what is required to make society fair. 

            Reconciliation in relation to Indigenous people is the restoration of friendly relations. Honouring treaties would be a start, equity in the legal system, equal opportunities, equal education, helping regain culture and history. 

            Rhetoric of modernity. Modernity is a foundation of western civilization but colonialism is pre-modern. Rhetoric is the art of persuasion. Rhetorical tropes are allegory, hyperbole, irony, metaphor, oxymoron, parable, paradox, personification, puns, simile. 

            In the Roots / Routes approach to Black writing, roots focuses on the culture that came into being after the route was traveled. Routes focuses on the meaning of diaspora and the original roots. I would say that the more current roots are more relevant unless one has access to a living culture that is more relevant to one's current one at the roots of the diaspora. 

            Salvage ethnography is an attempt to preserve the culture and history of a group that the researcher believes is on the verge of extinction. Some representations were staged to emphasize an imagined idea of the disappearing culture. Rasmussen’s reaction to the Inuit listening to opera worked against his agenda. There was a distrust that cultural groups could preserve their own artifacts as efficiently as modern societies and so things were taken away. In the case of Rasmussen nothing was stolen, but amulets were negotiated into his possession by trade and argument. The notion that Inuit people were tricked by Rasmussen may stem from a modern racist European belief that Indigenous people had an innocent collective mind that wasn’t savvy to the nuances of trade and barter. In the case of Rasmussen his actions seem to have been proven right by the fact that modern Inuit people are learning about themselves from what he rescued of their culture from extinction. 

            CanLit scandals such as the Steven Galloway case is a debate between people advocating due process and others who would like to transform our justice system into one based on belief. CanLit scandal of racism I guess is about cultural appropriation. 

            Self-reflexivity in postmodernism is a characteristic of metafiction. Self reflexive writing keeps the reader from entering into and identifying with the story. Self reflexivity can seek self understanding, it can be a kunstlerroman. Laurence Durrell is self reflexive and Henry Miller. 

            Speculative fiction differs from science fiction in that it does not necessarily follow the rules of known science. It could include elements of fantasy or the supernatural. Shakespeare puts characters together in Midsummer Night’s Dream that come from different mythologies. Atwood claims her Handmaids Tale is speculative but Ursula K Le Guin says it’s science fiction because it could happen. Speculative fiction explores what if scenarios. It has to take place in a world we know whereas a science fiction story could take place in a created world that still follows our rules of physics. 

            Sublime is the state of ecstasy that results from facing terrifying aspects of nature without dying. Frankenstein’s monster is a personification of the sublime. 

            White suburban fiction examples are The Invaders by Karolina Waklawiak and Wifey by Judy Blume. A Gothic suburban fiction trope is danger from within the family or community rather than from outside. Black suburban fiction is pretty much only works by Chariandy and really Brother is a pretty urban type of suburban novel. It’s just not downtown urban. 

            Technological sublime would include large skyscrapers, 9-11, airplanes, spaceships, rockets, modern warfare, large vehicles, large machines of every sort such as potato harvesters, large engineering projects. Any technology that one could get close to and possibly be harmed by it. Electrical fences, superhighways, big trucks, ski lifts, subways, trains, oil wells, floating oil wells, any vast facility, hospitals, cities, mines, submarines, skydiving, helicopters. The ideal video game would reproduce a sense of the sublime. 

            Terra nulius No man’s land. A place not occupied by anyone or anyone considered important to the occupier. 

            Wilderness in CanLit is the trope most associated with Canada and so literature that reflects that reality has more weight in representing Canada. In Canada there is a shorter distance to the wilderness for most Canadians. It is not far from our minds and our consciousness. In a sense Canadians are more haunted by the sublime than anyone else because the wilderness is never far away. It is what Canadians love to paint, photograph and write about. Its conquest has defined our history.

            I cut the mould off two slices of bread and toasted them, having them with a fried egg and a beer while watching Andy Griffith. 

            This episode was a Christmas show that was somewhat a modernization of the Scrooge story but without the supernatural elements. It’s Christmas eve and Andy is getting ready to go home to a Christmas party and he wants Barney to play Santa Clause this year. But the jail is full and Barney says he needs to guard the prisoners so he can’t go to the party. However Andy holds to the idea that the penal system is meant to educate more than punish and since schools are out over Christmas he lets his prisoners go home as long as they promise to come back after Christmas. With the jail clear Andy and Barney can go to the party but suddenly the liquor store owner Ben Weaver comes in having made a citizen’s arrest of Sam Muggins, who he caught moonshining. Ben is the Scrooge type character and every time he is reminded that it’s Christmas he exclaims, “Christmas? Hah!” Andy is forced to put Sam in jail but decides to arrest Sam’s wife and children too as accessories and then deputizes all the people from the party at his place, including Aunt Bea, Ellie and Opie so they can guard the prisoners. They have the Christmas party right there in the sheriff’s office. Suddenly Ben starts trying to get himself arrested but they keep letting him go. Finally when Ben is watching them carolling through the back window of the jail he falls and makes a noise in the alley. When Andy investigates he realizes what is really going on and arrests Ben. Ben comes in with a suitcase full of expensive presents for everybody but he claims they got into the suitcase by mistake and he has no use for them. Later Sam is allowed to go home because Ben drank all the evidence against him. 

            Sam’s wife Bess was played by Margaret Kerry who started out at the age of four on The Little Rascals. While graduating from high school she played Eddie Cantor’s teenage daughter in “If You Knew Suzie” and did a dance number called “My Brooklyn Love Song.” She was the co-host of “Teleteen Reporter” for two years. She was then a regular as the eldest daughter on one of the first sitcoms, “The Charlie Ruggles Show”. She was the model for the movements of the paedophile fairy Tinkerbell in Disney’s Peter Pan. She worked extensively in voice over work with 48 character voices in 21 dialects.