ArtsONE, we will look back on you fondly. Some of your texts, not so much, so today Her Campus writers Avery and Chimie decided to vent. Here are eleven texts from the ArtsONE reading list that we had some opinions about.
1. Sophocles’ Oedipus the King
C – Alternate title: Curiosity Killed the King. A tale of woe that was a good starter to the year. 8/10
A – I now feel more intellectually qualified to make mommy/daddy issues jokes around my friends. 7/10
2. Plato’s Republic
C – “We can never seem to escape Plato, can we?” – Robert Crawford, our seminar leader. And no, we cannot. I cannot. Plato’s made it impossible for me to converse using anything but the Socratic method. Plato makes Vancouver sunshine even weirder than it already is, because the sun now reminds me of the Good. Plato haunts my nightmares and waking hours alike. I have not known peace since September 2016. 6.5/10.
A – Sure, he’s one of the founding philosophers of the western world, but by now the fact that he can be connected to literally anything just makes me groan like a bad pun. 5/10
3. Shakespeare’s The Tempest
C – When Shakespeare, using Prospero as his proxy, faced the audience and essentially went ‘I’m retiring; I hope my works brought you joy’, I actually teared up. 7.5/10.
A – I’m grading this purely on how fun it was to read Caliban’s lines with a Golem voice. 9/10
4. Rousseau’s Discourse on Inequality
C – J.J. Rouz enjoyed BDSM and was banned from Geneva for committing written TMI about said BDSM*. Thankfully, Rousseau’s well-written Discourse on Inequality is just that, rather than a self-exposé on a very different kind of bondage from the one in his ‘Man is Born Free’ speech. 8/10.
*okay, so it wasn’t actually for his sexual writings, but Geneva DID kick Rousseau out.
A – This text is worth reading purely for Voltaire throwing shade on all of Rousseau’s arguments. I aspire to be as sassy as him one day. 5/10
5. Freud, selections
C – LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT FREUD. …or maybe not, to spare you. Point is, Freud’s concept of the ‘Oedipus Complex’ misreads our first text so badly it’s unfunny. 4/10
A – Thanks to this dude the term “uncanny” made it into every single one of my essays. 5/10
6. Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper
C – A good old-fashioned psychological horror story that turned yellow — the cheeriest, eye-seariest, lemon gumdroppiest colour of all — into something frightening. 10/10
A – I read this out loud for a recording accompanied by creepy music and I screamed in terror at the end. 11/10
7. Carter’s The Bloody Chamber
C – Every noun in the sentence “a dozen husbands impaled a dozen brides while the mewling gulls swung on invisible trapezes in the empty air outside” is being suffocated by adjectives. LET THE NOUNS BREATHE, CARTER. Also, The Snow Child is messed-up. 6/10.
A – Unlike my compatriot (giving Chimie the side-eye as I write) I really enjoyed Carter’s writing style. Bring on the adjectives! We could have done with a bit less necro- and pedophilia though. 8/10
8. Hildegard von Bingen, selections and film
C – Hildegard’s fun to read, because she constantly insists that she’s super humble, but — well, would a humble person do that? 7/10.
A – Brother Volmar made the movie not only watchable, but enjoyable. Hilly, on the other hand? Meh. 6/10
9. Sebald’s Austerlitz
C – “lmao ‘organized breaks in narrative structure’? ‘Sentences shorter than a page’? What do I look like to you, an Arts One student?” -W.G. Sebald while writing this, probably. Alternate title: Memory’s a Fake-Ass Bitch and You Can Be, Too! 6.5/10.
A – I still think Jacques Austerlitz is a ghost and you can fight me on this. 7.5/10
10. Bechdel’s Fun Home
C – Excellent art and clear yet gorgeous writing. Plus, Fun Home has so many extra-textual references that you’re practically reading fifteen books at once. 10/10
A – I agree. Why did we spend all this money on books when we could have studied everything via Bechdel? 10/10
11. Paul Auster’s City of Glass, adapted by Paul Karasik and David Mazuchelli
C – Good art and technique in the adaptation, which sadly couldn’t make up for the obscure, torturous source material. 5/10.
A – Everyone seemed to think that the comic adaptation was ground-breaking, but as soon as I got to the main-character-losing-his-mind-so-the-panels-fall-apart scene, all I could do was shake my head. Friends, this came out in 1994. That technique is old news by now. 3/10
Just a disclaimer folks: all opinions here are our own and have not been sanctioned by the ArtsONE teaching team, so if you have beef come to me (my offer to fight about Austerlitz still stands).
Photo Credits: Avery Creed, Wikipedia