The Amish Project

I recently saw a play called "The Amish Project," and thought I should share the unique perspective that it presented. This play is a fictional story about a real incident that happened in 2006 in Lancaster Pennsylvania. Lancaster has a little pocket called the Amish country, hosting the people who prefer to live an Amish lifestyle. In 2006, there was a shooter who entered an Amish school and killed five schoolgirls, then killed himself. This incident is what inspired playwright Jessica Dickey to write a one woman show that depicts multiple characters and opinions.

The show highlights the response of the Amish compared to the response of the rest of the Lancaster community. The characters who are not Amish react as the audience expects: they are mortified and choose to pity the Amish, who, they admit, they do not really understand. One character even calls the Amish bizarre and weird in their ways. The Amish choose to react in a much unexpected way, which reminds me of the expectations derived from affect.

The Amish were shocked and distraught by the situation, and the playwright chose to create a situation that involved one Amish family in particular that lost two daughters in the shooting. The audience sees the pain that this family goes through, but they also see the family approach the wife of the shooter with kindness. The wife of the gunman is a main character in the play, and she goes through multiple episodes of struggling with how to deal with her horrific situation. Most of society is disgusted with her because they only associate her with the gunman. One woman even tells her that it is her fault that the girls are dead because she didn't "handle her husband as a woman ought to."

The Amish family, however, reaches out to the wife, and consoles her. They bring her food and attempt to comfort her. The audience is drawn to admire the Amish because most people would despise anyone that was related to the killer of their children, but the Amish chose to see the situation differently, acknowledging that the wife was not at fault for the killings, and they extended a helping hand for a woman that lost everything because of what her husband did.

This challenges the expectations of affects because of the reactions of those who lost someone they loved. The Amish behaved differently than what the rest of society expected, which may mean that affect behaves differently in the Amish society.

My paper will examine jazz music as a catalyst for social change, most specifically focusing on John Coltrane's role as a leader of the combined social/musical revolution of the 1960s. I will parallel performances of Malcolm X's speeches with live performances of the John Coltrane Quartet, examining the affects evoked between the two, and touching on performance theory and cultural contexts to compare the two figures' roles as leaders of the civil rights movement. I will also look at the affects displayed by the audiences of each performance, and how their reaction helped spur the national movement to social change.

In future research and essays, I wish to continue to look at jazz as a catalyst for social change, perhaps looking at hip-hop's role in a later cultural revolution, and how modern jazz as the emergent, is attempting to blend jazz with hip hop in a new cultural and musical revolution now called the Stretch Movement. I would like to examine how the politically and culturally revolutionary work of modern musicians such as Christian Scott, Robert Glasper, Chris Dave, and Avishai Cohen pushes the barriers of both music and society.

I would also like to explore, throughout, the affects found in music, looking at music as a "universal language" spoken fluently by the best of musicians. Jazz is all about feel, and the dynamics and phrasing used to play a sad song versus those used to play a triumphant one are parallel to the facial expressions we use when we tell a story. The dynamics create a range of intensity, and the phrasing, a tone. The way a groove fits a section, or how a syncopation creates a hiccup in the feel are all relevant in looking at the message a song tries to send. In these, we should find accurate characteristics of the musical tendencies (the musical facial expressions) respond to each affect, as experienced at low and at high intensity.

Paper Topic

In my paper, I'd like to explore the idea of affect and the concept of terrorism. After the events of 9/11, we labelled our stance against terrorist threats as the "War on Terror." How does this labeling effect our interpretation of affect? Is the war on terror actually, to quote Massumi, a "war with affect as one of its weapons?" I'm planning on really thinking through Tomkin's definition of fear/terror as affect and how that may translate to some of the decisions America has  made in a post 9/11 world. I'd also like to throw in some of the ideas that we discussed concerning mourning and melancholia to address the way that we approach the idea of war and terrorism. How does this epochal event and its labeling affect our collective psyche in dealing with the threat of terrorism?

Paper Topic

For my paper, I will be examining the governess from “The Turn of the Screw.” If it can be assumed that she is hallucinating the ghosts, the question that gives meaning to the text is: why is she imagining them? I’m going to argue that her loneliness is the “hook” affect, kind of how we’ve been discussing “interest” to be in that it leads to other affects. In this case, her loneliness leads to fear and anxiety. The relationship all three have to each other determines the governess’s decisions, and thus, creates the apparitions she sees. 

PAPER TOPIC

What I am doing for this paper is taking the affect of interest/excitement and enjoyment/joy and learning how to dissect, create and maintain both interest /excitement and joy/enjoyment in an audience for a circus show.

Paper topic

My paper is focusing on the affect of interest involving attraction to the unknown or misunderstood. I will be focusing on Riquet's attraction to Rosetta compared to the narrator's attraction to Bartleby. Both Riquet and the narrator are fascinated by a character that does not seem to make sense; almost an enigma to what is considered a normal person. Once I discover what this affect of attraction is doing to these characters, I will extend it beyond the individual, trying to sort out where the attraction to an unknown or strange subject can be seen as a common thought for a general population.

Paper Topic: Lauren

For my paper, I am focusing on how affect is seen and interpreted when observed with the subconscious infatuation with capital gain and one’s status in the economy. Much focus is placed on the idea of obsession with the specific affect of excitement. I am concentrating on how setting, surroundings and upbringing (more oriented towards Rosetta) influence this affect. The two main pieces I am referencing to support my argument are Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall-street and Lauren Berlant’s Cruel Optimism. If I am able, I would also like to compare this desire to popular culture as discussed in the Grossberg article.