Wednesday, April 10, 2013

Act 2, Sc 2

Oberon doses Titania with the love potion

Puck doses Lysander with the same love potion, thinking he is Demetrius

Self-confidence is a kind of issue in this play.

Or, maybe LACK thereof.

What kind of a person (Helena) would literally CHASE a guy she loves, who tells her flat out “LEAVE ME ALONE!”?

It could be that she doesn’t like herself, and being with someone who doesn’t like her either CONFIRMS her self-opinion, even though it is bad.

Here’s a weird thing about COGNITIVE DISSONANCE - the anxiety and bad feelings that come from having TWO or more conflicting ideas/concepts/etc in your mind at the same time.

IF you have high paying job group and a low paying job group, the low paying job group reports a HIGHER sense of job satisfaction.

This makes no sense.

COGNITIVE DISSONANCE explains this.

A POSSIBLE explanation for Helena’s sticking around with a jerk (Demetrius) could be cognitive dissonance and her lower self-esteem.

It’s kind of cool that a guy who wrote a play in the 1600s was able to describe something that is a modern psychological discovery

Masochist - someone who seems to enjoy humiliation and misery (and sometimes, pain) - often, these people are kind of replaying bad situations from their childhoods

Helena’s possible motivations are pretty interesting and complex.

Hermia might have some interesting motivations as well.

Why do you think she doesn’t want to marry Demetrius, if he is similar to Lysander?

Can we find a possible deep, psychological reason why a teenage girl might want NOT to marry the guy her father has chosen?

Do we not KNOW that teenagers are always testing the boundaries set by their parents and society?

Do we not KNOW that teenagers rebel against those rules?

Do we not KNOW that teenagers are struggling to find their identities and their own individual paths?

These are classic teenage issues.

INDIVIDUATION - the thing that makes teenagers do the opposite of what their parents say

This is an important drive to separate from your family and become your own person.

There is another layer - the SEX ROLES - what makes a woman different from a man?

Part of the answer is EXPECTATIONS from SOCIETY

Think how scary it must be to live in a culture where Hermia is threatened with death if she doesn’t do what her father says.

NO! Lysander wakes up and sees HELENA! (remember, he’s been hit with the love potion)

Because of that love potion, he looks on Hermia and hates her.

AND he hates her all the more BECAUSE he used to love her.

SO, now Helena loves Demetrius, who is after Hermia, who loves Lysander, who is in love with Helena - the potion has made an even greater mess

Magic is OFTEN a chaos builder in stories - Harry Potter to the office?

Writing Assignment:

Choose ANY one character from the play.

Then, make up a phony Facebook/Twitter/Tumblr/Blog page for that character.

Try to incorporate material from the play, and from what we can figure out about their motivations and thinking.

Try to have the equivalent of about 1 -  2 pages of text.

What criteria would we want in a good assignment?

relevant to the play
doesn’t need to be in Old English (can be)
we would need to see identifying information
the relationships coming out
quotations (to prove something)
show character - consistency
writing in character
writing with creativity
writing that reveals characters’ thinking