So I'm keeping a blog for the next two weeks because I made this an assignment for my students too. The broad topic is courtship, but we're somehow supposed to figure out something more specific to talk about. But then, everyone is involved in some way with courtship and love, and you use words and symbols to make things happen "in love." So here goes.
I orginally came upon the idea of courtship for a class by reading the critic Kenneth Burke. His books The Rhetoric of Motives has a compelling chapter on courtship and rhetorical strategies. So I thought I could manipulate situations in a classroom to get students to enter the situation of discourse by offering interesting subjects to write about.
Courtship and love comes up every day--in the news, in life--wherever you look. I particularly like watching movies and reading books that describe contrasting situations around love. One of my favorite films is Badlands. It was directed by Terrence Malick in the early 70s. Sissy Spacek and Martin Sheen star in it. Their characters kill her father and become fugitives. The story is based on a true story--the Charlie Starkweather killings of the 1950. This movie shows a tension between indivdiual desire and communal restrictions of that desire. It also shows how violence and love are often closely associated. It's a gorgeous film to watch, and it is marvelous and strange.
