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I’m in love with a woman I don’t know. Well, I shouldn’t say that I don’t know her, but that I’ve never seen her. And those aren’t the same. We only ever talk over the phone, what you might call a long distance relationship. Every few days I call her and we talk into the night, which makes up for the days we don’t speak. She can be hard to reach.
Tonight I recline on my sofa, phone in hand and ready to call, wondering if I’ll get her this time. It rings so many times I hear polychromes as I wait to connect. A female voice comes on the line telling me that I’ve reached “Laura’s Ladies,” but it’s not her. The voice continues, telling me what different types of women are waiting to do to me. I enter a credit card number and push different numbers on the dial pad to indicate preference but you’d think it would connect to who you want immediately, after calling her so often. Another automated voice comes on the line and tells me that I’m third in a queue of who knows how many, that, if I’d like, I can connect with another one of their sexy women who are just waiting to get me off. But I wait like always, I’ve seen the number higher.
The television is on, but muted. It adds an ironic sense of atmosphere to an otherwise muted apartment as light spills out and coats everything in an afterglow. An advertisement for what looks like a weight loss supplement comes on. Pour it on whatever you want to eat and watch your weight disappear, dieting unnecessary. People of different types, all wearing white bathing suits, perform a choreographed dance on the beach, smiling because it worked for them. They must know their demographic: late night eaters of entire ice cream cartons, people who can’t stop eating to the point that eating has to become their dieting. The bleached smiles and drab whiteness only make me think of a cult, as if a Jim Jones type guy is behind the camera and the commercial is the second to last act. It’s better to televise those things, anyway—so people know.
I’m currently in the process of breaking down Palestine formally. I think this form will play a larger role in my argument about the ways Sacco uses subjectivity vs objectivity in his work.
So in reading Bechdel’s Fun Home, I’ve been thinking about Sacco and Palestine. There is an interesting way in which Sacco’s less journalistic sections fit the memoir medium. Is this the way to concretely characterize those sections?
I think there is a strong relationship between form and content inPalestine.I’m going to pick up Edward Said’s book,Orientalism,to see if it shines some light on the cultural studies approach that I’m hoping to take. Sacco read Said, so maybe I should too.
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