it seems that a lot of institutions are fans of cycles. it is week nine of the fall quarter at my uni and next week is finals. it is the fourth week nine i have had to live through since starting here last fall. i have a research paper due friday and eight performances to worry about. and i watched TV for two hours when i got home. tsk, tsk, i know.

thanksgiving weekend was one reluctant endeavor after another. i got up the day of, showered and dressed and met my parents downstairs to find that i had overdressed for morning mass. i was wearing my black slacks and a coral colored top while my parents were wearing jeans and shirts. after mass we came home, ate breakfast, and promptly fell asleep on the couch for four hours before waking up to go have dinner at my great-aunt's (whom i call my aunt). a stranger had been invited to the dinner that i felt awkward around and he took it upon himself to converse with me and another the entire evening.

i worked on friday.

i worked on saturday. when i got home, my parents fed me then barrelled me off to the mall in pursuit of holiday bargains. i was in no mood to shop after working eight hours at the store, but i had no choice.

more shopping on sunday.

the highlight of my holiday was watching a movie at the theatre on friday night--Pride and Prejudice. some parts i liked, many parts i didn't. to put it simply, its an indie film through and through. there was no accounting for historical context or thematic facts from the book. the characters stretched jane austen's frames to the limit. it wasn't accurate, but there was some dialogue created by the screenwriter that might have been worthy of jane austen had the lines not been delivered so...smugly. the bennets' house is a good example. first of all, the bennet's were not as poor and vulgar as the movie portrayed them to be. their house looked absolutely bohemian which i'm sure is the result of indie set-directors with their own concept of art. i understand that film-making is an art but so is writing a novel and art in film and art in literature cannot occur at the same time. if you're going to present a piece of literature through film, stick to the art in the literature, please, and don't insert your own concepts of setting.

elizabeth bennet giggled too much. mrs. hurst, poor thing, was cut completely out of the story. miss bingley dressed rather fast for a single lady of good breeding at that time. mr. darcy, when confronted by elizabeth during his proposal backed down--which he never did in the book. the whole concept of pride and prejudice was undermined throughout the film because some things weren't emphasized as they should have been. mr. bingley was outrageous--in appearance and character. the poor man played a red-headed idiot. i won't say anything about judi dench as lady catherine because she's above anything i have to say. the character i liked best was jane bennet. she was cast well, and she portrayed the part well.

i have yet to see a film-version of pride and prejudice that portrays mr. bingley in an agreeable way. in this version and the one done before it (the tv mini-series) he's always...i dunno...he's always weak. in the A&E version, his sister interrupts him while he's speaking and he takes it. in this version, he can barely speak correctly and admits during his proposal to jane that he had been an "incomprehensible ass" throughout their time together. he's not as weak or insignificant in the book. his weakness is expressed in his willingness to believe what his sisters and friend tell him about jane, and in his willingness to leave for London at the command of these same people, but this weakness is always taken to an extreme degree. he can speak perfectly well in the book and doesn't say stupid things. he has enough confidence to joke with darcy in front of elizabeth. he's intelligent. he's just too easygoing and lets himself be led astray by his family and friends--which isn't hard if you trust your family and friends.

capitalism

i'm sometimes so tired after work and school that all the things i wanted to write somewhere are forgotten. seeing as its a saturday night, i've done a little French homework, and my checkbook is balanced, i figured now's as good a time as any to solidify these thoughts.

plus its good review for my anthro midterm.

unlike most people, i didn't really know what capitalism was exactly. i had a vague idea of monopolizing certain markets, the systems large corporations use to sell, etc. even now i'm still not sure what capitalism means in the general sense and why people oppose it so much. but there are many facets to this word.

capital can be defined as money invested to make more money. anthropologists studying social hierarchies apply this definition of capital to their analysis of how people attain their certain social positions. they came up with three types of capital in an attempt to explain how people reach their positions in a social hierarchy.

the first is economic capital which is based on one's economic assets. each individual is only worth a certain amount of money (bill gates v. myself for instance) and people are systematically judged by the amount of economic assets they have.

the second is social capital based on one's connections. human resources, if you will. who you know and who knows you greatly influences your position in society. if you have friends in high places, you can tag along and perhaps surpass them.

the third is cultural capital based on style and taste: what you eat, watch, listen to, read affect what position you fill in the social hierarchy.

composition of capital is the sum of your economic, social and cultural capital. we were given the example of an oil tycoon in Texas. he has plenty of economic capital, but he drives around in a pink chevy with bull horns taped to the hood and his friends are as classy as he. this means he lacks cultural capital. the legendary bluebloods on the eastcoast most likely have all three: economic, social and cultural capital because of their affluence. now the oil tycoon with the pink chevy might decide to utilize his economic capital to gain cultural capital by sending himself to the male equivalent of finishing school or something ridiculous like that. at this male finishing school he'll learn to associate with high-class people, boosting his social capital. in just a little while, the pink chevy lies derelict while our oil tycoon rubs shoulders with the bluebloods along the eastcoast. this means that capital can be accumulated and transferred.

so now, capitalism has a different meaning for me than it probably does for anyone else. capitalism, for me, relates to what kind of friends i have, how much money i make, and whether or not i know what's fashionable.

but nothing is ever as clear-cut. all these forms of capital shift with perspectives, i think. Marxist class theory aside, i still think that people are divided into their own strata. have i ever spent a summer in the hamptons? have you? where i am, having two houses (not a timeshare) is pretty high-end. but elsewhere, that might not be the case. plus owning two houses in southern california is not exactly comparable to a house in martha's vineyard and vice versa. there's land to take into account, the expense of living in different regions. the tidy definition for economic capital goes down the drain when you look at housing here and housing in a place like wisconsin. social capital as well isn't such a neat theory. affluent people in the south don't exactly speak refined english because they have a certain dialect different from ours. just because they don't talk like us doesn't mean their underprivileged our touched in the head. just because we have friends or relatives who talk this way doesn't mean they'll bring us down in the eyes of our other friends. the same with cultural capital: in some places, the Bible is the book to be reading, in other places its The Devil Wears Prada. everything shifts, everything is relative, nothing is distinct. and no one seems to take into account behavior. what category of capital would that fall under? cultural capital? but what about an orphan who grew up on her own and became this poor excuse of a woman? what does that have to do with style and taste? there are things above this idea of social capitalism and while i am not wholly against, i don't believe that it is the answer to how people gain their social positions.

life isn't a bank. enough with investment. what are you saving yourself for? people don't gain interest like so many sacks of coin. if you want to be political, then make friends in high places and memorize how many courses a dinner with a Greek ambassador warrants. as for the rest of us, we have other things to do.

i want to earn money so i can live a good life, i don't want a good life earning money. i want to read what i want to read whether or not the critics like it. i don't know that person who just glanced at me across the street, but chances are, i'm never going to see him again, so what's the point of establishing a connection just to build my social capital?

my mother worked to get where she is. she didn't care whether people liked her or not, but she did such a good job at the things she was assigned to that they had to keep promoting her. that's what's important. she didn't hand out compliments, she didn't dress to impress. she worked and worked hard, and i will do the same thing because how can you live on something as insubstantial as pretty words and a nice wardrobe? favor is as fickle as anything else and winning it won't do you much good.