I've always known academians were either a little desperate or crazy or whacked or something, but I finally have solid proof. I spent eight years working my way up the collegiate ladder and along the way met many a Ph.D. or students anxious to be in possession of one. The problem is, to get such a degree, you must write a VERY long paper on something that has never been written upon before, which in the hard sciences (biology, chemistry…) is not so awful as there are always new and interesting details to research in depth, but in the soft sciences (literature, art…) it is much more difficult as most of the interesting/useful topics have been taken. So they usually end up researching something like Dr. Suess' favorite color and how it influenced his relationship with his uncle or something ridiculous like that. The problem with this approach is that we have a lot of time, money, and effort going into things that either make no sense or have no practical purpose in real life. This explains why many Ph.D's can't hold a real conversation: they've spent so long on their specific topic that they can talk and think of nothing else and sadly, no one else on the planet cares. I've had professors lecture for hours on an obscure encephalitis of horses in Switzerland (their thesis topic) and completely gloss over diseases I see and treat every day; I have treated far too much parvovirus but have never yet seen a case of Borna Virus, but guess what we learned about in school?
My ultimate proof of the futility of many doctoral degrees was the result of an investigation I did regarding a children's book, yes, it was that important. We read 'Goodnight Moon' every so often, as many a parent with small children has before us, and in one of the drawings, there is a painting in the background with a fly fishing bunny catching another bunny and I thought it looked very familiar, so I did the only sensible thing and googled it. The picture appears in another book by the same author called 'Runaway Bunny' which apparently I had once read or looked at some years ago. Mystery solved, or so I thought. I started reading further on the Wikipedia site and found a reference to some work ascribing an Oedipus Complex to 'Goodnight Moon' and its companion books. Am I the only person that thinks this is getting kind of weird? It is a kid's book, I don't think it was written with all these subliminal messages about the human psyche! Just read the book, tuck the kids in bed, and get a life!
I remember something of Oedipus from my mythology class in high school but had to go back and look him up to figure out what this article was going on about. He's the guy that killed his father and married his mother (unknowingly, as he was supposed to be dead and was raised by people who were not his biological parents). So basically an Oedipus Complex is when you have 'a thing' for your mom. And where exactly do you find that in 'Goodnight Moon?' Is there an official complex for people that read way too much into a children's story? This is what happens when literature doesn't mean anything anymore, I think they call it deconstructionism. The story doesn't mean what the author thinks it means, rather it means whatever the reader thinks it means. Huh? As a writer, I definitely take offense at that. I don't write gibberish, I try very hard to express exactly what I want to express, but apparently I am either not educated enough or sophisticated enough to realize that I cannot possibly mean what I think I mean, rather I mean whatever a particular reader thinks I mean? Doesn't this kind of kill communication? How on earth do these people have a conversation or maintain any sort of relationship: he said X which probably means X but I take it to mean Y because I think he should have meant Y. We might as well speak two separate languages!
I think I'll just enjoy the book at face value and let the academians argue amongst themselves about its deeper meaning. "Goodnight noises everywhere!"
No comments:
Post a Comment