Oral LLCE Blanc

Documents:

-Romeo & Juliet

-Buddha Of Suburbia (extracts)
-German print depicting the beheading of Charles the 1st
-Aretha Franklin’s Music ‘Enabled Me to Literally Get Up in the Morning’

Key-Question:

To what extent can art be a way, through expression of emotions, to free people from their
social chains?

Originally, Respect was a song sung by a man telling his wife that he expected her
to have respect for him since he brought money home and ‘assured’ her safeness.
Aretha’s version is a cover of Otis Redding. Aretha changed the p.o.v of the song and it
became an empowering anthem for women at the time: the lyrics told them that they didn’t
have to be submissive and that they could also expect their man to have some respect for
them. It’s a really popular song since it helped break social chains and boundaries that
weren’t meant to be crossed at the time.

Also, in the Buddha of Suburbia, we can see that some people are frustrated, such
as Anwar, letting himself die because of this frustration, created by the fact that his family
deny him in sort of ways. Moreover, this frustration makes him violent, as we can see
when he attacks Changez in the street, and end by being hit right in the head by a dildo,
which made him go to the hospital. Anwar is the representation of a person that couldn’t
deal with their emotions, and finished dead because of it. He MUST GET acceptance from
his peers to feel good. This work is more modern than Romeo and Juliet, and it’s easier to
relate to it, like Zaddie Smith said (the introduction’s writer and famous British novelist).
The book influenced her whole life and made her feel more accepted in society. Moreover,
this book went from hand to hand in her high school and people were really keen on it
since it made most of them feel valid and included in a time of strong racism against
strangers and especially, in BoS, against Indian and Pakistani people. It shows that a
coming of age novel, where the author expresses emotions can change people’s life.
Those are books which are used for educational purposes.

We can link Anwar story to Oscar Wilde’s quote: « I don’t want to be at the mercy of
my emotions, I want to use them, to enjoy them, and to dominate them ». It’s the kind of
things we feel (like it) isn’t needed anymore, since people are now freer to deal with their
emotions and what they are feeling at the moment. They are valid, because everyone has
emotions.
We can also link this quote of Oscar Wilde and the fact that people (especially men) don’t
feel valid when they have feelings due to patriarchy, and toxic masculinity. Oscar Wilde’s
quote related to both male and female gender, but it turned out that men couldn’t be as
expressive as women were allowed to. (without forgetting the fact that women are mostly
the ones affected by patriarchy. They are basically the martyrdoms of society.)
 To free themselves by education and the representation of one’s emotions and
identity.
Eg : Romeo and Juliet could help people be themselves and live their love as they’d like
to. They are a representation of a love that was being criticized by the contemporaries of
the work. It can help people because they see, maybe for the first time, a representation of
their love and what they would like to live but don’t dare to. Romeo & Juliet are breaking
social chains by loving themselves without caring about what people are saying on their
relationship. They live by themselves their own love, even if it means putting they parents
against them. It was one of the most important work of this time, combining social
influence and parental control, to make teenagers feel that they couldn’t love each other
without getting in trouble. It’s the most well-known « impossible love » type work, a
timeless artwork becoming an iconic representation, a symbol. It had a snowball effect on
literature and even in a stiff upper lip type culture, where people were meant to stay
composed in public, and to not express their feelings. It revolutionized the point of view on
this type of relationship and public opinion through art.

The Buddha of Suburbia is a story of anchoring and legacy, but also migration and
exile. In this book, lesser axes are tackled, like expression of emotions and construction of
the self. The extract is the moment when Karim goes to New-York to be an actor and he
starts to cut off his boundaries with his father (ideas and the kind of taboo ideas in his
family and its culture) and his moral legacy. Karim frees himself from the influence of his
dad and manages to become an actor despite the fact that the role that he played first was
caricatural and racist.

Having a print depicting such a strong action definitely delivers a message: the one
of the people frustration passing the years under the influence and the reign of such a king
(executed in 1649)
He was executed as a result of the English civil war, which took place from 1642 to 1651.
He fought from 1642 the armies of the Scottish and English parliaments to 1645 when he
was defeated. He surrendered to a Scottish force, then escaped captivity in November
1647. Charles was executed for high treason in January 1649, since he refused
negotiations with the parliaments.
The historical context is really important because it shows why the people were frustrated.
Here, it’s because they had been fighting for over 3 years and didn’t want any more war.
Moreover, the high treason has always been a huge problem and here, committed by a
king, resulted in his execution. Circa 1649, this print may have influenced people globally,
on a bigger scale, because people at the time couldn’t read (illiterate) for most of them. A
drawing or a visual representation was more adapted to people. It could have influenced,
on its scale, some other revolutions like the French one, a century and a half after.
With Respect, Aretha Franklin became a representation of a strong black woman at the
time, which wasn’t easy to be. She sang this song in the 60’s, a decade of social progress,
they were crucial for women emancipation and employment, their sexual freedom, and
racial equality too.

We can see that, despite of the fact the documents are really different, they are
linking to each other because of the fact that art has always been a mean to express one’s
emotions, regardless of the time or the number of people : the German print is older than
the other documents and they are an entire people, while in the BoS or in Respect or
Romeo and Juliet, they are just few people battling for themselves and their opinions and
liberty. Yet, we still feel the same way when it’s an entire people or just few of them.