According to Susan Stewart how has the "grotesque body" and "the trickster" each played a role within different cultures? Define their roles and their societal functions (according to Stewart). For instance, Stewart describes the representation of the grotesque body being the "antithesis of the body as a functional tool or the body as still life." Pg. 105 What examples of the grotesque body or the trickster can you identify in contemporary culture or mass culture today? Offer quotes, links, and images in your post.

I appreciate Susan Stewart’s depiction of the grotesque body in terms of images or representations. For example, the external objects of artwork through costumes, masks and disguises. When the body is paraded to be put on display in time and space, it involves a spectacle and aestheticization, therefore normalizes the grotesque. The direct attention to cultural regulation, within the domain of public space occupied by the grotesque “body in the becoming.” Which is a precedent of seeing bodies as genitals, mouths, anuses, and all of the products of taboo, ambiguity, and pornography. I think a lot about this in my own life and artwork. Where mass attention is being that gender is genitals, or a form of expression through clothing or “costumes.” A good representation of this is Juliana Huxtable, who also has been involved in a Ryan Trecartin piece (we have been shown the videos in class) DJ, writer, performance artist.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4OW7jDpXVrg 

 On page 117 it states (from Hegel) "The very desire of man (Hegel tells us) is constituted under the sign of mediation, it is the desire to make its desire recognized. Why is this being discussed at this point in the text and how does it relate to objects, human behavior, our imaginations, and other ideas within On Longing? In your discussion offer examples of art/architecture or pop culture phenomena that relates to this relationship between desire and mediation.

Human behavior is far too complicated to be generalized in it “always has a desire to make its desire recognized.” I think that on a base level it is true, we desire so many things love, success, friends, any number of things that attribute individual happiness or therefore the pursuit of. Susan Stewert interprets that even when our basic needs are fulfilled there is always a complex behind this. Such as ordering food at a restaurant and eating it… there is a narrative of who has prepared the food and where the food came from, that often is commodified without that significance. I thought about the desire of being nice or being a good person meditating a subconscious desire of being treated with niceness. Preaching self- love 2020, which is definitely a pop culture phenomena, via Marisa Peer.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CWKEDKAbQus&t=28s

But also for creative self- assessment and growth this book, really simple. Mediating why your negative habits do not suit your creative body of work and how to re-construct your attitude.