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Poppy Frean

University of Sussex, School of English & American Studies, Alumna

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First Degree Honours in English Literature and American Studies (2020)

This is an archive of my academic work since 2015 until the present. These essays should be considered as drafts, many if I rewrote them today would be very different. I am happy to receive criticisms and/or editorial suggestions. I am also happy to discuss any of these essays. hmu

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Andrea Mubi Brighenti

University of Trento

City, University of London

SUNY Oneonta

Anna Marazuela Kim

London Metropolitan University

Central Queensland University

KONSTANTINA DRAKOPOULOU

The Courtauld Institute of Art

Mariacristina Cavecchi

Università degli Studi di Milano - State University of Milan (Italy)

INOPINATUM Study Center on Urban Creativity

Università degli Studi "La Sapienza" di Roma

Emily Rueggeberg

University of Edinburgh

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Drafts by Poppy Frean

AND NAH IT AIN'T ART - Graffiti And The Social Construction of Language

This project examines graffiti as a linguistic phenomenon. Making use of poetry, photography, col... more

THE PUB AND THE PEOPLE - A South East London Study

The poet visionary transcendence and the fetishisation of Jazz music in the work of the Beat Generation

The poet visionary, transcendence and the fetishisation of Jazz music in the work of the Beat Gen... more

‘The City’ as Rhizome and Woolf’s Tunnelling Process in Mrs Dalloway

Dalloway -Woolf became dissatisfied with conventional novelistic form. The idea of discrete conta... more Dalloway -Woolf became dissatisfied with conventional novelistic form. The idea of discrete contained chapters "seemed to be the opposite of her vision of a web or organism of relations"; the narrative too heavily woven to allow for such disjuncture. 1 Woolf remained unhappy with the flimsiness of her characters and of the two-dimensionality of her construction until June the following year, when she had a revelation of process. Recording in her diary, Woolf wrote of this discovery: "how I dig out beautiful caves behind my characters; I think that gives exactly what I want; humanity, humour, depth. The idea is that the caves shall connect, & each comes to daylight at the present moment." 2 Woolf found that these tunnels allowed her access to her characters' pasts; that by adding a further dimension she could reinforce the instability of her modernist structure. Further she found in these passages the opportunity for interconnection -both in the physical reality of the novel and in another more metaphorical, psychological sense. Considering "[t]he underground is our ghost landscape, unfolding everywhere beneath our feet, always out of view", tunnelling is an apt metaphor for such a process. 3 The underground as this dark liminal space provides a murky parallel to the comparative clarity of surface life; this dubious and uncertain threshold affording potential for constant mutation, the burrowing animal forever able to alter its landscape of refuge. To tunnel is to retreat into darkness, potentially both sanctuary and harbourer of the malignant unknown. Like the heath, it is a place through which you journey, and not for human habitation. Woolf ventures into these tunnels in order to accumulate ghosts, to find points of interconnection and bring them to light, to partially unearth the threads of this weaving that is life.

Mosh Pits, Honour Codes and Kin-Making

"Paradise sounds like s(uh)n-tinc": Investigating MLE in the speech of Radio DJ Black Mack

The city, the pub and alcoholism in Ulysses

Joyce's Dublin is a betrayal, an inert, half-formed body that rests on the edge of modernity.

Stephen and the Square Ditch

Critical Review: ‘Circe’ and the Uncanny, or Joyce from Freud to Marx

Pornography, Voyeurism and "the long crevice" - Social Discipline in Fanny Hill

Pornography, Voyeurism and the "long crevice": Social Discipline in Fanny Hill .

Louisianan Voodoo culture, Matriarchal Art and the development of Jazz in New Orleans

Fetishization of Black Female Vocality in the Blues

Community in Borderland

"Every one of those impressions is the impression of the individual in his isolation, each mind keeping as a solitary prisoner its own dream of a world." - Dreaming in Olive Schreiner's The Story of an African Farm

"The rhizome is an antigenealogy... The rhizome operates by variation expansion conquest capture offshoots" - Theorising Colonial Power as Rhizomatic

The rhizome is an antigenealogy. ... The rhizome operates by variation, expansion, conquest, capt... more The rhizome is an antigenealogy. ... The rhizome operates by variation, expansion, conquest, capture, offshoots" (Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus). Discuss how the "rhizome" operates in Deleuze and Guattari and link it to one or two of the other texts you have read in Critical Approaches 2.

Discuss the relationship between pleasure and violence in American Noir

In 1967 H. Rap Brown, chairman of the SNCC declared violence an integral part of the American eth... more In 1967 H. Rap Brown, chairman of the SNCC declared violence an integral part of the American ethos. A necessary opposition, an addictive antagonism, taught alongside the American Dream. Denied in traditional narrative, this seclusive obsession reveals itself in American Noir. By rejecting the overt fantasy of conventional Hollywood, Noir strives to depict something closer to reality: bleak existence. While film noir emerged from a period of post-war anxiety, narrating visually a descent into political and economic turmoil; its progeny, neo-noir, reflects a postmodern cynicism; a world which, devoid of humanity is rendered meaningless. American Noir then, as an object of cultural capital is an expression of deep societal nihilism, its use of violence an exaggerated reflection of the desperate horrors of existence. This violence is fetishized by media culture, betraying a masochism which seeks to glorify and desensitize. This ritualistic and hypersexualised addiction refuses complicity, inciting instead a complex and troubling relationship with pleasure. David Lynch explores the complexities of this sinister affiliation in Mulholland Drive. Twisting fantasy and desire together, violence precipitates pleasure, which then precipitates further violence; this cycle exemplary of American Noir. The film confuses pleasure and violence, which contort and copulate together to reveal both gratification and horror; playing off one another in a hypnotic dance of pain and eroticism, lack and desire, destruction and final disparity. American Noir thus exists as a self-reflexive nihilistic device for exploring a masochistic fascination with pleasure and violence.

"The power of literature is that in describing the world it creates what it describes"

The Performative") Using two or three texts from this module discuss the idea that language can f... more

In what ways does Curb Your Enthusiasm critique modern American life?

Curb Your Enthusiasm is Larry David's post-modern, post-Seinfeld answer to the tired outmoded gen... more Curb Your Enthusiasm is Larry David's post-modern, post-Seinfeld answer to the tired outmoded genre of the American sitcom. By emphasizing the absurdities of modern life and then by subverting these norms, David is able to critique our conflicted/trived society. Our fractured existence is thus reflected back at us through Larry's cynicism, his self-obsession and refusal to accept social etiquette. His Jewish identity -which casts him as outsider -and the deconstructed televisual style, all culminate in the creation of a void. This is the vacuous space of the exasperated silences, the explanations never told, the sentences incomplete and the narratives left hanging which typify Curb. The show then, both revels in and revolves around this emptiness, at once childish and nihilistic. "We may be privileged, but we're in pain" 1 comments David in recognition of this narcissistic suffering. Yet despite this conceit, Curb nevertheless indicates a profound deficiency. By commenting on the excesses of modern life, Curb points back at itself to show what is in fact a gaping emptiness at the heart of American society.

Gender, Race and Class Divisions in the United States with reference to American History X and Bob Dylan’s The Times They Are A-Changin’

In What Way Does the Aesthetic Difference Between the Protest Songs Arlo Guthrie’s Alice’s Restaurant Massacree and the Dead Kennedys’ Kinky Sex Makes The World Go ‘Round, Affect Their Reception in Mainstream Popular Culture?

AND NAH IT AIN'T ART - Graffiti And The Social Construction of Language

This project examines graffiti as a linguistic phenomenon. Making use of poetry, photography, col... more

THE PUB AND THE PEOPLE - A South East London Study

The poet visionary transcendence and the fetishisation of Jazz music in the work of the Beat Generation

The poet visionary, transcendence and the fetishisation of Jazz music in the work of the Beat Gen... more

‘The City’ as Rhizome and Woolf’s Tunnelling Process in Mrs Dalloway

Dalloway -Woolf became dissatisfied with conventional novelistic form. The idea of discrete conta... more Dalloway -Woolf became dissatisfied with conventional novelistic form. The idea of discrete contained chapters "seemed to be the opposite of her vision of a web or organism of relations"; the narrative too heavily woven to allow for such disjuncture. 1 Woolf remained unhappy with the flimsiness of her characters and of the two-dimensionality of her construction until June the following year, when she had a revelation of process. Recording in her diary, Woolf wrote of this discovery: "how I dig out beautiful caves behind my characters; I think that gives exactly what I want; humanity, humour, depth. The idea is that the caves shall connect, & each comes to daylight at the present moment." 2 Woolf found that these tunnels allowed her access to her characters' pasts; that by adding a further dimension she could reinforce the instability of her modernist structure. Further she found in these passages the opportunity for interconnection -both in the physical reality of the novel and in another more metaphorical, psychological sense. Considering "[t]he underground is our ghost landscape, unfolding everywhere beneath our feet, always out of view", tunnelling is an apt metaphor for such a process. 3 The underground as this dark liminal space provides a murky parallel to the comparative clarity of surface life; this dubious and uncertain threshold affording potential for constant mutation, the burrowing animal forever able to alter its landscape of refuge. To tunnel is to retreat into darkness, potentially both sanctuary and harbourer of the malignant unknown. Like the heath, it is a place through which you journey, and not for human habitation. Woolf ventures into these tunnels in order to accumulate ghosts, to find points of interconnection and bring them to light, to partially unearth the threads of this weaving that is life.

Mosh Pits, Honour Codes and Kin-Making

"Paradise sounds like s(uh)n-tinc": Investigating MLE in the speech of Radio DJ Black Mack

The city, the pub and alcoholism in Ulysses

Joyce's Dublin is a betrayal, an inert, half-formed body that rests on the edge of modernity.

Stephen and the Square Ditch

Critical Review: ‘Circe’ and the Uncanny, or Joyce from Freud to Marx

Pornography, Voyeurism and "the long crevice" - Social Discipline in Fanny Hill

Pornography, Voyeurism and the "long crevice": Social Discipline in Fanny Hill .

Louisianan Voodoo culture, Matriarchal Art and the development of Jazz in New Orleans

Fetishization of Black Female Vocality in the Blues

Community in Borderland

"Every one of those impressions is the impression of the individual in his isolation, each mind keeping as a solitary prisoner its own dream of a world." - Dreaming in Olive Schreiner's The Story of an African Farm

"The rhizome is an antigenealogy... The rhizome operates by variation expansion conquest capture offshoots" - Theorising Colonial Power as Rhizomatic

The rhizome is an antigenealogy. ... The rhizome operates by variation, expansion, conquest, capt... more The rhizome is an antigenealogy. ... The rhizome operates by variation, expansion, conquest, capture, offshoots" (Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus). Discuss how the "rhizome" operates in Deleuze and Guattari and link it to one or two of the other texts you have read in Critical Approaches 2.

Discuss the relationship between pleasure and violence in American Noir

In 1967 H. Rap Brown, chairman of the SNCC declared violence an integral part of the American eth... more In 1967 H. Rap Brown, chairman of the SNCC declared violence an integral part of the American ethos. A necessary opposition, an addictive antagonism, taught alongside the American Dream. Denied in traditional narrative, this seclusive obsession reveals itself in American Noir. By rejecting the overt fantasy of conventional Hollywood, Noir strives to depict something closer to reality: bleak existence. While film noir emerged from a period of post-war anxiety, narrating visually a descent into political and economic turmoil; its progeny, neo-noir, reflects a postmodern cynicism; a world which, devoid of humanity is rendered meaningless. American Noir then, as an object of cultural capital is an expression of deep societal nihilism, its use of violence an exaggerated reflection of the desperate horrors of existence. This violence is fetishized by media culture, betraying a masochism which seeks to glorify and desensitize. This ritualistic and hypersexualised addiction refuses complicity, inciting instead a complex and troubling relationship with pleasure. David Lynch explores the complexities of this sinister affiliation in Mulholland Drive. Twisting fantasy and desire together, violence precipitates pleasure, which then precipitates further violence; this cycle exemplary of American Noir. The film confuses pleasure and violence, which contort and copulate together to reveal both gratification and horror; playing off one another in a hypnotic dance of pain and eroticism, lack and desire, destruction and final disparity. American Noir thus exists as a self-reflexive nihilistic device for exploring a masochistic fascination with pleasure and violence.

"The power of literature is that in describing the world it creates what it describes"

The Performative") Using two or three texts from this module discuss the idea that language can f... more

In what ways does Curb Your Enthusiasm critique modern American life?

Curb Your Enthusiasm is Larry David's post-modern, post-Seinfeld answer to the tired outmoded gen... more Curb Your Enthusiasm is Larry David's post-modern, post-Seinfeld answer to the tired outmoded genre of the American sitcom. By emphasizing the absurdities of modern life and then by subverting these norms, David is able to critique our conflicted/trived society. Our fractured existence is thus reflected back at us through Larry's cynicism, his self-obsession and refusal to accept social etiquette. His Jewish identity -which casts him as outsider -and the deconstructed televisual style, all culminate in the creation of a void. This is the vacuous space of the exasperated silences, the explanations never told, the sentences incomplete and the narratives left hanging which typify Curb. The show then, both revels in and revolves around this emptiness, at once childish and nihilistic. "We may be privileged, but we're in pain" 1 comments David in recognition of this narcissistic suffering. Yet despite this conceit, Curb nevertheless indicates a profound deficiency. By commenting on the excesses of modern life, Curb points back at itself to show what is in fact a gaping emptiness at the heart of American society.

Gender, Race and Class Divisions in the United States with reference to American History X and Bob Dylan’s The Times They Are A-Changin’

In What Way Does the Aesthetic Difference Between the Protest Songs Arlo Guthrie’s Alice’s Restaurant Massacree and the Dead Kennedys’ Kinky Sex Makes The World Go ‘Round, Affect Their Reception in Mainstream Popular Culture?