Oedipus, Electra and Freud

From our basic knowledge of Oedipus The King we know that Oedipus kills his father and marries his mother. Freud took this story and developed the theory of the Oedipus complex. It states that boys will compete with their fathers for their mother's attention because they want to have sex with them. Honestly, there is a lot more to it than just that. You can read up on it and it's gross, but no one uses Freud anyway because his theories are outdated, sexist superstitions most of which do not have any clinical evidence. Sophocles wrote another play, however, which is related to one written by Aeschylus. The Oresteia is told in 3 parts and follows Agamemnon's life and death after the trojan war and then his son Orestes revenge on his mother for killing Agamemnon. In the second part of the story during The Libation Bearers we meet Electra, Orestes' sister, and daughter of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra. She only serves as Clytemsetra's foil in that she accepts she can't challenge societal norms of misogyny and loves her brother more than her mother. In Sophocles Electra she becomes a complex character, questioning herself if exacting revenge on her mother is the correct thing to do. She survives as basically a slave in her own home which fuels her motivation. It's an interesting read and brings into question human morality and justice. Freud did not coin the term "the Electra complex", it was actually his contemporary Carl Jung. Freud rejected the term Electra complex but developed many of the underlying theories for this "negative Oedipus complex". It basically states that girls will compete with their mothers for their father affection until they have replaced them as the sexual partner. Again, really gross and really incesty. Jung and Freud were actually close friends and colleagues, but it was Freud's obsession with psychosexual behaviors that lead Jung to leave him. Both of these theories are pretty much the same in that children will fight to compete with one parent for the others attention, sometimes even the kids even kill them in the process. These complexes, according to Freud, are normal and happen during a developmental stage between the ages of 3 and 6. However, children don't realize they are doing this because it is an unconscious desire occurring from the Id which is the instinctual and impulsive part of the mind in Freudian Psychology. I thought this would be interesting to blog about because after reading Electra I stumbled across the complex while doing some reading in a psychology book.

“The Stacking Effect”

Although the documentary we watched in class already discussed many of the reasons behind the continuous growth of the prison population, I thought I’d share one that I believe the Netflix special didn’t touch on enough. “The Stacking Effect” is a theory which refers to the sentences of different lengths being piled one on top another in the prison system. After the 1970s, when politicians were pressured to crack down on crime, lengthier sentences were being dealt out. Statistics at the time proved that a majority of inmates reoffended after they were released from prison. The public blamed prisons for not doing their job of rehabilitating, and politicians and law makers solution to this problem was to just give out lengthier sentences. However, a lengthier sentence does not mean that a person will be successfully rehabilitated while serving time, it just means they’ll be behind bars for longer. Back to the actual effect though, the argument behind it is that the steady flow of inmates going in and out, in and out, did not increase. Short sentences stayed at a steady rate. However, these short sentenced prisoners were now being put into a prison which already contained a number of inmates who would be stuck behind bars for many more years to come. This is the reason for the spike in prison population. If you’re keeping people in your prison for a majority or even the entirety of their life, then of course the population is going to rise, because you aren’t moving people out as quickly anymore. A more positive solution would not be to increase the years on a persons sentence, but instead to learn how to successfully rehabilitate within a prison cell. Punishment just for the sake of punishment is a lot of time and money wasted.

De-smystification

In the Ear Hustle podcast “The Tunnel,” one of the key points is the necessity to de-mystify local myths concerning the deaths of black prison workers; this can be translated to any given myth in which people actually died violently and sometimes out of their control.  The question I pose would be: which would be better; to have people’s stories more coloquially known through myth or to tell the real story and potentially not be as well known?  Or would the possibility of it not being widespread even be a risk?

Silvon SImmons

One of the podcasts I listened to this past week was Criminal's "Silvon Simmons". Basically, this man gets framed by the police of shooting at an officer to save the officer's reputation after the officer shot him three times in the back. He was pressured to do a plea deal which would have given him 15 years in prison. As we discussed, there is a risk of going to trial. If he was found guilty, Silvon could have gotten up to life in prison. However, he very confidently denied the plea deal, knowing he was innocent. He went to trial and was found not guilty. I just really thought this story was crazy because I've heard stories of corruption in law enforcement, but the whole police force was behind this. It seems like some fictional story to me. Did anyone else listen to this or hear about any similar stories of corruption?

New Slaves

As some of you may know, I am a big Kanye West fan. When we started the discussion of the 13th amendment and the prison system, it reminded me of one of his songs. The fourth song on his sixth album, titled Yeezus, is called "New Slaves". He begins the song saying, "My mama was raised in the era when clean water was only served to the fairer skin." This is referring to the Jim Crow era which eventually ended in 1965. Kanye actually samples "Strange Fruit" by Billie Holiday in the same album, a song based around the tragic lynchings of this era. As the documentary we watched said, once the lynchings and Jim Crow laws became unacceptable, the oppression was switched to the prison system. Kanye then repeatedly refers to imprisoned African Americans as the "new slaves". He then talks about the war on drugs, started by Richard Nixon in 1971. Kanye says, "Meanwhile the DEA Teamed up with the CCA They tryna lock n***** up They tryna make new slaves." The CCA is a company that owns and manages private prisons and detention centers and operates others on a concession basis. The CCA makes billions of dollars every year off of the increasing size of the US prison population. The DEA has been accused of racist and unconstitutional acts in the past. Other companies besides the CCA continue to profit off of the prisoners. So, in this song, Kanye is accusing the Federal Government of using the prison system to create "new slaves" to further make more and more money and improve the economy, just as slavery did back in its time. This brings us to the 13th amendment. In 2018, Kanye had an outburst saying that the 13th amendment should be abolished. But, what he really was trying to say is that it needs to be amended, referring to its "exception clause". Kanye said, "In 1865, the 13th Amendment stated that no man is destined to slavery or involuntary servitude unless convicted of a crime," West read from his phone. "This translates to in order to make a freed man a slave all you have to do is convict them of a crime." This topic continues to be an argument across the nation, but I thought it was interesting to look at my favorite artist's viewpoint.

The SHU

I watched Ear Hustle's "The SHU." This was an excellent podcast that showed the atrocity of solitary confinement. It was a very good blog that gave many different perspectives on the issue and also focused on the mental health aspect of those trapped within the SHU. This may seem like a stretch, but I would like to show a relation between this podcast and Sing, Unburied, Sing. In the book we are able to see within the head of the three major characters.  All these characters seem to have some sort of falling mental health. Especially Leonie, we her struggle with drugs and ghosts. In a sense we can say that the characters in the book are in their own "SHU."

Prosecutorial Power

I watched Criminal (In)justice episode #102, and although I chose it at random, I’m glad I did so, as I learned a lot about the justice system in America and issues relating to it. Specifically, the episode concerned prosecutors in criminal trials, and how they have too much power. The episode began with a discussion on how there exists a mandatory minimum sentence for most criminal trials. Because of this, judges in these trials do not have as much of a say on the duration of the sentence. Moreover, it is mentioned that nearly 90% of all criminal cases are determined via a plea bargain, so they never even reach court. These two occurrences give the prosecutors in these cases lots of power, and they often abuse it. Prosecutors can tamper with and not disclose all the evidence in a trial (also known as a Brady violation), and because it is hard to bring about ethical charges against them, they often get away with it. 
In my opinion, there needs to be some sort of policy reform that limits the power of prosecutors and allows for more justice in the court system. I think one way that this can be accomplished is through the limiting of plea bargains, as they can undermine the court system, which is meant to give fair and equal protection to its citizens, as a whole.