Textual Poaching: If I Can Stop One Heart From Breaking

People/Characters Pictured:
1. Don Draper—Mad Men
2. Magneto—X-Men
3. Fritz Haber
4. The Comedian—Watchmen
5. Travis Bickle—Taxi Driver
6. Gus Fring—Breaking Bad
7. Frank Underwood—House of Cards

Poem by Emily Dickinson

Artist Statement:

The part of my identity I chose to comment on is hard for me to describe in one word. It is sort of informed by LDS culture and maybe just optimism in general. It is the idea of being inspired by simple sentiments. I was researching poems for another class and came across “If I can stop one heart from breaking” by Emily Dickinson. I was brought back to the feeling I had when I read this poem originally. It is a sweet sentiment that is motivating to have love for others and help them. In short I identify my partiality to these simple sentiments to be a part of my personality informed by my culture, and this poem is a perfect example of that.

Recently however, I feel like these sentiments are more complicated for me. Possibly I still believe them, but there is a lot more doubt in my mind. Maybe this is part of growing up, maybe this is also informed by my culture. I know it is definitely an issue for many members of the church as exemplified by Elder Holland’s recent address “Lord, I Believe” which is all about addressing doubts about doctrines of the church. Church doctrines are often these simple sentiments that I am talking about. This doubt struggle that comes with simple truths is what I wanted to represent. Reading Emily Dickinson say “If I can stop one heart from breaking, I shall not live in vain” I start to think of counter points. Implicit in this statement is that if we do good for someone else our life is worth living. I realize that one interpretation of this is that if we do not do anything for anyone else good or bad we live in vain. But the sentiment that inspired me about it and that I think is implicit in it is that if we do good our life is worth living.

This is complicated for me by thinking of these complex and sometimes villainous characters that I show behind the words. I don’t have space to elaborate on the stories of each of these characters. But just by way of example, Travis Bickle from Taxi Driver might read himself this poem. He tried to help a 14 year old prostitute escape in the movie by killing her captures. Whether he actually succeeds at this is not resolved and moreover he is a sporadic and potentially evil man. Fritz Haber was a scientist who did an overwhelming amount of good for the world but also accomplished a lot of evil. So is someone’s life worth living if they accomplish a good act? With these examples I would say not necessarily.

I suppose what I am doing with these texts that inspired me as a youth is making them, as in the velveteen rabbit, more real and possibly making them more ugly at first. But as Jenkins quotes in How Texts Become Real “these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real, you can’t be ugly.” That sounds a little cheesy, but what I mean is I believe I am engaging in making these important cultural sentiments my own by thinking them through sometimes by finding counterpoints or whatever it may be. So what my piece represents are these thoughts that I have.


Sources:
http://www.bartleby.com/113/1006.html
https://www.lds.org/general-conference/2013/04/lord-i-believe?lang=eng
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B9Lc1sVyYWa1OHFYcmJVUnRibDg/edit?pli=1
http://www.radiolab.org/story/180132-how-do-you-solve-problem-fritz-haber/
Taxi Driver. Bill-Phillips Production ; Columbia Pictures ; Italo/Judeo Production, 1976. Film.
Fincher, David. House of Cards. 1 Feb. 2013. Television.
Gilligan, Vince. Breaking Bad. 20 Jan. 2008. Television.
X-Men. Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment, 2005. Film.
Mad Men. Lionsgate Television. 17 July 2007. Television.
Watchmen. Warner Home Video, 2009. Film.