I draw pleasure from the attractiveness of note-taking, of multi-colored tabs thickening the spines of worn books. The intimate act of flipping through pages that only your fingers, at the moment, will know – even though the words you consume may have been seen by many. But I have come to face reality: when I read for myself, all annotation does is distract. It’s like listening to a particularly enticing playlist while doing calculus. How am I to focus when I’m engrossed by the lovely applications of synths? The clever manipulation of language pooled in the lyrics? How am I to grasp the author’s argument when I’m busy fumbling between blueredblackpenpencilhighlightertabpostitnote and tending to my aching hand?
Embedded Files
A photo I took of three of my pleasure-read books,
heavily tabbed.
A photo of In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado, which you can see I tabbed less as I got deeper into the book.
There are, I admit, occasions where I grow excited and scribble about regardless of efficiency, write asides as though I am speaking directly to the author -- but most often, I end up stripping the text. Doubling my screen and abusing the copy-paste shortcuts. Typing notes to dissect. (I’d love to do this on paper, as I myself am partial to taking handwritten notes, but my hands, fast as they are, often fail to match the speed of my thoughts, which in the event of digesting material for assignments, is not ideal.)
More important to the process I end up choosing, however, is accessibility: is the source only available on a website that does not allow you any downloads? Do I have access to a printer? Are there too many pages for me to print at once? Can I take notes directly on whatever platform I am reading the source off of? Only then do I settle on an annotation method.
In the case of “Forms: Soy Cuba and Revolutionary Beauty” by Rosalind Galt, I chose to annotate digitally.
MY SCREEN LOOKED LIKE THIS :
UGLY!!
CONTROL F
COPY-PASTE
ORGANIZE THOUGHTS
Because the website on which I was viewing “Revolutionary Beauty” would not let me annotate nor copy-paste (which is unfortunate – usually I’m able to fit a lot more onto a page), I would quickly type blocks of important text (sometimes direct quotes) onto a Google Doc (labeled with their respective page numbers) and either bold/underline/italicize words, paraphrase beneath, or add my own commentary. I find this method helpful because later on I can easily sift through my notes using the control-F shortcut as well as quickly copy-paste direct quotes into my paper. It also makes it easier for me to parse through my thoughts because I can play around with font, size, and color in order to separate different types of ideas from one another.
Though usually my notes are quite clunky (perhaps they look clunkier because they are not handwritten but typed), they are neither eligible nor incomprehensible. I find I don’t mind their clumsiness, as shedding my regard for perfection reaps juicier fruits from which I am able to pull riper ideas. If I waste time focusing on how I’m phrasing specific annotations, I increase my chances of losing an impression that might soon fade. Thus, I encourage anyone taking notes to, just as one should when writing for themselves, rid any expectations of crafting something beautiful or refined, and instead focus on capturing the essence of an idea.
SHED PERFECTION
RIPE IDEAS
KEEP IMPRESSION
CAPTURE ESSENCE
Later, I took another look at the article – this time through a downloadable PDF – and highlighted important sections on Preview. In doing so, when I cross-reference my typed notes with the document, I’m able to immediately locate the sections I am referring to. (Usually, I would highlight within the Google Doc itself in order to narrow down the scope of language I’d be rereading, but because the site didn’t let me copy-paste, I decided to download a PDF and do it on there instead).
While I was annotating, I specifically looked for important subclaims the author was making (blue) as well as areas that contradicted the popular belief that Soy Cuba was unsuccessful (pink). I made sure to take note of other sources the author was drawing from (green) and general relatively important information (yellow). Anything I underlined in red was, I believed, key to the article, and anything in purple was simply something I found important. Also underlined in red were central scholarly claims: in my search for them, I usually focus on the introduction and conclusion, as scholars typically concentrate their themes in two places: the final phrases before diving into their essay, or near the very end of the piece. I also tend to highlight sentences that include terms like “argue,” “I want to…,” “I seek…,” and “claim,” which are often used when author’s communicate their intentions.
KEY
BLUE important subclaims / PINK contradicts/rebuts other popular claims / GREEN sources / YELLOW normal highlight / PURPLE important / . key to article
The definition of my keys always shift slightly when I’m actively reading, as sometimes they distract me from truly interacting with the source, but for the most part they remain consistent and are helpful when looking back for quotes. Because I had read “Revolutionary Beauty” after our two other initial sources, I also made notes on how Galt’s use of sources seemed to perform in comparison.
Galt in conversation
Josefina Ruiz, writing in the weekly Verde Oliva, calls it “a film of the highest quality,” working at “an exceptional standard” and offering “an overwhelming visual beauty.” (Galt, 216)
There are a couple of sections into which Galt enters a space of conversation with multiple academics. When she speaks of the retrospective documentary on Soy Cuba named The Siberian Mammoth, she pulls from three separate scholars who each, in her eyes, fail to provide adequate sources to their heavy claims that Soy Cuba was terribly received, even going so far as to say that they “raise red flags for me because they seem to speak confidently of the film’s reception without offering much” (Galt, 216). To counter their shoddy work, she then goes on to pull from a slew of primary sources that contradict the argument that Soy Cuba was a flop. Her tone before she brings in rebuttal sources is hilariously passive aggressive as she states: “Oddly, considering that this empirically verifiable claim is the easiest one to document, none of the scholarly literature really spends any time in doing so” (Galt, 216). It’s so easy to do, she’s saying, as she does it. Why couldn’t all of you do it?
She even goes so far as to rip apart the one source that academics writing about Soy Cuba seem most drawn to: No Soy Cuba, by Luis M. Lopez (which, I must say, I would like to read the entirety of, considering it is so widely used). Galt essentially denounces his review as overly emotional and unprofessional, largely because it strays considerably from the review format. Through citing direct quotes from his review that frame Lopez as excessively angry and perhaps too biased, she punctures the single source that has been most referenced in scholarly articles arguing that Soy Cuba rose to notoriety from collapse. Galt is even prepared for a potential rebuttal, making sure to note that she is not “interested in performing a dramatic reversal to reveal that the film was actually hugely popular” (Galt, 218), because it isn’t explicitly true. She includes similar statements throughout her piece, successfully (or at least creating the illusion of) keeping her bias in check and solidifying her argument with not only her wealth of references, but her acknowledgement of the importance of sourcing correctly.
"Written in highly intemperate language, the piece does not include any of the characteristic features of the review format." (Galt, 219).
r e a c h
There are a couple of key audiences Galt appears to be trying to reach:
1
This essay specifically seeks to reach people who maintain a misconception of Soy Cuba – perhaps the very scholars of whose work Galt is critiquing, as articulated above.
2
Seeing as her entire argument is based around Soy Cuba’s debated legacy, I think that she has, as a result, also inherently entered a conversation with those interested in the film and its impact, thus making them her audience as well.
3
Thinking largely, Galt’s entire book, Pretty: Film and the Decorative Image seeks to reach film critics and sway their belief that pretty films are less influential or political, less gritty. She at times uses quite esoteric language to make it clear that she is speaking to a certain crowd, considering her work surrounds “anti-pretty discourse” at large. Her essay on Soy Cuba is merely a piece of her efforts to shift the narrative around aesthetics in film; to enact change in the film industry as we know it.
afterthought
afterthoughts
While perhaps the annotation methods I used to best understand "Forms: Soy Cuba and Revolutionary Beauty" aren't the most attractive, I found them dreadfully helpful while dissecting Galt's text. Color-coding is always useful, and doing it retroactively helps eliminate the distraction it may cause should one do it while performing an initial read of a text. Good annotations always save time for when it comes to write, and understanding the sources from which you pull is essential in developing an argument. Annotations open gateways not only to other scholars and sources, but to new modes of thought, unfamiliar ideas, and change.
s o u r c es
s o u r c es
Galt, Rosalind. Pretty : Film and the Decorative Image / Rosalind Galt. Columbia University Press, 2011.
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