Monday, October 12, 2009
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
Jackson "The Lottery"
Each month, The New Yorker podcasts one writer reading and discussing a short story by another writer (go to http://www.newyorker.com/online/podcasts/fiction). Recently, the story they featured was Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery"--one of those stories that has been around so long that it almost seems have been written out of the need for High School and freshman comp classes to have something to discuss.
While listening to the ending again, I suddenly thought of various SF stories too mediocre to be remembered which turn on the same switcheroo in which a central character is suddenly revealed to be a sacrificial lamb. I guess that's why "Those Who Walk Away from Omelas" by LeGuin stands out--by reversing what must have become a depressingly familiar dynamic.
A. M. Homes presents a nice appreciation of the artistry of the story (pointing out that it begins with a vivid splash of colors and ends with a black dot), but tells of getting angry reading of Marxist interpretations of the story.
Angry? Why, I wonder? I've often been angry with dismissal's of fiction I thought were ill-founded, but why get angry because a Marxist took a shot at interpreting the story?
It so happens that a month before they posted that interview, I'd written a lengthy attempt at a Marxist interpretation of the story. It was actually an email, to a friend who was going to be teaching the story (in freshman Comp, I assume.) She asked if I had come across any Marxist interpretations of it.
While writing it, It occurred to me how easy life would be if there were a Limbaugh school of criticism. Then all you’d have to say is that "The Lottery" is an allegory for how excessive taxation destroys the average Jill. There is no such school, as far as I know, but maybe Stanley Fish will invent one, to prove, once and for all, before he goes the way of all Fishes, that nobody in the world has any idea what the hell Stanley Fish means, or why
***
A Marxist approach to "The Lottery"? Surprisingly, "The Lottery" receives very little critical consideration (compared to, say, "A Good Man is Hard to Find"); I wonder if it's because as a writer of surprise endings ("The Lottery" "Charles") she suffers in by comparison to O'Connor? Dunno. Anyhow, I found reference to a 1985 article in the New Orleans Review, but I couldn't find it on JSTOR, so I don't know what the article says.
Still it's an interesting thought.
It's clearly not a Marxist utopia story, in that it's not a critique of the evils of capital from the perspective of the working man. The working men come off no better than the middle class. Bakhtin is more overtly pertinent, in that the Lottery itself is a carnival world, in which Mr. Summers becomes King for a Day. In this world anybody in the town is likely to be brought down into the earth. (In Bakhtin’s utopian carnival, this becomes the place of privilege; historians have pointed out that this is not exactly how it worked in real life, in that people destroyed during the carnival season often just died. Bakhtin calls the dark side the Romantic carnival, the carnival without hope.)
But there are some elements which a Marxist would focus on. The man who runs the carnival each year is the coal merchant, Summers. Notwithstanding the 21st century connection between the burning of coal and endless summers, a 1940's post-war connection between the two would note that burning coal warms us (like the summer), and, more importantly, both are associated with an optimistic promise of ongoing, energetic growth; from an economic perspective coal=industry, as within the story summer=lottery=corn=agriculture. So there is rough sense in which the story is an allegory of the absolute need of capital to, Vampire like, feed on the blood of the worker; this is a rough paraphrase of a comment by Marx about capital, but the worker who is fed upon here is more or less randomly chosen, NOT chosen by dint of lack of access to capital (as Marx would have it).
Let’s push this further.
The world of "The Lottery" is not exactly a feudal, pre-modern world, despite the references to agriculture, and its not quite a world of modern capitalism. If anything, it resembles an 18th century "emergence of the public sphere" world; the lottery is a civic gathering, decisions are made in a very orderly way. It’s a rationalized carnival, a carnival equipped with the trappings of a modern, enlightenment sensibility which serves to preserve a pre-modern ritual.
Lotteries, I keep hearing, were popular in the 18th century, and favored by the founding fathers; a quick peek at Wikipedia (btw, I do have real work to do today, but I’m on a roll) tells me that Liz 1 started lottery in the late 1500's, and that the English State Lottery was a regular feature from 1694 to 1826, and they were used to raise capital by the state, and that the broker system they developed evolved into a system of stock brokers. Here’s what this adds up to for me: the lottery was a tool for expanding hegemonic rule. That is almost precisely the role it plays in the story. The lottery in the story is a tool for maintaining hegemonic rule. People don’t want to change it or stop it because they’ve always done it, and because they’ve always done it, they don’t want to change it. The corn always grew after every other lottery; why stop now?
And it’s a patriarchal order they are preserving. The lottery is presided over by a man, and each male head of household draws. Regardless of the fact that the victim is as likely to be male as female (I once tried to work this out mathematically, to see if this were so; lets assume it is), the patriarchal order is preserved; it doesn’t matter who dies, so long as they submit to the patriarchy. I’m not confused by the red herring of Mrs. Hutchinson being the victim; she’s not Anne Hutchinson, except that she like Anne H. is sacrificed on the altar of patriarchy.
A Marxist account of elections in late industrial capitalism is that elections are recurring plebiscites in which the worker, through the act of voting, submits to the prevailing hegemony, ruled more by capital than by elected officials ( it’s Habermas I’m paraphrasing). The Lottery works sort of like that.
But here’s my most interesting thought, which popped into my mind when the radio came on this morning at 6:20 to reports of the worldwide financial crisis spreading.
Money, Marx tells us, is the ability to be what I am not. With money, I can appear smarter, more talented, better looking than I am; he says something to the effect that I may be ugly, but with money I can buy attention (not to mention better clothes); who then is to say I am not good looking?
A lottery is the promise of unearned wealth. I buy a ticket on the hope that chance will make me into what I have not earned or inherited. This lottery is the exact inverse of that. I participate not willingly but because it is my civic duty, and in this lottery everybody–almost everybody–becomes a capitalist for a day. "Capital is dead labour, which, vampire like, lives on the labor of the of the living," Marx tells us (Google) (actually its from Capital). He goes on to say that the vampire will not release the living until he has sucked out every drop of blood, every ounce of marrow. I get to participate in another’s destruction not because her actions have merited punishment but precisely because her death ensures my continued prosperity. The polity becomes the vampire.
If you’ve read Jackson's essay about how she wrote the story ("Biography of a Story"), you may see why I think this perspective probably does summarize how she felt. She also has an essay about working at Macy’s (?) for one day in which she pretty much portrays herself as the hapless victim of society, forced to participate in her own destruction.
What’s notable about "The Lottery" is the extent to it doesn’t identity with the victim. If at the end, Mrs. H. were pleading for life, the story would be unendurable. Instead she’s claiming the process wasn’t fair (ie., this should happen, but not to me) so we don’t really identify with her; we see her as spectacle, as other.
I’m sure your students will be entertained by a tour through Habermas, Bakhtin, and Marx.
While listening to the ending again, I suddenly thought of various SF stories too mediocre to be remembered which turn on the same switcheroo in which a central character is suddenly revealed to be a sacrificial lamb. I guess that's why "Those Who Walk Away from Omelas" by LeGuin stands out--by reversing what must have become a depressingly familiar dynamic.
A. M. Homes presents a nice appreciation of the artistry of the story (pointing out that it begins with a vivid splash of colors and ends with a black dot), but tells of getting angry reading of Marxist interpretations of the story.
Angry? Why, I wonder? I've often been angry with dismissal's of fiction I thought were ill-founded, but why get angry because a Marxist took a shot at interpreting the story?
It so happens that a month before they posted that interview, I'd written a lengthy attempt at a Marxist interpretation of the story. It was actually an email, to a friend who was going to be teaching the story (in freshman Comp, I assume.) She asked if I had come across any Marxist interpretations of it.
While writing it, It occurred to me how easy life would be if there were a Limbaugh school of criticism. Then all you’d have to say is that "The Lottery" is an allegory for how excessive taxation destroys the average Jill. There is no such school, as far as I know, but maybe Stanley Fish will invent one, to prove, once and for all, before he goes the way of all Fishes, that nobody in the world has any idea what the hell Stanley Fish means, or why
***
A Marxist approach to "The Lottery"? Surprisingly, "The Lottery" receives very little critical consideration (compared to, say, "A Good Man is Hard to Find"); I wonder if it's because as a writer of surprise endings ("The Lottery" "Charles") she suffers in by comparison to O'Connor? Dunno. Anyhow, I found reference to a 1985 article in the New Orleans Review, but I couldn't find it on JSTOR, so I don't know what the article says.
Still it's an interesting thought.
It's clearly not a Marxist utopia story, in that it's not a critique of the evils of capital from the perspective of the working man. The working men come off no better than the middle class. Bakhtin is more overtly pertinent, in that the Lottery itself is a carnival world, in which Mr. Summers becomes King for a Day. In this world anybody in the town is likely to be brought down into the earth. (In Bakhtin’s utopian carnival, this becomes the place of privilege; historians have pointed out that this is not exactly how it worked in real life, in that people destroyed during the carnival season often just died. Bakhtin calls the dark side the Romantic carnival, the carnival without hope.)
But there are some elements which a Marxist would focus on. The man who runs the carnival each year is the coal merchant, Summers. Notwithstanding the 21st century connection between the burning of coal and endless summers, a 1940's post-war connection between the two would note that burning coal warms us (like the summer), and, more importantly, both are associated with an optimistic promise of ongoing, energetic growth; from an economic perspective coal=industry, as within the story summer=lottery=corn=agriculture. So there is rough sense in which the story is an allegory of the absolute need of capital to, Vampire like, feed on the blood of the worker; this is a rough paraphrase of a comment by Marx about capital, but the worker who is fed upon here is more or less randomly chosen, NOT chosen by dint of lack of access to capital (as Marx would have it).
Let’s push this further.
The world of "The Lottery" is not exactly a feudal, pre-modern world, despite the references to agriculture, and its not quite a world of modern capitalism. If anything, it resembles an 18th century "emergence of the public sphere" world; the lottery is a civic gathering, decisions are made in a very orderly way. It’s a rationalized carnival, a carnival equipped with the trappings of a modern, enlightenment sensibility which serves to preserve a pre-modern ritual.
Lotteries, I keep hearing, were popular in the 18th century, and favored by the founding fathers; a quick peek at Wikipedia (btw, I do have real work to do today, but I’m on a roll) tells me that Liz 1 started lottery in the late 1500's, and that the English State Lottery was a regular feature from 1694 to 1826, and they were used to raise capital by the state, and that the broker system they developed evolved into a system of stock brokers. Here’s what this adds up to for me: the lottery was a tool for expanding hegemonic rule. That is almost precisely the role it plays in the story. The lottery in the story is a tool for maintaining hegemonic rule. People don’t want to change it or stop it because they’ve always done it, and because they’ve always done it, they don’t want to change it. The corn always grew after every other lottery; why stop now?
And it’s a patriarchal order they are preserving. The lottery is presided over by a man, and each male head of household draws. Regardless of the fact that the victim is as likely to be male as female (I once tried to work this out mathematically, to see if this were so; lets assume it is), the patriarchal order is preserved; it doesn’t matter who dies, so long as they submit to the patriarchy. I’m not confused by the red herring of Mrs. Hutchinson being the victim; she’s not Anne Hutchinson, except that she like Anne H. is sacrificed on the altar of patriarchy.
A Marxist account of elections in late industrial capitalism is that elections are recurring plebiscites in which the worker, through the act of voting, submits to the prevailing hegemony, ruled more by capital than by elected officials ( it’s Habermas I’m paraphrasing). The Lottery works sort of like that.
But here’s my most interesting thought, which popped into my mind when the radio came on this morning at 6:20 to reports of the worldwide financial crisis spreading.
Money, Marx tells us, is the ability to be what I am not. With money, I can appear smarter, more talented, better looking than I am; he says something to the effect that I may be ugly, but with money I can buy attention (not to mention better clothes); who then is to say I am not good looking?
A lottery is the promise of unearned wealth. I buy a ticket on the hope that chance will make me into what I have not earned or inherited. This lottery is the exact inverse of that. I participate not willingly but because it is my civic duty, and in this lottery everybody–almost everybody–becomes a capitalist for a day. "Capital is dead labour, which, vampire like, lives on the labor of the of the living," Marx tells us (Google) (actually its from Capital). He goes on to say that the vampire will not release the living until he has sucked out every drop of blood, every ounce of marrow. I get to participate in another’s destruction not because her actions have merited punishment but precisely because her death ensures my continued prosperity. The polity becomes the vampire.
If you’ve read Jackson's essay about how she wrote the story ("Biography of a Story"), you may see why I think this perspective probably does summarize how she felt. She also has an essay about working at Macy’s (?) for one day in which she pretty much portrays herself as the hapless victim of society, forced to participate in her own destruction.
What’s notable about "The Lottery" is the extent to it doesn’t identity with the victim. If at the end, Mrs. H. were pleading for life, the story would be unendurable. Instead she’s claiming the process wasn’t fair (ie., this should happen, but not to me) so we don’t really identify with her; we see her as spectacle, as other.
I’m sure your students will be entertained by a tour through Habermas, Bakhtin, and Marx.
Sunday, January 4, 2009
Hamlet 2
While watching the DVD of Hamlet 2 last night (Netflix), I thought, It's a good thing I don't own this, or I'd waste time everyday rewatching "Rock Me Sexy, Jesus."
Then I watched that song (in the sing along special feature) and thought, no, I probably wouldn't. Twice is enough. The choral arrangement of "Someone Saved My Life Tonight," on the other hand, holds up pretty well (I listened to that)
I give them credit for making the absurd connection between Jesus and Hamlet (special son, doomed son; absent father, overbearing father) and making it work.
Then I watched that song (in the sing along special feature) and thought, no, I probably wouldn't. Twice is enough. The choral arrangement of "Someone Saved My Life Tonight," on the other hand, holds up pretty well (I listened to that)
I give them credit for making the absurd connection between Jesus and Hamlet (special son, doomed son; absent father, overbearing father) and making it work.
Friday, January 2, 2009
Dickens Revisited?
'It was the worst of times. It was the age of foolishness. It was the epoch of incredulity. It was the season of Darkness. It was the winter of despair. We had nothing before us; we were all going direct the Other Way - in short, the period was the present period.'
--It's interesting that even printed this way, a sense of ironic detachment still comes through
--It's interesting that even printed this way, a sense of ironic detachment still comes through
Thursday, January 1, 2009
Dewey Readmore Books
About halfway through the book Dewey by the librarian Vicki Myron, I wondered how much Marge Piercy, that depression born daughter of the tough realities of the American midwest, she had read. It seemed to me she probably had some, probably more than I have. If not, she’s got something to look forward to, and maybe one or two more books to write.
The reason I thought of Marge Piercy was what struck me as the major sub theme of the book, the working lives of women. Mainly of course there’s her life, as the librarian of a small town in Iowa. But there’s also the life of her fellow workers in the library (where is it written that most workers in most libraries should be female? But it seems to be so), and the life of her mother.
Mostly though, I was grateful about the way she found to tell the story of her cat. Anyone can tell cute stories about a favorite pet, and enough people do. I’ve read or two of most cat related mysteries and enjoyed the experience the way last month and two years ago I enjoyed eating at McDonald’s for dinner. Dewey is not that kind of meal.
The author of Dewey "had" me when she began talking about attending Al-Anon meetings to recover from an alcoholic marriage long before Dewey showed up at her library (although this portion is told as a flashback). This assured me that she had a story that that had something to do with life as I've known it.
It helps that I’m married to a woman who once ran a small library, and that in every town I’ve ever lived in (most of them towns of less than 20,000), the local library has been a focal point of my sanity, and the local librarians have been that curious mixture of provincialism and cosmopolitanism that librarians and English teachers are. If there is a mold here, Vicki Myron fits it.
She’s an activist librarian. The librarians I’ve known have all had a sense of mission. None of have thought that they were going to save their community through their library, but several have definitely made it a point to provide the resources to community members that would make a difference in their life, and that’s the type of librarian Myron is.
The cat, Dewey, gives her is a thread to tell her story to make a rambling 25 year career more or less coherent. More importantly, her relationship with Deewy provides a metonymic figure of how human lives and animal companion lives are intertwined. To be sure, she saved Dewey’s life. He did no save hers, and it would be overstating it to say he made it meaningful; but he did give her a story, which in turn allows her to tell the story of her career–always a welcome challenge–and of her brothers’ and mother’s deaths.
3/4 of the way through the book, she assures the reader that Dewey is not a substitute son. Nonetheless, she frequently refers to herself as his mother–so is she saying he thought of me as a mom, but I thought of him as a pet?
Vocabulary breaks down. What he is her male offspring/companion.
Early in the novel, she tells of Dewey being found in a frozen library drop box, one so cold his paws are frozen to the bottom. She rescues him and washes him off; do I detect some birth imagery here? Later we find that she herself was the victim (there’s no other word) of an unauthorized radical hysterectomy. Is it entirely wrong to see this icey box as an image of her own womb?
This does not belittle her in the least. Rather, I’m trying to make a point about the cyborgian nature of human/animal relation. Anyone who has washed, fed, slept with, and disciplined an animal knows that animal companions both are and are not similar to children, just as they are similar to a spouse, a girl/boyfriend, and a nurse. They are not any of these things, but "pets" and these relations are embarassingly similar, and disarmingly intimate. We belittle them (and ourselves) if we only talk of them of them in an "aw, cute!" way (which by the way is why is why I thought of Marge Piercy, and not Anne Tyler; Tyler, though a better writer than either of the other two, is also more fundamentally comic, if not necessarily sweeter). People who live with dogs and cats know that these companions will help you survive some of the worst experiences of your life, and so it is when Myron talks of fights with her daughter, of her own illnesses, and the deaths of close family. We also know that these animals–not all of whom are as well mannered as Dewey–will bring us some real pain and heartache
Follow Up (Jan 4)
The day after I posted this, The Times and Democrat ran an article about the Vicki Myron adopting another kitten: The original article was published here.
Also, I heard of a book, Animals Make Us Human, which is about some of the things issues about inter species relations. Let me quote from the Publishers Weekly review:
Grandin, . . . the autistic author assesses dogs, cats, horses, cows, pigs, poultry, wildlife and zoo animals based on a core emotion system she believes animals and humans share, including a need to seek; a sense of rage, fear, and panic; feelings of lust; an urge to nurture; and an ability to play. Among observations at odds with conventional wisdom: dogs need human parents, not alpha pack leaders, and cats respond to training.
Dogs and cats don't thing of us as dogs and cats, anymore --or, I suspect, less--than we think of them in people terms.
The reason I thought of Marge Piercy was what struck me as the major sub theme of the book, the working lives of women. Mainly of course there’s her life, as the librarian of a small town in Iowa. But there’s also the life of her fellow workers in the library (where is it written that most workers in most libraries should be female? But it seems to be so), and the life of her mother.
Mostly though, I was grateful about the way she found to tell the story of her cat. Anyone can tell cute stories about a favorite pet, and enough people do. I’ve read or two of most cat related mysteries and enjoyed the experience the way last month and two years ago I enjoyed eating at McDonald’s for dinner. Dewey is not that kind of meal.
The author of Dewey "had" me when she began talking about attending Al-Anon meetings to recover from an alcoholic marriage long before Dewey showed up at her library (although this portion is told as a flashback). This assured me that she had a story that that had something to do with life as I've known it.
It helps that I’m married to a woman who once ran a small library, and that in every town I’ve ever lived in (most of them towns of less than 20,000), the local library has been a focal point of my sanity, and the local librarians have been that curious mixture of provincialism and cosmopolitanism that librarians and English teachers are. If there is a mold here, Vicki Myron fits it.
She’s an activist librarian. The librarians I’ve known have all had a sense of mission. None of have thought that they were going to save their community through their library, but several have definitely made it a point to provide the resources to community members that would make a difference in their life, and that’s the type of librarian Myron is.
The cat, Dewey, gives her is a thread to tell her story to make a rambling 25 year career more or less coherent. More importantly, her relationship with Deewy provides a metonymic figure of how human lives and animal companion lives are intertwined. To be sure, she saved Dewey’s life. He did no save hers, and it would be overstating it to say he made it meaningful; but he did give her a story, which in turn allows her to tell the story of her career–always a welcome challenge–and of her brothers’ and mother’s deaths.
3/4 of the way through the book, she assures the reader that Dewey is not a substitute son. Nonetheless, she frequently refers to herself as his mother–so is she saying he thought of me as a mom, but I thought of him as a pet?
Vocabulary breaks down. What he is her male offspring/companion.
Early in the novel, she tells of Dewey being found in a frozen library drop box, one so cold his paws are frozen to the bottom. She rescues him and washes him off; do I detect some birth imagery here? Later we find that she herself was the victim (there’s no other word) of an unauthorized radical hysterectomy. Is it entirely wrong to see this icey box as an image of her own womb?
This does not belittle her in the least. Rather, I’m trying to make a point about the cyborgian nature of human/animal relation. Anyone who has washed, fed, slept with, and disciplined an animal knows that animal companions both are and are not similar to children, just as they are similar to a spouse, a girl/boyfriend, and a nurse. They are not any of these things, but "pets" and these relations are embarassingly similar, and disarmingly intimate. We belittle them (and ourselves) if we only talk of them of them in an "aw, cute!" way (which by the way is why is why I thought of Marge Piercy, and not Anne Tyler; Tyler, though a better writer than either of the other two, is also more fundamentally comic, if not necessarily sweeter). People who live with dogs and cats know that these companions will help you survive some of the worst experiences of your life, and so it is when Myron talks of fights with her daughter, of her own illnesses, and the deaths of close family. We also know that these animals–not all of whom are as well mannered as Dewey–will bring us some real pain and heartache
Follow Up (Jan 4)
The day after I posted this, The Times and Democrat ran an article about the Vicki Myron adopting another kitten: The original article was published here.
Also, I heard of a book, Animals Make Us Human, which is about some of the things issues about inter species relations. Let me quote from the Publishers Weekly review:
Grandin, . . . the autistic author assesses dogs, cats, horses, cows, pigs, poultry, wildlife and zoo animals based on a core emotion system she believes animals and humans share, including a need to seek; a sense of rage, fear, and panic; feelings of lust; an urge to nurture; and an ability to play. Among observations at odds with conventional wisdom: dogs need human parents, not alpha pack leaders, and cats respond to training.
Dogs and cats don't thing of us as dogs and cats, anymore --or, I suspect, less--than we think of them in people terms.
One of Best of 2008?
The most interesting piece of filmcraft in The Dark Knight, which I recently saw on DVD, is the final shot of Keith Ledger as The Joker hanging upside; the picture swivels in the frame until he seems to be upright. His hair and other objects in the frame continue to fall "down," which is now "up" to the viewer, but Ledger himself is confident, poised; the Joker is using that poise, that non-chalance to taunt The Batman, because he knows he’s won. If the Batman kills him, he’s broken the Batman. If he doesn’t, this cat and mouse game will go on, which must be what the Batman really wants; the crime fighter shows, through his actions if not his words that he wants the criminal to continue.
It’s a simple trick of deconstruction. When you find a pair of binary oppositions which define themselves against each other (God, Satan; Good, Evil; Democrats, Republicans), you can usually make an interesting claim that A, which tries to crush or at least marginalize B, in fact defines itself by B, and so NEEDS B. (This also works with x and y). It’s a legitimate trick, one that’s been around for a while, but which deconstruction (and feminism and post-colonialism) have used over and over, sometimes more productively than at others. To some extent, a manufactures b; constant dieting leads to being overweight; an obsessive compulsive with neatness creates a chaotic life. In Dark Knight, the world of crime has turned to the Joker to be their hero to counter the heroics of Batman itself.
This convergence of opposites has always been part of the Batman story. However often the story gets rewritten, it always begins with Bruce Wayne as an orphaned rich boy whose parents were killed in a senseless robbery, "good" being birthed as the spawn of "evil." But this champion of capital and the superego has always associated himself with the id, with his underground lair and his horned mask, whose "ears" do not look anything like bat ears. (Why does he fashion himself after the most timid of predators, one known for avoiding trouble by wrapping itself up in its arms and hiding? According to the two page origin story that appeared about 6 months after Batman’s first appearance, Bruce Wayne adopted the bat persona because criminals are superstitious. I always assumed that this 1939 character was inspired by the 1931 adaptation of "Dracula"; according to my crack research team, aka Wikipedia, Batman’s creators say they were inspired by a 1930 haunted house movie called something like "The Bat Whispers." Okay, fine, but why were They inspired by a timid, flying mouse-like creature that eats mosquitoes? If only THEY had had access to Wikipedia, they might have named their movie after something truly scary, like unemployment, or Economic Deflation. "Unemployment Whispers!" "Deflation-Man"! Damn, that’d have been scary).
Back to this movie.
I was not surprised to see this superhero flick turn up on so many best of 2008 lists. Rarely has a movie been so tuned in to the zeitgeist. This Batman is America in the George Bush era. How did we end up creating evil when from the start we were focused on destroying it? To be blunt, The Joker is terrorism, and Batman is the war on terror. In Batman Begins, Chritian Bale’s Batman hung a character upside down to scare a response out of him; torture works (and I don't believed "hanged" would have been the right word, because the man is question is not hanged by the neck, but what do I know?). In The Dark Knight, this certainly works to get a response out of The Joker, but so what? Throughout the movie, The Joker consistently gives different answers to the question of how he got his scars (a question no one asks), but answers, it turns out, are not answers.
Thus the ending, in which Batman riding off on a motorcyle invites the world to blame him for everything that has gone wrong (I’ve skipped over the whole 2-Face / Harvey Dent subplot, so let me simply say that this neatly reflects the moral ambiguity developed elsewhere). Do we see a slight hint of America in Iraq?
I hope this is the end of the Batman film franchise for a few years. It takes a fair amount of showmanship to mix aesthetic figures of the failures of the American war on "terror" with really good motorcyle chases, but its the type 0f thing that can only be done once. After that, what you'll be left with is the motorcycle chase, which will certainly be twice as stimulating, but probably less than half as interesting.
It’s a simple trick of deconstruction. When you find a pair of binary oppositions which define themselves against each other (God, Satan; Good, Evil; Democrats, Republicans), you can usually make an interesting claim that A, which tries to crush or at least marginalize B, in fact defines itself by B, and so NEEDS B. (This also works with x and y). It’s a legitimate trick, one that’s been around for a while, but which deconstruction (and feminism and post-colonialism) have used over and over, sometimes more productively than at others. To some extent, a manufactures b; constant dieting leads to being overweight; an obsessive compulsive with neatness creates a chaotic life. In Dark Knight, the world of crime has turned to the Joker to be their hero to counter the heroics of Batman itself.
This convergence of opposites has always been part of the Batman story. However often the story gets rewritten, it always begins with Bruce Wayne as an orphaned rich boy whose parents were killed in a senseless robbery, "good" being birthed as the spawn of "evil." But this champion of capital and the superego has always associated himself with the id, with his underground lair and his horned mask, whose "ears" do not look anything like bat ears. (Why does he fashion himself after the most timid of predators, one known for avoiding trouble by wrapping itself up in its arms and hiding? According to the two page origin story that appeared about 6 months after Batman’s first appearance, Bruce Wayne adopted the bat persona because criminals are superstitious. I always assumed that this 1939 character was inspired by the 1931 adaptation of "Dracula"; according to my crack research team, aka Wikipedia, Batman’s creators say they were inspired by a 1930 haunted house movie called something like "The Bat Whispers." Okay, fine, but why were They inspired by a timid, flying mouse-like creature that eats mosquitoes? If only THEY had had access to Wikipedia, they might have named their movie after something truly scary, like unemployment, or Economic Deflation. "Unemployment Whispers!" "Deflation-Man"! Damn, that’d have been scary).
Back to this movie.
I was not surprised to see this superhero flick turn up on so many best of 2008 lists. Rarely has a movie been so tuned in to the zeitgeist. This Batman is America in the George Bush era. How did we end up creating evil when from the start we were focused on destroying it? To be blunt, The Joker is terrorism, and Batman is the war on terror. In Batman Begins, Chritian Bale’s Batman hung a character upside down to scare a response out of him; torture works (and I don't believed "hanged" would have been the right word, because the man is question is not hanged by the neck, but what do I know?). In The Dark Knight, this certainly works to get a response out of The Joker, but so what? Throughout the movie, The Joker consistently gives different answers to the question of how he got his scars (a question no one asks), but answers, it turns out, are not answers.
Thus the ending, in which Batman riding off on a motorcyle invites the world to blame him for everything that has gone wrong (I’ve skipped over the whole 2-Face / Harvey Dent subplot, so let me simply say that this neatly reflects the moral ambiguity developed elsewhere). Do we see a slight hint of America in Iraq?
I hope this is the end of the Batman film franchise for a few years. It takes a fair amount of showmanship to mix aesthetic figures of the failures of the American war on "terror" with really good motorcyle chases, but its the type 0f thing that can only be done once. After that, what you'll be left with is the motorcycle chase, which will certainly be twice as stimulating, but probably less than half as interesting.
Monday, August 11, 2008
Sources: Dell Support Staff Trained by CIA at Secret Black Box Location
The core concern of this blog is the way in which self/other (self/technology, self/animal,
self/montser, etc.) interactions define the nature of the self, particularly as those interactions are represented in popular culture. For the most part, "I" ( I almost want to say "Dasein" here) experiences Being through those interactions, though the experience of these interactions is that "they" are "me." I.e., I think of my machines as an ability I have, for instance, to surf the web in my shorts in the living room; I am only aware of my machines as things when they cease to function correctly, as when a laptop gives me a blue screen.
This is why I thought it would be worthwhile to blog about my horrible experiences with Dell support. I was trying to be modarate in my last two posts. Big mistake! I take back every moderate thing I said about Dell!
It's truly incredible. I've been waiting for support to call back for over 90 minutes. They sold me a hard drive, assuring me this would solve my problems.
It didn't. New Hard drive, same error message.
Only then does the techie think that maybe the drivers on my system might be out of date.
I want to hit someone. Hard. With a 7 pound dell laptop.
I've now been waiting for support to call back for over 105 minutes.
self/montser, etc.) interactions define the nature of the self, particularly as those interactions are represented in popular culture. For the most part, "I" ( I almost want to say "Dasein" here) experiences Being through those interactions, though the experience of these interactions is that "they" are "me." I.e., I think of my machines as an ability I have, for instance, to surf the web in my shorts in the living room; I am only aware of my machines as things when they cease to function correctly, as when a laptop gives me a blue screen.
This is why I thought it would be worthwhile to blog about my horrible experiences with Dell support. I was trying to be modarate in my last two posts. Big mistake! I take back every moderate thing I said about Dell!
It's truly incredible. I've been waiting for support to call back for over 90 minutes. They sold me a hard drive, assuring me this would solve my problems.
It didn't. New Hard drive, same error message.
Only then does the techie think that maybe the drivers on my system might be out of date.
I want to hit someone. Hard. With a 7 pound dell laptop.
I've now been waiting for support to call back for over 105 minutes.
Friday, August 8, 2008
Reflections on What I'm watching on DVD
The Closer, Season 1 Disc 1
Good to see Kyra Sedgewick again. I remember her from the Laroquette show. Good to see a 40+ woman in the lead. Best moment so far: "If I enjoyed being called a bitch to my face, I'd still be married." Worst moment: At the end of the first episode, she puts on cocktail dress, then collapses on her bed eating a Ring Ding and moaning (its the dress that's inauthentic).
Birds of Prey
I never even heard of this when it was being aired. Released to coincide with "Dark Knight" in theatres, it was apparently a little noticed tv show about the daughter of Batman and Catwoman, aka Huntress, and a semi-retired Barbara Gordon (Batgirl) after she was paralyzed by the Joker. On the plus side, it gets the world of the comic book right (there are references to the three former Robins at one point), and the main villian is a blonde psychoanalyst playing Sharon Stone crazy, and good "atmosphere." On the downside: Clunky dialogue (i.e., villains who explicate their thinking for the hero), a pretty girl playing "Huntress" with very, very limited acting chops. Also, her shtick is that she dresses as a prostitute while on patrol to blend in with the underworld. Only she doesn't. She dresses like an actress, which is to say, she doesn't look like the character or like a real person. I may not watch the next two discs.
The Wire, Season 4, Disc 1.
TV bliss. The best television show ever? Maybe. We'll know more in about 3 years. (I would have said that about Hill Street Blues once).
Good to see Kyra Sedgewick again. I remember her from the Laroquette show. Good to see a 40+ woman in the lead. Best moment so far: "If I enjoyed being called a bitch to my face, I'd still be married." Worst moment: At the end of the first episode, she puts on cocktail dress, then collapses on her bed eating a Ring Ding and moaning (its the dress that's inauthentic).
Birds of Prey
I never even heard of this when it was being aired. Released to coincide with "Dark Knight" in theatres, it was apparently a little noticed tv show about the daughter of Batman and Catwoman, aka Huntress, and a semi-retired Barbara Gordon (Batgirl) after she was paralyzed by the Joker. On the plus side, it gets the world of the comic book right (there are references to the three former Robins at one point), and the main villian is a blonde psychoanalyst playing Sharon Stone crazy, and good "atmosphere." On the downside: Clunky dialogue (i.e., villains who explicate their thinking for the hero), a pretty girl playing "Huntress" with very, very limited acting chops. Also, her shtick is that she dresses as a prostitute while on patrol to blend in with the underworld. Only she doesn't. She dresses like an actress, which is to say, she doesn't look like the character or like a real person. I may not watch the next two discs.
The Wire, Season 4, Disc 1.
TV bliss. The best television show ever? Maybe. We'll know more in about 3 years. (I would have said that about Hill Street Blues once).
Thursday, August 7, 2008
Regarding they who reputedly do suck of hairy bananas
Yesterday, I sent an email to Dell while I was waiting for them to answer the phone (every few minutes, the loop they played on hold would run an ad for what sounded like a higher tier of service than I was getting. Capitalism at its finest?)They replied:
Eventually I DID get through to a human being. I told him that I has been transferred at least 8 times already in the last hour, and asked him if he was going to transfer me again or try to help me. In short I was an impatient jerk. Incredibly, I had gotten through to the right department and he set out to try and help me. I told him my tale of woe ( the tattoos, the piercings the family dysfunction, discovering Soldier of Fortune magazine...) eventually leading up to the appearance of the dreaded Blue Screen on my laptop last year. I told him how I spent hours on the phone with other tech guys trying to diagnose and spend two hours wasting his time and mine going through diagnostics that I had gone through before.
He decided that, just for kicks, we should start from the beginning.
As impolitely as I could, I asked if he’d been listening. Nonetheless, I felt our relationship got stronger after that.
Two hour later, he gave me step by step directions on how to return microsoft windows to its original factory settings, which was what I had asked him to do two hours earlier. Unfortunately, both times I tried, I got the blue screen. He agreed to call me back this morning at 10.
He didn’t. I called Dell again.
This fellow didn’t waste much time. He gave me directions on how to reload my original software. When that didn’t work, he said, "Your hard drive is flawed."
That finally made sense. I ordered a new one. I probably could have ordered one cheaper shopping online, but then I would have lost the right to resent Dell when the reinstallation does not work. I need something for my bucks.
What to make of all of this?
First the obvious: this helpline is designed around impatience. They keep you on hold so that you become impatient. Each person who answered the phone seemed to be proceed on the assumption that I didn’t know what I was talking about: they interrupted me, they asked meaningless questions, they were too quick to transfer me, and they transferred me to the wrong person. This is the result of impatience.
It’s also clear that each person I have dealt with in this process (going back to December or January) knew a little bit less than they wanted to appear. They kept putting me on hold, apparently to check what things meant, what to do next.
Nonetheless, though so far the end result has not been worth the toil, it's oddly satisfying when you finally get past all the junk and actually start collaborating with someone half a world away. "It’s asking for a prompt. Do I press return or let it continue? Its giving me the same error code as earlier. Do you think I should restart it?"
Frankly, it made me think of Habermas and his suggestion that the discourse between psyschoanalyst/analysand could be a model for communicative action. The analyst doesn’t want anything from you but to collaborate in fixing your problem. Habermas (as I recall) seems to suggest we need a politics based on this, to complete the project of the enlightenment. To which the scientifically minded reply, "psychoanalysis?"
It seems to me that the model of the tech support hotline/customer is an idealized version of Habermas’s ideal use of language, ie communicative action . Once you actually get to talk to someone, solving the problem is really the only goal. But the embodiment of this form of communication is something that only the mind of Philip K. Dick would have foreseen. Calls get dropped and misrooted, endless loops of useless reminders play. And the end result is about as effective as psychoanalysis, which is to say, after all the frustration, there was a feeling of breakthrough, which in and of itself feels good–but so what? Nothing has changed, and it won’t until after I drop 2 C-notes for a new hard-drive.
Thinking about my own reactions, I had put off and put off making these phone calls because I KNEW it would be like this. I was right. Owning a dysfunctional laptop is oddly paralyzing. There are things I think of myself as being able to do, BUT I can’t do them because I don’t have a laptop (ie, type blog entries in my living room while sitting in my underwear). Getting a new laptop was going to be expensive, and fixing this one very, very unpleasant (especially because they kept claiming that they had resolved my problem). So the problem sat.
It’s like trying to convince a doctor that your knee really hurts, while he’s insisting that a little ibuprofen is all you need (that happened to me last year too). It’s also like trying to convince a mechanic that your brakes need work, while he’s telling you they’re just wet. I took time off from my day and my work to get my brakes fixed. They ain’t fixed. I’m going to have to go somewhere else another time. I feel sick.
Let me state the obvious. We are our machines when they are working, or rather, they are extensions of our body, parts of it for all intents and purposes. Then they stop working correctly. So we stop working correctly. In the brave new world, tech is -- not potency but the illusion of potency -- and I felt impotent.
Thank you for contacting Dell Online Customer Care. I see that you are not
satisfied with the level of service you have received. I sincerely apologize for
any inconvenience caused to you. I have forwarded your message to the management
and I assure you they will look into this issue and will work on making
improvements based on your feedback.
Eventually I DID get through to a human being. I told him that I has been transferred at least 8 times already in the last hour, and asked him if he was going to transfer me again or try to help me. In short I was an impatient jerk. Incredibly, I had gotten through to the right department and he set out to try and help me. I told him my tale of woe ( the tattoos, the piercings the family dysfunction, discovering Soldier of Fortune magazine...) eventually leading up to the appearance of the dreaded Blue Screen on my laptop last year. I told him how I spent hours on the phone with other tech guys trying to diagnose and spend two hours wasting his time and mine going through diagnostics that I had gone through before.
He decided that, just for kicks, we should start from the beginning.
As impolitely as I could, I asked if he’d been listening. Nonetheless, I felt our relationship got stronger after that.
Two hour later, he gave me step by step directions on how to return microsoft windows to its original factory settings, which was what I had asked him to do two hours earlier. Unfortunately, both times I tried, I got the blue screen. He agreed to call me back this morning at 10.
He didn’t. I called Dell again.
This fellow didn’t waste much time. He gave me directions on how to reload my original software. When that didn’t work, he said, "Your hard drive is flawed."
That finally made sense. I ordered a new one. I probably could have ordered one cheaper shopping online, but then I would have lost the right to resent Dell when the reinstallation does not work. I need something for my bucks.
What to make of all of this?
First the obvious: this helpline is designed around impatience. They keep you on hold so that you become impatient. Each person who answered the phone seemed to be proceed on the assumption that I didn’t know what I was talking about: they interrupted me, they asked meaningless questions, they were too quick to transfer me, and they transferred me to the wrong person. This is the result of impatience.
It’s also clear that each person I have dealt with in this process (going back to December or January) knew a little bit less than they wanted to appear. They kept putting me on hold, apparently to check what things meant, what to do next.
Nonetheless, though so far the end result has not been worth the toil, it's oddly satisfying when you finally get past all the junk and actually start collaborating with someone half a world away. "It’s asking for a prompt. Do I press return or let it continue? Its giving me the same error code as earlier. Do you think I should restart it?"
Frankly, it made me think of Habermas and his suggestion that the discourse between psyschoanalyst/analysand could be a model for communicative action. The analyst doesn’t want anything from you but to collaborate in fixing your problem. Habermas (as I recall) seems to suggest we need a politics based on this, to complete the project of the enlightenment. To which the scientifically minded reply, "psychoanalysis?"
It seems to me that the model of the tech support hotline/customer is an idealized version of Habermas’s ideal use of language, ie communicative action . Once you actually get to talk to someone, solving the problem is really the only goal. But the embodiment of this form of communication is something that only the mind of Philip K. Dick would have foreseen. Calls get dropped and misrooted, endless loops of useless reminders play. And the end result is about as effective as psychoanalysis, which is to say, after all the frustration, there was a feeling of breakthrough, which in and of itself feels good–but so what? Nothing has changed, and it won’t until after I drop 2 C-notes for a new hard-drive.
Thinking about my own reactions, I had put off and put off making these phone calls because I KNEW it would be like this. I was right. Owning a dysfunctional laptop is oddly paralyzing. There are things I think of myself as being able to do, BUT I can’t do them because I don’t have a laptop (ie, type blog entries in my living room while sitting in my underwear). Getting a new laptop was going to be expensive, and fixing this one very, very unpleasant (especially because they kept claiming that they had resolved my problem). So the problem sat.
It’s like trying to convince a doctor that your knee really hurts, while he’s insisting that a little ibuprofen is all you need (that happened to me last year too). It’s also like trying to convince a mechanic that your brakes need work, while he’s telling you they’re just wet. I took time off from my day and my work to get my brakes fixed. They ain’t fixed. I’m going to have to go somewhere else another time. I feel sick.
Let me state the obvious. We are our machines when they are working, or rather, they are extensions of our body, parts of it for all intents and purposes. Then they stop working correctly. So we stop working correctly. In the brave new world, tech is -- not potency but the illusion of potency -- and I felt impotent.
Wednesday, August 6, 2008
An Open Letter to Dell support services
Your telephone help is inadequate. I'm being polite.
Back in March, a sevice rep told me I needed to download drivers for my computer. He was going to send me information how. He never did. I sent two follow up emails, asking for help. No reply.
Yesterday a woman who claimed it wasn't her job helped me do exactly that. It took ten minutes.
As I write this, I have been on the phone for 1 hr, 40 minutes, and have yet to be transferred to anyone who believes that addressing my problems (persistent blue screen) is his job. Got that? I give everyone my service tag and express tag number, explain the problem, and they transfer me to someone else.
This is not satisfactory.
Back in March, a sevice rep told me I needed to download drivers for my computer. He was going to send me information how. He never did. I sent two follow up emails, asking for help. No reply.
Yesterday a woman who claimed it wasn't her job helped me do exactly that. It took ten minutes.
As I write this, I have been on the phone for 1 hr, 40 minutes, and have yet to be transferred to anyone who believes that addressing my problems (persistent blue screen) is his job. Got that? I give everyone my service tag and express tag number, explain the problem, and they transfer me to someone else.
This is not satisfactory.
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
Noir goût
About a year ago I picked up a copy of John Marks’ Fangland because it was a staff selection of the good people at Malaprop’s Bookstore in Asheville (www.malaprops.com), and because it looked like a light hearted satire, in which a fictional version of 60 Minutes (called The Hour in the novel) is taken over by vampires. I was expecting a kind of Network News with corpses and fangs.
Corpses it has. Fangs, despite the title, no. And though it’s not without satire, it’s not a comedy. More, Marks seems to think he’s writing a real novel (as a opposed to another vampire book).
Loosely, it’s a retelling of Dracula. The main character is Evangeline Harker, and she stands in for both Jonathan and Mina Harker. There’s also a Renfield character and character’s who can be loosely associated with Seward and Van Helsing. Dracula’s three wives, whose attempt to feed on Jonathan Harker make for that novel’s most genuinely frightening moment also have counterparts in the form of three brothers who are shown vividly but mysteriously; like their sources, they provide a sharp, frightening menace to the novel early on.
Like the novel Dracula, the book is told in a scrapbook epistolary style of diaries, letters, journals, and, because this is set in the 21st century, email (why no blog?). Evangeline is an assistant producer sent to the province of Transylvania in Rumania to interview a man who claims to be the head of a crime syndicate that has operated since the cold war. He turns out to be the novel’s version of Dracula, named Ion Torgu, an odd enough name that I figured it was probably an anagram; best I could do was “noir goût,” which would translate into “dark taste,” a fair description of the character and what he represents.
What Marks borrows especially effectively from Bram Stoker is that he brings the monster onstage early, still trying to act human, than, after Evangeline escapes his clutches, keeps him in the background.
The most effective thing the novel reinvents the vampire without any of the standby clichés. Torgu, for instance, collects burnt, ruined debris, including holy relics. Why is not entirely clear, except that it seems to be the type of thing a vampire would do.
Because it’s difficult to read Stoker’s novel with fresh eyes, most modern readers probably miss how mysterious the nature and extent of Dracula’s powers are throughout that novel, and this, too, is something Marks borrows effectively. Torgu can and does pass his vampirism on to our heroine—but just how is a little mysterious.
Equally mysterious—but not in a good way-- is the reasoning behind why two members of the Hour staff plan an explosion to call attention to Torgu’s evil. Not to kill him, but, apparently, to make people believe he’s trying to kill them. I could not figure out if their thinking was supposed to be infected, or if this was supposed to seem like a heroic, last ditch act.
All of this is set in a studio nearby Ground Zero. Marks makes effective use of that setting, though frankly I wish he’d avoided. The devastation of ground zero is one of the things that has attracted Torgu to NY. But if he’s attracted to mass death, wouldn’t Iraq or parts of Africa have been more interesting to him?
He also has some apparent plan to infect the world with his vampirism through a broadcast, though to what end I’m not certain.
Still, it contains chilling scenes. Everyone who works for the Hour starts to hear place names whiere slaughters have happened being whispered. Evangeline finds that writing starts appearing on her skin as the vampirism takes hold of her. And the most chilling, one of the senior Hour correspondents is seduced by Torgu, and slowly turns into a shade.
Corpses it has. Fangs, despite the title, no. And though it’s not without satire, it’s not a comedy. More, Marks seems to think he’s writing a real novel (as a opposed to another vampire book).
Loosely, it’s a retelling of Dracula. The main character is Evangeline Harker, and she stands in for both Jonathan and Mina Harker. There’s also a Renfield character and character’s who can be loosely associated with Seward and Van Helsing. Dracula’s three wives, whose attempt to feed on Jonathan Harker make for that novel’s most genuinely frightening moment also have counterparts in the form of three brothers who are shown vividly but mysteriously; like their sources, they provide a sharp, frightening menace to the novel early on.
Like the novel Dracula, the book is told in a scrapbook epistolary style of diaries, letters, journals, and, because this is set in the 21st century, email (why no blog?). Evangeline is an assistant producer sent to the province of Transylvania in Rumania to interview a man who claims to be the head of a crime syndicate that has operated since the cold war. He turns out to be the novel’s version of Dracula, named Ion Torgu, an odd enough name that I figured it was probably an anagram; best I could do was “noir goût,” which would translate into “dark taste,” a fair description of the character and what he represents.
What Marks borrows especially effectively from Bram Stoker is that he brings the monster onstage early, still trying to act human, than, after Evangeline escapes his clutches, keeps him in the background.
The most effective thing the novel reinvents the vampire without any of the standby clichés. Torgu, for instance, collects burnt, ruined debris, including holy relics. Why is not entirely clear, except that it seems to be the type of thing a vampire would do.
Because it’s difficult to read Stoker’s novel with fresh eyes, most modern readers probably miss how mysterious the nature and extent of Dracula’s powers are throughout that novel, and this, too, is something Marks borrows effectively. Torgu can and does pass his vampirism on to our heroine—but just how is a little mysterious.
Equally mysterious—but not in a good way-- is the reasoning behind why two members of the Hour staff plan an explosion to call attention to Torgu’s evil. Not to kill him, but, apparently, to make people believe he’s trying to kill them. I could not figure out if their thinking was supposed to be infected, or if this was supposed to seem like a heroic, last ditch act.
All of this is set in a studio nearby Ground Zero. Marks makes effective use of that setting, though frankly I wish he’d avoided. The devastation of ground zero is one of the things that has attracted Torgu to NY. But if he’s attracted to mass death, wouldn’t Iraq or parts of Africa have been more interesting to him?
He also has some apparent plan to infect the world with his vampirism through a broadcast, though to what end I’m not certain.
Still, it contains chilling scenes. Everyone who works for the Hour starts to hear place names whiere slaughters have happened being whispered. Evangeline finds that writing starts appearing on her skin as the vampirism takes hold of her. And the most chilling, one of the senior Hour correspondents is seduced by Torgu, and slowly turns into a shade.
Monday, April 14, 2008
Nalo Hopkinson: The "new"--no, I can't say it.
In June of 2007, roughly a year and a half after the unexpected death of Octavia Butler, Wiscon, the feminist science fiction convention held annually in Wisconsin, had a panel discussion on Genre Tokenism: The New Octavia Butler. Thanks to the tenacity of a few Bloggers, the thoughts that were informally exchanged that morning have been recorded on the Feminist Science Fiction wiki (wiki.feministsf.net) and discussed at length across a special corner of the web. In part a tribute to a revered foremother, and in part a bitter commentary on the lasting racial and gender blinders in the fields of speculative fiction, a group of respected authors (their numbers include K. Tempest Bradford, and Nisi Shawl, among others) who plow some aspect of the speculative fiction field and happen to be women of color, reflected on being called the “New” Octavia Butler, and what that might mean. While of course rejecting the question as tokenism, several of the panelists agreed that the writer most likely to be attached to that label is Nalo Hopkinson, because she has been relatively prolific as a novelist. When the blogger Oyceter picked up on this discussion (http://oyceter.livejournal.com/605061.html), it sparked a lively conversation in which, again Nalo Hopkinson’s name was again mentioned prominently. Hopkinson herself chimed in: “I find that when white people in SF talk about this stuff, money of them assume that the only perceptivle difference between a POC writer and a non-POC one is skin color. But that’s like assuming that a hearing person won’t regnise a tune being played if s/he can’t see the band. The makers of culture, language, and experience ring as loudly as any visual marker – which is to say, they’re so fluid that you can’t make any hard and fast assumptions.”
Hopkinson’s stateswomanly response to this issue seems to me to acknowledge two plain facts: In turns of similarity, no careful reader of Butler’s clean, direct prose would mistake her work for Hopkinson’s often flamboyant, Caribbean inflected prose, just as the introspective, heroic women who occupy center stage in Butler’s novel bare little similarity to the brash women Hopkinson is often at home with. Yet both of them have, with some been able to insert a black, female voice into the overwhelmingly white boys club that has usually been American SF. And of course, both of them question the hell out of standard definitions of race and sex.
more to come
Monday, February 18, 2008
Dark Corners: As I Was saying...
As I was saying, Brandon Massey's Dark Corners imports wholesale aspects of Steven King's Salem Lot: a rural town with a tradition limited contact with the outside world, a dark evil related to the town's past, a young man whose move to the town stirs things up, the quick spread of the vampire disease.
Each of these elements is a horror cliche by now.
What works for Steven King that doesn't work quite so well for Massey; King has absolute contempt for the small mindedness of this town. The evil of vampirism reflects the evil within the town itself.
Brandon Massey likes his people and his town, for the most part. Vampirism here does not represent the evil of slavery which brought it on the town; vampirism represents the desire for revenge.
This is a great idea. I wish he'd have done more with it. Instead, the theme he siezes upon is the father / son dynamic. David Works it out with his father, Kyle fails to work it out with his father, and Kahlil very effectively works it out with his. There's something to it: the wanton siring of vampires by vampires is an image of fathers wantonly siring sons.
Too earnest.
Where I really fell off the boat, though, was with the handling of Nia James and the romantic subplot. In a subplot unrelated to the main plot, Nia is being pursued by an abusive man from her past, Colin Morgan. Nia, who can repeatedly shoot a friend turned vampire until he's incapacitated, lets Colin get away AFTER he has captured and abused her Grandmother.
Here I see an author manipulating his plot to make certain plot points. It just doesn't work.
What I would have liked: Diallo is compelling. I wish his son had been equally so. I wish we were made to feel that his thirst for revenge, and that he were almost right to have it.
He leaves himself room for a sequal, which I expect to see. I hope Lisha, Kyles mommy, shows up and turns out to be unextectedly complex and not at all squishy good, and that Kyle intends to do evil but gets sidetracked into being less than evil. After he eats David Hunter. That's what I hope.
Each of these elements is a horror cliche by now.
What works for Steven King that doesn't work quite so well for Massey; King has absolute contempt for the small mindedness of this town. The evil of vampirism reflects the evil within the town itself.
Brandon Massey likes his people and his town, for the most part. Vampirism here does not represent the evil of slavery which brought it on the town; vampirism represents the desire for revenge.
This is a great idea. I wish he'd have done more with it. Instead, the theme he siezes upon is the father / son dynamic. David Works it out with his father, Kyle fails to work it out with his father, and Kahlil very effectively works it out with his. There's something to it: the wanton siring of vampires by vampires is an image of fathers wantonly siring sons.
Too earnest.
Where I really fell off the boat, though, was with the handling of Nia James and the romantic subplot. In a subplot unrelated to the main plot, Nia is being pursued by an abusive man from her past, Colin Morgan. Nia, who can repeatedly shoot a friend turned vampire until he's incapacitated, lets Colin get away AFTER he has captured and abused her Grandmother.
Here I see an author manipulating his plot to make certain plot points. It just doesn't work.
What I would have liked: Diallo is compelling. I wish his son had been equally so. I wish we were made to feel that his thirst for revenge, and that he were almost right to have it.
He leaves himself room for a sequal, which I expect to see. I hope Lisha, Kyles mommy, shows up and turns out to be unextectedly complex and not at all squishy good, and that Kyle intends to do evil but gets sidetracked into being less than evil. After he eats David Hunter. That's what I hope.
Thursday, February 7, 2008
Brandon Massey's Dark Corner
I first heard of Brandon Massey in connection with Dark Dreams, a volume of horror tales by African American writers edited by him. His own story, “Grandad’s Garage,” about a packrat who has collected such things as a signed copy of Phillis Wheatley’s poetry, is strong, not the strongest, but I remember it fondly, so I can say it’s not one of the weakest. Zane’s pornographic vampire story is silly, but it is what it is. One of the better stories is “Bras Coupe,” which takes its title from the story within a story of an African slave in The Grandissimes, George Washington Cable’s magnificent novel that pre-Faulknered Faulkner. In Cable’s novel, Bras-Coupe is an indominatable spirit who cannot be broken, only destroyed, and that not easily. In the story in Massey’s collection, Bras-Coupe comes back as a ghost who appears and then disappears from the apartment of a young white man living in New Orleans.
There is also a Dark Dreams II and III, by the way. I own but have not read Dark Dreams II. DD III has received some of the strongest reviews of any of the three books.
I belabor the point about Bras-Coupe not to show how well read I am (although, you know….) but because at the heart of Dark Corner, Massey’s Vampire novel which I have recently finished is an African Vampire who is very much the literary descendent of Cable’s Bras-Coupe. Only he’s ramped up about a hundred fold into a vampire who wants to destroy mankind.
This is all to the good.
It is equally influenced by Stephen King’s Salem’s Lot, which is a pretty darn good vampire novel, but Massey takes the elements which King returned to about a thousand more times—a haunted house, a man returning tohis small rural town, a love at first sight subplot—and uses them as a formula, which is not good.
One of the most interesting things about the novel is the parallel it sets up between two naïve sons trying to live in their father’s shadow. David Hunter is the son of Richard Hunter, who disappeared in a boating accident. Maybe. Kyle Coirat is Diallo’s son (with Lisha, an ancient vampire), who wants to resurrect his father (he does). There’s a nice parallel which loses some steam halfway through when Kyle falls under his father’s spell and never re emerges as himself. Still, Kyle, the modern vampire, is one of the more interesting characters. Diallo is essentially a black Dracula, but I do not mean this in any way as a dig. He’s compelling.
Lisha is not. She appears, disappears, acts from a distance, then doesn’t. I can see the problems the author is facing. Diallo is too strong for Hunter and his girl Nia to take on, so they need some alliance. But if there’s someone even stronger than Diallo capable of taking him out, why doesn’t she? The ways of Lisha are strange and mysterious, my child.
Actually, the novel has another father and son pair, and they nearly steal the show. Van Jackson is the police chief of Mason’s Corners; and his son Jahlil (who represents the hip hop generation) has the best arc of any of the characters, developing from selfish and indifferent to engaged and fierce. I like that these characters snuck up on me; both are presented as potentially 2-D, and both develop unexpected depth.
There is also a Dark Dreams II and III, by the way. I own but have not read Dark Dreams II. DD III has received some of the strongest reviews of any of the three books.
I belabor the point about Bras-Coupe not to show how well read I am (although, you know….) but because at the heart of Dark Corner, Massey’s Vampire novel which I have recently finished is an African Vampire who is very much the literary descendent of Cable’s Bras-Coupe. Only he’s ramped up about a hundred fold into a vampire who wants to destroy mankind.
This is all to the good.
It is equally influenced by Stephen King’s Salem’s Lot, which is a pretty darn good vampire novel, but Massey takes the elements which King returned to about a thousand more times—a haunted house, a man returning tohis small rural town, a love at first sight subplot—and uses them as a formula, which is not good.
One of the most interesting things about the novel is the parallel it sets up between two naïve sons trying to live in their father’s shadow. David Hunter is the son of Richard Hunter, who disappeared in a boating accident. Maybe. Kyle Coirat is Diallo’s son (with Lisha, an ancient vampire), who wants to resurrect his father (he does). There’s a nice parallel which loses some steam halfway through when Kyle falls under his father’s spell and never re emerges as himself. Still, Kyle, the modern vampire, is one of the more interesting characters. Diallo is essentially a black Dracula, but I do not mean this in any way as a dig. He’s compelling.
Lisha is not. She appears, disappears, acts from a distance, then doesn’t. I can see the problems the author is facing. Diallo is too strong for Hunter and his girl Nia to take on, so they need some alliance. But if there’s someone even stronger than Diallo capable of taking him out, why doesn’t she? The ways of Lisha are strange and mysterious, my child.
Actually, the novel has another father and son pair, and they nearly steal the show. Van Jackson is the police chief of Mason’s Corners; and his son Jahlil (who represents the hip hop generation) has the best arc of any of the characters, developing from selfish and indifferent to engaged and fierce. I like that these characters snuck up on me; both are presented as potentially 2-D, and both develop unexpected depth.
Next Up the good and bad of Nia James, her baddy Colin Morgan, and why King's overall structure does and does not work here.
Sunday, December 30, 2007
Fairwell, Amporn’s
Despite our colds, last night we went Amporn’s Thai Restaurant on their last night of operation. Amporn’s opened in Elloree about 8 years ago, with Amporn and Earl Appleby at the helm. Amporn was from Thailand, he from small town South Carolina (Eutawville, I want to say, but maybe only because I like saying Eutawville; try it and you’ll see why). The wait staff included their pretty daughter (who was about college age when it opened, so must be in her thirties now), and a fellow who is the neighbor of a friend of mine, out Columbia road (over the years, I learned and forgot the names of these latter two). At least once a week, and sometimes at lunch, Amporn’s brother filled in as cook. This was a true family operation.
"Thai food" I asked when my wife spotted the restaurant on a ride through town.
"Thai food!"
"Thai food?"
"That was my first reaction, too."
Thai food is not exactly what South Carolina is known for. It’s not much like American Chinese food, which does pretty well locally, it’s nothing like fried chicken, which does pretty well everywhere, and it is certainly not barbecue. Barbecue is a South Carolina favorite. It splits the population, between mustard and tomato based sauces, and every restaurant, every stand, has a loyal tribe of customer, its own diaspora. When my pharmacist was going to Savannah a few years ago, he packed a few extra bottles of Duke’s Barbecue sauce from Elloree. I had barely noted the store’s existence until a Jiffy Lube mechanic was taking my information. "You must go to Duke’s, huh?" he said.
I said no, I usually came right here, to Jiffy Lube.
"No, Duke’s."
"Oh, Duke’s!"
"Barbecue!"
"Yeah! Duke’s Barbecue, right there on the corner. I pass it every day," I told him. Then I admitted I’d never gone there. Some people have the barbecue taste gene, and some of us don’t.
We were at Amporn’s the second week they were open for dinner. We had the place to ourselves. My wife ordered a Thai curry. "That there is pretty spicy," Earl warned her. "Some folks who come don't know that."
I don’t think anyone else came in that night. When I ordered wine, he asked if I wanted red or white, and I said white, he brought out the bottle of Almaden and poured me a glass. Before we left, I asked Earl how business was going. "We were packed last weekend," he assured me. That had been the week of the Elloree Trials, the once a year horse race held on a race track in Elloree, and probably the biggest weekend of the year for most Elloree businesses.
"I hope you catch on," I said.
"We plan to be patient. This is something my wife has always wanted to do."
"Well, we’ll talk it up," my wife assured him.
And she did. She dragged several generations of Trinidadian students to Amporn’s, on the theory (which proved itself accurate) that people who have learned to like one kind of Curry would learn to like another. She talked it up to friends and colleagues. Twice we met colleagues out there, and both times thought that this is something we should do more often, though the fact of it being twenty-two miles from where we work really made that more inconvenient than a smallish, friendly number like twenty-two at first suggests. One woman, a seasoned traveller, told her flatly, "Oh I don’t eat that kind of thing," which was exactly the reaction we were afraid more people would have.
Folks everywhere have their own preferences about stuff. It clarifies and simplifies things to say I like this but not that. Mustard barbecue, not tomato. Spaghetti but not Pasta. Fried rice, but not Thai food. Folks who live in small towns have also had less chance to challenge those preferences, at least beyond a narrow range of choices, and are very happy to have achieved the kind of clarity that affords, thank you very much. When I was in college, I tried to emulate this kind of clarity of thought, mostly because I am from a small town and had none of the wordly sophistication I saw in my peers. But it’s not me. I’m stuck with experimentation in my tastes and preferences: "I wonder what would happen if..."
Again, open experimentation is not exactly the local motto. In point of fact, the state motto is "Dum Spiro Spero," which is Latin, so who knows what it really means, but seems to have something to with a disgraced former Vice-President of the United States. This is clearly in need of an update. I've seen as a suggestion (written by me) "Deep fried, barbecue, or grits"; though it has never been brought to a vote, it would look snazzy on a state flag, and more to the point expresses (in English) a genuine local attitude, one which would seem to preclude the fiscal health of an Amporn's Thai Restaurant. As we headed back on a biweekly basis to work our way through their menu, and usually found an empty or almost empty restaurant, we would discuss among ourselves the possibility of a small section of American favorites: steak, chicken, spaghetti. It never happened.
Then two things happened. Amporns was voted as having the best deserts in Orangeburg County by the readership of Times and Democrat. This was well earned. She served homemade ice cream, so this was certainly a worthy choice, but I suspect there was co-ordinated campaign behind it. And a few months later, we went to Amporn’s on Valentines Day and were told, and got the last seats in the house.
Afterwards, it was hard to introduce people to Amporn’s. If they lived in Orangeburg, they probably knew it.
Last night, when were there, we were among the few people who didn’t sound like Orangeburg in their voices.
Is this important? It is for me. I’ll never be from Orangeburg, though in a year I’ll have lived in this county longer than I’ve lived anyplace else in my life. Likewise, I’ll never be from Elloree; though I’ve lived in the town much, much longer than I lived in any other town, I only recently have developed the insider’s view of the place that I had of the town I went to high school in. For, not the least attraction to Amporn’s was its essential inessentiality. It was Thai but it was South Carolina, and it was home. Before it opened, the only restaurant we could decided, on impulse, to eat at on a Wednesday or Saturday night, was in Santee. While a good, family restaurant, it is the type of steakhouse that you find all over America. Amporn’s was unique, it was 3.5 miles from our home, and it belonged in Elloree no more, and no less, than we did.
"Thai food" I asked when my wife spotted the restaurant on a ride through town.
"Thai food!"
"Thai food?"
"That was my first reaction, too."
Thai food is not exactly what South Carolina is known for. It’s not much like American Chinese food, which does pretty well locally, it’s nothing like fried chicken, which does pretty well everywhere, and it is certainly not barbecue. Barbecue is a South Carolina favorite. It splits the population, between mustard and tomato based sauces, and every restaurant, every stand, has a loyal tribe of customer, its own diaspora. When my pharmacist was going to Savannah a few years ago, he packed a few extra bottles of Duke’s Barbecue sauce from Elloree. I had barely noted the store’s existence until a Jiffy Lube mechanic was taking my information. "You must go to Duke’s, huh?" he said.
I said no, I usually came right here, to Jiffy Lube.
"No, Duke’s."
"Oh, Duke’s!"
"Barbecue!"
"Yeah! Duke’s Barbecue, right there on the corner. I pass it every day," I told him. Then I admitted I’d never gone there. Some people have the barbecue taste gene, and some of us don’t.
We were at Amporn’s the second week they were open for dinner. We had the place to ourselves. My wife ordered a Thai curry. "That there is pretty spicy," Earl warned her. "Some folks who come don't know that."
I don’t think anyone else came in that night. When I ordered wine, he asked if I wanted red or white, and I said white, he brought out the bottle of Almaden and poured me a glass. Before we left, I asked Earl how business was going. "We were packed last weekend," he assured me. That had been the week of the Elloree Trials, the once a year horse race held on a race track in Elloree, and probably the biggest weekend of the year for most Elloree businesses.
"I hope you catch on," I said.
"We plan to be patient. This is something my wife has always wanted to do."
"Well, we’ll talk it up," my wife assured him.
And she did. She dragged several generations of Trinidadian students to Amporn’s, on the theory (which proved itself accurate) that people who have learned to like one kind of Curry would learn to like another. She talked it up to friends and colleagues. Twice we met colleagues out there, and both times thought that this is something we should do more often, though the fact of it being twenty-two miles from where we work really made that more inconvenient than a smallish, friendly number like twenty-two at first suggests. One woman, a seasoned traveller, told her flatly, "Oh I don’t eat that kind of thing," which was exactly the reaction we were afraid more people would have.
Folks everywhere have their own preferences about stuff. It clarifies and simplifies things to say I like this but not that. Mustard barbecue, not tomato. Spaghetti but not Pasta. Fried rice, but not Thai food. Folks who live in small towns have also had less chance to challenge those preferences, at least beyond a narrow range of choices, and are very happy to have achieved the kind of clarity that affords, thank you very much. When I was in college, I tried to emulate this kind of clarity of thought, mostly because I am from a small town and had none of the wordly sophistication I saw in my peers. But it’s not me. I’m stuck with experimentation in my tastes and preferences: "I wonder what would happen if..."
Again, open experimentation is not exactly the local motto. In point of fact, the state motto is "Dum Spiro Spero," which is Latin, so who knows what it really means, but seems to have something to with a disgraced former Vice-President of the United States. This is clearly in need of an update. I've seen as a suggestion (written by me) "Deep fried, barbecue, or grits"; though it has never been brought to a vote, it would look snazzy on a state flag, and more to the point expresses (in English) a genuine local attitude, one which would seem to preclude the fiscal health of an Amporn's Thai Restaurant. As we headed back on a biweekly basis to work our way through their menu, and usually found an empty or almost empty restaurant, we would discuss among ourselves the possibility of a small section of American favorites: steak, chicken, spaghetti. It never happened.
Then two things happened. Amporns was voted as having the best deserts in Orangeburg County by the readership of Times and Democrat. This was well earned. She served homemade ice cream, so this was certainly a worthy choice, but I suspect there was co-ordinated campaign behind it. And a few months later, we went to Amporn’s on Valentines Day and were told, and got the last seats in the house.
Afterwards, it was hard to introduce people to Amporn’s. If they lived in Orangeburg, they probably knew it.
Last night, when were there, we were among the few people who didn’t sound like Orangeburg in their voices.
Is this important? It is for me. I’ll never be from Orangeburg, though in a year I’ll have lived in this county longer than I’ve lived anyplace else in my life. Likewise, I’ll never be from Elloree; though I’ve lived in the town much, much longer than I lived in any other town, I only recently have developed the insider’s view of the place that I had of the town I went to high school in. For, not the least attraction to Amporn’s was its essential inessentiality. It was Thai but it was South Carolina, and it was home. Before it opened, the only restaurant we could decided, on impulse, to eat at on a Wednesday or Saturday night, was in Santee. While a good, family restaurant, it is the type of steakhouse that you find all over America. Amporn’s was unique, it was 3.5 miles from our home, and it belonged in Elloree no more, and no less, than we did.
Friday, December 28, 2007
Kudos to...
Fantasy Magazine for a three part round table discussion on people of color in fantasy literature, the problems with the way it has usually been done (what are Orcs, anyway?), and some insights. Part 3 has a list of books you should read, but for the complete interview, start here.
More Who Speak
The most remarkable aspect of the Dr. Who series 3 is the introduction of Freema Agyeman as Martha Jones, and the underdevelopment of the same. People of color have a small enough position within the world of televised science fiction that it is worth asking what, if anything, the producers are or were hoping to do with the not-a-couple coupling of The Doctor with Martha.
True, for the past two years, they had also featured an inter-racial relationship between Rose Tyler and her boyfriend Mickey, but that relationship was never really explored, except as something that did NOT tie Rose down. Mickey was the doctor-NOT, parochial, tentative, and undereducated, a symbol of Rose’s working class roots. Towards the end of the second season, they seemed to feel bad for not having created a character for the actor to play, and so gave him a bit of an arc; at the point he became interesting, though, he disappeared, along with Rose.
When they introduced Martha at the beginning of season 3, they also introduced a series of possibilities, most of which have so far been unrealized. Martha is a doctor in training herself, so potentially the most substantial companion the Doctor has had in quite some time;–here was someone who might be able to do more than get kidnapped and rescued. Also, they introduced a family of strivers, so here was a chance to explore the world of black, upwardly mobile Britain.
Instead, though, the actress, or the writers, or directors fell in love with the actress’s smile. She has, I must say, a very pretty smile, but I kept waiting for scenes in which she could put her medical expertise to meaningful use. I waited in vain. Worse, the meatiest acting role she was given was as a (drumroll please) domestic servant to the Doctor’s amnesiac in the two parter where he has convinced himself he’s human.
I have a suspicion about all of this. I suspect the season was in large measure outlined, that scripts were in development, before they knew who the doctor’s companion was going to be. The other option, of course, is that the season flew by before they got to know her. It is also likely that the actress is simply not a very good actress, or is dealing with directors who don’t know how to direct. "Okay, big smile. Now look pouty. Pouty some more. Now smile. Beautiful."
At any rate, they tried to make up for this in the last two episodes, by bringing Martha back to London, introducing her family, and making her the domestic savior of her family. I wonder how aware they are of the melodramatic history of Black women as domestic saviors? Within the universe of typologies, it’s a fairly positive one, so I’ll only not my objection that the trauma her family is forced to endure of having been The Master’s domestic servants for a year is culturally loaded one, that the ending suggests that it brings them together, but that three seconds of thoughtful analysis would suggest the togetherness forged by this shared trauma of captivity would almost certainly fail when exposed to the strain of everyday life. (Who wants to live everyday with someone who reminds you of your darkest hour?)
("You do know," a voice from the back of the peanut gallery asks, "that this is a tv show?" Yes, but a thoughtful tv show, one which respects its viewers’ intelligence and which plays with and against convention, which is why I’m writing about it.)
A show like Dr. Who brings a black woman into the role "lead supporting actress" to make a very specific statement. Whatever else they may have intended, a central biracial partnership says, in the language of television, "cosmopolitan"; the character they created is cosmopolitan–educated, not narrowly defined by race or class, interested in the wider world. Cosmopolitan is good, kind of proto-post-human. It’s no excuse for shallow.
###
Martha Jones has her own MySpace page at http://www.myspace.com/marthajonesuk. She had 3600 + friends when I checked it, including on Dalek. Wikipedia has a pretty good article laying out the issues that fans and producers have discussed regariding this character. Check http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martha_Jones
FOUND
This post created a bit on an uproar in FOUND magazine (www.foundmagazine.com) because it turns out that it has been previously posted on the web. So what. What I like about it is the weird way the elephant calls attention to the abstract nature of the exam question. What is a frictionless ramp? What is that 3 KG object doing hovering at the top of it? Even before the elephant, it represents the un self-aware kind of weirdness Lewis Carroll made fun of in his Alice books. I'd like to think the Oxford Don, Charles Dodgson would have found some merit in the logical doodlings; more likely, though, these are the kind of doodlings the undiscipline Oxford student Dodgson would have resorted to on an exam he was unprepared for.
Sunday, December 23, 2007
All the Hooey Here in Whoville
Two weeks ago, I started watching the Dr. Who Series 3, which Netflix has been sending me in the mail; I finished watching last night. All the multi part episodes made it hard to swallow in small bites. The temptation to slurp it down in large gulps was too strong. So while the Christmas episode will be running on BBC any day, kicking off Series 4 for Americans able to stream it through the web, I’ll be Who-less for another year.
It was another good season.
Let’s look at the things that are key to the considerations of this blog (or at least were when I started it): cyborgs and the post-human. I wanted to hug the producers with almost every episode for at least taking these considerations seriously. Let me repeat my first principles: that cyborgism speaks to human relatedness, that cyborgism is proximate and contingent, that it is symbol of strength, and that it stands in contrast to the "back to Eden" myth of essential humanism. On all of these issues, the TV show took the safe, easy route of preferring essentialised humanism to Cyborg relatedness. (Even the Doctor’s relation to the TARDIS is occassionally presented as questionable, though that was more true in Series 1 when it made Billie Piper a Goddess for a brief period).
Throughout the run of Dr. Who, there’s been a recurring theme in the use of the Daleks wherein the Daleks represent Superego and Dr. Who – somewhat uncomfortably– is the spokesguy for the Id. Part of this seems to be a basic conundrum of the problems of creating bad guys. You can imagine the conversation around the writer’s table:
"I don’t get it. Why do these metal R2D2 thingies want to exterminate humankind?"
"Um–because humans are weak?"
Doesn’t make sense unless the metal thingies are complete anal retentive freaks. That makes the Doctor kind of a world hopping inter-species head shrink trying to free the libido. "Tell me again how you feel about your smelting pot."
Regardless of whether it makes sense, the newer series have played with the idea of the Doctor as being whipped through the world by an out of control Id that he himself barely understands. Consider the maniacal grin he flashes whenever he offers his female a sidekick a trip to the wildside of time. In the Tom Baker days (as I remember it) he was kind of intergalactic fix-it man. That still seems to be how he sees himself, but most of the things he fixes turn out to have been caused by him careening through time like an out of control Ariel.
I'm down with that; self-delusion among the over educated is something I have, eh, witnessed from time to time.
The two episodes which did the most with the "Doctor" persona were the "family of blood" episodes (two parts) which show him having trapped himself in the early 20th century without his memory, to avoid a family which is chasing him. As the human version of the Doctor realizes who he really is, he starts to weep, asking "what kind of man is this Doctor?" Just barely glimpsed is a very humanist interrogation of the doctor as someone who has repressed his own Id (the human professor has fallen in love) and therefore is whipped erratically by the principle of the return of the repressed.
Be that as it may, he plot forces him to become his true self: from the terms of his alter ego, this is a tragedy (because he has lost touch with human scaled human values, such as the possibility of a stable loving relationship). From the terms of the series, it is comedy because OUR doctor, the Peter Pan who won’t grow up even though he is hundreds of years old, has been restored.
This IS a post human identity: contingent, proximate (which is to say, in no way an ideal version of the human self).
What the family does, though, the Master undoes.
The last three episodes, in which the Doctor catches up with the Master where he has been exiled as the Professor at the end of time were far and away the best episodes of the third series. Let’s take it from the top: The "Professor" the Doctor first meets (his memory has been erased through the same mechanism the Doctor used to temporarily erase his own) is a LOT like the Doctor of the 60's and 70's: an older, futzy professor with a bright, adoring companion (of a very foreign species).
In earlier decades, the "Master" was indicated by a dark goatee. I like the fact that when he regenerates himself he turns into...Tony Blair (or an actor playing a character designed to resemble Tony Blair). That is to say, he turns into a politician who has been constructed by an evil genius to be appear to be all things to all people. Good! He turns the Doctor into an old man; painful, but good.
Then, at the end of a year, with Martha (who escaped a year earlier) watching on the telly, he turns the Doctor into Yoda.
I wish I were making that up.
Then it turns out that Martha Jones has been spending a year walking the earth to get the whole human race to pray to or for the Doctor at the same precise moment–which they do–which (Holy Mother...) regenerates him.
Can you say Deus Ex Machina? "Day-uus–ecks mack–un–ah"
Still, it’s sci-fi, we can allow for Deus like machinations from time to time. And I mean, just because he gets all glowy doesn’t mean he’s "literally" (as my students might say) a figure of Christ.
Of course, when he wrestles foe to the ground and says "I forgive you" it sort of does.
No wonder the old sot doesn’t regenerate himself when his blonde squeeze shoots him.
Even so, even if it’s the weakest part, that’s not the most interesting thing about this episode. No, the most interesting thing is the appearance the nasty little metal spheres the Master has created. There are something like 3 billion of these he drops on the earth, and they go beyond the usual kind of "heartless metal evil" devices. These devices are snide, occasionally stupid, and downright offensive. Why? Because each one them contains the remains of a human rescued from the end of time.
Again, it’s the show’s absolute humanist perspective which cannot allow, not even for a second, that human consciousness could adapt to this new way of being which is grotesque on the face of it? Why not? Because it’s grotesque on the face of it! It’s like a person being confined to a wheelchair, or only being able to communicate with his eyelids: just plain gross, and anyone who would live that way must be evil.
It’s interesting exactly because the character at the center is himself cyborgian, defined by his relationship to his living TARDIS, dependent for emotional support on intense relationships with beings from another species.
Even though I don’t like the direction they are thinking, I DO like the fact that show is thinking.
It was another good season.
Let’s look at the things that are key to the considerations of this blog (or at least were when I started it): cyborgs and the post-human. I wanted to hug the producers with almost every episode for at least taking these considerations seriously. Let me repeat my first principles: that cyborgism speaks to human relatedness, that cyborgism is proximate and contingent, that it is symbol of strength, and that it stands in contrast to the "back to Eden" myth of essential humanism. On all of these issues, the TV show took the safe, easy route of preferring essentialised humanism to Cyborg relatedness. (Even the Doctor’s relation to the TARDIS is occassionally presented as questionable, though that was more true in Series 1 when it made Billie Piper a Goddess for a brief period).
Throughout the run of Dr. Who, there’s been a recurring theme in the use of the Daleks wherein the Daleks represent Superego and Dr. Who – somewhat uncomfortably– is the spokesguy for the Id. Part of this seems to be a basic conundrum of the problems of creating bad guys. You can imagine the conversation around the writer’s table:
"I don’t get it. Why do these metal R2D2 thingies want to exterminate humankind?"
"Um–because humans are weak?"
Doesn’t make sense unless the metal thingies are complete anal retentive freaks. That makes the Doctor kind of a world hopping inter-species head shrink trying to free the libido. "Tell me again how you feel about your smelting pot."
Regardless of whether it makes sense, the newer series have played with the idea of the Doctor as being whipped through the world by an out of control Id that he himself barely understands. Consider the maniacal grin he flashes whenever he offers his female a sidekick a trip to the wildside of time. In the Tom Baker days (as I remember it) he was kind of intergalactic fix-it man. That still seems to be how he sees himself, but most of the things he fixes turn out to have been caused by him careening through time like an out of control Ariel.
I'm down with that; self-delusion among the over educated is something I have, eh, witnessed from time to time.
The two episodes which did the most with the "Doctor" persona were the "family of blood" episodes (two parts) which show him having trapped himself in the early 20th century without his memory, to avoid a family which is chasing him. As the human version of the Doctor realizes who he really is, he starts to weep, asking "what kind of man is this Doctor?" Just barely glimpsed is a very humanist interrogation of the doctor as someone who has repressed his own Id (the human professor has fallen in love) and therefore is whipped erratically by the principle of the return of the repressed.
Be that as it may, he plot forces him to become his true self: from the terms of his alter ego, this is a tragedy (because he has lost touch with human scaled human values, such as the possibility of a stable loving relationship). From the terms of the series, it is comedy because OUR doctor, the Peter Pan who won’t grow up even though he is hundreds of years old, has been restored.
This IS a post human identity: contingent, proximate (which is to say, in no way an ideal version of the human self).
What the family does, though, the Master undoes.
The last three episodes, in which the Doctor catches up with the Master where he has been exiled as the Professor at the end of time were far and away the best episodes of the third series. Let’s take it from the top: The "Professor" the Doctor first meets (his memory has been erased through the same mechanism the Doctor used to temporarily erase his own) is a LOT like the Doctor of the 60's and 70's: an older, futzy professor with a bright, adoring companion (of a very foreign species).
In earlier decades, the "Master" was indicated by a dark goatee. I like the fact that when he regenerates himself he turns into...Tony Blair (or an actor playing a character designed to resemble Tony Blair). That is to say, he turns into a politician who has been constructed by an evil genius to be appear to be all things to all people. Good! He turns the Doctor into an old man; painful, but good.
Then, at the end of a year, with Martha (who escaped a year earlier) watching on the telly, he turns the Doctor into Yoda.
I wish I were making that up.
Then it turns out that Martha Jones has been spending a year walking the earth to get the whole human race to pray to or for the Doctor at the same precise moment–which they do–which (Holy Mother...) regenerates him.
Can you say Deus Ex Machina? "Day-uus–ecks mack–un–ah"
Still, it’s sci-fi, we can allow for Deus like machinations from time to time. And I mean, just because he gets all glowy doesn’t mean he’s "literally" (as my students might say) a figure of Christ.
Of course, when he wrestles foe to the ground and says "I forgive you" it sort of does.
No wonder the old sot doesn’t regenerate himself when his blonde squeeze shoots him.
Even so, even if it’s the weakest part, that’s not the most interesting thing about this episode. No, the most interesting thing is the appearance the nasty little metal spheres the Master has created. There are something like 3 billion of these he drops on the earth, and they go beyond the usual kind of "heartless metal evil" devices. These devices are snide, occasionally stupid, and downright offensive. Why? Because each one them contains the remains of a human rescued from the end of time.
Again, it’s the show’s absolute humanist perspective which cannot allow, not even for a second, that human consciousness could adapt to this new way of being which is grotesque on the face of it? Why not? Because it’s grotesque on the face of it! It’s like a person being confined to a wheelchair, or only being able to communicate with his eyelids: just plain gross, and anyone who would live that way must be evil.
It’s interesting exactly because the character at the center is himself cyborgian, defined by his relationship to his living TARDIS, dependent for emotional support on intense relationships with beings from another species.
Even though I don’t like the direction they are thinking, I DO like the fact that show is thinking.
Thursday, December 20, 2007
With Apologies to NPR...
This I Believe.
I believe in proportion, one scoop of coffee to two cups of water,
And that coffee is better at waking you up than alcohol is at relaxing you,
And that either can rob you of a good night's sleep.
I believe in turning problems over to God,
Even though I doubt he exists, and
That He will help me, although
He has the same doubts about me.
I believe that running uphill is good training for running uphill,
And something very similar about running hard on quarter mile tracks.
You can probably guess what I believe about lifting heavy objects in the gym.
I believe that people who say they believe that money can't buy happiness
Should subject that belief to an honest test;
Send me your money and let me try, while your try without it;
Let's see who has more success.
I am willing to set up a special research account for this purpose.
I believe that this is a good time to buy telecom stocks, but I no longer believe
That Cisco will make me rich.
(Back to the money/happiness thing: For the right sum,
I am even willing to write the results up
For submission to a peer reviewed journal, which, believe me,
Is a lot of work.)
I believe that true love is worth the wait, unless you happen to be waiting,
In which case the temptation to lie to yourself is irresistable;
Then heaven help you both.
I believe in the Now, in Life on Life's Terms, in Just for Today
Though last week, when I wasn't sleeping well (too much caffeine, I think)
These beliefs were impossible.
I believe that for a list poem to be of any value, it has to go on a little bit too long.
I believe that I may not know what my most important beliefs are until I stop believing them,
After which I'll be too despondent, enlightened, or dead to accept that they matter.
But I believe in belief: the clear ice
Of my teenaged certitude that doubt
Was the answer, the only answer to the industrial cement walls
Of God, Religion, War;
That this shifting iceberg would be my fundament
For questioning everything and
Eventually, indeed, itself.
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