Last Blog

In the past class, we started About Time and Stepford Wives (2004). I really liked them both so I decided to finish them. I really enjoyed About Time a lot. It seemed like it just got better and better as it went on. The cinematography felt really fresh and pretty and clean to me. I am a fan of Bill Nighy so I enjoyed his presence in the movie. The story kind of reminded me of a movie called Expiration Date, in which a Native American man finds out about his family curse where the men of the family always die on their 25th birthdays from getting hit by milk trucks. I also thought the movie had a good soundtrack; Ben Folds, yay! I always seem to like these romantic comedies that have just a bit of a twist to them, like Stranger Than Fiction. To me, the most touching part of the movie was definitely when the main character's wife was about to give birth and the main character went back to see his father one last time. I was crying SO HARD during that scene! Later my roommate and I were making Thanksgiving curry, I told her about that part of the story and I started crying again! Man, so touching! Another part that really tugged my heartstrings was when the main character's sister was confessing her fear that she was the failure in the family who would never amount to anything. I related to her because everyone else in my family seems so smart and talented compared with me. I was glad that her life got back on track. It seems like things always work out for people in these movies; I wish real life were like that. Lastly, I liked when the main character's mother was first meeting his fiancée, and she said, "You have a really pretty face," and the fiancée said, "No, I just am wearing a lot of mascara and lipstick," and the mother said, "Oh, yes. Good. It's very bad for a girl to be too pretty. It stops her developing a sense of humor. Or a personality." I thought that was pretty funny, and honestly it seems like it's often true! Even though it was a bit weird since that actress really had perfect facial proportions that you couldn't fake with mascara and lipstick.

Stepford Wives on the other hand seemed to get a little worse as it went on from the point at which we stopped watching it in class. The beginning was so hilarious, and so was the part when the family first arrived in Stepford and were getting shown around, but I felt that it lost its sparkle from there. I liked that part where the lady in "I Can Do Better" said, "Before this show, I only slept with one man. And that was usually Hank." It was sad how this seems like it could almost be a real reality TV show. It reminded me of an ad campaign on PBS where they made funny fake commercials for extremely mindless reality TV shows. For example:

It was a bit confusing how in the beginning, the main character seemed to really love her job and be super into it. She seemed like she really fit into that world. But then when she went to Stepford, she seemed more counterculturey, which seemed to contradict her persona from before a little. I know that her brain was zapped before she got to Stepford, but later when she meets the short Jewish lady, she says something like, "OMG I LOVE your work, the one about your mother? What was that called again? Oh right, I Love You But Please Die." The lady in the beginning of the movie didn't seem like the kind of lady who would be a big fan of the works of a sassy dorky feminist lady. One question I was left with in the end of the movie was I wondered what would happen to the Stepford wives after they stopped being controlled robots. Because if all of them are like that lady who kept saying "Do-si-do" over and over, then they all have a good amount of robotic machinery in their brains. The Do-Si-Do lady stopped going haywire when the mayor came and kind of snapped her neck a bit, causing her robotic machinery to spark. Is all of that sparky metal stuff just going to stay inside the Stepford wives' heads for the rest of their lives?

Number of absences: 1

Blog post count: 14 (not including this post of course...)

Word count: 11,216

Average word count per post: 801.14

Short stories finished: 8
Novels finished: 9
Novels unfinished: 3
Movies finished: 22
Radio episodes finished: 12

Numbers in parentheses are week numbers

Short stories finished: 8

• (3) The Story of Mimi-Hashi-Hoichi
• (3) Diplomacy
• (3) Of a Mirror and a Bell
• (3) Jikininki
• (3) Mujina
• (3) Rokura-Kubi
• (12) Bloodchild
• (13) The Aquatic Uncle

Novels finished: 9

• (1) Frankenstein
• (2) Twilight
• (4) Lullaby 
• (5) Aunt Maria
• (6) The Hobbit
• (7) Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone
• (7) Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
• (8) Anansi Boys
• (11) Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

Novels unfinished: 3

• (2) Interview with the Vampire
• (2) Let the Right One In
• (7) Magician's Guild

Movies finished: 22

• (1) Young Frankenstein
• (1) Frankenstein
• (2) Let the Right One In
• (2) Byzantium
• (4) Cabin in the Woods
• (4) Under the Skin
• (4) Donnie Darko
• (5) Kiki's Delivery Service
• (6) The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug
• (7) City of Lost Children
• (7) Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2
• (7) Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone
• (7) Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
• (7) Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
• (7) Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
• (8) Coraline
• (10) A Scanner Darkly
• (11) Blade Runner
• (11) Paprika
• (12) Attack the Block
• (14) About Time
• (14) Stepford Wives

Radio play episodes finished: 12

• (14) Episodes 1-12 of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Science Fiction Parody and Satire Response

This week, I listened to all of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy audio recordings. Just an FYI, the file for episode four in the website resources cuts off halfway through the episode. Anyway, I really enjoyed this series a lot. I didn't realize it was a radio show before, but I really liked it. It kind of reminded me of the Nightvale podcasts because of the dry humor and some similar themes, but I liked Hitchhiker's Guide better because it had more of a story to it. It also kind of reminded me of A Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket because of the writing style and humor. The authors had a funny tendency to put ridiculous things very matter-of-factly. These were some of my favorite quotes from Hitchhiker's Guide:

VROOMFONDEL: That’s right. You’ll have a national philosophers strike on your hands!
DEEP THOUGHT: Who will that inconvenience?
MAJIKTHISE: Never you mind who it’ll inconvenience, you box of black-legging binary bits! It’ll hurt, Buster! It’ll hurt! 

--This quote was funnier to hear than to read, but it's still really funny to read.

...they discovered only a small asteroid inhabited by a solitary old man who claimed repeatedly that nothing was true, though he was later discovered to be lying.

--Hehehe. The paradox!

Lastly...

The major problem—one of the major problems, for there are several—one of the many major problems with governing people is that of whom you get to do it; or rather of who manages to get people to let them do it to them. To summarize: it is a well-known fact that those people who must want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it. To summarize the summary: anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job. To summarize the summary of a summary, people are a problem.

--I found this quote really funny too, but also so, so true! It reminded me of Plato's Republic, in which Plato said that the leader of a government should be a philosopher, but that people would never vote for a person like that:

They don’t understand that a true captain must pay attention to the seasons of the year, the sky, the stars, the winds, and all that pertains to his craft, if he’s really to be the ruler of a ship. And they don’t believe that there is any craft that would enable him to determine how he should steer the ship, whether the others want him to or not, or any possibility of mastering this alleged craft or of practicing it at the same time as the craft of navigation. Don’t you think that the true captain will be called a real stargazer, a babbler, and a good-for-nothing by those who sail in ships governed in that way?

I don't know if the Hitchhiker's Guide people would want a philosopher for a leader, but probably! Man. This radio show was just hilarious. Also, I now know where Radiohead got the name of "Paranoid Android" from. I wish there were more than 12 episodes; I could listen to these forever. Maybe I'll also give Starship Titanic and Firesign Theater a try if I have time...

"The Aquatic Uncle" Response

1) Are there any prominent symbols in the story--what are they and how are they used?

The main symbols in "The Aquatic Uncle" were land and sea. Land represented modernity and evolution. Sea symbolized tradition and simplicity. These symbols worked to build up the theme of identity, because throughout the story, Qfwfq and other characters are either grappling with or accepting their identities. Qfwfq idolized the animals who grew up on land, because they were so new and different to him. Lll was interested in Uncle N'ba N'ga because he was so different because what she was used to. This is pretty similar to most younger people; they want to be different from what they're used to and be rebellious. The author also did an accurate portrayal of a lot of old people, who are the opposite: they don't want to change, even a little; they're very set in their ways. In some ways they are wise (like when the uncle was predicting how land animals would have to experience a lot of natural disasters and the natural disasters would possibly strip them of what originally made life worth living) and in other ways they seem a bit crazy... (like when he said random phrases such as "Lower your fins there, youngster!"). The author seemed to really understand humanity and portray it in this story, even though it took place thousands of years ago with fish and evolving fish. Oftentimes, in our society, we think that finding a gray area is what will make us happiest. For example, a lot of people believe that it's not healthy to spend all of one's time in a city, constantly surrounded by technology, but they also don't want to live completely off the grid and fully embrace nature. This contradicts what happens in "The Aquatic Uncle," where the uncle fish is happy to spend his life as a fish, and Lll is happy to "convert" to fishdom, but Qfwfq is never happy in the end because he doesn't feel like he's found his "thing;" he doesn't have a strong sense of identity because he is kind of anti-fish but the character he cares about most is a fish, and his ancestors were fish, so he doesn't feel quite right as a land animal either. In the last paragraph, he says,

It was a hard blow for me. But, after all, what could I do about it? I went on my way, in
the midst of the world's transformations, being transformed myself. Every now and then, among the many forms of living beings, I encountered one who "was somebody" more than I was: one who announced the future, the duck-billed platypus who nurses its young, just hatched from the egg; or I might encounter another who bore witness to a past beyond all return, a dinosaur who had survived into the beginning of the Cenozoic, or else -- a crocodile -- part of the past that had discovered a way to remain immobile through the centuries. They all had something, I know, that made them somehow superior to me, sublime, something that made me, compared to them, mediocre. And yet I wouldn't have traded places with any of them. 

To me, this is the part of the book that illustrates this point most strongly--he talks about other types of animals that he says "were somebody." He says, "And yet I wouldn't have traded places with any of them," but to me this kind of sounds like denial. Even though he claims he's happy the way he is, he doesn't seem as happy as Lll or the fish uncle. In a way, he's as stubborn as the fish uncle is, just in a different way... so stubborn that he loses his fiancé. Maybe becoming more fishy wasn't the answer for him, but I think he needed to find a way to feel that he "was somebody."

2) What connections did you make with the story? Discuss elements of the story with which you were able to connect.

The story reminded me of some other stories and articles I had read previously. Have you seen the movie Big Fish? In this movie, three of the main characters were an old dying grandpa, his son, and the son's wife, who he had recently married. The grandpa is really chatty and grates on the son's nerves because he's always trying to tell stories from his past. At the son's wedding, the grandpa tells a story that annoys the son because 1) he's already heard it 50 times, 2) it feels like his dad is trying to steal the attention from his son at his son's own wedding, 3) it's not a true story. The wife is much more open to the grandpa's stories; she is really patient and appears interested in what he has to say. Lll reminded me of the wife, Uncle N'ba N'ga reminded me of the grandpa, and Qfwfq reminded me of the son. Lll was much more open than Qfwfq to what Uncle N'ba N'ga said, which really surprised Qfwfq, who was expecting her to be appalled. This could be because she hadn't had to put up with him all her life, so she wasn't embarrassed or tired of him. On the contrary, she found what he had to say new and interesting, the opposite of how Qfwfq saw it, similar to the characters in Big Fish. Coincidentally, at the end of Big Fish, the grandpa turns into a fish and swims away; he identifies with fish. It feels very natural for him to do this, as opposed to dying on a hospital bed, which is similar to the difference between fish and non-fish in "The Aquatic Uncle." In the end of Big Fish, the son starts to see things his dad's way, and in the end helps him and accepts him, so it's different from the ending in "The Aquatic Uncle."

3) What changes would you make to adapt this story into another medium? What medium would you use? What changes would you make?

I would adapt this story into a short computer-animated film about 20 minutes long with a team of about 15 people to work on it. I have chosen this because I don't think the story is detailed enough to make a full-length movie out of, or simple enough to make a really short film, but 20 minutes seems about right. I chose computer animation over another type of animation because I think if it were done really well as a computer animation, there could be really nice lighting and texturing and effects that would enhance people's appreciation for the story that you couldn't have in another medium. It seems like a story that would do well with a stylized realism look like the look of The Croods perhaps. I would leave the title the same. Though I could also see this story being adapted into a folk song. The benefits of folk songs over animations is that it's easier to incorporate internal dialogue into folk songs because you can just sing your internal dialogue. I can see this being a super long folk song that's around 15 minutes in length and has banjos. This adaptation might give it a bit of a bias towards the uncle fish's side, since banjo folk music has an earthy, traditional feeling, much like the uncle fish. With computer animation, I don't think there'd be as much of a bias towards either side, especially since as I said, there'd be less internal dialogue in favor of the main character.

Uncle N'ba N'ga also kinda reminded me of Kapp'n from Animal Crossing!
Don't ask me why... I guess it was because they were both aquatic and said weird things...

The Reality in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

This week I read Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Phillip K. Dick. It was really interesting! I got through the whole book in a day because it was such a page-turner... even though I was listening to the audiobook... The main theme in this book was empathy and what it means to be human: where the line between human and nonhuman was drawn, and how it blurred. This is a really common theme in science fiction about artificial intelligence. It brought up memories of the movie AI and the book I, Robot because they shared this theme. It also made me think about Fahrenheit 451 and Brave New World because of the weird futuristic settings and strange human behavior.

One of the main similarities I saw between Brave New World and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (which I am going to start calling Androids because that title is kind of long...) was the religions present in the books. In BNW, everyone worshipped Ford as their god. In Androids, people followed Mercerism. The big difference was that in BNW this was seen as a bad thing. It was the brainwashed people who followed the religion, and they did lots of weird things as parts of the religion. In Androids, it was more complicated, and it was kind of like Life of Pi where religion was shown as good, but may or may not be real, but still may be good despite not being real.

The way that some of the characters acted kind of reminded me of Fahrenheit 451, thought I read that book four years ago so I don't remember it super well anymore. However, the wives in both books were kind of similar, because they were both kind of dumb and lost in the futuristic world. Actually, I think the lady in BNW who the main character had a crush on was kind of like this too, if I'm remembering right. For the wife in Fahrenheit 451, I just remember her using the seashells a lot, which were like little earbuds that spewed government propaganda. The wife in Androids wasn't quite this dumb, but it bothered me that she was purposely getting depressed using the mood organ. Perhaps I was interpreting her motives wrong, but to me it just seemed kind of childish and irresponsible to purposely get depressed. It seemed like she was taking shallow amusement out of a real problem that seriously plagues some people, but again, maybe I was not interpreting this right; I wasn't totally sure why this was something she wanted.

I kind of wondered when I was reading this if Phillip K. Dick was a vegetarian or something. He seemed to really like animals. From the start, Rick really wanted an animal, a real animal, not a fake sheep android. He was hoping that his neighbor would give him one of his horses (get it? NEIGHbor!?), but the neighbor said no, even though the main character tried to use Mercerism to convince the neighbor to give him one so it would be fair. Animals were highly valued by all of this society. Later, Rick got some money from killing a bunch of androids, and immediately he wanted to spend it on an animal, so he got a goat--this was the first priority he had to spend his extra money on. Towards the end of the book, Isadore finds a spider, and one of the androids wonders why spiders need so many legs, so she decides that she wants to cut off four of its legs and see how it does. This was one example of how androids don't have empathy, but humans do. Isadore was really freaked out by the android cutting the spider's legs off, but the android was completely unbothered by it. The weird thing about this though is that in today's world, there are TONS of humans who torture animals in some way. In comparison to some things that humans put animals through in today's world, cutting four of a spider's legs off seems very tame. So is this Phillip K. Dick's way of saying that anyone who tortures animals isn't really human? The humans in this book viewed animals very differently than the humans do in our world; they gave them a lot more respect and value. It could be his way of saying this should be part of what makes us human.

The Fiction of Ideas

I really enjoyed learning about the "fiction of ideas." I think it would be really cool to do a thesis that toys with the fiction of ideas. It would be so hard to do it successfully and convey a whole new idea about the world within a minute-long film, but it's something I'll consider.

I didn't get a chance to read a full novel for this week, but I will talk about the short story "Aye and Gomorrah" by Samuel R. Delany. In class, a few people said that they thought that frelks might not be human or have something weird about them... I found that interesting because for some reason when I was reading it, that thought just didn't really cross my mind. I assumed that frelks were completely normal humans who just happened to have a fetish for spacers, like how it's really common in real life for people who act completely normally to have a weird fetish. I guess the main reason I assumed they weren't aliens was that people couldn't tell who the frelks were so obviously there was nothing about their appearance that people were able to tell. I don't know. I thought it was kind of sad how "frelk" was a really derogatory term for people who seemed to be perfectly normal in the story. They consider being in love with something unattainable to be a perversion, but I think almost everyone has been in love with something unattainable so that's actually really normal.. Maybe that was the point of the story, for the reader to empathize with the frelks. It was kind of hard to tell exactly what the point of the story was but it was still pretty interesting. I read that the author of the story was gay, so maybe he was using the story as a bit of a metaphor on his love life. Being a frelk is kind of like being gay in a way, since there's not really anything bad about them but society can be super judgmental of them anyway.

I also thought the movie A Scanner Darkly was really interesting. I liked the style of animation. Have you heard of the movie Waking Life? As I was watching A Scanner Darkly, I thought, Wow, this looks just like Waking Life, and lo-and-behind, the animation stuff was done by the same people. Waking Life was a philosophy-themed movie and it was really good! I saw it for the first time my junior year of high school and I don't think I've made it through one English class since then without bringing it up at least once; I didn't really realize I did this till now.

Waking Life

The Reinvention of Myth in Anansi Boys

I was able to find a few people on Youtube who put up the audiobook of Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman, so that was nice. I was happy to see that this was basically Neil Gaiman week because I had been meaning to read a book by him for a while now, and finally I had a good excuse to do so! Over the summer, I'd also started Stardust and I really liked it, but I didn't have time to finish it... maybe someday. I also remember when Neil Gaiman came to our school during the spring of my freshman year and read some of his work. I really liked it, which is what initially made me want to read more of his stories. I really like him because he seems like a really smart person who has a great mind for fantasy and creativity, plus a true understanding of humanity. So obviously I really enjoyed Anansi Boys... I could relate to Fat Charlie because Fat Charlie is like super uptight and awkward and bad in social situations, and sadly I am very similar. However, I think my favorite character was Daisy. It seemed like whenever they were together, interesting/funny things happened and cute dialogue ensued. She kind of reminds me of Lucy from Despicable Me 2 because they unsuccessfully try to be kind of badass authority figures and are both super lovable. I liked the little injections of humor in the story. They were really funny to me. They seemed like British humor, which makes sense I guess since Neil is English. It helped that the guy doing the recording for the audiobook did great voices for the characters.

I found it interesting that the story was based on the Anansi stories. I remember seeing a play and reading stories about Anansi when I was in elementary school, but it wasn't something I had thought about since then, so as I was reading Anansi Boys, it slowly came back to me. The story of the book is based on the Anansi stories, fables about a prankster spider/god in Africa who played tricks on the other animals. Anansi is represented as Fat Charlie's dad. When their father dies, Fat Charlie and Spider come together and craziness ensues. Spider is also a god, so basically he is super cool and can do some amount of magic. He is really good at picking up studs, whereas Fat Charlie is as hopeless as a leftover piece of blubber when it comes to picking up studs. The worst happens when Spider, posing as Charlie, manages to have sex with Fat Charlie's fiancé, who was previously a virgin who kept insisting to Fat Charlie that she wanted to wait until marriage. Spider again posed as Fat Charlie when he went to work in his place, and was again completely convincing, which shows his power. As the story goes on, the ties to the original fables get stronger. Bird Woman is after Spider, and eventually gives him to Tiger, who cuts out Spider's tongue, and Charlie has to negotiate with Bird Woman in a very supernatural, mystical landscape. Even though I could see that the story was based heavily on the old Anansi stories, it didn't really hurt my experience reading the book that I am not really well-versed on those stories at this point because here and there they were retold throughout Anansi Boys.

The Novel of Spiritual Education

I must say, I am really looking forward to class this week because I really like "novels of spiritual education." I'm one of those people who is really into the Harry Potter series, and I have been meaning to watch City of Lost Children for some time now... I remember as a child and teenager, in addition to my love of Harry Potter, I really liked books such as the Guardians of Ga'Hoole series and the Charlie Bone series and The Mysterious Benedict Society, which are also novels of spiritual education.

For this week, I read The Magicians' Guild by Trudi Canavan. I actually thought that Night Circus and The Magicians sounded more interesting from their summaries that I read, and maybe I'll read them later on in life. However, I ended up reading The Magicians' Guild since it was the only book that was available online. I didn't like it as much as I hoped to. I didn't feel much of a connection with any of the characters, which is important for me. It also wasn't written in a style that appealed to me. I guess I am not really into super straightforward writing styles. I remember being really excited for The DaVinci Code too, but the writing style reminded me of reading a news article, so it was too boring for me to finish. This is how I felt about The Magicians' Guild. I tend to like books where the writing style is either like real-time storytelling, like with Harry Potter, A Series of Unfortunate Events, and The Hobbit; or poetic, like Ray Bradbury's writing; or if it's in a way where you really feel like you're in the character's head like in The Perks of Being a Wallflower, or just weird, like Chuck Palahniuk's writing. This is kind of bad for me because most books are written in that very straightforward way, and it makes them less interesting for me. As I said before, another important thing is character development, and I can still get into a book if it has that, but I didn't feel like The Magician's Guild had really very interesting character development either. Not that it was a bad book or anything; I can see why some people would really like it. It just wasn't my favorite.

Anyway, in this book, the source of spiritual education is the Guild, a group of administrators for the country of Kyralia. One of the major values of the Guild was adhering to tradition. For example, early on in the book, when the members of the Guild were proposing ideas on what to do about the rogue magician, a female guild member was the one who wanted to accept her into the Guild and educate her, because she wanted another healer in the Guild, and apparently women in the Guild generally become healers, so the guild follows traditional gender roles. Also, when Dannyl touches the hand of a girl in the streets and feels the amount of power she has, he starts thinking about what she would be able to do with the power. He thought that she would probably be used in her family to do tasks for them, and then she would get married off to strengthen the family's name. If she were a boy with the same amount of power, things would be different for her. He thought about this very matter-of-factly. In addition to adhering to old gender roles, the entire conversation had a feeling of old-fashionedness and wanting to do things the way they've always been doing them. It seems like it's a common theme in books about magic for the "good guys" in the story to be going against the way things have always been done. This made me think about how really conservative people are sometimes against books about magic, and maybe this is part of the reason why; conservatives tend to want to stick to old traditions and these books often push against that idea. A big part of the guild's purpose is to get the "dwells" out of the streets of the capital city. The dwells are poor people, and the Guild drives them away each year. The main character, Sonea, wants nothing to do with the Guild because of what they do to the dwells. She is against their old traditions. The society has a very strict and obvious caste system, with the dwells at the bottom and the Guild at the top. It's to a point where the servants for the magicians have to wait for the magicians to say "Speak" before they can say what they came in to say.

As one would expect, there are a lot of parallels that can be drawn between this story and Harry Potter. The biggest similarities are that there is a magical society where people train to learn how to use magic, and that the main character has the magical power but doesn't realize that they have it at first. Another similarity is when Sonea realizes that the magicians are trying to find her mentally, but she is able to block them, and the magicians say that they aren't sure if she is blocking them, because most people have to be trained on how to do that, and they don't think she has received any training. This is like when Snape is trying to teach Harry how to block Voldemort from sending Harry mental pictures, except apparently in this world it's not as hard to do that. On the other hand, there are some elements of realism that weren't in Harry Potter, probably because this book was written for older people. For example, when two girls are complaining about men "hassling" them, like catcalling and harassing them. Sonea says the reason she got short hair was to try to stop this from happening as much, but looking more boyish ended up having its own set of negative consequences.

Also, here is a random fact about a Harry Potter-related experience I had:

A lot of people in America seem to have never heard of this, but there is a place in the suburbs of London that is owned by Warner Bros. and it is basically these two huge connected warehouses, plus a backlot, that are where much of the Harry Potter movies were filmed, and now it's basically a museum that is stuffed full of props, sets, and costumes from the movies. I went this summer, and it was one of the most amazing things I've ever seen! If any of you have the chance of going here, you definitely should... It was one of the most expensive parts of my trip, but for all the tears and awe it inspired in me, and for the fact that I was able to spend about seven hours here pretty easily looking at everything, I think it was worth it. So please go do this ASAP!! I sound like Tony Rice.

Hufflepuffs fo life!!

Response to The Hobbit

I liked The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien SO much more than I thought I would! In the past, I'd had bad experiences with Hobbit-related things, so I had really low expectations for the book. For example, when I was in elementary school, I tried reading it because my dad told me he thought I'd like it... I found it really boring though, and I never finished it. Then, when The Lord of the Rings movies came out, I tried watching those and also found them even more boring. Then the two Hobbit movies were released. I watched the second one, The Desolation of Smaug, with my dad, and I still found it super boring. However, it was available as an audiobook, and I figured it would be easier to listen to the book than actually read it because then I could listen to it while I worked on menial tasks and kill two birds with one stone. So I decided to give it a try. I was really glad I did because I loved this book! I wouldn't say it's in the top five books of all time, but it was really good. The vibe of this book seemed completely different from the second Hobbit movie. This book was adventurous and had a good vibe of camaraderie. The movie was really lacking the heart that the book had. I've never read the Lord of the Rings books, but I saw parts of the movies, and The Desolation of Smaug movie reminded me too much of the LOTR movies...in a bad way, because they were super drawn out with boring characters who lacked personality. I think they did this on purpose to make the story more manly so that they could appeal to people who like manly action movies, which is tons of people. Like maybe if the movie had too much cutesiness it would only appeal to really dorky fantasy reading people. But I would have liked it better this way! I kept falling asleep during the movie. The book was super interesting! The only part of the movie that I liked was the barrel scene, even though it was really different from the barrel scene in the book, which wasn't crazy and action-packed like it was in the movie. I found a fun video about how they made the scene, if you're interested. It looks like the most fun scene to film ever:

Anyway, like I said, the parts of The Hobbit that appealed to me, and the parts of The Hobbit that appealed to the movie director were completely different I guess. For me, I really liked the parts with the character interactions and descriptions of their feelings and personalities. I loved the descriptions of Bilbo. He was adorably polite, like in the very beginning when people kept coming into his house, and he would serve them food and drinks and try to be really polite, while in his head he was worrying that he would run out of food. He ended up serving them the little cakes that he had been planning on eating later that day for lunch. Little details like that were my favorite parts of the book. 

To me, the funniest part of the book was in Chapter 7, when Gandalf, Bilbo, and the dwarves went to Beorn's house, but they didn't want to upset Beorn with all the people, so Gandalf told the dwarves to enter two at a time, every five minutes, and say something along the lines of "We are pleased to be of service to you." But it ended up not really working out that well and just being really awkward. I didn't describe it in a funny way, but in the book it was super funny! 

On many occasions, Tolkien did that thing where he kind of breaks the fourth wall and says something like, "But that's another story that we won't talk about here." I remember at one point, there was a chapter that ended with something like, "But then the hobbit realized... this part of his story had to continue in the next chapter!" I thought these things were cute. I had seen them a lot in other books, but the other books I saw it in were more recent, so it made me wonder if Tolkien was the first to do this or if he had just seen it in other books too and decided to adopt it. 

I'm sure that people already know about this and are tired of hearing about it, but I guess I may as well bring up the fact that this book is strongly reminiscent of the hero's journey. There are tons of stories that have it (e.g. Harry Potter and The Lion King), but it seemed to be even stronger in this book. I didn't mind this. It's not a boring plot structure and the actual events and characters were original. It kind of reminded me of The Lego Movie because Emmett was like Bilbo in some ways. They were really simple people who weren't particularly strong or amazing but still lovable because it made it easier for us commonfolk to relate to them.

In conclusion, this book had such a good vibe to it that the movie was totally lacking. It gave me a similar mood to the mood that I get around Christmastime, or when I go on the (now gone!!) Maelstrom ride at Disneyworld, or when I watch Labyrinth, or read the first few Harry Potter books. It made me feel like baking cookies and bread, and watching claymation movies, and building blanket forts, and going out to enjoy nature. I'm pretty sure this is really different from how a lot of people feel when they read the book, considering the nature of the movies. Maybe I should give the animated movie a try!

I think this scene would have been even better with this song!

The Witches in Aunt Maria

Aunt Maria by Diana Wynne Jones was a pretty interesting book. As I was reading it, I could totally see it being made into movies. The first half of the book felt like it could be a Miyazaki movie. It had all the Miyazaki trademarks: wind, cats, kids, old people, beige houses by the ocean, goblin-reminiscent forests, spirits, shopkeepers, people saying "Good afternoon!", and a wolf, particularly one that was originally a human but then turned into its animal state. It had a mixture of parts that were calm, thrilling, mysterious, supernatural, and quirky. To me, the writing style was reminiscent of the early Harry Potter books. It was kind of children's book-ish and whimsical, but still exciting. Towards the end of the book, the pace of the story picked up and it got weirder. It wasn't until almost halfway through the book that we found out Aunt Maria was a witch. It was here where things got a bit suspenseful, because Mig knew that Aunt Maria had turned Chris into a wolf, but she wasn't supposed to know, and if Aunt Maria realized that Mig knew, Mig would probably receive an equally bad fate and then she wouldn't be able to help herself or anyone else. While the first half of the book felt like a Miyazaki movie, the second half felt like it could be a Laika movie. It dealt with the supernatural a lot and had a wide cast of peculiar characters and circumstances, with an epic, mostly-happy ending. I really liked this book overall; I liked the tone of the story and the diction of the writer. It felt a bit nostalgic and innocent, like a breath of fresh air. I think I remember getting this feeling from Diana's book Howl's Moving Castle, although I read it so long ago that I don't totally remember. I guess from the diction of the writing, I got the sense that the author cared a lot about the feelings and processes that Mig went through, and that made me care too.

The witches in Aunt Maria weren't exactly straight-up witch stereotypes, but I did feel like I'd seen similar characters in the past. One that came to mind was Dolores Umbridge from the Harry Potter series. Like Aunt Maria and the Mrs. Urs, she was bitchy despite appearing to be a sweet old lady at a distant first glance. She would shroud herself in pink and cuteness, which seem like something a helpless, nice little old lady would do, but she had a power complex and was sometimes cruel. Aunt Maria was very similar in this way. She didn't seem to be strongly guided by morals. She mostly just bossed people around and bothered them. For example, even though she was capable of buttoning her corset, she made other people do it for her. She also made Mig's mother buy and cook food for her. When Mig's mother bought a cake instead of making one herself, Aunt Maria was really mean and snotty about it. The other Mrs. Urs were too, to varying degrees. From the start, one could see that Aunt Maria was mean and frumpy and lazy and obnoxious. However, she seemed more like a stereotypical old lady with dementia than a stereotypical witch who is thin and warty with a black hat. She would often invite a group of friends over for tea and dessert, and her friends were pretty similar, some nicer, some meaner, and some crazier and some saner, but all were kind of similar. Elaine was the meanest one, and came over the most frequently. As the story went on, it turned out that Aunt Maria had more power than we knew about originally. On page 72, Aunt Maria turned Chris into a wolf because he was badmouthing her and accusing her of murder. This was the first time that Aunt Maria actually showed her magic, and it was revealed that all her friends could also do magic. They weren't like stereotypical witches who were constantly doing magic in their day to day lives. It seemed like something that was only done out of necessity, and generally was kind of a weird roundabout way of solving the problem. I wasn't quite sure, for example, why Aunt Maria made it impossible for Mig's mother to realize that Chris hadn't been home, but she didn't make it impossible for Mig to realize. Either she was really smart and knew that even if Mig did notice, she wouldn't be able to do anything about it, or Aunt Maria was just being her weird self. I guess the biggest non-stereotypical thing is that generally there's not a group of crazy old stuffy ladies running a town.

Favorite quotes:

"Oh dear. I think Hester Bayley may be as dotty as Zoe Green
underneath. Or she doesn’t know better. Mostly the pictures were
of fairies, little flittery ones, or sweet-faced maidens in bonnets, but
there were some that were so queer and peculiar that they did
things to my stomach. There was a street of people who looked as if
their faces had melted, and two at least of woodlands, where the
trees seemed to have leering faces and nightmare, twiggy hands.
And there was one called ‘A naughty little girl is punished’ that was
worst of all. It was all dark except for the girl, so you couldn’t quite
see what was doing it to her, but her bright clear figure was being
pushed underground by something on top of her, and something
else had her long hair and was pulling her under, and there were
these black whippy things too. She looked terrified, and no wonder.
‘Charming!’ Chris said."

"Really it is difficult having a martyred crusading saint for a
mother sometimes. "

What is "Weird"?

For this week, I watched the movie The Cabin in the Woods and I read Lullaby by Chuck Palahniuk, two works that fit into the critical category of "weird."

The word weird has so many different meanings, depending on who you go to. It is a word that is thrown around casually to describe people and feelings. It's become a really casual term, like the word "love." Also, like someone said in class earlier, it's become popular these days to braggingly call yourself "weird" or "quirky," kind of like how it's recently become popular to ascribe various mental illnesses to yourself. It's been in fashion lately for people to try to stand out more, but stand out in a way that's still socially acceptable. There are certain mental illnesses that people over-diagnose themselves with, and others that people shy away from. There are certain "weird" and "quirky" attributes that people will try to absorb, and others that people still have stigma toward. This has become so popular it has a meme now!

It seems like people are always trying to decide which level of clichéness they're okay with for themselves, and they judge whoever is on a lower level of clichéness. But they also judge some of the people who are on a higher level, and some of the people who are on the same level, like they feel like what they're doing is more genuine than what other people are doing. In general, though, I think this trend is nice for kids because I think it might decrease bullying a little, and nice for people in general because it makes you feel a little safer to reveal parts of yourself that you normally wouldn't.

To me, the term is something that is more of a feeling that we apply a word to than a word that can be easily described. It's easy to call something weird, and know when something is weird, and if someone else calls something weird, you can usually agree with them. I think that it's not as easy to pinpoint exactly what makes one decide that something is weird, though. Sometimes if you look at two different things that you truly believe are both weird, it can still be hard to find a connecting line between them that originally made you decide both of them are weird.

The word weird also has a dictionary definition.
1) involving or suggesting the supernatural; unearthly or uncanny:
a weird sound; weird lights.
2) fantastic; bizarre:
a weird getup.

The dictionary definition gets closer to my interpretation of the critical genre of the "new weird." I had actually never heard of this genre before my introduction to it in this class, but I think I can see what the meaning of the term encompasses. I was never sure what a book like Lullaby by Chuck Palahniuk would be classified as. I probably would have lumped The Cabin in the Woods into the horror genre, but there is definitely more to it than a normal horror movie. "New weird" makes sense as a genre for both of these works. They both take something that we've seen before, but put a spin on it that makes it really unique. Both The Cabin in the Woods and Lullaby are based in the horror genre, but they're done in a unique way.

A side fact is that in high school I was really into Chuck Palahniuk. I read Fight Club, Diary, Haunted, Survivor, Invisible Monsters, Choke and part of Pygmy (though I didn't finish it because I didn't like it). It was actually just as I was about to start reading Lullaby, which was next on my list, that my parents said, "Hmm, we see that you have been into this Chuck fellow lately. Let's see what this is about!" As you might already know, Lullaby was influenced by the brutal murder of Palahniuk's father and girlfriend. So, my parents were really disturbed by this and decided to ban me from reading any more of Chuck's books. So I finally read the book that I had initially set out to read about four years ago! Lullaby was definitely very similar in writing style to Chuck's other famous books. It had the same use of short choppy sentences and repeated phrases and lack of certain types of punctuation. One difference in the writing was that this one alternated between past and present tense. Also, this was the first horror genre story I'd read by him. Diary had supernatural elements too but this one had them more strongly. Other parts of this book reminded me of Invisible Monsters. Though I don't remember Invisible Monsters super well, I remember there was a group of weird characters who went on a sort of road trip. Lullaby also featured a weird cast going on a road trip, though their road trip had more of a purpose. They also both had nonlinear structures.

From Lullaby and The Cabin in the Woods, I think it might also be safe for me to gather that works in the "new weird" genre have their own unique, satirical tones. Lullaby's tone is witty, meticulous, and dry. The Cabin in the Woods' tone is rather tongue-in-cheek, comedic, and heavily satirical. At points in the movie, it also had a shallow tone, which was intentional. They used this shallow tone for the parts where the "gamemaker"-type people putting the movie together were working or talking or partying afterward. They were disconnected from the feelings of the people in the movie and were very business- and money-oriented. Their shallow lack of empathy added to the satire feeling of the movie because it was shown back-to-back with characters in sheer terror and confusion. It trivialized the feelings of the people in the movie-within-the-movie. It was very different from the tone of a normal horror movie.

Assumptions of Kwaidan

I was hoping to read A Wild Sheep Chase for this week, but I didn't see it in the resources, and there also wasn't a copy available in the library so I decided to read the recommended Kwaidan stories instead, since they were free...

In The Story of Mimi-Nashi-Hoichi, the first thing I noticed was how in-tune with nature the author seemed to be. He wrote about nature spiritually. He called the beach haunted, but then wrote about it in a way where I wasn't sure if it really was haunted, or if it was just meant to be a poetic metaphor. For example, he said that when the waves crashed loudly at night, it sounded like people were yelling. If this wasn't a ghost story book, I would just assume that this was a metaphor. Religion in this story has a lot of influence on spirits compared with in ghost stories in Western culture, where generally ghosts don't really care or think about religion, probably partly due to the fact that ghosts are incompatible with most of Western religion (I think..?). It seems like in this author's culture, spirits are considered more normal and commonplace. They aren't always discussed as scary or amazing, just as a part of life that happens... I don't know much about the Shinto religion, but I believe it used to be really popular in Japan and involved making shrines on roadsides and in people's yards for spirits to take shelter in. Possibly the Shinto culture is the same or similar to the culture of this author. Hoichi must be very magical if he was able to completely recover after his ears were chopped off.

There was an interesting juxtaposition on the first page of Diplomacy, where there is a chaotic scene of a man about to be executed unfolding in a peaceful Japanese garden. Again, there is a very matter-of-fact perspective about the paranormal: "If any person be killed while feeling strong resentment, the ghost of that person will be able to take vengeance upon the killer. This the samurai knew." The ending of Diplomacy was interesting, despite being oddly abrupt. It made me wonder if the ghost of the dead man ever ended up biting the stone, since it was the only desire he knew and it would be weird if he didn't act on it, in my opinion.

The writing of these stories reminds me of Aesop's Fables or some other book of simple stories that have moral lessons at the end. It's very simplistic and straightforward with the occasional bit of dry quirkiness that may or may not have been intentional. It's not usually the type of writing that I see for Western ghost stories. It's weird how the girl in Of a Mirror and a Bell is obsessed with mirrors, like she got sad that she never got her family mirror and thought about the old saying, "a mirror is the Soul of a Woman." It's kind of funny to me how random this story is. The idea of a lot of loud crazy townspeople trying to smash the bell as powerfully as they can is a fun visual image, and so is are the religious leaders who get so annoyed with the loud noises that they roll the bell down a hill into a swamp. And then they went on a random tangent about nazoraëru before getting back to the bell in the swamp. The end of this story was also super weird but in a funny way I guess. They lead up this whole time to the wealth, and then never said what it was. Am I supposed to be getting a message out of this story such as be humble or don't be greedy? The farmer guy at the end was humble and greedy. I don't understand why the spiriti revealed herself to him and no one else. This story left me scratching my head. Maybe it is assumed that I would understand this ending as a member of Japanese culture. Possibly there were symbols that a Japanese person would understand and I wouldn't.

Relationships Portrayed in Twilight

A popular topic of discussion/marvel/confusion in class today was how the Twilight saga got to be so popular. Well, here's my theory...

The first time I read Twilight was as an eight grader, so this would have been the year 2007, one year before the movie was released. One thing that I don't think a lot of people know about/remember from being a middle schooler in the 2000's is how bad other popular books were at this time. In comparison, Twilight was probably around a B+. These are some of the other books that were popular around this time:

Not to judge books by their covers, but you can guess from these images that the quality of popular books in middle school was probably not that high...

Another thing about this short time period was that a fun new culture was just starting to take off in middle schools across the country...

Doesn't it look like if you were going to take the traditional teenagey book and combine it with the above picture, it would look something like this? 

So that is my theory on how Twilight got really popular. People complain about the writing a lot, but if you look at other books that were popular back then, this isn't too bad. That and people liked the slightly dark twist that this book had. The cover itself was mostly black with some red and white which were popular colors. But if you ask me why all of these books (such as The Clique, Gossip Girl, etc.) were popular, then I would be at a loss... 

Anyway, now to discuss the relationships portrayed in Twilight...

The main-ish characters in this book are Bella, Charlie, Edward, Renée, Tyler, Eric, Mike, Jacob, Jessica, Carlisle, Esme, Rosalie, Alice, Jasper, Emmett, and James.

Bella's parents are Charlie and Renée. Charlie is a police officer who lives in Forks, and he is quiet and awkward but down-to-earth and generous. He buys Bella a truck to give her when she first arrives in Forks, though he doesn't have a lot of money. They share a small house that only has one bathroom and a living room the size of a handkerchief, as Bella described it. Charlie is still in love with Renée, and has pictures of her hanging in the house even though they have been divorced for many years after a very short marriage. Unlike Charlie, Renée is very outgoing and talkative. She lives in Arizona in a "lower-income neighborhood" even though the city overall is wealthy. Renée lives with a guy named Phil who plays for a minor-league baseball team. Bella appreciates Charlie's quietness even though she finds it awkward at times. It's less annoying to her than her mom's overly-talkativeness. Strangely, Bella thinks of herself as a quiet, awkward person, but to me, she seems very average in her social skills, and definitely more outgoing than Charlie. 

Bella's high school friends/acquaintances are Tyler, Eric, Mike, and Jessica (along with some other less consequential people). Eric is the first person Bella meets, and she seems a little overly-judgey of him for someone who's supposedly bad at making friends and hasn't met anyone else yet and also is supposedly down-to-earth. On their first encounter, Bella tells him a bad joke and judges him when he doesn't laugh. 

The second person Bella meets is Jessica. Jessica is a typical loud, popular high school girl. Bella is a bit overwhelmed by her but they form a decent friendship and go dress shopping and whatnot together. According to Edward, Jessica is very empty-headed... not much substance there, he says, unlike SUPER INTERESTING BELLA! 

The other two (non-vampire) boys Bella befriends in this book are Mike and Tyler. Mike is one of the more popular boys in Forks High School (which again makes you wonder, why did Bella say she was shy and bad at making friends if she ending up making friends with some of the most popular people in school?). Also, he asks her out and shows interest in her many times, but Bella turns him down. Tyler is an idiot who almost hits Bella with his giant van, accidentally, of course.

Jacob Black is one of Bella's closer friends. He's pretty normal, but has just a little more depth than the other mortal boys Bella meets. He lives on the La Push Indian reservation. His dad, Billy, is friends with Bella's dad Charlie, and the tow of them go on fishing trips sometimes. Billy was also the one who sold Charlie the truck. In many ways, Jacob acts like the stereotypical all-American boy. He loves working on cars, and he also likes telling stories at campfires. He's big and strong but still cute... 

The Cullen family consists of Carlisle, Esme, Rosalie, Emmett, Alice, Jasper, and Edward. The Cullens are a group of vampires who were "adopted" by Carlisle and converted to "vegetarianism," in which they eat a diet of only non-human meat. Because of this, their eyes are golden instead of red....? After Bella, Edward is the character who shows up the most in the book. He is a studbomb vampire who is constantly saying how he has a dark side and is dangerous for Bella, which just adds to his studly intrigue. For some reason, the scent of Bella's blood is much more tempting to him than normal blood, and that's why he's always really nervous about being around her and is constantly having to control his urges (so studly!). Also, Edward has the amazing ability to read minds. Actually, he can read everyone's mind except Bella's, which adds to his intrigue in her. That's why he assumes that her mind is really interesting and complicated, unlike that stupid Jessica person. 

Carlisle is basically the leader of the Cullen clan. He has very strong morals. He refuses to eat humans, and won't let anyone join his clan if they don't agree to do the same. He works at the hospital as one of the top doctors. If someone is about to die, Carlisle will sometimes turn them into a vampire, which is how Edward became one. He's kind of a fatherly figure in some ways. He is married to Esme, the motherly figure. Rosalie is a beautiful blonde vampire who is really moody and doesn't like Bella very much. She kind of reminds me of the mermaids in Peter Pan who are like, "We were only trying to drown her..."She dates Emmett, who is bulky and testosteroney but nice. Alice is a cute small pixie-like vampire who can see the future. She approves of Bella and Edward's relationship more than any of the other Cullens. 

One last side note, there were no vegetarian vampires that sucked on carrots in this book. That was Bunnicula. 

Frankenstein and the Gothic as it Appears in Contemporary Culture

To me and probably many others, the part of Frankenstein that stood out most was when the monster was observing the De Lacey family for months before he cautiously approached the blind father and was then chased out by the younger De Lacey family members. When I first read Frankenstein as a high school student, I found this scene very relatable and touching. At the time, I struggled in an environment where people were highly judgmental of each other's appearance, which helped me to identify with the monster when he was isolated from others for his appearance.

The monster later hid in a small hovel, resigning to end all interaction with humans, and watched the De Lacey family, learning about what humans are like from them. This is probably not too different from why some people are interested in reality TV shows. They want to learn what it is like to be a part of a group and culture that they don't think they'll ever really be a part of. Someone who is shy and poor might be interested in a show about a family of outgoing, rich people.

Mostly I was moved by the kindness shown by De Lacey to the monster, and the contrast between him, as a blind person, and his children. What would the world be like if everyone judged people by their words instead of their appearances?

Today in class, when we identified some characteristics of Gothicism, I noticed that this part of the book had many of the Gothic attributes. The biggest one is probably strong emotions. The monster experiences strong emotions when he realizes that no one likes him because he's so disfigured. De Lacey experiences strong emotions as well when he shows compassion to the monster. Finally, when De Lacey's children come in, they experience strong emotions of fear and contempt. Another Gothic theme we discussed was turmoil, which was evident in the way the monster viewed himself, and the turmoil between the monster and the younger De Laceys.

One example I think of as an example of the Gothic as it appears in contemporary culture is the popular TV series American Horror Story. I watched the first season, Murder House. This show dealt heavily with death, immortality, and supernatural. It centered around a family that lived in an old haunted house in Los Angeles. Many people died in the house over the years living up to this family moving in, and everyone who died in the house became a ghost there and weren't able to leave the house for all of eternity. The family's interactions with the various ghosts resulted in subplots that had a lot of mystery and suspense, two Gothic characteristics. Another common characteristic is a main female character who ventures into dangerous situations. This was present in Murder House in a character named Violet, a teenage only child of the family that moved in. She ended up being the first in the family to become a ghost after she befriended one of the ghosts in the house named Tate, but then found out that he was a murderer. Tate represented the Gothic characteristic of having a lot of emotion. He was often almost melodramatic and very dark. Violet suffered from depression. The house itself resembles a stereotypical Gothic style house. It was old and Victorian-style. The show is extremely popular and will soon put out a fourth season. All of the seasons so far have strong Gothic themes in them, showing that Gothicism is still alive and is something that lots of people are very interested in.