(Supposed to Be) Last Post!!!! Reflections on Torture, FMA, Final Paper...

This is supposed to be my last post, but I think I still have to finish two more on Berlin to catch up. The goal this time is by tomorrow....



Anyways, this final paper seems to me to be very different from the papers that I've written before. Obviously teachers usually don't want pictures to waste space in papers, but the main difference is Spencer wanting us to take a more complicated and less restrictive approach from the standard thesis-driven paper.

In what little free time I have, I have over the past few months been watching the anime Full Metal Alchemist. It is probably considered an old anime by now, but it was and is very popular, and for good reason. Though I am annoyed with the third and fourth openings, the music is good to decent. Not as good as Tsubasa Chronicle. The characters are complex and well-developed over time. However, the best part of Full Metal Alchemist is its often-times shocking thematic elements and motifs. An obvious parallel is that to Nazi Germany, and the plot even contains the equivalent of an albeit smaller Holocaust. Discrimination and militarism are blatant, and it is interesting to see how the protagonists deal with each. Examples of more subtle themes unfortunately would spoil the plot. I would definitely give this anime a 10 out of 10 and recommend it to anyone, though. Also, it is interesting to see some stylistic manga elements in the anime--in a few (or one episode) the screen is even split up to form panels, and the emotional reactions of the characters are often depicted in amusingly iconic ways.



On to class-related topics, though. Namely, torture. Torture, which is supposed to be a taboo, but is widely and clandestinely practiced throughout the world. I'm not even going to touch torture in the United States, but I am appalled at the state of affairs in Israel. I completely agree with Sacco's ironic use of "Israel is the Middle East's only democracy."

History Forgotten

While I have been very lackadaisical in regards to posting lately, I do intend to make it all up by the time the schoolyear ends. Hopefully before Wednesday's class period.

Now, in regards to Palestine....

It was very difficult for me to get accustomed to Sacco's style of comics. I find his drawings very unaesthestic, especially the grotesquely oversized mouths. The details are amazing, but the way he draws his people...I honestly do not see anything attractive about the two Israeli girls he drools about in one of the first few chapters. But the form of his comics was also really confusing at first; maybe I'm stupid or something, but I had difficulty separating the different content bubbles. He has thought bubbles, rectangles with words, and speech bubbles all intertwined so it's difficult to follow a conversation. Superficialities aside, though, Palestine stands out thematically.

Sacco himself is an amusing if ironic observer. It is what he portrays, though, that is really shocking. I am ashamed of America's foreign policy on Israel now, and especially Israelis' treatment of the Palestinians. It's like once the European Jews got out of the Holocaust, they turn around and apply the "lessons" the Nazis taught them to the Palestinians. Now, don't get me wrong, I have strong sympathy for the Jewish people, having a somewhat morbid fascination with the Holocaust--accounts like Art Spiegelman's Maus and Martin Amis's Time's Arrow (even though it's fictional) really open up your eyes to the horrifying extent of the atrocities that were committed. I've read the philosophical treatment of the Holocaust and bigotry in Sartre's Anti-Semite and Jew, and reacted with anger upon learning in AP US History class about the Roosevelt administration's apathy to the plight of the Jews.

But all this history does -not- give the Jews an excuse to give the Palestinians treatment that is pretty much on par with the treatment they received at the hands of the Nazis. I don't know if Sacco is making a conscious comparison, but his anecdotes about Palestinians strike some uncanny resemblences to things I have learned about the Holocaust. For instance, the Palestinian stories about Israeli settlers throwing rocks through windows is eerily reminiscent of Krystallnacht. The prison camps, like Ansar III, are concentration camp-esque. The dominance of the Israeli military, the torture, the overzealous responses to minor Palestinian infractions. Some aspects of the conflict seem to be disanalogous--the intense hatred and terroristic subversion on the part of the Palestinians, for instance. They are not merely submissive victims (not implying that the Jews were), but what is really painful about the situation is how the Israelis dehumanize the Palestinians to the point where prominent leaders such as Golda Meir deny the very existence of the Palestinians.

Don't the Jews remember that they, too, were once victims of an attempt to erase them from history?

A Mystery Unresolved?

I still stand by my previous assessment of Fun Home, although I have to admit at times her literary comparisons are starting to sound a little contrived. Trite and contrived. Or perhaps I'm just annoyed that I'm missing so much meaning in the last comparison by not having read either Ulysses or the Odyssey. I did like Joyce's other works, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Dubliners, though. Perhaps I'll give Ulysses a try someday, though I heard you have to have a ton of notes to read it. And Finnegan's Wake just scares me.

In any case, although the book mainly focuses on the relationship between Alison and her dad, it is her mother's character who intrigues me. Yes, she seems distant and fails to fulfill certain motherly duties, such as giving Alison adequate attention. But for the most part she does her job well and even steps in when Alison's handwriting degenerates. I tend to blame her mother's long history with her father for her distant, apathetic attitude. What I don't get is--why did they get married in the first place? And why does she stay with Alison's dad for so long? I would've left after the first whiff of an affair. I feel like Alison's mom is consenting to sacrifice her freedom and life, even, just to play a part in Alison's dad's big cover-up scheme.

What's in a Name?

I'm not sure I ever bothered to reflect on the title of Stuck Rubber Baby. Fun Home's title is certainly a lot more obvious, though at this point I'm seriously doubting that the Fun Home is that important to the novel--the relationships in her life appear to be much more important. What of the word "Tragicomic" in the title, though? I Wikipedia-ed (is there a better neologism for this verb?) tragicomedy, the portmanteau from which tragicomic is obviously derived and discovered another apparent fact: it refers to fiction with both elements of tragedy and comedy, duh. An antiquated definition refers to a serious play with a happy ending. Somehow I doubt Bechdel was using that second definition. And Fun Home certainly fits the first definition--it's funny in a dark, satiric, absurd kind of way but you get the feeling that there's something even more darkly serious and profound lurking in the background of her humor.

In any case, I do like this tragicomic a lot. Bechdel's art is very detailed, her people don't look like squirrels, and the shades of blue are a nice change from the black and white of Stuck Rubber Baby. If there is a criticism to be made, it is perhaps the uniformity of the paneling for the majority of the pages, but when she deviates from the norm she does so quite effectively. I particularly like the inserted texts and the use of photos, which are rare in graphic novels.

Speaking of the inserted texts, the comparisons to fiction and her verbose use of language are probably among my favorite aspects of the novel. It is nice to learn how Proust and Fitzgerald tie in to her father's life--how he can seem real to her only through fiction. It creates a sense of disconnection while at the same time revealing how literature functions in our lives. As for her diction, it is quite sesquipedalian for a graphic novel. I enjoy learning new words like prestidigitation and she uses her vocabulary quite well to create both background and humor.