(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.

The Sound of Music

Okay, this is my first completely unrelated post as I don't feel like blogging about Stuck Rubber Baby or the mini-comics.So I will speak briefly about some of my favorite music, video game and anime music. Yes, I know I am a nerd but not much of the popular stuff around nowadays appeals to me. In fact, I think it's all quite shitty--mass marketed and processed in a box to the lowest common denominator. Pop nowadays is shallow and superficial, lip-synced to by any pretty slut. Hip-hop and R&B is just repetitively annoying, with meaningless obscenity thrown in and degrading videos of more sluts. Thus I have resorted to video game and anime music.



Anyways, here's an example of a very talented pianist playing a song from Bleach. I haven't seen Bleach, though it's supposed to be one of the most popular anime, but I plan on it. I mainly put this up because I want to learn this song one day--it's rather uplifting and fast-paced. My favorite music incorporates piano or is all piano as I just have an affinity for piano music. I took lessons for about a year and a half and have taught myself some Final Fantasy X songs. Classical music won't be in my repertoire.



This is from Super Smash Bros Brawl, the newest in the popular Nintendo fighting games. I still haven't played it unfortunately, but I intend to--it looks awesome. I've heard it's more n00b-oriented, so hopefully I'll do better at Brawl than Melee. Originally though, this song was from some Kirby game which I'm too lazy to look up and it's the theme for one of his enemies, MetaKnight. Metaknight, I've heard, is a pretty good character in Brawl and he looks basically like Kirby in armor with a sword.

Yeah, I don't watch YouTube videos, I listen to them.

Unwanted

I find that I like Stuck Rubber Baby less and less as the book drags on, becoming more trite in terms of narrative and overabundant detail. Honestly, unless someone is crafting a graphic novel like Watchmen that absolutely requires such detail, he needs to go easy on readers. The story isn't as compelling anymore and the themes get old when mired in a surplus of detail. Parsimony is a word that Cruse needs to learn.

As an aside, I also feel the need to rail against the main characters' moral failings. Honestly, Toland is way too self-absorbed and starting to look like the main character in Blankets more and more with his dependency on Ginger. I feel like he's just using her as a lifeline or a facade to convince others he's not gay rather than for any substantial relationship. It's quite aggravating how he gets all high and mighty by proposing a marriage in which he's free to cheat and then speciously asks why she'd want to "experiment" since she's not gay. He shows absolutely no guilt for lying to Riley (not that I much like Riley as an upstanding example of morality either) about his whereabouts and then hopping in the sack with Les. Likewise, I have no idea why Ginger is even in a relationship with Toland. She does not seem to care one whit for him and always talks condescendingly down to him, even while he deifies her like Craig did to Raina.

Now some might criticize me for wanting all characters in a story to fit into my prescribed moral categories, but I'm just complaining about the lack of a strong stable relationship example in the novel. I wish there was something that worked among all the dysfunctional relations among the characters. But perhaps I'm being a hopeless romantic, and such positivity would undermine the point of the comic. Though of course, there is one such example of such a relationship, and that's the one between the older Toland narrating and his boyfriend.

Nevertheless, the comic does bring up some poignant themes to address, and I still count it above Portraits from Life for that. One of these, recently examined in Juno, is unwanted pregnancy and its proliferation in today's society. Granted, during the 60s births out of wedlock were fairly uncommon and frowned upon in general society, as Orley's sensibilities demonstrated. However, his divorce from Melanie foreshadows the cascade of divorces in the 70s and the changing social mores. Even back then Ginger faced the same difficult choices many nonmarried mothers face today.

An Atheist on Religion

After finishing the second half of the assigned reading, I've decided that I do really like Stuck Rubber Baby, regardless of Cruse's unaesthetic drawing style. The detail involved allows me to focus mainly on the narrative and any visual elements that stick out, such as the use of thought bubble panels.
The focus of this blog though, is religion in Stuck Rubber Baby, a topic I believe can be written about without reference to the "graphic" aspect of the novel as per Spencer's instructions. Personally I have never had much use for religion, finding it too difficult to accept any church's tenets on blind faith and seeing far too much hypocrisy in its practitioners.
Part of the reason why I like Cruse's novel is that it portrays the civil rights movement in a very personal way that history books and other anecdotes have failed to do for me so far. The dogmatic, myopic, and pervasive hatred of the Southern whites for anyone who doesn't fit in their little conservative world view is just astonishing. I feel saddened by the strong antipathy of the bigoted that is based on so little understanding. What also saddens me, though it confirms my belief of the religious as hypocritical, is the role of religion in fermenting blind hatred.
There are little details throughout the book that indicate this, including the KKK-esque nature of a religious newspaper. However, the character of Orley, Toland's brother-in-law, probably demonstrates religious prejudice the best. He melodramatically says he will pray for Toland's soul and warns him quite graphically about the tortures of Hell in order to prevent Toland from straying away from societal norms. Never mind any reasoned arguments to believe in God. Just play the fear card, and people will follow like sheep, as the government found out after 9/11.
Other hateful characters aren't shown to blatantly be religious, but considering the background of the era, they probably have used religion to justify their bigotry. In Congress the Civil Rights Act was filibustered by a few white Southern Senators who used the Bible--specifically passages in Leviticus (hmm, also the part of the Bible from which anti-gay sentiments are drawn)--to justify slavery. The extreme violence demonstrated by antagonists in the novel highlights the hypocrisy of the whole supposedly devout Christian South. I guess Jesus's advice to "love each other as I have loved you" only applies to select individuals.
Of course, religion isn't depicted as a tool used to justify one's beliefs in all cases in the book. In fact, African American churches and ministers were rallying points for the civil rights movement. Toland even reflects on the schism between the freedom and justice-themed black churches and the white fear-mongering preachers on the radio who denounce the protests.
In any case, both sides have essentially proclaimed that God is on their side, as quite often happens in times of conflict. Religious fervor is a double-edged sword that can be used to unite and even comfort, or to inflame hatred. How convenient that an omnipotent God doesn't set them straight.