The look and feel of a film is usually all to do with the production’s budget. Big-budget Hollywood blockbusters which have heavy reliance on visual effects are nonetheless more clearer-looking and audible that your average run-of-the-mill ultra-low-budget independent movie. This has less to do with blockbuster directors having more money and better resources at their disposal than independent filmmakers wanting nothing to do with the studio system. However, independent does not mean backward. Rather, filmmakers like George Lucas – whose Star Wars series have not only been wildly financially successful, but a breakthrough in computer-generated visual effects and digital filmmaking – have brought about some of the most influential (and, as some purists would say, hazardous) changes to the cinematic landscape, and have caught up by utilizing cheaper facilities, a bandwagon non-independent filmmakers have of course since jumped on. The films Blade Runner and Mad Max respectively represent each of these film “rivals,” and together they show how the two are not so different.
If Socrates lived today and made films, it is probable he would have made Blade Runner. Blade Runner is a maddeningly philosophical science-fiction film, also throwing in elements of cyberpunk and future neo-noir, with characters who are so enigmatic yet enjoyably deep whose secrets are known neither to them or to us. They are all traditional film-noir character stereotypes seemingly trapped in a futuristic science-fiction world divided by humans and illegal human replicants.
Blade Runner opens with a sky-view shot of the dystopia of 2019 Los Angeles in all its blinding decadence: fire-lights, flying cars and hundred-storey skyscrapers illustrating the corporate greed and corruption of the jungle Los Angeles has evolved into. Declared illegal on Earth after a violent mutiny, criminal human clones dubbed “replicants” infest the streets below, which are already awash with homeless people, thugs and sex workers. And as a result of global warming, it is always raining.
Director Ridley Scott manages such a breakneck pace with the film that it really seems to make us understand clearer the limited life-span Eldon Tyrell, the creator of the replicants, has given his creations. Although it is not technically set in real time, in the way protagonist Deckard, a cop assigned to execute fugitive replicants, completely and successfully goes about his task of apprehending five replicants throughout the film’s running time, it feels like it all happens over the course of just one night.
Blade Runner’s narrative structure is something of a pastiche of the film-noir and science-fiction genres. After a written prologue and the shot of future Los Angeles dystopia, it goes: 1) Deckard checking in to see what his chief wants of him; 2) Deckard interviewing suspected replicant and femme fatale Rachael; 3) a forbidden love growing between the two; 4) slimy replicant Roy Batty beginning to track down Deckard; 5) scantily-clad but butch replicant Pris searching the streets for accommodation; 6) Deckard hunting down another replicant in a brothel; 7) Deckard questioning whether he himself is a replicant; 8) Roy Batty killing his maker for failing to make him perfect; 9) Deckard facing off in an abandoned mansion against Roy and Pris; 10) Deckard and Rachael escaping to a peaceful and happy life together.
The underlying theme in Blade Runner of prejudice towards replicants is what complicates the sub-plot of the romance between Deckard and Rachael. Deckard is torn between carrying out his duty to his chief and showing unconditional love to Rachael. To make matters worse, Rachael of course has a lifespan which is rapidly running out, after which time Deckard will be on his own again.
Ever since Blade Runner’s release in 1982, fans and critics have been completely divided over the issue of whether or not Deckard himself is a replicant. Early in the story we are told all replicants have visions of unicorns and have to find out for themselves where they came from. In one scene, Deckard is confused by a dream of a unicorn from which he has just awoken, and later is intrigued by stick-figures of unicorns. And if he really is human, it could be arguable that he would not find himself physically and emotionally attracted to replicants like Rachael.
One thing almost every film ever produced has in common is a cause-effect framework – how one character’s actions, while either for good or evil, do as much harm as they do good. In Blade Runner, the creator of the replicants Eldon Tyrell, has set out to create perfection in a series of human clones and has failed. Given that the human characters in the film live longer than the replicants, the replicants are subsequently inferior. Roy Batty is aware of his inferiority to humans thanks to the mistakes with which Tyrell made him, and Roy murders his maker out of revenge. It is through this stark distinction between its human and replicant characters the film challenges us to define perfection, or even if there really is such a thing.
While most movies use narrative time simply to show characters going on a journey in just two hours, Blade Runner uses narrative time to show the shortness of life itself. Just as the lifespans of replicants have deadlines, so, too, do we all in our efforts to go about our business everyday. While an early scene involving replicant Leon’s execution of his human interrogator and Roy Batty’s killing of Tyrell illustrate this message of time running out everyday, perhaps the most subliminal depiction in the film of a character’s deadline is the ending (of the Director’s Cut version) with Deckard and Rachael leaving their apartment, possibly to escape to freedom and eternal bliss. This ending is ambiguous and anticlimactic and can be read both ways: that the two A) die soon, depending on whether or not Deckard is a replicant; or B) live happily ever after. Either way, we know the problematic aspect of their love affair has only just begun, and that they are about to find out just what the film itself suggests: that perfection is not exactly that, or it is nonexistent.
The 1979 science-fiction action classic Mad Max is remembered as one of the crucial films of the 1970s Australian film renaissance. Produced for under one million dollars and originally designed to make a loss, most experts cite George Miller’s film as the first major action movie produced in Australia, and its influence was even felt in Hollywood (albeit after the actors’ Australian accents were dubbed into American accents) – especially with star Mel Gibson’s meteoric rise to international superstardom.
Mad Max can perhaps be best described as a revenge movie worked around a post-Apocalyptic science-fiction action narrative. Max Rockatansky is a young cop patrolling a highway running through the sunburnt Australian Outback, sometime in the distant future. An upstanding citizen, Max does not shy away from giving speeding tickets to people who go over the speed limit, and then letting them go. However, after a sadistic road gang murders his wife and infant son, there’s no more Mr. Nice Guy. Now, as the tagline for the film goes, “When the gangs take over the highway…remember he’s on your side.”
The chase sequences in Mad Max highlight the effectiveness of fast editing and how it enables you to imagine yourself in the situation on-screen – basically, George Miller and his editor have helped you imagine what it’s like to be in a car chase just by watching the film, so you do not actually have to get involved in one. The crash sequences have the same impact, but are done to reassure us we are watching from a safe distance (there is a famous shot of a car ploughing into a caravan). This is especially the case in the climactic chase involving Max and the last surviving member of the antagonist Toecutter’s gang. Max does not catch him, but the gang member meets his maker when he crashes into a truck at top speed. For maximum intensity, Miller cuts back and forth between the gang member and the truck – with the gang member nearly jumping out of his skin when first he sees the truck – rather than focusing entirely on one or the other. This is done not to evoke sympathy for the gang member or even the truck driver, but simply to show how quickly a life can be cut short (and, of course, to ensure every loose end is tied up).
Mad Max’s depiction of the Australian Outback in its post-Apocalyptic state has the same effect as Blade Runner’s depiction of 2019 Los Angeles. It is so unmistakably stunning that it becomes another character, so much so that hints that the Outback really is like a futuristic world in its desolation and isolation. Of course, hopefully Mad Max will not have successfully predicted the future for humanity as a whole, but that is not the point. The point is that there will always be vigilantes who see injustice and fight it. The influence of Mad Max’s depiction of the Australian Outback as unforgiving beast is still felt today in contemporary films like 2005’s Wolf Creek.
In both films, environment is a key factor in their portrayal of the future, yet both are set in environments that could not be more strikingly different. Incorporating film-noir elements into its science-fiction narrative, Blade Runner takes place in 2019, which is very humid and always enjoying rainfall. This is a clear hint towards global warming – something that was only known of by weather experts at the time of the film’s release in 1982 – and also to the loss of memory and the past and the inhabitants of it, be they human or replicant, slipping further and further back into the annals of history. As Batty himself famously says immediately before he dies, “I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate. All those memories will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die.”
Mad Max, on the contrary, uses the killer heat and desolation of the Australian Outback as an allegory for what the aftermath of the Apocalypse might be like. It is an almost Satanic entity which causes individuals stuck in it to slowly lose their minds, and leaving them open to the gangs who worship the Outback so much so that it is practically their creator. But Max is no Christ-figure either, He, too, has been corrupted to a certain extent by the Outback, however this has instructed him to right the wrongs of his world as much as he can, to erase some of the damage the Apocalypse has inflicted upon the world.
Whether or not it is too late to prevent the scary depictions of the future Blade Runner and Mad Max each put forth – or if they were always inevitable – is something that only time will tell. That said, neither of these films are cautionary tales. And they are more than just subversive pieces of genre-fusion. Ultimately, both films are postmodernist essays on the repercussions of current events and ideologies, irrespective of what cultures and religions they come from or whether they are political or environmental. And refreshingly, neither end on a conveniently celebratory ending, because in the cases of these two films that would diminish the impact of their negative views of the future.
Blade Runner and Mad Max, both having assumed cult classic status, are fondly remembered by critics today as two science-fiction films that helped to usher in the postmodern feel of the genre that is so present today. Ignoring the lure of the Star Wars template for science-fiction movie storytelling, Ridley Scott and George Miller each gave us, in their respective films, a downbeat, cynical and uncompromising view of the future. Respectively, Scott and Miller, in their films, made us attempt to decipher the difference between human and non-human and ponder whether or not they are one and the same, and provided us with an utterly disturbing depiction of just what the prophesized Apocalypse might be like. While we can only hope for all our sakes Scott and Miller wrongfully predicted the future, all good science-fiction tries to predict it, and only the best do get it right.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
· Scott, R. 1982, Blade runner, Warner Bros. Pictures
· Miller, G. 1979, Mad Max, Kennedy-Miller Productions
· Bordwell, D., Thompson, K. 2004, Film art: an introduction, pp. 415-418 (template only)
Sunday, September 28, 2008
Electracy in Outer Space.
ELECTRACY IN OUTER SPACE
By Jarred Kennedy
FADE IN…
The first thing we see is a computer, with the monitor showing it is currently in use. On the screen, one can see the game World of Warcraft is currently being played.
INT. BASEMENT – VERY EARLY MORNING
This is a lifeless basement if ever one existed. Painted white, with shut brown curtains probably covering closed windows doing absolutely nothing but complimenting the boring white walls. The basement is also appallingly unkempt: old, dilapidated chairs and a table are spread out around the room, surrounded by food wrappers, softdrink cans, beer bottles, pornographic magazines, cups, plates, and cutlery. Directly in shot, seated on a sofa that’s in such bad condition it looks like it was purchased from a secondhand store twenty years ago, sits nineteen-year-old Frank Gore.
Frank sits slumped back on the sofa, his belly almost bulging out from underneath his shirt, his fingers banging away at his keyboard as he explores the virtual world of the game. Next to him lie three opened bags of corn chips and two opened two-litre bottles of Coca-Cola. He takes his hands momentarily away from the keyboard to take a handful of the corn chips, which he eats, and then a huge swig of the Coca-Cola, which he swallows, and then goes back to the game. He does this in a constant loop every single day.
A black bar swirls clockwise across the screen to show the passing of morning to night, completely skipping the afternoon.
INT. BASEMENT – LATE EVENING
Not one thing has changed in the basement. Frank is quite evidently a computer game addict, and he’s probably in total denial about it. Still slumped back in the sofa like Homer Simpson, still with corn chips and Coca-Cola for what he calls “nutrition.” Yawning now, Frank is leaning, now staring much more closely at the computer screen. He is growing frustrated with the game that has robbed him of so much, and it’s about to make him snap.
FRANK
Damn it! I’ve been stuck on this level all day!
Frank smacks the side of the monitor with the back of his right hand.
Unexpectedly, a MOBILE PHONE rings.
Frank leisurely rises from the sofa and waddles to the other side of the room to a bench, where his phone is. He picks it up and answers it.
FRANK
Hello?
CUT TO:
INT. BEDROOM – NIGHT
This particular room is equally as unkempt as Frank’s basement. In the distance we see an unmade bed in the right hand corner, and in the left can be seen a wardrobe. Posters of thrash metal bands like Sepultura, Nightwish, and Slayer coat the walls with a sense of anger, alienation and even hate.
In direct view, seated at a desk and likely staring at a computer, is BRUCE.
ON BRUCE: Nineteen, white, stocky build, PURPLE dyed hair and black fingernails. By the looks of him, Bruce is a devoted, unapologetic and proud fan of death metal music. He is wearing a black leather trench-coat, and is holding his phone up to his right ear whilst pressing the keys on his keyboard with his free hand.
BRUCE
Oi, Frank you pussy! Are you gonna make a move on that hot chick from Denmark who’s playing right now or what?
Frank’s entire position in front of his computer screen has not changed.
FRANK
Nah, chicks don’t go for guys who do that.
BRUCE
How would you know? I mean yeah, I’ve never had a girlfriend but neither have you.
FRANK
Good point, I guess. You double dare me?
On the right-hand side of the screen there is a long list of users who are playing the game currently. Next to each name is a green dot which operates as a CHAT option. Frank clicks on the green dot next to the user evenstarangel90. A pop-up for chatting appears. Frank types in the box: “Hey, how you doin’? I’m RPGassassin89.” Five seconds pass, and a reply message appears: “Sorry, but I don’t like stalkers.”
Frank fists the desk.
FRANK
See, man? I told you.
BRUCE
(chuckling)
You suck dude. You totally came on way too strong.
Frank takes the phone away from his ear and looks skyward in fury.
FRANK
(shouting)
You are a bully! To me and Bruce!
Completely unexpectedly, two large shafts of intense white light like spotlights come down over Bruce and Frank. They make unnaturally loud sounds, something like that of a massive garage door being opened. Both Frank and Bruce look up in shock – the shafts of light have no end in sight!
Now, the ground starts to shake around the both of them. This is an ominous sign suggesting danger, and the pair have both seen too many science-fiction films to know otherwise. Naturally, they’re both sweating.
Finally, they are slowly lifted off the ground, with the light shafts sucking them in like vortexes. Faster and faster, until they are being sucked through the sky, out of the Earth atmosphere entirely, through a BLACK HOLE, all the while screaming with piercing volume and the sound of the gravitational pull overwhelming, until the Moon and the base of an enormous space ship comes into view.
EXT. SPACESHIP – DARKNESS
This is no human spaceship. It is lime-green, with rivets, gun turrets and rocket launchers covering its every square metre, and shaped like two oversized boats on top of one another. It is an alien spaceship, and most certainly not carrying aliens like E.T.
A large dock roof opens at the vessel’s base. Frank and Bruce are still under control of the gravitational pull.
The dock door has opened by now.
INT. SPACESHIP – DARKNESS
If the exterior of the spaceship looked intimidating, the interior is terrifying. Beginning from the far left hand corner of the dock we pan to find light black walls, very little lighting, a row of storage racks filled with disused robots or robots in need of repair, and scariest of all, to the right of the dock door, a human head on a spit. Edvard Munch could not have painted something as worrying as this.
Frank and Bruce, now at the end of the shafts of white light, are floating above the still open door, but begin to fall. The door now closes at the speed of light, and they crash-land on it, falling on their stomachs.
Frank and Bruce finally rise and dust themselves off, checking for injuries. They are fine.
Frank and Bruce simultaneously look up and around their new surroundings. Initially both react anxiously, however that anxiety turns to extreme excitement when they realize what the dock reminds them of. Both look at each other with exuberance.
FRANK AND BRUCE
(together)
We’re in Starcraft! High-five, bro!
They high five each other.
The dock now goes from almost pitch black to blinding bright instantly. We now hear a bellowing and very authoritative voice, much like James Earl Jones. It is that of an alien.
ALIEN
(not seen; shouting)
Who said that?!
Frank and Bruce now realize this is no dream or game. They fall to the ground simultaneously, and hug each other in terror.
The two just lie on the ground still hugging each other in fear, almost frozen.
ALIEN
(not seen; even louder)
Who said that?!?!
Still shaking with terror, the boys finally find their feet and gradually are able to stand up.
BRUCE
W-w-we did!
Now the alien creature finally shows himself, teleporting into the shot.
ON ALIEN: this terrifying figure looks like the offspring of the Pale Man from Pan’s Labyrinth and the xenomorph from Alien. Seven foot tall, with wrinkled red skin, gills, no hair, a spiky tail, extended razor blades for fingernails and toenails, and bright yellow eyes. It oozes terror from every inch of its anatomy.
Frank and Bruce both scream at the very top of their lungs, and collapse to the ground in fear yet again.
This angers the creature.
ALIEN
Silence! Rise!
The boys do as they have been instructed. Standing completely straight and starting to sweat, Frank and Bruce are almost frozen solid as the creature begins to walk around them in a circle, inspecting them. It sneers continuously and makes a hissing sound as it examines Frank and Bruce’s clothing, appearances and builds.
ALIEN
Just… what the doctor prescribed. A fat slob, and a metal-head! Human scum at its most disposable! I imagine you are both wondering how you got here, and moreover, why you are here. Am I accurate in my presumptions?
Bruce is losing patience. He steps forward to face the creature in the eye.
BRUCE
What the heck do you think?
Frank pulls him back.
FRANK
Now’s not the time for that attitude, you idiot! This thing looks like it’s gonna roast us on a spit and have its followers dance around the fire at the same time!
ALIEN
Hush! I have no plans at all to kill you!
(laughs)
Rather, I want to play a game with you, one which involves no bloodshed of any kind. At least, not if you make no errors. My name is Xerzjik, and I have a challenge for you. Just correctly answer a series of questions about a topic known as “electracy.” That is all the challenge entails. However, should you refuse to accept it, you will never be able to return home. Fail, and you will never return home. Never! Ever! This is not a dream you are having! This is not any kind of joke or hoax that you humans so commonly and poorly pull! Do both of you oxygen thieves understand me?!
FRANK AND BRUCE
(together)
Yes, Xerzjik!
XERZJIK
(bellowing)
What?!
FRANK AND BRUCE
(together)
Yes, Xerzjik, Your Majesty!
XERZJIK
Spoken like true prodigies. Here are your sources you will be needing.
Instantly, two thirty-centimetre thick slabs of bound paper (one for each boy) fall into Frank and Bruce’s hands. Frank and Bruce fall to the ground because of the weight of the documents.
They sit up on the floor of the dock, as Xerzjik leans down and stares icily in their faces.
XERZJIK
I would get reading if I were you. You have two days. Get one answer wrong, and you will never see your stupid, superfluous, insubordinate Earthling friends and relatives ever again, and they will have to bury empty coffins! Mwahahahahahaha!
Xerzjik presses a red button on the glove he is wearing on his left wrist. The dock roof opens, and he zooms out into space, staring at Frank and Bruce frighteningly.
CUT TO:
INT. SPACESHIP DOCK
Frank and Bruce and laying on the floor of the dock with the texts in front of them, opened by about a quarter of the pages. The two of them are scanning the writing with their eyes back and forth, back and forth, trying to get through as quickly as they can but slowly enough to take in every ounce of information as well.
In fast-motion, we see Frank and Bruce flicking through the humongous slabs of paper.
TITLE CARD: ELEVEN HOURS LATER
CUT TO:
INT. SPACESHIP DOCK – ELEVEN HOURS LATER
Frank and Bruce are still laying on the floor of the dock with the texts in front of them, only now they are half-asleep and fighting drowsiness in their aim of getting through the huge texts as soon as they possibly can. Bruce turns over one page and then yawns, with Frank following suit five seconds later.
TITLE CARD: NINE HOURS LATER
We can hear a slight beeping sound. It is an alarm on Bruce’s mobile phone going off. Hearing it, Bruce awakes with a jump. He takes the phone out of his jeans pocket, switches the alarm off and checks the time. It’s now 8:30 Earth time.
BRUCE
Man, we need to get reading again. One more day left!
Bruce leans over and shakes Frank’s shoulder to wake him. Frank opens his eyes for the new day, rubs them, stretches his arms and finally sits up.
Ironically, in front of Frank and Bruce are now the texts and two bowls of porridge. The boys are amazed.
FRANK
Do you think perhaps Xerzjik knows humans can’t study on an empty stomach?
Bruce laughs and grins appreciatively. Both of them prop their heads skyward.
FRANK AND BRUCE
(together)
Thank you, Xerzjik, Your Majesty!
Frank and Bruce each dive for their respective bowl and tuck in.
After a few mouthfuls, the two look at each other in realization of much time they have left before the quiz.
FRANK
I really think we should try to read this again.
BRUCE
Agreed.
Simultaneously, Frank and Bruce finish their breakfasts and start to while away at their texts for the second time.
Fade to black.
TITLE CARD: THE NEXT DAY
Frank and Bruce are by this time fast asleep on the ground of the dock. All of a sudden, the dock door opens, the sound waking them with a jump. Xerzjik appears in front of them, and he means business.
XERZJIK
The day of reckoning is upon us. Eat your human breakfast with haste.
In fast-motion, Frank and Bruce carry out Xerzjik’s orders. When they are done with this, both of them stand up straight.
XERZJIK
Guards!
Two alien guards appear, each wheeling a strange machine probably used for strapping dangerous life-forms into bed, that looks like a combination of an airport trolley and a straightjacket. They stop when they reach Xerzjik, Frank and Bruce.
XERZJIK
Strap them in.
Frank and Bruce turn to look at each other with anxiety.
Each guard pulls each of the boys away and begins to strap them into the contraptions. Frank and Bruce’s bodies are forced into the contraptions, then two sets of very thick bars of metal coming from the side are pushed down over their torsos and feet, securing them.
XERZJIK
Let’s get down to business.
He begins to lead the guards and Frank and Bruce away somewhere.
CUT TO: XERZJIK’S PALACE MAIN HALL – DAY
This is truly a room to behold. Huge and luxurious in its every square centrimetre, it’s like something no Impressionist painter would not go weak at the knees for. The walls have been painted a blazing gold colour, the architecture being the most perfect marble, and red-painted floors to top it all off. There is also a table and later a queen-size bed in the centre of the room each measuring about five metres, the bed coming complete with a curtain around its entire area.
Frank and Bruce have been wheeled to the very front of the hall. Now the guards begin to clip electricity cables to their fingertips. They each look anxious but appear to be hiding it quite well given the circumstances.
XERZJIK
Well, my human scum, this is what it has been about. I will cut straight to the chase. I am going to ask each of you five questions about the notion of electracy. If you get them all right, I will return you to your little planet and you will have lived to see another day. But, get just one answer incorrect and… here’s a demonstration of what will happen.
Xerzjik turns to his right. An alien, most likely a criminal alien, is also strapped into the same contraption and has electricity cables leading to a generator clipped to his fingertips. Xerzjik waltzes over to the generator and pushes a large black button which reads “DO NOT PUSH.”
Bolts of electricity race through the criminal alien’s body, shaking the alien wildly. After three seconds of this, the alien IMPLODES, its blood spilling and its body parts flying everywhere.
Frank and Bruce now freeze with terror. Finally, they SCREAM.
XERZJIK
Do not put all your fear and anxiety to waste yet! I haven’t even asked the first question! Since I understand neither of you will be able to decide amongst yourselves which of you would like to go first, I will do that for you. It’s you Frank.
Frank is now going white as a sheet.
XERZJIK
Be that as it may, with each question I will back and forth between you until we reach the end. That is, if we do reach the end. They are all true-or-false questions, and the more questions we get through, the harder the next question will be. You may take as long as you need to answer. Let us get this over with. Frank. The theorist Gregory Ulmer became one of the most renowned experts of electracy as a result of his text entitled Halflives: A Mystory.
Frank appears momentarily confident.
FRANK
True, Xerzjik, Your Majesty.
Xerzjik now turns to Bruce.
XERZJIK
Bruce. Gregory Ulmer once wrote that mystorys “were designed to simulate the experience of invention, the crossing of discourses that has been shown to occur in the invention process.”
BRUCE
True, Xerzjik, Your Majesty.
Xerzjik turns his focus again to Frank.
XERZJIK
Ulmer never wonders how a being can manage inventing something that will restrict the concept of technology to the home.
FRANK
False, Xerzjik, Your Majesty.
Xerzjik turns his attention back to Bruce
XERZJIK
One of Ulmer’s main arguments is that if electracy is to be introduced into schools, it has the potential to overcome the hurdles faced by any person who aims to surpass Enlightenment reason.
This time, Bruce thinks just for a moment.
BRUCE
True, Xerzjik, Your Majesty.
Once again, Xerzjik switches his focus back to Frank.
XERZJIK
On the nature of subjectivities that could be produced by a large-scale switch from literacy to electracy, Ulmer argues: “In the same way that the practice of reading privately and silently contributed to the formation of “self”, so too will performing hyperrhetoric contribute to a new subjectivication in the electronic apparatus (in which one will have to find a new term of self-reference, neither “parrot” as in the clan identity of the oral apparatus nor “me” in the individualism of literacy.”
Frank rubs his face in thought.
FRANK
True, Xerzjik, Your Majesty.
Once again, Xerzjik switches his focus back to Bruce.
XERZJIK
The article Halflives, a Mystory: Writing Hypertext to Learn was authored by Gregory Ulmer himself.
BRUCE
False, Xerzjik, Your Majesty.
Once again, Xerzjik switches his focus back to Frank.
XERZJIK
Tofts writes that electracy and mystory aim to produce universal truths.
Frank now rubs his face for ten seconds. He appears stumped, but it soon comes to him.
FRANK
False, Xerzjik, Your Majesty.
Once again, Xerzjik switches his focus back to Bruce.
XERZJIK
History is the very first element of mystory.
Bruce breathes in deeply.
BRUCE
True, Xerzjik, Your Majesty.
For the last time, Xerzjik switches his focus back to Frank.
XERZJIK
This is your final question, Frank. The term “hyperlogic” was coined by Darren Tofts in his essay Hyperlogic, the Avant-Garde and Other Transitive Acts.
Frank is now quivering with anxiety. He breathes in even more deeply time, rubbing his face agin. After ten seconds he finally looks up at Xerzjik.
FRANK
True, Xerzjik, Your Majesty.
For the last time, Xerzjik switches his focus back to Bruce.
XERZJIK
Bruce, this is your final question. The other four elements of mystory are herstory, mystery, my story and envois.
Like Frank, Bruce is now almost controlled by his anxiety. He takes a very long deep breath.
BRUCE
True, Xerzjik, Your Majesty.
Xerzjik remains silent for a few moments. Frank and Bruce look at each other, each of them wondering what their fate will be.
XERZJIK
(in alien language; subtitled)
Guards! Release them.
The two alien guards begin to unclip the electrical wires from Frank and Bruce’s fingers, and then free the two boys from the unnamed contraption.
XERZJIK
My deepest congratulations, Frank and Bruce. You have both beaten the game.
Frank and Bruce both now fall to the ground with relief. After five seconds they are able to find their feet again. They are ecstatic.
XERZJIK
You have proven how very wrong I was about you and your species. However, before I send you back to your families and your lives, I want to stress something to you. To begin with, I must confess you two were selected for this as I had been watching the two of you from space for some time. Watching how you do nothing except wasting away your lives by playing computer games. That will get you absolutely nowhere. I felt I had to enforce that upon you both. Electracy is a tool for staying on top of life, and it will become the way of the future. I was only so merciless with you because otherwise, my message would not have gotten through to either of you. Now that you have been put through such a terrifying experience, I want both you to promise me here and now that when you return to Earth, you will get out and grab life by the horns. Do you promise to do that?
BRUCE
Oh, we certainly do!
FRANK
Yes! One hundred percent!
XERZJIK
Good. I bid you both farewell now.
CUT TO: INT. FRANK’S BEDROOM – DAY
Nothing has changed in Frank’s bedroom since he left it. The large shafts of white light that lifted Frank and Bruce appear again in the room, only this time Frank falls back into the room and onto the floor. He lifts himself up on the floor and, tired, walks over to the bed and falls asleep instantly.
SUBTITLE: Frank went back to school and finished this time. He now works for the Commonwealth Bank.
CUT TO:
EXT. BRUCE’S BEDROOM – DAY
The shaft of white light has also come back into Bruce’s bedroom, and he also falls straight onto the carpet. Tired also, he too, walks over to his bed, slides onto it and falls straight asleep.
SUBTITLE: Bruce went back to school as well, and to university. He now works for a law firm.
THE END
By Jarred Kennedy
FADE IN…
The first thing we see is a computer, with the monitor showing it is currently in use. On the screen, one can see the game World of Warcraft is currently being played.
INT. BASEMENT – VERY EARLY MORNING
This is a lifeless basement if ever one existed. Painted white, with shut brown curtains probably covering closed windows doing absolutely nothing but complimenting the boring white walls. The basement is also appallingly unkempt: old, dilapidated chairs and a table are spread out around the room, surrounded by food wrappers, softdrink cans, beer bottles, pornographic magazines, cups, plates, and cutlery. Directly in shot, seated on a sofa that’s in such bad condition it looks like it was purchased from a secondhand store twenty years ago, sits nineteen-year-old Frank Gore.
Frank sits slumped back on the sofa, his belly almost bulging out from underneath his shirt, his fingers banging away at his keyboard as he explores the virtual world of the game. Next to him lie three opened bags of corn chips and two opened two-litre bottles of Coca-Cola. He takes his hands momentarily away from the keyboard to take a handful of the corn chips, which he eats, and then a huge swig of the Coca-Cola, which he swallows, and then goes back to the game. He does this in a constant loop every single day.
A black bar swirls clockwise across the screen to show the passing of morning to night, completely skipping the afternoon.
INT. BASEMENT – LATE EVENING
Not one thing has changed in the basement. Frank is quite evidently a computer game addict, and he’s probably in total denial about it. Still slumped back in the sofa like Homer Simpson, still with corn chips and Coca-Cola for what he calls “nutrition.” Yawning now, Frank is leaning, now staring much more closely at the computer screen. He is growing frustrated with the game that has robbed him of so much, and it’s about to make him snap.
FRANK
Damn it! I’ve been stuck on this level all day!
Frank smacks the side of the monitor with the back of his right hand.
Unexpectedly, a MOBILE PHONE rings.
Frank leisurely rises from the sofa and waddles to the other side of the room to a bench, where his phone is. He picks it up and answers it.
FRANK
Hello?
CUT TO:
INT. BEDROOM – NIGHT
This particular room is equally as unkempt as Frank’s basement. In the distance we see an unmade bed in the right hand corner, and in the left can be seen a wardrobe. Posters of thrash metal bands like Sepultura, Nightwish, and Slayer coat the walls with a sense of anger, alienation and even hate.
In direct view, seated at a desk and likely staring at a computer, is BRUCE.
ON BRUCE: Nineteen, white, stocky build, PURPLE dyed hair and black fingernails. By the looks of him, Bruce is a devoted, unapologetic and proud fan of death metal music. He is wearing a black leather trench-coat, and is holding his phone up to his right ear whilst pressing the keys on his keyboard with his free hand.
BRUCE
Oi, Frank you pussy! Are you gonna make a move on that hot chick from Denmark who’s playing right now or what?
Frank’s entire position in front of his computer screen has not changed.
FRANK
Nah, chicks don’t go for guys who do that.
BRUCE
How would you know? I mean yeah, I’ve never had a girlfriend but neither have you.
FRANK
Good point, I guess. You double dare me?
On the right-hand side of the screen there is a long list of users who are playing the game currently. Next to each name is a green dot which operates as a CHAT option. Frank clicks on the green dot next to the user evenstarangel90. A pop-up for chatting appears. Frank types in the box: “Hey, how you doin’? I’m RPGassassin89.” Five seconds pass, and a reply message appears: “Sorry, but I don’t like stalkers.”
Frank fists the desk.
FRANK
See, man? I told you.
BRUCE
(chuckling)
You suck dude. You totally came on way too strong.
Frank takes the phone away from his ear and looks skyward in fury.
FRANK
(shouting)
You are a bully! To me and Bruce!
Completely unexpectedly, two large shafts of intense white light like spotlights come down over Bruce and Frank. They make unnaturally loud sounds, something like that of a massive garage door being opened. Both Frank and Bruce look up in shock – the shafts of light have no end in sight!
Now, the ground starts to shake around the both of them. This is an ominous sign suggesting danger, and the pair have both seen too many science-fiction films to know otherwise. Naturally, they’re both sweating.
Finally, they are slowly lifted off the ground, with the light shafts sucking them in like vortexes. Faster and faster, until they are being sucked through the sky, out of the Earth atmosphere entirely, through a BLACK HOLE, all the while screaming with piercing volume and the sound of the gravitational pull overwhelming, until the Moon and the base of an enormous space ship comes into view.
EXT. SPACESHIP – DARKNESS
This is no human spaceship. It is lime-green, with rivets, gun turrets and rocket launchers covering its every square metre, and shaped like two oversized boats on top of one another. It is an alien spaceship, and most certainly not carrying aliens like E.T.
A large dock roof opens at the vessel’s base. Frank and Bruce are still under control of the gravitational pull.
The dock door has opened by now.
INT. SPACESHIP – DARKNESS
If the exterior of the spaceship looked intimidating, the interior is terrifying. Beginning from the far left hand corner of the dock we pan to find light black walls, very little lighting, a row of storage racks filled with disused robots or robots in need of repair, and scariest of all, to the right of the dock door, a human head on a spit. Edvard Munch could not have painted something as worrying as this.
Frank and Bruce, now at the end of the shafts of white light, are floating above the still open door, but begin to fall. The door now closes at the speed of light, and they crash-land on it, falling on their stomachs.
Frank and Bruce finally rise and dust themselves off, checking for injuries. They are fine.
Frank and Bruce simultaneously look up and around their new surroundings. Initially both react anxiously, however that anxiety turns to extreme excitement when they realize what the dock reminds them of. Both look at each other with exuberance.
FRANK AND BRUCE
(together)
We’re in Starcraft! High-five, bro!
They high five each other.
The dock now goes from almost pitch black to blinding bright instantly. We now hear a bellowing and very authoritative voice, much like James Earl Jones. It is that of an alien.
ALIEN
(not seen; shouting)
Who said that?!
Frank and Bruce now realize this is no dream or game. They fall to the ground simultaneously, and hug each other in terror.
The two just lie on the ground still hugging each other in fear, almost frozen.
ALIEN
(not seen; even louder)
Who said that?!?!
Still shaking with terror, the boys finally find their feet and gradually are able to stand up.
BRUCE
W-w-we did!
Now the alien creature finally shows himself, teleporting into the shot.
ON ALIEN: this terrifying figure looks like the offspring of the Pale Man from Pan’s Labyrinth and the xenomorph from Alien. Seven foot tall, with wrinkled red skin, gills, no hair, a spiky tail, extended razor blades for fingernails and toenails, and bright yellow eyes. It oozes terror from every inch of its anatomy.
Frank and Bruce both scream at the very top of their lungs, and collapse to the ground in fear yet again.
This angers the creature.
ALIEN
Silence! Rise!
The boys do as they have been instructed. Standing completely straight and starting to sweat, Frank and Bruce are almost frozen solid as the creature begins to walk around them in a circle, inspecting them. It sneers continuously and makes a hissing sound as it examines Frank and Bruce’s clothing, appearances and builds.
ALIEN
Just… what the doctor prescribed. A fat slob, and a metal-head! Human scum at its most disposable! I imagine you are both wondering how you got here, and moreover, why you are here. Am I accurate in my presumptions?
Bruce is losing patience. He steps forward to face the creature in the eye.
BRUCE
What the heck do you think?
Frank pulls him back.
FRANK
Now’s not the time for that attitude, you idiot! This thing looks like it’s gonna roast us on a spit and have its followers dance around the fire at the same time!
ALIEN
Hush! I have no plans at all to kill you!
(laughs)
Rather, I want to play a game with you, one which involves no bloodshed of any kind. At least, not if you make no errors. My name is Xerzjik, and I have a challenge for you. Just correctly answer a series of questions about a topic known as “electracy.” That is all the challenge entails. However, should you refuse to accept it, you will never be able to return home. Fail, and you will never return home. Never! Ever! This is not a dream you are having! This is not any kind of joke or hoax that you humans so commonly and poorly pull! Do both of you oxygen thieves understand me?!
FRANK AND BRUCE
(together)
Yes, Xerzjik!
XERZJIK
(bellowing)
What?!
FRANK AND BRUCE
(together)
Yes, Xerzjik, Your Majesty!
XERZJIK
Spoken like true prodigies. Here are your sources you will be needing.
Instantly, two thirty-centimetre thick slabs of bound paper (one for each boy) fall into Frank and Bruce’s hands. Frank and Bruce fall to the ground because of the weight of the documents.
They sit up on the floor of the dock, as Xerzjik leans down and stares icily in their faces.
XERZJIK
I would get reading if I were you. You have two days. Get one answer wrong, and you will never see your stupid, superfluous, insubordinate Earthling friends and relatives ever again, and they will have to bury empty coffins! Mwahahahahahaha!
Xerzjik presses a red button on the glove he is wearing on his left wrist. The dock roof opens, and he zooms out into space, staring at Frank and Bruce frighteningly.
CUT TO:
INT. SPACESHIP DOCK
Frank and Bruce and laying on the floor of the dock with the texts in front of them, opened by about a quarter of the pages. The two of them are scanning the writing with their eyes back and forth, back and forth, trying to get through as quickly as they can but slowly enough to take in every ounce of information as well.
In fast-motion, we see Frank and Bruce flicking through the humongous slabs of paper.
TITLE CARD: ELEVEN HOURS LATER
CUT TO:
INT. SPACESHIP DOCK – ELEVEN HOURS LATER
Frank and Bruce are still laying on the floor of the dock with the texts in front of them, only now they are half-asleep and fighting drowsiness in their aim of getting through the huge texts as soon as they possibly can. Bruce turns over one page and then yawns, with Frank following suit five seconds later.
TITLE CARD: NINE HOURS LATER
We can hear a slight beeping sound. It is an alarm on Bruce’s mobile phone going off. Hearing it, Bruce awakes with a jump. He takes the phone out of his jeans pocket, switches the alarm off and checks the time. It’s now 8:30 Earth time.
BRUCE
Man, we need to get reading again. One more day left!
Bruce leans over and shakes Frank’s shoulder to wake him. Frank opens his eyes for the new day, rubs them, stretches his arms and finally sits up.
Ironically, in front of Frank and Bruce are now the texts and two bowls of porridge. The boys are amazed.
FRANK
Do you think perhaps Xerzjik knows humans can’t study on an empty stomach?
Bruce laughs and grins appreciatively. Both of them prop their heads skyward.
FRANK AND BRUCE
(together)
Thank you, Xerzjik, Your Majesty!
Frank and Bruce each dive for their respective bowl and tuck in.
After a few mouthfuls, the two look at each other in realization of much time they have left before the quiz.
FRANK
I really think we should try to read this again.
BRUCE
Agreed.
Simultaneously, Frank and Bruce finish their breakfasts and start to while away at their texts for the second time.
Fade to black.
TITLE CARD: THE NEXT DAY
Frank and Bruce are by this time fast asleep on the ground of the dock. All of a sudden, the dock door opens, the sound waking them with a jump. Xerzjik appears in front of them, and he means business.
XERZJIK
The day of reckoning is upon us. Eat your human breakfast with haste.
In fast-motion, Frank and Bruce carry out Xerzjik’s orders. When they are done with this, both of them stand up straight.
XERZJIK
Guards!
Two alien guards appear, each wheeling a strange machine probably used for strapping dangerous life-forms into bed, that looks like a combination of an airport trolley and a straightjacket. They stop when they reach Xerzjik, Frank and Bruce.
XERZJIK
Strap them in.
Frank and Bruce turn to look at each other with anxiety.
Each guard pulls each of the boys away and begins to strap them into the contraptions. Frank and Bruce’s bodies are forced into the contraptions, then two sets of very thick bars of metal coming from the side are pushed down over their torsos and feet, securing them.
XERZJIK
Let’s get down to business.
He begins to lead the guards and Frank and Bruce away somewhere.
CUT TO: XERZJIK’S PALACE MAIN HALL – DAY
This is truly a room to behold. Huge and luxurious in its every square centrimetre, it’s like something no Impressionist painter would not go weak at the knees for. The walls have been painted a blazing gold colour, the architecture being the most perfect marble, and red-painted floors to top it all off. There is also a table and later a queen-size bed in the centre of the room each measuring about five metres, the bed coming complete with a curtain around its entire area.
Frank and Bruce have been wheeled to the very front of the hall. Now the guards begin to clip electricity cables to their fingertips. They each look anxious but appear to be hiding it quite well given the circumstances.
XERZJIK
Well, my human scum, this is what it has been about. I will cut straight to the chase. I am going to ask each of you five questions about the notion of electracy. If you get them all right, I will return you to your little planet and you will have lived to see another day. But, get just one answer incorrect and… here’s a demonstration of what will happen.
Xerzjik turns to his right. An alien, most likely a criminal alien, is also strapped into the same contraption and has electricity cables leading to a generator clipped to his fingertips. Xerzjik waltzes over to the generator and pushes a large black button which reads “DO NOT PUSH.”
Bolts of electricity race through the criminal alien’s body, shaking the alien wildly. After three seconds of this, the alien IMPLODES, its blood spilling and its body parts flying everywhere.
Frank and Bruce now freeze with terror. Finally, they SCREAM.
XERZJIK
Do not put all your fear and anxiety to waste yet! I haven’t even asked the first question! Since I understand neither of you will be able to decide amongst yourselves which of you would like to go first, I will do that for you. It’s you Frank.
Frank is now going white as a sheet.
XERZJIK
Be that as it may, with each question I will back and forth between you until we reach the end. That is, if we do reach the end. They are all true-or-false questions, and the more questions we get through, the harder the next question will be. You may take as long as you need to answer. Let us get this over with. Frank. The theorist Gregory Ulmer became one of the most renowned experts of electracy as a result of his text entitled Halflives: A Mystory.
Frank appears momentarily confident.
FRANK
True, Xerzjik, Your Majesty.
Xerzjik now turns to Bruce.
XERZJIK
Bruce. Gregory Ulmer once wrote that mystorys “were designed to simulate the experience of invention, the crossing of discourses that has been shown to occur in the invention process.”
BRUCE
True, Xerzjik, Your Majesty.
Xerzjik turns his focus again to Frank.
XERZJIK
Ulmer never wonders how a being can manage inventing something that will restrict the concept of technology to the home.
FRANK
False, Xerzjik, Your Majesty.
Xerzjik turns his attention back to Bruce
XERZJIK
One of Ulmer’s main arguments is that if electracy is to be introduced into schools, it has the potential to overcome the hurdles faced by any person who aims to surpass Enlightenment reason.
This time, Bruce thinks just for a moment.
BRUCE
True, Xerzjik, Your Majesty.
Once again, Xerzjik switches his focus back to Frank.
XERZJIK
On the nature of subjectivities that could be produced by a large-scale switch from literacy to electracy, Ulmer argues: “In the same way that the practice of reading privately and silently contributed to the formation of “self”, so too will performing hyperrhetoric contribute to a new subjectivication in the electronic apparatus (in which one will have to find a new term of self-reference, neither “parrot” as in the clan identity of the oral apparatus nor “me” in the individualism of literacy.”
Frank rubs his face in thought.
FRANK
True, Xerzjik, Your Majesty.
Once again, Xerzjik switches his focus back to Bruce.
XERZJIK
The article Halflives, a Mystory: Writing Hypertext to Learn was authored by Gregory Ulmer himself.
BRUCE
False, Xerzjik, Your Majesty.
Once again, Xerzjik switches his focus back to Frank.
XERZJIK
Tofts writes that electracy and mystory aim to produce universal truths.
Frank now rubs his face for ten seconds. He appears stumped, but it soon comes to him.
FRANK
False, Xerzjik, Your Majesty.
Once again, Xerzjik switches his focus back to Bruce.
XERZJIK
History is the very first element of mystory.
Bruce breathes in deeply.
BRUCE
True, Xerzjik, Your Majesty.
For the last time, Xerzjik switches his focus back to Frank.
XERZJIK
This is your final question, Frank. The term “hyperlogic” was coined by Darren Tofts in his essay Hyperlogic, the Avant-Garde and Other Transitive Acts.
Frank is now quivering with anxiety. He breathes in even more deeply time, rubbing his face agin. After ten seconds he finally looks up at Xerzjik.
FRANK
True, Xerzjik, Your Majesty.
For the last time, Xerzjik switches his focus back to Bruce.
XERZJIK
Bruce, this is your final question. The other four elements of mystory are herstory, mystery, my story and envois.
Like Frank, Bruce is now almost controlled by his anxiety. He takes a very long deep breath.
BRUCE
True, Xerzjik, Your Majesty.
Xerzjik remains silent for a few moments. Frank and Bruce look at each other, each of them wondering what their fate will be.
XERZJIK
(in alien language; subtitled)
Guards! Release them.
The two alien guards begin to unclip the electrical wires from Frank and Bruce’s fingers, and then free the two boys from the unnamed contraption.
XERZJIK
My deepest congratulations, Frank and Bruce. You have both beaten the game.
Frank and Bruce both now fall to the ground with relief. After five seconds they are able to find their feet again. They are ecstatic.
XERZJIK
You have proven how very wrong I was about you and your species. However, before I send you back to your families and your lives, I want to stress something to you. To begin with, I must confess you two were selected for this as I had been watching the two of you from space for some time. Watching how you do nothing except wasting away your lives by playing computer games. That will get you absolutely nowhere. I felt I had to enforce that upon you both. Electracy is a tool for staying on top of life, and it will become the way of the future. I was only so merciless with you because otherwise, my message would not have gotten through to either of you. Now that you have been put through such a terrifying experience, I want both you to promise me here and now that when you return to Earth, you will get out and grab life by the horns. Do you promise to do that?
BRUCE
Oh, we certainly do!
FRANK
Yes! One hundred percent!
XERZJIK
Good. I bid you both farewell now.
CUT TO: INT. FRANK’S BEDROOM – DAY
Nothing has changed in Frank’s bedroom since he left it. The large shafts of white light that lifted Frank and Bruce appear again in the room, only this time Frank falls back into the room and onto the floor. He lifts himself up on the floor and, tired, walks over to the bed and falls asleep instantly.
SUBTITLE: Frank went back to school and finished this time. He now works for the Commonwealth Bank.
CUT TO:
EXT. BRUCE’S BEDROOM – DAY
The shaft of white light has also come back into Bruce’s bedroom, and he also falls straight onto the carpet. Tired also, he too, walks over to his bed, slides onto it and falls straight asleep.
SUBTITLE: Bruce went back to school as well, and to university. He now works for a law firm.
THE END
Thursday, September 4, 2008
Representations of Women and Non-Caucasians in Science-Fiction Cinema.
Science-fiction, being a genre aimed at and enjoyed primarily by men, has over the centuries been filled with characters that are, for the most part, male and white. In early science-fiction texts, women were seldom ever represented as anything other than damsels in distress, which reinforced the prevailing ideology of the time which stated that women belong in the kitchen. Black characters were nowhere to be seen. That ship has sailed, but whilst those representations of women and the total absence of black characters in pre-postmodern-era science-fiction texts are impossible to read nowadays as anything but attempts at reinforcing the bigoted ideologies of the past, nonetheless those texts have shown contemporary science-fiction filmmakers and writers how to improve upon them and create science-fiction tales that ring true with contemporary audiences. In the past fifty years, science-fiction has evolved to include issues like the power of the individual, non-conformity, radically liberal ideologies as well as retaining political messages, and most importantly to show women and blacks as strong leaders and heroes.
Here I will examine the accuracy and effectiveness of new depictions of women and blacks in three culturally significant contemporary science-fiction films: Alien, its sequel Aliens and The Matrix.
Released in 1979, the seminal science-fiction horror classic Alien showed the great potential – both critically and commercially – for science-fiction texts involving a female protagonist. Lt. Ellen Ripley not only has a physique that pleasurable and reassuring on the eyes (Telotte, p. 51), but she is also a iron-willed and fiercely independent woman who still is not without her flaws (this is so as to not make the viewer read her as a lesbian or even to not reinforce lesbian stereotypes).
Ripley’s victory in her final battle against the extra-terrestrial creature is a reassurance that Ripley is only a protective mother figure, which makes her a successful effort by the filmmakers to erase the nightmarish image of the evil female dominatrix within science-fiction’s patriarchal discourses. Furthermore, critic Barbara Creed implies that if we extend the depiction of Ripley to all female characters in the pantheon of science-fiction texts, we could find new ways of understanding how male ideologies are sometimes used to deny the “difference” of woman in her depiction on the screen (Telotte, p. 51)
Having a strong female heroine in Ripley was not the only gender stereotype the film broke down. The crew’s spaceship Nostromo, whilst it also may be a model of lifeless and sexless rationality, is at the same time matriarchal in the womb-like imagery of Ripley and her crew sleeping in cryogenic pods at the beginning of the film. Less subtly, the Nostromo’s main computer is called Mother, who strangely in the end betrays her “children” by following the orders of the evil company who sent them on their mission (almost making Mother the female equivalent of HAL 9000 from the 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey) (Fulton 1995).
The alien spaceship as well is very feminine in design, showcasing an egg chamber and two very big vaginal walls to animate the female anatomy in a much more confronting way than the Nostromo. The design of the alien spaceship has an atmospheric Gothic feel that has total resemblance to its occupant: a boundary-crossing, shape-shifting being simultaneously male and female, organic and inorganic – a mixture of aroused phallus and castrating vagina (Fulton 1995).
Alien’s 1986 sequel Aliens not only showed Ripley as even tougher than before, it also showcases a female villain. Even more so than the Alien in the first film, the Alien Queen is a sadistic killing machine and the primal mother who has given birth – without a male – to endless and equally deadly offspring. Through her Aliens delivers a gruesome depiction of the reproductive organs of an unstoppable female monster. In this film, Ripley becomes a surrogate mother to Newt, a young girl left alone on the planet LV-426 after her parents and brother are themselves murdered by the inhabiting aliens. The final showdown between Ripley and the Alien Queen ensues after Ripley burns the Queen’s eggs to provoke her after the Queen has kidnapped Newt. Yet, it is not that Ripley is incapable of having children of her own and that she will reproduce because of culture and the Queen from instinct, but rather because the Queen represents Ripley’s other half – the lioness defending her cub. Both Ripley and the Alien Queen only transform into unsympathetic killing machines when their child – whether a biological or surrogate child – is threatened (Creed, p. 51).
The plot of the film The Matrix, and this aspect of the film is a trifle ironic given it seemingly incorporates so many elements that are usually synonymous with the fascination of men, is actually driven mainly by feminine narratives. It falls back on mythic structures centralized by female protagonists in texts such as Alice in Wonderland and Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, the former of which is, in fact, referenced in one scene by Morpheus. In its homages to those aforementioned texts among others, it is Trinity rather than Neo who can be read as the true hero of the story. Trinity has taken her name from a decidedly masculine God, and upon meeting her for the first time, Neo claims “I just thought…you were a guy,” to which she responds, “Most guys do.” (Williams 2003) On the other hand, many critics praised the Wachowskis for opening the film with an extended fight sequence featuring Trinity but noted how they later relegated her to simply being Neo’s love interest for most of the rest of the film (Schneider, p. 911), however when she revives Neo at the end by kissing him, she becomes his hero. This helps Trinity to reaffirm her crucial part in the saving of humanity (Ovnat, p. 4).
While it does not feature female characters as tough as those in Alien and Aliens, The Matrix equals those earlier films’ taboo-toppling gender depictions with its transgressive imagery of both females and males. Switch is a “gender blender” and Neo and Morpheus dress in long skirt-like leather coats. Neo and Trinity’s kiss at the end could be a straight kiss, a gay kiss or a kiss between two androgynous and unsubtle lesbians (because Trinity is wearing very masculine clothes and Neo’s head is shaven). Yet, the abundance of androgynous imagery in the film does not challenge sex or sexual roles. The Matrix is filled with images of gender bending, the leather scene (in all its militarism or sadomasochism), the questioning of who we are as individuals and androgynous aesthetic to reiterate the notion of the power of the individual and the minority (Ovnat, p. 8).
A great number of postmodern science-fiction authors and filmmakers have also unsubtly made race an integral concern in their texts. It should be unsurprising that science-fiction, being a genre awestruck by encounters with difference, must so frequently give us dramatizations of numerous significant racial historical events, starting with the American civil rights movement of the 1960s and the “blaxploitation” film and literary movement of the 1970s, which have collectively paved the way for the multiculturalism of the present day (Roberts p. 95).
In Alien, Ridley Scott presents us with a black-skinned monster, played (in the original film) by a black actor, which lurks at the bottom of a spaceship that is a metaphor for an industrial city, and kills through rape and violence with blistering efficiency. Thus, the crew’s (despite Parker also being black) fear of the Alien is essentially a metaphor for white middle-class individuals’ fear and distrust of an alienated urban black underclass. However, the character of Parker overrides the negative metaphor of the black man often being a homicidal killing machine, as Parker is an intelligent and tough African-American man who is the third last survivor after Ripley and her female colleague Lambert (Roberts p. 96).
Theories concerning The Matrix offer varying suggestions of rebel leader and Neo’s mentor Morpheus as being either John the Baptist or even the Almighty to Neo’s messiah, however the audience knows beyond a shadow of a doubt that this African-American character speaks like an orator with the most engaging wisdom and power – just like the Oracle, who is also African-American (Medved 2003).
Science-fiction writers and filmmakers’ early reluctance to work their texts around black characters was perhaps reminiscent of various space administrations’ refusal to employ black astronauts. Today, black astronauts are commonplace in reality. But while The Matrix was not the first science-fiction blockbuster to feature black heroes – preceding films like The Empire Strikes Back (1980), Independence Day (1996) and Men in Black (1997) deny it that title – it can justifiably be hailed as the first science-fiction film to feature black characters as not just freedom-fighting heroes, but gods and goddesses. Michael Medved proclaims The Matrix and films like it are proof that unification is not just a dream, it is a current reality, and they have helped popularize the notion that society can be aided by African-Americans in positions of authority (Medved 2003).
Blacks are not the only racial minority who science-fiction historically has ignored. Science-fiction writers and filmmakers have taken an even longer time to incorporate Hispanic characters into their texts, which has made Eduardo A. Valenzuela pose the question as to just why there is a lack of Hispanic characters in contemporary science-fiction. Do Hispanics or Latinos even belong in science-fiction, he wonders? Are they as sellable as characters of other ethnicities? (Valenzuela 1997) By breaking new ground by not just incorporating an Hispanic character but also making the Hispanic character in question a woman, Aliens can allay Valenzuela’s fears. Aliens’ Pvt. Vasquez is twice the independent woman Ripley is: a smart-mouthed, feisty woman who, when she is not battling the alien predators, is usually performing feats of strength in order to make her male colleagues impressed and even jealous. In one scene, Pvt. Hudson asks her, “Pvt. Vasquez, have you ever been mistaken for a man?” to which she quickly replies, “No. Have you?”
Science-fiction cinema, at its most transgressive, makes radical social statements not just to provide a breath of fresh air from the more child-oriented entries in the genre and to give us a real depiction of the current state of the world in which we live, but as well to give a voice to all oppressed minorities. Whilst there are still many social minorities for science-fiction to champion, women, blacks and Hispanics are now frowned upon less, thanks to the positive depictions of them in the three films analyzed here. Alien has been applauded for being one of the very first Hollywood films to have a plot worked around a strong and intelligent heroine, as well as a tough black male character; its sequel Aliens toughened Ripley even more and featured a no-nonsense female Hispanic fighter (who can easily be read also as a lesbian, although that reading of the character indeed reinforces lesbian stereotypes); and The Matrix glorifies blacks by showing its black characters as spiritual gods and soothsayers. The impact and legacy of the groundbreaking depictions of race and gender in all three films, both socially and within the film industry, proves unequivocally that science-fiction can be a vehicle for positive social change.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
· Scott, R. 1979, Alien, Twentieth Century Fox Pictures
· Cameron, J. 1986, Aliens, Twentieth Century Fox Pictures
· Wachowski, L., Wachowski, A. 1999, The Matrix, Village Roadshow Films, Warner Bros. Pictures
· Creed, B. 1993, The monstrous feminine: film, feminism, psychoanalysis, p. 51, Routledge
· Fulton, E.J. 1995, Manmade women: technology, femininity and the cinema, University of Alberta (find through ProQuest)
· Telotte, J.P. 2001, Science-fiction film, p. 51, Cambridge
· Williams, G.C. 2003, Mastering the real: Trinity as the “real” hero of The Matrix, Film Criticism, spring 2003 issue (find through ProQuest)
· Schneider, S.J. (ed.) 2002, 1001 movies you must see before you die, p. 911, ABC Books
· Ovnat, H. date not given, Visions of humanity in cyberculture: 1st international conference. Queering the hets: sex gender and sexuality in the Matrix and eXistenZ, pp. 4, 8, http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/ati/Visions/V1/ovnat%20paper.pdf, Hebrew University
· Roberts, A. 2006, Science fiction: the new critical idiom, pp. 95-96, Routledge
· Medved, M. 2003, Hollywood finally moves beyond racial oppression; Final edition, USA Today (find through ProQuest and ArticleLinker)
· Valenzuela, E.A. 1997, No se habla espanol in outer space?, Hispanic, April 1997 (find through ProQuest)
Here I will examine the accuracy and effectiveness of new depictions of women and blacks in three culturally significant contemporary science-fiction films: Alien, its sequel Aliens and The Matrix.
Released in 1979, the seminal science-fiction horror classic Alien showed the great potential – both critically and commercially – for science-fiction texts involving a female protagonist. Lt. Ellen Ripley not only has a physique that pleasurable and reassuring on the eyes (Telotte, p. 51), but she is also a iron-willed and fiercely independent woman who still is not without her flaws (this is so as to not make the viewer read her as a lesbian or even to not reinforce lesbian stereotypes).
Ripley’s victory in her final battle against the extra-terrestrial creature is a reassurance that Ripley is only a protective mother figure, which makes her a successful effort by the filmmakers to erase the nightmarish image of the evil female dominatrix within science-fiction’s patriarchal discourses. Furthermore, critic Barbara Creed implies that if we extend the depiction of Ripley to all female characters in the pantheon of science-fiction texts, we could find new ways of understanding how male ideologies are sometimes used to deny the “difference” of woman in her depiction on the screen (Telotte, p. 51)
Having a strong female heroine in Ripley was not the only gender stereotype the film broke down. The crew’s spaceship Nostromo, whilst it also may be a model of lifeless and sexless rationality, is at the same time matriarchal in the womb-like imagery of Ripley and her crew sleeping in cryogenic pods at the beginning of the film. Less subtly, the Nostromo’s main computer is called Mother, who strangely in the end betrays her “children” by following the orders of the evil company who sent them on their mission (almost making Mother the female equivalent of HAL 9000 from the 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey) (Fulton 1995).
The alien spaceship as well is very feminine in design, showcasing an egg chamber and two very big vaginal walls to animate the female anatomy in a much more confronting way than the Nostromo. The design of the alien spaceship has an atmospheric Gothic feel that has total resemblance to its occupant: a boundary-crossing, shape-shifting being simultaneously male and female, organic and inorganic – a mixture of aroused phallus and castrating vagina (Fulton 1995).
Alien’s 1986 sequel Aliens not only showed Ripley as even tougher than before, it also showcases a female villain. Even more so than the Alien in the first film, the Alien Queen is a sadistic killing machine and the primal mother who has given birth – without a male – to endless and equally deadly offspring. Through her Aliens delivers a gruesome depiction of the reproductive organs of an unstoppable female monster. In this film, Ripley becomes a surrogate mother to Newt, a young girl left alone on the planet LV-426 after her parents and brother are themselves murdered by the inhabiting aliens. The final showdown between Ripley and the Alien Queen ensues after Ripley burns the Queen’s eggs to provoke her after the Queen has kidnapped Newt. Yet, it is not that Ripley is incapable of having children of her own and that she will reproduce because of culture and the Queen from instinct, but rather because the Queen represents Ripley’s other half – the lioness defending her cub. Both Ripley and the Alien Queen only transform into unsympathetic killing machines when their child – whether a biological or surrogate child – is threatened (Creed, p. 51).
The plot of the film The Matrix, and this aspect of the film is a trifle ironic given it seemingly incorporates so many elements that are usually synonymous with the fascination of men, is actually driven mainly by feminine narratives. It falls back on mythic structures centralized by female protagonists in texts such as Alice in Wonderland and Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, the former of which is, in fact, referenced in one scene by Morpheus. In its homages to those aforementioned texts among others, it is Trinity rather than Neo who can be read as the true hero of the story. Trinity has taken her name from a decidedly masculine God, and upon meeting her for the first time, Neo claims “I just thought…you were a guy,” to which she responds, “Most guys do.” (Williams 2003) On the other hand, many critics praised the Wachowskis for opening the film with an extended fight sequence featuring Trinity but noted how they later relegated her to simply being Neo’s love interest for most of the rest of the film (Schneider, p. 911), however when she revives Neo at the end by kissing him, she becomes his hero. This helps Trinity to reaffirm her crucial part in the saving of humanity (Ovnat, p. 4).
While it does not feature female characters as tough as those in Alien and Aliens, The Matrix equals those earlier films’ taboo-toppling gender depictions with its transgressive imagery of both females and males. Switch is a “gender blender” and Neo and Morpheus dress in long skirt-like leather coats. Neo and Trinity’s kiss at the end could be a straight kiss, a gay kiss or a kiss between two androgynous and unsubtle lesbians (because Trinity is wearing very masculine clothes and Neo’s head is shaven). Yet, the abundance of androgynous imagery in the film does not challenge sex or sexual roles. The Matrix is filled with images of gender bending, the leather scene (in all its militarism or sadomasochism), the questioning of who we are as individuals and androgynous aesthetic to reiterate the notion of the power of the individual and the minority (Ovnat, p. 8).
A great number of postmodern science-fiction authors and filmmakers have also unsubtly made race an integral concern in their texts. It should be unsurprising that science-fiction, being a genre awestruck by encounters with difference, must so frequently give us dramatizations of numerous significant racial historical events, starting with the American civil rights movement of the 1960s and the “blaxploitation” film and literary movement of the 1970s, which have collectively paved the way for the multiculturalism of the present day (Roberts p. 95).
In Alien, Ridley Scott presents us with a black-skinned monster, played (in the original film) by a black actor, which lurks at the bottom of a spaceship that is a metaphor for an industrial city, and kills through rape and violence with blistering efficiency. Thus, the crew’s (despite Parker also being black) fear of the Alien is essentially a metaphor for white middle-class individuals’ fear and distrust of an alienated urban black underclass. However, the character of Parker overrides the negative metaphor of the black man often being a homicidal killing machine, as Parker is an intelligent and tough African-American man who is the third last survivor after Ripley and her female colleague Lambert (Roberts p. 96).
Theories concerning The Matrix offer varying suggestions of rebel leader and Neo’s mentor Morpheus as being either John the Baptist or even the Almighty to Neo’s messiah, however the audience knows beyond a shadow of a doubt that this African-American character speaks like an orator with the most engaging wisdom and power – just like the Oracle, who is also African-American (Medved 2003).
Science-fiction writers and filmmakers’ early reluctance to work their texts around black characters was perhaps reminiscent of various space administrations’ refusal to employ black astronauts. Today, black astronauts are commonplace in reality. But while The Matrix was not the first science-fiction blockbuster to feature black heroes – preceding films like The Empire Strikes Back (1980), Independence Day (1996) and Men in Black (1997) deny it that title – it can justifiably be hailed as the first science-fiction film to feature black characters as not just freedom-fighting heroes, but gods and goddesses. Michael Medved proclaims The Matrix and films like it are proof that unification is not just a dream, it is a current reality, and they have helped popularize the notion that society can be aided by African-Americans in positions of authority (Medved 2003).
Blacks are not the only racial minority who science-fiction historically has ignored. Science-fiction writers and filmmakers have taken an even longer time to incorporate Hispanic characters into their texts, which has made Eduardo A. Valenzuela pose the question as to just why there is a lack of Hispanic characters in contemporary science-fiction. Do Hispanics or Latinos even belong in science-fiction, he wonders? Are they as sellable as characters of other ethnicities? (Valenzuela 1997) By breaking new ground by not just incorporating an Hispanic character but also making the Hispanic character in question a woman, Aliens can allay Valenzuela’s fears. Aliens’ Pvt. Vasquez is twice the independent woman Ripley is: a smart-mouthed, feisty woman who, when she is not battling the alien predators, is usually performing feats of strength in order to make her male colleagues impressed and even jealous. In one scene, Pvt. Hudson asks her, “Pvt. Vasquez, have you ever been mistaken for a man?” to which she quickly replies, “No. Have you?”
Science-fiction cinema, at its most transgressive, makes radical social statements not just to provide a breath of fresh air from the more child-oriented entries in the genre and to give us a real depiction of the current state of the world in which we live, but as well to give a voice to all oppressed minorities. Whilst there are still many social minorities for science-fiction to champion, women, blacks and Hispanics are now frowned upon less, thanks to the positive depictions of them in the three films analyzed here. Alien has been applauded for being one of the very first Hollywood films to have a plot worked around a strong and intelligent heroine, as well as a tough black male character; its sequel Aliens toughened Ripley even more and featured a no-nonsense female Hispanic fighter (who can easily be read also as a lesbian, although that reading of the character indeed reinforces lesbian stereotypes); and The Matrix glorifies blacks by showing its black characters as spiritual gods and soothsayers. The impact and legacy of the groundbreaking depictions of race and gender in all three films, both socially and within the film industry, proves unequivocally that science-fiction can be a vehicle for positive social change.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
· Scott, R. 1979, Alien, Twentieth Century Fox Pictures
· Cameron, J. 1986, Aliens, Twentieth Century Fox Pictures
· Wachowski, L., Wachowski, A. 1999, The Matrix, Village Roadshow Films, Warner Bros. Pictures
· Creed, B. 1993, The monstrous feminine: film, feminism, psychoanalysis, p. 51, Routledge
· Fulton, E.J. 1995, Manmade women: technology, femininity and the cinema, University of Alberta (find through ProQuest)
· Telotte, J.P. 2001, Science-fiction film, p. 51, Cambridge
· Williams, G.C. 2003, Mastering the real: Trinity as the “real” hero of The Matrix, Film Criticism, spring 2003 issue (find through ProQuest)
· Schneider, S.J. (ed.) 2002, 1001 movies you must see before you die, p. 911, ABC Books
· Ovnat, H. date not given, Visions of humanity in cyberculture: 1st international conference. Queering the hets: sex gender and sexuality in the Matrix and eXistenZ, pp. 4, 8, http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/ati/Visions/V1/ovnat%20paper.pdf, Hebrew University
· Roberts, A. 2006, Science fiction: the new critical idiom, pp. 95-96, Routledge
· Medved, M. 2003, Hollywood finally moves beyond racial oppression; Final edition, USA Today (find through ProQuest and ArticleLinker)
· Valenzuela, E.A. 1997, No se habla espanol in outer space?, Hispanic, April 1997 (find through ProQuest)
The Pleasures and Perils of Robotics.
If there is one entity on our planet that never stays the same, it must surely be technology, in all its forms. As it improves upon itself, our fascination with technology only grows. It is perhaps the easiest way for us as imperfect beings to conquer the world, if only through a puppet of our making. Technological enhancements are viewed as blessings from the sky in the eyes of each and every one of us, helping us enormously to get through the harshness of life and come out at the end smelling like roses. It doesn’t matter what invention it was or in what time and context it was unleashed upon the world, technology’s positive social impact has forever remained the same. But we have arrived at a point in time where the possibly hazardous implications of future advancements must be ignored no longer.
Recent proposals by scientific experts in using cyberspace routines of investigative design methods involve taking apart the human brain to emancipate oneself from the body. Historically, there several examples of scholars – most notably Descartes – who contended that, contrary to the widely accepted medical argument that was the complete opposite, the human mind and the human body are two commodities that work and act separately, and that as a result each can be studied in the absence of the other (Ferguson, 2001). A far more recent concept that provides a contemporary angle to the body-and-mind-separate-or-mutually-exclusive debate is artificial intelligence. In the current climate, the concept of the robot permeates our very existence, from people on hospital waiting lists to death row. Many critics assume the point of AI is to provide an answer for the question of what it means to be human. As machines are built by us, however, there is the possibility for the most advanced technologies to interact with us minus the destruction of the mind, and our enhanced ability to live almost anywhere has purified the modern world even more for human inhabitation. Essentially, there is a fine line between smart spaces and smart living spaces (Ferguson 2001).
Steven Spielberg’s 2001 film A.I. Artificial Intelligence told the story of a robot boy in the future who fully resembles a real boy minus his being machine inside, learning about existence at the same pace as every human he meets. Interestingly, this perception of a robot child could turn from a possibility to a likelihood within decades thanks to the work of scientists at Switzerland’s Federal Institute of Technology. Sylvain Calinon and his team have patented a sixty-centimetre-tall robot codenamed HOAP-3 which is run on groundbreaking software allowing them to program the robot to perform skills like playing chess just by helping it move its limbs the right way. This is similar to what parents do to educate their children during the early developmental stage of childhood. Calinon’s hope for his team’s breakthrough will enable consumers to teach domesticated robots in the ways of servitude (Barras, 2007).
Relating to this, last year in the United States a state-of-the-art robot was let loose in a class of toddlers for a period of five months (Tanaka et al, 2007). Initially their attitudes to it varied from session to session but in the last week as the robot finally performed its complete behavioural selection it became treated by the children as a peer instead of a toy. This is just one of a rising number of tests and case studies that indicate robot technology is extremely close to attaining all-out love from young human children, which in turn may make it of much use for schoolteachers (Tanaka et al, 2007).
Part of the cyborg theory and our perception of it revolves around their uses for making life easier – but not necessarily for themselves. Artificial intelligence researchers and engineers everywhere are working together today to create robots equipped with standard human agility to give us a helping hand with carrying out daily household chores (Ingebretsen, 2008). This technological proposition calls for all AI techniques, encompassing robotics, knowledge representation, psychology, and developmental learning, to unite for a common aim (Ingebretsen, 2008).
The uses for this robotic human aide potentially stretch further than the home, however. It has already begun in the health care system: Advocate Health Care in Illinois uses robots in two of their hospitals for dispensing pharmaceutical medications, having been programmed to read barcodes associated with literally every medication used in the specific ward (Ceniceros, 2008). These robot pharmacists are faster by a noticeable margin at filling prescriptions than their human counterparts, and much less prone to putting the wrong pill in the wrong bottle, errors like that damaging the reputation of hospital chemists in every country where hospitals can be found (Ceniceros, 2008). Yet, it must be noted that this prospect of a robotic aide in the workforce poses one ominous threat: as this hints at a possible second Industrial Revolution, the same thing that happened to working-class citizens immediately after the first could happen to future generations as a result.
But should this household and workplace robot slave become a reality and then commonplace in mass society, as they grow more highly advanced and subsequently more human, their unconditional loyalty to their owner/maker could be overridden by dangerous feelings of oppression and a lust for revenge, because humans ourselves never appreciate being confined to the life of a slave.
But how big a threat does this pose to our own stability and individual prosperity? Through interaction with communicative robots in our day-to-day lives, our attitudes and emotions with regards to the robots in question have an impact on our behavioural patterns (Nomura et al, 2008). Nomura, Kanda, Suzuki and Kato, drawing on human apprehension, passive-aggressiveness and what those can do for later robot designs and utilizing two self-developed psychological scales for negative reaction to robots (the NARS scale) and reciprocated robot anxiety (the RAS scale), through the results of their study ultimately prove there is indeed evidence within normal human behaviour of a common skepticism about the real power of our technological creations, as well as a connection – whether or not we have the willingness in us to confess it – between technology and to what degree we are in control of our demons and our emotions (Nomura et al, 2008).
As humans, it is the psychological norm for each us of to have a threshold for many negative traits we encounter in others. None of us possess an unlimited amount of patience. Robots, even whilst now they still have yet to be perfected, are conveniently oblivious to the bias we (sporadically) have to them. A recent laboratory test in Japan aimed to find just how quickly robots today respond to their owner’s orders, and to what degree of loyalty (Anonymous, 2008). Thirty-eight students were instructed to order a robot to take out the rubbish, with the cyborg taking between only one and five seconds to make a response. With a two second gap on average being the students’ limit, the robot would speak a word like “well” or “er” to assuage the student’s rapidly diminishing patience. However, when the robot used a small icebreaker to get extra time to form a response, the student did not notice how much time had passed. If the potentially cataclysmic future relations between mankind and robot-kind are to be prevented, we must program robots to have the same communicative levels we enjoy (Anonymous, 2008).
Robots potentially will form a new social minority in future decades. They will begin to outnumber us, and rise up against us if we are not extremely cautious. Fresh reports from the United Kingdom, taking into account new visions of robot status in 2056 by the UK government’s main scientist Sir David King, put forth the possibility that by then robots will be afforded the same basic social rights as every human (Glick, 2007). This will come as no surprise at all to science-fiction fanatics, since Isaac Asimov famously wrote of a future world showing just that: humans and their machine creations sharing the same basic rights everywhere they go. With his policy of the “three laws of robotics,” Asimov presented us with a picture a future utopia where robots and other machines are viewed by the hands that built them as dead objects useful only for scrap metal but should they become essential, they will demand equal rights and will get their way (Glick, 2007).
Borrowing Asimov’s philosophies of robotics in the not-too distant future and transplanting them into overwhelmingly dystopic future landscapes, several highly influential science-fiction film narratives – most notably Blade Runner, The Terminator and The Matrix – have been instrumental as technological cautionary tales with their dark predictions of the possible negative consequences of mankind’s attachment to technology (Kwan 2005). In-depth critiques of science-fiction offer a worthwhile chance for pondering the time-honored notions about the meaning of life and what boundaries there exist in life which none of us can get over. Who knows? Maybe gratitude for and knowledge of the capabilities of robotics and cyberspace could heighten trust between machines and humans, as well as presenting us with clues as what “human being” connotes in a universe dictated for the most part by technology (Kwan 2005).
Looking ahead, what can we do now to prevent Earth from turning into one very, very big rubbish can, to put it metaphorically, because of technology? Each of us needs to think about how much technology we use everyday and as well, the amount of credit we afford it. Nonetheless, or perhaps naturally many technological experts view the possibility of technology eventually causing the death of its creator as just another conspiracy theory dreamed up by science-fiction writers and their followers. Shigeo Horose of the Tokyo Institute of Technology explains, “Robot technology should not be used to interfere with natural human relations and deprive people of their pride and jobs, but should instead be the silent force behind the scenes to support the life of the people.” (Watts, 2008) In the end whoever the future will hold to be successful in their predictions – science-fiction authors/afficionados or their critics – is not the most important issue here at this point. We must work to ensure humans and robots a century from today will be unified in the same causes but able to work independently from each other.
We all have been taught at school about the most tragic mistakes made by humanity all throughout history. This begs the thought, What would psychic abilities on a global scale achieve? Should this, too, become a reality, we then will be granted a perfect opportunity to undo the mistakes of the future even before we make them. Our future is forged everyday by what we do in the present day. All we have to decide is what kind of future we would like, and to create it ourseleves.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
· Ferguson, C. L. 2001, Cyborg culture informing architecture: reinserting the human, Dalhousie University, ProQuest.
· Tanaka, F., Cicourel, A and Movellan, J. R. 2007, Socializtion between toddlers and robots at an early childhood educational centre, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States, Infotrac.
· Barras, C. 2007, The robot that learns like a child, New Scientist, Infotrac.
· Ingebretsen, M. 2008, AI helps researchers get a grip on robotic hands, IEEE Intelligent Systems, ProQuest.
· Ceniceros, R. 2008, Robots reduce errors in dispensing prescriptions, Business Insurance, ProQuest.
· Nomura, T., Kanda, T., Suzuki, T. and Kato, K. 2008, Prediction of human behaviour in human-robot interaction using psychological scales and negative attitudes towards robots, IEEE Transactions on Robotics, Infotrac.
· Anonymous, 2008, Why robots need the gilt of the gab, New Scientist, Infotrac.
· Glick, J. 2007, UK report says robots will have rights. “Always Interesting: AI in the news.” AI Magazine, Infotrac.
· Kwan, W. K. K. 2005, Experiments in subjectivity: a study of postmodern science-fiction, The University of Hong Kong, ProQuest.
· Watts, J. D. 2008, Great minds give a glimpse at possible futures, McClatchy – Tribune Business News, ProQuest.
Recent proposals by scientific experts in using cyberspace routines of investigative design methods involve taking apart the human brain to emancipate oneself from the body. Historically, there several examples of scholars – most notably Descartes – who contended that, contrary to the widely accepted medical argument that was the complete opposite, the human mind and the human body are two commodities that work and act separately, and that as a result each can be studied in the absence of the other (Ferguson, 2001). A far more recent concept that provides a contemporary angle to the body-and-mind-separate-or-mutually-exclusive debate is artificial intelligence. In the current climate, the concept of the robot permeates our very existence, from people on hospital waiting lists to death row. Many critics assume the point of AI is to provide an answer for the question of what it means to be human. As machines are built by us, however, there is the possibility for the most advanced technologies to interact with us minus the destruction of the mind, and our enhanced ability to live almost anywhere has purified the modern world even more for human inhabitation. Essentially, there is a fine line between smart spaces and smart living spaces (Ferguson 2001).
Steven Spielberg’s 2001 film A.I. Artificial Intelligence told the story of a robot boy in the future who fully resembles a real boy minus his being machine inside, learning about existence at the same pace as every human he meets. Interestingly, this perception of a robot child could turn from a possibility to a likelihood within decades thanks to the work of scientists at Switzerland’s Federal Institute of Technology. Sylvain Calinon and his team have patented a sixty-centimetre-tall robot codenamed HOAP-3 which is run on groundbreaking software allowing them to program the robot to perform skills like playing chess just by helping it move its limbs the right way. This is similar to what parents do to educate their children during the early developmental stage of childhood. Calinon’s hope for his team’s breakthrough will enable consumers to teach domesticated robots in the ways of servitude (Barras, 2007).
Relating to this, last year in the United States a state-of-the-art robot was let loose in a class of toddlers for a period of five months (Tanaka et al, 2007). Initially their attitudes to it varied from session to session but in the last week as the robot finally performed its complete behavioural selection it became treated by the children as a peer instead of a toy. This is just one of a rising number of tests and case studies that indicate robot technology is extremely close to attaining all-out love from young human children, which in turn may make it of much use for schoolteachers (Tanaka et al, 2007).
Part of the cyborg theory and our perception of it revolves around their uses for making life easier – but not necessarily for themselves. Artificial intelligence researchers and engineers everywhere are working together today to create robots equipped with standard human agility to give us a helping hand with carrying out daily household chores (Ingebretsen, 2008). This technological proposition calls for all AI techniques, encompassing robotics, knowledge representation, psychology, and developmental learning, to unite for a common aim (Ingebretsen, 2008).
The uses for this robotic human aide potentially stretch further than the home, however. It has already begun in the health care system: Advocate Health Care in Illinois uses robots in two of their hospitals for dispensing pharmaceutical medications, having been programmed to read barcodes associated with literally every medication used in the specific ward (Ceniceros, 2008). These robot pharmacists are faster by a noticeable margin at filling prescriptions than their human counterparts, and much less prone to putting the wrong pill in the wrong bottle, errors like that damaging the reputation of hospital chemists in every country where hospitals can be found (Ceniceros, 2008). Yet, it must be noted that this prospect of a robotic aide in the workforce poses one ominous threat: as this hints at a possible second Industrial Revolution, the same thing that happened to working-class citizens immediately after the first could happen to future generations as a result.
But should this household and workplace robot slave become a reality and then commonplace in mass society, as they grow more highly advanced and subsequently more human, their unconditional loyalty to their owner/maker could be overridden by dangerous feelings of oppression and a lust for revenge, because humans ourselves never appreciate being confined to the life of a slave.
But how big a threat does this pose to our own stability and individual prosperity? Through interaction with communicative robots in our day-to-day lives, our attitudes and emotions with regards to the robots in question have an impact on our behavioural patterns (Nomura et al, 2008). Nomura, Kanda, Suzuki and Kato, drawing on human apprehension, passive-aggressiveness and what those can do for later robot designs and utilizing two self-developed psychological scales for negative reaction to robots (the NARS scale) and reciprocated robot anxiety (the RAS scale), through the results of their study ultimately prove there is indeed evidence within normal human behaviour of a common skepticism about the real power of our technological creations, as well as a connection – whether or not we have the willingness in us to confess it – between technology and to what degree we are in control of our demons and our emotions (Nomura et al, 2008).
As humans, it is the psychological norm for each us of to have a threshold for many negative traits we encounter in others. None of us possess an unlimited amount of patience. Robots, even whilst now they still have yet to be perfected, are conveniently oblivious to the bias we (sporadically) have to them. A recent laboratory test in Japan aimed to find just how quickly robots today respond to their owner’s orders, and to what degree of loyalty (Anonymous, 2008). Thirty-eight students were instructed to order a robot to take out the rubbish, with the cyborg taking between only one and five seconds to make a response. With a two second gap on average being the students’ limit, the robot would speak a word like “well” or “er” to assuage the student’s rapidly diminishing patience. However, when the robot used a small icebreaker to get extra time to form a response, the student did not notice how much time had passed. If the potentially cataclysmic future relations between mankind and robot-kind are to be prevented, we must program robots to have the same communicative levels we enjoy (Anonymous, 2008).
Robots potentially will form a new social minority in future decades. They will begin to outnumber us, and rise up against us if we are not extremely cautious. Fresh reports from the United Kingdom, taking into account new visions of robot status in 2056 by the UK government’s main scientist Sir David King, put forth the possibility that by then robots will be afforded the same basic social rights as every human (Glick, 2007). This will come as no surprise at all to science-fiction fanatics, since Isaac Asimov famously wrote of a future world showing just that: humans and their machine creations sharing the same basic rights everywhere they go. With his policy of the “three laws of robotics,” Asimov presented us with a picture a future utopia where robots and other machines are viewed by the hands that built them as dead objects useful only for scrap metal but should they become essential, they will demand equal rights and will get their way (Glick, 2007).
Borrowing Asimov’s philosophies of robotics in the not-too distant future and transplanting them into overwhelmingly dystopic future landscapes, several highly influential science-fiction film narratives – most notably Blade Runner, The Terminator and The Matrix – have been instrumental as technological cautionary tales with their dark predictions of the possible negative consequences of mankind’s attachment to technology (Kwan 2005). In-depth critiques of science-fiction offer a worthwhile chance for pondering the time-honored notions about the meaning of life and what boundaries there exist in life which none of us can get over. Who knows? Maybe gratitude for and knowledge of the capabilities of robotics and cyberspace could heighten trust between machines and humans, as well as presenting us with clues as what “human being” connotes in a universe dictated for the most part by technology (Kwan 2005).
Looking ahead, what can we do now to prevent Earth from turning into one very, very big rubbish can, to put it metaphorically, because of technology? Each of us needs to think about how much technology we use everyday and as well, the amount of credit we afford it. Nonetheless, or perhaps naturally many technological experts view the possibility of technology eventually causing the death of its creator as just another conspiracy theory dreamed up by science-fiction writers and their followers. Shigeo Horose of the Tokyo Institute of Technology explains, “Robot technology should not be used to interfere with natural human relations and deprive people of their pride and jobs, but should instead be the silent force behind the scenes to support the life of the people.” (Watts, 2008) In the end whoever the future will hold to be successful in their predictions – science-fiction authors/afficionados or their critics – is not the most important issue here at this point. We must work to ensure humans and robots a century from today will be unified in the same causes but able to work independently from each other.
We all have been taught at school about the most tragic mistakes made by humanity all throughout history. This begs the thought, What would psychic abilities on a global scale achieve? Should this, too, become a reality, we then will be granted a perfect opportunity to undo the mistakes of the future even before we make them. Our future is forged everyday by what we do in the present day. All we have to decide is what kind of future we would like, and to create it ourseleves.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
· Ferguson, C. L. 2001, Cyborg culture informing architecture: reinserting the human, Dalhousie University, ProQuest.
· Tanaka, F., Cicourel, A and Movellan, J. R. 2007, Socializtion between toddlers and robots at an early childhood educational centre, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States, Infotrac.
· Barras, C. 2007, The robot that learns like a child, New Scientist, Infotrac.
· Ingebretsen, M. 2008, AI helps researchers get a grip on robotic hands, IEEE Intelligent Systems, ProQuest.
· Ceniceros, R. 2008, Robots reduce errors in dispensing prescriptions, Business Insurance, ProQuest.
· Nomura, T., Kanda, T., Suzuki, T. and Kato, K. 2008, Prediction of human behaviour in human-robot interaction using psychological scales and negative attitudes towards robots, IEEE Transactions on Robotics, Infotrac.
· Anonymous, 2008, Why robots need the gilt of the gab, New Scientist, Infotrac.
· Glick, J. 2007, UK report says robots will have rights. “Always Interesting: AI in the news.” AI Magazine, Infotrac.
· Kwan, W. K. K. 2005, Experiments in subjectivity: a study of postmodern science-fiction, The University of Hong Kong, ProQuest.
· Watts, J. D. 2008, Great minds give a glimpse at possible futures, McClatchy – Tribune Business News, ProQuest.
Capital Punishment and the Media.
It is the job of a journalist to show the public either sanitised propaganda or confrontational statements of truth. The newspapers, radio stations and television networks employing them, however, dictate just what their journalists report about. Said organisations often have preferences or links with particular political parties. Presenting “safe” stories is not a journalist’s intention, but rather the intention of newspaper editors and radio and television news producers, whose greatest concern is that of selling newspapers and winning ratings – it’s a popularity contest. But it takes nothing more than their devotion to their work and concern for the awareness of their society for a journalist to take a stand and say, “Hang on, there is another more important side to this story which I must expose.”
For as long as it has been in existence, the death penalty has been a heated topic of much taboo. When it is raised in the media, it is often sanitised or purely just implied, with the criminals in question portrayed as heartless sadists instead of having their motives and reasoning highlighted. But what we ourselves think of the death penalty is irrelevant. What is relevant is why the media never seems to have a biased opinion towards it, and why some within the media are in support of it and some against.
Many reports of cases involving the death penalty have a religious historical angle. Bishop Christopher Saunders, Chairman of the Australian Catholic Social Justice Council, states, “The death penalty is an offence against the dignity and sanctity of all human life which must be respected, even in those who have done great evil. Nothing is gained through capital punishment. Indeed, use of the death penalty undermines respect for life and contributes to a culture of revenge. Such thoughts of revenge exist in contradistinction to our belief in life as a gift from God which is celebrated so vividly at this time of Christmas.” (Australia’s Leaders Should Renounce Death Penalty) Here, Bishop Saunders is making a pledge to the media to show the lighter sides of death row prisoners at a time of year which should remain synonymous with warmth and love, without implying that he thinks they have not sinned – the media tells us these convicts have sinned and shoves it down our throats.
The death penalty is clearly something of different importance for many different people. Some of us who, to begin with, are in full-fledged opposition to it may experience something which leads us to change our minds; others, vice versa. Reporters for the Sydney Morning Herald Margo Kingston and Antony Loewenstein showed then-Prime Minister John Howard as staunch opposition to capital punishment originally. When Indonesian terrorist Amrozi, one of the perpetrators of the 2002 Bali bombings, was sentenced to death, however, Loewenstein showed Prime Minister Howard as quote, “As usual, John Howard excels at having it both ways. He’s against the death penalty, but approves of it at the same time. I can’t stand the way he talks about “normal Australian” response to grief, as if there is such a thing. I think the talk of Australian values and un-Australian behaviour the most moronic expressions flung about. Next there’ll be an Australian way for buttering your toast!” (Kingston, Loewenstein, 2003).
Support for the death penalty in 2001 was surprisingly low in what would seem the most unlikely place – the United States. On June 11 that year one of the most infamous episodes in America’s recent history came to an end with the execution of 1995 Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh, however McVeigh’s execution actually found many Americans in a state of reconsideration for state killing. Of course, we all know what would tragically occur in New York City and Washington D.C. exactly two months after the day of McVeigh’s execution – the September 11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon. All these events encourage capital punishment supporters in their apparent message that execution is the only option for people who commit acts of mass murder. Interestingly, however, even shortly after the execution of Timothy McVeigh and the events of September 11, 2001, support in the U.S. for capital punishment was at a rate of 63, the lowest since the 1950s (Sarat 2001). This shows that despite the executions of mass murderers or acts of extreme terrorism, many still see capital punishment as a cruel and deliberate spilling of blood, and how maybe gives what the people in question might want – to be put out of their misery.
Of course, in much of the rest of the world, the U.S. is viewed, perhaps misguidedly, as a violent country, so what has happened for the majority of its population to turn against the death penalty? The main reason, according to many academics, is the introduction of DNA tests in cases since the 1990s – these are conducted to justifiably prove whether the person in question is guilty or innocent. There is also an underlying concern for the accidental execution of innocent people, and political disputes trying to sway ordinary citizens between two views (Sangillo 2007).
There is also to consider the power-plays between conservatism and liberalism. The media dehumanizes and marginalizes criminals, making an atmosphere that allows the criminal justice system to treat convicted felons harshly. This is especially the case for members of minority groups based on race and/or ethnicity. The public’s opinion on crime comes from several sources besides personal experience; fear of crime is driven by media treatments of crime rather than by statistics. The politicisation of crime has eliminated the definitions of criminals chiefly to African-American men and the poor, and death-row convicts to heartless monsters (Munro 1999).
One of the most widespread news stories of 2006 was the conviction and execution of fallen Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. However, what was so debated, given how disliked Hussein was, was whether his execution was justified. Even Foreign Minister Alexander Downer had these words to say: “The execution of Saddam Hussein is a significant moment in Iraq’s history. He has been brought to justice, following a process of fair trial and appeal, something he denied to countless thousands of victims of his regime. Saddam and two of his former officials were found guilty and sentenced to death by the Iraqi Higher Tribunal on 5 November of crimes against humanity for the orchestration of the execution of 148 men and boys in the village of Dujail nearly 25 years ago. It is a credit to the people of Iraq that he was provided a fair trial, which lasted over a year, for this, and the gruesome other crimes for which he and his regime were responsible. No matter what one might think about the death penalty, and the Government of Iraq is aware of the Australian Government’s position on capital punishment, we must also respect the right of sovereign states to pass judgment relating to crimes committed against their people, within their jurisdictions.” (Downer, 2006) Members of Civil Liberties Australia both agreed and disagreed with Downer’s statement, with CLA Director Vic Adams claiming, “The death penalty overturns that most basic of all human rights - the right to life. This does not change if the person involved is Saddam Hussein or Scott Rush, one of Australia’s forgotten “Bali 9” on death row. In the case of Saddam, the state-sponsored killing can only be for revenge as it is hardly a deterrent. Countries which continue to practise the death penalty have no right to be called civilised. Where are Australia’s politicians protesting such barbarity?” (Adams 2006)
Everyone has their own views on the state’s shedding of blood, and everyone is entitled to his or her views on it. The death penalty is most definitely a very topical and touchy issue; however, whether we like it or not, it is one that will not go away. But individual views on it are irrelevant here. What is relevant is why and how the media talk down to us by, at the least, watering down capital punishment, or at the most, glorifying it. Why does the media think we are all like impressionable children? Why do the media feel that we should be inclined to see things from their point of view? Of course, capital punishment is indeed a very sensitive topic, but underneath all the unsentimental bloodshed it involves, it is a human rights issue. Those are the stories that matter the most.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
· Author/s not stated, 19/12/2003, Australia’s Leaders Should Renounce Death Penalty, http://www.socialjustice.catholic.org.au/CONTENT/media_releases/2003_12_19_1072095434.html
· Kingston, M. and Loewenstein, A. 2003, Capital punishment: honest John goes all postmodern, Sydney Morning Herald, 18/18/03, http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/08/18/1061059762662.html
· Sarat, A. 2001, When the state kills: capital punishment and the American condition, http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=YD0W6BYp5vAC&oi=fnd&pg=PR9&dq=capital+punishment+and+the+media&ots=XKdomne2fd&sig=uBp8la8-oJGOfhNQUzHz7QpH_yo#PPP1,M1
· Sangillo, G. 2007, Death and innocence, National Journal magazine, Vol. 39, Iss. 17, find through ProQuest
· Munro, V.T. 1999, Images of crime and criminals: How media creations drive public opinion and policy, University of Minnesota
· Downer, A. 2006, Execution of Saddam Hussein, 30 December 2006, http://www.foreignminister.gov.au/releases/2006/fa145_06.html
· McKenzie, M.H., Adams, V., Klugman, K. et al, Civil Liberties Australia – What you say 2006, Civil Liberties Australia, http://www.claact.org.au/pages/yoursay.php
For as long as it has been in existence, the death penalty has been a heated topic of much taboo. When it is raised in the media, it is often sanitised or purely just implied, with the criminals in question portrayed as heartless sadists instead of having their motives and reasoning highlighted. But what we ourselves think of the death penalty is irrelevant. What is relevant is why the media never seems to have a biased opinion towards it, and why some within the media are in support of it and some against.
Many reports of cases involving the death penalty have a religious historical angle. Bishop Christopher Saunders, Chairman of the Australian Catholic Social Justice Council, states, “The death penalty is an offence against the dignity and sanctity of all human life which must be respected, even in those who have done great evil. Nothing is gained through capital punishment. Indeed, use of the death penalty undermines respect for life and contributes to a culture of revenge. Such thoughts of revenge exist in contradistinction to our belief in life as a gift from God which is celebrated so vividly at this time of Christmas.” (Australia’s Leaders Should Renounce Death Penalty) Here, Bishop Saunders is making a pledge to the media to show the lighter sides of death row prisoners at a time of year which should remain synonymous with warmth and love, without implying that he thinks they have not sinned – the media tells us these convicts have sinned and shoves it down our throats.
The death penalty is clearly something of different importance for many different people. Some of us who, to begin with, are in full-fledged opposition to it may experience something which leads us to change our minds; others, vice versa. Reporters for the Sydney Morning Herald Margo Kingston and Antony Loewenstein showed then-Prime Minister John Howard as staunch opposition to capital punishment originally. When Indonesian terrorist Amrozi, one of the perpetrators of the 2002 Bali bombings, was sentenced to death, however, Loewenstein showed Prime Minister Howard as quote, “As usual, John Howard excels at having it both ways. He’s against the death penalty, but approves of it at the same time. I can’t stand the way he talks about “normal Australian” response to grief, as if there is such a thing. I think the talk of Australian values and un-Australian behaviour the most moronic expressions flung about. Next there’ll be an Australian way for buttering your toast!” (Kingston, Loewenstein, 2003).
Support for the death penalty in 2001 was surprisingly low in what would seem the most unlikely place – the United States. On June 11 that year one of the most infamous episodes in America’s recent history came to an end with the execution of 1995 Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh, however McVeigh’s execution actually found many Americans in a state of reconsideration for state killing. Of course, we all know what would tragically occur in New York City and Washington D.C. exactly two months after the day of McVeigh’s execution – the September 11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon. All these events encourage capital punishment supporters in their apparent message that execution is the only option for people who commit acts of mass murder. Interestingly, however, even shortly after the execution of Timothy McVeigh and the events of September 11, 2001, support in the U.S. for capital punishment was at a rate of 63, the lowest since the 1950s (Sarat 2001). This shows that despite the executions of mass murderers or acts of extreme terrorism, many still see capital punishment as a cruel and deliberate spilling of blood, and how maybe gives what the people in question might want – to be put out of their misery.
Of course, in much of the rest of the world, the U.S. is viewed, perhaps misguidedly, as a violent country, so what has happened for the majority of its population to turn against the death penalty? The main reason, according to many academics, is the introduction of DNA tests in cases since the 1990s – these are conducted to justifiably prove whether the person in question is guilty or innocent. There is also an underlying concern for the accidental execution of innocent people, and political disputes trying to sway ordinary citizens between two views (Sangillo 2007).
There is also to consider the power-plays between conservatism and liberalism. The media dehumanizes and marginalizes criminals, making an atmosphere that allows the criminal justice system to treat convicted felons harshly. This is especially the case for members of minority groups based on race and/or ethnicity. The public’s opinion on crime comes from several sources besides personal experience; fear of crime is driven by media treatments of crime rather than by statistics. The politicisation of crime has eliminated the definitions of criminals chiefly to African-American men and the poor, and death-row convicts to heartless monsters (Munro 1999).
One of the most widespread news stories of 2006 was the conviction and execution of fallen Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. However, what was so debated, given how disliked Hussein was, was whether his execution was justified. Even Foreign Minister Alexander Downer had these words to say: “The execution of Saddam Hussein is a significant moment in Iraq’s history. He has been brought to justice, following a process of fair trial and appeal, something he denied to countless thousands of victims of his regime. Saddam and two of his former officials were found guilty and sentenced to death by the Iraqi Higher Tribunal on 5 November of crimes against humanity for the orchestration of the execution of 148 men and boys in the village of Dujail nearly 25 years ago. It is a credit to the people of Iraq that he was provided a fair trial, which lasted over a year, for this, and the gruesome other crimes for which he and his regime were responsible. No matter what one might think about the death penalty, and the Government of Iraq is aware of the Australian Government’s position on capital punishment, we must also respect the right of sovereign states to pass judgment relating to crimes committed against their people, within their jurisdictions.” (Downer, 2006) Members of Civil Liberties Australia both agreed and disagreed with Downer’s statement, with CLA Director Vic Adams claiming, “The death penalty overturns that most basic of all human rights - the right to life. This does not change if the person involved is Saddam Hussein or Scott Rush, one of Australia’s forgotten “Bali 9” on death row. In the case of Saddam, the state-sponsored killing can only be for revenge as it is hardly a deterrent. Countries which continue to practise the death penalty have no right to be called civilised. Where are Australia’s politicians protesting such barbarity?” (Adams 2006)
Everyone has their own views on the state’s shedding of blood, and everyone is entitled to his or her views on it. The death penalty is most definitely a very topical and touchy issue; however, whether we like it or not, it is one that will not go away. But individual views on it are irrelevant here. What is relevant is why and how the media talk down to us by, at the least, watering down capital punishment, or at the most, glorifying it. Why does the media think we are all like impressionable children? Why do the media feel that we should be inclined to see things from their point of view? Of course, capital punishment is indeed a very sensitive topic, but underneath all the unsentimental bloodshed it involves, it is a human rights issue. Those are the stories that matter the most.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
· Author/s not stated, 19/12/2003, Australia’s Leaders Should Renounce Death Penalty, http://www.socialjustice.catholic.org.au/CONTENT/media_releases/2003_12_19_1072095434.html
· Kingston, M. and Loewenstein, A. 2003, Capital punishment: honest John goes all postmodern, Sydney Morning Herald, 18/18/03, http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/08/18/1061059762662.html
· Sarat, A. 2001, When the state kills: capital punishment and the American condition, http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=YD0W6BYp5vAC&oi=fnd&pg=PR9&dq=capital+punishment+and+the+media&ots=XKdomne2fd&sig=uBp8la8-oJGOfhNQUzHz7QpH_yo#PPP1,M1
· Sangillo, G. 2007, Death and innocence, National Journal magazine, Vol. 39, Iss. 17, find through ProQuest
· Munro, V.T. 1999, Images of crime and criminals: How media creations drive public opinion and policy, University of Minnesota
· Downer, A. 2006, Execution of Saddam Hussein, 30 December 2006, http://www.foreignminister.gov.au/releases/2006/fa145_06.html
· McKenzie, M.H., Adams, V., Klugman, K. et al, Civil Liberties Australia – What you say 2006, Civil Liberties Australia, http://www.claact.org.au/pages/yoursay.php
From the moment art was first created, life has imitated it. Artists and storytellers have all through the ages devoted their lives to creating things that should provide depictions of reality that ring true with our own perfect wishes for our lives. Indeed, none of us lead perfectly joyous existences, but through such depictions of perfection we can imagine it. Then there is nostalgia. Revisiting our past through things we have held onto from our childhood and youth allows us to think of all the defining moments in our lives, and this helps us look on the bright side of our lives in the present day. Film is one medium which can provide nostalgic feelings. However, film in the postmodern era has increasingly swayed away from the connection between the past and the present, and instead attempts to show reflections on the past with fragmentation and humour, making those of us who experienced the era discussed in the film almost feel embarrassed, rather than nostalgic.
In this essay I shall highlight and deconstruct the depictions of fragmented and parodic nostalgia in the films Almost Famous, Forrest Gump and Little Miss Sunshine.
The 2000 film Almost Famous, a semi-autobiographical film of writer-director Cameron Crowe’s own youth experiences, fills in all the nooks and crannies of the American rock music scene of the 1970s. William Miller is a fifteen-year-old budding journalist who successfully lies about his age so he can become a reporter for Rolling Stone magazine and break away from his overbearing mother, who looks contemptuously at any form of popular culture. In the film, the rock stars are shown for laughs as bickering and raving lunatics who most of the time cannot get on with their bandmates and are too high to play a good show anyway.
The opening title sequence in Almost Famous is a suitably nostalgic opening for a film designed to carry nostalgic significance for the youth of a bygone era. It evokes the early seventies rock scene by panning slowly over a collection of vinyl album covers, concert souvenirs, and eight-track tapes. And, perhaps by no coincidence, the production company behind Almost Famous is called Vinylfilms (Auner 2000). It is the perfect opening titles sequence for this film because it tells us, if we have not heard anything about the film prior to watching, that we are going to be taking a journey back in time to the seventies.
Almost Famous exposes, for both those of us never experienced the seventies and those who didn’t see the darkest side of seventies counter-culture, the negative aspects of the lives of rock stars – addiction, pressure, and the frustrations of, as William puts it, “a mid-level band struggling with their own limitations in the harsh face of stardom.” And since rock and roll is something embedded in our collective consciousness as deeply as television, literature and cinema, this depiction of the grittiness of rock-star life is equally relevant today.
The 1994 film Forrest Gump takes us on a journey over four tumultuous decades in American history, the 1950s through the 1980s, through the eyes of the titular character of Forrest Gump. Forrest is a dimwit from Greenbow, Alabama who, among other things, has fought in Vietnam, become a national football and ping-pong star and has crossed paths with John Lennon, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon, while his true love Jenny eludes him. Now, while waiting at a bus stop for the bus that will take him to Jenny, Forrest tells his incredible story to anyone who will listen to him. As it turns out, Jenny’s life has taken a vastly different course, as we learn she has over the years protested the war and embraced alcohol, drugs and illicit sex.
As he guides us through the story, Forrest’s low IQ comes through the entire time in his misinterpretations of the events he is trying to describe, which does not make him a reliable narrator. For much of the film, Forrest’s impairments are exploited for laughs and he is oblivious to the prejudice others have towards him. Thus he only ever remains an onlooker and his narration places him right in the middle of the events of four decades of American history (Boyle 2001). However, his kind-hearted everyman qualities ultimately make him the spokesman for the Baby Boomers of America, who came of age during the era in which the whole of their country did.
The ways in which Forrest almost magically falls into one poignant historical event after another are the devices that make the film postmodern. Its treating history as a flexible story which welcomes Forrest’s appearances alongside so many influential historical figures is one of the film’s most distinctive elements, and it is, indeed, one of its points of postmodernism. If one theoretical use of postmodernism can be to show history as a narrative like any other, then a back-up point to a stronger one is that that narrative can always be messed with - people like Gump can be inserted into a story, and therefore they can be inserted into history, and others can just as easily be removed (Scott 2001, p. 3).
Agreeably it is hard to look past the fact that Forrest is the handicapped son of a single mother with an African-American man as his best friend, but while some misled critics have referred to Forrest Gump as conservative thanks to its supposed all-American themes, violence – however sanitized it may be – is an inevitable part of Forrest’s story. The film discusses interpersonal violence (notably bullying, homicide and, very subtly, child abuse) and struggle (Ku Klux Klan uprisings, antiwar protests, the Vietnam War), all of which are central to the film’s revisionist history as well as the coming-of-age aspect of the story (Boyle 2001).
During our upbringings, we all get poignant memories of our relationship with our family and the special gatherings we had with them, while such gatherings were still possible. The 2006 film Little Miss Sunshine rings true with our respective memories of those happy, sad, and sometimes plain tense times with our families.
Little Miss Sunshine follows the Hoovers, a normal working-class American family who embark on a cross-country trip to California so seven-year-old daughter Olive can compete in the Little Miss Sunshine child beauty pageant. There’s just one problem: other than Olive, they all have a few reservations with one other member of their family. Father Richard, a struggling motivational speaker, and mother Sheryl are almost broke and their marriage on the rocks. Sheryl’s brother Frank is a gay Proust scholar who has just unsuccessfully attempted suicide. Richard’s foul-mouthed and homophobic father Edwin has just been evicted from his nursing home for snorting cocaine, and Dwayne, Sheryl’s fifteen-year-old son from a previous marriage, is a depressed teen who has taken a vow of silence and hates everyone.
On the surface, Little Miss Sunshine does not seem like a movie that harks back to a bygone era, what with its setting in the present day. However, each Hoover family member, except for Olive, inwardly yearns for the more innocent and happy times in their past, something we all tend to do when our present odds seem insurmountable. Their cross-country trip elicits dormant emotions and re-opens old wounds for the Hoovers, and as we watch this dysfunctional family somewhat unknowingly forming a closer bond with each other by (reluctantly) baring their souls to each other, our own memories of the bonding car trips we have had with our families over the years come flooding back. Also, there is a semi-autobiographical side to the film, with it being based on screenwriter Michael Arndt’s own childhood family car trip experience.
Road movies are normally populated by characters whose ability to overcome their sociopathic ways eventually helps them to look on the bright side of life. Families are portrayed in this way less often. The yellow VW bus the Hoovers travel in is a good metaphor for their “dysfunctional family” status: the VW bus is reminiscent of vehicles of the 1960s and 1970s, a time when the conservative American ideal of perfection had not yet taken hold, and the vehicle is already in such a dilapidated state that it seems to be breaking apart just as quickly as its contents. This indicates a light-hearted parody of “conventional” family relationships, yet the moments of pathos in the movie gives the viewer a way to identify with one character or just to emotionally connect with each character, despite how they are all presented as a bunch of losers (Luzón 2006). We are meant to empathize with the Hoovers but also to laugh at them, rather than with them. Ultimately they show us how much worse our families could be, and to make us more thankful that our families are nothing like them.
While Little Miss Sunshine possibly only does this if the viewer can identify with it, Almost Famous and Forrest Gump both illustrate how certain icons and events of the past came to be so important and influential in the first place. In Almost Famous, Stillwater’s (the fictional band in the film) lead guitarist Russell Hammond, after falling out with the other band members and getting stoned at a party, boards their tour-bus to muted silence. Soon after, Elton John’s “Tiny Dancer” plays over the radio, with everyone singing along and remembering what brought them together to begin with –the music (Olsen 2000).
Forrest Gump does this in two ways. Firstly, it looks back on many historical events – some that united the world and others that divided the world – that have since between studied in school classrooms, all over the world, and attempts to pinpoint the reasons why memories of these events continue to get poignant, angry or sad reactions from the people who were alive at the time. It brings to the forefront the processes of re-construction, merging the past with the present, utilizing real-life footage and fiction, and this merger acknowledges how history and myth are stamped in the collective consciousness of a specific country (Cook 2004).
But what each of these three films have in common, with regards to their postmodern takes on nostalgia, is an underlying (and it is especially subtle in Little Miss Sunshine) and unflinching exposé on American subculture and how it is almost just as bad today as it was back then. Indeed, all three films feature a character who takes drugs, and these exposés – when spotted – actually make each film feel much less sentimental than they initially seem. Almost Famous and Forrest Gump, in their darker, more emotional moments, show the inescapable force of an American dystopia which sucks people in and destroys their lives, irrevocably shattering the American Dream.
Little Miss Sunshine shows this by depicting a nuclear family at war with each other, and the dangers stemming from American institutions like child beauty pageants – indeed, Olive’s naughty dance routine at the Little Miss Sunshine pageant is actually a statement against these breeding grounds for paedophiles. And as Jim Emerson writes, “Little Miss Sunshine shows us a world in which there’s a form, a brochure, a procedure, a job title, a diet, a step-by-step program, a career path, a prize, a retirement community, to quantify, sort, categorize and process every human emotion or desire. Nothing exists that cannot be compartmentalized or turned into a self-improvement mantra about “winners and losers.”” (Emerson 2006)
Almost Famous, at the time of its release in 2000, was in the middle of a slew of 1970s-set feature films. How these films recycled seventies pop culture is not only the latest example kitsch mish-mashes that have been present in cinema for decades. At the bottom of the dustbin of history there lies an unlimited goldmine of stories and images that are of relevance today. The most notable aspect of Almost Famous, however is the film’s rebellious sincerity, which strangely works well with its gritty texture of seventies subculture, because the film is essentially Cameron Crowe’s tribute to the people who helped him gather his fondest youth memories (Scott 2000).
In Forrest Gump, which is arguably the most groundbreaking of the three films under the spotlight here, we are guided by a man through his life story, in which he has often been thrust onto the sidelines of history unknowingly and by accident, when he is too simple to have completely understood any of it. This makes the film’s deconstruction of history warped, yet simultaneously it provides us with an historical viewpoint that is subversive in the way it alters and sometimes softens historical recollections for the innocent in us (which is really done simply for laughs), because Forrest’s mental condition has enabled him to retain his innocence. The film’s deconstruction and contemporizing of history most clear, however, in how star Tom Hanks was digitally placed into old footage of many of the historical events of which Forrest becomes a part.
Finally, Little Miss Sunshine is ultimately a fractured story of an even-more fractured family and how time heals their collective wounds, bringing them closer together (albeit in the face of tragedy) while it is still possible. While it vastly differs from Almost Famous and Forrest Gump in its time setting, Little Miss Sunshine ultimately becomes a twisted allegory and something of a cautionary tale for all families. We all recall long and uncomfortable car journeys with our families, and it does not matter if our relationship with them was anything like the relationships the Hoovers have with each other, because whether or not we want to admit, we all either grew up with someone who was, or once were ourselves, just like one of the Hoovers.
Cinema has always depicted and deliberately provoked feeling of nostalgia as a means to touch the hearts of even the most cynical audiences. But often throughout the decades, nostalgia cinema has become one of deliberate sentimentality. It is obvious the two go hand-in-hand, and since some of us dislike one or the other or perhaps even both, the challenging and often satirical exploits of postmodernism have to be thrown into the mix to give the film an edge of fragmented and parodic nostalgia. Almost Famous and Forrest Gump show the light and shade of the counterculture of the last four decades and never shy away from making those of us who experienced them almost feel ashamed to say that that is where they came from. Little Miss Sunshine, on the other hand, throws normal American family values out the window, giving us a story of a nuclear family who come to remind us of the people we grew up living with, reminding us that we must always move on from the past without forgetting it. Also, each of these films are only light on the surface. Collectively, these three films prove nostalgia that is fragmented and parodic is a refreshing and savage form of postmodern sentimentality we can all fall in love with.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
· Crowe, C. 2000, Almost famous, Columbia TriStar Pictures, Vinylfilms
· Zemeckis, R. 1994, Forrest Gump, Paramount Pictures
· Dayton, J. Faris, V. 2006, Little Miss Sunshine, Fox Searchlight Pictures
· Auner, J. 2000, Making old machines speak: images of technology in recent music, http://www.humnet.ucla.edu/echo/Volume2-Issue2/auner/auner.pdf, SUNY Stony Brook
· Boyle, K. 2001, New man, old brutalisms? Reconstructing a violent history in Forrest Gump, University of Wolverhampton, UK, http://www.scope.nottingham.ac.uk/article.php?issue=dec2001&id=280§ion=article
· Scott, S. D. 2001, Like a box of chocolates: Forrest Gump and postmodernism, p. 3, Literature Film Quarterly, http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3768/is_200101/ai_n8934162/pg_1
· Luzón, V. 2006, Little Miss Sunshine, Cinema, Culture and Society Portal, http://ccs.filmculture.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=71&Itemid=38
· Olsen, M. 2000, The uncool: Cameron Crowe discusses the making of “Almost Famous,” Film Comment magazine, September 2000 issue, http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1069/is_5_36/ai_65643706/pg_2
· Cook, P. 2004, Screening the past: memory and nostalgia in cinema, find through Google Book Search
· Emerson, J. 2006, Little Miss Sunshine (review), http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060803/REVIEWS/60724005/1023
· Scott, A. O. 2000, Ah the good old bad old 70’s, published in The New York Times, find through ProQuest
In this essay I shall highlight and deconstruct the depictions of fragmented and parodic nostalgia in the films Almost Famous, Forrest Gump and Little Miss Sunshine.
The 2000 film Almost Famous, a semi-autobiographical film of writer-director Cameron Crowe’s own youth experiences, fills in all the nooks and crannies of the American rock music scene of the 1970s. William Miller is a fifteen-year-old budding journalist who successfully lies about his age so he can become a reporter for Rolling Stone magazine and break away from his overbearing mother, who looks contemptuously at any form of popular culture. In the film, the rock stars are shown for laughs as bickering and raving lunatics who most of the time cannot get on with their bandmates and are too high to play a good show anyway.
The opening title sequence in Almost Famous is a suitably nostalgic opening for a film designed to carry nostalgic significance for the youth of a bygone era. It evokes the early seventies rock scene by panning slowly over a collection of vinyl album covers, concert souvenirs, and eight-track tapes. And, perhaps by no coincidence, the production company behind Almost Famous is called Vinylfilms (Auner 2000). It is the perfect opening titles sequence for this film because it tells us, if we have not heard anything about the film prior to watching, that we are going to be taking a journey back in time to the seventies.
Almost Famous exposes, for both those of us never experienced the seventies and those who didn’t see the darkest side of seventies counter-culture, the negative aspects of the lives of rock stars – addiction, pressure, and the frustrations of, as William puts it, “a mid-level band struggling with their own limitations in the harsh face of stardom.” And since rock and roll is something embedded in our collective consciousness as deeply as television, literature and cinema, this depiction of the grittiness of rock-star life is equally relevant today.
The 1994 film Forrest Gump takes us on a journey over four tumultuous decades in American history, the 1950s through the 1980s, through the eyes of the titular character of Forrest Gump. Forrest is a dimwit from Greenbow, Alabama who, among other things, has fought in Vietnam, become a national football and ping-pong star and has crossed paths with John Lennon, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon, while his true love Jenny eludes him. Now, while waiting at a bus stop for the bus that will take him to Jenny, Forrest tells his incredible story to anyone who will listen to him. As it turns out, Jenny’s life has taken a vastly different course, as we learn she has over the years protested the war and embraced alcohol, drugs and illicit sex.
As he guides us through the story, Forrest’s low IQ comes through the entire time in his misinterpretations of the events he is trying to describe, which does not make him a reliable narrator. For much of the film, Forrest’s impairments are exploited for laughs and he is oblivious to the prejudice others have towards him. Thus he only ever remains an onlooker and his narration places him right in the middle of the events of four decades of American history (Boyle 2001). However, his kind-hearted everyman qualities ultimately make him the spokesman for the Baby Boomers of America, who came of age during the era in which the whole of their country did.
The ways in which Forrest almost magically falls into one poignant historical event after another are the devices that make the film postmodern. Its treating history as a flexible story which welcomes Forrest’s appearances alongside so many influential historical figures is one of the film’s most distinctive elements, and it is, indeed, one of its points of postmodernism. If one theoretical use of postmodernism can be to show history as a narrative like any other, then a back-up point to a stronger one is that that narrative can always be messed with - people like Gump can be inserted into a story, and therefore they can be inserted into history, and others can just as easily be removed (Scott 2001, p. 3).
Agreeably it is hard to look past the fact that Forrest is the handicapped son of a single mother with an African-American man as his best friend, but while some misled critics have referred to Forrest Gump as conservative thanks to its supposed all-American themes, violence – however sanitized it may be – is an inevitable part of Forrest’s story. The film discusses interpersonal violence (notably bullying, homicide and, very subtly, child abuse) and struggle (Ku Klux Klan uprisings, antiwar protests, the Vietnam War), all of which are central to the film’s revisionist history as well as the coming-of-age aspect of the story (Boyle 2001).
During our upbringings, we all get poignant memories of our relationship with our family and the special gatherings we had with them, while such gatherings were still possible. The 2006 film Little Miss Sunshine rings true with our respective memories of those happy, sad, and sometimes plain tense times with our families.
Little Miss Sunshine follows the Hoovers, a normal working-class American family who embark on a cross-country trip to California so seven-year-old daughter Olive can compete in the Little Miss Sunshine child beauty pageant. There’s just one problem: other than Olive, they all have a few reservations with one other member of their family. Father Richard, a struggling motivational speaker, and mother Sheryl are almost broke and their marriage on the rocks. Sheryl’s brother Frank is a gay Proust scholar who has just unsuccessfully attempted suicide. Richard’s foul-mouthed and homophobic father Edwin has just been evicted from his nursing home for snorting cocaine, and Dwayne, Sheryl’s fifteen-year-old son from a previous marriage, is a depressed teen who has taken a vow of silence and hates everyone.
On the surface, Little Miss Sunshine does not seem like a movie that harks back to a bygone era, what with its setting in the present day. However, each Hoover family member, except for Olive, inwardly yearns for the more innocent and happy times in their past, something we all tend to do when our present odds seem insurmountable. Their cross-country trip elicits dormant emotions and re-opens old wounds for the Hoovers, and as we watch this dysfunctional family somewhat unknowingly forming a closer bond with each other by (reluctantly) baring their souls to each other, our own memories of the bonding car trips we have had with our families over the years come flooding back. Also, there is a semi-autobiographical side to the film, with it being based on screenwriter Michael Arndt’s own childhood family car trip experience.
Road movies are normally populated by characters whose ability to overcome their sociopathic ways eventually helps them to look on the bright side of life. Families are portrayed in this way less often. The yellow VW bus the Hoovers travel in is a good metaphor for their “dysfunctional family” status: the VW bus is reminiscent of vehicles of the 1960s and 1970s, a time when the conservative American ideal of perfection had not yet taken hold, and the vehicle is already in such a dilapidated state that it seems to be breaking apart just as quickly as its contents. This indicates a light-hearted parody of “conventional” family relationships, yet the moments of pathos in the movie gives the viewer a way to identify with one character or just to emotionally connect with each character, despite how they are all presented as a bunch of losers (Luzón 2006). We are meant to empathize with the Hoovers but also to laugh at them, rather than with them. Ultimately they show us how much worse our families could be, and to make us more thankful that our families are nothing like them.
While Little Miss Sunshine possibly only does this if the viewer can identify with it, Almost Famous and Forrest Gump both illustrate how certain icons and events of the past came to be so important and influential in the first place. In Almost Famous, Stillwater’s (the fictional band in the film) lead guitarist Russell Hammond, after falling out with the other band members and getting stoned at a party, boards their tour-bus to muted silence. Soon after, Elton John’s “Tiny Dancer” plays over the radio, with everyone singing along and remembering what brought them together to begin with –the music (Olsen 2000).
Forrest Gump does this in two ways. Firstly, it looks back on many historical events – some that united the world and others that divided the world – that have since between studied in school classrooms, all over the world, and attempts to pinpoint the reasons why memories of these events continue to get poignant, angry or sad reactions from the people who were alive at the time. It brings to the forefront the processes of re-construction, merging the past with the present, utilizing real-life footage and fiction, and this merger acknowledges how history and myth are stamped in the collective consciousness of a specific country (Cook 2004).
But what each of these three films have in common, with regards to their postmodern takes on nostalgia, is an underlying (and it is especially subtle in Little Miss Sunshine) and unflinching exposé on American subculture and how it is almost just as bad today as it was back then. Indeed, all three films feature a character who takes drugs, and these exposés – when spotted – actually make each film feel much less sentimental than they initially seem. Almost Famous and Forrest Gump, in their darker, more emotional moments, show the inescapable force of an American dystopia which sucks people in and destroys their lives, irrevocably shattering the American Dream.
Little Miss Sunshine shows this by depicting a nuclear family at war with each other, and the dangers stemming from American institutions like child beauty pageants – indeed, Olive’s naughty dance routine at the Little Miss Sunshine pageant is actually a statement against these breeding grounds for paedophiles. And as Jim Emerson writes, “Little Miss Sunshine shows us a world in which there’s a form, a brochure, a procedure, a job title, a diet, a step-by-step program, a career path, a prize, a retirement community, to quantify, sort, categorize and process every human emotion or desire. Nothing exists that cannot be compartmentalized or turned into a self-improvement mantra about “winners and losers.”” (Emerson 2006)
Almost Famous, at the time of its release in 2000, was in the middle of a slew of 1970s-set feature films. How these films recycled seventies pop culture is not only the latest example kitsch mish-mashes that have been present in cinema for decades. At the bottom of the dustbin of history there lies an unlimited goldmine of stories and images that are of relevance today. The most notable aspect of Almost Famous, however is the film’s rebellious sincerity, which strangely works well with its gritty texture of seventies subculture, because the film is essentially Cameron Crowe’s tribute to the people who helped him gather his fondest youth memories (Scott 2000).
In Forrest Gump, which is arguably the most groundbreaking of the three films under the spotlight here, we are guided by a man through his life story, in which he has often been thrust onto the sidelines of history unknowingly and by accident, when he is too simple to have completely understood any of it. This makes the film’s deconstruction of history warped, yet simultaneously it provides us with an historical viewpoint that is subversive in the way it alters and sometimes softens historical recollections for the innocent in us (which is really done simply for laughs), because Forrest’s mental condition has enabled him to retain his innocence. The film’s deconstruction and contemporizing of history most clear, however, in how star Tom Hanks was digitally placed into old footage of many of the historical events of which Forrest becomes a part.
Finally, Little Miss Sunshine is ultimately a fractured story of an even-more fractured family and how time heals their collective wounds, bringing them closer together (albeit in the face of tragedy) while it is still possible. While it vastly differs from Almost Famous and Forrest Gump in its time setting, Little Miss Sunshine ultimately becomes a twisted allegory and something of a cautionary tale for all families. We all recall long and uncomfortable car journeys with our families, and it does not matter if our relationship with them was anything like the relationships the Hoovers have with each other, because whether or not we want to admit, we all either grew up with someone who was, or once were ourselves, just like one of the Hoovers.
Cinema has always depicted and deliberately provoked feeling of nostalgia as a means to touch the hearts of even the most cynical audiences. But often throughout the decades, nostalgia cinema has become one of deliberate sentimentality. It is obvious the two go hand-in-hand, and since some of us dislike one or the other or perhaps even both, the challenging and often satirical exploits of postmodernism have to be thrown into the mix to give the film an edge of fragmented and parodic nostalgia. Almost Famous and Forrest Gump show the light and shade of the counterculture of the last four decades and never shy away from making those of us who experienced them almost feel ashamed to say that that is where they came from. Little Miss Sunshine, on the other hand, throws normal American family values out the window, giving us a story of a nuclear family who come to remind us of the people we grew up living with, reminding us that we must always move on from the past without forgetting it. Also, each of these films are only light on the surface. Collectively, these three films prove nostalgia that is fragmented and parodic is a refreshing and savage form of postmodern sentimentality we can all fall in love with.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
· Crowe, C. 2000, Almost famous, Columbia TriStar Pictures, Vinylfilms
· Zemeckis, R. 1994, Forrest Gump, Paramount Pictures
· Dayton, J. Faris, V. 2006, Little Miss Sunshine, Fox Searchlight Pictures
· Auner, J. 2000, Making old machines speak: images of technology in recent music, http://www.humnet.ucla.edu/echo/Volume2-Issue2/auner/auner.pdf, SUNY Stony Brook
· Boyle, K. 2001, New man, old brutalisms? Reconstructing a violent history in Forrest Gump, University of Wolverhampton, UK, http://www.scope.nottingham.ac.uk/article.php?issue=dec2001&id=280§ion=article
· Scott, S. D. 2001, Like a box of chocolates: Forrest Gump and postmodernism, p. 3, Literature Film Quarterly, http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3768/is_200101/ai_n8934162/pg_1
· Luzón, V. 2006, Little Miss Sunshine, Cinema, Culture and Society Portal, http://ccs.filmculture.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=71&Itemid=38
· Olsen, M. 2000, The uncool: Cameron Crowe discusses the making of “Almost Famous,” Film Comment magazine, September 2000 issue, http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1069/is_5_36/ai_65643706/pg_2
· Cook, P. 2004, Screening the past: memory and nostalgia in cinema, find through Google Book Search
· Emerson, J. 2006, Little Miss Sunshine (review), http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060803/REVIEWS/60724005/1023
· Scott, A. O. 2000, Ah the good old bad old 70’s, published in The New York Times, find through ProQuest
Power Struggles and High School Society: A Reflective Essay
DISCLAIMER: This is not an academic essay; rather, it is a personal reflective essay I did for my Year 12 English class back in 2005. I’ve held onto it all this time because from time to time I like to revisit it just to reflect on what I was thinking and feeling at that particular time in my life, and how far I’ve come since then. I’ve decided to post it here due to the hope that some high school student who may have just stumbled on this page might just get something out of it. Lastly, to any member of the North Rockhampton High School class of 2005 who might be reading this right now, know that this essay was and is NOT meant to be defamatory to you in any way. So enjoy.
High school is like a jungle. That’s a thinking man’s way of saying, To have survived it is to hate survived hell. Students can be divided into three different groups: the predators (lions, tigers, snakes etc.), who belittle everyone else because they think they’re superior; the prey (birds, fish, insects, rodents etc.), who so frequently are made to feel like the scum of the Earth by their “superior” peers, and the rest (monkeys and trees), who live out their lives in peace, filling out the remaining scenery. High schools have one of the highest occurrence levels of power struggles.
Why is this so? This is how teenagers – like animals – adapt to their natural habitat. More so, they are most very self-conscious about their own reputation. In primary school, bullying happens just as much, but not for this reason, as primary school students are simply too young to care. Teenagers are emotionally volatile, and in high school reputation is everything. They “go with the crowd” to fit in. When in groups, they use stand-off tactics to bully weaker students in order to look cool in front of their friends – hunting in packs.
When I first started Year 8, I was an innocent and naïve 13-year-old, anxious and scared of the experience that awaited me. It only took me a little while to settle in, but after I did the prospect of surviving high school seemed much more difficult than I had first foreseen. The workload was relentless, the teachers were stricter, and the older students were constantly trying to be intimidating. But what especially shocked me was the transformation my classmates took on. They were not children anymore. But now I know that’s just human nature, as very soon after it happened to me, too.
I have been a victim of bullying all my life. High school has been the worst. One especially bad patch caused by my being bullied was in the middle of Year 9, when I was constantly getting upset at school for what now seem to be very stupid and pointless reasons. It even got so bad that I wanted to kill myself. I felt completely alone, like an astronaut stranded in space by himself. But I got over that phase almost as quickly as I got into it.
Everything happens for a reason, and in retrospect I believe this experience was one through which I had to go, and if I didn’t, I would’ve missed out on a vital life lesson: that you shouldn’t care what anyone else thinks of you. And I don’t. Every student here is so paranoid about their own reputations, so caught up in their own shadow, to just be an individual, someone who says “Say what you want to about me, but I don’t care!” you need to have more guts than Pauline Hanson. Every school needs one of these individuals, and I believe, at North Rockhampton High School, I have to be that individual.
There is no place in society where power struggles are more abundant and severe. You can turn on the evening news or open a newspaper day after day and hear or see stories of workers’ strikes and political disputes. Corruption and confidentiality also play a part in struggles of power. In the current Bundaberg hospital scandal, Indian doctor Jayant Patel (or “Dr. Death”), who is accused of deliberately killing innocent patients, abused his power by threatening to sack his employees if they exposed to the authorities the details of what he was doing. Those of whom who actually dared to “blow the whistle” on Dr. Death are the individuals, so to speak, in this situation. They exposed him because they felt he should not get away with his actions.
What ignites power struggles? Racial prejudice, sexual harassment, different religious beliefs, social resentments, dictatorships? Or is it just humans’ natural blood lust? Because every case is different I suppose we will never know every reason for sure. But what is clear, is the tremendous effect power struggles have upon the world in which we live. All major cases (that is, which are widely told to us through the media) toy with our emotions and in some cases even make some of us scared to leave the safety of our own homes. For example, the War or Terror has caused many of us to be very wary of Muslims in the post-9/11 world; the Dr. Death inquiry has instilled in Australians the fear of being admitted to hospital in Bundaberg. And with the case of power struggles in schools, bullying much too frequently makes victimized students petrified of going to school, a side-effect which in turn affects their learning.
Almost any person who experienced it can tell you that high school is one of the most grueling things you will go through in life. Some will say moving to high school from primary school is tough, but after you’ve settled in there it’s all smooth sailing from there. The way I see it, they could not be more wrong if they tried. You see, the truth is, that transition – moving to high school from primary school – is just a warm-up. It prepares you for the real tests in the five years to come. The workload piles up as the years breeze by. Puberty and the inescapable abuse people serve up to you there pulls you apart and rebuilds you into an angry, emotionally scarred young adults when you leave high school, in vast contrast to what you were when you entered it. Only the strongest survive. Can you stand the heat?
Through my own personal experiences of high school, despite all the aforementioned personal upheavals I have had to endure, it has made me a better person. As a Year 8 student I was not always successfully trying to fit in. Once I did, I discovered the true nature of this place and of my friends. I found myself, I found my crowd, and of my friends I found which were my genuine friends and which were just trying to take advantage of me. I now am fully aware of the true nature and effects of power struggles in society but that awareness has not made me afraid of going outside and enjoying myself or dissuaded me from living my life as an individual.
High school is like a jungle. That’s a thinking man’s way of saying, To have survived it is to hate survived hell. Students can be divided into three different groups: the predators (lions, tigers, snakes etc.), who belittle everyone else because they think they’re superior; the prey (birds, fish, insects, rodents etc.), who so frequently are made to feel like the scum of the Earth by their “superior” peers, and the rest (monkeys and trees), who live out their lives in peace, filling out the remaining scenery. High schools have one of the highest occurrence levels of power struggles.
Why is this so? This is how teenagers – like animals – adapt to their natural habitat. More so, they are most very self-conscious about their own reputation. In primary school, bullying happens just as much, but not for this reason, as primary school students are simply too young to care. Teenagers are emotionally volatile, and in high school reputation is everything. They “go with the crowd” to fit in. When in groups, they use stand-off tactics to bully weaker students in order to look cool in front of their friends – hunting in packs.
When I first started Year 8, I was an innocent and naïve 13-year-old, anxious and scared of the experience that awaited me. It only took me a little while to settle in, but after I did the prospect of surviving high school seemed much more difficult than I had first foreseen. The workload was relentless, the teachers were stricter, and the older students were constantly trying to be intimidating. But what especially shocked me was the transformation my classmates took on. They were not children anymore. But now I know that’s just human nature, as very soon after it happened to me, too.
I have been a victim of bullying all my life. High school has been the worst. One especially bad patch caused by my being bullied was in the middle of Year 9, when I was constantly getting upset at school for what now seem to be very stupid and pointless reasons. It even got so bad that I wanted to kill myself. I felt completely alone, like an astronaut stranded in space by himself. But I got over that phase almost as quickly as I got into it.
Everything happens for a reason, and in retrospect I believe this experience was one through which I had to go, and if I didn’t, I would’ve missed out on a vital life lesson: that you shouldn’t care what anyone else thinks of you. And I don’t. Every student here is so paranoid about their own reputations, so caught up in their own shadow, to just be an individual, someone who says “Say what you want to about me, but I don’t care!” you need to have more guts than Pauline Hanson. Every school needs one of these individuals, and I believe, at North Rockhampton High School, I have to be that individual.
There is no place in society where power struggles are more abundant and severe. You can turn on the evening news or open a newspaper day after day and hear or see stories of workers’ strikes and political disputes. Corruption and confidentiality also play a part in struggles of power. In the current Bundaberg hospital scandal, Indian doctor Jayant Patel (or “Dr. Death”), who is accused of deliberately killing innocent patients, abused his power by threatening to sack his employees if they exposed to the authorities the details of what he was doing. Those of whom who actually dared to “blow the whistle” on Dr. Death are the individuals, so to speak, in this situation. They exposed him because they felt he should not get away with his actions.
What ignites power struggles? Racial prejudice, sexual harassment, different religious beliefs, social resentments, dictatorships? Or is it just humans’ natural blood lust? Because every case is different I suppose we will never know every reason for sure. But what is clear, is the tremendous effect power struggles have upon the world in which we live. All major cases (that is, which are widely told to us through the media) toy with our emotions and in some cases even make some of us scared to leave the safety of our own homes. For example, the War or Terror has caused many of us to be very wary of Muslims in the post-9/11 world; the Dr. Death inquiry has instilled in Australians the fear of being admitted to hospital in Bundaberg. And with the case of power struggles in schools, bullying much too frequently makes victimized students petrified of going to school, a side-effect which in turn affects their learning.
Almost any person who experienced it can tell you that high school is one of the most grueling things you will go through in life. Some will say moving to high school from primary school is tough, but after you’ve settled in there it’s all smooth sailing from there. The way I see it, they could not be more wrong if they tried. You see, the truth is, that transition – moving to high school from primary school – is just a warm-up. It prepares you for the real tests in the five years to come. The workload piles up as the years breeze by. Puberty and the inescapable abuse people serve up to you there pulls you apart and rebuilds you into an angry, emotionally scarred young adults when you leave high school, in vast contrast to what you were when you entered it. Only the strongest survive. Can you stand the heat?
Through my own personal experiences of high school, despite all the aforementioned personal upheavals I have had to endure, it has made me a better person. As a Year 8 student I was not always successfully trying to fit in. Once I did, I discovered the true nature of this place and of my friends. I found myself, I found my crowd, and of my friends I found which were my genuine friends and which were just trying to take advantage of me. I now am fully aware of the true nature and effects of power struggles in society but that awareness has not made me afraid of going outside and enjoying myself or dissuaded me from living my life as an individual.
Wednesday, September 3, 2008
A Photo That Stopped the World.
Generations are defined by the images and events they grew up with. From the First World War, the Great Depression, the Second World War, the assassination of John F. Kennedy and Neil Armstrong setting foot on the Moon, all the way along to the fall of the Berlin Wall, the death of Princess Diana and, of course, the catastrophic events of September 11, 2001. All some of the most symbolic and poignant historical events of the last century, each either defined a generation or separated two, but they remain etched in the memory of even those of us who weren’t alive when they happened through the images that simply won’t go away.
In 1972, one harrowing image changed public attitudes to the Vietnam War to dissent, for millions of people. That image was, of course, the photograph taken by Vietnamese photographer Nick Ut of a young naked girl running across a country road, after being burned with napalm during a South Vietnamese bombing raid on her village. For years beforehand, many Westerners had been staunchly in protest of the war in Vietnam, and the widespread distribution of this photograph only added fuel to the fire. Of that fateful day in 1972, Ut says, “You know, I had been outside the village that morning and I took a lot of pictures. I was almost leaving the village when I saw two aeroplanes. The first dropped four bombs and the second aeroplane dropped another four napalm bombs.” Ut now claims, “The pictures were shown in America, they were shown everywhere. They were shown in all the Communist countries - in China and in Vietnam. They still use the photo. Even though pictures are taken in every war, they still show the picture of Kim. They don’t want it to happen again – not napalm.” (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4517597.stm)
This devastating photograph shows the horrors of the war right from the perspectives of those who were on the frontline by accident – the civilians. The girl’s nakedness show how said civilians were never shielded from the war, and that they were stuck in the middle of a battlefield, and however justified the attack, the photograph depicts the horrors of war in a clear and concrete manner, without being toned down for the masses. It unsurprisingly – and deservedly – earned Nick Ut a Pulitzer Prize (Rademaker 2004).
Photography is a tool for the eternal capturing of a single moment in time. Photographers like to use their own views to preserve an image for all time so the other side of the photograph is artistic, not neutral. Just like a writer or an artist can use their imagination to show off their creativity, to do that photographers use nothing but the truth. Photographers like Nick Ut risked their lives so that they could show they world what their politicians, both then and now, don’t what them to see – another side of the story which is simply too powerful to be propaganda (Rademaker 2004).
The military has always been a significant hurdle for journalists to get around whilst trying to show the reality of an ongoing war. While there is necessary censorship of information that will jeopardize a particular mission, this necessary censorship applies only to very minute details, which a very sensible journalist will omit. The other side to this argument is the distribution of information that is nothing more than persuasive propaganda (Kennedy 2007).
Starting with the Spanish-American war in 1898, a journalist’s job when covering a war was to praise it, even if they wanted it to end. This was the same with the First and Second World Wars. However, by the time of the Korean and Vietnam Wars, television had begun to take hold and through this miraculous medium, people were able to see more of the world with which they were unfamiliar. In Vietnam, many television networks themselves were so cynical of the governments controlling them that they allowed their journalists to carry out reports that showed the war in all its horror. After the distribution of not just Kim Phuc’s photo, but also victims of events like the My Lai massacre and the conflict between South Vietnamese Buddhists and American forces, American public contempt for the war skyrocketed as quickly as the death toll. This change of heart in ordinary people is what is inspired when journalists dare to step out of their ceremonial positions, and become humanists. They are no longer trying to do their jobs, but rather, exposing the corruption of our politicians who should be trying to make a difference in a good way (Kennedy 2004).
But while throughout history war photography has gone from being used as propaganda to a tool for the spreading of the truth, it has also divided many into both wanting to win the war and to put and end to violence and suffering. As humans, we are undeniably obsessed with the suffering of others – the distribution on the 12 September 2001 of the infamous photo of a man falling out the North Tower of the World Trade Center to his death immediately after the 9/11 terrorist attacks received an angry response, but it has since emerged as the most well-known photo of the events of that infamous day (Scott 2006). Why do we often have a fascinated response from such confronting and depressing images? Perhaps we sometimes want to be challenged and moved, even without having homicidal tendencies, or that through seeing these kinds of images we get a glimpse of how our difficult lives could be worse, thus stopping us from taking so much for granted and enabling us to more often think of others and look on the bright side of life. For most of us, fascination with depressing things simply means a source of inspiration.
However, just as we sometimes forget that celebrities are just as flawed as we are, it is possible to forget the different or even more personal stories that people behind famous photographs have. In the same 1972 bombing of her village Kim Phuc lost two of her six brothers, with one of her surviving brothers being permanently blinded. She has crimson rope-like scars on her back as result of the removal of her burning clothes. In 1986 she was separated from her parents and sent to Cuba to study, where she met her husband Bui Hoy Toan, with whom she finally escaped to Canada in 1992 and had a son the following year (Plummer, Eftimediades, 1995). She is now a United Nations advocate for peace.
Kim Phuc, as a result of that photo, remains an accidental spokesperson for the inhumanity of war. But perhaps the strongest indicator of the power of that photograph is that even at the time it was printed in some of the most socially conservative newspapers in existence. This fact suggests that its statement about war made some of the most conservatively-inclined people of the day to look deeper into the actions and notions they were supporting. It continues to do that today.
However, Kim Phuc, whether she likes it or not, will never be able to either live down the photograph of her at nine years old, running away from war with napalm burning her skin, nor erase the harrowing memories of that day. We all may be able to come to our own conclusions about war from news reports or films, but unless we ever have the misfortune of being there, we will never discover the horrors of war in their full scale. Michael Kimmelman begs us to remember, however, that Kim’s unforgettable image also stands for millions of others, all throughout history, who as children or teenagers, were victims of war (Kimmelman 2006). Kim was indeed one of the more lucky ones since she lived to tell her tale, but the war will remain with her forever. “I know that picture changed the world, and it changed my life. I don’t want to remember that day,” Kim stated when attending a war photography workshop in 1995. At that same event, Nick Ut said, “ I thought something was missing. I thought how nice it would be if these guys who were killed could get involved. So even though we have photographers here who do underwater photos, who do fashion photos, one thing I wanted to point out with the memorial is that this is a fun job, it’s a good job, but people do die.” (Judson 1995) This makes us ponder the question, Why does suffering sell?
Nick Ut’s photograph was an image of modernity for the Baby Boomer generation. To be a part of modernity means finding ourselves living in an environment that promises an adventure and a change in us – and simultaneously, one which poses a very real threat to every part of our lives. Those of us who find ourselves in the middle of this maelstrom are often short-sighted enough to think they are the only ones in those situations. Indeed, this feeling has designated many nostalgic rumours of a pre-modern Paradise Lost, a feeling which usually stems from the loss of one’s innocence (Berman, p. 1). Upon seeing Kim Phuc’s sadly defining plight on newsstands and television news broadcasts, however, many Baby Boomers who felt disenchanted and without belonging were given a strong wake-up call. As previously stated, many of these people were staunchly opposed to the war in Vietnam before Kim Phuc’s image was shown all over the world, and its distribution only increased the number of participants in anti-war street protests. Due to the right-wing governments of the time, particularly that of Richard Nixon in the United States, their efforts fell on deaf ears, but the same Baby Boomers, as well as their offspring, are now protesting the war in Iraq thanks to brave and truthful reporting of that war. This is why journalism is the most influential medium.
With each passing generation, people are getting less impressionable and more starved for challenge. As absurd as it may sound now, fifty years ago all the media had to do to cause an uproar was to show Elvis Presley swiveling his hips. Since then we have matured more in fifty years than we did in five-hundred years. We now have a more cynical and jaded view of what we hear and see which makes us hungry for a more profound depiction of humanity (often making us search for our own answers), the good side and the bad side of it, as well as a natural yearning for such depictions in the human psyche (regardless of whether or not we have homicidal tendencies) through which we have become much more desensitized to violence. Journalists know what their audience wants, but all too often they can only deliver what their bosses know will sell. Why, most of the time, with the media do moral human issues like civil wars play second fiddle to ratings wars?
BIBLIOGRAPHY
· Ut, N. 2005, Picture power: Vietnam napalm attack, BBC News, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4517597.stm
· Rademaker, R. 2004, The history utility of photography: a case study in Vietnam, http://194.3.120.243/humanities/ibhist/student_work/ia2004/erik_rademaker04.pdf
· Kennedy, B. 2004, Project report: Media, war and peace, pp. 3-4, http://www.uow.edu.au/arts/sts/bmartin/classes/STS390_04topessays/Bernadette_Kennedy.pdf, University of Wollongong
· Scott, J. 2006, Photography and forgiveness (Nick Ut’s Vietnam napalm, Queen’s Quarterly, find through ProQuest
· Plummer, W., Eftimediades, M. 1995, Double exposure: symbols of Vietnam, Phan Thi Kim Phuc and Mary Ann Vecchio recall the anguish, People Weekly, find through Infotrac
· Kimmelman, M. 2006, Photographs of Vietnam: bringing war back home, The New York Times, find through ProQuest
· Judson. G. 1995, Stepping out from the lens of history: frozen moments alter lives of subjects of 2 famous photos, The New York Times, find though ProQuest
· Berman, M. 1982/1988, “Introduction: modernity – yesterday, today and tomorrow,” taken from All that is solid melts into air, Reading 4, Resource Materials
In 1972, one harrowing image changed public attitudes to the Vietnam War to dissent, for millions of people. That image was, of course, the photograph taken by Vietnamese photographer Nick Ut of a young naked girl running across a country road, after being burned with napalm during a South Vietnamese bombing raid on her village. For years beforehand, many Westerners had been staunchly in protest of the war in Vietnam, and the widespread distribution of this photograph only added fuel to the fire. Of that fateful day in 1972, Ut says, “You know, I had been outside the village that morning and I took a lot of pictures. I was almost leaving the village when I saw two aeroplanes. The first dropped four bombs and the second aeroplane dropped another four napalm bombs.” Ut now claims, “The pictures were shown in America, they were shown everywhere. They were shown in all the Communist countries - in China and in Vietnam. They still use the photo. Even though pictures are taken in every war, they still show the picture of Kim. They don’t want it to happen again – not napalm.” (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4517597.stm)
This devastating photograph shows the horrors of the war right from the perspectives of those who were on the frontline by accident – the civilians. The girl’s nakedness show how said civilians were never shielded from the war, and that they were stuck in the middle of a battlefield, and however justified the attack, the photograph depicts the horrors of war in a clear and concrete manner, without being toned down for the masses. It unsurprisingly – and deservedly – earned Nick Ut a Pulitzer Prize (Rademaker 2004).
Photography is a tool for the eternal capturing of a single moment in time. Photographers like to use their own views to preserve an image for all time so the other side of the photograph is artistic, not neutral. Just like a writer or an artist can use their imagination to show off their creativity, to do that photographers use nothing but the truth. Photographers like Nick Ut risked their lives so that they could show they world what their politicians, both then and now, don’t what them to see – another side of the story which is simply too powerful to be propaganda (Rademaker 2004).
The military has always been a significant hurdle for journalists to get around whilst trying to show the reality of an ongoing war. While there is necessary censorship of information that will jeopardize a particular mission, this necessary censorship applies only to very minute details, which a very sensible journalist will omit. The other side to this argument is the distribution of information that is nothing more than persuasive propaganda (Kennedy 2007).
Starting with the Spanish-American war in 1898, a journalist’s job when covering a war was to praise it, even if they wanted it to end. This was the same with the First and Second World Wars. However, by the time of the Korean and Vietnam Wars, television had begun to take hold and through this miraculous medium, people were able to see more of the world with which they were unfamiliar. In Vietnam, many television networks themselves were so cynical of the governments controlling them that they allowed their journalists to carry out reports that showed the war in all its horror. After the distribution of not just Kim Phuc’s photo, but also victims of events like the My Lai massacre and the conflict between South Vietnamese Buddhists and American forces, American public contempt for the war skyrocketed as quickly as the death toll. This change of heart in ordinary people is what is inspired when journalists dare to step out of their ceremonial positions, and become humanists. They are no longer trying to do their jobs, but rather, exposing the corruption of our politicians who should be trying to make a difference in a good way (Kennedy 2004).
But while throughout history war photography has gone from being used as propaganda to a tool for the spreading of the truth, it has also divided many into both wanting to win the war and to put and end to violence and suffering. As humans, we are undeniably obsessed with the suffering of others – the distribution on the 12 September 2001 of the infamous photo of a man falling out the North Tower of the World Trade Center to his death immediately after the 9/11 terrorist attacks received an angry response, but it has since emerged as the most well-known photo of the events of that infamous day (Scott 2006). Why do we often have a fascinated response from such confronting and depressing images? Perhaps we sometimes want to be challenged and moved, even without having homicidal tendencies, or that through seeing these kinds of images we get a glimpse of how our difficult lives could be worse, thus stopping us from taking so much for granted and enabling us to more often think of others and look on the bright side of life. For most of us, fascination with depressing things simply means a source of inspiration.
However, just as we sometimes forget that celebrities are just as flawed as we are, it is possible to forget the different or even more personal stories that people behind famous photographs have. In the same 1972 bombing of her village Kim Phuc lost two of her six brothers, with one of her surviving brothers being permanently blinded. She has crimson rope-like scars on her back as result of the removal of her burning clothes. In 1986 she was separated from her parents and sent to Cuba to study, where she met her husband Bui Hoy Toan, with whom she finally escaped to Canada in 1992 and had a son the following year (Plummer, Eftimediades, 1995). She is now a United Nations advocate for peace.
Kim Phuc, as a result of that photo, remains an accidental spokesperson for the inhumanity of war. But perhaps the strongest indicator of the power of that photograph is that even at the time it was printed in some of the most socially conservative newspapers in existence. This fact suggests that its statement about war made some of the most conservatively-inclined people of the day to look deeper into the actions and notions they were supporting. It continues to do that today.
However, Kim Phuc, whether she likes it or not, will never be able to either live down the photograph of her at nine years old, running away from war with napalm burning her skin, nor erase the harrowing memories of that day. We all may be able to come to our own conclusions about war from news reports or films, but unless we ever have the misfortune of being there, we will never discover the horrors of war in their full scale. Michael Kimmelman begs us to remember, however, that Kim’s unforgettable image also stands for millions of others, all throughout history, who as children or teenagers, were victims of war (Kimmelman 2006). Kim was indeed one of the more lucky ones since she lived to tell her tale, but the war will remain with her forever. “I know that picture changed the world, and it changed my life. I don’t want to remember that day,” Kim stated when attending a war photography workshop in 1995. At that same event, Nick Ut said, “ I thought something was missing. I thought how nice it would be if these guys who were killed could get involved. So even though we have photographers here who do underwater photos, who do fashion photos, one thing I wanted to point out with the memorial is that this is a fun job, it’s a good job, but people do die.” (Judson 1995) This makes us ponder the question, Why does suffering sell?
Nick Ut’s photograph was an image of modernity for the Baby Boomer generation. To be a part of modernity means finding ourselves living in an environment that promises an adventure and a change in us – and simultaneously, one which poses a very real threat to every part of our lives. Those of us who find ourselves in the middle of this maelstrom are often short-sighted enough to think they are the only ones in those situations. Indeed, this feeling has designated many nostalgic rumours of a pre-modern Paradise Lost, a feeling which usually stems from the loss of one’s innocence (Berman, p. 1). Upon seeing Kim Phuc’s sadly defining plight on newsstands and television news broadcasts, however, many Baby Boomers who felt disenchanted and without belonging were given a strong wake-up call. As previously stated, many of these people were staunchly opposed to the war in Vietnam before Kim Phuc’s image was shown all over the world, and its distribution only increased the number of participants in anti-war street protests. Due to the right-wing governments of the time, particularly that of Richard Nixon in the United States, their efforts fell on deaf ears, but the same Baby Boomers, as well as their offspring, are now protesting the war in Iraq thanks to brave and truthful reporting of that war. This is why journalism is the most influential medium.
With each passing generation, people are getting less impressionable and more starved for challenge. As absurd as it may sound now, fifty years ago all the media had to do to cause an uproar was to show Elvis Presley swiveling his hips. Since then we have matured more in fifty years than we did in five-hundred years. We now have a more cynical and jaded view of what we hear and see which makes us hungry for a more profound depiction of humanity (often making us search for our own answers), the good side and the bad side of it, as well as a natural yearning for such depictions in the human psyche (regardless of whether or not we have homicidal tendencies) through which we have become much more desensitized to violence. Journalists know what their audience wants, but all too often they can only deliver what their bosses know will sell. Why, most of the time, with the media do moral human issues like civil wars play second fiddle to ratings wars?
BIBLIOGRAPHY
· Ut, N. 2005, Picture power: Vietnam napalm attack, BBC News, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4517597.stm
· Rademaker, R. 2004, The history utility of photography: a case study in Vietnam, http://194.3.120.243/humanities/ibhist/student_work/ia2004/erik_rademaker04.pdf
· Kennedy, B. 2004, Project report: Media, war and peace, pp. 3-4, http://www.uow.edu.au/arts/sts/bmartin/classes/STS390_04topessays/Bernadette_Kennedy.pdf, University of Wollongong
· Scott, J. 2006, Photography and forgiveness (Nick Ut’s Vietnam napalm, Queen’s Quarterly, find through ProQuest
· Plummer, W., Eftimediades, M. 1995, Double exposure: symbols of Vietnam, Phan Thi Kim Phuc and Mary Ann Vecchio recall the anguish, People Weekly, find through Infotrac
· Kimmelman, M. 2006, Photographs of Vietnam: bringing war back home, The New York Times, find through ProQuest
· Judson. G. 1995, Stepping out from the lens of history: frozen moments alter lives of subjects of 2 famous photos, The New York Times, find though ProQuest
· Berman, M. 1982/1988, “Introduction: modernity – yesterday, today and tomorrow,” taken from All that is solid melts into air, Reading 4, Resource Materials
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