Medium: Not Just a Show on NBC

After exploring the worlds of Patchwork Girl and (more recently) Filmtext, I’ve come to the conclusion that I prefer old, boring two-dimensional print on old, boring white (hopefully recyclable) paper. Maybe I’m just an old, fashioned kind of guy. This doesn’t go for all kinds of literature, of course; I love hearing a poem read aloud and seeing/hearing a play performed on stage. This is because these are their intended mediums, which means maybe I just haven’t given hypertext a decent enough chance. I’ll try harder, I promise. Wouldn’t it be interesting, though, to see Patchwork Girl or (yikes!) Filmtext on paper? Wouldn’t that be a TRIP? (As if they weren’t enough of a trip already.)True, these works would probably not function as well in this medium (as Kim noted), but it would be, um…interesting to see what they look like on paper. Come on, it’d be fun! Hey now, we students have to read poetry and plays on paper all of the time; we’re rarely given the luxury of hearing these same works read aloud or performed on stage, in the mediums they were meant to be presented in. We’ve seen a lot of works outside of their mediums, so why not Patchwork Girl or Filmtext? They may not make a whole lot of sense, but it’d be…interesting, nonetheless.

This is why I enjoy Poems That Go. In some cases, you are allowed the opportunity to hear the poem read aloud, and even if not (ahem, Wallace Stevens), it is a visually stimulating experience; one is allowed to experience the poem in an updated art-space, easily accessible to many people around the world. I did a little internet research and found Forgetfulness, one of my favorite Billy Collins’ poems (I adore the allusion to Lethe). I believe it is even voiced by the MAN himself (sounds like him anyways):

 

Crave some more? Try The Best Cigarette. The visual artwork in this one is very stimulating. Trust me, your retinas will thank you:  

Patchwork Girl, She’s Been Livin’ In Her Patchwork World…

I actually acquired Patchwork Girl just in time; it was waiting for me in the mailbox at 1:30PM today. Since then I have most certainly delved into a good portion of it, though I’m not certain as to how much more of it is hiding away inside this magical CD-ROM, so I’ll take a break to write a post.

There’s a very…um…interesting format (ahem hypertext) to this piece, and to be honest, about an hour passed before I actually figured out how to steer my way through it in a digitally coherent manner. Now I realize there is probably no conventional way to approach it, but I’m still getting used to the randomness of narrative placement. (If the narrative placement is not supposed to be random and there isa set way to take oneself through the piece, somebody please cyber-slap or -mutilate me or something to that effect. Please.)

A narrative (or a fraction of one) that I have managed to trudge through sensibly: from the point of Shelley’s “monster” parting ways with her creator to the point of the “monster’s” inevitable leprosy-like symptoms intensifying to dangerous levels. Clearly, this creature is forever on a quest to become human, or at least successfully assimilate herself into a contemporary human society. Set out for the Americas, she carries “a collected Cicero, the beginnings of a black knit shawl still umbilicalled to its ball of yarn, a buttered bun carefully folded into a handkerchief,” all of which reflect on a particular human culture, displaying the assumption that she just wants to take on a human role. She even states early on, clear and concise: “I want to be human.” But it can’t be as simple as that, can it? She’s not just going to suddenly wake up one day and be a human being, is she? No, and it prompts her (and us, as readers) to ask: What exactly makes a human? She has all of the physical body parts sewn together, but as these start to fall apart from the collective “being” she is, does that mean she should start to feel like less of a human being? Going beyond the physical part of it, there are traces of an individual, a “self” being attempted: “I preferred Ovaltine to chocolate milk; I liked retsina and disapproved of dessert wines; I ate butter-rum ice cream exclusively.” This sense of “self” appears to not hold together too well, though, as is evident when she starts writing; she’s not sure whoexactly is doing the writing, associating the previous body part “owners” with anything involved in her writing process. If she does not have a claim to her physical self, why should she have a claim to any other part of her self? At one point she states, “But if I don’t own it…nobody else does either, or ever did.” And here comes (ta-da!) Hayles again with the whole “possessive individualism” theory, taken a step further into the physical realm: if she has no direct claim to her liver or her right arm or her left breast, what’s to say that the last person ever had a claim to these to begin with? Wouldn’t this would be a great concept behind an international Organ Donor system, where everybody shares hearts and kidneys and large intestines peacefully and endlessly and signatures on backs of driver’s licenses are unnecessary because the program is universally participated in? Ah, that’ll be the day.

For now, back to Jackson, then on to Amerika.

Get Thee To A Library, Go.

The more and more I reflect on it (which may not be as often as Kim would hope), I completely agree with a human life form (Miranda) behind the “primer” as a vital part to Nell’s “succession” in life; it wasn’t all about the primer itself, but there was a human being, a mother-type figure there to interact with Nell and guide her through pre-pubescence into adolescence. All of those sixty-five thousand girls? Who were they? We don’t know. But we do know Nell. And though Miranda didn’t have physical contact with Nell all of those years, she was still there for her on the other end.

This had me thinking about the whole concept of Instant Messaging. According to Stephenson’s novel, under the right circumstances in this day and age, wouldn’t a girl like Nell be able to “sprout” into a courageous young woman by assistance of AIM (along with real-life physical human characters like Constable Moore), or some sort of similar chat-based internet technology? Maybe I’m a little far-fetched here, but couldn’t the same story have been dictated and interacted with through this type of technology? Or what about text messaging? Personally, I prefer it in a book, so there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s just a thought.

Futher on the instant messaging topic: I think we adore Instant Messaging so much nowadays because we are aware that another live human being exists on the other end of the typed conversation. Of course we could just meet in person or talk on the telephone, but sometimes that’s not always convenient, or we’re just too damn lazy to get up and interact in those mediums. Personally, I hate the telephone and try to avoid physical contact with humans as much as possible. I have dogs; petting them is enough physical contact for me.

So what about AIM-Bots? You know, computerized personalities on AOL Instant Messenger that are programmed to type back to you. The conversations are amusing for a minute or two, and then grow increasingly redundant and stale. It’s just not the same as Instant Messaging a human being. For example, I gave an ex-girlfriend of mine Hamlet’s “Get thee to a nunnery” speech over AIM once and she lost it, pouring out with emotional outbursts such as “You’re an (expletive)” and “(Expletive) you” and “I’M the one who needs to be institutionalized?” What a riot! When this speech is typed to an AIM-Bot, however, the results are far less entertaining:

oooooohyeahhhhhh: “Get thee to a nunnery, go: farewell. Or, if thou wilt needs marry, marry a fool; for wise men know well enough what monsters you make of them. To a nunnery, go, and quickly too. “ SmarterChild: C’mon. Stop being so uncool to me.

While the response is more peaceful, it’s only half as amusing. And yes, my screenname is “oooooohyeahhhhhh.” Long story.

The Diamond Age, Or, A Young Lady’s Illustrated Blah Blah Blah

Let me begin by apologizing for the tardiness of this post. My internet has been misbehaving lately, and not even the effects of classical conditioning are working in this area. (You know: if the computer doesn’t misbehave, I don’t assault it with a sledgehammer.)

Oh, what can be said for the second half of The Diamond Age? I must admit that it was a hell of a lot easier to follow than the first half (the “set-up,” according to Kim), and here is where I also confess that a shorter span of time passed in reading the final four-hundred eighty-nine pages of text than the first ten; for me, delving into an alternate world of science fiction is usually not as difficult as this. Thank you, Neal Stephenson. The second-half definitely focused more on plotline and therefore flowed a little easier in my inner monologue (with the occasional interruption of a “total pages left to read” countdown); I particularly enjoyed the battle scenes because there were extremely vivid images in my mind as to what was going on– which led me to ask myself: “Why is this?”

Ah ha! And so Stephenson answers: “The passives of that era [ahem, our era] were so fun to watch, with their big, stupid cars and big, stupid guns and big, stupid people.” (393) Naturally, I (and don’t deny it; I’m sure some of you did as well) enjoyed reading these battle scenes only because this is what we were exposed to growing up: think of your typical grade-A Hollywood “blockbuster movie” (as the “Governator” deems it) and the images stenciled into your brain; those types of scenes are usually impossible to forget. This isn’t to say that I (we) ever enjoyed or advocated this violence, but aren’t these sometimes the images we remember best? I’d be a fool to claim that it stops with mere entertainment: naturally, the same holds true for real life; ever heard of PTSD? I’d also be a fool to strictly agree with Stephenson in associating these images with strictly our era; ever read Beowulf? Chanson de Roland? The list goes on and on. I’m not going to dwell on this, just ask: do we find these types of scenes in literature memorable because they fall into play with an intelligent, much larger plotline, or simply because of their “Bang, Bang, Boom, Boom” attractiveness we see so commonly exploited today? Are Westernized cultures mainly to blame for this type of entertainment or does it extend beyond that?

For a suitable, relevant parody of this type of entertainment, here’s a scene from “Weird Al’s” feature film, UHF, where Rambo saves Michael Richards from his mortal end:

Side note: since we’re talking about the bastardization of Westernized culture, did anybody else find it ironic that Dr. X dictated his anti-American “parking lots and chaos” (458) speech to Hackworth inside of a McDonald’s? Was this an intentional joke?

Another side note: Wonder why this technologically advanced sci-fi novel mostly took place in the Far East? Maybe this will help to explain.

Special Topics in Contemporary Literature!

And now, the most recently published article from theonion.com, definitely relevant to this class:

Novelists Strike Fails To Affect Nation Whatsoever

Graduate English Papers Kill Trees, Too

Wait, what’s that? We have to write a paper? Politicians have adulterous affairs with prostitutes, too? When did all of this start to happen?!

I did have a couple of ideas in mind:

I have stated my opinion in previous entries on the topic of materials and the experiences associated with them. In particular, the physical notion of the book: since it’s what we grew up with, we (book readers) exhibit a passion for books because of the memories we associate with this type of recreation (book reading). Furthermore, this is also why we (English majors) may dislike textbooks so much: since we have grown accustomed to reading for pleasure and textbook reading has always been a class requirement, the physical textbook may always appear revolting to us, like three-month old SPAM left uncovered on the kitchen counter (the stench alone is wretched enough). To take it even further, in this day and age, children may have that similar passionate connection to video games or a Segway or whatever it is kids worship nowadays, since these are the materials equated with recreational activity. This may account for the steady decline of book reading for pleasure: the only types of book reading that may be happening nowadays are Gary Paulsen novellas assigned in sixth grade English classes. Novels are becoming more and more “homework” and less “recreation.” Just a thought.

OR

The whole idea of film adaptation has always intrigued me, particularly the severe amount of alterations involved from page to screen. This summer I decided to read Rex Pickett’s novel Sideways after declaring the film version to be one of my favorite contemporary motion pictures of all time (in my quest to become a true wino, or oenophile, to use a euphemism). I was appalled by how many changes had been made, and most of them unnecessary, too: name changes, vital scenes cut out that would have allowed an audience to dig deeper into Miles’ depression, failure (he’s unemployed in the novel, not an eighth-grade English teacher– though I’d rather be unemployed, in all honesty), and suicidal nature (so much attempted drowning!), etc. etc. Too many non-sensical alterations. Why, Alexander Payne, why? I wouldn’t mind examining the process of film adaptation (perhaps I should see the film Adaptation, too: I hear it’s a masterpiece); I have a feeling that most of the decisions have to do with Hollywood marketing schemes: you know, sex and violence and all of that “good stuff” that helps sell thirteen-dollar movie tickets.

OR

Let’s a be a little farfetched here: how about YouTube-based readings of Shakespeare’s sonnet 38?

Nah, maybe not. Speaking of Shakespeare (and this is completely unrelated to paper topics), I happened to catch Laurence Olivier’s Hamlet (1948) the other night on TCM and couldn’t help but notice his strong resemblance to Sting. See:

You have to admit, every little thing Olivier does is magic. Except maybe his Richard III.