orrmatt

Soooooo... ya. Rocky Horror Picture Show? Not what I was expecting. It really was something quite ridiculous, but I am not sure it was entirely intended to be such. In fact, it almost took itself seriously in how silly it attempted to be.

I don't even want to talk about the science in it. As far as science fiction goes, that was not even remotely speculative. Rather, it was farcical at best. I mean, come on, an anti-matter LASER? I don't even want to look at you. *facepalm*

In terms of sexuality- man, the 'hero' and 'heroine' really were just kind of whorish. For a girl who apparently was 'saving herself' or whatever, Janet is kind of a nymphomaniac. She just gave in to Dr. Frankfurter, not reeeeaaallllyy putting up a struggle, and then just kind of raped Rocky II (as I would like to call him, since the original Rocky was way better). Brad is not much better, and I found it interesting how easily he 'gave up' his heterosexuality. It seemed a bit unreasonable, but hey- it's a movie, I can go with it.

Overall, I suppose I can appreciate how awful the movie is. It's really hard to do that. But it's also why, I can see, it's a cult classic.

Le Guin is cool. I mean.. it's sort of weird to think of human reproduction in a much more, animalistic sense? Like how people would go into heat or whatever, like a bear or a dog or something that doesn't have a year-round reproductive cycle.

Seeing the movie adaptation of the novel (not for the first time) on Tuesday was heartening. I had been filled with despair after reading Dawn and Never Let Me Go. A happy ending, even with a dead Theo, is a nice change. Also- I really really like that movie. It's truly one of my favorites, mostly because of the warfare in the city at the end, and the concurrent race to meet the tomorrow.
However, besides the basic premise: people cannot reproduce, then, 'OMG PREGNANT WOMAN', the book hardly resembles the movie! Alas, that happens. Let it be noted, that this is one of the cases where I like the movie more because I thought it was well done, and the futuristic things in the movie are totally neat, plus the grittiness of the internment city.
I suppose the book is really what I should be talking about, and I must say: as much as it makes sense, I didn't expect the amount of religiosity that was in the novel. It's the end of the world, and for some reason I expected more Bear Grylls, and less Luke-the-Priests. I suppose I just think of a quiet apocalypse differently: I think I would be like Jasper- stockpiling a survivor's wonderland. But not the whole kill myself part that he did.. Thinking about it, this world is even bleaker than Never Let Me Go, but the book is not a treatise on the matter. The book is about the return of hope, not its steady erosion. Whereas Never Let Me Go made me feel terrible about humanity, Children of Men helps a little bit to make me feel a bit better. Yes it's a bloody book, it's a dystopian world, and it's humanity's darkest hour: but there's also hope for a new beginning. I think that's why I feel that I would go all survivor-mode, because for some reason I cannot see giving up hope. This novel has more of it than anything else we've read, I feel.

This book freaks me out a bit. Aliens, whom I imagine to look a bit like Dr. Zoidberg from futurama, captive atomic survivors ala Fallout (the video game series, for those caring to look up the reference), and genetic manipulation of said survivors: oh my!

It simply is not what I am used to. It's kind of like a reverse prime directive these aliens have: interfere wherever convenient for their own species. I would not say these aliens are evil. But neither are they good. To be good, self-less intentions would be desired. To be evil, malicious acts would have to be executed. The Oankali have done neither, they simply saved the remaining humans so as to benefit themselves. In doing so, yes, they saved the remnants of humanity. But, nonetheless, they are saviors of a sort.

At the same time, they are enacting the final death blow to 'humanity': transforming them into something not quite the same. Neither human, nor alien, what remains of the human race will be unrecognizable. I see this as horrible in an altogether different way. I suppose I see it as cruel, but cannot fully describe why.

Cruel perhaps because Lilith will live to see this realized? Cruel perhaps because they are in the end, well, ending humanity.

Finally, I disagree with that whole "intelligent and hierarchical is bad" thing. Power structure, I see, is important for the same reasons labor specialization is good. People can work together in such a way to maximize the potential of all, rather than acting in some sort of 'parallel processing' type way.

Oh my science, this book is painfully slow! Unfortunately, I have never been one for suspense movies. It is not that I am very impatient. I can have immense amounts of patience. Rather, it is that I simply see that the characters could get on with it a lot faster. Wasted time is what I have a problem with in suspense movies. It is much the same with people who talk excessively slowly. I cannot stand to wait around for the punchline, as I can almost feel myself aging waiting to hear it. This book is all of those feelings I have, put into book form. The pace is agonizing!

Yes, 'Kathy' is recounting how she slowly learned what she is. From the drawn out explanation of her childhood, I have come to realize too that she is an organ mule... or whatever you want to call a walking organ farm. Yes, it is disturbing. Yes, I could imagine it being hard to realize that your purpose is to die for others, without choice or thanks. Frankly, the way she goes about telling us that she is a walking organ bag/clone, again, I do not know the P.C. term for whatever she is, seems to be far too nonchalant. Why! I want to know why is she so nonchalant about it! What could possibly let her be okay with it? I find it fascinating to step out of the book (and its painfully slow plot), and look at Kathy, nay all of the children. I cannot see any overt conditioning that makes them okay with everything that is to transpire in their lives. Has it been fear? Fear to ask why? Is that what has keep them quiet, and seemingly calm about the calamity which they are processing towards? Why do all of the children not even think about it! They hardly talk about it! Each of the characters seems to be just a kid, normal in every respect, except that they do not talk about the fact, and hardly acknowledge that they are going to be harvested for their organs soon enough. For lack of better words, the characters are boring. None of them appear to struggle with their existence, or philosophize on the meaning of life. There is not a one of them that goes out and kills themself because they are an individual or anything like that. They are merely boring kids, who have an extraordinary destiny. I do not know what I am to look for! It's just Kathy talking about self-discovery in a boring way! Also, I don't like Ruth.

This world the children live in: England. Sometime in the recent past. Cloned organ-bag children in place of voluntary organ donors. It is hardly illuminated by the story! Yes, it is interesting to see a world through the eyes of an individual living within it. However, it can be nice too to see it from a god's-eye perspective. The society-level, the macro-level, is what I find fascinating about this world. How did it come to be? What pressures exerted themselves to allow it to exist? Why grow people like produce, or livestock for that matter? Could they not come by organs through other, more humane, means?

I feel awful saying this, but I do not like how this story unfolds. "Character driven" narrative, is not, apparently, my favorite mode of storytelling. It is far too drawn-out for my taste! I feel that these two-hundred and eighty-eight pages could be filled with a far more gripping plot of Ishiguro's world! I would rather see the moral implications of organ-bag children clones argued about, even struggled over and drawn out in the pages of the book, rather than implied through a collection boarding-school-like childhood stories from which we are to take the side of the exploited (though I have yet to find one instance in which Kathy even hints at not liking the idea of donating all of her vital organs, or even feeling exploited).

At the same time, perhaps I must think the story over a bit more. I admit I may have missed a few things. Maybe the remaining one-hundred and twenty-one pages hold the answers for which I seek. Maybe I'm just tired, and this post will look silly in two days, when I'm asked to explain what I was saying in class. Maybe.

In the course of reading Brave New World, one scene stood out amongst all others. The reveal in Mond's study. No other scene in the novel is so densely packed with both Huxley's argument, and a deeper philosophical statements.

However, first, I would like to comment on whether or not I believe there is no conditioning in Piercy's "good" future. There is. Luciente was, without doubt, conditioned. So was Connie. So are we. One's environment always conditions. Through the environment, and pervading culture, people naturally tend to develop who they are. I suppose the way I spoke of conditioning earlier was vague. In terms of my comment, I thought it interesting that a society could be built actively, through active, conscious conditioning, by effort to develop its own ideals and mores. In contrast to a passive, natural conditioning, such as what is seen in our society.

In any event, that is very different from what I WOULD like to talk about here, and now. The book's climax, I feel, is the confrontation/reveal scene in Mond's study. For it is the first time that Helmholtz, Marx, John, and Mond are all in the same room. Mond acts as the representative of absolute power, and society as a whole. Many things happen here. Marx cracks. He attempts sell out his friends in a moment of hysteria, and is quickly removed from the picture. Helmholtz, the oppressed artist, and John the savage, continue on in their discourse with Mond. John asks many pointed questions to Mond, through which Huxley enacts his inquisition of this proposed civilization. In quick succession, John asks about just about everything that our society would consider part of the human experience, and just as quickly Mond explains each and every thing he brings up as dangerous to stability.

From what I gather, Huxley argues that by eschewing, what today most of us would consider to be, the human condition, a "utopia" can be achieved. He is not arguing for it, however. Here, John argues that something is gained by the struggle, the passion, the misfortune of life. Mond does not discount this, but rather notes that it is not good for social stability. John expresses desire for all this, as does Helmholtz, in a more round about way.

I find it immensely fascinating to think of Freud in this context. To think of natural drive, and instinct, frustrated and applied in another area, their directions subverted, but their magnitudes entirely the same. This is what I see making society, not completely unfettered sexual desires, and drives. Freud would, and as noted in the book, find this infantile. It is not much to say that infants are not great at building societies. I feel in a way that this whole scene goes to show that through some struggle things are achieved, and that Huxley's world is one that is without its own builders. They have been absent for some time, which is why stability is of the utmost importance. Freud comes in heavily here as well.

I fell this entry was a bit stream of consciousness at the end.. I began to write what came to mind..

Thinking back, Connie genuinely did have mental problems. I feel that Luciente and the future were simply her 'paranoid schizophrenia' manifesting itself. Of course, this might be my view because I have a tendency to trust the doctors, trust the science, and trust the more 'reliable' (perhaps empirical) view.
In terms of Piercy, the contrast of the two 'could-be's' was barely drawn out. Though we do eventually see the polluted future, the dystopia of future capitalism, the pitfalls of the utopia of Mattapoisett do not quite evidence themselves. Given that these are two completely different possibilities, I find it strange how they were juxtaposed. Not directly, but rather through the intermediary of Connie. I feel that the way Connie is introduced to the second, more polluted future, skews our own introduction. Though necessary to build up the conflict, and set Connie on her path to her ultimate fate, the scene in the windowless apartment seems only to be a poorly fleshed out foil for the Massachusetts utopia. It could have been done better? To say that, however, is dangerous, for I am no fiction writer myself. For me, I feel that though the book is supposed to be about the future- the future is never fleshed out fully. My final thoughts on this reading deal with the fact that perhaps because it is always alluded to, the brief scene of battle is all the more powerful. I find it interesting that that scene really exists at all, given that all it serves to do is to allow Connie to think herself at war with the institution. But it is with that connection, between Luciente's war and her war, that I believe she was after all, insane.