Fantasy and Tolkien

So now we have just begun our start into fantasy. From what I can gather it's a pretty broad "genre." It can be set in almost any time and anything goes as far as subject matter (dragons, creatures, cities in the sky ect). What I found interesting is that fantasy is really a way to discuss topics that relate to the human condition from a 3rd person point of view. Well okay, maybe not all the time, but I think being able to tell a story that deals with such things are more interesting and lasting for me. Substance. Depth. Character. Challenging your points of view, what you think you know. Urging you to find out who you are and to understand. Outward social commentary and inward scrutiny of self. Fantasy seems like a good medium for that. I'm not sure why yet. I don't quite understand it, but I like where it's leading me. As far as Tolkien, The Hobbit is a fun story. I had read it years ago and saw the movie recently a few months ago. I found it interesting that he had taken such an interest in language and build his world from that. Also, reading the annotated version, thought it was interesting he thought maybe the plural of dwarf should have been dwarrow, not dwarves. The talk about the hero's journey was also very insightful. I had always thought the journey was a straight line, from point A to point B. Actually, it seems to be a circle, a cycle. Things go down before they get better and it can restart at any moment. I felt like the hero's journey tied directly into life, anyone's life. Going to school, learning a craft, love, anything, ultimately ending up at having the freedom to live. Can't wait to learn more about it.

Witches

Witches were probably my least favorite of the kinds of horror figures found in literature. In a lot of movies they always just seem to have a hint of omnipotence and can do anything they want, usually for malicious purposes. For example, they can injure or kill anyone at will in Dario Argento's Suspiria. Suspiria had the kind of witch I usually think of, the evil kind that usually wants revenge or power and seems to live forever. The movie itself was really a ton of fun to watch. The scenes were really nicely designed with how they handled lighting, the music was creepy and gave a really ominous and frantic vibe and the deaths were blood splatteringly good. Compared to Hiyao Miyazaki's Kiki's Delivery Service, it's a much different kind of witch. Both have the independent, strong female witch, just in different ways. Suspiria's witch is independent and strong in a brutal, rogueish kind of way, while Kiki's is closer to the coming of age independence, youth into adulthood and strong in that she can just go out into the world on her own and not be the property of anyone. I thought that was interesting how witches are earthly and have a closer connection to earth, where it's not about the witch, but the power that flows through the witch. It's easy to see why the Christians didn't like that as they saw the body as the source of all sin. It was also mentioned that having a child is the closest thing to coming close to nature and how women are associated with being more in tune with the world. The women part led into talking about women's sovereignty and power and intimate relationship struggles and how typically in society men are a bit engrained to try and own the women. People trying to own each other in relationships, men or women, is where the power struggles of a relationship can stem from and it was mentioned it is better to try and nurture a more intimate relationship and have a fair distribution of power and good communication.

Haruki Murakami - A Wild Sheep Chase

I've read a little bit of a previous Murakami novel before, "The Elephant Vanishes," and really enjoy the way he writes. The stories are just written in a way that flow really nicely and the way he describes things is so off the wall and colorful. I mean, reading Wild Sheep Chase was awesome. I was actually enjoying the act of reading and every page I turned, in my head I was shouting, "This is awesome!" One of my favorites parts was when he was describing how beautiful this girls ears were. It was something like how they radiated down the oblique face of time and emitted protean beams of light. Man, it's just a really enjoyable book, not quite a horror story, certainly not like Frankenstein or anything of the others read so far, but incredibly enjoyable. We also watched the Japanese ghost stories in class and I thought the whole concept of ghosts not really being good or bad was interesting. It was mentioned that it was a very western thing to label things in black and white, good and bad, where in Japanese horror there is a lot of gray areas. The ghosts are really not good or bad and nothing is really labeled as such. I was also having my mind blown over the idea that everything is an allusion and you can't be certain if someone is experiencing something the same way you are.

Anne Rice - Interview With a Vampire

It's interesting how the vampire has changed in literature. Anne Rice's "Interview With a Vampire" really seemed to have sparked the change in vampires going from evil, reclusive monsters, to... well... sex idols? I dunno if that's the right term, but reading the "Interview With a Vampire" had a lot of sexual overtones. For example, the character described being turned into a vampire comparable to falling in love, sleeping on top of another man in a coffin, how every sound like the wind blowing is pretty much described sensuously. I know I'm probably reading far too much on the surface, but I just can not get into something like this. The vampires just feel too much like normal whiny people with immortality and a really bad allergy to sun. From what we talked about in class, vampires seem to be a way to wrestle a bit with ideas of gay relationships and even having multiple relationships and why we care. The book itself dealt with people and identifying which character was in a submissive or dominant role as well as handling what would it be like if you really did live forever. Apparently, living forever is just as bad, if not worse than just dying. I thought the idea of the fanatics, the people wanting to be turned immortal despite the consequences was a funny addition. The novel in general though, I just couldn't get myself in it. Intellectually, I knew the author used the interview as a way to immerse the reader, similar to how Mary Shelley opened her novel "Frankenstein" with notes. I just wasn't buying it though, I had seen this trick before and maybe I just didn't want to give myself over to the book, despite the fact that it is not badly written. Maybe I was just uncomfortable with how sensual all the imagery was, and that I don't like the idea of a vampire (who I consider a very badass form of clever, mysterious, assassin, monster) turned into a homoerotic, woe-is-me, pretty boy. I guess it's cool that vampires can be used to explore such topics but, I dunno, I just don't like how perfect they have become. Now they don't even burn in sunlight, they just sparkle or some stupid shit. Bleh :F

Richard Matheson - I am Legend

I saw the movie version of "I am Legend" a few years ago before reading the book. I was really happy to find that the movie version and the original book Matheson wrote are different enough to stand on their own. I didn't imagine the character in the book looking like Will Smith, or even imagine him in the same kind of city environment. I found that I really enjoyed reading the book and became immersed in the world very quickly. One of my favorite parts about it was understanding how Neville felt and the emotions he was going through in his daily "routines." I thought the monsters in the book made it seem like they were pure vampires, but after talking about it in class, it really did seem like they were hybrid zombie vampire creatures. I was thinking about how we are seeing a lot of apocalypse themes show up lately, along with the popularity of zombies. I personally am not a huge fan of zombies, but I am interested in some apocalypse scenarios. The only other apocalypse book I read was "The Road" by Cormac McCarthy and possibly "1984" by George Orwell. Either way, kind of negative views on the future (a natural disaster apocalypse by nature, or an apocalypse created by man via nuclear war, or enslavement). I thought it was funny how it was kind of joked about being real preparation for a real apocalypse, and although a real apocalypse might not involve zombies, it does seem likely that it could happen and prepare us mentally. I'm sure for some people in Europe during World War II it may as well have been the apocalypse. Matheson's version of an apocalypse had a very interesting twist on it though that I very much enjoyed. The human being the monster and the vampires being the new order of things, in turn, Neville become legend, a creature of fiction.

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein

I am ashamed to say that I have never read the original Frankenstein before. It was assigned once before in high school, but I never read it because I thought it was boring. Maybe I was too young and Frankenstein dealt with mature ideas that were above me to understand and sympathize with. Having read it now for this class, I did still find the book paced a bit slowly at times, however I found that I enjoyed reading it very much. Frankenstein himself is a very interesting and complex character. He explains why he feels the way he does about situations and life and I feel like I understand the actions he takes through out the novel. It is hard to explain, but I feel like this novel teaches a lesson about growing up and making decisions rather than just being a horror scare-fest like the cinemas make it out to be. It also deals with the ideas of what it is to be human and struggling with self. I found I really liked how intelligent the monster actually is and my favorite reference was the one in the notes at the beginning about the albatross from the Ancient Mariner. I had no idea what it meant to wear an albatross around your neck, but found it was like a curse or bad luck. It could also seem to represent taking responsibility for your actions, just like Frankenstein failed to take responsibility for the monster he created. I was also most interested to understand how Frankenstein really changed the whole horror genre of literature and more specifically gothic horror. The fact that Mary Shelley's mother was a radical feminist and how the church wanted more people to read. Most people reading at the time were middle class women (with servants) who corresponded through letters and had time to do activities such as reading. I can see how the opening of the book being entirely written through letters of correspondence really would bring people in and immerse them in this world.

Bloggin

This is my blog for Horror, Fantasy, and Sci-fi literature with Dr. Steiling.