Dynamic Subspace

Category: Science Fiction

  • Deleuze, Guattari, and The Dark Knight

    I’m currently reading Deleuze and Guattari’s A Thousand Plateaus:  Capitalism and Schizophrenia, and I couldn’t help thinking about it as I watched The Dark Knight this past Sunday with Y, Seth, Kolter, and Masaya at the Independence Regal.

    Actually, I had thought about the connections between Batman and Deleuze and Guattari’s nomadology a few months ago as I was working on my SFRA 2008 paper on Mike Resnick’s Ivory, nomadology, and how to make meaning for students.  I’m not well versed in the extended Batman history and mythology, but I have read Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns and The Dark Knight Strikes Again.  While talking with Professor Trogdon outside the Kent State library, it occured to me that Miller’s formulation directly relates to my reading of nomadology and the war machine, because Batman emblematizes resistant force against the all pervasive power, skewering Gotham, of the gangs and organized crime.  Furthermore, Batman leads a war machine, made up of individuals against the oppressive power of evil that permeates through fear.

    The Dark Knight, and the earlier Batman reboot movie, Batman Begins, further reinforces Deleuze and Guattari’s theory of resistance, nomadology, and the war machine.  There is the assemblage of Bruce Wayne, Batman, and his technologies–his suit, grapple gun, cape, the Tumbler, and Bat cycle–that resists corruption and organized crime within his hometown of Gotham.

    Turning it around, there is the Batman-Joker-Two Face assemblage.  They are retellings of one another–breaking rules and law for various psychic traumas in their pasts.  They each serve a particular ideology that overlaps and builds off of one another.  Batman does what the law cannot do in delivering justice.  The Joker is an “agent of chaos,” unhinged by some ancient trauma (if it can be said the Joker has a history), but not to be mistaken as uncalculating, even the Mandelbrot set appears to have a form of order, and likewise, The Joker manipulates and arranges his world to suit his anarchic vision.  Harvey Dent works within the system, unafraid of the risk to his life, and his metamorphosed self, Two Face, seeks revenge and retribution for his loss of Rachael with a white heat intensity.  In a sense, none of these characters may exist without the presence of the other.  As in the earlier Batman movies, The Joker says to Batman, “you created me.”  Their world necessitates their becoming-heroes or becoming-villians.

    There are some interesting convolutions and permutations around the Batman.  Bruce Wayne is able to do what he does, because he has old money that gets bigger and more influential because of Wayne Industries’ work and investment.  Ignatious Fox represents this go-between of money and the Batman’s ability to fight crime.  It’s the high tech weaponry developed by Wayne Industries under the guidance of Fox that enables Batman’s meting justice.  How then is Batman a nomad?  He lives the nomad life, especially illustrated in Batman Begins, but his nomad existence is made possible by capital and the power that comes from it.  Can the nomad represent both the war machine and the State (in this case capital–money is ever present in Batman–stopping bank robberies and such, and the State is only shown to be the police force protecting that capital).  What about The Joker?  Is he the true nomad in The Dark Knight, because he resists the power of the Batman?  Actually, Batman appropriated the war machine of the crime bosses by redirecting the affect of fear from the populace to the criminals.  Deleuze and Guattari say that the war machine will be appropriated by the State and used for its own ends, and if Batman represents capital, then this operation has been accomplished.  Then, The Joker comes on the scene as a resistance to the affect of fear created by the Batman.  The Joker organizes the force of resistance against the power of the Batman by employing the affective weapons of fear, uncertainty, disorder, chaos, and the supposed dearth of good human nature.  He fights what he perceives to be an oppressive power that comes from the shadows and the sky above, but he’s unafraid and resists that power to the end.  Does this mean that The Joker is the true hero of The Dark Knight?

    Awhile back, Sha warned me against becoming a Deleuze and Guattari acolyte, which at the time struck me, because I had not thought of being any sort of acyolyte–the word itself stung me into reconsidering some things.  And, as Jim Gunn says, “the unconsidered belief is not worth holding.”  There are some important things that Deleuze and Guattari have to say that I want to add to my toolbox, but I need to work more at developing my own tools.  Instead of picking up the Craftsman guaranteed tool, I need to walk up to the furnace, lathe, and milling machine and start carving out some of my own tools.  Perhaps I’ll borrow a gadget here or a bob there to enhance my own theories, but I must add my own tools to the toolbox so I’ll be all the more confident and proud to use and carry it.

  • Wall-E, Terrific Science Fiction

    Y and I just got back home from seeing Pixar’s latest animated film, Wall-E, at the single screen Highland Theatre in Akron, Ohio.  It’s everything but a “silly cartoon.”  I have to tell you–Wall-E is TERRIFIC Science Fiction, and GREAT filmmaking!

    I’ve seen every film by Pixar except for the Toy Story series, and I’ve enjoyed all that I’ve seen thus far.  However, Wall-E surpasses all of their previous work through a well-thought out story, amazing cinematography, good examples of real-world physics, and the interweaving of American consumer culture with capitalistic-paternalism and eco-disaster.  The most striking element of the film goes back to Leo Marx’s work, The Machine in the Garden, but I believe Wall-E is emblematic of how Marx is wrong.  Marx’s thesis is that American literature imagines an idyllic garden which has been lost and is reattainable through the embrace of technology, but the lost Edenic pastoral is gone forever, and technological progress pushes us further away from it.  The characters of Wall-E and his girlfriend, Eve, show humanity the way toward regaining what we’ve lost through two key scenes (one in the film, and the other during the end credits).  The earlier scene has Eve take Wall-E’s plant offering into what is best described as a womb.  There, the plant is safe until returned to the corporate robot controlled Axiom starship (accepted/unquestioned truth, wow, what a perfect name!).  Wall-E and Eve keep the plant safe, and reawaken obese humanity’s connection with (mother) Earth.  Then, during the end credits, there are developing scenes in a variety of stylzied animations covering cave paintings to Egyptian heiroglyphics to Impressionism.  In these scenes, the garden is recreated by the cooperation of humanity with its autonomous robotic creations.

    Wall-E is a really fun movie for all ages, and I guarantee that you’ll be as enchanted as I was by this amazing Science Fiction allegory!

  • Science Fiction and Your World

    Continuing from my last post, Dr. Takayoshi asked us to practice what she preaches and create a multimodal work to show to our students (e.g., an example of how to do multimodal work, something that ties into a multimodal assignment, or an introduction to our class).  Also, it should be 4 minutes in length.

    As much as I didn’t want to do something of this magnitude in one day, this assignment did help me crystallize my thoughts regarding the first writing class that I’ll teach in the Fall at KSU.  I decided to go with the theme, “Science Fiction and Your World.”  I’m going to assign my students a number of SF short stories and secondary readings to begin discussions about contemporary issues, which will lead into their writing assignments.  I found a nice anthology edited by Orson Scott Card that I’m going to assign, which is titled, Masterpieces:  The Best Science Fiction of the Twentieth Century.  I wouldn’t say that it’s the best anthology out there, but it has a number of enjoyable and topical stories that I believe my students will enjoy.

    After deciding my course’s theme, I storyboarded an introductory video that’s a campy informative mix.  It’s just over 4 minutes long, and available on YouTube.

    Oct. 21, 2023 Update: Video link removed as it no longer exists.

  • Multimodal Composition and Vernor Vinge’s Rainbows End

    Over the summer, I’m taking an intensive, four week class on teaching college writing.  The course is led by Dr. Brian Huot, Kent State University’s Writing Program Coordinator, and for three days this week, Dr. Pamela Takayoshi is introducing us to multimodal composition.

    Multimodal composition is the use of media other than paper and pencil for rhetorical communication and composition.  For example, blogs, Powerpoint presentations, Youtube videos, Podcasts, brochures etc. are other ways to make persuasive arguments and enter critical discourse.  In multimodal composition, the printed essay does not reign supreme.

    There seems to be a push in writing programs, which are increasingly influenced by the growth of rhetoric programs to the detriment of literature programs, to teach students to compose by any means available.  This means that students should be encouraged to create arguments, whether it be with audio essays or videos for example, with the tools at hand in order to increase their own involvement in the increasingly technologized mediums of communication.

    I like this idea, on the surface, because students should be aware of the ways they do and may be called upon to communicate in the twenty-first century.  Also, I engage in these practices in my own personal and professional lives with this blog, YouTube, and Flickr.  However, I first understood the basics of writing practices and composition before or in analog with my additionally technologized communication practices.

    My belief is that a grounding in traditional writing practices and composition empowers the individual to translate and apply those to other means and mediums of communication.  In the introductory writing classes, I feel that I not be meeting my students needs if I didn’t guide them towards an increased proficiency in writing before allowing them to use multimodal composition practices in the classroom.  Analogously, a pilot must earn a single engine pilots license prior to earning a license in larger and multiple engine aircraft.  Our students should safely pull out of a stall on a small Cesna before experiencing an F-15 flame out.  Therefore, I assert that students are better prepared communicators if they build on tried-and-true translatable communicative practices before using expressive, yet not as directly translatable, modes of communication.

    So what does this have to do with Vernor Vinge’s postsingularlity SF novel, Rainbows End (now available for free online here)?  In the novel, Robert Gu, a former great poet in the last throws of a slow Alzheimer’s death, is resurrected through regenerative medical technologies.  However, his disease has left a mark on his mind, and he has to relearn how to be a poet as well as learn about the changes in technologically mediated communicative practices.  Toward this end, he enrolls in a high school where he works with a teenage student, Juan Orozco, to create a multimodal final project in “shop class” that involves dance, music, holographic projection, and poetry.  There’s an exchange of ideas between the two characters–Gu introduces Juan to poetry and the power of the written word, and Orozco shows Gu the potential of story telling and art with the advances in technology during Gu’s illness.

    For all of the good things in Vinge’s novel, his writing about the multimodal compositions fell flat for me.  In fact, I cringed at the possibility that we’d move away from reading and writing within such a short time.  With the rapid advances in technology, and technology’s relationship and impact on the classroom, it seems like there is not enough reflection taking place on its long term and post-graduation effects on our students.  It’s one thing to write about how great this brave new world will be, but I question if that will be so.

    Granted, I haven’t been in the classroom yet, and I know that a large part of my own developing ideas on teaching practices are borrowed from the ways that I was taught, but m greatest rebellious response during the past couple of weeks in Brian’s class has been in regard to multimodal composition.  I don’t think it has a place in my introductory writing class, and I question to what extent I might employ it in higher level courses where students can demonstrate their ability to communicate effectively with the written word.

    A final issue that I have with multimodal composition is the technical instruction aspect of it.  I don’t do tech support.  In my previous life, prior to fully engaging my research interests in graduate school, I built more computers than I can count, I’ve repaired more Macs than I can imagine, and I gave phone, teletype, and email assistance to innumerable customers at the late, great Mindspring in Atlanta, Georgia.  I didn’t sign on to pursue research and college teaching to help students learn how to use iMovie, much less the poorly designed Microsoft Movie Maker.  I love technology, and it’s an integral part of my life, including  two World of Warcraft accounts, a 30″ Apple Cinema Display and Mac Book Pro, iPhone, building a Media Center PC, blogging, and keeping my girlfriend’s ailing Sony Vaio alive while she studies for her comps, but I strongly insist on keeping that separate from my goal of enriching the lives of my students by challenging them to think deeply, imagine new possibilities, and effectively communicate through writing before moving up to multimodal composition practices.

  • Cyberspace and the New Mind

    Neil Easterbrook recently sent an email to the SFRA listserve regarding The Atlantic article, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” by Nicholas Carr, which is available here.  Neil was using this article as a prompt for his inquiry for SF works that address the neurology of reading and how the act of reading changes the way people think.  I suggested Richard Powers’ Galatea 2.2 as a possible text, because the AI, Helen, evolves over time as she learns the literary canon from the fictional “Richard Powers.”

    I argree with Carr that Google and the Internet are changing the way we think.  As are cell phones and other digital necessities such as the iPod.  What I’m concern about is how something like Google can be employed to shape the way we think.  This is an idea that comes from thinking about Chomsky’s work on the self-censorship in the media, because of such effects as the increasing usage of government press releases in place of real reporting (which costs money and cuts into the bottom line).  In the case of Google, companies can sponsor links so that they appear higher in search results.  Also, as Carr’s article states, Google eventually wants to give users of its service just what they’re looking for.  Combining these two things together may not be exactly what a user is looking for, but an approximation based on the shaping of results toward capitalistic ends.  I fear the future won’t be about a Google AI supplanting our way of thinking, but rather about the buying and selling of our way of thinking.  I believe that capitalism already shapes our thinking, our consciousness, but in the Google model, where users don’t pay for services, but are given a service in exchange for the implicit agreement that advertising in some way pays for their access to Google’s services, users can’t pay to opt out of this new form of consciousness shaping.  They don’t want users to engage in the system in this way, because the system’s thought shaping serves corporate interests, including their own, which are diametrically opposed and mutually exclusive with an empowered user/individual/consumer.