Character response

So, last class we were supposed to research a type of person for the debate, and imitate their opinions and give a reaction to Pride. Unfortunately, I was horribly sick and had to miss that. But the “person” I had to imitate was an anti-war activist. I think the main part of the book that they would react to is the end scene, when the American soldiers kill the lions and the ignorance they display about the situation. One soldier lies about the actions of the lions, for example – he says that the lions charged at the soldiers and that is why they killed them, but this is in fact not true; Safa only roared/started toward them after Zill had already been shot (representative of the first strike by Americans in Iraq). I also think that the statement by one of the soldiers at the end that the lions were “free” would also cause a reaction by anti-war activists. I find this to be a very naïve statement; yes, the lions were looking for freedom (although Safa seemed content with zoo life), but what was given to them by the bombing certainly wasn’t what they had in mind. Likewise, Noor, I think, would much rather have earned her freedom herself than getting outside “help.”

So...yeah. That’s what I think about that.

Pride of Baghdad

Holy eff was that intense. I mean, I knew it was going to be. I read the back of the book before starting it, so I knew they’d die in the end. And I had talked to Rebecca about it and she said the same thing, that is was thoroughly depressing. But I was still taken aback. Like…I really wasn’t expecting that rape scene at all, let alone in the first 10 or so pages. And when the giraffe’s head explodes…or the lion that’s been tied up and de-clawed/de-fanged. That’s some heavy stuff – and all the worse because it’s so obviously an allegory for humans. Although, I think (and this could just be my own personal desensitizing) that using the animals to tell this kind of story makes it seem even more brutal, because when you look at an animal, you tend to think of it as a pure, natural, innocent being, even if it’s a predator. That’s not in any way to say that humans deserve violence any more than animals, but…this is a hard concept to put into words. I guess what I mean is that as a human, you have an understanding of other people’s psyches enough to realize (or at least make an educated guess about) what’s going on if they’re attacking you, and possibly formulate a way to get out of the situation/anticipate what might be coming next/etc. An animal doesn’t have these same ways of defending itself, especially against something like guns (not that an unarmed person would either, but they at least know what a gun is). Maybe that doesn’t make sense to anyone but me. Either way, the animals here are representing humans on one level, and I think the innocence of the animal psyche (if you can call it that) combined with this representation – as well as the very quick pace of all the action – makes it just about the most horrifying thing I’ve read. It will be interesting to delve into this more in class, but right now I’m still reeling from the initial reaction.

Random thoughts

So, to build off of a post from Blackboard, I think Gran’ma Ben has some unexplained actions that go along with Thorn’s sudden transformation.

But I suppose I should back up for a minute. The argument was that Thorn’s character goes from being confused/helpless/lost/despairing about her destiny to domineering/take-charge/badass leader in about 3 seconds. Page 596-601 is where we see this “new” Thorn. And from then on, she seems to have no difficulty accepting her role as a veni-yan-cari or adapting to her new powers, etc. I definitely agree with this; either 1) the author left out some important backstory/information about what the “turning” is all about (perhaps an attribute of becoming a veni-yan-cari is that you conform to your new self this quickly?), or 2) the text is already so huge that in order to advance the plot in a timely fashion, the reader has to take a few things like this for granted.

Okay, so I was thinking about all of this while glancing back through the story, and I noticed that something similar also happens with Gran’ma Ben – She also seems to quickly accept Thorn’s status as a leader at this point. For example, when the group is walking through the ash fields/ghost circles, Gran’ma Ben doesn’t hesitate to let Thorn lead them – now, obviously, Thorn can see the ghost circles when no one else can, and so on the surface, this doesn’t seem strange. But Gran’ma has been trying to protect Thorn for her entire life – why doesn’t she express concern about this? And she is also quick to give the sword over to Thorn even earlier than this. It just seemed strange to me that someone who takes as much pride in her own independence and strength seems so willing to hand this kind of a position of leadership to her granddaughter without feeling some sort of resentment.

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And on a completely different topic…

Another discussion on Blackboard was Phoeny’s character. I can’t stand him! But I don't know if I dislike him or the fact that he was written this way more. The thing about this kind of character is that they're supposed to learn something in the end - even if they go back to their old ways, they're supposed to have a new angle on it, to know that what they're doing is wrong, to have an appreciation for the goals they're trying to achieve but re-think the way they go about it. Phoney doesn't. The last we see of him, he's just the same as the beginning. There were several times when he'd almost get to the turning point (like right before he passes out when he's walking with Wendell and Euclid and he's awed at Lucius's selflessness on page 754, or toward the end [sorry, can't find the page] when he tires to run away because he thinks he's the one they want). But then he just goes right back to being obnoxiously greedy and self-centered. I guess I can't say that Smith was totally off to have used a character this way - I suppose there are those few people out there who will never change, even after going through something as epic as this...but it just seems very unlikely to me.

Archetypes

I’m going to list out the characters with what archetypes I think correspond to them, because 1) I just find it interesting, and 2) I might want to do something with this later, maybe for a project or something. Here they are:

Fone Bone: Hero; Unrequited Lover
Thorn: Hero; Warrior Maiden; Mother-figure; Noble (princess/queen); Innocent/Pure (at the beginning)
Phoney Bone: “That Guy”; Trickster; Criminal
Smiley Bone: Useless Sidekick; Stoner
Gran’ma Ben: Noble (queen)/Leader; Warrior Maiden; Mother-figure
Lucius: Bartender; Martyr (?); Warrior; Lover
Dragon: Sage; “Good Wizard”
Briar: Villain/Minion; Whore*
Lord of Locusts: Evil Incarnate/Villain
Old Master: “Good Wizard”; Jester
Tarsil: Knight Templar; Tragic Hero (to those loyal to him, anyway)
2 Stupid Rat Creatures: “That Guy”; Outcasts
Bartleby: Outcast; Innocent/Pure

There are probably more, but those are the most important, I think.

* I find the concept that Dan was talking about in class really interesting, of how Briar is the Whore who’s obsession and passion is for matters of the flesh, but she has no “flesh” of her own. It’s an interesting contradiction. I never really even considered her in this role until someone else mentioned it in class, but the evidence isn’t only in Lucius’s memories of her – when she (as the Hooded One) is talking to the Lord of Locusts, he tells her that “it is you we love,” (p. 503) and that she will remain his “eyes and hands,” (p. 763/501).

All-ages

So, okay, I know that part of what we talked about in class was that all-ages comics was that they aren’t necessarily “safe” – there are dark moments, deeper themes, etc. And I agree that that sort of stuff needs to happen for the older readers. But...I can’t help but think that it’s a bit much – at least in Bone – for the young kids reading this. Okay, I know what you’re thinking – what the heck am I talking about? Bone, as a whole, isn’t as intense, say, as Death Note or even Tales from the Farm. But, in my opinion, if I were a mother, I don’t think I’d want my children to read parts of this story. I’m thinking of when the captain gets cut in half on page 1146, or when we discover that Kingdok’s tongue has been ripped out by Roque Ja on page 774, or when the locusts explode out of Briar on page 829. All very disturbing, violent images. I mean, I suppose here it is kind of balanced with the amount of humor interspersed throughout, and the images are pretty widely spaced so as not to bombard the reader with it (as opposed to Pride of Baghdad, which I just got done reading – yikes...). I guess it’s not like I’m against it, per se – I don’t think those parts should have been left out, certainly. I’d just be hesitant to introduce it to a child.  

And can I also say that I laughed incredibly hard when they told us the name of the founder of Boneville? “Big” Johnson Bone – Wow, Jeff Smith. Just wow.

Wow. That was huge.

I can’t believe that I read the entire thing in two days. Talk about intense. But I really liked it.* And I suppose it’s better than reading Harry Potter in 23 hours (which I did), or at least much less dense than that. I was actually surprised at some of the content. I know Dan said it was for all ages in class (and I’m sure we’ll talk more about it this week), but still – I was impressed. But I think I’ll devote an entire post to that after class. But along those same lines – I was also surprised at the range of genres that this spanned (if “genre” is the right word). I mean, on the surface it was a children’s fantasy story. But it went much deeper than that and touched on some very real issues, like tolerance and duty to your family and friends – and the whole “choosing sides” issue that came up with Roque Ja completely took me off-guard. Also, not many books/movies/other media are able to get me as involved in the storyline as this one did. There were moments when I laughed out loud, or when I was so indignant/angry that I had to stop reading for a minute, etc. Overall, a very good read. I even told my best friend that she has to read it over the summer.

*Just as an aside – there really hasn’t been a book in this class I haven’t liked. Other than the writing style of the X-Men, but that still didn’t make me want to give up on the entire series or never read that saga again. It’s just interesting. I mean, there’s usually one book in a course that you hate. I guess I’ll wait and reserve judgment until the end of the semester…

Religious aspects

So, class the other day got me thinking about what I want to do for my assessment (Obviously. That was the point of the exercise. It’s late, I’m tired...forgive me). Anyway, I think I might want to do a paper on the religious aspects of American Born Chinese. I find mythologies interesting to begin with, and I’m a Christian, so I picked up on all of the Christian references, of course. And I think it’s really interesting how the author brought the two belief systems together and had them interact. The reference of the lion, the ox, the human, and the eagle, for instance, is taken from the book of Revelations – these are the four figures who surround the throne of God in heaven. And the character of Tze-Yo-Tzuh is an obvious reference to the Christian God, but I think (though I don’t know for sure, I’d have to do research), that he is also a traditional Chinese god, too. Oh, and the story of the monk Wong Lai-Tsao was probably my favorite part of the book, and that ended with the birth of Christ (pg. 215). So, I’d really like to do research and explore the relationship between the two traditions and find out more specifically why Yang chose to combine them the way he did.  

Chin-Kee

I don’t even know where to begin with Chin-Kee’s character. My reaction to him was...well, I think someone else said it best on Blackboard – he made me cringe, and I think he was supposed to. It was a very uncomfortable experience to read him, because on the one hand, he’s written as such a caricature/stereotype/embodied insult that you can’t exactly like him. But on the other hand, you have Danny whose perspective you’re looking at Chin-Kee through, and Danny is so completely opposed to the idea of Chin-Kee that that is offensive as well. And you do find out in the end, of course, after suffering through this, that this is exactly what Jin’s inner struggle means to him, to be faced with only two superficial choices of self and not yet have the ability to understand how to embrace parts of both to create a valued self. We get both extremes in order to realize that the middle ground is what’s best. It’s like Wei-Chen’s transformers – there’s more than meets the eye.

Parents

Something that bothered me while reading through American Born Chinese was the role of the parents, or really any adult figure in the book. I’m sure it was intentional, but the lack of influence was a bit disturbing. To me, the self-loathing issue that Jin has going on just seems to be the sort of thing that a parent would pick up on. Take for instance the day that Jin decides he’s going to perm his hair. I would like to hope that if my child did something along those lines, I might pick up on the fact that everything wasn’t okay. And the parents in the Danny storyline are portrayed as completely oblivious to any conflict whatsoever. I don’t know, I just think there’s a distinct lack of parental guidance. Not that I would want a scene where the parents sit Jin down and have a heart-to-heart of how they feel about being immigrants or tell him they understand, because that’s not the focus of the story. I mean we never see his parents’ faces, or even a scene at his home that isn’t his bedroom. But even a scene with one of his parents showing concern of some sort, even if it wasn’t voiced...although, I guess it does help to make Jin seem that much more isolated. And the point is that he doesn’t identify with what he sees his parents as being. So I guess I understand where Yang was coming from. But...still. I guess I’m just too much of a motherly type.

Reactions, etc.

Every time I look back through American Born Chinese, I gain some level of understanding that I didn’t get before. The whole convoluted issue of Wei-Chen being the Monkey King’s son and his story arc that’s revealed in the last chapter...the extent to which Jin is experiencing self-loathing and racial issues...the transformations of almost every character...it’s all very deep and interesting. The part that a lot of people have been talking about on Blackboard is the ending. And as soon as I read it the first time, I thought “this isn’t literal at all.” Because if you look at it literally, nothing makes sense. Chin-Kee being the Monkey King, Wei-Chen being his son, Jin turning into Danny. On the surface, it feels rushed and almost as if the author had written himself into a corner, or had a limited number of pages he could fill, and had to do some quick thinking to get himself out of it. But I don’t think that’s the case at all, I think the metaphor was meant to be worked in this way in order to force the reader to take it to the next level, especially as this was written for a younger audience.

Another initial thought I had was that if he wanted to, Yang could certainly make a sequel for this. I think it would be really cool to switch perspectives to Wei-Chen at this point and show how he deals with things. Albeit, his issues are similar to what Jin feels at the beginning of the story, but he has the entire background of being an emissary to take him in a different direction. One of the parts of the story that most appealed to me was Wei-Chen’s struggle to accept his place below humans, “in servitude” to them, etc, and the bitterness he embraces as a reaction to it. It really added a depth to his character that I’d want to explore as a writer.

Oops...

Okay, so I thought I posted this on here a long time ago, but evidently not. Anyway, here it is...

It’s kind of strange how the reader can be so opposed to what a character is doing, but still in some ways sympathize with him. Because on one hand, I want to see Light escape L. But on the other hand, I want L to catch Light. Weird. I mean, I strongly dislike Light because of all the reasons I ranted about in the previous post. And L has enough similarities to Light that it wouldn’t be much of a stretch for me to imagine disliking him in the future. But there’s still a quality about them that makes me care about what the outcome of their plight is. I guess what I ultimately want to happen is for Light to come to his senses, whether that means getting caught or not. I think he has potential. Which is more than he would probably say for someone such as himself, right?

I need to rant for a bit...

I’m finding the moral situation that Light’s character presents difficult to process. Some people online and in class were talking about how they were okay with his original idea, of ridding the world of criminals, but then they didn’t like what it was doing to Light once he put it into practice. But I can’t say that I ever thought it was a good idea – especially at the beginning. Because how messed up did he have to be to just decide that he has the right to pass judgment like that on anyone? It seems to me like he’s grouping all these “criminals” together into some generalized, evil category that refuses to consider circumstances and the ability of a person to change. Not that I’d try to excuse someone from murdering anyone, but...I don’t know. I guess I just don’t understand how Light can believe he has this divine right to pass judgment on others, even if they are criminals, because he can’t know all the circumstances surrounding their individual lives/situations, even if he can access his father’s computer files on them. Because he can’t get the whole story by just looking at their basic police files for a few minutes before he deems that they’re evil enough to be killed off. And then after a while he goes beyond even limiting his killing to criminals, but decides L needs to die just because he is against Light, and he even goes so far as to think about killing his family. He has major issues. And he’s a hypocrite. He just...irks me. But that’s the point, right? He’s supposed to.

Death Note

I really liked this one! I didn’t really know what to expect from a manga comic, but I really, really liked it. I’m going to need to go buy the 2nd volume very soon because I need to know what happens. Some things I noticed while I was reading it – There were a lot of up-close shots of people’s faces (or parts of them), which enhanced their emotions at the time. It made the effect more...intense, I guess is the right word. Even the dialogue bubbles were formatted differently for different people/tones of voice/etc which again made the experience more intense and specific. Even for Ryuk, who doesn’t really have a wide range of emotions, the artist used different shadings (pg. 23) and angles (pg. 29) to articulate his feelings. And speaking of Ryuk...he is possibly the most terrifying-looking thing I’ve ever seen. Ever. But anyway...initial reaction = quite good.

POVs

My group last class talked about points of view in The Spirit. Even before I was made to look closely at this aspect in class, it was something I noticed as I was reading it. I remember coming to “The Killer” and thinking how advanced for his time Eisner’s methods were. It was surprising, too, to go through and see just how many of the stories weren’t from the Spirit’s POV. We found that a lot of the time the POV started out as 3rd-person limited from the criminals’ perspectives, with the Spirit entering the story later. Then there was P’gell’s story, where even the narration was in her own 1st-person voice. There was even a movement in Eisner’s writing from the first stories, where the narrator was a 3rd person unknown, to the last stories which were narrated by the Spirit himself. What I found most interesting about this, I think, is that it allows Eisner to go beyond just following around this hero and seeing the different conflicts he’s part of, but to dig into deeper issues that a whole range of characters are made to deal with – take “Wild Rice,” for example, which delves into domestic abuse. We definitely wouldn’t have gotten the same depth on the topic if we had only seen things through the Spirit’s perspective. And “Ten Minutes” wasn’t about the Spirit at all – it was more an accident that it happened to be him to meet Freddy in the subway. I really liked that Eisner was able to give the reader so much depth in such a short space.

the ladies

Okay...I talked about it for X-Men, I suppose I should talk about it here. The portrayal of women. It doesn’t seem as offensive in The Spirit for some reason. Probably because “scantily clad” in the ‘40’s is so different than today. But there was just something about the characters in The Spirit that seemed...I don’t know. It was almost like the women in The Spirit were fully aware of the fact that they were dressing suggestively and using that to their advantage because they were intelligent enough to realize the implications/consequences/benefits/etc. of doing so. P’gell, of course, is the perfect example of this, as well as the scene in “Silk Satin” when Satin is taking the medal from the count (and various other instances). And I think that the intent to make the women intelligent like this says something for Eisner. He wasn’t just having these women in his comics to please an audience who called for women to be pretty, he was building strong, intelligent characters. And just because, as some people mentioned in class, the women who weren’t main characters weren’t portrayed that way (the wife in “Two Lives”, the old lady in “The Last Hand”), neither were the men. Again, going back to my last post about Satin, she and the Spirit are really the only ones shown with unwavering morals and intelligence. The male police, for example, are usually portrayed being easily duped and as quite portly. Again, I think Eisner was doing more than catering to the audience and giving us complex characters.

a side note

Someone made a comment in class about how Satin is kind of like the female version of the Spirit. I would tend to agree. She’s the only other character that we see who is as intelligent as the Spirit, and they seem to be on the same moral level (after the initial issue with Satin as a thief, of course). She even physically looks like him – the sharp features, mannish dress, and short black hair at the beginning. It’s an interesting parallel, and fitting, I guess, that their characters are drawn to each other (no pun intended).

The Spirit

My initial reaction to The Spirit was...well, I’m not really sure. I liked it, I suppose. I didn’t dislike it, at least. I can certainly see why Eisner is credited with so much in the comics industry – for something that was written in the ‘40s, there was quite a lot of experimentation going on in this comic. The various points of view/perspectives, for example, and the way he drew the splash pages. The stories themselves were more than just simple plots to follow from issue to issue. Eisner said in one of the posted interviews that he was trying to reach an adult audience, and the stories definitely show that. Ones that especially come to mind are “The Story of Gerhard Shnobble,” “Two Lives,” “Wild Rice,” and “Satin” (the part at the end where the Spirit shreds the evidence says a lot about his character/feelings for Satin). So, yeah. Eisner was awesome and there’s a lot to be learned from what he did in The Spirit, that much is evident. And I’d certainly read it again. But...I don’t know, I guess I just wasn’t blown out of the water about it.