Octavia Entry #6

This is my response to Kelsey's blog entry from last week:
http://versionsoffiction.blogspot.com/2011/10/im-monster.html
I did a music video for my blog entry last week so I thought I’d stick with that whole thing and review another one. So here is what I thought about Kanye’s “Monster” video:

Excerpt 1: "... The best living or dead hands down huh?
less talk more head right now huh?
and my eyes more red than the devil is
and I’m bout to take it to another level bitch
there you go again, ain't nobody as cold as this
do the rap and the track triple double no assist
but my only focus is staying on some bogus shit
argue with my older bitch acting like I owe her shit..."

Excerpt 2:
"... conquer, stomp ya, stop your silly nonsense
none of you niggas know where the swamp is
none of you niggas have seen the carnage that I’ve seen
I still hear fiends scream in my dream
murder murder in black convertibles
I kill a block I murder avenues
rape and pillage a village, women and children
everybody wanna know what my Achilles' heel is..."

After those two excerpts I think you might be well aware of where I’m headed with this. Let’s start with the video to kick things off. I’m in Doug Park’s Film Studies class as well as Seminar on Octavia Butler so analyzing rap videos should be my cup of tea. You can judge for yourself though.
When I was watching this video I instantly took note of how it took place in Kanye’s dark home. He’s engaging in sexual, yet empty, relationships with women. There is the bed scene where he adjusts the arm of one girl behind the other sitting next to him – suggesting that he has to do work just to make these affairs have any kind of chemistry. Meanwhile, we also get a shot of a tall woman whose face is off-screen that has the heel of her stilettos through the chest of a man on the floor – obviously a “man eater” sort of woman. We also have crowds of people who want to get inside of Kanye’s house and he intimidates and scares them off through a window. So, what sort of character does he resemble from our readings?
He’s a wealthy, alpha-male character who keeps “a house” and has a sort of polygamist system going on. WHO’S THAT POKEMON?
IT’S DORO!

The first excerpt does a fantastic job of describing Doro’s character, the way he looks, the way he acts, the way he thinks about people and women. He’s cold hearted and is willing to use force to get what he wants. He’s “the best living or dead” because you can’t kill him unless his “oldest” or, in Mary’s case the youngest but most promising. All throughout Doro’s stories he’s dealing with his struggles with controlling “his women.” His men serve him or die trying to run but it’s always the women who give him trouble and, clearly, Kanye suffers from the same problem. (LOL)

The second excerpt isn’t too much more important than the first one but it really embodies Doro’s tenacity. Most remarkable is the very last line considering that nobody could figure out how to kill Doro until Mary did. And who could have predicted that, anyways?




I think that the high stardom of being a famous black artist in America really inspires the sort of attitude that Doro embodies. Especially for someone like Kanye who thinks of himself as a god, or Jesus, or something... he really takes after that attitude. Personally, I think Doro is a lot more reserved and refined but you know.
With love,









-Cirque

Octavia Entry #5

In a distant future where the black race and rap music are considered to be the epitome of artistic perfection and cultural aesthetic... a world where secret organizations dedicate themselves to the production of the ultimate pop artist... a world where the club setting is not just a place to hangout but a test of one's character and ability to reach his destiny... one man lays down the hook.

Afro-futurism, being about exploring the black experience through the projection of possible futures pertaining to technological, social, or dystopian developments, is often seen outside the scope of popular culture. The primary exceptions to this are blockbuster theater features and video games. What we see in Fiddy's video are those same projective values applied to the production process of pop artists.
We see the "Shady/Aftermath Development Center" where, presumably, Eminem is working with scientists to develop a pop star. The "aftermath" seems to be an allusion to the destruction of the Earth's surface (possibly). The scientists seem to be applying information derived from the study of Eminem's previously successful music videos and music. Why these survivors need a pop star to show up and drop sick rhymes is another topic for speculation entirely but, at any rate, we see the implementation of advanced technology to birth or modify 50 Cent into being. He works out, he hones his good looks, he raps, he becomes the very best. And that's pretty much the premise for the video. It casts a black artist and black mainstream pop culture as not just existing in the future but being some sort of savior to the human race. The song, of course, is about how awesome 50 Cent is and how the people need him and that hate just feeds him because he's just so damned cool. Which he is.

Of course, it is just a music video so it doesn't necessarily have a coherent beginning and end in terms of the plot and story progression. (Might add some more things to this post by midnight... not sure.)

Octavia Entry #4: Layered Question

What questions is Lilith forced to struggle with as she comes to terms with what the Oankali demand of her as a "mother" in Dawn? What controversial issues do these questions parallel in our society today? Considering the resulting factions of humanity and Lilith's adopted roles in Adulthood Rites, does it sound like Butler is advocating a particular stance on the issues?

Geez, coming up with layered questions is harder than it sounds. Maybe its just the text we're covering. Hopefully, that's a good one.

Octavia Entry #3

Jesse Hutchings

Lysa Rivera

ENG423; Butler

Journal Entry #3

            “Most important, though, the boy was not human.

            Eli could not accept this. Again and again, he tried to teach Jacob to walk upright. A human child walked upright. A boy, a man, walked upright. No son of Eli’s would run on all fours like a dog.

            Day after day, he kept at Jacob until this the little boy sprawled on his stomach and screamed in rebellion.

            “Baby, he’s too young,” Meda said not for the first time. “He doesn’t have the balance. His legs aren’t strong enough yet.”

            Chances were, they never would be, and she knew it. She tried to protect the boy from Eli. That shamed and angered Eli so that he could not talk to her about it.

            She tried to protect his son from him!

            And perhaps Jacob needed her protection. There were times when Eli could not even look at the boy. What in hell was going to happen to a kid who ran around on all fours? A freak who could not hide his strangeness. What kind of life could he have? Even in this isolated section of desert, he might be mistaken for an animal and shot. And what in heaven’s name would be done with him if he were captured instead of killed? Would he be sent off to a hospital for “study” or caged and restricted like ven the best of the various apes able to communicate through sign language? Or would he simply be stared at, harassed, tormented by normal people? If he spread the disease, it would quickly be traced to him. Je would definitely be caged or killed them.

            Eli loved the boy desperately, longed to give him the gift of humanity that children everywhere else on earth took for granted. Sometimes Eli sat and watched the boy as he played. At first, Jacob would come over to him and demand attention, even try, Eli believed, to comfort his father or understand his bleakness. Then the boy stopped coming near him. Eli had never turned him away, had even ceased trying to get him to walk upright. In fact, Eli was finally accepting the idea that Jacob would never walk on his hind legs with any more ease or grace than a dog doing tricks. Yet the boy began to avoid him.

Eli was slow in noticing. Not until he called Jacob and saw that the boy cringed away from him did he realize it had been many days since Jacob had touched him voluntarily.

            Many days. How many? Eli thought back.

            A week, perhaps. The boy had ceased to come near him or touch him exactly when he began wondering if it were not a cruelty to leave such a hopeless child alive.” (594, Butler. Clay’s Ark.)

This passage is very interesting to me for many reasons and, of course, is very important to the overall plot of the story. It describes what the earliest years of life for Jacob are like as the offspring of the infected Eli. Until this point, there hasn’t been any offspring of the infected and this candid and foreboding look at what this “life” has to offer is chilling.

The description from this passage gives us an impression of Jacob and what would come to be “his kind” or, in Patternmaster, the “Clayarks.” When Butler chronicles Eli’s worries about Jacob and says, “If he spread the disease,” we get some clear foreshadowing that Jacob would indeed spread his disease. Jacob’s behavior seems to be very similar to that of a feral child – a child that has gone through the developmental years of childhood held captive without access to the outside world or in solitude. Children who aged in the solitude of nature, rare cases as they are, have been known to walk on all fours seemingly in imitation of the animals they encountered. As Butler’s work in Wild Seed and Patternmaster often draws our attention to what about our human sentiments are “natural” or “ethical,” it seems unnervingly appropriate that the offspring of a “disease” in one of her stories behaves like a child deserted in nature. This question of “nature” and especially of “human nature” becomes a motif as the infection causes people to experience fits of carnal desire – including but not limited to violence and rape.

Another reason why I liked this passage was because of the style it was written in. The tone of the paragraph starting out with: “And perhaps Jacob needed her protection…” can be read almost as comedic, if it weren’t lamenting such serious problems. When I was reading through it myself, I replaced Jacob’s disturbing developments with something silly like having an incurable fascination with walking around in a clown costume or refusing to put clothes on at all. If his problem were comical, these vehement lamentations would become highly satirical and amusing and might sound something like a Saturday Night Live skit. Of course, all of this is entirely unrelated to serious discussion of the story, plot, and social critiques but sometimes I think we should take a closer look at Butler’s writing style. Her style is, after all, a very dynamic and expressive one in which the tones can shift from being grim and dry to that of someone bawling dramatically. When you compare the paragraph I just mentioned with the shorter one starting with “Eli was slow in noticing…” this drastic reshaping in tone becomes strikingly apparent. This is a characteristic of Butler’s writing that is evident throughout the Seed to Harvest series.

In the natural world, animals can be known to abandon their young if they are different in the way that Jacob is. If a silver-back gorilla were to walk around exclusively on its hind legs, it might not be accepted as part of its group and be rejected violently if necessary. In Clay’s Ark, the human race is posed with a similar problem. Of course, we already have some problems that are similar to this with defective births (Down’s syndrome, for example) and we have responded in much the same way that Eli has to Jacob’s condition (in the passage). If a person is born with a genetic defect, we accept them into society and provide them with what roles they can handle. We nurture and take care of them as best we can. Jacob’s infection is slightly different in that it urges the carrier to reproduce and spread the orgasm that causes it. This poses us with the possibility that we might be destroyed, as a species, if we do not destroy the carriers of the organisms. So, do we kill them?

Testing 1,2,3.
I heard blogspot was having issues so I'm just testing if posting is up before I actually write another entry.

Blog #2: Post on Wild Seed by Butler

Here is some somewhat relevant listening (those who are musically faint of heart, beware). 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b7bxjDGbrLI

(Doro and Anyanwu discussing her post-escape husband Mgbada)

“And he survived a crossing on a slave ship?”

“Only part of him survived. He was mad most of the time, but he was docile. He was like a child. The slavers pretended that it was because he had not yet learned English that he seemed strange. They showed me how strong his muscles were – I had the form of a white man, you see.”

“I know.”

“They showed me his teeth and his hands and his penis and they said what a good breeder he would be. They would have pleased you, Doro. They thought very much as you do.”

“I doubt it,” he said amiably. He was being surprisingly amiable. He was at his first stage – seeking to seduce her as he had when he took her from her people. No doubt by his own reasoning he was being extremely generous. She had run from him, done what no one else could do, kept out of his hands for more than a lifetime; yet instead of her killing her at once, he seemed to be beginning again with her – giving her a chance to accept him as thought nothing had happened. That meant he wanted her alive, if she would submit.

Her own sense of relief at this realization startled her. She had come down the stairs to him expecting to die, ready to die, and here he was courting her again. And here she was responding….  (Butler, 191)

This passage is another key interaction between Doro and Anyanwu in their highly controlled but super hostile stand offs. Throughout the story of Wild Seed we have come to know Doro as a sophisticated and manipulative body snatcher and breeder of witch-like humans. Of course, at the very beginning he convinced Anyanwu to become his wife and travel to America with him for this purpose of breeding. This story, taking place in the 1800s and surrounded by the issue of slavery, makes a very powerful opposition between love or relationships and slavery. With Doro’s power of stealing bodies and killing simultaneously, presumably even involuntarily if it comes to his body being mortally wounded, he is a killing force that can operate outside of any authority known to man. With this power he can bring Anyanwu to do anything he wishes while threatening death and enslavement to her children as long as she is in a human form. The comparison between slavery and human romantic relationships comes in during their negotiate interactions as exemplified above.

Anyanwu is cast in this story as an infinitely fertile mother and healer – she is the end-all maternal figure for many reasons. One of the most powerful reasons is her being from Africa – the continent widely considered to be the arc and origin of life on planet Earth. Being native of this place as well as being an immortal shape-shifter and giving birth to many offspring throughout the course of the story is essentially enough to make her the literal and metaphorical “mother nature” apart from the fact that she can’t control the elements. She's a pretty impressive woman, if I do say so myself.

Doro comes into this picture as the harnesser of her powers. Also, being a descendant of European ancestry, it is not too far a stretch to say that he is the ultimate representation of the inescapable white man slave holder. If he wasn’t evil enough based simply on his actions, his mannerisms and capabilities as well make him almost a devil-like figure. He molds his personality to suit whatever he needs to accomplish in any given scenario - changes his face both figuratively and literally. This is exemplified by his casual questioning about Anyanwu’s prior husband. In any real life scenario, an ex-husband questioning his ex-wife about one of her latter husbands would probably be fuming with jealousy, rage, and/or bitterness. Doro’s ability to subdue his feelings to achieve his aims can only be described as uncanny or “inhuman.” The only thing consistently recognizable about him is an indescribable (no, seriously, it’s never actually articulated in words) tone in his voice that his subservients can recognize and an “inhuman” characteristic of his eyes.

When Anyanwu says, “They thought very much as you do” she is comparing Doro to a slave-trader. Considering how trapped she felt by Doro and his indifference to her feelings, this comparison has a lot of merit. More often than not, he shows little to no empathy for anyone who does not have some kind of immediate value to him as a “seed.”

Through Anyanwu and Doro’s interactions, Butler seems to be making some kind of a social critique on love and relationships. If not, she may be at least bringing them into a politically hyper-charged environment for an extra-contextualized analysis of some sort. Despite the fact that many births in this story are organized meticulously by Doro, Anyanwu seems to only conceive with partners that she has come to love in some way. Strangely, this is not the case with each and every conception in Wild Seed.

Does Butler seem to be conveying some kind of a message about whether or not romantic love is necessary for reproduction?

What sort of questions is Butler begging us to ask about loyalty and love? 

 With love, 

-Cirque

FIRST OCTAVIA BLOG

Ironically, this post doesn't talk about Butler at all.

In class on Tuesday much of our discussion of Le Guin, Gunn, and Suvin centered on estrangement from the world that we live in and how it affects our involvement in fictional stories. The story The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas by Ursula Le Guinn seemed to me very much as an exercise in how the writer or author must struggle to involve the reader in the story at hand. When writing a story it is very important to convince your reader to actually invest some part of them in your story; convince the reader to actually care, to put it bluntly. In Omelas, Le Guinn is explicitly struggling with how to go about describing the city, village, or town (whatever Omelas is) in a way that will do just that. When she writes, “ Joyous! How is one to tell about joy? How describe the citizens of Omelas?” and “Do you believe? Do you accept the festival, the city, the joy? No? Then let me describe one more thing…” she is calling us to pay attention to and reflect upon this very important aspect of writing. Famous writer, Italo Calvino, took a very similar approach in his works of Invisible Cities. 

When I try to think about this subject, I often think of it in terms of suspension of disbelief. If you want to invest some kind of feeling in a story and be moved by it, you need to “entertain” the events of the story as being real, or at least, real in theory so that you can by extension experience it in some way or another for yourself. What a feat, right? I often find that when  I am reading a story and a character’s personality doesn’t match their actions (good examples come from the fiction workshops in classes taught here at WWU) I can’t engage myself in the story itself and, as a result, it’s hard to read through a story that I don’t feel anything for. Creating a convincing reflection in writing of our own world allows for a story that readers can easily relate to and engage in, therefore, suspending the reader’s disbelief to experience the tale you want to tell. 

Suvin, in his essay Estrangement and Cognition, leads us through an analysis of these issues but in very different terms that familiarize us with Science Fiction and Fantasy. The way they relate to one another in regards to how they mirror our world and are different from our world (estrangement) and how that affects the reader (cognition). Suvin essentially says just this when he quotes Bertolt Brecht in his Short Organon for the Theatre, “A representation which estranges is one which allows us to recognize its subject, but that the same time makes it unfamiliar.” This particular passage makes me think instantly of Freud’s The Uncanny which illustrates perfectly why science fiction fixates and draws our attention to it, invites hard questions, and begs us to analyze what it is saying about our world. It takes what is, for the most part, ‘our world’ and changes it in a way that makes it “uncanny” to us. Like the naked body of a woman in her sexual prime with the head of a vulture, it draws our eyes (I guess I might not be able to speak for everyone, but quite a few, I’m sure) and repulses or confuses us at the same time. Conflicted feelings work great for maintaining attention. Attention, suspended disbelief for further judgment, mission accomplished in terms of entertainment.

Well, those are my thoughts for now! I’d love to hear feedback if anybody had some thoughts while reading it.