Who is Stick? An Experimental Video Project

Please, please, come join us as we flesh Stick out into a person! Every person counts in this community project!

All that I am is Earthseed....

Parable of the Sower takes a scary look into the future of America, a world of slavery, rampant drug abuse, and poverty.  The destructive actions of man have sent the world into a sharp environmental decline, full of climate change and withering forests.  All Lauren can do to survive is find a community of her own and cling to her idea of God.

In a way, that’s what people have been doing for centuries.  Religion is more than an explanation of how the world came to be.  For those who truly believe, religion becomes part of life.  It is how Lauren puts it on page 262, “What I am now, all that I am is Earthseed.”  When times are truly at their worst, religion thrives at its best.

The Tarot in Nova

 

I’m extremely interested in the Tarot cards and their significance in Nova.  Obviously there is a great deal of mysticism (and skepticism) surrounding the Tarot, but they seem to be of a higher importance in the universe presented in the text.  They transcend the realm of divination to the realm of cultural cohesion, pleasure, and advisor.  In the hands of Tyÿ, the cards are a powerful tool.  In the hands of Sebastian or the twins, the cards are a simple (or perhaps not-so-simple) game, a sport.  And yet for Mouse, they are something to apprehend, to doubt, to shun.

Inner Love, Outer Hatred: The Beginning and End of a Nation as Predicted by Black Empire

In reading George Schuyler’s Black Empire, we witness the rise of a great black nation as Doctor Belsidus leads legions of loyal, intelligent men and women to superiority.  He expertly designs and executes his strategies through careful manipulations through the fear, loyalty, ambition, hate, and in some cases love of those that follow him. Cold and calculating, Belsidus seems to able to feel only one emotion: blinding hatred for the white race.

Of One Blood: Race Lost in Melodrama

Of One Blood, while being a story focused around a utopia, is first and foremost a melodrama.  The story has a hero (Reuel), a heroine (Dianthe), a comic character (Charlie), and a villain (Aubrey).  The story is fraught with romantic intentions upon a female character who is lost, innocent, and doe-eyed.  The unhappy ending seems entirely avoidable, making it all the more tragic.  Despite the sad ending, poetic justice is achieved through Reuel’s orders.

The novel also contains the three P’s of melodrama: 1. Provocation, Reuel, after bringing Dianthe back from the grave, wishes to marry her and therefore leaves to Africa in search of wealth; 2. Pangs, While Reuel is away, Dianthe succumbs to Aubrey’s wishes despite that she is married; and 3. Penalty, Aubrey kills himself as a punishment for his crimes due to a spell cast by Ai.

Imperium in Imperio: The Racial Rainbow and Its Spectrum of Privileges

In Imperium in Imperio, we watch as Belton Peidmont and Bernard Belgrave struggle with the reality of harsh discrimination against their heritage. It's seen throughout the book that their differing skin tones serve as a base for a spectrum of privilege. Belton is a first-hand victim of racial abuse, but Bernard, being of a much lighter skin tone, feels the sharp jab of this discrimination not from a white adversary but through the harsh treatment of his professed love.

But that's getting ahead of myself.

The Hunger Games and Philosophy: Discipline and the Docile Body

I found the idea that the Capitol citizens were strictly controlled through their supposed freedom to be fascinating. Christina Van Dyke explains that Capitol society is structured to focus on fashion and society life because it draws attention away from politics and toward the self, which places President Snow in a relatively safe haven.

Capitol life centers on body modifications as an expression of self, which is essentially the only way they can achieve such. As far as the reader can see, there is no art, no literature, nothing to encourage depth of thought or character.

The Capitol hinges on social norms, manners and perspectives. Citizens are self-centered and attention-seeking. They are that way because they don't know how else to be.

Interestingly enough, Hank Green (of the vlogbrothers, a YouTube sensation) created a video talking about the implications of social norms that both compares and contrasts with Van Dyke's thoughts on the world of Panem and specifically the Capitol and further applies it to what that world reflects onto us as a privileged society in our own rights.





I'd like to see these two sit down and discuss their opinions on the series.

Deep End and Mark Dery: Black to the Future

"MARK DERY: The positioning of oneself, literally, as a stranger in a strange land.
GREG TATE: Right, and there are certainly long-standing spiritual traditions that lend themselves to that impulse: Santeria, voudon, and the hoodoo religion that Ishmael Reed talks about.
MARK DERY: It’s worth pointing out, in the context of what I’ve chosen to call “Afrofuturism,” that the mojos and goofer dust of Delta blues, together with the lucky charms, fetishes, effigies, and other devices employed in syncretic belief systems, such as voodoo, hoodoo, santeria, mambo, and macumba, function very much like the joysticks, Datagloves, Waldos, and Spaceballs used to control virtual realities. Jerome Rothenburg would call them technologies of the sacred.
GREG TATE: I agree, although I think you’re putting the interstellar carriage before the Egyptian horse, in a way. I see science fiction as continuing a vein of philosophical inquiry and technological speculation that begins with the Egyptians and their incredibly detailed meditations on life after death."

“But Wayna’s body was hers. No one else owned it, no matter who her clone’s cells had started off with. Hers, no matter how different it looked from the one she had been born with. How white.”

Saucer of Loneliness Question

3. What does the "saucer" symbolize in Sturgeon's story? What is this symbolic significance suggesting about the human condition in the modern world?

The saucer ties quite succinctly with the idea of reaching out to someone unknown. This is what the female character in the story was also trying to achieve with her message bottles. In touching the life of someone completely foreign to the lifeform who sent the saucer out, the lifeform is able to make a connection across galaxies despite never seeing the receiver face to face.

When applying this kind of thought to the modern world, one can see the appeal of reaching out and helping others that one has never had a connection to before. Although the female character was distraught because no one understood her dilemma, the act of reaching out from one human being to another can bring a sense of togetherness to a widening community. In truth, even though she had been trying to commit suicide at first, the female character finds a sense of understanding when a stranger reaches out to her.

(Saucer of Loneliness can be read here.)

Dark They Were, and Golden-Eyed

I just have a couple thoughts on this that I want to jot down.

Dark They Were, and Golden-Eyed (downloadable here) is a story by Ray Bradbury. It takes place on Mars while war rages on Earth. A refugee colony does its best to live on the dusty red surface, and only Harry Bittering notices the changes among his companions as the world changes them into people of its own.

My most present thought after reading the text was this fear of accidental assimilation. While trying to live by someone else's (or somewhere else's) terms, it is possible to change behavior, thoughts, principles to adapt to the current situation, aware of it or not. While everyone around Bittering was happy to live day by day slipping into the needs of the planet, Bittering himself desperately tried to hang on to what might keep him human and thereby unique to Mars. He fought being pulled into assimilation until the moment that everyone else was already changed. He relinquished his uniqueness only when it was no longer valuable to his state of mind.

Another thing that came to mind was that Mars was trying to defend itself. In its own way, Mars is a character in the story, using its influence to develop these outsiders and their resources to its own needs. The people are strange and unfamiliar? It works them into something immediately known to it. Their plants may destroy the ecosystems around them? Mars makes them into plants that are suitable for its surface. The planet protects its own, and the only way to survive is to become a part of what it considers its own.

New Blog, New Beginnings

Although this blog has been started to satisfy class requirements, after my spring quarter is over I will continue to use it to share my opinions on anything and everything from literature to movies to restaurants.

For the present, however, prepare to be bombarded with ramblings and soliloquies on science fiction works created by African American authors. Enjoy!