Response

In the past article “Reading Cyborgs Writing Feminism” by Anne Balasmo U was extremely interested in her connection of the cyborg and the feminine and also the cyborg and the concept of otherness. Last semester we explored the idea of otherness in monsters as a being that questioned various binaries to exist in limbo. In a similar way the cyborg does the same thing by testing boundaries of human/machine, technological/biological etc. We learned that often times the idea of otherness comes from an inner fear of social or internal discomforts. In the article Balasmo writes that “cyborgs come to represent unfamiliar otherness one which challenges the connotative stability of human identity.” The fact that cyborgs represent such otherness is a testament to the future of our society. Female cyborgs in particular represent an even greater societal fear of the female influence of technology. Since cyborgs are seen as the postmodern icon, our prospective idea of otherness could eventually dissapate into the cyborg being viewed as “normal”. It ma be true that in the future, we may have more and more artificial body parts- arms, legs, hearts, eyes and so on- till one might end up finally as a brain in a wholly artificial body. The ever evolving ideas about what defines a machine have changed including the influence of the female are changing.

American Heart

For anyone still watching…

Here’s some more zombies…

http://www.youtube.com/user/AmericanHeartShow

Leaving on a Zombie Note

We should probably talk about this before the wedding

http://xkcd.com/348/

I love xkcd and I thought this might be a nice last post for me.  I really loved all of the zombie stuff we did in class.  There’s just something really cool about zombie movies and such.  Scary, but cool.  Have a nice break, everyone!

I Hate Goodbyes

Sorry for the cheeseball title but Dumb & Dumber is one of my favorite movies and I thought it was appropriate.  Todays last class was completely surreal for me.  I cannot believe how quickly the semester flew and that our last class has passed us by.  I know we started to talk about this already in class today however I felt like I had a little more to say.  For one I thought the creative presentations were amazing.  I could not believe the variation of creativity that our class displayed.  It was the perfect way to end the semester and be able to see how every one of us interpreted the class.  As many of us said today, this class truly expanded my ability to think about concepts and allowed for an entire new perspective when approaching so many different topics.  I cannot thank you Prof. Burcar enough for bringing this class to us all.  I would have never guessed that this class would have broadened my horizons and opened my mind (not by a zombie) as much as it did.  To be able to come all the way from an opposite coast to teach us all in a course that was essentially an experiment is something I greatly respect you for.  Again thank you for opening our eyes and allowing us to dive into the world that we were so fortunate to experience this past semester.

Casshern: SINS

Alex Bryce
Blog Post #12
December 9, 2008

I’ve been watching this anime series, and it’s just…. amazing.

I know some people in the class who have/had negative misconceptions about anime (especially after watching Chobits and Sailor Moon). I can only urge you to watch this series, as it really represents another side of anime; a truly well-done, thought-provoking anime that doesn’t focus on trite objectification/sexualization of women.  It is violent, however, just FYI.

It deals with everything that we’ve discussed about Cyborgs, albeit it approaches cyborgs from the robot side rather than the human side. Much of the show deals with robots (the majority of inhabitants in the future earth) wresting with the human concepts of death and beauty and life.  Which brings us to mind our previous discussion: although we know humans can become cyborgs–is it possible for machines to acquire human qualities and become cyborgs themselves?

Here’s a site where you can watch it online for free. Note, it is an ongoing show, so only 10 out of the 24 planned episodes are currently out. Keep checking back weekly (or so) for a new episode.

http://www.animecrazy.net/casshern-sins-episode-1/

Please… even if you don’t like anime, find the time to watch the first two or three episodes

Zombie fandom or Homophobia

These collection of home made  videos entitled fnm videos

Chi as a sexual icon

See what you guys think this is also a rough sketchy of my essay.

Chi is portrayed first and foremost as a sexual being starting with cover art which is never featured within the context of the story but puts her in super sexualized clothing and positions. The contents page art for the first issue, before readers have even met Chi as a character has her naked in a bubble bath surrounded by rubber ducks with her legs spread and open facing the reader, her genitals barely concealed by the bubbles and her hair cascading down off the edges of the bathtub. This image and others like it do nothing but sexualizes the character. All this raises the question to me, what need does a cyborg have for bubble baths? When the readers first meet Chi she has been shut off and discarded in a heap of garbage and she is wrapped in what might be toilet paper, which leaves little to the imagination. After Hideki steals her out of the garbage, seeming to knock her software right out of her, he brings this unconscious female body back home.  He becomes more and more animated over the course of the next ten pages as he struggles to find the switch to ‘turn her on.’ This is by no means a pun. Hours after finding her and searching her person for an on switch Hideki confesses, “Where’s the Goddamn “on” switch?! I’ve searched every nook and cranny on her body. Every single one!! Every single one…Except… NO. They Wouldn’t… What am I doing? She’s just a machine right?! Nothing dirty about turning on a machine”(Chobits, 22)  The terminology used in the last line is by no means a mistake. Even if Chi is nothing but a machine, by literally embodying the female image of sexuality she transcends this purely physical characteristic and becomes something more to Hideki. The next four pages is a sequence of unlabeled drawings that show Chi’s mental, physical, and sexual awakening. They graphically show Hideki reaching between Chi’s legs reaching into her vagina and pressing a button that gives an audible “click.” On this single two-page spread the authors have drawn every sexualized physical characteristic, heightening its appeal; Hideki is vividly touching her genitals, her small mouth and glazed eyes are laden with sexuality, and on page twenty five her breasts are fully exposed as she jumps into consciousness and the rags fall away from her body. After he puts his hand in her vagina and turns her on, she leaps up, crawls up Hideki’s legs looks directly into his eyes and rapes her arms around him and falls asleep. This scene is the most graphic and one of the most sexual within the graphic novel.

Scientific Articles!

Alex Bryce
Blog Post #11

So I found two amusing scientific articles:

Ghosts, Vampires, and Zombies: Cinema Fiction vs Physics Reality
by C. J. Efthimiou and S. Gandhi

http://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0608059

(Click on download pdf on the right side)

Mathematics of the Human-Vampire Conflict
by Dino Sejdinovic
Published in the Nov. 2008 issue of Math Horizons (I’m sure an online version of the article will appear soon)

Basically, the first article attempts to prove that ghosts, vampires, and zombies cannot have existed. There’s some flaws and holes in their argument (i.e., not all populations grow exponentially like they assume), so it’s not well written. It’s still an interesting and amusing read

The second article basically critizes the first article, although it focuses specifically on their vampire section. The author uses basic bio-math principles to show that human-vampire dyamics is much more complex than presented in the first article.

Happy reading!

“For creatures that supposedly crave the darkness, vampires seem to be getting more than their fair share of the spotlight.”

Depending on whom you ask, vampire stories can be read as symbols of venereal disease, capitalism, immigration, industrialization, colonialism, AIDS, homosexuality, mental illness, anti-Semitism, technology or class warfare. “The vampire myth’s power is that we can use it as a metaphor and a language to talk about the problems of our world,” says William Patrick Day, author of “Vampire Legends in Contemporary American Culture.” The question, then, is not why we are thinking about vampires now, but how we are thinking about them—and what our vampires say about us.

–From A Bit Long in the Tooth: Hollywood found new blood with ‘Twilight,’ but the vampire metaphor is positively deathless by Jennie Tabroff. Click here to read the entire article.

Thoughts on the Symposium

I just wanted to take this opportunity to thank Professor Burcar for putting the Syposium together. I felt like it was a complete success despite the low attendance rate. To me, numbers are not important, but the quality of the presentation. You can fill the room with 100 people, and do a half ass- job or you can fill the room with 13-15 people and have a great afternoon full of intellectual and thought pr evoking dialogue… not to mention a lot of fun. Sure it would have been nice to have gotten to show off our talents a little more because I feel like the presentations that were done deserve the whole school’s attention, but that unrealistic, unpractical, and probably would have more stressfull and not at all as fun. I want to thank the students from our class that were able to come and watch, the students from the HWS community that were able to come and watch, and I want to thank my fellow presenters for doing such an amazing job. Thank you for further opening my eyes to some of the themes and ideas we have talked about in this class and making me look at some of them in a new light that I never could have before had I not gone/ participated in this event. To the other members of the class who could not make it to the Symposium, I am really looking forward to your presentations because I know they will inspire me and challenge my thoughts just as our classmates did today. I’ve really enjoyed this class very much and hope that we can keep it alive ( like a monster or an undead corpse aaahhhhh) either through the blog or even just a quick, “hey remember in Monster class when we talked about this…” or “hey, I know you like zombies and I saw this great article the other day..”Sadly, I will be abroad this Spring and am not able to take Professor Burcar’s Cyborg class, but I hope that you all take it if it fits in your schedule. (And keep me posted as to how things are going!)