Tuesday, April 22, 2014

Literary Speculation

I am a huge fan or A Clockwork Orange.  I have seen the movie many times and have read the book several times. It is so outstandly deranged and graphically messed up and will always stay with you but is a fantastic story. This story shows how the youth has risen above the ordinary person. They terrorize the public and abuse and hurt them as well. Alex, the main character, leads a small group of teenagers that rob, great, kill and rape men and women. They spend the rest of their lives in a bar that serves milk laced with drugs. In the movie, you can see how sexual it is because the chairs are naked people. The movie and book both make references about sex and violence. The kids are kind of crazy and insane with their behavior. A famous part of the story is when Alex rapes a woman and makes her husband watch while he does nasty things to her. The boys talk in the bar in the beginning of the story before getting all amped up start a robbing spree in the public. They steal cars, kill people, harass people, assault people and do everything else that you can imagine. Alex goes to prison and gets brainwashed by the prison so when he starts acting violent or things of sexual things he gets very sick. He cannot listen to classical music anymore and because it worked on him, the prison wanted to make it a huge plan for the rest of the population.
The movie shows the classical music much better and portrays the gang to be more mentally ill that crazy young youth. The prison and doctors use Alex as the test and gets exploited because of what they have done to him.
I think this story reflects youth and the culture of youth in itself. I think it has many elements that show how people grow up and grow out of things. But going to prison and changing is also very different. Alex, goes from being crazy and against the system to starting a different life once he is out of prison, in a way, all kids act like this at some point. Not to this extent but defiantly act out or go against the system.

Diverse Position Science Fiction

After reading the story BloodChild in class, I read it again and tried to understand it but I couldn't get over how graphic is was. The story is about a society where humans are the minority. Humans or Terran are animals to the Tlic that are used for birthing. When you start reading the story you think it is about growing up and becoming an adult. It is exploring the idea of losing your childhood and it explores other human themes. What i thought was interesting is that they are using humans as basically just property to make a creation. their function is to multiply.  This separates humans and technology completely. The Tlic say that the humans aren't animals, they are hosts to create new lives stranding humans and non humans together. The humans are reduced to a technological function. 
I agree with the story in a way that people are put here on this earth to multiply and make more babies. Everything that happens in our lives is to support kids and their future. 

Over centuries, people have come from different continents and have impregnated to create new races and over time this has become just normal. This story takes it above and beyond but at the same time, we are doing the same thing to women. We make children with them and make new generations of humans. Humans are starting to live longer and are becoming different in look, height, weight and even color. Many movies have also built of concepts like this to make sure that the human race stays in tact. Of course, this is a bit different but in all the demographics it totally fits with todays society and even previous generations. 

Cyberpunk and Steampunk

I read Soulless by Gail Carriger. This is a love story that is between two werewolves. The lovers go against evil to save their world. Alexia loves being in the supernatural world more than her own. This goes great with what we learned this week with going through alternative realities. In this case with vampires werewolves and such. She has to find out why vampires and werewolves are missing before its too late. The problem is that they are the real inventors of what was going on during that time. The mad scientist in this story is trying to take over her using her lover as bait to get her full power. Because the supernaturals are the ones coming up with all of the inventions, humans want to stop them and make sure they are the ones creating everything. Her lover, Maccon uses other vampires and werewolves to protect her during the full moon. What makes this a cool story is that she is going through different realities to save her one and only.
I this this is a great story because of the plot and everything but I have read and watched many movies like this story. She is looked up to because of how courageous she is and shows that she is a strong woman saving her man.
She is chosen by the council of supernaturals to keep the balance of the two worlds. Helping them all live together and make sure everything is okay.

I kind of feel like the story is like Twilight. I don’t know why but I got pictures in my head from the movies and parts of the book.   I love the fact that Queen Victoria from England is in the book which really shows the separation of the real world and the fantasy world. The ending is just like a movie would end, the peace is resotored from all the chaos and the two pain characters get married and everything is a fairy tale ending. 


Mythic Fiction and Contemporary Urban Fanstasy

I read Anasi Boys by Neil Gaiman. I googled Anasi and in African tribes and other cultures, is known to be a trickster and African God. This idea came from the country of Ghana. He can take shape of a spider and is considered to be the god of all knowledge of stories. It interests me because spiders are known for creating webs. Everyone has their own web and creates them differently. 
The story by Neil Gaiman is about two boys who’s father is Anasi, have to find each other in different parts of the world. The story brings them through many situations and uses their ethnic backgrounds throughout the story. The story ties in their African culture and the Caucasian cultures to create a funny way of looking at the ideas. Fat Charlie is from London and spider comes to visit him. The story is about going back to Florida where their father died. The story is also about getting spider away from his brother Charlie.
This comical story is very interesting to be because when Charlie is drunk, he talks to a spider and asks why his brother hasn’t visited. Once he says this, spider appears. I feel this happens many times with siblings and they always get along for a bit then its over and they have to separate. I am the same way with my siblings.
I think this story is very relevant in the contemporary world because these ideas don’t change and using the spider as a story has been passed down from writer to writer.

I loved picturing some of this story because even when I was in Kenya, many people wear spider jewelry and have many insect imagery because they fight off certain things.