MagicThought

I finished a book by Margaret Atwood recently, called Oryx and Crake, and I ran across a passage that I thought was really interesting in the context of what the class was about, which made me start thinking about the whole book in those terms.

Basically, the book is centered around a post-apocalyptic world and its sole survivor, Snowman. In flash backs to the society that fell, we see that genetics had become the new language, genes like words and the genetically-modified people like masterpieces (if you think about it, the entire genetic code of a human is composed of symbols– ATGC on random repeat). Crake is the grand creator of a group of grand new creatures, lovingly called Crakers, and Oryx is their teacher, the nurturing force that instructs them on the ways of their oh-so-limited world. And while I don’t want to ruin anything, figuring out how Oryx and Crake disappeared turns out to be an awesome parallel to the ancient goddess, the Christian God and humanity, if you think about it.

I also found it interesting that the book uses a lot of magical thinking when it comes to names. HelthWyzer is the company that distributes treatments to promote physical and mental well-being. OrganInc Farms manufacture artificially-engineered organs. And (this is where it hit me like a ton of bricks) the main character says at the end of the novel, “It’s Snowman.” It’s no man.

Anyway, here’s the passage that I particularly picked out:

“Watch out for art, Crake used to say. As soon as they start doing art, we’re in trouble. Symbolic thinking of any kind would signal downfall, in Crake’s view. Next they’d be inventing idols, and funerals, and grave goods, and the afterlife, and sin, and Linear B, and kings, and then slavery and war. Snowman longs to question them– who first had the idea of making a reasonable facsimile of him, of Snowman, out of a jar lid and a mop? But that will have to wait.”

Also, one more quick, interesting tidbit. Not only did this book have an ‘About the Author’ section at the back, but it had an ‘About the Type’ section. It informs the reader, “The book was set in a digital version of Monotype Walbaum,” among other things.

Leahanne

If Governator Ahnold, former Mr. Universe and embodiment of the patriarchal ideal, was ideally suited in 1984 (the same year that Time magazine made the personal computer the “man of the year” ) to play the Terminator, a robotic assassin sent back to the past to prevent the future, it is rather telling that at precisely the same moment that this country faces the real possibility — many would say threat — of being ruled by a female president the mother of that future is now at center stage in a new tv show called “Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles.” A lot of people have focused on the tear-factor in Hillary’s recent surprise win in New Hampshire, but few have commented on the fact that since the loss in Iowa, Hillary’s daughter, Chelsea, has been featured more prominently than ever at various campaign events. Having seen how little good her credentials as first lady were working for her, H.C. has been relying more and more on her credentials as a mom, and not surprisingly a large percentage of her winning vote in New Hampshire consisted of older married women with children or grandchildren. The pubic Bush is being hounded by the real thing, a mother and the wife to the man who got his pen cleaned and polished in the egg-shaped office. Barak Obama may be an inspired speaker and a visionairy idealist, but he himself admits that his wife is the pants in his family. So he’s at a real cultural unconscious advantage in a race against the Monstrous Mother. In the age of the complete takeover of the digital paternal symbolic and the demise of the analog maternal imaginary, the Matriarchy, as either Sarah or Hillary could tell you, is trying to stage a comeback. Or to borrow from Ahnold’s famous phrase from the film, “SHE’LL BE BACK.”

The name “Sarah” comes from the Biblical wife of Abraham (the first Hebrew Patriarch) and mother of Isaac, from Heb., lit. “princess,” from sarah, fem. of sar “prince,” from sarar “he ruled,” related to Akkad. sharratu “queen.”

As for, Connor, according to The Penguin Dictionary of First Names it was originally a nickname given to hunters. Thus Princess or queen of Hunters, an appropriate name for a mother whose only concern is to save her son and the future. As for Hillary, spare the Rodham, spoil the child.

Here’s a review of the show, the title of which would be perfect for an article about Hillary’s campaign for the presidency: Running and Fighting.
Dr. B.

January 12, 2008
Television Review
Running and Fighting, All to Save Her Son

By GINIA BELLAFANTE
The writers’ strike brings with it, of course, the significant potential to lower our viewing standards now that television’s midseason is under way. How amenable will most people be to rendering honest judgments on anything new and being shown and not the 923rd season of a reality venture in which people trade wives, or nannies, or plastic surgeries, or wallpaper or ferrets?

I propose circumventing the problem with the creation of two temporary critical categories: strike-good and, well, just plain good. To the second denomination I submit “Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles,” a new Fox series that begins on Sunday. One of the more humanizing adventures in science fiction to arrive in quite a while, the series is taut, haunting, relevant and an exploration of adolescent exceptionalism rendered without the cheerleading uniforms and parody of “Heroes.”

Extending the “Terminator” franchise, built on Arnold Schwarzenegger in his liquid corporeality, the series revolves around a young woman whose commitment to maternity makes the ordinary parental obsessions we’ve come to live with seem no more serious than a game of backgammon. Sarah, played by Lena Headey, all anxious muscle, isn’t fretting about nut allergies and tennis camp and early admission to Amherst (though boy, would her son, John, qualify as out-of-the-box enough to get in); she is striving to save him from the government-sponsored nut cases of the microchip brains and titanium bones who seek to annihilate him and thus his capacity to save humankind from their apocalyptic vision.

“Certainly for a parent, the death of a child is no less than a holocaust,” Sarah says in one of the show’s spare voice-overs. “In the case of my son, these words are literally true.”

“The Sarah Connor Chronicles” is a fantasy of technophobic paranoia, but it is also a metaphor for mad, crazy blood love, for motherhood not merely as an honorable career but also as salvation. Keeping John safe has required Sarah to learn four languages, work at 23 jobs, assume nine aliases and submit to years in a mental hospital. Sensing possible danger and telling John that they must move on from their seemingly pleasant life in Nebraska, Sarah, in the pilot episode, orders him out of bed and onto the road: “Half an hour, one bag, plus the gun. I’ll make pancakes.”

John, played by Thomas Dekker, complements Sarah’s intensity with a quiet anguish. He hopes for normalcy, friendships, a long-term address, but he doesn’t throw the sort of predictable temper tantrums in which he might scream that he just wants to be like everybody else and enter a motocross competition. He likes his mother’s boyfriend and is saddened because he and his mother have to skip town just as the matter of marriage has come up. That Sarah decides they must leave and assume new identities, right after she receives the proposal, leaves the question lingering of what it is she is actually afraid of.

“The Sarah Connor Chronicles” finds its dimension in the way it refuses to shy away from the terrors of ordinary life. By time-traveling her way around what would have been an ugly past, Sarah realizes that an alternate life would have left her dying of cancer. Cells wreak havoc just as robotic maniacs do. The most unsettling moments of “The Sarah Connor Chronicles” occur when, seeking to avoid such an outcome, she visits an oncologist’s office.

Terminator

The Sarah Connor Chronicles

Fox, series premiere Sunday night at 8, Eastern and Pacific times; 7, Central time. Regular episodes start Monday night at 9, Eastern and Pacific times; 8, Central time.

Josh Friedman, John Wirth, Mario Kassar and Andrew Vajna, executive producers; Toni Graphia, co-executive producer; James Middleton and Natalie Chaidez, consulting producers; premeiere directed by David Nutter. Produced by C-2 Pictures and Warner Brothers Television.

WITH: Lena Headey (Sarah Connor), Thomas Dekker (John Connor), Summer Glau (Cameron) and Richard T. Jones (James Ellison).

Between the cursive, inky text of the beginning and ending credits was one big mess of money-making boredom.  Why was it successful? 

I work at a movie theatre and asked a friendly patron what the allure was–she stated that the N.T. movies were family-friendly and had something for everyone, from their vague educational benefit for the kids (the movies are loosely rooted in HIStory) and PG appropriateness (a subjective acronym instated by the powers-that-be) to their occasional bouts of car chases and explosions (aka penis imagery and senseless fighting to honor and protect kin/country).  What is “Book of Secrets’”general thematic content?  Arguably, the threat of the imaginary, in the form of the cameraphone, to the predominating reign of paternity and print.

Beginning:

-Ben Gates attempts to clear his great-grandfather’s name through the help of academia, computer technology, a word puzzle, and an old questionable diary page

-Next, he peruses a woman holding a tablet with a boy toy (a remote-controlled helicopter records with a video camera the statue of liberty’s curves in Paris)

-Then he looks at two desks covered in penises… i mean… pens

-Then?  Chasing down a codex in the Library of Congress using the dewey decimal system as a password… o this is just too much

-Ben Gates’ girlfriend and mother are estranged at this point in the movie

 Ending:

-Cibola’s pictographic writing system now takes center stage, and Ben’s Mom alone can read it

-to find the treasure the hunters must climb into a vagina-looking cave entrance and enter a water-filled “womb” marked by a picture of a bird

-good ol’ mom takes over the excavation of the final discover, thus clearing the name of Ben Gates’ grandpappy and proving that Mt. Rushmore is a big fat fake used to hide ancient architecture

-Ben goes home to the girlfriend and Mom tolerates Dad again

this movie felt like one big ad for the cameraphone

oh, and all of the characters are academics, authors, or politicians

the end, go take a nap, you earned it

-Sara B.

We mentioned the ABC soap opera/drama “Brothers and Sisters” before, back when Sally Field ranted about the war at the Emmys.  I just finished reading an article about (creator?) Jon Robin Baitz  leaving the show, where he says something similar to the comment about the episodes going from “Patriarchy” to “Matriarchy.”

“At the first meeting I had with the lovely Francie Calfo (head of drama), who has left the network after making sure we made it on the air, I said: ‘I want to write a show that proposes that the dead American patriarchy is being replaced by a vibrant matriarchy.’”

Obviously I had to share.   It’s fascinating to me that, a couple years ago, some TV writer had an idea for a television show that would reflect what he saw as the rise of the matriarchy.  There’s that collective unconscious again.  As I write this, Hillary is winning the New Hampshire primary (though Obama already won Iowa).  It’ll be interesting to see in the coming months how vibrant the American matriarchy really is, although even if Hillary doesn’t win, the mere viability of her candidacy is a strong indicator.

–Brandon