Week Four: The New Weird

Hannah Blair

WEIRD

            I would like to preface by sharing my thoughts on the word “weird” itself. Weird was always a word used in a very negative way. In the 21^st century to be “weird” is almost a desirable thing by many people. People often label themselves with the term along with “quirky” or “different.” For some time I often responded with “who’s to say what’s weird and what’s normal?” Since hearing it more and more often I began to wonder why we have adapted this. Is it our need to stick out among the masses? Do we enjoy shock value and the attention we receive? My thoughts on the term are now as follows. There is no such thing as weird. Our own standards by which we judge is just the picture we have painted in our minds that is subject to change at any one point. The “norm” is so frequently challenged now that the “norm” isn’t a norm anymore. All we have is our own interpretations of the delusion that is our simple insignificant lives. To those that think they are weird I will say continue to challenge and push so the word weird is constant unspoken truth among all people.

            I guess the thing that to some people would be considered the weirdest in my reading of Monster Island was the fact that the main military force was a troupe of Liberian child soldiers (whom of which were mostly women) that they pumped full of drugs. The concept to me doesn’t seem that bizarre because as a child I remember that when I was exposed to less opinions that life in general made more sense to me and it was easier for me to just buckle down and do something without thinking about a million other things. To me the book was much like every other zombie book I read by the end of it and wasn’t as exciting as the first chapters had made me expect.

Week Three: Asian Horror:Vengeful Spirits

Hannah Blair

Week 3

The conventions in A Wild Sheep Chase by Haruki Murakami resonate with me on a very personal level. The novel had me paying more attention to the duality of what is good and evil as well as the playing the concept of authority more than any horror aspects. Most of my life I’ve always had issues with authority figures because of situations as a child that moved me to almost having to live two lives. Because of this I’ve often felt life in an almost dual fashion, sometimes in my head seen as the negative and positive.

The writing style instantly proved to be something I was going to enjoy just because it is so extreme in itself. I often have a hard time with names and the way Haruki illustrates the characters it makes it a less confusing experience and really allowed myself to immerse myself in each characters minds. I could easily empathize with the struggle of each of the characters even Sheep man, who illustrates someone who had something of TRUE value which was a memory and now cannot move on with his life because of how hard he tries to hold onto those good moments from our past.

Another concept the book plays with that I find interesting is the Romanization of images. Our “hero” finds a new girlfriend by his over Romanization of a photo of her ear. And the business mans (the rat) obsession with the picture of the sheep and his need to find it resonates notes of that delusion as well. I think as a society we do this with so many things creating value in material items or even the thought of an item or person that we can drive ourselves (and our inferiors that we boss around) to put so much importance in things that only have meaning because we give them meaning. When we allow those delusions to take control of us, we can force ourselves or those around us (much like our hero’s unfortunate situation) to waste the little precious life that is given to us in our blip of an existence on empty goals.

Week Two: Vampire: Love and Pain

Hannah Blair

Week 2

When I saw that we had the option to read a George R. R. Martin book I knew that was going to be the one. It took me a bit longer than anticipated because so much of the book was dedicated to the descriptions of steamboats in the way that Tolkein would describe a mountain. It made it less of an enjoyable experience than Martin’s other more popular series Game of Thrones, which has conventions that appeal to me more. But I digress, The story was staring an Abner Marsh who in fact wasn’t a vampire unlike some of the other novel choices I researched for this weeks topic. We meet Abner a very unfortunate fellow both aesthetically and financially. The vampire is Joshua York who stumbles into Abners life when the peculiarly rich man decides to fund Abners dreamboat in exchange for a co-captainship of the Vessel named Fevre Dream. Abner doesn’t discover his business associates secret until he observes many weeks of strange behavior from Joshua and his crew. The strangely group spends most of their time in closed doors during the day and Abner discovers their secret when he stumbles upon strange writings they have stored in their quarters about deaths and murders and confronts Joshua about them. This is where the novel takes a turn from that of a normal vampire story. Joshua tries to calm Abner at first telling him that him and his people are actually hunters of vampires only to later reveal that while they are out to “end” vampires by using a cure that Joshua created, they are themselves vampires. The irony of this convention really resonated with me as a struggle that even us mortals deal with. We often recognize the evil of man kind and strive to do all In our power to diminish the destruction that we leave on this world with our wars and mass reproduction and pollution and political corruption but there is always a greater power that either distracts us (think the reason the Greeks originally created the Olympics) or we become so overwhelmed with the amount of corruption that we choose ignorance. This translates over, in my opinion, when the villain of the novel, Damon Julian, an ultimate evil vampire, takes over the Fevre Dream, crushing the nobel attempts of the vampires aboard. Abner barely escapes the vessel. To me the vampires are those that were distracted from their mission by fear and distraction while Abner chose the path of ignorance. Many years pass and Abner and Joshua reunite in order to conquer the evil that instilled fear and disregard in the people with noble intentions. The novel ends on a happy (well as happy as it can be) note when the team is able to overcome Damon. To refer back to my analogy, during my reading I often found that if those who felt overpowered by the evil in the world were able to leave their reservations and delusions of what is possible behind then the evil in this world can be abolished. 

Week One: Beginning with Frankenstein

Frankenstein and gothic as it appears in contemporary culture

“How impressive would you be, if the world couldn’t see?”

This quote kept repeating in my head as I went through the reading. Having never read Frankenstein before and only known the general idea behind the story, I was shocked to find just how disturbing and eerie the reading was. I imagine the monster coming into the world as an immature mind and because he is so quickly seen as a monstrosity his life begins on negative energy. Not because of anything he did but solely because of his looks. What if he had been a beautiful woman? Then perhaps Victor would have taken kindly to him and the monsters life would begin on positive energy. Imagine what he could have made with that positive energy? You will get your answer by seeing how far he went on that negative energy.  Even at such a young mental state he was able to see what he had done was wrong and go to Victor hoping for forgiveness and with a plan to solve his psychological issue with a mate. Which would have worked and yet again Victor could not follow through with it because of the visual. So I ask again. How impressive would you be, if the world couldn’t see? Would you base so much of your life on your feelings from sight? Or just hearing about who a person was?

My first though when I think of the word gothic is the style of dress that was in style for a selective group of people when I was growing up in the 90’s. To me it seems to be an obsessive with the abnormal and the obscure. Which is funny because in my architecture classes I’ve taken I came to know that the “Goths” were original an East Germanic People that helped shape what we call the Medieval times of Europe. The gothic I think about is a subculture derived from that 19^th century and its literature. Although the literature was dark in nature most of the typical optics we know for “Goth culture” were taken from early horror films and more recent works of the 20^th century.