Jojo notes split off from previous entry
Jan. 8th, 2007 09:51 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sub_dividedI realized I shouldn't spam people who just want to read fanfic with endless nattering, indecipherable notes, and the books I am reading for class...so of course I am spamming the flist with them instead, XD. Scroll past if you've seen this already.
Research: Victorian Ghost Stories. One thing you notice is that they tend to be written in the first person -- or else, like Kipling's, detached third. There's no limited third and barely any omniscient third. I think this is because in order for something to be truly frightening, it has to be outside the understanding of the reader. First-person keeps the reader's viewpoint confined while still giving a sense of "being there" but I actually thought the detached perspective Kipling used was scarier. When you can't see into anyone's head it's like peering into an alien landscape. Though really, as much as the writing this comes from the Menace of India thing he has going on, so I shouldn't praise him too much.
Anyway, what pulls you into the story with Kipling isn't the POV, but the way he describes the atmosphere -- you call feel the heat and humidity.
Why are my ideas for Jojo all so HARD.
Part 1: Victorian Ghost Story
Part 2 (aftermath): Kafka in Argentina
Part 2 (aftermath): Politics of Urban Redevelopment
Part 4: Bakemono Hijinx
Part 6: Existential Vignettes
Part 7: Cowboys vs. Indians...sort of. More like national myth-building. The Steel Ball Run (the race) is part of the American narrative of expansion, it's a statement that says that the United States now extends from one end of the continent to the other. It's like the transcontinental railroad (built in 1869; SBR is set in 1890), staking a claim to the land so that you can push the Indians off. What Araki does is tell the story of America the way American themselves tell it (for proof SEE POCOLOCO).
This kind of ties into:
"Reimagined as unpossesed, everything on the continent could be claimed for the first time. Who was inside, who was out; where "we" belonged and where the "enemy" belonged, we alone would determine. This power to organize narrative boundaries without fear of contradiction gave the war story [Cowboys vs. Indians] its incredible simplifying and unifying presence. Americans could now claim to be "at home" anywhere; and since we were always potentially at home, any act against an American automatically put all Americans in the position of having their boundaries violated. Because of this aggressively mobile sense of home, captives, ambushes, and last stands came to take the place, in miniature, of the absent enemy invasion, and the sense of violation these engendered became an empowering force for the enemy's annihilation."
About the early 1800s, from The End of Victory Culture. It's a book that doesn't prove anything it says, you are just supposed to recognize the inherent logic of the author's arguments. ;_; But since this is a history of pop cultural interpretations of history, it's material I am actually familiar with, and now have "new" ways of thinking about. (If they were really new, I wouldn't recognize their inherent logic! But they are articulated here better than others have articulated them.)
The author's main argument is that the United States was forged through an never-ending series of frontier wars against nonwhite peoples. Basically, white settlers claimed "empty" land Out West so that they could push the Indians off, then claimed the Indians were at fault for "savagely" attacking them. This created a national myth: "The United States is a peaceful nation. We do not start wars, but if we are attacked, we will defend ourselves." Sound familiar? (The "End" of American Victory Culture, by the way, is Vietnam and the Civil Rights movement. All I can say is that obviously, those weren't the end.)
P.S. Tari, I just got your card! ^^; Or actually, I just found your card, in a pile with other unopened mail from before the holidays. OMG JONATHAN/DIO, YOU ARE AWESOME, THANK YOU SO MUCH.
Research: Victorian Ghost Stories. One thing you notice is that they tend to be written in the first person -- or else, like Kipling's, detached third. There's no limited third and barely any omniscient third. I think this is because in order for something to be truly frightening, it has to be outside the understanding of the reader. First-person keeps the reader's viewpoint confined while still giving a sense of "being there" but I actually thought the detached perspective Kipling used was scarier. When you can't see into anyone's head it's like peering into an alien landscape. Though really, as much as the writing this comes from the Menace of India thing he has going on, so I shouldn't praise him too much.
Anyway, what pulls you into the story with Kipling isn't the POV, but the way he describes the atmosphere -- you call feel the heat and humidity.
Why are my ideas for Jojo all so HARD.
Part 1: Victorian Ghost Story
Part 2 (aftermath): Kafka in Argentina
Part 2 (aftermath): Politics of Urban Redevelopment
Part 4: Bakemono Hijinx
Part 6: Existential Vignettes
Part 7: Cowboys vs. Indians...sort of. More like national myth-building. The Steel Ball Run (the race) is part of the American narrative of expansion, it's a statement that says that the United States now extends from one end of the continent to the other. It's like the transcontinental railroad (built in 1869; SBR is set in 1890), staking a claim to the land so that you can push the Indians off. What Araki does is tell the story of America the way American themselves tell it (for proof SEE POCOLOCO).
This kind of ties into:
"Reimagined as unpossesed, everything on the continent could be claimed for the first time. Who was inside, who was out; where "we" belonged and where the "enemy" belonged, we alone would determine. This power to organize narrative boundaries without fear of contradiction gave the war story [Cowboys vs. Indians] its incredible simplifying and unifying presence. Americans could now claim to be "at home" anywhere; and since we were always potentially at home, any act against an American automatically put all Americans in the position of having their boundaries violated. Because of this aggressively mobile sense of home, captives, ambushes, and last stands came to take the place, in miniature, of the absent enemy invasion, and the sense of violation these engendered became an empowering force for the enemy's annihilation."
About the early 1800s, from The End of Victory Culture. It's a book that doesn't prove anything it says, you are just supposed to recognize the inherent logic of the author's arguments. ;_; But since this is a history of pop cultural interpretations of history, it's material I am actually familiar with, and now have "new" ways of thinking about. (If they were really new, I wouldn't recognize their inherent logic! But they are articulated here better than others have articulated them.)
The author's main argument is that the United States was forged through an never-ending series of frontier wars against nonwhite peoples. Basically, white settlers claimed "empty" land Out West so that they could push the Indians off, then claimed the Indians were at fault for "savagely" attacking them. This created a national myth: "The United States is a peaceful nation. We do not start wars, but if we are attacked, we will defend ourselves." Sound familiar? (The "End" of American Victory Culture, by the way, is Vietnam and the Civil Rights movement. All I can say is that obviously, those weren't the end.)
P.S. Tari, I just got your card! ^^; Or actually, I just found your card, in a pile with other unopened mail from before the holidays. OMG JONATHAN/DIO, YOU ARE AWESOME, THANK YOU SO MUCH.