Media
Herbert, F. (1965). Dune. Philadelphia: Chilton Books.
“Religion and law among our masses must be one and the same,“ his father said. ”An act of disobedience must be a sin and require religious penalties. This will have the dual benefit of bringing both greater obedience and greater bravery. We must depend not so much on the bravery of individuals, you see, as upon the bravery of a whole population.”Excerpt From: Herbert, Frank. “Dune.”
Battlestar Gallactica (2005) 33. Season: 1 Ep. 1 (Available on iTunes and Amazon Video)
Geek of the Week
Mamoru Oshii, Angel’s Egg, 1985. (Daniel)
Fazzolari B, (2017), “Introduction,” Tracing a technological god: a psychoanalytic study of google and the global ramifications of its media proliferation, Florida, Florida Atlantic University, pp. 1-12. (Daniel)
Bioshock 1 (Nate)
Content Warning:
Bioshock is a dystopian first-person shooter/horror game. It contains frequent graphic violence as gameplay, including the main character injecting themselves with syringes. In addition, violence against children is semi-explicitly depicted. Late in the game there are also implications and reference made to potential sexual violence but this is will not come up in these materials unless you play/watch further than four hours in which I am not asking any of us to do.
[Extra Note About Challenging Content in Video Games:]
One of the unique elements of games, that we’re going to touch on, is that gameplay and immersion greatly amplify emotional involvement. If you decide to play the demo (or the full game) but feel at all nervous about the content mentioned above it’s worth being aware that playing the game (while the intended experience of the text) might be more of a gut-punch.
Sources:
Compilation of Cut-Scenes:
Watch a bit of this– while a lot of the plot is shown through gameplay, this video strings together many of the relevant cinematic/plot moments in the game. Specifically: 0:00:01 – 0:20:00 and 1:15:00 – 1:28:00. If you watch the let’s play, or play the demo, you can just check out the 1:15:00 – 1:28:00 clip.
For our ‘Let’s play’:
I will be streaming a Let’s Play of the first several hours of Bioshock 1 on Saturday, November 10th, beginning at 7pm EST @ www.Twitch.tv/Sparrowdog : We’ll be playing through together, with the opportunity to discuss in real time using the chat feature (if you want to, and don’t mind making a twitch account.) When we finish, I’ll post the footage online/provide a link to let anyone who missed the Let’s Play watch it after.
For an Apple Demo:
Navigate to the URL below and use the bold link at the bottom of the article.
https://news.softpedia.com/news/Download-Bioshock-for-Mac-OS-X-Free-Demo-126165.shtml
For a PC Demo:
Navigate to URL below, download demo button is next to the buy option on the right.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/7670/BioShock/
Note on Demo Accessibility:
Bioshock was released in 2007, and therefore its systems requirements shouldn’t pose much of a problem for most laptops/computers released after 2015. However, if you experience any issues/know your computer won’t work within those parameters, just check out a let’s play/tune in for ours.
Theory and Commentary
Dourish, Paul and Genevieve Bell. 2014. “Resistance is Futile”: Reading Science Fiction Alongside Ubiquitous Computing. Personal and Ubiquitous Computing 18(4):769-778.
McCurdy, Howard E. 1973. Fiction Phenomenology, and Public Administration. Public Administration Review 33(1): 52-60.
If we indeed conclude that imagination precludes design and ultimately implementation as “Resistance is Futile” argues, what happens when what is able to be imagined is enclosed? If there is not a free space for “free” imagination, what options are left prefigured by the environment itself (whether that envrionment is a literal natural enivronment, a manmade one, or a cultural/psychic/social one) ?
“Bioshock” the game provides a philosophical cyberspace through which it engages the very idea of dogmatism itself. Andrew Ryan, the founder of the ingame city, Rapture, is a die-hard Randian libertarian whose ultimate demise at the players (uncontrolled) hands, clearly elucidates the illusion of control within a closed system of thought. Inside and outside the game the player has no choice but to kill Ryan in order to progress the narrative. Is agency within dogma a simple, binary choice? Kill or don’t? Obey or disobey? Is this all agency is in and of itself? Act in accordance with a system of thought or don’t?
If we take dogma to be a systematic way of thinking that does not allow for exceptions, what does happen when we run into exceptions? Are these exceptions re-encapsulated by the system, reshaping it into something new each time into infinity. Or are we faced with a simple inside/outside case, where the exception is left in an ideological vacuum?
-female role (or the influence of mother character):
Mamoru Oshii’s Angel’s Egg is a fascinating piece of animation movie, dark, gothic (in the Japanese culture sense), mysterious, confusing, and quite slow. And there are also Christian religious references and motifs (the cross, the choir-like people/statue, etc.) But what interests me the most is that, for the major part the female protagonist looks like a girl but with a round egg beneath her dress (an attribution to Maria and Immaculate Conception?) but when she falls under water and breaths out bubbles she looks like a young woman. The transformation or the ambiguity of sexuality is worth thinking. What’s the intention of that?
(I also read that the movie is inspired by Mamoru’s mother’s saying when he was young that “from a woman’s birth, she carries an egg (ovum) and lives”, which is an interesting aspect to think about in this girl character)
-religious influence/attribution
-Dune: scifi or medieval fantasy/epic story? Is Paul like a savior figure (for whom?)?
BioShock is one of my favorite games so I’m thrilled it made geek of the week. How could Rapture fall apart so quickly? Was it due to the fact that Rapture was an isolated city with no contact from the outside world? Why did people feel the urge to splice – is it a form of escapism? A realization that they would have some semblance of control over their lives? Dr. Tenenbaum claims to have undone some of the mental conditioning courtesy of Suchong and Fontaine’s machinations, but how does she accomplish this? In doing so, does Tenenbaum grant Jack mercy or provide him with some semblance of free will? “BioShock: Rapture” By: John Shirley is an interesting read, if anyone’s eager to check that out.
Why is there a significant lack of dialogue in “Angel’s Egg”? How might we have interpreted this if there had been a lack of translated subtitles? Could the film be comparable to a graphic novel? Is the film representative of a “coming of age” trope? What did the fish represent and why do they cease to exist?
Paul Dourish and Genevieve Bell’s article “Resistance is Futile” addresses surveillance in relation to technology. Dourish and Bell write: “the issue is the forms of surveillance, their pervasiveness, and the institutions to whom they are available” (775). Can surveillance – the use of cameras, lens, and an ever-watchful gaze – impose an authoritarian dogma? With the operation of Google as a Technological God, surveillance and media seem to be inseparable from human society.
In “Angel’s Egg”, does the egg symbolize individuality and freedom from religious dogma? Or perhaps the innocence and purity of childhood, before the mind is corrupted with ideology?
RE: Battlestar Galactica #33…The relationship between internal Number Six and Dr. Baltar is fascinating. It is unclear if she manifested as a result of his extreme guilt or madness over his part in the destruction of the colonies, but she always appears to him as real. Baltar is the only one who can see and physically touch her, and she often advises him or gives him instructions. She continuously tries to convince him to believe in the Cylon god. Because Baltar knows she is most likely a figment of his imagination, he does not fully trust her. Her explanation for her own existence is that she is “an angel of God sent here to protect [him], to guide [him] and to love [him].” Later in the series, Number Six develops her own internal Baltar, who can speak and interact with her, as well. What was the writer trying to achieve with this near-transcendental relationship?
The material known as ADAM in Bioshock clearly references the biblical Adam. Are the creators of this game making a commentary on religion – where it masquerades as having only good intentions but inevitably leads to societal destruction and war?
In “Resistance is Futile,” Dourish and Bell state: “forms of persistent, mundane failure point to the curious ease with which things ‘‘just work’’ in more technologically optimistic shows—and work, what is more, without the kinds of continual maintenance and intervention that we might associate with contemporary infrastructures such as transit systems or plumbing.” (774) In considering this quote, does that reframe the “technologically optimistic” shows into some sort of technological fantasy? While still obviously science fiction, I’m curious about the way in which this complicates the boundaries between SF and Fantasy. Since “magic” in fantasy is something that “just works,” if the technology in these optimistic shows also “just work,” how are they any different than magic?
In BSG, the Cylons are monotheistic while the humans are polytheistic or atheistic. Anthropologically, monotheistic religions tend to have an emphasis on individuality. However, the Cylons exist as twelve reproduced models, and thus lack inherent individuality. What does their belief in monotheism then suggest about the Cylons as a species? What, by contrast, does the humans belief or disbelief stress about theirs? And where does Gaius fit in to the conversation? Interestingly, the humans polytheism is specifically attached to the Ancient Greek pantheon, suggesting they have access to only a certain aspect of their cultural history. Does it suggest that the Cylons’ monotheism will take over the humans’ polytheism, as Classical polytheism eventually was overtaken by Western monotheism?
In “Dune,” Duke Leto states that on Caladan, their power “depended on sea and air power. Here [on Arrakis], we must develop something I choose to call desert power.” I was interested in these different modes of military thinking, and how the tactics used on Leto’s home planet would prove useless and impossible on the new planet. What does this suggest about the interplay of humans adapting to a new space not just environmentally, but subsequently adjusting their governance and strategies as a result of ecology? Is it even possible to shift one’s strategies entirely in such an extreme case as going from a sea-planet to a sand-planet, or will there remain an inherent inability to fully adapt based on the conditioning of the home planet?
In “Fiction Phenomenology, and Public Administration” Howard posits that SF, beyond conceptualizing future technologies, anticipates the regulatory agencies needed to manage these technologies. While this doesn’t stick out as an obvious element of SF, it might actually turn out to be one of the most important. In what ways are these administrative and regulatory insights–while not sexy–crucial?
According to Dourish and Bell in “Resistance is Futile: Reading Science Fiction Alongside Ubiquitous Computing,” what are the benefits of reading a body of science literature–in this case, ubiquitous computing–as a form of fiction? Furthermore, do you find their argument compelling?
In “Tracing a technological god: a psychoanalytic study of google and the global ramifications of its media proliferation” the author does a good job of explaining his central premise, that the traditional metaphysical conception of God has been supplanted by a technological god, however, I found his explication of how rational thinking deconstructed God during the enlightenment, by exposing it’s contradictory nature, lacking. Did you also have this issue? Or did you find that portion of the argument compelling?
In Dune religon and prophecies are created and used to submit peacefully underdeveloped populations. Paul’s mystic control over the Fremen help him fulfill his goal of vengeance and power. However, altough a lie, this use of religion is not entirely represented as negative, since the entire universe seems to be benefited by the new order established by the Atreides. Religion is just a tool but a powerful tool nonetheless, that brings to mind Marx’s “religion is the opium of the people”.
In Angel’s Egg, on the contrary, religion, or hope, symbolized in the belief that there is effectively something inside the egg, is portrayed as a false and consuming hope, childish although pure. The alternative, however, incarnated in the boy with the cross that hatches the egg, isn’t any more reassuring. The belief in lies in Mamoru Oshii’s film seems as empty as absolute disbelief: contrary to Dune’s stance, in Angel’s Egg, hope and religion don’t seem to change anything. Still, Oshii’s portrayal of belief, altough empty and futile, is so muh more mystical and deep thant that of Dune, in which religion is only politics.
It is true that in both cases “religion is the opium of the people” seems to be applicable, but we should ask: how is it different in which case? to what extent? are there exceptions?
If human meaning seeking nature creates domgatic enterprise, is the rise of messianic figures inevitable?
If time and possibiliites can be deciphered with a computational understanding of causality, is there free will? Can hard determinism as an ideology lead to nihilism or dogma?
Dune presents the idea of a messiah that seeks to find a way out of the inevitable jihad that will be created from his rise. IS he presented with a moral choice between what he wants as an individual and what he must do as a member of the human species? Do we feel empathy to this or the contrary, it makes us feel superior by the assumption that we would never act as he did?
TRAGIC KINGDOMS
I no longer know if I love or hate “Angel’s Egg” thanks to our class discussion. This is a good thing though! I run up against many people who follow anime works with a zealous obsession and no room for critical observations. Often times, pop culture also makes religions out of these works of SF. I think Mamoru Oshii intended to meditate on his personal life and that of his culture through somber, traditional cel animation with a choral score, but it’s taken to a place of worship when we view it next to flashy computer-animated works today from, say, Pixar. I mean “Toy Story” is just as much SF as “Angel’s Egg,” but the style and tone of “Angel’s Egg” is so much more visceral that it expresses a vision of apocalyptic SF that automatically holds more power as a work of “serious” SF than something like “Toy Story.” Why’s that?
The world in “Angel’s Egg” is the most tragic of kingdoms, but it still read like a Kingdom with a capital K to me, which carried a heavy Catholic connotation that I try to reject in favor for something less dogmatic and problematic. I’d love to see an “Angel’s Egg” for the 2020s, and how the themes, tone, and style of this film can be reinterpreted (NO REMAKES THOUGH PLEASE!)
On another note, I appreciate how we brought up the “Cassandra figure” and her role in this film alongside doctrine, consent, and female trauma. In just 90 minutes, Martha Graham famously reworked the Casandra myth in her piece “Clytemnestra” (1958). Cassandra’s solos are amongst the most feminist portrayals of trauma and destiny in modern dance; it’s worth a glance, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SLHBm48X9I4
The “Angel’s Egg” let me remember the old Japanese castes system in the Edo period. In the system, everyone had their own profession and there does not have chances for people to promote. In the movie, the life of the girl and boy are determined, just like people who lived in the Edo period. This movie is produced during the economic crisis which somehow showing the Japanese society turning back to old age.
I really like the game Bioshock. It is fun to play and I like the moral system too. I always want to play good man in the game, so in those moral choices, I like to choose the moral one. However, I cannot control my temper sometimes, and I do good things because I consider bad behavior will affect on game process. But it is still cool when you can do thing randomly because it might cause serious consequence if you do bad thing in the real world.
1. Dune, Bioshock, and Battlestar Galactica are all works that have to convey a lot of information about the various dogmas and doctrines at play. Like my question for Xeno, it seems to me that each of these is a different medium plays an important factor in conveying that information. For example, you could argue that Frank Herbert has the easiest job because he can just convey his story through text, allowing for digressions or “explainers.” And yet, Herbert still has to be concerned with keeping his audience engaged rather than bogged down in these passages. Meanwhile, Battlestar Galactica has to convey that not only is this a democratic society with a strong military that ALSO has its own code of conduct, it has to get across the fact that the humans believe one thing, and the Cylons believe another. With that in mind, how do the form of novel, television show, and video game affect the way this dogma and doctrine is conveyed, and what are some additional strengths and weaknesses?
2. The “33” episode ends with a character – Apollo/Lee Adama – being forced to make what seems like an impossible moral choice, that is, to fire on and destroy a civillian ship in order to save the entire fleet. As the son of a military commander and a member of the military, Lee’s action is informed by the dogma that has been ingrained in him. How does that dogma affect – or not effect – Lee’s choice in this episode, and what are some other examples from the works we experienced this week?
3. If Bioshock is meant to be a commentary on libertarianism and Ayn Rand’s dogma, and Battlestar Galactica is a critique of Bush-era politics and militarism, then what are some critiques from the time in which it was written we can apply to Dune? What philosophies is Herbert calling – or not calling – out?
Rather than seeing the characters in Angel’s Egg as archetypes that must play out according to Christian doctrine, is it possible to view them as an unraveling of archetypes?
The success of Battlestar Galactica is due in part to the series’ connection to real-world issues and the way it managed to entangle real-world issues into the mythos of the Cylons and the humans. For science fiction to be successful, is this connection necessary? (There is also a strong sense of mythology in Dune)
I’ve never read the second book in the Dune series (and admittedly have still not managed to get all the way through the first), but what becomes of Paul’s Fremen lover, Chani? I know their son dies, and that the emperor promises Princess Irulan to Paul, but…does he just forget about Chani? I wish I was more informed about the series. It all seems very colonial on Paul’s part (I’m thinking of Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys in particular).
Angel’s Egg: I’ve got 569 anime to show you that are a hell of a lot weirder than this, but let’s get into it: In what way does this relate to dogma and doctrine? It’s important to contextualize the issue of Christianity in Japan. It’s a history of persecution. Bloody persecution. The first Christians in Japan were Portuguese missionaries and their converts. Yada yada yada history lesson there was a serious of very nasty massacres. Angel’s Egg is impossible to understand without a clear picture of what it MEANT to be Christian in Japan – which is not what it means today. In contemporary Japan, religion is treated in much the same way as the face you make when you cum. It is understood that you make a face when you cum. Everyone has an “I’m cumming” face. No one really ever wants to see it – if you’re lucky, your partner will accept it, maybe even like it. But it’s not something that’s just brought up in casual conversation. Of course, this “inside/outside” dynamic can be applied to a lot (and is applied, often, by Japanese cultural scholars) of situations, but in the case of Angel’s Egg it is important.
Angel’s Egg is violent. It is filled with tanks and weapons and guns and phallic symbols and fish and overt Christian iconography. It’s, at it’s core, about a girl protecting a “Tenshi no Tamago,” which (in order) invokes the kanji for “Heaven” and “Messenger” (which combined forms “tenshi,” “heaven’s messenger,” which translates to “angel.”) with the charged image of the egg as the ultimate symbol of “purity within, dirty without” and It’s Mamoru Oshii loudly shouting “I’m cumming!” as he crinkles up his face into the cinematic equivalent of an orgasmic scowl and then collapses into a sweaty heap on top of me.
But I’m totally into it. Would go for another round 10/10. I just can’t with the never ending deconstruction of every piece of imagery in the (almost completely silent art film) being broken down into component parts in an desperate attempt to find meaning. This is the meaning: it’s hard being a person of faith. It’s harder being a person of faith in a country full of atheists. Now take this hot nasty Magnum opus I’m cumming…. that was what I got.