WEEK 7 assignment : J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Philosopher Stone

This is the first time I’ve read Harry Potter. Although I’ve seen all films I never realize that there are so many things in the story I can relate my life to. I’ve been studying overseas for almost ten years by myself. I’ve transferred from school to school, city to city, country to country and it forced me to survive and be part of new societies where it’s distinctively different from the one before it. However, like leaving for Hogwarts, the journey away from a familiar world brought me to a better understanding of my very own world. 

Perhaps it is because Harry Potter is all about coming of age and growing up it speaks directly to the heart of children, adolescent and young adults like me who are going through stages of transformation and finding themselves. In fact many elements from the story sounds very realistic(like sister crying when her brother leaves) that it is easy to feel connected to them.

To me, going to different countries to study meant that I have to enter the realm of unknown and once again become innocent to everything. Just like Harry Potter, I have had many questions to ask about unfamiliar world even on subjects that are as mundane as common sense. I now realized that they may not be an end to it, but I have become more and more comfortable with being innocent, with adaptation and able to face things with more peaceful mind. The beginning of Hogwarts life reminded me of how nervous I was at the beginning of my journey and how much I’ve changed since then. Harry and many characters of his generation reflected mind of adolescent fascinatingly as they are always project negative thought to their future and worried about what could go wrong. I can imagine the story of this book being valuable to young readers as it can almost be an advisor or good influence to their life. It also reminds us that choices are actually ours, and most time we’ve already made them long before options come to us.

Just like Harry Potter, sometimes it is kind adults who resemble guardian figures, sometimes it is wisdom, courage or mere luck that got me through all challenges. Most of the time, I’ll know from deep inside and I’ve slowly learn to follow my inner voice which tells me that this is the path I meant to take. 

WEEK 6 assignment : Jrr Tolkien, The Hobbit

I think The Hobbit was an excellent work in both medium the film and the book(if I don’t compare The Hobbit film to The Lord of the Ring film). However, I found my experience watching and reading distinctively different. While imageries of the film highly satisfied the eye wonder and the tone of sounds and music evoked an epic mood, the book contained many subtle elements that film languages can’t fully convey. 

The book brought me a kind of immersion that is unique to all other mediums. What I noticed strongly as I was reading The Hobbit was the presence of Tolkien’s ethereal self. It was as if a mysterious kindness and wisdom of this invisible narrator always surrounded me as I immersed into the adventure. The film did gave me a heartwarming feeling in some parts but it did not occupy the world surrounding me like the novel did. I think it has to do with the way we perceive different mediums. Film watching experience was highly concentrated on what we see and hear, thus, the surrounding environment associate with the overall experience with the medium and embed in our mind. For example, nowadays when I think of my childhood favorite shows I always remember them along with place and time I watched them. Reading experiences were similar to some degrees but in comparison to films, books has a stronger ability to make us ignore the surrounding environment and make us simulate the world in our mind.

Books have an ability to make every elements seems much more intendedly important.  Mountains and treasures for example contain much more spiritual significance as they are landmarks of the world and worldly conflicts. Aspects of natures as big as seasons to mundane things like silence become something so lively and deeply interconnected to life. Nature such as Summer has been metaphorically compare to a person kindness, the wilderness felt truly wild, dance and music has truly become representative of culture, riddle has become a truly sacred ritual.

Acting, CGI and music were well made in the film but Middle Earth in the novel felt much more vast and colorful to me. I believe that it is because written words doesn’t only suggest the appearance of subjects but also absence of things surrounding it. Every descriptions of things in the novel also wordlessly described the world around it. This also apply to not only space but time. While several establishing shots were used to suggest a long journey in the film, sentences that describe time lapse in the book actually made it felt like significantly long time has passed because there’s more element of unknown that piled up to imagine. 

There was an interesting case of a medium that unintentionally allow us to fill our imagination in the absence of the world surrounding the subject and it was dialogues from translated MMORPG (Massively multiplayer online role-playing game). As a player, the idea of the world must be achieve from observing the world by traveling through it and connect it with dialogues from non-player characters. Most of the time, translated dialogue would be characters expressing their thoughts and feeling in broken sentences. That make most of the element in the Fantasy game world a fragments of informations and that successfully evoke players imagination to make connections and fill the voids. 

WEEK 5 assignment : Diana Wynne Jones, Black Maria

I think the novel Black Maria didn’t just reflect females empowerment. Essentially the story also reflects a clash between ideas of how power should be handle through the perspective of senior and younger generation and certainly genders. As seen from the story, the society where power are limited to several dictators with limited perspective and to those few who benefits directly from them are not a productive society. The world and people gravitated around Aunt Maria’s control reflect not much sense of progression but repetitive almost meaningless ritual like tea party that satisfy only few. 

Cranbury-on-Sea project an image of a failing community that resulted from limiting only one conservative ideology to exists. Mig and Christ on the other hands, prove that progression can be successfully achieve by balance of power between active members. By allowing different specialties to co-operate, not even supernatural power can stand a chance. To some degrees, aunt Maria could probably understand the threat of such conventional ideas that younger generation could bring, therefore she force children of Cranbury-on-Sea to be kept away. I found Black Maria quite political. What’s more fascinating is the fact that these fictional characters appears can be compare to political figures archetype in many dictatorship society, especially Aunt Maria who can be compare to senior elites in a strictly hierarchical society that will punish anyone who is against her or act offensively to her rule. I doubt it would be different if we swap the gender of ruling class or aunt Maria to male. Ultimately, awareness that all genders, members and lives (including other species) must coexist is the key to progressive society and natural world.

Mig and Christ are also a good representation of a cooperation between different gender with capability who are not in lover relationship with a chance of beneficial conflict(like their parents). Their bond are based on sense of being part of the family which is more unconditional. This means that as siblings they both must coexist and help each others no matter how bad things go. Especially when there single mother wasn’t being very helpful which also reflects that younger generation themselves also have a power to change the world dictated by powerful force.

WEEK 4 assignment : Weird and New Weird

Weird genre was a very interesting reading experience to me because they certainly reminded me of a collection of short stories I wrote on my own during high-school (when I haven’t even come across the existence of this particular genre). What’s even more remarkable was the fact that I could sympathize with writers’ writing mentality more clearly than I could understand the messages they tried to convey. And that also make a lot of sense to me as I realized from my own experience that this style so called weird is highly personal point of view based, which could be quite idiosyncratic to individual authors.

I read The Snow Child, The Executioner’s Beautiful Daughter, Souvenir of Japan and The Unnamable. Essentially they all prioritized the delivery of an interesting or clever point of view of metaphysics, humanity and perceptions over telling clean stories. In fact, enigmatic uses of languages stirred up the sensibility and force readers to think harder to uncoded there message. The Unnamable for example might contain an element of horror but to it’s core it was an attempt to bring up question about our perceptions. Materialistic elements and theme were used only as a tool to form an unspoken question about aspects of life. Sometimes the theme could be as mundane as a caption of ordinary events like in Souvenir of Japan or could be one without specific meaning to it’s background like The Executioner’s Beautiful Daughter, though the story still works because these are treated as fragments of mind rather than an external world. 

I considered worlds in weird genre metaphoric and symbolic in multiple layers. In Executioner’s Beautiful Daughter, almost everything from the existence and appearance of each characters to the rule of the universe they live in are metaphors. It is in fact weird an unnatural for the executioner to wear mask all the time but it make a complete sense if it’s being view as a symbolic representation of dictated law. 

There were a few weird short story I wrote during high school that are worth mentioning. One of them used both events and time as metaphors. It was a story about a boy who was walking back home behind his father’s coldhearted and fearsome shoulder that never look back. The boy not so kind opinion about his father were use as a main narrative throughout the journey home. The time passing during the short walk were use as a metaphor for a life span and what one learn. That aspect keep reflecting through the development of the boys chain of thoughts. When his mind finally decided to become independent the father turned back to him and reveal his tough parenting intention that shook the boy point of view and maturity and leave him with a little fear of losing his fatherly guardian. From this experience I think that an unspoken conclusion and realization is a charm of weird genre. 

Another story I wrote that worth mentioning as an example of a possible characteristic of weird is a short story that I used a scenario from a classic cartoon as a reference but twisted it’s point of view to create am impactful message. This is similar to the story Snow Child where the author use a famous fairy tale as a theme then twist the role and relationship between each characters and let audiences contemplate on that unfamiliar point of view which could be absurd or can be optimistic.

WEEK3 Kwaidan

I’m a kind of person who enjoy watching Kurosawa’s Dream, playing Shakuhachi(Bamboo flute) and reading about Zen, so I’m not surprise why I could easily appreciate series of Japanese folk tales from Kwaidan, in fact I’m familiar with many of them. I doubt that it’s totally the effect of my oriental background, I’ve seen many people from non-Japanese and non-eastern culture that deeply understood and appreciate Japanese deep culture. My pattern of world views just seems to connect with Buddhist philosophy and animism similar to Shinto quite well. 

These Japanese horror tales shares a lot of similarities to Thai indigenous horror as there are presence of the concept of Karma, states of one spirit and Buddhist Monks as representatives of balance bringer. Animism seems to integrate quite well with Buddhist in many Asian countries, however, one cultural trait that makes Thai folk culture quite different from Japanese folk culture seems to be the political influence that come later in the history. Both Thai and Japanese has a long history of glorifying Monarch as a heavenly figure but Thai metropolitan culture tend to overshadowed folk culture a lot more because of the political policies. Japanese successfully preserve their past by allowing them to be reconstruct materialistically while keeping the same spirit (example could be seen with ancient palace that has been issued to be reconstruct every 4 year with the same exact floor plan) while Thai method of preserving tend to keep the same exact material and structure on it’s spot without permission to re-study and reconstruct.

One other aspect that create a distinct difference between Japanese and Thai culture is the natural pattern and view of nature. Thailand is known to be located in tropical area in which crops can grow all years with lots of flat land available for it, while Japan has much harsher seasons and environments. Through Japanese eyes, life is much more fragile and nature is both beautiful and terrifyingly powerful. In Kwaidan and in many Japanese literatures, nature and nature of life has always been a huge statement and big part of the narrative. There is a philosophy that directly explain that aesthetic called Yugen. There is an example of a very old Thai folk tale I’ve read that actually contain the same essence, though the style tend to be forgotten through time and I’m hoping that I could revive it in the future.