Student Spotlight: Simulated Experiences

This semester's first Student Spotlight is on Doug. Doug does an excellent job of not only summarizing the first chapter of Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics but relating his ideas both to ancient Greek philosophy and contemporary anime--even if he does use Wikipedia. As always, here's an excerpt:

McCloud explains that comics are a media that can mix 3 factors that make up the “pictorial vocabulary,” these things are language, reality, and the picture plane. Comic book artists can mix these things however they like to tell their stories in a matter they see fit, whether it is by simple drawings with complex dialogue or extremely intricate art with minimal vocabulary. He concludes that it’s up to the author to create the stories and images but it’s up to us as readers to give the characters life.

The entire concept of what we perceive as objects or reality all goes back to the Allegory of the Cave and Plato’s Theory of Forms.

Ghost in the Shell is full of philosophical questions of being and possessing life.  

 Questions? Quibbles? Controversies? Share them with Doug!

Religious Critique in Black Death

Black Death is probably the center-piece of my study. Not only does it portray characters questioning their faith and a church committing dubious actions, but the bulk of its religious critique occurs between the characters. And that it's an action/horror film means it lends itself well to these kinds of issues. But to get at the real issues, I should warn, there are major spoilers ahead!

Fair warning...

The story follows the young monk Osmund during the 14th century plague infecting most of Europe. No one, including the monks, are safe from it's reach, except some of the rural villages deep in the forest and marshes. Conflicted between his duties to God and his love for a young woman, Osmund sends her back to their home in the forest. Guilt-ridden over breaking his vows, Osmund prays to God for a sign of which path he should follow. In answer, Sir Ulric, a knight on a holy mission (played by Sean Bean), and his troop of soldiers (of questionable repute) arrive at the monastery. They've been charged by the bishop to investigate a far off, secluded village that has not only been unravaged by the plague but death entirely; they hunt a necromancer. Osmund volunteers to lead them through his forest home with secret intention of reuniting with his love.

Of course, things don't go so well. Osmund finds his love's horse and bloody cloak just before his troop of miscreants is attacked by some crazy barbarian dudes, and a member of their party (the first of many) is killed. And worst of all, when they do find the village, they discover that their church hasn't been used in ages. They pretend to just be seeking refuge as they investigate, and they're wounds are healed by a local woman and her "mysterious" herbs. But the final straw is when Ulric sees one of the young village girls wearing a pendant given only to his order, who sent another knight in search of this village before him. And then he's captured, tortured, and quartered...but not before revealing he has brought the plague to the remote village. Oh, Sean Bean...

The film does an interesting job of continually poking at the Church's ignorance over assuming the plague is wrought by God or witchcraft. The battle scenes are excessively gory; special attention is given to one of the soldiers pissing behind a tree; the city the film begins in is a cesspool. The message is obvious--disease is caused by germs! When our band of heroes arrive at the village, they are immediately given a place to wash up and have their wounds tended by the village leader (a woman no less!) with the use of medicinal herbs. Again, the message is clear: this village is simply so remote from the disease and so cleanly, that not only does no one get sick but no one's dying either. To the stalwart Sir Ulric and the devout, however, only black magic could be the cause!

...Because the plague has nothing to do with rats!

Of course, none of this is to say that the village isn't evil. The village leader and supposed necromancer is crazy! Upon arriving at the village, she tempts Osmund with the body of his beloved, who she brings "back to life." Osmund, wary of the blasphemous necromancy that must be at play, refuses his newly revived love (who is more akin to a zombie than a person) and kills her to mercifully send her soul to God. Meanwhile, the crazy chick proceeds to have the villagers torture and kill the remaining band by promising them their freedom if they renounce God (only to then kill the renounced) as she preaches to her villages about the evil of the Christian God and His followers. Osmund (who's supposed to be reveling in his reunion with his beloved), manages to sneak in and free the remaining soldiers before chasing after the evil woman. But her torture of Osmund isn't done. She confesses that she is no witch or necromancer, and only used her herbs to make his love appear dead and then alive again--her living stupor only a temporary side effect of the medicine--meaning Osmund murdered her.

The woman manages to escape, and a the film's epilogue shows and psychologically ruined Osmund, now a knight and witch-hunter in Ulric's order. He travels Europe looking for the woman who so wronged him, and every time he finds a suspected which, she appears to Osmund as the one who got away. The combination of his rage, faith, and guilt means he listens to no pleas for mercy or innocence, but instead has each tortured and murdered.

It's kind of a depressing ending. But it drives home the message that religious fervor can be just as terrible as evil as atheistic fervor. And while this sort of strikes a balance between the two, the Church is still to blame for spreading the plague, murdering innocent women, and causing grief where none need be felt. From the time Osmund believes his love is dead, he firmly believes he is being punished, prompting him in one scene to confess to Ulric, "God has punished me for leaving His monastery." Ulric answers right back, "God has better things to think of." This idea that God has more to be occupied with than the petty sins of a lowly monk state that Osmund never need have hidden his love and sent her off alone in the first place. All of this compiled suggests that the film's message isn't that faith or the belief in God is bad, but that the Church itself is responsible for misrepresenting His word.

Questions? Quibbles? Controversies?

My Comics Course Syllabus...Comic

Well, I've finally done it! I've created a syllabus for my Rhetoric of Comics course that IS a comic! It's something I've been working on for a couple of years, actually, but had given up on. But since I'm in pursuit of pursuing my doctoral degree, I realized that this semester may be last chance I get to teach a composition class on comics for awhile. And I'm teaching three sections this semester! So I thought that this Christmas Break would be the perfect chance to get back to drawing and finish it! And I have!

Open publication - Free publishing - More comics

My drawing skills aren't exactly up to snuff, and sure, the relevance of some of the images for the text is dubious, and yeah, if Scott McCloud ever sees my attempts at drawing him he may sue. I still think it's pretty cool, and hopefully, my students will too. If nothing else, after the first day of class, none of them will be able to say they've never read a comic before (which happens disturbingly often).

But I couldn't have done it without my wonderful wife Veronica. One of the reasons I gave up on it was that it seemed a little intimidating. But Veronica's amazing techno-prowess really helped. She digitally fixed the layout of some of the early pages, completely worked up the later ones, made the text fit, and even coached my drawing.

Lastly, I should point out that the images of Scott McCloud and the silhouette Batman and Superman are my attempts at artwork by Scott McCloud and Frank Miller. I really felt they needed to go in there (especially Scott McCloud's, as his work is a huge part of my class), but I didn't want to just scan pages of their work. Oh, and Dr. Lunsford, if you ever see my terrible caricature of you, I apologize profusely.

Questions? Quibbles? Controversies?

Religious Critique in Arn: The Knight Templar

My wife calls him "Urn" to make fun :-/

Arn: The Knight Templar is a 2007/2008 Swedish adaptation of Jan Guillou's Crusades Trilogy of novels about Knight Templar Arn Magnusson. It's actually two films, but Netflix Streaming compiles it into one awesome movie. Arn is a war epic in the vain of Ridley Scott's Kingdom of Heaven, and like Scott's film, it stresses the importance of diplomacy when two ideologies conflict while humanizing the Muslim people and faith and thereby showing the faults of medieval Christian ideology. And though its criticism of the Church is not overt, the Church instead serves as a kind of antagonist.

The story of Arn is pretty good and most closely resembles something like Braveheart. Arn is raised in a Christian monastery in Sweden at the bequest of his parents who prayed for a miracle following his nearly tragic birth. A restless youth, a French monk and former Knight Templar decides to teach the boy to ride, use a sword, and fire a bow and arrow. When he comes of age, he is sent back to his family, in the throws of a clan war with the Sverkers for the crown. With his cool Templar training he takes the Sverker leaders hand in a duel to defend his father's honour. To rub salt in the would, he gets involved with the man's fiancee Cecilia, not only managing to get her pregnant but caught. Under the threat of excommunication, both are sent to perform 20 years of penance, Cecilia in a convent run by the Sverkers, and Arn in the Holy Land. There, Arn quickly earns the reputation of a protector, regardless of race, creed, or religion; in fact, the film begins with Arn saving a pair of Muslim traders from bandits. He even speaks their language and respects their leader Saladin, who he unexpectedly meets at various points throughout the film.

This is sorta how I hoped he'd look in Thor :-/

Without giving too much more away, the film is really interesting, and is as much about Cecilia awaiting Arn's return from war as it is about Arn fighting in it. And her part in the story is as relevant as Arn's concerning religious criticism. As mentioned earlier, Cecilia is sent to a convent to do her penance under an abbess of the Sverker clan, and she is punished above and beyond her penance for slighting the family. Her son is taken from her immediately following it's birth, and she is never given any information about where he's sent or even if he's alive. Years later, she is able to learn from a new nun that not only is her son alive but that he is being raised by Arn's awesome, armoured, manly, and Swedish-speaking uncle, Stellan Skarsgård. In fact, on her deathbed, the abbess confesses to purposefully making Cecilia's life more difficult during her 20 years penance and asks her forgiveness so that she can get into heaven.

For Arn's part, understanding the Muslim people where his fellow brothers do not tends to make his life more difficult. Despite proving himself, his loyalty is questioned by the head of his order, who decides to blindly attack Saladin's larger, better fortified and provisioned army because his army has obtained "the True Cross," the holy artifact under which no Christian army has ever lost. Needless to say, the battle does not go well. But Saldin's portrayal is very interesting, and Arn's respect for him is well-earned.

"I don't always grant mercy, but when I do, I prefer to look like your Savior."

All in all, the major criticism against the Church here seems to be that no one and nothing is holy simply because of its name. Cecilia's abbess isn't good just because she's an abbess, Arn's brethren monks are peaceful just because they're monks, the True Cross doesn't guarantee victory just because it is the True Cross, and Muslims aren't evil just because they're not Christian. This last one is central to Arn's ongoing friendship with Saladin. They postulate on the nature of their beliefs and find common ground in forgiveness, mercy, and even the nature of their respective gods. The director really seems to be trying to drive this last point home in his representation of Saladin--great care has obviously been taken to make him resemble Christ in one key scene.

In the end, Arn: The Knight Templar is an epic war film, and if you haven't seen it, you should. There's more religious critique to the film than I'm discussing here, and it paints an interesting (and fairly accurate) picture of the period.

Questions? Quibbles? Controversies?

Religious Critique in Season of the Witch

"The Last of the Templar"--Ominous much?

Next month I'll be presenting at an academic conference on Religious Critique in 21st Century Medieval Period Films. I'll be looking at the portrayal of the Church in films like Arn: The Knight Templar, Black Death, and of course, Season of the Witch. When undertaking a research project, I often tell my students to start by writing short summaries and their thoughts on the different sources they may use, and I thought I'd take my own advice by starting a new feature in which I do the same! Exciting, eh?

Most probably ignored Nicolas Cage's romp through medieval Europe to deliver a suspected witch for trial as the Crusades deserter Behmen with his tough partner Felson (played by the incomparable Ron Perlman). And you could be excused for that. It's not exactly what one might consider "high cinema." The historical accuracy's questionable at best, the acting (as with Cage, per usual) is pretty silly, and the characters are fairly cliche. But the story is what interests me here.

While the tale of a Crusades knight deserting for loss of faith isn't new (Behmen leaves the Holy Land when he realizes that the priests at the head of his army are having him strike down defenseless women and children, "In the name of God"), where the story goes from there is a little different. Behmen and Felson get arrested as deserters shortly after their return to plague stricken Europe, and of course, witchcraft is to blame. But the supposed witch has been caught for the telltale signs that she was 1) a woman, 2) wandering alone at night, and 3) speaking to herself--par for the course when the Church is looking for a witch to blame. Luckily, she gets a trial in a far off monastery responsible for copying the Book of Solomon, the holy book used to identify and kill witches, as well as perform exorcisms. Unfortunately, there aren't enough people to transport her there, what with everyone dying and all.

Ah, simpler times...

So Behmen and Felson take up the cause in exchange for their freedom along with a plucky band of adventurers who *Spoiler Alert* almost all die before they get there due to supernatural occurrences. And it's not much better when they do get there, since all the monks have also died from the plague, and (Surprise!) it turns out the girl isn't a witch but is possessed by a demon--and not the fun kind who pee on the floor and projectile vomit. This demon has used the girl's trial for witchcraft to be brought to the final copy of the Book of Solomon so that he can destroy it (never mind that he could have just flown there). In the end, Behmen dies, but not before exorcising the demon, saving the Book, and renewing his faith in the Almighty.

Still, Season of the Witch is different from many of the other films I'll be looking at. While the religious critique regarding motivation for the Crusades (at one point, Behmen yells at his captors, "No one has spilled more blood in God's name than I. A benevolent god would not ask such things of men.") and the identification of witches (discussed above) is obvious, the film takes an interesting turn in regards to the latter. The movie begins with the execution of three seemingly innocent women for witchcraft when (again, Surprise!) it turns out one probably was a witch and the another was the aforementioned demon who kills the priest performing the execution and destroys his copy of the Book of Solomon. And while the main girl is clearly innocent of witchcraft, she is possessed. So is the message that, 3 out of 4 times, the Church's methods work? Or does the demon just exploit how blindly the Church assigns blame in order to get close to the books? I'm inclined to go with the second option.

But also of interest is Behmen's renewal of faith, which is rare in these films. Most of these kind of heroes are heroes because they defy the church. And while most of them don't witness their best friend burned alive by a demon, Behmen still stands out for ending the story as he began it--a soldier of God. This coupled with the Church's respectable batting average of .750 when identifying the damned suggests that the film, in the end, is pro-Church. Again, this is odd given the other films of this genre, but I guess someone has to stand out.

Questions? Quibbles? Controversies?

My Personal History Statement OR How to Make a French-Speaking, Mexican, English Teacher

As I may have mentioned, I'm currently in the throes of doctoral program applications in education. I'm currently working on the first application to ask for a Personal History Statement--"no more than two pages in length, about your personal history, family background, and other influences on your intellectual development" and addresses "educational, cultural, and economic opportunities and disadvantages that you have experienced, and ways those experiences have affected the development of your special interests, career plans, and future goals." It turned into a "Why I Became a Teacher" essay, and I thought I'd open it to floor for thoughts.

My dad worked every overtime shift he has able to get when I was little. Looking back, I realize a lot of that must have gone into my tuition at the only private elementary school in Del Rio, Texas. Education was very important to my parents. By the age of ten, I was tackling algebra at the same time as my cousin who attended an inner-city middle school in San Antonio. But even The Little Schoolhouse didn’t teach us to read or encourage our progression as soon as my father would have liked. He taught me to read using Green Eggs and Ham and Fox in Socks before my classmates were Seeing Spot Run.

In 6th grade, my dad’s government job transferred us to the French-speaking province of Quebec. I was able to get into a prestigious, English-language, all-boys, private high school run by Jesuits, but my teachers were very honest. I was not likely to graduate on time because it was unrealistic to think that in 5 years I could pass the government-issued French language exam required of high school graduates who were mostly native speakers. The truth was meant to prepare me for 5 years of intense study, but it only made study seem pointless. What good would it do to study if I was going to fail the language exam and be held back? I dropped from all A’s to barely passing.

But my math teacher Mr. Sanders convinced my parents that I was too bright for basic math, so they tossed me in the deep end, and soon I was getting B’s in Honors pre-calculus. My Speech teacher Mr. Dubee encouraged me into public speaking as a lector at my local church. Mr. Hoefle showed me that I could understand and analyze literature in his Honors English class about Westerns and let me run with my own ideas. These teachers pushed me out of apathy, but Monsieur Brault helped me pass the language exam by never taking it easy on me.

In Quebec, high school ends after 11th grade, and I graduated before we were transferred back to the States. But American colleges wouldn’t accept my diploma since I wasn’t technically an international student, so it was back to school. All my hard work to avoid an extra year was for naught. But this time, my frustration didn’t have an adverse effect on my grades, the local school board did. At first, I wasn’t allowed to register for school because I technically already had a high school diploma. Eventually, however, I was able to finagle my way into school by not having some basic American college requirements: American History and Government, another science I had taken in eighth grade (high school in Quebec but middle school in America—so it didn’t count), and British literature. There were others (American Literature and World History), but I bent the truth about them in my interview with one of the school board members once I realized that not having them would mean also having to repeat the 11th grade.

Equally distressing was that any course from my Canadian high school that either was not offered at my American one or wouldn’t fit on my American transcript was discarded. Officially speaking, I lost two years of science, French, Spanish and English, four and a half years of Speech, five years of assorted religion courses (ethics, World Religions, etc.), half a year of Creative Writing, a year of Philosophy, three years of Physical Education, and my year of Honors English and Pre-Calculus, to the stroke of a pen. On top of that, the courses I was able to keep were not adjusted to reflect the grade breakdown used by my new school; in other words, most of my A’s became B’s, B’s became C’s, and so on. Surprisingly, all of this bothered me less than suddenly finding myself part if the 1% of Latino students who attended the upper-middle class, Bible Belt high school. I was often “complimented” on how well I spoke English (“without a accent or nuthin’”) and was excused from classes to attend lectures with the other 1% on encouraging us that being Latino didn’t have to hold us back from college and a successful career. Despite (or perhaps in spite of) all that, I finished with all A’s on bare minimum work at one of Newsweek’s “Best High Schools in America.” And more than anything, this struck me as odd.

I’d already decided that I wanted to be a teacher. The educators who pushed me out of disenchantment were inspiring. And my brief stint in what was some of the best that the American school system had to offer only strengthened that resolve. Throughout my undergraduate career, I threw myself into whatever teaching capacity I could: instructing swim lessons at the local Y, tutoring French for the university language lab, TA-ing the university horseback riding class, and training lifeguards.

I took lessons from each: it’s okay to toss students into the deep end if you’re there to help them stay afloat; the best advice is useless if you can’t make yourself understood; you can’t expect a student to want to jump straight into the saddle, but you shouldn’t assume they won’t want to gallop; letting a student by with sloppy technique doesn’t help anyone.

And I affirmed my desire to teach in graduate school where my real passion quickly became the composition classes I taught as part of my assistantship. I even requested extra contracts to tutor in the Writing Center. When the university offered me a full-time position, I jumped at the opportunity.

I’m still teaching, but I’m eager to learn more. I want to understand those curriculum differences I encountered in high school. I want to know what makes a strong university course and program. I want to be a much stronger teacher. And I want to work out solutions for those high school curriculums, or design better programs for serving the students who enter higher education, or just be able to pick out and push a kid who’s selling himself short.

 Questions? Quibbles? Controversies?

My Top 5 Games of 2011

Another year of gaming has come and gone, and as usual, I'm looking back on what I enjoyed and what I didn't. Comparatively speaking, I didn't play much this year, and only some of it was new. It was a difficult year that left little room for either buying or playing much. While that means I generally enjoyed what I did play, it also means I completed very few games (many of which I'll be discussing here). So here they are, my Biggest Disappointment and Top 5 Video Games of 2011.

Biggest Disappointment: InFamous 2

Originally I was going to go with Uncharted 2, but I think I've already said all I can about that in my review over at Bitmob.com. Plus, I wasn't expecting that much to begin with. But the game I was looking forward to the most this year that fell short for me was InFamous 2.

Now, I actually loved InFamous. It was a classic superhero origin-story, in which the choices the hero makes ultimately make him. But superheroes, like any fictional characters, are only interesting so long as they continue to evolve and grow. In comics this is often counter to medium (check out Umberto Eco's "The Myth of Superman"--required reading for the comics course I teach--to have you mind blown), but I see no reason why it has to carry over to superhero video games. Cole doesn't evolve in InFamous 2. He just gets some new powers and has to stop a new supervillain; it's more of the same. That was a big part of the disappointment for me, but the story also left something to be desired.

It's Mardi Gras Cole!

When it was first announced that InFamous 2 would take place in the fictional New Marais, it was obvious the designers were trying to play off post-Hurricane Katrina New Orleans. That didn't sit right with me from the beginning, but it wasn't until a took a creative non-fiction course and read the memoir pieces of a New Orleans native that I realized how much this setting choice was in poor taste. The game glorifies the destruction of a real place by tantalizing the player with a chance to parkour his or her way around it. Not cool.

5) Dead Space: Extraction:

Several articles and blogs I read about Dead Space 2 this year made statements to the effect of it being to the original Dead Space what Aliens is to the original Alien. But I never quite felt that way. To me, Dead Space was just Aliens and Dead Space 2 was More Aliens. Dead Space: Extraction, however, was another story. I had really wanted to play this when it first came out on Wii, but simply never got the chance. Then, EA promised a free download of the PS3 port for preorder, and I jumped right on that. And it was excellent. I've written on Bitmob how the weakest link in this series is Isaac Clarke, and I hope future games in the franchise do away with him in favor of storytelling and characters like those found in Extraction, even if they have to change genres to do it.

4) Odin Sphere:

I love Muramasa: The Demon Blade. In fact, it was number 2 on my Top 5 of 2009. So when it's predecessor finally came out on PSN a couple of months ago, I downloaded it without delay. I still haven't beaten it, but I love what I've played. The art style that George Kamitani perfected in Muramasa still holds up beautifully here, and while it's easy to see where the sequel streamlined elements of the basic game design, it doesn't get in the way of enjoying this game. Additionally, one of the aspects I really enjoyed in Muramasa was the storytelling through stage-like dialogues, and while Odin Sphere uses a few cinematic-type set-pieces to progress the plot, the theatre element is still here.

These are my friends. I can't say "Good-Bye."

3) Chrono Trigger:

So many outlets have been discussing this game this year that it feels like a new release. And as one of the many who never got to play it when it first came out, I was glad to finally see it on the Virtual Console. I instantly fell in love with it. Perhaps it's the quirky characters, the bizarre story, or just that it reminds me of Final Fantasy VII (my first, true JRPG). I haven't yet beaten it, and part of me doesn't want to--like when you've read half-way through a great book, and though you enjoy it, you don't want it to end.

2) Pokemon Black:

I got back into Pokemon last year during a particularly stressful semester. Something about the pick-up-and-play design coupled with the number-crunching has a very meditation-like effect on me when I start to feel overwhelmed. Finding it odd that I had suddenly taken up a game series I'd essentially ignored for a decade (when my brother and I decided we'd grown out of it) my wife took a sudden interest. What were these Pokemon? What was the object of the game? Could we play together? That settled it; we decided we'd get each other Black and White as anniversary gifts. And while my wife is a much more casual Pokemon trainer, it was nice to once again have someone to play the series with. Combine that with it simply being the best Pokemon game since maybe the originals, and placing this in my number 2 spot was a no brainer.

Exactly how I feel after playing for a couple of hours.

1) Dark Souls:

This one shouldn't strike anyone as a surprise. My love for Demon's Souls is so great that the reason I didn't write a Top 5 Games of 2010 was because it would have taken the number 1 spot two years in a row. I even lectured on the game at an academic conference this past spring. So I was counting the days for Dark Souls, and so far, it hasn't disappointed. It has an epic story that's subtly told, an excellent combat system, a multiplayer component unlike any other save its predecessor, brilliant level design, and challenging gameplay--so challenging that I still haven't beaten it, though I'm pretty sure I'm close. And while, no, it's not exactly a game I can play when I want to sit down and relax after a hard day, I love that about it too. Like meals, some games need to be savoured, and Dark Souls is one I plan to continue sampling well into 2012. And really, a great game shouldn't only be enjoyed the year it releases. A great game can be enjoyed for years to come. And I think my Top 5 this year shows that.

Questions? Quibbles? Controversies?