Bladerunner, Ishiguro, and humanity

By a confluence of events which could only be described as serendipitous, I’ve recently finished Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go, having been inspired by Ishiguro’s recent Nobel Prize win, and seen both Bladerunner 2049, and Ghost in the Shell.   All three have treatments of what might be termed quasi humans, or the treatment of those regarded as not quite human.  To begin with, Aristotle was pleased to think that that which was distinctly human was the capacity for rational thought.  At this point that no longer seems sufficient a condition, given that AI could in principle even more rational than a human.  Bladerunner wants to consider the distinctly human the domain of memory, which is highly policed, and only artificial memories are given to replicants.  (As an aside, one might wonder, why give them memories at all?)  Ghost in the Shell opines on the other hand that memory isn’t relevant at all, but it’s action which defines one.  Ghost doesn’t get very philosophical, and really, it’s up to the reader/viewer to tease out or elaborate on the premises of all these works.  If we leave it there with Ghost, we’re left with a kind of half-baked existentialism, which may not even be coherent, because by the end of the film Major spends a lot of time exploring her personal history, but  ends up working in the same capacity as at the beginning.  So perhaps the message is that personal history has a role to play, no matter how we choose to act or define our identity.  Or it could be just a muddle.

Bladerunner 2049 is impossible IMHO to fully appreciate without reference to the original, whichever original that may be.  At the end of that film, Roy saves the Bladerunner, just like K does in 2049, one might say, choosing to save humanity.  In the former case, Ford doesn’t completely understand why Roy made his choice, and in the latter, he doesn’t know about K’s fatal(?) wound. In either case, the replicants are constructed narratively to be far more sympathetic than humans, generally speaking.

That same approach is in play with Ishiguro, where the clones are the ones with passion and concern for each other, while humans are generally cool, unsympathetic, or distant.  The key difference in the narrative is that the clones pretty much accept their lot, whereas in Bladerunner they do not.  Presumably there were and have been a lot of replicants who accepted their lot, but we don’t hear much about the house that isn’t burning down.  Parenthetically, this book has a similar approach to his other works, where a character looks back on the past with more or less accurate memories, and either masks feelings or is prey to self deception.  In a role where the only future is grim and set, memories are questionable, and action apparently futile, it seems that it is actually the clone’s ability to fantasize and imagine which makes her most distinctively human.

State of the Furry Nation

According to Furry Nation, the furry phenomenon developed in the 1990s as the internet made it possible for previously disconnected individuals with specific interests to find each other.  (A blow for modern alienation, btw.)  Furries seem to be the odd group out in a culture which generally seems to be more accepting of difference:  the New York Post reported on a councilman who was forced to resign after being discovered as a furry.  Despite the culture being more ‘accepting’ of difference, at some point, humans being social animals, some distinction between ‘people like us’ and ‘them’ is inevitably made, though optimally this contest can be sublimated through, for example, sporting contests or other relatively benign artificial divisions.

I’ll leave you to read more about furries on Wikipedia, but I would contend that not much separates furries from other groups which are more socially acceptable, indeed some of them thrive on their distinction from what is they posit to be a majority culture.  Burning Man, for example, dubs the majority culture to be the ‘default culture’ and, much like furries, participants will dress up in a costume and assume a Burner name.  Various communities organized around sexuality have their own costumes. Furries are often identified with being a fetish, but this would be an erroneous assumption.  Comicon has cosplay, in which a participant uses a prefabricated identity.  The ‘majority culture’ whatever that might be arguably converges with all of these on Halloween.  Even the majority culture will make slight changes to its costumery during other times of the year, like the ‘ugly sweater’ during Christmas.  Partly, the reaction against furries is connected to disturbing normalcy--any time something different arises it can produce in the mind some general low level conflict questioning one’s own life course.  The easiest resolution is to reject the difference.  The general nature of cosplay is that it draws from mythologies that are recognizable to normal culture, and somebody might say ‘Ah, yes, I have heard of Darth Vader.  Dressing up like him just isn’t for me though I can see how that might be fun to some people.’  On the other hand, furries often create their own personal mythology behind their cartoonish animal, and that sharper individuality is less understandable.  And, given the association of furries with a fetish, sexuality and cartoon animals are clearly an intersection lying outside most majority cultures. That said, anti-furry fervor is less strong than, say, anti-D&D fervor in the 1980s, which often associated people 'acting out' or 'dressing up' in fantasy costumes with satanic worship.

It is also disturbing enough for people to wear masks in public that the practice is often banned.  One might argue that masks are a ‘public safety’ issue, in order to more easily identify criminals, but I am unaware of any study bolstering this concern as a basis for such a law--on the whole I grant it’s probably easier for a victim to identify a perp without a mask, but on the other hand a criminal will only be inclined to don a mask during more serious criminal activity.  Lately such anti-mask laws can serve the purpose of repressing religious minorities, like women who take the burqa.  In Austria such a law recently ensnared a furry, or rather a person employed to dress up in a shark costume in order to advertise a computer repair shop. One can imagine mass resistance to the anti-mask law as a new frontier for civil rights, where devout Muslim women and furries march together.

One of the statistics claimed was that 25% of furries would choose to be their animal permanently if given the choice.  This reminded me of the Lobster, in which being transformed into an animal was viewed as a kind of punishment.  Generally, the notion of being ‘reduced’ to ‘less than human’ has throughout history been viewed as a negative, from Circe transforming Ulysses’s sailors into pigs all the way through to replicants in Bladerunner.  I can imagine though one might find relief in escaping humanity.

Generally, though, the reaction against furries isn’t that strong, mostly because they, like Comicon cosplay or Burning Man or S&M, they all keep to their discreet and discrete locations to enact their sense of community and so don't disturb the majority culture (or, perhaps more appropriately, majority cultures? One issue confronting US and European society is that of multiculturalism in fact).  It has taken the business culture a long, long time to implement a ‘casual Friday’ in the normal majority community; it may take much longer still for ‘dress codes’ to be modified to permit people to show up at work in Burner gear or as cartoon Komodo dragons.

When will the indigenous Basquiat emerge?

One aspect of visiting Stratford involves walking the streets.  The touristic area is a clean, well lighted place, populated with the accoutrement of the upper income quintile--unique restaurants, artisanal products, spas, art.  One of these shops purveys indigenous art.  The front part contains all sorts of lower-cost knickknacks like magnets, journals, coasters, etc.  All of these with some indigenous thematic attached.  The back contains the pricier art and sculpture produced by authentic indigenous people.  This is where things get interesting.

Who decides what type of art or sculpture gets produced?  It’s a bit of a chicken and egg problem.  The thousands of dollars in cost means that this is not material which the indigenous people themselves will be displaying in their own homes.  Indeed, part of the point of these purchases is to help support these poorer people.  (Similar problems exist in many poorer countries e.g. coffee exports from parts of Africa are for the richer countries that can afford the export, not the people of the country itself.)  I can only imagine some kind of artistic middlemen who think about what richer people would be willing to display or purchase, and then explain to indigenous people who have some kinds of technical skill what they need to make.  

What does get produced are stone sculptures of arctic animals, paintings of arctic scenes, and the like.  In short, some facsimile of folk art, but not genuine folk art, because folk art is what folks would produce irrespective of capitalist intervention.  

What doesn’t get produced by indigenous artists is any sort of art with a modern impulse, like abstract expressionism, impressionism, concept art, etc.  I suppose that what is required before ‘modern art’ can be regarded as legitimate artistic product is some integration into the modernist art community.  ‘Minority’ artists of various ethnic identities have made this leap, even as they often find it profitable to make the subject of their identity part of their artistic project.  When will our indigenous Basquiat emerge?

The North Water, by Ian McGuire

So I finally read the North Water.  I had recommended it some time ago as it was well reviewed and a top NYT Book Review pick last year.  There's a separate discussion to be had here about knowledge from second-hand sources versus first-hand reading, which can be recapitulated in many other activities, such as sports commentators/athletes, film critics/film makers, etc.  Generally, the former aren't as highly regarded because they lack an 'authentic' connection to their material.  Exception:  'expert' political analysis doesn't require one to have been a politician.  

So, The North Water.

The author creates a horrific historical world.  Horror is a prevailing mood--it's a whaling past filled with blood and gore and old time phrases which helps you think you're reading some old journal of the time.  At one point there's a sly technique where the protagonist Sumner seems to be remembering an incident, but it turns out to be a dream.

Unfortunately, the plot and theme aren't equal to the detailed world-building or literary technique.  The story begins as a fast-moving propulsive thriller, but eventually loses steam when the antagonist Henry Drax exits the narrative, and further on we're bogged down when Sumner is rescued after bear hunting and spends some time recovering with the priest. (The plot becomes far fetched there as Sumner keeps pursuing the bear.)  Psychological realism is important and the ball is dropped here with such a difference between pre and post rescue Sumner, by the way.  I think a source of the thematic muddle is the detailed nature of the world-building, in part, and allowing the characters to 'tell their own story' as some writer workshop techniques advocate.  (Maybe it's inevitable that for a great novel, you can have two of the three:  strong characters, strong plot, strong theme.)  Personally, I like the strand of storytelling which restates Balzac's notion that behind every fortune is a crime.  However, there's a religious or mystical strand here ("There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.") which centers upon the Otto character and his recurrent visions, which largely come true, juxtaposed with Sumner's atheist disbelief.

Henry Drax is a memorable villain, but also somewhat implausible--it's hard to see such a man who characterizes himself as 'impulsive' and who has presumably committed a number of crimes take so long in his life to conveniently achieve his comeuppance during the course of this story.

On a larger point, the book is an entry point for a discussion about realism in the historical novel, and the extent to which that can be achieved, or is desirable.  I am reminded here of Foucault and the use of discourse in history.  Maybe this 'history' tells us more about our perceptions of life today than 'real' history--this book is precisely the opposite of a romanticized past, and these days the 'real' is often associated with the gritty or nasty.  The North Water seems realistic, but of course it's not, and that which seems realistic today will seem stylized tomorrow.  As an entertainment, the 'realism' quality isn't that important, just so long as the world is sufficiently diverting.