Your Thoughts on 2046

Remember, THERE IS NO ASIA/SCI-FI CLASS THIS TUESDAY, 27 NOVEMBER. The next time that our class will meet is TUESDAY, 4 DECEMBER. Therefore, you can have until 5 pm on Monday, 3 December to post your responses to the questions below.

I passed out photocopies of all of the readings related to 2046 in class last week, but in case you lost them or missed class, here is where you can find them on the Web (i.e., they are not on OASIS):

1. "Sci-Fi Ascendant" by Mara Hvistendahl, from Seed Magazine. 2006. At:
http://seedmagazine.com/news/2006/09/scifi_ascendant_1.php

2. "U.S. needs lesson from China on technology" by Steven Schwankert, from InfoWorld. 2006. At:
http://www.infoworld.com/article/06/05/12/78257_HNchineselessons_1.html

3. "Science Fiction, Globalization, and the People's Republic of China" by Lavie Tidhar, from The Science Fact and Science Fiction Concatenation. 2007. At:
http://www.concatenation.org/articles/sf~china.html

4. "Desire and Loss in the Curve of a Back" (review of 2046) by Manohla Dargis, from The New York Times. 5 August 2005. At:
http://movies.nytimes.com/2005/08/05/movies/05wong.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Questions on 2046:

1a. What were your reactions to 2046? What thoughts, feelings, and/or questions did you have about it? What did you think it was about? (You might read Manohla Dargis' review from the NYT and consider whether you agree or disagree with her opinion about the film).

1b. What did you make of the film's science fiction aspects? How do you read 2046 as a sci-fi film?

2. In class, we talked about the lack of a Chinese tradition of sci-fi. Two of the assigned articles discuss how science fiction has been alternately condemned and favored by the Chinese government throughout the 20th century, and how the current state now encourages artists to create sci-fi fantasies. 2046 is a part of this fresh wave of Chinese science fiction. How is this example of millennial Chinese sci-fi different than, or similar to, Western and Japanese science fiction? What do you think accounts for these differences or similarities?

3. The Chinese government is obviously hoping that Chinese sci-fi written today will help guide future technology development in the country. At the same time, both Hvistendahl and Tidhar point out that science fiction is often used to criticize contemporary social norms. Where does 2046 fall on this spectrum: does it provide an interesting imagined future for China, or is it a critique of the nation? Can you interpret 2046 as a political film in any way, and if so, how?

Once again, our next class will be on TUESDAY, 4 DECEMBER.

Your Thoughts on Wave Twisters/Robot Stories

Make sure you download the readings for this week!!! And answer these questions by Monday, 19 Nov 07 at 5 pm:

1. Lisa Lowe's chapter discusses the myriad ways that Asian Americans have always been figured as "immigrants" and "aliens" in contradistinction to American "citizens," even when Asian Americans *are* citizens. She talks about the uses of cheap Asian labor, the national origins quotas, the repeals of those quotas, the model minority myth. How can you use Lowe's theories and the history she describes to "read" (i.e., make meaning from) Wave Twisters?

2. How can you use Lowe to read the episode of Robot Stories that we saw?

3. What did you find interesting, intriguing, puzzling, or surprising in either the Greg Pak interviews or the DJ Qbert interviews (or the Wave Twisters reviews) or both?

Note: You won't get any points if your answers are along the lines of, "I don't see any way that the Lowe chapter relates to those movies, and I didn't find anything interesting in the interviews." Not. Acceptable. Answers.

Your Thoughts on Gankutsuou (Count of Monte Cristo) and Casshern

Next week, we're seeing two pretty short films, so we'll have plenty of time to discuss the anime we saw on Tuesday, Gankutsuou (The Count of Monte Cristo) and Casshern. Just as last week, at least 20 of you have to download the 3 articles from OASIS ("Cyberpunk Anime", "Frankenstein and the Cyborg Metropolis," and "The First Time as Farce: Digital Animation and the Repetition of Cinema") for anyone to get points for blogging. But since that was no problem last week, it definitely won't be a problem this week!

Here are your questions for this week, and be sure to post by Monday, 12 November by 5 pm:

1. In the article "Stylistic Crossings: Cyberpunk Impulses in Anime," Jane Chi Hyun Park points out how Western cyberpunk novels and films often depict the future as Asian, but Asian cyberpunk films are often set in an Occidentalist rather than an Orientalist future. We saw this trend in Memorizu: Canon Fodder a few weeks ago, and more recently we saw in Gankutsuou and Casshern Japanese visions of the future that are saturated with European iconography. Where did you notice Techno-Europeanism in Gankutsuou and Casshern, and why do you think Japanese anime (and anime-style) sci-fi filmmakers have chosen late-19th/early-2oth century Europe as their visual template for the future?

2. In the article "Frankenstein and the Cyborg Metropolis," Sharalyn Orbaugh traces a shift in sci-fi: from the beginning of film through the 1980s, sci-fi novels and films were modernist and highlighted a strict division between "life" (humans) and "non-life" (machines, robots), whereas beginning in the 1980s and continuing today, sci-fi films (especially anime) are postmodern and depict a future in which there is a range of "life forms," posthuman cyborgs (part-human part-machine). Orbaugh uses Blade Runner as an example of a modernist "life vs. non-life" sci fi film. How might we regard Casshern as an example of a postmodern "range of life forms" sci-fi film? Are there other ways you can compare or contrast Blade Runner and Casshern?

3. This is a question about formalism in film. In the article "The First Time as Farce: Digital Animation and the Repetition of Cinema," Thomas Lamarre relates that digital cinema (including recent and contemporary anime) attempts to make cinema "from scratch," or "cinema without cinema"; in other words, the goal of these films is "replicating or simulating cinema within digital animation." Do you think Gankatsuou or Casshern are aiming for this goal - "cinema without cinema"? If so, do you think they succeed? Or, if you think they are aiming at something else - some form of filmmaking that is not trying to replicate or simulate cinema, what do you think they are trying to accomplish with digital animation?