WOW! (comic)

WOW! is a new short story created for Spanish science-fiction magazine Exégesis, this time in collaboration with Spanish artist Moisés Bello. I'm leaving links to both the English and Spanish versions. Enjoy it!

• Click here to read the English version online .
• Click here to read the Spanish version online (you can also download it as a PDF).
• Click here to dowload the comic as CBR or PDF, in English or in Spanish.
• You can download the comics viewer CDisplay to read the CBR files (click here)

Soupe aux champignons (comic)

I've never used this blog for publishing fiction before, but, in truth, this is the first time I've got some fiction in English to share. I've been working a lot on comics in the last year, and this is the product of a collaboration with Spanish artist and friend Antonio HG. Soupe aux champignons is a uchronic satire created for the Spanish science-fiction magazine Exégesis. I'm leaving links to both the English and Spanish versions. Hope you can enjoy it as much as we did while working on it!

• Click here to read the English version online.
  
• Click here to read the Spanish version online.
• Click here to download the comic as CBR or PDF, in English or Spanish. I'm also including CDisplay (an excellent comics viewer) for those interested in the CBR file.

Beowulf: the 2007 film under the light of the old Saxon poem

Adaptations and new retellings of old stories establish an implicit dialogue with their predecessors. The outcome of this dialogue is what should interest any critic. Sometimes, however, the nature of dialogue is marred by the limitations of the new interlocutor –that is, in a dialogue, not all interlocutors are equally valid. Robert Zemeckis’ Beowulf (2007) could be deemed as a more than valid dialogical counterpart to the old Saxon poem. A greater part of the merit, we must admit, should go to the enormous pair of screenwriters. The screenplay for this motion-capture animated film was part of a personal low-budget project started by Neil Gaiman and Roger Avary. When it reached Zemeckis’ hands, the project just blew up to a 150-million-dollar 3D motion picture. The inevitable interference of mainstream standards in the screenwriter’s proposal may be evident to a certain extent, and not always welcomed, but on the whole, Zemeckis’ Beowulf is worth seeing and contrasting with the original poem. Personally, I prefer to distinguish two more or less clear sides to this new version of the ancient story –one, deep and critical, which clearly relies on Gaiman and Avary's script, and the other, somewhat flawed and unnecessarily commonplace, which looks more like the responsibility of the leading filmmaker.

I’ll begin considering what Semeckis’ Beowulf introduces as astounding new questions and answers into the ancient dialogue started by an unknown poet of the eighth century. This dialogue has already included many other interlocutors, from all artistic fields, cinema included. But Gaiman and Avary bring into it a clearly new and profound perspective. The leading force in this 2007 version is the interrogation about the origin and reasons underlying the actions and existence of Beowulf’s famous monsters –Grendel, Grendel’s mother and the dragon. The authors fill the gaps left by the original’s loose composition and a definitely different conception of narrative unity. While the Saxon poem justifies the narration with the sole presence of a hero, Gaiman and Avary give each character a reason for action. The authors then build a past that is unnecessary in the poem, but that imbues the story with 20th-century verisimilitude.

The almost plain and one-faceted nature of the characters from the poem grows in complexity and the story ends up definitely enriched. In doing so, of course, many of the situations and character relationships from the ancient poem are consciously altered, although –and this is one of the authors’ greatest achievements-, most of these changes can be felt as implicit in the original Saxon story. Gaiman and Avary’s proposals stand not as an alter reality to the original background, but as that hidden truth that the heroic nature of the poem was forced to ignore. In fact, this 2007 version could be imagined as the ‘real’ facts which, deformed and ornamented by secrecy and poetic imagination, would have given birth to the heroic Saxon lay. Such is the interlacing between the poem and the screenplay.

Attempting not to give away the plot, I will try to enumerate some of the effects that result from this new approach to the ancient story:

• Perhaps the most noticeable change takes place in the nature of the hero. Beowulf is not any more the flawless, virtuous and supernatural hero of the Saxon poem. This affects the whole nature of the story, which is drastically transformed from a simple collection of heroic deeds to a story of lies and ambitions.

• The more human and ambiguous nature in the characters turn them psychologically more interesting and plausible. This change touches not only Beowulf, but all other characters: from Hrothgar to Wiglaf, from queen Welthow to Grendel’s mother.

• In attempting narrative unity, the authors also find a link to all of Beowulf’s deeds –his race against Brecca, Grendel, Grendel’s mother and the hero’s final battle with the dragon. Unlike the poem, each situation and the character’s attitude appear soundly justified and linked to one another.

• The authors play exquisitely with the narrative gaps and deficiencies of the poem. Why would Grendel not hurt Hrothgar? Why would Beowulf carry Grendel’s head but not that of his mother? How can we believe Beowulf’s deeds when there are no more witnesses than himself? Why is it that Beowulf doesn’t leave an heir?

• There are also new elements and situations included by the authors which enhance the symbolic potential of the original story. Such is the case of the golden horn, Beowulf's nudity before the battle against Grendel, Grendel’s mother’s physical appearance, Beowulf’s self-mutilation in his final battle, and even the erotic melting of the hero’s sword.

• The authors also show clear signs of wit and erudition when playing with the Christian nature of the poem, acknowledging in a way the pagan spirit that underlies the attitudes and actions of most of the characters, in flagrant contradictions with the religious constancy of their words. In this respect, the script prefers setting the action during the spread of Christianity, showing this faith as a moral foreign to the characters, although gradually contaminating their lives.

All these rather interesting narrative elements added to Beowulf’s tradition do not always find an equally valid cinematographic counterpart. Zemeckis’ talent for mainstream taste is perhaps the film’s weakest point. The director has been quoted asking the script writers to “Go wild!” This would mostly mean to turn somber fighting scenes into grand-scale visual spectacles. Although this expansion of the story may have its rewards -as in the final battle with the dragon-, its payback is not always clear. Such is the case of the hero’s acrobatics during his fight against Grendel.

The unlimited possibilities of motion capture animation can also become dangerous in hands more interested in visual effects than in narrative meaning. In this respect, the film offers us from a floor subjective shot to several extreme perspectives of pointed weapons, all meaningless. And the same could apply to the insistent aerial travellings that end up becoming tiring and redundant and have no other purpose than screaming on the viewers face, "Hey, this is 3D!"

Possibly the clearer sign of mainstream taste affecting the visual rendering of this film is the seven-minute scene of Beowulf nude encounter with Grendel; seven minutes through which the filmmaker manages to avoid showing the hero’s virility by concealing it with the most improbable objects. This tour de force of puritan discretion cannot but move to laughter. And the same goes for some historical inconsistencies such as Beowulf’s karate stance against Grendel, Grendel’s mother’s high-heels, or the rap-like song chanted by the Geat warriors.

It may be unfair to put the blame of these flaws in the director alone while leaving to the writers the whole merit for the strengths of the adaptation. Films are collective products, this is true. However, there are clear heads in the process of creating a film, and sometimes -such in this case-, these heads can be identified with more clarity than in others. It is improbable that Zemeckis, who has acknowledged lack of sympathy for the Saxon poem, could have devised a narrative rationale so deeply intertwined with the original; perhaps, as improbable as it would have been to have Gaiman and Avary devising variety of props and furniture to conceal Beowulf’s groins. But I admit it may be unnecessary to assign and distribute blames; after all, films are also unities, with their strength and their weaknesses. So perhaps the best one could do would be to recommend this adaptation, which is valid and enjoyable, but also to recommend the Saxon poem, which can prove an interesting background with the potential to enhance the pleasure and understanding of this and other versions of the ancient Saxon story.

The ideology of technologies

Once again, the issue of technology arose; this time, prompted by Néstor’s concerns regarding Richard Berntein’s article “Don’t trust anyone under 30?”, which was published in La Nación under the (maliciously translated?) heading “¿Es possible que Facebook estupidice a los usuarios?” [1] When discussing this article in our L&C blog, the main concern seemed to be whether Facebook users should feel stupid or not. In fact, that was not Berntein’s main concern. In his article, the author rather refers to a recently published book by English professor Mark Bauerlein: “The Dumbest Generation: How the digital age stupefies young Americans and jeopardizes our future (or, Don’t trust anyone under 30)”.

This cumbersome title carries an almost explicit assertion: “new technologies stupefy.” The first counterargument one may think of is that technologies cannot be blamed for the content they are given. From this point of view, if Facebook is banal this would be because of its users and not because of the technology itself. This answer, however pertinent to a certain extent, seems to be avoiding a crucial idea implicit in Bauerlein’s title. To say that the digital stupefies implies linking stupidity to the digital technology, not as a risk or a potentiality, but as an unavoidable fact. This is the same as saying that technologies carry their own ideology. From this point of view, banality and stupidity would be natural characteristics of the digital gizmos, Facebook and the Internet included.

However counterintuitive this idea of technologies carrying ideology may be, this has been an academic topic of debate for a long time. Langdon Winner (1986) went over this issue in his essay Do artifacts have politics? There, he concluded that different technologies embody different values and power relations that are inherent to them. In his words:

“The adoption of a given technical system unavoidably brings with it conditions for human relationships that have a distinctive political cast –for example, centralized or de-centralized, egalitarian or inegalitarian, repressive or liberating.”

He also quotes Lewis Mumford, who writes that “from late Neolithic times in the Near East, right down to our own day, two technologies have recurrently existed side by side: one authoritarian, the other democratic (…).”

Winner’s and Mumford’s position go beyond saying that technologies can consciously or unconsciously be used or developed in the benefit of a particular ideology. What they are saying is that technologies have their own ideology, and no matter what the intention of the users is, this ideology will persist.

Among the examples posed by Winner, the atomic bomb is the easier to grasp. Developing nuclear technology -anyone would agree- requires of a centralized, rigidly hierarchical and militarized administration. “The internal social system of the bomb must be authoritarian,” writes Winner. And there is no other way such lethal technology could be handled. Nuclear technology, thus, is inherently authoritarian; this is the ideology it possesses.

Going back to Bauerlein’s title, if the ideology of the digital era were banality and stupidity, this would mean that no matter how hard we try to avoid it, the digital technology would always draw us to banality and stupidity. However, paying a quick glance to the content in technologies like the Internet or even Facebook should be enough to notice that there are serious and academic uses given to these two technologies. The Internet is the natural environment of a worldwide network of universities, libraries and research centres. Facebook, on the other hand, grew as a resource for college campuses, to allow students to get to know their new academic communities. If the content in Facebook was originally more banal than the universities sites, this is because Facebook was developed not as an academic tool, but as a community tool for academic support, which is very different.

All this should be proof enough that banality and stupidity cannot seriously be deemed as the ideology of the digital era. But what is the ideology of technologies like Facebook or the Internet then?

The Internet, it is fair to admit, was born as part of a project for the United States Department of Defense. However, those in charge of developing this technology were academic minds. Thus, although the American government had in mind the control of the quality of military information, it is most probable that those developing the system were really thinking in transmitting and sharing information (which is similar, but quite different). This ideology, coherent with the academic and university contexts that surrounded the development and later perfection of the Internet, may account for its current shape and ideology. This is easy to appreciate. No matter how hard companies try to limit the free transmission of information on the net, no conclusive obstructions can be imposed. People go on finding ways to share information, disregarding of the legal limitations imposed by universal copyrights. The ideology with which the Internet was developed was that of sharing, and in this respect the Internet could be placed within Mumford’s ‘democratic technologies’.

Hackers and virtual communities may serve as an example of this. Castells (2001) mentions these two Internet cultures as part of the four subcultures that helped create and shape the web [2]. Hackers –not to be confused with crackers- are programmers who reject the idea of a restricted copyright for software and freely share their developments on the web. Communities, on the other hand, are groups of people from different fields who simply share their common interests online. And, as Castells reminds us:

“Technological systems are socially produced and social production is culturally informed. (…) Therefore, the culture of the producers of the Internet shaped the medium.”

The Internet was developed within a democratic, communitarian culture, in which information and free access to it were essential, and this is the ideology the Internet naturally developed. Provocatively, Castells goes on to say that, in the Internet, “the network is the message.”

Randall Munroe's 2007 Map of the Online Communities (and other places of interest) [click to see full size]

Being Facebook a community network, its ideology is also democratic. In fact, the ideology underlying most of the digital inventions of our time is, to a certain extent [3], democratic and communitarian. People are the ones who produce, share and control; not the governments, not companies or organisations. But of course, this needn’t be good in itself. A powerful tool in untrained hands could derive in a rustic use of it. And perhaps, this is what Bernstein wonders in his article. After all, he acknowledges:

“Those who have honored me by accepting to be my Facebook friends are, I’m happy to report, high-achieving people who need no lessons from me about how to spend their time.”

But he goes on:

“Still, it does seem a bit odd to me that so many of them take the time to announce to their social circle what are often rather unimportant daily matters (…).”

These ‘unimportant daily matters’, however, are the same trifles most people share and talk about when they are in private, face to face. But if our private life is banal, we shouldn’t expect technologies to change that. Here we go back to our first counter argument: we cannot blame technology for the content we give to it. However, by now, we should be able to realize that even when online banality is a question of content, we can be banal (or not) only because we are using a medium that is democratic and allows all kinds of participation. And it is to us to give it a better use if we do not agree with the one that is being given today.

____________

[1] The original article is not online now, but I found the full text here.

[2] Castells, Manuel (2001) La Galaxia Internet. Barcelona: Plaza & Janes Editores. [I’ve found a summary of Chapter 2 –the one I’m using- here]

[3] Some programmers like Theodor Nelson, although acknowledging the democratic nature of the web, question that the current Internet protocols limit the potential participation of people. Simplifying Nelson’s ideas, we could say that the author believes that the World Wide Web is not yet a real hypertext, to the extent that people cannot interact with the texts they read. In this respect, many features of the Internet would still be as authoritarian in ideology as a traditional book is. [Read about his Project Xanadu here]