TWIB-II: 28
Apr. 20th, 2008 11:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
akujunkanI read three books this week and had a lot to say on each. Thus, individual cut tags.
1) Owning the Olympics - Monroe Price & Daniel Dayan (eds.)
Caveat: Owning the Olympics is not for everyone. Readers looking for a simple and friendly pop culture introduction to "the New China" are advised to look elsewhere. But if you're a reader looking for a book that deals seriously and academically with the multiple political, social, and economic issues raised by the PRC's role as host of the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, this book will be of immense interest.
The sixteen texts collected in Owning the Olympics explore the ways in which multiple actors--the Beijing Olympic Organizing Committee and the CCP, the International Olympic Committee, multinational corporations, mass and underground media, and NGOs--view the role and purpose of the Games, and how they are attempting to mold (and in some cases reframe) perceptions of the 2008 Olympics to advance their own agendas. Obviously, one could fill an entire volume examining just one of these issues, and the editors of Owning the Olympics are to be commended for selecting readings across a wide breadth of issues that each delve deeply into their individual subjects. Topics considered include the multiplicity of actors engaging in Olympic dialogue and their preferred narrative readings of the Games, the intersection of the PRC, the Games, and public diplomacy; BOBICO's construction and framing of its host city bid material, the interplay between Olympic narratives and constructions of Asian/Eastern identity; the role(s) and influence(s) of the news and mass media, and new technologies, in shaping and disseminating Olympic dialogues; and the ways in which Olympism, sport, and nationalism converge in Olympic activities and narratives.
Standout texts include the aforementioned exploration of the explicit and implicit messages encoded in BOBICO's bid material (chapter 5), chapter 9's examination of the political role historically played by "mega-spaces" in Beijing and the intended roles of new mega-architecture constructed specifically for the Games; and chapter 14's examination of the Western media's intentional drawing of dichotomous tensions in its China reporting. Each of these chapters are phenomenal examples of scholarship that will significantly broaden readers' knowledge and understanding of these issues.
There are a few selections, however, that don't meet the high standards set by the majority of the volume's texts. Chapter 10, which seems to be arguing that television broadcasters' adlibbed coverage of Games ceremonies trivializes those involved, has precious little to do with the Beijing Games and contains such a small and biased sample that it is of little use in drawing larger conclusions about Olympic reporting (look to chapter 7 for a much more thorough and topical examination of Games coverage and constructions of Asian identity). Chapter 11, in which a Chinese academic laments the IOC's decision not to include wushu (kung-fu) as an Olympic sport, is clearly an op-ed and does not belong in a book of academic scholarship.
These two texts aside, the editors of Owning the Olympics have assembled a selection of readings of amazingly high quality; a feat all the more impressive given the short time frame in which they had to collect them. Readers interested in sport and Olympism, China, or media studies will all find much to think about in this volume, and I highly recommend it to anyone interested in any of the above disciplines, as well as anyone else interested in serious exploration of these issues.
2) The Guardians - Ana Castillo
My reaction to The Guardians in a nutshell: it entertained me as I read it, but it left me with nothing to chew on after I'd finished it and doesn't much warrant a reread. Told through the alternating voices of four characters, Castillo's novel is loosely constructed around the attempts of Regina, a fiftysomething Mexican migrant and her nephew Gabriel, to locate Regina's brother Rafa, who has gone missing after attempting to sneak across the border into America. I say "loosely" because the narrative is much more focused on slice-of-life scenes in which these characters--and those of Regina's coworker and quasi-love interest Miguel and Miguel's grandfather Milton--go about the mundane routines of their daily lives. Castillo is a talented author and her use of language often quite beautiful, making these passages much more engaging than one might imagine. Her liberal use of Spanish (not difficult for me as a Classics student but perhaps a concern for other readers) greatly enhances the authenticity of her narrative and delineates each character's individuality.
Unfortunately, Castillo is also an author on a capital-"M" Mission, and a large percentage of The Guardians descends into tiresome didactic passages detailing the frightening uncertainties in the lives of immigrants in the U.S, both legal residents and not. I'm a strong proponent of the welfare state and Castillo's novel touches on a lot of causes with which I sympathize; nevertheless, I often found myself wishing she'd just give it a rest, already--never a good sign when an author hopes to make a point.
This is mostly due to two faults. First, Castillo tries to shoehorn every immigration-related headline and mistreatment into the lives of only four people, instead of choosing one or two and deeply examining their repercussions. This would have given the story poignancy (to say nothing of increased believability); Castillo's choice to cram it all in just results in soap opera melodrama. Second, instead of expending the effort to pen a longer novel in which all these indignities actually happen to the characters, Castillo has most of them occur before the beginning of the novel and has the characters relate them, newspaper style, to the reader. Said events are thus not terribly affecting because, since readers do not undergo them together with the characters, they are unable to undergo the emotional anguish alongside the characters, either.
Then there is the fact that the characters do not hold up well to close scrutiny. Miguel's infatuation with the much-older Regina makes her come off as slightly Sueish, Milton treads dangerously close to the self-parody of the "earthy Mexican," and as for Gabriel, any time an author pens a teenager character as a grade-A student who works several jobs, doesn't tell lies, never resents his caretakers, is absolutely uninterested in girls and dating, and longs for a life of religious work, you know the author is
setting him up as someone about to suffer a tragic death in order to make an Important Point About Something.
This isn't to say that The Guardians is not worth reading; just that it could have been a much better book had Castillo played a few critical cards differently. I recommend it to anyone who enjoys Barbara Kingsolver or stories set in the southwest more generally, but with the reservation that it is not going to leave any lasting impression on readers.
3) Testament: Akedah - Douglas Rushkoff & Liam Sharp
Testament is a comic with an intriguing premise: the juxtaposition of biblical passages with their modern reiterations in an Orwellian new world order. Thus, it's a real shame that its creators don't have what it takes to pull it off.
They make their first misstep in the introduction, where author Rushkoff ever so helpfully explains the first volume in advance: the meaning of the panels (the gods reach in from outside to affect the human characters cause they're gods, not humans!1), that he does indeed mean to draw parallels between biblical narratives and the present, and how he's so totally iconoclastic, like woah, for even daring to mess with the bible in the first place. You know, since there's a good chance we readers might not be smart enough to figure any of this out on our own. (Can you feel me rolling my eyes? Cause I'm gonna take a page out of Rushkoff's book here and tell you that yes, I am.)
And then there's Sharp's art, which is colorful and engaging, and also retrograde as fuck. In the Testament world, all of the women are DD cups (presumably implants, given said breasts' immunity to the law of gravity), many of them seem incapable of dressing themselves in anything beyond panties and frilly bras (if they bother with clothing at all); more disturbing still, their waists often appear smaller in circumference than their thigh--yes, that's singular.
Furthermore, there's lots of sex, but it all falls into one of the few following categories: fifteen year old girl aggressively pursues her college-aged SAT tutor; two girls pursue same guy who has simultaneous relationships with both; girls-as-temple-prostitutes; multiple girls give supervillain head; girls get daddy drunk and do him (yes, yes, that's from the biblical tale of Sodom and Gomorrah, but the narrative takes one look at the Sodomy and runs away screaming with its hands cupped protectively over its balls). Publishers and authors: THIS IS WHY WOMEN DO NOT READ COMICS! You want to fill panel after panel with T&A? You want to cater to the standard male fantasies? Fine. But give me (and other female readers) a similar selection of naked, waxed, and built male eye candy, not the gnarly, clothed, unthreatening-to-male-reader options we get here. And give us more of the stuff that gets women off (hint: it's not flowers and stuffed animals). If you're not gonna do that, shut the hell up about how you don't understand why there aren't more "girls" into comics2 and stop trying to appeal to the "female market" with more "teenage girl detective solves mysteries!" bullshit.
Anyway...the story itself owes an obvious narrative debt to Max Headroom (derivative, yes, but I'm okay with that because of my abiding love for Max Headroom), with a mishmash of Orwell, Neil Gaiman, and V for Vendetta thrown in for good measure. There's little by way of narrative development that doesn't attempt to beat readers over the head with the Anvil of DidYouGetThatYet?, and the dialogue reads more like an in-development movie script as opposed to anything people might actually say to each other. Luckily, this makes for one quick and disposable read.
End verdict: I'm gonna stick with this one for two more volumes in the hope that it might start to live up to its premise, but I'm glad I didn't pay money to read it, and I encourage others not to either.
1Smart people like Rushkoff refer to this as "symbolism."
2Yes, I am aware of the subset that thinks "girls" have no place in comics and take comfort in the fact that they can look forward to a lifetime of reluctant virginity.
That will be all.
1) Owning the Olympics - Monroe Price & Daniel Dayan (eds.)
Caveat: Owning the Olympics is not for everyone. Readers looking for a simple and friendly pop culture introduction to "the New China" are advised to look elsewhere. But if you're a reader looking for a book that deals seriously and academically with the multiple political, social, and economic issues raised by the PRC's role as host of the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, this book will be of immense interest.
The sixteen texts collected in Owning the Olympics explore the ways in which multiple actors--the Beijing Olympic Organizing Committee and the CCP, the International Olympic Committee, multinational corporations, mass and underground media, and NGOs--view the role and purpose of the Games, and how they are attempting to mold (and in some cases reframe) perceptions of the 2008 Olympics to advance their own agendas. Obviously, one could fill an entire volume examining just one of these issues, and the editors of Owning the Olympics are to be commended for selecting readings across a wide breadth of issues that each delve deeply into their individual subjects. Topics considered include the multiplicity of actors engaging in Olympic dialogue and their preferred narrative readings of the Games, the intersection of the PRC, the Games, and public diplomacy; BOBICO's construction and framing of its host city bid material, the interplay between Olympic narratives and constructions of Asian/Eastern identity; the role(s) and influence(s) of the news and mass media, and new technologies, in shaping and disseminating Olympic dialogues; and the ways in which Olympism, sport, and nationalism converge in Olympic activities and narratives.
Standout texts include the aforementioned exploration of the explicit and implicit messages encoded in BOBICO's bid material (chapter 5), chapter 9's examination of the political role historically played by "mega-spaces" in Beijing and the intended roles of new mega-architecture constructed specifically for the Games; and chapter 14's examination of the Western media's intentional drawing of dichotomous tensions in its China reporting. Each of these chapters are phenomenal examples of scholarship that will significantly broaden readers' knowledge and understanding of these issues.
There are a few selections, however, that don't meet the high standards set by the majority of the volume's texts. Chapter 10, which seems to be arguing that television broadcasters' adlibbed coverage of Games ceremonies trivializes those involved, has precious little to do with the Beijing Games and contains such a small and biased sample that it is of little use in drawing larger conclusions about Olympic reporting (look to chapter 7 for a much more thorough and topical examination of Games coverage and constructions of Asian identity). Chapter 11, in which a Chinese academic laments the IOC's decision not to include wushu (kung-fu) as an Olympic sport, is clearly an op-ed and does not belong in a book of academic scholarship.
These two texts aside, the editors of Owning the Olympics have assembled a selection of readings of amazingly high quality; a feat all the more impressive given the short time frame in which they had to collect them. Readers interested in sport and Olympism, China, or media studies will all find much to think about in this volume, and I highly recommend it to anyone interested in any of the above disciplines, as well as anyone else interested in serious exploration of these issues.
2) The Guardians - Ana Castillo
My reaction to The Guardians in a nutshell: it entertained me as I read it, but it left me with nothing to chew on after I'd finished it and doesn't much warrant a reread. Told through the alternating voices of four characters, Castillo's novel is loosely constructed around the attempts of Regina, a fiftysomething Mexican migrant and her nephew Gabriel, to locate Regina's brother Rafa, who has gone missing after attempting to sneak across the border into America. I say "loosely" because the narrative is much more focused on slice-of-life scenes in which these characters--and those of Regina's coworker and quasi-love interest Miguel and Miguel's grandfather Milton--go about the mundane routines of their daily lives. Castillo is a talented author and her use of language often quite beautiful, making these passages much more engaging than one might imagine. Her liberal use of Spanish (not difficult for me as a Classics student but perhaps a concern for other readers) greatly enhances the authenticity of her narrative and delineates each character's individuality.
Unfortunately, Castillo is also an author on a capital-"M" Mission, and a large percentage of The Guardians descends into tiresome didactic passages detailing the frightening uncertainties in the lives of immigrants in the U.S, both legal residents and not. I'm a strong proponent of the welfare state and Castillo's novel touches on a lot of causes with which I sympathize; nevertheless, I often found myself wishing she'd just give it a rest, already--never a good sign when an author hopes to make a point.
This is mostly due to two faults. First, Castillo tries to shoehorn every immigration-related headline and mistreatment into the lives of only four people, instead of choosing one or two and deeply examining their repercussions. This would have given the story poignancy (to say nothing of increased believability); Castillo's choice to cram it all in just results in soap opera melodrama. Second, instead of expending the effort to pen a longer novel in which all these indignities actually happen to the characters, Castillo has most of them occur before the beginning of the novel and has the characters relate them, newspaper style, to the reader. Said events are thus not terribly affecting because, since readers do not undergo them together with the characters, they are unable to undergo the emotional anguish alongside the characters, either.
Then there is the fact that the characters do not hold up well to close scrutiny. Miguel's infatuation with the much-older Regina makes her come off as slightly Sueish, Milton treads dangerously close to the self-parody of the "earthy Mexican," and as for Gabriel, any time an author pens a teenager character as a grade-A student who works several jobs, doesn't tell lies, never resents his caretakers, is absolutely uninterested in girls and dating, and longs for a life of religious work, you know the author is
setting him up as someone about to suffer a tragic death in order to make an Important Point About Something.
This isn't to say that The Guardians is not worth reading; just that it could have been a much better book had Castillo played a few critical cards differently. I recommend it to anyone who enjoys Barbara Kingsolver or stories set in the southwest more generally, but with the reservation that it is not going to leave any lasting impression on readers.
3) Testament: Akedah - Douglas Rushkoff & Liam Sharp
Testament is a comic with an intriguing premise: the juxtaposition of biblical passages with their modern reiterations in an Orwellian new world order. Thus, it's a real shame that its creators don't have what it takes to pull it off.
They make their first misstep in the introduction, where author Rushkoff ever so helpfully explains the first volume in advance: the meaning of the panels (the gods reach in from outside to affect the human characters cause they're gods, not humans!1), that he does indeed mean to draw parallels between biblical narratives and the present, and how he's so totally iconoclastic, like woah, for even daring to mess with the bible in the first place. You know, since there's a good chance we readers might not be smart enough to figure any of this out on our own. (Can you feel me rolling my eyes? Cause I'm gonna take a page out of Rushkoff's book here and tell you that yes, I am.)
And then there's Sharp's art, which is colorful and engaging, and also retrograde as fuck. In the Testament world, all of the women are DD cups (presumably implants, given said breasts' immunity to the law of gravity), many of them seem incapable of dressing themselves in anything beyond panties and frilly bras (if they bother with clothing at all); more disturbing still, their waists often appear smaller in circumference than their thigh--yes, that's singular.
Furthermore, there's lots of sex, but it all falls into one of the few following categories: fifteen year old girl aggressively pursues her college-aged SAT tutor; two girls pursue same guy who has simultaneous relationships with both; girls-as-temple-prostitutes; multiple girls give supervillain head; girls get daddy drunk and do him (yes, yes, that's from the biblical tale of Sodom and Gomorrah, but the narrative takes one look at the Sodomy and runs away screaming with its hands cupped protectively over its balls). Publishers and authors: THIS IS WHY WOMEN DO NOT READ COMICS! You want to fill panel after panel with T&A? You want to cater to the standard male fantasies? Fine. But give me (and other female readers) a similar selection of naked, waxed, and built male eye candy, not the gnarly, clothed, unthreatening-to-male-reader options we get here. And give us more of the stuff that gets women off (hint: it's not flowers and stuffed animals). If you're not gonna do that, shut the hell up about how you don't understand why there aren't more "girls" into comics2 and stop trying to appeal to the "female market" with more "teenage girl detective solves mysteries!" bullshit.
Anyway...the story itself owes an obvious narrative debt to Max Headroom (derivative, yes, but I'm okay with that because of my abiding love for Max Headroom), with a mishmash of Orwell, Neil Gaiman, and V for Vendetta thrown in for good measure. There's little by way of narrative development that doesn't attempt to beat readers over the head with the Anvil of DidYouGetThatYet?, and the dialogue reads more like an in-development movie script as opposed to anything people might actually say to each other. Luckily, this makes for one quick and disposable read.
End verdict: I'm gonna stick with this one for two more volumes in the hope that it might start to live up to its premise, but I'm glad I didn't pay money to read it, and I encourage others not to either.
1Smart people like Rushkoff refer to this as "symbolism."
2Yes, I am aware of the subset that thinks "girls" have no place in comics and take comfort in the fact that they can look forward to a lifetime of reluctant virginity.
That will be all.