#anjak

[twistedzepherart]

Some ref sheets for some of my characters that appear in Azul Uprising. c:

[david-mushegain]

...Anja K .. G'Day

[animalinside2013]

Maus Discussion Post

I found Art's personal introspection about his experience writing Maus and his relationship with his father a lot more fascinating than Vladek's story (not that his story was not extremely interesting in its own right). Having studied and learned about the Holocaust and its survivors extensively multiple times throughout my school career, much of Vladek's story was not very surprising to me. Instead, I was most surprised and prompted to think whenever Art reflected on the pressures he experiences from being born into a family of Holocaust survivors. I never before would have thought about how possibly stressful it must be to live with those who have survived the Holocaust.

It was very powerful when Art depicted his feelings of being helpless and overwhelmed in the physical size/age of his character in Maus. I can relate a little when he says "Sometimes I just don't feel like a functioning adult" (II, 43). Having his character age backwards to a child was very effective in conveying how overwhelmed he was with the media attention and demand for Maus as well as how he isn't prepared to reconcile with his father's experiences and expectations. Art was brutally honest about his relationship with his father, perhaps out of respect for truthfully documenting his father's story. The friction in their relationship and Art's frustration and unwillingness to live with Vladek seemed to have not been romanticized in the least bit.

[animalinside2013]

I remember someone mentioning this during class...Kristen Bell and sloths.

[animalinside2013]

Discussion Post: Zoo City

Odi Huron's relationship with the animalled and his own animal is an interesting one. On the one hand, as we see in the conclusion of Zoo City, Odi has gone to the greatest lengths imaginable to be separated from his animal and its implications; on the other, he has no qualms about employing and surrounding himself with the animalled (indeed, he seems to seek them out purposefully). One has to wonder-- if he was willing to manipulate and murder so many people for his own purposes, what must his original crime have been to have become an animalled in the first place? 

From the moment Zinzi first meets Odi she notices that the ties that should be connecting Odi to the things he has lost are enveloped by a black tumor with severed, sickly, thick monstrosities. Apparently, Odi had attempted to have them cut off. But they've grown back darker and thicker. After Zinzi has finally found Songweza and goes to Odi for her money, she notices that the amputated threads are even thicker and darker than before. What was it that Odi had lost that was so painful for him to hold on to that he had them cut off (perhaps multiple times)? His connection with his animal? His humanity?

[animalinside2013]

Discussion Post: Zoo City

What interested me most was the role that the animals play in regard to the "animalled". For these people the animals are supposed to represent their guilt from a sin they have committed. The animal should be a burden and stigma. Yet having an animal also means having supernatural powers. In addition, as we see with Zinzi, the animal acts as a companion and a sort of conscience; many times the Sloth reprimands Zinzi for her rash actions or poor decisions. One of the "viewer reviews" for the documentary on Dehqan Baiyat (the first sensationalized and widely recognized "animalled") wonders if Baiyat's Penguin was "his Jiminy Cricket or the devil on his shoulder". The review continues to say that the issue is skirted, leaving the reviewer wishing that the film had addressed the topic in more detail. Indeed, the readers of Zoo City probably wish the same. Many side-plots are left open ended (how exactly Zinzi's brother died, for example). Perhaps the reason why this is never revealed to the reader, as the story is told (mainly) in the first person from Zinzi's point of view, is a reflection of just how guilty Zinzi feels about it. I appreciated how Beukes crafted Zoo City to fit into our reality. In addition to the narrative, Beukes weaves in news reports, scholarly articles, etc. to make the world of Zoo City feel more realistic. In the suggested viewing for the documentary on Dehqan Baiyat, one of the listed movies is a study on the Golden Compass by Philip Pullman-- a novel that actually exists. 

[animalinside2013]

Discussion Post: The Monstrous-Feminine

I was intrigued by Barbara Creed's assertion that the vast majority of writers who have written about the character and role of female monsters in horror films insist that the woman is the victim-- even if she is the monster in the film. Indeed, some of the writers claim that there is no true female monster in any horror movie, simply a construct that seems to be a monster but is not or an imitative (and as such, weaker and not quite as monstrous) female version of the male monster. I guess it just goes to show how ingrained the patriarchal mindset is in popular culture.

I found it interesting that the opening quote of Chapter 1 stated that "abjection is above all ambiguity"; and yet while Kristeva calls abjection a border, she admits that it does not completely cut off the subject from what threatens it. To me, it seems that Kristeva is contradicting herself. And it's interesting that she brings up ambiguity. Through my studies I have always felt that ambiguity is an element which humans find frightening and adverse, something that people want to eliminate as much as possible. At the same time, Kristeva's whole analysis rests upon the foundation that the abject is the something that must be excluded, ejected, and eliminated from the body. Could abjection be that ambiguity between the human and nonhuman, the female and male?