Some photos of architecture

Here are a few photos of a new addition to the University of Virginia's Campbell Hall (appropriately, the architecture building). It really has a great modernist aesthetic, showing off the austere beauty of unadorned concrete, metal and glass. I really like it! It's especially nice in Charlottesville, where, for some reason, everything must pretend to be built with brick, even buildings that no one would ever really build with brick.

At the right is the old building it attaches to (brick, of course).

For some reason they felt the need to fill the framing holes with these plastic things. It just looks kind of cheap. Is this normal? I can't be sure, but I think in buildings I've seen before they've just been left open.

It's Intentional

Great post from Acephalous on convincing people that comic imagery is worth analyzing:

As anyone who teaches funny books or films knows, the task of convincing students that the scene before them is anything other than incidental would try Job's patience....

I've designed an introduction to visual rhetoric assignment that forces students to understand that all comic and film images are obscenely overdetermined. On the first day of class, I'll present them with Alan Moore's script for the eighth panel on the first page of The Killing Joke:

NOW WE ARE LOOKING AT THE POLICE CAR SIDE-ON SO THAT WE SEE THE UNIFORMED OFFICER STANDING FACE-ON TO US OVER ON THE LEFT AS HE STANDS WITH HIS BACK TO THE CAR AND COMMISSIONER GORDON FACE-ON OVER TO THE RIGHT, LEANING AGAINST THE CAR AND DRINKING HIS STEAMING COFFEE, MAYBE LOOKING UP WITH A QUIZZICAL AND CONCERNED LOOK OVER THE RIM OF HIS CUP TOWARDS THE EXTREME LEFT OF THE FOREGROUND, WHERE WE CAN SEE THE BATMAN ENTERING THE PICTURE FROM THE LEFT, IN PROFILE. SINCE BATMAN IS (a) CLOSER TO US AND (b) TALLER THAN EITHER THE COMMISSIONER OR THE PATROLMAN IN THE BACKGROUND WE CANNOT SEE THE TOP OF HIS HEAD HERE ABOVE THE BOTTOM OF THE NOSE AS THE FRONT OF HIM ENTERS THE PANEL ON THE LEFT. HIS EYES AND UPPER HEAD ARE INVISIBLE BEYOND THE TOP PANEL BORDER AND ALL WE CAN REALLY SEE IS HIS MOUTH, WITH THE BIG AND DETERMINED SQUARE JAW AND THE GRIM AND DISAPPROVING SCOWL OF THE LIPS. THE BATMAN DOES NOT APPEAR FROM HIS POSTURE TO SO MUCH AS GLANCE AT EITHER GORDON OR THE PATROLMAN AS HE WALKS PAST THEM EVEN THOUGH BOTH OF THEM STEAL GLANCES AT HIM WITH DIFFERING LOOKS OF UNEASE. THE PATROLMAN LOOKS UNEASY JUST TO BE IN THE BATMAN'S PRESENCE, WHILE GORDON LOOKS MORE CONCERNED ABOUT THE BATMAN'S POSSIBLE STATE OF MIND. RAIN DRIPS FROM EVERYTHING, INCLUDING THE BATMAN'S JUTTING AND GRIZZLED CHIN. GORDON GIVES THE LARGELY-OFF-PANEL VIGILANTE A PENETRATING LOOK OVER HIS COFFEE CUP, AND THE BLUE LIGHT ATOP THE CAR WASHES OVER ALL OF THEM AS IT CIRCLES.

No Dialogue.

Then I'll ask them to draw it. After assuring them that I did indeed say draw it, I'll let them have about ten minutes to transform Moore's prose into stick-figure theater before showing them how Brian Bolland interpreted it.

Discussion will ensue. I'll show them the scripts to other panels—ask them why, for example, Moore insisted the receptionist at Arkham Asylum be reading Graham Greene's The Comedians—and if all goes well, I won't spend the next few months reading essays about how in this panel Alan Moore wanted Batman to punch someone in the face so he told Brian Bolland to draw a picture of Batman punching someone in the face.

Unlike photography or film, where things can enter a frame because they just happened to be behind the subject, everything in a comic frame is placed there intentionally.  And since every additional element added to a frame increases the work required (and therefore the cost) to produce it, you can bet that authors/artists aren't chucking stuff in randomly.  A comic panel is quite deliberate, and should be analyzed as part of the narrative.  We have no compunction about picking apart, parsing and analyzing the minutiae of sentences in literature, and there's no reason narrative art shouldn't be subject to the same analysis.

The new I-novel?

The New Yorker has a great article on cell phone novels (keitai shousetsu) (via Meta no Tame):

The cell-phone novel, or keitai shosetsu, is the first literary genre to emerge from the cellular age. For a new form, it is remarkably robust. Maho i-Land, which is the largest cell-phone-novel site, carries more than a million titles, most of them by amateurs writing under screen handles, and all available for free. According to the figures provided by the company, the site, which also offers templates for blogs and home pages, is visited three and a half billion times a month.

In the classic iteration, the novels, written by and for young women, purport to be autobiographical and revolve around true love, or, rather, the obstacles to it that have always stood at the core of romantic fiction: pregnancy, miscarriage, abortion, rape, rivals and triangles, incurable disease. The novels are set in the provinces—the undifferentiated swaths of rice fields, chain stores, and fast-food restaurants that are everywhere Tokyo is not—and the characters tend to be middle and lower middle class.

Read the whole thing. What's interesting to me is that keitai shousetsu seem to be a modern iteration of the I-Novel, (Watakushi-shousestu or Shi-shousetsu) a literary genre popular in Japan around the Taisho period. The I-novel is characterized by narratives that are both confessional and fictional. Part of the appeal of the I-novel was that authors would "confess" dark secrets from their own lives, but the novels were not autobiographical, and freely mixed in fictional characters or settings or events with the confessional elements of the story.

In the Taiso era these novels were mostly written by men, often confessing their affairs. The keitai shousetsu, however, seems to be a kind of new I-novel that is primarily produced by women. Like the I-novels of old, they freely mix fiction with the author's own true-life confessions.

However, the Taisho I-novels were written by famous novelists, and part of their attraction was learning about the sordid details of the lives of these famous cultural elites. Keitai shousetsu, on the other hand, are written by amateur authors, pecking away at their cell phones anonymously.* What's the appeal to consumers? Do they feel they can relate to the narratives? Does the amateur nature feel more honest? Is it refreshing to read literature in a format and language they are more comfortable with? I'd be very interested to find out.

I also like the interaction of media here. Authors publish theirs stories on websites, the best of which bubble up and are seized by print publishers. But simply printing the story isn't enough:

Printed, the books announce themselves as untraditional, with horizontal lines that read left to right, as on the phone. ... Other conventions established on the screen are faithfully replicated in print. Often, the ink is colored or gray; black text is thought to be too imposing. “Some publishers removed the returns, but those books don’t sell well,” a representative of Goma Books said. “You need to keep that flow.”

Does the horizontality, colored text and excessive line spacing create a feeling of intimacy between the reader and author? Does removing these conventions destroy the sense of amateur honesty, making it seem like a "professional" media production? This little interaction between different types of media is pretty fascinating.


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*Inputting Japanese on cell phones is easier than inputting English, but even so I can't imagine writing a whole novel on one! My poor thumbs!

Manga from the US Military

Via Japan Probe, the U.S. Navy has created a manga to help foster cultural understanding on the eve of the arrival of the USS George Washington in Japan. There has been a spate of highly publicized crimes by US servicemen recently, as well as some local protests against having a nuclear vessel permanently stationed in Yokosuka. I guess the Navy felt something was necessary to ease tensions with its host country.

The manga, available in English as a PDF, follows a half Japanese sailor on his first assignment to the George Washington, and his first trip to Japan. It's well done, using humor and depictions of everyday life on board the carrier to humanize sailors. The characters have a deep respect for Japanese culture, and take classes to learn more about Japan. Towards the end the protagonist visits his Japanese grandparents for the first time, emphasizing the close cultural ties between the US and Japan.

I think it's a brilliant move. Not only does it embrace one of Japan's cultural institutions, but the manga format can convey a lot of information yet still be quickly consumed. And it's entertaining as well!

The run-on sentences of Suzumiya Haruhi

As I was going through some boxes the other day, I came across my copy of the first 涼宮ハルヒの憂鬱 book (Suzimya Haruhi no Yuuutsu, or The Melancholy of Suzumiya Haruhi). Most people probably know the very popular anime of the same name best.

Leafing through it, I was reminded how I love the book's narration style, especially the artful use of run-on sentences. The very first sentence of the books is:

サンタクロースをいつまで信じていたかなんてことはたわいもない世間話にもならないくらいのどうでもいいような話だが、それでも俺がいつまでサンタなどという想像上の赤服じーさんを信じていたかと言うとこれは確信を持って言えるが最初から信じてなどいながった。

A translation without adding any punctuation would be something like:

“How long did you believe in Santa Clause” is a trivial subject not even worthy of being the topic of idle chatter, but even so if I were to say how long I believed in an imaginary old man in red clothes like Santa I can say with confidence that I didn't believe in him from the beginning.

Whew! At least the author gives us one comma to take a breath. Because of word order differences this kind of narration is hard to translate into English. This wiki translation breaks that sentence up into three sentences. That's probably more natural for English speakers, but I think it looses some of the flavor of the original.

Superpowers old and new

You know how in comic books or other superhero stories, there are many cases where the author must invent transparent reasons why the one superpower^* that would be extremely helpful in a particular situation can't be used? Well, that's been going on for hundreds of years. Take this excerpt from Journey to the West a story about a Chinese monk who travels west to bring back Buddhist scriptures, and is accompanied by a monkey and a pig with supernatural powers (From W.J.F. Jenner's translation, p. 511):

[Monkey said] “My somersault cloud can cover thirty-six thousand miles with a single bound. To do a mere two-thousand-mile return journey takes only a couple of nods and a bow – there's nothing to it.” “If it's so easy, brother,” said Pig, “you should carry the master on your back, take him across [the river] with just a couple of nods and a bow, and save us all the trouble of fighting the monster [in the river].” “You can ride clouds, can't you?” said Monkey. “Why don't you carry the master across?” “The master's mortal flesh and bones are heavier than Mount Tai,” said Pig, “So although I can ride clouds I could never lift him. Nothing but your somersault will do the trick.” “My somersault is the same as could-riding.” Monkey said, “except that it takes you further. I'm no more able to carry him than you are. As the old saying goes, 'Mount Tai is as easy to move as a mustard seed, but a mortal cannot be dragged away from the earthly dust.' ...Although our master cannot escape from the sea of suffering he wants to go to a foreign land, so he finds every inch of the way heavy-going. All we can do is escort him and see that he comes to no harm. We can't undergo all that suffering on his behalf, nor can we fetch the scriptures for him. Even if we went ahead to see the Buddha, he wouldn't give the scriptures to you or me.”

Apparently Ming dynasty readers, just like modern readers, wondered why Monkey and Pig didn't just use their super powers to solve the whole problem in a second and turn the 100 chapter story into a 20 chapter story. And just like today, the author had to explain why superpowers couldn't be used.

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* replace “superpower” with “technology,” and you have the premise of 80 percent of Star Trek episodes.

Comments on Ōkami

Well, with the semester having ended I finally got a chance to finish playing Ōkami (Okami [Ookami], if your browser doesn't support the O-with-macron). There's a Wii version out now, but I've been playing the PS2 version.

I'm convinced the game started as a pun. You play as the sun goddess Amaterasu, incarnated as a wolf. Ōkami (大神), or “Great God” (part of Amaterasu's more formal name, Amaterasu no Ōkami) is homonymous with Ōkami (狼), or “wolf.” I imagine a couple Clover employees were in a bar one night after work, getting a little drunk. Their conversation became increasingly boisterous, and went something like:

Employee 1: Dude, wouldn't it be crazy if, like, an Ōkami were an Ōkami?
Embloyee 2: (Trying hard to process that) Uh, what?
Employee 1: You know, like if an Ōkami from the Kojiki or something were an Ōkami, like a dog.
Embloyee 2: Oh... yeah, that WOULD be crazy!

The next morning they were hung over and remembered nothing of the conversation, but in one of their pockets they found a crumpled napkin with the idea scrawled on it, and the game was born.


The game is a delightful romp (yes, I just wrote “delightful romp”) through the world of classical Japanese literature. In addition to the Kojiki, there are references to Issun Bōshi, Taketori Monogatari, Urashima Tarō, Shita-kiri_Suzume and Hakkenden. Even Benkei makes a cameo, as does Yoichi from Heike Monogatari. The capital city, Seian-kyō, is an obvious allusion to Heian-kyō, which is the centerpiece of the great body of Heian literature, including Genji Monogatari. I'm sure there are other references I didn't catch as well.

However, the most interesting aspect of the game is the main character. Amaterasu is generally the most revered deity in the Japanese pantheon, yet in the game she is depicted as a wolf, doing various things that are very recognizably canine; barking, growling, cocking her head, howling, curling up and napping, etc. She is accompanied throughout the game by Issun, who in addition to providing helpful explanations to the player also regularly berates Amaterasu for her slowness or misguidedness and addresses her by a pet name.

Because of this it is tempting to view Ōkami as an attempt to demystify Amaterasu. However, I think that would be ultimately incorrect. For one thing, Amaterasu does not speak, even to people who are able to understand animals. Lack of speech is, of course, very mystifying. Furthermore, she is portrayed as a weakened version of her true self. Throughout the game the player must strive to recover Amaterasu's thirteen “brush techniques,” which she uses to draw on the canvas of reality and create small miracles. At the end of the game, with the help of the prayers of all the people she has met, Amaterasu's true power is restored, and she becomes radiant and powerful. Naturally the player is only allowed to finish off the final boss battle with Amaterasu in this form, not perform any of the more mundane tasks that make up the staple of the game. So in the end the mystification of Amaterasu in her true form is maintained.

Most conspicuous, however, is the absence of Amaterasu's most prominent role: the ancestor of Japan's emperors. All Japan's emperors, including the current Akihito, can trace their lineage back to Amaterasu herself, thereby creating not only a divine right to rule but a personal divinity as well. In the game, there is no mention of this link at all. Amaterasu meets the emperor, but he does not show any signs of recognizing her as an ancestor, or even a goddess. In fact, the emperor is portrayed as an unremarkable, overweight, middle aged man more concerned with trading curio items than anything else.

Therefore it is clear that the game demystifies the emperor and de-links Amaterasu from him. At the same time it seems to maintain the mystification of Amaterasu herself. What can we make of this?

I think the game attempts to transform Amaterasu into a goddess suitable for the modern era. In the final stages of the game, Amaterasu regains her true power when all the people she has encountered throughout the game offer prayers to her. Significantly, she is portrayed as being accessible to everyone, not just the imperial clan. Worship of Amaterasu is not an exclusive imperial domain but appropriate for all people. Therefore, the game can be interpreted as an attempt to transform Amaterasu from an imperial deity into a national deity. Her worship (and, presumably, largess) sphere is shifted from a clan identity to a democratic, national identity.

How appropriate, then, that her “rising sun” brush technique, which the player can use to turn night into day, looks remarkably similar to the old Japanese flag, a powerful symbol of nationhood.