Taking a quick intermission from my ecstatic trip into ye olde grotesquerie; here is an update of a more contemporary flavour.
Yes, I have a chapter in this book ... and I would like you to read it.
The book, that is. You don't have to read my chapter if you don't want to. This stuff is optional.
Why bother with a book at all - why not just Google all the things?
A) because it has an amazing title; B) because it's a really interesting and timely collection focused on a neglected (and somewhat reviled) genre; and C) because... games! They're brilliant!
Plus - if you have an interest in hybrid bodies, genetic mutations, and grotesqueness in general - my chapter is on BioShock, and explores the kinds of ontological fusions and boundary crossings made possible by the game's unique weapons system. It's all connected... oh yes...
The end.
P.S. I am also in this book. Talking about zombies. Buy it for your grandmother!
Now that I'm in the twilight months of PhD writing, people often ask "what will you do after you've submitted?" This is precisely where my mind goes in those moments:
...
P.S. The 'hallway of hands' featured in this skit is just like the one in VAST's Pretty When You Cry video. Apparently both are based on scenes from Roman Polanski's Repulsion (1965), which looks quite amazing:
How have I never seen this film? This travesty must be rectified at once.
Long time no blog. Too much thesis writing going on at the moment. Plus, I've been trying (somewhat unsuccessfully) to take a break from the Web. It's just all a bit overwhelming at the moment.
Whenever my stress levels get above a certain point, a couple of things happen. First, my right eye starts twitching like I'm a movie villain whose plan to demolish the community center has just been foiled by those damn kids and their Basset Hound.
Second, I start reading novels. Lots of novels. Sometimes historical romance, sometimes crime, sometimes science-fiction or fantasy. I like them all.
This time I've been catching up on the latest Young Adult fiction. Here are a few of my favourites so far, in no particular order:
Inevitably, I've come across a few bad books... but I won't mention them...
I'm definitely a fan of futuristic/post-apocalyptic settings (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6). Quite few of these deal with 'post-human' themes as well (1, 2, 4, 5). Number 7 is pure fantasy, but it has such a unique heroine I couldn't resist. Now I think about it, they all have strong and complex female protagonists. I highly recommend them all to anyone looking for a good read/out of body experience.
Hello blog friends. So that intermission went a bit longer than I had planned. In my defense, I had an important deadline to aim for. No distractions allowed! (This is self-imposed, by the way - lest anyone think I suffer in the hands of a strict overlord. No so.)
Anyways, the deadline was hit and everything is good. I will get back to the Grotesk comics bonanza in a bit. Until then, I present to you some quality high/low convergence:
I have recently noticed that many of the challenges involved in writing a PhD can be adequately expressed using scenes from the Madagascar films.
As a PhD student you become somewhat insular. You spend a lot of time by yourself. Muttering intermittently. The outside world is suspect.
You wonder why you are doing it. And consider what else you might prefer to be doing... What if you only had two days to live? Keep writing the thesis?
So. I decided to change the blog template. Partly because I was getting bored with the old look. Partly because it didn't allow for any adjustments or customisation at all.
Of course, within 24 hours I have become nostalgic for the old blog and want to change it back. I missthe good old days. As it turns out, changing back isn't possible. The other design was so old that they don't offer it as an option anymore. Can't go back. Ain't that just like life.
Probably for the best.
In any case, I am still undecided about the current template/background. I appreciated the last design because it was somewhat homey and had a reassuring old bookshop wallpaper feel. Not keen on white backgrounds, to be honest. I know they are seen as 'cleaner' (and, I dare say, more professional and academic) but after spending my whole day reading and writing black text on white backgrounds it is all too much. A blog is not a thesis, an essay, a book or a journal article. And I like to be reminded of that fact.
It also feels a bit like false advertising. I don't consider this to be an academic blog. It's more of a series of enjoyable mind splurges. Messy and multifarious. I would feel awkward and inhibited if it was all crisp and official looking on here. Odd? Perhaps. But there it is.
Long story short: I might keep this background, I might play around a bit more, but the content will stay the same. All grotesque. All the time.
One last thing... if anyone has ideas for potential 'grotesque' backgrounds please let me know. Within reason. (Eg, I do not want nipple wallpaper or blood smeared corpses. Awesome, but too distracting in the long run.)
I have one week to go on my intro and I really, really want to finish it on time. Then revision of the chapters can happen. Then final draft can happen. Then submitting can happen. From now on, no overshooting is permitted!
As my incomparably wise supervisor has pointed out, I could keep writing the intro forever. At some point, you just have to stop. Keyboards down. Probably won't be posting much until I've hit this one.
I'm not entirely sure why Bill Bailey is on my wall. But his stare is oddly comforting. The man is a survivor.
I can't remember where I got this book, but it sure is speaking to me right now. Very PhD worthy. Thought I might as well share a few of my favourite quotes, seeing as I have no words of my own to spare at the moment...
Love this:
And most importantly:
I would add 'blogging about writing' to that list. All writers should own this book.
I'm writing a conference paper this weekend. It is giving me some stress, but then again, they all do. I have twenty minutes, which is good. You have room to fill in some of the background to your discussion in this time, and draw a few different strands into your argument. Everything still has to be tight, though. No tangents or waffling allowed. Nobody likes it when you go over and cut into coffee, lunch or (worst case scenario!) home time.
I think the American Project Runway should be compulsory viewing for PhD students.
a) Because it follows a group of people striving to: build their knowledge base; utilise historical sources; develop construction and presentation skills; cooperate and take (sometimes brutal) criticism; develop and communicate their own unique style; and fulfill a brief which seems impossible. Watching how different people respond in this situation is a study in personality types and stress management.
b) Because Tim Gunn is in it. And everything he says is amazing and applicable. (This is why you must watch the American show. The Aussie version is fine, but it suffers from a lack of Tim.)
Here he is giving a keynote in 2006:
Are you not inspired? I sure am.
[More historical grotesquerie coming soon, if anyone is interested. So far I have Victor Hugo, John Addington Symonds and G. K. Chesterton in my sights.]
I'm writing the introduction to my thesis at the moment, and thinking about all the critics, poets and philosophers who have contributed to grotesque theory over the years. It seems anyone who is anyone has held forth on the subject, and had their own particular definition of what the term 'grotesque' actually means. For this reason I've decided to do a bunch of posts dedicated to said opinionated persons and their statements on the grotesque.
These come according to no particular chronology, or any assumed order of importance. If you want to read a good history of the grotesque, I recommend Frances Barasch's The Grotesque: A Study in Meanings. Part one of Peter Ward-Jackson's Some Main Streams and Tributaries in European Ornament from 1500 to 1750 is also a great survey from the art perspective.
[Ulisse Aldrovandi (1642) Monstrorum Historia]
I'm going to start with Horace, because he is an interesting example of grotesque theory's tendency to adopt those who wrote about what is now termed 'grotesque' long before the word itself was actually conceived.
Horace begins his Ars Poetica or "The Art of Poetry" (18BC) with these lines (I'm not sure this is the best translation, but there you go):
"If a painter were willing to join a horse's neck to a human head and spread on multicolored feathers, with different parts of the body brought in from anywhere and everywhere, so that what starts out above as a beautiful woman ends up horribly as a black fish, could you my friends, if you had been admitted to the spectacle, hold back your laughter? Believe me, dear Pisos, that very similar to such a painting would be a literary work in which meaningless images are fashioned, like the dreams of someone who is mentally ill, so that neither the foot nor the head can be attributed to a single form. "Painters and poets," someone objects, "have always had an equal right to dare to do whatever they wanted." We know it and we both seek this indulgence and grant it in turn. But not to the degree that the savage mate with the gentle, nor that snakes be paired with birds, nor lambs with tigers" (1-33).
[Ambroise Pare (1582) Des Monstres et Prodiges]
Mismatched, imaginary bodies are here equated with inconsistency in poetic vision. To write well one must hold to a single premise, not place ideas together in a confusing manner. As he comments a few lines down: "let the work be anything you like, but let it at least be one, single thing."
He also includes this rather amusing snark:
"Near the gladiatorial school of Aemilius, a most incompetent craftsman will mold toenails and imitate soft hair in bronze but he is unsuccessful with his complete work because he does not know how to represent a whole figure. If I wished to compose something, I would no more wish to be him than to live with a crooked nose although highly regarded for my black eyes and black hair" (32-37).
Oh snap.
So there is no point perfecting the ingredients if you are unable to bring them together to form a convincing whole. It is interesting to note the value judgment at play here, for it is one that many others have shared. Grotesque bodies were often seen to transgress the laws of nature and God's divine plan - depicting things that could never, and should never, exist. Weirdness is to be avoided, stick with the familiar and your work will be approved of.
In Horace we also see how easily the line dividing art and literature is blurred. The hybrid bodies sketched and painted by artists are so suggestive he cannot help but observe their analogous counterpart in patchy writing.
[Fortunio Liceti (1665) De Monstris]
Montaigne later quotes Horace when offering his own, albeit brief, commentary on the grotesque. Significantly, he does so while likewise crossing the border between art and literature.
He begins his essay "On Friendship" (sometimes translated as "Of Friendship") like this:
"Considering the proceeding of a Painters worke I have, a desire hath possessed mee to imitate him: He maketh choice of the most convenient place and middle of everie wall, there to place a picture, laboured with all his skill and sufficiencie; and all void places about it he filleth up with antike Boscage or Crotesko [grotesque] works; which are fantasticall pictures, having no grace, but in the variety and strangenesse of them."
After duly admiring the grotesques, he compares them to his own writings:
"And what are these my compositions in truth, other than antike workes, and monstrous bodies, patched and hudled up together of divers members, without any certaine or well ordered figure, having neither order, dependencie, or proportion, but casuall and framed by chance?"
Montaigne then quotes Horace's line about the woman with a fish tail "Definit is piscem mulier formosa supernè."
A woman faire for parts superior, Ends in a fish for parts inferior.
Once again the grotesque is evoked to describe a writer's attempts at creation. The assemblage of body parts is analogous to the assemblage of words and ideas. The final text is thus imagined as a form of grotesque body.
Gregor Reisch (1517) Margarita Philosophia]
This all reminds me of Mary Shelley's comment in the introduction to Frankenstein: "I bid my hideous progeny go forth and prosper."
Academic writing is so dreadfully slow, sometimes it's like doggy-paddling through molasses. I often wonder if a creative writing thesis would have unfolded a bit quicker.
Then again, probably not.
Not many words happening around here lately. I've got masses of writing to do in the real world at the moment. About zombies mainly. And vampires. Very bloody.
And, yes. When the going gets tough, I do like to imagine myself incontinently rich. With a discreetly pregnant Brazilian boyfriend.
A little bloggy honesty: last week wasn't very good. Woke up feeling like a pickled arse most mornings. No matter how much you love what you're doing, there are always some days/weeks when things just don't seem to flow
And sometimes you just get tired of the view.
By the end of the week, if you had looked into my brain, this is precisely what you would have seen:
Tangent: I read Dune the other day. Apart from being an unexpectedly readable and enjoyable story (what? I was expecting pages of scientific ramblings and no female characters), it was full of philosophical insight and quotable quotes. My favourites:
"I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain."
"Any road followed precisely to its end leads precisely nowhere. Climb the mountain just a little to test that it's a mountain. From the top of the mountain, you cannot see the mountain."
I, and a lot of people I know, can see the mountain. Looking forward to a fresh view from the top.
