What I Would Do at Geek Girl Con, Part I

While I’m in New Orleans in October, Seattle will be playing host to the first Geek Girl Con on October 8 and 9, an event described by the GGC’s press kit as “dedicated to promoting awareness of and celebrating the contribution and involvement of women in all aspects of the sciences, science fiction, comics, gaming and related Geek culture through conventions and events that emphasize both the historic and ongoing contribution and influence of women in thisculture.” Good enough!

Honestly, this is a Con I’d love to go to, and a great one to get in on the ground floor of, because I have a feeling it’s going to go huge, fast. Unfortunately the scheduling conflict with the Popular Culture in the South Conference (you didn’t think I’d be completely self-promotion free here did you?), as well as a lamentably tight travel budget, means that I will have to miss Geek Girl Con. However, this does nothing to stop me from idly fantasizing about going, and what I might do while there.

So, if I were able to attend Geek Girl Con:

I would seek out Chase Masterson and ask her to autograph the largest boxed ear-wax removal system I could find (fellow ST:DS9 fans will understand).

After a Friday night in the hotel room spent with a highlighter and the GGC Programming Guide, I’d get up Saturday morning and start hitting panels:

10:00 – 11:00: Star Trek & Beyond with Chase Masterson. The actor who launched her career as Leeta on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and who now continues to act, sing, and produce speaks on fan-activism among genre fans.

11:00 – 12:30: The Heroine: Journey, Culture and Narrative. Haviva Avirom (mod.), Sara Freeman, Catherine Bailey, and Erin Lovejoy-Guron discuss the heroine’s journey in popular culture from Claudette Colbert to Wonder Woman to RPGs. I think I’d come prepared to ask about their takes on Haley Atwell’s character Peggy Carter in Captain America: the First Avenger.

12:30 – 1:00: Some kind of junk food lunch.

1:00 – 2:00: Trina Robbins on Tarpé Mills and Miss Fury. I don’t know Tarpé Mills but the programming guide makes me want to: “Trina Robbins, ground-breaking herstorian and comic author, introduces you to one of the greatest female creators you never knew existed. Author Tarpé Mills’ created Marla Drake, aka Miss Fury, has been described as the “grandmother that Buffy Summers and Sydney Bristow didn’t know they had.” Time for a history lesson!” I will even be willing to overlook the twinge that “herstorian” gives me. For now.

2:00-2:30: Shopping for cool stuff, particularly books!

2:30-4:00: History of the Universe as Told by Wonder Woman. Kristy Guevara-Flanagan (mod.), Gail Simone, Trina Robbins, Jennifer K. Stuller, Mike Madrid. Footage from Guevara-Flanagan’s documentary History of the Universe as Told by Wonder Woman will be shown, and the panelists will discuss our obsession with superheroes, and the evolution of female empowerment in the culture. Note historians Trina Robbins and Jen Stuller. Jen is one of the most delightful, brilliant people it’s ever been my pleasure to know, and both women are applying the historian’s art to fields too long neglected by traditional historiography. Definitely a professional interest in this one for me, but also (hopefully) a chance to catch up with someone I haven’t seen face-to-face in too long.

4:00 – 5:00: Character Studies: Geek Girls in Popular Culture. Jennifer K. Stuller (mod. [okay, obviously we’ll have to catch up later, Jen!]), Amy Berg, Javier Grillo-Marxuach, Sara Kuhn, Jessica Mills, and Stephanie Thorpe take a look at geek girls in film, TV, comics, etc. They’ll also discuss the status of geek girls in our culture. Good stuff.

5:00 – 5:30: Snack? Sit dazed for half an hour? Cat-nap?

5:30 – 6:30: Whedonistas. Naturally. Teresa Jusino (mod.), Jane Espenson, Nancy Holder, Mariah Huener discuss Joss Whedon’s work and the impact his shows have had on them, on the culture, and on Whdeon’s fans, who have become some of the world’s most active, particularly for women’s rights.

6:30 – 7:00: Dinner. See Lunch above.

7:00 – 8:30: Viscera Film Fest. I’ll let GGC’s program guide have this one: “Heidi Honeycutt hosts a mini-Viscera Film Fest. They will screen selected horror short films created, written, directed, produced, acted, goredup, and designed by women. You’ve never seen horror like this before. Operating since 2007, Viscera is committed to expanding opportunities for female horror creators.” How frakkin’ cool does this sound? I know, right!

9:00 – 11:00: Whedonesque Burlesque. “Man, if you gotta ask, you’ll never know.”

Then, I’d stagger back to the hotel, collapse into bed, and rest up for Sunday’s events… Which will constitute Part II of this little exercise in imagination. Until then, Reader’s Mine, maybe some of you might need to book a flight or two to Seattle, eh? Failing that, you can show your support forGeek Girl Con, by donating here.

Goings On

Well, there’s a Latin exam tomorrow, but I’ve spent four days studying for it, and believe I’ve reached the point of diminishing returns, which, with other homework being done, leads me here. It’s been a busy couple of weeks since my last post, Readers Mine. School is rolling along, and there is an ever growing stack of books threatening to overflow my shelves on everything from Samuel Colt to the Late Roman Republic to the Alhambra and Moorish Grenada to the cuneiform tablets of Sargon II. There is much reading still to be done, followed by much writing. Also test taking.

Samuel Colt

First up (aside from the aforementioned Latin exam) is the Popular Culture/American Culture in the South Conference, which is being held in New Orleans in October. I’m presenting a paper which uses the character of Sam Colt in Supernatural as a springboard to examine the historical Samuel Colt and his place and part in American popular culture. I hope to have that written by the end of this weekend. Good thing too, as the conference falls right before UNCG’s fall break, meaning that all of my midterm exams, papers, etc need to be finished and turned in before I head south, so I’ll probably need all of next week to gear up for that. The up-side, of course, is that I can enjoy the conference and the city with a pure heart unburdened by looming assignments.

Ed, Spike, Faye, and Jett

And one hell of a conference it promises to be! Along with the usual PCA/ACA crowd, the first LOST mini-conference will be held, featuring the one and only Nikki Stafford as keynote speaker. I’m looking forward to the whole shebang, not merely for the usual crop of great papers, but for the all too rare opportunity to catch up with friends from hither and yon face-to-face rather than by Facebook or e-mail. Mockingbird and I are both going, as usual, and she will be unveiling the first part of a look at the influences of Cowboy Bebop on Joss Whedon’s Firefly. Part II she’s saving for Slayage 5 in Vancouver next summer.

Gigi Edgley as Chiana

After the conference I’ll have two and a half weeks before taking the GRE, by which point the application process needs to already be rolling along. I am seriously hoping that I manage to get accepted into a school where I can go straight through to a doctorate, as applying for school is one of the more tediously stressful things in life. Almost as much so as applying for jobs. Along with graduate school applications, there will still be regular undergraduate work to be done, and also, sometime before the end of the year, I should be seeing my Farscape chapter come back to me with notes for revision. It’ll also be time to start the research for my own paper to be presented at Slayage 5, which reminds me, the deadline for proposals there is 1 December!

Like I said, busy semester.

In other news, the GOTP (Grand Ol’ Tea Party) is gleefully fucking up my home state of North Carolina through a series of legislative actions which have gutted the education budget, set women’s rights back by a few decades, and now they seem to think that putting civil rights up for a popular vote is sensible (which it is, assuming your goal is to deny a minority group its civil rights). My hope is that the conservative movement has overreached at last, and that the fine people of North Carolina will stand up, throw the bums out, and tell the next bunch of “representatives” that we’re looking for frakin’ jobs, not laws that make things harder on all of us. Jackasses.

Finally (for now), it seems I'm precognitive. If you are not watching Breaking Bad, you are missing a masterpiece of storytelling, and film. Don’t let the fact that its television fool you, this is something special. It’s on AMC. Watch it, bitch!

Apollo 18: "A-"

Russian poster for Apollo 18,
where it apparently was first released!

To celebrate a long weekend together, Mockingbird and I decided to take in a movie (among other things), and since we were looking for more of a popcorn flick than art film, we decided to check out Apollo 18. The film’s premise is pretty straightforward: after Apollo 17, the last official moon mission, NASA and the Department of Defense sent another Apollo mission to the moon, this time in secret. Ostensibly there to set up a series of early-warning devices to detect a Soviet nuclear ballistic missile launch against the US, the intrepid three-man crew discovers… something else.

I have to say that we were pleasantly surprised by the film. The back-story is that the audience is watching an edited version of some eighty-five hours of video files recently uploaded to www.lunartruth.com (which, in a further touch, has apparently been “blocked,” making it unavailable), exposing the mission, so all of the film is ostensibly from the cameras aboard the Apollo module and lunar lander, as well as a battery of hand-held and spacesuit-mounted 16mm cameras, and some tripod-mounted automatic cameras which the astronauts set up here and there. This leads to one of the more brilliant aspects of the film, as it has been meticulously made to appear as if it was actually shot using this equipment, and the film “stock” has been appropriately aged to give it an early 1970s unrestored archival look. The viewable area of the theater screen is even cropped to a square area with rounded corners to further the effect of watching old 16mm film. The technical work done here is astounding, as is the films attention to detail in recreating the living conditions of the Apollo astronauts in what were truly tiny metal shells fully equipped with such delicacies as “ham paste.”

In a nice change from frantic SF pacing, the movie builds slowly and evenly, ratcheting up the tension through several seeming climaxes which serve only to wind things a bit tighter still. It is as much a psychological thriller as it is an alien menace piece, and director Gonzalo Lopez-Gallego does a brilliant job of using the strange mix of claustrophobic spacecraft and utterly inhospitable lunar space to work on both the astronauts and the audience. I was also pleased to see lead actor Warren Christie, who can also be seen weekly on SyFy’s Alphas, get some big-screen time, and prove that he has the chops to be there. Christie brilliantly portrays the deep confusion and mistrust of a young career military officer who has been badly shaken by the Watergate scandal, reminding the audience that the film is set in a time when the now habitual mistrust of the American government on the part of its citizens was only just beginning to take root, and betrayal by that government was as unexpected as it was bitter.

I give Apollo 18 an “A-” over-all, however, because there were unfortunately times when the close-ups of frantic astronauts had me thinking “Look, it’s Blair Witch in Space!” but that has more to do with brief visuals than writing, directing, acting, or overall cinematography. Also, there remains the somewhat glaring plot-hole of just exactly how the footage from the hand-held and suit cameras made it back to Earth! Overall though, Apollo 18 is a thoughtful thriller that relies on acting and artistry to achieve its chills, and takes the time to build a real story rather than endless shrapnel-filled explosions and plucky-humans-against-evil-aliens clichés. Go see it.

Ave Minerva!

Well, it’s the end of August again, which means back to school for yours truly. I begin what is hopefully my last year of undergraduate study early tomorrow morning, and in most respects it’s stacking up to be a good semester. I’m only on campus Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, which leaves Tuesdays and Thursdays as workdays, which has proven to be a very effective arrangement in the past. It’s amazing what you can get done when you don’t have to go anywhere, see anyone, and have a coffee pot in your room. I’ll be living with the in-laws again and driving about forty minutes each way to good ol’ UNC-Greensboro, where Athena continues to watch over me.

As usual I’ll start out my day with Latin, and this semester I’ll follow the noble language with Spanish history, ancient Near Eastern history, and an independent study on the rise of Augustus and the establishment of the Principate in ancient Rome. Heavy on the history, but that is the major, after all. Plus, thanks to some long semesters earlier and summer classes, I only have to take twelve hours each of these last two semesters, so the work load should be doable.

That’s the school workload, of course. Beyond school, I’m lucky and excited to be involved in several writing projects. First, I’m working on finishing up a chapter for a forthcoming edited collection on the US/AU/UK science fiction series Farscape where I’m examining the show’s story through the lens of military-political history. Next comes a paper on Samuel Colt in fact and fiction to be presented at the Popular Culture/American Culture—South conference in New Orleans in October, and then beginning/stepping up the research process for Slayage 5 in Vancouver next July, where I hope to present the first in a series of papers on “War in the Whedonverses.” Finally (for now) I’m proud, flabbergasted, and downright giddy at being asked to serve as an assistant editor to David Lavery for a forthcoming project on the life and works of Owen Barfield.

Beyond all of that there’s studying for and taking the GRE. Getting together writing samples, letters of recommendation, applications, transcripts, etc to send off to prospective graduate schools, and dealing with a “commuter marriage” after a wonderful, too short summer season in which Mockingbird got me used to all of the myriad pleasures that come with sharing the same nest all the time (including co-authoring a post for Nik at Nite's Buffy Rewatch which goes up Tuesday!). One does what one has to do, of course, and all of this driving and separation is leading to a goal which will allow us to keep said nest well-feathered, but I do miss her, Readers Mine.

All of which is to say that, if you think posts here have been few and far between this summer, you may very well have not seen anything yet. I’ll try to pop in regularly, but I guarantee there will be times when other elements of life will be taking priority. In the meantime, though, be well and remember, as Jeff Bridges’ mom said “Have fun, and don’t take it too seriously.”

Marilyn, Suddenly

My Mockingbird had to have routine surgery Thursday (all went splendidly, and she is already healing rapidly and well), so the night before we went out for a feast to prepare her to fast from midnight until after the surgery. After we’d ordered, I excused myself in order to head to the bathroom to pee and wash up. So, I go in, turn into the first stall, unzip, and then Readers Mine, penis in hand, I look up at the wall above the toilet and see:

Marilyn Monroe by Milton H. Greene

Marilyn.

Barefoot. Sitting low, almost kneeling. Bare shoulders. Heavy breasts only barely covered by a spill of white that becomes translucent as it covers her long legs. One hand rising from her lap to auto-erotically caress her collarbone as her eyes look up at mine and her lips part. In a wonderfully sudden and enormously powerful moment of eroticism, a bolt of electric passion surged from the oldest parts of my brain to the organ I held in my hand.

I’ve never been a particular fan of Marilyn Monroe, and while not unaware of her sex appeal, I’d certainly never been moved by it like this! Grinning widely, I resisted the temptation to commit the Sin of Onan on the spot, finished my business, washed up, and went back to join my deliciously sexy wife for dinner.

But I think I’m a Marilyn fan now. Oh yes.

Captain America: A

Last Friday Mock’ and I decided to have something of a play-day, and after some morning chores, we headed off to the matinee showing of Captain America.  I’m not exactly easy to please when it comes to superhero movies, particularly when it comes to my favorite characters. In truth, Captain America was never exactly a favorite in terms of dedicated collecting of his solo title, but I dipped in and out of the Avengers for years, and Cap was almost always there. In fact, one of the most memorable comics moments for me was a page in Avengers (I have no idea what issue), showing the aftermath of a battle that had left Avenger’s Mansion in ruins. Cap was on his knees in the remains of his room, his cowl pushed back, and holding a scrap of paper in his hand. When one of his teammates asked him if he was all right he held up the charred paper and said something like “This was the only picture I had of my mother, and now it’s gone,” and he cried, man. It was one of those moments when you realize that comics aren’t kid’s stuff, aren’t trash, aren’t a waste of time, but are an art form that tells stories every bit as engaging as any novel or film, and brings to life characters so real that you find yourself weeping with them. Comics can and do matter as an art form, and as a medium worth respect and critical study.

And Hollywood can fuck them up so easily. But every once in a while, Readers Mine, they get things right.

Captain America is one of those times. This is a big deal because Cap is so very hard to get right. It’s way too easy to fall into jingoism, or to make Cap a cardboard cutout spouting patriotic clichés. It’s a problem that Marvel itself has struggled with for decades, particularly in the Captain America title, but also in The Avengers and the many other titles Cap has made appearances in. Peter Sanderson describes the heart of the character perfectly in Marvel Universe:

Here is the essence of the super hero myth: it elevates the will and conscience of one man above those of the rest. [Cap’s alter-ego] Steve Rogers is the perfect American who does not exist in real life, but who embodies Americans’ idealized image of themselves, a Frank Capra hero turned super hero.

That kind of hero is hard to buy in the cynical world of the 21^st century. Starting in the 1980s superheroes went dark, becoming more gritty, violent, and real. Marvel had long made its trademark with characters with all too human foibles, and the new esthetic seemed made for the company. Even the ultimate Boy Scout, Captain America, got a makeover with the launching of the Ultimate titles, emerging as a shoot-first-and-follow-up-with-a-grenade hard-boiled combat vet who was as likely to use his Thompson SMG as his shield. But the problem is, that’s not Cap. Look, we all know that the world has edges that just seem to get sharper, and after awhile, repeatedly capturing an evil villain, only to have to recapture him all over again months or years down the line just starts to seem a bit… stupid. Some people, we seem to believe, just need killing. Maybe, but the truth is that what we all secretly want is something to believe in, someone who really is good, who really does to the right thing, no matter the cost. We want Mr. Smith to go to Washington and Mr. Deeds to go to town. We want to meet John Doe. We want Captain America, who acts on the best sprit of American idealism, despite what the government or the public may want or think. We’re hungry for the better angels of our nature, and no superhero has ever done that better than Cap when done right.

Joe Johnston and Chris Evans do Cap right, and deliver in a big way. Not to mention that for the first time so far, we get in Haley Atwell’s Peggy Carter a female who’s tough, smart, savvy, sexy, and no pushover, even for the tall, blonde, hunk that is our hero. The supporting cast is nothing short of awesome, and includes Stanley Tucci, Tommy Lee Jones, and the inestimable Hugo Weaving as the Red Skull, who makes Hitler and the Nazis look strictly minor-league. The film and its hero are indeed Capra-esque. When asked by the aristocratic, highly educated, fanatical Red Skull why he was chosen to receive the super-soldier serum, what makes him so special, Cap replies with a small grin, “Nothin’. I’m just a kid from Brooklyn.” In the end it is this that sums up Captain America and makes the film work. Increased strength, dexterity, stamina, memory, etc are all well and good, but what makes Cap a hero isn’t any of that. Steve Rogers is a good man. And that is the difference.

Reading on the Mind

There has been an unintentional theme to some of my reading lately, revolving around ideas of mind, thought, will, consciousness, and language. Unsurprisingly, two of the three books I propose to write about today fall into the science fiction category. Unsurprisingly because SF is one of the few fiction genres still able to ask the big questions like “what is consciousness?”, “how does language work?”, “do humans have free will?”, and the like. Indeed, the great and tragic Philip K. Dick made a career out of repeatedly asking “what is human?” and “what is God?” Those who dismiss SF as mere genre fiction miss a rather crucial part of the continuing human attempt to make sense of who we are and what – if anything – that may mean. That being said, Readers Mine, let’s get down to cases.

Crysis: Legion by Peter Watts

Okay, before you strain a muscle rolling your eyes at the fact that the first book is the official novelization of a video game (which game was itself plotted by the darkly brilliant Richard K. Morgan); realize who you’re dealing with here. Peter Watts has been on the bleeding edge of SF since Starfish hit the shelves in 1999. Watts’ holds a Ph.D. in marine biology, and shows a recurring interest in the biological determinants of human intelligence and sentience. Indeed, his most recurrent theme is that free will is an illusion and that the vast majority, and quite probably all of our consciousness, cognitive-processes, and interactions with the world around us and with each other are hardwired deep into our neurophysiology. The corollary is that when we forget this and begin to believe our consciousness’ own press, we are generally on deadly ground. (It should be noted that one does well not to believe Peter’s own press about himself as “Peter ‘Fucking Hardcore’ Watts” the utter pessimist. He’s actually one of the most kind and thoughtful people you’ll ever meet. Fortunately, Peter himself doesn’t seem to really believe his own press either.)

Nor does Watts disappoint with Crysis: Legion. Within the tight constraints of the gameworld, and forced to guard against his more obvious tongue in cheek snarking (the editor of the book rejected this absolutely wonderful bit as breaking the 4^th wall), Watts nonetheless delivers some fantastic jabs at gaming, rigid structures, the ridiculousness specific to Crysis 2, and some of the most memorable lines I’ve read in a while (“Behold motherfucker, I stand at the door and knock”). The plot also falls right into Watts’ playground as the protagonist is being slowly incorporated into an advanced battle suit, actually going through most of the book as a dead man who’s consciousness is being kept alive through a process of nanotechnology, bio-mechanical fusion, and materials harvested from his own corpse as a kind of handy trail-mix snack. Along the way, the suit serves up a complex mix of chemicals and stimulus that keep our hero going and motivated. What makes someone want to do something, anyway? Well, basically, neuro-chemicals and stimulation of certain centers of the brain. Keep that stuff going and choice doesn’t really enter into it. Peter Watts, ladies and gentlemen, Peter Watts!

Embassytown by China Miéville

Miéville takes a different path into mind with Embassytown, focusing on language through human interaction with an alien race known as the Ariekei. The Ariekei have two mouths and the ability to sense the sentience behind a speaker. Their dualism, however, results in single-mouthed human language coming across as so much meaningless noise even if speaking the words and grammar of their own language correctly, and their sentience-sense only works on speech they recognize as speech, so humans were first not recognized at all as sentient beings. Most interesting however is the fact that the Ariekei cannot lie. Indeed, the idea that one can speak something that is not the truth is wholly antithetical to their cognition. This has led to the Ariekei turning figures of speech into something like performance art, the highest level of which is the simile. So, for example, in order to say that something is like a rock that has been split in two and then put back together, the Ariekei must literally, physically split a rock in two and put it back together, because if a thing does not exist, it cannot be expressed in language. So when they need a new figure of speech they must create it, at least temporarily, in the physical world. But some of the Ariekei want to learn how to lie, and gatherings are held where audiences tremble with excitement at hearing the greatest almost-liars among their people.

There is quite a bit more in this novel than this focus on language, but it is at the center of the book nonetheless. The novel turns on the Ariekei being able to progress from the use of simile, saying something is like something else, to the use of metaphor, saying something is something else. Because, after all, a metaphor is a lie. If I tell my wife “you are my heart,” this is obviously not the literal truth. It is a metaphor for how much she means to me emotionally. The transition from simile to metaphor causes an evolution of Ariekei consciousness, and reveals that their language, though perfectly serviceable, may never have been real language at all. This is the first book I’ve read by Miéville, but it will not be the last.

Saving the Appearances a Study in Idolatry by Owen Barfield

This brings us to the final, and only non-fiction, book in today’s discussion. Owen Barfield was a friend and contemporary of C. S. Lewis, and each thought the other to be the most brilliant man he’d ever met. Unlike Lewis, however, Barfield was not an academic, spending his career as a barrister in his family’s London law firm. He was, however, a great thinker and reader, particularly when it came to the idea of an evolution of human consciousness. Saving the Appearances came to me about a year ago as a gift from the brilliant, polymathic, and prolific David Lavery who is one of the leading Barfield scholars in the US. I dipped into the introduction when I first received it, and then put it aside until I could have time to devote solely to a close reading of the book. Barfield gets right down to it, and the ideas and overarching concepts of consciousness, language, and the interaction of human sense and consciousness with the natural world begin on page one of the introduction.

The foundation of Barfield’s argument is that the world as we experience it is not the world as it is, as demonstrated by particle physics. The solid table upon which my laptop sits as I write this actually anything but solid, being composed at the atomic and sub-atomic level of mostly empty space. It is my senses which perceive the table as solid, and my consciousness that forms and names it “table.” We thus move through a world of representations created by our senses and consciousness but which bears little or no resemblance to the actual particles which make up the world. Our interpretation of these particles are “collected representations,” which basically means that the particles most of us see as the oak tree in my front yard or your Honda Civic are seen in the proper manner by most of human society who sees them as tree and car, and are not seen properly by my crazy Uncle Quixote who sees the tree as a tower and your Civic as a dragon in need of a good lancing. Barfield posits that these interpretations have evolved over time, moving from an “original participation” in which humans were well aware that we were creating representations of true forms which lay hidden behind the representations, through a time in which direct knowledge of this participation was lost and thus fueled the scientific revolution by allowing us to conceive of these representations as objects separate from us and therefore amenable to comparison one with another, and towards a future “final participation” in which we recover the working knowledge of the world as representations, but see the truth of these representations not behind them, but as springing from within ourselves.

Barfield is not an easy read, and I do recommend reading him at the beach, where your eyes can rest on a far horizon while your brain begins to digest the ideas you’ve just read, but he is well worth the effort, and his writing is richly veined with a wonderful sense of humor and a deep affection for and kindness towards humanity.

Okay, that about wraps it up for now, Readers Mine. I’m off to the midnight showing of Captain America: the First Avenger on Friday, so look for yet another comic to movie review here over the weekend. In the meantime: Excelsior!