Just Looking ...

Ethical issues of cloning aside (e.g. for the purpose of harvesting organs, for example, about which a novel has been written if memory serves), today's lecture about our fear of clones got me thinking about its manifestation in popular culture. Specifically, I thought the issue was quite well examined in Gundam Seed.

In Gundam Seed, genetic science has developed so well that people can now 'customise' their babies, choosing appearances (eye/hair colours, for instance) and wanting their children to be essentially 'better' than everybody else's--and when something goes 'wrong' so they don't get the baby they'd wanted, they blame the doctors and get angry as though the babies are some products one might buy off the shelves of a retailer store. But the real problem arises when a 'superior' specie of humans are created, who basically look and are humans, only superior to the 'old' variety. Eventually, the Naturals (the original humans) feel threatened and demand 'Clean, Blue, Pure World,' advocating destruction of the Coordinators (the superior specie). Many Coordinators are murdered and eventually they're all driven off of earth, establishing their own colony with their own gov't and such in another planet. This is how the story begins, and the plot takes us through the war between the Naturals and the Coordinators.

In fact, the main 'villain' is a pessimistic clone who has become severely disillusioned by the world and its hatred and greed, claiming that he is the product of the epitome of human greed which knows no bounds (to be that which is 'superior' to everyone else), and wants to see this 'horrible world' destroyed. Basically, it's a question of 'where do we reach the limit / when do we stop?' At the same time, it's also geared towards showing us that there's actually very little difference between the Naturals and the Coordinators--in the end, they're both humans and innocent people suffer because of a pointless war. Anyways, even though this is an anime, I thought a lot of the questions it asks are quite thought-provoking and I would recommend it to anyone interested in exploring these themes. I personally did not enjoy its sequel (Gundam Seed: Destiny) as much, but you may find it different.

As well, cloning is a strongly embedded subject in the Hitman video game series (which I have discussed in a previous post concerning drive without desire). Here, the fear for clone also stems from concern for competition (at least from the perspective of main antagonists). Essentially, cloning technology is being developed to create an army of perfect assassins, from which Agent 47 is the sole surviving case of a successful experiment--and the antagonists (from competing agencies) are after him because his bone marrow contains the 'secret formula' needed to create more in his footstep. You can read more about it in detail here.

Thinking of the Calvin Klein Ad campaign in which Kate Moss is advertising the perfume "Obsession", I had a slightly different interpretation of what the photographer was attempting to do. As someone who occasionally watches shows such as "America's next top model" which focus constantly on the ability of a photograph to resonate with the viewer in a way that makes them identify with a product as well, it seemed to me that the purpose of the photo was to convey a feeling more than anything else. Although it can also seem like a pretentious photo, I thought the model's exposure, her lack of beauty and raw, almost bleak expression were meant to convey the feeling of "being obsessed" in such a way that the viewer identifies with the emotion and will therefore perhaps feel as though the perfume will represent them as well. Looking at the picture in this light made it seem a bit closer to the eruption of the real - not necessarily in that the photo makes us fearful or surprised, but that it IS arresting, seems REAL to us, but at the same time cannot be adequately symbolized or understood.

Also thinking of other ads that mask the absence of a basic reality, I remembered the Virgin Mobile ads which always made me confused when they first came out. I also found this bizarre Nike ad which was on a website depicting odd commercials. I'm not sure if they qualify, and i'd love another perspective!

We live in a secular society, where spiritual beliefs a personal choice and more or less a private matter. The University of Toronto constitutes a pretty enlightened community - scientists, engineers, and philosphers - where the accepted and debated truths are likely expected to be based in reason and logic. So we're all steeping in a culture of rationality, exploring abstract thought, and more or less keeping religion on the back burner. But still, we shouldn't take for granted that even the most enlightened of students take part in a culture with some pretty illogical supernatural beliefs to explain our surroundings.

Take the concept of luck, for instance. I was really suprised when last year in lecture, Holly Wardlow paralleled luck to an indigenous concept of mana. Its something I'd completely taken for granted. We believe in as luck something you can actually possess in quantities - You can have lot of luck, or just a little; there are different kinds of luck - good and bad; you can do things to make you more lucky, carry charms, perform rituals. Even the firmest of atheists has probably shrugged off a shitty situation in the past; write it off as bad luck and for some reason feel completely justified about the outcome.

A proponent of causation might tell you that you finding 5 bucks on the sidewalk was determined at the big bang, but that's no fun because its beyond our control. We can appeal to luck in the same way we can pray to a God, by simply crossing our fingers. I'm gonna propose that luck is the simplest most pervasive response to the Remainder in our society.

Professor Kalmar mentioned Japanese 'reality' shows, and I remembered reading about a particularly interesting one widely known as Nasubi, so I thought I'd share it with the class: read all about the trials of Nasubi here!

I recently had a discussion with someone about the value of digital art/computer graphics (specifically, 2D materials -- 3D is a whole another can of worms, though decidedly related without a doubt). My thought was that they were just as valid and authentic as pieces created using traditional tools of art, while my opposition argued that CG had no tangible work that could be considered the 'original' and that was why she would never consider CG as having half the worth of a 'real' artwork.

Technically, the original file (e.g. a .psd file, for example, with all the layers in tact) could be said to be the 'original,' but what she meant was something with tangible texture hanging in museums. According to her line of thought, there could be millions of digital copies and there would be no real way to distinguish the 'original' if, indeed, such a thing could be said to exist at all in the first place. That is, the only way to have a tangible copy would be to print it, which would be flat and 'lifeless' (i.e. without texture) and by extension could never exist as the 'original.' Certainly a CG work printed out would never be something fit to be displayed at the Louvre, for instance.

Now, I've seen innumerable digital [realism] paintings that, in my opinion, are just as amazing as traditional paintings (e.g. "Master and Servant", Gears of War concept art, "Gone", among thousands of others). The artists behind these paintings (created from scratch using computer-generated tools which closely imitate traditional tools of art) could easily have created the same pieces through traditional means, so does the fact that these only 'exist in the realm of the digital' make them any less worthy than traditional pieces? Is it because they lack the 'aura' of the distinctly 'original'? Can something which was created completely in the 'digital world' ever possess Benjamin's notion of 'aura'?

Labels: aura, benjamin, cg

In class, prof explained that "the uncanny rises from the excess of the real." in very simplified terms, i think this it goes like this...

the totalization of our worldview - letting it encompass and govern how we decide what is real and true - is necessary for being people to be able to relax and feel like there is some logical sense to the world they live in. If we didn't feel we could predict how things would roll along then we couldn't live our lives. We'd always need some kind of contingency plan, just in case the sun failed to rise that day. So while construction of reality is incomplete, it's based on a kind of general consensus affirmed by culture and soceity, and it gets us by 99% of the time. however, in an age of global communication we can't help but see that our worldview doesnt' cover everthing. particularly in anthro class, we appreciate the diversity of worldviews more and more, as well as the limitations of our own. as we all learned in ANT 100, there are societies that operate without words for time, or eight different words for snow, so clearly our way is no the only way; we might just be missing something. but this is the world we were born into and it works for us so why sweat it?

because we know that the rules for "reality" don't really explain everything, then we can harbour belief in things that we dont understand, that lie beyone the realm of our explanation- Coincidences and lucky breaks might be part of some greater natural order. rather than explaining it all, we can shrug it off or rely on faith to close the gap.

this concept made me think of obsessive compulsive disorder. From Wikipedia: Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is a psychiatric anxiety disorder most commonly characterized by a subject's obsessive, distressing, intrusive thoughts and related compulsions (tasks or "rituals") which attempt to neutralize the obsessions.

So for example - a woman taps the park bench 30 times on the way her way to work every day to make sure she doesn't get fired. And because the two are unrealted, she just happens to be a good worker and keep her job, she starts to feel she has to do this every day, just incase. So are OCD sufferers be defined as extremely sensitive to the Answer of the Real? Their obsure ideas about reality are getting confirmed by chance, simply because they are so illogical?

I've found this whole thing pretty confusing, and would love to get other people's thoughts, corrections, suggestions...