Response to Kyra's Bonus 9 - Kenneth Butcher

I was in a similar position whilst thinking about the question of "who has the right?". I've always thought about it in passing but I was never really able to nail down a solid position as to how I felt about it, or at least one I could commit to that held up to all matter of scrutiny. So I figured I'd be lazy cop out of it for this post and do a little goal post shifting in order to come at it from a different perspective.

First I want to start off by saying that I mostly agree with the stance you arrived at of the reason who having the right to write and or talk about being the people with first hand experience and if people want to write about it second hand that it would be important for them to approach the topic with reverence. However I think there should be a place at the table for people who don't want to come at a topic they have second hand information with reverence even come at it with malice if they want, and that place should be at a (proverbial) seat shackled with a need to uphold the tenants of the burden of proof. And this is where I'd like to pivot the responsibility from the person commenting on something as a Secondary source to the individual(s) reading said secondary source. I think in there case, as an assumed, attentive reader they should approach secondary sources (and even some primary sources depending on the situation) with a health does of skepticism.

That being said, specific examples like the ones you stated involving skewed social dynamics of power on a larger scale i.e things like oppressor and victim dynamics or institutional racism should be approached a little bit differently because of the added factor of social power. In that case remedys, not short of uplifting the first hand accounts of marginalized people in situations where said accounts might be consciously or subconsciously suppressed is important and could lead to some very good and well needed insight. While I like the Sherman Alexie example too, although it is slightly predicated on the notion that given the opportunity to approach a topic from a place of reverence and just general inquisition to acquire information, that most people will choose to do that. Which I personally don't find to be true. So I believe the most intuitive way to account for these people would be the aforementioned; saddling them with the burden of proof coupled with a health dose of skepticism from all of the readers in order to see if their claims and account can stand up to scrutiny. I believe this method this method is the most conducive to health discourse and will be better for general relations in the long run.

Group B - Post 4: 'A Tragic Recounting' Hiroshima and In This Corner of the World - Kenneth Butcher

In the wake of the Nuclear bombings of Nagasaki and Hiroshima at the end of the second wold war there have been many a stories across multiple mediums depicting the life of non active combatant military Japanese folk shortly preceding and in the aftermath of this catastrophic event. Over Spring Break I had the opportunity to experiences a fairly new iteration of one of these stories in the form of an animated film entitled, "In This Corner of the World" and I thought I'd takes this opportunity to compare and contrast the rhetorical and cinematic devices the film employs with those that the excerpt from the story "From Hiroshima" does, in order to see how the help us formulate empathy, as well as get a similar message across in two different ways.

The plot of 'In this corner of the world' follows the life of a woman named Suzu who lives in a seaside town called Eba in Hiroshima City. In 1944, 18-year-old Suzu, working for her grandmother's small family business of cultivating Nori (edible sea weed), is told by her parents that an unknown young man has come to propose marriage to her. The man, whose name is Shusaku, lives in Kure City, a large naval port city 15 miles away from Hiroshima City, as a navy civilian. He remembers that he and Suzu had first met during one of Suzu's childhood visits to the city. Suzu decides to marry him and moves to join Shusaku's family in Kure. As Suzu adjusts to her new life in Kure, the threat of the Pacific War slowly begins to encroach on the daily lives of the townspeople. Most of the first half is spent establishing Suzu as kind of a regular, lovable, artistic ditz to both endear us to her on a personal level and to later heighten the emotional impact of what we know is going to happen to her. It isn't really till the second half, after she goes to live with her husband and his family in Kure, that we start to see the realities of war start to encroach into her everyday life in the way of things like, the military police presence begin to grow in her town over time, certain food and resources progressively becoming more scarce to the point that the government has to give them out in extremely small rations, and randomly being forced to stop whatever it was they were doing at the time and go into an underground bomb shelter every time there was an air raid. All of this coming to an extremely emotional head when her sister in law is killed by a previously thought to be inactive bomb shell that had crashed on the beach after an air raid; and the explosion causes her to lose her right hand. This is where the characterization that the first part created comes into play because we see someone who we've spent the better part of 40 to 45 minutes getting to know and are for suffer at the hands of something preventable, with the intended purpose of wanting to create anger in the viewer particularly towards the situation and or the circumstances that led to it and sympathy and empaty for her loss. The significance in this scenario being (though she is a fictional character) Suzu is a stand in for all the Japanese folk who had to live in a similar situation or even bombed for a war they may not have been 100% behind; who we in the U.S would usually only get to hear about and see as statistics or a really high percentage rate.

From Hiroshima by John Hersey seeks to elicit the same feeling but It chooses to do so through the medium of written text and through the lens of the peoples lives in the aftermath of Hiroshima. Phrases like "Dr. Fuji lay in dreadful pain throughout the night on the floor of his family's roofless house on the edge of the city" and "Dr. Sasaki had not looked outside the hospital all day; the scene inside was so terrible and so compelling that it had not occurred to him to ask any questions about what had happend beyond the windows and doors." (pgs 112 in The Art of Fact) are meant to put a face to what would otherwise be just another casualty of war. Thus making the realities of the destruction it causes more real and unavoidable to the reader.
I read and that sought to critical analyze another academics use of Numbers to attempt to explain the rational for dropping the bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki that I found pretty interesting. Kimura choose to state, "Heartbreaking stories have been recorded,2 for example, as illustrated by the testimony of a sixteen-year-old boy, Akira Onogi: We found this small girl crying and she asked us to help her mother. Just beside the girl, her mother was trapped by a fallen beam…we had no choice but to leave her. She was conscious and we deeply bowed to her with clasped hands to apologies to her and then we left.3 " (Kimura pg 21) as a preface before diving into the factors at play he felt that didn't justify the dropping of atomic bombs on Japan twice. The reason I found this to be particularly interesting is because this piece was written in 2013 and I believe Kimura feeling the need to preface this article like this really encapsulates and generation shift in looking at the event. One that is in many ways far removed from the more detached and numerical/mathematical way of looking at war and it's effect that were very prevent in the past on a societal scale. And I also believe that ultimately looking at war through the lens of it's affects and not the short term of whatever the dispute is over is a good thing, if not a little idealistic, because of how things like the aforementioned retold accounts (fictional or otherwise) help us better empathize with our fellow man, and ideally not want to see them in such catastrophic situations.

Sources:

In This Corner of the World (film). (2018, April 02). Retrieved April 09, 2018, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_This_Corner_of_the_World_(film)

Applying Taurek’s ‘Should the Numbers Count?’ to (un)justify Hiroshima and Nagasaki: A combination of historiography and applied ethics by Tets Kimura
http://www.flinders.edu.au/sabs/sis-files/history/FJHP/Volume%2029/Tets%20Kimura%20vol%2029%202013.pdf

Group B - Post 3: The Art of Creating Dissociation in a Sonic Landscape through Abstraction; Radiohead Kid-A Analysis- Kenneth Butcher

The five piece Alternative, Art rock, electronica band Radiohead hailing from Abingdon, Oxfordshire England have never been ones to shy away from addressing the gnawing existential ideas that float around in everyone heads from time to time on topics ranging from identity to sadness with their music. However instrumentally, for their first 3 albums they (for the most part) held true to a lot of the musical staples of their genre during that era, like *diatonic power chords and popular time cadences like 4/4. Save for a better understanding of chord layering and time signatures than many of their contemporaries. But there was one album in their discography I personal feel was their opus of sort in regards to fully relaying the abstract feeling of not feeling like you belong in your current environment; as well as signaled their foray into incorporating heavy electronica elements and more unconventional sounds/methods of song writing to their creative process. In this essay I will briefly go through the structural, instrumental elements of the opening song of the album entitled "Everything In It's Right Place" and look at how said elements are employed to create a feeling of dissociation in and through their music.

    The first track "Everything In It's Right Place" not only paints a fairly good picture of what the rest of album is going to be like; but also kind of puts the listener on edge by incorporating several musical elements that almost seem to contradict each other. A 10 beat phrase is subtlety carried by a light 808 drum machine that is sort of drowned in muted piano chords that bounce back and forth from landing on the 4th and 6th notes. As well as going from a C to a D major to an E flat, which all serves to create a sense of dissonance. The major C and D major chords create a sort of warm atmosphere as the phrase loops, which is constantly being under-cut by the colder E flat which permeates the warmth of the major chords with a sense of unease. Or (if you'll forgive the pun) a sense that everything isn't in the right place. This flip from *ionian and *phrygian inflections is also prevalent in the way the lead singer Thom Yorke sings the the opening line "Everything In It's Right Place", and in the way the his vocals are chopped and dispersed intermittently in the beginning of the song before he sings the line proper. This is where the contradiction and irony of this song lies; between the title of the song and the songs structure. The songs stakes it's claim in the idea that everything is in it's right place before presenting the listener with skewed, seemingly random vocals a chord structure that doesn't follow a typical major or minor scale progression. A piano line that occasionally decides to land on the down beat; all above a steady 808 pulsing through 10 beat phrase. The final example of the song employing composition elements to create a feeling of disassociation can be found in the lyrics themselves. Of which include, "Yesterday I woke up sucking a lemon" and "What was that you tried to say?" . These lyrics serve to paint a picture of natural situations but with the inclusion of an element that distorts it or makes it unconventional, i.e waking up with a lemon in your mouth. Or somebody asking someone else to repeat something, even though they didn't say anything.

I think this kind of light deconstruction of repetitive aspects of pop (which is usually associated with positive emotions) is used this way to great a sense of gnawing unease and sonically exemplify the feeling of emotional dissonance/ disassociation. This kind of structural dissonance reminds me a lot of abstract impressionist art work. As well as a specific quote from a book entitled "Nature of Abstract Art" by Meyer Schapiro (1937) that I had to read for my art history class last semester; which was, "In the 1880's there were several aspects of Impressionism which could be the starting points of new tendencies and goals of reaction. For classicist painters the weakness of Impressionism lay in its unclarity, its destruction of definite linear forms"-" If the Impressionists reduced things to the artist's sensations, their successors reduced them further to projections or constructions of his feelings and moods, or to "essences" grasped in a tense intuition." (pg 4) This specific part of the essay was arguing that the striped back more abstract and 'open to interpretation nature' of impressionism was a detriment to the medium of painting.
contrary to this I would argue that, in the same way that Radiohead's ability to convey dissonance with their musical arrangement does a lot in conveying a feeling that many can relate to, without outright saying it; I'd say that the same argument can be made for impressionist paintings, and the painters who made and continue to make them. So I believe there is ultimately a lot to be said about the positive aspects of abstraction's ability to convey dissonance in art.

*Ionian mode is a musical mode or, in modern usage, a diatonic scale also called the major scale.

*Phrygian is the mode represented by the natural diatonic scale E–E (containing a minor 2nd, 3rd, 6th, and 7th)

Phrygian dominant scale

A Phrygian dominant scale is produced by raising the third scale degree of the mode:

E Phrygian dominant

Mode:	E	F	G♯	A	B	C	D	E
Major:	1	♭2	3	4	5	♭6	♭7	1
Minor:	1	♭2	♯3	4	5	6	7	1

Work Cited:

Schapiro, M. (1937). Nature of abstract art.

Ionian mode. (2018, February 28). Retrieved March 19, 2018, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ionian_mode

Phrygian mode. (2018, March 14). Retrieved March 19, 2018, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phrygian_mode

Post 2, Group B - The Dangerous Politics of Isolationism; Black Panther by Kenneth Butcher

I had the opportunity to watch Black Panther over the weekend and since it was still pretty fresh on my mind I figured I could use this opportunity to talk about the films portrayal of Wakanda. Wakanda is a fictional city in Africa in the film that boasts a technological prowess and innovation far beyond and of those in any country in the world today because of it's monopoly on a substance called vibranium. Which is an alien metal, with radioactive properties that allow it to absorb kinetic energy on impact. The story of Blank Panther sees a young T'Challa taking the position of king of Wakanda in the wake of his father's passing in Captain America Civil war due to a terrorist attack and trying to fend of the "colonizers" (*the films terms) from trying to steal the vibranium their country has to do with what they want (which in this case is to create powerful weapons). The main colonizers of which are Ulysses Klaue a black market arms dealer and  N'Jadaka / Erik "Killmonger" Stevens son of T'Challa's, Father's, brother and a U.S. black-ops soldier who seeks to overthrow T'Challa for the express purpose of arming black people all over the world with vibrabium weapons so they can stand up to their oppressors. What I want to focus on is how the city of Wakanda's politics are portrayed (and are not portrayed a some instances) And how those politics lead to the creation of people like Killmonger and Klaue. As well as how their political stances and social framework are bad for a countries overall longevity.

First of all I would like to establish that Wakanda is a Afro-Centric, Ethno-State; which is a political unit that is populated by and run in the interest of an ethnic group. In this case the group is the entire country of Wakanda and the ethnic group is the Africans whom reside their. Wakanda is also the only place in the world with access to vibranium, the most valuable mineral in the world. This alone puts them in a very interesting situation especially in the increasingly globalist world of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Because they are the only ones who have access to a material that has a variable cornucopia of uses they facilitate the creation of an even greater market demand for a product that would have been in high demand even if it weren't walled off exclusively by one country. And If there's anything that history teaches us time and time again (both in the real world and in the MCU) it's: Limiting access to a highly sought after resource almost ensures that less that reputable points of contact for access to that resource will increase because there would be a huge market for it. Limiting access to a sought after resource doesn't diminish the demand for that resource generally as much as it just makes the acquisition of that resource require more work. Which in turn allows people who are in the business of acquiring that resource to up the cost the consumers have to pay for the resource to see any sort of substantial return because the cot of accusation goes up. This is how and why black markets spring up and see a huge clientele base in both the real world and the world of Black Panther. The affects of this can be particularly greater in capitalistic or globalized nations. In the film these are the conditions that lead to creation of someone like Ulysses Klaue who sees a small fortune to be made in the business of acquiring and selling the most valuable material in the world (vibranium) even though it poses a huge personal risk because it involves stealing from the most technological advanced countries in the world. Real world equivalents of this are the gangs and speakeasy's that popped up during the Prohibition era in the 1920s and the nuclear arms black market the rose to prominence after the first Vietnam war. This is one example of how having an isolationist mentality when it comes to sought after resources can be potentially damaging to your country. Or in this case was actually damaging to Wakanda because it directly resulted millions in property damage and collateral as a result of T'Challa and his subordinates trying to get their vibranium off of the black market. A cost I can only assume Wakanda is stuck in a perpetual loop of having to constantly pay because of this practice, that I can't imagine being good for their economy.

The second example I want to look at is a little bit more subjective and that's Wakanda's social hierarchy and the rules that govern it. Namely their reliance on the primitive "might is right" philosophies when it comes to choosing a king/ someone to uphold the moniker of "Black Panther". And how its is so heavily contradicted by the fact that their is oligarchy in place. I think this creates a weird social dissonance because what it implies is that one can become king if they best the old king in combat but they are initiated as king to a royal council of T'Challa's relatives. It helps to foster a perception of a leadership group that is only self contained and interested, particularly when they aren't seeing the specific needs of their people. Having a sort of royal family in charge almost insures that in the wake of any socio economic crisis the blame will fall on the entire house of leadership and allegations of inner family conspirators will be brought to the table. Which is why I think T'Challa's friend W'Kabi is so quick to side with Killmonger after he "kills" T'Challa and takes over as king after Killmonger brings him the body of the man who killed his parents, Klaue. This is purely speculator but I think communication with the outside world would lead to them getting more ideas on how to run their governmental hierarchy in a way that doesn't create social dissonance or facility an almost arbitrary form of dissent so easily.

Looking at the broader social impact the film has had in our society and amoungst black Americans specifically; I'm reminded of a quote I read in Elizabeth Reich's essay entitled A Broader Nationalism: Reconstructing Memory, National Narratives and Spectatorship in World War II Black Audience propaganda. Which was: "Along with these mainstream movies, the government also called for propaganda films celebrating black soldiers. The result was three films (two of which were produced outside of Hollywood) developed through intensive collaboration between black and white artists and marketed solely to black audiences. These unusual films – Marching On! (Spencer Williams, 1943), We’ve Come a Long, Long Way (Jack Goldberg, 1943) and The Negro Soldier (Stuart Heisler, 1944) – directly addressed black anxieties about the war by employing the figure of the black soldier to deliver a pro-war message and redress the absence of black representation in nationalist narratives. As propaganda films, aiming to persuade a particular historical demographic, the films demonstrate powerfully how black artists imagined black viewing audiences during World War II, and how they used the figure of the black soldier to reach the minds of black America." (Reich 2) I believe were starting to see some remnants of that in today society except instead of soldiers it's happening with the Black/African Diaspora and Black identity politics. And Black Panther's meta narrative about isolationism is one of the factors that is playing into it.

Source: 

A broader nationalism: reconstructing memory, national narratives and spectatorship in World War II black audience propaganda

Elizabeth Reich

Screen, Volume 54, Issue 2, 1 June 2013, Pages 174–193,https://doi.org/10.1093/screen/hjt001

Published:

 

01 June 2013

Post 1, Group B - Inherit the Wind (1960); The Fear of Change by Kenneth Butcher

The movie I chose to look at for this assignment was Inherit the Wind. A film I was introduced to in my Anchor class last semester based on a play of the same name that I found pretty interesting. The plot is a fictionalized recounting of a real-life court case in 1925, where two renowned lawyers argue the case for and against a science teacher accused of the crime of teaching evolution in his classroom. The ideas of the proliferation of fear can be found almost everywhere in this film, but I specifically want to talk out the flim's take on the fear of change by looking at the ways the characters in the story respond to having their fundamental beliefs challenged.

There’s a scene towards the beginning of the film where Spencer Tracy’s character Henry Drummond (the lawyer arguing on the behalf of the teacher who was jailed for teaching evolution in school) is walking into the town to speak with his client and Fredric March character Matthew Harrison Brady (the other lawyer as well as the towns pastor) organizes his congregation to hold a parade for him as he rides to the courthouse. Something I interpreted as sort of a demonstration of sorts, once conceived with the intent of getting two messages across; the fist being that the town was predominantly comprised of unapologetic, fundamentalist Christians. And the second being that that aforementioned demographic was going to adamantly stand against Drummond in court on the grounds that any challenge to their core beliefs and traditionalist methods of teaching (in this case the rationalization of the teaching of Darwin's theory of evolution in schools) was direct affront to god and would be meat with fervent push back. I believe that this is highly indicative of a homogeneous state that has become so accustomed to life within the confines of their society for better or for worse, the live in fear of anything that poses any sort of challenge to that pre established normalcy. Thus they have to in a way constantly be on the defensive about their beliefs (hence the preemptive parade/demonstration against a lawyer they never met, entirely on the basis of what he represented)

That being said those are just the outward signifiers of a fear of change or being challenged. I think the more insidious aspects of the effects of this fear can be seen more heavily in the way Brady and members of his congregation speak and behave. As well as the rhetorical devices they use when they debate. As the trial continues one starts to notice a pattern in the way Brady behaves whenever Drummond want to make a point that might cause him to question one of his long standing beliefs or call someone who might be able to say something to incite the same effect; automatic dismissal. Brady (and subsequently the members of his congregation) would proceed to laugh off and or purposely misinterpret every point or more secular joke Drummond would make in lieu of actually addressing it. These scenes are played as comedic but I think they’re very indicative a strong adverseness to change and I think one of the exchanges that most exemplifies this is this one:

Matthew Harrison Brady : “We must not abandon faith! Faith is the most important thing!”

Henry Drummond :” Then why did God plague us with the capacity to think? Mr. Brady, why do you deny the one faculty of man that raises him above the other creatures of the earth? The power of his brain to reason. What other merit have we? The elephant is larger; the horse is swifter and stronger; the butterfly is far more beautiful; the mosquito is more prolific. Even the simple sponge is more durable. But does a sponge think?”

Matthew Harrison Brady : “I don't know. I'm a man, not a sponge!”

Henry Drummond : “But do you think a sponge thinks?”

Matthew Harrison Brady : “If the Lord wishes a sponge to think, it thinks!” 

So I kept my discussion on the themes of the film light with the thought that there’s a chance so of you might not have seen it; as to not completely spoil it. But if you have an hour and forty five minutes free I definitely recommend checking it out if your into these kinda films, it’s pretty funny and interesting.