Showing posts with label IT. Show all posts
Showing posts with label IT. Show all posts

Thursday, November 07, 2019

Worlds with Depth

The Fall/Winter issue of MYTHLORE includes an article by Katherine Sas on creating the "impression of depth" in a work of fiction (specifically, in this case, in the backstory of the Marauders in the Harry Potter series), a term coined by Tolkien in his classic essay "Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics." One of my favorite themes in fiction is the overshadowing of the present by the deep past. That's one reason I find Stephen King's IT enthralling, a feature that the new movie tries to present a bit better than the old miniseries, but still not adequately. So I'm glad to have an official name for this theme. Sas herself paraphrases this effect as "a sense of antiquity and historical reality."

The essence of the "impression of depth" consists of a feeling that the author "knows more than he [or she] is telling." Tolkien refers to the creation of "an illusion of surveying a past...that itself had depth and reached backward into a dark antiquity." He mentions the crafting of this effect in BEOWULF by "allusions to old tales." In his own work, Tolkien uses invented languages, frame narratives, references to ancient tales and lost texts, and "hypertextual layering" (i.e., metafictional features that draw attention to the text as an artifact). Such techniques produce the illusion of a world that has existed for a vast expanse of time before the present action and contains places, peoples, and events glimpsed at the edges of the main story.

Within a more limited physical setting, King's IT creates an illusion of deep time by the gradual revelation of how the monster originally introduced as merely a supernatural killer clown has haunted Derry since the town's founding—revealed by Mike's research into the generational cycle of the entity's periodic return and hibernation—and, eons before human settlement, came through interstellar space from an alien dimension. Likewise, the TV series SUPERNATURAL begins on a small-scale, personal level and expands to encompass an entire cosmology. At the beginning of the series, all we know about the background of Sam and Dean Winchester is that their father is a "Hunter" (of demons and other monsters) and that their mother died in a horrific supernatural attack when Sam was a baby. The brothers themselves know little more. We, and they, soon learn that their father made a deal with a demon. Eventually it's revealed that Sam and Dean were destined from infancy, not to save the world, but to serve as "vessels" for divine and diabolical entities. As they strive to assert their free will against this destiny, they uncover secrets of their family's past and the worldwide organization of Hunters (along with its research auxiliary branch, the Men of Letters), they clash (and sometimes ally) with demons, angels, pagan deities, and Death incarnate, and, incidentally, they do save the world and visit Hell and Purgatory several times. They learn the real nature and purposes of Heaven, Hell, and God Himself. The hypertextual (metafictional) aspect of the series is highlighted in episodes such as a visit to an alternate universe where the brothers are characters in a TV show and their discovery that a comic-book artist who turns out to be a prophet (as they believe until he's revealed as the very incarnation of God) has published a series that chronicles their adventures.

Tolkien's colleague and close friend C. S. Lewis reflects on the literary impression of depth in two articles reprinted in his collection SELECTED LITERARY ESSAYS, "Psycho-Analysis and Literary Criticism" and "The Anthropological Approach." In both pieces, he concludes that the ideas of hidden, half-forgotten, multi-layered dimensions in place or time and disguised remnants preserved from the ancient past are alluring in themselves. We're fascinated by the suggestion of "the far-borne echo, the last surviving trace, the tantalizing glimpse, the veiled presence, of something else. And the something else is always located in a remote region, 'dim-discovered,' hard of access." We're thrilled to enter "a world where everything may, and most things do, have a deeper meaning and a longer history" than expected. Many readers (although admittedly not all) enjoy the idea "that they have surprised a long-kept secret, that there are depths below the surface." Tolkien's exposition of this effect, as well as the creation of it by him and other authors who use similar strategies, offers valuable hints to writers who want to produce that kind of impression.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Sunday, January 21, 2018

The Musical Trojan Horse

Imagine what would happen if the sound system in Foxborough this evening were to be hacked by hippies, who installed a Spotify "Chill" playlist. 

Imagine if they played beautiful, soothing songs about sunny afternoons, peace, love, wearing summery windflowers in their hair, and being groovy.... instead of belting out warlike anthems about being champions, not taking disrespect, and assisting ones foes to bite the dust.

Would there be fewer penalties and less unnecessary roughness?

Music matters. Music makes a difference. Music can be dangerous. Or not. Perhaps one does not want music in the wrong hands.

Today, I connect three very different dots.

William R. Trotter's brilliant analysis of music and the art of war, which was published in the June 2005 issue of Military History magazine.
http://www.historynet.com/the-music-of-war.htm

The Pierce Brosnan movie I.T., about what happens when one willingly installs an Internet Of Things home with convenient camera surveillance even in the bathroom, then upsets an unstable hacker.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hfnDTvbtDUI

Liz Pelly's warning about Spotify, emotional regulation by algorithm, mood (if not mind) control through music and curated playlists, and a passing mention of "overpriced, fun-sized plastic and metal surveillance machines."
https://thebaffler.com/salvos/the-problem-with-muzak-pelly

If one connects those dots, music could be a Trojan Horse.  Since ancient times --even perhaps before Joshua used exceptionally loud music to demoralize his enemies and destabilize their fortress walls... perhaps by causing liquefaction-- music has been used in warfare.

According to Milutin Srbulov
Ground vibration can be caused by very loud noises, including by musical events, and by people marching or dancing. ... Damages can include excessive building settlement, liquefaction of sandy soils, slope instability, collapse of trenches, excavations, and tunnels, exposure of buried pipelines and other services, cracking.. .
Music has been used by the military to motivate troops, increase aggression, promote the "hive mind", to raise adrenaline and whip up violent emotions.

Marching to the beat of a drum was so prevalent that joining the army was called "following the drum". 

As William R. Trotter explains, there is a musical language of warfare. Machiavelli wrote explicitly about it in his Italian "Art of War" manual. Bugle and trumpet calls communicate distinct commands to cavalry or infantry. Warriors had their national anthems, so that when the forces were out of sight, one could identify friend or foe by what they were singing.

(Trotter tells stories where unscrupulous military commanders gained an unfair advantage over their enemies by singing the wrong song, or playing the other army's trumpet command to retreat. Musical dirty tricks!!)

According to Trotter, Music improves the X Factor.
"In his novel War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy observed that the effectiveness of an army is the product of the mass multiplied by something else; by an unknown ‘X’….the spirit of the army. Throughout history, music has had the effect of raising that unknown ‘X’ by a considerable power."

Did Simon Cowell know that?
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_X_Factor )

According to Liz Pelly, music can be sponsored and curated and manipulated for instance to persuade women to buy more exotic brassieres than they need, and playlists can be associated with all manner of product and services marketing... without the consent of the musicians, and perhaps without appropriate compensation.

If there is a playlist for shopping, are there playlists for political causes? What about for rallies, marches, and riots?  Considering the history of music for warfare, is this a good idea?  Should the police on picket lines have playlists?

It seems that music can be weaponized, and can alter moods and behavior. (I suspect, some types of music may be implicated in road rage.) If this is the case, probably an individual tune is harmless, but an extended serious of tunes that are put together for a specific purpose by a commercial or political enterprise might be a Trojan Horse.

One should worry when a government (such as the US Congress with the "Music Modernization Act" ) appears to be inclined to make copyright infringement lawful, or to retroactively absolve copyright infringement for the benefit of music services that produce curated music services.

Richard Bush points out:
"It also seems patently unfair to basically retroactively absolve Spotify of infringement damages, and willful infringement at that, just because a victim has not yet filed a lawsuit."
https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2018/01/19/spotify-music-modernization-act/

Also
" technology companies are lobbying Congress to create laws to turn the creative community into workers whose own musical creations are not in fact their own."
How is it in the public interest to make music cheap-to-exploit for billionaire internet players and to prevent musicians from opting out of certain political or marketing uses of their creations if they object to those uses?

For more reading on Orwellian goings on to strip control of music from musicians:

https://artistrightswatch.com/2018/01/16/is-it-time-for-the-inspector-general-to-review-the-copyright-offices-administration-of-address-unknown-nois/

https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2018/01/16/huffington-post-ceo-spotify/
  
https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2018/01/09/huffington-post-removes-spotify-article/


By the way, in FORCED MATE, my alien ruling class explicitly outlawed music in their societies, except for use for patriotic, feel-good occasions such as royal weddings.


All the best,
Rowena Cherry