As I moved to Japan, this blog reassume some of its former duties in documenting the interesting bits of life. If I see a good movie, I might write something about that here too, though.
Life since Sunday in brief:
Flight from O'Hare to Frankfurt, which is the largest, most desolate airport ever. It's got three restaurants. In the whole enormous place. I spent most of my six hours sleeping on a bench in McDonalds. It was raining, so I didn't feel like trying to get to town and back.
Flight from Frankfurt to Tokyo-Narita, with a stopover in Seoul to change crews; Lufthansa is paranoid about letting their people go to Tokyo, even though they get a pretty serious dose of radiation every time they fly. That's ok, though; Korea has nice mountains to look at as you fly over. Significantly more interesting than Canada or Siberia, at least.
I met Mr. Sato, my regional branch manager, and a couple more teachers at Narita, and we took a bus to another airport, from which we flew to Akita, which is in northwest Honshu (the main island). It's a lot like Milwaukee, except they've still got snow. From Akita, we took a bus to Morioka, Iwate Prefecture, where I am currently for training.
Morioka is a nice little city, with a good balance of chaos and organization. It's small enough that you can walk pretty much everywhere in 20 min or so, but large enough to have lots of places to eat and such.
Training is amusing; our trainer keeps the energy up and the humor rolling. It's mostly pretty useful, too, which is nice. Interac is a very practical company. In the mean time, I'm slowly learning the ins and outs of living in Japan. My Japanese is crap, which is a hindrance, but actually makes it less stressful than France, somehow. I think it'd be different if I went back there without a language pledge, though. In the mean time, I'm eating a lot of things I can't identify. They're mostly pretty good, though, so I'm not worried.
Last night, we did have an aftershock, which was not very big, but which shut off the power until this afternoon, which was particularly annoying. I really need to shave; this morning we still had no water or light. The earthquake itself was kind of interesting; just a little swaying.
Soon my permanent living situation and car will get figured out, which will be nice. This hotel room is really tiny, and I really want to unpack and clean out my luggage; my french press broke and one of my tea caddies got opened in transit, so it's a mess.
I'll put up some photos later; right now I'm off to dinner.
08 April 2011
04 February 2011
Some thoughts on Psycho
I wrote the following in response to this article, and thought it was worth publishing as more than just a comment. Sorry about the lack of attention; if I ever remember my brilliant theory about Persona, I'll write it down and post it here next time, like I should have before. My bad.
In the history of film, Psycho is always spoken of as a turning point in the horror genre. It was, in two ways: one, it humanized the antagonist; and two, it manipulated the audience into shocking scream moments (e.g. the shower scene). This isn't really inherently good or bad — nor are the horror films that preceded it — but significantly informs the genre ever since.
It has gone two ways, for each of Psycho's innovations: a string of films that humanize the antagonist in order to lead the audience to investigate the darkness in themselves (maybe Silence of the Lambs) and slasher films and scream fests that abandon the effort to be good films to the effort to be scary, to the detriment of the genre (Texas Chainsaw Massacre). That is not to say films must be wholly one or the other (Silence of the Lambs certainly has its screams), but they do tend to one or the other. This film (from the review; it looks too bad to see) looks to fall in the middle, with a tendency towards the scream, if not the gore.
A more interesting genre is following from the humanization of the antagonist, towards a juxtaposition of the antagonist as an antihero. Interview with the Vampire is the earliest that comes to mind (though obviously the Anne Rice book came prior), a clear break with previous vampire movies (Nosferatu (both), Vampyr, Dracula*, et al), borne out in those that followed (Underworld (all), Van Helsing, The Vampire Diaries, True Blood, Twilight). These movies and shows may have a lot less respect than those that went before, but I think that is due more to a failure in the coexistence of money and art. In terms of narrative space, there's a lot more possibility that a mere evil being that must be killed. Honestly, the plot of Nosferatu or Vampyr is too simple and dull for the more demanding audience of today (not that they are not great films).
When the tendency of the humanization of the antagonist leads to proper antiheroes, who are no longer quite antagonists, and fall outside the realm of horror, we find all variety of ingenious cinema. House, Mad Men, The Hurt Locker, The Social Network – most of cinema today owes a debt to Psycho. For better and worse.
* Despite writing about it, I don't think I've ever seen Dracula. I'm sure I'll rectify that sooner or later; in the mean time, I'm reasonably sure the assertion holds.
In the history of film, Psycho is always spoken of as a turning point in the horror genre. It was, in two ways: one, it humanized the antagonist; and two, it manipulated the audience into shocking scream moments (e.g. the shower scene). This isn't really inherently good or bad — nor are the horror films that preceded it — but significantly informs the genre ever since.
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| Looking back, it's a little unbelievable to me that this shot wasn't in color. |
A more interesting genre is following from the humanization of the antagonist, towards a juxtaposition of the antagonist as an antihero. Interview with the Vampire is the earliest that comes to mind (though obviously the Anne Rice book came prior), a clear break with previous vampire movies (Nosferatu (both), Vampyr, Dracula*, et al), borne out in those that followed (Underworld (all), Van Helsing, The Vampire Diaries, True Blood, Twilight). These movies and shows may have a lot less respect than those that went before, but I think that is due more to a failure in the coexistence of money and art. In terms of narrative space, there's a lot more possibility that a mere evil being that must be killed. Honestly, the plot of Nosferatu or Vampyr is too simple and dull for the more demanding audience of today (not that they are not great films).
When the tendency of the humanization of the antagonist leads to proper antiheroes, who are no longer quite antagonists, and fall outside the realm of horror, we find all variety of ingenious cinema. House, Mad Men, The Hurt Locker, The Social Network – most of cinema today owes a debt to Psycho. For better and worse.
* Despite writing about it, I don't think I've ever seen Dracula. I'm sure I'll rectify that sooner or later; in the mean time, I'm reasonably sure the assertion holds.
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