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“The Future is Nao!” Ozeki P147
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Kato and Enter the Dragon
Probably one of my favorite scenes in Enter the Dragon was the scene where Lee is on the boat with the other fighters going to Mr. Han’s island. More specifically I really enjoy it when Lee explains that his fighting style is “fighting with no fighting.” I think I found it more enjoyable because of how Kato describes it as a way to be in solidarity with the other Chinese workers on the ship. Also I believe “fighting with no fighting” is something that should be incorporated in our day to day lives at times. It’s kind of like saying that actions speak louder than words and by Lee putting Parsons on a small boat and threatening to let go of the rope shows to me a higher class way of being the boss. Fighting with no fighting represents cleverness. Checkmate.
“…”Lee,” however, maintains the transcendental state of calmness, as if ego has been liquidated from the outset of the combat.” (128) While I agree with Lee’s calmness during his fight with Ohara, in some ways, I was able to see at times his passion and his anger he was holding inside as he was fighting him. It wasn’t until the end that Lee produces this face (pictured below) where he looks as though he is going to cry. As if this isn’t the way Kungfu should be fought.
A Tale for the Time Being Reading Part I
We were required to choose a theme to observe upon for this reading. The theme I have chosen is Life/Death, but I will mostly focus on death since I remember it being mentioned the most.
Sui·cide
noun \ˈsü-ə-ˌsīd\
- the act of killing yourself because you do not want to continue living
- a person who commits suicide
- an action that ruins or destroys your career, social position, etc.
These three definitions can apply to the story that Nao Yasutani has been “telling” through Part I. Never before have I heard a story talk about suicide so much that you think the person has already gone off the deep end and is too late to save. Yet I learned that in Japanese culture, according to this book anyways, that suicide is not viewed as negatively in Japan than here in the U.S. According to the letter by “Harry”:
“Throughout history, we Japanese have always appreciated suicide. For us it is a beautiful thing that seems to have some kind of weight and shape, this is only an illusion. Our feeling of alive has no real edge or boundary. So we Japanese people say that our life sometimes feels unreal, just like a dream. Death is certain. Life is always changing, like a puff of wind in the air, or a wave in the sea, or even a thought in the mind. So making a suicide is finding the edge of life. It stops life in time, so we can grasp what shape it is and feel it is real, at least for just a moment…You can feel life by taking it away. Suicide feels like One Authentic Thing. Suicide feels like Meaning of Life. Suicide feels like having the Last Word. Suicide feels like stopping Time Forever. But of course this is all just delusion, too! Suicide is just part of life, so it is part of the delusion,” (Ozeki 87-8).
Nao Yasutani first talks about killing herself someday because she mentions she doesn’t have much time anyways, which wasn’t explained why yet. She constantly also mentions gruesome deaths that occur from demented old men who take young women to love hotels to extract pleasure, then kill the helpless ladies. By her tone and the way she casually speaks about death and suicide, I assume Nao is not as hesitant and fearful on killing herself as most other people would. Yet she mentions she does give some thought to how it might affect others, especially her parents and Old Jiko, if she were to kill herself immediately.
Then there was the mention of suicide clubs, which interested me. I have never heard of such a thing. Usually friends and family members get together if they want to commit group suicide, but this is the first time for me on hearing about strangers seeking other strangers to die with. It piqued my curiosity that I started searching for suicide clubs in Japan, but efforts proved fruitless. I did find an old article on the matter though. It seems that also Aokigahara is still a hotspot for suicide still. I remember hearing about it a few years ago, but hearing it again just reaffirms that there’s no place to die like in a forest near Mt. Fuji. The following video of Aokigahara has real corpses, so if you don’t like seeing dead people, then please move on.
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As for the “life” part of this theme, the only thing that stuck to my mind regarding life is that it’s fleeting and is a “delusion”. The mention that life was getting turning too “artificial” or that everything doesn’t seem “real” anymore made sense, but there can be some happiness, albeit temporary, that can be sought from these. To feel life, according to “Harry”, one must be on the brink of death, hence why suicide is so popular. The way they talk about it makes it seem less “negative” than what people believe here in the U.S. ans possibly other countries.
Regarding the book, it was an interesting read. Gave me a new perspective of suicide and why it’s being done in great numbers, to the point where Japan is #10 out of 110 countries in suicide rates, only being beaten by Greenland.
Kato flips the hip hop
Here is some visual food for thought, making connections between Kato and the world around us.
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Kato didn’t talk too much about Lauryn Hill but she was mentioned, along with Erykah Badu, and I thought that it would be great to share some of her music. Lauryn Hill has been an influential artist ever since she appeared on the scene and has played a large role in furthering the presence of women in hip hop and rejecting the the objectified image of women in gangster rap. Much like kung fu, she has fought and resisted through the medium of music.
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Body Count was an interesting band, fusing rap and metal together with the help of Ice-T. The whole idea of this song shows obvious resistance to the conditions of the urban communities in America. The resistance manifests through a unique form of dancing in the mosh pit, where people can “safely” release their frustrations with other like-minded people. Crosscurrents run deep, young padawan.
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This classic N.W.A. track screams Bruce Lee with a chorus about self-expression.
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Acknowledging the roots of hip-hop and their connections to Jamaica, here is a Bob Marley and the Wailers tune that speaks of resistance. The big tree that he refers to can be seen as “the man” or the government, but it also directly relates to their label Big Tree Records, who were profiting off of the band’s success by taking large cuts of their earnings.
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This song by Reggie Spice really illuminates the urban situation in Jamaica. Trenchtown is one of the major urban landscapes in Jamaica, where many reggae and rocksteady artists got their start. Trenchtown has also served as the battleground for political violence in the 1970′s.
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Some old skool hip hop and Kool Herc throwin’ it down.
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And to end, a short clip of RZA and Shifu Shi Yang Ming of the USA Shaolin Temple in Manhattan. RZA even performs a kick at the end of the video :] I am sure that any of these videos could take one far down the internet rabbit hole. It’s just another red pill kind of post I suppose.
Communication Theme
The other day I was talking to my room mate about how a restaurant I went to once a long time ago, had a mini flat screen television at every single table so that patrons can watch T.V. while they ate their meals. I turned on the T.V. but only for five or so minutes because I couldn’t stand that me and my partner at the time were just not communicating to each other and just zoned out on the T.V. Then I started thinking though, how is a mini flat screen any different from the smart phones that we carry in our pocket?
I work in the service industry at a restaurant, and I find myself noticing more and more that patrons are starting to communicate less to one another in real life and becoming more and more attached to their phones, most likely communicating to other people outside of where they are at the time.
If it weren’t for things like social media, I think I would have less friends. I wouldn’t be able to stay in touch with people I have met in my life. This even goes for my family. I remember growing up feeling so sad that I rarely communicated with my cousins or family in Japan but now with social media and other outlets, I can now stay in touch with them very easily.
So it’s weird though that even though a cell phone, or texting in some ways brings us closer to each other but in other ways it distance us from other people too.
Communication in this book is so prominent, whether it’s Nao communicating with her grandmother via text messaging, to Nao communicating with Ruth through her diary, or how the post mistress communicates with the entire town about Ruth’s finding. When you think about someone or something aging, some things that come to mind is the loss of something, whether it’s memory or freshness but as our world gets older, it’s developing newer ways to communicate yet the communication is losing it’s meaning more and more due to the newer findings (some people argue that communicating over the internet is shallow). Like Jiko, as she becomes older, she is communicating less (she is of few words) yet what she says is very meaningful and can be interpreted in different ways.
Blues & News
Blues:
Harold Ramis died earlier this morning (Monday 24 Feb). According to CNN, cause of death was “complications related to autoimmune inflammatory vasculitis, a condition Ramis battled for four years, according to United Talent Agency, which represented Ramis for many years.”
Ramis was a well known actor and director. I’ve been a fan of his ever since his role as Russell Ziskey in Stripes:
Ramis (left)
Ramis also appeared and/or directed Ghostbusters, Groundhog Day, Caddyshack, Animal House, Analyze This, Vacation, Meatballs, Heavy Metal, High Fidelity, and many, many more.
Ramis was 69-years old.
News:
Yearly war-games began in South & North Korea this week. The timing is unfortunate at the same time “Pyongyang allows wrenching reunions of elderly Koreans separated since the Korean War.” North Korea continues to threaten the truce struck at the end of the Korean war.
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A Tale for the Time Being, pgs 1-108
While reading the first leg of the book, I found it fascinating the way Ozeki broke up the structure of the book, blending Ruth’s own close reading of the material with the POV of Nao’s diary. Through this, we get to be inside Nao’s head and also Ruth’s, and it gives us a chance to interpret Nao’s words before Ruth even gets there. What gives Ruth such a drive to discover the truth behind this diary? It seems to me that Ruth has found a strong connection with Nao – a certain, desolate familiarity perhaps?
Nao is a very depressed person who has felt like time has slipped completely from her. At the tender age of 16, we find a person who has already given up on life. She is separated from the life she loved (in Sunnyvale) and has become this invisible, anonymous person. I feel Ruth might sympathize with such feelings, as she too is cut off from the life she loved (in New York) for a place where it seems, at least to me, that she might be too settled in. Her own concept of time loss corresponds with Nao’s, but Ruth’s loss is symbolized in a memoir that seems determined to remain unfinished. I also found a sense of “burden” placed upon both women’s shoulders. In Nao’s case, her father is suicidal and bares much of the weight for what happened to the family, which obviously affects Nao because she deeply worries about her father. Ruth had her own parental “burden” with her mother having Alzheimer’s, but since her mother’s death, has felt like perhaps she has done nothing worthwhile with her life since that “burden” passed. I’m eager to see how this connection develops but so far this is my take on it.
My Name is Khan
I have to be honest, I wasn’t a huge fan of this film. There were definitely things about it that I enjoyed, but over all I found it be a very poorly executed story. BUT first let’s start off with the positives.
Liar, liar, bums on fire.
First of all, I thought the first hour of the film was great. It starts ominously with Khan being detained in an airport, but it quickly moves into his back-story and his relationship with his family. Seeing his early years, his mother’s love for him and his brother’s rejection of him was very interesting. I’ve never really met anyone with Aspergers before, so I cannot speak to the accuracy of his portrayal, but I found his performance to be very endearing. His relationship with Mandira plays out beautifully as they get to know each other and overall I enjoyed that aspect of the story very much. I also have to say that I love how this film also focused on the racism that exploded post 9/11 and how that affected the Khans because, much like the Japanese internment, it’s a part of American history that isn’t really represented on the silver screen very often. In that sense, this film serves a very important role in portraying a different side to the post-9/11 climate, and could do well to educate people that racism is still something that happens and needs to be dealt with. With a message as strong as this, you’d think it could be seen as a major victory. Here’s a hint: it isn’t.
The reason why I say this is because this film has a whole other racist issue, in which we meet a black community in Georgia which, for some reason, seem to live in a village straight out of the colonial days. When the film shifts into Forrest Gump mode (another problem I have with it haha), Khan finds himself in the care of a black woman named Mama Jenny in this strange town, and boy does this character feel like a Mammy/Aunt Jemima stereotype ripped right from the early 1900s. Despite this film making a big deal about Obama being the first black president, it didn’t really do a good job of portraying African Americans. The whole hurricane molly bit felt very forced, as if they were trying to hit me over the head with the theme, and I think they could have dropped that whole subplot. The film would have precious minutes shaved off its running time and we would have a much more cohesive film. So beyond that, the film had pacing issues, felt too bloated for its own good, and had some major continuity issues which I’ll address now. Okay so maybe “continuity” is not the right word, but this film handled the passage of time very poorly. It’s supposed to cover 2001-2008/09, but it never really feels like there’s any growth or difference with the characters. Mandira’s son and his friend seem to never age, despite being kids during 9/11 and apparently during high school as well. That part is more of a minor nitpick, but I felt like it the timeline was sort of cobbled together. All to all, My Name is Khan has the best intentions but it was just poorly executed. The only bright spots in this film were the two main characters as I thought their relationship was beautifully played out, but Mandira is sort of shuffled to the background during the second half of the film, which kind of sucks considering how much she brings to the film.
Overall, I give this film 2 1/2 bums out of 5.
From Kung Fu to Hip Hop, pgs. 171-207
The connections between hip hop and martial arts really came into full focus through our class discussions and reading. I like the similarity between Jeet Kune Do and Hip Hop, specifically looking at the concept of sampling and how different elements can be brought together to make something new. We deal with this concept a lot in class in terms of “hermit crabbing”, as putting yourself in the mindset of another time period allows you to learn from the past in order to better understand the subject at hand. With Jeet Kune Do, Bruce Lee placed enormous importance on the “flow”, stating that a martial artist cannot predict combat and instead must be fluid “like water”. The unpredictability of Jeet Kune Do gave the “style without style” an edge over the opponent, favoring quick footwork (like Muhammad Ali) and a strong offense over a calculated martial arts style. Hip Hop, and sampling in general, utilizes the method of bringing all kinds of sounds to the mix and creating something new as its foundation.
Looking at a more recent example, in Kanye West’s work we find a huge selection of sampling that pulled from different bands and genres to create something new. Back in 2007 when Kanye West released “Stronger“, he used Daft Punk’s hit “Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger” as its foundation and through that created something different. The music video could also be seen as a form of “sampling” or perhaps “hermit crabbing”, as it’s massively influenced by the seminal anime film Akira. Another example is from his 2010 album My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, in which he sampled King Crimson’s “21st Century Schizoid Man” for the song “Power” and made it work in a way that was completely different than before. I don’t think it’s very often that rappers or hip hop artists sample 1970s prog bands, but it’s the union of two different eras and styles that makes for a pretty interesting song. It is these influences that made Kanye feel a bit fresh compared to the “bitches n’ hoes” attitude that invaded much of hip hop through the early 21st Century – although I have to say Kanye West can definitely be guilty of that as well. All to all, I wasn’t a huge fan of this book but it did get me to reexamine and acknowledge icons in our pup culture who are closely related in ways I never realized, and the similarities in approaches (such as sampling) are undeniable. There is a spirit of resistance found within these methods which help cross barriers and allow people of different backgrounds, gender and ethnicity to tap that same power and utilize it for themselves.
Tale for the Time Being
In class we went over a few themes of place, time, death, environment, and communication. I think loss is a theme that has definitely kept my attention. There are many instances in the book where I feel Nao and Ruth both somehow get these feelings of loss or being lost themselves.
First, let’s start with Naoko. I feel like Nao has lost her sense of reality around her. I say this because most of what Nao writes has some kind of imagination implanted into it or illusion she’s come up with. For instance, her first incident was when she talked about the otaku salesman staring at her in the cafe and she comes up with this perfectly schemed rape plan. I feel like was very detailed as if she knew what tortue like that would feel like for the first few pages of her diary. Another example would be her loss of self in a very symbolic way. Another example would be when she gets Daisuke to give her the card that’s been going around school. Throughout the book Nao seems to be willing to take whatever bullying comes her way and does not stand up for herself; however, at this point she takes matters into her own hands and almost kills Daisuke. “I took the knife and pressed the blade against his throat…Time slowed down, and each moment unfolded into a future filled with infinite possibilities. It would be so easy. Slice the artery and watch the red blood spurt and stain the ground…My fist, gripping the knife, looked like it meant business, and my artm felt strong and powerful, too. I liked that” (120). Here, we have the first sense of Nao ever feeling strong on her own and she somewhat is standing up for herself. What I am not sure about is if this is Naoko’s loss of self of who she was before this incident or if the whole time we were reading that was her loss of self.
Now Ruth (hah, get it?), I feel like Ruth has lost herself into Nao’s life. She finds herself overly involved in this girl’s life that she constantly thinks about it, until she’ll finish it. “She rubbed her hands up and down across her face, kneading her temples and pressing her fingers into her eye sockets. Why did it matter so much? But it did. She needed to know if Nao was dead or alive. She was searching for a body” (131). Ruth has been consumed by Nao’s feelings in a book. Also, I feel as if Ruth has been feeling like she’s at a loss with place. She takes the barnacles that were on the package to get them looked at and has this on going encounter with crows, both of which were not noticed or seen before.