Seven Degrees of Separation

It's that time of the year again when I have a bunch of university work to do, so I took the day to catalogue some more of the educational qualifications of some of my favourite fictional characters!

Honourable mentions:

Brian Griffin from Family Guy: One paper short of completing his BA from Brown University (he was too honest to cheat). Still working on that novel...?

Rupert Giles from Buffy The Vampire Slayer: Incomplete history degree from Oxford. Giles dropped out of Oxford to rebel against the family tradition of being a Watcher to the Slayers.

Arnold Judas Rimmer from Red Dwarf: BSC and SSC (Bronze Swimming Certificate and Silver Swimming Certificate respectively)

Anna Greens from Failure: Certificate in Google Adwords.

Bertie Wooster from Jeeves and Wooster: Unknown degree from Oxford (possibly Scriptural Studies, taking Latin as this was a mandatory subject for all undergraduates at the time), unknown if completed. Wooster was also educated at Eton before attending university.

Clarice Starling from The Silence of the Lambs: BSc (presumably) double-majoring in psychology and criminology from the University of Virginia, graduating with honours.

Walter White from Breaking Bad: BSc (presumably) majoring in chemistry from Caltech. As a New Mexico high school teacher at the start of the series, he would also have been certified in Secondary Education (which involves 24 credit hours in a Secondary Education program including student teaching, 3 credit hours of reading education, and 24 credit hours in a specific content area, 12 of which must be upper level classes).

Frank Underwood from House of Cards: LLB from Harvard Law School.

Perry Cox from Scrubs: MD from Johns Hopkins School of Medicine (interestingly, the character of Gregory House was inspired by Perry Cox and also attended John Hopkins). Cox also attended Hale University, a fictionalized version of Yale University.

Dr Evil from Austin Powers: MD from Evil Medical School.

Bunsen Honeydew from The Muppets: PhD or MD (unknown which, or both) from Carnegie Mellonhead University.

Temperance "Bones" Brennan from Bones: PhDs (one each in anthropology, forensic anthropology and kinesiology)

Professor Hubert J. Farnsworth from Futurama: Unknown, but he does hold a tenured post at Mars University (when asked what he is teaching, he responds: "The same thing I teach every semester, the mathematics of quantum neutrino fields. I made up the title so no student would dare take it"). The title of 'professor' derives from one's teaching or research post at a university (a professor is a "person who professes" in their field). A professor usually holds at least one higher degree (Master's level or higher) as the series is primarily set in the year 3000AD, the standards of academia may be different than modern ones.

Emmett “Doc” Brown from Back to the Future: PhD or SD (institution unknown).

Ross Eustace Gellar from Friends: PhD in paleontology from Columbia University.

Barbara Gordon from Batman/Batgirl: PhD in library science, likely from Gotham University.

Amy Wong from Futurama: PhD in Applied Physics (received in the episode “That Darn Katz!”)

Robert Langdon from The Da Vinci Code: PhD (presumably) in Symbology from Princeton University. As a professor at Harvard University, the least Langdon could hold would be a PhD. Symbology is not a real academic discipline.

Charles Francis Xavier (popularly known as Professor X) from X-Men: BSc (presumably) age of 16 from Harvard University. In graduate studies, he receives PhDs in Genetics, Biophysics, Psychology, and Anthropology with a two-year residence a Pembroke College, Oxford University. He also receives an MD in Psychiatry while spending several years in London

Gregory “Greg” House from House: MD with a double-speciality in infectious disease and nephrology. Completed at University of Michigan Medical School (where he would meet his future employer, Dr. Lisa Cuddy, MD) after he was expelled for cheating during an exam at John Hopkins Medical School.

Lisa Cuddy from House: MD specializing in endocrinology from the University of Michigan Medical School where she would meet the man she would later hire as Head of Diagnostics and date, Greg House.

James Evan Wilson (the Cy Young of medicine) from House: MD specializing in oncology, an undergraduate degree (presumably a Bsc) from McGill University. Wilson references having degrees from the University of Pennsylvania and Columbia University.

Eric Foreman from House: MD specializing in neurology from John Hopkins Medical School where his future employer Greg House attended. Undergraduate degree (presumably Bsc) from Columbia University.

Robert Chase from House: MD having a double-speciality in sports medicine and critical care, Bsc in pre-med from the University of Sydney.

Allison Cameron from House: MD specializing in immunology (institution unknown).

Dr. Leonard Leakey Hofstadter, PhD from The Big Bang Theory: PhD (likely in particle physics), Bsc from Princeton.

Dr. Sheldon Lee Cooper, from The Big Bang Theory: BS, MS, MA, PhD, and ScD

Dr. Rajesh Ramayan "Raj" Koothrappali from The Big Bang Theory: PhD (likely in astrophysics)

Mr. Howard Joel Wolowitz from The Big Bang Theory: M.Eng

My Learning Journey: Only a Sith Deals in Absolutes

One of the things I had to do for my teacher training was present a "learning journey" at the end of the programme which reflected on how my year of being a student teacher made me a better teacher. I'm reproducing the text of that presentation here:

So, this is mainly going to be about the development of my professional disposition as a teacher. Before I begin, I'd like to mention the behavioural science paper “Why the Unskilled Are Unaware: Further Explorations of (Absent) Self-Insight Among the Incompetent” which notes that people are typically overly optimistic when evaluating the quality of their performance on social and intellectual tasks. In particular, poor performers grossly overestimate their performances because their incompetence deprives them of the skills needed to recognize their deficits. I bring this up because I'm a “lifer”, I went from school to university to this programme, and I assumed that I would not be in for any surprises at all. Boy, was I wrong about that.

So, like the paper mentions, I was overly optimistic about what I thought being a teacher was, because my idea of what a teacher was was a Jedi, from Star Wars, taking in young Padawan learners and honing their craft to use the Force. My first significant moment then, came from the first week of Edcursec classes about lesson plans, and curriculum documents, and that's when I realized that being a teacher is way more like being an office worker or low-level administrator than I ever imagined [show lesson plans made]. You have to be comfortable dealing with paperwork, and that really changed how I look at teaching. I used to think that a teacher's role was predominantly inside a classroom, but it's more preparing for the classroom. This only really struck me when I was on practicum and scripting and, even sometimes, rehearsing lessons.

My first practicum school was Lynfield College which is where I actually went to school, so that was deja vu. Until that point, I hadn't really talked to kids since I was a kid so I had to relearn how to establish relationships. LC has this line in their code of conduct for student teachers about professional distance, and I went way overboard with this. One student saw my ring and asked if I was married or a bachelor, and I told that student “I am an English teacher”. The students learn about you as you learn about them and so over time I did try and learn everyone's name with crazy mnemonics. I also got ATs who had taught me and I really changed my outlook on how they were as teachers. I used to think that teachers had noisy classrooms because they were too nice. Now I know better; now I know that there's an element of chemistry in student-teacher relationships that's necessary for a productive classroom. I'm also more culturally responsive to New Zealand's sports culture- I think kiwis all lose their mind over nothing when it comes to rugby- but I'm much nicer about that now in the classroom and I pretend like I support anyone playing against Australia.

One of the things I did at Lynfield which has a BYOD policy was to improve my skills with e-learning, and that was often by just telling students to switch off their devices. There was an OECD report published recently which shows research which notes that there is no correlation between devices and improved achievement, and I was always seeing students use their tablets to play games or be on Facebook. In my opinion, no one over thirty-five can responsibly conceptualize what a 14-year-old will use a tablet for in a classroom. Students hated that I wouldn't let them use tablets, but it wasn't so bad after a couple of days. It dawned on me how much we shouldn't be using devices constantly.

I also learned that teachers need a level of attention to detail that I didn't think was possible. Ngaire Hoben asked me a quite-cutting question, she asked “did you ever find anything in school hard?” and no I didn't so it was difficult for me to comprehend some students' lack of savvy study skills. One of my handouts for Media Studies had a checklist on how to answer the question, and my AT very sternly told me to put boxes next to the items on the checklist and I thought it would be a massive hassle to re-copy thirty papers but I did, and man, did those boxes come in handy. Students love ticking things off.

My second practicum school was Avondale College and it was definitely there that I really came alive and kicked ass as a teacher. English is a really tough subject to contextualize transference because it's often hard to see how knowing film language is going to come in handy in your job. In my first practicum my attitude was just “you're here for an hour, I'm here for an hour, let's just get do this one hour together”. Now I'm much better at explaining metacognition and how academic qualifications signals to employers that you have the ability to think in certain ways. I think the real problem with my attitude in first practicum was just too narrow. My attitude in a classroom now is simply “you're here. I'm here. Let's do this- together”.

So, I suppose that this all comes down to whether or not I think I'm ready to be a full-time teacher, but only a Sith deals in absolutes. All I will say is that this is the most ready I'm ever going to be. May the force be with you.

Update: A Creature of Bad Habits

Update:

So, I haven't posted in a while so I thought I'd just write a quick blog to say how things are going.

“As good as can be expected, I suppose”.

It's been a very busy and stressful time for me, approaching the end of semester. I have two large research projects going on, which means that pretty much everything else gets put on hold which annoys me. I subscribe to the CGP Grey definition of success- how much of your time do you get to decide what you want to do? At the moment, for me it's “very, very little”. I'm currently writing this post as a way of just getting the language part of my brain warmed up and then it's back to 6,500 words of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and 5,000 words on The Artist.

So, what's been happening? Well...the semester's almost over and it's always at this point I like to take a moment and reflect on how the half-year's been. So far, no complaints but I do have some suggestions. Lately it's been very monotonous so I think a road trip is in order- the destination is unimportant. I really need to take some time to figure out what I'm doing outside of my university work. Certainly, I think I would like to think that I am not codependent on the university- although sometimes it is difficult to think otherwise.

Sometimes I listen to one song over and over again to get myself focused on writing. I've listened to Taylor Swift's “Blank Space” 300 times. I don't even like Taylor Swift- but it is a song which keeps me focused.

I dunno. I really don't have much to say- which possibly suggests that I've shut myself off to new experiences which is never a good thing. I'll do anything once, but I feel like I've not really “done” anything outside of my routine. You start dying when you stop growing, and this is a big problem in my world view, because I am a creature of bad habits, and I do enjoy my routine. Being forced out of my comfort zone is a necessary thing for me to do, but it's never something I'm ever going to be okay doing.

I'm finally out of my back-catalogue so I'll be posting new material here from now on. I had one story I was going to post but it seems in poor taste at the moment so I'm going to just hang on to that one for another time.

Ruby's Dos and Don'ts of Drinking

I've come up with some advice for inexperienced drinkers. You're welcome ACC.

Ruby's Dos and Don'ts of Drinking

Do: Drink with your friends. Humans are herd animals because it's a good survival strategy. If you're in a group, the jerks of the animal kingdom are more likely to leave you alone.

Don't: Drink to make the people around you more amusing.

Do: Drink at bars you like, not bars you think you should like.

Don't: Buy drinks at clubs. Pre-drink (or pre-game as the Yanks say) if you have to, but the cost-benefit analysis of $10 for a vodka shot is near criminally overpriced.

Do: Carry your ID at all times (driver's license, Hanz 18+, or passport). It's better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it.

Don't: Drink unless you have something that says you're old enough.

Do: Dress for the occasion. Suits and gowns at cocktail parties, jeans and T-shirts at house parties.

Don't: Wear an outfit for the first time when you go somewhere. If you're planning to wear something nice, wear it around the house a few times and see how you feel in it. The way we dress affects the way we feel, and if you have any concerns about what you look like, it's best to do it before you get inebriated.

Do: Share. You will have a better time if everyone is having a good time.

Don't: Pressure others into drinking. Offering is fine; insisting is bad. Allow people to drink at their own pace.

Do: Drink what you like. If you're a grown man who likes Smirnoff Ice, drink it! If you're a fan of gin and tomato juice, own up to it!

Don't: Be a drinks snob. No one likes that person.

Do: Enjoy a spa pool or a hot tub when you're sipping drinks.

Don't: Go swimming while drunk. It was nice knowing you.

Do: Go on adventures.

Don't: Go on adventures in a car if no one is sober.

Do: Play drinking games. God Save the Queen and Circle of Death are my favourites.

Don't: Play drinking games at weddings, or funerals, or interventions.

Do: Keep an eye on how many drinks you've had, and bear in mind your body's tolerance to alcohol. It can be very easy to get too drunk and once you're there, the reset button is...unpleasant and located at the back of your throat.

Don't: Top up your drinks halfway through finishing them. It makes counting difficult.

Do: Brush your teeth after you've finished drinking. Liquor on your teeth will make sure you need false teeth soon enough.

Don't: Brush your teeth with a bottle of Jack Daniels instead of toothpaste. C'mon Ke$ha, you're better than that.

Do: Try lots of different liquors throughout your life. As you grow up, your tastebuds will change and you may find yourself liking different things in your thirties than you did in your twenties.

Don't: Try lots of different liquors in one night. That's a good way to get a hangover.

Do: Drink Responsibly.

Don't: Blame it on the alcohol. You're not Jamie Foxx.

Dramatic Monologue: Mary Shelley

So, I used to write speeches and dramatic monologues for my friends in high school, for English and Drama. I was so desperate to show off that I could be clever, and my friends were often happy to exploit that. What I'm posting is The One piece which turned out leaps and bounds better than the rest, and was written in two days. For context, this was a Yr 13 Drama student (girl) who wanted to do a monologue in the guise of Mary Shelley (the author of Frankenstein; or The Modern Prometheus).

..

Dear Doctor

Am I a monster? For surely, if a monster is something that no one desires, then I am most certainly that. Doctor, you delivered my children and as they were in my arms, they were breathing, conscious creatures- I failed to make them beautiful, but they had form and grace. Neither was a boy, nor a girl, but they opened their eyes to see a paradise lost, and as I held each in my arm, I couldn't but think “it's alive! It's alive!”¹

Then, they weren't, and if my children aren't alive, then I have no purpose because it is a man's lot in life that if his wish is to give life then he is a madman! but it has always been that it is a woman's lot to prove that not only God can create life². There is something I must confess, I must- I think it will thrill you, it will shock you, it might even terrify you- but the two great mysteries of this, the region, the soil, the climb, in which the lost Arch-Angel fell, the two great mysteries are life and death³; life being the weaker- life is the absence of death. When I write to you I pour my soul, my life, and where from? These hands which hold a pen? This brain which cups my words? This heart which bleeds emotion?⁴ Life's easy- nature's way of keeping meat fresh, nothing to a man of science. We are not a single being, doctor; it is a lie- there is no contact where flesh stops and aether begins, only that we are made of many parts of all things precious, like a modern prometheus⁵- blood vessels and muscles act like wires and springs, and even after death, the wires sleep restlessly, waiting hopelessly for some sign to show that they have not been abandoned, cast away like used toys of time's predation.

There is death, one of the strangest tales ever told. Nothing to a blind man, who would hear the same of death as he would if he were lonely, and how he would feel that the world is quiet here. There is something at work in my soul, which I do not understand.

I am so lonely. I had a lover, but he ran away, scared and repulsed. He showed me how to read, how to speak, how to act like a human being for all human beings want is to be in the company of their own likeness. Speaking, reading, thinking, not so much movements learned but movements...remembered. Learning from many people, many places, each part of my soul is a part of them. Who are these people from whom I am comprised? Good people, bad people?

Like a bolt of lightning in the darkest of nights, he left, terrified of his creature which he had made, scared of something which could speak and reason⁶.

"Begone! Believe me from the sight of your detested form"⁷

The world to me was a secret, which I desired to discover...

He gave me life, but what kind of life was it? He was a master, but a master has responsibilities. A master does not leave his student left for dead in the weary world of wild endeavour, so deformed and horrible am I. All I wanted was your love, every bird in the sky flies with another, ever deer has a mate, and I am the first and last and I am alone. Even Eve had Adam on her wedding night, a companion to survive an eternity in Eden, though she was cast out, while I did no wrong. When I see others, men and women, with their young, I feel the snake tell me to burn the Garden to the ground.

Doctor, forgive me. If I were, in your professional opinion, an abomination, a social experiment gone wrong, a woman with such intuition, if I were a monster then the monster was the best friend I ever had^8.

Dear Doctor Frankenstein, what shall I do? You are my doctor, and I am your monster.

Yours, truthfully, Mary Shelley

1From James Whale's 1931 Frankenstein film. Also, a reference to Shelley's children who died in infancy.

2Quote from 2004 film 'Van Helsing' featuring Frankenstein's Monster.

3A mash-up of quotes from Paradise Lost (featured prominently in Mary Shelley's novel, and the prologue to the 1931 film

4Inspired by a line from Kenneth Branagh's 1994 film 'Mary Shelley's Frankenstein'

5“Modern Prometheus” being the subtitle of the novel of Frankenstein

6An allusion to Percy Bysshe Shelley or Lord Byron (ambiguous nature of this allusion is intentional)

7Quote from the novel, but here used in the context of Percy/Byron to Mary Shelley

8A quote from Boris Karloff who was the first actor to portray Frankenstein's Monster in a film with audio.

The Last Tin of Spaghetti

A little insight into the mind of a trainee teacher. As part of our practicum (basically an unpaid internship at a school), we were mandated to write journal entries of our experiences to compile in our teaching portfolios. I wrote this about ten months ago near the middle of my second practicum. Respect teachers.

In many shipwrecks, survivors are often occupying deserted islands as castaways with nothing. I cannot recall the details but do remember two men who, after losing their shipmates and vessel to a devastating storm, made their way to an uninhabited island. With only each other for company, they soon found that their fishing skills without equipment was negligible, their supply of cigarettes quickly ran out, and that they did not enjoy the nightlife of carnivorous insects. While I do not feel particularly seaworthy, I submit to understanding these men in regards to their feeling nothing. As I write this, it is exam week for my school which means that the seniors have gone off of leave. Through the luck of the draw, I have no scheduled junior classes and so while I informally observe classes, I don’t have any grit to do while the senior students are away. More closely, as I write this, it is actually night time and I am in the middle of writing lesson plans by the light of the moon and a computer monitor, with my sole companion- my last tin of spaghetti.

It has been a tough week, faced with the ever-edging reality that soon this career will soon be ignited and I will move from the unpaid intern to something quite startling- a professional. For indeed, a teacher is a professional and the more this week has gone on, the more I have grappled with this fact. I don't mean to gripe about Epsom Campus as if this were a running gag of a sitcom, but the staff there often talk about how teachers go to work to change lives and instil a sense of wonder in students. My sense of wonder is how teachers with this mentality survive the first five years on the job. Certainly, the variety of achievement that practicum demands have reminds me of the Hegelian master-slave dynamic (or, more cynically, of the prisoner-warden relationship). It has become my practice as of late to say to inert students “at least give me the courtesy of pretending to work” as opening their exercise books is at least a bigger step to the possibility of studying than a closed book. While teachers have a huge onus on the learning experience, I feel like some professional distance is required when students refuse to work and no amount of coaxing or pedagogical rationale will change that fact. We're teachers. We're not Jedi (I actually looked this one up and the plural of those heroic lightsaber-wielding freedom fighters is the same as the singular).

One of the Graduating Teacher Standards is “demonstrate commitment to and strategies for promoting and nurturing the physical and emotional safety of learners” and I am pleased to see that I have jumped another hoop in this puppy parade of assessment. During one of my informal observations, I spied a mutual loathing (adulterated loathing) between two adolescents which eventually flared into an emotional meltdown for one of them. Although it was my first time in the class, I was quickly able to diffuse the victory party the bully had thrown by sending him out of the classroom. Talking with him, I discerned that he engaged in such a conflict for no good reason other than that he saw it as fun, and upon the bare facts being laid out, it was something he was embarrassed about. The Church of Neo-Classical in Doctor Who don't have a devil- just the things that men do.

Another GTS I remember hooping is “demonstrate proficiency in oral and written language (Māori and/or English), in numeracy and in ICT relevant to their professional role”. The former is quite a boring story- as a threat to a few students who wouldn't do formal writing, I would teach them math (I know, I know- I shouldn't use one subject as punishment for another). Following through with my bluff, I laid out the Euclidean proof of Pythagorean theorem, and the use of triangular numbers in calculating two-point connections in polygons. Perhaps not a conventional piece of evidence for the GTS, but I must say, it does count (sorry-not-sorry, as the kids say). The ICT came in the fact that I was able to use the DVD function in the class projector while the reliever teacher was confused about it. Again, a weak show (but you haven't come here to hire me as an ICT teacher unless there was an ICT Teacher conference in Dunedin, and there's been a cataclysmic disaster in Dunedin).

A third GTS (I promise, this is probably the last one I talk about) is “demonstrate respect for te reo Māori me ngā tikanga-ā-iwi in their practice”. My practicum school had, in its tutor group time, the daily notices (yellow pages in the school) read out. One such notice was a scholarship being advertised solely to Maori students. “That's just racist” says the trio of white students who I genuinely enjoy talking with during the form time. I then seemed to be possessed by the Spirit of Educational Professional Studies 612A/B, and went on a rant about affirmative action, achievement equality, historical disadvantages that Maori students have had. The matter was dropped, though if it sunk in is impossible to prove.

Finally, I hesitate to go back to this well but I would like to talk about the fact that I am still living very much a threadbare existence as a student teacher who is unpaid and still with expenses like rent and food and power. Okay, maybe it seems stupid but I like a roof, and meals, and light when it goes dark. “Get a job perhaps” said my Visiting Lecturer the last school I was at. My answer was to bite my tongue, because the response would likely have been “oh, why didn't I think of that? You are a clever person. I see why they made you a lecturer!” It did, in fact, cross my mind to get some work this year to tide me over financially but I already have a job. I am at school for six hours every day and doing university assessments or school prep for three more. If you think I have energy for another job on top of this one, you must think I have a superhuman reserve of it. So, like the castaways I mentioned at the beginning, with seemingly nothing, I must conjure up a rather impressive existence. I must metaphorically turn palm fronds into beach hammocks, stones and sticks into fishing spears, and small twigs and hay into a fire in which to send smoke signals (SOS). This marooned status has, I know, been entirely voluntary, and so I posit that this should only prove to demonstrate even more that I desperately want to be a teacher for this miserly living is easily something I could have opted out from for something that might have fed me. I shall proudly write my lesson plans and university assignments by the light of the moon with my last tin of spaghetti for a friend, though like most castaway stories, I'm probably going to have to eat him.

The Race Space

So, I haven't written much original material for this blog. I apologize. It's been a bit of a hectic time for my Master's degree (or as I like to spell it, Maester's degree) and I don't really have much time now but I think that's a price I'm willing to pay. I'd like to write about something that I haven't discussed much with anyone over the last nine years, but I feel like it's something that is constantly weighing on my mind.

I am ethnic.

This is not that unusual. As far as I understand it, we all have ethnicities. I recently read this collection of essays called 'Half-Half' that I started eleven years ago and only just finished. 'Half-Half' is an anthology of authors writing about being biracial or bicultural. I've never been that interested in race, ethnicity, or heritage because to me, heritage is simply a geographical horoscope. Rather than by simply being born at a certain point in time, you happen to be born at a certain point in space- and for some reason, we like to think that this can define us. I know there are huge cultural and ethnographical arguments about why being born in one culture can greatly influence who you turn out to be (I, for instance, didn't have an arranged marriage or get into soccer at any point) but I feel like in a globalized society, we begin to assert so much precociousness into what is really not that big a deal. Should we be proudly tolerating cries of “I'm half-Irish, and a quarter-Jewish, and an eighth-Indian...” when you know that this person is probably soporifically horrifically boring?

I don't think so.

If you live in a reasonably first-world comfortable society, there are an infinite plurality of influences exerted daily, hourly, minutely, into your consciousness. Not just different races, but cultures, subcultures, even random acts of geography which are shaping the fluid sense of self that we have. How could you say that your ancestors had any real impact on you compared to the greatest friend you ever had? Not a huge Walt Whitman fan but he did write those famous words “I am large, I contain multitudes”.

Some people would accuse me of acculturation at this point, and I would reply with the fact that this accusation isn't totally baseless. I have no love for the idea of preserving cultures for the sake of posterity. There are plenty of cultures that we modern apes never documented and they have been wiped from the Universe's sweet face of existence. Was there really such a tragedy? “Those who forget their history are doomed to repeat it” some jerks inevitably say. It's a good thing we do teach history in schools, as we have gotten rid of racism, sexism, war, terrorism, corruption, and religious dogma. Thanks History.

Without pussyfooting, I know I sound like a sourpuss. I am not Anthropologist, merely a Media Scholar, but I would like to bring up two concepts here- Eurocentricism, and invisibility. Eurocentricism is the idea that those with European features fare better in a society that was colonized by white people. To refuse this notion is to ignore a subtle, but everpresent problem. I bear no ill will towards white people, but I have to say, in proportion, white people make up 90% of those who ask “where are you from?” An Australian comedian (I'm sorry I don't remember your name and I'm not going to be able to find you on the internet, but I remember you were on Rove and you won some Snickers Comedy festival) phrased it perfectly- the question “where are you from?” is really “why aren't you white?!”

Look, none of us chose to be non-white. Trust me, if I could I would. Being ethnic offers me no real competitive advantages in a Western society. “Passing” is something I do very well, and many white people have said “oh, you could be a white person!” as if to say “if I didn't know any better, I'd have said you were the normal colour a human should be”. It's not a compliment; it's just about the worst thing you don't realize you've said in a long time.

The other problem is the systemic nature of being disadvantaged as an ethnic minority, and I'm just going to leave two links on this at the end because I'm not super-interested in giving the math of this statement. Part of my problem with my ethnic identity is that I've always felt like I don't really have one. I wouldn't identify as anything, even now, not the place where my ancestors originated, nor the country I lived in for eighteen years, or the country I was born in. I am reluctantly content to just wave off the whole issue because it's confusing. Should it be confusing? I wish it weren't.

The other issue is invisibility- this idea that race is invisible to most “colour-blind” people. These people are jerks. “Oh, but that doesn't happen anymore” they might say, “I would never discriminate against anybody”. I don't think most people would consciously choose to discriminate in most social or professional situations, but you often don't know you're doing it. Metacognition, the ability to analyze your own thinking, can be difficult. To ignore the tumultuous landscape is to try to go skiing in the jungle. Sure, you can do it, but you've made an alarming error assessing the situation. Where would you draw the boundaries about where race-blindness starts? Is it when you get past Northcote and over the bridge? Perhaps just a little passed Epsom Avenue? Or is an epoch? Once we, in what would become the first-world, all abolished slavery, we fixed the problem of race. Was it the 9^th of April, 1847 that we solved the issue of race, or was it the 15^th? Perhaps it was when affirmative action was called 'affirmative action'. It's an epic army of cats, quick-footed and sneaky, pervasive and often unintentional, directionless and comforting, but unless we want to be overrun, we need to start thinking more broadly about what to do about this.

One quick note about the corrective measures we might take, and my overwhelming advice on this to white people is very similar advice I give to struggling husbands- give support, but don't try to take control of the situation. Hello white people, we appreciate all that you've done for us, but it's not your fight- we'll let you know when we need help. It'd be very similar to me arguing for Trans equality, advocating for the rights of Trans people to marry, use public bathrooms, et cetera. I seriously do believe in Trans equality, but at the same time- I'm not personally affected by the outcome of this struggle. When you're the figurehead of a fight which has stakes that aren't yours, you're not being a good Samaritan- you're co-opting someone else's life as your activity. Support the stance, don't try to steer it.

This is a blog about me though, and I just wanted to write about my own experiences recently about this. I've had the horrible feeling that I have been seduced by this race problem that throws me under the bus, in that I don't really have many friends the same ethnicity as me- and part of that has been by design. The people I congregate with have all homogenized in a certain way that I found attractive, and they didn't just happen to be white. I rarely make the effort to join Kiwi Asian clubs or date ethnic minorities, and this might seem strange- but it should be an effort. Though it's still a problem, it was an effort to get the majority of husbands to stop viewing their wives as property. Like that, we've come a long way with regards to race- but there's a reason why I likened an army of cats to racism- they're everywhere, and you often don't notice they're living with you until it's too late.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2864535/

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/24/opinion/research-shows-white-privilege-is-real.html?_r=0

“Desperate to be Feared”: A Textual Analysis of Brian Azzarello's Joker

"You really want to know what it feels like to be the clown at midnight? Where there's only ever one joke and it's always on you? Well, here you are. Now do you get it?"

-The Joker, Batman #681.

The 2008 graphic novel Joker, written by Brian Azzarello and illustrated by Lee Bermejo, presents a unique re-interpretation of the Batman mythos, giving an awkward and often unnerving portrayal of Gotham City, and the novel utilizes the comic medium to much advantage in achieving this. The novel follows small-town crook Johnny Frost as he escorts, and later serves the psychotic and sociopathic Joker who, on being released from Arkham Asylum, returns to Gotham City in order to reclaim his criminal empire. Two aspects of the comic's mise en scene highlight the awkward and unnerving effect- the unusual lack of emanata that demonstrates movement, and the irregular and erratic page layout. The stylistic choices in presenting this tale provides a refreshing and compelling addition to the DC Comics corpus, and it is a tale which could only have been told through visual narrative.

Unlike most comics, Joker does not use emanata for much of the book's artwork in order to indicate movement¹. This creates an unusual juxtaposition within the reading experience, between the impulse of assuming both static imagery and movement. The static imagery comes from the fact that without emanata, comics do not generally have an easy way of conveying movement pictorially. However, movement is conveyed in two ways, contradicting the “static” picture. One simple way is the level of sophisticated detail in which the artist has put into moving objects, such as the crinkles on the Joker's coat as it blows in the wind or Johnny Frost's jacket draping as he is suddenly picked up off the ground by Killer Croc. A more extra-diegetical way of conveying movement comes from the sequence and flow of panels, in which the reader is aware that there logically must be movement between panels, though they will not see such movement “portrayed” in the panel itself. In Scott McCloud's 'Understanding Comics', he writes “when part of a sequence, the art of the image is transformed into something more: the art of comics!”, expressing the idea that comics as a medium require sequence in order to function². Joker takes advantage of this presupposing movement in comic medium in order to ignore the semantic emanata. This idea that removing emanata can make a comic both unfamiliar, while details in artwork provide an allusion to movement, thereby instilling a sense of familiarity, invokes the idea of Freud's Uncanny in relation to the comic's nature.

The emanata, which is usually absent throughout the entire book, may act as a way in which to foreshadow the Joker's Uncanny nature to Frost. Freud considers the Uncanny to be 'the opposite of what is familiar; and we are tempted to conclude that what is 'uncanny' is frightening precisely because it is not known and familiar''³. If Joker has artwork that we may consider to be somewhat uncanny, then it can also be argued that this is a visualization to parallel the Joker's behaviour within the story in relation to the narrator. A common recurring theme is Johnny Frost's admiration for the Joker, in the belief that the two are similar in many ways. As the Joker begins his descent into chaos (such as burning down his own bar, murdering an elderly couple and sleeping with their corpses in bed, and raping Frost's ex-wife), the psychologically stable Frost begins to have increasing unease with the Joker, showing the uncanny effects of Frost seeing himself in the Joker, but also seeing something darkly unfamiliar.

One exception to this lack of emanata is Batman, who seems to radiate emanata in the few scenes in which he is present, swooping from the tops of bridges and engaging in fisticuffs with the Clown Prince of Crime. The sudden inclusion of emanata is subtle, and may be considered functionally metonymic in several ways. One interpretation of Batman's presence generating emanata to a scene could be its antithetic nature to an uncanny Gotham which lacks emanata, that the Joker is responsible for. The Joker's possession of panel stems from the lack of emanata very well; Batman's emanata breaks any spatial trope that suggests he is occupying his own portion of the panel. In Neil Cohn's article “Extra! Extra! Semantics in comics!: The conceptual structure of Chicago Tribune advertisements”, he defines the use of metonymic reference in comics as “a part of something to reference a whole or stating a place for an institution. In all cases, the metonymic element has some sort of related connection to a broader conception that it invokes”⁴. Batman's emanata may be thought of as a status symbol, referencing traditional and familiar Batman material where emanata is plentiful⁵, metonymic of the idea that this Batman figure has been “borrowed” from the mainstream comics to this re-interpretation. In Dennis O'Neal and Leah Wilson's book 'Batman Unathorized'⁶, they write 'Trademarks get their power in the same way- the consumer's participation in the culture of consumption is what makes a trademark valuable...Batman has value because we look at Batman and say “Tough” or “Cool” or “Funny” or “Hero” or “Bad-ass”'. In this sense, Batman (whose appearance can be likened to a cameo role), is fundamentally ineffable in his portrayal, even in this alternate-reality, uncanny, Joker-dominant story as he is essentially a trademark.

The erratic page layout also contributes to an awkward and unnerving effect in Joker. In Marshall McLuhan's 'Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man', he popularized the phrase 'the medium is the message', suggesting that the 'cool' medium of comics requires greater audience involvement and participation than a 'hot' medium⁷. Joker uses quite an active presentation unique to the comics medium, in order to convey the Joker's personality in the story, and his relationship with Frost, as it seeps into the construction of panel composition in page layout. Their first encounter continues the white gutters, as the Joker and Frost remain quite amiable and casual with each others presence. However, the Joker's figure is able to extend beyond the boundaries of his panel, as he is draped over three separate panels in fact, each panel with a different spatial point disconnected from the last, a feat which will only ever be displayed by him. Already, the Joker is demonstrating his ability to break extra-diegetical conventions which may act as a presage as to his breaking all manner of social conventions. The medium has intertwined the message.

In contrast to Alan Moore's The Killing Joke (another Joker-centric graphic novel), Joker has gutters which change colours, or are removed altogether in favour of panels simply being overlaid on other panels to fill the hyperframe. The first page of the story opens with a hyperframe divided into four equal horizontal panels, the first three of which share the same overview of a grubby Gotham City, divided by a pristine white gutter. The next two pages also feature rather casual panel layouts, with white gutters, giving a metronomic effect on the comic's atmosphere. These three pages all give a feeling of claustrophobia as the clean white gutters seem to contain the grime which the panel contents resonate. This metronomic rhythm is instantly broken on the fourth page in which the entire page is one hyperframe depicting the Joker's exit from Arkham Asylum and entrance into the story. Later, the panels are separated occasionally by brown gutters, as if to make the transitions between moments dirty, the gutter being the space where temporal jumps occur in sequence. These temporal jumps seem to have been infected by the Joker's influence on the setting. Where there are no brown or white gutters, there are no gutters at all to leave panels in a cluttered, uneven collage in the hyperframe which resemble the subjective time being expanded, such as Abner (the Penguin) having a long scene in which he is racketeered by the Joker and Killer Croc into servitude. The hyperframe having uneven panels overlaid on one another seem to make a clenching motion, similar to disjointed editing between awkward, un-natural camera angles on film, intensifying the uncomfortable atmosphere.

Joker uses the comic medium to its advantage in telling this unusual story; utilizing a lack of emanata and strategic page layout. An unnerving and awkward effect is given through comic technique, which is appropriate as it is immerses a reader into the role of the titular character. Through artistically intelligent choices, Joker remains a graphic novel that's no joke.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

-McCloud, Scott. 'Understanding Comics'. New York: Harperperennial. 1994. pp. 5. Print.

-Freud, Sigmund. The Uncanny. London: Imago Publishing. 1919. pp. 7. Print.

-Cohn, Neil. “Extra! Extra! Semantics in comics!: The conceptual structure of Chicago Tribune advertisements”. Journal of Pragmatics. Volume 42, Issue 11. November 2010. pp. 3138. Print.

-O'Neal, Dennis. Leah Wilson. “Batman Unauthorized”. Chicago, IL: BenBella Books ; Distributed by Independent Publishers Group. 2008. Print.

-McLuhan, Marshall. “Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man”. New York: MIT Press. 1964. Print.

1Emanata is included in this text for sound effects. I would argue that artistically,sound effects being removed would not make any significant stylistic difference to Joker's textual form as dialogue, which is included, already depicts aural properties. Perhaps if the novel did not include dialogue, the removal of sound effects would indeed make a similar intriguing difference from tradition as movement does.

2McCloud, Scott. 'Understanding Comics'. New York: Harperperennial. 1994. pp. 5. Print.

3Freud, Sigmund. The Uncanny. London: Imago Publishing. 1919. pp. 7. Print.

4Cohn, Neil. “Extra! Extra! Semantics in comics!: The conceptual structure of Chicago Tribune advertisements”. Journal of Pragmatics. Volume 42, Issue 11. November 2010. pp. 3138. Print.

5The Man Who Laughs and The Killing Joke would serve well here to illustrate my point.

6O'Neal, Dennis. Leah Wilson. “Batman Unauthorized”. Chicago, IL: BenBella Books ; Distributed by Independent Publishers Group. 2008. Print.

7McLuhan, Marshall. “Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man”. New York: MIT Press. 1964. Print.