10 Reasons + My own Reasons to Be Outraged with Brazil

A few days ago, a friend of mine posted on facebook an article written by the Brazilian journalist Ruth de Aquino about Ten reasons to be outraged with Brazil. I agree 100% with what she wrote but I would like to add some other things that I believe people should also be revolting against.

Original article in Portuguese can be found on the link below/ O texto original em português pode ser encontrado no link abaixo:

http://revistaepoca.globo.com/Revista/Epoca/0,,EMI197611-15230,00-RAZOES+PARA+SE+INDIGNAR.html

Ten Reasons to Be Outraged with Brazil

1- The number of functional illiterates in the world's eighth largest economy, which is a contradiction caused by the continuing lack of priority on basic education and the quality of instruction;

2 - Privileges and absurdities of deputies and senators who recently approved raises for themselves and did not cut off any 'extra' money they receive (extra = accommodation, telephony, etc). With R$26,000 monthly (almost €12,000, 50 times more than the minimum wage which is ONLY R$510), maybe they should give up the 'extras';

3 - The excessive influence of the Church on the secular state in Brazil. Issues such as stem cells, birth control and even the legalisation of abortion and drugs are out of question. Of course it is ok to respect Vatican's faith and rules as individual choices, but not as drivers of public policies;

4 - Impunity of confessed killers, such as the journalist Pimenta Neves. Who has money, prestige and diploma gets away from prison, even after confessing heinous crimes and being convicted by the jury;

5 - Road rage, which makes Brazil record for fatalities. As the anthropologist Roberto da Matta remarked ' Driving with caution in Brazil means to be a bad driver, dumb and stupid'. Drivers here speed up to scare pedestrians, 'close' another vehicle, block intersections, and curse all the time;

6 - The lack of education of the Brazilian elite. A good bunch of wealthy people developed a bad behaviour associated with arrogance and belief in impunity. They throw garbage at the beaches and from the window of their imported cars, throw huge parties ignoring the 'law of silence', violate environmental laws, and ALWAYS want to take advantage;

7 - Crippling taxes that bring NO benefit to the poor. Cartels punish the consumer and make Brazilian products and air tickets even more expensive;

8 - The lack of a public health system that gives dignity to those in need and to the elderly. People are dying while queueing in hospitals or due to the lack of beds and doctors which is unacceptable. How many CPMFs (it is a type of tax) will the government require?

9 - The lack of decent housing policy for the poor even though there are many empty buildings;

10 - The lack of public transport in a country that has wrongly opted for cars. Metros and trains, connected to a bus net without any connection to mafias, should transport all social classes.

My own reasons:

1 - The prices of everything are not compatible to the wages. But people here get by by paying everything in 10x or in months. Cars have been sold as easy as water and people do not realise how much interest they will end up paying. Maybe the price of a new car?

2 - Complementing Ruth de Aquino's 1st reason, I would say the lack of education IN GENERAL! It is an absurd that we still have millions of illiterate (around 10% of the population)but also that many public schools are falling apart, teacher qualifications and wages are considerably low, and consequently the quality is compromised.

3 - The strong presence of oligarquies rulling not only the media but also entire states and even the Senate, like the Sarney family does: 50 years in power, it is almost like a dictatorship even though they were 'voted democratically'. Is buying votes through 'political welfarist' programs democratic?

4 - Seeing homeless in the street, including children, and feeling helpless. You never know what is the best thing to do.

5 - Seeing welfarist programs, such as Bolsa Familia or Minha Casa Minha Vida, being praised by politicians and the media while you know that the poverty problem is not actually being solved, it is being instead sugar-coated.

6 - The thought: "Oh that politician steals money from us, but at least he builds some things sometimes". Did we to the point of being THAT numb?

7 - We pay taxes without being aware of them. For example, when we buy a washing machine 55% of the price is taxes while we have to pay 32% more for a simple washing powder. Hidden in products and deducted from our wages, the taxes in Brazil are one of the highest in the world. And why can we not see where they go to? Or maybe they are well-hidden in politicians' christmas panettones?

8 - Violence. We can't take public transport or walk home at night, we must have at least 10 reais in our pockets in case someone tries to mug you while we walk in the streets, drive with our windows closed all the time and never stop at the traffic lights at night, don't answer a phone call in the street or use your Ipod or Iphone, do not walk with a laptop bag as it draws too much attention, and so forth. Oh, I forgot to mention: live behind tall walls, eletric fences, and if a guard watching your home. Am I overreacting?

9 - Complementing Ruh the Aquino's 5th reason: Every year 40,000 people die in car accidents. These deaths are certainly not caused only by drivers' rage but also by bad roads. Try to drive in the roads in Northeast of the country and this data will come as no surprise;

10 - Should we feel hopeless? I am already, unfortunately :(

Death and Life of Languages: The Irish Gaelic Case

I was checking another blog I have done a few years ago when I was living in Ireland and although most of the things I posted were a bit crap, I found some nice posts and I will copy and paste them here. It is written in Portuguese, so sorry, but with the help of Google Translate maybe you still can have some fun! :)

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Sobre a língua irlandesa...


"Uma língua morre apenas quando a última pessoa que a fala morre". Levando este ditado a sério, a Irlanda é um dos poucos países que fazem questão de manter a língua nativa, no caso o gaélico ou irlandês, no dia-a-dia de cada habitante. Seja nas escolas, no trabalho ou nas ruas, é impossível nao se deparar com dizeres como Fáilte (Bem-Vindo) ou Slan Abhaile (Boa viagem) . Apesar de serem poucos os Gaeltacht vilarejos, ou seja os que tem o irlandês como primeiro idioma, o Governo adotou algumas políticas que ajudam a preservar e incentivar o uso constante da língua, de modo que ela não vire apenas um mero "objeto" em exposição nos museus. Dentre as medidas, além do ensino obrigatório nas escolas e de todas as placas serem escritas em inglês e irlandês, há uma que eu achei INTERESSANTÍSSIMA: o incentivo financeiro para empresas se instalarem em áreas Gaeltacht. Além de trazer desenvolvimento para a região, a empresa ajuda a preservar o idioma uma vez que ele é utilizado dentro da própria empresa no lugar do inglês .

Mesmo assim, acredito que o incentivo financeiro nao é o único responsável por preservar a língua: a vontade do pr[oprio irlandês, acredito eu, é o que mais mantem a língua presente no cotidiano. Não há um irlandês que não me pergunta se já aprendi algo ou se gostaria de aprender. Obviamente essa força de vontade está concentrada mais nos mais velhos, uma vez que os jovens são muito influenciados pela cultura britânica e americana. Felizmente, ainda há alguns jovens, principamente os que nasceram em vilarejos, que ainda se preocupam em usar e ensinar a língua aos estrangeiros. Ainda bem, pois assim aprendo mais...

Dados

Outro dia estava estudando inglês e li um texto no meu livro que me fez pensar muito sobre a preservação de línguas nativas. Por isso resolvi dedicar este post ao gaélico irlandês e, ao mesmo tempo, levá-los a refletir sobre as nossas várias línguas indígenas que, infelizmente, podem estar mais próximas de um final infeliz do que pensamos. Eis alguns trechos que achei interessante compartilhar aqui:

"(...)Não há nada anormal sobre a morte de uma única língua. Comunidades nasceram e morreram ao longo da história, levando com elas seus idiomas. Mas, julgando pelos padroes do passado, o que está acontecendo hoje é extraordinário. É a extinção de uma língua em larga escala. De acordo com as melhores estimativas, existem hoje 6mil língua no mundo. Destas, quase metade morreram ao longo desse século. Isso significa que, em média, há uma língua morrendo em algum lugar no mundo praticamente a cada duas semanas.

Uma pesquisa publicada pelo US Summer Institute of Linguistics revelou que há 51 língua com apenas uma pessoa fluente, sendo 28 apenas na Austrália. Há aproximadamente 500 língua no mundo com menos de 100 pessoas fluentes; 1.500 com menos de 1mil; mais de 3mil com menos de 10mil ; e 5mil com menos de 100mil pessoas fluentes. 96% dos idiomas no mundo são falados por apenas 4% de sua população. Por isso, nao é de se estranhar a quantidade de línguas em perigo!

Nós deveriamos preocupar com a morte dos idiomas da mesma forma que nos preocupamos com a morte de animais ou plantas. Tais mortes reduzem a diversidade no planeta. No caso das línguas , estamos falando sobre diversidade cultural e intelectual, nao biologica, mas todas as questões são as mesmas.

A preservação da diversidade linguística é essencial porque culturas são transmitidas por meio da língua escrita e falada (...) As vezes podemos aprender com uma língua algo prático, como a descoberta de novos tratamentos médicos por meio de antigas práticas medicinais indígenas, ou as vezes aprendemos algo intelectual, quando a conexão entre uma língua e outra nos diz algo sobre o movimento de antigas civilizações (...)".

Acho que nem preciso dizer mais nada sobre a preservacao de uma língua , né? Acho que não temos que simplesmente nos "fechar" para novos idiomas, muito pelo contrário, o que seria de nós sem tal aprendizado? Aprender um novo idioma é um processo fascinante e riquíssimo para um indivíduo. Mas deve ser feito com cautela, sem excluir o seu próprio idioma. E é isso que os irlandeses fizeram (e fazem): quando o inglês foi imposto pelos Britânicos, os irlandeses sempre arrumaram uma maneira de manter o Gaelic, mesmo sob repressão. Mais do que parte da identidade irlandesa, o Gaelic também é o retrato de um país apaixonado pela sua própria cultura.

2010 Elections in Brazil: too much democracy or a portrait of the country?

I was thinking about writing something about the wacky candidates in this year's elections in Brazil, but BBC was faster than me and published this story. It says pretty much what I had in mind...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-11351808

Complementing this article, another thing from Tiririca's campaign that has drawn considerable criticism is a brochure that has been distributed mainly for kids. In this brochure he uses pictures to explain what he will fight for once elected and uses many of his memorable 'slapstick' lines. It is in Portuguese but you can have one idea of its content and how it looks like.




So, too much democracy or a revealing portrait of Brazilian Politics?

Making sense of the Troubles: the murals before, during and after the conflict in Northern Ireland

For more than a century, Protestants and Catholics in Northern Ireland saw the construction and destruction of thousands of murals that were painted outside the houses and commercial premises by local inhabitants and artists. Such murals displayed the ideology of Loyalists/Protestants and Republicans/Catholics and not only became a form of communicating what was happening within their communities but also turned into one of the most dynamic forms of symbolic expression. Although the first murals appeared in 1908 in Belfast’s Protestant neighbourhoods, it was only after the beginning of the conflict named Troubles that such practise was spread to Catholic areas and the country witnessed a boom in the construction of murals.

The Troubles was a period of urban violence that plagued Northern Ireland for over three decades, leaving more than 3,500 dead, which is a considerable figure for a population of about 1.5 million. The conflict can be seen as a violent expression of existing animosities and unresolved issues of nationality, religion, power and territorial rivalry between two communities: the Nationalists/Republicans – mainly Catholics – and the Loyalists/Unionists – mainly Protestants. Briefly, the former sought independence from the British crown and more political participation while the latter wished to maintain loyal to the British government. Its beginning is conventionally dated from the late 1960s, with the Civil Rights Movement, and its end in 1998, with the Good Friday Agreement. However, both dates are arguable, since the animosities in fact began with the English occupation in the 16th and 17th centuries and after 1998 there have been a few isolated bombings and new political arrangements, such as the disarmament of the IRA in 2005 and the beginning of the power-shared government between Republicans and Loyalists in 2007.

Throughout the Troubles, the murals were in constant change. It is easily noticeable that the issues chosen to be painted would vary according to the political and social changes at a given time. Hence, how do these murals make sense of the Troubles? What are their roles before, during and after the war? Furthermore, to what extent do they represent truly the events that took place during the conflict? This essay, thus, takes the case of the murals in Northern Ireland to examine how alternative media make sense of wars, which meanings are conveyed and how events are represented before, during and after a conflict takes place.

The murals as media

There are many terms that can be used when defining the murals as media. They can be called alternative media (Downing 2002) or can also fit into Allan and Matheson’s (2009) description of citizen media even though the authors refer to digital media. Both terms refer to the type of media that is more sensible to the voices and aspirations of the citizens/community as they are the ones who produce the messages and circulate them. They are usually independent from political and economical institutions[1] and they present an alternative view from what is being conveyed by mainstream media.

The murals before the war

The first murals appeared in the early twentieth century and were recognized as manifestations of Protestant popular culture. The main theme depicted was the Battle of the Boyne (1690), in which the victory of the Protestant King William of Orange was praised, and it was chosen due to the annual commemorations of the Battle. The Catholics, on the other hand, were not allowed to develop similar activities and the police constantly stopped any attempt. As Neil Jarman (1998) exemplifies, in 1970 two men were sentenced to six months' imprisonment for painting the Irish flag in Belfast and in 1980 a 16-year-old youth was shot dead while painting republican slogans on a wall by a policeman who claimed he thought the paintbrush was a gun.

Although it cannot be said that the main function of the Loyalist pre-war murals was to prepare for a further war like mainstream media did in other conflicts worldwide (see examples in Carruthers 2000), they influenced to a certain extent the discontent among Republicans once the murals displayed the British ‘supremacy’ over the Irish. Therefore, by constantly displaying the Battle of the Boyne the murals ‘have accordingly been used to animate hatreds both between and within states, castigating one or more two groups as “foreign” and “other”, even though they may share (or have shared) the same nationality and a common (though denied) ethnicity (Carruthers 2000: 44)’. Hence, the restrictions in displaying their own culture plus the lack of participation in the main institutions and political decisions in the society inevitably led to the outbreak of the Civil Right Movements[2] in the late 1960s and the Loyalist murals indeed played a part in it.

The murals during the war

With the beginning of the Troubles, loyalist murals now began to include images of violence and militarism but also kept displaying loyalty to the British crown. The Republicans, on the other hand, were finally able to start developing such activity and the first ones depicted the infamous 1981 Hunger Strike in Long Kesh[3]. Among the themes depicted, there were militarism, Irish culture, elections, historical events, comparison to other struggles such as Palestine, and so forth. Both Protestants and Catholics made a lot of use of the murals to pay tribute to their ‘martyrs’ and victims, to intimidate outsiders while entering in their territory, to draw support for the war, to validate the engagement of the community to the war effort and to highlight their past and culture.

Many murals were painted during campaigns, whether it was to ask for the release of the prisoners of war (POW) or to support the hunger strikers, while other murals were done straight after an event took place, becoming a memorial, a form of telling what the community has just gone through. Moreover, some murals reproduced - or worked as - news reports, displaying numbers and facts. Interestingly, media in wartime – including the murals - appeared to be at war with each other as much as with the state, or with the enemy (Carruthers 2000:10). The murals, thus, were also in war with each other. For instance, as a response to the Republican mural in Derry with the writings You are Now Entering Free Derry, Loyalists from Belfast also decided to demarcate their territory by painting the mural You are Now Entering Loyalist Sandy Row.

Furthermore, the murals also reproduced many iconic images similarly to what was also done in other conflicts by (mainly) alternative media during war times. Here it can be drawn a parallel between some mural images with the Abu Ghraib scandal images. Like the iconic image of the hooded Iraq prisoner with arms wide open was reproduced in a mural in Iran as well in an IPod poster in the US (Andén-Papadopoulos 2008:17), the murals also made use of iconic images from other conflicts or films as well as from their own conflict, mainly reproducing the images of the squalid bodies of the Hunger Strikers. Moreover, some murals were mere reproductions of other photographs or of some iconic elements taken from a photograph, such as the case of the Bogside mural to the Hunger Strikers.

The murals after the war

With the peace process in 1998, the murals also began to change. The most militaristic have been replaced by peace murals in order to ‘brighten up’ the environment. Ex-members of loyalist and republican paramilitaries group are now working within their respective communities to transform negative imageries into positive messages to new generations, investors and tourists. According to a report of Marie Irvine for the BBC News website, the new emphases are on celebrating the achievements in sport, literature or music.

Not only the issues painted have changed with the peace process, but also the way the murals are seen. Although they have kept being seen as an important medium to give voice and to pay tribute to their heroes and victims, some murals were also seen as rather intimidating or as a mere display of paramilitary ideologies. Now they have become the symbol of the Troubles and received worldwide recognition[4] as works of art though there is still some disagreement among some scholars and artists whether it can be regarded as such. Nevertheless, which roles can the murals perform in a post-war environment? They can perform a pedagogical memorial role once they seek to ‘instruct posterity about the past and, in so doing, necessarily reaches a decision about what is worth recovering (Sturken 1997: 48)’. Carruthers goes further and says that media after war may ‘serve as a collective act of memory or forgetting, or remembrance in order to forget; as a warning against war in general or conversely as stimulus to current (or future) conflict (Carruthers 2000:267)’.

Hence, the way a nation remembers a war and constructs its history depends on how that nation has been propagating the war – both during and after it took place. Therefore, taking the Miltown Massacre[5] incident as an example, it is regarded by Catholics as a brutal event which took the lives of three people and injured other 60 while for Protestants the perpetrator of the attack, Michael Stone, is praised as a hero for surviving the lynching and carrying out the attack. Thus, It can be said that remembering through the murals is in itself a form of forgetting (Sturken 1997:82) as each community only makes sense of the conflict through their own experience, heroes and victims while the other side is never depicted the same way, only as the wrong-doers.

Others, War Images and Alternative Media

Interestingly, the murals seldom depicted the ‘Other’ unlike mainstream media that constantly utilise the dehumanisation of the enemy as a propaganda tool in order to justify the engagement in a war. Looking at war history, it is easily noticeable that Nazis, Vietcong, Iraqis, Communists, and so forth have been portrayed as ruthless enemies that should be fought. Daniel Hallin observed that during the television coverage of Vietnam, for instance, like most of 20th century war propaganda, tended to drain the enemy of all recognisable emotions and motives and thus banish him not only from the political sphere, but from human society itself (1986: 158). The murals in Northern Ireland, on the other hand, focused more on depicting their cause and the characters involved in it and when they did depict the enemy it was usually done in a rather sarcastic way, mostly through cartoons.

Hence, what else makes the murals depiction of the conflict different from mainstream media? This type of alternative media – or citizen media – has become another space of war where the very citizens tell the stories the way they experience them not with the ‘neutral’ look of a journalist. As there is no dependence from any political and economical institution, they are free to do it as they want, giving the communicative power back to ordinary citizens caught up in war (Allan and Matheson 2009: 25). Therefore, at the same time the murals occupy an important role in giving voice to the citizens which is generally forgotten by mainstream media, they can also function as an efficient propaganda tool, especially if they are done by paramilitary groups. And that is where much of the criticism towards citizen media comes in once they can act as echo chambers for fixed opinions among like-minded individuals, stifling rather than facilitating discussion (Allan and Matheson 2009: 118) and consequently blurring the distinctions between work of art of ordinary citizens and paramilitaries ads.

Moreover, another characteristic of the murals – and other forms of citizen media - is that they can also lead to a weakening of governmental authorities’ influence over public during times of national crisis (Allan and Matheson 2009:115) specially when voices are banned from mainstream media[6] which turns the murals into a reliable source of information. Interestingly, the same media that bans voices is the one that helps to publicise the murals. Zuuckerman (in Allan and Matheson 2009) notes the irony in the fact that citizen media gain much of their public profile from the attention paid to them by the institutions they set out to challenge (Ibid 2009:99). In December 1995, for instance, when Republicans found out that the then American president Bill Clinton would pass through the Catholic’s Falls Road, in Belfast, they rapidly erected a mural so that it could draw visibility from worldwide media.

Whether being dependent from each other or not, both medias – alternative and mainstream – share the same question: why do war images have received a lot of coverage and have had a great impact on people? What is their strength? For Susan Sontag, war images, mainly photographs – and here it can be extended to the murals - ‘say this is what it is like. This is what war does. And that, that is what it does, too. War tears, rends. War rips open eviscerates. War scorches, war dismembers. War ruins (2003:7)’. Furthermore, many murals have raised opposing responses; they have called for peace and increased awareness to the brutality of the war. Photographs and paintings can also objectify, turn an event or a person into something that can be possessed or function as a species of alchemy for all that they are prized as a transparent account of reality (Sontag 2003:72), even though sometimes it is more biased than transparent, as it has been argued previously. Andén-Papadopoulos similarly argues that photographs – and the murals – ‘to a certain extent speak a language of their own. They are complexly coded cultural artefacts that to some extent place us in specific viewing positions and convince us to see matters in a certain way (2008:9)’.

Conclusion

This essay examined how the role of the murals before, during and after the Troubles took place. Along with explanations of how events, victims and heroes were depicted, the discussion was broaden to the representation of the Others, differences and similarities between mainstream and alternative media as well as the importance of war images for them.

Before the war, as Republicans/Catholics were forbidden to display their culture and had to witness the construction of several murals by Loyalists/Protestants which displayed British ‘supremacy’ over Irish, it can be said that the murals played a significant role in increasing the discontent of the former and leading to the Civil Right Movements. During the war, the murals continued to display each side’s ideologies and other roles were included such as pay tribute to the victims and martyrs, demarcate territories, protest against war policies, and so forth. Moreover, during the conflict – and after - some images were turned into icons of the struggle and they were rapidly reproduced by other murals as well as iconic images from abroad were incorporated into the Northern Irish context. After the war, militaristic murals began to be replaced for peaceful ones with a more positive message and the murals of Northern Ireland began to be recognised not only as a form of art but also as a form of communication.

Another feature of the murals, unlike mainstream media, is that they emphasised on depicting their own struggle instead of focusing on the enemy ruthlessness and when they did so they usually adopted a sarcastic tone. Furthermore, the murals, as argued by Carruthers, may serve as a collective act of both remembering and forgetting once they represent the conflict through the point of view of each community, and not the conflict as a whole. And at the same time the murals are a fruitful space for unheard and neglected voices by mainstream media, they can also work as an efficient propaganda tool.

However, the question of the content of murals being truer than mainstream media should not be the main focus when analysing them. Instead, it should be emphasised its role and its importance within Catholic and Protestant communities. They have penetrated into the memory of not only those who have experienced the conflict but also of the outsiders who had the chance to come across the murals. Their power in telling their own story, paying tributes to what they considered their heroes and victims and showing the meaning of war for each of the communities is indeed unquestionable- and surprisingly touching.

References

· Allan, Stuart and Matheson, Donald. (2009) Digital War Reporting. Cambridge: Polity Press
· Andén-Papadopoulos, K. (2008) The Abu Ghraib torture photographs: News frames, visual culture, and the power of images, Journalism. Theory, practice and criticism, vol. 9, no 1.
· Carruthers, Susan L. (2000) The Media at War. New York: Palgrave Macmillan
· Downing John D. H. (2002) Mídia radical: rebeldia nas comunicações e movimentos sociais. São Paulo: Senac
· Hallin, D. C. (1986) The ’Uncensored’ War. The Media and Vietnam. Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press.
· Irvine, Marie (2005). Old Masters Change Murals. BBC News website. Available on: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/northern_ireland/4562793.stm. Accessed on: 20/06/2009
· Jarman, Neil. (1998) Painting Landscapes: the place of murals in the symbolic construction of urban space. The Institute of Irish Studies. Belfast. Available on http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/bibdbs/murals/jarman.htm#chap5 . Accessed on: 15/01/2008.
·McKittrick, David; McVea, David. (2002) Making sense of the troubles: The story of the Conflict in Northern Ireland. Chigaco: New Amsterdam Books.
·Sontag, S. (2003) Regarding the Pain of Others. New York: Farrar, Strauss & Giroux
·Sturken, M. (1997) Tangled Memories: The Vietnam War, The AIDS Epidemic, and the Politics of Remembering. University of California Press

[1] Although there were many murals that were produced by Loyalist and Republican paramilitary groups, the majority were done by the very community without any political connection to a party or paramilitary group.
[2] The Movements called for more political participation, better housing allocation system, less police discrimination, etc.
[3] Several protests took place in Long Kesh prison and the most notable was the two Hunger Strikes, one in 1980 and the other in 1981. The first hunger striker to die was Bobby Sands, after 66 days refusing food while other nine hunger strikers also lost their lives. All of them became immediately martyrs for the Republicans and their faces appear in several murals.
[4] To exemplify this point, in 2007 muralists from Derry – who are called the Bogside Artists - were invited to Washington, D.C. for the Smithsonian Folk Life Festival, in which they recreated murals in the Washington Mall.
[5] The Miltown Massacre took place in 1988 when Michael Stone attacked mourners at an IRA funeral. After been chased and almost beaten to death by the mourners, Stone was arrested and released after the Good Friday Agreement in 1998.
[6] Regarding the censorship during the Troubles, see Rolston, Bill; Miller, David. War and Words: The Northern Ireland Media Reader. Belfast: Beyond the Pale Publications, 1996.

All the photos were taken from the CAIN Mural Directory: http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/mccormick/

The Man in the High Castle: A unique Science Fiction novel

When one thinks of science fiction, the first thing that comes to mind is the image of spaceships, alien invasion, vampires, galaxies, clash of civilisations and so forth. However, none of these typical science fiction elements can be found in The Man in the High Castle; on the contrary, it is found instead Nazism, I Ching and “ordinary” characters. Hence, what makes this novel belong to the science fiction genre?

The first answer is that Philip K. Dick’s novel has most of the typical narratives found in Science fiction texts: conflicts, identity questioning, hegemonic discourse, high technologies predictions and even an oracle that guide most of the character’s lives. Furthermore, The Man in the High Castle has one of the central characteristic of science fiction which is also relevant to its relation with world politics: the process of estrangement. Based on what Darko Suvin called novum – new in Latin – this process sets the imagined world of a work of science fiction off from the mundane (Weldes, 2003:9). Put it simpler, the estrangement is what allows readers or viewers to step into a different way of seeing the world.

The Man in the High Castle does so by inviting the reader to step into a world where the Axis had won the Second World War, slaved the African Continent and divide the world between the victorious nations. However, this is not the only ‘world’ the reader is invited to step in; there are two other alternate realities.

Furthermore, The Man in the High Castle can be considered an unconventional science fiction novel with some considerable peculiarities. The novel firstly shows that science fiction is more than a genre concerned with possible futures and imaginary worlds, but reimagines the world we live in by creating three different “realities”. Philip K. Dick himself wrote in the 1978 essay How to Build a Universe That Doesn't Fall Apart Two Days Later, that two basic topics that fascinated him were regarding what reality is and what constitutes the authentic human being."

Philip K. Dick uniqueness lies on what some authors call Dickian Ttime, which consists of the use of one of the main science fiction approach: the alternate history together with teleological timeline. While the former presumes that more than one parallel world with divergent history can coexist, the latter can be exemplified by the linear view that one event moves into another. Laura Campbell believes that Dick “takes the usual western linear view (...) and combines it with the Taoist idea of synchronicity in which any part of the whole effects all of the whole (Hassler & Wilcox 2008:300).” Moreover, Sam Jordison (2009), author and The Guardian’s critic, believes that there are plenty of world politics intrigues and tensions between Nazis and Japanese, but it is the focus on a few other more ordinary, small-scale characters that really brings home the magnitude of the horror in this alternate reality.

In addition to the Dickian Time and the multiple realities, the lack of a well defined good versus evil, often present in most of traditional science fiction, along with multiple real humans characters rather than conventional heroes or one specific protagonist, make The Man in the High Castle a unique science fiction novel worth to be read.

Want to read it? Here is a short summary of the novel...

Philip K. Dick’s novel is set in 1962 in a world where the Axis, Germany, Italy and Japan have won the Second World War. In this alternative world, the US was not only defeated but also divided into German and Japanese zones. Apart from practically exterminating most of the Slavic and African population, the winners – mainly Germany - extended their European genocide of the Jews to the US. For the few remaining Jews, the only way to survive is by changing their names, hairs and even noses and brain sizes. Hitler is in his late stages of syphilis while Goebbels is still an active member in the Nazi Party and assumes the position of chancellor after the death of Martin Bormann. In addition to that, Germany has started the exploration of the space and holds the latest technologic and medical developments, while Japan is left behind ruling semi-democratically its territories and praising American antiques.

It is against this background that the readers follow the stories of five characters, of a book which depicts the Allies victory of the Second World War, and of the oracle, I Ching which guides the lives of most of characters. Robert Childan is a seller of American antiques who tries to be like his main buyers, the Japanese. Throughout the novel, the readers follow his attempts to behave as such and be accepted as one of them until a certain stage, when he realises it is not worth it. Frank Fink is a Jewish who hides his identity under a fake name and tries earning his livings by creating “antiques” which may bring him unwanted attention from the authorities if his business is caught. Juliana, Fink’s ex-wife, is a judo instructor whose life seems to have no meaning and after spending a night with an Italian truck drive, she is dragged into a journey that she could have never expected.

Nobusuke Tagomi is a Japanese trade commissioner in San Francisco whose life changes after the visit of a dissident German counter-intelligence officer, Mr Baynes (Rudolf Wegener), whose identities depend on the missions he is send to. Mr Baynes then reveals the Operation Löwenzahn (Operation Dandelion), a plan of a nuclear attack by Germany in order to secure its global domination is revealed.

In the midst of the personal struggles of each character, a clandestine romance called The Grasshopper Lies Heavy, written by a man who supposedly lives in a high castle named Hawthorne Abendsen, enters the lives of some of them, changing their perceptions of what is reality, especially Juliana who ends up saving his. In this novel, the Allies win the war, “the US keeps with the Pacific (...) and Russia is divided. It works for almost 10 years. Then the troubles begin...naturally (Dick 2006:183)”. Churchill engages himself in a semi-dictatorial form of governing the British Empire, and becomes the dominant world power, after the US drowns itself in a period of decay after the economic expansion under Rexford Tugwell presidency.

Furthermore, in Dick’s novel, most of characters, including Abendsen, “are connected to this moment to throw stalks to select the proper wisdom in a book initiated in the century 3 BC (Dick 2006:22)”, in other words, make use of the I Ching in order to take decisions.Nothing in the book is really what it seems to be: most characters are not what they say they are, most objects are fake and even “reality” is presented in three different ways. As the Guardian’s critics Sam Jordison (2009) puts it, “It is a mark of Dick's achievement that he can keep us transfixed as he guides us through this labyrinth. Though he provides no easy answers, leaves all his plot strands deliberately trailing and gives us nothing more to grab hold of than a delicious ambiguity, we are left feeling entirely satisfied”.

References

· Jordison, Sam (2009). Philip K Dick's alternative memory lane. The Guardian. Available on http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2009/feb/05/philip-k-dick-high-castle-hugo. Accessed on 07/02/2010

. Weldes, Jutta, ed (2003) To Seek Out New World. Exploring Links Between Science fiction and World Politics. Houndmills: Palgrave

· Klapcsik, Sandor (2008). “Politics, Multiplicity, and Mythical Time in the Oeuvre of Philip K. Dick”. In Hassler, Donald M. And Clyde Wilcox, eds. New Boundaries in Political Science fiction. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press