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

About other Walls - Belfast

The Falls' International Peace Wall

This month, the whole world celebrates the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. This event is considered by many as a symbol of the "triumph" of the capitalism over socialism. It was indeed an important step to democracy, families could be finally reunited and after almost a century of wars and dictatorship, Germany could finally say they were in peace.

However, while watching the coverage of the worldwide media one thing that came to mind (at least mine) was why did the media not take advantage of the exposure of this issue - the wall - and discussed about other walls that are still been built - such as the ones in Palestine - and the walls that have no prediction to be torn down - such as the ones in Belfast? So in the next two posts I will focus on both cases as much has already been said about the Berlin wall.

The "Peace lines" of Belfast

Exactly fourty years ago, Belfast saw the construction of several walls that later would be called ironically peace lines. Before discussing about them, I find important to give a brief explanation of the conflict named Troubles, that took place in Northern Ireland for almost 40 years.

The Troubles was a period of urban violence that assolated Northern Ireland for over three decades during the 20th century, leaving more than 3.500 dead, a considerable toll for a population of about 1.5 million inhabitants. The conflict can be seen as a violent expression of existing animosities and unresolved issues of nationality, religion, power and territorial rivalry between Catholics Republicans and Protestants Loyalists. Many scholars and the media consider its beginning the late 1960s with the Civil Rights Movement and its end in 1998, with the Good Friday Agreement.

However, both dates are arguable, since much of the animosities were built centuries ago since the British started the colonisation of the island of Ireland. In addition to that, after 1998 there were bombings and new political arrangements, such as the total disarmament of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) in 2005, and the election of former enemies Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness to the shared-power government in 2007. In March 2008, Paisley announced he would retire from political and religious life and Peter Robinson was elected the next month as his successor. Up to today, a few single acts of violence still take place in the region although in a smaller scale than during the Troubles.

The Peace lines

Throughout the Troubles, Belfast has seen the construction of walls. They were used along with check points and watch towers to keep the "peace" between both communities. They were first built in September 1969 by the British Army after a period of extreme sectarian rioting. The authorities justified its construction by saying they were built to protect the population, attending therefore their own demand. As Bardon puts it "...citizens found that their city had become a war zone; soldiers first blocked off the streets with knife-rests and concertina wire; later sensitive areas were separated more permanently by walls of corrugated iron bristling with barbed wire (Bardon 1982: 283*)". It is true though that before the walls were built, the very communities had already built some barricades to separate from each other. However, whether been their own demand or not, does the building of walls bring peace indeed? Or Does it bring more difference and hatre as instead of bringing communities together to try to sort their animosities they actually tear them apart and highlight their differences?

The walls of Belfast are quite impressive, I would say more than their Berlin counterparts. Some measure more than 8m high and from a few hundred meters to 5km length. Three layers were built in different periods in order to stop people throwing things over and these layers are highly visible (photo on the left). In one of them, The Falls' International Peace Wall, an open air galery was created similarly to the East Side Gallery of Berlin. In the Belfast one, the several works of art exposed not only re-tell the history of the Troubles, but also display their opinion about other worldwide conflicts, such as Palestine and Iraq. Along with the infamous murals painted on the outside houses and shops, the International Peace Wall is a true guide to understand what happened there and are definetely valuable works of art.

In 1994, with the first cease-fire and when everyone was celebrating the so-dreamt peace, there were 26 walls in Belfast. As shortly after the cease-fire the violence continued to take place, more walls were built totaling 80 and today the city has 40 distributed in 14 neighborhoods. Ironically, if the main reason to build them was to bring peace to the communities, why are they still there when all the politicians have been praising the Northern Ireland's peace process as an example to be followed by other nations in conflict? Maybe these walls are not that "peaceful"...or it's high time to bring them down.

* Bardon J Belfast An illustrated History 1982 Blackstaff Press, Belfast

The representation of the Others in Brazilian soap operas

In the past, the pillory was the stick and the whip. Today they are in the mass media. Our self-steem has been whipped every time. (Antônio Pitanga, actor)

For the first time in Brazilian television history a black actress was chosen for the leading role of a prime time soap opera in the main television network, Rede Globo. The very author and director of the 2009 soap opera Viver a Vida (Living Life) have been discoursing proudly about the choice and many consider it an important step in the black struggle in Brazil. However, if we go further and analyse the presence of other black in the soap opera, we can easily see their roles have kept up with the stereotyped view of the black in the Brazilian society – as inferior domestic workers, criminals or extremely sensual or sexual.

It is important, beforehand, to bear in mind that Brazil has a very mixed racial society, as there are descendants from European colonizers and immigrants - such as Portuguese and Italian - Asian immigrants - mainly from Japan and Lebanon - Native Indians and African slaves. According to the 2007 census, almost 50% of the population is white, 6,9% are black, less than 10% Indian and 42,6% consider themselves mixed. Another important fact is that the majority of the richest layer of the society is formed by white people as well as it is concentrated in the southern region of the country, where the majority of the population is white or at least mixed but descendent from Europeans and Asiatic.

Once having in mind the social characteristics of the Brazilian society it gets easier to identify the roles represented in the soap operas, as they are one of the most consumed product of the country’s media. Throughout the decades, Araújo (2000) identified an increase in the number of soap operas with black characters, from 25 in the 1960s to 72 in the 1990s. Still, it was observed that the roles they have represented have not changed considerably, restricting women to subaltern roles such as maids and attractive slaves and men to aggressive roles such as thieves and drug-dealers. In Viver a Vida, for instance, the character Bene is a black criminal while the black couple Matilda and Onofre are the domestic workers in the summer mansion of a white family.

In doing so, soap operas keep broadcasting a superiority of whites over black and Indians, and, consciously or not, contribute to the construction of a white identity, imposing the white and European aesthetics as the only beauty pattern (Araújo 2000). Richard Dyer goes further when he argues that whiteness generally colonises the stereotypical definition of all social categories other than those of race (Dyer 1997: p.12). The whiteness discourse in Brazilians soap operas thus not only reinforces racial stereotypes but also economical - white rich x black poor – and cultural – white is the pattern of beauty.

In addition to maids and criminals, another role generally played by black actors is the attractive and sensual black subaltern that arises sexual desires in his/her boss/colonizer. This stereotype was observed not only in soap operas that portray the colonial past but also the ones with contemporary scenario. This view of the sensual and sexual black is still similarly held by Europeans and it is widely reproduced by the Brazilian white media.

Not only blacks are portrayed as the “Others” by Rede Globo’s soap operas. The slums (favelas) have been drawing more attention in the national media recently. Since 2002, after the film City of God reached 3 million viewers in national cinema – which is considered a very high figure for national productions - and got notoriety in the international cinema, the slums have been the scenario of many attempts to represent this “other” part of the Brazilian society.

In 2008, Duas caras (Two Faces) had a neat and organised slum as the main scenario and made no reference whatsoever to the drug traffic and the war held inside by the drug dealers. Its author, Aguinaldo Silva, admitted that he wanted to get away from the frequent image of the slums as a dangerous and poor place, however in doing so, he ended up representing it through the point of view of the national white elite. Interestingly, in the same year, the British newspaper Financial Times published an article about the representation of the slums in Brazilian soap operas which summarises this elitist point of view.

They[soap operas] deal with issues of daily concern to viewers, such as crime, under-age sex and drug-taking -except that this is not quite Brazil, because everybody and everything is just a bit, often a lot, better-looking and less alarming than in real life. The poor, especially, do rather better in Globo's world than they do in the real one: they are better fed and clothed, get on better with their middle-class employers and live in favelas -Brazil's ubiquitous urban shanty-towns -that leave the real thing literally in the dust. (Wheathey, 2008)

Thus, it can be said that the “slumification” in Brazilian soap operas is a white elite fabrication which can be similarly compared to some issues of the Studies of Post-Colonialism. As Azzedine Haddout puts it, “negritude is nothing but a colonial fabrication, a Western mythology. Put simply, like a good orientalist who orientalises the Orient by fabricating, [Leopold Sedar] Senghor africanize the Africans (Haddout 2005: p.288)”.

More parallels can be drawn between Post-Colonialism studies and Media Studies having the Brazilian soap operas as the object of analysis of the concept of the “Other”. To summarize the discussion carried on above, the blacks and the slums are portrayed as the others by Rede Globo’s soap operas. They are, therefore, the Brazilian subalterns - term used by the Chakravorty Spivak, whose work Can the Subalterns speak is considered one of the most influent in Post-Colonialist Studies (Maggio 2007: p.419). They have no voice in the Brazilian media as the only space given to them is restricted to the white stereotyped view of them – the blacks are domestic workers, slaves, criminals and sexual objects; and the slums – a place that has no violence, only happy people living in an organised community. Hence, like the Western approach to the subaltern, the Brazilian white media either speak for or silently let them [the subalterns] speak for themselves. Both strategies silence the them because they ignore the positional relations of the dominant to the subaltern (Maggio 2007: p.422).

Furthermore, it is easily observed that while the white and rich characters “evolve” in every soap opera, black and poor seem to stop in time. The formers have their stories varied and occupy a highlighted importance in the plot while the latters are generally stuck in the same secondary and stereotyped roles. Once again, they can be compared to the Post-Colonial dichotomy West Colonizers x Colonies once the west – in the Brazilian case, the white elite - is defined by its differentiation between the present, past and future, as well as sense of the other. The colonial world – the black and poor in Brazil - has no such self identity, at least as the western viewers perceives it (Maggio 2007: p.424).

One aspect that must be recognised in the inclusion of black people in leading roles and slums in the main scenario is that they are bringing to some extent such discussions to the society, although in a very shy and biased way. Indeed, it is an important small step but still, it is not enough to shorten the (considerable) distance between “Us” and “Them” in Brazil.

Translation: Warning!Rede Clobo!Risk of damaging the brain

References

- Araújo, J. Z. (2000). A Negação do Brasil: O Negro na Telenovela Brasileira. SP: Senac.
- Dyer, Richard (1997): White, London: Routledge
- Haddour, Azzedine (2005): “Sartre and Fanon – On Negritúde and Political Participation” in Sartre Studies International, Vol 11, Issues 1 & 2, 2005, 286-301.
- Maggio, J (2007: “Can the Subaltern Be Heard? Political Theory, Translation, Representation, and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak” in Alternatives 32 (2007), 419-443.
- Wheately, Jonathan. “Brazil's winning game-plan”. Financial Times, 6 de Junho de 2008.

The Branjelina Industry

I read this The Guardian artcile a few months ago and I found it quite interesting. Although it does not go further in the discussion, it worths taking a few minutes to read it.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2009/jun/24/magazines-media-aniston-jolie-pitt

Framing a Global Crisis: An Analysis of the Coverage of the Latest Israeli-Palestinian Conflict by Al-Jazeera and CNN

This paper analyses the media coverage of the latest conflict between Israel and Palestine which took place between the 27th of December 2008 until the 18th of January 2009[1]. It was chosen as it is a war generally widely reported by the media around the world and therefore it can be quite useful in the discussion of global crisis reporting which is what this paper intend to engage. The main question this study proposes to answer is regarding the global aspect of Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Which elements seen in media reports and in historical and economical relations make Palestine a global crisis? In addition to that, this paper also does a framing analysis on the discourse used by two (considered) opposite channels, the CNN and the English version of Al-Jazeera, during the coverage of the conflict in order to complement and support the points of view expressed.

Firstly, the paper focus on to the discussion about the role of the media in a globalised world, drawing from literature on the determinants of international news coverage in an attempt to examine the myths surrounding media globalisation [2] as well as its main characteristics. The work of Kai Hafez (2007), who analysed the myths, Thomas J. Johnson and Shahira Fahmy’s (2008) study on Al-Jazeera, as well as Divya C. McMillan’s (2007) and Jean K. Chalaby’s (2006) discussions about hybridization are the main points examined in this part and are directly related to the case of the media coverage of Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Once understood the discussions surrounding media globalisation, the second part of this paper tries thus to answer the main question by examining what makes a crisis global and hence what is global about the conflict between Israel and Palestine. Simon Cottle’s global crisis reporting (2009) analysis is the main source used along with Guy J. Golan’s (2008) examination of newsworthiness and examples taken from the framing analyses to complement and reinforce the arguments proposed.

Lastly, the paper exposes the findings of the framing analyses carried out during the 23 days of the conflict. It thoroughly compared the discourse and elements (image edition, interviews selection, issues framed, etc) utilised as well as the extent of the coverage by the American channel CNN and the English-language version of the Arab network Al-Jazeera. Other networks such as BBC, Euronews and Deutsche Welle were also analysed though in a more quantitative way so that it could be better understood the extent of the attention paid for this particular conflict.

[1]On the last days of 2008, Israel started a series of military attacks in the Gaza Strip that only had an ended 23 days later with both sides declaring unilateral cease-fires and Israel removing its troops. During the conflict, more than one thousand Palestinians and 13 Israelis were killed and thousands of Gazans had to flee their homes and were left with no running water and buildings were badly damaged. According to Israelis authorities, the offensive began to stop Hamas throwing rockets into their territory and the smuggling of weapons through the tunnels between Palestine and Egypt. Palestinian authorities as well as the international community condemned such act and in September 2009, the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) published a report in which accused both Israel and Palestine of committing war crimes.
[2] Globalisation has been used by many scholars with different backgrounds to describe a certain phenomenon that has been happening to mankind In this paper, we use the term to refer to the increase of interconnectivity and interdependence that not only the media producers have been facing, but also the very media consumer, mainly on television which is our focus.

See the whole article:

http://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=0AW_d0_v0zsNBZGhodnE5Nm1fNGR3cjhjNWN3&hl=en

Aliens and Framing

Like cinema, news also uses narratives to represent reality. Although many journalists claim that they only report a certain fact impartially, many researches revealed that the news are in fact constructed. By selecting the issue to be covered and deciding the form the story will be constructed, journalist are already framing and not only objectively reporting.

Framing thus can be done in relation to its content and to its form. When choosing what to cover and how to cover a certain issue, journalists are automatically influenced by their own experiences, racial, sexual and gender orientation as well as geographic and generational identities. The form this issue is going to be covered is exemplified by Marguerite Moritz. “The prominence given to that coverage in terms of headline size or minutes of airtime, as well as the choice of words, images, audio and video all plays a role in framing a story and thereby in influencing audience perceptions of content and meaning (Moritz, p.322)”.

Similarly, cinema industry also uses different forms of framing. If we watch the film Good Night, Good Luck, for instance, we will notice that the fact of being filmed in black and white, the portray of journalists as the heroes and the insertion of historical texts and archival images, are all elements of the framing work and hence contributed to the categorization of the film as a docudrama and gave some veracity to it.

Another specificity of news framing is denominating and stereotyping “aliens”, or in other words, foreigner cultures and peoples or unknown minorities and groups. These framings vary according to political and historical changes, as Marguerite Moritz has observed in her studies about the changing in the coverage of gay issues throughout the decades in the US media. In the 1980s, the gays were the “aliens” as they “(...) were typically framed as outside the mainstream, formulated routinely as the discursive other (Moritz, p.322). Initially, the reports portrayed gays as “sick, pervert and criminal” and only after several civil rights movements and the formation of many associations, the US media started to discuss other issues, even though not broadly, such as gay marriage and child adoption.

Other example of aliens is the US media and government framing of their enemies that have gone from the communists during the Cold War to the Arabs of the “War on Terror”. Films have also changed the nationality of their aliens throughout the years. While analysing the stereotyping of Arabs, Debra Merskin points out the role of Hollywood in vilification and uses Basinger (Lyman,2001,p.81) quotation to illustrate this. “We’ve had the IRA as villains, we’ve had the international drug dealers, we’ve had the Arabs, and we’ve had vague Asians who weren’t quite sure what country they were from (Merskin, p.164)”.

Furthermore, if we analyse most of the examples of news framing cited above we will notice that they will be most influential in shaping the audience’s perception of the world when the “alien” or the issue in question is unknown. Debra Merskin exemplifies the case of the Arab “aliens”, which there is a historical combination of (mis)information that has worked to construct an enemy image in the popular imagination. This can be similarly seen in Good Night, Good Luck’s portrayal of the communism paranoid by American society. Framing, thus, help us understand how journalists and films display values and judgments in the products they create.

As consequences of framing, voices may not be heard and some crisis and conflicts may be simply ignored by the media, like Darfur and Congo war, as well as some stories may be reported partially according to economical and political interests. Furthermore, it may cause hatred and xenophobism in a territory and may leave the world more troubled as it already is.

What is terrorism? Some thoughts on the subject...

Saint Augustine once told the story of a pirate captured by Alexander the Great. "How dare you molest the sea?", asked the great Greek Emperor. "How dare you molest the whole world?", replied the pirate and he went on. "Because I do it with a little ship only, I am called a thief; you doing it with a great navy are called an emperor". This story illustrates perfectly how the concept of terrorism has been used (mainly) by western governments.

They use this term to label atrocities that target the west. September 11th, London Bombings and more recently Mumbai shootings (although India is not a western country, it is inserted in the economic and geopolitical dynamic) are just few examples of how the term has been used. However, if we stop and think, what is the real concept of terrorism? Are they just violence acts towards the west?

There is a definition argued by many authors as the most appropriated. It is ironicaly in the British law in the Prevention of Terrorism Act and it says "Terrorism means the use of violence for political ends and includes ANY use of violence for the purpose of putting the public or any section of the public in fear". So would it not be terrorism what the USA has been doing in Iraq, Israel has been doing in Palestine and what England did in Northern Ireland? Similarly, all these countries used violence for political (and economical) ends and left population in a constant state of fear.

Hence, in this case it can be concluded that labelling something as a terrorism act is intimately connected to questions of power and inlfuence. Certainly, if a powerful nation such as the USA says someone is a terrorist it will hold a bigger weight than if the member of a Palestinian community says that Israeli Government is commiting terrorism. Saint Augustine has certainly anticipated the concept of terrorism. Pity the powerful nations always forget to use it properly.