Author: Sam Ivanovsky

In Resurrecting Still Lives, Debo states that working in the brothel “is as much bout theatricality as it is about sex”(Debo 207). Her points center on the abstraction of “looking”, as if it is something more than the verb itself. As she puts it, looking “is layered, circular, and reflexive”, and she’s right, looking can be ambiguous. I can understand the ambiguity of looking when two teenagers are trying to decipher what the other is thinking, or the look your crush gives you when they pass by in an instance, but in a brothel; humans act more like animals, disregarding everything but physical appeal.

A brothel is a place of exchange, specifically, money for pleasure (which can vary among people). The men that go to a brothel already have a predetermined outlook on the women they are going to hire and the things they are going to do. The majority of encounters are emotionless and selfish. Meaning, the men that go to a brothel have to satisfy an inner need. The same mindset is applied to the women; they are out to get money. However, looking is an unselfish act in a brothel; it’s a way to evaluate the women apart from their race, personality, or other characteristics and only for their pure physical attraction, not minding your own physical appeal. Money levels the playing field because men don’t have to rely on their own characteristics to get the women they want, and they even buy into a more exclusive pool of women. Countess calls Ophelia “African Violet for the promise of that wild continent hidden beneath my white skin” and this is the exact reason why men may prefer the “very white skinned black woman” (Trethewey 13, 6). The exotic African appeal drives the men to seek these women for the promise of the hypersexual, good in bed characteristics, but all these “positives” in the brothel melt away on the street where she can’t find an office job. The benefits do not outweigh the disadvantages for Ophelia because she is ambitious.

Before starting to read Bellocq’s Ophelia I looked up who Bellocq and Ophelia were. However, I found that reading the first sentence of the first poem helped me find a starting point for my research. I started from the painting that describes Ophelia as she “dies face up, eyes and mouth open as if caught in the gasp of her last word or breath” (Tretheway 3). In this passage, Tretheway describes John Millais’s painting of Ophelia, a character in Shakespear’s Hamlet. It is known in Hamlet that Ophelia’s graceful time in the river is ended by her death, but this is not the case in Bellocq’s Ophelia.

John Ernest Joseph Bellocq was a 20^th century photographer who worked in New Orleans, known for his photography of prostitutes in the red light district. Most of his photographs were destroyed after his death, but some were found and published in a book. It was known that Bellocq would scratch off the face of the women he was photographing, “these plates are fragile…showing me how easy it is to shatter this image of myself” (Tretheway 42).  Although Ophelia is a prostitute, her relationship with Bellocq is unconventional. Their meeting at the hospital shows the depth of Bellocq’s fascination with images that capture local life. His interest was beyond the nudity, going as far as to emphasize the other side of a prostitute’s life.

However, Bellocq was not the only photographer of Ophelia. The description of “a doppelganger whose face I loathe” perfectly captures the standard reaction to an owners mug shot (Tretheway 29). Tretheway also mentions “Tableau vivant” which literally translates into living picture. People would dress themselves accordingly and pose without speaking or moving, and this  was a form of entertainment in the 19^th century. It was said that this art form fused photography with painting. Tretheway describes Ophelia’s strange postures, which then were accompanied by Countess’s calling of “Tableau vivant” which cued“the musical undulation of my hips, my grace, and my patience” (Tretheway 14).

Throughout Bellocq’s Ophelia, Opehlia is photographed frequently, and these photographs capture the many descriptive moments of her life.

After viewing part of “Modern Times”, my first Charlie Chaplin movie, I now understand why Chaplin is considered of the most important entertainers of our time. His social commentary is dynamic and simple, and without words, brings forth a clear message about the status quo of his time. Chaplin created his work for the people, and in empathy, portrayed the common problems of the average American citizen. Chaplin was in a different era of entertainers and celebrities, where his wealth did not undermine his cause to satire the rich and wealthy.

We are introduced to the quirky Chaplin character when he is working his factory job. He is a bolt tightener in a manufacturing plant and is dressed in stereotypical working overalls. He is accompanied by many other manufactory workers that are also doing the same task repeatedly. The factory is looked over by an omnipotent factory manager who tells a strong, shirtless, American hero male figure, to pull levers and turn wheels to keep up maximum factory output. Chaplin halts work to eat, but he is constantly doing the same bolt tightening arm movement. This satirical act has a deep meaning. Beyond the humor of it all, Chaplin is criticizing the value of a human. Although humans can do many things, Chaplin’s character has been doing the same movement with his hands repeatedly, and his worth is in this simple movement. Even when his character is not working, he cannot stop movement of his hands. Are factory workers only good for one movement of their hands? Factory workers are seem as a labor force, but the depth of their stories, past, ambitions, and overall life is lost within the factory where they compared to heard of sheep, which is seen in the beginning of the movie. Their identities are lost, and they are seen as a mass of flesh, rather than unique people. This idea of “being lost in the crowd” is also portrayed when we are shown images of many people waiting in line for food during the depression. Human individuality is transformed into a hungry body that needs food.

Despite the negative connotation of the loss of identity within a crowd, there is a positive aspect to the individual in a crowd. When Chaplin is found at the front of a protest with many people, he is individualized as the leader. The outcome of going to jail is unfortunate for the character, but it is hypocritical of society to ignore individuality when it comes to the benefit of the majority, and ignorant when individuality is recognized when it comes to the benefit the minority.

Upon reading “The Paradise of Bachelors and the Tartarus of Maids” I already had an idea about the contrasting worlds Melville was going to write about. Perhaps Melville was setting up a story foil, emphasizing differences by providing contrasting settings. Within these two stories, we are taken from a gluttonous social order of bachelors in London to the secluded factory near Woedolor Mountain. Accepting the obvious differences between both settings, we can agree that similarity exists between the paradise of bachelors and the tartarus of maids.

Isolation, the perfect ingredient for ignorance, keeps the divine world of luxury far from anything out of the ordinary. For the bachelors, their “Temple is, indeed a city by itself”, where the men miss out on a part of life that is necessary to explain the difference between paradise and Tartarus (Melville 1259). The isolation is not only geographical, but between the bachelors themselves. The lack of diversity within the group of bachelors brings about a saddening truth which is revealed when they all get together for a drinking session. The men share “all sorts of pleasant stories” about other times they indulged in ‘elaborate splendors” and things that are related (Melville 1263). They feast off the brilliance of each other’s lives, but there is no need to live vicariously because the men have nothing to be envious of.

However, I find this endless bachelor party deficient of the most important thing men want, sex. Is it true that a society of satisfied bachelors can exist without the longing for sex? Not in my opinion. Maybe Melville wants to keep women out of his story for his strong point of gender inequality, but in reality we do not find this type of man, and especially this type of bachelor. The term bachelor in itself puts an image of a young, sex driven, male type “Runaround Sue” character into my head, and I’m sure I’m not the only one thinking this way. But how is it that in “The Tartarus of Maids” the man that shows the narrator around the factory is named Cupid. After all it can’t be a coincidence that Cupid is the god of desire, affection and erotic love, and the name of man who works in a factory that is devoid of all those things. Cupid explains that they only hire “maids” because they are steady workers, assuming that married women are well off because of their husbands, or will not leave their husbands for secluded job. There is a subtle similarity between the “blank paper” and the maids that work in the factory that make it (Melville 1272). Both are in abundance, useful for one thing, and easily replaced. A sad reality.

It comes with no surprise that “Life in the Iron Mills” is a powerful piece with many details that capture the essence of the factory environment. Set in the 1860’s, this short story provides a glimpse at how hard life was for the average working American of the time. Nothing short of hell, Davis takes the reader into the black and gray, discouraged and distraught, and sluggish and slimy world of the Wolfe family. Although we do get a glimpse of hope at the end of the story, most everything else described is full of disappointment and negativity.

For instance, Deborah possesses a hump on her back. Davis includes this detail to dramatize the unfortunate life that these people live, because if everyone was healthy, the purpose of this story would be defeated. Along Deborah, Hugh is a described as a man with “bleared eyes, and a dull, washed-out-looking face”, and the poor chap is also forgetful; a personality trait that is unfavorable for a man in a relationship (Davis 2768). To add to the misfortune of this tale, Davis creates a romantic relationship between two cousins, which may have not been looked down upon then, but now the genetic consequences and social taboo of the act are considered unrefined. This sad tale ends in suicide, which is also not surprising. The turn of events only allows the reader to feel pity for Deborah, even though her act of stealing caused her husband to die.

By the end of this novel we can take away that the factory life is horrible, and it’s really just that plain and simple. However, these humans strive to survive, and to support what they have, even if it’s not much. The human condition allows people to always have hope, and this is an important moral in the story. Many people will get discouraged, but they will still move on, because opportunity is never completely lost.

Thomas Foster’s article is a crafted analysis of Neuromancer, and undoubtedly well written. Although Thomas disassembles the book into many subjects of interest, I would like to address the subject of meat puppets. The article adopts two opposite terms, meat puppet and robopath, which serve as two extremes of existence in the novel. As Thomas puts it, the characters seem to always be unhappy with their existence in either their “organic bodies” or “consensual hallucination”. The negative connotation of being imprisoned in your own body is carried throughout his analysis, and Thomas concludes that Case is obsessed with leaving his own body.

Thomas is surely right about Case’s obsession because the novel introduces three ways to escape the “meat puppet” for Case. The simstim is a “gratuitous multiplication of flesh input” (Gibson 54) and is described as being something that the cyberspace matrix cannot replicate. Case uses the simstim to evaluate Molly’s situations, and the simstim works as an easy transition between the characters of the book. Drugs also give the possibility of leaving the meat puppet for Case. In the book we constantly see Case using drugs when he can, and even at the end of the novel Case replaces his organs to allow himself to feel the affect of drugs on his body. Lastly, Case uses the matrix, which Thomas claims “feminizes him”. By focusing on Molly’s disembodiment, Thomas overlooks the deeper problem of his simplistic logic. Case may be lending his body to drugs, but through simstim and cyberspace he disassociates his body with his consciousness. In other terms, he is prostituting his body to drugs, but when he is using simstim and cyberspace, Case doesn’t allow the interaction of his physical existence to interfere with his conscious feeling of escape.

The feeling of escape is something that humans love. I think that when I watch a movie, part of the reason of watching it is to do with the feeling of escape. I take on the journey of the character and leave my body in chair of the movie theater, while my mind drifts with the plot of the movie. When Case uses simstim, he is also experiencing the movie effect. The combination of drugs, simstim, and the matrix allow Neuromancer to beg the question: are we all obsessed with the idea of escape? Thomas hits the bullseye on this issue, claiming that “Neuromancer depicts a situation in which the characters are neither the masters of their technology nor enslaved by it”.

What is the difference between a human and a machine? We can ask this question now, but in the future will the answer be the same? In the world of Neuromancer, the difference is minuscule because it’s apparent that a machine can do almost everything a human can. An important conversation arises between the Finn and Case when he is in the Metro Holografix, and ultimately an observation that I don’t think can be a coincidence.

When Case questions the Finn, “This is memory, right?” and the Finn explains that he taps it in , sorts it out, and feeds it back in, it seems that the level of control that the artificial intelligence has is incredible. The fact that the AI can manipulate his memory to an extreme detail scares Case because he questions Finn, “I don’t have this good a memory”. The Finn later explains that Case, and many others, do have good memory; they just can’t access it. Weird, because this novel was written in 1984 and research in 2009 has proven this to be somewhat accurate (http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/09/forgottenmemories/ for those that are interested).  However, beyond Gibson’s surprisingly accurate predictions about the future, the question of Case’s human importance still lingers. The Finn claims that he can access Case’s memory, but makes a point that memory is not the same as the mind. Conventional wisdom has it that the difference between a machine and a human is the material they are made out of, and while I agree that this is true, Gibson delves deeper and provides a great paradigm for the difference between human and machine through the barrier that the Finn meets; the fact that he can’t access Case’s mind.

In chapter thirteen I noticed that the police personalities were officially called “Turing Registry Agents”. In 1950, Alan Turing wrote a paper called “Computing Machinery and Intelligence” which basically questions the ability of a machine to think. He developed a famous test called the Turing test, where a human has to differentiate between a human and a machine response. If the human cannot tell the difference, the machine is considered to be intelligent. The fact that Gibson included the reference to Turing, and the way he twists the real world in with his novel while still making it relevant is incredible. The Turing law code bans the construction of AIs, and Alan Turing developed a test for machine intelligence. It just makes sense. What can we learn from this book? It’s all in the details.

From Kirin to Yakitori, this novel is influenced by Japanese culture, but this isn’t the Japan we know today. It’s filled with expatriates, cowboys, and a bartender named Ratz. The setting of the book is not your average city; in fact, it’s everything far from perfect. Case personifies the city through his low life character, and the reader gets a real life glimpse into his drug obsessive vision of the world. He’s a thief, and for two years he has been dealing drugs because of his bad actions.  Gibson vividly describes the digital dystopia that Case lives in, even calling beds “coffins”. However, I’d like to address the things that hit home for most people reading this book, rather than the overly futuristic jargon that Gibson uses.

The items that are mentioned in this novel are either made up, or very familiar. But this can vary from person to person, depending on how much Japanese culture one has been exposed to. To an American audience that is not well versed in beer, Kirin may come off as a futuristic drink that is exclusive to the novel; however it’s actually the most popular beer in Japan. This distinction between foreign objects and futuristic objects can be very unclear throughout the novel, but I feel that Gibson does this on purpose. Instead of keeping a familiar setting, he takes it further and chooses Japan, which in most cases is considered one of the most outlandish cultures in the world. Good for Gibson, but confusing for others. The reader is left to decipher between futuristic and Japanese elements, something that is hard to distinguish, especially because Japan has the non-negative stereotype of being very technologically forward.

The whole novel’s setting may seem like a large anachronism. Case is a lowlife character in a fast pace world, where one would assume safety from criminals. It has come to my understanding though, that this is why the novel is so revolutionary. The combination of high tech with low life has created a new genre called cyberpunk. The line, “she put a booted foot up on the dust-covered Kandinsky coffee table” really hits the spot, because like novel, Kandinsky’s artwork was also considered progressive and avant-garde, which may have influence Gibson to write novels like Neuromancer.