“Aesop Retold” Review

Being the only one who has watched the final edit of the video, I will say that I am nervous about what the rest of the group has to say, but am very pleased with our project. Although we overcame great difficulties in group loyalty, we managed to rewrite our script, several times- from the bottom up, under three different authors. The footage shown today incorporates animation and live action, accompanied by musical tones which subtend the voice-over recordings which verbatim retell the Aesop Fables. Last minute actor drop-outs also forced us to improvise on set (while managing production budget and timelines), and not only did we throw as much money as we could into saving our project from becoming a dud, but also we outsourced animators in two different cities to supplement colorful re-imaginings of the fables. These constraints also led to last-minute editorial rewrites which may or may not be in favor, or particularly aligned, with the director’s views (Alejandro). As executive producer, I authorized editorial decisions for Jose and myself (also editor) to alternatively break away from the script to emphasize the animation element, as I, too, worked as an animator, combining Danny’s visual 2D artwork with composite layers known as gifs (or mp4).

The strengths and weaknesses of our project go hand-in-hand as we received great support (even from group members abandoned after feeling too much stress during pre-production) in recording voice-over sequences. The creative adaptation aspect of the project involved our placement of setting in “Aesop Retold” at a campfire. The traditional campfire story here is embedded with imagery showing cartoon settings including the Greek flora and fauna and the Pyramids at Giza. Such a comparison of the “campfire story” with formations of Aesop’s Fables and histo-geographical cartoon representations allows realization of the anthropomorphic vision that editorializes the fables themself. The trope of questioning authenticity is reminded in the end by Michael’s echo of “no sense” being made, as a validation of prosthetic sovereignty in actual retelling of the Aesop’s Fables. Danny makes the final deconstruction-worthy statement about “nature” and encapsulates the entirety of our course in the existential claim about our connection to each other around the campfire, to animals, and more importantly, to the fables themselves.

The Helpful Prothstatic: Avatar (2009) and Ethical Medicine

Bradley Dexter Christian

Everybody experiences Hobbes’ Leviathan, so when Hannes Bergthaller in “The real unobtanium” questions the realness of the film Avatar in his article, “A Sense of No Place,” his argument is one which problematizes. He writes about heroin and consumerism-as-addiction, “Yet Pandora itself is clearly an ‘ideal product’ , to borrow William S. Burroughs’ pithy characterisation of heroin (1966: xxxix), designed to induce in the consumer an insatiable appetite for more,” (Bergthaller 158). He believes that simply watching Avatar is not going to solve the problems of Native Americans, and as Richard Erdoes himself edits and translates the American Indian fables the literature reveals a parallel in which Native Americans themselves were not benefitting from the stories told by white people who wanted a so-called cultural exchange. Continuing Bergthaller says, “At the heart of this effect is precisely the ability of the film to produce an illusion of depth- not only visually, but more generally by presenting Pandora as a world that is as richly textured as ordinary reality, a world in which one can always go a little deeper (for example by learning the Na’avi language or at least having one’s GPS navigation system speak it; Cullen, 2010),” (Bergthaller 158). Bergthaller is citing on various contemporary discourses about commerciality and marketability which lead to his Marxist description, about the infinite progress to be made, depths and rabbit holes of Avatar fan art, graphic novel and cult-gathering spinoff, franchises and games. Specifically drawing on heroin and the opiate of the masses, his critique is significant not only for being Marxist, but also for subscribing to an inclusionary form of argument which allows him to play with the dramatic aspects of Avatar for drawing out the parallels to the real, and furthermore, the ways in which we immerse ourselves, or rather, hypnotize or drug ourselves into doing “more,” which Marx would argue is actually display of proletariat suffering for the master class profit systems.

 

The benefit, however, of drugging oneself or hypnotizing oneself, in responding to Bergthaller’s problematic is not so hard to imagine in today’s opiate crisis. In extension of very notions of prothstatic-immersion in Avatar is a medical treatment practice which for recovering drug addicts involves substituting a crisis drug with an alleviator or placebo. The practice of using methadone clinics for rehabilitation of recovering addicts involves allowing the body to use the prosthatic substitute, for example, if the real unobtanium in Avatar was mined for curing humanity, then there becomes an ethical crux for that problematic system which Bergthaller sees as Avatar reinscribing the Leviathan through empathy. Macro-systems like the Leviathan are scary, but for some patients and on the micro-level, the prothstatic appears to be helpful, despite Bergthaller’s pitfalls on ecocentric identification. “Yet the film’s ability to compel spectators to identify with the Na’avi appears to be inseparable from its capacity to aesthetically dislocate them from their ordinary lives. Even as Avatar’s narrative advocates a ‘return to one’s senses’ , it in effect threatens to exacerbate the condition it criticizes […] those afflicted with Post-Pandoran Depression may join Thoreau in saying ‘I am not where my body is’ (1965: 598). Instead of encouraging the development of a ‘sense of place’ , Avatar is […] nourishing in the viewer a ‘sense of no place’,” (Bergthaller 158). Clearly Bergthaller is not thinking of the nuances of immersion in medical practice, which require the patient to undergo a separation from the places that aggravate any particular condition. The prothsatic is helpful for actual, living peoples, in medical applications for HIV/AIDS patients as well. We reduced numbers of AIDS patients when policymakers decided to immersed with drug war taboo to give away safe and clean heroin needles to drug addicts. The question of ethical identification is not a privilege that can be afforded for those needing the urgency of life-saving prothstatics. 

Anthropomorphizing Middle Eastern Identities in Rudyard Kipling’s Political Act

Rudyard Kipling in the “Servants of the Queen” chapter from The Jungle Book is imbuing a political satire, which simultaneously offends but also professes an ethical lesson, with hierarchical orders diminishing the representative other, or the Amir of Afghanistan, by representing anthropomorphized subjects; and yet, in paralleling the camp beasts with the historical nation in which trading and empire-building will occur over the next several hundred years across capitals throughout Asia and the Middle-East. Additionally in the “Parade Song of the Camp Animals,” the Comissariat Camels are reduced as perspectivism resorts into self-deprecations, inscribed by onomatopoeia expressions, “Urrr! Yarrh! Grr! Arrh!” (Kipling 210) as the prosthstatic demeaning of nation which itself consists of mainly camels. In drawing out the timidness and lacking of civil tones in the camels’ expression, Kipling creates tension in the previous treatment of the Amir chief who becomes fearful under impositions of the Queen’s parade. The parade itself becomes transcendent of the Leviathan construct which Jacques Derrida accuses of imposing a divisiveness or double-voicedness during the authorization of sovereignty, particularly in the so-called diplomatic intentions marking British treatment of Afghanistan.

The Amir of Afghanistan experiences a Leviathan-concept of prosthstatic sovereignty in the parade scene. The Amir is not killed or stampeded, as expected by our less-inspired classmates who conceive a maleficent state-power in the Leviathan, but rather, is welcomed by positive force into the body of Derrida’s Leviathan. Expanding the cruel and comical treatment of the Afghanistan chief when supplemented by the cowardly parallels of camel subjectivity, “We haven’t a camelty tune of our own,” (Kipling 209) shows that the native officer, in his concluding discussion with the Amir in the “Servants of the Queen,” is ambiguously inviting the Amir to participate in British imperialism, to enjoy the parade and to cooperate with Enlightenment projects for fabulization, rather than being enslaved. Kipling is challenging readership through metaphysical-conceit of the plot and characters, of their self-professed celebrations and fears of military prowess and the implied omniscience of the Leviathan. Can you imagine the alternative? If there was no Leviathan structure then how can the naval officer take care of his animals, and then why would animals reciprocate this politics of care in describing horse and mule warfare, oxen positionally on the battle-field, when even the camel yearns for returning to British empire, “Somebody’s pack has slid from his back, ‘Wish it were only mine!” (Kipling 209) according to a pro-war and Leviathan propaganda, then the chaos of lacking infrastructure would create an inability for Indians such as Kipling himself to join in on the fun of Imperialism. There has to be a Leviathan-structure in order for there to be equal opportunities, whether the example is one on guaranteeing the free markets of a capitalist systems, or in teaching a bully and the bullied the productive lessons of civility in a classroom, and the Leviathan according to Thomas Hobbes corresponds with the satirical approach to formulate in the literary a reaction to the supposedly insurmountableness of the Leviathan. 

Returning to Derrida’s cynical treatment of the Leviathan allows the readership to reconsider Amir anthropomorphization, to resist linking the weaker, more timid animals under the ethical orders of manipulation politics, or thinking with animals, and becomes a political act of inclusiveness, which although appears stereotypically insulting or convoluted by war propaganda, is in fact, symbolic of Kipling’s work functioning here in exposing the economic constraints about trade and colony-formation for publishing language and expression of military loyalties which effectively argues against power in British domination for the case of the subject of colonial representations.
-Bradley Dexter Christian

I, A Servant in the Name of Fear

It is not until the end of this chapter where the military native officer is shown, who appears to have a much better understanding of the chain of command than both the Afghan chief, as well as the beasts. The native officer begins, comparing animal’s servitude to humans, “They obey, as the men do. Mule, horse, elephant, or bullock, he obeys his driver…” (104). It should be emphasized when the native officer compares the beasts to humans when he says, “as men do”. Following this statement, compares the beasts and humans, describing a human’s servitude to other humans, “…and the driver to his sergeant, and the sergeant his lieutenant, and the lieutenant his captain, and his captain his major…the general, who obeys the Viceroy, who is the servant of the Empress,” (P.104).  This can oppose against the native chief’s following assertion that “we obey only on our wills,” meaning that he believes that every individual has their own choice, or in other words, their own “will” to obey anyone, if anyone, of their choice. The native officer disagrees with the chief’s belief because the native understands the chain of command similarly to the idea of the Leviathan; no one can escape the Leviathan. In other words, even if the chief (for example) were to have the free will to not obey anyone; he would still fall into the chain of command, obeying someone of higher power whether he is conscious of it or not, because even the wild and highest Arab ruler, the Amir, would have to take orders from their Viceroy once he meets under their presence. To also mention the beasts, it can be observed that they as well have varying understandings about their command under their human masters. The mule specifically questions to the other beasts of why they must fight at all in wars. The other beasts replied with a seemingly better understanding, “It is an order!” (101). The mule then questions who gives the orders, the troop horse, Billy, camel, and bullocks wisely added, “The man who walks at your head- or sits on your back- or holds the nose rope- or twists your tail,” (101); this depicts the human who holds possession and control over any of the beasts at the time of war, revealing that all beasts are serving under man. This quote also relates to the idea discussed with the officer’s quote. Every living being serves another power in the chain of command; the chain of the Leviathan in which no one can escape.

The order among the beasts can also relate to Derrida’s quote of prosthetic sovereignty. The elephant adds in the discussion, “I can’t always obey…But Billy’s right. Obey the man next to you who gives the order,” (101). Though it is an artificial law that they must serve under the right of humans, even aware of the artificiality, the beasts still follow the orders. Significantly, they follow these orders because to the greatest power, fear.  The elephant continues with his quote “Obey the man…or you’ll stop all the battery, besides getting a thrashing,” (101), revealing that the punishment for not obeying orders is violence, pain, or even death.  One of the important parts to point out of this chapter is the beasts’ common fear of blood, which can also assume the greater fear of death. This can be questionably ironic in their situation of war. Although, this can greatly explain why the beasts must serve the humans more than ever. After all the beasts are fighting in a man’s war, the beasts must also obey under the right of their human commanders to receive protection, care, and security to prevent their fear of the sight of blood. This is what the troop horse does essentially, as he highly trust and relies on the order of his driver, Dick Cunliffe, to guide and direct him in the right directions to safety. To conclude, the Leviathan is present in this time of war, as he is Dick Cunliffe, the Amir, Viceroy, and all the other commanders, giving all those who obey his commands a sense of security and order; which can also explain why war is depicted under the Leviathan image provided.

Sharmel Pilapil

If you can’t beat them, join them

By Katherine Hernandez

When first introduced to the concept of the Leviathan, the idea manifested to me as a form of fiction. I began to imagine an aquatic sea creature that leaves nothing free from its merciless wrath, until a higher being destroys it. This conception allowed me to believe that the Leviathan was not all around me, and rather than being frightened by the idea, I was impressed at the creativity of the creator. The introduction to the interpretation of Hobbes’s picture through the lens of Derrida however influenced a new found perception of the Leviathan which allowed me to interpret the position of “the native official” in The Jungle Book.

In the literary work The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling, we are introduced to a character that goes by the alias The Native Officer in which, at first glance, he is seen as a man who betrays his country and voluntarily contributes to western colonization made by the British in India. Through the lens of Derrida, this is the exact interpretation of Hobbes’s picture, giving up parts of yourself, whether it be religion or culture which The Native Officer does, in order to be a part of the Leviathan, otherwise known as submitting to the Leviathan. Because of The Native Officer’s actions, he somehow has a greater understanding at the chain of orders and commands that are delivered back and forth through rankings both low and high until reaching the ultimatum of the power, the Queen. In the book, one might interpret the Leviathan as the Queen, a physical being who possess ultimate power over humans. However further analysis sheds light on the concept of the Leviathan possibly having multiple layers; multiple ideas that sprout in the minds of humanity, and just like the chain of command that is introduced in the story the same chain lives in humans. The difference being that people can die but ideas can not. Just like animals are dominated by humans in the book, humans are also dominated by humans; the common factor between the two being the emotion of fear. Fear is an emotion that any creature can possess, it drives people into an automatic fight or flight response that is seen in every type of species in the world, however what if instead of fighting or fleeing you have the option of joining the entity? The possibility of protection by others is at hand, is it worth fighting something for all that you stand for or is it better to give up pieces of yourself for protection? After all, if the Leviathan is an idea that can shape shift into any form of supreme power and terror; wouldn’t that indicate that it can never die? The Native Officer when speaking to the chief about the parade of animals and how obedient they are, raises the paradoxical issue of the Amir claiming that “[His] Amir whom [he] does not obey must go to the Viceroy and take orders from him…” This displays the dominance, obedience and chain of command that exists among humans, which in itself is a paradox because The Native Office must also take commands thus making him susceptible to the corrupt system too. This allows him to have insight on how the chain of command works and, because he is aware of the Leviathan and the prosthetic sovereignty, he willingly accepts he is knowledgeable of how it works. Joining the Leviathan was neither fight or flight but rather a collaboration between beast and man out of fear, normality, and the rationalization that the Leviathan can never die because it lives all around us.

Creating and Conquering the Fear

In Rudyard Kipling’s story “Servants of the Queen”, various animals discuss how they fight and the  different roles they play in the army. Although all their strategies are quite different from each other (the horse rides into the heart of battle while the gun-bullocks drag the cannons in and then graze) all the animals share the commonality of obeying their masters and taking orders. In the discussion, the concept of fear is also brought up, especially in the case of Two-Tails the elephant because when he is afraid he blows his trumpet nose to signal it is time to bring out the cannons. All animals fear the sound of the trumpeting and blood, but say they trust their masters and will follow them anyways. The elephant has trouble with this and is more fearful because he is the most intelligent  of the animals and can “see inside his head” and has an idea of what will happen which causes him to be terrified. However this deep fear is in fact shared by all, including the elephant’s master who “shakes all over, but he knows too much to run away”(Kipling 132). The entire army has a whole is afraid of something much greater than them, a sort of Leviathan, and this is why they must all work together as one unit in order to succeed and conquer the fear. However, while they are scared they also impose a sense of fear on others, as seen with Afghan chief who is terrified as the parade approaches.

This relates to how Hobbes’ illustrated the Leviathan as a huge creature composed of many human heads all facing inward toward the one giant head. This represents all the individuals that make up the whole yet follow orders from the one great being, or in this case the Empress. By working together and using the various abilities of all the different parts, the army is more powerful and almost “prosthetic”. This also relates to Derrida’s idea of how a “prosthetic sovereignty” is the strongest.The chain of command in the army starts at the top with the Empress and travels down through officers all the way to the animals who blindly follow but give no orders. The native officer understands this best because he knows that “[animals] obey, as the men do”(136), and this ability to obey creates the Leviathan.