Wow, we really went all over the place during class, didn't we? I agree with you Tim, I think we're all at a consensus about not wanting to end up like the Eloi. I still haven't changed my mind about the shortcomings of the book and I think other people wanted more of the world too, but c'est la vie, tis not to be.
I did want to comment further on the gender roles in the book, something I'd glossed over before. Maybe it wasn't a big point for Wells, but he does relegate Weena to be a pet, a creature comfort for the Time Traveler, something Victorian women were-just a possession. The Time Traveler expresses a tiny bit of loss but doesn't seem to try to go back and save her, just moves on after the loss of his companion, as if he'd lost his tie. I think we now expect women to be a bit more, which is why in movie versions, however bad they may be, Weena becomes more fleshed out and a love interest. Untrue to the book, perhaps, but closer to a better version of the female lead.
Also I couldn't help but think of the movie Serenity (for those who don't know it, it was a movie that tacked on to the Joss Whedon series Firefly, which was cancelled prematurely by Fox, a recurring dilemma for that network) and the planet Miranda. On that planet, a centralized dictator-ish government introduced a chemical into the air (it was a terraformed planet) called the "pax" meant to weed out aggression and calm the population. However, it worked a bit too well as most of the population (sorry if I'm spoiling the movie for some of you) simply gave up the will to live, having lost so much due to the pax they went to the ultimate calm, simply not breathing. However, for a small percentage the pax served to rev up their natural aggression to new heights until they became (Well's favorite) cannibals. So, the Eloi I paralleled to the ones who simply died and the Morlocks to the cannibals, called Reavers.
And thus, I conclude my thoughts for this week. See you all next week on the moon!
Links:
http://imdb.com/title/tt0379786/
Wednesday, January 23, 2008
Tuesday, January 22, 2008
Class 1/22
So we have now had our first true class. Overall I would say that everybody seemed to have a fairly consistent view on The Time Machine, ie we do not want to wind up like the Eloi and the Morlocks. Aside from that I still think that we never really had a complete answer to the question PTJ posed as to why we are not as afraid of the world of the future presented here as the readers apparently were in 1895.
As far as our view on The Garrison State again I feel like we have agreed on a working understanding of why we can relate to this more than The Time Machine but to me it felt as if there was still a bit of questioning in the air at the end.
Regardless we managed to both declare Wells a genius of the time and call his character the time traveler a child simultaneously.
Good j0b team on being the only blogging group to have selected wikipages and remember, we will all be purple crabs one day.
Anybody hungry, how about a big Georgetown Burger?
As far as our view on The Garrison State again I feel like we have agreed on a working understanding of why we can relate to this more than The Time Machine but to me it felt as if there was still a bit of questioning in the air at the end.
Regardless we managed to both declare Wells a genius of the time and call his character the time traveler a child simultaneously.
Good j0b team on being the only blogging group to have selected wikipages and remember, we will all be purple crabs one day.
Anybody hungry, how about a big Georgetown Burger?
The Time Machine: pre-class response
As someone who wants to major in international communication the thing that struck with me the most was the Time Travelers interaction with the two groups of the future (the Eloi and the Morlocks) and his assessment of the way things are in the future and how they came to be that way. He seemed to right away judge his surrounding and make assumptions in terms of the world he knew and grew up in, despite the fact that he was over 800,000 years in the future. I believe that looking at new surroundings with that degree of bias will lead to false assumptions especially when one is in a setting so different from what one is used to. He keeps coming up with theories that he himself later claims were “only half-truths – or only as glimpse of one of the facets of the truth” (page 38). On page 42 he once again claims the theory he created at the time was later proven false, and in Chapter 7 after he encounters the Morlocks in their habitat his theories are once again shaken and reformed. To use a social science term he was looking at the world through his lens and the lens of his society, which one can’t do in such a foreign setting, the world he finds himself in doesn’t even have the human race as he knows it and only deteriorating remnants of past societies but he judges it based on the principles of the world where he grew up. Which is why I was skeptical about the Time Travelers theories, especially since he kept disproving his own theories one after the other, not always entirely, but he still based his actions and judgments on his theories and then was like “oops well here is this whole other aspect to the situation I didn’t even know about” which makes me wonder what else was he oblivious to during his stay in 802,701 AD.
Another thing that got to me was that more than once he claims to be superior, and due to this often finds himself unprepared in situations that he charges into without much planning or rational thought, him being a scientist I expected more from him. For example when despite the fact that the Eloi are disturbed greatly by darkness and the “wells” he just decides to climb down without thinking about the nature of the “white creatures” or the fact that he may need light or a weapon, he just blindly charges into a situation. In that sense I found him acting “childlike” a quality he often attributes to the Eloi who he finds to be of inferior intelligence.
Plus he is making assumptions concerning all humanity looking at just one area and group of “people” (the Eloi) then later when he discovers another race (the Morlocks) he just makes new assumptions, I just kept expecting a bigger picture. I understand that the author used these two races as a social commentary and used the Time Traveler to convey this idea but like I said the Time Traveler’s approach didn’t seem that rational to me most of the time, so although I find the idea of a worker class turned carnivore and elite class turned hedonistic interesting, I can’t take the Time Traveler’s ideas as truths of that world and I feel like there is so much more to it. To me it is similar to what the European explorers did: show up at a new place, claim the natives to be savages and apply their own standards to their societies. I just wanted the Time Traveler to be less narrow minded, more cautious (rather than randomly act belligerent, burn down half the forest and probably cause the death of Weena due to poor planning and rash actions) and more interested in learning about the two cultures he discovered and learning how they got to be that way. I feel like superimposed his own take on reality onto this futuristic world rather than actually learn about it.
Another thing that got to me was that more than once he claims to be superior, and due to this often finds himself unprepared in situations that he charges into without much planning or rational thought, him being a scientist I expected more from him. For example when despite the fact that the Eloi are disturbed greatly by darkness and the “wells” he just decides to climb down without thinking about the nature of the “white creatures” or the fact that he may need light or a weapon, he just blindly charges into a situation. In that sense I found him acting “childlike” a quality he often attributes to the Eloi who he finds to be of inferior intelligence.
Plus he is making assumptions concerning all humanity looking at just one area and group of “people” (the Eloi) then later when he discovers another race (the Morlocks) he just makes new assumptions, I just kept expecting a bigger picture. I understand that the author used these two races as a social commentary and used the Time Traveler to convey this idea but like I said the Time Traveler’s approach didn’t seem that rational to me most of the time, so although I find the idea of a worker class turned carnivore and elite class turned hedonistic interesting, I can’t take the Time Traveler’s ideas as truths of that world and I feel like there is so much more to it. To me it is similar to what the European explorers did: show up at a new place, claim the natives to be savages and apply their own standards to their societies. I just wanted the Time Traveler to be less narrow minded, more cautious (rather than randomly act belligerent, burn down half the forest and probably cause the death of Weena due to poor planning and rash actions) and more interested in learning about the two cultures he discovered and learning how they got to be that way. I feel like superimposed his own take on reality onto this futuristic world rather than actually learn about it.
Monday, January 21, 2008
Time machines, Morlocks, laughing children and plant buildings
Well, that was quite an enjoyable book. It was a quick read, yet it still managed to make me invest myself in the plights and triumphs of the Time Traveler. The first bit of the story that struck me as different was the use of adjectives for the listeners (ie the Medical Man, the Editor, etc). Although I am not certain of Wells' point in doing this, it struck me as a way to help buoy up the Traveler's story and keep the setup to a minimum. By playing on the reader's assumptions of each stereotype given, such as the Medical Man being skeptical and demanding evidence of the travels, the story is propelled forward without too much development of characters listening in. I make this point because it seems to be part of the key to why the story is still so interesting today. I for one know many medical professionals who would demand quite the same things of the story teller in a similar fashion. Perhaps something small to note, but it stuck with me after finishing reading.
The other part of this story that stuck with me was the political statements being made. I have heard arguments about capitalism versus socialism before, but never drawn out over a period of time as long as 800,000 or more years. Whats more, I don't usually expect such arguments to call one of the groups devolved hedonists (the surface-dwelling Eloi), and the other are nocturnal, cannibalistic carnivores (the subterranean Morlocks). Although I cannot speak for what will actually happen after all that time, perhaps I have some insight as to the accuracy of his predictions thus far. As far as I can tell, the rich class, and to some degree, upper middle class of the world have begun a slow decline towards this hedonistic state. 50 years after this novel was written, advertisements for consumer goods skyrocketed and people began accepting that they could possibly buy their way into happiness. Although this is not the place to argue it, I will simply say that people do in fact believe that mentality more now than they did before, with driving thoughts of "well if I get that i-Phone or that new car, I will be truly happy" leading them down the path of life. Now, speaking for myself, that sense of "happiness" at getting something new does last for a short period of time, but in most cases fizzles out fairly quickly, making me need something else to try and feel happy. I am certain everyone who reads this will have felt the same at some point. Extrapolate this out for many many many years, and you might just end up with the above-ground society described by the Traveler. A place where there is no more work to do, and so the people have devolved mentally and physically due to their pursuit of happiness to the exclusion of self-improvement and -upkeep. This is my opinion, but it seems plausible to me. I would love feedback on my thoughts.
Yours,
-Mike
The other part of this story that stuck with me was the political statements being made. I have heard arguments about capitalism versus socialism before, but never drawn out over a period of time as long as 800,000 or more years. Whats more, I don't usually expect such arguments to call one of the groups devolved hedonists (the surface-dwelling Eloi), and the other are nocturnal, cannibalistic carnivores (the subterranean Morlocks). Although I cannot speak for what will actually happen after all that time, perhaps I have some insight as to the accuracy of his predictions thus far. As far as I can tell, the rich class, and to some degree, upper middle class of the world have begun a slow decline towards this hedonistic state. 50 years after this novel was written, advertisements for consumer goods skyrocketed and people began accepting that they could possibly buy their way into happiness. Although this is not the place to argue it, I will simply say that people do in fact believe that mentality more now than they did before, with driving thoughts of "well if I get that i-Phone or that new car, I will be truly happy" leading them down the path of life. Now, speaking for myself, that sense of "happiness" at getting something new does last for a short period of time, but in most cases fizzles out fairly quickly, making me need something else to try and feel happy. I am certain everyone who reads this will have felt the same at some point. Extrapolate this out for many many many years, and you might just end up with the above-ground society described by the Traveler. A place where there is no more work to do, and so the people have devolved mentally and physically due to their pursuit of happiness to the exclusion of self-improvement and -upkeep. This is my opinion, but it seems plausible to me. I would love feedback on my thoughts.
Yours,
-Mike
Visions of the Future, Courtesy of Lasswell and Wells
This week's readings were both different and yet strangely complimentary. It is easy enough to envision Lasswell's Garrison State as an intervening step between the beginning world of the Time Traveler and the world of the Eloi and Morlocks in 802,701 AD.
That being said, I found that I accepted Lasswell's vision more readily than Wells due to being unable to get over the prejudice I thought hurt the book. I couldn't help but compare the Morlocks to the lower classes or minorities and felt that, while believable due to his strange location and circumstances, the Time Traveler should have been more open to understanding not only the gentle and pretty Eloi but the dark and scary Morlocks, being a man of science as he was. Impulsively siding with those on the surface of the world seemed awfully shallow to me and I was ultimately unable to get past it. Perhaps it was simple a product of its time, as so much of science fiction falls into (whether fair or not to the piece in question).
Lasswell's thought experiment in "The Garrison State" was much more to my taste. I particularly liked the following:
“The picture of the garrison state that is offered here is no dogmatic forecast. Rather it is a picture of the probable. It is not inevitable. It may not even have the same probability as some other descriptions of the future course of development. What, then, is the function of this picture for scientists? It is to stimulate the individual specialist to clarify for himself his expectations about the future, as a guide to the timing of scientific work.” (456)
Is this not the function of all science fiction? And if not, shouldn't it be?
I found the idea of an end to unemployment an interesting idea, gained through psychologically ending it and introducing compulsory labor (Lasswell, 459-460). In the vision of the future given by Wells, labor doesn't seem to be an issue. As in Metropolis, the laborers (the Morlocks) descended into the ground while the idle rich or elites (the Eloi) rose to the surface. But as the Eloi don't seem to work, labor might well go out the window along with organized government and society, which also seems to be lacking with the Eloi and Morlocks. Civilization rose, specialized in Lasswell, and fell again to a state of nature in The Time Machine. An interesting idea.
That being said, I found that I accepted Lasswell's vision more readily than Wells due to being unable to get over the prejudice I thought hurt the book. I couldn't help but compare the Morlocks to the lower classes or minorities and felt that, while believable due to his strange location and circumstances, the Time Traveler should have been more open to understanding not only the gentle and pretty Eloi but the dark and scary Morlocks, being a man of science as he was. Impulsively siding with those on the surface of the world seemed awfully shallow to me and I was ultimately unable to get past it. Perhaps it was simple a product of its time, as so much of science fiction falls into (whether fair or not to the piece in question).
Lasswell's thought experiment in "The Garrison State" was much more to my taste. I particularly liked the following:
“The picture of the garrison state that is offered here is no dogmatic forecast. Rather it is a picture of the probable. It is not inevitable. It may not even have the same probability as some other descriptions of the future course of development. What, then, is the function of this picture for scientists? It is to stimulate the individual specialist to clarify for himself his expectations about the future, as a guide to the timing of scientific work.” (456)
Is this not the function of all science fiction? And if not, shouldn't it be?
I found the idea of an end to unemployment an interesting idea, gained through psychologically ending it and introducing compulsory labor (Lasswell, 459-460). In the vision of the future given by Wells, labor doesn't seem to be an issue. As in Metropolis, the laborers (the Morlocks) descended into the ground while the idle rich or elites (the Eloi) rose to the surface. But as the Eloi don't seem to work, labor might well go out the window along with organized government and society, which also seems to be lacking with the Eloi and Morlocks. Civilization rose, specialized in Lasswell, and fell again to a state of nature in The Time Machine. An interesting idea.
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