Light of thy countenance. Is it literature?

I think literature is anything that is meant to be read for fun can be considered literature, even comic books. I would definitely consider Light of Thy Countenance a piece of literature. What makes it different from most literature is that is has visual illustrations to make up for the smaller quantity of words. I don’t think the illustrations necessarily take away from the experience of reading the book, it just gives glimpse into the world of the book in which the reader fills in the rest of the blanks using his/her imagination. For Light of Thy Countenance, the visual illustrations would have been absolutely necessary for the reader to understand and visualize everything that’s going because everything in this book is so abstract. Though it is only a very short book which could be read in nearly an hour, it has a lot to offer to the reader because there are so many interpretations to the pictures that the book presents as well as the words. The book is definitely not easy to interpret like most comic books are and the language is a little bit subtle at first, but definitely gives the author’s opinion to the readers in a very quick and efficient way. The book basically talks about the effects television has on people and how it is changing humanity as a whole. For instance, television is changing the way we think about sex and romance. Because we’ve seen it on television so many times, we basically all have the same idea of what romance should look like. In a way, we have all lost our individuality because of television. With television comes pornography, which we see at the end of the book. In a way pornography is almost like having sex with the television, which the personification of television implies, saying “I am the only pure and true relationship that you will ever know.” One of the advantages that pornography offers is sex without all the bad things in relationships, which is one reason why some people may prefer pornography over real sex. We see in the book’s illustration, a man and his female partner parting indifferently and the man watching pornography afterwards. There are also a lot of similarities of themes between Light of Thy Countenance and R.U.R, such as the rising of technology. In both of the books, we see humanity eventually loses control of their own technology and fall victim to their own creations. Both books seem to warn us about the future of technology and how it will negatively affect humanity. 

M butterfly

M butterfly portrays western attitudes towards eastern cultures on a political and social level. In the story, Gallimard believes he is the dominant figure in his relationship with Song when in fact it was the other way around. Song played the submissive and shy Chinese girl only to manipulate Gallimard into giving up secret information on western governments. By the end of the book, he dresses up as a woman and commits suicide. Before he does, he tells the audience, “My name is Rene Gallimard – also known as Madame Butterfly (93).” At first glance, most people would believe that the title of the book refers to Song when in fact it was Gallimard. It was Gallimard who had all the characteristics that were ultimately deemed effeminate despite the fact that it was Song who dressed up as a woman. In a traditional sense, it would be the woman who falls head over heels over a man and it is the woman who eventually kills herself because the man she loved probably betrayed her in some way. But M butterfly defies this tradition and turns the tables around. Through the relationship between Song and Gallimard, the novel portrays the ignorance of western culture and shows us that the belief that eastern cultures are weak and submissive towards a greater force is clearly wrong.

            Though M Butterfly portrays some obvious differences in both eastern and western culture, it also shows us the similarities between the two cultures. For instance, the issue of gender inequality is universal and is found throughout the world, even in societies as progressive as the west. All cultures have an idea what they consider feminine and masculine and western culture is no different. In one of the scenes, Gallimard tries to undress Song after ignoring her for three weeks and Song tries to keep her/his clothes on by saying “please…it all frightens me. I’m a modest Chinese girl (40).” Gallimard believed that Song was a woman based on the false assumptions that weakness, vulnerability, passiveness, and servility are all characteristics of females. Because Song is a man, Song is able to understand what men have come to expect from women and she/he plays on those expectations to make Gallimand fall in love. 

globalization and social networking

Pattern recognition is a very modern novel that is unlike any books that have ever been seen before. Unlike many modern novels, Gibson touches on globalization, social networking, and the emergence of a monoculture.

Globalization is apparent when we see Cayce traveling from country to country. Traveling, which is usually considered an exciting journey to exotic places is made easy and even a little bit boring with the invention of passenger planes. When Cayce arrives in Japan, “she sees the Coca-Cola logo pulsing on a huge screen, high up on a building (125).” Half-way around the world in a place westerners usually consider exotic and we already see the many things Japan has in common with the rest of the modernized world: slogans, advertisement, enterprise, and marketing culture. No matter which part of the hemisphere you are looking at, there is bound to be marketing culture and the familiar modern city with its tall skyscrapers. Only a while ago, this would not be true. But now globalization is happening everywhere and it is happening faster and faster as the world becomes more uniform, producing a single culture that the rest of the world has in common: a monoculture. The fact that Cayce interacts with people of different ethnicities and cultures is also evidence of the world’s progress in globalization. We get Boone Chu, who is Chinese American; Voytek and Magda, who are Polish; Bigend, who is Belgian but raised in England; and many more.

But what is Gibson’s tone towards globalization? It’s hard to tell but he illustrates both positive and negative effects of globalization. On the positive side, we see that globalization has made countries such as Japan and Russia significantly richer. Tokyo is the world’s largest metropolis and Russia is quickly rising out of poverty. With Russia’s new cultivated wealth, privatized prisons are created giving prisoners better living conditions and to prevent disease. However, this new wealth illustrated in the novel is in the hands of very shady figures like Bigend and Volkov, who always seem to have ulterior motives. These business figures seem to act on self-interest alone and operate in a shroud of secrecy. It is unnerving to think that it is these figures that control the media and drive the globalization process.

One thing that emerges from globalization that seems to have a powerful and widespread effect on society is social networking. Throughout the novel, we see Cayce interacting with people all over the world and developing friendships, such as Ivy and Parkaboy, through the internet. With the invention of the internet, you can talk to anyone on the globe that has a computer and an online connection. You can do this on a telephone, but it’s too personal and less convenient. The invention of the internet has connected so many people globally that a new culture is born: a cyber culture; a culture that makes communication so easy that you can do it anywhere, anytime, twenty four seven. For anyone in the virtual world, there is no limit to how many friends you can have, whether you prefer a few friends or five hundred friends. You can even forge a new identity in the online world. And this is everywhere and it has only been around for less than a decade. Everywhere you see there are people texting, chatting online, or posting comments on Facebook. But are all these online relationships healthy? Up until now, we use to go over to our friend’s house if we wanted to socialize. But now, we have five hundred friends, many of them who we almost never see face to face, which we communicate through words posted on the internet. Our idea of what a relationship should look like is changing so fast that when Parkaboy tells Cayce his real name for the first time over the phone, his “name feels strange on her tongue (279).” Even after all the years that Cayce has known Parkaboy over the internet, she feels strange and awkward speaking to him for the first time. Parkaboy’s voice wasn’t really what Cayce expected and she realizes that she doesn’t really know much about his personal life despite being friends for a very long time. Today, some of us might find this shocking and weird, and for others, not so much. But it isn’t completely farfetched that someday, all of us will have online friends all over the world. The fact that this future is a lot closer than we think is mind boggling and baffling.