The deeper meaning behind animation

"You associate and empathize with animated characters than real-life characters"

Well it's obvious isn't it - we don't see ourselves (or wider humanity) when you know that the people on the screen are different to you. The defects are obvious. The physical features are different. It was Charlize Theron's Aileen Wuornos in "Monster". It is why we see something of ourselves in Matisse's portraits - like the one below:

Henri Matisse - Portrait of Lydia Delectorskaya, the Artist's Secretary

Animation is indeed enduringly popular, even with adults. So it is not just the Simpsons, Family Guy, or South Park; the animated medium is also effective in tackling serious issues in a powerful way. This is evident in the animated films, "Persepolis" and "Waltz with Bashir".

"Persepolis" covers the turbulent period in Iran's history from the late 1970s to early 1990s. It is through animation that the story of Marjane, the little girl growing up, comes to life and gives us a feel for what it was like after the Islamic Revolution of 1979, and its political and social ramifications. It gives us a reminder how important history is, in considering the current situation which faces this proud nation, and how the 'Green' Revolution can be seen in the context of its unique political development.

"Waltz with Bashir" is another critically-acclaimed film which deals with the politically explosive issue of Israel's political memory. The story features Ari Folman, the director, who tries to piece together the events that binded him and his fellow soldiers during the Lebanon War. Inevitably, it has not been shown in the majority of Arab countries, but it is an attempt to utilize animation as culture, and to come to terms with political memory and hopefully in the longer term, political reconciliation.

The sometimes surreal or metaphysical nature of both these films is also helped by the freedom that animation affords. Despite the rise of CGI, 3-D glasses, and the like, it is this sort of animation which reminds us of the 'real' progress of the modern greats in art, as epitomised by Matisse and others.

Wisdom and Innocence - "Back in the day, man!"

According to the mesmerizing diagram above, wisdom is associated with the colours of purple, brown and dark blue in different cultures. David McCandless' visual presentation of information is indeed mesmerizing but for a writer equipped with words, it seems limitingly linear in comparison. And perhaps I will be guilty of this here.

I previously mentioned 'generational conflict' after being influenced by the current political discussion of pensions. Do we deserve pensions? Was it merely a post-WWII phenomenon which is no longer feasible? Are institutional investors running scared of the stock market still? And do we really need those fantastically intelligent actuaries scrutinizing data about when we die so they can work out our precious pensions in the right way?

These are all questions to consider but I want to concentrate here on merely the positives of wisdom and innocence. Because despite their wrinkles and funny hip-bones, older people are indeed wise and have many things to teach us. Temporality is not such an obstacle in considering a lot of important realms in life. Many times I have reconsidered thoughts having heard a gem of a comment from an older person. I do wonder sometimes whether I should hang out more with pensioners and the like...

Similarly, people in their 20s who are currently in 'kidulthood', look longingly at the innocence of youth. Lacking the wisdom to confront the rigours and sharp edges of adult life, they too want to run about in a playground pretending to be a plane - for no obvious reason. Merely because its fun. One doesn't have to think about things at all. To children, the intangible structures that adults have created - those invisible things called 'society' or 'institutions' - simply do not exist. It really doesn't matter if you are wearing Armani or 'Primarni'.

Thus this is why I step forward with trepidation towards recognizing the realities of adult life. I will stop wearing pink and white for a start. Those are obviously children's colours you see.

Note to self: More black, yellow and red in my wardrobe then - to denote authority and power

See relevant links:
David McCandless' Colours in Cultures
Economist - End of Retirement .pdf file

Writer's Block in Autumn

Going about my daily business, I tend to eventually find something original to write. But it has recently become more difficult, with one reason being that other people have been writing original stuff, and I can't really add to them. Here is a selection of the better things I've read this week:

The Continuity of the Pencil
In a world of laptops, iPads and the 'cool' stationery that the Japanese love (called 'sharp-pens'), it is a wonder that anyone still uses a pencil these days. But apparently the global pencil market is doing quite well for the moment, supported not just by budding artists but emerging markets where pencils are fundamental to learning. So its not all about $100 laptops in Africa then...

The 'sharp-pen' - not exactly replacing the pencil

Secular Tolerance - Part of the British Spirit
Following the relatively successful Papal visit to England and Scotland, some have started to question what all the fuss about his visit was about. Was it really because the Vatican seemed to be above the law, or merely because it cost the taxpayer millions to arrange his security? I heard somewhere before that Dawkins and Hitchens might try and get the Pope arrested for alleged crimes, but it seemed that Benedict XVI's visit was met with a generally warm reception. The 'aggressive atheist' strands did not figure too prominently, which Janice Turner in The Times argues was a good thing; there are things wrong with the Catholic Church, but it may not be a good thing to 'impose' our secular tolerance. It's a bit like my discomfort with reading the Guardian, which is sometimes a bit too lefty for my liberalism.
Not many people I know are very religious, but I would assume that most of them do not despise the 'evils' of religion. The New Statesman went for 'Catholicism in crisis' as its cover title this week, but it really didn't seem like the Church was facing the biggest threat to its legitimacy since the Reformation, did it?!

So it's nope to the pope...

False 'fun' at work
It might be quite obvious that I would not want to work in PR or advertising. Why? Because it's cool and you live your social life through your job. Now for the Facebook generation that can't really tell public from private, its OK really... but it seems that it is not just in this glitzy world of media services that 'fun' has arrived in the workplace. Social media companies lead the way of course with slides, bouncy castles, and really bright colours making the workplace more relaxed, creative, open, and ultimately more productive. But there must be many other people who shudder at the prospect of going to a team-bonding exercise, where this very smiley man with wide eyes tells you to drop your inhibitions, and jump around the room pretending to be a fruit. How do apples act, this is so weird, right?! But as Shumpeter in The Economist states, 'behind the "fun" facade there often lurks some crude management thinking'. I'm all for innovation  but seriously... this is work, not an extension of your Self. However, German Wal-Mart staff didn't do themselves any favours by resisting new rules of compulsory smiling - national stereotypes go a long way indeed!

See relevant links:
Economist - Schumpeter: Down with Fun
The cover of the New Statesman this week

Historical and snobby: Europe. Young, brash and naive: America. What about Britain?

We must really remember that for every person who took out stupid, sub-prime mortgages and lost their blue-collar jobs, there is a crafty banker with a Harvard MBA (a qualification which is basically a leveraged bet on someone becoming a finance director of a large corporation) rubbing his hands with glee as he creates his latest weapon of mass confusion, a derivative based on a forward contract based on an option through an Special Investment Vehicle based in the Cayman Islands or some other tax haven. Sorry, I got carried away with that bit...

Come to think of it, where do the British fit in this imaginary battle between America and Europe? I suggest that the British are indeed stuck in the middle - they want to really have the best of both worlds.

Brits clearly love the US, just ask the Beckham's. Everything is bigger, brighter, and better. But there is every now and again a little stab in the back, although it was more frequent during the Bush Administration. Those 'Yanks' must be pretty stupid to put up with him, some (Slate, 2005) of us argued in Britain. It was a bit awkward when Obama was elected; the French were celebrating the election of an American President - how often has that happened in history? But nevertheless, there exists still an underlying reserve in the British national psychology which contrasts sharply with the brash confidence of America and its young history, where anything is possible - "yes we can!". Hope is clearly not a reliable political currency in British politics, however, where 'austerity cuts' are big, bad, and almost unfathomably depressing; that is just how 'scare-mongering'/good political governance in Britain works these days it seems. Indeed America is a young, and thus naive country - a nation that is powerful but disliked by perhaps the majority of other nations in the world.

This unease about America however illustrates a wider contradictory approach to issues of youth and generational conflict. Yes, the Brits both love and hate youth. Men want to be 'lads' but must still appear respectable under their cheeky facade. Women want to look young but work 12 hours a day to climb the career ladder before contemplating children at a suitable biological age. The vibrance and innocence of youth is replicated at abhorrent School Discos, while 'hoodies' are criticized for being menacing figures of society. Similarly, the Brits love to criticize America's treatment of youth (hyper-sexualized adolescence, the MTV generation which values idiocy above intelligence), but speaks up for their own youth as the 'jilted generation'.

The argument goes that baby-boomers have lived beyond their means, and left the youth of today with no opportunities. They seem to surface over the wider problems in the changing perceptions of youth - are our parents solely responsible for digging the ever-deepening hole of decay and decline that today's youth has slipped into? Has it been forgotten what affect a daily dose of South Park, Grand Theft Auto, torrents, pornography, unemployment benefits, and recreational drugs have done to some parts of the British youth?

Of course in reality it's not as simple as how I've polarised these ideas. But let us ask ourselves this question: Is the generation game skewed by American influence and power?

See relevant links:
Ed Howker and Shiv Malik's "Jilted Generation: How Britain has bankrupted its Youth"
From the publishers Random House: Charles Pierce's "Idiot America: How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of the Free"

It can't be cool to be scared

We are generally a pretty self-confident bunch. Look at progress, technology, and rationality. There is nothing faintly teleologically flawed about this path of human development, right? But there is something about raw emotion which seems to be outside this realm of modernity; it is timeless and universal despite the paradigmatic changes in which our thoughts are framed. It is clear that our epistemological centre is radically different now compared to even 50 years ago, but an emotion like fear - it never goes away.

This may sound pretty obvious, but it is evident that our fears these days are confronted in a pretty sanitized, safe environment. We might watch a horror movie, or perhaps do a bungie jump in our gap yaar. But most of the time, we never really embrace our fears to the extent that one might have done before.

An example of this is the demise of myth in modern society. We can always work things out scientifically these days, like the Loch Ness monster is proven to be a hoax caused by refractions of light, or something along those lines... The sun doesn't revolve around us, it is scientifically proven we orbit it. Myths are not believed any more, they are just stories, or perhaps folklore. But it is important to consider why these myths came about in the first place, and how they reflected the society that they lived in. Why is there such stories of Hades, the minotaur, and the 'boogie man' (sometimes spelt bogeyman)? In some respects, they must reflect people's fears: why else would there be those ceremonial rituals of sacrifice, and vivid images of voodoos and people dancing around a fire with crazed eyes? It seems that people - in the absence of scientific confidence - really lived with fear. It seems to me that it was an accepted and respected part of the human fabric. But do children still really believe myth in the same way as before, as they play on their Game Boys playing Tetris or some awful farming game? Although I do have some respect for those Pokemon's; some of them were apparently based on the mythical creatures of history.

Do these two have anything in common?

But it's not really allowed to be scared, only unless you have an ulterior motive. You're scared of death but realize you're only acting it out in a play. You see the floods in Pakistan wreaking havoc but only see it on the 'flattened narrative' that is TV. The media says the Americans won the Gulf War, but Hedrik Smith shows that this is all a con. You expose some real emotion to someone, but then they take advantage of the situation. The newspapers just talk about bad news - wars, scandals, deaths, disappointments - but they are mere profit-driven businesses after all.

Historiography is leading the way in turning towards the intangible. Histories of madness and sexuality have been done and moved on. What the body and the 'heart' meant in early modern history is currently being explored. Who said history was dead, when the history of the irrational is being explored with such relish? Let us not just embrace fear historically, but perhaps think again about how we see fear through our computer screens today.

See relevant links:
Wikipedia entry on Michel Foucault's Madness and Civilization
Observer review - Joanna Bourke's Fear: A Cultural History
Hedricksmith.com - The Media and the Gulf War
Abstract of Geremie Barme's paper - China's Flat Earth

Many thanks to my friend J.C. for sharing thoughtful discussions on themes relating to this topic.

The beauty of science - why Hawking reflects modern thinking

In the past week or so, there has been somewhat of a media furore surrounding Stephen Hawking's comments about the role of God in explaining the universe. "The Grand Design", co-authored by Leonard Mlodinow - whose name is a few font sizes smaller than Hawking's on the cover - attempts to answer the ultimate questions of life, with the support of what physicists call M theory. An extension of super-string theory, its supposed to have 12 dimensions and multiple universes. For laymen like myself, these assumptions are a bit crazy and makes me wonder whats wrong with the 4 dimensions we have now.

Is this what M theory looks like?

Predictably when such controversy erupts, the most erudite religious leaders and the most extreme atheists do battle to try and stab the intellectual knife into their enemies' chests. Of course Richard Dawkins gets a phone call - the renowned biologist did write the "The God's Delusion" after all. As a sort of agnostic, it is hard to come to terms with someone who is so assuredly atheist, and makes it his mission to make rather cringing documentaries in America's Bible Belt about how they are all indeed deluded. This guy is surely not human, right? He looks a bit evil doesn't he?

Dawkins of course has to dominate my treasured Comments pages of The Times, seemingly going round in circles arguing about how religious leaders misunderstand science and misframe their intellectual enquiries. Then come the likes of Ruth Gledhill and Jonathan Sacks hitting back arguing, religion is still relevant, etc. I think they all have a degree in linguistics and philosophy, especially when they come out with things like, 'what do you mean by meaning?' Seriously...

But I think there is a more subtle point to be made here. Hawkings, as an all-encompassing sort of physicist, is trying to come up with a set of 'scientific' laws which govern our reality. His theory is not readily provable in a laboratory, nor is it universally accepted among physicists, who argue that his ideas are pushing towards philosophy and ethics. Sadly this is not a cue for those weird creationist people. How I interpret this, is that with M theory - a universal set of laws which govern the world, much like fundamental religious principles - God or any higher being no longer has a role in explaining the beauty of science. For some, the beauty of science is essentially what life means.

It is perhaps a little too extreme to say that atheists do not think there is meaning in life. In our modern, secular world, people do find their own meanings of their existence - similarly some scientists are inclined to think that the beauty of science is a meaning in itself. I remember at one house party during university, a maths boff wrote this extraordinary set of squiggles and letters that made up this complex formula with a marker pen on the fridge. "That's beautiful, isn't it?" He enquired enthusiastically with a can of beer in his hand.

Of course at the time I thought, "bloody hell, what a fruitbat... why does the water-polo team attract oddballs like these?" But now I kind of get it. And I can also smily wryly at another maths boff who would explain how he ate his jam sandwiches: two slices of white bread, with jam spread evenly on one side making sure it doesn't go over the edges, cut the bread diagonally to get two triangular pieces, consider it as an isosceles triangle and eat the two corners with the same angle first, and then the other corner.

Indeed life is beautiful, I really wish I could appreciate jam sandwiches in that way...!

Trusted links from the Beeb:
Hawking: God did not create universe
Profile of Jonathan Sacks - if you have access to BBC iPlayer, you can watch his 'A Case for God'
Dawkins, Christianity's not best friend