Of Cats, Kanno and Cross-dressers
Apr. 23rd, 2007 07:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sanetWoo, classes are over! Now, instead of spending my days firmly moored to the computer writing papers, I am firmly moored to the computer writing in journals and watching anime. So here's the news:
-Anyone looking to be utterly baffled and occasionally disturbed (and who isn't?) should watch Tetsuo Sato's "Cat Soup." Think Salvador Dali, only with cats in human clothes travelling through the circus/ocean/desert meeting elephants made of water and freaky fat guys in bondage gear. It's on YouTube in three parts, and is in serious need of psychoanalysis if anyone is so theoretically inclined. (Are there any Kristevans in the house?)
Rose of Versailles SPOILER:
-I made it through all 40 episodes of historical melodrama, and I see that my early intuitions about Oscar's non-subversive female-to-male cross-dressing were somewhat justified. She doesn't get with any women like my favourite revolutionary girl, Utena, since Marie Antoinette all but drops out of the picture in the second half. Instead, she finally admits her hitherto unrealized love for her stableboy Andre, and then immediately cedes all decision-making capabilities to him, because she is his "wife" and so (naturally!) only wants to follow his every word. Gah. But on the plus side, she does keep her male uniform in clinches with Andre -their relationship doesn't depend on her suddenly finding herself in a dress (cough*Haruhi*cough). And she also goes on to die heroically fighting with the peasants after Andre is killed. It might be that she's just upholding the worst of both worlds ("masculine" militarism AND "feminine" subservience in one convenient package!), but it might be more destabilizing than that, too. At any rate, good for looking at gender stuff, if you can get past the hideous 70's art.
-I am hopelessly in love with the song "Time Doing Time," off of Yoko Kanno's latest album for the Korean film Elegant World. It can be heard here. I also recommend "Tiny Painting," "Pathetique," and "Green Man," but avoid "Darling, Darling" at all cost.
And that's all for now! More when I get Ergo Proxy 2 and 3 this weekend, or when I manage to synthesize all the reading I've been doing on globalization theory into something coherent.
-Anyone looking to be utterly baffled and occasionally disturbed (and who isn't?) should watch Tetsuo Sato's "Cat Soup." Think Salvador Dali, only with cats in human clothes travelling through the circus/ocean/desert meeting elephants made of water and freaky fat guys in bondage gear. It's on YouTube in three parts, and is in serious need of psychoanalysis if anyone is so theoretically inclined. (Are there any Kristevans in the house?)
Rose of Versailles SPOILER:
-I made it through all 40 episodes of historical melodrama, and I see that my early intuitions about Oscar's non-subversive female-to-male cross-dressing were somewhat justified. She doesn't get with any women like my favourite revolutionary girl, Utena, since Marie Antoinette all but drops out of the picture in the second half. Instead, she finally admits her hitherto unrealized love for her stableboy Andre, and then immediately cedes all decision-making capabilities to him, because she is his "wife" and so (naturally!) only wants to follow his every word. Gah. But on the plus side, she does keep her male uniform in clinches with Andre -their relationship doesn't depend on her suddenly finding herself in a dress (cough*Haruhi*cough). And she also goes on to die heroically fighting with the peasants after Andre is killed. It might be that she's just upholding the worst of both worlds ("masculine" militarism AND "feminine" subservience in one convenient package!), but it might be more destabilizing than that, too. At any rate, good for looking at gender stuff, if you can get past the hideous 70's art.
-I am hopelessly in love with the song "Time Doing Time," off of Yoko Kanno's latest album for the Korean film Elegant World. It can be heard here. I also recommend "Tiny Painting," "Pathetique," and "Green Man," but avoid "Darling, Darling" at all cost.
And that's all for now! More when I get Ergo Proxy 2 and 3 this weekend, or when I manage to synthesize all the reading I've been doing on globalization theory into something coherent.
