Eruditorum Press

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Bloodmoon Episode 3: BloodRayne Part 3

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Edited text from the video description:

Bloodmoon is a series that looks at the evolution and apotheosis of specific themes and archetypes throughout various video games via the medium of full playthroughs with open discussion prompts.

Questions and observations:

Thunder and lightning is obviously an old horror trope. In the context of mythology and religion, however, they are sometimes seen as awe-inspiring signs of a divine presence. In the Yoruba religion, from which some of Voodoo is derived, Shango (also called Jakuta) is an Orisha, or divine spirit. A deified ancestor known for being a tyrannical ruler in life, his mortal reign ended when has palace was destroyed by lightning during a thunderstorm and has been associated with the natural forces of storms as an Orisha. He is also associated with the colour red, and was venerated highly in the African-American diaspora, whose ancestors valued him as a symbol of resilience and resistance during the time of slavery.

In spite of various controversies surrounding character design in video games, there is a certain multifacted way we, as players, can relate to avatars like Rayne. How, if at all, does this change when that level of agency is removed and the game is translated to something like a Let’s Play?

Take note of the paintings on the wall of Town Hall. George Washington (a noted slave owner). The Last Supper. Among other pictures of Great White Western Culture.

The Deputy is a certain kind of libertarian, not to mention Nerd Culture, ideal: The heroic lone wolf male alone during the apocalypse (a zombie apocalypse, no less) holed up in a super-secure makeshift fortress with “all the guns [he] needs” (note Rayne’s double entendre). It takes Rayne to point out it’s “only a matter of time” before the mutates and Mairaisreq “find a way in”, just like she did. Life, and nature, always finds a way, and fighting it will always be a losing battle in the end. And even so he can’t help but flirt with her and flaunt his rank. Not that this helps him realize she’s literally imprisoned.

BloodRayne on GOG

BloodRayne on Steam

Mods used:

BloodRayne XBOX 360 Controller Support

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The Proverbs of Hell 22/39: Shiizakana

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SHIIZAKANA: A hot pot dish, meat-based and the nominal main course. I’m going to go ahead and just call it “no relation” to the contents of the episode, because reading this as somehow forming a culminating centerpiece of the season is just too ridiculous.

HANNIBAL: Why not appeal to my better nature?

WILL GRAHAM: I wasn’t aware you had one.

HANNIBAL: No one can be fully aware of another human being unless we love them. By that love we see potential in our beloved. Through that love we allow our beloved to see their potential. Expressing that love, our beloved’s potential comes true. I love you, Will.

Given that it also includes Will slowly crushing Hannibal via elaborate rope bondage and the black stag, this dream sequence is firmly the slashiest scene in Hannibal.

HANNIBAL: Memory gives moments immortality. But forgetfulness promotes a healthy mind. It’s good to forget. What are you trying to forget?

JACK CRAWFORD: Doubt. I let doubt in.

For those inclined towards the “Steven Moffat was significantly influenced by Hannibal” school of thought, the similarities between this and “forgetting is the human superpower” is significant. Of course, that was Frank Cottrell Boyce, so the argument runs aground pretty quick. The study going around the popular science press suggesting that forgetfulness correlates with intelligence validates Hannibal pretty significantly. Meanwhile, the idea of forgetting as a cure for doubt is at once poignant and intriguing.

And here we get to where the episode starts to go awry – it’s a sudden and far from welcome return to the killer of the week setup, and more than that a return to the oddity of “Buffet Froid” where the episode reads as Hannibal’s take on a particular genre trope. In this case, as a strange animal slaughters a trucker while the camera pans up to the moon, we’re clearly doing a werewolf story. As a killer of the week it’s a perfectly good second season idea, but it feels like what it is – the killer of the week conceit stretching to its breaking point in ways that are fundamentally just not that compelling within the context of what Hannibal actually does well, namely its delectably oversignified exchanges between and around Hannibal and Will.

WILL GRAHAM: Do you have any regrets?

HANNIBAL: With every choice lies the possibility of regret. However, if I choose not to do something, it’s usually for a good reason.

Hannibal’s formulation – only considering the possibility of regretting not doing something – is fascinating. Some of it is context – Hannibal knows even before Will says as much that he’s regretting not killing Clark Ingram last episode. But Hannibal’s megalomania – a character trait he is even more circumspect about than his cannibalism – shines through in his complete disregard for the basic idea that he might regret anything he has done as opposed to merely missing an opportunity.

HANNIBAL: Did you make that decision on the basis of anticipating the regret you would feel taking another life?

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Bloodmoon Episode 2: BloodRayne Part 2

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We’re back to the cursed Louisiana Bayou over at my YouTube channel as the Bloodmoon series continues its look at BloodRayne‘s opening world. Check out Episode 1 if you missed it. If you’re only familiar with the Uwe Boll movies, get a look at where Rayne got her start and see her in a whole new light!

Editied text from the video description:

Bloodmoon is a series that looks at the evolution and apotheosis of specific themes and archetypes throughout various video games via the medium of full playthroughs with open discussion prompts.

Questions and observations:

“City of the Dead” is a nickname given to New Orleans St. Louis Cemetery No. 1, the oldest cemetery in the city. Though spanning just one square block, thousands of people are buried here, hence its name. Notice how the “City of the Dead” in BloodRayne is flooded.

The Yonic imagery in the Maraisreq nest is obvious. Swamp monsters have been part of bayou folklore for generations, but seem to be a Western myth instead of a Native one (though there is a Swamp Woman figure roughly similar to the Irish banshee in Wabanaki folklore of the Northeast Atlantic coast). A famous example is the Honey Island Swamp Monster, a Bigfoot-type creature reputed to haunt Honey Island Swamp in Louisiana.

In Louisiana, the Creole peoples refer to the descendants of French and Spanish colonialists who intermarried. It can also refer to descendants of African slaves and Native Americans who were born into the community.

Rayne’s “harpoon” isn’t really a harpoon, and could more accurately be described as a kunai on a chain. It does, however, reinforce the game’s BDSM theme as well as evoke ninja imagery, which plays into Rayne’s acrobatic build and body language.

The link between vampirism and sexuality is an old one. What are some ways in which sexuality, and the transfer of sexual energy, has been read and interpreted? How do you think this applies to Rayne, a(n at this point aspiring) half-vampire dominatrix?

Marie Laveau was a real woman, a famous Voodoo priestess who lived during the early-to-mid 1860s. Voodoo (not to be confused with Vodou, a similar religion practiced in Haiti), is a syncretic religion that emerged in the African-American community of Louisiana out of a blending of various West African spiritual pathways and French Catholicism. Ms. Laveau had a massive and multiethnic following in her time, practiced Native American spirit work alongside Voodoo and became a kind of living folk hero. She is said to be interred in St. Louis Cemetery No. 1.

Recent discussions in the contemporary magick community stress that magick itself is a neutral force: White/Black and Light/Dark should not be seen to map onto Good and Evil, and the spirits have moral codes above and beyond those of humans. What makes magick Good or Evil, in this framework, is whether or not it’s used for Good or Evil ends. It only matters what one does.

BloodRayne on GOG

BloodRayne on Steam

Mods used:

BloodRayne XBOX 360 Controller Support

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The Proverbs of Hell 21/39: Su-Zukana

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SU-ZUKANA: A palate cleanser, typically involving vinegar. A better title for last week, I suspect, but still fitting for this, which essentially starts off with all new concerns.

JACK CRAWFORD: How do you catch a fish who isn’t hungry?

WILL GRAHAM: You have to change tactics. Use live bait that moves and excites them to action. Gotta make him bite even though he’s not hungry.

JACK CRAWFORD: Make him act on instinct. He’s always a predator.

WILL GRAHAM: You have to create a reality where only you and the fish exist, where your lure becomes what he wants most, despite everything he knows.

JACK CRAWFORD: Wrong move and he swims away.

WILL GRAHAM: I’m a good fisherman, Jack.

Will’s framework of fishing and hunting has had time to evolve in his solitude, so that fishing takes on aesthetic qualities. Of particular interest is the creation of realities, an explicitly narrativizing approach that reframes fishing as an act of artistic creation. Already the reality he needs is coming into being.

HANNIBAL: Truite saumonée au bleau with vegetables and broth, served with hollandaise sauce on the side. Beautiful fish, Will.

WILL GRAHAM: It was my turn to provide the meat.

HANNIBAL: More flavorful and firm than farmed specimens. I find the trout to be a very Nietzschean fish. Trials of his wild existence find their way into the flavor of the flesh.

Will’s laconic line about providing the meat – sufficiently passive aggressive that Hannibal calls him on it shortly thereafter – still flags a fundamental appetite to do so. The bait, in other words, has been flashed. Hannibal, meanwhile, is going to entertaining lengths to empathize with the fish sufficiently to find aesthetic sustenance in it, elevating the trout into a would be uberfisch so that his dominance of it can feel substantive.

HANNIBAL: I agree with the pagans. The horse is divine. All beasts of burden are sacred animals.

A striking claim from Hannibal. The easy (and thus hopelessly lazy) interpretation would be to treat this as some sort of lie, but Hannibal has no motivation to do so in this instance, and he is not given to unnecessary falsehood. (Anyway, his declaration that he agrees with the pagans is too blatantly true in the general case to sustain that reading.) What, then, does he mean by sacred in the context of beasts of burden, which would by most readings be a lesser creature than the pigs he uses as his aesthetic baseline? The most likely reading is that he respects beasts of burden for their acceptance of subservience, finding a spiritual power in the fact that they do not think themselves more than they are.

HANNIBAL: The horse is a chrysalis, a cocoon meant to hold the young woman until her death can be transformed.

JACK CRAWFORD: Transformed into what?

HANNIBAL: Life. A new life. This is a birth. Or it was intended to be. This is every bit as much about giving life as it is taking it.

JACK CRAWFORD: What’s the thinking?

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Signal Boost: Preserving Classic Video Games with RetroRGB

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Have you ever thought about how we experience media?
 
A book is a book is a book, surely. Reading is reading, no matter what device or medium you do it on. And yet, you’ll still hear people say the experience of reading on a computer, phone or e-reader isn’t the same as holding a physical book forged from dead tress in their hands. Many people still prefer the sound of vinyl records to digital music. Watching a play live is a manifestly different experience than watching a recording of the performance or reading a script (just ask Jack about Shakespeare sometime). And once you move into more thoroughly modern forms of creative expression, movies, television and video games, medium becomes even more important to consider.
 
Ever since the dawn of television, movie studios have played with unconventional and experimental aspect rations (or 3D film) to provide an experience than can only be had in theatres. For one TV example that should be familiar to many of you, I have previously, somewhat infamously, raised cane about what I consider the “proper” way to experience and judge Star Trek: The Next Generation. To briefly summarise that old chestnut, Star Trek: The Next Generation was *recorded* on film, but *composited* on VHS, meaning the show was edited and all the special effects shots were added in on magnetic tape after the fact, so the final episode lost a startling amount of visual detail, clarity and information between filming and being sent out to TV stations. This was fine in 1987 when consumer CRTs at the time couldn’t process that information anyway and the show could play to the strengths of that technology, but this provides a problem for anyone trying to enjoy the show any way other than broadcast TV in 1987.
 
Star Trek: The Next Generation did not handle the transition to digital video easily or cleanly, and from the first DVD releases in the early 2000s there has been scepticism about the show’s art direction, lighting, cinematography and general aesthetics. But this was because the DVD “transfer” was an Nth generation lossy VHS composite copied over to DVD and run through some editing software to artificially “clean it up” post facto. That transfer was then used in online streaming and cable reruns, and was all we had until 2012 when the Blu-ray “remaster” (a hopelessly inaccurate term I wish PR people would stop using) went back to the original film negatives and recomposited the entire show in high definition, offering digital natives and immigrants a glimpse at what the show was really meant to look like for the first time. Happily, this new transfer can be seen not only on the Blu-rays, but on all digital streaming services today.
 
With video games, this sort of problem becomes even more pronounced. If you think about a game console, it’s essentially a custom, specialized hardware configuration specifically tailored for playing video games. Games were created with these specific hardware configurations in mind, and were designed especially to take advantage of their strengths, weaknesses and idiosyncrasies.
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Antica

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Let’s give the Proverbs a week off and talk about Secret Empire. For those who haven’t followed, this was Marvel’s annual shitty summer crossover, this time with the premise that history has been rewritten to make Captain America a Hydra sleeper agent who has now taken over the US. So basically, “what if Captain America were secretly a Nazi?” This has been widely panned, even moreso than Marvel’s summer crossovers usually are. On the one hand, this is entirely appropriate, as Secret Empire is not only one of the worst-written crossovers in superhero history but also one of the most flatly evil. On the other, relatively few people have actually articulated this, with an alarming number of critiques of the comic instead being exercises in point-missing far almost as epic than the crossover itself.

Perhaps the most spectacularly off-base thing to be frequently said about the comic is that its premise is an insult to the legacy of Captain America co-creator and avowed Nazi-puncher Jack Kirby. It is difficult to entirely grasp the value system under which making a fictional character he drew forty-three issues of into a fascist is an insult to his legacy but the basic existence of Marvel Comics as a corporate entity built on the systematic exploitation of his labor is not. Certainly it is not a value system worth taking seriously. But it is a commonly expressed one, in a way that is revealing about what superheroes, as a genre, have decomposed into over the seventy-six years since Captain America’s creation.

The second spectacularly wrongheaded objection to Secret Empire is closely related, namely the idea that its premise is anything short of brilliant. Of course Captain America as a fascist is a sensible story idea. He’s a blonde-haired, blue-eyed “super-soldier” named Captain America. The concept has always flirted with fascism, as has the superhero concept in general, with its fantasy of puissant men in uniforms who will protect us from danger and change. Exploring that tension has often been brilliant, whether consciously and carefully as in Alan Moore’s Miracleman and Kieron Gillen’s Uber, or with reckless overenthusiasm as in Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns and Steve Ditko’s Mr. A. As premises for crossovers go, it’s far better than “a superhero civil war over the ethics of predicting the future,” “heroes and villains switch places,” or “Secret Wars again.”

But premises aren’t everything, and Nick Spencer, the writer of Secret Empire, is spectacularly the wrong man for the job. To knock down one last bad argument about the series, this is not because he’s a borderline fascist. He was a centrist who ran for Cincinnati city council as a Republican in 2005 and drifted to the Democratic party in the wake of the Tea Party and Trump. His politics are shitty in almost the precise way you would expect from that, and indeed slightly shittier given that he’s a thin-skinned Twitter bully to boot. In most regards this is considerably preferable to being a fascist, but unfortunately not when it comes to writing Secret Empire.…

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Drunken Whocast 3

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At long last, here is Drunken Whocast 3. 

Myself, Daniel, James, and Kit, gathered on Skype to discuss Series 3 while getting progressively sozzled.  This time we avoided getting drawn into speculations about the orgasms of prominent right-wingers, but still managed to fly off in all sorts of irrelevant and awful directions.  Many things were said, with all the authority of drunk white guys, that were very wrong – in both senses.  (The actual libels have been removed – even the true ones.)  Even so, there’s a fair bit of good, solid Doctor Who talk here.  We all find Series 3 pretty interesting, it seems. 

Download here.

I must apologise for my posts being sporadic at the moment.  I’m desperately trying to finish off some other (non-postable) projects while coping with a real life that is increasing frantic on both a work and personal level.  I’m grateful to all of you for being patient – and especially to those Patreon sponsors of mine who are, at the moment, basically giving me money for nothing.  Bless you all.  If you want to give me money for nothing, go here.

Here, by the way, are the Patreons of James and Kit.  And here’s Phil’s/Eruditorum Press’s.  Daniel doesn’t have one yet, but I’m sure he’ll figure out a way for you to give him money if you want to.  Just in case you felt like sponsoring people who are actually producing stuff at the moment.

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Tom and Jerry Classic Reading Guide (V.2)

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Over the summer, I posted a rough draft of what I called a “Reading Guide” for Tom and Jerry. You know. The cat and mouse cartoon. I’ve since rewatched the series and revised my picks and criteria, so here’s “Version 2”.

(Also, apparently something happened with the latest DTV Tom and Jerry movie? Apparently it went mememtic this summer without me noticing?)

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I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the history of animation, particularly during the Golden Age, these past few months for a variety of reasons. I used to watch theatrical shorts all the time on Cartoon Network and I have a real affinity for that genre, but I think I’ve come to the conclusion now that Tom and Jerry is probably my favourite out of all the Golden Age series. Naturally, it’s the most controversial one.

Some of the criticism I find perfectly understandable. Some of it I find utterly preposterous and born from media illiteracy. But to take the more valid complaints, while there are certainly some pretty appallingly racist shorts in the Tom and Jerry catalog I tend to find this disproportionately overemphasized in modern criticism, making it seem like racist jokes and stereotypes made up far more of a percentage of Tom and Jerry’s humour than they actually did. I don’t actually find Tom and Jerry to be on average worse on stuff like this than Disney or Warner Brothers’ output, it just looks worse for Tom and Jerry because MGM never outright banned any of their most egregious outings like the competition did (I would count WB’s “Censored 11” as far and away worse for the time than just about anything Tom and Jerry ever did, and that Disney’s Peter Pan was allowed to skirt by unchallenged is a resounding source of ire for me).
 
On the whole, Tom and Jerry comes across to me as the most consistently creative, inventive and reliably excellent series in the entire Golden Age. I don’t think Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera always get quite the credit they deserve for sticking around the industry as long as they did (especially when their rivals were starting to visibly flounder), or for being the gifted comedic talents this series demonstrably shows them to have been. Other studios had a much harder time grasping the cartoon morality (let alone comic timing) Tom and Jerry perfected. And I was very surprised to see that Chuck Jones’ run on Tom and Jerry seems to be held in such low esteem by both Chuck Jones fans *and* Tom and Jerry fans: For someone who claimed to not understand the characters, I always thought he sure handled them well.
 
But more than that, Tom and Jerry is workmanlike, and I mean that in the best possible way. It constantly tries to adapt to a changing environment, and its humour is truly universal: Somewhat famously (and tellingly), Japan considers Tom and Jerry one of the greatest “anime” of all time, and it’s the only Western series to consistently make people’s Best Of lists.
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The Proverbs of Hell 20/39: Yakimono

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YAKIMONO: A course of flame-grilled meat. There are a number of episodes this would be a sensible title for, none of which are this one. 

MIRIAM LASS: I remember a dream about drowning. Then being awake. And not awake. Being myself, and not myself. I remember I could smell salt air. We were by the sea. For weeks. Months. Longer. Days and evenings blurred, I’d wake up to the smell of fresh flowers and the sting of a needle. I wasn’t afraid. Fear and pain were so far away, on the horizon, but not close. Never close.

Miriam’s description is loosely adapted from a description of Hannibal’s brainwashing of Clarice from Hannibal. 

ALANA BLOOM: They found a witness. A survivor. The only victim of the Chesapeake Ripper who lived to tell.

HANNIBAL: Is this witness watching me now?

ALANA BLOOM: Yes.

HANNIBAL: It seems I am the usual suspect.

ALANA BLOOM: I keep having angry, imaginary conversations with Jack Crawford about that. I wish I could tell you why this is happening.

Why are Alana’s conversations imaginary? She showed no hesitation in picking a fight with Jack in season one, nor at the beginning of season two when she started an investigation into his conduct. The charitable explanation – and it’s far from clear such charity is warranted when dealing with apparent inconsistencies in Alana’s characterization – is that she does not bring the matter up with Jack because she is afraid of what Jack will say to defend his position. 

WILL GRAHAM: This is very sudden.

DR. CHILTON: The federal prosecutor has dropped all charges. Since you weren’t convicted of killing anyone, the basis for your sentencing to this institution is null and void. The Chesapeake Ripper has set you free.

Endearingly meta, given that we last saw Will early in “Futamono,” have seen none of the procedural wheels involved in this, and the cliffhanger had nothing to do with Will’s release. As a result, Will’s release feels slightly out of nowhere for all that it’s been anticipated for six episodes. 

DR. CHILTON: Why didn’t Hannibal just kill you?

WILL GRAHAM: Because he wants to be my friend. 

There’s no reason, in the script alone, why this line, which is mostly a restatement of previous sentiments, should be immediately iconic. It’s good, sure, but not in and of itself brilliant. Dancy’s delivery, on the other hand, full of both condescension towards Chilton and incredulity at the absurd thing he has to say in order to understand the basic fact of his drawing breath, is a thing of wonder and ensures that this is up there with “I love your work” and… well, we’ll talk about that next episode.

JACK CRAWFORD: You need a ride?

WILL GRAHAM: I was going to call a cab.

The untroubled ease with which Jack and Will resume their friendship is a nice callback to the tone of the final scene of “Coquilles.”

JACK CRAWFORD: Miriam thanked me. When we found her. For not giving up on her.

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Asylum, Love, & Slavery

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I was just popping by to tell you lot about a brilliantly fun new entry in the Amicus podcast from myself and Lee Russell, which you’ll find here http://pexlives.libsyn.com/city-of-the-dead-14-asylum and will offer you just the tonic. If you like old Doctor Who, this sort of stuff is right up your alley. And if you don’t, you’ll probably dig it too.

I was just going to do that and be on my way, but I noticed that there was no Friday post from that wine chugging layabout J. Graham, so I thought I’d be your subsitute leftist for the week and post this recent essay that had previously been exclusively available to those who support me on Patreon. Feel free to throw paper airplanes and leave tacks on my chair in the comments below.

 

All over the world, white supremacists are flexing their pale, flabby muscles in this new age of online organising. In America, an emboldened, far-right Republican party controls the government. The Southern Strategy has made the Republican Party as hard right, as racist, and as popular as it is now. The strategy was (and is) the winking and ever more thinly veiled appeal to racist whites in the South and elsewhere. Vote for us, it promised with seductive gestures towards prejudice against blacks, and we’ll take care of crime and immigration.

The Southern Strategy was pioneered by Barry Goldwater and Richard Nixon in the 1960s and took thousands of anti-civil rights bigots away from their traditional home in the Democratic Party. Credit is also due to the now-dead, once-sentient hemorrhoid, Roger Ailes, who was later an instrumental force behind the shaping and running of the Fox News network and all of its crimes against humanity. The Republicans subsequently had crushing electoral success in 1968 and rode the strategy again and again to the Presidency. 

The logical endpoint of moving further and further in this toxic, backward direction is the kind of Presidential campaign run with intolerant and vicious effectiveness by Donald Trump, New York millionaire and media personality, in 2016. There is no need to dredge once more over the motherfucker’s worst moments on the campaign trail here. 

Donald Trump now squats in the White House (built by people who were whipped, beaten, and enslaved because of the tint of the colour of their skin) thanks mostly to the suppression of votes from non-whites, the new Jim Crow, and the work of one of the United States’ most cerebral slaveholders. James Madison advocated for the Electoral College as a way to give the slave states an advantage against the more populous so-called free states in the choice of President. 

Plantation slavery in the US was not that long ago, however much the black and white photographs may tie it in our minds to some prehistoric era that doesn’t need consideration, like the Roman destruction of Carthage. That we all still live with slavery’s malignant after effects is evidence enough of its closeness. To get the beginnings of an idea of what that simple word ‘slavery’, which we can be in danger of eliding over, meant (as well as  its intrinsic link to the growth of capital) I recommend Edward E.…

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