Sunday, May 18, 2008

It occurred to me to-day to look at the Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus phenomenon in terms of Vertigo. Powerful, unseen men dress a girl, tell her how to behave, give her blonde hair, all in the interest of financial gain. The audience buys into this illusion of an innocently sexual girl, and trouble arises from a picture that suggests an earthier girl who might know all the sexual implications of her glamour. Oh, modern culture; Alfred Hitchock's still got your number.

To-night's my third night of working on character designs. I finalised the main character's design last night. I've been looking at medieval fashions, but I didn't want to just create a carbon copy of something, so I improvised here and there, eventually coming up with something that looks like a woman from 1450 who'd travelled back in time to 1250 and is making do with the available wardrobe.

I hope you don't mind if my girl's not innocent.

I watched the new Code Geass while eating breakfast, and it was an episode I particularly loved. "The world is full of lies!" says the Britannian Emperor at the opening (fansubbed by a group called Eclipse). "'Thou shalt not kill. Thou shalt not steal. Thou shalt not bear false witness. Thou shalt not commit adultery.' These are all lies, all deceptions. 'I don't want to be killed. I don't want to be a victim of theft.' That is why they use lies like justice and morals to protect their weak selves. The original truth is the survival of the fittest. One must devour it all, whether it be other humans, wealth, power, or the world itself!" It was like bizarro John Locke talking.

We already learned last week that the character I thought had gotten a sex change, Nunnelly (the name itself is cringe-inducing), had in fact not gotten a sex change, but instead had become a governor. But this was still an improvement, and it actually led to a wonderful central conflict for the episode. In the first season, Nunnelly's brother, Lelouch, the show's main character, had become the masked insurgent leader, Zero, with the primary motive of creating a better world for Nunnelly. It always seemed like a really cheap, sentimental ploy to me, but it provided an opportunity in this episode for Lelouch to wrestle with this conflict of interest. My favourite scene began with Lelouch about to inject himself with a drug, but being stopped by his subordinate, Kallen (I'm pretty sure her name is "Karen", but all the fan subbers have settled on "Kallen"). He asks her to "comfort" him, but she won't give him this, and the reason is clear; his personal needs are less important that what being Zero means. "To wear a ring of power is to be alone," as Galadriel said.

I must admit this hits me at a rather personal level. It's something I've had to think about a lot as my personal needs for comfort and support have been denied noticeably this past year, though it's been a regular pattern for the past decade. And I see it happening to just about everyone I know, too. Sometimes I think working on something will help alleviate pain, but it never does. I have to keep working, though, because it's the only thing truly meaningful. While the established pattern of my life is that I invariably lose friends and things I care about, my own will is a constant.

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