Argument Within A Framework

When one argues within a framework, one is not setting out to break the framework entirely by dismissing it out of hand. Rather, one is operating as if the framework of argumentation is reality, especially when discussing a piece of fiction. When discussing fiction, one must operate within the confines of that reality to argue points and ask questions as to why things are the way they are. One need not destroy the work from without, one can easily destroy it from within through the use and application of the story's own logic. External critique has a time and a place, mainly for the analysis of gaps in the story or figuring out why the author might have written something a certain way. Internal critique is how one takes apart a story to start with.

The Division of Culture Was Inevitable

As communication technology became better, inevitably it became easier to share full-length movies and TV series, either officially or unofficially, and prior to that, it facilitated original, viral content. This helped to individualize, and by extension, isolate the entertainment experience. Ultimately, this was always going to happen. Ever since the advent of home video formats, the entertainment experience has become more and more individual, and more isolated. Coupling this with the advent of miniature computers and handheld devices capable of storing and/or streaming high-quality video, and the isolation becomes greater. The printing press could be argued as the start of this phenomenon, as the widespread availability of printed materials, combined with increased literacy rates, means that reading becomes a solitary activity later in life. This combined with an increasing individualism in worldwide society and rising introversion means that this division of culture into subculture was inevitable.

All Religion Is Confucian?

    A topic that came to mind last week was that most religion is based in some worship of ancestors, akin to that of Confucianism's reverence of the elders and ancestors. All branches of the Abrahamic religions claim Jaweh as the Allfather. Greco-Roman mythology has all of the gods descended from the Allmother, even her own mate. From there, everything else came. Hinduism has the entirety of the universe born from one... Let's say "thing" from which all else came. Ultimately, all religion with any actual doctrine requires reverence of the past to the detriment of everything else. Decrees that were passed down based on opinions and whims get held up for centuries as the gospel truth. Passing words taken as absolute orders, and whatnot. Anyone who's familiar with Confucius should be feeling chills right about now.
    Even non-deistic religions, such as the various forms of Communism throughout the years, Nazism, most political dynasties, and many political systems, the way some revere public and political figures and loads of fandoms are heavily Confucian. They all hold an unhealthy reverence for those who came before, they all hold idealized versions of the past up over the reality of the situation, and they're all suspicious of new ideas, newcomers, and any change.

Cosmic Ret-Cons and nonsensical renaming.

The way the Romans adapted and adopted Greek myths as their own reminds me of what happened when Disney bought Star Wars. They renamed the characters, reorganized the entire history of the universe, and yet when everything's said and done, most of the same events happen, most of the characters are the same, but with slightly different names, and the order of events is slightly different. In fact, the Roman attitude toward Greek myths is also very similar to what happens with a lot of comic-book adaptations to any other medium. It's more akin to having read the original comics, then watching an animated adaptation. In fact, all of the the Greco-Roman mythological variations strike me as very similar to what happens when one story is adapted multiple times over centuries or decades, much like many comic book heroes, or indeed, other literary characters such as Robin Hood.

Du Fu: I Stand Alone As A Hardcore Individualist Poem

    The work of Du Fu strikes me as that of a man who conformed to what he was expected to in his youth, but rebelled later in life, as an older man. Ironic, considering how in most western societies, conformity comes with age, and rebellion with youth.
    Du Fu was a Confucianist poet, and Confucianism tends to shun the idea of individualism. However, Du Fu's I Stand Alone strikes me as an almost Randian level of radical hardcore individualism. A number of other works by this same author show a distinct tonal shift from the laments of youth that the young didn't respect their elders into the laments of an old man who's wasted his life in piety rather than forging a path for himself. It strikes me as somewhat ironic.

Medea As Fanfiction

    Apologies for the lateness of this post, apparently Blogger didn't actually publish it when I told it to.
    Euripides' Medea really strikes me as something written by an ancient-Greek Otaku fanboy who was mad that his perfect Waifu was married off to the wrong guy. Allow me to clarify that statement. You see, I've read a lot of fanfiction on FanFiction.net over the years, and I wasn't a particularly huge fan of the last-minute pairings in Harry Potter that basically contradicted the entirety of the character development from the previous six or seven books, so I've spent a rather significant amount of time looking for stories that retell the events of the last two books with my preferred pairings of Harry Potter and Hermione Granger. Unfortunately, it's somewhat difficult to separate the good from the bad. One might be reading what seems like a perfectly good story for the author to make Ron Weasley a Death Eater or a rapist out of nowhere. This is more commonly known as "Demonization" in literary circles and as "Ron The Death Eater" on the internet, given the nature of fandom to completely overdo their hatred for a character who's not necessarily even that bad. Authors tend to flagrantly destroy characters they hate, putting them through hell and portraying them as horrible people, regardless of the character's actual personality. This tends to go both ways, a character the author likes can do no wrong regardless of how objectively evil their actions may be. This is something that I've always seen in Medea. I'm a big fan of Greek mythology, and everyone seems out of character in Medea as compared to its predecessor, Jason And The Argonauts. I never once thought in my readings of Jason And The Argonauts (And in my viewings of various film adaptations) that Jason would have had fourteen kids with Medea and then abandoned her for someone else. Their chemistry was great, and the two of them seemed like the prime battle-couple. As if the two of them could take over the world together if they wanted to. It didn't make any sense for them to split up for any reason.
    Then, along comes Euripides. I suspect Euripides had some form of infatuation with Medea, and a dislike for Jason. This is fairly common in Japan, as popular actresses will keep their marriages secret to keep their fanboys from harassing their husbands. In America we see a similar phenomenon, but with the genders reversed, popular actors wives tend to be picked on and harassed by the actor's fangirls if they don't fit the exact picture they had in their head of the woman (or man) they wanted to see the actor paired with. In reading Medea I get the hint that Euripides had gotten fed-up with the antics of real women (as he was twice divorced due to their infidelity) and wanted to marry a perfect, fictional lady. This manifests itself today in a somewhat ironic context, internet waifu culture. Although it manifests somewhat less ironically in Japan, where birth-rates drop in inverse proportion to the popularity of fictional men and women, typically animated ones, although some manifest as CGI or holograms (Such as Hatsune Miku). As Euripides was a hermit, and a man scorned by two wives, he fits quite the picture of the typical modern 引き籠り おたく(Hikikomori Otaku), or, roughly, an obsessive shut-in in English.
    Given the omnipresent hate-fic tropes in the story; a protagonist who can do no wrong, a badly-demonized romantic interest and every major character acting vastly different to all previous portrayal, I'd say that this story is almost certainly a piece of fanfiction written by a fanboy who was disappointed that he was getting cuckolded by a fictional character. In addition to him being obsessed with the character, I also believe he used the story as a method of lashing out as a result of his divorces. I see Euripides as using Jason as an effigy of his wives, and Medea as the agent of his revenge as well as a self-insert avatar. Think about it, Jason abandoned a smart, capable woman for the sake of power and personal gain, and as Sanderson has mentioned a number of times in class, we tend to fall in love with aspects of ourselves we see in others, so I think Euripides saw a lot of himself in the character of Medea, and thus used her as his avatar of vengeance against his wives, represented by Jason, and those whom they cheated with, represented by Jason's new wife. I don't know what the murder of their children is supposed to represent. Maybe it's a representation of destroying the relationships. I see that as one of the most out-of-character moments in all of Medea, as I'd have thought Medea would have just taken the kids with her when she left.

Mutual Obsession Is Cute, One-sided Obsession Is Creepy?

    If two people are massively obsessed with each other, then it's portrayed as cute, romantic, etc, regardless of whether or not one of the two parties involved would be considered a stalker otherwise. Romeo and Juliet were both creepily obsessed with each other, to the extent that both of them killed themselves at the prospect of not being with the other. I read a series of Egyptian love-poems written from very much the same perspective this week, and both of the characters came across as incredibly needy and whiny little bitches who'd never consummate their relationship, much less grow up enough to not be so god-damn needy. If either one of them wasn't interested in the other, they'd be considered a stalker. Contrasting this to a character like The Phantom of the Opera, he's a stereotypical stalker, but if the object of his affections was as creepily interested in him as he was in them, then I'll bet the story would be viewed entirely differently.