X2: X-Men United

X2: X-Men United

Prompt12

I think the Videodrome is the high technology which affects body in violent ways. The movie Videodrome is filled with violence. This is especially represented by showing death. There are a lot of deaths in the whole movie. Every death is related to the technology; Videodrome. Death is a huge change in the body. This movie shows the death in violent and disgusting ways. Convex programmed Max’s body by using videodrome. He put the tape inside of Max’s body by force. (This is disgusting scene.) Then, Max became assassin of the Videodrome. He killed his partners but fail to kill Bianca. Bianca removed the tape and programmed again to kill people related to videodrome. So Max killed Convex and Herlon. This is the main scene which is described as violent and disgusting death. Their body is changed in horrible and disgusting ways. It is too disgusting that almost everyone wouldn’t enjoy these scenes. According to this point, I think director exposed his intention about the movie. He is looking this movie in negative way. He made viewer to feel themselves about this idea. The argument is that this technology is too much that it can affect the body in negative way. It blows serious attention to viewers about the technology and the body. They would not want this things happens in the real world. Thus, I think this movie uses effective way to support the argument. The argument gets more obviously when showing the violence and negative affect about the body.

prompt 11

The main characters of X2 are the mutants. Due to high technology, there are many mutants in the world. Unlike humans, these mutants have special powers. The first mutant we can see in the movie is Nightcrawler, who has the ability to teleport. There are several other mutants who are X-men; Wolverine, Jean, Storm etc. They all have extraordinary powers which help them fight against the anti-mutant human, Stryker. Stryker injects drugs to mutants to control them by using Professor X’s ability. I think there are two arguments related with the body in this movie. First, high technology empowers the mutants’ bodies with extraordinary power and this is directly related to violence. The movie focuses on these X-men’s powers. It shows their special ability by using many cinematic languages. The focus of almost every scene is related to their power, such as the three blades from Wolverine’s hands, the ice for Bobby(Iceman) and fire for Pyro. They use this power to fight with Stryker and human military. This make their power directly related to violence. The second argument is that the body can be controlled by someone else. Stryker uses drugs or his son to control the mutants’ body. The light of the movie also supports this argument. It’s almost dark when they fight with their power. Then, it gets brighter when the movie is approaching to the peaceful end. The background is interesting as well. Alkali Lake is where Stryker tried to kill the mutants. Inside of his building, it’s dark and filled with violence. However, the outside of the building is beautiful nature. This means that outside of violence is peaceful. This contrast makes the violence more strong which also make the arguments more strong.

Prompt 10

I have several interesting topics in Neromancer that I want to talk about. First one is about agency. Armitage’s team, which include Case, Molly, Peter ….,  can be agency. They work as a team. Wintermute uses them to work for him because he doesn’t have physical body. This team can be considered as Wintermute’s body since they work for his body.

Freedom is also interesting part in this book. In this real world, where we are living now, it’s hard to imagine without the body. We barely have freedom about our body. In Neromancer, however, people could have freedom about the body. Case is the most predominant character who experienced freedom from his body. He connects to cyberspace where he can be apart from his meat. He can’t go certain place – which is not real – but he can see, talk and even feel!! All of these things are not related to his real body.

The next thing I want to talk about is death. There are a lot of character who are involved in death. For example, Dixie is dead person. But he is alive in cyberspace. Case is working (maybe just using) with him. Same as Linda. She is already dead in Chiba, but Case met her in the beach ( which is not real beach, cyberspace ). These facts can say that death is just related to body. In cyberspace, everyone is without the body. So death doesn’t affect anything to them. I think this is really interesting part. There’s one more interesting part about death what I want to mention about. It’s about Peter. Molly poisoned him. So he is almost dead. But Neromancer is using his eyes. Peter can be alive only if Neromancer keep his eyes. This means that if one part of your body is alive in other person, you are not died yet. This definition is really new for us. This whole thing can be new body modification related to high technologies.  

Prompt 9

The most interesting body presented in Neuromancer is the body which is modified by high technologies. First, there is brain-computer interface ability. By using this ability, people can easily connect to the virtual world. In cyberspace which is virtual world, people can act with or without their meat. They also can talk with system which can help you in many ways. For example, Case got helped from Dixie to find Molly in the freeside. This technology liberates characters from the flesh. It is totally new way to experience the body. This is really interesting part. Second thing which was interesting for me was about the actual body. They put some biomedical things to the body and make it function as they want. For example, Armitage implanted mycotoxin sacs into Case’s blood vessel which is significant thing about the body.
These concept about the body is quite different from the body we’ve encounter in the class. The predominant difference is about controlling the body. What we’ve discussed in class so far was the body mainly controlled by themselves. However, the bodies of this book can be controlled by someone else. This can be system, AI, or other people. The argument this book contains is that technology can change the control of the body. This sounds really strange. I think it is negative result from high technology. It may be useful in some part, but there will be huge confusion about the body. It extended the body controllership, but in negative way. I think the controllership of the body has to be the owner of the body; themselves.

Prompt 7

There are several "mainstream" body modifications in these days. Plastic surgery and diet is the main of the mainstream body modification. Even though they are considered as the "mainstream", it is controversial. This wasn't accepted when they first came out. For instance, many people think that plastic surgery is ridiculous at the first time. But since it became so popular, many people changed their mind.( For sure, there's still some people who against the plastic surgery.)
However, I think these body modification has almost same political potential as radical body modification which is heavy tattoos or piercing and flesh hanging. Even though it became so popular, it's still body modification. It can not be just same as normal. Many people think that these mainstream body modifications is regarded as normal, because their goal is to be close to the normative standards. But we have to think about the normative standards. What is normative standard? It could be various for every single group. Some group can think that normative is having a piercing and tattoos.
Pitt argues that body modification is to represent their body and claim some important things for their body. For this point of view, it can be applied to the mainstream body modification as well. They do it because they want to represent their beauty or health by their body. Maybe beauty and health is so popular and normal goal to represents themselves. So many people think that their body modification is ‘normal’. Taking all this into account, I think mainstream body modification has same political potential and meaning as radical body modification.

Prompt 6

First, I'm going to talk about the formal writing. This writing is as the wordmeans "formal". It is the method to express your idea by writing in someformat. This is very basic form of writing, so it usually suits for anysituation and audience. (But, If the specific situation or audience is given,then we can find more effective way of writing.) I practice this sort ofwriting almost in the school. Many classes request the formal writing to expressmy idea and confirm my knowledge. I write some formal writing when I'm workingaswell. I write daily reports and letters in formal way. The reason I'm using"formal writing" is that this is common formal way to communicate with eachother.

There are many ways to express themselves other than formal writing;which isinformal modes of writing. We can consider about our bodies. I think everythingwhat youdo with your body is informal modes of writing. For example, if you wear a nicesexy dressand have a big smile on your face, it means that you are happy and going outparty orsomewhere like that. You already wrote in your body about your emotion andplan.

I think there is a limit of authorship in writing. We can do our best to conveyour thought and idea by many ways. But we can't express totally same as weexpected. The way we can make as closely as we expected is to combine the methodofwriting. There are different limit in formal writing and informal modes ofwriting. I think they can compensate each other by combining.