Month: December 2019

Finding the Mother Lode

Hi everyone. How’s your December been? Mine’s been full of testing, grading, breaking my toe, acquiring two homeless kittens, and finally doing some last-minute Christmas shopping…for myself. Which means that shortly after this goes up, I’ll have to hobble out of the door and actually start looking for presents for my poor daughters.

No, really. Ahem.

But back to me. I did discover quite the mother lode in Busan Book Alley yesterday, yes? Yet even I balked at the various readers on Lacan and Gender and Critical Theory available though, and reluctantly put down such tomes as examinations of the works of various Australian woman authors, which I’d be unlikely to ever read myself. So you’re more than welcome to pick those up yourself!

Meanwhile, I’m also happy to say I do finally have various long posts actually written for you. But, curiously, Christmas and New Year’s don’t seem to be the best times to post anything you’d like to actually get read. So, I’ll just keep writing more instead—I shouldn’t be walking much on this toe after all—and will delay posting them until late next week.

Until, I hope you enjoy the holidays. And, given that you’re still reading this probably means that you too get excited about 30+ year-old books, I’d be happy to chat with you about any of my picks above. Probably, I’ll start with Gender Voices by David Graddol and Joan Swann (1989), in which the authors “explore in a clear and comprehensive manner the idea that language shapes individual lives—that through our speech we all help recreate gender divisions in society,” as that’s a subject there’s been many Korean articles about in the last few months. First though, I’m going to finish the classic States and Social Revolutions: A Comparative Analysis of France, Russia and China by Theda Skocpol (1979), which I wish I’d actually read when I studied it in a course on revolutions as an undergraduate. After that, I’ll try to finish Good Booty: Love and Sex, Black and White, Body and Soul in American Music by Ann Powers (2017), a rare new book which I bought because I listened to an excellent podcast interview of the author. I had to put it down a third of the way in however, as I just wasn’t enjoying the overly evocative writing style, through which every other humdrum dance-hall meeting and church service described somehow becomes rendered into a hotbed of hidden desires, frustrated lust, secret liaisons, and opportunities for forbidden miscegenation. This “pregnant with possibility” style as I like to call it, prominent in Clive Barker’s fantasy novels which I learnt the term and from especially in The Price of Salt (a.k.a. Carol) by Patricia Highsmith (1952), I usually enjoy immensely. But not in this first encounter in non-fiction. Perhaps after 293 pages of Scokpol’s “structural functionalism sociological paradigm comparative historical analysis” though, I’ll enjoy the contrast, especially more once I begin the post-1950 chapters about music I know?

Happy reading everyone!

If you reside in South Korea, you can donate via wire transfer: Turnbull James Edward (Kookmin Bank/국민은행, 563401-01-214324)

The Future is Now: Shin Min-a’s Dystopian Dust Mask Commercial Is Straight Out of Robocop 2

Estimated reading (+viewing) time: 3 (+4) minutes. Source: YouTube.

It’s become routine these days, trite even, to point out the many ways we are now living in the dystopias of once only imagined futures. So, when Shin Min-a’s endorsement of ETIQA dust masks came out back in February, reminding consumers there was no reason you couldn’t also look fashionable while trying to survive the climate apocalypse, I bit my tongue at the obvious resemblance to a spoof commercial from the Robocop 2 (1990) movie. Ten months later though? Again there’s much talk of fashionable ETIQA dust masks in the wake of the blinding, choking, toxic dust storms raging across the peninsula, yet a certain cyborg remains notable only for his absence. It seems this aging Generation X-er may in fact have been the only one to have made the connection.

Specifically, it was the Sunblock 5000 commercial that instantly came to mind. Because no need for the loss of the ozone layer to spoil getting that perfect tan, right?

And, with a nostalgic wink to fellow Gen X-ers, here it is in a compilation of some other spoof commercials from the first and second movie to give it some context:

In reality, without the ozone layer we’d all soon be dead; like much about the original movies (e.g., did you know the first was accidentally set in 2043?), with slightly more thought put into the commercial—as in having the voice-over claiming there was still slightly more than none of the ozone layer remaining—it would have been much more plausible. But at least, way back when I was 14, it did instill in me the first inklings of the sense that we were fiddling while Rome burned. And indeed, 30 years later, now we have a very real commercial that is in much in the same spirit.

What impact will this one have?

If you reside in South Korea, you can donate via wire transfer: Turnbull James Edward (Kookmin Bank/국민은행, 563401-01-214324)