MLA

Soon I will be boarding a plane for Seattle, and the 2012 meeting of the Modern Language Association.

Unlike Ulrike Ottinger’s film Ticket of No Return / Bildnis einer Trinkerin (pictured above), however, I will eventually return.

Those of you who know the academic job search will also know more or less what my MLA experience will be like: a professional conference where the interviews for tenure-track and (increasingly) non-tenure-track jobs take place.  Where the weight of individuals and institutions in the humanities is hefted, tested, critiqued and measured. As opposed to my regular haunts, the German Studies Association conference, Film and History, or the Northeast Modern Language Association conference, the MLA is supposed to be a fairly stiff-necked affair.  Faculty have confided in me about it being a kind of “meat market” or a “desperate” place.  One need only look at the various paltry statistics about employment in the academic humanities in this country since the 1970s to know this (and I have deliberately refrained from linking to said statistics, dear reader, to keep your optimism intact).

That being said, the only way out of the abyss is straight through it. That has been my dissertation solution and, as I seek new scholarly venues beyond my dissertation, a way out of the familiar.

2012 is a time for change, whether it stems from the movements of the masses or the movements within ourselves.

 

2012: Cryptic

Ever stared a year in the face?

Ever tried to manage your expectations about a year?

Ever attempted to come up with a coherent plan for a year, only to watch it crumble inexorably?

Though these are all yes/no questions, a year should not pose answers – only more questions.

Like this hazy Google Images search, if you will:

 

 

 

As with every year, I begin to blog again as my thoughts coalesce once more.

Short reviews of all that I consume shall soon commence again.

Red Alert! Future Prof. at Work

Dear Family, Friends, Colleagues and Other People Who Might Know Me or (Because It’s the Internet) Don’t,

I thought I’d type up a quick summary of what’s going on with me this fall of 2011.

While economic institutions lurch around their avaricious withdrawal of all capital from 98% of the world’s population, poor/plucky little me is heading out onto the German/film job market.  This was something I knew since the spring, but the visceral fact of the matter hit home over the weekend at the German Studies Association 2011 conference in Louisville, KY.  Yes, there are jobs.  Yes, there will be fierce competition among colleagues for them. Yes, I stand a chance at maybe getting one.

That being said, I’ve found myself involved with too many projects and loose ends to wrap up as I turn my attention to the timely completion of my long-overdue dissertation and the endless writing of cover letters, solicitation of information, etc.  In response, Kat and I have formed a solidarity pact to keep the various other forces at bay.

So what does this mean?

If you are involved on a project with me, I will endeavor to keep my deadlines, side of the bargain, etc.  If you are my friend, I will attempt to keep appointments to see you.  But if it seems like I’m a little spacy, punch-drunk, disorganized or whatever, please keep in mind that I’m now engaged in an existential proxy battle for my future while trying to keep all these commitments.

Thanks for your understanding!

-Evan

(The Guy in the Black Hat)

Apocalypse Hanoi – An Interview with Jörg Foth about Dschungelzeit (1988)

This interview with director Jörg Foth regarding Dschungelzeit (1988, Time in the Jungle) was conducted by Evan Torner on October 5, 2010 and in September 2011. It is the first interview Foth has ever given about his experiences in Vietnam.
***
DEFA Film Library [DFL]: You began working on the East German/Vietnamese co- production Dschungelzeit (Ngon Tháp Hà Noi, Time in the Jungle), back in 1982. How did it come about that you were working on this film? How did you develop its content?

Jörg Foth: It was not in 1982, but after I had made my debut film Das Eismeer ruft (The Arctic Sea Calls) in 1983. I was asked first to work as a director’s assistant again, like before my debut film. So in spring 1984, I assisted for Bernhard Wicki when he shot Die Grünstein Variante (Grünstein’s Variable) with the DEFA. With few exceptions, junior DEFA directors in the 1980s had to first work as assistant directors, then debut with a children’s film, and either earlier or shortly thereafter finish an international co-production as co-director. That’s why Michael Kann worked in Bulgaria, the USSR and Czechoslovakia in 1982 and 1985; Dietmar Hochmuth worked in the Soviet Union in 1988, Helge Trimpert in Switzerland in 1988, Yugoslavia in 1989. These double and triple hurdles–assistant director jobs, children’s film directing, and co-production– helped prolong our way to our first autonomous film beyond the children’s stories and waste our best years.
So I worked as a co-director for DEFA in Vietnam and had to visit the Studio for Feature Films in Hanoi Film for initial talks in fall 1984. The script was about a group of Germans who went to Vietnam as members of the French Foreign Legion after they had been POWs in France at the end of WWII. It was based on someone’s authentic report that he had written down years later.
Now I had heard the name of the German legionnaire who had placed his memoirs at DEFA’s disposal at some point back then, but never laid eyes on or spoke with the man. I also didn’t know if the name was correct at all. Legionnaires had false names not only while they were in the legion, but probably also afterward in the GDR. In any case, it wasn’t H.S. Stautmeister (Der Mann aus dem Dschungel, published with Verlag Frieling), nor was it Horst Pahl. Maybe I can find the name somewhere, but it certainly didn’t interest me at the time—Burmeister, or something like that. The books that proved much more important for my preparations were those like [Peter] Scholl-Latour’s ―Death in the Rice Field.
The film script had been already completed as a collaboration between the Vietnamese author Banh Bao and the East German author Peter Wuss, who rather uncollegially withdrew his name from the credits when the film was already finished and censored. But it had to remain an equal co-production, so that’s why my name was next to Bao’s in the final version. The original script title was ―The Tower of… (some name of a place) – it was supposed to be Biblical. Leonja Wuss, Wuss’ wife, initially wanted to co-direct the film. I had no idea why the job eventually fell on my desk, but it was certainly the main (or one particular) motivating force behind Wuss’ withdrawal of his name after the film had been accepted. It was, then again, not really my job to develop the content, but just to follow the script, prepare the shooting and cast the German actors.

DFL: The co-production conditions themselves bring to mind different aspects of the GDR’s relationship to Vietnam and other postcolonial countries.

JF: The GDR defined itself always as a ―friend and helper of all countries of the so-called ―Third World. My entire childhood and youth in East Germany was filled with slogans, messages and speeches on international solidarity and people’s friendship. Peace and friendship were two of the main founding promises that the young GDR gave. And of course it impressed us as children who had played in ruins for a long time after the war. For Fasching or Carnival, we dressed up and painted ourselves as Chinese, Indians, Africans in our kindergarten or school. We didn’t do so only because it looked nice or strange, but with feelings of solidarity even if we never had seen such strangers from abroad.

DFL: Economic and world political factors may have dramatically affected your co- production. Did you have conversations with people from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and/or other institutions about the content or conditions of you film project?

JF: No, my conversations only took place inside the DEFA studio and the film studio in Hanoi. I don’t know what and how the directors of both studios talked to their officials in both governments.

DFL: What did the GDR have to gain or lose with the project?

JF: The GDR was a pretty small country, it had some nice landscapes like the Baltic Sea in the north and some mountains–Saxon, Thuringia, Harz–in the south, but the GDR always felt smaller than it was, also because people couldn’t travel abroad. An international co-production sounded like an adventure for the DEFA and its audience and also a way to discover faraway perspectives. The longing for distant horizons and for making your own life a little more global than it was, were the motifs for all international co-productions that DEFA had tried. Another reason was saving half of the production costs at the same time.

DFL: What was the justification for the cooperation, and how was the co-production cooperative?

JF: The co-op effect of the co-production was an illusion. If there are 2 countries, 2 film studio bosses, 2 production managers, 2 directors, 2 cameramen, 2 set designers, 2 sound engineers, 2 costume designers, 2 production teams, 2 casts and so on, it is very hard to cooperate. And in our case, for each step or for exchanging personal position each side needed a translator, who often played his/her own play instead of translating, so things went truly wrong.

DFL: What was the political atmosphere that surrounded the project?

JF: Starting in fall 1984 and continuing during the preparation of the production in 1985-86, the political atmosphere surrounding our production changed because of the emergence of Glasnost and Perestroika, as well as the more abstract point of view that the GDR was starting to take on the Soviet Union.

DFL: You have expressed privately that the film did not turn out very well, and that there were great challenges in the creation of the film. What were the largest obstacles to overcome in the realization of the film? What difficulties did you have in talking through a translator? How did your body manage the different climate in Vietnam?

JF: The two main obstacles were the absent sanitary conditions and me actually being unable to ultimately turn down the project despite it not going so well. I was ill when I returned from the
shooting period. I had amoebas in my blood and was losing the hair of my beard. The doctors back home couldn’t find out about my illness. All of a sudden, I wasn’t sure what had made me sicker: the lack of sanitariness or the impossibility of working together!
As for the inability to say ―no: two friends of mine privately and urgently advised me against this co-production. Uli Weiß was afraid (as he put it) ―that then you’re stuck with them for 2 years (actually, it would become 5 years). Production head Hans-Erich Busch said something similar: ―Jörg, go to the doctors and ask that they write that you’re unfit for the tropics and save your strength for something else.  In truth, Busch probably did not want to make this film and now hoped I’d let him call it off in this fashion. But it could’ve been that my life, my youth, my connectedness with Western protest culture and music now stood in my way, so that I just couldn’t say ―no to this film.

DFL: The film eventually was completed in 1987 and 1988 (premiered in East Germany on April 14, 1988), and stands as one of the few films treating the subject of Germans caught up in postcolonial conflict in Vietnam during the late 1940s.

JF: There are a few more movies, documentaries, as well as TV films on this specific topic in Vietnamese history. And it is not a surprise than in the early 50s there were 20,000 Germans fighting for France in Vietnam. The GDR tried to call them back to the ―new Germany. Because of WWII, the POWs in Soviet camps and people fleeing to the West, East Germany needed men.

DFL: How was the film exemplary or extraordinary for a DEFA film? What kind of aesthetic did the film have, and were there mutual East German / Vietnamese influences on how it looked?

JF: It was exemplary only for the fact that it had artistically failed like every other DEFA co- production. But nothing about the production was extraordinary. I think there were not any cultural influences from one or both sides. This film is neither a Vietnamese nor an East German one, that’s the co-op problem. I tried to work closely together with the Vietnamese side, but this only meant that I had to leave my own position and without really reaching the Vietnamese partners.

DFL: What scenes in the film were particularly memorable for you?

JF: I often think back of the scene that takes place on a hanging bridge. On one side of the river there is large group of Viet Minh hiding themselves because they had been warned and on the other side some paratroopers appear. Among these Vietnamese rebels, there is a small German group of former members of the Foreign Legion who had run away and had joined the Viet Minh. We did not really have available white actors who could convincingly play the enemies and cross the bridge. I talked to my co-director and colleague, Tran Vu—a very impressive elder film artist from Hanoi—if we shouldn’t use our East German actors who fought in the film for the Viet Minh, dress them with French uniforms and let them play the scene, a double acting like a mirror scene. Tran Vu looked at me in an unforgettable way and said quietly: ―This will be the best scene of the film.  I’m sure DEFA would not have approved filming the scene this way, but Tran Vu’s words made it possible.
It was at the time when Heiner Müller wrote the following lines in Wolokolamsker Chausee V: ―The moment of truth – when in the mirror / the image of your enemy appears.

DFL: The protagonists of East German and Vietnamese cinema tend to be quite different, with the former favoring upright heroes and the latter favoring clever tricksters. What cultural differences did you encounter that were striking to you?

JF: The play of the Vietnamese actors was much closer to theatrical expressions than the performance of the East German actors. But I wouldn’t say that this was an obstacle that we couldn’t manage. At least, it was better to have different ways of acting on both sides of the actors. The strangers could stay strangers. Unfortunately, both sides speak the same language on screen. This is really a huge mistake.
If you take one look into the German-European and Vietnamese-Asian fairytale worlds, you quickly notice that their heroic types are diametrically opposed. In Europe, the image of the open, upright, and fair soldier is exalted and cultivated, even when such behavior is quite obviously never practiced in actual physical or martial conflicts. In Asia, it is the image of the mentally superior hero that is more ideal than the physically superior one, probably due to the fatal dangers of the weather, nature and the animal world there. This intellectual advantage, which is decisive for any victory, includes lying, trickery, deception and all that we would call ―unfair. We could have built our film based on that kind of cultural difference without discriminating against either side. Quite the opposite in fact: understanding each other’s differences would have more than helped our story. But despite the long planning phase, I still had almost no idea about what other countries like Vietnam were like, let alone their cultures. The GDR was too small. And we were too blind.

DFL: Almost no one has seen this film since its release. Perhaps given that it resembles Kurt Maetzig’s Preludio 11 (1963) as yet another failed co-production about past postcolonial conflict abroad. Is it likely that there are two different versions of this film that exist–one for the GDR and one for Vietnam? How would you assess the final film today?

JF: Even Helmut Nitzschke shot a complete film in the Carribean, based on a novel by Anna Seghers, Das Licht auf dem Galgen (1976, The Light on the Gallows), or Bernhard Stephan, Rückkehr aus der Wüste (1989, Return from the Desert). Both were not co-productions, but in my opinion failed films because of failures in working with–and getting lost in–other cultures.
I’m sure that the Vietnamese film version looked and sounded different the version we had made for our cinemas. The Vietnamese named their film script Jungle House, whereas ours was called Time in the Jungle. This little difference tells you a lot about the two different points of view of the same story. The title I had the DEFA use stands for irritation, confusion and chaos. The Vietnamese title is for the opposite: stability and sovereignty. The Vietnamese team didn’t follow our invitation to the German premiere and they didn’t invite us to their premiere of, I’m very sure, a Vietnamese version of our film. This was the very bitter end of a very hard film project, which was otherwise the first international co-production ever completely shot in Vietnam.

DFL: Is there anything else about the film and its creation that you’d like to mention?

JF: In my preparations for the film, DEFA neither offered to screen Apocalypse Now for me, nor did it alert me to the DEFA-produced TV film released in cinemas Flucht aus der Hölle (Escape from Hell, 1959/60). With that film, it had nothing to do with content or art, but rather the GDR idea of friendship among the peoples and proper protocol.
The first thing the Vietnamese asked me was if I knew of Apocalypse Now, and if I’d like to see it. So I spent my first Vietnam trip to the film studio at Hanoi in a small Asian screening room,
watching a print of Apocalypse Now. Francis Ford Coppola had personally given this copy of the film to the Hanoi Film Studio as a gift. And I think the film cannot have a greater impact than when one is watching it alone in the middle of Hanoi, having arrived there for the very first time.
During the preproduction from 1984 to 1987, friends and colleagues of mine often advised to try to get out of this project. But on one hand I was trapped in history and memories of my youth in the 1960s and on the other hand I was shocked to accept that it seemed to be impossible to work together. I was unable to share this. I did not want be the one who would say, there’s not any way to make a film together. Again, I was too much lost in all these slogans of friendship and solidarity that my country fed me.
After I had returned from the shooting period and all the post-production was done, I did not speak about my experiences and challenges for many years. 25 years later, this is the first interview I’ve had about Time in the Jungle. Thank you for asking.

Evan Torner, former program assistant of the DEFA Film Library, he is a PhD candidate in German & Scandinavian Studies and Film Studies at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, where he is writing his dissertation on “The Race-Time Continuum: Race Projection in DEFA Genre Cinema.” In addition to curating and coordinating the 2011 Summer Film Institute, he is also the official English translator of the 100 Years of Babelsberg exhibit at the Filmmuseum Potsdam. Torner has published numerous articles on 20th-century German genre fiction and cinema, and is co-editing a volume on Immersive Gameplay with William J. White for McFarland Press, 2012.

Fiasco in New Crobuzon

This is a playset for Jason Morningstar’s Fiasco generated by me (Evan Torner) and my wife Kat Jones for Origins 2011.  It’s all presented rather crudely, but then again I’m a busy man.  Enjoy!

(Download as a no-frills .pdf here.)

THE SCORE

Secret lovers make out furtively in the shadow of The Ribs, while sordid drug deals that could bring the City to its knees take place in the hovel behind them.  A bitter-faced cactacae cocks his rivebow in a back alley before rampaging against the militiamen who killed his comrade in cold blood.  That smell emanating from Salacus Fields has been there a week, and rumors have begun to spread about its terrifying origin.  Better find a way to keep your head down, though that only works so long…

Fiasco in New Crobuzon is set in China Miéville’s fictional city-state of New Crobuzon, an urban fantasy setting inspired both by Victorian London and Cairo.

WARNING: This playset contains a lot of book-related jargon.  Read (at least one of) the books and then relish in this transmedia experience!

BOOK NIGHT

Perdido Street Station, The Scar, Iron Council

RELATIONSHIPS

1. Obligation
1)    Guardian/dependent
2)    Employer/employee
3)    Owes the other their life
4)    Debt/creditor
5)    Bizarre contract
6)    Fear

2. Fellowship
1)    Members of the New Quill party
2)    Share a common enemy
3)    Drink in the same pub.
4)    Mutual intellectual pursuits
5)    Current leader/wannabe leader
6)    Wolf in sheep’s clothing

3. Romance
1)    Secret lovers
2)    Friends with benefits
3)    One-sided Obsession
4)    Lover/beloved
5)    Polyamory
6)    Unhealthy attachment

4. Crime
1)    Drug addict/pusher
2)    Petty thieves
3)    Black market dealings
4)    Prostitute/client
5)    Assassin/target
6)    Remade

5. Magic
1)    Master/Construct
2)    Bound by Tesh magic
3)    Rival thaumaturges
4)    Vampire/thrall
5)    Servants of extra-dimensional creature
6)    Teacher/apprentice

6. Community & Culture
1)     Radicals and Rebels
2)    Same race (see Races chart)
3)    Militia Members
4)    Outcasts
5)    Government Officials
6)    Handlingers (see Races chart)

LOCATIONS

1. Brock Marsh / Ludmead
1)     A laboratory of pilfered equipment
2)     An abandoned office in the university’s science administration wing
3)     Under the boughs of the common
4)     A forgotten cellar in a temple to a minor deity
5)     The slippery floor of a punishment factory
6)     The Dying Child, your run-of-the-mill pub

2. Bonetown / Mog Hill
1)     In the shadow of the Ribs
2)     An abandoned-seeming lot
3)     A neglected thieves’ hideout, covered in sticky tar
4)     Under The Spike, in its labyrinthine catacombs
5)     A militia pod on its way to The Spike
6)     Beneath the stretched skin of a shanty town tent

3. Kinken / Glasshouse
1)     The Plaza of Statues, in front of a palm tree made of khepri spit
2)     A khepri art exchange center
3)     A broodma’s lair, filled with decaying vegetation
4)     A shop run by a family of hotchi
5)     Half a house, next to the Glasshouse dome
6)     Yashur Plaza, at the entrance to the Glasshouse

4. Echomire / Badside / Dog Fenn
1)     On the banks of the failed docks, stinking with malarial filth
2)     An underground slaughterhouse with secret rooms
3)     A plank walkway, slung between houses
4)     A tunnel dug into the Undercity catacombs
5)     The carcass of Grand Calibre Bridge
6)     An unfinished room in an indifferent concrete structure

5. Salacus Fields / Sobek Croix
1)     A little booth at the Clock and Cockerel
2)     A crowded stall at the Aspic Bazaar
3)     A cab waiting along an iron fence in Sobek Croix
4)     At one of the Flexible Puppeteers’ subversive street shows
5)     A Palgolak reading room
6)     The Palace of Love, at Mr. Bombadrezil’s Unique and Wonderful Fair

6. The Crow
1)     The unkempt garden in the Mandragora Wing of Perdido Street Station
2)     The exact geographical center of New Crobuzon
3)     A heavily armed militia checkpoint
4)     The top of a long-deserted turret in Perdido Street Station
5)     On the tracks of the Verso Line
6)     Brothel of Remade whores, hidden near Brock Marsh

NEEDS

1. To discover the truth…
1)     … about that awful smell wafting from Dog Fenn
2)    … about my mysterious birthmark
3)     … about the local legend
4)     … about my family’s murder
5)     … about the Construct Council
6)     … about the latest street drug

2. To escape…
1)     … logic and time
2)     … via passage on a ship to Nova Esperium, where they don’t ask questions
3)     … the endless conspiracy that surrounds you
4)     … the stigma of my Remade body
5)     … your suffocating parents
6)     … your mounting debts

3. To lay with…
1)     … a scandalously different xenian
2)     … anyone who will shelter you this night
3)     … Infel Mendel, one of the mayor’s closest confidants
4)     … three people at once
5)     … your true love
6)     … your best friend’s true love

To obtain…
1)     … a map to the Fractured Land.
2)     … unchecked political power over the slums
3)     … the sliver of dignity you once possessed.
4)     … permission to study at the university
5)     … the Shintacost Prize for Best Artwork
6)     … a pig for tonight’s meal.

To get revenge …
1)     … for your murdered comrade.
2)     … for yourself, having been exploited by the system far too long.
3)     … on your disbanded rebel group
4)     … on the Thousand Voices of Suroch
5)     … your fourteen-year old ward
6)     … your pregnant sister

To inspire…
1)     … a citywide strike
2)     … a close friend to a life of crime
3)     … an up-and-coming scientist
4)     … an expensive exodus to locate Jabber’s resting place
5)     … a poet to record your legacy
6)     … fear in the higher echelons of New Crobuzon

OBJECTS

Dangerous
1)     A summons from the Militia
2)     A slake-moth larva
3)     The attention of The Weaver
4)     A forgotten colourbomb, decaying but still live
5)     A map leading to the secret lair of Jack Half-a-Prayer
6)     A grindylow artifact

Sordid
1)     A corpse of a vodyanoi neighbor
2)     Dreamshit
3)     A ticket to the Glad’ Circus
4)     A remade prostitute
5)     An unlabeled bottle of curious liquid
6)     The pickled head of a murdered magistrate

Secret
1)     A monk of the Hidden and Lost
2)     A half finished sculpture of Mr. Motley
3)     A xenian lover
4)     A musical instrument from the Ghosthead Empire
5)     Dispatch from the rogue floating city Armada
6)     A steamy letter from Mayor Rudgutter

Personal
1)     A box of colourberries
2)     A shopping list annotated in a secret code
3)     A locket from your long lost mother
4)     A scientific notebook
5)     A diary written by a High Cromlech noble
6)     An old print of a young hootch

Useful
1)      A skeleton key to the dwellings of Badside
2)      Easily concealable two-shot Derringer
3)      An aerostat
4)      A khepri stingbox
5)      A working printing press
6)      A wyrman messenger

Arcane
1)     Knowledge of golemetric creation
2)     A dagger that cuts through reality
3)     A sentient construct
4)     A possibility sword found at a pawn shop
5)     A stolen Remaker’s library
6)     A yag servant

Microscope – Solitaire – Part 2

Now that our Big Picture is

How the Cold War didn’t end in 1989.

Let’s choose some Bookends (where the history begins and ends):

Our history begins in 1945, after the fall of the Nazis.

And since I’m going all out for an alternative history, let’s end it in the future, say, 2045, after the mutual collapse of the USA and USSR.

Oh, and I have to assign “moods” to the book-ends – light or dark – which are symbolized by light and dark circles (0 or •)

Since it’s the Cold War, I’m going to say the fall of the Nazis gave birth to something arguably MORE rotten, and so I’m making 1945 a dark time (•).  2045, on the other hand, will be a point of hope (o).

Microscope – Solitaire – Part 1

Last night, I played a game of Ben Robbins’ excellent RPG Microscope, in which you play out epic histories with your friends.  I liked it so much, that – inspired by our recent RPG Solitaire contest – I’m going to play a game by myself, on my blog, for 10 minutes a day.

Consider it a writing exercise during all my frantic writing projects.

Microscope allows you to generate full-fledged historical dramas that leap back and forward in time, drawing you further and further into an immersive world.

To start, one needs to come up with a Big Picture for the history and world.  Now, it doesn’t have to be anything complicated, so I’m going to K.I.S.S.:

How the Cold War didn’t end in 1989.

Next Post: Bookends (where the history begins and ends)

Some Broken Paragraphs on the United States 2011

People of the United States, let me be brief:

The battle on the streets of Wisconsin was and is for the very future of America itself.

Why?

In the 1970s, there was an organizational revolution among the military, business and religious sectors that let them erode protections erected between the 1930s and 1960s to keep Americans alive, healthy and productive no matter what the circumstances of the “market.”

It was a reactionary revolution, but a revolution nonetheless.

In 2008, it finally succeeded in the form of a financial coup d’etat.

The world moved on, of course, but now under different terms.

Wolves no longer had to wear sheep’s clothing.

The New was now to be sacrificed on the altar of the Old.

Today, we are experiencing its full repercussions in the form of austerity measures which are, in fact, a form of class war against everyone who’s not a multi-millionaire or, dare I say, multi-billionaire.

That’s right: everyone.

You, even.

You, the single individual, who is in many ways at the heart of this battle.

Do you get to be, as the position goes, an individual in a karmic exchange where you live and die based on how much “hard work” you’ve done in a system stacked against you, or just one of a collective obliged to improve the lot of all mankind?

The people who believe in the former help some capitalize profits for short-term gain, and socialize losses for long-term social disruption.

The people who believe in the latter now ostensibly pose such a titanic threat to this system that even the remotest support mechanisms that imply a collective sharing of wealth and power (collective bargaining rights, education, healthcare) are being dismantled by the multi-billionaires.

So you may be surprised, however, to note that what we’re now seeing isn’t capitalism.

What we’re seeing is outright theft.

The disbelief in the so-called public good, the idea that we must force freedom from  collective welfare programs on the citizens of the world, these are mere positions to mask unadulterated greed.

But belief in the public good is communism, isn’t it?

Possibly.

But it’s also encoded into Christianity, Hinduism, Keynesian economics, most remaining indigenous societies, traffic signals, kindergarten, restrooms, and our biology itself.

Adult humans strive for the common good, and have to be continuously disciplined into thinking like a child:  prioritizing selfishness and avarice and instant, short-term gratification.

State-led Communism with its largely ineffective five-year plans attempted to condition populaces into long-term thinking without letting them becoming adults themselves.

It didn’t work.

This form of communism collapsed in 1989 thanks to its inability to effectively maneuver within the information economy.

After the Soviet Union collapsed at the center of it, a few thieves took all the spoils and left the people to fend for themselves.

Many citizens of Russia now miss the Soviet years.

They miss partial adulthood over perpetually conditioned and enforced childhood.

Capitalism, however, is as faulty of a system as communism:  it has to battle continuously falling profit margins.

In short, everything becomes worth less over time.

Crises must be perpetually introduced into the system to produce value.

Crisis also destroys most value (look at the earthquake in Japan), leaving a few valuable goods left over.

Finance capital collectively decided that in order to combat such a pernicious loophole in their lives of reflexive avarice, one can do no less than to seize everything, including time itself.

We didn’t believe they would do it.

But they did.

They do not want to seize power; they already have it.

Now it becomes a matter of breaking the remaining resistance: us.

Now they fear not only communism, or the so-called “naked wealth transfer” from the rich to the poor, but even the informal and formal networks that have helped us sustain each other against each financial onslaught:  Catholic charity, net neutrality, soup kitchens, low-income heating programs, public education, supportive families, team volunteer efforts, squatting, scavenging, repurposing, recycling.

But now that anxiety clouds their vision, courage and fortitude should animate our bodies.

What we will institute will not be called “communism,” but what we want is not so dissimilar – the equitable distribution of resources among those who deserve it.

This turns out to be everybody.

You.

Figurative Destruction – Part 6

Botkin says:

“Sadly, Figurative Destruction did not make the RPG Solitaire Challenge contest deadline, due to the author’s dissertation research and past-due book chapter for an edited volume. Please do not despair: the game will continue its development journey after the contest hype.”

Evan says:

“Thanks for participating in the RPG Solitaire Challenge. I look forward to reading your work!”

Figurative Destruction – Part 5

Resisting the Empire:

The plucky Protagonists and fearsome Adversary now all exist.  But how do our heroes resist?  At what price is the Adversary’s defeat?

• Choose a Protagonist. Play out an initial moment of resistance against the Adversary’s empire for them.  Imagine what makes this character just say “no” to an overwhelming dictatorship and then take up arms against it.  The Protagonist will succeed at doing one of the following:
–Resist a Minion
–Resist a Symptom of the Adversary’s Keep Others in Line
–Recruit an Ally to the Resistance

[Let's grab Dirk first.  I'm going to think of Dirk as kind of like a rogue noble turned bandit, with a gang of insectoid horsemen (knights?) who surround his roving legged palace.  Spinox has learned of Dirk's location from the Vanishing King and heads off to the plains to capture him. He and his army have hoversleds (those are cool… and a must-have), so they whiz on over to attack the horsemen. Problem is: the hoversleds have to be relatively low to the ground, so the horsemen still have a fighting chance against them. Dirk embarks on his horse and lays into Spinox's goons. To help him, one of his fellow knights Maraud does some crazy stunt-riding (i.e. wielding two swords on a horse) and manages to hold him off. Now I can only choose either "Resist a Minion" or "Recruit an Ally," so I'm going to choose "Resist a Minion" to put Spinox down for now, knowing full well I'll get a chance to "recruit" Maraud to my side later.

• Do the prior step for the second protagonist. Please choose a different option from the list, so as to create some variety, and play out the corresponding scene.

[Then I grab Botkin, who is meanwhile toiling away in the bowels of some factory. I'm going to choose "Resist Symptom" and say the Symptom is effectively the internal 'Net within the Vanished King's palace that keeps tabs on the robots' programming.  As a big fan of the role-playing game Zero, I take a page from it and just have Botkin suddenly drop from the 'Net.  Just like that, his digital mind is severed from the collective and begins to act independently using all the skills downloaded into him.  Botkin begins to actually learn the ins and outs of the palace, noting not only the patterns from his subroutines but anomalies as well. The chinks in the Vanished King's stronghold are found.

In summary: Dirk's looking to end the source of his misery, and Botkin's learned how.

Also keep in mind -- they haven't met yet. Be thinking of ways to plausibly get them together now.]

• The Adversary now gets a scene of his own.  Let the effects of the two moments of resistance become abstract-but-troublesome variables with which he now must reckon.  He now will apply the pain to each Protagonist in a direct and hostile fashion.  In addition, or as part of this pressure, the following happens:
–One of the Protagonists may get a new Ally as a result of this redoubled oppression. As with other Allies, the Manipulator must decide if they see this ally fighting to the death for his Protagonist, then marking an X or O in the box on that side of the big Character Roster sheet.

[Botcruel introduces this scene by bringing a "malfunction" to the Vanished King's attention, Botkin dangling from his arms.  The Vanished Prince orders the robot destroyed; a fairly simple proposition. To spare Botkin an early and easy death, I as the Manipulator take the Ally and claim Botcruel as my Ally. I write him down as an Ally and decide he's a little too jaded for that mushy "sacrifice" stuff - X.  So Botcruel takes Botkin off to be "destroyed," but actually uses this opportunity to slip him additional secret programming and has him shipped off to the Plains to gather forces for his own coup d'etat!  Botkin now has Botcruel's eyes in the palace, and Botcruel his unknown programming variables in Botkin...

The Vanished Prince, meanwhile, summons Sinuet from his usual project of converting resistance leaders into spies and double agents to find Dirk and defeat him… with his own army - bwa ha ha ha!]

Keep tuning in!