Ninth House and the Place of Magic

I've just posted a review of Leigh Bardugo's 2019 novel Ninth House at my "Grandfather Hu" blog site. In that post I go on and on about this novel as being wonderfully "mature" for its portrayals of complex protagonists who are developed at a comfortable pace.

What is not in that review is my delight in the novel's idea of "magical" spaces, or places endowed with "power" of some sort. This is a theme I would love to investigate more deeply someday. Ninth House is a mystery fantasy novel about a woman who investigates a murder, and uncovers a massive nest of vipers among the eight frat houses on Yale University (remember, I said this is a "fantasy" novel) that specialize in magic. The book is rich with suspense and ghosts, lots of ghosts. Flowing beneath the entire narrative is the assumption that each frat house has been built upon a spot that was already naturally flowing with energy, with power. 

Think about ley lines and feng shui, about cathedrals and temples, about ceremonial spaces and sacred lands. That is one off the topics I'm fascinated by, and that is an idea at the heart of Bardugo's novel. 

Have you read Ninth House or its recent sequel? If you have, visit my "other blog" and let me know what you think of this book.  

Zombie Film's Success Reanimates Native Pride

 

A Malaysian zombie horror film earned the praise of the nation’sprime minister has won a string of film festival awards in March this year, but so far the loudest voices in support of the movie have been from those who take special pride in the film’s positive portrayal of a strong Southeast Asian tribe that had been deeply affected by the real-world historical trauma of “First Encounter.”

The indigenous Iban tribe living within the Malaysian state of Sarawak on the island of Borneo — which itself is divided three ways between Malaysia, Indonesia, and Brunei — served as the setting and main source of actors for Belaban Hidup: Infeksi Zombie (Fight For Life: Zombie Infection). 

Belaban Hidup is also special in featuring the indigenous Iban language, the mother tongue that is still spoken by the population of native Iban that has dwindled down to just a million people.

The Iban were once respected in the region as a fierce and relentless warrior culture that practiced headhunting and whom the British colonizers who saw them as fearsome pirates. Under colonial pressures the Iban abandoned both their warrior culture and their headhunting practices, with most members of the tribe now identifying as members of a Christian ethnic minority within predominantly Islamic nations. Industrialization and the environmental degradations brought about by the palm oil industry have likewise had a negative impact upon the tribe, which is a branch of the Dayak indigenous people. The British called them “the Sea Dayaks.”  

The zombie film was written and co-directed by the 45-year-old Malaysian-Chinese filmmaker Ray Lee who was born on the island and his wife Misha Minut Panggau, who is a native Iban. They had been working on bringing this film together since 2016. This is the first film to be produced by a member of the tribe.

Belaban Hidup won in the Horror and Science Fiction category at the 2021 Singapore World Film Carnival on March 18. The film went on to win Best Feature Film and Best Horror Film awards at the International Symbolic Art Film Festival (Saint Petersburg, Russia) and Best Feature Film at the 2021 Canadian Diversity Film Festival. Belaban Hidup was also nominated for the Best Feature Film at the Los Angeles Marina Del Rey Film Festival.

"We are also anxiously waiting whether we can get through the nominations for several other international film festivals such as the Paris Film Festival, Hollywood Blood Horror Festival, and the Swedish Film Award," said co-director Ray Lee.

“We deserve our own film industry,” Misha Minut Panggau told the press after the win in Singapore. “I always hope this is the kind of work that I do that will spur more interest among Dayak youths who want to get involved in the film industry,” she said.

 “Malaysian corporates don’t really support the local film industry and prefer to throw hundreds of millions into foreign productions,” her husband added, expressing hope that this zombie film will have a positive influence not only on the Malaysian film industry, but for the Iban people who might expect increased interest and dollars from the nation’s tourism sector.

For the pre-colonial Iban, headhunting was ceremonially used to end the long and strict period of mourning after a death, especially the passing of a leader. Headhunting was also a way to celebrate the birth of a son, though the practice of taking a head was mostly a sign or martial valor and gave great prestige to the winning warrior.

Within the Malaysian film industry this zombie narrative is the first major and internationally released film to so heavily rely upon Iban involvement, from the production to the acting. Indeed, only two other filmsused the Iban community on Sarawak as a setting for their stories: Chinta Gadis Rimba (Love of a Forest Maiden, produced in Singapore in 1958) by L. Krishnan, a forbidden love story between an Iban girl and a Malay lover; and Bejalai (1987) by Stephen Teo, which was the first Malaysian movie in the Iban language, and focused on the ritual journey that Iban boys take when transitioning into adulthood.  

Some reviewers have indentified Belaban Hidup as a modern tribute to the gruesome Italian zombie and cannibal films of the late 1970s and 1980s, and Southeast Asian jungle horrors like the 1980 Indonesian cult film Primitif by Sisworo Gautama Putra. South China Morning Post reviewer Marco Ferrarese speculated Belaban Hidup would please genre fans who are eager for “a unique ethnic spin on the much-abused zombie invasion trope.”

But unlike many other filmmakers working within the confines of the zombie narrative, the producers of Belaban Hidup chose to highlight beautifully envisioned jungle and river settings, and a sharp focus on the Iban tribal pride in their historical traditions as a warrior culture. Does this film maintain the tradition of nihilism that has been an almost inescapable part of the narrative since the arrival of the shambling cannibal zombies of Night of the Living Dead?

Belaban Hidup may in its own way be using the zombie narrative to address the history of indigenous encounters with invading foreign powers, though in this horror movie the foreign intruder is a mysterious scientific research organization that moves from Madagascar to Borneo to set up a hidden laboratory and uses the offer of “free medical treatment” to locals as the bait to hook human test subjects. When a group of captive teenage orphans manages to escape, they also inadvertently unleash the zombie infection. The escapees flee to the jungle and seek the help of the tribe.

While the heavy focus upon the Iban is praised by many throughout Malaysia, students of cinema might someday examine why the filmmakers chose to also rely upon a number of non-Iban actors, including non-Malaysian actors such as Slovakian star Katrina Grey and Indonesian singer Tegar. Other well-known actors include Pablo Amirul and Cassidy Panggau, who join native Ibans who have never before acted in a film.

The larger Dayak population is concentrated in Brunei, the Indonesian province of West Kalimantan, and Sarawak. But tribal communities can also be found in Malaysia, mostly in Sarawak state, with smaller communities in Sabah and other parts of west Malaysia. Borneo Island, in the South China Sea, is not far from the territory claimed by China.

See the trailer for Belaban Hidup here.

Is "The Sadness" Just Below the Surface?

The film trailer for "The Sadness" is intriguing. It gives away just enough for us to know this soon-to-release Taiwan horror film is a "rage virus" zombie narrative. Of course, that much is in the press release that says “The Sadness” is centered upon a highly contagious virus that rapidly mutates, breaking down people’s inhibitions and encouraging the infected to act upon their very worst impulses.

My initial thoughts on this kind of film coming from a Taiwanese director are all about timeliness and relevance. By “timeliness” of course I'm referring to the global experience of the coronavirus pandemic that to date has reached over 86 million people worldwide, with some 1.85 million deaths. And while Taiwan has not experienced the worst of the pandemic — as compared to neighboring China — the “reminder” of the invisible infectious agent is forever visible in the masked faces of everyone in public spaces.

Adding to the ongoing fear of sickness and death from this new coronavirus is the rapid rate of viral mutation that has resulted in a new strain now making its way out of South Africa that is not only more contagious but also has the possibility of being resistant to the recently developed vaccines. It is not a far cry to say that most people around the world have never experienced anything as surprising or terrifying as this current crisis.

While Taiwan has been exceptionally effective in preventing a mass “domestic” outbreak, it was also the earliest nation to recognize the nightmare that was slowly developing in the city of Wuhan, and to see most straightforwardly the heavy handed response used to contain the epidemic. What most frightened Taiwan witnesses was their proximity to Wuhan (a mere 945 kilometers from Taipei) and the close flight connectivity between Taiwan and the China. If any of China’s neighbors were most likely to experience an early outbreak, it would be Taiwan.

On top of that, there was the mass frustration at seeing how the World Health Organization refused to acknowledge the Taiwan CDC’s initial public warnings about a dangerous new “atypical pneumonia” outbreak (during a period when China’s authorities were trying to cover up the epidemic) surely must have given the Taiwan public an overwhelming feeling of being ostracized as a nation to the point of invisibility on the global stage. 

This assumption of a “collective” experience is supported by academic observations of Taiwan as a democracy in which the processes of “societalization” work well, meaning a strong identification exists between sociocultural and political-institutional bodies so that reforms and transformations move in both directions and a high degree of trust exists between the civil society and the bureaucratic state.

With a total population of nearly 24 million, Taiwan is a mountainous island with extremely crowded urban centers on the coastal flatlands. The hyper-connected citizenry has for all of their "contemporary" history experienced intense, constant economic and political (domestic and international) stresses. As the WHO’s “ghosting” of the nation’s official medical representatives demonstrated all too clearly, Taiwan’s democratically elected government is isolated from the global structures of nation state diplomacy. At the domestic social level this results in an orphan-like experience that a majority of citizens finds quite alarming.

This sense of isolation enhances the anxiety that everyday Taiwanese feel when the China’s official spokespersons broadcast threats of martial conquest. The frequency of Chinese military incursions into Taiwan’s territorial “defense zone” has become so common that Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense now publishes these numbers on its website — demonstration of the phenomenon of “societalization” through which the public powerfully identifies with the institutions dedicated to their protection.

China’s steady expressions of aggression may have had the ironic consequence of pushing to 67 percent the number of people who assume a distinctly Taiwanese identity, an increase from 45 percent reported some 12 years earlier, according to a survey conducted in 2020 by Taiwan’s National Chengchi University. This trend is especially acute among the island’s younger generation aged 18 to 29, says political scientist Eleanor M. Albert.

Some observers might say that strong emotional expressions are part of the Taiwanese cultural makeup, but I would be reluctant to adopt such a generalization. If anything, what I see from my vantage point in Taiwan is how easily American citizens submit themselves to divisive public outbursts motivated by PACs and conspiracy hacks. By comparison the average Taiwanese citizen is much less prone to public displays of extreme fervor. Even participants at mass political rallies display a willingness to restrict themselves to performing according to the styles scripted by event organizers.

Might this be why Taiwan’s media organizations respond so strongly to even small and seemingly random public "outbursts" of passion, rage, and aggression? For example, social media sites recently found great delight in news media reports of a young woman who got into a fistfight with a security guard after refusing to wear a mask on the subway, or the elderly man who tried to remove a woman's caged hamster from the priority seating and ended up fighting with the pet owner.  News consumers viewed these incidents as ridiculous examples of individuals behaving badly in public places.

Of course, this same viewing audience was entirely justified for taking more seriously the reports of an incident on the mass transit in 2014 when an attacker stabbed 28 subway passengers with a knife, killing four of them. Even today most subway cars carry warning signs telling riders to use any object available to defend themselves, from backpacks to fire extinguishers.  Unfortunately this was not the only incident of an individual exploding into violence on a public transit system: as recently as 2019 an emotionally unstable passenger killed apoliceman on a long-distance train.

Both of these incidents pale in comparison to the shocking event in 2016 when a man pulled a child from her bicycle and beheaded her in front of her mother.  That incident sent shockwaves of horror throughout Taiwanese society.

Yes, these public assaults suggest shortcomings in Taiwan’s mental healthcare system. But these outbursts of violence from seemingly “ordinary” people behaving badly in less-than-extraordinary circumstances can also be understood as symbolic of what can happen to any of us when the stresses of survival become too overbearing and we flip over into rage. Neuroscientists are among the first to point out that heightened degrees of anger can bring into play a temporary insanity, leaving even the most mild-mannered among us prone to wrathful acts of violence.

Is it fair to ponder that Taiwan citizens undergoing not only the daily stresses of socioeconomic survival in crowded urban settings during a pandemic while also carrying upon their shoulders existentialist anxieties about their shared future as a democratic nation may be especially open to extreme breakdowns of civility?

All this is a long and roundabout way of suggesting that “The Sadness,” due for theatrical release in Taiwan on January 22 (2021), may be a cinematic commentary on the stresses being experienced by Taiwanese citizens every day. The film can probably be seen as an expression of the fear we never talk about, our worries about the fragility of social civility and the institutional structures that protect us from our neighbors, and maybe even from ourselves. 

Isn’t that an important part of most post-apocalyptic texts?  In Taiwan, where the stresses run especially high, we all must have at one time or another entertained morbid thoughts of what would happen to our now-peaceful society if even just a few of our neighbors were to psychologically break beneath these pressures.  If that’s true, “The Sadness” is very much what we are afraid of.

Is Video Game Violence Healthy for my Psyche?

Philosopher Christopher Bartell has recently posted an essay on the Aesthetics for Bird website entitled: “Why Video Game Violence Isn’t Innocent.” His brief post set off a minor electrical storm across my neocortex, just as I was getting ready to put aside my computer and take up my Virtual Reality headset.

In this essay Bartell highlights the most extreme examples of videogames that are themselves immoral, antisocial, or psychotic, and players who approach “normal” games with the rage and stupidity of their hate-filled ideals. These players, as the author says, commit acts of violence in games based on their own immoral, unethical values. “The moral relevance of our actions toward mere images is dependent on our attitudes and motivations.” 

I would hope that the majority of violence enacted in video gaming is “morally innocent,” undertaken “for purely strategic reasons having to do with the competition.” Enacting violence is how you win.

Other “innocent” enactments of violence—for the author says that there are “many reasons why players commit acts of violence in games”—are unrelated to the rules of the game: “because the violence offers a challenge, is novel, and is aesthetically rich.”

It’s a slippery slope for me, personally. I dislike games that would ask me to role play a thief or shoot a policeman, or even a war game. Yet I’ve come to love a cartoonish-looking multiplayer “paintball” game. A good friend hates the game because he feels uncomfortable targeting human players, especially friends. But my experience of “good gameplay” is that some strangers and I, when we are being mature, get a kick out of each others’ skill in dodging, shooting, hiding, and so on. We laugh and congratulate our opponent when they get in a good shot on us. There’s no hard feelings. (Hard feelings are reserved for the emotionally immature adults who respond to my good shooting with a string of profanities, but I’m learning to tell them to “bite me” with confidence.)

What of the violence I enact upon a zombie in gameplay? Yes, even in Virtual Reality the zombies can seem cartoonish, but still frightening because their sole focus is upon taking me down. I have no qualms about defending myself against their blatant attack. Of course, sometimes I get tired of the repetitive play and say “bite me” with a bit more sincerity.

Still, I may have to question whether or not violence in video gaming is good for me. At my weakest moments I justify my pleasure in shooter games (targeting zombies, robots, alien soldiers, demons, orcs) as practicing a “skill.” I’ll probably never have a chance in real life to see if I can shoot an arrow or fire a bullet into the head of a zombie, and for that I am grateful. But still, is it healthy for me? Psychologically healthy?

When I am shooting away the cartoonish-looking zombies in a game such as “Drop Dead,” I admit to moments of discomfort when one of the figures looks like me. A younger version, and thinner, and, well, deader, than I am. But it is me. And the cartoon attackers recycle, so on a good day I shoot myself over and over again.

My point is that even the cartoonish zombies signify human forms, which then sends my brain through the uncanny valley of the shadow of undeath to a land of milk and honey where real people exist, and I am not sure I would be capable of harming another individual. Unless I was insane with rage and blindly protecting myself and those I love by lashing out. Call that instinct.

Is it healthy for my psyche to be killing, to be pretending violence? Am I more than a stooge for the sports-competition industry and training myself to accept the universal military culture’s romance with aggression, dominance, and death? Should I be playing these meaningless and even boring games? Might I not be better off reading Buddhist scriptures, humming gospel tunes, murmuring mantras to Ganesh, Hanuman, Shiva and friends?

Yes, you ought to interject at this point and ask about horror films, especially zombie films, and our consumption of them. You should ask about the cinemagoing experience, whether we so totally identify with one side or the other that we are, in some way, acting as if we are playing a videogame.

OK, ‘nuff said.

Here’s the link to the Aesthetics for Birds essay by Christopher Bartell. 

Read it yourself and let me know, politely, what you think.

Snyder Tweaks the Iconic Zombie, Again

Zack Snyder's upcoming Army of the Dead features a take on zombies that strays from what he calls "the zombie canon." The upcoming Netflix movie co-written by Snyder, which is expected to release sometime in 2021, is a postapocalyptic story about mercenaries who head into zombie-infested Las Vegas to pull off a heist.  

Does that sound a bit like the Train to Busan sequel?

The upcoming film, as described to ScreenRant.com by one of the main actors, will build from the kind of zombie that we already know and are scared stiff by from Snyder's remake of Dawn of the Dead. As the actor said: "It's different. ... Zombies are scary. I'll tell you that. Zombies are really fast and scary." (ScreenRant.com)

Fast and scary? But this is the controversial zombie that Snyder offered the world with his very frightening Dawn of the Dead. Does Snyder or his crew think we’ve forgotten? (I’m sure some still haven’t forgiven, but that’s another topic.)

Snyder offered some more insight with his plot summary:

“A zombie plague hits Vegas, and they’re able to contain the virus to the city – they build a wall out of shipping containers. And then the city falls. And six years later, one of the casino owners hires this group of zombie soldiers to go get his money that he left in a safe in the casino.” (Bloody Disgusting)

Perhaps more worrying is Snyder’s promise that as director and producer he is free to do what he wants: “There are no handcuffs on me at all with this one,” he said. Army of the Dead “will be the most kick-ass, self-aware — but not in a wink-to-the-camera way — balls-to-the-wall zombie freakshow that anyone has ever seen.” (BloodyDisgusting)

Somehow this makes me worry. Too many lesser artists than Snyder have fallen into the trap of turning the zombie narrative into an action film, removing the heart from what could be another story about what it means to be human. But I will say nothing more until I can actually see the film when it releases on Netflix next year.

Netflix is already planning a franchise around the title. The company announced in early September 2020 that it had ordered a prequel film and an anime series set in the same universe.

DCeased! More Superheroes, Supervillains, and Zombies

Confession: I do not normally have access to comic books. And that's partly why I've completely missed the May 2019 arrival of the zombie pandemic in the DC comics superhero universe. The "DCeased" storyline looks fascinating. As an initial review on the videogame website IGN summarizes:

The villainous Darkseid spreads a "techno-organic virus" that infects the world's computer networks and spreads to humans "through anything with a screen." This new virus, which ultimately infects some 600 million people, causes victims to rip at their own flesh and eventually become overwhelmed with violent rage.

The series is a vehicle for Batman, and focuses on how the crime fighter (who is, unlike his fellow superheroes, only human) can survive a pandemic that alters the human brain.

In February 2020 DC Comics began sales of the second six-issue series in the DCeased universe: "DCeased: Unkillables." The continuation focuses on the supervillains and their reaction to the zombie pandemic. As of this post, "DCeased: Unkillables" has released three issues. In August 2020 "DCeased: the Unkillables" will be sold as a print collection of all the individual issues, marketed as Volume 2 of the collected editions.

As pandemic lockdowns have no doubt taken a large bite from the comic book retail industry, DC Comics on 19 May 2020 began offering an online supplementary series to the DCeased storyline. This web-only comic called "DCeased: Hope at World's End."

The digital "DCeased: Hope at World's End" series will, according to the IGN website quoting from a DC Comic press release, provide "greater insight" into the fates of other heroes fighting the "Anti-Life Zombie Plague," including Superman, Wonder Woman, Robin, and Martian Manhunter. Expected to run for 14 chapters, with one going online each week, "Hope at World's End" is to be accessible via the DC Comics app, Amazon's ComiXology app, and other digital platforms. It is possible that the online comic will someday be released in a print format.

The Tamil Zomcom that Couldn't Avoid Making Serious Social Commentary

In his 2019 Tamil comedy Zombie, Indian filmmaker Bhuvan Nullan R. set out to spoof the zombie genre, a personal project undertaken “for fun” that Tamil filmgoing audiences unfamiliar with zombie films could enjoy. 

In an online post, the director/writer emphasized the film was made, he says, “Just for own audience,” or Tamil viewers who are comfortable with the style of physical and verbal comedy more common to slapstick comedies produced by the thriving film industry of Tamil Nadu in Southern India, sometimes referred to with the portmanteau “Kollywood.”

While Bhuvan Nullan R. has certainly met his goal of spoofing the genre, with at least one very specific visual reference to Shaun of the Dead and the 2016 blockbuster Tamil zombie-action film Miruthan, he apparently couldn’t stop himself from allowing the opening pre-titles sequence from being an offhand criticism of social, economic, and judicial inequalities that encourage environmental abuses and unregulated capitalism. 

As with the 2016 internationally acclaimed South Korean film Train to Busan, zombie troubles fall off the back of a farmer’s truck, but the trail of origin usually leads back to an industrial accident.

In Bhuvan Nullan R.’s zomcom, it is a farmer who dumps a handful of dead chickens into a small pond, perhaps preferring to hide what might be a disease outbreak at his farm and avoid the government forcing a full cull of his flock. 

The camera focus shifts to a man who has witnessed the illegal dumping. The man, perhaps an impoverished vagrant, collects the birds from the water. The trash-strewn pond is fed by two large concrete sewage pipes.

As the man  gathers the carcasses into a bag, the camera shifts back into a long-distance aerial shot that reveals the pond water is connected to a large factory belching industrial strength smoke.

The bird’s eye view then cuts to a series of close-ups that show money changing hands, after which the chickens are shown being washed, plucked, and butchered.

The camera switches to a wider shot of the chicken cutlets being wheeled into a large restaurant kitchen by a cook who will deep fry them for the final service to the guests of a private resort where a party is being held.

The film title is then displayed in an animation that begins with an angry chicken’s eye that morphs into Tamil language letters that offer up a phonetic rendition of the English word “zombie.” An animated chicken leg bats away one part of the third letter and the full word is revealed before the title flips around to be replaced by an English-language title.

In both Tamil and English titles the characters/letters include “portions” of a face, including a wicked and toothy grin and an eye. Also included in both titles are a grasping arm to replace an empty space within a letter, a bandage wrapping, and a dash of stitches that demand reference to the iconic monster of James Whale’s 1931 adaptation of Frankenstein.

In the Tamil title, the final character is stylishly designed as a rooster’s comb, a trick that is lost in translation. (I wonder if Bhuvan Nullan R. is familiar with the 2006 splatstick Poultrygeist, an over-the-top farce whose stylized title was nowhere near as visually creative as his dual-language offering.)

I have to wonder why the designer of these creatively stylized titles chose to shape letters into stereotypical feminine images. In both languages, the radicals at the start and end of the word are abstracted into red high-heeled shoes. Another character (the English "i") is recognizably shaped as a lipstick container. Why this suggested feminization of the word “zombie?” It may be that the first victims of the film’s zombification are mostly women who eat the chicken at a barbecue hosted by the vacation resort. I do hope it is not in any way a suggestion that women are associated with both clucking hens or zombie outbreaks.

Indeed, one of the only truly disturbing aspects of Bhuvan Nullan R.’s film is the depiction of two men who see themselves as flirting with a woman they do not recognize is a zombie. These men also do not recognize they are behaving as sexual predators, displaying behavior that could only be identified as harassment and grossly disrespectful of both women and adult men. Surely some viewers will find comedy in this, but for any male viewer with an EQ above that of a delinquent adolescent, this will be the place where the zombie comedy becomes an embarrassing display of actual horror.

This entire sequence from the opening shots of the farmer’s truck to the animated title takes up almost six minutes, followed by almost two-and-a-half minutes of credits offered on a background of animated microbes, ever shifting and multiplying.

Overall, Zombie is a pleasant film built upon the comedy of cuteness available in the fat male body and the ordinary male face, and of course the charm of actors knowingly going too far in their characterizations of the clueless and powerless. I'll try to come back to this film again in future posts.


INTERVIEWS WITH BHUVAN NULLAN R.

No Heroes or Heroines in 'Zombie'

This Film Will Pave the Way

Cast and Director TV Appearance (in Tamil)

Official Zombie Trailer (no subtitles)