Ms. Smarty Pants Know It All

After much delay, I have finally managed to see Star Trek (the next regeneration). I agree with most of the things said about the film so I won’t repeat it in detail. Yes, the acting is fine. Yes, the action is well-paced. I really enjoyed it overall.

[Note: In most of my write-ups, I try to not give away any important plot points or story elements. This one, however, focuses on a specific detail of the movie's plot so please consider this your fair spoiler warning.]

Beyond all this though, I found the idea of the accidental time traveler the most interesting aspect of the movie. Most stories with a time travel element presupposes that the traveler is smart enough to have figured out time travel.

In this Star Trek movie, the Romulan time traveler is essentially just some working stiff. He is the captain, but his portrayal is pretty “hick”-like.

So once he goes back in time, when his planet is safe and sound, instead of heading there to warn about the impending super nova, he goes and exacts some preemptive revenge instead.

There’s something very stereotypically redneck about this.

Perhaps it’s because he is a miner that it all brings to my mind our own West Virginian mining culture and the feuds associated with this region of the country.

There’s also a political commentary element involved with the villain being so angry and scared that he lashes out blindly with violence rather than really doing what’s best for his people.

So by the end of the movie, the Vulcans are almost wiped out and the Romulans remain in danger. One would hope that the Federation can now take the steps necessary to save the Romulan people, despite the abhorrent actions of one of their members.

Tags: Movies by Ms. SP
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The Castle of Otranto is significant for being known as the first ever Gothic novel. I am someone who stays away from horror movies and scary stories of all kinds. I do not like bumps in the night.

But I didn’t have anything to fear from this novel at all. The spectural elements are mainly portents and messages rather than the walking dead chasing people all Doctor Who style down countless hallways.

The novel is essentially a story of heirs, lineages, and entailments. Although set in medieval times, the audience for the original printing of this book (1764) would have been greatly sensitive to the horrifying situation presented within.

Manfred is the prince of Otranto. Throughout the book, his claim to the title and the land are challenged through a number of ways. I won’t give anything away here, but I don’t think any of the twists will be a surprise to the modern reader.

The presentation is probably too melodramatic and overly Romanticized for today’s audience, but I appreciated how fast the action moved. The characters are cliche to us, but because I know the archetypes—the suffering wife, the dutiful daughter, the virtuous young stranger—I didn’t miss all the passages that are usually there to explain it all.

I just read through as quickly as the text demands.

It is interesting to read something without modern text conventions. Dialogue doesn’t break into paragraphs with every switch of the speaker. Instead, conversations just continue on in running text without even a [character] said, “…”

This, among other reasons, helped paragraphs run pages in length at a time.

While the text may be unfamiliar, the story elements really are. It’s strange to read this and think about when these elements, characters, and ideas were fresh and brand new. The history nerd part of me really enjoyed that.

Tags: Books by Ms. SP
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Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood is considered a groundbreaking novel/graphic novel and rightly so. Marjane Satrapi fantastically combines deceptively simple black and white images and deceptively sparse words to create a dramatic and emotion-filled portrayal of a childhood.

Persepolis is a memoir that chronicles Marjane’s earliest years in Iran. With upper-crust parents who were nevertheless revolutionaries and communists, she has interesting first-hand experiences with many of her country’s major happenings. We see how events like the Iran-Iraq War and the Islamic Revolution affected Marjane, her family, and her neighbors.

I read this a few weeks before Iran became a daily news leadoff story. Rightly or wrongly, I feel like I have a better sense of what might be going on there because of this book.

Marjane’s experiences as an Iranian youth are amazingly unique and universal at the same time. For example, make-up as a rebellion tactic takes on a new seriousness when one is able to be arrested because of it. Yet, the author is able to convey a young girl’s obliviousness of this difference and gets across that her younger self really didn’t think through this act of defiance too much. Yes, it was about making a statement, but it was also just something to do.

I found this book really engrossing, informative, and amazing.

Persepolis 2: The Story of a Return picks up her story at about age 14.

I think Persepolis 2 is the less successful volume because life (as it does for all of us) starts to get so much wordier later on.

Persepolis charms and communicates in an almost mysterious way. At times, I found myself staring at the panels trying to figure out why the series worked so well.

In Persepolis 2, sometimes the words threatened to overwhelm the panels. It’s a worthwhile read because if you can resist picking up P2 after the last panel of P1, you must have not enjoyed the original very much at all.

In Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi uses art to communicate childhood emotions and understandings. Language was used selectively. While Persepolis 2 still could not use a lot of words given the nature of the presentation, the reliance on conveying information was shifted towards describing rather than illustrating.

As a memoir, P2 serves well to continue Marjane’s story, but as a literary work, it is just not as special as P1.

Tags: Books by Ms. SP
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