Website Reflection Post

Okay, so!

I was trotting away with Dreamweaver, trying my best to mold a mess of code into something actually pleasing to the eye. After a full afternoon cram session in the library, I noticed that all of my saves hadn't been copying everything over onto my M:\ drive. For some reason the folder had been carrying over, but nothing inside of it. This is when I learned that my NetDisk had decided at some point during the day that I was no longer allowed to save anything on to or take anything off of it. It just kept saying, "Access Denied." Kathleen worked to help me out, but we weren't able to recover anything. Bummer!

Once I dried my tears (woe!) I started building up my Google Site. As far as jumping into the actual content of my site, I found Google to be accommodating. I was able to doodle some pictures and toss em right up and write my blurb right underneath -- simple as that! One benefit of working in the library all day on Wednesday was being able to look through a plethora of scholarly Great Gatsby books they had available. A collection of essays on The Great Gatsby, a book of Interpretations, a companion reader to The Great Gatsby and best of all, a book of Fitzgerald's personal journal during the last eight years of his life. This really kicked me into fully realizing my website, as a satirical/humorous and most importantly, fictional addition to Fitzgerald's journal. I took the idea of looking at the narrative of The Great Gatsby through the eyes of the other main characters a little bit further and supposed that they drew their own interpretations of each other within Fitzgerald's journal. Underneath each picture, I wrote (and am still writing!) a blurb for each character using the awesome books I found as sources.

One thing that has surprised me during the process of building this website is how few internet sources I have implemented so far. Aside from a picture of Fitzgerald himself, I am using blurbs from a website called "Shmoop" (a sort of cliff notes site) to help provide broad and simple summaries of each character to build off of into a more in-depth idea of them.

I'm going to cut this a little short since I am still writing feverishly on the site! I'll toss a link here incase anyone wants to check out this work in progress.

http://sites.google.com/site/thegreateveryoneelsesite/home

"and there is a good day to write in a blog."

"The First Annual All-Indian Horseshoe Pitch and Barbecue" is a story from Sherman Alexie's The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven that really sticks with me as one of his more abstract writings -- not necessarily in content but in the way that it was described. It's always impressive when an author knows exactly which pieces to pick out of a setting so to expertly portray an envrionment to the reader. You get this impression from the very first line, standing apart from the rest, "Somebody forgot the charcoal; blame the BIA." From the onset, the reader understands the feeling of a laid-back setting; no one is strung up on missing charcoal or who's to blame.

The way the story jumps; from piano-playing to lying beneath a picnic table, to a funny note on the ground and a mother speaking profoundly to her child -- the effect being that it reads more similarly to a scrapbook than a narrative. Beyond this, there are abstract and poetic phrases inserted arbitrarily into the context that cause the reader to spend time on some lines more than others; "That Skin with the long hair leaning against the pine tree, yes, that one," (148) and shortly after, "Neither has the words to describe this but they know how to dance, yes, they know how to dance." (148) It's as if the author is working to convince the reader of something, or that a second voice is interjecting to but more practically impressing the significance of certain images. Consider the difference between reading simply, "but they know how to dance," versus "but they know how to dance, yes, they know how to dance," and one can begin to more closely understand the author's mindset and motivation. It's as though the story is forcing the reader to more heavily on their own imagination than the concrete words written within. Perhaps then, the reason that this story sticks with me is because thinking of it conjures up my own visual ideas on what took place, almost like they are my own memories. I could say it's due to Alexie being a skillful writer, but really, I blame the BIA.

Imagine Keeping a Surprise Party from Jack Bauer

While reading about the heavy thought put toward torture scenes depicted in 24, I couldn't help but constantly apply the same thoughts to how torture has been depicted in video games. Most notably, the popular Metal Gear Solid series has depicted two lengthy torture scenes within its four canon installments. The man being tortured is often put through gruesome tactics including, but not limited to; physical detainment, a black bag fastened over his head, excessive electrocution, gunshots to several parts of the body (including an eye) -- the player is forced not only to watch the torture occur, but even to participate. By society's standards, this is undoubtedly graphic, but nothing too excessive considering we watch protagonist Jack Bauer carry out torturous techniques on a regular basis. What is the difference in watching a video game protagonist utilize similar techniques? The difference in this case, is that the player isn't the torturer, but the tortured.

Both halves of the torture scene depicted in Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater are here and here. Note that both clips are distinctly uncomfortable to watch and even include some graphic violence. It is also important to note that the man with the bag over his head (Big Boss) is the character whom players take control of throughout a majority of the game. He is currently being tortured so to give up information not only on who sent him (the U.S. Government) but why (to prevent nuclear warfare.) The people torturing him are unquestionably the antagonists in the narrative and the player is forced to watch them cripple the hero while they are unable to do anything to prevent it, save for rapidly tapping a button to maintain some of Big Boss' "Stamina." This scene was on my mind while I was reading Michael Brendan Dougherty's "What Would Jack Bauer Do?" and you can imagine my reaction when seeing some of the support for torture he quotes during the article. One quote from Stephen Moore was eerily comparable when he said, "'He should run the CIA [...] I love this guy. I wish it were real life. . . . This guy knows how to interrogate guys. He takes them in, shoots them in the leg, ‘Tell me where the bomb is..." Big Boss is also shot in the leg during interrogation, but would Stephen say the same thing about his torturers were he to watch both of the clips above?

A major point that Stephen Moore pulls out of the sources he quotes during his essay is how people are able to stand behind Jack Bauer's tactics because he is on our side, but more importantly, because it is all fictionalized. He ends his essay with the powerful line, "As escapism, 24 is riveting; as a parable for our time, it is revolting." Following that logic, if people play as a fictional character carrying out torture as a means for the greater good, it would only become more riveting, right?

Not exactly. Enter again, video games. The online juggernaut World of Warcraft released its second expansion (an add-on to a current game, featuring more quests for the players to work through and more land to explore) last winter titled "Wrath of the Lich King." One of the first quests new players were able to take on included using what was essentially a cow brand to torture enemy soldiers into giving up plans for an attack. Regarding this, society's response was not as forgiving. Enraged video game developer, Richard Bartle, crawled out from the 1980s to speak out against World of Warcraft's controversial new quest;

"I was expecting for there to be some way to tell the guy who gave you the quest that no, actually I don't want to torture a prisoner, but there didn't seem to be any way to do that, [...] When I signed up to play [World of Warcraft] I knew it had fireballs, so I expected killing. I knew it had rogues, so I expected thieving. I had to wait until the second expansion to find out it had gratuitous torture. This does not fall within the parameters of what I was expecting."

This raises an important question. Moore points out how many people are willing to stand behind Jack Bauer's tactics due to two important factors -- One: that they are safely within the realm of fiction and two: because Bauer himself is considered patriotic. Perhaps a third factor should be considered: that we viewers are able to stomach Bauer's tactics because they are his, not ours. Bauer is the one who shoulders the moral repercussions of stripping away a terrorist's basic human rights, not the public viewing audience. As soon as we are thrust into a fictional narrative where we are the ones seeking information, a line somewhere has been crossed and it is no longer some character's moral obligations that are under question, but our own. Moore quotes Ben Shapiro: "If torturing a particular terrorist is useful—if we engage in the complicated calculus that tells us that the benefits outweigh the harms—torture is not only justified, it is morally right.” If that is so, then why is there so much moral conflict in all of torture's nuances?