Tag: Reading response

Cat Links 2024 Blog, Lecture 8: Sci-Fi Technoscapes

[Reading Response] Imaginary CyberCities

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Reading M. Christine Boyer’s text, “The Imaginary Real World of CyberCities,” introduced me to some new perspectives on our future in modern cities. Here, I want to share my feelings about the concept of “CyberCities” and the imagination of future individuals. Boyer uses the term “CyberCities” to describe the blending of virtual and physical spaces, where the traditional understanding of geography is disrupted by digital networks. We should note that the article was written in 1992, when social media had not yet gone viral around the world. It seems that Boyer assumed that what social media would bring to people

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Cat Links Lecture 6: Housing Stories

[Reading Response 2]: In Search of the Ghostly In Context

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The book focuses on how Fruit Chan’s film defamiliarizes the city of Hong Kong, challenging the dominating genres at that time. He used spectral elements as a means to explore the city’s omitted problems and historical events. Chan’s film depicts haunted spaces as symbolic representations of large historical issues or repressed memories associated with those spaces, becoming a metaphorical reflection of the deeper issue that fills up the collective memory of the city. Chan describes the city as a place where ghosts gather, representing the dense history that is in tension with the act of remembering and sorrow. In the

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Cat Links Lecture 7: Monsters, Materials & Skyscrapers, Uncategorized

[Reading Response 2] Oh No, There Goes Tokyo – Anvesha Bajpai

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I was interested in exploring the deep psychological trauma ingrained in post-war Japan, particularly stemming from the experience of nuclear warfare which has a profound influence on Japanese popular culture, leading to doomsday cities such as Tokyo as recurring themes in films and media. Critics like Susan Sontag suggest these narratives serve as a means to address and cope with the collective trauma experienced by the population. Susan Sontag’s perspective on the appeal of postwar science fiction cinema, exemplified through films like “Gojira” (1954), illustrates the connection between trauma and storytelling. “Gojira” visually captures the destruction of Tokyo. Sontag argues

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Cat Links 2024 Blog, Lecture 8: Sci-Fi Technoscapes

[Reading Response 2] Migratory Cities

Posted on Mark

I think when the cities can move, they are not ‘city’ anymore. Instead, they should be called transportation tools. There are many transportation can move people from place to place while they can work, entertain, and live on machines such as aircraft carriers, trains, airships, and rockets. Similar stories can be told by changing the ‘city’ to other carriers such as pirate ships, then the story becomes “One Piece”, stronger pirates engulf weaker pirates. The main character trying to defect the strong pirates to get treasure. In the idea of moving to a residential place, I think of the vehicle

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Cat Links 2024 Blog, Lecture 6: Housing Stories

[Reading Response] Ancuta, K

Posted on u3613713

In Ancuta’s article, ghosts in Asian societies are portrayed to coexist with the dead, living in apartments surrounded by cramped urban densities. I was interested in the concept of the “living ghost”, where individuals living in modern Metropolis are alienated, and how failed dreams of economic success through migration turn individuals into “ghosts”. I’m also fascinated by the interplay between the “living ghost” and “dead ghost”.  ‘The Promise’ focuses on a Bangkok story of two siblings from a bankrupt developer family, both swearing to commit suicide. One sibling commits suicide, dies and becomes a physical ghost. Meanwhile, her sister broke

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Cat Links 2024 Blog, Lecture 7: Monsters, Materials & Skyscrapers

[Reading Response 2] Oh No, There Goes Tokyo by William M. Tsutsui, Cheung Wan Suet

Posted on c2vonne

There is a thematic parallel between Japan’s calamitous historical past and its visual culture and artistic creation, predominantly characterised by the doom-laden fictional apocalypses. From natural disasters to the nuclear threat, to the burst of a beautiful bubble of economic prosperity, the historical vulnerability led to the perceivable pessimism and unhealable trauma expression in most aspects of its cultural output.  However, the reading expresses an interesting point of view to challenge the very established notion of the gloomy “aesthetic of destruction” with a contrasting kind of optimism and hopefulness that lay underneath the seeming surface of pessimism. For films of

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[Reading Response] : The Imaginary Real World of CyberCities

Posted on bagrus18

The reading discusses various examples of sci-fi migratory cities in fictitious films. However, as all films do, the phenomena could be explained by societal desires and anxieties.    Using one example, the Walker City in Flood (2009) was a mobile “self-contained mini-city” supported by advanced heavy machinery that allowed it to move on and roam the catastrophically-devastated post-global climate change Earth, constantly scavenging for food and resources for its residents. The tale brings forward the realistic fear of reallife city-dwellers, as symptoms of climate change bit-by-bit propels cities in our very real-lives to transform. The air temperature gets higher and

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Reading response 2-Communal After-Living: Asian Ghosts and the City

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This article explores the portrayal of ghosts in Asian urban settings and how they reflect the social and cultural consequences of rapid urbanization and inequitable development. The author also critiques the role of popular culture and environmental concerns in shaping perceptions of urbanization and globalization. The article advocates for a multidisciplinary approach to studying these processes’ socioeconomic and environmental impacts in Asian societies. The article offers a compelling analysis of the links between ghosts and urban phenomena in Asia. However, the article could provide more detailed solutions to address the disparities and challenges caused by rapid urbanization and uneven development,

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Cat Links 2024 Blog, Lecture 6: Housing Stories

[READING RESPONSE 2] KATARZYNA ANCUTA

Posted on u3619253

This article is about the relationship between Asian ghosts and urban cities, especially how it’s portrayed in modern films. It dives into how the loneliness of ghosts actually reflects the inhabitants in apartments. Having lived in only apartments my whole life I agree with Ancuta. I never had talked to any of my neighbors. The bustling business of the city makes me want to reduce my interactions to a minimum so that I can keep my social battery to work. The architecture of apartments, just like the article mentions, such as small windows, encourage this isolation of human bonds. There

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