Eye Magazine

The Magazine of The International Academic Forum | Issue 7 | Summer 2015

暴走族!
The Violent & Unpredictable
World of Japanese Biker
Gangs

EYE MAGAZINE ISSUE 7

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CONTENTS
4.
From the Editor
An introduction to the latest
edition of Eye Magazine
6.
The Myth of the Second
Front
How ‘the experts’ and ‘theglobal jihad’ appropriate
Asian insurgencies by Tom
Smith
11.
The Islamic State
Balancing the Islamic and
the Tribal Identity by Haian
Dukhans
14.
The Power behind StarryNight
Vincent’s Empyrean Vision by
Jared Baxter
2 | Eye Magazine Seventh Edition

17.
Seeing the Last Supper in“Café Terrace at Night”
IAFOR President Joseph
Haldane interviews Jared
Baxter20.
Bosozuku
Society, Politics and Terror by
Paul Spicer
22.
The Family Reunion
Unacknowledged Matricide
in T. S. Eliot’s The Family
Reunion by Ken Chang
27.
Love, Suffering and Conflict
Some Lessons from
Freud’s Civilization and its
Discontents by Brian R. ClackEYE MAGAZINE ISSUE 7

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38
42

46
32.
Japanese Subs forAustralia?
Developments in Australian
Defence Procurement /Japanese Defence Export
Policy by Craig Mark38.
The 10,000 Hour Ruleand What it Means for
Language Teachingby Frances Shiobara
42.
I Love You, BroThe [Mis]Representation ofMale-Bonding in Boy Bands
through their Music by Mary
Jane S. Camarador
46.
“Cool Japan”
Princess Robot Bubblegum

52
Critiques: “Cool Japan” by
Christina Bethel52.
Cloud Computing for
Collaborative Knowledge
Construction
A Case with Google Drive by
Gary Ka-Wai Wong
58.
Conflict Irresolution
Post-Postmodernism and theLegacy of Ironic Subversion
by Michael Heitkemper-Yates
Back Cover:
Photo by Bentoboxd, Flickr

58
Eye Magazine
Issue 7 | Summer 2015

EditorMichael Liam Kedzlie
Assistant Editor - Copy
Editing & Layout
Lindsay Lafreniere
Original Design &LayoutThaddeus Pope
Subscriptions
magazine@iafor.org

Copyright © 2015, Eye Magazine

If you would like to subscribe to Eye Magazine,
or would like to contribute to the magazine,
please contact us via magazine@iafor.org
Eye Magazine Seventh Edition | 3

A word from the editor

Welcome to this the seventh edition of IAFOR’s Eye
Magazine, the International Academic Forum’s own inhouse e-magazine publication.

Photograph by Sarah Bürvenich/ Magdeleine

Through Eye Magazine, we hope to enlighten you as tovarious views and opinions of our contributors, many ofwhom have presented full research papers at our various
conferences. To us at IAFOR, Eye Magazine is a place foryou to focus on and share interdisciplinary knowledge andresearch synergies. Of course, that research has to be able
to be digestible by the non-specialists. So hopefully, with
Eye Magazine, a specialist in the area of international
relations can inform and enlighten a language learning
expert and likewise, a cultural studies expert can speak to
an economist or a lawyer to an environmental engineer,
without the burden of the over-specialist terminology
found within one’s own traditional research silo. To thatend Eye Magazine is in many ways an extension of our
focus on developing interdisciplinary knowledge andresearch synergies.
In this latest edition I wish to thank those contributors
who have kindly written articles and submitted photos
to make this issue an interesting and vibrant read. This
edition with its general theme of human conflict andidentity has some fabulous articles for you to read. The
cover story for this quarterly edition is by Paul Spicer, ofHiroshima Woman’s University, under great intrigue andat times of physical danger investigated the violent andunpredictable underworld of Japanese Biker Gangs. Haian
Dukhans, of St Andrews University, Scotland, has a guest
editorial on the current conflict within Iraq and Syria
titled The Islamic State: Balancing the Islamic and the Tribal
Identity that offers a further perspective when analyzing
the current crisis and one of the pathways to consider
regarding any post conflict governance in the region
currently occupied by ISIL. Tom Smith, of the Universityof Hull, examines the appropriated contextuality of
the Jihadist movement in The Myth of the Second Front:
How ‘the experts’ and ‘the global jihad’ appropriate Asian
insurgencies. Regular Eye Magazine contributor andthe IAFOR Journal of Politics Editor Craig Mark, ofKwansei Gakuin University, here in Japan, looks at thepotential export of Japanese submarines to Australia andthe possible political developments that may evolve fromit in his article Japanese Subs for Australia? Developments inAustralian Defence Procurement / Japanese Defence Export
Policy.
Also in this Summer 2015 edition, Michael HeitkemperYates, of the Graduate School of Humanities at Kobe

4 | Eye Magazine Seventh Edition

University, notes the post-postmodern modal shift backtowards the threshold of experience in his essay Conflict
Irresolution: Post-Postmodernism and the Legacy of Ironic
Subversion. Christina Bethel of East Carolina University
provides an illustration of the impact of Japan’s SoftPower movement in her article Princess Robot Bubblegum
Critiques: “Cool Japan”. Brian R. Clack of the University of
San Diego examines the question “where then does lovestand with regard to its benefits and costs?” in his article
Love, Suffering and Conflict: Some Lessons from Freud’s
Civilization and its Discontents. Gary Ka-Wai Wong, of
The Hong Kong Institute of Education, looks at ways totake the advantage of the latest in mobile technologies
for our classroom teaching and learning practice, and how
to enhance our students engagement in his article Cloud
Computing for Collaborative Knowledge Construction:
A Case with Google Drive. Ken Chang, of the National
Cheng-Chi University, Taiwan, offers in this issue afascinating look into the notion of unacknowledged
matricide in writer T. S. Eliot’s The Family Reunion. Mary
Jane S. Camarador, of Southern Luzon State University,
Philippines asks the question “so what is a Boy Band?”and discusses gender, music, adolescence, representationand homosocialization in I Love You, Bro: The [Mis]
Representation of Male-Bonding in Boy Bands throughtheir Music. Frances Shiobara of Kobe Shoin Women’s
University, Japan in her article The 10,000 Hour Rule andWhat it Means for Language Teaching explains that there
are no easy short cuts in language learning and that ‘oldfashioned’ attributes like hard work and application, andplenty of practice make all the difference. Lastly I wish
to thank Jared Baxter, our art contributor, who IAFOR
President Dr. Joseph Haldane recently interviewed. This
interview and a further article from Jared on the Van
Gogh series of research that is now gaining international
attention within the art world is also included in thisSummer 2015 edition. Once again my heartfelt thanks
to all of the contributors who submitted articles, essays
and opinion pieces.

““

FROM THE EDITOR

We trust that this edition of Eye magazine will once again
be an informative, interesting and exciting way for us tocommunicate with you, and you in turn with us. We hope
you enjoy reading it
Sincerely,
Michael Liam Kedzlie
Editormkedzlie@iafor.org

Eye Magazine Seventh Edition | 5

EDITORIAL

The Myth

Photograph by Jason Fudge/ FlickrW

hat is this idea of the second
front? It is a pernicious anddangerous idea that refuses
to go away. In particular, through thisessay I want to demonstrate that thesecond front needs a renewed critique
because of the appropriation of various
Asian insurgencies by both so-called‘terrorist experts’ and the ‘actors’ of the
global jihad. This critique illuminates
some of the most interesting andforward-thinking ideas addressing
The Sixth Asian Conference on Artsand Humanities conference themesof conflict and community. Indeed
what we will do is challenge the very
6 | Eye Magazine Seventh Edition

definitions of those words and ask
ourselves what is the conflict and whatis the community?
Now some of you may be well versedin this ‘second front’ idea and be
curious as to why I am still bothering
to put energy into discrediting it.
Well, I wish I didn’t’t have to, however
research and commentary on terrorism
in Asia (and elsewhere) continues
to be influenced by the idea. Which
like all ideas is difficult to delete. The
wealth of material that was produced
advocating the region, as the second
front remains well referenced andregarded today – certainly in somepolicy circles. But more than this, andany notion of ‘I told you so’, thosethat lead the charge in claiming links
between Asian insurgencies and thedark dangerous network of al Qaeda,
have recently renewed their vigor forthis subject.
Zachary Abuza, Maria Ressa, andRohan Gunaratna being the threemost visible of the so-called expertson the regions insurgencies. Whatthey did and continue to do, isconnect the local to global by wayof citing movements of people, arms,

of the Second Front

How ‘the experts’ and ‘the global jihad’appropriate Asian insurgencies
by Tom Smithfunding and ideology from one timeand place to another. This conflationof the so called-connections, of which
the best known story is that of the
Afghan Mujahedeen returning toSouth East Asia equipped and fuelled
to fight their local jihad as part of awider global jihad, is not evidenced
unproven. It’s an attractive story
and a fascinating idea but alas I havefound by some good old-fashioned
empirical research and some all too
rare fieldwork in the region it to be a
fanciful one.
Over the past few years I have focusedon both the Southern Thai and Filipino
insurgencies as supposed examples par
excellence of the second front. Asking
what, if anything, connects the Pattanior Mindanao to ‘the global jihad’.
But I would ask you to not just limit
yourselves to these two locales, butothers, while they work well as a casestudy comparison as both are situatedin non Muslim states, distant fromthe capitol, with similar geographies,
the second front idea was expanded
to other areas, obviously Indonesia
and Malaysia. But following lastmonth’s knife attack in Kunming, it’scertainly raised the spectra of Xinjiang

becoming a more prominent exampleof the jihad in Asia and sparking
further revival of the second front
thesis. Such positing of the local
within greater global contexts by bothgovernment officials and the media, as
is nearly always done, continued herewith Kunming.
It’s this that interests me – how is
it connected to the jihad? So, I set
out to see what others had claimed
and scrutinized their sources andevidencing, but more pointedly I went
to the locales myself– the immediaciesof the insurgencies and asked the
Eye Magazine Seventh Edition | 7

people if and how the insurgency wasconnected to the others events aroundthe world.
For the most part this meant riding
a motorbike and playing football in ajungle fringed landscape occasionallybroken up by mosques and malls. I
spoke to a wide selection of people
but was particularly interested to hear
the views of young people. The ‘angry
young men’ trope who have supposedly
been radicalized by an evil ideology
into a dark network was beginningto be exposed and discredited andeventually gave rise to the disciplineof critical terrorism studies as anapplication of critical theory.
Examples of others who have noted
the weakness in the second front thesis
need to be held up as academic heroes
in the field. Natasha Hamilton Hart
beat me to the punch by noting theterrible trend for definitive tones inthis field. She says: “At no stage do thebooks written by Abuza, Gunaratna
or Ressa – or most of the analysts whocite them – discuss issues of credibility
or interpretation with regard to
8 | Eye Magazine Seventh Edition

official information…Rather thanoffering any reflection on his sources,
Gunaratna frequently fails to even citea specific source for his claims, or fails
to identify the source sufficiently. Yet
there is no sign of doubt or uncertainty
in his work.”(Hamilton-Hart, 2005)
Likewise Michael Connors whowarned us that “Despite the factthat his work has been criticized foroverreliance on intelligence agency
materials and for often making
unsubstantiated claims, Gunaratna
remains an authoritative international
figure”(Connors, 2006).
What has Kevin Bacon got to do withterrorism in Asia, Tom? Well about
as much as Al Qaeda does it seems.
I honestly don’t mean to be flippant,but this fantastic insight by Graham
Brown needs repeating, sharing, andcirculating amongst peers once more.
If you would allow me another quote:“The general way in which different
types of source are utilized and, inparticular, how tentative allegations aretransmuted, through a kind of processof academic Chinese Whispers,

into established facts, studies ofinternational terrorism in Southeast
Asia and elsewhere would benefit
from much greater contextualization
within the domestic politics of thecountry in question, rather than theircurrent focus on specific individuals,organizations and networks”(Brown,
2006)This portrayal Brown criticizes ofa conflict where individuals aresupposedly members of groups andnetworks is rarely evidenced, yet it
exists as an almost existential truth.
Bin Laden even on his death wasconsidered the mastermind, despite
any evidence to substantiate this.
We all somehow knew him as being
in control of a global network withtentacles everywhere (Abuza, 2002;
Brimley, 2006).
The result is a narrative of an informal
hierarchy which even if cellularor hydra in structure was and isinherently top down with central
leadership hidden away somewhere in
remote caves or jungles yet benefitingfrom all the joys of a globalized 21st

Photographs by Global Panorama/ Flickr and DVIDSHUB/ Flickr

The result is a narrative of an informal hierarchy whicheven if cellular or hydra in structure was and is inherently
top down with central leadership hidden away somewhere
in remote caves or jungles yet benefiting from all the joysof a globalized 21st century CEO.
century CEO.
But its simply not true of course, thisthinking was built on an outmoded
top-down model, the same modelin which Islam was portrayed inInternational Relations when Oliver
Roy described the Islamic world interms of a Centre and peripheries.
In the post 9/11 space, the idea of a
global jihad was simply overlaid onto
this model complete with a center– be it Afghanistan or Iraq as thesource of purity or an authenticity
which needed to be exported to theperiphery by missionaries to the far
flung corners where safe havens andsanctuaries could be created for exotic
jihad.

if not comfortable with the practiceof web 2.0 and the idea of social
collaboration and two way platforms
for dialogue and exchange. In such acase I suggest we start to think about
the jihad and consider this conflictas jihad 2.0 if that helps us move on
intellectually from regressive ideas of
networked terrorists and the second
front.
The jihad is a mashup, a hosting
service, a platform from which thejihad is crowdsourced. It always
was this way, but the language andideas from technology and media

and the challenge they bring to ourprevious incarnations of identity andcommunity are striking in discussing
the jihad.
The jihad is on Google Drive,
somewhere up in the cloud, it iseverything and anything for anyone
and everyone to take what they willfrom. No control. No direction. No
indoctrination. No radicalization.
Manifest examples of this are in theart of the jihad, the nasheed videos
on YouTube, Facebook and Twitter.
Ethnically and culturally diverse,

What we have been left with isstraight from Hollywood, of a puppet
master, with a powerful and connected
network, pulling the strings. But it istime for the puppets to cut the strings.
It is time we inverted the pyramid andrethought our conceptualization of thejihad, particularly in Asia and with itchallenge our ideas of community andconflict. In much the same way that
Mary Kaldor made the distinction
between New Wars and Old Wars,
I suggest we now have old wars,
new wars and the jihad – where theindividual is at the apex – at the centerof the ‘everyday conflict’. Able to pull
down or download whatever theywant and need from the jihad which
has become not a single doctrine fordisciples but an ethereal groundswell
co-opted and manipulated, abused
and challenged, but with every
act, donation, internet forum post,
video download and discussion, thegroundswell, the jihad, grows forlater appropriation. We have alreadybecome accustomed with the idea,
Eye Magazine Seventh Edition | 9

regionally appropriate and suitable
to whatever setting be it Chechnya,
Kashmir, Palestine or Patani and
Mindanao. They acknowledge their

violence. For which the violent act out
on behalf of. The chest beating idea of‘representing’ their people is strangely
familiar to the jihad in several locales.

or whatever we come to call it, be youin paradise, downtown Manhattan,
London or catching a train in Madrid,
the plausibility for a connection to

The non-violent contributions are just as important as theviolent ones. The violence obviously catches our eye andwe obsess over it naturally, but in doing so we neglect theunderbelly of non-violence. For which the violent act out onbehalf of. The chest beating idea of ‘representing’ their people isstrangely familiar to the jihad in several locales. It is manifestly
challenging, which in itself is striking and enchanting.

But its also very modern as well as
displaying hallmarks of tradition andheritage, vibrantly so. It’s even, dare I
say, in some respects quite progressive,
and acutely feminine in some senses.
The non-violent contributions are justas important as the violent ones. The
violence obviously catches our eye andwe obsess over it naturally, but in doing
so we neglect the underbelly of non10 | Eye Magazine Seventh Edition

It is manifestly challenging, which initself is striking and enchanting.
Are Jihadist like environmentalists,
part of a global social movement
akin to others acting ethically or
humanitarianly for others far away?
Faisal Devji suggested this in his
groundbreaking philosophical 2005
work Landscape of the Jihad (2005).
It is an idea that has so far not beentested or followed up. The idea
antagonizes some who find it repellant
to analyze jihadists in the same way wewould other activists and global social
movements, but the violence does nottake place in a vacuum and we must
learn to appreciate that behind theviolence lies a growing environment,
or what Devji calls beliefs andpractices of non-violent participation,a fuel which lacks central control andauthority. This we can evidence, we
can cite it can be verified, it can beattested to in the public domain andit runs counter to the second front
radicalizing network narrative.
So, the next time you hear or read ofsomewhere long forgotten becoming
the next breeding ground or sanctuary
for the jihad, ask yourself if that iscredible, if the evidence they put
forward is substantive enoughcompared to what you see all around
you and what I have suggested today.
The idea that jihad in paradise is thethreat we all face is false. There are no
fronts to this war, conflict, insurgency

the jihad remains. So even if Disneydecide to make a movie based on Mark
Bowden’s article Jihadists in Paradise(2007), we all know the difference
between storytelling and reality.
There is no second front - there
are no fronts. What we can only be
sure of is that the sentiment sharedby individuals has been misread byexperts as evidence or radicalization
and appropriated by violent sociopaths
as consent. The jihad is, as yet, rarely
articulate, perhaps because of its
metaphysical inexactitude. Without
any order and cohesion and while thejihad revels in been contested, argued
upon like a politician who says they act
in ‘the public interest,’ the jihad will
ask more questions of us than anyone
has answers for. At the very least weshould caution against those who
attest to having the inside story fromsecret sources, demanding a better
standard of basic academic disciplines
and peer-reviewed rigor.
At the very least, the next time you areexposed to these issues, if the ideas of
who they are and what is their fightare not at the foremost of your mind,
one should be very skeptical.
Tom Smith teaches and researches
at the University of Hull, UK. A fullyreferenced version of this article
can be supplied upon request to the
Editor at publications@iafor.org

Photograph by DVIDSHUB/ Flickr

heritage, they recall the tradition of a
global religion or omnipresent identitythat recalls international brotherhood,kinship and sympathy. Whether thepractice of the hadji or one of the 5pillars of the faith – to give to charity,
the jihad becomes interwoven with
21st century Muslim life and identity,
expanding the individuals horizons
and ideas of community beyond theirlocal mosque and immediate family
but to the plight and suffering of fellow
Muslims far away. This cosmopolitan
caring and empathy should be
regarded as the most importantconnection to the jihad rather thanlooking for mythical instances of al
Qaeda moving people and arms andplans from one battle field to thenext. The reality for young Muslims
and non Muslims is a connection
based cerebrally. An empathy, a senseof duty, a 6th Pillar of Islam – thejihad, to contribute to do your bit inwhatever way. To post a comment, tolike a video, this jihadi clicktivism isthe connection we shouldn’t ignore
and should restrain from condemning.

The Islamic State Balancing the Islamic
By Haian Dukhans

International media has recently
reported that the Islamic State
group (IS) demanded the releaseof an Iraqi woman, Sajida Al-Rishawi,
detained in Jordan in exchange for the
Jordanian pilot, Muath al-Kasaesbeh,
they captured and executed later. The
organisation’s insistence on releasing
a woman raises many questions about
the nature of a group that exacerbates
the subordinate situation of women in
the communities it rules. What needs
to be looked at carefully in this situation is that by insisting on releasing

and the Tribal Identity

Sajida Al-Rishawi and not any of theother male prisoners held by Jordan,
IS is attempting to portray her arrestas a violation of women. This is a matter of high sensitivity in the tribal society and applied to the tribal idiom of
honour, which is a rational reason for
the group taking revenge.
In no part of the Middle East are thetribal elements more sharply defined
than in Iraq and the East of Syria
where IS dominates. The populationthat inhabits this part of Syria and

Iraq is largely tribal, defined by anthropologists as composed of an independent, regional political groupings
made up of structurally similar segments. The leaders of the Islamic state
who tend to be Iraqis and Syrians wereborn and raised in tribal communities
themselves and often speak of theirtribes and the honour of their people
animatedly and with pride. In all of ISvideos and statements, Abu Bakr alBaghdadi, the self-proclaimed caliph,
is not identified by his name and surname only but by the Quraysh tribe
Eye Magazine Seventh Edition | 11

12 | Eye Magazine Seventh Edition

of whom the Prophet Mohammed
descends. These links to the Prophet
provide a kind of cover to court alliances with Sunni tribes by helping
him establish legitimacy in denoting
the “purest” of Muslims by carrying
the prophet’s blood in his veins.
Throughout history up to the presentday, tribal identity and Islamic identity have been in constant struggle
and every Muslim with a tribal background is stuck in a dilemma of trying
to balance the compulsions of theirtribal background and the teachingsof the Islamic faith. Although Islam
tried to adapt all the tribal codes ofhonour and revenge, tribal influences
remained to permeate even the most
cosmopolitan Arab states such as
UAE. What this short article is trying
to argue for is that IS actions are more
swayed by a tribal template hidden
beneath an overtly religious surface.
One of the main principles of Arabtribalism is honour. Arabs are taughtthat honour is more important thanrelease” to be prepared to carry arms
saying, “I swear by Allah that the enemies will force you to carry them andyou will carry them voluntarily or byforce even after a while because this is
how honour will be safeguarded anddignity will be retrieved and the rights
recovered.” Likewise, in tribal codes,
any member of offensive community
is liable to be attacked in revenge for
an offense committed by a memberof his community. Al-Adnani calledon Muslims in Western countries to“find an infidel and smash his headwith a rock, poison him, run him overwith a car, or destroy his crops.” A few
months after his appeal, two French
citizens of Algerian origin attacked asatirical newspaper in Paris, “Charlie
Hebdo”, killing 10 of the magazine’s
journalists while shouting: “We haveavenged the Prophet Mohammed, we
have avenged the Prophet Mohammed, we have killed Charlie Hebdo.”
IS has praised the two gunmen who
stormed the offices of the magazine
in Paris as “heroic jihadists.” The mostsensitive part of tribal honour is thesader airplanes above their heads day
and night?” To atone for the shame
incurred by this aggression on Muslim
women, tribesmen feel they must seek
violent vengeance.
Moreover, the group’s execution of
hostages from the US, UK, Japan,
Egypt and Jordan, without requiring
any explanatory recourse to Islam, is
an implication of the system of collective guilt. The horrific manner inwhich the execution took place ought
to be placed under the heading of
pro-active deterrence. Arab tribes
have always existed in a de facto stateless anarchy where the use of retaliatory force was an effective technique
for suppressing future challenges.
The continuous release of beheading
videos shows genuine mastery of thetechnique of deterrent intimidation.
To conclude, understanding the influence of tribalism upon the development of Islam, and by extension
IS, requires acknowledging of thebasic characteristics and dynamics of

Photograph by Abdurahman Warsame/ Flickr

Throughout history up to the present day, tribal
identity and Islamic identity have been in constant
struggle and every Muslim with a tribal backgroundis stuck in a dilemma of trying to balance thecompulsions of their tribal background and theteachings of the Islamic faith.
wealth, fame, love or even death. Thus,
whenever there is transgression against
honour, there are reactions that seemon the face of it emotional because
they are not based on calculation but
rather stem from a need for revenge.
According to the central institution of
the tribes, when honour is violated, it
must be avenged by the entire group.
Abu Mohammad al-Adnani, the Islamic State’s chief spokesman, scatters
indicators of this thinking throughout
his speeches, using the word “honour”
frequently. As the coalition started its
air strikes against the group, al-Adnani asked all Muslims in an “audio

behaviour of transgression against
women as it directly relates to the honour of the men in the tribe. Violationof women provokes the most violent
reaction. Again, al-Adnani’s speeches
and other IS leaders’ statements are
replete with sentences about the violation of Muslim women by enemies.
“The crusaders have killed nine Muslim women three days ago by striking
a bus transporting them from Sham to
Iraq” Al-Adnani said when addressing
the tribes of Syria and Iraq, “Will you
leave the disbeliever to sleep safely athome while the Muslim women shiver with fear of the roars of the cru-

Middle Eastern tribalism. IS’ attitudes
towards its adversaries reflect the influence of tribal values. Without thisunderstanding, the war on terror will
not end in any kind of recognizable
victory as the current military actions
are only exacerbating the conflict.
Hainan Dukhan is a doctoral student at Saint Andrews University,
Scotland. A fully referenced versionof this article is available on requestfrom the editor at publications@iafor.org

Eye Magazine Seventh Edition | 13

The Power behind Starry Night

Vincent’s Empyrean Vision
by Jared Baxter

14 | Eye Magazine Seventh Edition

“That doesn’t stop me from having a terrible need for –dare I say the word – for religion, so I go outside at night
to paint the stars…” – Vincent van Gogh

One of the most famous and beloved
paintings, Starry Night (MoMA,
NYC), has mesmerized academia andthe general public alike for over a century. What has confounded everyone
is the inspiration behind the artist’s
visionary canvas. Theories range fromthe literal to the literary. The latterincludes suppositions the image blossomed from some literary source: theBible or Walt Whitman, usually. This
article advances the painting was inspired by Dante’s vision of the Em-

pyrean Heavens, his tenth and final They determined the two brightest
sphere, where the Trinity, in perfect orbs were analogous to the placements of the morning star, Venus, nearbalance, turns the cosmos.
the skyline of the Alpilles, and theWhile it remains uncertain if Vin- moon, in the upper, right-hand corner.
cent read The Divine Comedy, his ex- Boime and his own lead astronomer,
isting letters reveal a more than cur- however, disagreed about the placesory familiarity. Most notably was his ment of the remaining stars, one deopinion that the pinnacle of artistic termining the Aries constellation, theachievement included the portraits of other, Cygnus. Vincent’s imagination,
Frans Hals, and quote, “Dante’s Para- though grounded in reality, therefore,dise, the Michealangelos, and Rapha- created most everything else.
els, and even the Greeks.”
Boime posits Vincent may have readAs a denizen of Provence, Vincent Camille Flammarion’s Popular Aswas immersed in a culture in which tronomy which included a depiction
Dante’s shadow still loomed large. In of a spiral nebula, perhaps inspiring
May, 1889, Vincent admitted him- Vincent’s turbulent sky. While Vinself as patient at St. Paul’s, a Catho- cent may have seen this image, it islic asylum nestled in the Alpilles, nowhere near to-scale in his Starry
its landscape famous for inspiring Night, suggesting more relevance thanDante’s Gates of Hell. Vincent had a mere scientific phenomenon.
just moved fifteen miles from Arles
where, for a millennia, sarcophagi had While Starry Night’s hamlet is remibeen stacked at an ancient Roman niscent of the nearby town of St. Remy,
necropolis. The site inspired Dante to it was not viewable from Vincent’s
pen, “Even as at Arles where stagnant vantage point, as evidenced in dozens
grows the Rhone” beginning his sixth of other canvasses he painted frominside his room. As Boime pointed
circle of hell, the realm of heretics.
out, the moon, that early morning wasnotin its crescent, but gibbous phase.
Vincent admired and studied many
Boime
further noted Vincent’s apparwhom adored and recreated images
entartistic
struggles with creating thisfrom The Divine Comedy, including:heavenlybody,attempting to dispel
Giotto, Delacroix, Hugo, Carlyle,thebeliefthat
itis somehow a sunCorot, Doré and Rodin. Beyond themoon
combination,
perhaps in eclipse.
scope of this article, there is a broadbase of circumstantial evidence suggesting Vincent not only studied Vincent added many other elements
Dante but painted numerous scenes including: the Protestant church’s
from the Commedia. Further, it was spired steeple barely piercing the roilwell within Vincent’s purview to paint ing firmament, dwarfed by the towimages inspired by literature, espe- ering, flaming Cypress, a symbol ofcially at the confluence of poetry and death in the Mediterranean. For allthese reasons, the painting cannot be
theology.
accepted as merely literal.
Among literal interpretations, art historian Albert Boime’s “social history” Regarding Biblical inspiration, theotheory is the most widely accepted. ries of allegorical depictions of theBased in no small amount of scientific twelfth chapter of the Book of Revresearch, he had three UCLA col- elations, Joseph’s visionary dreams orleagues at the Griffith Park Observa- a sublimated Christ in the Garden of
tory, wind-back time and recreate the Gethsemane have been deemed largely
pre-dawn cosmos outside of Vincent’s Ptolemaic. This is due to more recent
asylum window the morning he re- research that has better organizedVincent’s existing letters, more fully
ported painting Starry Night.
Eye Magazine Seventh Edition | 15

essences
Distinct from it and yet contained
within it.
The other circles by various degrees
Dispose the separate powers in themselves
To their own proper ends and propagation.
These organs of the universe proceed
As you now see, from grade to grade,obtaining
Their power from above and acting
downward.
Within that loving light on which I
lookedAnd which is always what it was
beforeBy the sight that gathered strength
in me
defined his personal Christology as tween them. I find the citron-yellow, As I gazed on, what was One in apGroningen, and explicated his Sym- sun-moon combination to be a bril- pearance
bolist art phase as merely seemingly liant metaphor for the conundrum Was altering for me as I was changsyncretic. Biblical allusions, however, that is God’s mystery; an enigma that ing.
are due credit for positing the paradox may have been necessitated by the
In the profound and shining-clearthat is Vincent’s sun-moon combina- Commedia’s final line:
Existencetion.
“My yearning aligned in the Holy Of the deep Light appeared to me
Art historian Hope Werness pointed Spirit as it moves the sun and all the three circles
Of one dimension and three different
out that American poet Whitman, other stars.”colors:like Vincent, linked the stars, deathand immortality. She found many One simply cannot paint a sky full ofcommonalities between the men, be- stars with the sun in it! Yet, Vincent God reflected upon Christ and contween Whitman’s poetry and Starry seems to have found an ingenious verselyNight. Werness did not attempt to way of doing so. Just as ingenious was Rainbow upon rainbow, the Holyover-interpret or define the elements his ability to give form to the Holy Spirit
within Starry Night, stating:Spirit with his celestial, pulsating, Aflame, breathed equally between
helix. It should be considered more them.
“Van Gogh created an image of divine an example of his haloing techniquelove and of the glory and immensity than swirling clouds or nebulae. The Like a wheel turning in perfect balof the cosmos. In the painting, man’s remaining ten stars, more like living, ance
temporal and terrestrial existence is breathing flowers? They may represent My yearning aligned in the Holy
Spiritcontrasted with the immutable and Dante’s ten heavenly spheres.
As it moves the sun and all the othereternal nature of cosmic time.”
In conclusion, a few excerpts from stars
I cannot disagree with this and will Dante, the pilgrim, on his journey to
Jared Baxter is an independent refully admit that I may be guilty of the Empyrean:
searcher living on the outskirts ofover-interpretation. But I am always
the Portland, Oregon sprawl in rural
reminded of Vincent’s admonitions So, with your intellect swept bare,
Washougal, Washington. Originallyto “look closely,” for there are won- I will inform you with light so aliveders and mysteries hidden within the That it will shimmer as you look on it. from Salt Lake City, Utah he was
educated in Manchester, Englandgreatest masterpieces.
and Davidson College, North CaroDeep in the heaven of divine peacelina. Over the last three years, his
Therefore, I believe Vincent’s cosmos There whirls a body in whose power
research has focused on Vincent van
was inspired by Dante’s description rests
Gogh, in particular, how Vincent’sof the Empyrean, his tenth and fi- The being of all things that it conenduring embrace of Christianity
nal sphere of heaven where God, the tains.
manifested itself in his later life andsun-moon combination, reflects upon
Christ, the morning star, and the Holy The heaven after it, with brilliant stars, artwork.
Spirit aflame, breathes equally be- Distributes this being to different
16 | Eye Magazine Seventh Edition

FEATURED INTERVIEW

Seeing the Last Supper in “Café Terrace at Night”
IAFOR President Dr. Joseph Haldane interviews Jared Baxter.

Eye Magazine Seventh Edition | 17

Joseph Haldane: How did you cometo specialize in Vincent van Gogh,one of the world’s most loved artists?
Jared Baxter: Yes, that is a very goodquestion, thank you for asking it. It iskind of a funny story. We had a posterof his in our kitchen and we did nothave much money to decorate thehome. My wife had purchased a number of his prints. In the kitchen she
had placed “Café Terrace at Night”
and one day I was sort of looking at
the painting, wondering what the manat the middle of this painting is doing. I got up for a closer look and it
appeared he was a server. Somethingclicked. He was a servant. I counted
the number of diners around him.
There were 12. Then I looked directly
behind him. There were window minones that formed a crucifix. I wasconvinced I was looking at his lastsupper. I promptly did nothing about
it for about 12 or 13 years
Joseph Haldane: When you saw thislast supper as you came to see it inthis Vincent van Gogh picture, youwere struck that this was a clear depiction of the last supper, for you it
was an epiphany, indeed epiphany is
the right word in the context of yourwider work which involves Christianity. At the time you looked at it

18 | Eye Magazine Seventh Edition

you thought that this is the last supper and then you thought Vincent
van Gogh, this is a huge figure, surely someone has written about this,surely someone has noticed it.
Jared Baxter: It happened so long ago,some 15 years ago. The Internet was
not quite were it is today. I sent out
a couple of emails and did not get
any replies and did not think about
it or worry about it anymore. Thenin 2011 the van Gogh museum announced that a portrait long thought
to be a self-portrait was the older
brother Theo. On the tails of that a
new book comes out, the biography
claiming that he did not commit suicide and was likely shot and covered
up his own murder. So it was then I
realized that discoveries were being
made about this artist and perhaps I
should dig into this last supper theory
than I had a little bit further. On doing so I found no other evidence ofno other person having this theory.
So I thought I would dig in deeper.
To me the elements of the last supper are pretty basic. You need to havea Christ, a serving figure, perhaps justa servant, you need to have 12 diners,
one of whom was a Judas, a halo is notnecessary but it is quite often in there.
That’s about the only elements that
one needs to create a last supper.

Joseph Haldane: This is somethingof a coup in the academic establishment. Finding out something that a)people are interested in and b) has
some validity and traction among
the establishment. How have you
found the van Gogh establishment
reacts to your interpretation?
Jared Baxter: Not very well. Luckily
there are about 40 years of scholarship that have shifted and they havediscovered that van Gogh was painting in the symbolist form. In particular Madonna and Child. This is pretty
well accepted even by Dutchmen
themselves. So it was during the same
period in Auvers when he painted theMadonna and Child, which he liked
framed with two of his sunflowers. He
wrote in a letter that they would be
like torches or candelabra in his triptych. He was doing the same type ofart in Auvers when he painted Café
Terrace at night.
Joseph Haldane: So in other words
you are arguing that this fits perfectly well with his oeuvre.
Jared Baxter: Exactly! If you were to
do a last supper that is what it would
look like.
Joseph Haldane: This is your third

IAFOR conference.
Jared Baxter: Yes it is.
Joseph Haldane: The first couple oftimes as a regular presenter and thistime we gave you a bigger platform
to discuss some of your ideas. Perhaps you could give us an idea what
your presentation is about.
Jared Baxter: Yes, it was a great honor
to have a platform this big. So digging
into “Café Terrace” gives you an aperture into his world that hasn’t existed
before. When you understand that
his work had this kind of religious,transfigured Christian work, a whole
new vista opens up and I began studying the other paintings, in particular
his “Starry Nights” and his most famous Starry Nights at the Museumof Modern Art in New York with its
gorgeous swirling skies, huge luminous moon and pulsating stars. There
are a lot of theories written about
this painting, unlike “Café Terrace”
in which very little has been written.
There are a number of theories, whichhave been bandied about for 80 something years and I thought they were alllacking a little bit. So I reached out toa gentleman who is retired now, Professor Emeritus at Carlton College in
Minnesota, and he had written a pa-

per that it may be a subjugated Christin the Garden of Guessmine and hegoes into a lot of detail why he believes
this. Because I though that “Café Terrace” was the last supper this would fit
perfectly because after the last supper
became Christ in the garden of Guessimeni and he asked me if there wasa third painting in starry night overthe Roam – how does that fit into theoverall scheme. It was at that pointthat I did not know so I went backinto my research and I just became
overwhelmed by one name that kept
on coming up again and again. It was
Dante Alorgerry. There were so manyreferences in so many places that I finally read Dante and I will tell you it
was life changing. The fact that VG
led me to Dante was more important
than anything else I have done. Anybody who has discovered Dante has
to come to terms with themself. There
are some pretty amazing things in his
poetry.
Joseph Haldane: So Van Gogh led
you to Dante and from this study of
Christianity has led you to a work,
which has been hugely studied, a giant of the art world to a giant of theliterary world. So where next?

search to a broader audience. That hasreally been my goal for the past three
years researching this. The great thing
about IAFOR is that it has given me abigger platform. Having presented mypaper at an academic conference in an
academic atmosphere where there arepeer reviews going on and there are
publishing opportunities. It has beena great opportunity for me to grow as
an academic. So now I would like tobring it to a broader audience. I havea book, which I am working on whichaims to intrigue people, maybe they
have heard of VG, maybe they know alittle about that he cut off his ear, shot
himself. When people go to his museums that are dazzled by his colors andamazed by the textures yet they feelsomething else, they feel somethinga little spiritual. They can’t put it intowords. I am hoping that maybe I canhelp them do that.
Jared Baxter, a Featured Speaker atthe 2015 Asian Conference on Artsand Humanities (ACAH 2015), wasinterviewed in Osaka, Japan, by IAFOR’s President Dr. Joseph Haldane.

Jared Baxter: Yeah that is a goodquestion. I would like to bring this re-

Eye Magazine Seventh Edition | 19

Bosozuku
Society, Politics and Terror

The Black Emperors were formed inTokyo in the 1960s and disbanded
officially in 1992. Originally based in
Kunitachi, Tokyo, the gang became
notorious for their exploits around thecity, which included violence and theftas well as more subversive links toorganised crime. Between 1975-1976,
film director Mitsuo Yanagimachi
made his debut feature, God Speed
You! Black Emperor, a documentary
which chronicles the lives of thegang members as they try to come toterms with the responsibility of beinga part of a gang with rigid hierarchal
structures. The film is a stark portrayal,
not just of a generational sub-culture,but of Japanese society itself. The
disenfranchised nature of the Black
Emperor’s membership sees teenagers
who have been misunderstoodby parents and abandoned by theauthorities. But what was it that drove
these kids to reject a normal life,and join one of the most hardenedbosozoku gangs in Japan?

1960s saw multiple issues affecting
Japanese society; political scandals,
publicdemonstrations
againstgovernment policy and the Vietnam
War. Add to this, a continually
growing
nationalist
movement,
internal fighting between politicalparties, students, and various pressuregroups which led to violent incidents
and multiple deaths. One cause of theviolence was the U.S. Japan Security
Treaty, which was initially signed in
1951 but, despite attempts to stop theratification, was revised and resigned
in 1960. Throughout the 1960s,
there were multiple demonstrations
against the treaty, these included theorganised student and political groups,
but for the first time ordinary citizens
had mobilised to vent their anger at,
what they saw as, a threat to peace
and the possibility of being involvedin a regional war with the U.S. This,
as far as the activists were concerned,
was a flagrant disregard of democratic
ideology.

Japan of the mid-1970s was a country
coming to terms with the internal
violence of the previous decades. The

Up until the early 70s, there was aconsiderable amount of sympathy
towards the activists, particularly the

20 | Eye Magazine Seventh Edition

student movement. Even government
treated them with a certain degreeof respect, deeming that they werefighting to create a better society.
However, as the decade wore on,violence escalated as groups became
fragmented. This was mainly due
to splintered ideologies within thevarious factions who vehemently
disagreed about courses of action.
Some members favoured peacefuldemonstrations, whereas
othersdemanded violent opposition. The
situation escalated with the advent of
the Vietnam War, and saw prominentgroups emerge, such as Peace for
Viet-Nam! and Citizens Union (Behei-ren) and the Committee of AntiWar Youth (Hansen Seinen linkai).
However, the separation of groups
brought with it various problems,such as the lack of a common goal
and, more importantly, an increasein confrontation and violence. This
resulted in a loss of public and politicalsupport, and due to the frustrationof many at the lack of direct action,some student organisations turned tomore extreme measures. This led to
the formation of communist militantterror groups such as the United Red
Army (Rengou Sekigun), and theJapan Red Army (Nihon Sekigun),both advocating violent protest andimminent revolution. The groups
went on to commit terror acts suchas the Lod airport massacre in 1972
and the Asama-Sansou hostage
incident in Karuizawa in 1972. Bothincidents resulted in the death ofboth police and terrorists, but mostimportantly, the incidents had pushed
public patience to the limit, and any
support that these group may have
had disappeared as the public became
weary of this constant violence. Alsoat this time, crucially, the Japaneseeconomy had begun to boom, and as
people began to experience a relatively
comfortable lifestyle, their thoughts
drifted from the complex political
ideologies of those who, just a few
years previously, had been in positionsof relative power.
In the 70s, Japan had the thirdlargest GDP, mainly due to economic
restructuring which saw a swing awayfrom the reliance on imports andan increase in exporting. However,in such cases, and as people become
more affluent, a division was createdbetween those that are part of thisupturn. This issue is arguably where
Yanagimachi’s documentary truly
focuses. God Speed! features a social
class produced from the ashes ofJapan’s troubles. These are people
who belong to neither the politicalintellectuals or protesters, nor the newprosperous Japan. Within the film,
we are witness to families who are ina kind of ‘social-limbo’. They exist ina fragmented and ignored underclass,and are stranded in a country where
being part of a group is an expectedsocial norm. The director examines
how these people grapple with life,
and the measures that they will go tobe part of something, no matter how
distasteful it may be.
The Black Emperors are far removed
from any stereotypical representationsof motorcycle gangs which are seen
in western cinema. There is no senseof the violent but sensitive Brando in
The Wild One (Benedek, 1953), or the
freedom and hedonism of Easy Rider(Hopper, 1969). In contrast, God
Speed You! Black Emperor is a soulless,claustrophobic commentary on therigid hierarchal social structures, andthe lengths that people will go tobelong.
Yanagimachi’s film is considered to be
the definitive Bosozoku documentary.
He chronicles the life of the Black
Emperors, following various members
around the streets of Tokyo. Filmedin a cinéma vérité style, the director
resists camera movement choosing
to just ‘point and shoot’ the action.
Gang members bicker, argue andfight about all manner of issues andat times, these confrontations become
extremely uncomfortable. However,despite the films stark portrayal ofsocial issues, there is a sense thatsomething is missing, and we are left
with a feeling that we are being denied
full-access to the inner workings of
1970s Bosozoku life. Of course, itis probably fair to assume that thedirector needed (or was ordered), to bediscreet. Links with organised crimefor example are non-existent, but it is
a commonly known fact that the gangs
were working under the auspices ofmore violent well organised criminalorganisations. There is also the notionthat once a member reaches a certain
age, he is then promoted from a jeans
and leather biker, to a sharp-suited‘mobster’. A recent conversation with awell-respected ex-Bosozoku member,
who rode in Hiroshima in the late70s, revealed that for many members
the promise was often better than the
reward, “it was about what could be… of course we made money doing
various jobs, but really it was all about
power … to make the leap from theone who executed orders, to one who
gave them”. Yanagimachi stops shy ofa full exposé, we are left wondering‘who is actually pulling the strings’?
One of many examples occurs when
two Black Emperor members go tobuy a new motorcycle. Armed withcash, we are not given any kind of clue
as to where this money came from.
What is most confusing however is thehierarchal system, which is employedby the gang. The Black Emperors
seem to rely on a well customized
and severely rigid ‘Feudal type’ social
hierarchy. The importance of ‘member
order’ is highlighted throughout
as bosses reprimand lower ordermembers (often with violence), andyounger members stray. For example
one junior steals money, a crime,

which is seen as deeply offensive tothe older members of the gang, andwe are present at his ‘trial’, where heis barraged with questions, advice
and physical abuse. Ultimately, one
wonders why anyone would want toforsake one constricting social order,
to be a part of another which, for themost part, inflicts more stringent ruleswith much more severe punishments.
God Speed You! is a documentary,which both fascinates and infuriates.
The plight of the kids – the lack ofhope, the need to belong – comes
across extremely clearly, as does theirposition (or lack of it), in society.
However, the actual inner workingsof the gang, where the money comes
from, who is funding the Black
Emperors, the crimes committed, iscompletely ignored and leaves you
wondering ‘what exactly is going on
here’? Eye will feature a full interview
with an ex-Bosozoku member in a
future issue, one which will hopefully‘fill in the gaps’ of Yanagimachi’s film.
Originally from the UK, DrPaul Spicer is a media lecturer at
Hiroshima Jogakuin University inJapan
Eye Magazine Seventh Edition | 21

Unacknowledged Matricide in T. S. Eliot’s

The Family Reunion

BY KEN CHANG
Commenting on his The Family Reunion in ‘Poetry and Drama,’ T.S.
Eliot admits two serious problems hehad not solved properly: the Furies
and the disruptive perspective of theplay.
Eliot complains that the Furies neversucceed in being either Greek goddesses or modern spooks and the audience cannot decide whether to see
22 | Eye Magazine Seventh Edition

this drama as a tragedy of the motheror the salvation of the son.
After Eliot revealed he had modeled
The Family Reunion on Aeschylus’s
The Oresteia, many critics focused on
drawing parallels and fussing about
the correspondent characters in eachplays. Although critic Grover Smith
provides explanation of Eumenides asghosts personifying Harrys’ animosity

toward both his mother and his wife,
he does not pursue further to theorize
the theme of matricide. Fellow critic
Martha C. Carpentier seems to delve
deeper into matricide, but she concluded that the resolved matricide as atransition from paganism to Christianity. In her dealing with matricide, Carpentier dispenses with Amy (mother)to see the play as the salvation ofHarry (son). Matricide has not beenBefore proceeding to investigate therelationship between Amy and Harry,
we need to ponder on what kind of
mother Amy is, she, who made Harrywander around the world for ten years
rather than stay at home with her.
Mary and Harry’s memory about thehollow tree may shed light on Amy’s
maternity:
MARY. The hollow tree in what wecalled the wilderness
HARRY. Down near the river. That
was the block house
From which we fought the Indians.
Arthur and John.
..................................
MARY. They never found the secret.
HARRY. Not then. But later, comingback from schoolfor the holidays, after the formal reception
And the family festivities, I made myescapeAs soon as I could, and slipped down
to the riverTo find the old hiding place. The wilderness was gone,
The tree had been felled, and a neatsummer-house
Had been erected, ‘to please the children.’It’s absurd that one’s only memory of
freedom
Should be a hollow tree in a wood by
the river. (52-53)
A hollow tree is the only retreat providing Mary and Harry with the respite from the family pressure, but
Amy tyrannically roots out the tree

and establishes another neat summerhouse as the manifestation of her allencompassing control. Forfeiting theirpleasant retreat, Amy inhibits themfrom freely accessing gratification.
Amy’s act may arouse their stored-up
anxiety of deprivation experienced
at the first time as weaning. From
Klein’s point of view, babies react tounpleasant stimuli and the frustrationof their pleasure with feelings of hatred and aggression. The babies’ sadistic impulse against mother’s bodynot only incurs the sense of guilt but
also the fear of a mother’s retribution.
In babies’ fantasies, the hurt motherturns into the persecutor who threatens to dismember and devour babies(Klein, 1988). At the apex of theirpersecutory anxiety, babies turn tothe father for protection. In The Family Reunion, the absence of the father
figure aggravates this anxiety of being
persecuted by the mother. Devoid of
the father’s protections may result inHarry’s wandering, and the absent father may also prompt his insistence on
probing into the mystery of his family. For Harry, returning to the Wishwood is being exposed once again to
the threat of being in the possession ofAmy, because Agatha cogently points
out that Amy is identified with thehouse. In welcoming Harry’s return,
Amy heartily proclaims that nothinghas been changed. Refusing to let goanything in her grip, Amy is the mother who desires to possess her children
and keep them dependent on her.
Faced with an intimidating threat,
Harry nevertheless chooses to returnhome. In my view I think he wants not
only to investigate the mystery of his
family but also to attempt reparation
with his mother. Melanie Klein considers that the experiences of suffering, depression and guilt, linked withthe greater love for the object, stir up
the urge to make this reparation. On
his returning home, Harry insists on
proclaiming that he pushed his wife
off the deck into the sea. About Harry’s wife, the only available information is from Amy’s description:
She never would have been one of thefamily,She never wished to be one of the family,
She only wanted to keep him to herself
To satisfy her vanity. That’s why she
dragged him
All over Europe and half round theworld
To expensive hotels and undesirable
society
Which she could choose herself.
Being an outsider of his family, Harry’s wife serves as a lifeline to help
him escape from his family. I think
Harry attempts to evade Amy’s control by marrying his wife, and the actof marrying empowers him to makehim think that he possesses the power to defy his mother. Unfortunately,
Harry’s marital life repeats the samemode as his childhood with Amy andhis wife turns out to be as demanding
as Amy. Tinged with a mother’s jealousy, Amy’s recount may be exaggerated but she acutely captures the essence of their relationship: his wife’s
desire to dominate and possess Harry.
This outcome is predictable in Klein’s
theoretical framework, because she
thinks there cannot establish the successful relationship without the reparation with the mother beforehand(Wieland, 2000). Harry’s claim tomurder his wife is actually his attempt
to show that he is powerful enough tofight against the demanding Amy. Yet
the thought of murdering his wife andhis mother arouses his sense of guilt,
so the appearance of the Furies is theembodiment of his inner feeling. On
the one hand he wants to empower
himself to live an independent life; on
the other hand, he knows this method
is an impasse.
Harry’s reparation with his mother
does not go smoothly. After his insistence on seeing the apparition of
the Furies, Amy decides to call up
the family doctor Warburton to diagnose Harry. During their meeting,
Warburton continually requests Harryto behave normally lest exacerbating
Amy’s illness. Harry’s indignation
erupts in his retort:
HARRY. What about my mother?
Everything has always been referred
Eye Magazine Seventh Edition | 23

Photograph on next page by Marco Jorger / Magdeleine

adequately explored in comparison
with patricide, and I want to employ
Melanie Klein’s (1988) object relations theory to probe into this theme
and accommodate the two problems
Eliot encountered. Klein’s theory offers a way to simultaneously take
Amy and Harry into account without
exclusion, and Eliot’s unsatisfactory
Furies can be seen as embodiment ofHarry’s mentality. By accommodating Eliot’s problems with Kleinian
approach, I hope this can bring newlight on Eliot’s The Family Reunionand matricide.

The hollow tree		 in what we called				the wilderness
24 | Eye Magazine Seventh Edition

Eye Magazine Seventh Edition | 25

Photograph by Fiona McKinlay / Flickr

back to mother.
When we were children, before wewent to school,
The rule of conduct was simply pleasing mother;
Misconduct was simply being unkind
to mother;
What was wrong was whatever madeher suffer,
And whatever made her happy was
what was virtuous—Though never very happy, I remember. That was why
We all felt like failures, before we had
begun.
.... .............................
For punishment made us feel lessguilty. Mother
Never punished us, but made us feelguilty.
Without the interference of the father
figure, Amy ascends to be the sole authority determining her children’s behavior. Warburton’s request reminds
Harry of his unpleasant childhood inwhich the center is around his mother. Providing us with the profoundanalysis of how Harry’s sense of guilt
initiates his defiance, Leo Hamalianshows the hostility and distrust circulating between Harry and Amy are actually resulting from a series of affective interactions. Harry’s resistanceto pleasing Amy induces his sense of
guilt, so he desired to be punished tolessen his guilt. He is indeed caught
in the dilemma that Amy’s chastisement reinforces his hostility but without it he is distressed by his culpability. Melanie Klein observes that at thetime the children feel dominated bythese hostile impulses and in his mind
destroys the mother’s goodness andlove, they feel not only persecuted byher, but also guilty and bereft of thegood object. Although Wishwood is
the locus of guilt for Harry (Hamalian, 1977), his return may show his

26 | Eye Magazine Seventh Edition

desire to retrieve the good object. Despite his intention to thwart Harry’s
urge to investigate the mystery of his
family, Warburton’s statement accidentally revives Harry’s dire memoryof family and strengthens his resolution to find out the truth.
WARBURTON. Harry, there’s nogood probing for misery.
There was enough once: but what festeredThen, has only left a cautery.
Leave it alone. You know that yourmotherAnd your father were never happy together:
They separated by mutual consent
And he went to live abroad. You were
only a boy
When he died. You would not remember.
HARRY. But now I do remember. Not
Arthur or John
They were too young. But now I remember. . .
In his effort to curb Harry from probing into the mystery, Warburton unwittingly helps Harry to express his
trauma. From Klein’s point of view,the children’s early feeling of notknowing has manifold connection.
Not yet fully developed intellectually,
the overwhelming questions children
encountered are only partly consciousby them. Even when they are conscious of the questions, they still cannot adequately express them in words.
Klein further construes that this feeling of not knowing accentuates the
Oedipus complex. Deprived of the father figure to identify with, Harry cannot resolve his Oedipus complex. The
sole presence of Amy enhances the
disruptive feeling caused by the disparity between the good and the badobject, because affects, which should
be directed to the father transfer toher. After getting closer to the core of
the mystery, Harry shows his craving
to know whether he shares likenesswith his father: “Tell me / Did you
know my father at about my presentage?” By knowing more about his father, Harry can create a clearer imageof the father. Thus, Harry can transfer
the affects, which should be directed
to his father back to this imaginarypaternal image. Without being tainted
by the affects, Harry can begin to see
Amy in the more justified way. Amyis actually a worn-out mother with
only her strong will to keep her goingon, and Harry’s reparation need to resort to the substitute maternal object.
During the tete-a-tete between Agathaand Harry, Agatha reveals to him thehidden family secret, which he searches for a long time. Agatha even admits
that she feels Harry in some way hers,
because without her help Amy mightprobably be killed by Harry’s father.
Agatha stands in as the good object tomake the reparation possible and she
also brings this dark family secret into
the full conscious. Harry’s destructive
impulse toward his wife is actually
the replication from his father, once
he knows the origin of this impulse
he is freed from its influence. The
Furies, which are the embodiment ofHarry’s inner feelings reappears as the
Eumenides, and their transformationshows that Harry is purged from his
destructive impulse and finishes his
reparation.
Professor Ken Chang teaches at
National Cheng-Chi University,
Taiwan.
A fully referenced version of this article can be received by contacting the
Editor at Eye Magazine.

Love, Suffering and Conflict
Some Lessons from Freud’s
Civilization and its Discontents
by Brian R. Clack

Eye Magazine Seventh Edition | 27

Photographs by Gerard Moonen / Stock Snap (previous) & Joshua Earle / Life of Pix

Freud’s great book Civilization
and Its Discontents is permeated by a profound pessimism
and an attention to the extent andunavoidable presence of suffering andconflict in human life. According to
Freud there are three principal sourcesof suffering. It results: (1) from ourown body, doomed to decay and dissolution; (2) from the external world(Freud is here thinking of diseases
and natural disasters); and (3) fromour relations with other people (weare threatened by their cruelty, violence and faithlessness). (As we willsee, our relations with others are actually of an ambivalent nature, since human beings have the capacity both tosupport us and to bring us low.) Reflection upon these multi-directionalsources is enough to make us realizethat it is impossible to avoid suffering,and this significantly undermines thevery possibility of achieving a stateof happiness: ‘Life, as we find it,’ hewrites, ‘is too hard for us; it brings us
too many pains, disappointments andimpossible tasks’ (Freud, 1961). Whatis it that human beings typically do in
the face of this unavoidable existential pain? Freud’s suggestion is thatpeople adopt one or more of a number of possible strategies that serve tosoften the worst blows of life. He refers to these as ‘palliative measures’, aterm, which highlights the essentiallyhopeless and incurable nature of thehuman condition: a palliative, after all,is something that relieves without curing, something that lessens the effectsof far-advanced, severe and curativeunresponsive illnesses.
Freud mentions four palliative measures utilized in the total arena of
human existence. Firstly, intoxicantsand drugs (of one variety or another)are employed either to numb oneself
to the troubles of existence (narcotics
and alcohol can be seen to serve thisfunction) or else to introduce a degree of stimulation into a life felt tobe colourless and dull (hallucinogens
and stimulants such as cocaine mightin this capacity be used). The second
strategy is the adoption of religion,
which (at least on the Freudian interpretation) palliates the most painful
aspects of life by, as it were, re-creating a picture of the world, so that its‘most unbearable features are eliminated and replaced by others that arein conformity with one’s own wishes’
28 | Eye Magazine Seventh Edition(Freud, 1961). The third palliative isthe enjoyment of art, the pleasuresof which can be felt to diminish the
problems of life – or at least to add
some kind of value to one’s world –though Freud feels that the intensityof aesthetic pleasure is really too mild
to make us forget our misery. It is the
fourth palliative measure that is to be
our principal focus here, and is the onethat is, for many, the most treasured ofall: romantic love. It is the nature, thepotential success, and the problematic
limitations of love’s palliative functionthat this paper addresses.
I want to say at the outset that I will
have nothing to say here about the
famous (indeed, the notorious) speculations made by psychoanalysis about
the determinants of love in infancy
and childhood. I address these matterselsewhere (in my book Love, Drugs,
Art, Religion: The Pains and Consolations of Existence (Clack, 2014)). My
concern, rather, is with a very specific matter: if love has (among otherthings) the promise of a palliative
quality, in what does that quality consist, and are there unpleasant reverberations of love (and of the quest forlove) that counterbalance, undermineand even negate its palliating elements? A palliative measure, even in
the medical field, need not be an unequivocally beneficent thing, since it
is possible that hazardous side-effects
flow from it (within palliative medicine one common concern regards thenegative effects of the use of opioids).
The strategies for coping outlined
by Freud have their good points andtheir bad ones too: the use of a drug
may bring intense pleasure (there’s nopoint denying that) and yet, as everyone knows, it can lead to physical debilitation and addiction; religion may
bring a great sense of comfort, and yet
if Freud (and others) are right, it does
this at the expense of critical thought
and the preservation of an accurate
representation of reality. Where thendoes love stand with regard to its benefits and costs?
We can start with the benefits of love.
Freud himself stresses how, in our
search for pleasurable experiences, it issexual love that ‘has given us our mostintense experience of an overwhelming sensation of pleasure’ (Freud,1961), and that the attainment of thiskind of love can therefore be seen to

add considerably to the sum total of aperson’s enjoyable experiences, thereby
counterbalancing the inevitable painsof life. One may find Freud’s thinking
here base and overly physical, but it
is hard to deny that the experience offalling in love – and indeed of remaining in love, standing in love – is one oflife’s most ecstatic feelings, producing
in the lover a sense of euphoria andperhaps even a reconciliation to theworld as a whole. This point needs
to be emphasized. When a person is
in love (or has the comfort of a loving relationship) the world seems tothem a better, friendlier place, a glow
is cast over the world, and its difficulties and trials seem somehow now
more manageable. Contrast that withthe experience of one who has nolove, or has lost love, in the throes ofsome dreadful break-up, say: for that
person the world is painted in darker
colours and obstacles may seem insurmountable. We may remind ourselvesof Wittgenstein’s famous observationin his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus:‘The world of the happy man is a different one from that of the unhappyman’ (Wittgenstein, 1961). It is one oflove’s most remarkable qualities that it
has this capacity to transform our perception of the world, transforming it– even with all its faults – into something wonderful. Small wonder, then,that people should ardently seek thattransformative power of love.
Love is held in such high esteem thatphilosophers and creative writers havearticulated the most dramatic images
to capture its beauty and intensity. The
classic case is that found in Plato’s
Symposium, in the speech of Aristophanes, in which love is described as‘the desire and pursuit of the whole’,
two incomplete and broken individuals finding ecstatic wholeness in theexperience of merging with each other.
Aristophanes’ account evidently has
the character of a myth, original human beings being of an eight-limbed
form, and when split in two by atroubled Zeus, each half searches forthat part which will restore them tocompleteness. The view that love constitutes a kind of merging is not thepreserve of poetry and myth alone,
however. Some important contemporary philosophers (notably Robert

Eye Magazine Seventh Edition | 29

ing to one’s own’ (Singer, 1987). It isclear to see how a loving relationship,modestly thus conceived, could function in an effective palliative function,softening some of life’s most keenly
felt sufferings. As Nozick has written,‘love places a floor under your wellbeing; it provides insurance in the faceaway. No, the problem with love is thatit not untypically contributes to suffering. Freud stresses this point when hetells us why it is that ‘wise men of every age’ have warned against the pursuit of love: ‘It is that we are never so
defenceless against suffering as when
we love, never so helplessly unhappy
as when we have lost our loved object
or its love’ (Freud, 1961). The palliative promise of love is compromised,that is, by the vulnerable position we
occupy once we have attached ourselves, and the fate of our happiness,to another person. This situation can
produce the most profound suffering.
The most extreme of the pains engendered by love would appear to be
the conspicuous disturbance of one’s
mental stability it brings, that featurethat has led so many thinkers to describe love as a rather specific kindof madness (in Stendhal’s words, as a‘disease of the soul’ (Stendhal, 2004)).
(One may also wish to add here Plato’s depiction as the lover as a person‘who from the very nature of things isof fate’s blows’ (Nozick, 1995). This bound to be out of his mind’ (Plato,‘floor’ would seem to be achieved both 1973).) Beyond that general state,by the presence of another who takes there are the many particular kinds
an active role in securing our comfort of pain associated with love. Some ofand by the creation of a secure little these – such as the specific vulnerabilworld – a home – functioning as a ity produced by opening ourselves up
shield against life’s troubles, ‘an island to another and placing our happinessof coupled safety in a lonely world’ at their mercy – we have already not(Appignanesi, 2011). The at-home- ed, but more can be added. There is,ness thus experienced contrasts mark- for example, the experience of jealousy
edly from the cold and sometimes in which a disagreeable emotion suchdangerous nature of the world outside as panic ensues from the understandand serves as a refuge from it. Beyond ing or suspicion that one’s love object
that, it may just be – as attachment has developed (or is in the process oftheorists such as John Bowlby (1971) developing) a romantic attachment
say – that human beings in the main to another. Then we have the whole
seek the closeness of another person, range of small anxieties so brilliantly
such closeness instilling both comfort dissected by Roland Barthes in A
and a greater happiness in pleasant Lover’s Discourse: the rising sense ofexperiences. Hume’s thoughts are here alarm caused by waiting longer thanpertinent. Noting that the mind is in- expected for a phone call or at a rensufficient for its own entertainment, dezvous, for example, or the obsesand that the pleasure of the company sive attention to pauses and phrasesof an intimate causes the heart to be in the object’s speech, the lover tryelevated, he saw how vital the need ing to discern whether these indicate
for a companion is, in days both hap- a diminution of interest. Other relapy and sad: ‘Every pleasure languishes tionships – notably friendships – dowhen enjoy’d a-part from company, not cause such alarm. On the otherand every pain becomes more cruel end of a scale having frenetic anxiety
and intolerable’ (Hume, 1888).
and dreariness as its polarities, one
encounters the peculiar pains of doBefore one gets too carried away, mesticity, that setting in which the
however, it needs to be noted that love electrified interaction of two physicalis not an unequivocally joyful experi- beings must, as Balzac noted, ‘incesence, nor is its relation to suffering un- santly contend with a monster whichambiguously that of taking our pains devours everything, that is, familiar-

The most extreme of the pains engendered
by love would appear to be the conspicuous disturbance of one’s mental stability it
brings, that feature that has led so many
thinkers to describe love as a rather specifickind of madness (in Stendhal’s words, as a‘disease of the soul’). (One may also wish to
add here Plato’s depiction as the lover as aperson ‘who from the very nature of things
is bound to be out of his mind’.)the merging accounts is that provided
by the psychoanalyst Erich Frommin his book The Art of Loving. Frommargues that love is best regarded as‘the answer to the problem of humanexistence’ (Fromm, 2006), the thingthat uniquely overcomes the pain of
our separateness from others, meetingthe ‘deepest need of man … to leave
the prison of his aloneness’ (Fromm,
2006). For Fromm, love heals us: thefull answer to the unbearable sufferingof a separate, disunited existence liesin ‘the achievement of interpersonal
union, of fusion with another person,
in love’ (Fromm, 2006).
Accounts of the role of love in the
mitigation of suffering need not beso dramatic as to stress fusion, ofcourse. One might choose to speak
more prosaically of a joining of interests (see Singer, 1987) and this, morethan the ideal of merging, actuallyseems to present the truth of love as
best experienced: two distinct persons,retaining their identities, and yet joining intimately together in a shared experience of life, each one supporting
the other through struggles, false steps
and illness, each one celebrating theother’s joys and triumphs, each taking pleasure in the other’s mental andphysical being, and (as Irving Singer
puts it) ‘in general attend[ing] to thebeing of a person reciprocally attend30 | Eye Magazine Seventh Edition

Photograph by aundre larrow / Snapwire Snaps

Nozick (1995) and Robert Solomon(2006)) have also advanced the viewthat love is a form of shared identity
in which two individuals merge together into one united being. (I suppose this has a Biblical warrant: And
they two shall be one flesh (Mark 10:8).)
For our purposes, the most relevant of

ity’ (Balzac, 2005). Finally, hoveringin the background of even the mostsuccessful of relationships, there is thegrueling recognition that this love will
one day come to an end, when death
separates two people who longed so
fervently never to part. ‘Remember
all along’, Joseph Brodsky hauntingly
tells us, ‘that there is no embrace inthis world that won’t finally unclasp’(Brodsky, 1995).
The problems of love ultimately comedown to the ambivalent nature of ourrelations with other people, something
touched upon at the very beginning of
this paper. It was the great pessimistic philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer
who best caught the character of thisambivalence in his parable of the porcupines:‘One winter’s day, a number of porcupines huddled together quite closely

in order through their mutual warmth
to prevent themselves from being
frozen. But they soon felt the effectof their quills on one another, which
made them again move apart. Now
when the need for warmth once morebrought them together, the drawbackof the quills was repeated so that they
were tossed between two evils [i.e.
the cold of loneliness and the pain of
togetherness]’ (Schopenhauer, 1974,
volume 2).
This seems to me to sum up quite
perfectly the problem of human relationships. We seek support from otherpeople, and hope to receive from them
comfort when we encounter pain in
our lives. Very often we receive that
support, that comfort, that love. And
yet people – particularly those people
in whom we have invested love – havewithin their power the most dreadfulability to hurt us. And they frequent-

ly do. How many people are broken
up by love? How many novels, poems, and songs are dedicated to thattheme? As Freud rightly points out,
if our desire is to escape from pain, orat the very least to palliate it, then the
pursuit of love may not be the right
option: it is, after all, a high risk strategy. We might do better to immerse
ourselves in the more reliable, less volatile, joys of friendship, or of art. As
Napoleon memorably observed, ‘In
love, the only victory is escape’.
Dr. Brian Clack is an Associate Professor at the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of San Diego.
His research has focused predominantly on issues in the philosophy of
religion. He is the author of Love,
Drugs, Art, Religion: The Pains andConsolations of Existence (Ashgate,2014).
Eye Magazine Seventh Edition | 31

Japanese Subs for Australia

The Abbott Liberal-National Party(LNP) Coalition government of Australia is currently in search of a replacement for the controversial Collinsclass conventional submarine fleet of
the Royal Australian Navy (RAN).
Coincidentally, defence ties between
Australia and Japan have become evercloser in recent times, particularly under the respective conservative governments of Prime Ministers Tony
Abbott and Shinzo Abe. Following
the signing of the Agreement between
the Government of Australia and theGovernment of Japan Concerning theTransfer of Defence Equipment andTechnology in July 2014, prospects are
increasing that Japanese Soryu-classsubmarines may be exported to Australia in future.
Buying submarines from Japan would
32 | Eye Magazine Seventh Edition

be the most expensive single militaryprocurement in Australian history,
and would break an election promiseby the LNP to continue the manufacture of submarines in Australia.
The issue has thus already generated
considerable political conserversy. If it
goes ahead, this decision will have important implications for the domestic
politics of both Australia and Japan,
and for the strategic geopolitics of theregion. Before exploring these ramifications further, the historical background of the procurement of submarines for the RAN will be examined.
History of the RAN Submarine
Fleet
Following the foundation of the RAN
in 1911, two ‘E-class’ submarines,
HMAS AE1 and AE2, were added
to the complement of the new Brit-ish-supplied Australian fleet in 1914,
just before the breakout of the FirstWorld War. The AE1 was lost on
September 14th 1914 with all hands,
when she disappeared during a patrol
off the Duke of York Islands, during
the campaign to take German New
Guinea (Foster, 1977: 19-20).
The AE2 participated in the beginning of the Gallipoli campaign in
April 1915, managing to penetrate
the Dardenelles and disrupt Turkish shipping. However, she was soon
damaged by Turkish defences, andwas scuttled by her crew, who were
captured. These two actions therefore
brought an early end to Australia’s
fledging wartime submarine fleet; theAE1 and AE2 were the only vessels
lost in action by the RAN during theGreat War (AWM, 2014). To replace

Developments in Australian
Defence Procurement/Japanese
Defence Export Policy
BY CRAIG MARK

the lost submarine fleet, Britain supplied five ‘J-class’ boats postwar, deployed between 1919 and 1924, before they were scrapped to save costs(RAN, 2013).
Australia found itself under threat
from the submarines of the Imperial
Japanese Navy (IJN), most famously
an attack by midget submarines on
Sydney Habour (and at Newcastle) in
May-June 1942 (Ham, 2010: 289). 23
allied ships were sunk in Australianwaters in 1942-43 due to the IJN’s
anti-shipping campaign. The RAN
did not operate any submarines during the Second World War. However,the United States (US) Navy based alarge number of boats at Australianports, particularly Brisbane and Fremantle, as part of its highly successful
campaign to blockade Japan (Ryan,

2013: 70-71).
During the Cold War, with Australia
involved at the height of the Vietnam
War, the Australian government decided to reintroduce the Submarine
Service of the RAN, again supplied
by Britain. Six ‘O-class’ boats wereordered, and eventually deployed between 1967 and 2000 ( Johnman &Murphy, 2003:166, 174-176). The
Oberon-class submarines were fittedwith very quiet diesel-electric engines, and were later fitted with USsupplied weapons systems, including
the Harpoon anti-ship missile. As
well as their main deterrence role ofpotentially interdicting enemy shipping and maintaining naval superiority in the approaches to Australia, theO-class boats conducted surveillance
and intelligence gathering patrols in

East Asian and Southeast Asian waters (SIA, 2014).
The Collins Class Saga
The procurement project to replace
the O-class boats followed the defence policy concept of improving
defence self-reliance, developed underthe Hawke Labor government. This
had the aim of reducing Australia’s
reliance on foreign-supplied militaryequipment and weapons systems,
while strengthening the base of thedomestic manufacturing industry.
Maintaining such an industry thus
brought political as well as strategicand economic advantages, allowing
governments to publicise their rolein promoting Australian manufacturing jobs. In pursuit of this goal as theCold War wound down, in 1987 theAustralian Submarine Corporation
Eye Magazine Seventh Edition | 33

(ASC) was established in Adelaide,
South Australia (SA), as a government-owned corporation (Fruhling,
2014: 541).
The design selected to replace the OClass was termed the Collins Class,designed by Swedish company Kockums, to be consructed by the ASC.
The Collins was the second-largest
conventional boat at the time, witha crew complement of 58, a range of
11,500 nautical miles, and an endurance of 70 days. Construction of the
Collins began in 1990, with the firstboat delivered in 1996 (under the
Howard Coalition government). The
final sixth boat was delivered in 2003,
at a final cost of $5.071 billion, making it one of the most expensive Australian defence procurement projects.
The Collins class is due to continue
service until 2025, necessitating thecurrent search for its replacement(Davies, 2007: 65,67).
However, the Collins class projectsoon became plagued with technicalfaults, which led to delivery delays, anddamaged the reputation of the ASC.
There were faults in the US-designed
Rockwell combat system software, defects in the hull’s welding, persistentengine failures, and most worrying fora submarine, a high noise signature.
Repairing these faults saw each boat
being delivered well behind schedule,
ranging between 18 and 41 months
late. Crewing the boats has also beena constant problem, with a shortageof trained crews, reflecting the higher
standards required and more difficult
conditions endured in the Submarine
Service, long considered an elite armof the RAN. The lack of available personnel meant that only three boats outof six could be fully manned at a time,with only two boats fully operational
at a time on average. Nevertheless,once its problems were finally rectified, the Collins proved to be a highly
capable diesel-electric submarine, enabling the RAN to have a long distance patrol capability of up to at least
a month on station (Harrap, 2012).
In 2009, the Rudd Labor government
34 | Eye Magazine Seventh Edition

issued its Defence White Paper, outlining plans to acquire twelve submarines to replace the Collins (Crane,
2011:70). This highly ambitious andexpensive goal of doubling the RAN’s
submarine fleet was confirmed in thefollow-up 2013 Defence White Paper.
While not yet embarking on a tender
process to select a replacement design,
the Labor Party committed to continuing domestic contruction of thereplacement submarines by the ASC(MfoD, 2013).
Australia-Japan Security Cooperation
The election of the Abbott LNP Coalition government in 2013 has seena major policy shift in the replacement process for the Collins, with theprospect of submarines being bought
directly from Japan emerging as themost likely option to be pursued. Thispotential development has emerged
as part of the growing trend of closer
defence and security cooperation between Japan and Australia in recent
times, a generally bipartisan policy
which has been boosted even further
by the Abbott government.
Following the beginning of cooperation between Australia and Japan in
United Nations Peacekeeping Operations in the 1990s, the Trilateral Strategic Dialogue (TSD) talks between
Japan, Australia, and their mutual
core ally the US were first held at thesenior official level in 2002. This was
upgraded to ministerial level TSD
meetings in 2006, and leaders’ meetings from 2009. The Japan-Australia
Joint Declaration on Security Cooperation ( JDSC) was then signed
in March 2007, followed by regular‘2+2’ talks between defence and foreign ministers (Walton, 2012: 22-23).
The Acquisition and Cross-Servicing
Agreement (ACSA) was signed between Australia and Japan in May
2010, further increasing the level ofdefence and security cooperation,
which by this stage included regular
joint military exchanges and exercises,
particularly in maritime operations(Tow, 2012 : 152). The Information
Security Agreement (ISA) followedin May 2012, upgrading intelligencesharing and cooperation between thetwo countries (Anno, 2012: 53-54).
Diplomatic, trade and security ties
between Australia and Japan thendeepened ever further, following theelection of conservative governments
in both countries: Shinzo Abe returned as Prime Mininster in December 2012, leading the LDP, and Tony
Abbott in Australia from September
2013. Abbott’s visit to Japan in April
2014 finally saw the conclusion of aFree Trade Agreement (FTA), the Japan-Australia Economic Partnership
Agreement (EPA), which saw a partial reduction in a range of tariffs. The
EPA was complemented by a concurrent Defence Technology Sharing
Treaty, confirmed during Abe’s reciprocal visit to Australia in July 2014
(DFAT, 2014).
Soryus For Australia?
The way was therefore opened up topotentially allow Australia to purchase Japanese military equipment,
including Japan’s latest model submarine, the Soryu class. The Soryu(Blue Dragon) is considered one of
the most advanced conventional boats
in the world, with five in service with
the Japanese Maritime Self-Defense
Force (MSDF) since 2009, and five
more planned (out of a total submarine fleet of 18 boats). It has a complement of 65, with its range and endurance still classified, but estimated to begreater than that of the Collins. The
lithium-ion battery-driven propulsion
system is of particularly exceptional
pioneering quailty, allowing a greater operational range than standareddiesel-electric propulsion. The Soryu
is jointly manufactured by Mistubishi
Heavy Industries and Kawakasi Shipbuilding Corporation in Kobe (Ryan,
2012: 27-28).
Should the Coalition government
proceed with the purchase of the
Soryu, this would break a 2013 election campaign promise, made by then
Defence spokesperson Senator David Johnston, that submarines would
continue to be constructed in Austra-lia. Upon election, the Abbott LNP
government stated that the decisionon which model to replace the Collins could take up to 18 months, andhas so far yet to be confirmed (BarnsJenkins, 2014).
As well as the Soryu, potential tenders
for local construction by the ASC
could possibly come for European
models, from Sweden, France, Germany or Spain. The ‘nuclear option’, ofpurchasing American nuclear-powered submarines is not really viable,
despite the strategic advantages this
could bring; apart from the expense ofpurchase, maintenance would have to
be done in the US, given the lack offacilities to service nuclear reactors inAustralia. Overshadowing these obstacles, having nuclear submarines in
the RAN’s fleet would be too politically controversial (Radford, 2013).
The purchase of Japanese submarines
would probably be the cheapest option, estimated at around $20 billion,
instead of potentially up to $36 billion, if an overseas tender is locallyconstructed; even so, it would still be
the most expensive single militarypurchase in Australian history. Japan
therefore remains the mostly likely favoured option for the Abbott govern-ment, for economic, as well as geostrategic and alliance reasons (Herman,2014).
Any decision to purchase submarines
directly from Japan, instead of producing them locally, would confirm
the trend of the overall decline inAustralian manufacturing, with subsequent job losses; an inevitable development without ongoing government
subsidies. The ASC would then haveto shift to maintenance, and surface
warship construction, to remain viable. The question remains whether
the domestic shipbuilding industryof Australia is ultimately economically unviable in the long-term, as has
proved the case with the (multinational-owned) car industry (Cowan,2014).
Domestic Australian Political Implications
An inquiry into the prospective Japanese submarine purchase was held by
the Australian Senate in OctoberNovember 2014, hearing statementsfrom various interested parties. The
ASC claimed that overseas sourcing of submarines would be an overall economic loss to Australia’s GDP
in the long term, eventually undermining any short-terms savings thatmight otherwise be made. The majority report, made by non-Government
Senators, ultimately recommeded thatsubmarine construction remain in
Australia, after a competitive tender
process. The dissident minority report,by government Senators, called tokeep the Soryu option open (Senate,2014: 34-35, 81-84).
The Japanese option has thus always
been strongly resisted by the Federal
Opposition’s Australian Labor Party(ALP), and its traditional support
base in the trade union movement,
particularly the Australian Manufacturing Workers’ Union (AMWU),
whose members are most numerously
employed by the ASC. Reflecting thedivisions this issue has opened up
within the Coalition, Liberal MPs
based in South Australia have also
been pressing for the Australian option to be pursued, citing the benefits
that infrastructure investment will
deliver in the long-term, offsetting
higher initial construction costs compared to a direct overseas purchase.
Also, local servicing would provide
greater strategic security, reducing
dependence on offshore supply andmaintenance (Siegel, 2014).
For his part, Prime Minister Abbott

Eye Magazine Seventh Edition | 35

has stated that he wants the ‘very best’submarines, ‘at the best possible price’,where the country of origin should
not have priority over quality and cost;indicating favouritism towards Japan.
This favourable direction was given
further weight during a visit to Japan by then Defence Minister Senator David Johnston in October 2014,
where a formal request was made forJapan to cooperate with Australia on a
range of military techonology, potentially including submarines. Former
Japanese Defense Minister Akinori
Eto reciprocated this request, claimingthat Japan wished to proceed further
in deepening its overall defence andsecurity cooperation with Australia, as
it was a ‘special relationship’, needing‘special support’ (Carney, 2014).
Following this trip, Johnston said
there was no progress on overseas tenders for locally produced submarines,
indicating that the release of the next
Defence White Paper due in 2015
would confirming the decision for the
Collins’ replacement. However, Johnston’s position was severely weakened
after making a gaffe during a Senate
Question Time, when he dclared hewould not trust the ASC ‘to build acanoe’! (Norman, 2014)

this statement, claiming it was merelya ‘rhetorical flourish’, it was a likely
contributing factor towards a defeat
for the Coalition in a by-election for
the South Australian parliament soonafter; this result secured majority State
government for the ALP. Johnston
was further underminded by admissions he had not attended meetings of
the National Security Committee, ashe ‘had nothing to offer’. Details werealso leaked of expensive dining bills
incurred by his office at taxpayers’ expense, while the Abbott government
was pledging deep cuts to the Federal
budget, including subinflationary increases to the real wage levels of Australian Defence Force personnel (a decision later overturned, under pressure
from the public and minority party
Senators) (Taylor, 2014). Pressure on
the Abbott government has particularly come from South Australian Independent Senator Nick Xenophon,
who is demanding an open tender toensure local production of European
models. Xenophon has effectively accused Abbott of already making a deal
with Abe, which would be a violationof the open tender process, as well as
breaking the 2013 election promise
guaranteeing local production of submarines (Kerin, 2014).

While Johnston quickly apologised forTreasurer Joe Hockey has declared an

36 | Eye Magazine Seventh Edition

open tender will not happen, because
there is ‘no time’; a remarkable statement, given how tenders are usuallysuch a long, drawn-out and carefullyconsidered process. Hockey’s claim
for the necessity of a truncated tender decision has been contradicted by
the AMWU, the Australian Industry
Group (the major manufacturing industy lobby group), and other defence
industry commentators. In order tobuttress their case for local production, they have raised doubts that thelarger Soryu is not the most suitablefor Australian conditions, with thesmaller European boats being more
preferable for the continuing mission of the RAN’s Submarine Service;
maintaining an interdiction capacity
in the approaches to Australia’s sea
lanes, and covert reconnaisance andintelligence gathering in Southeast
Asian waters. European manufacturers have also maintained their tenders
would be price competitive with theJapanese (APDR, 2014).
Being consistently behind in opinion
polls, particularly after the poorly-received and unpopular Federal budget,in an attempt at a political circuitbreaker, Abbott carried out his first
Cabinet reshuffle on December 21,
2014. Johnston was unsurprisingly
dumped, given his poor handling of

the submarine issue, and his lacklustre performance overall, ending his
ministerial career. Former Social Security Minister Kevin Andrews now
holds the Defence portfolio; considered a hard-right social conservative,
Andrews has already made an embarrassing start, with revelations ofpast admissions he had ‘no interest’in defence affairs (Aston, 2014). The
appointment of Andrews as Defence
Minister is not likely to change thepreference for Japan to supply submarines, as the process is generally considered as being driven by the Prime
Minister’s Office, with Prime Minister Abbott having a close interest incontinuing to deepen Australia’s security relationship with Japan, aided
by his personal friendship with Prime
Minister Abe (Woodley, 2014).
The Labor Opposition is likely tocontinue to try to block any decision
to purchase the Soryus, by legislativemeans if possible. Labor has so far
used the Senate’s processes to attempt
to force the government to accept an
open tender. If the ALP and the minor parties and Independents are able
to legislate for a tender in the Senate,
Abbott might then be forced to resubmit legislation in the Lower House ofRepresentatives, in order to continue
with a truncated tender process which
could quickly allow the Soryu purchase to go ahead. Should the ALP
return to government following national elections due in 2016, Labor
would also likely break any contracted
agreement the Abbott LNP government makes with Japan. This politicaluncertainty could be enough to put
the Soryu purchase in doubt (NewsLtd, 2014).
Political Implications for Japan andthe Region
The potential sale of Soryus to Australia also has great signficance forJapanese politics and foreign policy.
Securing the sale would be the first
postwar export of a major combat
weapons system by Japan, confirming its shift towards a more active rolein international security affairs. The
long-held ‘Three Principles’ restric-

tions on military exports, self-imposeddue to the pacifist Article 9 clause of
the constitution, started to ease under
the previous Democratic Party of Japan government; these have further
loosened under Abe’s LDP government. Sales of defence equipment,
particuarly technology transfers suchas advanced sensors and communication components, have already been
made to the US and UK (BBC, 2014).
After decades of supplying the SDF
as their sole customer, Japanese weapons manufacturers have been longing
to expand their share of the global
arms market (McNeill, 2014).
Easing defence exports is merely partof Shinzo Abe’s overall direction towards allowing more active deployment of the SDF. His avowed policyof reinterpreting the constitution toallow Japan to participate in collective
self-defence with allied countries has
already been approved by Cabinet, andhas been claimed as part of the LDP’sruling mandate, re-confirmed by winning the early snap election recently
held on December 14, 2014. However,public opinion in Japan remains dubious about proceeding down such apath of an expanded overseas role for
the SDF, and also about any related
increase in military exports (Mainichi,2014).
This more assertive Japanese defence
and foreign policy is firmly supported
by Japan’s primary ally (and mutual allyof Australia) the US, which is encouraging the sale of Soryus to Australia.
Closer security ties between Australia
and Japan complements the American
goal of a ‘pivot’ of the majority of its
armed forces being deployed to theAsia-Pacific region, to ensure ongoing regional hegemony. Such cooperation has already been seen in development and servicing agreements
for the multi-national F-35 Joint
Strike Fighter ( JSF) project (despite
concerns over the JSF’s cost overruns
and capability), confirmed in the latest leaders’ meeting of the TSD, on
the sidelines of the last G20 Leaders’Summit in Brisbane (Nikkei, 2014).
There are also concerns that Japan’s

potential entry into the international
market for advanced weapons systems
will only fuel the increasing conventional arms race under way in the
Asia-Pacific region (Bateman, 2011:73-77). From the perspective of Japan,
the US, security partners including
Australia, and ASEAN states such as
the Philippines, Singapore and Vietnam, an expanding SDF and Japanese
defence export industry would contribute to countering the rapid military buildup of China’s People’s Liberation Army, whose Naval branch
includes a 71-strong submarine fleet.
North Korea has also launched its firstballistic missile submarine, raisingfears about ecalating proliferation of
its nuclear weapons. (Business Spectator, 2014).
Conclusions
The potential export of Japanese submarines to Australia therefore has
extremely important implications,for Australian and Japanese domestic
politics, as well as for strategic stability in the Asia-Pacific region as awhole. If it goes ahead, the sale of Soryus to Australia would be first major
weapons systems export from Japan
since the Second World War. Such a
move is defended by allies of Japan,
particularly the US and Australia, as
improving general security cooperation and the interoperable capabilitiesof their armed forces, which will deliver greater regional security overall.
However, this view discounts thepotential for an escalating arms race
ultimately undermining the peaceand stability of the Asia-Pacific. It
also raises important questions overthe political integrity of the Abe and
Abbott governments, if they proceedwith a defence procurement policy
which clearly violates the wishes of
their respective electorates, and undermines the general public interest.
Craig Mark, is an Associate Professor at Kwansei Gakuin University,
Japan. Dr Mark is the Edior of the
IAFOR Journal on Politics and law
amd is a member of the IAFOR Advisory Board.
Eye Magazine Seventh Edition | 37

The 10000 Hour Rule and What it
Means for Language Teaching
By Frances ShiobaraH

ow many times have parentsof bilingual children been
told how lucky they are?
“Children just pick it up, don’t they?”

Photograph by SImon / Flickr

How is this picking up taking place –through osmosis?
Although it must seem that there issomething in the genes, in fact, there
is no magic formula, it’s just down topractice – hours and hours of practice. There is no special skill needed to
become an expert at a language. According to Noam Chomsky (1965) weare predisposed to learn language, in
his Innateness Hypothesis he statesthat even children with an IQ of 50
can acquire a language. If human beings grow up under normal conditions(not conditions of extreme deprivation), then they will always develop alanguage (Chomsky, 1965). Although
this appears to be true for the first
language, it is certainly not true that38 | Eye Magazine Seventh Edition

all human beings acquire a second
language. The problem is how second language teachers can best recreate the conditions under which all
children acquire their first language.
Erikson, Prietula, & Cokely (2007)
studied experts across many fields,
they found that whatever the fieldof expertise one thing was identical;
all of the experts had put in about
ten years of “deliberate” practice. Ten
years was translated into 10,000 hours
of deliberate practice. This was later
popularized by Gladwell in his book
Outliers (2008). And more recently
Syed (2011) applied this idea to sport.
In this paper I would like to examine
what this means for learning a second
language. What is meaningful practice? How many hours of meaningfulpractice do you need to become fluent in a second language? With thisknowledge instructors and learners
can gain insight into the best way to
become an expert in a second lan-

guage.
What is an Expert in a Second Language?
Native-like proficiency in a second
language might be construed to be an
expert, but this is an unrealistic goal,
and very few language learners need
to attain this level of language learning. Jackson and Kaplan (1999) refer
to “language proficiency” as the ability
to get things done in a foreign language. Other researchers have defined
proficiency as “functional bilingualism” (Archibald et al, 2006 cited in
Eaton, 2012). For the majority ofJapanese students of English, the ability to get things done in a foreign language is a good goal.
How Many Hours Do You Need to
Learn a Second Language?
Malcolm Gladwell (2008) stated in
his book Outliers that 10,000 hours
are needed to become a specialist at

anything. Gladwell was actually using the 10,000 hour rule to show how
some people succeed in becoming extraordinary, what he calls an outlier.
Gladwell hypothesizes that the huge
number of hours of practice that Bill
Gates put in as a child was what madehim a genius computer programmer.
In his book Bounce (2011) Matthew
Syed says that 10,000 hours of meaningful practice are needed to become
an expert athlete. It is not realistic tosay that everyone needs 10,000 hours
to become an expert language learner,
it is also clear that in language learning students have different goals andgaining native speaker like second
language ability is not realistic formost learners.
There are many variables, such as distance from the native language, age
and language aptitude. In terms offoreign language learning, Jackson
and Kaplan’s (1999) definition of proficiency as “The ability to get thingsdone” is a good one, in this way it ispossible that our students do not need
10,000 hours of practice to become
experts. Jackson and Kaplan (1999)
estimated that with native English
language speakers in The Foreign Service Institute it could take as little as
600 hours to become proficient in languages closely cognate with English,
such as French and German, but exceptionally difficult languages such as
Japanese and Chinese could take 2200
hours. It should be emphasized thatthe students in The Foreign Service
Institute are all highly motivated withprior knowledge of more than one
language ( Jackson & Kaplan, 1999). I
would like to show that in language
learning anyone who practices enoughwill become proficient. Archibald anda team of researchers at the University of Calgary found that “Learninga second language for 95 hours per
year for six years will not lead to functional bilingualism and fluency in thesecond language. Expectations must
be realistic.” (Archibald et al., 2007
cited in Eaton, 2011) This is roughly
equivalent to Japanese Junior and Senior High School students. Although
it is probable that Japanese learnersof English do not need as much as
10,000 hours, they need more than2000 and a lot more than the 720
hours that they receive in Junior andSenior High School at present, even if
we assume that the time spent in theclassroom is meaningful input.
It is very difficult to estimate howmuch language practice a child getsin their native language, and this willvary greatly depending on their environment and upbringing. For ease of
calculation, let’s say that a baby spends
about ten hours a day listening to alanguage, and trying to produce it. Ina year they would spend 3650 hours
practicing a language. To get to 10,000
hours of practice would take about 3
years. The majority of children by theage of three are communicating quite
fluently with caregivers and friends
in their first language. They have alsointernalized grammatical structures
and are creating original language,
not just repeating what their caregivers have said. What is more, they accomplished all this whilst learning aplethora of motor skills from walking
to catching a ball.
When talking about learning Chinese, Ollie Linge (2012) states that
we cannot say that someone has beenlearning a language for six years. The
number of years is irrelevant, we mustmeasure the number of hours of language study. If you are going to alanguage class once a week, you can
expect it to take about two hundredyears to get 10,000 hours of practice.
It is not only hours, but also frequencyof study. People remember things better the following day than one week
later, so that intensive study is better
than once a week. When people bemoan the fact that they are studying
a foreign language, but they are notmaking much headway, the answer issimple math, they are getting there,
just very slowly.
What is Meaningful Practice?
The second argument that Syed(2011) makes is that it is not just any
practice, but ‘meaningful practice’,that makes the difference. Meaning-

ful practice is when you are constantly
pushing yourself to improve. Syed(2011) uses the example of Olympic
athletes training, constantly trying to
run faster or hit the ball harder. On
the other hand he uses the example ofdriving a car as non-meaningful practice. Many people have spent 10,000
hours driving a car, but at some point
they stop getting any better, this is because although they are driving, it is
not meaningful practice, in that they
are not trying to get any better. With
young children in their first language‘meaningful practice’ is made meaningful by the fact that children reallywant to understand and to communicate their desires. Very quickly this interaction becomes more complex withthe children negotiating with theircaregivers to get what they want. Theinteraction is meaningful and endlessly varied. Children will start a
sentence not really knowing how they
will finish it. In struggling to do better we improve in everything especially language. In a classroom environment, the activities are carefully
controlled so that students can practice structures that they have alreadylearned, but what they really need is
to be pushed to produce more thanthey believe possible. Jackson and Kaplan (1999) found that there is no one
right way to teach (or learn) languages, nor is there a single right syllabus.
Spolsky (1989) states that different
ways of teaching and activities workwith different groups of students andstudents’ needs change over time. Thus
the teaching methodology is probably
not the deciding factor in whether or
not students become fluent in a foreign language.
In 2013 Japan was ranked 22nd outof 54 countries on English proficiency, (EF EPI, 2012) this is one of
the lowest rankings among industrialized countries and very poor considering the amount of money spenton language education in Japan. The
biggest difference between Japan andthe five top ranked countries (Sweden,
Finland, Norway, Denmark and theNetherlands) is that in those countries nearly all television programs are
Eye Magazine Seventh Edition | 39

shown in the original language, which
is usually English. Much of the reading is also done in English rather thantranslate into their own language.
In this way, Scandinavians and theDutch get far more input than purely
classroom time. Not only that, but the
input they are receiving is meaningful,they want to understand what they arereading and they want to enjoy theirfavorite television shows.
Problems with Japan’s English Education
Most children in public Junior HighSchool study English for about threehours a week, which adds up to 360
hours over 3 years. High School is asimilar amount, so by the end of HighSchool we can see that students havestudied English for about 720 hours.
This is woefully short of the 2200
hours necessary to get things done in aforeign language ( Jackson & Kaplan,
1999), and the equivalent amount of
input of a 3-month-old baby! Even
if you assume that they spend time athome studying English, it will not benear the necessary amount of hours.
When looking at these numbers it
is no longer surprising that there are
not many people who become fluent
in a foreign language by studying at
school, it is a miracle that there are
any at all!
Some students do become proficient,but they have presumably spent many
hours studying on their own at homeor through extra-curricula English
classes.
When we start looking at meaningfulpractice, we see that this is also lacking. The vast majority of Junior HighSchool and High School teachers arestill using a form of grammar translation, which provides little motivationor negotiation. Compared to a childtrying to persuade their mother to letthem play in the park, students haveno desire or need to communicate.
Most classes are made up of repetition and grammar explanations given
in Japanese.

40 | Eye Magazine Seventh Edition

Krashen (1982) said that for students
to acquire a language that the input
needs to be at a level of i+1, whichmeans that the input should be slightly more difficult than the students cancurrently understand. The curriculumin Japanese Junior and Senior HighSchools advances much too quickly
for the majority of students, making the input too difficult for most
students, who lose interest and stop
studying.
Solutions
The situation seems hopeless. The vast
majority of English teachers enthusiastically try to teach students andprepare effective materials, but if at
the end of it all students will have lessthan one tenth of the input needed
to become proficient, what hope isthere? Perhaps the language classroom should be regarded as an area
in which students can be introduced
to new concepts, explicit grammar
teaching and error correction, but thebulk of their language practice must
be done outside the classroom.
Ellis (1991) found that students learnt
language rules and were more successful using them when taught explicitly. A combination of explicit teaching and implicit learning is probably
most effective. As educators we needto find ways to encourage and motivate our students to study outside
the classroom, rather than focusing
on classroom activities. Autonomous
learning is becoming increasingly
popular in universities, but it needs
to be pushed more. Some teachers do
not give homework due to the extra
work it will create for the teacher, but
without studying outside the classroom, any language learning efforts
will be slow and inevitably unsuccessful. Learning a language needs to beviewed more like learning a musicalinstrument than studying a subject.
Without practice you cannot become
proficient. Teachers must encourage
this practice, it is a rare case that anyone, let alone a child, will study without encouragement and some sort ofexternal motivation.

Autonomous Learning and Self-Access Centers
In the last few decades more and moreemphasis has been placed on autonomous language learning. To aid autonomous learning many universities
have set up self access learning centres.
Dincer, Yesil Yurt, and Goksu (2010)
found that classrooms have rules thatsometimes do not match with student
preferences. By allowing students tostudy autonomously, students can findtheir own best learning style, althoughlearners need some help to learn autonomously, which is where self-access learning centres are important asthey give these students opportunities
for autonomous learning. This autonomous learning can take many forms,
but the most common are extensive
reading, extensive listening and online
practice.
It has long been shown by the workof various researchers that extensive
reading programs can make a huge difference in the proficiency of language
learners (Cutting, 2011). In a studyof university students by Williams(2008) it was found that students who
participated in an extensive reading
program for a year gained on average 33.5 points on the TOEFL test.
It is hard to know how many hours
of extensive reading students did, but
we can certainly see that the gains are
significant. If a student is reading a
graded reader for 30 minutes everyday this means they can get about 180
hours in a year. If this were done over
six years of Junior High School andHigh School the amount of meaningful input would double. The reason I
call this meaningful input is becauseof the nature of reading, the effort tounderstand the ideas of the story andput your own interpretations on it
make the experience meaningful. It is
probably not as good as the negotiation that takes place between a childand caregiver, but it is a definite improvement on translation.
Recently there have been more andmore proponents of extensive listening. I would say that this has thesame advantages as extensive reading,
although there is not as much quantitative evidence for extensive listening. More time spent with meaningfulpractice the better you will get. In theliterature this has focused on students
listening to stories, often audio recordings of graded readers, I would like tosuggest that watching television could
also be a valuable form of input. Listening to stories for 30 minutes eachday also leads to about 1000 hours of
meaningful practice during the JuniorHigh School and High School years.
A close friend of mine with two Japanese parents is very fluent at English
despite having never lived in an English speaking country for more than a
few weeks. She told me that as a childher father bought her and her sistersome Disney videos. These were fromthe United States and were only inEnglish. He said that if they wanted
to watch television they would haveto watch these English videos. The
children loved the videos and would
rather watch them in English than
not at all, so spent hours and hours ofextensive listening. By High School
she and her sister were winning English speech contests. The University ofMichigan Health System (2012) estimated that children ages 6-11 spend
about 28 hours a week in front of the
television. I am not an advocate ofchildren spending hours in front of
the television, but if they are doing it
anyway, could we not encourage someof it in a foreign language and use it totheir advantage?
Study Abroad
Studying abroad is a very effective
way to get many hours of foreign language practice. Freed (1995) statedthat there are numerous versions ofstudying abroad, with or without formal language tuition. Other important factors are whether the students
spend time with fellow L1 speakers,
and whether students stay with a hostfamily, but for the purpose of this article I am just going to assume thatstudents have access to English forthe entirety of their period abroad.
Studying abroad will give you a possible fifteen hours of practice a day,including class, chatting to friends
and communicating with your hostfamily. One month in a homestay program could be the equivalent of yourentire time at Junior High School.
This is also super powered input as it
contains all the negotiation and motivation that a young child feels whentrying to communicate with theircaregiver. As Swain (1985) argues“production will aid acquisition only
when the learner is pushed.” Swinton (1983), reported a 52.3 (12%)
total point gain on the TOEFL test
for students enrolled for a semester (i.e., approximately 15 weeks) in
an intensive English program at San
Francisco State University. Although
Ellis and Tanaka (2003) found thatthe average TOEFL improvement in
a 15-week study abroad program wasonly 18.55 points on the TOEFL test,
they put this down to students staying in monolingual settings and inevitably not practicing English as muchoutside the classroom. This is still asignificant improvement, and it supports my hypothesis that it is hoursof practice that is the deciding factor
in students’ language improvement.
The students who were not practicing
English outside the classroom did not
improve as much on their TOEFL
scores. This also emphasizes the needto put students in a multilingual setting when they study abroad. Students need to be placed individuallyin homestay families with maximum
opportunities for meaningful English
practice. Sending students abroad tostudy in monolingual classes and stay
together in dormitories will result invery little more than studying in an
intensive English course in Japan.
I have listed three of the most common and easily accessible ways tospend many hours practicing English. There are many other opportunities, especially on the Internet, using
Second Life and other virtual environments, playing online Englishvcomputer games and just surfing the
web in English. Whatever motivates
students to practice for copious hours
and in a meaningful way will help students to gain the necessary practice tobecome proficient at English.
How Many Hours of Practice Do
You Need?
Generally speaking, the many hoursof practice necessary in Extensive Listening, Extensive Reading and Study
Abroad to achieve language mastery is
10,000 hours. This demonstrates just
how much continued, long term andextensive practice is needed in order
to become proficient. There are no
short cuts, but including all or at least
some of these activities with your students will have a significant effect. In
comparison, the total hours of study
in Junior and Senior High schools inJapan is yet to reach over 7500-hours
of Study.
Conclusion
I acknowledge that there are manyother factors that affect language acquisition, for example age and language aptitude, but within the constraints of the Japanese education
system there are many things thatteachers could do to help with language acquisition. There are many
excellent teachers and teaching methodologies, but what needs emphasizing is that rather than focusing on thestyle of teaching, we need to get thehours in. The number of hours thatJapanese school children study English is not nearly enough for them tobecome proficient. If we want the levelof English ability to improve in Japan,
students need to spend far more hours
in meaningful practice; in the classroom, extensive reading, and extensive
listening or study abroad programs. I
certainly believe that a combination offormal and informal study is the ideal.
Although including all these aspects
will not necessarily bring you to thelevel of native speakers, it must bring
you much closer. Practice is the key toproficiency in everything including
language learning.
Frances Shiobara is an Associate
Professor at Kobe Shoin Women’s
University, Japan.

Eye Magazine Seventh Edition | 41

I Love You, Bro

BY MARY JANE S. CAMARADOR

So what is a Boy Band?
According to the popular culture
website wisegeek.com, a boy band isdefined as a musical act composed ofat least three young men who can singand dance. They do not necessarily
play instruments, which sets themapart from a ‘band’ we typically know.
They fall into different genres likerhythm and blues, pop and hip hop.
Young female audiences are the usual
target market of boy bands. Boy bands
started during the mid-1950s though
the term ‘boy band’ was then called
the hep harmony singing group.
42 | Eye Magazine Seventh Edition

The Characteristics of a Boy Band:
There are templates incorporated
with these boy bands for why they
are called as such. In another website
cleverworkarounds.com that exploredboy bands, some of the characteristics
or criteria that are found in a boy band
were: (1) they have pretty faces, (2) they
have five members, (3) they can dance,(4) the playing of instruments is not
permitted, (5) they are fashion setters,(6) they do not write their own songs,
and (7) they are under the supervisionof record company management.
Most of these definitions, if not all,are seen within the list of boy bands

mentioned above.
The Formation of One Direction:
To know how modern boy bands
are created, one only has to look at
the formation of current Boy Bandsuperstars One Direction. Formed
in 2010, One Direction started theircareer when Niall Horan (19), Zayn
Mallik (20), Liam Payne (19), Harry
Styles (19), and Louis Tomlinson(21) individually joined the seventhseason of X Factor, a United Kingdom
based TV talent contest. They did
not qualified in the solo performer
category but instead they were

The [Mis]Representation ofMale-Bonding in Boy Bands
through their Music
Theory of Homosociality
The concept of masculinity and malefriendship was not static during the
19th century. In American culture,
there existed a continuum between
homosocial and homosexual bonds.
During the mid-19th century, men
could express emotions with fervor
and openness. Upon the late 19th
century, intimacy between men
became indistinguishable from theimages and language of love (Rolf,2011). It is also important to notethat during Victorian America,
homosexuality was a taboo. However,at the duration of the 19th century,

what is acceptable and unacceptable
forms of male friendship changed.
Eve
KosofskySedgwick,an
American academic scholar, who
specialized in queer studies, coined
the term ‘homosocial’ and madea distinction between homosocialand homosexual desire. In her book,
Between Men: English Literatureand Male Homosocial Desire (1985),
she explains that there is a malehomosocial desire existing among
males (be it overt heterosexual
to overt homosexual) that is notnecessarily romantic. She coined the
Eye Magazine Seventh Edition | 43

Photograph by Fiona McKinlay / Flickr

brought back to form as a group under
Simon Cowell, house judge for the X
Factor show. With their talents andcharm, One Direction captured theattention of not only the judges but
also the British viewing audience.
They won third in the finals andeventually invaded Europe throughtheir music. Since 2010, they havealready produced four albums: Up All
Night (2011), Take Me Home (2012),
Midnight Memories (2013), and Four(2014) where they received several
awards, topped hit charts and sold out
albums worldwide. Their music styles
are variations of pop and rock.

term homo- to challenge the existing
concept of hetero- and bi- and be able
to distinguish from one another.
Male bonding is not a new term
to be exact. Even Aristotle wrote aclassical description of friendshiparound 330 BBC saying, “It is those
who desire the good of their friends
for the friends’ sake that are mostMenudo being gay—these are someindications of the imagery and therealities happening within the boy
band world.
One Direction, a British boy band, issetting a new trend in terms of malebonding in the boy band culture thatis prevalent in their songs and music
videos. Songs like What Makes You

Famous Boy Band Timeline:
The Monkees (1966-1971)
The Jackson 5 (1970s)
The Osmonds (1970s)
Menudo (1977)
New Edition (180s)
New Kids on the Block (mid 1980s)
Boyz II Men (early 1990s)
Backstreet Boys (mid 1990s)
NSYNC (mid 1990s)
Hanson (late 1990s)
Jonas Brothers (2005)
Big Time Rush (2009)
One Direction (2010)

Photograph by Mark Stevens / Flickr and calltheambulance / Flickr

truly friends, because each loves theother for what he is, and not for any
incidental quality.” This definitionis the counterpart of what we called“bromance.”
Bromance is a portmanteau of thewords brother and romance. Coinedby Dave Carnie, editor of Big
Brother (American Skateboarding
magazine), in 1990s. He referred it to
the relationship developed between
skaters who spent a great time together.
Bromance is a non-sexual relationshipbetween two or more men.
The Homosocial on the Little Things
LyricsBoy bands have been criticized even
before that homosexuality is suggested
in their songs and music videos. The
effeminate image of Nick Carter ofthe Backstreet Boys, the song writing
partnership of John Lennon andPaul McCartney of the Beatles andthe revelation of Ricky Martin of
44 | Eye Magazine Seventh Edition

Beautiful, One Thing, Live While You
We’re Young and Kiss You hit the UK
music hit chart.
Little Things is one of the songs
from their second album Take Me
Home. There are a lot of criticalresponses and reviews from the music
critics. It is perceived as problematic
especially from the boy band’s target
audience who are females in theirteens, according to Grady Smith ofEntertainment Weekly. Fantasizing
the female body is not appropriate
at an early age, which may also affect
One Direction’s image.
Little Things is a song about overseeing
the imperfections of a person andloving her despite of. Flaws likefreckles on the cheeks, crickles in theeyes when smiling, sleeptalking, andeven weight concerns—these little
things do not matter for people whoare in love.

On a heteronormative perspective,
this is a song of a man who loves his
girlfriend enough for him to disregard
her flaws, that despite these little
things, he still loves the girl endlessly,(as what the lyrics say). On the otherside, a queer reading about the song
will create a totally different meaning.
Instead of a song of a man to his
girlfriend, it can be a song of a man
to his man. In case of One Direction,
this can be their song for themselves.
Analysing the text closely, it reveals
a subtext emanating among themembers. That is, it is a song thatrefers actually to their co-members.
Boy bands live closer together due
to their tight schedules and various
commitments. With this proximity, it
is possible that each one of them cannotice even the tiniest details of theirco-band members.
First point of this song is that eachmember has a part sang individually.
This suggests that every one of themhas a say—a chance of expressing
themselves. Second point, ‘little
things’ are enumerated in the lyrics:
size of the hand, freckles on thecheeks, crinkles in the eyes, dimples
near the butt, sleep mannerisms andeven the body weight. Here, space andtime play a major role. The context
implied a closed proximity between
the two individuals—a scenario that is
applicable among boy band members.
That scenario may look like this: menliving together in a single roof or evensharing a room (space); they are always
together during rehearsals, shows,or tours (time); thus, the level ofknowledge for personality differences
are high.
Little Things Music VideoThe music video of Little Things
also reveals a subtext based froma queer perspective. Factors which
had presupposed to a queer reading
include space and time, gestures andfacial expression, and editing style.

Space and Time
Coincide with the lyrics of the song,
the way the music video is madeused only one space—the recording
studio. This is the only music videoof One Direction that has noattempt to change the space or the
milieu. Prior to the analysis of the
lyrics of the song where men can beliving together under a single roof
or sharing a room, the music video
substantiates that interpretation. In
addition, no other individual exists
in the entire video aside from them.
A sense of territoriality (space) andbelongingness happened among malefriendship.
Gestures and Facial Expression
There are also gestures, facial
expression and eye contact that would
indicate a homosocial desire—an
explicit act of male-to-male fondnessfor each other. Zayn Mallik is tweaking
Harry Styles on the cheek. Contrary
to the previous music videos of boy
bands especially during the 1990s,
no such act of ‘intimacy’ was shown
to the public. Louis Tomlinson’s
gaze and smile to Liam Payne andtheir physical distance would suggest‘comfortability’ with each other.
Editing Styles
The
editing—relations
betweenshots—speaks so much in the makingof music videos. The way juxtaposition
is applied to create a narrative or nonnarrative gives meaning and a lot ofinterpretation.
The first sequence of the music video
is an instrumental. Among the seriesof shots shown, Zayn is smiling (ShotA) followed by Harry Styles (Shot B)
looking. Shot B is considered a reverse
shot of Shot A for it follows the 180
degree rule to achieve continuity. That
is Zayn is on the right side of theframe while Harry is on the left sideof the frame.
Another example is Louis and Zayn
having a shot/reverse shot with theaudio and “it’s you” paralleled to thevideo. Below is Niall singing as “I loveyou” followed by the shots of Zayn andHarry in a rack-focus technique (deepfocus on a foreground while blurredon the background and vice versa).

Conclusion
Over the years, the perception of
masculinity and male friendshiphas changed over time. During the20th century, American culture
characterized three themes ofmasculinity. These are: American
men are trying to control themselves;
American men are projecting theirfears to others; and American men
are attempting to escape when feelingpressured. The result is that they fearthat American culture is being too
feminized, too over-civilized, and too
Europeanised (Kimmel, 2006).
Homosociality at present is more
conspicuous than before, particularly
among men. Boy bands are justone discourse among others where
homosocial desires do exist. One
Direction has set a different trend
from the list of boy bands before
where masculinity is one of the showoffs. They show a new perspective
showing a different side of sexualitythat is social; and a different direction
by One Direction.

Eye Magazine Seventh Edition | 45

Princess Robot Bubblegum Critiques “Cool Japan”
By Christina Bethel
As an anime fan, I was particularly
intrigued by Princess Robot Bubblegum, an anime parody found in thevideo game Grand Theft Auto IV thathas stirred controversy in both video
game and anime fan communities.
Some members recognize the parody’salienation as a critique of Japan’s attempts to build cultural capital andsoft power; others argue that the episode illustrates how humor can beused to foster global connectedness.
To examine this situation, I have begun to conduct a cultural and rhetorical analysis of the parody through thelens of Dani Cavallaro’s concept ofanime synergy (2007). I argue thatthe inclusion of this parody in one ofAmerica’s most popular video games
illustrates Japan’s soft power success. I
will explore what Japan’s anime success means to Japanese and American
culture in terms of connectedness andalienation by focusing on how Princess
Robot Bubblegum parodies five values
commonly treated by anime and the46 | Eye Magazine Seventh Edition

An illustration of the impact of Japan’s
Soft Power movement through a crosscultural, cross-media response

practice of incorporating fan service
that has become popular in anime.
Animerica: Anime Synergy in Action
But first, let’s develop a shared vocabulary and some common contextual
ground. For content, I’ve focused onfour key terms common in the anime
community and two abbreviations
common in the gaming communitythat I’ve been asked to define in academic conversations, and for theory,
I’ve focused on concepts I’ve beenaware of for a long time as a fan butthat I’m only now building the academic vocabulary to analyze and discuss as a scholar. Anime is the termthat has been most widely accepted byboth the fan and the academic communities who discuss the medium ofJapanese animated films and television shows. Anime differs from otherpopular animation in American culture in many ways, but most notably
in depth and complexity of cultural,thematic, and character exploration,and in animation style. Literary scholar Susan Napier (2001) includes a detailed historical analysis of the term in
her appendix to Anime from Akira to
Princess Mononoke: Experiencing Contemporary Japanese Animation.
Hentai is the adult erotic genre of anime being parodied in Grand Theft
Auto IV. As Mariana Ortega-Brena(2009) explains in “Peek-a-boo, I See
You: Watching Japanese Hard-core
Animation,” hentai often gets conflated in with pornography in both
perception and popular use. However,as she also explains and as I have discovered through my fan experiences,hentai is erotic art, not pornography.
Japanese writers and animators seem
to use this art form to explore socialand cultural issues with a depth andcomplexity that deserves much more
scholarly and popular attention thanit currently receives. Historian Andrew McKevitt (2010) in the article,“’You are Not Alone!’: Anime and
the Globalizing of America,” identi-

fies that otaku is a long-time slur thatreferred to socially inept individuals
obsessed with anime who become reclusive and focus all of their energy on
fan activities.

fines as “the ability to affect others
through the co-optive means of framing the agenda, persuading and eliciting positive attraction in order to obtain preferred outcomes”.

However, Ortega-Brena and McKevitt agree that the term seems to havebeen appropriated by fan communities, particularly in the West. And thisappropriation has not gone unnoticed
by the artists, who demonstrate a keenrhetorical awareness of their audienceby using fan service to create and nurture fan communities. Fan service isthe practice of including generic elements and allusions designed specifically to appeal to long-time audience
members. This practice has becomecommon across multiple media platforms because it illustrates artists’ appreciation for their audience members. Fan service also illustrates thesocial, dialogic nature of art and is oneof the avenues where we can observe
anime synergy in action.

American scholars such as anthropologist Anne Allison (2009), sociologist Jonathan Abel (2011), andhistorian Andrew McKevitt, all writing for international, cross-disciplinary audiences, discuss Japan’s efforts
to gain soft power through strategic
production and international distribution of anime. Scholars and fansagree that anime’s unique success as a
medium comes from its versatile appeal to wide audiences. “Cool Japan” isthe most common term I have foundused in academic research to refer tothe movement to explore the cultural
power that Japan has gained throughcreation and distribution of Japanese cultural material internationally.
Jonathan Abel defines “cool” using
two categories of meaning: First, thehistorical meaning “of cool as form ofcultural production,… a style of art
that maintains a particular stance towards society. And second,… cool asaffect in cultural reception,… a modeof desire for that which resides at thelimits of comprehension”. He bothcritiques and perpetuates use of theterm “Cool Japan,” explaining that bystudying something, it loses its coolness, but he also recognizes the cultural power that Japan has gained by
fostering intercultural competency
and global connectedness.

I discovered this instance of anime
synergy through observing game playof Grand Theft Auto IV. GTA IV is theabbreviation used in both fan andacademic communities to refer to thisinternationally popular video game.
Over 50 articles have been publishedin English about this particular video
game, and according to Forbes.com, it
has sold over 22 million copies since
its 2008 release. And TBOTG is theabbreviation used to refer to “The Ballad of Gay Tony,” a set of additional
playable missions that were released
after the initial game, in which players
may continue to experience the worldof Liberty City from the perspectiveof a new character. This downloadable content is where the episode ofPrincess Robot Bubblegum originallyappeared.

One of the ways this connectedness
manifests itself is through widespread,
active fan communities that are international, intercultural, and interactive.
Napier analyzes these fan communi-ties, and in the same appendix where
she defines anime, she presents a profile exploring the cultural identity of
the anime fan. Myron Lustig & Jolene
Koester (2010) define cultural identity as “one’s sense of belonging to aparticular culture or ethnic group…
formed in a process that…involves
learning about and accepting the…
[shared] beliefs, values, norms, andpractices” of a particular group. Rebecca Black (2008) also explores thecultural identity of anime fans in Adolescents and Online Fan Fiction.
Cavallaro’s concept of anime synergy
makes perfect sense when we consider
the prevalence of these communities
and the potential soft power they represent. In Chapter 11 of Anime Intersections: Tradition and Innovation in
Theme and Technique, Dani Cavallaro
defines anime synergy as the ability to“persistently engineer[s] fruitful exchanges between disparate geographical areas, their cultures and histories,
as well as between discrete media andgenres”. According to this definition,
anime is a cultural tool being used
to foster intercultural competence,and the existence and fan response
to Princess Robot Bubblegum illustrate
part of the tool’s effects.
The GTA franchise has also become
interesting to cultural studies becauseof the value of its genre as a potential
acculturation tool. Marjorie Zielke
and her colleagues (2009) use GTA
IV as the example to introduce anddefine the term “living world game”
in the article “Serious Games for Immersive Cultural Training: Creatinga Living World.” They define “living world” as an immersive 3D video
game that develops a shared set of be-“Cool Japan” and Japanese soft power: Exploring Potential Motivations
for Japan’s Quest to Foster Anime asa Global Phenomenon
In The Future of Power, Joseph Nye(2011) argues that, “states are no longer the only important actors in global
affairs; security is not the only major
outcome that they seek, and force is
not the only or always the best instrument available to achieve those outcomes”. One of the types of power
Nye describes that influences global
affairs is “soft power,” which he deEye Magazine Seventh Edition | 47

Houser and Lazlow (2008) also explore the Japanese desire to both preserve traditions and adapt them for modern contexts, as well as the treatment of sexuality as both something exotic through incorporation of fantasy
and technology, and something mundane through what seems to many to
be a gratuitous focus but seems to better mirror the realities of how humans
experience sexuality than traditional Western media treatment.

Before we look more carefully at Princess Robot Bubblegum as an example ofanime synergy, it will be helpful tobriefly explore the history of animein America. Andrew Mckevitt asserts that historians have only begun
to explore “the impact of global economic and cultural exchange within
U.S. borders through histories of consumption and globalization” and uses
“the case of anime…as one tangible
illustration of the impact of cultural
globalization” in the past 35 years. The
earliest anime introduced into U.S.
popular culture in the 1960s and ‘70s,
through series like Osamu Tezuka’s
AstroBoy and Speed Racer, was barely
recognizable as Japanese. In the 1970sand ‘80s, the animation style shifted
to what Japanese literature scholar
Susan Napier refers to as “nonculturally specific.” McKevitt acknowledges
that the “’nonculturally specific anime
style’ appealed to American audiences… because it was aesthetically transnational – its apparent nonethnic stylefacilitated its diffusion across borders,”
and he adds that “the mingling of Japanese and Western aesthetics, genres,and racial and gender categories…
permitted anime to be a truly hybrid
global product”.
But it was not only the visual styleof anime that appealed to wide audiences. McKevitt also demonstrates
how anime distribution in the U.S. reinforced the development of activitst
fan communities as a further illustration of Japanese soft power over U.S.
cultural evolution. When he explains
Robotech’s success in U.S. syndication
during the 1980s, garnering syndication in 90% of the U.S. market, he argues that it was “likely teenage boys
watched for the fast-paced action
48 | Eye Magazine Seventh Edition

sequences…while adult women andmen appreciated the mature ‘space
opera’ storylines about friendships,
romance, and the tragic social consequences of war”. Anime’s tendency to
explore complex social issues througha combination of engaging character
development and interaction, imaginative plots and settings, and exotic
yet familiar visuals seem to have contributed largely to what McKevittcalls “anime fandom’s most conspicuous characteristic[:]…its emphasison activism within the community”.
Through his explanation of fan activism’s three primary forms, “fan clubs,
conventions (or ‘cons’), and…an underground, self-published, Englishlanguage literature on anime,” McKevitt argues that this fan activism
allowed anime fans to foster a senseof community among themselves andbegin to develop a cultural identity.
Across several texts, Napier (2001)
seeks to develop a dynamic profileof the anime fan community as “anincreasingly diversified audience, expanding from its original core of university students to include professionals in high tech industries, finance,and law....a thoughtful, intelligent,
and articulate group of people”. Napier developed a fan profile survey
in response to what she saw as stereotyping being perpetuated throughscholars’ tendencies “to see fans insomewhat narrow terms,” which Napier saw as an injustice to fans whose
interaction with anime she saw as“deeply engaged, transcending issuesof national boundaries, content, style,or ideology”.
McKevitt, Allison, Napier, and Abeldescribe a variety of forms of fan activism across different contexts, illustrating the potential and real ways
in which anime can be and has beenused to further Japanese political, economical, social, and cultural agendas
through agenda-setting, persuasion,and positive attraction, Nye’s threecriteria for building soft power. Anne
Allison even establishes a link between
the Cool Japan movement, which she
refers to as J-cool, and the concept ofsoft power, using the example of political activist Amamiya Karin to explain Japanese affective activist rhetoric. Her purpose is to demonstrate a
causal link between the Japanese cultural “shift towards immateriality” andJapan’s reproductive crisis as well as to“consider the subversive potential” ofwhat she calls “affective labor,” a typeof Foucauldian biopower with an ultimate purpose of exploring “J-cool”
as a subversive cultural tool in thecontext of modern Japanese youth activism being used to combat a global
trend into “care deficit”.
As I mentioned before, I came toanime as a fan. My parents met in
Okinawa, where my mother became
pregnant with me. Because of theiraffinity for the culture and the somewhat unique context of how I cameinto this world, Japan has always helda special place in my heart. When I
was young, my mother recorded oneof Tezuka’s Unico films for me when
she saw it on American television because she recognized it from her timein Japan. I watched the tape so manytimes during my formative years that I
wore it out. For many years, I searched
and was unable to find a copy towatch, but the beauty of the characters, the animation style, and the message stayed with me.
Since beginning to research animeand cultural identity, I’ve come to realize that the title character’s values andactions have heavily influenced myown identity formation. I was lucky to
be able to attend a Tezuka exhibit in
Kyoto in 2008 as part of a FulbrightHays Group Project Abroad where,
although I was unable to obtain a copyof the film, I purchased several Unico-related items, including a change
purse with the following message
printed on it: “Unico is a little uni-

Images from GTA Wiki - Project Robot Bubblegum / GTA Wikiliefs, values, norms, and practices forcharacters within the game that theplayer must learn to succeed within
the game world. They assert that “living world” games are valuable tools forteaching culture.

corn that does not take to human beings usually but he takes to one witha pure, honest and gentle heart, with asense of security. Unico can show his
magical powers for people being kindto him and once he takes to someone
he shall bring eternal happiness tothat person.”celebration of gratuitous violence andorganized criminal behavior, I discovered that while I could see why thesecontroversies emerged, this game develops a rich, complex argument about
the state of American culture. I realized that this game deserved not only
my, but the academy’s, attention.

Because of my intimate emotional andimplicit cultural affinities for Japaneseculture, I realize I must work hard todevelop a critical distance from thesubjects I study relating to Japan.
Abel’s explanation of how “conscious
fetishism” and “Japanophilia” become
problematic modes of inquiry when
they “articulate [themselves] througha privileged point of [false] authority

My first encounter with GTA IV inacademic publications was in Zielke
et al’s article. Marjorie Zielke and hercolleagues claim that “as a major strategy of the game, players spend timelearning Liberty City’s culture” andthat video games with “living worlds“
like GTA IV can be successful as cultural tools because of “the veracity of
the 3D environment...and immer-[that]…still contains an unquestioned
preserved point for the coolness ofJapan” reminds me to keep my bias
toward Japan in check as I transition
from “fan” to “responsible researcher”.
Analyzing the parody Princess Robot
Bubblegum has helped me develop astronger critical distance, along witha new appreciation for genres within
anime and video games that I previously dismissed.

sion...learning tools”. Adoption ofvideo games as cultural training tools
by the U.S. military demonstrates the
U.S. government’s acceptance of interactive media’s effectiveness as an
acculturation tool.

As I observed Grand Theft Auto IV
game play more critically for my research, my feelings about the gamestarted to change. GTA IV was agame I had purposefully avoided
until I learned about Princess Robot
Bubblegum because of the controversies surrounding the game’s apparent

If we take into account GTA IV’s international success in the gaming
community - the 22 million copies
estimated to have been sold is a highly
conservative estimate of population
impact – it becomes important to ask
the question “What do players learn
from GTA IV,” but that’s a question fora much larger project. For now, all I’ll
say on what we learn in GTA IV is thatthe subtitle captures the theme well:“Where the American Dream Goes
to Die.” You play and meet characters

who have been marginalized by society – immigrants, African-Americans,
GLBT individuals, criminals, and soon – and who struggle to survive andthrive in a world indifferent to theirstruggles.
GTA IV incorporates all three of thefunctions of humor described by
Claire Dormann and Robert Biddle
in the article, “A Review of Humor for
Computer Games: Play, Laugh andMore”: “Superiority theory suggests
the social aspects of humor, while relief theories address emotions, andincongruity theory is related to the
cognition and mechanisms of humor”.
Dan Houser, British writer and developer of the GTA series, and Lazlow,

an American radio personality who
has also become the dominant radio
personality in GTA’s Liberty City,
are masters of humor and rhetoric.
Much of the humor injected into thegame takes the form of in-game media, which includes a dynamic variety
of radio and television stations withlimited content conceptualized andscripted by Lazlow, an radio talk show
host reminiscent of Howard Stern,and Houser.
According to Dormann and Biddle,
humor plays an important role inmaking “games richer, more engaging, as well as fun…[by drawing] on
the functions of humor in the realworld for enhancing communication,
learning, and social presence”. Dani
Eye Magazine Seventh Edition | 49

‘fantasy escape and source of identification’ within anime’s graphic violence, voluptuous female characters,
and politically incorrect male-female
relationships” (Anime 241). However,seven years before GTA IV and Princess Robot Bubblegum were released,
Napier emphasizes the limited validity of such arguments when considering “that anime’s attraction for Westerners is far broader and more diverse”
than this narrow critique implies (Anime 241). Other outdated critiques
relate to localization, translation, andanimation quality issues that, while
they still exist, have lessened considerably over the past 30 years, mostly due
to fan demand and activism.

Cavallaro’s purpose in defining andillustrating anime synergy is to illustrate the positive and powerful impactof anime on art forms and genres,such as video games, in order to argue
anime’s value as a cultural tool withsimilar aims. By including an anime
parody in its living world’s radio andTV programming, GTA IV’s creators
acknowledge the ubiquity of anime in
American media as well as the crosscultural connections between animeand gamer fan communities. While
the sometimes “hostile” jokes in Princess Robot Bubblegum exhibit mostly
superior and incongruous humor, theauthors also incorporate tension relief
significantly by addressing common
taboo anime topics.
Princess Robot Bubblegum as Cultural Identity Critique: A Scathing(and Dated!) Reaction to Japan’s soft
power successOne of these taboo topics is Princess
Robot Bubblegum herself: the starcharacter of the series is an orphaned
young woman who, in the reflexivity
characteristic of anime that OrtegaBrena (2008) describes, stars in a hentai series. Princess Robot Bubblegum is,on the surface, a scathing and dated
critique of Japan’s efforts to build soft
power and cultural capital throughinternational distribution of animeand related entertainment media andproducts. The title character is a princess who practices a school of martial
arts that incorporates sexual practices
50 | Eye Magazine Seventh Editionas moves. The episode’s existence itself
illustrates the game developers’ understanding of the cultural identity of
their fan base.
GTA IV authors Houser and Lazlow(2008) use the episode to explore several Japanese value paradoxes, including: the affinity for peace and preserving honor through the use of what
seems to many to be gratuitously andgraphically violent scenes; the dual
affinities for preserving the environment and adapting both the environment and the self through technology;
and the desire to promote globalization and global connectedness while
privileging Japanese cultural values.
On the surface, Princess Robot Bubblegum is a scathing and dated critique ofJapan’s efforts to build soft power andcultural capital through international
distribution of anime and related entertainment media and products. The
game seems to argue through the anime parody against the capitalist element to “anime video game synergy[,
which] has been deeply affected bycommercial imperatives” (Cavallaro,2010).
Napier recognizes the partial validityof the critiques levied against anime
here. She criticizes Pointon and Newitz for their narrow framing of theanime and hentai fan, but she admits
that “both critics are correct to a degree when they suggest that a prime
audience of young males often find a

Princess Robot Bubblegum opens witha collision of unexpected images: abattle in futurist Tokyo is implied byfour Power Rangers-esque characterstaking flight amid neon skyscrapers.
Then cut to Princess Robot Bubblegum lying in bed, only shoulders andarms exposed as she reads a copy of
Restoring Honor for Idiots while halfheartedly reassuring her tentacularmonstrosity of a bedfellow about hislack of performance. This image presents the princess as an empowered
though anti-heroic female character.
Their dialogue is interrupted by theprincess receiving a call from “Master
Hentai,” her martial arts trainer, chiding her for being late for training. She
replies by equivocating: she tells himthat she has been “tending the garden,” an apropos double entendre. The
humor here plays on an allusion to theVictorian sexual metaphor of the garden and the literal sexual encounter
with an anthropomorphized plant.
The developers also include shockingly realistic visuals reminiscent of theincongruous yet meticulous attention
to detail in anime that often illustrates
the paradoxical blending of nature andtechnology in Japanese environments.
For example, as Princess Robot Bubblegum exchanges dialogue with herradioactive tentacular plant monster
partner, a fly buzzes around them, anda train rolls by the apartment window
The game seems to argue through theanime parody against the capitalist element to “anime video game synergy[,
which] has been deeply affected bycommercial imperatives” (Cavallaro,2010).

Houser and Lazlow (2008) also explore the Japanese desire to bothpreserve traditions and adapt themfor modern contexts, as well as thetreatment of sexuality as both something exotic through incorporationof fantasy and technology and something mundane through what seems
to many to be a gratuitous focus but
seems to better mirror the realities
of how humans experience sexuality
than traditional Western media treatment. One of the fan service elementsof Princess Robot Bubblegum is thetentacle rape scene that Ortega-Brenanotes has become a trope in hentai but
has a rich, complex history in Japaneseerotic art. The scene is an allusion to
the first hentai film to become popular with Western audiences, to which
Ortega-Brena, Napier, and Cavallaro
all make reference: Urotsuki-doji, orLegend of the Overfiend. This blend of
science fiction, slasher horror, and gratuitous sexual violence seems to be themost often-cited example of hentai
in current scholarship. She explains,though, that the first recorded instance of erotic art involving tentacles
was Hokusai’s 1814 woodblock print
The Dream of the Fisherman’s Wife, a
depiction of an obviously consensual
sexual encounter between a humanwoman and two octopi (2009). Thisconnection is new for me, so I have
only begun to explore the significancehere.

ing fan service.

Brad Rice of Destructoid.com reinforces the datedness of the critique in the2009 news article “GTA IV isn’t helping anime with Princess Robot Bubblegum,” and as an anime fan, he feels theneed to defend the improvements toanime against the outdated critique.
However, I don’t think that the significance is lost on the episode’s writers.
Houser and Lazlow mark themselves
as members of the fan communities
they criticize by demonstrating an
intricate understanding of both thesource medium and their fan base.
Based on the quality of character andcultural development in GTA IV’s living world, the writers are most likely
aware that their critique of anime isboth narrow and outdated. They likely
realize that fans like themselves, andlike me, will appreciate the nostalgic
nature of the critique instead of interpreting it as a critique of current anime, and they are capitalizing on thecommon anime trope of incorporat-

Embracing Princess Robot Bubblegum and Learning to Laugh at Ourselves
Globally we need to build stronger awareness of how popular media
actively participates in the framingof political, economic, and cultural
agendas. Nye recognizes that “in an
information age, communications
strategies become more important,and outcomes are shaped not merely
by whose army wins but also by whosestory wins”. And Japanese stories havebeen winning international audiences,and particularly American audiences,for decades, inspiring other artists to
respond. But if Houser and Lazlow
are critiquing anime as nostalgic fan
service through their parody, what are
the real issues they’re trying to address, and should viewers, particularly
members of anime and gaming communities, be offended?

Anime creators successfully build
soft power through fan service by increasing and blending use of popular genres and archetypal characters.
In their anime parody, Houser andLazlow combine multiple genres aswell: hentai, science fiction, fantasy,
shojo, and traditional martial arts generic elements are all easily identifiable within the 11-minute episode.
And the characters Princess Robot
Bubblegum, her tentacular bedfellow,
Master Hentai, the blind samurai, andthe princess’s animal sidekick Saki
are all representative of archetypicalanime characters. As fan service, theyalso incorporate references to popular
Japanese cultural elements throughTokyo, dojo, and nature scenery and aplethora of visual and auditory references, like the otaku boys waiting inline at the panty vending machinethat transforms into a mech robot.
It’s also common to find fan service
referencing other popular culture
phenomena through intertextuality,
and including specific and sometimes
gratuitous hyper-sexualized scenes,
like the training montage reminiscentof Sailor Moon and the tentacle rape
scene, which Princess Robot Bubblegum refers to jokingly as “monster,
monster rapey-time,” implying thatthe scene is both a tired trope and an
expected fan service scene.

I would like to suggest that Princess

Robot Bubblegum is more likely designed to act as an example of the kindof subversive affective labor Ann Allison describes. When I hear the princess complain about her sexual martial arts training or her less-than-ideal
working conditions, I interpret it not ascathing critique of fetishizing anime
but a complex and layered argument
against practices in the American sex
industry and an illustration of thevalue of animation as a medium for
exploring human rights issues in waysthat will captivate audiences withoutcompromising the rights, safety, or
security of live human beings. Theirargument is nuanced and connects
dynamically to the theme of oppression, in this case, of laborers in the sex
industry.
Princess Robot Bubblegum is an example of the kind of subversive affective
labor Allison describes in “The Cool
Brand, Affective Activism and Japanese Youth”. Bubblegum’s mundane
and reserved attitude about having
a consensual sexual encounter withher on-screen rapist, being continually objectified by Master Hentai
who also acts as the father figure forthe orphaned princess, and engaging
in competitive conversation with theblind swordsman of Teppanyaki about
whose occupation is worse seem to illustrate Houser and Lazlow’s desire topromote more ethical treatment of sex
workers than to illustrate a need forgenre reform in anime.
And by examining responses to PRB
from anime and gaming fans, we canobserve at least two affective responses to the Japanese attempt to secure
cultural capital through US popular
culture: from a few, validation of thecritiques the writers make; from some,recognition that the critiques are superficial and outdated; and from others, recognition that even if some of
the critiques are valid, the amount oftime and effort Rockstar put into developing such a high quality parody
illustrates their love for anime and reinforces the need to be able to laughat ourselves.
Christina Bethel is a doctoral student at East Carolina University,
USA. A fully referenced version ofthis article is available from the editor at publications@iafor.org
Eye Magazine Seventh Edition | 51

Cloud Computing

for Collaborative Knowledge
Construction
A Case for Google Drive

By Gary Ka-Wai Wong52 | Eye Magazine Seventh Edition

Eye Magazine Seventh Edition | 53

The usage of mobile technology in ourdaily lives has been developed to suchan extent that it is now a part of theeveryday culture in many countries.
This is especially so in our large metropolitan centres.
With advanced technology development and the high connectivity to theInternet through school based wirelessnetworks, it is now common and preferred for both teachers and students
to bring their personal mobile devices(e.g. smartphones, tablet computers,
and laptop computers) into the classroom and even prefer to use their own
devices whenever it is possible. However, often it is can be a distraction.
This had led to a few of key questions
that need resolving as it has been challenging for many teachers to engage
their students in classroom teachingenvironment when students bring
their mobile devices to class.
How then can we take the advantageof this mobile technology for ourclassroom teaching and learning, andenhance the student engagement inour classroom instructions? In addition, how can teachers provide a better learning activity to help students
explore and discover new knowledge
through their own effort? What learning activities could provide reflective
experience to the students? Finally,
what are the learning theories behindthese practices in the classroom?
Among many current cloud-computing solutions on the Internet, Google
Drive is one of the most common public cloud platforms to provide Software as a Service (SaaS). Although
this software is not made to target an
educational use, teachers can be creative in making use of this popular
platform and turn into an educational
technology easily.
Google Drive supports both browser
and native mobile operating systems(e.g. Apple iOS and Google Android).
In my point of view, the choice of thetechnology tool heavily depends on
the popularity and commonality of
54 | Eye Magazine Seventh Edition

the tool.
Making a right choice of educational
technology in the classroom can havea high sustainability and penetration
rate. In my own teaching situation,
I tend to ask students to bring theirmobile devices to use (or use the iPads
provided by me) because the lecturehall we use was not designed to use
computers. With their own mobile
devices ready on hand, we can immediately engage students in the lecture.
My own classroom teaching of how
to bring Google Drive and its application into my classroom started witha lesson plan that was designed basedon the idea of Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) developed by Lev
Vygotsky, a Russian psychologist in
working on sociocultural learning theory. In my view through the collaborative knowledge construction approach,students can be more engaging in
my classroom discourse and create alearning community. Therefore, withtechnology, I believe students are nolonger required to be locked in a classroom; but instead their minds can be
unlocked to accept further knowledge.
Cloud Computing as Educational
Technology
As previously mentioned, Google
Drive is a cloud computing platform
which allows users to connect and access information through the cloudservers anywhere at any time as longas the Internet connection is provided.
With wireless network connectivity,
users can use their mobile devices toaccess their information stored on the
Google Drive while on their move.
Originally, Google Drive was previously called Google Doc, and it wasdeveloped so as to provide office suite
applications such as word processing,spreadsheet, and presentation. A few
years ago, Google enhanced the features in this platform as a cloud storage to store these documents as well asother types of files. Thus, Google Docchanged its name to Google Drive.
One of the features Google promotes is the collaboration throughthe platform. In Google Drive, it allows creators to collaborate a working document with others without
synchronization issues. For example,
suppose two students want to collaborate on a field trip proposal. If thesestudents are asked to work on it separately, then they have two files existingin their own computers. When they
finally want to put it together, they
may realize there are duplicated ideas
and it is difficult to consolidate these
two separate files into one. But if theyuse Google Drive, they will be able
to work on the same file at the sametime, and they can see who is editingon which parts simultaneously. This
will significantly reduce their time incollaborating on the same topic anddocument. More importantly, users
can access to Google Drive throughtheir smartphones or mobile devices.
Apple iOS or Google Android system.
Another way to collaborate is throughthe Google Form in the Drive. Google
Form allows the non-technology
savvy user to create online submission form instantly without knowing
how to program with HTML codes
or other languages. It provides a quick
way to collect data from multiple users at the same time. When someone
submits data using the pre-designed
form, the data will be stored in a separate spreadsheet file as a database forfurther analysis. To help quickly offer
instantly feedback to the form creator,
Google Form also provides a “Summary of Responses” readily to present
statistical figures or tables.
As a teacher, I desire to gather datafrom my students in a classroom, andsummarize their data into information so as to become knowledge. In
this case, if a teacher carefully designs
the lesson, Google Drive can becomea powerful tool to transform data
into knowledge in a collaborative approach. To take the advantage of mobile technology, I also introduce theusage of QR code into the lecture so
as to embed the link of my designed
form into a QR code. That way, students can scan the QR code while ontheir site and access to the form without typing the web address to theirmobile devices.
Google Drive and QR code technology are both useful and commonly

known to the students. It is reasonable to assume students to be able touse the technological tool to assist
their learning, rather than focusing
on learning how to use the technology. Besides, teachers are able to create these tools quickly and easily anywhere they may be, and bring them totheir classroom as long as the Internet connection is available. Althoughthese tools are not originally designed

for learning, teachers can easily turnthem into powerful instruments for abetter learning and engaging environment. In addition, it is more flexible
and elastic when the technology is notparticularly designed for a particulartiple Intelligence (M.I.). In previous
work, I discussed the importance of
ZPD in the learning process of children (Wong, 2014). Vygotsky believedthat children quite often stay in their
cognitive stage where they could solve

educational usage. Teachers can introduce their creativity and imagination
into their teaching design and pedagogy.

problem independently. He called thisstage as the zone of actual development. In contrast, children sometimes
could solve problems under circumstances with external supports, and
Vygotsky called this stage as zoneof proximal development. From thispoint of view, he proposed that children’s learning happens when they
put efforts while in the ZPD. Children cannot handle and perform tasks

The Underlying Learning Theory
Based on the learning activity designed for my lesson planning, there
are mainly two theories behind thepractice, namely the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) and Mul-

Eye Magazine Seventh Edition | 55

successfully in this zone, but they can
succeed when they receive aids frompeers and teachers. The following figure illustrates three different zones
for children throughout their learning and cognitive process. Vygotsky
proposed that children learn very little
from performing tasks they can already do independently (Kozulin et.al,
2003; McDevitt & Ormrod, 2007).
Instead, they develop primarily by attempting tasks they can accomplish
only in collaboration with a morecompetent individual, which means
the children attempt tasks within
their zone of proximal development.
In other words, when children are being challenged, this is when they canlearn and acquire more knowledge.
In fact, we can now ensure how tomake certain a students understanding of ZPD and apply educational
practices to help the student accomplish challenging tasks and activities
with suitable assistance. One concept
or technique is called scaffolding aterm often used in construction andthe analogy can be similar in that thescaffold is an external structure thatprovides support for the workers until
the building is strong enough to support itself. After the building is stabilized, the scaffold becomes less necessary is removed at the end.
Palinscar (1998) suggests that in thecontext of research about the negotiated nature of teaching and learning,
ZPD with scaffolding is “probably
one of the most used and least understood constructs to appear in contemporary educational literature.” Theterm scaffolding in the educational
sense is used to “describe the guidanceor structure provided by more competent individuals to help children
perform tasks in their ZPD” (McDevitt & Ormrod, 2007). In fact, Crane(2014) has mentioned, “In a traditional teacher-centered classroom setting,where the role of students is reduced
to objects receiving instruction fromthe teacher who dispenses knowledge
to them, social interaction is limited to a one-way dependency. In themodel developed by Vygotsky, roles of
56 | Eye Magazine Seventh Edition

the teacher and student are interdependent and they both are subject tocognitive development. The role of ateacher is to serves as a guide or coachthat provides assistance to a learnerworking on a challenging task within
her or his ZPD. The teacher is needed
to offer support, encouragement anddesign tasks to stimulate a learner’s
development.” It is true that as teacher
we are obligated to know how to build
a scaffold for students to guide andstimulate them through a challenging
but feasible task. Thus, they will learn
or discover a new knowledge based on
their previous understanding.
Multiple Intelligence (M.I.)
American developmental psychologist
Howard Earl Gardner came up withthe theory of M.I. (Multiple Intelligence), which has had a strong impact on how schools can design theircurriculum and instructions targetingthe needs of the individual. (Chung,2014)
Howard Gardner’s theory has particularly importance in the design of myteaching practice and is an interesting
framework to help teachers understand the intelligence among individuals. Recognizing the uniquenessof individuals can bring advantages
into a classroom teaching because newknowledge can be collaboratively constructed through social interactions
with technology. Without the understanding of the importance of individuals, we may wrongly design a scaffold
only targeting on individual needs,
rather than on the learning community as a whole where everyone can contribute to the knowledge discovery orformation. Gruenkemeyer (2014) discussed that “M.I. is a social cognitivist
theory based on the belief that every
person possesses eight different typesof intelligence. Gardner refers to M.I.
as relatively independent mental faculties. No two people have the same
intellectual profile; each person uses
the combination of intelligences differently. The theory recognizes a broad
swathe of human capacities, includingones from the arts and from the realmof human intercourse that have tradi-tionally been considered non-intellectual and perhaps not even cognitive.”
No doubt, the theory suggests that the
intellectual profile is formed by multiple types of intelligence. If we design
a learning activity, which can gather
effort and thoughts from different individuals, then we can fill in the gapsof others.
Gruenkemeyer’s research also mentioned that, “Gardner argues thattechnology can be used in order to enhance and implement the M.I. theory
in education. Particularly, Gardner believes that online learning opportunities are very beneficial and applicableto the M.I. theory and improve learning. The online experience is an active
experience for motivated learners andis changing the way people take in information. Because of the wide rangeof resources available with technology, Gardner argues education can betransformed for the better, but only if
the technology is used appropriately.
Digital devices, according to Gardner, provide an engaging experienceand can appeal to the eight different
intelligences.” Thus, learning collaboratively with the resources on the Internet can easily construct knowledge
according to the theory of Gardner.
The Technology in PracticeThis semester, I am teaching a general
education course “Technology, Entertainment and Mathematics” formedby 15 students coming from mathmajor and other. The course is aboutfinding a relationship between mathematics and the latest technology
development and entertainment encounters. Most of the students probably know that calculator is an invention of mathematicians, but they may
not have thought that computer science is a field contributed mainly bypioneers who were mathematicians.
Instead of me presenting the historical backgrounds of these mathematicians directly, I decided to distribute alist of these mathematicians throughthe Google Drive and Wikipedia.
Students in the lecture hall were asked
to access to the list through capturing
the QR codes, and four of these math-ematicians linked to their Wikipedia
pages were assigned to each student toread in class.
Then, they were asked to summarize their profiles into the following
categories, namely Gender, Name,
Origin, Date of Birth, Educational
Achievements (both undergraduate and graduate studies), and Major
Contributions in Computer Science.
The summary was submitted to mycustomized Google Form, and then I
was able to use the “Summary of Response” to present the collaborative
results statistically. From the statistics,
students could see clearly that the majority of the early pioneers of computer scientists are mathematicians with
degrees in mathematics.
At the end, questions were asked tofollow up on their reflections about
the results, and students were able toagree together from their personal research experience instantly during theclass.
Besides Google Drive and QR codes,
I made use of mobile technology andother equipment in the designed lecture with intervention. Students wereasked to bring their own mobile devices to the lecture and complete theactivity by using their personal devices.
I provided my department’s iPads tosome of these students upon their request because their own devices might
be too small or not fast enough. Also,
the statistical results were constantly
updated and shown on the projector
screen so students can immediately
see their contribution to the class.
From my informal observation, students kept peeking on the interim statistic to see if their contribution madeany difference. Meanwhile, I encouraged the students to discuss together
about their own results when they
were searching the information. During the lesson, no student reported
that they had any difficulty to accessto the Google Drive, use the QR code
through their mobile devices, access tothe WiFi network, and reviewing theinformation on the Internet.

Critical Reflection
The lesson approach made use of theidea of providing the cloud-computing platform as the scaffold to assist
the students to use their learned skills
and knowledge about mathematicians
and conclude that computer science isa theoretical and practical field contributed by the early mathematicians.
Instead of having a student or theteacher to summarize and analyze theprofiles on behalf of the whole intelligences, the task was distributed toeach one and used their intelligenceto summarize, analyze, and present
to the community. One idea impliedby the M.I. theory is distributive andcollaborative knowledge construction.
Instead of believing that someone has
all necessary intelligence, the idea suggests everyone can contribute to theknowledge base somehow. Althoughsome students could not complete
reading all the profiles of mathematicians during the class, the anonymity
shown on the screen could help relieve
the stress of students in completing
every single task.
Furthermore, the cloud computing
technology allows students to accessto information even when they leave
the classroom. After the class, I left
statistical results on the Google Drive
so students could access to it afterclass. Although I did not keep track of
who completed all the submissions oraccessed it again after class, the option
is available for further design of thecourse. In fact, I could have invited thestudents to continue to submission
after the lecture, and generate a completed figure. Since the objective of
helping students recognize the contributions of mathematicians in computer science was achieved, I decided
to keep the information as it was.
Nonetheless, the students were actively engaged and they participated in
the learning activity without seeking
for extra credit. The motivation camefrom their intrinsic desire to contribute to the community rather than the
extrinsic bonus. I think that is a good
indicator that the built scaffold is successful to assist students walk throughthe ZPD and become independent

learners in this regard. Instead of theteacher serving as the assistant, thetechnology can serve as a major rolein helping students complete an assigned task to build new knowledge as
the outcome.
In my opinion, I believe that this activity is not suitable for students tocomplete individually outside of theclassroom because the immediate
discussion was necessary to reinforce
the idea. Although it was possible toextend the distributed construction
to outside of classroom, I wanted tomake sure students can instantly readthe statistic and discuss with me who
also serves as a major assistant role in
the ZPD.
Google Drive is mainly used in myintervention to illustrate the idea of
ZPD and M.I. in the cloud environment. Originally, this cloud technology along with QR code is not originally designed particularly for education.
Yet, it possesses every element that canbe turned into an educational technology elastically. Certainly, some othercloud applications have been designedwith pre-defined purposes, but theflexibility for customization is limited
and it ends up with so many different
apps for different purposes. If there
was a unified platform where teachers
can easily build new applications on it
while commonly adopted by students
using across platforms, it would be
more useful and flexible. At the end,
I think educational psychology is thefoundation of the usage of educational
technology for learning and teaching,
and the underlying theories guide thedesigner and educators in technology
aided learning. Through this experience, we can see that simple tool canbe already the simplest way for successin helping students to learn effectively.
Professor Gary Ka-Wai Wong,teaches and conducts research at The
Hong Kong Institute of Education,
Hong Kong, China. He was a presenter at IAFOR’s ACE / ACSET2014 Conference

Eye Magazine Seventh Edition | 57

Conflict Irresolution:

Post-Postmodernism andthe Legacy of Ironic Subversion

By Michael Heitkemper-Yates
58 | Eye Magazine Seventh Edition

Locating the
Post-Postmodern“Dear Gaston,” the narrator begins in
Donald Barthelme’s (1977) letter to a
fictitious literary critic, “Yes, you areabsolutely right—Postmodernism isdead” The letter continues:
So we have a difficulty. Whatshall we call the New Thing,which I haven’t encountered yet
but which is bound to be out
there somewhere? Post-PostModernism sounds, to me, a little
lumpy. I’ve been toying with the
Revolution of the Word II, or the
New Revolution of the Word . . . .
It should have the word “new” init somewhere. The New Newness?
Or maybe the Post-New? It’s a
problem. I await your comments
and suggestions. If we’re going toslap a saddle on this rough beast,
we’ve got to get moving.
And in the thirty odd years since thewriting of Barthelme’s letter, he andhis narrator have not been alone inthis pronouncement. With tedious
regularity, the death of postmodernism
has been echoing through the halls of
academia, strewn across the pages ofcountless critical journals, and publicly
mourned at literature and cultural
studies conferences for decades. But
somehow the death of postmodernism
seems to have maneuvered its own
obituary into some kind of endlessmise-en-abyme feedback loop of
sudden passings and Lazarus-likereappearances. And yet in spite of theserecurring reports of postmodernism’s
demise, as Charles B. Harris writes
in the American Book Review, “thecorpse remains suspiciously lively.
Like Barthelme’s Dead Father, it
continues to walk among us, not only
prompting frequent sightings (a newnovel by Barth here, one by Federman
there) but producing offspring . . .
.” (Harris, 2002). And reminiscentof the list of ungainly neologisms
suggested by Barthelme’s critic, these“offspring” of the undead and undying
fathers of postmodernism have
had to put up with (or have coinedfor themselves) all manner of new
propositions for the supposedly “NewThing” imagined as the successor to
first-wave postmodernism: “ImageFiction,” “Blank Fiction,” “Tragic
Realism,” “Psychological Realism,”“Speculative Realism,” “Crackpot
Realism,” “Avant-Pop,” “New-NewPost,” “PoPoMo,” “Long Modernism,”“New Sincerity,” and even “the [new]novel of intimacy.”
However, the category most generally
attached to this contemporary
generation of fictions (notwithstanding
it’s lumpiness) appears to be “postpostmodernism.” But what does thissecond prefix entail? And where is thepost- in post-postmodernism actually
pointing?
While each of the previous categories
varies significantly in the emphasis
it places on matters of textual form,
historical moment, and referentiality,
throughout
thecontemporary
criticism of post-postmodernism
runs a recurring theme of “post-ironicsincerity.” This post-ironic sincerity, as
articulated by critics and writers suchas Samuel R. Delany, Lynne Tillman,
Jonathan Franzen, David Foster
Wallace, and Robert L. McLaughlin,describes a re-assessment of theironic nature of the postmodern text
and a movement toward a new setof aesthetic positions and politicalresponsibilities no longer directly
guided by ironic narrative forms andparodic constructs.
This paper represents an attempt totrace the development of this postpostmodern literature of post-ironicsincerity and briefly examine its
formal and political relationships tothe type of ironic fiction practiced bypostmodern writers such as Thomas
Pynchon, Robert Coover, Donald

Barthelme, and Ishmael Reed. It is
proposed that the critical, self-reflexive,
metafictional narrative forms exploredby Pynchon, Coover, Barthelme, andReed during the postmodern periodof ironic dominance have led to anincreasing tendency toward a more
direct, unaffected mode of narrative.
This post-postmodern mode of postironic sincerity not only signals achange in the cultural values andpolitical crises of late twentieth andearly twenty-first century America,
this change also indicates that theironic mode, with its matrix of playful
linguistics, parodic subversions oforthodox ontology and epistemology,
and its radical ironic indeterminacy,
is no longer adequate to the task of
confronting the problems faced intoday’s post-postmodern world.

The End of Irony?
Despite the reactionary opinions ofmedia pundits and journalists such as
Vanity Fair’s Graydon Carter, who on
September 18, 2001, famously
announced that, “There’s going to be aseismic change. I think it’s the end of
the age of irony. . . Things that wereconsidered fringe and frivolous aregoing to disappear” (Beers, 2001),
actually, the “seismic change” declaredby Carter had been rumbling throughAmerican literature since the late1970s. Even in the mid-career worksof the first-wave fathers of
postmodernism a shift in narrative
form and political focus is readily
apparent. In claustrophobic works
such as Coover’s Gerald’s Party (1985)
and Barthelme’s Paradise (1986) it isclear that a new sense of isolation andcontradiction had entered thepostmodern mix by the 1980s. And
comparison of Reed’s The Terrible
Twos (1982) to his The Terrible Threes(1989), or Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow(1973) to his Vineland (1990), provides
a similar trajectory away from themaddeningrush
ofcomplex,signifying
rhetoric
Eye Magazine Seventh Edition | 59

But somehow the death of postmodernism seems tohave maneuvered its own obituary into some kind ofendless mise-en-abyme feedback loop of sudden
passings and Lazarus-like reappearances.
that characterizes their early fiction
towards an increasingly personalmode of revisionary historicism. In
each of these works the prose isdirected gradually further away fromthe grand histories and myths of thepast, towards a more personal,
domestic, if somewhat uncomfortablytense, approach to the grand histories
and myths of the present.
This continual shift toward new
narrative
explorationsoftheexperiential
moment,towardinnovative approaches to the depictionof personal and group identities,
and toward the formulation of new
narrative means by which to conceiveof personal responsibility and agency,
was brought to the forefront ofAmerican literature by the radical,
ironic poetics of the 1960s and early70s.
Through the parodic metafictional
critiques of these early postmodern
writers the hypocrisies of history andmyth that exist throughout American
culture and society were exposed
throughhumor,
deconstructive
fragmentation, and an incendiary
irony that sought to identify the gaps
in all ontological and epistemologicalconstructs through a self-reflexively
critical approach to the language ofnarrative. Indeed, by looking at the
inner workings of Western myth andAmerican history through the ironicbullet-holes shot in them by thewriters, artists, and other subversivesof the early postmodern period,
many of the dangerous ideologies
hidden behind the self-privileging
60 | Eye Magazine Seventh Edition

constructs of Western society andculture are revealed and opened up
for questioning. These revelations andquestionings were made possible bymeans of a violently critical, highly
ironic mode of parody.
As David Foster Wallace writes in his
oft-cited essay, “E Unibus Pluram:
Television and U.S. Fiction” (1993):“. . . irony—exploiting gaps between
what’s said and what’s meant,between how things try to appear
and how they really are—is the timehonored way artists seek to illuminate
and explode hypocrisy”. That thefirst-wave postmodern writers andartists turned their ironic weaponry
upon the “lone-gunman Westerns,
paternalistic sitcoms, and jut-jawed
law enforcement circa 1960,” Wallace
argues, was due to the fact thatthese artificial idols and images ofauthority represented, celebrated, andperpetuated, “a deeply hypocritical
American self-image”.
In “E Unibus Pluram,” Wallace
argues that, “Irony in sixties art andculture started out the same way
youthful rebellion did. It was difficultand painful, and productive—afirm diagnosis of a long-denied
disease”. “The assumptions behind
this early postmodern irony,” writes
Wallace, were frank, idealistic, andvery convincingly maintained “thatetiology and diagnosis pointed toward
cure; that revelation of imprisonment
yielded freedom”. However, despite
the intense idealism behind thepolitics of first-wave postmodernism,much of the tension and self-

awareness present in the literature of
the 1980s is directly informed by the
anxiety surrounding the disappointing
realization that, while these 1960s
and 70s “revelations” did manage toyield significant advancements in theactualization of artistic expression,these explosive attacks on American
hypocrisy did not yield much freedom
beyond the insulated bounds ofthe privileged sectors of American
intellectual culture and the elitesociety of the American art world.
Rather than a new world orderof free expression and unbridledcreativity, with the deconstructionof pure ontological myth and pureepistemological history came thelocation of the economic and interpersonal mechanisms of power andcontrol that continue to exert theirinfluences on the course of world
events. In response to the locationof these new threats, the character ofnarrative irony also changed; flights ofironic fancy are replaced by a growing
disaffection for the bounds of theprison-house of language that theearly postmodern artists and theorists
had identified and explored. In the
1980s, parody and self-reflexivity
turn increasingly inward, and areoften directed against the frustrating
limitationsofthesupposedly
autonomous object of the text and its
linguistically mediated ontology.
In works such as Lynne Tillman’s
Living with Contradictions (1982),
Ntozake Shange’s Sassafrass, Cypress& Indigo (1982), Audre Lorde’s Zami:
A New Spelling of My Name (1982),

and Kathy Acker’s Blood and Guts
in High School (1984), metafictional
tactics of parody and narrative collage
are brought to bear against the objectof the text, the object of the self, andthe place of these objects within an
American culture of production andconsumption. And in Acker’s My
Death, My Life, by Pier Paolo Pasolini(1983), these forms of objectification
are investigated by the text’s multiple
narrators and ever-shifting angles
of narrative approach. As one of thenovella’s many narrators states:
I’m an object. Do you, reader,know anything about humanobjects, what caused them: you
with your clawings, your gripes,
your grippes, your petty boyfriend
complaints? This, all this, isobject. Scream. I dream of being
punished. Scream. I dream of
torment that will carry me overthe edge and make me act without
considering the action. I dream ofhaving a body and it and thinking
being one monster. (Aker 1983, p.
281-82)This terrible realization that allis only language creates a similar
anxiety in Lynne Tillman’s Livingwith Contradictions, especially in thecollection’s title story. Musing selfreflexively to herself on the natureof her limited, verbally constructed,
commercially mediated experience,
Tillman’s narrator muses:
People are intimate with theiranalysts, if they’re lucky. What
could be more intimate than anadvertisement for Ivory soap? It’s
impossible not to be affected.
[. . .]The manufacture of desire and theevidence of real desire. But ‘real’
desire is for what—for what is realor manufactured? (Tillman 1982,
p. 121)
In decline is the flippant, satiricalhumorofPynchon,Coover,Barthelme, and Reed—the ironic
absurdity gradually replaced by a
growing sense of insecurity and selfcontradiction. Indeed, in throwing
back the curtain to reveal the verbal
nature of all interpretations andarticulations of experience, many of
the characters and narrators of 1980s
American fiction discover, as a result,that they share only as much stake inreality as an Ivory soap advertisement
or a string of subject-verb agreements.
As apparent in the previous examples,the sense of insignificance thatdeveloped in the texts of the periodalso reflected an angst that many artists
and writers were feeling in regards
to their place within an American
culture crowded with the false art ofmarketing propaganda, big-budget
fluff, and commercialism. In otherworks of the period, such as DeLillo’s
White Noise (1984), Ellis’s Less Than
Zero (1985), Tim O’Brien’s The
Nuclear Age (1985), and Paul Auster’s
In the Country of Last Things (1987),
the objectification of experience isportrayed as the source of a distinct
denial of authenticity. This denial isinterrogated in these novels throughan ironic assessment of the disparate
and often directly contradictory things
that Americans buy—both materiallyand consciously—to confirm theirsuccess, assert their independence, andaffirm their identity. In grueling detail,these works catalogue the loss of selfthat attends the expansion of popular
culture into the lives of an American
mass-market populace of paranoid,
image-obsessed consumers.
The “image-fiction” that developed asa reply to this mass-market America,
according to Wallace’s analysis,
followed the terms of a pop-centerednarrative irony straight into the mirrorthat it held up to itself. In definition,
Wallace writes:
Image-fiction is basically a further
involution of the relations between
lit and pop that blossomedwith sixties postmodernists. If
the postmodern church fathers
found pop images valid referents
and symbols in fiction, and if in
the seventies and early eighties
this appeal to the features ofmass culture shifted from use tomention, certain avant-gardists
starting to treat of pop and TV
and watching as themselves fertile
subjects, the new fiction of image
uses the transient received mythsof popular culture as a world inwhich to imagine fictions about‘real,’ albeit pop-mediated, publiccharacters. (Wallace 1993, p. 171)
The advantage of the imagefiction approach to the problems ofimmaterial authenticity, “real” reality,
and the late twentieth-century
proliferation of the “fictual”, Wallace
claims, is a “re-imagining [of ] what
human life might truly be like overthere across the chasms of illusion,
mediation, demographics, marketing,image, and appearance” (Wallace1993). However, Wallace states withdisappointment, in becoming one
with the “passive, addictive TVpsychology” of consumer America,
image-fiction does not move beyond
the self-stifling constraints of its own
irony-saturated discourse. Wrappedin the self-silencing entropy of ironic
self-consciousness, the corporate
worlds projected by the imagefictions of writers such as DeLillo,
Ellis, O’Brien, and Auster in the
1980s, as well as those of Douglas
Coupland, Mark Leyner, and Ricardo
Cortez Cruz in the 1990s, according
to Wallace’s assessment, act more to
support the expansion of neoliberal
Capitalism than they do to secure thefurther advancement of new forms ofindividual expression and the creative
renovation of American culture(Wallace, 1993).
For just below the surface of thesimulacrum, beneath the objects ofconsumer capital that arrive alreadybearing the name of some designer or
Eye Magazine Seventh Edition | 61

some producer (as in Ellis’s Less Than
Zero, American Psycho [1991], andGlamorama [1998]), and within themyth of some resonant substantialitythat a given object is said to contain,
represent, or satisfy (such as the
Dylar in DeLillo’s White Noise, or the
baseball in his Underworld [1997]),
is nothing but desire and solipsism.
As Jedediah Purdy interprets it in his
analysis of post-postmodern irony
in For Common Things: Irony, Trust,and Commitment in America Today,
through the profound emptiness andparanoia explored in works such asthese, “we [as reader] sense an unreal
quality in our words and even in our
thoughts. They are superficial, they
belong to other people and otherpurposes; they are not ours, and it
may be that nothing is properly ours”(Purdy, 2000). But how did the tables
turn so completely on the idealistic
radicalism that evolved during thepostmodern period?

dissimulation and double-speak, todivert consumer attention from its
own sales-pitch. Writers and critics
such as Wallace, McLaughlin, andChristy Wampole make a very
plausible case for this development,
for the forms of ironic dissimulationand the self-denigrating reflexivity ofirony do make the ironic mode ofnarrative an ideal mode for thecreation of entertaining, persuasivepieces of advertising. However, as thisshift occurs and pop-critical irony
begins to become indistinct from
simple pop-irony, its socio-critical
purpose is replaced by a financial
purpose and its subversive edge
becomes dull.
That this is so, Wallace argues (withmore than a trace of Kierkegaard in
his analysis), is due to the fact that,“irony, entertaining as it is, serves
an exclusively negative function. It’s
critical and destructive, a groundclearing. Surely this is the way our……. American hypocrisy did notyield much freedom beyond theinsulated bounds of the privileged
sectors of American intellectual
culture and the elite society of theAmerican art world.
According to Wallace and Franzen,
the profound emptiness in much of
the literature of the 1980s is due inpart to the contemporary appropriationof ironic forms by popular media suchas television and other market-driven
vehicles of commercial advertising(Wallace, 1993); (Franzen, 1996). By
evacuating ironic forms of their social
purpose and refashioning them into
flashy, multi-voiced tools of consumer
appeal, irony becomes a highly
effective weapon in the commercial
battle to subvert consumer suspicion,
createdesireand,through
62 | Eye Magazine Seventh Edition

postmodern fathers saw it. But irony’s
singularly unuseful when it comesto constructing anything to replace
the hypocrisies it debunks” (Wallace,1993). To Wallace this negativity
amounts to a kind of tyranny of
emptiness and vacuity based on arhetoric of, “I don’t really mean what
I say” (Wallace, 1993), and to Wallace
and other contemporary American
artists and writers such as JonathanFranzen, Dave Eggers, Jonathan
Safran Foer, and Jeffrey Eugenides,
such a position runs counter to any
form of creative expression that

consciously—and conscientiously—
conceives of itself as other than amarketing tool.

Ironizing Irony,or, Sincerity in the
Post-Postmodern
MomentAs Robert McLaughlin writes in“Post-Postmodern
Discontent,”
because the hyper-visual, sales-driven
culture of American media has “coopted postmodernism’s bag of tricks
to deleterious effect, writers of fiction,
especially those who see themselves as
the heirs of postmodernism, need tofind a way beyond self-referential irony
to offer the possibility of construction”(McLaughlin, 2008). In answer tothis possibility, post-postmodern
fictions seek to show that: “selfreferentiality by itself collaborates
with the culture of the consumer
technology to create a society ofstyle without substance, of language
without meaning, of cynicism without
belief, of virtual communities without
human connection, of rebellion
without change” (2008, p. 115). While
this literary exhaustion was certainly
not the intended socio-culturalconsequence behind the writing ofsuch self-reflexive texts as Pynchon’sV (1963), Coover’s Pricksongs &Descants (1968), Barthelme’s SnowWhite, and Reed’s Mumbo Jumbo,
nevertheless, such is the characterof “consumer technology” that thesubversive nature of irony must itself
be subverted in order for literature toremain subversive.
Wallace’s suggestion in “E Unibus
Pluram,” repeated throughout his Brief
Interviews with Hideous Men (1999),
Consider the Lobster (2005), This is Water(2009), and woven into the rhetoricof his posthumously published novel
The Pale King (2011), is the suggestionthat the next step forward, towards

genuine substance and the negation ofnegative ironic negation, is precisely
that—the construction of a counter
irony, or, reverse “anti-irony” throughan embracing of sincere forms ofexpression and “single-entendre
values.” Wallace (1993) writes:
The next real literary ‘rebels’ inthis country might well emerge
as some weird bunch of ‘antirebels’ . . . who have the childish
gall actually to endorse singleentendre values. Who treat
old untrendy human troubles
and emotions in U.S. life withreverence and conviction. Who
eschew self-consciousness andfatigue. These anti-rebels would
be outdated, of course, before theyeven started. Too sincere. Clearly
repressed. Backward, quaint,naïve, anachronistic. Maybe
that’ll be the point, why they’ll be
the next real rebels.
Although it is, perhaps, too early to
say what influence these proposed“anti-rebels” will have on the courseof future literary developments,
nevertheless, formally conservative,
highly “sincere” novels such as Dave
Eggers’s A Heartbreaking Work of
Staggering Genius (2000), JonathanFranzen’s The Corrections (2001),
Jonathan Safran Foer’s Everythingis Illuminated (2002), and Jeffrey
Eugenides’s Middlesex (2002), havealready made their collective mark on
the American literary landscape.
Pushing the dominant literary mode
ever closer to the realm of referentiality,
these works have been lauded fortheir genial humor, their masteryof observed detail, their earnest
concern for human relationships, andtheir heartfelt attempts to articulate
the paradoxes of daily experience.
Convivial, full of quirky, carefully
developed characters, and rife with
uncomfortably awkward “real life”
situations, these novels do not,however, represent the sort of rebellion
one might expect as sufficiently
radical to shake up the literary world
and move it in a new direction. And
yet, all evidence suggests that such a
move is in the process of taking place.
Whether this move simply represents
a market fluctuation, or is actuallyindicative of a deeper transition is
unclear, but one thing is clear, thedifference in mode between the ironic
fiction of the postmodern period andthat of its post-postmodern successor
is noticeable and significant.
With this return to character, emotion,and personal intimacy comes a drastic
alteration to the rhetorical contortionsof Coover and Reed. Likewise, thecollage-narrative forms of Pynchon
and Barthelme are critically revisedin these post-postmodern texts andexpanded into increasingly referential
textual territory. And instead ofheaping the trash of the world
onto the reader—in the manner of
Reed’s machine-gun signifyin(g) andBarthelme’s philosophical dreck—
post-postmodern writers are far more
likely to pick through the rubbish ofcontemporary experience and describe
it to the reader in detail, itemizing
every
ingredient,enumerating
its provenance, and proposing its
potential function within a global

matrix of socio-cultural relations.
The current post-postmodern modal
shift back towards the threshold ofexperience marks a departure fromthe realm of narrative abstraction anda distinct movement towards a more
realistic mode of shared, interpersonal
discourse, but is this emerging “postironic” mode actually any less ironic
in its sincere approach? Might not the
post- in post-ironic, like the post- in
postmodern, be better thought of as arelational demarcation? Could not the
post-ironic actually indicate a further
advance in the evolution of irony as amode of literature and discourse?
Obviously, it is far too early topropose an articulate reply to these
post-postmodern questions. But if
there is one thing that connects eachof the authors, whether modern,postmodern, or post-postmodern, it istheir enduring appeal to the continued
exploration of language. As Ihab
Hassan writes in The Dismembermentof Orpheus: “Language, after all, still
remains the deepest habit of our mind,
our most thorough inheritance fromdead or vanished gods” (1971, p. 17).
And like any inheritance, it is now up
to its inheritors to decide the future of
its use. For the question of language
will always remain: which habits ofuse to discard and which habits of use
are in need of further revision.
Michael Heitkemper-Yates is at theGraduate School of Humanities
at Kobe University, Japan. A fullyreferenced version of this article canbe sought by request from the Editor
at publications@iafor.org

Thank you for reading theseventh issue of

Eye Magazine

Issue 7 - Summer 2015
Editor: Michael Liam Kedzlie
Assistant Editor: Lindsay Lafreniere
Original Design & Layout: Thaddeus Pope
Produced by:
The International Academic Forum (IAFOR)
Published under Creative Commons
Attribution 4.0 International Licence
ISSN: 2187-8935
Photograph by Bentoboxd / Flickr