Encountering the Other
As
we were watching "Wanted" that we had recorded (there are so few shows
that are even half-decent that you have to enjoy what you can, even if
it is a network ripoff of "Shield"), I casually mentioned to my wife
that back in the day, they couldn't play "Magnum P.I." in Finland
because it was considered too violent. She thought that this was very
funny. We also watched the Conan O'Brien's show about his recent visit
to Finland. The one thing in Finland that surprised me by being the
most different from what I remembered were the doors to individual
apartments and the hallways of apartment buildings. Those little name
tags on the mail slots are so very quaint.
Out of curiosity, earlier today we went to an open house in the new 30-story pair of sleek condominium buildings that stand next to us. Two open houses, actually, since the first one was a one bedroom plus den, and whose size was less than two thirds of the size of our present place and it felt even smaller and cramped. Even so, the asking price was more than what we paid for ours almost two years ago. And even though the building itself is practically new, the overall quality of the apartment itself was not any better than ours, as far as I could tell. The lobby and the common elements are nicer, yes, but not that much nicer. The second one was a 1500 sq. ft. penthouse apartment which was very nice (especially the kitchen), although I still considered the asking price of $375K to be somewhat steep. But as they say, the one who gives is crazy, but not the one who asks.
Before the open house, we spent the afternoon in the Port Credit area at the Lake Ontario, since we haven't been to that area for a while and it's +10C outside. And for tomorrow, they were predicting +16C, which is much nicer than winter and snow. We stopped by the local library before going to eat, and I naturally checked out the comic book section, me having such a short attention span and all. This particular library had many manga books, although for some reason almost all of them were printed Japanese style so you read them from end to beginning. This annoys me, since I have once tried to read such a book and had to stop after ten pages because the effort gave me such a headache. Fortunately, there were also some manga books printed in a friendlier format, for example, a collection of Ranma 1/2 which I hadn't read before. My wife likes Maison Ikkoku very much but dislikes Ranma, since she finds it confusing.
The Japanese-style manga books tried to offer an excuse why they don't use the simple mirroring technique in English translations that the Japanese characters that are part of the picture would then also be mirrored. Right... and this is relevant to the 99.9% of the readers who don't speak Japanese how? Of course I know that the real reason for printing the manga books in such an offputting format is that the kids who go through the unnatural effort could then think that they are somehow special. Whatever. If anybody wants me to read something that they have made, or if they just want to make some point to me, they can goddamnit do so in my language and use a format that I will bother to read. Otherwise, forget it.
For the humour value, I also borrowed some Tintin comic books that I hadn't read since I was a kid. Now in my older years, I found it funny how very... French everything in these books is, even though all names and places have been anglicized in translations. These people truly are a propositional nation and Tintin is their ideal citizen, the embodiment of everything the French at least aspired to be. These books were also so old that one of them included a scene where Tintin puts on a blackface to go spying undercover, ending up looking very offensive to modern readers, somewhat like the certain character in old licorice boxes. I wonder if I should contact the library administration and ask them about this. I also had to wonder about the facial characteristics of a certain businessman who tried to foment a war between two Latin American nations to better sell them arms.
Out of curiosity, earlier today we went to an open house in the new 30-story pair of sleek condominium buildings that stand next to us. Two open houses, actually, since the first one was a one bedroom plus den, and whose size was less than two thirds of the size of our present place and it felt even smaller and cramped. Even so, the asking price was more than what we paid for ours almost two years ago. And even though the building itself is practically new, the overall quality of the apartment itself was not any better than ours, as far as I could tell. The lobby and the common elements are nicer, yes, but not that much nicer. The second one was a 1500 sq. ft. penthouse apartment which was very nice (especially the kitchen), although I still considered the asking price of $375K to be somewhat steep. But as they say, the one who gives is crazy, but not the one who asks.
Before the open house, we spent the afternoon in the Port Credit area at the Lake Ontario, since we haven't been to that area for a while and it's +10C outside. And for tomorrow, they were predicting +16C, which is much nicer than winter and snow. We stopped by the local library before going to eat, and I naturally checked out the comic book section, me having such a short attention span and all. This particular library had many manga books, although for some reason almost all of them were printed Japanese style so you read them from end to beginning. This annoys me, since I have once tried to read such a book and had to stop after ten pages because the effort gave me such a headache. Fortunately, there were also some manga books printed in a friendlier format, for example, a collection of Ranma 1/2 which I hadn't read before. My wife likes Maison Ikkoku very much but dislikes Ranma, since she finds it confusing.
The Japanese-style manga books tried to offer an excuse why they don't use the simple mirroring technique in English translations that the Japanese characters that are part of the picture would then also be mirrored. Right... and this is relevant to the 99.9% of the readers who don't speak Japanese how? Of course I know that the real reason for printing the manga books in such an offputting format is that the kids who go through the unnatural effort could then think that they are somehow special. Whatever. If anybody wants me to read something that they have made, or if they just want to make some point to me, they can goddamnit do so in my language and use a format that I will bother to read. Otherwise, forget it.
For the humour value, I also borrowed some Tintin comic books that I hadn't read since I was a kid. Now in my older years, I found it funny how very... French everything in these books is, even though all names and places have been anglicized in translations. These people truly are a propositional nation and Tintin is their ideal citizen, the embodiment of everything the French at least aspired to be. These books were also so old that one of them included a scene where Tintin puts on a blackface to go spying undercover, ending up looking very offensive to modern readers, somewhat like the certain character in old licorice boxes. I wonder if I should contact the library administration and ask them about this. I also had to wonder about the facial characteristics of a certain businessman who tried to foment a war between two Latin American nations to better sell them arms.
If you are reading Tintin comics, you should read Tintin in the Land of the Soviets, the first Tintin book. I just wonder why this was not published in Finland until 90's. :)
Posted by Anonymous | 2:47 AM
I'm not so sure I can go along with the leap from the Frenchness of everything in Tintin to France's being a propositional nation. First of all, Hergé's Belgian. Even if we grant that francophone Belgium is just a special case of France, it still doesn't follow that because a story domesticates foreign characters and climes (like most Hollywood movies do) and because a story's hero is the ideal citizen (like, say, Superman) that the nation giving rise to the story is propositional. I see no correlation between idealized heroes and domesticated foreigners and being a propositional nation. This is not to say that France isn't propositional, just that Tintin isn't proof of it.
robert
Posted by Anonymous | 3:52 AM