Science Fiction and Fantasy Analysis Class

Taking up English 146 now. Its listed as New Trends in Anglo-Saxon Literature. But in reality its actually an SFF analysis class under Prof. Emil Flores. Totally worth taking.

Some stuff I learned:

A discussion on Pol Anderson's Queen of Air and Darkness became two meetings about culture in a globalized world. There are two kinds of powers in the world, hard power denoting physical military might, and soft power through culture and economics.

Power through culture. Why is that when we say fantasy we mean Western fantasy like knights and elves and dragons? And by dragons, the western dragons, not the long swirly chinese ones? Its because of the sheer dominance of Western thought, at least in that aspect.

The reason why England created fairys and elves was to differentiate them from Greek and Roman literature, which Tolkien turned into Lord of the Rings. American writing in the 1800s sought to define what was american. Kim Stanley Robinson wrote about defining a Martian Literature in his Red-Green-Blue Mars novels, as to separate itself from Earth.

Asia is moving up. Korea is now having her revenge over the Japanese, K-Pop and Korean Telenovelas is now popular in Japan, their former colonizers are learning Korean so that they could translate the telenovelas directly. The same way that people in the philippines are learning japanese to watch anime better.

Disneyland in Europe is not doing so well... Because across the river, they have REAL castles. But Cowboy movies, already boring in the US, are a hit all over Europe, just because its unique.

And local cinema too! Right now, a little known 1970's film called Weng weng: For yu'r height only, staring 2'11" midget Weng Weng in a james bond parody is a CULT CLASSIC in the US and CANADA! YouTube has trailers! DVD release soon! Wow! XD XD

More stories to come. Like how 169 filipino families control 70% of the countries wealth, leaving 16M families 30%. Or how there was a 1950's filipino movie where the weakling hero transformes in a puff of smoke into a hyper-powered Nazi (complete with the SS uniform) who fights crime using Karate (ugh!).