Digital Culture and Literary Studies

Moby-Dick as a Paragon of the Literary Side of Digital Culture.

The humanities are about the expressions of the tensions and realities of human life. In the digital age, literature introduces us to the key tensions of living in and making sense of a wired world. The challenges of the digital age are not different from those of previous generations except they are being applied to rapidly advancing technology. Moby-Dick is a worthy text for the mediation of digital and literary themes because of its commentary on the tensions of human life. 

The debate over the creation and classification of content is a major debate of the digital age. The digital age has introduced tools such as Diigo, Pinterest, and Storify for classifying and sorting out information, but the idea of categorizing as a means of understanding is nothing new. In his chapter on “Cetology” in Moby-Dick, Ishmael attempts to introduce readers to the variety of whales that live in the ocean and their place in the animal world. His use of literary terms such as “folio” and “quarto” for classifying whales by size brings up the question of how we classify literature in general (Melville 119). Moby-Dick in itself is an interesting text because it is difficult to label as either a novel or an encyclopedia or a memoir because it breaks or bends the rules of each of these genres in some ways. Classifying Moby-Dick is one thing, but classifying digital content can be another fish entirely. However, understanding how literature is classified offers good perspective for understanding the nature of the other: if you know what something is, you know what to do with it and how it works. If something is a combination of genres, you may identify it by its different components. 

Kaylee analyzed the travel industry in the digital age. Moby-Dick, Kaylee remarks, is Ishmael's travel narrative.   Another way Moby-Dick can be seen as a travel narrative for the journey of navigating an ocean of information on a search for a specific goal or experience. Just like in the tourism industry, Ishmael brings together lots of information to create a journey for the reader, evaluating best and worst sources and ideas to sell his experience. Kelsey focused on the role of metadata for her research project. Analyzing metadata works for making sense of massive amounts of information to find meanings and interpretations. This sort of information can be put to good use. Kayla Swan, who focused on online citizen journalism, saw Ishmael as the ultimate citizen reporter, faced with questions on the ethics of sharing the story of the Pequod and the responsibility to help readers understand the situation he observed. 

Another context for the study of literature in the digital age is in terms of the role of mythology. Mythology is nothing new, but today's modern myths of movie franchises and fandoms are perpetuated online through digital culture, and the popularity of the mass media is faced every day by individual students. Moby-Dick has its own mythology in popular and academic culture, but in addition to this it is a metaphor for the role of mythology: the White Whale is the ultimate myth, Ahab is the ultimate believer in this myth; and Ishmael questions a lot of what he sees on the ship and in the mythology of whaling. Every individual within a mythology interprets a myth's symbols and their functions differently, as Ahab's officers question the symbols of the dubloon (385-89). Furthermore, every individual defines mythology differently, and they use it and remix it at will: online content proliferates and remixes copyrighted material regardless of restrictions. As Ishmael observes of whales, and perhaps of humankind's ideas, one man's loose fish is another's fast fish (354). 

Finally, evaluating the tensions of literary and digital cultures requires entering the conversation online. The conversation is as old as time itself, but the medium is new and it is in a lot of different ways to a lot of different people, not just scholars. Studying digital culture in the context of literature allows students to see their ideas as a means to participation as well as an end to self-expression.

Embracing the Creative Mode of Literary Studies Through Remix

For the optimal study of literature in the digital age, I propose an approach based on remixing and remaking the content of original texts and analyzing such re-creations of studied texts. The purpose of this approach is to allow students to have broader perspectives of literary texts other than those discussed in a formal classroom or scholarly setting. One of the main difficulties of the age we live in is being able to identify different perspectives and negotiate them. Placing a text in a different format can allow for different understandings of the text than otherwise possible. The curriculum of a literary course can be broadened to include re-tellings and adaptations of original texts, including dramatized adaptations as well as children's literature, recreation in a new genre, and remixed online content. Recall that some of the first popular novels of the eighteenth century, including Pamela and Camilla, were written in epistolary form. Frankenstein's frame story is a series of letters of a sea captain to his sister in England, in which he encloses the main story. Some passages in classic literature, as in the the books of Psalms and Isaiah in the King James Bible or Ahab's monologues in Moby-Dick, can be rewritten as poetry, and rewriting prose passages as verse can isolate words, rhythms, and other aspects of the passage that allow for consideration of the text as poetry.

 In a course based on remixed content from classic literature, students will also be encouraged to find, create, and share online remixed content such as memes, blogs, videos, and pop songs or raps. These different media allow for different perspectives of the original texts and enhance their studies. Epistolary literature or dialouge can be rewritten as a series of tweets on Twitter or status updates on Facebook. A course based on the remixing of classic texts will emphasize both the creative and academic aspects of literary studies. Allowing students to create their own content gives them a sense of empowerment, allows them to share their perspective about the content in question, and gives them a personal bond with the course material. 

Traditional academic scholarship will neither be disregarded nor held up as the sole standard for literary understanding, but both approaches will be emphasized as a medium for finding meanings within texts. A course based on remixing classic literary texts is meant to allow students to think about literature in terms of its complexity and the relevance of its ideas in today's world.

Final Project: How it's Looking right Now. Feedback Welcome

A thesis is like a scientific equation.  You need certain elements to come together to create a certain product. I am not entirely sure what the final product is going to be.  But I am now going to take this opportunity to lay out my ingredients on the table to see what I have and will likely end up with. This is not my final thesis and venue, but just me thinking through my ideas.  Lots of feedback would be welcome.

I want to somehow respond to my ideas on immersion from the midterm.  A good secondary term for immersion is engagement.  Using the terms more or less interchangeably, I define an individual's engagement or immersion within a fandom as a relationship with a fandom with the end goal of promoting a change change of value within the fandom, either for oneself or for the fan community.  Open immersion adheres to the values of the fan community and compromises with them to create value.  Closed immersion is only interested in the individual's veiw of how a fandom/fans should exist or behave and seeks to tear them down.

I also want to return to the idea of memes.  A fandom is a meme or contagious idea, as are the social morays within them.  Cultures have their own distinctive symbols, such as the harpoon or the line to Moby Dick's whalers, or Captain America's shield in the Avengers films.  Like these more physical symbols, there are also internal ideas that spread and change within a culture, like a whaling captain's responsibility to his crew or, to use an Avengers example, "COULSON LIVES!" It can be as simple as a joke or a motto, or as complex as a value judgment about a certain topic delivered by a community or an individual.  I want to understand how memes spreading within a fan community are a manifestation of people working together to add meaning to a fandom and pass judgment on media.  Thus,the  people create the fandom and not just the entertainment industry. (hmm, nice ring to that). Memes are a product of fan immersion.

The 19th-century whaling industry depicted in Moby Dick is its own culture and, in a way, a fandom, at least the way Ishmael regards it and the way Ahab works within it.  The difference between Ishmael and Ahab, as I pointed out in my midterm, is that one is openly immersed and the other is closed.  "Where Ahab errs, it seems clear, is in sacrificing others to his egocentric interpretation of reality[....] Disvaluing speech with other men in his desire for a dialogue with speechless nature, Ahab inevitably experiences the isolation that  lack of communication and lack of community entail" (Barnett 148).  Ahab closes himself off from all other interpretations of the White Whale than his own--human, natural, and supernatural--and charts his course of revenge accordingly.  The closed fan only interprets his fandom his own way and only opens himself to people or media that value his fandom the way he does.  Likewise the media producers that ignore the needs and desires of consumers are unable to sell their product or ignore larger opportunities for profit.  From my reading of the Star Trek Fan Phenomena, what made the difference between Star Trek being a failed TV show and the vibrant fan community it is today were the fans who incessantly clamored the TV networks for a continuation of the show--and that in the days when the internet itself was still the stuff of science fiction.  The digital age has turned fandoms into a force to be reckoned with.

 An open fan, however, is a breeding ground for memes, or in other words values other people's ideas about the value of a fandom and adds them to his own.  Ishmael is symbolic of this type of fan.
  "Ishmael [...] is purged of his antisocial feelings by his commitment to Queequeg and then [...]to humanity in general.  Intellectually saved by repudiating the narrowed perspective of Ahab's quest, and then physically saved by the caring of others, he is returned to a society whose common totems [...] he now willingly embraces" (147).
To put it more simply, Ishmael's experience in whaling culture re-fits him for life in human society in general.  A fan finds meaning and values within their fandom that they apply to real life and not just their narrow-minded quest for satisfaction.  Solidarity with fellow fans produces real-life relationships.  Fandom does not exist just for the sake of the entertainment but for the sake of well-being, not just for the individual but for the community.

My guinea pig for this project will be Marvel's "Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D."  This is a brand new TV show that is linked to a fandom (ie Marvel's Avengers) that is currently enjoying enormous success, although the show itself is currently received with mixed reviews.  I will be examining the success or failure of SHIELD's introduction to fans as a new fandom of its own and within the context of the Avengers fandom, and compare this to fandom evolution in general.  I will also trace the fan responses to the show before it premiered, during the first few weeks, and also the last three or more weeks, between which periods there has been an interesting change in fans' reception to the series.  In other words, how are we seeing the SHIELD fandom being created and adding to the Marvel fan universe?

I am not sure where I would want to submit my paper as of right now, but I would like to submit it to some conference or journal dealing with media or entertainment studies or pop culture/fan culture studies.  I also want this research project to be of benefit to the people who are actually producing the show.  I admit, trying to give Joss Whedon a report about himself sounds like preaching to the choir--but I want to demonstrate my engagement with SHIELD by trying to produce something that could represent a unique form of feedback to the industry about how their product is working and why--in other words, to point out that we are perhaps experiencing a unique phenomenon in the history of fandom. Heck, if I wanted to I could present this at LTUE or a comic-con next year.

The results of this survey  (in other terms, after doing a lot of thinking):
fandoms (Marvel (SHIELD))+memes+fan immersion=a unique phenomenon
argument: The Marvel fandom has the power to make or break the show's success because (1) the Marvel films and characters have a lot of value to the fans, particularly Coulson, (2) the fans are working together to derive value from watching the show, (3) and at a certain threshold of involvement, they will either express common approval or disapproval of the show that will make or break it. 
Then, add something that people in the higher tiers of academia or the industry don't know: Tell you what, I'm going to sleep on that.  The fans create the fandom. Give them stuff to build with.  How about that?  I'll post my final thesis/venue/other main ideas tomorrow or Monday.  I have a headache.  And the hiccups. Bedtime. zzzzz.

Moby-Dick and Fan Culture

What I have decided to focus on for this post is communication within fandoms, particularly criticism about the fandom itself. 

Moby-Dick is considered a unique novel because of the broken or one-sided communication performed by the characters. As with all types of communication, the aggregate of the communication within the novel leads to a certain conclusion.   "[The] atypical nature of most speaking in the novel encourages the negative view[...]that the world is a place where communication is suspect and perhaps impossible" (Barnett 140). Although throughout the book various speeches and conversations are made about the White Whale and Captain Ahab, "the multitude of verbal styles consciously represents the heterogenious collectivity of mankind" (141)  Likewise, indvidual fans think differently and have different ideas, but they all generally come to the same conclusions.  

 Can fandoms be compared to a product?  Technically they start out as a product or series of products, such as a book or movie.   As the item increases in popularity, authentic merchandise as well as fan-created materials begin to circulate.  As people invest themselves emotionally within a fandom, or begin to immerse themselves within it, they seek to know whether or not the immersion is worth their emotional energy based on the opinions of others.  Fans promote fandoms because they like their involvement and seek to express their liking and their identity within it.  This especially happens within social media, because it brings together a variety of people who are not necessarily geographically or socially connected, but sometimes people who share mutual ties of trust.  Interested fans also examine the opinions of other people they don't know to get a feel for what the quality of something is. 

A study by Buzzetto and Moore found "participants exhibiting prosumer behaviors through the use of social media as a means to share comments, perspectives, and opinions about goods and services. As such, mediated messages conveyed through SNS [social networking sites] are influencing purchase decisions with word of mouth messages paramountin consequence and ability to impel action" (Buzzetto-Moore 77.)  In Moby-Dick, Ishmael starts out as a prospective whaler who goes off information he gathers from Queequeg, Captain Peleg, and other people with experience in the industry.  Later, Ishmael becomes such a fan of whaling that he spends most of the book promoting and detailing its work.

Participating in a fandom sometimes requires spending money to attend movie screenings, buy books/DVDs/Blu-rays, or to buy paraphanelia to the materials to make it.  Individuals who want to spend money may be influenced by their peers in their decision whether or not a product is worth investing in.  To give a personal example, I am not a Whovian (follower of Dr. Who), but I want to be because I have seen Whovian-generated memes on Facebook promoted by friends who ARE Whovians, and since I trust their reputation (aka I know they're awesome) I am inclined to think positively of the fandom.  Fandoms can also require serious time commitments (e.g. making memes or costumes). This is also true of online missionary work of the LDS Church, but that's another story.

David Tennant as the 10th Doctor.  Photo Courtesy ABC Radio. 

Then fans make them into something their own. Fans recreate their fandoms on social media sites for bite-sized chunks.  On You Tube, for instance, "they come to consume pop culture like movies, television, and songs thesame way they enjoy cookies or chips – in conveniently packaged bite-size nuggetsmade to be munched easily with increased frequency and maximum speed (Miller,2007) [...] It can be considered a buffet of “snack” videos, highly meeting people’s needs for high-speed entertainment munching" (Shao11 ) It's called getting your daily dose of [Insert fandom name here]).  Consider this version of "Call Me Maybe."  All current episodes of Star Wars in one setting.  If that isn't a pick-me up I don't know what is.

For fans, creating content can fulfill personal needs.  "On Wikipedia, people can create new items or edit existing items with results that are immediate, obvious, and available to the world. Such contributing experience can help people believe that they have an impact on the group and that support their own self-image as an efficacious person (see Bandura, 1995; Kollock)" (14-15).  So when I make or share a meme, I do it because I have observed something insightful about a fandom and want others to know about it.  I want to be a part of the fan dialouge and enlighten others about how awesome something is.

Self-generated meme.  Picture courtesy of ABC.

Then fans evaluate media created by other fans and the industry.  Because the internet is so customized to the individual user, user customization and feedback is vital to sites as well as fandoms and the creators themselves.  "Customization provides individuals with an opportunity to express their interests, tastes, thoughts, and values. It also has the potential to generate positive attitudes and behaviors towards the sites (Carpenter, 2000; Graham, 2002; Kalyanaraman and Sundar, 2006)" (Shao 18).  And in this way, fans get feedback from each other about their common interests and ideas.

So how about Marvel's Agents of SHIELD?  How does social media inform us about this show?  Following the conversations on Facebook that the FB site for the show has posted,  I have noticed the generally negative trend of commentary on the show.   However, the fans who are defending the show usually have the following reasons:

1. The show is just barely starting and it could take a season or two to get on its feet.
2. The show is supposed to be about the AGENTS, so obviously people who are expecting a mini superhero movie every episode WILL be disappointed.
3. The show has a very small budget, which accounts for the lack of certain elements the viewers could be wanting, like having an actual superhero cameo.  For instance, a Hulk cameo would never work because the show does not have the budget for that (and in my opinion, even if it was just Bruce Banner it would still be difficult to pull off because the Avengers are level 6 and don't know that Coulson's back--and they might not respond well to that revelation)
4. The real reason the ratings are low is because people have the option of watching episodes on ABC.com or Hulu on their own time. (not actually said online, but true)
5. People who are now disaffected with the show need to get off the Facebook sit.

However, in the last two weeks the general comments have improved because apparently the episodes were more appealing  (except I'm not sure about last week.  Last week's episode I didn't like so much).

Screenshot of my FB status after last week's episode.

 Discussion within fandoms also focuses on the subject of the media at hand as well as its quality.  This link to a fan discussion board discusses the ending of the latest Marvel film, "Thor: The Dark World" (but it contains serious spoilers, so don't look at it if you haven't seen the movie yet).   Although the participants in this conversation say a lot of different things, their discussion also arrives at a consensus. 


What this is telling me is that although people can be of different backgrounds and ideologies they can still come to an agreement in order to navigate a common problem.  However, this seems to contradict the effect of conversation taken in the earlier quote from Moby-Dick, that communication is hopeless and pointless.  This might seem to make this positive perception of fan culture a little superficial, but taking the quote in context of the book, it is more easily understood.

  Moby-Dick is quite a different animal from today's social networks.  Unless you're FB friends with someone, you can hardly see the character development visible in books that lies behind the day-to-day conversations, and even with FB friends sometimes it's still obscure.  While we can communicate, we do fall short of true understanding, because we cannot see what lies behind people's statements.   This is why there are such terrible miscommunications on board the Pequod, if this holds true.  Ahab is so deeply immersed in his monomania that he refuses to allow the objections of Starbuck or anyone else to deter him from his quest.   Ishmael is keenly aware of the limitations of his relationship with Queequeg, who is from an exotic culture and whose values and ideas are completely different, but this only heightens the sublimity of their friendship.  In fan culture, everyone watches a movie or reads a book differently, even if such media are mass distributed, and it is easier to come to an agreement with people who agree with your tastes than those who do not.  But as far as superficial information-gathering is concerned, it's still the best way to gather information, even if we really don't know how to use it.

Pop Song Remix Needs a Music Video

So for those of you who are familiar with the pop song "Sail" by AWOLNATION, I wrote a spinnoff version called "Whale" based on Moby-Dick.  Dr. Burton said I could post the lyrics below.  I wanted to make a music video, but I wasn't able to record a video over a kareoke track of the original.  So I need help on that end.  But here are the lyrics, as well as a few (crude) illustrations that I would want to use in a potential video.  

Whale!

This is how the crew will die

white whale's gonna make us cry

blame it all on Ahab, baby,

Ahab's gonna work us all

we're gonna pay for his bad call
Blame it on the devil, baby!

Whale!
Whale!
Whale!
Whale!
Whale!

Maybe we should jump this ship,

maybe everyone should quit,

blame it all on not enough pay, baby.

Maybe this just wasn't right

Maybe we picked the wrong fight
blame it on monomania, Baby

Whale!
Whale!
Whale!
Whale!
Whale!

La la la la la
La la la la la oh!
La la la la la,
La la la la la oh!
La la la la la,
La la la la la,

Whale!
Whale!
Whale!
Whale!
Whale!

Deciding to consider a deeper context for this remixed song, I noticed that the original talks about disturbing mental health issues, which reminded me of Ahab's monomania.  So considered in that light, I looked up "monomania" in the text of Moby-Dick.  The Oxford English Dictionary defines monomania as a mental disorder or emotional state in which a patient is continually drawn to a single subject. Modern psychiatry would identify some cases as OCD.  From the usage of the term in the novel, not surprising for a 19th-century text, monomania is regarded as something to be dreaded.  To the monomaniac Ahab, the world around him exists only to satisfy his wishes, and even the "veriest trifles" point to the theme he seeks.  And the things that drive him away from his goal he distrusts.  Ishmael/Melville associates monomania and "madness" in general with disorder, with savagery, with the infernal imagery of the try-pots. As someone who has experienced OCD personally,  an obsession of that caliber does get to be a drag after a while.

 I feel like the song I've written is a reflection of how the crew of the Pequod tries to cope with the instability of its commander.  From both the text of the novel and the song I've written, Ahab's obsession takes its toll on the crew as well.  In writing this I was also inspired by the Divine Comedy music video "Fail," which laments the draining academics of BYU.  

So, anyone wanna help me make a real music video?

 

Translations of Moby Dick

So I decided to translate the first sentence of Moby Dick into another language, and then translate it back to English. In my original blog post, I originally decided to try three different languages, but after thinking about it for a while, I decided to stick with one language.

Ultimately, I wanted to translate the first sentence into a language that was much different from the English language.  As you know, the English language itself can be at times a difficult langague.  Drawing words from other languages the English langue has a wide variety of words that are used.  I have heard from individuals speaking other languages that because of this there are some words that are used in the English language that just can not be translated into other languages.

So the language that I wanted to translate Moby Dick to is: Hebrew.

So here is some background information on Hebrew provided by Wikipedia.

• Modern Hebrew is one of the two official languages in Israel
• Modern Hebrew is written from right to left using the Hebrew alphabet
•  The vocabulary used within the Hebrew language has been altered from its original form due to its reintroduction to various cultures of organic life throughout time.

So this is the first sentence of Moby Dick:

Call me Ishmael. Some years ago--never mind how long precisely--having
little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on
shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of
the world.

So when I translated the first sentence of Moby Dick using google translation this is what I got:

קוראים לי ישמעאל. לפני כמה שנים - לא משנה כמה זמן בדיוק - שיש
מעט או ללא כסף בארנק שלי, ושום דבר לא מעניין אותי במיוחד על
חוף, חשבתי שאפליג על קצת ותראה את החלק המימי של
העולם.

After translating it back to English this is the result:

Call me Ishmael. A few years ago - no matter how long - that
Little or no money in my purse, and nothing particularly interesting to me
Beach, I thought I sail a little and see the watery part of the
World.
  
As a result, though the sentence structure of the sentence was there, the main idea of the sentences could change because  the word shore apparently did not translate back into English, it was instead, replaced with beach.  This little word change for me could even change the way you interpret the text, making the reader wonder if Ishmael is in fact sailing across the world looking for a beach or if it was the beach he had in mind the whole time, or maybe he just wanted to become a beach bum.  Putting all of these thoughts aside, this little exercise made me realize how different languages can be both a barrier and insightful at the same time.

Post-Moby Stress Disorder

So I may definitely be having post-Moby Stress disorder (PMDSD).  I had a nightmare last night in which I was at this large resort on the west coast  that had piers going miles out to sea so people could watch whales up close, and they were very real-looking whales... but all of the sperm whales I saw were white and trying to kill the humans.  It's as if Moby-Dick had an enormous posterity, and somehow they all came out white. And I was scared.  And the people who owned the pier wanted to capture me and my family and turn us into animals to keep at a zoo.  I managed to stop it when I punched my mother in the back three times, and then I woke up.

So I didn't know liking Moby-Dick too much could do that to you.  Either that or I've been having too much fun playing the video game.

And my Western lit class today didn't help.  We were talking about Edward Abbey's Desert Solitaire and Dr. Snyder and one of my classmates kept comparing Abbey's writing to Melville's.  So asked them "Will you please STOP! I had a nightmare about white whales last night."

Dr. Snyder's response: "As you should."

What? Moby-Dick is supposed to haunt my dreams? 

But this invasion of my subconscious has me thinking. Cheri's post about the persistent popularity of Moby-Dick recounts how in popular culture, while not many people have read the book the story of a revenge-bent captain hunting a white whale is still well-known. I think I want to take her question to heart: what is it about Moby-Dick that has made it enduring?  And what about it makes it pervade the popular consciousness?

Allow me to explain myself: I am a fangirl of Moby-Dick not only because it is awesome but because it's Moby-Dick:  it's the 1000-page book that nobody reads.  But last weekend I finished reading it, and I consider it an accomplishment. There is definitely an aspect to Moby-Dick that, given its reputation, that makes it interesting to have a connection to.   I want to call it "quaint," but I think that would be too weak of a word.  Maybe "peculiar." No, it's "bizzare." It's out of the ordinary.  Perhaps there was something in the original story that would characterize it as bizzare: Captain Ahab with his obsession and his peg-leg; Queequeg, Stubb, the other random happenings aboard the Pequod.  And not to mention it's very nautical. What can I say? It's full of awesome. Why not celebrate! It's a big, loose fish in a sea of a culture that celebrates and values spontaneity.

But if one is so proud of having read such a ginormous book, then what else should be haunting about Moby-Dick? 

One question that bothers me is, why is the whale such a huge part of the pariphanelia if we know the whale is responsible for the deaths of multiple people in the book? It's like wearing a cross. Are we taunting Moby? Or does the whale stand for something in popular culture? Like an elusive dream?

Does it haunt us because we all have white whales we are chasing? I'm not chasing anything...ok if I said that I would totally be lying. But I'm not Ahab, seriously. I don't think the dream was an omen.

Ishmael, for one, definitely comes out of his experience with a deep reverence for the White Whale, as well as perhaps a fear of it. A whiteness that he equates with death and decay; the barbs and broken harpoons of sailors it has outswam and destroyed.

What was it in my dream last night that haunted me?  The whales were after me and my family, they were going to eat me, and they were HUGE, like, I could tell in the dream they were life-sized.  And  they were white like Moby-Dick, a whiteness that perhaps my subconscious equated with my own death.

Questions this makes me ask:
What is the influence of Moby-Dick in pop culture? What does this say about how pop culture works?
How does the way people summarize Moby-Dick work in real life? What is the connection between compressed perceptions and reality?  How does this type of thinking work?

Worth Whaling About?

I think I would make this post an answer to  Dr. Burton's call for explorers. In reading Moby-Dick you get a lot of descriptions and ideas that you can't quite visualize. So in going beyond the text to sources online and in print, I am exploring the world of the novel--not only the hard science behind it, but how the different knowledge between then and now represents the changes in technology and culture. This is a long post, but I am going to put in pictures for your amusement.

So today I went to the library.  I found the section on whales on the second floor.  Their most recent books are from 2011.  I thought about checking out one or two or them, but I was pressed for time and didn't know how to make up my mind. And there's also the myth/idea that any knowledge that can be found in a book can also be found online. I want to compare Melville's knowledge of whales with stuff about whales you can find in books versus information online. But I'm not sure how that would work out.  Mostly, I want to be able to illustrate whaling and whales in general to for the book, both visual and textual.

I decided to try a bookshelf since I like books with big, color, captioned images that I can put my hands on.  It's the good old-fashioned way. There weren't very many of those kinds of books at the library, though.  So in lieu of an actual book, I will use online sources for this post and perhaps try and come back later to see what the books say in comparison.

I would like to start with the Cetology chapter, since we don't know exactly what kinds of whales he is referring to. Since Melville's original readers would not have had as much access to books and television to tell them about the sea, he gave a lot of description so his readers could have that experience.

 However, cetology today is competely different from cetology in the mid-19th century. My object of exploration is to see what has changed, and how. For my online sources, my two main sources are Wikipedia articles on the chapter (Chapter 32) and on ceteans.

For one thing, whale classification. Ishmael organizes whales completely by size (remember, this is about printing, not whaling). Whales today are classified by physical characteristics and (theorized) evolutionary relationships--Darwin's On the Origin of Species, which would revolutionize the biological sciences, was not published until eight years after Moby-Dick. Ishmael takes "the good old-fashioned ground that the whale is a fish, and call upon holy Jonah to back me" (Mellville 118). Without scientific inquiry about the whale, Ishmael relies on the sacred reputation of the Bible.  As for the whales themselves, according to the Wikipedia article the "Razor-Backed" and "Fin-backed" whales are the same, and the "grampus," "Killer whale," and "thrasher whale" are all the same species, the killer whale or orca. The "black fish whale" is the pilot whale and the "huzzah porpise" is the bottle-nosed dolphin (no surprises there).

And for anyone who wants it, here is a link to a plaything that an animation major friend of mine showed me: I wish it did more tricks.

The "Sulphur-bottomed whale" is the Blue whale.  One of the more surprising things about 19th-century whaling is that there is no mention of the Blue whale at all, and the sperm whale is regarded as the largest whale. (Quick Rant: I hate that I have to go back to Wikipedia, but it's the only source that's coming up with the information I want. However, I was able to find another source on the origin of the name "Sulphur-bottom") The Blue Whale was not better known until 1874 when the name was coined, ironically, by a whaler (but Ishmael says whalers make the best explorers). As for when the blue whale was officially recognized as the world's largest creature (and not the Sperm whale), I am having a hard time finding that information.  Ishmael's cetology guide is incomplete, and he himself acknowledges that not all of the whales he knows about, even the ones he has classified for us, are known completely. 

Secondly, the sperm whale itself.

I have always considered sperm whales to be very ugly.  A big head, a long narrow snout, narrow jaw, usually gray or brown in color, small eyes, and bad reputation (which Melville probably did anything but help in writing Moby-Dick.) But they are pretty cool.

(whaleindex. com)


Their brains, which Ishmael describes as an edible delicacy (Melville 270),  are the largest brains of any creature on earth, according to multiple sources. According to the National Geographic, their heads are also filled with a substance called spermaceti, which Ishmael cites often as one of the whale's most valuable products, but scientists do not really know what it is for. The sperm whale at mature size is from 49 to 59 feet in length--longer than a school bus--and weighs 35 to 45 tons. Their tail fluke is 16 feet across. As popularized in the media and known to the whalers in the text, the sperm whale's diet consists of the giant squid (254). The sperm whale hunts for the giant squid in the deep zones of the oceans up to 3, 280 feet below--Ishmael perhaps may not have known about that depth.

Thirdly, our approach to nature. A lot of Ishmael's emphasis in his whaling chapters dwell on the commercial aspects of the whale, what products its  body parts can be turned into, including oil and bone. Back in Ishmael's day, of course, "whalebone" or baleen from baleen whales was used in women's corsets.  Oil was used for candles and lamps. The commercial side of whales was very important to the crew of the Pequod because collecting this oil supplied their livelihood. It was the basis for the livelihood of the entire whaling industry of Nantucket and New Bedford and the other places where whale ships came from. 

However, during the twentieth century, corsets went out of fashion and oil lamps were replaced by electric bulbs. Yet as whaling technology improved whales were hunted ruthlessly, some species almost towards extinction, and environmental activists demanded that whaling be banned.  As I consider this fact, I can imagine that the reader of today would be appalled at Ishmael's apparent carelessness towards whales (in a later chapter he claims that the sperm whale is incapable of being extinguished) and consider the primitive whaling scenes depicted in Moby-Dick to be barbarism.

This semester I am taking a Joseph Smith and the Restoration course from Brother Andrew Hedges.  In his lecture on Wednesday, Brother Hedges cautioned us that as we study the Restoration we need to be aware that people's cultural frameworks were very different then from what they are today. Questions about Church History arise often because we do not understand this.

  The same is very true about our approach to nature.  Back in the 19th century, nature was a source of resources.  But over time, we began to realize that nature is not inexhaustible and that natural resources must be managed wisely if we want them to last.  We have also become conscious of the notion that whaling can involve practices that are cruel to the animals.  Today, we appreciate nature for nature's sake.  Back then, nature was appreciated for the sake of its resources.

However, Ishmael seems to find a balanced view.  Back in 1851, there were no whale-watching cruises: whaling was the only exposure that people had to these animals, so their notions about whales were shaped by what resources the whale could provide.  Ishmael, however, is also exposed to stories of Moby-Dick's reign of terror on the high seas and Captain Ahab's obsession with the White Whale.  This perspective on a whale in all of its wild, destructive, unconquerable glory raises in him a "wild, mystical, sympathetical feeling" (159).  Ishmael respects the mystical whale for its secrets and its power. He uses the term "whale," "leviathan," and "monster" interchangably, and though "monster" may be the cruder of the three terms perhaps he does not always mean it in a negative way.  Although the whale is his foe and his source of income, he respects it for the life within it. During the first whale hunt, he observes:

"Stubb slowly churned his long sharp lance into the fish, as if cautiously seeking to feel after some gold watch the whale might have swallowed, and which he was fearful of breaking ere he could hook it out. But that gold watch he sought was the innermost life of the fish" (258).

Ishmael sees that there is value in the life of a wild creature.

So as far as this exploration is concerned, this post, although lengthy, is a head start. I would like to look further into how much information about whales can be found online versus in printed books: there is a discrepancy between what I'm looking for and what comes up on a google search.  Perhaps it's a matter of looking in the right place.

What's in a Tail?

I thought I would do the honors and be the first to talk about Moby Dick. So I may or may not have told you all, I took Dr. Burton's Shakespeare class last winter, and at the end of the semester he told me he was teaching this class. I bought a copy of Moby Dick and slowly read through it over the course of the summer in my free time...well, perhaps not that slowly.  It's hard to put down a book that you're reading late at night and munching toast to.
I will admit that I am as annoyed about the whaling chapters as some people get. However, what keeps me going is considering the value of the text. If one wants to get into the minds of 19th-century whaling culture and discover what the whaling industry was like, Moby Dick is probably the best text available. Herman Melville already went and did the research for us. This is what it was actually LIKE to be on a whaling ship hunting spermaceti.
This kind of reminds me of our digital culture today. While Melville uses words, modern culture uses pictures, captions, videos, skype and live-feed, music, and social networking forums to allows us a glimpse into any sort of world we want. The difference is that while a book can completely immerse you, the internet will only immerse you as deep as you want to go. The diverse options we have of what to do with our digital resources means that, as we said on Wednesday, we can either explore many things at once on a surface level or any one subject we want to an infinite depth. We can be either Ishmael, conversant on many subjects, or Ahab, the man obsessed.