CLASS: "Blog Post #4 - ???"

Blog post! As far as I can tell, there is no online assignment this time, but that doesn't matter – as I type this, I have no connection to the internet. I usually leech off of a neighbor's, and I'm away from the house, so I have to switch to a LAN line. Which isn't a problem in and of itself, but my IBM T20 refuses to connect with one – apparently, and despite there actually being a plug for one in the back, it either doesn't have the adapter or it doesn't have the drivers. So I'm writing from memory, unreliable and biased (yes, thank you, Last Angel of History) as it may be, and am to link two texts, theoretical and real, together.

Deathlok. The obvious comparison would be to Souls of Black Folk – the line “how does it feel to be the problem” rings true, given that Deathlok is a walking arsenal. Or, at least, he's considered as such, but doesn't seem to be armed with anything more than a couple of energy-based handheld projectile weapons (that look suspiciously like Super Soaker 10s), impressive strength, and an interesting co-mingling of soul and software, later seen as energy cartridge-based guns and a supporting OS with hacking abilities – not quite in the same class as War Machine. Micheal Collins is a pacifist, as much as a walking weapon can be (attempts to operate with as little loss of life, is disgusted with himself near the end of his first appearance, and is explained as such in “Souls of Cyber Folk”), and he attempts to explain to his son that weapons and violence aren't the solution. I found it interesting that, while he quotes from Souls of Black Folk in “Souls of Cyber Folk”, he doesn't follow the line I've followed, instead going with the more literal “double consciousness” line. It makes sense in context – two cyborgs, both black, feeling caught between worlds – and there's nothing really wrong with it. Deathlok literally has two “consciousnesses” within him, Micheal Collins and the OS he worked on, and on his first sortie, it was the computer/OS running the body with accurate and deadly results. (Reading it metaphorically, the computer/OS is the face that is originally seen, and there's Micheal himself – they are the “American” and “Negro” DuBois wrote of.) Then Micheal takes over, and would be considered the step forward DuBois wanted. However, Micheal would rather like to cease to be Deathlok – the curious intermingling of soul and software, a phrase more accurate to his situation than “man and machine” is, I think, as it isn't even his body – and return to being Micheal Collins again, just the one, not the one or the other. (He mentions, at one point, that he was in a situation where he had to fool himself to an extent in order to go through life without serious problems and even still occasionally hit the racial wall – the general impression is that he would gladly go back to it, as opposed to being a weapon, hence my comparison near the top.) The big difference, I guess, between the way his dilemma is handled and DuBois' view of it is that, Micheal has (or has the optimism to see) the choice.

Now that that's out of the way, what did I think of Deathlok? Seems very much like Robocop, actually, right down to the helmet (which serves a different purpose here, but both are shucked, and the end result is a character who seems less like a product and more like a human). I'm also going to draw a comparison to the older Japanese transforming hero Kamen Rider (Masked Rider – remember that crappy excuse for crap Saban made in the early '90s?), who got turned into a cyborg but only just escaped the brain surgery, and swore to defeat the organization (“Shocker”, a simple yet effective name) that created him, with punches and kicks rather than guns. And then there's the android Arale Norimaki from the gag manga “Dr. Slump” (as an example of the gags, “Norimaki Arale” is a sort of cracker) – the immediate similarity is her need to consume Robovitan A on a regular basis as fuel.

Other than that, I really don't have much to say tonight.