November 2010

Peran Gender Yang Terjungkir Balik

Imej dipinjam dari laman Wikipedia

Bulan ini ialah "Bulan Membeli Buku Secara Impulsif". Akhir minggu lalu, saya gatal mulut bertanyakan manga Ooku Volume 1 yang saya tempah seminggu sebelumnya di Kinokuniya sementelah tidak menerima sebarang panggilan telefon tentangnya. Dan 'padan muka' saya, manga yang dipesan khas kerana kehabisan stok itu telah tiba di kedai buku berkenaan.

Ooku pertama kali menggamit minat saya ketika ia dipamerkan di rak khas New Arrivals barangkali setengah tahun lalu. Ketika itu ia baru menang James Tiptree Jr Award, anugerah yang diberikan kepada karya sains fantasi yang menyelongkar isu serta persoalan gender untuk tahun 2009. Tetapi pada masa itu, saya tidak tahu tentang tujuan Tiptree Award. Yang saya tahu, label "M" untuk pembaca matang dan amaran "Parental Advisory Explicit Content" di kulit hadapan dan belakang manga itu menangguhkan niat untuk membeli dan membacanya meski Ooku seharusnya punya selling point yang kuat kepada seorang feminis.

Ooku merupakan sebuah karya yang dibina di dunia alternatif pada zaman feudal, atau setepatnya pada zaman pemerintahan Tokugawa yang bertempat negara Jepun. Bayangkan, kata Fumi Yoshinaga, populasi lelaki di Jepun hanya seperempat daripada wanita akibat serangan sejenis penyakit cacar. Lelaki jadi komoditi yang sangat berharga - mereka dilindungi, dilarang bekerja keras dan benih mereka menjadi rebutan untuk memastikan kemandirian manusia di negara itu.

Oleh sebab lelaki kini menjadi gender minoriti, segala peranan pemerintahan dan pentadbiran diambil alih sepenuhnya oleh wanita. Hatta, syogun dan para penasihatnya juga wanita. Seperti para pemerintah lelaki yang mempunyai harem besar dipenuhi para gundik, syogun di alternate Japan ini juga mempunyai inner chamber (ooku) sendiri, yang didiami 3000 orang lelaki, dan sebahagiannya merupakan lelaki-lelaki paling kacak di seluruh Jepun. Peranan mereka tidak berbeza dengan peranan tipikal dan konvensional gundik-gundik perempuan.

Bahkan, perangai mereka juga sama!

Mula-mula, terasa kelakar meladeni kerenah lelaki-lelaki 'simpanan' ini menikam belakang sesama sendiri. Memang tak ubah seperti perangai cemburu perempuan juga. Kehadiran Mizuno yang memberontak juga mengingatkan saya akan perwatakan tipikal gundik perempuan yang bakal jadi favorite raja. Telahan itu terbukti apabila Mizuno dipilih sebagai secret swain syogun Yoshimune.

Namun kemudiannya plot tidak lagi dapat ditebak. Mizuno yang menjadi fokus pada awal buku pertama ini rupa-rupanya bukanlah watak utama. Sebaliknya, Ooku membawa gagasan yang lebih besar daripada hal-hal 'dalam kelambu.'

Yoshimune, seorang syogun yang sangat tegas dalam hal ehwal perbendaharaan negara, mempersoalkan tentang gelar nama yang digunakan oleh wanita di Jepun. Dia hairan kerana meski wanita memegang tampuk pemerintahan tertinggi, tetapi nama keluarga yang digunakan masih nama lelaki. Malah, Yoshimune pernah tanpa sengaja menyangka Reverend Kasuga, orang yang mula-mula menubuhkan sistem Ooku untuk syogun wanita sebagai seorang lelaki juga.

Di samping itu, ketika menerima wakil dari rombongan dagang dari luar negara menghadap, Yoshimune diwajibkan mengenakan persalinan lelaki sehingga disangka budak muda oleh kapitan Belanda tersebut. Bak kata Yoshimune kepada Murase-san, jurucatat istana yang berusia hampr 100 tahun, "kalau dilihat kepada rekod dan dokumentasi, orang luar akan menyangka negara ini diterajui lelaki."

Untuk mencari jawapan terhadap persoalan yang mengganggunya itu, tentang adakah wanita memerintah Jepun sejak azali, Murase-san yang dilahirkan dan remaja sebelum populasi lelaki surut mendadak itu telah menyerahkan Chronicles of Dying Days kepada Yoshimune. Buku kedua dan seterusnya (setakat ini ada empat kalau tak salah), merupakan kisah dalam dokumentasi yang dicatat oleh Murase-san itu. Saya sudah bibliobankrupsi bulan ini, maka terpaksalah tunggu gaji seterusnya untuk mengetahui kisah lanjut dalam inner chamber istana Edo (kini Tokyo).

Sungguh pun begitu, terdapat beberapa persoalan gender yang dicetuskan Fumi Yoshinaga yang menarik sekali pada pandangan saya:

1. Adakah bilangan (dalam kes ini populasi) penting dalam menentukan pegangan kuasa?

2. Benarkah perangai lelaki dan wanita itu tiada beza, apabila diletakkan dalam situasi yang sama (perbandingan antara peranan tipikal masa kini dengan alternatif ciptaan Yoshinaga)?

3. Berapa lamakah perubahan (wanita mengambil alih peranan lelaki) diterima menjadi kebiasaan?

Siapa kata manga tidak berfaedah? Cuma perlu pandai pilih (seperti yang lain-lain juga)!

Belajar Tinggi-Tinggi Akhirnya Ke Dapur Juga

I wanted to get The Haunted Bookshop from Kino, to read over the (slightly) long(er) weekend, but it is listed to be over RM100. Thus I decided to consult a friend who's rated it 4 stars on Goodreads. She recommended it, and also the prequel - Parnassus on Wheels. Kino has Parnassus on standard paperback price, hence I was less reluctant to purchase it.

I read Parnassus expecting it to be a book about books, but I discovered it was so much more than that. It was a classic ode to feminism! Haha.

Helen McGill has been keeping the farm household for her brother, farmer-turned-author Andrew McGill for 15 years. During that duration, she has compiled an 'anthology' of 6000 loaves of bread and collected 1300 dozens of eggs while he vanished some time or other on his vagabond trips to find materials for his books, shirking the responsibilities on Sabine Farm solely to his sister. Helen was tired of it, she had been hiding, intercepting a lot of messages from publishers and fans alike to prevent Andrew from leading, continuing such 'irresponsible' life but to no avail.

Therefore, when one day, Roger 'Professor' Mifflin in his Parnassus, driven by a horse named Pegasus stopped by with an offer to sell his wagon of a traveling bookshop to Andrew for $400, Helen seized the opportunity to buy it for herself and went on her first vacation in 15 years!

I was amazed by Helen's impulsiveness. She decided in less than 15 minutes, and took another quarter of an hour to write a check, leave Andrew a note, packed and instructed her slow-witted Swede helper about the matter of the household. Then she was off!

Alongside Mifflin who taught her the gospel of good books, Helen learned to embrace her newly found freedom. At one point, she even felt like shouting to a housewife who was busy with chores, "Oh, silly woman! Leave you stoves, your pots and pans and chores, even if only for one day! Come out and see the sun in the sky and the rive in the distance!"

This liberation went further as the plot progressed, Helen learned to take charge of her life, and to acknowledge her desire as a woman - even as a near 40 years old - to love and be loved.

Of course there are other angles on which this book can be discussed, but as someone who loves books and passionate about feminism, I can be a lot biased when books become a device that liberate women from their typical roles.

However, I was less than satisfied with the ending. I was disappointed when Helen referred to Mifflin (who was now the love of her life) as "my master." And when she got back to Sabine Farm, she quickly assumed her role of the woman of the household while the men 'gossiped' (about her) in the sitting room. Like, after all those adventures then you go back to that? It's no different that the famous Malay notion, "belajar tinggi-tinggi pun akhirnya ke dapur juga."

Blrrrgh.

Library Task Force Protecting The Sanctity and Existence of (Banned) Books

So I finished The Bell Jar during lunch hour. That posed a problematic situation; I didn't have anything decent to read during the journey back home. The thing about working in the vicinity of the most well-stocked bookstore in the country was, yes, book-shopping convenience.

I have a book by James Wood, Madam Bovary and even The Golden Notebook to be attacked at home, so I needed/wanted something light. Hence, I decided to get a manga. I had set eyes on Library Wars a few weeks back and what can I say, it was kismet, I was destined to purchase and savor it anyway.

So why Library Wars?

Easy. It was a manga about library and books. It was set in near dystopian future where in Japan the Media Betterment Act was passed as a way for the government to confiscate 'indecent' books at their pleasure. In retaliation, state libraries set up their own Library Task Force, where selected librarians were army-trained to protect reading materials.

It was kinda cheesy, because the main characters were 'jual-mahal' to each other but we all know that they will be together-together in the end (I only read Vol. 1). But hey, it's about books. That's a huge selling points for me. I got teary-eyed even, when the Library Task Force Agent went all macho and helped Iku Kasahara when she refused to give up the copy of a fairy tale book she waited for 10 years to the Media Betterment Committee raiding her neighborhood bookstore.

What is WRONG with fairy tales?? I devoured fairy tales as a kid, and I'm still a feminist! I first read Madam Bovary when I was 12, but I didn't turn out like Emma - I hated her even. My parents actually trusted me that much to not filter my preferred reading materials. Why can't others do that as well?

Oh well, that's beside the point. I'm just venting out - a lot of reading materials I savored these past weeks revolved around injustice. It's time to set things right, maybe a la the Library Task Force!

The Bell Jar: This Is What It Might Be Like If You Decided To Let Go of Life

During the first half of the book, Esther Greenwood's stint in New York reminded me so much of The Catcher in The Rye. It was full of angst (albeit an estrogen-charged one) and pointless, apart from being a novel, and a very convincing one at that.

Then came the second half. Esther was now back in suburban Boston, spending (or wasting) the rest of summer under her mother's roof because her application to enroll in a writing course given by a prominent writer/professor was rejected. Esther expected herself to breeze through the application process, and went on to fulfill her ambition to be a published writer whose short stories would be bought by the likes of the magazine she worked for in New York. But that was not to be.

At this hiccup in life, Esther, who was a straight-A student for 15 years, asked herself: what if I decided to let everything go? Myself, my mind and people's expectations of what I would, could be?

As someone who's all about discourse, and 'educational' novels, I surprised even myself when I found I actually enjoyed the whole book. What was it with me? Or rather with Sylvia Plath herself? Was it this online quiz I took some time ago entitled 'Which Poet Are You?' and my answers spat out that I inclined to be like the darkly emotional Plath?

But I was disappointed when near the end it was implied that Esther's problems seemed to spark off from people's expectations of her marrying medical student, childhood friend Buddy Willard. So you don't love him, or any men for that matter. Can't you just tell him off? Oh well. She did turned down his proposal, but her mother hinted what a nice boy he was. Oh well.

Esther's issues with sexuality were also pretty lame. I can't believe myself that in the end she was 'cured' after being fitted with an IUD because "now I can have sex without getting pregnant, just like men."

I wish being a woman is that easy. But again, this novel was written more than 40 years ago, when things like birth control and non-marital intimacy defined female emancipation.

The ending was alright. I couldn't help feeling please that the IUD turned out to be a disaster. But I was glad that she made Irwin paid for the hospital bills. We never learned what exactly happened, but beware, it involved a hemorrhage. I also like it when Esther said "I don't care" when Buddy Willard upon visiting her during he last few days in Caplan asked, "who would marry you now, Esther (now that you've been institutionalized)?"

That, ladies and gentlemen, is what I call a liberation.

This book reminded me to the movie Girl, Interrupted, which starred Wynona Ryder, who also loved writing and had a disturbed mind. Yikes.

What is it about writing that makes people spiral down under?