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Of Games and Nightmares: the American Horror Story TV Show Meets the PlayStation 3 Commercial

The other week, while watching the last few episodes of the wonderfully creepy American Horror Story TV series, I had a suitably jarring experience.

If you haven't seen the show, it's about an American family that moves into a house that turns out to be haunted -- and ultimately destroys them all.

In the penultimate episode, Violet, a younger, likeable ghost, is attempting to rid the house of an extremely nasty member of the living dead.  She learns a spell for banishing bad spirits and tries it on him.

She flings the evil ghost's watch into the fireplace and untters a mystic word.  In response, he quivers ironically, and then bursts out laughing.  Violet gasps: "the spell didn't work!"  The bad ghost tells her that they never do.  People make up these rituals, he explains, to make them feel in control.  "But guess what," he mutters, "they're not."

This pessimistic vibe lingers throughout the episode.  A little later, Violet's mother, Vivian (who's still alive at this point), has the misfortune of going through childbirth in this freaky abode.  As you might expect, things don't go right -- and she starts to hemorrhage severly.

Her husband begs her to fight on.  But Vivian can also see Violet's spirit, who tells her, "mom, if you're in pain, you can let go."  Fading at this point, she replies: "I don't think I have a choice."

Unusual as it was to see a TV show where the stars don't ulitmately "pull themselves up by their bootstraps" and "take control", what was just as surprising, in this context, were some of the commercials that paid for it.

The most striking to me was one for PlayStation 3, which praises a young hero named "Michael":

 

At first viewing, it seems as if American Horror Story and PlayStation 3 come from completely different universes.  One ruled by defeat -- the other by conquest.

The Horror of the Real Estate Bubble

The "horror" in American Horror Story, in addition to the phantoms and spooks, is the seeming helplessness of the family stuck in this nasty home.

And you can see why this program became the new water cooler show: in an age of foreclosures, it captured an element of the zeitgeist.

The haunted house genre is after all, sometimes seen as an allegory about the anxieties caused by real estate -- and how sometimes, when a house goes bad, it can threaten a family's financial and emotional existence.  Here's literary critic Walter Benn Michaels on the Amityville Horror:

"Think of the plight of the Amityville couple as investors in real estate: having risked everything to get themselves into the spectacularly inflationary market of 1975, they find themselves owning the only house on Long Island whose value is declining -- the only one for a few years, anyway, until rising interest rates, as intangible as ghosts only more powerful, would begin to produce a spectacular effect on housing prices everywhere."

The Triumph of the Gamer's Will

But if American Horror Story is a fable about being overpowered by mysterious (perhaps ultimately economic) forces, is not the PlayStation 3 ad its mirror opposite?  In it, Michael, the gamer (whose portrait we see at the end) rather than get overpowered by phantoms, anxieties or crisis situations, is instead, their total master.  The "ghosts and goblins" in the spot worship the guy like a god!

All of which makes me wonder if there's not a sort of cause and effect relation between these two spectacular forms of entertainment.  It's as if the godlike pleasure of the video game has been invented as an antidote for the grim realities the TV show brings to mind.

You can see why young people -- especially males -- would love PlayStation 3.  In a world where mom and pop may be over stretched, perhaps stuck with responsibilities and investments (real estate or otherwise) that are going south fast, a game like this at least creates a fantasy where a little personal heroism is still thinkable.

And the tag line "Long Live Play" suggests something else.  Perhaps the reason the act of playing (like ritual) has been around as long as human culture itself is that our awareness of a potential disaster, always seemingly lurking around the corner, creates the need for mastery of some sort -- over some domain or reality.

Even if it's all only a game.  Thoughts? 

 

From Diesel (Jeans) Island to Zuccotti Park: Thoughts About OWS and Some Recent TV Ads and Videos

I've been away from this blog for a few weeks to get other writing projects done.  Now that I'm back, I thought it would be interesting to look at a few TV ads and videos that are  related -- directly or indirectly -- to Occupy Wall Street and/or our current political culture.

First, one from the Right (specifically focused on a Democratic candidate) that slams OWS and everyone associated with it.

Negative Political Attack Ad on Elizabeth Warren

 

This Karl Rove production associates Warren with the anachronistic sign of Communism ("radical redistribution of wealth"), with a little 60s era "hippie druggie" stuff thrown in for good measure.

But what interests me more here is one of the other reasons the ad offers as to why this rising Democratic star is "dangerous" -- she's an intellectual theorist.  This sort of "accusation" is partly a recycling of Cold War-era anti-intellectualism.  But it also points to another cliche about intellectuals: they're supposedly ineffectual, i.e., "all theory and no practice."

This can also be related to a common criticism of Occupy Wall Street.  Some commentators have complained that the movement is indefinite as to its demands.  At the heart of their irritation is the implication that OWS is all ideals, no "getting down to brass tacks" -- a variation on the theme of all talk/protest, no (effectual) action.

The next ad, produced for OWS (funded through an online crowdsourcing site), does a lot to answer both the criticisms of radicalism and impracticality.

Occupy Wall Street TV Ad

 

This ad seems designed to answer the question of "what do they want?" head on.  Every person who makes a cameo here begins their statement with "I want..." Some demands/desires are more general -- but others are quite specific.

Additionally, the mosaic of faces presented in the ad is from a wide enough swath of U.S. society (and the people look "normal" enough) to prove that OWS, rather than a radical "them" is a home grown "us".  You  might call the spot a representation of representativeness -- signifying not "dangerous foreign collectivism" but U.S. democracy with a capital D.

"Diesel Island Is Going Down!" (Video Ad)

In the context of the argument about the need for change that you see in the first two ads, the new video ad below for Diesel Jeans (though not directly about OWS) is  all the more fascinating.

A few months back, this blog covered a Diesel campaign in which the brand created a wacky kingdom called Diesel Island, "the least fucked up country of all".  It was an imaginary nation, made up of a kooky community of young idealists who all, of course, wore Diesel Jeans.

In this new video, we find out that this utopian experiment in (heavily-branded) democracy, alas, has succumbed to corruption and scandal:



Looking at this clip now, it's hard not to think, by coincidence at least,  of that other locale where utopian impulses are springing up: Zuccotti Park.  And though neither of the first two spots touches on it directly, the utopian element of OWS is what actually excites some commentators  Here is Matt Taibbi, reporting for Rolling Stone:

"...Occupy Wall Street was always about something much bigger than a movement against big banks and modern finance.  It's about providing a forum for people to show how tired they are not just of Wall Street, but everything.  This is a visceral, impassioned, deep-seated rejection of the entire direction of our society, a refusal to take even one more step forward into the shallow commercial abyss of phoniness, short-term calculation, withered idealism and intellectual bankruptcy that American mass society has become.  If there is such a thing as going on strike from one's own culture, this is it."

Is not the original message of Diesel Island (and other imagined brand communties such as the Republic of Corona) exactly the sort of thing that Taibbi sees OWS as rejecting? That is, the offering, say, of brand images and experiences as simulated stand-ins for more actual sorts of freedom.

Some scholars claim the ideological function of consumer culture is precisely to provide such  consolation prizes as substitutes for our own insurgent impulses.  William Davies put it this way, in a recent article in New Left Review:

"Advertising, like management theory, is fuelled by a critique of the dominant normative-economic regime within which it sits, facilitating safe acts of micro-rebellion against the macro-social order."

In this light, the dissolving of Diesel Island seems almost honorable.  It's as if consumer culture's unconscious is saying (in video dream-speak): "hey, when you've got real utopian experiment in the news, who needs a simulated one?"  (Though what Diesel's ad folks really intend is probably to  just to promote the brand as cool,  by way of joking around with the  political zeitgeist.)

In any case, this all makes you wonder: if experiments like OWS persist, what will it mean for consumer culture as we've known it?  Thoughts?

 

Ideals on Wheels: Buick's "What Matters" Commercial

I've been seeing a commercial for Buick a lot lately that tries to redefine the whole idea of "luxury."  In this spot, the word and the brand that represents it have more to do with finding meaning in your life than the love of glam.  Check it out:

 

Judging from its images, which show family-oriented, suburban middle-class types, you get the idea that the tag "your kind of luxury" is addressed to people who don't think of themselves as particularly rich.  They're unpretentious, "come as you are" folks.

This sort of appeal may be part of brand tradition.  Consumer Culture scholar James B. Twitchell has written "Buick has had a history of being a car for strivers who have not quite made it."

So the suggestion that this more everyday-folks sort of luxury "isn't luxury the way  you've always known it" but something new,  isn't completely true -- because we have seen a variation of it in other Buick ads. Here is Twitchell again, on a Buick campaign from the late 90s:

"Now Buick does have a luxury car, the Park Avenue.  But the Century is an underling now positioned as 'A luxury car for everyone.'  The TV ad reinforces this positioning.  In one commercial we see scenes of family bliss, as the voice-over by the actor Willem Defoe asks: 'Are rich people taller than the rest of us?  Are their loved ones more deserving of an air bag?  Was the sun created solely for their enjoyment?'"

What I do think is unusual, though, is what I mentioned earlier: the way the spot redefines "luxury" as a "life of meaning" -- and somehow connects this to its cars.

The credit here goes to copywriting -- because the script (intoned by "everyman" Kevin Bacon) makes the transition from the values sermon at the beginning to the brand copy at the end with a seamless grace.

And the ease with which it achieves this is all the more remarkable when you realize that this spot really contains two scripts.

The values speech at the beginning is actually adapted from a poem by Michael Josephson, the head of an organization whose goal it to encourage people to be more ethical -- and kinder -- in their everyday lives.  The "brand script" at the end of the spot is written to payoff the poem by connecting its values to Buick.

It does this well enough where you almost don't question the connection it draws.  Buick is a brand that expresses  these -- and your -- values.  It is a company that knows a meaningful life is "the greatest luxury of all."  Because of this high-mindedness, the logic goes, it makes cars of substance and quality.

In short, what's implied is that Buick offers you a more solid, dependable car than the trendy ones people who like to show off prefer (perhaps these are superficial nouveau-riche types?).  If in the old Marxian theory machines were "congealed labor", Buick, in this spot, becomes a set of ideals on wheels.

A Shift in Cultural Mood?

The playing off of ethical materialism against the more flashy kind isn't new.  In fact, if this spot is designed to appeal (as Twitchell's comments would suggest) to social sectors still on the rise, you could categorize it as classic.  Classes striving to get ahead commonly characterize themselves as more moral than the "decadent" folks above them.

Nevertheless, the spot's redefinition of luxury seems a real shift.  It wasn't so long ago that populist heroes were celebrated for their shameless flaunting of the signs of wealth in their gaudiest forms.   Here is Twitchell again, writing about Donald Trump in the late 90s:

"Perhaps the only person who really qualifies as the Ur-yuppie is a superannuated one, Donald Trump.  The Donald has become an eidolon of opuluxe on steroids.  Not only has he moved through serial marriages complete with fathering a daughter named after a store (Tiffany), not only has he demonstrated his unflagging interest in pimping objects brandishing his name, but he has remained unrepentantly materialistic.  It's me, me, me.  If old-style luxury was about subtly advertising that you had money, Trump has removed all the subtlety."

Despite Trump's momentary surge as a Tea Party candidate, you have to wonder if in troubled economic times like ours his type of glitzy "winning is the only thing" sort of ambition plays as well as it once did.

And in this light, maybe this spot can be read as a longing for a sort of "capitalism with a human face" -- i.e., a mode of everyday life that's a bit less dog-eat-dog, where people play and work a little more nicely.  Thoughts? 

Who Can You Depend On? Thoughts About the Movie Cedar Rapids

The other night on Pay Per View, I enjoyed Cedar Rapids, a truly funny flick about small-time Insurance Agents who gather at a convention.

And what doubled my pleasure was that, in between the laughs, I couldn't help but read the movie as reflective of our culture's current qualms about the dependability of its own economic institutions, and the businesses that promote them.

After all, how many times have you seen an insurance company touted as "rock solid"?  And don't brand images like this entail promises of impeccable integrity and care?  Yet, who looked shakier during the recent crash than AIG?

The Education of a Small-Town Guy

Such issues are played out hilariously through the hero of this tale: a small-town guy named Tim Lippe.  Lippe is ordered by his boss to attend a convention in Cedar Rapids, IA (a big city, for him).

His assignment is to redeem the credibility of his insurance company from scandal.  One of its main agents died in unseemly circumstances (via auto-asphyxiation) and there are rumors that the company's "Double Diamond Award" (for integrity) will be rescinded.  Lippe's job is to come home with the award once again.

Lippe is a true believer in the insurance business.  We find out that agents helped his mother get back on her feet after his father's death.  He's also seen his local company help flood victims and others in need

At the same time, he's shown to be incredibly naive, especially socially, and this is played to comic extremes when he meets up with worldly party animals: agents from other towns such as John C. Reilly and Anne Heche.

At might be expected, during the course of the film Reilly and Heche show him how to loosen up.  He even has a one night stand with Heche, who's married with kids but has no guilt about getting a little on the side at conventions like these.

Part of his education, though, also entails learning the dirty secrets of the Insurance Business.  Reilly reveals to him that the "Double Diamond Award" was achieved through a pay-off of the local President of ASMI (the industry organization throwing the convention).

To make matters worse, this same President (outwardly a holy-roller who starts each conference meeting with a group prayer) wants to deny Lippe the award this year on what amounts to a morals charge: he's seen Lippe partying with his new friends.  Lippe then compromises himself by paying him off (for the good of the company's name).

But, of course, in a feel-good comedy, cynicism is never rewarded.  Lippe's boss shows up and, with the help of his regained credibility, makes a deal to sell the company.  Lippe only gets to keep his job if he relocates to Milwaukee.

At this point, he revolts.  He gets in touch with his own clients who agree to stay with him, exposes his boss and the President, and forms his own company (joining forces with the other agents with whom he's been partying).

Who Are the Good Guys?

The movie takes a sort of romantic (and conventional) stance as to who you can really trust.  Those who "let it all hang out", are the most honest characters.  They're transparent (wearing their hearts on their sleeves).  And transparency, perhaps because of  the malfeasance that led to the crash, is an increasingly popular word in business culture today.

The portrayal of the villains is also familiar: the most outwardly straight-laced (and powerful) are the culprits.

Ethics or Politics?

Though a fable, this film offers an insight into a problem plaguing our economy.  The scholar David Harvey has remarked that what threaten "the system" nowadays are not the needs of those on the lower rungs -- but the privileges demanded by the high and mighty.

And, the movie also agrees with Harvey that, if the credibility of the economy is to be preserved, it will be achieved by the efforts of its foot soldiers.

But here the film parts ways with him.  Cedar Rapids suggests that if industries like insurance really did stick to the small-business (and small-town) values they preached -- if they took Lippe's ethics seriously -- a lot of problems would be eliminated.

Harvey sees the answer not in ethics alone, but also politics.  As he puts it: "Paradoxically, a strong and powerful social democratic and working-class movement is in a better position to redeem capitalism than is capitalist class power itself."

In any case, it's interesting that what's caused social upheavals in recent times is the same as what leads to trouble in the movie.  From Cedar Rapids to Cairo, what pisses people off is the idea that those they've been asked to trust are pocketing all the money and the benefits for themselves. Thoughts?



 

Hopes for a Stylish Recovery? Chrysler's New "Arrive in Style" Commercial

Recently I read (in an essay by Daniel Albert) that the cultural critic Henri Lefebvre "labeled the the car 'l'objet-roi': the king of all objects."

Though not a driver myself, I can certainly see his point.  Car ads not only dominate (along with electronic devices) much of our commercial space, but also carry an intense degree of cultural symbolism.  They seem to mean everything.

Check out this spot for Chrysler, which originally aired during the Golden Globes:

 

What struck me initially about this spot, in addition to the beautiful film work, was the contrast it offered to the new Audi spot (covered in the last post here).   Audi told its story in futuristic language: "luxury has progressed" it argued, thanks to the breathtaking technical innovation of its design.

Looking to the Hollywood glamour of the late 40s and early 50s for inspiration, Chrysler is concerned with more poetic than scientific or utilitarian values.  The spot reminds me of the show Madmen -- since it populates its stylish images with what look to me like contemporary people playing dress-up.

This look and feel is associated with a more prosperous America.  Here's the remarkable script (intoned by Adrian Brody):

"Whatever happened to style?  Where has the glamour gone?  Wasn't too long ago, America had it  Looking and feeling like a million bucks.  It was practically our birthright.  We didn't race from A to B.  We cruised.  Going for a drive was a big deal.  And when we arrived...we arrived in style.  At Chrysler, we believe it's time to get it back.  To regain the style, the cache, the confidence.  It's time, once again, to arrive in style."

Let the Middle-East Be Your Guide...

Though the spot looks to the past for its images, I think it would be a mistake to read it as mere nostalgia.  It's true, futuristic techno-hype is the biggest game in town right now, but the power of the purely aesthetic side to commercial culture still packs a tremendous punch.

I found dramatic proof of this recently in a book by Virginia Postrel, called The Substance of Style.  Postrel tells us that when the Taliban fell in Afghanistan,

"...Afghan men lined up at barbershops to have their beards shaved off.  Women painted their nails with once-forbidden polish.  Formerly clandestine beauty salons opened in prominent locations.  Men traded postcards of beautiful Indian movie stars, and thronged to buy imported TVs, VCRs, and videotapes.  Even burka merchants diversified their wares, adding colors like brown, peach, and green to the blue and off-white dictated by the Taliban's whip-wielding virtue police." (ix)

Further, as Postrel points out, since these people were exposed to virtually no advertising or marketing, it's hard to argue their desires were generated by some sort of consumer brainwashing. Instead, she reads the need for style, i.e., for everyday aesthetics, as basic to human anthropology.

And since Postrel, and every other public commentator nowadays for that matter, interprets U.S. culture trends by referring to what's going on in the Middle-East, let me jump on the bandwagon and do the same in reading this spot.

Part of what makes dreams of a renewed prosperity possible here (and the rainbow booming through the sky at the end), is the first thaw in a rigid type of U.S. ideology: Market Fundamentalism.  Chrysler is doing better, in no small part, because their fate was not left to "market forces."  They got a $12.5 billion bailout, courtesy of "big government" in 2009.  Thus their hopes are contingent, for the moment at least, on a mixed (or Keynesian) economic approach.

The brand explores the whole idea of "recovery" even more forcefully in another spot, which is airing concurrently with this one and features Eminem as spokesperson.  More on that one in the next post.

As far as this particular commercial goes, though, I have to admit that I'm still not quite sure why Chrysler took the risk of appearing "old-school"  -- by alluding so heavily to its (admittedly stylish) history.  Anyone have thoughts on this? 

What's So Alien About Artificial Intelligence? Thoughts on AI, Science Fiction and "Consciousness"

Recently I found myself fascinated with a group of articles in Wired Magazine re-examining the theme of Artificial Intelligence.  Enthusiasm about AI, it seems, after a pessimistic "winter', has experienced a renaissance.

The lead piece, by Steven Levy (which offers an enormously useful capsule history of theories about the field) shows that the development of artificial intelligence is proceeding at a faster pace than ever -- but that it comes in a completely different form than was previously imagined.

Gone are the fantasies of the metallic humanoids you saw it movies like I, Robot (itself based on classic science ficton tales from the 40s/50s by Isaac Asimov).  Engineers have given up trying to replicate the human brain (as was thought achievable in the 50s).

But their inability to do so turned out to be a fortunate fault -- for it led to the creation of a rich array of smaller, intelligent machines, each furnished with  "clever algorithms" that enable them to accomplish a limited number of specific tasks:

"Once researchers were freed from the burden of building a whole mind, " Levy writes, "they could construct a rich bestiary of digital fauna, which few would dispute possess something approaching intelligence."

Along the way, "the AI crowd" made a key discovery:

"'The big surprise is that intelligence isn't a unitary thing,'" says Danny Hillis, who cofounded Thinking Machines, a company that made massively parallel supercomputers.  'What we learned is that it's all kinds of different behaviors.'"

Because of the success of these new machines, Levy concludes that we are more dependent on Artificial Intelligence than ever.  We use AI to help us drive, invest, and find answers to nearly everything (via Google), just to name a few of the types of robots who assist us everyday.  Such dependency leads Hillis to conclude, "the computers are in control, and we just live in their world."

And this is a world we don't understand.  Levy tells us that these new machines reason in ways vastly different than human logic.  If anything, their consciousness is more mysterious than the soul searching, existentialist machines imagined (but never realized) during Science Fiction's Golden Age.

Different but Same

I asked myself what I found so intriguing about these ideas, especially seeing as I'm more of a pragmatist than a utopian (or dystopian) when it comes to technology.  At first, I thought it was the cool "otherness" these thinkers achieve when talking about what seem to be mere gadgets.  The vision of AI they propose -- multiple, ubiquitous, alien -- and with a "will of its own", is reminiscent of the founding science fiction narrative of the current technologic sublime: The Matrix.

And then I wondered if what drew me to these ideas was not their alien but familiar quality.  Maybe this is because this tale of alien intelligence replays recent theories of what human consciousness is all about. 

Take the idea, for example, that the minds of the new machines are too strange to comprehend.  In Susan Blackmore's concise introduction to contemporary thinking on "Consciousness", you find out that there is a school of thought, dealing with human and animal consciousness, based around the same assumption. 

Its proponents are labeled "mysterians."  They argue "that we humans are 'cognitively  closed'  with respect to understanding consciousness ... Just as a dog has no hope of being able to read the newspaper, he so happily carries back from the shops." (p. 7-8)

Or the idea of intelligence as multiple rather than unitary.  It turns this is the standard, materialist account of human consciousness as well.  As Blackmore puts it:

"There is no single location from where my decisions are sent out.  Instead, the many different parts of the brain just get on with their own jobs, communicating with each other whenever necessary, and with no central control." (p. 15)

And it's not just in the realm of philosophy such ideas seem familiar.  The arts of our time, both popular and avant-garde, are obsessed with the multiple -- and the "otherness" it supposedly forces one to confront.  And this is not to mention (before the crash at least) the praise heaped upon "de-centralized" approaches to business management and economic policy -- all said to be increasingly necessary in a "multi-centric" world.

All of which is to say, I suppose, that as "otherworldly" as the workings of artificial minds may appear, when it comes to describing them, the influence of worldly, human culture and metaphor is as powerful as that of science.

This may also be why the literature of really great science fiction, rather than being escapist, is the true realism of our time.

For often you need the technology of the future to get a clear look at the now.

 

The Poetry of Political Tragedy: George Oppen's "Armies of the Plain"

As I was in the process of writing a post about a George Oppen poem I admire, the story about the shootings in Arizona continued to unfold.  I was struck by the sad resonance this event had with the poem I was writing about.

"Armies of the Plain" offers Oppen's reflections on the story of the Kennedy assassination, by way of a study of its two gunmen: Lee Harvey Oswald and Jack Ruby.

It's a provocative poem -- speculating not only on a possible motivation behind political violence, but on the connection it might have to poetry and aesthetic pursuits in general.

Armies of the Plain

1.

'A zero, a nothing':
Assassin.

Not nothing.  At nineteen
Crossing frontiers,

Rifleman of the suffering --
Irremediable suffering -- of the not great,

Hero and anti-hero
Of our time

Despite all he has cost us
And he may have cost us very much

2.

Ruby's day,
Bloomsday.

Ruby

Proud to have learned survival
On the harsh plains --  --

Bloomsday.

A man
'Of the Jewish faith . . .'

'and it is so stupid . .
And I never use the term . .'

Whose people wrote
Greatly

Desperate the not great,
Like Oswald the not great

Locked
In combat. 

The Art of the Warren Report

When I looked for some background on this poem, I found, in an extremely helpful essay by Stephen Cope (read it here) that it was informed by Oppen's reading of the Warren Report.  The phrases in quotes throughout the poem are taken from Jack Ruby's comments about Oswald and himself as recorded by the Report.

Oppen not only found this document convincing -- he thought of it as a masterpiece in its own right. In fact, he looked at the section in which Jack Ruby explained his motivation for shooting Oswald as a kind of American Bloomsday -- with Ruby as a more tragic, because more banal, version of Leopold Bloom from Joyce's Ulysses.

Playing off the actions of these two "nobodies" (who became (in)famous) against a work like Ulysses (and an immortal creation like Leopold Bloom), it seems, helped Oppen speculate on the motivation behind Oswald and Ruby's violent actions.

Oppen related the "desperate" desire for greatness, on the part of Oswald and Ruby, to his own motivation for writing poems.  Like him, they were compelled to look for meaning.

But Oppen felt that the social order didn't offer a lot of roles in which one could find such fulfillment.  As a result, most were forced to "lead...lives without meaning and without drama and without honor."

The Importance of Being Nobody

Another of the quotes Cope includes in his piece suggests to me that Oppen, in adopting the role of "poet" in answer to a yearning for meaning (or even greatness), realized that one of its advantages was that the literary world itself at times makes a virtue out of what drives many crazy: a lack of recognition.  As Oppen puts it:

"It so happens that I   well,
happen to occupy a position at the precise apex of the pyramid, there is no one who outranks me.  First, because I am a poet, which is what gives me a position somewhere in the upper layers of the cultural pyramid, and finally because I am an unknown poet, which places me in the highest position of our society.  I outrank the President of the United States.   It is understood that if the President had the temerity to invite me for dinner, I would contemptuously refuse.  If I did not refuse, I would no longer be an unknown poet, of course, and would no longer outrank the President."

Oppen isn't just being satiric (or snobby) here.  As the late, great sociologist of culture, Pierre Bourdieu pointed out, in esoteric realms like avant-garde poetry, there's a loser-wins scenario.

That is, as if to make a virtue out of the relative obscurity of one's endeavors, writing to achieve "greatness for the ages" (rather than mere fame for today) is often taken as a sign of artistic integrity (i.e.,  a refusal to sell-out).  Thus, lack of commercial/official/public popularity can help increase one's prestige, at least among other poets "in the know."

Of course, Oswald and Ruby (like most) didn't have access to such rarefied aesthetic worlds.  But without some such sublimation, the poem suggests, their desires for greatness end up being acted out in the literal world -- with explosive results.  As Cope puts it:

"Oswald's act amounts for Oppen to a caveat bearing on the hazards of confusing the literary with the literal, the poetic with the political, and of wanting to achieve historical greatness at a time, and from a place, when and where it is historically impossible to do so."

Granted, few would apply such an aesthetic/existentialist take on the assassins of today.  Their actions are usually explained as a result of paranoid psychology meeting gun-toting (or religious) propaganda.  But Oppen's poem suggests at least that an additional speculation might be proposed about the causes of our current insanity ...

That, in an age of celebrity, maybe a lack of fame is another thing that drives people nuts.

NOTE:
For an intriguing comparison between today's assassination culture and the 60s', see the posts at Lally's Alley, starting here. 

 

 

What's So Funny About Hermann Goering? Or, Why I'm Afraid of (Political) Clowns

Reading Roberto Bolano's Nazi Literature in the Americas, a satirical encyclopedia of the lives of fictional poets and prose writers, I came across one faux biography I found especially amusing.

Under an entry labeled "Franz Zwickau, Caracas, 1946 - Caracas, 1971", we get the tale of a "son of German immigrants", once called "Venezuela's best schoolboy poet".  Here is part of Bolano's "review" of a "badly written" volume titled The War Criminals' Son:

"A number of poems are noteworthy:
--'A Dialogue with Hermann Goering in Hell,' in which the poet, astride the black motorcycle of his early sonnets, arrives at an abandoned airfield, in a place known as Hell, near Maracaibo on the Venezuelan coast, and meets the shade of the Reichsmarschall, with whom he discusses various subjects: aviation, vertigo, destiny, uninhabited houses, courage, justice and death." (p. 90)

Why, I wondered, was this passage, in a book full of fascist camp, particularly funny to me?  Of course, such a description is part of a long line of literary and media images of goofy Nazis, stretching from Chaplin's The Great Dictator, all the way to Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds.  If, as Susan Sontag first wrote, there's something kinky about fascists, there's something laughable about them too.

This is because as losers, their inflated claims about superiority seem, in retrospect, silly and pompous.  And who looks more boorish than the pudgy Goering?  In his day, he must have been a terror -- but to us, he seems a clown.

You could even say  that satiric portrayals of such figures have created a modern archetype: the puffed-up, anti-intellectual authoritarian who invites our derision as soon as he (or now she) appears in the news.  By now, in fact, this sort of portrayal is so common that figures who embody it have become almost endearing (because of their very familiarity, if nothing else).

But I wonder sometimes if we fail to fully grasp the dangers of modern authoritarianism, precisely because it seems difficult to take our own political buffoons completely seriously...

The Postmodern Political Clown

Back in 2009, the philosopher Zizek began commenting on the parade of puffed-up leaders who now inhabited the world stage.  Blustery figures such as Berlusconi of Italy, Ahmadinejad of Iran, and Putin of Russia, he noted, shared certain personality traits.

All were rather clownish, tending to make flubs, off-color remarks and generally outrageous verbal mistakes in public.  They were also given to emotional outbursts, sometimes containing threats.  

And though he never compares them to Nazis, I couldn't help seeing one rhetorical connection: what makes these figures seem silly is similar to what makes our media images of fascists funny: their almost self-conscious, ironic courting of pomposity, braggadocio and a sort of knowing ignorance- -- as if each were acting the fool for our entertainment.

Further, as Zizek pointed out, it's not only humor that makes these figures popular:

"The wager behind Berlusconi's vulgarities is that the people will identify with him as embodying the mythic image of the average Italian ... Even his grandiose enactment of the role of the noble politician, il cavaliere, is more like an operatic poor man's dream greatness.  Yet we shouldn't be fooled: behind the clownish mask there is a state power that functions with ruthless efficiency.  Perhaps by laughing at Berlusconi we are already playing his game."

Those Lovable Mavericks and Populists

Recent U.S. politics has been nearly overpopulated with these sorts of figures -- from the Perots of the 90s to contemporary innovations such as the Palladinos and Mama Grizzlies.  They too invite laughter mixed with identification through the screwed up, but "earnest" ways they talk (not to mention their "authentic" emotional outbursts and tweets).

But you have to wonder, in light of all this, if the many parodies these figures inspire might not be helping to normalize their politics -- by integrating them into a "lively and diverse American Scene." Such joking around might even imply that it would be fun (and harmless) to live under their entertaining rhetoric full-time.  They appear on Saturday Night Live after all!

And there's another factor that makes them appealing.  The political theorist Gramsci described (back in the 1930s, under Mussolini) something he called Caesarism.  Gramsci theorized that when large segments of the public perceived conventional politics to be "gridlocked", people longed for an authoritarian figure from outside the system to intervene.

No doubt this is part of the appeal of our own "mavericks."  The more they signal through word, deed and emotional display that they are not part of "regular" politics (despite their corporate backing), the more they they are not only loved -- but seen as a possible solution. 

   

 

If You're Mad as Hell, Try Xbox Call of Duty: "Black Ops" for Relief

Thanks to Fritz Wolfmeyer who alerted me to a remarkable TV commercial for Xbox's Call of Duty: Black Ops.  Check this out:

 

Chris Hedges, in his already classic book War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning, writes that the "myth of war" portrays armed conflict as something that offers us access to "a bizarre and fantastic universe that has a grotesque and dark beauty" -- one filled with "excitement, exoticism, power" and "chances to rise above our small stations in life." (p. 3)  After watching this spot, I started to wonder if it's creators had actually read Hedges book.

The spot also captures another aspect of war that Hedges says contributes to its almost addictive power: the "warm, unfamiliar bond" it creates with other warriors -- those people from whom we're normally alienated. (p. 9)

In fact, the commercial goes out of its way to present its war games as having universal appeal: men and women, of a variety of ethnicities and classes -- construction workers, professionals, blue collar types, NBA stars and even a TV talk show host -- all join together to blast away.

But what really struck me about the spot was the clear presence of an emotion I don't normally associate with war, real or virtual: happiness.  After the characters fire their rounds, some break break out in smiles.

They almost look relieved.  But about what, exactly?

To Keep It Real, You've Got to be Fake

Despite the realism such games promise through their imagery, it struck me that this TV spot also assured you that Black Ops would really be fake as well.  The violence gets so over-the-top at times that it resembles, say, Tarantino films, more than it does any sort of documentary.

The guy with the mustache, dressed in what looks like a fast-food server's uniform, blazing away with a gun in each hand while walking triumphantly from the explosion in back of him, ends the spot with a real comic touch. 

And then there's the presence of the celebrities.  No one in their right mind believes mega-millionaires like Kobe Bryant or Jimmy Kimmel would ever end up fighting in an actual battle.  Aside from mere cool (not enough anymore!) their presence adds a real kookiness to the aesthetics.

This exaggerated, unrealistic -- and funny -- side to the commercial made me think of something else Hedges wrote.  This time, on the appeal of Pro Wrestling:

"The success of professional wrestling, like most of the entertainment that envelops our culture, lies not in fooling us that these stories are real.  Rather, it succeeds because we asked to be fooled.  We happily pay for the chance to suspend reality." (pp. 5-6)

In connection with all this, I remembered something I read about the techniques of promotion that were discovered by that original guru of pop culture entertainment, P.T. Barnum.   Barnum found that the exhibits of his that drew the largest crowds were those whose authenticity was most controversial.

In fact, he would plant letters in newspapers, under assumed names, that accused his freakish people and creatures of being absolutely faked (which, of course, they were).

The fakery of Xbox foregrounds the fact that, as real as all the explosions look, you're entering a virtual world -- perhaps the only place you really can "be all you can be" (or, to paraphrase the tagline, find a little bit of the soldier in yourself).

So, on the one hand, I read the smiles I see as expressions of how much fun it is to escape into an unreal, and because of that, exciting world.  But the relief I sense, I think, resonates with something more socially significant.

For me, the spot revolves around a feeling of tension and release.  As it opens, you see "all walks of life" -- "the butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker", not to mention the NBA star -- looking serious as they grip their weapons.

As the spot progresses, each lets off an absurd number of rounds and then experiences pleasure, mock-triumph, or some mix of the two.

Because we're living in what might be called a "populist moment", I couldn't help but think of this scenario as an allegory about "popular rage."  People share a bond; many, it seems, are mad as hell. But, what they're mad at, and who the enemy exactly is -- are seen, if at all, through some pretty strange lenses. 

The spot mirrors this mystery and confusion. For a non-gamer like myself at least, it's hard to really tell who's shooting at who.  Or to see the enemy's faces.  But clear or not, the spot promises viewers a way to discharge some of their angst. Fast.

Thanks to Xbox, anyone can open fire right now.  And you don't even have to wait until you see the whites of their eyes.

 

Return of the Communist Menace! Recent Political Rhetoric and Steven Johnson's New Book

There's a specter haunting political discourse.  And yes, it's the specter of communism.  Again.  But not plain old materialist communism -- but communism of a virtual kind.  Exaggeration?  Check this out:

 

Actually, even in all its xenophobic glory, that TV spot is rather subtle.  If you listen to Glen Beck and crew, you'll find out that the hated liberals aren't only selling out to the Red Hordes -- they are the commies themselves.

Of course, by now, this sort of propaganda is so familiar it's hard not to be numb to it.  But what surprises me is that even in indie movies nowadays you see a blurring of the concepts of socialist, communist and liberal.  The other night, I was watching Southland Tales (2006), a film by one of my favorite directors, Richard Kelly (who made Donnie Darko and The Box, two films I love).

The film's premise is that because of nuclear terrorist attacks (this time in L.A.) the U.S.  lurches further to the Right -- with increasingly draconian enforcement of the Patriot Act.  There are, we are told, however, pockets of liberal resistance.  The main one is called the Neo-Marxists.

Not since the Cold War, it seems, have incompatible terms like liberal and Marxist experienced this sort of force fitting.  And on the face of it, it is ridiculous.

But, at the same time, over the last few years I've become a believer in the maxim that "the unconscious is on the outside"; i.e., that the secret fears and desires of people and cultures are often presented so blatantly, it's hard to see them.  (They're "hiding in the daylight", so to speak.)

So I began to wonder if this "Return of the Reds" (as in "commies" not red states!) into that public dream we call popular culture might not be expressing something deeper than just propaganda and confusion.

One candidate for the source of these anxieties is played out loudly and clearly by the commercial.  As our economy lags and China's apparently races ahead, there are no doubt fears that our style of capitalism ain't what it used to be.  

Add the double trauma of the Crash and continuing unemployment to the mix, and you start to wonder if this fear of communism is not masking a nostalgia for the Cold War era itself, when things were more prosperous (thanks in part to the very Keynesian economics the TV spot criticizes). 

But recently I came across a set of ideas that led me to wilder speculations about this latest version of commie phobia.

If You Have a Good Idea, Does It Mean You're a Communist?

A buzz-worthy read on the popular non-fiction scene right now is Steven Johnson's Where Good Ideas Come From.  In a piece last week in the NY Times in which Johnson wrote about his ideas, he starts by relating how a member of the audience, during his book tour, asked jokingly if he were a communist.  Johnson's article is about why the joke would arise in the first place.

He feels this is because his book makes the case that, since 1800, the majority of new scientific and cultural discoveries arose in non-market environments (i.e. from Universities to individual artists, hobbyists and inventors -- people making things for the sake of making things, without thinking if these these things would make them a buck).  And many of these innovations were the result of collaboration, rather than individual genius.

Of course, he assures us, there are numerous examples of market-driven discoveries.  Interestingly though, of these the majority are also of the collaborative, "networked" type.  So, on balance, he's speaking a heresy.  Though the market drives innovation -- other forces and sources drive it more.  And even in for-profit situations, a collective rather than individual effort most often comes up with the best stuff. 

A case in point: Johnson's own method for studying all this derives in part from the brilliant literary scholar, Franco Moretti (who's been discussed in this blog here) -- whose own ground-breaking theories arose out of his (collaborative) academic research and were published early on in New Left Review. 

Add to this the fact that the internet economy Johnson writes about, that place where huge collectives "liberate" formerly pricey products and share them for free, does tend to act like a big, subversive, electronic commune.

 The problem with all these new collectivities is that, as Johnson points out, there's really no name as yet for them or the symbiotic economies to which they sometimes seem to be on the verge of giving birth.  Maybe this is why old names for collaboration, like communism, keep coming up.

So perhaps, as far as communism itself goes, it may be most accurate to say it's still dead on earth, but alive and well in the heaven of our virtual life -- on the web, at the movies, in televisual space. Not to mention our imaginations -- paranoid or utopian.