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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.

 

The Child Is Father of the Stock Trader: TV Spots from Gerber and E*Trade

There's an advertising saying that goes something like "put a baby or a dog in a commercial and you can sell anything."  But as seemingly universal as the image of the child is, the specific way it's portrayed by commercials seems a real index of the particular concerns of the times.

Check out these two TV spots.  One is from Gerber; the other, the latest in E*Trade's now classic "talking babies" campaign:

 

 

Though the Gerber spot offers a touch of reverent wonder about childhood, while the E*Trade derives its humor precisely from its irreverence, in both, the babies are wise -- or wise guys -- beyond their years. 

One child savant works out a complex formula; the other is hip not only to the complexity of trading, but the coolness of the latest mobile devices.  As such, both commercials echo the Romantic idea that babies know lots more than we assume they do.  As Wordsworth famously put it, "The Child is father of the Man."

But the Wordsworthian echo here is a pretty distant one.  The kind of knowledge the Romantic Child was believed to possess and what these babies are wise to is very different.  Here's the poem ("The Rainbow" [1807]) where Wordsworth's maxim first appeared:

My heart leaps up when I behold
           A rainbow in the sky:
So was it when my life began;
So is it now I am a man;
So be it when I shall grow old,
          Or let me die!
The Child is father of the Man;
And I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety.

As I understand it, to Wordsworth, the child -- who has not yet been corrupted by language and social convention -- is seen as a repository of a "naturally pious" heavenly vision.  As a figure, the Romantic Child has access to an immaculate perception of nature and the divine.

That's why children for the Romantics, as M.H. Abrams noted, are poetic role models.  As Coleridge put it, "To carry on the feelings of childhood into the powers of manhood; to combine the child's sense of wonder and novelty with the appearances, which every day for perhaps forty years had rendered familiar ... this is the character and privilege of genius..." (pp. 378-9)

Wordsworth's use of the word "piety" is no accident.  His picture of the child can be traced back to a t least the New Testament, as in "unless you become like children you cannot enter the kingdom."  And it's a meaning that has not yet disappeared from culture.  Just think if Keith Haring's icon of "The Radiant Baby."

Of course, such images are idealized.  Children scarred by war, natural catastrophe or poverty certainly must see things differently.  As Trotsky once put it, "life strikes the weak, and no one is weaker than a child."

The Competitive Baby Genius

It's not like the babies in these TV spots are threatened by such realism.  But, idealized as they are, they nevertheless offer a fascinating inversion of Romantic assumptions.  Where the Romantics saw children as role models, these kids, instead, emulate us grown-ups.  Instead of us miming them, they're imitating us.

What both spots bring to mind for me is the whole array of educational and developmental products that urge parents to "start young" to "give your kids the edge."   A website I came across recently illustrates this attitude:

"Baby genius university.  Nobody has championed the baby genius concept more thoroughly than Glenn Doman of the Institute for the Achievement of Human Potential.  Through his best-selling books, 'How To Teach Your Baby To Read' and 'How To Teach Your Baby Math', he introduced the world to the concept of the baby genius.  His Baby University teaches parents how to coach their kid geniuses to advanced levels of intelligence, understanding and ability ... Early learning creates a rich neural network that will always provide greater potential for genius-like thinking..."

Reading these spots as indicators of cultural values suggests that just as our rationalized, practical society has little time for poems -- by Wordsworth or anyone else -- so the idea of playfulness or wonder for its own sake (embodied in the Romantic Child) is an endangered intellectual meme as well.  It's almost as if, in these commercials at least, childhood no longer exists.

In this respect, you might say the old Romantic/Christian image of the child is being replaced by an even older, but pagan one.

For like the goddess Athena, these kids seem to have been born all grown up.

 

 

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.