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Reason or Resentment? "Feud" (the miniseries) and the political mood

I was mad at Susan Sarandon because of some of her comments during the last election. Recently, though, I was so charmed by her portrayal of Bette Davis in the new miniseries “Feud” —alongside Jessica Lange’s equally charismatic Joan Crawford—that my annoyance evaporated. Thanks to their bravura performances, I found myself totally absorbed in this tale, which portrays the tumultuous backstory behind the making of “Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?”

Just a powerful as the acting, though, was the ideological debate embedded into the script. This is captured in a provocative interchange that takes place in a scene early on in the series. Studio head Jack Warner (Stanley Tucci), after seeing the film’s early rushes, tells director Robert Aldrich (Alfred Molina) that he believes it will be a hit because of the explosive interaction between Davis and Crawford. Such an authentic portrayal of emotion is only possible, he argues, because the two actors really hate each other in actual life.  Aldrich is skeptical; he tells Warner that he’s reacting to artistry. They are brilliant actors, after all.

Warner won’t hear of this. Instead, he offers an unusual theory about why real hate will make the film a true cultural event. “Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?” will be powerful because it embodies the psychology that drives our economic system. “What you’re seeing,” Warner remarks (as I remember it), “is Capitalism.” The fighting in the film, he explains, exemplifies the competition that makes our system run. Each actor, motivated by a fierce envy of the other, will seek to outshine her rival. Following this logic, the more each “hates” (his word) the other, the greater their performances, for their mutual resentment will set off a kind of arms race of talent, ratcheting up the intensity to new heights.

In essence, Warner is saying that what makes for a powerful performance isn’t the actor’s rationality (i.e. the intelligent choices she makes for her role) so much as her resentment.

The Jack Warner Theory of Politics

I don’t know whether the real Jack Warner ever propounded this theory of acting. What I do know is that that it shares an eerie resemblance to a theory of political performance that’s popped up in the wake of the last election. That theory goes like this…

Once we believed candidates needed to appeal to voters on the basis of economic reason (“it’s the economy, stupid), to win their support. Nowadays, things don’t work that way. The most effective politicians are those who appeal to voters' resentments (their envies, hatreds, prejudices and the like), rather than their rational self-interest. Much of this buzz, of course, is the result of the election of a figure who’s believed to embody populist rage.

Pankaj Mishra, author of The Age of Anger (a hot new book on the politics of resentment) offered an overview of this theory in an essay for The Guardian. The idea that people were primarily moved by their economic interests, he tells us, was simple-minded, for…

“…it neglected many factors ever-present in human lives: the fear, for instance, of losing honour, dignity, status, the distrust of change, the appeal of stability and familiarity. There was no place in it for more complex drives...Obsessed with material progress, the hyperrationalists ignored the lure of resentment for the left-behind, and the tenacious pleasures of victimhood.”

A Robert Aldrich Theory of Politics?

The importance of what might be called culturally-based (rather than economic) antagonism is obvious. As many have pointed out, it’s not always easy to see economic hardship as driving the actions of terrorists, for example. Nevertheless, something bothers me about downplaying “rational” economic interests in favor of “irrational” ones such as envy and resentment. What this suggests is that voters are not only misinformed but totally unreasonable--and unreachable. As such, this attitude replicates the condescension said to give rise to resentment in the first place.

Also, you have to ask yourself if it’s true? A recent piece by Conor Lynch put it this way:

“…it is smug…to disparage people for ‘voting against their interests’ when in reality both parties have failed to adequately address the real problems facing poor and working-class communities…While there can be no doubt that Hillary Clinton would have been a better president for the working and middle-classes, it is also true that Trump was better on certain issues that are important to blue-collar workers, such as free trade and the Trans-Pacific Partnership. (Even though Clinton opposed TPP during her campaign, she didn’t have much credibility…)

Lynch goes on to praise Bernie Sanders who recently, through Town Hall meetings, warned of the Right’s betrayal of these voters, exemplified in the botched health care legislation. The unpopularity of the proposed bill, and plummeting presidential approval numbers that accompanied it, suggest “hyperrationalist” arguments like Sanders presented to his rust belt audiences still packed a punch.  All of which makes one wonder if all the noise about “populist resentment” has made us forget about the potential for popular reason.

Put another way, just because the “Jack Warners” of our political world currently own the studio and are running the show, it doesn’t mean that the Robert Aldrich forces may not win out in the end.

 

Sneak Preview: Here's a Sample from Jerome Sala's new Poetry Book: The Cheapskates

My new book of poems, The Cheapskates, from Lunar Chandelier Press, will be out soon (see below for a sample).  There's a book launch party, April 13th at 6PM at the Bowery Poetry Club.  The book will be available there at a special discount.  Come one come all!  Details:

Book Launch Party for
The Cheapskates by Jerome Sala

April 13, 6PM

With Readings by
Jerome Sala
and Guests:
Bob Holman
Vincent Katz
Elaine Equi

Kimberly Lyons, publisher
of Lunar Chandelier Press, will host.

at The Bowery Poetry Club
308 Bowery
(between Bleeker & Houston)

Special Discount on the new Book

FREE

Advance Praise for The Cheapskates:

Wayne Koestenbaum writes:  "Jerome Sala's cheeky, splashy poetry seems never seems to be in a bad mood: he sails through profound political and historical issues with a tone of insouciance that -- like an erudite carnival barker's -- successfully lures us into the tent.  Indeed, The Cheapskates has a Cecil B. DeMille fullness, each of its sideshows masterfully spacious within close quarters.  I hear in Sala's voice the lovable sound of a storyteller-trickster who wants to beguile listeners into a reverie with no strings attached.

Joanna Fuhrman writes: "Jerome Sala's brilliant and hilarious poetry perfectly distills how it feels to live at the sparkling, flashy, hollow heart of late capitalism.  His poems make ideas rattle and zing.  This isn't 'neo' anythin', it's actually new."

Sample from The Cheapskates

Here are the first three poems in the book:

LATER, CLIFF

when I was a mouse
in a cartoon
chased by a cat

I said, "later, cliff"
as I ran into midair

but the cat followed me out
into the mighty void

of
(I thought)

escape

and we stayed there
above the infinite drop

feet and paws pedaling
long and short noses gasping
tails whipping into the great cool
nothingness

perpetual popular machines

until
we
looked
down

--------------------

WHO WILL BE AMERICA'S NEXT TOP MANNEQUIN?

in the commercial
men and women audition
to become mannequins
for a chain of stores
that sells casual party clothes

it's easier to work in the "Service Industry"
with a perpetual smile, hands frozen
in a greeting that broadcasts happiness
with professional grace

once people begged to be awakened from their roles
now they must prove
that they can sell in their sleep

there's an elegance to their somnambulism
a courage and a confidence:
that it's possible to achieve warmth with a blank stare

one that never bumps into the wall
of a customer's personality

one that reflects all interpersonal affection
back onto the clothes at hand

---------------------------------

REALITY EVERYTHING

The great thing about everything becoming public
is that this means nothing is.
You are traceable like a cigarette at night,
but no one is there to enforce the no smoking sign.
The lights are on, but no one's on the phone.
Those peaceful scenes after the plague
has annihilated the small town,
and no one's left in the restaurant or department store,
have all come true -- and yet no one's dead,
the market is more crowded than ever,
the street packed with stalled traffic,
the sky dark from flocks of planes,
punks in the overpopulated corners, the gangways,
under the street lamps, still sniffing glue --
but no one's there to get high --
all gone somewhere far away
leaving their lives behind
to go on living without them.

The Cheapskates will soon be available through Small Press Distribution (SPD) and Amazon.  Better yet, come to the party on April 13th, and get a signed, discounted copy.



 

Elaine Equi and Jerome Sala Read at DIA, 5/24 at 6:30 PM

I'm excited to be reading with my better half, the fantastic poet Elaine Equi, this coming week at DIA. Here's the info:

Poetry Reading

Elaine Equi
Jerome Sala

Thursday, May 24th
6:30 PM

DIA: Chelsea
535 W. 22nd St.
5th Floor 

$6 general admission; $3 DIA members, students and seniors.

For full description, click here. 

As a preview, here's one of Elaine's poems -- followed by one of mine:

THE POLITE ONES

have stolen my identity.

Robbed me of my naturally
murderous vitality
with their cagey emptiness.

Oh! I will smother them
with this turquoise cushion.

Mash it against
their perfectly outlined
crimson lips.

But later I will apologize.

                                        -- Elaine Equi
                                            from her book, Click and Clone

IT'S NOT TV

Khalisi, the queen of the barbarians,
joins her husband on the funeral pyre.
Before walking in she says to her devotees:
"I am the daughter of the dragon.
If anyone harms you, they will die screaming."
The witch who betrayed her is tied to the pyre too.
She says: "I won't scream."  Khalisi: "Yes you will.
But I don't want your screams, just your life."
When the branches have been burned
and all the agonizing screams have been screamed
Khalisi is still kneeling there, unharmed, naked
except for some ashes where her clothes have burned off.
The dragon eggs thrown into the fire with her
have hatched.  A baby dragon sits on each shoulder.
In the book, one is nursing at her breast.

                                                                        -- Jerome Sala

If you're around NYC and free, hope to see you there.  For more info on the reading and DIA, click here.  

 

Art as Experience and Vice Versa: Thoughts on Jerry Lewis and John Dewey

Ever since I watched a documentary on Encore  about the career of Jerry Lewis -- Method to the Madness -- I haven't been able to get one of the comedian's iconic bits out of my mind.

Lewis pretends to be typing (on an invisible typewriter) to the sounds of classical music.  He performs a sort of hand ballet, looking a bit like a conductor at times.  As the bit goes on, he gets  goofier as he becomes  exhausted by his efforts:

 

One of the things that fascinates me about this  gag is how it mixes the codes of high art with everyday life to such a delightful effect; it's part an elegant display of nimble dexterity -- and part slapstick.

In fact, this little concerto brought to mind a comment the pragmatist philosopher John Dewey made in his classic book on aesthetics, Art as Experience.  Dewey cautions against drawing too fine a line between the creative arts and everyday life.  As he puts it:

"The intelligent mechanic, engaged in his job, interested in doing well and finding satisfaction in his handiwork, caring for his tools and materials with genuine affection, is artistically engaged."

Is not part of the humor of Lewis' skit found in the degree of "genuine affection" his typist exhibits for what we conventionally think of as a mundane task?

If Life Can Become Art, So Art Can Become Life

Another reason the Lewis routine grabbed hold of my thoughts is that it exhibits an impulse that I've seen mirrored in interesting ways by the world of high art.  If Lewis suggests that there's something about everyday life that's artistic, the history of the avant-garde is replete with examples of poets and visual artists who have sought to make artistic culture part of everyday life.

Lautreamont, the prose poet and predecessor of Surrealism, insisted, for example, that "Poetry must be made by all..."  Among the ways this idea found expression in the art movements of the 20th century was in the recipes for cooking up poems that Dadaist and Surrealist poets offered to make it theoretically possible for "anyone to be a poet."

Tristan Tzara's famous instruction for making a Dada poem, for example, was to cut out words from a newspaper, shake them up in a paper bag, splash them onto a table, and record the results.

Surrealist seer Andre Breton's "psychic automatism" offered a a formula to get your unconscious to write the poem for you:

"Put yourself in as passive, or receptive, a state of mind as you can.  Forget about your genius, your talents, and the talents of everyone else...Write quickly, without any preconceived subject, fast enough so that you will not remember what you're writing and be tempted to re-read what you've written."

Following this method religiously, Breton states later, should enable you to write entire books on subjects you know nothing about.

Perhaps you could even say that some aspects of the Slam Poetry movement pursued dissolving art into everyday life -- and vice versa.  For in that format, as I remember, not only anyone can get up, "be a poet", and compete -- but all can be judges/critics who canonize the list of winners for the night.

In any case, it's no surprise that I associate Lewis' bit with certain modes of avant-garde art.  Both offer examples of how conventional thinking and experience can be transformed in pleasurable and even liberating ways.

Of course, once such techniques have been around in the culture awhile, the more traditional aspects of the social order usually move in to mess with them.  In our so-called free market society, such experiments are not so much repressed as standardized for money-making purposes.

Tzara's Dada poem is marketed as "Magnetic Poetry."  Surrealism becomes a preferred method for drawing charisma to rock videos and ads, and its techniques featured in self-help books to aid in overcoming  "writer's block" (and "unleash the voice within").  Slam morphs into movies,  TV and Broadway shows and rap records.  And "Jerry Lewis" is now a studio, a brand, a corporation -- an entire industry.

But before this process takes place, when low can still be high and vice versa, the joy  that comes with the sense of new possiblities can still be felt.

Perhaps part of the appeal of this strain of culture is that it supports the belief that things can still transform in exciting ways.  Maybe even that they can change.  Thoughts?

Related Interest:
More on art dissolving into life in my review of Nick Piombino and Toni Simon's Contradicta, now up at Evergreen Review Online. 

 

Is Jenny Still from the block? Jennifer Lopez's "My World" TV Commercial for Fiat

Recently, a standard, celebrity endorsement TV commercial started a mini-firestorm across the blogosphere, twitter and even mainstream media.

In the spot, Jennifer Lopez seemingly drives through the Bronx in a Fiat and describes how much her old hood means to her:

 

It turns out, as exposed by The Smoking Gun and other blogs, when JLo tells us how the Bronx neighborhood where she grew up inspires her "to be tougher, to stay sharper, to think faster", she is actually in L.A. doing a voiceover -- and the person we see in the Fiat is a body double.

To make matters worse, reporter Ed Morales witnessed the shoot (it took place close to his home), and took a photo that showed that the car in the commercial actually broke down.

If this weren't enough, the graffiti artists who created the giant heart you see at the beginning of the spot, also cried foul.  Their work, which Fiat used without permission, is copyrighted (Fiat ended up settling with them out of court).

And then, in the midst of all this, during Lopez's performance at the American Music Awards a Fiat appeared suddenly in the middle of her act, offering an instance of product placement so blatant, a fellow performer questioned her integrity.   The Fiat appears a little over a minute in...

 

The Authenticity Dilemma

Amusing as all these exposes are, initially I came away wondering, as Anderson Cooper did, what all the outrage was about.

After all, part of advertising's mystique has to do with the whole real or fake dilemma ads pose.  This is a genre of communication that delights in ambiguity. Think of the iconic headline that launced Clairol in the U.S.: "Does she or doesn't she?"

You could even argue that one of the thrills consumer goods provide is the tantalizing possibiity that they allow you to try out and even adopt new identities.

But with a little reflection, I could see why people got irked.  Lopez has built her brand around the image of a superstar who keeps it real by staying in touch with her roots.  Who can forget those lines from her most famous song:

"Don't be fooled by the rocks that I got
I'm still, I'm still Jenny from the block."

And it's this aura of authenticity that Fiat wants to associate with its cars.  Here is Fiat's marketing guru, Olivier Francois:

"Jennifer fits perfectly with the brand not because of who she is but because of what she is -- authentic, passionate, modern, and a fighter determined to stand out from the rest.  As you look at her career path, she embodies the Fiat philosophy, 'Life is Best When Driven.'"

Francois has reason to be confident with such a strategy.  He used the "authenticity" sell in his remarkably successful re-launch of Chrysler -- with TV spots starring blue-collar heroes like Eminem and others (covered on this blog here and here).  And an earlier viral video ad connected with the Lopez campaign ranked 4th most popular of its genre this year.

Nevertheless, you can see the contradiction contemporary ideas of authenticity often entail.  Francois praises Lopez for her driven, competitive personality.  She is authentic because, despite the odds against her, she fought for her individual vision.

Yet, the spot isn't so much about her individuality, but her loyalty to her community.  In fact, it's her "street cred" that affords her, as a performer, much of her bravado, swagger and authority.

Perhaps, then, the source of irritation with this spot drives from an issue Michael Lally (from Lally's Alley) has brought to my attention recently -- that of co-optation.

The fact that Lopez and Fiat simulated her cruise through the Bronx, appropriating its urban art, street scenes and people for their own uses, no doubt seemed to offer a particularly ungraceful example of cultural co-optation.

All of which makes me wonder if questions of authenticty become particularly acute for celebrities with working class roots.  On the one hand, they've got to transcend, even betray, their backgrounds to get over.

On the other, they've got to stay loyal to their cultural milieu in order to use it credibly -- especially if their artistic personas draw on their class or ethnic identity.

In any case, Fiat must be hoping the accusations about the ad's fakery don't reflect upon their car.

For in the past, Fiat has had its own problems with authenticity.  I've read that the last time the brand made a push for the U.S. market, instead of a hip, urban ride, it got a reputation as a car that broke down a lot.

The brand's name, in fact, became an acronym for "Fix It Again, Tony." Thoughts? 

Repetition or Renaissance? Jeff Beck and Imelda May vs. Simon Reynolds and Retromania

I've just started reading Simon Reynolds' widely reviewed Retromania, and I can already see where I both agree and disgree with his argument.

His book valuably documents a phenomenon that's so pervasive you sometimes accept it without a second thought.  That's the fact that everything from movies to ads to pop music (his focus) often seem like some sort of remake.

The retro has been embraced with such relish and abandon that Reynolds' wonders if, like oil or some other natural resource, we will soon run out of the past.

Boredom, of course, is often the result of all this repetition.  Do we really need to see remakes of flicks like Friday the 13th or endless installments of Final Desitination?  (Of course we do,  if the we in question is a studio looking for a quick score, but that's another story...)

At the same time though, there's repeating and then there's repeating. 

One of the things that's made pop and indie music listenable to me again is precisely the sophistication with which some artists now allude to past motifs and styles -- achieving an effect that makes the music simultaneously familiar, yet strangely original.

Much of the newer music (you can include varieties of jazz here too), informed by archives like YouTube and countless other sources, sounds more complex to my old ears -- simply because it seems to mix layers of music history together,  and so speaks with a wider stylistic vocabulary.

As a result, when I listen to groups like Outcast, Gnarls Barkley, Fleet Foxes or MGMT, I hear more than I used to in older pop music. 

Not ony that, but this knowing quality can make even nearly note-by-note tributes to the old sound fresh -- because the music is presented in a very different moment, one whose values and sense of style have little to do with the past. 

See what you think.  Here's an example of classic rock guitar maestro Jeff Beck teaming with the exciting, Dublin-based neo rockabilly singer Imelda May, doing a scrupulous rendition of Les Paul and Mary Ford's "How High the Moon."  I've included a vintage Paul/Ford clip for comparision:

 

 

The Newness in Nostalgia

One of Reynolds' problems with all this "archive fever" is the fear that music is becoming so swallowed up in nostalgia, that it's difficult to make way for the new.  Again, he's partly right.

When I hear the beautifully double-tracked vocals in both versions of "How High the Moon", I do get a nostalgic feeling.  I associate this sound with the music tracks to cartoons and TV commercials I saw when I was very young.  In my mind's eye, I even see a smiling moon dancing over a mountain.

On the other hand, the style of this music -- jazzy but pop (with a very light "Hit Parade" touch), is not something you hear a lot of on  today's pop scene.  Only artists with a sense of music history, like Jeff Beck and Imelda May, it seems to me, would even be hip enough to see that it was worth re-introducing.

And seeing as this is such an unfamiliar sound for today's context, isn't it essentially new (especially when presented by such stylish artists)?  Might not awarenss of it lead to strange permutations, where this sound is recombined with something unexpected?

That's why what's been going on in pop music (and jazz) in the last few decades reminds me of something art historian Arthur Danto pointed to in painting and the fine arts way back in the 80s/90s.

Danto commented on how artists no longer paid attention to the Modernist narrative of "art's progress", where aesthetic style evolved to culminate in the triumph of abstract art.  In the old orthodoxy, unless one showed allegiance to this tale, one would simply not be considered important.

Now, Danto wrote (back in the 90s), artists looked at the styles of the past and the museum itself "as filled not with dead art, but with living artistic options."  As a result, the fine arts were flooded with a wild range of approaches, many of which departed from the austere abstract orthodoxy.

And as far as pop music goes, it's worth remembering that many creative breakthroughs arrive via a kind of revivalism.  Wasn't Punk, for all its brash newness, also a return to rock's more stripped down, garage band sound?  You could almost say it represented a renaissance of rock's minimalist side.

So before completely trashing the retro, we should be aware that repeating a part of the past -- or drawing attention to forgotten traditions -- can be a way of announcing something new.  Thoughts?

 

 

Do You Have to Go Nuts to Be a Great Dancer? Thoughts on Black Swan, Ally McBeal and the Tortured Artist

A few days ago I saw the film Black Swan, in which Natalie Portman offers a convincing portrayal of a ballerina obsessed with, not only pleasing her director, but getting the lead role in Swan Lake just right.

The film is worth seeing, if for no other reason than to marvel at the sheer virtuosity and athleticism of the dancers.  It's also incredible to look at -- from the stunning play with color, to the sheer painterly beauty of its shots.  And then there's that marvelously  hallucinogenic quality that director Darren Aronofsky has been refining since his Requiem for a Dream (2000) -- one of my favorites.

But it's in connection with this last quality that the movie ended up disappointing me.  Portman's character sees things.  Many of her visions are spurred by a nervous concern for artistic mastery.  The movie captures these paranoid states of mind through a suspenseful double-register, forcing you to continually ask yourself, "was that real or not?"

But despite their craziness, the anxious feeling tone of these visions is not that alien from mind states anyone freaked out about accomplishing some major task might experience.  

Yet, Portman's visions come to be much more than that. In fact, little by little, they kill her.  To me, this was an over-dramatization that strained my ability to suspend disbelief.  I asked myself why this might be so ...

The Rise and Fall of the Mad Artist

Certainly, the idea of the creative person who loses it in pursuit of her art has a rich pedigree.  Plato famously insisted that madness was required for writing good poetry.  As he put it, "there is no invention in him [the poet] until he has been inspired and is out of his senses, and the mind is no longer in him: when he has not attained to this state, he is powerless and is unable to utter his oracles."  Horace added that it helped to be drunk too.

Such doctrines are seemingly renewed continually.  In my favorite century, the 19th, Rimbaud pursued "the systematic derangement of the senses."  And, starting with the Romantics and proceeding through their Pre-Raphaelite, Symbolist and Decadent successors, not only was the attainment of a nearly psychedelic artistic vision required, but, as catalogued by Frank Kermode, that vision had to cost you something to be credible.  Swan Lake, of course, is a product of music's "great Romantic Age."

Yet, as much as I'd like to believe in this mini-religion of art, today it all seems corny.  This may be because, in part, in the poetry world (the art form I've been personally involved with), such notions seem passe; we live in a distinctly anti-Romantic moment.  The last time poets were driven mad by their art, it seems, was at the beginning of Ginsberg's Howl.

The transformation of a few other attitudes come into play as well.  Addiction, for example, once the accoutrement of the tragic artist, is now seen as a mere pathology in need of a 12-step program. Likewise, today mad visions are considered psychological, rather than artistic, problems.  As such, they too can be domesticated away. 

The Visions of Ally McBeal

This may be why, despite the malefic quality of the visions of Black Swan, the film brought to mind the use of fantasy in TV shows of the past few years.  Coincidentally, reruns of Ally McBeal (the show that seemed to pioneer the use of fantasy imagery on TV), have been playing lately.  Here is perhaps the program's more famous scenes, where Ally -- a dancer in this instance too -- encounters a hallucination of her own:

 

As I remember it, this vision had something to do with McBeal's nervousness over her "ticking biological clock."  But, not being an artist but a mere lawyer, seeing things like this doesn't kill her.  As if informed by a New Age version of pop psychology, during the rest of the series she speaks to her vision, makes peace with it, "respects its right to exist", lets it be.

All of which is a way of saying, I guess, that the process of secularization in our culture demystifies not only the potentially mystical, but the arts and creativity as well.  But if that's true, why might an extremely sophisticated  filmmaker still expect these motifs to carry such dramatic weight?

I wonder if Black Swan might not represent a longing, not for a time when artists went mad for their visions exactly, but for one in which their visions mattered.

And to bring those somewhat more purist sentiments back to life -- in an age of action flicks, blockbusters and rom-coms -- is the type of ambition that would drive anybody nuts.

 

 

What's the Rap on Rap Today? Ideas from B.o.B. and Poet Saul Williams

The other week on Charlie Rose, Sasha-Frere Jones (pop music critic for the New Yorker), pointed to a fascinating trend in the world of hip-hop.

Usually we associate rap with "bragging and boasting"; now "it's full of this strange kind of self-loathing self-doubt," where the artist asks, "what does it mean to be famous..."

Frere-Jones was speaking about new releases from Drake and Eminen.  But the same mood is one of the things that makes the hit collaboration between B.o.B. and Halyley Williams (of Paramore) interesting.  The self-doubt here lends a bittersweet, haunting quality to this cut.  Check it out:

The key stanza in this rap for me is the one that begins:

Somebody take me back to the days
Before this was a job, before I got paid
Before it ever mattered what I had in my bank
Yeah back when I was tryin' to get into the subway
And back when I was rappin' for the hell of it
But now a days we rappin' to stay relevant

"Relevant" here could mean more concerned with a "message."  But I take it to mean competitive in the marketplace (as this collaboration with a mega-watt pop star keeps B.o.B.).  In either case, the act of rapping is no longer an "art about nothing" ("for the hell of it"), i.e., rap-for-rap's-sake -- as it's lost a bit of its joy and freedom -- on the practical road to making buck.

Poets Vs. Rappers

This trend in hip-hop self-critique reminded me of a much earlier one, offered by rap's first cousins: slam poets.  People who know about the history of that movement will tell you that a common theme for slam poems has been the idea idea that hip-hop was once great, but that now it has sold out.

Where such a complaint becomes really interesting is when it's put out there by someone adept at both hip-hop and literary poetry.  Such poems use the conventions of hip-hop verse to speak against the genre's cliches.  A fascinating example of this is The Dead Emcee Scrolls: The Lost Teachings of Hip-Hop (2006), by poet and slam innovator Saul Williams .

The book reinvents the tale of the discovery of such texts as the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Nag Hammadi Library, only as urban legend.  Williams mythologizes about finding a lost scripture beneath the subway tunnels of NYC, apparently written by an ancient poet (in an almost indecipherable graffiti-like script). His book is a "translation" of this mysteriously coded text into several poetic sequences.  

The visionary speaking through the Scrolls was apparently omniscient; he was there at the birth of the form and has predicted its demise, as in these lines:

Hip-hop is lying on the side of the road
half-dead to itself.  Blood scrawled over its
mangled flesh like jazz.  Stuffed into an over-
sized record bag.

Tuba lips swollen beyond recognition.  Diamond
studded teeth strewn like rice at karma's wedding.
The ring bearer bore bad news.  Minister of
Information wrote the wrong proclamation.  Now
everyone's singing the wrong song. (p. 37)

The problem with the genre is specified in a manifesto-like piece later in the book:

Statements such as, "keep it real," especially
when punctuating or articulating modes of
ultra-violence inflicted psychologically or
physically or depicting an unchanging rule
of events, will henceforth be seen as retroactive
and not representative of the individually 
determined IS. (p. 101)

Commercial (gangsta) rap is criticized here not only for its sensationalist violence, but its "realism." This trait makes for "an unchanging rule" (i.e., a sort of hopeless determinism).  In this sense, its message -- only describing the social rather than changing it -- isn't ambitious enough.  The way forward is to be found in the visionary rather than the so-called "real":

MTHRFCKRs better realize, now is the time
to self-actualize.  We have found evidence that
Hip-hop's standard 85 RPM when increased
by a number at least half the rate of the standard
or decreased by 3/4's of its speed may be a 
determining factor in heightening consciousness.
Studies show that when a given norm is changed
in the face of the unchanging the remaining
contradictions will parallel the truth.  (p. 102)

Two Ways to Criticize Commercial Art

You could say B.o.B.'s complaint about the rap business criticizes from within: if you're worried too much about hits, you lose the pleasure of spontaneity by serving the practical.  Williams uses the non-commercial standpoint of the visionary poet to critique the genre from the outside, with not only an aesthetic, but ethical protest.  He suggests commerce has weakened the message.

From both there's a complaint about the loss of autonomy -- about artists not being able to say what they want or should.  It's an objection that goes back to the beginning of modernism.

And often the sign that a genre is going to take a whole new turn.
  

              

     

    

   

Is It Ethical to Appropriate? Ideas from a Performance by Rob Fitterman

Even to a relatively uninitiated observer such as myself, newer literary practices that fit under the umbrella of "Conceptualism" are at times reminiscent (as Kenneth Goldsmith has mentioned) of older movements, such as Realism.

As in these earlier (predecessor?) styles, there is sometimes an effort to present/document very ordinary ways of communication from everyday life.  In the case of Conceptualism, this can involve snippets of conversation, internet chatter, advertising and journalistic lingo, institutional cliches and more. 

This "Realist impulse" can produce (in the words of Ranciere) a "scandal" -- arising from an "anything goes" attitude, in which what is customarily relegated to "profane" realms is welcomed into the halls of art. (pp. 5, 14)

You can see how it could also give rise to ethical questions.  As critical as Realism was of its subjects, it was considered democratic, if for no other reason than that it offered voice to people who previously had none (at least in high culture).  When Conceptualism appropriates unsophisticated chatter, it's often very funny. But then the question arises, is this "just making fun of the boobs"?  (In which case, it risks sacrificing the power of an egalitarian ethos.)

In a witty performance at St. Mark's Poetry Project last Wednesday, Rob Fitterman addressed this question head on.  Fitterman's new book, Sprawl, often uses online consumer commentary about stores and restaurants.  In a part serious/part satirical piece he read at the end of his performance, he described his sense of "failure" in his handling of such material :

"I still have the messy job of returning to the ethical question, which I failed to respond to in any satisfactory way.  I've tried to consider how I might borrow consumer language without having a superior relationship to it. The dilemma comes to a head in the conflicted decision of whether or not to correct the grammar and spelling of online found text.  If I Ieave in the original errors, I take the risk of poking fun of the online authors who might be less privileged in education, and if I do correct the errors, then I run the risk of controlling and purifying the found text.  Either way points to failure, major failure, capital F." 

Fitterman's performance did, though, offer some intriguing ways out of this quandary.  One solution to the "artist-over-subject" dilemma was to appropriate, and sometimes transform (with consumer language) elements from the texts of Matvei Yankelevich, with whom he read that night (and who gave a fascinating performance in his own right).  I took this as a way of leveling the playing field; i.e., reminding us that it's not only unsuspecting consumers who get their texts borrowed.

Even more provocative for me, though, was the fact that who the producer/author was and who the "mere" consumer shifted at points during the reading.

Who is "The Consumer"?

Working in Advertising/Marketing over the years, I've seen many presentations by prestigious research organizations on "The State of the Consumer" (who is sometimes "disillusioned", often "in revolt", "demanding more choice", and generally behaving irascibly).  In Cultural Studies literature, I've read about the "Consumer" being "the new proletariat".  It's always struck me, though, when describing this mysterious Other, that these intellectuals never seem to acknowledge that they are also describing themselves.  Don't they like to shop?

A particularly egalitarian moment erupted during Fitterman's performance when he presented a work that dissolved the subject positions of author/producer (and "person in the know" in general) and consumer.  It happened like this... 

The Poetry of Pills

As in the world of TV, FItterman's performance was interrupted with ads.  Throughout the night, he periodically re-presented drug ad copy (sometimes straight, sometimes modified) as poems.  Usually   these pieces got laughs -- especially to a younger crowd, where the imagined consumer was an "Other".  Picture a dramatic, deadpan, pause-filled reading of this text, about Levitra: "Sometimes you need a little/help staying/in the game.../but once you're in/the zone,/it's good."

It's not just, of course, schadenfreude that makes such copy funny.  After being bombarded with messages as consumers all day, ironic distance offers one the pleasures of taking an objective rather than subjective position to such texts.  However, something else occurred when Fitterman read this (in what I remember as a slow, slightly mournful voice):

Paxil

I don't enjoy
things like

I used to
I can't

sit still
I wasn't

always like
this I

used to
be happy

I remember
being happy.

When I spoke to people afterwards about the hear-a-pin-drop-silence that followed this poem, someone said "maybe that one was too close to home."  I think that's why, for me, this momentary erasure of the self/other divide answered the ethical question posed that night.

For, like a sign carried across a Brechtian stage, it interrupted the plane of the performance with a caption -- one that said: "Oh, by the way, this is about you, too."     

    

            

  

   

Do You Find or Create Yourself? Thoughts on Michael Lally's Poetry

Often poets and fans of the many styles of contemporary, populist performance poetry characterize its poetics as "all about identity."  Susan B.A. Somers-Willett, in The Cultural Politics of Slam Poetry, one of the first full-length scholarly books on the movement, would agree.  But she might add that some of these poets look at personal identity as something you find; others as something you make. (Shameless plug: I review this book in the upcoming issue of Pleiades).

I thought of this distinction when reflecting on a great reading I attended last week at St. Mark's Poetry Project, featuring Michael Lally and Ray DiPalma (himself a master at playing with poetic reading personas).

Lally's powerful style, mixing talk, a jazzy rhythm and pre-hip hop improvisatory rhyme with pure attitude, seemed predictive, in retrospect, of the performance styles to come after his own work began.  In fact, reading his work and seeing him perform it over the years, I can't help but think of him as the sophisticated (if at times unacknowledged) literary godfather of all sorts of poets.  (I know he influenced my attempts at mixing punk motifs with poetry.)

My Life: a Continual Sequel

At times, the humor and wit in Lally's poems comes from playing with the distinction between the self as discovered and the self as made. One of my favorites, that he read that night, is titled "My Life 2", found in his book It's Not Nostalgia  (and on his new CD, Lost Angels).  (Note: you can read this poem in its entirety in the sidebar of his blog Lally's Alley here).  Here are the first two stanzas:

My Life 2 

When I was 10,
I thought I was "Irish,"
even though I was
born in the USA.

When I was 20,
I thought I was "Black,"
even though my skin
is pink & freckled,
and I have no
African ancestry.

As the decades proceed, the poem takes us through one mistaken "self-discovery" after another.  At 30, the speaker thinks he is "queer", at 40, a "movie star", at 50, "enlightened", -- "even though I wasn't." Then, just when you're expecting the "real" self to be revealed (after all these mistakes), the final stanza declares:

But of course I was
and am -- enlightened,
as I was and still am
an Irish-Black-
Queer-Movie-Star.

The humor here comes from the doubling of self-deflation.  In fact, the logic of this poem is perfectly dialectical: statement/negation, statement/negation, etc. -- concluding with "the negation of the negation." One of the ways I read this is: the "self" isn't so much a particular identity, as the act of trying them all on. It's a performance (a truth this poet, who's worked as an actor, knows about firsthand).

Lally's acknowledgment of the malleability of "self" is the the source, not only of the wit in his work, but the poignancy as well.  This was the first reading he gave after brain surgery a number of months ago.  As Nick Piombino captures so precisely in a wonderful post of about the event (see link below), Lally's perception of the world continually altered in radical ways as he recovered.

For a while, he couldn't understand the John Stewart show because of its layers of irony.  Right Wing TV became easier to comprehend (offering him an understanding of Hard Right identity/consciousness from the inside, as it were).

And yet, rather than being freaked out by it all, Lally said he found the whole process incredibly interesting. It's as if his awareness of the experimental aspect of identity was a saving grace.  Because with it seems to come the knowledge that, no matter how many personalities are lost and found, lost and found again, in Bakhtin's words "there always arises an unrealized surplus of humanness; there always remains a need for the future..."

Nick Piombino on the Lally/DiPalma reading at his blog, Fait Accompli

Michael Lally's Blog (Lally's Alley), with a complete list of his books