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The "Science" of Literature: Thoughts on a Poem by A.R. Ammons

Recently I came across a passage in Sphere, A.R. Ammons' long poem, that caught my interest by the way it drew a parallel between natural and cultural evolution:

15

in the generations and becomings of our minds, anthologies,
good sayings are genes, the images, poems, stories
chromosomes and the interminglings of these furnish beginnings

within continuities, continuities within trials, mischances,
fortunate forwardings: gene pool, word hoard: the critic
samples the new thing, he turns it over in his consideration,

he checks alignments, proportions, he looks into the body of
the anthology to see if the new thing hooks in, distorts, to raise
or ruin: he considers the weight, clarity, viability of

the new thing and reconsiders the whole body of the anthology:
if the new thing finds no attachment, if energy, cementing,
does not flow back  and forth between it and the anthology,

16

it dies, withered away from the configuration of the people...

The "sphere" Ammons writes about in this poem is the earth.  And though I'm still in the midst of reading Sphere, I can see how integrating the two "evolutions" is in keeping with the poem's themes, as all the topics and images it presents are swept up into a single, self-modifying ecology.

But there's also a historical aspect about these lines that interests me.  Ammons' poem was originally published in 1974.  Two years later, science writer Richard Dawkins offered a similar analogy between biological and cultural evolution in The Selfish Gene.  Except, instead of referring to "literary" genes and chromosomes, as Ammons does, Dawkins coined the now famous term "memes" (which sounds a little like "genes," but also connotes [cultural] memory).  Here's how he defined his new word:

"Examples of memes are tunes, ideas, catch-phrases, clothes fashions, ways of making pots or of building arches.  Just as genes propagate themselves in the gene pool by leaping from body to body via sperms or eggs, so memes propagate themselves in the meme pool by leaping from brain to brain via a process which, in the broad sense, can be called imitation.  If a scientist hears, or reads about, a good idea, he passes it on to his colleagues and students.  He mentions it in his articles and his lectures.  If the idea catches on, it can be said to propagate itself, spreading from brain to brain."

Dawkins casts a wider cultural net than Ammons but, nevertheless, if you replace the "scientist" in his prose with the "critic" in Sphere, you have a fairly good  analogy between the two concepts.

The Decline and Fall of the "Meme"

Since the 70s, I've read, the whole idea of "memes" has been pretty much discredited as far as its scientific value goes.  The philosopher Massimo Pigliucci writes that "we don't know how to define memes in a way that is operationally useful to the practicing scientist, we don't know why some memes are successful and others not, and we have no clue as to the physical substrate, if any, of which memes are made.  Tellingly, the Journal of Memetics closed a few years ago for lack of submissions."

The "meme" concept has also come under fire from cultural criticism.  It's often seen as another "reductionist" product of scientism -- that form of intellectual overreach through which materialist thinkers seek to explain things they know little about by ascribing them, in some crude way, to processes borrowed from the natural sciences.

The only area, in fact, where the concept still has currency is the web.  But rather than something governed by "critics" or "scientists," the meme has become a populist, occasionally (mildly) subversive creation, as people joyously replicate, mutate and circulate endless goofy pictures of cats, celebrities, politicians and optical illusions.

The Return of Cultural Evolution

Despite the fate of "memes," the desire to discover patterns of cultural evolution has not gone away -- nor, for that matter, the pursuit of approaches to literature that use tools pioneered in the natural sciences.

The relatively new field of "digital humanities" is a case in point.  Because of the quickly growing digital archive of texts, both popular and "canonical," scholars are now able to pursue increasingly systematic, quantifiable approaches to literature.  They are beginning, for example, to be able to trace the way basic stylistic traits in the novel change between centuries.

Science scholar Armand Marie Leroi has written recently that this area of study may result in "something resembling the theory of organic evolution..." and will draw on fields such as "epidemiology, cognitive psychology and behavioral economics," along with the literary analysis of critics who interpret what these methods discover.

All of which makes me wonder if we're witnessing a shift.  Over the past 30 years or so, cultural critics have often been fascinated with the idea of viewing science through the lens of literature.  Perhaps now they are becoming enchanted by imagining what literature looks like in the eyes of a scientist.  Thoughts? 

The Poetic Blending Machine 2: Thoughts on a Poem by Ko Un (with Ideas from Mark Turner)

In a recent issue of Poetry Magazine, I came across a translation (by Suji Kwock Kim and Sunja Kim Kwock) of a poem by Korean poet Ko Un.  It caught my eye because, in a few brief lines, the poem created a whole, mysterious imaginative world.

EAR

Someone's coming
from the other world.

Hiss of night rain.

Someone's going there now.
The two are sure to meet.

One way to read this poem is as a reflection on birth and death.  A sort of balance is envisioned; one person leaves the world, another one comes (or perhaps returns).  What interests me most, though, is that moment when the poet imagines both persons meeting.

Where is it, I ask myself, that this meeting occurs?  I suppose it is a kind of Bardo state, a liminal space visible to the poet when things are murky (like on a rainy night) in the ordinary world.  But as mysterious as this imaginative space may be, it insists itself upon the speaker's consciousness, hissing into his awareness.

The Riddle of the Two Buddhist Monks

The alternate world that the poem creates is the result of a blending of two states that normally don't occur in a single space: coming/going or birth/death.  By blending these opposites, a third state is created -- one that transcends both.  (Note: "Conceptual blending" has been covered earlier on this blog, here).

This all reminded me of a riddle I came across recently in a book by Mark Turner, a literary scholar who draws on coginitive science, entitled The Origin of Ideas.

The riddle, said to originate with Arthur Koestler, goes like this:

"A Buddhist monk begins at dawn one day walking up a mountain, reaches the top at sunset, meditates at the top overnight until, at dawn, he begins to walk back to the foot of the mountain, which he reaches at sunset.  Make no assumptions about his starting or stopping or about his pace during the trips.  Riddle: is there a place on the path that the monk occupies at the same hour of the day on the two trips?"

The answer is yes, but what interests Turner is how our minds go about finding it.  He shows us that one way to do so is to compress the two trips and envision, in the mind's eye, not one, but two Buddhist monks (though they are the same person) -- each traveling a different direction (up or down the mountain path).  Then, through our imaginative visualization we see for ourselves that...

"...no matter how the two monks move, so long as they start at dawn, end at dusk, and traverse the path without leaving it, the monks must always cross, or meet, somewhere, at least once, and that meeting point will be the location that the monk occupies at the same hour of the day on the two successive days.  We do not know what point it will be, but we know that there must be at least one such point."

To solve such a riddle, Turner points out, we suspend time and space as well as the way we normally think of personhood.  For we blend two days and two directions into one moment in one location -- and clone a single person into two.  Like in the Ko Un poem, we create an alternate world where coming and going meet, except this time it's the same person who meets himself coming and going.

The theme of Turner's book is that this sort of conceptual blending (of which poetry provides the richest examples), is something we all do everyday to solve mundane problems, or even (or especially?) to help us come to terms with existential riddles.  In the case of Koestler's riddle, such imaginative blending enables us to solve a thought problem without having to resort to a laborious mathematical proof.

And when it comes to a poem like "Ear", the "blend" offers a way to think about what's normally unthinkable: the infinite.  Through creating a space outside of life and death, the speaker -- and we readers -- get a handle (at least for a moment) on the incomprehensible.

The revolutionary writer, Lautreamont, once insisted that "poetry must be made by all."

What fascinates a fan of poetry like myself is that the notion of conceptual blending suggests that Lautreamont was right, but in a way he couldn't have anticipated.  For according to writers like Mark Turner, eveyone, of necessity, uses their own, innate metaphor-making and, and in this sense, poetic abilities everyday, to create blends that aid in navigating and reconstructing the many clashing worlds we all inhabit.

In other words, it takes a hell of a lot of imagination to get through the day.  Any day.  Thoughts?

Only a God(zilla) Can Save Us: the Symbolism of Summer Blockbusters

In an interview the philosopher Martin Heidegger gave later in life, he spoke about how our technology had uprooted us, not only from tradition, but the very earth itself.  He added that this alienation had reached such an advanced state that "only a god can save us."

I found it amusing, and a bit surprising, that in the recent summer blockbuster Godzilla, when this "god" finally arrives, he takes the the form of a giant, fire-breathing dragon.

If you've seen the film, you know that due to our experiments with dangerous technologies (in this case, nuclear energy), great beasts arise from the depths to torment humanity.  Our main persecutor comes in the form of a giant, moth-like creature.  Godzilla follows this "MUTO" ("Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Organism") up from wherever such beings live, to hunt down and destroy it.  A battle ensues and God(zilla) is on our side all the way.

When I say Godzilla is a god, I mean that literally.  As Director Gareth Edwards put it in The Daily Beast, the MUTO represents "man's abuse of nature," and Godzilla "is a god, really.  He's at the top of the food chain and probably King of the World."  Godzilla is also called a god by characters in the film.

The mission of this godly being is to restore the balance of nature (that the MUTO throws out of whack), saving humanity in the process, as a sort of fortuitous side-effect.  At the end of the film, as Godzilla leaves the ravaged city where his battle with the evil MUTO took place, the crowd watching breaks out in a cheer.

This means, though, that even with its happy ending, the film has a pessimistic, somber mood -- not unlike Heidegger's later philosophy.  Humanity seems helpless.   Most of the action takes place between the behemoths.  All the military/scientific team that gathers in the crisis can do ultimately, is "let them fight," as one character mutters reverently.

This dark mood certainly reflects the zeitgeist concerning ecological issues.  Washington still debates the reality of global warming, while environmental scientists such as James Lovelock  (who invented the Gaia hypothesis), advise us to "enjoy life while [we] can," as "humans are too stupid to prevent climate change."

And yet, despite the reality of the issues the movie alludes to, I found it hard to take the messenger entirely seriously.  A popcorn movie, where a couple of monsters jam it out, after all, can't help but seem more fun and silly than profound.

As a result, I found myself reading into the movie in more mundane ways.  And I thought about Godzilla being a savior of something less grand than the earth itself.

Recently I've been reading a fascinating book about the entertainment industry by Anita Elberse titled Blockbusters.  In it, she shows that the main vehicle the movie business now favors is the big-budget, special-effects flick.   As a result, it follows a strategy in which it sinks most of its investment dollars into such blockbusters, in search of giant wins.  She also shows that the rest of the entertainment industry is pretty much following suit.

Elberse tells us that this industry increasingly relies on blockbusters, in part, to avoid the need to place its bets on smaller, riskier properties, aimed at niche markets -- an approach often associated with the fragmentation of audiences that came about because of the web and the digital age. Instead, the blockbuster makes old-school mass-marketing to a mass audience still possible.

You could say, then, that Godzilla saves not only the earth, but, on a more trivial level, the movie studio that produced the film he stars in, by offering the promise of the kind of big profits that will keep it afloat.

And blockbusters don't just save the movie industry from being at the mercy of niche tastes.  Elberse doesn't talk about this so directly in her book, but another aspect of entertainment in the digital age is that lots of it is free.  Blockbusters, designed for big, 3-D screens, are one of the entertainment products for which people are still willing to pay.

In this light, Godzilla isn't only saving the earth; he's also helping the paid entertainment economy fight off the increasingly powerful free one -- or what Jeremy Rifkin has recently termed the "collaborative commons."

And in this regard, perhaps this economic message is related to the ecological pessimism you see in the film.  For the same, clumsy, old school, big-time capitalism that survives by producing blockbusters, is, according to Rifkin, incapable of dealing with ecological crises.  What he predicts, instead (in The Zero Marginal Cost Society), is the coming of "Collaboratism," a new economic paradigm that transcends both capitalism and socialism.

Until then, I suppose, one might have to agree with Heidegger, that only a god -- or perhaps a Godzilla -- can save us.

On the Eyes Not Being Windows of the Soul: Gertrude Stein, James Franco and Mind Reading

I've recently been reading The Making of Americans the way Gertrude Stein says she wrote it: little by little, day by day.  Stein loves to teach, and some of my favorite moments are when she shares bits of wisdom, practical and artistic, in her witty, hypnotic fashion.

The other day I came upon a passage which makes the point that a person's facial expressions don't necessarily reveal his or her moods:

"Sometimes the boy had a way with him, and it would show clear in spite of the fair cheery sporty nature he had in him, a way of looking sleepy and reflecting, and his lids would never be really ever very open, and he would be always only half showing his clear grey eyes that, very often, were bright alive and laughing.  Later such a way of looking could be of great service to him.  It would not matter if he never really could have wisdom in him, this look could help him always in his dealings with all men and be of much service too to him with women.  He will listen then, and with his veiled eyes it will be as if he were full with thinking, and with himself always well hidden, and so he will be wise; or for a woman it will be as if he were always in a dream of them.  Wisdom and dreaming, both good things when shown at the right time by a young grown man, who wants to be succeeding, always, in every kind of living."

Even though we know that a person's demeanor doesn't always reflect his or her state of mind, as Stein's passage indicates, we often assume it does.  So much so, that she suggests her character can potentially use this assumption to his advantage: if he cultivates his tendency to "look sleepy" he can make himself seem more wise or romantic than he really is.

The cognitive cultural critic, Lisa Zunshine, attributes our habit of reading outward expressions as indicative of inner states as the result of what she terms "the myth of embodied transparency."  This is the traditional belief that not only the eyes, but the face and bodily attitude, are windows to the soul.

In Zunshine's view, our tendency to make this assumption -- almost like a reflex -- says something about our lives as social beings: we are constantly compelled to try to "read people's minds" by hints like facial expression because we need to guess at others' thoughts and intentions in order to make our way in society.

Is James Franco Bored or Stoned?

One of the reasons why I found the Stein passage amusing is that it brought to mind an actor known for his sleepy look: James Franco.  It seems much of the irritation surrounding him has to do with whether he "embodies transparency" or not.  His detractors claim he does; they read his demeanor as signifying boredom or intoxication.  But Franco claims his face doesn't mean what it appears to; he says it's the result of a medical condition.

Whatever the truth is, the ambiguity of his look seems to fascinate.  On a recent Comedy Central Roast, it was a touch point for many of the jokes.  "If at any point James fully opens his eyes tonight, there will be six more weeks of summer," said one roaster.  And another: "I've heard of a lazy eye, but that left one is collecting unemployment."

But despite the habitual pull of the idea of embodied transparency, there are moments, Zunshine argues (in her book Getting Inside Your Head), when our belief in it evaporates.  As she puts it:

"As soon as a culture becomes aware of an established niche for representing embodied transparency, this niche is vulnerable to subversion and parody."

One "niche" where this occurs in our times is Reality Television.  As a genre, such programs promise a raw look at the inner emotional states of their characters.  As Zunshine writes, because the people on such shows are not professional actors, "the assumption...is that participants...are not good at faking or concealing their feelings."

Yet, because the emotive situations and gestures seem overdone (and are repeated with such regularity on so many reality shows), the genre is frequently mocked for being "stagy."  As a result, though Reality TV aims for authenticity, it's often written off as artificial or manipulative.

But then, to make things even more complicated, there are also times, as Charles Bernstein has described in his now classic essay, "Artifice of Absorption," when literary or artistic works can actually heighten their emotional impact precisely by making us aware of their aesthetic devices; i.e., when creative work gains authenticity by admitting to its artificiality.

More on this fascinating twist in the next post...

Being Joseph Ceravolo: Thoughts about the Poem "Great Plains" (from Collected Poems)

The other morning my wife, the poet Elaine Equi, read me "Great Plains" from the newly published Collected Poems of Joseph Ceravolo:

Great Plains

What, no one here?  No one
around here?  No buffalo?
Like sleeping on the toilet bowl...
Drifting toward love...

The dogs are out this morning
jumping on top of each other
Is there a real release with them?

But, no one here.
There's no buffalo, only dogs,
this morning, where dawn
and a wild wild bird fly away.

She wanted to know my thoughts about this poem, and immediately I offered my surface impressions.

Recalling cold mornings in Chicago where I grew up -- and in fact remembering dogs, if not screwing, at least growling at each other in the icy street -- I placed the poem in winter (although there's nothing in it to indicate a season).  Perhaps the white of the toilet bowl made me think of snow (and the fact that it was cold outside).

I also knew that Ceravolo lived in New Jersey, but was part of the New York poetry scene from the 60s through the 80s.  So I sensed a touch of loneliness in it, as if Ceravolo, comparing NYC to Jersey, felt it to be rather desolate, with a touch a natural wildness to it.

I injected "wildness" into my reading because of the title and the mention of buffalo, but also because of something my Jersey friends have told me about the state: that just 100 miles outside NYC, you can still see bears and coyote (though they may have been pulling my Midwestern leg).

But what interests me, in retrospect, about this unremarkable 30 second interpretation was the paradoxical feeling state that came with it.  Even though my reading of the poem was really about me -- assembled more from my personal memories and associations than anything Ceravolo had in mind -- I identified with him. 

In fact, I felt I was actually inside his mind -- looking out through his eyes, seeing what he saw on that morning.  And therein laid the enjoyment I derived from this poem: the experience of seeing things from the perspective of a poet I admired.  (Perhaps a bit of his magic would rub off on me...)

And as I mentioned, all this happened in less than half a minute; my imagined projection into the poet's mind was automatic, instinctual -- I could not not do this.

This reaction brought to mind two books I've been reading that offer interpretations of literature informed by cognitive psychology.  The first (covered in a previous post) is by Lisa Zunshine, titled Getting Inside Your Head.  Zunshine argues that one of the pleasures literature offers is precisely this feeling that we're really seeing into the minds of others -- observing people's thoughts with a clarity we aren't granted in everyday life.

The second, a book about Shakespeare's Sonnets by Brian Boyd, connects this impulse to what he sees as the raison d'etre of the poetic lyric.  As a form, lyric poetry makes us feel not only that we're reading a mind, but doing so in a particularly intimate way.  It does this in part because, unlike other genres, it is not hampered by the necessity of telling a story.  Stripped of narrative conventions, lyric poems seem to reveal bare thought itself.

Both of these writers argue that our desire to read minds is an evolved trait.  As social and political animals, our survival depends upon accurately guessing the intentions of others.  So when we're offered an insider's view, it delights us.

Being John Malkovich

The drive to dissolve the barrier between our mind and another's can, of course, get rather obsessive, as the many parodies of fan culture suggest.

Coincidentally, as I was thinking about my experience of this poem, the now classic flick Being John Malkovich aired again on cable.

In it, you may recall, a character discovers a secret portal that allows him to get inside the mind of the actor and experience life as he does.  Soon, like a good entrepreneur, he merchandises the portal -- selling tickets to trips inside the Malkovich mindscape.

But even this invasion of privacy isn't enough.  Eventually, like a malevolent spirit, he takes over not only the mind, but the life of Malkovich, making him abandon his acting career and become a puppeteer.  All of which I take as an allegory of how in popular culture, keeping fans happy can pressure a celebrity to begin living out their projections.

Of course, poets today don't get famous enough to have to worry about such problems; we can fall into and out of identification with our favorite writers without harming anyone.

When it comes to mind reading, the contemporary lyric gives all parties a free ride.  No wonder, despite periodic claims of its obsolescence, it persists!  Thoughts?
 

Reading Joe Pesci's Mind: Thoughts About Lisa Zunshine's "Getting Inside Your Head"

I've just started reading Lisa Zunshine's Getting Inside Your Head: What Cognitive Science Can Tell Us About Popular Culture, and I'm already intrigued by its central idea.

Zunshine, a literary studies scholar, states early on that "we can predict...that no cultural form will endure unless it lets us attribute mental states to somebody or something."

She bases this bold statement on findings that arise from cognitive psychology and evolutionary theory.  According to cognitive psychologists, "...to make sense of any human action, we must see it in terms of a mental state that prompted it."  She adds "psychologists have a special term for [this] evolved cognitive adaptation...They call it theory of mind, also known as folk psychology and mind reading."

Zunshine goes on to explain that we've been "mind reading" for hundreds of thousands of years.  According to evolutionary psychologists, this trait helped our ancestors "make sense of the behavior of other people in their group, which could number up to two hundred individuals."  By now, this feature of our make-up is so habitual that much of our "mind reading" is an unconscious reflex.

But this ability stops far short of telepathy.  No matter how important it is to know the intentions of others, we can't be certain of what's actually in the mind we're reading.  As Zunshine puts it elsewhere, rather than "mind reading" we might call this habit "mind groping."  This is why, I take it, our culture is so obsessed with the inner thoughts and confessions of people.

As I haven't finished reading Getting Inside Your Head yet, I'm not yet convinced that what makes cultural productions last is their appeal to this trait.  This is a pretty big claim.

But as a metaphor, "mind reading" is certainly potent.  So much so that I find myself spontaneously thinking of examples that support the author's case.

Consider, for instance, this iconic scene from Goodfellas.  Its suspense and humor seem to arise from a little "mind reading" test that Tommy DeVito (Joe Pesci) gives Henry Hill (Ray Liotta).  The scene begins right after Tommy tells a hilarious story and Henry compliments him for being so "funny."

 

Henry makes an assumption  about Tommy's "mind state."  He thinks Tommy enjoys telling humorous stories and getting laughs.  He also assumes their relationship is one of easy familiarity.

Tommy then pulls the rug out from underneath Henry, making him question his interpretation.  This is why the seconds of silence in this scene are so gripping.  As I watch it, I'm drawn into Hill's mind; I identify with his uncertainty about really knowing what Tommy's thinking.

The laughs that erupt once the silence is broken and we find out that Henry really could see into Tommy's mind (judging finally that Tommy is putting him on) arise from the release from anxiety (for both the characters and viewers).  And after watching that scene, I found myself thinking of many social situations where such awkward silences occurred whenever I've said something in jest and was not quite sure how others took it.

Zunshine also argues that "mind reading" is so habitual that it's activated not just by people -- but their representations.  When we see a statue, we are compelled to interpret what this piece of stone is thinking.  Or, to return to my example, there's the scene from Goodfellas where Tommy plays art critic to his mother's painting:

 

Pesci's character is quite specific in deciphering this work.  He even tells us what the guy on the boat is thinking! (See the Art, Life, TV, Etc. blog for more on this scene.)

Another example that came to me of the expression of this trait is the psychological novel -- particularly the convention of "stream of consciousness" narration.  Here's a paragraph from Joyce's Ulysses that I found in an essay on "theory of mind" by Deirdre Wilson:

"What, reduced to their simplest reciprocal from, were Bloom's thoughts about Stephen's thoughts about Bloom and Bloom's thoughts about Stephen's thoughts about Bloom's thoughts about Stephen?  He thought that he thought that he was a jew whereas he knew that he knew that he knew that he was not."

And such mental gyrations are not, of course, confined to the novel.  Literary critic Brian Boyd, for example, argues that one of the reasons why lyric poetry persists -- despite the common criticism that it is no longer influential -- is that that it "allows us the illusion of access to another's thought" unconstrained by the conventions of story telling.

Somewhere in all of this I sense a fascinating new functional definition of the arts.  But that's a topic for other posts.  In the meantime, I'm wondering if anyone would like to share their thoughts about these thoughts about thoughts?

Is Cute the New Cool? Some Car Commercials from Kia

When it comes to cars, a non-driver like myself associates them with the power, speed and sleek design you see in ads -- and the hassles you don't.

That's why I found some TV spots currently running for the Kia Sorento and Soul intriguing.  These cars are portrayed, by contrast, as cute.

This isn't the first time cars have been marketed like this.  The Volkswagen Beetle had a cute look from the beginning of its life in the U.S.  It's been called the automotive version of a smiley face.

But these spots take cuteness one step further.  One is scored to what sounds like neo-soul; the other, hip-hop -- both signs of hipness.  The takeaway I get: not only are these cars cute, but they're cool because they're cute.

When you look into the marketing strategy for both, equating cute with cool makes total sense.  The Sorento ad (which I think ran first during the Superbowl) is designed for young parents.  According to Kia:

"Created by David & Goliath, 'Joyride Dream' speaks to young couples who are entering a new life stage and facing adult responsibilities while still desiring the style, freedom and fun they've always enjoyed."

The animals and toys that, in essence, do their partying for them, are the sorts of objects that signify their new lifestyle.  As new parents, these are the kinds of cute things that would be left in their back seats by their kids.

As the late Stephen Jay Gould suggested, cuteness awakens the innate response to nurture.  The spot is saying: your new, nurturing life can be just as fun as your old partying one, especially if you take the family around in a cute car like a Sorento.

The hamster ads, according to automotive reporter Jim Henry (writing about an earlier spot in the campaign) are designed to appeal to a younger crowd.  The "cool" hamsters in Kias are meant to "stand out" against unhip animals that (in this commercial) are riding in everything from washing machines to cardboard boxes.

From what I've read, smaller, cube-like cars are already considered hip, urban rides.  The cute hamsters add a light-hearted touch to Kia's version of this sort of vehicle: for me, they communicate that these are fun cars -- the perfect wheels to get the party started.

The Science of Cute

Noticing how these ads elicited an inner-smile from the inner-child I've been assured I have, I wondered about what made something cute in the first place.  It turns out there's a whole science of cuteness -- and that the topic has been a hot one for online critics for years.  Gould's observations are a touchpoint for them all.

Gould traced how the figure of Mickey Mouse had, over the years, been transformed -- from a wise guy  rodent with a long, sharp snout -- to a cuddly mouse with big ears, big hands, an oversized head -- and a button-like nose.  Gould said that as Mickey got older in historical years, in terms of what he stood for, he got younger.

What the artists at Disney discovered was something Zoologist Konrad Lorenz constructed a theory about: that the more you made an animal look like a human baby, the cuter it became. 

In this light, it's pretty clear why so many ads pursue cuteness.  As Gary Genosko at Invisible Culture put it, commerce "remakes" bodies in the interest of cuteness to give "everyone a chance to be a kind of nurturer through consumption."

The Triumph of Cuteness

Sentimentality, it's often said, is the other side of cynicism.  So, perhaps the flip side of our cool, ironic culture is unabashed cuteness.

But, speaking impressionistically, it appears to me that cute has been winning out lately.  It almost seems more modern, at least in terms of popular aesthetics, to be cute (in everything from indie music to digital products) than merely cool.

Why might this be?  One possible answer: the digital products that, along with cars, dominate commercial space, especially in their mobile incarnation, are smaller than old time media (TV, movie screens, etc.). And though they don't look like children, they are diminutive and toy-like.  Even grown ups devote a lot of their day to playing games on them.

To sell such experiences, popular culture increasingly encourages regression: it's as if consciousness is being remodeled like Mickey Mouse's image -- to get more childlike.  As one of AT&T's spots (while advertising its digital capabilities to stressed professionals) announces: "Welcome to your fifth birthday, again."

Of course, in the great recession people need to unwind.  But why, I wonder, is it now necessary to think like a little kid to do so?  Thoughts?                 

Survival of the Fittest Literature? Darwin and the new Literary "Evocriticism"

According to Hilary and Steven Rose in the latest issue of New Left Review, Charles Darwin's 200th Birthday last year and the 150th anniversary "of the publication of The Origin [of Species] saw the famously modest biologist turned into that very 21st-century phenomenon, the global celebrity." (p.93)  

In keeping with this picture, the commemorative buzz around Darwin and his work portrayed its originality via the "Great Man Theory" (93-94), rather than acknowledge -- as historians of science have -- that his discoveries were fruit of a historical process with many contributors.  (This can't be said, though, about the recent film Creation, which acknowledges that Alfred Russel Wallace "got there first" as it were.)

Rose and Rose suggest that this bias distorts the way evolutionary theory is currently being adapted throughout the culture.  From "evolutionary aesthetics" to economics and literary criticism, these authors see a tendency to erase the social in favor of an individualist (i.e. "selfish genes") version of biology. (91, 107)

Reading their piece, I remembered hearing about "the new Evolutionary Literary Criticism" but never quite knowing what it was.  So I dug up two pieces I had glanced at in the past that bring together aspects of the theory of evolution and literary studies.

After reading them more carefully, I have to admit finding the whole discourse more interesting than I had assumed.

On the Origin of Stories

Even a socially oriented literary critic such as Terry Eagleton admits some fascination with "evocriticism". Writing back in 2009 about a book by Brian Boyd titled On the Origin of Stories, Eagleton thought it might offer a corrective to some of the excesses of what's now mainstream literary scholarship.

"Given the rampant culturalism of much current literary work, which can see the natural only as an ideologically insidious 'naturalizing'," Eagleton writes, "it is agreeable to read a work which discusses Homer cheek by jowl with allusions to dung beetles, the neocortex and cases of sexual harassment among pigeons."

What Eagleton likes about such criticism is that it offers a way to speak about "nature" again -- something lost in postmodern thinking, even, as he says, in "an ecological age." 

At the same time, where Boyd's book fails is that often it uses its complex scientific vocabulary merely to restate truisms about literature.  It's as if such work has discovered a new vocabulary in which to dress-up cliches.

To ilustrate, Eagleton offers this example: " 'We may never be shipwrecked on a desert island like Robinson Crusoe,' Boyd consolingly informs us, 'but we can learn from the example of his fortitude, resolution and ingenuity.' " For this we need Darwin?

"In Boyd's evolutionary world," he adds, "nothing seems to be done just for the hell of it."  As Eagleton points out, we often derive pleasure from the arts because they give us a break from our utilitarian lives.

Franco Moretti on Sherlock Holmes

Back in 2004, the distinguished literary scholar Franco Moretti employed evolutionary theory in, to my mind, a much more interesting way (later collected in Graphs, Maps, Trees).  Like Darwin, Moretti does   sweeping quantitative surveys of his subject matter.  His research covers forgotten literature -- as Darwin's did failed species.

This allows him to pose questions about literature in a new way.  In one study, he wonders why, out of the hundreds of British crime stories of a certain period, it is only Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes tales that are still read today.  Why did this particular "literary organism" avoid extinction?

His answer is just as original.  In neo-Darwinian fashion, Moretti locates the survivability of Doyle's stories in a single ("genetic") trait: their use of clues.  Clues became extremely popular as this genre evolved, but Doyle's stories used them better than anyone else.

What does "better" mean?  Moretti is refreshingly specific.  Only the Sherlock Holmes stories 1) made clues integral parts of the narrative (not just add-ons for popularity sake) and 2) created clues that were "decodable" by the reader. (49-50)

Many such stories contained one or the other trait -- but very few contained both, and in as masterful way as Doyle's did.  As a result, crime fans kept (and keep) coming back to Sherlock Holmes (while competitors end up in the remainder pile).

But Why Do People Like Clues in the First Place?

Moretti works with a form of popular literature in the example I gave.  You wonder what he'd do with "fine art."  And you wonder also about something even more basic: why do readers find clues absorbing in the first place?

Is that a question simple enough for a Darwinian answer?         

   

        

If You Create a New Species, Is It OK to Have Sex With It? Thoughts About the Movie "Splice"

(Spoiler Alert: Contains details about the movie plot.)

I recently saw Splice, the latest film inspired by the ethical questions raised by genetic research.  In it, a married pair of scientists, played by the always cool Sarah Polley and Oscar winner Adrian Brody, through gene splicing experiments, create a new life form.

As in earlier films, like The Island of Dr. Moreau, the being is an amalgam of creatures.  It's got some of Polley's genes, so it looks partly human.  But it has legs like a bald kangaroo's, and a tail with a stinger (like a scorpion or stingray).  It chirps like a menacing bird -- and it unfurls majestic wings when excited, taking on the look of something above-human: an angel.

The being can look sexy, too.  Played by Delphine Chaneac, the creature sometimes resembles a runway model. The following scene captures a bit of the sexy/scary quality of this "new species":

What I like about this clip is that it suggests the mix of fascination/horror public discourse about new science and technology often carries with it.  We love this stuff, yet we're afraid it will kill us if we get too close.

In fact, what's new about the film is that it pushes that "love" all the way into Eros.  There's even a sex scene between Brody's character and Dren (the name given the creature), where her angel wings flutter in ecstasy.

But, as the stinger at Polley's throat reminds us, Dren is "not of our kind."  (That stinger will pierce the heart of one of the characters later, administering a death blow not unlike what killed Steve Irwin, the Crocodile Hunter.)

One of the things that keeps the film from resolving into cliche is that it maintains this ambivalence through to the very end.  Of course, Polley and Brody are punished in various ways for their Promethean hubris.  Like Adam and Eve, they've accessed knowledge it seems they should have left alone.

But in the last scene, this idea is thrown into doubt.  We find out Polley's character is pregnant. The baby could be the progeny of her (now dead) husband or of the creature itself -- who at one point transformed itself into a man and raped her.  In a rather futuristic take on the Pro-Choice position, she decides to keep the baby.

And her boss at the genetics firm has gone from condemnation of her creation to approval.  It turns out her research produced profitable new patents for the company.  Polley's character is lauded for her courage.

Tradition and the Posthuman Individual

As I was wondering about the film's vacillations, I came across some interesting observations by the philosopher Slavoj Zizek on the public rhetoric surrounding genetic research.

 Zizek, thinking about the way the news of genetics breakthroughs has been received in Europe, notes a tendency which "on the one hand, tacitly tolerates scientific and technical progress, while on the other...tries to control its effects on our socio-symbolic order, that is, to prevent the existing theological-ethical world picture from changing." (p. 62)

I think Zizek's comments explain the caution around such discoveries when it comes to public policy rhetoric.  In the U.S. at least, such "official statements" are influenced by a politics that speaks the language of (if not rules according to) Judeo-Christian ethics.  And the film certainly reflects this influence. But what of its simultaneous delight and endorsement with such dabbling? 

There's one U.S. institution stronger than Church and State combined: Business.  And this force is governed more by cost/value equations than ethics.  As such, it tends to be morally agnostic.

The movie can be read as a parable about the difficulty of splicing all these forces together -- into anything resembling an integrated social whole.  And though this integration never happens, along the way the film offers up some fascinating and hilarious conundrums.  Here's my favorite:

After walking in on Brody and Dren, Polley's character mutters a standard movie expression, along the lines of: "There are some things you just don't do."  This draws a big laugh from the audience.

Maybe that's partly because it's hard to define Brody's transgression: has he committed adultery?  Incest? Or something new -- human/alien sex -- that we don't have a sin for yet?  In which case, you find yourself asking: is it really bad?               

Is Nature Superstitious? Science, Religion and Science Fiction

Recently I bought an anthology of science fiction stories titled The New Space Opera 2.  The beginning of one tale in particular, "The Island" by Peter Watts, compelled me to read on:

"You sent us here.  We do this for you: spin your webs and build your magic gateways, thread the needle's eye at sixty thousand kilometers a second.  We never stop, never even dare to slow down, lest the light of your coming turn us to plasma.  All so you can step from star to star without dirtying your feet in these endless, empty wastes between. 

Is it really too much to ask that you might talk to us now and then?" And then, a little later on the page: "Why have you forsaken us?" (p. 31)

The addressee here is not God but, as far as I could tell on first reading, a post-human intelligence, perhaps some combination of man/machine.  And this prayer is uttered not in a Church, but in one of those Cathedrals of the far future: a rocket ship.

The character thinking these words is tens of thousands of years old.  But she's not supernatural either. She's simply one of a small crew of workers whose Sisyphean task is to travel thousands of light years across the cosmos, as she helps build things for a kind of intergalactic Robert Moses (the "person" addressed earlier).  To make this task possible, she and her crew only get to stay awake for a few weeks every thousand years or so (the rest of the time they're kept in an "undead" state by intelligent robots).

Talk about work alienation: "...there is no finish line," she mutters.  "We go on forever, crawling across the universe like ants, dragging your goddamed superhighway behind us." (p. 69)

Natural Supernaturalism

Why was I compelled to read on?  The pleasure of this text for me was in watching how it elegantly translated the motifs of older, biblical, devotional and mystical literature (and the feelings these stirred) into a secular tale.  In this, the SF genre shares something with Romanticism.  It too derives some of its appeal from what the great literary scholar M.H. Abrams termed (in a book of the same name) Natural Supernaturalism.

According to Abrams, the Romantics (and their progeny) -- reacting against the more mechanistic side of the Enlightenment -- found ways to reinvent older spiritual (and biblical) literatures by "reconstituting them in a way that would make them intellectually acceptable, as well as emotionally pertinent." (p. 66)

So, for example, the figure of "Prophet" becomes the "visionary poet" in Wordsworth.  "Providence" is transformed into the march of the Idea through history by Hegel.  The Millennial Kingdom is reborn as the post-historical age of Communism in Marx.

Pulp Vs. Hard SF

From what I know of the history of SF, the term "Space Opera" (derived from "horse opera") was originally derogatory.  It described a strain of the form full of fanciful science, with a premium placed on adventure. It was also known as "Space Romance."

"The New Space Opera" appears (at least on the basis of this tale) to be an attempt to renew the "wow" factor of its pulp ancestor (its sense of the cosmic infinite or sublime) by offering greater attention to hard science fact and theory, in order to enhance speculative plausibility.

 What's touching in this tale, though, is a sense of mourning for the lost innocence of older SF.  At one point, for example, there is a vision of nature reminiscent of a more Romantic heritage: a living star that signals "Stop, stop, stop" to the rocket as it nears.

The narrator tells us that no human crew has been able to communicate with an alien life form, and the very possibility sets off her utopian imagination.  She becomes convinced this being (called "The Island" or DHF 428) is evidence of a kinder, gentler, version of evolution: 

"The Island puts the lie to everything we were ever told about the machinery of life.  Sun-powered, perfectly adapted, immortal, it won no struggle for survival: where are the predators, the competitors, the parasites?  All life around 428 is one vast continuum, one grand act of symbiosis.  Nature here is not red in tooth and claw.  Nature, out here, is the helping hand." (p. 54)

But, as one might expect from a post-Romantic Space Romance, this proves untrue.  Through great effort, the ship, heeding the pleas of 428, adjusts its course, so as not to collide with it.  Later, though, we discover this being "conned" them" -- into killing another life form in its vicinity.  "I let myself believe in life without conflict," the narrator mourns, "in sentience without sin." (p. 69)

Science Vs. Ideology

Have we then, through this disillusion, escaped the Natural Supernaturalism of the Space Romance? Perhaps.  But doesn't it sound like the narrator, presenting a more "realistic" version of evolution is getting it mixed up with older doctrines like "Original Sin"?

Some cultural critics consider this "dog-eat-dog" version of "hard science" to be suspiciously close to competitive market rhetoric.  Evolution, so I've read, can be influenced by cooperative ventures like culture, as well as "selfish genes."

So you might read this tale as a cautionary one.  Perhaps it warns that sometimes you give up religion, only to replace it with ideology.