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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 There a Cat in this Text? Thoughts on Martine Bellen's Poem, "Cat"

In the latest issue of Conjunctions, I came across a poem, titled simply "Cat", by Martine Bellen, which intrigued and delighted me.  Here's the first stanza:

CAT

The cat belongs to
Me.  The cat belongs
To the house.  The cat belongs to
The other cat.  The cat
Belongs to itself.  The cat
Belongs to the forest.  The
Cat belongs to the bird and mouse.
The cat belongs to the mountain lion.
The cat belongs to no one.  The cat
Belongs to nothing.  The cat belongs
To everyone, everything.

In simple, quick sentences (that made me think of a reading primer), this poem takes off on a quest to define and understand what the cat is by exploring the network of objects, beings and meanings associated with it.

But whether the words come from "the domestic" or "the wilds", they can't quite catch the cat.  It's all and none of the above.  The next stanza elaborates on this mysterious being and the words it's been given to live in:

The cat has a name
That I gave it.  Everyone knows the cat's name
Is not its name.  It is my name for the cat.
Sometimes the cat refuses to acknowledge
This name and sometimes the cat
Plays along with the life I've created for the cat.
Sometimes the cat pretends that it doesn't live in a realm
Different from the one that the cat and I
Live in together.  The cat has needs that must be met
For the cat to live in my house, though most of the cat's time
Is spent elsewhere.  I invite the cat to live with me
So I can perceive some of the "elsewhere"
In which the cat spends much cat time.
The cat shares what I can't see by maintaining
An existence in my house and by responding to
The name I gave the cat.

The wit here, of course, is found in the way the cat gets to turn the tables on its supposed owner.  It plays with her just as she plays with it -- pretending at times to act like a cat should, according to human conceptions and desires.  But you also get the sense that this creature is doing a little shucking and jiving.

As such, it's a relative of Montaigne's famous cat, of whom the Renaissance-era skeptic asked, "When I am playing with my cat, how do I know that she is not playing with me?"

I gather that Montaigne meant to throw doubt on the presumption that "man", with his weapons of Reason and Language, was a sort of god over "ignorant" nature.  He believed instead that animals had languages and reasons of their own -- ones that we just couldn't understand.

As it turns out, he was closer to the truth than the "cutting edge" rationalists of his day.  According to current science, animals not only have languages, but they get high (and addicted!), depressed, and can become obsessed with their own grooming.

Maybe that's why this poem also made me think of the web's love of cat humor.  Isn't what's funny about some of it (as in the pix at left) the fact that it makes humans seem pompous in their assumptions of superior intelligence over the animal kingdom?

In any case, the last stanza of Bellen's poem opened up another dimension of meaning for me -- so that I read it as much as a comment about language as animals.

I know there will be a moment
In the circuitry of space-time in which the cat will discard
The name and forsake my house for good
And will exist only in the fields
I cannot see without the cat living in my house.   On that day,
I might say, "The cat has moved full time into the wild."
Or I might say, "Miau-miau has run away."

What strikes me about the final two lines is that both are descriptions from different (say less and more personal) human perspectives (just as earlier we got a picture of life with "owner" and "cat" from their respective positions).  Yet, no matter how many ways the poem looks at the cat, in the end, it escapes back into the "wilds" beyond words.

I wonder, then, if just as Montaigne's quip questioned the pretensions of his day, whether you could read this poem as a rejoinder to some of the cliches of our own.

The assumption that the world is made or our descriptions of it is a common one in our intellectual discourse.  And why not -- it 's a sentiment as old as Genesis.  As Umberto Eco put it:

"...Creation itself arose through an act of speech; it is only by giving things their names that he (God) created them and gave them their ontological status."

Perhaps.  But the cat who escaped this poem might not agree. 

Mirror, Mirror: Thoughts on Corona's "Party Mashup" Rooftops Commercial

Thanks to Richard Taub, who drew my attention to this spot, in a comment on a previous post.  It's for Corona Light -- and it's the first one, according to Ad Age, that abandons the beach images for which the  brand is famous.  Instead, it stays in the city and features two rooftop dance parties:

 

In the Ad Age article I mentioned, Jim Sabia, a Marketing-VP involved with the brand, states that one of the goals of this spot is to build a seperate identity for Corona Light, by differentiating it from its more "beachy" parent brand.  As Sabia puts it, "we want Corona to be on  the beach and Corona Light to be a little more urban, a little more major market."

The Ad Age piece goes on to fill in a few details about the purpose and plot of the ad (called "Party Mashup") that I didn't pick up in my first viewing:

"In the ad, music from the casual celebration conflicts a more upscale party nearby.  The tension is resolved when the two DJs...join their music together, which is meant to play on Corona Light's positioning as a premium/casual brand..." 

The overall vibe of this spot reminds me of other beer commercials I've seen recently.  There's a warm, social atmosphere -- much like the Heineken "Entrance Man" spot covered on this blog a few posts back.  Corona shows its product enhancing a situation where people can relax for a moment about whatever social realities might separate them, and play creatively together.  In short, it's got that mildly utopian feel I've see in lots of ads lately.

But even more interesting to me than the spot's content is the form.  I'm thinking specifically of the "double-ness" of the images -- not one, but two rooftop parties are jammed into a mere 30 seconds.

And after the initial tension between them is resolved, it's as if their differences are erased -- and you could say they mirror each other in celebratory vibe and identity.

Stepping onto the Mirror Stage

This all reminded me of a theory I'd been reading up on lately, about how children form their identities.  In one account of this process, famously invented  by psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, the child starts to build a sense of self through internalizing imagery.  Specificially, Lacan refers to the fascination which very young children exhibit when they discover their own images in mirrors (hence this period of development is referred to as "the Mirror Stage").

Lacan goes on to theorize that while the image in the mirror is the same as the child, it is also quite different.  Bodies, especially those of the presumably less inhibited very young, are also an anarchic cacaphony of drives, pulsations and emotions.

As a result, Lacan thought that while such images were captivating and even erotic, once internalized, they could also be alienating -- making you doubt your identity as much as they helped you "imagine" it.

The theory also suggests that as a result of these inner images, when we grow older we're destined to be at war with ourselves  -- for they form an "ideal ego" we can never live up to -- one that is always more "together" than we can possibly ever feel.  And these feelings are enhanced and exacerbated as we internalize other "ideal" images we'd like to mirror (such as people we think are "together", or simply "cool" -- like celebrities).

Good Twin, Bad Twin

Musing about this theory, I wondered if the appeal of some ads was that their products heal, symbolically, such inner divisiveness.  The initial tension between the rooftop images in the spot, after all, is soothed away -- by a common love of music, and of partying with Corona Light.

And what Corona does on a social level, others ads do on an individual one.  Think of makeup ads.  I remember one in which Drew Barrymore spoke about a Cover Girl product that would introduce you to "your skin's twin."

In light of Lacan's theory, I'd interpret that line in a double way.  Of course, it means the makeup, that promises viewers (in other spots) a "more perfect you", blends nicely with whatever skin tone they have.  But it also might be read as offering them kinship (if not "twinship") with an "ideal" image of someone as "cool and together" as a star like Barrymore.

Pop culture at large seems obsessed with the dual effect of identification/alienation such "mirror images" provoke.  Think of all the movies that feature "the evil twin."  The poster for the new TV show Ringer (starring Sarah Michelle Geller) says it all.

But the job of ads, of course, is to present scenarios and products that promise to pacify such conflicts (or at least keep them offstage).   Thoughts? 

 

Drive She Said: Thoughts on Emily Dickinson, Kate Winslet and HBO's Mildred Pierce

Recently I came across a poem by Emily Dickinson that speaks of confinement:

I never hear the word "escape"
Without a quicker blood,
A sudden expectation,
A flying attitude!

I never hear of prisons broad
By soldiers battered down,
But I tug childish at my bars
Only to fail again! (1859)

Such lines support the most common image we have of Dickinson -- as a secluded poet, who experienced moments of only private joy.

But it's fascinating also to think of this poem as having to do with her lack of audience and publication -- as if what can't escape the confinement of her room are her poems themselves.

Dickinson published less than a dozen of her nearly 1800 poems.  Of these, many were horribly rewritten by editors, to rid the work of its disruptive rhythms and dissonant slant rhymes -- precisely those qualities that make her the Thelonious Monk of poetry.

Judging from the dates of the poems in my book, this is one of Dickinson's earlier ones.  What's striking is that even here, there's ultimately little hope of "escape"; her attempts at freedom are "childish" she says.  But, one might ask, if her work seemed doomed to confinement from the start, what drove her to write so much?

A hint, I think, might be found in the repetitive quality ("only to fail again") to which this poem alludes.  This brings to my  mind a distinction made by the cultural critic Slavoj Zizek between "desire" and "drive".

Drawing on Lacanian psychoanalytic theory, Zizek tells us that "desire" is motivated by the hope of achieving some end (e.g. fame, publication, an audience, etc.).  Drive is what happens when such a goal becomes so elusive (or simply hopeless or impossible), that one keeps going just for the hell of it.  As Zizek puts it,

"...let us imagine an individual trying to perform some simple manual task -- say grabbing an object that repeatedly eludes him:  the moment he changes his attitude, starts to find  pleasure in just repeating the failed task [squeezing the object, which again and again eludes him], he shifts from desire to drive..." (p. 10)

The "driven", according to this logic, are often characterized as rebels -- for what motivates them are not the standard-issue rewards that society doles out, but something weirder, more eccentric.

But if driven-ness can have such alienating qualities, why not re-channel one's desire toward something more recognizable and achievable?  The problem with this, according to Zizek, is that, paradoxically, this can be profoundly unsatisfying.  For our desires are often not really our own, but, as he puts it, "desire for the desire of the Other."  That's why they leave one open to humiliation.

Is not the pursuit of fame, for example, often rooted in a desire to create an image of oneself that others will not just approve of, but desire themselves?  A wonderful example of this can be found in HBO's mini-series Mildred Pierce.

Artist as Social Climber

The Todd Haynes version of Mildred Pierce accomplishes something rare in U.S. films.  Haynes captures, better than any recent director, the intense desire to rid oneself of class shame.

Early in the film, Mildred takes a job as a waitress; not only is she reviled by her daughter for this "disgrace", but thanks to Kate Winslet's masterful, nearly excruciating performance, you know that Pierce hates herself for "stooping so low."

Later, we see that Vida, Mildred's daughter (and the externalization of Mildred's own ambitions for the good life), does find a route out of the reviled service industry (and a way to look good): she sings opera.  Mildred is so taken with this that she spends the profits she's made in the restaurant business on buying fine outfits for Vida, for her debut at the Hollywood Bowl.

When Vida appears on stage, Mildred, in the audience, can hardly contain herself.  She gasps with excitement and begins sobbing when, at the end of the performance, her daughter sings "I'm Always Chasing Rainbows" directly to her. (Winslet's mastery of facial expression here is incredible).  It's touching but pathetic.

And it gets worse.  Vida runs off with Mildred's "classy" husband -- leaving her mother bankrupt and even more humiliated than when she worked as a waitress.

Poetry vs. Prose

Of course, our Reality TV culture, which insists there is something wrong with us if we don't really want (conventional) success, understands the motivations of Mildred Pierce better than those of Dickinson.

But the beauty of Haynes film is that it suggests that cliched narratives of "the good life" are at least as confining and alienating as being driven to follow an eccentric path.

Perhaps Dickinson was hinting at her own disinterest in such conventions -- more the stuff of novels than of poetry -- when she began one of her most well-loved poems with the lines: "I dwell in Possibility -- /A fairer House than Prose --".  Thoughts? 

Can You Get Stoned on Ideas? Robert Hayden's Poem "Soledad" as a Profane Illumination

Reading Robert Hayden's Collected Poems recently, I came across a particularly striking poem titled "Soledad."  Hayden cautioned that by the title he meant the Spanish word for "solitude" or "loneliness", and not the prison (or the political drama for which it's known).

The poem is about drug use and offers a portrait of an addict Hayden knew.  (You can hear him read it here).

The piece reminded me of something I read by Alain Badiou about Plato.   It is said that the philosopher insisted that rigorous logical and discursive thought, as opposed to poetry, was the only way to approach truth. 

Yet, when Plato himself tried to describe his version of "the absolute", he resorted to images, metaphors and myths -- the very types of language he found problematic in poetry.  (p. 19)

Reading Hayden's poem, I was struck by how it too became dense with metaphor, almost opaque in fact, as it approached what I took as its own "absolute" moment: an attempt to describe the inner experience of addiction itself.

"Soledad" opens with a fairly straight forward, if poetically embellished description of a scene (the epigraph is from a teenage drug addict's poem Hayden saw in a magazine):

Soledad
(And I, I am no longer of that world)

Naked, he lies in the blinded room
chainsmoking, cradled by drugs, by jazz
as never by any lover's cradling flesh.

Miles Davis coolly blows for him:
O pena negra, sensual Famenco blues,
the red clay foxfire voice of Lady Day

(lady of the pure black magnolias)
sobsings her sorrow and loss and fare you well,
dryweeps the pain his treacherous jailers

have released him from for a while.
His fears and his unfinished self
await him in the anywhere streets.

The womb-like solitude of these opening stanzas then morphs into another sort of seclusion:

He hides on the dark side of the moon,
takes refuge in a stained-glass cell,
flies to a clockless country of crystal.

Only the ghost of Lady Day knows where
he is.  Only the music.  And he swings
oh swings: beyond complete immortal now. 

What struck me about this sublime "clockless country of crystal" is that, though the language is full of images, such a locale is hard to envision with the mind's eye.

Adding to its mystery is the fact that the poem admits that its extravagant language is only an approximation  of the experience.  Only otherworldly fellow initiates, such as Lady Day, know "where/he is."

But this idea brings to mind what is, for me, the biggest mystery of all about this poem.  Why, I ask myself, if this strange portrait of an "inner world" is only an approximation of the thing (of addiction) itself, does it seem so much more interesting, and in fact intoxicating, than what I remember of my own experiences as a member of the users club many years ago?

Words vs. Drugs: What's the More Intense High? 

It turns out that there's a name for finding the play of words, ideas, images and meanings a more pleasurable high than actually using drugs: "profane illumination."  The inventor of this concept, the great cultural critic Walter Benjamin, described it this way:

"... the most passionate investigation of the hashish trance will not teach us half as much about thinking (which is eminently narcotic) , as the profane illumination of thinking about the hashish trance.  The reader, the thinker, the loiterer, the flaneur, are types of illuminati just as much as the opium eater, the dreamer, the ecstatic.  And more profane.  Not to mention that most terrible drug -- ourselves -- which we take in solitude."

According to Benjamin, the reason I find Hayden's poem about addiction more fascinating than addiction itself, then, is because it is.

And such a pleasure, because it substitutes the worldly (profane) for the otherworldly ("dark side of the moon"), would logically have the potential to enhance, rather than down play, one's abilities -- especially in an economy  increasingly favoring communicative and intellectual labor skills.  Which is to say that words and ideas are the most reliable smart drugs.

Moreover, if this true, does it not also explain why that other dangerous drug much loved by U.S. culture -- the drug of anti-intellectualism -- carries such scary side effects?  If people deny themselves the intoxication of ideas, they may be inclined to pursue their highs through more problematic avenues.

And in this light, being anti-intellectual could be hazardous to your health. 

The Opposite of Cute: "Mean" Animal Planet Videos

Still thinking of the trained Polar Bear who starred in the Leaf commercial featured in the previous post, I remembered a very different type of "Polar Bear video" that, in its own way, is probably just as popular.  You may recall this one:

As mentioned in the news report, the woman who jumped into the bear infested waters was probably looking for "Knut", who lives at the Berlin Zoo, and is known as "the world's most famous Polar Bear."

Knut's fame is the result of his being the first Polar Bear raised successfully in captivity.  His image, especially as a cub, captivated Germany.  He was the subject of pop songs, appeared on the cover of German Vanity Fair, and there were postage stamps featuring his picture.

Perhaps lulled by the illusion of all these warm and cuddly images, the woman in the video thought it would be safe to try meeting Knut in person.  She was said to be full of joy and laughter as she dove in to take her risky swim.

When Animals Stop Being Polite and Start Being Real

What struck me about this video was not so much its freaky as its stereotypical quality.  Over the past decade or so, a new genre has developed along side of the "domesticated wild" that we see in so much television and film.

You can summarize the tale this other genre tells in a single line: "I thought it was tame, but then it bit me."

This story, no matter how often it is retold, asserts a mesmerizing power.  Think of the air time devoted to the tiger attack on Roy (of Siegfried and Roy).  Or the almost ghoulish obsession people had with the story of the supposedly tame chimp that disfigured Charla Nash.  The genre has even produced its own masterpiece: Werner Herzog's Grizzly Man.
 
There is an entire TV series of documentaries recording this phenomenon: Untamed and Uncut: Animal Planet.  Among the videos on the website for the show right now, you'll find a person attacked by a leopard that was raised by humans; a snake handler bit by one of his cobras; and my personal favorite: "Kangaroo Goes Berserk", starring "Killer Willard", whose script begins like this:

“It’s shocking live TV – an out-of-control kangaroo turns on both of his handlers.  It’s an all-out attack by a powerful animal that can kill with one kick.”

Heidegger and the Kangaroo

Such videos offer a kind of "reality TV" contrast to the over-produced animal cuteness that's caught my attention for the last few posts.  Wondering about the appeal of these wilder versions of Nature, I thought again of Heidegger's "The Question Concerning Technology."

As I touched on in the last post, in this lecture the philosopher argues that our current use of technology encourages a hyper-utilitarian way of thinking.  It's as if all that matters is that which can be proven useful for some end other than itself.  This not only threatens Nature, but humanity: once people have "served their purpose" they tend to be ignored or eliminated. (And if marked as "undesirable" for the "uses" of a species, an infinitely worse fate awaits them -- as in the early Heidegger's Germany.)

Yet, rather than causing us concern, this state of affairs, according to Heidegger, results in a sort of pompous over-confidence.  As he puts it:

"Meanwhile, man, precisely as the one so threatened, exalts himself and postures as lord of the earth. In this way the illusion comes to prevail that everything man encounters exists only insofar as it is his construct.  This illusion in turn gives rise to one final delusion: it seems as though man everywhere and always encounters only himself." (p. 332)

I wonder if, on an aesthetic level alone, we simply get bored with what such an orientation produces.  If the way we represent Nature often merely reflects back our love for ourselves -- perhaps the monotony of our imagery becomes intolerable.

These animal attack videos at least beak the narcissistic mirror for a brief moment with the "shocking truth" that there is actually something Other than ourselves out there.  In keeping with this, perhaps Untamed and Uncut should revise its website tagline from "Surprisingly Human" to "Surprisingly Non-human." 

The attack videos might also be read as ecological parables.  In the form of the once-confident animal handlers, we see the image of people as "lords of the earth."  In the sudden, almost "out-of-the-blue" animal aggression, the earth answers back -- cutting its supposed "masters" down to size.  Nature almost seems to be saying: "take me for granted at your own peril."

In this light, as goofy and as exploitative as they are, perhaps these videos of "animal revolt" grip us as morality tales.  Translated into an absurd, populist argot, they're likely as close as we're going to get to creating our own version of Aesop's Fables.                

From Cool to Cute to Sweet: the Sweet Million TV Commercial

As I was thinking aloud about the way the whole aesthetic of "cuteness" had been transformed in meaning, from what was once merely "corny", to now, a new version of "hip" (see last post), a colleague and friend, the artist Susan Napack, suggested I look at the word "sweet".

It too once connoted niceness to the point of weakness, but now meant something like extreme good fortune.  It also functions sometimes simply as a synonym for "cool".
 
Last Sunday, for example, there was a controversial call during a game between the Chicago Bears and the Detroit Lions.  The Lions receiver made a spectacular catch in the end zone.  Everyone, including the Bears' pass defender, thought it was a TD.  But the ref saw it differently.  The pass defender, as reported by Rick Morrissey, reacted like this to the good news:

"I thought it was a touchdown," he said."Then the one ref was like, 'Nah, it's not a touchdown.  He dropped it.'  And I was like, 'Sweet!'"

As you might guess, the most imaginatively blatant example of the remaking of this word comes from the oracle of advertising.  Here's a commercial I saw just the other night for the New York Lottery's "Sweet Million" game:

The deep voice-over (sounds like Puddy from Seinfeld, no?) booming from the sky at the end, essentially annihilates the cute scene with an insistent redefinition of the word "sweet."  The voice is playfully sacrilegious: it's as if heaven were demanding that we take up the faith of a sort of materialist fundamentalism.

The website (an amazing one!) takes the notion of, as Marx put it, "Money ... the god among commodities", a step further.   There, you can enter your name, and the site will produce a personalized "Sweetscape" for you.

In the "Sweetscape" I chose, an angel (who looked vaguely like the late John Ritter of the classic TV show Three's Company) threw money at me from off a cloud, while bizarre white owl-like cats ascended toward heaven cooing cutely, "Come fly with us, Jerommmme..." 

Why Not Being Sweet Makes You Sweeter than Ever

The word "sweet" has been reshaped semantically in all sorts of ways -- sometimes to mean great skill (boxing was called "the sweet science").  But the crudeness with which the word is twisted into a "less than sweet" shape in this ad campaign reveals something else.  The meanings these ads assemble come in at least two layers.

On one level, the commercial seems to say: "ok, let's not be sentimental.  As grown-ups we know it's cash that's truly 'sweet'; we'll worry about the warm, fuzzy feelings later."

But, at the same time, that surface message is delivered in such an exaggeratedly impolite way, that there seems an ironic tone underneath it.  "Of course," this tone implies, "we don't really believe in worshiping money, either -- this is just for fun, like the lottery itself."  Here again the commercial talks up to the knowingness and media savvy of the viewer.

Except: if you were entirely cynical, you'd never enter the lottery in the first place.  So, perhaps it's precisely by acknowledging your "worldly wisdom" that this spot gets you to lower your rational guard (and hopefully, eventually buy a ticket).  It's all in fun, after all; hey you never know -- maybe money really will fall from heaven this time.

To borrow another idea from Slavoj Zizek (pp.30-33), it's as if such communications free you from the illusion of the word (you know the sentimental meaning of the word "sweet" is bullshit), so you're free to act out the illusion of the deed (you behave sentimentally -- as if life is sweet -- by entering the lottery).

I wonder if this might offer a formula for how such words are recycled for, say, motivational purposes.  First, we're congratulated for our hip awareness that terms like cool, cute, and sweet are mere ploys, that don't mean what they used to.

But then, after an implied wink, another voice whispers: "but isn't it fun to act as if they still do?"               

A History Lesson from Stella Artois

Glen Beck's TV special on Fox last weekend about "restoring our history" (a follow-up to his rally), brought to mind how shaky our relationship to the past has become.

The idea that history has to be "restored" implies that the sense of its reality has been lost.  And this is one point on which even a hard-right commentator such as Beck would find some agreement on the Left.  One of the key features of our era, according to a neo-Marxist critic such as Fredric Jameson, is precisely its loss of its sense of history.

Jameson has written that our longing for a sense of the past can be seen in the popularity of the many "period" films which try to represent it through fashion and music (if not substance).  His writings, as I read them anyway, suggest that our nostalgia for other eras almost makes them seem like "lost objects of desire" that we can never really recover. (pp. 16-25)

He might even agree with Beck as to the cause of this sense of loss: the media.  But here's where their similarity ends.  For where Beck would say our past has been destroyed primarily by the media's liberal bias, Jameson might counter that our image-makers' distortions come about because, whatever their personal ideologies, they also need to make a buck. 

As a result, Hollywood, TV, the press, and the whole culture industry, mine history for marketable products -- and our past is packaged as romance, adventure, human interest -- essentially a movie, TV show, or some other set of pop images.  And history becomes, whether presented by conservatives or liberals, more surface than depth.

One of the criticisms that Beck is faced with, in fact, is that what he wants to restore is an idealized Leave It to Beaver 50s TV version of American history.  In other words, he's accused of being mesmerized by the very media industry he'd like to critique.

The 60s -- a Thing of Beauty

Such ideas helped me explain to myself the mildly hypnotic effect a beer commercial had on me recently. Though I'm not a drinker, and so had no interest in the product advertised, I found one of Stella Artois' TV spots rather striking.

It's the first commercial completely in French that I've seen on U.S. TV.  I was also jazzed by the stylishness of its film work.  As a friend of mine said, "that's pure 60s French New Wave."  The title tune is sung by Brigitte Bardot, from, I think, 1964: 

The almost over-the-top sexist quality of the spot, like something out of Mad Men, adds to its retro flavor.  As the Copyranter blog quips: "Stella Artois ... delivers Heterosexual Man's two favorite things getting ready for consumption/consummation.  Some sexism diluted by classy production and a quirky French tune."

It should be noted, though, that according to Mother, the brand's ad agency,  the target audience for the product is "the sophisticated beer drinker", and, in the U.S., this market "tends to be a slightly more female base" though the campaign will target "both men and women of a certain lifestyle."

Which is to say that the high retro-fashion style of the ad takes precedence over the substance of its gender politics.  And their ad agency seems to be consciously pursuing this look.  In fact, the U.S. print campaign which builds off TV spots like this one (which I think originally ran in Europe) is being shot by photographer Bert Stern, who did Monroe's last sitting in 1962.  The first U.S. print ad is modeled on a 1960 cover of Vogue.

With all this in mind, the TV spot seems to work, in part at least, by creating a longing for something unattainable, as signified by the woman in the ad.  On a basic level, men watching the ad, no matter their sophistication, cannot really hope to attain her -- she's out of the past.  Women may long for her style; but that's gone too -- along with the sorts of flashy 60s films the ad invokes.

On a more symbolic level, longing for her might be seen as the desire to live in an era, or a world, more glamorous, exciting and, above all, luxurious than our own.

Of course, it's advertising's job not only to create, but promise relief from such frustrations.  And this comes in the form of the commodity itself: "She is a thing of beauty." 

I've read reviews of Stella Artois at Beer Advocate, which graded it a "decent", but not outstanding, brew. But perhaps the raters were more interested in how the stuff actually tasted -- and weren't influenced by this ad.

For they missed the most intoxicating thing about the brand: that it bottles the spirit of an era -- and its sense of possibility.   

                

The Critic as Artist and Vice Versa. Thoughts on Oscar Wilde, Wallace Stevens, and Nick Piombino

Rereading Oscar Wilde's The Critic as Artist, I came across a favorite passage.  Wilde describes how his pleasure in viewing the Mona Lisa is enhanced when he remembers what the great critic Walter Pater wrote about it:

"Who ... cares whether Mr. Pater has put into the portrait of the Mona Lisa something Lionardo (sic) never dreamed of?  The painter may have been merely the slave of an archaic smile, as some have fancied, but whenever I pass into the cool galleries of the Palace of the Louvre, and stand before that strange figure 'set in its marble chair in that cirque of fantastic rocks, as if in some faint light under the sea,' I murmur to myself, 'She is older than the rocks among which she sits; like the vampire, she has been dead many times, and learned the secrets of the grave; and has been a diver in the deep seas and keeps their fallen day about her; and trafficked for strange webs with Eastern merchants..." (pp. 44-5) 

For Wilde, Pater's mildly extravagant vision is a lot more exciting than the plain old Mona Lisa.  And making that sort of appreciation possible, he proposes, is the job of the critic -- even if this involves disregarding the intentions of the artist.  "And so the picture becomes more wonderful to us than it really is," he adds, "and reveals to us a secret of which, in truth, it knows nothing..." (p 45)

In an act of provocation, Wilde ranks the imaginative critic higher than the artist.  For, if artists/poets enhance life, the critic enhances their enhancement.  In fact, Wilde insists that all great moments of creativity are deeply informed by the critical spirit. 

The Artist as Critic

Echoing Matthew Arnold, Wilde sees art as a criticism of life.  If the poverty of our conventional perceptions, to paraphrase Orwell, is boring, one solution some poets have offered to this problem is to willfully turn what they perceive into art. Here is Wallace Stevens, transforming what could be a standard natural scene into something resembling an abstract painting:

He walked with his year-old boy on his shoulder.
The sun shone and the dog barked and the baby slept.
The leaves, even of the locust, the green locust.

He wanted and looked for a final refuge,
From the bombastic intimations of winter
And the martyrs a la mode.  He walked toward

An abstract, of which the sun, the dog, the boy
Were contours.  Cold was chilling the wide moving-swans.
The leaves were falling like notes from a piano.

The abstract was suddenly there and gone again. (p. 270, lines: 4-13) 

Is the Best Poem the One that Got Away?

There is a whole poetic tradition that agrees with Wilde about the imagined work being better than the realized one.  Shelley wrote  that "...when composition begins, inspiration is already on the decline, and the most glorious poetry that has ever been communicated is probably a feeble shadow of the original conception of the poet." (504)  

But this makes you ask, why then even try to write a poem?  Why not just imagine one?

One of the wittiest takes I've come across on such questions is a series of prose poems that ends Nick Piombino's Theoretical Objects.  Titled "Explications", it offers something Wilde might have enjoyed: commentary on poems (I assume) that never existed.  

Piombino starts this sequence off on exactly the right note.  The second piece in the series offers an explication of an imagined poem on the utter impossibility of poetry:

Failure to Exist

The poet's implication here is that it is probably no longer possible to create a poem.  This is made clear in the opening passage which depicts the impossibility of describing the most beautiful and touching aspects of what it means to feel.  Speaking of an "ironic sun" and a "black hole of comprehension" the poet here dwells on a series of infinite parallels, digressions and reflections.  "Passion evaporates into transparent calm" is a line which may refer to the exaltation implied in a poet's silence.  "This isn't reality -- it feels too good" may be ironic or sincere.  "Hatred follows hard on joy" may signal the poet's despair toward anything that can be said too directly.  "Mostly movie stills," "false memories" "tiny sights" all refer to frustrating aspects of communication via images.  "Life has been replaced by words, only silence moves me."  Here the poet encounters chaos in the heart of the most meaningful aspects of private satisfactions." (163-4)

Getting It Wrong in Order to Get It Right

Now, of course, I may be absolutely wrong about this piece.  It's possible Piombino has an actual poem (or something altogether different) in mind here.  But even if I'm wrong, according to Wilde, I should be proud of my mistake.

For it would mean that in getting this poem wrong, I got the goal of poetry and criticism exactly right. 

Note: Nick Piombino's always provocative blog, Fait Accompli, is here.

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Why Do Girls Love Trolls and Vice Versa? Poetry, Dreams and the Film "Troll 1"

I'm a believer in something I first heard in a lecture on SF writer Philip K. Dick, by techno-mystic Erik Davies.  The "logos" I remember Davies saying, is often found in the discarded elements of culture -- those artifacts tossed aside and ignored, like the ads on the backs of matchbook covers.

That's why, when I saw this scene from a somewhat forgotten grade B movie, Troll 1, I felt I was in the presence of revelation.  In it, a character who is later transformed into an elf, recites from Spenser's Faerie Queene:

For those unfamiliar with this flick (now in my top 10 all-time faves), this moment may appear a bit opaque -- like a dream, or an avant-garde poem.  Here's the context:

The girl who requests this recitation is actually possessed by a murderous, scary looking (male) troll. This denizen of the mythic underworld is slowly overtaking all the inhabitants of an apartment building in San Francisco, and converting each of their pads into a different faerie world (you get a preview of these environs in this scene).

Once this devilish transformation is completed, the possessed girl will be crowned the troll's Faerie Princess.  And when this happens, the troll's maleficent kingdom will be reborn as a 4th dimension existing along side -- and in dark competition with -- ours.

The Secret of the Troll Doll Craze

As I was wondering why the troll felt so at home in the girl's body, Elaine Equi (my better half) reminded me that little girls and trolls have always had a thing for each other.  It's a fact of psychological life that no doubt fueled the Troll Doll craze.

Why?  Elaine's theory is that young girls cling to trolls as symbols of power -- exactly what they lose after a fully feminized socialization.  In addition to being a rebellious, anti-social figure, the troll possesses awesome magical capabilities. 

In this sense, trolls are necessary for girls, as symbols of autonomy. For that matter, trolls need little girls, too.  For (as the movie shows) without them, their desires can never surface in the waking world.

Coincidentally, Equi wrote a poem about all this -- long before we saw the movie:

The Necessary Troll

Once I thought I saw a lecherous troll gesture loudly
beneath a bridge on a box of jasmine tea imported
from some imaginary country in an undisclosed century.
He was trolling patiently for after-school girls
to give him the pearl of their girlish essence.
The tea was so delicate and feminine -- really more
like perfume in a cup than something to drink.
I hated the taste, but enjoyed playing chicken with the troll,
letting my eye sweep his dirty corner without grazing him.
No one knows what happened to those who actually did look.
Some say they turned into spiders and crawled -- others that they
aged hundreds of years in a blink.  I never crossed that bridge,
preferring to believe that as long as I didn't, everything
would remain as it was on the cardboard box.  And regrettably
it has.  You see, I didn't realize the value of the troll's slurpy
slobber and its power to transform a common commodity
such as tea into a rare and precious thing.

Giving up the Troll here results in a gentle sense of loss.  I wondered, though, if "the troll's slurpy slobber" had totally evaporated.  It was preserved, at least, in the poem, was it not?  This brought to mind something I read by the philosopher Lyotard on Freud's theory of dreams.

Freud termed the way dreams mash up images, sounds and meanings condensation.  Lyotard tells us that this aspect of the dreamwork "crumples" the text of a dream.  This process hides/censors anti-social desires from waking consciousness while, at the same time, preserving them -- for it offers them a masked, indirect way to see the light of day.  If you crumple a piece of paper with a message on it, some of its words are still legible. (p. 28)

The comparison of poems and dreams, of course, has a long, rich history.  Both are modes of figurative language, as are tales about trolls (perhaps the most "crumpled" of all mythological figures).  And all three "genres" often depend on condensation for their power.

The poet Lorine Niedecker wrote the classic statement on the advantages of the condensed work of poetry: 

Poet's Work

Grandfather 
    advised me:
            Learn a trade

I learned
    to sit at desk
             and condense

No layoff
    from this
           condersery

Some have read Niedecker's line about "no layoffs" as proof that being a poet is a 24/7 gig.  True enough. But I see it also meaning that she can't get fired.  As such, poetry offers a bit of autonomy no one can take away.

Perhaps like a dream, the work of poetry keeps a bit of the old slobber around.