Author: zpeterse

i completely forgot, but what i really wanted to talk about was how the cartoon ‘the upsidedowns of little lady lovekins and old manmuffaroo’ commented on the circularity and uncertainty of history (as opposed to the standard progress of history). this cartoon also relates to what we talked about in class before about ‘latent history’ which i think would be a good topic of discussion.

history seemed to be the subject of spiegleman’s philosophic struggle. world history versus personal history, biography v. autobiography, abstract historical account v. first hand account…spiegleman is worried how 9/11 will be remembered.  he talks about how the first cartoon characters (starting in 1893) were drawn to be remembered for that morning and then forgotten. how interesting would it be, then, to unearth the dead comics and juxtapose them with present catastrophe. are these characters, krazy kat, katzenjammer kids, foxy grandpa, still alive? or were they destined for history to forget them. spiegleman chooses comics that feature explosions, falling towers, ethnic slurs on porpose. but they all, as spiegleman is well aware of, tap into their cultural milieux and are politically charged. silly antiquated comic characters take on new lives, spiegleman cares for and nutures them, he raises them from the dead. the comic, especially In the Shadow of No Towers, should not be forgotten.

spiegleman relies on history to finish his narrative. his memory of the events of 9/11 slowly comes back to him and sometimes it’s unreliable. only the incessant vision of the burning towers remain with him, so he turns to old comic strips to "flood my eyes and brain with something other than images of burning towers" but he also has nothing left to say, or, he’d rather piggyback on what some cartoonist in 1936 had to say rather than invent a new way of saying it presently. mckinley was assasinated by some crazy ‘other’ so the government arrested every suspect associated with this ‘other’. somwhere in the back of that issue of the New York World newspaper was a comic strip, some other history, there’s always two histories.

so for my personal history, id like to say that i have nothing to say and im sticking to it. this culture was inundated with 9/11 stories and responses for a year, then everything fell silent. during this distracted time, our leaders had their way (yes, even landing the republican national convention in NEW YORK!). stuff happened that according to spiegleman made his SCREAM! he found old comics as a remedy, a coping device, a source of inspiration. ill stick with having nothing to say. 

it was found out by the feds, and they sent me to juvie for a week. i was nine.

like jarrod, i appreciated the cultural work giroux did with regards to the film, which, as stated before, can be a thankless task, not in the least because Hollywood films by their very nature don’t lend themselves to be read critically. moreover, the "critical" commentary of film critics and, as we saw in giroux’s article, of the actors themselves, for one reason or another, trump the work scholars do. scholarly film criticism may even be perceived by the entertainment industry as moving into a feminized space, work that hollywood culture deems irrevelant, inchoate, and socialist. Don’t get me wrong – I do feel that Hollywood films have the potential for critical engagement with the viewer. For example, Adorno talked about this: viewers would sit through a recycled hollywood film and realize that their lives were not like those on the screen, thus giving them the impetus to change society.

One point I thought giroux was especially right on was his reading of the scene where tyler points a gun at the back of the head of Raymond, the convenience store clerk or aspiring veternarian. Giroux’s thesis is that Fight Club effaces real social problems caused by corporate capitalism in favor of a simpler consumer – capitalism – emasculates theme, thus making it "a morally bankrupt and politically reactionary film." Tyler orders him to go to school to become a veterenarian without considering how much it would cost him – if he had any money at all – or any other responsibilities at home, etc. In all probability, the next day, which Tyler said would be Raymond’s most important day of his life, was probably spent calling his boss at the convenience store explaining his absence, why the door was open and all the product stolen, negotiating the terms of his dismissal, etc. Giroux is also right when he says Tyler, by way of his ‘just do it’ attitude, is nothing more than a spokesman for Nike.

At the same time, I wonder if this scene could be read differently if Giroux wasn’t focusing on the sociological side but rather the psychological one; after all, giroux never really admits that it is actually jack holding the gun to the clerk’s head. at another point in the article, giroux says the film’s message is that "violence is the ultimate language, referent, and state of affairs through which to understand all human events and there is no way of stopping it." That is to say, that the same  latent violence bred by the contradictions in capitalism is the cause of Raymond’s dropping out of community college AND Jack’s schizophrenic condition. In this psychological reading, Jack and Raymond are caught tragically in the same encompassing cycle of violence. It makes sense that the gun wasn’t loaded, for jack was never in any real power position to begin with, rather, the powerful referent of violence is pervasive and capitalism hands out markers of violence to all people and things.

   

so were mine, when i was a lad. then in high school i became really bad at math, and so here i am as an english grad student. this was my first time with darko, and let me tell you…quite a film. the montage of high school life that starts out with kids emptying out of the back of the bus, all set to tears for fears "head over heels" – simply beautiful…and i hate 80s music!

at risk of jumping around too much, let me focus solely on the music in the film. there are the suburban favorite band groups tear for fears and duran duran. the latter’s song "notorious" is used for the dance routine for the excruciatingly talented star search – bound ‘sparkle motion.’ this group’s positive attitudinal beliefs and ability to swallow vomit earns them a perfect score in my book, and i wish their routine was used more liberally in the film. meanwhile, sharita chen’s blase attempt at interpretative dance put me to sleep…those swans were fake, the futile attempt at throwing rose petals into a fan, the rich orchestral backdrop lacked a beat…a beat that i could clap my hands to. but seriously, a few of you have rightly given great attention to charita’s character, who I took as one of the main characters. certainly, the same people, like me, who vote George HW Bush, subsidize inspirational speakers/kiddie pornographers, influence educational policy, and are very outspoken on how they embrace god and cast away fear, also determine what accounts for sex appeal. overweight asian girls doing interpretive dance fall outside of their (and my) hegemonic rubric. and you cant beat duran duran.

the ending cover of tears for fears’ "mad world" is touching. the part of "and i find it kind of funny/ i find it kind of sad/ the dream in which im dying/ are the best ive ever had" is a fitting final song. donnie’s dream is where he got the girl, his mom felt  ‘wonderful’ in having a disturbed son, his father took his side every time, exposed the religious political right for what it is, and received intimidating test scores.

on the back of our edition of white noise, the editor states that the book is about jack and babette "navigat[ing] the usual passages of family life to the background babble of brand name consumerism." however, there is nothing "usual" about this family – i found all the characters drawn fantastically (with the exception of Wilder?) and unbelievable. they supposedly live in middle america – Indiana, Ohio, Michigan – yet do not in any way resemble a stereotypical middle american family. they are far too intellectual, introverted, excitable, in other words, they are too ‘new york’ to fit the middle america mold. moreover, the authenticity of jack’s character immediately is called into question when we learn that he is one of the country’s foremost Hitler scholars and doesn’t speak a lick of German! his role as professor/intellectual becomes even more complicated throughout the story as he makes one poor decision after another (couldn’t jack afford to simply leave the state during the ‘airborne toxic event’ instead of putting his family at risk by stopping in the next town) why does jack continually feel compelled to listen to the authorities (SIMUVAC, doctors, colleagues, babette, heinrich) for direction and the truth?

the question really is: after the fourth or fifth marriage, when is it time to call it quits? what im trying to get it, i guess, is the very well written ending and how this becomes such a profound moment. it seems to me that the profound ending (the shoot out) draws its strength from the fantastically manufactured beginning. none of the characters, especially jack and babette, i found remotely believable, of course, keeping in mind that ive never read this novel before and these are only my preliminary reactions… my larger difficulty with the novel compels me to ask, is this how americans actually react to their commodity saturated environment? do they have such an acute fear of death that they betray their husbands, sell their bodies for sex in exchange for drugs, let the drugs fall into the hands of a nine year old, steal a car and shoot a guy twice in the stomach? maybe. nobody can deny that commodity consumer culture is violent (remember last week’s computer commercials from 1995 featuring whats his name…) If americans don’t react in this way to the violence of capitalism, then what is this book saying? is it just a big joke?

if this novel were written today, would it not write itself? today, with all the natural disasters and our government’s inability to do anything about them, this book is eerily still pertinent. on the other hand, i would argue that in many ways the novel is outdated…perhaps we could touch on this during class discussion. later.

Jarrod – I actually thought your post was insightful, especially when you speak of the "regressiveness" of reading hypertext fiction. If we were fully centered rational individuals produced by the authoratative regime of print in the Enlightenment and Modern eras, we are now decentered skeptical subjects under postmodern computer mediated writings. If hypertext only leads us to the vague suggestion of an argument made by a web photo and an itune, the writing is relying solely on rhetorical strategies, the main feature of Ancient Roman communication represented by the teachings of Quintillian. Thus with computer mediated technologies, we are stepping back millenia. I also like the idea you posed with starring in your own fantasy film (I think this is what Total Recall was about), at least in that I would get that flat screen plasma TV ive been dreaming about. Actually, if a conglomeration of databases tried to write a movie with me as the star, it would basically be me sitting at my desk reading for like 12 hours straight. This movie would probably be rated "G," although i don’t know.

The thing about Baudrillard is that his writing is just simply poetic and amazing. However, his theories just don’t seem applicable to very many things that I can think of. Poster gives the example of TV ads, which by showing a busty blond with pom poms signifies a number of referents – beer, sex, football, etc. This, unfortunately, is not how TV ads work. At least anymore. Companies try to flood images of their products in our media/psychological sphere for exposure only – market penetration. Obviously, considering the recent demise of General Motors, probably the most ubiquitous advertised products on TV, the whole advertising thing just doesn’t work. Sales are most likely tied to "real" factors like the price of gas, cheaper better built foreign cars, etc…

While hejirascope lacked strict boundaries and order, Pax convinced me that it had a beginning and an end, and in some respects it had a plot. THe first half of the game was rising and the secong falling. This correlated to waking and sleeping, light and dark. Like hejirascope, the subliminal words constantly reappearing evoked death, terrorism, ecological danger, and epistemological uncertainty. While it is difficult to reach any broad conclusions about these texts, we can safely say that they are not wholly optimistic texts. 

Im going to just state what I liked about the novel instead of trying to critically extract an all-encompassing theme, which I hope doesn’t exist. I liked how Hagedorn treats her characters equally, by which I mean she develops even minor characters with care and detail. I was most invested in the relationship between Zamora and Lina, which at the end is not really resolved. The whole middle section, featuring the real life drama of the Apocalypse Now set, with Coppola (and wife), Duvall, Sheen, and Brando’s characters accounted for, took up much of the novel, although I felt that it didn’t have much bearing on my final assessment. All the energy devoted to the tiger section I felt was random – what exactly did Lina’s dreams of tigers signify?

I also liked the realistic portrayal of power relationships through the switching of narrator/point of view. Interesting that Zamora, even reduced to ash in an urn, had a powerful point of view and meaningful effect on the end of the novel. THis technique highlights the powerful moments when Lina is represented as the aggressor or instigator (as when she touches Zamora’s face). The drug/prostitution thing became tiring and overdone for me, but highlighted the absence of these things when the scene turned to the United States at the end, where the novel’s protagonists lead "different lives."

Although Hagedorn maps out a network of competing, collabrative, and conniving power relationships, her ultimate position on them is distanced, and moves towards calling them "fun." THe reality is the corruptive and oppressive Marcos regime, which led to constant death and destruction, but Hagedorn is able to look back and dismiss it all, laugh it off, as a weak performance by wealthy and bored men. 

I agree with preceeding posts that a main problem with Benjamin’s essay is his use of "aura." I’m sure I know what he means by it, but I’m not sure how he feels about it. Is he lamenting the loss of authenticity in art, is he celebratory of the new aesthetic possibilities of film, or is he simply dreading the future of art in the hands of the masses? At times it seems that he is valuing one "high" (painting) art form over a "lower" (hollywood film) one, which, if he is, must be an unforseen mistake on his part. Capitalsim transformed the work of art into a commodity produced for the market, consumable by an uncritical mass, but the economic system has also had a hand in producing a great number of powerful forms of art in the 20th C. Concluding that Marlon Brando acted with no aura or arguing (as Adorno tried to do) that Charlie Parker played only repetitive snippets from popular songs would get you fired as an art critic today. So there seems to be an unbearable outdatedness to Benjamin, but im not so sure.

furthermore, there seems to be a struggle in "the work of art" on who owns culture: art critics, politicians, or the "masses," who are never defined by Benjamin. The article, although steeped in the history of art, has an urgent practical purpose in rescuing the work of art from the Nazis, and I’m wondering if that’s all we can say: Western art in the beginning served the magical and now serves the political. This "essence," "authenticity," "tradition," and "unique existence" of an artwork of old is in opposition to the modernday artwork as "image" or "spectacle." If anything, this binary opposition shouldn’t highlight a social and economic transformation as much as it should reveal how fragile these "aura" terms are. The meaning and beauty around any artwork throughout history is culturally constructed, and I think Benjamin says this. So what’s the real deal? Besides photography and film supplanting painting and theater as the new priviliged art forms, what has happened? Would the Nazis have been able to take control if photography and film hadn’t existed? I feel like I’m missing the point and i’m looking forward to tomorrow’s class discussion so that people can fill me in. 

Morrison in Song of Soloman takes up with the problem of identity.  Milkman Dead’s body is a tabula rasa that becomes littered with everyone else’s history, culture, and desire.  In fact, through much of the story there’s a question of whether Milkman exists at all (is it I’m Milkman already Dead or Milkman Dead still alive).  The first time Milkman feels real at all was when he knocked his father into the radiator.  The Oedipal maneuver by Morrison is one of many that seems to me overtly Freudian that she is actually mocking him and distancing herself from that kind of psychological reading.  The second time, or the first time something real had "filled his mouth with salt" (183), was when Guitar gave a "crisp concreteness" to the lost gold story told to him by his father (184).  Of course, the first time an event had formed "a clean-line definite self" of Milkman, turned out to be a hoax.  The gold that promised a life of freedom and comfort turned out to be the bones of a white man, which later turned out to be the remains of his grandfather.  The gold that symbolized a "flight" from Milkman’s stalemate life turned out the be the bones of a man who had actually taken "flight".  This knowledge in the end sets Milkman, from his perspective, free.  The road to self knowledge for Milkman is, in the very least resemblance, the same as the one for Oedipa Maas. 

There is so much in this novel, it makes me dizzy thinking about what to write.  Let me say, since it looks like I’m the first to blog on the book, some generalities: this story takes place in a specific time, in specific places, within real historical realities.  Milkman Dead shares his birthday with the author, which she gives on the first page.  Most of the novel is set in what seems like Southside Chicago, even though Dead repeatedly says he’s from Michigan.  And it deals with issues related to the "Great Migration," most importantly, race riots.  Guitar takes on this overtly political role as the black radical.  While she represents Guitar’s duty (an eye for an eye) in what I took for a positive light, Morrison by the end is distancing herself from this character.  It’s unclear what Morrison thinks of Milkman by the end. Did he finally realize his true self, as a part of the Song of Soloman, as a true member of this great diasporic family, or did he, like his grandfather before him, up and leave his family and problems behind.

If cherry jam is the enemy, the unlived "other" life, then raspbery twigs represent home, the whole being, the chosen way. Ginger represents the unreal, the supernatural, the place of longing and desire. The other shore. The other world. Ginger, not grown in the United States, is not a natural smell. The brain plays tricks on the senses and ginger is not actually smelled but felt. If you’ve ever drove through south Chicago, like I have many times, the range of smells is confounding. You know that there’s the Wrigley gum plant, the soap plants, the automobile plants of Gary, In., but these smells, all mingled together, never match up in the mind to the exact source. 

Although not its most salient point, the two main settings of Memento, a run down exurban commercial strip and an abandoned industrial park, continue the familiar strain so far this semester of postmodern writers inquiring about the degradation of america’s natural environment. Pynchon, Le Guin, and Whitehead all have something to say about failing urban areas, commercial sprawl, military pollution, and overpopulated cities, etc. Sometimes I find it helpful to think of what’s not present in film or book settings. In Memento, there are no woods, lakes, parks, grass, animals, etc. There are a lot of drugs, bloody body parts, cars with broken windsheilds, bullets. Nolan chose his setting with a purpose. Its Californiaesque, and shares characteristics with Lot 49’s landscape and plot.

 It occured to me last week, as i was driving through man made fog spewing from a semi truck engine fire on 395, that this whole postmodern condition of ours can be both an economic one, as Jameson argues, or an environmental one, as many people probably have already argued, but only just recently dawned on me. i’ve never read Delillo, but from what I hear, this question will keep arising again and again.

John, very good point about the British and Canadian make-up of the film. I disagree with the Bush Administration that we shouldn’t claim everything for ourselves. I would point to Nolan’s use of setting  to consider it decidedly american in feel. Im interested in what people had to say about the form, structure of the film, with some saying how creative it was to put the audience in Leonard’s shoes in trying to put together the pieces of his wife’s murder, and another saying that it was, oh what’s the word, cliche?  i agree with jarrod’s comments that there was truth for the viewer to grasp. I almost thought that we would find out who killed his wife! Look forward to tomorrow’s discussion.

in addition to these fine comments below, let me add that what struck me about whitehead’s novel was, like pynchon’s, the critique of american capitalism around the year 1960. besides hooks, i felt like the works of the frankfurt school, especially adorno and benjamin, would be beneficial. later, jameson, too, seems pertinent. the difference is, of course, that the author is writing today looking back in history. i got the feeling at the end of the novel that lila mae had an omniscient view of the inner workings of society, and i felt the reader was always looking at new york aerially, as if we had already acheived this new portentous elevator technology. arbo, a corporation that seemingly had everything within their monopolistic grasp, in reality operated on the whims of an obscure, bath-robed, inventor. it doesn’t seem that whitehead offers a ‘blueprint’ for radical change coming from a collective underclass as hooks envisions, rather, change will proceed from a single person endowed with special knowledge. whitehead’s text then, is homologous to w.e.b dubois ‘souls of black folk’ rather than a postmodern pluralist tract like hooks’.

the other aspect (which were so many and i don’t know how we’re going to cover them all in class) that interested me was the author’s treatment of the white nyc population, specifically the irish. im not sure iv’e read anything so stereotypical of irish men on my life, and im sure whiteheads motives are satirical, im just not sure how, and its a topic i hope to get to in class. certainly, the black and irish population of nyc has had a ‘colored’ history; they represent the bottom rungs of the economic and social ladder. the irish famous for their fierce xenophobia and rascist attitudes towards blacks. bell hooks, in her other writings, comments on how surprised white people are when they hear blacks’ negative descriptions of whites’ appearances and manners. as if blacks were not capable, in their perceived status as object, ‘the watched’, as having judgements of their own. it is interesting how whitehead works with this unique perspective, but i would like to maybe or maybe not discuss further how this counter-stereotyping operates in the novel.

i was struck, generally, how this novel seemed to occupy, like hooks’ criticism, a place between modernist and postmodernist categories. i did catch much postmodern elements, such as chancre’s simulacra of otis’s first elevator, which served to bolster the appearance of empiricist power, but other moments, especially the ending, evoked moderninst tendencies. 

im surprised how many of the novel’s themes were left out of this week’s blogroll (an advantage of getting to write last!). first, no one said anything about race. this is partly a love story between a white man and black woman. there are also strong undercurrents of the nostalgia le guin feels for the radical black political movement of the late 60s (SNCC, black panthers, etc). on the love part, it seems that by endowing lelache with a multitude of animal characters; a crab, spider, snake, and treating orr as a jellyfish, le guin is saying something to the efffect that love can happen between anyone, even an aggressive terra firma animal with a passive aquatic one. (remember the sharp divide between land and sea in the opening). certainly there’s more to be said about environmental degradation and how this plays into postmodern thought, as well as drug culture, etc… im looking forward to our tuesday discussion. i loved this book!

first, a word on the delillo short short, which i thought was quite brilliant. delillo challenges hierarchies of what are important human actions, and democratizes these actions by sandwiching “killing a roach” between “conteplating an abortion” and “romantic love.” this is an extremely liberating feeling for the reader because it semiotically challenges the “natural” priviliging of “love” and “abortion” over having, say, “roast beef and mashed potatoes.” of course, reading this short simply as a satiric take on what we would call now a “made-for-tv-movie” is fine, as are the infinite other ‘readings’ of this story.
second, and related, is the question of whether pynchon is saying a whole lot of nothing or a grand something. the main plot of the story is whether oedipa can grasp any firm solid truth. throughout, i felt that pynchon revealed the real ‘truths’ about the san narciso (and thus american) landscape, that, however, his characters were never able to grasp. the recurring imagery of drinking, eating, and smoking human bones, the smog, the electronic circuitry of city planning, the two towering missiles that decorated the yoyodyne building. at once, this landscape seems both threatening and benign, as the characters gloss over these realities in a frenzied and confused search for higher truths. pynchon’s careful use of adjectives like ‘gossamer’ (41) and ‘dross’ (76) indicate what we talked about in the first class: that the postmodern american landscape is a glossed over surface, with no depth, nothing of substance.
jameson is describing this “break” in history, when things began to lose their depth, their modernist meaning, and he discusses painting, photography, architecture, and cartogrpahy, among other things. new manifestations of cultural production in these areas are simply images, that have lost their link to old world meaning. where the two missiles at the entrance of yoydyne no longer signify war, crisis, or death, but rather serve as a garnish to an already inundated militaristic landscape, such as a dandelion would garnish a delicious glass of human bone aged dandelion wine.