American Postmodernism

There are so many postmodern concepts in Dream Jungle already mentioned, I am left to ponder the unanswerable or, at least, the elements of the novel that puzzled me. The time shifts involved in the story of Zamora’s life and the Tabao and the many angles Hagadorn employed to fill in the gaps of first hand experience at ‘The White House’ leaves one with more questions rather than less. For instance, the time frame spanning from Paz’s second attempt to interview Zamora at his delapidated mansion and his death is not documented, and the reader is left to wonder what exactly ‘killed’ Zamora. Was his demise and death a self-fullfilling prophesy since he was no longer a benevolent celebrity venerated for his stone age discovery of the Tabao, but rather, known as an ignoble scam artist, as Paz’s father believes?

 The constant infiltration of "Antonio Pigafetta’s account of Magellan’s expedition" coupled with recurrent Conradian illusions that bind Zamora, Tony Pierce, Moody, and absurdly, Sabastian Claiborne seem to answer the question of Zamora’s death. "Zamora held out his arms, ready to give as well as to receive. He was a long-lost king, a glorious saint, a triumphant savior. Our hero, our savior." This man, Zamora, is Conrad’s Kurtz reinvented. Zamora’s home, whether imagined or real, whether among an authentic Tabao people or a constructed or "fake" tribe, is "the darkness." The stark comparison between Kurtz and Zamora leads me to believe that Zamora, while literally self-isolated in the darkness of his vacant house, is consumed by the darkness, or the chaotic void of a universe in which humankind is persistently trying to impose social order. Zamora’s construct of order, again whether imagined or real, was the adoration "of his devoted supplicants," the Tabao and the fame, the parties, and the glory that the alleged "the ethnological find of the century" brought him. Zamora, like Kurtz, and Magellan before them, are at home among strangers, among the suppliant, the colonized "other," people that are transfixed with the godlike appearence of a distanced fatherly benevolence.

None of the characters, however, are ‘at home’ with their families, the traditional unit one should be closest to according to premodern/modern standards. Kurtz abandon’s Europe and ‘his beloved,’ Magellan was a notorious conquistador, not a family man, and Zamora is so isolated from his wife Isle and his daughter Dulce, he no longer exists to them at his death and posthumously. "My daughter’s happy now, lost int he warmth and glow of my rum and her mother’s radiant smile…The girls are having fun. And not once does my name come up. Not once." Is this Hagedorn’s assessment of the postmodern condition of family? Is family more fragmented, detached, and without connection in contemporary, globalized societies?

Paz’s alienation from her bible thumping sadist of a brother Ricky and her break from her family when she moved to the U.S., Lina’s flight from her mother and her home with Zamora at Casa Blanca and her relationship to her sexually and physically abusive father, Janet’s distanced relationship to Pierce (a strictly professional relationship in film and a biological partnership to propagate the species), and Moody’s escape from his girlfriend and son, Alex, are all instances of the postmodern disconnection of family. The unit no longer represents unconditional solidarity or loyalty, but is something that can physically dissolve and break down at the drop of a pin. However, Lina, Paz, Janet, Moody, and Zamora are all characters that Hagedorn depicts with the substantial conscience to yearn for their family connections to be reconstructed and made whole again, even if only in remembrance. In Zamora’s case, even in death as his spirit is peering out from the urn, "the source of his agony," the "failed love" of Isle is what his restless spirit realizes was most important. 

As I write this post on the tail-end of your ideas, I find myself encountering many of the same problems, the greatest of which is translation. I don’t know that I agree with John when he argues that the Tagalog was used to simulate "a mesh of Spanish, English and native dialects." I’m pretty sure it is an Austronesian language that is the base of Filipino (the language, not the nation). Perhaps you were thinking of the "Pigeon English" that is sometimes spoken, not only in the Philippines, but many other Asian countries (especially China). Furthermore, the un-translated text also includes Latin, French, Spanish, and probably a few others I did not recognize. For me, the lack of translation speaks to a greater problem, one that has supposedly existed since the Tower of Babel. Texts are inherently untranslatable. To translate is to conquer. To change a language into English is to divorce the original language from its context and rob it of its inherent connotations. However, this begs the question: what about the texts she did translate? Are there in-jokes I would get if I read these languages? Is there a subtle context within the translation? I believe that this question balloons out to encompass the entire text. I am only vaguely familiar with the history of the Philippines, the filming of Apocalypse Now, and the paintings of Goya. What intertextual references am I missing with my Eurocentric understanding of our world’s history? If anything, this text plays off of our lack of knowledge and in doing so is able to rewrite history. What part of this text is real? Was there a former child actor in Apocalypse Now? This of course speaks to the fictional (or at least narrative) nature of history that many of you have already mentioned. Hagerdorn’s text is asserting a different voice in the narrative of the history of a notion. Though fictive, I am no position to see to what extent it is so.

I thought that one of the major encompassing themes in Dream Jungle was the issue of perception in history.  Most history is based on perception, and therefore it’s very difficult to have cold, hard truth when discussing it.  Hagedorn’s story is based on real people and real occurrences, which makes her story a historical account, except through a different perception.  She said that the idea of the novel came from seeing Zamora’s (his real-life alter ego, I forget his name) picture and obituary in the newspaper one day.  The character of Paz portrays Hagedorn’s real-life experience with Zamora, and so she plunges into the novel, re-creating a fictionalized account of actual events and people, thus re-writing history. (Hagedorn and Zamora’s families really did know one another, she really did sit through an awkward interview on his terrace, etc) By using the different character’s voices to narrate the novel, she is pushing the concept of “perception” that much further.  Each character has a different, unique perception to what is occurring and the world around them.  Lina’s perception of Zamora, Fritz’s perception of his father and Zamora, Moody’s perception of the Philippines, etc.  The narration is schizophrenic, but it’s also very intentional and goes along with Hagedorn’s attempt at re-creating the mixed, jumbled feeling of collecting historical accounts in order to form one succinct interpretation – and never coming to a solid truth. This is paired with Pierce’s “perception” of Vietnam, creating a movie to depict the event, but also re-writing history.  He in fact re-writes his version of history over 90+ times.  And really, isn’t all history re-written about a thousand different times.  The movie is virtually the same mode of historical portrayal as the book, because it’s based on a real event, real people, but there still isn’t any truth.  I think I’m confusing myself now.  I was just thinking about how future generations, my generation even, will watch movies like Apocalypse Now and our perception of Vietnam will come from those images.  The first thing I think of when WWI or WWII comes up is Tom Hanks storming Normandy, it’s my version of truth, it’s my perception of history.   Hagedorn re-writing the history of Zamora, the Taobo, the making of Apocalypse Now, although fictionalized, is still her perception of a reality, and she uses the voices of the various characters to emphasize the varying degrees of interpretation an event can have.

Similar to Kira’s idea of escaping family, perhaps in a post-modern world, there is a tremendous need to escape reality.  Granted, throughout the semester, we have been discussing what "reality" is or even if "reality" exists or can be defined (especially given the variety of time and space concepts of Harvey); however, regardless of our meaning of "reality," it seems to me that our characters are continually seeking to escape whatever they envision reality to be.  We had, of course, George Orr who escaped the original reality of the destruction of his world by dreaming a new reality into existence, from which he spends the remainder of the novel dreaming further adaptations to this reality.  He initially was escaping the catastrophic annihilation of the world, but he goes on to try to escape the negative aspects of the reality that remain once he has altered it (for example, the "color"/race problem and the wars that take place throughout the world).  We also have Leonard (and even the other characters of Memento) "dealing with" reality by intentionally changing it or causing it to be remembered differently (by Leonard).  Leonard perhaps has created the entire murder case about his wife in order to escape his reality of not being able to create new memories.  He also tattoos himself in an attempt to preserve "reality" and how far he has gotten in the case.  We do know, however, that he changes reality by purposefully creating a false tattoo to maintain his need to hunt down a killer (and maintain purpose in his reality he must face constantly).  Other characters use Leonard, too, to change the progression of reality or to find a way of dealing with it.  Natalie, in an attempt to escape the reality of her boyfriend’s murder, uses Leonard to get revenge, not altering what happened in the past, but altering the future and finding a way of accepting the loss.

And on to Dream Jungle, the title of which sparked my thoughts along this line.  As I got a little ways into the book, I began searching for the meaning of the title, and I ended up, sort of subconsciously, looking for meanings of "dream" and how dreams factor into the story.  I was thinking of the meanings of "dream" – literally, to have sleeping dreams, but also to have hope-type dreams of what will come of life, and the idea of something being ideal or "a dream."  All of those ideas factor into the escaping reality trend I’ve been on in this post.  Parts of the novel make me think that the real dream-like/ideal place to live and exist might be in the jungle, as the Taobos live.  They seem to be without some of the horrors that wealth, class distinctions, and post-modern ways of life tend to lead society into believing/valuing.  Though "savage," perhaps they have the better life.  Even more pointedly, I see the examples where literal dreams (like with George Orr) help characters escape reality.  Rizalina escapes the sexual abuse of her father by dreaming him dead – in fact, dreaming that she stabbed and gutted him (20).  Then, when her father and brothers really do die, on the way to Zamora’s house, Rizalina fades in and out of sleep/dreaming, and it is unclear if she actually dreams the scene or if her confusion and loss are distorting the reality that she sees (the sights and sounds of which are new and foreign to her anyway) (26).  That, of course, is just the start of the "dream" moments in Dream Jungle, but I find the recurring idea of escaping reality an interesting one for post modern possibilities.

I’m interested in the emotional trajectory the narrative takes – always away from the characters.  Zamora is introduced in the beginning, then drops out until his corpse reminds us he inhabited the story; Lina addresses us directly in a standoff-ish but affecting way, then becomes a ghostly companion to another dissolving character, Vincent Moody.  Each enters the story at perhaps their most intense emotional moment, receding from there.  Rather than building characters and scenes into a grand emotional pinnacle, the narrative diverges, breaking down around a series of disappearances.  This lack of a payoff is exemplified by the fizzle of the tiger on the movie set: “‘Aw, phooey,’ Jesse Pierce said. ‘That was lame’” (270).  The implicit promise of lurid action is not just deferred but is structurally impossible in Hagedorn’s narrative, and this seems to be one thoroughgoing aspect of the postmodern text.  Indeed, there’s almost a distraction of desire, as if no one can see things through.  The metaphor here is the film itself, which takes forever to shoot, gets written and rewritten by director and cast alike, and results in miles of footage without anyone knowing how it fits together into a meaningful whole.  Perhaps this lack of a coherent trajectory is inevitable in a postcolonial tale that gets senselessly hijacked – like the Philippines itself: on a course diverted first by the Spanish and then the Americans, all the while constructing images of its own pre-colonial history in the Taobo.  And, if we accept Kwame Anthony Appiah’s split between postmodernism and (post-)postcolonialism along some aesthetic/political divide, then Dream Jungle is clearly an example of the former, for the novel sacrifices (political) solidity in favor of (aesthetic) dissolution.  But then we’re caught in the same old double bind we always are when discussing the politics of a work of art: Does it subvert or merely reflect what it presents as the status quo?  For Appiah, the sculpture Man with a Bicycle is politically salvageable because it refuses to ‘Otherize’ – or commodify – what it represents.  It moves beyond delegitimization and makes “an appeal to an ethical universe” (353).  But I’m not convinced that Dream Jungle makes the same move.  Instead, it seems to wallow in its representation – not of the commodified Other – but of the hopeless case, the pitied object, the world-weary chronicler, the imaginary past, the speaking corpse.

Zac brings up Lina’s tiger dream.  Hagedorn builds up the whole tiger scene, and it’s completely anticlimactic.  In fact, Pearce’s son says it was lame (270), one of the instances of self-reference in the novel.  However, Lina seems to be looking for some sign that “could help her make her decision.  To stay or to go?  To leave Yeye behind or take her along?…The tiger blinked its amazing eyes and roared.  As if to say, Yes, yes.  It’s about time!…Lina felt great joy” (270).  This incident seems to have guided Lina in her eventual decision to move to the U.S. and leave her daughter behind.  But other than that, I’m not sure of its symbolic significance, even though Hagedorn tells us that the tiger represents the Hindu god of destruction (263).  Also, “Tigre!  Tigre!” (270) is an allusion to the famous William Blake poem, “The Tyger”; however, once again, I’m sure of its significance.

And on the topic of dreams, I’m having trouble making sense of the novel’s title.  On a quick flip-through, I counted 12 separate mentions of dreams or nightmares throughout the book.  It seems to me that the two most important dreams are the one that Zamora describes to Rizalina about being a crucified he-goat (47), and Lina’s recurring dream about the tiger, described in detail on page 270.  However, after looking closely at these two dreams, I can’t see how they relate to the novel’s title exactly.

Ada mentions language and the fact that Hagedorn left many words untranslated.  I think this is important in relation to the Philippines.  From what I understand, Tagalog is sort of a mesh of Spanish, English and native dialects.  So I think it makes sense for Hagedorn to have her characters use a mesh of different languages.

Julie G. brings up the idea of truth or lack thereof.  Something that stood out to me was Moody’s description of the Napalm Sunset script; he sees it as “funny in a fatalistic, ironic, Filipino kind of way.  No clear-cut heroes or villains, no simplistic, black-and-white notions of justice.  Just murk and mud” (175).  I think this is an apt description of the novel itself, which was probably the intention.

OK.  Now someone fill me in on the title.   

Most of the time, my first reaction when I read these books is to look at the formal constructs the authors use to frame their stories. As a writer, that’s how I’ve been trained, and those types of critiques tend to come more easily to me than many of the things we end up discussing in class as lynchpin elements of a text. So I apologize if this isn’t necessarily on topic, but as I read through Dream Jungle I was continually impressed with how Jessica Hagedorn handled the varying intertextual constructs within the book.

Many times, these types of fictional elements (excerpts from Pigafetta’s journey’s with Magellan, interview transcripts of discussions, a courier-fonted excerpts of Pilar’s memoir, footnoted excerpts, etc.) can have a counteractive quality that disrupts the reader more then enriches the text, and that didn’t happen here. Though the content bears almost no resemblance, I kept seeing the same authorial instincts to use these constructs as Michael Dorris and Louise Erdrich used in Crown of Columbus, where intertextual references play a large part in establishing a fictional "history", but establish also a depth the to story instead of highlighting surface aspects. I keep thinking of why these elements worked so well, and I think it may be the double-culture revelry that the books share. Dream Jungle does deal directly with American pop culture, but not exclusively, which adds a certain cultural weight to the "bells and whistles." In Dream Jungle, somehow they work to achieve a distinct "history" to the fictional elements to the text that worked along with historical characterizations of place, such as the characterization of the Philippines throughout. Books built around intertextual meta-elements that deal solely in discussing American pop culture (anything by David Foster Wallace, really) tend to have the hurdle of reader alienation to deal with, and I think it may have to deal with the nature of our pop culture’s inability in many instances to look past its own influence (which Wallace once wrote an essay about, ironically), which can cause self-reflexive aggravation in readers when authors revel in it. Hagedorn in her books finds a way to dodge that trap by pitting American pop culture against a staid history, and I think that may be what I responded to most here.

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 really enjoyed Kwame’s article, and was deeply shocked by the attitudes of the curators; the so-called experts on African art. No wonder African artists feel the need to distance themselves from their ancestors! Even though this distancing is an act of resistance to the realism and nationalism that followed in the wake of liberation from the colonial power, I would have resisted with all my might against an  art establishment that that, despite its alleged postmodernism continue to place such old-fashioned and, and Kwame points out, modernist demands on African art and culture. For whereas postmodernism claims that African art cannot be legitimated merely on the basis of  culture- and history-transcending standard, modernism asserts that “primitive art was to be judged by putatively universal aesthetic criteria” (347). It is incredible that an (almost) contemporary curator, safely and ‘objectively’ placed in the Center of the art world, actually allows herself to patronize an African artist by indirectly claiming that he – unlike her Western self – is ignorant of the diversity of African art and hence does not know how to appreciate it. It does indeed seem just if it is true that the good curator became a victim of her own superiority: if the commodification of African art works that encourages the continued construction of African Otherness and gives room for the introduction of works of ‘falsified otherness’, led her to include such works in her postMODERNIST exhibition of exotic objects of interior décor.      

False constructions and otherness are also major themes in Dream Jungle. We are never sure if Zamora Lopez de Legazpi is, like his namesake Miguel Lopez de Legazpi, a true explorer, or a man who has set the whole thing up, ‘just because he could’. Zamora could have ‘refurbished’ reality a little, or himself have been fooled by Duan. It is also possible that the President (who has in every other way prostituted his county), has gone behind Zamora’s back to use PIMPF for his own dubious purposes. Just like Sebastian Clairborne, the President might have inserted himself into the script of the Jungle Emperor and changed it. In Clairborne’s case, the script is Tony Pierce’s. Ironically, Pierce is making a movie about the Vietnam War in an area in which there is an actual armed conflict going on. Yet despite his work on a movie that attempts to portray the complexities, dehumanization and suffering of the Americans’ great war, Pierce has absolutely no thought for the ‘natives’ or the conflict going on around them. To him, the country is merely a backdrop; one that frequently causes them inconveniences; such as having to stop shooting of the film because the helicopters are needed in actual shootings, or having to deal with the nuisance of real dead bodies instead of the expected props. For this reason, Pierce seems to me the worse ‘colonialist’ of the two Jungle Gods.

Because it depicts the Vietnam War, because of its setting, its drugged and disillusioned cast, and because it is being documented by Janet, Pierce’s film alludes very clearly to Apocalypse Now. So much so, that I wonder if it is not a comment upon this film, and the notion it plays upon (taken, of course from the great modernist work Heart of Darkness) that the Philippines with its dark and dreamy jungle, just like Africa and its cultural expressions, is still to us that ultimate Other. And we want to keep it that way. The great response to Zamoa’s discovery of the ‘lost tribe’ underscores people’s need for this Other – to which we are both drawn and repelled – just like films like “Napalm Sunset” promise to perpetuate its image.        

The idea of truth, or lack there of, is one of the central themes I encountered while reading. There are so many ways in which Hagedorn eludes giving the truth, the whole truth. First of all, the way she narrates the novel seems schizophrenic because she is constantly changing narrators as well as point of view. Not only do the characters change, but they switch from first to third person. This made it hard for me to be able to trust my judgment of each character because I was constantly getting different opinions and facts from many different sources. At times I couldn’t stand Legazpi (which I think was the point). He was an arrogant, perverted pedophile who was almost crazy at times. But when I would get his point of view it was easier to see his passion for his work and his struggle to be a good man. I had the same problem with Moody and even Fritz. I think the problem is that Hagedorn doesn’t leave them as flat villains, but instead creates an entire world for them. Maybe we (Westerners?) are supposed to relate to him yet be disgusted by him (and ourselves?) at the same time?

There were also many truths left unsolved within the plot. Was the Taobo tribe really “discovered” by Legazpi or was it all a hoax set up by the government? The name of the tribe itself is unclear. Is it “Taobo” or “Tao Po”? This part where we see Legazpi has purposely changed the name is juxtaposed with an excerpt from Magellan’s expedition where they change the names of the islands they visit. What is the truth of these names? Is the name its original title or the one Westerners have imposed upon it? The story within a story about Vietnam also adds to the lack of truth. Pierce himself says that there are so many sides to the war and that’s why he wanted to make it into a film. It was unclear who was “right” and who was “wrong.” Is it a coincidence that a book written in 2004 depicts both ancient explorers and Vietnam? Is she saying something about power and control?

I like Kira’s post about the distancing of ourselves from our ancestors. The fact that the narrative was also intertwined with excerpts from Magellan’s expedition seems to point to the fact that we cannot escape this cultural barbarism. That, in fact, our entire existence in Western culture is based upon these sorts of expeditions and taking advantage of native peoples around the globe. Look at the way the rich (Legazpi, Fritz, Pierce, and even Moody) treat the poor natives. Those in power got there by exploiting the native and tribal communities. Legazpi is a Spaniard and is not a native of the Phillipines—yet he is like a king in their society. The Himal people are subordinates in his house and he even keeps a “wild” Taobo boy as his pet. Pierce, a typical rich American, drives around in limos and leaves a sick Phillipino stranded in the jungle. Fritz, not totally Phillipino, makes money off of the Taobo tribe in the guise of help. It doesn’t seem like just an ugly past. Perhaps Hagedorn is pointing out that what we subsist on is people like Rizalina and that we shouldn’t ignore it or try to escape from it.

I thought it was interesting that Kwame Anthony Appiah said, in his essay: "It is an important question why this distancing of our ancestors should have become so central a feature of our cultural lives" (342). This made me think of how, in Dream Jungle, many of the characters escape or distance themselves from their families (and perhaps their ancestors).

Rizalina escapes her family first when her father and brothers are drowned, and then escapes her mother by running away. Vincent also escapes his family – his girlfriend and son in L.A. – and comes to the Philippines. Paz moves on to live in New York and L.A., and Ilse manages to escape from Zamora in divorce (although her children are ultimately returned to him). I’m not entirely sure what this all means – perhaps it’s just the theme that one can escape one’s own history, heritage, and ancestors. Or can you?

I like how Ada pointed out the issue of translation in the novel. There were a lot of untranslated words in the novel, and a lot of the time the characters couldn’t understand each other. This creates barriers between the characters, but also with the audience. I also wondered if this means that there is room for our own translation, our own interpretation? Meaning, that perhaps without a translation, the truth of something is ever elusive and ever open to interpretation, as we have sometimes discussed in class?

Along with the many intertexual and historical elements that comprise parts of Jessica Hagedorn’s Dream Jungle, the question of translation also arises.  I am interested to see what you all think about the author’s decision to include un-translated words in several different languages throughout the text.  My first experience with Hagedorn was reading Dogeaters, in play form, which also had several words and phrases in different languages.  In this case, though, there was a glossary in the back, with the translations.  Do you think that Dream Jungle should have included a glossary?  I think that one of the major successes of the novel is that even without notes on translation, Hagedorn’s prose is lucid and evocative enough so that the reader can gain understanding of the words or phrases contextually and within the included sentences.  In fact, in some instances, I feel that the un-translated, italicized words were more effective in relating emotion, confusion, and sentiment.  The mix of Tagalog, German, Spanish, English and other languages intertwined the narratives of the individual yet interconnected stories.  It is interesting to note that language, particularly such a mix of languages, are that which binds the characters together.  Walter Benjamin, in his 1923 essay entitled “The Task of the Translator” asserts that translation is a mode, and therefore, one of the key elements in this mode is the original, and its meaning, particularly tied to the “translatability” of the original.  Then, because there is a temporal quality to the original and its relation to the translation, it is through the translation that the original work sustains and maintains a “continued life.”  Hagedorn’s decision to include in the text words that are un-translated echo Benjamin’s observations of translatability, not necessarily that the words cannot be translated, but that the text is better served by leaving the words un-translated, that their force as linguistic modes is more powerful in the original.  There is also the sense of a sustained life, in the telling and retelling of a tale in several translations, moving contextual and historical information to fit the language of the new translated text.

Although it is not obvious due to the way his discussion on the traditional art work’s loss of ‘aura’ is represented, I find Benjamin’s essay to be very positive towards the new mechanically reproduced art forms. The fact that their emergence everywhere – i.e. the new focus on exhibition – has changed the way art is perceived, is of outmost importance to him. When read in connection with the introduction and epilogue, it becomes evident that Benjamin actually regards the ‘loss of aura’ and the ‘absorbtion of art by the masses’ to be what protects art from being used as an aesthetizied tool to promote party politics – like Fascism. I also liked the way he perceived the avant garde art of Dadaism as a forerunner to film and the new mode of perception the film developed. Stating that “[o]ne of the foremost tasks of art has always been the creation of a demand which could be fully satisfied only later”, Benjamin points out how Dadaism attempted to create in their pictorial and literary art the same effects the film today provides (17). Dadaist artworks were ‘reproductions’ deliberately useless for contemplation. Emerging at a time marked by the decline of the bourgeois, this art trend promoted distraction as an alternative to what it regarded the asocial bourgeois aesthetics of contemplation (Benjamin, 18). Its foremost objective was to shock and outrage the public. Benjamin regards the Dadaist art work as “an instrument of ballistics. It hit the spectator like a bullet, it happened to him, thus acquiring a tactile quality” (18). In this manner Dadaism initiated the demand for the distracted mode of participation now realized in film. The development from contemplative to tactile reception spurred by this avant-garde represents to Benjamin but one among many examples of how perception changes according to changes in humanity’s entire mode of existence (5). Radically overturning the more negative notion that the products of the culture industry represent a diminution of art (strongly argued by Adorno and Horkheimer, for instance), he also suggests that new mechanically reproduced forms like film may enrich more traditional art forms with important (primarily technical) insights (Benjamin, 29).

It’s interesting that Benjamin’s essay attempts to be positive about the work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction, but it reads so negatively.  Is that because we’ve all become a little jaded about how ‘the film’ (which we now know includes commercial television) works?  While it may destroy the commanding aura of the original and elite object, I think we’ve all come to understand that it effectively creates its own aura as well.  Any good Marxist knows that commodities are fetishized by the dissociation of use-value and exchange-value, and that the laborer is alienated by the separation of one’s labor from the object one creates by the fact that one is paid in dollar bills.  Obviously the next step in the triumph of capitalism is to make impossible the tactile relationship one might have with the fetishized object; the object is an image.  Benjamin sets up the actor-in-the-room and actor-on-the-screen binary in order to suggest that the film audience can somehow become more critical because of the actor’s absence, but it seems that the ‘shock effect’ of the camera’s work is more open to the inflated, uncritical, desirous gaping that accompanies the image of “breasts in a clinging sweater or the naked torso of the athletic hero” in Adorno and Horkheimer’s culture industry essay.  What’s even more scarifying – and yet something that we as a filmic culture have accepted with amazing pluck and aplomb – is that the system of reproducible images has changed the very way we perceive.  Benjamin’s thesis rests on a crucial ‘should be,’ when he states that “the shock effect of the film […] should be cushioned by heightened presence of mind” (238).  Even with his allowances for the intellectual laziness of the masses, Benjamin’s perspective on ‘distraction’ as a means toward critical perception sounds rather…I’m sorry…I got distracted by the cheerleaders on Monday Night Football…where was I going with this?

Note: This post was written before I was able to read any of the other posts, and so I didn’t realize that most of the class read Benjamin as being negative about film and reproducible images — and that there would be such a rousing defense of film.  I guess we’ll probably start with this discrepancy in our class discussion tonight.