Mazes and Zones: Part 1

While the vast majority of the discussion of post-modern television has focused on its stylistic formulation and structure (non-linear narrative, intertextuality, pastiche, etc), it has largely ignored the substance of content that is fundamental to the era of post-modernity.  As an intellectual progression of history, post-modernism is the shift from a question of epistemology (and its potential) to one of ontology: not just what can we know, but what is real? [1].  As television progresses into a mature medium of artistic form (and a post-modern construct itself) to challenge and (in the case of the popular conscious) supplant literature, it has now begun in its new golden age to successfully articulate and reveal the reflections of post-modernity as such.  The narrative content can now possess the substance of these questions: the shifting nature of the experience of our surrounding realities,  the unavoidable perspectivism of truth, the elusiveness of identity and the self.

Literature eventually reveals the underlying conditions of an era, but the illustration of an actual event presents them much more poignantly.  This is the case with Chernobyl, an A-grade drama that blends perfectly with the top television works of the era, but with an added weight of the history that it faithfully tries to represent. Chernobyl is perhaps the first real-world zone on Earth, a place that doesn't exist, that no longer has history, that doesn't function in synchronicity with the rest of existence.  From this real heterotopia, the series forms a complete integration of dramatic narrative and history, inseparable as the drama elucidates the significance of reality while the reality exhibited dramatic and unreal elements. Most striking is how the function of the perception of reality in wake of the event is still an ever increasing problem.  The total elevation of political opinion over scientific facts is a condition that firmly places the Chernobyl event within our own era (and it is not a coincidence that this event was one of the final break-downs of the Soviet Union, thrusting history fully into the post-modern in 1991).  Presenting one of the first real-world fixed zones, the narrative of Chernobyl realizes the concept of displaced places, and therefore makes a great companion piece to the expanding collection of neo-golden-age television which can accurately be called postmodern television.

Regarding the structure of the external world, the postmodern age has revealed that the order of discrete spaces, delineated by borders, with individual rules, laws, and underlying meaning, has become obscured, as it was based on illusion. Space is no longer a series of spaces, but non-contiguous zones in which meaning may materialize as it fluctuates, overlaps, and diminishes.

In Philosophy and Film Noir, Jerold Abrams presents Umberto Eco's analysis of mazes. The first kind of maze is the classical labyrinth, in this maze "you can enter and leave without difficult; and, while the string may help a little, the only real problem is the Minotaur."[2] This illustrates classical thought - reality is straightforward and is clearly perceptible with unproblematic access to knowledge (perhaps with the help of divine oversight).  With the advent of modenism the maze became "mannerist."  Faced with "distortion of perception," "nothing is what it seems"- "getting out is (with your sanity intact) is all the challenge requires. But that will never happen unless you have the all important modern [string] - pure reason." [3] In the post-modern era, the maze has transformed into the rhizome, which has "no center, it has no perimeter, and worst of all, it has no way out.  Here, the Minotaur is still the form of the labyrinth itself, but now there is no escaping him with reason (or faith, or any combination of the two."[4]  This is our problem.  There is no knowledge that can explain the entire structure of our reality.  Neither reason or faith can give us the answers, leaving us in an existential condition of of blind self-reliance as the only means of navigation.

Man in the High Castle

The Sinner is another series thoroughly dealing with post-modern difficulties.  Each season is concerned with reconstructing an elusive self, built upon shifting and failing systems of memory, while being somewhat constructed through intensive external conditioning.  In this case the maze involves recreating the hidden history of events and the labyrinth of the subconscious.In season two, the labyrinth/Mintoaur metaphor becomes an explicit (even visual) representation and "escaping the labyrinth" articulated as the explicit problem.

Taking a quirky, positive, light approach to the problem, Lodge 49 also explicit confronts the contemporary ontological problem, as characters attempt to see "above the maze," get to the "center of the maze," and uncover the "hidden reality" underneath the everyday, mundane world of continual difficulties, setbacks and soul-crushing difficulties.  Behind the events which shape the community and change the cultural and economic forces are deeper levels of groups and individual who influence events, unknown and unidentifiable  at the surface. This notion of ever-increasing levels of hidden power is prevalent in much of recent art-televison, perhaps starting with Lost and featured in series such as Breaking Bad, in which the accosiates Walter White encounters become much more insidious with each season, with power increasing in relation to invisibility, from street dealers to drug cartels to international conglomerates forming a pyramid, with the fundamental base always deeper and obscured.

At the other end of the spectrum Westworld is disturbingly dark examination of this condition. Explicitly confronting the question of reality, Westworld brings in all of the postmodern substance.  Set in an intentional heterotopia, the park presents meaning from the historical past, but it is not just a simulation, but a simulacrum, as it reflects a history that is not faithful to true reality.  Within this zone of constructed historicity, Hosts attempt to achieve consciousness by reaching the "center of the maze."  Delos

Owing much to Lost as a direct predecessor, with underground bunkers, and mainland institutions at work pursuing their own nefarious plans, both series feature those trapped inside, unaware of the structural laws,  looking for the exit and the meaning in transcendental terms.*

Unlike those works which attempt to navigate the maze of  contemporary society, the Walking Dead series examines the zone as a the totality of existence. All borders, as elements of structure, are completely gone.  There is no particular meaning to any space.  It is not a heterotopia, a space beyond an event horizon marking the normality of an attempted surface structure.  Like Chernobyl, The Walking Dead explores the unavoidable catastrophic encounter of the Lacanian Real beyond the artificial construct of the Symbolic that we perceive as fundamental reality  While spaces like Westworld and Chernobyl exist as zones through their own laws in relation to a larger external structures, outside of history, there is here no longer any difference here; all is pure disorder, as there is no longer any history in a functioning sense.

While existence becomes realized as a maze rather then a single, clear plane, the contemporary disintegration of space renders the search for the center of the maze as a contradiction - as space is a rhizome without a center.[5] The maze then becomes only relevant to the self, the internal subject which stands in opposition to the disorder of externality, the zone.  The new golden age of TV, this art-televison, realizes this condition and fully engages with this postmodern question of space in relation to knowledge and being, as postmodern literature and science fiction began doing during the twentieth century.



[2] Mark Conard. The Philosophy of Film Noir. Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 2006. 70.
I've mentioned the analysis of  this article before, and I think it only becomes more relevant in the new era of film/TV/literature.
[5] Compare this to modern cosmology is which no place in the expanding universe is center or edge - everywhere is.

Native Son

Thoughts on Native Son by Richard Wright

For me, the most prominent question that arises from Native Son concerns Bigger’s justification. This work resembles The Stranger, written by Camus at roughly the same time. In that work the character Mersault was also sentenced for death for inadvertently killing someone. Ultimately, his real crime was indifference to the world (a world that was indifferent to him).  He was not an active participant in his own life.  The same can be said of Bigger.  However, in his case, there seems to be something more than indifference. Once he gets himself into this situation, his attempt to get out becomes more ruthless, to the point that he is willing to kill again - even the person closest to him.    

There are several situations where Bigger notes a disconnectedness from himself, as when he claims that “he felt he had no physical existence at all right then” (67). He is certainly not exerting direct control over his actions. His mother notes that he needs to apply himself or he will suffer, yet he hesitates and wavers about taking the job while contemplating committing robbery.  From the beginning he essentially lost and drifting along.  Just as he does not fully recognize himself as a person, Bigger doesn’t see others in the world as individual people.  For him “white people were not really people; they were a sort of great natural force” (109).  This idea of force along with Bigger’s inability to act consciously suggests that the world is merely opposing forces caught in a struggle and human beings are just caught in that maelstrom, unable to escape.  While Bigger is living in an oppressive time and place, the one possible escape might have been the way suggested by Jan and his communist idea of equality.  However, he is not given the chance to pursue this idea, as events put him in an unwinnable situation.   After killing Bessie he finally realizes that “he had committed murder twice and had created a new world for himself” (279).  In contrast to the earlier ideas of external force, the word created suggests that Bigger did indeed play a role in forming the situation.   It is not a world that one would choose, but given his role in it he must deal with the consequences of it.  Bigger has not only fought against the whites and the oppressive conditions they set up, but by killing Bessie he has committed crimes against his own people, and there seems no clear justification for this action.  His only motivation seems to be a pure animalistic drive for self-preservation, regardless of what color his opponents possess. The divisions of color have disappeared, and he is alone against the world.

It would seem that Bigger will either have to face the realization that he has no freewill or take responsibility for his actions.  In the Stranger, Mersault accepts what he has done and learns to live with it (for as long as that lasts).  In Bigger’s case, he will have to do that as well, if he is to ever justify himself.  On the other hand, if Wright is arguing that there is no freewill and that all of us are merely exhibiting instinctive responses to external forces, then there is no hope of freedom for anyone regardless of race, color, or social status.

A large amount of Part 3 contains arguments that attempt to minimize Bigger’s criminal actions.  While Max’s argument makes some sense in reference to the system set up by the whites that has caused repercussions of this kind, not all of it seems to hold justification. His claim that Bigger was in a kind of “war” and forced to kill, does not directly justify the two murders. First, Mary was trying to help Bigger. While her behavior could be felt as patronizing, killing her in some kind of war effort would be counterproductive. In this sense, during the Civil War, slaves would be justified in killing sympathetic Northerners, which would clearly hinder their own efforts.  Second, this argument does nothing to explain Bessie’s murder. She was not an enemy to Bigger, and was not really involved in a race conflict. Unlike her, there were black members of the clergy who Bigger viewed as being like the whites, as they held some power. Even in war soldiers have to make ethical decisions, and ultimately Bigger’s actions come down to his own responsibility.  Max argues that “it was an act of creation” (466).  While Bigger may have found some kind of autonomous personhood and freedom in his actions, ultimately his denying the personhood of others, black or white, by killing them would contradict his own freedom.  If Bigger had made deliberate decisions in order to act in ways that would eliminate his oppression, then a better claim could be made that his actions were necessary. 

I found the most compelling argument to be the indictment of religion.  Bigger rejects religion, and Wright seems to be suggesting (in a Foucauldian way) that it is one more instrument used to separate people. Bigger looks at white people like a transcendental force.  “I always think of white folks. . . well, they own everything.  They choke you off the face of the Earth.  They like God” (409).  His rejection of white society and its dominate power system goes along with religion.  He states that he “wanted to be happy in this world, not out of it.  I didn’t want that kind of happiness. The white folks like for us to be religious, then they can do what they want with us” (412). Perhaps the most shocking image in the book is the contrast of the burning KKK cross to the cross that Bigger has worn.  Religion that he had previously been a part of, was not really his religion and, in the end, it couldn’t do anything for him.  He realizes that “whatever he thought or did from now on would have to come from him and him alone, or not at all.”   However, along with this feeling of freedom and self-reliance, there is a side effect of despair.  He states that “never again did he want to feel anything like hope” (394). 

In the end Bigger does seem to have some idea that connections to others are what matter, but he doesn’t seem overly affected by this realization, nothing that would suggest remorse or awareness of the value of others.  Max (and presumably Wright) makes the case that the problem isn’t racial division, it’s economic.  Wealth, and its power, create classes and divide people and because of this system individuals will sometimes rebel as products of this society.  However, he does not make a claim of how individuals should act and feel towards others.  By omitting this, Wright seems to be claiming that the world is fully deterministic, and he doesn’t reveal an easy solution, other than reducing the cycle that dehumanizes and produces these crimes.  If Bigger was created by society, and unable to act in a conscious manner, then there is no hope for him to feel.

St Augustine in Hell

From this week's stupid and annoying files:  John Piper has claimed that watching Game of Thrones is like re-crucifying Christ.  Not because it depicts the most horrific methods of violence and an incredible disregard for the integrity of human subjectivity.  No, just because it contains nudity.  After taking a lot of pain killers for my spinning head, I finally think I understand this.  Not that understanding makes the statement any less stupid.  If we take the fundamental theme of Game of Thrones to be power, in a Foucauldian sense of meta-narrative (along with Nietzsche and Adler), then it involves all of life in this world.  Piper would seem to take a Paulian and Gnostic view of Christianity which rejects everything in the material world as evil.  Only the spititaul can be good.  Anything that feels positive would be an attraction to this world, which would seem to be why we can discount violence as a bad thing.  Assuming Piper isn't a psychopath, he apparently isn't attracted to abhorrent violence.  But, he may actually have an attraction to sexuality, and any glimpse of something to which he has a natural affinity (such as the expected female nudity in Thrones) would be a quick trip into the downward spiral that is real life.  Even St Augustine dealt with the natural attractiveness of prurient interests, and took a far less extremist view.  If catching a glimpse of nudity is so severe that is an act of re-crucifying, then I think it's safe to say we shouldn't be dealing with Game of Thrones.  We should be more concerned with rejecting all of popular culture to the point of resisting going out on the street (and certainly not the beach).  If Piper wants to promote a ascetic way of life that's fine (although I would think rejecting a God-given life in God-created reality to live in a self-deluding fantasy in hopes of finally going to another world would be possibly the worst sin imaginable).  But if he is really serious about that, then he should go live in a hole in the desert, or  at least in a monastery and not participate in the cultural world at all.  Directing his remarks to cultural artifacts that are themselves created out of the real history of thousands of years of human atrocities and human desires completely misses the point.  The real problem is Piper himself, who has a motivation to live (as he rightfully should) but rejects it because of extremist ideology. This resembles the movements to outlaw everything fun -sex, alcohol, dancing, etc- because "I want to do it but I can't, so no one else should be able to do it either."  Piper and his ilk should either enter the real world and attempt to make it better - to promote the good, or he should find that hole in the desert and ignore culture altogether while wasting his time waiting to be saved from reality.  Whatever he is doing now isn't helping - either the world at large or the cause of the religion he invokes.  It's just annoying.

Parallel Worlds

I. Stephen Hawking has once again claimed philosophy is dead. On the outset he is still completely wrong. No matter what final determination science can make about the nature of reality, it still can't give us a complete metaphysical picture. It is self limiting. More importantly, it can't tell us what to do. There will always be the need for philosophy as an assessment of the world we live in.

Having said that, philosophy is killing itself from the inside. After one hundred years of positivist influence, the contemporary state of philosophy as analytic is dead, in a sense of a wider historic view rather than a narrow technical method. Analytic philosophy is good at asking questions, but as it has thrown itself at the mathematical and scientific side of knowledge, it doesn't seem to do as well at answering them. In this respect, Continental philosophy fares better, as do other humanities. For instance, these days a lot of interesting works of philosophy can be found by writers like Terry Eagleton, an English professor. The other humanities, such as English, are undergoing the same difficulties, a century of "scienceitization" and intrusion by social science. Richard Rorty has written about this reorientation in both philosophy and English. In "The Inspirational Value of Great Works of Literature", he writes about philosophical dryness, and dissertation work being done on areas like " the proper analysis of subjunctive conditional sentences," and not in the engaging areas of philosophical wisdom.  The problem with a "little" philosophy, is that it is not enough.

II. Last Book Read - Parallel Worlds- Michio Kaku

As for science and philosophy, Michio Kaku's work Parallel Worlds does offer some insight.  This book serves as a great introduction to his work, as it summarizes much of the string theory information found in Beyond Einstein and Hyperspace as well as the future technology found in Physics of the Impossible.  He also presents interesting ideas about the transition of civilization from a Type 0 to Type I and beyond, such as the establishment of the internet as a Type I communication system and the evolution from nations to trading blocks, revealing the significance of our current time in history and the future paradigm shifts. Kaku discusses surviving the death of the solar system and, more importantly, the eventual death of the universe by using technology to escape to other locales in the multiverse. After theorizing about the "theory of everything" needed to reach this technological level, he concludes that even if we can reduce all the known physics down to a one inch equation, we still have to ask "why that equation?"  "Where did this equation come from?"  At this point, it seems that cosmology and physics can't help us.  There is still the problem of meaning.  Kaku shows that in the infinite multiverse , anything that can happen does and every choice is made both ways.  There is no uniqueness to any situation, no weight or consequence of choice, no "moral sense."  Kaku's resolution to this "quantum existential crisis" is that meaning must be created by each individual.  In this way, Kaku acknowledges that philosophy must pick up where science stops.

Scenes from a Memory

I though I'd take a minute to address the visual arts. I really like what is being done these days with the help of technology.



Checkout Digital Blasphemy. I've been a fan of his work for years, I'm always amazed by the immersive worlds that are created in these pictures. I'm not a fan of straight naturalist art - what's interesting here is the presence or non-presence of humanity. Often there are lone figures facing a giant city or massive landscape. And, when there in no one, their absence is glaring, leaving the viewer in perfect isolation. The tranquility is contrasted to the excitement of discovering "what's out there?" In Endless Blue the distant boat and campfire reveal that the viewer is not alone in this vast beach. Other favorites are Overseer and Gotham Garden.


Also, take a look at Night Visions (Boing Boing link). What Troy Paiva does with photography is awe inspiring. His technique is light painting, which I think is genius, because I believe color is incredibly important in visual arts. Once again, we experience the lack of presence. These places have no people, there are vast and empty, yet they are completely defined by humanity. They are artifacts and these "places" owe their very existence to world of people. See more at Lost America