Holidays in Eden

 

With the latest Marillion deluxe release, it is back to where it started - for me. June 24th 1991, Holidays in Eden is released. One month after my initial [brief] encounter with Marillion.  The band’s second effort with frontman Steve Hogarth very much repeated the pattern of the original incarnation of the band.  This was their difficult sophomore attempt, their next Fugazi.  Whereas their first release as a new group easily found music inspired from without (in this case the music written with Fish), this one required a what now? period of motivation.  Additionally, the record company (as always) was pressuring them to release material that was commercially viable and recreate their brief highpoint of chart recognition.  The result, emerging from a much larger contribution from H, including tracks from his previous alternative career, was indeed their most commercial attempt. This legacy has haunted the album, considered by many to be too pop, and an album of commercial singles.  However, as my entry point into new-release Marillion, this record has always presented core, classic Marillion - built around the ethereal and intense guitar work that Rothery had been exemplifying for at least three albums. Cover My Eyes (adapted from How We Live’s Simon’s Car), Dry Land (a How We Live cover), and No One Can are the radio-friendly cuts. Call them whatever you want, but the first two are about as close to perfect pop/whatever songs (and then squared) as you can get, and I would dare call the original Dry Land a New Wave album.  For the third, every time I start to get that feeling that it’s an overly-sweet, sappy love song, I am overcome by the transcendental quality of the guitar line, and it might be the most innocent, positive song the band has done, without something dark lying right beneath the surface.  While many consider this a complete diversion in style, and for those following through the 80s, and from earlier prog entries, this may make sense.  For myself, being an entry point, this album makes perfect sense as a quintessential sound, and as I was already encountering what I knew would be decisive change from the Fish material, it didn't seem that much more of a reach than Season's End, and by the end of the summer 1991 all six albums seemed like a contiguous whole. Emerging as music of the time, as Marillion moved away from their pre-1980s influences, resulted in something more like U2 (incorporated into a higher level) than the aging idols of progressive rock.  Although, as the accompanying documentary reveals, there still remained a lot of classic influences which were directly re-articulated in these songs, namely Yes and The Who, which once brought up, makes perfect sense. 

Holidays in Eden, the next in line with a commercial structure, is in my opinion, despite the far-from-unanimous appreciation from the community, the most Marillion title and theme they have created. Let me take a moment to digress. Everything they have written somehow returns back to the idea of the self (and the ultimate self-facing you must do) in opposition to the world.  Stepping out of the social construct of the symbolic world, one encounters the Real.  A complete change of context results in an internal change as the self is constructed out of the meaning around it, it is, we are, being-in-the-world.  Thus, in a Heideggerian sense, a change of context results in a new self.  Furthermore, a collapse in worlds changes the center of our existential being and our relation to authenticity.  Experiencing such a world as Eden, in opposition to our own highly problematic society (as Marillion often engages), and then exiting that world would result in such a collapse, and require us to disclose new meanings in the process of finding authenticity. This theme is mirrored in the opposite way in the This Town- 100 Nights trilogy, where the surrounding environment, the city, forces the self “to become” what it is, rather than being directed internally. The result is a decent of the self into a morally unclear position and the initial relations of the song meet a seemingly disastrous end.  There is always a consistent theme in H's work regarding the loss of innocence and the dangers just below the surface in any ostensibly benign situation - the unavoidable, ever-present, forces of change, the inevitable crack emerging in what one thought would remain unchanged, and the Real surrounding the Symbolic stability of one's immediate life -the need to wear your gun to Neverland,

As a product on the dividing line of a much larger world and time at the end of the 80s, this record was a little ahead of its time, foreshadowing the 1990s.  Season’s End had shown us many of the larger external predicaments of the final chapter of the Cold War.  Here we are presented with a more optimistic, open future.  Gone are so many of the past problems, leaving the self as the challenge to be taken on.  The most important view was now inward, as a reflective exploration.  Of course, even more forward looking, this would be short lived, and the dark storms of larger forces would again return on Brave, with a following return to the self on Afraid of Sunlight.  As Pete claims in the documentary, this was the first attempt at their Sunlight. And, again, that now makes sense.


Splintering Heart is the mini-epic of the record, a slow-build-up rock song. In addition to the straight-forward rock and pop songs, the This Town-The Rake’s Progress-100 Nights trilogy is the full epic of the album, and has always been classic Marillion.  Waiting to Happen is the acoustic-type ballad of the record, and while the band considers it a “classic” presence, The Party has always been the odd-one-out track to me. The updated release attempts to correct the sound away from the late 80s / early 90s zeitgeist in order to allow some of those dismissive fans to re-hear the record out of that context, as well as satisfy the band’s persistent desire to finally finish a not-quite-complete product, as in the case of Fugazi. The impression I get on the initial listening is that it really does emphasize the overall album, and brings out each part in a very positive way.

The package includes a live show from Hammersmith on the 1991 tour.  Alongside the usual HD and 5.1 mixes, like the Script and Fugazi releases, the blu-ray also includes a live concert video from the tour, a surprisingly well done upgrade for a shot-on-video release from thirty years ago.  It is worth it for video documentation of Freaks alone.  As an excellent representation of the band in their prime, this upgrade from my incomplete record-show purchase of a VHS bootleg might become my favorite video release of theirs. Unfortunately the live discs are not duplicated on the blu-ray which does includes all of the B-Side material from the 1998 remaster, which provides an interesting alternative album: including the original versions of Splintering Heart and This Town, the original Epic (Fairground) which became 100 Nights and included material from the post-Clutching at Straws session, as well as the other How We Live track You Don’t Need Anyone, considered as an alternative to Dry Land (and whose existence was denied for seven years). If you ask me, all of this material, and maybe a recording of yet another How We Live track, Games in Germany, could be remixed, finished and made into a fine album on its own. On the more acoustic side, the creepy-yet-intriguing track A Collection and the cover of Sympathy are here as well. Not included is the acoustic session released over the Dry Land singles, which included the Who’s Substitute.  In my own playlists, I’ve found that adding the other included B-sides of How Can It Hurt (amazingly played at the 2022 weekend) and I Will Walk on Water, adds more Holidays in Eden -like songs and fills out an amazing rock album. Additionally, You Don’t Need Anyone fits in exceedingly well with the trio of concise singles (unsurprisingly of similar origin) - of course this is the direction that so many people were apprehensive of embracing.  But, this collection of songs doesn’t get weighed down in overly long attempts (*ahem, last four releases, ahem*).  This is the side of the band that get straight into the rock (I’ll leave the magnitude up to you) and directly and without hesitation dives into the point of the song.  These are the songs, when included in contemporary setlists, that break up the long journeys found in newer material, and continue to provide a momentum that always deserves to be included in anything involving Rothery.

Murder Machines

Be hard on yourself
You've been spoilt for years
Be hard on yourself
You'll be glad you did 

                - Marillion - Be Hard on Yourself

 

While I’ve been attempting to comprehend the pandemic era's place within contemporary history, as well as preparing to absorb Marillion’s proclamation that we only have an hour until it’s dark, the Real has once again further intensified as another intrusion as the 2020s progress. Of course, this is from the perspective of a very complacent time period in history. With the exception of 9/11 and the following economic turbulence, the era since at least 1984 has been considerably uneventful, particularly 1991- 2001. We got too used to it. As one meme recently expressed, we don’t want all of the twentieth century coming back in the 2020s. But, now we have it, the largest wart in 70 years, in geo-political terms. As I noted before, following the devolution of 2016, some will suffer. We weren’t prepared for it to be in such an advanced nation, entering into the first world, and inextricably linked to the second. One day life was perfectly normal, and the next morning it was definitely not. I have also noted George Friedman’s prediction that we would go to war with Russia in the 2020s. [1] This seemed to be far too much of a stretch. But, here we are.

For those that mindlessly place the blame on the current administration, I defer to Marie Yovanovitch, Fiona Hill, and John Bolton. [2] Not only because it has been their job to understand this context, but they were actively involved in the implementation of policies of the previous administration. An administration that explicitly promoted the idea of the US exiting NATO, which would result in its dissolution allowing for unchecked Russian expansion. Furthermore, plenty of blame can be located in the Libertarian rhetoric of questioning the existence of NATO for the last decade. Without its continued deterrence, this situation would have developed much sooner, and at the cost of the sovereignty of many countries. The purposes of the Western alliance has now been revealed and proven, and any further attempts at its deterioration can be seen for the political propaganda it is. [3]

It could be argued, and is now becoming quite apparent, that we wasted thirty years ignoring improvements to Russia-Western relations. I contended in the 90s that there should be improved agreements between Russia and the US to diminish the risks of confrontation. However, after 1999, maybe even 1998, I’m not sure this would have really been possible. There was only a small window. And the subsequent republican administrations dismantled arms agreements rather than enhancing them.

That said, the idea that the West is to blame is nonsense. There was no agreement to not expand NATO, and although it is undesirable for Russia, particularly leadership that wants to reform the Soviet Union, that is the playing field that we have legitimately inherited. The idea that the US and the USSR disengaged from the Cold War on equal terms is pure fantasy. Wars have consequences. The reality is that the USSR lost. Their untenable political-ecomonic system failed and they were the ones that were forced to change (and replace that system with another corrupt, untenable system). The result was a victory for the US, providing the advantage. Disregarding the desires of American influence, the issue of NATO membership is openly free to the existing nations (unlike the Warsaw pact). It is those countries that are freely expressing interest in membership. And now, under direct threat of nuclear attack, we can see the pressing need for these countries to participate, as well as the continued mission of NATO.

Further nonsense is the ubiquitous comparison to the American invasion of Iraq. While the invasion was a massive strategic blunder, undermining not only the whole of US history, but that of the Western Liberalism as well.

However: this event emerged from a specific context. First, the US was actually attacked, prompting a response. Although it was the wrong country to prosecute such a response, Iraq was not altogether removed from the situation. The region was already involved in a complex multitude of conflicts which were intertwined with Islamic terrorism. Iraq was ruled by a dangerous dictator, had invaded other countries, was committing its own war crimes, and had been in violation of international law. Repeated violations, and concerns of its weapons program were a concern for the international community. The US response not only had support of its close allies, but NATO and UN support as well. Even Russia hesitantly agreed that the weapons inspections were not working. There was not a great international resistance. Saddam did not have the support of the people, and had intervention been done in a less destructive way, could have been better supported by the populace. While there were war crimes committed as part of the campaign, the operation itself was not a war crime. US policy did not target civilians, flatten civilian infrastructure, or siege cities. Grave mistakes certainly happened, and should have been fully prosecuted, but were not an intentional element of strategy.

I think the most damning condemnation of it is to judge it by the standards of the legacy of the Untied States, which supposedly attempts to uphold rigorous enlightened standards and democratic principles. In the overall field of history, it is less suspect to scrutiny, and this is why it was such a disappointment and should have been avoided

As nuclear powers, now toe-to-toe on the red line, it seems time is the dimension that will determine the fight. Before Russia can gain an advantage, and block international aid, US intervention must be able to prolong the resistance to ultimately weaken the Russian force. All we can do is:

1. Provide as many weapons as fast as possible.
2. Find ways to provide humanitarian assistance and prevent war crimes.
3.Wait out a Russian defeat (of itself).
4. Re-think military alliances, both in terms of internal NATO requirements, and NATO’s relationship with intermediate countries.
5.Affect regime change in Russia
6.Assertively pursue new arms limitation agreements, to reduce the dangers of escalation in future stand-offs. 

Perhaps the most startling revelation of this confrontation, is the test of the Russian military.  We know know that the most feared military for 70 years is impotent in combat against a peer nation, let-alone one that outspends, and out-trains it, by many, many factors.  Given US combat experience, there is no match.  But, more worrisome, is the fact that Russia now knows we know.  This means they have no conventional threat. And, they have no economic threat.  We have already beaten them is these two arenas That leaves only the strategic threat of WMDs. We are now in uncharted territory.

[1] who also noted that there would be a significant labor shortage and the US would have to import workers. I think its time for a re-read.

[2] Bolton, the most right-wing war-hawk in the Trump administration not only reveals that Biden is not "weak," but, predictably, claims that Trump couldn’t even find Ukraine on the map - which is quite telling.

[3] At this point, I’m firmly convinced that the Libertarian “party” is only a propaganda arm of Russian authoritarianism. Look at how fast they started posting memes of Russia as a utopia once, it;s cut off from the West. Ethnically singular, legally protected from the “fake news” of non-State media, excepted from the social programs of public health (vaccines), etc. Clearly it is the Russian Oligarchs that are the idolized position of the Libertarians, free to exploit all others for their own gain, as they clearly only support libertarian freedom for “me,” separate from the authoritarianism needed for all needed for all the dirty masses who must kept in ideological line. Never again can they be trusted.

 

Note: The above graphic is not meant to suggest that B-52s, or the USAF, are a murder machine (currently), although, of course, they potentially can be.  We have now reverted to a pre-post-Cold War stance, in which the defenses and deterrents that combat those current murder machines have the potential, through escalation, to cross the line into strategic mass destruction. Waking up to see potentially nuclear-armed B-52s headed towards the border of a nuclear aggressive country, certainly, marked the point of departure between these eras of relative global stability and possible catastrophic confrontation.

Jeremiah Blues 2020+

 How can one make sense of the experience of 2020?  Perhaps the best way is the realization of the no-sense that underlies history.  There is clearly a sense that 2020 will be a crossroad point in history, with change of direction that will lead the path into the future. A convergence of replays of 1918, 1929 and 1968 (and the 1860s) have dislodged our sense of stability and security.

    The initial "historic" event of the year, COVID-19, was beyond what most had experienced in several generations - the inability to "solve" the emerging problem, the uncertainty  (with its certain destructive impact), and the inescapable ubiquity of a true pandemic have undermined our modern society.  The necessity of realizing the breakdown of normality has  caused a psychological trauma within our collective unconscious, the first felt by most outside of "unthinkable" modern spaces like Sarajevo or Syria).  This force has infiltrated and subverted the impregnable defenses of the unshakable first-world. The only way to comprehend the unnegotiability of this event, is to realize it as an intrusion of the Lacanian Real into the "Stable" construct of Symbolic Reality.  Our language, laws, ideology, principles, and even our science, cannot contain it or shield us.
     

As Tony Myers has described the Real, it is:
    "anything that is interpreted differently discloses the presence of the Real. AIDS is a good example of this. Some people interpret it as a punishment for homosexuals, a divine retribution for carrying on a  non-Christian way of life. Others see it as part of a plot by the CIA to stem population growth in Africa, while other people consider it the result of humankind's interference in Nature. All these explanations circle around the same brute fact of the disease which carries on regardless of the reasons attributed to it. In other words, AIDS is an irruption of the Real. It is meaningless in itself and all these interpretations of it are attempts to Symbolize it, attempts, we might say, to divine a message in the Real where none exists. For the Real is meaningless and senseless-it just persists, and meaning can only be found within the reality of the Symbolic Order."

This example of another coronavirus illustrates the trauma of Covid as as an intrusion of the Real.  It's a Chinese plot to destroy Trump.  It's an American plot to destroy China.  It's a global plot to inject microchips into the population. All ways to interpret this brute intrusion.  This event itself would be historic enough in its direct impact on the totality of individuals that constitute global activity.  However, beyond that we must ask: How does history happen?  Do events, (and their resulting cultures, policies, and world-views) occur as we pre-plan and enact them through reasonable and practical considerations? Or do they involve a certain amount of randomness, occurring beyond the precise world that we can carefully control?  Like our own best-laid lives, history "is what happens while we make other plans."

Against the background of a Covid world, the tension was going to inevitable break into violence, and the Real infiltrates not only nature, but society. For those "law and order" advocates that condemned the protests-turned-riots by the criminal undesirables, let us not forget Philadelphia 1985 when police bombed (literally) and burned down a neighborhood, killing 11 people, including five children.   It is interesting to note Jean Baudrillard's work America, in which he discusses the concept of asepsis:

"In Philadelphia, a radical sect named ‘MOVE’, with a bizarre set of rules, including one forbidding      both the practice of autopsy and the removal of rubbish, is cleared out by the police, who kill eleven    people by fire and burn down thirty adjacent houses, including those (the irony of it!) of all the neighbours who had called for the sect to be removed. This, too, is a clean-up operation. They are getting rid of rubbish and patina, getting back to an original state of cleanliness, restoring. ‘Keep America Clean.’"

Of course, now that the radical right has shown definitely that it isn't really about the law, its about control (Fascism), and power defines what the law means.  There is nothing above it (or more fundamental). It was the transition into a new year and new political landscape that finally synthesized social violence and politics. A breakdown of both political and daily social function has shown the intrusion of the Real into the Symbolic systems that found our everyday functioning. Of course, the right-wing propaganda compares the 2020 election to the 2016 one, and the capitol siege to the 2020 riots. 

As for the election, in 2016 the Democrats were accused of refusing to accept legitimate results when they wore pink hats and had peaceful marches.  Far removed from organized (conspiracy) attempts to overthrow the legitimate 2020 results.  No one on the left claimed the Trump did not officially occupy the office of president, only that he was sworn in on a technicality - a deficiency built into the fabric of our system,- and the outcome, however legitimate, was a result of  voter influence by foreign propaganda and political maneuvering (Comey).  The impeachment did NOT exonerate him from these accusations.  He very much did NOT have a mandate.  A professional, honorable person in that position would have been very prudent and should have appealed to the opposite side - the majority- for cooperation.  As for being President by upholding the office through professional action, the four years revealed a failure in this respect, culminating in the capitol siege.

In terms of the violence, the comparisons would be laughable in less serious circumstances. Once again, the left is accused of condoning the riots.  Of course no one in any rational manner, or in any political capacity endorsed, condoned, encourage, incited or promoted such activity.   As criminal activity, it was never labelled as anything but criminal.  Two major differences stand out:

1. It was extra-political, or at the least extra-legal.  While making a political statement and attempting political goals, these events aimed at something outside of the parameters of the functioning governmental process. While groups like BLM are closer in thought to the Democratic party,the are not synonymous, nor was it was a Democratic sanctioned issue.  No one did in the name of Democrats and no one sported shirts or flags and acted in the name of an individual.  Furthermore, the protestors have a legitimate cause. The problem is that the justice required for the solution is not to be found with the justice system nor the political process.  Without recourse to an established system, only no-legal means might remain, hence an extra-political situation.  As such, the manifestation of frustration and anger may be illegal, but whether it is unethical remains in question. Certain from inside the system it appears so.  But, as already revealed the system is incomplete and any progress to an equitable system may necessitate criminal behavior.  When criminal behavior is enacted for a purpose, it is up to the individual to commit to responsibility for it.  They must consider the repercussions and be prepared to face them.  If they find that justice will be further advanced, then the ethical decision is for them to make. For example, freeing a slave pre-Civil War was clearly criminal. Nevertheless it was the correct action.  While the circumstances are not currently as clear-cut as that, it may be proven in the future that discrimination in civil rights requires revolution outside of the system. Reflecting on the serious of rioting, let's not forget that some rioting is quickly overlooked (and it's a bit of an American tradition).  Burning garbage cans, overturned cars, and broken windows are not unheard of results of sporting events, and have no inherent value at all.  But, these crimes are dismissed as nothing (but crimes). So, to claim that the 2020 riots were downplayed in respect to 2021 is disingenuous at best.

 However, what just happened was not equivocal, it is distinct level  , and direct comparisons area category mistake.

 2. The siege was Anti-American. A far larger difference between the two events involves the political overlap.The siege was not just criminal, it was a higher level of violation: treason.  In attempting to overturn the election and destroy the legal process, it attempted to negate the very laws of the land.  In this itself, this event has no relation to the riots. But, far worse, is that this insurgency is led by the Comander-in-Chief himself.  Not since Emperor Palpatine have I heard of a leader controlling two forces pitted against each other.  With some Senator and Representative already complicit in treason with the President, the insurgency is both internal and external to the established government and unequivocal to criminal riots. 

Before the Capitol siege, the State Capitol takeovers by Militias in the summer were already well beyond protests. If you attend a protest armed- that is terrorism, plain and simple.  Even worse if do it on government property.  As a way of influence politics through fear and intimidation, brandishing weapons is terrorism.

What we are dealing with is not just differences of policy, and beyond differences with ideology.  It is meta-ideology.[1] A deeper ideology which has co-opted, corrupted, and radicalized the conservative ideology.  The growing cult (influenced by QAnon) has expanded to redefine the Deep State as to include The media, academia, the FBI-CIA-intelligence agencies, the Supreme Court, Mitch McConnell, Fox News, Big Tech, Walmart, the cabinet, and VP Mike Pence. Every thing and everyone the defends the Constitution becomes a target, an enemy of the state.  America as a state is now the enemy of the "patriots." The coup of the Republican party is evident in the RINO accusations, when solid conservatives are condemned as not real Republicans.  The is absurd and obviously backwards.  That split is apparent only because the party was commandeered by a far more conservative and radical ideology.  A more authentic party, clear in its ambitions and presentation would be honest in its alternative to the Republicans, something like "The America First Party", "or the American Fascist Party." As a far-right party, the choice would be clear for voters.  Instead, we have political action on false pretenses, a cult unlike any previous party - stores of propaganda merchandise, shirts and flags with an Messianic icon. It is a Twenty-first century update of the The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, patterned on the Book of Revelation.  It is more than a political movement, it the foundations of a religion, a very false and dangerous one. "Draining the swamp" means destroying a democratic society and leaving an omnipresent swamp of corrupt oligarchy. Fighting the Deep State means ignoring, violating and overriding the US Constitution.

Ultimately, the Republican party was the Frankenstein that built the monster of Trump. And, Trump is the Frankenstein that built the monster of his cult. It is all out of their control.  And, the spreading danger it possesses needs to be eradicated before it consumes American democracy. Covid was not the only virus to mass spread in 2020, and we are now living in the Real, hoping for a Symbolic reconstruction to normalize history.

Addendum: I just noticed that the last post I made, High Rise, involves the fracture of the Symbolic social order into the Real. Although written by April, I was reading it at the end of 2019.  I guess 2020 was doomed to be the coming storm.

[1] Not only is it an ideology - a viewpoint considered universally true and foundational (when it is contingent and arbitrary), but one that resides secretly underneath an ideology- creating a double falsity.

High Rise

High Rise by J.G. Ballard (1975)

It has been suggested that J.G. Ballard was beyond psychological help. High Rise is an example of this reaction, a story of conditions that spiral out of control into some colossal external force which creates situations that no rational person would ever consider possible.

In terms of the film: The first thought I had while reading the book, was how interesting this story would be in terms of 21st century consumer technology, with our constant surroundings of multiple screens which present new challenges in interpersonal interaction. Given the emphasis on batteries to power the first generation of portable devices - tape recorders, cameras, etc- in the absence of functional municipal power, and the alluded transformation into cybernetic lifeforms (bio-robots), the current human state of always-wired-wirelessly only enhances Ballards original thought.  Therefore, I was quite disappointed that the film chose to keep the setting in the 1970s. Not only is the entire 1970s aesthetic something we don't ever need to revisit, the 70s view of excess and tuned-out reality, exemplified in orgiastic sex events, detracts from the core story in my view. Conversely  there is an opposition to the free-love counterculture with A Clockwork Orange feel and its 70s appreciation for violent anarchy and rejection of the system.  Additionally, although Ballard's writing contained a strong surrealist vision, this is cinematically presented in a psychedelic approach which makes the film overly strange and hard to follow. I'm not sure what someone who had not read the book would think of the film, although looking at Amazon reviews it seems pretty clear. The film simply doesn't present the story clearly. Unsurprisingly, it simplifies the story, but it also reduces the horrific elements to a tamer, more acceptable representation. As the novel reaches its most intense point, Laing cannot even descend the building because of the stench of a pool filled with rotting corpses, (reduced in the film to a far less graphic scene showing the few causalities being laid to rest in the pool.) In the novel, this scene is extremely unsettling and jarring as its shows a local holocaust which occurred without a rational explanation and, even worse, not at the hands of external tyrannical forces, but only by the participant residents themselves.

What I find significant about High Rise, is its relevance to the current state of the world. As a story of the fragile nature of the social construct which can completely unravel from small disruptions, there is something to learn for now. This social de-evolution, to a state that is completely unthinkable does actually occur. In recent memory it has happened in Syria and Sarajevo, and the modern first-world currently hangs on the edge of sliding down such a steep precipice. The most prominent question that arises asks: why don't the residents simply leave? But history shows again and again people gripping onto their section of the world even as it erupts into total chaos, as they grip tighter in spite of this, possessing what is "their" even as it turns to rubbish. There is a Luciferian notion that it is better to rule in Hell, than serve in Heaven - that outside civilization which is maintained by someone else. After being immersed in dysfunctionality, Wilder finds time away from the building "dreamlike in its unreality" and eventually Laing cannot even force himself to leave. Like a lobster being boiled, each event which worsens conditions is not recognized to be part of an on-going chain with extreme results. Perhaps people are ultimately too optimistic. How can the world be progressing along, and all of a sudden we are living inside a nightmare that no one chose to stop before it started (as happened so many times in the twentieth century).  This is an exploration of that phenomena.

The additional political messages inserted in the film seem to only over-emphasize the theme, which is already overly presented and all too clear in the novel- as the building, with is numerical hierarchy of residents, is an obvious metaphor of class systems. But, this seems overly idealized in the film with Wilder's low class (level) flat displaying a Che Guevara poster and the closing Margaret Thatcher quote. This quote: "There is only one economic system in the world, and that is capitalism." is interesting in itself in that it completely embodies ideology. If it is taken to mean that Capitalism is the only possible system, in an end of history view, than it is total ideology without any objective value or meaning, as it dismisses any alternative possibilities. Conversely, if it is taken to mean that all economics are capitalistic in nature, then it turns the two terms into synonyms and strips away any meaningful distinction of capitalism. I don't find the story a compelling challenge to capitalism, although it makes strong statements about consumerism.  Rather it concerns a more fundamental layer of human nature, the initial ideological conditions before they are systematized into economic structures.  What is most interesting is Royal's response to the complete breakdown of his utopia, as he embraces this breakdown rather than attempting to fix it, a position that Laing also embraces and continues.  So the resulting message becomes maybe everything needs to be destroyed before it can be rebuilt, but the dangers of nihilism are a serious threat without meaningful response that is left unconsidered in the work.

The film is disappointing not because it's bad, in fact it is unique enough to leave a strong impression,  but because it could have been so much better. There were so many things that could have been done different to explain the story, while at the same time not explicitly hitting the viewer over the head.  So many interesting scenes I was waiting for ultimately never occurred, instead being replaced by some 1970s acid induced psychedelic trip or watered down, destroying the effect.  However, in both version, the story leaves a chilling, disconcerting afterimage.

As Ballard's characters "surrender to a logic more powerful than reason," the underlying proximity of the Real becomes apparent.  Safe within the stable realms of our Symbolic world, we can function on a level far evolved from barbaric savagery.  But, really, this stability is an illusion, we are only existing on a fragile coating of a surface suspending us out of the Real.  A simple crack in this layer can easily disintegrate the chain of meaning that sustains society.  Reason can only manifested through Symbolic mechanisms, but the more fundamental conditions of the Real always persist within us.  And as the more fundamental level of existence, it contains its own logic, not as articulate-able propositions, but as forces.  Recent shifts of political thought have shown this fragility, as pressure exerted from the narrow, but vocal, political movements which have caused further forceful  ideological balkanization, pushing us all deeper into factions built on our own adopted Symbolic systems.  The field has been set for final disintegration, with each person ready to take up arms for their own banner.  While the full potentiality of this political disintegration is only now becoming clear, Ballard seemed well aware of the unsustainability of civilized modernity back in 1975, once again showing tremendous foresight.

Welcome to the Desert of the Real

Brian McHale has claimed that there is a" peculiarly postmodern form of temporality: the vision of apocalypse, of the end of history."  While that has been clearly evident, in a seemingly obsessive way, in the novels of Douglas Coupland, as well as the eco-disaster of Davis Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest, it has somewhat appeared overly paranoid.  Of course Slavoj Zizek would argue that paranoia is the naturalized conditioin of post-modernity, and his work Living in the End Times explores some of the current situation.  But, it is becoming more and more clear that apocalyptic concerns are not solely in domain of neurotic writers in the world of postmodernism.  It is an ever present element in the historical world of post-modernity itself.   From the closed White House meetings of Ronald Reagan and Ollie North, to the continued lunatic ramblings of Michele Bachmann, to the violent injections of Al Qaeda et al into the civilized world, the end of modernity (and the Cold War) has seemed unsatisfactory to those who wished that it would have been the end of history as well.  However, the attempt to end history has only projected it father along, throwing us back in.  As Baudrillard notes in The Illusion of the End, we are erasing our progress. I conjecture that this eschatology is not just on the minds of a few extremists, it is part of the fabric of the current historical reality.  The break in the signifying chain that has revealed not only the underlying gaps in mental processes (the Symbolic and linguistic), but has been injected into the physical and practical as well.  The ideology that holds back the Real from invading the civilized Symbolic world is no longer sustainable.  The sooner we realize this danger, of ideology as means to sustain civilization, the sooner we can avoid further calamities like the one in Paris today. The message of Zizek's Welcome to the Desert of the Real continues, and will continue, to return.

For now, we can only reflect on how far we haven't come since 9/11: