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.

Song of the Lark

Thoughts on Song of the Lark by Willa Cather (1915)

     The most prominent theme that stands out to me is the commitment to one’s art, and within that process there is a necessity to form one’s own identity. In this book there is an ever present awareness of the roles one should play in society, and the subtle authority that exists behind it.  The divide between the ethnicities of Moonstone, and Thea’s willingness to overcome it, is one aspect of this social convention.  The role of religion is another.  At some point Thea may have to diverge from the comfortable pre-determined belief system that she has acquired from her family.   An interesting exchange between Mrs Kronborg and Giddy illustrates two ways of thinking when she states that:

     “I believe a man's watched over, and he can't be hurt on the railroad or anywhere else if it's    intended he shouldn't be.”
     Giddy laughed. "Then the trains must be operated by fellows the Lord has it in for, Mrs. Kronborg.     They figure it out that a railroad man's only due to last eleven years; then it's his turn to be smashed."
     "That's a dark Providence, I don't deny," Mrs. Kronborg admitted. "But there's lots of things in life that's hard to understand." (121)

     This suggestion of providence could be applied to Thea and the idea that she is destined for greatness in whatever she does.  But Giddy’s witty response shows a practical understanding of the world.  Life is usually not that simple, or safe.  If one wants to be an artist, as in Thea’s case, then one might have to fight for it against the odds.  The artist, or other kind of committed individual, must be willing to actively create oneself without just passively going where life takes him or her.  If everything is destined to happen, then there is not much use in striving for something that will happen anyway.  However, this is a big gamble to take if one is ambitious about something, in which case it is better to take over control and not blindly trust providence. 
     Up to this point the book has been a chronology of events without much tension to the story.  There are no real problems, setbacks, or mounting struggles that would define Thea’s character.  Even when the money to continue study seems like it will be a problem a solution presents itself and she is able to advance from teacher to teacher.  The end of Part 2 notes a “turning-point”:

This time, when Thea left Moonstone to go back to Chicago, she went alone. As the train pulled out, she looked back at her mother and father and Thor. They were calm and cheerful; they did not know, they did not understand. Something pulled in her -- and broke. She cried all the way to Denver . . . It was all behind her, and she knew that she would never cry like that again. People live through such pain only once; pain comes again, but it finds a tougher surface. Thea remembered how she had gone away the first time, with what confidence in everything, and what pitiful ignorance. (246)

Finally, we get to some character growth and some intensity of experience.  I expect the first half of the book was all about setting up events for a much more dramatic situation in the second half, when Cather can make a significant statement about the artist or individual existing in opposition to the world.
     The second half of The Song of the Lark seems to really emphasize the isolation the artist must go through in order to be committed to his or her art.  There is clearly a separation between Thea and the rest of the world. This extends beyond her family and the residents of Moonstone to include personal social relations and also members of her own profession at the end.  Life in her hotel suite seems to be a quiet, cloistered one.  However, there does seem to be a definite reason for this, not only giving Thea the time and space to perfect her art, but to give her the perspective on life that is very different from others.  She has a significant revelation during her time in the world of the “ancient people.”  She asks herself  “what was any art but an effort to make a sheath, a mould in which to imprison for a moment the shining, elusive element which is life itself, -life hurrying  past us and running away , too strong to stop, too sweet to lose?” (286).  This awareness is the kind of thought that most people don’t have and compels Thea to move on her with art, unable to return to a simple life.
     This notion of a “shining, elusive element” that is at the core of life’s vitality suggests Cather shared an aesthetic vision with Frederich Nietzsche. There are a number of Nietzschean elements that come through in the book. Cather’s mention of a “Nietzsche Club” in passing in the section “Stupid Faces” suggests her awareness of his work regarding the artist. Nietzsche viewed ancient art as containing a Dionysian element of chaos that acknowledged the inner vitality of life which eventually became suppressed by the Apollonian element of rationality and order.  Losing connection with the Dionysian means one loses the connection to their most essential being.  One location that Nietzsche was able to see the return of Dionysian expression was in the operatic works of Wagner.  Another aspect is revealed when Dr Archie is reflecting on his past and considering the most important years of his life:

He fell to looking back over his life and asking himself which years of it he would like to live over again, - just as they had been,- and they were not many. His college years he would live again, gladly. After them there was nothing he would care to repeat until he came to Thea Kronborg. (375)

This examination contains a hint of the Nietzscean concept of “eternal recurrence,” the idea that one must be willing to experience everything in their life is order to give an affirmative “yes” to the value of their life. Dr Archie seems to think that knowing Thea created a value that compensated for all those years that he would rather not relive. Finally, Thea eventually states that:

You can’t try to do things right and not despise the people who do them wrong. How can I be indifferent? If that doesn’t matter, then nothing matters. . . What one really strives for in art is not the sort of thing you are likely to find when you drop in for a performance at the opera. What one strives for is far away so beautiful . . . that there is nothing one can say about it. (429)

She continues by discussing the feeling produced by art, something that can’t be wholly contained within language. There seems to be a division here, not only between the artist and others, but between different artists when ranking bad art versus good art. Thea’s response here clearly shows a value system and an attempt to overcome the nihilism that Nietzsche predicted by rejecting a system that supports the idea that “nothing matters.”
     The lack of Thea’s point of view in the second half indicates how much she had faded out of the social world and into a world of her own making. Her life was an attempt to find that elusive element in a way that only the individual can. Others who have not had the same experience of revelation that she had would be unable to fully appreciate it and coexist with her, since it is a world that in many ways exists beyond language.

Tender is the Night

Thoughts on Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald

     Despite the expansive setting and intricate interactions between characters of this novel, there seems to be a notable lack in regards to a depth of feeling within the story itself. The activity in this world is limited to shopping, leisure travel, and throwing elaborate parties, without much concern for money or the fundamentals of life. There does not seem to be a foundation under this problem-free lifestyle from which it can be sustained or given meaning. Fitzgerald may be suggesting that this particular world, however culturally active, is superficial. The characters, particularly Dick, seem to have no commitment to their own life, no focus, and no concrete goal to pursue. They passively move through life, as elements of a social construct, rather than as autonomous agents. This superficiality is indicated by the discussion of acting: “[I]n the theatre, No. In the theatre all the best come­diennes have built up their reputations by burlesquing the correct emotional responses—fear and love and sympathy” (288). The world of actors involves creating a presentation to others and being able to slide in and out of character in order to produce a desired response.
     In contrast to the structured facade of acting, the field of psychiatry plays a significant role. Dick begins a downward spiral as he us is unable to separate his roles of doctor and husband, and he realizes his own behavior is not unlike that of Nicole’s father.  This realization suggests that the causes of illness and the corresponding cures are delicately linked with each other.  Additionally, some of the roles that we assume in life are not compatible with each other. As he dives into his own psychology, Dick is faced with the danger and disorder that is present in the human mind. The conflict between the external calculated behavior and the internal unknown motivations is suggested when Dick goes to meet Rosemary at the studio:

He knew that what he was now doing marked a turning point in his life—it was out of line with everything that had preceded it—even out of line with what effect he might hope to produce upon Rosemary. Rosemary saw him always as a model of correctness—his presence walking around this block was an intrusion. But Dick’s necessity of behaving as he did was a projection of some submerged reality: he was compelled to walk there, or stand there. . . (91)

     The struggle between ordered structure and chaotic forces can be seen on a larger scale with the references to World War I. The opulent period of the 1920, an apparent celebration of the end of war, would seem to have given a false optimism to this generation. While discussing the World War I battlefield, Dick claims that “No Europeans will ever do that again in this generation” (57).  This is an unfortunate position for the character to take given the events that would happen ten years later, and by the time the novel was published Fitzgerald must have had an idea that this prosperous and peaceful period was coming to an end, given the condition of Germany and Hitler’s influence on European politics.
     Tender is the Night was apparently poorly received during the Great Depression, when the “difficulties” found in the lives of the rich were not taken as particularly pressing. The same reaction could probably be said of the world of The Great Recession. However, Fitzgerald already seemed aware that this lifestyle of the elite trying to participate in the Zeitgeist was unsustainable, and that the authentic life of the individual who is irreversibly connected to others was a more valuable alternative.  In this sense it would seem to be the antithesis to Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls, in which the lead character actively chooses a direction and a goal for himself despite the negative consequences involved. This kind of authenticity is not felt in the world of the Divers.

Purchased Experiences: Identity and Consumer Culture in Generation X

    Douglas Coupland’s 1991 novel Generation X presents a view of life in the contemporary world which can be further understood by Marxist criticism, as it aesthetically embodies the theoretical views of such criticism.[1]  The novel revolves around three characters, Andy, Dag, and Claire, all near the age of thirty.  They have left their career-oriented lifestyles, and moved to the Mojave Desert to live in Palm Springs.  Here they work “Mcjobs” and entertain each other by telling stories.  Being hyper-conscious of the world of the late twentieth century, Generation X criticizes the prevailing class structure of consumer society.  This has led to accusations of the novel being pretentious and unrealistic. Why are the members of this generation more dissatisfied with life than previous generations were?  Does the world presented by Coupland correspond to external reality, or is it one writer’s personal dissatisfaction and disillusionment with the world?

     Marxist criticism seems useful in analyzing this work, perhaps even more now than when it was published in 1991 and Marxism was still a powerful political force that overshadowed its critical effectiveness.  Marxist criticism provides insight into the world of the late twentieth century, where economic class and status have become the most important factors in social life. The Marxist idea that economic class is fundamental to everything that happens in culture reveals more about the characters in the novel than is immediately apparent  While Paul Fussell has laid out the division between classes and the similarities of the members of each class, the ideas found in the postmodern theory of Frederic Jameson are highly illuminating for understanding this novel.  In Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, published at roughly the same date as Generation X, Jameson details the change in culture after World War II, manifesting in the emergence of a consumer society, claiming that the postmodern split happened in the 1960’s, at roughly the point that “generation x” came into being. As the importance of participation in the consumer world has increased beyond this split, authenticity of the individual has been replaced with an artificial and superficial public stream of economic interaction - participation in the latest trends as a source of meaning. What you buy defines who you are, so the individual works just to buy stuff; work becomes the field in which to experience life while the resulting economic exchanges define the individual.

    The well developed theories of Marxist criticism suggest that the postmodern world depicted in Generation X is an accurate one, and the novel presents us with illustrations of how we should approach living in such a confusing and challenging time period.  Coupland remarks that “There is no weather in Palm Springs - just like TV.  There is also no middle class, and in that sense the place is medieval . . . Nonetheless, the three of us chose to live here, for the town is undoubtedly a quiet sanctuary from the bulk of middle-class life” (10).  Escape is an important concept in the novel as each of the main characters recalls their exit from traditional society.  Furthermore, they compare their lifestyle to other characters who have decided to stay in the mainstream society. In “An Anatomy of Classes” Paul Fussell analyzed contemporary society by dividing it into nine classes, revealing the negative aspects of each class by presenting the conformity inherent to each one. He then proposed a “Category X” of people who attempt to escape from the rigid class structure.  This category of Fussell's analysis has been mentioned by Coupland as a possible influence on his generational concept.  The idea of a “medieval” lack of the middle class can be understood as the middle-class being a very modern development, and Jameson argues that there was a pre-communist state that existed before capitalism widened the split between classes.  The novel's comparison of Palm Springs to TV shows a postmodernist awareness of real places feeling fake and fake illusions presenting themselves as real.

     While attempting to escape from the construct of the consumer society that has been created, the characters in this book find themselves in a fragmented existence, alienated from the world and each other, and internally from their own cohesive past.. They exist in isolation, trying to relate to each other.  The characters view their lives as discreet, separate experiences which seem story-like.  As they attempt to get through life and relate to each other, they tell stories, which take on a significance of their own, revealing much about the characters and the world they see themselves in.  The historical events of their lives are reduced, while the fictional stories of their imaginations are elevated, thus blurring the division between reality and non-reality.  The idea of postmodern fragmentation is readily apparent here, both the fragmentation of individuals into different groups within society, and as time fragmenting into a series of "perpetual presents,” as understood by Jameson.

    Coupland's Generation X asks "Why work? Simply to buy more stuff?  That's just not enough" (23).  This line alone communicates much of what Marxist thought would condemn about our consumer society. We go to work to make money to buy things, and then the cycle repeats itself.  The death of the subject presented by Jameson is also an important idea here.  The characters feel that if they exist in that consumer world, they lose some level of consciousness and become an automatic part of that system.  They feel restricted by their jobs, career choices and life choices. In order to become creative and have the ability to develop their own individual being, as well as experience a sense of aesthetic possibility, they must drop out of the structured world of class.  They leave behind the career track and live moment to moment.

    Andy, in one of his untold stories, imagines a future city where "its boulevards were patternless, helter skelter, and cuckoo.  Everywhere there were booby traps of moustetraps, Triffids, and black holes . . and directions were impossible" (51).  The dangers and confusions of contemporary existence found in this work correspond to the postmodern world envisioned by Jameson as “a mutation in built space itself,” a hyperspace, like the confusing maze of the Bonaventure Hotel which has become a physical manifestation of the fragmented, rhizomic structure of late capitalism. Andy warns of a future with no clear paths, exits, or methods of clear navigation.

     As Andy reflects on his home-life, he states that "I get this feeling--.  It is a feeling that our emotions, while wonderful, are transpiring in a vacuum, and I think it all boils down to the fact that we're middle class.  You see, when you're middle class, you have to live with the fact that history will ignore you.  You have to live with the fact that history can never champion your causes and that history will never feel sorry for you, It is the price that is paid for day-to-day comfort and silence.  And because of this price, all happiness is sterile; all sadnesses go unpitied." (147)  Here we see the idea of the middle class forming a bland, uncreative existence, like what had been presented by Fussell.  It may be comfortable, but it is not adventurous.  While recalling his youth during the Vietnam War, Andy notes ". . . they were ugly times.  But they were also the only times I'll ever get - genuine capital H history times, before history was turned into a press release, a marketing strategy, and a cynical campaign tool.  And, hey, it's not as if I got to see much real history, either - I arrived to see a concert in history's arena just as the final set was finishing.  But I saw enough, and today, in the bizarre absence of all time cues, I need a connection to a past of some importance, however wan the connection." (151). In the post-modern world where time becomes a fleeting series of discreet points the connection to a linear progression of history and self is lost, identity becomes unanchored from events resulting in an artificial presence, an existential alienation from the larger world. After the radical break in history, Jameson argues that "there is a disappearance of the sense of history, the way in which our entire contemporary social system has little by little begun to lose its capacity to retain its own past, has begun to live in  perpetual present and in perpetual change that obliterates traditions of the kind which all earlier social information have had in one way or another to preserve" (214).  This description could apply to Coupland's novels as well as the world at large.  Throughout the book Coupland's characters speak in phrases like “my hair doesn't look 1940's enough," as well as making extensive references to “dead TV shows,” Elvis, and Marilyn Monroe.  Through these references we can see Jameson's understanding of nostalgia, the idea that “we seem condemned to seek the historical past through our own pop images and stereotypes about the past, which itself remains forever out of reach.”  (Jameson, 208) If there is no way to map the future, no clear sense of direction, then sensible meaning can only come from the past. Furthermore, we can also see other aspects of postmodernism at work, such as the implosion between disciplines, where history becomes entangled with advertising, politics with entertainment, etc.

     Other theories, such a a psychological approach, could focus on the few disillusioned characters, and claim that this book is really just about three misfits who have a strong sense of nonconformity.  What is really important is their understanding and reaction to the world, and these understandings may not accurately represent the world at large.  In this sense the world would be a production of their attitudes, rather than the characters being the production of the social construct.  But, this interpretation becomes much too solipsistic, leaving every individual with an isolated reality.  Rather, the Marxist critique presents each individual relating to the same world, and is therefore more useful, as it deals with what is “out there,” rather than inside one’s own mind.  The base that society functions on determines the psychological consistency of its individuals.  Generation X can be seen as a story that explains the experience of existing culture, the one which has produced the characters,  as well as the readers.  This culture is indeed the one of consumerism and late capitalism described in detail by Jameson.  As it is based almost exclusively on economics, this society is therefore understood best in the terms of Marxist criticism.  It is not just a story of a few characters that have a particular psychological aversion to society.  As the novel is aware of the economic and social pressures that exist, it attempts to analyze those conditions rather than passively ignoring them, undermining the idea that modern mainstream consumerism is a natural state of existence. As Jameson notes, postmodernism explains the logic of consumer capitalism, however, "The more significant question is whether there is also a way in which it resits that logic" (214).  Coupland's work is a response to that. In the form of stories, through the aesthetic, meaning can emerge from the subjective individual experience.  Generation X is an exploration of the first generation to experience Jameson's radical break of history.

Sources:
Coupland, Douglas, Generation X. New York: St Martin’s Press. 1991

Jameson, Frederic.  “Postmodernism and Consumer Society.”  Everyday Theory.  Ed. Becky McLaughlin and Bob Cole, Pearson Longman. 2005. 201 -215.

Original version written as an outline (2010)

[1] Note here that I am using the academic mode of Marxism as it was originally conceived in philosophy as a critique of capitalism, and not a particular political ideology. Remember Marx was an actual philosopher and his critique was inseparable from the actual emerging conditions of capitalism (they are intertwined views).  Non-theoretical later uses by political parties are inauthentic distortions, which may or may not represent Jameson's views.

Something in the Air

As the US government falls deeper and deeper into a crisis, it seems clear why national forms of government don't last more than a few hundred years (many don't make it twenty). This seems far more in the procelerating world of global technologically, and the United States (which may have the oldest government in existence) is quickly feeling the effects of this exponential change.

Robert Reich has noted an article [1] by the Washington Post: "In About 20 years, half the population will live in eight states." He comments:

The framers of the Constitution – who decided that each state would get 2 senators regardless of population -- never imagined that Americans would bunch up in just a few states. Yet demographers now predict that in two decades, 70 percent of Americans will reside in just 16 states, half in just 8 states. As a result, 30 percent of Americans – who will also happen to be far whiter, older, and more rural -- will control 68 percent of the seats in the U.S. Senate. The House, of course, will still be based on population. So the Senate and House will reflect two different Americas – the America of the distant past, and the America of the present.

Now that two twenty-first century elections have revealed that the original American system is beginning to have internal failures, consideration of the operational limits of the American approach seems appropriate. The over zealous motivation to keep a few states from over-dominating election processes has resulted in a minority of the population now over-dominating.  Once again, we are seeing imbalances of power, as it slides to one group- concentrating in a minority.  This will only get worse, and avoiding crisis requires redistributing this power back across the population as a whole.

Many aspects of our system of government now seem inadequate and over-whelmed by a world in which global contact is in real-time.  At the time of our founding, America was a very large expanse with a widely dispersed population which would be difficult to govern centrally. On the other side, contact with foreign adversaries would be largely limited to border neighbors and a few of our elder European relatives as rivals.  But since we have been able to nuke the entire planet on a few minutes notice, the procedures for regulating our ability to wage war seem immensely outdated.  Not to mention the economic links of global trade, where factors of the economy depend on what other governments do.

Domestically, now that we are all instantly connected, it is a counter-productive hindrance to have protocols which were meant to compensate for the difficulties of direct democracy.  Even if we want to protect the ability for 50 states to having varying legal systems, it seems foolish to choose federal systems based on the outlines of these states, dependent on who lives on what side of which line.  The laws of the nation should be chosen by representative proportions of the population, without consideration of which state each citizen belongs to.  Considerations of minority views (to avoid a majority-decides-all outcome) should be ideological, not geographical.

It would seem wise to presently look into Constitutional modifications in light of historic changes in order to keep the resulting goals achievable rather than waiting for it to break and bring down the country in an unavoidable crisis.

[1] behind paywall

Power

I: Beyond Capitalism I:

In Bit Rot (2016), Douglas Coupland, the preeminent bard of the superficial consumerist culture during the millennial transition, questions the disparity between economic systems in light of the new monolithic state of Global Capitalism:

"[In] the end, the ownership of . . . industry globalizes to the point where there are only a few players, aren't we right back to default Soviet system, where the supply of bread or what have you is centralized and crypto-communist? And in this new system, both power and profit go to the One Percent - the new politburo. It's shield? Globalization is so boring that people fall asleep before they can articulate the issue. Boringness is the superpower of communism. Globalization kills you, but first it puts you to sleep."

Slavoj Zizek has noted how twenty years ago:

possibilities were perceived as open [at] the level of social organization itself. Will capitalism prevail? Will Fascism? Will there be socialism? So social imagination was active at the level of different possibilities of social organization. The idea was maybe we would have fascism, totalitarianism, maybe some Orwellian closed society, maybe the Huxleyan 'Brave New World', maybe liberal capitalism, State capitalism, whatever. Here it was possible to imagine change. Somehow production would go on, it would continue to exploit nature - this was conceived as a a constant.
     Whereas today . . it is . . . exactly the opposite. It's very easy to imagine . . . that somehow all of nature will disintegrate, there will be ecological catastrophe, or whatever: the human race will not go on. What is no longer possible to imagine is that there will be no liberal capitalism; there is no change at that level. So the dream is that maybe there will be no nature, maybe there will be total catastrophe, but liberal capitalism will somehow exist even if the Earth no longer exists. So precisely scenes like this, where you can see how what is visible, what is invisible, what can be imagined, what cannot be imagined, change. This is . . . empirical proof that ideology is at work. . . . the notion of ideology is also always a two-level notion . .. the way to recognize ideology at work is always through denunciation of another ideology. There is never pure, naive ideology. . . .how did we experience the moment of disintegration of communism when we finally got rid of this totalitarian indoctrination and returned to the natural state of things? What is the natural state of things? The free market, multi-party elections, etc.? Precisely, this most spontaneous self-experience of how you are getting rid of some imposed artificial order and returning to some kind of . . . non-ideloigcal natural state of things . . .is the basic . . . gesture of ideology. [1]

Besides the general recognition that ideology is most at work when it appears as the "outside", the escape from all those "other" ideologies, which are obviously artificial constructs over the natural order of things, this analysis reveals the inherent danger within the global system.  When one resides within a system that has no live alternatives, no potential challenges or modifications, positive evolution becomes impossible.  Once the prevailing belief assumes the naturalization of current conditions, any modifications are seen as "false" perversions.  The final defeat of ideology then creates a field that is extremely ideological, and far more dangerous because the presence of this is even more masked.  [2]   Without available criticism, the status quo can be corrupted,  or co-opted to actually pervert it into something beyond its intention. The danger to be avoided is not the particular economic systems, which can be used in alternative ways, but the very structure itself which allows for oppression by totalizing powers. Since nothing outside of Capitalism can even be conceived of, it is seen as naturalized and the most advantageous and evolved system. Anything else would be "false" or morally inferior. But, if the goal is a complete rejection of anything authoritarian, totalitarian or otherwise un-democratic, the focus should not be policies or regulations, but on the threat of power inherent in the system.  This is the point that libertarians refuses to recognize: It is not the ultimate solution to government interference existing at the polar opposite of a continuum, it is merely a mirror image with its own possible extreme radicalizations.  Reduction (or destruction) of government constructs ultimately opens a vacuum for alternative non-governmental actors to seize (without recourse to higher equalizing authority).  The real threat against free democracy, what is to be avoided, is oligarchy, which is just as harmful, and often much more dangerous, than strong government.  The effective outcome for the oppressed is indistinguishable whether the oligarchy is governmental or corporatist elements of the free-market. As Coupland illustrates, what difference does it make if the economic structure is controlled through distributive government or monopolistic powers if the outcome is the same? Holding an idea, a name, in superior regard at all costs does no good if the practical results do not live up to the idea.

II: 1984 (Part I)

This leads to the first of my many points regarding George Orwell's 1984.  It's now become impossible to go a full week without hearing the words "it's 1984" or "it's Orwellian." While considering 1984 as an example of the symbolic structure of ideology which, as a literary work, contained aesthetic form which necessarily negates a conclusive explication of ideology (Chapter 4) [3], I argued that the commonly voiced notion that it is a warning against left-wing politics and centralized government is a misunderstanding, and that such a definitive reading was an example of over-interpretation.  I think now, given recent political events and paradigm shifts, along with the resulting references to Orwell, this is even more significant.  Examining more extra-literary evidence regarding Orwell, all of the meta/contextual relations which fall outside of the aesthetic work, suggests his intentions were aligned with Socialism, thereby requiring that the extent of this error be revealed and analytically addressed.

Though commonly regarded as a prime example of left-wing totalitarian governments of the twentieth-century, the government of Oceania is so far beyond communism that comparisons become incomprehensible, and the relevance to capitalism become just as apparent [3]. As a manifestation of Oligarchical Collectivism, the world of Oceania becomes Orwell's warning about the concentration and abuse of power, not against economic distribution systems. Control has become so ubiquitous (and power inversely so removed from the individuals in  the culture) that the means which sustain the system are no longer important or directly relevant.  With this warning in mind attention must be directed towards obstructing the formation of oligarchy even when that means challenging the superior system  in order to prevent its corruption.  The dispersion of power should be something that both libertarians and Democratic Socialists can agree on (along with anyone valuing human and democratic principles).


Looking at any day's news from 2018 reveals the relevance of 1984 to current events: Just a quick look from today:
"[The Trump administration] is becoming more and more like a Soviet-type of economy here.” - Republican senator Ron Johnson

"Don't believe the crap you see from these people, the fake news . . . Just remember: what you're seeing and what you're reading is not what's happening." - Donald Trump, 2018
 
 compare to:

"The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command." -1984


[1] Interrogating the Real. p76-7
[2] For more on this read: any Zizek, or:
McCooley, Brian J., "Ideological Interpretation and the Aesthetic Nature of Literature" (2017). Culminating Projects in English 87. 
[3] Again, see above.  When I started writing that in 2015, I had no idea that it would become so relevant to the emerging political world of post-truth and "fake news" (and one of the top 2017 sellers).

Russia's Locked Doors (Amerika)

History has apparently come a long way in the last ten years, from when the US was the sole Superpower, and Russia was a regional power dreaming of returning to the global Superpower stage. Now, the US has bowed in allegiance.  Irony officially died this week when Trump attacked Germany for having "too strong " of ties with Russia. Remember four years ago when conservatives suggested President Obama would be committing treason if he negotiated with Iran? Or, when the right lost their minds when President Obama didn't stand up and risk war to aggressively counter Russia's advance into Crimea? (while at the same time denouncing Hillary Clinton as a warhawk) Well, Republicans aren't anything if not schizophrenic. After eight years of hysterical conspiracies about the Muslim-commie Obama, everything they "feared" is actively being implemented. All while being actively embraced.  It seems their modus operandi is to denounce in others (erroneously) exactly what you want.

Where will this end?  Perhaps the plan is a Russian-American Axis which leaves a broken post-Nato Europe.  Perhaps Trump is not President Greg Stillson, as I have suspected. Maybe he is really haunted by the nuclear, tormented to the point of desperation.  Maybe his plan is to surrender the Cold War, after a ridiculous twenty-five year wait past its end.  This would explain his "nuclear" comments during the campaign (and the summit)  and his friendly submissiveness to North Korea, along with his rationalization that it was to prevent a nuclear bomb "falling on your family."  While submissive, it is not friendly in the case of Russia, and this all feels like a beaten, last-ditch attempt at survival in the form of surrender.  Where is Captain Kirk, and what would he do? [1]  And why is any of this necessary? There has been no immanent threat that must be dealt with without the luxury of long-term diplomacy. In any case it is not American strength, and not the aggressive, fearless Reaganism that conservatives demand, and that Trump seemed to exude during the campaign.  If strong and fearless is not a possibility for Trump, the question then becomes why not play the nice guy?  He could be Obama to the ultimate extent.  Rather, he pleases our adversaries while being the abusive spouse to our allies: Canada, Germany, NATO, etc. have all become the scapegoats of a drunken rage.[2]  There appears no rational answer, other than Trump is out to serve Russia.  The only other possibility, one that is not personal to Trump, is that we are in some deep shit that we don't know about. Maybe it's not Trump's personal paranoia of a nightmare nuclear scenario, but an actual blackmail threat. Given the alarms raised this week, perhaps we really are being brought to our knees, and to avoid actual destruction Trump is trying to appease our enemies. This might be the only scenario that makes sense, although it doesn't seem to fit known facts - How could we have come to this point- negotiating from a point of total weakness, even as a Superpower? Beyond the threat of complete computer/digital erasure or electrical system disintegration (and nuclear meltdown), the only un-countered dangers would be new super-weapons reported over the last few years (16 warhead ICBMS, 100 MT drone submarines, nuclear powered cruise missiles). But, using these to extort ransom seems unlikely. This would be too much for a James Bond story. 

Even if Trump is really fighting for our existential survival, his priorities have been clear so far as he has attacked (aggressively) the media, academics and the courts. These are all the institutions that sustain the superior elements of our culture, the pinnacle of our historic development.  Add in alliances and maybe even our military, and not only is our high culture in danger, but our very existence as a civilization is in grave danger regardless of any external threats [3]. The threat of a Russian-American oligarchy would be globally and historically devastating, but this seems the more likely goal and possibly as unwelcome as anything else.

[1] Whatever the conditions that Trump is dealing with, his behavior displays nothing but a weak loser, the very opposite of a strong hero.
[2] Seriously, what kind of asshole does this?  Attack allies and appease adversaries - it's so absurd and plainly stupid that it would be laughable if not unfolding right in front of us.
[3] In another display of extreme irony, it seems that Trump's rejection of our Western European origin is doing more damage to our cultural heritage than Social Justice Warriors are doing on campuses,. 

The Sound and the Fury

Thoughts on The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner

The freedom of the individual and their ability to escape the past has been a recurring theme in twentieth century literature.  While other works, such as Nightwood suggested the possibility of “forgetting”, this book is all facticity - it seems there is no escape from the past. Faulkner shows life as confused and constantly being oppressed by the intrusion of the past into the realm of present thought.

This imprisonment by the past is most exemplified in Quentin (at least in the first half). He is certainly obsessed; with family, the past, and time itself. An interesting revelation of this is when Quentin goes into the jeweler’s shop. He keeps asking if any of the clocks are accurate - until he gets the answer no. His mental response to this is remembering his father‘s view that “says clocks slay time. He said time is dead as long as it is being clicked off by little wheels; only when the clock stops does time come to life” (97).  Earlier, he while contemplating what time is, he remembers his father saying that “constant speculation regarding the position of mechanical hands on an arbitrary dial which is a symptom of mind-function” (87).  Apparently mind-function is a bad thing, in this sense it detracts from life lived in the moment.  The answer that none of the clocks is accurate shows that time is merely an arbitrary concept; it isn’t real – at least in the ways that it is measured.  Furthermore, it suggests that there are no foundations to the modern world.  There is no fixed absolute from which everything else can be quantitatively or qualitatively evaluated.

Like the conceptual reversal of time, Quentin’s father inverts the idea of sexual innocence, stating that “women are never virgins. Purity is a negative state and therefore contrary to nature” (132).  Faulkner doesn’t reveal an argument to clearly backup the position that purity should be a negative state, but it seems that Mr Compson is indicating that the world as a whole exists in a fallen state, and it is just common sense to realize that no one could live up to the ideals of purity.  He also makes reference to the “reducto adsurdum of human experience” (97).  He sees that life can’t be organized by reason and molded into what we want it to be.

This obsession with what is not, or what can’t be, seems to indicate that there is a very profound crisis underlying life. Reducing time to the mechanical workings of a human machine makes it artificial.  The construct of the modern world, the artificial, is in conflict with the natural order.   Quentin seems caught in the middle of this conflict.  On one side Benjy represents a more innocent state of being.  He is naturally able to see things from a simple point of view.  The references to the age of thirty-three and the holidays of Easter and Christmas in his chapter suggest he lives in a traditional (Christian), or pre-modern world.  Quentin’s father on the other hand has already accepted the absurdity of life, rejected imposing his own structure on it, and continues living in a dysfunctional state.  This nihilistic view has advanced beyond the modern.  Only Quentin realizes modernity and with his hyper-conscious thought he is obsessed by the nagging “lack” in the world and finds it a problem to be fixed.  Unfortunately, he is trapped in time and doesn’t seem to be able to find a solution.  This leaves him with a developing neurosis that results in incestuous thoughts, anger management issues, and the inability to live in the present or the future.

I found reading the second part of the book to be a much bleaker experience than the first half. It seemed to me that Quentin (the brother) was really the heart of the story. Without the presence of Quentin, Caddy, and Mr Compson (with his unusual but provoking thoughts about the world) the family seems very empty. I haven’t been sure what to make of the repeated idea that “Caddy smells like trees,” but by the end I’m thinking that she represents the natural order of things and as her experiences begin the breakdown of the Compson family, they move away from the natural to a very artificial state of being. 

There is no more spirit in the family, leaving only a mechanical functioning to everyday life.  Jason’s thoughts are very cold and calculated, with no time to stop for any useful introspective thoughts. All that matters now, at least to Jason, is money. Everything he does revolves around it. But, even after all the effort he expends involving constant attention and resulting headaches, he still loses his wealth. There are constantly forces at work that are beyond his control, and his security is placed in the market.  He uses the market to hopefully profit, but when things go wrong he replies that “that’s not my fault either. I didn’t invent it” (282).  There is no acknowledgement of responsibility and rather than make smarter decisions he continues to let things happen and then blame others.

At this point, I can only assume that Faulkner is making a comment on the rising consumer culture which quantifies everything into units of time and money. In this world the everyday rat race becomes just a superficial “sound and fury”, and the internal life of the self begins to “signify nothing.”  Once life is adapted into this structure, there is no essence of humanity left.  Faulkner may have been reacting to the change in the South, but this whole process of decay, or perhaps devolution, seems applicable to the world and time at large.  At the fundamental core of life is the relationship one has to other individuals.  When this breaks down there is nothing left to build upon. 

Almost all of the characters spend their time concerned with the actions of others, but only out of concern for themselves.  Jason is so obsessed with imposing discipline on everyone else that he leaves no room for them to act autonomously.  In the process he neglects control over his own actions and loses some of his selfhood.  Quentin’s obsession  leads to his own demise when he can’t reconcile Caddy’s actions.  Quentin Jr.  barely has a self and is consciously aware that she “is going to hell” and doesn’t care (217).  Only Dilsey offers some contrast to this, as she has a notion of the importance of the self and finds some possibility of salvation in religion.  But as the older views and traditions are replaced and the younger generation of the family takes over, it seems that this emptiness will expand.  At the end (is it even an end?), I can only think that Faulkner is suggesting that one should be a more active participant in their own life, choose appropriate courses of action and then ultimately find connection with others in a more constructive manner.

El Dorado

i. Long-Shadowed Sun

I remember..
The enchanted English walled garden
Days of summer air and honey-suckled nights
The capricious dance of lavenders and cabbage-whites
Made more than 3D, glowing in the evening long-shadowed sun
Nowhere better. But in England, although nothing really changes, the weather always does…

The thunder approaches
The heavy sighing of the monster…
  - El Dorado, Marillion (2016)


In video game design the Green Hill Zone is the initial, idyllic landscape from which the player begins their journey, an area of relative safety which allows the player to ease into their virtual existence before encountering serious conflict.

Born into American culture of the later part of the twentieth-century, specifically in the Mid-west, life existed in a world of a Green Hill Zone.  The only existential danger were those economic downturns which particularly devastated rural livelihoods.  But, in these cases the worst outcome was far better than the world's poor classes and farther above the historic peasantry.  World-War II was now a receded nightmare, the result of an antiquated historic period.  We were finally enlightened, modernized and civilized.  Even living under the nuclear threat, the economic golden age of the 50s and 60s were the prologue to the utopian future.  After the Fall of Communism and the ostensible end of the nuclear threat of the Cold War, the future really was now.  War, still never too far away, and in many ways now an omnipresent, ongoing campaign to maintain safe order, was at least clean. Genocide, holocaust, and the mass destruction of function society were unthinkable (without the final push of a button). Of course Sarajevo happened quickly, an actual siege of a modern city.  But that was a one-off, an exercise, something to show how well the new Western-led international community could respond.  Rwanda, Cambodia, Darfur, Myanmar, these were and are all so far away.  By the time of the Syrian war post-2011, it was no longer possible to say that the horrors of mass warfare were impossible. Now, the Green Zone, that safe zone, may not remain outside of the action and the resulting horrors.  Mid-America may not witness destruction, ignoring it even as it helps to sustain the mechanisms that create it. But it is no longer causally separated from such events and it is no longer insulated from the damaging effects.  In the process of making America "great" (again?) it is an active part of the center of history, susceptible to engagement and consequence.

This week David Lynch suggested Trump "could go down as one of the greatest presidents in history because he has disrupted the thing so much." I cant agree with Lynch's logical position, as he claims that "No one is able to counter this guy in an intelligent way."  Of course, everything Trump does can be countered by an intelligent (an exponentially more intelligent) response.  But he is right in the sense that Trump and his supporters are not operating on the cognitive and intelligent level. You can't have an intelligent negotiation because they don't care, they are solely functioning on a reptilian-response level.  For whatever reason, Lynch is coming from a similar perspective to Zizek, seeing the positive result of Trump tearing down the old Order. I wouldn't in any case look to Lynch for rationality, in fact his artistic expression has its own genius precisely because it is irrational, it embodies the Real, the inarticulate-able, primordial, pre-symbolic aspects of existence. Lynch is the auteur of the Real, just as Zizek is the philosopher of the Real.  But, there is an extreme danger when these views collide with the practical world, and the idealistic vision to build something new from the ground up allows for a path to catastrophe. Lynch did follow up, adding “Unfortunately, if you continue as you have been, you will not have a chance to go down in history as a great president ... You are causing suffering and division.”  He is at least not oblivious.

At this point, when the government is literally torturing and abusing children (as young as a few months old) by separating them from parents and throwing them into detention camps (as sick, twisted, supporters are cheering it on), it is certainly safe to say that we will longer be able to avoid the storm unscathed.  Innocent people will suffer at the hands of a tyrant and his evil supporters.  Those ready to take their ideological fight to the front-lines may suffer, but they are not the measure of history.  It is the innocent, those who are trying to flee, avoid conflict, ans simply live (and who likely don't have a say in global politics) who will be caught under the machinery which manifests the Storm. [1]

As Tobias Stone wrote:

At a local level in time, people think things are fine — then things rapidly spiral out of control until they become unstoppable, and we wreak massive destruction on ourselves. For the people living in the midst of this, it is hard to see happening and hard to understand. To historians later, it all makes sense and we see clearly how one thing led to another . . .  We should be asking ourselves what our Archduke Ferdinand moment will be. How will an apparently small event trigger another period of massive destruction . . .  It will come in ways we can’t see coming, and will spin out of control so fast people won’t be able to stop it. Historians will look back and make sense of it all and wonder how we could all have been so naïve. . . . The people who see that open societies, being nice to other people, not being racist, not fighting wars, is a better way to live, they generally end up losing these fights . . . we are entering a bad phase. It will be unpleasant for those living through it, maybe even will unravel into being hellish and beyond imagination. Humans will come out the other side, recover and move on. The human race will be fine, changed, maybe better. But for those at the sharp end . . . for those yet to fall, this will be their Somme.

We are already seeing those at the sharp end.  For many, white Americans not near the faultlines, things will go on, possibly without disruption. But for many it won't - those trapped in between the faults, those that are crushed by America (the New American Direction) and can't be defended by their own governments, and maybe those who try to stop it. The Storm is coming, It can now be seen and heard on the horizon.

As Sartre argued there is no non-choice, any war is our war, everyone's war.  Each individual must make a moral choice, and stand on the moral side of the war.  For those of us in the culture creating this conflict, it is our responsibility. History will judge those who allowed evil things to happen.

[1] What i call The Storm (or Trump's Storm) is not to be confused with any ridiculous conspiracy theories, although I think they a apt name.

Tropic of Cancer

Thoughts on Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller

It is hard to imagine the impact of Henry Miller’s vulgar language in 1934, but I suppose in the pre-shock-jock era someone had to push the bounds of language and conventional thought. If Dostoevsky's underground man was the kind of person that must exist in the nineteenth century, created by the expanding rationalistic world of modernism, then Miller’s persona in the Tropic of Cancer is a logical but extreme extension of that thought. Given the possible nihilism that has come about after Nietzsche’s proclamation that “God is dead,” the possibility of value has been eroded in the early twentieth century. Miller’s reference to Turgenev shows an affinity with Russian nihilist thought. He states that:
For a hundred years or more the world, our world, has been
dying. And not one man, in these last hundred years or so, has been
crazy enough to put a bomb up the asshole of creation and set it
off. The world is rotting away, dying piecemeal. But it needs the
coup de grâce, it needs to be blown to smithereens. (26)

Since nothing seems to rise above into a hierarchy of meaning and value, Miller seems to reject everything as the same, and in response concerns himself only with the base values of food and sex. He quite consciously claims that he is not of the human world but the inhuman, and it seems Paris suits his activity better than American and its “puritanical” values .

Once I thought that to be human was the highest aim a man could
have, but I see now that it was meant to destroy me. Today I am
proud to say that I am inhuman, that I belong not to men and
governments, that I have nothing to do with creeds and principles.
I have nothing to do with the creaking machinery of humanity – I
belong to the earth!

This view indicates Miller wants to throw off all artificial limitations created by man, and live in a much more naturalistic way, answering only to the self. Despite his rejection of value, there does seem to be times where Miller regards the act of creation as having intrinsic value, and the (sometimes) eloquent and poetic quality of his writing suggests a pursuit of an aesthetic goal. Ultimately, Miller’s interest is only in what is immediately present, the concrete elements of life. He is interested in the awareness of the: discrepancy there is between ideas and living. A permanent dislocation, though we try to cover the two with a bright awning. And it won’t go. Ideas have to be wedded to action; if there is no sex, no vitality in them, there is no action. Ideas cannot exist alone in the vacuum of the mind. Ideas are related to living: (242)

Life requires action, it should not be “an abstract idea nailed to a cross” (243). Life is lived on the margins of society. Anything that takes the vitality out of life (such as social conventions, normative morality, etc) should be rejected. While this worldview may not be sustainable for societies at large, it does seem applicable to the artist striving to find the center of life, to create something new, and live life to its fullest intensity. I think Miller is proposing that the only way to find value in the modern world is to first destroy all of the systems that have been built up in the past and start over by finding value in life itself.

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.

Brave

For the second EMI Deluxe release of Marillion we have Brave (the third releases of the band v2.0, a concept album reminiscent of the third album of Misplaced Childhood).  This one is a little less definitive.  This is a more difficult case, as there have already been 6 discs of material for this album released, the 1998 remaster with B-sides, the Made Again live album of the tour (historically interesting as the first live album of the H era), and the making-of album. Additionally there was the River release and 2002 and 2013 live versions  While we get the Blu-ray with documentary and 5.1 Wilson mix, there are a lot of omissions.  The album disc is a new mix, but strangely the disc of B-sides is ditched in favor of including the original mix (already released twice).  The two live discs have the full performance used for the Made Again recordings, adding 9 tracks, but not adding much to the Brave legacy. Also, as a personal irritation, the cover is not directly signed by the band, but includes a signed print. Just as cool, but now it won't match the Misplaced Childhood release on the shelf and a display of 7 signed prints will be incomplete. What would have been a really cool addition would be a digital version of the vinyl release which had a randomized ending, either concluding on Made Again, or The Great Escape (Spiral remake). A carefully constructed discrete 5.1 mix, once again makes this a definite version (and adds to the study of the immense depth of layers found in Marillion work, although I can't say much of the specifics (these days who has time to to sit in solitary contemplation in the proper space for an entire album - music is more on-the-go).  The next releases are now eagerly awaited as we rediscover the classic period of Marillion's career.

The Last Jedi (or Return of the Jedi We've Been Wating For)

Imagine waiting 34 years to meet Luke Skywalker as a Jedi Master, and finding him to be difficult, abrasive, engaged, and unlikable.  [1] That's what we have with the Last Jedi.  There's still a lot of a whiny farmboy in him. After the awful sequel-reboot that was the Force Awakens, this one is much better, but still missing something. [2] Is IX a reboot of V?  No, but it's a little too familiar.  We start with the Rebels desperately fleeing their base (an even more reduce version than the Rebel Alliance), a novice force user confronting the last member of the Jedi order- who is difficult and hostile to training- on a remote, hidden, and undeveloped planet, and a land battle against AT-ATs on an apparently snow-like planet. I'm not sure I like how Luke is presented, a lot more could have, and should have, been done with this character, but it was done better than Solo.

The big question is how does this all fit together? Rey is still the strongest part of the last trilogy, despite really being a Luke clone.  But, it remains to be seen how this story completes the Skywalker epic.  This certainly does not feel like the story Lucas would have continued.  The Last Jedi moves the story along, but it also places a higher pressure on Episode IX to end the story with a coherent and unified conclusion.

The biggest problem, in my view, is the origin point of the trilogy: while being the New Republic, the Galactic government is instantly reduced to a group of Rebels, and by the end of the second film, just a group of people transportable by one piece-of-junk cargo chip.  While the novels try to retcon how the First Order became so powerful behind the scenes and were able to overpower the Republic, a better setting for the trilogy would have been the struggles of an ascending Republic and a new enemy, not just the old Imperial Navy/ Dark Force mix. It just feels like a repeat of the middle trilogy. But, the first time, the Empire was the ultimate domination, so it made sense that even after the loss of the Death Star they could  begin to get the upper hand against the rebels.  Here, the loss of the First Order weapon/base doesn't retard their destruction of the established government, and the fringe militant group still has domination.  It doesn't make sense.  Hopefully this will all pay off, but there is only one chance, everything rests on IX.

Other thoughts: I like the look of being in hyperspace, [3] borrowed from the games.  The timing is a little better.  At least some length of time is shown while traveling, unlike the instant travel through a hole in The Force Awakens and Rogue One (something that started back in Episode III). The WWII air campaign battle styling was interesting.  Kylo came across as more, well, characterized, and his ambition beyond what Darth Vader pursued was an interesting plot point. There is still too much attention on comedy, at least at the most illogical points, and it's a little too forced. Leia's fake death seemed unnecessary and a waste, as we know she had too be written out anyway, why not make a dramatic and useful death scene that makes a significant plot point.  Laura Dern's character seemed completely out of place.  That's what an admiral acts like in the New Republic fleet? It would have made more sense to have her the last member of the civilian leadership.  Benicio Del Toro's character also seemed misused.  Looking back, the subplot makes a little sense, but seems somewhat like a waste of a character.The entire Resistance escape makes no sense.  They should have used the first of three ships to destroy the Mega-Star destroyer, saving the final two (the venerable Nebulon-B and the Calamari Cruiser). But, even after destroying the First Order fleet, they land and lock themselves in a salt version of Echo Base and then wonder how to escape, not realizing the just flew in on transports that could now be used to fly away from the no longer existing enemy ships (especially once the Falcon can provide escort).  Do they have phones in their Universe? Do phone jokes make any logical sense?

Instead of the dark, moving set up for the final resolution, we get a movie where nothing goes anywhere.  Everything could have been done in the first battle: The Resistance is destroyed, Kylo kills Snoke, and Rey is off learning that Luke is no longer the Luke of legend.  The End.  Episode VII didn't really do anything in terms of narrative advancement because it had to introduce new characters and integrate them with the old.  It was the set up. OK.  Now, Episode VIII doesn't really go anywhere. The only thing these movies have done is negate the resolution found in Return of the Jedi, it just resets the situation back to Episode IV/V. So almost the whole story of trilogy three will reside in Episode IX.  Seeing Luke as a Jedi Master defeat all perceivable threats, and then be confronted with the danger that his student (and relation) might be the thing that resurrects the Sith, forcing him to prevent that by any means, would have made a great story.  That's what the trilogy should have been, rather than putting the interesting narrative in flashbacks just to explain situations that may or may not have any significance and which we may never even get a complete answer to.  These movies revolve around the edges of the real story. Unless Rey is revealed to be a Skywalker and brings the Anakin/ Luke lineage to a conclusion, she should have just been set up at the end to carry on in the upcoming trilogy.   As for the Republic and First Order, unless the destruction of both of them together is meant to be a parallel to the necessary negation of the Jedi/Sith dichotomy, the inconsistency and flux in their respective power positions makes no sense. 

It's just disappointing that by getting this story we will never get the Skywalker tale we were waiting for.  This seems like fanboy fanfiction (which JJ might be the worst of all), "wouldn't it be cool to see someone do this?" "Wouldn't it be cool to see Luke milk a walrus?" Etc.  No, it wouldn't. Have any of these people seen the original films - in a way they understand the characters and can continue to develop or adhere to them?  Ultimately, the story of this trilogy is just bad, it can't really be saved. The value of Star Wars is its cultural mythology.  It became entwined with fundamental human existence, to become an active mythology that will persist to embody the late twentieth century.  That is why it important to take it seriously.

For all those defensive replies that Star Wars was always a simple, youth-oriented story, I have two points: 1. We, as a media receptive audience are far more sophisticated now than in the 1970s.  Film making has evolved immensely in forty years [4], replacing (and becoming) literature as the dominate cultural engagement with narrative art.  Look at Game of Thrones, or any of the New Golden Age of television [5].  2. Star Wars (A New Hope) is largely responsible for this generational leap.  It began a new era where sci-fi was not just awful B movies.  So, it has to compete against its own history as a measurement and evolve as well, resulting in the final parts of the story more advanced than the original that was a (relatively) low budget fantasy of an independent filmmaker. It has been reported that Lucas was distraught after making A New Hope, realizing that he made "a kid's movie,"
 rather than a sophisticated epic.  Even if that is true, there has been continual opportunities to take that simple story origin an expand it toward the other side of the spectrum, that it making it an advanced story while still retaining the basic elements of the original.  Lucas may have tried, with the result being some politically obtuse Prequels, but he also never did really try, focusing effort on elements like Jar Jar.

Since Disney has no plans to slow releases, we always have more forthcoming films to enhance the legacy (and maybe the dark, gritty TV series planned by Lucas will eventually materialize), but hopefully the legendary Skywalker center of this universe will remain intact following Episode IX.


Updated 12.20

[1] If someone had long ago told me that after waiting half a lifetime, the next time I see Skywalker, he will be milking a space walrus, I would have inquired as to what kind of bizarre alternate universe this person travels from.  Of course, I've already been asking myself how I came to be in that weird alternate universe. [A] 

[2] Beyond being a retelling of A New Hope, another (God please stop) larger Death Star, the annihilation of Han Solo's character and far too much emphasis on comedy, the main problem was the logic of each scene.  Despite having much larger, more capable Star Destroyers, the First Order's only attempt to stop Finn and Poe is a few concussion missiles. Their only ability, despite being a massive starfighter carrier, is to send a few Tie fighters against the Millenium Falcon, etc. And, don't get me started on the Starkiller weapon.  Having people watch  (as through visible light) a hyper-space beam destroy multiple star systems at least light days away from each other is possibly thew stupidest thing ever done in sci-fi.

[3] But did they really have to constantly use the term lightspeed? It's just bad science, and sounds worse now than when Battlestar Galactica insisted on it in the 1970s. Speaking of which, the space battles seemed a little too influenced by the Galactica reboot (ships emerging from Hyperspace, tracking through jumps, the camera being too prominent in the framing, etc). But, I guess that's just a little historic revenge.  The original trilogy had the best scientific consistency(for what that's worth) and it has continued to go downhill when it could easily be rectified.

[4] Here I don't mean technologically, although Star Wars deserves recognition for its great visual advancements and contibutions.

[5] This may partially explain why TV now seems much more interesting than film.  These two hour dramas have embraced the idea of a visually exciting story taht fills the time, but doesn't leave lasting room for contemplation that very long series can.

[A] Where the FBI is the enemy, the Russians are the good guys, the free press is bad, etc

Paper Lies

It's a sign of the times
We believe anything and nothing

Paper lies

When you kill the truth
You can make a killing
You might just make losing look like winning - Marillion (1994)

Despite Trump's assertion that he invented the word fake, it actually has been in use a long time (since at least the 18 century).  And the idea of fiction, falsity and bias in news reporting has been around for a long while as well (someone even mentioned it in a song in 1994). Trump's statement is a fascinating example of irony that displays what it is attacking.  We used to even have a more-than-one-syllable word for it: propaganda.  As such, propaganda attempts to close any open, unresolved elements to ensure a complete, monologic transmission of thought.  That is, to force a conclusion without question.  It is a mode of ideology in operation.

The problem isn't news that's fake, it's use of the term itself.  Fake news is a term that is used to shut down a debate and enforce ideology over facts. And it's used by, and to describe, people who don't want to think for themselves.  Other than the noise created by negative chaos of social media and deliberate lying manipulation by memes, and organizations so deprived, evil and so ridiculously stupid that only a true moron would follow them [1], which aren't news at all, but lies meant to incite: psychological warfare, there isn't much fakeness.  The news reported is based on real events, it's the presented fields of interpretation that add There is a responsibility on the part of the receiver to understand these fields and discern some levels of relevancy and accuracy.  In this information age, it is easier than ever to fact check on one's own an d to stay current.

As American landscape has changed over the last 10 years, there has been a lot of blame put onto the  media, lamenting the loss of objective reporting and accusing the of inserting bias.  But this is just a surface reaction.  To understand the real issue requires a look at the subject of what is being reported.  It isn't the media that has changed -fundamentally - but the political landscape itself.  Changes in the media are only a response, a a reaction to that.

As Fareed Zakaria has noted "Politics is about tribal affiliation. It's not about issues anymore. In the old days is was about issues, it was really about economic issues, and economic issues you can comprise on . . . When you get into these cultural,social issues which are really more about core identity, how do you compromise? . . . These have become issues on which people see the world differently. we have become Sunnis and Shiites . . . for the last ten years there has been no compromise"

The culture has become so split that no news report could be completely objective in the perspective of both parallax views.  But, that does not mean both sides are equivalent.  Not all forces of persuasive discourse are equal.  Power systems must be factored in and the existing dominant structures recognized.  Reporting that challenges the power structure is not the inverse of reporting that promotes it.  Challenges still leave an open space for understanding.  But, reports that mimic what leadership wants one to believe closes space for debate and argumentation.  

In the case of Fox vs CNN there is a difference. First Fox is very monologic, with talking heads spouting ideology to force conclusions inline with their desired power structure.  When the head of power is on the left, they attach to figures on the right that form an opposition.  In the case of CNN, first there is active debate.  Panels made up of three to three on the left/right are common, sometimes 2 on the left against 3 on the right . The balance of left/right on CNN is even more distorted to the right  than it was to the left during Obama's term, with the placement of panelists who have been paid members of the Trump team.  With panelists like Lewandowski, Jeffrey Lord, Kayleigh, Ed Martin, Andre Bauer, there is a direct defense of Trump's establishment and hence, CNN cannot be monologic. The debate raises issues that the viewer can contemplate.  Secondly, while the channel does challenge  Republican administrations, it also heavily criticizes Democratic ones as well.  For instance, Erin Burnett would at times lead with three stories attacking the Obama administration.

With each swing of the pendulum, the challengers in the social discussion adopt tactics that the former side used and there is further escalation.  What is needed is not a draining of the swamp, but a return to the establishment, when policy makers were professionals and worked in terms of policy primarily rather than cultural ideology.  When the debates become once again anchored on facts and not judgment, then the competing arguments can be presented and evaluated in objective and comparable terms.

[1] Pure non-sense like Info-wars and Alex Jones which de-evolve any view into childish fantasy and result in evil, rather than misinformed bad arguments.