Archives for June 2012

" “any alliance between the left and global capital ends up favoring the populist right.” Fabio Vighi The narratives of the Spectacle. What you see today on the corporate news front is a reliance on the most reductive of discourses. What's interesting is how this reduced bit of story-line, scenario creation, is filled up with a sort of ventriloquists performance. Or its like an old crystal ball mind reading act (cue: Screening of Nightmare Alley). There is a processing of narrative that demands the simplest sort of assumed psychological foundations. By which I mean, the perceptions of the political spectacle often seem to include personalized mind reading on the part of the viewer. "Oh, … [Read more...]

Interestingly, this topic of magical thinking seems to be in the zeitgeist. http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175561/tomgram%3A_lewis_lapham%2C_will_wonders_never_cease/ What needs to be kept in mind is the ideological implications of all this (if I wasn't clear before). In the Imperialist nations of the west, magical thinking, superstition, is labeled as "science"...often anyway. Junk science is really just the latest branch of marketing. Research is corporate manipulation. Here is an example of real science..... http://www.motherjones.com/blue-marble/2012/06/bpa-linked-brain-tumor-first-time Pliable plastic is the greatest offender for it contains the most BPA. This has been … [Read more...]

A post of just collected flotsam and jetsam that is floating around out there....wherever 'there' is exactly. http://blackagendareport.com/content/citigroup%E2%80%99s-role-rape-haiti I recently was reading through facebook -- and found a thread on the posting of affirmations. The seemingly endless stream of sunflower photos, or memes on positive thinking (if life gives you lemons, make lemonade etc). The predictable response to the original complaint was to defend these memes, and to reinforce this belief (very much a US phenomenon I think) that life is about YOU and YOUR happiness, and that if only people would 'think positive' everything would magically improve. Its really that, a form … [Read more...]

A new dialogue, this time with my friend, playwright and director Guy Zimmerman.... http://john-steppling.com/dialogue-2/ … [Read more...]

One of the most striking aspects of living in Scandinavia is to realize that the level of paranoia one is used to, as an American, is no longer relevant. I experience this dislocation daily. I can observe myself in social interactions, with strangers, preparing for the defensive self protective reflex to be called forth. I think it's hard to grasp the degree of paranoia and anger in US culture. I think part of this is both reflected in and created by the culture industry. There is almost not a single US TV show in which the narrative does arrive at a moment in which someone apologizes...and this apology then refused. "I'm sorry" is usually, almost always, met with "that doesn't cut … [Read more...]

Odds & ends. When I was growing up, in Hollywood, in the sixties, and as a young boy in the late fifties, it was a given that people came *to* Hollywood (and by extension, LA) and that it was a city of domestic immigrants. They came to be in 'movies'. The general career arc was from aspiring young actress and actor, to second career that usually began around the age of thirty -- maybe a bit more for the men. That second career for woman was (this became the joke) beauty school, massage school, or they got into real estate. For men it was move to places like Lake Havasu or often not even that far....just the further ends of the San Fernando Valley, to start up a small business in sporting … [Read more...]

Several related topics rattling around in my head today. Let me start with a nice piece by my friend Rita Valencia....http://www.timesquotidian.com/2012/06/07/go-ask-alice-i-think-shell-know/ I've never liked nor trusted Sellars. The reason has to do with this brie & chablis network of rich people culture he rambles through, with his cuteness and faux enfant terrible persona. The truth is, what Sellars does (and he's hardly alone) is to create the right variety of kitsch, tricked out in high culture drag, and calibrates it perfectly so as not to offend anyone or actually say anything. I am immediately reminded of Marina Abramovich, who also has built a franchise on emtpy posturing...with … [Read more...]