The death yesterday of Comandante Hugo Chavez marks it as a very sad day. Much will be written in the coming weeks, and the possible involvement of the CIA is certainly not to be discounted. So, I find myself sitting back to write a few other things on art and culture but do so in the long shadow of Chavez' death. Reminding onself of US foreign policy for the last sixty years....hell, last couple hundred years....the names of war criminals like Allen Dulles, Henry Kissinger, and William Colby, and Jim Woolsey...Richard Nixon, Reagan, and Clinton, and Bush, Dick Cheney, Dean Rusk, or Alexander Haig ... the grotesque policies that left for dead, or sent into exile....Patrice … [Read more...]

“The men construct an image of a high-born woman (‘white countess’). They then worship that image, which must be asexual. They persecute the sexuality of the ‘low-born’ woman — proletarian, communist, Jew (=whore) — by first making her a prostitute, then murdering her; meanwhile lack is maintained in relationships with their own (child-bearing and asexual) women through their exclusion (as nameless wives) from social productions and from the contrafraternities of men. All of these forms of oppression — adoration, murder, exploitation — are related.” Theweleit Writing about the origins and characteristics of "realism" has led to a series of semi-disparate observations. Misogyny, … [Read more...]

Horkheimer wrote...... "...a profound change of outlook...that has taken place in Western thinking in the course of the last centuries. For a long time....the view asserted the existence of reason as a force not only in the individual mind but also in the objective world....great philosophical systems such as those of Plato and Aristotle, scholasticism, and German idealism were founded on an objective theory of reason. " Harmony was reasonable. Proportion, both emotionally and materially, were a form of the reasonable. One could see the harmonious man or woman, the harmonious culture, and the harmonious dwelling. The emphasis was on ends and not means. Molly Klein's comments on … [Read more...]

"Literature is never the product of a single subject. There are always at least three actors: the hand that writes, the voice that speaks, the god who watches over and compels" Roberto Calasso On the evening in which the Oscars bestowed best picture upon a valentine to the CIA and to itself, in the insufferably tumescent and self conscious Argo, the US was continuing its build up in Africa, and the White House announced Obama would be visiting Israel and Bibi in mid March. The re-colonizing of Africa is, of course, mostly about resources. As Richard Raznikov wrote: America is using its military for the purposes of the oil companies, the arms industry, and the bankers, and … [Read more...]

There is a linkage between capitalism, authority, and exploitation, and that linkage can best be described as instrumental rationality; a form of thinking, of logic, of reason. The same logic that demands control and domination. Joseph Lamb recently wrote : "President Obama candidly remarked in his State of the Union address that, “The greatest nation on earth cannot go from one manufactured crisis to another”. Stagecraft spectacles rehearsed from political pulpits are a ‘synthetic commodity’ passive listeners consume. The State of the Union illustrated a pep rally containing populist sentiment, and altering statecraft into a ‘pseudo-event’ " Instrumental thinking concerns itself … [Read more...]

I'm fond of the word snark. Its not really a word. In the United States, most serious artwork and culture is met with a snarkiness. Meaning it is met with a snide, sarcastic, ironic, and self consciously insincere attitude. It is met with attitude. It is met with "attitude". This connects in my brain with a certain class of liberal accepting, even welcoming, of fascism. It is almost embarrassing, it seems, to express deep enthusiasm for an artwork. I think its permitted to be enthusiastic yourself, even love the work, experience it with great enthusiasm, but keep it to yourself However, there is also a sort of dovetailing of this snark with a the new liberal fascists. … [Read more...]

I posted a long interview with Molly Klein a couple days ago....on theatre, on my work specifically, and on an engagement with the spectacle. I wanted to write some random sort of addendums to that, and to some recent film criticism, and on audience creation. I find an awful lot of film writing to be woefully short on actual film history. I suppose this raises issues about how influence works within a medium that is, first, so mediated by economics, and secondly, so new ---- a medium with a history of a hundred years or less, really. The mediation by capital is the more acute issue. While I think the auteur theory a bit strained at this point, it remains useful as a touchstone for … [Read more...]

The second part of our discussion of theatre....of my work....and of the spectacle. http://john-steppling.com/interview-on-theatre-with-molly-klein-part-2-space-and-spectacle/ … [Read more...]