I recently mentioned and referenced Ruth Fowler's sharp and amusing take on the Sindead O Connor open letter to Miley Cyrus. Now, over at Counterpunch, Jeff St.Clair has redacted the, apparently, offending sentence or two and issued an apology. A fawning apology. It strikes me that as the society becomes ever more violent and toxic, the language must become ever more pure and chaste. This is coupled, again, to the idea of hurt feelings. Jesus fucking god, is everyone just offended all the time about everything? I hated the racism in Captain Phillips, the Hanks vehicle and ode to commercial shipping, but Im not "offended" by it. Every time I see Joe Lieberman I might be queasy but my … [Read more...]

"You see, control can never be a means to any practical end....It can never be a means to anything but more control....Like junk...." William Burroughs "However when we observe the sexual proclivities of persons placed in positions of power and control over other human beings, we can see these principles at work. Priests and altar-boys, heads of state and their dalliances with prostitutes and subordinates, and the insistence within the neo-feudal theocratic movements of complete domination of females by males both in society and marriage, are but a few ugly signs of the sexual nature of authoritarianism." Dan Mage There feels like there are several cultural trends going on at once … [Read more...]

Political theatre seems to be on the uptick. Or rather it is being foregrounded by media puppets. Take the government shut down as example one. Or the debt ceiling, which is just part of the same show. Or better, take the raids on Somalia and Libya. These really are the stuff of kitsch TV and film. From Raialyoum... "A US official told CNN television that the Libyan Government had been informed in advance of the raid carried out by u.s. special forces in broad daylight, but Libyan Prime Minister, Ali Zeidan denied this, saying he had demanded an explanation from Washington and stressing that Libya was, ‘Keen on prosecuting any Libyan citizen inside Libya’. However, his keenness … [Read more...]

I wanted to follow up on the last post. And I want to discuss in a sense why Tragedy seems to impossible today. I recently found myself in long debates about two popular cultural products, The Avengers and Breaking Bad. I realized that this sort of discussion is problematic, in the same way Obamacare arguments are problematic. It is problematic because government shutdown is just bad theatre. Just a bad movie. But to explain that to, even, a lot of leftists, requires a long and often tedious discussion. Same with having to discuss The Avengers. Someone had gotten very upset at the idea that I called, what was clearly a favorite film, "fascist". But this raises the question of what I began … [Read more...]

"*I am what I am*. This is marketing's latest offering to the world, the final stage in the development of advertising, far beyond the exhortations to be different, to be oneself, and drink Pepsi. Decades of concepts in order to get to where we are, to arrive at pure tautology. I equals I". The Invisible Committee. One of the questions one is often confronted with is to explain why or how an artwork has value, or quality. Now, in one way, this blog has often been about exactly this, but what I'm more thinking about here are the prevailing assumptions this culture demonstrates in it's non specialized outlets. Given that there is so little arts education anymore, I often find distinct … [Read more...]

Here is a story that is not uncommon these days. http://www.adistinctiveworld.net/health-department-raids-community-picnic-and-destroys-all-food-with-bleach/ And this curious bit of legislation: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-04-09/kansas-s-self-destruct-button-a-bill-to-outlaw-sustainability.html And this.....http://jonathanturley.org/2013/09/19/95-year-old-man-in-nursing-home-resists-going-to-hospital-police-arrive-and-shoot-and-kill-him-stun-gun-and-bean-bag-rounds/ These are examples of an ascension of irrationality in state agencies, and a new level of aggression. That is the key, the aggression is coming out of a culture now inundated with representations of violence. … [Read more...]

Nothing arouses the almost religious indignation of the U.S. populace (the educated liberal class anyway, and that means mostly white) than to criticize their favorite TV shows. Vince Gilligan's AMC series Breaking Bad has, as we close in on the final two episodes, reached clear cult status now. I've seen it compared to Dostoyevsky and Kafka. What accounts for the show's over-valuation? I think the clearest answer, the most simple, is that it flatters the intended audience. Network Demographics has it this way: AMC targets viewers 18-49, viewers 25-54, males 18-49 and males 25-54, according to its 2007 Cabletelevision Advertising Bureau profile. For full-year 2007 the network … [Read more...]

"...the certain realization that Kafka's entire work constitutes a code of gestures which surely had no definite symbolic meaning..." Walter Benjamin, On The 10th Anniversary of Kafka's Death I want to continue on fromn that last post, and also to incorporate some of the long comments thread, and also try to more specifically look at this idea of violence in the West, and its cultural expressions. The link below is almost a daily occurance now. http://www.commondreams.org/further/2013/09/12-1 The new theatre of violence is this temporary stage on the side of the highway. This mini drama encapsulates the thrust of the white male system of domination. The beating of a woman, … [Read more...]