WRAC 130.Section 11 (Spring 2005)

Sunday, April 24, 2005

Animal Man -- #6 to 17

Let's go with another lettercol (on some of the more overtly political issues) for today, and we'll close (on Thursday) with my own fulminations about the series (and the radical ethical implications of the metafiction)!

See you on Tuesday!
Dave

posted by goodkingwenceslaus, April 24, 2005 18:41 :: link::

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Saturday, April 23, 2005

Waking Life
(comment for extra credit)

Here's a good review, courtesy of Salon.com.

It's probably fairly apparent to you--at this point--how well this film fits in with our Emersonian and Animal Man-related concerns! If the concept of "reality" is merely a (possibly unneccessary) survival strategy, then the question becomes--"what price survival?" i.e.--why go on believing horrible thing A? Simply in order to keep horrible World-A intact? Why not try believing pleasant thing B instead, and see what happens? You can apply this reasoning to just about any of the coercive "realities" that we've created for ourselves. Racial/gender/class (and, of course, species) hierarchies all have their origins in the human habit of mistaking the contingent for the inevitable (or "natural"). We pass the blame onto God, or fate, or science--but really, what we're saying is that we'd prefer to keep on with the same dream, rather than face a new and different one... which doesn't mean--of course--that we can force life to conform to our expectations! The light switches never work! But I think that this film licenses us to deal with "reality" in a much more playful (i.e. antinomian) fashion than we normally do...

posted by goodkingwenceslaus, April 23, 2005 15:39 :: link::

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Tuesday, April 19, 2005

Sulllivan's Travels
(comment for extra credit)

Do you think that this film practices what it appears to be preaching? Isn't it--in fact--the sociological treatise ("with a little sex"--and a lot of comedy) which Sullivan declares that he wants to make, at the beginning of the film? Doesn't it demonstrate, quite powerfully, what can happen to a person without money in America? Yes--it's great to make people laugh, the film appears to be saying--but it's even better to be a rich director! How do you think the director (Preston Sturges) would respond to "The Coyote Gospel"'s argument that laughter derived from the suffering of cartoonish figures (think of the cook in the land-yacht scene scene) plays a very sinister role in the maintenance of oppressive social structures (note the way that, later on--when the studio team is suffering through Mr. LeBrand's lambasting--the cook blurts out a completely gratuitous "yes sir!"...does this resonate, in your mind, with the staccato "yes sirs" and "no sirs" emitted by the prison camp trustee, in his dealings with the warden?)

Also--you might want to contrast the respective endings of this film (the montage of laughter) and Bamboozled (which works its way toward very different "always leave 'em laughin'" finale!)

see you on Thursday!
Dave

posted by goodkingwenceslaus, April 19, 2005 13:13 :: link::

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Sunday, April 10, 2005

Animal Man #1 to 5: "Oh Billy, I did it. I saved the world."

As I mentioned in class, this is the only comic that we'll be reading which incorporated reader-response into its pages. This will become very important later on... It may already be clear to you that the creators of this book--and its audience--will have a major role to play in the story, as it unfolds...

Here are the reactions to "The Coyote Gospel":

also--as you may have gathered--the myth of Prometheus is quite important to an understanding of this story.

see you on Tuesday!

Dave

posted by goodkingwenceslaus, April 10, 2005 00:06 :: link::

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Sunday, April 03, 2005

Locas, Part III

I suspect that our final Locas discussion will center upon the final story--"Bob Richardson". Rose Curtin's entry on the book (which generated an interesting discussion--in the comments section--that I proudly leapt into!) should give you a lot to think about.

a sample:

What I’ll say instead is that the whole last story, “Bob Richardson,” is about the spirals we weave around ourselves, the way the identities Maggie and Hopey have created for themselves through their wishes and deeds circle in tighter until real pain and deceptions have to crash in on themselves to contain a new reality. And I know I shouldn’t say stories are “about” things, know that they contain multitudes, but all I mean is that it’s useful for me at the moment to look at the tightening gyre rather than other aspects of the story, which I’m about to contradict by talking about one of them. Best friends Maggie and Hopey love each other and have sex with each other sometimes and have sex with others sometimes and occasionally those times even overlap. Part of the narrative movement, its sway, is Maggie’s understanding of her sexuality and her relationship with Hopey. Hopey seems happily bisexual, or at least consistently bisexual even when not happy, but Maggie considers her situation more complex. Is she really a straight girl who’s willing to make an exception for Hopey (and is it ever true when people say that? I’m too biased to know.) or bisexual or is she really straight and her friendly love for Hopey has just crossed over into the sexual realm? And can she love anyone else as much as she loves Hopey or more or differently? And what about loving herself?

see you on Tuesday!

Dave

posted by goodkingwenceslaus, April 03, 2005 18:48 :: link::

comments (22)

Sunday, March 27, 2005

Locas, pages 246 to 542

Again, there's a lot going on in these pages... You could base your comments upon one story ("Vida Loca: The Death of Speedy Ortiz", "In the Valley of the Polar Bears", and "Wigwam Bam" are obvious candidates for this treatment), or you could look for some way to tie the readings together thematically... I leave it to you.

One aspect of these stories that fascinates me is the way that Jaime Hernadez manages to keep the spotlight upon Maggie & Hopey's relationship--even when these two characters go months & years without seeing each other. One of the reasons I chose this book was because I think it shows, in both subtle and obvious ways, how "constructed" our notions of "normalcy" are... Penny, Daffy and--perhaps most strikingly--Ray's conviction that these two are "meant for each other" really work upon your mind (or my mind anyway!)... Terry's schemes against the "incest twins" also reinforce this effect. I don't see how you can possibly read Locas without absorbing their assumptions, at least to a certain extent... Which is not to say that the book doesn't ever question this article of faith. In fact, I think that, once it has you on board, it goes in the opposite direction--testing your loyalty to the very idea of "meant for eachotherness"...and raising the possibility that even our deepest yearnings are, to a larger degree than is generally supposed, created by the expectations of those around us! It's easier to see this in Locas than in a "heteronormative" narrative (which doesn't have to work very hard to convince us what's "normal"), because, in this case, the normalized/naturalized relationship is between two women... and the process (building us up and bringing us down!) happens before our eyes.

posted by goodkingwenceslaus, March 27, 2005 13:33 :: link::

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Saturday, March 19, 2005

Locas, pages 7 to 245

Well--this is a big chunk of reading, and I'm sure, when you get here, you'll be scratching your heads trying to figure out what aspect of the story you ought to be commenting on... Locas--unlike the self-contained superhero epics that we've been reading--is character-driven, rather than plot driven... Everything that happens, basically, happens in order to flesh out Maggie and Hopey's relationship.

There are at least a couple of fine pieces about this book out there on the net--and I'll be linking to them once we're further along--but, for right now, I guess I'd like to hear your reactions to these two characters. How would you describe their relationship? Their social environment? Their stances toward the world in general?

I think that's the place to start.

see you on Tuesday!

Dave

posted by goodkingwenceslaus, March 19, 2005 19:29 :: link::

comments (31)

Friday, March 11, 2005

The Dark Knight Returns #1-4:

Best writing available on this book? Hands down--just perform a search for the title at Peiratikos.

Steven Berg (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6) and Rose Curtin set themselves up for business at the intersection between Batman's quests for a "good death" and a "good life"--with, in each case, extremely profitable results!

You really haven't read this book until you've read what they have to say about it. I'm serious. I'm not going to excerpt because it's all good.

But you certainly don't have to stop there!

There's a good entry (which attempts to parse the desire for justice from the death-wish that Miller entwines it with throughout the book) at Comic Book Politics.

Dave Intermittent takes a look at the OPERATIC nature of the story (and might also convince you to check out Sin City)

J.W. Hastings presents an argument in favour of Dark Knight's superiority to Watchmen as an experience of the sublime.

And, while I don't agree with J.W.'s interpretive approach at all--I do share his conclusion that this book cuts much closer to the heart of the kinds of questions that ought to concern us in an "intro. to americal radical thought" course. My own sublimity-centered take is here.

As I mentioned in my e-mail, comments will be due on Thursday this week. But I'll see you all Tuesday for our discussion of Fight Club and the first two books of DKR.

Enjoy the rest of the break!

And don't be shy to comment early and often! (on both the film and the comic)

Dave

posted by goodkingwenceslaus, March 11, 2005 16:33 :: link::

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Sunday, February 27, 2005

Squadron Supreme #4-12

Okay! I recommend that all of you read this piece in its entirety, because it offers a diametrically-opposed interpretation of the book from my own--and that's always helpful, I think...

Here's an excerpt:

Utopian schemes often ignore the costs they involve, through various intellectual frauds. These frauds range from simple denial ("It won't cause enough trouble to matter") to demonization of the victims of policy ("We had to liquidate them because they stood in the way of progress"). In either case, the dedicated utopian attempts a round of bait-and-switch by selling possibly-unrealizeable benefits at a dishonestly-deflated cost. Yet often the benefits do not materialize, and, somehow, costs creep in, unwanted, like roaches into a tenement. The skeptic might note that the costs always existed, waiting only for the crisis brought on by impractical reformist schemes to make them visible.

Not only does the Squadron's program fail, it fails in a way that shows the cost in human terms - in a very clear count of human bodies hauled away to rest on gurneys in a morgue. And, even among the survivors, the damage remains - the damage of having played the victim in some purportedly high-minded but functionally inhuman program, the damage of having colluded with its perpetrators, or the damage of having run the whole thing. Some such wounds heal, some don't.

Beyond the libertarian ideas implicit and explicit in s work, though, we see a strongly moral bent in this work. For many, striking a moral posture that requires no self-sacrifice suffices as a substitute for character. Nighthawk, however, saw a great evil and gave up everything to fight it, including his friendship, his loyalties, his sense of himself as a moral being, and ultimately his life.

When the virus of totalitarianism infects the minds of those with the power to lead, we can expect such a cost if any have the will to oppose it to the end. And, though Nighthawk lost himself in the process, he knew the cost was a small one compared to the stakes of the game. To the end, he acted towards a goal of the greater good even against enemies who thought they did the same.

Now, from where I sit, this kind of thinking seems far more deluded than the "Utopianism" it opposes. To be fair, the piece is entitled "The Libertarian Message of Squadron Supreme", and the author sure isn't kidding about what political blinkers he is wearing... Do you see a difference between the "greater good" (basically, the status quo) that the essay privileges and the supposedly delusional greater good that he indicts the programmatic thinkers amongst the Squadron Supreme for pursuing? Like all libertarians, he adheres very strongly to the doctrine that people are "born with" certain rights, feelings, and--most importantly--property. Of course,this reads to me like a rationalization for the imperative to defend what you have (i.e. the power you have over other people and animals) against any "visionary" scheme that attempts to redress horrific imbalances created by historical processes--but perhaps you will disagree. Do you think that "political power" is something that can be done away with? Or does the Libertarian solution only render such power invisible--and thus, quite possibly, more dangerous? Do you make an exception for Nighthawk's resort to political expediency? Or do you see his conundrum in exactly the same terms as the one faced by the larger group? It's no secret where I stand on this matter--there are no "Just" decisions, there's just decision-making. Are the prejudices we are born with somehow more "valid" than ones that might be "imposed" upon our minds from "without". Is there such a thing as the "integrity of a mind"? Or is this kind of thinking merely a post-Christian hangover? (and keep in mind that most Libertarians tend to be vociferously anti-Christian!)

Again--the dispute between my own interpretation of the book and the one expressed (very eloquently) in this piece hinges in large part upon the question of where you place the accent in the moral dilemma posed by the "b-mod" device. To stick with the example of Golden Archer and Lady Lark--whose anguish does Squadron Supreme foreground? It seems to me that a Libertarian reading would require that this situation be focalized through the victim of the process--and this is nowhere to be found in the text itself! (Lark is not shown to be disturbed by the "manufactured" nature of her now-visceral emotions--her problem is that Archer then promptly refuses to accept the responsibility for what he's done; also--think of how Shape's modification is presented, and even Ape-X's--whose problem is not that she has been "programmed" per se, but rather that a "gap" in said programming causes her mind to crash)... Instead, we are made privy to the effects of this decision upon the perpetrator. This is consistent with my own argument that this book primarily examines the problems (and the heavy costs) of foundation. Specifically, what is the place of the "unmodded modifier" in a remade society (or, at the micro level, the remade relationship)? That term is an explicit reference to the philosophical concept of the "unmoved mover" , which is still very relevant to all political (if not metaphysical) inquiry.

It's all very well and good to attribute the foundation of a society to an absent deity (or race of beings, like the Kree who set Power Princess' island Utopia in motion), but what becomes of a founder who refuses to disappear or conveniently die before setting foot in the "promised land"... For Gruenwald, I think the answer is clear--they would become like the Scarlet Centurion...and, if you accept that, then the question becomes equally self-evident: is the creation of a well-ordered, peaceful society worth the sacrifice of all possible kinship with the inhabitants of that Ideal world? The series of bloody battles that punctuate the book stage the fundamental undecidability of this momentous question--and, obviously, the story offers no ultimate answers!
***********
Also--here is a very succinct summary of Von Clausewitz's thoughts on "pure war" (i.e. war freed from all political considerations--which is not possible in practice)--and you might want to consider my own ideas about how this can be adapted (as a logic of "pure reform") to a reading of Squadron Supreme.

See you on Tuesday!
Dave

posted by goodkingwenceslaus, February 27, 2005 14:45 :: link::

comments (30)

Sunday, February 20, 2005

Squadron Supreme #1-3:

"Okay, we all get the picture that things are rotten. Now what are we gonna do about it?"

What indeed? How do the figures in this book line up with the characters in Watchmen? Is this a topsyturvy world in which all of the superheroes (with one exception) flip out a la Ozymandias? Or are the stakes completely different in this book? I would answer "yes" to that last question-but perhaps you will disagree. The difference, as far as I'm concerned, is that the "totalitarian"/utilitarian faction is not presented as compromised by the lust for power and a degree of vanity that verges--and, let's face it, actually crosses over into--insanity. The Squadron don't stalk around their secret fortress in purple robes, exulting in their brilliance for the benefit of disposable "friends" and pets... They don't even really seem to know what they are doing. But I rather assume that this comes with the territory--when you set out to make the world anew! Where is the Cold War in this book? It came out just a year before Watchmen. Does it seem like the same world to you? (I mean the world it was published and sold in, of course) Gruenwald does not seem to have been affected by the threat of nuclear annihilation to the same extent that Moore was... If there's a "Black Freighter" in this book, it isn't "war" or "nuclear holocaust", but human suffering and death itself.

Instead of asking: "how do we stop these fools from trying to kill each other"? the book asks: "how can we--through the use of our powers(which you'll note, as the series progresses, are pretty clearly analogous to the power of technological innovation) bring earth a little closer to heaven?" This is unabashed utopianism--a plea for a radical break with the course of human history--and the question becomes: how hard do you want to "pray for change"...and to what lengths are you willing to go in the hopes of, as Emerson would say, "realizing your world"? I think that one of the great things about the series is that it puts the options right out there on the table--instead of making a mystery of things--and it doesn't really allow you to sit back and "cheer for" one side of the debate or the other. It seems to me that everyone is "right" in this book...and thus it should come as no surprise that, in their world, as well as in ours--and despite the fact that most of us generally do have the best intentions concerning our fellow human beings--everything is all wrong!

here are some more of my thoughts on the early chapters:

****************

In the book's initial tableau, Hyperion struggles to prevent the Squadron's space-borne ivory tower, badly damaged during the catastrophic backstory, from hurtling earthward and exacerbating an already dire situation. Upon completing his mission (by redirecting the unstoppable object's trajectory of descent toward a designated "splashpoint" in the middle of the ocean) he declares:

There it is. The finest man-made object earth ever put into the sky... the satellite headquarters of the Squadron Supreme... Now a dilapidated hulk... Maybe it was meant to come crashing down on our heads...(SS #1, 4)

The satellite's demise very quickly assumes symbolic importance for his teammates as well--it is roundly interpreted as a sign that the Squadron's wonted method of "heroism" has done little to make the world a better place, and may in fact be the root cause of the current devastation. Golden Archer sums up the group's concerns, when the members convene at their subterranean replacement headquarters: "Okay, we all get the picture that things are rotten. Now what are we gonna do about it?" (SS #1, 18).

This question prompts Power Princess to embark upon an encomium to her native isle of Utopia, a community which "knew no poverty, injustice, sexual discrimination, or crime" (SS #1, 19). (Power Princess is an analog of DC Comics' Wonder Woman--just as each of the other Squadron members have counterparts in that corporate universe's Justice League of America series--and it is refreshing that this version of the character is not an "Amazon" from an essentialist-feminist paradise, but a proponent of a non-gendered human capacity for "more perfect" social unions). Her monologue, which is destined to provide the foundation for what the group will call their "Utopia Plan", is worth examining in detail:

Defeatist talk will get us nowhere Kyle! It is deeds not words that will restore our credibility, and save the world in the process... As you all know, I am from Utopia Isle, a small island in the Southern Sea whose civilization has remained isolated from humanity since its inception... We Utopians believe ourselves to be the result of genetic experimentation conducted upon the human species long ago by beings we know of only as the Kree. While the rest of humanity was making flint spearheads, we developed a culture based on peace, fellowship, and the acquisition of knowledge... Within our small island community, we knew no poverty, injustice, sexual discrimination, war, or crime. We truly created a Utopia. When the outside world developed the atom bomb, my people believed their way of life--their existence--was in jeopardy. Building a starcraft, the Utopians left this world to find a new home among the stars. I chose to remain behind as their emissary to the outside world, a role I had assumed some years before. I had believed it possible to spread the Utopian philosophy among greater humanity. But in decades past, first alongside the Golden Agency and then with the Squadron, it was all I could do to combat crime. I could never make anyone--not even you--believe that Utopia was attainable. Maybe now, in the wake of this mass chaos, people will want to believe (SS #1, 18-19).

Her plea speaks directly to the concerns of recent theorists, such as Slavoj Zizek and Bernard Stiegler, who strive to understand the relationship between scientific innovation and the social.

Zizek, a sort of Lacanian-Marxist, treats the technological marvels of the age as threats to the human which must be confronted and tamed:

The digitalization of our daily lives, in effect, makes possible a Big Brother control in comparison with which the old Communist secret police cannot but look like primitive child's play. Here, therefore, more than ever, one should insist that the proper answer to this threat is not to retreat into islands of privacy, but an even stronger socialization of cyberspace. One should summon up the visionary strength to discern the emancipatory potential of cyberspace in what we (mis)perceive today as its "totalitarian" threat (Did Someone Say Totalitarianism?, 256).

The relevance of this Zizekian choice to Power Princess' speech is apparent in the opposition between Utopia (where the reign of harmony is made possible by a commitment to the "acquisition of knowledge" for social purposes) and the rest of the world (where the the murderously anti-social trajectory of the sciences culminates in the development of nuclear technology). Zarda, like Zizek, maintains that the transformation of these threatening "lords of life" into social boons can be achieved through an act of public will.

However, this "faith-based" solution is undermined by Power Princess' own admission that her people are themselves most likely the products of "genetic experimentation" by the Kree. This begs the question: did they make a Utopia, or were they made Utopians? Did they ever have a choice? Here we find ourselves in territory that Bernard Stiegler explores, with fruitful results, in La technique et le temps:

L'invention de l'homme: sans qui'il faille s'y complaire, l'ambiguïté génitive indique une question qui se dédouble" <<Qui>> ou <<quoi>> invente? <<Qui>> ou <<quoi>> est inventé? L'ambiguité du sujet, et du meme coup l'ambiguïte de l'objet du verbe (invente), ne traduit rien d'autre que l'ambiguïté du sens meme de ce verbe... Le rapport liant le <<qui>> et le <<quoi>> est l'invention. Apparemment, le <<qui>> et le <<quoi>> se nomment respectivement: l'homme, la technique. Pourtant, l'ambiguïté génitive impose au moins que l'on se demande: et si le qui etait la technique? et si le quoi etait l'homme? Ou bien faut-il s'acheminer en deça ou au-dela de toute différence entre un qui et un quoi? (145)

{{{my translation: "man's invention"--the very juxtaposition of these words poses a question--who or what invents? what or who is invented? The difficulty in determining the subject and the object of this verb ("to invent") indicates the essential instability of the meaning of the verb itself. The relationship between "who" and "what" is "invention". The "who" and the "what" are inseparable, and constitutive of each other's respective meaning--"man", "technology" (or applied knowledge). Given this ambiguity, we can be forgiven for wondering: could the "who" be technology? And could man be the "what"? Or is this inverse distinction just as spurious--and just as impossible--as the more usual formulation of the subject and the object of "invention"?}}}}}

Is our understanding of what is humanly--and socially--possible so intimately bound up (in what Stiegler establishes as a "strange relationship") with technics that it becomes impossible to take the Zizekian hope seriously? Can the engine of society take an unprecedented course without first being refitted with the proper human parts? And if not--where does the impetus for change come from? From humans? Or from technology itself? There may not be any answers to these last questions--certainly, there are none in Squadron Supreme, although they are constantly in play.

The debate leading up to the referendum on Power Princess' call for the implementation of Utopia centers precisely upon the question of the imperative to act. Earlier in the issue, during a rescue mission, Tom Thumb--in many ways the key member of the team, and the focal point of the book--remarks that "anythin' broken can be fixed" (SS #1, 9). His flight-companions, Golden Archer and Lady Lark, embellish upon the thought with the following exchange:

Archer: Says you Thumb!

Lark: Tom Thumb's right. Things can be fixed, given time.

Archer: But does America have that kind of time, Lark? (SS #1, 9)

In a very real sense, this is "the Decision" that the Squadron must make. Is the world running out of time? Or is this time of crisis a chaotic welter of possibilities whose liminal properties ought to be husbanded, rather than foreclosed upon? If it is the former, then clearly any program is better than none at all. However, if it is the latter, then the only goal that makes sense is the preservation of instability!

In the realm of superhero comics, the classic example of a team dedicated to the second proposition is Grant Morrison's Doom Patrol, whose adventures in deconstruction invariably present them with the challenge of disabling aggressive epistemes and narrative structures. Their first mission is an assault upon the encroaching totality of Orqwith (Doom Patrol #19-22), a variation upon Borges' Tlön, a figure of the perfect work of art qua work of art (or plan for social organization), which accounts for everything, stops time, and devours our communal reality in the process. According to Borges:

Contact with Tlön, the habit of Tlön, has disintegrated this world. Spellbound by Tlön's rigor, humanity has forgotten, and continues to forget, that it is the rigor of chess masters, not of angels. Already Tlön's (conjectural) primitive language has filtered into our schools; already the teaching of Tlön's harmonious history (filled with moving episodes) has obliterated the history that governed my own childhood; already a fictitious past has supplanted in men's memories that other past, of which we now know nothing certain--not even that it is false (Borges, 287)

The Squadron Supreme appear to choose against the Doom Patrol scenario by electing, without quite realizing it, to summon their own Tlön into existence. Their decision does most certainly pass through the realm of "undecidability"--after all, the random, telluric defense of neighborhood and planet against evil genius and space alien is the stock-in-trade of the American superhero--but, as Hyperion notes: "this curbing of power policy hasn't worked" (SS #1, 20). The "Utopia Plan" represents an unprecedented departure for the group, which had hitherto always made it their policy to interfere in favor of the weaker term in asymmetrical power relationships between third parties. There is a certain logical continuity in this trajectory: the team's evolution is analogous to the career of a "trust-buster" who decides that the only way to prosecute his/her mission is to deploy massive centralized power against her/his targets--becoming, in effect, an "anti-trust monopoly".

Perhaps the most radical proposal to emerge from the meeting--and arguably the surest proof that we are indeed passing through "undecidability" in this scene--is Nighthawk's implication that the Squadron ought to disband, which is couched in the observation: "the fate of the world--to be decided by a vote among the power elite. To think that it would come to this"(22). Is this a classic liberal attempt to evade the responsibilities of sovereignty, or is it a call for the use of the sovereign's prerogative against itself? In view of the way Nighthawk's subsequent actions contrast with Amphibian's later abdication of responsibility (after committing a face-saving--but ineffective--act of sabotage, he retreats to an undersea realm populated by dolphins who "don't understand" the affairs of the surface world), it seems clear that the ex-president does aspire to Decide, in a Schmittian sense. Upon decamping, he declares, simply: "you folks do as must do...and so will I" (SS #1, 23). This is an extremely important moment in the text, for if sovereignty is indivisible, and this series will eventually reveal itself to be the record of a struggle within the group-mind of the sovereign over precisely this question of implementation, then it could be argued that the Squadron Supreme never do Decide, because Squadron Supreme itself fails to emerge from the morass of the "Undecidable".

Bearing this interpretation in mind, it is important to note that the surface triumphalism with which the first issue of the series concludes is haunted both by the rebel Nighthawk's mere presence at the press conference (not to mention his inability to carry out his resolution to assassinate Hyperion) and the significant fact that, when the Squadron place their "Utopia Plan" into effect, it is revealed as a one-year plan (not coincidentally, the exact same duration as this limited comic book series). The very finitude of the measure undermines its total aspirations to such an extent that it begins to seem quite provisional indeed--more like a thought-experiment than a decisive act. Meanwhile, Nighthawk, with allusions to Lincoln filling the thought balloons above his head, is poised to play the role of John Wilkes Booth, vis-a-vis Hyperion.

Nighthawk's relationship to his nineteenth century predecessor is crucial to an understanding of this scene. He memorializes Lincoln as "The Great Emancipator"; but Lincoln was also the great mobilizer, and the main beneficiary of the massive expansion of state power which occurred during the course of the Civil War. Perhaps the rebel's failure to pull the trigger (like the Squadron's failure to arrogate power to themselves for an indefinite period) signifies not a "lack of willpower", but a desire to continue thinking through the ambiguities of this "Presidential différance" (the imperialist emancipator, who "forces the people to be free"), in dialogue with the other members of the sovereign Squadron, of which he remains a part, in spite of himself. In between the key scenes of the secret vote and the public decree, Hyperion remarks that "Kyle Richmond is an honorable man, his disagreements with us do not stem from vanity" (SS #1, 23), which does not explain why, if the debate is indeed concluded, he does nothing to prevent Nighthawk from "doing what he must". It suggests, rather, that the conversation is just getting started, and that, moreover, it will be prosecuted, throughout the remaining eleven issues of the series, according to the conventions of a discourse proper to superhero comics--that is to say, in a "sign language" of hyperkinetic strife, punctuated by bombastic oaths.

****************

I guess that's more than enough for now hunh? In your comments, you might want to focus on Power Princess' big "utopia speech", or Nighthawk's references to Lincoln...

also--here's a link to a site that does a good job of summing up the Hobbesian doctrine of sovereignty.

see you on Tuesday!

Dave

posted by goodkingwenceslaus, February 20, 2005 02:58 :: link::

comments (28)

Saturday, February 12, 2005

Watchmen #7-12:
Lost and Founding

Okay--here's a cavalcade of links! Take your pick. Or collect'em all!

1. Doug Atkinson's Annotated Watchmen site--invaluable!

2. Eve Tushnet's fine essay on the book. Eve's motto is: "conservatism reborn in twisted sisterhood". She is a fascinating personality.

some excerpts:

With Great Power... comes the temptation to take responsibility for others. Moore reverses the classic superhero shtik--power is thrust upon you and so you have to save everyone. Instead, he says, power is seized by those whose darker motives push them to save others because they can't do jack for themselves. The offices of the ex-superheroes are creepy-pathetic--those of both Hollis Mason ("Obsolete Models a Specialty") and Adrian Veidt (surrounded by posters and toy versions of himself). Our first visit to Hollis's shop is only a couple panels before the first shot of the "Nostalgia" ad (although we don't see the tagline then). In our first sight of the Nite Owl costume, it's erect and bigger than Dan is. This has been perhaps the most obvious aspect of Watchmen and so I'm not entirely sure what more I can say about it. Veidt's attempt to manipulate the world is wrong; but so too is Dan and Laurie's abdication of responsibility. They could have told everyone about the plot, and they don't. It's understandable, but hardly admirable.

Watchmen features two unsuccessful replacement gods: Ozymandias and Dr. Manhattan. But what is it they were supposed to do? Were they supposed to prevent suffering? That's precisely what they tried to do, with the necessarily imperfect knowledge and understanding that even wildly intelligent or semi-transtemporal created beings are heir to. In order to fix everything, to remove conflict and suffering, the replacement gods mistrust and destroy ordinary humans. I don't think that this can be pushed too hard, but I'll note here the parallel with a fairly basic Christian response to the problem of evil--to force us to love is to remove our ability to love; to remove our capacity for evil is to make us robots, not humans, and ultimately to destroy us for our own good.

Ordinary People..." Just as Rorschach's justice-without-mercy role is taken on due to female pain, so the only instances of mercy in the comic are undertaken by women. Sally Jupiter forgives the Comedian; then Laurie Juspeczyk forgives her mother; and Malcolm's wife forgives him. I'm pretty sure these are the only examples of explicit forgiveness shown in the comic. I think that's why it ends, in a seemingly too-easy way, with the Silk Spectre. Women seem marginal to the world of Watchmen (even Laurie), but they're central to its theme--which is, I hope, an intentional statement about what is overlooked by fantasies of universal justice. Women, who have so often been "wounded in the house of a friend"--suffering intimate violence--might be more able to articulate or represent the terrible price of either justice without mercy or mercy without justice than a male character would be.

3. Jim Henley's second symphony.

Excerpt:

Some things worth noting about the decisions heroes make in the aftermath of Veidt's massacre - they are decisions made in the aftermath of Veidt's massacre. The deaths are a fait accompli, as Laurie herself notes. Dreiberg and Juspeczek are not deciding whether to approve the plan itself, but what is the best course of action now that it's happened, and now that early indications are that it is achieving its goals.

Rorscach demands that Dr. Manhattan kill him. The fact that I can see all kinds of reasons why he would do this - from simple rage and death wish to himself not wanting to succeed in exposing Veidt's plan, despite his sense of duty to do so - speaks well of the work.

4. Two from John Jakala--one of which is a direct response to Eve's piece, while the other was a major inspiration for it!
An except from the latter:

I thought the pirate comic was pretty good, even taken in its own right. Not to say that it's great literature, but it certainly works as a moralistic tale in the vein of old EC horror comics or Twilight Zone episodes.

I also think the pirate comic contributes to the larger narrative. First, as Steven said, it answers the question of what comics might be popular if superheroes really existed. Second, I believe the pirate comic adds a bit of complexity to the main storyline. As I read it, the survivor in the pirate comic is meant as a rough parallel for Veidt: Someone who is so wrapped up in his fear of some future horror that he kills his fellow man in order to save him. As Veidt says to Manhattan at the end, he dreams of himself as that survivor, swimming out to meet the pirate ship. Although Veidt protests that he makes himself feel every death, Veidt has set himself off from humanity by putting himself above (outside) human morality.

Another interesting complexity that the pirate comic adds, in my opinion, is the suggestion that Veidt's slaughter of millions was unnecessary. For if the parallel holds, Veidt's plan to save humanity was just as superfluous as the survivor's plan to "save" his town. In both cases, the threats seemed inescapable. But in the pirate comic, the threat never came to pass. Perhaps the war between the U.S. and USSR, which seemed so inevitable, would never have happened even if Veidt had not intervened.

There's a lot more on John's mind, but I particularly like what he does with the pirate comic, and I agree with him 100% percent on the Black Freighter=WW III equation...

5. John also references (and, luckily, quotes liberally from) a critique by the always insightful Steven Berg of Peiratikos fame (you'll be hearing a lot from him when we come to Dark Knight Returns)--but the links to that post lead nowhere, I'm afraid! (also--I lament the loss of Todd Murry's essay--which focused upon the Cold War context--to another case of linkrot...)

6. And then there's Comic Book Politics--where the site's mysterious impressario decided (as an exercise) to read the book as a pure allegory. The comments are useful too!

7. Finally, I offer to you my own contribution to these discussions--which I've collated here.

(oh yes, and, completely off-topic, but fun---anyone notice how closely Rorschach resembles Groucho Marx on the fourth panel of page sixteen in chapter 10?)

Okay--see you on Tuesday!

Dave

posted by goodkingwenceslaus, February 12, 2005 22:03 :: link::

comments (34)

Sunday, February 06, 2005

Watchmen #4-6:
Failing the Rorschach Test

For Tuesday, I expect that our discussion will focus on the "origins" of Dr. Manhattan and Rorschach (+ whatever else you feel like bringing up!) ...

For our first trick, here's Jim Henley on the "literature of ethics" (and where Watchmen fits--or fails to fit--into that tradition):

I Watches the Watchmen -

I am indeed rereading Watchmen. Of course, the first thing that jumps out on re-reading is the very first page, where Rorschach, in his journal, avows that, when the time comes, and degraded New York begs him to save them, he will say, "No." And of course the time comes and they don't know to beg and he does try.

What strikes me about the style of the book: quite a number of the transitions walk right up to the edge of facile, the sequential-art equivalent of what screenwriters call "on-the-nose" dialogue. This is the esthetic downside of the preoccupation with puns and twinning that Eve identified.

What strikes me about the substance: Here's how you solve "the problem of the superhero story in the post-Watchmen era" - don't worry about it so much. I've reread five issues so far and I'm more convinced than ever: Watchmen is not a story about "what superheroes would really be like." It's a story about Cold War America. The "masks" are the way they are because that approach lets Moore dramatize his anxieties about US politics and culture. Hey, don't believe me. Believe Alan Moore. Here's the actual text of his "bad mood of fifteen years ago" remark:

The apocalyptic bleakness of comics over the past 15 years sometimes seems odd to me, because it's like that was a bad mood that I was in 15 years ago. It was the 1980s, we'd got this insane right-wing voter fear running the country, and I was in a bad mood, politically and socially and in most other ways. So that tended to reflect in my work. But it was a genuine bad mood, and it was mine

No wonder he has spent so much post-Watchmen time developing more benign takes on the genre - he wasn't trying to "deconstruct superheroes" in the first place.

Watchmen is barely the first word in thinking seriously about superheroes. For one thing, there's only one "superhero" in it, meaning, only one character with superhuman powers. Everyone else is a masked vigilante with no more powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men than you or I have. "Hollis Mason" tells us in his memoir that you had to be pretty off the wall to dress up in a costume and fight crime, which is surely true for us regular folks. But is it as true for someone who can fly, or fire beams from their hands? Watchmen won't tell us. It doesn't care. The only guy who can fly and shoot beams from his hands wears no mask at all.

As Moore suggests, the problem is less what's left of the superhero story after Watchmen than too many creators "still working out the ramifications of me being a bit grumpy 15 years ago."

As a way forward, I suggest reading Tagore Smith's recent item about volunteer firemen. Watchmen can't explain why volunteer firemen do what they do. (It's not trying to.) Neither can Tagore, but he'd sure like to know:
What I'd like to do is ask a few firemen: what could possibly make them think that it was worthwhile to risk their own lives to save others. This isn't a question of bravery, per se- I have run into an inferno to find my own cats (I have been in more than one fire). What I want to know is what is it that makes you run into a fire, if you don't even know one individual that might be in there. It takes no bravery to save what you love. It takes a lot of bravery to save what you don't personally care about, if that salvation comes at risk of your life.
I'd like to say more about the imnplications of that idea - but in the end I am really afraid of them. Maybe some other time.

The entire item contains Tagore's account (pieced together from sources) of how he was thrown out of a burning building as an infant and - I ruin the ending for you - caught. Very much worth your time.

Actually, Tagore is asking about firemen in general. I'm specifying volunteer firemen because doing so eliminates one obvious motive: Hey, it's a living. And of course the core question, "what could possibly make them think that it was worthwhile to risk their own lives to save others," can be spun and flipped in a number of important ways. From Why do firemen do what they do? to Why don't the rest of us do what they do? to Why shouldn't the rest of us do what they do? and even What right do we have not to do what they do? To me, superheroes become an interesting way of addressing these questions. I would argue that, if science fiction is the literature of ideas, the superhero story is the literature of ethics. Or say, rather, it should be. As "literature" need not mean frowny-faced drudgery I would even say the formulation holds for kids' superhero books.

The core question of the superhero story might be phrased as What do we owe other people? The problem is that comics have typically answered the question before they've barely asked it: "With great power must come great responsibility!" Really? Are you sure about that? And how much is "great," anyway? What part of my life can I keep back for myself?

You may have noticed that these questions are salient whether you wear tights or not. They apply to you. Because most of us, certainly most of us in the developed world, have more power, wealth or wherewithal than somebody. Certainly almost everybody reading this blog item could, in principle, quit their present jobs and work pro bono for an African AIDS clinic while subsisting on donated food, or maintain a couple of homeless people instead of taking vacation, or - join the Volunteer Fire Department. Depending on your politics, you may believe that people like yourself or people like Bill Gates really do owe some non-trivial portion of time, wealth, influence or attention to - something or someone. The poor, the ill, the frightened, alienated, the "doomed, damned and despised" as Jesse Jackson once put it.

And having had the thought, you've got more problems. Which will it be, first of all - the poor, the ill or the frightened? Just how should you help them? And when, if ever, do you get off-duty?

Fantasy provides external analogs of internal conflicts, and the subtype of fantasy about superheros is a way of externalizing questions of duty, community and self. How should the powerful behave? (Most Americans are, in global-historical terms, "the powerful" in one aspect or another.) And there is still, almost twenty years after Watchmen, a global political dimension to this. Because the question of what responsibilities impinge on the powerful has everything to do with the position of "hyperpower America" in the present world situation. There are bad moods and good moods yet to have with masked men and women.

(now this is me)

With the character of Dr. Manhattan, Alan Moore pushed superheroic transcendence beyond even space and time (I wonder if David Lynch was thinking of Watchmen when he created the scene in Lost Highway in which Robert Blake hands Bill Pullman the cell phone and a voice at the other end of the line--also Blake's--says "I'm at your house"... probably not--but you never know!) Many reviewers have preceded me in noting the complex strategy of doubling and differentiation in this work, so I won't do any more of that--but I do want to establish that if Manhattan is the superhero concept blown up to impossible dimensions (and, unlike the Comedian, Manhattan is a true nihilist through most of this story, in that he places no more value on one thing than another. We are told that his affection for Laurie constitutes his only tether to this plane--although he actually exists in all times, in all places, and "the work" that he talks about doing in the present never seems to amount to anything, so it's debatable how "tethered" he actually is... One thing is certain, however--every once in a while, he remembers how miraculous it can be for someone else to buy you a beer..."Someone" can buy themselves a beer, but it's nothing without that "else". And you'd better believe in that--or else...), Rorschach is his opposite number: the moral imagination boiled down to its' fetid essence.

In the past few months, I've hammered away at the idea that superheroes are liberated from "power relationships"--but I never wished to imply that they lose their ability to relate as a consequence! Quite the reverse, in fact. According to Foucault--all relationships are power relationships. For me, the very term is an oxymoron. A moral relationship presupposes equality. Power not only abhors a vacuum, it creates one... Take Peter Parker, for instance. When we first meet him he's an ostracized nerd--a nonentity. In more realistic fiction, this type of character only has two options open to him: either he continues to endure social oppression, or he becomes a "somebody" by "standing up for himself", thus altering the power dynamic in his community. In the actual event--he does neither, thanks to the spider bite. Throughout Ditko's run, at least, Parker remains the same bookish nerd he's always been. And yet, his newfound indifference to the power structure that so determined his life before his "conversion experience" enables him to develop actual relationships with other characters... His "adventures in morality", as Spider-Man, ground him.

But what if that adventure consumed his entire life? Wouldn't that "grounding" then become something akin to a burial? Parker's activities as Spider-Man enable him to lead a more genuine life--but those activities themselves are most emphatically not "life". Web-swinging is more like meditation, or an exorcism--it's not Peter's "true self" unleashed. And if he got trapped in that condition, he wouldn't be a "free spirit", he'd be more like a wrathful ghost. He'd be like Rorschach, in fact.

When Walter Kovacs gives up his dual identity, he upsets a delicate balance. No longer grounded, he goes underground--and his capacity to relate to the world rots away. Rorschach's strange destiny is to become the undead embodiment of his own moral law. He is absolutely immune to all power relationships. Even when he is locked up in the ultimate Foucaultian structure--a modern penitentiary--he is not defined by it. He deftly manipulates the prying psychiatrist and he stands off an army of thugs--reacting mechanically to each situation, as if hovering above it all. And, of course, he is. It all makes perfect sense--at a certain point, Kovacs the man became indistinguishable from his moral judgements of the world.

There's a lot more out there, believe me--but most of it is too thoroughly entwined with statements that give away the ending. We'll get to it. All in good time... At any rate, there should be more than enough here to get the comments flowing!

See you in class!

Dave

posted by goodkingwenceslaus, February 06, 2005 10:51 :: link::

comments (25)

Saturday, January 15, 2005

Aversive Linking

* First off--as you begin thinking about your introductory papers, here's a very handy guide to MLA citation-style.

* Here's the ultimate Emersonian web-resource...

* Here's Plato's "Myth of the Cave"

* Here's a transcript of Anne Hutchinson's trial

* Here's Jonathan Edwards' Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God

* If you're looking for the syllabus, it's here

* If you're interested in my ravings about Kant, Coleridge, the Sublime and the relationship of these thinkers and ideas to Emerson's project (particularly the "transparent eyeball"), here's a little piece that I wrote on the subject, a while back (I realize that the terminology is a little obscure--and if you begin to feel that the essay is doing you more harm than good, please don't feel obligated to read on! I can answer any questions you might have in far more comprehensible terms than I am using here!):

Irrational Symbolism and the Kantian Sublime

The cluster of charged sentences surrounding the image of the “transparent eyeball” in Nature dramatize the tensions generated by Coleridge’s blurring of the boundary between the faculties of Reason and the Imagination. Like most New Englanders of his era, Emerson knew Kant primarily through the Biographia Literaria and the Aids to Reflection. These texts were anything but faithful translations from the original German, and the blueprint of a new monism lurked within Coleridge’s musings upon Kant’s emphatically dualistic schema. However, in Emerson’s seminal book, and in his work as a whole, a sense of the inescapability of subjectivity consistently undercuts the tendency toward mysticism.

It was perhaps inevitable that Coleridge would transform the sober Königsberger’s Practical Reason into a faculty capable of grasping eternal truths through poetic insight. In The Critique of Practical Reason, Kant had written:

. . . there is a knowledge of God indeed, but only for practical purposes, and, if we attempt to extend it to a theoretical knowledge, we find an understanding that has intuitions, not thoughts, a will that is directed to objects on the existence of which its satisfaction does not in the least depend ... Now these are all attributes of which we can form no conception that would help to the knowledge of the object... (Kant, 345).

In the lexicon of critical philosophy, the imagination is a faculty of sense which crumbles in the face of the sublime, paving the way to the “pleasing” knowledge that “every standard of sensibility [falls] short of the ideas of reason”. In Coleridge, by contrast, we find imagination re-christened as the “Imagination”, and its scope considerably enlarged—to the point where it is capable of forming “all into one graceful and intelligent whole”.

Even in Coleridge, for the most part, access to the noumenal realm (through the strangely interfused faculties of Reason and Imagination) is restricted to intuitions, but now it appears that these intuitions are susceptible of incarnation within the creations of the poet. Thus, he can triumphantly declare: “it has pleased Providence, that the divine truths of religion should have been revealed to us in the form of poetry” . More importantly, at the conclusion of Aids To Reflection (which is the work Emerson knew best), Coleridge goes completely off the Kantian rails, arguing that although the mystic mistakenly attaches to “anomalies of his individual temperament the character of reality . . .”, the poet “will know, that the delightful dream, which the [mystic] tells, is a dream of truth”.

In his discussion of mysticism, Coleridge introduces the figure of Jacob Behmen as an example of a “fanatic” who tried to force the vision vouchsafed him down the throats of his neighbors. The very same Behman appears in Emerson’s “The Poet”, in a similar capacity—as a fetishist of “tedious village symbols” rather than a prophet of “universal signs”; but in the subtle shift of emphasis, we see Emerson working to refine the Coleridgean formulation of mysticism. The latter is concerned primarily with the “divine truth” which even the misguided may catch a glimpse of; the former zeroes in on the means of apprehending (or perhaps merely indicating) the noumenal—the symbol.

Emerson’s oeuvre manifests various and conflicting attitudes toward the possibility of a perfect correspondence between the subject and the cosmos: from the arch-pantheism of “Brahma” to the postlapsarian gloom of “Experience”. However, on the whole, he privileges the transportive power of language over the terminus of the noumenal (or the “Over-Soul”). There is no counterpart in Emerson to Coleridge’s “divine truth” (which is basically revealed Christianity), and certainly there is nothing like Kant’s categorical imperative. In “Self-Reliance”, he urges the reader to “detect that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within”, but there is rarely any indication, in Emerson, of what the light might disclose. The Emersonian project is an attempt to capture that gleam in words, without reference to what may lurk beyond it. Emerson’s commitment to the pure symbol manifests itself most startlingly in the famous “transparent eyeball” passage. It is a linguistic pressure cooker, which contains the wildest extremes of pantheism and solipsism. Clearly, it is impossible to “be nothing” whilst “seeing all”. To complicate matters, the very idea of “seeing all” is unfathomable—to “see” is the most subjective, fragmented operation a being can perform; in order for seeing to take place, some exterior object must be present to be seen. Furthermore, one cannot see oneself (at least, not the organ that does the seeing). Clearly, Emerson has anticipated these objections by making the all-seeing eyeball a transparent one, but this apparent solution only makes matters worse, for, in effect, this would make the eyeball blind to itself. Is it possible that this is how Emerson wishes us to read the passage--that the subject must cultivate a blind spot in order to feel the “currents of the universal being” circulating through itself?

More likely, the passage is groping toward a dramatization of the contradictions inherent in the experience of the Kantian sublime, as interpreted by Coleridge. When confronted by the abyss of “infinite space” (an instance of the mathematical sublime), Emerson is “glad to the brink of fear”, and his imagination expends itself in the creation of a symbol without a referent, protesting all the while that it is gaining a Coleridgean glimpse of the Divine. The transparent eyeball is an opaque symbol, a wall of words, performing analogously to Kant’s Reason, which papers over the sublime by positing a film of numinous Ideas.

* well, that's enough for now, I would say!

(but I'll be adding pertinent links to the song and film entries throughout the weekend)

Happy MLK day everyone!

Dave

posted by goodkingwenceslaus, January 15, 2005 09:58 :: link::

comments

Sunday, January 09, 2005

WRAC 130: American Radical Thought

Section 11: Tuesdays & Thursdays 12:40pm to 2:30pm

Room: Bessey-312

Instructor: David Fiore

Office Number: Bessey-301

Office Hours: Tuesdays 3pm to 5pm (or by appointment)

Course Description:

The thespian's mantra, "acting is reacting", holds just as true in the political and philosophical arenas as it does upon the literal stage. This is an indispensable insight for students of American radicals to keep in mind--i.e. what are these individuals reacting to? Is it the "power structure" (often referred to as the "military industrial complex")? The complacency of an electorate which votes for the status quo every 4 years, regardless of which party they support? Or some combination of the two? Are these things even separable? At the heart of this question lies a radical chiasmus that marks the thinking of any proponent of a better world: in order to change the social structure, it is necessary to change the people; and yet, it isn't possible to change the people without changing the social structure.

In this course, we will examine a number of figures, in a variety of texts, dealing with precisely this problem, in its most extreme form--and take up their cross ourselves. There is very little likelihood that we will emerge from the ordeal with any definite answers. However, it is my hope that our gain in mutual understanding will make up, at least in part, for this almost certain disappointment. You will be responsible for generating a great deal of our reading material, and, in a very real sense, your most important research this semester will be the investigation of each others' thought. This is ideal, because our primary objective in this course will be to develop your writing skills--and writing is reacting.

Texts:

Ralph Waldo Emerson -- Complete Writings

Mark Waid & Alex Ross -- Kingdom Come

Mark Gruenwald, Bob Hall, Paul Ryan, John Buscema, et al.-- Squadron Supreme

Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons -- Watchmen

Frank Miller -- The Dark Knight Returns

Jaime Hernandez -- Locas

Grant Morrison, Chas Truog, Tom Grumett, Paris Cullins, et al. -- Animal Man

An assortment of on-line readings (including your own writings!)-- see http://www.wrac.motime.com

Our course soundtrack (which I will distribute on the first day of class):

1. "Rebel Girl" -- Bikini Kill & Joan Jett

2. "Terror Mad Visionary" -- New Kingdom

3. "Freakathon" -- Red Aunts

4. "Pure Massacre" -- Silverchair

5. "Hate the Christian Right" -- Team Dresch

6. "Killing in the Name" -- Rage Against the Machine

7. "Call the Doctor" -- Sleater-Kinney

8. "Have You Ever" -- Offspring

9. "The Masses Are Asses" -- L7

10. "By the Time I Get to Arizona" -- Public Enemy

11. "DemiRep" -- Bikini Kill & Joan Jett

12. "Shut 'em Down" -- Public Enemy

13. "Co Pilot" -- New Kingdom

14. "Spawn Again" -- Silverchair

15. "Screwing Yer Courage" -- Team Dresch

16. "I Like Fucking" -- Bikini Kill

17. "LAPD" -- Offspring

18. "Down Rodeo" -- Rage Against the Machin e

19. "TGIF" -- Le Tigre

20. "Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos" -- Public Enemy

21. "Paradise Don't Come Cheap" -- New Kingdom

22. "Fight the Power" -- Public Enemy

Films:

Spike Lee -- Bamboozled

Frank Capra -- Meet John Doe

Frank Borzage -- Strange Cargo

Kimberly Peirce -- Boys Don't Cry

David Lynch -- Mulholland Dr.

David Fincher -- Fight Club

Plagiarism Disclaimer:

If I discover that you have used another person's material without citing it, I will give you a zero for the assignment. No explanations will be accepted.

Assignments/Grading:

(I will hand out more specific instructions regarding each of these assignments in class as the semester progresses.)

1. A short introductory piece--what is your definition of "radicalism"? What does a radical commitment entail? (5% of grade)

2. "Policing the World": discuss the ways in which Kingdom Come, Squadron Supreme and Watchmen address the connected problems of radical change/maintenance of order, with reference to Emerson, Von Clausewitz, Thomas Hobbes, and the opinions of your peers--1500 words (15% of grade)

3. Music Critique: discuss one or more of the songs/bands on the sountrack, with reference to the opinions of your peers and the links I will provide -- 1000 words (10% of grade)

4. Film Critique: discuss one of our films, with reference to the opinions of your peers and the links I will provide-1000 words (10% of grade)

5. Long paper on one of our texts. Must include references to peer discussions and at least three outside sources. The choice of focus is up to you (to be decided upon in consultation with me) -2000 words (30% of grade)

6. Written Participation (20% of grade)--This course will not function unless you contribute your opinions to our discussion forum! The grade will be assessed on the following basis: a maximum of 13 points for each "letter" posted to our weekly letters page (of course you are welcome to post more than once a week!), 4 points for posts to film discussion lists (4 different films--although, again, follow-up posts are welcome and encouraged!), 3 points for posts to three separate song discussion lists. Posts must be at least 100 words in length and demonstrate some evidence of thought in action, in order to receive credit.

7. Class Participation (10% of grade)--to be assessed based upon your participation in general class discussions.

"Typical Class":

(excepting the first 4 sessions and classes devoted to film screenings)

12:40-1:05 Small group discussions, based upon the comments submitted to class forum--which I will print up and distribute (Tues); or progress on upcoming assignments--i.e. peer editing (Thurs)

1:05-1:30 I will deliver an interpretation of the day's assigned reading, based upon references to specific moments in the text and insights gleaned from the larger philosophical, political, and aesthetic context.

1:30-1:40 Break

1:40-2:30 Class discussion, which will grow, initially, out of your comments upon/quarrels with my interpretation/choice of contextual frame, and hopefully spread into a more general, non-Fiore-centric debate!

Due Dates:

I will not accept any papers after the specified due dates.

Attendance Policy:

I will be taking attendance. You have a right to miss 3 classes-any additional absences will result in the loss of 0.25 per absence off of your final grade. (i.e.: a student who earns a 3.5, but misses 5 classes, will receive a 3.0).

Course Schedule:

Jan 11th: Introductory lecture; formation of groups

Jan 13th: Emerson, Nature

Jan 18th: peer-edit assignment #1; Emerson "Self-Reliance", "History"

Jan 20th: Emerson "Circles", "Experience"; Assignment #1 due

(weekly discussion forum postings begin--due before 11am, each Tuesday)

Jan 25th: Kingdom Come and the Myth of the Hero

Jan 27th: movie screening: Meet John Doe

Feb 1st: Squadron Supreme #1-3

Feb 3rd: movie screening: Strange Cargo

Feb 8th: Squadron Supreme #4-9

Feb 10th: Squadron Supreme #10-12; discuss assignment #2 in groups

Feb 15th: Watchmen #1-3

Feb 17th: movie screening: Bamboozled

Feb 22nd: Watchmen # 4-6

Feb 24th: Watchmen # 7-9; discuss assignment #2 in groups

March 1st: Watchmen #10-12

March 3rd: movie screening: Fight Club; assignment #2 due

****Spring Break*****

March 15th: Dark Knight Returns #1-2

March 17th: Dark Knight Returns #3-4; discuss assignment #3 in groups

March 22nd: Locas pages 7-245; assignment #3 due

March 24th: movie screening: Boys Don't Cry

March 29th: Locas pages 246-542

March 31st: movie screening: Mulholland Dr.

April 5th: Locas pages 543-704

April 7th: Animal Man #1-4; discuss assignment #4

April 12th: Animal Man #5

April 14th: Animal Man #6-11, including Secret Origins #39; assignment #4 due

April 19th: Animal Man #12-17

April 21st: Animal Man #18-22; discuss assignment #5 in groups

April 26th: Animal Man #23-26

April 28th: full class peer-editing and general discussion of assignment #5

May 5th : class evaluations; assignment #5 due (this is our exam period)

posted by goodkingwenceslaus, January 09, 2005 23:57 :: link::

comments (3)

Boys Don't Cry -- Kimberly Peirce

Here's a good review of the film.

a sample:

As Brandon, Hilary Swank gives a performance that's a continual revelation. With his cropped, farmer-boy haircut and a padded tube sock stuffed down his jeans, Swank's Brandon passes for a man easily enough. In preparation for the role, Swank spent time in public dressed as a man, and whether her choices are intuitive or intentional, they work as a marvelous subterfuge for a character who's striving (against the cruelty of nature, unfortunately) for acceptance. Brandon's swagger seems to spring straight from his joints. His full lips are always just a little cracked and chapped (few women willingly allow this to happen). You don't actually ever forget that you're watching a woman -- but that's exactly the point. Brandon conveys his uncertainty and vulnerability in small, subtle ways, in the way he avoids a direct glance, or smiles too broadly and eagerly when he's trying to make friends. Conventionally speaking, those are "womanly" screens often used to hide insecurity; it's heartrending to see Brandon succeed so completely in filling the role of a man -- only to give himself away to us in these tiny, barely perceptible ways.

It's love at first sight when Brandon sees Chloë Sevigny's Lana, and that goes for us, too. Sevigny seems to end up being the heart of just about every movie she appears in (from the abominable "Kids" to the soggy "The Last Days of Disco"), and "Boys Don't Cry" is no exception. With her sleepy lizard eyes and her slow, secret smile, she at first seems a little inscrutable as Lana, a 19-year-old who sleep-works through the night shift in a spinach-packing factory, but who pours every essence of her being into her karaoke singing. Sevigny is the kind of actress who never gives it all away at once. We see her slowly becoming more and more comfortable with Brandon, and simultaneously, we warm up to her too. When the two of them find themselves in her darkened backyard, playing around with a Polaroid camera, we get the first clue that she really, really likes him. She swings away from him, glancing back slyly, her beguiling smile an unspoken invitation.

As an actress, Sevigny's transformative power translates not just to people (we really start loving Brandon when she does) but also to things. Her Lana is a tough, townie girl in beat-up leather, but when she oohs and ahhs over a selection of cheap silver rings at a convenience-store checkout, you don't feel pity for the poor soul because that's all she can afford. You think, "Yes, one of those would look pretty on her." You want every good thing for her character, which makes it all the more wrenching to know that there's trouble ahead. When Brandon dies, "Boys Don't Cry" reaches an emotional intensity that's almost operatic. The saddest thing, though, is seeing Sevigny's Lana crumpled over his corpse -- the way she plays it, you know that when Brandon went, he took a part of her with him, too.

I chose the film because I think it raises some really interesting questions about identity itself--

Sure, you can construe this as a simple plea for tolerance of people who are different from you, but there's a lot more going on here... For one thing, when Brandon calls himself an "asshole"--I take him at his word. A lot of his behaviour can be explained by the societal taboos that he is dealing with--but what about this very desire to be known as a "him"? The one thing that Brandon doesn't do is question the idea of gender roles themselves. Look at how happy he is, early in the film, when he gets into a bar brawl. A little later, he participates in the "bumper surfing" event--because "that's what guys do around here."

I know that you can't just dismiss an identity crisis... If I had walked into that town and declared that identity itself is a lie, I really doubt that it would have eased Brandon's mind any...and yet, the film does some of my work for me. Again, early on, Brandon asserts, rather stridently, "I'm not a dyke" (after her cousin has urged him to make this admission). And this, from my point of view, gets to the core of the problem with the way that sexuality is perceived in this society--i.e. our terms stress roles, rather than desire itself. A "dyke" is a woman that desires women. A "straight" person desires someone of the "opposite sex". We hear these words and we immediately think of the wrong thing. They force us to think of individuals, rather than the lack that makes individuality impossible.

The way I see it, desire (in the largest possible sense of the word--I'm not just talking about sex here!) is the only thing that's real. Incompleteness, alienation, "fallenness", etc. Every philosophy and religion tries to account for this fact of the human condition--and, of course, the explanatory diagnosis always contains the antidote (the venom and anti-venom are one and the same)... I'm not here to tell you whether you should or shouldn't accept any of these formulae for mental health--but, speaking for myself, I don't want to think about the causes of the disease of subjectivity, because I don't want an otherworldly "cure"... I want action now. And so I focus (as much as possible) upon the thing we try so hard to ignore--i.e. that we are desire, pure and simple, and that we can never be satisfied. The things that we want are so arbitrary...the result of infinitely complex programming...who cares why we want them? I'm more interested in thinking about what our desires drive us to do. Look at Brandon--he's so caught up in playing the role of a "guy" that he actually has to forego full participation in a sexual relationship! (and in doing so, he robs his partners of this possibility as well--this is why I agree that he has been acting like an asshole) And this is what Lana is getting at when she demands the right to reciprocate his caresses. The real tragedy of this story isn't that "society won't let Brandon just be a guy"--it's that Brandon and Lana's exploration of the ways in which love transcends gender roles is cut short.

posted by goodkingwenceslaus, January 09, 2005 23:55 :: link::

comments (23)

Fight Club -- David Fincher

I think that you can get a lot of mileage out of thinking about this movie in conjunction with Emerson's lament: "Things are in the saddle, and ride mankind".

What "things" does he mean, exactly? The newfangled gadgets that were becoming more and more a part of American life in the 19th century (and certainly would become even more central to our own lives)? The tools that have always distinguished humans from animals (including language)? Relationships themselves?

You probably remember Tyler Durden's manifesto/mantra:
"You are not the contents of you wallet you are not how much money you have in the bank you are not your fucking khakis...you are the all singing all dancing crap of the world..."

What the hell does that mean? It's easy for human beings to decide what they are not--but notice how evasive the language becomes when the speaker attempts to make some kind of a statement about what we are. Freeing yourself from thralldom to the Ikea catalogue is one thing (and I quite approve), but once you've done that, does it follow that you ought to "just let go" of every single thing you ever cared about--including people? For Tyler Durden, the answer is, manifestly, yes. And if you get lonely, just make up a friend--and then punch them in the ear.

The "freedom" that this dual-protagonist embraces is indistinguishable from death. He is not free to build an original relationship with the universe. He is merely free to court his own destruction--24 hours a day, if possible...

Is the movie saying that, in order to care about other people at all, you have to kill off the most vital (because most willing to die!) part of yourself?

How does this passage from Emerson's "Experience" relate to the film:
"Nothing is left us now but death. We look to that with a grim satisfaction, saying, there at least is reality that will not dodge us."

If you go questing too enthusiastically after "life" and "the self"--is there any doubt that you will soon find yourself longing for catastrophe?

discuss!

Dave

posted by goodkingwenceslaus, January 09, 2005 23:48 :: link::

comments (29)

Bamboozled -- Spike Lee

Andrew O'Hehir's piece on the film at Salon.com is really interesting!

Here's a small sample:

The story of Delacroix, an uptight buppie with a Harvard coffee mug and a dubious Francophone accent who creates a nightmarish blackface minstrel show for his fictional TV network, lies in the tension between those two potential epigraphs (or epitaphs, as the case may be). Anyone who thinks Lee is a dogmatic black racist won't be convinced by anything I have to say, and may as well turn off the computer and go back to the Wall Street Journal right now. Others will find "Bamboozled" to be a fascinating, enigmatic and, yes, shocking film, a near masterpiece ambiguously balanced between brilliance and incoherence.

On one hand, it's a furious protest against the persistent media stereotyping of blacks (or "Negroes," as the persnickety Delacroix always says) that has existed throughout American history. But Lee also suggests that blacks have become conscious and unconscious collaborators in the perpetuation of these stereotypes and must bear some responsibility for it. Delacroix's "New Millennium Minstrel Show" is sponsored by a malt liquor called Da Bomb (it comes in a bomb-shaped bottle with fins), whose commercial features a posse of writhing rappers urging viewers to "get your freak on."

posted by goodkingwenceslaus, January 09, 2005 23:46 :: link::

comments (13)

Mulholland Dr. -- David Lynch

Okay! This is a series of (unedited & hastily written--but passionate) conversations that have taken place in my little circle of net-acquaintances over the past few months...

#1: There's a man... in back of this place... He's the one that's doing it

I concur with the Flak magazine commenters' broad outline of the film, which you can download here if you haven't heard it--they don't say anything staggering, but it's smart and fun to listen to! So Mulholland Drive is the Wizard of Oz in reverse...

Still, there's more to this film than that... Interpreting "Betty's" adventures as "Diane's" "fiction-suit" protection against the rigors we are exposed to by the last half-hour works, there's no question about that, but I don't see why you have to stop there. There's no place to call "home" in this movie.

Seems to me that there's an overwhelming tendency, amongst critics and other analytical folk, to privilege the "sordid" over the "sentimental". But that's nonsense. Both are human constructions. There's nothing more "real" about a strung-out tinseltown casualty than a wide-eyed ingenue sleuth. One of the major themes of Darkling I Listen (and I'm trying it again--in something called Chimera Lucida) is the connection between romantic comedy and film noir--the fact that these two widely disparate genres affect me in very similar ways...

So why are we so sure that Diane's story is the "base" and Betty's is just "false consciousness"? Isn't it merely because most of us put up more barriers against happiness than despair? Who's to say that Betty/Diane isn't dreaming both parts of the film, after winning that jitterbug contest in Deep River Ontario? (I love that opening sequence by the way: it's like a Rorschach test made out of music, colours, and energized bodies--and isn't that what life is?) Nightmares are dreams too.

From where I sit, the only "real" things in this film are the blue key, the blue box, and the homeless "man" that's "doing it". The key is imagination, the box is experience, and the creature behind "Winkie's" is the director/artist, who strives in vain to adjudicate between these two hopelessly irreconcilable things.

The truth of this film is spread across both of its "parts". "Life" is an uninhabitable planet. Narrative is artificial atmosphere that enables us to walk upon its surface. That's why Grant Morrison's concept of the "fiction suit" (from The Filth) is so apt. But, as Emerson knew, there's no way to bring "it" nearer to ourselves.

I think my jaw dropped permanently during the wordless encounter at the studio between "Betty", Adam, and "pseudo-Camilla", who is auditioning for the role of "love interest". The scene is dominated by crazy Old Hollywood closeups of intense longing and Linda Scott's maudlin/profound bubblegum version of one of my favourite Jerome Kern songs--"I've Told Every Little Star" (why haven't I told you?). But you can't tell the Other how you feel about her/him/it, and you can't even express these feelings very accurately to yourself.

So "opening the box" isn't just "waking from a dream"--it is, literally, death. Whatever's in there cannot even be thought by human beings--despite the fact that getting in there is pretty much all we think about! The way of "optimism" and the way of "despair" intersect at the abyss (although, as Camila notes, the second way is a "short-cut"!), and Lynch's vertiginous transition between narratives at the Utopian moment of expected fulfilment (after Betty and Rita have found the box together) is one of the most incredibly affecting evocations of the Sublime in the history of cinema. Without all of this preparation, the Diane scenes (masturbating, deliberating in the darkness about whether to accept Camilla's purred invitation, the walk from the car to the party, her quiet breakdown at the dinner table, and her suicide: the nightmare counterpart of Betty/Rita's lovemaking--both are the logical climaxes of their respective narratives, and neither succeeds in rescuing the dreamer from the necessity of dreaming!) wouldn't have nearly the impact that they do.
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Ian Brill:
When my friend and I saw this in the theaters how many years ago we came out of that theater with the same sense of awe.

It might be the circumstances of my surroundings but I've always thought of this film as all types of genres of film (musicals, horror even porn) put into one film to create a type of "movie stew."

While I thought the first 2/3rds of the film was just a dream of a wannabe actress I never considered all of the film as a dream but I like the sound of it. I do like your interpretation and think I'll try to watch my DVD of this over the weekend now that I've read your post.
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Charles Reece:
I love MH, and wrote a synopsis of its structure back when it came out on dvd for some friends. There's 2 schools of thought on Lynch, that he's a irrationalist (an image that he tries to spread in his popular interviews) and that he's quite rational (but a certain type, namely one who doesn't provide answers before the question). I believe his narratives are too tightly structured to place him in the former category, as MH demonstrates (contrary to the outlook of, say, Martha Nochimson).

Your dream within a dream scenario points to what I see as Lynch's dismantling of the Hollywood dream while still using film's oneiric qualities (what's Reason to do when it falls through the rabbit hole? The only rational thing it can, adapt). There's too many specific connections between the earlier dream sequence and the later reality sequence and the embedded flashback sequences (e.g., the key being there and then missing and how it clears up the significance of the box) for me to believe that this segment is on the same plane as the earlier one. But the last shot of the ghosts over Hollywood, in what seems a nod to Anger's cover to Hollywood Babylon (but it's a been a little while since I've seen the film), seems to either be a nod to Hollywood's potential and inevitable lure, or a final bit of cynicism, or (probably) both. Anyway, the film strikes me as using dream (i.e., film) to critique dream (i.e., the Dream Factory) while casting a skeptical eye on itself (i.e., being a continuation of the factory through it's allusions to Classic Hollywood to reinforce its meanings, such as the reversal of the homosexual love triangle from GILDA, from which Rita gets her name). But I look forward to hearing the commentary to see where they go with it. Thanks.
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#2: Let's Keep Talking About Mulholland Drive, Shall We?

Good stuff Charles! Although, just to defend my interpretation a bit, what do you make of the fact that "Silencio" is present in both parts of the film--and, even more importantly, that Betty & Rita see Diane dead before this tableau can possibly have taken shape in "real" life? I don't think there are any definite answers to this question, and there certainly is a lot of textual evidence to support the Diane-is-real/Betty's-a-dream interpretation... Still, even if that's what Lynch intended, he can't (as you say) seem to help undermining himself with stuff that doesn't fit with the rational explanation, and I love that! It doesn't suit me at all to believe that the only thing in that box is one paltry crime of passion!

Couldn't the correspondences be more of a comment upon the fact that, no matter what "mode" we think we are dreaming in, we always dream according to certain patterns? And we're never quite able to dream (or live or think!) our way past the moment of ultimate fulfilment/catastrophe? If this were merely the story of one woman's disillusionment, it could never have held my brain in its thrall for this long! I prefer to think of the film as a breathtaking expresson of my own personal credo--the universe isn't broken, it is a break-up!
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Ian Brill:
I don't mind MH talk, it really is one of my favorite films. On the subject of Lynch undermining so there is no rational explanation: I think Lynch has created a sort of mystery that isn't meant to be solved as much as it is meant to be admired for being such a mystery. Not that trading interpretations isn't fun and stimulating but it seems once someone thinks they've got "the answer" you'll find Lynch put something in the film to throw a theory off. What of the clues Lynch includes in the DVD package? I don't think those help anybody solve anything as much as they are just more red herrings to throw you off. That Lynch, he's such a trickster! **********************************************************************************************************************************************************
Abhay Khosla:

mullholland drive has a structure, but is it a "tight" structure? well, its rigorous to itself-- the wacky hitman scene and the director versus the pool boy scene both share the same comedic tone, the bit where the underlings communicates with the single-word speaking midget-y boss occupies the same sense of dread as the Cowboy scenes.

but while i know you dislike considering authorship questions (which... may be oversimplifying or mis-stating and i apologize), the thing i'm always stunned by at the end of mullholland drive is its origin as an ABC television pilot and that sense that he found the movie after that experience had been completed. early on in the movie, it does have a television aura to it (that robert forster cop scene, say)(its what i like about the movie, that so many scenes have so narrative point besides their own texture and, i don't know, sensation), but for an organically created work ... the logic of it feels inescapable. and that organic feel sort of emphasizes the dream like quality in a way. i have a hard time divorcing myself from that knowledge, i guess, is basically all i'm saying here.

(for interest re: the pilot, the tad friend article from the new yorker is a fun read(though likely not one useful for your purposes at all)... i like friend's entertainment writing in the new yorker so i was happy when i found this: http://www.lynchnet.com/mdrive/newyorker.html)

and as for "Diane is real"... given the last image of the movie or second to last (the bit with the old people i need to watch through my fingers), even accepting that premise she can only be real to a point. but again, i'm not sure i watch with that same interest as the more interesting character to me is the Lynch Los Angeles, and Diane and Betty-- neither of those are the real Los Angeles, they're both just opposite poles. though i've never really grasped how the Cowboy fits into Diane's Los Angeles but i overfetishize the Cowboy who's really not that interesting a character probably (besides on the surface -- that guy's cool!- level)... and just that idea that whichever universe you occupy, the other one winds up in your dreams whether you want it there or not... its hard to get wrapped up in the Diane-Betty question since both those Los Angeles's are ... equally unreal places (well, Diane maybe slightly less so)...

geez, sorry, i'm not sure i have much coherent to say about it, but its a fun movie.

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Charles Reece:

Regarding 'silencio': I'm pretty sure that Lynch got that from Fellini. Unfortunately, I can't remember which movie: it's either LA STRADA or THE WHITE SHEIK where the word figures prominently (I think it's the former, which is about surviving crushed dreams, after all), but I'd have to go back and rewatch both to make sure. That and his blue-haired lady are allusions to one of Lynch's favorite directors. I'll have to watch the film again, but it's my memory that the word appears every time Betty/Diane (and the audience) is awakened a little more. Consequently, it's the last word of the film. Just so we're on the same page, Dave, there's 3 narrative realms in the film: the dream, reality and the flashback. The last is embedded in the second, and the second follows the first. Lynch seems to be fixated on destiny figures, such as the White Witch in WILD AT HEART and the Bum and/or the Blue Haired Lady here. I'd argue that the mechanical bird at end of BLUE VELVET functions similarly, namely as a medium between the diegetic and the audience, questioning the reality of the story and of the audience's reception. Anyway, the dream characters are brought back at the end, which suggests to me, not that everything in the diegesis is pure dream, but that anything within the film is artifice ("dream"). But, as the emotive power of the film should indicate, Lynch is a real believer in the artifice.

Anyway, to Ian, 'silencio' is one example where those dvd clues aren't red herrings. What I'd recommend is coming up with a hypothesis of the film and then testing them against those clues. At least, that's what I did, not reading them until after I'd come up with some possible explanations. Another example is the key on the table. It's the "key" for for understanding the difference between what's flashback and what's present in the final 3rd. Anoher is the opening sequence containing the jitterbug (Diane's past) and the subjective shot going towards the red pillow. I either can't remember or haven't worked out some of the others, but I'm inclined to think all are actual clues to the authorial intent.

p.s., before anyone suggests that 'silencio' is Spanish for 'silence,' I found this Italian proverb on the web:

"Il silencio è d'oro e la parola è d'argento." (Speech is silver, silence is golden.)

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Adam Pound:

First, I haven't listened to the Flak commentary, so forgive me if I'm repeating that interpretation.

Now, I'm always surprised at how people view Mulholland Drive primarily as an intellectual mystery to be solved, rather than as one of the saddest, most emotionally devastating movies ever made. Anyway, I'll get back to that. Here are some thoughts...

As far as the two halves of the movie being equally 'real', I think that the film's structure itself prevents that interpretation: the fact that the second half comes temporally after the first immediately makes it more 'real'. Also, it's clearly Diane who falls asleep at the beginning of the movie, as her awakening before 'the second half' is clearly a counterpoint to that beginning. Taking it as a given that Diane is the 'narrator' of the first half, the interesting question, to me, is whether she is still the 'narrator' of the second half. The striking difference between the two halves is that in the first half Betty is never judged (Rita is a non-entity, which Betty/Diane can form as she will), while in the second half she is always judged-- she is cast out of her 'small god' status, cast out into the world, always aware (almost exclusively) of how other people judge her. The distinction has little to do with 'sordid' versus 'sentimental', and everything to do with experiencing the world as being-for-yourself versus being-for-others (to steal Hegel and Sartre's terms). This is why the second half seems more real-- because Camilla is an Other as Rita is not-- Camilla can judge Diane, and Diane is always aware of herself as an object to be judged. Since Camilla's judgements seem imbued with cruelty, I think that it is still Diane who 'narrates' the second half-- an omniscient narrator would not be so subjective. Which only supports your view that both halves are equally real: each half presents a picture of a mode of existence, and both modes of experiencing the world are equally real, and are interdependent.

But, as I said before, the second half is more real because it comes after the first, which brings me to the movie's 'plot'. You describe it as 'one woman's disillusionment', but that strikes me as a tremendous oversimplification. It's not disillusionment, it's heartbreak-- the realization that the Other whom Diane loved (i.e. whom she wanted to be an object for) has chosen another object instead. Since Diane's objectivity has been cast aside by Camilla, her place as an object in the world is unstable, and she can only view herself as the repulsive object that tried desperately to cling to the Subject (Camilla). Thus, she tries desperately to reassert her Subjectivity, by reducing the other Subject to an object-- which she can only do by killing it (a drastic Eternal Sunshine procedure). And isn't this what so many people do after a breakup, when they suddenly decide they must hate that person who they loved a month or two earlier? Of course, Diane really did love Camilla, she really did view her as the ultimate Subject; so, having killed Camilla, Diane only exists through her memories of Camilla-- specifically, memories of killing her. Having killed the infinite subject, Diane has no choice but to kill herself, the finite object.

All of which is why I think the walk up the wooded path to the party is the most stunning scene in the movie, and is filled with an almost unbearable sadness. Although the bubblegum-love-song audition scene is also pretty spectacular.

Of course, I haven't even mentioned the 'dream of Hollywood', which is the dream of being loved by the world, and so reappropriating the world by becoming the central object in it. This seems to be secondary to the love story (although of course they're similar existential stories): Betty chooses to return to Rita in the midst of the audition scene, when she clearly 'could have had it all' right then.

Wow, this turned out to be really long. Anyway, thanks for the many interesting thoughts.
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Dave Fiore:

thanks for the input folks!

Adam:I really like your manner of distinguishing between the two narratives--it's the difference between screwball comedy (in which the protagonists seem to have the freedom to make anything they wish of their lives/story) and film noir (in which powerless figures of desire are pulled by their heartstrings toward an inevitable doom)...

But don't forget! Betty isn't nearly as "free" in her storyline as she (and you) are claiming!

1. if this is a dream (and of course it is), then all of it--including the Adam parts--are expressions of Betty/Diane's plight... "This is the girl!" is not merely a nod to weird Hollywood politics, it's a statement about romantic obsession. Wouldn't you consider the Cowboy's whole speech a judgment of Betty? (the Flak guys interpret it as Diane's vengeance upon/castration of Adam, and there may be something to that--but I don't feel it myself! One of the reasons the audition scene hits me so hard is that, right there, we realize, without quite understanding it, that, in the context of the Betty narrative, Betty is Adam!)

I agree with you about the power of the walk up the hillside. Perhaps it sounded dismissive when I described the "Diane is real" interpretation as reducible to the statement that "this is a story about one woman's disillusionment", but I assure you, I do feel the emotional weight of the Diane sequences (although I don't want to choose between feeling the film and thinking about the structure--I'm compelled to do both!)... I think both aspects of the film are part wish-fulfilment and part self-torture/castigation/admission of powerlessness... "This is the Other I must love" isn't so different, after all, from "this is the Other I must kill"... Each of these hard-determinisms force an ending, an opening of the box, and a silence...

keep 'em comin'!!!
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Adam Pound:

Regarding the compulsion to both 'feel the film' and 'think about it's structure', I couldn't agree more! Of recent films, only Magnolia inspires the same degree of both compulsions.

So, then... You're right, Betty isn't entirely free-- sorry if I implied that. It's Diane, the narrator, who has the power in Betty's narrative: Betty is how Diane wishes she were, and, as such, Betty is an object for Diane. To steal some more terms from Sartre, Betty is the positional self and Diane is the non-positional self (though only in Betty's narrative). But, as far as I'm concerned, even the non-positional self, the 'pure' self isn't really free, though it has power; and this is especially true in Mulholland Drive. Diane has no control over how she views herself, either in her wishful thinking or in her self-loathing-- she has no control over her own narration. The only person who has any control is the 'man in back of this place'.

I'll have to watch the Cowboy scene again to see if I agree that his speech is a judgement of Betty, but I definitely agree that it's not a vengeance upon Adam. Adam is presented as an entirely sympathetic character in Betty's narrative-- it's only in Diane's narrative that Adam is portrayed as despicable. I took this to mean that Diane, in her role as narrator of Betty's narrative, had the capacity to forgive Adam, to view him as 'put upon' as she was (have you seen the Good Girl? It's great). But, as you say, the Adam she forgives is really only a part of herself, part of the story she wishes were her story. I also agree that each narrative contains some degree of the other's defining characteristic; just like experience, the different modes of narrative continually fold together, and, as you say, they also continaully break apart. (It's the Hegelian dialectic depicted in movie form!)

As for loving the Other being similar to killing the Other (or at least similar compulsions), both are certainly driven by the same desire for self-unification (by trying to make oneself entirely object in the first case, entirely subject in the second case), but the way the experiences play out are certainly wildly different!
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Charles Reece:

A few other thoughts:

It's often been said that Lynch is skeptical of language, and MH seems to support that. Hence, silence reveals artifice, leading to realization. The apex of this being at Club Silencio where singing keeps going after the singer stops and instruments keep playing after the player stops. It's immediately after that that the dream breaks down.

And I agree with Adam that the film moves from interiority to exteriority, with all the characters in the first part being a constructed extension of the real Diane ("Betty").

On intellect and emotion: Contrary to the popular division and even some of Lynch's own protestations, the more one thinks about his films (but particularly LOST HIGHWAY and MH), the more emotive they become. For example, the more you understand the story of MH, the more feeling you get out of the Crying scene. At least, that's the way it worked for me. All of this isn't so surprising if one makes the analytic distinction between emotion and feeling, the former (as Noel Carroll argues) has a conceptual component. Lynch's films evoke a lot of feeling (sentiment?), but always filtered through thought.
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Dave Fiore:

Charles (it was Charles right?) wrote:

On intellect and emotion: Contrary to the popular division and even some of Lynch's own protestations, the more one thinks about his films (but particularly LOST HIGHWAY and MH), the more emotive they become

Absolutely! And it's no accident that these two are far and away my favourite Lynch films! I'm not interested in "puzzle films" (I never want to see Memento again--sure it's fun, but what does it have to say about the human condition? nothing powerful, that's for sure. In the final analysis, it's basically just a cinematic version of those SAT questions that ask you to find the next number in the sequence...I kind of like doing them, but once once they're done, that's it! They don't stay with you. That's certainly not the case with Lynch...)

Ultimately, affect and intellect can't be separated from one another! The only reason things affect us is because we are able to conceive of them otherwise! That's pretty basic, but it's true, I think. We tend to be overwhelmed by emotion when the unexpected occurs--but there is no "unexpected" without expectation... There is no joy without our ability to conceive the reverse; likewise, there's no mourning without memory, which both reifies and plays variations on past experience... This is big game--and Lynch pursues it relentlessly!
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Bruce Baugh:
I'm partial to the view that there just isn't a "real" layer in Lynch's films, at least not the ones of his I like best (Mulholland Drive and Lost Highway). I have the impression from interviews that this is closest to his view of things: everything that is solid melts into air, to steal a phrase. ("Trifles light as air", to steal from Alan Moore, while I'm at it.) We project ourselves into the hopes and fears of others; they project themselves into ours; time and chance happen to us all.
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Dave Fiore:
Bruce, we are complete accord in this matter!
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Josiah:
I think that Lynch's films are very logical, but they follow dream logic, which tends to be much more intuitive and fanciful than the real world variety.
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#3: Why/Haven't I/Told You?

Did you know that you could easily spend the rest of your life reading net-musings about Lynch's Mulholland Dr.? Last year, I contributed some words of my own to the tower of babble--but I'm back for more, thanks to Mark K-Punk:

The ‘standard’ interpretation of Mulholland Dr claims that its first two-thirds are the fantasy/ dream of failed two-bit actress Diane Selwyn, whose actual life is allegedly depicted, in all its quotidian squalor, in the final section of the film. This would underscore MD’s striking similarities to The Singing Detective, whose complexly-interacting narrative lines are weaved from the fantasies and memories of the convalescent pulp author, Philip E Marlow (Michael Gambon). Yet such a reading is ultimately unsatisfactory. As Timothy Takemoto argues, (you have to scroll down to his piece, ‘Double Dreams in Hollywood’) to see the second part of Mulholland Dr as real is inherently conservative in its assumption that there is an unambiguous reality to which we can ‘return’.

Following Zizek, Takemoto suggests that what MD presents is not an exposed ‘reality’ but a ‘grey fog’ of competing, incommensurable realities, from which desire and will are never extricable. (An homologous case is Kubrick’s near-contemporaneous Eyes Wide Shut, which is standardly interpreted as entirely the dream of the protagonist, Tom Cruise’s Bill. What this reading of Eyes Wide Shut has in common with the dominant readings of Mulholland Dr is a confidence in the possibility of parsing reality from desire, a distinction which both films disturb, as the very title of Kubrick’s film indicates).

Where was Mark back when Charles and I were having it out in the threads? Clearly, I share his hostility to the Wizard of Ozzing of the film. We're a strange species--the only thing we like better than a mystery is a solution (especially a hard-bought one). Unfortunately, the only way to secure that final-Grail piece is to sell the quest short. You know there's always something missing. You know, because what's missing is "you".

This is the age of the second person singular--and we missed it.

We always do.

Mulholland Dr. is its prophet and encomiast.

Play it. Watch it. Play it again. There's no stopping it, really... Oh sure, life goes on--but there's no shaking that prison-bar pause sign, once you've succumbed to this film.

What I find strange is that none of the fascinating pieces that I've read (and I've barely scratched the surface, of course) really does much of anything with--for me--the key scene. Oh sure Silencio is breathtaking, that first conversation in Winkie's lays the foundations for a free-fall and Diane hooked by the phone is intense...but the heart of the film beats somewhere between here

and here:

and what song is playing during this charmed interval?

I make up things to say on my way to you,

On my way to you, I find things to say.



I can write poems too, When you're far away,

When you're far away, I write poems too.



But when you are near, my lips go dry,

When you are near, I only sigh, Oh, dear.



Refrain:

I've told ev'ry little star,

Just how sweet I think you are,

Why haven't I told you?

I've told ripples in a brook,

Made my heart an open book,

Why haven't I told you?



Friends ask me:

Am I in love?

I always answer "Yes",

Might as well confess,

If I don't they guess.

Maybe you know it too,

Oh, my darling, if you do,

Why haven't you told me?

"I've Told Ev'ry Little Star" (composed by Jerome Kern, with lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II, and deliciously bubble-gummed by Linda Scott) The scene comes exactly halfway through the film, and it's more of a turning point, as far as I'm concerned, than the belated switch-over between Betty's tale and Diane's. Up until this moment, we've been splitting our time between following Betty & Rita's screwball sleuthing and Adam Kesher's bizarre game of "High Noon" with fate. Many people have identified the director and the actress as two aspects of the same dreamer, and I'm right on board with that, so far as it goes--but where exactly does it go? I mean, there it is--the actor (or purposive self) being seen in the way that every one of us wants to be seen (as a ray from the heavens), and the director (or interpretive self) catching that lightning in a looking-glass bottle...but the much anticipated moment of integration never comes! These two halves remain have-nots--Betty has to leave to keep her date with Rita (a date which will bring them face to face with Diane's corpse) and Adam is compelled to refocus his gaze upon the lip-synched spectacle on stage, an elaborate cue for him to speak the much-rehearsed line: "this is the girl".

And that's it...third-person triumphant!

Forget about not being able to tell "you" what you've always wanted to say...these two candidates for "wholeness" never even meet. As Derrida would say, no letter (especially not a love letter) ever reaches its destination. Each of us spends our entire lives trying to reduce that third person by one--and ramming our heads into "the girl" or "the boy" of our dreams. You can't tell the "whole truth" to a person that you aren't directly addressing, and no one has ever found that Northwest passage to "you". The "shortcuts" (like the one that Camilla unveils to Diane after pulling her from the limo on Mulholland Dr.) aren't even paved with good intentions, but they do lead straight to Hell (which, Sartre to the contrary, is most definitely not "other people".)

And that brings me back to the twin fantasies of pure communion (in love and in hate) that the film offers us--the first in Betty's impossibly poignant declaration "I'm in love with you" (the very expression of which exposes the unreality of her story and her supposed interlocutor) and the second in the consummation of Diane's plot to kill the (sublime) object of her desire... After each of these events, there is only Silencio--and the stark emptiness of a box that isn't a box, but an airlock, sealed against the vacuum of radical otherness. There isn't anyone that wouldn't give their lives to be sucked up into that space--to address those emotions, at long last, to the appropriate place--but the words die still-born in a void. That's why "I" haven't told "you"--and maybe it's a lucky thing too!
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Paul:
What do you think of Lost Highway? Much of what you say in regards to Mulhullond Drive is even more true of Lynch's prior film. LH for me is all a dream with no reality, but most importantly it is the viewer's dream, not any character's, and the movie demands of you "WHY are you having this dream? What does it mean to you?"
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Charles Reece:
I've been watching oeuvres lately and right now I'm going through Lang's (reading Gunning's great book as I go along). But, I'm going to MH again tonight, just to refresh my memory. I'll say that I remain skeptical of any view which doesn't acknowledge what's in a film, namely MH's 2 levels of reality. The first 2/3 is not the same diegesis as the final 1/3 and has tons of linking elements that set up the latter as a ground for the former. But I'll be back.

LH is precursor to MH, in which Lynch borrows a good bit to work out problems of having a pilot that he needs to turn into a feature film. My own theory is that Pullman is being electrocuted at the end after losing his identity in his own personal film, a dream of death.

Also, one doesn't have to accept the final 1/3 as "real" to accept the other portion as diegetic dream. I think Lynch in both LH and MH is playing with filmic reality as artifice, where multiple characters become one, like that of an author's. The "reality" segment is still created within a film.
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Dave Fiore:

Paul! I love Lost Highway too (although it's been a long time since I've seen it and the bastards won't put it out on DVD...I don't have a VCR anymore...) The difference between the earlier film and Mulholland Dr., for me, is that, in the first, we only get the horror of alienation, so to speak... in the second, we certainly get that, but, more importantly, we get the horror of an--almost--perfect communion too!

If LH asks:"why are you dreaming this dream?", MD asks: "how could you possibly dream anything else?"
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Charles Reece:

I actually think there's quite a few similarities between Lynch and Lang: a concern with destiny and desire, where destiny isn't merely given to us by a god, but constructed on a reality of desire. Lynch also loves to put into his films destiny figures: the Good Witch, the Blue-Haired Lady/maybe the Crazy Bum, the mechanical bird, the Mystery Man.

Welp, I watched it again and took some notes. One interesting factor in this that's not been commented on as far as I've read is how much Lynch borrows from his previous films:

1. Rita wandering around, blood trickling from her hairline after a car wreck, cf. WILD AT HEART.
2. Mr. Roque (pronounced 'Rook' as in chess), controlling things from a curtained room, cf. TWIN PEAKS (including chess reference).
3. The Cowboy with a too-big white hat, cf. THE COWBOY AND THE FRENCHMAN.
4. Shifting identities has been the one parallel most noticed, cf. LOST HIGHWAY.
5. What should've been the most obvious, but I don't think anyone has: Rebeka del Rio singing Roy Orbison to a tape (funnily enough, of Rebeka del Rio singing Roy Orbison), cf. BLUE VELVET.

Maybe people want to make something out of 1 and 3, but I'd suggest Lynch loves car wrecks and silly cowboys, the grotesque (see his art of rotting animals) and cheap Americana (see just about any of his stuff). The interesting thing about 2 is that not even Martha Nochimson, who spends a lot of page space on the meaning of the curtained room, as a place of transcendence or where reality becomes possible, has anything to say about why a funny controlling agent who looks quite a bit like a homunculus would be sitting in one of Lynch's favorite rooms. Mr. Roque is the agent of destiny in Diane's dream, controlling Adam, telling him who is "the girl". But he's a construct built on Diane's desire and won't be seen again in the final 3rd. Why is that, if the last 3rd doesn't serve as some basis for the first 2/3's? Mr. Roque's not in control, he's a chess piece. But, just like in TWIN PEAKS, the game isn't what it seems.

As for 4, much has been written, including how it links the film to VERTIGO, so I won't say much, except to question the irrealist reading of Lynch. FTR, I don't think Lynch is irrational, feeling-based, or some anti-metanarrative theorist. Sure, some people shift names, but do they shift identities? Betty loves Rita and Diane loves Camilla. Adam is a director and Adam is a director. Coco is an old Hollywood grand damme and she still seems to be as Adam's mother, Coco. The waitress at Winkie's is the same waitress, just with the name Diane shifting to Betty. Anyway, you get the point. When you have a dream of a loved one acting bizarrely, like I used to have of my sweet mother chasing me around with an axe in a cheap horror film, is the dream still bizarre if the dream doesn't connect up to reality? I'd say no. Likewise, the tragedy, and I think that's what Lynch has created, a tragedy brought on by Dianne's desire and leading Betty to her necessary conclusion, loses its impact if all segments of the film are merely unreal, competing realities. It's interesting that the most prominent interpretations I've seen all fall into the postmodern camp, but that's not the "conservative" one. Isn't it time that we simply recognize the anti-"metanarrative" reading as just another metanarrative. Come on, do we have to still live in 70s film theory?

Consider, further, number 5. Lynch plays on an old joke of his, and one of his most memorable scenes, by doing himself one better: he has del Rio playing herself, lipsyncing to her own song, a Spanish cover of Orbison. This joke loses much of its humor if (1) you fail to recognize the reality of del Rio, an actual person, (2) its connection to the very real oeuvre of Lynch and (3) how its reality might differ from the rest of the film. I note that Betty and Rita stop crying once del Rio falls to the floor, but the music keeps going. That's an odd reaction if everything is equally unreal. It's true that Lynch calls into question the reality of the "reality sequence" (the final 3rd), by putting in the dream characters of the Bum and the Blue-Haired Lady, but that doesn't mean that *within the film* there's not a reality which informs the dream within the film, only that the diegesis isn't reality, despite our emotional involvement, as the real del Rio can attest. Stripping that away, the film loses much of its emotive impact, just like Lynch's joke, and why the girls stop crying once the mechanism has been laid bare.

Does Lynch connect all of this in a purely rational, conscious way? Probably not. But, even if he's purely intuitively driven (which I think isn't very likely given all the puns, rhymes and connections that appear in his films), who's to say his intuitions aren't fairly rational, or coherent?

I could go on (and how), but that's enough for now.
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Dave Fiore:

this is all good stuff Charles, but I don't agree with your assumption that affect must be rooted in some kind of ontological ground... feelings are feelings, and it's a romantic fantasy (you could argue, of course, that my own point of view is premised upon another type of romantic fantasy--and you'd be right!) to believe that just because you feel something intensely, it must therefore be real... who says so?

your point about the song at silencio is a great one though--the song goes on, but when the auditors lose their belief that it is being sung to them, it loses its power... so yeah, no question, humans crave "the real"--but does it follow that they ever get it? or do they just go on manufacturing it, constantly attempting to replace the parts that time and chaos inevitably corrode, before the mechanism (fragile--and fractured--consciousness itself) completely breaks down? (as it surely does in Betty/Diane's case?)

my point is that D/B's breakdown ought to viewed as the result of a loss of faith in both love and hate as effective routes to "the real"... her problem is that she can't think her way past the notion that "this (particular) girl" is the pole star (the "reality", in fact) by whose light she must orient herself...

she becomes nostalgic for the object of a desire that precedes their encounter...mistaking the object for the desire itself...that's a danger that each of us faces--and that's why this film is so poignant... memory is a curse--but the ability to make new ones is a blessing--and the only thing that keeps us going...

Diane/Betty loses faith in her ability to ever make anything "real" again--and once that happens, you are dead!
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Charles Reece:

--------" this is all good stuff Charles"

Right back atcha.

I'm not so concerned with an ontological ground as I am with reference. An object term without an object (of some sort) isn't an object term, but an empty signifier, a sound string. The reality of a feeling is the feeling, just like the sound string is real. Sorry for this tautological shit, but the ontological importance of a feeling is that you're feeling it. The degree to which an emotion has significance, however, is what it's linked up with, its reference. If I'm feeling happy after hearing about my dog dying and I loved the dog, you'd say that's not a proper emotion. The feeling, however, would still have happened. Even if the emotion is brought on by a manufactured diegesis, it doesn't mean that the emotion isn't valid. I think, contrary to the subjectivist take on Lynch, he gives us something like a Goodman-like relativism (which is why I like him): we are as rational as we can be with what's given. That's not the same thing as saying everything is equally true. I think MH pretty clearly sets up different levels of reality, but the connection between them is a subjectivity. Do we crave the real? Yeah, otherwise everything and nothing is just shit. Just because we don't get a transcendent viewpoint doesn't mean everything is nothing, manufactured on the fly by whoever is doing the manufacturing. MH shows that there's real responsibility to one's actions, even if those responsibilities fall out of the desire that led to the actions. I can't imagine what anyone would see as sad about the story of Betty if they didn't acknowledge something about Diane killing Camilla. That's what gives the dream it's emotive force. Putting both segments (Betty and Diane's) on the same level makes hash out of the story, resulting in something like destiny being controlled from without (Nochimson insists it's Mr. Roque changing Betty into Diane -- ugh). The dream says something about Diane's reality, gives meaning to it -- I'm not denying that. However, Lynch doesn't stop there, but goes on to implement the audience, "silencio", i.e., what does this story say about you? (There's also a similar use of silencio here to the way the videocassette is used in LOST HIGHWAY, it keeps reminding the subject to face the facts.) I think it's necessary to recongize the different grounds here, and how the more dream-like worlds (Diane's flashback for her dream, Betty's for Diane's reality, Diane's reality for us) serve as interpretants for the (shifting) ground. It's an interaction of the subjective with the objective, not one or the other.

--------"my point is that D/B's breakdown ought to viewed as the result of a loss of faith in both love and hate as effective routes to "the real"... her problem is that she can't think her way past the notion that "this (particular) girl" is the pole star (the "reality", in fact) by whose light she must orient herself... "

I definitely agree that Camilla serves as Diane's desideratum, but I think there are very real consequences.

-------"Diane/Betty loses faith in her ability to ever make anything "real" again--and once that happens, you are dead!"

Well, that and a gunshot.
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Dave Fiore:

the wonderment continues!

I like what you're saying here Charles...and yet, I resist!

I would call Rita/Camilla/the idea contained within the imperative "this is the girl" (and all referrents in fact!) Betty/Diane's (and paint-smeared-Adam's!) idolodulia (as opposed to her/his desideratum)...

I'm pulling this word from Calvin's Institutes...

While the whole world teems with these and similar delusions, and the fact is perfectly notorious, we, who have brought back the worship of the one God to the rule of his Word, we, who are blameless in this matter, and have purged our churches, not only of idolatry but of superstition also, are accused of violating the worship of God, because we have discarded the worship of images, that is, as we call it, idolatry, but as our adversaries will have it, idolodulia.

I think that Lynch--like Calvin--is saying...hey! there may be a referrent (God, for Calvin), but it is absolutely inacessible to you... and the heartbreakingly human dream of building some ultimate bridge across the gulf between the subject and the object will get you nowhere...

and the best bridges (i.e. those which appear most stable) are the surest routes to hell!

you want to put pressure on the tragedy of Diane's enraged decision to kill Camilla, in light of Betty's overwhelmingly beneficent love for Rita... I want to put pressure upon the idea that these emotions themselves are the tragedy ... you want to hold Diane accountable for her actions (and so do I)--and yet, it's hard to imagine how these events--in either of our accounts--can have played out any other way (does B/D have the power not to want to kill Camilla? does she have the power not to focus the sum total of her desire upon one ersatz sunstitute for the inacessible other?)

If we accept the Adam in Betty's dream as another aspect of the same desirer, I think we at least get a sense of what her other choice might have been, even if we cannot really imagine her making it (that's predestination my friend!)--to wit: Adam could have walked away from "his" film... he did not have to capitulate to the cowboy's (fate's?/biology's) demand... he could have chosen not to report back to the studio at all, and damn the consequences... or he could have chosen to follow Betty out of the audition room, instead of playing his assigned role (in effect, he plays Judas to his own Jesus, by betraying himself to the authorities through the instrumentality of a seemingly superfluous act of "identification")... if he had chosen disobedience, the result would have been an entirely different film!

but he doesn't (he agrees to make a film with a leading lady that has been chosen for him). and betty doesn't (her love burns Rita to the socket). and diane doesn't (she makes a final attempt to bind the fiber of her desire with Camilla's nebulous substance in the dual noose of an assassination cliche).

they all follow the injunction to substitute "the girl" for an unscripted life (a life which is unimaginable and yet, somehow, perversley possible--and without that possibility, there is no tragedy)

and so--I reiterate!--Betty's impossible confession of love TO Rita is just as much a suicide as the one that follows Diane's conspiracy to murder Camilla... "something bad is [, indeed,] happening", and it is all intensely felt, but no one aspect of the tragedy is any more real than any other aspect!

(yikes! I'll bet there are some typos in here!)
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Charles Reece:

Oh, Dave, you make my secular brain hurt with these religious references! I find that an odd sounding interpretation of a theological determinist, but the hell if I'm going to spend any time reading Calvin to test it out one way or the other. Anyway, I think you miss some possibilities living way over their on your egopole. A little bit of Davidson on schemata applied to the subject/object "divide": you have to be in a place of privilege to say one way or the other whether or not they can be bridged and that -- like arguments for the prime mover -- is going to involve you in an infinite regress. You're committing the same sin as the most rabid, old school correspondence theorist of truth by suggesting that we can't (how do you know?). So, you can either assume we can or we can't with equal authority if you want to play skeptical. I'd say you're left with pragmatism, and it's not very pragmatic to assume conversation is impossible. In fact, anyone who writes one word surely doesn't seriously hold that. And there are some good psychological reasons for thinking conversation is possible (e.g., when listing attributes to a word's meaning, subjects' listings tend to collect within certain conceptual dimensions, i.e., "family resemblances"). Now, this doesn't solve any sort of noumenal problems that philosophers might dream up, but it does suggest that, as a human community (I'd say biologically informed, as well, and there's some good evidence for this, too), we're able to live within a world that doesn't need to connect up to an Absolute for us to have some objective ground for communicating (more or less), that is, we don't have to know the Absolute to "empathize" (to use the term as loosely as possible). We deal with the given (however metaphysically ineffable) as best we can. I think the work of Lynch emblematizes this condition: real understanding comes out of the way his characters form real bonds, based on how they grapple with the unknowable, not out of recognizing that empathy is metaphysically impossible, or fundamentally unknowable. That's why Dale Cooper is the Lynchian hero par excellence: he looks at what's given, and works within the parameters of what's possible. That means giving in/being open when he doesn't have control over all the consequences. A subjectivist believes not only that you can justifiably ask any question, but that you can justifiably give any answer (subjectivism is a relativism, but not all relativisms are subjective). I don't think there's much evidence for that sort of radical indeterminism within MH or any of Lynch's films. The most tragic figures are the one's trying to control the consequences (Diane in her dream as Betty, parallel to her life as Diane, Bill Pullman in LOST HIGHWAY). Subjectivistic wish fulfillment leads to misery. Rational openness to the objective is what brings contentment (of course, the objective in Lynch's diegeses is a tad bit off from ours, but the message translates). So, it's not Diane's decision to kill Camilla per se that I'm focusing on, it's her attempt to control what she can't control whence the tragedy derives. She has no control over Adam in reality, but she attempts to control him in her dream (through her homuncular forces), thus I don't see him as a co-desirer, but as an object of her desire (her desire to control). She's the director, but not really. That's not a gaze of love between them, but, I'd wager, one of recognition. She doesn't have control over the consequences and the dream is a realization of that. I think that's what silencio is saying, stop fitting the world to your own private language, let it speak. That we can't connect to the Absolute is neither here nor there, it's more important to recognize that objective conditions fall out of subjective desires. Again, it's an interaction, and you can't have one without the other. Accepting this is rational in the Lynchian universe (and ours).

I should also point out that Cookie, the fellow with an interesting moustache, is one character who I don't think has a parallel in the final 1/3. Maybe this is signficant, but I'm inclined to not wrap up every element in this film as if it's all pointing in the same direction. I'm betting that Lynch liked Forster in the cop routine, so he kept him, likewise, Cookie, and wasn't that concerned with making everything perfectly fit some preordained form.

That's enough from me for now,

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Dave Fiore:

we're more in agreement than you know Charles--pragmatism, after all, is simply a secularized Calvinism (transcendentalism begins with the kind of subjectivism that you impute to me--with a self-reliant rejection of all limitations upon the self that, as you point out, merely reinforces the old metaphysics...but it moves very quickly toward Emerson's "Experience", which is the birthplace of pragmatism, and I'm pretty much still there!)...

I have to disagree with you when you argue that metaphysical doubt is "unimportant", though! Without it--there could be no change, and, so far as I can see, no desire/history/life either! You say that Betty is at fault for desiring to control circumstances... I agree, I suppose, but I would go further and suggest that to accept a given circumstance is also to exercise a form of wholly unwarranted control! As soon as you say--"this is just the way things are"--you are really absenting yourself from the situation, and associating yourself with "Reality"... it's the oedipal shift on a grand scale--"I'm not under daddy's thumb--I am daddy...or, at least, I've imagined myself into daddy's position"... The decision to act only within a set of given parameters is not pragmatic--it's a capitulation...a refusal to admit that sometimes, despite all appearances, the parameters have to be smashed! (and humans have been smashing parameters with alacrity since the Reformation--all I want is a more of the same!)

I can't read Mulholland Dr. as a parable about giving in to circumstance (or, as you put it, letting life speak)... Life speaks whether we let it or not--the question is whether we are going to join in the conversation, even if we know that one side of it has been pre-recorded! We are always hoping that, somehow, through some magic, the recording will halt and the real voice that laid down the tracks will make a spontaneous reply... I think you misinterpret my skeptical position on language Charles (not unexpected!)--I'm not arguing that talking is useless, I'm saying that it never says it all (and I'm not saying that I want it to, I'm merely arguing that our desire to say it all is what drives us forward, and makes us try different means of solving an insoluble problem!)

on Adam--I really disagree with you here... I don't see him as being controlled by Betty in the dream--I think he is Betty... and so, yes, it's definitely a look of recognition, but it's also a look of love...isn't that always the way? Not sure if you caught (or what you think of) my little investigation of Adam's conversation with Cynthia (Katharine Towne), but it's really moving to the center of my analysis of the film... "you don't know what you're missing"... it's true... we never know that... we can't... when you get right down to it--we don't even want to know! it's not control that poisons life--it's certainty... like Morgan Morgan in Minnie and Moskowitz--"I know where my wife is buried"--if you know that, then you know where your life is buried too--if you can be sure of the one, you can be pretty sure of the other...certainty forecloses upon desire...and this is the tragedy of Mulholland Dr.--Diane/Betty's conclusion that there's nothing left to want coupled with our own powerful--but unformularizable--sense that there is someone on the other end of the line, even if we never see them--and we'll never know what we're missing...

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Charles Reece:

I don't see how theological determinism and pragmatism mesh, but I'll trust you that there's some historical connection.

Just keeping with the film, and not necessarily whether I agree with it or not, I think the the dream (you know what section I'm referring to, so I'll just use this term for ease of typing) is a story of failed subjectivity. It's dream of a split identity, not only in terms of the characters being aspect of Diane's readings of others, but in how her homunculus isn't letting her get away with absolute control (Mr. Roque makes Diane's Adam behave in a way that Diane was trying to dream away). Thus, the dream isn't merely her creation, but it's rooted in the given/objective/real/Lynch's narrative. Certain aspects of what's given aren't metaphysically certain, if that's how you were taking my use of "given", but in actions brought on by desire. Diane might've been in control of her actions, but she's not in control of the events brought on by those actions. Lynch uses a similar story device in STAIGHT STORY where this present story is "bent" by the revelation of memories and the responsibility for those memories by Alvin Straight. In MH, however, Lynch inserts the memories towards the end. Lynch is pretty moral filmmaker, his stories tend to be morality tales (among other things, of course). And I think all this talk of smashing boundaries and such is more yours and others wanting to incorporate Lynch into a particular worldview than looking at and reading the film. The film is a given, the interpretation is not. But we've been down that road before. However, I hope that I've made it clearer what I'm talking about as "given". A capitulation is pragmatic if it's useful to capitulate. I'm not quite sure what you're trying to make of the different segments and how they might relate to each other. It seems to me that "breaking the boundaries" is exactly what begins to fall apart in Betty's world each time silencio/shhh is uttered. Your interpretation tends to leave me at the same point that the girls stop crying upon realizing the artifice. It tends to dance around the morality and the empathy that really drives the formal play into a much deeper level.

On letting life (or in our case, the film) speak, is a fundamentalist really living always dreaming of a promise of another life? I'd say no. That pretty much sums up my view on what I think you're missing about the dream (and the film itself). But that's just restating our difficulty here. I agree that language never uses up all the possible meaning of what's being talked about. The irony is that it's often those most skeptical of communication that are the most linguistically focused. But that's an argument for some other time.

On Adam, I hope it's clearer how I read him in the dream by my first paragraph. I agree that he's Betty, but that he's a part of Betty that's not entirely subjective, he's got an objective correlate elsewhere, just like many in her dream cast. There is no objective self, no Cogito.

What the hell, a tad more to go with the other shit.

Dave, are you familiar with Putnam's "meaning is not in the head" view? It's from the analytic side of the Great Divide, but it's apt here. His thought experiment is something like this: Imagine another world exactly like ours, but with the one key difference that what they refer to as water is composed of xyz instead of H20. "Water" behaves the same on both worlds, but knowing this difference, are the people on both worlds referring to the same thing when using the same term? Diane's Adam isn't just referring to herself, but is also referring to the Adam that we see later in reality sequence. Diane tries to escape into a world where all reference leads back to her cogito, but it just can't happen. Reference is knocking on her door.

Alright, I'll shut up for now.
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Dave Fiore:

ahh...but who says that the Adam that is engaged to Camilla is the "real" Adam?

I agree that there's a relationship between Adam 1 & Adam 2...but I don't see that relationship the same way that you do! I don't want to cast Adam as the heavy of the piece... I think that he/they each represent different styles of dealing with desire's inability to reach its objects...

Adam 1 flips out, steeps in his rage for a while, intuits the possibility of a completely divergent storyline (which would, of course, be no less fraught with obstacles) whilst on the phone with Cynthia (I think you could write a dissertation on the use of phones in Lynch), and, finally succumbs to the certainty that "this is the girl" (at the very moment in which the dreamer's fractured subjectivity comes closest to fusion--which, of course, ultimately, merely ups the angsty ante)

Adam 2 is more at his ease because he can, seemingly, take things or leave them...romance is a joke to him, and so is everything else... he wants to marry Camilla, but he clearly isn't depending upon that--or any other--relationship for anything...he sure comes across as an ass--but I think the point is that, in Diane/Betty's view, in a world in which "this is the girl" is not up to you--Adam 2's ambivalence toward the object of desire is the only sane path... and she doesn't want to take it! She isn't crying because she has lost Camilla--she's crying because she realizes that the only that she could have "kept" Camilla would've been to play a role that seems worse than death itself (her own--and Camilla's...for the murder plot unites the two lovers in a way that Adam 2--who is kind of Diane's disciple of "the rules"--and Camilla never could be!)

oh well!

doesn't out continued disagreement over this movie prove anything about the instability of all meaning Charles? As far as I can tell, you resist my reading because it diminishes the impact of the film upon your mind and emotions... I resist your reading for the same reason... there are moments in the film (I've Told Ev'ry Little Star; the phone conversation) that do crazy things to my head & heart that your reading simply cannot account for--and I presume that this goes both ways... and so each of us is left to muse upon the text in our own ways!
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Charles Reece:

Still puttering about online, Dave, but I'll get back to you later. I just wanted to say that you're talking to someone who is obsessed with phones in movies. Particularly ringing. My favorite is in SECONDS (which if you haven't seen, you'll absolutely love) where protagonist (who'll be turned into Rock Hudson) is startled by the ringing of his phone (by the company who's going to do the identity switch). You have to see and hear it, but it just knocks you back. But Lynch is a fucking master of the ring. Anyway, I've had the same thought and evidently someone released a book a couple years ago on the use of phone conversations in film. I read an essay in some film mag about a year ago.

------------------"I don't want to cast Adam as the heavy of the piece... I think that he/they each represent different styles of dealing with desire's inability to reach its objects..."

I'm not quite sure what you're getting at here. I don't see Adam as the heavy, but he's part of the central triad of the film (which I think makes your allusion to NO EXIT a worthwhile comparison, how hell is similar and different in the 2 works; it also relates both to GILDA; all 3 stories, to some degree, question who you are, other's readings of you or your reading of others, or your reading of others' readings of you, etc.). Desire might not be intentionally controlled (I think the movie pretty clearly says that), but it does reach objects, effects conditions one has to live with.

But, we definitely have a difference about the "Ev'ry Little Star" segment. I see fission where you seem to be seeing something like an objective self emerging (by your use of "fusion"), or fighting for air. But I'm not sure what's being fused according to you. You're definitely right to pay attention to the lyrics, since Lynch rarely if ever uses pop songs frivously (although LH might be an exception -- why he'd use that shitty Bowie song instead of the classic Hank song "Lost Highway," I'll never know). But those lyrics are targeted at Diane's relation to Camilla, not Adam. Adam's gaze is an intrusion into this delusional world Diane's created for herself (but don't get hung up on a too literal reading of those last 3 words: Diane clearly fails to do this successfully, she's dreaming a version of herself based on the manufactured illusion sold to our culture by Hollywood). Adam intrudes in the dream just like he intrudes in reality (and, of course, Diane's view of Camilla isn't very accurate in either world). Now, you say that Adam threatens a divergent storyline, and it's hard not to see many segments as somewhat doing that (the dreamer at Winkie's, the assassin sequence), but it's just Lynch includes so many rhymes in the 2 segments of his film, that the simplest explanation is one story that I don't see any way out of reading this as a single narrative that questions the possibility of singular narratives but to postulate another enunciator/dreamer that exists within the diegesis (but what's the evidence?) or to say that the film never pulls things together (which leaves all those parallels unexplained). You kind of go back and forth between these possibilities. I'd prefer parsimony. I think that there's just as much philosophical fallout with the more parsimonious explanation as the approach which tries to make the narrative as difficult as the philosophical issues it tackles.

-------------"She isn't crying because she has lost Camilla--she's crying because she realizes that the only that she could have "kept" Camilla would've been to play a role that seems worse than death itself"

See, I'd use a single explanation here: she's lost her Camilla (which was never really Camilla). Diane's been living a life where either she's playing herself (both as others have made her or as she like to be, based on illusions that weren't completely her own doing). She doesn't have any more control in her dream than she does in reality. She's lipsynching.

As for polysemy, well, there are some wrong interpretations out there. You acknowledge this possibility when you ask, "doesn't out continued disagreement over this movie prove anything about the instability of all meaning Charles?" That is, our continued disagreement is proof that meaning is instable. Is that stable? Sorry to get all liar's paradoxical on you, but you've got a self-refuting viewpoint on this issue, Dave.

I'm not sure that I get exactly how you're connecting the different versions of the characters or the segments. You often say things which are pretty similar to what I'm saying (only with different terms), but resist my conclusions. You seem to approach the film in such a way that any ability to say what's so sad about Diane's arc becomes impossible, since no sequence can serve as an interpretive source for any other sequence (they're all equally valid within the narrative and all equally wrong within the same context). I mean, is Betty Diane, Camilla, Adam, what? You say desire, but who's desire? Obviously, the film speaks to us, but the film also says something about itself. Why, at the end of the "girl is missing" phone sequence, is the final phone that isn't answered the same one as Diane's in the later part of the film? I'm not getting these sort of basic points from you. That's an objective connection on the surface of the screen. So maybe I'm missing something crucial about your position, but I'm not seeing what I haven't covered. Maybe you could point out how my view fails to cover a particular point about the narrative. To get back to the preceding point, you'd have to argue that some point is an important aspect of the film, and that my view simply can't handle it. That, too, entails something more than all meanings are in flux. But, if you're pooped (and I'm getting there), I've enjoyed arguing with you once again.

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Dave Fiore:

I will never tire of discussing this film! (certainly not when my interlocutor is as engaged as you are) and I'll definitely be referring back to these conversations when we reach the film in my class!

but for now, let's see...

----------"I mean, is Betty Diane, Camilla, Adam, what? You say desire, but who's desire? Obviously, the film speaks to us, but the film also says something about itself."

I think this question accounts for most of our difference of opinion--I don't think anyone is desire. Desire just is. (just as when say I that "the universe is a break-up', I purposefully exclude any subject)

When I say that the film is all dream--I don't mean that it's all Betty's dream, but that it's making a bid to become the viewer's dream... I think that's what a great work of art does--manages to convince you that you dreamed it, and makes you puzzle over it in the same way that you would puzzle over one of your own somnambulant sonatas--if you were lucky enough to remember it as vivdly as you can remember a text that you encountered while awake (and the added privilege of flipping back and forth through the pages or the film make only intensifies this)

when I say that another possible story opens up in the phone conversation between Adam and Cynthia, I don't mean that Adam (as a separate character) threatens to take over the narrative--the possibility that I'm referring to is embodied by Cynthia...

That scene, that warning--"you don't know what you're missing"--I find it so powerful, and I can't account for its power in any other way... it just seems to me that her side of the conversation is coming from an entirely different film (call it "This is not the Girl", or "This is a different girl", or somethin')--we know that there's no way to get there, and, moreover, that we'll never see this character again (she doesn't have a double in the second narrative)...that, in fact, there's something vaguely illicit (and, therefore, all the more liberating) about this one glimpse itself! Does it feel that way to you at all?

about the fusion in the I've Told Ev'ry Little Star scene--it's near-fusion, not fusion itself (I don't think that's possible)... like Kitty, in Random Harvest, who is "so nearly the one", this near-meeting of two parts of the dreamer's self only makes the faultline within the self (which I call desire) more apparent... but I don't think that Adam's gaze is an intrusion here, nor do I feel that we are supposed to think that Betty resents it... it's very hard to tell, in this scene, what Betty is looking at... in fact, I would argue that she isn't looking at anything at all--she is merely being seen...but the moment is broken up before it can lead to anything definite (as all of these moments are) by something outside of it, by the circumstances that force Adam to deal with his casting situation, and Betty to deal with her quest to discover "Rita's" history...

I could go on--but I hope this clarifies (although I'm sure it fails to convince you) why I can maintain that none of the characters are "real' (except to the extent that they all mirror the viewer), but that the film nevertheless packs an emotional and intellectual wallop!
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Charles Reece:

I mistyped: should've been "whose" not "who is," but maybe it didn't make that much of a difference. Getting back to the point about what's a conservative reading of Lynch: I've got a collection of books about him, and not one author suggests anything but an illogical/death of author/dissolution of narrative approach. I think this is largely due to a conflation of narrative, linearity, and logic. Just because Lynch critiques certain philosophical ideas doesn't mean that his work isn't logical or that he doesn't work within a narrative structure or even that MH doesn't have a linear sequence of events. That doesn't mean that his selection of elements has to be rational or entirely conscious, but there's a good deal more narrative logic to the way he puts these elements together than he's typically given credit for. Reading a collection of essays on Lynch is pretty much a game of one-up-manships, where each essay begins with how some "radical" reading doesn't go far enough. Much like bad litcrit writing (but I'm most certainly not including you here), the film has to be as muddled as what it supposedly expresses. I bring this up because you seem to be assuming that a separation of diegetic levels in the film would decrease the oneiric feel of what I've taken to calling the reality sequence. Not at all, I think that's what explains the logic of putting those dream/destiny characters at the end: this film affects you in a real way, but it's not real, it's a dream of reality, if you like. That doesn't entail any need to rid the film of it's narrative logic. The way I see it is that it's a narrative that critiques narrative, but still a narrative. Without that, it ceases to be self-reflexive, for their is no "filmic self" to reflect on. The film gives us something. Otherwise, you could apply your reading of MH to any film in existence. There's something other than you applying some limitations to your reading. Theoretically, we might have unlimited semiosis, but that doesn't mean, practically, everyone is randomly applying whatever concepts to whatever objects, a film's narrative is no different. This film is replete with references to the other, a reference beyond the self (Rebeka del Rio being a reference to her actual self in our world at the point that most assume is the center of the film, what Lynch calls his "eye of the duck" sequence). One can assume a diegetic "reality" without thinking of Neorealism or socalled transparent filmmaking, you know?

Another irony is that even though I'm arguing for a more "logical" Lynch, I don't feel the need to tie up every element of the film in a particular philosophical reading. The Cynthia scene could be there because it introduces the reason for going to see the Cowboy, which was all part of the pilot. Not that this makes your "this is another girl" reading wrong; it fits just fine into both of our readings, I think, but I don't see how it has much consequence one way or the other (no more so than the yelling mobster, Adaya or whatever the actor's name is, during the meeting). I mean, she was suggesting herself because Adam's wife definitely wasn't "the girl." However, I think you're right in pointing out a good example of the dialogue meaning something more than what it suggests in the particular scene. "You don't know what you're missing" is definitely saying something to the character of Adam, and by extension, I'd suggest, the dreaming Diane (just like the crazy mystic neigbor at the door). Good point (hopefully you don't feel I mangled it too badly).

As for Adam's gaze, "intrusion" doesn't quite cover it, true. I mean, according to my view, he can't exactly intrude in a place of which he's part. But he's like a doorknob on a door, sort of part of it, but kind of an intrusion as well. Hell, the door knob even kind of suggests intrusion. He both calls attention to himself (a reference to the "real" Adam, your Adam 2), but calls attention to Diane, as well. That's what I meant by intrusion (which, come to think of it, is something like that "eye of the duck" thing -- have you read Lynch's comments on that in the book of interviews with him? If not, and you're interested, I can probably dig up the quote -- that's just another way of saying I don't disagree with you about the importance of this scene).

I'm not familiar with Random Harvest (I initially thought of Red Harvest), but I have the web at my fingertips ...

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Dave Fiore:

ah yes--the web is wonderful Charles!

Random Harvest is an old-time amnesiac-romance by Mervyn LeRoy...came out on DVD recently... I love it! (although Red Harvest is even better!)

I agree that certain critics will purposefully ransack a work looking for a confirmation of their theory, and then leave a mess behind as a smokescreen... and I share your passion for reconstructing narratives (or, at least, for tracing out tentative paths through narratives)... that's what's been happening to me throughout our various discussions of the film, in fact! I'm becoming more and more enamoured of one basic set of assumptions about the ways in which the parts fit together...

1. i.e. that the most important thing about the two Adams is they way that they comment upon each other (and upon a series of available roles vis-a-vis "the girl"--i.e. fight against the command, "this is the girl", and then, later, submit, and disappear from the narrative/then, on the other side of the "this is the girl" divide, accept the imperative, but hedge against self-destruction by "playing it cool" and refusing to truly engage with--despite becoming engaged to!--the object of desire), rather than their respective functions as first puppet the puppet and then the antagonist of Betty/Diane;

2. that the I've Told Ev'ry Little Star scene is just as important as the Silencio scene, and that these scenes comment upon each other as well (in the first, the magic of life as action--agency/self-assertion--and direction--storytelling/memory--blaze off of the screen, without quite soldering the fault-line that separates these two aspects of the subject from each other, and the world--the "you" that "I" can't tell; in the second, we get the reverse: a profoundly demystifying enterprise that nevertheless leaves us feeling less knowing than ever before...sure, it's all a tape, and we're all just spectators, rather than actors or directors, but who did lay down those tracks? No one has ever found that one out--at least, no one that ever returned from their leap into the void within the blue box of experience...pure surface that contains nothing/everything)

3. that the phone conversation with Cynthia stands out in--a way that I'm still wrestling with--by holding out the possibility (which, we know, somehow, could never actually be accepted) of an escape into an entirely new narrative... the fact that both ends of the conversation are filmed creates a kind of wormhole between the two planes... the second of which is a place that we know nothing about, except that we don't know what we're missing there (and thus we correspondingly miss it more!)

next time I watch it (in class, about ten days from now)--I really want to focus on the Cowboy... because I'm still not completely sure what I want to say about that scene...

I'd love to hear more about the "eye of the duck" comments... I've never read any interviews Lynch...and, in fact, I've read almost nothing about the films either (except for the stuff that I've been linking to!)

okay--time to read some Poe for my seminar!

bon weekend!

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Charles Reece:

Lynch on ducks and their eyes:

"Yeah, a duck, its a...well, one of the most beautiful animals."

"I sort of go by a duck when I work on a film because if you study a duck, you'll see certain things. You'll see a bill, and the bill is a certain texture and a certain length. Then you'll see a head, and the features on the head are a certain texture and it's a certain shape and it goes into the neck. The texture of the bill for instance is very smooth and it has quite precise detail in it and it reminds you somewhat of the legs. The legs are a little bit bigger and a little more rubbery but it's enough so that your eye goes back and forth. Now, the body being so big, it can be softer and the texture is not so detailed, it's just kind of a cloud. And the key to the whole duck is the eye and where the eye is placed. And it has to be placed in the head and it's the most detailed, and it's like a little jewel. And if it was fixed, sitting on the bill, it would be two things that were too busy, battling, they would not do so well. And if it was sitting in the middle of the body, it would get lost. But it's so perfectly placed to show off a jewel right in the middle of the head like that, next to this S-curve with the bill sitting out in front, but with enough distance so that the eye is very very very well secluded and set out. So when you're working on a film, a lot of times you can get the bill and the legs and the body and everything, but this eye of the duck is a certain scene, this jewel, that if it's there, it's absolutely beautiful. It's just fantastic."

The eye sort of stands out, doesn't make quite aesthetic sense, but it makes the duck whole, creates its own aesthetic. Used narratively, it's kind of Lynch's McGuffin.

On narratives and theory, the oft-mentioned Zizek says this about LOST HIGHWAY: "In a first approach, one should absolutely insist that we are dealing with a real story (of the impotent husband, etc.) that, at some point (that of the slaughter of Renee), shifts into psychotic hallucination in which the hero reconstructs the parameters of the Oedipal triangle that again make him potent -- significantly, Pete turns back into Fred, I.e., we return to reality, precisely when, within the space of psychotic hallucination, the impossibility of the relationship reasserts itself, when the blond Patrician Arquette (Alice) tells her young lover, "You'll never have me!"" Would anyone argue Zizek's "conservatism" strangles the interpretative possibilities of Lynch? I'll leave the issue of conservative versus radical with that and go on to your points.

1. The 2 Adams do comment on each other, which suggests reference. One problem the film explicitly addresses (but that's probably an issue with all films) is what's being referenced? I'd say that, minimally, one has to recognize a difference in realities/worlds/status as signifier or whatever you want to call it between the 2 segments in order to suggest any commenting is going on (identical twins don't stand for each other). His role in the dream is to play the mouthpiece for the Hollywood Other, where Diane buries the elements of Camilla standing in her way of obtaining her desired object. What functions as uncontrolled irrational otherness in Betty's world turns out to be reality worming its way into the dream's logic. Adam 1 is no more of a puppet of Diane's than Betty. Going back to Zizek, he suggests that ideology is objective to the degree that subjects accept it, or act as if they accept it. I think that's a pretty good way of reading the Hollywood ideology at work in the dream and Diane's dreamy take on Adam's place within that ideology. Diane's repressing things and filtering much through an ideology that's not exactly her own, so it's not like she's a puppetmaster. (I try to avoid psychoanalytic theory as best I can, but it's not easy with Lynch.)

2. I think the Ev'ry Star scene is really important, it sets up the Silencio one, makes it possible, even, but I can't see it as being more crucial. The former is the creaking and screetching of the wheels to the latter's derailed train. I still believe you need a reality to supply the tragedy of the dream and that's what the film gives with the second segment. I do believe the film insists on giving "a reality" and shows it's importance while not having "the reality" (which is where many get derailed into putting both segments into one continuous diegetic line: "they're both equally unreal" -- yeah, but not within the film).

3. Yeah, there's maybe something missing which is alluded to by the Cynthia conversation, but I don't put much importance on it (at least, I'd be surprised if any interpretation would be radically altered by a reading of that scene). Maybe you'll change my mind.

The Cowboy is one of the more vague elements: he only appeared once more to Adam, indicating he did good. But he appeared 2 times for Diane (and us), and one of those times is before she wakes up, and the other is in the past, her memory. Diane certainly never picks "the girl," in dream or reality or memory. And if Adam 1 is Diane (you know what I mean by now), then the Cowboy was addressing her at the same time as Adam 1. I don't know, but I'll be interested in hearing if you come up with anything.

Oh yeah, I copied the Lynch quote from The City of Absurdity ( http://www.thecityofabsurdity.com/quotecollection/ducks.html) and the Zizek one from his "The Art of the Ridiculous Sublime: On David Lynch's Lost Highway."

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John Pistelli:

So I slept on Mulholland Drive and here's what I think: my reading is halfway between the conservative argument and the postmodern one. The first 2/3 is, among other things, an exploration of genre, a structured series of tropes and devices from other films, but there are moments within that structure where the real of Betty/Diane's desire/guilt burn through the conventions: the first time I saw the movie, the scene that impressed me most was Betty's audition where she performed with the old guy, and I take this as one of the first moments where the dream sours into nightmare and the emotions become too much for the material of her fantasy to contain. (The sickening moment where a dream turns into a nightmare is the feeling the movie gives off--I think it's scarier than most horror movies!) But anyway, Silencio: this is where Betty/Diane can no longer deny she's dreaming/fantasizing around an absence (a silence), but the implication of the scene goes to the viewer, because this is what we're doing in the theater. No hay banda is like a koan to meditate on. Obviously it means that we're watching a recording (of a translation of a song that is an allusion to another film, at that) and have no creator to appeal directly to, but it also implies generally that we can't appeal to the real in the film, or to appeal outside the real of our emotions. If there is no band, then there is no origin for the first 2/3 that's more real than others: is it Diane's psyche, or the Hollywood dream factory or the collective unconscious or what? No hay banda. But Betty/Diane misinterprets, gets the key and tries to open the story into intelligibility, into a space where there is a band, where there is more than a recording, but--and here I'm with you--the box of meaning just sucks you into a void, an absence, a silence. I think we have to take the last 1/3 as more real than the first 2/3 to get Lynch's joke that it no more explains away the real of Betty/Diane's desire than any Hollywood convention (the sinister conspiracy behind moviemaking, say) does. That's why the bum behind Winky's reappears: he's an excess in the first 2/3, a seemingly unrelated figure that is nevertheless doing all of this, and Betty/Diane reverts to him as the agent of her torment. The old people initially represent the love/home/support she wished she had, while at the end, even they are revealed as fantasies spun around an absence: no hay banda, and there is no perfect family or perfect love either. So mostly I'm with your interpretation entirely, but I think a slight privileging of the diegetic reality of the last 1/3 makes your point all the sharper. Just because it's real doesn't mean it (or anything else, like the culture industry) is sufficient to reduce Diane's pain into something manageable.

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Dave Fiore:

every time I read anything about this movie, I want to watch it again, and that's just craziness... but let's see if I can say a few quick words without losing another 2.5 hours of grading time in the bargain!

I really like your final point John--and for sure, the main point of contention between Charles and myself was the question of whether Diane's story explains anything that we've seen (or, as you put it, makes it manageable)... I can't believe that anyone could watch that film and come away thinking--oh yeah, it's just a story about a woman scorned (by her lover, by hollywood, etc.) I like Proximo's theory that the film aspires to involve each of us in that scorn (that this is the human condition, not just one unlucky person's melodramatic spiral into murder, suicide and despair)... that the scorn predates experience (and is, in fact, the only ground upon which experiences can be had...)
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Proximoception:

Scorn predates experience? Whoa dude. Not sure I like that. Betty is all Diane's idealization and none of her memory?

I think there is a state of comparative innocence, a castle preceding the ruin. Hell, the Tower of Babel story ties in nicely here. It's the experience that's universal, not the confabulation. Though the experience is strong enough to be inevitably mythed up some. God, imagine a story where it wasn't. It'd make a third with Requiem for a Dream and Shoah.

But the Betty portion is weirded up enough that clearly it's not just memory, not unmixed real-time occurrence, so you may be getting at something. And certainly the mechanic kid in Lost Highway is almost entirely idealization, a projection of an innocent "earlier" self who might evade Fred's mistakes. (The great touch there was the parents: "it would help if my/his parents were cooler; let's give them sunglasses and leather jackets and also they can ride motorcycles and let's have them be both hands-off and caring").

And what would an eighteen-year-old Wordsworth say, handed his own Immortality Ode of fifteen years on?

But life is not storyless, and memory isn't just a Rorschach Test.
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Dave Fiore:

you're right there... about the "scorn"--there I was drawing upon Emerson's "Days"... we may not always see the scorn beneth the fillet of time...but it's there--making history, and stories, possible...

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Proximoception:

Scorn meaning, reality tugging on our leash? I like this. Melvillean/Lynchian addendum: Hard tugs break necks.

Actually one of the most fascinating things about Mulholland is how thoroughly it continues, and how thoroughly it revises Highway. And almost every revision is an improvement; there's immense gain in power and poignance by having the idealized life come first, by having the Everyman be a woman, by hinting how everyone shifts roles in this lover/scorner/hater chamber piece, by representing the moment of change so mysteriously in that past-the-margins apocalyptic middle sequence. And the removal of moral concern is masterful: Fred recognizes what is guilty in himself, if too late, and purges it or wants to (same thing in these inner lands). But how? And even if Lynch knew and could tell us, there is still the story of those who don't know, of the Dianes among and in us--a more compassionate, more essential one. Lost Highway organized Lynch's world into a story but Mulholland organizes that story into the world.

And you know? Early Harold Bloom loved Blake so much that when he called anything Blakean you knew he was giving it the highest praise. I'm a Shelley man and I find this movie deeply Shelleyan.

Proximoception:
I like an awful lot of what all three of you are saying; even where I think you're wrong about this movie you're juggling ideas that I'd like to see new movies embody.

I forget most of my plot theory of Mulholland, which means I absolutely have to rewatch it, hopefully tonight, but I remember it's close to Charles' "conservative" view. Confusion is caused by the vestiges of the series it grew out of, but this is essentially a coherent story, and not a dream: everything happens or directly represents what has happened. The backbone of the television series would have been the neoplatonic heirarchy of evil, or good, or whatever--all those weird characters--resumed from Twin Peaks and then discarded as unnecessary, with just a couple tie-ins later on (the Cowboy at the party) to hide that Lynch was just saving fun, expensive footage.

I forget which of you mentions that the characters, eventually, are all one person. On first viewing, the night it reached my town, I somehow assumed that toward the end three leads, actress director and mystery lady, were exchanging bodies/personalities, and that this meant they really were interchangeable for the purposes of this story, and hence we are too, this is the story of each of us. Forget the extensions and distinctions of plot, the movie seemed to say, all that has gotten you to this point and now I'm dropping the rockets. Here is your own story, and alas.

I was very disappointed in the movie when I rented it a year or so after and saw I'd been mistaken. Not that the movie wasn't essentially going for that, for tricking us into our own secret loves and pains via those of others and thereby merging us; but it hadn't dared to kick free of its scaffolding in the way I'd imagined. And who can blame it, it was losing enough people with the risks it actually took.

It's important to see that this is beyond morality. It's after the deeper compassion, the recognition we're leading the same life. How many times have you heard someone hesitate, and say they don't know if it's the same for other people, but for them...and then read a paragraph of man's autobiography.
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Charles Reece:

I'm having a hard time telling who is whom, but I think I'm pretty much in agreement with proximoception. I posted some recent stuff over on Dave's thread, so I won't repeat it here. I'll add that the Bum is sort of a deterministic force, despite being an obvious construct of a film, that works against Dave's tendency towards a subjectivistic interpretation. There's always something else other than what we/Diane would like it to be that has an effect on our subjective interpretation. The film is, in part, constructing our experience. And even though Betty and Rita stopped crying once they realized the artificial nature of the Silencio show, I still get teary-eyed, even knowing about the Bum.
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That's all folks!
(for now!)

Dave

posted by goodkingwenceslaus, January 09, 2005 23:42 :: link::

comments (20)

Strange Cargo -- Frank Borzage

here's a little piece I wrote on the film last year, at the height of the Mel Gibson/The Passion crisis (and, as Ashleigh points out, there's a lot of good stuff on the IMDB)--I'm fascinated by the way this film uses Christian imagery without allowing itself to be used by it! There's even an Animal Man teaser in there!

Gods On Holiday

Forget Caviezel, forget H.B. Warner, forget Dafoe even--there's only been one great portrayal of Christ in film history...I'm talking about Ian Hunter in Strange Cargo (1940), of course. Fittingly, he's a supporting character. Are you listening Mel? There is no difference between a hair-shirt and a straight-jacket.

Frank Borzage uses every convention of the ultimate Nietzschean genre (the prison-break film) to build his case against romantic "empowerment"--which is really just the flipside of asceticism. You know the drill with these--toss the moral law out the window: it's man vs. men; self-actualization vs authority...the strong do as they will, the weak suffer what they must. You either beat the system or it beats you.

The gangster cycle of the thirties was born to dramatize this struggle. Eventually, there's nothing to do with desire but kill it, and these protagonists all end up dead: either physically--as in Little Caesar, Scarface and a hundred others--or spiritually, as in I Am A Fugitive From A Chain Gang... Depending upon the director's point of view, this either comes across as martyrdom or mercy-killing, but in neither case is there any possibility of a truce between the outlaw and fate.

But how about that possibility?

What if you show human beings triumphing over every obstacle until they smack into the bars of the ultimate jail cell--the will itself? And then you give them the key? Or, rather, you tell them: there's nothing on the other side, why not redirect that desire toward what's on this side of it?

That's exactly what Borzage does here--and he doesn't go halfway with his deus ex machina... He sends God (Cambreau) in to pinch-run in the equivalent of the second inning, and he stays in there to run things for the rest of the game. This is Christ as player-manager.

When Hunter and Gable first meet, in a disgusting prison dormitory on Devil's Island, Gable grabs the Bible off of his saintly cell-mate and says, flipping through the pages: "There's some things in here that'll startcha talkin' to yerself. Like this for instance: 'And God created man in his own image.' . . . Take a look at me--do I look like a God to you? This forsaken place is fulla Gods, I suppose? Only they're not workin' at it right now. They're gods on a holiday."

And he's right. That's Nietzsche's (and Emerson's) superman in a nutshell, absolutely free. In "Manners", Emerson explains that his ideal human being ought to "carry the holiday in his eye".

I'm more interested in gods who punch the clock. And so is Borzage.

This whole adventure is a preparation for salvation. The Christlike Cambreau does what he can for the Telez (the brutal theist), Flaubert (the paranoid), and Moll (a lesser version of Gable's superman). But Gable is the target from the beginning--in the penultimate scene, he screams at the drowning man: "who're ya gonna call on for help now Cambreau--I'm the only God who can save ya now!" And then he understands what he's just said and dives into the water. He pulls Christ back into the boat. And that's what Christianity should have been about. Not God suffering as a man. But a person who becomes a God by halting that suffering. Borges theorizes that "Christ" wasn't Jesus, but Judas. I vote for Pilate... The Gospels tell a story of human/divine failure...

Ah, but we love those martyrs, don't we? We like to project ourselves into that Christ position. All that suffering, but there's redemption beyond the grave, right? You'll be sorry world... Billy Corgan syndrome. Borzage (like Grant Morrison in Animal Man) is saying: You are God--and that's a heavy responsibility. There's no time for self-pity. Other people are being crucified every day, and if you can stop it, you'd better do so! Some holidays are far too costly.

"Why have you forsaken me?"

I give up.

Why?

posted by goodkingwenceslaus, January 09, 2005 23:38 :: link::

comments (14)

Meet John Doe -- Frank Capra

Click on the film-still above for a link to the Interet Movie Database entry on this film! (the IMDB is an indispensable repository of film critiques/chit-chat!)

And here's a little Frank Capra-based discussion that I wrote/participated in, a while back...the John Doe stuff kicks in at the end:

Forager indicates that he is substantially in agreement with a lot of the stuff I've been ranting about, but asks "What About Capra?". I replied, of course, because I think the question deserved an answer, and the results were beneficial, as we each were able to clarify our positions, a little, vis-a-vis Mr. Capra. Along the way, Forager mentioned Manny Farber's "termite art" once again, and I decided that, even though I really should be finishing off doctoral applications, I ought to do a little checking up on this fascinating "insect aesthetic"... Anyway, I've barely scratched the surface of "termite-tapeworm-fungus-moss art", but I like what I've gotten under my fingernails so far...

During the course of the aforementioned comments-thread discussion, Forager and I decided that we agreed (with the help of a little somethin' called the "shotgun suspicion") that Capra's It's A Wonderful Life is actually an exceptionally dark film... But that didn't solve anything, because we still have no way of understanding why I love it and he hates it (or really dislikes it, anyway). Forager added that he really likes early Capra works such as The Bitter Tea of General Yen and It Happened One Night--it's just the films the director made after his "breakdown" in 1935 that bother him. Now, I don't want to go on for too long about IAWL in this space, because I'm trying to hive up that particular honey for use in late-December, but Forager also mentions Meet John Doe, in passing, and I think I'll use that film as my text...

I really have to disagree with Forager's contention that the later Capra films "don't acknowledge any of the contradictions and complications in the material". Or, you know, maybe I could let that statement stand, if the proviso could be added that, because this acknowledgement never takes place, the contradictions and complications which are manifest within the film are all the more intensely felt! Basically, I don't think Frank Capra ever recovered from the bout of craziness which drove him into seclusion for most of a calendar year, immediately after he had become the toast of Hollywood, thanks to the Oscar-sweeping performance of It Happened One Night in 1934. The apocryphal story is that a "strange man" came to see Capra in his sickbed and lectured him about squandering a magnificent opportunity to enlighten a world that was waiting, with baited breath, for his next film. If that doesn't convince ya that the Capster was a bit deranged, I don't know what would! And I love it! Typically, I like works that just don't hold together. My favourite books are Hawthorne's Blithedale, Melville's Pierre + The Confidence Man, Dickens' Mystery of Edwin Drood, Hammett's fiction--all of which are usually interpreted, when they receive any attention at all, as "fascinating failures". My point is--why throw an artistic pass that you know you are capable of completing perfectly? To score another touchdown? Why run up the score? (this is the main source of my problem with Hawks, Hitchcock, Kubrick, Ford--well, no, I just hate Ford, I'm not gonna lie to you, dear reader!--but the rest of 'em? come on! Who wants to watch Hitchcock defeat the Freudian thriller 77-0?) Capra had already made the ultimate "never the twain shall meet" fable (Bitter Tea), and the ultimate screwball reconciliation between the sexes/classes fantasy (It Happened One Night), but the problem then became, what to do next?

I think the key early Capra film is actually The Miracle Woman--a textbook "fascinating failure" that no one, including Capra, knew what to make of, once it was done. The only thing that's obvious about the film is that Barbara Stanwyck is probably the greatest screen actress of all time--and that any of the artificial technique she might have acquired earlier was completely eaten away by the impossible task her director assigned to her (basically, she was somehow supposed to embody complete sham and complete authenticity!) It's an insanely great performance, and we're not likely to ever see its' like again, but I think that, in every film he made after 1935 (except for obvious phone-in jobs like You Can't Take it With You and Arsenic and Old Lace), Frank Capra tried to recreate the intensity of that performance on an ever-widening canvas. By the time you get to John Doe, the termites in Capra's brain had so eaten away at his ability to deliver a coherent sermon that you (or I, anyway) just gawk in amazement at what on earth it is he ever could have been hoping to communicate to the world. I mean--what's wrong with Gary Cooper in this movie? To use actor-speak: "what's his motivation"? Why does everyone keep changing all of the time? Why does Edward Arnold actually look concerned about Cooper's welfare at the end? Does Stanwyck really think her hobo is the second coming of Christ? Does anyone really believe that "the People" that we've seen in this movie are capable of the kind of unified action that Stanwyck's cynical speeches call for? Even after she says she's starting to believe? I don't know the answers to any of these questions, and neither, I'm sure, did Capra. Later on, he would just smile and say he made these movies "for the little guy", but I think we can just dismiss that--he made them because he was so distressed and hopped up on the dichotomies that his early films had brought to light that he couldn't help filming a record of the madness that comes from not "embracing contradiction".

Anyway, that's what I think. I can understand why some people would find these films annoying, harrassing, disturbing, etc. But that's why I love 'em!

Happy Commenting!

Dave

posted by goodkingwenceslaus, January 09, 2005 23:36 :: link::

comments (8)

Fight the Power -- Public Enemy

For you consideration:
(p.s. one of these articles makes me want to bite--can you guess which one?)
* Shut Them Down: A History of Public Enemy vs. the System
* Public Enemy: Power to the People and the Beats
* Nude as the News: Album Review
* Notions of Rupture (or Noise) in Subculture
* Chuck D is a Signifying Monkey
* Chuck D is a Signifying Monkey--WTF?

From:

1989 the number another summer (get down)
Sound of the funky drummer
Music hittin' your heart cause I know you got sould
(Brothers and sisters, hey)
Listen if you're missin' y'all
Swingin' while I'm singin'
Givin' whatcha gettin'
Knowin' what I know
While the Black bands sweatin'
And the rhythm rhymes rollin'
Got to give us what we want
Gotta give us what we need
Our freedom of speech is freedom or death
We got to fight the powers that be
Lemme hear you say
Fight the power

Chorus

As the rhythm designed to bounce
What counts is that the rhymes
Designed to fill your mind
Now that you've realized the prides arrived
We got to pump the stuff to make us tough
from the heart
It's a start, a work of art
To revolutionize make a change nothin's strange
People, people we are the same
No we're not the same
Cause we don't know the game
What we need is awareness, we can't get careless
You say what is this?
My beloved lets get down to business
Mental self defensive fitness
(Yo) bum rush the show
You gotta go for what you know
Make everybody see, in order to fight the powers that be
Lemme hear you say...
Fight the Power

Chorus

Elvis was a hero to most
But he never meant shit to me you see
Straight up racist that sucker was
Simple and plain
Mother fuck him and John Wayne
Cause I'm Black and I'm proud
I'm ready and hyped plus I'm amped
Most of my heroes don't appear on no stamps
Sample a look back you look and find
Nothing but rednecks for 400 years if you check
Don't worry be happy
Was a number one jam
Damn if I say it you can slap me right here
(Get it) lets get this party started right
Right on, c'mon
What we got to say
Power to the people no delay
To make everybody see
In order to fight the powers that be

(Fight the Power)

lyrics courtesy of Public Enemy.com

posted by goodkingwenceslaus, January 09, 2005 23:16 :: link::

comments (5)

Paradise Don't Come Cheap -- New Kingdom

For your consideration:

* A review of Bell Hooks' Outlaw Culture
* Terror, Drugs and Propaganda
* Why We Should Legalize Drugs
* Drug War Facts
* Drug Policy of the Democratic Party
* Drug Free America Foundation

from:

Fueled by liquid courage
Product of a one night stand
38' caliber revolver singin'
I wanna hold your hand
The Kings from Queens were blastin on the jukebox
Somthin bout shell top sneakers
Played alot places graced alota stages
Always felt like a soapbox preacher
Lived by the code of the streets
The Law...
Only the good die young
I'm losen touch gettin older by the second
Prayin for my day to come

Paradise don't come cheap (x2) Alright
Paradise don't come cheap (x2)

Rented one bedroom upstairs in an attic
Off the wall murphy style bed
Old black white read nuthin but static
Caliber she lay like a lady side my head
Whisper in my ear
Justify my bad habits
Mexican gold had me sinkin in the mattress
Careful what you wish for cause it just might happen
As strange as it looks
The stranger it seem
It feels as I'd been stuck inside a movie screen

Paradise don't come cheap (x2) Alright
Paradise don't come cheap (x2)

Paradise come to me in my mexican sleep
But I was drownin knee deep between the sheets
Says "I'm the one you've been lookin for to meet
I couldn't save you too quick
Because I plays to keep"
I saids, "No need to explain
My gratitude is yours"
We smoked the last of my stuff
And then she opened the door

Paradise don't come cheap (x2) Alright
Paradise don't come cheap (x2)

posted by goodkingwenceslaus, January 09, 2005 23:12 :: link::

comments

Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos-- Public Enemy

For you consideration:
(p.s. one of these articles makes me want to bite--can you guess which one?)
* Shut Them Down: A History of Public Enemy vs. the System
* Public Enemy: Power to the People and the Beats
* Nude as the News Album Review
* Notions of Rupture (or Noise) in Subculture
* Chuck D is a Signifying Monkey
* Chuck D is a Signifying Monkey--WTF?
* American Incarceration Statistics

From:

I got a letter from the government
The other day
I opened and read it
It said they were suckers
They wanted me for their army or whatever
Picture me given' a damn - I said never
Here is a land that never gave a damn
About a brother like me and myself
Because they never did
I wasn't wit' it, but just that very minute...
It occured to me
The suckers had authority
Cold sweatin' as I dwell in my cell
How long has it been?
They got me sittin' in the state pen
I gotta get out - but that thought was thought before
I contemplated a plan on the cell floor
I'm not a fugitive on the run
But a brother like me begun - to be another one
Public enemy servin' time - they drew the line y'all
To criticize me some crime - never the less
They could not understand that I'm a Black man
And I could never be a veteran
On the strength, the situation's unreal
I got a raw deal, so I'm goin' for the steel

They got me rottin' in the time that I'm servin'
Tellin' you what happened the same time they're throwin'
4 of us packed in a cell like slaves - oh well
The same motherfucker got us livin' is his hell
You have to realize - what its a form of slavery
Organized under a swarm of devils
Straight up - word'em up on the level
The reasons are several, most of them federal
Here is my plan anyway and I say
I got gusto, but only some I can trust - yo
Some do a bid from 1 to 10
And I never did, and plus I never been
I'm on a tier where no tears should ever fall
Cell block and locked - I never clock it y'all
'Cause time and time again time
They got me servin' to those and to them
I'm not a citizen
But ever when I catch a C-O
Sleepin' on the job - my plan is on go-ahead
On the strength, I'ma tell you the deal
I got nothin' to lose
'Cause I'm goin' for the steel

You know I caught a C-O
Fallin' asleep on death row
I grabbed his gun - then he did what I said so
And everyman's got served
Along with the time they served
Decency was deserved
To understand my demands
I gave a warnin' - I wanted the governor, y'all
And plus the warden to know
That I was innocent -
Because I'm militant
Posing a threat, you bet it's fuckin' up the government
My plan said I had to get out and break north
Just like with Oliver's neck
I had to get off - my boys had the feds in check
They couldn't do nuthin'
We had a force to instigate a prison riot
This is what it takes for peace
So I just took the piece
Black for Black inside time to cut the leash
Freedom to get out - to the ghetto - no sell out
6 C-Os we got we ought to put their head out
But I'll give 'em a chance, cause I'm civilized
As for the rest of the world, they can't realize
A cell is hell - I'm a rebel so I rebel
Between bars, got me thinkin' like an animal
Got a woman C-O to call me a copter
She tried to get away, and I popped her
Twice, right
Now who wanna get nice?
I had 6 C-Os, now it's 5 to go
And I'm serious - call me delirious
But I'm still a captive
I gotta rap this
Time to break as time grows intense
I got the steel in my right hand
Now I'm lookin' for the fence

I ventured into the courtyard
Followed by 52 brothers
Bruised, battered, and scarred but hard
Goin' out with a bang
Ready to bang out
But power from the sky
And from the tower shots rang out
A high number of dose - yes
And some came close
Figure I trigger my steel
Stand and hold my post
This is what I mean - an anti-nigger machine
If I come out alive and then they won't - come clean
And then I threw up my steel bullets - flew up
Blew up, who shot...
What, who, the bazooka was who
And to my rescue, it was the S1Ws
Secured my getaway, so I just gotaway
The joint broke, from the black smoke
Then they saw it was rougher than the average bluffer
'Cause the steel was black, the attitude exact
Now the chase is on tellin' you to c'mon
53 brothers on the run, and we are gone

lyrics courtesy of Public Enemy.com

posted by goodkingwenceslaus, January 09, 2005 22:57 :: link::

comments (7)

TGIF -- Le Tigre

* The Electroclash movement
* Interview with Kathleen Hanna
* Office Politics.com
* Le Tigre, Erase Errata: The Noise of Revolution

From:

(Intro skit) Don't fuck with me I'm the fuckin manager!
And don't forget your fuckin daily planners.
You better write down everything you accomplish.
And lemme see your fuckin smile around the office.
You "grrrls" look tired were you out late last night?
I heard you were some kind of underground electro feminist performance artists.
Is that right? Right.....
In five years you won't remember getting fired or whatever
And until then and forever I'm proud to be associated with you.
I know 40 hours a week would suit you fine
But your application's been denied, surprise!
This is how it feels to be free.
Turn around, turn around, turn around
And take a look at the crowd and say:
It's okay to hate your job after all it's fucking wrong.
Turn around, turn around turn around and take a look at the crowd.
You know, all my friends are fucking bitches
Best known for burning bridges.
Do you need a character witness?
I said I'm proud to be associated with you.
When I look around, I see your face in the crowd.
I see the girls are out, a lot of freaks in the house.
Le Tigre family and friends,
I hope this feeling never ends cuz you're beautiful
And your boss is an asshole
And I don't give a shit what that dick thinks.
We will survive as thieve we will survive as freaks.
Turn around, turn around turn around
And take a look at the crowd...
I think it looks all right we got friend in sigh yeah
Tomorrow we fight so let's have fun tonight...
Turn around, turn around...

posted by goodkingwenceslaus, January 09, 2005 22:53 :: link::

comments (7)

Down Rodeo -- Rage Against the Machine

* Rage Against the Machine FAQ
* The Anarchist's Cookbook
* Against the Anarchist's Cookbook

From:

Yeah I'm rollin' down Rodeo wit a shotgun
These people ain't seen a brown skin man
Since their grandparents bought one

So now I'm rollin' down Rodeo wit a shotgun
These people ain't seen a brown skin man
Since their grandparents bought one

So now I'm rollin' down Rodeo wit a shotgun

Bangin' this bolo tight on this solo flight can't fight alone
Funk tha track my verbs fly like tha family stone
Tha pen devils set that stage for tha war at home
Locked wit out a wage ya standin' in tha drop zone
The clockers born starin' at an empty plate
Momma's torn hands cover her sunken face
We hungry but them belly full
The structure is set ya neva change it with a ballot pull
In tha ruins there's a network for tha toxic rock
School yard ta precinct, suburb ta project block
Bosses broke south for new flesh and a factory floor
The remains left chained to the powder war

Can't waste a day when the night brings a hearse
So make a move and plead the fifth 'cause ya can't plead the first
Can't waste a day when the night brings a hearse
So now I'm rollin' down Rodeo wit a shotgun
These people ain't seen a brown skin man
Since their grandparents bought one

Yes I'm rollin' down Rodeo wit a shotgun
These people ain't seen a brown skin man
Since their grandparents bought one

So now I'm rollin' down Rodeo wit a shotgun

Bare witness to tha sickest shot while suckas get romantic
They ain't gonna send us campin' like they did my man Fred Hampton
Still we lampin' still clockin' dirt for our sweat
A ballots dead so a bullet's what I get
A thousand years they had tha tools
We should be takin' 'em
Fuck tha G-ride I want the machines that are makin' em
Our target straight wit a room full of armed pawn to
Off tha kings out tha west side at dawn

Can't waste a day when the night brings a hearse
Make a move and plead the fifth 'cause ya can't plead the first
Can't waste a day when the night brings a hearse
So now I'm rollin' down Rodeo wit a shotgun
These people ain't seen a brown skin man
Since their grandparents bought one

Yeah I'm rollin' down Rodeo wit a shotgun
These people ain't seen a brown skin man
Since their grandparents bought one

Yeah I'm rollin' down Rodeo wit a shotgun

The rungs torn from the ladder can't reach the tumour
One god, one market, one truth, one consumer

Just a quiet peaceful dance!
Just a quiet peaceful dance!
Just a quiet peaceful dance!
Just a quiet peaceful dance!
Just a quiet peaceful dance for the things we'll never have
Just a quiet peaceful dance for the things we don't have

lyrics courtesy of Rage Against the Machine.net

posted by goodkingwenceslaus, January 09, 2005 22:40 :: link::

comments (4)

LAPD -- The Offspring

* reports from the L.A. riots
* LAPD official website
* Rodney King Links
* Riot Gun.com

From:

When cops are taking care of business I can understand
But the L.A. story's gone way out of hand
Their acts of aggression, they say they're justified
But it seems an obsession has started from the inside
They're shooting anyone who even tries to run
They're shooting little kids with toy guns
Take it to a jury but they don't give a damn
Because the one who tells the truth is always the policeman
CHORUS
Beat all the niggers
Beat whoever you see
Don't need a reason
(We're) L.A.P.D.
The city of L.A. feels like a prison
With helicopters overhead and bullets whizzing by
Martial law ain't no solution
Police brutality's just social pollution
Beat all the white trash
Beat whoever you see
Don't need a reason
(We're) L.A.P.D.
They say they're keeping the peace
But I'm not buying it because a billy club ain't much of a pacifier
"Protecting your freedom"
Now that's just a lie
It's an excuse for power that's more like an alibi
Law and order doesn't really matter
When you're the one getting bruised and battered
You take it to a jury, they'll throw it in your face
Because justice in L.A. comes in a can of mace
CHORUS

posted by goodkingwenceslaus, January 09, 2005 22:35 :: link::

comments (7)

I Like Fucking -- Bikini Kill

For your consideration:
* Andrea Dworkin--"Intercourse"
* Bikini Kill--A Riot Grrrl Band
* Riot Grrls
* First-Person Punk: Remembering Bikini Kill's First Tour
* Wikipedia entry on the DIY punk ethic
* Musique du Mouchette (a great free internet radio station)

from:

Hey do you believe there's anything beyond troll-guy reality?
I do. I do. I do.

It gets so hard
Just to be okay
Sometimes being happy baby
Is what I'm most afraid of
Baby you know
It gets so hard for me to fight
I don't know how
I guess I never did
Why don't you show me now
How to lose control

(She's so very I don't care) [x2]

Just cuz my world sweet sister
Is so fucking goddamn full of rape
Does that mean my body must always be a source of pain?
No. No. No.

(She's so very I don't care) [x2]

Just cuz I named it right here sweet chickadee
Don't mean for a minute you should think
I'm the opposite of anything
But if you wanna know for sure I'll tell you
We're not gonna prove nothing, nothing
Sittin around watching each other starve
What we need is action/strategy
I want. I want. I want.
I want it now.

What I want. I believe in the radical possibilities of pleasure babe
I do. I do. I do.

posted by goodkingwenceslaus, January 09, 2005 22:31 :: link::

comments (14)

Screwing Yer Courage -- Team Dresch

For your consideration:
*Queercore links
* Riot Grrls
* Wikipedia entry on the DIY punk ethic
* Musique du Mouchette (a great free internet radio station)

from:

it's summer the hairs grown in on my upper thigh just like so much corn in late july but is it summer i'm shaking and my feet are bitter cold i need some fries to go with that shake i need to grease back my hair or let it whip in my face let it whip my face i love you baby i love you we'll stock up on canned goods and move to the woods we'll find a piece of land and quit this fucking band i love you baby i love you

posted by goodkingwenceslaus, January 09, 2005 22:28 :: link::

comments

Spawn Again -- Silverchair

* PETA Website
* Your Mommy Kills Animals--a "discussion" thread
* Animal Liberation Front
* The New Abolitionism

From:

Death becomes clearer through bloodshot eyes
As a death from old age becomes nearer
Why can't the livestock be free
When trading soldiers for steak
Learn to evolve with the new transition
To act upon a hypocritical vision
Discard the old and in with the new
Discard the old and in with the fashion

Learn to evolve with the new transition
To act upon a hypocritical vision
Learn to evolve, learn to, learn to evolve

Who is the bad guy for iron
Require mince these are the facts
So eat what you murder
This is animal liberation
Eight billion killed for human pleasure

Bring on the ape farm
Demolish the monkeys
Drink up, drink up
Look down on junkies

A new hypocritical look and ambition
The time has come
To make the decision you...
Drink up, drink up, look down
I'll hold it back, I'll hold it back

Discard the old, in with the fashion

Death becomes clearer through bloodshot eyes
Death becomes clearer through bloodshot eyes

posted by goodkingwenceslaus, January 09, 2005 22:25 :: link::

comments (5)