I love E.O. Wilson
1) I want to look as good as E.O. Wilson,
as charming as "Sri" David Attenborough,
as well-reasoned as Noam Chomsky,
... when I'm sixty-four. Tam tam.
2) A rundown of a common phenomenon: Internet message boards are composed of trolls (so-called "users"), harassing ("posting to") other trolls ("users") with drivel ("opinions") and spam ("new topics"), constantly creating conflict ("discussion") based on misunderstanding ("interpreting") what the other trolls ("users") have written... This is a way of perpetuating the societal divides and conflicts on a micro-scale, playing them out in the doll-house of make-believe arguments and debates called message board, or forum - or even "guest book"... Yea, let's behave like good guests, shall we?
3) Message boards are even more inane than your regular politics, since in the virtual world there is no material resistance, and since (to expand the scope for a minute) the internet meme/virus/trend/youtube phenomenon propagates by disarming the remaining mental resistance of the user, infiltrating the subcutaneous world of the WWW Everyman by forcing acceptance of a complete inanity, a total jackass obscenity. Because "that's cool". It's not cool. It's hot. Internet is (McLuhan) cool, but youtube is hot. Youtube is the final act in the history of Television (which, by the way, turned "hot" around 1980, when CNN was launched) and thus a viral infestation within the Web. I suggest eradication, but this is to be achieved by simply turning our backs on suggestible user marketing, which is hardly any worse than corporate- or state marketing. But we go online to escape the drudgery of everyday existence - what do we find? Drudgery of everyday existence, but more "spaced out" and hyper-textual. Dead links and 404's are simply gaps in our consciousness, like the blind spots of our retinas. We are urged (and urge ourselves) to feel connected, but sometimes the modem (brain) is not plugged (tuned) in .
4) I had some 4th point but I forgot... Oh yea!
5) American films focus on the subject-object conflict ("fend off evil and fetch a reward"), and on the thorough-faring ("tunneling through") of the protagonist. American (and to some extent European, Latin American etc...) movies are made out of destructible material: The COST of a movie is measured in wrecked cars, houses and sets. Even when nothing explodes, people feel in control of their plastic and silicon appliances and gear: people have knobs and monitors to fondle. Maybe it's eternal, this effigy of destruction? Maybe all theatre is theatre of the sacrifice? Whatever the historical origins, American cinema (of the Bruckheimer variety) is ugly precisely because it has no peripheral consciousness. Whatever is seemingly "peripheral" in these scenes is a hopeless mess! Really, from film to film - I'm absolutely gutted. These fuckers don't know how to measure proportions of light, space and sound in all 4 dimensions - except to the degree it relates to the struggling protagonist and his gear (i.e. appropriated material mobilized for the sake of a cause, i.e. utility). American cinema is hopelessly pathetic and melodramatic, precisely because the model is an operatic aria with an empty stage. But when one realizes that this "emptiness" is simply blindness or unwillingness to see (the richness of the environment and so on), then the truth is laid bare: American movies, especially their "action" sequences, are generally (with a few exceptions, from Lynch to Cronenberg) devoid of natural elegance. The world is violently transformed: The model, then, is Kali rather than Brahma. Contrast this with the superb elegance of Oriental, Russian or French cinema. Despite an almost painful lack of a subject-center, the world of the un-American (indeed anti-American) cinema is constantly aware of the situatedness of the stage - of, as it were, the position of the camera frame within the environment. From fixed shots to pan shots, the peripherally conscious psyche draws elegant, smooth, erotic, brush strokes, like a calligrapher or a vine farmer. This, of course, is what much of this "New Wave" of Chinese, Hong Kong, Korean, Japanese and Taiwanese cinema is consciously rebelling against (just look at films like Infernal Affairs). While I recognize the need (and indeed right) of a rebellion for the young (what a curmudgeonly thing to say!), I would hope this utter Americanization of the Oriental arts (if not the Oriental mind) is a superficial or a passing phase. But that's just an Orientalist position, I grant, which can be neatly summed up as the simultaneous longing for an exotic Other coupled with a wish for their constant lagging-behind and stagnation: the Third World shall remain the Third World, or else the First World has nowhere to escape to!
Well, at any rate, I would hope to enjoy my septuagenarian years watching Bergman and Kurosawa, reading E.O. Wilson, and consuming the Orient in a feverish attempt at a white man's re-appropriation of what Alan Watts called the "flood-light consciousness."
as charming as "Sri" David Attenborough,
as well-reasoned as Noam Chomsky,
... when I'm sixty-four. Tam tam.
2) A rundown of a common phenomenon: Internet message boards are composed of trolls (so-called "users"), harassing ("posting to") other trolls ("users") with drivel ("opinions") and spam ("new topics"), constantly creating conflict ("discussion") based on misunderstanding ("interpreting") what the other trolls ("users") have written... This is a way of perpetuating the societal divides and conflicts on a micro-scale, playing them out in the doll-house of make-believe arguments and debates called message board, or forum - or even "guest book"... Yea, let's behave like good guests, shall we?
3) Message boards are even more inane than your regular politics, since in the virtual world there is no material resistance, and since (to expand the scope for a minute) the internet meme/virus/trend/youtube phenomenon propagates by disarming the remaining mental resistance of the user, infiltrating the subcutaneous world of the WWW Everyman by forcing acceptance of a complete inanity, a total jackass obscenity. Because "that's cool". It's not cool. It's hot. Internet is (McLuhan) cool, but youtube is hot. Youtube is the final act in the history of Television (which, by the way, turned "hot" around 1980, when CNN was launched) and thus a viral infestation within the Web. I suggest eradication, but this is to be achieved by simply turning our backs on suggestible user marketing, which is hardly any worse than corporate- or state marketing. But we go online to escape the drudgery of everyday existence - what do we find? Drudgery of everyday existence, but more "spaced out" and hyper-textual. Dead links and 404's are simply gaps in our consciousness, like the blind spots of our retinas. We are urged (and urge ourselves) to feel connected, but sometimes the modem (brain) is not plugged (tuned) in .
4) I had some 4th point but I forgot... Oh yea!
5) American films focus on the subject-object conflict ("fend off evil and fetch a reward"), and on the thorough-faring ("tunneling through") of the protagonist. American (and to some extent European, Latin American etc...) movies are made out of destructible material: The COST of a movie is measured in wrecked cars, houses and sets. Even when nothing explodes, people feel in control of their plastic and silicon appliances and gear: people have knobs and monitors to fondle. Maybe it's eternal, this effigy of destruction? Maybe all theatre is theatre of the sacrifice? Whatever the historical origins, American cinema (of the Bruckheimer variety) is ugly precisely because it has no peripheral consciousness. Whatever is seemingly "peripheral" in these scenes is a hopeless mess! Really, from film to film - I'm absolutely gutted. These fuckers don't know how to measure proportions of light, space and sound in all 4 dimensions - except to the degree it relates to the struggling protagonist and his gear (i.e. appropriated material mobilized for the sake of a cause, i.e. utility). American cinema is hopelessly pathetic and melodramatic, precisely because the model is an operatic aria with an empty stage. But when one realizes that this "emptiness" is simply blindness or unwillingness to see (the richness of the environment and so on), then the truth is laid bare: American movies, especially their "action" sequences, are generally (with a few exceptions, from Lynch to Cronenberg) devoid of natural elegance. The world is violently transformed: The model, then, is Kali rather than Brahma. Contrast this with the superb elegance of Oriental, Russian or French cinema. Despite an almost painful lack of a subject-center, the world of the un-American (indeed anti-American) cinema is constantly aware of the situatedness of the stage - of, as it were, the position of the camera frame within the environment. From fixed shots to pan shots, the peripherally conscious psyche draws elegant, smooth, erotic, brush strokes, like a calligrapher or a vine farmer. This, of course, is what much of this "New Wave" of Chinese, Hong Kong, Korean, Japanese and Taiwanese cinema is consciously rebelling against (just look at films like Infernal Affairs). While I recognize the need (and indeed right) of a rebellion for the young (what a curmudgeonly thing to say!), I would hope this utter Americanization of the Oriental arts (if not the Oriental mind) is a superficial or a passing phase. But that's just an Orientalist position, I grant, which can be neatly summed up as the simultaneous longing for an exotic Other coupled with a wish for their constant lagging-behind and stagnation: the Third World shall remain the Third World, or else the First World has nowhere to escape to!
Well, at any rate, I would hope to enjoy my septuagenarian years watching Bergman and Kurosawa, reading E.O. Wilson, and consuming the Orient in a feverish attempt at a white man's re-appropriation of what Alan Watts called the "flood-light consciousness."
posted by BoxBob | 12:56 AM
|
1 comments
