Borat

[hundredmillionlifetimes]

That is not even worth responding to, except to point this out. Methinks someone is huffing glue for breakfast.

Whereas you're stuck with responding to posts you deem unworthy of response, while indignantly bypassing the bit about making an effort to understand the post to which you're actually responding. I don't believe you even have a clue as to what Formalism means, or are you really just a devout neocon apologist?

 

[hundredmillionlifetimes]

"And the reason we chose Kazakhstan was because it was a country that no one had heard anything about, so we could essentially play on stereotypes they might have about this ex-Soviet backwater ... I've been in a bizarre situation, where a country has declared me as its number one enemy. It's inherently a comic situation."

Poor Cohen, he can't even escape the Borat character even when he's escaping the Borat character, here trying to defend the film as anti-racist in a racist way. A country that no one had heard anything about (that'll be news to those in Kazakhstan) ... Just like those "characters" in the film now suing Cohen who thought Borat would only be shown in "a country that no one had heard anything about." A comic situation all right, with Cohen now - hilariously - pleading victimisation.

 

[nomadologist]

are you really naive or are you just disingenuous? you're the one who doesn't know what formalism means, but talking to you is like talking to a brick wall of nonsense where ad hominem attacks against others' "logic", when met with valid criticism, is turned into attacking the very foundational principles of logic to absolve yourself from the very thing you were trying to use to tear someone else down. so it's no longer worth my time and i won't be clicking on this Borat thread again.

by the way, kubrick kept taking money from warner brothers for the rest of his life. your argument has no validity, unless you can claim that someone would remove something for moral reasons and keep taking money from distributors who were spreading it around.

 

[hundredmillionlifetimes]

are you really naive or are you just disingenuous? you're the one who doesn't know what formalism means

If you'd read the post you might have learned something about formalism, but you haven't bothered.

but talking to you is like talking to a brick wall of nonsense where ad hominem attacks against others' "logic", when met with valid criticism

Valid criticism? There hasn't been any, unless you mean by valid criticism the ad hominems you perpetually engage in.

... is turned into attacking the very foundational principles of logic

Yes, you didn't read the post - the very foundational principles of logic are precisely what Godel undermined by using logic itself, turning it against itself to demonstrate its limitations. This is clearly too difficult for you, being a formalist an' all.

to absolve yourself from the very thing you were trying to use to tear someone else down.

I wasn't using logic's "foundational principles" but the proven limitations of those principles to demonstrate their inherent weakness ("tearing someone else down" as you label it).

so it's no longer worth my time and i won't be clicking on this Borat thread again.

Too late, you've sniffed way too much glue already. And its not even lunch-time yet.

by the way, kubrick kept taking money from warner brothers for the rest of his life.

So the guy was a conservative capitalist. Is this supposed to be some new insight?

 

[nomadologist]

Ok, I lied, I looked at Hundredmillion's response.

Too late, you've sniffed way too much glue already. And its not even lunch-time yet.

Now there's a statement that not even I can argue with. Hehe. Looks like you do have a sense of humor. Please use it more, I like it

Some guy on Jameson, Deleuze, and why schizophrenia is not formalism (short answer: because the schizophrenic has no "I", no linear "self" narrative, rather than an overabundance of it, via Judith Butler)

http://www.datawranglers.com/negations/issues/96w/96w_peretti.html

Returning to Laplanche's analysis, we can say that Deleuze and Guattari's revolutionary schizophrenic is skilled at effecting "de-translations." This is necessary in a society dominated by heterosexist, racist, colonialist, and sexist norms. As I have argued, schizophrenic acts of de-translation may also be somewhat effective for resisting increasingly flexible and accelerated modes of capital accumulation.

my ADD gets worse by the minute thanks to my new favorite distraction, doesn't it?

 

[nomadologist]

Also, tangential, but something I was thinking about today. The reason why "intention" matters when it comes to something like Borat might have something to do with mirror neurons. If racism is not institutional (i.e., unavoidable and something structurally embedded that we all on some level partcipate in), but exists in individual events or "evental sites" or what have you, maybe it's important to remember that humans can, and always do, call upon a "sense" or set of sensory input that is now being understood by neuroscientists as a fundamental function of cognition.

Mirror neurons are believed to be the structures that process input in such a way that they what give people the feeling of "rapport" with others. It's a sort of meta-structure that we don't quite understand yet, but that seems to have lots of promise. So when some people watch Borat and perceive racism, instead of satire, maybe it has something to do with not being in tune with Borat (or more in tune, as the case may be.)

Maybe this doesn't make sense the way I've said it, and there's obviously no way to test my hypothesis (yet), so it's not scientific, but read about mirror neurons here if you like that sort of thing:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_neuron

 

[nomadologist]

Mirror neuron dysformation/disruption/damage is linked to autism, by the way (which is in turn now being linked to schizophrenia, I think genetically if not in terms of etiology.)

So maybe our new mode is autistic. No one can really explain its prevalence or why 1 of 166 children are now born with some form autism or an autistic spectrum disorder, which is, even after you account for probable misdiagnosis, and the lack of previous awareness of its neurological basis, still staggeringly high.

http://www.fightingautism.org/idea/autism.php

I think that's higher than the number of children who are born with fetal alcohol syndrome or down's syndrome. Would have to look it up.

 

[nomadologist]

One more.

(Autistic) Americans now have almost no friends outside their families/colleagues, study finds:

http://dukenews.duke.edu/2006/06/socialisolation.html

 

[petergunn]

From yesterday's
Baron Cohen, who was born in Hammersmith to an affluent Orthodox Jewish family, is the second of three sons. He went to an independent school in Elstree, and Christ's College, Cambridge, and worked for the investment bank Goldman Sachs before starting his career in television.
Yesterday 08:54 AM
D84
Quote:


oh snap!

 

[borderpolice]

all I'm doing here is simply reframing its findings, a refutation of Formalism, results that have been known and understood since Kurt Gödel's two incompleteness theorems

Goedel's theorems in no way defeat mathematical formalism. In fact they are perfectly compatible with formalism. What you presumably mean is that they refute Hilbert's programme, but even that is debatable (and debated), if only for the simple reason, that Hilbert never actually spelled out his programme in sufficient detail for the question of its veracity or falisity to be a directly mathematical mathematical problem.

And worse, attempts at formalism within the political and social domains leads to madness (schizophrenia) ...

Whatever the merit of such a statement, there is no known connection whatsoever between Goedel's theorem and "political and social domains".

 

[gek-opel]

Also, tangential, but something I was thinking about today. The reason why "intention" matters when it comes to something like Borat might have something to do with mirror neurons. If racism is not institutional (i.e., unavoidable and something structurally embedded that we all on some level partcipate in), but exists in individual events or "evental sites" or what have you, maybe it's important to remember that humans can, and always do, call upon a "sense" or set of sensory input that is now being understood by neuroscientists as a fundamental function of cognition.

Mirror neurons are believed to be the structures that process input in such a way that they what give people the feeling of "rapport" with others. It's a sort of meta-structure that we don't quite understand yet, but that seems to have lots of promise. So when some people watch Borat and perceive racism, instead of satire, maybe it has something to do with not being in tune with Borat (or more in tune, as the case may be.)

Maybe this doesn't make sense the way I've said it, and there's obviously no way to test my hypothesis (yet), so it's not scientific, but read about mirror neurons here if you like that sort of thing:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_neuron

Interesting, but somewhat of an overimplification to render a lack of empathy merely down to a simple neural reaction in the case of an audience not responding well to Baron-Cohen as Borat, surely? There must be plenty of more conscious mediation which intervene inbetween neural mimesis and the ultimate critical decision ("This is racist tosh").

 

[gumdrops]

when is s.b.cohen going to do a jewish character? its all very well him using black/asian rudeboys, gay european fashion interviewers and east european guys to get a laugh and offend people but when is he going to come up with a jewish character? or is he not comfortable with doing that?

 

[gek-opel]

Its not Meta enough is it? Or perhaps too Meta? Hmm...

 

[nomadologist]

From yesterday's
Baron Cohen, who was born in Hammersmith to an affluent Orthodox Jewish family, is the second of three sons. He went to an independent school in Elstree, and Christ's College, Cambridge, and worked for the investment bank Goldman Sachs before starting his career in television.
Yesterday 08:54 AM
D84
Quote:


oh snap!

peter when i read that i was like "damnnn" he knows exactly what he's doing. stacking paper. and everyone went and gave him some. so weird.

 

[nomadologist]

Interesting, but somewhat of an overimplification to render a lack of empathy merely down to a simple neural reaction in the case of an audience not responding well to Baron-Cohen as Borat, surely? There must be plenty of more conscious mediation which intervene inbetween neural mimesis and the ultimate critical decision ("This is racist tosh").

yeah it is an oversimplification, but mirror neurons are set up to be the most important function we don't understand yet by a lot of researchers. they think we're going to find out all sorts of things are related to it.

 

[nomadologist]

and I don't think empathy is the right word--empathy is what sociopaths lack, not autistic people. i think it's just a simple lack of understanding of another's intentions

 

[nomadologist]

when is s.b.cohen going to do a jewish character? its all very well him using black/asian rudeboys, gay european fashion interviewers and east european guys to get a laugh and offend people but when is he going to come up with a jewish character? or is he not comfortable with doing that?

Larry David beat him to it.

The episode where Larry and another Jewish man get into it because Larry's listening to Wagner? Classic.

 

[Numbers]

when is s.b.cohen going to do a jewish character? its all very well him using black/asian rudeboys, gay european fashion interviewers and east european guys to get a laugh and offend people but when is he going to come up with a jewish character? or is he not comfortable with doing that?

He already did in some way, in the very beginning, together with his brother:

Ali G: Before he was massive:

 

[swears]

Re: Offending people/Larry David

Have you seen the episode of Curb... where he manages to offend his wife's Christian relatives in every possible way over the Christmas holidays and then he tries to make up for it by hiring a nativity performance...and it just gets worse and worse until he's brawling on the ground with "Joseph"?
Had me in stitches.

 

[nomadologist]

HA yes I love that one. Or the one where Larry and his wife pretend not to be Jewish or democrats to get into that Country Club? Where he pretends to have a hummer or suburban or something that he drove from a few blocks away, and says "log cabin republican" like it's a dirty word?

laugh till it hurts