humour: media / politics

[Guybrush]

some Jungian stuff i found on a website about inversion and myth

Interesting stuff. Would you mind posting the link?

 

[nomadologist]

It's true, Slothrop, I think you're right on that.

I know what you meant, Guybrush, I was just being obnoxious for effect

 

[nomadologist]

http://www.mythsdreamssymbols.com/hero.html

 

[Slothrop]

In architecture/literature/whatever — loads of things. My point is that such should be able to be discussed without someone constantly interupting the discussion with facts that are a matter of course.

But in this case it actually was relevant (if not particularly polite): Gavin gave the explanation "I think that the excessive irony and detachment in art & culture is a product of the lack of any political sway the citizenry has in the west...."

So if the citizenry actually have more political sway in west than they do in (say) China or Zimbabwe or Somalia (to pick some rather cheesy examples) then you'd expect a culture of excessive irony or detachment in those countries as well. Otherwise you're saying that people have less political sway in the west than anywhere else in the world, which Tea and Vimothy weren't convinced by. Or the point needs to be modified and qualified.

I'd agree with the point that disengagement from the political process is a factor but it's not just the basic lack of political influence than the original statement made it sound like. It's maybe more that people have the luxury of disengagement from politics and if politics isn't likely to come knocking on our door in the middle of the night or make it impossible to feed their family. I don't know - does this hold out across other places with a history of reasonably high standards of living and moderate politics?

 

[zhao]

*Chokes on biscuit*

Fucking hell! Maybe it's good to live under tyrants then, yes? At least our "art" means something...

What a load of facile sub-TAZ nonsense.

of course there is something to be said about art produced under oppressive regimes. it is sometimes much more profound and powerful than in a fake democracy where people think they are "free" and "can do what ever they want". look at the conditions under which Tarkovsky made his movies in the former USSR. and the amazing films Abbas Kiarostami made in Iran. arguably these are works of a much higher order than anything produced in the west in past few decades.

no i am not romanticizing 3rd world dictatorships. shit i come from one so i know how stifling life can be under those conditions. but it is true that nothing means shit in the west, while in some places art is still important, something to fight for, a matter of life and death. and when there is that much conviction, the results are often just unbelievable.

 

[turtles]

But in this case it actually was relevant (if not particularly polite): Gavin gave the explanation "I think that the excessive irony and detachment in art & culture is a product of the lack of any political sway the citizenry has in the west...."

So if the citizenry actually have more political sway in west than they do in (say) China or Zimbabwe or Somalia (to pick some rather cheesy examples) then you'd expect a culture of excessive irony or detachment in those countries as well. Otherwise you're saying that people have less political sway in the west than anywhere else in the world, which Tea and Vimothy weren't convinced by. Or the point needs to be modified and qualified.

I'd agree with the point that disengagement from the political process is a factor but it's not just the basic lack of political influence than the original statement made it sound like. It's maybe more that people have the luxury of disengagement from politics and if politics isn't likely to come knocking on our door in the middle of the night or make it impossible to feed their family. I don't know - does this hold out across other places with a history of reasonably high standards of living and moderate politics?

I think maybe it's more like people come up against a hard wall much faster in more oppressive societies, so that they feel like their art/protests/whatever are really doing something, because they hit resistance so quickly. Whereas in more liberal democracies, you can push and push and push and never really come up against much resistance. Even if you do produce some change, it's an allowed change (like electing a new government) and everyone kinda goes "oh that was an alright idea" and carries on. It's TOO easy, there's TOO little resistance, which sucks the life out of the art/whatever, because it feels like there's no force to resist against, while simultaneously the thing that you really want to resist against always seems to be one step removed from the thing you actually can get to. Cf. Kafka's The Castle

(dude! ctrl+i automatically adds italic tags to your text. cool!)

 

[gek-opel]

Who are you to say whether these outpourings were phony or not? Isn't this extremely condescending (and goes counter to your belief that we are not all the media's puppets)? I dare say that many of the people showing public grief were tagging along for various reasons, but to tar all with the same brush is downright wrong. Also, bear in mind that people are naturally gregarious and truly live through interaction through with each other, so this 'being seen to do something' should not be considered particularly baffling.

Mediatized real-life tragedies are the equivalents of the fictional tragedies that fulfilled a similarly cathartic function (for admirable and not-so-admirable reasons both) in days gone by. That's why the public passes from tragedy to tragedy on a whim - it is the generality, not the specificity of each case that attracts people.

I don't know why everyone's tying themselves up in knots over this phenomenon.

Firstly "tragedy"- what an over used word! Nowadays t seems merely to refer to something dramatic and unfortunate...

Such "tragedies" squat on the news schedule and obscure actually important events, geopolitics, economics etc.

I for one have no understanding of "catharsis" I know what the word means, but I have never understood its function, or how it feels. I think people enjoy going down dark sadistic tunnels of experience. A mediatized event does serve a communal purpose, but is often malign as it serves to cover over other more important long terms goings-on, and also to perversely over-emotionalise events which morally need another sort of affect-- the media has the ability to present situations where empathy and pity are completely useless, almost offensive and self-indulgent emotions. They often have the strange effect of preventing a proper engagement with the causes of such situations, creating a knee jerk desire that "something must be done", hence mass-mediatized charity spectacle et al...

Also the phenomenon of the child abuse bestseller is pretty disturbing, especially when people don't come out and admit they get a salacious thrill out of reading about the misfortunes of others, rather that it is somehow a morally improving experience...

 

[nomadologist]

just guess what ctrl + b does to your text, turtles! or ctrl + u!

 

[gek-opel]

In contemporary Hollywood, celebrities (analogous to Greek gods and goddesses) are no longer held up and worshiped for their glamorous screen personae, but instead, people are fascinated with the everyday, unglamorous, all too flawed and ugly traits of celebrities. Instead of looking to them for wisdom and inspiration, we look to them as cautionary tales. What we look to in our pantheon is an INVERSION of what the Greeks did theirs.

The interesting bit is the sick jouissance we gain by watching celebrities suffer, an inhuman lust for blood and death, and decline and fall. There is a truly sadistic relationship at the heart of celebrity/women's mag culture, which goes beyond merely schadenfreude or ressentiment, into an almost bread-and-circuses hard-on for corruption and ruin.

 

[turtles]

just guess what ctrl + b does to your text, turtles! or ctrl + u!

yeah I know but I didn't realize it would also work and put in the right tags in this crappy little web-form! i'm excited!

 

[gek-opel]

I think maybe it's more like people come up against a hard wall much faster in more oppressive societies, so that they feel like their art/protests/whatever are really doing something, because they hit resistance so quickly. Whereas in more liberal democracies, you can push and push and push and never really come up against much resistance. Even if you do produce some change, it's an allowed change (like electing a new government) and everyone kinda goes "oh that was an alright idea" and carries on. It's TOO easy, there's TOO little resistance, which sucks the life out of the art/whatever, because it feels like there's no force to resist against, while simultaneously the thing that you really want to resist against always seems to be one step removed from the thing you actually can get to. Cf. Kafka's The Castle

Its also because once society is more democratic and capitalistic Art can function as an effective control system for energetic and rebellious youth enabling them to engage in a pseudo-struggle against a foe who doesn't care and in fact is only to happy to utilise the products of their labours.

 

[Mr. Tea]

Yes, "mundane" explanations are always more "probable" explanations for things, right Mr. Tea? Isn't that what they taught you in particle physics? That things work exactly the way they appear to work. That's why the earth is at the center of the universe. And all of that.

Don't ask me, this is your and Bicky's argument - I just stuck my oar in for the sake of a cheap gag.

Edit: although while we're on the subject of particle physics, I will say that Occam's Razor, or some equivalent of it, still operates at the sub-atomic scale...physicists may come up with theories that appear outlandish to the layman, but they are usually still the simplest, most down-to-earth theories that will describe the known data. No-one has yet received a Nobel prize for coming up with most head-bustingly whacked-out theory that will explain a particular phenomenon: the theories that stand the test of time are almost invariably the most elegant, economical ones. If they contravene 'common sense', then so be it.

 

[turtles]

Its also because once society is more democratic and capitalistic Art can function as an effective control system for energetic and rebellious youth enabling them to engage in a pseudo-struggle against a foe who doesn't care and in fact is only to happy to utilise the products of their labours.

Yes, definitely. Was reading this excerpt from NO LOGO the other day which talks about pretty much the same thing. Capitalism gladly absorbing all criticism and then selling them back to you in a handy niche-marketed bundle. Which basically leads us back the question that started off this whole thread...

 

[Mr. Tea]

Vimothy and Mr. Tea: the ‘if you prefer dictatorship to democracy why don’t you pack your things and move?’ shtick (and its variations) is starting to get really tiresome. It’s like trying to have a constructive argument over the merits of the 1950s and having some feminist go ‘but what about how they treated women, and blacks, and ...’ every 5 minutes. Valid point, sure, but pretty damn grating after a while. Especially when made as a lame one-liner instead of being woven into a coherent argument.

OK, I accept that as a valid criticism, but Gavin's original remark about how "we in the West have so little say over what goes on" (or whatever it was, that was the gist of it) carries with it such an obvious implicit corollary, to the point that it's almost explicit, that there exists a much better and fairer system somewhere else. And I fail to see much evidence of this, to be honest. I mean, if people in the US/UK are making "ironic" art because they feel so powerless in the face of the ruling system in power in those countries, it follows that art from countries like Iran or Burma or wherever must be orders of magnitude more ironic, does it not? Whereas having seen some of the stuff Gavin's been posting in this thread, it seems as if the sort of revolutionary art being created in dictatorships or violently corrupt pseudo-democracies around the world draws its power precisely from its honesty and authenticity as a means of expression.

 

[gek-opel]

I get Gavin's point, but perhaps it is better to look at the argument the other way around: that an ironic detachment created by late capital/post-modernity vitiates the ability to make anything "authentic" or "honest" (scare quotes intentional, natch).

 

[zhao]

The interesting bit is the sick jouissance we gain by watching celebrities suffer, an inhuman lust for blood and death, and decline and fall. There is a truly sadistic relationship at the heart of celebrity/women's mag culture, which goes beyond merely schadenfreude or ressentiment, into an almost bread-and-circuses hard-on for corruption and ruin.

wish i had it with me but the paper i was reading was talking about exactly this: the fascination with the fall of celebrities is exactly like the fascination with the fall of heroes in classic tragedy.

Re: catharsis: haven't you ever cranked death-metal or dark-step and just rocked out for 30 minutes and feel lighter and better afterwards? or see a sad movie and afterwards feel a bit cleansed?

 

[swears]

"You've got to be kidding..."

So why should such an established artist inspire fantasies about lacking a sense of humor? Well, in the most respectful way, Koons can seem like a joke - one either gets Koons or one doesn't...

 

[gek-opel]

wish i had it with me but the paper i was reading was talking about exactly this: the fascination with the fall of celebrities is exactly like the fascination with the fall of heroes in classic tragedy.

Re: catharsis: haven't you ever cranked death-metal or dark-step and just rocked out for 30 minutes and feel lighter and better afterwards? or see a sad movie and afterwards feel a bit cleansed?

I can see the argument vis-a-vis celebrities/Greek heroes and tragedy, but I think its a little too cute... it fails to take account of the fact that firstly these people aren't actually held up as "heroes" or even their analogue in the first place. Most of the time celebrities (not "stars" or "artists" but plain bog-standard celebrities) do not pass the "appreciate them for a skill or attribute" phase, they move immediately or with an alarming rapidity into the torture chamber of endless creepy analysis of their every move and childish (in the sense of children at their most cruel) delight at their suffering. For example: what exactly is my interest in Pete Doherty based on- in no sense is he a hero for me, I think his talents are exceptionally slight and his output cliche-riddled in the extreme. I enjoy his exploits only because of an inherent sadism... so in a sense there is no fall... they don't even need to be celebrities per se (see the rape-fiction stuff- although I acknowledge that what is going on there is slightly different, probably even more creepy). Unless of course the Greek tragedy stuff is based more in sadism, which a lot of it appears to be...

Re: Catharsis-- I enjoy those things certainly, but I don't feel lighter afterwards, there is no sense of purification. They don't make me more angry or sad or anything either tho!

 

[Guybrush]

OK, I accept that as a valid criticism, but Gavin's original remark about how "we in the West have so little say over what goes on" (or whatever it was, that was the gist of it) carries with it such an obvious implicit corollary, to the point that it's almost explicit, that there exists a much better and fairer system somewhere else. And I fail to see much evidence of this, to be honest. I mean, if people in the US/UK are making "ironic" art because they feel so powerless in the face of the ruling system in power in those countries, it follows that art from countries like Iran or Burma or wherever must be orders of magnitude more ironic, does it not? Whereas having seen some of the stuff Gavin's been posting in this thread, it seems as if the sort of revolutionary art being created in dictatorships or violently corrupt pseudo-democracies around the world draws its power precisely from its honesty and authenticity as a means of expression.

I mostly agree with your critique of Gavin’s point — I would side with Turtles in that it’s not necessarily a democracy vs dictatorship issue. (I think that was his idea, anyway.) One thing to remember with regards to your argument above, however, is that even if people in developing countries live under dictatorial regimes pretty much all the time, the regimes themselves change now and then, sometimes quite frequently (a coup followed by another coup, and so on and on), so there is at least the possibility of dramatic social upheaval (for good and for bad). I imagine that the citizens of Mogadishu experienced that the Sharia laws that the Islamistic Junta imposed upon seizing power had quite an effect on their everyday life, etc. Examples abound, really.

 

[zhao]

a friend pointed out guys like John Stewart are probably more a part of the problem than anything aproaching any kind of attempt at solutions -- the effect they have is more pro-status-quo than pro any kind of change.

in fact, fake democracy loves guys like Stewart, because they (and 4 millions retards) can dish out the endlessly annoying party-line: "well at least we are allowed to criticize blah blah blah". which reinforces the illusory freedom. while in reality the Daily Show just makes people laugh about things they should be angry about and gives them a free pass to go on with biz as usual.

anyone read this?