Tyler Ledger Joker Fi

I went and saw Joker last night - dutifully.  It was violent, very well made, well acted (and heavily acted), wonderfully shot, all like you've heard.

I would also like to submit that it may just be the most thought-provoking piece of cinematic commentary on our current socio-economic condition in decades.

It is a radical film full of radical ideas and radical violence.  Although it saddens me that it is radical to say that the current economic status quo is wildly immoral and that an existential cognitive dissonance is necessary to participate in the system honestly.

The central question of Joker is whether any of the events of the movie actually happened or not within the confines of the fictional Batman universe.  This question is revealed in the final moments of the movie when Arthur is locked up for treatment of his mental illness.  It becomes clear that this moment is chronologically prior to all of the violence that has previously occurred in the film.  Arthur describes all (or possibly just some) of that violence as a "joke" that as occurred to him as we was speaking with his case worker.  When she asks him what it was, he says that she "wouldn't get it".

Source: tvOvermind.com

This 'final reveal' parallels the 20-year-old final reveal of what I consider the last really radical movie focused on these same themes, Fight Club.  In that movie we learn that our previously reliable narrator was actually Tyler Durden the whole time.  (Also, in a partial re-viewing the scene where Lou drops in on a fight club evening, Tyler's hysterical laughter after having his ass kicked by Lou is preminiscent of Arthur's own manifestations of his mental illness).

Earlier in the film, it is revealed that Arthur's mother was diagnosed with delusional psychosis and narcissistic personality disorder (a diagnosis that may be pretty close to part of Arthur's own plus a dash of schizophrenia - which is reified in the moment when Arthur is actually standing in the room as an adult when his mother is being booked into Arkham after abusing him as a child).  While many reviewers have made much of the portrayal of mental illness in the film, I think the underlying argument of both of these movies is that some forms of thought and action (including some violence) that we casually refer to as mental illness are in fact radical responses to the immoral status quo.

To be clear, I am not condoning any real world violence here, but I do think that artistic depiction of radical political violence can pose important questions that perhaps can't be voiced within the current socio-political climate.  Questions like - what might happen if we take the modern-era royalty (i.e. the super-rich) out of power.  In Joker the one piece of violence that we know "really happens" (although perhaps not exactly as we see it occur in the movie) is the murder of Thomas and Martha Wayne.  This event is formative to the future Batman, so it has to occur within the larger mythology of the film.

We also tend to forget in our modern and enlightened era how rare it is to have massive social change without violence.  Although the "clowns" in Joker are easily read as violent criminal thugs engaged in looting and riots, they are also the lumpenproletariat activated by their clown prince.  They are engaged in a modern iteration of the French Revolution and their King Louis XVI (i.e. Thomas Wayne) needs to topple.  One wonders what, exactly, this makes Batman in this historical parallel?

Pre-prequel

Anticipatory plagiarism is a concept I used to struggle with - coming up with a brilliant idea only to come to realize that someone else had thought of it and published it decades or even centuries earlier than you had the opportunity to get it down.

This also happens in literature when a writer unwittingly writes a similar story to something they had never come across. In general, this happens by some sort of collective osmosis (perhaps it’s a Jungian phenomenon) by which these thoughts and ideas are in the ether - part of the existing background. It’s in the groundwater. 

This morning I read a short story in the Bradbury-edited collection that I’ve been making my way through.  It’s called “Mr. Death and the Redheaded Woman”, by Helen Eustis. It is an unintentional prequel to Piers Anthony’s On a Pale Horse (by which I mean of course, Anthony unintentionally wrote a whole series of novels {of which I’ve read the first few but not all} as a follow up to Eustis’s very fine story).

I've been getting back into Wikipedia as of late, particularly as I've been reading Timeless Stories for Today and Tomorrow, edited and with an introduction by Ray Bradbury.  As I started digging into the stories, I was struck first by the sense of time - of being tales from a different (but not entirely unfamiliar) era.  Much like when I read The Thin Man last year, one of the most enjoyable parts of every story, is a real insight into how folks lived 'in the before'.

The stories have also been enjoyable in their own right, but because they are primarily speculative as opposed to pure fantasy, they each have been deeply and fundamentally rooted in the time they are written (or when they are portraying in the rare case it's not meant to be "present day").  Bradbury finished the introduction on 1 July 1951, which means the collection is made up of stories all from before that time (and likely mostly well before, given that they're mostly being re-produced and collected here in this book).

As I read the first couple stories, I wondered who the collection of writers were that Bradbury had collected.  I've heard of many of them, but the first two at least were completely unfamiliar to me.  Henry Kuttner's story, particularly, excited me as he had worked within the Cthulhu Mythos (and had corresponded with H.P. Lovecraft).  Kuttner also worked closely in collaboration with his wife, C.L. Moore and the authorship of much of his work and her work were intermingled (so much so that the story in this collection could likely have been in good part her work).

 I plodded forward, and for each story resolved to read the Wikipedia entry for each author in concert with the story.  Which brought me to Christine Govan's story, where I found no corresponding wiki-entry (though she was mentioned in a few other articles, often as a family member to someone else).  A writer in her own right, I created her article and have now noticed that Helen Eustis also has one missing.

Govan and Eustis were the second and third woman authors collected in this book, and the first two authors in the book without their own wiki-entries.  It's a problem and I am working on solving in a small way.  I created a stub for Govan, in the same way that I had Faustin E. Wirkus years ago.  I don't have the time or inclination to go in depth and create a full article, but a sourced stub about someone who definitely deserves a wiki-page will grow on its own.  It takes time, but eventually the world will help do the work (as long as it doesn't get deleted!).

Open Letter to Brian Reed

Hello Brian,

I have just listened through to the last episode of S-Town, and am just now passing by Flint, Michigan to my right on Southwest Flight 336 (I promise I’m responsibly on airplane mode!).

I would first like to say, thank you for this podcast and all of your work that has gone into it.  You might just as well have called it Walden III (note: I am a former English major with an M.A. in Humanities and am in the death throes of a PhD program in Modern Studies, but fully admit that I’ve not read Walden II and Thoreau’s original is more years away from me than I care to admit, and though I think I recall it well, I likely am remembering it mythologically).  Nonetheless, the project, whether it’s really yours or John B. Macklemore’s, is a revelation for the humanist project – and I appreciate the time, and work, and life, and effort that went into it.

I started Chapter VII shortly after boarding this flight and I have to say that I was, for a moment, welling up all umbrage and outrage when I thought your final episode was going to posit and explore the idea that John (he is John to me too, now) killed himself because of a brain chemistry madness brought on by 35 year’s worth of poisoning himself.  By the end of the episode I was joyfully weeping – afraid that my flight attendants would think I was soused, because I ordered a second scotch and soda! – at the genius of John’s words describing a well-lived life, and at the heartbreak of the vast amount of ‘lost genius’ we have in this world (and perhaps, in particular, in this America), and, most of all, at the amount of life John was estimating we all spent at living (less the sleep, and the “jobs” {different from work, in capitalism}, and the administration {Kafka-esque waiting in late capitalism}).

Thank you for a well-made product – a fine podcast.  And thank you for your ability and your curiosity.  The time this took to put together and the distance between ‘episodes’ (not yours, but those that make up this whole story: the first email; the questionable call and follow-up trip; then the follow-up and follow-up…), coupled with the themes and ideas at play here, are epic.  You have created a modern epic.  Thank you.

I don’t write fan letters – or express appreciation of works to those I do not know – because I’m thoughtless and unkind and have an inflated sense of my own brain and generally think that I could have done – could have created a thing into being had I had the space and time and initiative.  (This is of course an arrogant and foolhardy notion, but it’s a part of the reason, I think, that I don’t express appreciation toward most works I enjoy).  This podcast – the editing and vision and content – is a masterwork of intellectual and empathic genius.  I am in your debt for making it.

Regards,

Joel

Joel Seeger
Milwaukee, WI

Playing it cool

I read back to back short stories about murder after finishing the playlist style novel, The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry. (It occurs to me that this is my second "dark double feature" on my Last Fives in recent weeks). The stories both approach the crime quite matter of factly, but the perpatrators in each story could not be more different in their respective approaches. I suppose it comes down to their relationship to the crime itself in some ways.

In "Lamb to the Slaughter", the 6-months-pregnant wife has just been told - something - by her husband. At best or worst she is told by her husband that he wants a divorce or that there is someone else for whom he is leaving her.  It's hard to say which of those is best or worse, "I'm leaving you because there's someone else" versus "I'm leaving you because you".

"Tell-Tale Heart" on the other hand features a murder which is incited by the gaze or perhaps just the eye of an old man and its effect on a madman. The murderer even refuses to kill the man he has decided to end for an entire week because the old man doesn't open his offending eye until the 8th night. 

If I had to summarize the theme of this particular double feature it would be to say that the stories are about guilt.  Poe's narrator clearly suffers the guilt of his crime, whereas the husband in Dahl's story could be said to 'suffer the guilt of his own crime', at the hands of his soon-to-be abandoned wife.   

*  *  *          

...(picking up the thread, some time later)

Twain's 'most likely to be assigned to a 5th Grade Reading class' of a short story, "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" is well worth the sitting, if you've not read it before.  It's a story about a foolish showman getting his comeuppance.  And the Fikry chapter that shares the Twain story's title is much the same.  Although not so public, the clown of this chapter also gets outed.

The whole novel works to rhyme the themes of each

On Eco

This morning I learned that we lost a great literary and philosophical mind with the passing of Umberto Eco at 84. 

I have long been a fan from afar of Eco's, never someone I would list as my favorite author, but formative in my early academic thinking, particularly his beautiful book On Ugliness, which is an embarrassment of richness of images and ideas on our relationship with ugly things (death, bodily functions, horror, etc.)

His loss is sad, but go forth and embrace all of his work and thinking...

I'm revisiting my favorite work this morning:

The work is a curation of passages from literary and social theory works alongside beautiful images from classical and modern art, architecture, and ephemera centered on a specific theme.  Eco adds editorial remarks in each section.

Of particular interest is the chapter on the Uncanny.  The thinking on that concept and in that chapter was fundamental in my academic thinking on Gunther von Hagens' BodyWorlds exhibition.  The artistic presentation of death is an exquisite example of Freud's and Eco's discussion of the concept of the Uncanny (unheimlich).  Presenting a thing that is, inherently, familiar (our own bodies) in a way that causes discomfort, uncertainty questioning what we know we know.

I highly recommend picking up a copy.  Go borrow it from your local library!

This Post is Very Meta...

A couple of years ago I was taking a real look at my social media self.  Bringing back this tag to Roman Numeral J reminds me of my recent Facebook post about same date nostalgia. 

When I was a kid I had a page-a-day sports calendar.  For that reason I know that Jay Hilgenberg shares my birthday, March 21st.  The date on which things happen is important to us (anniversaries, birthdays, deathdays) and being able to mark just how long ago a specific thing occurred helps comprehend the passage of time.  This understanding, I think, can help calibrate our intentions - that is, understanding that you are now, say, 37, and that you were 28 - or maybe 19 - and had many of the same ideas, aspirations, or hopesdreams, and that there may be specific actions that need to be taken.

The link between memorial and memory is something I've written about (sorry, no link at present - not sure where that is).  Facebook's new On This Day feature is symptomatic of our desire to memorialize our lives.  However, Facebook's new version is imperfect.  Today, we post instantly from our iPhones, and properly memorialize, but many of the earlier year Facebook memories I see in my feed are on the wrong day... I didn't post my vacation photos until I actually got back from vacation (because I used to use a camera to take pictures).

I don't mean to sound like an old coot.  But I think the medium of social media is not built for memorialization, but they try...

I'll think this through, and remember it fondly.  I think I'll tweet out a link to the post to try to keep the conversation going...

On Reading and Re-reading

I am just shy of 100 pages from the end of The Chronicles of Amber, a ten-book epic fantasy series written by Roger Zelazny, primarily in the 1980s. It is with a mixture of anticipation and despair that I approach these final pages. The sad [contradistinction] of reading (of any consumption, really, but particularly the consumption of grand epics) is the joy of the ultimate unfolding mixed with the knowledge that you will soon be at an ending.

Endings are unpleasant things, even when they’re happy – because, of course, they represent the represent the only reliable stasis of the universe, change. Endings are manifestations of life writ literary – they are reminders of our own mortality. We all will end, and most of us are so terrified of the fact that we spend our lives distracting ourselves from the simple reality. Work, wealth, goals and ambition are just ways of organizing oneself away from [alabaster].

To come to the end of an epic is a unique misery, because you’re experiencing the pain from both sides, the finish of a massive creative act (e.g. writing Ulysses) and simultaneously the finish of a massive consumptive act (e.g. reading Remembrances of Things Past, or eating a meal at Old Country Buffet).

#   *   #   *  #

It's been a year and a half about, since I put this together originally...  I like the direction of the thinking, so will add it to the record (jss - 8 May 2016) 

Assume a Position

As part of my “academic review” at the end of last semester, Andrew Kincaid suggested to me that I write up a series of “position papers” that might function as 30 second – 10 minute summations of my areas of interest. The idea being that I needed to be able to define myself and an area of study, particularly with regards to the job market, but more generally as an academic, and so I present the first, perhaps most general of my position papers for your review. This is a sort of never-ending work in progress, so (as always) comments and questions are more than welcome, they’re absolutely fundamental…

*** *** ***

Why study death?

Death is an essential and fundamental part of all of our lives (one Walter Benjamin calls “exemplary”), but it is an aspect of modern life that we avoid talking about or even thinking about if possible. The modern need to overfill one’s life with events & stuff & people (the modern hyper-busy) is the need to distract one’s attention from death. Entire industries, such as life insurance and legacy investment planning create institutional denial of death by recreating a new, modern afterlife, namely the bank account – the trust fund.

The simultaneous wane of absolute religious authority and development of the ‘self’ in the modern era have created a situation where the game of life (& death) has become unwinnable. Previously, an individual who was dying was secure in the comfort of some version of an afterlife, or continuance, either a religious heaven, the promise of reincarnation or a more ecological dispersal of the body. Additionally, before the advent of the modern ‘self’ a dying person could trust in the continuation of the line through children and the tribe, or even the civilization. This isn’t to say that pre-modern man didn’t see any distinction of the self, but that modernity’s (and especially late modernity’s) emphasis on individual destiny and its insistence on splintering society, separating people from one another makes a collective immortality (or at least survival) less appealing.

There was an earlier time when death wasn’t seen this way. It wasn’t a horror in and of itself. It was scary, perhaps, but it was joked with, laughed at, and most importantly considered. I am interested in tracking these changes, both temporally and geographically and understanding first, whether some fundamental change has taken place and if so, what the implications might be.

Presenting... The dead.

I've now made my first ever conference presentation. And it was much more painless than i expected. Attended by only about 12 or so people, I talked about Gunther von Hagens' Body Worlds and how it helps us/hinders us thinking about our own deaths (as individuals and as a society). I was the 3rd of three folks to present at my session, and thus garnered the most questions, both because i had lots of cool pictures to look at (see left) & because i was freshest in all their minds. It was the first time i'd ever tried to simply read a paper i'd written straight out (i wrote it in a slightly more conversational tone than i normally do because of this plan) and i felt like i was looking straight down at my paper non-stop, not realizing anyone else was in the room whatsoever. Perhaps had i gotten the words down on paper (and by paper i mean Word) earlier than the morning of the presentation i could have looked around a bit more during my presentation, but as it was, i felt that i could not risk losing my spot and looking like a total boob (until the point when my paper just stopped & i then started talking about the things i thought i might have included, but couldn't figure out how to fit in).

I think part of the reason my presentation went so well, despite not being fully thought out or "finished" was because i didn't (as i usually do) pretend to know everything about anything. I admitted that there were parts of my thinking in this paper that didn't quite work & that it was a work in progress and so a lot of the questions/comments garnered were helpful, pointing me in new directions... sometimes possibly helpful (Foucault's "Birth of the Clinic") and sometimes perhaps less so (J.G. Ballard's Atrocity Exhibition), but overall i was pleased as hawaiian punch to have received a response other than pretensious scoffing & academic one-upping & felt a huge success afterward... so much so that i drank myself into a stupor later that evening in celebration.

"...greatly exaggerated"

This moring, Brooke & i went to the Farmer's Market in Omaha's Old Market, and, after finding it painfully understocked & not buying anything we stopped to have a coffee & sat at an outdoor table... As we were sitting there, Kate, a girl i used to work at Metro Community College with, but didn't know very well, walked by. She was smiling and said, "I'm so glad to see you. I thought you had died." This struck me as odd, but i thought it might just be an expression... something like 'it's been so long,' just weirder, but then she went on to explain that she literally thought i was dead, because she'd heard that somebody named Joel who worked at Elkhorn (the Metro campus i worked at) had died, and she thought it had been me, since she didn't know my last name. She said she'd wondered what i'd died of, and how sad that was & was oddly apologetic that she hadn't come to what she thought had been my funeral (she used her baby as an excuse).

She imparted to me that she was very happy i wasn't dead, a point we could agree on & we parted amicably, if awkwardly... See you later