Vengeance, Naked

Tonight we had the rare opportunity for An Uncorrupted Double Feature (viewing two new {to me} movies, one after the other, thereby linking them forever in my mind and creating thematic linkage).  

As an unchilded human, this might seem on offer more often than to others, but it is, truly, a real rarity...  The first offering was Vengeance - a 2022 dark comedy by B.J. Novak, who quite possibly might turn out to be the most talented person to have been on The Office.  Vengeance is Novak's directorial debut, and in addition to being highly entertaining, it's possible that it may also turn out to be a defining film of the era.  It's the best kind of lowkey potentially great movie where it is surface level charmingly clever, spreading some sort of message that feels sort of important and profound (in the case of Vengeance there are 3 or 4 of these differing, but related messages), but nothing too scathing or cynical; and then on further reflection and examination it starts to dawn on you that this movie may in fact be not only deeply meaningful and great, but, in fact, important.

"Important" works of art are ones that are not just elegant or profound or even sublime, but I think most importantly they are the ones that are exceptionally timely.  What the world needs now, is aptness, sweet aptness.  Very often the messages that are needed at any given time are political (which is why so many "important" movies or "important" art generally is often political), but I think just now the messages we might most need are cultural and critical (in the academic sense) in nature.  

At one point in Vengeance, Ashton Kutcher's character (Quentin Sellers) says by way of critique of our current moment we find ourselves in: "Everything means everything, so nothing means anything."  The quote diagnoses the extent to which we have entered, just in the past few years, a postmodern cultural era.  Postmodernity is a complicated thing to define (just ask Fred Jameson who spent 500 pages or so in an attempt to do just that).  Possibly my favorite attempt at a definition is in Jameson's introduction to his book (and in postmodern studies, you only ever have to read introductions to books... or even just the marketing blurbs!).  He offers it somewhat glibly, but I think we can retrospectively now take it somewhat seriously...  He says something like:

"the Postmodern is thinking about the present historically in a world that has forgotten its history"

We are living in an era of supreme subjectivity where everyone's thoughts and identity have become significant and actual meaning and complexity and depth have become tertiary.  We have fully blown past Colbert's Era of Truthiness, briefly paused at the moment of "alternative facts", and now exist in a time when claims of "I feel that ____" and "I know the __{insert expert here}___ says ________, but I believe that ___________" have equal epistemological standing to previously 'absolute' truths like 3 + 3 = 6 and "water is made up of 2 parts hydrogen to 1 part oxygen".  And this, I think, is closer to a postmodern sensibility:

"Nothing means anything, so everything means anything"

That mentality is perhaps more akin to a less thought about branch of postmodernity called supermodernity (which itself is thought of as a branch of hypermodernity) which I think of as the notion that the meaning of the whole of anything can be ascertained by closely examining and understanding any part of it.  It's what Walter Benjamin was on about in his unfinished master work The Arcades Project, but I think it's also what's going on, in a satirical way, in Vengeance. In the movie, one of the Shaw daughters primary aspiration in life is to be famous - when this gets interrogated, and she is asked what she wants to be famous for - does she want to be a famous singer, or a famous actor, she decides she wants "to be a famous celebrity" - and this pretty well encapsulates the thesis of the movie, but is a throwaway joke line, soon forgotten.

And so (i haven't forgotten) we come on to Juliet, Naked, a bizarrely un-timely movie that came out in 2018, but is about email - in a moment after "email is over". It's based on a book by Nick Hornby from 2009, a time when email ruled - and the adaptation took the material straight (which is generally the best choice when adapting Hornby - who has kinda always already gotten it...), but that makes for a weird unmoored feel to the movie.

Given its excessive untimeliness, Juliet, Naked is anything but important, but as is so often the case with Nick Hornby, it captures aspects of the modern human experience, and interrogates them from a myriad of angles.  Here we find an investigation of highly curated fandom - questions of who owns a work of art, the artist or the appreciator of the art.  The movie is about the fraught-ness of an artist putting themselves out there, but also the fraught-ness of putting yourself out there - committing yourself to someone despite all their foibles and obsessions and insecurities.

As with Horby's best works - really all of his work that I've encountered, whether in writing, film, or song - the central question being asked is, "what is a life?" or maybe, "what should I do in my life?"  What to do with your life feels all-encompassing, and final, but what to do in your life feels like a good question to ask - where to spend your energies, what (and who) to give your attention to.

Life is like a weird dry run where only at the end of it we realize it was practice for a performance that's never going to happen

The eclipse, Hegel, and the American Road

I logged 2400 miles of American roads, 14 hours of Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit, 3 full Brewers game broadcasts (all the enemy radio feed on XM), and 1 total eclipse as seen from Glendo State Park in Wyoming.

I woke up on Sunday morning and decided to forgo my Midwestern eclipse experience plans because the weather looked uncertain for optimal viewing.  En route to Deadwood, SD, I listened through the Preface (very familiar!), the Introduction and the early parts of A. Consciousness. 

My copy of Phenomenology was safely at home on my bookshelf, sitting right next to Susan Buck-Morss' excellent Hegel, Haiti, and Universal History (which I have read in its entirety!).  I bought a used copy (originally Elizabeth Trejack's it seems) at a book shop in Minnesota.  It was highlighted and underlined in a few very specific sections (it opens automatically to Lordship and Bondage), and otherwise appears largely untouched.

I first learned of the existence of a fellow called Hegel and his friend "Geist" on my first day of classes at the University of Chicago.  I read the greatest hits from Hegel's masterwork, and nodded knowingly when his influence on later theorists was discussed.  On arrival to UW-M, I heard less about Hegel (though there was quite a lot more mention of Foucault, who I only heard come up once at UChicago, and that was in a joke from a Zadie Smith reading about introducing someone at an academic party as "... she likes Michel Foucault and costume jewelry"), but dutifully put Phenomenology and Buck-Morss' book on my prelim reading list.

Naturally, like most good reading lists, I did not read most of most of the books on the list, but excel at the academic art of talking about books you have not read.  I have also not read that book, though I've held it in my hands, and skimmed through bits, and I know people who have read it.

During my long drives of the last several days, I've read through the first 513 paragraphs of Hegel's work, starting and stopping and occasionally paying more and less attention as one is wont to do when reading or listening or existing at all, I suppose.  I think this might be the best way to read Phenomenology, not as one's only or deep reading of the text, but as a way to have read through it all.  As I drove, I would make notes of paragraphs I wanted to return to (don't worry, the highways of South Dakota and Wyoming are sparsely populated, even when there's an eclipse on!).  When I was first reading Shakespeare (or first reading it in college, I can't remember which), someone (either Jerry Davis or Mary Hull Mohr) gave me the advice to "just keep going" when you're reading it and not sure you're absorbing.  It's reading as muscle memory, and the deep read of certain sections can come later (or earlier!). 

Hearing "of Lordship and Bondage" after reading through the entirety of Consciousness changes the focus of the passage.  It makes the easy reading of Hegel as writing the heroic history of Haiti less easy and fancy free.  I've come to trust Buck-Morss, and don't think her reading is at all off the mark.  That said, I think it is important to remain aware of our academic practice of the use of texts to suggest meaning and significance.

*.  *.  *

I first learned of the Great American Eclipse earlier this year, and almost in the same moment committed in my mind that I would be there to see it.  I took a few days vacation, but made few other plans, except to choose Beatrice, Nebraska as my viewing sight.  Tim & Jen & the kids live in Omaha, and actually lived in Beatrice shortly after they got married.  When the day got close, weather across the Midwest started looking dicey, and I headed west.

A total eclipse is an awe-inspiring sight, truly an opportunity to see the most awesome, magnificent vision available on earth.  An eclipse is also a random conflation of events - a new moon that aligns with the earth and sun; a sun for a planet that is about 400 times larger than the planet's moon, which is about 400 times closer than that same sun (so they take up about the same amount of sky space).  Also, we also happen to be in the small window of time, cosmically speaking, that allows this confluence.

I've been struggling to describe what I saw, or what the experience was like, or why it was worth the trip.  Finding significance in the random confluence of hunks of rock hurtling through the galaxy is what we do as humans.  Making meaning from bringing texts, histories, moments - that's what humanists do.  We live in a strange confluence of psychology, philosophy, astronomy, physics, history, sociology, geology, chronology and on and ology.

My thoughts of late have been turning back toward the super-modern, and the importance of the small.  I'm still working at making meaning from the experience of the eclipse, and from reading Hegel on the way to and from seeing the eclipse, and the observations and thoughts I had about Americans and Trump and Mt. Rushmore and history on the way to and from seeing the eclipse.  I expect that I will continue to try to build this meaning for quite some time.

What I learned or have built or have decided for now is that my phenomenology of totality has provided me some perspective on our present American experiment.  We are a strange and strained people, but I still think this is all just crazy enough to work. 

mind the gaps...

I. Preamble -

This isn't a review - rather an overall critical analysis of ueber-narrative.  I've recently been on a mission to watch the Star Wars oeuvre in chronological order (dedicated readers {I presume they will be there in future, as they aren't currently turning out in significant numbers} will note that I'm also currently on the same project in the Star Trek universe).

I know Disney and J.J. Abrams own my viewership soul, but I frakking love filling in the gaps of mythologies.  I am eager to see the story of the new episodes - VII & VIII - but watching Episode III followed by Rogue One and then A New Hope is fascinating and fulfilling.  The fun fairy tale that I knew as a kid (still has whiny little Luke) has become a robust narrative. 

I'm equally (or perhaps more) excited for the start of the new Star Trek: Discovery series starting this fall, which will bridge the end of Enterprise to the days of ST: TOS (by way of the lost ship at the center of the plot of Star Trek Beyond).

Walter Benjamin has a concept called Jetztzeit (now-time), which he also calls messianic-time. The simplest framing of this concept for me is using the latter term, and imagining the potentiality of all times (of each moment) to contain salvation (or revolution, or clarity).  This concept is fundamental in Benjamin's oeuvre, and is related I think to the concept of hyper-modernity (or supermodernity), which is the idea of the whole being explained or understood or accounted for in every part. This is also a common theme for Benjamin, and in many ways his Arcades Project is the prototypical work of supermodernity.

I have my own (as yet unnamed) theory of reality and being and narrative. The line of thinking goes something like this: the act of literary creation is, in fact, an instance of literal creation. By imagining a thing (or perhaps by writing it down or filming it or publishing it,,, I'm not too clear on all of the specifics), that thing is created in reality. It is evoked. The actuality of the thing is explained scientifically (I use this word loosely) by multiple worlds / realities theory - the idea that every choice or possible outcome exists in parallel realities.

II. Messianic Time / Messianic Space -

The Arcades Project is Benjamin's masterwork.  It is a collection of quotes and fragments focused on a series of subjects relating to the Paris Arcades, which Benjamin works through.  Benjamin is sitting in the mid-20th Century looking back at the 19th Century for meaning.  The work is a strong candidate for bibliomancy; a lot of obscure passages that can be interpreted for a lot of situations. 



III. Container Story

We see ourselves as occupying 'the real' world, and the narratives we create are a part of our world.  The Chronicles of Amber has another, different starting place (actually 2, Amber and the Courts of Chaos), but contains the same conclusion, that there is a real space, which begets all else.

The Dark Tower is


IV. Narratives of scale -

Star Trek is the future narrative of a world much like ours.  Star Wars claims to be in the distant past, far away.  In time, both of these narratives might be found to be in the same universe (that's right, I'm loosely proposing that Wesley Crusher is the next last Jedi).

This weekend, The Dark Tower is being released in cinemas across the country - another new chapter in a long-established narrative.  The tag line on early images teasing the new movie was "The Last Time Around...". 

The narrative of the film (mild-spoiler alert warning) is in some ways an odd reformulation of Stephen King's first novel of the series - The Gunslinger -, but it's a bit hard to recognize as such.  In the novel, Jake Chambers is torn from his native New York (although we don't see this at this point in the series) and pulled into Mid-World.

This new iteration of a decades old story feels a bit out of synch when watched on its own.  Stephen King's Dark Tower universe is a narrative that contains all other narratives - all other realities in fact.  As a reader, familiar with the scope and scale of the Dark Tower universes, the new film feels like a sprinting tour of the whole series of novels.  At the same time, it's a reset button in which Jake Chambers saves Roland's quest, which has been lost to the pursuit of revenge.  The movie finds Roland having forgotten the face of his father.



VI. All of us are 'one of the most important figures' in our own universes, our own narratives


Much like Benjamin's "Capitalism as Religion", I intend this entry to be something robust and interesting... but I want to post (it's been a while!), so there may be a while before the overall outline gets filled in.

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

Reformed, Refragmentalized, Referential

Note: Loyal RNJ readers will, i'm sure, quickly note that i already posted these ideas earlier, but i think i see them a bit more clearly now, and i'd like to offer them up for comment, ridicule, or questions before i submit them to my (as yet not fully formed) committee.

My prelim areas will focus on the postmodern concept of the fragment, but i'd like to tie this idea of, which i've referred to as 'supermodern' elsewhere, to the 'pre-postmodern' formulation of the fragment as well, which comes through especially for me in the work of Walter Benjamin in the form of the aphorism and short essays. Mostly, though, 'the fragment' or 'fragmentation' is being used as a way to connect seemingly disparate areas of interest for me, namely:

1. Fragmented Bodies - This section, which starts at my interest in zombies - and so, extends itself to ideas about corpses, death, funerary tradition, and display - might more aptly be called "Fragmented Bodies, Fragmented Lives". I want to consider not only the unfortunate case of the zombie, of the undead, of we might term 'bare life', but also the parallel bare life that is stripped bare by human forces, namely that of refugees, of die Flüchtlinge. This section will also consider other implications of zombie theory, such as theories of revolution, consumption, and ressentiment (thanks Patrick). Fragmented Bodies is also the place in which i will explore representations of bodies (mostly dead, but also alive) in film (The Act of Seeing With One's Own Eyes), fiction, and exhibitions (from Body Worlds to funeral homes). Finally, this representation theory will bring me to the representation of non-human bodies (animals & Cyborgs, for instance).

2. Fragmented Cities - Again, i come to this section through a specific project, namely my interest in urban exploration, but my formulation of urban exploration as an alternative form of tourism gives me a larger body of work in which to place this section. Starting from 'theory of tourism' (Dean MacCannell, for one), i want to explore the concept of redefining and remaking place both from the perspective of the tourist and from the perspective of urban planning (think Milwaukee's Third Ward as one example of this). In a post-industrial economy, former warehouses, factories, and mills are being transformed into places of leisure, luxury, and amusement. A very different kind of rebranding occurs when places and events of atrocity become memorialized. The resulting Museum Kult, the draw of seeking out 'authentic experiences' of history, is a kind of 're-placing', a re-creation of space. The tourist's experience of an actual space of 'historical meaning' alters that meaning. I want to examine this process of alteration.

3. Fragmented Narratives - Finally, i want to look at places where 'pure narrative' breaks down: in postmodern narratives (Think House of Leaves), in frame narratives (and more interestingly broken frame narratives like Frankenstein and Transit), and, finally, in non-narrative forms such as avant-garde cinema. Traditional narrative theory (Noel Carroll? Lewis Carroll?) tells us that narrative is a construction of suspense. A sequence of readers asking 'whatnextwhatnext-whatnext?', but i will also investigate (through Ricouer at the outset, then others) what happens when the reader doesn't necessarily ask this question, or asks it out of fear or desperation (think of a Kafkian-bureaucratic nightmare). Alternately, in a novel of boredom (sorry, Ron), nothing seems to happen next, causing the reader instead to ask something more like 'so what?' (sorry, Professor Veeder).

How's this sound? Can i really go to school for this?

superModernity

*Note: The following is taken (and only slightly adapted) from a seminar paper of mine for Fall 2008. It examines the idea of 'super-modernity' and fragmentary history... 

 ...as Marc Augé points out in his book, Non-Places: introduction to an anthropology of supermodernity, this collecting of fragmentary histories into ‘history proper’ is what anthropological history (which he seems to equate with history generally) consists of. A modern historian, working within the confines of the social sciences, takes a collection (a sample) of personal histories and constructs a narrative from them. This narrative, then, becomes ‘recorded history’. Augé’s concept of ‘supermodernity’ (which operates as something like a ‘happier’ alternative to postmodernity), however, problematizes this ‘final narrative’ due to the fact that the time between history and the present becomes ever smaller. That is, ‘historical events’ need no longer be from 50, 25, or even 5 years ago, instead, the personal event can, in some sense, be aware of itself as historical event. Supermodernity, then, is the coming together of unfathomable numbers of historical events, so that, like in postmodernity, there can exist no over-arching historical narratives. Unlike this postmodern history, however, supermodern history does not dismiss the possibility of the existence of these narratives, these ‘truths’, but only acknowledges the impossibility (or perhaps merely extreme unlikeliness) of knowing them.

Back to Basicks

It occurs to me that both of you loyal Roman Numeral J readers may have, in recent days & posts, been disturbed by the blogs tendency toward the overly political -- Whether it be solving social secuity, finding deep political arguments in juvenile comedies, or pointing out the persecution of atheists going on all across the world (by which i mean america).

But, i am now announcing a turn toward the undead... again. As i put my PhD applications together, making statements of purpose justifying my year spent thinking with zombies & editing and rewriting my Romero paper. Also, i will try to turn the blog back toward the momentary and incidental (everything is momentary and incidental, i suppose, but i'll shoot for what most would consider trivial)...

On that note, i had some tawny port tonight... after work. Watched Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, the first third with subtitles (which i initially thought were part of the movie... thinking it 'really arty'). Now i'm hanging out with my guinea pig for a while. Yeah. that's exciting...

but, in an exclusive announcement, i'd like to toss out some feelers for a Christmas Party... December 16th? who might make it? An exclusive (and by exclusive i mean hardly anyone will show up unless you readers make it sweet) party at the Martha house... anyone... anyone...

Life Lessons in the Office

According to Ricky Gervais, a great philosopher once said:

"There are three things you need in this life. The first is an important relationship with someone else, the second is an occupation that matters, and then you need to know you make a difference."

Who the fuck is Ricky Gervais... and who the fuck is said great philosopher. Tonight, two lovely... consumptions ... i moments ago, finished watching The Office dvd on generous loan from Nate & Lissa, and earlier in the evening went to Omaha's Jazz on the Green, tonight, featuring Heidi Joy (doesn't she look a bit like the Adventures In Babysitting girl?)

I think, perhaps i fear, that something about me has fundamentally changed. And i don't know quite when it started or if i want it to continue. As Gilbertson and i sit here and write this entry, my mind is a-flutter with thoughts of what can be gleened from The Office, and my viewing on Wednesday of Superman Returns (the Superman thoughts definitely have a strong connection to Zizek.)

Two books arrived on my doorstep today about Gunther von Hagens' Body Worlds, and i'm so excited to dig into them, i can't even describe it. So i'll try. All i want to do, is (have some fun) write some papers. As i mentioned previously, i'm actually currently garnering absolutely no pay for my days labors, but i find, more and more, that i can't stop fucking considering everything.

Why is it that Superman so often flies around saving one person at a time (how many other people are simultaneously dying that he's not saving)? Why is it exactly that von Hagens wants to industrialize the plastination (and preservation) of dead bodies? Do you really need all three of those things or is that just a 'best case scenario' and one or two will do you fine?

I don't know really, quite, what i'm getting at (my head's full enough of Shakers that i wouldn't pay attention to me if i could help it), but Brooke said something tonight to me that worried me. She said she saw me (future-gazing here) as an old academic, sitting in a leather-clad room, puffing a pipe (she said cigar, but i think her angle must have been bad) just talking about shit. And that can't be what i want to do, can it? Can i really live a life where i just talk about things? (This is where Zizek comes in)... Or is it that in thinking about these small things, academia is really pointing at larger things, and so my function becomes something of a go-between, a being who walks in both realms & tries to take the "real world" (so obviously absent from so many who go to UChicago) to the academy & the thoughts of the academy to the real world... Maybe i could be like some kind of academic Messiah, except i'd prefer to turn my water into vodka... wheat-based, 6-time distilled, vodka.