This

http://blip.tv/file/3122155/

is a great intro to the idea of "the essential subject" and "the other"--which, I should mention, is the most applicable-in-my-own-life bit of philosophy I've yet encountered.

I should also mention that I think the clip provides a really interesting example of something that may be hypocrisy--I find myself critical and sympathetic. The piece critiques something foundational to current gender construction, and at the same time uses current gender construction (maybe ironically, but functionally as well) to market itself. You can see this in the visual storytelling; the visual and comedic style constantly stops you and says, "Look! Pretty girl! Pay attention." Whether that undermines it's broader message or not (I think it does) is an interesting question.

and I ususally hate songs about adultery

So, I am safely back east with my parents for my winter holiday, which means it's time for a very quick post, leaving more time to hug my parents, wander around the east coast, and consume mass quantities of frozen blueberries. :)


I really enjoy this song; it seems to convey a certain pathos beautifully, and there are certain lines--"an half blind we wrote these songs on sheets of salty wood. .." "such distance from our friends, like a scratch across the lens"--

anyway, enjoy. :)



"I do not exist,"
we faithfully insist
sailing in our separate ships,
and in each tiny caravel -
tiring of trying, there's a necessary dying
like the horseshoe crab in its proper season sheds its shell
such distance from our friends,
like a scratch across a lens,
made everything look wrong from anywhere we stood
and our paper blew away before we'd left the bay
so half-blind we wrote these songs on sheets of salty wood

you caught me making eyes at the other boatmen's wives
and heard me laughing louder at the jokes told by their daughters
I'd set my course for land,
but you well understand
it takes a steady hand to navigate adulterous waters
the proppeller's spinning blades held acquaintance with the waves
as there's mistakes I've made no rowing could outrun
the cloth low on the mast like to say Ive got no past

but I'm nonetheless the librarian and secretary's son
with tarnish on my brass and mildew on my glass
I'd never want someone so crass as to want someone like me
but a few leagues off the shore, I bit a flashing lure
and I assure you, it was not what it expected it to be!
I still taste its kiss, that dull hook in my lip
is a memory as useless as a rod without a reel
to an anchor-ever-dropped-seasick-yet-still-docked captain spotted napping with his first mate at the wheel floating forgetfully along, with no need to be strong. we keep our confessions long and when we pray we keep it short
I drank a thimbleful of fire and I'm not ever going back

Oh, my G-d!

"I do not exist," we faithfully insist
while watching sink the heavy ship of everything we knew
if ever you come near I'll hold up high a mirror
Lord, I could never show you anything as beautiful as you




Happy New Year.

Happpy first day of Christmas, everyone. :)

a word from Zizek--

"Would you like to live in a society where you have to debate and argue all the time that women shouldn't be raped? No. I would like to live in a dogmatic society where when someone starts to advocate the right of men to rape women, you simply disqualify yourself, I mean, people don't even attack you. You're such a jerk it's like, "huhu, I mean, what's wrong with this guy" or whatever. . and unfortunately, I would like to live in a society where the same goes for torture. . . "

-http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2530392910118230001&hl=en, around 1:14

Prop 8

Takes a gutsy man to say this on the national news.

I can see--while I don't agree with--the free speech "we don't want our children learning this is OK in schools" argument--but it is genuinely far beyond me how gay marriage is a threat to traditional marriage in any substantive way.

for dancers--and everyone else?

I came upon this on youtube tonight, and was delighted. I found it said something about the dance that I've been failing to articulate for some time now.

Metal is very stylized, and in some ways that makes it perfect for the ballet.

Ballet is all about extreme stylization. Each generation of dancers since the court of Louis XIV has faced some pressure to be lighter, more stately, graceful, delicate, and higher on their toes--growing generation after another towards heaven, up out of dark medieval symbolism that associated downwards and bodies with hell and earth.

As time has come and passed, that heavenly ideal became an idol of self-destruction. In a world where virtually all the stars are women, blooming young and retiring by thirty, generations of men follow student to master as they shape, dictate, choreograph and direct. By the late 1980's the image that dominated ballet was the inherited ideal of Bruce Balanchine's work: transparently slender, long limbed, tall, and young, with the disposition of an adoring child and skin the color of a freshly peeled apple.

In keeping with the tradition of Dance, the visual surpassed the corporeal. Balanchine taught his dancers how to "cut some corners" on technique, creating spectacular stage performances alongside premature retirements and tendinitis. Children ready to give anything for the New York City Ballet sacrificed physical maturity as they starved themselves into--and then sometimes out of--the shape proscribed.


Set against nightwish, figurine grace and surreal, doll-like perfection have made ballet real for me again. In this fantasy playground, historical footage emphasizes every marionette pause, and the dark undercurrents of ballet's approach to sexuality and gender are left clear. Here we remember her invisible bones, the impossible thinness of her ankles, the irrevocable constancy in which she exists only for her beauty, and the way all of us worship her for it as she dances on, forever--in every way that matters--alone.

Here, removed a step from The Great Western Heritage of Culture And Dance, it is easy to believe the ideal is not real; it is easy to believe that no one really thinks this is the ultimate embodiment of who and what I am supposed to be.

Here it is possible to conceptualize ballet as only one aspect, to raise it from it's dark beauty and, in some small way, integrate it to myself--without being eaten by what I would have left behind.



Here's a link to the blog of the fellow who did it; deep thanks for a masterful and insight provoking job.

This is another amazing film piece. It showcases a very tangibly corporeal side of the dance, and at the same time, overwhelming performance, grace, and technique.

not a drop

I've just watched this documentary, called A World Without Water, which seems to have been recorded off of British television almost commercial free.

In case any of you didn't know, over the past fifteen months or so, I've watched several hundred documentaries. This is in my top ten. To be fair, this is the first I've seen that dealt exclusively with the global water crisis, which is pretty compelling material. Still, even if there is a better version of it out there, this is. . . well. . . compelling.

I think the most interesting thing about it is how it neatly skirts the basic ideas of economics, sort of grazing them as it passes by. It abandons them in favor of a foundational assumption which it never quite articulates, but which, I think, lies near the center of a lot of controversy.

That assumption? That we both can and should make a moral choice to maintain certain things outside the reach of the market. In itself this is not a controversial idea, at least in most quarters. Outright chattel slavery is perhaps the clearest example; as a culture we seem to have come to the conclusion that it's not OK to legally own each other, no matter how profitable it might be or how much it might benefit the common good.

The case this film makes, then, is that water should fall in that same category--that as a matter of human decency, it should not be so commodified.

I'd have liked to see more about how the river privatization "irrigation schemes" had been "fabulously successful" in Africa, and otherwise heard more about the other side, but however biased, this is really an interesting and thought-provoking film.

If you're looking for a particularly striking/thought-provoking experience, do as I did and watch it right after the first part of Spike Lee's When The Levees Broke, an exceptionally well crafted telling of the Katrina disaster. Between them they do wonders in broadening one's perspectives on water.

do not shop gently into that good night

A citizen's introductory course in economics.




http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1473370760428862272&hl=en

http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=life+%2B+debt&hl=en&emb=0#

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-9016886482738598023&hl=en

extra credit--less well made, but to quote a friend it gets the job done.

If you've already seen all these, kudos to you! and, what did you think?

this is about us

(original music video)


(lyrics)


*tips hat to rise against*

this is most effective if you can get them playing simultaneously; try letting the first one go for about three seconds, then starting the lyrics on 0 volume.



P.S. Happy birthday, Dad.

What do you think of radiohead?

And also, what do you think of the culture jam movement?

Radiohead is the jam, by the way. I think. *snark muffled by sincere respect for radiohead. . .*

I've some pretty mixed feelings about adbusters, the organization who's page hosts this. Here's a documentary about them, if you're interested. . . I find it's a pretty good concise exposition, at about 40 minutes.

So here's my gripe about culture jam. Is it enough? Is it everything someone can do? Is it effective? At all?

And I confess, the cheerful font of the sticker that said "enjoy debt" on the ATM was pretty striking. But most of the work they do? Not so much. I don't think soundbites will ever be enough to convert someone away from capitalism. Without development of the ideas behind it--without an understanding of the reasons one would wish to deface ads, and background for the alternative message presented--it doesn't come to much.

Perhaps some of my resistance comes from the book culture jam, which is simply not well written, and the official adbusters website, a recently de-slickified construct full of what look exactly like ads and--paradoxically--selling their own brand ("black spot") of products. I believe them when they say they aren't in it for the money, but it feels very odd to support someone who uses the Exact methodology they're dedicated to fighting.

It's not that I don't appreciate what they're trying to do, but it's a superficial makeover. Alone, it's no more than a pitiful attempt to turn vast impressionist sweeps of advertiser's image building into a dialogue. .. but a dialogue where no one ever says anything that takes longer than those two seconds it takes you to look at an ad.

It doesn't work.

Is deconstructing and elaborately mocking adds the best way for a cultural revolutionary to spend their time?

And then comes another question: exactly what are they proposing instead? Economic suicide isn't useful for much, and to support only ethical companies, at this point, is still economic suicide for most of us. The votes of dollars will never be enough until supported by a real public discourse, and meanwhile the majority of our time and our dollars go to the enrichment of those same people we "jam." In perspective, it's like leaving informative little notes in bigoted history texts as a protest against their use in public education. . . except, following that metaphor, all the textbooks would have to be bigoted, and they would have to be most of what was available. Hmn.

I can see it as a useful tool, but only when used more substantiatively. . . in conjunction with a more substantiative discourse, and a more substantiative plan for action.

P.S. Also, everybody shout out a big happy birthday for my sisters number three and four, for birthdays yesterday and today, respectively. They rock, each in their own awesome way. :D

These women

are so beautiful.

Gender Studies, Plus!

When you have a spare hour or two, I'm interested in what any of you think of these cultural critiques. They were both produced by the most excellent Media Education Foundation.

This first one is about the essential role of violence in our culture's idea of masculinity. (53 minutes)

The second one is about what advertising says about/to women's identity. (34 minutes)

I'd have rather posted this and this, which I feel address the same material more potently (less than ten minutes to watch both) but all I could find were previews.

I know for me, these ideas and some related ones have really changed the way that I see my culture. . . Especially when considered in combination with realizations about how fantastically, destructively materialistic*(55 minutes) our culture is.

It causes me to want to become a buddhist nun in Thailand. . . no wait, it makes me want to take a vow of non-materialism and renounce media constructions of gender. . . no wait, it makes me want to be a buddhist nun in Thailand.

*sigh*

Decisions, decisions. . .


*if you watch one, start with this one (unless the other ones specifically seem more interesting to you). Fantastic work from PBS, featuring the disembodied voice of that guy from NPR!


P.S. Edit: ok. . . so I promised you the *cough* judicious *cough* use of pictures and links. . . and so, for kicks: