Reading Adorno: In Search of Wagner (2) ‘Gesture’

 

In this piece I shall address Theodor Adorno’s essay on ‘Gestures’. In this essay, Adorno wears more of a musician’s hat than his many other hats, like say, the Freudian psychoanalysis hat; the sociologist hat; or the philosophers’ hat.

 

Give them what they want – The Allegory of the Running Man 

 

Perhaps the most informal way of trying to understand this essay, and that is by no means to say that I do in fact understand it; is to try and make a couple of cultural touchstones. There’s an expression among my friends which comes from the film ‘The Running Man’, which is about a totalitarian imagined future (from a 1980s perspective) where in order to ignore the reality of martial law, entertainment is used to pacify the audience, to use crass consumerism and aspiration as a ploy to accept the dominion of the status quo. One of the tools to do so is by the entertainment show ‘The Running Man’, where convicted persons go on a sadistic game show to fight for their lives. The character Killian says at the start of the show: ‘We give ’em what they want’. What an interesting parable to allude to when discussing a Marxian theorist of culture. The film itself is almost like some Frankfurt School parable. Later on in the film, Arnold Schwarzenegger’s character makes a step towards overturning  the false class consciousness of the audience and then before he kills Killian, Arnold’s character (Ben Richards) recapitulates the phrase but giving it a new context: ‘and right now, I’m going to give the audience what I think they want’.

 

While I could say more about how this film is a parable for the Culture Industry thesis of Adorno, I might instead talk about Adorno’s damning essay on ‘Gesture’ that accuses Wagner not merely of bad character as he did in the essay ‘Social Character’, but of poor composing ability. I think the most salient and boiled down version of what Adorno says of Wagner in this essay is that the Saxony composer wrote unstylistically, and perhaps even unmusically. Wagner is putatively understood for being the composer of long phrases and lucious chromatics, building tensions and creating erotically charged dissonances, but to Adorno, there is compositional merit to this, and the reputation he has built on his composing is effectively a shallow populism: it is akin to Killian’s ‘give them what they want’. 

 

The Wagnerian Gesture 

 

One of the things I hate about academic writing is when a term is used, and can even be an everyday term, but it is not defined. I’m probably guilty of this myself on occaision. As this essay concerns the gesture. We might ask what is a gesture. Instead of giving a definition as such, Adorno points towards how Wagner’s work is gesture-like. Perhaps that is the closest we can get to for understanding a gesture.

 

One point Adorno makes is that as a person, Wagner’s traits show in his music, and both in terms of his music, and personality; Meister Wilhelm is a dilettante. Perhaps another crude way of putting this is to say that Wagner is a Jack of All Trades, and master of none. Wagner in his later operas put much effort into elements outside of the music itself: the libretti, mythology of the texts. It is even said that Wagner put much effort into the costumes and even the physical considerations of a concert venue in his Bayreuth opera house. Wagner was an ambitious person, and his music met such ambitions. However, to be dilettante is to be amateur. Adorno’s acusation is something as follows: Wagner’s ambitions were shallow, and this is reflected in the lack of depth in his music. This is what seems to me the meaning of a gesture.

 

Wagner as a bad composer 

 

Adorno does not say this without reasons. There are specific things that, within the musical work of Wagner’s work (in contrast to say the mythology of the libretti). Adorno has very specific things to say to accus Wagner of being a bad composer. They are the following:

 

Wagner emphasises the role of the conductor as a ‘master’ of the music. In historical context one may accept this and see this as leading to a future where conductors are on a level of musical artists as say, the composer. A generation after Wagner, notable composers had reputations as conductors, in particular Mahler must be mentioned. Mahler was almost as much a superstar conductor of his day as he was a notable composer!

 

Adorno also makes the point that the music Wagner makes is compatible with or conducive with the emphasised nature and centrality of the conductor with specific respect to tempo. Wagner also makes a claim that I’m still trying to work out in my own head, that there is a distinct atemporality to his music. I may take this to mean the way that the harmonies and textures of the compositions are atemporal both in terms of being otherworldly and not obviously alluding to the work of past composers. Compare this to say Brahms, where in much of his work the Beethovenian and Baroque elements are quite evident (and much pleasantly so). Not being an expert on Wagner, I will take this on face value about atemporality.

 

The other point about atemporality may be construed in terms of being immaterial to the historical based conditions of the music and the settings of the grand stories of Wagner’s operas. Atemporality also refers to the respect that the melodies don’t go anywhere interesting. Instead they simply and frustratingly stay in the same places without a good amount of development. Atemporality is something Adorno is using in a variety of senses, some ideological, some psychoanalytic, but all musically justifiable. To provide and example of the atemporality as a lack of melodic development, Adorno appeals to the infamousTristan concert prelude.

 

Wagnerian gestures try to speak of a grand view through big instrumental sounds of the symphony orchestra, but they are gestures because of the poor score-writing. Adorno specifically refers to poor modulations and disapproves of the secondary modulations present in much of Wagner’s score-writing to be sloppy.

 

Adorno references another Wagner commentator, Alfred Lorenz. Lorenz put forward a notable study of Wagner’s work and points out specifically the use of ‘bar form’ in Wagner’s work. Adorno picks up on this as a lack of form, and this is a big part of what Adorno seems to find disapproving in Wagner. I think something that wikipedia noted to me is that Lorenz is considered as a discredited authority on Wagner, due to the former’s associations with Nazi ideology. Adorno in the purposes of this essay, however, takes the bar form (AAB melodic phrasing) as horribly generic and unstylistic.

 

If I were to pretend to be Zizek and be facetious, I might give a crass analogy. Adorno here is employing something of an Oedipal fascination and protection of his mother against what he percieves as a threat to his mother, the father. In this crass parody of a Freudian analogy (which I urge you not to take seriously), the unwelcome father is Wagner who is courting the mother’s affections.

 

So who is the mother? In this essay I might take it to mean the ideals of Viennese Classicism. But to me this is not a good enough answer. If Adorno valorises the greatness of Mozart and Beethoven, I contend it is only mediated through the other masters of Viennese form: Adorno’s own divinities: Schoenberg and Webern. But let’s take a step back and talk about Viennese Classicism.

 

Viennese Clasccisism

 

What Adorno refers to as Viennese classicism refers to a golden age around the middle of the 18th Century (ah, the 18th century, my favourite time in philosophy), where the greats such as Mozart, Beethoven and Haydn developed stylistic innovations which emphasised a particular brand of balance, and form over feeling. I am led to feel that this historical ideal of the 18th Century is clouded by Adorno through the Schoenberg perspective. Late Beethoven cannot be said to exhibit balance in its emotional temperament. Perhaps Adorno’s understanding is anachronstic. It is often said that talk of a ‘First and Second Reich’ only came about when the Third Reich was conceptualised as a notion. Likewise, there seems to be no Viennese Classicism in Adorno without what had come to be known as the Second Viennese school. There are reasons to support this interpretation in other essays where Adorno compares and contrasts Wagner’s composing and scoring to Schoenberg. The essay ‘Colour’ comes to mind when thinking of Adorno comparing to another ‘Viennese great’, which I shall write about hopefully soon enough.

 

Why is Viennese Classicism so important? This to me is the real issue of this essay. If Wagner is a composer of gestural motions, it is because he does not pay attention to the innovative aspects of his forebears such as Beethoven. Beethoven and Mozart were masters of form when it came to composition, they were masters of developing melodic lines and harmonies and of transitioning keys. I take this to be more than a musical opinion but a strong personal conviction. However I am sceptical of Adorno’s disapproval. I understand the ideological and cultural grounds for saying that Wagner fails as a composer compared to Beethoven. Then again, almost every other composer fails to compare to Beethoven, and those that dare to surpass him number on a four-fingered hand. Of course Adorno would think Schoenberg numbers among that four (as do I!).

 

The Tristan passage which Adorno is highly distainful of, I find hard to be convinced that this is terrible part writing. Adorno talks more about the Tristan passage in his essay ‘Motiv’. Which particularly goes into what I consider as a very contraversial view about Leitmotif. If Wagner was a composer of gestures, then he has fooled even me that his harmonies are luxurious. Indeed Meister Wilhelm even convinced Nietzsche for a time. Adorno stated in his own musicological way of the shallowness of Wagner’s writing which has a simultaneous appeal to it, because it is gestural. Adorno says this where Nietzsche says in much pithier words: Only sick music makes money today.

 

Some conclusions

Part of me wonders as I read this book, and as we had also written an essay on Glenn Gould on this blog some weeks ago: what would have Gould thought of Adorno? Adorno very much resembles one of the personalities that Gould adopted in his broadcasting work, of the avant-garde radical composer. Both are fans of Schoenberg, I keep emphasising this because there are very few of us in the world, living and dead! However, for very similar reasons, Gould enjoys Bach where Adorno valorises the Vienna 18th Century. Gould however, was no big fan of Beethoven or Mozart (Gould once made the infamous comment that ‘Mozart died too late’). Part of me wonders whether Adorno’s vision of music prefigured a character like Glenn Gould, or whether Gould’s later piano career could be seen as reflecting some of the musical ideology that could be said to be ‘Adornian’. This is a thought that I will try to develop more hopefully as I am going further along in assessing these essays.

A serious point is to be made here. I could take Adorno’s views here seriously, and I would respond to say I am not convinced that a lack of form is such a bad thing in something like the Tristan concert prelude. However, I find Adorno’s reasons very apt, if they were applied to other music. Something that I have also been suspecting about Adorno is finding textual evidence. Namely, that Adorno could have been a formalist aesthetically speaking. Formalism is the view that what makes something beautiful is the form of it, and the underlying rules and principles that govern that art form. Those are the things that made Beethoven great, those are also the things that made Schoenberg a great composer too. But if Wagner were a great composer, it would only be for him as a dilettante. But that said, that to me is not necessarily a bad thing. This is an essay where Adorno is uncharitable, but his points force me to take them seriously because of the strength of the psychoanalytic association between Wagner’s character and the shallowness of his writing. Perhaps if we are to take formalism seriously as an aesthetic view, we may draw from an essay like this to evaluate its merits, by looking at the demerits of its alternative.

Michael

Reading Adorno: In Search of Wagner (1) ‘Social Character’

In Adorno’s Essay ‘Social Character’, the philosopher attempts to go into a character study of the composer himself, through a selective history and a look at the Wagnerian texts. In particular I would like to highlight what I shall call ‘the Wagnerian joke’ and internal conflicts about the ideology of Wagner. I should say as I regularly do when I write commentaries like these, that my thoughts are always subject to change, and I am hardly authoritative when thinking and writing about Adorno. I write as if this blog were my digital moleskine diary.

 

A summary of this essay would be that Adorno tries to psychologise Wagner. In doing so, Adorno gives us a reason to consider the composer as a self-aggrandising egotist who relies on the middle-upper classes to fund his composing while at the same time critiquing the order of the status quo. Wagner also portrays his ideological vision of the world using the Jews, or rather, a stereotyped characterisation that his audience would recognise as a Jewish sentiment, as problematic to society. Adorno points out how there is an internal inconsistency, or conflict in the ways that Wagner both relies on the bourgeoisie patronage, as well as the status quo of a culture which celebrates opera; against Wagner’s supposedly revolutionary sentiment. The other ‘conflict’ relates what is casually referred to as Wagner’s secret. Namely, the accusation (which is not explicitly stated in Adorno but only alluded to), that Nietzsche knew ‘the truth’ of Wagner’s parentage, that in spite of all of Wagner’s anti-semitism, he himself may have had a Jewish heritage. So that’s a summary of the essay. I could just end my blog post here! But of course, I never do end at the beginning.

 

The Wagnerian Joke 

 

The Wagnerian Joke reflects a certain personality trait that Adorno is trying to trace in looking at Wagner historically. Adorno draws from materials such responses to Wagner’s earlier works and his own descriptions of them, testimonies about the composer as well as other stories and relationships that are documented. Such as Wagner’s letters to the Romantic heavyweight composer, Franz Liszt; Wagner’s contact with Friedrich Nietzsche and Wagner’s contact with Nietzsche’s sister, Elizabeth Förster-Nietzsche, the latter who became infamous for her antisemitism, but that’s another story.

 

What I would call the Wagnerian joke draws a certain unitary concept from the testimonies and characterisations that Adorno seems to string together about the way Wagner believed in his own cultic status and revolutionary character. Wagner’s sense of self-celebration is depicted also in select characters of his works.

 

The Wagnerian joke, as drawn from this essay can be understood in the following ways:

 

1. Wagner ridicules the plight of a character whose malady comes from a concrete social situation

2. By doing this Wagner creates a sense of humour while also attempting to create a form of celebration. The joke, and response of laughter serves as a rationalisation and acceptance of the plight in question. Instead of thinking critically about it, we laugh.

3. A consequence of this is that Wagner makes himself in a janused fashion both malicious behind a magnanimous and friendly face

 

The Wagnerian joke is deeply sinister, and it is imbued within the comedy around Mime’s character. Another example of the Wagnerian Joke is the anecdote of Hermann Levi conducting Parsifal. Levi was a Jew and one might think that this could be something to allay the concern of Wagner’s anti-semitism. Adorno refers to a story in which Wagner gives Levi a letter written anonymously to the effect of telling Levi to step down from composing Parsifal. Levi asks why Wagner gave the conductor this letter and Wagner answers in a way that appears both kind but also deeply sinister and ugly at once. Apparently after Wagner gave the letter to Levi, the latter was deathly silent at a dinner engagement to which Wagner asked Levi why he was so quiet, which was in some darkly way, a gesture of intimidation clothed behind the appearance of concern. The Wagnerian joke is something Adorno describes and I am trying to conceptualise (by calling it the Wagnerian joke), but realistically speaking, I cannot really have a grasp on it as a notion.

 

Perhaps the closest thing that came to mine was the comedy of Ricky Gervais. Particularly in the way that Gervais uses embarrassment and humiliation as a way of breaking a character down and revealing the facade and fakeness that was really underneath. I’ve had conversations about this kind of Gervais reactionhumour (another term I made up on an ad hoc basis) and this seems to be the basis of the dislike or like of Ricky Gervais as a comedic writer. I personally am a fan of the ugliness of the Gervais reaction as there’s something very awkward and untimely about it, television sitcoms and acting seem to have this polished nature to it and the Gervais reaction is an instance of how something in real life happens that is not comedic and not timely. Whether one finds this funny, seems to be the defining question of whether one is a fan of Gervais or not.

 

Wagner’s inner conflicts 

 

Another aspect of Wagner’s social character seems to be the internal conflicts present within his work and his character. One dimension of this is the relationship with the bourgeosisie that Wagner has. Wagner is dependent on the Bourgois classes as patronage and as a paying audience. Adorno notes how Wagner occupied a time before state provisions were introduced for artists, and also when the influence of opera was waning. As such Wagner occupied a position of a bohemian, the artisan without a patron. It is interesting sociologically speaking, to think about the ways in which artists and musicians of the various times in history may find financial support before they become properly established, if they ever become established at all. This is an issue that many people in bands or many artists face today. Have we really escaped the age of the Patron. In the UK we have things like the National Lottery and the Arts Council, who are in some ways not so much different to the House of Esterhazy or Ludwig II of Bavaria.

 

Wagner’s narratives reflect a feudal mentality, and one which is in some respects against the bourgeois status-quo. Adorno points out the compromise of Wagner’s integrity to take the thalers of patrons and appealing to bourgeois sensibilities, while also trying to provide a revolutionary sentiment of a different social order. How far can one be revolutionary while conforming to the modes of the status quo? In some ways this is not a unique issue. Another book I’m currently reading, by filmmaker Kevin Smith: “Tough Shit: Life Advice from a Fat, Lazy Slob Who Did Good”  speaks about the early days of Miramax and the indie films he made with them. Smith speaks about how the rise and rise of Smith’s career was due to a commitment to a specific vision of his stylised view to filmmaking. Smith later admits that the intervention of studio executives interfering with various aspects of his filmic vision led to a compromise and a loss of interest from a large part of his audience. I think the film that Smith refers to as destroying him in the book was ‘Cop out’. Back to Wagner…

 

This kind of compromise might look disingenuous. But I do wonder if Adorno meant it to be so. This kind of tension is based on the social conditions of creating music. If I were to create music today, I’d need access to quite a fair bit of equipment. I would need some fancy software and fancy recording equipment and it’s not too easy to get a hold of a lot of that stuff without a studio, or making one! I’m actually having this problem lately as it happens with another project. On the other hand, Wagner’s ideology that underpins his opera libretti are deeply imbued as social narratives and visions of society. One reading of this inconsistency is suggestive the necessity of a consideration of the means of production in the culture industry and thinking along that narrative, another reading reveals the strained relationship with the bourgoisie that Wagner had following a textual consideration.

 

The other inconsistency needs a bit of unpacking. Wagner as an anti-semite characterised these behaviours and characters that an audience of his time would associate with Jewish connotations and the negative stereotypes of their day, as well as reflecting cultural worries. Wagner’s vitriol was a point of contention when it came to his friendship with Nietzsche. Adorno points out how Niezsche alluded to ‘Wagner’s secret’ or the inconsistency of knowing the truth about Wagner in the light of these antisemitic characterisations and attitudes in the latter’s work. I am slightly perplexed at the way Adorno words this issue, because it seems not explicit. After some digging, I think what Adorno was alluding to in not enough words was the controversial claim that Richard Wagner’s father was not Carl Wagner, but his stepfather, Ludwig Geyer. Also by extension, the rumour that Geyer was Jewish would by this line of speculation entail that Wagner had a Jewish heritage. I think it is reasonable that this is what Adorno is alluding to with Nietzsche’s allegation, which I think comes from Nietzsche’s 1888 work Der Fall Wagner.

 

With this line of thought I am unsure of how seriously to take this. Adorno goes into detail of how the characters Alberich and Mime reflect Wagnerian ideosyncracies which rely on cultural prejudices and the “Race theory [which] assumes its rightful place in the no man’s land between idiosyncracy and paranoia” (Adorno 2009: 15). Adorno thinks that the racialised characterisation and the ‘ideosyncracies’ as he calls it, reflect and betray the deeply anti-semitic character of Wagner’s work.

 

Concluding thoughts 

 

Adorno reads into the ugliness of Wagner’s character in this essay. The beautiful music and lyricism of works such as Der Meistersingers von Nürnberg are met by the inexorable ugliness of the character of Wagner. Reading this book we are led to ask that open question: how do we square this circle of a great composer who is, according to Adorno, ugly to the core. Perhaps this is an ongoing question we should have when reading this book.

Another thing I might worry about when reading Adorno is that there seems to be an internal logic to reading this book. If one is reading ‘In Search of Adorno’ as a way to interpreting Wagner, we would be dealing with the simplistic reading of ‘is this how to interpret Wagner?’, and the answer to that is probably better answered by reading some more specialised Wagner literature. There does seem however, to be another alternate route to reading this text, and that is by a principle of charity, taking serious the internal logic and argumentation of where Adorno is going with his line of thought. This involves a suspension of judgment more akin to when I’m reading say Descartes or Kant. An example of this would be: when reading Descartes on the soul or on God, or Kant on his metaphysics, one simply has to assume we can validly talk about the soul, or God before engaging critically with their thoughts, failing to do so is failing to be an exegete. That said, I do wonder how far Adorno’s internal logic is seperatable from reading the text without having such a charitable hermeneutical perspective.

Michael

The Cult of Glenn Gould

 

As many of you can tell, I’ve been blogging a lot about music lately. I have always had thoughts and Ideas about music and I always considered that eventually I would come to speak my views or embed them in unsystematic places through other discussions, such as my commentary blog pieces on Adorno.

 

However I thought I might just try and address some of the thoughts and issues directly. With that in mind I thought I would write about my favourite Musician: Glenn Gould, and try to articulate some of the things I find interesting about the pianist-broadcaster. Part of the reason I felt it important to talk about Glenn Gould is because part of his insight will, I suspect continually be referred to if I continue to write on issues musical. Gould is as a pianist, as influential to me as say Kant is as a philosopher.

Why I like Glenn Gould 

 

Glenn Gould is one of my all time favourite musicians. I say musician and not concert pianist. Gould composed works in his own time which have been of little recognition, Gould also had very deep thoughts on music history. Glenn Gould worked with Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) in producing programming that engaged with the public about music, in the way that the likes of Carl Sagan or Richard Dawkins did for science, or Marcus deSautoy for Mathematics today. I consider Gould not just as a performer, but someone who was a performer with a composer’s mentality, someone with ideological views on music, its direction and its history. Gould was someone who lived in the age that transitioned the end of classical music as we know it and saw the emergence of popular music styles which took the place of the big composers.

 

Gould is a divisive figure, many have a dislike for him for giving the impression that’s okay to play the piano with poor pedagogy, or while humming, using an inappropriately low chair. On the other hand, it is the eccentricity of the man that I love. It is the out of this world nature of his personality, that also reflects the other-worldiness of the composers that he favoured: Bach and Schoenberg. I will consider the many different dimensions of Glenn Gould and have some closing reflections on the ‘cult’ of Glenn Gould.

 

Who is Glenn Gould? 

 

Gould the performer 

 

One of the things I am attracted to about Glenn Gould are his performances. The way that Gould makes 18th Century J.S. Bach come alive in a way that gives it a distinct freshness. Gould’s interpretation of the Brandenburg Concerto is considered a benchmark, and Gould’s career can be book-ended by his early recording and his late recording of the very same piece

 

One thing I find particularly interesting about Gould is the choice he made for his recordings. Gould avoided Romanticism a great deal, and expressed a certain Baroque-ness in all of the pieces he recorded. Gould’s choices in music reflects a lineage, from Bach to Schoenberg, from Rhineland old to Rhineland recent. There are however some choice exceptions to Gould’s work: his interpretation of Mozart leaves much to be desired, and the choice of recording Scriabin leaves me unsure of what to think. I am particularly surprised at some of the Richard Strauss lieder recorded by Gould.

 

Gould the ideologue 

 

Gould nailed his colours to the mast about many issues. Perhaps bold enough to say that Mozart ‘died too late’ as a form of disapproval of the latter’s later work. Gould was a pianist who was known more for their voice than his hands. Gould was very vocal on his feelings for Bach and Schoenberg and many of the ideological baggage that he carried has chimed a lot with my own musical upbringing and influences. In a way Gould is a natural extension of my musical worldview. I particularly like the way that Gould conflates or expands (depending on how you see it) the role and position of what a concert pianist should be. Should a pianist play, or contribute to a conversation about music and what music means?

 

Gould the Studio Musician/perfectionist 

 

Glenn Gould famously refused to be part of the concert scene and chose not to engage in live performing. Gould had distinct reservations about the way in which music is performed to an audience, and the way that the distinction was made between performer and audience. Gould was then led to taking a more studio oriented approach to performing and propagating his music. There are amazing videos out on youtube showing the ways in which Gould had been involved in the studio process of making music, not just in terms of playing the piano, but in the post-production stages of mixing audio and cutting tape. I’ve lately been working in some home studios with very fancy software like Digital Audio Workstations, but I am astonished at an age where cutting up a recording and splicing with other takes literally involved cutting tape! Gould was a perfectionist of the classical music variety, in an age where the studio was emerging. Gould made himself a recording artist from a performer, and this is something very telling about the status of musicianship today and the scope of what musicianship involves.

 

Gould the firebrand/anti-conservative 

 

Gould is a figure who is inherently disagreeable to some, or may I even say many. This is a fundamental aspect of what makes anyone a firebrand. There is a story of Glenn Gould meeting another notable musician (and musical intellectual) who found Gould’s interpretation disagreeable, but noteworthy enough to deserve engagement. That musician was Leonard Bernstein, someone who I also have great admiration for as a musician and a composer (and no I’m not so big a fan of West Side Story).

 

Gould held strong opinions, from Romanticism to Modernism; Bach to recording methods. Gould remained a distinct face and one who ruffled feathers by his distinctness and presentation. Glenn Gould was not just an eccentric and a passionate person of the world of classsical music, but was distinclty a person of 20th century sensibilities as well, doing things that other classical performers would not do. Like this!

 

Gould the broadcaster 

 

Glenn Gould’s greatest legacy may very well be not in his playing, but the efforts he made to educate the public in music and culture. Very similar to Leonard Bernstein, Gould made entertaining material from discussing the history of music, discussing style and reaching audiences through CBC broadcasts in an accessible fashion. We speak of the public intellectual like a rare breed of broadcaster these days. We also normally think of such intellectuals for science, mathematics or even history and philosophy –  but …whither music? The Unanswered Question.

I particularly enjoyed the ways in which Gould would parody the pretentiousness of the world of classical music by the various fake characters that he would perform, and at the same time embody in all seriousness the very kind of persons that he would lampoon. Such a strange and contradictory state of affairs it is to be Glenn Gould. It is with greatness that one can both parody experimental composers and music critics, and both be an advocate of Serialism in all seriousness as well as having very strong views on issues musical. This contrast between the serious and playful/funny Gould is something that any public intellectual can learn from. Gould contains great comedy as well as seriousness. As evidenced from things such as his ‘so you want to write a fugue’. A fugue about writing a fugue. Talk about parody as a form of art.

Gould the ‘bad example’

Gould is, lets face it, a bad example to emulate as a pianist. Gould does a lot of things ‘badly’, pedagogically speaking. The chair he sits on is too low, Gould strikes with an overhand that is too dominant; humming is not desirable plus the movements are far too eccentric. Of course when it comes to virtuosi they are a law unto themselves. Like performers like Louis Armstrong, their eccentricities are evident of their skill, but not things for mortals to emulate.

Gould’s in wider historical cultural context

Glenn Gould was born in an age where notable composers wrote notable works, but then composers became less notable and their works less notable still. We think of composers more now as institutionalised figures from the universities who studied composition, or jobbing composers who work in film or commissions. This kind of historical situation gives less of a scope or an opportunity in my view, for the kind of classical music we may have envisaged of earlier centuries, or perhaps the whole notion of a classical music is an anacrhonism in itself. Gould acknowledged that there was a world outside of the classical, there was music outside of the world of R. Strauss and Hindemith. In that way I see Gould as a transitional character in the grand scheme of things. One who engaged with a changing world, where things like television and radio media are innovative ways of engaging with the public, and that engaging with the public is a social good. It’s a vastly different world from the old masters. Although to a lesser extent than Bernstein, Gould did make an effort to bridge these worlds together in a way where he seemed to both belong to them and be apart from them.

Conclusion: The Cult of Glenn Gould

Glenn Gould has something of a cult of personality about him. Gould’s eccentricities and his views are a package deal. I refer to Gould’s following as a cult in that fewer people these days are familiar with his work and fewer people still remember what he represents. As I am getting more engaged with music I find some inspiration from Glenn Gould, not just as a musician and as someone with a stylistic outlook, but as someone who talked about these things rather than just doing it, and as someone who shows the potential of being a public intellectual about music. That, and few other people in the old world of music make me laugh as much as him.

Michael

#AMDG , or On the Jesuit Pope

We are living in an age of so many unprecedented things it is too much of an effort to keep track of them all. I thought I would care to mention one unprecedented thing of significance to us, and that is the announcement of a Jesuit Pope, the first ever Jesuit Pope.

 

There are lots of different things I could address about the most recently appointed head of the Catholic Church: the fact that he is from Latin America; the issue of liberation theology, or the other issues that many in the public and the Church congregation which to have the new Pope address, such as celebacy, scandals in the Church or the role of women. I’m going to do the side-stepping thing of not discussing them for the purposes of this post, and only talk about two issues specifically. Firstly – the question of ‘Why Francis I as a papal name?’ and secondly What significance is there to a Jesuit Pope?. It should go without saying that this is a speculative exploration in the exercise of writing this piece.

 

Why Francis? 

 

When I heard that the Pope was named Francis the First. I immediately thought of one Saint. Unlike most of the commentators around the Vatican and in Catholic media, I considered Francis to take after Saint Francis Xavier, who is the patron saint of Goa, known for introducing Catholicism to India and Japan and one of the first Jesuits. We at Noumenal Realm considered it interesting that we have a particularly different relationships to Francis Xavier. For I consider him as one of the founders of the Society of Jesus foremost, while Michael considers Xavier as the missionary who brought Catholic Christianity to parts of Asia.

 

Many commentators likened the name to an association with Francis of Assisi, better known for love of animals and nature. The question of what’s in a name is a significant one – as one is a missionary going to the edges of the known world spreading values, and the other has more of a conscientious connotation. Perhaps it is like me always to overplay the Jesuit connection with everything!

 

A Jesuit Pope 

 

Ah the Jesuits, they live in poverty and obedience to the Pope. The Jesuits are sometimes called ‘God’s Marines’ due to their militaristic nature. The Jesuits have placed themselves in many educational institutions and have taken a large part in mission work historically. I grew up with tales of Jesuit adventure and the very real perils that they faced in their work, including beheadings. I also have memories of the Jesuits claiming that they had their own personal views about homosexuality and women being inducted to the priesthood, but must always submit whatever personal views they had to the authority of the Pope. I always saw that as freethinking within limitations. I also respected such freethought from what appears to be a very authoritarian order.

 

I’ll always have a bit of a rational blind spot about the Jesuits, as they made me who I am in very large ways: inspiring my interest in Classics, Theology and Systematic thinking. The Jesuits also taught me that you should live by ideals, which included adhering to them. One of the things that has been coming out about Francis I is the way that he enacts poverty to his real life. The way that Francis I takes austerity in his own living conditions and behaviour, dress and actions is embarrassing the status quo of how things are done and have been done in the Vatican. No more custom red shoes, no more elaborate stoles and no more popemobile? This is a Christianity that I was grown up to believe in, not one of rock-star like entourages and fancy clothes, but one where a concern with the poor means identifying with the poor in how one lives, eats, dresses and travels.

 

Living with a minimum, without too much extravagance, and dressing for simplicity was the way that I was taught by Jesuits, and the ideal that I saw Jesuits live by. I was told about how Jesuit teachers had a ‘common pot’ where they put their wages, which were used for things like food, personal travel and clothing expenses. Even my dress sense has been influenced by the Jesuits. Smart, but universal. Simple and utilitarian. Try not to be too flashy. Try dressing to be adaptable. Wear black.

 

The Jesuits live with orders to have obedience to the Pope, does that make a Jesuit Pope a contradiction? How is it that an individual Jesuit can have complete obedience to himself? This reminds me of that old saying from Meister Eckhart: Can God make a stone so big that he could not carry it?

 

Perhaps I am being more deferential than I should. It is also the case that there are many critical avenues that people wish to address the papacy. I choose just for this post to focus on the Jesuit angle, because if he’s anything like the Jesuits who taught me, there is definitely space for reform.

 

I suppose all one can do is keep eyes open. It’s also amusing to see #AMDG trending on twitter!

 

Destre

Antisophie’s Words: using ‘man’ as a prefix, -porn as an adjective

As part of an ongoing series I have been thinking about words that I hear in everyday speech and writing, and I think about how they have a specific location in our contemporary context, both in terms of being located in the English langauge, and being as signifiers of things in our time and that I hope one day will look like a bit of a commentary of our society (and its decline). I’ve talked about unnecessary words in the past, so….

Using ‘man’ as a prefix (or, the man-portmanteau)

(advisory: mention of eating disorders)

For some reason I found the show Will and Grace on tv the other day. I remember thinking how edgy it used to be with all the gay culture allusions and how edgy it was with all the double-entendres. But then I realised when I watched it I was an impressionable teenaged girl and many things seemed edgy when they actually weren’t. I remember recently watching this particular episode where the character Jack appeared to be sad about a relationship breakup, and said something to the effect that he was a manorexic. I then felt very icky about how I used to like the show and how deeply troubling it was to make a gag like that.

I often hear uses of the word -man used in a portmanteau fashion. A portmanteau is is a combination of words that don’t conventionally go together. Usually this is as a way of trying to show some significance of the newness of a combination, or it may be affectionate, or it is an ad-hoc way of trying to explicate what one means. Some portmanteaus however have gained common currency and are recognised beyond an ad hoc usage, like ‘chillax’.

The man-portmanteau (see what I did there?) is often used as a diminutive variation of an already existent word, or something that triest to make a phenomenon more masculine. ‘Manorexic’ is sometimes used in a demeaning way to look at anorexia, sometimes it is used in a non-serious way and in a growing usage acknowledging male eating disorders, it is sometimes used in a serious way. Other examples of using a man-prefix/man-portmanteau include:

• Man cave
• Man flu
• Mancession
• Man bag
• Mankini
• Manscaping
• Man-child

The use of these prefixes seem to communicate quite different things. Something like man-scaping, mankini or man- bag tries to communicate something that is by the distinction of having association with maleness, unusual. Other terms like man cave and mancession have very specific meanings. Man cave is usually associated with a cultural symbol of a boorish anti-domestic type or indulgent. Mancession refers to the way that economic conditions have influenced male dating behaviour and its effect on women looking for men. Much of these prefixed terms seem to communicate different aspects of masculinity: vain, boorish, immature or lackadaisical. I am ambivalent however as to whether these ascriptions are wholly negative.

Porn as an adjective

I’m trying to think a little bit systematically. I’ve heard the term ‘porn’ used as a descriptor and it makes me reflect one what pornography signifies if it is to be linked in a suffix way to other words. Examples of what I mean are:

• Property porn – the phenomena of admiring property ownership and the upward mobility associated with it
• Inspirational porn – A term used by Ouch Podcast presenter Liz Carr to describe the Paralympics and its irrelevance to the lives of many disabled people in the UK
• Food porn – the subject of many tumblrs, Pinterest boards and television shows valorising glamorous food

Michael once made the point that a Kantian perspective would deny that gastronomy could be a thing of art, because we eat it. In doing so we have an interested perspective about its consumption. It is relevant to our appetitive interests to crave foods, even the unhealthy kinds. However the idea of food porn seems apt to me, because it is (fitting to the analogy of pornography) skirting between the respectability of being artistic in some ways, to just appealing to our craving of it. The aspiration of food is also a distinctly class-based issue and one of the modern signifiers of class, cultural capital and what Veblen would call a pecuniary interest. The use of porn to describe food seems very apt to me.

Thinking about property porn and inspirational porn. I think there is something deeply political about making them analogous to pornography. Pornography generally portrays a world that doesn’t really exist, but represents fantasies that most people can’t have access to. In a world where wages don’t get to make ends meet and a gamut of other forms of economic instability, the presence of programmes valorising home ownership and a ‘quality of life’ in living in an x bedroom house with water features and close to the city reflects lots of deeply held and I think covertly socially stratified based attitudes. With ‘inspirational porn’ to describe the paralympics, I think the point was to point out how elite athletes who happen to be disabled is a bit of an irrelevance to the reality of many disabled people, who are living in increasingly intolerable conditions with the introduction of things like the PIP its exceptionally stringent conditions. We see the ugly side of aspiration: we must aspire but we cannot have. We are told what we ought to have and how we ought to behave, but with little possibility of fulfilling it. That is a sick society and reminds me of how Marx described religion: as a spiritual gin. Of course, spiritual gin is a bit of an obscure reference, where one syllable will do: porn.

 

Antisophie

On Guilty Pleasures (or, shall we eat cake?)

The more I think about it, the more I see the proliferation of guilty pleasures. What is a guilty pleasure? A guilty pleasure is a thoughtless form of satisfaction, it requires little critical effort and one engages with it in one’s own terms. The more a guilty pleasure is consumed, the more it is made as a desirable end. A guilty pleasure is something that usually one knows that they should for whatever reason know better than enjoying. One should know that there are more thoughtful, more refined or more engaging sensibilities. But for whatever reason, we will always have our guilty pleasure. So ends my definition.

I was thinking about this from one particular thing. It started with a bus advert, it was for the upcoming Sly Stallone film ‘Bullet to the Head’, which reminded me of how comforting I have found Stallone films. The comfort comes from the predictable nature of action films. It is predictable that there will be juxtapositions: of the older man handling a post 2010s world with a 1970s outlook; the juxtaposition of how physical violence is socially unacceptable, but seeing it on film gives one such an animalistic buzz when it is executed with comedy and finesse, or a one-liner. The year is 2013 and there are a whole lot of bus adverts with a 60-something action hero returning to doing films of a genre that was out of date two decades ago. However I might poo-poo on the action film. I grew up with it and many other people my age and older had, and it is a guilty pleasure. For all the critical things I have said I’m probably going to watch the film in the cinema and I’m probably going to laugh at the gags and have a good time with my friends. I find it interesting how the film critic, who is supposedly the bastion of cultural sensibility and critique, have so easily chosen to take an uncritical view of a film.

I think perhaps the most notable way of showing the guilty pleasure and how it affects our mindset is when certain topics come to mind that evoke comforting associations and a completely different way of thinking to normal, this may involve things such as: cake, sex, alcohol, LAN parties, football, poetry slams (delete as appropriate). I’ve been following the film reviews of the upcoming Kim Ji-Woon directed film ‘The Last Stand’ and many have pointed out how the film is mediocre, except for the fact that it serves as a return of action film star Arnold Schwarzenegger. Richard Roeper gives it a B- review. The editor of Shortlist Magazine, Martin Robinson (sic) said something to the effect of how despite how he may boast of his refined cultural sensibilities: he has seen The Seventh Seal maybe twice, but he’s seen Commando over 160 times. The Guardian Film Review’s Peter Bradshaw reflects on effectively giving the film a metaphorical get out of jail freecard just for reinforcing the cult of Arnold Schwarzenegger and the ‘good old days’ of action films. A guilty pleasure is a great way to hide critical thinking.

The guilty pleasure may be seen as harmless and sometimes it is not necessarily making an explicit point about the world. However, it is hardly apolitical, insofar as the following truism remains. If one chooses to indulge in a guilty pleasure, they do so willingly to the avoidance of something else. This is not harmless in itself, but what if we are surrounded by advertising appealing to guilty pleasures to a degree that temptation and it acknowledgement is impossible. Advertising for package holidays, nice shoes, the next series of your favourite drama series, celebrity gossip on your news feeds or the desserts that are right by the door on supermarkets the country over. If the way we spend our time is oriented or centred around guilty pleasures? Where is the time to think, and think differently? Where is the time to challenge the status quo? It’s one thing to talk about figuratively voting with our feet, what we choose to watch on television (or whether we choose to watch it) is something we can control. But we cannot escape many of the advertisements ubiquitous in social spaces to remind us of the ways we can find hedonistic enjoyment.

I definitely would hold that the guilty pleasure is something that is here to stay and it would be wrong to deny this. I must admit that I have mine. In my mission to redefine my body mass through weight training and other strenuous activities on a regular basis, the proclusion of cake (inter alia) is advisable. However my other guilty pleasures involve little games on my smartphone; the occaisional day in or night out with my friends; comic books; or old-school heavy metal tunes pretend to say that I have moved on from. Despite the ways in which I am otherwise Spartan and ascetic. I still accept the occaisional frequent guilty pleasure.

Part of me wonders if Adorno would have really denied the importance of guilty pleasures in addressing its ideological implications for capitalism. Adorno himself was a fan of very bad cowboy western films. I am in a broad agreement with the Adornian point that a culture of satiation has political ramifications for late Capitalism and the eroision of counter-discourses. Shall we let ourselves eat cake?

Michael (based on a conversation with Antisophie)

(anti)Heroes of our time: Cyclops and Wolverine (a year-end post)

So, the year 2012 is ending. This is normally the kind of time when we review what was eventful about the year. To be honest, this year has seemed the same as last, and almost the same as 2010. The headlines seem often the same, either there’s a scandal about someone’s personal affairs which becomes political, or a political scandal that is personalised to specific individuals.

I’m a believer in the notion that our culture reflects our times. Often nostalgia for the year passing focusses on entertainment news or things that have happened in culture. At least in the UK, culturally we seem to live in two worlds. There is the discourse of aspiration and the reality of its improbability. Television shows offer fame and stardom, give us things we wish to aspire to: lovely food, great homes, interior decoration or the spiritual gin of a cheap thrill through comedy and music. I am just as guilty as anyone else in buying in to this irreverence. I am reminded of Robert K. Merton’s notion of strain theory in criminology: the idea that criminality and deviance directly relates to the dissonance between the ideals of what people are told to aspire to against its inherent difficulty due to current social times.

Perhaps one way to sum up the year for me, is through a Comicbook storyline and the way in which it has concluded. Marvel’s ‘Avengers Vs. X-Men’ (AvX) was a story about two teams of heroes who were forced to fight because of a difference of opinion. This difference of opinion was based on the significance of a very powerful supernatural force known as the Phoenix, which enters a physical body and imbues them with special powers. The Phoenix was destined for one particular character, Hope Summers, but as it happened, by an accident the Phoenix entered five different people who it was not supposed to.

(spoiler warnings)

Cyclops and Wolverine

The conclusion of this story was that one of the most archetypal characters representing the moral good has turned into a villain, namely, the X-Man, Cyclops/Scott Summers. Cyclops in his depiction in Marvel Comics has always been a morally upright citizen, the one who always holds the line of decency and has a commitment to the values of Xavier’s ideology of mutant equality.

Perhaps the most notable turn of events for me was the ‘transition’ from hero to villain of Cyclop’s character in the 5 issue short: AvX: Consequences. Cyclops, imbued with vast amounts of power had the ability to change the world, at first it looked like he was acting out of good. Many of Cyclops and the other Phoenix hosts moved to create a better world, some of their acts included things such as improving ecological conditions and solving the fundamental problem of the scarcity gap to end hunger and global energy needs. Quite a poignant use of superhero powers if such people ever lived in the real world. However the vast power of the Phoenix emphasised the nobility of their hosts, but eventually their darker sides were also emphasised, which eventually led to the moral corruption of the Phoenix five.

After the Phoenix ordeal, Cyclops is put in a prison. In a conversation with his former team-mate Wolverine, the latter says: you were always the man I wanted to be. Wolverine references Cyclops’ idealism and his commitment to moral good, incorruptible nature and his courage. Cyclops is, or was, as traditionally heroic as heroes get. Cyclops’ fall was notable in this regard. Eventually Cyclops’ is sprung out of prison and it looks like he has become part of a villainous ‘X-Men’ group including Magneto. One of the most notable acts of Cyclops when  he was empowered by the Phoenix force was that he killed his mentor, Charles Xavier, who is the most important character in the X-men series, since he founded the team.

After killing his mentor and murdering a prisoner out of vengeance, Cyclops realised he has changed and accepts this new moral character emerging from his actions. Summers leaves a note at the prison for Wolverine after he escapes, which says to the effect: I realise that I have to be the hero you once saw me to be, because that hero has now become you. Wolverine, as it has been acknowledged throughout comic law, and by himself, is hardly the most traditionally heroic. Wolverine has killed in cold blood, believes in a vigilante form of justice and embodies rage in many occaisions. Wolverine as an X-man, and a role model realises that his behaviour has implications for those who have looked up to him and this has made him more mindful of his behaviour.

I think that the transition of the hero mantle from Cyclops to Wolverine reflects a change in the cultural sensibilities of our time. Idealism seems no longer relevant, idealism seems sour in an age of austerity and hardship. Our heroes are often the reluctant ones. The heroes of our time are more like Aeneas: brooding, strained, unwilling, encumbered by duty. Charlie Brooker has written a piece a few days ago to this effect pointing out how James Bond and Batman, characters of two blockbuster films this year; are essentially the same character. That Cyclops has become a villain hit home to me the cultural sensibilities of today, and how different this decade was in relation to the last. The bubble has broken and we are in a wet spot. Anti-heroes are our heroes, and idealism is replaced by cynicism and regret.

Michael

P.S. Happy New Year from the Noumenal Realm team

The Hawkeye Initiative and the dictum of cultural challenge

Preamble

I’m writing about this issue because it reflects two things: my fandom for the Marvel Universe, and my enduring admiration throughout much of my life to the many great animated series, games, comic books and even Youtube re-dubs put out by Marvel. I used to be a big fan of the X-Men when I was younger, then was quite a fan of Iron Man and in recent years I’ve come to enjoy the Avengers through their cinematic entry and their recent comicbook tussle with the X-Men (five of which were powered by the Phoenix Force). It comes from this perspective that many people may find it difficult to criticise the things they love.

From about 10 days ago I saw a memetic emergence, in true Susan Blackmore style, a cultural idea was successful enough to be interesting to people that people would wish to replicate it, or reblog to be more specific. This memetic emergence came from (I understand from a trustworthy nerd source) a comparison between a comic book cover of Character Natasha Romanov/Black Widow replaced with the male character Clint Barton/Hawkeye. Many people found the interpretation so powerful that they made their own versions, some looking very low quality (but that’s not really the point) and others are more professional looking mark-ups, transposing ridiculous poses that women are depicted in on the covers of comics, to drawing men in such a fashion.

What Hawkeye Initiative shows
The Hawkeye Initiative, as it came to be known, began to collate a large number of variations on a theme. Not just Marvel comic book covers began to be copied, it became evident that this seemingly humourous transposition of a female character on a comic issue’s cover to a male one reflects the systematic objectification of women in comics. Compared to men, female characters are often in postures which would be difficult to maintain, perhaps physically impossible. The depiction of women often reflect idealised perceptions of what comic writers, artists and what they presume their audience would consider as an idealised female body. The costumes of women, when worn on men in such a way that the Hawkeye interpretations show, reflect the inherent disproportionate treatment of women as sexualised in some kind of enticement towards the audience.

For a long time I was aiming to write a piece on how unrealistic male comic characters are physically, however it seems that it is the case for both men and women characters.

What Hawkeye Initiative means
(image: Elizabeth ‘Betsy’ Braddock, or Psylocke action figure. I used to have one this very action figure when I was younger, and it was a very rare find)

The Hawkeye Initiative shows the institutional disadvantage of women in comic book culture. The comics represent many of the gendered values of ordinary society and while some comics can be progressive in political and social ways, gender is a bit of an Achilles’ heel. It should be said that while there is a progressive aspect to the subversion of gender roles embodied in the Hawkeye Initiative series of comic book re-interpretations, a number of people have pointed out the ways in which transgender people could also face the same kind of ridicule in that their bodies at birth may not conform to the percieved norms of how females are depicted in comic books and wider culture. By the way of subverting the posture of say Black Widow or Ms. Marvel and depict it a Hawkeye as point of comedy, it has been seen as a ridicule of those who do not fit the putative conception of a straightforward gender and sex isomorphism. This was brought up on the Tumblr blog and the moderator of the blog acknowledged this as problematic but no specific offense was intended to groups such as those individuals assigned female at birth.

The dictum of cultural challenge

From the Hawkeye Initiative has come talk of the ‘Hawkeye test’ in comics. This is in my view an example of culture as a form of critique, at its best. In many points throughout my blogging and even in my non-blog writings on aesthetics, I’ve spoken of something I’d call the Dictum of cultural challenge, this is the notion that culture insofar as it is worthwhile, should challenge the ills of the status quo. A corollorary of this principle would be: art that makes one see the world in a different way, gives one the potential to think of the world in a different way. Perception in this sense becomes politicised. By noticing the ways in which men are depicted in comic books as a neutralised and non-gendered stance, while women are highlighted as gendered when if their male counterparts are drawn in a similar way the latter looks unusual or (excuse the pun) comical, then there is an asymmetry of our imagination, an inequality of the ways in which we treat gender.
(Image: Nathaniel Essex/Mr. Sinister, what’s more noticable: the menacing nature, or his ‘Mr.’ prefix?)

(Image: Miss Sinister, I think its fair to say that the ‘Miss’ is more noticable than ‘Sinister’)

On balance

Here’s the thing. I still really like Marvel Comics, and I think there are interesting characters of all genders and none. The objectification of women puts off a large audience to very engaging stories and strong characters, such as Major Carol Danvers/Ms. Marvel who outranks Captain America, or Ororo Munroe/Storm, who not only faces the challenge of being a mutant in an homo sapien world, but during combat faces her claustrophobia in perilous situations. Thinking about the sexualisation of women also makes me rethink about other female comic characters, such as Vampirella or Witchblade. I wonder how much of the value or appeal of Vampirella would be there without the constant titillation and lecherous behaviour of the vampire men she opposes, or in the case of Witchblade, which of the alter-egos do we consider more challenging to the putative discourse on femininity. One thing is for sure, objectification in comics hurts the audience, the potential audience comics are losing and most of all, its culturally damaging to perpetuate what is essentially a status quo about gender perceptions about physical appearance.

Michael

Review: ‘Barbarians’, by Barrie Keefe

There is that old line by Adorno that poetry after the holocaust is barbaric.Michael reminded me of this line after I came out of seeing a play earlier this week. What I saw was ugliness, bleak despair in Doc Martens and suspenders. I don’t normally get to visit the Noumenal Realm crew but an unrelated occaision brought us all together, and since I was local to South London, I was told about a burgeoning grassroots cultural group called the ‘Tooting Arts Club’ who have been around for a bit over a year now. Ever the ones for new experiences, about three of us went to see a play that we knew nothing about.

‘Barbarians’, by Barrie Keefe apparently debuted about 20 years ago in the early 1990s. This being the early 2010s, there is a layer of significance about this play that resonates with the present day. Thinking about what Adorno wrote on the holocaust all those years ago gives a sense of distance about what the Second World War was, as seven decades have passed and those with living memories are fewer in number. This play however, is set in the late 1970s. The play was set in a time period so close, many of the audience (the various 50 and 60 somethings) were probably the same age as the youths depicted in the play. The slightly younger mid-30 to mid-40 somethings were probably familiar with the economic downturn of the late 1980s and early 1990s where the play originally had its run. During the break in a conversation with Antisophie, we commented how although we were hardly alive or conscious adults during either the 1970s or late 80s, this play cuts close to the bone for us as well.

The situation is Lewisham, an area of London not too much unlike Tooting. The time is set (I think) over a year or two in the late 70s. The most interesting part about the play was that there was no distinction between audience and stage. As we came in to the play, one of the cast members was hanging around and engraving various things on the wall. The ‘stage’ was a former building dedicated for some kind of youth employment scheme in a bygone year, which is pertinent since the first act refers to the careers advice given to the characters at the time: train for a profession and get a competitive edge in the job market. Of course, everybody knew that such a plan didn’t work in difficult economic times.

Bell’s post-industrial society came to mind when the characters were not impressed at the prospect of working in a factory filled with predominantly women, gender roles associated with industrial work and masculinity were strongly ingrained in that generation. There was no ‘stage’ as such, but rather different aspects of the building were through the process of the performance. The characters would break the forth wall and ask us, as the audience to kindly stand up and sit in a different place, the chairs were then reorganised and we faced a different part of the building to see the next act of the play. In this way, there was no distinction between the audience and the performers. One performer flirted with one of the female audience members (which I must presume is part of the script) and at another point, another person’s alcoholic drink was almost spilled the other actor jumped on the table. The degree of eye contact and talking with us, the audience was deeply uncomfortable for me. Michael commented that it reminded him of when he went to see Marc Maron a while back and Maron looked at him and said, almost with mimicry ‘will you be my dad?’.

The changing nature of space was very innovative, and it helped the audience engage more with what this play was about. I normally read plays as opposed to watching them (the same goes for Opera), and there is a comfortable distance when reading about difficult subjects or even pleasant ones. Being in a stage so physically close to the actors (one of them in fact bumped into me during the pitch black scene change) and the setting of the play based in a time period very close to the present ensured that every member of that audience felt engaged.

The play was deeply upsetting. The main themes of the play seemed to be about the lack of sense of belonging among the characters Jan, Louis and Paul. The play also featured a distinct sense of betrayal from many sections of society to these three youths. Paul’s betrayal by his duplicitous cousin who he is unwittingly playing as a pawn to; Jan’s betrayal from both his family through his absentee father to his unreliable uncle whom he places much confidence in; finally there is Louis, the black British character who finds friendship among the other two white protagonists but also plays a pawn to Paul’s various schemes. Louis appears at the end as the most successful character who manages to find a profession and a bit of an earning, but ultimately cannot escape racism.

There is a bit of racism in this play. Michael commented how brutal it was, plus adding the unease of being in a predominantly white bourgeois audience. With many performances, like say, Antigone or Dido and Aeneas, one can walk away from the play with a sense of distance and perhaps eat cake or whatever it is people do after plays. With this play, walking out of that building from the 1970s to 2012 really made no difference. I entered a building where the Conservative Government were more interested in party political quibbles than Youth Employment, where money was tight for many people concerned and many people felt betrayed by the false hopes and aspirations taught to them by the older generation. The only real difference between going inside that building and coming out to Tooting High Street was the smartphone in my pocket. What made this play really successful was that the sense of despair and ugliness about the time of the 1970s is something that one cannot ignore, moreover, the similar sense of pessimism for the present day is something we are reminded of. I thought to myself that this was a great piece by the expressionist standard.

I was chatting to Antisophie on Skype earlier today who made a couple of observations to the point of trying to be funny, it was lost on me. Antisophie’s first remark was to tell me about a gag on this week’s episode of Have I Got News For You, a popular panel show about current affairs. The joke was concerning the Jubiliee celebrations, that the Jubilee committee asked the Punk band Sex Pistols whether they would celebrate the Diamond Jubilee in the way that they did with the Jubilee in 1977 by re-forming. The punchline was that they declined because John Lyndon was unavailable, as he was filming for a butter commercial. I then was reminded of Adorno’s thesis that the Culture Industry eventually subverts the subversive into aggressive capitalism. The other mocking comment she made was that she said after the play Michael probably listened to Burzum on the way home [editorial: I did (MP)] feeling some disingenuous sense of facile sensibility. While there was some acknowledgement into the youth culture and movements of the time (Notting Hill Carnival, Punk Music), the play does not overplay the ‘radical’ aspects of these cultural forms by putting some balance about the boring aspects of the 1970s. There was for instance a 1970s original poster informing us about V.D. and the stage changes were aided by some crass televisual advertisments of the time, such as the inadvertently ridiculous female perfume named ‘Tramp’. It was a good call not to overplay the revolutionary aspects youth culture of the time, that’s for the aging trustafarians who boast their punk anarchist credentials to local ramblers who pass their farm house.

Michael commented on how the whirling and altering nature of the stage, as well as the near-contemporary setting of the 1970s reminds him of Goffman’s notion of the front and back stage. So much of society is the front stage that the back stage is an exhaustingly small domain. The embarrassment of the audience when the actors would look at us and talk to us reminded me of the small space that Goffman’s ‘back stage’ has in social life. The fact that one could not escape the subjects of the play by simply leaving the performance venue also made us uncomfortable. The emphasis on performance in social behaviour, aggrivated by the rise of service industries and the perfectionism of television media as it tries to make real life into its ‘reality’ reminds me of how little space there is for a back stage. There is betrayal and objectification from larger social forces. The final essence of the play is that something’s gotta give if the youth of today are under such pressure and under such psychologically destructive forces that undermine identity, group affiliation or the failure of aspiration.This was expressed in the play by the hint of racialist politics by the character Paul, or the hint of post-traumatic stress from Jan. Or we may simply be victims by other victims, like Louis.

A few hours after the play once I got home, I was reminded of a more modern parable: Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight. I thought of the Joker because he seems to represent a villain that emerges from the social conditions of Gotham City. In that way, he represents all of the corruption and ills and lies of the society that he came from. The extreme psychotic criminality makes more sense in the context of Gotham City’s corruption. Just like the ending of Barbarians, when economic and social conditions become difficult, something’s gotta give.

Destre

We also very much appreciate the work of Tooting Arts Club for their latest venture, but also their past and (hopefully) future events.

Indoctrination: reviewing last week

[This blog post is a few days out of date as the stories have lost their freshness, however that’s a testament to my own lack of time than anything else. ]

“Tell me what to think, I can’t make up my own ideas!”, On Kony 2012

As most people with a facebook account last week may have observed, the video from charity ‘Invisible Children’, ‘Kony 2012’ was spread like, well, a virus. Even the memes and picture boards referenced the awareness campaign integrating it with other memes, such as Third World Success. I thought it was an interesting blending of activism plus cynical meme humour. How much more fun would it be, then, when a story came up of bizarre behaviour on the part of Invisible Children’s CEO.

There was an interesting televisual piece by Charlie Brooker on the phenomenon (which was notably, a few days before Jason Russell’s ‘incident’. I shall link to it here:

This phenomenon was an experiment in crowd mentality. Exactly what we can learn from it time will tell. However, it does show that as a message is propagated to a large group, nuance can become lost, even polarised responses are galvanised as blunt opponents. The response of criticism to the Kony 2012 film is on a variety of fronts, such as the lack of context in contemporary Uganda in which the message is portrayed.

The mass mentality shown through the whole Kony 2012 affair is almost Adornian. I found another amusing take on the issue from Nostalgia Critic.

On Mass Effect 3 (SPOILERS AHEAD)

Moving from one indoctrination to another. Like the Kony 2012 issue, I’ve been meaning to write about the latest Mass Effect game, but as more news came my opinion completely changed and I had to revise what I was going to say. I want to firstly say: I LOVE MASS EFFECT. The series is unlike anything I’ve played, and perhaps the comparable great RPG game before it would have to be Baldurs’ Gate.

Lots of things have been said about the innovations about having a character that stays through each of the two sequels, as well as the decisions you make. The great feeling of playing the Mass Effect series is feeling that you have a part in the game, and that your reactions and responses mean something to the story. There are lots of elements concerning common science fiction tropes, such as FTL travel and humanoid races, but the story has interesting elements, some of which are tried and tested sci-fi fare, while others form a social critique or an interesting imagining of the future based on current knowledge and reasonable speculation (using quantum entanglement to send messages, anyone?).

I really liked that I could keep my relationship option from Mass Effect 2, even though my romance option (Tali) had to die. There was a weird glitch where Tali appeared later on in the game in a romance scene, even though she was dead. That was really weird. I thought it was great that my male Commander Shepherd had the oppurtunity to delve in other potential relationships, one of which with a man! The presence of a male homosexual in the story was very welcome to me, especially because it was presented in an incredibly normal and almost boring way. I suppose when the galaxy is about to be destroyed, other issues don’t really come as high in one’s priorities.
Even though many games don’t do well in terms of social diversity, as well as addressing real world issues, I considered ME3 to have touched on a few interesting human (excuse my speciesism) concerns, such as grief, post traumatic stress, the loss of a limb, genocide and even Nietzsche’s notion of the eternal return. Compared to ME2, however, there wasn’t much depth, but this is mainly because the last chapter of the series is essentially an endgame tying up loose plot ends, which to a large extent it does.

As I completed the game, my response to the whole series and what I originally intended to fanboy pour over about the game changed. There has been a large response of disappointment to the effect of saying that a game that was successful at giving a worthwhile and meaningful choice to the outcome of a story that was essentially your own outcome, had the same ending for everyone. I have to admit this is a convincing ground for disappointment. What I observe about this response is much similar to the Kony 2012 internet populism of polarising opinions.

One might say there are two proposed poles of response to the ending. One pole is so disappointed in the game that they propose that Bioware alter the ending of Mass Effect 3, they have even raised a good amount of money in an online campaign. Another pole critiques the former group, calling them out for a false sense of entitlement over a game that they do not deserve to claim as the franchise were their own intellectual property. Oddly enough, there is even a Mass Effect conspiracy theory, which I myself find convincing, that the ending of the game was part of a wider theme of the trilogy, about the Reaper race of artificial life taking over the minds of organic life and Shepherd’s ‘non-decision’ was essentially part of the Reaper’s indoctrination, making sense of several odd dream sequences and giving more prominence to the symbolism of the dead child who is present at the start of ME3.

If the conspiracy theory is to be believed, Bioware has not only anticipated angry responses, but have also cemented a legacy of duping its own gaming consumer audience through a very, very dark ending for a story that millions love and enjoy. If the conspiracy theory is true, then I can say that the ending was not disappointing.

I think there is a general lesson to be learned from these two events of the week: Don’t rely on your first response to any issue, take a pause and think less about your knee jerk reaction, and take a more calm, collected response. In the age of populism and reactionary politics, we could do with a little bit more stoicism. I could also do with knowing if the indoctrination conspiracy theory is true!!1

Michael