Ah! Here we have a proper tableau, placed upon an “invisible battleground of socio-psychological scars.” Atomization, alienation, fragmented communities, a pervasive loneliness, a vacuous intellectualism that cannot penetrate our inauthentic lives. Fabulist, phoniness, cinematic, play-acting, etc.
“I don’t think life can be like these strange worlds which bar reentry once the doors close.”
“I’ve never known how strangers can make conversation…It’s best to sit there in silence or talk a lot, which is the same…”
“Out of some persistent sense of large-scale ruin, we kept inventing hope.” White Noise.
“Bad guys like us never die. It’s the innocent who die.”
There is a unifying principle that underlies Fassbinder’s critique of modernity. Fascism isn’t a political program. Fascism is an inherent, pervasive condition, a cancer at the center of modern life. How do we deal with this fascism? How do we hold it at bay? Characters seek out the safety of anonymity, the cold comfort of depression, passionless lives, the perfection of inauthentic, tired, rote mechanical repetition. This is one possible response to fascism. Violence, extreme self-destruction is another. Neither are a cure, of course, but a temporary salve, a mild palliative at best. Sadomasochism in this sense is not a disease unto itself in need of further psychological treatment, but a logical response to fascism. The cauldron broils, the frustrations builds. Scapegoats become necessary. There must be a cause to our ills. This is why left wing critiques were off mark. You can not reduce the complex psychological makeup of a character to prototype. Petra’s loneliness, madness, and cruelty have nothing to do with her lesbianism, and everything to do with the fascism of modern life.
Is there no way out of this? Perhaps not. It is a bleak, pessimistic view of modern lives. The role of the artist is to bring this disquieting truth to the forefront, examine it under extreme conditions, not to present a 15-point political program to cure fascism once and for all.
“A system which greatly rewards sociopathy is not such a great system, especially as that success grants those sociopaths even more power.” – Eschaton.
Pitchbot: Senator Mendez needs gold bars to pay for all those $78 Brooks Burgers.* Alt title: It’s getting hot out here and we ain’t talking climate change, people!
*Total airport tab: burger (medium), steak fries, side of ranch, 3 skinny margaritas, whiskey chaser, Jack Handie, and blow. No tip! Not in this economy! No wonder the people! Always, the people.
What is HuffPost, exactly? What purpose does it fulfill? Is this news? A story carried along through the reflections and notoriety of a cross-selection of angry tweets? A series of pasted tweets inside a “news” story is a bat signal to stop reading. Nothing will be accomplished in this futile partisan exercise other that achieving another 15 minutes of fame for a few random folks in the Twitterverse. I’m trending! My tweet was used in HuffPost piece on some controversy du jour!
Ah! A controversy! X said this, but Y said, no way X, how dare you, but Z said give X a break, Y, stop judging and hating! Is there a value to this exercise? I suppose if there was real substance behind the remarks, but no, the story is no more than the clash of different subjective tastes (with the added hidden assumption that some tastes are so despicable and beyond the pale they should be denounced as such).
Now to specifics, which I am loathe to engage. Is Prince Charming really a stalker? Only in the most superficial of ways, that is, detached from the specific historicity in which the fairy tale draws its inspiration. We can always fault an artist for the choices made, the character arcs they are made to follow, but never for the sins of omission that are due to the accidents of history (Medieval mores, Patriarchy, pre-capitalist economic systems, etc.). How much of an update is needed before we consign these fossils to the trash heap of history and begin the harder work of creating new myths rather than the necromancy of resurrecting the dead?
Ah! We moderns have a lot of choices at our disposable. Why not have Snow White ask her lawyers to draw up a cease and desist letter to the Evil Queen (apparently no updates for the lousy treatment stepmothers get in fairy tales). A superficial resemblance to modern sensibilities can be an interesting line of artistic exploration. But it’s a mistake to fold one phenomenon into another on that superficial basis alone.
We live on the surface. The superficial is raised to the level of the profound. We don’t even attempt to find a deeper meaning, a real profundity in the superficial because to do so would require real thought, attention to detail, and real expenditure of energy. This is not news. It’s catharsis. Something to do because we believe we have everything at our disposal and nothing else to do. We are bored and petulant dilettantes.
The rehash business is getting old. We don’t need an update, we need new myths for new times, new fairy tales. But that’s harder, and no guarantee of future success, so we walk among the decrepit tombs for inspiration. Thought doesn’t exist in a timeless vacuum to be hoovered up at will. Thoughts are ephemeral placeholders along a larger journey. We find edification and error. You can make anyone’s words and actions seem terrible in hindsight, because life is often terrible in hindsight, but not the substance, the substrate, the medium, the human. Here is where the living breathing joy is at work and at play. Come and see. The work itself will explain all there is to know.
“But where is the argument wrong?” Look to the assumptions, often unstated.
The County singer Luke Combs has popularized “Fast Car”, an old Tracy Chapman gem from my bygone era. The Washington Post used the occasion as a springboard to address larger issues of race and sexual identity and the lack of representation in country music. Some pushed back, feeling the editorial was gratuitous. Can’t we just like the song? Does everything have to be about “those issues”? The back and forth commenced.
What interested me though, was the way the two camps are talking past each other. One side is asking for a cease fire in the culture wars, the other is offended at the attempt to rule out of bounds beforehand legitimate questions surrounding “those issues”. A song written by a black lesbian popularized in country music is a healthy sign, a cause for celebration. It is also an occasion to ask and raise questions because the barriers are real and still exist. The back and forth is a feature, not a bug. If the Washington Post made its argument and was greeted with universal agreement and acclaim, I suspect the real world would look much different then the world they are describing.
But it also got me thinking. Is there a sizable underground contingent of black lesbian country performers desperate but unable to cut into the mainstream? And how would a country Tracy Chapman, an undeniable whistle-popping, feet-stomping talent succeed in that market? Would she have to be careful, proceed with a subtle, covert lesbianism, or could she give it the full Cardi B treatment? In the end, it’s all about winning, I suppose. That seems to be the way America resolves these cultural disputes. At a certain point, the talent, the ear-worm catchiness converts even the most hard-hearted cynical souls. The bug is the feature. So feature the bug, front and central.
The Hack 