Thoughts on same-sex parents - from flirting with disaster to the kids being all right.

After Judge Vaugh Walker handed down his decision that Proposition 8 - the legislation that banned gay marriage in California - was unconstitutional on August 4th, proponents of the legislation promised an immediate appeal. The majority of the arguments being shouted back-and-forth for appeal of the unconstitutionality ruling are primarily based on the grounds of the potential "harm" inflicted from lifting the ban: the harm that would come to the institution of marriage, the harm to tradition and personal morals, and, seemingly, the harm that will be inflicted on the children raised by same-sex couples. Listening to NPR the day that the decision was handed down, I heard callers basing their argument that children would be "harmed" if they were raised by same-sex couples on historical evidence: children have traditionally been raised by one mother and one father, so now why would we want to go around messing with this already functional system?

If tradition dictates that children should be raised by a man and a woman, then over 12 million families in the US are guilty of breaking tradition by functioning as single parent households. If the definition of an "adequate parent" is based on the presence of a man and a woman to raise a child, then women whose spouses have left them, or men whose partners have passed away, or ambitious single women who choose to adopt a child without the financial or emotional support of a life partner do not qualify as "adequate parents." What about families that have several generations living under one roof, families in which aunts and grandparents and siblings share in the parenting responsibilities? Or families in which one of the parents falls ill and can no longer share in the child-rearing responsibilities? Attempting to define the basis for what makes an adequate parent is such an incredibly personal and unique assessment to make. It is so frustrating that more people aren't offended by all of this "tradition" rhetoric that organizations like the National Organization for Marriage are throwing around, especially given the profound ignorance of the feelings of the children involved in this whole discussion.


Seemingly released apropos recent research that supports this notion that children of same-sex couples "are well-adjusted," Lisa Cholodenko's newest dramedy The Kids Are All Right attempts to depict what The New York Times dubbed "a generous, nearly note-perfect portrait of a modern family." If one knows the premise of the film, the title effectively conveys the outcome of the storyline in a fairly clear manner - that children of gay parents, despite popular belief, might just turn out to be pretty okay. Is it possible, in the face of the beliefs of Proposition 8 supporters, that non-traditional family models can actually produce children that can function in a dominantly heteronormative society? Is this film trying to tell us that despite the "abnormal" behavior of their parents, the children of same-sex partners might just be able to function as the normal, well-adjusted human beings that we want to have in society? That, in fact, the kids of lesbian parents might just be totally all right?

Interestingly enough, some affirmation of this notion came in a recent lonely late night with my Netflix Watch Instantly queue, which lead me to revisit the fairly forgotten mid-90s film Flirting with Disaster, a movie that unexpectedly touches - albeit somewhat ironically - on the parenting questions being raised by Prop 8 supporters. This frenetic David O. Russell comedy stars Ben Stiller before he was a male model conducting walk-offs refereed by David Bowie and threatening that "nobody makes me bleed my own blood," and - brief sidebar - reminds the viewer why some audiences fell in love with him in the first place.

The film focuses on the journey of neurotic Mel Coplin (played by Stiller) and his wife Nancy (Patricia Arquette) as they travel the country with their newborn son attempting to find his birth parents with the incompetent-but-flirtatious adoption agency employee Tina (Téa Leoni). Mel's adoptive parents Ed and Pearl Coplin (played to bickering perfection by George Segal and Mary Tyler Moore) are deeply hurt and defensive of his decision, thinking Mel's search for his birth parents is a slight on their skills as parents. The first few scenes of the film set up the audience for the true reasons behind Mel's myriad neuroses and his quest to find out the reasons behind them - his adoptive father Ed is perplexingly afraid of the wheel of cheese sitting on the living room table (Pearl later calls him "food-phobic), and his mother won't let her son finish a sentence without a loud and dramatic interruption.

As the film goes on, Tina brings the young couple to two different people who turn out not to be his parents - the last of whom subsequently enables Mel to back a semi truck into a post office. At the police station, the three run into Nancy's old high school classmate Tony (Josh Brolin) who works in the alcohol, tobacco and firearms division with his partner, Paul (Richard Jenkins). The five of them all go out to an Italian restaurant, where it is slowly and subtly revealed that Paul and Tony are not just partners in the ATF division of the station - they are also romantic partners who are potentially considering adopting a child.

Tony and Paul serve as comic relief for the remainder of the film, if not just for their sexual orientation: Tony (who admits he's bisexual) attempts to seduce Nancy by licking her armpit, and Paul ends up running half naked through the desert after taking two hits of acid that Mel's vindictive and bitter younger brother meant for him. But, to my surprise for its serendipity, the last few lines of the film turn the joke away from the same-sex relationship and over onto the potential reality of any family situation - that even a child who is raised by a man and a woman in a typically "traditional" household has every chance of being messed up and poorly adjusted.

In the last scene of the film, the whole group gathers outside the jail from which Ed and Pearl Coplin have been bailed out after being caught with hundreds of tabs of acid in their trunk (I'm telling you, just see the movie - this matter of the plot is far too tangential to my main point). Outside the jail, Pearl turns to Ed and, motioning toward Tony and Paul, says "I think those two men are homosexuals." Ed responds that the two are thinking about adopting a child, and expresses how "sick" someone would have to be to do that. Pearl agrees with Ed, adding "can you imagine the neurosis that child will have to deal with?" After an entire movie about a man who can't name his child until he's met his birth parents, who (it's mentioned) has problems performing during oral sex, whose mother exposes her breasts to his wife, and who has awkward and illicit sexual interactions with someone who's effectively his psychiatrist, devoting the last three lines of a film to this ironic comment on the nature of familial relationships struck me as oddly timely to all the yelling and hand-wringing being done by outspoken Prop 8 supporters about the effects on the psyches of the children of gay and lesbian couples.

I cannot describe the surge of feelings brought forth in me that the last minute of a film made 15 years ago managed to pinpoint the exact fear expressed by supporters of traditional marriage values today in 2010. I smiled, feeling like I was a part of some in-joke, when the fear of potential mental harm to the child of a same-sex couple is spoken by a dysfunctional, heterosexual couple that produced an entirely neurotic and idiosyncratic offspring. Sure, one could argue the mere fact that Mel was adopted in some ways makes his family a non-traditional one, but keep in mind that I am going off of the assumption that a traditionally defined family (according to certain supporters of the ban on same-sex marriage) is one that is lead by a man and a woman. One could also argue that, seeing as he is married and has a child and job, Mel is an ipso facto well-adjusted member of society, but I would beg to differ that his issues far outweigh his surface normalcy.

I find that the testimony of the adopted children of same-sex couples is hardly given any credence in this whole discussion, even though they are seemingly the ones who are so negatively effected by their family situation - and who, not surprisingly, tend to express positive feelings about their home life. This issue is so extremely personal, and anyone who attempts to try and dictate what is best for any one child or any one family needs to step back and take a good look at what they are implicating about other non-traditional families in various alternative circumstances. Is it appropriate to turn to a strange family in a crowded restaurant and attempt to scold their child for being messy or consuming their food too loudly? Is it anyone's responsibility but the parent of a child - be it birth or adoptive - to decide what is best for their children? If anything, the laws against gay marriage are what most effect the psyche of a child of a same-sex couple - it can't be anything but devastating to grow up watching your parents be discriminated against for simply loving each other and making some attempt at normalcy.

"The Internet is boring today" - A Brief Look at How This is Even Possible

When I was checking my email last night before tucking myself into bed with John Irving, I noticed a Google Chat status update from a former classmate that read as follows:

The Internet is boring today.

I immediately asked myself: How is this even remotely possible? There is just so much information available on the Internet - however, this is not to say that all of it is credible, interesting, or even entertaining. Most of the stuff one finds on a daily basis holds their interest for a matter of minutes, sometimes even seconds, which certainly does not make time fly if one is bored out of their minds. I don't think that it was necessarily the Internet that she was bored with - quite possibly, she had simply run out of motivation.

I would argue - and maybe I'm starting in with the big guns of optimism a little too soon -that even someone with the most niche and the most obscure of interests can find something interesting, intriguing, or inspiring to read, interact with, create, or watch on the Internet on any given day. But - and here's the catch - one has to actually be in the mood to seek it out. Optimistic, starry-eyed scholars love to elevate the Internet to this amazing source of ultimate information, comparing it to a bridge that will connect all peoples in their quest for knowledge, truth, and cute kitties. But the echo chamber into which most bloggers are contributing (guilty, I'm sure) and through which most readers are hand-picking their content of choice does not lead us to these infinite options as much as we would like to believe. However, if one is smart enough about their pursuits of knowledge and is willing to devote time to seeking out content and information, then the Internet can never be truly boring. This "boring" label should be more appropriately slapped on the user.

Sure, the viral video selection might not be as exciting as it was on Monday, or maybe the details of the Financial Reform Bill just don't pique your fancy, or perhaps Twitter is down and you just don't know what to do with your info-hungry self. But as I'm considering all of these caveats for why one would state that "the Internet is boring," I can't help conjuring up the adage "if you are bored, you are boring." Was my media-obsessed (and I would think she would have to be to pursue a Masters degree in the field) former cohort making the statement that the Internet was boring to her at that moment? That she was bored with the information or news she was finding? Or that she was simply bored with the Internet?

Whether or not the day's local or national or international news is particularly appealing or exciting for one reason or another does not negate the wealth of yet-unread blog posts that one has been meaning to get to; does not immediately discredit the available fiction, non-fiction, opinion, and how-to articles on which one has been meaning to sit down and focus; and certainly does not mean that one has watched, listened to, clicked on, or looked at everything available on a given day. Most of us go to websites, blogs and videos to look for things that interest us - however, I can understand how one can become tired of staring at a screen for hours on end if, say, one's job requires them to do so, and how one can subsequently become bored of looking for things to do on the web. This was probably her way of saying she was "bored," but was looking for someone/thing to blame for her boredom. And of course, who better to blame than an intangible, potentially info-rich source of information? It's like someone walking into a library with the explicit purpose of reading only to fall asleep on their pile of books and then report back to their friends that "the library was boring today." While this is entirely possible, one should blame their lack of sleep or disinterest in the subject matter before blaming the books - but then again, this blog entry is simply the nitpicking of a five-word status update, which could perhaps be used to prove that I, too, have nothing better to do online and that I, too, have also found that "the Internet is boring today."

True Blood title sequence: sexual consumption and intolerance of the Other

The beginning title sequence of True Blood effectively sets the location and space in which the narrative will unfold while alluding to racial tensions and overt themes of sex and consumption. In a recent interview, design house Digital Kitchen’s Shawn Fedorchuk, one of the main creatives behind the storyboarding of the True Blood title sequence, alleged he wanted the credits to take on “a point of view of a supernatural, predatory creature observing human beings from the shadows, almost stalking them” [1]. The sequence begins underwater with the camera tilting up from a menacing, amphibious creature lurking in the depths, immediately cutting to the eye of a crocodile that stares unblinking at the camera. The following shots pan across deserted swamplands, simultaneously locating the action in the Southern state of Louisiana (well-known for its alluvial topography) while also insinuating that the actions to unfold will deal with “creatures” literally hidden beneath the surface of society, important both symbolically and literally as vampires sleep underground.

As the camera takes the viewer away from the swamplands and along the streets of a town lined with picaresque houses and Mom and Pop liquor stores, we get our first clear glimpse of some of the people who inhabit this Louisiana town: black women in their Sunday best, singing and clapping their hands in a church choir. As the camera continues to move along the sleepy storefront of a liquor store, there is a cut to archival black and white footage of civil unrest between black and white folks with an intervention by police officers. The archival footage has most likely been taken from a Civil Rights protest in the 1960s, hinting to the viewer that similar struggles for civil rights will unfold during the course of the program’s narrative, in this case contextualized with the Vampire Rights Movement. The choice to show these black faces after images of the creatures that inhabit the literal underbelly of the swamplands might be an attempt to prepare the audience for the depiction of a Southern state that still positions minorities against the hegemonic norm of whiteness, a town in which white (in this case white human) authority is bureaucratically superior and minorities still maintain their traditional Southern role of persecution.

The next several bodies that we see are white and evoke some reference – both indirect and directly – to either sexuality or violence: the black lingerie-clad body of a blond woman on a bed; the youthful, blank face of a tiny, hood-adorned Ku Klux Klan member; two young boys smearing a pulverized strawberry across their mouths and chins. After the shot of the half-naked white body, the audience is privy to the slow-motion shot of a snake preparing to strike an unseen victim that might just be the unassuming white woman. If we are to link the black, minority bodies to their introduction by gruesome yet inactive swamp creatures, then the same connection can be made for the relationship between the predatory snake and the violent and sexualized white bodies: in this narrative, white men are the main purveyors of violence who are able to comfortably and openly speak about killing the minority vampire figures.

As the title sequence moves on, we see several female bodies juxtaposed with dead or dying animals: an image of a white, half-naked woman lying down just before a shot of a flattened, bloody possum; in another sequence, a woman sits on the edge of a pool table, wrapping her legs around a man’s waist, an image in contrast with a frog being consumed by a Venus Flytrap. By equating these sexual bodies with dead animals and creatures capable of consumption, the title sequence attempts to align sexuality with nonhuman creatures in a way that foreshadows the miscegenation between humans and the undead that is to occur in the program's narrative. The Venus Flytrap functions as a visual play on the vagina dentata, a male fear of the female sex organ as a possible castrator due to the female’s “lack” of a phallus [2] that can be said to serve as a comment on Jason Stackhouse's fear of having sex with both vampires and women who have copulated with vampires. The dead, bloody possum juxtaposed with the white, half-naked female body serves as a reference to “meat” available for consumption by whatever creature intends to feed on it. As the song “Bad Things” by Jace Everett plays to its end, the sequence culminates with convulsing black bodies in a Baptist church and two white men baptizing a white woman in a lake. The intense religious imagery, including a brief shot of a cross bursting into flames and two white women praying and crying, notifies the viewer of the religiously-informed position of most of the people in this small Southern town. If the brief shot in this title sequence of a church sign reading "God Hates Fangs" didn't do enough to convince the audience that this town is filled with intolerance of the Other - even an Other who looks so much like them as humans - the events that unfold on the show will convincingly depict this atmosphere of religiously- and socially-formed intolerance in due time.

[1] Shawn Fedorchuk. Qtd in “Doing Baptisms, Bars and Bloodlust.” Red Orbit, 10 September 2008. http://www.redorbit.com/news/entertainment/1550089/doing_baptisms_bars_and_bloodlust/index.html

[2] Discussed in Barbara Creed. The Monstrous-Feminine: Film, Feminism and Psychoanalysis. New York: Routldge, 1993. 105 - 121.

The Gentrification of Brooklyn: The Pink Elephant Speaks

On Thursday, February 4th, the Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts (MoCADA) in Fort Greene, Brooklyn opened their newest exhibit titled "The Gentrification of Brooklyn: The Pink Elephant Speaks" to a mass of attendees. Complete with digital turntablism and free food (which I overheard was donated from local eateries and restaurants) and wine, the opening event was so crowded that it was almost difficult to see all of the 20 works of art inhabiting the walls, floor, and video screens in the museum's gallery space. I was there supporting my friend Josh Bricker, whose installation piece at the MoCADA titled "The Order of Things" can be viewed by either visiting the gallery itself (open Wed thru Sun 11 - 6) or by visiting the sculpture section of his portfolio on his website.

I mention this exhibit not just to plug my friend's piece, but also as a nod to my "Race, Class, and Ethnicity in the Media" course. (I know, it's pretty much the only course I've blogged about thus far. Trust me, posts having to do with "Sexual Personae" and "Art After Deleuze" are forthcoming.) There seemed to be a mix of anger, confusion, and critique present among the attendees and the works of art in the gallery as to what the gentrification of Brooklyn means in relation to class, to loss of a unique identity, and to the social structure of the inhabitants of the area that is in the process of gentrification. I highly recommend visiting the exhibit for yourself to witness pieces from artists from the five boroughs of New York City of diverse ethnic backgrounds (none of the artists currently reside in Brooklyn, however) whose pieces cover topics including relocation, homogenization, redefinition of the word "community," and what it means to be a neighbor.

For more on the exhibit see an article from The Daily Serving and a video from NY1 in which you can see Josh's piece with the artist himself standing by, and my bewildered-looking roommate (hilarious).

Culture of Distraction

I'm all for constantly remaining connected. Whenever I am on a computer, I usually keep my Gmail account open so I can instantly know if someone sends me an email or instant messages me. I keep my cell phone within my sight at almost all times. But I think there is a point when certain other "distractions" should take the place of connectivity-related distractions, wouldn't you agree?

If you know me personally or have been following me on Twitter, you are probably aware of all the free cultural events I have been attending in the city this summer: David Byrne concert in Prospect Park, the New York City Opera and Orchestra at South Seaport Pier 17, a poetry reading and Meredith Monk tribute concert at Rockefeller Park, the Figment collaborative art festival on Governor's Island, Harold and Maude in Bryant Park, "Pay What You Wish" Saturdays at the Guggenheim, Siren Music Festival on Coney Island, the Colombian Independence Day celebration in Flushing Meadows...the list goes on and on. And while most of these events are far from formal, they are still, for the most part, performances -- cultural, artful "distractions" from work, school, life, or any other mundane, repetitive, commonplace part of everyday living. When one is dedicating their time to the viewing of or participation with performance or a cultural event, is it too much to ask that emails and text messages are ignored, at least for an hour or the length of a film or the course of a musical performance? Is it too much to assume that everyone loves to get lost in these types of experiences as much as I do, that it's not about just being there and saying you were there but actually about experiencing something new and having it alter you, even if that alteration is ever so slight? My basic sentiment, to quote Gob Bluth of the wonderful Arrested Development,

"Come on!!"

Two instances have gotten me particularly up in arms lately:

1) When I was home in California, my boyfriend took me and his brother's girlfriend to see Andrew Bird perform at the Greek Theater, a beautiful, woodsy, outdoor venue nestled on the hillside of Griffith Park. I sat to the left of my boyfriend with a mid-thirty-something year old man to my left who was text messaging almost continuously throughout the show. Now, we certainly weren't inside where extraneous light would certainly be distracting, but the LED glow emitting from that screen was piercing through the darkness of the amphitheater like a searchlight on the middle of a lake at midnight. It was completely distracting in my peripheral vision, and I made a point of perching on the verrry edge of my seat so as not to be distracted by his blinding cellular device, somewhat hoping he would pick up on the hint that his glowing cell screen was bugging the shit out of me, as if my sideways glances and tisking weren't enough of an indication.

If you are that bored during a musical event and not paying attention to something that you paid to see, just get the hell out and let the rest of us focus. Seriously. His slouching posture made it clear that his texts were not urgent or necessary, as did his occasional bursts of air-violining whenever he decided to tune in to the illustrious Andrew Bird's beautiful set. This to me is almost worse than messing around with one's cell phone during a free performance or event, especially since one has paid to be there. But then again, I think I've recently developed an even more sensitive relationship to what it means to spend money on something. Call me old-fashioned, but I think it's polite and probably worthwhile to pay attention during a live performance. Even if the live performance is of the ilk executed by the landlord in The Big Lebowski, it's probably a more unique experience than whatever is going on in the ether with one's social networks.

2) I mentioned above that I went to see Harold and Maude in Bryant Park. What I failed to mention was what an intriguing experience it was. I could honestly write an entire post about struggling through a sea of people to find a patch of grass large enough for myself and my roommate, the gay couple that was taking pictures of me because they apparently liked my outfit, the fact that everyone got up to dance when the HBO introduction began - but the element of the evening that was the most relevant to the topic of this post has to be the group of girls in their late teens sitting directly ahead of us on the lawn. Before the film started there was a silly Merrie Melodies Bugs Bunny/Elmer Fudd cartoon, during which this group of girls proceeded to take endless arms-length focal distance photos of themselves (someone with less respect for women might call these "cam whore" shots, but no, I'm not going to do that here. I'm not going to go so low as to dub these girls "cam whores.") with the flash pointed directly at my retinas. They would then proceed to giggle and scream if the photos were not to their liking or happened to capture a double chin or an awkward blink. I figured I wouldn't allow myself to get too upset until the actual film started since for now was just a cartoon, but when the film started and the Myspace-whore photo-snapping did not subside and one of the girls turned to the group sitting to their right and asked "What movie are we watching?", I was visibly gritting my teeth with rage. Not only did these girls not even know what movie they were all meeting up to see, but they were also ruining the entertainment factor for others who very much did know what movie they were about to watch with their inconsiderate behavior. They weren't there for the actual experience. They were there to document that they were there, to have a reason to post photos to their Facebook profiles, and not at all for the film. In fact, about a half an hour into the movie the girls began dropping like flies until they had all packed up their digicams and their loud mouths and left the park before the film had even reached the tree liberating scene.

In short, I guess I get pretty aggravated when peoples' lack of interest in an event or a performance are blatant and visible. Especially when that lack of interest bleeds into text messaging and taking photos that impose on my vision and attention - there's a reason why cell phones are banned in movie theaters and museums. And the fact that this activity is so rampant even further enforces my belief that appropriate mediated behavior should be considered as much of a civic responsibility as picking up one's trash.

Okay, so maybe that's going a bit far. But I think you get my point.

Current MoMA exhibits worth seeing

Since Spring semester has come to a close and I'm pretty much settled in my new apartment on the Upper East Side (still need curtains and more decorations on the walls, but that's another matter), I've had lots of free time on my hands. True, I should probably be looking for a job, but with the 3.94 GPA I've been maintaining I'm convinced a job will just make my grades and my work suffer. However, knowing that I'm starting summer session in less than a week and will probably be working on stuff for my design class at a computer all day instead of enjoying a day in the park has served as a great motivator for me to get out and do things! The Met has a killer Francis Bacon retrospective that's up for quite some time that I've already been awed by, and MoMA has all sorts of exciting exhibits to kick off a summer full of culturally-stimulating events and works. I'm pretty upset that I've almost completely missed the Cruel and Unusual Comedy series that focuses on different socially charged aspects of silent slapstick comedy such as racial issues, violence, and the treatment of children and animals, but my visit today more than made up for what I missed. The MoMA is six floors full of awesome so I didn't get to see all the new exhibits, but one of the (few) perks of being a New School student is free admission to the museum any time of any day, so I'll just have to make another trip some time soon. What I did get to see, however, especially in the photography section, made me completely nerd out with glee.

Polish Posters 1945-89
Hidden in the Architecture and Design Galleries with the product design pieces, 3rd floor
(Up through January 11th, 2010)

I was honestly expecting a lot more in terms of quantity, but the small corner exhibit of 30 or so prints made in Poland (that took the place of George Lois' Esquire covers exhibit) were all quite impressive in their own way. Characteristically expressionist and most of them quite surreal or abstract, the majority of these prints, most of them made by four artists, were made in Cold War-era Poland, a country which the exhibit cites as being the most free of Soviet-imposed power of all the Eastern Bloc countries and therefore the most devoid of artistic censorship. All of these brightly colored images were used on either book jackets or on film, opera or theater posters to announce a performance or showing of a particular piece. The poster above, "Ksiadz Marek (Friar Marek)" was a piece made by Roman Cieslewicz in 1963 for a play to be performed in Poland that same year. Ranging from graphically simplistic in the genre's inception to gruesomely detailed and disturbing in its later works (see Andrzej Pagowski's "Psie Serce (Heart of a dog)", 1982, below), every one of the posters was visually stunning or moving in its own way. I would have liked to see more description of the individual artists, and overall I don't think enough space was devoted to these pieces. Especially after being so impressed by the Met's British Prints (1914-1939) exhibit back in October and know what sort of memorable impact extensive wall literature and descriptions and ample space can bring to a themed exhibit, I was expecting a bit more. But, as I suppose it is with every building, space is a premium in New York City, even at the Museum of Modern Art.

Into the Sunset: Photography's Image of the American West
3rd Floor at the back of the long corridor
(Up through June 8th, 2009)

Featuring photographs ranging from daguerreotypes of gold miners in the 1850s to color prints from as recent as 2007, the focus of this exhibit was on the usual, unusual, commonplace and hidden lifestyles of the American West in all of its glory: beauty, repetition, degradation, suburban banality, and a richness of the rural. Photographers such as the well-known Cindy Sherman (featured above, Untitled Film Still #43, 1979) and Lee Friedlander were sprinkled throughout the exhibit, which danced between black and white, muted sepia and rich, large scale color prints. Some of the photographs products of personal endeavors, others WPA-era government-funded projects, the exhibit was held together quite nicely by the common themes of desert scenes of sparse nature, portraits of working (and unemployed) men and women, stages of progression of the once untouched land (one six-image series shows the steps of development of a planned housing community in Lakewood, CA) and counter- or sub-cultural figures such as Hell's Angels members, native Americans, Las Vegas prostitutes or suburban families.

I mentioned above that some of the things I saw today made me "nerd out". A certain 1872 Albumen silver print of Yosemite by none other than Edweard Muybridge, in particular, was the one image made me squee a little inside. Here was one of the fathers of the moving image, one of the men who aided in the invention of the motion picture camera, one of the geniuses who was fundamental in the art which I have studied so intently and lovingly for the past five years, just casually hung next to other Albumen prints like he was just one of the many who was taking landscape photographs during the 1870s. In effect, he was just one of many, but he was definitely the only one who was hanging on that wall at the MoMA who took a bet that same year as to whether or not a horse in full gallop completely left the ground, leading him to be one of the first to experiment with human and animal locomotion through the medium of photography, eventually causing him to be known as the certifiable "grandfather of the motion picture". As I stood in front of this image, I looked shifty-eyed from side to side, wondering if anyone else in the gallery knew how special this photograph was. Sure, it wasn't of a horse; it wasn't even of anything in motion, just a fairly serene, peaceful landscape with trees and water and mountains. But this photograph had a special celebrity aura to it, a certain draw that none of the other photographs in this exhibit had. Based on your knowledge of film history or the amount that you even give a hoot, this photograph might easily go unnoticed among the dozens of photos throughout the four room exhibit. But if you do find it, please take a minute to look at it and think about the hands, and the eye, who thought of capturing and therefore created that image. Yes, I was starstruck by a mediocre photograph from the 1870s by a dead guy who basically invented the filmic process. Big huge nerdy nerd. Right here.

Tangled Alphabets: Leon Ferrari and Mira Schendel
6th Floor at the top of the escalator
(Up through June 15th, 2009)

Leon Ferrari (Untitled, 1962, is pictured above) and Mira Schendel, both of Latin American heritage, are a bit like Picasso and Braque. I would assign the role of Picasso to Ferrari and Braque to Schendel, mostly because I think that Ferrari was far more evolutionary, experimental, and daring than Schendel, and also broke the mold of his early work, branching out into multimedia territory with far more comfort than his contemporary. Please don't think that I am comparing Ferrari and Schendel's artistic talents to that of the two Cubists; I am simply using them as a comparison of contemporaries with similar incipient visions.

I understand why the two were put in the same exhibit, and it is important that one sees the similarities between their works: both artists integrated language, the cosmos, and religion into their pieces, but the first two categories are really where the most similarities lie. Some of their pieces, much like Picasso and Braque, can be shown side by side and, without wall descriptions, the artist will certainly be completely indiscernible. There are very few works between Ferrari and Schendel that hold that many visual similarities, especially when one moves from their work with letters and blank space to their depictions and statements of religion. Simple graphic elements, letters, and shapes almost always presented with minimal color, Schendel's style remains virtually unchanging and consistent throughout her career, even when she was attempting to make statements on religion. Some might see Ferrari's religious work as heavy handed, but it's just as thought-provoking as Schendel's pieces, most of which as up for differing interpretations.

As with my relationship and feelings about Picasso, I was more impressed with the breadth and visual style of Ferrari than I was with Schendel. Including more color and detail (two visual elements that are consistently compelling for me, no matter what the genre), Ferrari's early work can be described as a series of ink scribbles that experiment with depth and the structural elements of the alphabet and language. Ferrari even went to lengths to construct his own alphabet, complete with icons both language- and image-based.

His series "Rereadings of the Bible" was probably the most imposing yet astounding of the work from his twilight years, taking Catholic figures and placing them in scenes of violence (atomic bombs, missiles, war) and sex (images from the Kama Sutra) to create something that was "not anti-religious art but art that [was] against repression, torture, and power." Creating a collage of sorts, these stood out among the myriad sculptures, paintings, prints, and illustrations to be my favorite of Ferrari's work in the exhibit. I wouldn't mind, however, staring for hours on end at one of his scribbled pieces like the one I've pictured above. So much detail for things only the artist can fully understand...

American Apparel is officially soft core pornography

...and I am officially boycotting this company.

Ok, so I own some of their stuff. In total, I have two v-necks, a gray dress, a brown leotard, two pair of track shorts, and some metallic silver snake skin leggings (that make my legs feel like they are in sausage casings and that I've only worn twice, but god damn do they look good on me and make me want to get doooown on the dance floor). And I'm not throwing away the items that I purchased from them almost a year ago because that would be straight wasteful, and I never throw clothes away in the first place. I donate. I'm actually wearing one of their shirts right now: a white v-neck that I wore with a white skirt and brown leather belt today because it was 90 freakin' degrees outside and I intended to reflect the rays of the scorching sun as much as possible. So please, don't try to call me a total reactionary or a hypocrite, because I do own some of the company's clothing, I do think that what I own is comfortable, and I am not getting rid of any of it just for my moral opposition to their advertisements. Oh, yeah, so if you were wondering why I'm embarking on this rant about American Apparel, it all stems from just that: their barely legal soft core pornography advertising campaign.

When I was in my early teenage years, my mom would not allow me to purchase a pair of Calvin Klein denim jeans because she was so opposed to the blatant female objectification and hegemonic, male-centric sexuality that was portrayed in their billboard and print ad campaigns. I'm pretty sure that if I had a teenage son or daughter today who wanted to give their money to a company that promoted such objectified images of women that did nothing to advertise the clothing and solely promoted a male-centric gaze toward the barely legal women featured in their ads, you can bet I would react in a similar fashion to my mother and exclaim an emphatic "no".

An example of said objectifying image from the lovely company in question:

This is a photograph from a slide show on the American Apparel website entitled "Britney wearing the Unisex Oversized See Thru T-Shirt". Surname-less, generic, blond Britney "wearing" a t-shirt laying on a bed with a come-hither look in her eyes is more asking the viewer to buy her body and not an item of clothing. I can't even tell if that's a t-shirt or a scarf, and as I buyer I would have no idea how the shirt actually fit a human body. And actually, based on this photo, she's about to not be wearing it in two seconds. And as a matter of fact, as the slide show goes on, there are, to my shock and amazement, blatantly displayed nipples (hover over the photograph for the slide show navigators to appear). Somehow, this smacks of a Playboy photo feature and not a clothing advertisement, don't you think?

Britney is in no way a single occurrence in this company's quest to push the limit of appropriateness. If you want more examples of crotch shots, vacant stares, take-me-from-behind poses, and near-nipple exposure, trust me, they are really easy to find. Please take note that none of these half- and near-naked slide shows feature men. The only male representation to be seen in the slide show section is of men going places for the company, doing things like dying t-shirts, and trying out different ways to wear a jacket, under which the model is surprisingly wearing pants. There are half-naked men modeling underwear, but that is to be expected; even Hanes does that kind of stuff. For a company that claims to be unisex, female customers are certainly getting the short end of the stick when it comes to advertisement eye candy (that's what I like to call sarcasm, kids). What I mean to say is: for a company that offers clothing for both men and women, their advertising is certainly geared toward the gaze of their male customer. Well, that's not being fair to all the women-loving women out there...let's just keep it simple and say that their advertising unabashedly depicts mostly women, not men, in a hyper-sexualized light. And it wouldn't be nearly as creepy if the brightly lit photographs didn't so closely resemble barely-legal pornography.

In short, I refuse to give another dime to this company. The inner fashionista in me might be crying this summer when she can't rock that fly light-weight jersey dress everyone else is sporting, but the gender equality side of me will hopefully just punch that stupid American-Apparel-craving hipster straight in the face and call it a day.

Art in a State of Fluxus: A Rhetorical Analysis of the Neo-avant-garde Social Movement

The notion that a (mostly) pacifist artistic movement could possibly function as a catalyst of active social change might strike some as impossible, if not at least difficult in potential execution. The motivation behind the international collective of the Fluxus movement, nonetheless, strove to advance their goal of reaffirming “everyday life and its natural, often humorous, relation to art” in an attempt to separate itself from the growing consumer-driven tendencies of a postwar era, among other driving forces to be discussed at length. The foci of this paper’s analysis of the Fluxus movement will initiate with a description the incipient structure of Fluxus as a social and artistic movement; follow the flow (or, if I may, the flux) of the overarching substantive qualities of the movement; and finally, spotlight the organizational visual and rhetorical style of the group’s neo-avant-garde artistic output.

From the Roman circus to New York Vaudeville: The Incipient Structure Stage of Fluxus

While many point to John Cage as the instigator of the Fluxus movement, it would be more accurate to say that Cage’s music and art were the inspiration for the instigation of the Fluxus group, especially to one George Maciunas, a Lithuanian-born anti-artist who is the credited “maniacal organizer” and individual responsible for really jump-starting the movement in the early 1960s. While there was no overt, dominating leader of Fluxus, one can easily argue that Maciunas was responsible for bringing together likeminded individuals whose unification was realized in the striking similarities of their visual style and the underlying message of their collective artistic vision. While consistently rejecting consumerism (a move which some would argue is at odds with any group wishing to display their “products” (read: artworks) in the public sphere ), Fluxus understood that the “product” they were indeed “selling” to the public through the vehicle of their movement was not physical but indeed an ephemeral “ideology, particularly its program for change” via artistic output.

The group’s aim was to produce a reaction “against the heroics of Abstract Expressionism and the commercialism of high Modernism” with the goal of “expanding the boundaries of art” through public performances and gallery shows made available to the public. To support his agenda Maciunas gathered local and international personalities including the noted first video artist Nam June Paik and his wife, video sculptor Shigeko Kubota; musician, minimalist, and instruction painting artist Yoko Ono ; event score composer/artist Alison Knowles; and conceptual artist and avant-garde composer George Brecht.

A unifying force for all members was at least a familiarity with Eastern philosophy and an outlook on Buddhism not as a way of life but as a foundation for representation and creative stimulation. Maciunas was responsible for penning the movement’s Manifesto, a brief, one-page document known as The Fluxus Codex. As Alexandra Monroe details in an exhaustive compilation of the female artist’s life and work Yes Yoko Ono, Maciunas “reached back to such diverse sources as the Roman circus[…]and Byzantine iconoclasm” while also taking inspiration from the more contemporary “Dada and Futurist sound poetry, abstract calligraphy[…and] Vaudeville” when conceptualizing the way that the movement would interface with the outside audience. Self-designated motivated leader of the group, Maciunas understood that “social movements[…]must rely on ideological and social commitments from their members” in order to succeed in their goal, which was his reason for drafting The Fluxus Codex.

The Fluxus Codex: The Overarching Substance of the Movement

What I do I do not wish blamed on Zen…I often point out that Dada
nowadays has in it a space, an emptiness, that it formally lacked.
What, nowadays, America mid-twentieth century, is Zen?
- John Cage

On the surface, the artistic and social movement known as Fluxus that grew out of myriad inspirations in response to numerous anti–art and postwar anti–consumerist tendencies seems to be thoroughly steeped in Eastern philosophy and Buddhist religious signifiers; however, while John Cage (arguably the educator and creator most responsible for the inception of Fluxus) was highly influenced by Zen and Taoism, a reaction to these Eastern influences of key member Nam June Paik is telling: “I react to Zen the same way as I react to Johann Sebastian Bach.” In other words, the movement’s roots in Zen were simply a creative and interpretative jumping-off point as opposed to a constant, insistent referent; to Cage and his successors, Zen was just “one conceptual tool in the Fluxkit”. Therefore, the work of John Cage and his followers in the Fluxus movement should not be considered Buddhist or Zen, because, as Cage reminds his audience: really, what was Zen in 1960s America?

The study of Fluxus as a social movement would be remiss without explicitly stating the problem situated behind the group’s motivations for creation and public interface. Through their art and “happenings”, Fluxus hoped for "the gradual elimination of fine arts[…]motivated by the desire to stop the waste of material and human resources[…]and divert it to socially constructive ends[…targeting] nationalist and hierarchical cultural traditions that had led to the social catastrophe of the first World War." All of these (notably environmentally- and socially-concerned) motives are outlined beautifully and succinctly in The Fluxus Codex, in which Maciunas penned his desire to “Purge the world” of these evils. This “purging”, however, was not to be done by violent or negative means, but instead through the group’s minimal appropriation of materials when creating their art, event scores, and happenings.

The major narrative for the movement attempted to escape negative rhetoric in order to completely embrace the “spontaneous, unmediated experience” of creation, while simultaneously never taking it as seriously as their precursors in Expressionism. The teachings of Buddhism and the artwork that makes references to its philosophies was far from drastic or menacing in tone: the Buddha is almost consistently depicted as a happy, smiling, rotund individual, far from heroic or somber. A parallel can be drawn here between Buddhism’s humorous, light-hearted aspects and the Fluxus movement, which strove to “temporarily have the pedagogical function of teaching people the needlessness of art including the eventual needlessness of itself” ; in other words, through Fluxus’ clever event scores, including Knowles’ The Identical Lunch; Paik’s “visual equivalent of Cage’s 4’33”” entitled Zen for Film; and numerous other happenings that bubbled up from Fluxus, a self-contained sense of humor was enacted in order to connect with their audience, a tactic which cleverly avoided group alienation from the broader public. Despite, as Baas points out in her text Smile of the Buddha, “the overtly political nature of the enterprise, Fluxus products were leavened with considerable humor” which the members hoped would allow more public participation and support than alienation and rejection.

While the Fluxus movement is certainly not as prolific in the contemporary art scene, event scores are still being performed to this day by Knowles, and Paik was an integral figure in the creation of unique video art up until a stroke rendered him paralyzed in 1996. It is no coincidence that most cite 1978 as the end the prolific thrust of the Fluxus movement; this was the same year as founding member Maciunas’ death. Fluxus remains in spirit, and has influenced several postmodern multi-media artists with its core values and ideologies.

Minimalism, Performance Art, and the Fluxkit: The Visual and Rhetorical Style of the Movement

When one enters an exhibit focusing on the neo-avant-garde Fluxus movement, one does not encounter loud splashes of color or wild video installations; on the contrary, one will encounter minimalist (often in subject and in size) video installations, naked canvas and parchment paper, and simple tri-chromatic screen prints. The entire wall at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum dedicated to the instruction paintings of Yoko Ono includes nothing more than rows of framed parchment upon which are inscribed tiny Japanese characters in modest black ink with translations offered below each column of frames.

As mentioned above, tenants of Expressionism and abstract art were a far cry from the rhetorical visual style of Fluxus; rather, in coherence with their environmentally-driven goals of minimizing waste output, Fluxus’ rhetorical style was visually represented through pencil drawings, photographs of event scores, sepia-toned books and lithographs, a slightly humorous multi-media collection of tools entitled Fluxkit, and even a simple rectangle of white light projected on a wall from an exposed roll of film . In this way, Fluxus’ and its organizer Maciunas’ style can certainly be found in ordinance with Herbert W. Simon’s description of the rhetorical strategies of an intermediate social agenda: somewhere between the passivity of the moderate and the intensity of the militant.

While Fluxus indeed had a unique social goal that can been seen as a less militant version of the contemporary “green” movement with similar sentiment found also in AdBusters magazine and other anti-consumerist modern-day art movements, Fluxus was not alone in their era. The 1960s, ripe with social reform, was also the chronological home of neo-Dada, Happenings, the Beats, and the Bay Area conceptual art movement. Possibly the unique quality found in Fluxus that separates it from its contemporaries is its consistency in style despite geographical differences among artists.

Not So Much a Problem as an Issue: A Summation of the Fluxus Social Movement as an Un-Aggressive Force

There is no solution because there is no problem.
- Marcel Duchamp

There is no problem because there is no solution.
- Shigeko Kubota

Kubota and her contemporaries in the Fluxus movement recognized that although their goal was to do away with the consumerist, hierarchical standards of past cultural and social eras, there was ultimately no concrete solution to the problem of consumerism in an inherently capitalist society. While enthusiastic about the group’s art and the rhetoric surrounding their visual styles, it can be argued that even Maciunas understood it was impossible to “purge the world” of everything that he believed called for purging. As stated above, Maciunas’ and Fluxus’ goal was to temporarily inform people about their beliefs and their Codex, with the knowledge that movements come and movements go.

Even so, characteristics of Fluxus remain with us today in our postmodern society: certainly multi-media visual art projects and performances can attribute their invention and creation to Fluxus artists, along with remix artists such as Sim Sadler and Johan Söderberg who take pre-existing footage and edit it to music in order to construct social commentary. Although a movement that withered with the death of its key founding member, Fluxus remains at the heart of all artistic movements that want to enhance the life experience of its members, contributors and the interfacing public through more than simple aesthetic means. Because for members of Fluxus, the movement was not just about creating art; it was a way of life. For as a movement “decidedly rowdier and more socially committed than the American Abstract Expressionists […Fluxus] wanted to give art back to the social realm.” Those were its aims, and as argued here, it’s ultimate successes as a social movement.

(I couldn't figure out how to insert linked end notes, and therefore not much is cited. I will attempt to change this into in-text citations soon.)

Downtown in CIL

Of course my father has already sought out the English-speaking owners of most stores in the CIL area of their small town. With his French that a friend once told him is reminiscent of a Spanish cow, he manages to buy some aftershave from a small fragrance store and converse with a man who sells nothing but dried fruits and nuts. The latter salesman offers us samples of almonds, walnuts, dried apricots, dates and prunes. I’ve never met a date that didn’t make me gag from its fleshy texture, but these were heaven; glistening, chewy, sweet heaven. My father takes me around the corner where a man is almost completely sold out of his vegetables for the day, ensuring my father in very broken English that “More come tomorrow, monsieur.” My father points out the only small storefront that has fresh Serrano ham and bacon, and takes me past another butcher who smiles at us as he takes a long drag off his cigarette from behind the counter.

A left turn and past another butcher whose waiting area is covered with lounging cats, my father takes me his small but well-stocked wine merchant, a store called Nicolas. The man behind the counter stops his conversation with the stock boy and comes out to shake my father's hand. I learn he's spent some years living in San Diego, California, and his English is flawless. After a quick look around the store we tell him we'll come back later. We'll be needing wine for our trip to Marrakesh tomorrow.

After a pot of Moroccan mint tea and a discussion of digital copyright standards ("The two camps of thought are not, in fact, dichotomies." "This is exactly what Lessig discusses in this book REMIX, Dad. You'll have to flip through it when we get home.") we return to Nicolas, where a Spanish native who owns a cosmetics company in Hong Kong helps us pick out the best native Moroccan wine. 640 dirhams later (just a little more than $67 US) we have 6 bottles of red and white wine in a small case which we carry over to a small beauty salon owned by a local art aficionado. After allowing us an exclusive look at the art hanging in the walls of the upstairs office area and handing my father an invitation to a gallery opening next Wednesday, he offers his summer home in Azemmour for us to stay in sometime next week. After my father attempts to politely decline which ended in Said thinking my father wanted him to drive us to his place, we wandered over to O'Self, a small local grocer. I buy a toothbrush, and after paying the owner, in English, insists on inspecting and approving of my father's purchases. In a blend of French and English the grocery owner mildly approves.

As we exit the store, my step mother is pulling their minivan up outside. While embarking on the dark road home, they discuss intricacies of the roads in the area as I begin to worry that everything I am studying and everything I care about in the United States is utterly meaningless, especially to the woman who tries to sell us dusters and facial tissue from the center divider. To her, life is incomprehensibly different than mine, but it is all she knows. To her, life is simpler yet more taxing than anything I've experienced. This woman most likely has no concept of a digital representation of self. To her, life is only the people who purchase her grossly under-priced household items, and maybe a family to which she returns each night. To her, life is being dirtied by car exhaust and dust from the ditches alongside the highway. But to our white unsullied skin in the protection of the minivan, life is provided with people bending and catering to our sheltered selves.

The "i" in iProducts

As Michel Foucault so aptly asserted, our environment and society is defined by the type of language that we use. I've written a term paper about this before, about the influx of words like website (combination of "interweb" and "a destination site") streaming into our vocabulary, words that mash together two previously separate ideas to create a new idea, a new word, a new concept, and thus a new sign in our culture.

I was thinking about this as I was reading Monday's New York Times Business section today as a class assignment (uh, yeah, I'm a little behind for my Media Industry class lately, mostly because we had a snow day and that class was canceled this week) and was looking at the word "iPhone". All of these new terms that have developed (iPod, iPhone, iGoogle, etc.) are interesting to me in the aspect of the capitalization of the name.

First of all, think about how the majority of texters and instant messengers and computer-mediated conservators in general decide to not capitalize "I" when referring to themselves when typing online. This is usually employed as a time-saving device, implying that it is much quicker to simply type "i" than "shift - i". It is commonly accepted and no one will look down on a communicator for failure to capitalize "i", or any other word for that matter. This could be one reason that companies such as Apple and Google have decided to place the lowercase "i" in front of their products, but I think it implies something much different.

While these products are homogeneous, all of them superficially alike in the way that they look and function, they also have the capability of being personalized to the liking and tastes of the owner. My iPod and my best friend's iPod and my mother's iPod, while maybe having some similar music, will never contain exactly the same content. What I choose for my RSS feed on iGoogle will be far different than even a fellow classmate who has similar interests. So the "i" in front of the word of the product or site is there to signify a sense of ownership and a quality or suggestion of personalization. While this "i" is there for owners to feel that this Pod or Phone or Google page is "mine", the capitalization that has been employed in the word speaks volumes on what is really important for hardware and software companies in this relationship between self and product. With the capitalization of the product name and not the "i", the device is given more weight within the word itself, and thus in the community zeitgeist, than the person owning the device. And in a world where technology, especially the third screen of smartphones, is increasingly becoming not just an extension but a literal part of us, this language of emphasis on the device over the user is quite intriguing to me.

I don't know if I want to jump to any conclusions, but it certainly seems for these companies (Apple and Google, especially) their importance is definitely weighted toward the subversion of the consumer under the importance of their product. But, isn't that just how it is with all corporations?

Just wanted to write a quick little note before I forget about it.

“Copy-and-Persist: The Logic of Mash-Up Culture”

"Copy-and-Persist: The Logic of Mash-Up Culture" from the journal Critical Studies in Media Communication in June 2007.

This article discusses a type of rhetoric that most of encounter in our daily studies of media: the rhetoric of piracy, illegality, and copyright issues surrounding our entertainment media. For those of you unfamiliar with mash-up culture, the article explains it as thus: “Using MP3s and audio-editing software, ‘bedroom disc jockeys’ spliced together two or more pop songs to create unlikely combinations, which they distributed through peer-to-peer file-sharing services or posted on websites”. Examples of well-known artists from mash-up culture include Girl Talk (Feed the Animals is his most recent), and Danger Mouse, who famously spliced together Jay-Z’s The Black Album with The Beatles’ The White Album to produce The Grey Album.

There is a club in Los Angeles (I believe there is one in San Francisco and probably here in New York, too) that does a mash-up night once a month, combining Nirvana songs with 80s pop hits or other ridiculously unexpected examples. I have experienced what this means in a live venue; people getting extremely excited to hear old favorites produced in a new way, or maybe dancing to a song the lyrics of which one never thought one would hear in a dance club setting. The other side of the “mash-up culture” token comes in the form of listening in one’s bedroom, a private experience in which the cleverness and nuances of the mash-up can be appreciated.

On to the analysis of rhetoric present in the article: the author looks at the way that the music industry discusses illegality of file-sharing and copyright infringements that go along with using at-home editing software to isolate vocal tracks, remove them from their original setting into a new song, and speed up or slow down either track to produce an entirely new product. In the example of Danger Mouse’s The Grey Album, EMI released “cease-and-desist” orders to record stores, websites like eBay, and Danger Mouse himself, stating that these tracks were an encroachment of their copyright on The White Album. The author of this article is arguing that a different rhetoric is represented among those responsible for mash-up culture: one representative from the group Downhill Battle spoke up, saying “Artists are being forced to break the law to innovate”.

In the postmodern age in which we live, isn’t appropriation quite common in visual art? Why is it that artists like Sherrie Levine (who I do not appreciate, if I must insert my personal opinion) can get away with blatant, barely re-contextualized appropriation but music artists who are trying to create a collage of sorts are met with so much resistance? This article argues that the popular corporate and copyright rhetoric is what holds these artists back from moving their work into the mainstream. Or, independent of restrictive rhetoric, does it make it kind of cool that these artists are doing something subversive, and maybe once popular rhetoric changes the mash-up culture will be no more?

Ah, the concept of celebrity

I must apologize for my extended absence. I'm taking some pretty intense courses this semester, and have found myself inside most nights of this past week reading.

Is it odd that I feel a nagging sense of guilt when I haven't updated in several days? That I have more loyalty to my blog than to my class readings? Quite possibly, but these nagging feelings are real, I tell you!

Anyway, I've been reading essays and chapters in books and more essays on the evolution to the current form of celebrity that we "celebrate" daily. I'll have to post more about this because it is fascinating stuff.

One tidbit I found amusing: my friend and I were discussing the possibility of life outside of the planet Earth, and he said it was highly unlikely. "Possible, but highly unlikely. Although, aliens did build the pyramids."

"Well aliens might have built the pyramids," I said, "but actually pyramids were probably only built as the Pharaohs' publicity stunts." Ruminate on THAT.

Yeah, I've been reading too much celebrity cultural theory.

On Monitorial Citizenship

One of the individuals in the online discussion for my Understanding Media Studies course brought my attention to this website, WeFeelFine.org, which I found to be an utterly amazing and beautifully constructed experiment on current human emotion as it is expressed on weblogs. This site was constructed by Brooklyn-based designers as a way to connect with, in a way, an instantaneous Zeitgeist (well, Zeitdiagnose [a grasping of a present thought] would really be more appropriate), a way to access and then assess how the population of bloggers are feeling in a given year, in a given city, even as specific as how members of a specific age and sex are expressing emotion. Plus, it's got the added bonus of being aesthetically pleasing.

Jamie (and 6th grade), this one's for you.

In the midst of reading a stack of cranky, pretentious Theodor Adorno essays and excerpts this evening, my best friend called me from California. The conversation basically consisted of us gushing about how much we missed each other (home is only 30 days away!), me talking to her son who would have honestly rather been watching Blue's Clues, and her telling me that she was importing all of her old CDs, including some really old stuff.

"What is that one other Boyz II Men song?" she asked me. "It's not on the album with 'I'll Make Love To You'."

"Uhh...'End of the Road?'"

"No no no..."

"Umm...I'm down on bended knee!?"

"No no, the other one!"

"...Ohh!! You mean the one that goes...uh...Back in school we used to dream about this every day. Da da dada happen, or do dreams just fade away, yeah. That one?"

"YES!!"

And here it is, ladies and gentlemen (and in particular, Jamie), your moment of zen:

"Eating the Other" and "Stereotyping"

(This post is in response to both bell hooks' "Eating the Other" and Richard Dyer's "Stereotyping", two essays that deal with the politics of representation in film and the cultural sphere).

Let me begin by stating how much I love reading hooks. In the introduction to "The Politics of Representation" section in this text, the authors describe her blend of "mature rhetorical analysis with everyday language and sensibilities" (340), which makes this read not only enjoyable but also relatable and accessible.

There is so much that can be touched upon when speaking about hooks' excerpt, but what I found especially interesting were the parallels I found myself drawing between "Eating the Other" and Dyer's excerpt on "Stereotyping" from his text Gays and Film. While Dyer's work was written eight years prior to hooks', they both draw upon the same types of ideas using similar rhetoric and basis of comparison. The ideas that stood out the most for me are twofold, the first being their like stance on the dismissal or active ignorance of the existence of prejudices and biases. hooks uses an excerpt from the play Les Blancs to depict the voice of the Other in the form of the character Tshembe. His speech asserts "it is pointless to pretend that [a device of conquest] doesn't exist - merely because it is a lie" (371), which is definitively parallel to Dyer's assertion that just dismissing stereotypes as falsehood is not enough: “What we should be attacking in stereotypes is the attempt of heterosexual society to define us for ourselves” (357), as opposed to attacking stereotypes on the grounds of their inaccuracy. Dyer believes that “righteous dismissal does not make stereotypes go away” (353) much like hooks declares that the open admittance of whites of their sexual desire for the Other does not allow white people to “eradicate the politics of racial domination” (371) but is instead continues along the path of racial discrimination and racist rhetoric.

In both Dyer and hooks, the hegemonic dominance is presented as problematic, but in two different senses. hooks’ description of Sarah Bernhard’s film Without You I’m Nothing presents an example of the white hegemonic viewpoint (notably, however, given a different slant because it is a Jewish woman doing the defining and not a white man) as defined against the Other; Bernhard uses the story of the racial Other as “a personal metaphor” and as “scenery, backdrop, background” (380). Dyer also speaks of a definition of the Other (in his essay not capitalized yet still holding the same loaded meaning) on the terms of the heterosexual hegemony, which can be seen in the quote taken from page 357 that is referenced above; in this case the hegemony preaches how the homosexual Other should be viewed by society.

The second point of their similarities lies in the fact that both hooks and Dyer comment on the practice of the dominant majority of categorizing or associating the Other with animals; Dyer speaks of the relationship in film of lesbian characters to animals (lesbian characters’ penchant for “clothes made from animal skins” (359) and imagery in films “linking lesbianism with the natural, bestial or low” (357)) while hooks focuses on self-referential commentary of black men to their own identification with “the black man as animal, speaking of themselves as ‘endangered species,’ as ‘primitive’” (376) which is simply going along with the dominant majority and their views. To hooks, this rhetoric, although self-referential, is self-racism, self-hatred, and self-pity. But in both the case of the gay and the racial Other, I believe they are both arguing that these concept of the Other as animal is ultimately dominantly imposed.

St. Mark's Place Celebrates Obama's Victory (with photos and video)

Last night, around 11 PM Eastern Standard Time, Barack Obama was decidedly declared the 44th President of the United States as McCain conceded defeat on national television.

Watching in a bar off Avenue A between 2nd Street and Houston called Kelly's, I sat stunned, not quite ready to celebrate. This is what our system has done to me: turned me into even more of a skeptic than usual, doubting that anything CNN tells me could possibly be completely true, not yet ready to celebrate for fear that we would have another incident like in 2000. But looking down in the corner at the electoral votes, glancing around at the elated faces of my friends and fellow beer drinkers, hearing shouts of exuberance and the sound of horns honking flowing incessantly in from the streets, I knew it had to be true. And I couldn't help it, but tears came to my eyes.

Our nation had elected its first African-American President. And I had voted for him. And he was now MY president.

This night was, indeed, an historic event. Not only will Obama's be the first black family to live in the White House, but this marks the end of one of the longest presidential races in the history of our country, and an election with one of the largest voter turn outs to date.

Everyone can easily recount for a friend where they were when they first heard about 9/11. My mother's generation can tell us youngsters what their living room smelled like when they found out Kennedy had been shot. I will never forget listening to Obama's acceptance speech, which, not surprisingly, brought tears to my eyes again. Perched on the end of a pool table shifting my eyes back and forth from any of the 8 different TVs in the bar, I applauded. I nodded. I repeated "Yes, we can" after he said it. And for the first time in a long time, I felt that I was a part of something. That my generation can actually do something.

Yes, we can.

This phrase will no doubt go down in history books next to Four score and seven years ago and I have a dream. And the things this man could do for our country are virtually endless. He will change the face of this nation. I have hope; after tonight, I really believe. As a friend of mine said tonight, "optimism is certainly contagious."

After Kelly's Bar I walked with some friends up Avenue A in the direction of home just to see where the night would take us. After only 6 blocks, we hit St. Mark's Place (also called 8th Street for all you Angelinos out there). I couldn't have asked for a better situation to stumble upon:
Along with hearing Obama's speech as I sat on that pool table, I will never in my life forget dancing in the middle of the street like a lawless heathen as police attempted to clear the road for cars. The photo above was taken from atop a dumpster on the south side of St. Marks before infiltrating the street with my friend Arthur.

Obviously, the police attempts to clear the streets were fruitless. I got pushed to the side by one slightly, but as soon as the officer would pass someone would break out of the squished line, and suddenly everyone was blocking traffic again. A few cabs tried to make it down the street, and we moved aside to let them through. None of the cabbies seemed too upset; they understood the implications this election held, and had no problem allowing us to go ahead with our celebration.

The cops eventually gave up, and what ensued afterward was dancing, chanting, singing and hugging the likes of which I've never before poured my entire heart into. If you look at the video I've posted at the end of this entry, you can see the balcony on which several people were leading the crowd in a sing along, also where all the music was coming from (Hot Chip, MIA, Queen, Biggie, MGMT, and some 60's hits that I can't remember exactly at this moment).

I don't think I've ever danced like such an idiot, and felt so free about doing so. My friends brought up how un-American this was, how this is what countries do when their team wins the World Cup, what Third World countries do when their leader of choice is elected to office. Do you remember stories of people running, dancing, cheering through the streets when Clinton was elected?

So, remember the car nestled amongst the sea of people from the first image? Well, several people decided to stand on it to take photographs, and...
killed it.

Besides that, I didn't see any other damage. It wasn't a dangerous, angry riot; more like a free-loving spiritual demonstration, which is why I think the cops eventually laid off and resorted to instead setting up barricades at First Ave. to keep cars away from the situation.

It's now almost 5 in the morning as I sit with legs that just couldn't walk any further, a throat sore and hoarse from chanting, yelling and excitedly talking, a body that knows it has to be up for class tomorrow, but somehow none of this matters. Somehow, in the course of a single day, optimism has filled my brain, my emotions, my outlook on the future. And I will either sleep soundly with that thought, or possibly stay up all night from the excitement, a kid before their first trip to Disneyland, a citizen who is just as anxious for 1.20.09 as I am for visiting California in December, an American who can say her country has made her proud for the first time in her adult life.

"Bankrupt on Selling"

After listening to my favorite podcast yesterday (This American Life on NPR, duh) and hearing this Modest Mouse song related perfectly to the commercial paper market and the type of fiscal language that is usually used by a small percentage of highly educated bankers in episode #365 entitled "Another Frightening Show About the Economy", I've decided it's the anti-anthem for the current economic situation, especially the lines I've put in bold.

"Well all the apostles - they're sitting in swings
saying "I'd sell off my savior for a set of new rings
and some sandals with the style of straps that cling best to the era"
So all of the businessers in their unlimited
hell where they buy and they sell and they sell all their
trash to each other but they're sick of it all
and they're bankrupt on selling
And all of the angels
they'd sell off yer soul for a set of new wings and anything gold
They remember
the people they loved their old friends
and I've seen through 'em all seen through 'em all and seen through most everything
All the people you knew were the actors
All the people you knew were the actors
Well, I'll go to college and I'll learn some big words
and I'll talk real loud
Goddamn right I'll be heard
You'll remember all the guys that said all those big words he must've
learned in college
And it took a long time
I came clean with myself
I come clean out of love with my lover
I still love her
Loved her more when she used to be sober and I was kinder"
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You can hear this song on Modest Mouse's album "The Lonesome Crowded West"