The Culture Vulture as Hero: Jonathan Lethem’s Chronic City (and Slavoj Žižek)

April 7, 2010June 22, 2014 / Bradley J. Fest / 1 Comment

I picked up Jonathan Lethem’s newest novel, Chronic City (2009) for perhaps two reasons: 1) it had an interesting dust jacket,[1] and 2) his name is one of those vaguely familiar ones I’ve heard bandied about for awhile now so figured it was about time I read something of his. W/r/t many of the concerns of this blog, there are a number of interesting things about Lethem’s most recent effort, but for the purposes of brevity I’ll focus on one particular aspect: the hero as culture vulture.

In my mind, Chronic City is perhaps singular and original in casting its protagonist, though not its narrator, as, for lack of a better term, a “culture vulture.”[2] What I mean by this term (and I, of course, am not the first to use it[3]), is a person who (sorta) mercilessly picks at the refuse and detritus of culture for their own ends, literally a cultural scavenger.[4] The “culture vulture” picks apart culture, finding it where and when they can (if at all. . .), filling themselves, gorging themselves on “culture,” and, after some amount of digestion, shits something out that combines everything digested. Unlike other definitions of “culture vulture” (see note 3), I make no distinction whatsoever b/t “high” and “low” culture here. Everything is on the table, from—to allude to my titular parenthetical—Wagner to “I Can’t Believe it’s Not Butter.”[5] Again, w/r/t to my titular parenthetical, perhaps one of the best formulations of (perhaps) what I mean by “culture vulture” is given by Slavoj Žižek in his “Preface” to Looking Awry:

“Walter Benjamin commended as a theoretically productive and subversive procedure the reading of the highest spiritual products of a culture alongside its common, prosaic, worldly products. What he had in mind specifically was a reading of the sublime ideal of the love couple represented in Mozart’s Magic Flute together with the definition of marriage found in Immanuel Kant (Mozart’s contemporary), a definition that caused much indignation within moralistic circles. Marriage, Kant wrote, is ‘a contract between two adult persons of the opposite sex on the mutual use of their sexual organs.’ It is something of the same order that has been put to work in [Looking Awry]: a reading of the most sublime theoretical motifs of Jacque Lacan together with and through exemplary cases of contemporary mass culture: not only Alfred Hitchcock, about whom there is now general agreement that he was, after all, a ‘serious artist,’ but also film noir, science fiction, detective novels, sentimental kitsch, and up—or down—to Stephen King. We thus apply to Lacan himself his own famous formula ‘Kant with Sade,’ i.e., his reading of Kantian ethics through the eyes of Sadian [sic] perversion. What the reader will find in this book is a whole series of ‘Lacan with. . .’: Alfred Hitchcock, Fritz Lang, Ruth Rendell, Patricia Highsmith, Colleen McCullough, Stephen King, etc. (If, now and then, the book also mentions ‘great’ names like Shakespeare and Kafka, the reader need not be uneasy: they are read strictly as kitsch authors, on the same level as McCullough and King.)”[6]

Lacan’s formula—which Žižek exploits so mercilessly (though not ineffectively) it might be put over the doorway of all his work—“Kant avec Sade”[7] might describe the limits of what I mean here by “culture vulture”—i.e. there are few, and the boundaries which are present spread out so widely as to be Nietzschean horizons rather than limits at all (or maybe “Foucauldian limits” . . .).

Another way of looking at how a culture vulture might operate is to recall the excellent Japanese video game: Katmari Damacy (2004).[8] [9] The point of the game is simple: roll your “katamari” (a ball) around, running into things. Anything you run into that is smaller than yourself will attach to your katamari, thereby making it bigger and it becomes subsequently possible to pick up bigger and bigger things. Basically, by mercilessly, gratuitously, and non-selectively rolling around, you will pick everything up, becoming, w/in the game’s logic, bigger than the earth-/solar-system-/galaxy-/universe-/etc.-/itself. After this is done, you have two options: 1) hoist this katamari into space to make something new (planet, nebula, constellation, etc.), or 2) explode the katamari into star-dust. Either way, the random accumulation of objects—all sorts of objects (really, play the game and try to think of objects they don’t include. . .[10])—is directed toward the end of becoming something else. The objects are merely consumed, absorbed, and “rolled-up” so that the stars that have fallen down[11] can be reconstituted; in other words, new forms of “meaning” can again be introduced into the universe.[12] (I also am aware of how much I harp on this game, but hey, it takes one to know one. . . .) Basically, this is a “pure” sorta “culture vulturing.” Nothing is off-limits; everything can be combined. And Lethem’s creation of Perkus Tooth in Chronic City is a representation of a culture vulture par excellence.

Perkus smokes massive amounts of marijuana,[13] imbibes a constant stream of coffee, and basically never leaves his house except for the daily necessity of eating.[14] He is an out-of-work rock critic who, for reasons that are left (mostly) unexplained in the book, basically just sits around and absorbs culture all day, every day. And all kinds of culture: film, music, literature, “art,” celebrity, political-stuff—you name it, it is part of Perkus’ cognitive mapping of the world. More to the point, he is fascinating. He talks. He absorbs and talks. Eats and Regurgitates. Scavenges and shits. Best of all, Lethem only gives us fragments and moments of these talks, allowing “us,” through the narrator, to merely get a sense, an atmosphere of what he is talking about. Everything he says seems important, the result of a deep engagement w/ contemporaneity, and a fluid, dynamic, and quick intellect that, through constructing various networks b/t cultural products, is also eminently creative. (Suffice it to say, he is a living, breathing archive who produces more entries into the archive.) For anyone familiar w/ Žižek’s work or his public persona,[15] it is quite possible that Lethem constructed Perkus on the model of ole’ Slavoj. A lengthy passage from the very early in the novel I think displays all this quite well:

“So if I had a secret, it was that I had conspired to forget my secret. Perkus eyed me slyly. Perhaps it was his policy to make this announcement to any new acquaintance, to see what they’d blurt out. ‘Keep your eyes and ears open,’ he told me now. ‘You’re in a position to learn things.’ What things? Before I could ask, we were off again. Perkus’ spiel encompassed Monte Hellman, Semina Culture, Greil Marcus’ Lipstick Traces, the Mafia’s blackmailing of J. Edgar Hoover over erotic secrets (resulting in the bogus amplification of Cold War fear and therefore the whole of our contemporary landscape), Vladimir Mayakovsky and the futurists, Chet Baker, Nothingism, the ruination Giuliani’s administration had brought to the sacred squalor of Times Square, the genius of The Gnuppet[16]Show, Frederick Exley, Jacques Rivette’s impossible-to-see-twelve-hour movie Out 1, corruption of the arts by commerce generally, Slavoj Zizek [sic] on Hitchcock, Franz Marplot on G.K. Chesterton,[17] Norman Mailer on Muhammad Ali, Norman Mailer on graffiti and the space program, Brando as dissident icon, Brando as sexual saint, Brando as Napoleon in exile. Names I knew and didn’t. Others I’d heard once and never troubled to wonder about. Mailer, again and again, and Brando even more often—Perkus Tooth’s primary idols seemed to be this robust and treacherous pair, which only made Perkus seem frailer and more harmless by contrast, without ballast in his pencil-legged suit. Maybe he at Jackson Hole burgers in an attempt to burgeon himself, seeking girth in hopes of attracting the attention of Norman and Marlon, his chosen peers.”[18]

A series of fairly random quotations from Žižek should make clear the affinities here (I literally just sorta opened the book to any page):

“At some point, Alcoholics Anonymous meets Pascal: ‘Fake it until you make it.’”[19] “So the idea was formulated that, just as people sign a form giving permission for their organs to be used for medical purposes in the event of their sudden death, one should also allow them to sign a form for their bodies to be given to necrophiliacs to play with. . . . Is not this proposal the perfect illustration of how the PC [politically correct] stance realizes Kierkegaard’s insight into how the only good neighbor is a dead neighbor? A dead neighbor—a corpse—is the ideal sexual partner for a ‘tolerant’ subject trying to avoid harassment: by definition, a corpse cannot be harassed.”[20] “A kind of musical equivalent [Schumann] to the Heidegger-Derrida ‘crossed-out.’ Being.”[21]

Though again, there are many things about Perkus (esp. w/r/t the fact that he may be Lethem’s fictional Žižek) which are interesting, one thing stands out (perhaps) the most: Perkus feels like a kind of “perfect” postmodern subject/character. He is at the center of the narrative while never being clear—i.e. he is a thoroughly opaque character who always seems to exist in a kind of pure present. He absorbs everyone—esp. the narrator—into his circle; and the entire novel becomes simply how the other characters orbit within this circle—i.e. the narrator, despite being a fairly famous ex-child-actor, is very clearly a kind of Everyman who is also thoroughly opaque, kinda dumb, and just as fascinated by Perkus as the reader is. Most importantly, the only thing that really makes him interesting, gives him any kind of “fictional roundness” or complexity. . . the only thing that makes him a character at all is that he is a vast reservoir of cultural knowledge and production. If Žižek is one of the most famous, fun, and widely read theorists right now (for [whatever/good] reason), then this simulation of him into a fictional form completes the (parallactic) circle of Žižek’s project. In other words, Perkus, though being himself a product of (ridiculous) cultural production, a node where various cultural products meet and are clarified in their relationship, and (of course) a commentary on the position of the postmodern subject in a hyper-mediated cultural space—despite all this, there is something weirdly, disturbingly, and comfortingly familiar about him. We all have a friend like Perkus, if in fact we are all not Perkus himself. Our encyclopedic desire to consume culture, to culture vulture everything, is not only expressed in Perkus, it is expressed sympathetically and tragically. Yes, of course he is a symptom, but he is a parasitic symptom, a figure who is simultaneously both the cure and the disease. (And don’t think the narrator’s many musings on the subject of Perkus are so off w/ my own. . . .)

Furthermore, he dies offstage. We get no answer of how to get “rid” of this symptom/disease/cure, nor, and this is most important, is it really so important that he dies at all. In other words, because of his ambiguous and ultimately meaning-less/ful death, there is something eminently tragic about this figure disappearing. We don’t know how or why, don’t know what forces could possibly get together to make such a thing happen. The book (sorta) suggests it is some kind of conspiracy, that amid Perkus’ myriad cultural re-in-digestion he has happened upon the “truth” and that the forces that be cannot abide such insights; but really, and this is kinda the point, he “cannot be killed,” for he is himself endemic, and his death is really not symbolic of anything whatsoever. We both “need” Perkus and we “need” him to die. But his death cannot be seen to be at the hands of anything (except his own internal workings and hemorrhagings). The clear Baudrillardian simulation-stuff[22] in the novel perhaps call into question if Perkus ever indeed existed at all, that he was a kind of pure simulacrum, a simulated product of what is already a simulation, but I think this is perhaps a bit too easy.

Ultimately, what Lethem has done, as said before, and I do think this is a fairly singular and emergent expression,[23] is to make the culture vulture into a hero. The massive, hyperarchival over-accumulation of (the) “culture” (industry) combined w/ (perhaps) the failure of cultural studies has made anyone attempting to confront it always already into a kind of Perkus. His Sisyphean task to understand, well. . . anything merely through what we “have” (i.e. culture), to “read” texts, to “find connections,” etc. etc. etc., and then to employ all that shit in any sort of meaningful way to our own specific historico-cultural moment is doomed to fail; and not only doomed to fail, but it will fail offstage, no one having heard what the cause of the failure was, nor the voice when it was speaking and alive. Perkus functions as a kind of perfect allegory for the grad student/academic right now. We know there is something incredibly important about, say, Norman Mailer and Marlon Brando. . . but what? We’ve written stuff up, published it, other people have responded, etc.—but that doesn’t mean we still don’t die offstage. This might be a little corny, and perhaps ridiculously politically irresponsible, but Lethem has constructed the grad student/academic[24] into a tragic hero. But the tragedy here lies not in the hero’s death, nor even the hero’s quest, but in the very fact that it is now possible to imagine this type of figure as a hero! Perkus has no great antagonist, no great struggle, no great conflict. His conflict is Bartlebian (at best). And it is this that is tragic and why I think that Lethem’s novel is so interesting for, though I will refrain from going into it here, he truly does attempt to understand what the antagonist of this type of figure may be. And though I think Lethem ultimately fails (and knows it), the amount of nodes he introduces as possible sites, even if they are feedback loops operating w/in the totality of a system w/o origin or end, draw the rolling katamari forward, but this time, perhaps w/ some sense of direction.

[1] Seriously, I’m a sucker for a pretty book w/ interesting blurbs, and now totally disagree w/ the ole’ “don’t judge a book by its cover” cliché. In this day-and-age of even small and university presses producing ridiculously attractive books, I’m beginning to think perhaps the only way we can judge a book is by its cover. This contentious observation, however, will have to wait to another time for anything resembling full-development (that is, if I ever remember I said this or get around to it). A corollary of this is that we might refuse to judge books w/o covers—i.e. e-texts; but again, for another time.

[2] I’m sure it’s not, but nothing is readily suggesting itself to me at this moment. I’d be interested to hear of other, as singular, examples.

[3] For instance, the “free dictionary” (.com), says it is an idiomatic expression meaning: “someone whom one considers to be excessively interested in the (classical) arts. ‘She won’t go to a funny film. She’s a real culture vulture. They watch only highbrow television. They’re culture vultures.’” This definition is (perhaps) supported by http://www.culturevulture.net/. That said, I would like to use this term in a far more inclusive (and perhaps even more exclusive) manner. See above.

[4] Btw, it is in no way lost on me that I am a culture vulture (so is virtually everyone I know to some degree or another). In other words, I don’t necessarily mean this term in a derogatory manner, but rather in the sense of: I don’t know how it’s possible to be a “postmodern subject” and not be a culture vulture in some way.

[5] See Slavoj Žižek, “Why is Wagner Worth Saving?” Journal of Philosophy & Scripture 2.1 (Fall 2004): 18-30, and Welcome to the Desert of the Real: Five Essays on September 11 and Related Dates (New York: Verso, 2002), respectively.

[6] Žižek, Looking Awry: An Introduction to Jacque Lacan through Popular Culture (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1991, vii).

[7] Žižek, in his classical reversal, develops this formula more fully in The Parallax View (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2006): “This is also why we should reverse the standard reading of ‘Kant with Sade’ according to which the Sadeian perversion is the ‘truth’ of Kant, more ‘radical’ than Kant; that it draws out the consequences Kant himself did not have the courage to confront. It is not in this sense that Sade is the truth of Kant; on the contrary, the Sadeian perversion emerges as the result of the Kantian compromise, of Kant’s avoiding the consequences of his breakthrough. Sade is the symptom of Kant: while it is true that Kant retreated from drawing all the consequences of his ethical revolution, the space for the figure of Sade is opened up by this compromise of Kant, by his unwillingness to go to the end, to retain the full fidelity to his philosophical breakthrough. Far from being simply and directly ‘the truth of Kant,’ Sade is the symptom of how Kant betrayed the truth of his own discovery—the obscene Sadeian jouisseur is a stigma bearing witness to Kant’s ethical compromise; the apparent ‘radicality’ of this figure (the Sadeian hero’s willingness to go to the end in his Will-to-Enjoy) is a mask of its exact opposite” (94).

[8] Which, according to Wikipedia translates as “clump spirit,” though I have also heard “dung-beetle of love,” which I very, very much prefer.

[9] I also don’t think this is the first—nor will it be the last—allusion to this game I make.

[10] Well of course they can’t include everything (which is also kinda the point. . .), but the sheer amount of things they do include is staggering. The game even contains an in-game-archive of all the objects you’ve collected. Try to collect them all! for a sense of virtual accomplishment (and genocidal mayhem).

[11] The metaphorical and allegorical gravitas of this should not be underestimated. (Also see Theodor Adorno’s book, The Stars Down to Earth).

[12] That said, try getting any “meaning” out of the conversations b/t the Prince and the King (or pretty much anything in the game, and this is, again, sorta the point); Hamlet had a better time than your little avatar.

[13] Thus part of the “chronic” in Chronic City. I know, it’s kinda dumb, but the book saves itself on this one for “chronic” becoming other things as well. . . .

[14] Do not think it is lost upon this author, btw, how this, minus the marijuana, resembles himself. . . .

[15] See Žižek! (Astra Taylor, 2005).

[16] I think it is very important that throughout Chronic City, the Muppets are constantly referred to but, for what I presume are copyright reasons, they are always the “Gnuppets.”

[17] Žižek also writes on Chesterton: see The Puppet and the Dwarf: The Perverse Core of Christianity (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2003).

[18] Jonathan Lethem, Chronic City (New York: Doubleday, 2009), 13, my emphases. Though Žižek is a bit buried here, I think it is very clear that one of the figures Lethem is modeling Perkus on is the “Giant from Ljubljana” himself.

[19] Žižek, The Parallax View, 353.

[20] ibid., 309.

[21] ibid., 365.

[22] The book feels a bit dated, btw.

[23] Again, if it isn’t please let me know.

[24] Or perhaps I am simply over-identifying w/ all this shit right now.

The Archival Erotics of Repo Men

April 5, 2010June 22, 2014 / Bradley J. Fest / 2 Comments

(So first off I’ll fail to apologize for only now realizing that I have not posted anything on here for over a month, and that my continual engagement w/ Otis Nixon should not have perhaps been heading this page for as long as it has—which is to say, hopefully there will be a slight flurry of activity re: this blog on my part in the near future, as I hope to have posts on a bunch of new work from people of some eminence: Jonathan Lethem’s Chronic City, Don DeLillo’s Point Omega, John Ashbery’s Planisphere, and perhaps a piece on a short story from the March edition of Harper’s, “The History of The History of Death.” But for all that, I thought I’d start w/ a film I saw recently that legitimately surprised me in more ways than one.) (Also, like all my posts, there will be spoilers galore.)

I in no way intended to see Repo Men (Miguel Sapochnik, 2010). Like many other things in my life recently, I’ve inexplicably taken a break from my frequent and unapologetically saccharine foray into commercial cinema. So a few days ago I realized I desperately needed, for whatever indefensible and inexplicable reason, to see Hot Tub Time Machine (I did, btw, but snuck in after Repo Men).[1] The reasons for this are probably more complex or simple than I would like to pursue, but suffice it to say, the film was peculiarly suggesting itself to me.[2] I also very much wanted to see Scorsese’s new effort, which was playing ten minutes after Time Machine. Due to an inexplicable lane closure for construction that was nowhere apparent as being done, there was a familiar intensity of traffic over the Homestead High-Level Bridge and I arrived, of course, too late to see the beginning of either film. Not wanting to wait around, my only chance for immediate darkness infused cinematic bliss was Repo Men, and even though I’d thought little-to-nothing good about the previews, I decided—hell, why not; it couldn’t be worse than Hot Tub Time Machine. And I was right.

I should’ve known better than to dismiss this film so off-handedly as just another vehicle for Jude Law’s increasingly weird and inconsequential career (which I’m tempted to say isn’t inconsequential at all). I mean, Forest Whitaker is in it for christ’s sake.[3] From the previews it appeared to be yet another Fahrenheit 451 rehash: agent of the oppressive dystopian police force turned resistance sympathizer, etc. Don’t get me wrong, it is that. And it very easily could have been very little but that, despite the interesting and complex friendship b/t Forest and Jude, the commentary it is so obviously making on our current economic crisis, and its portrayal of late-capitalistic posthuman cyborgicity. Basically, I should’ve known better b/c of the fact that many recent SF films have been deceptively incisive and captivating despite their mundane genre trappings and crappy trailers. In other words, unlike, say “comedies,” or even Hot Tub Time Machine specifically, in which all the best, funniest, most worthwhile moments are portrayed in their trailers, this type of film is fairly exemplary of putting none of why it may be interesting in the trailer. The typical contemporary comedy often feels simply like a device shuttling you from one recollected moment of the trailer to the next. We’ve already seen many of these films, for like most jokes you hear twice, they simply aren’t as funny on the second go-round. At first glance, Repo Men appears to be doing just this. It’s political, social, aesthetic, and economic stakes are clear: a 451 for the cyborg generation. It looks exciting, action-packed, violent, bloody, and perhaps just complex enough w/o being too difficult to garner some mild amount of attention.[4] And of course it is these things. But why Repo Men is worthy of some attention is for completely different reasons. (Say, in the same way Steven Shaviro finds Gamer interesting.)

For my own purposes, the readily suggestive reading of the film is an obvious one, but the film’s specific archival engagement is only grounded upon this blatancy. Basically, the premise of the film,

is that a massive corporation—sterile, all-encompassing, and totally ruthless in its pursuit of the bottom-line[5]—has cornered the market on artificial organs, enabling them to charge extravagant prices for them. As a majority of these organs are vital [sic] for the customer’s continued existence, of course. . . they pay, and they pay w/ credit. Inevitably, they miss a few payments, at which time the repo men repossess these organs, often killing the customer in the process.[6] There are clear things at stake here: 1) an engagement w/ our current mode of late capital and a critique of consumer debt; 2) a surveillance society in which the body is literally marked w/ its own potential death; and 3) a clear engagement w/ the (hopefully soon to be) aftermath of the wars of the early 21^st C.[7] If this were all the film did, I believe it would still be worthwhile as, even though it is grossly heavy handed, it raises some important questions about the role of capital w/r/t the body in both the future and the present. But ultimately it would be so heavy handed as to be eminently dismissible—yet another dystopian, paranoid speculation on an idea taken to its obscene limits.

Repo Men avoids simply being another generic entry into SF’s archive for two reasons: 1) the important, yet obvious twist that occurs in the film; and 2) the frankly incredible scene at the heart [sic] of the Union corporation: its organ reclamation center. And, for reasons that will soon become apparent, I’ll address the second of these first.

The film (of course) culminates in an all-out-assault on the Union Corporation’s headquarters, w/ all the necessary Matrix-esque action, gunplay, and some pretty gruesome (actually) knife-wielding by a small band of people to topple the very structure that makes the Corporation run. At the heart of Union, behind an (appropriately) pink door, is the database of all the people w/ artificial organs and, if one were to delete the database, everyone who currently had an organ would be “free” to “enjoy” it w/o worrying about paying or missing a payment. Like so many of these films, Law’s character has descended into the underground—that of course gets brutally wiped out[8]—and the only recourse to possibly getting off the grid is attempting a last-ditch desperate effort to destroy the corporation which manufactures the very thing keeping him alive.[9] But none of this is the point.

The point is that when Law and his girlfriend make it behind the pink door, sealing themselves inside, there is no keyboard. Instead, all there is is yet another sterile white room w/ scanners to literally scan the barcodes of the organs into the database. In other words, there is no way to delete the archive. The basic thing Law and his girlfriend confront in this scene, is not only that humanity has become totally and utterly archived, at the most bodily, vital level, but this archive’s logic is impenetrable: it can’t be burned (i.e. deleted w/ a keyboard). The body throughout the film is always at the mercy of the most brutal of archival processes. Your specific, numbered organ’s “time is up,” it must be put back into archival circulation to be repossessed again and again, and all through this process human bodies are piling up. This, in many ways, is more sinister than everyone being implanted w/ RFID tags or barcodes.[10] The very thing that marks and distinguishes these bodies, that archives them in the state’s (or capital’s) panoptic gaze is absolutely essential to the continual existence of the lives of those bodies. What appears clearly at stake w/in the context of the film is an extension (and perhaps complication) of Giorgio Agamben’s comment on the notion of survival w/r/t biopower:

“the most specific trait of twentieth-century biopolitics: no longer either to make die or to make live, but to make survive. The decisive activity of biopower in our time consists in the production not of life or death, but rather of a mutable and virtually infinite survival.”[11]

Agamben says this mostly w/r/t Auschwitz, but I think it is equally applicable here. This making survive is in capital’s best interest, in the case of the film, as it will funnel the last available resources out of the subject trying to survive. They will go into debt so deep it causes death—the final logic of capital. Most importantly, this making survive takes the form of placing directly into the body the very limits of its survival. The artificial organ simultaneously makes survive and when biopower no longer has use for this survival, reclaims it to begin the process over. As long as you are surviving and paying exorbitant amounts of money to survive, the corporation will let you. Once you cease to do this, biopower no longer has any interest in continual survival.

The archived nature of this survival, however, I think slightly extends or complicates Agamben’s notion of survival. Survival here is wholly dependent upon being w/in the systemic archive (i.e. making one’s payments) or else going off the archive’s grid (not making payments and “running.”) Either way, however, when Law enters this room and realizes there is no way to ultimately delete one’s presence in this archive of survival, something is made very clear. When the very processes of the body become the site of archival logic and the interest of biopower in survival, there is (virtually) no recourse. The archive and survival become synonymous. Nothing is outside the logic here and everything is caught w/in the camp. Consequently, and this is what is so important about this film, for all Law’s Matrix-esque shenanigans, there is nothing to be done.

Sorta. And what Law and his girlfriend do, and what director Sapochnik portrays so well, is an alternative. Law has an artificial heart, his girlfriend some ten (or so) artificial organs, including lungs and kidneys. Obviously they cannot simply cut these organs out and scan them, for their very survival would be compromised. Instead, Law sees that the only recourse they have, the only way to get off the grid, to get out of the archive, is to cut into each other’s bodies and scan the organs while they’re still operating, while they’re still alive! (And furthermore, this is perhaps one of the most erotic scenes I’ve ever seen in any film.[12]) Anesthetizing each other while making out, Law’s girlfriend, actress Alice Braga, cuts into his chest, inserting her hand all the way to his heart to scan it, to take him out of the survival archive. This ultimate act of love, freeing the other from biopolitical control, however, requires this ultimate penetration of the body (and it is, of course, important here that it is the female penetrating the male body, and not just anywhere, but precisely at that point [the heart] where it is most vulnerable). Then it is Law’s turn to “scan” Braga: her eyes, her ears, her throat (he pushes his hand to the back of her throat), her knees, and ultimately her lungs and kidneys, mirroring and complicating her own penetration of himself. Blood is flowing everywhere, their bodies intertwined, “passionate kisses,”[13] etc. And, less it be unclear, this act is neither sadistic nor masochistic. The only power over the body that is expressed by either sexual party is the act of getting rid of power over the body. No pleasure is taken in the inflicting or receiving of pain, but rather in liberating the other’s body. No genital sex takes place here, and this weirdly pure, violent, horrific, gruesome act of lovemaking may very well be what Gilles Deleuze had in mind when he talked of “non-genital sex.”

The point this scene seems to be making w/r/t the film as a whole is that, though the very survival of the body may be inscribed into the archive in totality, the body’s sexual role w/in this constellation defeats this reification through what I would like to call “archival erotics.” The act of deleting one another from the archive, is the erotic act par excellence. This is not sex as: two people simply masturbating w/ each other. Rather, sex here becomes a liberatory, vital act of not only survival, of emancipation, but of escaping a totalizing archival logic. And most importantly, there is no other option available w/in the space of the film. The “way out” is only available through a radical re-imagining of two bodies relationship to each other at the most primal level. Bodies interacting ceases to be procreative and becomes liberatory. Sex (w/o genitals) becomes a mode of escape.

But of course, and this is why this film is so interesting, that is not the end of the story. Whitaker bursts through the door to perceive Braga and Law in post-(non-genital)-coital bliss, revealing he has a bomb. Since Braga and Law have entered their organs into the archive, the machine is asking for those organs to be placed into a receptacle. Conveniently, Whitaker’s bomb is placed in this receptacle, which is then taken into the archive where it explodes, deleting the archive. The characters then sit back against the door, laughing. And it is this laughter that is so captivating.

If they had just let Whitaker in a few moments earlier, this entire erotic scene would have been unnecessary. Perhaps they are laughing at the absurdity of what they were forced to do. Or perhaps they’re laughing at something else. What I would like to suggest is that they are laughing at the absurdity that it is only after such a violent and poignant moment where biopower’s control over them is displayed so keenly that it becomes possible to literally penetrate the archive and delete it through, of course, technology. In the space of the film, the laughter is important. It not only signals that something is (perhaps) slightly amiss w/ this whole spectacle we’ve just witnessed, but that this act has been procreative. The technology (of the bomb) was produced in this act. What Law and Braga have given birth to is the very technological tool w/ which to delete the archive. And this is fucking hilarious. But it is hilarious because it is ultimately false. Pain is funny, and the pain we’ve just seen was ultimately for no reason whatsoever.

And this brings me to my first point of why this film is interesting. Long before the scene I just described, there is a “final showdown/confrontation” b/t Law and Whitaker during which Whitaker hits Law over the head w/ a chain(-thingy). Immediately after this, the screen goes blank (evoking Law’s voice-over of “being knocked out”), and then Law’s life flashes before his eyes. The twist at the end of the film is clearly perceptible here. Throughout the film, a system that would preserve consciousness in the case of catatonia is repeatedly referred to, and it was at this moment I realized that Law “died” and that everything that was to follow in the film was taking place in his catatonic-consciousness.[14] And, as the film closes, this is precisely what is revealed: the twist. Everything we’ve seen b/t this moment and now was pure simulation. The whole moment of archival erotics was simply a projection of Law’s (un)consciousness. Consequently, his badassness in killing virtually everyone while storming the castle is revealed as pure fantasy. In other words, the laughter following the amazing, erotic scene is nothing but the acknowledgment that this sort of narrative, poignant and incredible though it may be, is impossible w/in the system all the characters are inhabiting. And this is why Sapochnik’s first feature-length is so incredible. He simultaneously gives us an incredible, gorgeous, brutal “answer” to the whole problem while acknowledging that this answer, this “way out” is complete fantasy. Furthermore, it occurs in a kind of hyperarchival [sic] mode. Law has become totally subject to the survival archive. His very consciousness only persists w/in its logic. This “survival” will now only be maintained by Whitaker continuing to repo organs (i.e. this life-after-life is very expensive). Whitaker asks: can we know what he’s thinking, and of course the answer is no. Survival here, and indeed consciousness itself, becomes only a function of the dominating totality of the archival logic. Not only is there “no way out,” but there are further ways in. Consequently, the entire amazing, incredible scene b/t Law and Braga becomes merely how archival erotics themselves get absorbed into the system. Something posited as a way out only is possible by being more thoroughly w/in the system than one ever was before. Love and sex are merely (hyper)archival expressions.

And this is why Sapochnik’s vision is so much more terrifying than merely a rehash of 451. There is no alternative here. The only, quite provocative alternative is ultimately presented as part of the whole damn thing. Even resistance is a function of archivization. And if this is terrifying, it should be, for it presents us w/ the truly terrifying prospect of the only solution being a fantasmatic one that can only come as a result of being so thoroughly plugged into the machine that we cannot survive w/o it.

[1]This is also of course to suggest that part of my unapologetic enjoyment of commercial cinema is seeing multiple movies for the price of one.

[2]I also have absolutely nothing to say about it.

[3]Also of impressive note, is that Repo Men is director Miguel Sapochnik’s first feature-length film. How he got Forest and Jude, I presume, would be an intriguing back-room Hollywood story if I cared to do any research.

[4] For how little attention it may have indeed garnered, however, it need be noted that I was the only person present in the fairly major cineplex during its screening—something I always thoroughly enjoy b/c it affords me the opportunity to smoke cigarettes and see the smoke rising in the light of the projector. Mild crimes like these are strangely enjoyable.

[5] I.e. the film goes as far as to suggest that the company desires people to have their organs foreclosed upon as it insures that the Union company can re-sell that specific organ to someone else. The fantastic scene in the seemingly endless, sterile, white manufacturing center of Union also appears to suggest that this company is doing very well indeed. (On a side note, the Repo Men also give a semi-hilarious twist to the notion of the body w/o organs. In the case of the debtor, their bodies are w/o organs b/c they’ve quite literally been removed. A tangent to this is that in the opening scene Jude Law is, by law, required to ask the “patient” whether or not they want a doctor or ambulance present. This is totally absurd, as Law’s character clearly perceives, b/c he asks this of the “patient” after he has been stunned unconscious, of course implying that a body w/o an organ, in this scene the liver, clearly will very soon have no need of a doctor nor an ambulance.)

[6] It also need be noted that there is no affinity whatsoever b/t this film and the fantastic punk classic, Repo Man (1984).

[7] Law and Whitaker are both veterans of (presumably) the Iraq (or some other) war. They are highly trained soldiers who have found the perfect venue for their training, and b/c their actions are clearly sanctioned by the state, they can approach it as “just a job.” One of the most important parts of the film is that both Law and Whitaker are portrayed as not terribly intelligent; indeed, there is a quite hilarious flashback where they are shown to be specifically bodily suited for operating a tank: they have large heads and small brains, the better to prevent concussion. They’re just dumb, “normal” guys who are violently carrying out the whim of capital.

[8] The aftermath of this scene is actually quite affective as Law’s character walks over piles of corpses. The resonance w/ other genocides is quite clear here.

[9] Oh, btw, predictably, Law’s heart fails and has to get an artificial one. He of course misses the payments now that he can empathize w/ his victims and subsequently doesn’t make any money. (Also of note, how weird is it that these dudes work off commission, like some sort of used-car salesman death squad.)

[10] I distinctly remember one techno-industrial-kid who worked at my local zia in t-town, AZ who had a barcode printed on the back of his neck—the “subversive” irony of this I thought was dumb then, and I surely do now, btw, if you’re interested.

[11] Giorgio Agamben, Remnants of Auschwitz: The Witness and the Archive, trans. Daniel Heller-Roazen (New York: Zone Books, 2002), 155.

[12] W/ the exception of Marina de Van’s Dans ma peau (In My Skin, 2002).

[13] Mary Chapin Carter had no idea her “Passionate Kisses” may ever have been used in such a manner.

[14] Thus the penultimate scene on the beach is obviously a pure dream-construction.

Open Thread Regional Review Vol. 2

April 4, 2010June 22, 2014 / Bradley J. Fest / Leave a comment

A poem of mine, “Nothingness Introduced into the Heart of the Image,” just appeared in the Open Thread Regional Review Vol. 2, a very handsome volume indeed. Check Open Thread out here, and purchase this beautiful book here.

Repackaging the Archive (Part I.v): A Meta-Commentary on the Archival Phenomenon of “Otis Nixon” and his Networked-Being

March 1, 2010June 22, 2014 / Bradley J. Fest / Leave a comment

So there is no possible way I could have predicted that when I wrote: “A node. Nothing more” slightly over a year ago that I would one day feel obliged to comment further on the figure/phenomenon that can only come under the heading “Otis Nixon” (see “Repackaging the Archive, Part I”). Since that time his name has never been terribly far from my digital reality. Without fail, no matter the day or time of year, if I deign to check my “blog stats,” a search for his name has inevitably turned up this here blog in some distant galaxy far to the right of the many google “Os”; furthermore, wordpress does its due diligence to let me know that someone has searched for Otis Nixon and that it very well may have led them here. Nothing, and I mean nothing and no one has caused as many “hits” on this site as has Otis Nixon.[1] In fact, there may be a good chance that you yourself are reading this post b/c you’ve entered “otis nixon” into your google search bar and, after scrolling through umpteen-pp., have finally arrived here, and for that I thank you, for you prove my point. This is not about Otis Nixon the baseball player, the very good lead-off hitter, his fantastic catch robbing Van Slyke of a homerun, his cocaine/crack addiction, nor the way he turned his life around toward god, started a ministry, and is doing, well. . . you can see for yourself. No this is about “Otis Nixon” the baseball card. Otis Nixon the archival phenomenon. The networked-Being of the emergent singularity that, for lack of a better term, we will call: Otis Nixon. (Otis Nixon, “otis nixon,” “otis” “nixon.”)[2]

To be clear, I suppose the fact of Otis Nixon’s near archival ubiquity here, his ability to form a significant node linking so many disparate things together (for everything here is always already under the sway of Otis Nixon first and foremost), is ultimately a result of the sports figure who also goes by the name Otis Nixon—that, no matter how popular post-apocalyptic stuff may be nor how in demand ridiculous archival theory, sport, in terms of archivization, perhaps lends itself more easily to producing such networked-Beings (think Vince Carter). That said, however, it is significant that it is “Otis Nixon” that I am designating as the proper name of this networked-Being. It isn’t Michael Jordan, Peyton Manning, Tiger Woods, or Venus Williams.[3] No, it is Otis Nixon who most clearly articulates an existence that is wholly and exclusively archival. This is not the Otis Nixon whose book is Keeping it Real. This is the Otis Nixon who needs no book, for it is always already Keeping it Hyperreal. This is an Otis Nixon who has, for a great many years now, been the most visible emergence of the archive organizing itself into higher orders. “He” is a singularity. And Otis Nixon is becoming ubiquitous. Furthermore, there is no reason this phenomenon need be Otis Nixon, but that is the point of archival organization: it is dependent upon both chaos and order working profoundly together to create, well, Otis Nixon. If a post-singularity is even remotely on the horizon, it will be called Otis Nixon. And for those of you searching for that “other” Otis Nixon, well here you go.

[1] Btw, I’m going to be using his proper name about as much as I can to foster this phenomenon. For those of you who may be interested, you can visit his website. His book, significantly for my purposes, is called Keeping it Real. It is seemingly only available through his website (though understandably, I only checked amazon).

[2] It should be obvious what my goal is here.

[3] I also know that in even writing these things down I may be digging myself into a further hole. . . .

I Cannot Help but Think. . .

February 13, 2010June 22, 2014 / Bradley J. Fest / 1 Comment

Recently I’ve noticed a disturbing and yet curious trend in my writing, and specifically in my academic writing (though I’m surely guilty of it on this here blog as elsewhere). I’ve been using the phrase: “I cannot help but think that. . .”[1] followed by an assertion, usually an interpretation of some sort, far too much. As in: I want to start off virtually every sentence (including the one that will follow this one) w/ “I cannot help but think. . . .” I cannot help but think that my use of the phrase “I cannot help but think” is somehow important, maybe even interesting, while simultaneously something I cannot help but think is me being lazy, a crutch, a tried-and-true verbal formulation that, well, gets my thinking down onto paper (easily). It has been so bad recently that I’ve actually had to go back through whole documents, searching for “cannot help” and deleting or reformulating sometimes far too many sentences for me to be comfortable w/ my own ability to write—as in: I can’t (write, that is [again]). (Wow, look at that, even here I’m developing a new one: as in, I just wrote “as in” above. Will this ever stop? As in: will I ever get to a place where my prose flows freely w/o so much language that could easily be thrown away?) We all have these verbal and grammatological tics (lord knows I have had them, currently do, and will for the foreseeable future). You know (again), those little stylistic quirks that aren’t quite necessary but always seem to be suggesting themselves. The ones you use over and over again, almost unconsciously. These short, relatively meaningless phrases that allow our thinking to transition from one syntactical unit to another[2]. . . I cannot help but to use them (though I could have written: “I cannot avoid them.” What the hell). And I’m usually perfectly aware of myself when I’m writing like this, even if it takes me a while to recognize it; and yet I cannot help (again) to use them. In the past some of these have been, for myself, a gross and almost embarrassing reliance on the phrases: kinda, with regard to, furthermore, basically, in short, vis-à-vis, grounds,[3] namely, and yet, articulates, in other words, i.e., formulates, expresses, etc. etc.[4] This list could go on and on, and if I were to be exhaustive in this list, I might perhaps (another one, “perhaps,” that is) come to the horrifying realization that I am a robot. Yes, you heard me right, a robot (or perhaps [sheesh, again] an anthrobot[5]). I may very well be nothing more than a preprogrammed vocabulary who does nothing other than stitch together whatever amorphous rules of English expression I may have a shaky grasp upon in order to attempt to articulate (sheesh) whatever it is I am “thinking.”

I know that the usefulness/quantity of these types of words is largely to facilitate understanding, that they serve as moments to pause, breathe, signal the importance or lessen the impact of a statement. They mirror verbal speech—i.e. no one speaks in (H.) Jamesian prose nor Derridean deconstruction (or maybe they do, and I just have the wrong friends [or the right friends. . .]). These grammatological tics serve to mark, at the same time, that writing is trying to mirror spoken language while calling attention to the very construction of its inscription. But for all that, they feel like cheating to me, like inserting something that I know will make the sentence “flow” (or break. . .) w/o having to think terribly rigorously about how I’m using language. Perhaps this is b/c—at least I console myself w/ this fiction—that I’m trying to be “clear” (i.e. a bunch of unnecessary words eases the readers eyes and ears. . .), but is it really b/c I am lazy, uninventive, un-attentive, and—the real kick-in-the-pants—stupid? That I should get in another racket while I’m still young and have something to sell the world?[6] Or is it something else? I cannot help but think that this most recent tic—and there will be others, I’m sure—is significant in some way, that it signals something, and that what it signals is precisely (maybe) how these types of tics work.

So I’m sitting there at any of my various word processing machines (sometimes, though not often including the pen), attempting to communicate,[7] or whatever, something I’ve been “thinking” about, attempting to use words to encapsulate something I’m not terribly sure is a purely linguistic phenomena (thinking)—though this is also to say that I’m not terribly sure it isn’t purely linguistic. . . get back to me—and though the words might be struggling to get to the page, when they do come, I can’t help but think that they are midwifed in some way by the “I cannot help but think,” that they are eased into the world by this specific sort of nonsense.[8] In other words (again), “I cannot help but think” functions precisely as it says: I am thinking, I am attempting to write that thinking down, and it is the interaction b/t these two things is happening on an automatic level that I cannot understand. I literally cannot help it. I don’t know how.

Taken purely in-and-of-itself the phrase “I cannot help but think” might even be said (shit, again) to be (mildly) ontologically profound. I am. I cannot help but to be.[9] I am the thing that thinks. I being I, I thinks, regardless of whether I want to or not.[10] I cannot help but think. What I’m thinking is what I’m attempting, oh so poorly, to convey to you. My not being able to telepathically mind-meld w/ you, I’m forced into this other thing,[11] this action of thinking for a long, anxiety producing, and never static time cannot help but find its way onto the page, into this form. Writing “I cannot help but think” becomes the grossest and most accurate tautology for the whole process. I’ve tried helping it, really I have, thinking that is; and furthermore, I’ve tried thinking other things, at length and laboriously. Anyone familiar w/ academic labor (a few people), or thinking (hopefully everybody), knows what I’m talking about. I’ve thought a lot, and this is where I wind up. I can’t help it. I can doubt it, question it, revise it, etc. etc., but ultimately, this is what I’m writing down, so this is what I cannot help but do. Yes, I could do otherwise, but then I couldn’t help but think whatever it is this otherwise would be; it would amount to the same thing. I suppose this is why Zen Buddhism is so attractive—it is attempting to not think. Perhaps a good mantra for it would be “I can but help think.”[12] End of sentence, document, oeuvre, writing. Of course my overly-Westernized sensibility realizes this is a contradiction and paradox in-and-of-itself: thinking about not thinking, trying to help but not think is still a thinking, which, I guess, is the whole damn point and why I failed so miserably those times I tried to meditate (for real, and at a meditation center). But writing is in absolute contradistinction to this. One cannot write the not thinking. This is not an experience that can be conveyed. It simply doesn’t work.[13]The minute you try to help explain not thinking by putting it in writing, there is a thinking. (This is also why surrealism and Dada ultimately fail, btw [perhaps, damn, again!].) Surely to be able to help thinking, to not do it, is a complex, respectable, and fascinating goal, even if I’m not sure it can be reached, but it does me no good when writing, esp. when I “have” to write something.[14]

So I cannot help but think that I should refrain from using “So I cannot help but think that” ever again. (Of course I will use it again. I’ll be writing a long time, hopefully, and it will inevitably pop up. The nature of my thinking is that I will have forgotten ever having written this, and it, or any number of other grammatological tics will seep like Tracy did into the soil the other night in the Heroes[15] finale into my writing.) In other words, it is an ultimately meaningless, empty, needless, and tautological phrase. In fact (again), its real evil might be that it obscures and prevents thinking at all. “Better” thinking. “Better” prose. For it is a fact that I’ve just now spent a few hours writing about this rather than the writing I should be doing. It, quite literally, has prevented writing and thinking. Even if one takes writing as an emergent self-articulation of thinking onto the page, we don’t need to hear about it, have it crammed down our throats (or in my case, I’m doing the cramming). So, in the interest of verbal tic-ery and its proponents everywhere, I’m in the market, on the search, w/ my ear to the ground for a new throwaway phrase to heedlessly put into my writing. Right now I’m thinking about “viz.,” but am open to other suggestions. Perhaps “It should be freaking obvious that. . .,” or “anyone who isn’t Sarah Palin would clearly comprehend that. . .,” but those would be perhaps slightly inappropriate and would wear out quickly. For now I’m simply left w/ the hope that one day I will have developed and cultivated such a large fecal mountain of these types of phrases that they will go unnoticed, but for now I’m only left w/ the hope that I can be aware of them, delete them when they occur too often, and reconcile myself to them like I have so much else, viz. if you can’t help but mobilize the “can’t help but think(s)” of the world, why not join’em at their orgy and whatever it is that occurs afterward. (Seriously [yet another one, I can’t stop], what happens after the orgy?)[16]

[1] It should be understood here that “I cannot help but think” also stands in for all the variations on this phrase: i.e. “this cannot help but to suggest,” and others.

[2] Whatever I say (or don’t) about language below, I firmly believe that we don’t think syntactically. Though I can only “believe” this, like having faith in my own statement “I cannot help but think. . . .” What if I could help it. And isn’t this really the whole point?

[3] As in: grounded in, upon, etc.

[4] And, sad to say, my poor students probably bear the brunt of these throw-off grammatical tics in the comments they receive from me more than anyone else. For this, I apologize (even if I don’t see it changing. . .).

[5] wink.

[6] Another (empty) consolation I tell myself: every writer ever has asked themselves this question—not consoling at all.

[7] It should also be noted that (again!, look how similar this is to note 1, which was actually written after this note!) I have similar, if wholly different tics, when it comes to poetic composition, as opposed to prose. That said (again), I will not tell anyone what these are, though they’re obvious, for the thought of uttering that type of candid statement about my own poetics is one that makes me mildly nauseous, in that I’d-be-nauseous-at-myself sort of way, which, of course (another), I already am.

[8] This is also the moment I’m realizing that this entry perhaps has no place on this blog whatsoever, is overly self-indulgent (like anything I do isn’t!), and really would be of no interest to anyone whatsoever. Which, of course, is also to say that (look how many words I just used that were wholly unnecessary in this sentence already, and then, to top it off, I wrote a whole gaggle of more words that were unnecessary in this parenthetical [something, btw, I’ve grown perfectly accustomed to and comfortable w/ tic-wise w/r/t myself, so now just bask in my ability to make an aside about an aside about an aside], and am still doing it!). . . even this self-indulgent footnote is a product of my anxiety over feeling self-indulgent about my anxiety about writing about my self-indulgent interests and anxieties, in a place where I try to attempt to understand the nature of the expression of anxiety w/r/t the biggest cause of anxiety of them all: the end of the world. In other words, anxiety, for me, is a fundamental aspect of any eschatological formulation (again), and consequently, perhaps fits quite well, considering the degree of anxieties which are in play here, w/in The Hyperarchival Parallax which is above all about the anxiety over the (over-)accumulation or destruction of writing, of the archive, anyway. Furthermore (again), the reason this is even being written in the first place is a result of the anxiety I’m feeling about not writing something else that is decidedly not self-indulgent though does make a fair use of “I cannot help but think” and is thus producing this anxiety, both the anxiety of what I’ve written and the anxiety of not continuing to write it; and at this point everything is probably getting pretty boring for anyone reading this (here, a link to something else! Okay, that one probably is absolutely the wrong thing to be linking to here [look esp. at the post “Does Nietzsche’s Grocery List Constitute Writing?”], so here! Couldn’t have said it better myself.), which, of course, is producing more anxiety. Perhaps what I’m trying to say is (again), that instead of whatever I’m suggesting “up there” (wink, wink to all ya’ in the know down here), these grammatological tics are really a way of coping w/ the anxiety of writing, or something.

[9] Well of course I could, but then I wouldn’t.

[10] I’ve found solutions, but they’re largely chemical (I think), and have much more to do w/ memory, or more precisely a memory lacking, than thinking. Or perhaps I should be valiantly striving to go Rimbaud’s way: Je est un autre.

[11] I know there ain’t much terribly profound here, but I cannot help but think I have to say it anyway.

[12] Or something.

[13] You may feel free to disagree w/ me here, and even show me an example of what you would call such a writing, but again, my overly Westernized mind would simply respond: “prove no thinking was involved,” or even worse, “of course thinking was involved, I’m reading someone’s writing.” Actually, I’m kinda fascinated by this. Maybe I take it back.

[14] I.e. I cannot help but think that there would have been an adverse reaction had I handed in my PhD project exams w/ simply the line: “I can but help think.” (I still think there is a far better way of formulating this, of writing this, of expressing it, but that’s sorta the point. It doesn’t spring to mind (unlike “I cannot help but think”). I cannot help but to think that helping to think cannot but help to be put in writing, which of course is a “cannot help but think.” But again, if anyone can formulate [literally, third time, what is wrong w/ me] it better, esp. b/c out of the context of this writing it actually doesn’t make much syntactic or grammatical sense (again, the point), get in touch; even if it just sounds cool. Btw, one of my more-favorite blogs, if only b/c it is by a PhD student at pretty much the same place I’m at, studying, disturbingly, many of the same things I am, has a recent post on the whole doubt/anxiety/writing/etc. thing, that I’m perhaps merely expressing after the fact of my most recent and specific submersion into that realm. Please check out “Winter Snows, Doubts, and Donna Harraway,” at Jason Ellis’ Dynamic Subspace.

[15] Lord, how I hate how that show is always promising in for its futurity rather than its present.

[16] I’m stealing this from somewhere. I can’t help but think it’s Baudrillard.

Return to Snow(mageddon)y River

February 13, 2010February 13, 2010 / Bradley J. Fest / Leave a comment

This is a fantastic clip critiquing the over-use, over-saturation, and ridiculousness of apocalyptic rhetoric in the media from Stewart the other night. Both him and Colbert have a long tradition of throwing barbs at the eschatological hyperbole of the media, but this one is simply amazing. And it is esp. appropriate for both this here blog, the weather outside (how frightful it is),[1] and the fact I wrote on this exact thing a couple of days ago. Enjoy.

Vodpod videos no longer available.

Not to be outdone, the Baltimore local news also got involved. I don’t know which is better. Fox et al or this attempt at emulating their apocalyptic and absurd fear mongering.

All I know is, the snow outside ain’t going anywhere, but, then again, neither is the media. It has to make you wonder how they would react in the face of an actual apocalyptic scenario. It wouldn’t be anything like the movies. But then again, how much more ridiculous could they get. They might have to get all calm and, idk, objective.

[1] Esp. according to the woman I talked to (completely randomly) on the street yesterday. She, quote, “hate(d) this shit.” Why I appeared to be an appropriate person to express this to, is perhaps unimportant, but it is to emphasize that everyone is thinking exactly how frightful the weather is and feel that they have to inform whomever may walk by immediately. (As if I’m gonna say, “What the hell are you talking about. This is delightful!”) That said, I firmly agreed w/ her, and said so. There is something remarkable about how weather, and more importantly talking about it, creates socialization and connection b/t two people who would never talk to one another otherwise. This whole week I’ve been experiencing smiles, knowing looks, and a sense of community wholly lacking at other points in the year. We all agree on one thing, and it brings us together: we hate this shit, and yet. . . , I think there is something good in this agreement. This is also one of the reasons I like sports. Esp. in pgh, one always has a common ground from which to begin a conversation w/ a stranger. Usually talking about the weather is banal to the extreme, the old cliche, that thing that, strangely, causes disconnection b/t people. But when the unusually strong snowstorm hits the ‘burgh, its like the freaking Superbowl (of conversation starters–and of course the SB coincided w/ this past weekend). Of course this is great and all, but lord I miss the desert. At least there the weather didn’t shut down a city, even if it was just as much a part of the conversation. And it is always apocalyptic, though one never hears about “heat-wave-ageddon,” or “four-months-w/o-rain-Judgment-Day.” Though that would be hilarious.

Apocalyptexts 02: Makers by Cory Doctorow and Freedom (TM) by Daniel Suarez

February 8, 2010June 22, 2014 / Bradley J. Fest / Leave a comment

(This, like all my posts, will contain spoilers of the entire work(s), so deal.)

Though neither of these new novels by Cory Doctorow and Daniel Suarez (aka Leinad Zeraus) are overtly apocalyptic,[1] their mutual involvement in and speculation of both the demise of capital-as-we-know-it and the virtual disappearance of middle-class life in the U.S. easily suggests what has already become a genre in-and-of-itself in the past couple years: apocalypse as economic disaster. This, of course, is nothing new.

As we perhaps all well recall, Walter Benjamin in his “Theses on the Philosophy of History” clearly and critically considered dialectical (or historical) materialism in terms of a messianic impulse,[2] and it is difficult to read The Communist Manifesto as not tarrying w/ messianism or apocalypticism. But it is curious that it has taken the complete digitization of capital, capital divorced from “human nature,”[3] pushed to its ultimate logic by the absolutely hyperreal speed of the postmodern market for the contemporary instantiation of this teleological inevitability—or at least the imaginative speculation of it. . . (i.e. money circulates so quickly and freely, w/ such algorithmic “precision” and “logic” that it is only a convenient and soothing fiction that we are able to “blame” CEOs of companies like Goldman Sachs for economic disaster).[4] If we are comfortable w/ calling economic disaster messianic or at least teleological, we can only have recourse to some “ghost in the machine” explanation (or better yet, a dwarf inside Deep Blue [5]). And yet, central to both Makers (one can read it online) and Freedom^TM is the projected inevitability of the breakdown of capital—its parasitic logic, sped up w/ a globalized, digital, networked economy, is eschatological (or at least disastrous). And significantly, as both of these authors are so involved in various other e-endeavors,[6] esp. Suarez’s own involvement in the weirdness of late-capital, we should note the temporal nearness of these fictions. The worlds and economies they imagine are clearly speculative (and perhaps “science fictional”), but they resemble our own world w/ only a few minor extensions of the present projected into the future. As everyone is telling us everywhere, economic disaster, the apocalyptic threat of it, Greenspan’s “once in a century tsunami” (see my addendum to the post on 2012), has happened, is happening, and will happen (unless we do something to stop it, which “we” aren’t). Lo and behold: economic disaster is the apocalypse, the only one that actually makes any “sense,” the finally achieved end of whatever. This should not surprise us.

But, as said above, neither of these novels could really be called apocalyptic at all. Makers presents a world in which the US economy is pretty much destroyed, w/ shanty-towns springing up everywhere,[7] massive job loss, a New Deal type economic revolution called “New Work” that dramatically fails. . . but ultimately, capital, in the form of Disney Imagineering[8] (mostly) keeps on a’rollin’, and the novel ends pretty much in the no-space of narrative “giving-up-ness,” the utopian projects having all failed, capital having not collapsed, and its protagonists getting old and imminently dying (from side-effects from the “fatkins” treatment[9]). Freedom^TM, on similar terms, imagines a “Cybergeddon”: a coup staged by the economic elite-of-the-elite to wipe out virtually all global financial assets but their own, but of course this fails, thwarted by the weak-AI or “Daemon” presented in the first novel of this series, Daemon.[10] This is done in a world where gasoline has risen to $17.87 a gallon, unemployment is at 32.3% in the US, the US dollar is virtually worthless, and gold is at $4,189/oz.[11] And of course the novel ends on a mildly-messianic, hero-having-overcome-obstacles-and-reached-the-end-of-his-quest-narrative, w/ a twist that might set up a third book in the series (which I, for one, would like to see).

So of course the question is: why are either of these novels—even depicting significant, nigh apocalyptic economic “downturns” as they do—apocalyptic? Well, in quite simple terms, the manner in which both Doctorow and Suarez structure both economic disaster as well as the utopian possibilities both novels present is archival. Yes, I said it, no surprise (of course), but they are, and they are to a fairly ridiculous degree.[12]

I’ll begin w/ Makers (mostly b/c I read it first). Though this isn’t a sequel to Doctorow’s teen-fiction Little Brother—a fascinating and kinda brilliant novel that explores surveillance and what Deleuze would call a “control society” in a pretty interesting post-Orwellian way (thus the title. . .)[13]—it definitely is in the same near-future speculative space, and shows Doctorow putting his finger on the pulse of America very well in a similar fashion.[14] (I will also most assuredly give Little Brother to my kids [after 1984, of course] when they get to the appropriate age [that is, if they materialize.]) The first third-or-so of Makers is perhaps the most interesting, but archival themes are present throughout.[15]

Separating the novel as I am into thirds (first third, and last two thirds), each presents an archivalism, both in terms of accumulation and destruction. The first third posits a venture capitalist purchasing and merging EastmanKodak and Duracell—two thoroughly obsolete companies in this digital age (for obvious reasons)—and creating “Kodacell.” The goal of this action is to radically redefine how entrepreneurial capitalism works. Basically, Kodacell will leverage its massive assets toward investing in small, collective entrepreneurial endeavors, “synergizing”[16] them w/ other such endeavors in the company, all to promote creativity, emergence, inventiveness, and un-exploited profit-making opportunities. This model quickly comes to be known as “New Work.” Its principal figures are two techno-geek-engineers who basically simply use the detritus and waste of late-capital to make new, creative, inventive products (they’re actually pretty cool ideas. . .). Though there are many ideas to talk about, this first third culminates in the “3D Printer”: basically a “printer” which can print any three dimensional object one would want, and, furthermore, the printer is able to print itself.[17] These are mobilized primarily as a virtually-free machine geared toward homeless, dispossessed, and third-world inhabitants/people as a cheap, limitless supply of object-making (i.e. the logic here is: how do we exploit the untapped market of those w/o any economic resources whatsoever [and, of course, “help” them]. . .). What should be clear, is this “alternative” to late-capitalism—collective, emergent, networked, fluid, small, etc. etc.—ultimately produces, w/in the space of the narrative, an object-relationship that is archival. This 3D printer can make anything. It is literally an object-archive, in which any object capable of being archived can be reproduced.

The second-two-thirds of the novel is devoted to “The Ride”: an emergent, interactive archive which makes use of the logic of 3D printers to create a space which is constantly and archivally redefining itself. The logic of this ride is that one gets on, goes through this museum-archive, clicking approve or disapprove on any object one sees, and it constantly re-updates itself, using little robots and 3D printers on steroids. This ride, of course, gets globally networked and set up in multiple localities, and a “narrative” or “story” starts to emerge—some sort of collective experience of history, the past, nostalgia, etc. that people get ridiculously invested in (one kid, named “Death Waits” gets pummeled to the point of traction for this investment). One can bring any object they want to be included in the ride, and the collective, nigh utopian endeavor of riding the ride creates an archival space that is supposed to represent some sort of collective unconscious of its participants—and it is emotionally, organically (somehow), fulfilling. And of course Disney gets involved, lawyers, new modes of litigation, copyright infringement, and all sorts of narrative-pushing shit which is ultimately kinda boring.

What Makers makes (sic) so clear, is that any post-capitalist model (utopian or otherwise) will have to necessarily involve an archival creative commons to hope to overcome the abuses of globalism. Not only is every text archivally at one’s fingertips, but so is any consumer product, any object whatsoever. Furthermore, humanity’s relationship to objects becomes an archival question; the relationship to Things (in the best/worst Heideggerian sense) is translated into an emergent property of culture expressing itself—the archive accumulates simply b/c it’s there; and all of this is represented as an alternative to capital. Though the novel is an obvious narrative failure on pretty much every point, it absolutely succeeds in making quite clear that archivalism is both apocalyptic and utopian, destructive and creative. For instance:

“Welcome to the Cabinet of Wonders.[18] There was a time when America held out the promise of a new way of living and working. The New Work boom of the teens was a period of unparalleled invention, a Cambrian explosion of creativity not seen since the time of Edison—and unlike Edison, the people who invented the New Work revolution weren’t rip-off artists and frauds. their marvelous inventions emerged at the rate of five or six per week. Some danced, some sang, some were help-meets and some were mere jesters. Today, nearly all of these wonderful things have vanished with the collapse of New Work. They’ve ended up back in the trash heaps that inspired them. Here in the Cabinet of Wonders, we are preserving these last remnants of the Golden Age, a single beacon of light in a time of darkness. As you move through the ridespace, please remain seated. However, you may pause your vehicle to get a closer look by moving the joystick toward yourself. Pull the joystick up to cue narration about any object. Move the joystick to the left, toward the minus-one, if you think an item is ugly, unworthy, or misplaced. Move the joystick to the right, toward the plus-one, if you think an item is particularly pleasing. Your feedback will be factored into the continuous rearrangement of the Cabinet, which takes place on a minute-by-minute basis, driven by the robots you may see crawling around the floor of the Cabinet. The ride lasts between ten minutes and an hour, depending on how often you pause. Please enjoy yourself, and remember when we were golden.”[19]

“Culture” here become whatever one chooses to bring to the table. One can look at it, change it, accept it or deny it, interact w/ it, passively observe, actively participate, or choose an endless stance of destruction; even a Bartlebian stance is possible. The Ride is the archive par excellence. It mobilizes all the Derridean logic of archives, while maintaining a weird sense of populism and political potential. It also clearly interacts w/ markets, and is easily absorbed into the totality of late-capital. If Doctorow has done nothing else w/ Makers, he’s staked out the terms of archival logic as we go forward, and if the economy contains w/in itself the seeds of its own demise, or conversely, its transcendence into some new model, it will be realized, parallactically, w/in the archive (at least w/in the speculative imagination).

Freedom^TM on the other hand gives us something slightly different. The novel, as said above, is a sequel to Daemon, whose premise was that a “genius” game-designer set off a “virus” upon the moment of his death appearing in the obituaries, which basically inscribes the World of Warcraft (hereafter WoW) upon reality.[20] The virus takes a hold of pretty much every major corporation, infects GPS and all the other surveillance capacities of the police-state, is able to affect material reality itself (through controlling pretty-much-everything), and offers, perhaps most significantly, an alternative economy to the quickly declining US model. In short, it is a weak AI singularity in the sense we have become accustomed to. Two things about this novel are notable for myself.

First, for anyone who has played, knows about, has heard of, or even seen the appropriate South Park episode, it should be clear that WoW is archivism inscribed upon (a virtual) reality (in the case of the novel, it ain’t virtual). What I mean by this is that WoW documents, inscribes, catalogues, inventories, and measures everything. The entire makeup of its World (and I do mean all the Heideggerian implications of this word) is archival. One’s very Being in this world is archival. I’m a lvl so and so, class so and so, race so and so; and though this configuration will change its parameters, it will never stop being true. I’m a series of numbers stored on a database in some distant land (presumably the Pacific Northwest) whose interaction w/ the “World” is dependent upon those numbers changing. Every single interaction I have w/ this world (in the best late-capitalist sense) is a slight adjustment to my archival being w/in the economy of WoW. In other words, if I want to “do” anything, I must enter the economy—there ain’t no alternative.[21]

Basically, the gist of Freedom^TM is that this model is somehow more “democratic” than our current system.[22] For one, it has clear, teleological goals, something wholly lacking from any model of interacting w/ late capital as a plebe does now.[23] One can enter into[24] the WoW economy, and it is one that makes far more sense than our own. To be able to interact w/ it, one has to do, idk, stuff—not simply trade futures and fictional assets, but create. Yes, there are plenty of people that are able to exploit this system, but it ain’t posthuman—it’s practically feudal. You spend enough time: you become “rich.”[25] And what Freedom^TM does is present this economy as alternative to our own.

I can’t help but think, considering my own panoptic time[26] in WoW, that the model Suarez outlines in Freedom^TM is in fact fairly prescient and promising. (Furthermore it evokes, perhaps unconsciously, all the “good” things about Economy 2.0 that Stross outlines in Accelerando; actually, not only that, it resembles more concretely a weirdly [T] Rooseveltian populism than anything that has been broached recently, and for that, I commend him.) That said, however, his fiction depends upon so many cognitive leaps that even the possibility of its utopian realization has to confront the brutality of late-capital and its ability to totalize, reify, and absorb pretty-much-everything. In short, he makes it quite clear that even the possibility of this type of emergent, post-capital economy will have to confront capital-as-it-is—i.e. in all its brutal logic.

And this bring me to the second reason why this novel is notable. I might be totally wrong about this, but I think this is the first novel that truly imagines in a “real” way what the destruction of our current archive would look like. The real danger of our postmodernity is that everything will be “deleted.” And this is precisely what the villains of Freedom^TM try to bring about: Cybergeddon. Delete the archive. All of it. All the money, digital affects, and flows of global capital: gone. This is our current apocalyptic scenario par excellence. The novel posits a conspiracy of just this type of endeavor[27]: to leave capital, and perhaps more importantly, information, in the hands of even fewer people than it resides w/ today. (This is what the internet is for, btw: to continue informatic (and capital) flow after nukes destroy shit.) The utopian nature of this novel is that WoW can solve this dilemma. (Btw, it can’t. You ever talk to the dumbasses which inhabit that world !? Shit.)

So I feel at this point tired and that I’ve confronted the major issues of these respective Apocalyptexts, so will leave off. But basically, if these novels do nothing else, they recast the “economic downturn” in far more interesting ways than simple old-style apocalypticism would, and, though these novels aren’t apocalyptic per se,[28] they still are compelling for all sorts of reasons, the least of which are archival.

In other words: delete the archive, make the archive into an economy, a ride, a (self-replicating) machine, or what-have-you, the nuclear logic of archival accumulation or destruction is still the dominant trope of our fictions. And btw, Obama may have called what is happening in my current reality “Snowmageddon,” but I prefer my roommate’s words: “Snowbliteration.” Cheers brothers and sisters.

[1] This isn’t quite true in the case of Suarez and the “Cybergeddon” he introduces. See Daniel Suarez, Freedom^TM (New York: Dutton, 2010), 370-2. More on this later. (Seriously, btw, that’s twice in a little over a week that I’ve encountered the suffix “-geddon” applied to things that perhaps do not deserve it. I’m looking at you Obama, and your “snowmageddon.” If you really want to get a taste of snowmageddon, read Robinson’s Science in the Capital trilogy.)

[2] “Our coming was expected on earth. Like every generation that preceded us, we have been endowed with a weak messianic power, a power to which the past has a claim. That claim cannot be settled cheaply. Historical materialists are aware of that” (Walter Benjamin, “Theses on the Philosophy of History,” Illuminations, trans. Harry Zohn, ed. Hannah Arendt [New York: Schocken Books, 1968], 254).

[3] Whatever the hell that is. . . .

[4] I also can’t help but coin a phrase here. Perhaps we should call tales of apocalyptically destructive economic disaster: Capitalgeddon? W/ a British accent: “that is a capital [sic] idea!” Or perhaps we’d be better off getting rid of geddons altogether. (Geddongeddon? Yeesh.)

[5] Recall Benjamin’s famous first thesis: “The story is told of an automaton constructed in such a way that it could play a winning game of chess, answering each move of an opponent with a countermove. A puppet in Turkish attire and with a hookah in its mouth sat before a chessboard placed on a large table. A system of mirrors created the illusion that this table was transparent from all sides. Actually, a little hunchback who was an expert chess player sat inside and guided the puppet’s hand by means of strings. One can imagine a philosophical counterpart to this device. The puppet called ‘historical materialism’ is to win all the time. It can easily be a match for anyone if it enlists the services of theology, which, today, as we know, is wizened to and has to keep out of sight” (Benjamin, 253).

[6] Suarez is, according to the book-jacket “an independent systems consultant to Fortune 1000 companies. He has designed and developed enterprise software for the defense, finance, and entertainment industries.” And of course I would assume Doctorow’s own work in the blogosphere (Boing Boing) is relatively familiar to most.

[7] A particularly arresting passage: “Off the turnpike [between Orlando and Hollywood, Florida], it was even worse. The shantytowns multiplied and multiplied. Laundry lines stretched out in the parking lots of former strip malls. Every traffic light clogged with aggressive techno-tchotchke vendors, the squeegee bums of the twenty-first century, with their pornographic animatronic dollies and infinitely varied robot dogs. Disney World still sucked in a fair number of tourists (though not nearly so many as in its golden day) [Lewis Mumford anyone?], but they were staying away from Miami in droves. The snowbirds had died off in a great demographic spasm over the past decade, and their children lacked the financial wherewithal to even think of overwintering in their parents’ now derelict condos. The area around the dead Wal-Mart was particularly awful. The shanties here rose three, even four stories into the air, clustered together to make medieval street mazes. Broward County had long since stopped enforcing the property claims of the bankruptcy courts that managed the real-estate interests of the former owners of the fields and malls that had been turned into the new towns” (Cory Doctorow, Makers [New York: Tom Doherty Associates, 2009], 121).

[8] Doctorow imagines that Disney as we know it splits form Disney Theme Parks (“Imagineering”), becoming two separate companies, and allowing the Imagineering arm of it to take on licenses outside of the Disney purview, say, Universal, Fox, etc.

[9] A gray-market genetic treatment one has to go to Russia to receive, which basically wipes away all body fat, but b/c Americans are stupid, they go whole hog for perfect bodies and have to eat 10,000 calories a day, which basically ruins every single system in their bodies in terrible ways. Yes, ridiculous, but so is this novel. . . (this is not meant in a derogatory fashion).

[10] This novel was published under the penname “Leinad Zeraus” in 2006 by Verdugo Press (basically a vanity press). Its massive success caused Dutton, an imprint of Penguin, to re-release the novel under Suarez’s actual name in early 2009. Freedom^TM is the sequel to Daemon.

[11] Suarez, 227.

[12] Of course there is much more to talk about w/r/t these novels, but I’ll leave that to someone else.

[13] Thanks need to be given, btw, for much of this post to J. James Bono, as he directed my attention to virtually everything in it. Seriously, why didn’t I mention this earlier, Jamie is perhaps the most “with-it” person I know when it comes to, idk, pretty much anything (esp. computery stuff).

[14] To paraphrase the Liars (“Grown Men Don’t Fall in the River, Just Like That,” They Threw Us All in a Trench and Stuck a Monument on Top [Mute Records, 2001]).

[15] Its last 2/3 get fairly bogged down in “character development” and far too much interest in theme parks and Disney.

[16] God I hate this word and other variations of it.

[17] Hyperarchivalism if I’ve ever seen it.

[18] I’ve done away w/ paragraph breaks in this quotation for formatting and readability reasons. If this offends anyone, get in touch.

[19] Doctorow, 124.

[20] Btw, for those who’re interested, I’m “Slothrop” (yes this is a Gravity’s Rainbow reference) or “Wyattgwyon” (a Gaddis [The Recognitions] reference) in “Galakrond.”

[21] Well, of course there is—i.e. I can just run around talking to people, but this action doesn’t preclude that whomever I’m talking to immediately “judges” me based upon my archival makeup. The transgressive and alternative possibilities of the game are still w/in the game itself.

[22] And I’m inclined to agree w/ Suarez, for whatever reasons.

[23] This is to ignore the clear goals late-capital has for itself, of course. See Naomi Klein, The Shock Doctrine (New York: Picador Books, 2007). This is also to give an imperative to Obama: provide some fucking goals!

[24] As opposed to being perpetually outside of or tangential to it, as we all are now.

[25] Btw, I ain’t in this economy. I just don’t have the time, inclination, drive, nor OCD necessary to succeed in this economy; and most importantly, I don’t care.

[26] And I do mean this w/ all the appropriate disciplinary connotations.

[27] Against which, of course, our intrepid WoW–ians are fighting.

[28] Seriously, I think that’s the third time I’ve used this here. oops.

Fallout: New Vegas

February 8, 2010 / Bradley J. Fest / Leave a comment

For anyone who recognizes the banner to this here blog. . . they’ll understand why I’m posting this. But anyway, a new Fallout game set in Las Vegas has been announced, and though I don’t think a single detail has been released, we get yet another post-apocalyptic, freakout-wasteland to explore in the near future. Thank Abaddon for video games that give us post-nuclear scenarios–I can convince myself I’m doing work when I’m really just wasting time. Can’t wait.

“Snowmageddon”

February 8, 2010February 8, 2010 / Bradley J. Fest / Leave a comment

Today I experienced my first ever “snow day,” as my Reading Poetry class along w/ the rest of the University of Pittsburgh’s classes got canceled; and to commemorate it I thought I’d add a couple more “Apocalyptexts”: basically things I’ve read recently during a bout of mild yet much deserved academic irresponsibility. For someone who grew up in Tucson, Arizona, a snow day is completely novel. The closest I ever came to anything resembling a snow day was school being canceled b/c of floods, but that really isn’t the same thing at all, for the rains, when they come—even when they are torrential and flood the streets w/ feet of water—are a blessing: they slake the perpetual thirst of the desert. For this snow day, however, it isn’t even snowing (it’s actually sunny and quite nice, if cold, outside). The nearly 2 feet of snow that got dumped on the ‘burgh b/t Friday evening and Saturday morning is basically still on the ground, and doesn’t look like it’s going anywhere anytime soon (there’s another 3-6 inches expected Wed.). The storm that hit the mid-atlantic states this past weekend dumped the most snow pittsburgh has seen since 1992, and is one of the 4 worst snow storms in terms of inches since they started keeping track of this stuff. Basically, it’s kinda epic. (Though the pics below don’t quite do it justice, esp. since things have “melted” a bit in the past couple of days.) Wandering around the city has been surreal. I haven’t been driving b/c my back-wheel drive pickup truck would not get very far—esp. w/o the sandbags in the back I’ve been procrastinating putting there all winter—though I do have a large amount of respect for the many inhabitants I’ve seen valiantly digging their cars out and spinning their wheels down streets it looks like no one has even tried to plow. There has been an infectious sense of joy amidst what they are still calling a “state of emergency” (or maybe it’s just me, whose current life is such as to be minimally effected by this type of inclement weather). More people are walking around the streets than I’ve ever seen before, and people are generally smiling and cordial, esp. those brave souls who have gone to work, opened much needed services and stores, and basically kept the whole capitalist train running. My thanks. But I am sitting at home, warm and happy, pouring hot water down my pipes to unfreeze them (they weren’t that frozen thankfully) so I could do some much-needed laundry. So what better way to spend a snow day, to endure what Barack Obama called “snowmageddon” (no fooling), to do some apocalyptic blogging? My thoughts precisely. On to some Apocalyptexts.

Also, someone has recently pointed me toward this delightful apocalyptic flash video, check it out.

Some pics (though they aren’t as apocalyptic as could be, as I just stepped outside to do them, rather than, as I shoulda, taken my camera when I was wandering around the city earlier):

wait, that tree limb isn't supposed to be there. . . .

Yep, that tree limb has definitely decided to come hang out on the porch. there's also a grill, a table, and some chairs out here somewhere. . . .

I'm not going anywhere.

holy nuclear winter batman!

tree, please don't fall on our house.

I’ll try to be more prescient and try to take my camera elsewhere, but not today. cheers.

In the Words of Daft Punk, the Archive Won’t Stop, Can’t Stop; or, Why The Book of Eli Makes me Feel Good About My Choices in Life Even if it is a Terrible Film

January 17, 2010June 22, 2014 / Bradley J. Fest / Leave a comment

I have to admit that the recently released The Book of Eli (The Hughes Brothers, 2010)[1] constitutes a moment of personal gratification for myself and my recently completed PhD project in that it only serves to further cement the work I did there.[2] In short, a bulk of my project constituted a revivification of the now long dead and mostly forgotten practice of “nuclear criticism,” a theoretical framework most explicitly laid out in Jacques Derrida’s “No Apocalypse, Not Now (Full Speed Ahead, Seven Missiles, Seven Missives),” which he delivered in1984 at a colloquium on nuclear criticism at Cornell University. At the time, Derrida argued that all literature is marked by the nuclear epoch in that the historical and literary archive is that which is most threatened by nuclear war. What The Book of Eli represents so dramatically is exactly this logic: whatever else may be going on in its world, the real stakes of the post-apocalyptic wasteland Denzel Washington (Eli) traverses throughout the film are ultimately archival ones.

Disregarding for a moment the conflicted and confusing Christian ideology which infects the film like an out-of-control tumor, as well as the film’s problematic geography, weak characterization, the presence of Mila Kunis,[3] and its overall ridiculous premise, this film is about a book, and not just any book, it is about the Christian Bible.[4] Denzel has been told by a voice (Christian God) to carry the only remaining Bible west, and that he would not only be protected during this journey,[5] he would “know” when he arrived where he needed to be.[6] Threatening his progress is Gary Oldman’s character, who is desperately seeking a Bible for its powers of populace-manipulation (think Nietzsche’s Genealogy of Morals). There is also a pretty great scene when a bunch of books are plopped down on Oldman’s desk, right after he was reading a biography (?) of Mussolini; he of course instructs his underlings to burn these books (archival destruction!).

The real crux of the film for myself is the reason it gives for there being only one Bible remaining. Basically, after what appears to be global nuclear war, the survivors got together and burned all the Bibles in the world, blaming this text for the devastation. (This also implies that this was a religiously motivated war, like b/t Islamic States and Christian ones, rather than a good ole’ ideological nuclear war.) Denzel’s ultimate task is to bring this Bible, which he memorizes—so doesn’t need the actual object (memory as archive. . .)—to Alcatraz, where a printing press and archive has been set up to rebuild civilization. The film ends with the Christian Bible being placed on a rack of books including the Torah and the Qur’an, as well as a host of other religious texts.[7]

In all of this, The Book of Eli is a deeply confused film. It simultaneously acknowledges the really insidious, destructive aspects of religion while attempting to uphold the importance of the Bible’s teaching—namely “faith.” Denzel-as-blind-prophet directly communicating w/ God as signaling the importance of the restoration of the New Testament (one would assume the Old Testament was present on that shelf already. . . .) runs directly into the Bible as “just another book” in the last scene. The Apocalypse portrayed is simultaneously one caused archivally (by religion) and one that can be lived-through afterward only archivally (by, again, religion). (Need I mention that if the nuclear war wasn’t the Apocalypse of Revelations, it is, in Derrida’s phrase, “still to come” in the space of the film. . . .)[8] The film, ultimately, has no idea what it is trying to communicate, no idea where it stands, no idea what Christianity really has to do w/ anything, other than being a convenient trope for an apocalyptic film.

And, at day’s end, this is what is so impressive about the film. Its archivally apocalyptic logic overwhelms it, takes center-stage, and demonstrates that the archive’s destruction (or restoration) is the limit of the nuclear. Once one invokes such a post-apocalyptic landscape, all questions become archival. The visual presentation of the film is at times breathtaking—man I love what CGI enables w/r/t post-apocalyptic landscapes—but in every case, the visuals are simply archival markers of what has been destroyed: the Golden Gate Bridge, Nuclear Power Stations, Freeways, old burned-out automobiles, gigantic craters, and of course the presence of “Western” towns run by a malignant “boss” (Oldman’s character is unsubtly named “Carnegie”). The main object Denzel carries around as a marker of the “good” of humanity, the Bible aside, is in-and-of-itself an archive: an old beat-up iPod (man he loves listening to that iPod).

Basically, the Bible in The Book of Eli is merely a stand-in for archival maintenance or restoration. It doesn’t really matter what book it is in the space of the film, only that the Bible is perhaps the most manipulatively affective sign of this restoration[9] and that it allows all sorts of other heavy-handed bullshit to enter the narrative space.[10] In short, The Book of Eli is yet another marker of the reliance of aesthetics upon imagining the archive as both producing apocalyptic destruction and saving the world from that very same destruction. This is nothing new, of course, but the overt manner in which this happens throughout the film combined w/ the work I just completed, makes it a singularly interesting (for me at least) instance of this, and one which shouldn’t be ignored just b/c the film is so awful.

[1] This is actually a slightly odd entry into the Hughes oeuvre, as they had previously made films like From Hell (2001), American Pimp (1999), Dead Presidents (1995), and Menace II Society (1993).

[2] In other words, during my written project exams I referred to its imminent release, and while we were waiting to get started with my oral exams, my committee and I had a brief conversation about it. Needless to say, if The Book of Eli proves anything, it is that I will always have a career talking about archivally apocalyptic films. . . .

[3] And how “hot” she looks in a world where pretty much all the other characters look like irradiated mutants, i.e. Tom Waits’ cameo (though he does look alright).

[4] Btw, I’m going to spoil this movie all over the place here, so don’t read on if you care about such things. (I’m going to spoil it in 3, 2, 1. . . .) That said, it wouldn’t really hurt you knowing whatever it is I’m going to say b/c you already know what is going to more-or-less happen the minute the film opens—i.e. both my friend Adri and I kinda knew Eli was blind pretty early on, and just sorta forgot this fact as the film progressed, making the big “reveal” or “plot twist” pretty funny/not surprising at all (that he was blind the whole time and, lo and behold, the book he was carrying around was in brail!)—poor Gary Oldman.

[5] Consequently, ridiculous action scenes ensue where Denzel is pretty much a badass.

[6] For those of you looking for a clear analogue b/t Denzel and the biblical Elijah, there is none. The closest it gets is Malachi 4:1-5: “See, the day is coming, burning like an oven, when all the arrogant and all the evil-doers will be stubble; the day that comes shall burn them up, says the Lord of hosts, so that it will leave them neither root nor branch. But for you who revere my name the sun of righteousness shall rise, with healing in its wings. You shall go out leaping like calves from the stall. And you shall tread down the wicked, for they will be ashes under the soles of your feet, on the day when I act, says the Lord of the hosts. . . . Lo, I will send you the prophet Elijah before the great and terrible day of the Lord comes. He will turn the hearts of parents to their children and the hearts of children to their parents, so that I will not come and strike the land with a curse.” (Note: this is taken from The New Oxford Annotated Bible. Other Bibles place this as Malachi 3:19-24.)If indeed Elijah-as-prophet-of-messiah-and-eschaton is the reference for Denzel, then the film botches this quite badly—i.e. the burning has already happened. The film makes a point of stressing how humans (not God) caused this destruction, however, so within the theological-eschatological space of the film, perhaps all this means is that the messiah and “real” burning (the landscape of the film looks pretty burned though. . .) is in the future—the apocalypse hasn’t “happened” yet. Kunis’ character, Solara, also seems to be an analogue for the biblical figure Elisha, but again, the Christian or Old Testament themes are pretty damn loose everywhere here, so reading the film in such a way doesn’t really generate much (or so I believe).

[7] There is also something to be said about this being a “‘New’ King James Bible,” rather than a translation from the Hebrew or Greek. English gets privileged as the language of God in a very real way, which, the more I think about it, is deeply disturbing. (To say nothing about the textual inaccuracies of the King James Bible. . . .)

[8] This is also to say nothing about the cannibals, George and Martha (Washington) and the shootout which occurs at their (little) house (on the apocalyptically devastated prairie—i.e. also see my entry on apocalyptic Westerns w/r/t The Road).

[9] Furthermore, the film doesn’t even address the glaring fact that the Bible is the best-selling book of all time, and to destroy every copy but one is ludicrous, no matter how fanatical the Firemen or Tetragrammaton Clerics may be.

[10] In that, it really isn’t much better than something like the Left Behind series, and may in fact be more insidious b/c of the presence of Denzel rather than, say, Kirk Cameron.