tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-306652182024-03-18T05:47:41.052-04:00Benefit of the DoubtA "pop culture apologist blog," looking at mass media film, music, and memes according to their own merits.Jesse Mhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06628842413174084374noreply@blogger.comBlogger348125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30665218.post-83390153487059096582020-10-12T13:00:00.001-04:002020-10-12T13:00:04.376-04:00Reflections on Visual Art<p>As I mature as a person, I am learning to integrate my disparities more fully. One way I'm doing this is giving up on specialization (a contrarian sensibility, in a world where I'm expected to specialize in order to compete). For instance, though I've adopted poetry as my primary outlet in the last few years, I've refused to let go of visual art. Here are a few of my current/recent visual art rituals:</p><p></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>I completed a series of drawings this summer for the Sketchbook Project, entitled Deck of Motifs.</li><li>I've been trying to push my interests in photography, experimenting more with compositing and abstraction. One accomplishment there: <a href="https://orangeblushzine.wixsite.com/home">Orange Blush zine</a> is going to publish a few of my photographs in their winter issue.</li><li>I'm currently entrenched in Inktober, which I'm completing this year in a tiny sketchbook, working for the first time ever directly in pen and ink (not every drawing, but the increasing majority)</li></ul><p></p><p>I love that poetry is a fairly narrow field, a world of people who are very passionate: a tight-knit, extremely supportive community of nerd practitioners at the bleeding edges of language, culture, and experimental thought. But visual art is a whole different dimension, with its own scale and dynamic -- a panoramic spread of approaches, and an unimaginable volume of free-floating talent. The ocean for visual art is big, and even the small fish are breathtaking.</p><p>There is a vast universe of brilliant visual art out there, always one step away in Instagram or Pinterest. Amateurs and enthusiasts are doing magical things with line and color, using every medium imaginable. We are incredibly fortunate to live in the digital era, when these human capacities have been unlocked -- not the capacity to do the art itself, but the means to propagate it --</p><p>A time when the resources to create art (both the materials and the technical knowledge) is accessible enough that creative production is within reach for so many...</p><p>And a time when the contact surfaces for communication have blossomed so bountifully -- now that millions of aspirants can reach an audience, and the curious consumer has a million new venues for discovering the art that stirs them.</p><p>We live at the center of an explosion of creativity, an era that dwarfs the Renaissance. I think some people out there are still convinced that our age is somehow creatively impoverished -- that there are too many remakes of films, too many narrowly-scripted artistic movements, too tight a relationship between capitalist (and popular) market forces and availability of art. But I think these people are wrong. for reasons I can't quite pin down (too hung up on outdated modes of legitimacy, perhaps?).</p><p>Here are a couple of my favorites from my feed just now --</p>
<p></p><blockquote class="instagram-media" data-instgrm-captioned="" data-instgrm-permalink="https://www.instagram.com/p/CGOb3feBLV8/?utm_source=ig_embed&utm_campaign=loading" data-instgrm-version="12" style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); border-radius: 3px; border: 0px; box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.5) 0px 0px 1px 0px, rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.15) 0px 1px 10px 0px; margin: 1px; max-width: 540px; min-width: 326px; padding: 0px; width: calc(100% - 2px);"><div style="padding: 16px;"> <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/CGOb3feBLV8/?utm_source=ig_embed&utm_campaign=loading" style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 0; padding: 0px; text-align: center; text-decoration: none; width: 100%;" target="_blank"> <div style="align-items: center; display: flex; flex-direction: row;"> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 50%; flex-grow: 0; height: 40px; margin-right: 14px; width: 40px;"></div> <div style="display: flex; flex-direction: column; flex-grow: 1; justify-content: center;"> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 4px; flex-grow: 0; height: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; width: 100px;"></div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 4px; flex-grow: 0; height: 14px; width: 60px;"></div></div></div><div style="padding: 19% 0px;"></div> <div style="display: block; height: 50px; margin: 0px auto 12px; width: 50px;"><svg height="50px" version="1.1" viewbox="0 0 60 60" width="50px" xmlns:xlink="https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" xmlns="https://www.w3.org/2000/svg"><g fill-rule="evenodd" fill="none" stroke-width="1" stroke="none"><g fill="#000000" transform="translate(-511.000000, -20.000000)"><g><path d="M556.869,30.41 C554.814,30.41 553.148,32.076 553.148,34.131 C553.148,36.186 554.814,37.852 556.869,37.852 C558.924,37.852 560.59,36.186 560.59,34.131 C560.59,32.076 558.924,30.41 556.869,30.41 M541,60.657 C535.114,60.657 530.342,55.887 530.342,50 C530.342,44.114 535.114,39.342 541,39.342 C546.887,39.342 551.658,44.114 551.658,50 C551.658,55.887 546.887,60.657 541,60.657 M541,33.886 C532.1,33.886 524.886,41.1 524.886,50 C524.886,58.899 532.1,66.113 541,66.113 C549.9,66.113 557.115,58.899 557.115,50 C557.115,41.1 549.9,33.886 541,33.886 M565.378,62.101 C565.244,65.022 564.756,66.606 564.346,67.663 C563.803,69.06 563.154,70.057 562.106,71.106 C561.058,72.155 560.06,72.803 558.662,73.347 C557.607,73.757 556.021,74.244 553.102,74.378 C549.944,74.521 548.997,74.552 541,74.552 C533.003,74.552 532.056,74.521 528.898,74.378 C525.979,74.244 524.393,73.757 523.338,73.347 C521.94,72.803 520.942,72.155 519.894,71.106 C518.846,70.057 518.197,69.06 517.654,67.663 C517.244,66.606 516.755,65.022 516.623,62.101 C516.479,58.943 516.448,57.996 516.448,50 C516.448,42.003 516.479,41.056 516.623,37.899 C516.755,34.978 517.244,33.391 517.654,32.338 C518.197,30.938 518.846,29.942 519.894,28.894 C520.942,27.846 521.94,27.196 523.338,26.654 C524.393,26.244 525.979,25.756 528.898,25.623 C532.057,25.479 533.004,25.448 541,25.448 C548.997,25.448 549.943,25.479 553.102,25.623 C556.021,25.756 557.607,26.244 558.662,26.654 C560.06,27.196 561.058,27.846 562.106,28.894 C563.154,29.942 563.803,30.938 564.346,32.338 C564.756,33.391 565.244,34.978 565.378,37.899 C565.522,41.056 565.552,42.003 565.552,50 C565.552,57.996 565.522,58.943 565.378,62.101 M570.82,37.631 C570.674,34.438 570.167,32.258 569.425,30.349 C568.659,28.377 567.633,26.702 565.965,25.035 C564.297,23.368 562.623,22.342 560.652,21.575 C558.743,20.834 556.562,20.326 553.369,20.18 C550.169,20.033 549.148,20 541,20 C532.853,20 531.831,20.033 528.631,20.18 C525.438,20.326 523.257,20.834 521.349,21.575 C519.376,22.342 517.703,23.368 516.035,25.035 C514.368,26.702 513.342,28.377 512.574,30.349 C511.834,32.258 511.326,34.438 511.181,37.631 C511.035,40.831 511,41.851 511,50 C511,58.147 511.035,59.17 511.181,62.369 C511.326,65.562 511.834,67.743 512.574,69.651 C513.342,71.625 514.368,73.296 516.035,74.965 C517.703,76.634 519.376,77.658 521.349,78.425 C523.257,79.167 525.438,79.673 528.631,79.82 C531.831,79.965 532.853,80.001 541,80.001 C549.148,80.001 550.169,79.965 553.369,79.82 C556.562,79.673 558.743,79.167 560.652,78.425 C562.623,77.658 564.297,76.634 565.965,74.965 C567.633,73.296 568.659,71.625 569.425,69.651 C570.167,67.743 570.674,65.562 570.82,62.369 C570.966,59.17 571,58.147 571,50 C571,41.851 570.966,40.831 570.82,37.631"></path></g></g></g></svg></div><div style="padding-top: 8px;"> <div style="color: #3897f0; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-weight: 550; line-height: 18px;"> View this post on Instagram</div></div><div style="padding: 12.5% 0px;"></div> <div style="align-items: center; display: flex; flex-direction: row; margin-bottom: 14px;"><div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 50%; height: 12.5px; transform: translateX(0px) translateY(7px); width: 12.5px;"></div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; flex-grow: 0; height: 12.5px; margin-left: 2px; margin-right: 14px; transform: rotate(-45deg) translateX(3px) translateY(1px); width: 12.5px;"></div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 50%; height: 12.5px; transform: translateX(9px) translateY(-18px); width: 12.5px;"></div></div><div style="margin-left: 8px;"> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 50%; flex-grow: 0; height: 20px; width: 20px;"></div> <div style="border-bottom: 2px solid transparent; border-left: 6px solid rgb(244, 244, 244); border-top: 2px solid transparent; height: 0px; transform: translateX(16px) translateY(-4px) rotate(30deg); width: 0px;"></div></div><div style="margin-left: auto;"> <div style="border-right: 8px solid transparent; border-top: 8px solid rgb(244, 244, 244); transform: translateY(16px); width: 0px;"></div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; flex-grow: 0; height: 12px; transform: translateY(-4px); width: 16px;"></div> <div style="border-left: 8px solid transparent; border-top: 8px solid rgb(244, 244, 244); height: 0px; transform: translateY(-4px) translateX(8px); width: 0px;"></div></div></div></a> <p style="margin: 8px 0px 0px; padding: 0px 4px;"> <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/CGOb3feBLV8/?utm_source=ig_embed&utm_campaign=loading" style="color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 17px; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration: none; word-wrap: break-word;" target="_blank">This place was like a desert to me. #inktober2020 #illustration #illust #art #draw #drawing #desenho #sketch #artwork #kunst #oc #penart #bnw #arts #doodle #dibujos #dessin #일러스트 #dailyart #lineart #일러스트레이터 #simpleart #instaart #illustrator #그림 #teckning #inktober #minimalism #artsy</a></p> <p style="color: #c9c8cd; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 17px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 8px; overflow: hidden; padding: 8px 0px 7px; text-align: center; text-overflow: ellipsis; white-space: nowrap;">A post shared by <a href="https://www.instagram.com/wondami0907/?utm_source=ig_embed&utm_campaign=loading" style="color: #c9c8cd; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 17px;" target="_blank"> wondami0907</a> (@wondami0907) on <time datetime="2020-10-12T01:46:42+00:00" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 17px;">Oct 11, 2020 at 6:46pm PDT</time></p></div></blockquote> <script async="" src="//www.instagram.com/embed.js"></script><p></p>
<blockquote class="instagram-media" data-instgrm-captioned="" data-instgrm-permalink="https://www.instagram.com/p/CGMBdyHJkUk/?utm_source=ig_embed&utm_campaign=loading" data-instgrm-version="12" style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); border-radius: 3px; border: 0px; box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.5) 0px 0px 1px 0px, rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.15) 0px 1px 10px 0px; margin: 1px; max-width: 540px; min-width: 326px; padding: 0px; width: calc(100% - 2px);"><div style="padding: 16px;"> <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/CGMBdyHJkUk/?utm_source=ig_embed&utm_campaign=loading" style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 0; padding: 0px; text-align: center; text-decoration: none; width: 100%;" target="_blank"> <div style="align-items: center; display: flex; flex-direction: row;"> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 50%; flex-grow: 0; height: 40px; margin-right: 14px; width: 40px;"></div> <div style="display: flex; flex-direction: column; flex-grow: 1; justify-content: center;"> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 4px; flex-grow: 0; height: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; width: 100px;"></div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 4px; flex-grow: 0; height: 14px; width: 60px;"></div></div></div><div style="padding: 19% 0px;"></div> <div style="display: block; height: 50px; margin: 0px auto 12px; width: 50px;"><svg height="50px" version="1.1" viewbox="0 0 60 60" width="50px" xmlns:xlink="https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" xmlns="https://www.w3.org/2000/svg"><g fill-rule="evenodd" fill="none" stroke-width="1" stroke="none"><g fill="#000000" transform="translate(-511.000000, -20.000000)"><g><path d="M556.869,30.41 C554.814,30.41 553.148,32.076 553.148,34.131 C553.148,36.186 554.814,37.852 556.869,37.852 C558.924,37.852 560.59,36.186 560.59,34.131 C560.59,32.076 558.924,30.41 556.869,30.41 M541,60.657 C535.114,60.657 530.342,55.887 530.342,50 C530.342,44.114 535.114,39.342 541,39.342 C546.887,39.342 551.658,44.114 551.658,50 C551.658,55.887 546.887,60.657 541,60.657 M541,33.886 C532.1,33.886 524.886,41.1 524.886,50 C524.886,58.899 532.1,66.113 541,66.113 C549.9,66.113 557.115,58.899 557.115,50 C557.115,41.1 549.9,33.886 541,33.886 M565.378,62.101 C565.244,65.022 564.756,66.606 564.346,67.663 C563.803,69.06 563.154,70.057 562.106,71.106 C561.058,72.155 560.06,72.803 558.662,73.347 C557.607,73.757 556.021,74.244 553.102,74.378 C549.944,74.521 548.997,74.552 541,74.552 C533.003,74.552 532.056,74.521 528.898,74.378 C525.979,74.244 524.393,73.757 523.338,73.347 C521.94,72.803 520.942,72.155 519.894,71.106 C518.846,70.057 518.197,69.06 517.654,67.663 C517.244,66.606 516.755,65.022 516.623,62.101 C516.479,58.943 516.448,57.996 516.448,50 C516.448,42.003 516.479,41.056 516.623,37.899 C516.755,34.978 517.244,33.391 517.654,32.338 C518.197,30.938 518.846,29.942 519.894,28.894 C520.942,27.846 521.94,27.196 523.338,26.654 C524.393,26.244 525.979,25.756 528.898,25.623 C532.057,25.479 533.004,25.448 541,25.448 C548.997,25.448 549.943,25.479 553.102,25.623 C556.021,25.756 557.607,26.244 558.662,26.654 C560.06,27.196 561.058,27.846 562.106,28.894 C563.154,29.942 563.803,30.938 564.346,32.338 C564.756,33.391 565.244,34.978 565.378,37.899 C565.522,41.056 565.552,42.003 565.552,50 C565.552,57.996 565.522,58.943 565.378,62.101 M570.82,37.631 C570.674,34.438 570.167,32.258 569.425,30.349 C568.659,28.377 567.633,26.702 565.965,25.035 C564.297,23.368 562.623,22.342 560.652,21.575 C558.743,20.834 556.562,20.326 553.369,20.18 C550.169,20.033 549.148,20 541,20 C532.853,20 531.831,20.033 528.631,20.18 C525.438,20.326 523.257,20.834 521.349,21.575 C519.376,22.342 517.703,23.368 516.035,25.035 C514.368,26.702 513.342,28.377 512.574,30.349 C511.834,32.258 511.326,34.438 511.181,37.631 C511.035,40.831 511,41.851 511,50 C511,58.147 511.035,59.17 511.181,62.369 C511.326,65.562 511.834,67.743 512.574,69.651 C513.342,71.625 514.368,73.296 516.035,74.965 C517.703,76.634 519.376,77.658 521.349,78.425 C523.257,79.167 525.438,79.673 528.631,79.82 C531.831,79.965 532.853,80.001 541,80.001 C549.148,80.001 550.169,79.965 553.369,79.82 C556.562,79.673 558.743,79.167 560.652,78.425 C562.623,77.658 564.297,76.634 565.965,74.965 C567.633,73.296 568.659,71.625 569.425,69.651 C570.167,67.743 570.674,65.562 570.82,62.369 C570.966,59.17 571,58.147 571,50 C571,41.851 570.966,40.831 570.82,37.631"></path></g></g></g></svg></div><div style="padding-top: 8px;"> <div style="color: #3897f0; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-weight: 550; line-height: 18px;"> View this post on Instagram</div></div><div style="padding: 12.5% 0px;"></div> <div style="align-items: center; display: flex; flex-direction: row; margin-bottom: 14px;"><div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 50%; height: 12.5px; transform: translateX(0px) translateY(7px); width: 12.5px;"></div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; flex-grow: 0; height: 12.5px; margin-left: 2px; margin-right: 14px; transform: rotate(-45deg) translateX(3px) translateY(1px); width: 12.5px;"></div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 50%; height: 12.5px; transform: translateX(9px) translateY(-18px); width: 12.5px;"></div></div><div style="margin-left: 8px;"> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 50%; flex-grow: 0; height: 20px; width: 20px;"></div> <div style="border-bottom: 2px solid transparent; border-left: 6px solid rgb(244, 244, 244); border-top: 2px solid transparent; height: 0px; transform: translateX(16px) translateY(-4px) rotate(30deg); width: 0px;"></div></div><div style="margin-left: auto;"> <div style="border-right: 8px solid transparent; border-top: 8px solid rgb(244, 244, 244); transform: translateY(16px); width: 0px;"></div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; flex-grow: 0; height: 12px; transform: translateY(-4px); width: 16px;"></div> <div style="border-left: 8px solid transparent; border-top: 8px solid rgb(244, 244, 244); height: 0px; transform: translateY(-4px) translateX(8px); width: 0px;"></div></div></div></a> <p style="margin: 8px 0px 0px; padding: 0px 4px;"> <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/CGMBdyHJkUk/?utm_source=ig_embed&utm_campaign=loading" style="color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 17px; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration: none; word-wrap: break-word;" target="_blank">I should go to church Day 10 . . . #sketch #sketchbook #drawing #inktober #inktober2020 #drawings #draw #sketch #sketching #artwork #inspiration #conceptart #instadaily #picoftheday #imagination #culture #kimjunggius #karlkopinski #entertainment #freestyle #characterdesign #micronpen #micron #vietnam #church #pope</a></p> <p style="color: #c9c8cd; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 17px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 8px; overflow: hidden; padding: 8px 0px 7px; text-align: center; text-overflow: ellipsis; white-space: nowrap;">A post shared by <a href="https://www.instagram.com/thinhnuen/?utm_source=ig_embed&utm_campaign=loading" style="color: #c9c8cd; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 17px;" target="_blank"> Thinh Nguyen</a> (@thinhnuen) on <time datetime="2020-10-11T03:17:32+00:00" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 17px;">Oct 10, 2020 at 8:17pm PDT</time></p></div></blockquote> <script async="" src="//www.instagram.com/embed.js"></script>
<p></p>
<p>I can't really think about why I do visual art, without thinking more directly about why I do art in general. I am, essentially, an embodiment -- the fundamental thing I do is <i>be in the world</i>. (see also <i>Dasein</i>, the cogito, etc etc). This is what I do before any specific goal-oriented behavior -- it's the basis for the personal, the social, and the spiritual aspects. I can't really think of any more fundamental task for myself than refining my capacity to do this... to level up my <i>being in the world</i>, to make it more subtle and responsive, more conscious and intense. Everything I do is directed toward this, from parenting and home-building to watching action movies.</p><p>Art -- visual and literary -- is my most cherished form of self-refinement. It's a sense-assertion... the senses being the contact surface where my embodiment meets its environment. It combines two basic ways of being: perceiving, and actuating (or effecting... acting on the world... is there a good Theory word for that?).</p><p>And this task of being, as I understand it, has at least two facets (among many many others I'm sure) -- extroverted and introverted. It's two forms of exploration --- two dimensions of the unknown --- and here's where we get to the different ways of creating art.</p><p>Here I was, leading to a thesis about how visual art differs from literary art, and I'm watching my claims fracture on my own theory. I was going to say that poetry is (for me) an introspective art (which it is) and visual art is extroverted. But this doesn't entirely hold up. In particular, visual art feels very different when we talk about photography versus drawing.</p><p>Photography is certainly my most extroverted art form. I subscribe to the basic theory that a camera is a finger, used to point at something in the world and act on the viewer's attention. It's play with the extant, the boundaries and gestalts and patterns that are folded endlessly into nature, waiting to be found. I love the way time and space create spontaneous compositions on our sense-receptors, the way we respond to symmetry, the way the world is an endless play of boundaries and gestalt relationships and chiaroscuro.</p><p>Photography is, in a sense, an art of self-annihilation, a way of being the purest sort of consumer possible: a device that grafts reality onto my subjectivity. A way of instrumentalizing passivity.</p><p>But when I draw, I generally start in relative isolation -- I've practiced drawing from life, and I use references, but this isn't where my drawings emerge from. Like poetry, they are an exploration of an inner landscape. I'm doing my best to access something subconscious, only grazing reality as an occasional, incidental tool.</p><p>If there's anybody who I'd point to as an inspiration for this -- someone who embodies the potent kinship between drawing and poetry -- it's Bianca Stone. If you're curious, take a moment to poke around <a href="http://www.poetrycomics.org/p/poetry-comics.html" target="_blank">some of her work at poetrycomics.org</a>.</p><p>Bianca has reached deeper into the subconscious than I have. When it comes to visual art, I'm still stuck in grooves of narrative and semiotics and tropes. Still, if you're curious about my most recent project, here's some of it:</p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7FGs44sKBUePX6-1QA0peZct9x5yQHWVVK0JkHAecEzrabQsxqAtMHrwoSIb3UWT4HOZR7pnrqmrRyCytDkc_olXIlz22X8wkWeWFYW9rxneC1nPu97cvE7vnJ0H86Ez1Za_P/s2016/IMG_4859.jpg" style="margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2016" data-original-width="1512" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7FGs44sKBUePX6-1QA0peZct9x5yQHWVVK0JkHAecEzrabQsxqAtMHrwoSIb3UWT4HOZR7pnrqmrRyCytDkc_olXIlz22X8wkWeWFYW9rxneC1nPu97cvE7vnJ0H86Ez1Za_P/w150-h200/IMG_4859.jpg" width="150" /></a> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgm3zsG8skhfWqMtCDM2L0d5GX4h2ya-wUcTVq6APhy_ig_PbnUHljejiGXN5H6INhKG0yqXA_QqOycrcYUNQr2JQluiu-6152sgn7Fiy9GACqIlLW5miEN3PCk0qKOXQgVP5TV/s2016/IMG_4865.jpg" style="margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2016" data-original-width="1512" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgm3zsG8skhfWqMtCDM2L0d5GX4h2ya-wUcTVq6APhy_ig_PbnUHljejiGXN5H6INhKG0yqXA_QqOycrcYUNQr2JQluiu-6152sgn7Fiy9GACqIlLW5miEN3PCk0qKOXQgVP5TV/w150-h200/IMG_4865.jpg" width="150" /></a> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBrXtnTEIe7Xqlht8Z9K9awriX9D-2p7h_Y1O0I1Ukrz3HX9y_O7SC98TFuCaCPDYTaaoojSZ7OBIu_DuuPKjZu8vZA2DejbeAWqpwguLpgQYVTk_isqgOu4yP2R4LtTcYOk5M/s2016/IMG_4867.jpg" style="margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2016" data-original-width="1512" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBrXtnTEIe7Xqlht8Z9K9awriX9D-2p7h_Y1O0I1Ukrz3HX9y_O7SC98TFuCaCPDYTaaoojSZ7OBIu_DuuPKjZu8vZA2DejbeAWqpwguLpgQYVTk_isqgOu4yP2R4LtTcYOk5M/w150-h200/IMG_4867.jpg" width="150" /></a> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzS1cVxiIKPfs-vOM_ahapLu220_qvsHRtrjEQkILDUvlDeFm77KDuKUlmn0p0b7eEFj5zdwNt7norSkoL-SuQB1ZHqxCfyq7ZyACgKiDS8Z_YEpBDrNS-DCKMNMEAjhHw1fmg/s2016/IMG_4869.jpg" style="margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2016" data-original-width="1512" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzS1cVxiIKPfs-vOM_ahapLu220_qvsHRtrjEQkILDUvlDeFm77KDuKUlmn0p0b7eEFj5zdwNt7norSkoL-SuQB1ZHqxCfyq7ZyACgKiDS8Z_YEpBDrNS-DCKMNMEAjhHw1fmg/w150-h200/IMG_4869.jpg" width="150" /></a> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvnm1KRGrlZEpTKKS-Zrk8iRzP2wJAcvR6CCmqw6g5dkgoV8tht9Z6JBiFaHZCDVFcem9URVnlhHiQK_FNm6mE0ZYg43UA8l5FaV73FDQ63lyPDxDqJU7WBgVoZlgULRhPxRN4/s2016/IMG_4880.jpg" style="margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2016" data-original-width="1512" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvnm1KRGrlZEpTKKS-Zrk8iRzP2wJAcvR6CCmqw6g5dkgoV8tht9Z6JBiFaHZCDVFcem9URVnlhHiQK_FNm6mE0ZYg43UA8l5FaV73FDQ63lyPDxDqJU7WBgVoZlgULRhPxRN4/w150-h200/IMG_4880.jpg" width="150" /></a> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghn_Jto301bKz7QTNdcut2nAxXfNPyOesZphLME7GMcZwMjY9pF6W9WQ0unY-5m5JQYWWZL0j6QHMUrKwZ3Eh_Kce6E-4vtDDN6WSUqiEKUrliGjWLkhXIhJYXzzGIvXzrXHF-/s2016/IMG_4886.jpg" style="margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2016" data-original-width="1512" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghn_Jto301bKz7QTNdcut2nAxXfNPyOesZphLME7GMcZwMjY9pF6W9WQ0unY-5m5JQYWWZL0j6QHMUrKwZ3Eh_Kce6E-4vtDDN6WSUqiEKUrliGjWLkhXIhJYXzzGIvXzrXHF-/w150-h200/IMG_4886.jpg" width="150" /></a></p>
<p>I've seen a fair amount of occult/divination posts recently, and I find it fascinating and intriguing on a pseudo-spiritual/deep-insight kind of level. Tarot has a lot of appeal for me, as a language of symbols with both a visual and a verbal component, and an expansive and ambiguous vocabulary for describing and structuring experience. My big hang-up: I don't really feel like investing the time it takes to learn these symbols, which seem to me (like all linguistic constructs) somewhat arbitrary in nature.</p><p>Wouldn't it be a better instrument if each person manifested their own tarot deck?</p><p>So I went about doing that, and called it the Deck of Motifs. It became the basis for my sketchbook project. The list of elements was basically spontaneous and intuitive, with a little curation and minimal editing. These then served as prompts for daily sketches and drawing exercises. It was a fun and fulfilling project, and I am happy to consign it to the Brooklyn Library Sketchbook Project, where, like the Arc of the Covenant, it probably won't ever be seen again.</p><p>Now that I'm done posting those, I'm moving on to Inktober. I'm still doing one specific thing, and I'll try my best to keep at it: for every drawing I post, I also post a photograph, so my Instagram feed is a checkerboard of photos and scrawls.</p><p>If you're interested at all in this side of my creative life, go ahead and check out my IG, and follow me: <a href="https://www.instagram.com/miksimum/">https://www.instagram.com/miksimum/</a> -- and send me your own IG name and story, if you're so inclined.</p><p>Thanks for reading.</p><div class="blogger-post-footer"><p><a href="http://benefitofthedoubt.miksimum.com">* Benefit of the Doubt *</a> | <a href="http://www.miksimum.com/">Miksimum</a></p></div>Jesse Mhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06628842413174084374noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30665218.post-77713219533336382772020-07-06T16:00:00.006-04:002020-07-06T16:00:00.631-04:00Reestablishing Connection, Attempt 1/x<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhiV-qRF1dfX94DJ7uOBC4WILfSUIORbiHXoPGP9P7KnLySLAtWVU8kXUhWiQx0861dxZxoI8iIyUIXSwotuv_yeCqDLiK23NbHy8mSyO4ulnoF-AE3itKuYJA1HPOxews4S_HR/s2113/28F4FE93-4BED-479C-811A-1CE37E22BCB2.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2113" data-original-width="1970" height="256" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhiV-qRF1dfX94DJ7uOBC4WILfSUIORbiHXoPGP9P7KnLySLAtWVU8kXUhWiQx0861dxZxoI8iIyUIXSwotuv_yeCqDLiK23NbHy8mSyO4ulnoF-AE3itKuYJA1HPOxews4S_HR/w238-h256/28F4FE93-4BED-479C-811A-1CE37E22BCB2.jpeg" width="238" /></a></div>I see I haven't posted here in over a year (my last post was a discussion of Fantasy back in June 2019, which I've referenced to in several Twitter discussions since then).<div><br /></div><div>I occasionally update my Instagram feed with photos I feel are passably interesting. Tumbler gets updated from time to time, both automatically (via Instagram reshare) and manually (back in October, most "recently").</div><div><br /></div><div>I could retire this blog entirely, as I've generally stopped doing regular casual media criticism. Most of my current production is Poetry. This has been true since 2017 -- I've been persistently exercising this skill, picking up occasional publications in online literary outlets, and becoming more involved with the online poetry community.</div><div><br /></div><div>The Twitter poetry scene seems to be the most productive. Established personalities join the discourse with more emergent authors and publications, and it's used broadly for discussion and announcements, both poetry-related and adjacent thereto. For a more consistent window into my sparse attempts to social engagement, visit me there at <a href="https://www.twitter.com/@miksimum" target="_blank">@miksimum</a>.</div><div><br /></div><div>Before we leave the topic of poetry, I'll post my most recent placements. For the full list, see <a href="http://www.miksimum.com/publications/" target="_blank">my Publications page on my website</a>.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>February 2020:</b></div><div><a href="https://www.jukejointmag.com/jesse-miksic" target="_blank">Downtown Office as Abscess</a> in Juke Joint Magazine</div><div><a href="https://www.neologismpoetry.com/February-2020#jm" target="_blank">Being a Thing in the Fall</a> in Neologism Poetry Journal</div><div><br /></div><div><b>April 2020</b></div><div>2 poems in <a href="https://gumroad.com/3moonpublishing">3 Moon Magazine, vol. 1 issue 3</a></div><div><br /></div><div><b>July 2020</b></div><div><a href="http://www.bodegamag.com/articles/488-foot-bridge-as-bowstring" target="_blank">Foot Bridge as Bowstring</a> in Bodega Magazine</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Forthcoming</b></div><div>3 poems in <a href="http://www.praxismagonline.com/">Praxis Magazine Online</a></div><div><br /></div><div>Recently, I've been trying to prime my engine for visual art, returning to photography and pen/ink drawing. As compared with poetry, these don't have as obvious a career path for amateur enthusiasts like myself. I'll be posting sketches and photos (often heavily treated) on Instagram, but I don't have a lot of hope that I'm going to successfully connect with some kind of alt/art community that fits my style and skill level just right. I want to be more serious than a fairweather comics/fan-art dabbler, but I don't have the training or time investment of the excellent concept or semi-professional artists I see out there.</div><div><br /></div><div>Even so, I'm still inspired by, and toward, certain forms of visual art, so if you want to keep track of that, follow me on <a href="https://www.instagram.com/miksimum/?hl=en" target="_blank">Instagram</a> or <a href="https://miksimum.tumblr.com/" target="_blank">Tumblr</a> -- always @miksimum.</div><div><br /></div><div>Tonight I will be doing something. Maybe I'll watch the not-so-well-received Dark Tower movie, which I just acquired in Very Cheap Blu-Ray form. Maybe I'll keep reading something I picked up at my family's old farmhouse, the Robert Graves autobiography "Goodbye to All That." Maybe I'll write another poem in my drafts notebook.</div><div><br /></div><div>Maybe I'll even get around to writing about it.</div><div><br /></div><div>Later!</div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><p><a href="http://benefitofthedoubt.miksimum.com">* Benefit of the Doubt *</a> | <a href="http://www.miksimum.com/">Miksimum</a></p></div>Jesse Mhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06628842413174084374noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30665218.post-44024794758091966542019-06-17T19:30:00.000-04:002019-06-17T19:30:01.611-04:00DELAYED POST: Game of Thrones, and a proposed definition of Fantasy (with bonus discussion of Star Wars)I felt viscerally compelled to write a post after the Series Finale of Game of Thrones last night. The end of the show has peeled off the cover of Internet fandom and revealed the crawling abyss of gripes and DIY revisionism, and I have an almost infinite number of responses to that. I could write a whole essay just on that, but I'd rather just get it out of the way, or else I'll feel like I'm swinging a baseball bat at a rain storm. Here is my response, which I will argue endlessly to justify:<br />
<br />
1. The end of the series was decent, excusable... a good enough landing for a hell of a flight. It was compromised, but only because the whole structure of the show (and the things we liked about it) led the showrunners into a nasty trap that they couldn't get out of unscathed.<br />
<br />
This trap is summed up well in this Wired article: <a href="https://www.wired.com/story/game-of-thrones-plotters-vs-pantsers/">https://www.wired.com/story/game-of-thrones-plotters-vs-pantsers/</a><br />
<div>
<br /></div>
This leads to a whole labyrinth of open discussion on gardeners versus architects, or "plotters versus pantsers." It's an interesting area to address... in particular, I think "gardener"-type writers like GRRM are generally writing under the assumption that there IS NO CLOSURE - every development, every event, has future consequences, and finding an "ending" is bad faith.<br />
<br />
2. None of this changes what made the series so remarkable -- the way characters and plot arcs twisted, the way you could love and hate every character at every moment -- and if I was master of media history, Game of Thrones would stand forever just on this merit.<br />
<br />
Phew. OK, feeling better.<br />
<br />
So this blog entry is inspired partly by this episode of the Partially Examined Life, which was released today (May the 20th, the day after the aforementioned Series Finale). In the first 40 minutes or so, which is all I've consumed so far, there's a lot of gnarly discussion on what defines fantasy and what makes it work, and I feel a dire need to respond to this.<br />
<br />
So it leads me back to a big Semantic/Ontological question, and two pragmatic outcomes that follow from that answer.<br />
<br />
BIG QUESTION: What is Fantasy? (and how does it work? which is the same question, from a different angle)<br />
<br />
<br />
SMALLER QUESTIONS (boundary-testing!):<br />
<br />
1. Is Game of Thrones fantasy?<br />
2. Is Star Wars fantasy?<br />
<br />
<br />
ON THE BIG QUESTION:<br />
<br />
JRR Tolkien laid the template for fantasy. He wasn't the first, and he wasn't the most sophisticated (as with all art forms, the genre continues to evolve) but he is the central pillar of the genre, for reasons of novelty, popularity, and the deep connection that every subsequent fantasy work has with the tropes and structures he invented.<br />
<br />
In a way, Lord of the Rings is the context for all other fantasy.<br />
<br />
But (very important) - this doesn't mean it's the ideal, or the boundary or final form. It just means it's sort of a reference point. Whatever fantasy has come after LotR is partly understood in relation to it: in what ways it's the same, and in what ways it's different.<br />
<br />
Some of it is VERY DIFFERENT! From Grimdark to New Weird, Steampunk to Sword and Sorcery to Fantasy of Manners, etc etc. These are all variations on the genre, and the writers and fans think of themselves in relation to the vast nebula called Fantasy that tracks back to Tolkien.<br />
<br />
But as different as they are, they are all in a genre because there is much that is the same between them. And here, also, is where it gets squishy, as all words get squishy when you start to pick at their boundaries: there isn't a simple consistent definition. There aren't even "necessary" and "sufficient" characteristics. What there are, instead, are Family Resemblances.<br />
<br />
Here are the basic tenets of fantasy, in my estimation -- and in order of structural importance:<br />
<br />
1. Set in a secondary world, with a full commitment to that world, and no direct trace back to our own universe - this is very nearly a "necessary characteristic," but of course, there's always Narnia or Fantasia (Neverending Story), which are treated as pocket-universes connected magically to our own universe. And speaking of magic:<br />
<br />
2. Operates on an alternative physics - things are possible in this world that aren't possible in our own. Generally this takes the form of magic, and when it's not "magic," it's just a different word for the same stuff. It's minimally explained, because legit explanation would undermine the characteristic: in short, it's not reducible to our own world's causal properties.<br />
<br />
3. Draws on an idealized, romanticized, or mythical conception of human history - usually this is "conveniently distorted medievalism," with swords and castles and horses and long journeys to undiscovered lands. It sometimes draws more directly on mythology itself, which is where we get the standard fantasy races of elves, dwarves, and men. And it gives us far-off kingdoms and good and evil royalty. And, speaking of which:<br />
<br />
4. Centered on heroism, especially in a "chosen one"/triumph-of-the-good sense - most fantasy is about a hero. The genre is pretty agnostic about whether this hero comes up from obscurity, or from the existing power structure. But inevitably, the hero gets to walk the halls of power, and so:<br />
<br />
5. Structured by formal power relations, with royalty (or its equivalent) at the center - there is very little fantasy where the story isn't somewhat about the minds and morals of the king and queen, or the emperor, or whatever. This implies an inherent political concern, though this is fairly collateral to the other main characteristics.<br />
<br />
6. A Manichean moral universe - there are definitely good things/people, and there are definitely evil things/people, and we, the audience, should be rooting for the Good to Win because Justice.<br />
<br />
7. A reliance on the spectacle of violence - self-explanatory and ubiquitous.<br />
<br />
I'm having trouble thinking of anything as important as these seven tenets. As far as I can think, any serious fantasy shares at least 4 or 5 of these. Let's try listing some:<br />
<br />
LORD OF THE RINGS, DRAGONLANCE, EARTHSEA, WHEEL OF TIME, FAFHRD AND THE GRAY MOUSER, KUSHIEL - all of them, to a T.<br />
<br />
When you gently fail #1, you start to get into the stories that are clearly still fantasy, but not quite in the High-Fantasy vein of the true classics:<br />
<br />
CONAN THE BARBARIAN, NEVERENDING STORY, CHRONICLES OF NARNIA, PRINCESS MONONOKE - everything fits, except that there's a self-conscious trace from the world of the story back to our own world. Here's the thing, though: #1 is so important to the genre, that these have to have pretty much ALL 6 of the others to qualify.<br />
<br />
The next group are stories that fit in all essential characteristics except for "feel":<br />
<br />
GORMENGHAST (though I've only read book 1) - #1, #3, #5 are hard YES's, and #2 and #4 are soft YES's. Its failures on #6 and #7 are what make it such an unusual entry in the genre.<br />
<br />
LITTLE BIG - Leans hard into #2, #3, and #4, and gently into #5 and #6. It misses #1 and #7, the most and least important characteristics - and this is dramatic and conspicuous, in a way that throws its status as "fantasy" into serious doubt.<br />
<br />
Whole subgenres have sprung from manipulating one or another of these characteristics. NEW WEIRD and URBAN FANTASY love to mess with #3. GRIMDARK is all about breaking or subverting #4 and #6. Fantasy of Manners has sprung up in opposition to #7.<br />
<br />
And yet, they are still part of the family. Fantasy has a true nature... it's just something you have to see by stepping back a bit. As with all families, there are exceptions to every rule, but the exceptions just prove the coherence of the structure.<br />
<br />
And so we come to the secondary questions, as a way of testing the boundaries of this thesis.<br />
<br />
1. Game of Thrones<br />
<br />
I don't think I need to spend long on this question, honestly. As far as genre, it's a standard example of Grimdark fantasy. It subverts #4 strongly, and #6 loosely. But the rest are intact.<br />
<br />
2. Star Wars (the original trilogy, for now)<br />
<br />
Star Wars is clearly in line with #4, #5, #6, and #7. But in my frank opinion, it fails on #1-#3. It's not just because it has Planets and Space... those things suggest a continuity with our own universe, but don't prove it.<br />
<br />
To me, it comes down to the scrolling credits in the very first movie:<br />
<br />
"Long Ago, in a Galaxy Far Away"<br />
<br />
It's pretty clear that this description forges a direct connection with our own universe. Long ago from when? Far away from what? Undeniably, the answer to this question is, "from you, the viewer." And because it's traced back to your own context, it also creates an implicit assumption that The Force is not truly an alternate physics... it's something that we humans could manipulate, as long as we trained right, or evolved right.<br />
<br />
This is a huge giveaway that Star Wars is not Fantasy, but is actually Science Fiction. This should not be a controversial opinion. Any adventure story will tend to satisfy #6 and #7, and a great many books, including Romance and Historical Fiction, fulfill #5.<br />
<br />
Where the confusion over Star Wars comes in, I think, is how strongly it leans into #4. Because Luke is such a messianic hero of justice, so similar to any number of fantasy protagonists, it gives this sci-fi a certain romantic hue that links it to fantasy.<br />
<br />
Still, I don't think it belongs in the genre. You can put a chosen one, a Boy Hero, at the center of a lot of different adventure stories, and you'd have to look to the other characteristics for your principal criteria.<br />
<br /><div class="blogger-post-footer"><p><a href="http://benefitofthedoubt.miksimum.com">* Benefit of the Doubt *</a> | <a href="http://www.miksimum.com/">Miksimum</a></p></div>Jesse Mhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06628842413174084374noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30665218.post-52973527912241879082019-04-10T12:41:00.000-04:002019-04-10T12:43:11.400-04:00New Poetry Online, April 2019Some new poetry of mine has appeared this month:<br />
<br /><br />
<a style="border: 1px solid rgba(200, 200, 200, 0.4); padding: 1.2em;" href="http://drunkmonkeys.us/2017-posts/2019/4/1/poetry-sam-neill-vs-the-abyss-jesse-miksic" target="_blank">Sam Neill Vs. the Abyss on Drunk Monkeys</a><br />
<br /><br />
For a while I was planning to write an essay on Sam Neill's presence in several apocalyptic horror films (for the record, it's In The Mouth of Madness, Event Horizon, and Possession). Eventually I decided to write it as a poem instead, and got to this version over several rounds of revision.<br />
<br />
And guess whose approval it got?!? (a fine moment in the life of a poet!)<br />
<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
<div dir="ltr" lang="en">
Thanks. I like it. Esp the last 2 lines.</div>
— Sam Neill (@TwoPaddocks) <a href="https://twitter.com/TwoPaddocks/status/1113248658231681024?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 3, 2019</a></blockquote>
<script async="" charset="utf-8" src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script>
<br />
Also, in Gravel Magazine, three of my favorite recent poems, which I submitted under the general title of "Sense Organs":<br />
<br /><br />
<a style="border: 1px solid rgba(238, 238, 238, 0.2); padding: 1.2em;" href="https://www.gravelmag.com/jesse-miksic.html" target="_blank">3 Poems by Jesse Miksic</a><br />
<br /><br />
I have a few more forthcoming: in June, poems in <i>Whale Road Review</i> and <i>Liminality</i>; in October, a group of four in <i>Coffin Bell</i>.<br />
<br />
Thanks for following this little blog, all ye one or two readers. Happy Spring 2019!<div class="blogger-post-footer"><p><a href="http://benefitofthedoubt.miksimum.com">* Benefit of the Doubt *</a> | <a href="http://www.miksimum.com/">Miksimum</a></p></div>Jesse Mhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06628842413174084374noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30665218.post-22526558750672964832019-01-17T09:36:00.004-05:002019-01-17T09:36:54.835-05:002018 in Consumption<i>(Acknowledgment: this post was written toward the end of 2018, but I held off on publishing it until now, because I wasn't sure how to frame it)</i><br />
<br />
I pretty much devoted this year to poetry, didn’t I?<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
A lot of my consumption (readings and viewings) seem distant... like it’s already been more than a year, even since the most recent stuff.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<h4>
BOOKS</h4>
<br />
I did manage to read the whole of Gregory Bateson’s Steps to an <i>Ecology of Mind</i> (<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2422524024" target="_blank">review</a>), which gave me several new tools for thinking, especially in separating a forest from its trees, or a metaphor from its content, or what have you.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Before that, it seems my only other reading was the stuff of nightmares and enigmas: Stephen King’s <i>Insomnia</i>, <i>Cabin in the Woods</i> by Paul Trembly, and a book-length study of Pu Songling’s ghost stories called <i>Historian of the Strange</i> (<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2352736940" target="_blank">review</a>).<br />
<br />
Toward the end of the year, I also finished Craig Morgan Teicher's <i>We Begin in Gladness</i>, which was a wise and well-considered discussion of how poets unfold over the course of careers and lifetimes. I'll try to add a review eventually.</div>
<div>
<br />
<h4>
MOVIES</h4>
<br /></div>
<div>
Movies? Again, I handed so many late nights over to poetry... but I managed to watch <i>Tale of Tales</i> just this month, and before that, <i>Star Wars VIII</i>, <i>Slow West</i>, <i>American Fable</i>, <i>Babylon Berlin</i>, and both seasons of <i>Stranger Things</i>.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
My wife and I have also imbibed <i>The Last Kingdom</i> and <i>The Great British Bake-Off</i>, so I’ve scratched all sorts of different erogenous spots.<br />
<br />
This has been a quick summary of my 2018 media consumption. At this point, I need to accept that this blog is pretty much entirely for my own benefit, but at least I have it recorded. Upcoming post: 2018 new work and publications. Happy January!</div>
<div class="blogger-post-footer"><p><a href="http://benefitofthedoubt.miksimum.com">* Benefit of the Doubt *</a> | <a href="http://www.miksimum.com/">Miksimum</a></p></div>Jesse Mhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06628842413174084374noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30665218.post-37260085512129431382018-05-24T13:30:00.001-04:002018-05-24T13:32:06.691-04:00Star Wars Episodes VII and VIII: The Law of the Father, the Life of the Mother<b>WARNING: Spoilers ahead for Star Wars, especially episodes VII and VIII.</b><br />
<br />
Fatherhood is deeper in the Star Wars DNA than Light Sabers, deeper than the Force and the Light and Dark Sides. It's the thematic backbone and nerve center of the whole mythology.<br />
<br />
"Luke, I am your father."<br />
<br />
"You were the chosen one!"<br />
<br />
etc etc<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiy3FI5tPMwjY0Cmz6xxMOdYFoJajWf-JQvMdH3s0x7q5FebhWCWKrq0mbaaHT-VMfNC13n6vtEiUWbpM_3-mVJA7ZJdKGluF3sdT0B1O0IUUbt8JmK81LRa7Xv3UiBAwTQxN77/s1600/Obi-Wan-and-Luke.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1201" data-original-width="1600" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiy3FI5tPMwjY0Cmz6xxMOdYFoJajWf-JQvMdH3s0x7q5FebhWCWKrq0mbaaHT-VMfNC13n6vtEiUWbpM_3-mVJA7ZJdKGluF3sdT0B1O0IUUbt8JmK81LRa7Xv3UiBAwTQxN77/s200/Obi-Wan-and-Luke.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
Starting from Obi Wan, and going outward in either direction, you can see how the Patriarch is implicated in every mythical moment. Obi Wan is the keystone of the first six Star Wars films.<br />
<br />
We are introduced to Obi Wan as mentor to Luke, through whom Obi Wan hopes to redeem himself. Obi Wan's training (continued by Yoda) allows Luke to face his own father, eventually becoming Vader's mortal enemy, echoing the patricidal impulse that the Sith swear by (the <a href="http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Rule_of_Two" target="_blank">Rule Of Two</a>).<br />
<br />
The original trilogy is resolved, in episode 6, when Luke refuses the patricidal role that seems to be his destiny: refusing to destroy his father, even at the most decisive moment, he effectively breaks the murderous chain that runs through every Star Wars.<br />
<br />
If you trace the line of fatherhood from Obi Wan in the other direction, you find, in the prequels, Anakin the fatherless, rebelling against one father-figure (Obi-Wan) and ultimately destroying another (Emperor Palpatine).<br />
<br />
Anakin, the fatherless, the betrayer... from his betrayal of Obi Wan, unto his redemption, the betrayal of Supreme Leader Darth Sidious. And of course, in Kylo Ren, Anakin finds an analogue.<br />
<br />
And so, fifteen years go by, and then come Star Wars VII and VIII, proudly restating the themes of their predecessors. Kylo Ren is Vader with his mask off: the tortured product of a compromised ideology, following in Anakin's footsteps as the consummate patricide (first Solo, then Snoke). He is a creature of naive idealism, twisted into a reactionary when faced with the imperfections of his symbolic order.<br />
<br />
Fatherhood is still a pivotal theme in episodes VII and VIII, but now, a new question emerges to complicate it:<br />
<br />
What of motherhood? Of the masculine, we've seen much... but of femininity, all we've seen, in Episodes I-VI, is maidenhood. The only mother who has any role in character development is <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skywalker_family#Shmi_Skywalker-Lars" target="_blank">Shmi</a>, and she is effectively a disposable device, part of a section of backstory clumsily soldered to the Clone Wars narrative arc.<br />
<br />
At the very least, we saw that the death of his mother was the first trigger for Anakin to drift toward the dark side (though it may have always been within him). In a sense, Anakin was a failure of nurturing, an id conditioned entirely through the one-sided application of austerity, specialized training, and detached spirituality.<br />
<br />
So we might take the license of really reading into that: the whole story, from episodes I through VI, is the story of a universe without motherhood.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFhfNWVB5N3y6ARPSi3_dRs84Ut3ZAFLPHVwMlFPONAgBn_QhGKwB4Sd3jTL9Xl-cRxxcXhN-4ZBYVlJLIDapE3oXnK7W3TN0ATTABc9TC49dVytW3jNmlTQMv6hDlPr_FkGNn/s1600/mothers.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="501" data-original-width="813" height="122" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFhfNWVB5N3y6ARPSi3_dRs84Ut3ZAFLPHVwMlFPONAgBn_QhGKwB4Sd3jTL9Xl-cRxxcXhN-4ZBYVlJLIDapE3oXnK7W3TN0ATTABc9TC49dVytW3jNmlTQMv6hDlPr_FkGNn/s200/mothers.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
It is only in Episode VII and VIII that motherhood stands up and makes its return. Leia Organa is the motherhood of strength and survival, Maz Kanata is the motherhood of the concerned bystander, and Amilyn Holdo is the motherhood of secondary relations, the aunts and godmothers and best friends of the world. This motherhood includes both survival and sacrifice, two dominant themes of Star Wars Episode VIII.<br />
<br />
In Episode VIII, Luke returns, and through Luke and Kylo Ren, the fatherhood theme continues its critical role. However, Luke Skywalker, now a hermit sage, drives a massive shift in momentum: he hesitates to become the father figure, and when he finally does, he is the ghost of a dying ideal. His critical contribution is a duel with no intention of winning; his final gesture is to fade away and vanish altogether.<br />
<br />
This is Luke seeing this history for what it is, and attaining the clarity of two crucial insights:<br />
<br />
FIRST, that the fatherhood complex is toxic... it has always been about ideological purity and passivity (the Light), or about envy and murder (the Dark).<br />
<br />
SECOND, that the new virtues must be wholly different: the virtues of survival and sacrifice and rebirth. These are the virtues championed by the maternal spirits, and they are the stamps of destiny upon Rey, the orphaned female successor to the Jedi philosophy.<br />
<br />
And still carrying this thematic burden, despite her tragic loss: Carrie Fischer as Leia Organa, forever the survivor, sending severed tongues to abusers, always shattering her stereotypes: the princess, the sexual chattel, the hysteric. Carrie Fischer, who seemed so linked to her own mother that the latter followed Carrie into the dark.<br />
<br />
And so, we can follow Star Wars, one of our greatest mythologies, into one of its greatest discoveries: that motherhood survives and blesses our successors with their survival, and fatherhood finally learns when to let go and overcome itself, dissolving back into history.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><p><a href="http://benefitofthedoubt.miksimum.com">* Benefit of the Doubt *</a> | <a href="http://www.miksimum.com/">Miksimum</a></p></div>Jesse Mhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06628842413174084374noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30665218.post-65593597783320697652018-02-12T12:14:00.005-05:002018-02-12T12:14:47.928-05:00Recent placements in poetryA topical update on my creative endeavors lately: I've placed poetry in a few beautiful and respectable literary magazines (all online so far, which is cool, because it's actually easier to provide access to them).<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
I'm quite proud of some of these pieces, and proud of their placements in these excellent outlets.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
♥💗❤💗♥</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
I have one in <a href="http://www.righthandpointing.net/116" target="_blank">Right Hand Pointing #116</a> called "That's One Way to Go"</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
I have one in the December issue of Cold Creek Review called <a href="http://www.coldcreekreview.amberdtran.com/gosling/" target="_blank">"Gosling"</a></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
I have one forthcoming in March in <a href="http://www.westtexasreview.com/" target="_blank">West Texas Review</a></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
I have two forthcoming in April in <a href="https://www.skyislandjournal.com/" target="_blank">Sky Island Journal</a></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
♥💗❤💗♥</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
I'm still trying to decide where to keep a running bibliography of my published poetry. It might end up in a side-page on miksimum.com, or maybe I'll create a post on here and continually update it.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
If anyone has a burning desire for rapport on this or related topics, please don't hesitate to <a href="https://twitter.com/miksimum" target="_blank">contact me on Twitter</a> or <a href="mailto:jesse@miksimum.com" target="_blank">email me</a>.</div>
<div class="blogger-post-footer"><p><a href="http://benefitofthedoubt.miksimum.com">* Benefit of the Doubt *</a> | <a href="http://www.miksimum.com/">Miksimum</a></p></div>Jesse Mhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06628842413174084374noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30665218.post-75766771138271662392017-09-11T02:48:00.000-04:002017-09-11T02:48:44.806-04:00Twin Peaks: The Return / A Cataclysm of Enlightenment"Explanations place all apparent possibilities into the context of the necessary; stories set all necessities into the context of the possible." -James P. Carse, <i>Finite and Infinite Games[1]</i><br />
<br />
...<br />
<br />
Today's date is September 11, 2017. Thursday. <i>Twin Peaks: The Return</i> ended exactly one week ago, on Sunday the 5th.<br />
<br />
...<br />
<br />
With luck, the end of Twin Peaks: The Return will also be the end of Twin Peaks as a whole phenomenon. It's been pushed to its reasonable limit, and at that limit, it's found a kind of wholeness.<br />
<br />
...<br />
<br />
Another reason the series should reach its end: the whole world of Twin Peaks was annihilated in the closing moments of episode 18. That final scene showed the collapse of that universe.<br />
<br />
...<br />
<br />
Not everybody who watched the finale saw this. Indeed, the general drift of public opinion seemed to be frustrated confusion (as though nobody had noticed Lynch's whole, relentlessly consistent directing career telegraphing this kind of ending). Most people didn't know what they saw in those final moments... it registered as an unsettling non-sequiter, a rebuff to the closure that Lynch teased them with in episode 17.<br />
<br />
...<br />
<br />
The end of the episode is about those fans, hoping for some kind of closure. It's also about the FBI (at least, the fantasy FBI that Lynch has constructed for the world of Twin Peaks). It's also about characters, and audiences, and creators, and all their relationships to the art that defines them.<br />
<br />
...<br />
<br />
And of course, like everything Lynch has created, it's about the strangeness and singularity of the art.<br />
<br />
...<br />
<br />
This is not a particularly profound conclusion, despite this broken, aphoristic formatting, which is saturated with pretense and self-consciousness. (I'm only using it because these thoughts needed to be broken up, or they would have come rushing out as an exhausting torrent of interpretation and explanation [2]).<br />
<br />
...<br />
<br />
If you want to "understand" Twin Peaks... if you were frustrated by the lack of closure, by the fact that the ending didn't add up to anything meaningful or resolute... I have a solution. It may work for you... it may not... but at least I can offer it. It's an interpretation that convinced me, even in my resistance to it. It's the one that risen above all the other speculation.<br />
<br />
...<br />
<br />
I kind of hate that I've discovered a privileged reading. I kind of liked it better when I was wandering between interpretations. But it's only natural that, as a Fan, I find a form of closure here, because that allows me to be more at home with the series.<br />
<br />
...<br />
<br />
Judy has been translated by some fans as "explanation." This has been hotly disputed, and I'm almost ashamed to be referencing it, but it leads smoothly into this reading of the series' conclusion: that Judy is an embodiment of transcendence, or gnosis, in a terrible, destructive form.<br />
<br />
...<br />
<br />
By "transcendence," I mean the understanding of Twin Peaks from outside the fictional world of the show. This is what Judy represents. This is the "extreme negative force" that these characters are all chasing, even as they should be running away from it.<br />
<br />
...<br />
<br />
A lot of these ideas are assembled from comments in <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/twinpeaks/comments/6ymvcq/s3e18_why_we_dont_talk_about_judy/" target="_blank">this Reddit thread</a>, by the way. Despite my desperate desire to explain every detail of this interpretation, I am going to restrain myself. To read more of the textual connections, glance through that thread a bit. Also, I think <a href="http://www.backofthecerealbox.com/2017/06/twin-peaks-glass-box-analysis-david-lynch.html" target="_blank">this blogger got about halfway to where I ended up</a>, so read that post for some more connections within the text.<br />
<br />
Also, <a href="https://medium.com/@onantiad/episodes-17-18-of-twin-peaks-the-return-are-meant-to-be-watched-in-sync-81352ce38e8" target="_blank">this post on syncing up episodes 17 and 18</a>: this theory is brilliant, and may ultimately overrule any alternative, but it also dovetails with my own interpretation: the connection between Judy and the Demiurge, and the pathway into the real world, are particularly relevant.<br />
<br />
...<br />
<br />
If this is what Judy is, and they finally find Judy in the semi-fictional Limbo ("pocket universe") of Richard and Linda and Carrie Page, then the final scene is the discovery of Judy herself, and Cooper and Laura/Carrie's realization that they are fictional characters.<br />
<br />
In fact, the sound of Sarah Palmer's voice calling Laura's name... to me, it looked like that was coming from a room in the house. It looked like someone in that room was watching a TV, and maybe that was the dialog they were hearing.<br />
<br />
...<br />
<br />
When this happens, Sarah screams, Cooper loses his orientation in time, and the power goes out.<br />
<br />
...<br />
<br />
The fire of narrative, fed by credulity and poetic faith [3], is embodied as electricity. In those final moments, the electricity flows out of this universe forever. This is the destruction of the show's secondary reality, the collapse that closes out the whole series. When the characters realize they are parts of a fiction, that fiction can no longer be maintained.<br />
<br />
...<br />
<br />
So many of us amateur critics are willing to hand-wave Cooper's disorienting final question: "What year is this?" That line actually has great significance for this finale. To Cooper, it's a confrontation with a reality outside his own timeline, which is running discontinuously through it, on a million televisions.<br />
<br />
Suddenly Cooper, the character, understands that he simply vanished for 25 years, and now he exists again, with a different name. He is the accursed fancy of a higher consciousness: a Creator with the power to construct a universe out of nothing.<br />
<br />
For the audience, this is connected to the question of why: why should this creation, left fallow for 25 years, suddenly be resurrected in our age of cell phones and Skype? And why, 25 years after the story closed itself off to us, are we still so desperate for closure and "explanation"?<br />
<br />
...<br />
<br />
David Lynch has been hounded by demands for explanation his entire life. He knows that everybody wants it. He also knows that in the end, we don't want it... it dispels the glamour of narrative, chops down that fertile tree that grows from our subconscious.<br />
<br />
...<br />
<br />
And the reason <i>Twin Peaks: The Return</i> spoke to me was that Lynch had something to tell me... a warning, a threat, and a little koan. Because I didn't want explanation, I thought. I've always reveled in the open signifiers of Weird Cinema, and I've always appreciated the fluid meanings of poetry and surrealism.<br />
<br />
Right?<br />
<br />
...<br />
<br />
But I also search for meanings. I search desperately for them. Where I see order, I can't help but divine for purpose. Twin Peaks was no special case in that regard... I digested for a day, and then I fell into the major outlet thinkpieces (numbingly repetitive, frankly) and then I dove deeper, surfing Tweets and comment boards and the subreddit.<br />
<br />
I was hunting for something I didn't want to find.<br />
<br />
...<br />
<br />
And now that I've found it, I'm lost outside the work. I'm the consummate chin-stroker, hovering above the abyss, who's lost the grand mystique of unspeakable ideas. I've stumbled from <a href="https://medium.com/@miksimum/reductions-the-consumer-and-the-critic-ed5f028bc6c7" target="_blank">Fandom into Criticism</a>.<br />
<br />
...<br />
<br />
This was the trap Judy laid for me, and I fell into it.<br />
<br />
...<br />
<br />
And perhaps, when I hit Publish, I'll lure a few more hapless souls into this explanatory abyss.<br />
<br />
...<br />
<br />
But even from here, I can still see the whole series, laid out before me, and part of me knows I don't really understand it. Though my sight is dimmer, I can still see sparkles: unresolved events, unanswered questions, and broad themes that I've only glimpsed.<br />
<br />
And that part of me will always find a home in Twin Peaks, beyond the shadow of Judy.<br />
<br />
...<br />
<br />
[1] Carse has some fascinating ideas about Explanation, Narrative, and the Unspeakable. His theory is beyond the reach of simple paraphrase, but I should note: he associates explanation with what he calls "finite games," which are time-bound, goal-oriented, and seek as few players as possible (ultimately leading to a single "winner"). Explanation closes off possibility, and it's relentlessly rearward-facing, always hung up on the past. To Carse, explanation is self-limitation, and as a world is explained, it is also restricted.<br />
<br />
Judy is the Finite Game descending upon the open signification of Twin Peaks. She is the knowledge that undermines wonder, and the darkness of pure transparency. To Lynch, she is terrifying.<br />
<br />
[2] Okay, here's a quick tour of some other evidence:<br />
<ul>
<li>The question "What just happened?" was asked repeatedly in the last couple episodes, and the repetition was pretty conspicuous. These characters are itching for an explanation.</li>
<li>The refusal to speak, the allusion to Judy as the unspeakable: "We don't talk about that" is echoed by Agent Jeffries, and also in Hawk's explanation of the spiritual map.</li>
<li>There are several pretty strong implications that the final scenes of The Return, after Coop and Diane's night in the hotel, take place in the "real" world (or something close to it, at least)</li>
<li>Electricity is a crucial image through the whole season, the 2017 "mutation" of Fire from the original series. There are lots of metaphorical possibilities here (the Lynchian Open Signifier), but there's no denying that electricity is necessary for running a television -- the lifeblood of the fictional artifact, and the lubricant that allows it to escape its container and get released into the world.</li>
<li>By this reading, the end of Season 3 echoes the discovery of Laura's killer in Season 2. By some accounts, this is what killed the show's momentum and mystery. Another explanation, another death of the show... then forced, now intentional.</li>
</ul>
<br />
[3] A concept related to "<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suspension_of_disbelief#Psychology" target="_blank">suspension of disbelief</a>", associated with <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_N._Holland" target="_blank">Norman Holland</a>.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br /><div class="blogger-post-footer"><p><a href="http://benefitofthedoubt.miksimum.com">* Benefit of the Doubt *</a> | <a href="http://www.miksimum.com/">Miksimum</a></p></div>Jesse Mhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06628842413174084374noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30665218.post-53950992681640479072017-07-27T04:33:00.000-04:002017-07-27T04:56:51.235-04:00On Twin Peaks: The Return, and the Present Delerium<span style="color: red;"><b>Note: Spoilers below for Twin Peaks: The Return, Parts 1-11.</b></span><br />
<br />
<br />
1989 comes to a small northwestern town, just as it comes to every other place. This town, sheltered by the rains and forests of Washington State, is called Twin Peaks.<br />
<br />
And in 1989, Twin Peaks becomes a place so unlike every other place, it's almost insulting to describe it with the same language, channeled through the same air.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj66Hl52cFl2cIaSR8Ps4yiz130fF1yBT-8wnS2rO5s6Pxr5misCE7-VX_tgHzsQzqH1CrdSCD76Haermg6uOeFT86zYPXn5QB-H1EhLlTPYOi8kJeHNvpwRg0JkCfD7h9dtmf0/s1600/Photo+Jul+27%252C+12+46+22+AM.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="width: clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="150" style="width: 200px; height: 150px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj66Hl52cFl2cIaSR8Ps4yiz130fF1yBT-8wnS2rO5s6Pxr5misCE7-VX_tgHzsQzqH1CrdSCD76Haermg6uOeFT86zYPXn5QB-H1EhLlTPYOi8kJeHNvpwRg0JkCfD7h9dtmf0/s200/Photo+Jul+27%252C+12+46+22+AM.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
Something will find Twin Peaks and linger there: an entity from outside space and time, incorporated in a human body, but endless and depthless when you look into its eyes... a creature of the abyss, feeding on suffering, whose emptiness infects the weak and compromised. This thing is called BOB.<br />
<br />
Fortunately, this universe has its defenses. A coalition of reason and resistance will emerge -- a wise and perceptive FBI agent named Dale Cooper, a stern and earnest local sheriff named Harry Truman, and a cast of supporting personnel who will make their jobs possible. This coalition will both win and lose... it will vanquish a tormentor, save a life, and face down the darkness... but Cooper will be drawn into an existential prison, locked away, while BOB is let loose upon the world.<br />
<br />
This story will start with a single unsolved murder, and it won't end for 25 years.<br />
<br />
...<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjaxwoF9n3966mpFf9VDhvx4enZQsDgOTPHPmx6ozUq2lHJnglino47wxyrDfMAT1JTkQHvizoSROQeo8If0javacVXUfr3OXimeSFimvtm5vhG57Mxb_fAhMl3bbm3j2YHvuwX/s1600/twinpeaksepisode11-7.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="891" data-original-width="1600" height="111" style="width: 200px; height: 111px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjaxwoF9n3966mpFf9VDhvx4enZQsDgOTPHPmx6ozUq2lHJnglino47wxyrDfMAT1JTkQHvizoSROQeo8If0javacVXUfr3OXimeSFimvtm5vhG57Mxb_fAhMl3bbm3j2YHvuwX/s200/twinpeaksepisode11-7.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
In a hotel that appears mysteriously empty, except for the small lobby where we linger, there's a meager crowd huddled together and looking expectantly at an empty stage. Suddenly, a chorus of music blares, and a figure descends on a long escalator from nowhere. He stands in front of this audience, hand-picked to receive him, and he tells them something small and strange that will end up changing the lives of everybody in the world.<br />
<br />
This creature is a funny little monster, a sort of orange wax figure, always scowling, with hair that looks like the chaff from a bad harvest. It's truly a Thing.<br />
<br />
There's a lot of mockery of this spectacle... disembodied laughter, a slow-reacting universe that sees nothing but an empty absurdity... but when everything becomes clear, months and years later, we'll remember that laughter as a terrible portent.<br />
<br />
...<br />
<br />
In that small northwestern town, where those terrible things happened twenty-five years ago, a girl meets with her boyfriend outside the <a href="http://twinpeaks.wikia.com/wiki/Double_R_Diner" target="_blank">Double R Diner</a>. He is afflicted... everyone is afflicted... and in his case, it shows as bad skin, a twitchy demeanor, and sunken eyes.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3wXV5hnlvy1s1yd8ujxOoNPJkwRBn5_BqrJ9OfHhpJx6KQryJfDNpejbfLjIF7RlYTZ0lo3__U3vKCi8umBOOCZgUTLMjYHSzpWa9JR-HwotTEA1EMrOygL0DkNCxZk7Wh_Ny/s1600/becky-amanda-seyfried.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img style="width: 200px; height: 104px;" border="0" data-original-height="628" data-original-width="1200" height="104" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3wXV5hnlvy1s1yd8ujxOoNPJkwRBn5_BqrJ9OfHhpJx6KQryJfDNpejbfLjIF7RlYTZ0lo3__U3vKCi8umBOOCZgUTLMjYHSzpWa9JR-HwotTEA1EMrOygL0DkNCxZk7Wh_Ny/s200/becky-amanda-seyfried.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
The girl ends a tense conversation by giving him a wad of money, and he promises her the world. He is moving in the right direction, he says. He will be everything he's been promising. In the meantime, do a line and lean back while I drive you into the wind.<br />
<br />
It takes a certain kind of person to do this -- to convince themselves, and those who trust them, that they own the world. If they're really that kind of person, they can give you the glow of a good high, even as they grind your life into dust.<br />
<br />
...<br />
<br />
On November 8, 2016, the strange Thing from the top of the escalator becomes the Thing-in-Chief. Garmonbozia Futures shoot up on the commodities market.<br />
<br />
...<br />
<br />
Dale Cooper returns to the world, but he loses something in the process: his shoes, of course, but also his sovereignty, his gifts of wisdom and cunning and personality. He is essentially reduced to a toddler, well-meaning, but diminished, adrift in everyday life. Nobody really seems to care, because they have no sense of his real value... to them, he is just a placeholder, like every other secondary character in their lives.<br />
<br />
Sheriff Harry Truman is suffering from an unnamed medical condition, and his loved ones can only hope he will recover. Twin Peaks, 25 years later, has to function without him. The silence of his absence is deafening.<br />
<br />
Where are the heroes, the protectors, the avatars of hope and compassion? Where have they been, while Bob has been ranging across the American dreamscape?<br />
<br />
...<br />
<br />
The Thing-in-Chief is constantly photographed. This is a world where every reality is measured in photographs, after all, and this Thing has changed everything. History will always have his mark gouged across the second decade of the 21st century, and there will be plenty of visual records to prove it.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgT8AwifMukvXrH7bupnascdnkhmgZMrEnjy21WY2Z1-wm0HaU-vswCfoxTqVN_ThvH3JclQ56OUJlY-81IrQAYaT6PUHV_CrzwpDUn7mG8JR7nJEOGha-KfUayAXad-fQm7oPP/s1600/Photo+Jul+27%252C+12+49+41+AM.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img style="width: 150px; height: 200px;" border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgT8AwifMukvXrH7bupnascdnkhmgZMrEnjy21WY2Z1-wm0HaU-vswCfoxTqVN_ThvH3JclQ56OUJlY-81IrQAYaT6PUHV_CrzwpDUn7mG8JR7nJEOGha-KfUayAXad-fQm7oPP/s200/Photo+Jul+27%252C+12+49+41+AM.jpg" width="150" /></a></div>
In this particular clip, he is on the tarmac, walking in close proximity to his wife, a loyal beauty who's been reduced to an ornament... whether this flatness is his work, or whether it's somehow self-imposed, is presently unanswerable.<br />
<br />
The distinguishing thing, though... the little touch that sets this moment off... is that he reaches for her hand, looking for reassurance (a show for the cameras? Or an unexpected moment of insecurity?) and she bats him away. With gait unbroken and stone expression, she rejects him. How easily she makes such a large Thing look so small.<br />
<br />
And the lens of the entire apparatus... every looping GIF, every gasp and joke and conspiracy theory, is turned toward that snub. Here, in a soup of irrationality, we catch a taste of meaning, and it turns out we're starving for it.<br />
<br />
...<br />
<br />
In 1941, "Trinity" -- predecessor of the nuclear bomb -- changes the geographic face of New Mexico, and the political landscape of the whole planet earth. This is the epicenter of the sins that will be visited upon these humans for the next century.<br />
<br />
Within the blast radius, shadows flicker against gas station walls, and something parasitic is born.<br />
<br />
...<br />
<br />
Hands are an especially persistent motif in this visitor's mythology. The dissenting voices of the void call them "small," and this becomes a creeping trauma for the thing-in-chief. He sometimes uses them as weapons in social situations, yanking people toward himself and crowding them when he needs social leverage. His handshake is a landmine.<br />
<br />
One of his strangest spectacles is a session in his office, sitting across from a fellow world leader while the buzzing eyes swarm around them. The expectation is simple -- a handshake, the oldest convention of courtesy in Western diplomacy -- and he refuses to carry it out, conspicuously ignoring the chancellor with whom he is supposed to be negotiating.<br />
<br />
What is he afraid of, exactly? Her good will? Her leverage over him? Or his own hands, that suddenly seem so tiny?<br />
<br />
...<br />
<br />
And now we come to the primal scene, the moment where everything is distilled into its purest incomprehensibility.<br />
<br />
...<br />
<br />
At the Double-R Diner, there's tense conversation, followed by an unexpected burst of violence outside.<br />
<br />
If you want the imaginary center of this sequence of events, pay attention to the conversation. Twin Peaks Deputy Bobby Briggs is talking to his daughter Becky and his former wife Shelly, and the family's tenderness is palpable. Even so, the strength of their connection can't efface the cruel undertone: Becky defending an abusive husband, continuing a pattern of abuse that her mother once propagated... and that her mother is making the same mistake again, even as she disapproves. The deep compassion of this family is barely enough to balance the cycle of violence that plagues her maternal line.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_Oa_F9kh5p_kZLH2cM3B8TvXS7am79YXYP_R8bJQjHhoxUFsWWSNdpFGYHJzx5gJpz9Ehz-fmeC_3usIh8ukRYo3pHBZ2RBldSCgnvFWipeJVtzNFUWpLYdlua6LS1eckao4Z/s1600/Twin-Peaks-boy-738x492.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img style="width: 200px; height: 133px;" border="0" data-original-height="492" data-original-width="738" height="133" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_Oa_F9kh5p_kZLH2cM3B8TvXS7am79YXYP_R8bJQjHhoxUFsWWSNdpFGYHJzx5gJpz9Ehz-fmeC_3usIh8ukRYo3pHBZ2RBldSCgnvFWipeJVtzNFUWpLYdlua6LS1eckao4Z/s200/Twin-Peaks-boy-738x492.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
After the conversation is over, the violence comes, and here, you will find the emotional center, hand-in-hand with the imaginary center. Two gunshots break the windows of the Diner, and everyone ducks for cover. Deputy Briggs runs outside and finds a family stopped at an intersection, the mother screaming at her sulking husband for leaving a loaded gun in their car, and their child sulking in turn. So the father, so the son.<br />
<br />
Behind the derailed minivan, there's a white sedan, and it can't stop honking, despite the obvious emergency that's holding up the line of traffic. Like a good town cop, Deputy Briggs goes to the window of the sedan to convince the driver to stop honking.<br />
<br />
There, Briggs finds something harrowing, in its inexplicable way: a woman screaming about the delay, enraged that she won't make it home for dinner, while a young girl writhes in throes of agony beside her... apparently having a seizure and coughing up black bile.<br />
<br />
There is something absolutely alien and poisonous about this narrative moment. What impulses the driver is acting out... why she's so hysterical over banalities, even as she accompanies a suffering family member with a horrific illness... the malevolence is thick and oily and palpable. There is a sense, here, that Deputy Briggs has stumbled into a nightmare. Luckily, a scene change arrives to wake us up, so we don't have to remain there with him.<br />
<br />
...<br />
<br />
More centers, more nodules where reality seems to have twisted around on itself:<br />
<br />
On July 25, the Republicans in Congress (the Thing-in-Chief's sycophants) held a vote on to bring a bill to the Senate floor. This bill would dismantle the ACA, and radically reshape the US healthcare system. It would rip health insurance away from something like 15 million people, and it would increase premiums by something like 20% (contrary to its stated aim of making healthcare affordable for all) [<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/obamacare-skinny-repeal-cbo-score-2017-7" target="_blank">CBO via Business Insider</a>]. Their "Yes" votes were audible over the national public outcry against the bill, and over the advice of <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2017/06/26/politics/ama-opposes-senate-health-bill/index.html" target="_blank">medical associations</a>, <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2017/07/14/politics/mike-pence-governors-health-care/index.html" target="_blank">state governors</a>, and their own constituents.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvwoT7vp87KXKJEDfSjigDJvLJuTmUjZzEhKjTjzzjCENvRjTmWgnd8n7H2ASf0moB3DuNOX2xQpUvtitsXY_KDsAfShjoXgx9gPZWjo1JTNM7RmZofkdKRTqJz3W4CKoip1RW/s1600/Photo+Jul+27%252C+12+44+24+AM.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img style="width: 150px; height: 200px;" border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvwoT7vp87KXKJEDfSjigDJvLJuTmUjZzEhKjTjzzjCENvRjTmWgnd8n7H2ASf0moB3DuNOX2xQpUvtitsXY_KDsAfShjoXgx9gPZWjo1JTNM7RmZofkdKRTqJz3W4CKoip1RW/s200/Photo+Jul+27%252C+12+44+24+AM.jpg" width="150" /></a></div>
If you glance at this bill for more than a second, you see that it's actually illusory: no concrete policy is entailed, no strategy for solving the lingering problems with the healthcare system is implied. It's essentially a blank page, and the Republicans, led by Mitch McConnell and goaded by the Thing itself, are insisting on having a "constructive debate" on it.<br />
<br />
At the heart of the process was a veteran soldier, famous for standing up against his party's worst impulses. braving the aftermath of major brain surgery... a mythical figure of politics, walking dramatically into the Senate chamber, and casting his vote: to conform without question to his party's nihilism, denying millions their health insurance when he himself had just undergone the trauma of a devastating medical condition.<br />
<br />
He was applauded for his bravery, not just by his own party, but by the entire floor. And then the vote went through, and this bill -- a throbbing nuclear bomb for anyone with unstable employment and medical needs -- became an imminent possibility.<br />
<br />
These are the children of reason's sleep. These are the scions of a chaotic, narcissistic, demented modern age.<br />
<br />
...<br />
<br />
It's 3 AM, and my town is very Lynchian tonight. The suburbs are deserted, with a hum in the background (a neighborhood of window air conditioners). Whenever I hear a car coming in the distance, it's always isolated, and I'm fully alone, and so I keep feeling a moment of panic. This is the dark road of the margins, and I am the bystander getting caught in the headlights.<br />
<br />
Where are my protectors? Where are the people who have some grip on the world, who can still resist its tantrums and confusions and cruelties?<br />
<br />
They are still sleeping, it seems, and I'm still left watching the television.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><p><a href="http://benefitofthedoubt.miksimum.com">* Benefit of the Doubt *</a> | <a href="http://www.miksimum.com/">Miksimum</a></p></div>Jesse Mhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06628842413174084374noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30665218.post-10897236496662401892017-06-21T19:00:00.000-04:002017-06-21T22:41:46.493-04:00Twitter movie reviews: first half of 2017In honor of the Summer Solstice, I'll go ahead and compile all my Twitter reviews for this year. These were all written within a couple weeks of seeing the film, and they all take up exactly 144 characters, including the film title and date. As you can see, I gave myself some flexibility on the matter of punctuation and abbreviation.<br /><br /> If you <a href="https://twitter.com/miksimum">follow me on Twitter</a>, these will occasionally show up on my timeline. As you can see, I like movies. I am very forgiving. If you're looking for something more acerbic, maybe Armond White or the Angry Nerd has a Twitter account.<br /><br /><br /> JUNE<br /><br /><br /> Spring (2014) - A wide-ranging young romance, with flashes of horror that are discordant, but don't do much to curb the warmth of the story.<br /><br /> Kagemusha (1980) - Grand & lush, all the elements of vintage Kurosawa, but didn't have the shapely arc and development of his better movies.<br /><br /><br /> MAY<br /><br /><br /> Anguish (2015) - A brooding, earnest "tormented ghost" tale with exceptionally endearing characters. In the end, it rather undersells itself<br /><br /> Tangled (2010) - Sort of a throwback Disney Romance/comedy, whose brilliant physical humor more than redeems some clumsy writing and pacing.<br /><br /> Kubo and the Two Strings (2016) - Gorgeous boy-hero story plus family chronicle, all warmth & wisdom, tempered by brilliant visual treatment<br /><br /><br /> APRIL<br /><br /><br /> The Wailing (2016) - A strong, thick, & subtle tonic: when the initial hints of levity fade, you're left with despair burning on your tongue<br /><br /> The Double (2013) - Through a Terry-Gilliam-influenced lens, a focused, twitchy, & potent reflection on the cruelties of desire & insecurity<br /><br /> Enemy (2013) - A brilliant, chilling cyclical enigma that opens its own little self-contained universe, and ends by closing itself up again.<br /><br /><br /> MARCH<br /><br /><br /> 10 Cloverfield Lane (2016) - A tense, brooding chamber drama -- great fun, but its explosive finale undercuts the interesting character work<br /><br /> Dead Lands (2014) - A self-conscious intensity only barely distinguishes this action movie, otherwise built on rote masculine warrior tropes<br /><br /> City 40 (2016) - A fascinating subject, but too clinical, missing any kind of gravitational center -- intriguing, but emotionally weightless<br /><br /> A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (2014) - Not too scary, but stylish &; austere, with the feel of a dream on the edge of becoming a nightmare<br /><br /><br /> FEBRUARY<br /><br /><br /> La La Land (2016) - Sometimes too pat, but always earnest... you could tell the filmmaker wanted a happy ending as badly as his audience did<br /><br /> Dope (2015) - Malcolm and his crew are brilliant protagonists in a striking and spontaneous adventure, tonally cacophanous, but never boring<br /><br /> Happy People (2010) - Herzog weaves a spell of fascination and intimacy with the Taiga: its stern voices, its landscapes, & its bitter cold.<br /><br /><br /> JANUARY<br /><br /><br /> Extraordinary Tales (2013) - A Poe anthology that improves steadily, from an amateurish first entry, unto the finale, a goddamn masterpiece.<br /><br /> Quest for Fire (1981) - A muddy slog, bludgeoning narrative conventions with brute frankness, but limited in its capacity to create tension.<br /><br /> The Last Unicorn (1982) - A wise and bittersweet animated romance, crafted with gentle strangeness that makes it feel timeless and mythical.<br /><br /> The Witch (2015) - A grimy historical claustrophobic head-space whose perversions leave a toxic footprint. Creepy, corrupt, & very effective<br /><br /> The Lobster (2015) - A dry and twisted movie - sadistic in a lonely, alienating way, with traces of hope and romance. A singular experience.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><p><a href="http://benefitofthedoubt.miksimum.com">* Benefit of the Doubt *</a> | <a href="http://www.miksimum.com/">Miksimum</a></p></div>Jesse Mhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06628842413174084374noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30665218.post-90455373145948358862017-06-21T13:07:00.001-04:002017-06-21T13:07:20.184-04:00Reductions: The Consumer and the Critic<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3ekwT924g6Jai06nS_hQ2TwLpkMI6bI_-vLcKyZj30_5CgVX1Mj61trKHQAdpwxAOW-CJ6yKcAPfew17RUY3K26h1VLuvLk74gV3i27TsVAHOXk8V_VECfTeWaSJg3wonRnAe/s1600/Aristotle-With-A-Bust-Of-Homer-1653.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="553" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3ekwT924g6Jai06nS_hQ2TwLpkMI6bI_-vLcKyZj30_5CgVX1Mj61trKHQAdpwxAOW-CJ6yKcAPfew17RUY3K26h1VLuvLk74gV3i27TsVAHOXk8V_VECfTeWaSJg3wonRnAe/s320/Aristotle-With-A-Bust-Of-Homer-1653.jpg" width="294" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
I'm going to go ahead and post some more abstract notes, developing some ideas I've had floating around for a while. This is related to <a href="https://medium.com/@miksimum/an-aesthetics-of-aspect-1e7d9bc1e20b" target="_blank">this post</a> and <a href="https://medium.com/@miksimum/criticism-contra-fandom-2d6f25a4eb13" target="_blank">this post</a>, where you'll find what I was then calling the Aspect Aesthetic (I think I need a better name).<br />
<br />
This is a follow-up on those posts, doing the following three things:<br />
<ul>
<li>elaborating on those basic points</li>
<li>expanding the argument to include the Critic</li>
<li>reducing some of my previous wordiness</li>
</ul>
Still, the big idea is the same: that these three roles are fundamental, especially when talking about aesthetics... and they can be applied to many areas of life where investment and appreciation meet reason, loyalty, identity, and faith.<br /><br />This depends on a lot of premises that haven't been proven, obviously... like, the idea that culture can be used as a guiding frame of reference for understanding humans and their relationship to the world, and that the more broadly you apply this frame, the more it seems to cover. You've started with culture and art and the creative instinct, and eventually, by talking about subjectivity and human nature and idealism, and the universe as a sensory phenomenon, you find yourself stomping clumsily through ethics and politics, and encroaching even upon history and physics and metaphysics.<br /><br />Not that I necessarily mind that... I'm no analytic academic... but for now, we just have to start with the seed of the idea: the Consumer and the Critic. The Creator is a bigger construct, I think, and that will have to wait for a different day.<br />
<br />
<h2>
I. THE CONSUMER (Interiority)</h2>
<br />The consumer lives in the work.<br />
…<br />
All works create an interior world, guided by certain patterns and assumptions, operating by certain rules, constrained in particular ways.<br />
…<br />
The world of the work is built according to the blueprints of its Creator, but it's not limited thereby. There's just as much input from history, context, collective memory, the subconscious, and the cultural preoccupations, as there is from the Creator herself, a small person with a limited purview and access to an disinterested creative force (the muse, the reservoir, etc... wait for the Creator entry for more on that).<br />
…<br />
The Consumer inhabits this world. They invest in it, accept its specifications, and make it real by acting as its observer.<br />
…<br />
The Consumer's relationship to the work is <a href="http://www.iep.utm.edu/buber/#SH2b">I-Thou</a>, as opposed to the Critic's <a href="http://www.iep.utm.edu/buber/#SH2b">I-It</a>.<br />
…<br />
The quintessential consumer is the Fan. If you're not a Fan, your status as Consumer is precarious. The Fan is the person who not only chooses the work, but who also chooses to advocate for it... a form of Patriotism for the work's conceptual territory.<br />
…<br />
The Fan has a shadow (the Jungian, or an archetypal video game Doppelganger boss, depending on your frame of reference). This shadow is the Anti-Fan, a genuinely weird creature -- a Consumer who rejects the work outright -- whose engagement takes the form of kneejerk denial. Anti-fans are the people who say, without any explicit reason, "This just isn't my thing" or "I don't really think I get it."<br />
…<br />
The true Fan defines the work from the inside. They are a necessary part of the work coming into fulfillment. Lots of works have no Fans, which leaves them stuck in a sort of limbo, having no relationship to the world except through the anemic will and intention of their Creator.<br />
…<br />
Fandom is a sort of religious experience, and all religions are Fandoms. Christians are the most obvious example of this, being Fans of God’s word, His creations, and Jesus, His central character/principle/motif.<br />
…<br />
A crucial part of the Consumer role: it's where freedom manifests.<br />
…<br />
The Critic may be free to focus on certain works and ignore others, but they're always bound by the obligations of rationality. They make claims about works, and these claims are supported or unsupported. Criticism is a parasite that feeds on justification. Consumers are immune to this infection.<br />
…<br />
The freedom of the Consumer is not merely the negative freedom of not-being-forced... it's the positive freedom of browsing and investing, the radical self-actualization of choosing something that defines you. Being a Consumer means you have this capacity… being a Fan means actually using it.<br />
…<br />
Fandom is the full exercise of freedom: sovereignty, choice, actualization.<br /><br />
<h2>
II. THE CRITIC (Exteriority)</h2>
<br />Criticism is exile.<br />
…<br />
It's hard to imagine why anyone would choose to be a Critic, when there's so much content around to get swept up in. Because Criticism is, by nature, a self-exile from the subject (i.e. putting your beloved pet, the dog named Culture, on the dissection table of discourse).<br />
…<br />
Criticism is <a href="http://www.iep.utm.edu/buber/#SH2b">I-It</a>, contra the intimate, fully-involved Fandom relationship, which is <a href="http://www.iep.utm.edu/buber/#SH2b">I-Thou</a>.<br />
…<br />
It may be the access. The Critic DOES have access to certain dimensions that the Consumer can't get to.<br />
…<br />
For instance, being a Consumer means the loss of the economic dimension... and for the Fan, there is no economic dimension at all. In a way that's denied to the Fan, the Critic can step outside the work and understand it in terms of precedent, context, relative quality, the field. "The Market," as it were.<br />
…<br />
But the Fan could certainly argue that the Critic is denied a certain dimension, as well, and it may be the most important dimension of the work: the heart, the interior, the absolute investment that makes the work come alive.<br />
…<br />
The Critic has to acknowledge the possibility of the Consumer, but they can't fully Consume. They have to appreciate the Fan, but they are not Fans. Anyone who claims to be a Fan and a Critic at the same time is misunderstanding one of those two roles.<br />
…<br />
If they're truly a Fan, their criticism isn't true criticism -- it's merely an intellectual engagement, broadening the scope of the work by doing internal labor. If they're doing the difficult work of criticism -- sorting out the pros from the cons, observing technical weaknesses, categorizing the work, questioning its motives and its internal coherence -- they're not really being a Fan. They're being a Critic.<br />
…<br />
Perhaps they're being a Critic who has eaten a Fan. This is relatively common, and frankly, Fans make the best food (other Critics are bitter and chafe the palate). So Fans make the best food, and eating Fans makes the best Critics.<br />
…<br />
The Critic eats Fans like Kirby eats his enemies. By eating the Fan, the Critic gains the short-term, provisional ability to ignore the work's weaknesses and assimilate with it. Employed correctly, this can make the Critic's criticism far more robust, and thus more persuasive. Criticism written from this perspective -- from the post-prandial daze of simulated fandom -- I would call "Criticism in the sympathetic mode."<br />
…<br />
Still, this is an asymmetrical relationship. The Critic can temporarily effect Fandom because the Critic is outside the work, and has more freedom to operate in various modes in relation to it. The Fan can't become a Critic in the same way, because the Fan is a creature of the interior. The Fan can't survive outside the work, and they can't see the work as a whole, which is required for any meaningful criticism.<br />
…<br />
One of the key postures that challenges the Critic-Consumer dichotomy is Ironic Fandom. This is a popular mode in postmodern discourse, and a key part of <a href="http://wagsrevue.com/Download/Issue_1/Moor.pdf">the Hipster project of illegibility</a>.<br />
…<br />
The Ironic Fan seems to blur the line between Fan and Critic, but inevitably, the rule still holds: a Critic can act as a Fan, and not vice versa. The Ironic Fan is actually a Critic simulating a Fan, but leaving the signposts of simulation out to see. They are highly conscious of context: history, genre, and conventions. Their temporary Fandom consists in recognizing all the conventions and tropes and standard templates, and willingly inflating the value of these conventions in order to distort the appraisal of the work. Their Fandom is not sincere... it's a game of superiority and obfuscation.<br />
…<br />
The Critic has other crucial roles in cultural production. These are related to those functions and dimensions that are the unique purview of the critical perspective: context, history, technical authority, status, independence, objectivity. These may be true characteristics, or they may be pretensions... in any case, they are crucial for the work of the Critic.<br />
…<br />
One role of the critic is Gatekeeper.<br />
…<br />
One role of the critic is Historian.<br />
…<br />
One role of the critic is Mentor.<br />
…<br />
The critic has many faces... almost as many as the Creator, and certainly more than the Consumer.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><p><a href="http://benefitofthedoubt.miksimum.com">* Benefit of the Doubt *</a> | <a href="http://www.miksimum.com/">Miksimum</a></p></div>Jesse Mhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06628842413174084374noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30665218.post-29648989700444324302017-06-08T12:41:00.001-04:002017-06-08T12:41:16.862-04:00Notes on Consumption: History of Philosophy, Twin Peaks, some writingsI'm feeling nostalgic for a time long before I existed... before most of Western civilization existed, really. It's a side-effect of listening to <a href="https://historyofphilosophy.net/" target="_blank">The History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps</a> (I'm up through the Middle Platonists) and reflecting on the potency and simplicity of those early philosophical doctrines, from Heraclitis and into Aristotle and Socrates and the Hellenistic schools.<br />
<br />
I'm not nostalgic for the inevitable disease, scarcity, and slavery that made up everyday life in those classical empires... indeed, my nostalgia requires a certain denial about the real historical conditions. What I'm nostalgic about, obviously, is the freshness of thought... the way these philosophers could try to get a handle on the whole universe, the nature of reality and virtue and everything, in a way that's simple, that just requires a couple principles, one or two guiding concepts, and a faith in reason to reduce everything else.<br />
<br />
It's been a long time since somebody could honestly say, "The virtuous life is the good life, and virtue is just the pursuit of wisdom and self-mastery." It's also been a long time since somebody could say, "Everything is made of air." How different history would have been, if one of those metaphysical statements had proven true! That behind the great multiplicity of reality, we'd found a simple unity! A history of childlike simplicity, of getting everything in order according to one principle... the whole mess of human conflict, just washed away, all at once.<br />
<br />
I know philosophy can't really operate like that these days. That kind of innocence is long gone, diluted by cultural exchange and obliterated by the fires of war. No intellectualism can be honest without acknowledging the specific, the irreducible, the multiplicity of objects and subjects and vantage points.<br />
<br />
So if you have a yearning for something that captures the world, or at least tries to grapple with everything at once, rather than with some small, isolated part of it, you have to go to those places that lean into ambiguity, that celebrate the strangeness and the mystery of it all... things that make space for meaninglessness, and accept infinite contingency.<br />
<br />
Luckily, I've been watching the new season of Twin Peaks, and Lynch's sensibility scratches this itch pretty well.<br />
<br />
It's not perfect... or if it is, I'm not far enough through the whole thing to see it... but Lynch does not shy away from the grand fog. He may find some monsters in the mist, but more importantly, it brings out the obscure discord of everything... the way all reality is sort of floating, removed from the simple constraints of logic and justice and cause and effect and archetype. Sometimes it's almost nihilistic, and sometimes it's merciful and melancholy.<br />
<br />
There is something sad, to me, about watching Dale Cooper wander the city, helpless, only comprehending the most proximal connections and sensations. Because I am the proud parent of a toddler, and Dale Cooper is acting very much like her. And what it conveys, to me, is a particular point about how confused and venal and unnecessary the world is, with all its complications.<br />
<br />
I'm uniquely sensitive to this kind of ambiguity at the moment. I think this is what I responded to in "<a href="https://medium.com/@iamchrisscott/its-not-like-i-tried-to-hurt-anyone-5b47556db0b0" target="_blank">It's Not Like I Tried to Hurt Anyone</a>," a very compelling story I stumbled across in one of those Medium "recommended" sidebars... there is a sense in which the main character's refusal, her withdrawal from history, makes her feel vast and divine in a way that's not shared by all the rest of us, caught up and diminished in the flow of the everyday.<br />
<br />
I'd like to do some more focused writing soon. I'd do a philosophical essay, if I could manage it, and I've got a starting point -- the Skeptics' investment in their own ignorance, which I strongly identify with -- but I need more content, something more compelling to structure it. We'll see what comes of the urge. I feel a terrible shortness in myself, an inadequacy, that I need to power through, even if I can never vanquish it.<br />
<br />
As a final note -- I also ran across <a href="http://blog.fitzcarraldoeditions.com/extract-essayism/" target="_blank">an excerpt from a book called Essayism</a>, and it's made me want to buy the whole thing, when I have a moment to read it.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><p><a href="http://benefitofthedoubt.miksimum.com">* Benefit of the Doubt *</a> | <a href="http://www.miksimum.com/">Miksimum</a></p></div>Jesse Mhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06628842413174084374noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30665218.post-87867098741175340862017-05-24T20:00:00.000-04:002017-05-24T20:00:01.566-04:00Tangled (2010) and the Real Men of The Snuggly DucklingYes, that's right -- armchair media critic raising a little girl has been watching a lot of Disney movies, and in the spirit of this blog, I can't help but appreciatively thumb through their themes and messages and motifs. Here, as anywhere, there are many beautiful things to discover.<br />
<br />
Despite having great friends and family who are intense Disney fans, I remain a bit of a skeptic. I have to take the position of the Critic on this topic -- I can't shake the suspicion that "Princess" culture might feed into crass, commercialized, rigid femininity.<br />
<br />
On the other hand, I can't deny the company's love for cultural myth, and their commitment to storytelling. Rewatching their various canonical films, both Classic and Contemporary, I'm struck by the complexity of their aesthetic. They run the wide gamut of Romantic sensibilities, from the folksiness of Snow White to the Gothic sprawl of Sleeping Beauty, up through Princess Tiana's Creole Southern Gothic Americana.<br />
<br />
I've been struck by some of the emotional moments in these movies... as, for instance, the crushing moment in Tangled <a href="https://youtu.be/EhSVreVsjJo?t=3m37s" target="_blank">when Rapunzel says "Yes, mommy" to her jealous kidnapper</a>.<br />
<br />
And I've been impressed with how Disney has changed: before what <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disney_Princess#Modern_era" target="_blank">Wikipedia calls the Modern Era</a>, the Princesses were generally pitted against standard monstrous adversaries. Since the 2000's, however -- with the adjective-titled Disney films, <i>Frozen</i> and <i>Brave</i> -- you'll find that a focus on internal turmoil, rather than external conflict... the estrangement between two sisters, a girl who resents her mother and the traditions she represents. These are the battles all the young people of the world will have to fight.<br />
<br />
I did love <i>Tangled</i>... despite being a crusty 35-year old man, I was genuinely delighted by its earnestness and its slap-stick humor.<br />
<br />
And I especially loved the bandits of The Snuggly Duckling.<br />
<br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="214" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Bate_tvVUpk" width="380"></iframe><br />
<br />
These goofy men remind me more of myself than I'd ever be willing to admit to anyone, save the whole anonymous Internet. I imagine they're all living their Plan B -- they rehearse their piano lessons, reminisce about their first crush, and occasionally visit the storefront that was supposed to be their bakery. Pillaging was always supposed to be a side-job, they tell themselves... how did I end up here at the Duckling, just like my dad did, and just like his dad before him?<br />
<br />
But they know. These bandits, they know -- it's not about who recognizes your hard work, or how much you get paid for it. They know that the free market economy chooses winners and losers based on inscrutable patterns, cynicism, charisma, and the flapping of a single butterfly's wings. For these ruffians, it's about flourishing, and they have faith that they CAN flourish, even as plunderers and highwaymen, as long as they set aside time for their true aspirations.<br />
<br />
Eudaimonia -- a life of flourishing -- is all about having a space of your own to cultivate, even if it's deep under the radar of the prevailing social structures. It's all about having hopes, and passions, and a community of support.<br />
<br />
That, of course, is the other beautiful function of the Snuggly Duckling... it's a community of enlightened, supportive masculinity, disguised as a rotten rat's nest of thieves. Who wouldn't want to be adopted by this circle of friends, who will listen to your concerts, taste your cupcakes, and watch your little puppet shows?<br />
<br />
Of course, they have to keep up a front. Their furry capes and winged helmets are their Gucci business suits, and their battleaxes are their business cards. They have to talk in gruff obscenities, just like other male-gendered people have to make eye contact and shake hands. You never know when a potential client is going to come through that door and potentially catch you, looking like some kind of Unicorn Collector.<br />
<br />
But for an earnest young lady who asks them the question -- what are your dreams? -- they will open up, just as they've opened up to one another. Breakin' femurs may provide a show of confidence, but it doesn't really indicate true security, genuine self-acceptance... only the recognition of your brothers-in-arms can do that. This is a truly magical little tavern, a temporary autonomous zone, where pretense is shed and aspiration takes all forms.<br />
<br />
In fact, honesty and openness is so important to the denizens of the Snuggly Duckling that they will enforce it by violence, if necessary (truly an intersectional community). This is what Flynn Rider discovers when he refuses to sing.<br />
<br />
All those swords.<br />
<br />
Those swords have a clear message: In this community, a show of vulnerability and authenticity is the hazing, the expected trial by fire. If you don't open up and show your true self, they're saying, then you're not privy to the nurturing fraternity that's hiding here in the Duckling... nay, you get the malicious, mean, and scary outlaw pirates. And I don't think you want that, Mr. Slick-haired Pseudonymous Flynn "dying of insecurity" Rider. No, you definitely want to be on our Snuggly side.<br />
<br />
My brothers, lost in this postmodern era, I promise you: we will eventually find our Snuggly Duckling. We will dream again!<div class="blogger-post-footer"><p><a href="http://benefitofthedoubt.miksimum.com">* Benefit of the Doubt *</a> | <a href="http://www.miksimum.com/">Miksimum</a></p></div>Jesse Mhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06628842413174084374noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30665218.post-8350397761341621832017-05-08T20:30:00.000-04:002017-05-08T20:30:26.196-04:00Kubo (2016) and Poesis -- the Why of Art<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://blog.alltheanime.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/kubo-3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://blog.alltheanime.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/kubo-3.jpg" height="215" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />Did we all write poetry? I know I did. I read them in classes, and I workshopped them among friends. I once got to read a few at a library event (some lyrical little remixes of lines from Langston Hughes, trying to leverage some unearned insight into the soul of jazz and blues). When there wasn't a literary magazine to publish it, I founded one. Poetry was a very pure exercise in construction and expression, and even now I occasionally miss it.<br />
<br />
Despite its terrible potential for abuse by sullen teenagers, there’s something fundamental about poetry. In <a href="http://www.clivejames.com/essays/recent/dyingart" target="_blank">A Dying Art</a> (2015), Clive James calls it "the queen of the humanities because all the humanities must be done for themselves alone, but poetry can prove that this is so." This is the praise of damnation, of course... he’s saying that poetry’s motives are vindicated by its social and economic irrelevance. Sad but fair.<br />
<br />
On this point -- the elevation of poetry among the arts -- Martin Heidegger is more convincing. In The <i>Origin of the Work of Art</i>, he says "Art happens as poetry," and like so many of his claims, this is built on a reading of history and language. As an infamous miner of linguistic resonance, Heidegger knew that the etymology of the word "poetry" (German "poesie") is from Greek poiesis, meaning "making" more generally. Poetry -- the word, the signifier itself -- drags around the trace of something bigger: the human drive to create.<br />
<br />
The question of "why" follows poetry around like an ill-tempered, codependent dog. In the last day, I’ve run across it in two different (very different) bits of criticism: the aforementioned Clive James essay, and the classic of literary theory, Harold Bloom’s <i>The Anxiety of Influence</i>. And as poiesis suggests, this question is a proxy for a broader one: why art in general? Why do we still insist on making things, when every practical and extrinsic motive is refuted?<br />
<br />
A 2016 stop-motion Samurai film -- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4302938/" target="_blank">Kubo and the Two Strings</a> -- opens up this question ("why art?") and tries to give us the first traces of an answer.<br />
<br />
<i>Kubo and the Two Strings</i> is not a rumination on artistic practice. It’s a sentimental swashbuckler, the story of a boy who’s being hunted by his demonic grandfather, and who undertakes a hero’s journey to save himself and reconcile the breakup of his family. Still, the motif of creative energy is highly visible: Kubo’s prized possession is a magical Shamisen from his mother, and when he plays, he’s able to invoke spirits in origami form.<br />
<br />
I have to come out right here and declare my love for Kubo... not just the film, but the character himself, a solitary boy who’s taken on a nurturing role toward his ailing mother. He’s also, essentially, a multi-media artist, using his Shamizan and his origami puppets to stage adventure stories in a public square. And as exciting as his adventure becomes, I think that the beginning of the film, his time in his cave and hometown, have far more to offer the discerning audience... the film is truly thematically front-weighted.<br />
<br />
Martin Heidegger, afore-mentioned German philosopher who ran with the wrong crowd, had a lot to say about context, and how it inevitably defines us. This is an angle worth noting in <i>Kubo</i>. Heidegger used terms like "world" and "thrownness" to get at this theme, but we can skip the jargon and talk about the specifics. Kubo’s life is one of misfortune and absence, from the very beginning: he lives in a cave, living by a small fire, and he travels to a single town to perform skits and trade for his household’s everyday needs. His mother lives with him, and she’s also a storyteller, but it’s pretty clear that they don’t travel a lot, and nobody in this family is going to a specialized prep school for the arts.<br />
<br />
And this context, in turn, reveals the significance of Kubo’s music and theater. Kubo’s stories are vibrant and exotic, a succession of boss-fight vignettes that catch all Kubo’s spectators in their spell. They involve a great knight (Hanzo, who Kubo patterns after his mythical father) and a cast of monsters to be defeated... giant spiders, fire-breathing chickens... and they end with the appearance of The Moon King, an evil warlord, as Hanzo’s final adversary.<br />
<br />
Like so many artists, Kubo’s art is compromised by his economic needs. His public-square stories are products, his talent packaged and sold. For most of his life, Kubo’s "why" has been banal: to buy food for myself and my mother.<br />
<br />
After the plot’s initiating event, this changes, and Kubo finds himself traveling in search of his father’s mythical armaments, his economic concerns overruled. Still, he uses his magic, which is also his art: crossing a frozen tundra, he sees a lone bluebird, and he summons a flock of origami birds to fly alongside the loner and play with her.<br />
<br />
This is where I feel the most kinship with Kubo, and indeed, I wish I practiced such a spontaneous art.<br />
<br />
Kubo and I have this "why"... this creative impulse... because of the fissure between our inner lives and the world that situates us. We feel a richness in our imaginations, a vastness of possibilities, and when we return to the real world, we find it brittle, distracted by trivialities, rigid in scope, and inevitably lonely. This is not to say that reality is impoverished. Indeed, I’ve traveled to some amazing places, and Kubo spends half the film on a grand adventure. But we all have limits, standards, patterns, boundaries that draw us back. We are all locked into our situations. Our worlds don’t go on forever, and for some of us, at some times in our lives, they don’t even go past the city limits, or outside at night.<br />
<br />
The "why" of art -- poiesis, as Theory calls it -- is that it lets us contaminate the mundane with the magic of possibility. To the well-structured, inevitable world of experience, with its stable past and fleeting present and predictable future, we can add this trickle of our private reality. Art lets us broker a peace, or at least reach a stalemate. Art is the negotiating party of our imaginations, setting out to meet with the world... to compromise, to respond, but never to submit.<br />
<br />
...<br />
<br />
<b>Postscript:</b> You could read more into Kubo, rich as it is in thematic nutrition. I mentioned Harold Bloom, and in a deep analysis, he might become useful again. Kubo is, after all, the product of powerful influences, and his relationship with them is a crucial part of his eventual resolution. You could also write something about the sort of bicameral relationship of Beetle/Mini-Hanzo, which becomes very puzzling as you learn more about the two characters.<br />
<br />
This is the expansive inner life of art, isn’t it? For every artifact, a thousand interpretations, an infinitude of lenses and dimensions. A good work of art is worth a thousand critical interpretations.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><p><a href="http://benefitofthedoubt.miksimum.com">* Benefit of the Doubt *</a> | <a href="http://www.miksimum.com/">Miksimum</a></p></div>Jesse Mhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06628842413174084374noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30665218.post-46918336213330134712017-04-30T03:21:00.003-04:002017-04-30T03:21:53.196-04:002013, year of the doppelganger (on Ayoade's The Double & Villeneuve's Enemy)2013 was a big year for doppelgangers. I had to check IMDB to confirm, but I shouldn't have bothered, the memory is so vivid: seeing previews at indie features, and noticing that there were two movies arriving at the same time, both in a dark eccentric style, and both about protagonists meeting shadow versions of themselves.<br />
<br />
I finally got around to seeing both of them this year. 2017 is looking to be a great year for discovering movies.<br />
<br />
In case you missed either of them: the first was <i>Enemy</i>, starring Jake Gyllenhaal and directed by Denis Villeneuve. You might recognize that name... in the past year, the guy really leveled up, directing excellent film and worldwide award magnet <i>The Arrival</i>. The other was <i>The Double</i>, starring Jesse Eisenberg and directed by Richard Ayoade.<br />
<br />
<i>Enemy </i>was an excellent, stirring film, partly because it was so focused and compact. It had the feel of Christopher Nolan's earlier films, but with richer tactile qualities, sort of inky and jaundiced. In a sense, its narrative purity was also its weakness: it felt so focused that it became irrelevant. It was essentially a study of itself, blind to the world that we were watching it from.<br />
<br />
<i>The Double</i>, on its surface, wasn't much different. It took place in an absurdist fantasy world with strong Terry Gilliam influences, and it was tricky and ominous, but relatively predictable (the twists weren't very twisty, and those moments that were surprising weren't very relevant to the plot as a whole). However, these criticisms are minor quibbles when the whole product is taken into account, and I think, though it was less pure and technically artful, <i>The Double</i> was heartier than <i>Enemy</i>, and had more to say to its audience.<br />
<br />
The key problematic in <i>The Double </i>was Simon's insecurity, and the film was intensely attentive to this. Simon was a sad character, perhaps too much of a caricature to be relatable, except for the fact that he embodies every neurotic insecurity and inferiority complex looming over our psychological bubbles. James was a brilliant foil, a manifestation of Simon's fantasy of dominance and aggression and confidence, and he captured both the thrill of that construct, and its terrible price: the inauthenticity, the opportunism, the misplaced priorities, the lack of consideration or compassion.<br />
<br />
Simon having to face James as a sort of shadow perfection: that made for a powerful film, and at least for me, a compelling comment on how fantasy and reality run in parallel.<br />
<br />
It brings larger questions to bear: at what point in our lives should we let go of the aspirational version of ourselves? At what point does a fantasy of self-possession, of personal success and validation, become an anchor rather than a buoy? Can we keep aspiring and striving, if we don't have some sort of perfect projection we're following... our own inadequacy, reconstructed as a guide to a better version of ourselves?<br />
<br />
I started reading Fernando Pessoa's <i>The Book of Disquiet </i>recently -- you may have run across it in my other recent entries -- and this fits firmly within this entry's thematic, as well. Pessoa's distinguishing characteristic was that he wrote under multiple personas, all refracting his own personality in various ways. These all had their own histories and identities and concerns, but their writing (through Pessoa) was always rich and earnest and fully realized. Pessoa's subjects included inadequacy and incompleteness, the existential gaps at the heart of human identity. His writing might have been a balm for Simon.<br />
<br />
This has been a relatively unfocused entry, and I hope you'll forgive it. Maybe I'll have more thoughts on 2013, the year of the doppelganger, and I'll write a second, more idealized post as a sort of twinner to this one.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><p><a href="http://benefitofthedoubt.miksimum.com">* Benefit of the Doubt *</a> | <a href="http://www.miksimum.com/">Miksimum</a></p></div>Jesse Mhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06628842413174084374noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30665218.post-37265031009284426072017-04-07T14:47:00.002-04:002017-04-07T14:47:26.841-04:00A Manifesto, dedicated to Fernando PessoaYour style is a straitjacket.<br />
<br />
You've figured out what you think is beautiful, and what kind of work you're committed to, and what kind of character you have as an artist, and this is your protective stance as you present yourself to the world. Every time you give the public a new artifact, a new piece of yourself, you put yourself at their mercy... and yet, you've shut out so many others. Because by choosing your style, you've excluded all other styles, and those exclusions have become part of your identity.<br />
<br />
Your identity is built on an unstable affirmative and a rigid infinity of negatives.<br />
<br />
I don't have a style. Each new work looks for a style, and they don't find it in me, and so they struggle. So my exclusions are washed away, and my potential fills the infinite space that my pretensions have vacated.<br />
<br />
. . . . .<br />
<br />
Your popularity is a poison.<br />
<br />
You know the taste of validation, of feedback and response and appreciation. It's a sweet acidity that penetrates every level of your praxis. It softens your commitment and puts cracks in your sovereignty, and once it's in there, it can't be washed out.<br />
<br />
You may embrace it. You may say you "do it for the fans," that your followers are "the most important thing to you." Some people love the things that are killing them.<br />
<br />
I have no fans. I've learned the long asceticism of failure, and it keeps my creative organs pure. If I love any of my own output, I know that it has a 100% approval rating, that the only person in the world who cares about it is enamored of it. Hate follows the same path.<br />
<br />
. . . . .<br />
<br />
Your productiveness is a failure mode.<br />
<br />
You know how to turn an idea into a product. You have a pipeline, a process, a series of technical steps that lead you to something complete, that you're happy with, that you can show the world. You've dug away the soft loam of unfinished projects.<br />
<br />
But that vast incompleteness was you at your most fertile, your most robust. When you finish a work, you strip away all its beautiful indecision, its vastness, the unfulfilled potential that gives it those cosmic roots. Each signature and sale is a cord of wood, and your range is notably short of trees.<br />
<br />
I don't finish projects, and they remain seeds and saplings in the primeval woodland of my imagination. I may produce artifacts, little bundles to burn as kindling or desiccated limbs shaped into walking sticks, but this only happens when the work has already died. And so I leave my best work to the wild, nascent, leafy, unrealized, hopeful and beautifully hopeless.<br />
<br />
. . . . .<br />
<br />
"And I wonder if my apparently negligible voice might not embody the essence of thousands of voices, the longing for self-expression of thousands of lives, the patience of millions of souls resigned like my own to their daily lot, their useless dreams, and their hopeless hopes."<br />
<br />
Fernando Pessoa, <i>The Book of Disquiet</i><div class="blogger-post-footer"><p><a href="http://benefitofthedoubt.miksimum.com">* Benefit of the Doubt *</a> | <a href="http://www.miksimum.com/">Miksimum</a></p></div>Jesse Mhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06628842413174084374noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30665218.post-49989899755372531142017-03-11T02:46:00.000-05:002017-03-11T02:46:33.108-05:00Dads and Daughters and Dozing Off<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj03Fuww0m8n4fs9fIDMnf9ND_moCLZ_89cqedhr8gQ9sI24H3o1IEzrKs9cQ71AdxXEHMlggmmQJte06JjpIuV0liLQHPSsPdXJHNl4J2a-xBvhfBD7Cp-yutXbBGoWEeqaG6F/s1600/sandman-raven.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj03Fuww0m8n4fs9fIDMnf9ND_moCLZ_89cqedhr8gQ9sI24H3o1IEzrKs9cQ71AdxXEHMlggmmQJte06JjpIuV0liLQHPSsPdXJHNl4J2a-xBvhfBD7Cp-yutXbBGoWEeqaG6F/s320/sandman-raven.jpg" width="218" /></a></div>
John Crowley wrote about Sleep more perfectly than I could ever hope to rival, so I’ll use his words (culled from his novel Little, Big) as padding between my mutterings.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
“But life is wakings-up, all unexpected, all surprising. On a certain November afternoon, twelve years ago, from a certain nap (why that day? Why that nap?) she had awakened from sleeping: eyes-closed, blankets-up-to-chin, pillow-sleep Sophie awakened, or had been awakened, for good.”</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>Little, Big</i> pg. 254</blockquote>
Sleep is every sentience’s fellow-traveler, and so, naturally, we’ve all cultivated very personal relationships with her.<br />
<br />
For some, it’s affection, even to self-indulgence: a full embrace of the co-dependence, a love that won’t be ashamed when it dozes off at a dinner party or starts its day at twilight.<br />
<br />
For others, it’s more of a disciplined respect. Sleep is a solid partner, a trusted support, and neglecting her is unwise. She has time slots and minimum commitments. We can’t make this work without her.<br />
<br />
For me, and others like me (though I don’t hear from us very often), it’s another thing entirely. Where others have affection and codependence, we have resentment. Where others have respect, we have defiance. When she lurks in our bedrooms, we try to ignore her, or step outside. If we could cut ties with her, we would do it at a moment. As it is, we are stuck with her.<br />
<br />
We are the Citizens Against Slumber, the odd hour keepers, the midnight oil burners. We know <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8wpUohIRgBc" target="_blank">Sleeping is a Sucker’s Game</a>, and we only play it because biology bullies us into it.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
“You still up?” she said, and at the same moment he asked the same of her.<br />“It’s awful,” she said, coming in. She wore a long white nightgown which gave her even more the air of an unlaid ghost. “Tossing and turning. Do you know that feeling? As though your mind’s asleep but your body’s awake—and won’t give in—and has to keep jumping from one position to another…”<br />[…]<br />“Awful.” He felt, but would never admit to, a sense of fitness that Sophie, long the champion sleeper, had come in recent years to be a fair insomniac, and knew now even better than Smoky, a chancy sleeper at the best of times, the pursuit of fleeing oblivion. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>Little, Big</i> pg 289</blockquote>
<br />
What makes sleep so interesting, for me, is how it unhitches my consciousness from continuity.<br />
<br />
What is my brain doing, that it has to forget where I am, how old I am, and what’s happened in my life since high school? How does sleep, for a few hours each night, manage to persuade my consciousness to let go of those anchors and drift off into this oneiric ocean?<br />
<br />
You’ve seen that moment on-screen… most recently in The Night Of, for instance, but also in The Hangover: where am I? What happened last night? Cinema is the best medium to simulate the sudden break, the jump cut, and the resulting scramble for context. Editing is the art of (dis)continuity.<br />
<br />
It happens so fast, too. One serviceable definition of “dozing off” is losing continuity without really losing time: blinking stupidly in your driver’s seat, having to remember why you’re at this light, why you’re on this road, and panicking for a moment, checking to ensure your foot is still on the brake.<br />
<br />
This example is especially salient for me, because on a few occasions, I’ve stupidly dozed off while driving. I never hurt myself, or anyone else — dents in cars, maybe, and some calls from insurance companies — but it significantly heightened my awareness of my own mortality. I seem to have outgrown the danger, but I still wonder about those occasions and their counterfactual universe where I veered off the road, collided with the end of a guardrail, or crumpled into the space between a semi’s front and back tires.<br />
<br />
It didn’t take many incidents to really amplify this anxiety, and it’s been with me ever since. I don’t grow out of it. I generally trust myself behind a wheel now, but I still don’t really trust myself to sleep.<br />
<br />
How does this manifest? It happens when I’m sitting in my car in the driveway, listening to the end of a song before I head inside. It’s warm, and I’m not in a rush, so of course my consciousness drifts a little bit.<br />
<br />
I should know I’m safe, shouldn’t I? Isn’t that why I’m so relaxed in the first place?<br />
<br />
But when I come out of that doze… when my eyes snap open and my ears recognize the same song, still playing… it’s always accompanied by a moment of panic, feeling like I’ve fallen asleep at the wheel, expecting to see a car’s headlights as it collides with my little Nissan.<br />
<br />
That’s one of the little offenses that Sleep has for me. I don’t blame her — it’s self-inflicted — just a little prick of karmic retaliation for my tendency to fight her, belittle her, act like I don’t need her.<br />
<br />
She also likes to interrupt Netflix movies, and sometimes she smothers me on train rides, or when I’m trying to write essays.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
“Now, child,” she said. “What was it you learned from the bears?”<br />“Sleep,” Lilac said, looking doubtful.<br />“Sleep, indeed,” said Mrs. Underhill. “Now…”<br />“I don’t want to sleep,” Lilac said. “Please.”<br />“Well, how do you know till you’ve tried it? The bears were comfortable enough.” </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>Little, Big</i> pg 268</blockquote>
Sleep has a stronger hand to play, now that I’m getting older. She visits me with more regularity — the end of work, the last hour on the edge of normal-person bedtime — and she usually wins.<br />
<br />
I remember, with bitter nostalgia, my time as the dominant party in this rivalry.<br />
<br />
From my teens until my late twenties, I was assertive with sleep, stern in guarding my boundaries. In a week, I could get by on 30 hours of sleep… several short, productive nights, followed by a low-key “catch up” night, and then back into the fray. I don’t know whether it affected my life expectancy, but it gave me a feeling of control over my time, and I got a lot of writing and gaming and movie-watching and exploring done.<br />
<br />
I have a kid now… a toddler, a fucking dream come true of a little girl… and I’ve lost a lot of leverage in these negotiations with Sleep. Even when the little one’s not waking up for comfort in the scarce morning hours, she gets up at 6:30 AM — always, like a milk-crazy alarm clock — so I can’t have those short Saturdays and Sundays any more, where I lose a whole half-day to the blissful, achy shame of daytime slumber.<br />
<br />
You know how parents always seem to have these uptight, early-bedtime, high maintenance sleep habits? Well, there’s a reason for that: having a child changes your whole economy of time and energy. It’s such a humbling, such a paradigm shift, it’s hard to imagine it could possibly be worth it, unless you’ve actually had the experience (where you suddenly realize it’s “worth” pretty much anything).<br />
<br />
She looks so peaceful in her crib, and she’s so happy when she’s sleeping well, it’s easy to forget that Sleep and I haven’t resolved our antagonism. It’s up to me to mediate that Daughter/Sleep relationship, after all… creating a “good relationship” with Sleep, i.e. creating good sleep habits, is a imperative parenting role.<br />
<br />
But I need to remind myself: Sleep isn’t always a friend. We foster these good sleep habits so the little girl has an opportunity to be on good terms with Sleep, so Sleep is ready to help us take care of her. But we are not here to force it on her. And seeing her and admiring her peaceful breathing when she’s asleep? That “Ah, she’s so perfect” moment? That’s for my own satisfaction, not purely for her well-being.<br />
<br />
The girl might love Sleep, like her mommy. That would be fine with me. But she also might fight with it, resent it, keep her distance from it. She deserves that chance, too.<br />
<br />
So I’m not going to surrender to Sleep. I’m not going to bow down, promise her my Witching Hours in return for comfort and consistency. I will keep resisting her, at my own discretion, until the day when she wins that final battle and my eyes close forever. I think, after this lifetime of short nights, I’ll be able to appreciate that restful eternity even more.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><p><a href="http://benefitofthedoubt.miksimum.com">* Benefit of the Doubt *</a> | <a href="http://www.miksimum.com/">Miksimum</a></p></div>Jesse Mhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06628842413174084374noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30665218.post-42134249165959307422017-02-22T02:20:00.001-05:002017-02-22T02:20:55.799-05:00A Defense Against the Dark Clouds<blockquote class="instagram-media" data-instgrm-version="7" style=" background:#FFF; border:0; border-radius:3px; box-shadow:0 0 1px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.5),0 1px 10px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.15); margin: 1px; max-width:658px; padding:0; width:99.375%; width:-webkit-calc(100% - 2px); width:calc(100% - 2px);"><div style="padding:8px;"> <div style=" background:#F8F8F8; line-height:0; margin-top:40px; padding:32.4537037037037% 0; text-align:center; width:100%;"> <div style=" background:url(data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAACwAAAAsCAMAAAApWqozAAAABGdBTUEAALGPC/xhBQAAAAFzUkdCAK7OHOkAAAAMUExURczMzPf399fX1+bm5mzY9AMAAADiSURBVDjLvZXbEsMgCES5/P8/t9FuRVCRmU73JWlzosgSIIZURCjo/ad+EQJJB4Hv8BFt+IDpQoCx1wjOSBFhh2XssxEIYn3ulI/6MNReE07UIWJEv8UEOWDS88LY97kqyTliJKKtuYBbruAyVh5wOHiXmpi5we58Ek028czwyuQdLKPG1Bkb4NnM+VeAnfHqn1k4+GPT6uGQcvu2h2OVuIf/gWUFyy8OWEpdyZSa3aVCqpVoVvzZZ2VTnn2wU8qzVjDDetO90GSy9mVLqtgYSy231MxrY6I2gGqjrTY0L8fxCxfCBbhWrsYYAAAAAElFTkSuQmCC); display:block; height:44px; margin:0 auto -44px; position:relative; top:-22px; width:44px;"></div></div><p style=" color:#c9c8cd; font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; line-height:17px; margin-bottom:0; margin-top:8px; overflow:hidden; padding:8px 0 7px; text-align:center; text-overflow:ellipsis; white-space:nowrap;"><a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/BQECUJCh42B/" style=" color:#c9c8cd; font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; font-style:normal; font-weight:normal; line-height:17px; text-decoration:none;" target="_blank">A post shared by Jesse Miksic (@miksimum)</a> on <time style=" font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; line-height:17px;" datetime="2017-02-03T20:35:44+00:00">Feb 3, 2017 at 12:35pm PST</time></p></div></blockquote>
<script async defer src="//platform.instagram.com/en_US/embeds.js"></script>
<br />
It's hard to think about anything except politics these days.<br />
<br />
I'm not the first to notice this. It's a known issue, especially within the media-elite bubble of anxiety and outrage. Checking Twitter and Google News and WhatTheFuckJustHappened... these things eat up more of my cognitive real estate than I ever thought I could spare for something so unproductive.<br />
<br />
There are other effects, though. One of the most pronounced: I've felt pressured, nigh compelled, to question my creative priorities. I've suddenly grown skeptical of my more fanciful pursuits, like writing fiction (a long-term project) and experimenting in visual art. This is a time for serious reflection and education, right? ... a time when I need to be sharp and intelligible and writing powerful polemics that contribute to the political discourse? No cool drawings or notes on character backgrounds these days! My country needs me to write <i>thinkpieces</i>!<br />
<br />
This might be depressing as hell, except for the fact that, the more I think about it, the more I sense that those pursuits of the imagination are not only necessary... they may be more important for than ever, at least for my own ego-integrity. They may, in fact, be one of my only defenses against the dark clouds of the zeitgeist.<br />
<br />
I've read a lot of think pieces lately. A LOT. I've never been so responsive to targeted pitches from Medium authors, and I'd never spent so much time reading The Guardian. I have my list (still very short) of essays that really struck me... like <a href="https://nplusonemag.com/online-only/online-only/the-politics-trump-makes/" target="_blank">this one on Trump as disjunctive president</a>, and <a href="http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2017/02/09/one-sacred-trick-for-moral-regeneration/" target="_blank">this one on Identity-Affirming Society</a>... but even with these nuggets of insight, I have to say, the perennial reading of think pieces has gone well beyond "processing," drifted down through "treading water," and is now turning into genuine masochistic navel-gazing.<br />
<br />
The problem is, after a certain amount of ineffectual explaining, I start to sense the emptiness at the heart of this endeavor. Analyzing, investigating, diagnosing... it's always been therapeutic, but it's becoming clear that the syndrome isn't progressing.<br />
<br />
I'm quite confident that this is because of <a href="https://theestablishment.co/the-disastrous-terroristic-rollout-of-trumps-executive-orders-was-probably-by-design-479fb963859b?gi=a6ec7f424eec" target="_blank">the intentional, deeply entrenched ambiguity</a> that's become a tactical framework of the current regime. It's so full of paradox and dissembly, so contemptuous of earnest representation and transparency, that it makes a plaything of the rational instinct. It invites those deconstructions, and then renders them useless, because its leverage is not reasonable or persuasive or principled.<br />
<br />
On one hand, as Katherine Cross argues in the essay linked above, it's crucial that we (writers in their writing, and readers in our understanding) remain precise and rigorous about language, so we don't cede the discourse to the irrational forces. However, equally important: we can't be locked into a state of crisis by the regime's linguistic slippage. Even as we maintain our standards, we also have to wrestle with those ambiguities in an endless, infinite-game kind of way. Reality will never entirely submit to reason.<br />
<br />
That's where I have to let go of the essayist instinct, and return to art and fiction. These are the sites where I can truly wrestle with ambiguity... where <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/BQPC2Fuhlq5/?taken-by=miksimum" target="_blank">I can diffuse the reality in an image with a spontaneous splash of the formal</a>, or where I can write a character to perform those paradoxical processes of dissolution and reconstruction. There is nothing more satisfying (at least to me) than crafting something that only makes sense in that special, non-verbal language that it constructs for itself.<br />
<br />
I am not saying that my art, or anybody's art, will save the country or the world from Trumpism, or from drone strikes, or from structural racism.<br />
<br />
What I am saying is that we are all going to need something... some way of thinking or seeing or surrendering... that lets us confront the irrationality bubbling under the surface of the Real. I see it as a sort of hardiness, a personal integrity -- a quality that outlasts the present absurdity, and makes room for the permanent paradoxes -- that's cultivated privately, intimately. In my case, it has to be through these creative gestures.<br />
<br />
This is, after all, a monster that can't be debated down, or harassed and vandalized out of existence... it has to be survived, appropriated, and integrated into whatever fortress we eventually build on the debris of the present.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><p><a href="http://benefitofthedoubt.miksimum.com">* Benefit of the Doubt *</a> | <a href="http://www.miksimum.com/">Miksimum</a></p></div>Jesse Mhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06628842413174084374noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30665218.post-28789748315118073242017-01-06T14:54:00.001-05:002017-01-06T14:54:12.707-05:00An Aesthetics of Aspect (on Medium)Today, a sort of philosophy/media theory post on the CREATOR-CONSUMER-CRITIC triad, which I'm calling the Aspect Aesthetic. It provides a quick summary of the big picture, with the triadic diagram to map out the poles and paths, and then it goes into a deeper discussion of the CONSUMER role, touching on fandom, worldbuilding, and the joys of inhabiting a work of art.<br />
<br />
Post can be found here:<br />
<a href="https://medium.com/@miksimum/an-aesthetics-of-aspect-1e7d9bc1e20b#.uag3iclvp">An Aesthetics of Aspect</a><br />
https://medium.com/@miksimum/an-aesthetics-of-aspect-1e7d9bc1e20b#.uag3iclvp<div class="blogger-post-footer"><p><a href="http://benefitofthedoubt.miksimum.com">* Benefit of the Doubt *</a> | <a href="http://www.miksimum.com/">Miksimum</a></p></div>Jesse Mhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06628842413174084374noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30665218.post-77891399240353852142017-01-02T02:54:00.002-05:002017-01-02T02:54:55.054-05:00Bubble Universes (Welcome to 2017)First of all, to head off any elevated expectations: this post is mostly about movies. The title sounds broad and philosophical, partly because I'm trying to stretch my frame a little, but movies are where this idea started, and I doubt it's going to wander too far from that starting point.<br />
<br />
On New Year's Eve, I did what a lot of people do, aside from watching the ball drop: I caught a couple on-demand movies. In my case, these were <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4263482/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">The Witch</a> (2015, but really 2016 as far as public release) and <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3464902/?ref_=nv_sr_1">The Lobster</a> (2016). These choices were entirely arbitrary, no more thematic than "oh, I remember wanting to see that one!"... and yet, in retrospect (where so many things become more orderly), I feel like they were pretty perfect for closing out 2016 and moving into a new solar cycle.<br />
<br />
There's been a lot of talk, of course, about how rough 2016 was, and 2017 is a frontier under such a dark cloud... it's not really a pleasant transition, even if change is welcome. It kind of puts into relief that angst that comes with every New Year... the feeling that under all the celebration, all the rhetoric about renewal, the truth is that it's exactly the same world, just tagged as the next iteration.<br />
<br />
But a couple movies like <i>The Witch</i> and <i>The Lobster</i> helped with that transition, it turned out... and not just in a way that every other movie would help (which is distraction and spectacle, mostly). These helped because they did something unique among movies: they created self-contained little bubble universes, and these gave me the stepping stones I needed to move between two troubled years and really <i>feel that threshold</i>.<br />
<br />
<i>The Witch </i>creates its bubble universe out of vivid sensory detail and historical specificity. Beyond the incessant use of "thee" and "thou," the world was relentless and textured and -- probably my favorite word for it -- grimy. Full of grime. After William and Katherine leave their Puritan plantation, they are caught in, essentially, a tiny world of two settings: the homestead, and the forest.<br />
<br />
The immersion on display here isn't just stylistic or aesthetic. Director Robert Eggers (by his own admission, <a href="http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2016/02/23/the_witch_director_robert_eggers_on_the_real_history_behind_the_movie_s.html">here</a>) was trying to place his audience in an authentically Puritan frame of mind. This means a gawking fascination with sin and perversion, a manic-depressive relationship with Christianity, and a belief in Satan and witchcraft in their most literal forms. Eggers is trying to rip us out of our modernity and instill in us the fear of a wild, corrupted abyss populated by malevolent forces.<br />
<br />
<i>The Lobster </i>does something similar in the abstract, but in almost the opposite way. It also creates a small, self-contained universe ("city," "woods," and a hotel make up the whole world). However, instead of a jarring injection of detail and history, it fashions this world out of the familiar and the taken-for-granted, reconstructed in absurd and unexpected ways. The City has the feeling of Washington, DC (at least that's the closest analog from my own experience), and the hotel feels like any mid-priced Hilton convention center hosting a huge conference.<br />
<br />
This world is structured metaphorically, emphasizing the absurdity of the familiar. <i>The Lobster</i>'s bubble universe alienates us from everyday life, floating up above and letting us look back on social psychology and romantic conventions as they might appear to an alien anthropologist.<br />
<br />
The longer I sit and stare at these films side by side, the more parallels I see. They're both about a breakdown at the margins of an overly-structured society... they're both about exiles, creating rituals in defiance of the rituals that initially excluded them. They're both about the terror and anxiety instilled by the demands of conventional thinking, whether it's consensus or superstition.<br />
<br />
All that aside, I'll go back to the title. It was this little skipping action, this move between bubble universes, that's helping me make sense of the New Year transition. In every practical sense, the new world is the same as the old one... I just stepped out of it for a couple movies. But in another sense, we're moving into a reality with a new framework... a whole new set of rules are coming into play.<br />
<br />
These new global rules include an escalating authoritarian trend, sudden fractious instability in international consensus (both political and economic), and a step back from reasoned discourse, idealism, and accountability. So in this sense, the "bubble universe" concept might not be such a bad tool: a focus-shifted lens for seeing 2017 as radically, qualitatively different.<br />
<br />
In honor of this effect, I'd like to reflect for a moment: what other films have this sort of feeling, that they're taking place in a tightly-constrained reality whose rules are alien and temporarily absolute?<br />
<br />
I'll note, and set aside, those horror and science-fiction films that make this a point of premise... <i>The Cube</i>, <i>Snowpiercer</i>, <i>THX 1138</i>, <i>Alien</i>, <i>The Village</i>. Even <i>The Shining </i>is a little more explicit than I'm talking about. I'm trying to come up with movies that tease a larger reality, but then compress it, to wring every drop of significance out of the setting.<br />
<br />
Hitchcock tended to do this... <i>The Birds</i> is such a film, I think, since it takes place in an island village, isolated from the outside world.<br />
<br />
<i>Rules of the Game</i> has this sense, as well (it's been quite a while since I've seen it).<br />
<br />
There must be others... Gilliam? Haneke? Anderson? ... BUELLER?<div class="blogger-post-footer"><p><a href="http://benefitofthedoubt.miksimum.com">* Benefit of the Doubt *</a> | <a href="http://www.miksimum.com/">Miksimum</a></p></div>Jesse Mhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06628842413174084374noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30665218.post-61485671089129215402016-12-23T13:00:00.000-05:002016-12-23T13:00:10.373-05:00The Pendulum<div class="tr_bq">
Published a piece on Medium called The Pendulum, about the shift from despair to tentative hope while I ponder all the catastrophic implications of the Trump presidency. I also mention the Thai Blind Orchestra. Both of these things came to me in an NPR report this morning, on a drive to take care of some errands.</div>
<br />
<a href="https://medium.com/@miksimum/the-pendulum-c368d818cb29#.cx94mlojc">The Pendulum</a> on Medium:<br />
<blockquote>
The future does not look bright. In fact, in some moments, like driving down the road listening to these NPR reports, it looks frankly terrifying. My head constructs something that looks like Flint in the middle of its water crisis, and NYC and Detroit at the height of urban decay, and the Rust Belt and Appalachia at their most desolate, featuring lone-wolf terrorists in prominent roles, both Middle Eastern and radicalized American. I think this is what they call “catastrophizing”… or just “hysteria,” if you want to spare a syllable. </blockquote>
<blockquote>
At these times, I tell myself that I just have to protect my family and seek high ground. Civil society has always been build on the bedrock of a hostile wilderness, after all… will that world, where we have to fight for survival, finally start peeking through? When is it ethical for a non-violent leftist to buy a gun? Is a coming apocalypse the right time to rethink that principle?</blockquote>
<blockquote>
At this point, it was not a pleasant drive.</blockquote>
<div class="blogger-post-footer"><p><a href="http://benefitofthedoubt.miksimum.com">* Benefit of the Doubt *</a> | <a href="http://www.miksimum.com/">Miksimum</a></p></div>Jesse Mhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06628842413174084374noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30665218.post-26984095575455098842016-12-07T12:16:00.002-05:002016-12-22T22:44:47.039-05:00Trump and The SpectacleWrote a thing on Medium. Sounds very Guy Debord/Critical Theory, but don't worry, there's nothing particularly rigorous about it. It's just one more moment of me thinking I've "figured it out" because I just had a new thought that seems to have overturned a few previous thoughts at once.<br />
<br />
A selection:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The hardest part about reconciling with the present moment — not submitting to it, of course, but finding the right way to exist in relation to it — is going to be resisting the spectacle of it all. We are all, even unto the most cynical and steady, vulnerable to the distraction that comes from bearing witness. Our own need to gaze awestruck upon the bigness of history, and the bigness of our own imperfection, is going to leave us dazzled.</blockquote>
Find it here: <a href="https://medium.com/@miksimum/the-spectacle-91b8217f78f9#.bz8wegyyl">The Spectacle</a><div class="blogger-post-footer"><p><a href="http://benefitofthedoubt.miksimum.com">* Benefit of the Doubt *</a> | <a href="http://www.miksimum.com/">Miksimum</a></p></div>Jesse Mhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06628842413174084374noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30665218.post-43990623003234522372016-11-28T10:56:00.002-05:002016-11-28T10:56:28.034-05:00Westworld's Three DomainsI've been gone for some time, but -- this seems as good a time as any to come back, since this blog feels like the best place for my current musings. If this is the only post in a five year span, please forgive me.<br />
<br />
My ongoing viewing has been Game of Thrones, Mr. Robot, and Westworld. The first two are currently between seasons, so I'm focused on the third one, whose first season is just coming to an end. I have thoughts. This is the place for them, methinks.<br />
<br />
My instinctive reaction to the show is that it's steeped in influences, and this isn't necessarily a bad thing. It's built on foundations of Inception, The Matrix, The Truman Show, Battlestar Galactica, Ex Machina, The Hunger Games, and various other postmodern reality-bending science fiction, and almost every artifact in the show can be seen as a refraction of one or several of these. I don't think it's doing anything ground-breaking with this conceptual material, but it's beautiful and well-executed, and there's nothing wrong with delving deeper into themes that our culture is currently hung up on.<br />
<br />
My primary criticism of the show, up until this morning, was that it's too caught up in the self-indulgence of contemporary plotting and writing: the need to always have three, four, or five ongoing plot arcs, each with several characters, to the point where every concern feels trivial. In particular, Maeve's character arc, which represents a massive disruption as far as the setting is concerned (like, she's the lynchpin that's bringing about the end of the whole world of the show), doesn't feel entirely earned. There are enough characters that I can't always keep track of them, and when an old face turns back up in a new context, I find myself scrambling to remember where I saw them, or why it's even interesting.<br />
<br />
But I think I've worked out a way of thinking about these plots that will help me make better sense of them, with the finale impending. As far as I can see it, this season consists of three primary narrative arcs: Dolores, Bernard, and Maeve. The other plotlines -- Ford as sinister mastermind, Charlotte and the board of directors, and the Man in Black -- are all background noise, threads that don't serve much except to tie those three major plotlines together.<br />
<br />
Those three major plotlines can be thought of as, respectively, Spiritual, Existential, and Political.<br />
<br />
I say "spiritual" for Dolores's plotline because it seems to be a journey of self-discovery and transcendence, and it takes on cyclical, mystical overtones. I wouldn't be surprised to discover, in the finale, that her journey brings together Past and Future and Good and Evil, and that she satisfies Westworld's obligatory "messianic" role.<br />
<br />
I say "existential" for Bernard's plotline because it's a journey inward, to find the boundaries of Selfhood. The stakes are the limits and accountability of consciousness, and the reality of one's own emotions and experiences.<br />
<br />
And Maeve's journey is political in the sense that she's working out, and manipulating, her place in the power structure. If the world is created and activated in the spiritual realm, it's in the political realm that it's ultimately brought to an end, through fire and revolution if necessary.<br />
<br />
Some of this is informed by <a href="https://www.bustle.com/articles/197139-are-william-the-man-in-black-the-same-person-on-westworld-the-well-tempered-clavier-all">a certain fan theory floating around out there</a>, that seems pretty highly likely as we approach the finale.<br />
<br />
As another side-note, I have to say, I wish one of these Artificial Intelligence movies -- AI, Ex Machina, Her, even The Matrix -- would tackle the Hard Problem of Consciousness more directly. They all take it for granted that these intelligent agents have an inner life, perfectly analogous to our own. This is necessary for stories of self-discovery and heroism, but it's also kind of a cop-out.<br />
<br />
I wouldn't even mind, if they didn't seem to be approaching this problem and then running away from it, like children running away from the waves lapping up the beach. Westworld is particular is obsessed with the secondary symptoms of this idea. Ford has a whole monologue on how he doesn't believe there's a clear distinction between human and machine consciousness. Logan, William's evil friend, is the epitome of a consciousness skeptic, believing adamantly that however human they appear, these hosts are simply machines, no more self-aware than calculators. And from what it sounds like in that last episode, it seems like "the maze" itself is just a test of sentience for the hosts, a high-powered Turing Test for some pragmatic "consciousness" criteria.<br />
<br />
And yet, we're always privy to inner experiences of the hosts. Bernard and Maeve and Dolores have intense flashbacks, many of which seem to be distorted or fabricated, just like human memories. Wouldn't it be creepier if we'd seen, in some experimental sequence, a close-up of Bernard's eye as he's describing a vivid memory, and then a cut to complete black, or to a screen full of code? And wouldn't it be a beautiful moment if we got to see Bernard go from inert self-monitoring terminal to actual conscious mind? I'm not sure how you would do this, cinematically: some visual effect or camera trick representing the first glimmerings of a private, conceptual picture of the world, inaccessible even to the human operators.<br />
<br />
Maybe this is part of the larger formal message of Westworld: that consciousness itself is basically a cinematic device showing flashbacks, a film reel that starts at birth and ends at death, that does nothing more interesting than represent the machine to itself. And that this simple mechanism is all that's necessary for "automaton" to become "living thing with a rich inner life."<br />
<br />
Lots of questions. No answers, so far. But the finale is bearing down, and perhaps the questions will all least keep getting more interesting.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><p><a href="http://benefitofthedoubt.miksimum.com">* Benefit of the Doubt *</a> | <a href="http://www.miksimum.com/">Miksimum</a></p></div>Jesse Mhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06628842413174084374noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30665218.post-83094136166541456202014-10-13T12:07:00.001-04:002014-10-13T12:22:52.438-04:00On Daily Intel and whether male feminists existIn response to <a href="http://nymag.com/thecut/2014/10/you-want-to-be-a-male-feminist-maybe-dont.html">an article from Kat Stoeffel on the Daily Intel</a>.<br />
<br />
As an all-oppressor-classes human [cis, white, hetero, male, suburban, American, Yankee, upper-middle class, abled, neurotypical, etc], I've struggled with being an ally for some years. To all men, like me, who are reading this: the first step is, indeed, radical acceptance that you need to be secondary in this conversation; that if your views on gender issues remain forever conflicted, benign, and invisible, that's okay, it probably means you're doing it right. This disclaimer has been brought to you in the name of solidarity.<br />
<br />
However, within that fuzzy gap where an oppressor-class human can talk about a movement he cares about, but isn't officially a member of (biologically speaking, and according to Kat, even in terms of identification) -- I want to note: Kat's article is fine in condemning a certain class of social-climber feminist men who rise in the movement's ranks by exercising their own chauvinist impulses. Clymer and Schweizer? Sure. Boorish, self-important, and definitely not good for the movement. However, along with that valid point, this article has a willful divisiveness riding side-saddle, and I doubt it's doing the larger feminist movement many favors.<br />
<br />
Why? Because, at least for me, this article triggers some nasty anxieties about whether there is EVER a path to reconciliation for me, and for others like me, who want to contribute quietly and productively to the fashioning of a better world for all people stuck in the gender matrix. I know you (Kat, and other feminists) are not responsible for my "feels," and this isn't intended as a take-down. It just might be worth having on-hand as a data point -- one of many -- as you configure your strategy going forward.<br />
<br />
It's this anxiety, triggered by articles like this, that occasionally threatens my interest in being an ally. It communicates, whether intentionally or not, the sense that I'm a permanent target of exclusionary rhetoric. In fact, this kind of wagon-circling is the only thing that gives me hang-ups about supporting feminism. Reading MRA rants and hearing misogynistic remarks? That actually makes me feel more feminism-aligned. I have no desire for solidarity with men who express their masculinity through disrespect and aggression.<br />
<br />
Lots of men, some of them perhaps excellent allies, may want to identify as feminists, because the term refers to a complex of ideas and commitments, a belief in certain values and a broad historical movement (and it's not a biologically-determined identity, like "disabled" or "American Indian"). Exclusionary rhetoric (and also snarky, dog-whistle defensive mechanisms of any kind) just make it seem like I'm not welcome to hold those values, or to adopt any position of support whatsoever vis-a-vis feminism.<br />
<br />
Does feminism prefer an eventual reconciliation and mutual acknowledgment between the sexes, as the term "gender equality" would suggest? Or does it favor a permanent state of culture war, which would at least give women a place to fight for their autonomy and identity, even if it never leads to any kind of long-term equilibrium? It is an honest question, and I don't mean to load the answers with pre-judgment.<br />
<br />
POSTSCRIPT:<br />
<br />
In the spirit of this particular type of ally-ship, I'd like to recognize the good work of Matthew Inman in <a href="http://www.themarysue.com/the-oatmeal-gamer-girl-comic/">actually, earnestly apologizing</a> when he writes jokes that offend people. This may be the best possible way to act as an ally... know when it's time to defer to the community. This is especially true if you accept the increasing feminist principles that: 1) silence in the face of injustice is bad, and 2) speaking out clearly enough to derail the movement's focus is bad.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><p><a href="http://benefitofthedoubt.miksimum.com">* Benefit of the Doubt *</a> | <a href="http://www.miksimum.com/">Miksimum</a></p></div>Jesse Mhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06628842413174084374noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30665218.post-79622662530593679052014-08-12T01:21:00.002-04:002014-08-12T01:21:30.921-04:00On the Passing of Something (Robin Williams, 1951-2014)How do you love an actor through their work? A celebrity, a public personality you've never met, never seen in their private moments, never known as anything but what they choose to put on the screen? A lot of questions, all intellectually interesting. Also, all easier to think about than the instigating event. All effective diversions.<br />
<br />
I mean, some celebrities don't feel like mere projections, assemblages dispensed by the entertainment industry for the sake of optimal charisma. Some celebrities... some advocates, politicians, comedians, and even comic actors... don't seem to put much of a wall up between their public lives and their private eccentricities and vulnerabilities. Maybe they're just not good at the fakery. Or maybe they're extremely good at it, and my senses haven't caught up. Who knows?<br />
<br />
You can't fall in love with on-screen personas the way you do with someone whose hand you've shaken at their wedding reception. You can't fall in love with them the way you do <a href="http://chinadailyshow.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/dead-poets-society.jpg">a trusted mentor</a>, or <a href="http://d13s5ta1qg2cax.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/good-will-hunting-screenplay-robin-williams.jpg">a great psychologist</a>. You can't fall in love with them the way you do with <a href="http://www.childstarlets.com/captures/videocaps/ascott/hook/ashk73.jpg">your kids as you tuck them in at night</a>, and you can't be connected to them the way you can <a href="http://screenmusings.org/movie/blu-ray/What-Dreams-May-Come/images/What-Dreams-May-Come-075.jpg">to a soul-mate</a> whose trials and troubles you've spent a life trying to shoulder. With an entertainer, there's a degree to which it's all pre-packaged, conducted for your benefit, and for the benefit of several billion others who share your unrequited love.<br />
<br />
But in a mediated age like ours, where we're all managing different aspects of ourselves that are being peeled away in fragments and distributed according to the logic of production, I think it's valid... perhaps even necessary... that we can fall in love with projections, with the ideas that people choose to champion and represent. It's been happening for centuries, after all... people have loved saints and athletes and politicians, in moments of hardship they've loved prophets and revolutionaries, in times of prosperity they've loved artists and emperors. They've loved fictional characters and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emperor_Norton">half-serious delusions</a>. These kinds of love are real, and and their mourning warrants expression.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjiTXNwob8Sx0DdY_TC3aeYjAv6g63UvQNG54woVgQpYn1QSge7bqye3RG4dNw6LHrNjvPbortqohMf_fuQuwmf9nDux2JgaiZTlEJ4k-DeTsCl7RARZOHjNQTzBQitbyf3CtKF/s1600/r-williams.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjiTXNwob8Sx0DdY_TC3aeYjAv6g63UvQNG54woVgQpYn1QSge7bqye3RG4dNw6LHrNjvPbortqohMf_fuQuwmf9nDux2JgaiZTlEJ4k-DeTsCl7RARZOHjNQTzBQitbyf3CtKF/s1600/r-williams.jpg" height="207" width="320" /></a></div>
Robin Williams earned our love, and he deserved it. Through the roles he chose, through his commitments to particular characters at particular moments, he came to represent a very specific thing in our culture: the hapless sentimentalist. He was a comic actor -- even his most serious roles were cut with a certain therapeutic irreverence -- but his humor was always an interface with a certain soaring, hopeful, joyful sadness, the kind of heartfelt pathos that's come under siege in the age of smug self-consciousness and detachment.<br />
<br />
And goddamn! From a young age, I've fallen in love, repeatedly, with what Robin Williams represented. I was in love with <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0107614/">Daniel Hillard</a> and <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0115685/">Armand Goldman</a> and <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0116669/">Jack Powell</a> and <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119217/">Sean Macguire</a>. His roles all took on this fatherly tenderness... even the heroic roles (Alan Parrish in <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0113497/">Jumanji</a>) and even, weirdly enough, the twisted and unhinged antagonist roles (Seymour Parrish of <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0265459/">One Hour Photo</a>, Walter Finch of <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0278504/">Insomnia</a>). As with many kids (not all, I fully realize), I thought my dad was the most heroic human in the world, and in a way, I loved Robin Williams because his roles seemed to be paying tribute to my own dad (Kevin Costner is the only other actor who managed the same thing from time to time).<br />
<br />
Maybe Williams was so good at this because he also knew how to play a kid, and he knew the power that a father-figure or an older mentor can have over a child. This came through most explicitly in <i>Jack</i>, a lovingly-acted role in a movie that I still think about at the most random times. It's also one of the central dimensions of <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0102057/">Hook</a>, which is an affectionate, reconstructed hero story built around the father figure rediscovering childhood. <i>Hook</i> is, incidentally, in a three-way tie for my favorite Robin Williams movie.<br />
<br />
One of my other favorite Robin Williams characters is the genie in <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0103639/">Aladdin</a>. I can't help but see all the good, earnest, loving people I know in that genie... all the people who I've been grateful to have as my mentors and influences. It was a movie all about the relationship between power and dependence and vulnerability, right? About how the greatest power in the world suddenly becomes worthless without the existential sinew of vulnerability and honesty and self-acceptance?<br />
<br />
My third favorite: Williams' role as Chris Nielsen in <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120889/">What Dreams May Come</a>, one of the great epic journeys, a walk in the shadow of endless cosmic melancholy. Despite its joyful, almost saccharine ending, there's a profound sadness that permeates <i>What Dreams May Come</i>, a sense of futility and submission to the endless cycles and trials and rediscoveries of history. This is, of course, balanced by the redeeming forces of familial love and loyalty and free will, but one of the most beautiful things about the movie is that it finds a delicate balance... the darkness passes, but it remains on the horizon of the film, even unto its rosy final shot.<br />
<br />
I loved Robin Williams, one of the great father figures of the modern age of cinema, and though his story will always be tinged with melancholy, I hope that for him, the darkness has passed. RIP RW.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><p><a href="http://benefitofthedoubt.miksimum.com">* Benefit of the Doubt *</a> | <a href="http://www.miksimum.com/">Miksimum</a></p></div>Jesse Mhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06628842413174084374noreply@blogger.com3