VENEERS OF HEGEMONY, VOL. I

Those who fear systematically tend to disobey written rules while at the same time adhering to unwritten, so-called natural norms.

The lawless anarchist out-of-doors, the inner sycophant riding herd. 

THE HIPPIE EISENSTEIN

 

Look, so she likes smashing images together like rocks. She's not afraid of the blunt, the obvious, the over-reach. This is rare. Sam Fuller with art-ball Meyerholdian chops. But like him, that doesn't mean there aren't subtle or interesting things happening in her movies. Also, tedious bits. But one day, probably a masterpiece, or a Bezhin Meadow.

HISTORIES OF THE SUPPOSEDLY EXIGENT

And it is interesting to see that the same mind and temper which induced the first act of self-aggrandizement tend quickly to lead to another one, which is unobtrusive, indefinite, unavowed. The assertiveness which in the first place claimed the prerogatives of eternal justice now proceeds by a similar logic to a more subtle form of encroachment; for the whig historians have shown a propensity to heighten the colouring of their historical narrations by laying hold on some difference of opinion or some conflict of policies and claiming this as a moral issue. And indeed it is a propensity which requires great self-discipline in any of us to resist. It must be remembered that there are some things in the past which the whig is very anxious to condemn, and some of his views have a way of turning themselves into something like a moral code. There is at least a change that the real burden of his indignation may fall on things which are anathema only to the whigs. It is not an accident that he has shown a disinclination to see moral judgements removed from history.

And from the future, of course. The cinema. as mother-novum, is a futurology that is also an ontology. Its mode is science-fictional. It is an eternal home to our homeless utopian dreams. That is why it was embraced by Futurists from Vertov to Cameron. The concept of Progress, as a human invention, is a brilliant piece of propaganda that would have made the priests of old envious. The future always needs a placeholder, and images fullfill that function rather magically.

Every novum calls attention to the historical inertia of the reader's actual present. It includes in itself an evaluation of the inadequacies of history and of the potentials offered by critical reflection. Its primary aesthetic pleasure is seeing the translation of historical cognition and ethics into form. The true novum thus fuses aesthetic effect with ethical and historical relevance. The worthy novum stands in for and also stimulates the rational disillusionment that is a precondition for affirming utopian-socialist collectivism, the 'historical destiny of man'. Accordingly, a true SF novum, represents a decisive change, a change in the "front-line of history". A novum is a fake unless it in some ways participates in and partakes of what Bloch called "the front line of historical progress."

DROWNED SOJU BITCHES

The new film by Joe Swanberg. Synopsis: Pusan Film Festival. 2010. A visiting American filmmaker, played by Joe Swanberg, is screening, in competition, his new DV feature. He meets Hong Sang-Soo, (played by Korean actor Seung-Woo Kim), and over soju, they have a long, wary conversation about the styles of cinematic reflexivity. "Hong Sang-Soo" starts fucking Swanberg's real-life girlfriend, who explains wistfully to Swanberg that she always comes harder with Korean filmmakers. In a harrowing, emotional scene Swanberg grills her for details of the lover. Staying up late with his laptop, Swanberg re-edits his not-yet-screened film to include dialogic references to "Hong Sang Soo's" sexual practices. At some point, an attractive young Korean with the State Film Office explains to Swanberg that the character's name should be Sang-Soo Hong. The film replays again, this time with the name substituted in the "correct" Korean order. The Pusan jury, headed by Greta Gerwig and Philippe Garrel, awards Swanberg's film the laurels. At a press conference, Hong announces that his next film will be Hollywood reboot of LOL. "Swanberg" feels empty, hollow, in quotes, etc. He makes subtle "grimaces" before mirror. End.

SCOPOPHILES

A porn film that stars actors playing famous scientists like Marie Curie, Röntgen, and the famous and sad crystallographer Rosalind Franklin. Some of the sex scenes are filmed with X-ray film stock. Incredible densities of eroticism are thus produced. At the end of the film, after the so-called "money-shot", we see the semen itself x-rayed and we see little skulls, a little inaccurately, inside the individual sperm. Then the principals are interviewed, without shame, about their experiences. The music is by Mihaly Vig.

SATANTANGOPALOOZA, or THE WHALE

The situation today offers great chances of success to the ambitions of conspirators of either the Right or the Left Wing. So inadequate are the measures proposed or adopted by governments to break down any possible revolutionary attempt, that the danger of a coup d’état should be most seriously examined in many European countries. The peculiar nature of the modern State with its complex and delicate functions, and the gravity of the political, economic and social problems which it is called upon to solve, make it the barometric index of the people’s hopes and fears, which increases the obstacles that stand in the way of its defense. The modern State is more exposed to the danger of revolution than is generally recognized. It is useless to object that even liberal methods of defending the State are obsolete, the conspirators for their part frequently show their ignorance of the very essentials of the modern technique of a coup d’état. Even if it be true today that conspirators in many cases have not known how to take advantage of circumstances favorable to their attempts to seize control, it is no less true that the danger of revolution exists.

In countries where order is based on liberty, public opinion ought to bear in mind the possibility of a coup d’état. In its present state Europe is everywhere faced with this possibility, as well in a free well-organized country—“policed” state, to use an Eighteenth Century expression, still appropriate in our day—as in a country infested with disorder.

The object of this book is (…) to show that the problem of the conquest and defense of the State is not a political one, that it is a technical problem, that the art of State-defense is guided by the same principles that guide the art of its conquest, and that circumstances favorable to a coup d’état are not necessarily of a political and social order and do not depend on the general condition of the country. No doubt this will not fail to create some anxiety amongst the Liberals of the most stable and best-policed countries of Western Europe. It is this anxiety, so natural in a lover of freedom, which gave birth to my desire to show how a modern State can be overthrown and how it can be defended. Shakespeare’s Bolingbroke, Duke of Hereford, who said, “They love not poison, that do poison need,” was perhaps a lover of freedom also.

Malaparte, The Technique of the Coup D’Etat

Revolution as therapy: these flashmob sort-of-virtual revolutions are notable because they bypass or are indifferent to the infrastructure of the state, which seems to exist to them in another world. They are “Performance Art” insurgencies, with all the attendant excitement, the feeling of rupture, of festival, much milling about, a demand that the people’s accedia be somehow solved by anybody willing to take the power.  

No one steps up. The accedia of the masses is shared by its leaders.

ALL-JAZEERA ALL THE TIME

The proper response to the pseudo-event regardless of "content" should be this -- yes, be moved by the art of it, as we are moved by the railroading death of the heroine in Anna Karenina, but if you want to change national railroad policy because of this, you force me to say: this is insane. It is applied Quijotism. You would be making a possibly irrevocable decision in the world based on what is, essentially, a beautifully articulated fiction. Maybe that is what revolution means.

THE IMPURE AND GIRLY

Dave Navarro, Media Theorist:

And then now as an adult, seeing it kind of come back into the forefront of culture even more so then it did back then, with young, adult women, generally speaking a lot of them have very secretive dark pasts that force them to embrace something unique and pure and girly, if you will. There's a duality that's inherent in that which is interesting and fascinating to me.

The image itself is more of a symbol of darkness to me than anything else. Because you can take one person who's really dark and they're into really dark things, but it's the person who gravitates toward the light to hide away from the darkness that's actually more intriguing. A good example of that would be the serial killer John Wayne Gacy doing paintings of Bambi or doing paintings of himself as a clown or the Seven Dwarfs. There's such a severe contrast between the dark and the light, that's the type of intellect that I find incredibly fascinating.

And also for me personally, my mother was murdered when I was 15 and I'm a recovering drug addict, and so I am no stranger to the darkness. And again, I don't want to make a blanket statement and upset anybody, but I would say in about 75% of cases, adult fans of Barbie and Hello Kitty and things of that nature, there's usually a past of either abuse or divorce or maybe sexual abuse, eating disorders, something that can easily be looked up in the DSM IV, which is basically the psychiatric diagnostic manual of disorders.

Yes, Kawaii insists on something to an insane or violent degree, but probably what it insists on can't be pinned down as easily as Navarro thinks. What is disturbing about it exists because of a defiant, liminal quality that lends itself so easily to projection.


It is monstruous.