Brain Drain Blog

Archive for September, 2007

An obvious theme throughout Fight Club is the partnering perceptions of death between the narrator and his alter ego, Tyler Durden. Obvious though it may be, the intricacies challenge our own perceptions, making us ask which is right. Either? Elements of both? None? And how does this relate to the?shift from the modern?to the?postmodern?

In response to the narrator’s living death, his doctor rejects the plea for chemical escape from the emptiness of the waking dream. He says, “Insomnia is just the symptom of something larger. Find out what’s actually wrong. Listen to your body” (9).?From this advice?comes?the equation of the narrator’s empty soul with his ailing physical form. (Consider the connection of?modern?form and function.) The narrator recognizes this in himself when he says “the bruised, old fruit way my face had collapsed, you would’ve thought I was dead” (9). This idea of the body and soul as inextricably connected, the former a symptom of the latter, is echoed in the support groups for the diseased. The narrator finds it “easy to cry when you realize that everyone you love will either reject you or die.” Crying cures his insomnia because, for him, “losing all hope [is] freedom” (12). For the narrator, dying bodies, if only in part, are a release from the?meaningless?empty space between birth and death. Through oblivion and destruction the ultimate end becomes the beautiful freedom of escape from society and all its rules.

Tyler sees things differently. For him, death is not the end. In chapter 1, the opening scene, a gun is jammed in the mouth of the one body that makes his conscious self?possible, and the Parker Morris building he stands on is about to slam down on the national museum. Flanked by death on all sides, Tyler says, “We really won’t die … This isn’t really death. We’ll be legend. We won’t grow old” (1). For Tyler, death is a merely the transition of being. He is enamored with becoming legend. To eradicate previous history, that which is trapped in statistic data, financial?records, and even old literature?and art is not the true essence of what makes life worth living. He wants to replace the old and dead with the realization of his own legend, “This is our world, now, our world … and those ancient people are dead” (4). The ancient dead he refers to are the living museum legends he is about to obliterate, destroying all?historical record of old ways of thinking. For Tyler, oblivion and destruction?are not the ultimate end, but a way for him to live forever. In fact, through Fight Club, he endeavors to destroy his own body or form, to?find the true meaning of?what he is made of, a notion unacheivable through the material world.

Recognizing the insanity within Fight Club, there are obviously deep seated issues with both approaches. The narrator, by using other people’s dark, dying bodies in order to recognize the sweetness of life, is cheating and he feels it most when Marla enters the support group scene. “Marla’s lie reflects my lie, and all I can see are lies … and all of a sudden even death and dying rank right down there with plastic flowers on a video as a non-event” (12). His death and rebirth are copies of a non-event. He experienced neither as something tangible or real. He avoids connecting deeply with his own mortality and must return for a nightly fix of something he has yet to internalize himself. This offers no escape from the emotionally barren life he continues to fill with material goods. Without?making fundamental life changes (abandoning the goods, living in the moment and relenquishing the desire of dying to escape) he cannot fully escape his nightmare.

Tyler, while fascinated with the idea of legacy and legend, is simultaneously repulsed by it. He finds himself in a catch 22. As with his log arrangement, creating a shadow hand at the beach where “for one perfect minute Tyler had seated himself in the palm of perfection he’d created himself,” he goes on to say, “a person has to work hard for it, but a minute of perfection [is] worth the effort” (22). The question one must ask is would sitting in the palm of perfection have been so sweet had the narrator not marked the moment by bearing witness to it? Moving forward to the high rise scene, how will Tyler survive death without tracking his new chaotic moment in an historical context the very likes which he wants to destroy? History is the very vehicle that transcends death, giving people life long after their bodies fail. (C’mon, Esther. This is where your first chapter Jesus reference enters in.)

We’re left with the utopic idea that one must give up both history and the material while embracing death to appreciate life. This is the path to living freely in the perfection of the moment. But what is perfection exactly? According to the second law of thermodynamics, all systems tend toward a state of disorder. Tyler is stuck between believing that disorder is the natural, perfect state and yet he is lost as to how to create meaning within that chaotic state. According to his actions, perfection is not natural but something to work toward, a human creation subject to individual perspective and impossible to recognize without context. He is at once modern and postmodern.

Wrestling with what death means, whether as an end or a new beginning, challenges us to think about how we order meaning in this world. I turn to the theoretical debate between Lyotard and Jameson on what the postmodern can do after the death of the modern period, in the temporal sense. Lyotard says in Answering the Question: What is Postmodernism?:

Under the general demand for slackening and for appeasement [of postmodern experimentation], we can hear the mutterings of the desire for a return of terror, for the realization of the fantasy to seize reality. The answer is: Let us wage war on totality; let us be witness to the unpresentable; let us activate the differences and save the honor of the name. (82)

This sounds much like Tyler’s symbolic eradication of a capital institution (the narrator’s disdain for the body) imprisoning and terrorizing the old meanings of the past (the narrator’s waking nightmare). It is the recognition of and attempt to break free from the modern idea that perfection is a form inextricable from function. Tyler wants a new form, or no form, or maybe just reference to old forms to create new meaning. He wants access to the freedom that lies within the grey areas, the presentation of the unrepresentable. Whatever form this takes in the end, he first and formost requires?a (the)?narrator.

Jameson, although he finds himself plagued by the postmodern, also feels that we must do it justice. In Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism he says:

This is not then, clearly, a call to some older and more transparent national space, or some more traditional and reassuring perspectival or mimetic enclave: the new political art (if it is possible at all) will have to hold to the truth of postmodernism, that is to say, to its fundamental object – the world space of multinational capital – at the same time at which it achieves a breakthrough to some as yet unimaginable new mode of representing this last, in which we may again begin to grasp our new positioning as individual and collective subjects and regain a capacity to act and struggle which is at present neutralized by our spacial as well as our social confusion. (54)

Jameson’s conclusion is what Tyler butts up against in his execution of chaos and mayhem. Once you destroy what exists, what do you replace it with? Even when beginning anew, one desires to contextualize experience. For Jameson, cognitive mapping is the answer, tracing how we get to the new even as we eradicate the old beyond recognition. If you destroy the body to free the soul, the soul loses context, unless, of course, the path of destruction from “what was” to “what is” can be traced.

Available on Amazon

Racial Inequality in Public Education through the Lens of Critical Race Theory

Does the injustice of racism create systemic issues or do systemic issues create unjust divisions of race? A rally for both sides exists, but I believe that critical race theory, as opposed to conservative nationalism, better argues where the actual problems lie. To counter conservative assumptions that laziness or unwillingness to succeed is the cause of a minority?s failure to achieve upward mobility within a color-blind, equal opportunity system, critical race theorists convincingly offer better recognition of economic determinism and reject the notion of unbiased rights, merit and objectivity to explain why inequality in learning institutions exists, how racial influence upon social systems increases the level of difficulty for minority children to succeed, and why the entire legal system must be rebuilt from the ground up.

To offer a brief summary of critical race theory, it is a movement which combines scholarship and activism in response to racial disparity in America. According to Critical Race Theory, An Introduction by Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic, critical race theory?s tenets are built upon European philosophy and theory, the American radical tradition, critical legal studies and radical feminism, reaching beyond the scope of civil rights and ethnic studies by paying close attention to the broader fields of ?economics, history, context, group ? and self ? interest, and even feelings and the unconscious? (Delgado and Stefancic, 3). Race is approached through several basic understandings embraced by the majority of critical race theorists. At the heart, race is understood to be a social construction with illusive and changing definitions that echo the societal needs of the times. If the job market finds value in one group, stereotypes of that group may wane. If the need no longer exists, oppression again becomes necessary to preserve the dominant power. This migrating level of acceptance is called ?differential racialization? and its fluidity proves that characteristics of race are not based on genetic science or biology. Even in the waning stages, the all-too-common racial discrimination in society?s everyday operation makes it difficult to detect and combat subversive practices while the ?color-blind equality? of liberalism allows for an end only to blatant discriminatory acts. Where black and white color lines do converge in a situation termed both ?material determinism? and ?interest convergence,? advancement exists for both the material interests of white elites and psychic interests of the working class, inciting few to object.

While seemingly concerned only with a simplified black-white binary to this point, it is important to recognize that critical race theory also addresses ?intersectionality,? where combinations of race, gender, sexual preference, and class overlap. In light of this, anti-essentialism recognizes that not all races share the same experience. Still, the “voice of color” provides perspective from the recipient of racism, although this concept is not fully supported when arguing that ?legal storytelling? should be used to contextualize an experience in a court of law. What has yet to be mentioned as it is relatively new in study, is that race is about power and, to that end, whiteness as privilege must also be recognized as a race. While this summary cannot adequately address the depths to which critical race theory runs, the remainder of these pages will further explain those aspects which are most useful in addressing racial inequality within public education.

Why do we suppose the poorest neighborhood schools in our country fill daily with more minority children than with whites? I turn to a critical race argument between two camps, the idealists and the realists. The idealists believe that racism is a mental perception that can be dismantled with good will, education and awareness. The realists, or economic determinists, believe that the explanation of perception is just the beginning of understanding as to where biased institutions hail from. ?For realists, racism is a means by which society allocates privilege and status. Racial hierarchies determine who gets tangible benefits, including the best jobs, the best schools, and invitations to parties in people?s homes? (Delgado and Stefancic, 17). Alternately, race also relegates who has the least tangible benefits, including the worst jobs, schools and insults as opposed to invitations.

The way in which schools are economically funded falls under the economic determinists? point of view. Because funding is determined by the neighborhood tax base, those areas already in poverty which tend to be populated by minorities have no chance of offering better qualified teachers, current books or technology to their students. Every year a new generation of minority children becomes oppressed by a system destined to fail them. Attending such a school means falling behind even prior to walking through the door.

Worse yet, many minorities do walk through the door and spend valuable time?learning skills that will further them in life. These children are not unwilling or lazy as many conservatives would argue. They are simply underprivileged. Perhaps a better plan would be too ensure fund disbursement equally to all schools from a centralized source while continuing to collect resources according to individual or family tax brackets. Everyone would pay the same percentage, and the quality of educators, buildings and supplies within poverty lines would vastly improve without damage done to the already functioning schools. Unfortunately, this point is moot on several levels. First, systemic change will do nothing for the child who is still socially stigmatized, and second, states prefer to retain the right to control their own school systems, bringing me to the discussion of rights in general.

While individual rights appear to be a unifying measure of government to assure fair and equal treatment of its citizens, critical race theorists find them a distraction from egalitarianism. ?Think how our system applauds affording everyone equality of opportunity, but resists programs that offer equality of results. Moreover, rights are almost always cut back when they conflict with the interests of the powerful? (Delgado and Stefancic, 23). Improving rights to include equal education for minorities and whites not only conflicts with interests of the power dynamic, I believe a deep fear surrounds this issue. There is the perception that competition for jobs and high paying salaries would greatly increase but, more importantly, educated minorities would no longer settle for blue collar jobs that fuel the well oiled machine of late capitalism. Also, those precious distinctions that delineate the elite from everyone else would blur, and how else does one define oneself if not in contrast with the ?other?? For these reasons, it is in the best interest of the wealthy white majority to hold true to the current system without adjustment for equal rights, fully preserving their appreciation for the status quo.

To add another dimension to this argument, critical race theorists believe that rights actually alienate people ?rather than encouraging them to form close, respectful communities. And with civil rights, lower courts have found it easy to narrow or distinguish the broad ringing landmark decision like Brown v. Board of Education? (24). The end result reminds us of the popular slogan of a constant struggle, ?you can?t eat your rights.? Rights are only useful to those who make the rules as they offer little more than empty promises to appease a vocal opposition to oppression.

What happens when a minority breaks free from systemic constraints and the prideful merit held by the elite diminishes in the face of the powerfully prescribed handicap? Perhaps critical race theorists have struck a conservative nerve by arguing that, ?merit is far from the neutral principle its supporters imagine it to be? and that ?merit is highly contextual? (Delgado and Stefancic, 105). Distribution changes within the minute details of measurement have the ability to rule out a large portion of the population. Conservatives Farber and Sherri appear to protect their own achievements by accusing critical race theorists of being anti-Semetic for judging a system to be corrupt when Asians and Jews performed well within it. Critical race theorists countered that Farber and Sherri confused criticism of a standard with criticism of a race. It seems to me that a minority group deserves more merit than their white counterpart for having to navigate additional barriers, which brings me back to this paragraph?s opening question.

While racial disparity can be whittled down to the finest points, the biggest obstacle is the American myth of objectivity. Conservatives will argue that the democratic theory of classical liberalism is objective, neutral, and free from governmental restriction upon individual upward mobility. This is the very ideology that allows for the merit system previously in question. Within this ostensibly objective ideal, failure, as I?ve already mentioned, is credited to the individual, placing blame on the impoverished, unskilled and undereducated for their refusal to seize available opportunities within an unbiased system.

Critical race theorists oppose this important conservative cornerstone of objectivity, declaring liberalism fundamentally flawed and criticizing it ?as overly caught up in the search for universals ? apt to do injustice to individuals whose experience and situation differ from the norm? (Delgado and Stefancic, 58). The only conservative rebuttal is a weak effort ?to show the critical race theorists? lack of concern for truth, [whereas] opponents point not only to critical race theorists? open declarations that truth is socially constructed, but also to a number of allegedly misstated facts? (Delgado and Stefancic, 58).

Perhaps this lack of retort comes from the deep seated realization that if one can never step outside the influence of culture and history to find objective truth, logic dictates that institutional laws and rights created by people within a society must bear the imprint of that society?s culture and history. The undeniable end product in America is a capitalist government requiring an underclass to function remains stable, suiting those in power well and reinforcing their permanence via the institutions of law and education.

Since it proves far more beneficial to examine what critical race theorists propose as a solution rather than to bicker about misstated facts, I return to my main argument. In order to encourage students of every color to reach their full potential, critical race theorists propose we, ??look to the bottom? in judging new laws. If they would not relieve the distress of the poorest group – or, worse, if they compound it ? we should reject them? (Delgado and Stefancic, 22). This, the Golden Rule, would seem to prevail among both secular and religious types alike. While I continue to support the implementation of affirmative action until the collective social conscience reaches a level of general tolerance, I cannot begin to estimate how long it will take for the tide to turn and a practice like this to be put into effect. I suspect the answer is that it will not happen in my lifetime. If the main concern of those in power is to achieve equality, this would be a wonderful place to start. Of course, if that were the main goal, it would also already have been implemented. Sadly, I believe that those who hold the power cannot yet envision an America free of social barriers in the name of a greater good. Until they, not the minorities, take the initiative to reimagine what it means to be a free American, there will always be an oppressed underclass.

Initially written to entertain myself??until I accidentally learned something.

The Twist

The one thing Frederick Jameson fears most in ?The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism” is postmodernism. He believes that?the loss of a?modernist code or the historicity in?art & lit?renders it?powerless. But what about his theory itself? It seems to me that Jameson, in talking about the postmodern, ironically,?becomes postmodern.?While incorporating paintings, photography, architecture, poetry and prose, all encapsulated within a recognizable theoretical framework, is he not using?various recognizable forms to present the unrepresentable??

The Sting

Wouldn’t that be a kick in the pants. Had?Jameson left the reader to come to his or her own conclusion, my theory might have had a chance. Instead, we are directed to a specifically unified?interpretation from the author, killing my fun altogether.

Seriously: Words vs. Meaning

My prior argument seems about as sound as Jameson’s after today’s class discussion. While there is an element of “truth” in the argument that late capitalism drives the art market, I have a hard time believing?accusations?of postmodern ?depthlessness? and lack of context. So what can I gain from a piece I don’t feel I can connect with?

I?m trying hard to hold fast to history as a lived moment of human experience rather than some nonexistent, objective Truth or, as Aliya said, ?another metanarrative.? I think what throws me is the terminology rather than the idea. Baudrillard’s “simulacra” (copies of copies with no identifiable source) serves me better. Unfortunately, I can?t find a way to apply this to Jameson’s assessment of Warhol because I feel Warhol?s message was larger than Jameson gives credit for. So?

Preliminary Apology

I?m sorry to return to?my?lingering??The Last King of Scotland? argument.? I made a new connection today. I hope you’ll stick around to read it. (I probably won?t be able to let this go until I resolve my “fascination with” and “brutal distaste for” the film’s end result.)

Film Example: “The Last King of Scotland”

This movie is ?based on true events? about a very real Ugandan dictator, but his life is revealed through the perception of a fictional doctor. This doctor is not simply narrating. He is the main character with significant influence on very disturbing events within the film, yet it is never made clear that he is fictitious. Then, in the DVD special features, Ugandan extras said they are glad children?can watch this film and finally learn about Ugandan history.

(BIG) PROBLEM!

This isn?t history! It?s not even comparable to studying Native American perspectives?amid an overabundance?of British colonization literature. This is purely fiction and claims itself as such? in the extras. Of course, if you don?t watch the extras, you have no way of knowing to what extent the story has been created for the sake of entertainment. Will Ugandan children know? I think not.

Finally, Why Jameson Matters

I find it confusing to have experienced a?very?upsetting reaction to a movie that rocked my world. Ugandan children will learn from a presentation that represents nothing that ever took place. I think this?misrepresentation (although if it never happened it can’t be misrepresented) is what deeply disturbs Jameson. This nostalgia for historical format produces nothing real. This is where I begin to find value in Jameson’s argument.

I should start with this question: Why does this film affect me more than the thought of “Titanic” being our most prevalent reference to the actual ship sinking? (That said, should I be equally outraged?) I suspect?the difference?stems from my?access to other informational resources if I decide I want to explore them. Ugandan children do not have that privilege. It deeply upsets me that this movie?will likely be a child?s only (and brutal) source of information.

In this sense, I feel that corporate interest in box office performance is?a poignant?example of imperialistic?governance over point of view. How very arrogant to insert a white and highly educated man within the complicated Ugandan cultural structure and sell him as truth sayer, OR is this a critical commentary on white society’s rejection of?information from a black?society? I understand the enormous power of art in delivering powerful messages, and now also how inextricably capitalism infiltrates it with corruption.?In the end, the white guy is the hero. Victory?goes to?the dominant culture?in possession of enough money to?keep it that way. With this dominant/oppressive late capitalist relationship, third world, culturally based?education systems seem impossible to build, yet the quirky playfulness of pop culture is forced upon them in the name of that same almighty buck.

So, it seems my understanding of the?postmodern is two-fold. To those in the dominant culture?it?will be entertaining and maybe even valuable and enlightening. To those without access to education it will be devoid of?”historicity”?(pastiche) and they won’t even know it. How’s that for two very different metanarratives about postmodernism?!

End-trails

1. Is?the postmodern?as elite as the modern, requiring education to appreciate while that same education is robbed from the lower classes by a capitalistic system that, by default, requires an underclass to exist?
2. If postmodern art is driven by late capitalism, and following the line of logic I just laid out, doesn’t that make postmodernism corrupt by default?
3. If either of these questions ring true, then are commercial artists?complicit in?the continuance of?oppression?

This is all so very pessimistic.

It’s been a couple of months since I wrote about the racially charged contraversy surrounding the?Jena Six.?My?writing was nowhere near timely?as precipitating events and racial tension in this small community began more than a year ago?with arrests made as far back?as December,?but the story was just then beginning to?percolate above ground. Coverage came from independent media sources such as Democracy Now! while mass media outlets wouldn’t touch it.

Yesterday, 20,000 activists marched in an act of civil disobedience through Jena, LA. People across America who could not make the journey wore green and black in support. And aside from one instance of “aggravated ignorance,” where nooses were displayed in neighboring Alexandria, LA, the result was impressive.

Today the media is BUZZING. “The Jena Six” is now a household phrase.?One can only hope that?increased knowledge and awareness will allow these boys to be treated fairly.?

America is watching.

Luciano Pavarotti passed away on the 6th of this month and, although I didn’t know him, it saddens me.

One of my favorite memories about being a flight attendant was a 1998 trip?to Italy. Pavarotti was seated in first class.?The famous tenor’s?manager had arranged with our airline?to provide?a special?meal on board. Once in the air,?Pavarotti stepped into our galley to be sure that his request?wasn’t causing any trouble. A jovial man, he made us laugh, broke out into song, and suggested we take a group photo. He was?singing as?he posed with some of our crew.?

Before the month was out, I just wanted to?recognize?Pavarattoi’s much appreciated good will and cheer that will not soon be forgotten.

Having already given my raw reaction to the postmodern?Fight Club in?a previous post, I wanted to share?some bonus material?in reference to the car accident scene. I had mentioned?the Futurist connection?in class but the original text is far more revealing.

The frame of mind?surrounding the events of this 1908 car accident?is similar to what Pitt’s character was striving for when he let go of the wheel and hit the gas. Connections can be?drawn between?Fight Club’s Project Mayhem?and the?modern Manifesto?of Futurism by F. T. Marinetti:

MANIFESTO OF FUTURISM (1909)

1. We want to sing the love of danger, the habit of energy and rashness.
   The essential elements of our poetry will be courage, audacity and revolt.
2. Literature has up to now magnified pensive immobility, ecstasy and slumber. We want to exalt movements of aggression, feverish sleeplessness, the double march, the perilous leap, the slap and the blow with the fist.
3. We declare that the splendor of the world has been enriched by a new beauty: the beauty of speed. A racing automobile with its bonnet adorned with great tubes like serpents with explosive breath … a roaring motor car which seems to run on machine-gun fire, is more beautiful than the Victory of Samothrace.
4. We want to sing the man at the wheel, the ideal axis of which crosses the earth, itself hurled along its orbit.
5. The poet must spend himself with warmth, glamour and prodigality to increase the enthusiastic fervor of the primordial elements.
6. Beauty exists only in struggle. There is no masterpiece that has not an aggressive character. Poetry must be a violent assault on the forces of the unknown, to force them to bow before man.
7. We are on the extreme promontory of the centuries! What is the use of looking behind at the moment when we must open the mysterious shutters of the impossible? Time and Space died yesterday. We are already living in the absolute, since we have already created eternal, omnipresent speed.
8. We want to glorify war – the only cure for the world – militarism, patriotism, the destructive gesture of the anarchists, the beautiful ideas which kill, and contempt for woman.
9. We want to demolish museums and libraries, fight morality, feminism and all opportunist and utilitarian cowardice.
10. We will sing of the great crowds agitated by work, pleasure and revolt; the multi-colored and polyphonic surf of revolutions in modern capitals: the nocturnal vibration of the arsenals and the workshops beneath their violent electric moons: the gluttonous railway stations devouring smoking serpents; factories suspended from the clouds by the thread of their smoke; bridges with the leap of gymnasts flung across the diabolic cutlery of sunny rivers: adventurous steamers sniffing the horizon; great-breasted locomotives, puffing on the rails like enormous steel horses with long tubes for bridle, and the gliding flight of aeroplanes whose propeller sounds like the flapping of a flag and the applause of enthusiastic crowds.

(For the first and last bits, click here.?I have deleted them from?my original?post for?their excruciating length.)

While I haven’t done formal research, the?parallels with Fight Club are astounding. Much of this?philosophy is?as disturbing as the film with?numbers 8?&?9 taking the cake: Machine + War - Woman = Futurism.?More unnerving, I might add, is that Futurism moved swiftly in the direction of fascism, with Marinetti?personally supporting Mussolini.

Anyway, just some fat to chew on… or sell… or blow up…

Watching movies for class rocks.?

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HstQaobp4Jw]?

From the opening credits, Fight Club alludes to the unrepresentable. As the names spin off into gaseous clouds, what appears to be the universe swirls within the biologic make-up of Edward Norton’s character, yet one would think that the character would exist somewhere within the Universe. So, where does the Universe begin or end? Does it start with human perception or is human perception a byproduct of the Universe? Ooooh, the questions stew already.

In the opening scene, perspective shifts from within Norton?s character?s body, through the gun, and into Pitt?s character?s point of view. Perspective then leaves both characters (or halves of one character) and the camera travels out of body altogether. Now the point of view becomes that of the movie viewers? as we get a voyeuristic view of the explosives below the city. Throughout the morphing POV, we never fully know where one begins and another ends.

Cut to Bob?s boobs. Is he still a man with no balls and full breasts? What essentially makes a man ?manly? if not the biological pieces and parts? Can comfort be derived from any breasts but a mother?s or lover?s? Norton says yes.

Then we back up. The beginning of the movie isn?t the beginning as we traditionally know it. ?Nothing is real? Everything is a copy of a copy of a copy.? And here, Baudrillard. Really, need I say more? Norton is a copy of himself on many levels. Stuck in the marketing galaxy, ?What kind of dining set defines me as a person?? What else does?

Playing Cornelius and other ?characters? so he can cry and sleep like a baby, where does Norton?s character end and his others begin? He dies and is reborn with each new meeting. But who dies and who is reborn? Cornelius, Tyler Durden?

Pitt’s image flashes in several scenes, spliced into a single frame at the hospital, the testicular cancer meeting, when Marla walks off supposedly forever. Later, we learn that Tyler splices frames between reels at the theater. Does he create himself then? Has Norton’s character created him?

Do events shape us or do we shape them? Do we own things or do they own us? Half asleep, half awake? Reality enters dreams, dream enters reality? Half alive, half dead? Not quite whole but not fully cleaved in half? Somewhere between life and death lies meaning.

?It was on the tip of everyone?s tongue. Tyler and I just gave it a name.?
?First rule of Fight Club? You do not talk about Fight Club.?
Coincidentally, that’s the second rule too.
?It wasn?t about words.?

We’re back to the failure of language again. Instead, the sublime is the pleasure derived from the pain of pummeling and being pummeled.

?Nothing was solved when the fight was over, but nothing mattered.?
?This was freedom. Losing all hope was freedom.?

The car wreck: All I could think of were the Futurists. Historically, not just in the movie, a car launches into a ditch and?gives birth to four survivors who create a Modern movement infatuated with technology, speed and chaos.

“Let go of everything you?think you know?about life…”

You can?t explain the unexplainable, sublime. Familiar themes?akin to?Wnnterson’s Written on the Body… Marla: Love as invasive. Love as pure desire. Love as a bridesmaid dress loved for only one day and then thrown aside. Narrating organs in books?left by a recluse. Cancer of the prostrate will kill. Combination of form: Movie – documentary – porn – and back again. Characters talk to themselves on screen, then they turn to the audience and talk to … ME! I have just become the object of two subjects. How beautifully postmodern.

Capitalism: The democratization of art?becomes public taste governed by money. To?free our identity from?being defined by our stuff and our menial jobs that make us slaves?to purchasing?more stuff, Capitalism must be destroyed.

Then the biggie: Dualing subjects. One fights the other for power. Can there ever be two, particularly when they share one body? According to the smoking gun, the answer is no.

I could continue with the play-by-play but we?re all watching the same thing. Suffice it to say, I loved this movie the first two times I saw it. I have a renewed appreciation this third time. Now excuse me while I retire the keyboard and get back to the milk and cookies.

Dear class:

I can get behind Lyotard’s?postmodern theory on several levels:

• I’m down with the fact that reality is not real, that it is?rather “simplicity, communicability” (75) in the name of?the “unity of experience” (72).
• I even prefer?the raw honesty of the aesthetic sublime over the beautiful and perfect modern form.
• AND I get that the postmodern “puts forward the unpresentable in presentation itself” (81).

What I need some help with is how:

The artist and the writer , then, are working without rules in order to formulate the rules of what will have been done. Hence the fact that work and text have the characters of an event, hence also they always come to late for their author, or, what amounts to the same thing, their being put into their work, their realization (mise en oeuvre) always begin too soon. Post modern would have to be understood according to the paradox of the future (post) anterior (modo). (81)

Please tell me this means that?artist and writer?are working without a planned form, aside from their experience of writing about an event,?and that the outcome, or presentation of the unpresentable,?is?only revealed to them?once the work is finished.

Its either that or?time travel.

In class we began to analyze what the narrator had learned, if anything, by the end of Winterson’s novel, Written on the Body. I believe that several important massages were accepted by both the narrator and myself, as a participating reader.

In deep mourning for Louise’s lost love, the narrator says, “?I couldn’t find her. I couldn’t even get near finding her. It’s as if Louise never existed, like a character in a book. Did I invent her??? (189).

The question feels plausible since the narrator questions reality throughout. In this moment, Louise appears to be a haunting memory, if only of a fantasy, but Gail Right offers proof that Louise and her remaining souvenirs were not invented.

“?No, but you tried to [invent her],? Gail said. ?She wasn’t yours for the making??(189).

Does the narrator ever fully understand his or her objectification of Louise? I think yes. The last passage of the book speaks to this conclusion:

The walls are exploding. The windows have turned into telescopes. Moon and stars are magnified in this room. The sun hangs over the mantelpiece. I stretch out my hand and reach the corners of the world. The world is bundled up in the room. Beyond the door where the river is, where the roads are, we shall be. We can take the world with us when we go and sling the sun under your arm. Hurry now, its getting late. I don?t know if this is a happy ending but here we are let loose in open fields. (190)

If, as the narrator says, ?it?s the clich?s that cause the trouble? (189),?or the language that?confines us, then the?confines or walls are exploding in a moment of clarity. Windows have turned to telescopes searching beyond the language, magnifying the world outside. This is the place where Louise and the narrator can finally exist together. The entire universe is theirs for the taking.

But is this a happy ending? It all depends on whether or not Louise’s final appearance is real. If so, one might think yes. Both the narrator and Louise have finally escaped the boundaries of subject, object, power and submission, using the term ?we? to capture the equality of the lovers let loose in open fields. Still there is a sense of urgency in ?Hurry now.? It?s as if the ability to escape the shackles of language is fleeting. One cannot avoid defining thought with language for long.

Then again, can we trust Gail? She’s never met Louise. What if Louise is not real? The last paragraph begins with ?This is where the story starts, in this threadbare room,? I returned to?the?novel’s beginning?for further insight.?From that perspective, the escape truly is brief. In the room where the story starts, we find the narrator avoiding heartbreak again by falling back into the same cycle of clich?s with Gail that were experienced with Jacqueline:

Still waiting for Mr Right? Miss [Gail] Right? And maybe all the little Rights? ? I am desperately looking the other way so that love won?t see me. I want the diluted version, the sloppy language, the insignificant gestures. The saggy armchair of clich?s. It?s all right, millions of bottoms have sat here before me. The springs are well worn, the fabric smelly and familiar. I don?t have to be frightened, look, my grandma did it ? my parents did it, now I will do it won?t I, arms outstretched, not to hold you, just to keep my balance, sleepwalking to that armchair. How happy we will be. And they all lived happily ever after. (2)

If this?is where the novel ends, stuck back in?the cycle with only a breif peek into the fantasy of Louise,?it becomes painfully obvious that the narrator nor the reader can remain free from the boundaries of language, the boundaries that keep us separate from love and from our beloved.

This book raises so?many questions. How can one operate outside language, even with its flaws? How would the story be told? The minute we try, the trap snaps shut once more. Even if Louise were allowed her own quotes, wouldn’t they be?filtered through the narrator’s reactions? Perhaps we must tell every story from two or more perspectives, but how does that effect our own as author or narrator? If Louise and the narrator exist outside of language, how do they communicate? Have they become one and the same – just knowing? Has anything really changed? Louise, if real,?still doesn’t speak upon arrival except through her body, through touch. Perhaps that’s the key to truth, experience without words.

Again I’m left wondering, what do we do with this? Even when we strive to reach beyond the comfortable clich?d armchair for something more, when we can?glimpse?the possibilities of the Universe and want to run freely in the open fields of equal love, we aren’t quite sure?how to step through to the other side linguistically.

Much like this…

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_Xu3BYaR_8]

Chaos has moved in. We are in the midst of installing the new wood floor… which must be done before we install radiant heat (as to avoid shooting nails through the tubing)… AND, we need to finish ripping walls out of the basement to pour new flooring over said tubes… AND yes, with 40 degree weather last night, we realize that time is of the essence. Can you say ?frenetic??

I came home from class yesterday to find the living room crammed into the dining room. Our friend brought his tools and his son, Zack. Poor Zack. He?promptly stepped in?dog shit. Still, we managed to move forward. The couches are now stacked in a way that defies gravity. Like ?The Fountain,? a urinal turned on its side in the name of modern art, they seem to say, “Sure, we ‘normally’ offer ass support, but if you sit here now, we’ll snap you up like a Venus flytrap because?you must BE an ass to have placed your faith in form alone.” The dog is lost, as are most of our shoes. His bed is shoved in a corner, our shoes in the office closet. All comfort, familiarity and order is destroyed in the name of two rows of boards which were?finally nailed into place prior to midnight.

When life gets turned upside down you notice things, like the table that has been quietly sitting in the main hall for three years. Last night, for the first time in forever, I thought, ?Hey, I like that table.” Of course, other things get lost, like my husband’s wallet, which he returned to retrieve only shortly after leaving the house. As for me? I realized during lunch, after spending an entire morning on campus, that I had been wearing one black and one brown boot. One lost, one found ? in each color.

When you no longer blend into the background, say, by not wearing the same pair of shoes, things begin to stand out. Following a tractor beam stare to the object of interest I discovered, much like found poetry, my new-found style. No fanfare for this nut. Instead? Instant mortification followed by paranoia. I wondered, ?Are other people looking at me? If so, have they noticed? Will they say anything? Are they thinking, ?That?s the dumbest shit that ever walked the face of the planet in two different boots???

I was not only hyper-aware of the impact my footwear had on the judgment of others, I was also forced to recognize the ways in which I feel pressured by the fashion police. Yes, even I thought, ?I am the dumbest shit that ever walked the planet in two different boots.?

Why should any of this matter as long as the body?s extremities are protected from the elements? Aren?t warmth and protection the premise of clothing at the most basic level? As I was reminded today with new vision, the frightening answer to that question is no. Clothing conformity matters because we assign meaning as a label-obsessed society. Breaking the rules reaps real consequences when we step outside our class, gender or ethnicity. The boots are no big deal, I realize, but they provided an interesting experiment, allowing me to feel society?s demand to define identity through appearance.

Here was my chance to throw back my head in defiant laughter, revel in the moment, and shove my feet in the face of the fashion police. Three blocks worth of prideful strides carried me to my car and I enjoyed every inch travelled. Will I do it again? Not intentionally. Besides, fashion anarchy is nothing new. (If you?ve ever seen pictures of St. Mark?s Place, NYC in the ?80s, you know that my boots and I offer no competition.) Still, I learned what it felt like to be on the outside, if only in my own head. You should give it a try sometime.

How does any of this relate to Winterson?s novel,?Written on the Body? Maybe I?ll explore that question tomorrow when I can?get down and dirty?with the book.?Tim just got?home.?I need to get down and dirty hauling out old carpet and feeling the brute force of a compressor and nail gun.