Brain Drain

Posts Tagged ‘nostalgia’

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.

This assignment is interesting. I am not, nor have I ever been, a fan of comics, but I’m having fun seeing echoes of Jameson all over the place. I can even see a bit of Saussure and the French duo, Deleuze and Guatarri.

Like the reflective walls of LA’s Bonaventure Hotel, Watchmen reflects the genre in which it situates itself, and yet it is certainly not a direct representation. This is a comic book – kind of. The format, like all comic books which came before, comes complete with crime, super heroes and cartoon-like illustrations, yet Watchmen borrows this traditional form to create something new, a graphic novel (as in pictoral AND graphic in content). This gives whole new meaning to the recycling of comics.

I’m reminded of Jameson’s description of the Bonaventure’s confusing layout with entrances that aren’t clearly marked and with no directions within. Maybe it’s just that I’m new to the whole comic thing, but it took me some time to learn how to navigate through the narrative. In the traditional sense of reading from left to right, I could enter into the story, but I needed to allow the text to carry me through time (flashback with the actual use of a flash image) and space (the use of color to designate East coast, West coast, Vietnam and Mars). Like the Boneventure’s escalators and elevators, the text required me to be receptive and adapt to the space within the page.

This is where Saussure’s sign/signifier/signified theory comes in. While he spoke solely of speech, I learned a new visual language, one randomly assigned but accepted and understood by the comic community. Again, I’m reminded of how color represents place while images of flash bulbs and fireworks signal flashback. This only works if this is true of all comics. Perhaps the Super Man and Batman “Pow” is a better example of the sign we all know to signify a punch.

More directly associated with Sassure is the necessity for societal acceptance in the adaptation of language. Minuteman Hollis Mason in Under the Hood also talks about this happening in his lifetime when he says:

The arrival of Dr. Manhattan would make the terms “masked hero” and “costumed adventurer” as obsolete as the persons they described. A new phrase had entered the American language, just as a new and almost terrifying concept had entered its consciousness. It was the dawn of the Super-Hero” (Watchmen 13).

(Uh, do I credit Mason or Moore & Gibbons for this quote? I jest. Ah, the technicalities of a new form…)

To return to Jameson here, I have to ask – Are the super dudes parody or pastiche? I think parody, although Jameson would disagree. One thing is clear. These guys aren’t super heroes in the traditional sense. Most don’t have powers at all, except for the tall, blue freak. (I mean that in the nicest possible way.) These clowns (I mean that in the nicest possible way too) don’t even have morals to guide their mother-freaking mental ship. The Comedian is the ultimate satirical character. He isn’t funny and he doesn’t seem to find the world as funny as he says he does. His superbly f*&!ed up power is to rape a fellow super hero and shoot a pregnant woman carrying his child. Aside from the foulest of his transgressions, I think he’s an amusing character… but I’m kinda sick like that.

To recall Deleuze and Guattari’s rhizomes, this novel is certainly the organic orb to which the metaphor refers. There is a pulpy center called Watchmen. Off to one side is the offshoot of the Comedian’s journal. To the other, there is a comic book within a comic book. And somewhere left of center is Hollis Mason’s autobiography. This is no typical, traditional, linear representation.

Jameson would have a field day with the fact that Watchmen looks back to a non-existent social and political history. This brings us back to our discussion of capitalization on both the nostalgia and originality of a piece depending on the consumer’s generational perspective. If comics are for kids, and this is definitely not, does this idea still work? It seems that this book targets the same audience that was once interested in comics, although it targets them at an older age. And does Watchmen lose it’s comic critique in the face of the previously released Heavy Metal, an adult cartoon that similarly looks back on “future artifacts?” Does that make it pastiche – a dead language – something lacking indiviuality? I think yes. Sure, it won awards for what it accomplished, but so do pop songs and they’ve all been done before too.

(Got ID?)

HARK:
Postmodernism = Modernism flipped ass over tea cup. That which was of dominant importance in the 40’s and 50’s is now secondary, giving all those original underdog qualities renewed appreciation upfront and center.

I like the way Jameson refers to Gerty’s-got-her-groove-on Stein. In her manifesto, Composition Explained, she’s all about,

“The only thing that is different from one time to another is what is seen and what is seen depends on how everybody is doing it.”

Jameson agrees, and in fact borrows this idea which was written in 1926. Ooooh, the irony. In art, we still create representations of the same things we used to. The focus just shifts as we use new lenses to look at the same old, same old.

BEHOLD:
Modernism is like a Dadaist collage in that previous art is deconstructed and resynthesized into new art. Dadaism took art from the hands of masters and brought it to the people. As an original idea (in it’s day), this is parody.

What differs in postmodernism is that art is no longer out to change the world so much as to ”respect the vernacular of the American city fabric” (1968). This is pistiche, mimicing styles which are already dead. All the while, we look back with nostalgia to what has come before and try to recreate it with new tools.

TAKING IT FOR A SPIN:
So, to me, this sounds like the closed structure of Derrida, where one thing supplements another to make a whole new piece of art. The possibilities are as infinite as the combinations of coupling, yet the pieces to work with are limited. According to Jameson, we have reached a dead end in finding “the new” and must begin to reconstitue and recycle the old in new ways. Yes?