one MM missing, one MM rocking the stage
Mar. 23rd, 2003 10:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lapsedmodernistSo watching the Oscars tonight, seeing simian-foreheaded Jennifer Garner interact with a CGI Mickey-Mouse on stage, I had an epiphany--with the war and the revival of Norman Rockwell-esque Americana, and the montages of American Wartime Patriotism/American Defiance clips at the Oscars, and pregnant Catherine Zeta-Jones, the Queen of Hollywood royalty accepting her award for Chicago and family values: we are in the 50s.
But, of course, not the 50s-as-they-were. At first I was, like, this is simulacrum 1950s. But that's not correct. Baudrillard's definition of simulacrum is a signifier that purports to represent something, but really only represents itself. But that's just postmodern, which is not what is going on here. It's not like "these times" only represent themselves--they really DO stand for the agenda and ethos of the 1950s. Then it hit me: it's the Un-50s (see previous discussions of the Ungay). It's the zombie 50s, where they have been dead through the 60s, 70s and 80s, through the pomo 90s, and now they have returned, their genuineness (aka life essence) drained by subsequent deconstruction and irony. Now that irony has been suffocated by duct-tape, that does not bring back the real thing. Like, just because the "death" status of a zombie is reversed, that does not revivify the zombie with life essence. We live in the un-50s where the discourse of uncritical Americania (both domestic and in foreign politics) constructed through demonization of "the other" (then--commies, now--Arabs) can't even lay a claim to some sort of non-generated, non-derivative, non-constructed "innocence" (not that it was that way in the real 1950s, but at least it happenned before that very same discourse got deconstructed, so you could argue that on the mass consumer level it was less cynical than it is bound to be today).
Mad kudos to Michael Moore for lambasting Dubya on stage. It was amazing. "Fictiotious president and fictitious war." I wonder--if he had not won, would all the documentary film nominees still have come up on the stage? That was a great organizational move. Kudos to Adrian Brody for saying something, at least. Well, at least Michael Moore alone got more publicity in that moment than our huge march in New York did yesterday.
Question of the moment is: where is Eminem?
But, of course, not the 50s-as-they-were. At first I was, like, this is simulacrum 1950s. But that's not correct. Baudrillard's definition of simulacrum is a signifier that purports to represent something, but really only represents itself. But that's just postmodern, which is not what is going on here. It's not like "these times" only represent themselves--they really DO stand for the agenda and ethos of the 1950s. Then it hit me: it's the Un-50s (see previous discussions of the Ungay). It's the zombie 50s, where they have been dead through the 60s, 70s and 80s, through the pomo 90s, and now they have returned, their genuineness (aka life essence) drained by subsequent deconstruction and irony. Now that irony has been suffocated by duct-tape, that does not bring back the real thing. Like, just because the "death" status of a zombie is reversed, that does not revivify the zombie with life essence. We live in the un-50s where the discourse of uncritical Americania (both domestic and in foreign politics) constructed through demonization of "the other" (then--commies, now--Arabs) can't even lay a claim to some sort of non-generated, non-derivative, non-constructed "innocence" (not that it was that way in the real 1950s, but at least it happenned before that very same discourse got deconstructed, so you could argue that on the mass consumer level it was less cynical than it is bound to be today).
Mad kudos to Michael Moore for lambasting Dubya on stage. It was amazing. "Fictiotious president and fictitious war." I wonder--if he had not won, would all the documentary film nominees still have come up on the stage? That was a great organizational move. Kudos to Adrian Brody for saying something, at least. Well, at least Michael Moore alone got more publicity in that moment than our huge march in New York did yesterday.
Question of the moment is: where is Eminem?
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no subject
Date: 2003-03-24 10:02 am (UTC)Good point. I'll be mulling this one over for a while. (I'll also be pimping you in my journal, as you'll be a treat for all my thinking friends).
no subject
Date: 2003-03-24 11:38 am (UTC)i think there are definitely elements of the 1940s at work just by the virtue of there being a war on, but in a way, the 50s were a culmination of the 40s. not to get all marxist, but in the sense the 40s laid the base for the 50s, and the 50s were the superstructure in full bloom (obviously, the 40s had their own war-informed ideology, but the 50s were the direct cultural product of various economic ramifications of WWII, in terms of productivity, technology boom, temporary transformation of the workforce demographic, and the subsequent reactionary whiplash, etc). the other thing is, everything is faster now, wars are measured in weeks and not years (although let's not forget that the original name of Operation Enduring Freedom was INFINITE Justice), and this is not a World War (yet), it's a colonialist invasion posing as war, but the point is, the outcome is kind of overdetermined, which allows the during-war discourse and the soon-to-come-yet-already-here post-war discourse to be collapsed into one. because war will be over really soon, and because war will never *really* be over in the new American paradigm. but in terms of historical parallels, it's like the amalgamation of the 40s and 50s mentalities, with the 40s elements inherent in the 50s made active, rather than latent, by a war
no subject
Date: 2003-04-01 04:21 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-04-01 08:07 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-04-01 08:57 am (UTC)I think many of you kids would be better off cultivating something like humor, or even malice, over this tiresome philosophastic lingo. You're roommate, thank fuck, is a very welcome relief from it. I can't offer the same kind of analysis you can, with those Academie Approved mortars you employ, but I can suggest that they make up for a lack of spunk in your 'discourse'.
As for being original, and my use of the word - 'correct' is at least as relative. I mean not all of us think Bauleggedretard and Del'ooze are the last word in semantics. Thankfully.
no subject
Date: 2003-04-01 09:45 am (UTC)as you can see, i deleted your last comment and the response to it, because, well, i like comments in my journal to be either on topic, or, if they are not on topic, they must be from my friends. your comment did not qualify. you are also banned from commenting in my journal in the future. of course, you can choose to writhe in anonymous paroxisms of immaturity on my comments page, but i will just delete anything you have to say unless it is respectful and on point. incidentally, i am not sure who you think my roommate is, but she uses a similar vocabulary to mine.
i really don't want to have to be nasty to people in my journal. if you don't like what i have to say, if you think that it's pretentious or boring or "lacks spunk," then don't read it.
no subject
Date: 2003-04-01 10:53 am (UTC)xxx,
butthead
no subject
Date: 2003-04-01 11:04 am (UTC)