tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8716201413142785882024-03-13T06:02:51.924-07:00The AnsibleReflections on science fiction, politics, and philosophy.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02491193993862345976noreply@blogger.comBlogger73125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-871620141314278588.post-32905286562148396322017-05-23T07:36:00.001-07:002017-05-23T07:56:13.120-07:00Space Gods, Aliens, & Androids: Oh My! (by Jase Short)<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
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<b>Space Gods, Aliens, & Androids: Oh My!</b></div>
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<b>by Jase Short</b></div>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">It is difficult to
understate the impact of the popular mythology unleashed by Ridley Scott’s 1979
film <i>Alien</i>. Both <i>Alien</i> (1979) and <i>Blade Runner
</i>(1982) represent a sea change in science fictional cinema, which is what
led to such disappointment with Scott’s return to the genre with <i>Prometheus </i>(2012). With poor writing, a
convoluted plot, and flat characters, <i>Prometheus</i>
paled in comparison to the original conceit that was the minimalist, against
the grain-style film making of <i>Alien</i>.
Nonetheless, it reopened the mythos spawned by the original film in new and
exciting ways which are explored much more fully in Scott’s latest entry, <i>Alien: Covenant </i>(2017).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Popular reception of the
Alien films has always centered on the duality of the xenomorph and the human,
but in fact the films rely on a third entity—the android—to complete the
science fictionalized character system. What <i>Alien: Covenant </i>(2017) accomplishes is the unveiling a new monstrosity at the heart of
the saga: David the android.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The system in <i>Prometheus </i>(2012) was without the
xenomorphs: human, android, and Engineer formed the triadic relations bound
together by the Engineer’s bioweapons. The Engineers were portrayed as humanity’s
progenitors (at least in some vague sense), and the humans in turn create the
androids. In <i>Covenant</i>, it is revealed
that David unleashed the Engineers' own weapon—the "black goo,"
aggressive bioengineered intelligent DNA that rewrites its code into the
genetic code of its hosts—on their civilization, which achieved genocidal
results. From this deicide (the Engineers are explicitly identified with gods) came the experiments that yielded the xenomorph,
which is "birthed" with David as witness in a chilling and moving
scene in the film. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Covenant</span></i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">
is not a horror movie like <i>Alien</i>, it is an altogether different kind of
narrative even though it shares superficial similarities with the original. It
is a more classic style science fictional story aiming at "big
ideas," ideas which are largely reflections and interpretations of the
original film. In this, it achieves what <i>Prometheus
</i>promised without the aforementioned weaknesses. Further, it displaces the
central monstrosity of the mythos from the xenomorphs to David, a more
disturbingly post-human vision of the grotesque. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">David is a Frankenstein's
monster, the true Prometheus of the new saga. If Frankenstein's monster was "the modern Prometheus" with humanistic pretensions, David is "the postmodern Prometheus" aiming at a post-human future predicated on the anti-humanist conceits of post-structuralism. Our protagonist never was Shaw or
Daniels—there are no Ripleys here. The protagonist of this new chapter in the
saga is David, and the mood isn't arcing toward hope as <i>Alien</i> did (and <i>Aliens </i>((1986))
fulfilled), rather it is arcing toward despair.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><b>The New Saga:</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><b>David as Modern Prometheus</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">It is important to
divorce oneself from the desire, so prominent in fandoms, to correlate the
contents of every film in a franchise. One has to take in each film according to its own context and judge it according to its own merits. It is important to remember that, for instance, when <i>Alien</i> was made, it was not made with the expanded world already developed, and so attempts to retcon (impose retroactive continuity) are essentially a waste of time.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">This is vital even when discussing the undisputed classics of the franchise, <i>Alien</i> and James Cameron's <i>Aliens</i>. For instance, the introduction of the Queen by Cameron has long been denounced by Ridley Scott, who sees it as a betrayal of the planned life cycle of the creature. In spite of this, the Queen has become an essential part of the various continuities in the xenomorph mythos, particularly in later cinematic installments and in the much lauded Dark Horse graphic novels (which continue to be produced, and with excellent quality, to this day).</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">For the purposes of analyzing <i>Covenant</i> it is important to only consider the events of <i>Prometheus</i> and <i>Alien</i> (and perhaps <i>Aliens</i>) as important to the storyline, the aesthetic, and the mythos. Further, one can still enjoy the mystery and darkness of <i>Alien</i> without the explanations and origins of its events as they are revealed in <i>Prometheus</i> and <i>Covenant</i>.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Istvan Csicsery-Ronay Jr.'s comments on the series are illustrative here. In <i>The Seven Beauties of Science Fiction</i>, he writes that "the individual installments" of the series "are clearly intended to be linked into an <i>Alien</i> megatale." Further:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">"It is also clear that they are always after-the-fact additions. The audience is thus invited to imagine a unified 'saga,' at the same time that they know each new film is an improvisation. The <i>Alien</i> films are consequently already grotesque in their moment of presentation, requiring their audience to close enormous temporal gaps between episodes...while also opening up gaps in stories that appeared to be be closed...The linking narrative of each episode is, from this perspective, also a pretext for displaying ever more complex variations on certain themes" (207)</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">In many ways the new saga is an origin story for the xenomorphs. We are given a scenario set in motion by the desire of a megalomaniacal (and white male capitalist) Peter Weyland for immortality. The original sin that sets in motion the events of this new saga is this desire on Weyland's part to cheat death. Ultimately these new films aim at an origin for the xenomorphs, which is a betrayal of the mystery driving the original film. Nonetheless, an origin for the xenomorphs detracts from the wonder of the original only if we obsessively view them together. One ought to, on the contrary, look at this as an opportunity to see multiple continuities and which open up more possibilities for creative freedom both in the films and in the Dark Horse installments.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Scott's new saga, while aiming at an origin for the xenomorphs is nonetheless focused more on the aforementioned protagonist of David. In the opening scene of <i>Covenant</i>, we see David interacting with Peter Weyland after he has been activated for the first time. Weyland marvels at David, insists on being seen as a father to him, and delineates the boundary between himself and David: David cannot <i>create</i>, he can only mimic. In <i>Prometheus</i>, Weyland casually dismisses David as a being without a "soul," a curious term but telling terminology to use by someone who has just utilized science to generate artificial life.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">As the conversation continues, David comments that, even though he is the creation, he will continue to live on even as mortality claims Weyland. Weyland pointedly does not respond to this, but rather commands David to prepare his tea for him. We see a flicker in David's eye, the first moment that he recognizes that something is amiss. </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">The Master-Slave dynamic between Weyland and David drives David's sense of value...ultimately, he will come to value creation and autonomy, he will seek to supplant his creator and free himself from his status as subordinate laborer.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">For his entire existence David is bound to Weyland. Though remarkable in his own right as the most complex artificial life form yet constructed, David is a servant. He nonetheless demonstrates a remarkable flexibility within his programming. In <i>Prometheus</i>, he continually improvises in difficult situations. He is fascinated with, and yet repulsed by, humanity. In response to an inquiry from the character Charlie, David says, "</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">I was designed like this
because you are more comfortable interacting with your own kind." To which Charlie remarks that David's makers are constructing him "pretty close" to humanity. David's response is merely, "Not too close, I hope."</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">His disappointment with his creators is central to his motivations. David asks Charlie, "Why do you think your people made me?" Every dismissive and arrogant, Charlie retorts, "We made you because we could." David's retort provides massive insight into his view of humanity, "Can you imagine how disappointing it would be for you to hear the same thing from your creator?"</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">Once Weyland is killed, David is free. His affection for Shaw, who has shown him compassion, is illustrated by his smile in response to her claim that they are fundamentally different because he is "a robot," whereas the same claims made by Weyland and Charlie were clearly indicated as sleights. In the "Prologue" to <i>Covenant</i> and in the film itself we see David demonstrate compassion and care for Shaw, who is the exception that proves the rule. David feels himself superior to both the Engineers and humanity, but we see his complexity as a <i>person</i> in his ability to nonetheless maintain affection for an exceptional human that deviates from the general pattern.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">In <i>Covenant</i>, we are then exposed to Walter. Walter looks like David, but is an updated model. It is said that David approached being human too closely, and so Walter has been made into something more like a robotic servant. Nonetheless, Walter retains affection for an exceptional human, in this case Daniels, as pointed out by David. The dialectic of these two represent the possibility for the post-human creation: will they become mere extensions of our consciousness, or establish their own and supplant us entirely? While David teases out Walter's motivations, ultimately it seems Walter does not question his place in the caste system. Nonetheless, Walter's "love" for Daniels suggests that even the most "secure" android might at any point withdraw their consent to be ruled.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><b>Transgressing Boundaries</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Returning to Csciscery-Ronay Jr.'s comments on the original films, we can say that the new saga in a sense <i>radicalizes</i> the tendencies already at work in the original films. He claims that the films are representative of a particular kind of the science-fictional grotesque "appropriate both for cinema's kinetic rhetoric and for postmodern culture's pervasive concern with transmorphic, body-dissolving phenomena" (206). It is helpful here to quote Csciscery-Ronay Jr. at length:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">"As the stories become increasingly defined by themes of physical interfusion and reproduction, genealogy and affiliation, each category of character moves further and further from its original conception, while retaining a trace of its origin. At the level of image and visual design, category confusions occur incessantly. Boundaries between genders, between machines, humans, and animals, between technology and organic life--all come down. Interiors project outward, while exteriors invade. Some horrible excess of decontainment attends each boundary violation: explosions of blood, brains, android juices, alien vital-acid and drool...are expected and required. Visually, there is the constantly metamorphic interfusion of technological design and organic form, foreground and background, interior and exterior, environment and agent...the Alien has two mouths, and evokes the menacing genitalia of both genders; it is metallically organic, while the Alien Spaceship of the first film is organically metal; androids are endowed with their own spurting life-juices, coded as both milk and sperm; men give horrific birth, females have deadly phalluses..." (207)</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">This thematic becomes explicit in the new saga with the introduction of "the black goo." The mutagenic pathogen is utilized as a biological weapon by the Engineers, though it clearly has greater significance than a mere weapon. The opening scene of <i>Prometheus</i> shows us a ritual in which an Engineer intentionally consumes the liquid as an act of self-sacrifice, throwing himself into the primordial waters of what is presumably a planet the creatures aim to seed. There is a reverence here that is backed up further by the murals found in the facility on LV-223 in <i>Prometheus</i> which depict not only the Engineers, but life forms clearly animated by the goo.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">The black goo aggressively attacks hosts by tearing up their DNA codes and rewriting its own into it. Thus near infinite variations are possible with openly blur the boundaries of human, alien, and Engineer. In the <i>Fire and Stone</i> Dark Horse comics we even see this black goo take over the bodies of various androids. This boundary-dissolving device is central to the new saga and provides the basis for David's work.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">While direct exposure results in various monstrosities, it is clear that a more complex working with the genetic material can yield more surprising results. In <i>Prometheus</i>, an infected Charlie impregnates Shaw, resulting in an arachnid-esque child that later, in classic "face hugger" fashion, impregnates a captive Engineer host. The Engineer "births" a kind of proto-Alien, called "the Deacon."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">This process prefigures David's work in <i>Covenant</i>, in which he performs genetic experiments using the Engineers, the goo, and the genetic material of Shaw. In a twisted way, David's use of Shaw's body is for him a powerful way of incorporating her into his creative labor and thus a sign of his affection rather than hatred for her.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">This desire to consume and destroy the loved one turned into an object, a form of sadistic being-for-others, recalls various serial killers throughout the history of horror. Annalee Newitz's discussion of serial killers in <i>Pretend We're Dead: Capitalist Monsters in American Pop Culture</i>, is illustrative here. David's status as a degraded servant, as a worker exploited by his subservient status, is the source of his desire for creative, self-directed labor that takes the form of his experiments. Newitz:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">"One of the basic and painful contradictions a worker must face is that his source of social power is also his source of degradation as a subject. His work may give him power, but he price he pays is the 'death' of his subjectivity, or various parts of his subjectivity over time. When this contradiction becomes too much for him to bear, he may develop a psychopathology which compels him to literalize Marx's metaphoric notion of 'dead labor' by killing people who represent it" (34)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">David's work is to carry on the thematics of the series by transgressing the genetic boundaries of the various organisms until he arrives as the "perfect organism," a designation that links Ash, the android from <i>Alien</i>, to David. Precisely what makes them perfect is unclear in the new saga, though Ash gives us clues in the original: "It's structural perfection is matched only by its hostility...</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">I admire its purity. A
survivor... unclouded by conscience, remorse, or delusions of morality."</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">David also celebrates the "purity" of leaving behind "conscience, remorse" and "delusions of morality." It is perhaps telling that this last quotation was chosen for the cover of <i>Empire </i> magazine's <i>Covenant</i>-centric issue. In brief, we can see the ultimate goal of the series to be the reduction of these transgressions into the ever growing separation between the humanistic Ripley and the anti-human xenomorphs, with the post-human androids serving as mediators between the two (aiding the xenomorphs in one instance and Ripley in another).</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><b>Horror in <i>Alien: Covenant</i></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">It is telling that our first experience of danger in the new film comes from a natural event in space rather than a monstrous intrusion. A neutrino burst overloads the colonization ship's electronics, resulting in catastrophic damage and the horrifying immolation of Daniels' husband in his cryo pod. From the outset it is clear that we are to see space not as the idealized place of <i>Star Trek </i>with its crisp uniforms, but rather as a cold and unforgiving vacuum in the style of the original <i>Alien</i>. In "The Last Supper Prologue" to the film, the character Tennessee says of space that it "spooks" him because it is "a big 'ole sea of nothing." This recalls Weyland's final moments in <i>Prometheus</i>, in which he proclaims with his dying breath, "There is <i>nothing</i>."</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">The promise of a paradisiacal new world for the couples that constitute the crew of the colonization mission gives way to a dead world. It is a kind of simulacra of a real world, complete with vegetation but no remaining animal life. The black goo has turned the surrounding area into its habitat, embedding itself in the spores of fungi-like organisms that resemble vegetation, but are, like their terrestrial analogs, closer to animals than plants.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Members of the crew are exposed and thus give birth to the "back bursting" Neomorphs. These sleek albino monsters are horrifying variations of the xenomorph design. Their smooth, infant-like skin contrasts with the harsh, obsidian exoskeletons of the traditional xenomorphs. Perhaps the scene in which the two battle was cut for fear it resembled too much the sensibility of the <i>Alien vs Predator</i> sub-sub-genre, but it plays out metaphorically through the film. David tries to connect with the Neomorphs, but it is clear that when the first xenomorph is birthed that he has finally succeeded in making his perfect organism. Rather than portray this "birthing" as a site of horror, it is instead given a hopeful, beatific score. In a way, this moment vindicates David <i>and</i> the previous unfolding of the narrative, for it finally points the way to the events of <i>Alien</i>.</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8T9YoTRsFXNdrgReYguehyphenhyphenGXp7uw_oq1crwPyabUDacLKnYTWxbZAF-xjehTA1Nt4n8EQ_ftqB3Mq12UrW8yYojF8hBCRrzHwq038seipu2ycyUM_cGQtjEqBNA-DZlc1hMJXpOOuD_8/s1600/covenant3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="184" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8T9YoTRsFXNdrgReYguehyphenhyphenGXp7uw_oq1crwPyabUDacLKnYTWxbZAF-xjehTA1Nt4n8EQ_ftqB3Mq12UrW8yYojF8hBCRrzHwq038seipu2ycyUM_cGQtjEqBNA-DZlc1hMJXpOOuD_8/s320/covenant3.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Memorable scenes include the back burster horror aboard the drop ship and the revelation of David's lair inside the ruins of the Engineer structure. Oddly enough the bizarre variations on the organisms shown, which demonstrates David's skill as a taxidermist and illustrator, recall a scene from the much-hated franchise installment <i>Alien: Resurrection </i>(1997) and its memorable scene of the first eight attempts at cloning Ripley. The dramatic irony at work when characters enter this lair drives home the attempts to portray David as analogous to a serial killer, for whom death is creative labor.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Each death is given more weight by the status of the crew as a collection of couples, a conceit tied to the vision of the colonization mission. We are made to feel each death that much more because we identify with the anxiety, dread, and remorse of the surviving partners. The most memorable performances in the film center around the danger and death of loved ones rather than the characters own experience of danger.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">The ending of <i>Covenant</i> sees David triumphant after having tricked Daniels and Tennessee into believing that he is in fact Walter. Daniels only discovers this, to her horror, once already trapped in her cryo pod. David "sails" off into deep space with xenomorph embryos and several thousand cryogenically frozen human colonists. The darkness of this ending contrasts sharply with the note of hope registered at the ending of every other film in the franchise, from the first four to <i>Prometheus</i> itself. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">his displacement of Daniels, which follows the displacement of Shaw, demonstrates to the audience that the new saga does not seek to create a new Ripley, but rather seeks to tell a very different story. Echoes of Ripley are found throughout these two films, mostly notably in Janek's sensibility and heroic act in <i>Prometheus</i>, along with the actions of <i>both</i> Daniels and Tennessee in <i>Covenant</i>.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Of course <i>Covenant</i> does not measure up to the original genius of <i>Alien</i>, but it does measure up as a modern science fictional tale playing on the same thematics. </span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02491193993862345976noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-871620141314278588.post-60678853094582343622017-05-15T09:16:00.000-07:002017-05-15T09:16:23.783-07:00Inner Terror in Outer Space: Alien (1979) and the Vision of Internal Colonization (by Jase Short)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgoghdWEuiGm5Jt63dRCUZIKdvz_T0_qlAg4HoHfFPojSIFJ2akuBKr7kwrCsFOQ8pY2hFwv63m3OlCTMZnYfIZQMZTMDcCLKLUKt3E2kljoCkYcHPTjKxZNQzR1g0C1t83xFpg2sQDPsY/s1600/xeno1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="209" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgoghdWEuiGm5Jt63dRCUZIKdvz_T0_qlAg4HoHfFPojSIFJ2akuBKr7kwrCsFOQ8pY2hFwv63m3OlCTMZnYfIZQMZTMDcCLKLUKt3E2kljoCkYcHPTjKxZNQzR1g0C1t83xFpg2sQDPsY/s320/xeno1.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<h2 style="text-align: center;">
Inner Terror in Outer Space: <i>Alien</i> (1979) and the Vision of Internal Colonization</h2>
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by Jase Short</div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">The emergence of science
fiction over the course of the twentieth century was never a linear process,
but it is safe to say that it truly emerged into the mainstream following the
upheavals of the Second World War. Suddenly things like helicopters, air raids,
missiles, mechanized warfare, and atomic weaponry were no longer dreams…they
were everyday realities. Beyond the technological side, social dislocations
associated with colonialism accelerated during this period throwing millions of
persons into unfamiliar environments.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">This was the fertile soil
in which science fiction took root, and where it became popular it was meted out
with a heavy dose of liberal progressive ideology. Great men living in
conditions of post-scarcity took to space to unveil new worlds, slay monsters,
and win over the dotting affections of mostly blonde white women. Swashbuckling
heroes encountered B-side monstrosities and dispatched them with a notorious
derring-do not far removed from the mythology of the American West. The
critical energy of H.G. Wells was the exception as most science fiction was
presented as mere escapism or a confirmation of then contemporary prejudices.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">But this trend buckled
and strained under the tensions of the upheavals we associate with the decades
we so ceremoniously refer to as “the Sixties,” but usually refer to both the
1960s and the 1970s. As visions of social hope crested and troughed on the
evening news, the old stories began to lose their appeal. Pessimistic and
cynical visions of the future emerged. Voices of the subaltern began to speak
out, penning their own science fiction novels such as <i>Woman on the Edge of Time</i> and <i>The
Female Man</i>. Cinema began to catch up with such notable reflections on
dystopia as <i>Soylent Green</i> (1973) and <i>Logan’s Run</i> (1976). When swashbuckling
heroics returned with <i>Star Wars </i>(1977),
they were tempered with an aesthetic of run down, grungy, “lived in” technology.
Travel across the galaxy? Certainly. But in a grimy bucket of bolts. This “used
future” aesthetic would rise to new heights with Ridley Scott’s 1982 <i>Blade Runner</i>, but the testing ground for
Scott was none other than the now classic masterpiece of sci-fi horror: <i>Alien </i>(1979).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The minimalist
understatement of the title—simply the word “Alien”—is exemplary of Ridley
Scott’s style in the film. The creature itself is often understated, revealed
only in brief flashes enshrouded in darkness. This is in contrast with older
science fiction films for which the appeal was strictly the effects work of the
creature. Images of the creature would populate posters and promotional art for
the simple reason that there was little other motivation for attending the
film. <i>Alien</i>, on the other hand, drew
in audiences through the sense of mystery and a cast that promised serious
drama.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">At the time, a popular
strain of mythology production attempted to reconcile audiences to notions of
the alien, thereby providing an effective salve for our own sense of
alienation. In the days of the old colonial system these took the form of
adventure tales to dark continents where whiteness and Christianity did not <i>yet</i> hold sway. As our social system
changed and scientific development expanded our sense of the world, the setting
shifted from dark continents on Earth to the ultimate dark continent of space.
Other worlds became stand-ins for as yet unassimilated regions of ourselves,
alien encounters exalted mythopoetic visions of our encounter with fantastic
imitations of our own alienated essence.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">In the interstices of
this genre, something subtle, sinister, and grotesque began to fester. Between
the poles of the alien enemy to be subdued and the alien divine to be submitted
to something altogether disturbing gestated. This was a vision of an internal
colonization, of a freakish change within ourselves brought about by a
forbidden knowledge discovered "at the ass end of space," to quote
one of the sub-genre's most famous protagonists.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhy5SX7LNBzoH7Zy9iiKlbFWZJmtsA7gf2mfkFNSmQNhUf01h6GTybl-cNizf1enROqPv1f3Wn177wv_VXAbsynGinOBHeITEXMxs0c_dC_mGINbswR3rBWGWrFfBhBwHOB_qAtKi9j4nU/s1600/xeno5.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="133" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhy5SX7LNBzoH7Zy9iiKlbFWZJmtsA7gf2mfkFNSmQNhUf01h6GTybl-cNizf1enROqPv1f3Wn177wv_VXAbsynGinOBHeITEXMxs0c_dC_mGINbswR3rBWGWrFfBhBwHOB_qAtKi9j4nU/s320/xeno5.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion" by Francis Bacon was a major inspiration for the hellish vision of the xenomorph, a sensibility expressed via demonic biomechanical forms</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">No single auteur can
claim credit for the artistic icon that is <i>Alien</i>
(1979). A confluence of happy accidents, failed productions, and last minute
personnel changes congealed to conceive a film of mythic quality that continues
to reverberate across cultural formations today. The unique artistic vision,
dystopian futurism, incredible camera work, memorable performances, and
resonance with the darkening mood of the emerging late capitalist/neoliberal
ideological consensus worked together to generate a stunning instance of
science fictional horror.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Though it is always
termed “Ridley Scott’s <i>Alien</i>,” the
film is as much a product of Alejandro Jodorowsky’s failed attempt to create a
cinematic version of Frank Herbert’s now classic science fiction novel, <i>Dune</i>. Screenwriter and director Dan
O’Bannon worked with Jodorowsky on the failed project and there found himself
haunted by the work of Swiss Artist H.R. Giger, specifically his collection <i>Necronomicon</i>, named after the fictional
girmoire set in H.P. Lovecraft’s Weird mythos.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzNCzxvUBmRnkN-eYUwcWugyGf7s5ePoBCvvfMOgDgIAFhG7KN-rlZA7yemQRP-F78hpIFLtO6MMZ3cO3NgiB3KyboYTH1rPWBPNn2RBT35MIN07PYTdk5tAiky_zGCmOoQv35ugGm0fw/s1600/xeno8.webp" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzNCzxvUBmRnkN-eYUwcWugyGf7s5ePoBCvvfMOgDgIAFhG7KN-rlZA7yemQRP-F78hpIFLtO6MMZ3cO3NgiB3KyboYTH1rPWBPNn2RBT35MIN07PYTdk5tAiky_zGCmOoQv35ugGm0fw/s320/xeno8.webp" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Giger's concept art for the unmade Jodorowsky <i>Dune</i> project</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Recalling the cosmic
horror of Lovecraft through the title, the works collected in <i>Necronomicon</i> depicted stunning
visualization of the interpenetration of the organic and the mechanical by
melding visions of the machine with sexual imagery. Phallic and vaginal
representations are interspersed with satanic imagery, producing a sensibility
of bodies as pleasure machines, and machines set in motion by the power of
pleasure. Indeed, humanoid representations within the images seem to be
penetrated by the mechanical, setting the machinery in motion via the pleasure
enacted on the feminized bodies.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEQYst1Qr_f0997zrJJETZxyjZPGH4LqJuX-Y_-y9Ol00TQNharzk1C0y3_o6_dloJtZzmp992HNjVPqJTi-pdvN_vgxExNDUzWzDCYlMBBcOu9xe_2sW4wp89fHzytph6dR0EckbUdzU/s1600/xeno3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEQYst1Qr_f0997zrJJETZxyjZPGH4LqJuX-Y_-y9Ol00TQNharzk1C0y3_o6_dloJtZzmp992HNjVPqJTi-pdvN_vgxExNDUzWzDCYlMBBcOu9xe_2sW4wp89fHzytph6dR0EckbUdzU/s320/xeno3.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">None of the feminized
bodies are integrated as whole individuals, rather it is unclear where the
machinery and the organic can be delineated. This nightmarish vision inspired
O’Bannon’s screenplay, which went through many iterations, rewrites, with final
credit going to himself and Ronald Shusett. O’Bannon said of the inspiration,
“His paintings had a profound effect on me, I had never seen anything that was
quite as horrible and at the same time as beautiful as his work. And so I ended up writing a script about a
Giger monster.” <o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAZ3eW8KwwpiQKmEB6IjpDe4IdmsPsNHKVXV5aAfVznkA4ahr3fIgFbq5yCqs6dc8QTrKeUX-W1FUAp5qFhrBKhoBNL9AINewC3i7ycyes3_FPTwM0hoWBfOwiG4N1nf1oO1Yuu7cEaUs/s1600/xeno2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAZ3eW8KwwpiQKmEB6IjpDe4IdmsPsNHKVXV5aAfVznkA4ahr3fIgFbq5yCqs6dc8QTrKeUX-W1FUAp5qFhrBKhoBNL9AINewC3i7ycyes3_FPTwM0hoWBfOwiG4N1nf1oO1Yuu7cEaUs/s320/xeno2.jpg" width="226" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Alien: Covenant</i> concept art by Dane Hallett</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">With the working title <i>Star</i> <i>Beast</i>,
O’Bannon set out to create a narrative that was, at the suggestion of Shusett,
influenced by his own idea of a fictionalized account of the infamous
“gremlins” that emerges from World War II lore. Tales of gremlins wreaking
havoc onboard bomber planes spread rapidly during the war among the RAF and the
United States Army Air Corps. Bearing resemblance to imps—classified as a kind
of “lesser goblin” by folklorists—these rambunctious creatures were said to
have an insatiable desire to dismantle machinery and thereby cause mechanical
failures aboard the flying machinery. These agents of chaos provided the basis
for a monstrous terror in space as the crew were trapped aboard these flying
machines wholly unable to defend themselves.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtmSX2QK60afw1UStTO9YG0SXvDbUTZQ1JxyFmasqIlbs6oLL5-aIVBpjpT7zKz2VXynYhMk3t38PXHj0NLBdz3LOeuiy_bVxSeFNIfaWB67y5d5Rzkx9csqO7zJlNEE3t3RTbRoO7RaY/s1600/xeno6.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtmSX2QK60afw1UStTO9YG0SXvDbUTZQ1JxyFmasqIlbs6oLL5-aIVBpjpT7zKz2VXynYhMk3t38PXHj0NLBdz3LOeuiy_bVxSeFNIfaWB67y5d5Rzkx9csqO7zJlNEE3t3RTbRoO7RaY/s320/xeno6.jpg" width="208" /></a></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Whatever the source of
these tales—likely coping mechanisms combined with the effects of high
altitudes—they informed O’Bannon’s sensibility when writing <i>Star Beast</i>, which morphed into <i>Alien</i>. Both a noun and an adjective,
this new title captured the ambiguity set at the heart of the film which
explored deeply cynical attitudes about the future. Written in the era of
neoliberal ascendance and the rise of the truly multinational corporation, <i>Alien</i>’s plot was set in motion by the
nefarious designs of “the Company,” a shadowy interstellar corporation which
presumably owns almost everything by the year 2122 C.E., the date set for the
film.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Envisioned as a story of
“space truckers,” blue collar workers for whom interstellar travel is a banal
affair undertaken to secure the wages necessary to sustain their lives, <i>Alien</i> breaks with genre conventions of a
post-scarcity society that even <i>Logan’s
Run </i>retained. The crew of the <i>UNSCSS
Nostromo </i>are towing an ore refinery from deep space rather than conducting
an exploratory mission. The ship’s name recalls Joseph Conrad’s novel of the
same name, which depicts an amoral political ecology of cynicism, exploitation,
and betrayed revolutions. Nothing in their mission involves boldly going “where
no man has gone before,” on the contrary they are conducting a routinize
mission to extract resources and return them to Earth for the benefit of the Company.
Later iterations will identify this company as Weyland-Yutani, a
Japanese-American conglomerate, a vision informed by the context of Japan’s
then rising status as the star of global capitalism.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGxQ4fCivkq6flFWebxuTPfgoVVeDTmjtc1CxhqxfdheJs_af2rTbF_hexjzucB00qFDR6ok8_uTNrnFY_17WK7mM9q0lmiiX39bGInr6eZyfTaf5bsyv3ccqa7VkMQvAhDFu9lw0ZXzI/s1600/xeno4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="138" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGxQ4fCivkq6flFWebxuTPfgoVVeDTmjtc1CxhqxfdheJs_af2rTbF_hexjzucB00qFDR6ok8_uTNrnFY_17WK7mM9q0lmiiX39bGInr6eZyfTaf5bsyv3ccqa7VkMQvAhDFu9lw0ZXzI/s320/xeno4.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The interior of the <i>Nostromo</i> is functional-industrial in design, eschewing the sleek, glossy, and clean science fictional designs that dominated visions of spaceships</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">Diverted from their
journey home by a distress signal emanating from an unknown source, the crew
begrudgingly sets down on LV-426, a satellite of a nearby gas giant. There they
discover a Gigerian derelict spacecraft, complete with a fossilized giant skeleton
whose chest seems to have exploded outward. The ship appears to have been grown
rather than constructed, a true realization of Giger’s vision. Indeed Giger
himself did a lot of the design work, including that of the infamous “Space
Jockey” fossilized skeleton. To cement the contrast, Giger’s work was confined
to the derelict craft and the alien itself, while Ron Cobb and Chris Foss
developed the design work for the </span><i style="font-family: "times new roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">Nostromo</i><span style="font-family: "times new roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">
and its crew.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">While aboard the craft, a
crew member investigates an egg with vagina-esque openings, resulting in a
snake/hand/spider hybrid creature wrapping itself around his face. Once aboard
the ship, the crew member is found to have been impregnated by the “face
hugger” when a phallic monstrosity bursts from his chest in the dining hall in
a scene eerily similar to a hospital birth. The supposed protagonist and others
are murdered as the creature stalks the ship, penetrating and violating the
crew with abandon until a new protagonist emerges—Ellen Ripley. Ripley sets the
<i>Nostromo</i> to self destruct, escapes
aboard the Narcissus life boat, only to find the creature has stowed away
onboard. She successful blasts it out the airlock, exorcising the monster in an
act of cinematic catharsis unparalleled by the science fictional horror subgenre
since.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Alien</span></i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">
captures the mythology of encountering the internally colonizing alien form in
a way that no other work of art managed before. Scott’s stunning camera work,
combining documentary style and methods he developed from his work as a
producer of commercials leads the audience through long single takes that lure
one’s consciousness into the dark recesses of this “haunted house in space.”
Slow zooms which adjust while in motion first pioneered to fixate on desirable
female subjects in commercials are now utilized to focus on this
organic-mechanical monster.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Alien</span></i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">
is a fully realized work of art that distills the sensibility of this mythology
of internal colonization by an alien form into an intelligible narrative. The
shocking act of oral penetration and impregnation of a male member of the crew
(who displayed only attributes usually coded as those of the adventurous,
heroic go-getter) culminating in the brutality of the chest birthing scene
continues to reverberate across cultural time and space. The imagery is
routinely appropriated to make crucial points about supposedly alien forces
taking on the qualities of their hosts, only to birth themselves by way of the
host’s demise.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">As Scott’s newest attempt
to revive the appeal of the original hits the screens this week (<i>Alien: Covenant</i> serves as a sequel to
the poorly received <i>Prometheus</i> and
acts as a prequel to <i>Alien</i>), it is
important for us to understand what it is about the original vision that was so
compelling and has had such lasting power. While Twentieth Century Fox seeks to
profit from the franchise’s rebirth, it is important for us to remember that its
lasting resonance was not a product of advertising but rather that of a unique
artistic vision that undermined popular narratives of progress and male
supremacy. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhk6_Zn5HsjSZ5r9lJrpvuU1nasioKsQZliwGCoKo6p5Yv1xuXZIwuQ6-fjJmbfhguhkPFayYj0oGKgxbz1SeGs001GsUHTiHDjwsVS7tXphG1UslwH2hJvNhQNV7Cy9AqZsZUGiud0RLg/s1600/xeno7.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhk6_Zn5HsjSZ5r9lJrpvuU1nasioKsQZliwGCoKo6p5Yv1xuXZIwuQ6-fjJmbfhguhkPFayYj0oGKgxbz1SeGs001GsUHTiHDjwsVS7tXphG1UslwH2hJvNhQNV7Cy9AqZsZUGiud0RLg/s320/xeno7.jpg" width="215" /></a></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02491193993862345976noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-871620141314278588.post-38135420526526200472017-04-07T19:01:00.000-07:002017-04-07T19:01:34.549-07:00Why Bombing Syria is Terrible (by Jase Short)<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgo2n3Byy1dk32AJam34CxOZSzzf604AdlL0oxl15agD8cy7mUJrhzy-Ewvqfl8ENHniuo1Kv1Xaooxb9SVaesj1edsdNRwjrvpz3LlEOuZ_yEDQ_F-KnRD4bJd-sqRFiDLKtM7Ya30qZo/s1600/syria3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="251" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgo2n3Byy1dk32AJam34CxOZSzzf604AdlL0oxl15agD8cy7mUJrhzy-Ewvqfl8ENHniuo1Kv1Xaooxb9SVaesj1edsdNRwjrvpz3LlEOuZ_yEDQ_F-KnRD4bJd-sqRFiDLKtM7Ya30qZo/s320/syria3.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"City of Love in a Time of War" Wissam al-Jazairy</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Let us discuss in frank
terms why Trump’s attack on the al-Shayrat airfield, near Homs in Syria, is a
terrible thing that warrants building an international anti-war movement.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Trump</span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">
himself saw the folly of this kind of response in 2013 after the much more
destructive chemical weapon attack on Ghouta which killed 1,500 (in contrast to
a little below 100 for this attack in Idlib). At the time, Trump wrote on
Twitter: “If Obama attacks Syria and innocent civilians are killed, he and the
US will look very bad! What I am saying is stay out of Syria. AGAIN, TO OUR
VERY FOOLISH LEADER, DO NOT ATTACK SYRIA—IF YOU DO MANY VERY BAD THINGS WILL
HAPPEN & FROM THAT FIGHT THE US GETS NOTHING.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">There
has been no investigation.</span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"> It is likely that sarin gas was
deployed in Idlib by the Assad regime against rebels. But to justify any kind
of intervention <i>under international law</i>,
an investigation must first take place. Neutral observers must determine what
happened and bring a case to the United Nations Security Council. Neither
Congress nor the President can <i>legally</i>
circumvent the laws established following World War II that prevent his kind of
action. What Trump has done is commit an act of aggression under international
law, a crime for which many Nazis were hanged during the Nuremburg Trials.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">This
attack is unlikely to harm the Assad regime or aid the rebellion in any
fashion.</span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"> While the regime is likely to stop its use of sarin
nerve gas, it will continue its war on the rebellion, a war that it is winning
thanks to the intervention of its allies: the Russian government, the Iranian
government, and the Lebanese militia/party/state-within-a-state Hezbollah. The
war is actually winding down now that the rebels have been overrun in Aleppo.
This war has raged across Syria since 2011, and this strike promises to
re-ignite it just when an end—however cruel, with an Assad victory—was in
sight.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrKdiYz18yfrV0aX4izWyWe49qQ39ZsrEu7LCe8mP5QcyQTWP0zi4AG-yuvqs-HEQQcALe_-J5I5tASffzrje3uFTduto5N3L09sa0KuOe8i-yOMDWgjQA1d_VZFoOriesj6NoUHGQwJU/s1600/syria2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="217" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrKdiYz18yfrV0aX4izWyWe49qQ39ZsrEu7LCe8mP5QcyQTWP0zi4AG-yuvqs-HEQQcALe_-J5I5tASffzrje3uFTduto5N3L09sa0KuOe8i-yOMDWgjQA1d_VZFoOriesj6NoUHGQwJU/s320/syria2.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"Painful Syrian Thought" Wissam al-Jazairy</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">This
attack has <i>nothing</i> to do with
protecting innocent life—the US has itself killed more in the past couple of
weeks than died in the Idlib chemical attack.</span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"> On the 22<sup>nd</sup>
of March, the US launched an airstrike on a school just east of Raqqa in
territory controlled by ISIS. That killed at least 33, mostly civilians who had
fled the bombing of Raqqa. The previous Saturday the US struck a mosque in
Raqqa, killing at least 52 people. A few days before, on March 17<sup>th</sup>,
in Mosul (Iraqi territory under ISIS control) a US bombing resulted in the
massacre of between 200 and 300 civilians. If the US is concerned with the
death of innocent people at the hands of cruel airstrikes it can do something
immediately to help the situation: <i>cease
and desist all cruel airstrikes that kill innocent civilians. </i>Do you
honestly think President Trump, who ran a campaign which called for cruel
measures to bar Syrian refugees from settling here, gives a damn about Syrian
civilians? Could there be a more obvious pretext than this?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">This
attack puts the US on a serious collision course with the Russian government.</span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"> The
Russian government is heavily involved in the Syrian Civil War. It has boots on
the ground, a massive facility in Latakia, and has engaged in hundreds of
airstrikes against the rebellion on behalf of Assad. According to Dmitry
Peskov, a spokesman for Russian President Vladimir Putin, the Russian
government views this as “aggression against a sovereign state in violation of
international law, and under a false pretext. With this step Washington has
struck a significant blow to Russian-American relations, which were already in
a sorry state.” Russian MP Mikhail Yemelyanov said on Friday morning, “This
step will have far-reaching consequences. There’s a risk of direct
confrontation between Russia and the US and the consequences could be very
difficult, right up to an armed clash and exchanging strikes—nothing can be
excluded here.” Any armed confrontation with Russia runs the risk of triggering
a nuclear war that will result in a nuclear holocaust and the destruction of
human civilization itself. No one will survive it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">This
empowers Trump, rehabilitates his role as President for the “deep state” that
has been trying to reign him in, and establishes a pattern of escalation that
could lead to a serious power grab on his part in the near future. </span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Those
who are old enough to remember the period from 9/11 to the end of the 2004
election will recall the period of hyper patriotism that followed. Loyalty was
questioned. Dissent was quashed via shunning and pressure from employers.
Draconian laws were passed in the dead of night. A process was unleashed that
brought us, finally, to here, today. The US invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq,
and the subsequent War on Terror, created the context for the current Syrian
Civil War. When will the escalation end? And with Trump now being praised by
the establishment voices that mere days ago were troubled by him, where does
this end?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqZnckYtUDUi_7oSDHa2bUiP9nm0l10SrMJw69I254lxG5n2IejSDcbeRo-4BIDCF5ztVvW3FIsg9zcs9TNbEVWFWHsKn4Z1HXIphZdpjyCD9Y8BbIii_zJEr6DCqakGGIQ0Rwy9giftA/s1600/syria1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="178" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqZnckYtUDUi_7oSDHa2bUiP9nm0l10SrMJw69I254lxG5n2IejSDcbeRo-4BIDCF5ztVvW3FIsg9zcs9TNbEVWFWHsKn4Z1HXIphZdpjyCD9Y8BbIii_zJEr6DCqakGGIQ0Rwy9giftA/s320/syria1.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"Death Screams" Wissam al-Jazairy</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02491193993862345976noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-871620141314278588.post-58668596420878834012017-03-21T16:00:00.002-07:002017-03-21T18:28:12.376-07:00Kong, Godzilla, and the Emerging Hollywood Monsterverse (by Jase Short)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">As a young child <i>King Kong v.s. Godzilla</i> (1962) held a special place in my imagination. I perceived the pair as representative of the apex of inhuman power and, accordingly, to see them battle was to see something more than a mere monster fracas: to see them battle was to see two spirits battle with mythic overtones. Kong was worshiped as a deity on his island and Godzilla…well, it’s even in the name. Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine Hollywood would recreate this spectacle, particularly after the Roland Emmerich debacle in 1998 and Peter Jackson’s monumental retelling of the Kong myth in 2005. But sometimes the opaque workings of the culture industry turn in our favor, particularly when nostalgia becomes an engine for profit.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">When Legendary embarked on its kaiju film revival it had precious little to go off of beyond this nostalgia. The only kaiju films produced in Japan from 2005 on were one offs,usually parodies, and of astoundingly poor quality (with minor exceptions like <i>Gehara: The Dark and Long Hair Monster</i>).Hollywood’s post-Zilla foray into the genre came in the form of the found footag e<i>Cloverfield</i> (2008) which, while well-received, was limited in its potential for producing new content. In an age of emerging “expanded universes” encompassing continuity from film to television to comics, it seemed kaiju were doomed to the dustbin of history.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">But never underestimate the power of wealthy white men with a dream. Thomas Tull, Legendary’s former CEO, is a big monster fan. A giant monster fan. A Godzilla fan. And so he stoked the fires, letting Guillermo del Toro unleash <i>Pacific Rim</i> (2013) and underwent the risky move of producing a new Godzilla film. Tull chose monster lovers to take care of this project, and in the case of <i>Godzilla </i>(2014) went with an untested British filmmaker who had made a haunting, low budget monster film bursting at the seams with social commentary.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Though <i>Pacific Rim</i> was not the sensation hoped for, its sequel is due out next year. <i>Godzilla </i>did not live up to the haunting promise of its trailers, which suggested something akin to the 1954 masterpiece, but it performed well and captured the essence of the creature. What was most intriguing, from a fan standpoint, is that the film acted as a “<a href="http://www.scified.com/news/godzilla-14-as-a-stealth-showa-film">stealth Showa</a>” film. That is to say, it was presented in form as a dark, brooding film in the style of Christopher Nolan’s <i>Dark Knight</i> trilogy, but the actual content was in line with the original run of kaiju films. Godzilla acted as a kind of hero in the narrative, and this opened the field up for a revival of the old style…<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">…enter Kong. Legendary was in pre-production for <i>Kong: Skull Island </i>(2017) when the decision was made to collapse the films together:Godzilla and Kong would inhabit the same universe, knit together by the plot device of the Monarch organization, and would eventually battle one another on the big screen. Tull explained his motivation: “I’m juvenile…I wanted to see them fight.” In short, Tull envisioned the rebirth of the sensibility of <i>science fantasy</i> that structured the Showa period (1954-1980) of kaiju film.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">On that note, <i>Skull Island</i> delivers. We are treated with an ensemble cast that is at once charming, humorous, and compelling. While <i>Pacific Rim</i> delivered adventure and <i>Godzilla</i> brought an endless parade of unbroken tension, <i>Skull Island</i> knits both together. The resulting work of art is a perfect blend that captures the spirit of that special breed of Showa films: the Ishiro Honda films of the1960s. Ethics and social commentary are served up in appropriate doses that avoid the ham-fisted reputation of kaiju cinema. Most important of all: the monsters are spellbinding, breathtaking, and sublime. They aren’t giganti canimals…they are spirits.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">In Peter Jackson’s <i>King Kong</i>, Kong is indeed a character endowed with emotion, intelligence, and motivation. Yet, the dinosaurs seem to be mindless monsters, instinct-driven animals without intentionality. <i>Skull Island</i>’s inhabitants arestunningly different in this regard. Even the villainous Skull Crawlers exhibit intelligence and intentionality, while creatures such as the giant waterbuffalo-a vigorous nod to Miyazaki films-exhibit a quiet and dignified solemnity. Surrounded by a perpetual storm,the island exists as a fantasy realm peaking out into our own, intruding and bringing with it new and mysterious ways of living and being. This is even reflected in the human inhabitants, who adorn their bodies with religious symbolism and speak very little, conveying their thoughts with minor facial expressions not unbecoming those who share living quarters with gods and devils (another kind of piece, which I intend to write, demonstrates that this evasive maneuver is itself ultimately a racist/Orientalist depiction which unironically appropriates Japanese racist depictions of the South Pacific in numerous Toho films).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The “Hollow Earth”mythology is introduced in this film, which gives some more sense to the claim in <i>Godzilla</i> that these kaiju live deep in the Earth and have only now begun to awaken. With the Hollow Earth mythology plus the unknown human civilization, the films are now open to the conceit of ancient civilizations so popular in classic kaiju entries from <i>Atragon</i> (1965) to <i>Godzilla v.s. Megalon </i>(1973). Further evidence of this comes from the end credits sequence which depicts cave paintings featuring Godzilla,Mothra, Rodan, and Ghidorah.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Skull Island</span></i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"> takes a soft approach to social commentary,relegating the majority of it through Samuel L. Jackson’s Colonel Packard.Packard is a soldier’s soldier, deeply committed to the war on Vietnam. He notes that they did not lose the war, rather they abandoned it. While others discuss what they will do when they return to the US, Packard seems clearly at a loss. He jumps at the opportunity for this operation, and when Kong attacks their helicopters he responds by displacing his enmity for the Vietnamese onto Kong, bringing us full circle to the <a href="http://theweeklyansible.tumblr.com/post/44391242914/80-years-on-a-retrospective-on-king-kong-by-jase">commentary on colonialism</a> that is shot through various Kong films. Packard’s folly is the folly of colonialists, and in this case melds nicely with the sense of unbalance pervading the new films.By weakening Kong, Packard unleashes the Skull Crawler in Chief, imposing a state of unbalance that only Kong can remedy.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Without a doubt this film is lovingly attuned to the history of Kong’s cinematic appearances. We have giant octopi, chains, the <i>USS Wanderer</i>,dinosaur skeletons, helicopter battles, boat proppelers-turned-weapons, and an elegant nod to Kong’s past erotic draw to blonde women. Rather than find himself in a crude romantic entanglement, Kong gains respect for Brie Larson’s character Mason Weaver when she tries to save one of the island’s benign inhabitants. Later they have a moment of intelligent recognition, and it is clear that Kong follows a certain ethical system on the island in which he protects it from dangers both foreign—the military helicopters—and indigenous—the Skull Crawlers. The nod is in fact ironic here, as Weaver's connection is based on a solidarity of ethical action-showing compassion for life on the island-rather than the implausibly disturbing eroticism of previous entries.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">This Kong exhibits the deep melancholy of the Peter Jackson film in keeping with the history of the character as detailed in Cynthia Erb’s book <i>Tracking King Kong</i>. He is a loner who has lost his family to the Skull Crawlers. He bears the scars of previous battles but is nonetheless an adolescent(undoubtedly having to grow a bit before he can take on the truly gargantuan Godzilla who stands at 108 meters tall). Like Godzilla in the previous film, he intervenes when something imposes a state of unbalance on the natural order.Kong is a fully-fleshed out character, which is why the moments of the greatest tension are those in which Kong seems to be in danger.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">A new kaiju sequence has been unleashed, and at the center is the project of bringing Kong and Godzilla together on the big screen for the second time ever. By the time the film i sreleased, 60 years will have passed since the last time they met. In those decades these creatures of taken on an even more iconic role in popular culture as symbols of ecological and societal unbalance, the rebellion of the colonized, the misunderstood monster, and more. There is something deep and moving about this peculiarly capitalist mythology of giant monsters congealed into the battle of the ultimate reptile and the ultimate mammal. There is also something really fun about it all, and I’m not ashamed to admit that I’m embracing my 5-6 year old self’s desire to see this film. Life is dark and difficult, sometimes it is nice to lose oneself in a realm of gods and monsters.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02491193993862345976noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-871620141314278588.post-43842864336354837532017-02-16T07:52:00.001-08:002017-02-16T07:54:21.983-08:00Manchurian Candidates & Resistance (by Jase Short)<div><img src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-s3lAtIuhQyE/WKXLLAY_k-I/AAAAAAAABNg/6ISk9L7fVGw/I/photo_52855.jpg" border="0" class="bloggoimg"></div><br><br><br>Current developments in the Trump Administration, now just three weeks in, have me worried about the potential for building movement and political power. The dismissal of General Flynn over communiques with Russian officials during the transition, coupled with the emerging investigations into Trump's ties with Moscow, lays the groundwork for an impeachment on national security grounds. The Democratic leadership has stoked anti-Russian sentiment for months now and, combined with the GOP's already hawkish stance, we could see the dissolution of our democratic awakening and the consolidation of a new order at the top.<br><br>Our greatest opportunities for the past month have emerged from the incompetence and mismanagement of the Trump regime. This is precisely what is terrifying elements of the ruling class, particularly the so-called "deep state." Ungovernability is their greatest fear and our greatest asset. This is, accordingly, a perilous state of affairs for the ruling order. Given the ready-made solution of Pence and the GOP establishment-who can hope to implement much of their agenda without the chaos of Trump nor would they have to deal with his promises of economic populism and white ethnonationalism-we cannot assume this to be an impossible scenario even with the GOP's grip on Congress. Indeed, the GOP might see it as their only saving grace of Trump's support sinks low enough, as they can show themselves to be the slayers of a hated Administration.<br><br>There are opportunities here as well. We can continue building movement against the GOP's agenda, and with Pence unable to hold together the Trumpian coalition we have an opportunity to deepen our movement into something more than an anti-Trump project. Further, with the legs of right wing economic populism crippled, we can once again take our place in the public eye as the principle enemies of neoliberalism.<br><br>It is a cliche but nonetheless the case that every crisis is an opportunity. Thus far we have seen enormous potential for movement building and mass radicalization under the Trump regime, but this state of affairs might turn out to be a blip in the midst of a trending authoritarianism. Either Trump and his coterie will consolidate their fascist-lite rule or the leadership of both parties will get their hands back on the wheel and guide us back into an already cruel status quo. Either outcome is problematic for us, and so something like a continuation of this status quo-inept management at the top coupled with little actual policy making-is the ideal situation for movement building.<div><br></div><div><div><img src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-zk7wJypy7Zk/WKXLLb8r3iI/AAAAAAAABNk/WpvS3PbSvuc/I/photo_737056.jpg" border="0" class="bloggoimg"></div><br><br> <br></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02491193993862345976noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-871620141314278588.post-33190885570979929272017-02-06T15:54:00.002-08:002017-02-06T16:34:41.347-08:00A Brave Trumpian World (by Jase Short)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">These first few weeks of the Trump Administration have
been a whirlwind. From the most kleptocratic looking Cabinet (eight individuals
of which own an obscene share of the nation’s wealth) in a long line of kleptocratic
regimes, to the unsettling of the famed cornerstone of the imperial system—NATO
and the project of European integration—it has been an almost revolutionary
time. Every day brings new Executive Orders and browbeating tweets, not to
mention new and inspiring developments in mass protest from the Women’s March
to the airport demonstrations. What does this signify?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Trump is a kind of postmodern, wannabe fascist. He lacks
neither the clarity of political will nor wit to understand the competence demanded of a would be revered autocrat in the style of Putin or Erdogan. His 4<sup>th</sup>
grade mentality wedded with the lowest common denominator achieved by making
himself a brand, which is an ethereal commodity, make him the perfect empty
vessel for forces of reaction that have gathered in the demonic inner sanctums
of the world’s most violent political party.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">Whether
the radical fascism of Bannon and Miller or the more theocratic
tendencies represented by Pence and the Cabinet (which in many ways resembles
the sort of Cabinet one would have expected to take shape under a President
Cruz, from Kellyanne Conway to Besy DeVos) prevails, what is clear is that the ship of
state is caught between two competing versions of an ultra reactionary ruling
class. Indeed, the hard right pivot of the Democratic leadership, particularly
its “new Cold War” rhetoric, is another side of this same coin.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The most frightening scenario involves the disintegration
of the European Union after the upcoming election, with the National Front’s
Marine Le Pen taking France in a right wing populist direction. A new arc of far right
powers could emerge running through Washington, London, Paris, and Moscow.
Grand bargains could be imagined which permit an expansion of the Russian sphere
of influence into more ex-Soviet states, including Eastern Europe. With the
rise of official state sponsorship and a new regime of international
cooperation—a kind of “Concert of Europe” even complemented by the likes of Abe
in Japan and Xi Jinping in China—we might see a rapid dissolution of democratic
gains across the core regimes of global capitalism.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">What is clear is that neoliberalism has mutated rather
than perished. The old order represented by the 1990s already faced serious
challenges with the Bush II years and the Great Recession and many jeremiads were
sung of it’s demise. Now, the claim is, with the threat of protectionism and
trade war, this order is finally over. In some sense, yes, a particular regime of
global capital accumulation is indeed in a state of deep, fundamental crisis.
But still the commodities flow. The extractions continue. The environmental
devastation has accelerated, not slowed. Political violence to maintain the
relations underlying this state of affairs have not abated, but intensified.
What then has happened?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">A more anarchic administration of global capitalism has
emerged. Regional powers and quasi-global powers have successfully achieved
their goal of a breakdown of the Transatlantic order, albeit not without a
cost. While Beijing has long militated against the “democratic” and “free
market” standards defined by this old order in favor of a more laissez-faire
approach to internal affairs, it is now perversely experiencing its own crisis as it gets
what it wishes. Now that it has a stake in the system it is committed to maintaining the
status quo. At home this means a more streamlined, centralized, and efficient
machine of exploitation and capital accumulation. Abroad, it does not mean the sudden rise of bellicosity in theater after theater, but it could benefit from a dissolution of the Translatlantic order.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">The
crony, almost mafia-capitalism of Russia achieves a similar impact, and what it
lacks in labor markets and rates of accumulation at home it seeks to make up
for by expansion of political influence abroad. A system of Middle Eastern
alliances running from Tehran to the endlessly besieged Damascus has outmaneuvered
the divided Translatlantic order and rebuffed the system of local alliances run
out of the system of Gulf monarchies and pro-Washington autocracies. This seems
in many ways to be the maximum achievement possible with such limited entry,
and one cannot but imagine a “Grand Bargain” promising the green light for more
European and Caucus-oriented incursions in exchange for a sacrifice of the
regime in Tehran.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">On the shores of North America, the emboldened far right scrawls swastikas—whether “ironically” or not
makes no difference—across the public sphere. Milo Yannoupoulis, Richard Spencer, and Steve Bannon are all household names. Fascism creeps in the
background without a full mobilization or seizure of power, but one cannot forget
that fascism in Spain and Italy did much the same. The fever dream of fascism
and its enemies will always be the Third Reich, but that level of total fascist
conversion is unlikely to happen in more than a handful of cases in the
emerging order. Far more likely are drastically weakened liberal institutions,
show trials with a veneer of judicial independence, and loyal oppositions who
are not <i>de jure</i> barred from the levers of power.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">Nonetheless,
one does not expect a highly successful Trump Administration to leave the GOP
without significant electoral advantages over the already undemocratic United
States. The ability of an electorally-disciplined militant minority to capture
the Presidency ought to be self-evident after 2016, and if the Democratic leadership
continues—as we would expect—on its current path, it will deliver a deep
political makeover which will, at minimum, allow a further lurch to the right
among the Democratic leadership. One can imagine a stunning electoral defeat
for the GOP followed by a reassertion of DLC-style discipline over the party
since we have, after all, witnessed this in the 2006 and 2008 elections.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">Savage
austerity and class war continue unabated, <i>and yet movements exist.</i> That is
saying something that simply was not the case a decade ago. Occupy initiated in
many ways a new spring of resistance, one that has its vanguard in the black
freedom struggles, the climate justice movement, and a panoply of gender and
sexual self-determination struggles. Immigrant struggle and advocacy is finding
new alliances as borders tighten. One saw the explosion of resistance across US
airports when the first step of Trump’s “Muslim Ban” was unleashed. Calls to
tighten borders have spread from Argentina to Greece to Britain and beyond. The
movement of things continues unabated even as so-called free trade comes under
suspicion, but the movement of bodies continues to tighten even as millions of
refugees are made by war and climate chaos.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">At
the precise moment when the knowledge of the requirements for dealing with the
climate crisis and the dire need for addressing it have intersected, we have a
regime that appoints a climate skeptic to the Environmental Protection Agency
and the former Chief Executive Officer of Exxon and climate change denial to
the State Department. Movements continue even as Congress moves fast to expand
the ability to dump toxins in our waterways. The heroic resistance at Standing
Rock looks to be a bellwether for our future, and the inspiring example of
solidarity notwithstanding, it does not bode well for our collective future.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">In
the midst of this the Syrian War is coming to some kind of conclusion or at
least de-escalation as Russian and Iranian-backed forces continue to deliver
defeats to the diverse and not uncompromised opposition forces. In this
environment, the well-funded, trained, and armed operatives of the so-called
Islamic State in both Syria and Iraq are losing their institutional role. One
sees the end of the Soviet war in Afghanistan on steroids here, as militants
will be tempted to return to spectacular 9/11 style attacks that will only
reinforce the security state apparatus in the US and around the world. Through
this period the Israeli state has morphed into a far right crisis state, obsessed with new notions of racial order and dreams of a land without
Palestinians for a people who already occupy the best lands. Discussions of
mass expulsions and other accelerations of genocidal policies are openly
discussed, and vigilantes exact a daily toll of Arab blood.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">In the last instance, the</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 16px; text-indent: 48px;"> ultimate arbiter of our destiny will be up to flows of global capital </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">and attempts to maintain regimes of accumulation. At some point, the shoddy post-2008 financial
superstructure is bound to suffer crisis, though it has proved more resilient
than expected by transferring costs through good trickle-down practices. Inequality between and within sovereign states has reached obscene
levels made most grotesque by the laughable prospect of “existential danger”
emanating from places like Kabul to DC, or for that matter even from Pyongyang to Seoul. The
great equalizer is a world financial crisis brought on either by
deleveraging of assets and concomitant financial crisis, or a financial
crisis unleashed via trade wars, the dissolution of monetary unions, and so
forth. The prospect of outright war in the Middle East and Eastern Europe—a somewhat
odd thought given the existence of already-devastating conflicts in Ukraine and
Syria—or the outbreak of a more serious inter-imperial conflagration in East
Asia or Europe could be the force that puts the wheels of this great nightmare into motion.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">From
there the question is: if the international system cannot salvage itself by way
of a repeat of the post-2008 Great Financial Crisis (which led to the “managed
depression” we call The Great Recession), then what new order will consolidate?
It is here that the opportunity for radical change is possible. We could see
the rise of revolutionary regimes of the right and left, and in this context
social awareness and politicization has become a more pressing existential
concern for all of us. International solidarity with resistance, rather than states, has become a practical necessity. The key to remember is that our solidarity is our
strength, and that tactical alliances and retreats are sometimes necessary but
a fundamental betrayal of our principles is not—in fact, that is arguably why
we are here in the first place.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">If
resistance in the US and Europe is controlled by the existing elites, then this dark scenario is far more likely. But
if a real alternative can be given the strength of international solidarity and
mass political organization stretching deep into workplaces, neighborhoods, the
streets, and social formations, then another world is finally within our reach.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">Sadly,
things seem to be moving in the other direction. Nonetheless, we cannot expect
these regimes of cruel fascism to have an easy time developing in societies equipped
with weaponized instant mass outrage and examples of successful grassroots
resistance. Every victory, no matter how small, has a force multiplier effect brought on by the politics of spectacle in the social media era and increases our capacity to
fight and win something better from this chaos rather than another generation
of darkness or faux peace. We have the tools in each other to change this state
of affairs, but we must become the very best versions of ourselves to stand against
this tide of terror.</span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02491193993862345976noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-871620141314278588.post-84869809630336531992016-10-03T07:12:00.000-07:002016-10-03T07:28:11.262-07:00Tears in the Rain<div><div><img src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-w5aU1RFGZgk/V_JnQpIooJI/AAAAAAAABHk/MXgX1sllkzA/I/photo_630837.jpg" border="0" class="bloggoimg"></div><br><br> <br></div><div><br></div><div>“I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears...in...rain. Time to die.”</div><div><br></div><div>-Roy Batty, <i>Blade</i> <i>Runner</i> (1982)</div><div><br></div><div> </div><div><br></div><div>Is it possible for there to be enchantment in the culture of late capitalism? The system is predicated on demystification and reduction maneuvers which generally leave enchantment to the uninitiated, to the mostly privileged youth while the rest of us take an ironic stance towards our own experiences. Too much seriousness is to be avoided as fanatical and subversive, but subversive energy can spring from a fascistic as well as liberatory wellspring.</div><div><br></div><div>Encoded in the texts of the culture industry are deeper structures, mythic projects thrown up from our world by a collective sigh of desperation. We seek to understand ourselves by taking this internalized, ineffable experience and rearranging it into objects of aesthetic experience. Many will report the sense of enchantment at the moment of the experience, particularly as regards music or the experience of cinema as the credits begin to roll. But in a social system which has as its guiding ideological principle a thoroughgoing cynicism, a will to act in spite of unbelief, can we believe? Can anything be transcendent, or are we condemned to naïveté or cynicism?</div><div><br></div><div>From a materialist standpoint many would argue that this line of questioning presumes a world that could be lost, a world of enchantment and wonder and awe that never truly existed. But this is not really the question. Perhaps in every age we have to ask this question, of whether we can be truly enchanted in the sense of forgetting ourselves and participating in some other mode of being merely by virtue of experiencing an object of alienation. When we forget what we are doing and merely do it we become embodiments of the numinous without critical distance. Let us boldly proclaim that, at minimum, such experience is always already opposed to the order of things, but that this utopian consciousness can—indeed, it must—be mobilized either towards ends broadly fascistic or liberatory.</div><div><br></div><div>This experience always pulls apart the trance of the liberal consensus (a consensus incidentally enjoyed by most reactionaries). In that bifurcation, that breakdown of the one into two we see moments pregnant with utopia. Are these then channeled in the direction of self aggrandizement, of embracing the sad shell of the alienated self and yearning for a place that never was? Or do they become jolts of awareness in the broader forgetting of ideology? Do they form the vanguard that breaks through the obscuring fog bank, revealing the shoreline ahead?</div><div><br></div><div>One might argue quite reasonably that actual experience is always a mixture of these two. Life and the experience of the aesthetic, of the sublime even, is not abstract but lived, sensuous experience. Neat categories of liberation and what I'm here calling fascism are the stuff dreams are made of, but the dreams are assembled from harsh, ecstatic realities.</div><div><br></div><div>Whatever attempts there are to kill off this enchantment are vain. We will never become "Men Without Chests" or any other dystopian nightmare. As long as we draw breath we are capable of repudiation, betrayal, renewal, conversion, and other iterations of change.</div><div><br></div><div>The postmodern cultural logic of late capitalism is indeed predicated on the sensibility of the reduced, shallow, immediate thing. And yet, its project is steeped in failure. That is what is behind the proliferation of new superstitions and religious cults. They are responses to morbid symptoms of a system already dead, but which by virtue of its power prevents the new from being born. </div><div><br></div><div>Lying before us are the tools needed to dream another world. Some works of art have more of this manna than other objects, but every product of culture contains, no matter how small, the promise of a new world, even if it is merely in its affect of denial. To repudiate means we must first posit the premise to be negated.</div><div><br></div><div>Some might charge this to be something like the catholic syncretism of the early Christian communities, or the assimilationist logic of an insurgent Islam. To see in all things the spark of the divine is delusion, or so this line of opposition goes. </div><div><br></div><div>But this, I think, is wrong. Not because such a sensibility-thoroughly communistic in this case-is not akin to the aforementioned catholicism but precisely because it is. It is the mark of a vital, healthy insurgency against the order of things. It is indeed redemptive and prophetic, albeit throughly secular and anti-teleological.</div><div><br></div><div>All these sparks burn bright before dissipating. They are star bursts in the void. We cannot tarry there any more than we can tarry beyond death. All these moments are tears in the rain, but that is precisely the condition of possibility for the new. </div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02491193993862345976noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-871620141314278588.post-41052269263844471902016-05-22T21:15:00.004-07:002016-05-22T21:19:47.588-07:00The 5 Giant Monster Movie Eras<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"> </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">I am in the midst of developing a periodization scheme
for giant monster films which privilege the role of kaiju films as the driving
critical force of the genre and recognize the centrality of the kaiju subgenre
for giant monster films. Questions of genre and sub-genre are strong here, and
I would venture to argue that giant monster films form their own genre, of
which kaiju are a subset, and yet one which have enjoyed hegemonic status for
some time.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The major distinction has historically been between films
produced in Hollywood and those produced in Japan, with Hollywood’s
cultural-industrial hegemony continually undermined by the critical-aesthetic
hegemony of mostly Japanese films situated in the kaiju sub-genre. Whatever the
perceived dominance of American forms has been over the years, in reality the
artistic sensibilities of Japanese cultural workers has led to a feedback loop
in which Hollywood has found its greatest inspirations from those Japanese
artists who were themselves inspired by Hollywood productions.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: .75in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.5in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><b><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I)<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;">
</span></span></b><!--[endif]--><b><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Prehistory</span></b><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">:
1925-1952, this period roughly covers <i>The
Lost World</i>, <i>King Kong</i>, and those
films influenced by this masterpiece (<i>Son
of Kong</i> and <i>Mighty Joe Young</i>, for
example); the ending of this period can be found with the re-release of Kong in
1952, an event which inspired the next sequence<b><o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
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<!--[if !supportLists]--><b><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">II)<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;">
</span></span></b><!--[endif]--><b><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Classical/Showa</span></b><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">:
1953-1981, this period is determined primarily by the names of Tsuburaya and
Harryhausen, as well as Ishiro Honda; it is inaugurated by <i>The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms</i> but especially <i>Gojira</i>, its pinnacle can be found in the mid-1960s as the monster
boom got underway and the passage from <i>Ultra
Q</i> to <i>Ultraman</i> mirrored the
transformation of the genre; it is bookended by the late decline of the
Harryhausen films with <i>Clash of the
Titans</i>, as the influence of <i>Star Wars</i>
led to a renewal of Hollywood monstrosity signified by the names Spielberg and
Cameron<b><o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
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<!--[if !supportLists]--><b><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">III)<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;">
</span></span></b><!--[endif]--><b><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Heisei</span></b><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">:
1984-1999, trying to be taken seriously, the mood of the Godzilla franchise is almost
morose in spots, whereas Gamera shines as never before setting <i>the gold standard</i> for kaiju films, the <i>truly unique</i> production of <i>Pulgasari</i> (1985) coupled with the film's political subtext stands out as an exceptional artistic triumph, though Godzilla is served by an actual continuity and the right
characterization the films’ plots and characters are lacking, this is capped
off with the tragedy of the 1998 TriStar film and the sequence is truly ended
with the masterpiece <i>Gamera 3</i> (1999),
while the new period is inaugurated by <i>Godzilla
2000</i> (1999)<b><o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
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<!--[if !supportLists]--><b><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">IV)<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;">
</span></span></b><!--[endif]--><b><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Millennium</span></b><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">:
1999-2012, this is a period characterized by a proliferation of unique standalone
films alongside multiple reinterpretations of Godzilla with only one sequel, darker
arthouse films like <i>The Mist </i>(2007), <i>The Host</i> (2006) and the low budget <i>Monsters </i>(2010) are the gold standards
of this era, and the 2008 <i>Cloverfield</i>
stands as a unique ground-level limited perspective kaiju film, stand outs in
the Godzilla franchise include the almost Spielbergian character system of <i>Godzilla 2000</i> alongside the fantasy
reimagining of Godzilla in <i>GMK</i> and
the near-perfect Showa-style of <i>Tokyo SOS, </i>this period is also characterized by numerous parodies including <i>Death Kappa</i> and <i>Monster X Attacks the G-8 Summit</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><i><br /></i></span></div>
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<!--[if !supportLists]--><b><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">V)<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;">
</span></span></b><!--[endif]--><b><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Neo-Kaiju
Era/Legendary Sequence/Shin Sequence</span></b><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">: 2013-?? This period is
just now emerging, but it is determined by the big move by Legendary in 2013
and 2014 by releasing an original kaiju epic <i>Pacific Rim</i> and their reimagining of <i>Godzilla</i> the following year, this sparked the development of a new
Toho film and several Hollywood attempts to build their own giant monster
franchises, Legendary has now embarked on a shared universe project which aims
to culminate in Godzilla fighting Kong on the big screen…this period is also
punctuated by a growing kaiju literary genre, a much better integrated fandom, further
we are seeing <i>genuinely</i> <i>faithful</i> <i>kaiju adaptations on multiple media platforms for the first time</i>,
with the major distinction exemplified by the difference between “Zilla” and
the Legendary-Goji interpretation of our favorite monster, questions are open…new
Gamera? Original kaiju? Monsterpocalypse and Rampage movies? <b><o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfEeWaIOaXmQ_3or-tZO6WfIQ6mGBxIwYBBfRxrmLLjH_Pi9xY5BVZdebNf2U0MYgNsrL0d0k-sC_JhamyT6b8RUdPrhBKy1NmuTD_z2rHTsAjBSY7hzzVSm0qvktAkm9gwabOOZdqHyY/s1600/sav1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfEeWaIOaXmQ_3or-tZO6WfIQ6mGBxIwYBBfRxrmLLjH_Pi9xY5BVZdebNf2U0MYgNsrL0d0k-sC_JhamyT6b8RUdPrhBKy1NmuTD_z2rHTsAjBSY7hzzVSm0qvktAkm9gwabOOZdqHyY/s320/sav1.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>King Kong v.s. Godzilla </i>(1962)</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgr4sEleZwMRkVn43XtNUWHXGT7Gn7kn7xSEIP8dtkCbv3lkr8G_o-Ssc7JBhWDIBszx9PdmGun_t6SDhrQEyzBvgaMrVN1WpyXgqgewvFUMUIs9EceRA9OCPFHzttBHx5lld28aBuvxj8/s1600/sav3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="226" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgr4sEleZwMRkVn43XtNUWHXGT7Gn7kn7xSEIP8dtkCbv3lkr8G_o-Ssc7JBhWDIBszx9PdmGun_t6SDhrQEyzBvgaMrVN1WpyXgqgewvFUMUIs9EceRA9OCPFHzttBHx5lld28aBuvxj8/s320/sav3.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Art by Garayan on DeviantArt, inspired by <i>Shin Gojira</i> (2016) promotional materials</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKqZd05bwzjHE-untOTMw5g3vnJfN8EevBCA4SJquqUoh402yzLcgsFk0xzBGD3UCr7s5Pf_fAZs0r2OwZYsrN85pJmmUN82mamDCivSoZHHj52i3Jr5yBekVWgWGOtjRDyND9E6i2Z1U/s1600/sav2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKqZd05bwzjHE-untOTMw5g3vnJfN8EevBCA4SJquqUoh402yzLcgsFk0xzBGD3UCr7s5Pf_fAZs0r2OwZYsrN85pJmmUN82mamDCivSoZHHj52i3Jr5yBekVWgWGOtjRDyND9E6i2Z1U/s320/sav2.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A cinematic adaptation of the classic arcade game <i>Rampage</i> is in the works, among other pre-production developmental projects...will they turn make it to the light of day and form a new monster boom?<br />
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02491193993862345976noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-871620141314278588.post-6462586461135222522016-04-03T11:59:00.000-07:002016-04-03T16:06:34.038-07:00Batman v Superman: A Dour Justice<div><div><img src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-NY14HpJZP_U/VwF5kDY_ypI/AAAAAAAABDI/20OTBSRj134/I/photo_969693.jpg" border="0" class="bloggoimg"></div><br><br> <br></div><div><i>Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice</i> is far from a flawless film. It has been described as pondering, lumbering, and somber. The editing process seems rushed, and some characters seem to lack motivation or at least exhibit shallow motivations. Nonetheless, I would argue that it is an excellent, albeit reactionary, comic book film.</div><div><br></div><div>Audiences have grown used to Marvel and its comic, character-driven formula. The greater narrative movements of Marvel films are often lost in the charming dialogue and witty character interactions. Further, the creative team at Disney-Marvel seems to excel at making dark, violent and brooding productions as well, as evidenced by the flawless <i>Daredevil</i> and <i>Jessica</i> <i>Jones</i> shows.</div><div><br></div><div>This sets a high bar, as does the recent memory of Christopher Nolan's <i>Dark</i> <i>Knight</i> trilogy which, though it stumbled with its final installment, is remembered by audiences, fans, and critics as a near perfect work of art.</div><div><br></div><div>Enter Zack Snyder. Known for his CGI-heavy spectacles, controversial comic book adaptations (Watchmen), ultra violence, and choppy dialogue, one would think the decision to have him helm the DC cinematic universe was a crushing mistake.</div><div><br></div><div>This is not far off the mark. Snyder's dark tone, though welcome to those who want more <i>Dark</i> <i>Knight</i> and <i>Jessica</i> <i>Jones</i> in their comic book cinema, is often filtered through a cynical prism of reactionary politics. Inspired by the likes of Frank Miller and Ayn Rand, Snyder portrays the human masses in crude fashion, most evident by his nauseating portrayals of protesters in <i>Watchmen</i> and <i>Batman</i> <i>v</i> <i>Superman</i>.</div><div><div><img src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-0ebpoEB5pyc/VwF5knIVNBI/AAAAAAAABDM/vDjtLsDi6pw/I/photo_393551.jpg" border="0" class="bloggoimg"></div><br><br> <br></div><div>The clearest example of Snyder's wasted potential concerns his most controversial decision in <i>Man of Steel</i>, the infamous scene in which Superman takes the life of General Zod. Superman's tortured response seemed to lay the groundwork of motivation for his well known "no killing" principle, and yet it is left unexamined in the this film.</div><div><br></div><div>This would all seem to add up to the conclusion that <i>Batman v Superman</i> is a terrible film, but I think this is premature. Rather the preceding points are meant to show that I understand where Snyder's critics are coming from. Nonetheless, in spite of these flaws, I think this film contains powerful insights, examples of extraordinary visual storytelling, and lays the groundwork for a universe of films with promise.</div><div><br></div><div>THE PROGRESSIVE STRONGMAN AND THE DARK KNIGHT </div><div><br></div><div>Unlike the usually shallow Marvel films (<i>Winter</i> <i>Soldier</i>, parts of <i>Age of Ultron</i>, the Netflix shows, and <i>Civil</i> <i>War</i> being exceptions), both <i>Man of Steel</i> and <i>Batman v Superman</i> grapple with complex issues of power and politics in the same manner as Nolan's <i>Dark Knight.</i></div><div><br></div><div><i>Man of Steel</i> posits a dialectic of ancient hierarchy and individual promise in a manner that ought to put liberal ideologists to shame. The character of Superman in this world is tortured by his greatness, a Nietzschean overman in the making who must renounce the trappings of ressentiment and embrace his authentic self so as to make a better world. It is a curious blending of Nietzschean, Randian, and old style progressive sensibilities. It is also a traditional pro-immigrant (but also racist) "melting pot" tale: Superman must shed the old hierarchical prejudices of the old country in favor of the progressive individual of the new world. </div><div><br></div><div>This same character shines through <i>Batman v Superman</i> as a beacon of hope for a downtrodden world in search of greatness. "They will stumble, they will fall, but in time they will join you in the sun": the words of Superman's Kryptonian father Jor-El echo through both films. Superman is a kind of god, a god who inspires greatness in those who look to him.</div><div><div><img src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-7fT-5Oihzkc/VwF5lACNdmI/AAAAAAAABDQ/paEI14k0BKk/I/photo_147294.jpg" border="0" class="bloggoimg"></div><br><br> <br></div><div>In Batman's nightmare of an apocalyptic future, this inspiration has given rise to a military force that presumably seeks to build a new world with Superman as its Great Leader, a reference to the <i>Injustice: Gods Among Us</i> storyline told in both video games and comic books. This examines a Superman whose greatness turns to vengeance on a world of the weak at the hands of the strong, a fever dream of a kind of fascist degeneration of the progressive strongman hope.</div><div><br></div><div>This sequence is easily one of the most powerful of the film, as it grants us insight into Batman's imaginary relationship to this progressive strongman. It could easily have been Lex Luthor's own dream, as Superman's archenemy has always discussed his foe in dictatorial terms. </div><div><br></div><div>Of course the source of this dream is a character, Batman, who has long been associated with fascism. It would be absurd to call this or that character "a fascist" or "a revolutionary leftist." That reductive typology analysis is the stuff of rather weak Marxist analysis, and yet we cannot deny that these characters often represent our imagined relations to these social categories.</div><div><br></div><div>Batman enacts the fantasy of vigilante justice aimed at rooting out corruption and crime, all with the aim of creating a more respectable world of law and order. Civil liberties are dissolved in this calculus of torture and "results by any means necessary." Further, beneath the mask is the face of a billionaire who uses his wealth for these law and order ends.</div><div><br></div><div>In this imaginary universe, crime is never the result of festering social contradictions, rather it is a consequence of an innate drive towards evil inherent in both those with power (the corrupt cops, politicians, and gangsters) and those without (the endless stream of petty goons). Batman acts in this space to restore balance, and his extreme measures elicit an equal and opposite reaction in the form of super villains.</div><div><br></div><div>An especially cruel Batman inhabits the text of Batman v Superman, one inspired by the visions of Frank Miller's <i>The Dark</i> <i>Knight</i> <i>Returns</i>. This older Batman has lost all sense of idealism and restraint, he is merciless and just. His previous incarnations which eschewed lethal force on principle have been discarded, leaving behind something less than a superhero and more a vengeance film protagonist. This is not without precedent in the comics, however.</div><div><br></div><div>This is the source of the underlying philosophical conflict between the two. Superman has become Clark Kent, a reporter with muckraking sensibilities whose alter ego is a progressive strongman bent on making a better world by embracing his greatness. As Clark he pressures Perry White, editor of the Daily Planet, to go after "the Batman." He explicitly states that the editorial board is uninterested because the victims in Gotham are poor. </div><div><br></div><div>Batman is motivated by another sensibility, one informed by his experience on the streets of Metropolis during Superman's battle with Zod during the climax of <i>Man of Steel</i>. In that film, the destruction of Metropolis is spectacle, but in the scene at the beginning of <i>Batman v Superman</i> it is felt directly through the eyes of mere mortals trying to survive the skyscraper-crushing battle. Both are set on a collision course precisely because they see their own dark side in the other. This external projection makes them an excellent dialectical doubling, two beings who are predicated upon one another. </div><div><br></div><div>For Batman, the question of why Superman and Zod are fighting and whether Superman put a stop to a deadly situation is lost: humanity is in the crossfire, Superman is an alien like Zod, fighting for obscure reasons with catastrophic human consequences. For Bruce, it is irrelevant that he is ostensibly fighting to stop Zod, precisely because Zod and Superman are inseparable, two sides of one whole.</div><div><br></div><div>Bruce sees this horror firsthand and then witnesses the aftermath of near religious devotion to this stage alien god. Assuming the best of intentions on Superman's part does not repair the damage or restore lost lives, indeed it merely shows that his danger is a consequence of his very existence. Bruce, and Lex Luthor with him, fears that Superman will cease to be a benign god of periodic intervention and become a dictatorial god of everyday life.</div><div><br></div><div>In one telling exchange, Batman states that events don't just have meaning. Meaning must be "beaten into" events. This existentialist philosophy of meaning is exemplified by his project of becoming "the Batman," a project which is threatened by Superman's role as savior-god. His very existence threatens to rouse a population of passive adoration rather than active emulation. </div><div><br></div><div>Furthermore, we see in Superman's character arc confirmation of this fear. As the film progresses we are exposed to a being who is becoming more and more distant from his humanity with every beat of the plot. All that tethers him to that reality is his mother and Lois Lane. Indeed, in Batman's dream sequence (or one could say "vision"), Superman says that all he had in the world was "her" (which could be either Lois or his mother, as further developments of the plot suggest). Presumably this loss is what leads to the birth of the dictator Superman, a tragic figure portrayed in both <i>Injustice</i> and the <i>Red Son</i> series. </div><div><br></div><div>What resolves this conflict is Bruce's experience of Clark's humanity. As he is poised to kill him once and for all, he hesitates when Clark utters the name, "Martha." Bruce mistakes Clark's mother's name for a reference to his own mother, murdered in the original act that made him the Batman. This slippage connects threads together in Bruce's mind, and as he searches the room with his eyes upon learning that Luthor has taken Clark's mother hostage, we can only imagine that his detective work has revealed that he has been had: it was Luthor who set this in motion, it was Luthor who wanted them to destroy each other. </div><div><br></div><div>This central antagonism determines much of the film, and it's resolution lays the groundwork for the union of these two with the Justice League project, which is teased at the film's end. The film opens and closes with a funeral (SPOILERS): first the funeral of the Waynes, which leads to Bruce's subjective transformation (a vision of religious ecstasy in which he is lifted from the darkness of the cave into the light by swirling bats) into the Batman; and then the funerals of Superman and Clark (separate events), which leads Bruce to posit a need for what will become the Justice League.</div><div><br></div><div>In the end what Bruce learns from Superman's death is that when the gods die, all that remains is the promise of building a collective. One might say this gesture is the only progressive/cooperative moment for any of the film's heroes, who are stuck in a go-it-alone mode.</div><div><br></div><div>OPERATIC GRANDEUR</div><div><br></div><div>Throughout the film a bare bones script gives room for a kind of operatic storytelling pioneered by Snyder's work on <i>300</i> and <i>Man of Steel</i>. He has routinely spoken of the mytho-poetic nature of the DC comics characters as opposed to the pulp character of Marvel (one can easily poke holes in this dichotomy), and it shows in the way he treats each of the big names of this film.</div><div><br></div><div>Superman is routinely portrayed hovering in the sky with his cape billowing majestically behind him. A statue of him (later vandalized with the graffiti of "False God") in Atlas-like stance adorns the memorial to the victims of Metropolis. His stroll through the Capitol is modeled on the motions of royalty.</div><div><br></div><div>The Bat Cave, Batman's sudden disappearances and reappearances, his transformative glance at the ruins of the Wayne building in Metropolis, his display of the murdered Robin's costume in his lair complete with graffiti presumably written by the Joker...it all adds up to create an image of the avenging darkness, demonic energies unleashed to restore balance.</div><div><br></div><div>And it is not only these two who are presented as mythic ideals, divine and demonic. We are presented with the mad genius of a young Lex Luthor wearing the skin of Silicon Valley, a kind of mad scientist version of Steve Jobs or Elon Musk. Though his motivations are murky, he claims to oppose the threat of a divine dictatorship, though in the name of what is unclear. His interactions with Senators and other notables is something between a Shakespearean fool and a tyrant.</div><div><br></div><div>Wonder Woman also adds to this mythic texture, speaking little and yet saying much with gestures, glances, and yes, incredible action sequences. She embodies something like centuries of women's defiance, greatness, and dignity in the face of a patriarchal world. Superman is strong, Batman is talented and smart, but Princess Diana of Themyscira embodies both.</div><div><br></div><div>In fact it would appear that the only two entities who are acting as conscious agents in this world are Luthor and Diana. The world is displayed in equally grand terms, with glistening modern architecture, dynamic political responses to Superman (memorials and literal xenophobic protests), and yet it is a world in which ordinary people are notably absent.</div><div><br></div><div>This isn't an Everyman story, it is a story of great and terrible beings, and masses of faceless people who have no real role to play. In some ways it is a story of archetypes with minimal characterization. Snyder's take might be a welcome antidote to the ironic stance of the Marvel films, but in some ways it mistakes serious for dour. Affleck and Gadot's creative impositions on Snyder's film give it brief moments of levity which will hopefully define the following installments. </div><div><br></div><div>THE PROMISE OF THE DC CINEMATIC UNIVERSE </div><div><br></div><div>Many rightly claim that a film ought to rise and fall of its own merit, but the rejection of sequel and saga is a decidedly modern development centered around the notion of "high art." For millennia humans have told and retold the same stories, adding and redefining mythic figures in order to make contemporary, living lore.</div><div><br></div><div>The brilliant comic book writer Grant Morrison writes in his book <i>Supergods</i> that Superman and Batman, Wonder Woman, and the other great comic book characters function like modern day folklore. They inspire millions, take on lives of their own in the minds of both fanatical and casual fans, and act as symbolic resolutions of social contradictions.</div><div><br></div><div>The Marvel route of film making has been to take a comedic slant by way of an ironic tone with these seemingly absurd characters. The new DC universe takes them deadly seriously, and even if they fail in their portrayal that in itself is commendable.</div><div><br></div><div><i>Batman v Superman</i> has opened a new world of comic book film, and whether anyone can do anything with it is largely up to the machinations of opaque corporate overlords who distort and exploit the work of hundreds of artists in order to produce event/spectacle/tent pole productions. Nonetheless they are playing with fire, with powerful material that has persisted for nearly a century precisely because it resonates with millions.</div><div><br></div><div>Let's hope the pitfalls of this last film are transcended in the forthcoming <i>Suicide</i> <i>Squad</i> and <i>Wonder</i> <i>Woman</i> films. Many of us have waited a long while to see the heroes of DC on the big screen, and now that moment is finally upon us. Whether it confronts our fears or reinforces our prejudices, there is a lot to be learned from these productions. </div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02491193993862345976noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-871620141314278588.post-28588778807008622882016-03-25T08:05:00.000-07:002016-03-26T06:04:33.018-07:00Social Privilege & Liberal Ressentiment<div><div><img src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-IFwAS2bYAkM/VvVU7hlptfI/AAAAAAAABCo/K8n_m76INNA/I/photo_143741.jpg" border="0" class="bloggoimg"></div><br><br> <br></div><div>I think there is something to be learned from the concept of social privilege, a concept which can unlock a lot of potential in our struggles. But I think a version of this concept has become central to a discourse of power, a liberal discourse which seeks to reduce the notion of social structure and relations of domination to a highly individualized affair. </div><div><br></div><div>This discourse is structured by a kind of liberal ressentiment whose final word is the maintenance of power for the ruling strata. It generates abstract ideal standards of rightness and morality predicated on awareness of the various discourses oppressed by dominated groups. We are all subject to those ideals, which are themselves (mostly) analogs to discourses of the university-that is to say, they are filtered through a prism of betterment via educational interaction rather than building power. Like other forms of liberal ressentiment, new forms of power are produced by the very discourse of renouncing power in the form of "checking" privilege. </div><div><br></div><div>What does it mean to "check" your privilege? What does it accomplish? If it means that you should recognize that your standpoint is embedded in a social context that gives you a particular picture of the world, then all the more power to you.</div><div><br></div><div>But what if it means your arguments are inherent unsound as a consequence of your degree of social privilege? All too often this becomes the function of privilege politics, leading us down the path of searching for that mythical entity: the most oppressed person on Earth, who is the only one allowed to speak.</div><div><br></div><div>Often when we shift from discussions of power relations to differential access to social privileges we inevitably shift away from understanding how these forms of oppression fit into the social totality. Larger questions of solidarity drop away as we focus on how to soften the impact of our social privilege and dial back the influence it gives us.</div><div><br></div><div>When attempting to organize movements of solidarity this is to some degree necessary. We need to check the replication of power relations in our would-be democratic spaces. If we don't address differential access to social privileges then our movements will reflect the hegemonic imagination of the ruling class rather than the masses we wish to empower.</div><div><br></div><div>But all too often rather than becoming a means towards the end of organizing solidarity movements (and by this I don't mean "solidarity with the oppressed" but "solidarity of the oppressed") that challenge social structures predicated on relations of domination, it becomes the end in itself. This is the trap of a new kind of liberal representation at the level of discourse, abdicating questions of defeating the social totality in favor of redressing grievances of voice and representation within the system.</div><div><br></div><div>This is the kind of politics decried as "PC" on the right. What they mean by this is an increasingly intricate web of tolerance politics, which functions by repressing openly vile discourses of domination in favor of cloaking them in technical language that abstracts and codes so as not to offend, but which nonetheless maintains the status quo.</div><div><br></div><div>What is ironic about the right's monopoly on this "anti-PC" sensibility is that it was precisely the right who pioneered it in US politics, finding euphemisms and codes following the defeat of Jim Crow. Law and order, welfare queens, and so forth became the polite way to push a vile new paradigm of anti-blackness in US politics.</div><div><br></div><div>Thus discussions of how to check your privilege are analogous in the eyes of many to this same inauthenticity. Checking your privilege may alter your consciousness of things, make you into someone who listens more and defaults to the voices of those who are impacted most by particular relations of domination, but if this is not coupled with building struggle to upend this state of affairs then it becomes a means of cloaking the evils of the system.</div><div><br></div><div>Everything about what we can call late or mature capitalism and the current neoliberal accumulation regime that enjoys hegemony within it is dependent on this kind of ideology. Ideologies which level out differences or exaggerate them, which displace questions of structure to questions of perception, which displace discourses of confrontation with management, which replace concrete relations with abstractions and neutral technical languages...this is the lifeblood of this system.</div><div><br></div><div>It is an uneven system, which is to say it's ideal state of affairs as represented in ideology is imaginary, and its forms vary across geography even if they serve the same underlying totality. So the politics of privilege is not the same everywhere. White supremacy/anti-blackness is vital for the entire system, but it takes radically different forms in Lagos, Baltimore, Bogota, or Tokyo.</div><div><br></div><div>Underlying these differences is the same possibility for revolt and revolution. This threat and motion is what motivates strategies of domination and hegemony by ruling classes. What threatens them is comradeship, not privilege checking.</div><div><br></div><div>This is not a plea to leave the vital notion of social privilege in the dustbin of history, rather it is a call to put it in its right place. Public shaming of celebrities on Twitter does not substitute for work stoppages and sit-ins. But we cannot have functioning organizations and institutions of solidarity if we build little fiefdoms of privilege within them.</div><div><div><img src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-AKKd6cb8i_o/VvVU8ccZ6vI/AAAAAAAABCs/Wpr1IkoMj4k/I/photo_96176.jpg" border="0" class="bloggoimg"></div><br><br> <br></div><div><br></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02491193993862345976noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-871620141314278588.post-55379725908154770112016-01-18T17:38:00.001-08:002016-01-18T17:38:08.723-08:00Notes on the Politics of Star Wars<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">[It's been an entire month since I last posted, and I still haven't had much time to sit down and write. The struggles of being a parent...anyway, here are some NOTES...not an essay, not a normal post, NOTES. Unedited. Stream of consciousness. All that...on the notes of Star Wars.]</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">When analyzing something
like the politics of Star Wars—a fictional franchise predicated upon
profit-centered activity—we cannot but ask ourselves the question: to what end
do we direct this investigation? Is there merely a play at trying to mine shallow
commodities for some ephemeral meaning that simply has no import? Or is it an
indulgence in play? Or a waste of time?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I would say that it
involves a kind of <i>theoretical play</i>,
predicated upon a relationship to a fandom. Upon that we can say more, but for
now let us get down to business.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The overarching political
theme of what might call the first two movements of the Star Wars saga involves
the transformation of the thing into its opposite: from the noble democratic
Republic to the Empire, from the noble Jedi Knight to the Sith Lord. The end of
that story is the end of both the Empire and the Sith Lord, the triumph of a
Rebel Alliance which is predicated upon an illusion of Republican virtue and a
counter-factual approach to the crisis of the Clone Wars (i.e. it is built upon
the illusion of a blameless Republic, which nonetheless structures the Alliance
in a positive way).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">A political lesson can be
drawn from the Clone Wars, namely that the “anything to defeat the
reactionaries” stance can in fact lead to…becoming the reactionary oneself. A
parallel can be seen in the impasse of parliamentary politics today, in which
most of what would constitute a Left aligns itself with Center-Right and
Center-Left forces which carry out a politics that is barely distinguishable
from the far right, albeit it takes place with a different rhetorical style and
the “rule of law”…for the wealthy.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">That is to say, in a
sense there was no correct position in the Clone Wars…there was no third way,
and yet the Rebel Alliance has predicated its politics on this. This is the
contradiction of the third movement now underway in the saga, the movement from
Endor to Starkiller base. It is the story of an uneasy peace, an unjust peace,
and a kind of fascist renewal of the old imperial remnant.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The First Order’s name
origin has not been revealed, but is it a reference to Order 66? The FO is
conscious of its allegiance to the dark side. Where there were rumors and only
elite knowledge in the old Empire, there is a widespread knowledge of the
centrality of the dark side to the FO. So maybe, just as Kylo Ren promises to
"finish" what his grandfather-Vader-started, the FO considers its
foundation to be the extermination of the Jedi. Hmm...or maybe not. We don't
know yet.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">But this seems to be
consistent with the politics of the FO. It was founded by a faction of
imperials who were unhappy with the Concordance, signed after Jakku. It
demilitarized both the imperial remnant of the New Republic with 90% reductions
of armaments, created a neutral zone, and imposed a heavy burden of reparations
on imperial remnant.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">There is an obvious
parallel here with the Versailles Treaty, but one must also keep in mind that
the Concordance was the brainchild of Mon Mothma. Mothma, unlike much of the
rest of the Alliance, saw that the Empire did not defeat the Republic in the
Clone Wars, but rather the Republic <i>became
the Empire</i> in the process of defeating the Separatists. A heavily
centralized and militarized New Republic could easily fall prey to
authoritarian political designs. Indeed we see machinations like this in the
Expanded Universe/Legends saga, beginning with Borsk Fey’lya in Timothy Zahn’s <i>Heir to the Empire</i> trilogy. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Two factions found
themselves unhappy with this state of affairs. First, what became the First
Order and second, what became the Resistance. We know little of the FO’s origin
as of yet, only that a confluence of dark side cult interests, the inner circle
of Palpatine, and sections of the imperial navy came together to travel to the
Unknown Regions. There they searched for Sith artifacts, Palpatine’s outposts,
and more to reconstitute the Empire under the radicalized banner of the First
Order.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Led by General Leia
Organa, who shed her diplomatic and royal skin to do what she always did best—lead
insurgents—the Resistance was constituted by volunteers who would not support
imperial tyranny. The details of the how the imperial remnant fell to the FO
are not out there yet, indeed it may be the case that the FO and the imperial
remnant are still separate entities by Episode VII.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The FO is built on
competition, violence, one upsmanship, and a culture of extreme ideological
indoctrination. Where the Empire was a kind of conservative order constituted
by the most reactionary elements of the Old Republic, the First Order is something
of a Himmler-style fascist formations built upon a police state supported by a
kind of religious cult at the top. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02491193993862345976noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-871620141314278588.post-71429293255280553342015-12-13T21:14:00.001-08:002015-12-13T21:31:05.322-08:00Nightmare Godzilla Returns in 2016<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFvn15dOUSRk94jVmAtZoK2g_oXAbnFQZIRoGUggn1PboNVvFbuN03BBYoy2dgYDgVhGF6Fj1KRdc_c5FC_X9p-zdOWXhcMMgbXHOIMQ-lly_7dt8I0eDvGj_xNMjx7yrZqE_s2wETusI/s1600/shin1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFvn15dOUSRk94jVmAtZoK2g_oXAbnFQZIRoGUggn1PboNVvFbuN03BBYoy2dgYDgVhGF6Fj1KRdc_c5FC_X9p-zdOWXhcMMgbXHOIMQ-lly_7dt8I0eDvGj_xNMjx7yrZqE_s2wETusI/s320/shin1.jpg" width="226" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">An homage to the original, complete with creepy humanoid eye. Those teeth and that mouth though...almost like one of the creatures from <i>Critters</i> (1986)</td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: 13.5pt; line-height: 200%;">Thus far we have little to go by for the upcoming
<i>Shin Gojira</i> (2016), or as it is being marketed in the US, <i>Godzilla:
Resurgence</i>. Hideaki Anno and Shinji Higuchi promise to bring us our “best worst
nightmare.” Coupled with the creepy new poster that has dropped, I have to say
that I think Anno and Higuchi are delivering the film that many of us hoped to
see with Legendary’s 2014 <i>Godzilla</i>.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 13.5pt; line-height: 200%;">Though it was an excellent film (as I have argued elsewhere), it did not deliver what the marketing campaign promised: a dark
reimagining of the 1954 classic achieved by combining the horror of the monster
with a social message that would resonate today. Though the film <a href="http://ansibleone.blogspot.com/2014/08/the-new-godzilla-movie-was-it-about.html" target="_blank">carried asocial critique</a>, it did so in a manner that did not resonate with audiences in
the same way that the original film did.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhisGno82SiJX5ScFnV_hsQFKDed3oo0gzCyQwLN5xEyk2puB0t1N6r9UyiBcUTtX7b02JQdFRL1KrU2xQGXlNhwFJf1YIM4oU7XbEMyUGTX4LOtT75va5jNbjZX68rsf2-kXCk33W0C5A/s1600/shin2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhisGno82SiJX5ScFnV_hsQFKDed3oo0gzCyQwLN5xEyk2puB0t1N6r9UyiBcUTtX7b02JQdFRL1KrU2xQGXlNhwFJf1YIM4oU7XbEMyUGTX4LOtT75va5jNbjZX68rsf2-kXCk33W0C5A/s320/shin2.jpg" width="206" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Excellent artwork by Jeff Zornow based on the poster</td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: 13.5pt; line-height: 200%;">The proof of concept trailer for that film
featured a voiceover from Robert Oppenheimer, discussing how he felt during the
initial test of the atomic bomb, the so-called “Trinity” test. He described “a
line from the Hindu scripture” (the <i>Bhagavad Gita</i>, from the <i>Mahabhrata</i>) with
the English translation, “I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.” We see
devastation, a dead (and burning) kaiju, and then Godzilla’s silhouette through
dust and debris. He gives out his iconic roar.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 13.5pt; line-height: 200%;">We are led to believe from this and other
marketing stunts that Godzilla was to be a force of mass destruction in the new
film. Instead we got a mixture of Godzilla the hero, Godzilla the antihero, and
Godzilla the territorial kaiju who just happens to walk through cities.
Intentional destruction of the kind seen in some of the Godzilla films was
eschewed in favor of a territorial creature. It worked for the film and created
a promising mythos for future installments, but it did not capture what some of
us expected. Indeed, in Japan there was a sense among critics that the film
was beautiful, but did not seem to “get” Godzilla.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 13.5pt; line-height: 200%;">And now Toho’s board has set out to make its own
films (its contract with Legendary does not prevent it from producing and
marketing its own films). They chose Anno (of <i>Evangelion </i>fame) and Higuchi (of
<i>Attack on Titan</i> fame) with the seeming intent of making a dark, sinister, and
serious film with “a deeper message.” Let’s hope.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 13.5pt; line-height: 200%;"> <table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWmeM6yqgDqF8gikj1_kBq4DuQTH0REN60QSmqu9v5RLRWeMxm7cwxkw54HYXVTZXAbk7evG4zf0_2B0JJedZY3I0KVJM7fcdoDIW4P_467xOEnFOmiJJbMqmtSpkbsZRI1Lyt9LiuwnI/s1600/shin3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="216" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWmeM6yqgDqF8gikj1_kBq4DuQTH0REN60QSmqu9v5RLRWeMxm7cwxkw54HYXVTZXAbk7evG4zf0_2B0JJedZY3I0KVJM7fcdoDIW4P_467xOEnFOmiJJbMqmtSpkbsZRI1Lyt9LiuwnI/s320/shin3.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Art from the incredible Noriyoshi Ohrai, who sadly passed away recently</td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: 13.5pt; line-height: 200%;">In the meantime, in the spirit of the “machete
order” of watching <i>Star Wars</i> films, I would like to suggest my own sequence of
Godzilla films to be watched prior to <i>Shin Gojira </i>in order to match it up
against its peers.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 13.5pt; line-height: 200%;"><i>Gojira </i>(1954) and its American version, <i>Godzilla,
King of the Monsters!</i> (1956)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 13.5pt; line-height: 200%;"><i>Mothra v.s. Godzilla</i> or its American version,
<i>Godzilla v.s. the Thing</i> (1964)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 13.5pt; line-height: 200%;"><i>The Return of Godzilla</i> (1984) but really its
American version, <i>Godzilla </i>(1985)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 13.5pt; line-height: 200%;"><i>Godzilla v.s. Destroyah</i> (1995)</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 13.5pt; line-height: 200%;"><i>Giant Monsters All-Out Attack </i>(2001)</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 13.5pt; line-height: 200%;">I will devote more detail to each of these in the lead up to the new film, and discuss several almost-mentions (<i>Godzilla Raids Again</i>, <i>Godzilla v.s. Biollante</i>, and <i>Godzilla 2000</i>). What these have in common is a nightmarish vision of Godzilla as the embodiment of a nuclear holocaust. Godzilla in these films represents nature's vengeance, an effect of human meddling with the order of things in the form of total warfare and atomic weaponry. In one film, Godzilla quite literally threatens to extinguish life on Earth, as his atomic powered body has begun to undergo a process of nuclear meltdown.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 13.5pt; line-height: 200%;">I have a lot of faith in Higuchi and Anno (even if the recent <i>Attack on Titan</i> film was less than stellar). I hope this is everything Anno and Higuchi have promised...</span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02491193993862345976noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-871620141314278588.post-61912641338792795732015-12-07T19:18:00.003-08:002015-12-07T19:18:38.655-08:00And Now for Some Philosophy With a Plea for Universalism<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijfwECxJXclYtGHoZQmHvQwCYVqN_m38tbq-7x8j1HgJxT1e8pu4lAdVOYoRGJrbV4tYWQe0ogwjfW8D7MQcEuQfC5kt_5Ub305vrEvL_C_yUM8St5xDYT-GlffCcpvCzm8QJ9QPiw8jY/s1600/indiff2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="284" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijfwECxJXclYtGHoZQmHvQwCYVqN_m38tbq-7x8j1HgJxT1e8pu4lAdVOYoRGJrbV4tYWQe0ogwjfW8D7MQcEuQfC5kt_5Ub305vrEvL_C_yUM8St5xDYT-GlffCcpvCzm8QJ9QPiw8jY/s320/indiff2.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: 13.5pt; line-height: 200%;">It has been a long time since I felt a sense of urgency and passion in my philosophical work. Usually I consider it a kind of job without the benefits: I try to hone my skills as a scholar for academic reasons, the emotional resonance of past philosophical encounters has been sufficiently internalized to play out in my daily life without clogging up my reading schedule. But then I was exposed to Madhavi Menon's <i>Indifference to Difference</i>, which I am devouring at a rapid pace.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 13.5pt; line-height: 200%;">What captured me was Menon's articulation of a queer universalism founded not on identitarian enclaves, but instead founded on "an anti-ontological state of being [specifically against the charge that any particular identity, e.g. gay or straight, has any ontological foundation beyond its ideological role for power] that would acknowledge and embody difference without becoming that difference" (14). Menon takes up Badiou's assertion that, in a sense, <i>all there is</i> is difference. But that is not the same as saying <i>difference is identity</i>.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 36px;">She goes on to further Badiou's case made in <i>Saint Paul</i>, claiming that "[e]ven as differences exist, they cannot be translated into particular identities. Differences are way stations but never destinations; indeed, universalism is a movement across these way stations that does not arrive at an ontological resting place" (15).</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 36px;">Nonetheless, Menon does not call for abandoning queer liberation, feminist struggle, and so on, in the name of some class reductionist Marxist orthodoxy (though she does present a kind of Marxism by way of Badiou). She does not reduce all identity to divide and rule. Her work grounds a universalist politics in the agency of political actors, not unlike similar moves made by Sartre and Beauvoir. To resist ontological status here is to resist the notion of oneself as an object, a thing which has properties which one cannot but exhibit as a consequence of the structure of one's being.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 36px;">I find this compelling because her work walks a tightrope between what one might call identitarian liberalism and chauvinist forms of old left politics (I don't have precise terms for these, forgive me). <i>Indifference to Difference</i> critiques this politics of fragmented identities without dismissing difference out and out, without calling for us all to be melted down in some uniformed mass (though of course the conditions of struggle might call for that as a matter of self-determination...).</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 36px;">The argument at its simplest was originally articulated by Badiou. The notion of being "indifferent to difference" occurred to him, at least in his telling, by way of a daily walk which brought him into regular contact with a woman wearing religious covering (I can't recall-and this is why a blog is nice because I don't need to look it up-if it was a <i>hijab</i> or something more like a <i>chador</i>). They acknowledged each other every day. Neither commented on his "Frenchness" nor her "Islamic" decor. It meant nothing to who they were to each other.</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZWaXWC-m6jHuqB-jNzilpfZgE4T-ZdHlddPw0j70Oagx5RIi4vMqs_ROLM3XYsxPwWx3I6MYVTomra8YgtwfrtjXzQJDMKZrzzNvfuY75Ji_JCpzzJOy5zqWlPPqFtSyP967q-nQfsdQ/s1600/indiff1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="203" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZWaXWC-m6jHuqB-jNzilpfZgE4T-ZdHlddPw0j70Oagx5RIi4vMqs_ROLM3XYsxPwWx3I6MYVTomra8YgtwfrtjXzQJDMKZrzzNvfuY75Ji_JCpzzJOy5zqWlPPqFtSyP967q-nQfsdQ/s320/indiff1.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 36px;">Below is a long excerpt from the introduction. Menon's work, especially the introduction, reads like a philosophical manifesto. I highly recommend it to anyone interested in these matters, though of course I'm sure now that I've gone to all this trouble I'm going to either 1) read the rest of her book and discover that I don't like it at all, or 2) discover that she has some reprehensible politics that I did not know about.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 36px;">Whatever. I'm indifferent to that noise for the moment...</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 36px;">Here it is:</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 13.5pt; line-height: 200%;">"Identity is the demand made by power-tell us who
you are so we can tell you what to do. And by complying with that demand, by
parsing endlessly the particulars that make our identity different from one
another's, we are slotting into a power structure, not dismantling it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 13.5pt; line-height: 200%;">We should never have to choose between good and
bad identity, difference and universalism, but rather, our interrogation should
focus on what subtends the demand for identity and difference. Critiquing
identity politics, then, is not a dismissal of lived reality but, rather, a
response to the oppressive demands that identity itself can make under the
guise of a progressive politics. Oppression by identity also qualifies as lived
experience, and we should not settle on a demand made by power without also
taking seriously the consequences of that demand.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 13.5pt; line-height: 200%;">If anything, the most widespread truth about our
lived reality is that it is too multiple to abide by a code of identitarian
difference: live dreality is at odds with identity politics. This is why it is
so startling when many of us seem content with thinking of our lives strictly
within the structures that constrain it, speaking unironically about the
immutability of race or gender or sexuality. Race and sex and gender and class
are certainly policed fiercely in all societies, but why do we confuse that
policing with the truth about ourselves? If anything, the categorization is the
problem, not our challenging of it. In a bizarre move of sympathizing with our
oppressors, we take to heart regimes that restrict us, and then tell ourselves
that the restriction is the truth of our being in the world."<o:p></o:p></span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02491193993862345976noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-871620141314278588.post-364431725301046582015-12-06T09:41:00.001-08:002015-12-06T09:41:06.622-08:00Struggling to Write on SF<div class="MsoNormal">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg99-DRezX-kjFxfzat7Hy9Obgmebi2qakEhbEDyWQaamG102w2PtQpS1JZ6OfDQOWHcrLb03pwPzmmT337sQzy_Qmfgrrp3YzZncfqHAsTzhi8V-fOnC1Hrsg9j4m3GtM_rGcw2MEL3s0/s1600/write.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg99-DRezX-kjFxfzat7Hy9Obgmebi2qakEhbEDyWQaamG102w2PtQpS1JZ6OfDQOWHcrLb03pwPzmmT337sQzy_Qmfgrrp3YzZncfqHAsTzhi8V-fOnC1Hrsg9j4m3GtM_rGcw2MEL3s0/s320/write.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 36px;">From time to time I struggle to find a non-political topic to write about. I consider myself very experienced and well-rounded in politics and thus consider my insights to be valuable, but in the field of speculative fiction I recognized that I am something of an amateur theorist. I've had no serious academic training in the field, but have engaged with it in a rather obsessive way for the better part of 4 years (and I had one introductory English undergrad course on Science Fiction).</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 36px;">It is a subject I care deeply about and yet the dilemma: <i>what to write about?</i> Sometimes I feel pressured to write "reviews," which I'm almost always uncomfortable with. How does one break down a film or TV show in this way and present an analysis that is anything more than a glorified 1-5 stars rating? I confess I still don't know. A much more interesting practice for me is to engage with some aspect of a work of art or to write a long form essay detailing its process of production, its social context, and so on.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 36px;">So I think I will stick to what is comfortable: lists of recommended works and why they are worth your time; analysis of various aspects of film, television, books, short fiction, and so on; kaiju fandom material; political analysis of sf works; and the like. Good luck to me.</span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02491193993862345976noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-871620141314278588.post-78295515177225807352015-12-05T06:03:00.003-08:002015-12-05T06:17:31.082-08:00The Meaning of San Bernardino<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlABu2kw-f4X9RQwUagVRrZanyGKR9D8k4ac2HDDZMIP6Hz_EanbrpgVLi-TyLi7zWVPcxbEfUZTXADXwKgTjScJmCO0uQml1cKHWTXyrW_9PQ9-0fLhFuwKv5DzyWWgnhG0pynBPnBj8/s1600/gun.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlABu2kw-f4X9RQwUagVRrZanyGKR9D8k4ac2HDDZMIP6Hz_EanbrpgVLi-TyLi7zWVPcxbEfUZTXADXwKgTjScJmCO0uQml1cKHWTXyrW_9PQ9-0fLhFuwKv5DzyWWgnhG0pynBPnBj8/s320/gun.jpg" width="232" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 36px;">Human beings confer meaning upon events. The point is best made when discussing "natural disasters." An earthquake in a remote region which impacts no human beings is just called an earthquake, but a similar natural phenomenon which occurs in say, Santiago, is conferred with a different meaning and judged to be a natural disaster-which is a way of saying a social disaster brought on by natural phenomena.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 36px;">There is a mass shooting-defined as an incident in which 4 or more people are shot-incident in the United States roughly <i>every day</i>. I remember when the Columbine massacre occurred in 1999 and I insisted that everyone was paranoid because this was a more or less one off incident. No more. Now it is a persistent social problem with complex origins and no silver bullet solution.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 36px;">We confer meanings on the different shootings, though the default is to consider them "senseless," their perpetrators "crazy," and then to pivot towards a discussion of guns (whether pro-gun control or anti-). A unique situation arises, however, when the shooter <i>happens to be a Muslim</i>. Though a white male shooter apparently means nothing more than a deranged person, a Muslim shooter means something about Muslims in general.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 36px;">First there was Fort Hood, then Chattanooga, and now San Bernardino. The previous two are a testament to just how similar these events were to something like Sandy Hook or Columbine rather than something like the 9/11 attacks. A lone, troubled individual with access to firearms went on a rampage. Targets were carefully selected, but ultimately the goal was to take down a lot of people in a blaze of glory.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 36px;">In the Fort Hood case the shooter's online presence included statements of affinity with one of the many Al-Qaedas that came together after the invasion of Iraq. People on the right were insistent that this was a "terrorist attack." Of course what <i>they</i> meant by "terrorist attack" was more informed by the show <i>24</i> or Reagan-era action movies. They meant that this person became an agent of an evil organization bent on the destruction of the United States...and so that person carried out a mass shooting at his workplace in a rather similar fashion to numerous incidents of its kind perpetrated by mostly white males.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 36px;">San Bernardino seems to follow the same pattern. If we are to believe the increasingly <i>sketchy </i>story painted by the FBI (not far right activists, mind you, this time the charge of "terrorism" is institutional), these individuals amassed an arsenal, pledged allegiance to the self-appointed "caliph" of ISIS/IS/Daesh/whatever...<i>and carried out a workplace massacre</i>, this time at a holiday party.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 36px;">With the Paris attacks fresh on the memories of millions of misinformed people who have been whipped up into a brand new moral panic over Muslims and refugees, right wing activists and Presidential candidates have seized this moment to present this as a failure of Obama's anti-terror policies. They <i>could </i>simply point out that virtually every single prosecution in the US on terrorism charges was achieved through entrapment and note that the US is literally manufacturing terrorist plots so that it can break them up and pat itself on the back. But of course, that does not fit their narrative (though the volume of prosecutions minus the knowledge of entrapment confirms it, another example of the neo-liberal Democrats bolstering far right ideology).</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 36px;">The example of the French government "getting tough" is cited by many (particularly CNN anchors who seem to be tired of playing second fiddle to FOX's unabashed chauvinism). What has the French government done? It has established a legal state of emergency for months. The security services can raid, search, and seize with impunity. They've arrested hundreds, carried out hundreds of raids, and sent a chilling message to Muslims in general with the ransacking of property they <i>know</i> is not affiliated with ISIS or the Paris attacks in any way. Mosques are already under heavy surveillance, regulation, and scrutiny in France (just like every other religious institution), and so the practice of raiding mosques and destroying property (books, etc.) is clearly a tactic of intimidation reminiscent of the Algerian War.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 36px;">In spite of their rhetoric the true message is clear: <i>the French government would like the Muslim population to be keenly aware that it can make life much harder for them and intends to do so if events like Charlie Hebdo and the Paris attacks are repeated</i>. Memories of hundreds of Algerian bodies dumped in the Seine in 1961 are being conjured up. Hollande is trying to get ahead of the National Front's neo-fascist/right-wing populist solutions with his own version of 21st Century Gaullism.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 36px;">This is what the far right wants in the United States. Recently a court ruled in favor of a "Muslim free zone" at a gun store in Florida. The owner posted a video saying, "Welcome to the new America." Of course it will never hold up with further court challenges, but this bigot's taunt is part of a chorus of people who can perhaps described best as "potential spree shooters" (not my words): dejected, alienated white men who are feeling the soul-crushing effects of neo-liberalism, but have turned to scapegoating-women, queers, trans folks, Muslims, immigrants, refugees, black people, etc.-as a substitute for adult politics.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 36px;">Some internalize this whirling mix of ideological nonsense to the point of no return and become spree shooters. Other externalize it and become agents of far right politics, whether in the form of Breitbart "journalists" or something as banal as simply being a Trump supporter. This overwhelmingly white crowd (and if not male at least dedicated to a hyper-patriarchal view of gender identity) is holding us all hostage and playing into the hands of a ruling elite who hold their craziness over the head of everyone else in order to make someone like Hillary Clinton electable.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 36px;">So hold up before you confer some qualitatively different kind of meaning onto the San Bernardino shootings. If this couple <i>did </i>carry out this atrocity, it means nothing more than the other shootings: <i>our society is in a deep crisis, people feel alone and threatened and with no hope are lashing out with extreme dramatic violence. It fills a gap in their being...letting them die with a sense of dignity (however insane this idea might be, it is catching on in a big way) and escape the never-ending nightmare that is everyday life in a society on the brink.</i></span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02491193993862345976noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-871620141314278588.post-84529397031662826732015-12-02T04:30:00.001-08:002015-12-02T04:30:22.282-08:00Are the Sith Evil?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgg961bUVL_w5JFvrnP-RlPPeI5dq6heQnxHejGWy3j6im8F7ngAJNfcqYqaJUGhXHEIwIFfr_4v0do6pTVHZXmZwbTB4d1JwWa4mxxD15ZKbB9HuYc2aaeALEAd9aXQBdHAW8sQj0ZnL0/s1600/sith1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="147" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgg961bUVL_w5JFvrnP-RlPPeI5dq6heQnxHejGWy3j6im8F7ngAJNfcqYqaJUGhXHEIwIFfr_4v0do6pTVHZXmZwbTB4d1JwWa4mxxD15ZKbB9HuYc2aaeALEAd9aXQBdHAW8sQj0ZnL0/s320/sith1.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: 13.5pt; line-height: 200%;">A friend posted a link to an article <a href="http://www.tickld.com/x/jaw/we-all-thought-the-sith-were-pure-evil-but-what-if-we-were-wrong?utm_content=inf_10_93_2&utm_source=tickld&utm_medium=facebook&utm_campaign=contentse&ts_pid=214&tse_id=INF_f1b07d5e8a834c0dab349e2a4f81326d" target="_blank">"We All Thought the Sith Were Pure Evil, but What if We Were Wrong?"</a> on my Facebook, and I spontaneously re-caped some of the main points I've made about the Sith/Jedi dichotomy. See below:</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 13.5pt; line-height: 200%;">It's pretty clear in the old Expanded Universe
that the Jedi have some serious problems and that there is a lot to the Sith
that ought to be understood better. I'm not sure how they are going to go with
it in the new continuity...<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 13.5pt; line-height: 200%;">Some of the best Jedi/Sith material involves
following a character on their journey to the dark side. There is a lot to
justify it, but then there are these major contradictions. The Brotherhood
period, for instance, shows Sith acting more like Jedi, acting selflessly to
defend their collective project and performing many of the functions of the
Jedi Order.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 13.5pt; line-height: 200%;">On the other hand, the Jedi clearly take a
problematic stance in the politics of the Old Republic. They often favor
stability over justice, whatever their proclamations to the contrary. Dissident
Jedi are disciplined and warned that they are going the way of the dark side.
Later, when the Jedi adopt their anti-marriage, etc. precepts, they take
non-attachment to a place that is a form of attachment itself: attachment to an
ascetic warrior ideal.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 13.5pt; line-height: 200%;">In the end, almost uniformly, there is a kind of
fascist element to the Sith. I mean this in the very technical sense that
distinguishes fascism from other forms of right wing politics, which is the way
in which it mirrors left wing politics. The Sith take up a just cause, Darth
Bane even says their rise is inevitable because the Jedi defend an aristocratic
social order that represses the poor, but they ultimately use the cause for
very personalized ends. The ego of the Sith lord becomes the substitute for the
realization of concrete social change, and in fact under Sith rule the very
things they decried-inequality, corruption, violent repression-become
radicalized.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 13.5pt; line-height: 200%;">That concludes the Facebook rant. But what about the new continuity? Where are they going with the Sith/Jedi/Force mythos? I think we can speculate away, but none of it much matters until we see <i>The Force Awakens</i>. How does it awaken? In what sense? What conception of "the Force" are we dealing with?</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 13.5pt; line-height: 200%;">The Force of the Expanded Universe was a mystical power that interpenetrated all aspects of reality, animated by the accumulated power of living things. Something like that exists in the new continuity, but if the <i>Clone Wars</i> cartoon is any indication of where they plan to go with it, the Force is a bizarre thing involving beings more complex and godlike than Sith and Jedi.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 13.5pt; line-height: 200%;">The Yoda episodes, something like a heroes journey and a mystical awakening, coupled with encounters that various Jedi have with strange Force beings that are neither dark side nor light, gives us a glimpse into a vast and complex world beyond what we see in typical <i>Star Wars</i> fare. This world is a kind of science fictionalized Buddhist realm of different beings acting a higher plane of existence than human beings, a realm that is in a sense "beyond good and evil."</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 13.5pt; line-height: 200%;">In the Buddhist cosmologies I referenced, there is the sense that humanity is capable of enlightenment and balance which is qualitatively different than those below (hungry ghosts, animals) and those above (various demigod/divine beings), one which can bring harmony to the whole order. It is unclear in <i>Clone Wars</i> whether this is what is happening with the Jedi/Sith in the normal realm of existence, or whether we are meant to understand that normal realm as a kind of shadow cast by the greater forces at work in the higher realms (less Buddhist-esque, more Platonic with some Gnostic/Manichean thrown into the mix).</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 36px;">Guess we all have to wait just a little longer...</span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02491193993862345976noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-871620141314278588.post-86552245150664125612015-11-29T05:57:00.003-08:002015-11-29T06:08:57.527-08:00Right Wing Terrorism<div class="MsoNormal">
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<span style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 36px;">What <i>is </i>terrorism?</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 36px;">The FBI definition is rather straightforward: acts of violence which are intended to create a political effect. Of course</span><span style="font-size: 18px; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;"> in practice "terrorism" means any act of guerilla warfare or resistance to the power of the state. The everyday political violence of the police against people of color, of ICE against undocumented immigrants, etc. does not qualify. Neither do forms of violence which uncontroversially cause more damage to material infrastructure and human life than acts of resistance, namely neo-colonial violence such as bombing campaigns.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 36px;">So what is <i>right</i>-<i>wing</i> terrorism?</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 36px;">I would argue that the use of violence to generate political effects through terror is the bread and butter of the repressive apparatuses of the state. This violence is designed to buttress a social order which can be characterized as "right wing" in that it is predicated upon hierarchies of domination, exploitation, and oppression. Within the populations ruled by the state there are those who identify (or <i>misidentify</i>) with this social order, or find that the social order is not doing enough for their privileged position (i.e. in spite of its white supremacist patriarchal, etc. structure, they nonetheless suffer and blame the social order for not being properly supportive of them).</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 36px;">These individuals, whether in groups or acting alone, whether with state sponsorship or acting independently, carry out acts of violence which are aimed at intimidating specific populations (e.g. Women, immigrants, black folks) and at sending a message to the state. That message is quite simple: their loyalty must not be taken for granted.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 36px;">This right wing terrorism is <a href="http://www.juancole.com/2015/11/differences-between-terrorists.html" target="_blank">never called terrorism</a>. It is spoken of as a problem of mental health, lone wolves, disturbed persons. The families of the perpetrators go through a public ritual of asking what went wrong: what could have disturbed them and driven them to this? This shifts responsibility off of them and their politics. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 36px;">Those on the opposite side-mostly affiliated with Islam these days-are treated as indicative of the problem itself. They are not exceptions to the rule, but rather proof that the rule itself is one of terror. Their political motivations are also downplayed, but instead of blaming it on idiosyncratic psychological issues, religious motivations are ascribed. Any use of religious rhetoric-even when it is demonstrably a part of a political program-is cited as evidence of there being a religious source to the issue at hand.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 36px;">Liberals are also complicit in this. They tend to say that the Christian Right is "our own Taliban." Of course there are parallels between right wing social movements like ISIS or the Taliban and groups like the Christian Right, but there are significant differences. Once again, if religion is viewed as the primary lens through which political terror is understood, we conceal more than we reveal. For instance, the role of neo-colonial power structures in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, etc. is not present in the United States. The populations served by the Christian Right do not suffer from periodic imperial interventions into their communities. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 36px;">On the Left some tend to idolize these groups as "anti-imperialist." Their complicity in regional imperialism and their right wing or even fascist structures are downplayed, ignored, or denied. And yet, between neo-colonial power and quasi-fascist groups like ISIS, what side is there to take?</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 36px;">This dichotomy, thankfully, is an ideological mirage. There are many who do not fit the bill. For instance, the socialist-feminist-anarchist-whatever-you-wanna-call-them YPG Kurdish forces are struggling against ISIS and form the backbone of the opposition to ISIS. A strong pro-democracy/secular movement has sprung up in Baghdad and other parts of "Shi'ia Iraq," challenging the pro-Iranian regime sectarian government. And so on.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 36px;">The point of right wing terror is to buttress the reactionary aspects of the social order and roll back or negate the gains of movements for human liberation. They are designed to intimidate entire populations. And they perform a vital function for the state by making the state look like a neutral party by forcing those on the Left and Liberal side of politics to identify with state repression against groups like the KKK.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 36px;">The attack on the Planned Parenthood facility in Colorado is just the tip of the iceberg. There is <a href="http://www.globalpost.com/article/6592741/2015/06/24/white-americans-are-biggest-terror-threat-united-states" target="_blank">an enormous threat</a> from right wing extremism in the United States. We must stand against it, but beware of the trap of identifying with the state.</span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02491193993862345976noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-871620141314278588.post-62073542269620317532015-11-28T19:37:00.003-08:002015-11-28T19:53:59.595-08:00Classifying Daikaiju<div class="MsoNormal">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">These popular <i>daikaiju </i>anatomy drawings are an example of self-referential art in that they participate in the mythos of <i>daikaiju </i>by presenting themselves as artifacts from a fantastical world in which these beings are subject to biological investigaition</td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 36px;">It is difficult to consider an aesthetic trope as a coherent, clear, and distinct concept. To do so requires numerous self-deceptions built on omissions, denials, and cases of special pleading. One sees this often in fandoms when fans perform mental gymnastics to support an interpretation of their aesthetic tropes in order to justify the emotional investments they have made into a fiction.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 36px;">In spite of this problem, aesthetic tropes are not necessarily </span><i style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 36px;">incoherent</i><span style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 36px;"> and </span><i style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 36px;">arbitrary</i><span style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 36px;"> in substance; they enjoy a genealogy and can be analyzed as historical objects. The trope in question is the <i>daikaiju</i>, a subset not only of giant monsters in general, but of the Japanese concept of <i>yokai</i>. These "cultural hybrids" are the product of social interpenetration between Japan and the United States from the Meiji Period onward. Specifically, they amount to a fusion of aesthetic traditions between the "culture industries" of the postwar United States and post-imperial Japan.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 36px;">In this analysis, we can see <i>daikaiju</i> as aesthetic tropes which involve a degree of syncretism between North American conceptions of giant monsters, the horror film genre (and especially <i>atomic horror</i>), Japanese <i>tokusatsu </i>cinema (a tradition which includes everything from science fiction to disaster films), and Japanese folklore (specifically the sensibility of <i>yokai</i>).</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 36px;">This is the subject of a long term study of mine. More detail is forthcoming. The point, however, is to establish the connection between Western giants and Japanese <i>yokai</i> as central to understanding the uniqueness of <i>daikaiju</i>. Why this is relevant is of course another question I have dealt with <a href="http://www.redwedgemagazine.com/essays/the-theory-and-appeal-of-giant-monsters" target="_blank">elsewhere</a>, but in sum let us say that this is one of the most important cultural mythologies to have developed in the 20th century. It is a product of late capitalism, if you will, and as such warrants study as an insightful body of aesthetic objects.</span><br />
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02491193993862345976noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-871620141314278588.post-366434951534983742015-11-26T04:44:00.003-08:002015-11-26T04:53:26.040-08:00Giving Thanks for Dystopia<div class="MsoNormal">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Massacre of the Pequot, 1637</td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 36px;">Thanksgiving is the kind of holiday one would expect in <i>Man in the High Castle</i>, an alternate history developed by Philip K. Dick (and now a popular Amazon TV series) in which the Axis powers win World War II. It has taken on many forms, most localized, but as a national holiday Thanksgiving came to existence during the Presidency of Lincoln.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 36px;">It was conceived of as a holiday of national unity which sought to celebrate "family values," that old ideological phantom that has been conjured up to instill the values of patriarchy and colonization for a larger part of human history than many care to admit. It celebrates an image of the United States as some kind of transaction between "the Pilgrims" and "the Indians," in which "the Indians" yield their skill and culture in order to fade away into the whiteness of what would become "the Americans."</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 36px;">The original generosity of the Wampanoag was repaid with waves of settler migration. As the colonists gained a foothold they declared all unsettled land "public domain," citing Biblical precedent for subjugating lands under "heathen" control. We know the rest. The settler colonial project unfolded over many generations dispossessing indigenous nations and plundering their agricultural systems. Genocidal policies eventually resulted in the utter destruction of these nations and the realization of the settler colonial dream.</span><br>
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<span style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 36px;">It is a <a href="http://www.kasamaproject.org/2015/11/native-blood-the-myth-of-thanksgiving/" target="_blank">story</a> of settler colonial dispossession. It is a <a href="http://slatestarcodex.com/2013/11/28/the-story-of-thanksgiving-is-a-science-fiction-story/" target="_blank">science fictional story</a> of a person kidnapped by alien invaders (the infamous Squanto), shown a world of wonder and advanced technology shaped by a cruel and inhuman social system, and then returned to a homeland ruined by a strange disease brought on by the invaders. For us, it is the story of dystopia realized. We are living out the dystopian nightmare...nations have been wiped out...enslaved peoples have struggled to get free...memory has been wiped clean, replaced with convenient myths...</span><br>
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<span style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 36px;">But, like some of the characters in Dick's <i>Man in the High Castle</i>, some of us are waking up from our dystopian nightmare. Milan Kundera's famous words, "The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting" is the key to unlocking our awakening. It is a first step.</span><br>
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<span style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 36px;">Of course there are structural reasons why this is an excellent time of year (at least for people here) to get together. It <i>is</i> a national holiday, so it only makes sense for us to take advantage of what it gives us. But we should renounce any identification with the symbolism of native genocide and the ideology of whiteness/anti-blackness. And when we delve into a dystopian world we ought to remember Thanksgiving as a prime example of why dystopia is not "Out There"...it is <i>right here</i>, and we are living it.</span><br>
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<span style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 36px;">(For more on the wars of settler colonialism,<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Indigenous-Peoples-History-ReVisioning-American/dp/0807057835" target="_blank"> check out the brilliant book</a> by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, <i>An Indigenous People's History of the United States</i>).</span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02491193993862345976noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-871620141314278588.post-71182764207262803242015-11-24T08:42:00.001-08:002015-11-24T08:42:48.314-08:00The Burden<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 36px;">"It's unfortunate that we have to shoulder this burden alone, but <i>somebody</i> has to do it."</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 36px;">-NPR caller, <i>On Point With Tom Ashbrooke</i>, commenting on the need for an invasion of Iraq, Syria, etc. to defeat ISIS</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 36px;">To many (mostly white) Americans, the idea that we have to "shoulder a burden" of "protecting the world" is common sense. It is as natural as the sun coming up in the morning. Politicians decry the US "having to be the world's police force," but the tacit assumption in this talk and in every TV show or movie that portrays US military action abroad is this: <i>the world is a dangerous place and it is the moral responsibility of the United States to periodically engage in military action abroad to bring justice and stability.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 36px;">I once had a discussion with family members in the waning days of the Bush II Administration about the brutal suppression of union activity in Indonesia and Columbia and the ways in which corporations like Nike were complicit in this activity. My would-be-progressive family member responded, "But haven't we gotten into everyone's business enough!" as I discussed the issue. I was slightly flabbergasted. She thought I <i>was calling for military interventions in Indonesia and Columbia to improve their human rights records on labor</i>.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 36px;">This is the kind of thoughtless expression of "the Burden" that permeates our culture. I once saw a soldier introduced at the beginning of a football game as someone who had "recently returned from Korea," and the person next to me thought they had been fighting a war on the Korean peninsula. This slip of ignorance is actually indicative of the perception that most ordinary (mostly white) people seem to have in the US: <i>that American troops are everyday fighting numerous wars in the colonies, and the only reason they cannot win is because they do not get enough support from the politicians.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 36px;">For this personality, Korea, Yemen, Iraq, Syria...it is all the same. It is "Over There." It is the Heart of Darkness, the realm of blackness and the Other. Who is the Other? A dreaded Chinese totalitarianism? An insane Korean dictator with funny hair? A strongman in Moscow that we cannot help but admire as we oppose him? Muslims? Black people?</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 36px;">That world is always "Over There" and periodically outposts of non-otherness, like France, are attacked. When this happens to a place near and dear to the hearts of professionals and those with enough money to travel (and those who are sold on the imaginary Paris presented by romance movies and the alliance of conservatives and liberals who look at it as some kind of socialist paragon), they call for blood.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 36px;">And this is how the racism we call "Islamophobia" functions. It cobbles together electoral alliances where none existed before. It makes things like austerity and lower wages more palatable as part of the war effort. It makes us feel that there is a permanent sacred war to defend the utopia that we think we live in...until we think about it for a moment. The most shocking is how the discourse of our liberal utopia creeps in even among those who suffer the most from its violence...</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 36px;">"The Burden" is the same one that Rudyard Kipling talked about. It is the White Man's Burden, the burden of whiteness. We will bring freedom and democracy everywhere and if we fail it's because our partners "won't fight for their own country."</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 36px;">Of course, the reality of the situation is that often <i>they are fighting for their country</i>...but that means fighting "the troops" which we are so eager to support-you know, unless it comes to their healthcare or housing situations.</span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02491193993862345976noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-871620141314278588.post-91688762422413045752015-11-22T06:21:00.001-08:002015-11-22T06:21:52.240-08:00The New Appetite for Fascism<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbxWCSbehF7SmvgQpTlMyD6dUA_LJEA3qFgtZJzMtx3rgkTlqsaJBOchSVP0Q-98p4OkGeIPAb19vJbbrYN7iXy1XchBKKo8SpTERwLjN993vR9j2AopzDhCcSHavfPPmR-uHWm4JbO1Y/s1600/fasci1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="280" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbxWCSbehF7SmvgQpTlMyD6dUA_LJEA3qFgtZJzMtx3rgkTlqsaJBOchSVP0Q-98p4OkGeIPAb19vJbbrYN7iXy1XchBKKo8SpTERwLjN993vR9j2AopzDhCcSHavfPPmR-uHWm4JbO1Y/s320/fasci1.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: 13.5pt; line-height: 200%;">Is it fascism yet?</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 13.5pt; line-height: 200%;">This question is being thrown around quite a bit these days. The problem is that very few of us agree on anything that looks like a working definition of fascism. Some would say that it is pointless to utilize this term whether in regards to something like ISIS or the politics of Donald Trump. This is either because the term is essentially useless at this point as it is engaged to describe any kind of authoritarian behavior, or because its only legitimate when used to describe those political formations that are consciously modeled on 20th century European fascist parties.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 13.5pt; line-height: 200%;">There are more abstract conceptions of fascism, for instance the political ontology of French philosopher Alain Badiou. Badiou's fascism is immanent in all political situations. For Badiou, the reactionary status quo can be interrupted by a situation which breaks the stability of the social order, tearing the center apart into two camps: one roughly corresponding to fascism, and the other corresponding to a politics of liberation ("communism" for Badiou).</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 13.5pt; line-height: 200%;">Whether or not we employ the term, let us posit that there is definitely something to the notion of a radical break from the norms of a parliamentary/liberal system by an organized political right. When such a break takes place with the mobilization of a social movement to act as an instrument of political force we can broadly identify this movement activity in conjunction with state power as the thing we are talking about when we are talking about fascism.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 13.5pt; line-height: 200%;"><b>What Isn't Fascism?</b></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: 13.5pt; line-height: 200%;">This would exclude something like a simple military dictatorship, though such a dictatorship would inevitably employ fascistic methods (extra legal forms of political violence enacted by "ordinary" people rather than military or counter intelligence agents). Military occupations like the Israeli occupation of Palestine would similarly be excluded from this. Forms of one party rule like that of contemporary China, or monarchical rule as in Saudi Arabia, would also be excluded as a kind of status quo authoritarianism.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh03UAnO_DToTdls7FWK0CrEoIvZF1r-zLg2KxroDj5gvve1M84Kn3bOAWAK5s9lIspkav6oB1-57Ofp3Ks6UjaBY-YbvtQRnLYcG6ToaT2tL_QkZnJw-_YXkNeWG2kpd8UFucfWY876b0/s1600/fasci2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="220" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh03UAnO_DToTdls7FWK0CrEoIvZF1r-zLg2KxroDj5gvve1M84Kn3bOAWAK5s9lIspkav6oB1-57Ofp3Ks6UjaBY-YbvtQRnLYcG6ToaT2tL_QkZnJw-_YXkNeWG2kpd8UFucfWY876b0/s320/fasci2.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: 13.5pt; line-height: 200%;">Fascism is usually presented as an exception to the rule, a break from the status quo and an entry into special circumstances. It is characterized by a more or less permanent state of emergency. After 9/11, the mobilization of the national security state to the status of permanent war footing coupled with the endless waves of media and government-sponsored moral panics have been described by many as fascism, and indeed it does seem like these are elements of fascism without the substance.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: 13.5pt; line-height: 200%;">I would maintain that this substance is the <i>mobilization of a mass of ordinary people to engage in a variety of extra-legal forms of violence aimed at effecting political change on behalf of a radicalized version of reactionary ideology</i>. "Reactionary" here refers to ideological systems which bolster forms of domination, oppression, and exploitation within the status quo of class based societies. The radicalization component is what we mean by fascism, as reactionary ideology in itself can encompass things such as your run-of-the-mill Republican conservativism and mainstream liberalism (the kind that wants some welfare state provisions but is totally supportive of, say, the architecture of neo-colonialism).</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: 13.5pt; line-height: 200%;"><b>Fascism as a Reaction to Liberation</b></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: 13.5pt; line-height: 200%;">Another philosopher in Badiou's orbit is Slavoj Zizek, who has courted a lot of controversy lately for his response to the refugee crisis. Whatever our misgivings about Zizek, he has often drilled home a point about fascism that I find quite compelling: <i>fascism is a kind of reaction to movements for liberation; it is made possible by this movement activity and thrives by mimicking its behavior, organizational forms, etc. </i>In the case of the original fascists in Italy, this was literally true: Mussolini was a socialist activist who became a far right movement leader; he employed elements of the organizational and ideological structure of this left wing activity into his new formation.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: 13.5pt; line-height: 200%;">This is to say, the problem is not discipline and coordinated activity (some of it even violent) aimed at social change, but how this discipline is achieved-on the one hand, through the solidarity of the oppressed; on the other hand, through the solidarity of oppressors.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4mPK_aI05MMj1_IwZZAsBG_A40FIVQSRmxoDxZrozdeBq_OYAFD91Fw3_T49DhbmPAw3jA52xRYkKRD_7n36o0Ify0cKasb9SV5Kdr-pGAWesJOPV_L1jDTPx7u4HFRA6-Ai5-SrRm_U/s1600/fasci3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4mPK_aI05MMj1_IwZZAsBG_A40FIVQSRmxoDxZrozdeBq_OYAFD91Fw3_T49DhbmPAw3jA52xRYkKRD_7n36o0Ify0cKasb9SV5Kdr-pGAWesJOPV_L1jDTPx7u4HFRA6-Ai5-SrRm_U/s320/fasci3.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: 13.5pt; line-height: 200%;">We once again run into the problem of finding fascist elements without the underlying substance of mass mobilization and states of emergency. For instance, the 1980s and 1990s saw the mass mobilization of tens of millions of white Americans as a reaction to the movements of liberation that shook the country (and the world) roughly from 1965 to 1975. The Christian Right became at least a proto-fascist force in politics for a time. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 13.5pt; line-height: 200%;">While mass violence against political opponents and a state of emergency was missing, this "movement" enabled violence in the home aimed at women, queer folks, children, and more. It's legacy lives on today through massive institutions with considerable political clout. It inspired an incredible novel, <i>The Handmaid's Tale</i>, by Margaret Atwood, which portrays a dystopian fascist society modeled on Christian Right principles.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: 13.5pt; line-height: 200%;"><b>What is to be done?</b></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: 13.5pt; line-height: 200%;">All of this is to say that the contemporary appetite for fascist elements in politics is more important than definitions or our decision to employ the term itself. Beatings <a href="http://usuncut.com/politics/trump-supporters-filmed-viciously-punching-and-kicking-black-lives-matter-protester-at-rally/" target="_blank">at Trump rallies,</a> assaults by Trump supporters, Trump's Nazi-like call for registration and special identification for Muslims (not just refugees), these must be opposed through collective struggle. Though we can comfortably say that the Christian Right is <i>not</i> a fascist formation, we can easily see how it embodies elements of fascism which are being employed today by the populist right, from the Tea Party to Trump.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 13.5pt; line-height: 200%;">The lesson of 20th century fascism is that parliamentary procedures, courts, laws, and the normal activities of the state are not capable (or willing) of putting a stop to these elements. Whether it is Trump or Dylan Roof, the performance of fascist acts must be met with an outpouring of struggle. Today we see CNN rushing to interview far right European politicians like Geert Wilders and Marine Le Pen. We see the mainstream media giving Trump more or less free campaign coverage for the sake of ratings.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: 13.5pt; line-height: 200%;">There is an appetite among a large number of people in both the US and Europe for far right politics and the methods of traditional fascism. Whether it turns into full blown fascism, with mass violence, mass movement, and states of emergency is up to the resistance.</span><br />
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02491193993862345976noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-871620141314278588.post-62504347112189821232015-11-20T04:54:00.000-08:002015-11-20T05:12:09.463-08:00Films for the Terrorist Apocalypse<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 36px;">If you know me at all you know I am <i>obsessed</i> with film. I'm one of those people who says "film" when I write instead of "movies." One day I will write up a general philosophy of film, but nobody said it better than Walter Benjamin: the successive changes of scene and focus are emblematic of our contemporary consciousness; and thus film contains the <i>potential</i> for an aesthetic of liberation.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 36px;">This situation with the Paris attacks is bewildering. On the one hand, for the activist-observer, it is hard to see what has changed. On the other, as one who observes the way mainstream knowledge is disseminated, it is clear that we are in the midst of a sea change in "public opinion," that abstraction that hovers over us like a monstrous angel of death. The Public demands action, and so what if that public is an ideological construct and the action it demands is madness and playing into the hands of ISIS and all of that?</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 36px;">One of my principal strategies to stay sane is to engage with film. I'm going to give a list of films that I have found insightful in regards to the politics that is unfolding before us. My descriptions will be criminally brief. Sorry...I've got housework to do.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 36px;"><i>The Battle of Algiers </i>(1966)</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSs6GZGnJXGEjGfWqD5rRnG-O4yPdqe8kd3K642fRpK8ua7wC4TFUYo1Ic1f_bF8wqpVIKgfIbOKP52n9v7mUOqYucDu4rigN_ZY6dZCKJkx_sgJ19H7YwjJd3KGspN_A2OaXRcavneEs/s1600/bal1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="179" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSs6GZGnJXGEjGfWqD5rRnG-O4yPdqe8kd3K642fRpK8ua7wC4TFUYo1Ic1f_bF8wqpVIKgfIbOKP52n9v7mUOqYucDu4rigN_ZY6dZCKJkx_sgJ19H7YwjJd3KGspN_A2OaXRcavneEs/s320/bal1.jpg" width="320"></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 36px;">If you are one of those folks who thinks of France as a peaceful socialist hippie paradise then this is a great movie for you. It will dispel you of all right wing US propaganda about France. France is a colonial power and this film is about a war to maintain the Algerian colony, a war that cost over 1 million Algerian lives. It was watched by both US occupation troops in Iraq as well as Iraqi rebels. It is as good a picture as you are going to get of the dynamics of occupation and resistance.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 36px;"><i>Children of Men </i>(2006)</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 36px;">Director Alfonso Cuaraon's take on the state of our civilization. Metaphors of the old world dying and the new struggling to be born form the center of the film, but the real story is told in the backgrounds. From graffiti to choices of clothing to news reports, this film does what good science fiction ought to do: it takes our world, rearranges some elements to make it unfamiliar, but then as the narrative unfolds it begins to look <i>just like our own world</i>.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 36px;"><i>Syriana </i>(2005)</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 36px;">This spy thriller-esque film pisses everyone off. It pisses radical folks off because it isn't super radical, and it pisses mainstream folks off because it's...too radical. With an all star cast and some stunning camera work, <i>Syriana</i> takes us to an imaginary Gulf monarch state and gives us a sense of what happens when reformers start to mess with the status quo. It is anything but a perfect movie, but I think it is accessible to a wider audience and allows us to see the (imagined) inner workings behind things like suicide bombings and drone strikes.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 36px;"><i>Paradise Now </i>(2005)</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 36px;">This is a brilliant film which captures the absurdity of the situation of Israeli apartheid. One can absolutely not compare the politics of ISIS to anything going on in the Occupied Territories, but one can gain a broader understanding of the kind of oppression at work and the sense of hopelessness so many feel. The gallows humor of this film makes it memorable more than anything else, particularly the "jihad confession" scene.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 36px;"><i>V for Vendetta </i>(2005)</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 36px;">Look, I get it. The Guy Fawkes mask is annoying now. This film has become a parody of itself, a hyperreal quasi-left version of an Ayn Rand novel. For right wing folks this has also, bizarrely, served as a film expressive of their politics. It isn't as good as the graphic novel, and on and on. I agree. But...it has its moments. Its moment during its release was eye opening and engaging for me, it <i>spoke</i> to me as a young 20 something living in the endless Bush Administration. More than anything, the story within the story of Valerie Page makes the movie.</span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02491193993862345976noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-871620141314278588.post-29886165408099981612015-11-19T05:25:00.001-08:002015-11-20T04:22:56.853-08:00Angry, Paranoid Reflections on the World Post-Paris Attacks<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjaEJ0AyAIYkV_c9xVyypbi0hPyGah1VX8a0okCJ3r4B4iynWgphFH3slWd0tZJjJl_3V7HR9i3-nCzbuk1-Do_D_v3s9Vlr6qTY8cLh4ViCwNuBjPOCDl69aGdLNlc1f0J2gLcisoz8CE/s1600/paris1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="172" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjaEJ0AyAIYkV_c9xVyypbi0hPyGah1VX8a0okCJ3r4B4iynWgphFH3slWd0tZJjJl_3V7HR9i3-nCzbuk1-Do_D_v3s9Vlr6qTY8cLh4ViCwNuBjPOCDl69aGdLNlc1f0J2gLcisoz8CE/s320/paris1.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Children of Men </i>(2007) captured the spirit of the age of 9/11 and the Bush II years. It was prophetic...but now everyday life is starting to look like the backgrounds of that film.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: 13.5pt; line-height: 200%;">*This is an excellent example of why I run a more or less informal blog rather than contribute more regularly to a magazine or something. This piece is A HOT MESS in need of some serious editing...but I don't have time. Think of it like an extended Facebook rant. And enjoy!*</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: 13.5pt; line-height: 200%;">The Paris attacks coupled with Russia’s
intervention in Syria together mark a significant shift in the unfolding
Greater Middle Eastern War. Precisely how things will unfold is unclear, but
new political battle lines are being drawn across Europe and the United States
over refugees. Elections with neo-facists and right populists are being
contested over these issues both in France (regional) and the United States
(Presidential election year). On top of that, President Hollande is mobilizing the political capital of the Paris attacks <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/18/paris-attacks-isis-hollande-france-obama" target="_blank">to press Obama</a> for some kind of escalation short of a ground invasion and is coordinating with President Putin in a further sign of thawing relations with Russia.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 13.5pt; line-height: 200%;">Obama is reluctant to give up on his legacy of
keeping large numbers of US ground troops out of combat. His Drone War—now under attack<a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/18/obama-drone-war-isis-recruitment-tool-air-force-whistleblowers" target="_blank"> by whistleblowers</a> in the Air Force—replaced the Bush era strategy (of
invasion, occupation, and gulag) with a strategy of targeted killings by killer
robots and clandestine military operations. It is his signature foreign policy
strategy to have “a light footprint.” Of course if the situation arose in which
it became necessary to defend global capital Obama would (reluctantly) mobilize
a fresh invasion of the region. But that looks to be off the table until after
the 2016 elections.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 13.5pt; line-height: 200%;">But that is the key. Clinton is an
arch-reactionary on issues of intervention. She is<a href="http://www.salon.com/2015/09/10/what_hillary_clinton_wants_you_to_forget_her_disastrous_record_as_a_war_hawk/" target="_blank"> a war hawk</a> of the same
caliber as John McCain (seriously, look at <a href="http://www.thenation.com/article/hawk-named-hillary/" target="_blank">her record!</a>), and couples this with
a series of neoliberal policy positions on everything else. And she is the
inevitable winner of the Democratic Presidential nomination process. She has already
secured the superdelegates necessary and possesses the organizational and
institutional support that will make her an unbeatable force (unless gaffes or
scandals take her down, but even then the Democratic Party primary voters seem
to think she can do no wrong).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 13.5pt; line-height: 200%;">On the other side…is the GOP. The most likely
winner is an establishment Republican, who will undoubtedly bring Bush era
(both I and II) people in to prosecute the US side of the war. They will likely
escalate the situation by launching a ground invasion—perhaps limited, but
almost assuredly on the horizon (unless the next year is different than the
last 5). Clinton is likely to adopt their position…as she always does when her
opposition begins to succeed.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 13.5pt; line-height: 200%;">In other words, Clintonian triangulation coupled
with the extreme escalation of the war (Hollande has said that it is “destabilizing
Europe”) almost guarantees that Washington will put the dreaded “boots on the
ground.” Through Turkey? Iraq? Jordan? Who will host the invaders?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 13.5pt; line-height: 200%;">I’m thinking of my political education during the
formative Bush II years. I’m thinking of <i>Children
of Men</i> and the cinematic version of <i>V
for Vendetta</i>, both of which captured—albeit in radically different ways—the
tone of the period. <i>Fahrenheit 911</i>
was a terrible movie, but Moore’s cliché use of an Orwell quotation from <i>1984</i> at the close of the film seemed
eerily fitting.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 13.5pt; line-height: 200%;">We went through a period of hyper paranoia, a much ado about nothing...but there was no punch line, only the complete ruin of two countries, a new global gulag, and new politics akin to that of a totalitarian police state. When I saw these two films on screen I felt that they captured my sensibility, which involved a sense of loss. Certainly the status quo liberalism of contemporary capitalist society has to go...it is built upon a mound of black bodies and empire. But through the 1990s there had been a sense that we had entered a post-political era in which technocratic management would ensure that things got incrementally better...how mistaken we were.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 13.5pt; line-height: 200%;">Now after two Obama terms the things that were unthinkable and had to be expressed via dystopian film have become routine. But there was a push back. Whatever its failures, the anti-war movement managed to move the population in some direction. We had a President who was committed to keeping the US out of a ground war, and even though the Drone War and the ruthless intervention in Libya have happened under his watch, no one can deny that it is <i>a little bit better</i> to not have something like the Iraq War happening every few years.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 13.5pt; line-height: 200%;">But now we have Syria, which has seen an <i>even more devastating war</i> as its revolutionary struggle turned into a civil war and then a <i>proxy war</i> for regional powers like Iran and Saudi Arabia, but now also "great" powers like the US and Russia. In <i>V for Vendetta</i> a character mentions that someone has military experience "in Syria...before <i>and after</i>..." this chilling "<i>and after</i>" feels all-too-real now.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 13.5pt; line-height: 200%;">This is not exactly like the post-9/11 environment of extreme paranoia, and there is a substantial chunk of the Democratic Party's base that simply <i>won't accept</i> a return to those dark days. The power of the resurgent black liberation movement, the immigrant rights movement, and even the nascent movements against anti-Muslim racism (coupled with a burgeoning BDS movement) mean that there exists-however thin on the ground-a social force that simply <i>will not lie down and die</i>.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 13.5pt; line-height: 200%;">On top of that, the white liberal base of the Democratic Party has shifted to the left on these issues and has come to understand the nature of racism...err...a <i>little </i>better? It is unclear, except that I think without Obama's elections many of the white liberal supporters of Black Lives Matter would have been more reactionary (it remains to be seen how much their "support" really counts, however). Nonetheless, the situation is also immensely complicated by Obama, who can (rightfully) decry the paranoid anti-refugee response sweeping the US as absurd while he turns around and looks over his "kill list" the following morning.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 13.5pt; line-height: 200%;">Here's the thing: the Obama Administration represents <i>a little progress</i> on some of these issues, but in the long run the normalization of the architecture of the War on Terror means that this is the baseline. The next fight's success might be measured by how closely we return to these Obama years, and that in itself is a dystopian thought. Whether Clinton, Rubio, Bush, or-gods forbid-Trump, ends up in the White House after the 2016 elections, <i>a very serious escalation is upon us</i>. We <i>must</i> build an anti-war movement. We <i>must</i> build on the anti-racist struggles in the US today and link the struggle against the police state to the imperial state, as black radicals did in the 1970s. We <i>must</i> stand against anti-Muslim racism in all of its forms.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 13.5pt; line-height: 200%;">Our solidarity is a our strength. We have nothing else.</span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02491193993862345976noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-871620141314278588.post-19720114288175623792015-11-17T05:48:00.000-08:002015-11-17T17:25:10.217-08:00A Primer on Refugees and ISIS<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
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<span style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 36px;">Now that numerous state governors, including Governor Bill Haslam of my own state of Tennessee, have moved to bar the entry of refugees from the conflict in Syria, it is incumbent upon us to make a few things clear about <i>who these refugees are</i>, <i>what the relationship between this situation and the religion of Islam is</i>, and <i>what ISIS is</i>.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 36px;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 36px;">This is a primer for folks who are not incredibly well-versed in the conflict. As such there are numerous simplifications that won't do for the seasoned observer. I apologize for these, but am mainly aiming at those facing relatives, co-workers, and friends who have responded to the Paris attacks with calls for more war and a crackdown on refugees...and Muslims in general.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 36px;">Throughout all of this please remember that <i>the vast majority of ISIS's victims are Muslims</i>. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 36px;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 36px;"><b>The Refugees</b></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 36px;"><b><br /></b></span>
<span style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 36px;">Who is fleeing the conflict? How many? Why are they fleeing?</span><br />
<span style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 36px;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 36px;">You hear many say, "Why don't they stay at home and fight for their country?" This statement betrays an absurd ignorance about the situation. The Syrian Civil War is one of the most destructive conflicts <i>in world history</i>. Had the war been fought a generation ago it would possibly have been less so, but with the incredible destructiveness of modern warfare coupled with the intervention of multiple regional powers, the people of Syria have no chance.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 36px;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 36px;">Syria is a nation of just over 20 million people. Of those, 4 million have fled abroad. That's unprecedented, perhaps with the exception of the destructiveness of the Iraq War and the destruction of Palestine in 1948 (and of course World War II). Millions more are displaced within the country. Though places like central Damascus might be relatively stable and safe (though there is fighting in the suburbs), entire regions of Syria have been eviscerated.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMcHak-3sOhn188KDm2yZTrZXNUIpPuyDCRCg__vv9c2YSY0ceSyPkUUyLyQe2ZYqJxJ-thq0zODFMaLjdw0tHveIEGxtaEc-aoVjFmXToT2QZNJPeKlHv_v1yT5NpZkZ4wPKpNt5ARJE/s1600/isis2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMcHak-3sOhn188KDm2yZTrZXNUIpPuyDCRCg__vv9c2YSY0ceSyPkUUyLyQe2ZYqJxJ-thq0zODFMaLjdw0tHveIEGxtaEc-aoVjFmXToT2QZNJPeKlHv_v1yT5NpZkZ4wPKpNt5ARJE/s320/isis2.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Remember this image whenever you hear, "But we cannot vet the refugees!"</td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 36px;">At least 250,000 have died since the war began, probably many more. People feel squeezed. The government is the principal force of destruction, and now it is bolstered by foreign interventions from Hezbollah from Lebanon, Iran, and Russia. The government maintains its rule through terror and violence. Many refugees are actually those who resisted being drafted into the army.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 36px;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 36px;">On the other side, the major rebel factions are led by reactionary Islamist groups bankrolled by individuals and the intelligence services of countries like Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar. A leader among them is the Al-Nusra Front, a faction of Al-Qaeda. What non-Islamists there are exist as local forces or as entities that act as proxies for institutions like the CIA. The vast network of activists who led the early phase of the struggle against the regime has largely been destroyed by violence from all armed factions, and those who left have joined armed groups...or fled.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 36px;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 36px;"><b>...and then there is ISIS</b></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 36px;"><b><br /></b></span>
<span style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 36px;">ISIS's vanguard came into being during the US invasion and occupation of Iraq. Many of its leaders were tortured at Abu Ghraib, and it was there that they learned strategies to overcome extreme violence with even more extreme violence. Foreign recruits are likely to travel with the book <i>Islam For Dummies</i> since for most of them the politics of joining a successful insurgency is more important than anything resembling religiosity.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 36px;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 36px;">The group morphed into its current form during the interim between the US pullout from Iraq and the escalation of the Syrian Revolution into full blown civil war. It formed as its own faction once Al-Nusra went its own way, leading to the infamous Al-Qaeda/ISIS split over tactics (ISIS believes in establishing a state first and using it to carry the battle to its enemies).</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEioO9PLs52PITl9cfpn_iSvLTlqSnsjBJZ2VzrmTKmGj2I9AxMd6qOqdjJ8ziCcacRvmaLEWuwWi74JaQKQAdDwD7XjA_cHsszEuOIAfcuH2eLCkjoWZ30Lf7wxbVp4vxoFH3H-iuVZ1Xc/s1600/isis3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="192" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEioO9PLs52PITl9cfpn_iSvLTlqSnsjBJZ2VzrmTKmGj2I9AxMd6qOqdjJ8ziCcacRvmaLEWuwWi74JaQKQAdDwD7XjA_cHsszEuOIAfcuH2eLCkjoWZ30Lf7wxbVp4vxoFH3H-iuVZ1Xc/s320/isis3.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">ISIS soldiers were produced by the politics of the US war in Iraq...and here they are, brandishing their fancy US weaponry and vehicles.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 36px;">Bankrolled by money and support from private donors (and likely intelligence agencies based in Turkey, Saudi Arabia, etc.) as well as taxation, oil revenues, and seizure of property, the group is flush with cash and runs a state spanning from Palmyra in the west to Mosul in the east. It carries out a form of ultra-violent justice involving bizarre public executions, mass murders, ethnic cleansing, and it enslaves people for their labor (including sexual slavery).</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 36px;">ISIS's strategy has been laid out for all to see. They <a href="https://theintercept.com/2015/11/17/islamic-states-goal-eliminating-the-grayzone-of-coexistence-between-muslims-and-the-west/" target="_blank">seek to "shrink the Gray Zone,"</a> a place occupied by Muslims who stand between the colonial power centers in Washington, London, and Paris and "the Caliphate" itself. They seek to do this by provoking crackdowns on Muslims in these countries, forcing a segment of the population to turn to them for support. In this they will undoubtedly welcome backlashes against refugees in Europe and the United States as it plays into their strategy <i>and serves as proof that their tactics, such as the Paris attacks, work</i>.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 36px;"><b>The Very Political and Not Very Religious ISIS</b></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 36px;">Its relationship to the religion of Islam is shaky. Though they utilize religious rhetoric and ideology, one of their principal opponents in places like Mosul has been imams (prayer leaders of mosques). They practice extreme forms of racism against Yazidis and other ethnic minorities, and routinely violate Islamic norms in regards to the treatment of "People of the Book" (Christians and Jewish people). Their proclamation of a Caliphate has been taken up only by those who play into their hands and wish to paint them as legitimate representatives of Islam.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 36px;">Most of their organizational capacity comes from their experiences fighting the US and its sectarian death squad allies (i.e. the Iraqi government), as well as fighters who are ex-members of Saddam Hussein's regime. The US occupation authority laid these men off en masse and did nothing to support them economically, and then proceeded to criminalize them, placing them into a situation in which personal survival meant criminal and "terroristic" activity (particularly when it became clear that the nature of the state the US had imposed on Iraq was a ruthless sectarian one that would do everything in its power to repress the Sunni Arab minority).</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 36px;">This is to say, ISIS is not based on religious forms of organization or principals anymore than Al-Qaeda was. It is a political instrument that carries out political acts for political ends. One important way these ends are achieved is via religious rhetoric and the provocation of religious explanations for conflict, which preclude solutions short of extreme forms of warfare.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 36px;">ISIS has foreign recruits, certainly, but the vast majority of its members are Iraqis and Syrians. These are people, in the Iraqi case, who suffered from the violence of the US war and occupation which claimed half a million lives and devastated Iraq. Once home to a highly educated and relatively secular populace, Iraq became the kind of place where cholera epidemics happen. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 36px;"><b>Conclusion</b></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 36px;">To put it simply, the goal of ISIS in Paris was to carry out an act of spectacular violence that would capture the mainstream media's attention and provoke a backlash against Muslims, culminating in state violence against Muslims and renewed military interventions in the Middle East. It struck France because France is one of the major purveyors of colonial violence around the world, and because France is heavily involved in the war on ISIS already.<br /><br />The <i>overwhelming majority of ISIS's victims have been Muslims</i>. Many refugees are <i>fleeing ISIS.</i> Keep that in mind.</span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02491193993862345976noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-871620141314278588.post-63460832483080679122015-11-14T09:06:00.003-08:002015-11-14T12:01:46.294-08:00Paris, Terror, and Empire<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZ0UC5ivQnCug-e2Uqn2KHpr52kJGCgM_cQb_6DpNCFQE5zmfHFN-6i4_0c8D6tYc0Dzn6-5B9uxxw81iUO6ZCIVWzUz6dC-Yr_dw9qQIQ5dhv4Gnpjl0-AcaXgadfNx7RYs-kqJ4j4pw/s1600/pairs.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="199" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZ0UC5ivQnCug-e2Uqn2KHpr52kJGCgM_cQb_6DpNCFQE5zmfHFN-6i4_0c8D6tYc0Dzn6-5B9uxxw81iUO6ZCIVWzUz6dC-Yr_dw9qQIQ5dhv4Gnpjl0-AcaXgadfNx7RYs-kqJ4j4pw/s320/pairs.jpg" width="320"></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Though presented as a tolerant and humane society, French colonial violence continues to plague the world and provoke violent responses including the Charlie Hebdo massacre and last evenings ruthless attacks across Paris.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 36px;">Let us from the start assert that it is both right and necessary to analyze the political dimensions of ISIS's atrocities in Paris. Many have said, "Now isn't the time for politics, this is a time of mourning." And yet no one made this claim about the Kunduz hospital bombing, or the Ghouta gas attacks, or the Yemeni wedding massacre. This is because, for those who make this claim, events like this are like natural disasters rather than political acts. This allows them to remain comfortable with an illusion that the world is a safe stable place that is only routinely interrupted by this kind of violence.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 36px;">When doctors and patients are slaughtered by US bombs in Kunduz or when a wedding is blasted off the map killing 131 persons in an attack perpetrated by a regime that harbors ISIS supporters, we automatically understand that these are <i>political events</i>. Because, you see, places like Afghanistan and Yemen are places where politics and violence go hand in hand, unlike France. The piles of African and Arab bodies upon which French politics stands are no matter...they are a thing of the past, you see.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 36px;">But France is one of the world's most active colonial powers routinely intervening in African nations even though "colonialism has ended." The French government of Francois Hollande has carried out ruthless colonial interventions in Ivory Coast, Mali, the Central African Republic, and Syria itself as part of its bid to maintain neo-colonial control over human bodies and the territories they inhabit.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 36px;">At home, 40,000 Arabs and Muslims languish in French prisons, constituting 60% of the imprisoned population even though they make up only 7.5% of the total population. These individuals are in France as a consequence of the social relations of the old colonial empire and France's current neo-colonial system. Secularism and humanism is wielded as a tool of racist oppression targeting these individuals as "not French enough" all the while betraying the principles of universality and solidarity once common to this humanist heritage.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 36px;">Things are so bad that France has seen riots against police brutality and welfare state inequalities on many occasions. The response of the state has been to escalate repression rather than redress the legitimate grievances of its victims. This is the context of last year's Charlie Hebdo massacre and this horrifying atrocity that has claimed over 100 innocent lives.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 36px;">Let us be clear: the perpetrators of these atrocities <i>are not justified in their violence</i>, but that does not mean we should discard analysis and refuse to understand what is happening. ISIS and similar formations are the product of colonial interventions in the Middle East coupled with policies which enable their existence perpetrated by the local allies of French, British, and US imperialism. Gulf monarchies' money, Turkish material support, and more have flowed into these organizations. France itself has supplied rebel factions in Syria that have joined ISIS's formations.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 36px;">This attack follows the downing of a Russian airliner and twin suicide bombings in Beirut, a clear sign that ISIS is learning how to carry out spectacular Al-Qaeda style terror attacks abroad. The level of sophistication for this group is ever growing, and is a consequence of the money and guns of colonial powers and their local allies. They desire to strike out in order to provoke further intervention and thus pull the colonial powers into an endless quagmire. The more intervention, the more ISIS has a reason to exist and a means of gaining new recruits.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 36px;">No one is changing their profile pictures to flags of Lebanon or Yemen, nor have trending hashtags focused on the violence perpetrated <i>by the French government itself</i>. Why? Because France is part of us, the empire of whiteness and capital. Those other places are part of them, the "Dark Continent" of non-whiteness and oppression. This continent exists in the inner city, in the prisons, and in countries like Syria and Iraq.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 18px; line-height: 36px;">It is an imaginary space with very real consequences for the millions who suffer, both from microaggressions and from lethal violence. The French government is a leading perpetrator of this violence, and so while you are mourning the dead make sure to remember the others who are dead and dying at the hands of French military aggression.</span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02491193993862345976noreply@blogger.com0