POST-PUNK: A POST ABOUT PUNK

(This was originally three different posts, which I have consolidated into one entry so that it reads chronologically.)

I.
When I was home over Christmas break, I was showing my dad some bulky sweater that I wanted to buy, and after viewing a series of bulky sweaters online, he summarized them: "Oh, so kind of a hipster look." Now, whatever. Who knows what he thinks that means. But what it definitely meant was, "Ah, this set of stimuli, I hereby file away under category X, never to disturb me again." It didn't mean, "Oh, I could see myself wearing that, if only I were younger," or, "I can see how that would be fashionable in New York but not here in the suburbs." I would liken it to the part in the Terminator movies, where you see behind Arnold's "eyes" and see the computer run through the series of possible identifications and responses. The computer doesn't "see" things--it categorizes them; the kind of categorization I am describing files things away so precisely *not* to see them. And something as innocuous as a bulky sweater!

My dad's response to this criticism was (partially) that I do this more than anyone--with all my subgenres and critical -isms, and of course my favorite category, "bourgeois." However, the infinite variety of different "cores" and "isms" at least testifies to a willingness to open up new categories when so demanded, and I will have something more to say about the bourgeois in a moment. My point is, the world is infinitely more various than our comprehension of it. To have a fixed number of categories guarantees confusion. This is the cause of nearly every argument I have with my dad. When he asks me a question like, "Is that in the Village?" when I have been describing something in New York, I have to allow that his conception of Greenwich Village is and will always be a term that encompasses probably 1/2 of Manhattan (this is a made-up example). But really, everything has to be filed away like this under a heading he is aware of. For example, my dad (in this fictional example) doesn't know NOLITA. Therefore, it is in the Village. Of course, to any one instance of this, I am "overreacting." I don't think so. Not only because it isn't just one thing, and it isn't just my dad.

My definition of the bourgeois, to be given in a moment, is completely unsurprising and I think we will all agree with it. It is not a Marxist definition, although I certainly see that behind it. It could roughly be given as: "the status quo," but that is so boring and not quite what I mean. And this is a category I make use of A LOT. But, unlike my dad's use of "hipster," I don't mean "bourgeois" ever as a "case-closed" recognition of a phenomena, but it is always something slightly cryptic and only partially descriptive. It is, basically, a poor adjective for most things. It isn't a subject heading, and is so vague as to be almost useless. But here's my definition: The bourgeois is that which does not want to be disturbed.

Now, let me give you another quote, from Flaubert: "Hatred of the bourgeois is the beginning of virtue." The bourgeois, of course, returns the favor. All of my favorite thinkers, Freud, Derrida, Baudrillard, Nietzsche, Marx, etc. are universally despised by our conventional wisdom. Freud is "discredited," Derrida's death was greeted with the nastiest obituary in the NY Times, Baudrillard is a lunatic, Nietzsche retrospectively a Nazi, Marx "works only on paper," and so forth. It's so ludicrous. But this enmity, this stubborn, mudslinging, empty (yet white-hot) hatred from all corners of respectable society...this is what you get. Why not embrace it?

To me, that can be the only definition for punk--in this moment, in this socio-economic order, in countries like this one--taking upon oneself the onerous and ugly position you already will have been given by hating/disturbing the bourgeois. "You're already going to hate me, let me make it easy for you, and clear for everyone else."

A problem immediately arises: this could be only an empty gesture. What if you are harmless, and yet you take on this aspect? You are easily IGNORED. In fact, this is what we see. No one sees a punk on the street and thinks "Oh, this person wants to DESTROY ME." This should be the case, unfortunately that ship sailed long ago.

Nonetheless, I refuse to admit what many have conceded to the bourgeois in a kind of postmodern defeatism-- that resistance, hatred, disturbance of the existing order is *already* "empty" and "co-opted" and a "floating signifier." Not that these things aren't true, but what is the logic here? That because "Nothing's shocking" anymore, we all should be content to let critical thought die out? This seems to be the argument.

This is probably why punk has such a low retention rate. It promises disillusioned kids a chance to change the world, to piss off their parents, to have crazy adventures, read Chomsky and go to protests, have an obnoxious diet, stupid hair, etc. And it should be all those things. But it can't be all those things ONLY, because then you realize 1) you haven't changed the world, 2) you don't even care about your parents, 3) you aren't having interesting adventures, 4) protests are dumb, 5) your stupid hair is getting in the way of meeting girls or getting a job, etc.

So, what are you left with? Some vague politics and being vegetarian. And some mp3s. Well, that hardly seems worth the effort. And here is the, "Well, what now?" question.

II.
OK, so this goes on--but not without a caveat or two first. This blog is really for people who know me, who I saw the day before (in which case, I have probably stolen our conversation and put it in blog form), or friends who I don't see that often and we only communicate by reading each other's blogs, or my parents and other well-wishers.

Of course, it is definitely ALSO for haters, but I feel like reading my blog without knowing me (or without giving a wide berth and confidence that I will end up somewhere), is probably just to get back your own message in return: duh. This isn't an academic treatise--I'm sure you noticed--there are gaps everywhere that I haven't filled in, that will be much easier for someone with some patience or knowledge to fill in. This is why I try to make everything fairly personal and evidently self-involved--not because "it's all about me," but so that no one will ever forget that there is a definite *perspective* from which this is originating.

So, my last post began by talking about my dad. That's something I'd like to return to here, for two reasons: 1) so that no one will EVER forget that everything I say comes from a certain place, certain things about my family and my upbringing that I love, certain things I want to destroy, and--if one were to forget that--then to get upset about what I'm leaving out/getting wrong/etc. Let's just say, I'm writing about me. I hope you learn something about you, but that is really up to how you read.

So, my dad. The first Black Flag album originally carried a "warning" sticker with a quote from the president of MCA records saying: "As a parent, I found it to be an anti-parent record." If there was ONE THING punk meant to me as an unpopular, dorky kid, it was Black Flag's ultimate dictum--don't become your parents. Now, I love my parents. Whatever. Hi, Mom.

To me, what was great about punk was that it wasn't just to "piss off" your parents, since anything can do that. It's the message: "don't BE your parents." Now, I know kids from high school who are already married, have kids, etc, so that at least literally, they already ARE parents (if not yet their own). But punk, to the extent that it is "not just a phase" and that it will have an eventual meaning in this discussion, is--wait--precisely that: that punk is not just a phase and will mean something IS in its not-being-just-a-phase.

Savvy?

All other youth culture is just that...youth culture. Punk, which of course everyone grows out of to some extent, in a way--and defining that will be the important thing--is something more irrevocable. It's something life-changing. It sticks with you. And of course, I'm not talking about people in bands or the rare few who can make a living within punk, and therefore don't have to leave or even step outside of it. I mean, obviously I've chosen to step well outside of punk for my chosen career. And maybe someone's answer will be, "oh, you blew it--if you aren't living in a squat and doing politics and making hardcore and eating communal dumpstered pasta, and instead are reading Barthes in your ivory tower, you lost it, you can't be punk anymore." And I TAKE THAT VERY SERIOUSLY. In the most literal sense, it's obviously true. Fact. Ok, so let's all take a deep breath and see that I am not trying to put together my life with *that* particular vision, which has its charms but really is not for me.

And here we arrive at the furthest I will dilute any definition of punk. As Gerard Manley Hopkins writes, "Enough!"

To recap this detour: not being one's parents, and making a new life out of that--fine, but that can't be everything punk is: I go to an Ivy league school, I live in New York, I read XXXXXX author, I listen to XXXXXX shit bands, I'm vegan, I don't have a real job, I live in a room the size of my laptop-- none of those things really have anything to do with punk, they just are things the complete opposite of my parents' existence. Punk HAS to be something else than just being a grad student, wearing tight pants, talking to Talya, and buying records I don't have the time to listen to. Duh. But really, some days, I'd like to pretend that is all it is.

I need to go to bed right now, and I want to get this post up, but let me leave you with one unsatisfactory answer, and one open question that I'll get back to. My interests, my personality, my style of thinking, my writing, my general disdain for humanity, my politics (such as they are)--these things aren't going anywhere. I am no nearer to being a normal, functioning member of society than ever. And that's not, in itself, punk. But I feel just as far away from everything as when I was 16, and yes, in a more complicated way, but really just in a sadder way. If I don't relate to DOA's lyrics anymore, and if Crass' politics seem a bit rickety, well-- that doesn't mean that I've found anything better: it's just all the sadder. But that makes it sound like punk is just "one more thing I can't relate to." But so is Victorian literary criticism, so are my best friends. Which is just to say, I hope that I have done some growing up, but all the procedures of growing up are just as full of shit as anything when I was younger---I mean, I thought high school was stupid, but it has nothing on the "real world"---and I guess I am still not willing to make those compromises. Not only that, I still despise people who do. If I am at all "better-adjusted" (which is by no means certain) than when I was a kid, it only makes clear that I will never be *well*-adjusted. And, again, that itself isn't "punk."

This is where we need to think some more about it. When I was a kid, simply being upset about all this was enough. That's what loud music is for. Now, it's like...well, here I spend 16 hours a day reading and thinking about "big ideas," and on the other hand, I have a completely alienated experience from everyone around me--maybe that is not a coincidence which I should just overlook. Maybe it's precisely that I am not thinking the same things which is *the thing* here.

So, I am still a person upset at the world, maybe more than ever, definitely in a more difficult and complicated way than before--and now that I've diluted the definition of punk where it maybe looks like I am willing to say that somehow MERELY being unhappy and listening to the Yardbirds somehow counts towards being punk, I'd like to say, OF COURSE NOT--and this is what I will reconstitute in the next post.


III.
So far, I've ruled out the following things as being the definition of punk, although some of them are obviously important, and we may want to define punk by a combination of these ideas, or set them off against each other:

- pissing off your parents
- being politically active
- fashion
- diet
- being sixteen

And now, I'd like to unveil the two things I find most important in punk: DIY, which I have left out of the argument until now, and that which I began with, the self-imposed stigma of being anti-(whatever). I am inclined to say, anti-bourgeois, because for me, that says it all. That may not be the case for you. I am not inclined to define it here, but let's just say that I see both major political parties in America as bourgeois parties, and so by default I am talking about 98% of the electorate. To that, I would add nearly all of corporate culture (an oxymoron if ever there was one), the latently racist, sexist and homophobic, the religious, law enforcement, and everyone complicit in disseminating the falsehoods which prop up the illusion that any of this is worth preserving. AGH. So, it's a broad definition, and if clearly 98% of America is not technically "bourgeois," I want to let stand the more troubling implication that the problem of class in our country is precisely what we don't want to know about.

If you'll recall, this is a kind of circular logic-- earlier, I defined the bourgeois as "that which doesn't want to be disturbed" by any knowledge, and here I am saying that class is precisely that knowledge that we don't want to know about. So, here I can only give you the tautology, the American bourgeois fantasy is only sustained by repressing the knowledge that it IS a fantasy.

Punk, as conventional wisdom never tires of pointing out, shatters this fantasy. At the most basic level, punk wants no part of self-congratulatory, teleological liberal utopias nor in the comforts of religion and regressive order. And punk can only be punk if it disturbs, criticizes, agitates, and brings down upon itself the ire of the keepers of this fantasy.

To which I will add, THAT is the message. And the medium is DIY. That's punk--and it should sound like The Ramones, Discharge, and Black Flag.

I think that rules out everything that would either try and "sneak in" or those things which a vague definition would accidentally include: mere fashion, hippies, Foucault, burnouts, hipsters, metalheads, Nate Treadwell, indie-pop, emos, computer programmers, etc.

As far as what this has to do with me, I can only say, a) DIY is an ideal. It is not always possible, but as much as I can, my life-ideal is to work with it and through it. No kidding; b) On the other count, I think no one will begrudge it to me if I say that I expect to bring a great deal of ire down on myself before it is all through.

allegory

One of my friends has been writing her undergraduate art history thesis about allegory, and the more I have learned about this project, the more upset I get and the more clearly I can define my own critical goals (in opposition).

Let us grant: 1) the validity of Freud's discoveries in psychoanalysis. 2) the existence of "real" allegories-- in renaissance painting, Dante's DIVINE COMEDY, etc. 3) "postmodernism."

In Freud's INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS (yes, I am capitalizing all book titles now), he strongly refutes the notion, still preserved in our mainstream ideas of both dream-interpretation and Freud, of the dream-book, a kind of dream dictionary. This is, of course, precisely *not* what Freud's book is. In such a book, water would "mean" desire, dreams of being naked would "mean" you are concerned about security, etc. etc. This is what Freud warns against-- a one-to-one correlation between a dream-event and a meaning (a premonition of what will happen, for example). What Freud shows us is how dreams are wish fulfillments that are not apparent as such. The whole book is full of elaborate interpretative contortions to show how absurd, contradictory, seemingly-irrelevant dreams in fact show us our desires-- through the medium of their "revisions" (the "dream work") and in fact their reception and re-telling. The meaning of this is that the latent content is not to be found in interpretation from the manifest content by a simple decoding of the elements. What gets in the way is 1) secondary revisions, 2) overdetermination, 3) transference in the analytic situation, and 4) the context (of the psychic past but also of the language that tells it). The unconscious (in a Lacanian formulation) is "what *will have been* spoken" in a dream. This means, the dream, like the Freudian slip, comes out at any opportunity, and if it is not one thing, it will come out in another. The dream is no exception. I think we all know what a Freudian slip is, so it will be helpful to think of a dream in the same way-- it "comes out" in the telling.

All of this means, there is no dream book--there is too much interference that has to be worked out. This explains two famous psychoanalytic aphorisms: Lacan's "There is no metalanguage" (ie: a dreambook), and Freud's "Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar" (meaning relies on more than just symbolism, there is no guarantee that a cigar will always (or only) mean "penis").

This guarantee of meaning, if I have taken a while to get to it, what allegory intends. The OED definition is "Description of a subject under the guise of some other subject of aptly suggestive resemblance." So, a dream about driving through a tunnel would really be a dream about having sex. One thing stands in for the other, as long as the resemblence is "apt" enough to be decoded. This, I think, is the philistine understanding of all criticism: XXXXX is really about YYYYY. I would say, this isn't even what we call "meaning." If I were to allegorize Super Bowl xxxii as a medieval tragedy, once everything was decoded back out to the events of Super Bowl xxxii, there still wouldn't be a meaning--just a football game. This method can also be forced on just about anything. If you want to make THE GLASS MENAGERIE be about the recording of Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon, you could probably write the world's worst paper proving that.

This, of course, is not advisable. Nor is it criticism.

Hence my dismay at the idea that postmodern art (or say, le nouveau roman) can be taken as "allegorical" because it is "meta." For one, we already have the word "meta," so there is no need to drag in a perfectly good word like "allegorical" to explain something we already have a word for. Secondly, the justification for this seems to be that these works are "allegorical" because their meaning is about their failure to represent/capture meaning/etc. So, calling attention to the inadequacy of the frame, how the frame is contained within the subject, makes the works...allegorical.

Please note that this makes no sense. For one, this is not a new idea. Art has always been doing this. Ditto, literature. Look at fucking Hamlet, for Christ's sake: "What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba!" Secondly, it makes the *subject* under the guise of another *subject* something like this: failure of mimesis, flux of meaning, temporality, artificiality of representation under the guise of a painting, sculpture, etc. . So, in the way that THE WIZARD OF OZ warns about the folly of William Jennings Bryant's economic program (see footnote to this post), although some may say that is really a parable--in this way, all "meta" art would be demonstrating/representing the subject "failure of mimesis" under the guise of another subject. And here I say, this is actually just what "meaning" is---because failure of mimesis is an inappropriate subject for allegory.

The confusion, I believe, arises in that, by commenting on the existence of shifting meanings, one is believed to have introduced the elements of time and multiple themes necessary for an allegory--because the allegorical "subject" is necessarily represented either as a series of events (a narrative subject) and/or the presence of numerous elements (as in a mannerist allegorical painting).

My point here is: IN FACT, ONE HAS ONLY THEMATIZED TEMPORALITY AND MULTIPLICITY. The allegorical "subject" occurs over time and has multiple themes---whereas the "meta" artwork only makes reference to this single, unchanging notion.

"Real" allegory works like this: A number of elements/narrative in the artwork--->stand in for--->a number of elements/narrative in the true subject.
To see the meta artwork as allegory is to say: X artwork ---->Allegorizes--->the multiplicity of meanings and play of time in representation.
BUT, all this is really doing is this: X artwork--->THEMATIZES---> the single theme of multiplicity and temporality.

That is to say, the subjects here are not parallel. All you have is a theme-- a representation, if you will. And this makes meta artwork seem very boring, which I don't see that it need be.


________________________________________________________________
WIZARD OF OZ:
Oz is short for ounce, the measure for gold and silver.

Dorothy, hailing from Kansas, represents the commoner.

The Tin Woodsman is the industrial worker, rusted as solid as the factories shut down in the 1893 depression. The Scarecrow is the farmer who apparently doesn’t have the wit to understand his situation or his political interests. The Cowardly Lion is Bryan himself; who had a loud roar but little political power.

The Good Witches represent the magical potential of the people of the North and the South.

muppets

This post is about the film "A Muppet Christmas Carol" (which I just saw for the nth time).

I had to take this out of a paper the other day (because it had nothing to do with my topic), but it might fit nicely here:

Speaking reductively, there will be only three authors in the English Canon: Shakespeare, Austen, and Dickens. Their works have all lived up to the real measure of canonical texts: their capacity to be reinvented, made relevant again, for latter-day audiences. Recent years have seen a number of films transposing Shakespeare and Jane Austen's plots into high schools (Clueless, Ten Things I Hate About You, and O retelling Emma, The Taming of the Shrew and Othello), and in turn, high school drama departments around the nation sense the urgency that could be conveyed by an "update" of Shakespeare into period analogues. Dickens sits less easily in this trend. It is impossible to conceive of a "mod" Bleak House or a Civil War Our Mutual Friend. Because the specific British reforms of the nineteenth century which Dickens tackled do not universalize well, and so much period and local detail transcends the incidental to become integral to the plot, his novels are almost unthinkable outside their Victorian context. Two obvious exceptions are A Christmas Carol, so capable of being universalized that it jumped over the category of human as to be acted out by Muppets in A Muppet Christmas Carol , the definitive orphan narrative Oliver Twist, which became the orphaned-kitten cartoon Oliver and Company. You will notice, however, that these children's versions, however clever, are still more juvenile than the high-school adaptations that crown Austen and Shakespeare's careers in reinvention. To which I propose that Dickens' real, serious achievement of universal appeal lies in Great Expectations--a statement borne out by Pip's sharing with Prince Hamlet that dubious apotheosis of universality, being portrayed by Ethan Hawke in a modern adaptation.

So, I got home, I rented A Muppet Christmas Carol, and I just watched it. It's great. I cried a few times. Having only one major role played by a human is PERFECT for Charles Dickens, because his characters are so incompletely-developed and yet freakishly memorable--like muppets. I mean, Tiny Tim is far too maudlin a character to be convincingly played by any real human child; he would be insufferably cute and tear-jerking. Recall Oscar Wilde's famous quip about Dickens' "Old Curiosity Shop": "A man would have to have a heart of stone to read the death scene of Little Nell and not...laugh." But Muppets really solve this problem entirely. They are deformed yet instantly likeable.

Also, by having Gonzo play Charles Dickens, the movie keeps in a great deal of the actual prose from the novella, without reducing it to weird voice-over narration, which really would not have fit in. And although not all of the songs are good, a few are really funny--the opening scene, the one with the Marleys (played by the two grumpy old men), and the song with the ghost of Christmas Present, are all good fun.

The two parts I cried at: when Scrooge rewatches the scene where he first meets his lost love, and then begs the Ghost not to show him the later scene, when their relationship falls apart. I guess there is something heartbreaking about having to see the pointless acts of self-loathing we drive ourselves toward--that, with the remove of years, become retroactively inevitable and constitutive, and so lose some of their smart. Having to experience such senseless waste *as if* it were possible to then undo it...seems very cruel. The other part is when you suspect that Tiny Tim might die. This would be the most awful thing imaginable, to me. Why should the probable death of a FROG PUPPET upset me so? I think the answer is precisely not that Tiny Tim is so sweet, so cute, so helpless, etc. That would be be the dumb route, and I think Dickens (or Henson) is so much smarter for making it the case that this misshaped green blob is actually what the whole family is based on--their whole crappy lives are lived in this above-board cheeriness so that Tiny Tim won't have to know otherwise. Hence, what appears to be his innate goodness ("God bless us, every one") isn't 1) that he is young and doesn't know better, or 2) that he is a perfect angel who doesn't know better, but rather--that this unsustainable hope in the goodness of people is exactly what his family and everyone else have to act out around him, so that for as long as he is alive, he won't see the truth. And if he were to die, there just wouldn't be any point. SAD.

Someone tell me what this means

Nietzsche Family Circus

This website pairs a random Nietzsche quote with a random Family Circus cartoon, with hilarious results. I love the internet.


"Thoughts are the shadows of our feelings -
always darker, emptier and simpler."

oh no

Heidi Klum has released a Christmas single, "Wonderland," which I hope does not have a Pavlovian effect on me where I will no longer find stunning blonde models attractive. This has to be the least sexy song EVER (just edging out "Oklahoma!")

jokes to be made:
- Referring to "Wonderland" as "Wonderbra-land."
- Pronouncing it "VUNDER-land."
- Combining the two. Calling it "VUNDER-bra-land."

new Deicide album

So, I just bought this album and it is instantly the stupidest record I've ever heard.

First of all, this is the cover art:


YEAH.

So, with a title like "Stench of Redemption" and songs like "Death to Jesus," you know you are in for an IQ-raising experience. Actually, ok, typing this in my room, and having listened to death metal for the last five years, I started laughing out loud at "Death to Jesus." It's maybe the stupidest thing I've ever heard.

On the other hand, I do not have an ironic relationship to this album.

Although Deicide have been a running joke for the past ten years, since every album they put out seemed to be worse than the next (although mercifully, their previous records are ALL under 35 minutes long). Not to mention, that Glenn Benton publicly announced that he was going to kill himself and then DIDN'T (wuss). But after hearing the last Vital Remains record ("Dechristianize"), with Glenn Benton (from Deicide) on vocals, everyone in the "metal community" suddenly had to wonder, could the new Deicide album be good?!

Well...I mean...it's a Deicide album, so when you say it's "good," you have to take into account what that means. The guitarists in the band quit (they were brothers), and so Benton has drafted INCREDIBLE talent in the form of a dude from Cannibal Corpse and a dude from Iced Earth (yes, the band which wrote a concept "suite" about the battle of Gettysburg and features former Judas Priest vocalist "Ripper" Owens, the person portrayed by Marky Mark in the film "Rock Star"). So, while the music is still mostly the same weirdly slow and redundant Deicide riffs, on *top of* the normal material is extremely fluid and beautiful guitar melodies and leads. It doesn't exactly "fit" because the duhn-duhn-duhn-duh-duh-duh double-bass plod is so very unmelodic, that every time these sweeping solos come on, you have to switch into a totally different mode of listening.

In conclusion, the new Deicide album:
-is retarded.
-has the coolest guitar playing on a death metal record maybe EVER. (obvious exceptions for Death and Morbid Angel)
-has a bonus Deep Purple cover if you buy the vinyl.
-makes me want to buy a pair of white hi-tops.
-is not parent-friendly.
-is still not as good as the Vital Remains 2xLP...

Democracy (in Mexico)

By way of a clarification of my points in the last post, here are two quotes from the New York Times about the swearing-in-to-office of Mexico's new President:

The courts determined Mr. Calderón, 44 years old, won the election last July 2 by about 240,000 votes out of 41 million ballots cast. But his principal rival, Andrés Manuel Lopéz Obrador, has insisted that the official results are tainted and has never conceded defeat.

Mr. Calderón reached out: “To those who voted for other political options, I will not ignore the reasons and causes for your votes,” he said. “And I ask you to let me gain your confidence with acts.”

I think it is time here to make clear the subversive point about democracy that I was trying to make in the last post: it is about LOSING. Democracy is not a rule by majority. It is about the losers accepting the will of the majority. I am not "for" democracy. This is why the question of a one-party rule (update from Gourevitch's book-- Uganda ended its "non-party" system in 1995, allowing semi-competitive elections which kept Museveni in power) is interesting, because the difference between a rubber-stamp parliament and a strong majority in a party system is to be seen in the willingness of the opposition to continue to participate and legitimate the system after their loss. So, I would say, with no interest in "finding out" whether the Mexican election was legitimate or not, that they will have a democracy only when the leftists concede defeat, and that if there is never a support by the left constituency of the new political order, there will be a huge problem--half of the country would be "outside". Democracy is not just counting votes. Here we see why the definition I am giving is not a happy definition.