This is a really promising movie from the start, and though I think it has more than its share of problems, it ultimately left me with the sense of confounded, frustrated intrigue that makes me want to write about something. The basic story is of a sudden rash of suicides in Tokyo. It’s a serious topic, and the parallels to real life are obvious – Japan has the second-highest suicide rates in the world, and events very similar to that depicted here are common. These are on a huge, ludicrous scale in line with Japanese horror films, though – fifty girls at a time throw themselves in front of a train in the film’s opening sequence.
That sequence shows off one of the great choices made, the cinema verite camerawork that blurs the line between documentary and absurd horror. This isn’t the gimmicky handheld style spreading in movies like Cloverfield, but a much more neutral camera eye that, with its slight graininess and locked-off view conveys a different kind of “realness.” It makes the opening gut-wrenching, as it sets up the girls as strikingly everyday. Then it goes into splatter mode, drenching the train in corn-syrup blood. It’s a dichotomy – between the real and the absurd, the filmic and the lived – the movie goes on to play with quite compellingly.
The following hour does a great job of offering a view of what is, in the film’s own parlance, a jigsaw world, where the suicides are suggested as, at least possibly, having causes both concrete and more metaphorical. No punches are pulled in making this a story about Japan’s ongoing social malaise, as everyone in the movie guzzles crap pop-culture in the form of the preteen girl-group Dessert, people sadly hunt for companionship on the internet, kids follow fads without knowing the line between a joke and a commitment, and everyone on the trains looks like they’re about to kill themselves just on principle. There’s a parallel ambiguity to the detective story that pins it all down. Are these true suicides? Is something supernatural going on? A crazed teen fad?
All of this richness is what makes the film’s one hour mark at first galling, then rewarding, as it trots out a barely-developed, malevolent “villain” to take the fall for the ongoing rash of deaths. At first it seems unbelievably ham-handed, a narrative dues ex machina that explains far too much of what has come before. But soon, we realize that the film itself is making this exact point, as it spins back out into chaos and despair. We are quite bluntly being told that there are no easy answers, that, just maybe, the problems being described are far deeper than any mass murderer.
One thing that bugs the shit out of me with this movie, and with a lot of Japanese movies, is that even though one of the film’s themes is the manipulative pull of pop music, it uses some of the most saccharine film music, at some of the most obvious and pappy moments, of any film I have ever seen. It’s so ham-handed it’s almost like Godard’s satire of film music (I forget the name of that one). Further, the film’s closing trades in a few too many of the tropes of Japanese horror, as in its use of children and a descent into surrealism.
It does highlight particular social problems, and ends with a truly unfortunate ‘message’ moment about being ‘connected to yourself,’ as if, despite his earlier trick, the writer didn’t have the will to leave things truly unresolved. But it does retain a (to me) certain irresolvable status, a refusal to settle clearly on any ‘villain’ that reminded me a great deal of the recent “Dark Knight.” Perhaps ironically, while the film from supposedly individualistic America has a great deal to say about the role of law in society, the film from supposedly ‘collectivist’ Japan seems to locate all of the problems it depicts in problems of individual choice, behavior, and psychological orientation. This emphasis may ultimately suggest an exacerbation of the very problems of atomization and detachment that the film seems to bemoan.
Sunday, January 4, 2009
Thursday, January 1, 2009
On Apollo, Dionysius, and Batman
In response to Paul's post on The Dark Knight:
The gap between the illusion/"hope" of justice, represented by Dent, and the ugly reality of enforcement and extralegality, represented both by the Joker and Batman, connects to some of the most fascinating issues I've been grappling with lately. It seems related to the Birth of Tragedy, as the division between the Apollonian and Dionysian is in one sense that between a comforting illusion of order and sanity on the one hand, and the brutal confrontation with the fundamentally chaotic nature of existence on the other. It ties in even more closely with a discussion I was recently having with my brother, who is a nascent libertarian. My argument to him (though I didn't put it in these terms) was that, ironically, libertarianism is founded on an assumed Apollonian worldview. That is, you can only argue for libertarianism if you believe that the world is subject to an emergent meta-order that develops from the unrestrained actions of many individuals. My contrary position, as a socialist, is essentially dionysian - that we live in a world and society that are ultimately chaotic, and that the important thing is to construct institutions that combat that chaos.
The Dent/Batman duality puts that division on slightly different ground, since Dent's status as the Lawgiver is both personal and institutional - he represents both humanity as Apollonian, and the forces of the state maintaining order in the face of the Dionysian, which is embodied in the Joker, but which implicitly exists in all of us (even Dent).
These two forces have historically traded off - a book like "A Canticle for Leibowitz" shows the episodic nature of human history, achievement followed by collapse ad infinitum. The solution proposed by "The Dark Knight," one that seems to accord with contemporary socialist thought, particularly Laclau, is that one possible way to eliminate this cycle is to make sure that the Dionysian and the Apollonian remain in balance. This requires that the Dionysian remain fundamentally 'outside' but still imaginatively accessible. This is the point of the end of the film - the best way Batman can help maintain order is to remain ultimately outside of order. All of the bat-imitators, even the bat-signal, are symbols of the integration of chaos into order, and that integration ultimately leaves the ordered universe itself less stable. I’m reminded of the chapter from “Freakonomics” about promiscuity – the point that large amounts of celibacy actually makes sex more dangerous by reducing the number of participants and increasing the risk for each one. Stricter and stricter order leads inevitably to its own cataclysmic collapse.
The gap between the illusion/"hope" of justice, represented by Dent, and the ugly reality of enforcement and extralegality, represented both by the Joker and Batman, connects to some of the most fascinating issues I've been grappling with lately. It seems related to the Birth of Tragedy, as the division between the Apollonian and Dionysian is in one sense that between a comforting illusion of order and sanity on the one hand, and the brutal confrontation with the fundamentally chaotic nature of existence on the other. It ties in even more closely with a discussion I was recently having with my brother, who is a nascent libertarian. My argument to him (though I didn't put it in these terms) was that, ironically, libertarianism is founded on an assumed Apollonian worldview. That is, you can only argue for libertarianism if you believe that the world is subject to an emergent meta-order that develops from the unrestrained actions of many individuals. My contrary position, as a socialist, is essentially dionysian - that we live in a world and society that are ultimately chaotic, and that the important thing is to construct institutions that combat that chaos.
The Dent/Batman duality puts that division on slightly different ground, since Dent's status as the Lawgiver is both personal and institutional - he represents both humanity as Apollonian, and the forces of the state maintaining order in the face of the Dionysian, which is embodied in the Joker, but which implicitly exists in all of us (even Dent).
These two forces have historically traded off - a book like "A Canticle for Leibowitz" shows the episodic nature of human history, achievement followed by collapse ad infinitum. The solution proposed by "The Dark Knight," one that seems to accord with contemporary socialist thought, particularly Laclau, is that one possible way to eliminate this cycle is to make sure that the Dionysian and the Apollonian remain in balance. This requires that the Dionysian remain fundamentally 'outside' but still imaginatively accessible. This is the point of the end of the film - the best way Batman can help maintain order is to remain ultimately outside of order. All of the bat-imitators, even the bat-signal, are symbols of the integration of chaos into order, and that integration ultimately leaves the ordered universe itself less stable. I’m reminded of the chapter from “Freakonomics” about promiscuity – the point that large amounts of celibacy actually makes sex more dangerous by reducing the number of participants and increasing the risk for each one. Stricter and stricter order leads inevitably to its own cataclysmic collapse.
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
On Guitar Hero
Three or four days ago, I got to play Guitar Hero for the first time, at a friend's party. Then tonight I got to see and play Rock Band, which is fundamentally similar - a game that tests your sense of rhythm by sequencing certain actions to famous rock songs. First, let's get the pro forma out of the way:
As a musician, Guitar Hero offends my sensibilities.
As much as it bears a huge whiff of self-importance, I feel like it's the kind of thing I want to put in scare quote so I can hide its fundamental honesty. The game has a weird, not entirely obvious relation to actual musicianship, and it's supremely frustrating not to be good at something modeled on a real-life activity you're pretty good at. Someone tonight mentioned a video of the band Journey playing along to their own songs and failing miserably, apparently making a more direct form of that point - i.e. don't confuse this for the real thing, fatty.
But why is this important for musicians to protect? Well, because of the rewards of musicianship. Obviously, no groupies are going to glom onto the best of the best Guitar Hero players the way they (used to) do real guitar heroes, but there is a much more indefinable and slightly more fleeting set of emotional rewards that actual play reveals, a kind of climatic experience of accomplishment. And it's not incidental that a crowd is built in both to reward and punish.
But I'm not in Journey, and I don't play that much real guitar - it would probably take me a month to learn, to any level of competency, most of the songs featured on Guitar Hero, and to be frank, I don't really want to. The music that I play is generally way less virtuosic and more focused on a) getting some ideas out and b) having fun making noise. That's thanks to the final reason I'm offended by guitar hero - it's not just musicianship at stake, it's creativity. Despite my understanding of the principles of the cultural commons, it still simply feels a little less creative, to me, to play someone else's song, making Guitar Hero doubly fake.
Allright, so, got that judgment out of the way. Now on to actual thought. What's most confounding about the experience of playing Guitar Hero is the nonintuitive relationship between the source music and the requirements placed on the player. First, it's not as if there's anything like a "G" on the Guitar Hero controller - there are only five buttons and a little fin-like thing you strike to play. So, from the start, there's no such thing as a "note" - all you have is a color. Second, especially at the easy difficulty settings, you don't actually play all (or even most) of the notes, instead doing something drastically simpler and getting a whole slew of sound as a reward. What really sucks about this for anyone who is either a musician or just generally has good audio rhythm is that, obviously, there's no way to tell which of these many notes you're supposed to pretend to "play," so depending on the audio becomes a lost cause. Ultimately, while the song is crucial in a lot of ways, Guitar Hero is a visual rhythm game - you watch the little dots come down the screen and then hit the little buttons at the right time. It's a whole different language than music, one that happens to fit within one aspect of music's regime.
All that said, though, I must admit it's hella fun - weirdly, in some ways it's way more fun than playing an actual show, which is most often a stressful situation in which you kind of lose track of everything going on around you. By simplifying the whole process, Guitar Hero actually lets you enjoy it more, even with a fake audience. And maybe that's what's most upsetting of all - not that Guitar Hero is a matter of lowly mortals stealing fire from the musical Gods, but that it might keep some people who would otherwise be jumping over those initial hurdles from doing so. Lord knows, if it weren't for Fallout 3, I would be doing a lot more exploration of the rotting hulk of Washington, D. . . oh, wait.
As a musician, Guitar Hero offends my sensibilities.
As much as it bears a huge whiff of self-importance, I feel like it's the kind of thing I want to put in scare quote so I can hide its fundamental honesty. The game has a weird, not entirely obvious relation to actual musicianship, and it's supremely frustrating not to be good at something modeled on a real-life activity you're pretty good at. Someone tonight mentioned a video of the band Journey playing along to their own songs and failing miserably, apparently making a more direct form of that point - i.e. don't confuse this for the real thing, fatty.
But why is this important for musicians to protect? Well, because of the rewards of musicianship. Obviously, no groupies are going to glom onto the best of the best Guitar Hero players the way they (used to) do real guitar heroes, but there is a much more indefinable and slightly more fleeting set of emotional rewards that actual play reveals, a kind of climatic experience of accomplishment. And it's not incidental that a crowd is built in both to reward and punish.
But I'm not in Journey, and I don't play that much real guitar - it would probably take me a month to learn, to any level of competency, most of the songs featured on Guitar Hero, and to be frank, I don't really want to. The music that I play is generally way less virtuosic and more focused on a) getting some ideas out and b) having fun making noise. That's thanks to the final reason I'm offended by guitar hero - it's not just musicianship at stake, it's creativity. Despite my understanding of the principles of the cultural commons, it still simply feels a little less creative, to me, to play someone else's song, making Guitar Hero doubly fake.
Allright, so, got that judgment out of the way. Now on to actual thought. What's most confounding about the experience of playing Guitar Hero is the nonintuitive relationship between the source music and the requirements placed on the player. First, it's not as if there's anything like a "G" on the Guitar Hero controller - there are only five buttons and a little fin-like thing you strike to play. So, from the start, there's no such thing as a "note" - all you have is a color. Second, especially at the easy difficulty settings, you don't actually play all (or even most) of the notes, instead doing something drastically simpler and getting a whole slew of sound as a reward. What really sucks about this for anyone who is either a musician or just generally has good audio rhythm is that, obviously, there's no way to tell which of these many notes you're supposed to pretend to "play," so depending on the audio becomes a lost cause. Ultimately, while the song is crucial in a lot of ways, Guitar Hero is a visual rhythm game - you watch the little dots come down the screen and then hit the little buttons at the right time. It's a whole different language than music, one that happens to fit within one aspect of music's regime.
All that said, though, I must admit it's hella fun - weirdly, in some ways it's way more fun than playing an actual show, which is most often a stressful situation in which you kind of lose track of everything going on around you. By simplifying the whole process, Guitar Hero actually lets you enjoy it more, even with a fake audience. And maybe that's what's most upsetting of all - not that Guitar Hero is a matter of lowly mortals stealing fire from the musical Gods, but that it might keep some people who would otherwise be jumping over those initial hurdles from doing so. Lord knows, if it weren't for Fallout 3, I would be doing a lot more exploration of the rotting hulk of Washington, D. . . oh, wait.
Saturday, October 18, 2008
Hoodwinked! Bamboozled!
I was just watching a broadcast of an Obama Rally . . . I think live. In reference to McCain's economic policy, he says:
"We will not be hoodwinked. We will not be bamboozled."
I'm doing a little looking around, and it seems Obama has been using these phrases for a while. And it's not really Malcolm, just a speech from Spike Lee's movie, never actually delivered:
http://www.mydd.com/story/2008/1/26/15930/0207
Is this a Democratic version of right-wing people quoting obscure passages of the bible? If so, HALLELUJAH. The mere connection has me fired up.
The question is - why haven't the Right made more hay with it? It seemed linking Obama with X would be one hell of a lot more frightening to the people the McCain campaign is targetting (which is apparently ignorant, distrustful rednecks who truly believe themselves to be 'more patriotic' than other Americans and who really think Obama is a terrorist). But it seems this is a really subtle play on Obama's part, since the Republicans would probably just end up looking ridiculous if they accused him of referencing Malcom X . . . "But it's not really him, it's from a movie."
-David
"We will not be hoodwinked. We will not be bamboozled."
I'm doing a little looking around, and it seems Obama has been using these phrases for a while. And it's not really Malcolm, just a speech from Spike Lee's movie, never actually delivered:
http://www.mydd.com/story/2008/1/26/15930/0207
Is this a Democratic version of right-wing people quoting obscure passages of the bible? If so, HALLELUJAH. The mere connection has me fired up.
The question is - why haven't the Right made more hay with it? It seemed linking Obama with X would be one hell of a lot more frightening to the people the McCain campaign is targetting (which is apparently ignorant, distrustful rednecks who truly believe themselves to be 'more patriotic' than other Americans and who really think Obama is a terrorist). But it seems this is a really subtle play on Obama's part, since the Republicans would probably just end up looking ridiculous if they accused him of referencing Malcom X . . . "But it's not really him, it's from a movie."
-David
Friday, October 3, 2008
On Pelosi
Is anyone doing the cable news thing? MSNBC has Nancy Pelosi pitching the bailout bill, and has the Dow Jones ticker next to her. Pretty hilarious - at least for the last few minutes the Dow has been losing gains progressively as she speaks. The underlying assumption is just comical.
She's also doing a good job of shouting out Democrats who rewrote the bill with essential stuff on protecting mortgage holders, getting rid of golden parachutes, etc. I'm fairly impressed with both her and frankly with the entire process. I don't want to misinterpret this as a moment of Democrats showing backbone - god knows we're not quite there yet, and this was a real multiparty resistance to bullshit, with a lot of credit going to Republicans, which is if anything more inspiring.
And now we're watching the vote tallies come in in real time - something I have never seen in my lifetime. Really fascinating.
She's also doing a good job of shouting out Democrats who rewrote the bill with essential stuff on protecting mortgage holders, getting rid of golden parachutes, etc. I'm fairly impressed with both her and frankly with the entire process. I don't want to misinterpret this as a moment of Democrats showing backbone - god knows we're not quite there yet, and this was a real multiparty resistance to bullshit, with a lot of credit going to Republicans, which is if anything more inspiring.
And now we're watching the vote tallies come in in real time - something I have never seen in my lifetime. Really fascinating.
Thursday, October 2, 2008
Liveblogging the (V.P.) Debate
9:31 - Biden's daughters are total hotties. And with that, I'm through.
9:30 - I think it's fairly predictable that Palin will benefit from low expectations. A blowout for Biden, but by whatever weird calculus prevails, I'm guessing it will be known as a draw.
9:28 - Biden's point about not questioning motives is huge. Not just presidential, but poetic. I'm not so sure it's true, of course - personally I imagine Jesse Helms was a corrupt fuck, but as a PR gesture it's got its merits.
9:25 - Palin doesn't come back at Biden on the Bork thing . . . this is a core conservative issue and it seems she's not even familiar with it, again.
9:23 - Biden may be closing this thing down. He's been visibly pissed off for most of the debate, and the question is whether people will identify more with that or with Palin's recycled Bush folksiness.
9:22 - John McCain is "the man we need to leave - I mean lead." Classic.
9:20 - She attributes "Shining city on a hill" to Reagan? I think that about sums up the depth of not just the McCain campaign but the Republican party.
9:16 - Palin completely fails to address the question of Cheney's interpretation of the VP's position outside of the executive branch. It strikes me that she's not even familiar with the issue. Biden gives the sensible answer that Cheney is self-aggrandizing.
9:14 - It's funny, Palin mentions "having a conversation" with McCain, and I can't even picture it. I can only see McCain holding her in barely-concealed contempt. McCain is flawed, but at least he's substantive. The idea of Sarah Palin in a position of authority in the U.S. national government is frankly frightening, just as much as it was before the debate.
9:12 - Palin on Biden's schoolteacher wife: "Her reward is in heaven, huh?" For a secular person, this comes across as weird and vaguely threatening. I wonder if this will be spun as a blunder.
9:10 - I'm starting to notice tone more than anything. She's clearly a charming performer, very Bush-like. But also like Bush, she's completely without substance, without a thought process. There's nothing back there. I just really wonder whether people will notice this, and whether they're going to make the right decision.
9:08 - Okay, I'M tired, I can't imagine what those two are feeling.
9:01 - "It's so obvious I'm a Washington outsider . . . " I can't say I hate Palin, which surprises me somewhat. But she's clearly a Barbie doll in the worst possible way. There's absolutely no substance here, she's regurgitating slogans.
9:00 - Biden seems to be getting tired. Repeating himself on Afghanistan.
8:58 - "Facts matter." There is no important principle that distinguishes the Democrats and Republicans.
8:56 - More incoherence from Palin on nuclear weapons . . . srsly.
8:56 - Biden takes the opening and runs down all of the places where there has been no declared difference between McCain and Bush.
8:53 - Biden's critique of Bush admin in Israel is harsh and pointed. But can h connect it to McCain? Again, he refuses to take the attack dog role. Palin - "I'm so glad we both love Israel." Creeeeeeeepy.
8:51 - Again with the "second Holocaust." Downright offensive.
8:49 - And now she's failing to distinguish between "sitting down" and "diplomacy." Biden points out the ridiculousness of the McCain campaigns attempts to square the circle.
8:48 - What I'm most impressed by is that Palin can say "Akmedenijad" (sp?) without showing her pride. Her answer is not just vague but outdated even by standards of debate rhetoric, going back to the "talking to dictators" line against Obama. Wasn't that like, three months ago?
8:47 - Okay, Palin is predictably ineffectual, going back to Iraq. The McCain campaign must know that this isn't much of a selling strategy.
8:46 - Biden on Pakistan vs. Iran is strong, but I'm on the fucking edge of my seat waiting for Palin. This will be where she lives or dies - international affairs.
8:45 - Okay though, Biden on McCain's fundamental understanding of the war is fairly devastating.
8:43 - There's just nothing spectacular or really interesting happening here so far. Biden has gotten mad a couple times, and that's good stuff. But they're both really just regurgitating vague outlines of party positions.
8:42 - I have to confess that even I am simply tired of talking about Iraq, to the extent that even if I did think a withdrawal was surrender, I'd be excited about it.
8:40 - On to Iraq. And I notice George Bush has not been mentioned a single time.
8:39 - And Biden seems to have gotten something interesting, apparently no difference between gay and straight couples civilly.
8:37 - Wow, Biden says something that sounds very strong - no constitutional or legal distinction between straight and gay couples.
8:35 - Palin is good on energy, and she's getting a lot of time on it.
8:32 - "If you don't understand the causes, it's virtually impossible to come up with a solution." Biden is good here. Although "clean coal" is total bullshit.
8:31 - Ooh, climate change, this should be good. Sounds like Palin is hedging a bit . . . maybe there is some human effect. And now she's just babbling . . . "I'm not interested in debating the causes, I'm here to talk about how are we going to get to positively effect the impacts." Her manner collapsed in the course of one question.
8:30 - Palin dodges mortgages to talk about Energy - I'm not sure that's going to play well. I have to say, though, she seems confident, and her smiling manner is compelling.
8:26 - "I hope the governor can convince John McCain to impose a windfall profits tax on oil companies like she did in Alaska." This sort of jiu-jitsu seems more common this cycle - complimentary but convoluted.
8:24 - Okay, Palin is off-topic, but she's performing well on her tough stance against tax breaks for oil companies. It's got Biden defensive for the first time. She's even gotten Biden praising her.
8:21 - Biden's analysis of McCain's healthcare plan is impassioned and compelling.
8:19 - The tax cut thing seems pretty clear cut. Palin's response isn't completely incoherent, which is kind of like hitting it out of the park. That seems like a theme here.
8:15 - Biden actually knows the details of McCain's positions - how many times has he supported deregulation? 20. Palin turns around and has numbers of her own - 94 times Obama didn't reduce taxes. Biden rebuts with overwhelming strength - McCain did the same thing 477 times. Palin goes back to her mayoral term . . . that's what's known as being on your heels.
8:10 - Oh, who do we blame subprimes on, to Palin. This should be good. Blaming Wall Street for being greedy is like castigating the fox for eating chickens. And she's calling for strict oversight, weird from a Republican. The message about restraint is a good one for a Republican, hits the good messages about conservatism and responsibility at a time when it makes sense.
8:09 - Palin's literally incoherent, babbling sloganeering is just creepy.
8:08 - The effect of Palin talking about McCain nonstop has a bit of a weird vibe to it. Biden's doing it a bit with Obama too. It's kind of like they're competing car salesmen.
8:06 - Palin goes to soccer moms as economic belwethers . . . and my own mom next to me sighs in disgust. That seems like a signal that folksiness isn't selling.
8:04 - First question on the bailout. "The worst economic policies we've ever had." But will he relate it to McCain? Well, going more positive than that - pro-Obama.
8:04 - "Can I call you Joe?" from Palin. Well-calibrated folksiness.
8:02 - The most anticipated VP debate in history . . . and Bryan Williams puts that in perspective immediately by pointing out what a weird pick Palin was.
9:30 - I think it's fairly predictable that Palin will benefit from low expectations. A blowout for Biden, but by whatever weird calculus prevails, I'm guessing it will be known as a draw.
9:28 - Biden's point about not questioning motives is huge. Not just presidential, but poetic. I'm not so sure it's true, of course - personally I imagine Jesse Helms was a corrupt fuck, but as a PR gesture it's got its merits.
9:25 - Palin doesn't come back at Biden on the Bork thing . . . this is a core conservative issue and it seems she's not even familiar with it, again.
9:23 - Biden may be closing this thing down. He's been visibly pissed off for most of the debate, and the question is whether people will identify more with that or with Palin's recycled Bush folksiness.
9:22 - John McCain is "the man we need to leave - I mean lead." Classic.
9:20 - She attributes "Shining city on a hill" to Reagan? I think that about sums up the depth of not just the McCain campaign but the Republican party.
9:16 - Palin completely fails to address the question of Cheney's interpretation of the VP's position outside of the executive branch. It strikes me that she's not even familiar with the issue. Biden gives the sensible answer that Cheney is self-aggrandizing.
9:14 - It's funny, Palin mentions "having a conversation" with McCain, and I can't even picture it. I can only see McCain holding her in barely-concealed contempt. McCain is flawed, but at least he's substantive. The idea of Sarah Palin in a position of authority in the U.S. national government is frankly frightening, just as much as it was before the debate.
9:12 - Palin on Biden's schoolteacher wife: "Her reward is in heaven, huh?" For a secular person, this comes across as weird and vaguely threatening. I wonder if this will be spun as a blunder.
9:10 - I'm starting to notice tone more than anything. She's clearly a charming performer, very Bush-like. But also like Bush, she's completely without substance, without a thought process. There's nothing back there. I just really wonder whether people will notice this, and whether they're going to make the right decision.
9:08 - Okay, I'M tired, I can't imagine what those two are feeling.
9:01 - "It's so obvious I'm a Washington outsider . . . " I can't say I hate Palin, which surprises me somewhat. But she's clearly a Barbie doll in the worst possible way. There's absolutely no substance here, she's regurgitating slogans.
9:00 - Biden seems to be getting tired. Repeating himself on Afghanistan.
8:58 - "Facts matter." There is no important principle that distinguishes the Democrats and Republicans.
8:56 - More incoherence from Palin on nuclear weapons . . . srsly.
8:56 - Biden takes the opening and runs down all of the places where there has been no declared difference between McCain and Bush.
8:53 - Biden's critique of Bush admin in Israel is harsh and pointed. But can h connect it to McCain? Again, he refuses to take the attack dog role. Palin - "I'm so glad we both love Israel." Creeeeeeeepy.
8:51 - Again with the "second Holocaust." Downright offensive.
8:49 - And now she's failing to distinguish between "sitting down" and "diplomacy." Biden points out the ridiculousness of the McCain campaigns attempts to square the circle.
8:48 - What I'm most impressed by is that Palin can say "Akmedenijad" (sp?) without showing her pride. Her answer is not just vague but outdated even by standards of debate rhetoric, going back to the "talking to dictators" line against Obama. Wasn't that like, three months ago?
8:47 - Okay, Palin is predictably ineffectual, going back to Iraq. The McCain campaign must know that this isn't much of a selling strategy.
8:46 - Biden on Pakistan vs. Iran is strong, but I'm on the fucking edge of my seat waiting for Palin. This will be where she lives or dies - international affairs.
8:45 - Okay though, Biden on McCain's fundamental understanding of the war is fairly devastating.
8:43 - There's just nothing spectacular or really interesting happening here so far. Biden has gotten mad a couple times, and that's good stuff. But they're both really just regurgitating vague outlines of party positions.
8:42 - I have to confess that even I am simply tired of talking about Iraq, to the extent that even if I did think a withdrawal was surrender, I'd be excited about it.
8:40 - On to Iraq. And I notice George Bush has not been mentioned a single time.
8:39 - And Biden seems to have gotten something interesting, apparently no difference between gay and straight couples civilly.
8:37 - Wow, Biden says something that sounds very strong - no constitutional or legal distinction between straight and gay couples.
8:35 - Palin is good on energy, and she's getting a lot of time on it.
8:32 - "If you don't understand the causes, it's virtually impossible to come up with a solution." Biden is good here. Although "clean coal" is total bullshit.
8:31 - Ooh, climate change, this should be good. Sounds like Palin is hedging a bit . . . maybe there is some human effect. And now she's just babbling . . . "I'm not interested in debating the causes, I'm here to talk about how are we going to get to positively effect the impacts." Her manner collapsed in the course of one question.
8:30 - Palin dodges mortgages to talk about Energy - I'm not sure that's going to play well. I have to say, though, she seems confident, and her smiling manner is compelling.
8:26 - "I hope the governor can convince John McCain to impose a windfall profits tax on oil companies like she did in Alaska." This sort of jiu-jitsu seems more common this cycle - complimentary but convoluted.
8:24 - Okay, Palin is off-topic, but she's performing well on her tough stance against tax breaks for oil companies. It's got Biden defensive for the first time. She's even gotten Biden praising her.
8:21 - Biden's analysis of McCain's healthcare plan is impassioned and compelling.
8:19 - The tax cut thing seems pretty clear cut. Palin's response isn't completely incoherent, which is kind of like hitting it out of the park. That seems like a theme here.
8:15 - Biden actually knows the details of McCain's positions - how many times has he supported deregulation? 20. Palin turns around and has numbers of her own - 94 times Obama didn't reduce taxes. Biden rebuts with overwhelming strength - McCain did the same thing 477 times. Palin goes back to her mayoral term . . . that's what's known as being on your heels.
8:10 - Oh, who do we blame subprimes on, to Palin. This should be good. Blaming Wall Street for being greedy is like castigating the fox for eating chickens. And she's calling for strict oversight, weird from a Republican. The message about restraint is a good one for a Republican, hits the good messages about conservatism and responsibility at a time when it makes sense.
8:09 - Palin's literally incoherent, babbling sloganeering is just creepy.
8:08 - The effect of Palin talking about McCain nonstop has a bit of a weird vibe to it. Biden's doing it a bit with Obama too. It's kind of like they're competing car salesmen.
8:06 - Palin goes to soccer moms as economic belwethers . . . and my own mom next to me sighs in disgust. That seems like a signal that folksiness isn't selling.
8:04 - First question on the bailout. "The worst economic policies we've ever had." But will he relate it to McCain? Well, going more positive than that - pro-Obama.
8:04 - "Can I call you Joe?" from Palin. Well-calibrated folksiness.
8:02 - The most anticipated VP debate in history . . . and Bryan Williams puts that in perspective immediately by pointing out what a weird pick Palin was.
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
Utopian Community and the Critique of Liberalism
The social failures of utopian communities, whether based on religious stricture, as in the case of Warren Jeffs' polygamist sect, or on the liberal universalism and enlightenment, as in the case of Auroville, seem to end in similar sorts of failures. In both Auroville and the Texas polygamists' ranch, there were accusations of child abuse and neglect, abuse of power, and general dysfunction.
The "mother" who runs Auroville concieved it as "a universal town where people from around the world could live together in harmony and unity, without having to worry about food and shelter." Setting aside for a moment the implicit scientific utopianism of the second part of the claim, the social utopianism of the first perfectly encapsulates the overtly stated goals that underpin much of modern Western society. And, as both David Theo Goldberg and Carl Schmitt would predict (from vastly different perspectives), this universalism leads quite directly to an oppression that must be actively disavowed - according to the BBC article, local Tamils have great difficulty becoming members of the exclusive (universalist) club at Auroville, a contradiction that would seem difficult to maintain. Is this an instance of the need for supposedly universalist humanism to covertly exclude some as "non-human" in order to sustain its enterprise?
The "mother" who runs Auroville concieved it as "a universal town where people from around the world could live together in harmony and unity, without having to worry about food and shelter." Setting aside for a moment the implicit scientific utopianism of the second part of the claim, the social utopianism of the first perfectly encapsulates the overtly stated goals that underpin much of modern Western society. And, as both David Theo Goldberg and Carl Schmitt would predict (from vastly different perspectives), this universalism leads quite directly to an oppression that must be actively disavowed - according to the BBC article, local Tamils have great difficulty becoming members of the exclusive (universalist) club at Auroville, a contradiction that would seem difficult to maintain. Is this an instance of the need for supposedly universalist humanism to covertly exclude some as "non-human" in order to sustain its enterprise?
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