Watching Cowboy Bebop

I don’t often get time to watch anime anymore. Between grad school and work, my time is pretty much spoken for. And anime is by definition time-consuming. A story that expands over twenty-six episodes? Textbook time-consuming.

So tonight, watching Cowboy Bebop, unfolding myself in the hour it took to watch two episodes, I found myself unwinding in the same way the story does. This might be my favorite anime, ever. Between the washed out colors and simple art style and the way the stories always seem soft-spoken, as muted as the colors, there’s just something about it that invites relaxation.

And while Bebop may not seem to have a story on the surface, there is definitely a story that unfolds overtime. But that’s not where the focus lies. Instead, the focus is primarily on the characters. And if the colors are downplayed, if the explosions are less frequent, if the tone of the series is muted, then the characters more than make up for it. They’re not larger than life. They’re lifelike. They’re believable characters. Sure, there are those random moments of awkward dialogue, but that’s more a problem of translation than anything else.

All of that plays perfectly into my  style of storytelling; it’s the reason I like Delillo and Faulkner, the reason why Light in August was on the groom’s cake at my wedding. I like the expansive stories. Which is awkward, being a writer primarily of short stories at the moment (again, grad school limitations). There’s something to learn from classic anime like Bebop (and there are some modern anime that follow the same pattern) and it’s the same lesson we learn from those expansive works like Faulkner and Dellillo and to a lesser extent Chabon and Franzen. Stories don’t have to be all flash and explosions. I love a good Jonathan Lethem novel, but the best stories are those that don’t rely on spectacle. Sure, I fall into the trap of spectacle in my own writing, and it works sometimes, but there’s something to be said for understatement, whether that means not having a kangaroo in the bathtub, or focusing on human characters in what has typically been viewed as an action-heavy, plot-centric medium.

Elizabeth Bishop taught me to linger on those great moments when writing poetry. Apparently Cowboy Bebop is teaching me the same thing in fiction.

Late Night with Slavoj Zizek

Putting insomnia to good use, I decided to read some Zizek.  Sublime Object of Ideology. I ran across this little ditty and just had to share.

After some supposedly funny or witty remark, you can hear the laughter and applause included in the soundtrack of the show itself–here we have the exact counterpart of the Chorus in classical tragedy…why this laughter?…The only correct answer would be that the Other–embodied in the television set–is relieving us even of our duty to laugh–is laughing instead of us. So even if, tired from a hard day’s work, all evening we did nothing but gaze drowsily into the television screen, we can say afterwards that objectively, through the medium of the other, we had a really good time.

Apropos of nothing. This is just why I love Zizek. Cause where else are you gonna get a discussion of Marx, Lacan AND laugh tracks?

G’night E’erbody!

Christina Hendricks Boobs, or A Lesson in Modesty

 

Christina Hendricks at the Emmys 2011

Being married, I spend more time watching post-Emmy fashion reporting than I used to. Not an inordinate amount. It’s not like my wife sits around watching E constantly. (Is E even still around? I’m so out of touch on that one.) Maybe that’s what makes this situation that much scarier, because it happened on a much more mainstream show. It was on the Today show that I first heard about the controversy surrounding Christina Hendrick’s Emmy dress.

First, a few facts: I’ve known about Christina Hendricks since she appeared on Firefly back in the early oughties. And since then, I get a special thrill whenever I hear the name of any actor that had anything more substantial than a bit part on that show. Especially should one of them be nominated for an Emmy. So there’s a bit of a bias going on here. I was excited that Hendricks would be nominated for an Emmy—even if I did have my head under a rock and miss her nomination for Mad Men last year.

No really. A rock. With my fingers in my ears, going Tra-la-la-la-la.

Apparently, my head was in the same place this year, because until this Monday, the morning after the Emmys aired, I had no idea that her dress had caused the kind of stir it did. I expected, on Monday morning, a rundown of the best and worst dressed, as tends to be the standard after any of these red carpet events. And the standard look back at the highlights, the tear jerking moments from the night before, how drunk Charlie Sheen was when delivering his apology to the Tro—I mean Jon Cryer.

What I got was a diatribe on Christina Hendricks’ boobs.

I’m not a fashion expert. And I don’t really care if someone wants to call a dress good or bad. I can offer no opinion on that count.

What does bother me is when I see a female reporter taking an actress to task for her irresponsible choice in a dress.

Drug use? Rant away. Drunk driving? Cursing the Jews? All condemnable offenses for highly visible people such  as actors and actresses, people who should be role models, not cautionary tales. But when you start to critique another woman for showing off too much skin? It just seems like too many steps back for me.

Let’s give credit where credit is due: women have worked hard to earn their place anywhere in our society, and the screen is no exception. Perhaps even more importantly, women have worked hard to earn respect. So that even I got a little misty eyed when all five women nominated for Best Actress in a Comedy got up on stage before any winner had been announced. It was a big f**king deal. (It was an even bigger deal when Melissa McCarthy won, but that’s another story.)

Instead, we get an actress who has already earned no small amount of respect from her peers being reduced to a pair of breasts.

And don’t tell me that she asked for it. That’s like saying a rape victim asked for it because of what she wore. It’s disgusting, and it smacks of mid-century chauvinism, something we claim to have left behind as a culture. I think the real reason we’re okay with attacking Hendricks for her dress choice is that, for all our progressive rhetoric, we still live in an either/or society. Everything for us is black or white. You can be either an actress or a woman. And god help you if you try to be both, or if you try to give us even a hint of womanness in your actor.

Because that’s what’s at stake. Christina Hendricks wore a dress that showed off her breasts, a highly female…asset. And so many people are uncomfortable because it supposedly takes attention away from her acting skills and refocuses it on her chest. I think the problem is not that she’s trying to show off her curves—and let’s face it, Hendricks is probably one of the curviest women on TV at the moment. No, I think the problem is that we’re still not comfortable with anything that doesn’t fit in our either/or mold. That’s what we’re faced with when we look at Christina Hendricks on Emmy night. A woman who is not either an attractive woman or an actress, and never the two shall meet. Instead, we get someone who is both an attractive woman, comfortable enough in her sexuality to show off her assets, and a highly skilled actress.

I’m fairly sure Hendricks didn’t mean to spark controversy with her dress. But maybe, hopefully, we can use this as an opportunity to grow as a society, to accept more of these both/and situations.

Or maybe we can go back to women not showing their ankles and being barred from the theater.

In the end, it’s our choice.

PS–For comparison, here’s last year’s dress. How come we weren’t making a fuss over this?

“I don’t want any Bree! I want my money back!:” Musing on jouissance with Frasier

I was up too late again last night. And I watched a rerun of Frasier, back from season 1. Here’s a YouTube clip of the episode:

 

Around what equates to the 2:30 mark on the video above, I started waxing Lacanian. I don’t think this is anything new, but I’m just gonna make some notes here.

So, first, Lacan posits that, at the point a child (subject) enters into a relationship with language (a system of signification, the Other), something is lost. That something is chiefly jouissance, commonly interpreted as sexual pleasure, but more accurately described as enjoyment. Freud’s pleasure.

So take this scene as a metaphor, like my sleep-deprived brain did. Frasier loses money (and Lacan used money as an example of jouissance in “Position of the Unconscious,” so it’s not that much of a stretch to equate money with jouissance in this scene). What has he been sold in exchange? A fake painting. An empty signifier.

The fact that the presumed painter of this piece decries it as a forgery is also interesting, just because it means that the painting (or signifier) takes on a life of its own, apart from the artist’s original intent (or lack of intent). It becomes, in the context of the episode, a commodity. (yes, I could bring in Zizek and, by extension, Marx, but I have a headache so I’m not gonna do that now. Maybe in a later article.) A signifier. The only thing Frasier (the subject)  cares about is the money (jouissance) that was lost.

So, there’s an evolution in this episode: the painting evolves from object (the thing which the subject desires, in this case, standing in for Frasier’s desire to raise his social standing) to signifier (after it is revealeed as a forgery,  it is merely a painting, not the painting), until it is finally accepted–admittedly begrudgingly–as a valid signifier.In the end credits, Frasier hangs the painting, as if it were real. The fact that it is hung in a restroom takes away none of its significance. The painting is still given a place as a painting.And that’s what happens in Lacanian psychology–the signifier never fills the need it was intended to fill, but it still has to take it’s place as what it’s intended to be.

That was as clear as mud. But then, I guess like any good literary theory, it raises more questions than answers.

Waxing Nostalgic, or MacPaint redux

So I found out today, the Computer History Museum is now hosting the source code for the original MacPaint. That takes me back.

I didn’t start on Macs, they weren’t my first computers, but they were pretty darn close. I’m comfortable with different OS’s now because the first computer my family owned was a PC (an IBM-clone to be precise) and, not long after, when I started school, I got weekly exercises in how to use a Mac. Because Apple was the supplier of choice when it came to my elementary school. Everything was a Mac.

When I was in second grade, I won a science fair. 1st in the school, third at district, a pretty big accomplishment for a 10 year old. How’d I do it? It shouldn’t be a surprise: I wrote a book.

Yes, that’s right. Back in those days, my big science project, the thing that won me a science fair, was a book. Shocker, I know.

More to the point, though, it wasn’t only that I wrote a book. It’s that I illustrated it too. And you get three guesses how I did it.

That’s right. MacPaint.

This book I wrote–a children’s book to say the obvious–was produced completely digitally. I just wanna brag, inaccurate as the title is, that my second grade science project was in digital publishing.

(And for the record, during my remaining years in Elementary School, the only time I won a science fair was when doing something related to computers. Go figure.)

So finding out today that MacPaint (albeit a slightly older version than the one I worked with) is now a museum piece puts me in a pretty nostalgic mood. I can say, as a user, that MacPaint was indeed pretty revolutionary. There was nothing even remotely similar on my PC at home–MSPaint as we know it now wouldn’t come along for a few more years; and yes, I did get heavily into MSPaint when it was released, but it was never quite the same, nor was Paintbrush.

It kinda makes me feel old knowing this, but then again, so does the iPaq palm computer thingy I had in high school, the one my phone can now outperform. The only thing that doesn’t make me feel old is that a TI calculator costs the same and has the same resources as it did when I was younger. And that I can still develop programs in the same language I did in high school. (Which is a stretch–technically, I can still develop in C and Java, both of which I learned in high school, they’ve just changed a bit.)

Oh well, he said with a sigh. Moore’s Law in action. The times, they are a-changin.

YUMM

I like to eat. Anything, mostly. I’m going to be honest: like most Americans, I’m guilty of participating in the fast food military-industrial complex. Yes, I am a  soldier of the McDonald’s army. Mobilize me, supersize me. I don’t exactly lead a busy life, but I don’t sit on my ass. I keep awkward enough hours to pick up dinner at a drive-thru, take it home and plant myself in front of a television.

I like to eat. But I love to eat healthy. Or rather, I love the feeling it gives me when I do. I once, to my soon-to-be-daughter, described it as a bath for my internal organs. Because that’s how it makes me feel, as vulgar and disturbing a sentiment as that may seem. Not only does it make me feel clean inside, it gives me an ego boost. Whenever I eat right, whenever I fix a salad or eat at home, have a side of broccoli with a grilled chicken breast instead of getting a Big Mac and fries, I feel good about myself.

Like everyone will tell you, it’s about making good choices. So much so that it got to the point, some weeks ago, I got tired of the ever-expanding circumference of my waist. So I started doing P90X. That’s just an extension of the whole “good choices” ethos. Because it is a choice, as everyone involved with the program says, to “just keep pushing play.”

I’m not saying this to brag. I’m saying this because, this morning, CBS’s Sunday Morning put it in my head.

The questions–the ones that would spur this essay–really came about not on their cover story, but on the second feature. See, thing is, in the art world, there’s always been a conflict between the “ideal” and the realistic. Even Ruebens had his critics. But, as this particular piece pointed out, the art world is booming for artists painting plus-size models. And yet, our culture is consumed by the image of an “ideal” woman, even as we’re more and more willing to take the easier, more fattening way out, and supersize ourselves.

So in a country obsessed with being thin but getting fatter every year, is the art market some kind of reality check?

I got to thinking, with this, the last line of the story, are we raising a culture that hates itself? I changed my routine, started an extremely intense exercise regiment because I wasn’t satisfied with myself. So, is that the reason we’re, as a people, always on the lookout for the next great diet fad?

I’ve often commented on media rhetoric in this day and age. We, as a culture, constantly bombard ourselves with images of the ideal, the slender waist and the ripped abs. It’s why programs like P90X make fortunes for their creators. It’s why I can mention the South Beach Diet, and everyone’s ears perk up. As a culture, we’re becoming more unsatisfied with ourselves as we are, and craving more of the ideal, even as we get larger and larger. And yet, really, we can change things, change this culture of obesity that we’re cultivating, just by making the right choices.

So–

Are we getting to the point where we hate ourselves? And what are we going to do about it?

[Author's Note--Special thanks to my fiancee for coming up with the title to this essay.]

On Brand Loyalty

I’m sitting here trying to write, and winding up pondering brand loyalty. It’s weird how my mind works.

So as I sit at Cafe Express, writing with, in front of me, my laptop, iPhone, and empty dishes, a guy sits near me, with–take a guess–an iPhone and a laptop. This, of course, takes me back to my time at University, those glory days when you could ask a stranger to watch your stuff for you and actually have a reasonable amount of trust that said materials would still be there when you get back.

What does this have to do with brand loyalty? It all has to do with how we learn to trust people as human beings.

No matter how much we preach tolerance or color-blindness, at the end of the day, we still base our assessment of people on what they look like. That means I’m going to be more willing to trust the person who looks like me, dresses like me, carries the same phone, the same bag, whatever.

So, when a guy sits across from me, that’s where my mind is drawn: to the familiar stuff. And that’s why conformity (re: Apple) is the way of the future. You get everyone moving in equal step, get everyone to have the same experience, get everyone using a uniform system, and you create a network of trust. It’s why I bought an iPhone, after all. I wanted to know what all the fuss was about. And it’s why I’m now playing–or, rather, ignoring–around ten games of Words with Friends. All with people I know in the real world.

It’s the same reason geeks can sit around and be geeks together and enjoy it. It’s why family dynamics work. We get together with a group of people we have things in common with, and we can communicate more effectively than if things were different.

It’s ultimately why Apple is succeeding, but that’s a matter for another day.

For now, let’s just give this a blanket statement: conformity is the future! -thumbs up-

Or I’m just reading too much into things.

Something to think about either way.

(Re)Inventing the Signifier: A further look at “Window Seat”

To start up this post, I’m going to go back to Erykah Badu’s statement on her controversial music video; the one about “layers and layers of skin or demons that are a hindrance to your growth or freedom, or evolution” (source).

And once again, let’s go ahead and structure this second part of our examination around a question: what happens after Badu has (successfully) created a new signifier? I’m going to be revolutionary and say that she succeeds at her goal, even if she isn’t clear on what her goal really is.

I’ve been (re)reading Lacan’s Seminar XVII lately. Here, Lacan is concerned with the role of the master signifier. Now, let’s assume that, in the case of Badu’s music video, the act of parading nude through a community represents the master signifier. According to Lacan, this master signifier enters into a relationship with the big Other, the complete set of signifiers (a crude, vulgar oversimplification, but for the sake of our argument, it’ll do). In this exchange, the subject–here, the perpetrator of the act–doesn’t die. We can more appropriately label what happens impotence. That’s why Lacan can get away with calling this process castration.

The author isn’t dead. The author is impotent.

Why? The same reason the Lacanian subject is impotent in this same situation: the subject becomes a signifier.

We’re going to take a look at this, just so I can subject you, my dear readers, to a Lacanian diagram:

Here, S1 represents the master signifier, imposing itself on the subject (divided due to the “intervention” of the signifier). I’m only going to concern myself with the left half of this diagram for now. S2 represents the big Other (a set of all signifiers) and a represents jouissance, or enjoyment (again, a crude explanation, but I have no desire to hold a seminar all my own over a blog).

I’ve gone through all of this just to prove a point: because of the intervention of the master signifier, the subject is divided, split, and essentially becomes impotent. This is important because it goes back to our point about Badu effectively creating a signifier: it is the subject who creates the master signifier. In this process, we wind up with a lost object–a–the cause of desire, and a set of all signifiers, S2, which only exists because we believe it must exist, and would have no existence were it not for the existence of the master signifier, S1.

Confused yet?

Basically, what you need to get out of this is that Badu efffectively castrated herself, just like any good little Lacanian subject is wont to do. This is important because it plays out on a grander scale what typically happens privately before we’re even old enough to fully communicate it (as if we would ever really be able to communicate it; language doesn’t create relationships and never fully illuminates them, it always shows a lack).

So what happens next? That’s where Badu’s statement comes into play. Her artistic statement includes the necessary next step: evolution. And, because we’re dealing with something slightly different here, I would venture to add immortality. The statement, though, isn’t what matters here; the subtext and the act itself come to matter more than the author and the statement she tries to make ever will.

The Other constantly evolves. It needs to, else it would be complete. (This is all very subjective, mind you. We must remember that the Other wouldn’t even exist were it not for the subject.) The subject, in relation, must also continue to change.

In my eyes, the most important aspect of this relationship is castration. Lacan compares castration, the subject’s division and isolation through and in language, as a mugger’s choice: “Your money or your life,” which is really no choice at all. And the only way to attain agency, the only way to actually keep moving is to surrender to this. The only way to get anything done–to survive–is to bow to castration.

So yes, Badu, the author and artist, creator of this work, has become a signifier. She is impotent. As always, the author is impotent. And because of this impotence, Badu actually achieves a deeper goal: a wider audience for her art and a longer lasting legacy. After all, what lasts longer than a signifier.

So while previously I mentioned that this act is a blank signifier, and while that is true, the fact that the act is a blank signifier only allows Badu more agency. They’re all just steps toward an ultimate goal.

So perhaps this video is smarter than anyone in the media, anyone in Dallas will admit. Maybe Erykah Badu realized something the rest of us haven’t: the only way to get anything done is to admit defeat.

**PS: The awesome art at the top of this post came from the masterful eye-saw, whom I first ran into on flickr. You can find more like this here, priced to move. Go there and buy stuff. Support the arts.

Original Intent, or Erykah Badu, Signifier

Forgive me, but I’m going to wax Lacanian.

By now, everyone’s heard of Erykah Badu’s naked Saturday stroll through Downtown Dallas that included one trip down Elm Street, ending in the spot where President Kennedy was assassinated. If you haven’t seen the music video for this yet, it’s here. I wouldn’t advise watching it if you’re easily offended. My question is: Did Badu know what she was doing?

In an interview, Badu claimed that the song is really “about liberating yourself from layers and layers of skin or demons that are a hindrance to your growth or freedom, or evolution” (source here). I, as always, beg to differ. Sure, that may have been what Badu originally intended, but as we know, art goes far beyond the creator’s original intentions once it’s released into the mainstream. Once it’s released into the mainstream, art is anyone’s game.

From a strictly Lacanian sense, to simply answer the question at hand, Badu doesn’t know what the heck she’s doing. This isn’t a character attack, I’m not assassinating her as she claims critics will do. Rather, I’m pointing out a fact. After all, “I’m not where I think,” and neither is Badu.

And to be quite honest, I can’t assassinate Badu. That’s already been done, and she’s the one that did it. The moment she made her artistic statement, she became little more than a signifier, upon whom people can thrust their own meanings. If she has been assassinated, it’s because she allowed herself to, making herself into a signifier like a good Lacanian subject.

Here’s where Lacan steals the show: most of us, and I’m sure it applies to Badu, went through this castration (terrible word, but it’s Lacan’s term for the original division of the subject). What we get with “Window Seat” is a playing out of this same drama, made plain by controversy and media saturation. The art here is no longer Badu’s, nor is the statement she tries to make. Her statement has been overwritten by her signifierness.

I could go on about this, but my point remains the same: the moment this became public, Badu lost control over her own statement. It isn’t her statement any longer, it’s just a signifier. It’s another word in a language that strives for completion. Or, more properly, that we strive to complete. And from a Lacanian point of view, we can’t exert control over language any more than Cnut could tell the waves not to get his feet wet.

Something to think about.

On Influences

I’ve been reading Gravity’s Rainbow recently. And when I say recently, I mean for the past three months.

My point is, reading such a hefty book, while hard on my shoulders–I’m pretty sure Dostoevsky is the only longer work I’ve read–is also hard on leisure reading. Not that I’m actually reading this as an assignment or anything of the like. I’ve made up for this by taking brief breaks from the book–setting smaller goals, mingling it with a science-fiction novel or short occasionally–and managing to spice things up a bit.

What I can’t spice up, however, is my writing. The influence has already set in, and it doesn’t seem very likely to disappear anytime soon. I seem to be getting more long-winded in my writing, which really isn’t a good thing. Pynchon is an artist, turning phrases like nobody’s business. But he’s not who I want to be.

This leads to an important discovery; at about the same time I was getting into the thick of my Pynchon pastiche, William Gibson tweeted that he doesn’t, in fact, read while he writes. It’s not the first time I’ve heard the same thing. It seems to be a common practice.

The question is why. And it seems to me that it’s done mostly to avoid the impulse to mimic in your current work a book you’re simultaneously reading. Which, let’s be honest, is a large temptation. After all, great writers, as Eliot said, steal. Let’s be honest about it, we all do it. We steal, whether intentionally or not. As I’ve heard, the point isn’t the originality of an idea–it’s the originality of the execution of that idea.

The best advice I’ve heard to combat any unwanted influence is to wait two weeks after reading a life-changing book. If the impulse is still there, go for it. If not…well, you’ve still got stories in you. And by and large, it’s good advice. How do you read a book and write a story at the same time? It’s more work, but you have to consciously keep yourself from mimicking whatever book has currently insinuated itself into your life.

I’m not strong enough to do that. Ask any of my readers–I’m lazy in my writing. So, until I finish Pynchon and edit this body of works I’m currently producing, all my stories will start with variations on “A screaming comes across the sky.”