Happy Halloween

Zizek at Powell's in Oregon

part 1 of 10, the rest of this is available adjacent to the clip that's here.

Impressions/Feedback:

minute 6: we live in a post-ideological era - no. Ideology matters more than ever. This would be like being in a relationship and someone says "now that we love each other, we don't have to discuss our feelings any more."
min. 8: Culture Wars emphasize tolerance, and we have to move beyond a discussion of tolerance. Agreed. Wouldn't it be great if all we had to debate was whether you could wear a pro-abortion pin to work? But we can't, and that's why ideology matters.
Min 10: Catastrophe is natural in nature - no it isn't, not even from our (human)point of view. The type of catastrophe one is subjected to depends on where one is living. Ecological crisis on a global scale is real.
min 15: We are a part of nature and therefore can't step back and critique our own behavior within it. First part yes. But weren't native American cultures critical of our treatment of nature from the beginning? This bit about legitimizing fetishes is disturbing. Can't a corporate interest say that their shareholders have a fetish for profit and so thereby legitimize what they do? "Fetish" is just an excuse.
min 19: but Hegel is wrong.
min 22: Ideology =Brutality? No, brutality does not need ideology to operate, only opportunity. Ideology can be used later as an excuse to hide the true mechanism of power in operation, which I think was a point Foucault made somewhere.? Or was it Chomsky? Actually they both agreed on that did they not?
min 25: That's not the message of the film as I see it. See below
min 30: Does the chicken know? This is interesting. Kind of reminds me of Ginsberg's later poem: "Birdbrain" *birdbrain rules the world!* Ginsberg wrote.
min 38: I wish he would talk more of this, the Yugoslav situation. But I wonder with his preoccupation with fetishes if he is trying to tell Western listeners that Yugoslavia was made a fetish of the West after communism's collapse? As in there was some powerful interest that agreed to let the country destroy itself while it/we/US stood by and watched with a reluctant but guilty pleasure. Is that what he thinks?
min 47: I'm a leftist fascist, privately. Gee are you sure? You kind of just told everyone. Does ideology matter now then?
min 56: back to porno. Why is he requiring civility and manners out of something that never delivered it in the first place? Moving along..
min 1:01: Nothing is forbidden: Karadzic. I'm glad he mentions this because that's a good motto for the power-hungry. Now I don't see a necessary connection between socialism and the rise of nationalism as Metternich suggested, instead I see a connection between the collapse of the social contract and the rise of nihilistic ideas, aggressive nationalism among them. But when the punk rockers of the UK said "nothing is forbidden" in 1978, full-scale war didn't break out because the UK does not define the nation-hood through ethnicity, but through belief in the abstract values of what it is to be British, and there are many of those values. Oh and the social contract held together, -ideas such as, if you got beef, form a band instead of smashing your neighbor's face- which the Balkan region of the world did/does not endorse to a similar extent. In that part of the world nationality was/is defined by ethnicity and or religion more so than the artificial, put-upon distinction of "being Yugoslav." This has been mentioned many times by journalists just doing their job and I don't know how Z. managed to miss it. Actually, maybe it can be imagined, because he has a personal stake in what he's discussing. But his efforts to use that personal stake as persuasive leverage undermine his overall arguments that appear elsewhere about transcending personal stake for the sake of a collective benefit.

min 1:06: They Live. Well the glasses to be put on are the ideology. Or you can choose to not put on glasses/take the blue pill etc. and that is an ideology also.
min 1:15: Torture. Yes it's disturbing that this even has to be discussed. Here is where Agamben matters.
min 1:42: The enemy! Don't forget who the enemy is! Wow that's real constructive.

Am I taking this guy too seriously? I think what's needed is an american continental philosophy. Why let all these Europeans continue to narrate our psychic existence? Its like he wants to float an abstraction that allows us to "be American" while at the same time declare that America is guilty of aggression and militarism, but yknow it's kind of a joke because we're fetishy, and the Zeez is fetishy with us. So maybe he wants to make fetish into an addendum to our own social contract. This way he won't scream at the West like much of Yugoslavia did when the country fell apart and NATO stood by for too long while atrocities occurred. Does the West have an excuse? Perhaps we're just a culture of sexually experimenting teenage girls and the Zeez instead of barking at that in a Poundian manner wants to supplement it philosophically.

My admiration for Zizek has come to an end.

"Returno-Tech" a dark rockabilly fantasy

This time I'm directing in the Vaudeville Festival; this play was written by a local author. The ghost really is in the machine as an inventor brings a strange device to the studio of a local Home Shopping Channel. A slapstick, this play features a theme of invigorating human ceremony over the cold pall of technology, and then what happens after. We throw in some choreography and sound effects where possible. And the pigs fly.

I selected this play for its utter lack of depth. The curtain rises at 8pm on October 24th and 25th.

Six other plays feature on the nights of Friday and Saturday along with this one. Tickets are still available at their box office. Hope to see you there!

The Boy Who Liked Me - a play

This Friday and Saturday the North Park Vaudeville of San Diego will be producing a play that I wrote, The Boy Who Liked Me, along with 6 other short plays of various genre in conjunction with their annual North Park Playwright Festival.

The festival began last weekend and runs through the 25th of October. Mostly there are comedies showing but also some relationship stories and political drama. This piece is a comedy kind of along the lines of Sixteen Candles, but a little more mature in theme. With this I wanted to stretch myself to try to tell a story from a female perspective. Also, since I've usually directed my own writing for the stage, I'm looking forward to seeing someone else interpret my work.

Ticket information is available on their website, which I have linked on this blog in one of these nifty little columns to the right there. Come out and support local theatre!

Poets Against War

Ah, yes, I was in that too. Not in the shortened collection that came later, but I sent in a poem among the 22,000. Basically I was trying to write a Rage Against the Machine song, or at least enough lyrics to inspire one. I don't think you can find it by searching, you'd have to ask them directly. I've read it so many times it has no more effect, especially since the war happened anyway. If I had known how nasty the war was going to get I would have edited some things, there are references to Clinton bombing Sudan, Yugoslavia. So I made it anti-war in general and not just targeting Republicans, which in my opinion after 2004 got to be just too easy.

War sucks. What's happened is the entertainment industry, not "the media", has become the 4th branch of government, this is why people couldn't think critically about ejecting Bush. But maybe bloggers can take it back. I feel ok talking from both sides because I have a degree in "the media."

Best anti-war song ever, this one:

Gonna lay down my burden (lay down)
down by the riverside (down by)
down by the riverside (down by)
down by the riverside
gonna lay down my burden (lay down)
down by the riverside
ain't gonna study war. no. more - yes indeed
..hm hmhmh hmhmhm

http://poetsagainstthewar.org/