Obligatory Eraserhead Post

I'm going to agree with the idea that the film plays out like some sort of elaborate nightmare. It's surreal in it's imagery but, like any good nightmare that occurs naturally, it follows some sort of plot even if it doesn't make any sense.

Lynch sets up a world for us that we have to accept right away without explanation. For example, things like the industrial wasteland landscape that we are introduced to at the beginning of the film, or the man with the chemically burned face, describes a world where the human being is not the most important factor. The film doesn't go into why this is or how this society works because, as in a nightmare, the audience is just merely seeing it happen and are meant to accept it as a way of life in this newly adopted reality. Also, the tiny chicken scene just goes without saying.

Really, it's just that the whole movie feels like a bad dream that David Lynch had one night in college. The bottom line is: This shit is scary. It makes us feel uncomfortable but interested. Eraserhead is like a nightmare that you don't want to wake yourself up from.

Postmodernism Generator

During my quest to find a topic, any topic, to cover so I can try and attain the necessary amount of posts, I've come across a device of the internet that just might be the most postmodern thing I've found. What the following link will take you to is a postmodern generator. This is a webpage that will randomly generate quotes from postmodern philosophers and couple them with postmodern ideas whenever you refresh it. The result is an incomprehensible essay due to it's mish-mash nature.

You may not think that this is totally postmodern, but I think it proves that it really doesn't matter if I'm wrong. If the internet is able to bring me nonsensical postmodern essays, I don't know why I should even bother coming up with anything else.

I promise I'll try anyway.

Blog coming at you.

Here's a clip from an episode of Gilmore Girls.



Although I don't think it's been confirmed by the show's creators, the clip looks suspiciously similar to the dinner scene in Eraserhead, including the awkward silences and dialog, the shot of the clock, and the concept of the boyfriend meeting the girlfriend's parents, who want what's best for their daughter. A couple of people agree that it might be a parody of the scene, including this lady (check the third paragraph of the article).

Here's my issue with it. This scene can't measure up to the scene it's based on, and honestly, it's not as funny as the original. Sure, it is funny, but only if you know the show well enough. So what are we supposed to do with a parody based on a more explicit work? Gilmore Girls is, of course, a more family-friendly program than Eraserhead, and therefore, it's not as ironic. A parody of Winnie the Pooh in which Pooh dresses as a dominatrix and Eeyore threatens to kill himself is probably more ironic than a parody of a controversial movie on a not-so-controversial TV show.

There was also a parody of Eraserhead in the first episode of Tiny Toons, where Babs puts an eraser on her head and says, "Look! I'm Eraserhead!" Though I couldn't find a clip of it for you.

What I really wonder is, do you agree that a parody or pastiche is more successful if it's more controversial than the original work, or can it still be as much of a success due to other factors?

in the end, all that matters is that it was.

So, for a film which has a primary message of the loss of all new ideas, it’s funny, almost, that I’ve learned something new because of it.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=_zcqvDPpzQA

I found this while putting around across the Internet. I saw first the baby and thought it was a fake. In the thumbnail of the video, I was reminded of the baby from “Eraser head.”

The child in the video suffers from a skin disease called harlequin ichthyosis. It was called that because most sufferers of the disease end up with a scaly diamond shaped pattern of abrasion and sores across their body. The resulting impressions are nostalgic of the harlequin-esq carnival costumes.

Now-a-days, it is possible for persons with harlequin to live fuller lives; this, of course if thanks to new technologies. New information that is shared through learned texts of growth and study. In a way, it’s like my experience with the film [Eraserhead]. Even if those ideas that sparked it had already been thought, and expressed before, through objective chance, and a level of Internet-surfing boredom, they still taught me something new; that in itself is worth their continuous expression.

I prefer pens...

The most interesting connection within the dark and nightmarish film “Eraser Head” was the relationship between the title (and correlating scene) and the man who seems to be controlling the world. In reference to literature, the controller it obviously the author. He gave life to everyone, as if they are all characters in his grand narrative.

In the title scene, when Henry’s head is extracted like an aging Swiss cheese, then literally turned into eraser tips for pencils, the author dies, because his character’s mind is wiped clean. With no mind, there is no character. With no character, there is no story. With no story, there is no author—he has no purpose.

Another level to this poor artist’s inescapable demise comes from the characters and the readers in the film co-inhabiting the same plane. They are equals and interact with each other they same way they interact among themselves. If then, a character can rightly be called an “eraser head” then a reader, as an equal can be called the same. As a reader though, the title takes on another meaning.

Readers erase, or forget works of literature. Therefore, reproduced stories are always new when they are read again. This perpetuates the idea that there are no new ideas, and thus, if all ideas are reproductions of potentially pre-read texts, then there is no single author.

In this light, I think this film is balanced somewhere between modernism and postmodernism. The author is fighting his downfall and trying to create something new out of something that is very much like that which is consuming it. [Modernism] At the same time, he fails, and the film is left to a pluralistic audience of viewers. [Postmodernism]

Strip the Soul

A video I remember from high school. This is Porcupine Tree's "Strip the Soul" music video on their enhanced album Absentia from 2002. I think it's appropriate considering that we just saw Eraserhead.


Porcupine Tree - Strip The Soul


This is my home, this is my own, we don't like no strangers
Raise the kids good, beat the kids good and tie them up
Spread it wide, my wife, my life, push the camera deeper
I can use, I abuse, my muse, I made them all

This machine
Is there to please
Strip the soul
Fill the hole
A fire to feed
A belt to bleed
Strip the soul
Kill them all

They are not gone, they are not gone, they are only sleeping
In graves, in ways, in clay, underneath the floor
Building walls, overalls, getting bored, I got faulty wiring
Brick it up now, brick it up now, but keep the bones

(Do you want a western home in the rubble ?)

Eraserhead

Ok, so here's my thoughts on the film. Given the way the movie progresses, even though there is definite abstraction and fragmentation present, it strikes me as being more Modern than Postmodern. Then again, this does also bring into consideration what delineates the Modern from the Postmodern. I think the key with "Eraserhead" is the presence of some sort of overlying narrative. The film seems to have a certain set of goals at its outset, and by the end of the film those goals are met. We meet Henry, we meet Mary, and eventually we meet the Baby. Although we do not ever discover what the baby is, that does not seem to be the major concern. What is concerning the parents more is how to deal with the creature. They try to feed it, they try to nurture it and care for it, but no matter what they do they still do not know what to do with it. It certainly cannot be treated in the same way any normal child could be handled. They can't even seem to name the creature. In the end, though, all is well. Henry removes the bandages and exposes the Baby's heart and stabs it, ending its perplexing existence and conquering it. He then goes on to find some sort of bizarre love with the Lady in the Radiator.

Taking into account the events in the film, it would not qualify as Postmodern since it follows a teleological path. Another thing to consider is how it tries to create a narrative in which the seemingly unconquerable is conquerable. If you consider the Baby as trying to achieve the same sort of symbolism as the Minotaur in House of Leaves, then you can clearly see how differently David Lynch handles the unknown from Mark Danielewski. The Minotaur is not something that can be unravelled and exposed, its heart ready for the taking, but the Baby is clear and in sight, no matter how strange it may be.

And that's that.

Socks 4 Socklops

David Firth is a British animator whose series of animations, "Saladfingers," gained popularity back in 2004 and continues to grow today. He started out working with hand animation, but eventually started to use Flash to make his work. One of his lesser known films: "Socks 4 Socklops" really struck me as interesting in a sort of Postmodern way by the way that it takes fragments of stories and composes them in a manner that does not follow a pursuit of meaning. Take, for instance, the scene involving the French scientist. Everything the scientist creates turns out to be completely useless. I see his character very clearly as a jab at the useless nature of science.

I would like to warn those who are squeemish not to watch this film, as it contains animated violence and gore. Watch at your own risk, please.

Sock 4 Socklops


So, what I would like to hear opinions on this from whoever would like to contribute. Can this work be considered Postmodern, or does it fall under some other sort of category? I think it is a very difficult task to try and pin anything as being Postmodern or not, or maybe that's just me. Anyways, enjoy!

what i'm trying to say is that...there shouldn't be a point.

so, in a way i'd like to talk about all the differences there are in eraserhead between postmodernism and surrealism/modernism, though i could talk about the similarities also. even if this will end up in a jumbled mess probably here goes...

i kept trying to place this movie with surrealism, as much of the class was saying they thought it was surreal, though i couldn't fit it in perfectly to the genre.

the reasons for my opinion are this:

1. there's a plot. even if there were ways for people to get confused about certain things and even the whole meaning or story line, the fact that there was an actual story, that they follow through to the end, is more than most (or any) surrealist films.
2. If we think of any example, Un chien andalou (from 1929)it is said the salvador dali and luis bunuel went into making the story knowing that it couldn't make any sense. It wasn't supposed to. ideas jumped through to different ideas in a matter of minutes. in eraserhead, though the meaning is questionable and lynch doesn't agree with anything anyone has come up with, the story line of the baby and the man who has to take care of this baby because he had sex with a woman (when they weren't even married gasp) and the process of him being left alone by the baby's mother. there are visions of sperm like objects constantly, and the tone of sex is beyond apparent. the lady in the radiator takes a stand against them by squishing them under her feet in rebellion while saying everything will be ok, (in heaven).

there are in fact moments and ideals in this however that are very much based off of surrealist concepts however:

1. the dream sequences. the subconscious plays a huge role in this movie. his dreams of men in a factory turning his head into erasers, his dreams of the baby appearing from his body.
2. the lady in the radiator has a surrealist feel saying that things are ok, but coming from a radiator which is a symbol of henry's desire for suicide.

i think if anything it is obvious that this film is made by someone who knows what he is doing through the decades of arts. he has made a point of this movie to have both surreal subconscious nature and the makings for a really well done postmodern piece.


also...just so monica gets to see how eraserhead and radiohead come together...here you go ma'am.

in the panoptic colony

Ever since we read the Foucault, it has got me thinking about Kafka's In the Penal Colony. Now, I know that the whole Postmodern movement started up around the 1970's and that In the Penal Colony was written in 1914, but they seem to really inform one another. I don't think either that the story is all that Postmodern, but more like both Kafka and Foucault were drawing from the same history and text in terms of discipline and punishment.

In the story, none of the characters have names. they are all referred to by their title: the officer, the explorer, and the condemned man. Much like Foucault's body of the king, and body of the condemned man. In the Penal Colony serves to illustrate the old means of discipline.

For those of you who haven't read it--well, you should. It's friggin' Kafka and there are sexy torture devices involved. Full text: http://www.mala.bc.ca/~johnstoi/kafka/inthepenalcolony.htm


anyway- an explorer comes to the penal colony to observe and study their system of judgment (Michel?) and is shown by the officer their "machine" with which they are going to execute the "condemned man." The explorer learns that their justice system is not the best (ie: the condemned man doens't know why he is being executed and cannot defend himself) and learns that the machine is meant to carve a phrase into the body of the condemned for 12 hours. At the end of 12 hours, right before he dies, the condemned man comes to"Enlightenment" of what the machine as taught him. The officer complains that no one comes to see the executions anymore and that this new boss wants to shut him down. The explorer says that he cannot endorse this and at this, the officer frees the condemned man and places himself under the machine--which malfunctions and instead of "exquisite torture such as the officer desired" it impales and kills him.

right. so, this seems to be a perfect example of the punishment of the body. They are not concerned with the state of his mind or rehabilitating him. He learns to be just through the mutilation of his body. He learns by "decipher[ing] the script with his wounds." This torture is idolized as a blessing where by though you die you are shown what you cannot see without the pain. The "Enlightenment" is "a moment that might tempt one to get under the Harrow oneself."

And the officer does just this when he realizes that the times of physical torture is over and he subjects himself to his own punishment. He does not gain his enlightenment and is simply killed quickly and violently.

To me, this shows the passing of the era of punishing the body and begins to question the idea of Enlightenment. Seems like our friend Franz was really on the ball in beginning to voice in his own way the basis of Foucault's ideas of punishment. Just wanted to put that out there, since it's been bugging me.

Also, when looking for a full text of the story i came across a "dramatic short film" as it is called of In the Penal Colony. And dramatic it is. I couldn't watch the whole thing, just skipped around but it involves dramatic slow motion chases and falls, classical music, german accents, a "machine" made with a budget of about $40, stiff acting, and very slow goose-stepping. it's good for a laugh, but read the story and don't blame Kafka for this.

P.S.

I don't think the italics worked on that last post - but don't forget that book titles are italicized and chapters/articles are not.

<3
M

Bibliographic info

OK, as promised, here are the citations for the class handouts.

The three below come from the following compilation (please include it in the citations):


A Postmodern Reader. Ed.s Joseph Natoli and Linda Hutcheon. Albany: SUNY Press, 1993.


Articles:

Derrida, Jacques. "Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences." 223-242.

Hassan, Ihab. "Toward a Concept of Postmodernism." 273-286.

Lyotard, Jean-Francois. "Excerpts from The Postmodern Condition: A Report On Knowledge." 71-90.

Then here's the Foucault:


The Foucault Reader. Ed. Paul Rabinow. New York: Pantheon Books, 1984.

Foucault, Michel. "The Body of the Condemned." 170-178.
"Docile Bodies." 179-187.
"The Means of Correct Training." 188-205.

Please do CORRECT MLA FORMATTING!!
Consult cheat sheet on library homepage if necessary.

Noticed a few things in the movie

A few things that caught my eye, or mind, whatever. I haven't thought them all through yet to their ends seeing as how we still have to watch the rest of the film.

1. We see Henry walking by a building that looks similar to the efficient housing of modernism. Perhaps there is some meaning about walking away from the unfeeling architecture. Maybe it is just another scene of a dude walking around.

2. Henry also heads into a tunnel/under a bridge (I'm not sure what it was) that looked like a large square tunnel/underpass thing. Not to say that architecture can't be square or boxlike unless it is influenced by modernism. Having the scene after the building that looked like housing left me trying to pull some connection. As does most of the film.

3. The lingering idea of neglect seems to pop up a lot. The man pulling levers seems very determined and harsh when pulling. They let out squeals that could be fixed with a bit of oil perhaps but it seems unlikely that they will be cared for. The mail slots or shelving unit that holds papers like mail slots appears dusty and covered in cobwebs. The older woman who does not move (grandmother?) seems neglected. Mary, the husband, the pups and of course "Spike." I guess it is just fine to leave the baby alone especially when it is sick.

4. Thinking of the baby as a product of Mary and Henry, I was trying to come up with what it would mean if the baby is not fully formed or is disfigured. It seems easy to jump to the idea that neither Henry nor Mary are fully formed individuals and any mixing of the two would not equal a whole. Like two people having the genes for some disorder would probably pass that on to any offspring. (I know it depends on the genes and the disorder) Or even thinking about it with mental illness. Having one mentally ill parent can have an influence on the child and two mentally ill parents makes it an even greater possibility that the child will also be mentally ill. I'm not saying that Mary and Henry are mentally ill. I'm not even going to try to go there with them.

So, yeah. That is all right now. These are clearly just a few things I had thought of. Nothing concrete.

Oh, something neat, I thought. Because of the darkness of the television and the darkness of the movie, some parts made it so the action was hidden and all I could see was the reflection of all of us watching the film. Sort of a cheesy "in the dark we find ourselves" kind of thing. It also tied to the idea of being kept in the dark, for me. I thought it was fun and kind of cool for something that wasn't intentional.

latest blog tally

OK, here's what I have:

Maggie - 9 (done since some were extra long)
Ryan - 8 (just do one more, since a couple were really long)
Laura - 8
Jeff - 4
Davyn - 2
Kelsey - 10 (done)
Erica - 1
Ben - 10 (done)
Julian - 0
Matt - 6
Rachel - 9
Marie - 11 (done)
Kristen - 5
Jess - 7

The blog will be closed for business at the end of the day on Sunday, May 11.

Also - on Monday, May 12, at 1 PM, you will be expected to present for seven minutes on your final paper. You may read from it or talk about it or show something or perform... whatever.

I will post bibliographic info for all the handouts I gave you soon (here).

Spike and other thoughts

Okay, first of all—I maintain that the baby is cute. I don’t find “Spike,” as the baby is (aptly?) nicknamed by the actor who plays Henry, disturbing at all. I sort of want to pet him, which is strange seeing as I tend to not be an admirer of babies in the first place. He just needs love (like a Charlie Brown Christmas tree) and a bit more care and attention than a humidifier (also, like a Charlie Brown Christmas tree). Does humidity help measles? I wouldn’t think so.

Anyway- the thing that stuck out most to me was the great number of juxtapositions within the film. Lots of characters and images seem to have a counterpart. The one that came immediately to mind was the inside Mary’s house during the dinner scene: there is a bitch with a large litter of chubby pups feeding from her then juxtaposed with the admission of the existence of an unhealthy baby that they cannot feed easily (at all?).

Other juxtapositions:

-The plain wife Mary with the oversexed neighbor wearing half a shirt, with the chipmunk-cheeked woman in the radiator.

-The passive Henry with the workman in charge of the levers who seems much more together.

-The father’s arm that cannot feel with the shrunken chicken that can feel.

-The cheery father and aggressive mother.

-The absence of middle lighting- either dark or highly lit, or that could just be the film quality of our TV.

-The worms? Those I just don't get quiet yet, between the small acrobatic worm and the large tapeworm-esque one's I'm not sure of a relationship yet or just what they might be a binary to. Perhaps the woman in the radiator for her active role against them and their passive rather lying about (this would exclude the jumping worm). But that doesn't hold up to me. Very interested to see the rest of this.

I’m not quite sure just yet how this has to do with the PoMo concept of juxtaposition, but it definitely brings up the whole idea of binaries. I just don’t see these juxtapositions being deconstructed as of yet, but it’s only the first half so far.

few things with minimal meaning...

ive been very tired lately...

in fact i had a moment today where i had to question if i was high or not since i was in such a trance and didnt know if i was awake, and why these stupid ideas kept coming into my head. this started a few nights ago writing the paper...ask ben and jeff, they were there. or maybe they weren't...hmmm.

a while ago this person bought me a cd of short stories read by actors to a live audience in new york, one of the stories being raymond carver. im not gunna lie, all i kept it around for was that, the other ones on the cd didnt make me so interested.but in any event, i hadnt listened to it yet, and at a yard sale i just went home for i realized there was a pile of things my parents were selling of mine. this being one. mark picked it up, and had never heard or read the story cathedral by carver. well, one thing lead to another and yesterday i was riding in a car with cathedral being spoken by a weird guy and me not being able to stop thinking about house of leaves.

now this is where that 99% chance of me being high asleep or drugged on pomo comes in. but im just gunna get this out anyway...

in cathedral, carvers wife has a job reading documents and other papers to the blind man robert. (oh, oh, its like zampano!) then theres this whole thing of carver being worried that he's coming over, and awkward around a blind man. until finally, hes describing cathedrals to him, or at least trying to...and failing. but when he gets down on himself, the blind man takes his hand and they draw this building together. In my stupid head i couldnt get away from thinking how similar these two stories were, in this dumb way that raymond was johnny and robert was zampano.

again...ive been very tired lately.

I've never been able to let things go

So, I’m still unsettled about the class discussion from Wednesday. I think that people are different in their own homes than they are on the streets. Even if everything that we do outside, in public, or scripted by some hegemonic text; I think that we allow ourselves some freedom from that, once we are inside.
The idea of “behind closed doors” itself may be a text. So when we see people behaving in a way that they have been trained is the correct expression of physical attraction, we can follow our training and say, “get a room.” But even then, we’re abiding by the fact that there is a level of propriety and that some things (that are fun and are suppose to make us feel free) are meant to be kept ‘private.’
Something that I think Maggie had brought up during the discussion made a lot of sense to me. Suppose that once off the streets and behind our drawn curtains we do allow that “frumpy” style of dress that makes us feel more comfortable. Now suppose that that too is a text, and that we have been rained to think that those clothes are more comfortable because of their fit and inappropriateness for public-wear. I think my main point is that it doesn’t matter that that is a text too, because regardless, we still feel more comfortable. The concept of textual hegemony doesn’t negate the relaxed demeanor that it causes.
In this case, if there were a tower with an elusive guard surveying over students, it would matter that they know, or be told he is there (even if he’s not). But, if they were never told that they were being watched (which is why I originally asked if they knew) then they would act the way they are texted to act when they think no one is looking. They would follow the proprieties of the “behind-closed-doors” moral code.

Life is but a Game

Beginning of my essay so far. Read carefully and click on the coordinating links please.

Terrorism in Western society is a fickle matter that affects a population more so when a government exasperates it, which it most certainly will if it wishes to remain in power. Although a government is a body of people usually and notably ungoverned, culture has fashioned itself to respond best to violence and fear through manipulation by a high power. Lies and ignorance are weapons stronger than anything a terrorist can ever muster. In Don DeLillo’s Mao II he writes of the world’s social norms and interests being run by popularized terrorism made accessible and easy to understand by way of U.S. propaganda. It isn’t a subculture (?) of people in uprisings anymore; it is pop culture at its most perverse state in human history. Artists no longer shape human culture, but instead the consumerism of malicious terrorist acts and Western economy-running products made by underage Asian children. People are too often simpletons to be herded for cultural slaughter. They are taught to fear Middle Easterners and buy American (!) to help win the war against terrorism, which is the actual fuel that keeps the country’s furnace running.

Foucault died in 1984

Mythology

Alright, better late than never. Now that I finally know what I want to say, here are some theories about House of Leaves, La Strada, and mythology.

Let's say Zampano, for the moment, is Theseus. He takes Gelsomina away from her home, and all that she knows, under the guise of giving her a better life. Gelsomina, then, is Ariadne, who helps Theseus thinking it will make her own life better. Of course, it doesn't, because in the myth, as in La Strada, Theseus/Zampano abandons Ariadne/Gelsomina as she's sleeping.

So, in the myth, Ariadne is made into the wife of Dionysus, who finds her sleeping on the island after she has been abandoned. In the movie, the abandonment drives Gelsomina crazy. We might say that the two outcomes are different, but consider one thing. Dionysus had followers, called the Maenads. They were crazy followers. I'm talking batshit-insane-will-tear-your-arms-off-because-they-feel-like-it crazy. And since Gelsomina goes insane, perhaps, if we want to follow the myth, we can say that it does, if Gelsomina becomes a follower of Dionysus, and loses her mind.

Something has been bothering me about all this, however. I keep wondering who The Fool is in all this, because I want to assign him a mythological character very badly, but am I trying too hard? I think the most logical choice would be Dionysus, because he wants to keep Gelsomina safe from Zampano. Of course, The Fool dies, but this could either prove or disprove his role. Since he's dead, we can say he can't be Dionysus, because he's not there to find Gelsomina and save her. But we can also say that he had to die in order to be elevated to the position of a god. And while we're at it, if we're liking Pelafina to Gelsomina and Johnny to The Fool, consider what Pelafina writes on page 592:

"I dreamt about you last night. You had long hands which glistened in the starlight. There was no moon, yet your arms and legs seemed made of water and changed with the tides. You were so beautiful and elegant and all blue and white and your eyes, like your father's eyes, were infused by strange magic.
"It was comforting to see you so strong. Gods assembled around you and paid their respects and doted on you and offered you gifts your mother could not begin to imagine let alone afford.
"There were some gods who were jealous of you, but I shooed them away. The rest kept close to you and said many great things about your future."

This presents a slight problem. If Pelafina is also Ariadne, what does that make Johnny in this context? His mother is elevating him to the position of god, which we could interpret to say that Johnny is Dionysus. Zampano of House of Leaves could also be Theseus, because if we say that he is Johnny's father and Pelafina's old lover or husband, it might be that he abandoned Pelafina in the mental hospital, especially since Pelafina seems to know who Zampano is.

So, is The Fool/Johnny Dionysus? It's difficult because of the family tree involved. For Johnny to be Dionysus, it would mean that he both Pelafina's son and lover, but from the Whalestoe Letters, where Pelafina says a lot of rather inappropriate things to her son, that doesn't seem like a huge stretch. Freud would love this one.

Who is who here? There's more than one correct answer, I'm sure, but this is just my take.

film update

OK, I decided on the film we'll be viewing the last week of classes.

We're going to watch Eraserhead, David Lynch's first feature-length film. This is perhaps the most disturbing thing I've ever seen. But that's not the point necessarily... what we're going to do is watch the film and then I will have you write a response about it in class, and your task will be to consider, is this a postmodern film, or a modernist (surrealist or expressionist, perhaps) one? So brush up on your knowledge of the differences between modern and postmodern art and prepare to be unsettled.

I took this picture a few weeks ago and thought it really related to the discussion we had in class today. It's hard not to feel pre-packaged sometimes.

Ok, I know we're technically done with Zampano...

BUT! I though this was interesting:

"Both the body of need and the body of drive are real insofar as their source (Quelle) is in the body, but whereas need involves the inside of the body, the inner organs (the stomach, intestines, and other vital organs), drive involves the surface zones of the body and the erogenous openings. (The eye is a special case in terms of source in that it is an organ which is half inside and half outside, rather than a hole, as the mouth and ears are.) The openings are vanishing points where the inside meets the outside. The two bodily zones, though distinct, interface. They are superimposed and connected via the figure of interior 8. The continuity and connection of the zones makes transgression possible. The interior 8 writes or draws one body upon the other as in a palimpsest or pentimento... Perhaps it would be well to say that the old conception, replaced by a later choice, is a way of seeing and then seeing again." (From Reading Seminar XI - The Demontage of the Drive, p. 120) (My emphasis in blue and red)

I was just thinking that this seemed interesting in terms of Zampano's blindness, and the idea that replacement with a later choice might be a way of seeing again. What does that say about the minotaur, or perhaps Zampano's decision about the children's fate, which, if you read the image on the front cover-ish insert thing, talks about how perhaps he'll kill them. This idea of the drives as holes, or holes - houses? - and the eye as being half inside and half outside makes me wonder about Zampano's drives vs. his needs: If his organ which is able to straddle both worlds is blind, then is he in neither?

Postmodern fonts

Found this today in a book my design prof wants me to read:

POSTMODERNIST (late 20th & early 21st century): frequent parody of Neoclassical, Romantic or Baroque form: rationalist or variable axis; sharply modelled serifs and terminals; moderate aperture.

Postmodern letterforms, like postmodern buildings, frequently recycle and revise Neoclassical, Romantic and other premodern forms. At their best, they do so with an engaging lightness of touch and a fine sense of humor. Postmodern art is for the most part highly self-conscious, but devoutly unserious. Postmodern designers -- who frequently are or have been Modernist designers as well -- have proven that it is possible to infuse Neoclassical and Romantic form, and the rationalist axis, with genuine calligraphic energy. (p. 15, 135 "The Elements of Typographic Style" by Robert Bringhurst)

These are the two examples they give in the book:

http://www.myfonts.com/fonts/agfa/itc-esprit/
http://www.myfonts.com/fonts/berthold/nofret-be/

Basically all the jargon up there has to do with the design of type faces. Basically they take bits and pieces from other, traditional fonts and stick them together to form Postmodern ones. Most of the snitching is done with serifs (the little feet thingies at the bottom and tops of letters) and they change how the font tilts on the page. If this isn't making sense, I can do a demo or something in class if people are really, REALLY interested. Just something small and kinda interesting to consider, especially given the amount of time we spend talking about language and how much it fails at being anything more than signifers. This is proven even more by the fact that type faces can be changed like this and give something a completely different feeling and message than just the words themselves. You can give a text an entirely look and it changes your intent and how the audience feels when reading it. Fonts can make you look pretentious, peaceful, studious and matter-of-fact, or like a dumbass making a parody of something serious. Generally the job of the designer or typographer is to pick a font and arrange the text that best portrays what said text is about. In this, typographers and designers author what the writer has already written.

Take the design of this blog, for instance. It's a set default layout which is used a bizillion other places, most of which are simple blogs about people's lives, but mostly their egos at work needing to express themselves. The fonts they use are legible, which is important, but also casual. You don't feel like you're reading a textbook or an official document by any stretch when you see this page. Certainly there are people out there who use blogs, similar layouts and fonts and, I'm sure, post amazingly thought-out things. Unfortunately, one must wade through lots of "i fUcKeD dis chic tday" or "OMG my 'rents SUCK", therefore a blog generally carries the stigma of informality and fluff.

another postmodern approach to film making: the tracey fragments

bruce mcdonald's (hard core logo) latest film, the tracey fragments, offers a new look at film making and (possibly) a new way for people to think of file sharing and the spread of media on the internet.

the movie stars ellen page (who i'm sure everyone now recognizes from juno) and follows tracey burkowitz, a 15 year old girl searching for her lost younger brother.

what i think is really cool about what mcdonald did with this film was that after he shot and edited the whole thing, he uploaded hundreds of hours of raw footage, the soundtrack (by broken social scene) and the script to the internet for people to download, with the idea that they could then re-edit the material and make a new project of their own -- "a new feature film, rock video, trailer or personal manifesto."

each scene is shot from multiple camera angles, and many of the frames have a fragmented collage of multiple shots and perspectives, which allowed people a lot of options when re-editing the footage.







i think, aside from being a really fun & interesting idea on mcdonald's part, putting up the footage on the internet is forward-thinking and a bit avant-garde as well. especially considering how much in our lives is connected to media, entertainment, and the immediacy in which we're able to get it. not only is he making the media readily available, he's putting it out there with the intent that people will download it and make their own art out of it. going back to the isolating feelings of a postmodern society, media culture, etc, in a small way mcdonald is promoting something interactive, creative and personally meaningful with this project. (this could also point back to what i mentioned in the four eyed monsters post.)


the trailer and the re-fragments are up on the film's website.

Wizard People, Dear Reader

First, a brief introduction to what you are about to see, because if you haven't heard of "Wizard People, Dear Reader," you will probably not have a damn clue what's going on.

This is the creation of Brad Neely, who you may also know from his work on Superdeluxe.com (he created the Professor Brothers and Baby Cakes shorts), and helped write three episodes of South Park last season (The List, Imaginationland Part II, and Le Petit Tourette, if that means anything to you). The clip that basically follows is the first chapter of his work, which is a redubbing of the first Harry Potter movie. In a voice that is oddly reminiscent of both Peter Lorre and Clint Eastwood, he re-narrates the entire movie in the style of a drunk beat poet. Let's watch.



Now for discussion.

This project, of course, has caused controversy. Warner Brothers considers it a copyright violation, but supporters of "Wizard People" believe that it's a work in and of itself, and is, in fact, a new form of art. I can see both sides of the fence here, but I would much rather see it as art, especially as a postmodern work, because it takes something that already exists, that isn't even that old or dated, and reworks it for a different kind of audience. But this is subjective, so, as Kathy Acker called her own work plagiarism, but others disagreed, you can decide for yourself: illegal or art? Or illegal art, as it is on a website with that name. Perhaps even you'd consider this little more than crude parody.

A lot of people are saying that this is a new art form, but if it is, that means it should theoretically work with other movies, but it seems that choices are limited, because the form is really only relevant to the audience if the audience is already at least semi familiar with the movie they're seeing. Would this work with a movie like Lord of the Rings? What about with something lesser known, or as widely liked, or even a movie that nobody knows, like a Bollywood film? Does the film have to be serious for the result to be funny?

no one else? seriously? okay: dibs.

La Strada, ending scene:


So, I am all for buying that Fellini's Zampano is not represented or alluded to in House of Leaves, but that the Zampano is in Danielewski's work is the same as in La Strada. They do have a great deal of similarities in personality as discussed in the article given in class, but also I just can't find a good reason for it not to be the same person (I say person and not character because prefer to lend Danielewski's work more realness than other books for the reason that it so questions and acknowledges its own layers of falsity). For a book presented by a "real" man, compiled by a (fictional?) mad young man, the work written by a (fictional? imagined by fictional character? = fiction X 2) blind man about a film he "saw" about another man (fictional? or is it fiction X 2?), the use of a dichotomy of real and unreal is a complete oversimplification. With all of these layers, I find it much more interesting to simply "just go with it" (quote not to be ironic just quoting).

While I can understand that interpretation, I much prefer to conclude that Johnny has not invented Zampano and additionally that Zampano (or Johnny)has not invented the Navidson Record. As my copy's personal author, that is how I author it. The strange parallels, slip ups, and-oh- the blind man describing a film, doesn't mean it all can't be real within the book. To me, that is much more interesting than one man having psychotic delusions of his deteriorating self. It's a little too M. Night Shyamalan to me.

The article states that if Zampano is the same in La Strada as in House of Leaves that we must automatically assume that all of Johnny's narrative is imagined- "even in the sense of the imaginary 'real' posited in most works of fiction." My response is: What? and No. First off if we are going to work off the fact that there is already a "real" in the fictional realm that that should be enough to solve the argument. Why is it that the real of the book cannot be connected to the real of other pieces? Zampano being shown in a different work does not detract from his reality in Danielewski's work because it is all the same level of real.

Finally, I posted the last scene because besides being an incredible moment, if you watch from 45 seconds in to around 1:25, Zampano looks blind. When he is looking down, the angle and tiredness in his face, make his eyes look like hollows and then when you can see his eyes they look dead as though they are seeing nothing. He raises his head and stares at the sky (presumably just a large blackness) and the sight comes back to him, his eyes travel and he collapses clawing at the sand.

To end on a funny note: La Strada was made into a musical which premiered on Broadway in 1969. It closed after one performance. thank the gods.

bleh

i was surfing myspace somewhere around 4am when i found this

http://elperritovive.blogspot.com/

apparently he starved a stray dog to death as part of an installation. i guess i just wanted to see if anyone had heard anything about it/what everyone thought.

also it kind of relates to the whole recurring stray dog thing in molloy and don quixote. maybe? i don't know.
peaacee.

Blog tally and grading your blogging

Hi.
So, here are my tallies for who has done how many posts.
Please note that not all blog entries are created equal.
Some of you have posted amusing little tidbits.
Others have done some serious thinking, writing or creative posting (poems, video).
To the amusing little tidbitters: you may want to go over 10 of you're interested in a good grade for this portion of the course.
To the really serious posters: if you've posted a few really long, brilliant ones (coughcoughryanmaggie) rest assured that each one of those can count as two in the end. Remember, the instructions were to write about a page's worth, so a really long post is about two pages.

You will receive a grade and written "critique" at the end of the semester for your blogging.

OK, here's what I have. I count comments as posts. Let me know if you think I'm in error.

Maggie - 7
Ryan - 8
Laura - 4
Jeff - 4
Davyn - 2
Kelsey - 9
Blake - 0
Erica - 1
Leah - 1
Ben - 9
Julian - 0
Matt - 4
Rachel - 6
Marie - 8
Kristen - 4
Jess - 6

C'est tout.

Oh yeah - if anyone posts (substantially! no amusing tidbits here!) on either La Strada or the movie we watch at the end (TBA), that will count as two posts. BONUS!!

Simulation. Has it gone too far?

I'm finding it difficult to write about these things. Postmodernism is so broad and expansive it's hard to really pin one thought down without another one fluttering in and giving its opinion. Maybe that's the point. Who knows.

There was one thing I wanted to mention. Anyone ever heard of the game Second Life? It scares the crap out of me because there are real people out there who basically live their entire lives in that game. They make a little person they can play as, have social interactions, buy and sell virtual real estate (using real money) and so on. In my curious gamer nerdy-ness I gave the thing a try.

The game itself barely even qualifies as a "game." It's not like EA's the Sims where you control a character that is unrelated to you and interacts with simulated people, nor is it anything like any MMORPGs (Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games) where your character has objectives to achieve for imagined points or simulated rewards. Second Life basically gives the users the capacity to create their own realities, and users will buy and sell things with real money in order to advance their character.

It's hard to really fully explain this monstrous thing, so here's the website. http://secondlife.com/

My question is, what's next? Thousands of people already devote their entire lives to this game. How long is it until we're all just walking simulations? Or are we all just simulations already? Ach. I think it's time I simulate myself some sleep.

A picture is worth a thousand words... and a wookie on drums

Leia singing, Luke, Han Solo and Vader on guitars. Wookie on the drums. Commentary on the characters as modern-day rockstars? YOU BE THE JUDGE.

Fun To Imagine

I recently found one of these at a thrift store and bought it with the intent of using it for my final project. Nicole was fascinated by it and plugged it in. Lo and behold, the damn thing still works.

The postmodern part: Imagine rap music and Finger 11 coming out of this thing.

This Blue World - A Theory

In order to speculate the meaning of the word "house" appearing in blue in the book, we must first consider a phrase often used in the book: "out of the blue." According to Goenglish.com, the phrase means "sudden, unexpected, unprepared for." Reading further into this, "out of the blue" can also mean to come out of nothing. The house is, essentially, "nothing" therefore everything not blue is outside of the house.

In an alternate view, one must consider the phrase "this blue world." Why is the sky blue? Why is the ocean blue? Because blue is the shortest wavelength in the color spectrum that our eyes can see. Circling back to the previous theory, the color blue stands for both the ocean and the sky, both of which are infinite to the human eye, and both of which are are forever changing, expanding or contracting.

Oh look, granola bars!

V for Vendetta

I kept flashing on V for Vendetta when we were talking about Mao II. Lots of the same themes. A different look at terrorism, the use of symbols, war, the authoring of a new future for a nation of people. If you haven't seen it or read the graphic novel, you get to get with the times, man.

postmodern modernism

stan douglas is an artist from vancouver. though a lot of his work deals with subjects that have a modern sensibility, he approaches it in a decidedly more postmodern way.

with his installation win, place or show (1998), he addresses the issues of the transformation of public space that occurred in postwar north america, specifically the urban renewal that was happening in canada in the 1950s. a grid of apartment blocks and row houses was slated to be built on what was left of one of vancouver's poorest neighborhoods after all the original buildings were torn down. douglas's piece, a looping, six minute film about two dock workers who share an apartment in one of these new buildings, expresses the isolated, agitated feelings of people during this time from a modernist perspective. the film "chronicles an antagonistic conversation that flares up on a wet day off. After erupting into physical violence, it then lapses into weary irritation, only to be rekindled into a smoldering verbal friction."

douglas presents these modern ideas postmodernly: during the exhibition, the video, shot from 20 different camera angles, loops in real time but each time in a different combination of cuts, so that what the viewer gets in an endless, fragmented series of images from many different view points. each time a new montage of cuts plays, there's a new version of the story. "In this way Douglas not only deconstructs the conventions and values integral to the style, the genre, the medium, and even the art form he employs but, by highlighting devices of disidentification, foregrounds the conditions and terms of spectatorship and, by extension, indicts as false any encompassing ideology."

douglas says of his own work that "it is less concerned with the narration of the event than with the space of its unfolding," which i think relates back to what postmodernists were trying to do in finding a new way to express something that couldn't be expressed without language. playing with the idea that since everything's already been done, all you can do is find new ways to do it.

(quotes from this article by lynne cooke: stan douglas and douglas gordon: double vision)



win, place or show (1998)



also connecting back to postmodernism, stan douglas has been influenced a lot by samuel beckett's work. one of his early productions called monodramas (1991) was a series of 30- to 60-second micronarratives that were shown during commercial breaks nightly for three weeks. the videos were made to mimic commercials but were actually fractured bits of a narrative that never came together. douglas also worked as a curator on beckett teleplays (1988) which focussed on beckett's work that dealt with how to produce for television. by considering these two works together, douglas presents himself as the "artist as producer," and shows how the two seemingly-separate roles can actually work well together in order to challenge peoples' ideas on how one can practice art. with monodramas and teleplays, douglas "defines...a syntax constituting and articulating culture and society in terms of difference and representation, where the notion of identity is constantly refracted through an engaged multi-cultural media perspective of the 90s." (source)

one of the videos can be seen here: http://www.mediaartnet.org/works/monodramas/video/1/

Mad Men

"Mad Men" is a show that I started watching a year ago on AMC. It's set in 1960 Manhattan and is centered around the main character who is an executive at an ad agency. Every episode quips at the underlying theme that the only thing they sell is an image, or an illusion, to create desire. For example in the pilot the main character, Donald Draper, struggles to overcome the recent discovery that cigarettes are in fact bad for you and advertising otherwise is now against the law. In a brilliant advertising coup, Draper comes up with the slogan "It's Toasted" for Lucky Strike cigarettes which is still the slogan used today. The idea is that because all the other tobacco companies have the same problem, advertisers can say whatever they want to set their client's products above others.

Another recurring theme in the show is the way that most of the characters live double lives. Draper has a nice suburban home with two kids and a beautiful wife, but he also has a mistress in Manhattan. Draper himself is really not who he says he is, since that isn't even the name that he was born with.

Anyway, I thought that the show was pertinent to our Postmodernism discussions. If any of you have seen the show feel free to comment, but if you haven't you should really check it out. It's very rare for there to be actual thought provoking shows on regular cable TV.

postmodern film: four eyed monsters

from the production notes:

"Four Eyed Monsters is an autobiographical film about how Arin Crumley & Susan Buice met in 2002 and really didn’t speak for the first 4 months of their relationship. They treated their relationship as an experiment to learn what love is, document their experiences and then present their findings."

and from arin:

"We made a feature length film called Four Eyed Monsters. The film tells the true story of how Susan and I met online and I stalked her at her work and then we ended up dating but with a rule to never speak in person. Then our lives and minds begin to meld and our fantasies and fears manifest as we become a living breathing Four Eyed Monster."


we live in a society now that's so media and technology-based, and a lot of what we've read/discussed in class about postmodernism sort of sees that as a negative thing, and i suppose in a lot of ways it can be. what four eyed monsters does is show us that there can still be something beautiful in all of it, something small and passionate and extremely artistic. the film shows this through the story of arin and susan's relationship, while aspects of media culture are used not only to bring the film to the audience, but in a very true way this relationship happened because of the culture we live in. the film makes us take a new look at art, people, relationships, communication, connection, sex, love, and what we thought we knew about any of it.

the entire film & accompanying podcasts are up on the film's website and myspace. everyone should check it out if they have the time and want to see it, it's really adorable. i'm happy i was shown it.

http://foureyedmonsters.com/
http://www.myspace.com/foureyedmonsters

Nothing in Nothing

Stand aside and let words dissolve in water.
Back up and lean against walls made of nothing,
and fall forever and not even care.

For every step forward,
you are actually not walking at all.
If you are walking forward you are falling,
and if you back up you dissolve.

For now stay still and take in
all of life's rarest sweetest things.
Because it is okay not to understand,
as long as you just are.




DJ Shadow - Midnight in a Perfect World

film showing end of semester

So, the last week of classes, we'll have some time to watch a postmodern film.

I will take recommendations, of course. So far, I've come up with the following possibilities: Bladerunner (seems too obvious, maybe?), The Saddest Music in the World, a David Lynch film (like Eraserhead or Mulholland Drive), Adaptation... I mean, I love Donnie Darko, but hasn't everyone seen that?

Thoughts?

If you want to recommend something, make sure it has postmodern features, and isn't just something you like!!

Holy shit, more Garfield.

http://garfieldisdead.ytmnd.com

You all should have one immediate reaction to the first strip like I did.

im so post modern with my myspace info

http://www.myspace.com/thebedroomphilosopher

listen to the song i'm so post modern. it's cute, until you realize it's 5 and a half minutes long.
(i didn't intend to give a shout out to house of leaves there, it's just long...and i went ok ok, and clicked out of it before it ended)

Some Thoughts on Pelafina

So I was thinking about what we talked about in class a few meetings ago, about how Whalestoe is slang for camel toe, which seemed really silly at the time. But the more I thought about it, the more things started to makes sense, once I got past my third-grader response of giggling over bathroom humor (not that there's anything wrong with that). Anyway, I got to thinking that since it's a camel toe we're talking about, it's very clearly a vaginal image - and of course, the Whalestoe houses Pelafina, Johnny's mother. So that's a connection right there - the mother is a vaginal image. From here, I started thinking in Lacanian terms again (please bear with me):

If the letters were supposedly hand written, but we only receive them as typographical works, could we then read them as Johnny's work? If Johnny wrote the letters, or even if Johnny only altered them, perhaps he is trying to retrieve the Phallus, which the Mother is lacking. Perhaps the letters are an attempt to get at truth and thus, some modicum of power, for his mother. If Johnny wrote the letters, is this a way to connect to her, giver her some sort of existence? Without the Phallus, she is a lack, and if she possesses the Phallus, she is a lack, but if Johnny can "author" his mother through these letters, he can (attempt to) make her into the Phallus, which is, of course, impossible. But through this attempt to "author" a mother through these letters, he might be attempting to find some Truth, which is also impossible, though tempting to believe.

Calvin and Hobbes

You can never have too much Calvin and Hobbes. Let's take a look at a couple of strips.


This raises an interesting question. Do we have to like art if we're going to look at it? Calvin is trying to create a sort of Emperor's New Clothes situation here, where he will create art that no one understands or particularly likes, but they will pretend to like it and understand it in order to avoid being classified as "the lowbrows who can't appreciate great art like this."

If it's okay to not like art and still appreciate it, or rather, to not find it aesthetically pleasing, maybe that means that great art shouldn't fit society's definition of beauty at all. Maybe the greatest kind of art is the kind we can't understand and don't think is particularly pretty.

Still, the question remains, would you pay to see a deformed snowman in an art gallery setting?


Alright, one more.


So here's something that's very different from anything Calvin has ever made, because Calvin doesn't want to do what everyone else does. But when he gets tired of not conforming, he finds a new way to be avant-garde: be ironic by giving the public exactly what they want while simultaneously making them think they don't want it and therefore, they will want to want it. If Calvin gives them a nostalgic image in a modern setting, his theory is that his audience will love it, either because they're nostalgic themselves or because they believe nostalgia is avant-garde.

Danielewski Q & A

Interesting comments on writing HOL

I guess we should be happy?

http://youtube.com/watch?v=KdB5FcGh7Ks

So, I heard this on the radio (not my radio, my friend’s…) and before I could discern any real words being spoken (almost to the rhythm) I caught on to the roadrunner sound-blip. Then I deciphered the word Roadrunner and realized yes, he is actually singing about the Roadrunner… the Warner Brothers’ cartoon bird that is always escaping the Wily Coyote.

This is not something I expected from Kiss 108… (while I was listening to it… in my friend’s car.) Sex, drugs, fellatio, bling, and more sex… yes. But cartoons? When did cartoons become gangsta?

I played the song for my father and posed this same question, tailed by, “we should be happy it’s not about sex then right? Then it’s okay for the younger masses to overplay?” to which he responded with a raised brow and sly grin:
“Yeah… and yet somehow I still don’t feel socially redeemed.”


Has the rap community depleted its resources for covertly beating the censors and singing freely about sex and drugs? When I first heard Akon’s “Smack That” (by someone else’s request at a club) I remember being actually shocked (which was weird because I consider myself generally desensitized) and thought to myself “wow, they’re not even being coy and trying to blatantly hide the message…maybe this is the end, maybe the well of sex is try—or at least chafed” and now I hear this Roadrunner song…

Of course, I suppose Roadrunner may just be a metaphor for having sex while taking speed…

Group Project - PoMo track list

Yep, you guessed it. Self-referential music, either about playing an instrument, singing, playing or writing it. Something like that. This is what I have so far. Feel free to add to it! I feel like there's a shit ton I'm missing...

"I Play Bass" by Sack Trick
"Story of A Girl" by Nine Days
"Click Click Boom" by Saliva
"Sing" by The Dresden Dolls
"Art Is Hard" by Cursive
"We Call Upon The Author" by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds
"Pon de Replay" by Rihanna

Monty Python and the Holy Grail

'Nough said. Monty Python mixes contemporary humor with medieval aesthetic to create a satire of the times. See also the interjection of present-like scenes, especially when the British cops get involved trying to find out who slew the narrator guy. What's interesting is they're not just making fun of it, they're do so intelligently. All the members of the cast have some sort of history degree.

Reclaiming a prostituted voice?

http://youtube.com/watch?v=oXmYVRIpu2w&feature=related

So, this girl sold her image (voiceless as it was) eight years ago, and now that the stock footage is being used for what it was intended for (stock usage) she’s suddenly not okay with the currently applied message.

Is it fair for her to have expected that the only uses of her footage would be for nightclothes and cough syrup?

Is it fair that now that the footage is being used creatively (as its intention) that she is offended that it negates her current opinions and beliefs?

What if she was a Hillary supporter?

Ah-well, as Obama so eloquently put it, seems she’s giving her all at being that “just another white person.”

something to cry about

I just watched Shea Craig's performance tonight and it really stayed with me- more than just the scent of onions that clung to my eyes and clothes. For those of you that missed it, Shea diced onions for one hour in his installation piece this evening. A lot of onions. 10 pounds if I remember correctly, just one of the three bags he brought with him. When I first heard that he would be cutting onions, I was intrigued, but wasn't sure how long I could watch it before losing interest.

Then as soon as he started, I knew I was going to be there until he ended. For a while I didn't even have any idea why, and for the most part, I still don't know why and I'm okay with that. He was on his knees in front of an overturned wooden crate dicing onions meticulously. He would pause as he picked up each new onion and hold it before slicing off the top of the bulb. He looked so meditative and contemplative-purposeful that for a moment, cutting onions was almost a prayer. He set the tops on the side of the board as a record of what he'd accomplished. He diced the onion by cutting it into halves, slicing each half horizontally and then chopping the rest.

I was painful to watch almost, not only because I knew the chemicals he was surrounding himself with were going to cause the liquid on his eyes to convert to sulphuric acid, but because of what the rest of us were doing. Shea was sitting in a shanty- barely a shelter, someplace the homeless would live and he was cutting onions. Everyone else was wandering around, chatting and enjoying free coffee and food.
The act of cutting onions was brought to the center and set against the rest of us in our comforts. I sat there watching and felt horrible eating my free brownie.
After a while, his technique began to give out- there was now no pause, the tops were flung away with the skins, no longer a record and just in the way. the horizontal slice was gone and the end bits weren't chopped but discarded. He began to eat one like an apple, his face red and wet. He cut his hand and ignored it.

For the most part, I stopped trying to analyze just why I was feeling the way I was and just took it as just as valid in not having an answer. Cutting onions could make me feel something and I don't know why or how or really what I even was feeling. the specificity perhaps that Danielewski suggested?

Western World's Burden

Consumerism is an animalistic force not to be reckoned with. It comes in with a new name, which in affect changes the value of everything around it. Sneaking in with Western Industrialization, consumerism has consumed people for the greater part of a century with advertisements, products and services. And in this "Utopian society" we call America the stretch between social classes grows wider apart with every new product we give birth to. For every consumer tainted by "Totalitarian Consumerism" we lose another body in a sea of products.

We are slaves to our own creation


British/Sri Lankan Mathangi Arulpragasam "M.I.A." singing "Paper Planes." The lyrics say it all and the visual helps too.

Begotten

Watch it if you dare... I mean it.

This might actually give you nightmares. I just got hold of this whole film and I'm still wondering if I should watch it at night.



While the movie is not easily approached—lacking both dialogue and discernible cultural symbols—it does contain references to various religious and pagan myths. Relatively obvious Christian myths are present in the impregnation of Mother Earth by God, akin to the impregnation of Mary by the Holy Spirit. The same myth is partly present in ancient Egyptian mythology, where Isis impregnates herself with the penis of the killed god Osiris and gives birth to Horus.

Samurai Champloo: Postmodern Anime

The anime Samurai Champloo is totally Postmodern.





Even the word "champloo" used in this instance means "a mixture of" or "something mixed". Meaning they combine Edo period events with contemporary sensibilities. Such as the following!

-Stylized graffiti, guns, rapper hand gestures, beat-boxers, guys walking around with wood over their shoulders like boom boxes, obvious gang-warfare (or, in Japanese, yakuza). The producers are well aware of the mixing of time periods and address it at some points with statements along the lines of "We know. We're doing it for a reason. Just go with it."

-The main characters MST themselves in the beginning. Mystery Science Theatre 3000 (1988-1999). Also self-referencing the show and the storyline. Metanarrative!

-This particular episode (18: "War of the Words") is about language/interpretation of language/learning of language. Mugen, one of the main characters, can't read. While they're in a city, he's basically kidnapped by a drunk schoolmaster and put through language bootcamp where he learns to read *Hiragana. It is also about image and image through the shape of language. Mugen learns language, then creates his own symbol meaning "Mugen". Then there's the whole signifier/signified shabang when at the end of the episode, where he labels everything by writing on objects with their corresponding word. Meanwhile, there's a gang war going on where the competition consists of trying to out-do each other by graffiting or "tagging" the most dangerous spots around the city. Behold, the power of words as symbols carrying more meaning than the usually associated because of who painted them where.

(*Note that the Japanese have four different alphabets. Katagana, which is used for forgien words, Hiragana, mainly used for Japanese words, Romanji, or the Romanization of Japanese sounds, and Kanji, the complicated pictorial characters used to mean entire words or parts of words. Most of these were ganked from the Chinese alphabet. You could go all kinds of crazy with this, but I'm tired, so NO.)

hard core logo, and music as a simulacrum

i don't know how many people have seen this movie or read the book, so maybe none of this will make much sense but i'll try to write it out. it's just something i've been thinking about. there'd been discussions in class especially around the subject of delillo's work that sort of tie in i think, and matt's presentation last week hit on some of these thoughts, too.

mostly the idea of image as reality, persona as reality when applied to people, shown (sort of) through music and the music industry.

i know, original, right?

hard core logo is a book by michael turner about a fictional defunct vancouver punk band named hard core logo who get back together to play a benefit show for a global awareness organization. the show goes so well that joe dick, lead singer, wants the band to reform and do a reunion tour of western canada. the story follows joe, billy tallent, pipefitter and john oxenberger along the tour, goes through the good shows and the bad shows, dealing with all the crap of the music industry and "selling out" and feeling like a has-been, aging punk at thirty-two, and follows through to the eventual, final disintegration of the band.

turner's approach to the way he writes is very postmodern, and hard core logo in particular is similar to house of leaves in that it's very unconventionally structured and it challenges the way a book "should" be written. hard core logo is made entirely of images. the story of this band is told through photographs, set lists, song lyrics, poetry, journal entries, letters, answering machine messages, receipts, posters, interviews, etc. rather than a narrative storyline. what we get from this is a look into the lives of these characters, small snapshots of their personalities and what makes up their lives-- a collection of crumpled gig posters and ratty old notebooks filled with lyrics; interviews with radio stations and articles in magazines; inventory lists, merchandise, road games.

the movie, shot as a mockumentary, is an image also. not only is it physically visual but it's a product of turner's original images; an image made from an image. it's a combination of the pictorial quality of the book and the tangible physicality of film. being able to put faces to the names on the page, to actually hear the songs that were only lyrics before, helps make the characters even more real than they started out.

the characters appear as images as well, and here is where i'll get to the persona as reality part. right off the bat, the name of the band is more of an image than a name, not even going so far as to provide an actual logo, just saying insert one here. joe dick, billy tallent and pipefitter are images themselves, smaller images making up the larger one of the band. they're nicknames and rockstar personalities. in the film version, john says that pipe doesn't even remember what his real name is, he's been calling himself that for so long. joe and billy gave themselves their punk handles when they were teenagers and still refer to each other by them. as the story progresses, joe begins to see "billy tallent" as an image billy is projecting to the world, this rockstar front. he thinks billy is getting too lost in the surreal world of The Rock Star, that it's becoming less about the music and more about the limos and the models and the fame. joe's worried billy is starting to buy into the hype about himself and believe he really is "billy tallent," famous lead guitarist of seminal punk band hard core logo. the name, the idea of billy tallent becomes much bigger than the man himself-- joe's best friend; the guy he's known since they were kids; the guitarist in joe's band; just billy.

another character in the story who becomes an image is bucky haight. he's a punk legend and joe's idol. bucky represents punk music for joe-- what it used to be, the essence of what it should be. none of the rock and roll, music industry problems that inevitably come with being famous. during the tour, the band spends a night at bucky's place in new york city, and instead of this great legend, all they see is a regular guy trying to live a half-way decent life after speeding through it too hard. in john's tour diary he says he "reckoned [bucky]'d be healthier, but he looked as bad as he did in the eighties" (140). bucky tells them stories from when he was first starting out as a musician, the trouble he eventually ran into with the industry and drugs and burning out too quickly, and it culminates in him finally saying:

"if i could give you all
one piece of advice:
ditch the band
and buy a farm.
it doesn't matter what you grow.
it's the fact that you'll see
whatever you do" (139).

to see his idol in this shape, to hear from him that the music really isn't worth it because everything that comes with it is shit and fake, joe's picture is totally blown-- not only of bucky, but of his own life, in a way, when he thinks about how much he's put into believing in music whole-heartedly. john writes: "we drove in silence down the highway. i could tell joe was really bummed. while billy and pipe were bemused by buck, joe grew more despondent" (140).

the idea of bucky haight became larger than life to joe. bucky's image started to mean more than the real thing. so when confronted with just the man, stripped down and human -- with the reality of what the music industry is and what it can do to people, with how bad it can get for people -- joe doesn't deal with it well. the idea of bucky had become more real than any physically real person could have been. it wasn't even necessarily the idea of bucky himself, but what bucky represented musically that joe is now not sure he can believe in as strongly anymore. when the band makes it to the gig in saskatoon, joe dedicates a song to "bucky haight, the legendary punk king who died last year in new york city" (143).

possibly the only character who isn't an image is john oxenberger. he's the only band member without a nickname, and more importantly the only one who sees the truth about the people around him while everyone else struggles with the representations of truth bombarding their lives. so much of the insight we get about the other characters comes from john's journal entries (in the book) and his narration (in the film).


i guess my wanting to write about this book for this blog came about because i started to think about the idea of the simulacrum in a more everyday sense; to wonder how i could put this into simpler thoughts i could wrap my head around.

much like how hard core logo the book is written (a big collection of images), and how the film version is put together (an image made from that big collection of images), the story parallels this structure through commentary on the music industry. the image of an idea is what consumes everyone rather than anything real or tangible, and even characters like joe dick who just want to be on the outside of it all, who fight against falling into that, are images themselves. music is reduced to appearance and managerial bullshit, essentially.

we see people as simulacra everyday, know people who have their own fronts and images they like to project, and for some that image may even go deeper than just surface value. because even as superficial as our outward image is when compared to the whole of an individual, it still gets so much meaning placed on it in society, whether it's an indication of socio-economic status or subculture; our symbolic value, as baudrillard would say. if reality is image and image is reality, then the image of the rock star is just as real -- if not more so -- than the actual person underneath all that; the person who grew up in the same neighborhoods we did, who has parents and siblings and a favorite breakfast food.

the example of music speaks strongly to the point delillo makes in mao when he says that the novel used to be what people found meaning in, that writing and writers used to be dangerous, and nowadays people need bombs dropped on them before they're affected by anything. we all know plenty of people who don't read for pleasure but i can probably count on one hand the number of people i've met who don't listen to music. music can be synonymous with reading in that it's something people find meaning in, something revolutionary that affects and inspires. if the images of bill and his novel become real in mao, the same can be said of one's favorite band and their music.

in the lecture on baudrillard monica gave us, it said baudrillard felt that "the postmodern human condition is a combination of 'fascination,' 'melancholy' and 'indifference.'" that cries so loudly for music. musicians say everything we feel better than we think we ever could and that gives the music dual meaning: it gives us something to hold onto, a sense of belonging where we feel like we aren't the only ones who feel or think the way we do; and it gives us a human something we feel we can connect with, the empathetic musician who speaks to me and knows exactly how i feel.

matt included this quote about bill from mao in his presentation: "a dream locus, a doubleness that famous places share, making them seem remote and unreceptive but at the same time intimately familiar, and experience you've been carrying forever" (120). haven't we all felt this way at least once before about a musician we really admire? they seem larger than life but it still feels like they're speaking directly to us. joe felt this way about bucky haight, i think.

at some point during the course of the experience, the reality of the musician- or author-the-person seems to fade away a bit and what we're left with is the impression the work has made, reduced to the words (the books or lyrics or sounds) themselves. it doesn't matter if we really know farrokh bulsara or the image of freddie mercury; the rockin' world still goes 'round and we're still a part of it. the person who created those words still exists, certainly, and we know that, but if the image of that person isn't in the forefront it's the new images they've created.


that was so long winded and i'm sure there's still more i could have said, i just hope it made some amount of sense. sorry for the probably too-specific example, again. :/



film trailer:

i wonder what would happen if we all just walked away...

The Little Prince

"If I've told you these details about Asteroid B-612 and I've given you its number, it is on account of the grown-ups. Grown-ups like numbers. When you tell them about a new friend, they never ask questions about what really matters. They never ask: 'What does his voice sound like?' 'What games does he like best?' 'Does he collect butterflies?' They ask: 'How old is he?' 'How many brothers does he have?' 'How much does he weigh?' 'How much money does his father make?' Only then do they think they know him. If you tell grown-ups, 'I saw a beautiful red brick house, with geraniums at the windows and doves on the roof...,' they won't be able to imagine such a house. You have to tell them, 'I saw a house worth a hundred thousand francs.' Then they exclaim, 'What a pretty house!'"
(Antoine de Saint-Exupery, Le Petit Prince, p. 10, English edition)

I don't really classify Le Petit Prince as a postmodern novel, but that statement reminded me of our discussions on language, and how, according to Derrida, we cannot escape it. But it seems that here, Saint-Exupery took the concept of language a step further and said that children and adults cannot communicate well because they speak in different languages. Children use words, and to adults, numbers have become the new way to communicate, and each side considers the other's way of communicating to be wrong and even laughable. Even the author (as the narrator), feels like he is falling between the two worlds of language, and doesn't seem sure which side he is supposed to take.

Delving into the PoMo of Tool's "10,000 Days"

Tool has proved to be one of the more enigmatic bands of the past twenty years, releasing albums sparsely, never known for being media spectacles, and when giving interviews, well, they constantly lie. An idea came to me in the car, where most of my ideas come from, while listening to their last release "10,000 Days" that not only was it a giant piece of trash, but it was severely Postmodern.
In 1992, Tool released their first official EP "Opiate" and quickly followed with the full length album "Undertow" the following year. It was three years later, and a giant shift in the musical dynamic when "Aenima" was released in October of 1996. The "sophomore slump" that many bands suffer–a term referring to a band’s second album not standing up to the acclaim that their debut album had–was entirely circumvented an "Aenima" put Tool on the map of progressive rock until this day. Three years in the industry sense between albums is not unheard of, nor uncommon or uncharacteristic, but many labels prefer a two year span between albums, especially when it is a big label pushing a band’s marketing hard. It was five years until Tool would speak of a new release, when in January of 2001 the band announced their new album "Systema Encéphale" and along with it, a 12 song set list. Bootleggers immediately rushed to begin printing up teeshirts, and file sharing networks filled with leaked song files, but alas it was Tool that had the laugh. "Systema Encéphale" and the 12 song set list was completely made up and in May of the same year "Lateralus" was released (with a 13 song set list), leaving many over-zealous fans stuck with a heap of unlicensed and bogus merchandise. Let me take this opportunity to pause the Tool discography lesson now.
In Don DeLillo’s Mao II character Bill Gray is a famous author who avoids any and all media attention. After publishing two very successful books, he finds himself in a period of editing, scrapping, rewriting, and editing the same book. Years go by with his fans desperately waiting for the release, and many fans plan search parties to locate Gray to see him after spending so many years as a recluse. Gray’s editor, Scott says that he does not want Gray to actually publish the book because the hype for it is so great that it could never live up to the standards that his fans have placed on it for so long. Scott and partner Karen also would rather Gray not have his photograph taken by photographer, Brita. The reasons for this privatization is to keep the power with Bill Gray. As soon as Gray has his photographs released then he is expected to live up to looking like those photographs. It is the same as when he releases his book then he relinquishes all power and the book that he wrote essentially becomes property of the public.
Now, unpause. After the wild success of both "Aenima" and "Lateralus" Tool toured and then faded away into the depths of their private lives. Vocalist Maynard James Keenan worked on starting his vineyards, and releasing albums with A Perfect Circle and the rest of the band did whatever the hell it is that they do. August 2004 brought about news that Tool was releasing a new album "within a half year" which actually seemed plausible, but as it happens many times in the Tool universe, it was just another untruth. That same news update paraphrased Keenan saying that new material was being worked on daily. The chatter began, the questions, the doubts, etc. Considering the huge shift in dynamic between the previous three albums, what would this one be? How would age factor into the new material? Constantly spanning out albums nearly five years apart, the guys get older faster–in some sort of weird timing if you go by album releases–and the creative parts of the brain start to dwindle. But many Tool fans had the faith that "Tool takes their time on their albums and does things right."
So "10,000 Days" officially was released on May 2nd of 2006, five years after their last album. Essentially, the "Bill Gray" of Tool had now died after a half decade of silence. So what about the hype? Did "10,000 Days" stand up to expectations? Absolutely not! The best review I read of the album called it "aural sloppy seconds" although the media giants considered it favorable; but hey that’s what giant label corporations do, pay media giant corporations to speak kindly about them. Hmm, that’s an interesting use of the word "corporation" it kind of reminds me of when Bill Gray tells Brita that all writers have now been "incorporated." But as a side bar, "10,000 Days" was leaked on the internet by a non-password protected FTP that allowed not only radio stations to download the album (the intended downloaders) but the entire internet. Some rumors have led some fans to believe that this was done intentionally by Tool to spite their label.
The big problems with "10,000 Days" was a lack of songs to speak of. At 11 tracks the album only actually has five tracks. Vicarious, Jambi, 10,000 Days (Wings pt. 2), The Pot, and Right In Two. Vicarious is a song that Baudrillard would be proud of. It deals with the Hype-reality and imagistic media-drive society we have become.

Lyrics to Vicarious
===
Eye on the t.v cuz tragedy thrills me.Whatever flavor it happens to be.(like)Killed by the husband...drowned by the ocean...Shot by his own son...she used a poison in his tea, Then she kissed him goodbye.That's My kinda storyIt's no fun till someone dies.Don't look at me like I am a monster.Frown out your one face but with the other youStare like a junkie into the t.v.Stare like a zombiewhile the mother holds her child. Watches him die.Hands to the sky, cryin' "why, oh why?"Cuz I need to watch things die, from a distance.Vicariously, I live while the whole world dies.You all need it too don't lie.Why can't we just admit it?We won't give pause till the blood is flowing.Neither the brave nor bold nor brightest of stories told,We won't give pause till the blood is flowing.i need to watch things die, from a good safe distance.Vicariously, i live while the whole world dies.you all feel the same so why can't we just admit it?Blood like rain come down. Drum on grave and ground.Part Vampire, Part warrior, Carnivore, and VoyeurStare at the transmittal. Sing to the death rattleCredulous at best, your desire to believe in angels in the hearts of men.Pull your head on out your hippy haze and give a listen.Shouldn't have to say it all again.The universe is hostile. so Impersonal. devour to survive.So it is. So it's always been.We all feed on tragedy. It's like Blood to a vampire.vicariously, I live while the whole world dies.Much better you than i.
====


"That’s my kind of story. It’s no fun till someone dies." Keenan sings. It is exactly the highlight of the era of Post-Modernity where reality is the image, and reality is just a simulation as dictated by the media and the television screen. Monica wrote "Baudrillard says the postmodern human condition is a combination of ‘fascination,’ ‘melancholy’ and ‘indifference.’" Highlighting any more of the lyrics to Vicarious would be useless, as it is all apparently fascinated and indifferent towards the images of death and horror. In that sense, one could couple this song with Stinkfist which uses the imagery of having an entire arm, up to the shoulder inserted into an anus just to create a feeling over the appalling desensitivity of the culture.

Lyrics to Right In Two
===
Angels on the sideline,puzzled and amused.Why did Father give these humans free will?Now they're all confused.Don't these talking monkeys know that Edenhas enough to go around?Plenty in this holy garden.Silly monkeys,where there's one you're bound to divide it,right in two.Angels on the sideline,baffled and confused.Father blessed them all with reasonand this is what they choose?Monkey killing monkey killing monkeyover pieces of the ground.Silly monkeys,give them thumbs they forge a bladeand where there's one they're bound to divide it,right in two.Monkey killing monkey killing monkeyover pieces of the ground.Silly monkeys,give them thumbs they make a cluband beat their brother down.How they survive so misguided is a mystery.Repugnant is a creature who would squander the abilityto live tonight in heaven,conscious of his fleeting time here.Cutting it all, right in two.Cutting it all, right in two.Cutting it all, right in two.Cutting it all, right in two.Fight over ground, over earth, over sky.They fight over life, over blood, over air and light,over love, over some, over none.They fight or they die, Over what?Over writing!Angels on the sideline again,Benched along with patience and reason.Angels on the sideline again,Wondering where this tug of war will end.Cutting it all, right in two.Cutting it all, right in two.Cutting it all, right in two.Right in two!Right in two.
=====

In the Postmodern sense with this track it could be said that this is a dystopian view on the world. It also goes back to the days prior to Modernism when the Age of Reason had come to be and subsequently failed with the World Wars, when people realized that people are arguably innately horrible creatures. I’ll also count it to be hypocritical of Keenan to be writing and singing about angels considering he is avidly against organized religion. See: A Perfect Circle’s "Judith" which is actually a reference to the subject of "10,000 Days" Judith Marie, Keenan’s mother.
The lack of songs on "10,000 Days" isn’t the only disappointment, it’s more the disappointment that the actual songs deliver. It seems as if Tool got stuck in their own language and couldn’t find new ways to express themselves. They’ve always been hailed for their technical ability, Danny Carey’s absolutely mind blowing drumming complete with odd time signatures, incredible accuracy, his unique style. Adam Jones’ scant guitar work that somehow always seems to be just exactly perfect for the song and never seems like too much or too little. Justin Chancelor’s driving bass lines that end up caught in your head on a continuous loop for days on end. Maynard James Keenan’s challenging lyrics that make any fan run to their local library looking up Saturn Ascensions and Bill Hicks, and his booming powerful voice. But on "10,000 Days" it seemed like everyone except Justin had showed up more than just physically. Adam Jones recycled riffs from the past twenty years to either create stunning rip-offs of himself, or use guitar warm up techniques as actual riffs. Danny Carey who I swear could have an epileptic seizure with drum sticks in his hand and still sound better than 65% of drummers ever worked with what he had been given by the guitars but even then seemed more interested in playing his mandalas–triggering sound effects–than creating the stunning mathematical masterpieces his drum beats are known to be. Justin Chancelor didn’t so much as disappoint, delivering his one-of-a-kind bass lines and at times creating some absolutely beautiful creative riffs, but considering the songs dragged on for so long at times (I’m looking at you "Wings For Marie" series) that his riffs began to become stale when played for 45 seconds at a time; and not in the good way like in Schism.
Maynard James Keenan was up to par with the rest of the band in being boring as well. The opening to The Pot actually is something unheard on all prior Tool releases, vocally, but quickly becomes the same exact vocal style that he had in every song on the "Undertow" album. Now don’t get me wrong, it was nice to bring back in some of that old style, but over six minutes of the same repeating and not so interesting verse/chorus routine, it made me remember why I hated "Undertow." Keenan got stuck in his own language barriers, be it vocally, or lyrically. The album opens with Vicarious which could easily be slid right into the track listing of "Lateralus" and nobody would ever suspect it didn’t belong there, save the lower diction lyrical content. Then after Vicarious there is Jambi which is an obscure allusion to something in Sumatara, one of those typical Tool type things to do, that makes a listener scramble to Wikipedia or the famous Tool FAQ. Nothing on the album was new, they weren’t saying anything different, and didn’t even seem to be trying. "The world is pretty saddening" was the basic gist of the album from Vicarious talking about the media, down to The Pot and hypocrisy, and Right In Two’s commentary on angels being confused about humanity. Everything that was done musically on the album as well was either a rip-off of "Undertow" or something that sounded like it belonged on "Lateralus" yet less interesting.
The track "Lipan Conjuring" is one of those examples of the Postmodern "borrowing." The whole track is just an Apache tribal chant. It actually deserves an award for serving no purpose on the album.
Now the title track 10,000 Days (Wings pt. 2) has a very connection with two other tracks. At 11 minutes and 13 seconds long it features a long build up without much action beside repetitive instrumental tracks and Keenan’s low vocals which actually come to the pinnacle of the album, a three part vocal harmony. The track prior to 10,000 Days (Wings pt. 2) is Wings for Marie, pt. 1 which is the first track I heard off of the album (I chose it at random from the internet leak and refused to listen to anything else). My initial reaction was "Wow. Nothing is happening!" until the four minute, twelve second mark when the guitar and the drums inexplicably pick up, and then stop seconds later. The track features mainly ambient noise and the same drum and bass lines as the title track. It does not serve properly as a lead in to the title track, nor does it stand up to be its own track at all. Odd. The last track of the album Viginti Tres is five minutes and two seconds long and features nothing but ambient noise that sounds either like wind, or television static. Now check this out. If one were to first put Viginti Tres then Wings for Marie, pt. 1 together and play them as one track without any gap in between then the length would add up to 11 minutes, 13 seconds. Play that couple over the 11 minute, 13 second song 10,000 Days (Wings pt. 2) then one song is formed. The ambient noise syncs with the other ambient noise, then the instrumentals start to sync, and at one point Keenan starts to do a call and response with himself on the combined track. How is that for anti-form? Take a song and then demolish it and make three unfinished songs? Wow, Tool. Raising the bar over their own heads now.
The track Intension sounds so much like the "Triad"–a coupling of three songs at the end of "Lateralus" Reflection, Disposition, and Triad–that it’s almost uncanny. It’s as if they mashed the "Triad" together with the next track, Right In Two together, and added in the same two note riffs that Jones plays at the beginning of 10,000 Days (Wings pt. 2). PoMo Alert! But an interesting fact about the word "Intension" that in referring to language without intension words have no meaning.
"10,000 Days" did challenge the notion of CD packaging with the award winning work that Adam Jones directed with Alex Grey. The cover opens three-fold, vertically. The top portion is a pair of 3D goggles that the viewer uses to look at the rest of the inner-packaging, creating 3D images of the band, as well any of the extra stuff in the booklet. In May of 2006 the band’s official webmaster said that the four individual photos of the band could be used in conjunction with another to used to create "pieces of a kind of puzzle." To my knowledge, what that is, has not been discovered.
Anyone who is a fan of Tool for long enough begins to look deeper into their work for things like 3D picture puzzles, hidden meanings of songs, etc. When I began to delve into this project of looking at things in the Postmodern sense, I didn’t know what I’d find, and I’m sure I could still find more. It all started with thinking of how it related to Bill Gray. My eyes hurt now. Any feedback is much appreciated, as well as suggestions of other things to explore/explain.