Being Emphatic, Post-9/11

Postmodern Bonnie and Clyde:

To: {souleater}

From: runawaydevil

Subject: Re: Hello there!

 

well you see... [color=red][size=5]i fucking love you! [/size] [/color]

 

 

Msg id: 1302244771

To: {souleater} (1340807)

From: runawaydevil (1209054)

Date: Wed Mar 8, 2006 9:00 am

Subject: Re: Lyrics!

 

Aha yey! you make me feel so loved :hearts: and yes i do love you,

Your wonderful *kiss*

 

 

 

Msg id: 1302290948

To: runawaydevil (1209054)

From: {souleater} (1340807)

Date: Wed Mar 8, 2006 10:59 am

Subject: Re (2): Hello there!

 

Well thanx fer caring so fucking much you, you, you sexy beast you!

tehee ttyl

18r beautiful!

 

 

 

Msg id: 1302296648

To: runawaydevil (1209054)

From: {souleater} (1340807)

Date: Wed Mar 8, 2006 11:12 am

Subject: Re (2): Lyrics!

 

Yeah I'm so glad that you feel that way about my cuz I love you too! so

You didn't call last night what's up? well I hope that you have a good day

today & hopefully I'll ttyl tonight or something! well *hugz&kissez!* XOXOXO

Take Care!

 

*kiss*

 

 

Msg id: 1330764621

To: runawaydevil (1209054)

From: {souleater} (1340807)

Date: Mon Mar 20, 2006 1:00 pm

Subject: Hey Beautiful!

 

 

Hey howz it goin'? I'm ok I guess... but I'm still sorry that you got into trouble! :( & when I tried to call ashley I was thinking of you & I think that when I went to dail her number to apologize I accidently dailed your number I'm so so sorry! :( That totally sux that your grounded for a month! God your parents are totally unfair! :cussing: My mother was nothing like your parents... know why cuz she'z been living on her own since she was 15 and she used to hang out with 25 year olds and stuff so she knows what it's like to be us... :) too bad your parents don't.... they should get with the program and realize that times are ever changing and they can't stop it!... like what if man kinds life style changes are they going to refuse to change too! cuz they won't make it very far then! well I hope to talk to you some time soon, I miss you! *singing* "I want you, I need you, I have you, I won't let anybody have you", tehee Slipknot rulez! :D well hope to see you soon or sumthin'! Take Care! Love You! :love:

 

Msg id: 1331568479

To: {souleater} (1340807)

From: runawaydevil (1209054)

Date: Mon Mar 20, 2006 7:10 pm

Subject: Re: Hey Beautiful!

 

rawr i hate them

so i have this plan

it begins with me killing them

and ends with me living with you

so we are set

im going to try and call you but i really dont know if i'll be able to

to

they are treating me like shit

i hate them sooo much

but i love you and hope this wont bring us far apart

i hope to talk to you soon

love you with all my heart

:love:

 

Msg id: 1334483680

To: runawaydevil (1209054)

From: (souleater} (1340807)

Date: Tue Mar 21, 2006 9:51 pm

Subject: Re (2): Hey Beautiful! 

Well I love your plan but we need to get a little more creative with

Like details & stuff! I wish they wouldn't treat you that way! grrrr! it angers me to hear that I dislike them very much! Don’t worry I love you too… my sexy beast! I hope to hear from you soon too! Take Care my love! You have the key to my heart & soon enough you shall have my heart… if I die anyways cuz if I give it to you now I’ll die then you won’t be able to hear me say how much I love you!

:love: XOXOXO :love

LOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ROTFLAMO!!!!

How can affect manifest itself in LOLspeak? Or, to ask a slightly more modest question: how can one convey emotion in an online conversation? Precisely those "expressions" that have been created to, supposedly, replicate nonverbal signals - smileys, LOL, :hearts:, etc - seem to deaden online text. "LOL," used unironically, kills a joke in a way that "real" laughter never could.  We could blame "online chatting," blogging, short-form and poorly edited online content as formats; we could suggest that these are simply structurally impoverished media, unable to convey a full range of human emotions.  Yet, as I think comes across very strongly in the above, there is something intensely "pathetic" (i.e., pathos-evoking) about LOLspeak. If one puts enough exclamation points after LOL, it becomes a bit uncanny; that is, this excessive emphasis highlights the impossibility of the task at hand (to convey a spontaneous gesture using a repeatable symbol) by harping on the need to add emphasis to something that by definition must be self-sufficient (an out-loud laugh). Yet here is another source of uncanniess: a laugh is supposed to represent plenitude; inasmuch as LOL fails to achieve this plenitude (or ":hearts: xoxoxoxxoxoxo" fails to be a gesture of genuine love), it "represents" the implicit failure of these "real" gestures on a level that is paradoxically more "immediate." There is something repulsive about "LOL" (even more so with LMAO, or <8,>

Does this mean that LOLspeak is the only possible critical language in which to assess the manifest failure of new media to serve as a fulsome form of expression? Good question. I'm trying to write an article about this for n+1, the most important literary journal of our time (this is Gawker's best meme [pronounced "mi-mi", BTW] so far).

Define Irony

Jonathan Krohn, 14, has written a book. It is 86 pages long. It is entitled Define Conservatism. LOL@ his age, his prepubescent voice, his home-schooling, the fact that he plays golf. Etc.

More interesting: the book's title. There is something about it that stands out. On the one hand, it has the naive, overly-literal simplicitly of a 14 year old who wrote a book: i.e., his book is an attempt to "define conservatism," which he claims has been bastardized into a political stance as opposed to a philosophy (? I think this is what he is saying, dunno tho). Thus, we might argue that he titled his book to straightforwardly reflect his aims. 

On the other hand, there is something of a conscious aesthetic choice. "Define Conservatism" has something of the ironic over-simplification, the post-double-entendre, about it.

This reminds one of the cover of a K. Anthony Appiah book, or perhaps:

Or:

One almost has the sense that Krohn is playing with our preconceptions; the title acts as an ironic gesture that anticipates objections based on his young age. I know you think I'm young, that I speak in declarative sentences and ask my parents the meaning of various common words. But in fact, it is you who is woefully ignorant: you who lambaste conservatism (that's you Barack - the "most radically leftist president in my lifetime!") don't even know what it means! Just as "Gay Ideas" - which evokes both a naive intellectualism (I'm gay, and these are my ideas), a naive homophobia (what a gay idea!), and a reappropriation of that homophobia - makes a highly self-aware aesthetic gesture that supersedes its supposedly straightforward denotative meaning, "Define Conservatism" seems to hint at a sophisticated grasp of the aesthetic possibilities of language - and perhaps the creation of an entirely new politics based on the endless play of signification. Look 4ward 2 seeing more!

18th brumiere of Soulja Boy

Hegel remarks somewhere that all great world-historic personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.

Prestige Tweets

THE_REAL_SHAQ

At firehouse subs, dat turkey on wheat wit extra mayo is gooder dan a mug, lolabout 13 hours ago from TwitterBerry

lindsaylohan

cocaine cheezeburgers and champaign dreamsabout 4 hours ago from TweetDeck
schwarzenegger@robotchampion This group wants your ideas to make California better and your input on current CA issueshttp://bit.ly/o2Ar4
5:12 PM Feb 27th from TweetDeck
Our work is not over. We were in a crisis. But crisis provides opportunity for real reforms for California.12:37 PM Feb 19th from web
DaveJMatthews@bigbrowneyes Bam!5:36 PM Feb 26th from twitterrific in reply to bigbrowneyes
yokoonoLove someone.Express it.When you express your love you are not only expressing it to the one you love but to the Universe. I love you! yoko3:52 PM Feb 13th from webONO: GIVE PEACE A CHANCE The International Remixes - OUT NOW on iTunes & Beatport: http://tinyurl.com/ono-gpac12:12 PM Feb 20th from web
snoopdogg@vanivasky getn the day startd with some tweets ya diggabout 10 hours ago from web in reply to vanivasky@Woodifield chickn and waffls player!!!about 6 hours ago from web in reply to Woodifield@yellaarknigga family is #1 yoabout 10 hours ago from web in reply to yellaarknigga
KarlRoveTrying to figure out why all my DMs don't show up on TweetDeck. Any ideas?8:03 PM Feb 27th from TweetDeck

Subversive Commercials

This commercial, which I just saw while watching the Hannity report on my flatscreen television, may at first seem to reify blah blah sexism. However, we might look more closely to find the potentially subversive element lurking within. As the burglar waits in the dark, his reflection on her pristine floor-to-ceiling windows the only hint of his presence, so too does this subversive kernel lurk within the fabric of this supposedly "mainstream" commercial. As in Britney Spears' performance at the 2007 VMAs or Hans Holbein's "Ambassadors", there is a "tache" (stain) on this work.  But in a move that makes this work perhaps more radical than the aforementioned canonical texts, it consists precisely in the (unheimlich) aesthetic contours of the work.

"Treadmill" appears to be a commercial targeted at the merely-conservative, middle-American male or even the particularly interpellated soccer female. An attractive but "mainstream" 30-something woman prepares to "work out" in her spacious suburban home. She talks on her cell phone to her girlfriend, puts on some trance music, and gets ready to "blow off some steam"/burn off the cheeseburger she snuck for lunch. The threats that she faces (her house being burgled, possibility of rape) and the vehicle for her subsequent rescue (institutionalized authority of the panoptic "security system," comforting voice of the white male phone operator) seem to reify this conservative ethos. A male viewer might want to get Brinks for his stay-at-home wife; the stay-at-home wife might see it as a way to protect herself from the fears that she must invent for herself to assuage her constant boredom.

Yet there is something both menacing and awkwardly comic about "Treadmill," and moreover the menace and the comedy are mutually reinforcing in a decidedly unheimlich way. The threat of sexual abuse - the fact that the burglar (there are actually two - are you seeing the possibilities here?) decides to break in while looking at the woman, dressed in her tight running clothes, knowing that some sort of confrontation would ensue in the "break-in" - is quite risque for a Fox ad. More intriguing is the shot at 0:15-0:17, a zoom in from behind the woman on the treadmill. Whose perspective does this shot represent? The viewer of "Treadmill," a sexual pervert who has violent scopophilic designs on the soccer mom? (This would be a traditional film-theoretical, Mulveyian position). Or perhaps the woman herself, fantasizing about her own violation from the security of her treadmill and iTunes?

And what of the awkward little dance our fair-haired heroine performs at 0:20 when she jumps off the treadmill? How does she know to head for the loveseat, in which the cordless phone is buried? Here we go: because she knew that Matt From Brinks Home Secuity was going to call. Why does it matter that he has called? The "breakers-in" have already left. Most crucially: Matt From Brinks Home Security is going to "send help right away." Again: why? why is she reassured by this? What kind of help does a lonely, scared woman at home need? And what kind of help can Matt From Brinks Home Security provide?  

The tache, then, is the fact that the woman's self-negating desire is revealing to have structured the very aesthetic form of "Treadmill" itself. The woman - who exists, needless to say, only within the diegesis (or does "woman" exist at all?) - has structured this explicitly "sexist"  and sexually violent tableau via her own fantasy, which itself is a symptom of the larger cultural gestalt in which the viewer is thus seen to participate. The unheimlich of "Treadmill" - the simplistic, declarative title serving as deadpan reminder of the totalizing nature of suburban spleen - consists in our realization that the double-mediation of the fantasy (the masculine-interpellated viewer's [even if female] voyeuristic/sexually fantasy of transgressing this 'idyllic' - for the Fox News demographic - scene) is rendered comical and unerotic because the female character who is supposedly the object of the scene is in fact its subject. 

career decisions

PRESTIGE RANKINGS

Plz rank the following:

Harper's MAGAZINE (smoking cigarettes and discussing the relative merits of Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and Stein in a Soho office building)

Graduate school

the opportunity to continue driving your "vintage" car in nice weather, reading theory on the beach, listening to LCD soundsystem while driving to class (UCLA)

being super interdisciplinary, getting real rigorous (chicago)

mnstrm academic prestige (YALE)

i-BANKING: whippin tradez, broing out at the office, feeling real good walking home from work, or taking a black car - really, whatever you feel like. you're liberated - you don't need need the convenience of a cab, instead you can flâne all the way from the FD to the LES. on the other hand if you're tired, it's not a problem, just take the black car. the confidence, convenience - the choice - to contemplate that which you understand, dialectically, from a position of comfort. 

the French - they "get it"

I stole this highly bloggable video from HRO, but I think it's worth a second analysis driven by an ironism with a different number of repetitions of the word "post" in front of it (this is a de facto admission that my blog is now nothing more than a reblog of HRO, and certainly not the most successful one at that - see HRO Exegesis). Charles writes: 

I haven’t ever really listened to the Presets too indepth, except for this one Lifelike remix of them. But I have heard that they are ‘amazing’ live, and they probs are. N e ways, this music video is pretty meaningful bc it was directed by the same person who made M83’s “Kim and Jessie.” I think I can really identify with this music video because I am a teen from the suburbs who wants to go to the city and ‘get my dance on’ but then also get meaningful at a beach bonfire.
<3>

Okay. But also: I think I can really identify with this music video because I am a "young adult" from a city nostalgic for a suburban experience that I didn't have. I want to go to the Hollywood walk of fame and "get my dance on" as if I were a t(w)een from the suburbs. What's authentic about this video is that is evokes a nostalgic longing for an experience of urban life as something aesthetically supple, something new and forcefully alienating and beautiful. The first shot of a sped-up LA freeway scene (0:30), interspersed with our tween walking to school in his uniform, is infused, if not with the wide-eyed, naive awe of a suburbanite's first view of the big, godless city, then with his first wonderous view of a TV commercial for a global investment bank with calm professionals presiding over the chaotic urban scene outside of their gleaming office tower. Though it's not particularly interesting to point out that this shot is "cliche" (here we go again), the aesthetic power of the shot is due more to an evocation of the form which we might imagine a suburban longing for the dissolution of subjectivity offered by the anonymous metropolis, cars whizzing past, would take. Indeed, we don't ever have to "imagine" what form it would take, because the desire itself is cultivated by, e.g., these advertisements (and more forcefully, Hollywood film - it is not insignificant that this is L.A. and not New York).

   The shot is thus all the more powerful because we've seen it before. The desire being evoked here is not our desire for "that (postmodern) urban experience"; rather, it is a nostalgia for that desire.  This also extends to the way the video treats a notion of "Hollywood culture." As our tween sashays down the Walk of Fame, bowling over Elvis and Marilyn Monroe, there is a gleeful kind of irony which, precisely because it is not "post-" (or rather, because it is "post-post-"), feels naive. Wouldn't it be nice to just genuinely ironically enjoy pop culture, instead of having to try to ironically enjoy it? This need to try (Baudelaire's "heroic" affirmation of the present in all its squalid glory), and the effort to navigate the neverending series of quotation marks it unleashes, is a trope to which the French are especially (uniquely?) well-suited.

The French director of this video, Eva Husson, also directed a video for M83. Though I think the unheimlich humor of the M83 video is slightly tangential in regards to this aesthetic, M83 is perhaps the best example of the contemporary Baudelairean attempt to confront postmodernism. Is it a surprise that M83 is French as well?

These could be shots from the Presets video. On the one hand, blissful, "authentic" suburban tween life; on the other, the promise of the Real of urban anonymity and amorality. And again, with the suburban scene, it is the highway in the background which makes the photograph particularly moving; rather than a pure bucolic/rural - and thus historically "previous" to the urban - ideal, it evokes a knowing naivete and willfully heroizes precisely the ironic/knowing aspect. With the urban scene, this is again a generic shot, and what's important about it is the intentionally pseudo-authentic details (grainy stock, saturated colors). Note the similarity to shots from Heat, Miami Vice, and Roadtrip 2K8: