tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2905155363976375938.post6427381086258771834..comments2024-03-21T22:36:54.451-04:00Comments on HISTORIES OF THINGS TO COME: Generation X Goes Back to the Future 4: I'm Still HereLC Douglasshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04250961297714038453noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2905155363976375938.post-76614179642280799992010-09-29T22:10:58.137-04:002010-09-29T22:10:58.137-04:00Hey pblfsda,
Thanks for your amazing comment! Le...Hey pblfsda,<br /><br />Thanks for your amazing comment! Let me plug your DP blog - check out LGC Doom Patrol<br />http://lgc01dp.blogspot.com/<br /><br />WRT the reality/non-reality, yes indeed, the Boomers have been doing it all for quite awhile. The whole problem goes back to the ancient Greeks and before - Plato's cave. Perhaps what interests me is that each generation approaches the problem differently. <br /><br />To digress for a moment, the use of generational terms of identification is a product of modern history. It has nothing to do with the weird theories of history put forth by people like Strauss and Howe, who were/are not historians. And there was a time of course when people did not define themselves generationally at all. The use of horizontal alignments for self-definition probably emerged in the late eighteenth century in revolutionary Europe. Vertical alignments (social hierarchy, family etc.) were replaced with horizontal loyalties (class, generation). Each of those loyalties relies upon a different value. So for example, people used to be motivated by ideas of duty, loyalty, fealty, honour - which have largely fallen by the wayside.<br /><br />To get back to the point, each generation deals with the problem of reality/unreality in their own way; they project the values they identify with onto that problem. The Boomers would toy with the idea, and ultimately boil everything down to a coy solipsism, lost in themselves, while sure there was still an objective 'authority' out there to fight.<br /><br />If the Xers approach the problem differently, which I think they do, then the question is - how and what values come to the surface when they do?<br /><br />The big giveaways on Gen X values buried in this big confidence trick imo are Affleck's two comments. First, he said that the camerawork became more accomplished, professional, stylized as the film progressed. That means that there is an aesthetic, an artistic practice and demonstration of artistic change, that reveals Xers' values. Second, he implied that the film is really Dante's Inferno, set in the reality film world of modern Hollywood. This is a medieval religious reworking of classical epics - a transition piece from the middle ages to the Renaissance. It's about a journey of the soul as it learns to recognize evil and reject it. That, to me, suggests that Affleck and Phoeix took a morally barren medium like reality TV and transformed it into a genre that could represent ethical values. And these are values that are historical embedded in our past - presented via a futuristic play on the expectations of a world-weary audience. So - past values presented through an aesthetic of improving film style through the film, plus the confidence ploy to force the audience to look at a very old story and an even older philosophical problems as if for the first time.LC Douglasshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04250961297714038453noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2905155363976375938.post-37928730844262040832010-09-29T19:41:57.122-04:002010-09-29T19:41:57.122-04:00A few points:
First, Roger Ebert can, should actua...A few points:<br />First, Roger Ebert can, should actually, praise or criticize a movie for its technique, composition, acting, etc., but given his history it feels bizarre that he would take issue with a movie for blurring distinctions between life on and life off the celluloid. If memory serves me right (and after this article I'm seriously wondering how much of my memory really happened), he was hired by Malcolm McLaren (probably on the strength of "Beyond The Valley Of The Dolls")to write a vehicle script for the Sex Pistols, a punk update of the sort of vanity projects that Dave Clark 5 or Herman's Hermits used to do in which the band play themselves. The result was "Who Killed Bambi", which never finished production and spiralled out of control with rewrites. In fact, Ebert may not have been the first writer on it. Parts were cannibalized for "The Great Rock And Roll Swindle" and "The Filth And The Fury", the latter of which was made as a disambiguation of the former, specifically because its use of real people playing themselves in fictional scenarios fueled a mythology about the Sex Pistols which may have served McLaren's purposes but was often detrimental to the band's members and associates. Ebert may not be at all culpable for any ensuing damage, but he should certainly be intimately familiar with this precedent for playing with the audience's perceptions vs. reality.<br /><br />As should Richard Lester and The Beatles.<br /><br />And the obvious elephant in the room here is Andy Kaufman, who is widely remembered as a brilliantly original and daring comedian. He was, but few seem aware that his performance art 'routines' owed as much to debilitating mental illness as his genius. We only assumed he was perpetuating a massive con and prided ourselves on seeing through it, unaware that we had missed the much bigger con. He was externalizing some internal torture but we believed he was 'pretending' to be real.<br /><br />There are other examples, less extreme. Liza Minnelli's marriages, anyone? Oh, and Stan Lee didn't really preside over a Bullpen of creative folks who called each other by colorful nicknames and engaged in jovial camaraderie. The real 'Bullpen' was made of salaried writers and artists in the early 1950's, so-called because during their lunch break they ate in the studio and listened to baseball games on the radio. At the time, Stan had temporarily left comics to write for radio and TV and discovered the Bullpen when he returned as an editor. In 1957 everyone but Lee, the receptionist and a production manager was fired. For months they published only file stories while the owner debated whether to continue publishing comics at all. When they resumed, it was with a small core crew and the majority of work was created by free-lancers. Few people worked in the offices. Lee used the image of a Marvel Bullpen in his editorials, occasionally working himself and others actively into the stories and even into the plots (especially FANTASTIC FOUR #'s 10 and 176). That aggressive adherence to brand identity resulted in profiles in Rolling Stone and Esquire by the end of the 1960's. I'm not sure that terminology such as 'brand identity' even existed at that time. But even people who knew that Spider-Man was not real had no way of knowing that the Bullpen wasn't what they thought it was.<br /><br />I'm aware that you've seen my DP blog (and thank you for the acknowledgement; from someone so consistently insightful and articulate that's very high praise). I touched a bit on Boomer conceits in an anecdote from my librarian days a few months ago and now I wish I could have referenced this post at the time. Bravo.pblfsdahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07471473189061385119noreply@blogger.com