Long Sunday

W(h)ither the Philosophy of Pop?

"Do you realize how ridiculous you must sound when you bring into the classroom, the place where should be taught universal truths, this [spluttering]…this rubbish. This is little more than a propoganda campaign for MTV. Pop caters to the lowest common denominator; the energy of pop is too often the testosterone-fueled energy of male adolescence; the languages of pop are impenetrable, ephemeral jargons; it locks into stereotypical patterns which relate purely to physiological artefacts and thus have no significance whatever to philosophy. Man will always have need of entertainment; this is not, however, philosophy; or even philosophically interesting. There is no philosophy, nor politics, in pop."
               -Grayson Darkling-Furniss 

"All art...is...essentailly poetry [Dichtung]"
                -Martin Heidegger

Having heard the phrases, "pop philosophy" or, "the philosophy of pop" resonate in certain corners of the 'sphere, having read this generous transcription by Robin; (from whence the quote above); or this post in particular by K-Punk (since followed up by many others); or, going even further back, this good interview by Infinite Thought...well here a mammoth post, with generous (but hopefully not ponderous!) excerpting from an article by Mark Greif follows...

poshlost'

"Corny trash, vulgar clichés, Philistinism in all its phases, imitations of imitations, bogus profundities, crude, moronic, and dishonest pseudo–these are obvious examples. Now, if we want to pin down poshlost' in contemporary writing, we must look for it in Freudian symbolism, mothmythologies, social comment, humanistic messages, political allegories, overconcern with class or race, and the journalistic generalities we all know..."

Or:

"A well-rounded, untranslatable whole made up of banality, vulgarity, and sham. It applies not only to obvious trash (verbal and animate), but also to spurious beauty, spurious importance, spurious cleverness"

–Vladimir Nabokov

King Kong.  Baudrillard.  Shopping Malls.  Disney Land.  MTV.  Dave Eggers. 

On some level one cannot help but recognize the sheer dominance of these forces.   Speaking generally, they are the air we breath.  This does not mean that they are natural.  Liberals (the politicians, not the ideals of any philosophy - which for many reasons, such as Capitalism, do not exist) would have more nuanced cooking shows, a slightly better quality of life for slightly more people for a slightly longer time.  A stronger, more gentle war on various emotional states.  Their prospects, of course, hinge on a fundamental delusion of sorts – namely a world where conservatives (at their current stage on the several-decades-developing road to fascism) simply do not exist.  Indeed, much of the liberal delusion consists of an elaborate maintainence of this snobbery.*  (And, to be fair, much of the conservative machine depends on exploiting the resentment springing from this impression.)  Those are all familiar enough complaints, to be sure.  And like everywhere, such generalizations are perhaps only useful up to a certain point.

If it is even worth mentioning (and I'm not convinced it is), this realm is nevertheless where a stupid film like Team America hits hardest.   
It "hits" in the sense that it literally performs a kind of violence on its audience (a violence for which we have very few words, yet – apart from the usual phrases, "beating over the head," "insulting the intelligence," "forced to consume," etc.)  Lenny Bruce's form of satire comes to mind (and yet, is it funny?  Really?).  That it panders equally to liberals and conservatives is perhaps worthy of a chuckle.  It's also of somewhat Zizekian topicality, in fact.  I wonder if he's seen it.  But to mistake this film for a "critique" of anything would surely be going too far (again recalling a certain Zizek). 

Having so warned against generalizations, I will now proceed to generalize.  I do think there is some wisdom in making an effort not to speak of the banal, or at least to do so carefully, and not in a manner that treats it with any more dignity than that with which it may handle us.

Paxless in Americana

It's a match made in heaven.  One wonders if they know each other?  A commenter on the latter, one "Big Billy" asks a good question:

What if a pair of opposing hypocrits (where one says one thing and doesw [sic] the other, and the other says the other and does the one thing) team up? As a human, I find it impossible to constantly avoid hypocrasy [sic], so why not pair up and embrace out hypocritical natures, and then we can really progress, right? My partner will do my work for me while I do his work for him. We will both get our jobs done while approaching more exagerated extremes.
But then again, we're probably better off if you just call me an idiot too.

In this our quest, for the ultimate blog brevity I then leave it to you, dear eater, to draw your own excursions.  For it is a black and white world, with the Author sitting f'evern top (ever'n especially whilst claiming the bottom!) and we was only ever kiddin', once Hugh challenged e to a duel. 

A duel, e says!  At dawn, no less.  E dunno, somehow "be offended, but say so" just don't 'ave the same ring to it.    An' sometimes it be da fools who call idiots, "idiots" best.