A Momentary Cultural Obsession: Violence as Primary Means of Displaying Power

What social purpose does this image serve?

Initially, the meme disturbed me … for many reasons.

Apparently, the Internet does make you stupid, as anyone who has the gall to create and post an image of video game characters in medias res massive  slaughter and destruction has probably been in front of the computer screen too long and touch with reality [and yes, I see the irony here].  Aside from the meme having an overtly off-color quality, however, the image has other less-apparent though just as important disturbing aspects to it.  Consider that these video game characters featured in this meme (who really did attempt to destroy buildings) and the premise of this game (to destroy every skyscraper) was acceptable entertainment for children a few decades ago.  Furthermore,  Midway [thanks Jacob!] released its version of the arcade game, Rampage, in the 80′s: a decade that also witnessed the release of Commando, a film memorialized, at the time, as the movie with the single-highest body count ever.

Keeping this cultural context in mind, the meme seems to reveal an underlying violent tendency present in America resulting from a momentary cultural obsession with using destruction as the primary means of displaying power. That said, is it really any surprise that we discover a meme eight years later that exploits these power-hungry, destructive attitudes of the 80′s and uses them within the context of recent  tragic events for the purpose of offering smart-ass, reflective commentary about our culture?

What disturbed me the most, however, is the way in which the meme seemed to suggest a disconnect between reality and fantasy that seemed to be an effect of mediation.

As I continued contemplating the image, I developed a hypothesis based on the premise that in light of new communication technology, information and events, whether real  or fantastical reach through Americans only after being mediated.  Keeping this concept in mind, I conducted a brief analysis of the controversial image that attempts to examine its various mediated components and their relations in such a way as to suggest that mediation distorts reality and creates a schizophrenic cultural attitude.

Looking back at the meme, we observe an image of two smoldering buildings that continually appeared on television and as such, served as the primary way of connecting Americans and the rest of the world to the event.  News programs mediated the image to Americans who, because of proximity or time, had no way of experiencing the tragedy directly.

What we see in the foreground of the buildings, however, is not an actual event that corresponds to a reality but a fantasy: the recreation of a Godzilla-themed video-game, Rampage.   Though the buildings represent reality and the Godzilla characters, fantasy, what remains the same in both images is the mediated quality.  For instance, Americans in Detroit, due to limitations in proximity or temporality, could not stand in front of the building and experience the event directly or after the events occurred, so they turned to the mediated reality provided to them by news stations to recreate the experience for them.  Likewise, the only means of connecting gamers with the fantastic world of monsters and destruction is through mediation reality provided to them by arcades or game systems.  In either case, we observe a similar structure: a distant reality/fantasy is mediated to individuals via technology capable of bridging space and time.

Are we back to the allegory of the cave? With the web, we become connected to cultures and realities far across time and space; however, since often times we cannot directly experience them, how do we know that the representation we receive on the web or television are actually accurate representations of the circumstances they reflect?  Is this reality or has it been altered in some way for consumption?  If the representations of reality are inaccurate, then we have experienced nothing more than augmented versions of reality that try to pass off as true.  In this context, then, where faraway circumstances may only be experiences through representation, representations of fantasies could be said to have as much credit as realities, as at least they don’t make a claim at truth.

The above attempt to demonstrate  the way in which mediated information (whether reality or fantasy) serves to call into question our entire understanding of reality.  By doing such, I hoped to introduce ways in which a culture steeped in mediation loses touch with reality and essentially develops a form of schizophrenia.

Adapt, Migrate, or Die

“A generation of permanent cripples, failed seekers, who never understood the essential old mystic fallacy of the acid culture: the desperate assumption that somebody, or at least some force, was tending the light at the end of the tunnel.” -Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

I use the quote above to illustrate not necessarily what happened to one culture in particular.  Instead, I use it to refer to the phenomenon that occurs when maladaptive cultures fall through the cracks due to unanticipated changes in environments.

What happens, for instance, to a generation of children raised on video games, social networking, Wii, and garage band who clung to these forms of media and entertainment under the “desperate assumption” that their environments would stay the same and that these forms of media would have relevance for future decades?  Prosperous economic circumstances, of course, may be ephemeral, and the cultural productions of these circumstances, consequently, have that same ephemeral quality.

I learned this morning from a story on NPR about NEATS in England who cannot find a job in this economy despite their degrees at prestigious colleges.  A NEET, is someone who is Not in Education, Employment, or Training.  The NPR story focus on one particular NEET, who, despite her education at King’s College in fashion and design, could not find work anywhere.

Through this example, I do not wish to imply or suggest that fashion or multimedia entertainment are merely fads of sorts that no longer support a large enough market for up and coming professionals.  (Though, they may change, in time, according to our abilities to access the natural resources that give us energy to produce these aspects of our culture, I don’t think they are “here today, gone tomorrow”).   The point of the example and the early discussion of Thompson’s quote serves to illustrate the phenomena that occurs when resources in an environment no longer support the cultures that begot them.

The end result.  The “mystic fallacy” that “some force was tending the light at the end of the tunnel.”

Dawkins, Genetics, and Jurassic Park: Shakespearean memes in canonical amber

Mosquito in Amber

Every few years or so, a producer gets the compulsion to plunge a needle deep into the preserve of the Canon until it reaches the delicate corpse of a Shakespearean text.

The Shakespearean text, then, gets life after death; though, the life comes in the form of a clone whose alternate environment must shape its behavior attributes in a way quite different from its predecessor.  Thus, with Shakespeare, we get 10 Things I Hate about You and The Lion King.

Despite it’s slightly reconfigured DNA, the “Shakespeare meme,” has done a remarkable job of proliferating and surviving.  In some ways, one could say that it has become one of the most adaptable and persistent of the memes in our cultural history.

Blood sucking fiends. Or is the canon more like the mosquito that sucks the blood of our culture, thereby preserving our values in beliefs for later generations to replicate?

But has it done so on its own, or has it preserved and pilfered every so often through the convention of the canon?

Furthermore, how well might a meme (preserved in canonical amber) survive once cloned and introduced into an cultural environment altogether different from the environment that witnessed its initial prosperity?

“The Day the Music Died” in the Nietzsche sense of the phrase

I went back to the future this morning while venturing through iTunes, and for nearly three hours, (as only a “gentleman of leisure” can) I attempted in vain to identify some albums and labels worth supporting, and I encountered great difficulty with the task.

Really, though.  Should I feel surprised when I jump on iTunes and encounter a profusion of manufactured bands?  I know there’s nothing new under the sun, but much of what I encounter sounds as though it were a poorly thought out, lo-fi replication of bands that were awesome (but unpopular) when I was ten.  Either that or the music has so much sugar on it that you feel like a stick of rock candy has been rammed down your throat.  Furthermore, what do I make of the endless realizations that all of the artists I enjoyed [when younger] have altered their sounds in such a way as to feel like limp fish?  I think much of this later observation may be summed up in this wonderful segment from Irving Welsh’s Trainspotting.

The whole morning’s experience rewarded me with a limp, wet, slap on the face, as I concluded that the musical aesthetic that both reared me and influenced my subsequent taste has become utterly obsolete.  Though I once found great spiritual rejuvenation through music, lately, I feel that due to a flood in the market, music has lost something that I will probably not be able to get back.

But I can’t help but wonder: has music really lost its sacred transformative quality.  Does “God is dead” also apply to music, or did it only “seem” to have a spiritual component when I was young and hadn’t yet let go of my belief in Santa Claus?

An impulse and a question rose from this observation: an impulse to contribute and create (and do it myself); and a question regarding the whole music entertainment business: To what degree does the music industry really just exist to quell and distract us cattle before we reach slaughter?  Hasn’t it become just another oppressive ideological staple?

Probably, not, and it is just entertainment; though don’t get me wrong.  There’s nothing wrong with listening to your favorite tune on your way out.