I first learned of Tim Dlugos while reading the 2008 Spring Edition of Columbia Poetry Review. David Trinidad, editor of the journal and also of Dlugos’s collected works (A Fast Life: The Collected Poems of Tim Dlugos), included 20 of Dlugos’s early poems in the issue. I instantly fell for Dlugos’s poetry. Aside from his queer, cultural, and campy content, Dlugos’s poetics captured Frank O’Hara’s conversational tone while masterfully making use of repetition.
Repetition comes in many forms with Dlugos’s work. For example, in the poem “CRAZY” (pg. 67), he repeats the word “crazy” 22 times in 15 lines; or, 23 times if you include the title. The tone of the piece is conversational to begin, “Everybody tells me I’m crazy because I walked around muttering and screwed my courses”. However, the frequency of “crazy” helps to build momentum in the poem and give readers the implication that the speaker might really be a crazy madman; “I’m jobless and crazy, crazy with power, crazy for glamour and rhinestones and stars”. Yet, at the end of the piece, Dlugos disables the word when he reflects on how prospective lovers will tell him, “You’re Crazy when I fall into their eyes”. Indeed, being crazy in love is only sensible, and this poem makes that point clear, aided by Dlugos’s crafty repetition.
Likewise, Dlugos is keenly aware of phonetic figures, as evidenced in his echoing of them (and lack thereof) in his poem “AS ALIVE” (pg. 528). This is a short poem of 12 lines, and he ends the short, first line with “risen”. The “sen” sound is repeated in the second line with “ascend,” and again (but slightly altered) in the third line with “Rican”. Dlugos skips out on the sound for two lines and then brings it back in the 6th line’s “wren.” He then has readers wait for the sound to repeat itself after 5 lines. Withholding the phonetic figure that’s been repeated makes the lines read faster here. But, Dlugos places the phonetic figure (“born”) at the close of the last line, like a bookend. Surely, his repeating and refusing an established phonetic figure keep the tempo of this poem, which compliments the poem’s push and pull with life and death.
Along with concern for repetition, Dlugos does not shy from more constrained forms of poetry, like rhyming quatrains. In “SLEEP LIKE SPOONS,” Dlugos uses tetrameter and rhyming quatrains (with the 2nd and 4th lines rhyming) to deliver an urbane and urban love poem. He heavily enjambs the lines to prevent them from sounding too hokey and keep the sentences somewhat conversational, but he still uses the end-rhyme to retain the complimentary sound it evokes. Sure, some of Dlugos’s rhymes are monosyllabic and usual, like “balm” and “calm” in his first stanza (pg. 529); but, he also tries out unusual rhymes as well, such as “freckled skin” and “Scandinavian” in the second stanza. The timeless form he uses here matches with the undying sentiment of love, and his repetition by means of rhyme resonate with the subject of two spoons fitting together.
Again, Dlugos employs repetition in a variety of ways. He uses it to build momentum in a poem, or he might turn it off to quicken the pace of a section/control the tempo, or he uses it to compliment his subject matter. Whatever the reason, Dlugos frequently writes with repetition and does so successfully; at least, in this reader’s opinion.
Everything's fallen apart in these past few weeks; I had a bad bout of flu that I passed onto G, my poetry's sounded flat, my chapbook project feels like a hassle, work's deflated my ego in ways it had never before. I'm a mess, and there isn't much to fix me up. Little of my poetry's been workshopped this quarter. My friends have mostly been depressed, breakups, shootdowns all tearing them apart. I don't know what to do. Confused,
Our assignemnt this week for class will be to send each other postcard poems. I think this'll be fun... (we'll have to take into account Chicago's notoriously slow postal service, though)
Excited- Chicago opera troupe, VOX3, has worked with local poets (including me) and composers to turn poems into music, which VOX3 then performed. Singer, Brian von Rueden and composer Eric Reda used the following poems of mine in a cycle called "Iconic Waltzes"-
ACRYLICONCANVAS
*Andy Warhol's Marilyn Monroe
Call me Beauty, darling
they all do,
due to my hairdo, blonde and stiff,
with these lips, red as a virgin’s nipples on tits too small to care; my eyes
blue with lashes too long glued
droop to my chin, neck, breast.
Goddess, me?
No, no.
Behind this pink painted bubble-gum
is skin that sticks to the surface
and a mole that spots
me on the streets.
I am trapped like acryliconcanvas
to this image shown orange on blinking neon signs above sidewalks,
within this frame, twenty by sixteen.
Please don’t stare, dear at these hollow cheeks
that decorate this layered face,
or at the brows that have been plucked
from my forehead;
they’re just as capable as anybody’s
to fall off and be blown for luck
when you’ve completely run out
of lashes you thought were long enough.
Do you find me forward, or simply fallen back
onto the bed and spilled out,
like a bottle of dolls, arms over here
legs there?They keep me company on these lonely nights--two of ‘em,
twenty-two, sixty-nine, seventy;
a glass of water to wash me down
and I’m at your waist, my love,
ready to be scooped into your arms
and finally let go
for gravity to do his work.
THE WEIGHT OF WOMEN
Empty wrappers litter floors,
crinkled, crumpled - and saucy
laughter pours forth from mouths,
while MamaCass pants for breath,
escapable as it is
as it has always been
an undulating between
chins one and two, that hiccup
like yeast, dough rising; roaring
cackles at the crooner’s crouch
over her pillowed stomach,
hands slapping knees, blood rushing
to the throat; this is the joke:
and it always involves cheese.
Cut, eat and watch her keel,
the weight of women concerns
others too often, failure
tastes good and leaves her slumped,
head bent to the chest, reaching
soft stomach for red-eyed rest.
CALLAS
Ho assassinato molte donne
nella mia vita. La mia voce
taglia attraverso le folle
e frantuma i caraterri.
La fase e una tomba.
Vittime, parole, possono piu
non parlare, ne posso ricordare
i loro racconti.
Ora sono soltano, nomi:
Anna Bolena, Giocanda, Aida,
Floria, Santuzza, Norma.
La loro caduta di nomi
pesante come le tenda da
che lo chiude.
L'assassino, me, ma il mio
destino e lo sesso;
mi transformero appena
in un nome, Maria.
(NO NEED TO TALK IT OUT)
Karen Carpenter killed herself, inch by inch
off the waist; a bone shone through her pants
in the shape of an alabaster bowl
ready to break on the floor; wrenching
herself up, the weight of gravity more
than the lung capacity in her breast,
she slipped and fell harder than the dust
in her voice; songs fractured in a starved throat-
I note the expansion of my own hips,
a ballad of fat that hangs when I squat,
the buttocks that clench into vibratos:
every day becomes the one where nothing fits.
I blame it on the clothes, sinew and stitch,
the temperature of water, humid air,
my mother's genes and my father's cooking.
All we wanted were Barbie doll bodies-
legs so unbelievably long and lips
painted persimmon, with accessories
to match our plastic-perfect, bendable
physiques, mouths that never needed
to open, to speak, not hunger nor answer
for food nor any human necessity;
our figures holding the pitch that extends
beyond this bar's measure to the next.
DOLLY
My little doll, five foot and one inch tall,
your hair is colored like a popcorn ball
while your nails are simply acrylic
to turn you into a woman idyllic-
Your face is lifted unnaturally,
wrinkle-free at the age of sixty three.
You've been hoisted up from that poor, dirt floor
and modeled yourself after the town whore-
for men and women to touch and to pluck
like a guitar string that has run amok;
to twang your brazen voice in country tunes
as your chest draws eyes like festive balloons.
Dolly, wally to behold, wigs of gold
hide silver strands of hair aged and old
as you stand atop stages worldwide;
about your upbringing, you never lied.
And so, despite your beguiling guise,
you still remain a treasured, trophy prize:
And although your hair is not yours, I know,
you've let your roots grow out and truly show.
GARLANDS
Garlands, JudyGarland, continue
curling around your neck
just as flowers keep on falling
to slippered stage feet
and your hands palm kinks
from braided hair; eternally young,
little one, whose beyond sick
from rainbow pills and too-tight ribbons,
frills boys pulled back
when lifting picnic skirts on stormy summer days
as flowers kept on falling
from their forefingers and thumbs-
pluck, plummeting onto your face,
petal applause and bee stung,
your basket hung above tires
turning danger out like tornadoes.
The curtain is drawn and house lights turn on,
revealing a standing crowd
that pours out ovations
in the form of flowers falling; garlands, even to your trapped-door grave.
Terry Gross
Questions are keys, turning A into B;
when this woman asks on air, she deceives
with honest inquiry into tiny locks,
moving them with a silvered, soothing voice
and sounding the clink of metallic joints
made of art, made with points well played.
You have something to say behind the door
and past the frame of simple conversation
where the ring she carries, comes, pricks, expands
I'm imploding- afraid to go to sleep because I don't want to wake up into tomorrow. Each day delivers new death notices, forebodings, warnings, fears; all of which I have to sign for. I watch the lives we've built out of sandstone slowly disintegrate. Whiplash of wind, water-boarding rain drops. It gets harder to breathe; my chest is heavy, my stomach sick.
This week was the pits. We ended up buying platters from Crate & Barrel in preparation for Thanksgiving. I hated them; they are white, plain, dull- like my job, like me; I couldn't stand the sight of them. I was surprised at my own reaction, glaring at the platters with tempestuous rage. I wanted to shatter them, to see them crack into thousands of sharp bits, to hear them separate into the same brokenness as me. Crate & Barrel's dinnerware is overpriced and boring- I said that we could buy the same things, only with more flair and personality from anywhere else, Target, Ikea, World Market. Vowing to go to Target this weekend and getting some better ones myself, I went with my friend, C; he drove me in a Zip car on the errands. We walked around Target, and walked around, and walked around aisles like a hall of mirrors; the platters and cutlery were exactly the same as Crate & Barrel's; yes, it was a tad cheaper, but simply white all the same. The only pieces with color and life were unfortunately marked with giant snowflakes or Christmas trees. Making the most out of the trip, I decided to buy a few odd items that we still needed: a butter dish, a salad bowl.
There was a sale on some nice dinnerware, combinations of dishes, bowls and coffee mugs; I actually really liked it, and we needed a set of 8 for Thanksgiving. I didn't buy them though, as I wanted to sleep on it, and have G come back with me to see them for himself. So we did, today. The southbound El was inoperable, so we took a bus down to Target. We headed for the dishes, and the sale was gone. The dishes still sat there, smiling at me; but they were no longer on sale. My stomach popped. I slumped. All that way for the one thing, and it flitted off.
It's not about the platters, really. It's about that great big god in the sky making a joke of me. Poking me with that same finger he stretched out to Adam and then pulling it back to a place I'm unable to grasp or retaliate, god laughs in my ringing earaches and that looming quiet.
Misstep, unlike an ankle twisted 'round
itself or the uneven sidewalk slip
-ping of potholed cement, which one was it
that planted and set this crack in motion?
Truncation, a regret once it's grown
into a duet, branching through shins
split open; O, your mouth mussitates cold
words after your breathing has been broken.
A brambly fissure thrives within legs
disallowed necessary rest, while bur
-ning smells in your flared nostrils; stress has flow
-ered into your chest, bouquets of roses.
So, I hardly ever blog- which is essentially a self-gratifying form of journal keeping. Why is this? Do I lack time? Perhaps. Is it because it's so public? Probably. What am I afraid of? People knowing my deepest, darkest secrets.
Regardless, here I am.
Class has started off swell. I've got a professor this quarter that encourages much reading and writing of poetry; she also promotes sending work out for publication, and offers up her contacts for an advantage. This is conducive to my process. I hope to produce quality material this quarter.
Thus far, I'm doing a good job of keeping busy with it all. More to come, later on!
Santa came with me one night,
while a cold winter moon was frozen in the wky.
His kisses tasted like candy, as his bear
beard tickled me nice. He spread me
into a star and ate my coal
colored hole until it opened into a halo.
The neighbor was singing Jesus carols
out my window, on the street, as he bowed
my ass and slipped his icicle
underneath. And, with family close
by, he clattered his sack across my back,
digging into shadows, glamoring the dark.
His fingers moved to jerk my string
vigorously, but I dripped and decorated
my flavorful mirth onto the bedspread,
and he gifted me with naughty milk
at the base of my chimney,
which he cleaned with gold stockings.
Then he picked up his boots
and left in a way you wouldn't expect:
out the door, instead of the hearth, he went.
I couldn't withstand getting a Starbuck's caramel macchiato this morning. I've been trying to break the habit, but these sugary, caffeinated cups of goodness keep pulling me back. I know there are many that would turn their noses up at me for frequenting Starbucks, but it is my true guilty pleasure. The over-roasted taste of their beans, the way the company operates as eco-friendly and local as possible makes it an okay place, in my mind.
Speaking of addiction though, I am hooked on Madge Weinstein's podcast, Yeast Radio at yeastradio.com.
And, it's kind of inspired me to start my own poetry podcast. With all the reading of poems I do for classes in the MFA program, I am often rereading and reading aloud the poetry assigned. I figure, why just not record my reading these great poets and put them out there for everyone to enjoy. Plus, it would help me with my own reading of poetry aloud abilities. Win/win.
Now, I just need to get some help setting this up and learning the whole process.
Time After Time: Successorship from Modernity to Postmodernity to the Beyond
“A son can bear with equanimity the loss of his father, but the loss of his inheritance may drive him to despair (1. Machiavelli),” wrote Niccolo Machiavelli.The same could be said about successorship of artistic modes or eras to the way artists relate to their predecessors and their works.Through memory (an understanding of place in time after established precedents) and gender relations (codes in which people are able to relate to each other) we are able to see the deterioration of artistic inheritance from modernism to postmodernism, and to the point of now; this is visible when looking from the films Open City (1945), to Videodrome (1983), to Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai (2000).
As discussed in class, modernism is characterized by a great unevenness, and the modern film, Open City, certainly presents us with a world of the haves and have-nots.On one hand, we are given the foreign governing Fascists who wine and dine with music in a lavish parlor; and on the other hand we have the native Italian resistors who live by breadlines and walk amid bombed out infrastructures.Memory comes to play here, when Pina and Don Pietro walk by a ruined building and Pina reflects upon it saying, “Do Americans exist?”She imagines a premodern world, before the war, when life would have been better.And, her questioning of the current crisis presupposes that the outside world of the past still has inherent value and applicability to the modern world.
The memory of an independent Italy, free from the Germans, drives the resistance movement.They employ premodern techniques, such as passed handwritten notes and whistling as means of communication to undermine the Germans and their organized forms of radio and photographs.The Catholic Church even acts as a premodern headquarters, where messages filter through; with centuries of tradition and a still-intact infrastructure, the Church provides the freedom fighters an ideal way to communicate with one another and subvert the new status quo.
Furthermore, although luck cannot be learned, it is a mode by which the Italian resistance operates.It is also a premodern notion or means, equating to the ancient Greek dues-ex-machina, or even magic, where something outside and above with power will intervene.One example at the beginning of the movie comes when the resistance is able to feed their hungry after a bakery so happens to be mobbed; Pina provides them with bread she had illegally obtained.Later, a more prominent example of living by luck occurs when Francesco escapes the Gestapo because of the child that gives him a scarf; it delays him from turning a corner into the captors and allows him to flee.
However, memory and adherence to the premodern are not only what drive the way in which the resistance fights and the way they relate to the Germans; gender relations also dominate the picture.As Tasmin Spargo notes in Foucault and Queer Theory, “The traditional, mutually dependent but antagonistic, male/female opposition, for example has acquired its hierarchical structure through association with others: rational/emotional, strong/weak, active/passive and so on.Heterosexual/homosexual is similarly caught up in a network of supporting oppositions” (2. Spargo 46).Likewise, we are able to identify the oppositions of a masculine Italian resistance, where nearly everyone involved is male (with the exception of Pina, who is shot down midway through the film), and the feminized German oppressors that are composed of Ingrid, Marina, and the effeminate Major Bergmann.This juxtaposition indicates where power truly lies within the situation, with the male-driven resistance.
Sexuality, too, thickens the plot, where Fascists are depicted as queer entities, outside the resistance’s heterosexual norms.While Pina and Manfredi are due to marry (reenacting heteronormative standards), Ingrid and Marina behave in a lesbian fashion, touching and gifting, giving signals of queer overtones.Also, in sheer numbers, the Germans are far outnumbered by the Italians, which also adds to their othering here.“Declaring oneself to be out of the closet of concealed sexuality may be personally liberating, but it entails acknowledging the centrality of those who are still in the closet.It is impossible, in short, to move entirely outside heterosexuality,” Spargo writes (Spargo 47); and so, the story becomes not only one about warring over nationality, but sex and sexual identity.And, because the Germans are identified as queer/homosexual, we must note that they are not able to fully move outside of the physical space of Rome in this film; they must, in a way, play by the heteronormal/native rules that the resistance has in place, albeit unorganized and with guerilla tactics.
What’s more, Spargo writes, “As Foucault’s work and the experience of some affirmative homosexual politics has shown, demanding the recognition of a distinct homosexual identity inevitably reaffirms a binary and unequal opposition between homosexual and heterosexual,” (Spargo 47).Hence, even if the Germans seemingly overpower the resistance on a weaponry level, they are still weak when compared to the Italians on a moral level (as the Catholic Church and communists alike support the resistance).Thus, we are able to foretell the fall of the Fascists here, as there is a great inequality in power at play.
This failure of the Fascists is recognized at the end of the film, not only as Marina faints upon sight of her tortured former boyfriend, but as the oppressors are unable to obtain testimonies out of Don Pietro and Manfredi.Despite the fact that they destroy these men, the town’s children (all boys) witness Don Pietro’s execution; and so the children have a first-hand account of the experience.Though some of the lesson goes unspoken, much has been taught to the children; they had acted out of communication with their parents when they bombed the Germans, and then they witnessed the consequences by execution.Don Pietro and Manfredi then are martyred for their causes and suffer for the children, bequeathing an inheritance of code and creed unto them.
Therefore, by the end of Open City, we see that memory has driven the resistance and will continue to drive the next generation of resistance by their witnessing of it.Additionally, we see that this is performed in a patriarchal fashion, from Father (even as Priest) to sons.This modernity salvages premodern notions from the wreckage of an industrialized, war-torn world and supposedly believes the next generation of men will be able to reconstruct it.
Yet, when we enter postmodernity, such as in the film Videodrome, we find the unraveling of a post-war, Baby-Boomer generation, a generation going through midlife crisis as it were, where memory no longer serves as it once did, and identity is lost.We can recognize the lapse in memory through the main character, Max Ren, who from the beginning of the movie is already under the influence of hallucinations after watching “Videodrome.”Max’s love interest, Nicki Brand, reveals this to him near the film’s conclusion, saying that she has been a figment of his imagination and that she’s long been dead before he even watched the show.His visions of her are merely the beginning of a faulty memory (as understood in place and time within a space) though; Max’s world quickly takes on shorter and shorter memory spans.
His memory slips and time and space become irrelevant as Max continues to watch “Videodrome”.The television recording and Brian O’Blivion respond to him as he watches, something television shows are not programmed to do.O’Blivion speaks directly to Max, saying, “The television screen is the retina of the mind's eye. Therefore, the television screen is part of the physical structure of the brain. Therefore, whatever appears on the television screen emerges as raw experience for those who watch it. Therefore, television is reality, and reality is less than television.”This realization, or surrealization, opens Max up to the point that his body, his stomach opens up and he loses his gun in it.After the loss of the gun, the film cuts in such a way that his stomach is closed again, and we are not sure whether or not what we had just witnessed actually transpired; time elapsed in such a way that we are not sure of the past.
Space, too, becomes questionable later when we (and Max) go from his watching “Videodrome” and Brian O’Blivion, to his visiting the back of Barry Convex’s eyeware store, to the hallucination of being in “Videodrome” and whipping TV Nicki, then TV Masha, and finally back to his apartment with a murdered Masha in his bed, who then is not in his bed when Harlan comes over.Time, space, and reality have completely collapsed at this point, and we the viewers no longer recognize what is real and what is not.While modernism and Open City performed in a realist/neo-realist manner, postmodernity and Videodrome have become surreal.O’Blivion’s monologue is realized, and reality is less real than fiction.
Once memory has escaped Max, paranoia takes over. Tasmin Spargo writes, “For many people, the experience of the AIDS epidemic shattered their understandings of knowledge and identity, revealing both to be inextricably bound up with the operations of power,” (Spargo 36).This postmodern notion ties directly in with Videodrome, as it was released in 1983 at the beginning of the AIDS crisis.And, as Max’s memory shortens in such a way that time and space have collapsed, he begins to get paranoid.He is a fragmented and shattered individual who is bound up with the operations of greater powers, like Barry Convex and his NATO conspirators.Max is convinced by Barry Convex to work for them and assassinate Bianca O’Blivion, Brian O’Blivion’s successor.However, Bianca is able to turn Max against Barry, and so max becomes an extension of both sides in this great battle between Convex’s international/corporate conspiracy of eradication and O’Blivion’s religious philosophy of “the new flesh.”
This paranoia and conspiracy helps to make sense of Max’s place in the situation of a postmodern world.It aids in soothing the trouble of blurred lines between reality and fantasy, when objects begin to act upon Max.It gives him a sort of power in a seemingly powerless situation, when videotapes can be inserted into him, and greater outside forces are controlling him.The belief or knowledge of “the new flesh” that the O’Blivions offer Max make him capable of fighting back against Convex.“The new flesh,” or “Videodrome,” serve as a memory that Brian O’Blivion extends via his daughter, and acts as a sort of legacy bequeathed to subvert the status quo.
Further, the codified genders of the movie help to deconstruct Max and his world.Spargo writes,
“A crucial feature of Foucault’s analysis of sexuality and of related poststructuralist and queer readings is that the individual is not viewed as an autonomous Cartesian subject (‘I think therefore I am’) who has an innate or essential identity that exists independently of language.What we commonly or casually think of as the ‘self’ is, instead regarded as a socially constructed fiction (albeit a serious one), as a product of language and of specific discourse linked to divisions of knowledge” (Spargo 50).
Likewise, the dissolving of an individual gender/sexual identity by outside social forces is represented in Videodrome through Max.Upon watching “Videodrome,” Max “grows” a hole in his stomach that is remarkably like a vagina; he fools around with it, even inserting his phallic gun.After what appears to be sexual pleasure and masturbation with his stomach-vagina, Brian O’Blivion remarks from the television, “Max, I’m so glad you came.”Hence, Max is re-gendered through “Videodrome” into something female, and experiences sexuality in a new way.
Barry Convex modifies this re-gendering though, and Max, as female, is acted upon by male intervention of inserted videotapes.This comes at a point when inanimate objects have become interactive subjects.The pulsating videotapes and throbbing TV are highly sexualized, confusing Max as to what may appropriately be considered a sexual object.Here, everything and anything may be interacted with sexually, guns, TVs, men, and women.
Moreover, Max’s gender and sexuality are muddied still when Bianca O’Blivion modifies him once more with another cassette inserted into his vaginal stomach.Spargo writes,
“In the same way that gender appears to be a founding component of my identity, so my sexual preferences and desires seem, and feel, crucial to my sense of who I am.In the late 20th century, I am likely to think of my sexuality in terms of a range of possible identities – straight, gay, lesbian, bisexual – which are themselves bound up with my gender classification,” (Spargo 51).
With this in mind, Max’s gender classification is non-existant, and so too is his sexual identity, particularly after Bianca empowers his vaginal stomach.We witness this empowerment the next time Harlan attempts at forcing his cassette into Max; Max is able to ward off Harlan with his vaginal stomach.He even acts violently upon Harlan’s arm, tearing it off in a manner that conjures up the concept of ‘vagina dentate.’The vaginal stomach then provides Max with his gun again, reconstructed as a part of his phallic arm, and he then assassinates Barry Convex.Once a heterosexual male, by the end of the movie, Max has been transformed by culture and society into a hermaphroditic, omnisexual being.He is nearly non-gendered and all-gendered at the same time as he is asexual and capable of having sex with everything, defying even late 20th century classifications of gender and sexual orientation.
T.S. Eliot states in Reflections on Vers Libre, “as for vers libre, we conclude that it is not defined by absence of pattern or absence of rhyme, for other verse is without these; that it is not defined by non-existence of metre, since even the worst verse can be scanned; and we conclude that the division between Conservative Verse and vers libre does not exist, for there is only good verse, bad verse, and chaos,” (3. Eliot).This was a reflection upon the modern art of Eliot’s time, but what could appropriately be tied to what has become of postmodernity and Max in Videodrome.Where modernity was capable of a central point of view and an authentic experience, such as the boys witnessing the death of their elders, postmodernity is incapable of originality and looses distinction.
Max does not have an authentic inheritance of any kind; rather, he inherits Brian O’Blivion’s “Videodrome” vicariously through an organization that wishes to corrupt him.Harlan admits near the end of the film, “North America's getting soft, Patron, and the rest of the world is getting tough. Very, very tough. We're entering savage new times, and we're going to have to be pure and direct and strong, if we're going to survive them. Now, you and this cesspool you call a television station and your people who wallow around in it, your viewers who watch you do it, they're rotting us away from the inside. We intend to stop that rot.”Even though Max thwarts Harlan and Convex’s plan, he is still stopped at the end of the film by O’Blivion’s faulty, self-destructive memory and legacy, “Videodrome.”
This destruction of the individual is seen at the end of Videodrome, when Max annihilates himself, as instructed through the lens of television.The television, as an entity more real than reality, reveals Max’s suicide to us at first.Repetitive sequencing of the film in this final scene confuses us, the audience; and once Max, as an individual, is gone, there is nobody left to succeed his legacy.It is perhaps that we, the audience, are to succeed him, but this would only add another degree to the vicarious, second-handed nature of living that is available in postmodernity.The unauthenticated individual and removal of formal memory, of gender and sexual lines altogether leaves us confused, and as Eliot alludes to in his Reflections on Vers Libre, in a state of chaos.
And so, out of the chaos, we have started to develop into a new era beyond postmodernism.As discussed in class, postmodernism is the point at which modernism is complete.Fredric Jameson characterized it by pastiche and schizophrenia/paranoia in Postmodernism and Consumer Society (4. Jameson 113-118).All this can be viewed in the 1983 film of Videodrome, but by the turn of the century we have a new generation that inherits a differing memory and contemporary way of relating through gender; such a shift in modes can be seen in the 1999 film, Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai.
The memory in Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai can best be described as highly intertextualized and self-generating.Intertextualization plays into the film as soon as the opening credits have stopped rolling, when we are taken to Ghost Dog’s dilapidated/postmodern rooftop shack and he is reading Hagukare: The Book of the Samurai.Here, the postmodern and the premodern coexist; images of ancient relics are shown next to electric lamps and faucets.We even see these differing modes work into Ghost Dog’s means of communication, when he uses premodern carrier pigeons and futuristic (post-postmodern) gadgets to access gates and start cars.Additionally, forms of entertainment take on this intertextualization, as Louise Vargo, the mafia boss’s daughter, reads the ancient Japanese book, Rashomon, next to the mobster who is watching Betty Boop on TV.
Intertextualization is taken further when genres within the film hearken us back to other types of movies.Ghost Dog appears to live in an inner-city ghetto, reminding us of gangster-thug films; but because of his assimilation to the way of the samurai, we also have ancient samurai and ninja films functioning simultaneously.Moreover, the mafia that hunts Ghost Dog calls to mind mob films from the middle of the 20th Century.We even have individual scenes, such as the showdown between Ghost Dog and his maker, Louie, that are reminiscent of old westerns.The inclusion of cartoon clips adds to intertextuality of genres, where animated pictures exist in the same movie as “real-life” film.Hence, this movie reminds us of many other movies in its crossing of genres.
Despite the highly intertextualized nature of the movie however, where memory recalls all of these different genres and modes of communication, the memory present is self-generating.By combining the various objects, modes and genres, something new is created.Likewise, the story of Ghost Dog and Louie ends in their passing onto a new generation.Ghost Dog’s experiences and knowledge are lost, but the source by which they came, Hagukare: The Book of the Samurai, is given to the little girl.
Additionally, once Ghost Dog dies after nearly killing off all of the mafia, Louie presents Louise with her copy of Rashomon, and she is crowned as the new successor of the mafia.Her detachment from the mafia throughout the film, taking into account that they originally wanted to detach from her and have her shipped away, is implicit of her ignorance on how to organize or run the group; it is something that she will need to learn for herself, similar to how the little girl will need to learn the way of samurai on her own.Thus, memory is self-generating, as much as it is highly intertextualized in this period beyond postmodernity; and so we are in a constant flux of ebb and flow, remembering the past and recreating new memories, or living in the present.As the subtitle appears on screen from Hagukare, “A man’s whole life is a succession of moment after moment.If one fully understands the present moment, there is nothing left to do, and nothing else to pursue.”
Gender relations also take on a new form in this era past postmodernism and influences the way in which we approach the world.For instance, the main character, Ghost Dog, is a being that is although seemingly heterosexual male, asexual in practice.He relates on the same level with male counterparts (his Haitian best-friend) as he does with his protégé, a little girl.There is a degree of separation between these friendships, as he and the Haitian do not speak the same language, and the little girl is a generation younger than he is; but their relationships are not any less authentic because of that.And, when Ghost Dog encounters Louise, a woman in full bloom, a woman whom he connects with on interest in ancient Japan, he distances himself from her; she becomes an irrelevance to him, someone whom he does not kill upon seizure of the mafia’s headquarters at the movie’s end, but whom he looks beyond after recognition.Clearly, Ghost Dog is not a sexually driven character.
Furthermore, the strongest relations he seems to have are with animals.These relationships are completely void of any sexual influence, but Ghost Dog best gets along with other species, such as his pigeons.He also encounters a dog in the park that is intensely interested in him and shows up again near the movie’s end.Additionally, Ghost Dog relates to the fallen bear in the countryside, saying “You know, in ancient cultures, bears were considered equal with men.”Ghost Dog relates time and time again with animals, considering them equals and making gender and sexuality irrelevant despite always being divided as different species.
The one place we do find sexuality in practice during the course of the film is when Louise and her lover partake in postcoital entertainment.She reads her book, and he watches cartoons on TV.The detachment between the two is visible not only in space, with each sitting across the room from each other, and not only in activity between her reading and his TV watching, but also in their ages.Her lover is a man old enough to be her father, and so there are multiple degrees of separation at work here.Though they were able to connect on a level of sexuality, they are still disconnected by age, space and interests.
Hence, gender and sexuality are made out to be minor differences between characters in the film.There are many more matters that supersede gender/sexuality and separate us, including language, age, space, interest, etc.Tasmin Spargo notes, “Butler returns to Foucault and discovers that within his overall argument is a recurrent metaphor or figure of the body as a surface on which history writes or imprints cultural values,” (Spargo 55).Thus, in this post-postmodern era, the cultural value of gender and sexuality have diminished so that it no longer matters if women inherit what was once traditionally valued as masculine.The historically male arena of ninjas and mobsters have become gender neutral by this film’s end, when the little girl receives the Hagukare and Louise becomes mob-boss.
In brief then, gender relations and sexuality have become immaterial ways of differentiating people, as varying degrees of separation already supersede them.Likewise, the present is always secondhand to us in this period beyond postmodernism. To quote the hybrid from the television show, Battlestar Galactica, “All [of] this has happened before, and [it] will happen again...again...again...again...again...again...” (5. Moore).While modernity began to breakdown from, but still followed a linear timeline of memory and gender relations, and postmodernity became chaotic and schizophrenic in these regards, the period we have now come to realize is lyrical, cyclical like a lens.We are only able to relate to the world and others, past and present, in a vicarious manner.It is the same way in which many people related to and described the global crisis of September 11, 2001, saying, “It was just like watching a movie.”
