War is Peace: Framing in Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize Acceptance Speech

Benjamin Schultz-Figueroa

December 14, 2009

Political Media and Communication

War is Peace:

Framing in Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize Acceptance Speech

This paper sets out to illustrate how President Barack Obama utilizes the technique of framing in his Nobel acceptance speech by positioning non-violence and peace activism as justifications for his military policy, and positioning his military policy as a route to non-violent ideals. Using Gregory Bateson’s definition of the psychological frame, we will dissect President Obama’s speech into Bateson’s terms: message, premise, and frame. President Obama builds a protective frame around his military policy through the rhetoric of his speech, and in doing so places bloodshed, immorality, and evil outside this frame. Through this process he transforms his foreign policy from official military doctrine into a psychological ideal and manages to defend the concept of war while accepting the highest prize for the promotion of peace.

Obama’s speech employs a technique of defending his foreign policy that extends beyond the employment of facts and figures. Instead he draws a map of war and peace for the audience, creating a topography of concepts that shine favorably on his decisions as Commander and Chief. This technique is comparable to Gregory Bateson’s ideas concerning the psychological frame. Before addressing Obama’s speech let us begin by defining Bateson’s key concepts concerning the frame: for Bateson, the frame is a psychoanalytic concept whereby messages and actions are named and categorized. He defines “play, movie, interview, job, [and] language” as frames, elaborating that each of these frames are built to contain messages, and these messages can include actions, ideas, and objects (Bateson, 187). If we take the example of play, the messages that make up this frame could vary from specific toys, the set of rules in the game of tag, or the specific actions of a playmate. Each of these messages are connected through a set of premises. For example, the toy only exists in the frame of play if it is being played with, it might otherwise exist in the frame of chore if the child is cleaning up their room. The premise here exists as a set of logic, a toy is part of play if played with, and through these links of logic a frame is created. Frames are inclusive and exclusive, in that they include certain messages as part of the frame and exclude other messages outside of the frame. It is important to note that what is excluded is just as necessary as what is included for the creation of a frame. This creates a frame-outside-the-frame, containing messages of the same “logical type” that are inside the frame yet are excluded from it. If we again take the example of play, the frame is created here by obstructing a border between a playful chase and a real chase, two messages of the same type but separated by the border of the frame (Bateson, 189). Similarly Obama constructs a border between his decision to extend the war in Afghanistan and the evils of war in his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech.

Obama creates a specific frame for his military policy through the arrangement of messages and the creation of specific linking premises. The multiple messages, or talking points, in Obama’s Nobel acceptance speech vary in scope from broad and general to specific. We will begin with the two broadest messages, war and peace, and through the process of displaying how these ideas are premised upon each other we will delineate Obama’s other, more specific messages and premises. Obama begins with war, connecting its history with the history of humans themselves. For Obama:

“War, in one form or another, appeared with the first man. At the dawn of history, its morality was not questioned; it was simply a fact, like drought or disease – the manner in which tribes and then civilizations sought power and settled their differences” (2009).

Here we see that war takes on both the attributes of a natural phenomenon imposed upon humanity from the outside, “like drought or disease,” and the attributes of an essential part of human nature, unique to and appearing with the “first man”. Obama posits that war, no matter its form, is an inevitable occurrence. As both a natural, outside event, and a psychological, inner event, war carries with it the inevitability and uncontrollability of both the seasons and the human unconscious. Outside of the frames of the natural and the psychological, war exists in a spiritual realm, reenacting the battle between good and evil. As Obama states,

For make no mistake: evil does exist in the world. A non-violent movement could not have halted Hitler’s armies. Negotiations cannot convince al Qaeda’s leaders to lay down their arms. To say that force is sometimes necessary is not a call to cynicism – it is a recognition of history; the imperfections of man and the limits of reason (2009).

Represented in the examples of Hitler and al Qaeda, the presence of evil is as sure as any natural phenomenon, and it demands that wars continue to be fought.

Obama continues his history of war, showing how key figures, “philosophers, clerics, and statesmen,” attempted to dampen the primal urges of humans and control these unstoppable forces of conflict; he describes the fruit of these efforts as the “just war”. The border between war and the “just war” is essential for the development of Obama’s framing. The just war is fought in a regulated fashion. As Obama states, war is just “if it is waged as a last resort or in self-defense; if the forced used is proportional, and if, whenever possible, civilians are spared from violence” (2009). According to Obama, the messages that make up the frame of the just war lie in the United Nations, the Cold War, the United State’s promotion of “peace and prosperity from Germany to Korea” and enabling “democracy to take hold in places like the Balkans,” and Obama’s escalation of troops in Afghanistan and sanctions on Iran. The just war is waged under the precepts of “enlightened self-interest” (Obama, 2009)[1]. The just war has perhaps more in common with peace than it does with war since it seeks to bring about peace and end war. For Obama “the instruments of war do have a role to play in preserving the peace,” and those who fight in the just war are honored not as “makers of war,” but as “wagers of peace” (2009). The just war of rules and regulations is aligned with peace, morality and liberty and positioned against unadulterated war, represented by terrorism and holy wars.

If in this frame war is aligned with peace, where do we place what is traditionally thought of as peace, including the non-violence movement and neutral nations? Obama introduces the subject of peace by affirming its importance and moral strength. He acknowledges the basic precepts of the non-violence movement, quoting Dr. King “violence never brings a permanent peace,” and places himself within its lineage by claiming that “as someone who stands here as a direct consequence of Dr. King’s life’s work, I am living testimony to the moral force of non-violence” (Obama, 2009). However once the virtues of peace have been extolled we quickly move on to the ideology’s limitations. After establishing his origins in the non-violence movement Obama sets out to prove that the tactics of its leaders cannot help him in his current position, stating,

As a head of state sworn to protect and defend my nation, I cannot be guided by their examples alone. I face the world as it is, and cannot stand idle in the face of threats to the American people (Obama, 2009).

This position is an interesting reversal of what has come before. While moments earlier he confirmed the strengths and utility of the peace movement, remarking, “I know there is nothing weak – nothing passive – nothing naïve – in the creed and lives of Gandhi and King,” he then invalidates these very characteristics (Obama, 2009). How is peace not weak if it fails to protect and defend us, and how can it be anything but naïve if it cannot “face the world as it is”?

As Obama draws a border between the chaos and immorality of war, and the moral imperative of the just war, he also draws a border between the ineffective and unrealistic peace, and the embattled just peace. He states that we must,

think in new ways about the notions of just war and the imperatives of a just peace. We must begin by acknowledging the hard truth that we will not eradicate violent conflict in our lifetimes. There will be times when nations – acting individually or in concert – will find the use of force not only necessary but morally justified (Obama, 2009).

Just peace is founded on the assumption of the inevitability of war and can be found even in the midst of, or as a result of war. For Obama, peace is not enough to combat the evils of this world and so, despite Dr. King’s words, peace must at times resort to violence. The just peace is arrived at not through the growth of non-violence but through the dampening of war by any means necessary, including war itself.

In this speech, Obama uses the messages of a just war and a just peace to create a frame distanced from traditional war and peace. Obama creates a feedback loop in which war can lead to peace and peace can lead to war, building the frame of the just war and the just peace and premising the two concepts upon each other. This insolated circle of logic effectively protects his lofty goal of “a just peace [that] includes not only civil and political rights” but also “economic security and opportunity,” through the exclusion of the realities of war, which he attributes to other, less just, wars (Obama, 2009). It is during the wars in the frame outside of the frame where “many more civilians are killed than soldiers; the seeds of future conflict are sewn, economies are wrecked, civil societies torn asunder, refugees amassed, and children scarred” (Obama, 2009). Obama raises the arguments of both war and peace in order to displace them both, thereby positioning his frame of just war and just peace out of their reach. Roland Barthes termed this technique “Neither-Nor criticism,” in which two sides are raised but neither is advocated. Obama ends his speech with this sentiment:

We can acknowledge that oppression will always be with us, and still strive for justice. We can admit the intractability of depravation, and still strive for dignity. We can understand that there will be war, and still strive for peace (2009).

In response to which, we can apply Barthes’ analysis of Neither-Nor criticism:

Needless to say, this fine morality of the Third Party unavoidably leads to new dichotomy, quite as simplistic as that which one wanted to expose in the very name of complexity. True, our world may well be subjected to a law of alterations; but you can be sure that it is a schism without Tribunal; no salvation for the judges: they also are well and truly committed (82).

In his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, Obama builds a frame around his military actions, by establishing and then distancing himself from the dichotomy of war and peace, thereby positioning himself as impervious to judgment.

Work Cited

Barthes, Roland. Mythologies. Trans. Annette Lavers. New York: Hill and Wang, 1972.

Gregory Bateson.  “A Theory of Play and Fantasy.”  Steps to an Ecology of Mind, 2nd             edition.  Chicago:  University of Chicago Press, pp. 177-193.

Obama, Barack. “Remarks to the Nobel Committee.” Oslo City Hall. 10 December 2009.

---

[1] Obama’s word choice here is worth noting considering the history of wars fought under the precept of Western Enlightenment ideals.

Looking at the Past, Envisioning the Future: Theories and Practice of the Arts and Crafts Movement

Benjamin Schultz-Figueroa

November 10, 2009

Political Media and Communication

Looking at the Past, Envisioning the Future:

Theories and Practice of the Arts and Crafts Movement

The Arts and Crafts movement was built on a dialectic frame and a specific set of historical circumstances. The movement provided both aesthetic rules for the production and criticism of art, as well as a treatise on the organization of society. Roughly taking place from 1860 to 1910, the Arts and Crafts movement started in England and eventually spread to America. The members emphasized design and craftsmanship, setting up workshops and crafts schools, as well as the occasional cooperative community. The two major founders of the Arts and Crafts movement in England were William Morris and John Ruskin. Ruskin and Morris strove to achieve political and artistic significance though their manifestos and lectures. The substance of the social movement focused on bringing together the two, seemingly distinct worlds of politics and art, however their inability to achieve this caused internal factionalism, which significantly contributed to the movement’s decline in the early Twentieth Century (Wilder, 109). Due in part to their lack of coherency regarding the issues of art and politics the Arts and Crafts movement was swallowed up by the ever-changing landscape of industrial Europe and the United States.

Ruskin frequently reflected upon the “moral” and political significance in art and, alternately, the ascetics of morality. In one of his major works Ruskin states, “there is no moral vice, no moral virtue, which has not its precise prototype in the art of painting; so that you may illustrate the moral habit by the art, or the art by the moral habit” (9). The Arts and Crafts worldview posits the idea that aesthetics and morality are connected, even equivalent. Ruskin perceives that the division of these two worlds led to the separation between the artisan and the artist and the creation of two distinct classes: those of the degraded laborers and those of the idle artists. In Fors Clavigera he writes:

Nearly every problem of State policy and economy, as at present understood, and practiced, consists in some device for persuading you labourers to go dig up dinner for us reflective and aesthetical persons, who like to sit still, and think, or admire. So that when we get to the bottom of the matter, we find inhabitants of this earth divided into two great masses;- the peasant paymasters- spade in hand, original and imperial producers of turnips; and, waiting on them all round, a crowd of polite persons modestly expectant of turnips, for some- too often theoretical- service (114).

Ruskin’s solution was to enhance both classes through education in the arts of the other; for the idle upper class this consisted of lessons in manual labor and craftsmanship; for the laboring lower class it consisted of lessons in refined taste and aesthetics. He predicted that the result of this merger would be a classless society of individual craftsmen, who take pride in their handmade work (Triggs, 7-38).

Subsequent members of the Arts and Crafts movement interacted with and altered Ruskin’s ideology. One such thinker was Oscar Wilde, whose lectures on art in California were a major part of the migration of the movement from Europe to the United States. Wilde envisioned a future in which the entire labor class would be elevated into the idle class, rather than merging with them, as Ruskin had outlined (2). While Wilde may seem to turn Ruskin’s ideas on their head, they work within the general movement’s framework. What unifies the movement, despite its varying approaches, is the perceived problem of the mechanization and division of labor and the tentative solution of a classless society of individual craftsmen.

While these themes, the dignity of man, the morality of aesthetics, etc. may seem general or timeless they arose out of a specific set of historical conditions. The Arts and Crafts movement coincided with one of the most tumultuous periods in modern history, the Industrial Revolution. At the time new technologies appeared to be reprogramming every element of peoples lived experience and Western society was reeling from the shock of each new invention. Marshall McLuhan and Quentin Fiore describe the shock of dealing with new technologies as “phantom pain”. Medically, this term refers to the occasional pain amputees feel in missing limbs, however McLuhan and Fiore use phantom pain to describe a society’s pain when attempting to reconcile their current, post-technology world with their past, pre-technology worldview (Fiore & McLuhan, 12-17). This phantom pain has laid the groundwork for the creation of many social movements.

Phantom pain relates to Carol Wilder’s “reactionary” category in her four sections of political orientations (which also includes conservative, reformist and revolutionary). Both distinctions involve a desire for a return to a previous state of society. Like a reactionary movement, the aesthetics of the Arts and Crafts movement strive “to return to values or conditions of times past” (91-92). As opposed to the reactionary aesthetic theory of the movement, the politics they enacted were more inline with Wilder’s concepts of a reformist or revolutionary movement insofar as they sought broad social change (92). This dichotomy can be seen in the example of the classes held by the group’s members, which freely taught laborers the methods of pre-Industrial craftsmanship. While the progressive intention was there to enact social change by democratizing education, it existed side by side with the reactionary attempt to turn the clock back through antiquated, albeit aesthetically beautiful, techniques. Despite Ruskin’s progressive ideas about the dignity of the human, much of the Arts and Crafts movement is a reactionary response to the mechanization and materialism of the industrial revolution.

Oscar Wilde aptly summed up the movements attitude towards the machine when he said,

We reverence it when it does its proper work, when it relieves man from ignoble and soulless labour, not when it seeks to do that which is valuable only when wrought by the hands and hearts of men. Let us have no machine-made ornament at all; it is all bad and worthless and ugly. (2)

This disdain applied equally to the products of a mechanized society, whether literally made by a machine or not, such as products made on the assembly line. For the members of the Arts and Crafts movement it was essential that the artist and the artwork be expressive of the individual not the technology. They swam against the tide of history, attempting to form communities outside of the industrial cities and detached from the mechanized world (Obniski). Unlike the Futurists who saw expressive possibilities in the machine, or Walter Benjamin who saw revolutionary possibilities in mechanical reproduction; the Arts and Crafts movement could not reconcile its progressive, and at times revolutionary, desire for a socialist utopia with its reactionary emphasis on the individual craftsmen and artwork.

Both James Allen and Robert Winter identify this split in aesthetic and practical ideology as an inherent contradiction in the Arts and Crafts movement. Interestingly, they both draw nearly opposite conclusions from this observation. In Allen’s paper The Use and Abuse of Aestheticism he objects to the notion of attempting to realize aesthetic goals in the world beyond arts, as is the case in the Arts and Crafts movement. Allen uses the figure of Oscar Wilde to illustrate the moral hazards of such actions. He goes so far as to claim that Wilde succumbed to the allure of evil just as Dorian succumbed to Lord Henry in The Portrait of Dorian Gray, by acting “on the high minded ideal—the love of beauty” (26). Allen objects to taking moral cues from the world of the arts[1]. On the other hand, Winter’s paper The Arts and Crafts as a Social Movement identifies the movement’s main weakness in its unwillingness to commit to their Socialist views and carry those ideas over into their aesthetic theory. Winter writes, “like Progressivism, the Arts and Crafts movement had no real program for social regeneration other than the usual individualistic, self-help litany of Protestantism” (37). Their commitment to the individual craftsmen led to inevitable roadblocks. As Winter concludes:

It was impossible to sustain radical reform without major changes in economic, moral, and religious life. The craftsmen might have tried to turn back Karl Marx’s wheel of history, but with their tentative motto ‘Als ik kan’ (as best I can) they were no match for the mighty dynomo (39).

Despite a desire for a socialist utopia, the movements tight grasp of past modes of production eventually left them behind in history.

How should we finally view the Arts and Crafts movement? Perhaps we should look to their initial conceit, that morality and art are interconnected, when searching for their lasting effect. While most attempts to implement this idea seem to have disappeared, the idea itself remains central to current movements in arts and politics. The very act of studying media’s effects on society takes for granted the concept that expressive art interacts with the wider world of morality and politics. As with other social movements of the past their failures may also provide us with a valuable lesson. Without a unity of approach in aesthetics and actions, large and eventually irreconcilable rifts occur within a social movement, to the detriment of the movement’s future goals. While the Arts and Crafts movement may have failed to bring about the utopia of a classless society of artisans that they had envisioned, their attempts at doing so provide important insight for future movements.

Works Cited

Agel, Jerome, McLuhan, Marshall & Fiore, Quentin. War and Peace in the Global

Village. San Fransisco: HardWired, 1997. 7-67.

Allen, James Sloan. “The Use and Abuse of Aestheticism.” Symposium. Vol. 104, No.

5, May/June, 2003. 23-27.

Obinski, Monica. “The Arts and Crafts Movement in America.” Heilburnn Timeline of

Art History. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000. October

13, 2009 <http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/acam/hd_acam.htm>.

Ruskin, John. “Fors Clavigera Vols I-II.” The Complete Works of John

Ruskin Volume XVII. New York: Fred DfFau & Company, 1880.

Ruskin, John. The Art Criticism of John Ruskin. New York: Da Capo

Press Inc. 1964.

Triggs, Oscar Lovell. The Arts & Crafts Movement. New York: Parkstone International, 2009.

Wilde, Oscar. “Art and the Handicraftman.” Essays and Lectures by Oscar

Wilde. London: Methuen and Co., 1908. October 12, 2009

< http://www.burrows.com/founders/art.html>.

Wilder, Carol. “The Nature of Social Movements.” The Rhetoric of Social Movements:

A Critical Perspective. Kent State University, 1974. 85-139.

Winter, Robert W. “The Arts and Crafts as a Social Movement.” Record of the Art

Museum. Princeton University Press, Vol. 34, No. 2, 1975. 36-40.

---

[1] It should be mentioned that Allen’s major example of immorality is Wilde’s homosexuality, for which Allen grants “Wilde would not have to pay that price today” (26). This could be said to point to Allen’s own political stance as a reactionary.

 

Scratching the Surface: The LP & the Age of Digital Reproduction

Andrew Nealon

Media Studies: Ideas

Spring 2009

“When you put on a record,” he added, “it’s an event.”

—Williams, 2008[1]

“Hey mister DJ, put a record on, I want to dance with my baby”

— Madonna, 2000[2]

Introduction

Vinyl records aren’t convenient. LPs don’t sparkle with a futuristic sheen quite like the digital file — the MP3, AAC or WAV. Nor is vinyl easily reproducible, sharable or piratable like the binary, which due to its intangibility can be deconstructed and reassembled as an exact copy, undisturbed by time, wear or maturing physical technology. However, in the shadow of technological renaissance, when a pocket-sized device can house an entire music collection, the LP survives — resurging in the market, providing a material form for the soundtrack of a host of sub-cultural socio-musical movements. In 2008, 1.7 million new LPs sold in America, an 89 percent increase from the previous year.[3] (Not to mention vintage and used record sales, which aren’t included in market statistics.) The growth of local record shows and shops — all while music industry megaliths like Virgin, Tower and Circuit City are boarding up the windows — only proves vinyl’s recent reanimation and reintroduction to the market[4] is viable. (As of April 2009, 670,000 new records had been sold in the U.S. for the year.[5]) All this growth for a dated, once dead, media at a time when CD sales are plummeting — they fell 19.7 percent during 2008[6] — and digital distributors such as iTunes struggle against a virtual media-pirate scourge. So why, even after the music industry tossed away their LPs over two decades ago, are consumers, who’ve also fully embraced the technological, forcing record companies to crawl back to a medium that pre-dates the industrial revolution? The answer, I insist, is a complex matter of material authenticity.

Vinyl’s recent success is connected to its inherent negativity, that which it isn’t; becoming legitimate, being made authentic, through its embrace of the dialectic tension that embodies its aura. That tension, born from the LP existing as a physical medium and being tied to the event it represents by a plastic groove, is the undeniable source of vinyl’s mythos — a story crafted by an audiophilicly obsessive cult, which in turn, feeds the form’s acceptance as authentic. Despite the fact vinyl can only strive for the authentic qualities of the actual event it represents, the framework of the digital age provides a new men’s. Due to the hollowness of the MP3, vinyl has been granted a new authenticity, which could only be realized after the act of digital reproduction instilled new authority to the mechanically reproduced. It might be impossible to fully unearth the authentic aura of the LP here, as the issue is a tangled web of ideas drawing from a number of divisions within the study of media, culture and society. However, I believe these pages might provide a foundational understanding, which might be then applied to further suss out the core of vinyl’s authentic aura. First, we must examine the cult.

Cult

The material object — especially the mechanical reproduction of an authentic object or event — defines modern, post-industrial human existence. It seems we are driven by the need for the material, and in the realm of art and music nothing differs. Benjamin understood this drive, claiming forever “the urge grows stronger to get hold of an object at very close range by way of its likeness.”[7] From this urge, we obsess over form, drawing identity from its aesthetic. Despite being material representations of events — the live performance, the studio session, the impromptu jam — LPs have grown to become a consumer art form, through which the collector, audiophile or scene-driven hipster can display their identity one plastic disc, one gatefold album cover, one 7” at a time. And in the vinyl underground, where subculture hip-hoppers, indie rockers, electro-punks, and music elitists are all vinyl-obsessive, LP’s have come to represent something deeper. The LP has become a ceremonial object.

Even Benjamin himself understood how material objects could amass such cultural and personal importance so to develop cults. In his essay Unpacking my Library, Benjamin “describes a complex relationship between the collector and his books that is not simply about the practice of reading but about the physicality, aesthetics, experiences, and tactility of collecting,”[8] so that the collector, when speaking of his collection, “proves to be speaking only about himself.”[9] That is, we so draw our identity from our material collections that the development of cult to celebrate our related obsessions is inevitable. Through the discourse of its proponents, all supporting a very specialized way of experiencing music, the cult of vinyl becomes solidified.

Gramsci provides support for this sort of material cult with his concept of ideology, which is concerned with the importance of sensationism, a connection to the physical that spawns spirituality.[10] As the record died and a handful of sub-cultural groups continued to cling to the LP, members became more connected to what was sensational about vinyl — the pop-hiss, the crackle, the feeling of warmth, the act of moving the needle, being forced to experience an entire album, flipping the disc half-way through. And from this sensationalism, which could be shared between vinyl-loving subgroups regardless of what genre of music they supported, an ideology was formed. Over time, this shared ideology, one that preaches vinyl’s material superiority, becomes a manifestation of cult.

How then, did the cult of LP become powerful enough to successfully proselytize, launching vinyl’s recent resurgence? Hebdige might argue the cult of vinyl existed for decades as noise beneath the surface of the music industry, until the form interfered enough “in the orderly sequence which leads from real events and phenomena to their representation in the media.”[11]Once successfully authenticated as counter-culture by the media, the power shifted from the industry standard, to the sub-cultural preference. That is, the cult of vinyl was able to broadcast its beliefs in the authority of vinyl so that the media had no other choice to accept it as an authentic movement. In a thorough review of media reports surrounding the history of vinyl, Yochim and Biddinger found the propaganda of vinyl littered in the pages of Rolling Stone from as early as 1979. In their introduction to the resulting study, ‘It Kind of Gives You that Vintage Feel’, the authors conclude, “vinyl records have been articulated with human characteristics, such as fallibility, warmth and mortality, which, for record enthusiasts, imbue vinyl with authenticity.”[12] Through powerful declaration in the media, the cult was able to exert its mythos on the industry.

While there might not have been any authenticity to vinyl during the medium’s nearly century-long market reign, there now exists such a system of subculture so that vinyl is stamped out as “ceremonial objects destined to serve in a cult.”[13] While Benjamin argues mechanical reproduction forever separated art from its basis in cult, DJs who’ve spent years digging through musty stacks of records, and collectors, their thumbs rubbed raw from sorting and resorting their shelves of plastic, have reestablished a connection between vinyl and cult, thereby granting it great power in the marketplace and culture in general. Vinyl then defies the standards that judge other mechanical reproductions for the simple fact that its cult reclaimed the physical form, instilling in it an aura, and granting it God-like status in the ceremony of listening.

This then is one step toward understanding vinyl’s material authenticity. However, the cult is powerless without its gospel. The cult needs a story to tell.

Mythos

What then was this cult so enamored with that it was driven to establish a new ideology surrounding vinyl? Like any religion, it is myth that provides a foundation for support, and there is no format quite as storied as vinyl.

Even a brief rummage through the news headlines concerning vinyl provides proof that there’s little complexity to the mythos of the LP. Barthes was right to claim any object, once provided with an appropriate discourse, is replete with myth.[14] Articles in Rolling Stone, The New York Times, and a host of other publications supply an exhaustive history of the LP’s mythical story. As “any material can be endowed with meaning,”[15] vinyl is replete with myth instilled deep within its grooves by over 100 years of discourse — a dialectic primarily concerned with the physical qualities of vinyl so that the myth flows from the pops and hisses, transcending from the artwork on its sleeve. The physicality of vinyl is inescapably tied to its myth. And because of this specific link to its form, vinyl’s system of myth becomes “more amenable… to historical criticism,”[16] thus cyclically burrowing itself further into the cultural consciousness. Like Barthe’s “passionified roses,” the emptiness of an arcane plastic disc becomes full as the signifier of authentic recording by never stepping too far from the myth of a superior aesthetic. “It just sounds better,” is the simple argument so often argued by the cult.

To the cult of vinyl, the LP represents that which the MP3, nor any other digital medium, ever can. As New York Times reporter Alex Williams put it, “[i]n an era when ‘everybody’s music collection is the same’ thanks to file swapping, collecting expensive, unwieldy LPs is a conspicuous way for the superfans to advertise their cognoscenti status.”[17] This line of thought could go far in an argument relating to vinyl’s role in identity creation. However for this argument, vinyl’s authenticity is further tethered to form. It’s not only the sound of vinyl, which is derived form its mechanics, but also its total physical aesthetic — an aesthetic of the material itself, as well as the environment it creates — that defies appropriation by any digital form. A digital recording of vinyl might represent the hiss-pop, but the total effect is lost due to the absence of the physical. Barthes would agree, as “the myth is always there to present the form; the form is there to outdistance the meaning.”[18] Regardless of content, vinyl carries it’s meaning in its form. Here vinyl’s authenticity can be unearthed a bit more, as Benjamin asserts, “[t]he authenticity of a thing is the quintessence of all that is transmissible from its origin on, ranging from its physical duration to the historical testimony relating to it.”[19] The cult of vinyl, concerned mainly with the aesthetic of vinyl, has provided a complex mythos dating to the birth of the gramophone in the late 1800s. All that has been transmitted about vinyl in its long history had stacked up, collected and, until recently, was waiting for the right moment to support a new authenticity for the form. And as we will now see, the birth of the CD provided the blow vinyl needed to assert a new authenticity.

What It Is Not

Andreas Huyssen, writing on Adorno’s reconsidered culture industry, explains the “crisis of the beautiful,” through which Adorno found for the possibility of legitimate, and one might also add authentic, art if the result maintains an “awareness of the crisis.” Such an art, Huyssen explains, preserves the traditional aura in negativity.[20] Put another way, a form’s embrace of what it is not, that which it cannot represent, is, in fact, a reasonable reason to grant a measure of authenticity, as it is now innate with a certain self-awareness.

Extrapolating this idea for the purpose of vinyl’s authenticity can help explain the medium’s survival in the time spanning the “death of vinyl” in the late 1980s to the current resurgence in popular culture. As CDs became the primary mode of musical distribution around 1988, the culture industry seized them, thrusting the new plastic discs into Adorno’s foggy mist. Here the CD, already born into the world with an aura of decay due to it’s digitalization of the event (the ultimate step in the process of mechanical reproduction), acted as martyr, pushing vinyl out of the culture industry’s grasp, and into a more authentic space beneath the surface. Once free from the restriction of the market, free from the mainstream culture industry, the record could breed subculture into an army simply be acting as the alternative to popular culture. It was no longer the industry standard, an in that anti-authoritarian fact, the cult found pride and grew.

In the transition from LP to CD, vinyl was instilled with the aura of negativity — vinyl was not digital, not new, not the future. Vinyl was messy and full of noise; it was warpable and bulky. It was nothing like the unbreakable, digital, hi-definition savior, the CD. Almost overnight, vinyl also represented the past, standing alone as a musty testament of the past.

The cult accepted these truths, embracing the sound of vinyl despite its supposed lower quality and obsolescence. The cult was aware of the crisis, and by default, vinyl became the beneficiary of new societal tension. By acknowledging all that vinyl wasn’t, and formulating a response championing the form’s negativity, the cult created a cultural self-awareness for vinyl even Heidegger would admit allows for some authenticity. Because vinyl thrives as a result of what it is not, it must be granted some authenticity. And if all this can be concluded from the introduction of the CD, what then happens to vinyl in the context of the MP3?

Record(ings) of the Authentic

Even in its name, the vinyl record presents an authenticity, another example of self-awareness. “Record” acknowledges the form’s mere representation of an event. Opposed to a copy, rather a recording. Vinyl is honest with its fallible; it has no false confidence concerning its existence. Simply by pressing the record to vinyl, the event is forever altered, contained in the physicality of the disc. And, as seen above, in the addition of noise installed in the process of manufacturing, the cult finds reason to celebrate. This must be considered when uncovering the new authenticity of vinyl in the digital age.

The MP3 is absolutely a product of the age of digital reproduction, where the form is intangible yet offers itself as an exact copy of a physical event. The MP3 represents the original event sure enough, yet it is totally unaware of any specific individuality, all copies are exact. In this way, the MP3 lies to itself. Where each record represents a new take on a specific event, all MP3’s represent the same inferior representation. The MP3 is tirelessly reproduced until all meaning is shaken from the binary coding that renders them so inauthentic.

The tension between the honesty of vinyl and the dishonesty of the MP3 paves a road for authenticity. Benjamin asserts a necessity for the contextual existence of a work of art, claiming reproductions lack a “unique existence in a particular place,”[21] and therefore the aura of the original is inevitably lost. However, stepping forward in light of the digital age, the LP is endowed with new meaning. In a reality where music is virtually transferred and duplicated without degradation, the LP is afforded an opportunity to embody Benjamin’s standards for authentic art despite being mechanical reproductions themselves.

As Benjamin continues, “It is this unique existence — and nothing else — that bears the history to which the work has been subject. This history includes changes to the physical structure of the work over time, together with any changes in ownership.”[22] The lack of a contextualized existence is a major factor when Benjamin then considers authenticity, saying, “The whole sphere of authenticity eludes technological — and of course not only technical — reproduction.” However, within the context of the modern day, when consumers “use a click wheel to sample songs from Miley Cyrus, Nas, Black Sabbath, John Coltrane and the Scissor Sisters within minutes,”[23] the record itself must come to represent a unique event, an original reproduction. Seeing the LP in this light allows it to meet Benjamin’s specific criteria. All of a sudden, each mechanically reproduced LP contains a unique physical history — its own scratches and pops — as well as its own unique existence and interaction with its owner. Each play is, in fact, an event, each spin representing an original occurrence, thus becoming original in a way totally unavailable to the MP3. In that way, the MP3 does much to degrade the experience of music, hiding the auratic experience in a fog of easy accessibility and everyday normalcy. Vinyl still demands work, and for that, it generates awareness in the listener.

For reasons of space and temporality, no two performances are ever alike. Just as no two records, even if they contain congruent content, will ever offer the same listening experience. Certainly, even a single record spun twice would differ more in performance than the same song played back to back on an MP3 player. There is simply a better chance for the record to exist in a unique manor, even if they were pressed hundreds at a time. So, it’s through the lens of digital reproduction that the record is granted a second chance at life, as well as an opportunity for authenticity — secondary authenticity, perhaps.

Conclusions & Predictions

Hopefully then, we can arrive at my original thesis and conclude that through the tension developed by the invention of the CD, and then furthered by the MP3, a sufficient negativity was created to instill authenticity in the record. This negativity was enough to captivate the cult of vinyl, pushing members to establish power for the form through the successful spread of its mythos. Of course, this is an incomplete and jumpy case for the secondary and material authenticity of vinyl. However, I believe the pathway paved provides a sufficient case for the existence of this authenticity. While no plastic pressing will ever capture the full beauty of a truly authentic experience, vinyl does, in fact, create some sort of authenticity for itself in the light of digital reproduction.

Of course, this case must be accompanied by a somewhat ironic prediction. As the music industry rediscovers the monetary power of vinyl, one is forced to ask if the mythos of the LP faces the possibility of becoming vapor once again in Adorno’s foggy mist. Will what little authenticity gained from the tension of digital reproduction be totally stripped from vinyl as it is stocked on big box store shelves? Moreover, as major labels release new “popular” albums, as well as reissues, on vinyl, does a cult that thrives on exotic treasure hunting and an underground mentality become diffused? Unfortunately, I believe it is only too possible for the culture industry’s cold embrace to make all of the above a reality for the LP.

However, perhaps vinyl’s time really has past, and even if the market continues to grow, it will never reach a breaking point. For the digital revolution, with its grassroots promotion and distribution methods, might kill the music industry before it has the chance to squeeze every last penny out of the plastic. Maybe then, the record will remain as a testament to the authentic days of mere mechanical reproduction. Either way, vinyl will always have three authentic decades to be proud of.

---

[1] Williams, Alex (2008, August 31). Another spin for vinyl. The New York Times, retrieved May 17, 2009 from http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/31/fashion/31vinyl.html?_r=1&pagewanted=print

[2] Madonna (2000). Music (CD). Los Angeles, CA., Maverick/Warner Bros.

[3] Melnick, Jordan (2009, May 13). Resurgence in vinyl helps record store in recession. Medill Reports, Retrieved on My 17, 2009 from http://news.medill.northwestern.edu/chicago/news.aspx?id=129095

[4] In an April 27, 2009 article in the New York Post, Peter Lauria reported American retail giant Best Buy would introduce vinyl to their sales floor. The move sparked some hope for the music industry, which saw an opportunity to raise prices, from $13.99 on average for a CD to $22.95 for the average LP.

[5] Lauria, Peter (2009, April 27). Best Buy turning the tables with vinyl. New York Post, retrieved on May 17, 2009 from http://www.nypost.com/seven/04272009/business/best_buy_turning_the_tables_with_vinyl_166384.htm.

[6] Melnick (2009).

[7] Benjamin, Walter (1968). The work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction. Illuminations. New York: Schocken Books, p. 223. From Benjamin’s first version of Work of Art, chosen for more direct translation.

[8] Beer, David (2008). The Iconic Interface and the Veneer of Simplicity: MP3 players and the reconfiguration of music collecting and reproduction practices in the digital age. Information, Communication & Society, 11(1), p. 75.

[9] Benjamin, Walter (1968). Unpacking my Library, Illuminations. New York: Schocken Books, p. 59.

[10] “Ideas derived from sensations. But sensationism could be associated, without too much difficulty, with religious faith and with the most extreme beliefs…” Gramsci, Antonio (1971). The concept of ideology. Selections from the prison notebooks of Antonio Gramsci (Eds Hoare and Smith). New York: International Publishers, p. 57.

[11] Hebdige, Dick (1979). Subculture: The unnatural break. Subculture, The meaning of style, New York: Routledge, p. 90.

[12] Yochim, E. C. and Biddinger, M. (2008). ‘it kind of gives you that vintage feel:’ vinyl records and the trope of death. Media, Cultrue and Society, 30, p.183.

[13] Benjamin (1968), p. 224. Again, from Benjamin’s first version of Work of Art.

[14] Barthes, Roland (1972). Myth Today. Mythologies, New York: Hill and Wang. p. 109.

[15] Barthes (1972). p. 110

[16] Barthes (1972). p. 112. Perhaps I’m using ‘historical criticism” more generally than Barthes would appreciate, as I’m allowing it to encompass any discourse relating to the past, present or future of the vinyl.

[17] Williams (2008).

[18] Barthes (1972). p. 123.

[19] Benjamin, Walter (2008. The work of art in the ace of technological reproduction. (Eds. Jennings, Doherty and Levin) Harvard, p. 22. Now, we draw from Benjamin’s superior second version.

[20] Huyssen, Andreas (1975). Introduction to Adorno. New German Critique, 6, p. 8.

[21] Benjamin (2008), p. 21.

[22] Benjamin (2008), p. 21.

[23] Williams (2009).

The Good & The Great: Reagan’s Dual Visions for America

Benjamin Schultz-Figueroa

September 27, 2009

Political Media & Communication

The Good & The Great:

Reagan’s Dual Visions for America

Ronald Reagan

Ronald Reagan’s “Evil Empire” speech of March 1983, as it was later referred to, represents a shift in the way Americans perceived themselves for the years to follow. This speech is currently rated 29 in a list of the top 100 American political speeches of the 20^th century, placing two higher than FDR’s first fireside chat (Lucas & Medhurst). The content of Reagan’s speech reveals a relatively new president, only 2 years into office, outlining a vision of America to come. This vision demonstrates an attempt to coalesce Reagan’s political worldview and that of the American Christian community into one overriding philosophy. I will explore the characteristics of this viewpoint, Reagan’s vision of America, through two concepts raised in the Evil Empire speech: the good and the great.

For many of us good and great represent levels of achievement or benevolence, however for Reagan they have two distinct meanings and representations. These themes are introduced when Reagan quotes Alexis de Tocqueville: “America is good. And if America ever ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.” He proceeds to personalize this seemingly vague assertion by stating, “I’m pleased to be here today with you who are keeping America great by keeping her good” (Reagan, 1983). I propose that for Reagan (and his supporters/speech writers) this good henceforth represents the moral/religious/personal realm whereas the great represents the political/ethical/social realm. Here we encounter not only the creation of a distinction, between the good and the great, but also the establishment of a logic, or logos, in the relationship between these terms. Previously we may have understood good to precede great on a scale of value, whereas now it shall be understood that the good causes the great.

According to Reagan, without the good there is no great; the great is dependent on the good for its existence. He states that his administration “sees the greatness of America in you, her people, and in your families, churches, neighborhoods, communities” (Reagan, 1983). Here he details this relationship by defining the good as “families, churches, neighborhoods, communities,” wherein, he claims, the greatness of America is formed.  It is important to note that the audience, the you, in which his administration sees the greatness of America, is the National Association of Evangelicals. Throughout the speech Reagan conveys that moral and spiritual guidelines make up the institutions of the good, whereas judicial or governmental guidelines rule the great[1]. Reagan describes how “the rights of parents and the rights of family take precedence over those of Washington-based bureaucrats and social engineers,” and continues, “Freedom prospers when religion is vibrant and the rule of law under God is acknowledged” (Reagan, 1983). From these quotes we see that “Washington-based bureaucrats and social engineers,” who try to impose the world of the great upon the world of the good are at fault, however it may also be inferred that the world of the great, freedom being one of its main issues, will “prosper” as long as it is subservient to the good.

Reagan argues that past decades have deviated from the order of good/great domains and that his administration represents a return to form. He states, “there’s a great spiritual awakening in America, a renewal of the traditional values that have been the bedrock of America’s goodness and greatness”[2] (Reagan, 1983). All this begs the question, a return from what? Reagan’s answer is secularism, which seeks to invert the relationship between the good and the great. He describes how “many… have turned to a modern-day secularism, discarding the tried and time-tested values upon which our civilization is based.”  He believes that the secularist, “no matter how well intentioned,” is guilty of confusing the natural order of things, of imposing the rules of the great upon the world of the good. Reagan sees the world of the secularist as lost in the realm of the great (institutions) and in the pursuit of perfection. He reminds us that, “we must never forget that no government schemes are going to perfect man. We know that living in this world means dealing with what philosophers would call the phenomenology of evil or, as theologians would put it, the doctrine of sin” (Reagan, 1983). Reagan provides many examples to illustrate the secularist’s misguided attempt to perfect man without the acknowledgment of sin. He notes that “while they proclaim that they’re freeing us from superstitions of the past, they’ve taken upon themselves the job of superintending us by government rule and regulation” and cites examples such as clinics supplying birth control to teen girls[3], “abortions on demand,” and censoring religious speech in the name of the First Amendment (Reagan, 1983).

Reagan is willing to concede the good intentions of the secularist, however he believes the Soviets are the opposite of both the great and the good. Furthermore, he asserts that communism represents the downfall of man stating, “Marxism-Leninism is actually the second-oldest faith, first proclaimed in the Garden of Eden with the words of temptation, ‘Ye shall be as gods’” (Reagan, 1983). Here Reagan conflates Marxism with original sin by placing the conception of Marxism in the Garden of Eden. For him it is the Serpent instead of Marx that speaks the Soviet’s original doctrine. Importantly, this points to a view of communism that is spiritual in nature rather than political or material.

Reagan views communism not as a competing ideology, contesting the United States’ control of global power, but instead as the “Evil Empire,” contesting Christianity’s and the good’s hold on American souls. In one of his main examples we can see the level to which Reagan brings this contest into the realm of the good. He recalls a father discussing the issue of communism in California:

I heard him saying ‘I love my little girls more than anything.” And I said to myself, ‘Oh, no, don’t. You can’t… Don’t say that.’ But I had underestimated him. He went on: ‘I would rather see my little girls die now; still believing in God, than have them grow up under communism and one day die no longer believing in God (Reagan, 1983).

Reagan’s fearful reaction (“Oh, no, don’t. You can’t”) to such an innocuous and touching sentiment (“I love my little girls more than anything”) can only be explained through the lens of the good and the great. What Reagan fears in this statement is that the father’s love for his little girls will reject the threat of communism from the realm of the family, the good, confining its threat to the realm of the political, the great.

Much of Reagan’s political power lies in the connection and relationship between these two worlds. The extent to which he can convince Christians in America that the political and ethical is also the spiritual and moral increases his ability to rally his base and achieve his goals in Washington. Approaching the culmination of his speech Reagan urges us to oppose those who place the United States “in a position of military and moral inferiority” stating:

I urge you to beware the temptation of pride—the temptation of blithely declaring yourself above it all and label both sides equally at fault, to ignore the facts of history and the aggressive impulse of an evil empire, to simply call the arms race a giant misunderstanding and thereby remove yourself from the struggle between right and wrong and good and evil (Reagan, 1983).

For Reagan, as we can see, separating the good and the great is both a moral injustice and a strategic failure.

Reagan’s conflations between the spiritual and the material, the familial and the political, were not new, nor did they end with him. Still, Reagan’s worldview was specific to his administration and time. This speech was given in the golden age of televangelism, before many of the scandals that would follow, and people were used to receiving spiritual guidance from their televisions (Razelle). Reagan’s previous acting career undoubtedly evoked a nostalgia for time when the battle between good and bad was unsullied by morally complex issues such as Watergate and Vietnam. Reagan’s speech effectively wooed America with its relatively simple outlook of a good America leading to a great America. With this idea Reagan appointed himself spiritual leader, political crusader, and moral father to the Christian faith in’ the United States.

Work Cited

Aristotle. Rhetoric. New York: Dover Publications, 2004.

Fronkl, Razelle. “Televangelism” Encyclopedia of Religion and Society. AltaMira Press.  30 September 2009 <http://hirr.hartsem.edu/ency/Televangelism.htm>.

Lucas, Steven & Medhurst, Martin. “‘I Have a Dream’ Leads Top 100 Speeches of the Century” University Communications News Release. 15 Dec. 1999. <http://www.news.wisc.edu/releases/3504.html>.

Reagan, Ronald. “Remarks to the National Association of Evangelicals.” Orlando. 8 March 1983.

---

[1] One lens through which we can view this is Aristotle’s delineation of three types of rhetoric: the oratory, political and forensic. While the political and the forensic deal with relatively concrete subjects, justice or injustice, expediency or harmfulness, the oratory deals with the much more subjective criteria of honorary worth (13). It could be argued that Reagan is using an oratory framework to take on political and forensic topics, such as judicial law, foreign affairs, etc.

[2] He proceeds to give examples proving that America has been returning to a religious, specifically Christian, faith, “95 percent of those surveyed expressed a belief in God and a huge majority said that the Ten Commandments had real meaning in their lives.”

[3] Here he notes that the clinical term “sexually active” has replaced the moral term “promiscuous” highlighting secularist’s placement of sex into the scientific realm rather than the religious/familial realm (where Reagan believes it belongs).

Digital Duplication: Authenticity and the Aura in an Internet Age

Benjamin Schultz-Figueroa

Understanding Media Studies: Ideas

5/18/09

Digital Duplication:

Authenticity and the Aura in an Internet Age

Such a vast majority of what we consider media criticism was developed before media production became a consumer activity. When we consider the writings of semiologists and media critics such as Walter Benjamin, Roland Barthes and Theodor Adorno we are viewing works that are written under the assumption that most media is professionally made by profit driven companies. We are forced to question which of these ideas still function and how they function in this changed environment. The monopoly on image production and distribution has certainly lost much of its grip due to the spread of affordable video cameras and free web channels. This change in culture is also reflected by a change in industry. The rise in prevalence of what is called Enterprise 2.0 illustrates this. Enterprise 2.0 is an attempt to change the work environment so that it can survive in this new landscape where traditional ways of earning capital are undercut. Yet, despite these changes, so much of what past media critics had to say seem more prevalent now than ever.  With the distribution of image sources our perceptions of the world around us have become more and more mediated. Through the examination of work made in this new atmosphere this paper will attempt to rediscover Benjamin, Barthes and Adorno under contemporary conditions.

Theodor Adorno

Before embarking on an analysis of the contemporary significances of the writings of Walter Benjamin, Roland Barthes and Theodor Adorno we must establish what their writings meant at the time they were written. Since all these writers had multifaceted arguments this paper will attempt to focus on one essential theme that concerns them all, specifically authenticity within the language of media. We will consider authenticity in terms of meaning and agency. We will explore these authors’ various ways of viewing this issue, their answers to the problem of subversion and commercialization, their locating of sites for resistance, and their judgments on using the language of media in its many forms. It is this precise identification, of media as a language, which all three of these writers share.  When we consider language, especially the spoken word, we think of it emanating from an individual. Someone must speak a language and therefore language contains not only the transferring of information but of perspectives as well. That language contained within it ideology and subjectivity, even in mediums relying upon the photographic process, which supposedly took the human element out of the equation, was an essential point for these three writers.

The conclusions they drew from this position are essential to realizing where they differ. For Theodor Adorno the covert subjectivity of language is a repressive, dehumanizing fact. To quote from The Culture Industry:

The moment in the work of art by which it transcends reality cannot, indeed, be severed from style; that moment, however, does not consist in achieved harmony, in the questionable unity of form and content, inner and outer, individual and society, in those traits in which the discrepancy emerges, in the necessary failure of the passionate striving for identity. Instead of exposing itself to this failure, in which the style of the great work of art has always negated itself, the inferior work has relied on its similarity to others, the surrogate of identity. The culture industry has finally posited this imitation as absolute (Adorno, 103).

What Adorno posits here is that the difference between the language used to describe a subject and the subject itself exists as an extension of our search for self-identity. We establish ourselves in relation to the object described and, yet, this created identity is doomed to fail. The simulation strips the object of its objectness, its completion as a thing within the world. Even with the processes of mechanical reproduction available to us, the objects that we simulate are not the objects themselves, but instead our perceptions of the objects, and therefore the identities created in relation to these simulations will be illusory as well. Through the reification of these ideas, Adorno argues that the culture industry (a culture which is subservient to industry’s ends) hides the false aspect of these, thereby positing “this imitation as absolute.”

For Adorno this absolute vision of reality spreads past the space of the theater. Through a process of simultaneous identification and idealization viewers both repeat what they see on the screen and keep themselves locked in their perspective classes. The more natural the use of performances provided by the culture industry in everyday life, the greater the culture industry exerts its power upon the individual. As Adorno writes:

Every phenomenon is by now so thoroughly imprinted by the schema that nothing can occur that does not bear in advance the trace of jargon, that is not seen at first glance to be approved. But the true masters, as both producers and reproducers, are those who speak the jargon with the same free-and-easy relish as if it were the language it has long since silenced. Such is the industry’s ideal of naturalness (101).

We can see from this quote that there is no recuperation for Adorno. The language of the culture industry is permanently stamped with its origin. No matter what the content or the context, the signs that originated with the culture industry stay under its sway. There is no such thing as the natural within the culture industry.

Roland Barthes

Roland Barthes sees a similar vision of the process of representation, a process that he dissects through the lens of semiology. Barthes breaks language down into a specific procedure. In daily language[1] we have three parts: the signifier, the signified and the sign. The signified is the object or concept itself, existing outside the world of language. The signifier is that which stands in, the word, image, symbol, and so on, for the signified. The sign is the synthesis of the two, the language-object as it is understood. Barthes then adds to this system “a second-order semiological system,” or the mythic language (Barthes, 114). Here a new signified is added to the sign, the language-object, creating a new mythic-language-object (Barthes, 113-115).

While the semi-technical language used here might seem to preclude something so potentially ephemeral as power relations, Barthes is sure to include them in his considerations. Within this process of signifier-signified-sign there exists a hierarchy of relations. The signifier must be emptied out, what Barthes calls “impoverished,” of inherent meaning in order for it to contain the concept of the signified and create the synthesis of the two, the sign. In mythic language, language (here again used in the broadest terms to encompass spoken word, images, photographs, films, and so on) is emptied of its meaning so that it may be endowed with a mythic concept. The object that is represented loses its specificity in exchange for its mythic status. As with representation in the culture industry, myth hides its structural workings, engendering meanings through associations that appear to be natural. This seeming naturalness allows conservative powers the ability to subvert the populace through the stowing of ideological messages in apparently innocent images (Barthes, 117-119).

Unlike Adorno, Barthes sees an opening for recuperation or a re-impoverishing of mythic language. As he writes:

Truth to tell, the best weapon against myth is perhaps to mythify it in its turn, and to produce an artificial myth: and this reconstituted myth will in fact be a mythology. Since myth robs language of something, why not rob myth? All that is needed is to use it as the departure point for a third semiological chain, to take its signification as the first term of a second myth (135).

Using the same technique as myth, the hollowing out of a sign in order to convey a new signifier, which can be of radical or progressive intent[2].

Barthes also identifies another linguist with progressive potential: the maker. The maker utilizes language as a tool. This relationship breaks down the mythic element of language “Wherever he links his language to the making of things, meta-language is referred to a language-object, and myth is impossible” (149). This return to the use value of words strips them of their mythic status thereby returning to them the status of communication tools as opposed to ideological disseminators.

Finally, Barthes describes the mythologist as a combater of myth. The mythologist deconstructs the myth, revealing the workings behind the surface. Their mission is to protect reality from the attacks of myth by defining both. This is a treacherous path, since the mythologist must use the very tools of language that he is battling.

Walter Benjamin

Walter Benjamin identifies a similar process of impoverishment in The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technical Reproducibility, but draws some very different conclusions. Benjamin uses the term aura to apply to the uniqueness (that which is “impoverished” by the system of signs for Barthes, and the key failure that the culture industry hides through reification) of the object existing outside the world of language. For Benjamin this removal of the aura has the ability to lead to much radical potential.

To begin with, technologically reproducible artwork can “provide an object of simultaneous collective reception” (Benjamin, 36). Benjamin sees this in opposition to painting or sculpture which places its emphasis on viewing the object in person, thereby establishing a hierarchy between the elite with access and the impoverished without access. This radically questions a class system based on building such hierarchies.

Cinema also has the ability to open the viewers lives up to new possibilities, or as Benjamin puts it “then came film and exploded this prison-world with the dynamite of the split second, so that now we can set off calmly on journeys of adventure among its far-flung debris” (37). When filmgoers contrasted the visions of far off lands and unbelievable events, real or imaginary, with their lives the possibility for change is opened up.

Finally, while the “fine” art viewer approaches the work of art with a cool and critical eye, the masses absorb the mechanically reproducible film into their very being[3]. This allows for the possibility of establishing habits, which will change the lives of viewers outside the theater as well as inside. This habit changing effect leads to the possibility of enacting concrete material change based on a cinematic or illusory stimulus (Benjamin, 39-41).

Benjamin ends The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technical Reproducibility with the following words; “[Humankind’s] self-alienation has reached the point where it can experience its own annihilation as a supreme aesthetic pleasure. Such is the aestheticizing of politics, as practiced by fascism. Communism replies by politicizing art (42).” This state of extreme self-alienation is what Adorno is arguing we all experience under the power of the culture industry. It is the power to turn everything, even war and death, into pure art, entertainment, or aesthetics. What is essential here is that Benjamin sees this power as a fact, the aestheticizing of politics he calls it, but also allows for a radical sensibility to exist alongside, or in opposition to this power. Through the techniques outlined above radical political goals can be introduced into art, combating the alienating interests that also exist within the field.

For the sake of clarity, we can quickly review the perspectives just outlined. Adorno sees the culture industry as a hollowed out world that traps its citizens in an empty cycle of consumption through a process of representation and reification. In this world all engagements with the culture industry’s language leads to a loss of self, in-the-worldness, mana, and so on. For Barthes representation produces a similar effect through the process of mythification, but Barthes sees three possible ways of using language to compete with this process. These three techniques are the analysis of the mythification process, using language as a tool, and remythifying language. Benjamin, on the other hand, sees potentially progressive traits inherent in our modes of representation during the age of mechanical reproduction. These traits are the decentralization of access, the opening up of unforeseen possibilities, and the transformative effect on viewers.

Mechanical reproduction in the information age

In a recent article entitled After the Amateur: Notes Ed Halter has discussed the shift of media production from pre to post internet through the terms amateur and professional. Halter argues that these terms do not adequately describe the situation any longer. Instead, he creates his own term, the sub-amateur. The sub-amateur is unconcerned with the form of their creations but instead with its function. This breaks down into a few key distinctions. The sub-amateur is concerned with the content of the representation, not in the same way as, say, a documentary filmmaker but instead in the vein of a mapmaker. This is to say that the work of a sub-amateur is created essentially for its use-value. Unlike the mapmaker though, the sub-amateur utilizes the user-friendly default functions on their mediums, not concentrating on the aesthetics of the work but on its value as an object.

Halter discusses how various contemporary internet artists engage with either the work or the tools of these sub-amateurs. He sites a piece by Oliver Laric titled 50-50, (which can be viewed here: http://oliverlaric.com/5050.htm) which Halter says:

makes visible formal differences between a social-default convention of the YouTube lip-dub: variations in image and sound compression, lighting, and composition become as individually expressive as the performers themselves. These elements had been, of course, invisible or irrelevant to the original creators of each clip.

In this sense the piece functions as a sort of internet anthropological survey. It illustrates Halter’s concept of the sub-amateur but also illustrates many of the theories that we have outlined in their contemporary form.

From Adorno’s position this piece would represent the complete dissemination of the culture industry’s means. The performers in this piece are emulating the image of 50 Cent, an industry figure. The fact that these videos are made in people’s houses and by consumers, simply shows the extent to which the culture industry’s reach extends. We now are not only represented as empty media icons but represent ourselves thusly as well. These performers all “speak the jargon with the same free-and-easy relish as if it were the language it has long since silenced” thus representing the final success of the culture industry.

For Barthes there are, perhaps, more possibilities for agency here. Using Halter’s definition of the sub-amateur performers here, as those who use the media for its use value, we can see a connection to Barthes’ language of the maker. If the sub-amateur is unconcerned with the aesthetic qualities of their work, they also disregard the mythifying function of these aesthetics. Through the pure use value of these videos, ironically an attempt to by the performers to identify themselves with the myth of 50 Cent, they demythify 50 Cent by stripping him, or at least his image, of the aesthetics that create his mythic status. In this way, and this is assisted in no small part by Laric’s accumulation of these pieces, this work also functions as a remythification of 50 Cent. It accomplishes this by investing subversive and unintended meaning upon these songs and performances. Lastly through the exploratory function of Laric’s piece he dissects the myth and its operation, here emulating Barthes’ mythologist.

Finally, for Benjamin we see an extension of his cinematic concepts. The decentralization of production has been expanded and the audience has become the producers.[4] The almost unlimited access to these videos devalues any attempts at a hierarchy, a major frustration for those attempting to make money off the internet. We also see the internet opening up possibilities and drawing unlikely comparisons, identifying these performers, from widely varying backgrounds, as unified in their position as viewers and consumers. Finally we see the effects of the medium on the lived lives, the daily performances of audience consumers implying the truth of Benjamin’s conclusions.

These different perspectives should not be seen as cancelling each other out, but rather as existing along side one another. The fact that all these elements are contained within 50-50 is one of the most interesting things about the piece. And all these elements exist within the internet itself as well. In many ways the many conflicts that arise out of the internet (piracy vs. copyright, privacy vs. publicity, and so on) are conflicts about which perspective should be used to frame the internet for future regulation. Drawing from these past theories helps us consider which of these frames we want to take when considering the future of the internet.

Work Cited

50-50. Dir. Oliver Laric. http://oliverlaric.com, 2007.

Adorno, Theodor W. and Horkheimer, Max. “The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception.” Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments. Ed. Schmid Noerr Trans. Edmund Jephcott. California: Stanford University Press, 2002. 95-136.

Tribulation 99: Alien Anomalies Under America. Dir. Craig Baldwin. Perf. Maurice Bishop, Jimmy Carter and Fidel Castro. Other Cinema, 1992.

Barthes, Roland. “Myth Today.” Mythologies. New York: Hill and Wang, 1972. 109-159.

Benjamin, Walter. The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility. USA: the President and Fellows of Harvard College, 2008.

Halter, Ed. “After the Amateur: Notes.” Rhizome at the New Museum. 29 April 2009. The New Museum. 19 May 2009 < http://rhizome.org/editorial/2566#more-14930>.

Lessig, Lawrence. “Four Puzzles from Cyberspace.” Key Readings in Media Today. Ed. Brooke Erin Duffy & Joseph Turow. New York: Routledge, 2009. 102-117.

United States. Enterprise 2.0. Enterprise 2.0 Conference. 2009. March 29, 2009. <http://www.e2conf.com/>

---

[1] Falsely opposed here to mythic language for the purpose of explanation. For Barthes almost all daily language is myth, as is tragically displayed in his descriptions of the utter alienation of the mythologist (158).

[2] This is technique was utilized by the Situationalists through détournement. Craig Baldwin displays this technique in all its ferociously biting glory in Tribulation 99 where he “mythifies” the myth of communism in the science fiction films of the 40s and 50s.

[3] This is a perfect example of two theoreticians seeing the same phenomena but drawing totally different conclusions.  For Adorno this is the very process that allows the culture industry to exert its control over the masses.

[4] And in many ways the reverse is true judging by the rise in music videos with internet aesthetics. For example, take Kanye West’s video for Welcome to Heartache, which uses a youtube staple effect of datamoshing.

The Suchness of the Screen: The Tibetan Book of the Dead, Illusion, Spectacle, and Media

Death in Media

Benjamin Schultz-Figueroa

May 4, 2009

The Suchness of the Screen:

The Tibetan Book of the Dead, Illusion, Spectacle, and Media

All phenomena are ultimately selfless, empty, and free from conceptual elaboration.

In their dynamic they resemble an illusion, mirage, dream, or reflected image,

A celestial city, an echo, a reflection of the moon in water, a bubble an optical illusion, or an intangible emanation.

You should know that all things of cyclic existence and nirvāna

Accord in nature with these ten similes of illusory phenomena.

(Tibetan Book of the Dead, 9)

So much of media theory is based on the study of illusion. Within this field we critique and consider the effects of illusory sights, sounds and emotions on the watcher/listener/feeler. For the Tibetan Buddhists who prescribe to the beliefs in The Tibetan Book of the Dead, every aspect of our lives consists of an illusory quality. This book’s philosophizing about the nature of reality is also a treatise on illusion and the effects on its witness. Through the course of this paper I will outline the enduring ideas of The Tibetan Book of the Dead and consider their possible applications to media theory.

The Tibetan Book of the Dead is an incredibly intricate text, with lists of thousands of gods, lessons, realms, prayers and so on. Countless pages and lifetimes have been spent attempting to comprehend this book in its totality. Within the constraints of writing this paper I will only be discussing the most fundamental ideas, but even in this barebones form we will find great insight and implications. It is also important to note that there are numerous interpretations of this text and my word is in no way the final one on the subject. At best we should consider this paper a riffing and resonating off of some ideas contained within The Tibetan Book of the Dead.

We can arrive at a working dynamic of The Tibetan Book of the Dead’s perspective on the world by defining some key terms. Cyclical existence refers to the cycle of life, death, and rebirth (457). There are different classes of cyclical existence, including the six classes of sentient beings and the three world systems, (509, 518). What keeps the inhabitants of cyclical existence spinning through this circle is suffering. This suffering is caused by a state titled Fundamental Ignorance, which, in turn, is caused by a “misapprehension of the nature of actual reality”. Fundamental Ignorance leads to dissonant mental states, such as anger, malice dissimulation, fury, envy, miserliness, and so on, as well as the twelve links of dependent origination (460-461, 470-471). These mental states and the links of dependent origination each tie the mind to cyclical existence.

Nirvāna comes at the end of Fundamental Ignorance, the reversal of past dissonant mental states, the attainment of clarity, and the severing of the twelve links. It is important to note that nirvāna and cyclic existence are not truly separate realms. As is written on page 40 of The Tibetan Book of the Dead “cyclic existence and nirvāna are inseparable.” Nirvāna exists at the center of cyclic existence, where it sits unmoved and unaffected by the suffering that fuels the beings that orbit it. The shorter your radius from this center the closer you have come to achieving enlightenment[1] (493-494). The illusion of cyclical existence covers nirvāna, like the skin of an apple, or more aptly the surface of a balloon, which we, the fundamentally ignorant, mistake for being all there is. Here we confuse the inner and the outer, meaningfulness for meaninglessness and visa-versa.

Nirvāna is a state of divine emptiness, also called ultimate truth, actual reality, and suchness. Here there is no movement. Even the earlier states of peacefulness and tranquility are eventually give way to emptiness. To quote from the glossary of the The Tibetan Book of the Dead:

All things and events, both external and internal, are devoid of any independent, intrinsic reality that constitutes their essence. Nothing can be said to exist independently from the complex network of factors that gives rise to their origination, nor are phenomena independent of the cognitive processes and conceptual designations (mental constructs) that make up the conventional framework within which their identity and existence are posited (463).

And so, nothingness, no-thingness, exists inscribed within each and every thing[2]. We confuse our relationships with things for the things themselves, and when we strip away these transitory relationships, we find that there is nothing left over. This nothing, this not-a-thing, and the true apprehension of its overriding reality, or lack thereof, is nirvāna.

Like the concept of zero, the mathematical equivalent of the void, nirvāna is a term that is difficult to grasp and pin down. It is a sign that stands in for that which isn’t[3], and this contradiction itself is a mystery to be pondered[4]. We might then clarify this term through the use of the old military technique, the pincer movement, and examine nirvāna from both flanks, or the two extremes, as they are called in The Tibetan Book of the Dead. These extremes are nihilism and eternalism. They are traps that are encountered in the search of enlightenment. In that they analyze reality and our relation to it, they are moving towards nirvāna and away from fundamental ignorance but it is not their final destination. Their closeness to actual reality makes them all the more dangerous. In The Tibetan Book of the Dead the nihilist “denies the existence of objects, laws of cause and effect and the principle of dependent origination” (493). Eternalists, on the other hand, “posit the existence of the independent self or soul. By contrast, Buddist schools… do not accept the notion of self in the sense of an eternal, unchanging, independently existing entity” (465). From these two definitions we can develop a polarity, with a complete disavowal of the objects of the outside world, nihilism, on one side, and a belief in the inherent meaning and permanence of those same objects, eternalism. What this duality, these two extremes, break down into is a question of where we derive our meaning. For the eternalist meaning, reality, eternity, perception and so on exist in the objects of the world, for the nihilist these objects are devoid of these things. The eternalist exists within a world of extreme materialism, a materialism beyond capitalists’ drive for possessions, or the scientists’ drive for facts. In the realm of this materialism even souls are objects, items, facts. Contrary to this, the nihilist denies all things any claim of existence at all, a denial that extends itself even to nothing. Fundamentally this comes down to a matter of perception, what is also called the subject-object dichotomy in The Tibetan Book of the Dead; the nihilist finds fault with all truths, disproving perception further and further, thereby driving themselves further and further into themselves, and the eternalist projects truth onto everything, thereby extending themselves to the point of self-negation.

Here we have the two extremes, and they are truly extreme, between the endless expanse of infinite possibilities and the endless depths of the void. Between them exists a myriad of pettier, less articulate views, the views of the fundamentally ignorant but there also exists Madhyamaka, the third way. The third way is a reconciliation of the polarity between the two extremes. It is the apprehension of the truth in both sides, in the subject and the object, the real and the unreal, the infinite and the void. It is the realization that one does not cancel out the other, the realization of how the two relate with each other. This is the true path to enlightenment. To some extent we all know this, that some things exist and others don’t is not a radical idea, but we do not know it in its full scope: that all things exist and also do not, have meaning and are meaningless. And to know this, to speak it and to think it, is still not enough; in order to reach nirvāna one must also apprehend the idea and live it, which is an entirely different matter.

Alas, now as the intermediate state of dreams arises before me,

Renouncing the corpse-like, insensitive sleep of delusion,

I must enter, free from distracting memories, the state of the abiding nature of reality.

Cultivating [the recognition of] inner radiance,

Through the recognition, emanation, and transformation of dreams,

I must not sleep like a beast,

But cherish the experiential cultivation which mingles sleep with actual [realization].

(Tibetan Book of the Dead, 32)

For the consumer there is nothing left to classify, since the classification has already been preempted by the schematism of production. This dreamless art for the people fulfils the dreamy idealism which went too far for idealism in its critical form. Everything comes from consciousness—from that of God for Malebranche and Berkeley, and from earthly production management for mass art. Not only do hit songs, stars, and soap operas conform to types recurring cyclically as rigid invariants, but the specific content of productions, the seemingly variably element, is itself derived from those types.

(Adorno, 98)

Theodore Adorno’s conceptualization of the culture industry is a deeply layered and oblique one. At its most basic, the culture industry can be described as the subservience of culture to industry. This process involves more than product placement or commercial jingles. Through the recreation and reification of ideas, themes, perspectives, personas, ideologies and realities, mass media drains all objects of their meaning, leaving one prevailing ideology: consumerism. As Guy Debord explains when contemplating the same phenomenon, which he calls the society of the spectacle, this space is “where the commodity contemplates itself in a world of its own making” (http://www.bopsecrets.org/SI/debord/2.htm). Wielding a slew of produced desires, the culture industry sutures our perceptions to its manufactured world, turning the viewer into passive melencholics,[5] constantly longing after a fulfillment that is promised but never received. They wander, lost in a sea of representations, searching for meaning and self-worth where only hollow images can be found.

The Tibetan Book of the Dead describes the fundamentally ignorant as:

Like a fool, for example, who, when finding himself amidst a crowd of people,

Becomes mesmerised by the spectacle [of the crowd] and forgets himself,

Then, no longer recognizing who he is, starts searching elsewhere for himself,

Continuously mistaking others for himself (51).

The comparisons between this state, that of fundamental ignorance, and the citizens of the society of the spectacle are made self-evident here. Both search for meaning where there is none, both confuse themselves for what is not themselves, a confusion of the inner and the outer, and both exist distracted, in a daze caused by the constant stimulations around them. The spinning through life, death, and rebirth within cyclical existence is mirrored and mimicked in the culture industry’s repetition of themes and genres, and, more importantly, in the consumerist cycle of purchase, consume, and dispose.

If The Tibetan Book of the Dead seeks to show us that reality as we perceive it is an empty illusion, then the writings of Debord and Adorno seek to show us that this illusion is no longer our own.  It has been usurped for the purpose of selling us material goods and the lifestyles that surround them.  The inherent confusions and delusions we face in our relationships with the outside world are exacerbated and compounded here. Had The Tibetan Book of the Dead been written now there would perhaps have been added a seventh class of sentient being, existing farther from the center of nirvāna than all the others, for those of us who live in mass-media cultures.

The question then becomes: how can we change this situation? Where is Madhyamaka, the third way, out of this maze of media? In response to this question I would like to begin with a quote from a prayer for enlightenment within The Tibetan Book of the Dead:

If, upon looking outwards towards the external expanse of the sky,

There are no projections emanated by the mind,

And if, on looking inwards at one’s own mind,

There is no projectionist who projects [thoughts] by thinking them,

Then, one’s own mind, completely free from conceptual projections, will become luminously clear (45).

Again, the analogy is made clear by the words of the text themselves, but the implications of this analogy still need to be worked out. If we consider the processes in which the spectacle confuses the screen and the viewer, the projection of the outer onto the inner and the inner onto the outer, then distinguishing the two becomes necessary for enlightenment. Cinema is constantly renegotiating and questioning our relationships with our perceptions[6].  The stillness of the theater and the audience contrasts with the movement on the screen. To varying degrees, depending on the film, we as viewers fluctuate between our awareness of our bodies in the theater and our awareness of our bodies in relation to the diegetic action[7]. The object on screen is fundamentally empty in a way that is far easier to grasp than the emptiness of the objects experienced outside of the screen. Each successful simulation of an aspect of reality not only causes the viewer to enter the illusion but also reflects this possible illusory quality back on that aspect of reality itself.

The cinema can become a tool not only for radical action against the spectacle but also a lab for testing our relationship with cyclical existence.  In our attempts to progressively engage with media we should remember the traps, the two extremes, outlined in The Tibetan Book of the Dead. On the one hand, a complete disavowal of the filmed event as purely disconnected, subjective, and false, leads to a disengagement which is unproductive and misleading.  On the other hand, an unreserved faith in the depicted images leads to an uncritical sleep in which change is impossible. The situationalists, who followed the writing of Debord, recognized the cinema’s power to create meaning (again pointing back to The Tibetan Book of the Dead, the relationships between empty, or on-screen, objects have the power to create very real meaning) and used its own methods to point out its flaws in a technique entitled détournement (fig 1). Cinema’s ability to play with our senses offers us a unique opportunity to enhance our understanding of reality.

This collapsing of the study of media and the study of reality has much potential significance. It ties together our search for social change and personal enlightenment. It opens the door for aesthetic theory to be applied to the world outside of the arts. It adds a weight of spiritual importance to our study of media.

Inland Empire

Work Cited

Adorno, Theodor W. and Horkheimer, Max. “The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception.” Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments. Ed. Schmid Noerr Trans. Edmund Jephcott. California: Stanford University Press, 2002. 95-136.

Barthes, Roland. Camera Lucida. Trans. Richard Howard. New York: Hill and Wang, 1981.

Crowell, Benjamin. “The Modern Revolution in Physics.” Light and Matter. 2006. May 12. 2009 <http://www.lightandmatter.com/html_books/6mr/ch01/ch01.html>.

Debord, Guy. “The Society of the Spectacle.” bopsecrets.org. Trans. Ken Knabb. 2002. May 12. 2009 <http://www.bopsecrets.org/SI/debord/index.htm>.

Felluga, Dino. “Modules on Lacan: On the Gaze.” Introductory Guide to Critical Theory. 2008. Purdue U. May 12. 2009 <http://www.purdue.edu/guidetotheory/psychoanalysis/lacangaze.html>.

Freud, Sigmund. “Mourning and Melancholia.” The Grim Reader: Writings on Death, Dying, and Living On. Ed. Maura Spiegel & Richard Tristman. Bantam, 1997. 239-258.

Lynch, David. Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness, and Creativity. New York: Bobkind, Inc. 2006.

Mulvey, Laura. “Visual pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” The Sexual Subject: A Screen Reader in Sexuality. New York: Routledge, 1992. 22-34.

The Tibetan Book of the Dead. Trans. Thupten Jinpa et al. New York: Viking, 2006.

---

[1] It is apt that nirvāna exists as a point, a one-dimensional object which cannot be defined in two, three, or four-dimensional terms. In the scientific world the study of subatomic particles led to quantum physics “which stated… that certain processes in nature are inescapably random.” This leads to questioning the empirical finality of so much of our science and the concreteness of reality (Crowell). Nirvāna exists beyond examination and quantification, within the almost imperceptible fault line cracks of reality.

[2] This schema, the nothingness inside the thing, could be viewed as the same configuration discussed by Barthes in Camera Lucida, as I argued in my previous paper.  For Barthes, the thing shell would be the studium and the break, which leads to the nothingness inside, is the punctum.

[3] Although isn’t isn’t the correct term here, for nothingness is not a unicorn, but this difficulty in language is exactly the point.

[4] All of our attempts to signify nothingness ultimately contain this contradiction. My Grandfather once told me a joke, which we both have long since forgotten, where the punch line, “nothing is better than a sandwich but a sandwich is better than nothing,” illustrates this point perfectly. Our terms for nothing tend to create these types of endless feedback loops. They exist as black holes in our language, sucking meaning into the void, leaving us with the very thing our sign has failed to represent.

[5] In Freud’s description of melancholia the ego becomes self-effacing and certain experiences are fetishized due to the longing after a departed (usually dead) loved one. In similar style, the subject of the spectacle’s spell longs for departed meaning. Determined that they themselves are unworthy to create their own meaning, they fetishize the products they consume, which in turn only prolong and heighten their suffering.

[6] An entire wing of film criticism is based on the comparison of the spectator with the mind of a child, and the screen with the mirror in Lacan’s conception of the mirror stage.  The mirror stage takes place when the child first views themselves in the mirror and attempts to reconcile their inner being with their outer image (Felluga).

[7] For a specific example of this process in both content and form one can look at David Lynch’s INLAND EMPIRE. Lynch is acquainted with many of the main concepts of Buddhism, although he has his own particular beliefs.  INLAND EMPIRE’s protagonist confuses and explores her personal sense of reality with the cinematic sense of reality. The audience, who fluctuate between apprehension of the cinematic narrative space and complete alienation from this space, mirrors this experience. A terrifying and, at times, infuriating film, INLAND EMPIRE expands and contracts the cinematic space in such a way that we must question our own relationship with both media reality and our own perceived reality.

Transgression in the Photograph: Barthes’ Erotic Act

Benjamin Schultz-Figueroa

March 10, 2009

Death in Media

Transgression in the Photograph:

Barthes’ Erotic Act

The initial impetus in writing this paper was a perceived connection between Barthes writing in Camera Lucida and what Bataille terms the continuous in Erotism: Death & Sensuality.  I felt it was clear that Barthes was somehow committing an act transgression.  My attempts to define this act demanded a further defining of the terms, both Bataille’s and Barthes’.  Part of what you will read in the following pages attempts to engage with and locate the nature of both men’s theories.  Using these findings I have moved on to attempt to specify the nature of Barthes’ transgression and thereby illuminate the erotic potential of photography in his writings.

Bataille’s Continuity and Discontinuity

Bataille’s concepts of continuity and discontinuity are deceptively simple at first glance, and conversely complicated upon closer expecting. The simple definitions are that continuity is death and discontinuity is life. In Erotism’s introduction, Bataille writes on discontinuity: “Each being is distinct from all others… He is born alone. He dies alone. Between one being and another, there is a gulf, a discontinuity” and on continuity: “It is my intention to suggest that for us, discontinuous beings that we are, death means continuity of beings” (12-13). To reiterate, here we see that discontinuity references our fundamental separation from everything but ourselves. Continuity is brought about by death, which dissolves the discontinuous being, thereby returning it to continuity.

Yet, even in these relatively simple definitions, complications arise. If we apply our present definition of discontinuity to the term “death means continuity of beings” the distinctions between the two states begin to break down (Bataille 12-13). What is stated here is not death destroys the discontinuous being, reasserting continuity which would be the case if discontinuity and continuity were completely separate states. In other words, this is not a case of being solely either one state or the other; it is possible (and we may find necessary) to be both. If we magnify our focus even more, including just the term “continuity of beings” the notion that a being is completely discontinuous by its very existence is again refuted. This prompts the question: how can a being (singular) be continuous?

We shall begin answering this question by proposing that discontinuity exists in degrees. The level of discontinuity can be discerned by the subject’s distance from violence. Bataille’s use of the term violence encompasses both reproduction (sex) and death (42). The farther from violence the subject is, the more discontinuous they are. Let us use the distinction between animals and humans to illustrate this. Early humans developed work as a means of survival. Through technological advancements (tools, agriculture, and so on) they separated themselves from animals[1]. The world of work that humans created necessitated the banishment of violence through the creation of taboos. Thus humans pushed themselves up the ladder of discontinuity. Their separateness became more secure as they stripped themselves of their connections (violence) with continuity (Bataille 30, 42).

It can be useful for our discussion to think of this progression, from the either/or version of dis/continuity to the degreed dis/continuity, in terms of a graph. The either/or system exists in one-dimension, where discontinuity and continuity are on either polarity of a line. The leveled version exists as a pyramid graph. Pure discontinuity exists at the very top of the pyramid, where all sides converge. The substances of the pyramid’s sides change as you ascend higher, but at all levels they share the definition of being limits upon the self. If we consider our above example, the human exists on the upper level of the pyramid, containing a smaller surface area than the bottom, and thereby a more distinct, discontinuous self. The animal, on the other hand, exists lower down, closer to the base, with a wider, more open sense (or lack there of) of self. At the higher, more human levels the walls of the pyramid are made up of taboos, whereas on the lower, more animal levels they might only be constructed of one’s senses. And yet, this is again far too simplified to actually encapsulate Bataille’s argument.

We have not yet factored in the title of the book: eroticism. According to Bataille, eroticism is a form of transgression, in which one steps beyond the limits of the self, moving towards the realm of the continuous. It is important to note that this step, this transgression, is not a movement downwards on the pyramid it is a conscious breach in the walls of the pyramid itself. As Bataille writes, “The transgression of a taboo is not animal violence” (64). Ingrained within this idea is an important addition to our pyramid. Since you reach the continuous world by breaching of the walls of taboo, the continuous world can be situated in the space outside of the borders of our pyramid. This means that continuity is the space into which the pyramid of discontinuity is built into. A concrete example of this might be nature itself. As humans build and define their discontinuity (work, technology, etc.), they do so by expanding their order into nature’s disorder (Bataille 45). They convert the violence of nature into the rationalism of humans, changing it from continuous, violent force into what Heidegger would call “standing reserve” (298). There is a distinction here that will become important to our discussion later on. Continuity is not restricted to a world beyond our own. Under special circumstances material beings and objects are endowed with a connection to the continuous world. Bataille points out examples of this phenomenon, such as corpses, sacrificial animals, and beautiful women[2] (46, 82-83, 143). It can be argued that at one period humans experienced all objects as connected to the continuous.

Returning to our graph, there we have even more additions to be made. Radically, Bataille writes:

But the taboos on which the world of reason are founded are not rational for all that. To begin with a calm opposite to violence would not suffice to draw a clear line between the two worlds. If the opposition did not itself draw upon violence in some way, if some violent or negative emotion did not make violence horrible for everyone, reason alone could not define those shifting limits authoritatively enough (63).

Here he refers the taboo of murder, but he might just as easily be talking about our graph. What we see here is that the world of continuity, characterized by violence, not only exists outside of the confines of the pyramid but within it as well. This internal violence is seen in both the extravagant urges let loose in ritual orgy as well as in the nausea felt at the sight of excrement (Bataille 57, 112-114). Coursing through and propping up the walls which delineate its borders is the very violence the pyramid is constructed to keep out.

This inner violence always threatens to break loose. No boundary can ever fully contain it. In fact, the stricter and more numerous the taboos are the greater the urge for violence. Bataille quotes Marquis de Sade as saying “The best way of enlarging and multiplying one’s desires is to try and limit them” (48). And so the higher one goes up our pyramid the more numerous spectacular is the possible transgression. “Eroticism,” Bataille writes, “is assenting to life up to the point of death”(11). Our pyramid has now revealed itself to be a volcano[3].

The fact that both the inside and the outside of our volcano imagery are constructed of the similar material can lead us to another radical conclusion. The divisions that separate us, that make us discontinuous, are illusory. Bataille makes the comparison to waves in the ocean. “A man can suffer at the thought of not existing in the world like a wave lost among many other waves” and later “Erotic activity, by dissolving the separate beings that participate in it, reveals their fundamental continuity, like the waves of a stormy sea”(15, 22). We can draw from this analogy that our discontinuous being is in fact an illusion, as we are all part of the same ocean. Taken quite literally this concept would coincide with Katherine Hayles idea of post-human, since the wave is a pattern of energy not substance, as the Office of Naval Research succinctly puts it “In deep water, a wave is a forward motion of energy, not water. In fact, the water does not even move forward with a wave” (Hayles  36-43; “Ocean in Motion”). That which makes beings discontinuous is not a difference in materials but in pattern. As Bataille writes “death does not affect the continuity of existence, since in existence itself all separate existences originate; continuity of existence is independent of death and is even proved by death” (21).

Barthes’ Studium and Punctum

Let us now move on to Roland Barthes’ musings on the nature of photography. He defines two main criteria for considering photographs, the studium and the punctum. The studium represents the reasoned response to a photograph. It can be seen in the cultural, political, and/or moral framework of the picture. It is that which ties the photograph to a specific time and place. The punctum is first described as a detail that has “punctured” the studium. As Barthes writes, “it is this element [the punctum] which rises from the scene, shoots out of it like an arrow, and pierces me” and later, “this wound, this prick, this mark made by a pointed instrument” (26-27). Further on in the book punctum is redefined as time’s inevitable effect upon the photograph. This effect, no matter when the photograph has been taken, is the death of the subject. As Barthes writes “that is dead and that is going to die” (96).

Let us consider these terms as they relate to each other. The studium acts as a shell or a cover for the punctum. It is the diegetic element, the human-interest story, which sutures the viewer to its world of signs and significations (Silverman). It is a series of bells and whistles[4] that distract the viewer from the true message of the photograph. The punctum is a break in this veneer. It has the power to wash away all tacked on or prescribed meanings and leaves the viewer with one simple truth: that which is pictured did once occur. And, though this truth is simple, it carries with it the entire weight of death, past, present, or future (Barthes 99-100).

For Barthes this process is an exceedingly painful one. The fullness of the photograph, its many illusory “truths,” cannot compare to the one “truth” Barthes seeks, which is the living person (103). Looking for life Barthes only finds the stillness and silence of the photograph, which is that of death. As Barthes describes staring at a photograph of his dead mother on page 90:

I cannot transform my grief, I cannot let my gaze drift; no culture will help me utter this suffering which I experience entirely on the level of the image’s finitude… the Photograph—my Photograph—is without culture: when it is painful, nothing in it can transform grief into mourning… And if dialectic is that thought which masters the corruptible and converts the negation of death into the power to work then the photograph is undialectical… [It] excludes all purification, all catharsis.

In this sense the photograph is a corpse. Yet, it is an unholy one, one that never ages or decomposes. Its integrity stays intact, allowing for no progression of emotion, no flow of life into death. The subject is dead and yet they still carry with them all the distinctions of life.

In the decision between life and death in the photograph there exists madness. This contradiction occurs between the contrast of the photograph’s perfect preservation of the subject in life and its emptiness. The viewer is offered a choice, either to stay in the reasoned world of the studium or pass through the punctum into the world of madness. Barthes concludes his book by saying, “Such are the two ways of the Photograph. The choice is mine: to subject its spectacle to the civilized code of perfect illusions, or to confront in it the wakening of intractable reality” (119).

Photography as Eroticism

Having outlined the function of these ideas we can now apply them to each other. The studium, “the civilized code of perfect illusions,” can be compared to the walls of our graph, the taboos established by work and the state of discontinuity itself. Yet the studium is far more powerful a taboo than most, it exists at the very top of our graph where all the sides converge, for the photograph has no inner self, it exists solely as material. The taboo associated with it is the taboo upon insanity, upon disconnecting oneself to the material world. It is all the distractions, the details and the evidence of our discontinuity. It presents itself as empirical, irrefutable fact, a unified fact that implies the existence of a unified reality (Barthes 40-41). Through photography’s mechanical reproduction, discontinuity wills itself into being as unarguable reality. The discontinuity created by the photograph is not only one of material objects and beings but of time itself. The wave, the pattern of energy depicted by Bataille, is frozen and converted into a distinct object. Photography claims to prove that this object once was and is no longer.

But, as we have seen, where discontinuity asserts itself powerfully there exists an equally powerful potential for an explosion into continuity. And the explosive (or implosive) power of the photograph is comparable to a black hole, (continuing with our nature metaphors) whose infinitely dense and distinct make up tears a hole in reality as we know it. This is the punctum, the erotic act, the act of breaching the walls of the studium/discontinuity. The transgression offered by the photograph is to bring the dead to life again. If you can break through the studium you refute all those lifeless details (as they no longer as a pattern, interacting with others in time) of reality that make it up. Here is where insanity becomes an option, for this is a break from the material world.

Each photograph exists as a potentially sacred object. Like the corpse, its lack of motion implies the violence of death, but unlike the corpse it has all the appearances of life. It acts as a corpse that never rots, never deteriorates back into the violence of continuity[5]. It is similar to Bataille’s example of the sacred king’s corpse on the Fiji Islands. The difference in photography is that both the obedience to hierarchy, demanded by the king in life, and the fury of ritual violence, demanded socially after his death, are in play at the same time (66-67).  On the one hand, you have the obligation to pay heed to the evidence of reality before you, and on the other, the obligation to close your eyes, thereby reinvesting the dead subjects with life. By choosing the latter of these two options, Barthes transgresses a taboo so ingrained it is no longer considered, the taboo against necromancy. He brings the dead to continuity by infusing death into the purely discontinuous object.  He is proving the continuity of existence, as Bataille expressed it, through the acknowledgement of death (21).

Image From Rose Hobart

(fig 1)

Example of Detournment

(fig 2)

Work Cited

Barthes, Roland. Camera Lucida. Trans. Richard Howard. New York: Hill and Wang, 1981.

Bataille, Georges. Erotism: Death & Sensuality. Trans. Mary Dalwood. San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1986.

Ernst, Max. Une Semaine De Bonté. New York: Dover Publications, 1976. 49.

Hayles, Katherine. “Virtual Bodies and Flickering Signifiers.” How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999. 25-49.

Heidegger, Martin. “The Question Concerning Technology.” Basic Writings: from Being and Time (1927) to The Task of Thinking (1964). Ed. Krell, David Ferrell. New York: HarperCollins, 1993. 287-317.

Kline, Joshua. “Joshua Kline: The Amazing Intelligence of Crows.” Posted May 2008. Online video clip. Ted.com. July 2008. <http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/joshua_klein_on_the_intelligence_of_crows.html >

“Ocean in Motion: Waves – Characteristics.” Science and Technology Focus. Office of Naval Research. 4 Mar. 2009 <http://www.onr.navy.mil/Focus/ocean/motion/waves1.htm>

Rose Hobart. Dir. Joseph Cornell. Perf. Rose Hobart. 1936.

Silverman, Kaja. The Subject of Semiotics. New York: Oxford UP, 1984.

---

[1] This distinction is not universally valid since many animals have been shown to posses the ability to use tools, and complex thought. In fact, as we learn more and more about animals, we find that our mental capacities are not nearly as different as we once believed. This does not completely discount the legitimacy of the example, although it does have interesting implications (are crows more discontinuous than other animals as Joshua Kline might lead us to believe?)

[2] I am tempted to change women to people in general here for the sake of equality, yet that seems unfair to the detail Bataille pays to conceptions of female beauty. To truly tackle this issue one would have to investigate conceptions of male beauty in equal detail and determine if there is really a similar operation at work. For the purposes of this paper I will confine myself to Bataille’s example.

[3] And an extremely phallic one at that, not unlike the volcano in Joseph Cornell’s brilliant Rose Hobart, (fig. 1). As was hinted at before, Bataille can be criticized as having a phallocentric approach to eroticism and many of his comments about the nature of female sexuality are extremely inflammatory. Although the ejaculatory model of eroticism (instances of “little death”) is the main one throughout the book, he also allows for a more sustained female eroticism, in what might be called a wave model (water being traditionally linked with female sexuality, for better or worse, as shown in fig. 2). The wave analogy will be brought up later but its gender implications are never fully investigated within this paper.

[4] Perhaps the most horrifying aspect of the mechanical representation of reality is its ability to transform cultural, political and moral values into bells and whistles with complete accuracy.

[5] In the digitizing of photography this permanence becomes all the more applicable. The discontinuity of an image can be permanently frozen into an imprint of data, which is incapable of the warping and deterioration of chemicals and paper.

Welcome to Be My Teacher

This blog is a space where I will be uploading papers I have written for class. Please feel free to comment, grade or respond everything you read on the site. If you are interested in posting your papers here contact me and I can figure out how to do that.

-Benjamin Schultz-Figueroa