Into the Back Room: Modes of Storytelling in Porn

Porn is one of those genres that has a hard time dragging itself into the realm of art--partly because theorists keep creating arcane bullshit arguments for why pornography is definitionally incompatible with artistry. It seems like the majority of people interested in quality have just dismissed porn, leaving it to the normal Joe Bloe(job) (sorry) who doesn't care much about relative quality levels in porn, science fiction, blockbuster movies, food, or anything else for that matter. It's difficult to find a system of connoisseurs when it comes to porn, so there's no one to really draw the quality level upward.

But that's not the only problem. The other issue is the fact that people don't seem to really know what to do with porn artistically. I mean, where do you go with porn? The goal--erotic satisfaction--is so... well... simple. How do you artistically expand upon that while not complicating and subverting the goal?

Remember that article on modes of storytelling that depend upon a single scene or moment or image acting as a catalyst for the brain to generate a whole sequence of other ideas? I think this might be the best way of looking at and understanding the artistic side of porn. Ultimately the question I want to ask here is what can porn do, and what makes it count as art.

To do that, though, let's take a trip back into the more private booths in the depths of the pub. Oh, you didn't know these were here? Come, let's take a look.

Nomming Through The Gallery: Food and Art

I thought, in celebration of the traditional holiday bloat and inevitable self-recrimation that sets in around New Year's Eve 1, we should take time out to honor the noble Culinary Arts. Now, these are, like a lot of the art I talk about here, not what one would call high art. Not in the popular imagination, anyway. Oh, sure, everyone knows about the gold plated ice creams and the Larks Tongues in Aspic or whathave you.2 But those aren't what one would necessarily consider artistic, they're just really fucking expensive (which, in fairness, seems to be what passes for artistic value in our culture--but I digress).

And yet, people love good food. And they know good food, too, if they've grown up eating a variety of food that doesn't come in a little red box with a big yellow grin. Which is kinda weird, since art and food both ultimately appeal to the senses. Surely there can't be that big a division between taste and sight when it comes to determining art--and determining what we like. So, what qualities do art and food share? And what does one tell us about the other?

Food (And Art) Should Make Our Senses Happy

Food has a whole variety of tastes, and everyone has preferences. And, of course, some people are genetically wired to taste foods in different ways--hence why some people love broccoli and others hate it. And yet, most people know good flavor from bad flavor. And there's a whole taste of deliciousness that appeals quite strongly to our senses and fills us with pleasure. Check out Proust Was A Neuroscientist for the scoop on that one, by the way.

What's interesting, though, is that while we can distinguish good tastes from bad tastes, we don't need everything to be sugar coated. Sour and spicy things are pleasurable to eat too, even if they're also painful. So, saying that there are good and bad ways to mix flavor and texture and so on doesn't presuppose that there is only one ur-flavor we're going for, or that we can only have our senses appealed to in one way.

If we apply this to art, we find much the same thing is true. Art appeals to our sense of sight, hearing, or touch the way food appeals to our tongues and our noses. But, again, just because we can tell good flavor from bad flavor doesn't mean we need our art sugar coated: being aesthetically successful and beautiful does not mean that a subject cannot be bitter or sour or spicy. And, of course, we can recognize that something is put together well even if it's not really a flavor we enjoy. So, there isn't really a contradiction between good taste and personal taste.

Food (And Art) is a Way to Come Together

This calls back a bit to the Christmas article from the other day. Sharing food is a great way of expressing all sorts of things to others. There's a reason we talk about breaking bread, and there's a reason why meals show up so much in myths. The Last Supper, anyone? Sharing food and an experience of food is, I would argue, quite an empathic thing. This is why I try to eat food from outside my own nebulously defined culture. I'm not sure how much you can understand on a conscious level about another culture from their food, but on a level of simple bonding food is incredible.

The same goes for art. FILM CRIT HULK recently did an essay on why seeing movies in movie theaters is not just a good but an incredibly important thing. Having just gone out to the movies for the first time in quite a while, yeah, I have to agree with his analysis: there's something powerful about experiencing movies with other humans. The same goes for art galleries, to a lesser extent. It's cool to go out and see the art with another person, because you get to experience the tastes at the same time and compare notes. It's a way of coming closer to each other and, if you have the background for it, maybe you can come to understand the cook a bit better, too.

Which leads logically to:

Food (And Art) is a Means of Creative Expression

I come from a house where recipes are less a set of rules and more a set of vaguely defined guidelines. This is because once you really know the rules you can start to mess with them to fit your own taste. This is the reason why the cooking channel remains popular: people recognize and enjoy the fact that cooks are coming up with their own interesting blends and doing creative things with their dishes. Even though there's still a focus on quality, people appreciate a creative chef.

This is, again, how it is with art. We like to see something new and interesting, or a creative way of putting dishes together. There's always going to be more innovations, and while there are still things you can do to make a well flavored painting or sculpture, there's room for bending and breaking the rules in order to get a cool effect. So, art is about an individual or a group expressing themselves through creative problem solving.

My sister gets this:

My sister is pancakthulhu.

Anyway, what I think we can take from this is that art and food can learn from each other. Art discovers, via food, that there are certain things that do in fact work, but there's still lots of room for creativity, self expression, and unified experience within that. And, of course, Food discovers, via Art, that, well, it IS art! Food may be a lot more ephemeral than a painting or a sculpture, but it's often trying to do a lot of the same stuff. There are limits to what it can do as a medium, but hell, any medium has that. You can't paint a mural with felt tip pens, after all. Well, not efficiently, anyway. So, while we're elevating games and comics and music videos to the status of art, let's bring some food with us, huh? It's going to be a long, steep climb and I'm going to want snacks. You don't want to see me when I have low blood sugar.

Or you could just find out the connection between art and food the direct way--via the devouring of paintings:

 Ah, watteau, dear!

As always, feel free to leave comments, complaints, or, best of all, your own interpretations, or e-mail me at keeperofmanynames@gmail.com . And, if you like what you've read here, share it on Facebook, Google+, Twitter, Xanga, Netscape, or whatever else you crazy kids are using to surf the blogoblag these days.

1 And in honor of the fact that I need to go find some pictures for my next, far more [ahem] stimulating article

2 Sometimes they even know both part 1 and part 2, but usually only if they listen to college radio, or have relatives with a turn table. "That's a terrible joke!" "BUT IT'S MY ONLY LINE!"

How Sam Keeper Stole The Christ Out Of Christmas

I've been trying to figure out just what Christmas means.

"Oh Christ," you're mumbling now, possibly without irony. "Here he goes again. Not only is this a horrible Christmas cliche, it's going to be another article where Sam takes something totally bloody simple and turns it into something complex."

Take another swig of eggnog and relax. I know what I'm saying seems pretty silly. Christmas, of course, is about the birth of the child who would go on to become known as the King of the Jews. That, and Santa, and presents, and rampant consumerism. But I'm not much of one for consumerism, and, more egregiously, I have some serious doubts about a lot of the elements of the Christmas story, what with virgin births and angels and so on and so forth. (Besides, I've already covered why you might not want an angel showing up out of the black sky on a cold winter evening... those shepherds must've been scared out of their minds.)

And yet I celebrate Christmas.

How do I justify this contradiction?

Well, the easy way would be through force of habit. I celebrate Christmas because everyone else in my family does. That's a rather weak answer, though, and one that I'm just not satisfied with. If this was force of habit alone (and a love of getting presents) why do I spend so much time considering what I want to get or make for each person? And why do the trappings of Christmas--the lights, the songs, and so on--fill me with such joy? (Well, when they're actually occurring right before Christmas. In Novemeber they just sort of fill me with irritation.)

Late last night, when I should have been sleeping but instead was fiddling around with an art project present, it occurred to me that perhaps the way to go about this is to view Christmas the same way I viewed Halloween: through its emotions and stories. So what do the Christmas stories we tell to each other tell us about ourselves? What is the spirit of Christmas?

Personally, I think it's empathy.

Isn't the gift giving and the caroling and so on all about how we relate to others, after all, and how we try to bring happiness into their life? That's the driving idea behind the old maxim that it's the thought that counts: what matters is that we attempt to feel empathy toward our fellow humans.

I think this is largely borne out by the stories that have made their way down to us through various media. We don't here a lot, for example, about Herod anymore. I think that's largely because his side of the story is more about politics and jealousy than it is about empathy and togetherness. Now, the idea of a savior born in a manger, "no crib for a bed," surrounded by shepherds and wise kings called alike to come together to mark the occasion. It's a stunningly beautiful story, when you really ponder it over. And it's the same kind of motif that Dickens was working with in A Christmas Carol. Ultimately the stories that seem to have really left an impact on our culture and inspired the most responsive art are the ones that emphasize an empathetic shared experience of joy and peace. Hell, there's a reason why people periodically repeat the story about the soldiers on the front lines of the First World War ceasing their hostilities and celebrating Christmas together.

We can perhaps see this even more fully in contrast to other holidays. Here's the allure, I think, of A Nightmare Before Christmas. Halloween is, after all, a profoundly individual holiday. It's about personal experiences of terror and personal expressions of strangeness and outsiderhood. So Tim Burton's tale is, on one level, about how spooky things and holiday things don't necessarily mesh well, but on another level it's about the disconnect between one whole mode of experience and another. Easter, as well, has another sort of tone to it--one of wonder and awe at the rebirth of the world after Winter and the rebirth of the Son after Death. It's no strange thing to see the similarity between the season and the stories we tell.

So, where does this leave Christmas for heathens like me?

Well, like I've discussed before in my Gaga articles, I think there's an incredible value in refreshing and retelling stories even if we don't take them as literal truth. And the Christmas story is a truly beautiful one. I don't think there's any danger of the Christ being taken out of Christmas, as the usual scaremongering right wingers have no doubt declared this year, right on schedule. No, the stories we tell on this season are too deeply encoded in the holiday and its emotional power.

If anything, they should be worried about modern consumer culture's tendency to suck the empathy out of the holiday. That's a far more sinister attack than the works of any atheist, because it attacks not the surface level of the story but the deep roots that give the story strength. Scary stuff, man.

I'll leave on one final anecdote. The other night I watched The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo with a couple old high school friends. Now, there's some pretty brutal stuff in that film, to the point where I would hesitate, for all its brilliance, to recommend it to most people. It's the kind of thing that I wouldn't really be able to get through normally. But a certain sleepless film student was sitting there with me, literally holding my hand. Just that human presence and shared feeling was enough. So, on one level, the experience really had buggerall to do with Christmas.

But on another level, the kind of empathetic response we shared is more a part of the season than all the other trappings of Christmas combined. And if we can get back to that core, I think we can reconcile the Christian and the Secular traditions of the holiday, and drink our eggnog in unison.

Merry Christmas, everyone. And have a wonderful holiday.

Modes of Storytelling

Modes of Storytelling

When we think of storytelling we tend to focus on a certain set of standard models. Generally speaking, a story has a beginning, a middle and an end, with a number of changes or beats throughout that propel the plot forward. There's the possibility, of course, that these sections are arranged out of order, but generally speaking there's still a beginning middle and end, and there's still a set of beats that--even if they aren't chronological--move the reader to some sort of understanding.

And then we have something like this:

"Classified: Baby Goods. For sale, baby shoes, never worn."

An alternate version tossed around is:

"For sale. Baby shoes. Never worn."

According to legend, Hemingway turned this sucker out on a bet that he couldn't create a story with a beginning, middle, and end in less than ten words. In a way, he seems to have succeeded.

But on further analysis he really hasn't.

Not strictly, at least.

See, the interesting thing about this passage is that it actually does not contain a beginning a middle and an end within the text itself. The story is there, but it is generated due to the reader's interactions with the text--not in the text itself. It is making us--the audience--do the extra work.

This might seem like a dumb, finnicky thing to say, and to some extent it is, but it's worth considering due to the possibilities it opens up. Namely, the idea that you can encapsulate the suggestion of an entire story of hope, tragedy, and loss within a single moment. This means that a single scene, a single message, a single image can contain within itself the catalytic power that prompts the reader to generate the rest of the story. Let's look at a few new storytelling modes that this opens up, shall we?

Implied Narrative

I've actually already explored one mode of this sort of implied storytelling in my article on mechanical horror. Remember our friend Cloistered Youth? I would argue that the storytelling there is very similar to what Hemingway is using in the tale above. The card really just represents two separate states of being. The story comes from the fact that you are the one in charge of the transformation, and that the transformation takes place within the context of a wizarding duel in which you apparently are capable of making some pretty foul bargains. The story is ultimately a product of the player reading the mechanics as indicative of a wider story, just as the Hemingway take depends upon the reader interpreting a classified ad as indicative of a narrative.

There are a few other good examples of this in recent Magic: The Gathering sets. Again, I've tried to pick out stuff that is easily grokkable by a general audience. Check out, for example, this interesting piece:



This card is pretty straightforward. You give a temporary boost to one of your creatures so that it's better in combat. But the flavor of the card is particularly interesting from a narrative perspective because of the implications it sets up. Look at the bravado of that flavor text! Look at those glowing weapons! Look at that stat bonus!

...Now look at the seemingly endless crowd of zombies the guy in the art is jumping into.

And then look again at that last bit of text: "till end of turn."

Yep, this heroism is just a momentary thing. Eventually this faith that our hero prizes so highly is going to start to fade. And when that happens... well... tell me, do you think it's likely that he'll have taken down all of those zombies? Or even most of them?

Yes, what's interesting about this card is that it implies a beginning, middle, and end using only the middle section. The beginning and end are going to be a highly individual thing, but I suspect that the start is in the midst of a desperate last ditch attempt to stave off the forces of darkness, and the end... well, let's just say it won't be pretty.

Implied History

Drawing further away from Hemingway's model is this card:



It's also a card that moves away from my mechanical horror idea, because the mechanics of the card don't really matter all that much. In fact, the only thing that matters is that flavor text:

Underling Ethu's 263rd report read simply "Yes, my lord. Overwhelmingly, my lord." This marked the end of the Mirran-Phyrexian War.

Let me give you some backstory. This card comes from the third set of cards relating the story of the Mirran War mentioned above--a war between the natives of the strange metal plane of Mirrodin and the horrific colonizing and corrupting force of Phyrexia. The Phyrexians are beings that will restructure, reprocess, debase, corrode, and corrupt anything in the name of progress and improvement. They are the personified nightmare of technology in the hands of utter monsters.

And they won.

Not only did they win, they won without mercy, without quarter, without anything other than a simple mechanistic impetus to purify.

Now, this flavor text does not, on its own, say much of anything. But with this backstory of desperate survival it suddenly creates an evocative picture that an actual description could never create. It is a picture of a final desperate battle for survival on the planet's surface, a last ditch attempt to avoid extinction. And not only did the Mirrans fail, they failed overwhelmingly. I love, in particular, that this failure is relayed not with dramatic, tragic language, but with the simple, curt efficiency of these utterly inhuman victors. The horror and the tragedy of this loss blows me away, and part of the impact comes from the fact that the entire scene is created by my own mind. I'm not translating someone else's vision. It's all my own, prompted by the chemical catalyst of this text and what I already knew of the wider history and storyline.

This is actually a technique that I've seen used to great effect in short fanfiction. Consider this little piece by LessWrong, author of Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality:

UTILITARIAN TWILIGHT
(Note: Written after I heard Alicorn was writing a Twilight fanfic, but before I read Luminosity. It's obvious if you're one of us.)
"Edward," said Isabella tenderly. She reached up a hand and stroked his cold, sparkling cheek. "You don't have to protect me from anything. I've listed out all the upsides and all the downsides, assigned them consistent relative weights, and it's just really obvious that the benefits of becoming a vampire outweigh the drawbacks."
"Bella," Edward said, and swallowed desperately. "Bella -"
"Immortality. Perfect health. Awakening psychic powers. Easy enough to survive on animal blood once you do it. Even the beauty, Edward, there are people who would give their lives to be pretty, and don't you dare call them shallow until you've tried being ugly. Do you think I'm scared of the word 'vampire'? I'm tired of your arbitrary deontological constraints, Edward. The whole human species ought to be in on your fun, and people are dying by the thousands even as you hesitate."
The gun in his lover's hand was cold against his forehead. It wouldn't kill him, but it would disable him for long enough -

Ahyup. We can, from there, imagine a whole potential range of conflict and adventure, all generated from this text colliding with the original idea.

Implied Character and Emotion

But what if we don't want a full narrative arc? I mean, that last category certainly seems to be drawing rapidly away from the idea of a narrative anyway. Do we need it at all?

Strictly speaking, I guess we do if we want to tell a story, but it can be just as valuable, I think, to express a powerful emotion or a sense of a characterization within a single moment. And it can certainly be just as difficult, because it still requires taking a basically two dimensional work and plugging it into a reader's mind to create a three dimensional impression.

This card does that well:



Look at that flavor text. Just... really, try to read that without grinning just a little bit. The sense of self-awe is palpable. You can practically hear the realization dawning upon Oglor that he is a being of immense power... but that this power is actually totally secondary to that of his Frankensteinian master. It's delicious.

So, from this small line of text, and the context given by the name and the setting, we can construct in our minds a whole characterization for Oglor. It's not a strict beginning-middle-end story, but it's still a whole scene and predictable set of characteristics drawn from our own interactions with people and our familiarity with the Igor archetype in scifi-horror.

This category is actually exemplified best, I think, in poetry and image-based art. I think my favorite example of this kind of storytelling through a single moment is Alfons Mucha's Star and Siberia:



This is just stunning. Absolutely stunning. I started attempting to describe everything that makes this painting brilliant, and I just could not come up with a description that didn't sound like utter bullshit. I think the painting speaks for itself anyway. This is why I find this storytelling technique so effective--it forces the viewer to put the pieces together, and fill in the blanks in their own mind. The future and the past are simply products of our projection, triggered by the fleeting moment and what it signifies. It is an art, ultimately, of the suggestion--a kind of sleight of hand which convinces the audience to see what it wants to see.

And in the depths of our mind, our desire for narrative creates a sensation of an art that surpasses direct truth and enters into the sublime.

I'll be doing a followup article on this sometime next week. Remember my Shunga paper? It might have something to do with that. As always, feel free to leave comments, complaints, or, best of all, your own interpretations, or e-mail me at keeperofmanynames@gmail.com . And, if you like what you've read here, share it on Facebook, Google+, Twitter, Xanga, Netscape, or whatever else you crazy kids are using to surf the blogoblag these days.

Some Fascinating Highlights from Golden Dusk

The cover of the new Twilight spinoff novel

Selling the rights to Twilight was the single best thing that Stephanie Meyer could have done with her text. Then Quartz Publishing took their best possible option and hired a Byzantine historian that is apparently on more drugs than Grant Morrison to write a distant prequel to the series.


I know these were The Best Things because of a Best Thing I did recently. Ladies and Gentlemen, don't ask me how I did it, but I got an advance review copy, I got permission to finally spoil the cover image that everyone's been waiting to see, and I got a chance to pick over the subtext of the tale before anyone else.


And why, besides the fame and glory heaped upon me from on high, is this The Best Thing? Well, simply put, Golden Dusk is an incredibly fascinating and compelling book.

It is a work that many fans of the original series will probably hate, because it is a deep level deconstruction of what makes the original books tick, and an exploration of the implications of a world where vampires are glowing, luminous beings of temptation, werewolves are obsessives hiding in plain sight, and large institutions seem to have been utterly subverted by dark, ageless forces. It is everything the original books could have been but weren't. And instead of waiting till the last book to really expose its readers to the fucked up side of its author's psyche, these jump right in with author Randolph Georgi Jaf's translation of a certain medieval manuscript that I've mentioned on here before.1 So, its basically unromantic deconstructive nature is probably going to alienate a lot of fans, and its association with the original Twilight series and its cracked out concepts will probably inspire a lot of potential fans to steer clear.

Here's why you should check it out anyway:

Exhibit A: The Byzantine Vampire

Jaf takes the mythos in a fairly straightforward (if revolutionary) direction: the vampires are parasites cloaking themselves in the garb of Angels and Gods. There's something wonderfully perverse about this reversal of expectations, and the main antagonist/love interest (he is never named so I'm going to refer to him as The Byzantine Vampire in this article) seems to be a fascinatingly schizophrenic being, at once in love with his beauty and filled with hatred for the curse which forever separates him from humanity. This is, perhaps, one of the problems with the book--his "curse" hardly seems like much of a curse, after all. Too beautiful? Oh honey please. But his effect upon the plot is ultimately that of beautiful psychosis. The novel is explicitly designed to say, essentially, that we as readers are unable to escape the allure of such a being, but that this reaction is ultimately ruinous, and we are fools for believing anything good can come of it. So, first of all, come for the fascinating expansion of Meyer's core vampire concept.

Exhibit B: The Bella Stand In

...is a mess as a human being. She is tormented by her curse in a much more credible way than The Byzantine Vampire is, due to her religious convictions. She is obsessed with reclaiming her virtue and confuses her obsession with TBV with passionate love.2 Even within that, she is aware on some level that what she ultimately seeks is revenge, and there are a number of beautiful moments when she quite literally sharpens her blades while monologuing about undying love. I think she is still ultimately a very strong character in that she is willing to go to any lengths to reclaim her virtue--through either love or revenge. So, come for the deconstructive version of Bella that actually, you know, has a character.

And speaking of characters:

Exhibit C: The Vibrant Side Characters

C.1: Bartholomae and Cassie, the 40 year old werewolf and his 15 year old imprinted charge, locked permanently in a sort of warped, chaste-but-barely, Mutually Assured Destruction style codependency. It's a wonderful take down of the Jacob/Renesemsesmeeee... thing.

C.2: The Sybil of Cumae, a shriveled being that, as far as I can see, serves no thematic purpose, but should make fans of The Waste Land (or The Satyricon) squee with delight. I mean, come on, she's a prophetess that continues aging--unlike the Vampires--but is also immortal and slowly going insane. Yikes.

C.3: The Head of John the Baptist shows up at one point. I'm not even kidding. I won't spoil what's going on with him, but I will say that he isn't as quiet as you might expect from a decapitated head...





Everything here is either a logical extension and deconstruction of the original works, or a radical redefinition of traditional mythic figures on par with the radical redefinition of Vampires and Werewolves in the original series. In essence, everything that was bad about the originals has been horrifically deconstructed and everything that was compelling has been extended not simply by expanding the mythos of the originals but by utilizing the same strategy of totally screwing with the canon.




So, as far as I can see, that will mean that the books will be roundly hated by monster purists everywhere, and by Twilight purists everywhere, and ignored by pretty much everyone else but us dirty scholar types. Yuck. Scholarship.



But this ultimately really is a book that's worth checking out. Yes, its plotting is, at times, rather uneven. Yes, its language is dense on a level more akin to Borges or Lovecraft at his worse than to Meyer. And yes, sometimes Jaf goes chasing after totally bizarre ideas that have little or no bearing on the main plot. But for all that, it's a fascinating example of how a world can be expanded and reimagined by another author, and how the sharing of properties, even within the confines of what is ultimately a business deal, can and does produce fascinating art. It would be wonderful if more authors took Meyer's example to heart and opened their playgrounds up for others. I have to commend her for doing so; it really seems that she learned from the whole Midnight Sun kerfuffle that ultimately other people want to get involved in the world, and the writing and expansion of the world, and that's not something we should try to stifle.

Anyway, I'll get down off of my high horse, and you go preorder a copy in time for Christmas. Trust me, it's worth it.

Yes, I spent an hour and a half photoshopping a cover for a fake Twilight spinoff novel. Screw you, I'm awesome. As always, feel free to leave comments, complaints, or, best of all, your own interpretations, or e-mail me at keeperofmanynames@gmail.com . And, if you like what you've read here, share it on Facebook, Google+, Twitter, Xanga, Netscape, or whatever else you crazy kids are using to surf the blogoblag these days.

1 And can I just say--I'm thrilled that I predicted the hell out of that little development! And thrilled that Jaf has, apparently, done his homework on this one. It's definitely raised Jaf to, for me, on par with someone like Eco, Clarke, or Kostova

2 Ever heard a devout ex-virgin rationalize with a variation of the line, "If I marry him, it's ok?" Take that up to 11 and you have our main character.

I Can Has Filtered Reality?

In this post I shall explore the shift over time from consumption of visual media as escapism to the active participation in digital visual media creating a mass “filtered” reality.

Anyone who has even taken a film class, read a book about film history, or expressed even the most remote interest in film has heard it said that motion pictures were uber-popular during the depression because they offered audiences an “escape from reality.” Considering the exponential growth of visual media over the decades since, its pretty safe to say that escaping from reality is still a valued pastime. But what exactly does it mean to escape from reality anyway? Any sci-fi nerd will tell you with a sigh of longing that as of now our science has yet to build any kind of bridge, gateway, wormhole, or thread that allows us to travel between parallel universes. So what exactly are we doing when we “escape” and what does it mean that we’ve decided to label the act in this way?

Before I continue I’m sure you’ve figured out by now that this ain’t Keeper, but I’ve chosen to mimic his style here because, well, it seems to work. To give you one, vague bit of information about me that hopefully will at least validate my opinions re: escapism to y’all, I’m a cinephile. (It’s okay, I’m in a support group. It’s called film school.) I grew up escaping from reality. In fact, I was raised on the same stuff that folks during the depression were watching.

 If you don’t know who Errol Flynn is, watch this clip or GTFO.

There are numerous reasons that people at the turn of the century might want to step outside their lives for a moment and enter a world of swashbuckling heroes – not the least of which being bread lines  (‘sup 99%!) – but to speak of indulging in cinema as escaping from reality implies dissatisfaction with reality. Even if you were reasonably okay with your life, suddenly an entire industry sprang up around the idea that you weren’t – and today Hollywood thrives on malcontent. Love the place to death, but, well, in LA if you get LivingSocial deals in your inbox they’re all, “Half off 40 units of Botox!” “Brazilian Wax for $15!”

City of.

 Back in the early 20^th century, Hollywood beckoned the disaffected masses out of their homes to their local nickelodeon or movie house or picture palace, to sit in a dark room full of other thrill-seekers for anywhere from a 40 minute program to one that lasted several hours. They consisted of selected short pieces – cartoons, newsreels, musical presentations, and one, perhaps even two, feature films. You could stay for the entire program, or just the short you wanted to watch, but let’s be real here you just paid anywhere from a nickel to a dollar for this escape – you want to get your money’s worth. So you sit in the dark and gossip with the people sitting near you, sing-along with the musical short, and throw popcorn at the kids running through the aisles.

Was film the immersive turn-off-your-cellphones-put-on-your-3D-glasses-lean-back-to-see-the-IMAX-picture experience we know today? Hell-to-the-no. Might seem counterintuitive, but it didn’t need to be. The world of the movie theater was something completely separated from the outside. The dark space was safe for dreaming and socializing with people you might not otherwise meet. It resided outside of your reality.

So way-back-when we have going to the theater as a mini-vacation. And on that vacation you might catch something like this cinematic gem:

Yes, we’ve loved us some lolcats since 1903. Here’s one everyone’s probably familiar with:

Clearly its much easier to find teh kittehs today. Flip open your laptop. Thumb the YouTube application icon on your smart phone. Bam. I can has cuddlez.

Assuming for a second that its part of human nature to seek out adorableness that consumes mini-chunks of time – its pretty clear that changes in the technology that provide access to it have altered the nature of escapism. Though we may be viewing the same kittens, the experience today is no longer social, and requires little effort on our part. Not to mention the primary change – they’re everywhere – in videos, ads, memes, etc.

So what does this mean about the way we view our reality? Since I’m on a roll with the felines here, consider for a second the kitteh that Keeper used in his self-referential entry about how he writes his articles:

This meme [blank] cat is [blank] has many variations, as memes will, and as far as I can tell began with the infamous longcat.

'Nuff said.

(I may be wrong in this and feel free to correct me. My meme research is occasionally hindered by a pledge I made to never, ever visit 4chan directly.)

So beginning with an image of a frankly, big but not too extraordinary cat held up to display its length, we get a meme that consists of laying a statement of the obvious over an image of a cat.

You don’t fuck with dramatic cat.

But if you’re anything like me, when you troll the interwebs, you occasionally find yourself staring at pictures like this and thinking, “so what?” The statement is phrased in such a way as to imply that the creator of the image is stating the obvious. Yes, this cat is, indeed, this. However the phrases are derived from an interpretation of image that can only sometimes be verified by the image itself. Is long cat long? Sure he is. Is dramatic cat dramatic? He’s probably just a cat sitting in some dramatic looking light. But repetition of the interpretation in text presents a single view of the image as real and obvious. It presents that interpretation as reality.

Reading too much into a cat meme? Probably. But its worth looking at as a function of the media schizophrenic world we live in. We’re bombarded by flashy imagery that markets everything to us from toothpaste to sex. Reality is just as difficult to pin down as methods to escape from it, so we resort to simple, familiar outlets such as internet memes to define and shape our version of reality. Want a more prosaic example? Log in to Facebook. (Don’t tell me you don’t have one – you might not want one, but you have one.) Made a status update lately? Tweeted anything?

Yep.

Facebook updates, tweets, Tumblr posts… all structures that allow others to affirm reality for us. We established earlier that we don’t bond with other human beings while escaping from reality anymore, so someone else “liking” your Facebook status is the modern equivalent. By publishing the story and receiving that validation its “real.” Congratulations.

Social networking and the proliferation of visual media that is easily accessible (particularly online), have resulted in an inability to completely escape from reality – its too prevalent, too much a part of the reality we want to escape from. Visual, and especially digital media, can however filter our experience of reality. It’s as if by putting our funny junk out there on the Internet, we’re sending it through a wormhole outside of reality, and then bringing it back in washed in the sweet detergent of Internet. It comes back better – less real – than when we sent it out. When we watch fuzzy cat videos, some cute chick’s video blog about caffeine (embedded below – you’re welcome), or even reality shows like Jersey Shore, Cake Boss, etc. we’re not escaping from reality, we’re grasping at a safer version of it.

Escapism is alive and well. Cineplexes still provide us with a form of it. We sit in the dark and dream together, without speaking to one another, focused entirely on the single story presented to us. But with the expansion of visual media outside the theater, we’re gained the ability to filter our reality through it, as if we are in a state of constant, incomplete “escape.” Whether or not it is detrimental to human existence to wander around with a haze of lolcat in front of our eyes is a matter of opinion. I mean damn, they are cute aren’t they?

Now caffeine. Caffeine we can all agree is evil.

Thanks to Leslie for this guest article. I love how dense and crazy it is. I suspect, based upon what little I know of its genesis, that even deeper secrets will emerge if you read it while inebriated. As always, feel free to leave comments, complaints, or, best of all, your own interpretations, or e-mail me at keeperofmanynames@gmail.com . And, if you like what you've read here, share it on Facebook, Google+, Twitter, Xanga, Netscape, or whatever else you crazy kids are using to surf the blogoblag these days.

Newness and the Fantastic Credibility Barrier

It's hard to drag science fiction and fantasy into the realms of literary criticism. Hell, even a, shall we say, softer style of sci fi like The Dark Knight is difficult to discuss in an academic setting. And, certainly, some of this comes from the general academic disdain, the snide "Isn't this for kids?" comments when you get comics out of the school library, and so on. That's definitely an issue. But there's also a deeper individual mental block that I've certainly run up against periodically.

The problem is simply that when one tries to talk about fantasy and scifi stories one tends to kind of end up sounding like a bit of an idiot.

Recently, for example, I was pondering over an essay that I'll be composing soon for my class on John Milton and Paradise Lost. The idea is that we should take a modern work and dig into how the story reflects ideas in Paradise Lost. I'm still working on what exactly to focus on--Sandman, perhaps, or His Dark Materials 1. But another possibility ran through my mind: Neon Genesis Evangelion. 2 Now, for those of you not familiar with the show, it is a deconstruction of the Giant Fighting Robot genre of Anime. The main character is the emotionally crippled, ineffectual Shinji Ikari, who is forced to pilot by his sociopathic monster father, aided by two other pilots: an emotionally stunted submissive and a psychotic, abusive attention seeker. The robots they pilot are giant barely-restrained biomechanical horrors that have a habit of going berserk and eating their equally horrific Angel opponents.

Where does the Milton aspect come in? Well, I'm still tossing this idea around, but it might be possible to draw parallels between the characters in Eva and the particular ways in which Satan, Adam, and Eve all fall from grace in Paradise Lost. The thing is, each of them manages to find all sorts of justifications for turning away from God and Paradise in the story, and, once they are on the path down, reasons to keep digging themselves in deeper. Ditto for the characters in Eva. Ultimately they keep finding ways to dig themselves in deeper, refusing to ask for forgiveness, refusing to find a way to relate. It is this particular capacity to find a rationalization for simply giving up and embracing suffering and death that fascinates me, and I think the lasting resonance of the two works can probably be pinned at least partly on this deeply troubling exploration of the allure of self-destruction.

The problem is, it's rather difficult to discuss these issues without getting into the fact that the main characters are, ultimately, piloting giant robots against abstract geometric solids in an effort to stop the end of the world.

This gets worse and worse as the series goes on, actually, to the point in End of Evangelion (the movie that wraps up the original tv series) you get such a mass of weirdness and surreal, Freudian imagery that it becomes impossible to explain it without sounding like a gibbering lunatic.

I mean, really, how does one go about academically describing a scene where Giant Rei Ayanami grows what appears to be a labia with eyeballs, and absorbs the giant robot that has become the Tree of Life (or something) into her skull, allowing her to turn every human into a giant ocean of Tang? I'm not making this up. This happens.

Pictured: Rei Ayanami's giant decapitated head sitting over a sea of what appears to be Tang. Anyone else remember Tang? No?

Listen, I've watched Eva four... five times, and I still have no idea what some of that stuff even means, let alone how to casually work it into a paper while still retaining even a shred of my credibility.

The weird thing about this is that I suspect much of it is self-inflicted. After all, there are certain things that get a free pass in our critical discourse. Avant garde film, for example, might as well just stride around with a big sticker reading: "Haters Gon' Hate." You know it's true. I know it's true. And The Mighty Boosh knows that it's true:

But maybe you don't like complete incomprehensibility. Perhaps you want a narrative you can understand! Well, then, the best you're going to get is probably something like Brave New World, which is just close enough to home, and just canonized enough, that it's ok for you to talk about Orgy Porgy without feeling like too much of a dumbass (although I bet that feeling will flicker across your heart at least once).

Like I said, though: this is a self inflicted prohibition. I suspect quite strongly that the main reason you don't hear about deep literary analysis of Evangelion, or The Dark Knight, or Fullmetal Alchemist, or whatever else you might choose to write an essay about is not because these topics are all being selectively censored. No, I suspect that there's a much more prevalent self censorship amongst people that probably have the ability to elevate some of this material, if they wanted to. And it's ridiculous, ultimately, because we already write about such ridiculous and inane things! Check out these juxtapositions of pop culture material with more traditionally accepted high art:

"The children chant around the pig's head in a horrific scene of primal brutality."

"The Joker constantly seeks to push his foes into a primitive state of murderous rage, muttering and chanting to himself a masochistic mantra of 'Hit me, hit me!'"

"Adam asserts repeatedly that, because Eve was grown from his rib, the two first humans share a fate."

"The ghost, however, never speaks to the other characters in the play."

"Lord Humongous gives the holdouts an ultimatum: deliver the gas, or be utterly destroyed. 3

"Big Brother, although not a character himself, becomes an ultimate symbol of the choice presented by INGSOC: support the party, or be utterly destroyed, mentally as well as physically.

"Grendel flees into the darkness, and the warriors nail his dismembered arm to the front door."

"He is fundamentally incapable of connecting with other beings. Shinji has completely detached from reality, and he thus makes a perfect conduit through which Lilith can reabsorb her progeny, combining all consciousness into one."

"Although Orgy Porgy seems to allow most of the side characters to experience a sort of merged consciousness,  Bernard is perpetually cut out of the experience, unable to connect with other beings.

"He kills the soldiers with the jawbone of an ass."

"He kills the assassin by forcing him to swallow a cyanide capsule, all while acting as though he is attempting to prevent this "suicide." 4

By the end there it starts to get a little difficult to distinguish between the most overblown cartoon and our supposed literary canon, doesn't it? See, we already talk about some pretty crazy stuff. I think the difference is that everyone is accustomed to the idea of a woman growing from a rib, while the idea of a girl destined to be absorbed into--and to become--the progenitor of all life is a new concept that seems odd when put into an essay. This, for me, is the first necessary step toward studying pop cultural stories in a literary context: we (or... maybe just I. This could be a problem only I have) must recognize that the only reason these things seem weird is because they're new, unlike Milton, Huxley, Shakespeare, Beowulf, or the Old Testament.

And the only way they can eventually become old, accepted literary works is if we start analyzing them in the first place.

As always, feel free to leave comments, complaints, or, best of all, your own interpretations, or e-mail me at keeperofmanynames@gmail.com . And, if you like what you've read here, share it on Facebook, Google+, Twitter, Xanga, Netscape, or whatever else you crazy kids are using to surf the blogoblag these days.

1 The reference to Milton is, after all, right in the damn title.

2 I can name at least two readers who are rolling their eyes right now...

3 I had to get him in there somehow. It's contractual.

4 Note that adding "Ha ha, so playful" after any of these as commentary makes them instantly hilarious.

Finding Feminist Characters

The major problem that I keep noticing with feminist critiques of art is that they tend to be framed around the idea of reforming all feminist critiques of art.

So, we're already off to a terrible start here.1

But the other problem that I've noticed is that there tends to be a decided lack of solid methodology. I mean, how does one go about finding works that do, in fact, get it right and depict women (and men) in a feminist way? Or, perhaps more importantly, how does one go about finding stages where the story goes wrong? I, admittedly, have this difficulty as well--it is only recently that, thinking about it, I began to construct a scheme for myself. It's very easy and tempting to just glance at a work and say, "wow, strong women! Nice! FEMINISM!" or "Wow, [name redacted] is just fawning all over her stalker vampire lover the whole book. SETS FEMINISM BACK A CENTURY!" This stuff tends to be pretty intuitive. But I'm not comfortable with that, because it's not really fair to creators to tell them, "well, trust me, if your work was feminist it would feel more feministyish." And besides, I hate not having a schematic way of analyzing things. It's just who I am.

My criteria break down like this:

1. Is the character someone I can admire or find compelling?

This works a bit better than you might think, because of the compelling rider. I don't necessarily have to like or even empathize with a villain, for example, to find them compelling. If a character fails this first test, that's a warning sign--especially when this is the main character.

Another phrasing for this question would be "Is the character three-dimensional, and is it a problem if they aren't?"

2. Is my feeling in line with the author's?

This gets into the murky area of authorial intent, something rather at odds with my love of the Death of the Author. This is more a useful tool for analyzing the gaps between an intended view and my actual perception.

3. Is the gap in the above due to stereotypical assumptions, or simply differences in things like personality and so on?

And, finally, and most importantly,

4. Can I justify my reading of the character, even in opposition to the actual intent of the author. Or, to put it more bluntly, can I work past the author's bad ideas to find a way of making the work still enjoyable to me?

This is kind of dense, sometimes weirdly phrased stuff, and I had to go back and figure out what the hell I meant by most of it just now (give me a break, I wrote the first half of this article like a month ago). So, let me try to break it down using three different characters. Introducing:

Eowyn! From The Lord of the Rings!

Hermione Granger! From Harry Potter!

And, last but certainly not least:

Lord Humongous! The Ayatollah of Rock and Ro--

Oh, no, wait, that's wrong...

Uh, let's go with:

I know it's cliche. I'm sorry. It just works too well.

CATEGORY I: WELL ROUNDEDNESS:

Right from the start we're seeing some interesting things here. Hermione and Eowyn are both characters that I greatly admire for very different reasons--Hermione for her intellectual prowess and levelheadedness in the face of the kind of crazy things that were going on by the end of the Harry Potter series, and Eowyn for facing down the fucking Witch King of Angmar. Listen, this dude was a being so powerful that he locked up Gandalf for a while.

Bella, on the other hand... aaeeeeahhhh.

What's interesting about Eowyn here is that she isn't the kind of female character we normally get in fantasy and science fiction. She isn't an irrepressible badass. She's a human being with definite flaws--obsessiveness, a a tendency to be a bit over dramatic. This is why I phrased the question the way I did: there is nothing compelling in a two dimensional female character, no matter how many bad guys they kill over the course of a film. What makes Eowyn compelling is how she comes to heroism through despair, and ultimately chooses to attack death head on rather than succumb to it. What makes Hermione compelling is how she comes to balance her tendency to obsess over the intellectual side of things with real heroism and a bond with other human beings.

What makes Bella Swan less compelling is her fundamental lack of a characterization beyond "in love with Edward" and "doesn't like math."2

CATEGORY II: HOW THIS LINES UP WITH THE AUTHOR'S INTENTIONS

This tells us less about the work and more about the author, but it's important for the overall critique of these characters in the next two questions. In Eowyn's case, I have seen absolutely nothing that implies to me that she is supposed to be anything less than a compelling, fully realized female character. To some extent, she exists so that Tolkien can pull his "I am no man" trick on the audience, but the fact that he spends so much damn time on her and Faramir at the end indicates to me that he was fundamentally committed to turning her into a true character.

Of course, there's another possibility here, one that I've seen hinted at (although not explicitly stated) in other Feminist critiques: that Eowyn exists so that Tolkien can, at the end, set her up to be married to Faramir and retire from combat to a comfortable home. This is, as far as I can see, the only way you can effectively claim that Eowyn is not a feminist character. And it doesn't work. See, part of having a well rounded character is, of course, having flaws. And I see her mooning over Aragorn as a flaw. But more importantly for the sake of this critique, I think Tolkien does, too.

Similarly, Rowling seems committed to portraying Hermione as a rounded character that has a number of flaws--her temper, her obsession with studying, her awkwardness in some social situations--but it wouldn't make sense to view these flaws as anti-feminist, because both Rowling and I agree that they aren't necessarily good qualities in ANYBODY.

Bella, on the other hand, represents everything that Smeyers loves and everything that I can't stand. Especially the bit about hating math. I mean, come on, Smeyers, how much pandering are you really willing to do here? 3

CATEGORY IV: WHERE DOES THE GAP COME FROM?

If I perceive a character differently from the author, I want to know why. Hermione is easy here--there doesn't seem to be one, besides me feeling like she should be the main character rather than that ass Harry. Hermione Forever! But, I can see the logic behind keeping Harry as the main character, so I'm happy writing that off as me being kinda silly, more than anything else.

Bella is similarly straightforward, albeit in a different way. The difference does, in fact, come from a total difference in opinion on the role of women in society. I think they shouldn't be subservient to gender stereotypes. Smeyers does. Here, I think the problem lies with her.

Now, notice what I'm doing here. I'm critiquing my critique by figuring out why my perceptions don't line up with the author's. This helps me to evaluate whether I'm correct in criticizing the character, or whether I need to repeat the MST3K Mantra:

"If you're wondering how he eats or breaths
And other science facts (la la la)
Repeat to yourself 'It's just a show,
I should really just relax...'"

Sound advice.

Especially with Eowyn. If I were to take the position of her critics for a moment, how would I answer the question of the gap in perception between me and Tolkien? Well, the first possible criticism is that she spends too much time mooning over Aragorn. Isn't that rather Bella of her? Well, this was answered by the second question--there isn't actually a gap here, because Tolkien doesn't approve of her gloomyness either. So, what's the second one? Well, the critique I've seen is that her sudden falling for Faramir at the end of the story undermines her strength as a character. Again, I don't think Tolkien sees it that way, so let's look at where the difference in perceptions comes from. I think what's going on here is that commentators are looking at her action in the abstract and reading it as representative of a message about, I don't know, women finding happiness in marriage, I suppose.

Tolkien, on the other hand, is giving Eowyn and Faramir their one chance at happiness--the only chance at happiness they have left.

See, it's not like Faramir is any happier at this point. He's just been almost burned alive by his father, and then functionally deposed by Aragorn. Eowyn has just witnessed the death of her father and killed a being that can destroy your will to live simply by standing next to you. What Tolkien has realized here is that Faramir and Eowyn are probably the only humans that can understand each other's trauma. Having them fall in love here isn't a cop-out, it's a story of two terribly scarred people finding solace in the person that can truly understand their pain. (Remember, Tolkien lived through two World Wars--he was surely aware of the results of war.)

In this case, I think the gap lies in the fact that the critics are looking for a message, whereas Tolkien is looking for a character arc. To avoid that would, for me, flatten Eowyn out into the kind of 2D badass gritty perfect female warrior of modern fantasy. Yes, she's vulnerable here. Yes, that means that she isn't as perfectly strong a character as we might, in some ways, want. But that's what makes her a deeply compelling character. 4

CATEGORY FINAL: CAN I MISREAD THE CHARACTER BACK TO LIFE?

Maybe you don't buy my reading of Eowyn, or my assertion that this is what Tolkien was going for. Alright. That's cool. But I'm willing to bet you can think of it the way I am. Even if you think it's a misreading, I bet you can misread Eowyn as a powerful, admirable, and compelling character.

And isn't that better than just writing her off entirely? Remember, Anything Can Be Salvaged, and if it can be salvaged... well, it probably should.

Hermione is already awesome. She doesn't need to be fixed.

Bella, on the other hand, is beyond my help. 5

THIS WAS A BAIT AND SWITCH

Alright, I admit it, really what I was most interested in here was explaining why I love Eowyn. What can I say? My whole family is basically in the Eowyn/Faramir fanclub. They are probably our collective favorite characters in The Lord of the Rings. (No, we were not happy about Faramir's movie appearance. At. All.) But I wanted to actually set up a way of looking at this character before I delved into why I think she's so great, because otherwise I'm just rambling rather than explaining my reasoning. And I think providing the counterexamples of Hermione and Bella helped to clarify just how my system works.

But ultimately I think the important thing is that we have systems--personal, if not universal--because otherwise we're just going off of how things feel intuitively, and there's not really an effective way of communicating that. There's value in those intuitions, of course, but ultimately what I'm interested in is a way of expressing the intuitions.

But what do you think? 6

As always, feel free to leave comments, complaints, or, best of all, your own interpretations, or e-mail me at keeperofmanynames@gmail.com . And, if you like what you've read here, share it on Facebook, Google+, Twitter, Xanga, Netscape, or whatever else you crazy kids are using to surf the blogoblag these days.


1. It's worth noting here, of course, that this could just be a quirk of perception. Still, I keep seeing discussions framed in this way... I'm honestly not sure why.

2. What makes Lord Humongous compelling is his utter conviction of his own ultimate power--he is a being obsessed with obedience and defiance, a man with delusions of imperial power.

3. I think the creators of Road Warrior are very aware of Humongous's nature. This is part of why his character design involves the mask covering a burned face--he is a large, brutal ruler that seeks to hide his flaws. He is both odious and compelling, and the creators are quite aware of that.

4. Again, I think I'm right on the same mental track as the creators of Humongous. No commentary needed here.

5. My only criticism of Road Warrior's treatment of Lord Humongous is that there isn't more Lord Humongous. We just need more!

6. LIIIITTLE PUUUPPY?

Composing the Ivory Tower

So, I'm sitting here, tired out of my mind, exhausted from my sister's birthday celebration and a number of other holiday-related things, staring bleakly at the articles I have half written and wondering whether I should attempt to revise one of those or come up with some new topic, wondering just what such a new topic would look like, and then it hit me... the perfect way to behave as though I'm generating legitimate content... the perfect artistic cop out:

I could write an article about how I write Storming the Ivory Tower articles!

Because the average blog reading crowd just loves process notes, right?

Sure! (I lied shamelessly to myself) Nothing could be better for my blog! I get a chance to write an easy article, I can put off the longer articles I'm working on till later, when I can devote real attention to them, and the general public can see inside the mind of a professional (I lied again) writer!

And then I actually thought for a bit about my writing process and sank into a pit of despair.

Observe these Steps For Success:

Step 1: Come Up With An Idea!

For example, when you're ranting to someone about how wrong they are, stop and think to yourself, "Wouldn't it be more productive if I did this in the form of an article on a blog written by ten unrelated people on the internet?" Respond to yourself, "Yes, yes it would be!" Do not question this response.

The actual creation of such rants--and the ideas behind them--ultimately comes from thinking critically and creatively about different subjects. This doesn't mean just waiting for inspiration--it means taking other people's work and picking it apart, usually, or taking separate ideas and seeing how they fit together. It's this kind of creativity-through-fiddling-with-things that prompted me to analyze whether or not the sparklyness of Twilight vampires was an inherent non-starter of a concept, or what it would take to make "Manos" The Hands of Fate into an unironically good movie. It's also what prompted me to smash together concepts like "Poetry and Comics!" or "T.S. Eliot and DJ Earworm!"

Step 2: Begin Putting The Idea Down Logically!

This means taking the totally tripped out concepts from Step 1 and figuring out a way to describe them so that others will understand them.

Part of this is the way in which you explain the concept: would it be best to use an essay? A poem? A fan fiction? An ARG? A comic? There are all sorts of possibilities, and one of the things I've tried to do here is explore ideas via many different media.

Another part is how you structure your argument. Usually I find that coming into an essay with the assumption that the reader is at least somewhat new to the topic goes over well. From there it really comes down to clearly laying out how one idea leads to the next logically, and using compelling examples of the argument. You can look over some of my past articles for examples of where I think that did work well ("Iconic Color", "Modern Music, Modernist Poetry") and where I think I really dropped the ball ("Strange Speakers, Strange Subjects").

The question I always ask myself is, ultimately, am I tying this paragraph back into what I want to say? Is this an important building block for my argument? Or, at the very least, is it funny enough that I should keep it in? (See: Abraxas the Horrible Armrest Rat)

Step 3: Get Distracted by TV Tropes!

"Just five more minutes," you'll say, "then I'll get back to writing. Ooh, I wonder where this link leads!"

Step 4: Write A Separate Article To Introduce The Topic More Fully!

Sometimes I realize partway through writing an article that the ideas I'm grappling with are too huge for just one article. "Ways of Reading Gaga" started out as one article. It's expanded into three written, with two more on the way. "The Lure of the Night" articles were originally going to be one article, and they to some extent precede another article about monstrosity and its importance for culture and academia that I have yet to even write. I have another article half-written that I realized required a whole other article about the nature of shortened storytelling before I could delve into the specific genre I wanted to discuss. And then there's the grim hardboiled detective story that actually doubles as an allegorical analysis of the collapse of First Amendment Rights in America... that one is a nightmare.

Repeat to yourself, "Eventually I'll get to the original article. If I just keep going, I'll reach it eventually." Alternately, meditate upon Zeno's Paradox and its metaphorical application to your life.

Step 5: Get Distracted by TV Tropes Again!

Tell yourself that it is "research." Cry into your whiskey at midnight, all alone.

Step 6: Put In Multimedia!

This is, after all, The Blagotubes. ("The readers will understand that I mean 'Internet,'" you'll say confidently as your eyes unfocus slightly. "I mean, everyone has the entire backlog of XKCD comics memorized by now, surely.") And people on The Blogoblag require constant stimulants! ...Stimulation! Yes! With that in mind, pepper your articles with links to other articles, to other videos, to your own articles, to the article you're currently writing! Anything goes! Just make sure the reader doesn't get bored!

Step 7: Decide To Write Something Else Instead!

Do this at 10:00 at night, if at all possible. "This other article needs to be saved," you'll say, shaking as a madman shakes a dead geranium, "I'll just write about something I know really well, and pepper it with self referential jokes and T.S. Eliot jokes! It will be MASSIVELY POPULAR!"

Pass out at 1 AM, broken and defeated.

Step 8: Repeat, Wonder Why You Aren't More Popular

Whine about it in the form of an article about the writing process. Disguise it with sleep deprived attempts at cleverness.

Collapse yourself and your computer into a void of self reference.

Discover that God's plan was secretly to generate a universe that would give rise to funny cat pictures.

Yo cat, I heard...

Step 9: AUTHOR SAVING THROW!

Sometimes an article just runs straight off the rails. That's the point where you drag things back at the end with a half-baked explanation of why everything in the article ties together.

Here, for example, I could argue that ultimately the most interesting ideas will tend to get away from you, and to some extent all you can do as a writer is to follow them and try to pin them down in coherent and--hopefully--entertaining ways.1 And that even following a seemingly uninteresting idea can lead you to totally bizarre places of self-reference and insanity.

But ultimately I think what it shows is that good articles don't come from genius talent so much as a willingness to think in weird ways, experiment, practice a lot, and pray desperately that your sleep deprivation hasn't totally sapped your ability to write.

Heaven help us all.

As always, feel free to leave comments, complaints, or, best of all, your own interpretations, or e-mail me at keeperofmanynames@gmail.com . And, if you like what you've read here, share it on Facebook, Google+, Twitter, Xanga, Netscape, or whatever else you crazy kids are using to surf the blogoblag these days.

1. My writer friend Addie adds: "Just make sure that when the idea drags you away, it's consensual." Always sound advice.

Send Me An Angel

When I was thirty years of age, I was living with the exiles on the Kebar River. On the fifth day of the fourth month, the sky opened up and I saw visions of God...

I'm home for Thanksgiving now, and absolutely on my last legs. It's been a hellish few days of tutoring and meetings and class and preparations for the break. I am, in short, exhausted. So, because I want to write about something fairly simple, and since I've had this topic requested, I'm going to devote tonight's article to Angels and what they are.

Turns out that they're cosmic eldrich horrors.

What, you were expecting beautiful men and women with long golden hair and big fluffy wings? Hah! Not in Old Testament God's Heaven! No, if you hadn't noticed, Old Testament God is less interested in making the world a pretty place and more interested in killing all the firstborn sons of Egypt, turning people into salt pillars, and dicking around with Job's life because of a sucker's bet with Satan. He's not a kindly, friendly, forgiving type of god, and his messengers reflect that. You can see it reflected in their billions of eyes.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Let's look at some of the angel species, shall we?

CHERUBIM

Cherubs! Aw, this is a nice start, right? Because Cherubim are just those cute babies with wings that fly around in Rococo paintings and--

WRONG

No, let me tell you about Cherubim. These are beings that have four heads--human, ox, lion, eagle--some variable number of wings (Ezekiel says four, but I've seen them described as having a range of numbers up to Far Too Many For Comfort), and billions and billions of eyes.

These are entities that have wings covered in eyes, and they are all watching you. Right. Now.

I'm actually kind of baffled as to how the term Cherub got attached to what are properly known as Putti--the little winged babies. Those things are actually a Roman import from when Christianity was becoming the hip new thing (I was a fan of Jesus before he got popular, &c.) in the decaying Roman Empire. See, the Romans liked this new Christianity thing but also dug their old artistic traditions, so you have these weird pieces of art cropping up where biblical characters show up next to Roman and Greek heroes. Remember how I talked last time about Typology? This is part of where that comes from--it's the reinterpretation and adoption of older heroes and images for the new Christian iconography.

Somewhere along the way the name Cherub got attached to those little naked cloudrats (seriously, look at baroque and rococo paintings--these things are an infestation) and since then people calling upon cherubs for angelic assistance have been getting all sorts of nasty, hilarious shocks.

According to some sources, Cherubim are among the highest ranking angels--typically the second ones down. The highest rankers are:

SERAPHIM

Seraphim are probably the most badass of all the angels, simply due to the composition of their bodies. See, Seraphim cover their bodies with their wings constantly (they've got six, so they certainly have a few to spare). And why, O student, do they cover their bodies in this way?

It turns out that they burn with a celestial radiance so pure that they cause mortals to basically explode. They're like great glowing basilisks on steroids that've been plugged into a nuclear power plant.

Or like this:

See, it turns out part of what makes Indiana Jones so awesome is that it accurately portrays the interaction between mortals and God--the mortals get their faces melted off.

THRONES

It's kind of scary that Thrones are both a step down in the Angelic Hierarchy from the others, and a step down in mindbending creepiness. Scary because Thrones are, themselves, deeply unnerving. This is another of those things where a number of accounts sort of have gotten merged together, I think, because I can't find them identified by this name in Ezekiel. Still, these angels show up in Ezekiel:

As I watched the four [cherubim], I saw something that looked like a wheel on the ground beside each of the four-faced creatures. This is what the wheels looked like: They were identical wheels, sparkling like diamonds in the sun. It looked like they were wheels within wheels, like a gyroscope.

Wheels within wheels. I've seen them described elsewhere as being covered in eyes and burning with fire. We're making progress here in that we can look at these guys without our brains exploding, but this is still some pretty freaky noneuclidean stuff. And these things are supposedly the throne and chariot of God. Yes, his throne is composed of living beings that are geometric shapes covered in eyes and fire. Old Testament God, remember?

OTHER ANGELS

A few other odd beings crop up. There are the Grigori, who mate with human women and produce the Nephilim--the giant heroes of old, born out of sinful lust between angel and mortal. Or the angel that Jacob wrestled with, who seems to have taken the form of a human(oid). Or the shadowy creatures Senoy, Sansenoy, and Semangelof, who hound Lilith, the First Woman, only to be repelled by her invocation of the four letter celestial name of God. And beings like Michael, who has wings of peacock feathers with actual eyes embedded in them, or his fellow archangel Gabriel who has a few thousand wings, according to some accounts, or Satan, who in some accounts appears to be the Accuser who challenges the faithful at God's behest and in others a fallen Adversary of all that is good. There's a lot of confusion about who is on what side, just what the angels look like, what their goals are, and so on.

But let us leave some of those accounts for a later date, when I'm less likely to pass out before hitting the Post button.

For now, I'll leave you with one deeply alarming thought. If these accounts are correct, then the beings greeting us at the gates of heaven are less like this laughably romantic picture:

And more like Ramiel from Neon Genesis Evangelion:

Goodnight, everyone.

...And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.

Bwahahaha.

As always, feel free to leave comments, complaints, or, best of all, your own interpretations, or e-mail me at keeperofmanynames@gmail.com . And, if you like what you've read here, share it on Facebook, Google+, Twitter, Xanga, Netscape, or whatever else you crazy kids are using to surf the blogoblag these days.

Ways of Reading Gaga III: Ways of Gaga Reading

It always comes as a surprise to me when people argue that Judas is a video and song created just to attack Christians. It should not surprise me, of course: modern Fundamentalist Christianity seems to have decided that its best strategy moving forward is to become an occified relic that has systematically purged itself of all relevancy to the lives of real human beings. I'm not talking here about the barbaric wars against science, sexuality, women's rights, reason, history, all other religions, the Liberal Arts, and so on, despite how evident many of those crusades are in the above video. No, I think those wars are symptomatic of a much deeper problem:

Fundamentalism is terrified of interpretation.

What's bizarre is that this fear of interpretation--this terror of saying that perhaps the Bible cannot be perfectly understood in a literal, single way--runs counter to some of the things that have made the Judeo-Christian tradition so enduring and evocative. I've already talked on here, in very broad terms, about archetypes, and about what it means to create art as part of the interpretive process (in fact, it might be worth reviewing those articles before reading this one, although it's not a prerequisite or anything). Turns out that Christianity has, as part of its artistic tradition, its own particular way of working with those two ideas.

But this is a StIT article, so I'm going to leave that tantalizing idea hanging while we delve into what makes the video for Judas really tick.

The video opens with that same icon I've been pointing out all along: it's a red cross on a (largely) bleached-white background. This is the third video so far where we've seen this kind of iconography, which says to me that Gaga's slowly but surely developing her own set of symbols to place within her videos and performances. And part of that language of symbols is Christian iconography. So, right from the get-go this video is tied to Alejandro and Bad Romance--fittingly, as it shares many of the same dualistic themes running through her other work.

Rather than picking this apart chronologically, I'm going to make some general statements about the artistic choices here and their thematic purpose. What I hope comes out of this is evidence that Gaga has done her homework here. Take the way she depicts Christ and the Apostles. They are, of course, a biker gang.

BOOORN TO BE CRUUUUCIIFIIIIED! ...I'm going to hell.

Which is perfect.
Think about it, Christ was not someone within the orthodoxy. He was kind of a bad boy, if you really think about it. He hung around with poor people, cripples, lepers, prostitutes, wenches, people that weren't happy with Roman or Church rule... these weren't exactly the high and noble class we're talking about. These were outsiders. This was a guy that was born in a manger because his family couldn't get anyplace else to stay, who had a bunch of fishermen as his disciples. This is real rebel stuff. So, I love the biker aesthetic. It's a way of reinforcing just how revolutionary Jesus was.

Which, speaking of revolutionary--notice how Jesus is decidedly not a white Anglo-Saxon European. I'm not sure how historically accurate Gaga's replacement is race-wise, but it's still significant to me that such a replacement was made, simply because, again, it undermines this idea of white Christian hegemony. It's another way of reinforcing the idea of Christ as an outsider.

Once past the stylistic choices we can start delving into the particular characters of Christ, Judas, and--I assume this is what Gaga's going for here--Mary Magdalene.

Pictured: Jesus, A Pop Star, And Some Douchebag

 Judas is the easiest character to get ahold of here, and his characterization does not seem to be anything that a Christian--fundamentalist or otherwise--would have a problem with. He is, in short, an asshole. One of the best moments of the video is when he pours a can of wine on Gaga's back and casually tosses it behind him. This is an uncouth creep. And yet... he is still part of the Disciples. As shifty a character as he is, the others do not seem to view him as someone capable of a full on betrayal. Is this extrapolating a lot from the texts? Sure. But I don't think that makes it any stranger than the way the seventh Harry Potter movie particularly emphasizes the themes of power and responsibility. In the Gospels, Judas comes across as an odious character, but still a character horrified, in the end, with how far he fell. That's on display here.

Mary still is in Protective Mode. Christ, on the other hand, knows exactly what's coming...

Mary/Gaga has a much more Gaga-generated personality in the video, being torn between the good of Christ and the evil of Judas. Although she is frequently depicted as standing protectively beside Christ, she often gazes not at Christ but at Judas--her body language shows how torn she is. Interestingly, she is, perhaps, the most human character of the bunch. Notice how, in the kissing scene (a depiction of the moment where Judas kisses Christ, betraying him as the leader of their rebellious group to the watching soldiers) she seems to be in despair, but both Christ and Judas are largely stoic.

This seems to be Christ's characteristic, in fact--he is serene at best and stoic at worst. There is only one moment where he seems to break from serenity, and that is after the kiss scene. This moment actually parallels the gospels, interestingly enough. Check out this passage from Matthew 26:47-50:

When he was speaking, look, Yehuda, one of the twelve, came, and with him a great crowd with swords and clubs from the high priests and the elders of the people. And the betrayer told them the signal, which was, "The one I kiss is the man. Seize him."
And at once he came up to Yeshua and said, "Hello, Rabbi."
And he kissed him.
And Yeshua said,
Friend, do what you are here to do.
Then they came and laid their hands on Yeshua and seized him.

There is a sense of stoic resignation and sadness in Christ's response here to Judas's betrayal, especially evident since it comes after a scene where Christ prays to be free from his burden, only to finally conclude that he must go through with the plan, as it were. In Gaga's video, Mary is in the place of the normal human--she cannot understand the terrible necessity of the betrayal and its results. Both Jesus and Judas, however, know exactly what is coming. It's a powerful moment in the Scripture, and I truly feel that Gaga is attempting to faithfully convey that moment here.

The lyrics convey a similar attention to detail. Let's break those down a bit:

When he comes to me I am ready
I’ll wash his feet with my hair if he needs
Forgive him when his tongue lies through his brain
Even after three times he betrays me

Here Gaga is working with some fairly traditional imagery of washing feet as a gesture of religious and ritualistic respect, but because the focus is on Judas and not a more noble figure like Christ she turns it into an image of degradation. The last two lines, interestingly, are not a reference to Judas but to Simon Kefa, who responds to accusations of being associated with Christ essentially with the reponse, "I don't know what you're talking about! Never heard of this Jesus guy! No further questions, move along!" He does this three times, just as Christ predicted, and breaks down when he realizes that Christ was right. Note, though, that here is the first linking of betrayal with forgiveness within the song.

I couldn’t love a man so purely
Even prophets forgave his crooked way
I’ve learned love is like a brick you can
Build a house or sink a dead body

This is the dualism that I mentioned (but didn't bother explaining) earlier. Love here is something that can create or destroy--just as love is mixed with obsession and degradation in Bad Romance, and sex is mixed with militant totalitarian domination in Alejandro. It's a very Blakean notion, actually--that in the midst of the two opposites of Good and Evil, new ideas are created.

In the most Biblical sense,
I am beyond repentance
Fame hooker, prostitute wench, vomits her mind
But in the cultural sense
I just speak in future tense
Judas, kiss me if offenced,
Or wear an ear condom next time

This is interesting because it draws in part from a common sort of... well, I'm not sure I would call it an error, exactly, but certainly a supplementary interpretation that goes way beyond the main text. That interpretation is that Mary Magdalene was a prostitute. In our culture, she's been linked to the story of the crowd of chuckleheads who want to stone a prostitute to death, where Christ essentially steps in and says, listen, go ahead, I've got no beef with stonings, but if you're going to do it, let's have it be started by the person here who is totally without sin. Then presumably everyone sort of shuffled their feet and avoided each other's eyes and finally went home feeling like right chumps.

Pictured: Fans of Fox News

Of course, this isn't what happens at the end of Gaga's video, which says to me that she's very aware of what reception she's going to receive with this song. I wonder, is the guy in the first video I posted totally without sin? Just an idle speculation.

Also, the "wear an ear condom next time" line is hilariously apt, as it charges the listener to just ignore the song if offended while also tying back into Gaga's sexual themes. I love it.

I wanna love you,
But something’s pulling me away from you
Jesus is my virtue,
Judas is the demon I cling to
I cling to

I think this is the most telling set of lines in the song, as it gets back to the point I made waaay back at the beginning of the article: Gaga is working here in a Christian tradition of symbolic types.

See, under this system, Christian (especially early Christian) art uses the juxtaposition of different characters to show parallelism throughout the gospels. So, Jonah, eaten by the whale, is a type of Christ--he predicts Christ's entombment and resurrection. Hercules appears as a type of Samson in some Roman art. Moses and Abraham are also paralleled with Christ. These characters exist as reflections of each other through time and scripture, showing the ultimate unity of the Judeo-Christian myth tradition, and its links with other myths of the time and region.

This video is Gaga's attempt at a kind of modern Typology. She is taking the story of Christ--in particular, the story of his betrayal--and depicting its modern parallels. On the one hand she makes this more concrete by staging the story as a struggle of love between a virtuous man and a jerk. This is the most obvious view of the song.

On the other hand, it can be seen as a far more abstract metaphor for the struggle between the desire to be virtuous and the allure of evil. The video and song use the conflict between Christ and Judas to illustrate the struggle within all humans. Gaga has essentially delved into the Christian myth here and discovered not only its beauty but also its fundamental relevance to her life and, by artistic extension, our own lives.

This is what I mean when I say that the fear of interpretation is leading Fundamentalist Christianity, as an institution, down the path of ossification and, ultimately, total irrelevancy. They have said, in essence, "Our way is the only way of interacting with scripture emotionally and artistically." And, sure, every sect has probably done this to some extent, but never before have I seen such a slavish dedication to the utter stifling of everything that makes The Bible one of the most beautiful, significant, moving works in the entirety of world literature.

Wait, wait, let me say that again.

The Bible is one of the most beautiful, significant, moving works in the entirety of world literature.

And Fundamentalism is entombing it alive.

Whereas Gaga, in contrast, has taken an already deeply moving Biblical story and found a way of making it deeply relevant to her own life and experiences. She is honestly and openly interacting with the Christian tradition in a way that takes account of the basic difficulty of living up to the standard of goodness. I consider that honesty to be the mark of a much purer religious experience than dogmatic purity, because it recognizes that the answers to our questions of good and evil are not always so simple or forthcoming. It recognizes that we, as humans, are not perfect, even though we aspire to match the perfection of Christ... or of our other heroes. And it recognizes that the stories in the Bible are not singular but part of a long tradition of parallel tales--that Lady Gaga can be a type of Mary, and the men in this video represent a type of Christ and a type of Judas. I feel secure, therefore, in calling this a truly beautiful work of Christian art.

So, my charge is essentially this: take a page from Gaga's book. Be open to alternate readings. Explore the meaning of all art, both secular and scriptural. Find meaning for yourself through the creation of symbols, meaningful themes, narratives real and imagined, the play of opposites, and, ultimately, the deep and powerful act of sharing experiences. Because interpretation is not a way of muddying the waters. It is not a way of dissecting and killing the enjoyment of art. It is, itself, an artistic act, and one that can uncover the beauty and power of both a book written two thousand years ago... and a music video created just this year.

It all comes down to the ways that we read.

That's the last Ways of Reading Gaga proper, although there are at least two postscripts--one by me, and one by someone else. Those won't be out for a while though. As always, feel free to leave comments, complaints, or, best of all, your own interpretations, or e-mail me at keeperofmanynames@gmail.com . And, if you like what you've read here, share it on Facebook, Google+, Twitter, Xanga, Netscape, or whatever else you crazy kids are using to surf the blogoblag these days.