kitsch/lost causes
Music: Not Drowning, Waving: Circus (1993)
I am a sensitive person, which sometimes makes watching television a weepy experience. While ironing and cleaning tonight, I watched (listened to) two PBS documentaries, a Frontline piece on New Orleans after Katrina, and Sherry Jones' Torturing Democracy, both of which are devastating critiques of the Bush II administration, both of which make me feel small and helpless, and both of which invite disbelief: did I just live through all this? did my government just do this? I know it's naïve to read, and it does feel stupid to type out these questions, but these programs leave me at loss for words to describe how they make me feel, how they resurrect buried astonishments. I had a little workplace drama today that had my stomach all churny, but then when I see programs like this I realize how humane my day-to-day life really is. I recognize such a reaction means that the idealist in me is much more prominent than the cynic, though both are closely related.
For some months I have been thinking about humor and the mournful work it does, and how cynicism has become our dominant mode of humor (even in painfully violent sorts of ways, e.g., South Park or Sarah Silverman). I finally ordered Alenka Zupancic's The Odd One In: On Comedy, because I think she will help provide a vocabulary for the sobriety of things like documentary. While I'm far from finishing the second book in progress (which is on mourning, a reason why it's taking some time, I reckon), I think my third book will be on humor. Oh, no, it's on music. But humor after that.
Humor aside (but it returns, inevitably like a Delcon Shield), the images from Abu Ghraib shown tonight reminded me of Kirsch's recent hit job on Slavoj Zizek's In Defense of Lost Causes and Violence, both of which I have not yet read (if you can keep up with Zizek, you get a gold star; with teaching and writing and administrivia I cannot). Zizek apparently discusses torture in each volume at some length. I gather from the reaction of Jim Aune and others, Zizek is at the peak of his most contrary, arguing for a reconsideration of communist violence vis-à-vis liberal democratic solutions. I'll wait to pass judgment since I've not read these books yet (I thought I would gouge out my eyes reading the Parallax), except to note something about their rhetorical surfaces: that two books on violent, lost causes appear in the same year from our resident contrarian should give us pause. At what point does talk about violence and the radical embrace of futility become "cute," become kitsch?
Exhibit A: I was reading the paper on Sunday, as I am wont to do, listening to This Week and Meet the Press. I was clipping coupons when I ran across an insert from "The Bradford Exchange," a full-page ad for the "Echoes of Glory" coo-coo clock. It's a Confederate States of America clock that has Robert E. Lee seated on top, and a canon that comes out and booms each hour. The copy reads thusly:
The Pride of the South: In the South's hour of need, a gallant gentleman soldier named Robert E. Lee took command, and against all odds won timeless glory for himself fighting men of Dixie. The Pride of the South left a record of courage and audacity that endures to this day, and now a limited edition clock reminds you of that history every minute and hour.
Ok, so you're thinking this is a joke---"Humor Shield, Activate!"---but it's not. This is a legit product, just as legit as the Rushmore-esque carving of Lee on the side of Stone Mountain near my hometown in Georgia, the side that they do a "laser show" on and have Lee and gang march about to the tune of "Dixie." While the on-line advertisement doesn't do the print circular justice, point your browser here to see the real thing.
In what sense is this "Echoes of Glory" clock analogous to the aesthetic of Zizek's recent work? I'm very aware that I'm not engaging his argument, as I've not read it. But there is a certain aesthetic cultivation at work that's close to kitschy.
I don't know. I thought I'd have something coherent by the time I finished this entry. Instead, I'm yawing and dream of sleep, as I fend off cat after cat in search of lap time.