Wednesday, May 26, 2004
New media crit nonsense from Susan Sontag
While I'm on the subject of nonsense, Susan Sontag's recent NY Times Magazine piece contains the following puzzling passage:
After all, the conclusions of reports compiled by the International Committee of the Red Cross, and other reports by journalists and protests by humanitarian organizations about the atrocious punishments inflicted on ''detainees'' and ''suspected terrorists'' in prisons run by the American military, first in Afghanistan and later in Iraq, have been circulating for more than a year. It seems doubtful that such reports were read by President Bush or Vice President Dick Cheney or Condoleezza Rice or Rumsfeld. Apparently it took the photographs to get their attention, when it became clear they could not be suppressed; it was the photographs that made all this ''real'' to Bush and his associates. Up to then, there had been only words, which are easier to cover up in our age of infinite digital self-reproduction and self-dissemination, and so much easier to forget.
What the hell is Sontag talking about in that last sentence?
First, in what sense are digitally stored words self-reproducing and self-disseminating? I'm quite familiar with digital things that are self-reproducing and self-disseminating; they're called worms, viruses, and Trojans. English words alone are generally not self-reproducing and self-disseminating. They are reproduced and disseminated by the conscious intentions of humans using software (like email clients and blogs). Sontag's phrase sounds interesting, but it doesn't make any sense.
Second, and more importantly, in what sense do reproduction and dissemination make words easier to cover up, or to forget? In the past, when the only record of a written word was ink on a physical piece of paper, words were really, really easy to cover up or forget: you burned the paper, flushed it down the toilet, or ate it, and it was gone. Poof. By contrast, digital computing technology makes words harder to cover up or forget: digitally stored data are trivially easy to copy, back up, or distribute widely, all of which are bulwarks against covering up and forgetting. (See: archive.org.) Sontag's got the facts exactly backwards.
In fact, digital technology has essentially nothing to do with the fact that words had less impact than pictures. The dominance of visual media over verbal media long predates the digital age. In the extremely long view, the primate brain became highly visual not long after we diverged from the rodents. In the more recent view, it was the analog technologies of photography and television that caused images to displace words as our culture's most powerful form of discourse. Digital technologies have actually led to a resurgence of words, in the form of (among other things) email, instant messaging, and blogs.
Sontag's article is mostly correct in its larger take on the Abu Ghraib photographs and their effects. But Sontag made her intellectual bones as an art critic and media theorist --- On Photography and Against Interpretation being the preeminent volumes in the Sontag canon --- and therefore it's fair to take her to task for such lazy, sloppy thinking about the meaning of digital media, particularly since she strains, elsewhere in the article, to draw parallels between video games and Internet pornography, on the one hand, and the Abu Ghraib photos on the other. Sontag draws these parallels rather breezily and moves along as if merely raising the subject proved her point. But her argument can't be persuasive when she evinces such elementary misunderstandings about the properties of electronic media.
Larry Everest: Feckless speaker
Speaking of crappy radio, KUOW (Seattle's NPR station) is now broadcasting a speech by Larry Everest, who has an incredibly irritating speaking style, rather reminiscent of the vegetarian hippie Waterfall Jr. on the Futurama episode The Problem with Popplers. He has a high-pitched, nasal voice; his speech cadences oscillate between overwrought hectoring, sarcastic whining, and stiffly rhythmic droning; and he presents his material in a way that is practically guaranteed to preach only to the choir --- he started hitting the inflammatory notes about imperialism and capitalism right up front, gestures that stroke the sensibilities of people who already completely agree with him, but are unlikely to win over anyone.
He's also rather sloppy with his rhetoric; for example, early in the speech, he said: "The war in Iraq was not about finding weapons of mass destruction; it was about making sure that America had more weapons of mass destruction than anybody else." Uh, America has more weapons of mass destruction than anybody else, and will for the foreseeable future. Our military supremacy over the rest of the world hasn't been in doubt for a decade and a half. Maintaining military supremacy was not the motivation for the war. To suggest such a thing is nonsense --- and I mean that literally: it just does not make any sense. It's like suggesting that Arnold Schwarzenegger ran for governor of California because he wanted really big muscles. But this sort of thing strokes the right spots for a certain kind of listener.
More excerpts from his speech: "...a war on terror that is a war of terror... globalization at gunpoint... the shadow war going on behind the scenes that people don't understand... the United States confronted the Soviet Union, a nuclear power, for thirty years, it was a huge impediment to United States power..." (Uh, Larry, the Soviet Union was deeply evil.) "...the Right wants to change the dime, instead of FDR facing left, they want Reagan facing right... gay marriage isn't just an issue in its own right, it's a wedge issue to enforce patriarchy... people say we can't leave Iraq, we can't just leave. Why not?" (audience clapping) "...I'm not for the Shia clerics, don't get me wrong... no good can come from this occupation..." (Uh, Larry, there are good reasons to fear what will happen if we leave Iraq; you may disagree, but it is not prima facie ludicrous to believe we should stay.) "...terrorizing people, putting wire around whole villages..."
The thing is, I agree that the Iraq war was about building an American empire (hardly a controversial assertion among those in the know), and I still find Everest annoying. After about fifteen minutes I had to turn it off.
Labels: liberalism, npr, stupidity
Sunday, May 23, 2004
Understanding how the Bush administration works
I've gotten to the point where Bush jokes are rarely funny anymore. The unending barrage of daily outrages has kind of worn me down. There's practically no joke you can make about the Bush administration that isn't outstripped by the reality. Nevertheless, via Kos...
How many members of the Bush Administration are needed to replace a lightbulb?
The Answer is SEVEN:
- one to deny that a lightbulb needs to be replaced,
- one to attack and question the patriotism of anyone who has questions about the lightbulb,
- one to blame the previous administration for the need of a new lightbulb,
- one to arrange the invasion of a country rumored to have a secret stockpile of lightbulbs,
- one to get together with Vice President Cheney and figure out how to pay Halliburton Industries one million dollars for a lightbulb,
- one to arrange a photo-op session showing Bush changing the lightbulb while dressed in a flight suit and wrapped in an American flag,
- and finally one to explain to Bush the difference between screwing a lightbulb and screwing the country.
It's not just another light bulb joke. It's a frighteningly accurate description of the Bush administration's modus operandi.
Kinsley on Brooks
Also in today's Times Book Review: Michael Kinsley takes down David Brooks. Agree 99%. Minor quibble: "David Brooks has been every liberal's favorite conservative." Uh, no. I can scarcely stand Brooks more than I can stand Dowd, and I hate them both. They're both writers of immense triviality. At least the Kristols, père et fils, have something that resembles a set of serious ideas to promote. At least Safire is reliably insane and evil, which has something to be said for it. Brooks is just a twee wanker in love with his own cuteness.
Lad lit, romance novels, and the objectification of men
Laura Miller's Last Word column in today's Sunday Times Book Review analyzes the underwhelming sales of recent "lad lit". I haven't read these books, but they sound roughly like a variation on "shopping and fucking" books, except told from a male perspective. We learn some interesting tidbits (e.g., that men constitute only 20% of the market for adult fiction), but overall the article's basic premise --- that lad lit was meant to appeal to women --- is dubious. Isn't it more likely that these books were published based on the distinct, though equally faulty, premise that the men who subscribe to "lad mags" like Maxim and FHM would buy a book that catered to the same fantasies, thereby opening up a hitherto untapped market? Miller's citation of an "events planner at a Chicago bookstore chain" who says Smith and Mebus "might attract women readers" seems like a bit of desperately speculative wishful thinking ("OK, the men aren't buying it... maybe, uh, women might buy this book?") rather than a reflection of the promoters' primary strategy.
However, the article does have one astute moment in the next-to-last paragraph:
Lad lit authors may be truthful about young men's preoccupations, but the recipe for great escapist reading does not include ample servings of stuff people would rather not know. The promoters of lad lit confuse the way women exhaustively analyze a boyfriend's smallest words and gestures with genuine curiosity about men's inner lives. What could be mistaken for a process of detection is actually an act of construction on the part of women who already have a pretty good sense of what's going on in the locker room and prefer to imagine something more appetizing.
Heh. In our culture, women spend a lot of time being objectified in a really obvious way, and for whatever reason most women have developed the facility of understanding their own objectification --- or, at least, the facility of maneuvering under these conditions. Men are, in their own way, objectified just as much. However, unlike women, I think that most men aren't too aware of their own objectification. In fact, I think that most of the time, it doesn't even occur to men that they could be objectified. Hence the error.
This puts me in mind of a totally fascinating post that I ran across on Usenet's rec.arts.sf.written a while back, discussing niche marketing in genre romance fiction:
When people object to porn, one of the things that comes up is the targeting, the way there's "big boob" porn, "shaved" porn, "tall girls" porn, blonde porn, brunette porn, and so on, and the way this divvying up of the female body objectifies porn and turns women into "sex objects."
But romance novels are no different. If women are "sex objects" in porn, then men are "success objects" in romance novels.
Consider, first, how _much_ "healthy sex" you want in a romance novel: You've got four lines from Silhouette to choose from: Superromance, Intimate, Temptations, and Blaze. The Superromance typically has one sex scene which fades out before they "do it." Initmate has one sex scene, which lasts the entire event, but uses different adjectives and gentler language. Temptations has one sex scene and uses the regular words we're used to in erotica; the characters may never "fuck" when they can "make love," but they have cocks and breasts, although "womanhood" is still a popular term for pussy. Blaze is pure smut; multiple love scenes, hot sex, deliberately targeting an audience that wants more. In used bookstores these books are so densely packed you only see the spine, where the letters "S", "I", "T", and "B" stand out clearly in black against the red cover at the top of each spine.
After that, consider your favorite scenario: A clock means that the protagonist finds the man of her dreams in a whirlwind romance that proceeds from introduction to love scene to marriage proposal within a weekend. A stork means that the woman finds the man of her dreams, love scene, marriage, and gives birth to a perfect baby before the book ends. A carriage, on the other hand, indicates the "unwed mother" scenario. A badge means that the protagonist wants and needs a protector, a strong man who can defend her against something, and usually he's a perfect lover and companion and ultimately husband as well.
I find this hilarious. When I read this, I knew at last how women feel when they look at the cover of a typical porn video. It's like, this is what they want? Ha ha! Get real!
(Disclaimer: Of course, none of my fine friends who read this blog objectify men this way. They objectify men in completely different, and much less laughable, ways. Right.)
Stability in Iraq: A Modest Proposal
On today's Times front page, we learn that, last night, American forces raided a weapons cache held by insurgents in Karbala. Now, for years, pro-gun activists from the NRA and elsewhere have informed us that the widespread possession of arms reduces crime dramatically, thereby improving social stability; and that confiscating people's weapons is both the worst kind of tyranny and a recipe for disaster. Well, here we are, in Iraq, confiscating people's weapons, and it's turned into a total shitstorm. Could there be any more potent demonstration of the wrongheadedness of gun control?
The National Rifle Association's patriotic duty is clear: it must start a fundraising drive to purchase millions of rifles and ship them to Iraqi civilians. Once every Iraqi possesses a rifle, stability in Iraq will improve dramatically.
