Author: ke$hav

One of the more recent documentaries on rock star legend Jim Morrison entitled “When You’re Strange” offers an interesting new perspective on the celebrity. Jim Morrison is an infamous figure, known for haranguing his audiences in between performances, frequent altercations with the law, and open admission to illicit drug use.

Although his band’s music was a popular, Morrison’s personal image struggled. Even though Morrison would self-identify as a poet and creative genius, the public felt his antics were uncalled for, his belittling attitude towards his fans arrogant, and his unpredictable, reckless actions menacing. Morrison’s behavior is not unlike hip hop star Kanye West’s today (Kanye actually refers to himself as this generation’s Jim Morrison, interestingly enough).

However, as the documentary I mention above notes, Morrison’s awareness of his identity being an integral part of his music was quite clear. One excellent example is the song LA Woman, and the famous refrain “Mr. Mojo Risin’/Gotta keep on risin’/risin, risin…” – the emotional and musical climax of a radio hit, and a song frequently requested live. As band members note, Morrison invented this phrase on the spot, and later revealed that it was an anagram (he just rearranged the words of his own name – like Tom Marvolo Riddle in Harry Potter).

This particular moment of studio session songwriting brilliance is emblematic of a larger point – Jim Morrison’s wild “bad boy” persona fueled his band’s fiery sound. As band member Manzarek notes in interviews, “he would do things just to see if he could get away with them. To say he did them.” One might even risk the thought that if Morrison was aware of his persona and its relationship to his music, perhaps his wild behavior was in fact a form of performance art.

Jim’s antics on stage, according to his band members, could be highly energized, or highly dangerous – one could never tell. On bad days, Jim would consume so much alcohol and LSD that he would yell at the crowd, or pass out, forcing the band to continue without him.

 

Another time, Jim blacked out on stage from drinking heavily and dosing on LSD and proclaimed, “I AM THE LIZARD KING!!! I CAN DO ANYTHING”. The Doors’ label later released a band compilation entitled “Lizard King” – concretizing Jim’s physical performance into a musical object.

In the field of Art Criticism, a term called Ekphrasis is defined as a verbal description of art.

Dwell on this thought for a moment longer – why is Ekphrasis such an important concept that it gets this fancy word-name?

Because Ekphrasis is actually the process by which we translate a work of art like a painting into a verbal statement – it is the mental process through which the artist’s brushstrokes become words on the blank slate of the audience’s mind.

Ekphrasis has existed as long as art and language have coexisted. So this begs another question – across cultures with different values, religions, philosophies, social structures – has the Ekphrasis been fundamentally different? In other words, if an art critic from the Renaissance.

Were to discover a Modernist Frank Stella Sculpture from hundreds of years later, they’d write differently about Stella’s sculpture than Stella’s contemporaries not just due to differing cultural taste, but because their brain has not been wired to even comprehend what Stella is doing.

The word for this cognitive wiring is neural plasticity –

 

Cognitive scientists have discovered that action neurons in our brains are shaped (or plastered – and I do not the drinking kind, mind you) by our experiences. This is why consistent practice develops muscle memory, the ultimate evolution of an instinctive drive which replaces our need to consciously focus on the actions at hand.

For example, the first time you drive a car, you’re freaking out about signaling and making that left turn. Today, on the ump-teenth left turn of your driving career, you’re probably texting, blasting Big Sean, and not giving a fuck – all thanks to neural plasticity.

In fact, Art Historians, Linguists, and Cognitive Scientists have combined elements of their disciplines in order to develop a theory for the genesis of art in the caves of Lascaux and Altamira of Spain. The idea, explained by Art Historian John Onians, is that the inhabiting cavemen actually carved the likenesses as an attempt to communicate, but the first attempts at visual representation were crude and exaggerated.

Other cavemen not only read the visual representations, but also interpreted the exaggerations, continuing to reproduce this mistake and create a second system of visual representation – an artistic one that evolved alongside pictorial, symbolic communication as a more visual, metaphorical means of communicating thoughts.

When Art critics engage in ekphrasis, they’re describing how a painting works – using literary terms such as irony, metaphor, metonymy, as well as cognitive concepts, such as spacial relationships, logical inclusion, and so on. Ekphrasis is therefore a powerful mental tool that allows an individual to become more self-aware of how their own life experiences and interaction with a larger culture have shaped their mind to form a unique visual logic.

With this post I hope to emphasize the value of Art History, a subject which allows us to expand our visual logic and interact with cultures beyond our own – both today and throughout history – by learning their cultural contingencies in order to understand how and why they produced the art they did.

This post was inspired by a class I took 2 years ago with Martin Powers – HA 393 – Art Language, and the Language of Art – one of the best educational experiences of my life – Take it!!!

I’ve been studying the notion of postmodern art for a television history class (taught by Candace Moore, take a class with her if you want to learn awesome things about TV!)

Postmodernism is characterized by an extreme interest in style as a means of making a statement, disinterest in any traditional form, and the conscious decision to take a variety of historical aesthetics out of context to create a mosaic aesthetic which defies the logic of consumer culture.

I want to suggest the possibility that hipster culture is inherently postmodern. Let’s note some parallels:

Style as a form of statement:

hipsters are flashy and aware that every aspect of their grooming and clothing choice stand out from “the mainstream”. Hence, rad haircuts,

super thick rimmed glasses,

ironic t-shirts.

All of these clothing items not only demand attention, but call into question why these clothings are designed and worn the way they are. In other words, using the symbolic nature of clothing to get rid of the consumer agenda hidden behind the fabric.

Pastiche (empty cultural references):

in other words, taking visual elements of other cultures and using them to create a new, mosaic-like aesthetic which is unlike any existing tradition. For example,

t-shirts with tiny buddhas on them are not an attempt to push Hinduism/Buddhism’s ideals, they’re merely using Buddha because he looks funny, different, and distinguish the hipster’s wardrobe as anti-mainstream.

That’s like…so mainstream:

The decision to parody marketing tactics through actively rejecting the mainstream. Hipsters have distinguished hair styles and clothing trends which are anti-establishment. This smorgasbord approach to aesthetics rejects traditional consumer logic (capitalist hegemony).

I want to point out something here. Hipster culture ultimately forms its own mainstream – stores and salons have started to market the hipster look. Moreover, the decision to “distinguish” oneself from mainstream consumerism requires the social resources to pursue education, which some people plagued by consumerism do not have access to.

Hence, hipsters ultimately create their own brand of consumer logic. Their contribution to the anti-mainstream, however, is still relevant. By overemphasizing style and aesthetic marketing strategy, hipsters create awareness that style can be manipulated.

This post is meant neither to hipster bash nor hipster glorify, but rather to explore the postmodern aesthetic strategies hipsters have employed, and how those crazy concepts we’ve learned in school (Jean Baudrillard’s postmodern theories of hyperreality, Pierre Bourdieu’s critique of taste and social capital) actually apply to modern day fads.

Gangster rap is often cast aside as a commercial project, an advertisement which exploits urban violence and societal drug problems in order to create the image of the gangster, a figure condoning overconsumption and violence. I would like to analyze the lyricism and aesthetic of the lone gangster rapper figure as a poet. Although gangster rap certainly glamorizes violence and monetary excess, perhaps this glamorization calls to attention greater systemic problems within the community from which this figure originates.

One of the most infamous figures in the ganster rap tradition is the Notorious B.I.G. aka Biggie Smalls. Biggie died at the age of 24 in a drive-by shooting. Biggie was known for affiliations with east coast gangs and his rise to fame and wealth are often associated with these dubious allegiances. Biggie’s death marked an opportunity for media to condemn the event as the crystallization of a music culture which glorified the accumulation of wealth at any cost. But Biggie’s image and his music treat his socioeconomic background with far more nuance than critics credit him. I believe Biggie is quite self aware of his media image, which his label coopted to glorify a lifestyle of overconsumption in order to gloss over larger social problems. His lyrics reference his relationship to the drug scene and also situate his image in relationship to a broader cultural tradition of the crime lord figure.

His song, “You’re Nobody (Till Somebody Kills You)”, ironically released posthumously, exemplifies Biggie’s dialogue not only with media criticisms of the contemporary gangster rap image, but with broader historical social structures of capitalist oppression and the cultural tradition of crime as the manifestation of underlying structural violence.

The song begins with a reference to Christ’s 23rd Psalm:

“Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death
I will fear no evil — for you are with me
Your rod and your staff, they comfort me
You prepare a table for me, in the presence of my enemies
You anoint my head with oil, my cup overflows
Surely goodness and love will follow me — all the days of my life
And I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever”

Biggie references Biblical morality and complicates this moral compass by positioning the gangster as the figure seeking spiritual absolution. The question implicit to this formulation is: can criminals who have forsaken the law of the land still have access to its mercy? Is a figure outside the law of the land forsaken of its justice? Moreover, if the law of the land is exclusionary, if a figure born of this oppressive exclusion actively defies the law, is it not their social marginalization the real sin, and not the vile acts the criminal commits?

In the next verse, Biggie establishes the gangster as a figure caught between two opposing worlds: a life of socioeconomic exclusion which push the impoverished criminals into a life of violence, and a legal system ready to kill gangsters without considering the circumstances that have caused them to act outside of the law. As Biggie notes, “Strictly gun testing, coke measuring…/Shit’s official, only, the Feds I fear”. Gangster have created an alternative system of existence to support themselves in the face of economic subjugation, an official system outside the law. Paradoxically, any attempt to create a legitimate system outside of the law is necessarily illegitimate. There is no escape from economic subjugation, because any attempt to form resistance can only be done so with reference to the dominant oppressive system – it’s a catch 22.

Biggie goes on to demonstrate an awareness of the cultural tradition of criminal alterity: “Watch Casino, I’m the hip hop version of Nicky Tarantino”, draws reference to the cinematic tradition of the Italian-American gangster. Cinema studies notes the formation of the Italian-American gangster figure as an explicit critique of exclusionary legal and social structures. Driven outside society, the gangster is left with few options other than to commit to a life of crime in order to survive. Biggie notes a cultural parallel between this cinematic tradition and the contemporary state of gangster rap music.

I’ve been writing a lot for classes lately – one TV script (final draft due tomorrow!), one movie screenplay, an essay, and also this weekly gig. I got pretty sick of staring at my old-school style of outlining:

1. Thesis – this outline’s goal is to show how I used to outline

• I used a hierarchy of bullet points
• relating back to my main theme
• each sub-point adds another intricacy to my core argument
• And finally, I tie it all back together in a:

1. New direction – this may be another

• topic paragraph for a blog post
• scene for my screenplay
• Section of my essay
• And finally, I reach

****THE CONCLUSION – That this gets really boring to do for hours.

So, I came up with a new style of outlining. Something refreshing, colorful, exciting – something that I could do for 5 hours in a row without wanting to kill myself and cure the overwhelming boredom.

I created: The Board.

The board uses color-coded post-it notes and color-coded ink on them to divide up my themes, plot twists, character arcs, by color so I can keep track of them visually. Post-it Notes also let me feel my story out, literally moving scenes by hand to visualize the order and progression of arc, theme, or plot.

I got this idea from Blake Snyder, a screenwriter who wrote an awesome book on screenwriting advice called Save the Cat.

 

I created a second board for this screenplay (a super-hero stoner comedy, that’s why I have green post-it notes for the main plot and green ink for the super-hero’s dialogue-lulz) using one of Blake’s ideas from his sequel book Save the Cat Strikes Back, in which Blake notes the value of using different organizational logics in order to stimulate the creative process.

 

(This board’s structural logic is inspired from Snyder’s Chart Called the Conversion Machine)

 

Moreover, the board’s physical presence really helps me feel connected to my writing. My writing isn’t just an electronic file on my computer anymore, it’s a physical object I spent time and energy creating. And it looks so PRETTY!!! Every part of the writing process becomes a work of art in its own right, filling me with a fresh creative energy to push through writer’s block. So I guess what I’m saying is, don’t underestimate the value of outlining – and also, don’t underestimate your ability to invent creative, artistic ways to innovate on the very nature of the outline – an outline says a lot about your creative sensbilities.

“Earlier much futile thought had been devoted to the question of whether photography is an art. The primary question – whether the very invention of photography had not transformed the entire nature of art – was not raised.”
~Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Mechanical Age of Reproduction”

“Everywhere one seeks to produce meaning, to make the world signify, to render it visible. We are not, however, in danger of lacking meaning; quite the contrary, we are gorged with meaning and it is killing us.”

~Jean Baudrillard, “Simulations”

Roger Ebert, famous film critic, contended video games are incapable of being works of art. Ebert notes video game defenders contend film shares a technological component similar to photography and film: the attempt to simulate reality. Ebert argues the problem with this logic lies in the video game’s intrinsically commercial purpose from the moment of its invention, a characteristic which separates it from every other art form.

I disagree with Ebert. I believe video games are art. I also believe Santiago, the video game supporter whom Ebert cites, uses a weak strand of logic and an unsatisfactory definition of art, allowing Ebert to dispute the artistic merits of videogames.

I’ll begin by extending my own definition of art. Going back to my first blog post, in which I note the fundamental tension between structure and uniqueness inherent to categorizing anything as art. In this post, I conclude that art’s goal is not merely to affect sensory perception, but rather, to breathe a fresh perspective on the structures that govern our lives. So sensory affect is a necessary attribute, but not a sufficient attribute to deem something art. Art must not only illicit sensory response, but also produce a psychological response that alters the audience’s way of thinking.

Ebert and Santiago both agree that videogames affect senses. Videogames are essentially a simulation of reality – a coded series of rules and a visual interface which seek to build a world to play with. Their point of contention is the inherently commercial intent of videogames, which seek to entertain and stimulate in order to reap profit rather than to sow inspiration. My definition problematizes this point of contention. The commercial intent of videogames certainly inflects a rigid structure and mode of exhibition, but could this affinity for structure also provide an opportunity to induce a greater psychological rupture from the structure?

Instead of looking at more avant-garde, so called artistic games, lets examine the most commercial game possible: Grand Theft Auto V. This game is part of a recurring series, simulates the real world from the perspective of a criminal, and gives players the freedom to mess around in this “sandbox” world in order to offer wish fulfillment in exchange for the almighty dollar. This isn’t art, it’s a glorified toy, as Ebert might say.

But Grand Theft Auto V is a highly self-reflexive simulation, quite vocally aware of its own commercial history and its audience’s expectations. GTA V actually subverts audience expectation by playing with the tropes of crime game genre – offering 3 classic mobster characters to choose from, each exaggerated to the point of satirizing the entire history of the mobster genre.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kFhkHFSytVU

Two features of this game which simulate reality best – the extensive network of radio programming and the stock market through which players accumulate wealth – intentionally parody reality in order to offer commentary. The fictitious radio stations mock real radio stations and the commercial nature of the entertainment industry as a whole. The stock market demonstrates the predatory tactics of brokers and the setup of a volatile market of exchange which artificial accumulates capital independent of real labor.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yWNx2x73RjQ

This game embraces its commercial nature in order to exhibit itself to the widest audience possible. Moreover, it relies a commercial means of production to spread a satirical simulation of commercialism, over emphasizing the contradictory, flawed logic of consumerism in order to implode consumerist values. GTA V, therefore, demonstrates the unique artistic potential of videogames – to penetrate the conditions of reality in order to alter our most intimate presuppositions of what reality is in the first place. The intricate fictitious world-building feature of videogames offers an opportunity for an art form which altogether changes its external world.