Tuesday, January 26, 2016
Comedy Changes the World (2006)
I welcomed David Schimke’s essay “Want To Know What’s Really Going On? Ask a Comic” (Utne Sept-Oct ’06), particularly the necessary connection and comparison between today’s satirists and the suffering of Lenny Bruce. But Schimke’s analysis manages to completely miss the major distinction of artists like Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, and the writing and research teams that are essential to their success. Certainly Stewart and Colbert, like Maher and Rock, directly satirize the outrageous abuses of power that make reading headlines an irony-rich exercise. But politics and politicians are not the central subject of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report: their main target has always been (and continues to be) the sorry state of journalism, particularly television news.
Because they are themselves part of the empire of corporate media that they satirize, these comedians must include a level of self-satire and deliberate irony that – while learned from Letterman and company – take political satire and comedy itself into a new dimension of reflection, responsibility, and intelligence. Schimke overlooks how Colbert and Stewart must themselves practice responsible journalism in order to satirize the abundant examples of irresponsible journalism. Perhaps this is one way (among many) that these “jokesters” can in fact change the world, through fake news that provides truth that so-called “real” news won’t.
Nor, Mr. Schimke, would this be the first time that comedians and satirists have changed the world – as the examples of Lenny Bruce, Jonathan Swift, R. B. Sheridan, and George Bernard Shaw should attest.
Letter to the Editor of Utne Reader, Fall 2006.
Lost Formulae (2005)
Written/posted 17 October 2005, shortly after I moved to Texas, and not long after I discovered Lost.
Television drama, like most forms of drama (if not most forms of fiction), tends to thrive in mass production once artists hit on a successful formula. Happily, thanks to the contributions of deconstructionists and structuralism, academic criticism seems to have moved past the knee-jerk rejection of formulae as inherently lowbrow or unoriginal. Roland Barthes managed to demonstrate how narrative formulae are at work in cultural forms one might not otherwise describe as narrative (professional wrestling, for instance, or portrait photography); Stephen Johnson (in his book Everything Bad Is Good For You) demonstrates the potential utility of formulae and variations from formulae as a deliberate and constructed game artists play with their audiences. Kennings and riddle-games, as I've talked about here before, reveal the long history of formulae in texts and hint at their potential cultural utility. We might be able to take a step beyond commercial interest - knowing what formula makes a program successful, sustainable, and lucrative - and examine how formulae and their variations (in TV drama, as an example) enrich a text's potential and empowers its audience.
Take Lost, for example, ABC's quasi-SF hit that helped open the floodgates for a new breed of SF/horror programs this season. At first glance, on first description, Lost appears to fit quite nicely within existing forms and previous parallels. The most apparent, of course, is Gilligan's Island, which also told stories about a group of strangers isolated on a deserted island. The castaways provide a pseudo-microcosm of society in the form of familiar character types (leaders/heroes, ingenues, bungling comedians, sage advisers, mercantile opportunists, romantic interests) and undergo trials both mundane and fantastical, particularly conflicts that arise from petty or personal agendas, but never forgetting the demands of survival or the aspiration for future rescue. Of course, one is a half-hour comedy, the other an hour-long drama, but there are parallels - at least, when we describe the formula this way.
This is hardly a formula, however; it's really more of a description of results. That society should seem to be represented by a microcosm is hardly surprising, since character types are not only ancient models based on observations of society, but cultural paradigms that we use to perceive and program our behavior in society. How the microcosmic relation is constructed is far more interesting than simply noting that one seems to exist. And this is one way in which Lost clearly varies from Gilligan's Island on a generic level: the latter uses character as a given, unquestioned and dependably predictable, while the former uses character as the point of departure, the starting point for constructing plot.
Conventionally, one-hour TV drama has long employed A-plots and B-plots (a better description than "plot" and "subplot" in that "subplots" can often take the foreground for the better part of a one-hour episode), in which two stories are told simultaneously. The best-known structure is that of drama and comic relief - a standby for programs like L.A. Law, for instance, just as it had been in melodrama, American musicals, and variety shows. This is not the only way to deploy A-plots and B-plots, however, and their utility has recently expanded with the rise of series arcs, or long-term plots that last for longer than a single episode. Lost uses A-plots and B-plots to sustain suspense over the long haul of the entire series, while rewarding the audience with smaller versions of the larger arc in each one-hour episode.
What makes this structure work most effectively, however, is the choice to reward long-term investment in the B-plots (installments of the larger, series arc) with short-term narratives that manage to expand interest in the series as a whole, while managing to remain somewhat self-contained. The key to this mechanism is character. By means of flashbacks and retrospectives, character histories are gradually revealed - but always in terms of a current, ongoing action or development (typically framed as a series of choices). This process forms the A-plot: we will learn more about these characters, as each story is ultimately about them; but these characters will grow, change, and often confound our expectations by means of their interaction with each other and the situation as a whole as it develops (i.e., the B-plot). One might look at it as Aristotle's poetic principles in action: plot is the soul of the drama, but the windows on that soul are through character actions as they overlap with and shape that plot, and through their collective choices enact it.
To put this another way - to abbreviate the formula - Lost lays before its audience an assortment of mysteries: strangers. At first we (as the characters do) interpret these mysteries according to familiar patterns - we think of these characters as particular types. But each plot, each episode, subverts and challenges these expectations by exploring characters in detail, and revealing not only details about these characters' pasts, but an ongoing series of actions in which these characters actually decide what kind of people they are going to be. Our suspense is engaged: we want to find out who these people are, and the more we find out, the more mysterious they become. But the focus on individual characters (or individual character relationships) allows us to be satisfied with a single installment, and feel as if a whole story has been told - while drawing out our interest, and magnifying the allure of the series as a whole, through the interweaving of these characters' stories in the larger fabric (revealed in glimpses only). Each episode satisfies; each episode increases our interest in the next.
How does this empower the audience? Insofar as it demands that the audience do the work of seeing how this interweaving of characters' private tales with the development of the whole manages to embody - not some symbolic set of icons representing an ideal society - but the process of constructing a society itself. The show manages through its structure to focus not only on individuals, but on the nature of community itself. A template is not simply presented to the audience as a product to be consumed; rather, a system is devised through which the audience can (through imaginative engagement) play out various scenarios that both challenge and construct community.
It might be obvious, but it seems worth noting, the irony of examining community through isolation - not only the isolation of becoming "Lost" on a mysterious island, but also the "isolation" that television's so-called "wasteland" is supposed to inflict on passive viewers.
Television drama, like most forms of drama (if not most forms of fiction), tends to thrive in mass production once artists hit on a successful formula. Happily, thanks to the contributions of deconstructionists and structuralism, academic criticism seems to have moved past the knee-jerk rejection of formulae as inherently lowbrow or unoriginal. Roland Barthes managed to demonstrate how narrative formulae are at work in cultural forms one might not otherwise describe as narrative (professional wrestling, for instance, or portrait photography); Stephen Johnson (in his book Everything Bad Is Good For You) demonstrates the potential utility of formulae and variations from formulae as a deliberate and constructed game artists play with their audiences. Kennings and riddle-games, as I've talked about here before, reveal the long history of formulae in texts and hint at their potential cultural utility. We might be able to take a step beyond commercial interest - knowing what formula makes a program successful, sustainable, and lucrative - and examine how formulae and their variations (in TV drama, as an example) enrich a text's potential and empowers its audience.
Take Lost, for example, ABC's quasi-SF hit that helped open the floodgates for a new breed of SF/horror programs this season. At first glance, on first description, Lost appears to fit quite nicely within existing forms and previous parallels. The most apparent, of course, is Gilligan's Island, which also told stories about a group of strangers isolated on a deserted island. The castaways provide a pseudo-microcosm of society in the form of familiar character types (leaders/heroes, ingenues, bungling comedians, sage advisers, mercantile opportunists, romantic interests) and undergo trials both mundane and fantastical, particularly conflicts that arise from petty or personal agendas, but never forgetting the demands of survival or the aspiration for future rescue. Of course, one is a half-hour comedy, the other an hour-long drama, but there are parallels - at least, when we describe the formula this way.
This is hardly a formula, however; it's really more of a description of results. That society should seem to be represented by a microcosm is hardly surprising, since character types are not only ancient models based on observations of society, but cultural paradigms that we use to perceive and program our behavior in society. How the microcosmic relation is constructed is far more interesting than simply noting that one seems to exist. And this is one way in which Lost clearly varies from Gilligan's Island on a generic level: the latter uses character as a given, unquestioned and dependably predictable, while the former uses character as the point of departure, the starting point for constructing plot.
Conventionally, one-hour TV drama has long employed A-plots and B-plots (a better description than "plot" and "subplot" in that "subplots" can often take the foreground for the better part of a one-hour episode), in which two stories are told simultaneously. The best-known structure is that of drama and comic relief - a standby for programs like L.A. Law, for instance, just as it had been in melodrama, American musicals, and variety shows. This is not the only way to deploy A-plots and B-plots, however, and their utility has recently expanded with the rise of series arcs, or long-term plots that last for longer than a single episode. Lost uses A-plots and B-plots to sustain suspense over the long haul of the entire series, while rewarding the audience with smaller versions of the larger arc in each one-hour episode.
What makes this structure work most effectively, however, is the choice to reward long-term investment in the B-plots (installments of the larger, series arc) with short-term narratives that manage to expand interest in the series as a whole, while managing to remain somewhat self-contained. The key to this mechanism is character. By means of flashbacks and retrospectives, character histories are gradually revealed - but always in terms of a current, ongoing action or development (typically framed as a series of choices). This process forms the A-plot: we will learn more about these characters, as each story is ultimately about them; but these characters will grow, change, and often confound our expectations by means of their interaction with each other and the situation as a whole as it develops (i.e., the B-plot). One might look at it as Aristotle's poetic principles in action: plot is the soul of the drama, but the windows on that soul are through character actions as they overlap with and shape that plot, and through their collective choices enact it.
To put this another way - to abbreviate the formula - Lost lays before its audience an assortment of mysteries: strangers. At first we (as the characters do) interpret these mysteries according to familiar patterns - we think of these characters as particular types. But each plot, each episode, subverts and challenges these expectations by exploring characters in detail, and revealing not only details about these characters' pasts, but an ongoing series of actions in which these characters actually decide what kind of people they are going to be. Our suspense is engaged: we want to find out who these people are, and the more we find out, the more mysterious they become. But the focus on individual characters (or individual character relationships) allows us to be satisfied with a single installment, and feel as if a whole story has been told - while drawing out our interest, and magnifying the allure of the series as a whole, through the interweaving of these characters' stories in the larger fabric (revealed in glimpses only). Each episode satisfies; each episode increases our interest in the next.
How does this empower the audience? Insofar as it demands that the audience do the work of seeing how this interweaving of characters' private tales with the development of the whole manages to embody - not some symbolic set of icons representing an ideal society - but the process of constructing a society itself. The show manages through its structure to focus not only on individuals, but on the nature of community itself. A template is not simply presented to the audience as a product to be consumed; rather, a system is devised through which the audience can (through imaginative engagement) play out various scenarios that both challenge and construct community.
It might be obvious, but it seems worth noting, the irony of examining community through isolation - not only the isolation of becoming "Lost" on a mysterious island, but also the "isolation" that television's so-called "wasteland" is supposed to inflict on passive viewers.
American Dreamtime (2004)
The ancients lived their lives steeped in myth, living alongside and within it. Medieval consciousness imagined itself as existing simultaneously with the past: while there was an admission of historical time, history co-existed with a way of seeing the world guided and focused by constant symbolism. Similarly, Thomas Mann constructed his novels around the principle that it was possible to tell the story of one’s own life by following the shape of myths; his metaphor was that we walk in the footsteps of heroes, by re-living and embodying their quests in our own lives. Meaning is seldom absent from such a world view; indeed, meaning is literally everywhere. The first Australians call this the Dreamtime: a world of story that is neither long ago nor far away, but mythic nonetheless.Frances Yates described such a way of seeing in her construction of the ars memoria – the art of memory. In the art of memory, one builds imaginary cathedrals in the hollows of one’s mind, modeled after physical cathedrals. The individual’s inner cathedral was built to contain the story of one’s life, translated into symbols and narratives enclosed within familiar structures, vividly imagined and meticulously practiced. (It is not so impossible an art, I suspect, as it sounds at first.) While the contents of every such imagined cathedral were individual, they were made out of and housed in structures shared by many; every individual house of memory was unique, but the architecture and building blocks were collectively the same. Those who practiced the art of memory built inner worlds – we might call them private infospheres - shaped individually out of shared materials, whose design and components resembled and coincided with the outer world.
We might imagine the infosphere as a postmodern way to perceive mythic consciousness: a world made of shared information combined in infinite variations. We, too, walk inside myth. The American Dream is most often invoked as a description of a common aspiration, but it also captures in a layered metaphor a state of mind, as well: a shared dream, a people defined by a commonly constructed idealism. But today’s American Dream – like the consumption-driven infosphere of today, dominated by a crazed rush to control and brand images and ideas so as to profit from their exchange – lies outside our individual control, and perhaps our collective will, too. We sleep but think we are awake; we believe we perceive, pragmatically but optimistically, what is truly the real world. But we ourselves have shaped our gaze, like sleepwalkers, to avoid the unpleasant cracks that shiver across our collective façade. We are like prisoners who eagerly keep watch on walls of our own construction, unaware even that we are afraid of that which lies beyond those walls. Cognitive dissonance begins to describe this – that state of mind wherein we reconstruct our understanding of the world to avoid and revise those data which contradict or endanger the fantasy, the Dream. I wouldn’t hesitate to claim that America today lives in a constant state of cognitive dissonance – constantly fantasizing, but – and this is the key, since fantasy itself is not the problem – unaware that we are fantasizing. Indeed, we adamantly insist that our Dream is the only Dream.
An early Christian (and apocryphal) myth called the Hymn of the Pearl – a beautiful text whose imagery and architecture can be found rippling through other traditions and times as well, and whose influence can be charted in many influential artists (such as August Strindberg, for instance, in A Dream Play) – tells a similar story. It imagines a hero who disguises herself (or himself) in order to seek out a precious stone she has accidentally lost. In the process of her quest, she loses herself; she forgets who she is, where she came from, and why she seeks the Pearl. The story hinges on the moment of anagnorisis, the opposite of forgetting (and a critical structural element in drama); some early Christians called it gnosis, a remembering of the forgotten divine. The Pearl can be used as a metaphor for this; as is the life of the princess (or prince) who descends into the world and forgets she has descended. The American Dream is a dream without gnosis, addicted to amnesia (because history, like myth, reminds us of ways of seeing that we might prefer to forget or ignore). We are like Oedipus in Sophocles’ tragedy; we look for the American Character, for a sense of collectively shared identity (perhaps condensed in a cultural crucible euphemistically called The Melting Pot), but blind ourselves in the moment that we grasp what we seek. We have fallen into dream and out of balance; we have forgotten who we are; and we turn our resentment on those very myths that drive and shape our desire, as though the Pearl itself is at fault for our willful, shame-driven self-forgetting.
What would it take for us to awaken? Or, perhaps: what would it take for us to re-claim (collectively and individually) the authorship of our own myths, and thereby of our own lives?
First written/posted 11 December 2004
We might imagine the infosphere as a postmodern way to perceive mythic consciousness: a world made of shared information combined in infinite variations. We, too, walk inside myth. The American Dream is most often invoked as a description of a common aspiration, but it also captures in a layered metaphor a state of mind, as well: a shared dream, a people defined by a commonly constructed idealism. But today’s American Dream – like the consumption-driven infosphere of today, dominated by a crazed rush to control and brand images and ideas so as to profit from their exchange – lies outside our individual control, and perhaps our collective will, too. We sleep but think we are awake; we believe we perceive, pragmatically but optimistically, what is truly the real world. But we ourselves have shaped our gaze, like sleepwalkers, to avoid the unpleasant cracks that shiver across our collective façade. We are like prisoners who eagerly keep watch on walls of our own construction, unaware even that we are afraid of that which lies beyond those walls. Cognitive dissonance begins to describe this – that state of mind wherein we reconstruct our understanding of the world to avoid and revise those data which contradict or endanger the fantasy, the Dream. I wouldn’t hesitate to claim that America today lives in a constant state of cognitive dissonance – constantly fantasizing, but – and this is the key, since fantasy itself is not the problem – unaware that we are fantasizing. Indeed, we adamantly insist that our Dream is the only Dream.
An early Christian (and apocryphal) myth called the Hymn of the Pearl – a beautiful text whose imagery and architecture can be found rippling through other traditions and times as well, and whose influence can be charted in many influential artists (such as August Strindberg, for instance, in A Dream Play) – tells a similar story. It imagines a hero who disguises herself (or himself) in order to seek out a precious stone she has accidentally lost. In the process of her quest, she loses herself; she forgets who she is, where she came from, and why she seeks the Pearl. The story hinges on the moment of anagnorisis, the opposite of forgetting (and a critical structural element in drama); some early Christians called it gnosis, a remembering of the forgotten divine. The Pearl can be used as a metaphor for this; as is the life of the princess (or prince) who descends into the world and forgets she has descended. The American Dream is a dream without gnosis, addicted to amnesia (because history, like myth, reminds us of ways of seeing that we might prefer to forget or ignore). We are like Oedipus in Sophocles’ tragedy; we look for the American Character, for a sense of collectively shared identity (perhaps condensed in a cultural crucible euphemistically called The Melting Pot), but blind ourselves in the moment that we grasp what we seek. We have fallen into dream and out of balance; we have forgotten who we are; and we turn our resentment on those very myths that drive and shape our desire, as though the Pearl itself is at fault for our willful, shame-driven self-forgetting.
What would it take for us to awaken? Or, perhaps: what would it take for us to re-claim (collectively and individually) the authorship of our own myths, and thereby of our own lives?
First written/posted 11 December 2004
Five Responses in Ten Days (2004)
When I worked in Vermont, I was very active with KC/ACTF as a respondent. I wrote this after a memorable jaunt to five different college performances in November, 2004.
... On Monday I completed a brief, ACTF-sponsored tour that invited me to drive more than 1500 miles to five different colleges over the course of ten days.
As I see it, one of the most important services provided by KC/ACTF (a national organization for the advancement of college-level theatre) is that of the “response session,” in which a colleague well-versed in academic theatre is invited to respond to a college production. While I volunteered to respond to these shows, I feel honored by each of my hosts to have been invited to share my comments. I’d like to thank them for giving me an opportunity to see their engaging, challenging, and excellently entertaining work:
Thanks to Colby College for their beautiful, surprising, and reflective production of The Tempest. Those spirits (and their plays within plays) still haunt me.
Thanks to the University of Maine at Machias for provocative social engagement and bold silence speaking volumes in their production of The Moonlight Room.
Thanks to Franklin Pierce College (and particularly to Bob Lawson, for his hospitality), where I found myself transported and challenged by an intellectual, emotional fantasia on Edgar Allen Poe in Dark Cathedrals of the Heart.
Thanks to Eastern Connecticut State University (and guest artist Larry Hunt) for fascinating me with poignant and compelling masks and faces in their utterly engaging rendition of Plautus’ Roman comedy in The Brothers M.
Thanks to Dean College for bringing me Plautus, too, (his play, of course, not the man himself), in a Menaechmi both bold and blatant. This Saturday evening was sexy without being cheap, brave without being rash, and kept me laughing all the way home.
Many thanks to Jim Beauregard for making the whole trip possible.
And an additional thank-you to Ashleigh Ward (Saint Michael’s College ’04) for inviting me to Newburyport, Massachusetts, for an excellent cap to the entire “tour” via a fully professional production of a new play, Cannibals, whose irony-soaked investigation of the lives of frustrated actresses gave me cause to reflect on why I chose a profession in academic theatre over the performance industry.
... On Monday I completed a brief, ACTF-sponsored tour that invited me to drive more than 1500 miles to five different colleges over the course of ten days.
As I see it, one of the most important services provided by KC/ACTF (a national organization for the advancement of college-level theatre) is that of the “response session,” in which a colleague well-versed in academic theatre is invited to respond to a college production. While I volunteered to respond to these shows, I feel honored by each of my hosts to have been invited to share my comments. I’d like to thank them for giving me an opportunity to see their engaging, challenging, and excellently entertaining work:
Thanks to Colby College for their beautiful, surprising, and reflective production of The Tempest. Those spirits (and their plays within plays) still haunt me.
Thanks to the University of Maine at Machias for provocative social engagement and bold silence speaking volumes in their production of The Moonlight Room.
Thanks to Franklin Pierce College (and particularly to Bob Lawson, for his hospitality), where I found myself transported and challenged by an intellectual, emotional fantasia on Edgar Allen Poe in Dark Cathedrals of the Heart.
Thanks to Eastern Connecticut State University (and guest artist Larry Hunt) for fascinating me with poignant and compelling masks and faces in their utterly engaging rendition of Plautus’ Roman comedy in The Brothers M.
Thanks to Dean College for bringing me Plautus, too, (his play, of course, not the man himself), in a Menaechmi both bold and blatant. This Saturday evening was sexy without being cheap, brave without being rash, and kept me laughing all the way home.
Many thanks to Jim Beauregard for making the whole trip possible.
And an additional thank-you to Ashleigh Ward (Saint Michael’s College ’04) for inviting me to Newburyport, Massachusetts, for an excellent cap to the entire “tour” via a fully professional production of a new play, Cannibals, whose irony-soaked investigation of the lives of frustrated actresses gave me cause to reflect on why I chose a profession in academic theatre over the performance industry.
After This Fall (2004)
Written after the Red Sox won the World Series in 2004:
A few years ago, Sports Illustrated imagined New England after a World Series victory by the Boston Red Sox. Months after the celebrations ended, an inexplicable malaise would creep through the fans. Without defeat, they would lose direction; the Boston Red Sox, World Champions, would lose the haunting “almost” that made them distinctive.
But when the Red Sox finally won a World Series this year, the story of their victory was more amazing than anything fans could imagine – and yet the story we most hoped for. After lying prostrate before the New York Yankees, these “happy idiots” produced one of the greatest comebacks in sports history. How beautiful that a team driven by impossible standards should meet defeat at the hands of a team driven by sheer joy; how poignant that New York’s impossible perfectionism should fall to Boston’s practical idealism.
Can Red Sox Nation survive now that “long-suffering” must be stricken from the word “Red Sox fan”? Those who think it can’t don’t understand. Our passion was never about our pain; it was always about hope. The Red Sox finished second to the Yankees seven years in a row. For a Yankees fan, that level of defeat would be intolerable. For a Red Sox fan, this was a fountain of hope. It hurt – it definitely hurt. But I could always count on the Red Sox to make things interesting. Like many other fans, I never loved the Red Sox because they lost. I loved – and love – the team because every game was a thing of beauty. That’s what loving the Red Sox, for me, has always been about: blind, passionate, unfathomable but unquenchable hope – and a beautiful story to make the game worth watching.
Some have said that the Red Sox, those “lovable losers,” will by winning lose their lovability. But no Red Sox fan loves losing. What we love – and what defines that land without borders, Red Sox Nation – is possibility itself. Possibility is what makes every game new, every season “next” season, and every struggle an epic. I can’t thank these Red Sox enough for telling a story, time and again, that kept me coming back for more. If you think this year’s story was amazing … just wait ‘till next year.
A few years ago, Sports Illustrated imagined New England after a World Series victory by the Boston Red Sox. Months after the celebrations ended, an inexplicable malaise would creep through the fans. Without defeat, they would lose direction; the Boston Red Sox, World Champions, would lose the haunting “almost” that made them distinctive.
But when the Red Sox finally won a World Series this year, the story of their victory was more amazing than anything fans could imagine – and yet the story we most hoped for. After lying prostrate before the New York Yankees, these “happy idiots” produced one of the greatest comebacks in sports history. How beautiful that a team driven by impossible standards should meet defeat at the hands of a team driven by sheer joy; how poignant that New York’s impossible perfectionism should fall to Boston’s practical idealism.
Can Red Sox Nation survive now that “long-suffering” must be stricken from the word “Red Sox fan”? Those who think it can’t don’t understand. Our passion was never about our pain; it was always about hope. The Red Sox finished second to the Yankees seven years in a row. For a Yankees fan, that level of defeat would be intolerable. For a Red Sox fan, this was a fountain of hope. It hurt – it definitely hurt. But I could always count on the Red Sox to make things interesting. Like many other fans, I never loved the Red Sox because they lost. I loved – and love – the team because every game was a thing of beauty. That’s what loving the Red Sox, for me, has always been about: blind, passionate, unfathomable but unquenchable hope – and a beautiful story to make the game worth watching.
Some have said that the Red Sox, those “lovable losers,” will by winning lose their lovability. But no Red Sox fan loves losing. What we love – and what defines that land without borders, Red Sox Nation – is possibility itself. Possibility is what makes every game new, every season “next” season, and every struggle an epic. I can’t thank these Red Sox enough for telling a story, time and again, that kept me coming back for more. If you think this year’s story was amazing … just wait ‘till next year.
Out of Your Head (2004) or, Life in a Bubble
A soapbox rant from 26 January 2004, prompted by Bush the Second and Secretary Rumsfeld. The names and referents have changed. References to "life in a bubble" in politics today often refers to those figures who have begun drinking their own Kool-Aid.
It's time for a brief rant; please excuse the soapbox.
I think it was within the last couple of weeks when Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, speaking to the national press corps, repeatedly confused Osama Bin Laden with Saddam Hussein. The Daily Show has already enjoyed the comic potential of this sadly frightening episode - in which one of the most powerful men in the world demonstrated an alarming level of hysteria as well as confusion - but I found it reminding me of a conversation I had a few months ago with a family friend.
She asked me to explain why I felt that President Bush wasn't as dumb as he sometimes seemed to be. Rumseld's frightening gaffe, I think, helps explain my position. Rumseld himself is a veteran of politics in the White House, the Pentagon, and Capitol Hill, and has demonstrated ruthless cleverness. How could he possibly confuse Bin Laden and Hussein? While I enjoy entertaining conspiracy theory - it is possible that this was yet another deliberate effort by the Bush administration to juxtapose two independent concepts (like Saddam Hussein and 9/11) through relentless talking points - his almost manic delivery suggests it was an accident.
I suspect that the tactics deployed by the Bush administration are so compelling that the politicians now believe their own hype. Logical contradictions and contrary facts have no place in this world-view, which is built on a bedrock of unquestioning faith. As the authors of All The President's Spin carefully demonstrate, misdirection is one of the most effective tactics the Bush PR machine uses. As Michael Gazzaniga observes in his discussion of how humanity thinks, we are more susceptible to such techniques than we imagine; he suggests that it's very much a part of how we see the world.
Gazzaniga describes a famous trick ("Out of Your Hat") performed by Harry Blackwell, Sr., in which the magician created the illusion of pulling a full-sized donkey out of his top hat. Magicians "use the simple device of redirecting our attention to make objects that are in our full view, that we know our retina transmitted to our brain, go unnoticed." (The Mind's Past, 1998.) By carefully directing the audience's attention towards a lovely assistant and some elaborate gestures - using speech to focus that attention - the audience completely overlooked another assistant simply walking on stage in full view with the donkey. It was only when Blackwell re-focused his audience's gaze towards the donkey that it "appeared" to them.
Now, imagine a situation in which the trick goes on as planned, but Blackwell has begun believing his own powers of conjuration. Perhaps he startles himself when the donkey appears. This is not unlike the situation we now face with the current administration. Through repetition, constant misdirection, relentless adherence to talking points, and fanatical secrecy, our current leadership has managed to convince itself that the illusion it's been selling to the American public is real.
Rumsfeld and Bush probably don't deserve to be singled out for this; self-delusion is part of how our minds function. Not only do we revise information as it comes in, we constantly re-write our own histories throughout the course of our lives. (Ronald Reagan, for instance, confounded his staff and the press corps with stories from his life that clearly never took place - and no one could ever really tell if Reagan himself was aware of the discrepancies.)
But this is hardly an excuse. Cynically accepting misdirection as a fundamental part of the way we perceive and communicate is insufficient. As I pointed out in my discussion of skaldic poetry (below) this kind of deception is only acceptable when all sides are completely aware of it. There is clearly a large portion of the American public that actively wishes to be deceived - and has little desire to be disabused of their comfortable illusions. Why believe that American forces might be systematically killing more Iraqis than the insurgents themselves? In the case of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal - which shouldn't have come as a surprise to anyone familiar with the documented history of American conduct in Vietnam - the most popular response to the issue, and Bush's rebuttal, was the repeated assertion that, in essence, "Americans don't do such things." It's almost as if we don't need Bush's help to look away from uncomfortable facts, towards attractive illusions of moral superiority.
The problem, however, is that Rumsfeld's conflation (the summation of years of effort to conflate Iraq and Al-Qaeda in the public's imagination) didn't take place during a magic show, and the news from Iraq - while determined by the conventions of narrative - is not a poetic fiction. We are fooling ourselves by our own active misdirection - from the world around us to what we think that world ought to be. Rumsfeld and Bush are not fools; they are devout believers in a lie.
The antidote, I think, is the same as the skaldic poet's, and the magician's - to constantly remind the listeners that they are playing a part in the act. In the case of politics, however, the audience must stop playing a passive role, and realize that it's playing a role in its own deception.
It's time for a brief rant; please excuse the soapbox.
I think it was within the last couple of weeks when Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, speaking to the national press corps, repeatedly confused Osama Bin Laden with Saddam Hussein. The Daily Show has already enjoyed the comic potential of this sadly frightening episode - in which one of the most powerful men in the world demonstrated an alarming level of hysteria as well as confusion - but I found it reminding me of a conversation I had a few months ago with a family friend.
She asked me to explain why I felt that President Bush wasn't as dumb as he sometimes seemed to be. Rumseld's frightening gaffe, I think, helps explain my position. Rumseld himself is a veteran of politics in the White House, the Pentagon, and Capitol Hill, and has demonstrated ruthless cleverness. How could he possibly confuse Bin Laden and Hussein? While I enjoy entertaining conspiracy theory - it is possible that this was yet another deliberate effort by the Bush administration to juxtapose two independent concepts (like Saddam Hussein and 9/11) through relentless talking points - his almost manic delivery suggests it was an accident.
I suspect that the tactics deployed by the Bush administration are so compelling that the politicians now believe their own hype. Logical contradictions and contrary facts have no place in this world-view, which is built on a bedrock of unquestioning faith. As the authors of All The President's Spin carefully demonstrate, misdirection is one of the most effective tactics the Bush PR machine uses. As Michael Gazzaniga observes in his discussion of how humanity thinks, we are more susceptible to such techniques than we imagine; he suggests that it's very much a part of how we see the world.
Gazzaniga describes a famous trick ("Out of Your Hat") performed by Harry Blackwell, Sr., in which the magician created the illusion of pulling a full-sized donkey out of his top hat. Magicians "use the simple device of redirecting our attention to make objects that are in our full view, that we know our retina transmitted to our brain, go unnoticed." (The Mind's Past, 1998.) By carefully directing the audience's attention towards a lovely assistant and some elaborate gestures - using speech to focus that attention - the audience completely overlooked another assistant simply walking on stage in full view with the donkey. It was only when Blackwell re-focused his audience's gaze towards the donkey that it "appeared" to them.
Now, imagine a situation in which the trick goes on as planned, but Blackwell has begun believing his own powers of conjuration. Perhaps he startles himself when the donkey appears. This is not unlike the situation we now face with the current administration. Through repetition, constant misdirection, relentless adherence to talking points, and fanatical secrecy, our current leadership has managed to convince itself that the illusion it's been selling to the American public is real.
Rumsfeld and Bush probably don't deserve to be singled out for this; self-delusion is part of how our minds function. Not only do we revise information as it comes in, we constantly re-write our own histories throughout the course of our lives. (Ronald Reagan, for instance, confounded his staff and the press corps with stories from his life that clearly never took place - and no one could ever really tell if Reagan himself was aware of the discrepancies.)
But this is hardly an excuse. Cynically accepting misdirection as a fundamental part of the way we perceive and communicate is insufficient. As I pointed out in my discussion of skaldic poetry (below) this kind of deception is only acceptable when all sides are completely aware of it. There is clearly a large portion of the American public that actively wishes to be deceived - and has little desire to be disabused of their comfortable illusions. Why believe that American forces might be systematically killing more Iraqis than the insurgents themselves? In the case of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal - which shouldn't have come as a surprise to anyone familiar with the documented history of American conduct in Vietnam - the most popular response to the issue, and Bush's rebuttal, was the repeated assertion that, in essence, "Americans don't do such things." It's almost as if we don't need Bush's help to look away from uncomfortable facts, towards attractive illusions of moral superiority.
The problem, however, is that Rumsfeld's conflation (the summation of years of effort to conflate Iraq and Al-Qaeda in the public's imagination) didn't take place during a magic show, and the news from Iraq - while determined by the conventions of narrative - is not a poetic fiction. We are fooling ourselves by our own active misdirection - from the world around us to what we think that world ought to be. Rumsfeld and Bush are not fools; they are devout believers in a lie.
The antidote, I think, is the same as the skaldic poet's, and the magician's - to constantly remind the listeners that they are playing a part in the act. In the case of politics, however, the audience must stop playing a passive role, and realize that it's playing a role in its own deception.
Spinning Stories (2004)
At my brother’s suggestion, I recently devoured All The President’s Spin (2004) and enjoyed its rational, careful analysis of how the aesthetics of campaign rhetoric can operate as a form of political power – and how the Bush administration seems to have demonstrated a quantum leap in spin technique. It occurred to me that “spin” was a term that had crept up on me unnoticed; I don’t remember when I first heard it used, I’m not quite sure how long it’s been around, and for several years I’m quite sure I didn’t know what it meant. Now, like many an infectious meme, the concept of “spin” has proved far too useful to shake.
The Wikipedia’s entry on spin argues that the term signifies “a heavily biased portrayal in one’s own favor of an event or situation” designed to bring the spinner back on top. The label of “spin” implies that a source of information has been “disingenuous, deceptive and/or highly manipulative” in using tactics intended “to sway audiences away from widespread (and often commonsense) perceptions.”
The Online Etymology Dictionary (which notes the appearance of “spin doctor” during the Reagan presidency, in 1984) shows that the word comes from the Old English spinnan (twisting fibers into thread) and also implies stretching. Political spin, likewise, involves stretching facts and twisting them around each other to transform the thread of public discourse. Spin first meant “revolving” or “turning rapidly” in the 17th century; political spin certainly involves turning not only the facts around (to make them mean the opposite of what they appear to indicate by shifting their context) and disorienting the press and the public, but also a reversal of fortune in that negative data is re-worked in order to serve the argument that it initially appeared to refute. The goal of spin, after all, is to come out on top, no matter what the available information seems to indicate.
What fascinates me is how this tactic – and I enjoy how the excellent correspondents at Spinsanity manage to consistently treat “spin” as a tactic, not a condition – is often perceived as a state rather than a methodology. The emphasis, in other words, is on the pre-existing “bias” of the spin doctor, rather than on the feats of misdirection and illusionism that are required to make spin happen. (Note that bias, like spin, stems in part from language about the weaving and cutting of fabric – as does the word text, and, of course, fabrication).
But if one accepts bias as a fact of human nature – not insurmountable, of course, but nevertheless a basic tendency to look at the world from one’s own point of view (go figure) – then we can see a certain amount of “spin” in the stories we tell ourselves about who we are and what we’ve experienced. In the 12th century, Snorri Sturluson’s retelling of Norse myths preserves and re-uses a tactic favored by the Norse poets: the use of misdirection and deception, both as a plot device and a rhetorical strategy. His concept of poetry was deeply informed by this: poetry is a beautiful deception, a vastly creative construction: a distortion at best, and a fabrication at worst.
How is it that we have become such fundamentalists when it comes to story-telling that we expect reporters to be capable of conveying information without bias? Do we believe that their words can somehow provide an unadulterated access to the truth? Nor do I suggest that the existence of bias invalidates the concept of truth. Aristotle argued when he defended the value of poetry that many imitations of the truth can provide greater access to truth – through their compilation and comparison – than any one “authoritative” account might provide. I mean by all of this to suggest that our culture seems addicted to an almost unquestioned belief in pure information, as if information could exist independent of the story that shapes, conveys, and catalyzes it. David Mindich writes:
“… reporters, despite their claims to be ‘objective,’ did not (and do not) operate in a vacuum. This is what makes the information/story dichotomy so untenable: information cannot be conveyed without an organizing narrative, and stories cannot be told without conveying information.” (Just the Facts, 133).
Poets of other times knew this; the Northern skalds told a story that their audiences knew had been twisted and changed, to suit both the occasion and the audience. They told of how the world was created by ancient gods who could spin the world out of the “deceiving gap” that was before creation. They sang that their own words were borrowed or stolen; that their words, like the words of chieftains and even gods, should never be completely trusted. It was only in full knowledge that they were being, in some part, deceived by the poet that the audience could really play the game of meaning with him – and thereby absorb, with a skeptical ear and eye, the poet’s story in such a way that they could might glean some truth from it.
We, on the other hand, appear to have lost sight of both the unavoidable deception inherent among reporters – who use a ruthlessly minimal form of poetry, but poetry nonetheless – and their willingness, as well as our own, to be blatantly misled. It seems as if many reporters would remain blithely unaware of how their claims to objective transparency deny the power that they exert, particularly in constructing and perpetuating a particular bias.
Ultimately the worst sort of poet, it seems to me, is the one that claims that everyone else is doing the spinning. Such liars are dangerous: from their point of view, the world only revolves around them. We must also recall that no story can ever provide the complete and total truth. (If it could, it wouldn’t be a story – it would be reality itself.) By understanding the mechanisms of storytelling we can better perceive how a story has been spun – because all stories spin. It’s just that some poets are more honest about their alterations than others.
The Wikipedia’s entry on spin argues that the term signifies “a heavily biased portrayal in one’s own favor of an event or situation” designed to bring the spinner back on top. The label of “spin” implies that a source of information has been “disingenuous, deceptive and/or highly manipulative” in using tactics intended “to sway audiences away from widespread (and often commonsense) perceptions.”
The Online Etymology Dictionary (which notes the appearance of “spin doctor” during the Reagan presidency, in 1984) shows that the word comes from the Old English spinnan (twisting fibers into thread) and also implies stretching. Political spin, likewise, involves stretching facts and twisting them around each other to transform the thread of public discourse. Spin first meant “revolving” or “turning rapidly” in the 17th century; political spin certainly involves turning not only the facts around (to make them mean the opposite of what they appear to indicate by shifting their context) and disorienting the press and the public, but also a reversal of fortune in that negative data is re-worked in order to serve the argument that it initially appeared to refute. The goal of spin, after all, is to come out on top, no matter what the available information seems to indicate.
What fascinates me is how this tactic – and I enjoy how the excellent correspondents at Spinsanity manage to consistently treat “spin” as a tactic, not a condition – is often perceived as a state rather than a methodology. The emphasis, in other words, is on the pre-existing “bias” of the spin doctor, rather than on the feats of misdirection and illusionism that are required to make spin happen. (Note that bias, like spin, stems in part from language about the weaving and cutting of fabric – as does the word text, and, of course, fabrication).
But if one accepts bias as a fact of human nature – not insurmountable, of course, but nevertheless a basic tendency to look at the world from one’s own point of view (go figure) – then we can see a certain amount of “spin” in the stories we tell ourselves about who we are and what we’ve experienced. In the 12th century, Snorri Sturluson’s retelling of Norse myths preserves and re-uses a tactic favored by the Norse poets: the use of misdirection and deception, both as a plot device and a rhetorical strategy. His concept of poetry was deeply informed by this: poetry is a beautiful deception, a vastly creative construction: a distortion at best, and a fabrication at worst.
How is it that we have become such fundamentalists when it comes to story-telling that we expect reporters to be capable of conveying information without bias? Do we believe that their words can somehow provide an unadulterated access to the truth? Nor do I suggest that the existence of bias invalidates the concept of truth. Aristotle argued when he defended the value of poetry that many imitations of the truth can provide greater access to truth – through their compilation and comparison – than any one “authoritative” account might provide. I mean by all of this to suggest that our culture seems addicted to an almost unquestioned belief in pure information, as if information could exist independent of the story that shapes, conveys, and catalyzes it. David Mindich writes:
“… reporters, despite their claims to be ‘objective,’ did not (and do not) operate in a vacuum. This is what makes the information/story dichotomy so untenable: information cannot be conveyed without an organizing narrative, and stories cannot be told without conveying information.” (Just the Facts, 133).
Poets of other times knew this; the Northern skalds told a story that their audiences knew had been twisted and changed, to suit both the occasion and the audience. They told of how the world was created by ancient gods who could spin the world out of the “deceiving gap” that was before creation. They sang that their own words were borrowed or stolen; that their words, like the words of chieftains and even gods, should never be completely trusted. It was only in full knowledge that they were being, in some part, deceived by the poet that the audience could really play the game of meaning with him – and thereby absorb, with a skeptical ear and eye, the poet’s story in such a way that they could might glean some truth from it.
We, on the other hand, appear to have lost sight of both the unavoidable deception inherent among reporters – who use a ruthlessly minimal form of poetry, but poetry nonetheless – and their willingness, as well as our own, to be blatantly misled. It seems as if many reporters would remain blithely unaware of how their claims to objective transparency deny the power that they exert, particularly in constructing and perpetuating a particular bias.
Ultimately the worst sort of poet, it seems to me, is the one that claims that everyone else is doing the spinning. Such liars are dangerous: from their point of view, the world only revolves around them. We must also recall that no story can ever provide the complete and total truth. (If it could, it wouldn’t be a story – it would be reality itself.) By understanding the mechanisms of storytelling we can better perceive how a story has been spun – because all stories spin. It’s just that some poets are more honest about their alterations than others.
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