Love... no wait, it's DESIRE.

This post may seem incoherent to some, but I think that comes with the topic.
As I am studying for the upcoming test, I read over our short in class discussion about Desire. And about how Prof Kalmar suggested that our love objects are not ultimate or exclusive. This being due to the fact that Desire is shaped by Reality. So although our love may unite us with certain people, Desire is more general... it is not only found in that one love object, but more generally for anything that makes us feel Love and we only know when we encounter it.

As a Psych student, and knowing Robert Sternberg's Triangular Theory of Love (see picture), I've always found that Love is something that is hard to grasp and I do believe that it's something that you'll know only when you encounter it and that there can be many love objects, depending on the -type- of love. But our discussion about Desire and the Real has enlightened my perspective.

Relating this to how our Desire always points towards the Real, in hopes of uniting us with the other half, I can see how this can be so frustrating. From a psychological perspective, it is frustrating because two people may be trying to find the same Type of love in each other but their relationship may not be falling under their ideal Type of love. From an anthropological perspective, the desire to unite with the other half is frustrating because as we get closer to attaining our Desire, we become afraid because we fear the loss of our Reality as we approach the Real.

I think the Psychological perspective on Love is much more optimistic in that it seems more possible to attain the ultimate Consummate Love with another, so long as you have the 3 main ingredients. Whereas Desire is much more general and free-floating, and only seems to make us feel repelled by it in the end because we fear the loss of our sense of Self as we come closer to fulfilling our Desires.

However, I also think that the representation of Love as a Desire that points towards the Real is ultimately what we are all looking for. Not a formulaic compatibility with another, but another half that completes us. And I think that most classic love stories and films portray Love as Desire for the Real as well, with the protagonists wondering why they have fallen for this other person with whom they share a frustrating but chemical relationship with.

I'm going to leave this post as is, terribly inconclusive, and go back to studying now... ;P

The Social Network and Žižek

“I don’t want to use facebook anymore”, was my first thought after I watched the movie the Social Network.

Before I watched that movie I thought it is a story about how a smart young man fulfills his dreams. Even when all of his friends was turning back on him because of the money and fame, he will never stop chasing his dreams. But I soon realize I was completely wrong.

The way Mark Zerckberg treated his friends in the film made me felt that he don’t deserve to be the youngest billionaire in the world. He kept claiming that he invented the Facebook like that’ the only thing matters in the world. That’s right, he is a genius, he invented the Facebook but that doesn’t give him the right to treat his friends like that.

These days I was reread Žižek; and I thought that in that film, the reason Mark valued the Facebook so much could applied what Žižek mentioned as the desires for the ”use value” and the “exchange value”. Mark keeps claiming to everyone that he invented the Facebook. It seems that he desires what the website could bring to him: girlfriends, fame, and wealth. However, in my opinion, things like fame and money can only be considered as the “use value” of the website, they are forms of expression of the “exchange value”. For Mark, what he really wanted was a confirmation of the others' attitude toward him, in other words, he wanted to be cared about by other people. In the beginning he thought he could get that by joining the final clubs, or by becoming famous, but he failed. It is only in the very end of the film where he finally realized what he wanted, so he sent out an Facebook invitation to his ex-girlfriend . May be this time he will finally realize what is the most valuable thing for him.

After all it is a great movie. I really love it.

Fight Club and Hegemony

When we discussed about the concept of hegemony in the lecture, I immediately thought of the movie "Fight Club" filmed by David Fincher. (BTW, for those who don't know, he also directed "The Social Network") In the movie, the narrator (Edward Norton) is an enthusiastic man who lives mundane life during the day and goes to the support group just for crying hard so that he can no longer suffer from insomnia during the night. This guy later meets Tyler (Brad Pitt), his alternate personality who has everything the narrator has longed for. Tyler intrigues and fascinates the narrator for many reasons, and one of these is that he is an activist dissatisfied with the society under hegemony where well-privileged groups exercise control over under-privileged people. He also pities those weaker groups who ultimately give their approval by taking unequal distribution of power for granted just like the narrator. In other words, Tyler feels pathetic that their naturalization eventually makes the dominant people maintain their power without forcing. Thus, he creates fight clube where oppressed males can express their aggressions towards whatever they feel dissatisfied with and it later evolves into a terrorist group that shows average people's strong resistance to the society. They weird thing I notice here is that as the movie heads towards the end, the fight club they are in has transformed into another hegemonic system where Tyler controls over the members as if he is the rulign power. At this point, I interpret this irony with Roland Barthes' idea that myth is part of the system of privileged. To elaborate, Tyler creates his hegemony by convincing members with the myth of destruction of the society that has oppressed them and by making it inarguable for them.

Anyways, here I only made a brief comment on just some elements of the movie that I think are related to the concept of hegemony we talked about in class. The movie in fact contains many cultural texts that I haven't written above such as capitalism, consumerism, gender issues etc. and definitely gives something to think about. I know it's a pretty famous movie but if you haven't seen it, it'd be nice to check it out during the break.

The living dead

I figured that since I'm a huge fan of zombie movies, it would be foolish not to take this opportunity to share some of my views on the subject of the living dead. As we all know, zombies represent something that we are afraid of; things that have a drive without desire. All zombie movies depict mindless beasts carrying on day after day, with the sole purpose of devouring the flesh of some poor unsuspecting individuals. Their lack of desire of course, is based on the fact that zombies are dead and require no sustenance. I've seen a movie where a zombie head (the rest of his body is else where at the time) tries desperately to get a bite off a woman's leg. The flesh enters his mouth, and leaks out of his neck instantly, but he continues to feast.

From a purely anthropological viewpoint, one begins to ponder on the reasons behind why and how our minds conjured up something so gruesome. Since movies, television and other forms of media reflect social themes, what theme is reflected in zombie movies, or even in movies like the terminator for that matter? Apart from being mind blowing-ly entertaining, they reflect our fears, our hopes and our fantasies. Themes like life after death (albeit a very distorted one) and drive without desire are but a few reflected in zombie movies. Without delving into them, a couple of others could be capitalism (I know this one demands an explanation, but just think about it the next time you see a movie like Dawn of the Dead) and social struggle (Land of the Dead)

The Desert of the Real

Zizek's theories on reality and the real are the basis of key ideologies in various Hollywood movies, in particular, those pertaining to the science fiction genre. In the movie, The Matrix, these ideas are well played upon. Since I'm sure most of you have already seen the movie, to explain it in a nutshell, it is about an alternate reality, where machines have acquired an extremely high degree of artificial intelligence, and in doing so, have surpassed their human creators, who now they only see fit as a power source. To implement this 'innovative' power scheme of theirs, the machines plug a bunch of wires into the humans to drain their energy, and one special wire that is plugged directly into their brains that simulates a virtual reality (that is called the Matrix) that is meant to fool them into believing that everything is alright. A handful of human beings realize the situation they are in and form a resistance aimed at 'un-plugging' people from the matrix and fighting the machines.

Here, the play on the ideas of reality vs the real is clear. The Matrix represents reality, and the world that is dominated by the machines represents the real. The movie represents a constant struggle between these two aspects of life, much like the The Black Square painting by Kazimir Malevich.

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

(Watch video for explanation of post title)

Today, I came across the article "Word: Jay-Z’s “Decoded” and the language of hip-hop" Kelefa Sanneh on the New York Times online site. ( http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2010/12/06/101206crat_atlarge_sanneh#ixzz17Gj7eHOA.) The article provides examples of different people (academics, rappers) creating books which anthologize and annotate rap lyrics with attention to poetic devices and tropes. This intersection of elite scholarly techniques and what is typically seen as music out of the under/lower/working classes is relevant (and perhaps exemplary) to the concept we have recently learned about of "embourgeoisement". What struck me most clearly was a paragraph that perfectly portrays the difference between economic and cultural capital, as theorized by Bordieu:

"One day four years ago, Jay-Z was reading The Economist when he came across an article bearing the heading “Bubbles and Bling.” The article was about Cristal, the expensive champagne that figured in the rhymes of Jay-Z and other prominent rappers. In the article, Frédéric Rouzaud, the managing director of the winery behind Cristal, was asked whether these unsought endorsements might hurt his brand. “That’s a good question, but what can we do? We can’t forbid people from buying it,” he said, adding, slyly, “I’m sure Dom Pérignon or Krug would be delighted to have their business.” Jay-Z was irritated enough that he released a statement vowing never to drink Cristal again, and he started removing references to Cristal from his old lyrics during concerts. (He eventually switched his endorsement to Armand de Brignac.) In Jay-Z’s view, Rouzaud had not only insulted hip-hop culture; he had violated an unspoken promotional arrangement. “We used their brand as a signifier of luxury and they got free advertising and credibility every time we mentioned it,” he writes. “We were trading cachet.” (Actually, the book, not free of typos, says “cache.”)"

Although Jay-z has the economic capital to purchase Cristal, the managing director of Cristal denies his cultural capital to display the product. Clearly, Jay-Z's conception of "credibility" is not the same credibility Cristal aims to convey to its customers, nor does the company want to be associated with "free advertising." In successfully alienating Jay-z, Cristal is able to maintain its elite status, while enforcing class distinctions, although perhaps minimizing its economic capital. The perception of cultural capital is dominant in this paragraph as the interviewer of Frédéric Rouzaud questioned not what the endorsement would do for Cristal, but if "it would hurt his brand." The implication that the upper-middle and perhaps upper class customers would be turned of the product because of its popular celebrity status assumes these classes are constantly working to distinguish themselves form the mainstream popular. I don't know any of the statistics, but it would be interesting to see if Cristal took a loss when Jay-z began his boycott.

This section of the article exemplifies the different perceptions of "cache"/"cahet" and presumably how Jay-z is welcoming the process of embourgeoisement while Cristal is denying it.


Here is an older blog about the prevalence of Cristal in rap lyrics:
http://newmediasphere.blogs.com/nms/2004/12/bring_on_the_bl.html

The Double Goodbye and the Phatic Function of Language

We've all been there. You are walking along the street with a friend and say your goodbyes as you approach a corner, only to realize, as the lights change, that you are both heading in the same direction. Suddenly, your once-lively conversation comes to a halt and you are left walking in an awkward silence. But why is it that the word "goodbye" should have such power over your conversation? I think the answer lies in what Roman Jakobson termed 'the phatic function of language'.

According to Jakobson, the phatic function is focused on contact, or on beginning, ending or continuing a conversation. The question "how are you?" at the beginning of a conversation is primarily phatic, as we are not so much interested in how the person is actually doing, but rather wish to establish contact with them. The word "goodbye" is also largely phatic, signifying the end of a conversation. By saying "goodbye" and continuing to walk with someone, we create a disparity between physical and linguistic contact. We can still see and hear the person we are with, but we are no longer in conversation with them. We cannot simply continue our previous conversation because we have already ended it with our "goodbye". Nor can we start a new conversation (by saying "Hello", for instance) because there has been no break in physical contact. If we had said "goodbye" and walked on different streets for a block, only to meet up again on the same corner, it would be much easier to restart our conversation, perhaps with a somewhat jesterly "Hello again". But, since we never left our friend, we cannot simply begin a new conversation. The solution, then, seems to lie in simply ignoring the "goodbye" and forcing the previous conversation to continue. Either that, or walking in an awkward silence until you finally (actually) part ways.