The New York Public Library ran a particularly great selection of lectures last year. Here is the culmination: Gunter Grass followed by both Grass and Norman Mailer.
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The comments thread under my rant against the execrable Zeitgeist has taken on a life of its own. Most people are clearly cranks, but a few are curious as to why I think such a seemly amateur and relatively unimportant film is worth talking about at all.
Rather than discussing the details of the film, which for me is like a chemist arguing with a priest as to whether you can turn water into wine by saying a prayer, I am more interested in the general pathology of conspiracy theories on the Internet (Perhaps this would be a good topic for some second-rate liberal arts degree).
The ability to travel to new continents created pandemic disease that wiped out many aboriginal Americans. The web has created a potential for diseases of the mind to spread more rapidly across continents than ever before. It is reasonable to take seriously the threat of idea pandemics caused by false ideas, spread via any new and powerful medium. The Rwandan genocide was triggered by the more traditional and less virulent medium of radio, as Hutus spread rumors that they would be attacked by Tutsi. I suspect that it is theoretically possible that an idea could spread via the Internet and translate into large scale violence, and that we should be on the look out for Internet memes that could mutate into malignant forms, just in case.
Current viral ideas on the Internet are largely benign, if bland or tasteless, from cuddly animals (LOLcats) to people drinking each other’s shit (2 girls one cup). Looking at the statistics from YouTube, conspiracy theory clips are extremely popular and increasingly so. Many of the ideas in these are only a few plot changes away from resembling those that have triggered violence, historically. Zeitgeist is a prime example.
Aired on Sept 4th on BBC to celebrate this weeks trial run of the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, a history of the Big Bang, a story far more wonderful and imaginative than Biblical creation.
(For those of you that have noticed that I keep bashing religion at the moment – I’ve had enough, I’ve cracked. I am normally relatively nonpartisan about politics because I don’t like or trust any politicians from McCain to Obama, but I can normally see people’s points of view from both sides of the fence. However, I really, really am depressed about a certain intellectually incurious, beehive hairdoed, 50s throwback, living adjacent to Siberia without a Passport. Someone probably quite nice as a person and harmless, if her opinions aren’t inflicted on everyone. Someone who thinks that fairy stories should be taught as an alternative to science and that rape victims should be forced to have babies without a welfare state to support them. Palin is living proof that consent can be manufactured, and in 15 minutes, as junk food rather than a healthy product.)
Albert Bartlett is a modern day Malthusian on a mission. Bartlett is physicist who claims that “The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function”. He points out what is undeniable: that at current growth rates the world population will have to decline within a period of historical rather than geological time (i.e. not that long), or we will not have enough room to stand up, let alone farm, and that this decline can only come about through a finite number of means: contraception, abortion, disease, war, famine.
With this knowledge, people who are against contraception, the item on this list which will cause the least suffering, are extremely dangerous.
If you believe that the exponential rise in population which coincides exactly with the use of fossil fuels has something to do with fossil fuels; if you believe that the geometric (i.e. non Malthusian) increase in the efficiency of farming through oil based products has something do with oil, then its even more imperative to start listening to people like Bartlett.
Unfortunately a large percentage of the population would rather believe that the cause of our prosperity is due to either the Dancing Wuli Masters, the ascendancy of Mars in Capricorn or the miracle of the image of Jesus Christ in a damp stain on a shit-house door in Ohio. Many of the same people think that we absolutely must breed like rabbits because a garbled, Greek translation of a late Bronze Age folk tale, called The Bible, modified through centuries of the game of Telephone, says so. Is it surprising that these people fail to understand the exponential function?
Charles Trenet sings La Mer, followed by Bobby Darin’s classic cover (only a slightly sub standard recording of it), Beyond the Sea, below.
Two brands have dominated the history of Scooters: Lambretta and Vespa.
The larger and more decorative Lambretta is often considered more desirable for vintage scooter enthusiasts, however, I have always preferred the minimalist simplicity of the snail-like Vespa from the early 60s, which seems to better capture the spirit of modernism rather than Mod.
This documentary traces the history of Viaggio and Innocenti scooters from post war Italy to mid 60s Britain. It has some particularly great period footage from the 50s.
American Christianity is increasingly weirder than Christianity in other countries (except, I am told, Brazil, although I have never visited). When I was younger, this video of a infant preaching in the hellfire tones of a death metal band would have been an alien artifact from a backwater Bayou. Today, it would fit comfortably on the cultural flagpole of ‘America’s Funniest Home Videos’. Perhaps the fact that this one year old does a fairly good impersonation of a Baptist preacher says more about the intellectual culture of evangelical sermons than the infant’s prodigy.
This is the point where you might think that I have posted exactly what I said I wouldn’t – the equivalent of a 30 second clip of a dog on a skateboard. The difference is that encouraging dogs to perform human acts like skateboarding is more amusing than cruel, whereas encouraging children to perform adult tasks like preaching or fellatio, is inhuman.
This seemingly bland video sums up for me, something very serious, the rise of nationalism in the guise of an artless bastardization of a religion that was pretty fucked up to start with.
Tony Wilson’s Factory Records defined the Manchester music scene. All the more amazing because he famously passed up signing Manchester’s biggest band, The Smith’s. Wilson claimed not to have regretted it: “Mr Morrissey had a great talent and was a truly horrible human being who treated others very badly and I’m over the moon that I never had to work with him”.
With the benefit of hindsight, the highlight of this interview is the brief chat with, the man who wrote the tunes rather than the words, Johnny Marr, rather than Morrissey (I wonder if Wilson is deliberately trying to wind him up by calling him Steven). Morrissey comes off as pretentious, but perhaps this was before he decided that Smith’s lyrics were deliberately funny.
This is where Morrissey and Wilson are fascinatingly similar. Both had grand ideas that were quite often pretentious but like natural showmen, both were clever enough to adapt to how what they did was perceived. Wilson was cocky enough to name a small record label in an industrial town, after the world’s most famous art studio. Today, Wilson’s Factory is as famous as Warhol’s.
As an example of Morrissey’s showman-like adaptability, I can’t help but think that his lyrics were originally intended to be serious, but when the DJ who launched them to fame (John Peel), assumed that they were witty and ironic, Morrissey played along rather than lose face. Whether this is true or not, almost doesn’t matter, since perhaps creativity is just knowing how to edit accidents. In the end, the wit and irony became real, even if the style had originated as accidental camp.
Popular songs will never be all bland after a line like: I was only joking when I said by rights you should be bludgeoned in your bed.
I’ve posted a list of ejection seat videos over at Oobject today. The top clip stood out because of the oblique choice in music. It features extremely calm oriental sounds of the type used to represent ‘a taste of the orient’ in a commercial for: (a) a Chinese restaurant; (b) a spa; (c) somebody about to get a Kung Fu beating. As a backdrop for the extreme violence of a fighter jet ejection, it works surprisingly well, while the more obvious choice of Blur’s ‘Song 2’ is used for the second clip.
Interesting that such different pieces of music can be used quite effectively, for the same thing.
Charles and Ray appear on a very dated TV show presented by a creature with a very dated accent to launch a chair which looks as modern today as it did then.
In two parts, second part here.