Richard Calder‘s Frenzetta is a decadent fever dream of a novel. Set in a future where humanity is divided between the “pure” (reactionary straights) and the “perverse” (people who have been genetically re-engineered to include the animalistic in their nature; they include wolfmen, catgirls, insectmen, spiderwomen, among numerous others), the novel traces a delirious course through various scenarios of lust and catastrophe. The narrator, a zombie (seven-feet tall, supernaturally strong, but impotent, returned from the dead and remaining animate through a diet of fresh brains) and his beloved Frenzetta (a sneering 17-year-0ld punkette, half-rat, and fated to die in the throes of orgasm) wander through the continents of a decaying earth (in which former human technologies are gradually forgotten, due to the influence of the perverse, and the pigheadedness of the pure) searching for a deliverance – both sexual and existential – that they are unable to define. The novel’s philosophical reflections on the nature of desire are given with a light touch, never overshadowing the novel’s delirious, overwrought prose. All in all, the novel is sort of pop Bataille, a melancholy underwriting its numerous titillations, with an overwhelming awareness of the fatal clash of sex and death, but also a sense of futility and decay suggesting the unattainability of the ideal, even of self-annihilation.
Richard Calder‘s Frenzetta is a decadent fever dream of a novel. Set in a future where humanity is divided between the “pure” (reactionary straights) and the “perverse” (people who have been genetically re-engineered to include the animalistic in their nature; they include wolfmen, catgirls, insectmen, spiderwomen, among numerous others), the novel traces a delirious course through various scenarios of lust and catastrophe. The narrator, a zombie (seven-feet tall, supernaturally strong, but impotent, returned from the dead and remaining animate through a diet of fresh brains) and his beloved Frenzetta (a sneering 17-year-0ld punkette, half-rat, and fated to die in the throes of orgasm) wander through the continents of a decaying earth (in which former human technologies are gradually forgotten, due to the influence of the perverse, and the pigheadedness of the pure) searching for a deliverance – both sexual and existential – that they are unable to define. The novel’s philosophical reflections on the nature of desire are given with a light touch, never overshadowing the novel’s delirious, overwrought prose. All in all, the novel is sort of pop Bataille, a melancholy underwriting its numerous titillations, with an overwhelming awareness of the fatal clash of sex and death, but also a sense of futility and decay suggesting the unattainability of the ideal, even of self-annihilation.
In the past, I’ve liked Meshell Ndegeocello‘s more visceral yet outgoing, angry, and political albums – like Cookie: The Anthropological Mixtape – better than I have her more inward-looking, personal albums – such as Bitter, which was, I guess, not funky enough and too Lilith Fair-like for my taste (OK, so perhaps I’m more of a stereotypical guy than I like to think I am). But her new album, Comfort Woman, seems to me the best of both worlds. It’s a quiet album, made mostly of love songs. It’s even happy, optimistic, and upbeat for the most part – as Bitter was not. Yet despite my resistance to music in such a mode, Comfort Woman entirely wins me over. The album performs the rare feat of conveying a (non-ecstatic, or non-orgasmic) joy without being lulling. And this is all on account of the way it moves. The album is deeply funky, albeit without the hard edge of Cookie and some of Meshell’s other records. (I’d like to just call it “deep funk,” by analogy with “deep house”). Under the melodies, which are mostly gentle, there is a lot of roiling and seething rhythm. Not harsh or aggressive, but deeply – alive. Cross-rhythms percolate in some songs, an off-center beat pulls you along in others, a potent dub energizes others. Not to mention the best song on the album, “Liliquoi Moon,” which introduces the one note of negativity in the album – “death’ll come fast, I want to be free, closer to the sky” – but even this negativity is lyrical and strangely hopeful – “I want to fly” – and then the song concludes with an intense hendrixesque raveup guitar solo by Doyle Bramhall II. All in all, Comfort Woman is riveting; all the more so, perhaps, for the way it sneaks up on you, delivering on promises you didn’t even realize it had made.
In the past, I’ve liked Meshell Ndegeocello‘s more visceral yet outgoing, angry, and political albums – like Cookie: The Anthropological Mixtape – better than I have her more inward-looking, personal albums – such as Bitter, which was, I guess, not funky enough and too Lilith Fair-like for my taste (OK, so perhaps I’m more of a stereotypical guy than I like to think I am). But her new album, Comfort Woman, seems to me the best of both worlds. It’s a quiet album, made mostly of love songs. It’s even happy, optimistic, and upbeat for the most part – as Bitter was not. Yet despite my resistance to music in such a mode, Comfort Woman entirely wins me over. The album performs the rare feat of conveying a (non-ecstatic, or non-orgasmic) joy without being lulling. And this is all on account of the way it moves. The album is deeply funky, albeit without the hard edge of Cookie and some of Meshell’s other records. (I’d like to just call it “deep funk,” by analogy with “deep house”). Under the melodies, which are mostly gentle, there is a lot of roiling and seething rhythm. Not harsh or aggressive, but deeply – alive. Cross-rhythms percolate in some songs, an off-center beat pulls you along in others, a potent dub energizes others. Not to mention the best song on the album, “Liliquoi Moon,” which introduces the one note of negativity in the album – “death’ll come fast, I want to be free, closer to the sky” – but even this negativity is lyrical and strangely hopeful – “I want to fly” – and then the song concludes with an intense hendrixesque raveup guitar solo by Doyle Bramhall II. All in all, Comfort Woman is riveting; all the more so, perhaps, for the way it sneaks up on you, delivering on promises you didn’t even realize it had made.
Philip Pullman‘s slender new volume, Lyra’s Oxford, is best thought of as a little present for those of us who love the His Dark Materials trilogy. It’s a short story, “Lyra and the Birds,” which picks up the life of the trilogy’s heroine two years after the events of the final volume; together with a number of other artifacts (including a map) from the Oxford of Lyra’s world, and in one case (perhaps) from that of our own. The book has some nice illustrations, and a fine red binding. The story – which you can read in twenty minutes – is about the vagaries and uncertainty of interpretation; “everything means something,” Lyra says, “We just have to find out how to read it.” And again: “everything has a meaning, if only we could read it.” The difficulties of reading are not just a matter for those who deal with arcane texts; they are very much the fabric of our lives. Pullman is one of those rare authors I love utterly unreservedly – even though (in contrast to my other favorites) his preoccupations are in many ways quite distant from my own.
Philip Pullman‘s slender new volume, Lyra’s Oxford, is best thought of as a little present for those of us who love the His Dark Materials trilogy. It’s a short story, “Lyra and the Birds,” which picks up the life of the trilogy’s heroine two years after the events of the final volume; together with a number of other artifacts (including a map) from the Oxford of Lyra’s world, and in one case (perhaps) from that of our own. The book has some nice illustrations, and a fine red binding. The story – which you can read in twenty minutes – is about the vagaries and uncertainty of interpretation; “everything means something,” Lyra says, “We just have to find out how to read it.” And again: “everything has a meaning, if only we could read it.” The difficulties of reading are not just a matter for those who deal with arcane texts; they are very much the fabric of our lives. Pullman is one of those rare authors I love utterly unreservedly – even though (in contrast to my other favorites) his preoccupations are in many ways quite distant from my own.
‘ve been reading some of the books of Gabriel Tarde, a French sociologist of the 1890s, once famous, the intellectual antagonist of Durkheim (but Durkheim won). Reading Tarde is an unexpected pleasure. The guy is so brilliantly wacko that I’m amazed that he was ever taken seriously as a sociologist. He’s more a crazy metaphysician of social (and other) forms of organization, than someone who has anything concrete to say about any actually existing society of his time.
I’ve been reading some of the books of Gabriel Tarde, a French sociologist of the 1890s, once famous, the intellectual antagonist of Durkheim (but Durkheim won). I started looking at Tarde out of idle curiosity, but now I’m glad I did…
Continue reading “Gabriel Tarde”
I find that I like Erykah Badu‘s new album, Worldwide Underground, better than anything she has previously done; though I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that many (most?) of her past fans like it less. This (both why I like it better, and why others might like it less) is because it’s really groove music: that is to say, it deemphasizes melodies, or at least strong melodic profiles, and relies instead (or much more) on repeated grooves and riffs, giving the songs, and the album as a whole, a kind of warmly propulsive feel – except “propulsive” isn’t quite right, in that it implies progression, whereas Worldwide Underground eschews any sense of forward motion almost entirely. Also, it’s not even “propulsive” in the James Brown sense of funk that really makes you MOVE, even if in fact you aren’t going anywhere (i.e. you are vibrating in place, rather than going in a particular direction) – it’s way too laid back to be doing anything like that. Most remarkably, the album sustains this sense for 50 minutes or so even at the expense of de-emphasizing Ms. Badu’s rather formidable voice, which here blends into the mix rather than dominating it as it did on her previous albums.
I’m not sure where to go with this observation, aside from saying that I like the results. It seems too obvious and cliched, and thereby saying far too little, to classify this music in gendered, sexual terms, e.g. by identifying Badu’s “feminine” pre-orgasmic rhythms in opposition to “cock rock” (I’m not quite sure what the equivalent term would be for hip hop or r&b); nor am I quite able to classify it in drug terms in the way one can often do with music (I mean, in the sense that certain dance music is clearly linked to Ecstasy, or that D’Angelo’s Voodoo, to my mind the greatest-of-all-time example of laid-back groove music, is so clearly stoned-out). So I’ll just have to go with the flow on this one (can’t believe I actually wrote that).
I find that I like Erykah Badu‘s new album, Worldwide Underground, better than anything she has previously done; though I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that many (most?) of her past fans like it less. This (both why I like it better, and why others might like it less) is because it’s really groove music: that is to say, it deemphasizes melodies, or at least strong melodic profiles, and relies instead (or much more) on repeated grooves and riffs, giving the songs, and the album as a whole, a kind of warmly propulsive feel – except “propulsive” isn’t quite right, in that it implies progression, whereas Worldwide Underground eschews any sense of forward motion almost entirely. Also, it’s not even “propulsive” in the James Brown sense of funk that really makes you MOVE, even if in fact you aren’t going anywhere (i.e. you are vibrating in place, rather than going in a particular direction) – it’s way too laid back to be doing anything like that. Most remarkably, the album sustains this sense for 50 minutes or so even at the expense of de-emphasizing Ms. Badu’s rather formidable voice, which here blends into the mix rather than dominating it as it did on her previous albums.
I’m not sure where to go with this observation, aside from saying that I like the results. It seems too obvious and cliched, and thereby saying far too little, to classify this music in gendered, sexual terms, e.g. by identifying Badu’s “feminine” pre-orgasmic rhythms in opposition to “cock rock” (I’m not quite sure what the equivalent term would be for hip hop or r&b); nor am I quite able to classify it in drug terms in the way one can often do with music (I mean, in the sense that certain dance music is clearly linked to Ecstasy, or that D’Angelo’s Voodoo, to my mind the greatest-of-all-time example of laid-back groove music, is so clearly stoned-out). So I’ll just have to go with the flow on this one (can’t believe I actually wrote that).
Since I’m stuck with Windows for the time being (when I can afford it, I intend to go back to the MacOS, which I abandoned some years ago), I was very happy that Apple released iTunes for Windows last week. It’s a better tool for managing my iPod than ephpod was (not to mention infinitely better than the horrible Music Match Jukebox, which was the software Apple previously officially provided to Windows iPod owners). Plus, now I can buy from the Apple Music Store: though I don’t like copying restrictions in general, Apple’s seem less onerous than those that come with most of the other legal online music sites, so I suppose I can live with them.
Anyway, the first songs I bought from the Apple Music Store were a few cuts from Bubba Sparxxx‘s new album, produced by Timbaland: remarakble stuff, especially “Comin’ Round”, which somehow melds the razor-sharp hiphop beats Timbaland is famous for with Appalachian fiddling, a genius culture-meld I’ve never heard anything like before.
Among recent listens, I also like the latest from the always brilliant Go Home Productions, “Sly Beyonce Walks Like A Nerd,” a clever (and highly illegal) track that (as the title suggests) mixes Beyonce and N.E.R.D. (The Neptunes), with a little Sly and the Family Stone thrown in for good measure, to produce the ultimate neurotic love song.
Since I’m stuck with Windows for the time being (when I can afford it, I intend to go back to the MacOS, which I abandoned some years ago), I was very happy that Apple released iTunes for Windows last week. It’s a better tool for managing my iPod than ephpod was (not to mention infinitely better than the horrible Music Match Jukebox, which was the software Apple previously officially provided to Windows iPod owners). Plus, now I can buy from the Apple Music Store: though I don’t like copying restrictions in general, Apple’s seem less onerous than those that come with most of the other legal online music sites, so I suppose I can live with them.
Anyway, the first songs I bought from the Apple Music Store were a few cuts from Bubba Sparxxx‘s new album, produced by Timbaland: remarakble stuff, especially “Comin’ Round”, which somehow melds the razor-sharp hiphop beats Timbaland is famous for with Appalachian fiddling, a genius culture-meld I’ve never heard anything like before.
Among recent listens, I also like the latest from the always brilliant Go Home Productions, “Sly Beyonce Walks Like A Nerd,” a clever (and highly illegal) track that (as the title suggests) mixes Beyonce and N.E.R.D. (The Neptunes), with a little Sly and the Family Stone thrown in for good measure, to produce the ultimate neurotic love song.
Following the example of Jenny, I’ve decided to use Re_Invigorate to find out how many people are actually reading this blog. I suppose I could look at the raw data collected by my service provider, but I’m too lazy. I wonder what I will find out, and whether I really want to know…
Following the example of Jenny, I’ve decided to use Re_Invigorate to find out how many people are actually reading this blog. I suppose I could look at the raw data collected by my service provider, but I’m too lazy. I wonder what I will find out, and whether I really want to know…
My new book, Connected, Or, What It Means To Live in the Network Society, is now in print! (Amazon.com doesn’t seem to have it yet, but I have received my own copies, and they now have it at my campus bookstore). It’s a book about cyberculture and globalization, in which I use science fiction novels as my main sources of social theory. The book discusses all sorts of things from copyright piracy to psychedelic drugs to evolutionary psychology to ubiquitous surveillance and corporate control to the Experience Music Project museum in Seattle.
I am hoping at some point to have the entire text of the book available online; I’m still negotiating with my press, which is willing to let me do this in principle, but would like for me to wait until the book has been for sale for six months or a year.
My new book, Connected, Or, What It Means To Live in the Network Society, is now in print! (Amazon.com doesn’t seem to have it yet, but I have received my own copies, and they now have it at my campus bookstore). It’s a book about cyberculture and globalization, in which I use science fiction novels as my main sources of social theory. The book discusses all sorts of things from copyright piracy to psychedelic drugs to evolutionary psychology to ubiquitous surveillance and corporate control to the Experience Music Project museum in Seattle.
I am hoping at some point to have the entire text of the book available online; I’m still negotiating with my press, which is willing to let me do this in principle, but would like for me to wait until the book has been for sale for six months or a year.
Kill Bill is gorgeous and ice-cold. Pure formalism. Where Tarantino’s earlier films were filled with humanity, with unforgettable characters and genius dialog, Kill Bill reduces these to an absolute minimum. Nothing is allowed to interfere with the pure kinetic beauty of the fight scenes. That is to say, Kill Bill is to Pulp Fiction as Kubrick is to Howard Hawks. In fairness, Kill Bill never feels anal or constipated the way all of Kubrick’s films do. Nor is Tarantino doggedly repetitive, the way Kubrick insists on being.
All the set-ups, all the elements of cinematic form in Kill Bill are fantastic: the decors, the camera angles, the editing of the fight scenes are so brilliant that they reveal in comparison how lame and unimaginative nearly all other English-language action cinema is. Even Lord of the Rings, powerful and lyrical as it is in bringing to life its (admittedly) dubious source material, can’t hold a candle to Kill Bill in terms of sheer visual inventiveness.
But Kill Bill‘s formal mastery comes at a price. Near the very start of the film we read the title: “Revenge is always best served cold” (which Tarantino, with characteristic cinephile in-joke wit, tags as an “old Klingon proverb”). And this story of Uma Thurman’s revenge is indeed served cold. The film is so utterly devoid of emotion it feels reptilian. (Perhaps I am slandering reptiles?). The fight scenes are awe-inspiring, but they have absolutely none of the sense of fun that makes Tarantino’s models, the Hong Kong fight scenes, so exhilarating. Nor is there any of the sense of fatality that imbues Leone’s (and others’) spaghetti Westerns, another obvious source of Tarantino’s iconography.
Even Tarantino’s racial obsessions are cut to the bare minimum. Uma Thurman gets the people of color out of the way in Volume One, killing Vivica Fox and Lucy Liu; in Volume 2, to be released next year, she will get to go after the white villains, Daryl Hannah, Michael Madsen, and David Carradine (unless Carradine is a fake Asian, as he was in the frequently-Tarantino-referenced Kung Fu).
So Tarantino has proved that he is as brilliant a visual director as he is a writer/director; but at what cost?
Kill Bill is gorgeous and ice-cold. Pure formalism. Where Tarantino’s earlier films were filled with humanity, with unforgettable characters and genius dialog, Kill Bill reduces these to an absolute minimum. Nothing is allowed to interfere with the pure kinetic beauty of the fight scenes. That is to say, Kill Bill is to Pulp Fiction as Kubrick is to Howard Hawks. In fairness, Kill Bill never feels anal or constipated the way all of Kubrick’s films do. Nor is Tarantino doggedly repetitive, the way Kubrick insists on being.
All the set-ups, all the elements of cinematic form in Kill Bill are fantastic: the decors, the camera angles, the editing of the fight scenes are so brilliant that they reveal in comparison how lame and unimaginative nearly all other English-language action cinema is. Even Lord of the Rings, powerful and lyrical as it is in bringing to life its (admittedly) dubious source material, can’t hold a candle to Kill Bill in terms of sheer visual inventiveness.
As for the citations and allusions: I got the sense that nearly everything in the film was sampled from one or another obscure samurai or martial arts film that I don’t remember or (more likely) haven’t seen. The effect was like the best hip hop: the film is rich in its web of references, and this works even if you don’t know what the references are to.
But Kill Bill‘s formal mastery and meta-cinematic referentiality comes at a price. Near the very start of the film we read the title: “Revenge is always best served cold” (which Tarantino, with characteristic cinephile in-joke wit, tags as an “old Klingon proverb”). And this story of Uma Thurman’s revenge is indeed served cold. The film is so utterly devoid of emotion it feels reptilian. (Perhaps I am slandering reptiles?). The fight scenes are awe-inspiring, but they have absolutely none of the sense of fun that makes Tarantino’s models, the Hong Kong fight scenes, so exhilarating. Nor is there any of the sense of fatality that imbues Leone’s (and others’) spaghetti Westerns, another obvious source of Tarantino’s iconography.
Even Tarantino’s racial obsessions are cut to the bare minimum. Uma Thurman gets the people of color out of the way in Volume One, killing Vivica Fox and Lucy Liu; in Volume 2, to be released next year, she will get to go after the white villains, Daryl Hannah, Michael Madsen, and David Carradine (unless Carradine is a fake Asian, as he was in the frequently-Tarantino-referenced Kung Fu).
So Tarantino has proved that he is as brilliant a visual director as he is a writer/director; but at what cost?
Aki Kaurismaki‘s most recent film to date, The Man Without A Past (2002), is as good as anything he’s done. I’ve gradually come to realize that Kaurismaki’s films are inverted melodramas. That is to say, they are just as stylized and anti-naturalistic, just as reliant on music and decor, and just as socially critical as the melodramas of Douglas Sirk or anybody else; only Kaurismaki’s films are stylized by restraint, where traditional melodramas are stylized by excess. Kaurismaki’s deadpan minimalism – the way the characters are stoic and restrained, and do not indulge in any emotional displays; but also the way the scenes are framed, and the way the camera lingers on desolate details, or pauses while a melancholy song is being sung, but elides determinate action almost completely – all this formal restraint is almost Bressonian, although Kaurismaki is a humanist, and has none of Bresson’s spiritual severity.
The Man Without A Past is about a man (Markku Peltola) who suffers amnesia after he is attacked, and beaten severely on the head, by a trio of punks. He slowly and patiently rebuilds his life, although he has nothing. That’s just about it. As in more conventional melodrama, the characters are crushed and betrayed by social forces beyond their control — here, as usual in Kaurismaki, by the bureaucratic uncaringness of the state, and the ruthlessness of big Capital. But in this film, as in Floating Clouds and a very few others, Kaurismaki even allows himself a bit of hope at the end, which would be sentimental were it not so wry and understated. (Well, in a sense it is sentimental — this is a sort of melodrama, as I said, rather than Bressonian tragedy — but it is an entirely justified, “earned” sentimentality).
The film is devoid of the gorgeous youth you see in Hollywood movies. The female lead and love interest, as so often in Kaurismaki’s films, is played by the utterly sublime Kati Outinen, who has never looked so worn and haggard. (She’s older now – a decade older than she was in Match Factory Girl – and it shows).
Great soundtrack: the music is a mixture of 50s-ish rock (Finnish imitations) and more traditional melodies; usually a song is introduced diegetically, and then continues non-diegetically, which was neat.
Aki Kaurismaki‘s most recent film to date, The Man Without A Past (2002), is as good as anything he’s done. I’ve gradually come to realize that Kaurismaki’s films are inverted melodramas. That is to say, they are just as stylized and anti-naturalistic, just as reliant on music and decor, and just as socially critical as the melodramas of Douglas Sirk or anybody else; only Kaurismaki’s films are stylized by restraint, where traditional melodramas are stylized by excess. Kaurismaki’s deadpan minimalism – the way the characters are stoic and restrained, and do not indulge in any emotional displays; but also the way the scenes are framed, and the way the camera lingers on desolate details, or pauses while a melancholy song is being sung, but elides determinate action almost completely – all this formal restraint is almost Bressonian, although Kaurismaki is a humanist, and has none of Bresson’s spiritual severity.
The Man Without A Past is about a man (Markku Peltola) who suffers amnesia after he is attacked, and beaten severely on the head, by a trio of punks. He slowly and patiently rebuilds his life, although he has nothing. That’s just about it. As in more conventional melodrama, the characters are crushed and betrayed by social forces beyond their control — here, as usual in Kaurismaki, by the bureaucratic uncaringness of the state, and the ruthlessness of big Capital. But in this film, as in Floating Clouds and a very few others, Kaurismaki even allows himself a bit of hope at the end, which would be sentimental were it not so wry and understated. (Well, in a sense it is sentimental — this is a sort of melodrama, as I said, rather than Bressonian tragedy — but it is an entirely justified, “earned” sentimentality).
The film is devoid of the gorgeous youth you see in Hollywood movies. The female lead and love interest, as so often in Kaurismaki’s films, is played by the utterly sublime Kati Outinen, who has never looked so worn and haggard. (She’s older now – a decade older than she was in Match Factory Girl – and it shows).
Great soundtrack: the music is a mixture of 50s-ish rock (Finnish imitations) and more traditional melodies; usually a song is introduced diegetically, and then continues non-diegetically, which was neat.