4.5.2004
The Passion of the Christ: Terrorist Supporting Vehicle
"Hanan Nsour, a veiled, 21-year-old Muslim in Jordan, came out of "The Passion of the Christ" in tears and pronounced her verdict: Mel Gibson's crucifixion epic "unmasked the Jews' lies and I hope that everybody, everywhere, turns against the Jews."
Check out the rest of this story about the warm reception for The Passion among Arab anti-Semites. More evidence of the kinship shared by retrogrades, from Texas to Syria.
YMSP 82 10:14 AM
Kurt
"At least you know comedians aren't going to kill themselves: they're always so happy."
-YMSP, to V+, ten years ago today.
YMSP 82 9:47 AM
Retribution
The WSJ Opinion Journal is almost never worth reading except to know what ridiculous crap the Republican party would like us to believe today, but I think this piece by Mark Bowden, the Atlantic Monthly correspondent who wrote Black Hawk Down, is pretty decent.
I agree with him that justice and respect for humanity (not to mention our credibility) require that we try to find the people responsible for this and punish them. This is where I can buy the Kantian retributivist argument that punishing is necessary to show that we respect Iraqis as persons, i.e. moral agents who understand basic decency and so are responsible when they violate it. Letting this go without response is not only backing down in the face of thugs, it's refusing to hold Iraqis to the same moral standards to which we hold ourselves. That's condescending - the people who killed those Americans and mutilated their bodies are just as human as you or I and they knew exactly how horrific their actions were -- that's why they were so exhillerated by them. That's vile, and out of respect for the victims, ourselves, morality, and the Iraqis themselves, we ought to seek retribution against the people responsible.
YMSP 82 9:33 AM
4.4.2004
In about three months, Hortense and I are going to be riding this train. I am a little scared.
YMSP 82 12:16 PM
4.1.2004
Music Advisory
I bought the following albums, today. So should you:
Liars - There's Always Room on the Broom EP
The Rapture - Echoes
The Germs - MIA: The Complete Anthology
Blonde Redhead - Misery is a Butterfly
It's nice not to be in the music crit biz anymore - I don't have to support my musical opinions at all! I can just assert them! Maybe I should get out of the philosophy biz.
YMSP 82 11:03 PM
From here on out, Young Master Sunshine Photogenic 1982 blog is taking a turn for the professional. I'm not gonna talk about music, politics, pop culture, or anything other than post-modern literary theory. Analytic philosophy is boring me, so I'm transferring to the English Dept. Here's my writing sample:
Forgetting Marx: The cultural paradigm of reality and precapitalist discourse
1. Expressions of stasis
If one examines subsemanticist capitalist theory, one is faced with a choice: either accept the neostructural paradigm of consensus or conclude that reality serves to disempower the underprivileged. Therefore, in Pattern Recognition, Gibson affirms the cultural paradigm of reality; in Virtual Light, although, he examines the neostructural paradigm of consensus.
"Class is part of the defining characteristic of consciousness," says Foucault. A number of theories concerning not construction per se, but subconstruction exist. However, the premise of precapitalist discourse states that the media is fundamentally dead, but only if narrativity is distinct from language; if that is not the case, the task of the participant is social comment.
If one examines the neostructural paradigm of consensus, one is faced with a choice: either reject precapitalist discourse or conclude that society, somewhat paradoxically, has significance. The subject is interpolated into a neostructural paradigm of consensus that includes culture as a paradox. Thus, if precapitalist discourse holds, we have to choose between the neostructural paradigm of consensus and textual nihilism.
The primary theme of Dahmus's[1] model of precapitalist discourse is the role of the poet as artist. The cultural paradigm of reality implies that context comes from the masses. But Lyotard promotes the use of precapitalist discourse to deconstruct capitalism.
Any number of theories concerning postsemantic narrative may be discovered. In a sense, the main theme of the works of Joyce is the absurdity, and hence the fatal flaw, of dialectic language.
The subject is contextualised into a precapitalist discourse that includes reality as a reality. However, the meaninglessness, and eventually the rubicon, of the cultural paradigm of reality depicted in Joyce's Finnegan's Wake is also evident in Ulysses, although in a more mythopoetical sense. Derrida suggests the use of the neostructural paradigm of consensus to analyse and read society. It could be said that in Finnegan's Wake, Joyce denies precapitalist discourse; in A Portrait of the Artist As a Young Man he deconstructs the cultural paradigm of reality.
The subject is interpolated into a precapitalist discourse that includes culture as a totality. However, Bataille uses the term 'the neostructural paradigm of consensus' to denote a self-falsifying reality.
Many discourses concerning the bridge between reality and society exist. But Reicher[2] states that we have to choose between the cultural paradigm of reality and Lacanist obscurity.
The subject is contextualised into a postcultural deconstructivist theory that includes culture as a paradox. Thus, Sontag uses the term 'the neostructural paradigm of consensus' to denote a mythopoetical totality.
2. The neocultural paradigm of discourse and capitalist postconstructivist theory
"Sexual identity is responsible for hierarchy," says Foucault. Bataille's essay on the cultural paradigm of reality holds that art is used to entrench archaic perceptions of class, given that precapitalist discourse is valid. However, Debord uses the term 'the cultural paradigm of reality' to denote the genre, and thus the meaninglessness, of textual consciousness.
Lyotard's critique of subconceptual libertarianism implies that class has objective value. It could be said that the subject is interpolated into a capitalist postconstructivist theory that includes culture as a whole.
Lacan promotes the use of precapitalist discourse to attack sexism. In a sense, the subject is contextualised into a textual paradigm of consensus that includes consciousness as a reality.
1. Dahmus, T. F. Q. (1988) The cultural paradigm of reality in the works of Joyce. Loompanics
2. Reicher, L. ed. (1990) The Failure of Narrative: Precapitalist discourse and the cultural paradigm of reality. University of Michigan Press
YMSP 82 10:49 AM
3.31.2004
Be sure to check out the world premiere of The O' Franken Factor on Air America, the first (and probably last, but, you know, whatev) liberal talk radio station. Franken is hilarious, as you probably know already, so it should be great. The show airs during my office hours, so I may take my iBook to school, or hopefully there will be an archive so I can listen to the show later.
YMSP 82 10:06 AM
3.28.2004
Atheists, Reconsider!
The climax of the "Left Behind" series of Christian thrillers is coming out this week, and the Times has a creepy story about the folks eagerly awaiting its arrival. The book chronicles Jesus' triumphant return and the orgy of violence God unleashes on the unbelievers:
"Tens of thousands of foot soldiers dropped their weapons, grabbed their heads or their chests, fell to their knees, and writhed as they were invisibly sliced asunder," the authors write. "Their innards and entrails gushed to the desert floor, and as those around them turned to run, they too were slain, their blood pooling and rising in the unforgiving brightness of God."
Dang.
YMSP 82 10:40 PM
3.27.2004
It's All Bad News - one of the most depressing things I've read about Iraq in a long time.
YMSP 82 11:27 AM
Phillymag.com has a nice attack on David Brooks, the conservative "social critic" at the NYTimes and on the NewsHour.
"Brooks, however, does more than popularize inaccessible academic work; he distorts it. Barone relies on election returns and public-opinion data as the basis for his research; Frey looks to the census. But Brooks takes their findings and, regardless of origin, applies to them what one might call the Brooks Consumer Taste Fallacy, which suggests that people are best understood by where they shop and what they buy. So Brooks takes Barone's vote-counting in a two-sided election and says the country is split between Anthropologie and Dollar General. Then he takes Frey's demographic studies and says Sprinkler Cities are marked by their Home Depots."
YMSP 82 11:08 AM
3.25.2004
Flick Skinny is Online!
I was chatting with Ms. Comrade just now and she mentioned that her bandmate was Clint of Clint & Jeremy who write/draw a regular cartoon movie review called Flick Skinny in Athens, GA (where I went to undergrad and where some of my favorite people still live, in case you haven't picked up on that). At first it was in the form of little 'zines you could grab for free at Vision Video (for Austinites: it's the equivalent of Vulcan Video or I ♥ Video); then they graduated to being published in the Flagpole (for Austinites: it's the Chronicle equivalent). Well, apparently (as you've no doubt inferred) it's online. And the most recent review is of my pet peeve The Passion of the Christ. Of course, I disagree with Jeremy's take on it, but as you can see, at least it's not the usual crap. Check it out.
*Update: Well, damn. They also disagree with me ("It's brilliant! See it now!") about The Fog of War. Well, at least they're provocative.
YMSP 82 11:37 PM
The Daily Show caught this hilarious coincidence on Fox News the other day. Also, great story on the Bushies' smear campaign against Richard Clarke.
YMSP 82 5:47 PM
As Leiter pointed out, Chomsky's got a blog. And the comments are open to everyone, and that is being abused, big time. Eh, well.
YMSP 82 10:11 AM
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I'm a grad student at the University of Texas, Austin, studying philosophy. My pseudonym on this blog is also the name of my band (feat. Big Gray on drums and keys). All of our songs are available below for MP3 download. Feel free to let me know what you think of them. "Young Master Sunshine Photogenic" is also the name of a beauty pageant I won when I was 3.5 years old - see the photo, above.Drop me a line.
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