Podcast #142 Culture, Film, and TV
John Steppling, Dennis Riches, Max Parry, Shaenah Batterson, Hiroyuki Hamada, and Lex Steppling
https://john-steppling.com/2015/11/the-sound-of-architecture/
https://john-steppling.com/2013/09/breaking-white/
https://john-steppling.com/2015/10/what-is-impossible-to-remember/
https://sabzian.be/collection/dani%C3%A8le-huillet-jean-marie-straub
https://www.ejumpcut.org/archive/onlinessays/JC04folder/Straub.html
https://collider.com/lost-toxic-workplace-damon-lindelof-comments/
https://davenold.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/Notes-on-Cinematography.pdf
https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/646755.The_Big_White_Lie
https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/distributed/C/bo44893600.html
I can’t recall if you mentioned the new Day of the Jackal in this podcast but, having just seen Jackal to the end, I couldn’t help feeling that this assassin figure had a certain similarity to Ernst Jünger’s “anarch” – defined (according to Goggle’s AI Overview) as the “metaphysical ideal of a sovereign individual who is inwardly free and lives quietly within society, but not of it.”
In short, a kind of devious actor figure who goes along with social customs and appearances but always reserves to himself the right to basically do whatever he wants to as long as he doesn’t get caught. (Not a definition you’d likely get from AI.)
Thus Redmayne’s “cool” professional warrior with his smoothly operated techno bric-a-brac, his slender figure slouching across various glamorous locations.
(At which point we might notice that this is hardly a new figure. It has certainly been lurking around in the media for the duration of my own life cf. James Bond – though note that Bond was receiving orders from central office. Nobody tells the Jackal what to do!)
Thus there may be something in G G Preparata’s fixation with Jünger as the true representative of the Western propaganda.
Speaking of which, and on listening to GGP in a YouTube debate, I note once again his apparent obsession with what Walter Benjamin called (with reference to Jünger) “sinister runic nonsense”. GGP has an oft repeated similar fixation with modern human society as some kind of “hive formation”. He demonstrates a dismayingly commonplace meme with the non-Marxist dissidents: the conviction that ALL government is a demonic force and that in some miraculous fashion, humanity would be just fine if left alone without any organisation. (I sometimes think of this as an especially American fixation i.e. the “free individual” against “the evil collective”.)
I also note that Preparata seems to be obsessed with fascist writers: Jünger, Schmitt and Spengler. And he is utterly hostile to Marx. He is a very peculiar figure indeed.
And, since I am typing away disconsolately on New Year’s Day with nothing else to do, and in the wake of recent confrontations on Twitter, I have been thinking increasingly of one of my favourite films, “The Swimmer” – a 60s piece set in a weird kind of American version of a Kafka landscape with its closed world of rural affluent folks in which Burt Lancaster effectively plays white liberal America with its utterly uncomprehending starry eyed narcissism and relentless instinct for exploitation. X is full of such people.
Enjoyed the podcast mostly. I liked the mention of Tarkovsky at the end... I'll never forget how I first discovered Tarkovsky. At my neighborhood Blockbuster in the 90s the one year I lived in Minneapolis. I was renting a Kieslowski film and the associate who was at the check-out was a very pretentious film nerd and he says to me ... well if you like Kieslowski, you should watch Tarkovsky's films -- they are so much better... I thought he was being a jerk in the moment but alas he did have a point in some ways.
Also... I was a little disappointed there was no mention of Better Call Saul... I believe it is the best tv series to come out of America... I recently was going to re-visit just a couple episodes but ended up watching the entire thing again and found it utterly compelling and discovered new things ... it may be that I connect with it on some personal random levels but I find so much more to it than any other series I have seen ... the Jimmy/Saul character is endlessly fascinating and such an interesting comment on America ... and he can be so entertaining but has deep morality that only comes out in extremis. The arc of Kim Wexler from too perfect white shoe associate ... and of course the Charles McGill character watching this after the plandemic ... other than the crazy ideals he has about the 'rule of law' .... it is so entertaining to watch how he deals with his supposed extreme hypersensitivity to electromagnetic radiation in light of the ridiculously insane responses to a supposed 'virus' ... that show has got me thinking in new ways about so many things and clarified my ideas about contemporary America.
Lastly, I will always have to admit that the first series I ever binge-watched was the 80s British series Brideshead Revisited. What a different world. But that had all to do with context. Cheers and happy new year.