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.
oh man, I should do a discussion on The Swimmer. Its a sort of interesting cultural signpost. Based on a Cheever story and directed by frank perry. And perry had a this very curious career of , mostly, flops, and none are good films, whatever that means here, but all are quite interesting. David and Lisa, Diary of a Mad Housewife, and Mommie Dearest. But the weirdest is Doc, a doc holliday gunfight at OK corral saga with stacy keach and faye dunaway. Its a just unintionally surreal bit western kitsch with many virtues none of which save it from being a mess. Anyway, the cheever story (The Swimmer) on which the film is based is quite good and the film is pretty loyal to it.
Oh good god, Diary of a Mad Housewife – that brought back some memories. And I recall Richard Benjamin as the sarky husband. I also recall Snodgress having an affair with this wild eyed blond guy (“You put on that feral act because you’re a fag!”) but I didn’t realise he was played by a young Frank Langella. Other than that and a shamelessly exploitative shot of Snodgress’s (or her body double’s) bare backside (which we schoolboys gaped over) I can’t recall much of the movie. Ah well no loss.
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.
I didn't much care for Better Call Saul but when I read your comment there, I realised that there was so much more to it than I thought. I never noted the parallel between the hypochondriac brother and the viral paranoia of the last few years though I see that BCS started as far back as 2015.
I certainly agree that it was much better than Breaking Bad which I found totally repellent - the essence of slick juvenile misanthropy.
Cameron Golden, “‘You’re Annette Benning?’ Dreams and Hollywood as Subtext in The Sopranos,” in Reading the Sopranos (New York: I.B. Tauris, 2006), 91-103.
Christopher Kocela, “From Columbus to Gary Cooper: Mourning the Lost White Father in The Sopranos,” in Reading the Sopranos (New York: I.B. Tauris, 2006), 104-117.
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.
oh man, I should do a discussion on The Swimmer. Its a sort of interesting cultural signpost. Based on a Cheever story and directed by frank perry. And perry had a this very curious career of , mostly, flops, and none are good films, whatever that means here, but all are quite interesting. David and Lisa, Diary of a Mad Housewife, and Mommie Dearest. But the weirdest is Doc, a doc holliday gunfight at OK corral saga with stacy keach and faye dunaway. Its a just unintionally surreal bit western kitsch with many virtues none of which save it from being a mess. Anyway, the cheever story (The Swimmer) on which the film is based is quite good and the film is pretty loyal to it.
Oh good god, Diary of a Mad Housewife – that brought back some memories. And I recall Richard Benjamin as the sarky husband. I also recall Snodgress having an affair with this wild eyed blond guy (“You put on that feral act because you’re a fag!”) but I didn’t realise he was played by a young Frank Langella. Other than that and a shamelessly exploitative shot of Snodgress’s (or her body double’s) bare backside (which we schoolboys gaped over) I can’t recall much of the movie. Ah well no loss.
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.
funny, i had meant to mention Better Call Saul, a better show than BB. Maybe next time. And kim Wexler's was great, agreed.-
I didn't much care for Better Call Saul but when I read your comment there, I realised that there was so much more to it than I thought. I never noted the parallel between the hypochondriac brother and the viral paranoia of the last few years though I see that BCS started as far back as 2015.
I certainly agree that it was much better than Breaking Bad which I found totally repellent - the essence of slick juvenile misanthropy.
Sources mentioned:
Cameron Golden, “‘You’re Annette Benning?’ Dreams and Hollywood as Subtext in The Sopranos,” in Reading the Sopranos (New York: I.B. Tauris, 2006), 91-103.
Christopher Kocela, “From Columbus to Gary Cooper: Mourning the Lost White Father in The Sopranos,” in Reading the Sopranos (New York: I.B. Tauris, 2006), 104-117.