Re-Bombings

Absolutely hilarious and brilliant.

All the Rage

So I saw 28 Weeks Later the other night. Alone. I really needed an escape from reality, this was the most appealing thing showing, and I did want a glimpse into the action (never saw 28 Days).

The opening sequence alone makes the film worth seeing. There is something immensely satisfying about the combination of thrashing rock music with excellent distortion and images of someone running their ass off, running for their life, running across the rolling green hills of England, being pursued by a throng of sprinting, tireless, blood-spewing and -chewing, insanely-angry-ass motherfuckers.




My sense is this sequel lacked the depth, nuance and character of the first, but still picked up on interesting themes that I assume have been explored by others: rage as parable for modern angst, alienated existence in the midst of crowds, anxieties about populations, immigration, epidemiology, etc. To these this film (perhaps ungracefully) added layers of militarism, police states and panopticism, the ethics of settlers, and the paradox of state violence as a public good.

The film theorist Jean Epstein argued that one role of the camera is to make available aspects of reality that are unavailable to the eye but are no less real. Through slow motion, acceleration, and lighting effects, elements of presence of being, alive and active--even animistically present in creation-- can be momentarily highlighted and brought into perception. Arguably, the film as narrative, with its thematic orientation, does this as well. It highlights and brings into focus aspects of our existence we might ordinarily miss. Acceleration and hyperrealization are obvious techniques, and the "28" franchise capitalizes on this exceptionally well around the topic of anger. Simply put, it seems to ask, what the fuck is anger and why the fuck are we so mad?

"This time the bullet cold rocked ya
A yellow ribbon instead of a swastika
Nothin proper about ya propaganda
Fools follow rules when the set commands ya
Said it was blue
When ya blood was red
That's how ya got a bullet blasted through ya head

Blasted through ya head
Blasted through ya head"

Employing the trope of a "rage virus," the film risks externalizing the sin, in a semi-gnostic disassociation with the evil of our flesh. The darkness comes from without as an invader, rather than from within (Are we to clean the cup, or is it out of the heart that the unclean comes?). But, in fairness, such symbolism is often the best way to convey a message, with a narrative performance using mythical devices as hooks to draw the viewer in to the deeper implications of what is unfolding. Zeroing in on and enlarging this aspect of our existence to such proportions at least allows the possibility of putting this limit experience of rage under the microscope for further examination.

" I give a shout out to the living dead
Who stood and watched as the feds cold centralized
So serene on the screen
You was mesmerized
Cellular phones soundin a death tone
Corporations cold
Turn ya to stone before ya realize"

This rage is not just an individual experience, but takes place collectively. There is an odd solidarity between the rage zombies. They don't seem to attack each other after they've been infected. But there is no logic to this. Why would rage discern? Why not tear the fuck out of whoever the hell is around, so what if they are enraged too? The madness of crowds is at play, so that the logic of mob violence works to direct these pissed off, radically isolated individuals in a choreography of destruction aimed at the "not-yet-angry".

"No escape from the mass mind rape
Play it again jack and then rewind the tape
And then play it again and again and again
Until ya mind is locked in
Believin all the lies that they're tellin ya
Buyin all the products that they're sellin ya
They say jump and ya say how high
Ya brain-dead
Ya gotta fuckin bullet in ya head"*

Finally, this sequel, as noted above, adds the possibility of conceiving rage institutionally. "Execute code red": the hackneyed, stock line, uttered by the steely military commander in an effort to contain the social distortion, sets in motion the manifestation of the state's own anger. The monopoly on the means of violence having been challenged, the codified and stored up pissed-ness of the law--politics as the continuation of war--unleashes itself in its own display of catastrophic rage. As the protest of the living dead unfolds on the streets, the arm of power sweeps like a tidal wave across the concrete plane of history so that "even the dead are not safe".

----
* Rage Against the Machine, "Bullet in the Head"

Musical Musings

Irreplaceable

"To the left, to the left."
What this country needs is some movement to the left. (Ok, I digress, already.)

Beyonce has got talent. She can sing, fo' sho'. This is a catchy song. Nice melody, gets in your head, especially since it is being played by every radio station every four songs.

And I can't wait to have the opportunity to say to someone: "You mus' not know 'bout me. You mus' not know 'bout me."That is awesome. It has so many applications. I like that it's slightly ominous: are you connected to the mob, perhaps? Is there a can of "whoop-ass" in your pocket?

This song can also be taken as empowering for women. She's got the money, she's the owner, she's got the stuff and his ass is out. As one commentator to a YouTube video exclaimed:

"I love this song like she just stading [sic] there doing her nails not faised [sic] at all GIRL POWER"

Girl power, indeed.

Yet, there is an anxiety that undergirds this song, and no doubt provides it with its erotic energy.

The first hints are obvious: "Everything you own in a box to the left." His identity and life have been summed up and wrapped up nicely. It boils down to a few items. These commodities are what he is about, the last remaining symbol of his presence. Once they are gone, not even a trace will remain.

The lines are drawn; there is no sharing: "In the closet, that's my stuff. Yes, if I bought it, please don't touch." Her own identity, being grounded in this set of commodities, needs boundary maintenance. No exchanges, for all exchanges are over. The swapping of lives, saliva, and CDs can no longer take place.

And for all that I appreciate Beyonce's vocal abilities, her songwriter(s) are another matter entirely. The lovely melody and soaring vocalics come crashing down when wedded to lyrics like:

"I could have another you in a minute / matter fact he'll be here in a minute."

I won't dwell on the offense to poetic sensibilities presented by these verses.

Yet in the cacophonous clang created during the crashing "minutes," the song's anxiety ratchets up a notch. There is more at stake here than the end of a relationship. This is not merely about asserting one's independence. Beyonce as prophetess of our time announces nothing less than the celebration of the commodification of the human. Like a cog in the wheel, or like a fitting rattled loose on the factory conveyer belt, this man can be replaced with another. This other is identical, fits neatly into place, and is available according to post-Fordist "just in time" manufacturing protocol. No lag time is necessary; production can continue as planned. It will just be a minute.

Yet there is no time to lament (or continue to celebrate) the human commodity, for the song's commentary spirals outside itself. It becomes a self-commentary, removing any grounds for the possibilities of analysis it provides, pulling the carpet out from under itself. It realizes this in performance, in the very act of its audio "display" before our ears. For, as we listen to it, it begins to dawn on us that nothing about this song makes it irreplaceable. There was one right before it (a minute ago) and there'll be another one "here in a minute." The song, like the man it sings, is a reified commodity, able to be freely discarded and replaced as the economy of our identity-construction marches on.

Unfortunately, this is not all. For, as the song sings the man, and sings itself, it sings the singer. Perhaps, then, the real anxiety driving this song is not just about the limitless possibilities of copulatory partners, freely replaceable, like a great line of the terra cotta soldiers fashioned for a king hoping for protection in the afterlife. Nor is it simply about the song, one among many of its kind, one pixel that becomes imperceptible as you step back to gaze at the sea of color and image. Perhaps this song drives forward, flailing, in the hopes that we will not at the end of things come to realize that, sadly, it is you, Beyonce, who are not irreplaceable.

The commodified man, as parable, opens up into the narrative itself, showing the commodified structure of the mode of communication itself. This, in turn, unravels further and implicates the enunciator as commodity. For we are well aware of the machine and its needs. Like Steinbeck's "Bank," always hungry, rapacious, devouring, this machine of which Beyonce is a part can only do one thing. It uses her on the factory floor like other mechanisms, and the erotic energy she exudes is amplified by the clinging by a thread, suppressing this reality, hoping to perform more effectively and efficiently than previous cogs, to shine so brightly so as maybe, maybe to convince the foreman that she, unlike all the others, is irreplaceable.