August 12, 2015 / Vito Gulla / 0 Comments
Author’s Note: It seems I’ve fully given in to my philosophical tendencies with today’s post, so I hope you’ll forgive me. While I typically like to keep things here focused on questions about the narrative arts, and writing in particular, I have been reading a lot of the great philosophers as of late, and I guess it was only a matter of time before I felt the need to express some of those ideas divorced from any discussion of art.
So often do we forget the many pleasures life offers us. When we listen to music, whether a rock song or a symphony, we leave it on as background noise, something to cloud the outside world so that it becomes a little less distracting, a little less distinct. We ignore the beauty of a sunrise. We read a book to find meaning rather than to appreciate the charm and magic of the prose. These are simple things, little things, all as valuable as those greater pursuits we strive toward. Yet there is a dark side to anything human. As Aristotle demonstrates in his concept of the golden mean, there are two sides to every coin, an excess and a deficiency. In today’s world, and maybe since philosophers began philosophizing, there is one virtue that seems fundamentally misunderstood: conflict. Any sign of nuance or consideration is tossed aside for unequivocal damnation, especially when it comes to violence and aggression. We act as though, through sheer willpower (and activism) alone, we can frolic in the meadows hand-in-hand, all of us, committed to a peaceful cohabitation. It is a nice ideal to strive for, a utopian paradise, one that is kinder, gentler, and better overall than the world we have and have had in any time before us. That does not mean it will ever happen. And though I’m not fond of shutting down possibilities—it is, after all, theoretically possible—it is very, very unlikely. Such ideals fail to recognize the benefits of conflict and its myriad manifestations.
It typically starts with offense, conflict’s instigator. We are all prone to take offense with some idea or another. Sometimes the offense is benign, a simple statement of preference—I’m a vegan, I’m a creationist, I’m a smoker—which causes the listener to create a conflict. This is probably a matter of projection more than anything, where the very admission makes us question our own assumptions about the way we live our lives. This type of offense mostly stems from misunderstanding more than anything else, and it would be easy to dismiss this as unworthy of our attention. I disagree, however, since such statements make us dwell on our own ideas and offer some kind of defense. This is worthwhile indeed. If we are going to believe in anything, those beliefs should hold up to scrutiny. They shouldn’t, if we believe in them strongly, crumble at the first sign of opposition.
I’ll give you an example. When I was younger, I didn’t think that prostitution should be legal. What my reasons were, I did not know, and if you asked me, I would have probably explained that it just was or some other form of circular reasoning. It wasn’t until, late one night, I saw one of those panel-driven talk shows did I realize how arbitrary my ideas were. The panel was discussing prostitution and its illegality, when one of the comic’s said that she believed that there was no reason for such a legal imposition on women’s choices. She said that if a person wanted to, they should, and that, furthermore, this would afford those people access to basic modern necessities like healthcare. I was, at first, dismayed by her comments, offended even, just because the comic stated her opinion, but when I listened to her reasoning, I quickly changed my position. Her reasoning, to me, was quite sound, and I couldn’t think of any cause to dismiss her. It made me realize that my ideas where based on nothing, that they couldn’t be assumed but must be considered. The conflict here was small, but it’s effects were infinitely enriching. Conflict made me better, smarter, and most of all, more empathetic.
Now there are, of course, willful acts of conflict, times when offense is properly given, when the speaker makes an attack intending to hurt. I know I’ve done it, and I have no doubt that you have done it as well. We say things like “People who eat meat deserve to die” or “I hate such-and-such.” These statements are explicitly designed to judge, to belittle, to exert power or mastery. I would even say that these admissions are not necessarily bad, merely an expression of resentment for some slight, real or imagined. It is a reasonable thing to do, especially when you meet someone who embodies those things you hate. However, it is not necessarily conducive to a productive and stimulating dialogue. It causes the discourse to stall, as name calling begets name calling, but what happens afterward? Sometimes, we entrench ourselves further and confine ourselves to others who subscribe to our beliefs, which allows us to avoid any more conflict. This is, overall, a bad thing as an echo chamber does little to identify solutions, but I don’t think it wholly bespeaks the possibilities. We are going to find points of disagreement, always, even with those inclined to agree. We could go on shutting out others until we are as lonely as can be, alone with ourselves, trapped in our own minds. Few, if any, I would think, would allow things to get so bad. More likely, there will come that epiphany, that visionary moment, when we recognize that our ideas must be tested, that we must fight back on equal footing, not through name calling or other acts of pettiness, but through reason. We can consider those flaws that others point out. Even the pettiness helps us to get better. We set out to find answers to prove the other wrong. Sometimes, we discover that our ideas are arbitrary; other times, we learn how to fix them, to fortify them. That, I would say, is a worthwhile endeavor. We need opposition. We need to suffer. This is what allows us to grow.
But what of violence, what of aggression? How can we rationalize something so irrational? We assume that ideas can only be defended and tested by reason alone, that they must, when brought up against opposition, seek the better way. Why? We assume that everyone can be swayed to rationality, but is everyone so capable? Think about how many times you’ve been in a situation when some tough guy decides you or someone around him has caused him offense. Maybe you spilled a drink on him accidentally. Maybe you bumped into him because the crowd was so thick, and everyone was so rambunctious. Maybe he just didn’t like the way you looked at him. He invariably starts to shout or maybe even push you. What should you do? What do you do? You probably walk away. That’s the right thing to do, after all—isn’t it? You choose to diffuse the situation, robbing him of his victory. You’re the bigger man. Or are you? Aren’t you also submitting to his will? Aren’t also you letting him dictate your actions, however small they may be? Your choice to be non-confrontational is submission, and the balance of power clearly shifts in his favor. He’s allowed to continue along unchecked. But what if you strike back? What if, when he pushes you, you knock him cold? Doesn’t that have a beneficial side effect too? I think it does. He may have to reconsider his own behavior, worried that people exist that are not so quick to fold, or he may shoot up more steroids and hit the gym a little harder. Regardless, of the consequences, he is improved. And if you run into him again, he may be more apologetic, but just as possible, he may return stronger. It is those simple verbal slights, those disagreements we have everyday, made physical.
Now, this isn’t an endorsement to start bar-fights, even if in the name of self-improvement. There are, of course, other factors to consider, especially somewhere crowded: This is collateral damage. We have to recognize when and where to engage as much as what type of engagement is necessary. Of course, collateral damage is unavoidable, especially in today’s mechanized world of assault rifles and nuclear bombs. But each opportunity presented to us should be carefully scrutinized, especially when those horrific side effects can be minimized. These situations dictate our recourse and must be judged from moment to moment. But again, there is a clear benefit. The bully, the tyrant, the asshole comes in many forms, and when we engage them, we are granted a chance for reflection in the aftermath. We can recognize the flaws in our tactics, the people who we hurt by accident, the amount of force applied. Sometimes, this is enormously regrettable, horrible in fact, when we go too far, but sometimes, it is not enough, for we played things too safe and only made matters worse. And on the rarest occasions, we have weighed our options equally and met the threat with that golden mean of conflict. However, the biggest mistake we can make is to avoid the conflict altogether. If you want to change something, you have to resist. Passivity is just as bad as the barroom bully.
It is all a matter of judgement, of what tool is appropriate. Violence isn’t always the answer. That much should be obvious. But we shouldn’t take anything off the table in regards to meeting opposition. Conflict is necessary for progress, however slow and non-linear it may be. We learn through conflict how to conduct ourselves. We discover that golden mean in imposing our own will, in wielding our own power. When the American colonies revolted against Great Britain, they met force with force. When Socrates saw a man in the market claiming this or that, he struck back with reason. These conflicts make us better and worse. Every action has side effects, and it’s nice to think that logos will always win out. Unfortunately, as long as evil exists (and evil people, as rare as they may be), the pathos of violence will always have a place in our repertoire.
August 10, 2015 / Vito Gulla / 0 Comments
Lately, I have heard a lot about ideas such as cultural appropriation and cultural exchange, ideas of privilege and oppression, ideas, which, ultimately create a quandary for the artist. Of particular note, has been the increased calls for diversity, both behind the art and in the thing itself. These goals, I believe, are admirable and well within reason. It is largely benign, of neither insult nor disfigurement to American art at large; instead, it is to our shared benefit. We should have a plethora of unique and boisterous voices to admire. Good art is always worth striving for. However, there seems to be strain of these criticisms that seems ill-defined at best, an uncertainty, an inability to articulate exactly what the critic wants. The closest I have to a definitive statement comes from J. A. Micheline’s “Creating Responsibly: Comics Has A Race Problem,” where the author states: “Creating responsibly means looking at how your work may impact people with less structural power than you, looking at whether it reifies larger societal problems in its narrative contents or just by existing at all.” There are a couple of ideas here that I take issue with, ones that don’t necessarily mesh with my ideals of the artist.
Hegel wrote that “art is the sensuous presentation of ideas.” Nowhere is the suggestion that art comes attached with responsibilities. I’m not saying that art doesn’t have the power to shape ideas, but more so, there is often a carefully considered and carefully crafted idea at the heart of every work of art. That overarching theme is given precedence and whatever other points a critic discerns in a work fails to recognize the text’s core. In other words, how can we present evidence of irresponsibility of ideas that are not in play?
This, no doubt, branches out of the structuralist and post-structuralist concepts of binary opposition, and most of all, deconstruction’s emphasis on hierarchical binaries. I no doubt concede that such things exist in every text: love/hate, black/white, masculine/feminine, et cetera. However, the great flaw in this reasoning is that these binaries, even when they arise unconsciously, conclusively state a preference in the whole. Such thinking is a mistake. If we reason that such binary hierarchies exist, why should we conclude that they are unchanging and fixed? Such an idea is impossible, regardless how much or how little the artist invests in their creation. Let’s take a look at a sentence–a tweet, in fact from Roxane Gay–in order to make such generalities concrete:
I’m personally going to start wearing a lion costume when I leave my house so if I get shot, people will care.
We will ignore the I of this statement as it is unnecessary in order to make this point. We have to unpack the binaries at play. First, we note the distinctions in life/death, animals/humans (and also humans/animals). These binaries exist solely inside this shell, yet, if we consider this as a part of a much larger endeavor, we are likely to find contradictory binaries in other sentences. When exactly can we decide the author has concluded? How can we determine the author’s point? Can we ever decide? Now think of applying such an act to a text of 60,000, 80,000, 100,000 words. There’s no doubt it is possible. Yet, should we sit there and count any and every binary that privileges one of the terms? Would that move us any closer to a coherent and definitive message? I find it unlikely.
Of course, I’m not advocating for a return to the principles of New Criticism nor I am saying that post-modern philosophy and gender/race/queer theory have no place in the literary discourse, but to simplify a text, to ignore its argument, seems inherently dishonest. Critics are searching for validation of their own biases, a want to see what they see in society whether real or imagined. This is by no means new, as Phyllis Rackin notes in her book Shakespeare and Women, “One of the most influential modern readings of As You Like It, for instance, Louis Adrian Montrose’s 1981 article, ‘The Place of a Brother,’ proposed to reverse the then prevailing view of the play by arguing that ‘what happens to Orlando at home is not Shakespeare’ contrivance to get him into the forest; what happens to Orlando in the forest is Shakespeare’s contrivance to remedy what has happened to him at home’ (Montrose 1981: 29). Just as Oliver has displaced Orlando…Montrose’s reading displaces Rosalind from her place as the play’s protagonist….” Rackin’s point is clear: If you go searching for your pet issue, you’re bound to find it.
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I am not fond of polemical statements nor do I want to approach this topic in a slippery-slope fashion as it simplifies a large and complex issue which is too often simplified to fit the writer’s implicit biases. In order to explore thorny or shifting targets such as these, we need to strip away whatever artifice clouds our judgement and consider the assumptions present therein. Unfortunately, most of the discourse has been narrowly focused, boiling down to little more than a sustained shouting contest, a question of who can claim the high ground, who can label the other a racist first. This is not conducive to any dialogue and only serves to make one dig in their trenches more deeply. It is distressing to say the least.
One of the assumptions most critics make goes to the pervasiveness of power, that power is, as Foucault puts it, everywhere, that there is no one institution responsible for oppression, no one figure to point to, but instead, it is diffused and inherent in society. Of course, Foucault’s definition of power is far from definitive and impossible to pin-down. Are we merely subject to the dominance of some cultural hegemony, some ethereal control that dictates without center as some suggest? This, it seems to me, only delegitimizes the individual. Foucault suggests that the subject is an after-effect of power; however, power is not a wave that merely washes over us. It is a constant struggle for supremacy. Imagine it on the smallest scale possible: the interaction of two. Even when one achieves mastery over the other, the subordinate does not relinquish his identity. These two figures will always be two, independent to some degree. The subordinate is relinquishing control not by coercion but by choice. Should the subordinate resist, and he does so simply through being, the balance of power shifts however slightly.
Existence is not a matter of “cogito ergo sum,” but a matter of opposition, that as long as there is an other, we exist.
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Many people have made the distinction between cultural exchange and cultural appropriation, that the former is a matter of fair and free trade across cultures while the latter is an imposition, a theft of cultural symbols used without respect. While this sounds reasonable, the exchange is impossible.
There is no possibility of fair and equal trade: One will always have power over another.
We assume that American culture is some definable entity, that there is some overall unity to it, but just as deconstructionists demonstrated the unstable undecidability of a text, a culture too is largely undecidable. A culture is not some homogenous mass, but a series of oppositions at play, vying for influence.
We can use myself as an example. Of the categories to which I subscribe or am I assigned, I am a male, cis, white, American, Italian-American, liberal, a writer, an academic, a thinker, a lover of rock n roll, and so on. Each of these cultures are in opposition to something else: male/female, cis/trans, white/black, white/asian, white/hispanic, et cetera. These individual categories form communities based on shared commonalities, but to suggest that these segregating categories can form a cultural default or mainstream is deceptive. Each sphere is distinct from the other, a vast network of connections that ties one individual to a host of others based on one facet. Yet this shared sphere does not create a unified whole. There is no one prevailing paradigm. It is irreducibly complex.
So what’s the point here?
Cultural appropriation, if such a thing exists, is inevitable.
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It should go without saying, but these ideas of oppression and power are ultimately relative. Depending on what community you venture into and your privilege inside it, you will find yourself in one of these two positions—always. America is as much a text as a novel or any other piece of art. We can count up our spheres of influence, those places we are powerful and those places we are powerless and come no closer to overall meaning.
This is not a call to throw up our hands in nihilistic despair for the artist. The artist would be wise to remember their own power, their ability to draw the world uniquely as they see it. If an artist has an responsibility at all, it is not to worry what part of the binary they are or are not privileging, what hierarchy they summon into being. Someone will always be outraged, oppressed, angered as long as they are looking for something to rage about, regardless of whether it is communicated consciously or not.
Freudian criticism often looks at the things that the author represses in the text, the thoughts and emotions that the author is unwilling to admit explicitly. When asked to give evidence, the critic often claims that the evidence does not need to be demonstrated because it cannot be found: It is somehow hidden. And it is this vein, that sadly, has infected our current approach to texts. We co-opt a text for our own biases, to express what the critic can project onto them, rather than what the work itself describes. We look for any example which might fit our goal and consider it representative of the whole. That is cherry-picking at its most obvious, and an error we should all strive to avoid.
We tend to forget that there are bad texts available to us, that do absolutely advocate the type of propaganda that critics infer in works that approach their subjects with care and grace. How can we scrutinize The Sun Also Rises as antisemitic, as heterosexist, as misogynist when we have books like The Turner Diaries that clearly are? How can we damn Shakespeare for living in a certain era? How can we cast out great works which recognize the complexity of existence and ignore those which undoubtedly make us uneasy?
To the point, we are more enamored by the implicit over the explicit. The central argument of a text is what deserves our attention, how it is made and whether it is successful. We cannot presume to know the tension of other binaries as that text is still being written, constantly shifting, unending in its fluidity.
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It is easy to make demands on the artist. Anyone can do it. Criticism is one of the few professions that does not require any previous knowledge or qualification. It is, at its heart, an act of determining meaning, and many, I would argue, have been unsuccessful. The hard part is creating meaning. And to those who make some great claim on what art should or should not do, my advice is simple: Shut up and do it yourself, because, by all means, if it’s that easy, demonstrate it.
April 25, 2015 / Vito Gulla / 0 Comments
I just started teaching drama to my comp II class, and typically, the first play we do is Glengarry Glen Ross by David Mamet. It’s one of my favorite plays by one of my favorite dramatists. There’s a line that I’m particularly fond of:
The great fucks that you may have had. What do you remember about them[…]? I don’t know. For me, I’m saying what it is, it’s probably not the orgasm. Some broad’s forearm on your neck, something her eyes did. There was a sound she made…or me, lying, in the, I’ll tell you: me lying in bed; the next day she brought me cafe au lait. She gives me a cigarette, my balls feel like concrete.
It’s a great one because it’s so damn true–with anything you’ve ever enjoyed. Those fragments of memories that come streaming through your mind, it’s always one moment, always that one little image, insignificant, divorced from any goal or objective, but for some reason, it stays.
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When I was on the verge of adolescence, I couldn’t wait until the Christmas of 1998. I must have pestered my mother everyday to get my present early. Most of them could wait, but the one I needed was The Ocarina of Time. Of course, it did little to change the delivery date. I did eventually get it and played from start to finish in a few weeks. It was (and probably still is) the greatest game I have ever played. But at the time, I didn’t know why, didn’t know how to express it. All I knew was that it was different and “fun.”
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I’ve always been interested in movements, those paradigm shifts for the entirety of art. It’s nice to have those categories, to point to those commonalities of an era. And there always seems to be some figure who is leading the charge. Romanticism had Byron, Keats, and Shelley. Transcendentalism had Emerson and Thoreau. Naturalism had Crane. Modernism had Joyce and Woolf. Post-Modernism was Burroghs and Ginsberg. But what about now? What–really–is pushing us forward? We’re not at a loss for good authors: Junot Diaz, Johnathan Letham, David Eggers, Johnathan Franzen, Jennifer Egan, and this list goes on. They’re all wonderful in their own right. And we still have those legends who creep out from behind the curtain every so often, like Roth or DeLillo or Pynchon. But I don’t see anybody trying to shake things up. Everyone seems to be content with the way things are. It’s been over twenty years since Tom Wolfe said we should move back towards realism, as if that was the only way to capture an era. But nobody seems to want something different, something that is in the moment and also new. To me, the magic of movements isn’t just what they aimed to depict but how.
I guess what I’m asking is, Why aren’t we trying to reinvent ourselves?
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I once did a Google search for the movement after Post-Modernism. Most were unhelpful. The answer was typically Post-Post-Modernism. It didn’t give an explanation of the movement’s philosophies or goals or what differentiated it from what came before. The closest to a definition I found was a few writers who were thrown under the bus.
But then I saw something that seemed a little more interesting. They called it the New Sincerity.
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By the time I made it through my first year of undergraduate, I had probably watched more movies than most people watch in a lifetime. I had no interest in becoming a filmmaker because controlling a set and overseeing actors and editors seemed like a lot of work. Not to mention, somebody is going to come along to fuck it up. The less hands on what I’m making, the better.
I guess that’s why I choose writer instead.
But I spent a lot of time thinking about those movies too, about the choices those directors made and why. Little things started to fall into place: the use of shadow, the actor’s placement in the frame, the transition between scenes. I realized that the very good and the very talented didn’t leave things up to chance. They shot something a certain way not because it was cool or looked nice but because it had meaning.
A great movie wasn’t just good craft. That was a given. You had to make sure the acting was good and that the characters were realistic and believable and the dialogue felt true and that the costumes and sets and editing were spot on. Those things, production value, were what it made it easy to watch. But the true geniuses thought more deeply, saw things differently, they needed to convey something.
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Just recently, my girlfriend was reading some book in bed, something that recieved attention here and there in the papers. I read a few pages over her shoulder, and other than pointless fragments, the book had a good voice and good prose and seemed true and beautiful. It didn’t take me long to recognize what it was though.
I rolled over and shut my eyes, and my girlfriend asked me what I thought.
It’s just what this world needs, I said. Another book about World War II.
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The thing that bothers me about all the short fiction I read in the magazines is that they never seem to talk about the world I live in. It’s either a sorry account of hipsters trying to find meaning in their world of irony or about some long ago historical event or some academic who spends his or her time trying to bang students and read Proust. Rarely, do I find stories about real people, stories that aren’t preoccupied with rehashing the past.
I guess it’s easy to blame the MFA. It seems like the only people who read the magazines anymore are the MFAs trying to get into them. So I guess it’s about catering to your audience. But I don’t think all of us are that self-involved. I mean, I have an MFA too, but the last thing I want to do is read a story about workshops or seminars or some dickhead who enjoys Derek Walcott–especially when the reference is empty, only an attempt to display how widely the author has read.
I like reading probably more than the next guy, but I would never say it’s the only thing I do. And even though I’m a college professor (adjunct, of course), I certainly wouldn’t say it’s the most exciting part of my day.
When I get together with my friends, we spend a lot of time just talking, maybe have a few drinks, watch a movie, play some video games. We have things we want to do, things that worry us, things we like to do. I think we spend more time on our phones and on the internet than we do a lot of other things. And I don’t think it’s bad either. There’s a lot of great stuff on the internet: There’s Wikipedia and Facebook and Twitter and Imgur and Youtube and YouJizz. It’s a part of our lives now. Sometimes, it seems like the only constant, especially when you have to wonder how you’re going to pay off your student debt on your retail job salary–even though you went to college for medieval history.
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For as long as I can remember, I wanted to do something great. I wanted to make some kind of discovery, do something that had never been done before. For a time, it was going to be paleontology. By sixth grade, it was end global warming by discovering nuclear fusion. That lasted til college, and I settled on writer.
I guess I’m still pretty naive.
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Whenever you read a novel that focuses on technology, it seems like the message is always the same: This thing can be dangerous. Emerson probably said it best: “The civilized man has built a coach, but has lost the use of his feet.” I understand the perspective, but I feel it’s far too common. Everyone seems to be a little too glass-half-empty on the subject, and it’s not an idea that seems to be going anywhere anytime soon.
Just look at the new Alex Garland movie, Ex Machina. Now, I have little doubt the film won’t be worthwhile. Garland’s writing is pretty damn good, and I’ve enjoyed everything he’s done with the exception of The Tesseract. But if the trailers are any indication, it seems like we’ll be getting that same old message once again. Of course, I haven’t seen it (though I probably will) and I’m rushing to judgment and maybe it’s just me, but why isn’t anybody saying how awesome this all is?
Instead, people seem to pine for that great yesterday, when things were simpler. There’s the paleo diet. There’s internet blocking software. There’s parent-controlled time limits on iPads. There are people going off the grid.
I don’t know about you, but I like progress.
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So where do we go from here? I don’t know exactly. This isn’t a manifesto. It’s not a how to guide on the direction we need to take to get out of this rut. If this is anything, I think it’s a push towards something greater. After all, the first step is admitting you have a problem.