In his post, Ken Rufo points out the supposedly contracting nature of Jean Baudrillard’s postmodernist ideology. Says Rufo: “People say he was a postmodernist, whatever that means, but he repeatedly disavowed the label and said that he was actually arguing against postmodernism.” Because Baudrillard identifies with other ideologies, such as Marxism, the guest blog post paint’s Baudrillard’s beliefs as being illegitimate.
It becomes important to understand that postmodernist theory is not a sequel to modernism; while some of the aspects between the two are similar, postmodernist theory should be regarded as a separate entity from its predecessor. Modernism and Postmodernism are both interested on the fragmentation of reality. However, unlike modernism, postmodernist theorists embrace this fragmentation.
Baudrillard maintains that mass imagery brings a universal language and a system of belief to a culture where consumerism is a way of life. The imagery found in commercials, advertisements and film reinforce this way of life, telling us what it means to be a part of the “modern world”. Postmodernist theorist Jean Baudrillard uses the term “the loss of the real” to describe how images created by the mass media become more than what they represent.
Baudrillard’s postmodern views could easily be misinterpreted as an allegory about the media’s responsibility in influencing the American culture’s obsession with materialism and consumption. This is why it appears that he “begins as a Marxist”.
Says Rufo: “Sometime later…Baudrillard sets out to explain how the commodity can be understood as a sign in and of itself, and vice versa, how the sign is understood as a form of commodity logic.”
The criticism of a culture for placing too much value on goods or services is known as Marxism. According to Marx, a culture that places collective value on material items is devaluing social equality and preventing people from forming genuine relationships with each other. Baudrillard agrees with this, stating that recurrent media images take on a hyperreality. That is, our mental images have been created through our constant exposure to recycled media deceptions.
However, Baudrillard’s explanation of this relationship disputes Marxism. Baurdillard is saying that this relationship between signs and commodity is necessary in American culture, because it shapes our understanding of the world.
As for Ken Ruffo's discussion and illustration of Baudrillard's orders of illustration, they interestingly lead to the very intriguing idea of "impossible exchange". The continual deferring of reality, does not continue infinitely, as Saussure would say, but finally hits a wall past which meaning cannot be deferred. Thus reality refuses to be explained or theorized into language, manifesting itself in the very rare form of the unexplained, the unfathomable. Baudrillard says that the more we defer meaning the more likely we are to hit this wall, and it seems to me that an instance of this is the state of genetics today.
After the project of the human genome was realized and the entire genetic map of the human being was produced, scientists have found more anomalies and irregularities than they have found patterns. They have found more exceptions to what they thought the rule was , than rules themselves. It looks like in genetics- where meaning was quickly being deferred further and further still, and scientists and non-scientists had the feeling that they were getting closer and closer to real knowledge- finally hit a wall where exchange of meaning value was no longer possible, the wall past which exchange is impossible.
"Thoughtcrime does not entail death: thoughtcrime is death." - George Orwell, 1984
Wednesday, November 10, 2010
Tuesday, November 2, 2010
Arthur Miller: The Problematic Farmer Scholar
For our blog this week, we chose to discuss the playwright and author Arthur Miller. Here is a link to the interview that we are going to examine in our post:
http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/4369/the-art-of-theater-no-2-arthur-miller.
In the introduction to the interview, the interviewers discuss in length the simplistic and humble living that Miller has established. They discuss the “white farmhouse” that Miller lives in with his family and how they “found the playwright, hammer in hand, standing in dim light, amid lumber, tools, and plumbing equipment.” They go on to say that, “He welcomed us, a tall, rangy, good-looking man with a weathered face and sudden smile, a scholar-farmer in horn-rimmed glasses and high work shoes.”
Miller is portrayed throughout the duration of the interview as a humble and reasonable man, whose approach to his own literary technique and literary achievement are both honest and truthful. Miller discusses his works objectively as though they are simple accomplishments, rather than the mass successes they actually are. He elaborates on the differences between writing plays and writing short stories, and denotes his opinions on each.
Miller discusses the relationship between classic and contemporary literature, as well as what must be done to bridge the gap between the two. He discusses as a young playwright, admiring the styles and “blank template” that is often associated with Greek theatre. That is to say, that to Arthur Miller Greek Theatre exists as a simulacrum. A representation of a representation or as a copy without an original. Through these templates, he is able to create his works. Arthur Miller also discusses the arbitrary nature of writing itself, more specifically in the art of prose.
Miller considers the oppositional binary between spoken word (theatre) versus written word (short story). Miller discusses how subjects that are “harder to write” translate better into plays. When writing a short story, in which Miller conveys more of his “simpler” ideas, he feels guilt associated with not writing plays. Miller also discusses how mistakes are more plainly visible in plays than in short stories, where audiences are more capable of deciphering mistakes than a reader would.
He also discusses the idea of a hero and how a hero is created within a play. He says that all experience is “schematic” in that the authors of plays do not often let the characters remove themselves from the dreadfulness that is their world. The hero is perceived as such because he offers some form of “enlightenment” from the despair. This often makes theatre highly predictable.
He discusses his distaste for the lack of tragedy in common theatre. Like how Oedipus breaks a taboo, or in Lear when two of his daughters kill himself. The hero’s crime must be civilizing; the crime must be something that goes against his own world. It is predictable because in the beginning, whatever that crime is, is established right away, and we know that this is what is going to happen later.
Miller appears to view himself as an authority as a playwright, but not as an author. He is almost discrediting the art of being an author, in that it is more simplistic than being a playwright. He is oversimplifying when he does not consider individual skill. He removes himself from his quaint country home into an edifice separated from his habitual life: his wife, his daughter, his horses.
He views himself as a man who writes plays, but at the end of the day, still a man. He is different because he refuses to accept his position as “Arthur Miller, the playwright.” He is the creator of The Crucible or Death of a Salesman, but he prefers to keep his writing life separate from the rest of his life. He doesn’t want the position where he lives his life thinking constantly of his writing. Sometimes he wants to view something like the sunrise as any other man, not just the author.
On his influence by other playwrights, he says that he is not intentionally influenced, but it still happens because he has read their plays.
When asked what he is writing next he says that he has several things started in a very casual manner. He is not pretentious about his work. He conceptualizes his art, as in literature, in a way that shows that writing is very rigid, there is a formula for it, and it should not be worshipped. In regards to his short stories, he explains that there is a distinct manner in which he writes. He is discrediting himself.
The interviewer asks him specifically, “What do you think happened in New York?” He answers by saying, “Something I never thought could happen. The play was never judged as a play at all. Good or bad, I would never know what it was from what I read about it, only what it was supposed to have been.” While Miller seems to be discrediting his role as an author, at the exact same time, he is giving the position that he understands his work’s entire story presented from beginning to end.
http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/4369/the-art-of-theater-no-2-arthur-miller.
In the introduction to the interview, the interviewers discuss in length the simplistic and humble living that Miller has established. They discuss the “white farmhouse” that Miller lives in with his family and how they “found the playwright, hammer in hand, standing in dim light, amid lumber, tools, and plumbing equipment.” They go on to say that, “He welcomed us, a tall, rangy, good-looking man with a weathered face and sudden smile, a scholar-farmer in horn-rimmed glasses and high work shoes.”
Miller is portrayed throughout the duration of the interview as a humble and reasonable man, whose approach to his own literary technique and literary achievement are both honest and truthful. Miller discusses his works objectively as though they are simple accomplishments, rather than the mass successes they actually are. He elaborates on the differences between writing plays and writing short stories, and denotes his opinions on each.
Miller discusses the relationship between classic and contemporary literature, as well as what must be done to bridge the gap between the two. He discusses as a young playwright, admiring the styles and “blank template” that is often associated with Greek theatre. That is to say, that to Arthur Miller Greek Theatre exists as a simulacrum. A representation of a representation or as a copy without an original. Through these templates, he is able to create his works. Arthur Miller also discusses the arbitrary nature of writing itself, more specifically in the art of prose.
Miller considers the oppositional binary between spoken word (theatre) versus written word (short story). Miller discusses how subjects that are “harder to write” translate better into plays. When writing a short story, in which Miller conveys more of his “simpler” ideas, he feels guilt associated with not writing plays. Miller also discusses how mistakes are more plainly visible in plays than in short stories, where audiences are more capable of deciphering mistakes than a reader would.
He also discusses the idea of a hero and how a hero is created within a play. He says that all experience is “schematic” in that the authors of plays do not often let the characters remove themselves from the dreadfulness that is their world. The hero is perceived as such because he offers some form of “enlightenment” from the despair. This often makes theatre highly predictable.
He discusses his distaste for the lack of tragedy in common theatre. Like how Oedipus breaks a taboo, or in Lear when two of his daughters kill himself. The hero’s crime must be civilizing; the crime must be something that goes against his own world. It is predictable because in the beginning, whatever that crime is, is established right away, and we know that this is what is going to happen later.
Miller appears to view himself as an authority as a playwright, but not as an author. He is almost discrediting the art of being an author, in that it is more simplistic than being a playwright. He is oversimplifying when he does not consider individual skill. He removes himself from his quaint country home into an edifice separated from his habitual life: his wife, his daughter, his horses.
He views himself as a man who writes plays, but at the end of the day, still a man. He is different because he refuses to accept his position as “Arthur Miller, the playwright.” He is the creator of The Crucible or Death of a Salesman, but he prefers to keep his writing life separate from the rest of his life. He doesn’t want the position where he lives his life thinking constantly of his writing. Sometimes he wants to view something like the sunrise as any other man, not just the author.
On his influence by other playwrights, he says that he is not intentionally influenced, but it still happens because he has read their plays.
When asked what he is writing next he says that he has several things started in a very casual manner. He is not pretentious about his work. He conceptualizes his art, as in literature, in a way that shows that writing is very rigid, there is a formula for it, and it should not be worshipped. In regards to his short stories, he explains that there is a distinct manner in which he writes. He is discrediting himself.
The interviewer asks him specifically, “What do you think happened in New York?” He answers by saying, “Something I never thought could happen. The play was never judged as a play at all. Good or bad, I would never know what it was from what I read about it, only what it was supposed to have been.” While Miller seems to be discrediting his role as an author, at the exact same time, he is giving the position that he understands his work’s entire story presented from beginning to end.
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