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October 28th, 2008
01:54 pm - D&G: ‘The evening hour when a thousand holes appear on the surface of the earth’
Deleuze and Guattari’s A Thousand Plateaus represents a decisive break from the Cartesian dualism that has dominated conceptions of language and the subject. Indeed, whilst Freud already identified how a ‘multiplicity of libidinal “currents”’ (31) problematises one’s psychological condition, he nevertheless reduced the subject ‘to the One’ (31) by attributing all the ‘little scars… [and] little holes’ to the ‘great scar or supreme hole named castration’ (31). Consequently, even with Freud there is an identification with language’s ability to totalise and designate an object of study even ‘when there is no unity in the thing’ (27). The stability of linguistic signs ensures ‘the unification of an aggregate they subsume’ (28). Deleuze and Guattari disagree with Freud’s tacit appeal to linguistic nomenclaturism, where there is a one-to-one correspondence between a word and a thing it signifies. Instead, they purport that the relationship of the proper name is ‘an intensity to the multiplicity it instantaneously apprehends’ (28). No longer can language act as a stopgap measure to ‘re-establish a unity no longer found in things’ (28). Instead, language “splinters” into a multiplicity of signifiers that defy totalisation and semantic stability: we have arrived at the ‘first stirrings of a subsequent adventure’ of the signifier that enacts an infinite substitution of itself for a circuit of asignification, signification and designification (28).
The consequence of this is twofold: not only can we no longer declare the unification of the subject through its subreption by language, but we must also come to understand the subject as always already deontologised by Deleuze and Guattari’s notion of the “body without organs”. The body, which once indicated the border between inside and outside, subject and object, is now one “without organs”, where the things which serve as organs are distended within and without the body ‘according to crowd phenomena’ (30). The One is now inextricably linked to the Many; its identity is therefore constantly diffuse and fragmented across a range of discourses and socio-cultural relations. The “body without organs” resists the structuralist taxonomy and schematisation of sound patterns and concepts to words and things, insofar as they ‘[blow] apart the organism and its organization… [into] a body populated by multiplicities’ (30). This has profound consequences not only for how one perceives the world, but also how the world shapes our perceptions. Deleuze and Guattari’s story is ultimately a ‘story of multiplicity’ (32) and becoming: it doesn’t fall prey to the myth of an originary totality and unity of the subject or of language. Instead, to be a subject is also to be a ‘part of the crowd and at the same time completely outside it’ (29). One can never firmly say that ‘I am this’ or ‘I am that’ (29) because the proper name is part of a ‘field of intensity’ (37) in which there are ‘only multiplicities of multiplicities’ (37) that break with signification as soon as it is established.
Current Mood: ![[mood icon]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/classic/tired.gif) tired
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October 21st, 2008
09:45 am - How Does “Power” Work in De Certeau’s Essay?
For de Certeau, the city’s topographical configuration represents a variable ‘texturology in which extremes coincide – extremes of ambition and degradation, brutal oppositions of races and styles’ (91). Indeed, the semiotics of the streetscape; the interlocking grid of formal pedestrian pathways and roads; and the dense cluster of vertiginous buildings all represent discursive formations whose strategies work to produce obedient subjects within the greater ideological and socio-economic relations of his/ her clime. Furthermore, the materiality of the city’s architecture manages space into a ‘finite number of stable, isolatable, and interconnected properties’ (94) and thereby functions not only as an apparatus of power through panoptic technologies but also reproduces the historical discursivities of what the “city” and its institutions represent and oppose. These include reiterating the dichotomies of city and country as well as the city as the touchstone of modernity and modernisation. Additionally, governmental institutions reproduce and manage Enlightenment ideals of civic duty, publicity and democracy whereas repressive state apparatuses such as prisons and juvenile rehabilitation centres operate as their corollary. ‘The language of power is in itself “urbanizing”’ (95).
Nevertheless, walkers often escape and unknowingly resist the urban hubbub and its attendant power relations by creating “desire lines” that ‘make use of spaces that cannot be seen’ (93) by jaywalking, cutting across pathways and taking shortcuts through side streets instead of using a main road to get to their destination. These tactics resist the city’s formal strategies and in so doing the city becomes a polyvalent construct in which ‘networks of these moving, intersecting writings [and power relations] compose a manifold story that has neither [a single] author nor spectator’ (93). There is a dialogic interaction between tactics and strategies because resistance towards panoptic administration is prefigured within ‘the networks of surveillance’ whilst specific tactical routes, if ritualised, have the capacity to stabilise movement and thus constitute regulatory behaviour (96). Nevertheless, the rhetoric of walking, whether according to formal trajectories or serendipitous incidents always ‘[manipulate] spatial organizations, no matter how panoptic they may be’ (101), thus producing a “wandering of the semantic” wherein a multiplicity of power relations resists a totalising and monologic “truth” to the city and to subjectivity.
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October 20th, 2008
12:04 am - What is abjection, according to this piece by Kristeva?
Being more than a bit of a tyro when it comes to (Freudian/Lacanian) psychoanalysis, I was quite apprehensive about responding to Kristeva's famous piece. So I've tried to frame my response according to the relation between abjection and linguistic meaning. What I find interesting about Kristeva's piece is how abjection mimics the moment of primary repression in which the "I" simultaneously approaches the threshold of subject formation - 'radically separate' - yet is unable to successfully establish the distinction between subject and object: 'Not me. Not that. But not nothing, either' (2).
The involuntary disgust that one experiences when his/ her lips touch the slimy milk cream 'thin as a sheet of cigarette paper' (2) on a coffee is inherently linked to its "liminal" tactility: neither the thickness and consistency of "real" cream nor the silky liquid texture of milk, the milk skin broaches these two material conditions yet is nevertheless irreducible to their signification. As neither this nor that, the abject never entirely exists on the margin as excess of the "I" and can never be sublimated to the "I's" centre. Abjection 'preserves' a pre-objectal relation of the body before the 'immemorial violence with which a body becomes separated from another body in order to be' (10). Abjection confounds the (arbitrary) surrogationalism of language with its one-to-one correspondence between the signifier and signified because each signified ("subject," "object," "self") is 'always already haunted by the Other' (12) and thus can lay no claim to a univocal and totalised meaning. Consequently, one's violent corporeal reaction to the abject reiterates the originary event of meaning's fractalisation and diffusion. It thrusts one 'toward the place where meaning collapses' (2) in which the "I' can no longer be distinguished with utter certainty from the "Other".
Current Mood: perplexed
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September 3rd, 2008
11:38 pm - What Point is Foucault Making with the Reference to Borges in The Order of Things?
Like many people, I've always found it difficult to read Foucault's texts and to firmly determine the limits of his concepts, e.g. episteme and discourse. In terms of Foucault's reference to Borges' encyclopedia, I don't think an understanding can be reached about it without comparing it to the "standard" way we define animals via taxonomy and biological classification. For Borges to define animals according to a disparate and bizarre set of criteria ("belonging to the Emperor", "sucking pigs", "sirens", etc.) which nevertheless remains as a coherent ordering of objects shows the radical systematicity and dynamism of Foucault's conception of language and how the knowledge which it produces will shape and reshape culture. Ordering systems or discourses ultimately are 'a tabula, that enables thought to operate upon the entities of our world', but they also have a profound phenomenological impact upon how we perceive objects exterior to ourselves and also how we come to use knowledge in a community of signs. Consequently, the fact that we can order any "object of study" 'into any of the categories that make it possible for us to name, speak, and think' lends itself to an idea of culture as inherently unstable and characterised by the (ordered) play of the signifier across a range of disciplines rather than the signified (I think... This might be too Derridean a point...). It seems like culture is beholden to the immanent movement, convergence and divergence of different fields of knowledge (science, economics) and the specialised language that each uses to cordon off their discipline. Culture appears for Foucault to be (to a certain degree) aporetic and indeterminate, being almost akin to a "controlled" clash between different epistemic institutions (which are also internally "controlled" by bifurcating what knowledge is deemed to be central to it [self] and what is marginal or foreign to its classification [other]). In this way, it appears as if Borges' encyclopedia demonstrates how classification systems generate heterotopic cultures or cultures that aren't monadic but are in fact multivalent; where language is constantly questioned as to what myths and grammatical/ syntactic structures "imprison" our expectations and actions. Foucault's archaeology of knowledge versus a traditional genealogy thus indicates his emphasis on a synchronic rather than diachronic study of culture that 'experiences the propinquity of things' as they engage in dialogue with one another to produce a 'series of mutations necessary and sufficient to circumscribe the threshold of a new positivity'.
Hopefully this was a half-coherent exegesis of the text and not just a garbled and hodge-podge conflation of structuralism, deconstruction and Jameson and some other theories that I have most probably butchered at this late hour... Hopefully, haha :S
Current Mood: crazed
Current Music: Lalo's Cello Concerto
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August 27th, 2008
09:54 pm - Journal for Arnold and Williams published on 20 August (may have been on private)
11:07 pm - Compare Arnold and Williams' Ideas about Culture
Arnold's "Culture and Anarchy" and Williams' "Culture is Ordinary" present differing ideas about culture and its raison d'être. For Arnold, culture appears to serve a pedagogical function in society, wherein striving for the perfectibility of its various forms and in turn educating the greater populace to appreciate such forms will produce the enlightenment of the people through "a national glow of life and thought". Consequently, by making accessible to all people "the best knowledge, the best ideas of [one's]... time", Culture ultimately counteracts the impulse towards social unrest and dissatisfaction towards the State by dissolving class divisions. Arnold appears to have been influenced by Hegelian philosophy in his perception of present culture as being immanent to a grander historical gesture towards the perfection of the mind through its concord with the artefacts and structures of the material world. Perfectibility in Arnold's text is closely related to regulation, for "without order there can be no society, and without society there can be no perfection". Yet I find Arnold's emphasis on perfection to be problematic, because in proposing there are ideal cultural forms that a whole populace should learn to appreciate and reproduce has the danger of making culture into a monolithic and homogeneous construct. Different classes will often regard one cultural product as more valuable than another both aesthetically and functionally because of the vast economic cleft between them: the cinema is arguably a highly visible and accessible cultural form for many due to the relatively cheap price of tickets compared to what one would normally pay in a playhouse. Access to forms representing a high degree of cultural merit (in Arnold's case, works taught within tertiary institutions and in general "high culture") should not overshadow the potential for "low" culture to evolve and increase its level of exposure in the future. If culture is always in a state of becoming, then this must apply not only to society in toto but also to both the "high" and "low" forms which constitute its essence. After all, music was once regarded as a lower art form than pictorial painting by the German romantic aestheticians: nowadays, it would be difficult to argue that (for instance) a Beethoven symphony is somehow aesthetically inferior to a Turner painting other than from a deeply subjective vantage point.
Williams' understanding of culture is no less holistic than Arnold's by emphasising culture as "the product of a whole people" and their "whole way of life". Nevertheless, for Arnold culture encapsulates every facet of society from commonplace experiences to the deeply personal and from merely trivial cultural trinkets to the most arresting and powerful objects of one's clime. V's Shadow Gallery and Dietrich's cellar museum exemplify the second aspect of Williams' definition of culture, viz. the "arts and learning - the special processes of discovery and creative effort". This includes not only preserving for posterity objects which in our present society would possess a high level of cultural merit (the Qu'ran) but those representing transient and fickle interests in entertainment forms (V's dukebox). Williams' first aspect of his definition of culture is encompassed most memorably in the final tableaux of people, including the deceased Valerie and Dietrich. Here, they are united not only in their hope towards the betterment of society in the future (like Arnold's text) but also through their display of a united front as representative of culture being first and foremost "ordinary" and the product of common social exchange. As "ordinary" people their singular act of walking towards parliament constitutes a camaraderie based upon a commonality of experience. Ultimately, the latter is the thread which for Arnold weaves a culture together with its populace.
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August 20th, 2008
11:07 pm - Compare Arnold and Williams' Ideas about Culture
Arnold's "Culture and Anarchy" and Williams' "Culture is Ordinary" present differing ideas about culture and its raison d'être. For Arnold, culture appears to serve a pedagogical function in society, wherein striving for the perfectibility of its various forms and in turn educating the greater populace to appreciate such forms will produce the enlightenment of the people through "a national glow of life and thought". Consequently, by making accessible to all people "the best knowledge, the best ideas of [one's]... time", Culture ultimately counteracts the impulse towards social unrest and dissatisfaction towards the State by dissolving class divisions. Arnold appears to have been influenced by Hegelian philosophy in his perception of present culture as being immanent to a grander historical gesture towards the perfection of the mind through its concord with the artefacts and structures of the material world. Perfectibility in Arnold's text is closely related to regulation, for "without order there can be no society, and without society there can be no perfection". Yet I find Arnold's emphasis on perfection to be problematic, because in proposing there are ideal cultural forms that a whole populace should learn to appreciate and reproduce has the danger of making culture into a monolithic and homogeneous construct. Different classes will often regard one cultural product as more valuable than another both aesthetically and functionally because of the vast economic cleft between them: the cinema is arguably a highly visible and accessible cultural form for many due to the relatively cheap price of tickets compared to what one would normally pay in a playhouse. Access to forms representing a high degree of cultural merit (in Arnold's case, works taught within tertiary institutions and in general "high culture") should not overshadow the potential for "low" culture to evolve and increase its level of exposure in the future. If culture is always in a state of becoming, then this must apply not only to society in toto but also to both the "high" and "low" forms which constitute its essence. After all, music was once regarded as a lower art form than pictorial painting by the German romantic aestheticians: nowadays, it would be difficult to argue that (for instance) a Beethoven symphony is somehow aesthetically inferior to a Turner painting other than from a deeply subjective vantage point.
Williams' understanding of culture is no less holistic than Arnold's by emphasising culture as "the product of a whole people" and their "whole way of life". Nevertheless, for Arnold culture encapsulates every facet of society from commonplace experiences to the deeply personal and from merely trivial cultural trinkets to the most arresting and powerful objects of one's clime. V's Shadow Gallery and Dietrich's cellar museum exemplify the second aspect of Williams' definition of culture, viz. the "arts and learning - the special processes of discovery and creative effort". This includes not only preserving for posterity objects which in our present society would possess a high level of cultural merit (the Qu'ran) but those representing transient and fickle interests in entertainment forms (V's dukebox). Williams' first aspect of his definition of culture is encompassed most memorably in the final tableaux of people, including the deceased Valerie and Dietrich. Here, they are united not only in their hope towards the betterment of society in the future (like Arnold's text) but also through their display of a united front as representative of culture being first and foremost "ordinary" and the product of common social exchange. As "ordinary" people their singular act of walking towards parliament constitutes a camaraderie based upon a commonality of experience. Ultimately, the latter is the thread which for Arnold weaves a culture together with its populace.
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June 2nd, 2008
01:28 pm - Moral Panic and the Internet
Moral panics surrounding the predatory nature of paedophiles in local neighborhoods is easily transferable to the digital domain, where delirious fears about the safety of children is only compounded by the ability for anyone to shroud themselves via nondescript avatars, onion routers and false information whilst traversing the dark alleyways of the cyber-city. And yet, what happens when the figure lurking behind the screen coercing youth does not conform to the image of the depraved middle-aged pervert and is in fact youth itself?
The moral panic surrounding the internet as an invasive and dangerous medium for youth is a curious one when considering that youth are increasingly becoming both perpetrators and victims of this new form of "violence". Indeed, the proliferation of networking sites such as Facebook, Myspace, Wasteoftimebook, Myface ad nauseum re-orients the internet towards a predominantly youth audience in the face of the information explosion which propels the parent-as-technophobe into the stone age of obsolescence even further. Whilst the child taps into various shareware sites and downloads an endless stream of pirate dvds at breakneck speed, the parental luddite lags behind and scratches his/ her head whilst staring incredulously at the slim usb key in front of him/ her: "what exactly do I use this for?" he/ she asks before trying to use it to open the front door.
Indeed, the inverse relationship between innocence and knowledge resurfaces again and can all too easily be seen in the recent emergence of "suicide pacts" on Myspace. It is also evident in the increased bullying which occurs on these "friendship" sites which ironically promote exclusion and deceit through an innumerable number of privacy settings which include tagging others in photographs at parties you weren't invited to and blocking people from seeing your profile. Nevertheless, the moral panic of the internet as a predominantly youth-oriented concern is created and coded by adults using a hypocritical and patronising moralism, where protection is equal to preventing youth access to networking sites via spyware whilst spreading another moral panic towards decreasing privacy in the wake of advanced surveillance technologies. Once again, by excluding youth from entering the discussion about the "moral panic" of youth suicide pacts and bullying we are confronted with a skewed depiction as to the level of alarm which should be caused by such actions and in fact the prevalence of these actions to the number of youths which use the internet.
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May 19th, 2008
01:29 pm - "Moral Panic"
Marilyn Manson is often derided, chided and condemned for his music and concert performances because they often deviate from the heteronormative discourse of sexuality and the socio-religico institution of Christianity. Indeed, Bill O'Reilly's interview typifies the "moral panic" that surrounds Marilyn Manson, whose simulation of sex acts onstage and "satanic" lyrics "encourage kids to have sex" by putting "[them] at risk". But what risk IS caused by listening to Marilyn Manson?
"Moral Panic" is only useful as a discourse as a way of examining how the media distorts and amplifies atypical behaviour whilst veiling concerns that are altogether unnoticed by society. Take for instance the furore surrounding the Columbine school shootings, whereby critics immediately shifted the blame for Klebold and Harris' actions onto Manson and his band, citing Manson's lyrics and his persona as a "Minister in the Church of Satan" as "proof" of their abhorrent actions. Yet how could they then justify this claim when Harris' journal revealed an all-encompassing hatred that included such divergent targets as the WB Network and Tiger Woods, as well as contradictory statements which praised Hitler's "final solution" and then criticised the prevalence of racism in the US? [Salon.com, 'Inside the Columbine High Investigation] Surely it is spurious and myopic to draw a positive correlation between Marilyn Manson and the increase of youth violence in communities without recourse to other variables including their geographical location, mental stability, level of education, family life and social behaviour.
The problem with "moral panic" is that it is so often coopted and corrupted by media technologies which feed upon shock, fear and sensationalism in order to garner ratings. A "moral panic" that may indeed be legitimate to begin with can ultimately perpetuate the media's three-ring circus spectacle of hyperstimulation, violence and sex. The media always-already uses the rhetoric of "moral panic" because their prime motive is to sell; did the PMRC consider this and its implications when they attempted to censor and block the release of Manson's music and others? Probably not. For them and others, this is not a crusade to save the "morality" of youth, but a thinly-shrouded moralism that wishes to obliterate resistant forms to the establishment.
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May 12th, 2008
01:40 pm - Innocence and Knowledge
From Miley Cyrus' recent semi-nude photo shoot to Britney Spears' titillating "Hit Me Baby One More Time", the association of the schoolgirl as the "innocent" is gradually being replaced by a maturity of sexual knowledge that belies the biological age of these youths. Indeed there appears to be an inversely proportional relationship between innocence and knowledge, where it appears that the more these celebrities depict themselves as virginal and naive the more likely it is that their puffed-out cheeks, trout pouts, high pigtails, pleated skirts and white blouses are seen as erotic make-up, the bare face of which is their manufactured nature and the silent consent and tacit acceptance of society towards the sexualisation of youth. One example comes readily to mind: the Bratz dolls. Clothed in high-midriff tops and quasi-BDSM gear, one would perhaps be alarmed to know that the target market of these "dolls" are girls under the age of 10. The all-pervasive nature of the image of the "naughty" schoolgirl or nymphet is also evident in St. Trinian's, a movie that revels in images of schoolgirl deviant behaviour as long as it involves subverting the discourse of youth as it involves sexuality. One needn't look too far to see that the glamorisation of subversive behaviour is also taken up in Gossip Girl, a show whose heady cocktail of fat trust funds, clique behaviour and of course, sexually knowledgeable school girls makes for high ratings. Go figure. In our sex-crazed and media-dominated clime, it's little surprise that the biological age at which youths may display their sexual preferences or even consider themselves as "sexual beings" is rapidly decreasing in number.
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May 6th, 2008
11:16 pm - The Office
Bureaucracies are often depicted as crippling "iron cages" that enervate individual consciousness and subjectivity through their standardising and repetitious modes of work which increase productivity and efficiency. But such a negative portrayal of bureaucracies as well-oiled and perfectible machines belies the common tendency for them to implode under the strain of office buffoonery, sexual harassment and general incompetence. Indeed, 'the only thing that saves us from bureaucracy is its inefficiency' [Eugene McCarthy] is a fitting reminder that the rigid demarcation of the office as symbolic of adulthood, and play as a form of "inefficiency" and therefore youth cannot necessarily be maintained as these categories begin to bleed into one another when work becomes the primum mobile for social interaction. David Brent confounds the distinction between youth-as-immaturity and adulthood-as-maturity when considered according to the criterion of social development, where his crude sexual jokes ("Sir" David Brent as a pun on knighthood and prophylactics), constant banter with colleagues and inattention to examining the credentials of interviewees makes him akin to the desperate high school student wishing to be "cool" and part of the "in-crowd" by being the class clown.
His office antics firmly place him within the societally coded image of youth-as-play, which is delightfully conveyed in the contrasting way he handles Stuart Foot and Karen Roper's interviews. David's inanity reaches its apotheosis during Stuart's interview when he continues to sing a Desree song despite Stuart's overt discomfort and futile attempt to harness the interview back to a discussion of his former work experience. Karen's interview fares no better, where the standard association of work and adulthood is further erased through David's sexual advances, which include moving her chair onto his side of the table (thus obliterating the hierarchical observation of the "boss"/ "principal" over surveyed "student"/ "employee"), his double entendre of "exploring yourself" and by lecherously sprawling his body over the table as she enters the room.
Thus "The Office" demonstrates the problematics associated with the "standard biography" of human life [Crawford, 47-48], where colligating education with youth and work with adulthood conflicts with observing how these categories simultaneously collapse into and subtend one another in actual practice. To define the transition from youth to adulthood on the basis of social maturation alone cannot guarantee the latter's commensurability with work and responsibility.
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March 23rd, 2008
10:37 pm - In what ways is A Clockwork Orange about youth?
A Clockwork Orange exemplifies the paradigm of youth as a time of impiety and rebellion, as shown through Alex’s malignant narcissism, hedonism and adherence to the semiotic codes of the “droog” subculture. By appropriating the dress codes of the “dandy” (cane, bowler hat), utilising Nadsat to communicate with his droogs, and ritualistically consuming moloko in the common territory of the Korova Milk Bar, Alex compensates for the lack of his parents’ disciplinary strength by assuming a paternal responsibility over his peers. However, this marker of youth-as-growing-responsibility is thoroughly undermined by ‘his own hyper-exaggerated sense of pseudo-self’ [1], as manifest in his socially transgressive acts of “ultra-violence” and theft. Juxtaposing the abhorrence of rape alongside an exuberant Alex singing ‘Singin’ in the Rain’ renders his character (and as an extension of him, youth) as amoral and subversive towards the regulated flow of ideologies within the dominant culture.
As depictions of youth-as-trouble, his flat affect and implacable sexual desire also have the corollary of demonstrating youth as a period of conceptual immaturity through the infantilising nature of his argot and its semiogenic limitations: ‘it was gorgeousness and yumyumyum’. Nevertheless, the Ludovico technique poses a double bind for the dominant culture wishing to cultivate Alex into becoming ‘instrumental in changing the public verdict’ of youth-as-problem. For although the medical discourse produces a hegemony over Alex’s subjectivity by establishing ‘an internal authority to watch over him, like a garrison in a conquered town’ [2], its effect is ultimately chiasmic; eviscerating these negative portrayals of youth diminishes its semantic possibilities and produces a set of morally-abiding automatons which are ironically unaware of morality's key role in maintaining society’s hegemonic relations: ‘He ceases to be a wrongdoer. He ceases also to be a creature capable of moral choice’.
Although A Clockwork Orange acts as an allegorical warning against the vagaries of youth, it also conveys youth as ‘regulated more by feeling than reasoning’ [3], as shown through Alex’s impulsive reactions towards violence, sex and even the music of ‘Lovely Ludwig Van’. Nevertheless, A Clockwork Orange ultimately values this impulsivity over its obverse, for the insincere resistance towards aberrant behaviour in lieu of internal and external punishment does not warrant the loss of one’s autonomy and youth as a period of experimentation.
[1] Kenneth Womack and Todd F. Davis, '"O My Brothers": Reading the Anti-Ethics of the Pseudo-Family in Anthony Burgess's A Clockwork Orange,' College Literature: A Journal of Scholarly Criticism and Pedagogy 29, no.2 (2002): 23
[2] Sigmund Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents, ed. David McLintock (London; New York: Penguin Classics, 2002), 77.
[3] Aristotle, quoted in Ilana Krausman Ben-Amos, Adolescence and Youth in Early Modern England (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994), 28.
Current Mood: tired
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March 16th, 2008
09:37 pm - "What is Ferris Bueller rebelling against?"
Ferris is rebelling against the authoritarianism of the educational system that aims to mould him into a “responsible” adult who ultimately upholds the ‘legal and political superstructure’ [1] of his milieu. By emphasising upon the teaching of “Voodoo economics” and the history of the American economy, the film implies the extent to which educating students on the mode of economic production coopts their subjectivity, whereby this mode weaves with other relations of social production (including the role of parents as imbuing their child with an ethical conscience) to create ‘definite forms of consciousness’ [2] towards politics, culture and education. By “taking the day off”, Ferris is doing more than appreciating the transience of life (‘If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it’); his story is in fact a cautionary narrative against blindly following the ideologies taught and upheld by the school-as-“superinstitution” [3].
Unlike his catatonic peers who induce Mr. Knowlan’s teaching on the prison symbol unquestioningly and who are consequently unaware of how this institution is commensurate to the one in which they are attending, Ferris refuses to accede to the perception and creation of youth as a set of discrete images (‘sluts… wasteoids, dweebies and dickheads’) corresponding to (among others) ‘youth as party’ and ‘youth as the future’. Ferris’ “day off”, although at first appearing to conform to the former category, has elements of the latter by allowing Ferris a reflective caesura upon youth’s finitude (as Cameron and he make the transition to college) as well as giving Cameron a reprieve from the category of ‘youth as confusing tribe’, whereby his tumultuous relationship with his father results in melancholia. Ultimately, Ferris implicitly agrees with Martin’s understanding of youth as an ideational state rather than one that is tied to biological age: it is ‘a mode of behaviour, a way of being’ [4], which culminates for Ferris in a growing process of individuation: ‘a person shouldn’t believe in an –ism, he should believe in himself’.
[1] Karl Marx, 'Preface,' in A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (1859). Reproduced at http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1859/critique-pol-economy/preface.htm.
[2] Marx, 'Preface,' in A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy.
[3] Catherine Driscoll, 'Youth Cultures: Images and Ideas of Youth' (Lecture, The University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW, March 10, 2008).
[4] Adrian Martin, 'Teen Movies: The Forgetting of Wisdom,' in Phantasms: The Dreams and Desires at the Heart of Our Popular Culture (Ringwood: McPhee Gribble, 1994), 66.
Current Mood: groggy
Current Music: "Offertorium" from Mozart's Requiem
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