Saturday, May 18, 2013

To This We Came

Now, where could we go?

52 comments:

  1. EEK!

    I NEED EAR BLEACH!


    I couldn't even listen all the way through to any of this "music."

    I guess that I'm to old to change my preferences in music. Or something.

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  2. Did your parents say the same thing about your music growing up, AOW?

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  3. It's just business. The problem is that millions take it seriously.

    Try living a Ludacris lifestyle without Ludacris money and special privileges, and you end up dead, in jail or living in a shabby apartment somewhere collecting a government check and smoking another bowl because you can't stand the thought of doing the night shift at the 7/11 sober.

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  4. Nothing can be prohibited. Prohibition ITSELF is prohibited!

    So ENJOY! Indulge your fantasies! Only when you do, think product!

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  5. Full frontal video's...

    It's only a matter of time. After all, Hollywood represents "the return of the repressed"... especially when it comes to sex, but more recently and increasingly, to "violence".

    Now let's "slap up some b*tches"!

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  6. Jack,
    No, my parents didn't because I never enjoyed what they might have considered "extreme" music. I was more old school for various reasons -- one of which was my loving ballroom dancing. Ballroom dancing was my choice -- not my parents' choice, BTW.

    I was quite into the crooners(Dean Martin, Frank Sintra, etc.) while others my age were into rock and roll (Beatles, Rolling Stones, etc.).

    I was also trained as a classical musician and particularly involved in choral music of the type performed in concert halls and at the National Cathedral. That training had a lasting effect on my musical tastes, I'm sure.

    About as extreme as I ever got: Scott Joplin, the Doors, CCR.

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  7. btw - My wife and I went to the Hippydome in Baltimore last week and saw the Greenday musical "American Idiot". I suspect that the play was named after the fellow who brought it to Broadway and sold it as a "musical".

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  8. Crap has existed in any age. Ours is simply no different.

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  9. You've a lot to be proud of in bringing this state of affairs into effect, Duckman. The Boy's of '68 are the counter-culture's heroes... summer of "love", elimination of the Hayes Code... Gosnell v. Wade, etc., etc.

    Thanks a bunch!

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  10. Sorry, Farmer, the case that opened the floodgates for the blessed demise of the Hays code was adjudicated in 1954, I believe.
    Before my generations day.

    Of course, you'd prefer Tammy to Summer with Monica but there is no elevating someone's taste.

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  11. Right, Ducky....for the last 250 year in America, 15 yr old girls have always licked their lips and talked about kissing men's genitalia.

    Well, maybe in YOUR neighborhood.

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  12. That didn't happen in the 60's, z.

    I know that you and Farmer would love to go back to the days of restricted speech, partially because the religious right can't trust adults.

    But this all went south when the media companies found they could market to kids with money. And adolescents will be adolescents especially when they get subjected to blitz advertising.

    But that's capitalism for you and for some reason it's worse in America.

    So we'll all go back to Doris Day because some people can't control their kids.

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  13. If it looks like shit, smells like shit, and SOUNDs like shit,

    GUESS WHAT?

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  14. It's SHIT!

    But WAIT -- it's not that simple anymore. The oddest thing has happened. The Master Malefactors, who've been work sedulously behind the scenes for over a hundred years to corrupt, degrade and rot out the innards of society, have managed through decades of crafty conditioning and ceaseless manipulation through a series of brilliantly -conceived-but-unprincipled lawsuits to accomplish the impossible.

    They have created a whole new BREED of human beings who positively WORSHIP and ADORE the look, smell, taste and feel of SHIT -- and can, apparently, no longer tell the difference between SHIT, SHINOLA and CHOCOLATE CANDY.

    The American Public has for a long time been fed a STEADY DIET of SHIT -- and the younger generations have grown to LOVE it so much they will stouly defend to the DEATH their right to enjoy ROTTEN, DEGENERATE, OBSCENELY UGLY stuff like those videos posted above -- and WORSE.

    I could show you videos -- available right here online -- of teen age girls literally EATING SHIT on camera and dispassionately discussing its "merits" as quaint novelty fare in faintly-bored, emotionally-detached, pseudo-sophisticated tones ON CAMERA.

    NOTHING may be forbidden -- because of our warped interpretation of the First Amendment -- and so we HAVE NO CHOICE but to WATCH our NATION DIE a LONG, SLOW, AGONIZED DEATH from Court-Sanctioned, Government-Mandated DEGENERACY.

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  15. FT, that kind of thinking is pathetic and defeatist. I have three young children, all who know right from wrong. We take the time to teach them in big ways and small, to listen to their conscience.

    Young families all over our country are doing a great job of raising mindful children.

    When I hear people bemoan the state our nation is in, I think back to lessons from the Old Testament, where there were public orgies and it was common to worship...ANYTHING but God.

    Nothing is new. Society goes in cycles and we will survive.

    I wish conservatives and libertarians would stop whining and living in fear. Instead of focusing on the problem, come up with solutions.

    Young voters are looking for leadership in a forward direction. We can't go forward if we're always looking back.

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  16. Jen,
    We can't go forward if we're always looking back.

    To a certain extent, I agree. The GOP, which venerates Reagan (a man whom I also respected although probably not enough until he was gone) spends too much time yearning for another Reagan. It is my view that Reagan would never have been elected if not for the consummate failures of Jimmy Carter. In other words, the time was right for a Reagan to get elected as POTUS. As far as I can tell, the time we are living in now isn't such a time because people are not fed up with the Leftist leadership.

    I suppose that the important question is this: Will enough time under Leftist rule do so much damage that undoing that damage is impossible? Once people are very dependent on the Nanny State, they are incapable of seeing that here is another way that works better exactly because another way is less intrusive.

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  18. I fully realize there are many who still fight the good fight, Jen, and I thank God for them every day. I'm sorry you got caught in the crossfire of this particular debate.

    As is so often the case on these blogs, I was directing my [unusually harsh, crude and biting] observations at two who post here with some frequency and seem to want to believe:

    A) in one case -- that ALL THINGS are perfectly ACCEPTABLE and ALL values are entirely relative and that QUALITY and VIRTUE exist ONLY in the minds of individual beholders.

    B) in the other case that ALL things MUST be ACCEPTED and SUFFERED no matter how MONSTROUSLY HIDEOUS, INIMICAL, INSULTING to DECENCY, PERVERSE and MORALLY REPREHENSIBLE they may appear.


    I would say to you about longing for a-perhaps-idealized past, however, that a close study of the best and most ingenious aspects of the past (History) is the only thing upon which we might hope to build a firm foundation for a better future.

    UNFORTUNATELY we took a huge wrong turn during The Civil Rights Era, and allowed ourselves to be persuaded that a close examination of the very worst events in history and the most abominable character traits exhibited by human beings were the ONLY things that served the interests of TRUTH, and were, therefore, the ONLY aspects of History worth studying.

    We've been steeped in distortion, degeneracy and depressing negativity ever since.

    The results of this bad move have been what has been angering and distressing most of us on the right for most of the past fifty years.

    I believe we have been BROUGHT to this state of decadence and near-despair, because of the perverse and downright EVIL popular culture that has been FOISTED on us by evil geniuses. Because of the media celebration of our rapid descent into decadence, we are not very far from a return to the Circus Maximus.

    Surely there could be NOTHNG the least bit desirable about THAT, could there?

    Despite the militant, usually bilious cant and rhetoric of intellectual leftists, progressives and some of the more extreme libertarians, who, apparently, believe in imposing no moral constraints on society whatsoever (other than a strong categorical rejection of homosexuality), I am much in favor of a return, if possible, to what has been contemptuously referred to by leftists for over a century as a "Bourgeois Mentality" or "Middle-Class Morality."

    More intellectually and spiritually advanced individuals may reject and move beyond that on their own, of course. They will anyway. Always have, and always should. But the attempt to drag entire societies to a uniform standard of "advanced" thinking has led us to our present pass, so obviously the leftist initiatives have been a grievous error.

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  19. Jen,
    Clarification....It was not my intent to put you into any kind of crossfire!

    PS: I did not address this comment to FT because I'm sure that he realized that my intent was not to criticize you or to find fault with a good past as a model for a brighter future.

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  22. FreeThinke: I believe you and Ducky may be lamenting the same thing.

    He comes at it from a different standpoint. He likes his arty, dirty movies, and if our kids become swamped with sewage when the floodgates open, so what?

    Advertising does play a part in all of this, but as Jen says, the answer is to teach your children. Do not turn them over to the popular culture. Teach them to live in the world but not be of the world.

    A positive development is that the music scene is now beautifully atomized, and a thousand genres and niches have bloomed. I may be wrong, but I believe no genre will have the impact that Jazz, Rock and Roll or Rap had on our culture.

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  23. Always On Watch said...
    ”It is my view that Reagan would never have been elected if not for the consummate failures of Jimmy Carter. In other words, the time was right for a Reagan to get elected as POTUS. As far as I can tell, the time we are living in now isn't such a time because people are not fed up with the Leftist leadership.
    I suppose that the important question is this: Will enough time under Leftist rule do so much damage that undoing that damage is impossible? Once people are very dependent on the Nanny State, they are incapable of seeing that here is another way that works better exactly because another way is less intrusive.”


    What the hell are you rambling about?
    What Difference does that make? Conservatives seem to have short memories when it's convenient. Lets not forget for one second, who was the despicable men who led us into a phony war in Iraq!
    Let's not forget Iran Contra today and how Reagan got away with Treason! And who ILLEGALLY sold arms to IRANIAN terrorists who killed 241 American service members.
    Why don't the Republicans just change their right wing Christianity to Reaganianity and be done with it?

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  24. More intellectually and spiritually advanced individuals may reject and move beyond that on their own, of course. They will anyway. Always have, and always should. But the attempt to drag entire societies to a uniform standard of "advanced" thinking has led us to our present pass, so obviously the leftist initiatives have been a grievous error.


    Excellent point, FT!
    I think that statement alone gives me a good deal of insight into your thinking. :-)

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  25. I suppose that the important question is this: Will enough time under Leftist rule do so much damage that undoing that damage is impossible? Once people are very dependent on the Nanny State, they are incapable of seeing that here is another way that works better exactly because another way is less intrusive."


    I completely agree, AOW. I also think the same about Reagan's election.

    I guess I'm particularly determined to remain hopeful because my children will model my behaviour. Maybe I'm unrealistic, but I won't predict a negative future for them.

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  26. Jen,
    By all means, rear your children with that positive and hopeful attitude. At some point, it will be up to that generation to take the helm and the reins at the ballot box.

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  27. LeftofLeft,
    I am rambling about the sea change in America during the Carter administration. Every Democrat whom I personally knew was disgusted and voted for Reagan in 1980. Every single one -- and I knew quite a few! In fact, I myself voted for Carter in the first Presidential election in which I was eligible to vote.

    You are ranting at the wrong person to defend the GWB administration. I do, however, remind you that many Democrats did support GWB's "war in Iraq" -- mostly because of the reports of WMD's. Ultimately, of course, removing Saddam Hussein (sometimes referred to by my friends belonging to the Democratic Party as "So Damn Insane") did damage to the balance in Iraq, which is an artificially created nation and comprised of three different Islamic sects ever in conflict.

    Nor will I defend Iran-Contra. It was orchestrated by players behind the scenes and not Reagan. At the time, most of the big players were focused on the threat of Communism in the same hemisphere as the United States. These big players thought that they could manage the Middle East. Ha! That's been proven wrong, hasn't it?

    The history of the world is a tale told by alliances that failed because the motives for the alliances were ideologically at odds in the first place.

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  28. Ducky, are you nuts?
    For one thing, that's my point; crap has NOT been like that for years and years. Everyone but you knows that.

    I can't respond to the rest of your ridiculous comment.....man, you are so delusional it's almost fun to read your stuff these days!
    You sure don't know people you've read for years. hmm


    FT: I'm very sorry you took my comment to be in response to you instead of that awful new lib at my place. If you'll read them again, you'll see it was aimed at the dope! Sorry reading my comment wrong hurt you, but I could see how you might have read it that way. It was my intention to ridicule HIM not YOU. xx

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  29. He comes at it from a different standpoint. He likes his arty, dirty movies ...

    ----------
    An interesting observation from Silver.

    Note the conflating of arty and dirty. Try again Silver, that's asinine.

    What would you call "dirty", Silver? My film collection runs to a couple of thousand and there isn't much nudity. Only a couple that would be considered "dirty", "The Night Porter" and "Empire of Passion". I'd say both present a serious topic. I wouldn't show either to my film class but I certainly would encourage mature adults to see either.
    The type of film I prefer is the type that doesn't "stay in the theater" so to speak.
    Unlike ,z, for instance, I think film in the 50's and 60's found a way to be transformative but as FT says, I like those japanese films that no one in their right mind would watch.
    In other words, I am not anti intellectual and have faith in the ability of adults to exercise good judgement.

    Let me know what you consider to be a "dirty movie".


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  30. Ducky, you and I actually have a lot in common. I don't think you like or respect "Pop Culture" any more than I do, and I believe you have a sincere interest in examining life from your own unique perspective and an appreciation for others who do the same -- as do I.

    After that we may part company, because our views on how and why "Pop Culture" became what it is, and why it is so widely accepted by the vast majority differ greatly. You blame "Capitalism" -- i.e. crass profit motive run amok -- while I blame "evil geniuses" who have promoted this stuff with the express purpose in mind of subverting, upending and destroying what Western Christian Civilization used to be.

    It might interest you to know that Turner classic Moves, which has been a refuge for me from the generally revolting spectacle of "modern life" for years, has been showing not one -- not two -- but WHOLE DAYS filled with nothing-but Japanese movies IN Japanese and other foreign films presented en masse as well.

    I flat out resent this, BECAUSE I do not watch movies on television for any other purpose but to relax, unwind, be intrigued, sometimes moved or reduced to uncontrollable giggles, etc. -- but mostly to enjoy preserved glimpses of the past, which most regrettably has seemed far more enjoyable and uplifting than most things "modern." In short I watch TCM to be entertained.

    Japanese, Indian, and most-but-not-all European films do NOT "entertain" me, instead they act as IRRITANTS -- not because they are not good, but because they are too damned CHALLENGING in the venues in which they are presented.

    I happen to be fortunate enough to have had a lifelong passion and insatiable hunger for what-is-popularly-known-as "classical music" -- a very stupid term, if you examine the field with any depth, but let's use it anyway.

    I am capable of being completelyenraptured by everything from Gregorian Chant, Machaut, Josquin, Ockeghem, Obrecht through Palestrina, Tamas Luis Vittoria, Monteverdi, Gesualdo, Sweelinck, G.F. Handel, J.S. Bach, Domenico Scarlatti, Soler, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven ------------ all the way through to Jazz, Operetta, American Musical Comedy, Cabaret Music, and many things from the more serious side of the past hundred-or-so years including many operas which get performed all-too-rarely.

    HOWEVER, I do NOT want to hear these things in railroad stations, airport terminals, doctors' waiting rooms, lawyers' offices, elevators, restaurants and certainly not from "boomboxes" in public spaces such as pars, beaches, street corners and public transportation.

    In most instances, unless I am in a concert hall, opera house or at home, where I have complete control over what-if-anything I want to hear, I prefer to hear NOTHING.

    There are many more things I like in the field of music than those I don't like. Unfortunately for me and I-think the rest of society we are constantly bombarded with and subjected to "expressions" of vilest, most offensive sort wherever we go on a society gone mad with a Continual Celebration of Bad Taste.

    This has not happened by accident or strictly because of "profit motives." This IS a form of Public Brainwashing, and it's effects on our quality of life have been TRAGIC.

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  31. Ducky,
    It's a "community standards" issue.

    Amoral cultural nihilists, cheered on by people like you, have torn down the pillars of Western Christendom and build a flaming pyre, around which you gleefully dance naked.

    The backlash against puritanical censors was inevitable and also needed. We are free people, and this is not a backward Muslim country. Censorship and liberty are incompatible.

    The problem lies not in allowing people to enjoy all manner of perversity in their own homes and voluntary associations, but in the perverse need to shove in everyone's faces, to put it on public display and demand everyone appreciate it and bow down to it.

    You feverish lefty loons were not happy until you had set fire to the entire culture. You've given us a plague of incurable social diseases, intellectual herpes, mind-rotting syphilis...

    You should be ashamed of yourselves.

    What does it say about the psychology of a person who is compelled to display his deviant behavior and twist the modern culture to it instead of merely using his freedoms to enjoy them in private?

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  32. z, whenever a right winger complains about the state of the culture I have to wonder if she is complaining about homosexuality being more open.
    Hard to know in your case.

    As far as pornography is concerned. It's always been there but with today's plethora of media outlets it's tough to keep it in the back room.

    One thing I will say is this has nothing to do with striking down the Hays Code and allowing free expression. Go ahead and blame all those nasty liberals if you like but most people don't want your constrained culture either.

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  33. Sorry, Farmer, the case that opened the floodgates for the blessed demise of the Hays code was adjudicated in 1954, I believe.
    Before my generations day.

    Of course, you'd prefer Tammy to Summer with Monica but there is no elevating someone's taste.


    Watcha talkin' 'bout, Willis?

    I ALWAYS been on Plato's side, looking to "ban the foreign poets" (Laws). I was on Rousseau's side writing letters to D'Alembert.

    ...and the "reason" given by the Court was an "anti-monopoly" argument. In other words... a "Leftist" one.

    If I want to see Summer with Monika, I'll get on a plane and fly to Stockholm with all the other members of the Nocturnal Council, I mean "President's staff".

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  34. I've decided that Farmer, z and Silverfiddle should all attend a very non PC retrospective of Italian cinema citing homosexuality as a root case of Nazism. Probably meets Silverfiddle and z's idea of community standards.

    Start wit Rome, Open City and end with The Conformist.

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  35. Yes, FT, we probably agree more than disagree although I don't have an issue with film or any visual medium being difficult.
    Need to exercise the mind now and again.

    We probably agree with Hayek that elites should have a major role in advancing culture but I think Farmer, z, and Silverfiddle are going to break with their hero Hayek and stick with "community standards" (i.e. Inertia).

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  36. Ducky: If you think "elites" are advancing our culture, you need help.

    I shouldn't have to explain this to you, but here goes...

    Mankind has always been plagued with social ills, deviant behavior, etc like prostitution, murder, etc.

    Back in the old days the perverts, pornographers, and other other criminals respected society's norms and practiced their perversities in their dens of iniquity, hidden away from decent society.

    And many in decent society knew they existed. Hell, many regularly snuck away to them for some free-wheeling fun.

    I understand and appreciate are in all the mediums, including the contemporary.

    Yes, in its broadest sense, I consider these offering by FT to be art, because they are a product of artistic expression.

    I also understand and appreciate the value of art exploring difficult and controversial themes.

    My rustic understanding is that one purpose of art can be to shock. OK. To what end?

    Countee Cullen's poem, "Incident" shocked me as a white middle-schooler living in a rural farming community. It moved me towards a better understanding of those different than me.

    So much of popular culture is all about shock, but it seems that it is an end unto itself.

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  37. Yes, Silverfiddle I do feel that elites are critical in advancing culture and i felt it necessary to point out that the theory has strong roots on the right wing in hopes to short circuit some of FT's rants about Gramsci and others.

    Yes, one purpose of art is to shock. Duchamp's Fountain is a pretty notorious example. Did it have a serious purpose, yes, I believe it did.
    You'll find similar examples in film such as Bunuel's An Andalusian Dog which had an express purpose to shock. It tried to shock the AVANT-GARDE ESTABLISHMENT. He was very upset that the film was well received.

    That attempt at shock is a good deal different than attempts by pop rock stars to be outrageous but we have David Bowie and gay culture to thank for a lot of that superficiality.

    Still don't know why you consider foreign films, dirty.

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  38. I was speaking broadly.

    A natural reaction to the puritanical censors was to bash down the gates. That let the art in, that never should have censored, but it also let in the rats and cockroaches.

    I am not arguing for more gatekeepers. In a healthy society, educated people act as their own gatekeepers.

    I'll grant you, there is something to your theory about advertisement, which I prefer to call what it is: Propaganda. It comes at us from everywhere.

    Unfortunately, many of us are defenseless against it, thanks to the progressive education syndicate. One of their key objectives must have been to prepare us to receive. It sure wasn't logical analysis and critical thinking.

    Would I like to be in a hot tub with a naked woman? Sure!

    Would I want my daughter to be the woman in that video? No way.

    We can set aside the question , WWJD.

    How about What Would Kant Do?

    He would treat people as ends unto themselves, never as a means.

    And he would invoke his categorical imperative:

    Act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law.

    Our society is sick. I've observed the chicken and egg argument, and my opinion is that the sick society produces sick art. There is a feedback loop, so it is a somewhat symbiotic relationship.

    My point is we get the popular culture we deserve. Art, like our politicians is a self-inflicted plague.

    Having said that, a plain reading of history backs up FreeThinke's observations on how the leftwing deconstructionists and other bourgeois-hating atheists have dedicated themselves to dismantling Western Civilization for over 100 years now.

    They're almost finished, so we'll all have to find new things to argue over.

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  39. Inertia "Is" the "just" position, duckman.

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  40. And the same goes for today's art scene: in it, the Real does NOT return primarily in the guise of the shocking brutal intrusion of excremental objects, mutilated corpses, shit, etc. These objects are, for sure, out of place — but in order for them to be out of place, the (empty) place must already be here, and this place is rendered by the "minimalist" art, starting from Malevitch. Therein resides the complicity between the two opposed icons of high modernism, Kazimir Malevitch's "The Black Square on the White Surface" and Marcel Duchamp's display of ready-made objects as works of art. The underlying notion of Malevitch's elevation of an everyday common object into the work of art is that being a work of art is not an inherent property of the object; it is the artist himself who, by preempting the (or, rather, ANY) object and locating it at a certain place, makes it the work of art — being a work of art is not a question of "why," but "where." And what Malevitch's minimalist disposition does is simply to render — to isolate — this place as such, the empty place (or frame) with the proto-magic property of transforming any object that finds itself within its scope into the work of art. In short, there is no Duchamp without Malevitch: only after the art practice isolates the frame/place as such, emptied of all its content, can one indulge in the ready-made procedure. Before Malevitch, a urinal would have remained just a urinal, even if it were to be

    Zizek, "The Matrix or Two Sides of a Perversion"

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  41. Still hawking "Supremecism", Duckman?

    Wait... stand over here... inside the camera frame... of me Master Signifier's "gaze".

    I'll lay down in the rhizome. ;)

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  42. ...and re-territorialize asignified objects... ;)

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  43. After all. Planes of organization are passe in the post modern age. Planes of consistency (the hobgoblins of small Emersonian minds) are where its' at!

    D&G, "A Thousand Plateaus"

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  44. Farmer, can you tell me why Silverfiddle thinks foreign films are "dirty"?

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  45. Does he?

    I can say one thing about them. They're not "American" in values.

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  46. Ducky,
    This is why I find it tiresome to try to converse with you.

    You ignore what you can't deal with, including my answers to you, and pursue your narrow little agendas, such as they are.

    Maybe I've misjudged you and you really are dense. Sneering sophistry doesn't require much brainpower.

    Come to think of it, I haven't heard much intelligent thought out of you that didn't come from The Nation or some other book or publication. Do you think for yourself? Do you read the comments of others and consider them? Looking back, I'd say no.

    You read more like a propaganda bot programmed by OWS types. You're banal, predictable and worst of all, unoriginal.

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  47. Here's a recap for the slow ones in the audience who can't follow context and who get tripped up by figurative language:

    Ducky Quacked quizzically:
    Still don't know why you consider foreign films, dirty.

    May 20, 2013 at 6:37 PM
    Silverfiddle said...
    I was speaking broadly.

    A natural reaction to the puritanical censors was to bash down the gates. That let the art in, that never should have censored, but it also let in the rats and cockroaches.


    A norman human being with a passing understanding of the English language would understand what I am saying.

    Let me guess, Ducky. You must be a member of the Public School Syndicate...

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  48. Silver, have you ever read Milton's Areopagitica ?

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  49. ... and I'm still trying to figure out why you think foreign films are any more explicit than American.

    I can't think of any nation with a film industry on the level of MTV.

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  50. ... aaaaaand he wanders down another goat trail...

    You're a time burglar

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  51. The point here, Ducky, is that leftists like you, back when the left still cared about civil liberties, rightly pushed the boundaries of censorship. From what I understand (I wasn't around at the time) much of the banned "racy" stuff was European. For the purposes of this discussion, it doesn't matter.

    The left now refuses to call anything whatsoever smut, especially if it is grunted out by a squatting minority who is engaged in genitalia-inspired nihilism or bashing Old White European Dude morality.

    Instead of making the case for art, you instead simply left the gate open, and the grunting hog Larry Flynt wandered in (What a wonderful centerpiece for the left's interest in the 1st Amendment!) and the rest of the rats and cockroaches followed. Congratulations. Mission Accomplished!

    And corporateamerica jumped on board, proving again that left and right is just red flag-blue flag bullshit for those who must have teams to root for.

    So what are you going to do now to divert the conversation. Start lighting your farts?

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  52. Glad to see some life exhibited here for a change.

    Impossible to summarize my beliefs on this easily or succinctly.

    I most earnestly do believe in absolute Freedom of Expression, because there are thousands of historical precedents that have proven over and over again that "Community Standards" repeatedly and almost universally misunderstood, condemned and went-so-far-as-to punish the creators of works of the most profound genius.

    Once upon a time we artists called the smug, intolerant, blockheaded advocates of "Community Standards" PHILISTINES -- the people who can see no difference between a penis on a statue by Praxiteles, on a painting on the papal chapel ceiling by Michelangelo, or the crudest photographed images of ugly old men having their way with wayward young girls -- or other men for that matter.

    To the typical Philistine ALL nudity is obscene and should be banned, PERIOD!

    Will Hayes -- as the author and supporters of Volstead Act before him -- was most assuredly a PHILISTINE.

    I think, SilverFiddle, understands that Philistinism HAD to be fought and ultimately defeated (though it never will be, Alas!).

    Unfortunately, in throwing out the "bathwater" of narrow, insular, ignorant, unsophisticated, petty-minded, unduly suspicious, views driven largely by superstition, we made the Great mistake of throwing out the "baby" of charm, affection, romance, gentleness, gentility, subtlety, beguiling fantasy, common sense, common decency, good intentions and good taste.

    So today, because of all the "freedom" we've been permitted by The High Court, against the better judgment of a vast majority, we've lost our moral compass, and surrendered ourselves to a perpetual celebration of brutal cynicism, grotesque depravity, unbridled insolence, loss of respect for elders, loss of respect for God and Country, loss of loyalty and the hope of enduring affection in personal relationships, etc.

    Why ONE EXTREME must invariably supplant its OPPOSITE after any "Revolution" is The Great Mystery all men of good conscience should be striving to solve.

    Instead, we delight in calling each other names, and make stupid, irrelevant derogatory remarks about someone's ability to speak French -- as though THAT had any bearing on the issue a hand in ANY way whatsoever.


    Time to get over being STUCK on STUPID, don't you think?

    ReplyDelete

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