Critical Articles

The Abolitionist Project - David Pearce Podcast - The Hedonistic Imperative

2012-01-27T16:20:00.000-08:00

Philosopher David Pearce made this podcast in 2007 and it is currently available on www.abolitionist.com. I made single image videos that accompany the audio and uploaded them on YouTube. This allows for easier embedding and linking. There are other video versions of this podcast but they tend to be accompanied by distracting and melodramatic slideshows.

Pearce's online piece The Hedonistic Imperative (found at www.hedweb.com) has had a profound influence on me, and I am a big fan of his various articles and websites. I often try to explain these ideas to others and am usually met with strong but predictable resistance. It is easier to link to these videos and sites than to debate something that has already been outlined so well.

My only issue with Pearce is that he seems to be associated with the "animal rights" movement. While I agree with everything mentioned about animals in this podcast, nothing in it would be possible without research on animals. My conclusion (based on a video of another talk) is that Pearce is not opposed to animal testing for the ends described. I despise the anti-testing movement and just want to make that clear.

Here are the videos. Enjoy!
PART I:

PART II:

PART III:

American Censorship ©

2012-01-17T21:29:00.000-08:00

Please call your representative today.
Use the link below:

http://americancensorship.org/modal/call-form-moz.html

SOPA, Jobs, and the Future of Music Industry Middlemen

2012-01-16T06:03:00.000-08:00

[Edit (1-19-2012) Luckily, since this was written, anyone not living under a rock (or alternately who isn't a senile old senator who can't remember which bill he was paid to sponsor) has heard of SOPA and PIPA, due to internet blackout day. The following link is still worth looking over.]

If you have never heard of the proposed SOPA bill, make sure to check out the following link before reading any further. This thing is a big deal.

http://americancensorship.org/infographic.html

SOPA and its senate sister PIPA will enable unprecedented internet censorship in the US. This legislation will authorize anti-competitive corporate practices, shift burden of proof to those least able to defend themselves, and generally restrict the internet, undermining its utility, privacy, and safety.

The Colbert Report hosted a very brief, humorous debate on SOPA. Music industry exec Danny Goldberg defended SOPA as harmless and necessary for the survival of the entertainment business.

Here's a link to the segment:

http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/403466/december-01-2011/stop-online-piracy-act---danny-goldberg---jonathan-zittrain

Despite Goldberg's smug assurance that such broad legislation will only be used as promised, the dangers of SOPA and PIPA seem clear. But I will deal with a supposed benefit of the bill. To quote Goldberg in the debate:

"Over the last 15 years, multibillion dollar [internet] companies have been created. At the same time, thousands of jobs [were] lost in movies and records and books."

He's saying SOPA will save jobs in America. It also sounds like he's vaguely suggesting that the jobs situation is the fault of powerful online newcomers. Jobs-lost numbers are controversial and I don't know how they are calculated or by whom. It's hard to trust statistics quotes from trade group reps who tend to count every download as a lost sale. I do believe his statement and in any case the quantity of jobs lost is irrelevant in this discussion. Rather, it is the kinds of jobs lost that matter.

Losing one's job, or not being able to find work is, at best, very rough and more often disastrous. There is, however, a kind of dissonance when jobs are talked about relative to costs. Lowering taxes often means firing people- an obvious example. Purely as a point of argument, let's say a $20 dollar CD sale versus a $4 digital download produces additional revenue that can contribute to more salaries allowing for more office cubicle jobs at record companies. Does this justify industry price gouging, monopolization, and especially the limitation of digital (immaterial) access to art, education, and knowledge in general to the public? There may be a dilemma on an emotional level- unemployment sucks. Still, you will find few people willing to subsidize the resurrection of the telegraph industry for the sake of new jobs.

On his official website, Danny Goldberg states that he has "worked in the music business as a personal manager, record company President, public relations man." To appropriate a quote from a non-SOPA article in Spin magazine¹, I believe he is or was a "gatekeeper of the few channels to reach consumers [e.g. radio, MTV]." Goldberg's knowledge of the industry system as well as the kinds of services he provides were required by aspiring professional recording artists. Something changed in the last decade and a half that resulted in a massive depreciation in value of such services, if not their complete irrelevance. Can you guess what it was? The internet suddenly allowed artists to market themselves, communicate directly with fans, and so on.

Danny Goldberg is probably sufficiently well off and not in a panic about losing his job. Nonetheless, such a job, or at least much of what it entails, is obsolete. He is desperately lobbying for the preservation of an anachronistic system, arguing that it was a source of employment and therefore an intrinsic good. Is it a stretch to call him a Luddite? Middlemen like him no longer have a significant place in either making, distributing, or broadcasting music. Anyone planning such a career should probably reconsider or risk becoming one of the supposed thousands without a job due to what is commonly termed internet piracy. Being a PR mouthpiece for the recording industry like Goldberg seems like a safer bet.

Keep in mind, I'm not arguing that all the reported jobs lost were related to business and establishment positions and exclusive of those actually involved in making music. However, it seems very likely that the much larger proportion were such middlemen.

Predictably, Goldberg uses language like "theft" and "stealing" in his argument. This equates stealing a car to duplicating and storing electromagnetic bits of binary data. The economic implications of the latter certainly deserve serious discussion, but the analogy is absurd and has no basis considering the logic of the physical, corporeal world we live in; a car is a tangible object, information is not.

And so, ironically even though SOPA is wrong on so many levels, it's apparent that even the mindset behind its expressed goal is considerably flawed.

¹Spin, January 2012 (I'm not actually a fan of this magazine).

Christopher Hitchens 1949-2011

2011-12-21T13:18:00.000-08:00

Hitchens was the ultimate contrarian. His views were incredibly diverse and there is a lot he's said that I disagree with. Fortunately, in these last few years, he was probably most famous for being a passionate and effective champion of ATHEISM.

So as a tribute, here is a link to a great compilation video of Hitchens debating the issue of genital mutilation, specifically circumcision. This practice, of course, has a religious origin and is still perpetuated in much of the world in the name of god.

Enjoy as Hitchens verbally destroys any justification of circumcision and denounces theism in the process.

Psychosis in Cronenberg's Work

2010-07-02T00:25:00.000-07:00

A Brain Undergoing a Schizophrenic Hallucination

In late 2007, just before getting my first degree, I wrote a paper as part of an independent study project for college. I've been meaning to post this for almost three years, but never did for various reasons. Finally I figured, what the heck, why not! Rereading it three years later, there are many things I would want to alter and add. Indeed, I did edit some of it just now. There were parts that just needed to be changed or elaborated on. One thing that bothered me upon reading this again was the scarcity, throughout the paper, of in-text citations; there should definitely have been more of those in there, and I regret my negligence and overestimation of common knowledge. Regardless, I like this work, and except for the edits today, it is the 2007 original. Please tell me what you think! Deepest thanks to Professor Paula Massood for advising me on this paper.

And now...

Psychosis in Cronenberg's Work

Many of David Cronenberg’s films, especially those released from the mid-80s to the early-90s, explore the theme of psychosis. While psychosis is often thought of in the outdated psychoanalytic sense, characters in Cronenberg’s films, for example Videodrome, exhibit psychoses of clearly biological origin. In this way, the director's films express two important themes: the all-importance of the body, and mind-body connections. His films also attempt to express the experience of psychosis through hallucinatory imagery and a surreal tone, which some have described as “visceral.” The result is an extremely intimate and compelling cinematic experience in which film engages the viewer in an unconventionally physical way. The viewer is placed in a rare and valuable psychological state- an awareness of one’s own body and biology. In order to explore the above, I will discuss Cronenberg’s Videodrome (1983) and Naked Lunch (1991).

It should be noted that this paper will take for granted the fact that David Cronenberg is an auteur. Evidence for him being one can be seen in the fact that he writes most of what he directs and that he often retains the same crew and actors. What's more, there are recurrent themes and imagery throughout his films, as well as a continuing vision centered on the body. Interestingly "Cronenberg has suffered somewhat from being the subject of a criticism politically out of step with film theory. In practice he is, of course, a classic auteur" (Rodley 18). A robust Auterist criticism of Cronenberg's work is beyond the scope of this paper, but it is important to understand that it is the director who is responsible for the unique and unifying character of all his films.

Our first task is to define psychosis, the understanding of which is crucial to the premise of this paper. Here, I will happily let Dave 'Deprave' (Rodley xvii) have the first word. In discussing his tribulations with professional censors, Cronenberg states that "censors tend to do only what psychotics do: they confuse reality with illusion" (qtd. in Rodley 105). A quick look in the dictionary comes up with much the same meaning; psychosis is a "derangement of personality and loss of contact with reality" (http://www.thefreedictionary.com/). Still, to go along with the psychiatric emphasis of this paper, a modern clinical definition is needed. According to the Diseases and Disorders book on Schizophrenia, "Doctors use the term 'psychosis' to describe mental illnesses like schizophrenia, in which the person is incapable of separating what is real from what is imagined. People with psychotic disorders often cannot comprehend that they are mentally ill" (Abramovitz 12). Schizophrenia is probably the condition that a majority of people now associate most with psychosis. The "positive" symptoms of the disease are the most well known. These include psychotic delusions and hallucinations. The other groups of schizophrenic symptoms, "negative" and "disorganized," (Ibid 13-14) are less relevant to our discussion. Negative symptoms include "a lack of facial expressions and a refusal to make eye contact with others." (Ibid 14). Disorganized symptoms "include incoherent [and] illogical speech and behavior" (Ibid). The protagonist in Cronenberg's Spider (2000) suffers mainly from these latter two types of schizophrenic symptoms.

Throughout Ambramovitz's book, photos of scans of schizophrenic brains show that their brain activity, both in location and intensity, is different compared to normal brains. One fascinating image is that of a schizophrenic brain scanned during a hallucination (Abramovitz 14). These scans illustrate the modern view of schizophrenia; "that the primary cause is genetically determined biological abnormalities in the brain" (Ibid 29). This is in contrast to the now outdated psychoanalytical ideas of Freud who "believed schizophrenia was caused by a person's unconscious memories of traumatic childhood events" (Ibid). The (acute) efficacy of a class of drugs appropriately named the antipsychotics (invented in the 1950s) in contrast to the utter failure of hands-off psychology (Ibid) appears itself to be enough evidence against any non-physicalistic theory. The point of the all of the above is to emphasize that psychosis is strictly a phenomenon of biological origin, and that this viewpoint is held by all serious researchers who use any modern empirical method- both neuroscientists and modern psychologists.

Many films, especially those of the immediate post-war era, embraced psychoanalytical causes and solutions. A perfect example is Hitchcock's Spellbound (1945) in which the protagonist, played by Gregory Peck, discovers a repressed memory during the climax of the film and is magically healed of his amnesia. Hitchcock himself later admitted that all this was "pseudo-psychology" (qtd. in Truffaut 234). Cronenberg's narratives seemingly flirt, initially, with psychoanalytic content. One such example is seen in the beginning of Dead Ringers (1988). The twin gynecologist protagonists of the film are shown during their unusual childhood(†) performing gynecological surgery on small, plastic anatomical models tied down with miniature surgical tubing. When grown, brother Beverly will utilize surgical tubing during role-playing sex with girlfriend Claire. However, constructing a psychoanalytical reading of the film would be misguided, as the narrative and imagery is firmly grounded in Cronenberg's exploration of the theme of "body horror" (Rodley xiii). Psychosis appears in Beverly because of drug abuse, notably stimulants. The solution to the troubling psychological problem of the "mental disintegration of one man made two by an accident of conception" (Ibid) is solved not with a lively talk-therapy pow-wow but with a scalpel. In Cronenberg's films, the body reigns supreme, and it is the very corporeal brain, with all its lobes and sulci, that misfires during psychosis. Memory, personality, emotion, etc. are all just neurons in the brain, which is just another part of the body. Thus, mind and body are one.

†Noteworthy is the total absence of the twins' parents throughout the film, including the childhood scenes.

"Cronenberg tried something new with Videodrome that he has since reformulated for Naked Lunch: a movie which slips, unannounced, into the protagonist's hallucinations" (Rodley 94). Videodrome is about TV station owner Max Renn's obsession with a violent, sadistic, and pornographic pirated video signal. He wants to buy it to broadcast on his station and he searches for its source. He begins experiencing hallucinations from watching the Videodrome signal and this leads him to a conspiracy of sorts. Soon, he becomes (or is forced to become) utterly delusional, and reality never does return. Renn will go in and out of hallucinating throughout the film. This technique makes the viewer question if what she is seeing is still reality in the film. For example, after we learn of the tumor-forming nature of Videodrome, we begin to question if everything on screen after that point is objective reality or Renn's hallucinations. At first, it is fairly easy to make the distinction. When the tape given by Bianca O'Blivion begins to breathe, we know Renn is hallucinating. This hallucination continues when Renn thrusts his face into the ecstasy of the inflating television. The next day when he confronts Bianca warning her that "it bites," we are no longer in the hallucinatory realm. Reality is episodic and is proven or disproven by special effects. Tapes and TVs don't move in real life, so he must be hallucinating. When he slaps his secretary and briefly sees Nicky, we know he is hallucinating because of the impossibility of such a situation. Since our point of view is firmly Renn's, there is no possibility of this being an expressionistic device intended to convey a piece of information to the audience about reality through unrealistic images.

Eventually, this system for differentiating between fantasy and reality no longer works. At the same time, Renn's hallucinations become more public in setting. The break when this occurs is near the end of the second act, in the scene in which Renn puts on the helmet given to him by Spectacular Optical to capture his hallucinations. After his hallucination of being in Videodrome, there is an abrupt cut to him waking up. The result of the helmet experiment is never revealed and is probably even a mystery to Renn. Is Renn in the helmet for the rest of the film? This is more likely considering that he continues hallucinating after he wakes up (he briefly believes he has murdered Masha). A similar break with reality occurs in eXistenZ (2000), which in many ways is a remake of Videodrome. After Ted pauses the game system, he is no longer sure of reality. In both cases, after one puts on a hallucinatory virtual reality device, he may never know if he will ever take it off.

Barry Convex's helmet can be compared to the brain scanning machine mentioned previously that showed the areas of the brain that light up during a schizophrenic's hallucination. (FIGURE 1) Like that machine, the helmet (if we are to believe that it indeed does what Convex says it does) reads the biology of the brain and extracts from it a psychological state. In Videodrome, a tumor causes the hallucinations. In schizophrenia, abnormal brain activity causes the hallucinations. Either way, the source of the psychosis is biological. We can then reason that the brain and body are one, both governed by the same kinds of physiological impulses as our other organs.

Since most of Renn's hallucinations after he puts on the helmet happen in public places, and in scenes of spectacular violence with horrified onlookers, the question arises; are we, at any point, taken out of Renn's point of view and shown the objective, non-hallucinatory, reality? This indeed is the case. Cronenberg uses mis-en-scene to clue the audience in on the objective veracity of events. A memorable example is the scene of Convex splitting apart into a swelling mass of tissue after being shot by Renn. It is divided into seven shots at different angles, all at a medium-shot distance. Only Convex is shown. At no point do we see any member of the audience reacting to Convex's disintegration, (although we do hear their screams). We do see the audience reacting to Renn accosting and firing at Convex. Renn may indeed have shot Convex (and his partners), but what happens to Convex's body is only Renn's imagining, their screams only a response to the assassination. Similarly, when Harlan gets blown up, we see a store patron's reaction to his "bomb hand," but she is out of focus, suggesting that she is reacting to something other than what we are seeing. Shallow focus traditionally implies a separation between the subjects in the two planes.

In Naked Lunch, Cronenberg similarly uses both surreal, impossible imagery and mis-en-scene techniques to take the audience in and out of objective reality. However, this is done so less than in Videodrome. This makes Naked Lunch even more daring in its unconventionality, and an even more unnerving filmic representation of psychosis than Videodrome. Moreover, there is a fundamental difference in the way the films use psychosis and what they say about it. Videodrome is a film that explores a variety of themes: media, censorship, and sex are some, and channels them through a context of psychosis. Connections are made between, for example, violence in the media and psychosis. In Cronenberg's words, the film "posits the possibility that a man exposed to violent imagery would begin to hallucinate" (qtd. in Rodley 94). Cronenberg is always apolitical and his approach is more a scientific "experiment" (Rodley xiv) performed on screen. In other words, in Videodrome he is not concerned about the political repercussions of censorship, even though he is personally disgusted by it (Ibid 158). Rather, his aim is born in the most basic seed of science and art: curiosity. In his experiment, society as whole, as well as Renn as an individual are the subjects, and psychosis is the introduced variable. In these terms, Naked Lunch is different in that the subject is psychosis itself, in the context of the film taking the form, and being indistinguishable from the creative process, specifically writing. "The film is about the "prison [and] self exile called expression" (Peter Weller, The Directors DVD). The exile is in a place far from reality and in one's own mind, not always a pleasant place, but the birthplace of creativity.

Naked Lunch is a based on Cronenberg's screenplay which borrows from William S. Burroughs' bizarre novel of the same name, as well as the short story "The Exterminator" and Burroughs' own life experience. The narrative centers on exterminator Bill Lee, played by Peter Weller, and his surreal espionage adventure in "Interzone," a free city somewhere in north Africa (based on Tangiers in what is now Morocco) (Rodley 158). Lee escapes to Interzone after shooting his bug powder addicted wife in a drunken game of "William Tell," all the while hallucinating talking bugs, alien-looking "mugwumps," and the like. Throughout, he is writing a novel, which he types up as spy reports to insect superiors.

The realization of the script is as unusual as the narrative. Cronenberg's aim was to "show the unshowable and speak the unspeakable" (Rodley 159). He succeeded by making the protagonist live his art. Burrough's and Lee's art is disturbingly sexual and bodily, surreal, and non-linear in nature, and is well suited for a representation through psychosis on screen. Such an execution is crucial because one important aspect of what showing the unshowable means is making a film about writing that wasn't boring. As most screenwriting texts (Hunter 21) will tell you, "the act of writing is not very interesting cinematically" (qtd. in Rodley 165). This is also the case for any internally creative profession, architect, composer, or painter, for example. "It's a guy sitting. Maybe he's interesting , maybe he wears a hat, maybe he drinks and smokes. But basically he sits and types. It's an interior act" (Ibid). This can be seen again and again in movies about artists. In Pollock (2000), for example, the title character, played by Ed Harris, splashes and pokes his canvas in a montage with decisively inspiring music in the background. The audio leitmotif returns when there is a pan of his paintings, and we are thus informed that Jackson Pollock was an artistic genius. What's missing is any substantial insight into the mental processes involved in painting. The music is as close as we get to knowing what is inside his head. This is the case in films I like to refer to as the "drunken artists of the 20th century behaving badly" genre. In The Doors (1991), Jim Morrison drinks, yells, and sings. In Sylvia (2003), Sylvia Plath, drinks, broods, and writes. They all die at the end. By the way, these are all wonderful, entertaining, and rich films, but not because they say anything much about the creative process. Rather, they are portraits of fascinating, troubled characters. In contrast, Bill Lee is a restrained personality, never throwing tantrums or knocking over dinner tables. He is troubled but never lets his problems get the best of him. He is a writer first and a drug addict second, though he doesn't know it.

Bill Lee is clearly psychotic throughout the film. Like Max Renn in Videodrome, his psychosis is of biological origin and often takes the form of hallucinations dealing with the body, flesh, and surreal sex. Lee's psychosis begins in earnest when he first uses "bug powder." Shortly after, he hallucinates a giant talking bug. He seeks help for his addiction from Dr. Benway who substitutes bug powder with an apparently even more mind-altering substance made from "aquatic Brazilian centipede." The fictional nature of the drugs is intentional. Aside from Cronenberg's disinterest in anti-drug subject matter (Rodley 164), which would inevitably be political, the drugs had to be exotic and extraordinary enough themselves to produce their results. No drug in existence will make you believe, for months on end, that you live and work in a place populated by giant talking insects, lumpy aliens, and shape-shifting typewriters. Therefore, the drugs in Naked Lunch serve a metaphorical purpose directly related to our discussion of the biological origin of psychosis. Drug induced psychosis is inherently biological. Drugs alter the brain's chemistry, and in extreme cases (such as neurotoxicity), even its permanent physical structure. Lee is out of his mind because there is something abnormal about his brain functioning, not because he is devastated about killing his wife or distraught about being a failed writer.

The imagery that Lee hallucinates is itself biological in nature, consisting solely
of organic, fleshy images, especially creatures. He hallucinates shooting his wife and using centipdede powder, both body-centric activities. In contrast, he doesn't see any flashing lights in the sky, transparent, effervescent ghosts, or holographic images of Abe Lincoln. All of those don't fit into Cronenberg's style or goals (supremacy of the body). Moreover, like a true deluded psychotic, he completely accepts his hallucinations. He writes, nonchalantly, on a
typewriter shaped like a mugwump's head, casually taking a sip from a cup as a shadow of a mugwump appendage in the foreground creeps across his face and then releases some kind of fluid. There is a slight suggestion, both in Lee's eyes, and from the atonally-influenced background music, that there is something wrong with this, but it never reaches a conscious level in him. Cronenberg here triumphs in showing the true horror of unrelenting psychosis. The horror is that of the audience seeing a man completely unaware of the chaos around him. Naked Lunch, unlike numerous other films that are action flicks pretending to be horror, succeeds in truly disturbing and frightening its audience. In conventional "slasher" films, the protagonist runs away from the monsters. In Cronenberg's body horror, the protagonist accepts, and even absorbs the monsters (as in The Fly). This resonates with almost all audiences because it is more moving and engaging. Most people eventually begin to question the total subjectivity of their point of view and its suggestion of alienation and madness. Are we all living with monsters in our bodies, minds, and homes?

There are several devices Cronenberg uses to express psychosis in Naked Lunch. As in Videodrome, a brief departure from Lee's point of view informs the audience objectively. When Lee's friends come to visit, the broken typewriter we believe to be in Lee's bag is actually full of drug paraphernalia (real drugs- pill boxes and syringes, not bug powder). As his friends leave back home, their tone suggests that Interzone does not even exist. The claustrophobic, and
surreal set design, partly due to an inability to film on location (Interzone [Tangiers] was recreated in a studio in Canada) further suggests this idea. The locals don't seem "real." They shuffle along the streets in a mechanical, robotic way. The reuse of actors is another favorite Cronenberg technique. As in Spider, there is a possibility that the character is mixing up or mistaking faces. There is a specific, mapped out part of the brain known to be involved in facial recognition, and its impairment, as a result of stroke, for example, can cause this phenomenon. The two policeman in the beginning of Naked Lunch are played by the same actors as the two Annexia borders guards at the end. Both duos might be misidentified faces, or more likely, figments of Lee's imagination.

In Naked Lunch, psychosis is also expressionistic. Cronenberg states that you can't get inside the process of writing in a "realistic or naturalistic way" (qtd. in Rodley 165). Lee lives out his darkest fears and wildest desires in Interzone, a "state of mind" (Ibid 168) actualized and visualized as a place. Bill Lee hallucinates his novel into reality. As he and Joan Frost engage in an adulterous act of romance and writing, their typewriter begins to expand and circulate blood in a very Videodrome-like way. As their lust escalates, the typewriter becomes a living creature that attempts to join in. To invoke Brian O'Blivion, who himself rewords the Gospel of John, the word becomes flesh.

Reality is governed by the limitations of the body. For example, we can't live forever, teleport around the world, or break through a prison wall after committing a crime. Fiction fulfills the desire of escapism. However, fiction works best when it feels realistic, since art and entertainment are sensory experiences. This is a matter of both aesthetics and content. Using the single-sense medium of the radio play as an example, a distorted, hard to hear program is inferior to one in which the sound quality is not compromised, and a program with sound effects, such as car horns and weather noise, is superior to one with only dialogue. The filmmaker has an advantage here over any medium, at least until virtual reality is perfected. Film is a more authentic feeling medium than theater, writing, or gaming, because it is capable of perfectly reproducing realistic visuals and sound through mechanical means (Bazin 13). Even fantastic creations tend to look and sound convincing, especially Cronenberg's organic-styled effects.

Cronenberg's success lies in his combination of reality and fantasy. Cronenberg takes the body, the fundamental feature of reality, and then runs with it, placing it in the most bizarre contexts. This is the essence of fantasy, and Cronenberg's output is the most extreme, and therefore the most effective. It is this aspect of Cronenberg's style that the audience both craves and fears in the same way that a hallucinogenic drug user does as he awaits the beginning of his visceral, psychotic experience. Spectators desire temporary psychosis as an escape and artists seek it as part of their process. The more senses that are immersed, the more effective the experience, and the more complete the illusion. Cronenberg's prediction of a brave new world of permanent, technology-created psychosis in eXistenZ is a comment on a basic facet of human nature.

Works Cited

Abramovitz, Melissa. Diseases and Disorders: Schizophrenia. San Diego: Lucent Books, Inc, 2002.

Bazin, Andre. What is Cinema? Vol. 1. Trans. Hugh Gray. Berkeley: University of California P, 1967.

The Directors - David Cronenberg. Dir. Robert J. Emery. Perf. Holly Hunter, Peter Weller, David Cronenberg. DVD. Winstar, 2000.

Hunter, Lew. Screenwriting 434. New York: Perigee Books, 1994.

Rodley, Chris, ed. Cronenberg on Cronenberg. Toronto: Alfred a. Knopf Canada, 1992.

Truffaut, Francois. Hitchcock. Paladin Grafton Books, 1984.

I'm a Watch Wearer Now, pt. 1: Metaphysical Reasons for Wearing a Watch

2009-08-10T00:43:00.000-07:00

The Hidden Potential of Television and Video in VIDEODROME

A watch is a source that one can tap, whenever necessary, of information. It provides a very basic kind of information in a form that is immediately tangible and available to the perception of our senses. Thus, this worn object becomes evidence of physical, temporal, and conscious existence, and helps to materialize the reality it occupies. The wristwatch is in this way a grounding comfort.

Humans, and likely most other species, crave sensory feedback. People uniquely desire information that can be interpreted in a cerebral and preferably cultural way. A watch provides an array of visual configurations. It can be read in the intended semiotic manner of numbers and time units, or, to those without the foreknowledge of its language, an abstract collection of lines, shapes, and squiggles in two and three dimensions.

In nature, the texture and composition of plants, the infinitely variable and complex gaseous structure of clouds, and the activities of animals are a few examples of things around us us that provide the individual with rich sensory stimuli even in the absence of fellow humans. The witness of such perceptual data naturally tries to make sense of it using analysis through memory. It hence becomes knowledge. Humans are not merely content with taking in pure form nor aesthetic pleasure, they tend to shape what they witness into something relevant to their condition as conscious, intellectually active beings. "Culture", for lack of a better word exists even in an individual who has never seen other humans.

In the modern world, our lives are filled, sometimes to the point of excess, with information. Think of an opposite situation: a room with white walls, a comfortable though immovable white chair made entirely of molded plastic, no clothes allowed. This kind of sensory isolation (when undertaken for a significant amount of time) would be torture for most, if not practically all people. Wearing a wristwatch in such a room would be a comfort not because it tracks time, but because it provides a constant source of information. It is like having a book, although an extremely short one and written in numbers and abstract geometric forms, not letters: an "abstract book".

The output of a watch is confined to an obvious pattern, and the information is acutely finite, but there is also significant change as the hands move or the digital numbers flicker. In a basic analog watch, there are usually three hands multiplied by 360 degrees of variety. If one becomes very desperate in an isolation situation, he can re-set the watch to different times, play with the hands or digital functions, and set the mechanism in motion again. A book is more desirable than a watch in an isolation situation because of the higher level at which it engages us. Books, in contrast to watches, contain naturalistic, human oriented content. That said, to someone who is illiterate, a book is more abstruse than a watch dial, even if they have never seen a watch before. The reason is the intuitiveness and openness to interpretation of a watch. Upon seeing a watch, one can immediately assign some meaning to the parts and its activity, even if this interpretation is creative and unique and completely removed from the act of keeping time. The simplicity of the design of a watch can, in this context prove, be an asset. Assigning meaning requires much more ingenuity when dealing with letters of the alphabet. It's important to note that for the purposes of this article, a "book" is only text, there are no illustrations.

One special characteristic of a watch, an an advantage it has over a book is that it is an object that works on its own. A broken watch loses most of its ideological power and becomes, at best, a piece of jewelry. It's the watch's independent movement that reassures the owner of temporal reality with its every tick or LCD flicker. A watch with a "seconds" function is therefore much better in this context since the minute function reveals information too slowly to naturally be an object of sole attention-to-change in nature. There are sources of constant perceptual stimuli on our own bodies, such as hairs and skin, and this is analogous to the previously mentioned "abstract book". A heartbeat is closer to a watch. Bodily secretions and excretions of all sorts are the intermediate between the lifeless book, and the autonomic heartbeat. Ancient oracles "read" animal entrails as a source of data. The equally gross act of "reading" bodily secretions and excretions is possible and has undoubtedly been attempted in history. Such a source of data has an advantage over looking at skin because it is a more dynamic, temporal thing, the reasons why I'll leave to the reader's imagination.

Of course, the watch also has the advantage of greater tactile interest when compared with a book. Even the simplest watch is made of a variety of materials, each with a different texture when touched. The smoothness of a given watch's glass face is a contrast to the rough underside of its leather band, for example. The paper leaves and cover of a book are not as full of tactile possibility as the parts of a watch. Indeed, a watch that ticks, has digital beeps, or an alarm also engages the sense of hearing, something a book cannot do without purposeful manipulation like drumming. In a sensory deprivation situation, a watch provides a multi-sensory and automatic experience compared to the passive and aesthetically uninteresting book of text.

The watch is technology, so unlike our bodies, it is a connection to what humanity does best: adapt by making things and changing the environment. Body modification is this human industriousness applied to the only thing that is truly ours from birth, our physical selves. A tattoo, brand, or piercing, etc. reminds us of our humanity, of our unique ability to alter our bodies creatively using technology. A watch, worn almost as a cybernetic attachment of supplementary function on our bodies, though not true body modification, can have similar conceptual understanding. A book, is also technological in origin, but it can never be incorporated as a part of the body like a watch can.

The watch would not save the victim from isolation-induced insanity for long; it's simply not enough, and that's not the point. The isolation chamber argument illustrates through an extreme scenario that the comfort it provides in that setting, in the ways mentioned previously, is a comfort that still exists in ordinary, every day wear. The watch, when thought of in this sense, transcends its utilitarian function and becomes an existentially charged object. It can function as a worn symbol of the power and nature of the human mind.

I'm a Watch-wearer Now: Introduction

2009-03-05T23:34:00.000-08:00

A Wristwatch

About a year ago, I began wearing a wristwatch daily, something I hadn't done for nearly a decade. I made doing so a conscious habit, and I quickly became captivated by the little accessory. The satisfaction that I now get from wearing a watch -in my case an inexpensive three handed analog model made of plastic and rubber- is manifold. There are practical, aesthetic, and notional aspects to watch-wearing. I originally wanted to write about this phenomenon in one article, but decided to split it into a couple when I realized that the approaches to the subject were sufficiently divergent in nature as to require their own respective pieces.

In short, articles about watch-wearing and wristwatches are coming. They will include my experience and advice relating to the topic, as well as my philosophical approach.

Steroids and Bioengineered Athletes of the Future

2008-09-10T15:39:00.000-07:00

Commander Data Showing his Incredible Strength By Bending Steel

You don't have to be a sports fan to be familiar with at least some news concerning the use of performance enhancing drugs. Anabolic steroids used to be the matter, but there are so many banned substances now that aren't steroids that the media uses more appropriate terms like doping, even though steroids likely almost exclusively come to mind in the popular consciousness when there is a scandal. Now being several weeks after the Beijing Olympics, one can read up on all sorts of substance troubles, including horses being given PED's in the Equestrian events (horse doping being nothing new, of course).

I currently don't oppose drug testing in sports for most substances, but I think what started out as a health issue has turned into a moral panic. My very limited knowledge of Endocrinology makes me no authority on the issue, but from what I've read, steroid abuse, even by intelligent, responsible athletes, and done in "cycles" etc., is still quite damaging to one's health, especially when used for an extended period of time. Being an advocate of nearly absolute freedom for the individual in private matters, it is my belief that the use of steroids by those not competing in events hosted by organized sporting organizations, for example, individuals who just want to get buff, should be allowed. I believe my anti-prohibitionist views do not conflict with my acceptance of drug testing in organized, and especially professional, sport. That's because the advantage it gives to those that take these substances encourages, or even forces, other athletes to do the same to remain competitive. In contact sports, such as football or boxing, there is also the issue of overpowered athletes hurting each other because their abilities now unnaturally exceed that which the human body can defend against, for example, a boxer's punch becoming too powerful.

Here's the problem: I think the media, a variety of demagogues, and the ignorant have muddled the health issue with the fairness issue. This leads to the acceptance of a quasi-puritanical ideology that discourages the possibilities of biological improvement through science.

Those who know me are already aware that I am an admirer of David Pearce's Hedonistic Imperative, a rather radical futurist manifesto that proposes the need to "eradicate suffering in all sentient life" when technology will eventually allow it. Much of this entry is influenced by that essay. I won't get into specifics, but reading it will give some insight into my views, though I don't agree with everything Pearce believes. I mention The Hedonistic Imperative because of my desire to discuss sport in a futurist context.

Many futurists predict (within varying time frames) that humans will one day be able to engineer their bodies and the environment to a fantastic level. That means dramatically extending lifespan, instantaneous access to information and communication, and all that good stuff. This would be achieved through research in fields like genetics and bionics. What bioengineering would also allow for is the opportunity to improve our abilities, both physical and mental. It's my belief that no "enhancement" procedure will ever be 100% safe, but the ideal is that, unlike steroids and stimulants, the technologies that we employ in a Transhuman era will have negligible risk.

Imagine then, an athlete wants to be very strong. In the future he or she will be able to take the figurative "safe steroid," whatever wonder that may be. This substance or procedure will, of course, besides being harmless, have no painful or unpleasant side effects. That athlete will then have an advantage over competitors. This is unfair so others follow in his or her footsteps. Soon, the whole league will be full of people with super-human strength. We may currently be living in a world "before the days steroid injections were mandatory," as recollected by Professor Farnsworth in Futurama.

Only something like weight class might still be relevant. Gender doesn't have to be. Sounds like one brave new world doesn't it? And so what? No one's health would be compromised and the spectacle would be phenomenal. But it might never happen.

The problem is the steadfast insistence of some people that we should not tamper with the human condition. People have an obsession with tradition and will consider all its limitations as a positive for no rational reason. This phenomenon can be seen in the bizarre organic movement that has swept much of the earth. It seems many people in the developed world are so spoiled by their prosperity that they reject the very technologies that allow them and others less fortunate to survive and thrive. This regressive mindset is evident in my previous entry about quackery. The psychology behind the anti-technology movement is somewhat complex, and is explained better elsewhere.

Unless Neo-Luddite oppressors will have their way, which I'm very afraid is a real possibility, the advantages of elective bioengineering could be a real option in the future- but maybe not for athletes.

The dogmatic upholding of the "natural" is also what I believe will be responsible for the prospective banning of profound biological improvement in sport, when it becomes available. [On a side note, the issue of improved equipment (like mecha suits) is somewhat different, and I assume that there will be much less resistance to its adoption.]

An example of the confusion of fairness and what I'll call "organic-sport" is sportswriter Jeff Passan's almost comically regretful and cynical article about the anniversary of the 1998 home run race between Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa, and the effect baseball's steroid scandal has had on its legacy. He talks of "innocence," and "[the] sacred," and how steroids have ruined all this forever. Never once is health mentioned. Maybe he feels that part is obvious. I don't know how Passan would feel about a team of healthy, but bio-enhanced baseball players. The rules of the game would have to change, but that happens all the time anyway. It appears that he is not so much concerned with health as he is with preserving the natural tradition of sport being based on inborn ability and hard work. I for one think it is not a positive that hours of mindless, repetitive, physical exertion should be a necessary, and even rewarding, part of an aspiring athlete's life. If you like to work out all day, fine, but don't force your way of thinking on others; strenuous exercise may one day be replaced by artificial fitness, the underlying biological mechanism of which will be no different.

Assuming that safe bioengineering becomes available to the masses, it should also be available to athletes. However, there may be fans and pundits in the future who, while benefiting from the newest bioengineering technology themselves, would insist that all pro and semi-pro sport remain an anachronistic spectacle of the original Homo sapiens. Athletes should not be treated differently than those in any other profession. It's true that sport is, to a certain extent, about personalities, and a kind of primitive mythical heroism, but let's not get naive; sport is foremost a game. Adults should be mature and civilized enough not to buy into an illusion to the point of idolism. Considering how physically injurious almost all sports are, it seems fans care less about the health of their beloved athletes, and much more about the possibility of them "cheating," (in the unnatural biological improvement sense). If they are all bioengineered super athletes, and they are also healthy, there should be no problem. Of course, it might turn out to be impossible to test future athletes to see if they are Transhumans. If so, then all this is moot.

The Number One Rule of Quackery

2008-08-29T17:18:00.000-07:00

Teller Demonstrating that Blood is Magnetic

Honest medical doctors have more in common with quacks than they might think. Popular culture has it that doctors take a vow of "do no harm," a familiar part of the Hippocratic Oath. Smart quacks, the ones that don't get into trouble with the law that is, are wise to take a different oath: "Do nothing."

Quackwatch is one of those wonderful sites on the Internet that I would call "one of the good guys." These are sites that try to counter the Pandora's Box of misinformation created by the Internet by giving people a good starting point from which to find the truth. As you've always been told: don't trust only one source. People of the rational persuasion always try to reference several sources before coming to a conclusion. These "good guy" sites themselves recommend critical research instead of assuring visitors that they have the truth. A good example is Snopes, which put up a few light-hearted hoaxes to remind folks of the importance of not relying on a god-truth. [A quick note: I don't link Snopes because they have a lot of annoying ads.]

That said, Quackwatch is a great place to find out if an "alternative" treatment for an illness has legitimate scientific grounding, or belongs on Penn and Teller's Bullshit. Two weeks ago, I read an article on Quackwatch about some so-called "Black Salves." These are corrosive topical treatments given by "Alternative Medicine" practitioners to sufferers of all sorts of skin tumors, especially on the face. Here is a link to the article, but I warn the squeamish out there; it contains a couple of gory pictures. For the rest of us, it's an interesting glimpse at folk medicine gone horribly wrong. Anyway, the story goes (there are a couple actually) that a woman with a bump on her nose was given medicinal paste by some dude, and soon after, much of her face was destroyed.

Here is a quote from the article: "...she developed red streaks that ran down her cheeks. ...the naturopath brought the explanation that the presence of the lines was a good sign because they 'resemble a crab, and cancer is a crab'." My first thought when reading this was that the paste contained sodium hydroxide or lye, a chemical base that is corrosive on the skin (think Fight Club). The injury created then became infected by bacteria (the red streaks) and much of her face had to be debrided. Further research indicates that the alkaloid found in bloodroot (in the salve) acts on ion pumps on cell membranes in such a way as to make the stuff necrotoxic.

It is unclear whether this naturopath was penalized in any way, but there are mentions in the article of several practioners who were punished in similar cases. They went to jail (or got fines, etc.) because it was proven in court that they marketed their products as medicine rather than drain cleaner. True quacks after all have to lure patients, or else they would be out of work.

These quacks failed because they claimed their products had medicinal properties. In some quackery cases that have gone to court, patients, such as cancer sufferers, stopped chemotherapy and radiation, and relied strictly on these alternative healers. Some good examples are cases involving something called a Rife Machine. From my very limited legal understanding, if I give a chainsaw to you, and you cut off your arm, I'm only guilty if I told you it would cure your hangnail. If I implied it, we enter a gray zone full disclaimers and references to 19th century scientists. I don't believe in a nanny state, so I favor a buyer beware argument: an ignorant person should be allowed to make bad, even fatal, choices as long as they aren't being grossly deceived. I think that is an issue I disagree on with Quackwatch, but, anyway, that's all beside the point.

The "Do nothing" approach to quackery is what I'm trying to describe here. I had an exemplary experience of this at a New York City street fair. An Asian man in a suit and tie was selling, for lack of a better description, a set of electric dildoes with an instructional DVD. I mention that he was Asian (Chinese, if I remember correctly) because he would frequently cite this ethnic identity, and Eastern heritage in general, during his sales pitch. He would approach passersby, ask them if they had pain in their life, and, in his words, "fix any problem in ten seconds." His claim was that his devices contained "special magnets" that could be activated on exact pressure points to cure all sorts of ills, especially musculoskeletal strains and pain. I was around for a while during this street fair so I got to see him work. Many people sat down and let him practice his therapy. Some recipients of his treatment claimed that they felt outright nothing. Others politely left after the experience. I noticed that most fairgoers rolled their eyes at the spectacle, and many laughed. He was unfazed throughout, and you know what, many people bought his modified sex toys. Did I mention they were more than $150 dollars for a set? Of course, this man was, again from my legal understanding, doing something illegal. He enthusiastically claimed that his product could treat and cure disease, something that would get him in trouble with the FDA. Working street fairs is a good way of weaseling through such complications, but he might get in trouble if he goes big time. The point of the story is that his devices are simply vibrating knick-knacks; his customers have no chance of harming themselves. They will just get no relief or possibly benefit from a placebo effect. Their skin won't get burned and they won't turn purple. The worst that can happen is if they poke themselves in the eye. Considering our litigious society today, I wouldn't be surprised if the packaging came with a warning of the possibility of such a mishap. As long as the alternative therapy in question has no biological effect, the quack is in the clear.

Real medicine doesn't have the luxury of pure placebo effect, mystical magic auras, and allusions to "thousands of years of use." Drugs and surgeries will always have side effects, and severe ones in a select few individuals. That's how anatomy works. Futurists can only ponder when science will finally surpass this hurdle of improbable disaster.

Holistic medicine-men preparing to profit off the desperate and ignorant would do well to put only purified mud in their products. That way, nobody's face will get burnt off, and nobody's tumor will be healed.

Why "Critical Articles?"

2008-08-28T23:10:00.000-07:00

Why did I choose the phrase Critical Articles as my blog's name? It might sound a little odd at first. You may think that it's too broad, generic, or dull of a name. Maybe it conveys an academic or journalistic feel that isn't consistent with what I am trying to do. Well, few things are perfect, but I know I picked the best one.

The title of the blog had to have a matching Internet domain (e.g., .com, .net). This saves people the trouble of typing in or saying the dots when accessing sites hosted on services like Blogger or MySpace. Moreover, it feels great owning a little plot of land on the World Wide Web, even if it is an illusion. "CriticalArticles.com" was already taken, which is why I use the cool sounding .ORG domain. The .com version is an ad site based in the Bahamas. In the unlikely event you will ever repeat the domain "CriticalArticles.org" to an acquaintance, remember to emphasize the .org domain. Anyway, the insignificant downsides of the name are defeated by all the wonderful positives. For one thing, I like generic and dull names. Second, I didn't want to invent words or use obscure ones like Lycos or google, respectively. There is a prospective problem, though: people who don't speak English may not understand the meaning of the name. That's not a big deal, however, because my entries will be written in English anyway. What about translator software? I can only read one language, so I performed an experiment just now. I copy-and-pasted something from the Alitalia website into Babelfish for an Italian to English translation. What I got back was understandable, to a certain extent, but a stranded airline passenger would have no idea what to do if he or she read it on a bright red sign in Palermo International. Conversely, an Italian reader may likely have a hard time reading my site. I welcome non-English-speaking readers, but I had to make a choice.

A short while after thinking up "CriticalArticles.org", I discovered that it sounds alliterative to my ear. Pleasing sounding language, including, in my opinion, alliteration, is almost always preferable. Since my blog theme is quite general, the name couldn't be something like "LighterCollector" or "SciFiMovieReviews". Using my name in the title wouldn't work either; "Miky'sThoughts" has no meaning at all. It's not a terrible option, but I think it works best for celebrities and the like. Through such elimination, I came up with the name. As it turns out, "CriticalArticles.org" is pretty appropriate. What I will be writing here is, for the most part, critical writing. I will analyze an issue and come away with a conclusion or question. The word critical has other meanings too. It can mean unfavorable, for example, a critical person who always finds faults in situations. Critical can also mean, according to dictionary.com, something very important or dangerous; Imagine fiery activists writing blogs regarding some grave injustices that they feel everyone out there should know about as soon as possible. I will try to keep problems that critical out of my blog, but I find the idea a little amusing. As for the "articles" part, that's clear; the entries I post are articles of a sort. ...And there you have the explanation.