[Nettime-bold] hollywood, madness and the american way of life

[David Teh <dteh@arthist.usyd.edu.au>]

apologies all, for cross-posting. composed for the ::fibreculture:: list
(.au)

::fc:: our responsibilities ::  mythography  ::  counter-mythology: a
perfect crime

::our responsibilities::

"what can talking about it achieve?"  the understandable pleas for
‘grievance
before analysis’, aired here on ::fc:: and elsewhere, are integral to
the world’s
response to these appalling events.  but I feel that a moment of
collective
silence would be a moment wasted, for we all have responsibilities in
this, not
the least of which is to express our shame.

The responsibility of all able-minded Australians in this situation is
to be
critical of our media and our government, their approach to this event
and their
interventions in how it ‘reaches’ us.  Both are deeply complicit in the
propagation of a 24-hr feed of ideas and pseudo-information that is not
theirs
and not ours.  Those that can must listen to and circulate the
viewpoints/
responses/information that are being systematically suppressed from the
dominant
media-marketplace.  These are many and diverse.  Our responsibilities
are to our
own communities – the moment when the global info-flow is most
homogenized
coincides with the moment when our communities’ responses to these
events is the
most chaotic and diverse. Consensus has never been further away. Let us
not
pretend otherwise. There is communicative work to be done, and it
involves media-
criticism.

The responsibility of ::fibreculture:: is perhaps greater, because here
we have
convened a community, (one of) the specific purposes of which is
precisely this:
to be critical of the media (and government). What’s more, many of us
are
professionals in this respect.  It would be a derogation of duties to
our own
communities (as well as any broader ones) to shirk the task of critical
analysis.
I am therefore thankful that the debate here has been so intelligent and

insightful.  It must continue.

::  mythography  ::

I put forward a few of the Mythologies of the Present that I think need
to be
attacked.

1.. MADNESS – these crimes were perpetrated by "crazy people".  This is
obviously
BULLSHIT, but it is an immediate framing device for the new War on
Terrorism.
The attacks on the WTC were hideous and unpardonable. But it is all too
obvious
that they were IN NO WAY IRRATIONAL. The perpetrators were not crazy,
they were
angry.  It is a grave indictment against ALL of us that their anger came
to this
expression, rather than being addressed through the exchange of views
and other
forms of giving.

America and Americans have been wronged; as they struggle to grasp how
and why,
what is even more crucial is that they’re made aware that for years,
THEY HAVE
WRONGED OTHERS, all across the globe, in ways and dimensions they have
clearly
failed to grasp. Whether or not their wrongs were inadvertent, the
opportunity
remains for us to make it clear that this "senseless and random"
violence was
neither senseless nor random.

2.. AWOL – the american way of life – the first kneejerk act in this
Media war
was to perceive and promote this crisis as a threat to the AWOL. A
complex of
carefully selected ideologies is bundled here: ‘freedom’; ‘democracy’;
capitalism; civilisation – all are predominantly determined in the
American
vocabulary yet arise globally/locally in many guises.  Whether or not we
hold any
of these things dear, we must reject the Bundle as a justification of
anything.
Among other things, this Bundle is insidious, hypocritical, and covertly

Christian.  It is a politically motivated rationalisation of impending
crimes
against humanity, and itself a re-declaration of a global war that has
been
raging for too long already. Let us not forget that respect for the
lives and ways of
foreign peoples is not America's strongest suit. AWOL must be unbundled
and
domesticated back into
the US-ideo-scape from which it issues.  I do not want an AWOL. I’ve
seen it
first hand, and it stinks.  It is also unsustainable – and we’ve all
just seen with
horror how tenuous it is.

3.. It's just like a HOLLYWOOD MOVIE - this has apparently been so
instinctive a
response for so many that it was not possible to edit it out of the
media-scape. the
comment is muscular, involuntary, like vomiting.  it is telling that all
sorts of
american 'commentators' (media corps and 'eye-witnesses') have blurted
out this
obvious analog with cinematic fiction. pulp and screen culture paved the
way for
these images, mentally preparing the audience for this urban
apocalypse.  Comparing
this horror to the cinematic version is apparently instinctive. There is
the
intimation that this event, so singular, is yet somehow linked to
another order of
imagery that is so everyday, so consumable. As far as i am aware, they
have failed to
take the next step suggested by this intuition: there's a REASON that
this looks like
Hollywood: Hollywood provided the template (screen) on which (and the
audience before
which) this violence was wrought. This looks like Hollywood because that
screen was
the only screen on which this point could have been made. Not only coud
this have
been the confection of a Hollywood Studio, but in fact, no studio could
possibly have
produced such a script, or imagined a crime, so perfect and so
compelling. <maltby>


::  counter-mythology: a perfect crime ::

some confusion remains concerning the role of technology in this
violence. It was
neither a HI-TECH nor a LO-TECH operation.  It was a NO-TECH operation.
The
perpetrators turned a minute portion of US economic infrastructure
against the
rest of this (enormous) infrastructure; in doing so, they showed deftly
what was
too obvious to be noticed: that this whole infrastructure is volatile
and deadly
– that the daily constellation of air-transport movements above North
America is
a network of mobile bombs. (open the fold-out map at the back of your
In-Flight
Magazine. The curved red lines approximate the trajectories of this
network of
bombs.) in this regard, the disaster has changed nothing. We are no more
or less
‘safe’ than we were before it happened. The perpetrators realise this,
which is
why there is unlikely to be further atrocities in the short-term. Their
crime is
only perfect if the After is the same as the Before < dphillips>.

The only ‘technologies’ involved are the technologies of democracy and
capitalism, the economic/geographic/discursive channels by which these
are
disseminated and often imposed. If this was simply "a callous attack on
a
civilian population", it would’ve happened over Idaho, Florida and
Oregon. It was
a murderous iconoclasm directed at symbols that stood for much more than
AWOL.
Trade, like politics, was the continuation of war by other means; this
is a
retaliation presented on the very same ground, the same networks.

Further, there is nothing left of the perpetrators. A perfect crime
leaves nobody
to blame. The worldwide search for evidence is a theatrical goose-chase.
There is
nobody left. All those who took part in the crime are dead.  This is an
absolutely necessary condition of its perfection, for it follows that
every
subsequent engagement – every act of retribution or reprisal, including
all those
to date in the media-war – will be an action entirely distinct from the
tragedy
of NYC, DC, Penn. Regardless of possible ‘justifications’, the causality
between
‘tragedy’ and ‘reprisal’ must be regarded as the dodgiest link of all
media-time,
and must be distrusted completely. Separate acts, because the perfect
crime
leaves no-one to blame.  But blame will fall, and bombs with it. Someone
will be
punished for the crime, but their connection with it will be strictly
circumstantial.

send your myths and counter-myths to ::fibreculture::
peace
dt


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