Freespeak & Newspeak

This post was brought on in part by some of the recent political debates about certain statements being “over the line” etc.

To piggyback on a point I once read regarding the contemporary loss of distinction between Patriotism and Nationalism and/Jingoism, I’ve been thinking on and off about what ever happened to the social category of “Taste”.  I suppose it’s kind of a pre-90’s mentality–you know, back when The Simpsons was considered edgy–but it seems to me that the realm of social meaning and valuation that “Taste” used to occupy has been carved up between radical Free Speech advocacy and PC Speech Restrictions, and that conceptually we’re a far poorer society as a result.

Briefly, as a working definition I understand the “Taste” to encompass the degree to which an actor frames his actions/utterances in accordance with the accepted social norms of the particular context of the action/utterance.  Radical Free Speech attacks this by claiming that social context should never impinge upon one’s right to express oneself however one wants wherever and whenever one wants, and PC Speech declares certain expressions and opinions as off-limits in any context.

Jive Iliad

Courtesy of Gizoogle, this ought to be worth a weekend of fun.  Check out “bootylicious Achilles“, which I’m sure is what Patroclus thought…

I wouldn’t say that I was ‘depressed’ or ’suicidal’ last year, but…

Hmm…

On a lighter note

I have long held that the plural of “Kleenex” should be “Kleenices”.

Brotherly love

For some reason I’ve been dinking around lately with some Coptic Gnostic Christianity texts and, in  particular, giving a cursory run-over to the contents of the Tchacos Codex (i.e., the one with the Gospel of Judas), and I found the following bit from the opening of 1st Apocalypse of James rather intriguing:

It is the Lord who spoke with me: “See now the completion of my redemption. I have given you a sign of these things, James, my brother. For not without reason have I called you my brother, although you are not my brother materially.”

The text goes on to outline all sorts of cool quasi-SF Gnostic hierarchies and gnomic utterances about the male and female elements and about where, when, and why whoever can be released from materiality will be etc.  Typical stuff– all this spirit-body/good-evil sort of dualism.

But…if one of the points of this text is to reinforce the belief that Jesus is actually some kind of primary spiritual emanation of God (”But it did not exist when I came forth, since I am an image of Him-who-is. But I have brought forth the image of him so that the sons of Him-who-is might know what things are theirs and what things are alien [to them].”), and if the ultimate goal for James is to leave behind his body in order to become spirit (”If you want to give them a number now, you will not be able to do so until you cast away from your blind thought, this bond of flesh which encircles you. And then you will reach Him-who-is. And you will no longer be James; rather you are the One-who-is.”), then what purpose does it serve for Jesus to specify that he is “not [his] brother materially”?

No, I don’t want to have the whole “no word for ‘cousin’ in Aramaic” debate, especially if it’s going to be compounded by issues of translation into/from Coptic and Greek.  I just thought it was an interesting point that appears to reflect an early belief (earlier, at least, than Eusebius) in Jesus’ and James’ different parentage.

There’s also the curious point that the Protoevangelium of James from around the same time appears to claim that James is Jesus’ stepbrother.   [Blunt spectulation!] But perhaps this otherwise meaningless initial aside about not being brothers “materially” is meant as a means to authorial authenticity by piggybacking off of the Jesus-James relationship of the other work, e.g. “although you are not my brother materially (Hint, Hint: I’m the real James writing this,  since I’m not making any crazy claims about Jesus being my actual brother.  So if you liked my protoevangelium, then you certainly shouldn’t find anything objectionable about what I say here)”.

No, Mr. Bond, I expect you to…

…lather, rinse, repeat?

Hmm…

If the movie “Prefontaine” had a sequel, would it be called “Fontaine”?

‘Lost’ going off the rails

Although I’m still fan of the show Lost, I’ve been a bit upset at the pacing lately. That and the glut of unnecessary peripeties that’s been shoving the plot swiftly into soap opera territory over the past season and a half. Damn networks ruining another show by trying to stretch it out!

Or at least that’s how I’m interpreting it, and I think I’ve got a fair bit of back-up in the voice of Borges. The following point about the requirements of the adventure genre, as opposed to the psychological or realist genres, is from his introduction to Adolfo Bioy Casares’ “La Invención de Morel”, which novel apparently made a cameo appearance in a recent episode:

“La novela de aventuras, en cambio, se propone como una transcripción de la realidad: es un objeto artificial que no sufre ninguna parte injustificada. El temor de incurrir en la mera variedad sucesiva del Asno de Oro, de los siete viajes de Simbad o del Quijote, le impone un riguroso argumento.”

I recall saying several times within the first couple seasons that two of the main reasons I enjoyed Lost were A) that you knew pretty much every detail was going to be important and would eventually be explained in some reasonable manner with reference to accepted “rules” of the “normal” world, and B) it was accordingly character-driven.

My rationale for part A veers a bit off topic into why I don’t consider the show to be proper Science Fiction, time travel and all notwithstanding, so I’m not going to go into that. As for part B, the character psychology in the show functions more in line with Borges’ description of an adventure novel as opposed to a psychological novel. We’re not terribly interested in who the inhabitants of the island are except insofar as it moves us along in the set narrative, since that’s the point of the show. I have a hunch that this is part of why people seem to find Kate’s backstory so flat. It’s not that it’s not an interesting story in and of itself, but rather that it doesn’t [yet] seem to have a bearing on the greater story that’s proportional to the detail we’ve been given. We don’t really want to know Kate’s psychology in depth, or Jack’s or Sawyer’s and the details of that love triangle, since any attempt at making the audience reflect upon the implicit psychological realities of those individuals pulls those characters out of the overarching narrative matrix and jars the fundamental suspension of disbelief necessary to enjoy the show as a good adventure. In other words, when we start to think of a few characters as more psychologically “real” than others, that undermines the deterministic basis for a good adventure story, in which all the cogs are supposed to fit together and run smoothly. Moreover, the fact that we’re pretty well aware by this point that we’re watching an artificial “adventure” and not a “psychological romance” totally flattens out any in-depth treatment of any character’s emotions. While we’re willing to tolerate occasional specimens of romantic flatness from an adventure since we know that it has a greater purpose in moving the plot and that we’re not supposed to dwell on it, the more an adventure forces us to endure relatively isolated plot turns, romantic or otherwise, the more the adventure slides into the hack territory of soap opera.

Look, but don’t touch…

While reading this article on bordom (thanks to Works and Days!), my eyes wandered over to the sidebar leading to further pieces on the site.  Much to my bemusement, the advertisement had stacked the story “Eliot Spitzer not alone in high profile apologies” right on top of the story “Images from the Patriots’ cheerleader tryouts”.  Interesting…

Where in God’s name is Carmen Sandiego?

Not too difficult…