From La distro des 100noms
December 8, 2024
The other day, there was a presentation in my class. It was a friend who was doing it, so I at least tried to listen a little. It was about the male gaze (clichéd gender representations) in cinema and in culture in general. And especially about alternative ideas like the female gaze or queer gaze. Which goes to show that we talk about interesting subjects even in the philosophy of art, I'm not saying the opposite. Anyway, great powerpoint, the presentation and all that, I understood about half of it. In truth, it held my attention a little, especially because I wanted to piss people off with my off-topic questions. So, I waited for those who wanted clarification on what was said to finish; some guys taking up all the space when we talk about feminism, again lol; and I opened the subject. Okay, changing the images to change reality after the fact, but does it really work like that?
I may be criticized for pushing a political agenda in class or whatever. And yes, I want to open up discussion spaces in class, and I have ideas that I would like to share, and know those of others. But often, I don't feel like I have dogmatic knowledge that I try to copy and paste, I doubt a lot and I sincerely ask myself questions. And there, my friend and other students seemed to be thinking at the same level as me. And not with an exam in mind or any other interest than understanding the world. That's what doing philosophy is all about! Yes, but it's not really to the taste of the teacher who just sees that we're not interested in her subject as she wants, and who tries to refocus. Well, it annoys me a little because it's been the same thing for 19 years that I've been in national education, that we're told to wait until we know more and talk less. I'll try again before I stop there, again.
Anyway, I had forgotten about the debate a bit, preoccupied with other things. But a few days ago, I wanted to watch the movie "Skin", a fictional biography about a guy who had been a skinhead. I had seen excerpts on Insta, and I was sick, I was looking for something to watch. I turned to the usual shady streaming sites (like ww25.soap2day.day =3). No luck, all the links were crappy and led to a short film of the same name. I watched it anyway, but it wasn't long enough. While looking for something else, I came across the movie "Asking for it". The bio was selling dreams:
“In this 2022 film directed by Eamon O'Rourke, a young woman named Joey, played by Vanessa Hudgens, finds herself entangled in a vigilante group of women who seek justice against a society that has wronged them. The narrative delves into themes of empowerment and retribution, offering a gritty and intense portrayal of their fight against systemic abuse. »
But right from the intro, the name "Ezra Miller" makes me tick. Weird, I never know the actors. Except when they get canceled paradoxically lol. I imagine that as a queer icon and "committed" ...
Well, I'm still watching the movie. It's very entertaining (and that's not just a compliment). Love intrigue, fight scene, big party, hassles, Manichean bad guys, dramatic deaths, the same recipe that works. On top of that, they sprinkle in everything that satisfies today's audience. This movie in particular has a nice track record, they bring out the whole "woke" inventory. The main characters are racialized women, it talks about sexual violence, toxic masculinity, there are lesbians, a drag king, a disabled person, indigenous people... And it's true that it's hard to say that it's not a little nice to have this kind of representation (although there it was a bit cliché and overused). It's cool, but does it really change anything? The debate comes back.
What I think about it now is that no. Quite the opposite. We're wasting our time and energy trying to advance a system that's going backwards. And I'm talking about culture in general, "Asking for it" is just one example. A good one anyway, because by claiming to be a radical feminist and by highlighting this Ezra Miller crap, it creates a very visible paradox. It illustrates the gulf between substance and form. But that's not the only aspect, otherwise hunting down the rapist (after the fact, eh, so not very effective) would be enough to resolve this angle. But no, because the form isn't there. The film industry is completely fucked. Creation of idols, exploitation of workers, capitalist authoritarianism, power games with States, manufacturing of consent... there's nothing to save there, so nothing to try to change there. Big cinema is a propaganda tool by essence, it is not conceivable to use it reasonably. Because we cannot fight against the dominant ideology, it IS the dominant ideology. It is too strong a power, which should not exist. ITS culture is the annihilation of other people's cultures. For example, this will seem stupid to you, but I wanted to watch a film about the Black Panthers. I don't know too many, I tell myself that the internet will help me. IMPOSSIBLE. All the results redirect to the American blockbuster Black Panther, the superhero there. Black Panther on Netflix, Black Panther at the cinema, Black Panther film review, Black Panther comics on Amazon, everything that can be bought with the Black Panther label. This representation of Marvel, not content with making political references inaccessible, steals their terms and especially the idea, transforms History into a television show. With its interests behind it, which remain capitalist.
Because I realize that we live in a society of the spectacle. Yes, it's a reference to Guy Debord, no I haven't read the book and I don't intend to. Because the academic world is part of this critique of culture. When I saw our little intellectual, petty bourgeois teachers coming out with ultra-radical political theories to young people like them, like me, at first it gave me hope. But seeing able-bodied white cishet guys talking calmly about patriarchy and capitalism while in the next room, it was precarious black women cleaning OUR classrooms, I started to think that there was a problem. Seeing teachers talking about state violence while sitting comfortably behind their desks and not even being aware that CRS brigades had already entered the campus twice this year, in the corridors they take every morning, or else turning a blind eye to it, made me furious. Before, I believed that revolution was only a question of knowledge, that once we knew a little about the harm the state was doing, we could only rise up against it. But these paradoxes among so many others show that it is not. Damn, these people know dozens of nuances of Marxism more than me, why have I never seen them at a general assembly, on a blockade or even in a fucking canteen? Overall, when a technocratic elite (the "professionals") centralizes power (production of cultural capital, knowledge, laws, legitimate violence, etc.), I think there is a problem. Not only is the form of production bad, but the form of consumption is just as bad. The result is like with Black Panther, a revolutionary idea only circulates through mega-productions. Those who have ideas of insurrections behave in the same way as those who are happy with the system, they remain spectators, at most not of the same film. Their money, therefore their work force, ends up in the same pockets. And they shatter the dreams of those who are trying to get by.
This analysis can be seen as a supreme victory of materialism over idealism. I have a hard time calling myself a materialist, partly because it is generally (and falsely) understood as a total adherence to the ideas of Marx that I partially refute, and partly because it is an academic term that confuses conversations more than it clarifies them. But overall, I tend to agree with this kind of reasoning.
I would still qualify the idea that even classical culture has a certain utility. But since politics is equalized with all other subjects, we get there through a combination of circumstances. I myself perhaps only started to be interested in politics because it became one of my specific interests rather than the medieval world or astronomy. I liked dystopias, without understanding the political values behind them, or even taking them the wrong way. Because I consumed them like a spectacle. Even by insisting, by reading more, literature, philosophy, history, then political essays, my relationship to culture did not change. I was only able to do so because I had privileges. I called myself an anarchist because I had assimilated what the dominant culture allowed me to access on anarchism. Beautiful principles, economic analyses, beautiful drawings of circled A's... It can be many things, as long as we stay wisely in line, but especially not in practice. Capitalism has this power to integrate criticism into itself, to assimilate it. Think what you want as long as you consume. I only started to be a real anarchist when I started to frequent libertarian spaces, to act as such. Before that, it was bullshit, and it works for everything.
What is the point of improving Culture then? I would say that with a lot of luck, it can lead people to move towards different practices. But it means a break with the original form. It is a passage that requires a lot of energy, to deny the dominant culture alone. The thing that makes me think of is Kropotkin's idea of a man of initiative. I didn't get the whole concept, but it is a particular condition where an individual has enough strength to drastically change things around him. Nik the avant-garde however, which very often does not escape the dominant culture, a group of intellectuals who steal its words and its power from the proletariat.
Ok, so it's crap. What to do? I think the heart of the idea is to take individuals out of their spectator status, transform them into actors. And to do that, you have to cut off the power to the TV, that is to say disrupt their daily routine. But that's only effective if we have a viable alternative to propose, right now. It means developing mutual aid and action groups, autonomous centers, free neighborhoods, libertarian communes, anarchist territories. Because culture is not just a question of image in museums and on screens. Culture is know-how, knowledge, customs, traditions (yes, not the bad ones just). So a discussion circle on VSS can have much more concrete impact than the play WOKE by Virginie Despentes (You shouldn't have let me get into that theater for free hehe). In any case, if we have to match the means to the objectives, it is certainly more interesting to push people to be autonomous, to think for themselves, to produce for themselves, to direct themselves. And that, whatever the ideas, the bottom line is counter-culture!
That means that yes, we can draw ugly stick figures playing pétanque, if it's done shlag style, locally and on a piece of scrap paper, it will surely be better than the most revolutionary film ever seen that cost and especially brought in millions to people who don't need it. Of course, there are people who will make shit. But it's because we are aware of that that we must take away the power to culturally impact a society. Because crap like the film Athena marks an entire generation with its death clichés, hundreds of thousands of people who polarize without ever having lived in the real world. Countercultures, even masculinist or other bullshit ones, are healthier than the holy Culture of perfection, unique and globalized (soon to be ardently supported by AI!). Let's say that at least, we can easily discuss with a small-scale, horizontal production. And at worst, we pull them up. It is easier to sabotage a fascist printing press than to attack the Capitalist Empire as a whole, especially if we have enriched it with our criticisms.
Let's take this death sentence from Nietzsche, which only guys without material problems seem to like in passing: what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. Capitalism is not going to disappear because gradually, the culture there would change. By producing with it, within it, more things even "subversive" or "relevant", we are only expanding it. Before, it was easy to say that cinema was shit. Yes, well there are no chicks in your films, they are ultra-racist, homophobic, right-wing and all that. Except that now, people who wanted to do well have allowed overly stylish representations in them, ultra badass revolutionary speeches. Before, these words belonged to those who needed them, not to the culture industry. We don't want street art sponsored by the city, Pride sponsored by companies, anti-racism advertisements made by the police. It's assimilation. It doesn't change the balance of power behind it, it hides it, blinds people to the form and substance of what they are participating in.
IN SHORT, we're getting a bit lost, as usual. But let's not try to make rotten applesauce better. Let's change the ingredients, and even the recipe. Let's do things ourselves, let's be interested in what others are doing. Not these superstars we'll never know, but local music groups, neighborhood painters, friends with a camera or those with a printer. Everything must be done in a framework that nourishes us, not what kills us, but what makes us live. If you do something critical of the State, do it AGAINST it, not for it. That's the idea of a counter-culture. On that note, long live self-production, fuck high culture, benevolent or not!
07/12/2024
Neo-Diogenes
NB: I didn't know where to add it, but yes, I consume big culture too. But I notice that what touched me the most were films inspired by real events, even full documentaries. But I really learned about counterculture by doing, not by watching, reading or analyzing, I don't know what thesis. In short, I wasn't going to write an article on culture without leaving references, the interest remaining in DOING things, but we are allowed breaks anyway!
Documentaries:
Queercore (Yony Leyser)
We are not afraid of ruins (Yannis Youlountas)
Crip Camp (Nicole Newnham and James LeBrecht)
Neither the center nor the periphery (Apolline Anor)
Antifa, skinhead hunters (Marc-Aurèle Vecchione)
Indianara (Chevalier-Beaumel and Marcelo Barbosa)
Love and Revolution (Yannis Youlountas)
Movies:
The Wave (Dennis Gansel)
The Chicago 7 (Aaron Sorkin)
Pride (Matthew Warchus)
The Lorax ( Chris Renaud and Kyle Balda )
Don't Look Up ( Adam McKay )
Isle of Dogs (Wes Anderson)
Princess Mononoke ( Hayao Miyazaki )
The Miserables (Ladj Ly)
Series :
The Collapse (The Parasites)
The Committed (Sullivan Le Postec)
We the Wave (Anca Miruna Lăzărescu and Mark Monheim)
Arcane (Christian Linke and Alex Yee)
Wayne (Shawn Simmons)
Novel :
The Dispossessed (Ursula K. Le Guin)
Brave New World (Aldous Huxley)
The Reaper (Nel Shusterman)
Homage to Catalonia (George Orwell)
On the line (Joseph Ponthus)
Finishing with Eddy Bellegueule (Edouard Louis)
Disobedience (Alberto Moravia)
Kafka on the Shore (Haruki Murakami)
Music :
Letter to the Republic (Kery James)
When I grow up (NF)
Anarconnesse (Changeline)
Brasero (Krav Boca)
Cross the line (Dubioza Kolektiv)
Almost all of Joey Gluten's music
Comments
yep lol it's a hard hard hard
anon (not verified) Sun, 01/05/2025 - 15:28
yep lol it's a hard hard hard problem buddy!
i like the journal ramble.
something to contend with is that ppl are always on drastically different pages without perhaps understanding the extent of the implications of such. my understanding of that is that some are truly looking for a passeable material/sensory existence for themself. some are looking to be thought a hero or to do something big and admirable. some are looking to solve intenable combo-problems...
idk meng all i know is how to trespass thru the forest and what kind of food plants are better at self-propagating, i don't know shit about how other people work or how to motivate them.
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