- There’s a passage in the documentary The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology where dialectic Marxist superstar Slavoj Žižek goes on a tangent about how to properly satirize institutional power. His point, in essence, is that you can’t successfully erode an institution by attacking the person in charge. [I suppose it’s possible that this wasn’t exactly what he was talking about, because sometimes Žižek can be hard to follow. But this was my takeaway, and my interpretation is valid, even if it’s wrong. Misinterpretations can still be accidentally true.] According to Žižek, attempting to satirize the public image of a powerful person inevitably proves impotent; this is because positions of power are designed to manipulate and displace a high degree of criticism. You can mock the president with impunity—nothing will really happen to him or to you. Part of the presidential job description is the absorption of public vitriol. It’s a rubberized target. A comedic assault doesn’t change perception in any meaningful way....
Žižek is a populist derivative hack, and so is Klosterman, but damn if they aren't entertaining as hell. But they're right. Seinfeld is probably the darkest, most misanthropic, philosophically fulfilling, and most important show that has ever been on television. And it's amazing that it doesn't matter who I show Seinfeld to (and I force a lot of people completely opposed to it to watch it), they all suddenly understand. Like as kids they saw it and there's no way they could grasp it, and it just looked like a shitty sitcom, but there hasn't been one yet to suddenly have it click as to why it was so damn good. But through all that, despite how much I love the show and respect it, and find it hilarious, I still don't know what about it that I actually find funny. It's just a straight up morbid show, and it shouldn't be funny, but it somehow always works. It's similar to Curb Your Enthusiasm, but there I can derive a lot of the comedy from the ridiculously embarrassing self-deprecation. Seinfeld is just... a class of its own comedy. I do like the comparison to Always Sunny as well. Calling it Seinfeld vulcanized by PEDs and the Internet is dead on.
I've read quite a bit from him, and I really, really love his writing style. He can make everything interesting, and to this day I still have the 23 Questions I Ask Everyone I Meet In Order to Decide if I Can Really Love Them on my facebook page, and had people answer it all the time. That part of him is really fun. And really, that's what he does well, he asks some though provoking questions and makes interesting navel-gazing connections and seems to really be in touch with some parts of human nature that connect us all to things in a fun, hypothetical way. My gripe, though, comes from what seems to happen when he doesn't like something or forgets that's he's funny and whimsical, where he suddenly starts writing like he's a really profound, philosophical writer. He becomes extremely condescending and holier-than-thou. For example, look up any of his opinions on punk music. He doesn't just say he doesn't like this thing, it becomes the worst thing to ever happen since Hitler, and if you like it, you a half-donkey shit baby who has no part in our society and how can you be so fucking stupid to have a differing opinion to I, arbiter of culture who knows all. His writing stops coming off as navel-gazing self-aware ridiculousness and starts coming off as someone trying to pass this off as academic. But I still love reading his work. He's a hack, but a fun hack. It's just when I get to those points, it makes me need to take a break from him a while because it sours everything around it. He also has a bad habit of not really making his point very well, and, really, it's not too important most of the time. This article, for example, he circles around a few times and his real point here he ends up making is the cultural significance of Seinfeld, because it's popular satire, so nothing really groundbreaking there. But he frames the article around his point that it's villainous, but doesn't really stick with that, or why it's important, or why it's villainous compared to other shows with bad people as main characters. It just kinda falls away into his writing. I am interested, however, in how his fiction work is. I can see it really going either way.
1. It depends very much on outside variables, but to follow the bent of the question -- no. 2. Again, some research into who exactly I would be freeing might be prudent, but to follow the bent of the question -- yes. 3. Hitler's skull. But I've always kinda wanted a turtle. My roommates have a bearded dragon right now (vaguely similar sort of pet, not sort of animal) and I enjoy it immensely. So I might be prodded into picking up a turtle after I put the skull up. 4. Nope -- oh, the Raiders? Eh why not. 5. Yeah, I mean I'd spend an obsessed 2.99 years listening to seven albums a day, but obviously in the end the pill. 6. No. Not out of a sense of shame but because the whole shebang sounds like too much trouble. 7. One of the animals, probably, depending on the circumstances and what the new species actually are. But of course if I'm practical and don't want to get fired, the president gets first billing. The front page of the Times is a big ol' space, though... 8. Nope. Although that's a brilliant question. Tops the Alice in Chains one considerably. 9. No clue. I'd prefer to go bi... 10. N/A. 11. Finish the movie. 12. I'm fine without, but I think I might pay him to do someone else out of curiosity. 13. The novel that influences 30 percent of readers into homosexuality, of course. 14. Ha! 15. Writing a journal. 16. Of course not. I'm going to make fate try a little harder than that. 17. This one's kind of meaningless. Skip. 18. Is that even worth...? 19. This is a situation that would almost certainly never arise without the influence of alcohol, so making an excuse probably wouldn't even be necessary. I'd let 'em get me back. 20. Neither. In that hypothetical, wouldn't I be the one person who couldn't get much out of either movie? 21. Probably a couple of years earlier (again out of curiosity) just to see what it would've been like with that one girl from high school who got away etc.
22. The debt, I suppose. 23. I'd feel weird. Well, anyway. Where am I?
And that's why I have always hated Seinfeld. As a member of the audience, I never felt like I was watching "the most sinister and authentic" version of myself. I felt like I was watching people I would actively avoid pursuing activities I would eschew in an environment I would leave. Okay, satire. But you watch Friends and you're given the message "here are people you should care about." You watch Seinfeld and you're given the message "here are people we will make you care about even though they all suck." It took me years, but I figured out that some art is created from the worldview that people are evil. My worldview is that people are good. As such, evil-worldview art has never appealed to me, has never interested me, and has never given me a toehold within which to discuss its merits with people who love it to death (lookin' at you, Chris Nolan). If you compare Seinfeld to Arrested Development, Seinfeld is full of people who make evil choices because they're amoral. Arrested Development is full of people who make evil choices because they're immoral. It's two letters, but it's an entire worldview.In another episode, Jerry specifically breaks up with a woman because she’s “too good.” Here, again, he says this directly: “She’s giving and caring and genuinely concerned about the welfare of others. I can’t be with someone like that.” Because he’s so candid about this distaste, it feels like a traditional joke. But it’s not a traditional joke. It’s an omnipresent worldview that informs everything else, and it’s what made audiences feel like they were watching the most sinister (and the most authentic) versions of themselves.
But, but, but Batman had a really cool motorcycle. And didn't you see the end of Inception? That really made you think, didn't it? (Hoping you can sense my way over the top sarcasm). Really, anyone who saw Following could see straight away what a terrible writer and filmmaker CN is. Apparently, you and I (mostly you, as I'm still a big enough dipshit that I went and saw all the Batmans (Batmen?), because I'm a sucker) are among the few who can see through his hollow cynicism, and judge his movies for the piles of garbage they are. Only an asshole like Nolan could make SUPERMAN cynical. (I know he didn't direct it, but his handprints were all over it.) Edit: I also know that I should say things like "an asshole like Nolan", as I don't know the man, and I don't even know anything about him, other than he makes terrible movies that make a terribly large sum of money. Can't blame him for that. I take back calling him an a-hole, but won't delete it out of self-flagellation. I deserve whatever criticism is levied at me for that....(lookin' at you, Chris Nolan).
My first exposure to Nolan was Memento, which was a hollow retelling of a single subplot in the Tykwer debut Winter Sleepers. Next I watched Insomnia, which made me simultaneously hate Al pacino, Robin Williams and Hilary Swank, three people whose work I adore. I followed that up with The Prestige which somehow managed to suck beyond all possible imagination despite having David Bowie playing Nikola Tesla. By the time I saw the first Batman film I was actually impressed by how bad it wasn't, considering how bad it could have been. He has an extremely narrow, bleak worldview. I have no idea what he's like to work with, but his perception of the universe and mine did not come from looking out the same window.
Well now that is interesting as i had a different impression on each of these films. Perhaps i am a nihilist and just never realised. Got any links for further reading on this Nolan world view? I cant say i thought about the films all that much after watching them apart from the central hook in each (memory and identity in memento, the fact that the machine kills the original you when it creates a copy in The Prestige etc). I didnt find them particularly fantastic, the batman movies were overly long, inception had interesting visuals but not much else. I did enjoy them at the time though.
Momento was also my first into to Nolan. I was 17, and I was impressed. But I was impressed in the same way that I was impressed by The Usual Suspects. That is, on first watch I thought it was really cool, but only because it was unexpected. On second watch, you realize that the movie survives on nothing but a cheap gimmick, and that if you strip away the gimmick there isn't a lick of substance behind it. The real Kaiser Soze is the little man in your mind that prevents you from seeing the forest for the trees. I like to think that I wouldn't fall for those types of cinematic pranks now that I'm not a teenager, but who knows? I'm wiser, but damn if they don't know how to capture your attention out in your neck of the woods.
The way I write: 1) Imagine a world. Give it aspects and conditions. Establish the ground rules on which that world operates, the aspects of it I wish to illustrate and the things that make it interesting. 2) Imagine the characters that would be the most interesting to explore that world. Find the perspective into that world that entertains the most. Give those characters the opportunity to run and take the narrative where it goes. 3) I know I have created a viable world and viable characters when, in the midst of writing, they surprise me. This is nothing more than my subconscious "role-playing" with my story but it gives me insights into my story that I would not have otherwise. In other words, I write stories as if I were creating a Dungeons & Dragons campaign, and I, the dungeonmaster, control the Non-Player Characters that you, the player, view through the access character I have created for you. The universe is whole and good and successful when the NPCs revolt or when the access character shows me insights that I did not consciously create. When you do it this way, you at least create a semi-complete world to explore. I like to use the film Alien as an example - there's all sorts of throw-away dialog about rates and wages while everyone wakes up and drinks their coffee. It's nothing but "banter" but it also reflects '70s era British labor disputes and subtly sets up a class society whose underpinnings give breadth to the characterization of the film. The cargo hold is also full of all sorts of mysterious things that we never see fully, that we can only guess the purpose of, and that exist only to make the pursuit of the Alien more genuine... but there's a real sense that somebody spent an awful lot of time figuring out what would be in the hold of the Nostromo so that when the audience explores it, they get the sense that the Nostromo is a real ship. The way Chris Nolan writes: 1) Imagine a story. Line it up like dominos. 2) push over the dominos. Don't look left, don't look right, don't pause the dominos, don't imagine anything outside of the narrow view ahead of you. Take The Prestige. This is ostensibly a story about two feuding magicians. They each have some trick that wows the audience and neither knows how the other does it. This feud ends up costing them both dearly. Okay, fine. But the trick one of them employs is "I have a twin." The trick the other employs is "I have created a matter replicator." Fer real. And the twins basically decide "one of us will die just to fuck with you" while Mr. Matter Replicator's whole thing is "I have been creating copies of myself and drowning them every night and hiding the bodies in the basement just to fuck with you" and the audience, rather than going "WTF" goes nolan is a jeeeeeeeeeeeeenius and I say "fuck this guy."
Cheap trick. I read somewhere that good stories don't have surprises like that, no sudden unveiling of facts at the end to suddenly change the plot - dependent on narrator and point-of-view of course - nothing that should have been previously known 100 pages ago that the author just hid up his sleeve to hit you with at the last moment. You can't always apply that rule, of course, but it's worth thinking about. When I wrote loose crazy fantasy fiction-prose I'd just start with characters and see what they did. Several "novels" worth of that hidden away in old desks on lined paper in longhand. Now and then I experiment with prose outside of the blog but it's much more semi-autobiographical. I think, by the way, sometime I should try my hand at scripts. I watched the House of Yes again last night and I want to read the play it's based on, I think it's a very tight script. But the trick one of them employs is "I have a twin"
This is what pissed me off about Sherlock Holmes. I can't believe any of the Holmes stories are considered the standard of mystery literature. "Oh, by the way, Sherlock knew all along cause that one time he saw the thing and did the move to trap the guy. He's so smart heh." Come on.
What bothered me about Sherlock Holmes is the fact that Holmes' skill is essentially "looking very hard" and/or "noticing the details and putting them together." In addition, a lot of the stories rely on there being little tells for Holmes to pick up on - when in real life that isn't always the case - although I suppose the point was the tells were so small "ordinary" people wouldn't notice them. Idk.
Cut Conan Doyle a little slack, though - it was over a hundred years ago, there was no Internet, he had an opium habit to feed and he even tried to kill Sherlock Holmes off in a satisfying way and the fans dragged it back. You'd probably invent a snake every now and then, too.
It's called a deus ex machina and is to be avoided at all costs. The counterprinciple is Chekhov's gun.
Trey Parker uses it to varying degree when he digs himself into a giant hole in some South Park episodes. In the case of a 22 minute comedy, it can work in a beautifully ridiculous way, although even in those cases I think it's only used because the show is a made in a week and sometimes they just run out of time.
You can get away with a lot more in parody because absurdity is a fundamental part of satire. It's when you're taking yourself seriously - "if the eagles could swoop in and save Frodo and Samwise at the end, why didn't they just ride fuckin' eagles from the Shire in the first place?"
Also fuck Nolan and his genius idea to release low-level thought movies in the Summer season, when there are zero-thought movies, and being hailed as the messiah of shitty sci-fi-ish films. And screw the Dark Knight Rises, holy crap. Edit: b_b, just saw your comment, we are very close in thought when it comes to films, apparently."Its a device Morty, that when you put it in your ear, you can enter people's dreams Morty. Its just like that movie that you keep crowing about."
"You're talking about Inception?"
"That's Right Morty! This is gonna be a lot like that. Except you know. Its gonna make sense."
"Inception made sense!"
"You don't have to try to impress me Morty."
---
“[This dream is] like Inception, Morty, so if it’s confusing and stupid then so is everyone’s favorite movie”
Dear lord. I had to see that movie twice in theaters because my girlfriend at the time loved it. And then again after that when people got it on DVD. I didn't enjoy that movie at all, there were a ton of plotholes and the entire storyline was meh at best. However, I will admit to really enjoying The Dark Knight, but that's about it as far as Nolan goes. I think that's more because Heath Ledger absolutely nailed it.And screw the Dark Knight Rises, holy crap.
Regarding those two words, do you understand the difference as such: Ammoral -doesn't have a moral code Immoral- your moral code doesn't align with convention That's how I've always understood it. More specifically, what's your take?
Precisely. Everyone on Seinfeld does what they do because god is dead, nihilism is truth, friendship is dadaism and society is a myth. The Bluths, on the other hand, are resolutely, reliably, predictably selfish. Stories on Seinfeld revolve around the inconvenience of morality. Stories on Arrested Development revolve around the consequences of selfish behavior. Stories on Seinfeld are a consequence of the characters discounting the existence of right and wrong. Stories on Arrested Development are a consequence of the characters consistently justifying "wrong" in pursuit of individual goals. There are good Bluths and bad Bluths. Michael and George Michael consistently try to do the right thing but often find themselves cutting corners in pursuit of selfish goals only to face outsized penalties thereby reinforcing their desires to do the right thing. Gob, Lindsey and Buster, to varying degrees, consistently know what the right thing is but always pursue the wrong thing because it's easier and end up mired in the consequences. Michael and George Michael go through life striving for perfection, while Gob, Lindsey and Buster remain chained to the wheel of karma. Seinfeld? Seinfeld is a Nietszchean abyss. People act selfishly because it's the only rational choice and no justification is necessary. Thus they are forever mired in tedium and never advance, never recede, never care. There are angels and devils on the shoulders of everyone in Arrested Development. Seinfeld has only the void.
Still, I find both shows to be hilarious in their own right. One needn't be a nihilist to find humor in their ridiculousness.There are angels and devils on the shoulders of everyone in Arrested Development. Seinfeld has only the void.
I'll buy that. In fact, I may actual steal that line at a future dinner party.
I don't think Seinfeld was particularly Nietzschean. The characters are something like Nietzsche's last men, but the last men were the stawmen Nietzsche held up as what would happen if people didn't find new morals to replace the ones that couldn't be imposed on them anymore. They were the thing he thought we needed to overcome. Star Trek is more Nietzschean than Seinfeld.
I have gone through both swings of that pendulum. I'm on the "All people have the inherent ability to do good, but need a push and a few small reminders now and then" part of my life now. I bring this up because your comment is interesting. If you assume all people are good, how do you explain people who are not? Maybe not evil as that word has a lot of loaded baggage associated with it, so maybe more malevolent? That may be the better word. I have never seen Seinfeld. Is it worth looking up a show or two?It took me years, but I figured out that some art is created from the worldview that people are evil. My worldview is that people are good.
You might as well check out a few Seinfeld's, I'm sure there are ten greatest episodes of all times lists. It leaves me cold. The joke is that the characters lives are shitty because they are so petty and stupid. They never realize this and are content to go on being exactly who they are over and over again for many seasons. Lots of people love it. Watch the soup Nazi episode, seems to be one that people still quote and laugh their ass off over.
Elaborating: I think that most people, when presented with a choice to do good that requires little energy or a choice to do evil that requires little energy, will choose to do good. I think that a choice to do good that requires a lot of energy and a choice to do evil that requires a little is a grayer subject, but my study of society, civilization and psychology lead me to believe and predict that if it costs nothing extra to be kind to your fellow man, people will be kind to their fellow man. It gets dicey when you re-shape what "fellow man" is and all sorts of evil are committed in the name of country or tribe, but if I recognize you as human and I recognize you as in trouble, my first instinct as a human is to help you out. Without that instinct, there's no cooperative hunting or gathering and we end up wolves in caves. It's that "fellow man" fallacy that I suspect is the root of most evil in the world. Nobody casts themselves as the bad guy - it's all framing. And while moral compasses can be wrong, and while justifications can be faulty, I think that "normal" human beings have morality and judge themselves to be good. If they judge others as evil it only serves to illustrate their lack of empathy, which - from my perspective - makes them failures as storytellers. Thus, I hate Chris Nolan.
Great article, I hadn't really thought about how much Colbert, Stewart, et al. ignore the institutional problems of our society. But really, False dichotomy much? Liberals and conservatives aren't the only 2 things you can satirize.The successful social satirist must show a) how the average liberal is latently selfish and hypocritical, or b) how the average conservative fails to comprehend how trapped he is by the same system he supports.
True. But they are also the only groups upon whom you can hope to affect(effect?) Change through satire. A moderate usually doesn't have enough logical fallacies in their philosophy to make them worth ridicule. Or rather, such ridicule comes across as bland and definitely has little to no entertainment value.Liberals and conservatives aren't the only 2 things you can satirize.
