Attack of the Mutant Space Zombies

September 19, 2007 by Leave a comment

I was quite alarmed when I read this story from Peru today. A meteorite falls to earth and hundreds fall ill; how long before the alien virus (for that is what it surely is) starts turning people into crazed mutant zombies? Sure, Peru seems like a long way away, but this kind of infection tends to have an unpredictable incubation period, so there are probably already symptomless carriers spreading the contagion. We’ll see cases in Lima, then fleeing tourists will take it to North America, and from there it will go global.

Like most municipalities, my home town is woefully unprepared for mass zombie attack. I can only hope that, faced with a rising tide of the undead, the authorities will relax our strict gun-control laws, and issue firearms to surviving citizens. Based on extensive experience of playing Doom and Resident Evil, I would favour a pump-action shotgun, though I guess a good 9mm pistol would do, so long as it had a 25-shot magazine, since zombies can usually take a few bullets before they go down. The whole situation is likely to be fairly chaotic, so I think I could depend on finding plenty of ammunition just lying around.

I’m probably more prepared for this sort of emergency than most people, having suffered from zombie-phobia since childhood. As phobias go, it’s quite a good one to have, since it doesn’t really impact much on my day-to-day life, and an extreme aversion to animated corpses is likely to be quite adaptive once the damned start wandering the earth, feasting on the flesh of the living.

I can trace my fear of zombies back to my first viewing of George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead, when I was in my early teens. I’ve seen the film several times since then, and while I can appreciate Romero’s sly critique of consumer culture, my visceral reaction is still “Arrrgh!! – Zombies!!”.

My condition seems to be getting worse as the years go by. I haven’t been able to see any of the more recent zombie flicks, like 28 Days After or Shaun of the Dead, and I’ve had to give up playing zombie-themed video games. Even writing this post will probably give me nightmares.

Why do I find zombies so scary? The idea that friends and neighbours could shed their veneer of civilisation and try to kill and eat me must tap into some sort of subconscious paranoia. There’s definitely a sexual subtext too – a fear that libidinal energy might overwhelm the ego and allow the unrestrained id to act out its destructive impulses. (I’ll blame that on watching Cronenberg’s Rabid at an impressionable age). Then there’s the pitiless and relentless nature of the undead, which surely echoes the creeping reality of human mortality. Or maybe it’s just because the putrefied complexions of the living dead look really unattractive.

Anyway, I’m going to go out to the shopping mall tomorrow, to check out how easy it would be to block all the entrances with big lorries. I might look into learning how to fly a helicopter too…

Filed under Culture, Psychology Tagged with , , ,

This ain’t the Mudd Club

September 10, 2007 by Leave a comment

The first record I ever bought was the 7″ single version of “Heart of Glass“, back in 1979. This came to mind today when I read that Hilly Kristal, owner of CBGB’s in New York, had died, just a year after the club was forced to close as the neighbourhood around it gentrified. CBGB’s hosted early gigs by Blondie, and several other bands that I grew up with, like Television, Talking Heads and the Ramones, so the news of Hilly’s death produced the depressing realisation that a time that I had lived through was being consigned to the history books.

I visited CBGB’s a few times in the early 90’s, though by then the club’s glory days were long past, and the bands I saw were completely forgettable. At least the Bowery was still authentically scuzzy, and observing the street life was quite entertaining. I remember being tremendously impressed by the general grittiness of New York the first few times I visited – it was exactly how I had imagined it would be from watching Taxi Driver and Mean Streets. I hear that the city has been cleaned up a bit in the last few years, which I guess is good news for New Yorkers, if disappointing for Scorsese-loving tourists.

The last time I was in New York was 1992, for the CMJ. I saw some great gigs during the course of that event, notably The Flaming Lips and The Jesus and Mary Chain, both on the same bill at the Roseland Ballroom, and enjoyed some interesting social interaction with the local music crowd.

Now CBGB’s is gone, Joey, Johnny and Dee-Dee are dead, and the time when I would jet across the Atlantic to go to a music festival is nothing more than a fading memory. I keep meaning to go to SXSW or Burning Man, but at some point in the last decade my life became too complicated to do things impulsively, and I’m no good at planning ahead, so I don’t think it will be happening any time soon.

Filed under Culture Tagged with , , , ,

I fear to watch, yet I cannot turn away

August 22, 2007 by Leave a comment

Actually I take back what I said about the X-Factor. Having watched the first show of the new series, I have reverted to the view that they expect us to laugh at the hopeless losers, especially when they burst into tears during the post-rejection interview. To be fair to the producers they do leaven the cruelty with some sentimentality, by featuring stories like that of the girl who only entered the competition to realise her late father’s dying wish. Luckily she had a good singing voice, and the judges were spared the embarrassment of having to crush her dream at the first audition. No doubt they’re saving that poignant moment for a future episode.

It makes for morbidly fascinating viewing for a while, though it is best enjoyed in small doses. I always end up wondering why people are willing to subject themselves to humiliation on national TV (and worldwide via YouTube), when a moment’s reflection would tell them that their chances of success were close to zero.

Is reality TV culture blunting our collective discernment and self-awareness, or merely giving a platform to people who are already suffering from delusions of talent? A clue that the latter is the case comes from the observation that winning a TV talent show is far from a guarantee of lasting fame. Most of the acts that have emerged have been briefly tolerated by the public before slipping back into the limbo of Z-list celebrity. (For some the backlash comes with frightening speed – Steve Brookstein, winner of the first series of X-Factor, was reportedly booed off the stage at his first concert. People weren’t just indifferent, they actually paid money to go to his show and give him abuse). To me this suggests that the audience for these shows is tuning in to see the drama of success and failure (especially failure), rather than to appreciate the artistry of the performers. The alternative – that the likes of Shayne Ward really do represent the musical taste of the UK population – is too horrible to contemplate.

Filed under Culture Tagged with , ,

Blog Idol

August 12, 2007 by Leave a comment

I’m generally too much of an intellectual snob to lower myself to watching reality TV, but I will admit to making an exception for shows like X-Factor. Not the later stages, where they get the people who actually have some ability and ruthlessly extinguish any trace of originality or individuality, but the first few episodes, where the experts tour the country sifting through the hopeful masses to uncover some hidden nuggets of talent.

During these audition shows the cameras will invariably home in on several would-be stars, each one eager to proclaim their absolute faith that they are going to be chosen, because “I really want this, I’ve always wanted it.” We then see their acts, which reveal that they would be well advised to direct their creative urges into other projects. They are told as much, kindly by the kind judge, brutally by the brutal judge. Afterwards some appear defeated and disillusioned, but most retain their belief that, one day, they will make it to the top, despite all the evidence to the contrary.

I used to be sure that the program producers included these segments for their comedic value; that we were being invited to laugh at the losers who were deluded enough to think that a lame impersonation of Justin Timberlake or Britney Spears would be their passport to the golden realm of celebrity. Now I’m not so certain. Maybe we’re actually being asked to admire the way these aspiring stars remain true to their dreams in the face of the world’s cruel indifference.

That would certainly be in line with the general trend in our culture to favour emotion over reason, and to believe that the key to achieving a goal is to desire it with sufficient fervour.

Nowhere is the line between desire and reality more blurred than on the internet, particularly the wild frontier of Web 2.0. The barrier between inspiration and publication is so insignificant that anyone with any sort of half-baked idea can present their work to the world. This has generally been felt to be a good thing, representing as it does a major democratisation of the creative process, but the absence of external editorial control does call for a bit self-restraint, a quality that is not always associated with bloggers. So while there is a lot of interesting material in the blogosphere, there is also a not inconsiderable amount of self-indulgence.

I’d have to admit that this blog is not a great advert for the medium, consisting as it does mainly of my inconsequential thoughts on random topics, with very little that pertains to its ostensible subject. I could try to excuse this with reference to my other commitments, but the truth is that, like the X-Factor hopefuls, I am guilty of mistaking a wish to do something for the ability to carry it off. I still think the basic idea is good, and I am going to try to approach it a bit more methodically. Expect a few more weak columns before I get my act together though.

Filed under Blogging, Culture Tagged with , ,

Ah…sweet liquor eases the pain

July 31, 2007 by Leave a comment

I went to see “The Simpsons Movie” last weekend, and very entertaining it was too. It was more like an extra-long version of the TV show than a proper feature film, but in an age where most summer blockbusters are just glorified advertisements for tie-in merchandise that hardly counts as a criticism, especially when the TV show in question is one of the finest comedies ever broadcast. There was the anticipated high quota of visual and verbal jokes, the trademark sharp social comment, and moments of wild surrealism. It wasn’t perfect though; the plot seemed a little over-extended, and I felt that more use could have been made of the the broad cast of characters that for me has always been the great strength of the show. Most of Springfield’s residents did feature at one point or another, but, Ned Flanders aside, none of them were really integral to the story. These are minor quibbles though, and I doubt I’ll laugh as much at any other film this year.

I don’t think that I could write anything about the broader cultural phenomenon that is “The Simpsons” that hasn’t been said already, so I’ll just note that I concur with the general opinion that the show is not as funny as it used to be. My all-time favourite episode is “Bart’s Inner Child” from season five, but every show from the first eight years is guaranteed to have a host of quotable lines.

Intriguingly, the end of the Simpsons’ golden age (as I see it) coincides exactly with my 30th birthday…

Filed under Culture Tagged with , ,

Endless Vacation

July 28, 2007 by Leave a comment

I’ve been reading reviews of the film Hostel 2, which was released in the UK the other week. Critics over here are fairly unanimous in the opinion that the movie is an unpleasantly misogynistic piece of crap. US film writers pretty much hold that view too, though a few do buy into director Eli Roth’s explanation that his film is not actually a cheap exploitation flick, pandering to the worst instincts of sick individuals who like to fantasise about torturing young women, but is in fact a serious work of horror, which performs the traditional role of the genre by allowing the audience to exorcise their subconscious fears through a cathartic experience of vicarious menace.

I haven’t seen the film myself, or its predecessor, so I don’t really have an opinion on whether Roth has a point or not. Whichever way you look at it though, the fact that there is enough of an audience in the US to make this movie a commercial proposition tells us something interesting about the current state of the collective American psyche. Either casual sadism is becoming more mainstream, or paranoia has become so widespread that people really worry that stepping over the border carries a risk of being kidnapped and murdered by sinister foreigners. Thinking about how this might translate into US foreign policy is the sort of thing that keeps faint-hearted Europeans like me awake at night.

Filed under Culture Tagged with ,

A bigger picture

June 22, 2007 by Leave a comment

Like the majority of web surfers, I tend not to range freely over the ever-widening ocean of information that is the internet, but stick close to the familiar waters of a few favourite sites. A frequent port of call for me is the Onion AV Club. I like the way that its writers treat popular culture as something deserving serious consideration, without sliding into humourless pretentiousness. (And it also carries Savage Love, for my money the most consistently fascinating advice column out there).

It was a column in the AV Club that steered me towards this blog, written by a woman grappling with the complexities of being one partner in a polygamous relationship. It’s not as interesting as it sounds though, since the woman in question is not a real person, but a fictional character in the TV show Big Love. The blog entries themselves are a quite well-done pastiche of the sort of self-absorbed musing that all compulsive blog-readers will be familiar with, but what really gives the site verisimilitude are the replies left by visitors. I’d love to think that these comments are genuine, but I’m pretty sure that they’re made-up too. It’s all essentially indistinguishable from the real thing though, and illustrates how simple it is to create a false sense of familiarity in cyberspace.

There are plenty of other examples of characters taking on a life beyond the bounds of their fictional worlds of course, but this is usually driven by fans, and it feels a bit manipulative when it’s done by a big media corporation.

This case is fairly harmless though, compared with some of the fake blogging that’s around. Katie Couric’s video blog, for example, which was at the centre of a minor scandal a few months back, when it turned out that a touching personal story about Katie’s first library card had been lifted from a column in the Wall Street Journal. Personally I wasn’t too bothered by the plagiarism, nor by the barely-surprising revelation that Ms Couric doesn’t script her own journal entries, but delegates the task to a staffer. What does annoy me is the thinking behind the blog, the idea that, if we can be fooled into thinking that we have some sort of personal relationship with a complete stranger, we might be more prepared to believe that the stuff she is paid to read out on the TV is actually the truth, rather than sanitised corporate propaganda.

For the connected citizen in the technologically advanced world, the amount of social interaction that takes place in cyberspace is increasing at at accelerating pace. This is especially true of the communication that mediates the multiple relationships between individuals, the institutions of civil society, and the state. There are many positive aspects of this, not least the widening of the concept of community beyond traditional geographical and cultural boundaries. How can we be sure of the integrity of this communication though? How do we know that our emotions are not being subtly manipulated, by state or corporate interests, for their own ends?

It could be argued that anyone who has grown up watching TV – that is practically everyone in the developed world under the age of 60 – should be able to tell the difference between a real personal connection and the fake sincerity of a newsreader, but I think that underestimates the extent to which the internet as a medium of communication can replicate the experience of true intimacy. Even the most cyber-aware of us haven’t really had the chance to develop the psychological tools that would let us judge how much we can trust our own feelings when it comes to online interaction, and most of the time we don’t even think about it, or are at best only dimly aware of the possibility that our reactions may be unreliable.

I don’t know if studying cyber-interaction at an individual level will answer any of the broader questions about how society and politics are being affected by the changes in patterns of social communication that are developing as we live more of our lives online, and how we should react to those changes, but it seems as good a place to start as any. Self-knowledge can only help us fulfil our responsibility to be vigilant cyber-citizens.

Filed under Blogging, Culture, Psychology Tagged with , , , ,

Crime and Punishment

June 10, 2007 by Leave a comment

Since everyone else seems to have an opinion on the Paris Hilton in/out of jail saga, I thought I should weigh in with my bit of ill-informed reaction too.

I’m not going to say anything about whether or not Ms Hilton deserves to serve time, beyond noting that, from a European perspective, the US justice system is ridiculously punitive, and there is no evidence that short jail terms serve any rehabilitative purpose. Rather I’m going use the fact that so many people are interested in the story to expand on a point made in my last post.

I was writing last time about virtual intimacy, and how this can work best when the object of the supposed intimacy acts as a blank screen upon which a person’s desires can be projected. The whole phenomenon of celebrity culture is one big example of this.

It’s hard, even for sceptics like myself, to maintain a realistic perspective when it comes to celebrity stories. I first really noticed this a couple of years ago, when I was standing in line at the supermarket checkout, and I happened to glance at a magazine cover, which carried the story of Angelina Jolie’s pregnancy. I experienced a feeling of sympathy, which on reflection resolved itself into the thought “That must be hard for Jennifer Aniston”. (If you have no idea what I am talking about, don’t worry. In fact, count yourself lucky). It wasn’t until a few hours later that I realised how strange that thought was. I wasn’t close to Jennifer Aniston. I had no way of knowing how she would react to that event. Yet I had experienced an emotion in relation to her that was indistinguishable from a feeling that I would have had upon receiving troubling news about someone that I did know well.

Now I’m someone who hardly ever watches TV and only reads serious newspapers. I do try to avoid frivolous stuff on the web, though not always successfully. Yet, despite this, I have managed to pick up an amazing amount of trivial celebrity information – I recognised a picture of Perez Hilton the other day, without having to look at the caption. It must be some kind of cultural osmosis. No one can escape it.

It’s hardly original, I’ll admit, to note that people experience vicarious emotions in relation to celebrities, and I’m sure there has been some work done on identifying personality traits that predispose to extreme forms of this – I remember reading a paper about people who experienced severe grief reactions following Princess Diana’s death (I’ll try to track down a link). Come to think of it, it will be the tenth anniversary of that soon, so there will probably be a resurgence of such cases.

It would be interesting to study if there is some connection between the propensity to experience intense emotion in relation to celebrities, and the ability to experience virtual intimacy. Another thing to explore when I set up my practice in SL.

Filed under Culture, Psychology Tagged with ,

Newer posts →