Now that the Ever Clear ship is cleared, we can view the Suez Canal blockage with irony, as a metaphor of our times, that culture is stuck.
Continue reading #cultureisstuck#cultureisstuck
Tag: Post-Empire
Best Films of the 2010s: A Retrospective
What was the 10s’ as a decade? My pat answer: a seismic shift in American culture. What used to be nerd culture went mainstream, or more accurately, became gentrified. The Internet Lost Its Joy. Smartphones and social media fed off each other, stuck in one gigantic circle-jerking feedback loop. We are all online all the time. No such thing as AFK.
Continue reading Best Films of the 2010s: A RetrospectiveBanksy
The most famous artist of this age, Banksy is a conceptual street artist whose work has ranged from walls to satirical amusement parks.
Continue reading BanksyGet Off Facebook!
A few years ago I ditched Facebook for the seductive promises of Twitter. I took the distinction between the two to be fundamental, that we were plagued by the ignorance of our friends on Facebook, but benefited from the wit of strangers on Twitter instead. However, in time this distinction turned out to be merely skin-deep. It took me a while to admit that both forms of social media were already compromised by the very nature of digital communication. Continue reading Get Off Facebook!
Narcissistic, still?!?
In the 21st century today, narcissism appears to be much less about the correlation between our self-importance and our own personal relationships than it is with the number of followers on Twitter or Facebook friends. Indeed, social networking is, at worst, a platform to cultivate one’s narcissism and indulge where it hasn’t metastasized. Continue reading Narcissistic, still?!?
Plato on Trump
According to Plato, political regimes evolved consistently, from oligarchy to democracy to tyranny. When the elites become self-indulgent, lazy or promiscuous, and develop interests apart from the masses, they fall, oligarchies give way to democracies. And in turn, when mob passion overpowers political wisdom and a populist despot seizes the moment, democracies yield to tyranny. However, the despot is not quite a tyrant just yet. In a democracy, the would-be tyrant always offers himself as the champion of the masses. He simplifies everything, and make everything whole again.
In Donald Trump, this evolution is pretty straightforward: a vulgar right-wing populism coalesces in the midst of an anti-establishment hysteria and a strongman fascist declares that he will stick it to the elites and make the country great again, and presents a familiar scapegoat, an alien Other the masses can redirect their poisonous resentment. For a fragmented and bitter populace, this is rhetorical palliative, and just like Plato predicted, the very sort of thing that pushes a country over the edge. Continue reading Plato on Trump
Explaining Donald Trump
There’s nothing funnier than watching the punditocracy twist themselves into pretzels in trying to explain why Donald Trump hasn’t already imploded by now like they all thought.
Continue reading Explaining Donald Trump
Tracing Cynical Reason in 20th Century America
In this blog I trace cynical reason of 20th century American history as a phenomenon in two aspects: in the sphere of economics and in the sphere of cultural arts. Instead of complaining about the so-called poverty of contemporary politics or whining about the decline of contemporary morality, I insist on cynical reason as a dominant sentiment of the post-Fordist capitalist existence. In this respect, cynical reason extends further than the emotional or psychological response to the contemporary existence, and closer to a sociological analysis. Continue reading Tracing Cynical Reason in 20th Century America
Pseudo-modernism
Is postmodernism really dead, finally, after a thousand articles and books arrogantly, yet prematurely announced its death? Or perhaps tomorrow belongs to it because postmodernism is born post-humously? Kirby made a strong case in his article, Death of Postmodernism and Beyond (2006), in which he claims that the Internet is essentially proof that the zeitgeist has lurched from the text back to the reader — now an active participant in the creation of text. Continue reading Pseudo-modernism
Old Empire/Post-Empire: labelling the cultural zeitgeist
Bret Easton Ellis has been running with this distinction over the past year on twitter, and this week, he finally found his avatar to channel this latest label of the zeitgeist. Continue reading Old Empire/Post-Empire: labelling the cultural zeitgeist