Watch Bavarian television, you see long shows celebrating traditional clothes on women, children and men. Especially if children wear the old style peasant clothes, the moderator ( and by implication, intention and interpollation) delights in their willingness to follow their mothers’ wishes.
Women are surely the driving force behind Trachten, as with so many traditions. Trachten appear on regular shows, fashion brands on commercials.
If any channel ran prime time shows on Armani or Brioni it would seem crassly commercial, indeed against their interests. Main stream television wants to limit the amount of time spent on brands, only as news should they appear, as a supplement to commercial air time.
But Trachten don’t have their own commercial identity, they pretend to appear as a social phenomenon, removed from fashion.
Since the nineteenth century, their authenticity depends on not seeming to be a fad. Thus they are pushed along by a social consensus that sees them as an expensive alternative to upper-class fashion. This consensus operates from person to person, as a local identity, as a means of resistance against global, or at least national, uniformity.
Blue jeans have lost their rebellious quality, but Trachten still work as a communal movement.
Saturday, May 23, 2009
Thursday, May 14, 2009
The History of Style
The House of Chanel today shows a greater awareness of historical styles than most schools of architecture.
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
Fertility cults
The debate over abortion is a fight over the mythic belief in fate. People like to believe that getting pregnant is one of those archaic moments of divine intervention.
The issue is not so much a Christian concern for life. It is the far more ancient belief that some higher being, the gods written in small letters and never really identified, have brought about fertility. Abortion riles conservatives not because of their interpretations of the old testament, but because it runs against the fatalistic urge to reproduce. Fertility is treated as a sacred blessing that cannot be denied for fear that worse punishment will appear, death.
Life is sacred to the conservative right because they are more prone to mythic thought, to looking for the intervention of chance, the possibility of a random selection which when granted must be accepted. If you are picked then you must accept your lot, so the mythic logic.
Christianity is simply layered on top of this much older belief. Pro-life defenders want to believe that there is still a place for divine intervention in the world, and pregnancy, to the extent that it has not been determined by science, seems like one of the few remaining instances when the hand of the gods might be felt.
The language of the old testament still applies to current discourse: “a couple is blessed with children,” “they are left barren.” The implication is not that it is their fault. Mythic thought is discerning enough to know that the virtuous are quite as likely to be denied children as anyone else, --a quality which makes pregnancy an even more random, archaic gift. Even the evil doers have children.
Fertility is beyond good and evil.
Many people barely believe in the gift of Christian salvation, yet they can accept that children are a divine present. Our consumer desires readily adapt to the older mythic sense of receiving fertility.
A Christian face can easily be put on the gift, it can be ascribed to the Christian God , and thus doubly deserving of defense, as a last proof of the Lord’s care for us on earth and as a communal fear that one ought never spit in the face of the chthonic gods of fertility.
That this more ancient concern not to deny fertility precedes Christianity is demonstrated by the great tolerance Christians show premarital sex in relation to abortion. While sex outside marriage is warned against, once pregnancy occurs, another set of rules appears. The sin of adultery is acceptable if it results in fertility, a far more fundamental human concern than the proper regulation of sexual practice.
The pro choice position arises from the Enlightenment, and it implies religious tolerance as much as it does personal rights, the question of whether one would give oneself over to the reasoning of fertility cults or whether one would declare self-disciplining control over reproduction is the kind of ethical concern first extended to women as a result of the Enlightenment
That women have always practiced abortion is the something that neither the Enlightenment nor conservative Christian discourse knows how to address.
The prochoice position would leave the matter to the individual as if the question would be a matter of personal faith. The anti abortion activists want to characterize the matter as a communal threat. It is not just a personal decision with isolated implications, rather is affects the entire community.
So too with fertility rituals; they were never confined to isolated couples, but were readily understood as applying to the entire community. For one person to defile the fertility rites was to threaten the entire community. The life of the fetus argument is an attempt to make the question juridical, to find an Enlightened argument to counter the tolerance defence.
However the real concern of conservatives, their primal anxiety, is that the community as a whole will be denied future fertility because of one person’s sacrilige. The abortion debate concerns our understanding of what we might deny happening, our sense of the future.
Fertility superstition swirls through us all.
The depression of frustrated women, the male fear of impotence, the urgency to have children, the so called biological clock are manifestations of an older thinking, one that does not have to be reduced to just biology, but involves older practices and beliefs that have saturated our culture so completely that we don’t see them until they come into play
The issue is not so much a Christian concern for life. It is the far more ancient belief that some higher being, the gods written in small letters and never really identified, have brought about fertility. Abortion riles conservatives not because of their interpretations of the old testament, but because it runs against the fatalistic urge to reproduce. Fertility is treated as a sacred blessing that cannot be denied for fear that worse punishment will appear, death.
Life is sacred to the conservative right because they are more prone to mythic thought, to looking for the intervention of chance, the possibility of a random selection which when granted must be accepted. If you are picked then you must accept your lot, so the mythic logic.
Christianity is simply layered on top of this much older belief. Pro-life defenders want to believe that there is still a place for divine intervention in the world, and pregnancy, to the extent that it has not been determined by science, seems like one of the few remaining instances when the hand of the gods might be felt.
The language of the old testament still applies to current discourse: “a couple is blessed with children,” “they are left barren.” The implication is not that it is their fault. Mythic thought is discerning enough to know that the virtuous are quite as likely to be denied children as anyone else, --a quality which makes pregnancy an even more random, archaic gift. Even the evil doers have children.
Fertility is beyond good and evil.
Many people barely believe in the gift of Christian salvation, yet they can accept that children are a divine present. Our consumer desires readily adapt to the older mythic sense of receiving fertility.
A Christian face can easily be put on the gift, it can be ascribed to the Christian God , and thus doubly deserving of defense, as a last proof of the Lord’s care for us on earth and as a communal fear that one ought never spit in the face of the chthonic gods of fertility.
That this more ancient concern not to deny fertility precedes Christianity is demonstrated by the great tolerance Christians show premarital sex in relation to abortion. While sex outside marriage is warned against, once pregnancy occurs, another set of rules appears. The sin of adultery is acceptable if it results in fertility, a far more fundamental human concern than the proper regulation of sexual practice.
The pro choice position arises from the Enlightenment, and it implies religious tolerance as much as it does personal rights, the question of whether one would give oneself over to the reasoning of fertility cults or whether one would declare self-disciplining control over reproduction is the kind of ethical concern first extended to women as a result of the Enlightenment
That women have always practiced abortion is the something that neither the Enlightenment nor conservative Christian discourse knows how to address.
The prochoice position would leave the matter to the individual as if the question would be a matter of personal faith. The anti abortion activists want to characterize the matter as a communal threat. It is not just a personal decision with isolated implications, rather is affects the entire community.
So too with fertility rituals; they were never confined to isolated couples, but were readily understood as applying to the entire community. For one person to defile the fertility rites was to threaten the entire community. The life of the fetus argument is an attempt to make the question juridical, to find an Enlightened argument to counter the tolerance defence.
However the real concern of conservatives, their primal anxiety, is that the community as a whole will be denied future fertility because of one person’s sacrilige. The abortion debate concerns our understanding of what we might deny happening, our sense of the future.
Fertility superstition swirls through us all.
The depression of frustrated women, the male fear of impotence, the urgency to have children, the so called biological clock are manifestations of an older thinking, one that does not have to be reduced to just biology, but involves older practices and beliefs that have saturated our culture so completely that we don’t see them until they come into play
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
Europe and America
Getting ready to take a long trip, which always brings to mind those big differences, the ones that sound like cliches today, but someday will be the basis for sweeping historical arguments
The real difference between the US and Europe is that we spend gobs of money on defense and they do not. Instead Europeans spend money on “quality of life.” The argument being that they spent gobs of money on war earlier in the twentieth century and now would rather do something else.
The US has managed to spend on the military and keep up appearances by working longer, a system of self-exploitation. We build more houses from cheaper materials with no design effort. We work longer hours for less pay. We consider this virtuous.
The real difference between the US and Europe is that we spend gobs of money on defense and they do not. Instead Europeans spend money on “quality of life.” The argument being that they spent gobs of money on war earlier in the twentieth century and now would rather do something else.
The US has managed to spend on the military and keep up appearances by working longer, a system of self-exploitation. We build more houses from cheaper materials with no design effort. We work longer hours for less pay. We consider this virtuous.
Sunday, May 10, 2009
Why is Spock cool again?
OK, so here comes the geek in me, not that it wasn't already obvious.
Spock is cool again because, we have had far too much deciding from the gut over the last two decades, far too much breaking of the rules because that's how you win the game. Way too much James T. Kirk.
Basically Obama is Spock, and the other way around, too.
Nevermind the total repression of emotions. We have seen Spock's occasional outbursts when the breakdown of civilization is imminent
Spock is popular again because we need the governance of intellect and knowledge over gamesmanship.
If Obama's election was made possible by seeing images of successful black athletes and actors performing at levels beyond anything the public could manage, if Denzel Washington and Michael Jordan were floating around in white swing voters' unconscious, then so was Spock, the mixed race commander, you know you can trust.
Back with the original series, I had always took Spock to represent the struggle of Eastern European Jews to assimilate in WASP American--that comes from growing up brainy in Queens.
Now suddenly the mixed heritage, the struggle between two parents, two cultures has a new allegorical reference. It was always there, but now Spock's complicated cultural and family heritage, his struggles to excel in his mother's society even as he is marked by his father's appearance, all this has a new referent that was always implicit in the myth of immigration and the original show, but now has a concrete historical referent.
So my newest t-shirt design:
Spock=Obama
Spock is cool again because, we have had far too much deciding from the gut over the last two decades, far too much breaking of the rules because that's how you win the game. Way too much James T. Kirk.
Basically Obama is Spock, and the other way around, too.
Nevermind the total repression of emotions. We have seen Spock's occasional outbursts when the breakdown of civilization is imminent
Spock is popular again because we need the governance of intellect and knowledge over gamesmanship.
If Obama's election was made possible by seeing images of successful black athletes and actors performing at levels beyond anything the public could manage, if Denzel Washington and Michael Jordan were floating around in white swing voters' unconscious, then so was Spock, the mixed race commander, you know you can trust.
Back with the original series, I had always took Spock to represent the struggle of Eastern European Jews to assimilate in WASP American--that comes from growing up brainy in Queens.
Now suddenly the mixed heritage, the struggle between two parents, two cultures has a new allegorical reference. It was always there, but now Spock's complicated cultural and family heritage, his struggles to excel in his mother's society even as he is marked by his father's appearance, all this has a new referent that was always implicit in the myth of immigration and the original show, but now has a concrete historical referent.
So my newest t-shirt design:
Spock=Obama
Thursday, May 7, 2009
Same ol’ Same Ol’
I remember back in the 70s when I went to church regularly with my parents, there was a guest pastor who railed in good old fashioned Lutheran fashion against pop culture. He was so engaged in fire and brimstone that we all got a kick out of it. He even skewered me when he pounded against children who watch Star Trek so many times that they can recite the dialogue. Mind you this was 1975.
Today I am off to NYC to hang out with my 45 year old friends at the latest Star Trek film. Over thirty years after receiving my first denunciation of repetition.
Never mind Kierkegaard. Repetition is now built into our environment. It is no longer an existential decision a lá Nietzsche. Now it is all there is.
Culture is indeed over, just as those horrible conservatives claimed. This Hegelian conclusion applies to the upper class of the West. Culturally we have not moved beyond the 70s, whether it’s Star Wars or the Sex Pistols. Technology has moved forward amazingly, but content, otherwise known as quality, has changed only in the sense that 1970s thoughts have been unfolded, rehashed, and disseminated further, but never upended, denounced, overthrown or replaced. You still hear Pink Floyd and Jim Morrison as you drive down the highway.
Is there no avant-garde other than the old guard?
Today I am off to NYC to hang out with my 45 year old friends at the latest Star Trek film. Over thirty years after receiving my first denunciation of repetition.
Never mind Kierkegaard. Repetition is now built into our environment. It is no longer an existential decision a lá Nietzsche. Now it is all there is.
Culture is indeed over, just as those horrible conservatives claimed. This Hegelian conclusion applies to the upper class of the West. Culturally we have not moved beyond the 70s, whether it’s Star Wars or the Sex Pistols. Technology has moved forward amazingly, but content, otherwise known as quality, has changed only in the sense that 1970s thoughts have been unfolded, rehashed, and disseminated further, but never upended, denounced, overthrown or replaced. You still hear Pink Floyd and Jim Morrison as you drive down the highway.
Is there no avant-garde other than the old guard?
Manufacturing an Education
Lots of thought has gone into figuring out why the cost of college tuition has risen faster than inflation over the last decades and the easiest target has been the faculty. Administrators point out that labor costs are the largest proportion of any annual budget.
This is of course true for many institutions,
How to reduce labor costs is the concern of every institutional head, capitalist or otherwise. For a while the higher-ups imagined that applying corporate budget analysis would help sift out the "unproductive" elements of the university, classes with low enrollment, for example.
Industrial production has been mechanized tremendously over the last century, but higher education has not found any way to reduce the number of faculty comparable to the reduction in factory workers.
Perhaps this means that education requires personal attention. Humans interacting with other humans. The product is still an idealistic one, which is to say it requires more than manufacturing, it requires both the producer and the product to believe that more is happening in the exchange than simple creation of economic value.
This is of course true for many institutions,
How to reduce labor costs is the concern of every institutional head, capitalist or otherwise. For a while the higher-ups imagined that applying corporate budget analysis would help sift out the "unproductive" elements of the university, classes with low enrollment, for example.
Industrial production has been mechanized tremendously over the last century, but higher education has not found any way to reduce the number of faculty comparable to the reduction in factory workers.
Perhaps this means that education requires personal attention. Humans interacting with other humans. The product is still an idealistic one, which is to say it requires more than manufacturing, it requires both the producer and the product to believe that more is happening in the exchange than simple creation of economic value.
Monday, May 4, 2009
Nowadays everyone makes films
Something about the films of Adrei Tarkovsky makes you think he was a white haired man when he shot them. Every one seems like the last statement of ancient mystic, and yet he made films for decades. Watching these old clips of Tarkovsky today, you see a handsome fellow, never mind his similarity to the deposed governor of Illinois.
The first Tarkovsky film I ever saw was Sacrifice, during the 1980s in a cold, wet German university, where we all smoked and worried about nuclear war.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRBIJR1d5mc&feature=related
What language barriers there were for a Russian to direct Swedish actors. A nice lady translates, and Tarkovsky breaks into English with a slip into French. The slow tracking shots of Sacrifice are here filled with a Babel of directions, “My right or yours?” “Right for the camera, left for you.” The set is as noisy as a kindergarten or a construction site, and yet the film is hauntingly silent. All sorts of chatter ‘til everyone agrees to have lunch after this shot. The exquisitely subtle movement of the camera on the screen is shown here to have been set up with Tarkovsky riding like a boy on a choo-choo train.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1c8TPVib-Kw&NR=1
What a contrast between the happy play of shooting in the Nordic sun and the film’s on screen apocalyptic tone. Another reason to delight, and to take another look. These documentary snippets make you rethink existentialism, like when you first heard that Kafka thought his stories were comical.
The first Tarkovsky film I ever saw was Sacrifice, during the 1980s in a cold, wet German university, where we all smoked and worried about nuclear war.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRBIJR1d5mc&feature=related
What language barriers there were for a Russian to direct Swedish actors. A nice lady translates, and Tarkovsky breaks into English with a slip into French. The slow tracking shots of Sacrifice are here filled with a Babel of directions, “My right or yours?” “Right for the camera, left for you.” The set is as noisy as a kindergarten or a construction site, and yet the film is hauntingly silent. All sorts of chatter ‘til everyone agrees to have lunch after this shot. The exquisitely subtle movement of the camera on the screen is shown here to have been set up with Tarkovsky riding like a boy on a choo-choo train.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1c8TPVib-Kw&NR=1
What a contrast between the happy play of shooting in the Nordic sun and the film’s on screen apocalyptic tone. Another reason to delight, and to take another look. These documentary snippets make you rethink existentialism, like when you first heard that Kafka thought his stories were comical.
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