jkachinsky-criticalpractice

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Final Essay

The 2013 movie Ender’s Game is an adaptation of Orson Scott Card’s 1991 novel of the same name, which in turn is an update of the 1985 version. It brings a new focus to the issues of distance and simulation endemic to an era of drone warfare. From there it delves deeper into the mindsets of enemy combatants, seeking the reasons why people make war, and finds a complex of mirrored monstrosity and ignorance. Finally, the Christian morality carried over from the original book firmly condemns war on the grounds that all nations, however different, are essentially comprised of persons capable of living in universal harmony- but in doing so, avoids both a pragmatic, materialist analysis of conflict and a true moral condemnation of the actors. Ender’s Game is a meditation on the psychology of modern war, which shades, in Orson Scott Card’s typical style, into a morality play; one that paradoxically reveals the futility of rendering moral judgment in a post-modern, post-monster world.

           The movie begins, appropriately, with a group of children playing a game. Ender faces off against another boy in a simulated dogfight, each holding and manipulating a tablet in a way that closely resembles children playing video games on a smartphone, tablet, or other modern platform. Also familiar is the content of the game, in isolation and in context. The idea of a video game where the player pilots a spaceship with the goal of destroying an opponent’s ship is not at all new to us, despite lacking the technology to do so in real life. On the other hand, in the context of the narrative, the simulation is no longer a science fiction game but a realistic war game, another common genre. Later, in battle school, the battles between armies less resemble video games and more resemble sports. Correspondently, the relationship between gameplay and a real battle or war becomes more abstract and less explicit. Instead of spaceships interacting via complex simulations of astrophysics and rocket science in a realistic outer space environment, the children play something closer to zero gravity laser tag.

Ender’s Game adds weight to these games by making them practical training for future military officers instead of idle entertainment. This hearkens on one level to frequent criticisms of violent video games, including or especially war games, as gateways to real violent behavior in the future, as well as to stereotypes of sports enthusiasts as violent individuals who use simulated violence to supplement or substitute for the real thing. On another level, it makes an interesting point about how a culture of war games is used to condition young people for military service. The comparison between the operation of a drone to kill people at a distance and the mode of play in a recreational flight simulator or fighting game has been made many times in recent years. And by the end of the movie, we discover that the simulated violence of command school- the final series of simulations meant to test the skills of the team of graduates- was not only a gateway to real violence, but was in itself real violence. Throughout command school, the viewer is given hints that the games Ender is playing against Mazer Rackham are not only games- most memorably, his scolding about the loss of too many ships in a failed match. Another point where simulation blurs with reality is in the mind game. This game was already designed to reflect the player’s real emotional state, and in the end we find it had been coopted as a tool of communication between Ender and the Formic queen- two real people, as opposed to one real person and a generated construct. The game shows him a real place instead of a fantasy world, and eventually he uses his memory of the simulated queen to discover a real Formic egg. But before that, when Ender discovers that the simulated battles have been real the whole time, he is adamant that he would never use the tactics he used to win battles that he thought were games in an actual war.

However, is this statement of moral outrage really credible? We know that Ender, on two prior occasions, responded to an attack by severely, or possibly even fatally, injuring his opponent. In one case, he explicitly stated that the reason was to pre-empt future attacks, the same reason commonly cited for initiating a second Formic War. Ender’s Game could easily be a story about the cruel necessity of evil during war. Yet the narrative takes pains to avoid casting humanity in general, including Colonel Graff and Mazer Rackham, and especially Ender, as monsters. The movie is careful to show each party’s motive and justification for the things they do, however morally questionable.

The key reason for war, then, according to the movie, is fear. Humanity fears a second invasion, and so attacks preemptively. Ender fears further attacks from his bullies, so he fights to incapacitate rather than just escape. The Formics, it is implied, fought the first war because of a fear of death due to lack of water. These fears breed ruthlessness- ruthlessness that the narrative condemns, except in Ender’s case. The Formics are from the beginning presented as an enemy that was gloriously defeated due to their invasion, and the other characters are treated at various points to shows of moral outrage or fits of self-recrimination. And while Ender plainly feels guilt for the things he does, there is always another character there to reassure him; to articulate his reasons and explain to both him and the audience why he was justified. Why does the movie insist that Ender is more ethical than other war-makers? Why is he permitted to finally condemn the Formic genocide? What is the moral difference between his violence and the violence of the International Fleet?

Ender himself tells us the difference in his words to Valentine: “I've won because I've always understood the way my enemy thinks… I think it's impossible to truly understand someone and not love them the way they love themselves. But in that moment… I destroy them.” This issue of true understanding, we find, is actually the root of Ender’s criticism after the destruction of the Formic homeworld. “If I’d known it was real,” he says, “I would have… watched them! What were they thinking?” He doesn’t offer a different strategic course that he would have taken- another, more ethical way to win or prevent future aggression. The first thing he would have done differently was understand his opponent better, and thereby be sure that there was no course other than war. We see him do this at other times, seeking to placate his bullies however he can before resorting to physical fighting. To the narrative, this justifies his war-making. On the face of it, this is a coherent moral point- some actions can be considered ethical courses if, but only if, they are a last resort to prevent a worse outcome.

This idea also forms the foundation of Ender’s Game’s overarching themes about understanding as a moral signifier. Ender’s perfect understanding, and thereby perfect love, make him both the most effective warrior and the most moral character in the movie. Other characters, less moral and less adept than Ender, fail because of their ignorance, and how it leads them to war. The bullies do not understand that Ender will genuinely avoid threatening their status and prestige, so they attack him. The adults do not understand the Formics, so they attack them in order to prevent another invasion. They do not understand the children they train, so they are forced to put them through cruel tests in order to be sure of their usefulness to the war effort. And though this is not explicitly confirmed or denied in the movie, a reader of the novel would tend to carry over the idea that the Formics, having a hive mind, did not understand that killing individual humans was destroying fully sentient beings as opposed to drones. In each case, ignorance leads to wrong, destructive, even monstrous actions. And the other side of it, is that ignorance permitted these actions because it also permitted the dehumanization of those harmed- ignorance led each of these human war-makers to wonder if, and then to fear that, their opponent was a monster who could and would at any moment destroy them or their way of life. Ender, then, is superior not because he necessarily refuses to go as far, or do the same things- in fact, it’s heavily implied that in the right circumstances, he might- but because he would act from a place of love and understanding as opposed to ignorance. He could never see his opponents as monsters, as he uses his understanding of them to destroy them, and, in an unusual corollary, this understanding also means that that destruction cannot make him a monster. And at last, the movie drives the point home by making the only act of war which he will not be justified in (and thus will be made truly monstrous by) the only act of war which he undertakes out of ignorance- not knowing that the simulated battles he fought were real.

The issue with this, of course, is that wars are not actually fought due to ignorance and fear. The Christian injunction to love our neighbor (or rather, our enemy) as ourselves has little power to truly prevent war- in the world of Ender’s Game, perfect understanding between combatants would have been enough to prevent genocide. In the real world, most people understand on some level that, in the immortal words of Smedley Butler, war is a racket. The issues of monstrosity, ignorance, and fear that the movie raises are very much present in the psychology of individual soldiers and citizens of the nations at war, as well as in the propaganda used to raise popular support- but wars do not start because of popular support or fears. They start because of a desire on the part of the powerful for more power or resources, and if the populace cannot be convinced to participate by fears of an unknown monstrous opponent, they can be forced by things like a military draft.

Ender’s Game is a movie that insists that anyone we truly understand, we cannot see as a monster. It insists that we understand the real thoughts, feelings, and motives of those who make war. And it tells us that those war-makers, if taken out of their ignorance, would mutually agree that all sentient beings, however different, should not be monsters to each other. But this refusal to make the war-makers genuinely unsympathetic prevents these ideas from carrying over into praxis. Ender is able to incapacitate his bullies despite his empathy for them, but his guilt over this is at times debilitating. Likewise, how can we confidently act against those who make war, or otherwise do evil, if we must also understand and love them perfectly? It’s easy to say that mutual understanding would solve the problem, but we do not live in a world of mutual understanding, or a world where ignorance is truly the primary cause for conflict. That is the practical problem at the center of postmodern relativism- the problem of making and acting on judgments when no judgment can be objective. And how can we act on a subjective judgment when we must also acknowledge our enemies as subjects? This is the question that Ender’s Game raises, but cannot, like so much contemporary media, offer a satisfactory answer.

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Final Essay Thesis

Ender's Game is a meditation on the psychology of modern war, which shades, in Orson Scott Card's typical style, into a morality play; one that paradoxically reveals the futility of rendering moral judgment in a post-modern, post-monster world.

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Assignment 7

             While many pieces of science fiction deal with androids (especially “evil” ones) which look and can to some extent act entirely human, Blade Runner is relatively unique in making these androids physically indistinguishable from human beings. One of the absolute first bits of exposition that the movie gives the viewer is the set of ways in which replicants differ from humans. They are faster and stronger, but do not possess the same emotions. The issue for blade runners, of course, whose primary task is to weed these androids out of the population, is using these differences to distinguish replicants from “real” humans. In most stories, the issue of humanity is neatly reduced to biology- if you cut an android, it does not bleed. Likewise, we can tell humans from animals on the basis of biology; of clear physiological differences. Yet replicants do bleed, and when they are “retired”, they take on injuries, fall, and die exactly like humans do. They are possessed of superhuman strength and speed, but these are attributes which are easily concealed or engineered away- the only way to tell a replicant from a human, Blade Runner tells us, is to administer a Voight-Kampff test, which deliberately provokes emotional reactions in order to reveal how they differ from those of a human.

             But even this test is not a perfect barometer of humanity. A replicant that is allowed to live for too long can develop emotionally to the point where it can pass a Voight-Kampff test, necessitating an artificially shortened lifespan. And a replicant equipped with memories (even memories not its own) of a normal human childhood immediately becomes far more difficult to identify than a normal replicant. Beyond that, we certainly never see a replicant without any emotions at all, nor many emotions that no replicant ever displays in the movie. We see them happy, we see them upset, we see them desperate, and we see them love each other and humans alike. It takes dozens of questions in a controlled environment to distinguish the minutest of differences in their responses to emotional provocation, differences we know can disappear after only about four years (the length of a replicants inbuilt lifespan). Early on, Deckard is asked if he has ever mistakenly “retired” a human, a question which he easily dismisses. This inquiry, however, can come to haunt the viewer. Knowing the vast neurological variation in humans, one is led to wonder if there are any natural-born human beings who would fail the Voight-Kampff test. When the sole meaningful criterion for humanity (and thus the right to life) is the minutest nuance of your emotional response, one begins to wonder how many mentally ill, developmentally disabled, or brain damaged people have at one point or another been executed for failing the critical test. And more than that, it’s common knowledge that human four-year-olds have brains, and resultantly psychologies and emotions, that are wildly different than those of adults. We can say that four-year-olds are still human because we know that they will grow into psychologically “normal” adults, but the movie tells us quite explicitly that replicants also tend to develop into passable human mindsets.

             Blade Runner, as a text, seems at first to pose the question, “What makes a human different from a machine?” A serious analysis, however, makes it clear that the only answer can be “nothing”. In Blade Runner’s future, technology is so advanced that machines can be engineered to be empirically identical to humans, except for the very engineering that is their origin. But at the same time, the technology for artificially creating or genetically engineering humans is already developing now. Any line drawn can be easily crossed or erased by some hypothetical technology, leaving only an abstract sense of ontology. We accept that replicants are not human (and conversely, that humans are not replicants, or otherwise machines) only due to an ingrained and constructed division; a cultural sense of human exceptionalism with no real bearing on reality. Blade Runner is one piece of media that, in seeking this boundary, only proves its nonexistence.

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Assignment 6

             Playtest begins as an essentially normal TV program or movie- it shows the viewer a video of a play, staged by actors and edited, which we are meant to understand as being a fiction which simulates reality, despite having its own markers and differences which viewers must “read” to understand the story fully. The reality of the episode is distinguished from the viewer’s “true” physical reality by its two-dimensionality, its imperceptibility to senses like touch and smell, the malleability of time (as seen in the discontinuity in perceived time and action between scenes), and various other markers. But in accordance with convention, the viewer suspends their disbelief and temporarily accepts the TV simulation as real.

             Soon, the protagonist, Cooper, must undergo the same process as the viewer. When he is hired to playtest a new virtual reality game, his first “test” is a game of whack-a-mole played with simulated holes and gophers. This virtual reality, like our, TV program, has certain markers of its unreality- most prominently, that when Cooper reaches out to touch a gopher, his hand passes right through. Not only that, but he and we have both been informed by a seeming authority that the simulation is a computer image perceptible only to Cooper.

             At the end of his game of whack-a-mole, Cooper moves back into the realm of true, physical reality, and agrees to participate in a second simulation. At first, the haunted house simulation bears the same markers as the gopher simulation- intangibility, unrealistic events and images, and so on. But as the “game” becomes more frightening, Cooper begins to refuse suspension of disbelief. This is a serious contrast from his previous responses to virtual reality, where he expressed difficulty understanding the simulations as false because of how similar they were, perceptually, to his physical reality. But in order to manage his fear, he deliberately talked about and sought out the markers of the virtual constructs as simulated, complimenting the graphics, touching the projections, and so on. Later, however, these reality checks begin to fail. When the simulation of Sonja appears, he at first assumes she must be real because he is able to feel her. In order to explain the other marks of simulation (e.g. the unrealistic story that she tells; her inability to adequately explain how she could find Cooper and visit him at the house) he accuses her of lying, essentially presenting a different type or layer of “false” reality.

             When she attacks him, physically transforms, and disappears, and the voice of Katie reappears to tell him what is real and what is not, he and the viewer are able to use these markers to redraw the line between physical reality and simulation, with one key marker, intangibility, now lost. Cooper again takes some time to dismiss the false reality- he insists, in a panic, that the attack must have been real, that he knows because he felt it. From that point, we see a breakdown of the line between real and fake. The markers of reality are successively lost or rendered untrustworthy- Katie’s voice claims to have lied and manipulated Cooper, then becomes entirely hallucinatory, all the physical sensations we were told could not be simulated are revealed to be simulatable, as the entire house scenario is revealed as a simulation.

At this point, only two markers of unreality remain- the malleability of time, and the unrealistic nature of events. Cooper is told, upon returning to the physical, that he had been in the simulation for only about a second, despite perceiving it as much longer. Furthermore, especially towards the end, much of the simulation drew on recognizable horror tropes and impossible or ill-explained scenarios. When Cooper and the viewer reenter reality, these markers have dissipated (at least within the episode). The final horror is one that seems very realistic to Cooper- his mother, like his father, clearly having developed severe Alzheimer’s. The very end of the episode takes this last marker, leaving us only with the malleability of time- the viewer, thrown back into the room where Cooper first donned the virtual reality headgear, sees the discontinuity between the new scene and the one in Cooper’s mother’s house, and is then informed (by Katie again, no less) that the simulation lasted less than half a second before Cooper’s death. The viewer is now the only subject left to interpret this final, “true” reality- yet by this point, Playtest has launched itself into the realm of the hyperreal. Cooper died unable to distinguish reality from simulation, and the markers that he thought he could use to do so were steadily proved false. This, as well as the mirroring in reality of a simulated scene, leads the viewer to question how “real” the final scene truly is- and how real the simulation.

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The Matrix Classwork

             When the resistance first removes Neo from his vat, he is barely able to function in the real world. While in the Matrix he perceived himself as sensing and interacting easily with a material reality, when he sees the real world for the first time, he finds these senses and interactions extremely difficult or unavailable to him. His muscles are atrophied, never having the chance to work and grow strong as they would have in a “normal” lifetime. He asks of his saviors, “Why do my eyes hurt?”

             Morpheus replies, “Because you’ve never used them before.”

             This exchange immediately harkens back to Plato’s allegory of the cave, a concept that threads through much of the movie’s meditations on the nature of reality and the difference between real and not. When the cave dweller exits, ascending to the ideal world of forms, the light of the sun would be so much brighter than the firelight casting shadows onto cave walls that the viewer would be blinded. Likewise, the true reality which the Matrix mimics and overlies is not comprehensible to the senses of one accustomed to a simulated reality. While he has thought he was using the senses and facilities of inhabiting the world, he actually adapted to something so fundamentally different from real life that one world isn’t readable to the inhabitants of the other- like trying to open an mp3 file with Photoshop.

This metaphor for the inconceivability of the true or ideal forms of our world also serves as a metaphor for the distress and cognitive dissonance associated with “waking up” to the the complex nature and issues of one’s own society, or the loss of innocence. Men’s rights activists and some other communities aligned with the alt-right are famous for coopting the icon of the red pill, calling people “redpilled” who have come to “see through” the mainstream view of the world and come to take a far-right view. However, many less mainstream, more esoteric, or simply more “adult” ideas come with a similar red pill moment. Being disillusioned and coming to understand reality in a way that is new and difficult, but also more true, is often a painful experience- partially the pain of realizing that one is wrong, partially the pain of knowing things that are unpleasant, and partially the pain of comprehending and assimilating new ideas. These moments often lead people to realize that they have experienced, mentally, the same sort of atrophy that Neo experiences physically- they haven’t learned the tools and skills needed to function or cope in the reality that they have just “entered” (just as Neo’s muscles have not developed enough for him to move and interact in the real world) and they find their new perceptual and analytical toolbox, their ability to critically think and understand the world through their new lens, is also new and painful to use (“Why do my eyes hurt?”).

The Matrix is essentially a movie about an ordinary man’s radicalization. He is monitored by a fringe organization that seeks to essentially destroy the very foundation of modern society. This organization contacts him, telling him that he can be an important part of their movement and promising to reveal secrets that call into question all he’s been raised to understand. They tell him that there is a powerful shadow government who have trapped the rest of humanity in a false consciousness in order to exploit them, prompting him to join them in all-out guerrilla warfare against the authorities. The essential shock of this point in the process (as well as in the “crossing over” stage of the hero’s journey) is shown in Neo and Morpheus’ exchange: “Why do my eyes hurt?”

“Because you’ve never used them before.”

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             Contemporary xenophobia is only the latest part in a tradition so long as to apparently predate humanity itself. Foreigners are definitionally others, and immigrants are definitionally others in the midst of the community, representing uncertainty, outside influence, and change in what has, in a sense of mythic time, always been familiar. Framing immigrants as monsters has long been a successful tactic of conservatives and longstanding institutions, playing off public fears in order to suppress or eradicate those outside influences. Today we see immigrants again used as monsters to literally scare up support for far right leaders and movements, justify severe abuses, and obscure inconvenient truths. Cohen’s seven theses are applicable quite neatly to the tactics and logic of this “monsterization”, from the semiotics of the immigrant’s stereotyped appearance to the reactionary nature of this modern monster myth.

             Cohen’s first thesis is borne out in the stereotypical immigrant body. This mythic body relies in part on already old and deeply embedded racializations, of mestizos, Arabs, and South Asians in particular. Then costumes are added, attaching pieces of clothing and headdress so irrevocably that they become more part of the monstrous body, and less a garment that a person can remove. Finally, a foreign mode of speech is added, allowing both meaning and silence to be projected onto the monster at will.

             As for the second thesis, immigrants are understood as being a persistent threat, constantly invading. While more gatekeeping and more deportations can always be implemented, these measures are never enough to truly wipe out the immigrant threat. Always there are some who, through some clever trick or loophole, have escaped detection, always there is some new way for them to invade the in-group’s homeland, and throughout history, there has always been some new group of outsiders poised at the gates of the homeland, hungry for entry, even as the flow from the last wave or perceived immigrant threat died off.

             Cohen’s third thesis can be applied to the very nature of what being an immigrant is- a person from a foreign realm, with foreign ways, who is also simultaneously a part of the familiar realm. One of Them and one of Us at the same time. Seeing this, it makes a great deal of sense that the greatest outbreaks of xenophobia occur at times when there is a strong drive to consolidate, validate, or shore up the nation-state. The entire nation-state concept hinges on a clear division between citizens (insiders, natives) and non-citizens (outsiders, foreigners), as well as the correspondence between those groups and the insiders and outsiders of a particular culture or community. Immigrants problematize that correspondence as well as the distinction between the two categories.

             The fourth thesis is demonstrated quite clearly in President Trump’s famous statement about Mexican immigrants: “When Mexico sends its people… they’re not sending you. They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists.” This he then promptly, if weakly, qualified: “And some, I assume, are good people.” This hits many of the key notes in Cohen’s fourth thesis. First, Trump states that the people Mexico sends (immigrants) are not “you”- he speaks directly to the American in-group and says quite explicitly that these immigrants are not them, are not like them, are different. He then demonizes that difference, stating that unlike Us, these immigrants “have lots of problems” and are going to bring them in to threaten the insiders. He associates one type of difference- being from a different place- with other, even more expressly or implicitly negative differences (i.e. drug addiction, criminality, sexual deviancy, etc.). These ascribed differences are then used to justify the exclusion and mistreatment of the outsiders in question.

             The application of Cohen’s fifth thesis is a little less obvious. What proscribed action or way of being do immigrants warn against? They are used less as a bogeyman to deter specific actions than as a way of enforcing cultural unity, homogeneity, and survival. Demonizing immigrants helps to suppress their contributions and their beings as full persons, warning against accepting cultural change from such outsiders or breaking down the nation-state by eroding borders or the concept of citizenship. The immigrant monster polices the conceptually possible rather than the physically possible.

             The sixth thesis is clearly apparent in how often immigrants and the cultural artifacts they bring are commodified and fetishized. It is the desirability of these cultural artifacts- things like outside religions, foreign cuisines, new ideas and technologies, unfamiliar modes of dress, etc.- that makes immigrants such a threat to a conservative community. They tempt insiders and the community as a whole to take on new ways and threaten the dominion of the old.

             Finally, immigrants arise most strongly as monsters as a reaction to pushes for their inclusion without assimilation- when the Other is most likely to enter the Inside, bringing outside influence and threatening to overturn the status quo. It is no coincidence that the contemporary reaction against immigrants occurs at a time when much of the nation-state principle is being publicly questioned, cultural relativism and with it anti-assimilationism is prevalent, immigration is high in many western countries, and the ethnic balance of population and thus democratic power is shifting away from those who have traditionally held the most sway.

[jkachinsky-criticalpractice]

Assignment 4

Thesis I: The physical characteristics of a monster are symbolic of its cultural role and meaning. Markers of uncertainty are often encoded into monsters’ material descriptions, and their workings as beings are never fully resolved into reality, common sense, or understanding.

Thesis II: Though in stories monsters can be entirely defeated, the same or similar monster narratives recur, as the conflict represented by the monster cannot actually be defeated in the same way. Additionally, the same “types” of monster will be used and re-used to signify new dilemmas.

Thesis III: Monsters defy traditional, entrenched, or accepted categories, problematizing binaries by existing as a third option. They arise to challenge existing taxonomies, destroy them, and replace them with new forms of logic.

Thesis IV: Monstrosity is a way of articulating the Other or outside, making it subhuman and needing to be defeated or destroyed, and thereby justifying subjugation or attack by the in-group. Many types of difference are ascribed to the Other to further emphasize its foreignness and monstrousness, even aside from the differences that actually prompted Othering.

Thesis V: The threat of monsters, or of becoming a monster, is used to portray the violation of norms or the preferences of the powerful as impossible rather than merely undesirable, thereby enforcing the survival of the culture.

Thesis VI: Monsters, as outsiders defying categorization, are also often the sites or objects of escapist fantasies, allowing “normal” people to imagine being free of social constraints temporarily and outside of their actual role, thereby avoiding any true risk to the social order. Monsters are most threatening when their desirability in that sense threatens to seduce people away from their cultural mores.

Thesis V: Monsters arise at points of serious sociocultural change or reevaluation.

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Victoria Hanna’s Aleph Bet video does a few things which are very interesting from a postmodern perspective- first, it recontextualizes Jewish liturgy as art, second, it blends modern or gentile media styles with traditional singing and cultural motifs, and third, it makes a clear feminist statement which is encoded not only in its content but its medium.

The clear theme of the video is women’s, particularly Jewish women’s, access to language- the ability to read, to speak, to sing, and to be heard. The very act of making a music video already subverts one of the most visible restrictions on this access- the prohibition against women singing around men. By making her singing available to everyone, Victoria Hanna clearly allows men to hear her sing. But more than that, the lyrics of Aleph Bet in particular, especially when paired with the visuals in the video, make clear reference to the inability of women (at least in Orthodox synagogues) to sing along audibly during prayer. After the recitation of the alphabet (at 0:51 in the video) the lyrics become one of the Hoshanot sung on Sukkot, with the lines arranged in alphabetical order. Hanna and the girls chorus “hosha na” and dance as if gesturing and beating the ground with lulavim, and at one point she actually does hit the chalkboard with a willow branch. This clearly references the prohibition on women and girls singing this song in a normal religious context. Additionally, the classroom motif further emphasizes the issue of women’s access to language, bringing up the restriction of Hebrew and Torah studies to boys by creating a Jewish classroom populated solely by girls. At the beginning of the video, she and her “students” (whom she herself occasionally appears among, identically uniformed) chant the alphabet, showing it to them on the chalkboard including vowel marks (marking the writing as being intended for the edification of children) whose sounds she then recites as well. Honey is poured onto a book, referencing a tradition in which a young boy at the beginning of his Torah studies would lick honey off of a written page.

The use of the music video as a medium and the injection of modern musical styles- making portions of the video somewhat hip-hop-ish- show a very classically postmodern blending of divergent styles, originating in different times, places, and cultures. The elements of the new and foreign, blended and juxtaposed with traditional elements, combine with the Sukkot theme to make a message of rebirth, change, and redemption. In parts of the video, time seems to run backwards- honey, rain, and clods of soil fly up against gravity, pouring themselves in reverse. At the very end, all the girls come up to the chalkboard and make marks, which together create the impression of a rainstorm. This implies the point that allowing girls to learn, to access language, to sing prayers, to make marks (physical or metaphorical) and be heard, is as renewing and life-giving as the rain prayed for during Sukkot. The rewinding of time implies the erasure of history, but with so many deeply historically based themes, the image evokes more a break with tradition without the denial that erasure implies.

Finally, the video reframes liturgy as art, even popular entertainment. It takes the Hoshana and rearranges it, recontextualizes it, and pairs it with a new beat and melody that, while it in many ways resembles and evokes the feeling of the original, is also something foreign and new. Not only that, but it makes the prayer itself no longer a prayer, but a simple song- a piece of entertainment for people, not a prayer for God. It uses elements with spiritual meanings to create something that can stand and is in many ways presented (i.e. in the form of a music video) as pure art. Aside from the Hoshana, parts of the dance reference the ritual movements in Sukkot services and, especially during the recitation of the alphabet, the Kabbalistic correspondences of the letters to parts of the body. The impression of the letters having an almost physical power, the use of letters as lyrics in themselves, and the overall trippiness of the video also seem to come from Kabbalah. But this esoteric play between literal and symbolic, so distinct in the context of Jewish mysticism, is also one of the hallmarks of the typical modern music video. In true postmodern fashion, we see that merely placing this Kabbalistic tendency into a new context transforms it from philosophy into fashion.

[jkachinsky-criticalpractice]

             The image here is immediately identifiable by its style and format as a fairly contemporary political cartoon. There is a painting in watercolor or ink, in a simplified style that exaggerates the features of the figures depicted, above a short caption presented as a quote. The image shows two figures in the foreground, standing beside a window. One figure is much larger than the other, at least twice the smaller figure’s size. The larger figure holds a curtain in front of itself, as if hiding behind it or using it as a shield, but its face remains exposed. The smaller figure is crouched on the ground behind the larger, taking a similar cowering posture behind its leg. In the room are two televisions, each showing crowds of people. In the foreground of one are two figures in pink hats holding a sign that reads “The future is female.” The other shows another figure in a pink hat, this one holding a sign reading “Women’s rights are human rights.” Outside the window, a similar crowd is seen with signs that are so small as to be mostly illegible. The crowd appears to stretch back a great distance. The image caption declares “’I’m terrific at estimating crowd size. It looks like a dozen, maybe two dozen women at most.”

             A certain amount of cultural knowledge, combined with context clues from within the image, makes the intended interpretation easy to find. The signs and the appearance of the figures in pink hats (long hair and darkened cheeks indicating that they are women) on the televisions clearly indicate that they are feminist protestors. The crowd outside, painted in pinks and reds, can also be read as a group of similar protestors, although the signs and individual figures can no longer be distinguished. The caricaturized faces of the foreground figures, the top of an American flag behind them, and the thin spire in the far distance, clearly place this tableau at the White House, with the president and vice president confronted by the recent women’s march protesting their election and their policies. The caption references President Trump and others in his administration’s remarks regarding the size of the crowd at his inauguration. In response to photos comparing the crowd in 2017 to the crowd at the presidential inauguration in 2009, with the 2017 crowd being noticeably sparser, Trump claimed that the photos were not reflective of the actual number of people present or even weather conditions when he was sworn in. The caption implies two things- first, that there were many more protestors present at the national mall than there were Trump supporters at the inauguration, and that this demonstrates a lack of popular backing (or indeed, popular mandate). Second, that President Trump’s observations of reality are warped by his own ego. The reference in the caption essentially serves to present us with two images instead of one, both accompanied by a statement meant to represent Trump’s view. There is the image shown in the cartoon, where the President, presented with a literally incalculable number of detractors, claims that the crowd is (as he perceives it) very small. And there is the referenced image, where, given direct photographic evidence that he had a relatively small group of supporters at his inauguration, he claims that the crowd was (as he perceived it) much larger. The cartoon is drawing a contrast between an apparently objective reality where Trump is disfavored, possibly even to the point of illegitimacy as a democratic leader, and the version of reality he claims to see, which favors him much more.

[jkachinsky-criticalpractice]

Assignment #1

           I’m willing to admit that there exists a certain millennial knee-jerk reaction against 60-year-olds who claim that the culture of our generation is uniquely stagnant, derivative, or otherwise inferior. It’s not really rational at this point- if someone over the age of 50 starts talking about the year twenty-umpteen, I’m reflexively geared up to refute them before they’ve even finished their first sentence. But I still think that anyone who claims that there hasn’t been any meaningful aesthetic change since the 90s isn’t looking closely enough.

           There are several facets of this claim that need to be separately addressed: first, that artifacts or records from twenty years ago no longer seem “dated” the way they did in previous decades (i.e. that the past is no longer distinguishable from the perspective of the present, but that it was previously) and second, that current trends present nothing new and instead only mimic past aesthetics, while in the past there was genuine innovation. And within each of these claims we find another two assertions: that the present is in some way stagnant, and that the past was on the same level not.

           First of all, the idea that 90s artifacts do not seem dated to present viewers is patently absurd. If there was no distinct 90s aesthetic, then there would be nothing funny or aesthetically off-putting about 90s textbook photos, boy bands, or sitcoms. That there are some aesthetic elements that haven’t changed, or some things that are still appropriate for the present day, doesn’t mean that there has been significantly less change than in previous decades. There are certainly some elements from the 30s that wouldn’t have seemed out of place in the 50s, and likewise with any other 20-year span. The aesthetic revolutions discussed have never totally swept away the old order, and beyond that, the stereotypical “looks” of each decade- the ones Anderson references to make his claim- were never universal even at the heights of their popularity. Just as flappers once coexisted with dour suffragettes and punks with New Romantics, today there are many distinct aesthetic trends that coexist. Focusing on the ones that are the most similar to previous trends cannot do justice to the full aesthetic repertoire of any era.

           Secondly, the trends of an era have always been to some extent cannibalized from other cultural sources. Creativity does not come from a vacuum, and if the modern style makes some references to older fashions or ideas, it doesn’t take any more than previous styles or transform what it’s taken any less.

           But most of all, in looking only at the most visible or mainstream styles and aesthetic elements, Anderson overlooks much of the most revolutionary developments in modern culture. He dismisses the technology of the information age- the site of some of the most rapid and radical cultural change and trendsetting in human history- entirely, overlooking the new and recognizable trends in web design, comics, essays, fanfiction, game design, music, and more. In his focus on the stereotypical hipster-as-seen-in-the-streets-of-Portland, he misses the proliferation of smaller, less visible, or simply less cliché hipster subcultures and stylistic changes- dubstep, the white queer Look, dystopian YA fiction, gamer comics- the list goes on. The rise of 3d animation and photorealism in animation has given us movies and games that look wildly different to anything present or even attempted 20 years ago. There were certainly no popular rappers like Angel Haze 20 years ago. And absurdist meme culture, one of the most obvious and current hallmarks of 2010s style, looks, sounds, and expresses like nothing that came before. I’ll grant that a hipster sporting a 19th century mustache might not exactly be a great stylistic innovation. But that 19th century mustache doesn’t stand alone- it’s part of a distinct and eclectic 21st century aesthetic. You just have to look past the mustache to see it.