#reinventing rationalism from first principles

[torschlusspanikattack]

told a friend i would rather struggle and suffering forever than an end to history and especially any non-human agent slop terminus

not sure if i endorse biting the bullet on this but the worldview they were endorsing was so bleak

[miiiilena]

Exploring Philosophy through Doctor Who

  ⃪ Welcome! 🍄 . ⵢ

"Doctor Who" is an iconic science fiction series that portrays the adventures of an eccentric protagonist who has the ability to change appearance whenever he's on the brink of death. He belongs to the Time Lords, a species from another planet. The series has a somewhat retro visual style with a strong British influence, especially in its humor. The Doctor always invites companions on his travels, which quickly turn into dangerous adventures. Together, they face frightening alien creatures and challenging situations. Broadcast by the BBC since 1963, the series remains relevant over the years due to its ability to reinvent itself, whether through new actors or innovative storylines. Currently, the role of the Doctor is played by actor Ncuti Gatwa, the first Black and openly gay actor to take on the role of the Doctor.

Now, speaking about philosophy, the philosopher Aristotle has a lot in common with "Doctor Who." Both have their followers, or companions, who help them in their journeys, and they face adversaries that threaten order and justice. Aristotle believed in a world governed by natural and rational laws, while "Doctor Who" explores multiple realities where the rules of the universe can change. Aristotle advocated for ethics based on virtue and happiness, while the Doctor follows a more flexible moral code that values the preservation of life and friendship above all else.

The series addresses philosophical concepts such as metaphysics. The TARDIS, the Doctor's iconic ship, is an example of an object that defies the laws of physics. It is bigger on the inside than on the outside and travels through time and space by manipulating the energy of the time vortex. This all fits into the idea of dimensional transcendence, where the internal space of the TARDIS exists in a distinct dimension from the external one. The TARDIS, beyond being a machine, possesses a certain personality of its own, and these elements make it an interesting link to Aristotelian metaphysics.

Another central philosophical theme is identity and memory. With each regeneration, the Doctor changes appearance, style, and even aspects of his personality but retains fundamental traits like his intelligence and sense of justice. This leads us to reflect on how the character deals with his own transformations and the changes in relationships with his companions and enemies. The Doctor's identity is constantly questioned by the characters around him, as he never reveals his true name and is known only as "The Doctor."

"Doctor Who" also explores the nature of time in a unique way. Time is treated as a dimension that can be manipulated but also has its rules, such as fixed points that cannot be altered and alternate timelines. These rules help avoid paradoxes and preserve the integrity of the web of time, a concept the Doctor explains as "wibbly wobbly timey wimey stuff."

Ethics and morality are constantly tested in the series, with the Doctor frequently facing dilemmas involving saving lives, combating threats to the universe, or deciding between right and wrong. His enemies, like the Daleks, Cybermen, and the Master, have complex motivations and often see themselves as saviors or superior, challenging the Doctor to confront not just their actions but also the principles that drive them.

Death is a recurring theme, where the Doctor's regeneration offers a form of temporary immortality, contrasting with the mortality of his companions. The series deals with cloning, consciousness transfer, and immortality, questioning the value and consequences of living forever.

Beyond these themes, "Doctor Who" addresses aesthetics, consciousness, politics, and justice, always bringing deep reflections in a fun and accessible way. Throughout its seasons, the series not only entertains but also prompts viewers to reflect on universal philosophical questions.

Finishing! 🍄 = . ༅.

In the end, "Doctor Who" is much more than a sci-fi series full of adventures through time and space. It is a true dive into philosophical themes that make us think about who we are, what is right or wrong, and even how time works. With the Doctor and his companions, we realize that life is full of questions without easy answers, but that's part of the journey.

The cool thing about "Doctor Who" is that even after so long on air, the series continues to reinvent and surprise itself, showing that change can be positive and necessary. With its unique style and humor, it reminds us that no matter the challenge, what really matters is valuing life, friendships, and never losing curiosity.

So, whether facing Daleks, traveling in a TARDIS that’s bigger on the inside than on the outside, or breaking all the rules of time, "Doctor Who" teaches us that the important thing is to keep exploring and adapting. In the end, what truly matters is what we learn along the way and how we use it to make the universe a slightly better place.

[retvenkos]

probably very controversial, but i feel like eloise's anger at penelope at the end of season 2 is justified? like, yes penelope did hurt eloise in an attempt to help her, but i also think eloise was right and penelope did it in part to help herself. like, there are so many issues with how they communicate in that final argument and neither is completely right or completely wrong but in the end i think penelope wasn't listening to eloise far more than eloise wasn't listening to penelope.

asdfghjhgfdsdfgh, i know i said i'd answer these on wednesday but you know how it is asdfggfdsdfg

ohmygod, okay, yes, i have had major beef with penelope for two seasons now and i'm glad i'm not the only one!!!!! like, yes, penelope is an intriguing character and i feel sorry for her unrequited love, but !!!!! that doesn't mean i can't fundamentally disagree with her !!!!!!

as a person (and character) penelope is the absolute opposite of what i respect and value. i remember feeling so betrayed and upset in season 1 when she tells everyone marina's secret. i don't care if penelope ~loves~ colin she handled that sO. INCREDIBLY. POORLY. she has few qualms betraying her friends (and i come to this conclusion because she doesn't exhaust all other avenues first before going for the killing blow) and she has the gall to feel sorry for her own loss after it all. ma'am?????? like, with the marina situation, she could have *gasp* told colin he was being entrapped??? because if it's truly about him and penelope not wanting him to face scandal, then the obvious answer is to tell him what's happening! but it wasn't ultimately about him only, because she doesn't tell him! because he might be fine with it and marry marina anyway! and penelope ultimately doesn't care that one of her friends would have to face such a devastating fate if it means she still has the slim chance of being with colin. if marina had to live destitute because of the whistledown situation and penelope was able to marry colin, pen would have been fine with that outcome. because it serves her. damn. okay.... be cruel to your inner circle i guess. loyalty? who's she???

and that principle of pen's character translates over to this season with eloise!!!! i was actually glad that there's that consistency with her character (because damn the showrunners really did say 'let's reinvent anthony's personality for season 2.' like, it was done well and i like anthony better but it doesn't change the fact that he's so markedly different this season...), but it really shows the ruthlessness of her character! pen is so incredibly self-serving and self-preserving that she will step over anyone and everyone in order to protect her best interests! i mean i think that's such an interesting character beat - especially for a woman! - and it means we can push her to the absolute edge at all times and watch her destroy everyone before herself, but it's just inherently against my own morals that i just... i can't vibe with penelope. i mean, once again, penelope had every opportunity to tell eloise that she was whistledown after eloise reveals her family is in danger! penelope could have faced the ire of her friend and quite possibly the rejection, but then they could find some way to work together to salvage the situation, y'know? they could still be pissed, but at least your best friend's ENTIRE FAMILY won't be ruined! but instead, penelope decides to protect herself! and absolutely destroy eloise in whistledown because "it's something eloise can bounce back from because she's from a popular family," completely IGNORING the fact that the bridgerton family has already faced so many scandals, it's unlikely they'll be able to bounce back from such a big one at that. and they still have so many family members unwed! there's so many lives at stake, but pen is able to rationalize it all away in her own mind for her self-preservation.

it's certainly interesting, but eloise deserves to go off at penelope, and while eloise made many missteps you cannot tell me that penelope was in the right. in the end, penelope had every opportunity to come clean, and again, WHO sabotaged the family of WHO?

[earthling-wolf]

Ji Essentialism

Ji (introverted judgment) is a function that defines an object by its inner essence and seeks to understand the innate qualities within a single object. Rather than comparing things to other things in a causal fashion (Je), Ji evaluates how a thing compares to itself in its static properties, judging whether it is self-aligned. Expressions of its functioning include the identification of self-contradictions, impurities of character, hypocrisy, and asymmetry. If the individual is used as the central reference frame, all things will be compared against themselves for alignment or misalignment in beliefs, ethics, reason, aesthetics, and motives.

Identity & Individualism

The question of identity becomes a significant concern for Ji, as it participates in the establishment of one's core standards and aspirations. For Ji, creating an identity arises from a longing to embody whatever would be the most perfect and beautiful manifestation of themselves according to an ideal they envision in terms of ethical values, character, and aesthetics. While all people have a sense of identity, for Ji, "the question of identity" is an essential matter involving the revisiting, rediscovering, and reinventing of what our self must be composed of by comparing that self against some maximal beauty - in whatever way that is defined by them. Ji also has independence from any situation of origin, culture, or location in which they were first placed. Ji can generate a sense of identity from first principles and divorce itself from the specificity of its birthplace. In this sense, it sees no limits to what one can conceive oneself as. What matters most is that their outer manifestation exemplifies their values and true principles. This can lead to eccentric behaviors and attires and idiosyncratic beliefs and fixations.

Idealism

Due to this, the operation of Ji is more concerned with what – in principle – is the best position or perspective, void of consideration for the necessities and trade-offs suggested by the present. The word "idealistic" is used not necessarily in the dreamy or fantastical sense but in the purely rational sense of wanting what is fully aligned with reason. Many Ji types will be stubbornly idealistic, feel that "no compromise is a good compromise," and will fight for their utopian vision of people, society, and the world. However, despite their zeal and fervor for the right cause, Ji will often take few or no steps from their tower toward the practical production of their embellished ideologies. The Ji function is termed the "Compass" because it does not carry one to the final place but points the way. It is the needle of the psyche, and while we may never arrive at the north, it will always strive to point the psyche in that direction. It offers no understanding of the terrain or what is needed to navigate it, but it does understand one thing — where the proper course is. Moreover, notwithstanding the challenges that come with this tendency, without this inner sense of the optimal order, we would have a far weaker grasp of the ultimate aim and how to direct resources towards it.

Nobility & Conscience

The Ji function can produce relatively abundant feelings of guilt, low self-worth, and inadequacy. When the mind is preoccupied with such high visions and aspirations, the state of oneself often pales in comparison. For Ji, this distress can only be alleviated by internal efforts to purify one's character and live up to one's standards. This will tend them towards a higher focus on nobility and the cultivation of personal dignity. Whether this personal standard qualifies them as dignified in the eyes of other people or cultures is not the primary metric used. Thus, many Ji types will be disqualified as externally noble/dignified for being irresponsible, stubborn, neglectful, and lacking follow-through. Many such character flaws will exist in the Ji type - but Ji will focus on those flaws specific to the values most highly promoted by their inner sense. There is a ranking of virtues in Ji which, although specific to each person, often places authenticity, transparency, self-knowledge, and truth among the highest. Virtues such as dependability, hard work, patience, and practicality may be considered less.

Pickiness & Perfectionism

Ji is commonly directed towards criticizing outer structures outside the aforementioned focal points. They will manifest acute attention to detail in their crafts and be picky about shapes, colors, textures, and forms. When working on an art piece, Ji's participation may lead to a more precise final product or no product as they may be incapable of settling on a direction or accepting the appearance of what they have produced. As a coworker, this can lead to delays in workflow as the Ji type may spend longer than others in organizing their material beyond the baseline requirements they are being held to. Phrases such as "Just get it out the door. It does not have to be perfect" or "Something is better than nothing" are ideas Ji may struggle to integrate and honor, especially when the product is of specific personal importance. Ji operates from a "quality over quantity" philosophy due to its tendency to hyperfocus. If pressured to produce at an accelerated rate, they may have unimaginably imprudent oversights due to how narrow their attention focuses are to one thing at a time while ignoring all else.

[bbq-hawks-wings]

So I took a personality test to day and got the result of an Architect (INTJ) and for some reason Hawks just came to mind so I wondered, based on the Myers-Briggs classification what personality would he have? Also just out of curiosity, and you don't have to answer, but what would yours be? (I took the quiz on the website 16personalities)

Fantastic question, anon! Last I took the test a few years ago I was an INFP (The Mediator) myself which I think still largely applies. It can be easy to mistype yourself, let alone someone else, so I’m going to use evidence from the manga as much as possible and go through the individual traits one by one to see what I can find. I considered taking the test myself in character, but realized especially with how long the test is it could be easy to either overthink it or hyper-fixate on consciously or unconsciously preconceived traits, so I decided an evidence-based approach would be more accurate.

An important thing to know about Meyers-Briggs personality types is that they’re not all-encompassing, exclusive, or immutable. Some people have a tendency to make ill-informed preconceptions about people or treat it like a horoscope. This is the wrong way to apply a Meyers-Briggs personality type. They are insights to the instinctual way people are likely to act and perform and are only a tool to aid in things like working in a team, putting them on a path to personal success, and exercising emotional intelligence when interacting with them. Many people may still display a different “type” in different settings so I’ll be as cognizant of that as possible as I go through.

So with that, let’s get started!

Extroverted [E] or Introverted [I]?

This is a fantastic example of how preconceived notions  can completely mess up a characterization of someone as well as someone displaying a different type from what they might naturally display. Hawks is great with people, can work a crowd, and is a people-pleaser through and through. To many others, he would be a dead ringer for an extroverted. However:

In his own ideal world, Hawks has time to himself, to spend alone at home, doing whatever he wants freely. If he was an extrovert this dream might be a little more geared towards still being a top hero, but he’s said in so many words he wishes he was a little further down the ladder.

At this point I’d be remiss if I didn’t bring up that a false dichotomy of introvert/extrovert has developed over the years. Humans require interaction with other humans to stay healthy and they also require alone time. Too much or too little of either will give them problems over time. It’s a tad frustrating to me that this personality test requires an either/or answer since I thoroughly believe that Hawks enjoys human company and would naturally seek it out in his ideal scenario, just in greater moderation than he does now (which would make him more of an ambivert); but given the fact that at this point in time he seeks more opportunities for solitude, I’m going to answer that he lands, somewhat surprisingly in the Introverted category.

Observant [S] or Intuitive [N]?

This one is also tricky at first, but a deeper dive into their definitions gives us a pretty solid answer, I think. According to the website: 

“These traits describe what people are more likely to do with the information gathered from the world around them. Intuitive personality types rely on imagining the past and future potential of what they see. Those with the Observant style are more interested in observable facts and more straightforward outcomes. They prefer to avoid layering too much interpretation on what they see.“

So does Hawks take a complicated, theoretical approach to information he’s exposed to, or does he call it like he sees it? Does he act in the here and now, or is he more bigger picture?

While he’s actively working toward a definitive goal, he has a tendency to only focus on the information in front of him as it happens. Dabi’s going to release a super powered Nomu? Better get the best hero around to fight it. Need to infiltrate the League of Villains? Just hammer away at getting Dabi to trust him and open the door for him.

He tends to look at the road in front of him to figure out if he should go left or right, but doesn’t always seem to realize he could be being taken for a ride. In his section of the new character book, his relationship with Dabi is described as “they are using each other” (note the present continuous tense) meaning that Dabi is stringing along the number two hero for his own purposes, but Hawks seems to have no idea of it. Just his altercation with Dabi at the warehouse after High End is proof he’s too trusting of the information he’s given at face value.

He may have contingencies (such as holding onto the one feather), but they do not span very far and wide into the future depending on any way things go. It’s always, “If plan A doesn’t work, go to plan B” and never a step or two ahead of that or a consideration of other possible outcomes. Did he have a plan in case High End actually killed Endeavor? Based on his reaction, I don’t think he really thought that was a possibility even though in the end it almost happened and left him with a permanent scar.

This, to me, puts him safely in the Observant category.

Thinking [T] or Feeling [F]?

Hey, this one is actually easy! Hawks is incredibly intelligent, but he is far from rational. A good litmus test for this is to see how someone reacts to failure. A thinking individual will view an undesirable outcome as useful data for the future and possibly just a result of things beyond their control, but a feeling person will view the same as proof of inadequacy that needs to be remedied through personal improvement.

He consistently reacts to situations emotionally first. Even when Tokoyami really proved himself during his internship, it was an emotional response that changed his attitude towards training him and the next generation.

Even Endeavor describes him as,

Hawks has always been emotionally expressive, responsive, and driven. In his interactions with others, he displays a huge amount of emotional intelligence - you can see it in the way he ever so slightly adjusts his interactions with others based on the response to him and the outcome he’s looking for. He pauses for just a second to get a cool selfie perfect for a girl’s social media timeline, he’s polite and considerate carrying a little old lady’s bags up the stairs for her, and he appeals to a little boy’s sense of style and flair when asked to sign his bag. The way he and others feel at any given moment is almost paramount to him.

This is a trait I don’t see changing in his character over time unlike some of the others. He’s clearly a Feeling type.

Judging [J] or Prospective [P]?

This one I also think is easy to figure out. Basically, does he prefer a set, methodical schedule or is he a more spontaneous, spur of the moment person?

Yeah, this is Hawks we’re talking about. He’s shockingly adaptable and almost seems to fall into routine for the sake of others instead of his own sanity. Most of his decisions are made on the fly, and he’s known to improvise.

He’s more than capable of planning ahead, but prefers to operate as the wind blows which makes him a solid Prospective type.

Assertive [-A] or Turbulent [-T]?

For funsies, I just want to pop in and check in on this last trait since it’s here. Basically, all it asks is his confidence level and response to stress. I’ve more or less answered this earlier, but when encountering a situation potentially way over his head, he may outwardly display confidence and roll with the punches (his _S_P traits at work) but when it comes to results, especially failure, perfection and personal excellence are all that matter. I feel very confident classifying him as a Turbulent personality.

Final Results

So with that we get a final Meyers-Briggs personality type of ISFP-T which according to 16 Personalities is the Adventurer type personality.

“Adventurer personalities are true artists, but not necessarily in the typical sense where they’re out painting happy little trees. Often enough though, they are perfectly capable of this. Rather, it’s that they use aesthetics, design and even their choices and actions to push the limits of social convention. Adventurers enjoy upsetting traditional expectations with experiments in beauty and behavior – chances are, they’ve expressed more than once the phrase “Don’t box me in!” Adventurers live in a colorful, sensual world, inspired by connections with people and ideas. These personalities take joy in reinterpreting these connections, reinventing and experimenting with both themselves and new perspectives. No other type explores and experiments in this way more. This creates a sense of spontaneity, making Adventurers seem unpredictable, even to their close friends and loved ones. Despite all this, Adventurers are definitely Introverts, surprising their friends further when they step out of the spotlight to be by themselves to recharge. Just because they are alone though, doesn’t mean people with the Adventurer personality type sit idle – they take this time for introspection, assessing their principles. Rather than dwelling on the past or the future, Adventurers think about who they are. They return from their cloister, transformed.Adventurers live to find ways to push their passions. Riskier behaviors like gambling and extreme sports are more common with this personality type than with others. Fortunately their attunement to the moment and their environment allows them to do better than most. Adventurers also enjoy connecting with others, and have a certain irresistible charm.”

It feels like a pretty accurate assessment of his personality, so I think I did a good job. This was a lot of fun, and I feel like I’ve even gotten to know him a little better! Thanks for sending in the question, anon, I really enjoyed it!

And if you’re curious about Meyers-Briggs personality types or want to take the assessment yourself, go check out 16personalities[.]com!

[writing-prompts-for-friends]

Notes from Robert McKee’s “Story” 11: Character Versus Characterization

What is the most important aspect of a story: plot or character? This is something that has been debated for centuries, as far back as Aristotle. However, there is no answer, because, as McKee states:

“Structure is character; character is structure. They’re the same thing, and therefore one cannot be more important than the other. Yet the argument goes on because of a widely held confusion over two crucial aspects of the fictional role--the difference between Character and Characterization.”

First, let’s define things.

Characterization: the sum of all observable qualities of a human being, everything knowable through careful scrutiny: age and IQ; sex and sexuality; style of speech and gesture; choices of home, car, and dress; education and occupation; personality and nervosity; values and attitudes--all aspects of humanity we could know by taking notes on someone day in and day out. The totality of these traits makes each person unique because each of us is a one-of-a-kind combination of genetic givens and accumulated experience. This singular assemblage of traits is characterization... but it is not character.

True Character: it’s revealed in the choices a human being makes under pressure--the  greater the pressure, the deeper the revelation, the truer the choice to the character’s essential nature.

In other words, characterization is who the character is on the surface. But true character is who the person is at their core, who they become in the most harrowing moments of their lives.

McKee states that the only way to divulge true character is to witness the character make choices under pressure to take one action or another in the pursuit of his desire.

“As he chooses, he is. Pressure is essential. Choices made when nothing is at risk mean little.”

If a character chooses to tell the truth where telling a lie would gain him nothing, the choice is trivial, the moment expresses nothing. But if the same character insists on telling the truth when a lie would save his life, then we sense that honesty is at the core of his nature.

McKee provides a brilliant example that I’ll give a portion of.

“Two cars motor down a highway. One is a rusted-out station wagon with buckets, mops, and brooms in the back. Driving it is an illegal alien--a quiet, shy woman working as a domestic for under-the-table cash, sole support of her family. Alongside her is glistening new Porsche driven by a brilliant and wealthy neurosurgeon. Two people who have utterly different backgrounds, beliefs, personalities, languages--in every way imaginable their characterizations are the opposite of each other.

Suddenly, in front of them, a school bus full of children flips out of control, smashes against an underpass, bursting into flames, trapping the children inside. Now, under this terrible pressure, we’ll find out who these two people really are.

Who chooses to stop? who chooses to drive by? Each has rationalizations for driving by. The domestic worries that if she gets caught up in this, the police might question her, find out she’s an illegal, throw her back across the border, and her family will starve. The surgeon fears that if he’s injured and his hands burned, hands that perform miraculous microsurgeries, the lives of thousands of future patients will be lost.”

The scenario continues, but you get the idea. How these two people act when under pressure will strip away the mask of characterization and then we can see their true characters.

Character Revelation

The revelation of true character in contrast or contradiction to characterization is fundamental to all fine storytelling. Life teaches this grand principle: What seems is not what is. People are not what they appear to be.

If you write a character as a kindhearted mother, and by the end she is still a kindhearted mother with no secrets, no dreams, no hidden passions, it’s certainly a realistic character. Such people do exist in the real world. But they are boring, and we don’t want to read a whole book about them.

We need to see who our characters really are, and see a contrast between their characterization and their true character.

Character Arc

“Taking the principle further yet: The finest writing not only reveals true character, but arcs or changes that inner nature, for better or worse, over the course of the telling.”

It’s probably easiest to see character arcs in coming of age stories. We start out only seeing their characterization, and then slowly the layers are peeled back as the plot progresses, choices become more difficult, stakes get higher. By the end of the story we can see not only who they were at the beginning, but the person they have changed into by the end of the story.

Structure and Character Functions

“The function of STRUCTURE is to provide progressively building pressures that force characters into more and more difficult dilemmas where they must make more and more difficult risk-taking choices and actions, gradually revealing their true natures, even down to the unconscious self.

The function of CHARACTER is to bring the story the qualities of characterization necessary to convincingly act out choices. Put simply, a character must be credible: young enough or old enough, strong or weak, worldly or naive, educated or ignorant, generous or selfish, witty or dull, in the right proportions. Each must bring to the story the combination of qualities that allows an audience to believe that the character could and would do what he does.”

Structure and character are interlocked. If you change event design, you have also changed character; if you change deep character, you must reinvent the structure to express the character’s changed nature.

Climax and Character

Structure and character seem almost symmetrical until the climax of the story. If the finale fails, the entire book will be for nothing.

“Story is metaphor for life and life is lived in time. Storytelling, therefore, is temporal art. And the first commandment of all temporal art is: Thou shalt save the best for last.”

Basically, McKee believes that the success of a story hinges on the success of its finale. And in order for the finale to be successful, we must believe that it is a choice that the character would make. Any aspect of the character that undermines or goes against their ultimate choice in the finale needs to be cut away or rethought.

So does this mean that you need to have the climax planned out before you start creating characters? No, not at all. Honestly, because structure and character are so interwoven, I think you have to have a character in mind before you can determine the climax. But if during the long path of writing your story you decide that the climax does not match the character, then you must change one or the other, and go back and change what you have already written accordingly.

Source: McKee, Robert. Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting. York: Methuen, 1998. Print

[justforbooks]

Poe's best known fiction works are Gothic, adhering to the genre's conventions to appeal to the public taste. His most recurring themes deal with questions of death, including its physical signs, the effects of decomposition, concerns of premature burial, the reanimation of the dead, and mourning. Many of his works are generally considered part of the dark romanticism genre, a literary reaction to transcendentalism which Poe strongly disliked. He referred to followers of the transcendental movement as "Frog-Pondians", after the pond on Boston Common, and ridiculed their writings as "metaphor—run mad," lapsing into "obscurity for obscurity's sake" or "mysticism for mysticism's sake". Poe once wrote in a letter to Thomas Holley Chivers that he did not dislike Transcendentalists, "only the pretenders and sophists among them".

Beyond horror, Poe also wrote satires, humor tales, and hoaxes. For comic effect, he used irony and ludicrous extravagance, often in an attempt to liberate the reader from cultural conformity. "Metzengerstein" is the first story that Poe is known to have published and his first foray into horror, but it was originally intended as a burlesque satirizing the popular genre. Poe also reinvented science fiction, responding in his writing to emerging technologies such as hot air balloons in "The Balloon-Hoax".

Poe wrote much of his work using themes aimed specifically at mass-market tastes. To that end, his fiction often included elements of popular pseudosciences, such as phrenology and physiognomy.

Poe's writing reflects his literary theories, which he presented in his criticism and also in essays such as "The Poetic Principle". He disliked didacticism and allegory, though he believed that meaning in literature should be an undercurrent just beneath the surface. Works with obvious meanings, he wrote, cease to be art. He believed that work of quality should be brief and focus on a specific single effect. To that end, he believed that the writer should carefully calculate every sentiment and idea.

Poe describes his method in writing "The Raven" in the essay "The Philosophy of Composition", and he claims to have strictly followed this method. It has been questioned whether he really followed this system, however. T.S. Eliot said: "It is difficult for us to read that essay without reflecting that if Poe plotted out his poem with such calculation, he might have taken a little more pains over it: the result hardly does credit to the method." Biographer Joseph Wood Krutch described the essay as "a rather highly ingenious exercise in the art of rationalization".

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at http://justforbooks.tumblr.com

[lachlanbctsmith]

Where to from here?

 Monday rolls around again and its time to catch up with the group on what we have achieved and where we are up to progress wise. It is evident from checking the blogs that everyone is taking vastly different approaches to the process. Zed and I have gone straight into building the artifact with only the basic research we have done in the first couple of weeks. whilst Kaelin is really doubling down into his research, really trying to find the differences between AdHoc and TecDis. 

After speaking with Kaelin, and going over his findings, we have come to a crossroad where the more he reads about adhocism, the more similarities he finds between it and Technological disobedience. This dilemma proves to me that I now have to double down on my research into TechDis and really get an underlying knowledge of it all. A critical evaluation of my current lamp build needs to be completed for me to move forward into my next prototype where I should hopefully have a complete understanding of Technological disobedience. 

Now, What have I learnt so far?. After reading Ernesto Oroza’s article ‘Technological disobedience: From the revolution to revolico.com’ It is clear that I have missed some major contextual information when it comes to the thought process behind the creations. E. Oroza explains that “When people held onto things, they also archived their technical principles, ways of piecing things together and formal archetypes. In a critical moment, they could mentally survey their stockpile to find “just the thing” to fix it.” Now, this mindset of the people is an aspect of Technological Disobedience that I cannot recreate. However, contextually, it is very much impossible for me to replicate many aspects regarding the methods and mindset of the people of the time. As this concept took place over a ten year period and E. Oroza  “spoke to some of those first Cuban innovators and rationalizers, now elderly, and I noticed a recurring theme: over the course of their life they had left a trail of inventions in their wake everywhere they lived and worked”. Which highlights that it was a lifelong adjustment that these people had to work with and learn, that I cannot simply recreate in a month. 

However, going forward I will build my prototypes with three practices that        E. Oroza explains as being, “Repairing”, “Repurposing” and “Reinventing” as well as reflect upon my initial build and evaluate it against the aspects of these 3 practices. 

[thezodiaczone]

August Forecast for Taurus

There have been quantum changes in your life over the last couple months, Taurus—or at least, you have the sense that things are being rearranged on some grander scale. From uncomfortable to exciting to unsettling, this shift from potential to kinetic energy is part of a long process that’s happening from May 15, 2018, until April 2026 as revolutionizer Uranus visits your sign for the first time since 1942. Uranus takes 84 years to return to each sign, and this once-in-a-lifetime visit is an opportunity to radically reinvent everything from your lifestyle to your appearance to your attitude.

Whew! If you need a minute to take it all in, you’ll get it—and then some! On August 7, Uranus begins its annual five-month retrograde until January 7, 2019. You’ll get a chance to slow down and review, especially when Uranus backs into Aries, activating your twelfth house of closure for its last hurrah this century. While you might be a little frustrated by some stalled progress, this could prove to be a blessing in disguise. It’s an opportunity to confront any complex patterns and relationships and to heal addictions that are keeping you stuck.

As a creature of habit, you tend to tread the same well-worn paths, but those roads keep sending you to the same old places. Been there, done that! Stare any deep-seated fears in the eye, perhaps with the help of a pro, and begin clearing the blocks before Uranus settles into Taurus for a seven-year run in March 2019. You’ll want nothing to stand in the way of your awesome ascent—least of all your own baggage and blind spots.

August provides the occasion to relax and reflect as the Sun travels through Leo and your nurturing fourth house of home and family until August 23. Nesting and connecting with your crew feeds your soul during this homey solar season. Intimate dinner parties, air-conditioned movie nights, trips to an uncrowded beach where you can nap in the sand for hours: Hello, bliss! Take plenty of time for self-care, and keep your space serene.

This is especially important since Mercury, the planet of communication, travel and technology, will be retrograde in Leo from July 26 until August 19. During this wire-crossing backspin, old family feuds could flare, or you might experience friction with a relative or roommate. If you’re visiting loved ones, book a hotel or Airbnb, even if there’s “tons of room” at their place. During Mercury retrograde, it’s always best to have a backup plan. While this time is ripe for reunions, don’t be too quick to volunteer YOUR sleeper sofa or guest room to anyone. Make sure you’ve actually got time to host—and that the visitors are truly self-sufficient people who don’t expect white-glove service. If you’re moving or changing your home, Mercury could cause complications or slowdowns, so read the fine print!

Now that you’re clear on the precautions, get ready: A rare Leo partial solar (new moon) eclipse is arriving on August 11. Ready or not, your living situation or family structure could change, possibly without notice. Some Bulls could hear about a sweet deal on a property—and you’ll need to pounce instead of taking your usual “slow and sensible” approach. A female relative, perhaps your mother, could be involved in events near this eclipse. This is the penultimate eclipse in a series on the Leo/Aquarius axis that’s been transforming your home and career sectors since February 2017. It’s the prelude to a grand finale on January 21, 2019, so it may take until then for things to completely settle or reveal themselves. But if you reflect on the past two years, you’ll see how much you’ve grown—and maybe even radically changed—around home, family, career or work-life balance.

You may still be reeling from July’s two eclipses, especially the Aquarius total lunar (full moon) eclipse on July 27 that rocked your tenth house of professional ambition and long-term goals. This “awakening” put you in touch with what you truly need to feel fulfilled. Eclipses demand that we transform any parts of our lives that don’t work…and if we don’t, they’ll do it for us. For some Bulls, a job may have been eclipsed away—perhaps your company announced a restructuring, or a key colleague suddenly exited. Maybe you were offered a promotion or a leadership opportunity or a new position altogether. Resistance is futile—and a waste of energy—since something much better is on its way!

The last week of August takes a turn for the playful as the Sun enters Virgo and your fifth house of love, passion and self-expression for a month on August 23. Emerge from that cozy cocoon and start making audacious moves. If you’ve been off the grid, post some vacation pics or glam up and film an Instagram Story. Make up for lost social time and go paint the town crimson while your joie de vivre is at peak levels.

One of the month’s luckiest dates is August 25, when the Sun, structured Saturn and innovator Uranus form a rare grand trine—an equilateral “golden triangle” that’s one of astrology’s most auspicious aspects. As these three luminaries harmonize in earth signs, you get a triple shot of courage, assertiveness and head-turning fierceness. Presto, change-o: You could step out of a salon (or out of the metaphorical shadows) and be totally unrecognizable—yet indubitable. If you’ve been wanting to take a bold risk, you’ll get the guts to quit deliberating and actually DO it. Thanks to Saturn in your expansive ninth house, it could involve a life-changing vacation, going back to school, publishing your work or launching a startup biz. With Uranus and Saturn both retrograde, you may feel a pull toward the past. Did you start a project in one of these areas and set it on the back burner? Things could pick up speed now.

You don’t have to do this alone, either. On August 26, the year’s only Pisces full moon illuminates your eleventh house of teamwork and technology, giving you serious collaboration mojo. It’s an amazing day for networking, communing with kindred spirits or kicking off a cutting-edge joint project. You could be celebrating a group victory or gathering with your most vibrant and forward-thinking friends. With Mercury retrograde safely in the rearview from August 19 on, this could be a great date to launch a digital venture or viral social media campaign. The next day (August 27), ambitious Mars ends a two-month retrograde that slowed your goals. The cosmos will be waving that metaphorical red cape at you by the time the month ends, so get ready to charge after something that sets your heart and soul on fire.

Love & Romance

Self-care is sexy! On August 6, amorous Venus parades into Libra and your sixth house of wellness and service for the first of two trips this year, putting you in the mood to nurture yourself (and a lucky plus-one). Tackling a life-improvement mission or a project, like adopting a pet or redoing part of your home, could bring you closer. Single Bulls could meet someone through healthy pursuits, volunteering or even while running errands. There’s some incentive to stop procrastinating on your to-do list!

Heads up: This is the first of Venus’ two trips through Libra this year, thanks to a retrograde through this sign from October 31 to November 16. Plan ahead to avoid any stressful meltdowns later in the year. Be careful not to treat your mate like a fixer-upper, or to get overly involved in trying to help or change them. That could backfire during Round Two of this Venus transit, especially if you feel resentful or used. Maybe part of the lesson is to focus on yourself and things you can control, like getting healthier and treating yourself with the same kindness that you extend to others.

Under the Leo eclipse on August 11—and with Mercury retrograde alongside it in Leo and your domestic quarters until August 19—you have a perfect opportunity to “indulge” in some self-nurturing and maybe even catch up on your beauty sleep! If you’re newly dating or considering living with your partner, follow some Feng Shui principles to make your home more of a love den.

Meantime, the other love planet, fiery Mars, is retrograde from June 26 to August 27. Because this reversal had been taking place in Aquarius and your future-oriented tenth house, some big plans may have slowed down, or you may have been quarreling about shared goals. But once it backs into Capricorn on August 12 (for the duration of the retrograde), put the disagreements on ice and pursue something you enjoy doing together, like a favorite outdoor activity or returning to a cherished vacation spot. If things have been a little too close for comfort, bring some breathing room into the relationship—just enough so you don’t feel like you’re suffocating.

August 7 is a great day to peacefully hash things out if you’ve been feuding. With Venus in peacemaker Libra harmonizing with Mars in practical earth houses, you’ll be able to talk calmly and rationally. Show you’re willing to compromise, and your mate or love interest may be inspired to do the same. Plan a date somewhere beautiful and upscale, but also natural. Think: a farm-to-table restaurant with a chef’s tasting menu or an exclusive vineyard tour.

Key Dates

August 9: Venus-Saturn Square You may realize that a new relationship is moving too fast or that you’ve been leading someone on. Or you might experience the eye-opening awareness that your new “love interest” isn’t that interested at all. Saturn can help you make the necessary adjustments, including hitting the gas if you’ve been going under the speed limit.

Money & Career

Is it time to cash in a few vacation days? The cosmic influence of August will skew heavily toward home, family and fun, as the Sun travels through Leo and your domestic sector until August 23, and after that into your pleasure and playfulness zone when it takes a four-week plunge into Virgo. Make time for enjoyment and pampering before summer wraps up. September and October will be bustling months for you, so stop now to refill your tanks.

On top of that, Mercury, Mars, Saturn, Uranus (in Taurus), Neptune AND Pluto are all retrograde for most if not all of the month. With so many planets in this slowed-down position, August is best used to reflect and inspect. Avoid hasty moves—which aren’t really a Taurus thing anyway—and conduct your due diligence. Sleep on any big decisions that you don’t feel totally confident about, preferably under a big beach umbrella with your toes in the sand!

Career stuff has been all over the map ever since go-getter Mars turned retrograde in Aquarius and your tenth house of success on June 26, a biennial backslide that lasts for two months. Tension and crossed wires may have flared up at work, or you could be waiting rather impatiently for a decision maker to give you the green light. Thanks to a July 27 Aquarius lunar eclipse, things could be even topsy-turvier in your professional life. A project could be especially demanding or challenging, ratcheting up stress levels or causing you to procrastinate while obsessively fretting. All the more reason to take little self-care breaks in between marathon sessions!

You might want to tap a mentor or brush up your skills with a course, especially once Mars backs into Capricorn and your expansive ninth house on August 12 for the duration of its retrograde, which ends on August 27. Be careful not to bite off more than you can chew, as you’re at risk for over-promising and under-delivering. Pace yourself: Mars will rocket through Capricorn and Aquarius for a second, retrograde-free trip from August 27 to November 15, which will catalyze anything that got slowed down. You’ll be glad you did your research and refueled because things could start moving at warp speed!

Key Dates

August 2: Mars-Uranus Square You might not be in sync with a team under this “rugged individualist” angle of ego-tripping Mars and hotheaded Uranus. You could feel threatened by a person who comes on too strong and doesn’t listen to anyone. (Or maybe you’re the one acting that way?) Try to stay flexible—though under these volatile skies, that’s way easier said than done.

Love Days: 12, 17 Money Days: 6, 24 Luck Days: 4, 22 Off Days: 1, 15, 19

[architectnews]

Fernando Donis' Frame City proposal to "combine city and countryside" wins Redesign the World contest

Fernando Donis' proposal to create new habitable topographies in which humanity and nature coexist has won first place in Dezeen's Redesign the World competition powered by Twinmotion.

Donis' Frame City concept aims to undo the damage to nature and people's wellbeing caused by a century of rapid urbanisation.

Each high-density city, which is designed to house a million people, is formed of mountain-like terraced structures made from cross-laminated timber, which would be built to frame natural landscapes.

Roads and private vehicles would be abandoned in favour of pedestrian and cycling infrastructure and careful city planning to ensure that necessary services and amenities are within a 15-minute walk or cycle of people's homes.

Donis imagines that each city would be designed to integrate with and complement its natural surroundings, creating a diverse network of different urban settlements, which would lead to rich cultural exchanges and tourism.

Frame City "unlike any other entry" in Redesign the World contest

The proposal beat over 100 entries and 14 other finalists to win the Redesign the World competition, which called for radical proposals to rethink planet Earth.

"Donis' proposal for a new topography that is inhabitable for people while providing for nature is powerful, compelling and unlike any other entry we received," said the Redesign the World judges.

"There have been many attempts to bring more greenery to our cities to fuse nature and architecture, but Frame City approaches the challenge in a really innovative and memorable way."

See all 15 finalists projects here or read on to find out more about Donis' Frame City proposal.

Frame City Fernando Donis Rotterdam, Netherlands Winner

"In 1922, Le Corbusier proposed a city of three million inhabitants.

"Despite not being built, his vision defined urban principles for the past century:

– a business and commercial hub with high-rises surrounded by the sprawl of low-density housing; – separation of urban programmes within a rational organisation; – large highways for car circulation with less importance given to pedestrian network; – unsustainable steel and concrete construction generating 'concrete jungles'; – endless urbanisation.

"These tenets engendered the urbanism we live in, making us prisoners of an endless capitalist consumption of cars, energy, time and landscape.

Read:

Mcheileh Studio's flying farms that "combine aerospace technology with aeroponic farming" named Redesign the World runner-up

"Today, despite new attempts of integrating solar energy, EV mobility and underground infrastructure, the core of the problem still comes from the cities we envisioned a century ago.

"Redesigning the world means radically rethinking the economic, political and environmental model of the city: a bottom-up agenda from the city to the entire planet, reinventing new sustainable standards that adapt to the population and climate change needs of the 21st Century.

"For 2022, we propose the Frame City, a compact, one-million-inhabitant 'Countrycity', a combination of city and countryside, with the following agenda:

– the integration of housing, business and commercial programmes within densified structures; – the combination of urban programmes within organic compositions, surrounding large green parks or forests; – the elimination of the highway and the use of private vehicles in exchange for pedestrian and cycling networks; – sustainable cross-laminated timber (CLT) construction, generating 'green cities'; – framed densified cities.

Read:

Matthew Pratt's vision to elevate humanity "high above the ground" wins joint third place in the Redesign the World contest

"The best places to live in the world are right in from of the best parks: Central Park in New York, Hyde Park in London, Chapultepec Forest in Mexico City, Kralingse Bos in Rotterdam, etc.

"Such places find a balance between city and countryside, engendering a 15-minute healthy polis, ideal for walking and cycling. The new cities can become that, simple frames surrounding distinct natural landscapes with every human being living at the most valuable parts of the city.

"A combination of high-rise and megastructure, large curvilinear 'mountains' with terraces integrate a quarter of a million living units with four inhabitants average per unit.

"Services, commercial and business areas form the triangular structural base of the mega waves with views towards the open fields.

Read:

Bless Yee's vision for carbon-capturing "living infrastructures" wins joint third place in the Redesign the World contest

"Every city would vary according to the park, forest or landscape they frame, potentially creating thousands of singular experiences that would forge tourism and cultural exchange.

"The rest of the environment should be reclaimed by nature, protecting our planet ecosystems and the human race for millions of years.

"Architecture becomes an extension of nature at the Frame City, undoing thousands of years of mistaken so-called progress. The city architects would now cooperate to design and maintain each city, rather than competing for extravagant uniqueness.

"They would also plan the agricultural and solar fields encircling and stopping the cities for further development; regions providing the necessary food and energy for each Frame City.

"As in an ancient Greek society, the diverse communities of the multiple frames would refocus their concerns towards philosophy, science, knowledge and sports."

Redesign the World

Redesign the World is the ultimate design competition, which called for new ideas to rethink planet Earth to ensure that it remains habitable long into the future.

Launched in partnership with Epic Games, the contest asked entrants to visualise their concepts using architectural visualisation software Twinmotion.

The contest received over 100 entries from more than 30 different countries around the world.

These were assessed by a judging panel comprising White Arkitekter CEO Alexandra Hagen, structural engineer Hanif Kara, speculative architect Liam Young, Twinmotion product marketing manager Belinda Ercan and Dezeen founder and editor-in-chief Marcus Fairs, which selected 15 proposals as finalists to be published on Dezeen.

We unveiled one finalist a day throughout our Dezeen 15 festival. The winner received a top prize of £5,000. There were also prizes of £2,500 for second place, £1,000 for third place and £500 each for the remaining finalists.

Find out more about Redesign the World › See all the finalists ›

The post Fernando Donis' Frame City proposal to "combine city and countryside" wins Redesign the World contest appeared first on Dezeen.

[talabib]

Qualities of Great Innovators

We all seem to know what an innovator is. But what’s been harder to define for thousands of years is how innovators actually come up with their ideas.

In ancient times, it was believed that creativity was not a human attribute at all but solely a divine one. The Sumerians, who are credited with a large number of technological and social innovations at the very beginning of human history, believed that the many creative achievements of their civilization were not due to their own efforts but rather were gifts from the gods. In the Judeo-Christian tradition, human beings were likewise not considered to be “creative.” They were makers and users of things that God had created in the first place.

Everything started to change with the European Renaissance of the 14th to the 17th centuries, and in particular with the birth of humanism. That’s when the belief began to spread that great creative or scientific accomplishments were the direct result of a person’s owns education and abilities rather than the work of some external divine entity. Suddenly, it was the human being that was the genius. And in this exciting new age, as rationalism slowly eroded the power of mysticism, people were encouraged to tap into their own intellectual and creative capacities in unprecedented ways. Thus, the Renaissance ushered in an era of unleashed human potential, producing a slew of technological, artistic and cultural achievements.

What we primarily want to understand is the innovative thinking patterns and dispositions that became so prevalent in the Renaissance period

Innovators know how to leverage resources

Innovators see themselves, and the world around them, as a collection of skills and assets that can be recombined or stretched into new opportunities.

Filippo Brunelleschi, for example, who is regarded as one of the seminal figures of the entire period, started out as a master goldsmith. But he also studied literature and mathematics and had a strong artistic leaning. Brunelleschi was able to masterfully leverage his portfolio of skills beyond metalworking into sculpture, clock-making, architecture, archeology, engineering and even ship design — in many cases achieving what had literally never been done before.

In 1410 Brunelleschi succeeded in inventing the world’s first portable clock. By borrowing and repurposing technologies from different fields, Brunelleschi was able to make a clock that was not only much smaller and lighter but, more importantly, portable for the very first time.

However, Brunelleschi is best remembered not for his contribution to clock-making but for his achievements in architecture. His major work was the huge dome of Florence Cathedral (known as the Duomo), which is considered one of the greatest engineering accomplishments since antiquity. Nobody had ever built a self-supporting dome before, and none of his contemporary architects had any idea how to do it. Brunelleschi had to rewrite all the architectural rules, inventing his own mathematical, structural and building solutions at every step of the project.

He was constantly trying to expand his portfolio of skills and assets and to redeploy them in new ways or new contexts. He proved himself a genius at leveraging his own resources — and those he discovered around him — to transition into different kinds of opportunities.

This attitude, the awareness of our limitless capacity for developing, stretching and synthesizing resources, is one of the recurrent thinking patterns we find when we study the mind of the innovator

Innovators understand the needs of the people

The pattern of thinking that is characteristic of Innovators is their seemingly insatiable curiosity for the world around them and their unshakeable belief that they could make the world an increasingly better place.

No figure from the period epitomizes this more than Leonardo da Vinci. Helen Gardner, in her book Art through the Ages, writes of da Vinci’s “unquenchable curiosity,” and we see this reflected in the 13,000 pages of his famous journals, in which he made a daily record — in notes, drawings and scientific diagrams — of his observations and studies. These notebooks cover a wide range of interests and phenomena, from human anatomy and facial expressions to animals, birds, plants, rocks, water, chemistry, optics, painting, astronomy, architecture and engineering.

Da Vinci’s acute observations led him to think about and try to solve problems that hadn’t been seriously considered before. Nobody, for example, was asking for a parachute, a car, a submarine, a hang glider, a diving suit, a helicopter, a calculator, or floating shoes and stocks for walking on water, but Leonardo da Vinci invented, or at least conceptualized, these things.

Da Vinci was able to spot unmet needs and innovation opportunities because he was vastly more observant and more engaged with his environment than others. He was focusing his attention on issues and frustrations that most people simply ignored.

Innovators figured out how to connect what was possible with what was needed. This, then, is the  perspective or thinking pattern of the innovator — the desire to develop deep insights into all kinds of phenomena and to use new knowledge to solve problems, address needs and improve quality of life in completely novel ways

Innovators know how to challenge orthodoxies

Perhaps the first thing that comes to mind when we think about Renaissance innovators is their contrarian spirit. It was a time when people began to ask skeptical questions that had never been asked before and to challenge deeply entrenched beliefs that had long been taken for granted. For example: Copernicus, Galileo and Kepler asked,“What if the Earth is not the center of the Universe? What if it revolves around the Sun along with the other planets?”

Machiavelli asked, “What if politics has nothing to do with theology or morality? What if it’s simply about using all means — fair and foul — to retain power?” Filippo Brunelleschi and Leon Battista Alberti asked, “Why can’t a painting be less like wall decoration and more like a window into the natural world? What if we used mathematical and optical principles to imitate objects so accurately that they look entirely real?”

Amerigo Vespucci asked, “What if the Earth has a much larger circumference than we learned from Ptolemy’s cartography? What if these lands Columbus has newly discovered are not the Indies at all but in fact another whole continent — a New World?”

Almost by definition, these Renaissance revolutionaries were nonconformists who were willing to contest previously held truths — beliefs and assumptions that had been accepted as absolute gospel for perhaps a thousand years or more — and to reinvent their worldview completely from scratch. Many of them were branded as heretics or lunatics. Yet their propensity to break the chains of precedent and to challenge conventional thinking became the basis for a whole string of breakthrough discoveries and new philosophies that literally changed our world.

This capacity to challenge orthodoxies and to propose perhaps wildly antithetical alternatives is one of the fundamental driving forces for innovation

Innovators see the future in the present

Innovators understand change. They seem to have a knack for recognizing and harnessing the potential of things that are already changing, where others do not. They are sensitive and alert to the kinds of trends that — if scaled up — could profoundly impact the future or that could enable them to drive significant industry change.

Innovators are not just better at picking up the signals. They are better at reading them. Their accurate powers of observation are matched by exceptional powers of reflection. They have a deep curiosity that makes them wonder where some nascent development might eventually lead, how it could potentially alter the current rules of competition, what kind of new value it might create for customers or what would possibly happen if this trend intersected with others.

Most importantly, they act on this vision before others do, usually because their rivals are still denying or discounting the importance of these change factors.

If we are going to learn to ride the waves of change, we first need to develop the ability to spot and recognize emerging patterns that can reveal where the world — and our business — might be or should be going in the future. We need to immerse ourselves in what is happening right now by making sure we stay closely connected with our customers, society and the rest of the world, and by keeping our eyes and ears open at all times.

That means regularly engaging in activities that awaken your curiosity by exposing yourself to new trends, impressions and perspectives. For example, conversing with people from different industries, demographic groups, geographies and levels of the organization. Or visiting new and out of-the-ordinary places; eating in new restaurants; following new fashions in clothing, music, sport, movies and theater; getting a close-up view of new technologies; and spending more time hanging out with teenagers and other people who seem to have their finger on the pulse of change.

Innovators repurpose, redeploy and recombine

Every company utilizes a specific set of resources (e.g., competencies and assets) to turn some form of input (e.g., raw materials, semifinished goods, information, ideas) into some form of output (e.g., a product or service) of value to others. Many of those resources are embedded in an organization’s own business model. Others are possessed by external companies that work with the firm at various points in the value chain as part of a larger business ecosystem.

For most of the industrial era, companies have predominantly asked themselves how to use the resources available to them more efficiently — in other words, how do we produce basically the same kinds of goods and services only faster, better and cheaper? But in today’s value-based economy, companies increasingly need to ask themselves how to use the resources available to them more innovatively — “How do we leverage existing skills and assets in different ways, different contexts or different combinations, in order to create new opportunities for value creation and growth?”

Nobody on earth knows how to produce and distribute carbonated soft drinks more efficiently than Coke. But the fact of the matter is that soda sales in the United States have been declining for the past 10 years (and are now falling globally), as people in general become more concerned about health, wellness and obesity issues.

So the focus at Coca-Cola is not on how to produce greater quantities of soda at lower cost but on how to use all available resources to offer customers healthier or trendier alternatives, such as fruit juices, water and energy drinks, not to forget Coke’s new “healthier” soda, Coca-Cola Life.

If a company is not capable of doing this — of using resources not just efficiently (for optimized production) but also innovatively (for new value creation) — it runs the risk of one day becoming incredibly efficient at producing what customers no longer want. Nokia and Kodak are sad examples of this phenomenon.

Business history teaches us that innovators often come to their breakthroughs by decoupling, remixing and stretching existing resources. They view a company not as a set of business units but as a portfolio of distinct, standalone skills and assets that can potentially be repurposed, redeployed or recombined in different ways to create new opportunities for value creation. In fact, they look at the whole world as a rich reservoir of resources that may be leveraged to make innovation happen.

Over the last few decades, the Walt Disney Company has continued to leverage its formidable skills and assets to open up new avenues of value creation. For example, the blockbuster movie series Pirates of the Caribbean had its genesis as a theme-park attraction at Disneyland back in 1967. This asset was repurposed as a feature film in 2003 and went on to become a major franchise, encompassing several more movies as well as novels, video games, media publications and additional theme-park attractions. The films alone have grossed well over $3.7 billion worldwide.

Where would Sir Richard Branson and Virgin be today if he had decided not to diversify but rather to focus his efforts solely on running the world's best record stores? His advice to other companies? “You shouldn't be afraid to diversify if you are in a position to do so, especially because nothing ever stays exactly the same. ... Whenever Virgin has money I always renew my search for new opportunities.”

Innovators know how to Innovate from the customer

More and more companies are learning to engage their customers in the innovation process. However, innovating from the customer  doesn’t just mean “listening to the voice of the customer.” Why not? In an interview with BusinessWeek in May 1998, Steve Jobs remarked, “It’s really hard to design products by focus groups. A lot of times, people don’t know what they want until you show it to them.”

Nobody, for example, told Apple they wanted a translucent desktop computer, a cool MP3 player, an online music store, a revolutionary smartphone, an App Store or a tablet computer, but once Steve Jobs showed us these amazing things we realized we definitely wanted them — and needed them.

So the challenge is to try to understand the latent needs, wants and frustrations that customers can’t always articulate. The way entrepreneurs and companies get to these answers is not simply by asking customers what they want or by reading a market research report, but by trying to look at the world — and at their own brands, products and services — through the customer’s eyes (the fourth lens of innovation). They immerse themselves in the customers’ environment and observe how they behave and what they experience.

Whether through direct observation of the customer in his or her natural setting (perhaps making photo or video diaries), or mapping the customer experience at every stage of the demand chain, or trying to viscerally share that experience by using your company’s products and services yourself, the goal is to make the customer’s needs, problems, frustrations and feelings your own. This is how you generate the kind of deep customer insights that may trigger big new innovation opportunities. Your next step will be to start thinking creatively about how to address these issues before the competition does.

For most of the last century, corporate innovation was driven primarily from the technology side rather than the customer side. That is to say, in most large organizations it tended to start with technical R&D and engineering rather than with deep insights into customer needs.

But in today’s value-based economy, where global competition and overcapacity have given the consumer more choices and more power than ever before, a large number of companies from all over the world are now competing for the same customer’s money. Success has therefore come to depend on an organization’s ability to bring exciting and compelling new benefits to customers — or address their unmet needs — before the competition.

In many cases, it’s still the technology that comes first and the consumer application second, which can nevertheless work out just fine. But increasingly companies are starting from the other end, by first identifying an important customer need and then working backward to find a technical solution. The key point here is that both sides of the equation are vital, so the real challenge for organizations is how to get better at bringing the two together

[mycorrectviews]

Report from Israel:  The End of Labor or the Start of Something New?

Breaking the Impasse

It was a strange year for Israeli politics even before the Corona virus turned us all into extras on the set of a bad sci fi movie.  Things are not supposed to work this way.

Israel went to the polls three times over the past year, and each time Bibi fought his way to a draw with Blue White, the most recently created -- and lately deceased -- successor party to the one time Labor led center left.  This stalemate was born of polarization, with orthodox parties swearing obeisance to the supreme leader of the Israeli right in advance of each election. Avigdor Lieberman, the Putin-wannabe secular nationalist, meanwhile, joined the other side with equal vigor, in attempt to rebrand himself as an anti-Bibi, right wing liberal.  The usual way out of such an impasse, a Likud- BW unity government with a rotating prime ministership, proved equally impossible.  As a collection of disparate groupings with no ideological common denominator save opposition to the indictment-plagued Netanyahu, BW was unable to join a unity government almost by definition, driving the country to round after round of electoral gridlock.  Three elections and a pandemic, however, changed the calculus. Neither side knew how they’d emerge from a fourth round of elections in the midst of a recession and health emergency.  Benny Gantz blinked first, dismantled his party and the “Never Bibi” coalition, joining his nemesis in an “emergency” government.  Gantz brought over enough MK’s from his rump faction of Blue White to help Netanyahu build a comfortable majority.  In return he received an equal number of ministerial portfolios along with a turn in the prime minister’s office 18 months from now – all at an impressive discount for a fractured party only half the size of the Likud.  Bibi, meanwhile, will continue his fight to stay out of jail from the prime minister’s chair, where he can influence the selection of judges and disburse patronage to potential trial witnesses.

How bad is all this?

Well, it’s a matter of perspective.  To the extent Bibi is the main, existential question facing Israel, the unity government is no cause for celebration.  Using every conceivable stratagem to avoid doing what he unabashedly demanded of his hapless predecessor Ehud Olmert -- to leave the political stage and face justice like any other citizen -- Bibi has severely undermined the rule of law.  But it could get even worse.  Over the past three years Netanyahu has spared no effort to eviscerate public confidence in the Supreme Court, the Police, the office of the attorney general and the independent press – working in precise lockstep with everyone who owes him a dime, from government ministers to his Adelson financed newspaper to brand any and all opponents with the stain of left wing elitism.  The unity government, with the Justice Ministry passing to a Gantz appointee, will now presumably cease its war on Israel’s free institutions.  One may also hope Bibi and his ministers will dispense with the racist, Arab baiting rhetoric he needed to question the legitimacy of Blue White.  In the final analysis, what interests Netanyahu is neither judicial activism nor Arab politicians; all that matters is what works for Bibi.  Had Gantz left him to continue running an interim, right wing government until September, with a potentially more extreme one on the horizon, we might all have ended up joining some ideological street militia in the dangerous twilight of Israel’s democratic order.  Hard to say.

Amir Peretz’ Continuing Odyssey

Amir Peretz took the reins of the Labor Party at the nadir of its political fortunes.  In April, an irrelevant nonentity, Avi Gabbai, had crashed the party of Ben Gurion and Yitzhak Rabin to six MK’s out of 120 in parliament.  

To be fair, Gabbai, like Peretz in his wake, had little chance under the circumstances.  Blue White, with its unprecedented challenge to the Netanyahu regime, sucked the oxygen out of Israel’s political environment for the Zionist left.  Gantz and his allies fired the imagination of voters thirsty for change, no matter what that change would mean.  BW, after all, was an ideologically incoherent alliance of three different lists: Yair Lapid’s neoliberals, Bougie Yaalon’s right wing annexationists, and Gantz’s own startup –- a party that could easily have found its place in the historic Mapai.  As a political force, Blue White always had a limited shelf life.  

Peretz – I can only assume, extrapolating from my own assessment at the time – took the long view. Harboring no illusions of winning , he sought to rebuild a social democratic alternative for the day after.  Labor had been in precipitous decline since the Rabin assassination, but now, with his party on the brink of extinction, Peretz sought to break the genetic code of Israeli politics that kept middle eastern Jews and their descendants (Mizrachim) – over half of Israel’s Jewish population -- loyal to the Likud.  

Schadenfreude

Left wing intellectuals have long struggled to explain why Mizrachim – more heavily working and lower middle class than their Ashkenazi counterparts – vote against their “own interests” by repeatedly supporting the Likud and its occupation policy.  But the very endeavor belies the elitism and ethnic condescension that defines Israel’s ethnic divide.   The left’s inability to conceive that right wing voters are capable of rational decisions reminds many folks – and rightly so -- of the arrogance and paternalism with which the European, Mapai establishment treated North African immigrants during Israel’s first three decades.   The recoil has been powerful and enduring.  You felt it in the schadenfreude with which Likud activists gleefully told journalists how they lied to exit polls on election night last year to humiliate the press with unrealistic projections of a Gantz victory.  And the culture of Israel’s left never ceases to trigger more recoil.  Israeli pundits have treated Amir Peretz, himself an immigrant from Morocco, as a clown – or a trickster – ever since the Lebanon war (one Labor voter explained to me a few years back that Peretz simply “didn’t know his place”). You felt it, too, in the visceral reactions to Peretz’ short lived partnership with Orly Levy, another “Moroccan” politician last summer.  In the words one left wing columnist, “there is now a Mizrachi party on the left. Peretz has condemned the left to the status of Salah Shabbati [Ed. an iconic, wiley, poor Moroccan immigrant in a classic Israeli theatre production].  Peretz lives in his own tribe,” she wrote.  It’s evident in the hysterical accusations one self-declared Mertz supporter wrote me on Facebook (“Peretz is a racist who thinks Ashkenazim are evil”). These folks just can’t put two and two together.  If the left can still brand Mizrachim as incapable of understanding their own interests by voting against peace, is it any surprise that attacking the left as Arab-lovers is so popular on the right?

Playing the Ethnic Card

Amir Peretz, to be sure, never played the ethnic card in his long and distinguished political career. A protégé of the late Lova Eliav -- an early Labor supporter of Palestinian statehood -- and a veteran Rabin loyalist, Peretz made his first mark as mayor of the Mizrachi town of Sderot -- a Likud stronghold, despite his unabashedly socialist politics.  Moving on to become an MK, Histadrut boss, cabinet minister and ultimately deputy Prime Minister, he is the rare, dovish politician who can hold his own in right wing constituencies without being branded a “leftist,” (itself a demonstration of how little a role ideology plays in the politics of identity). There was something contrived, yet native about his open shirt collar and Stalinesque moustache (which always reminded me of the Mapai forefather Beryl Katzenelson but which Israel’s hi-tech, Tel Aviv elite saw as a mark of buffoonery).   One way or another, many Mizrachi voters saw him as authentic.  But last summer’s merger between Labor and Orly Levy held out the promise of something big.  Levy’s father David symbolized the political coming of age of Israel’s Mizrachim, rising to power with the Likud as Menahem Begin’s deputy prime minister and foreign minister.  David Levy, too, was initially ridiculed in the press (he spoke French but not English when he addressed the UN).  His star ultimately faded, and he ended his career as a foe of Netanyahu.  Orly, a fiercely independent – some would say unabashedly opportunistic – politician in her own right, left Avigdor Lieberman’s right wing party to form her own, unsuccessful list in 2017.  Her calling card was a social democratic economic policy, not foreign policy or human rights. Amir Peretz saw an alliance with Levy as Labor’s game changer.  It would give right wing voters – especially Mizrachim – the legitimacy to vote Labor, thereby genetically reengineering Israel’s political paradigm for the long term.  Was he playing the ethnic card now?  Well, in a sense he was.  But no Israeli political party was ever accused of tribalism for fielding two (three or four) Ashkanzim in their top slots.  Left wing critics of the merger said Levy was, if not a Trojan horse, then at least guilty of ideological impurity.  Peretz countered by asking why [the very non-Mizrachi] Tzipi Livni was treated as a liberal heroine after bolting the Likud for an electoral run with Labor.  He was right in principle, tragically wrong in practice.

Save Us, Amir Peretz

As Amir was trying to reinvent Labor, political space was narrowing on the left.  In the June elections, Labor and Meretz, running separately, each polled dangerously close to the electoral threshold, prompting calls for a joint run in September under Amir’s leadership to avoid wiping out one, or both.  Peretz demurred.  By his calculations, such a union would be worth less than the sum of its parts. The Likud supporters he hoped to attract would never vote for Meretz -- a symbol, in their view, of Israel’s socio-cultural elite. Meretz voters, meanwhile, could not stomach Orly Levy.  It was a marriage made in hell, but the pressure was high.  Meretz supporters demonstrated in front of Peretz’ home and took out full page newspaper ads calling for unity.  Liberal columnists had been accusing Peretz for months of political adventurism and self-delusions of grandeur.  He would, no doubt, be blamed for the extinction of the Israeli left if Meretz failed to reach the threshold.  The result was humiliating in any case.  In September’s election the united list polled only 6 MK’s, about half of what Meretz and Labor scored separately in June.  But that was not the end of it.  Orly Levy, apparently, decided she had no political future in a tiny, left wing niche party and bolted right again, declaring she would not join a Gantz-led government.  It was the end of the road.  That road, in any case.

Mapai Redux?

Peretz had repeatedly vowed never to join a Netanyahu government.  Sometimes, however -- as Emerson says -- consistency is merely a hobgoblin of little minds.  Since the elections Peretz did, in fact, turn down go-it-alone offers from Netanyahu that would have guaranteed the Likud a slim majority and Labor an unprecedented bounty. But once Gantz gave Netanyahu his government, the only question for Peretz is where he could make the best use of his remaining political capital.  Purists demanded he remain in an opposition led by the neoliberal Yair Lapid and his far right allies, Lieberman and Yaalon, along with the Joint Arab List (a stellar political force that merits separate discussion in its own right).   Despised and irrelevant, he would have finished his career, and the historic role of Israeli Labor, on the margins of the 23rd Knesset.  Instead, Peretz and his ally Itzik Shmuli led a two member Labor faction into the government, receiving two ministerial portfolios, chairmanship of the government’s economic cabinet and responsibility for Bedouin development in the Negev.  But his move carries with it far greater political meaning.  Peretz will has now formed an ad hoc political axis with his Blue White allies including former Histadrut boss and Peretz protégé Avi Nisankorn at the Justice Minstry, another one-time Peretz appointee, former IDF chief of staff Gabi Ashkenazi, as foreign minister, and a list of other progressive MKs that could easily form the nucleus of a new, center-left political force.  To be sure, the two lists have not merged, but Labor and BW have signed a separate, cooperation agreement within the unity government itself.   It calls for raising the minimum wage, defense of collective bargaining rights, fighting racism and pursuing the peace process.

What now?

Is Amir Peretz reinventing Labor, once again?  The risks are far from negligible.  This government will lead Israel into an unprecedented, Corona induced recession. The main beneficiaries could be today’s opposition, with everyone associated with the governing coalition being held responsible for mass unemployment, foreclosures and bankruptcies.  It might have been preferable to leave Bibi holding the bag alone. Gantz also promised to support the annexation of the Jordan Valley on the eastern limits of the West Bank, a move some argue could trigger to a chain reaction leading to the collapse of the Palestinian Authority itself. Let’s hope not.  On the other hand, this unity government could also work the other way, with Benny Gantz proving his mettle and by leading the country out of recession, and talented young social democrats like Labor’s Itzik Shmuli (the new minister of labor and social affairs) gaining vital governing experience, positioning them for national leadership in the future.  

As they survey the smoking wreckage of an opposition that defined itself by opposition to one man, some pundits have called for an entirely new paradigm, with progressive Jews joining forces with the 15 members of the Joint Arab List to form the nucleus of a revived, Israeli left.   In my view, this is premature.  Israel’s Jewish and Palestinian citizens still constitute distinct national communities with opposing views on the legitimacy of Jewish statehood.  They can, and still must, collaborate to promote civil equality, democracy and social justice.  Zionist parties must find a way to integrate more Arabs into senior positions, and Arab parties must do the same for Jews.  But there must still be a powerful, mainstream, center left political force that supports the legitimate aspirations of the Jewish People for self-determination, while championing civil equality, economic justice and human rights for all.

[writing-prompts-for-friends]

Notes from Robert McKee’s “Story” 09: Genre and Expectations

The majority of this section defines genres and sub-genres of story. I’ll provide a summary of them at the end of the post. I think that we all as writers know what genre our works tend to lean toward, so I instead want to focus on what McKee has to say about what is expected of writers as dictated by genre and by the audience. 

Mastery of Genre

As life-long consumers of media, we have ingrained expectations of a story once we hear the genre. A rom-com? Well then, we’re in for a light-hearted comedy with a happy ending for the love interests. High fantasy? There’s gonna be lore and magic and elves and dwarfs, and a massive conflict that will probably span multiple novels or films. 

“The genre sophistication of filmgoers presents the writer with this critical challenge: He must not only fulfill audience anticipations, or risk their confusion and disappointment, but he must lead their expectations to fresh, unexpected moments, or risk boring them. This two-handed trick is impossible without a knowledge of genre that surpasses the audience’s.”

As writers, it is our job to identify our genre and research it thoroughly. In the previous section about setting, McKee explains how the setting of the story gives the writer both limitations and inspiration. 

Genre is, in a certain way, the frame in which the setting and story sit. Depending on the genre, the frame can be pliable or it can be rather fixed. Here you need to study your own genre deeply to find out exactly how flexible it is. For example, the genre of “Comedy” is much more pliable than that of the “Crime” genre. There are sub-genres, of course. But under the vast umbrella of “Comedy” almost anything goes as long as we can get a laugh out of it. “Crime” on the other hand, generally involves a struggle between a criminal and a justice-seeker (with the justice-seeker most commonly being the protagonist) and culminates in one triumphing over the other. 

How to Master Your Genre

“Never assume that because you’ve seen films in your genre you know it. This is like assuming you could compose a symphony because you have heard all nine of Beethoven’s.”

McKee states that genre study is best done in the following way:

List all the works that feel similar to yours, both successes and failures. Studying works that are similar to yours but were failures can lead to great insights.

Study each of these works from page to page, breaking each one down into elements of setting, role, event, and value. 

Stack these analyses on top of each other and look down through them all and ask yourself, “What do the stories in my genre always do? What are its conventions of time, place, character, and action?

Until you find these answers, the audience will always be one step ahead of you. 

Personally, that sounds like a lot of work lol. But doing case studies like he describes would certainly help me to better understand my genre. Idk when I’ll have time for it, but...well. I’ll work on it. 

Creative Limitations

This section really echoes what McKee had to say about setting, in that both setting and genre create boundaries for you to work within, but having boundaries pushes you to be more creative. 

Until now, I’ve always started writing a story on a whim, based on a single scene in my head that grows into some 300 page monstrosity. I resisted plotting and just wrote what I wanted to write that day. I enjoyed the freedom that came with having no specific plans and not thinking much about my genre. 

However, McKee uses a brilliant example to illustrate the beneficial aspects of understanding and working within the bounds of your genre:

“Robert Frost said that writing free verse is like playing tennis with the net down, for it’s the self-imposed, indeed artificial demands of poetic conventions that stir the imagination. Let’s say a poet arbitrarily imposes this limit: He decides to write in six-line stanzas, rhyming every other line. After rhyming the fourth line with the second line he reaches the end of a stanza. Backed into this corner, his struggle to rhyme the sixth line with the fourth and second may inspire him to imagine a word that has no relationship to his poem whatsoever--it just happens to rhyme--but this random word then springs loose a phrase that in turn brings an imagine to mind, an image that in turn resonates back through the first five lines, triggering a whole new sense of feeling, twisting and driving the poem to a richer meaning and emotion.

Thanks to the poet’s Creative Limitation of this rhyme scheme, the poem achieves an intensity it would have lacked had the poet allowed himself the freedom to choose any word he wished.

The principle of Creative Limitation calls for freedom within a circle of obstacles. Talent is like a muscle: without something to push against, it atrophies.”

So one of our first steps as writers is to identify our genre or combination of genres, and then learn the genre conventions. 

Genre conventions are the expected aspects of a certain genre. In a “Boy Meets Girl” romance genre, an obvious convention is that a boy and a girl must meet. It isn’t a cliche--it’s a necessary part of the equation. These conventions force us to use our imagination to reinvent the paradigms our genres and audiences demand, and if we can do it right, we fulfill their expectations while giving them something they had never dreamed of before.

Mixing and Reinventing Genres

What better way to sum up this section than Run DMC’s “Walk This Way,” which was the first hip hop hybrid video every played in heavy rotation on MTV? 

Generally, a work tends to be a mix of two or more genres. For example, there is a Love Story subplot in just about EVERYTHING nowadays, for better or for worse. By mixing genres we as writers have a chance to give the world something that has never been seen before. 

Something that McKee stresses is that genres are not static. He says:

“Genres are simply windows on reality, various ways for the writer to look at life. When the reality outside the window undergoes change, the genres alter with it.”

Social attitudes change. This means that what may have been a compelling story 50 years ago may not be as compelling when looked at once again today. The example McKee uses is the 1950′s film FALLING IN LOVE, which was about a man and woman who fell in love with each other but were already married and in unhappy relationships. Nowadays, in mainstream America, divorce isn’t a big deal. If an audience in 2020 watched this film, they’d just say, “You’re married to people you hate--just get a divorce already!”

“The audience wants to know how it feels to be alive on the knife edge of the now. What does it mean to be a human being today?

Innovative writers are not only contemporary, they are visionary. They have their ear to the wall of history, and as things change, they can sense the way society is leaning toward the future. They then produce works that break convention and take the genres into the next generation.

The finest writers are not only visionary, they create classics.”

McKee’s List of Genres

McKee states that there are many different ways to break genres down, and his is neither the best nor the most complete. Also, keep in mind that this book is actually focused around storytelling through film, so the references he uses are not books, but films. 

LOVE STORY. It’s sub-genre, Buddy Salvation, substitutes friendship for romantic love. 

HORROR FILM. This genre devices into three sub-genres: the Uncanny, in which the source of horror is astounding but subject to “rational” explanation, such as beings from outer space, science-made monsters, or a maniac; the Supernatural, in which the source of horror is an “irrational” phenomenon from the spirit realm; and the Super-Uncanny, in which the audience is kept guessing between the other two possibilities. 

MODERN EPIC (the individual versus the state).

WESTERN. 

WAR GENRE. Although war is often the setting for another genre, such as the Love Story, the WAR GENRE is specifically about combat. Pro-war versus Antiwar are its primary sub-genres. 

MATURATION PLOT or the coming of age story

REDEMPTION PLOT. Here the film arcs on a moral change within the protagonist from bad to good. 

PUNITIVE PLOT. In these, the good guy turns bad and is punished. 

TESTING PLOT. Stories of willpower versus temptation to surrender.

EDUCATION PLOT. This genre arcs on a deep change within the protagonist’s view of life, people, or self from the negative (naive, distrustful, fatalistic, self-hating) to the positive (wise, trusting, optimistic, self-possessed)

DISILLUSIONMENT PLOT. A deep change of worldview from the positive to the negative.

COMEDY. Subgenres range from Parody to Satire to Sitcom to Romantic to Screwball to Farce to Black Comedy, all differing by the focus of comic attack (bureaucratic folly, upper-class manners, teenage courtship. etc.) and the degree of ridicule (casual, caustic, lethal).

CRIME. Subgenres vary chiefly by the answer to this question: From whose point of view do we regard the crime? Murder Mystery (master detective’s POV); Caper (master criminal’s POV), Detective (cop’s POV), Gangster (crook’s POV), Thriller or Revenge Tale (victim’s POV); Courtroom (lawyer’s POV); Newspaper (reporter’s POV); Espionage (spy’s POV), Prison Drama (inmate’s POV); Film Noir (POV of a protagnoist who may be part criminal, part detective, part victime of a femme fatale). 

SOCIAL DRAMA. This genre identifies problems in society--poverty, the education system, communicable diseases, the disadvantaged, antisocial rebellion, and the like--then constructs a story demonstrating a cure. It has a number of sharply focused sub-genres: Domestic Drama (problems within the family), the Women’s Film (dilemmas such as career versus family, lover versus children), Political Drama (corruption in politics), Eco-Drama (battles to save the environment), Medical Drama (struggles with physical illness), and Psycho-Drama (struggles with mental illness). 

ACTION/ADVENTURE. This often borrows aspects from other genres such as War or Political Drama to use as motivation for explosive action and derring-do. If ACTION/ADVENTURE incorporates ideas such as destiny, hubris, or the spirtual, it becomes the sub-genre High Adventure. If Mother Nature is the source of the antagonism, it’s a Disaster/Survival work.

HISTORICAL DRAMA. The treasure chest of history is sealed with this warning: What is past must be present. He must find an audience today. Therefore, the best use of history, and the only legitimate excuse to set a film in the past and thereby add untold millions to a budget, is anachronism--to use the past as a clear glass through which you show us the present. 

BIOGRAPHY. This cousin to Historical Drama focuses on a person rather than an era. BIOGRAPHY, however, must never become a simple chronicle. That someone lived, died, and did interesting things in between is of scholarly interest and no more. The biographer must interpret facts as if they were fiction, find the meaning of the subject’s life, and then cast him as the protagonist of his life’s genre. These caveats also apply to the sub-genre Autobiography.

DOCU-DRAMA. A second cousin to Historical Drama, DOCU-DRAMA centers on recent rather than past events. 

MOCKUMENTARY. This genre pretends to be rooted in actuality or memory, behaves like documentary or autobiography, but is utter fiction. It subverts fact-based filmmaking to satirize hypocritical institutions.

MUSICAL. I would love to see a musical novel lol.

SCIENCE FICTION. In hypothetical futures that are typically technological dystopias of tyranny and chaos, the SCIENCE FICTION writer often marries the man-against-state Modern Epic with Action/Adventure. But, like history, the future is a setting in which any genre may play. 

SPORTS GENRE. Sport is a crucible for character change. This genre is a natural home for the Maturation Plot, the Redemption Plot, the Education Plot, the Punitive Plot, the Testing Plot, the Disillusionment Plot, Buddy Salvation, and Social Drama.

FANTASY. Here the writer plays with time, space, and the physical, bending and mixing the laws of nature and the supernatural. The extra-realties of FANTASY attract the Action genres but also welcome others such as the Love Story, Political Drama/Allegory, Social Drama, and/or Maturation Plot.

ANIMATION. I guess you could equate this to graphic novels, comics, and manga. 

Source: McKee, Robert. Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting. York: Methuen, 1998. Print

[thesinglesjukebox]

The Singles Jukebox Celebrates 30 Years of Rhythm Nation 1814 (a Janet Jackson retrospective)

Janet Jackson’s had one hell of a career. It’d be glittering even if you were to cut the album she released 30 years ago this week out of history. And historic is what Rhythm Nation 1814 is, not like a war, but like a discovery; it was groundbreaking and influential and so much pop released in its wake owes it a debt of gratitude. The album contained seven top 10 singles in the U.S., each with indelible melodies, state-of-the-art beats and vivid music videos. Janet was always on the radio, always on TV, and welcome everywhere she went. She endured the failure of two albums and the weight of family baggage before reinventing herself, seizing artistic control and having one of the longest and brightest imperial phases of any pop star. Sex positive, romantic, assertive and wise, she’s an icon whose brilliance comes as much from how her songs make us feel about ourselves as they do about her.

Her familial connections might help explain her, but they didn’t define or limit her. She’s a sympathetic performer, an innovator in the development of music video as an art form (someone in her camp needs to fix up her spotty presence on video streaming sites, people need to see these videos in HD) and a smart, underrated songwriter in her own right. There’s a lot of Jackson in Beyonce, in Rihanna, in Britney, and in any woman who makes us smile and makes us dance. Because she did all those things over and over again.

Here’s a bunch of songs by Miss Jackson that moved us, or just made us move:

Katherine St Asaph on “Nasty” [8.14]

Date the quote: “[His] dance cuts have a format-friendly, artificial sheen … but she seems more concerned with identity than playlists.” This is not from 2019, about a post-Spotify pop star (I cheated a bit, leaving out a reference to “Arthur Baker dance breaks”) but from the ’80s. Specifically, it’s from the Rolling Stone review of Janet Jackson’s’s Control, the first half of which is a review of a comparatively nothing Jermaine Jackson album. This was typical: if press didn’t dismiss her as an biographical afterthought who happened to still sing, they wrote about her alongside her family, and specifically her brother. (This continues to this day: Note the sustained attention given to her response to Leaving Neverland, which ultimately was to join her family in condemning it.) The line everyone quotes is “Ms. Jackson if you’re nasty,” but more pointed is one of the lines that precedes it: “my last name is Control.”

The lyric to “Nasty” is full of that sort of role-reversal, like a swordfight where one guy yoinks the other guy’s sword — the sword being the “nasty groove.” But said groove possibly illustrates the lyric even better. Made by producers/former The Time members/future creative partners Jam & Lewis out of big ’80s percussion, plus clanks and repurposed orchestral stabs from an Ensoniq Mirage, one of the earliest sampling keyboards, it doesn’t sound martial exactly, like some of Jackson’s later work, but certainly sounds stark. It sounds like a challenge, one Janet takes up: her past soubrette voice drops to a throatier register, then is stoked into roars. The beat’s not quite its own thing; “Nasty” resembles experiments like Herbie Hancock’s “Metal Beat,” and in turn much of New Jack Swing resembles it. But how Jam & Lewis described it was a rapper’s beat — now standard for pop or R&B singers, from Destiny’s Child to Ariana Grande and Billie Eilish, when they want a tougher image. Meanwhile, Britney took Janet’s soft spoken-word interlude “I could learn to like this” and extrapolated an entire career from it — and covered it, unusually early in her career — but simplified it, mostly collapsing the context of family ties and dignity and creative control onto one axis: sex. But what they’re all doing is asserting this kind of Control.

Part of appreciating songs from the ’80s and ’90s is prying them out of the clutches of the era’s pop-culture jokification– I do like MST3K, but their sort of snappy “Nasty” joke is kind of what I mean. More than one article/restaurant review/listicle attempts to identify, meme-ily, Janet’s idea of “nasty food” (Janet’s answer, dubiously, was whole squid). A certain comment by a certain head of state gave the song a late-breaking sales boost But put on some ’80s radio (or a contemporary playlist of people copying ’80s radio) and wait for “Nasty” to come on. The rest of the radio will flinch.

Kat Stevens on “What Have You Done For Me Lately?” [8.67]

“What Have You Done For Me Lately?” is a sparse, angry snap of a song, the overspill of weeks and months of gradually-building resentment. It’s taken a nudge from bezzie mate Paula Abdul for Janet to fully admit her relationship has gone sour: her once fun-loving, adoring beau has become complacent, content to put his feet up on the sofa and take Janet for granted. Should she leave? She loves him! Or does she? Should love really feel like a heavy weight, pressing down on you? Like your stomach won’t stop churning? Like letting the phone ring out unanswered rather than deal with his temper? Like maybe it’s your fault that he’s like this? “Who’s right? Who’s wrong?” Janet is determined to make a decision with a clear head, but the anxiety and hormones are bubbling underneath (“I never ask for more than I deserve…“). Thankfully Jam & Lewis are on hand with a clinical, whipcrack beat — snap out of it, Janet! The tension manifests itself in her zigzagging shoulders, hunched and strained and contorted, primed to lash out – just as he walks through the door! Janet is wary, but her dude is on his best behaviour, puppy-dog eyes, I’ll do better from now on, I swear. They dance perfectly in time together, remembering the good times: all is forgiven. Surely Janet hasn’t fallen for the same old lines, doomed to repeat the cycle? Paula is rolling her eyes: ugh, not this bullshit again… Then, as the happy couple laugh together over dinner, Janet glances back at us, and the smile falls from her face. The decision has been made. As soon as Mr ‘Not All Men’ leaves for work in the morning, she’s putting her passport in a safety deposit box and setting up a secret savings account to fund her getaway. The plan is in motion. You’ve got one life to life.

Thomas Inskeep on “Diamonds” (Herb Alpert ft. Janet Jackson) [6.80]

After “The Pleasure Principle,” this might actually be my favorite Janet Jackson single (even though she’s technically the featured artist on it). “Diamonds,” written and produced by Jimmy “Jam” Harris and Terry Lewis for Herb Alpert’s 1987 album Keep Your Eye on Me, is, in all but name, a Jam/Lewis/Janet record — with a few Alpert trumpet flourishes. The beats rock hard, and Janet delivers what may be (and certainly was at the time) her most IDGAF vocal: you’re gonna get Miss Jackson (because you’re clearly nasty) some diamonds, aren’t you?

Alfred Soto on “The Pleasure Principle” [8.43]

For all the banter over the years about the cold and steel of Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis’ beats for Control, the coldest and steeliest they had no hand in creating. Songwriter Monte Moir, like Jam and Lewis also a The Time alum, stumbled on the title first: “I had to figure out what it was I was trying to say, I just stumbled into the title and realized it fit.” Sung by Jackson in her airiest, most insouciant coo, “The Pleasure Principle” starts with bass synth and cowbell before settling down into a matter-of-fact tale of a night of sin. To visualize the concept, choreographer Barry Lather put together one of Jackson’s most iconic videos, a masterpiece of athleticism involving chairs. Too cold and steely for the audience, or perhaps the hype cycle for a sixth single had exhausted itself: “The Pleasure Principle” missed the top ten in the summer of 1987, stopping at #14. So ignore the single mix and revel in Shep Pettibone’s Long Vocal Remix.

Kat Stevens on “Let’s Wait Awhile” [6.60]

Can you have an erection-section classic that’s primarily about abstinence? “Let’s Wait Awhile” has all the features of a late-night Magic FM request slot regular: soft electric piano, finger clicks instead of drums, lyrics about promises and feelings and stars shining bright. But this message is about trust, not lust. It takes courage to admit that you’re not ready, and it requires faith in the other person that they’re not going to be a dick about it. I remember the advice columns in Just 17 repeating over and over that as Informed Young Women we shouldn’t be pressured into sex, which was all well and good until it actually came to the act of Doing It, whereupon the fug of hormones and internalised misogyny meant that all rationality went out of the window. It’s the sign of how strong and confident Janet is in her relationship, that she can be ‘real honest’ and discuss her concerns freely with her partner, without worrying that he’s going to a) dump her b) tell his mates that she’s frigid or c) ‘persuade’ her round to his point of view (*shudder*). If he’s not willing to wait, maybe he’s not such an ideal person to be doing this sort of stuff with in the first place? I can hear the dude whining to his mate now: “I took her out for dinner and all I got was a perfectly vocalised key change!” Just 17 would be proud of you, Janet.

Jessica Doyle on “Miss You Much” [7.83]

A little context: in March 1989 Natalie Cole released “Miss You Like Crazy,” a ballad built for Cole to sing wide about longing. In June Paula Abdul released the third single off Forever Your Girl, “Cold Hearted,” whose video made a point of its group choreography. And then in late August came “Miss You Much,” the first single from Rhythm Nation 1814. Did Janet Jackson have beef with her ex-choreographer? Was that the kind of thing people talked about, in the pre-poptimist, pre-TMZ era? Because in retrospect “Miss You Much” looks like a dismissal of “Cold Hearted,” cool and upright where the latter was David-Fincher-directed sleazy. (By contrast, the director of “Miss You Much,” Dominic Sena, had already treated Jackson with respect in the video for “The Pleasure Principle.”) But also “Miss You Much” plays as a broader statement, a refusal of expectations. There’s nothing sad or ballad-like about it. There’s that opening high of “sho-o-ot,” and then Jackson’s on a roll: it’s all about her, the deliciousness of her feeling; she can barely bother to describe the “you” being missed so much besides the blanditries of smiling face and warm embrace. The power in “I’ll tell your mama/I’ll tell your friends/I’ll tell anyone whose heart can comprehend” isn’t in the longing; it’s in how much she relishes being the one who gets to do the telling. By 1989 she was in control enough to not have to utter the word once. “Miss You Much” isn’t a deep song, didn’t set out to accomplish as much as the title track or later songs like “That’s the Way Love Goes” or “Together Again” would. But thirty years later it still looks and sounds like (what we now call) a power move.

Katie Gill on “Rhythm Nation” [8.57]

How does one try to condense the reach and influence of “Rhythm Nation” in a single blurb? Entire articles have been written about this song and video (because really, you can’t talk about the song without talking about the video). It’s influenced singers, dancers, directors, choreographers. It won a Grammy as well as two MTV Music Video Awards when those awards actually mattered. The choreography is perfect. Jackson and her dancers move with military-like precision, flawlessly executing maneuvers and creating a dance that would almost instantly become part of the popular consciousness. The sound is amazing. That bass groove is so tight, adding a layer of funk which the guitar takes to further levels. The tune is an absolute earworm, the chorus is iconic, and Jackson’s vocals are at the best of their game. But I think the most important part of “Rhythm Nation” is that this absolute banger of a song, this masterclass in choreography, has remarkably idealistic lyrics. Jackson’s “Rhythm Nation” yearns towards a racially and socially conscious utopia as it attempts to unite people to join together and create this utopia. In a lesser artist, these lyrics would be out and out corny. But when wrapped up in the final package, the lyrics go from corny to believable. Suddenly, the idea of the whole world helping each other or rising up in protest doesn’t sound so far-fetched.

Alfred Soto on “Escapade” [7.67]

With solo credits as common as hair metal solos in Janet Jackson music, I often listen to tracks like “Escapade” and wonder: what did Janet Jackson contribute? Lyrics? Sure. But she has to write them around a Jimmy Jam-Terry Lewis melody, no? Or, as is no doubt the case, she comes up with her own vocal melody to accompany their chord progressions. According to Jam, the trio had “Nowhere to Run” in mind: first as a cover song, then as inspiration. “Escapade” hopscotches away from the sense of danger animating the Martha and the Vandellas chestnut; in 1989, into the eclipse of a grim decade for black lives, looking forward to Friday and drinks and friends would have to do. Over Jam and Lewis’ unrelenting thwack, Jackson sing-songs a valentine to a shy boy whom she hopes will join her in — what? The sheer euphoria of the bridge — a melody as bright as a returned smile — suggests worlds of possibilities when the check’s cashed and the night’s young. After all, MINNEAPOLIS!

Leah Isobel on “Alright” [7.14]

Rhythm Nation might have more banging singles, and it might have songs that more directly diagnose the ills of late capitalism, but no song on the record better encapsulates its utopian aims than “Alright.” Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis famously left the high end of Janet’s songs empty to provide space for her delicate soprano; here, they fill the low end with vocal samples, percussion, submerged synth blats, and tense bass licks. Instead of singing high for the whole track, however, Janet buries lyrical references to magic spells and the end of the world in her lower register, where they blend into the rest of the song. It’s only on the chorus, and particularly on her swooping vocal runs as she riffs on the phrase “you’re alright with me,” that she surfaces from the swirl. On a record where she spends so much time and thought discussing what’s wrong around her, here she takes the time to see and acknowledge what’s right. I don’t know that I’ve heard a better sonic analogue for finding relief from chaos: one voice against a wall of voices and sounds, getting lost and being found over and over to the comforting rhythm of a pop song.

Edward Okulicz on “Black Cat” [6.57]

“Black Cat” was never the huge stylistic U-turn it was perceived as. Janet’s brother had dabbled in rock guitars, and this is in that vein too, while still being of a piece with the other songs on the album. Where it succeeds is because it doesn’t just lean into rock, it’s as credible a rock song as it is a dance-pop song — the riff, which Jackson wrote herself, kicks ass, the drums shake a room as much as the cavernous thuds of her contemporaneous singles, and the song’s melody and the fierce vocal performance straddle both worlds. And if you don’t like the mix there’s like 900 different versions with 2000 different guitarists — only a slight exaggeration. Its overall success is testament to Janet’s persona, sure, because nothing she released could have failed at this point, but you can’t go to Number One with single number six off an album without your usual co-writers and producers unless you’ve written something that connects with listeners and performed it with power. The way she slams down on “don’t understand… why you… insist…” is a moment of perplexed, angry humanity in the middle of a song that tries to understand something tragic — the corrosion of drugs and gangs on young people’s lives — and while the soloing is a little hammy, the song escapes being embarrassingly corny. Because in fact the whole song kicks ass.

Pedro Joao Santos on “Love Will Never Do (Without You)” [8.71]

One of the greatest pleasures in getting into Janet is how deliriously bold all of her work is. A story, if you will: how Jimmy & Terry stepped in to support her emancipation and helped her invent new jack swing all within Control, before taking the formula apart in Rhythm Nation 1814, aiming for pop that was both a manifesto against bigotry and, between a balm and a corrective, a rush of love. It was designed for high impact, meaning it would’ve always been a pop juggernaut — the material was there, even if the marketing was oblique, which it was. Instead of a glamour shot in Technicolor and a flirtatious title, the 12 million copies sold feature a stark black and white portrait backed by a call-to-arms; the pop froth is smattered around the backbone of topical anthems.

From single to single, A&M skittered between the two sides and amassed consecutive top 10 singles, but it was the last calling card that proved career-defining. At first, “Love Will Never Do (Without You)”’s hard-edged beats scan identical to “Rhythm Nation”’s sonic matrix: belligerent and completed by Janet’s frontal vox, only in this instance driven through a more feminine marketing (the music video is a blueprint). That’s the first trick: she unexpectedly launches into the first verse in a tentative, lightly hostile lower register (“like a guy would,” said Jimmy Jam, as it was to be a duet) and keeps it until the chorus wraps up. It’s pop as friction. By the second verse, Janet goes up an octave and matches the now-bubbling passion at the forefront. The tiny synth countdown drives it into a perpetual unfolding, each time emerging to add more (vocal) layers to the cacophony and threaten to wrap it up, before coming back in force.

Janet’s head voice soars up to the grand finale, a pop cataclysm of an ending, one of the best in recorded history — which applies to the entirety of “Love Will Never Do,” a simultaneous pitch for chaotic head-over-heels energy and blockbuster status. It’s a bizarre ride and a joyous knockout: the honeymoon phase juiced into one relentless beast of a banger, one that changed pop for good.

Jackie Powell on “State of the World” [6.67]

“State of the World” deserved a music video. At its heart, this is a dance cut with a little bit less of the hard rock that roars in “Rhythm Nation.” In content and in sound, this track is a sequel and that’s not a criticism. It’s an expansion which encourages a foot tap by the listener and includes an absolutely integral bassline that drives this track through and through. While the song clocks in at under five minutes and could have been a bit shorter, its chorus, which crescendos in clarity and volume, makes up for it. In addition to Jackson’s delivery on the verses, which is rather understated, the sound effects which illustrate “State of the World”  aren’t too kitschy. The cries and crashes aren’t as apparent as in brother Michael’s “Earth Song” for instance, and that’s appropriate. The politics had to run as smooth as the bass on this track, and they did. They didn’t serve as a distraction, but rather as an asset. Janet was the master of New Jack Swing, and while folks look to her brother’s album Dangerous as the most successful of this genre, Janet experimented with it first.  The percussive repetition, serves a purpose for Jackson on the record. It maintains the same intensity throughout as it reflects exactly what she has to say. Lyrically, I wish that Jackson explained how her “Nation” would “weather the storm.” To this day, homelessness and poverty are issues that affect people continuously. Jackson states the cornerstone rather than the specifics, and maybe that’s okay. It’s something that in 2019 we need more than ever. While unity appears so far out of our reach, Janet attested as early as 1991 that we can’t stop and shan’t stop.

Thomas Inskeep on “The Best Things in Life Are Free” (with Luther Vandross, BBD and Ralph Tresvant) [7.60]

To soundtrack his 1992 film Mo’ Money, Damon Wayans (who wrote and starred in the critically-derided box office hit) called upon superproducers Jam & Lewis, and they did work, producing or co-producing 13 of the album’s 14 tracks and writing or co-writing 12 of them. The soundtrack’s lead single was very pointedly a “look at all the cool stars we got together” move, featuring superstars Vandross and Jackson duetting, along with a brief rap bridge from Bell Biv DeVoe (credited here as BBD) and their New Edition compadre Ralph Tresvant. Released as a single in May 1992, it’s a perfect summertime smash, simultaneously airy-light and slammin’, with Vandross and Jackson weaving in and out of each other’s vocals effortlessly. BBD and Tresvant pop in with a nothingburger of a rap (Tresvant gets a label credit for literally uttering one line, the song’s title) that at least serves to provide a modicum of grit to the proceedings, but no matter: Jackson especially sounds breezier than maybe ever, while Vandross seems to float above the record. The two are magical on a track perfectly suited for them (credit Jam & Lewis, of course), and the result is a minor classic.

Jonathan Bogart on “That’s the Way Love Goes” [7.86]

A little over a year ago I rather overshared in this space when discussing Madonna’s “Erotica,” released a year before this single. A year makes a lot of difference: by the time I was listening to Shadoe Stevens count this down on American Top 40, the summer it became the longest-running #1 hit any Jackson family member ever had, radio pop was no longer a dirty, soul-damning secret, just a daily companion, a window into a more colorful, adult, and interesting world than the ones I knew from books. I would probably have had a healthier relationship to romance and sexuality, in fact, if this had been my introduction to overtly sexual pop rather than “Erotica” — both songs share the technique of a sultry spoken-word refrain, but Janet’s is actually grown-up, with the confidence of a woman who knows what she wants and how to achieve it, with none of Madonna’s juvenile need to épater les bourgeois. As it happened I didn’t particularly connect to “That’s the Way Love Goes,” having reached the stage in my adolescence when getting a charge out of raspy-voiced men singing about political instability felt like the more gender-appropriate inevitability. It wouldn’t be until years later when I returned to re-examine the radio pop of my youth with maturer ears that the amazing miracle of this song fully dawned on me: those pillowy guitar samples plucked from songs where raspy-voiced men sang about political instability, but pressed into service of a loping, candlelit coo: equal parts seduction and vulnerability, Janet singing with the authority of someone who had already conquered the world about the grown-woman concerns that really matter: love, and sex, and the impossible beauty that results when they intertwine.

David Moore on “If” [8.33]

Janet Jackson sang explicitly about “nasty boys,” but I was, to use a term my son’s preschool teacher used to describe him, a timid boy, and I soaked up the privileges of maleness with a corresponding fear of performative masculinity. My love of women through childhood was paired with a deep-seated self-loathing that snuffed out friendships, made me uncomfortable in my body, and sparked intense, violent fantasies directed toward unnamed aggressors in my mind, all those “bad guys.” I wouldn’t be able to reflect on any of this until adulthood. But there was a point in preadolescence when the contours of the trap started to become discernible, and Janet Jackson’s “If” was both a cherished song — one I would listen to rapt in front of MTV or on the radio, legs haphazardly splayed behind me — and was also the uncanny soundtrack to my discomfort: a muscular, menacing, alien object that completely unnerved me, made me a supplicant to its rhythm, got into my head and into my guts, made me move, if only for a minute, in a world that glanced contemptuously toward — but stood defiantly outside of — that toxic timidity. I was the woman telling the man what I wanted, and I was also the man obeying; I was the dancer and I was the floor, too. On “If,” Janet Jackson and Jam & Lewis tamed the New Jack Squall that her brother unleashed on Dangerous with Teddy Riley, insisted upon its lockstep subservience to her mission and her groove, and pointed to an R&B futurism that was barely a twinkle in pop music’s eye in 1993. The result is simultaneously mechanistic and wild, rolling waves of noise that you quickly learn to surf or risk drowning in them. That same year, I also found inspiration in angry men, many of them likely nasty ones, the same men I would have assiduously avoided in person and fought off in my dreams. But Janet Jackson kept me honest, reminded me that my anger was a tell for my underlying cowardice and shame. There is never a hint in “If” that her hypothetical proposition — too strident for any coyness or the suggestion of flirting — could ever be satisfactorily answered. Not by you anyway. No boy, nasty or timid, could meet Janet Jackson’s challenge; she’s mocking the guy who would even try. By the time you hit that cacophony of a middle 8 break, defibrillation on an already racing heartbeat, you’re defeated, more thoroughly than any bad guy you might have dreamt up. You’re not ready for this world — you’re not, so you can’t, and you won’t. But what if…?

Jonathan Bradley on “Again” [5.67]

It sounds like a fairy tale: billowing keys, Janet’s tinkling voice, and no drums to earth the fantasy. “Again” was from John Singleton’s Poetic Justice, not a Disney picture, but it shimmers with its own magic anyway. The melody is gorgeous: listen to Janet measuring out the descending syllables in “suddenly the memories came back to me” like they’re sinking in as she sings the words. (She repeats the motif on “making love to you/oh it felt so good and so right” — this is a romance where the sex is as fondly remembered as the emotions.) Janet Jackson is such a versatile performer, and for all the bold strokes and blunt rhythmic force of her best known moments, “Again” is a treasure all of its own for being none of these: it is tiny and tender and sparkles with a real joy that is all the more wondrous for sounding like it could not exist outside of a storybook.

Scott Mildenhall on “Whoops Now” [4.83]

Even outside America, there’s a widespread tendency for people, in search of a lifetime’s grand narrative, to define everything that happened before The Day The World Changed – a coincidental proxy for their childhood, youth or adolescence – as a simpler time. It’s a convenient illusion for anyone in the world lucky enough to be able to believe it, whose formative years were insulated from war or suffering and can be instead defined by the most carefree scraps of pop culture. In that respect “Whoops Now” holds great temptation, it being the breeziest brush-off of burdens, with an all-over Teflon disposition. It’s therefore an almost fantastical ideal of ’90s radio (and still one of Janet’s most played in the UK); a warm and fuzzy-round-the-edges memory of which on closer inspection, the details are inscrutable. Janet, aloft in a proletarian reverie, relates a confusing tale of overnight shift work, a hindrance of a boss and the consequent curtailing of her plans for some fun in the sun this weekend with her friends (who, judging by her extended roll call, seem to mostly be record execs, producers and performers, as well as dogs). Narratively, it’s difficult to tease apart, but all you need to know is that hurrah – she somehow ends up on holiday anyway. A story that sounds more like something from an expletive-laden segment of Airline thus becomes the most casual celebration of the apparent inevitability of positive resolutions when you’re a globe-straddling megastar, or perhaps just a kid in the back of your parents’ car with the radio on. With that certainty of happiness and universal balance, and the belief that it ever was or could be, it’s fantasy upon fantasy upon fantasy. But no bother: Anguilla here we come.

Nortey Dowuona on “Throb” [6.86]

I started listening to Janet Jackson as a happy accident. Her songs were on Atlantic Radio, but nowhere else. I barely heard her music growing up and only knew of her massive career, and not the music that made it so huge.

So when I first pressed play on “Throb,” I was kinda scandalized.

Because it was so directly, overtly sexual, and confident about it. Janet was ready to get down and dirty, without all the mind games, patronization and bullpuddy packed all over it. The lyrics are pretty straightforward, and there are only ten lines of lyrics. Its pretty clear what Janet wants, and she’s gonna get it.

Plus, the bass was slamming, it slunk around my neck and just rested there while the air horn synths washed over my eyes, blinding me. The drums then stepped over me and plucked me up, with cooing and cascading moans and grunts swirled around my body, shredding me to pieces —

Then the song ended. And it was over.

I honestly, can’t really say why this is my favorite Janet song, but I can say that you should probably play it while having sex, and while thinking about having sex, and play this late night in the night if deciding to have sex. I know this’ll be the first thing I’ll play if I have sex with anyone.

Thomas Inskeep on “Throb”

In the summer of 1993, I’d just finished my second freshman year of college, in my hometown. (I’d gone to college straight out of high school in 1988, and dropped out without much to show for it, 16 months later.) One of my best girlfriends had herself just graduated from college and was back at her parents’ house, job-hunting. We were both past 21 and looking for a place to go dancing, and we found it in the nearest big city, Fort Wayne, Indiana, about 45 minutes away. It was a short-lived gay bar — so short-lived I don’t even recall its name, sadly — with a dance floor roughly the size of a postage stamp. I don’t remember meeting anyone there, ever. (I didn’t drive at the time, so Julie always had to, so it’s not like I could’ve gone home with someone anyway.) I don’t remember anything about the bar — except its dancefloor, and the fact that they had a decent DJ on the weekends, who mostly played house music, which I loved. And there were three songs that got played, in my memory at least, every single week. (And Julie and I really did go just about every weekend that summer.)

The first was Bizarre Inc.’s “I’m Gonna Get You,” an ebullient diva-house track which topped Billboard’s Dance Club/Play chart in January but was just peaking at pop radio in June. The second was, really, the gay club record of the year, RuPaul’s “Supermodel.” It peaked at #2 on the Dance Club/Play chart in March, but never left gay clubs at all through 1993. When that got played at the club, I would, week-in, week-out, “work the runway,” lip-syncing my ass off. (It’s just that kind of song.) And the third was an album track from a newly-released album (that would, in fact, eventually be promoted to dance clubs at peak at #2 on the Club/Play chart), Janet Jackson’s “Throb.” This song went where Jackson never had before, both musically (it’s a straight-up house jam) and lyrically (it’s a straight-up sex jam). Its lyrics are minimal but to the point: “I can feel your body/Pressed against my body/When you start to poundin’/Love to feel you throbbin’.” No subtleties there! Accordingly, Julie and I would spend the song grinding up against each other on a tiny riser at the back of the dance floor, because why not? And because it’s fun.

26 years later, ‘Throb” still kills. And throbs.

Maxwell Cavaseno on “Runaway” [6.50]

My childhood managed to dodge the oceanic nature of pop thanks to being struck between two extremes. My father usually kept the car full of rap, via cassettes of assorted rising stars of the moment (Big Pun, Nas, Various Wu-Tang Soloists) or whatever was playing via Hot 97. Meanwhile my mother typically wallowed in a realm of AOR pop a la Amy Grant or the likes who you could never remember anything about. If there was anything majorly important in the history of pop music from 89-98, lemme tell you, that shit didn’t happen anywhere near me. However, one of the few memories that did manage to linger on was “Runaway.” It was a record that managed to ethereally sneak up to me like some kind of weird creep that I just couldn’t understand with its weird foreign instrumentation simulating orientalist visions and Janet’s background vocals harmonizing like a bunch of Buddhist Cats sneering a la Randy Savage’s “nyeeeah.” Whenever I trailed along in supermarkets or tried to keep busy in waiting rooms, I could comprehend what happened on other songs I liked in the outer world like “Take a Bow” or “Kiss From A Rose.” But this? How did you rationalize all of these gliding vocals crooning and this swarm of glittery noises when you have barely any understanding of the world around you, let alone music? No matter how much further away and away I’d get from whenever it was meant to be a single, it could still disruptively appear in the wild and send the whole day into a state of disarray. It’s so alarming to know now as a grown adult that I can personally summon this ifrit of a single, rather than think of it as some sort of rare sighting of trickster energy (all the more bolstered by Janet’s ad libbed teasing of supposed imperfection and other-human excess) that isn’t meant to be heard more than once in a blue moon. To be honest, I may just forget altogether after the fact, the same way I never remembered the name of the song even when considering it for review. Just that “nyeeeah” hung around in my memory.

Danilo Bortoli on “Got ’til It’s Gone” [6.17]

In Joni Mitchell’s “Big Yellow Taxi”, a cut from her 1970 album Ladies of the Canyon, she sang of impeding progress as a form of destruction (“They paved paradise/And put up a parking lot”). Often seen as as environmental anthem, actually, she was looking back at the sixties, and then seeing, right ahead, a decade that showcased no promising future, only aching skepticism. This resulted in one the purest, simplest lines she has ever written: “Don’t it always seem to go/That you don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone”. Almost thirty years later, Janet Jackson conjured those same thoughts, conveying, instead, a different meaning. The Velvet Rope was her very own game of smoke and mirrors, and intimate and often misleading look at her private life. Lying at the center of that album, there is a delicate tribute. “Got ‘til It’s Gone” features a well-placed sample from that line culled from “Big Yellow Taxi.” The context is entirely different however. Here, the same words are uttered between confessions of love. It helps, then, that “Got ‘til It’s Gone” is, in reality, a talk. It’s the way Janet asks “What’s the next song?”. It’s the way Q-Tip responds “Like Joni says.” It’s also the way he asserts finally: “Joni Mitchell never lies.” The brilliance of a sample travelling three decades is that it is deliciously meta. The concept of truth, in Janet Jackson’s universe, is interchangeable. That way, she, too, can never lie.

Josh Love on “Together Again” [6.86]

Together Again was originally conceived as a ballad, and no wonder – it’s a deeply sentimental (borderline treacly, if I’m being uncharitable) song about death and angels and reuniting in the afterlife in heaven. Deciding to record it as a surging house jam instead was an absolute masterstroke, and the result is one of the most purely joyous, transcendent moments of Janet’s career. The idea of carrying a lost loved one in your heart and feeling their spirit in the goodness you encounter in the world, and even the thought of one day joining together with them again in the great beyond – “Together Again” makes you feel that joy rather than merely verbalizing it. So many of us say that when we die we want those we leave behind to celebrate our lives rather than mourn our passing, but Janet is one of the few artists to really bring that radical acceptance of impermanence to life.

Thomas Inskeep on “I Get Lonely” (TNT Remix) [7.43]

Allow me to be cynical for a moment: Janet Jackson, in 1998, is still a superstar. But in the past five years, she’s only had one R&B #1, ‘94’s sex-jam “Any Time, Any Place” (assisted greatly by its R. Kelly remix). So if you’re thinking “What do we do to get Janet back to the summit,” what do you do? Well, it’s 1998. How about calling in Teddy Riley? Better yet, how about he gets a helping hand from Timbaland? And the best: how about Teddy brings his merry men of BLACKstreet with him for a vocal assist? Ergo, “I Get Lonely (TNT Remix),” now label-credited to “Janet [she was just going by “Janet” at the time] featuring BLACKstreet.”

And you know what? It’s genius. The idea, brilliant. The execution, top-notch. Riley on the remix, with instrumental help from Timbo, with guest vocals from BLACKstreet: it’s more exciting than the original (which was already quite good), has a little more junk in its trunk (those should-be-patented instrumental tics that Timbaland is such a wizard with, ohmygod, much like Janet’s big brother’s vocal tics), and the duet vocals are superb (especially as it was so rare to hear Janet singing with others at the time, and every member of BLACKstreet save Riley was a great-to-marvelous singer). Presto! Two weeks atop the R&B chart in May 1998, along with a #3 Hot 100 peak. Mission accomplished — and fortunately, it works even better artistically than it did commercially. Everybody wins!

Pedro Joao Santos on “Go Deep” [7.14]

That The Velvet Rope’s party song is so heavy on gravitas and spine-tingling urgency speaks volumes. In an album so hellbent on carnal and psychological openness, the party of “Go Deep” goes deeper, and makes sense. It’s not just the top-20 banger it factually was, and it’s not just hedonism for the sake of it. That is, if you don’t divorce it from the wounds of longing, manipulation, abuse and distress being sliced fresh. Tension lies within this absolute romp, placed midway through the red-hot catharsis of Rope. It might be that the party acts as a salve for the trauma. Though it isn’t put into words, you can hear it subliminally: Janet’s hesitant vocal; the evocative, near-melancholy synth fluctuating about. You can even imagine the words as portals: making friends come together as support; the sexual come-ons not just because, but maybe as physical relief for the pain.

A bare-bones lyric sheet would give you nothing — but music as context goes a long way. And the music itself from “Go Deep” gets me in raptures after all these years, from that ridiculous boing (perhaps best known from “I Can’t Dance” by Genesis) to the bass driving it, all chunky and rubbery, and the dramatic string arpeggios in the middle-8. If there’s got to be a template for urgent, carnivorous Friday night anthems, let this be the one — and keep it in context.

Leonel Manzanares de la Rosa on “You” [7.00]

The Velvet Rope carries a strong and fascinating legacy; It is rightly praised as a predecessor to both mainstream R&B’s exploration of the intimate (the body) and the spiritual (the soul) in the continuing decades, and to the experimental scope and atmospherics later adopted by today’s so-called “Alt-R&B,” and this extraordinary mixture of elements is never more efficient than in the album’s third track “You.” The song is, first and foremost, a triumph of production genius. Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis’s use of space, and the dynamic at play between the then-cutting-edge electronica ingredients and neo-soul’s earnestness and sensual themes, should itself be a case study for aspiring producers, but it’s the way Janet’s vocals are performed and filtered through the track that take the song to unsuspected levels of greatness. There is something in the breathy, low-pitched verses that exudes unadulterated eroticism, and when the post-chorus harmonies kick in where things really become ecstatic. In several interviews, Janet herself defined this album as “baby-making music”, and I can safely bet that “You” is the song she was thinking about. And its echoes still reverberate today, not only in the sound of R&B to come, but in the fact that thousands of people were conceived to this very beat.

Edward Okulicz on “Free Xone” [6.83]

I remember it only vaguely; it was 1995, and for drama class we had to do a performance based on a social theme using a combination of media and methods. I was in a group with a big Janet fan, who decided to use her music as the basis of a combination spoken-word, mime and dance performance on racism. I only understanding the themes in the abstract because I was young, sheltered, and white. I knew racism was a thing I didn’t like, but it wasn’t an existential threat to me. Two years later, on “Free Xone,” Janet would speak directly to me and tell me of a bleak present with the promise of a better future.  Janet told it like it was, and still is for many: if you are gay, despite the fact that love is love, a lot of people are going to hate you or at least be uncomfortable around you. Homophobia isn’t just violence or hostility, it can be any kind of social rejection, and it can happen anywhere, as it does in the anecdote in the first part of the song, where a pleasant conversation with a person sitting next to you on an airplane sours because of it.

Janet Jackson is a dancer, but she didn’t dance around anything if she didn’t have to. She leaned into her status as a gay icon out of love, not necessity. But she made her social justice songs out of both love and necessity. Hating people is so not mellow. Love and sex are never wrong. Janet Jackson has never resiled from that belief, and never shied away from putting it in song. I’d grown up listening to Janet Jackson, but I’d never thought of her as an ally for myself, and it was intensely comforting to hear that she was on my side when nobody else seemed to be (Meshell Ndegeocello’s “Leviticus Faggot” the previous year had more or less convinced me I’d die in the closet).

In 2019, her funk here sounds a little dinky, the transitions between the soft groove and the raucous party bounce are kind of awkward, and the weird song structure sounds like it was cut and pasted together, but it’s a collage of compelling pieces. It got quite a lot of play on the alternative youth station here, the one whose listeners were at the time generally terrified of a) pop superstars, b) Black artists, and c) dancing. Someone thought the kids needed to hear this, and they were right. “Free Xone” helped my nascent consciousness come to grips with earlier songs that I’d just considered a good time before. Its story is less common in the Western world, now, but it’s still true as history for some, and as present for others.

Leonel Manzanares de la Rosa on “Tonight’s the Night” [4.50]

I’m a sucker for good covers; we usually tend to give songwriting, the cult of the inspired author, and the concept of originality a certain mystique that grossly overshadows the importance of skilful creative interpretation and re-invention. But many of our most important singers are essentially covers artists — Joe Cocker, Tom Jones, Bettye Lavette, a huge number of blues and jazz singers, most of the 50s-60s Greenwich Village folk scene — because of course we need these musicians to give these tunes another dimension, whether stylistic, generational, or purely emotional. Also, a song’s perspective can change dramatically because of who is singing.  “Tonight’s The Night” works with Rod’s gravelly, rugged voice, and, although it can sound a bit creepy by today’s standards, the arrangements carry it beautifully, but in Janet’s sexually adventurous, musically exuberant The Velvet Rope, it acquires a new dimension, a far more interesting one, might I add. From Janet’s view, and the brilliant decision of not changing genders in the lyrics, her version alludes to bisexuality in a way that makes complete sense within’ the album’s core subject matters, and works wonders within’ its production philosophy. Stewart later presented his live renditions of the song by saying “This is an original by Janet Jackson”. No one will refute that. It’s her song now.

Alex Clifton on “All For You” [6.86]

“All For You” is the first Friday night you go out with your new college friends and that utter sense of freedom where you realize the night is yours without a curfew. It’s sparkling fairy lights in the background, a disco ball overhead, at a roller rink or at a club with a fancy light-up dancefloor, maybe a stolen swig of rum on your tongue. It’s the moment you see someone new and your heart falls into your stomach with no prior warning, and you suddenly know you’ll do anything to talk to them. You simply have to; it’s an animal urge, chemicals and hormones whizzing through you and making it hard to walk because you’re giddy. Maybe you’re braver than I am and you go talk to the person who’s snagged your attention, but maybe you hang back with your friends and pretend you’re not watching out for your crush while also dancing stupidly with your new friends. There’s a pure exhilaration in this song that many have tried to emulate but few match the ease with which Janet performs. She’s flirty and sexy like no other, but “All For You” also makes you, the listener, feel flirty and sexy too — something about it worms its way into you and becomes the shot of confidence you need. Lots of people can write songs about dancing at the club, but Janet turns it into a night you’ll remember for the rest of your life.

Jibril Yassin on “Someone to Call My Lover” [7.00]

Does falling in love always feel the same every time? It’s one thing to keep pushing on in life but what’s striking about “Someone to Call My Lover” is how infectious Janet’s optimism is. Built on an Erik Satie riff by way of the band America, Janet recast herself as a woman excited to love again. Let it be on the record – long-term relationships are fucking terrifying. Moving on from the dissolution of a marriage is disorienting and the songs that use Janet’s divorce as inspiration on All For You share a tentative yet firm belief in renewal.

She uses “maybe” on “Someone to Call My Lover” the way one throws out a “lol” after shooting their shot – you don’t even have time to catch it amid her grocery store list of wishes for her future love. “Someone to Call My Lover” hits all the right places thanks to the careful and immaculate production but it’s Janet’s sincerity that marks it as her best twee performance.

Will Adams on “Son Of A Gun” [5.20]

Given All For You’s post-divorce setting, it was only appropriate that after the aural sunbeam of the title track and giddy optimism of “Someone to Call My Lover,” Janet would do a 180 and proceed to rip him a new one. The opening taunts — “Ha-ha, hoo-hoo, thought you’d get the money too” — against the throbbing kick bass set the scene, but the true genius of “Son of a Gun” comes from its sampling and modernization of ultimate kiss-off song “You’re So Vain.” The classic bass riff, once soft in Carly Simon’s original, is now razor-sharp. The cavernous drum beats sound like you’re trapped in an underground dungeon. All the while, Janet mutters burn after burn right into your ear (“I’d rather keep the trash and throw you out”) before Simon launches into the “I betcha think this song is about you” refrain, sounding like a Greek chorus confirming Jackson’s digs. The album version carries on until the six-minute mark, with Carly Simon waxing poetic about clouds in her coffee and apricot scarves in an extended outro. The video version wisely excises this in favor of guest verses from Missy Elliott, whose reliably grinning performance shoves the knife in deeper. In both versions, however, Janet’s menace is preserved. Forming a trinity with All For You’s preceding two singles, “Son of a Gun” showed just how versatile Jackson is, and how adept she is at encapsulating the messy, complex emotions of an ended relationship.

Will Adams on “All Nite (Don’t Stop)” [6.17]

I had been looking away from the television when it happened. By the time I’d heard the gasps from my parents and I glanced up at the screen, the cameras had cut to an aerial shot of the Reliant Stadium in Houston, where the 2004 Super Bowl was taking place. My 11 year old brain couldn’t process exactly what happened from my parents’ concerned murmurs, and having completely missed the incident (there was no YouTube back then, see), it would take years for me to understand the impact that the “wardrobe malfunction” had on culture and Jackson’s career. The greater impact was to be expected — the six-figure FCC fine on CBS (later dismissed by the Supreme Court) and conservative handwringing about the moral decline of the country — but Jackson in particular suffered unduly. There was the blacklist, ordered by Les Moonves, which kept her off CBS, MTV and Infinity Broadcasting. Jackson’s appearance at that year’s Grammy Awards was canceled. Late-night talk show hosts turned it into monologue fodder, usually grossly and usually at her expense. The controversy hampered her album cycles well into the Discipline era. Meanwhile, Justin Timberlake remained entirely unaffected. His career would skyrocket two years later with the release of FutureSex/LoveSounds; he became a Saturday Night Live darling; he performed solo at the Super Bowl’s halftime show in 2018. This alone puts Damita Jo and “All Nite (Don’t Stop)” in a more sympathetic light, but even then, pop radio missed out on a truly brilliant song here. Janet acts as the Dance Commander, taking the opening guitar lick from Herbie Hancock’s “Hang Up Your Hang Ups” and turning it into a lasso with which she throws you onto the dancefloor. The percussion percolates, each sound placed perfectly to create an undeniable groove. Because of the blacklist, it didn’t even break the Hot 100, and the video was also subject to its own asinine controversy — the few video channels that managed to avoid the blacklist edited out the sexual content, including a scene were two female dancers kiss. Even fifteen years later, it feels like we’re still reckoning with how Jackson was treated in the aftermath. But there’s an inspiring resilience in “All Nite (Don’t Stop)” reflected in the smile she bears on the Damita Jo cover; its unabashed sexuality in the face of all the backlash makes it an even better listen today.

Kat Stevens on “Strawberry Bounce” [7.17]

I like Janet best when she takes risks, whether that be controversial subject matter, a new image or a change of musical direction. Old faithfuls Jam & Lewis are still a solid presence on Damita Jo, but on “Strawberry Bounce” we see Janet plumping for a left field choice in the then-unknown Kanye West. The result is an intriguing Ryvita, all brittle handclaps and feathery faux-ingenue whispering, on the verge of crumbling into nothing. It’s so light that there’s no bassline, just a queasy glockenspiel tinkle and Janet’s butter-wouldn’t-melt sing-song. I keep wondering to myself: why have Janet and Kanye chosen to present a song about working a shift at a strip club in the style of an Aptimil Follow-On Milk advert? Is it a subtle reminder that sexy times may eventually lead to night feeds and dirty nappies? It doesn’t help that instead of a proper beat, we have Jay-Z muttering ‘BOUNCE!’ as if he’s grumpily shooing a dog off his lawn. It’s confusing and uncomfortable, yet compelling and convincing, and I’m still listening. The risk has paid off.

Will Adams on “Rock With U” [5.83]

“Just Dance” is often thought of as ground zero for the rise of dancepop and eventually EDM in the US, but it had been brewing for over a year before the Lady Gaga song topped the Hot 100 in early 2009. From 2007 onward, the increased interest in incorporating elements of disco via four-on-the-floor beats and faster tempos created some indelible hybrids, particularly in the R&B world: “Don’t Stop the Music”; “Forever”; “Closer”; “Spotlight”; and “Rock With U.” While most of those songs stuck to traditional verse-chorus pop structure, “Rock With U” proves that sometimes simplicity is best: A house arrangement of arpeggios and basic rhythms. A single verse, repeated three times and interspersed with wordless vocalizing with nearly no variation, save for Janet’s whispers. All this, combined with the glorious one-shot video, creates a hypnotic effect, like the song will go on forever. On a recent Song Exploder episode about “Honey,” Robyn said of dance music: “It’s about putting you in a place where you’re in your body dancing without thinking about when it’s gonna end. It’s more about the moment and how it makes you feel.” This is the heart of “Rock With U”: an invitation to get lost in the music, forget about the outside world, and just rock.

Maxwell Cavaseno on “So Much Betta” [5.67]

The beginning of the 2010s was way too challenging in retrospect and I regret every minute of it. “So Much Betta” was a song I first heard in a mix by Robin Carolan, now best known for founding and guiding Tri-Angle Records, but for a brief period operated a side-blog called “SO BONES” where he’d pontificate about random gems of pop, R&B and rap but in a way that made records feel gross and sinister. Suddenly Cassie’s “My House” was a ghost story, Vanessa Hudgens’s “Don’t Talk” would be compared to Takashi Miike’s Audition, and so on. In retrospect I think of the Capital P Pop songs of the decade that I’ve responded to enthusiastically like “TT,” “Cheyenne,” “Strangers,” “Somebody Else,” “Backseat,” “Lac Troi” or the dozens of others there is at least usually a despair or gloom I can at minimum project onto the record even where it might not be obvious. And that comes from hearing Janet Jackson whisper over a record that sounded like some toxic goo from out of the dregs of the Rinse.FM swamps I’d often thought to be “the coolest” sounds, before cutting through over glistening synths that felt like a phantom of not Janet per se but her brother’s past. It was a song that felt v. strange in 2010 well after MJ had died with the listless echo of the Pop Monarch feeling less like a dream-like invocation and more like a degraded copy of a copy in its grotesquery. Enough can be said about how cool and timeless and bright and powerful Janet at her best can feel. But it deserves an acknowledgement that she could also make a song that was so evocative in all the most unpleasant of ways.

William John on “Unbreakable” [6.67]

“Unbreakable” as an adjective is applicable to those rare, unending, strong relationships between people, whether they be romantic, platonic, familial, or, as has been intimated in relation to her song of the same name, between performer and audience. But it’s also a word that can be used to describe oneself, and one’s ability to traverse adversity with stoicism. The first song on Jackson’s most recent album doesn’t sound defiant – more “stroll to the supermarket on a warm summer’s evening” than an escapade to Rhythm Nation. But courage manifests in different ways. Jackson’s breezy delivery, which takes on an ecstatic form in the song’s chorus, is indicative of her self-assurance at her status; she’s embracing the languor allowed to her as a legend. She may have been removed of her clothes in front of the whole world a decade prior; she may have spent her whole life in the shadow of her infamous relative – but she hasn’t faltered. She’s still here. As she greets her listeners in her inviting whisper at the song’s conclusion, she notes that it’s “been a while” since her last missive, and that there is “lots to talk about”. But her listeners aren’t impatient; there’s always time for Janet. Her story has always been one of control, of poise, of excellence. Long may it continue.

Pedro Joao Santos on “Dream Maker/Euphoria” [5.17]

When I get to delve deep into a legend, as with Janet, I tend to hit the ground running and have them release a new, great album a few months later. Not having heard 20 Y.O. and Discipline, I was shielded from the Janet-isms from the ’00s and viewed Unbreakable as a proper continuation to her legacy, instead of the grand comeback it actually was — hackneyed artwork, halted tour and all. Janet got the upper hand, finding her reunited with Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis, in a steadfast gaze in a steadfast gaze over airtight, pensive and giddy R&B. An exemplary return to form, incidentally devoid of all the raunch, bathroom breaks and Kioko.

One older Janet-ism survived in a marginal capacity: the penchant for interludes, continued here in only two moments (aside from endearing sneezes and spoken-word outros): one was the bizarre preview for a Target-exclusive full track; the other was “Dream Maker/Euphoria”. A precise inflection point scribed upon the passage from “side 1” to “2” — even if things threaten to get a bit pedestrian and humdrum in the last half. The track itself is a dual mood, yet a continual trek through the glow of a renaissance. A seemingly old groove recalling the Jackson 5 gets dusted from the vaults for the first part. That’s ear candy for ages in itself, a web of vox so intensely feverish and melodically preternatural. It gets looped tantalisingly, then it transcends onto the next level. Full-on rapid eye movement: keyboards and ambience make up the sound of eyelids opening to meet a purple, unreal sky — suspended between worlds, a dream dimension of utopia and the reality where those ideas must coalesce. “I guess the dreamer must be awake,” Janet concludes after envisioning a “perfect place” exempt from “jealousy, abuse or hate,” “war, hunger or hate.”

Janet’s  four peak-era albums alone prove she’s been excelling at world-building where and when the world was far from ready. In “Dream Maker/Euphoria,” it isn’t so much the stark condemnations of Rhythm Nation 1814, but its more hopeful fantasies, articulated through the confident tone of Control, set to the type of innovative musical reverie The Velvet Rope predated, softened through janet.’s sensuous filter. But more than the touchpoints of yesteryear, the essence of “Dream Maker/Euphoria” lives in its manifestation of the future: how tangible and expansive it might just become, if given a chance.

[betterorbetter]

Nowhere is the dictum "every history is a history of the present" more true than in the case of the French Revolution: its historiographic reception always closely mirrored the twists and turns of political struggles. The identifying mark of all kinds of conservatives is its flat rejection: the French Revolution was a catastrophe from its very beginning, the product of the godless modern mind, it is to be interpreted as God's punishment for the humanity's wicked ways, so its traces should be undone as thoroughly as possible. The typical liberal attitude is a differentiated one: its formula is "1789 without 1793." In short, what the sensitive liberals want is a decaffeinated revolution, a revolution which doesn't smell of a revolution. Francois Furet and others thus try to deprive the French Revolution of its status as the founding event of modern democracy, relegating it to a historical anomaly: there was a historical necessity to assert the modern principles of personal freedom, etc., but, as the English example demonstrates, the same could have been much more efficiently achieved in a more peaceful way... Radicals are, on the contrary, possessed by what Alain Badiou called the "passion of the Real": if you say A - equality, human rights and freedoms - you should not shirk from its consequences and gather the courage to say B - the terror needed to really defend and assert the A. [1] However, it is all too easy to say that today's Left should simply continue along this path. Something, some kind of historical cut, effectively took place in 1990: everyone, today's "radical Left" included, is somehow ashamed of the Jacobin legacy of revolutionary terror with its state-centralized character, so that the commonly accepted motto is that the Left, if it is to regain political efficiency, should thoroughly reinvent itself, finally abandoning the so-called "Jacobin paradigm." In our post-modern era of "emerging properties," chaotic interaction of multiple subjectivities, of free interaction instead of centralized hierarchy, of a multitude of opinions instead of one Truth, the Jacobin dictatorship is fundamentally "not for our taste" (free the term "taste" should be given all its historical weight, as the name for a basic ideological disposition). Can one imagine something more foreign to our universe of the freedom of opinions, of market competition, of nomadic pluralist interaction, etc., than Robespierre's politics of Truth (with a capital T, of course), whose proclaimed goal is "to return the destiny of liberty into the hands of the truth"? Such a Truth can only be enforced in a terrorist way: If the mainspring of popular government in peacetime is virtue, amid revolution it is at the same time virtue and terror: virtue, without which terror is fatal; terror, without which virtue is impotent. Terror is nothing but prompt, severe, inflexible justice; it is therefore an emanation of virtue. It is less a special principle than a consequence of the general principle of democracy applied to our country's most pressing needs. This Robespierre's line of argumentation reaches its climax in the paradoxical identification of the opposites: revolutionary terror "sublates" the opposition between punishment and clemency - the just and severe punishment of the enemies IS the highest form of clemency, so that, in it, rigor and charity coincide: To punish the oppressors of humanity is clemency; to pardon them is barbarity. The rigor of tyrants has only rigor for a principle; the rigor of the republican government comes from charity. What, then, should those who remain faithful to the legacy of the radical Left do with all these? Two things, at least. First, the terrorist past has to be accepted as OURS, even - or precisely because - it is critically rejected. The only alternative to the half-hearted defensive position of feeling guilty in front of our liberal or Rightist critics is: we have to do the critical job better than our opponents. This, however, is not the entire story: one should also not allow our opponents to determine the field and topic of the struggle. What this means is that the ruthless self-critique should go hand in hand with a fearless admission of what, to paraphrase Marx's judgment on Hegel's dialectics, one is tempted to call the "rational kernel" of the Jacobin Terror: "Materialist dialectics assumes, without particular joy, that, till now, no political subject was able to arrive at the eternity of the truth it was deploying without moments of terror. Since, as Saint-Just asked: "What do those who want neither Virtue nor Terror want?" His answer is well-known: they want corruption - another name for the subject's defeat. [2] Or, as Saint-Just put it succinctly: "That which produces the general good is always terrible." [3] These words should not be interpreted as a warning against the temptation to impose violently the general good onto a society, but, on the contrary, as a bitter truth to be fully endorsed. - The further crucial point to bear in mind is that, for Robespierre, revolutionary terror is the very opposite of war: Robespierre was a pacifist, not out of hypocrisy or humanitarian sensitivity, but because he was well aware that war among nations as a rule serves as the means to obfuscate revolutionary struggle within each nation. Robespierre's speech "On war" is of special importance today: it shows him as a true pacifist who ruthlessly denounces the patriotic call to war, even if the war is formulated as the defense of the Revolution, as the attempt of those who want "revolution without revolution" to divert the radicalization of the revolutionary process. His stance is thus the exact opposite of those who need war to militarize social life and take dictatorial control over it. [4] Which is why Robespierre also denounced the temptation to export revolution to other countries, forcefully "liberating" them: "The French are not afflicted with a mania for rendering any nation happy and free against its will. All the kings could have vegetated or died unpunished on their blood-spattered thrones, if they had been able to respect the French people's independence." - Zizek