v a l l e j o n o c t u r n o

Understanding

Can an american understand a Korean?  Really absurd question.

Can an amerivan understand a Dominican? why

Can an american understand a Brasilian? rhythmless

Can an american understand a Mexican? illigal

Can an american understand a Dog? best friend

Can an american understand a war criminal? presidential award

Best War Ever

John Stauber on You Tube

Cable blackout

During this last week our U.S. media has performed admirably monopolizing all air time with an idiotic focus on a ten year old crime featuring a rich midwest family and a young girl. A much more gruesome crime, involving the rape and murder of a 14 year old girl and her family was on the news briefly but even though we know who may have commited the crime, people working for us, it seems there is little interest among our own. Juan Cole has an excellent write-up on the reasons for this paradox:

That is frankly because the victim was not a blonde, blue-eyed American, but a black-eyed, brunette Iraqi. Both victims were pretty little girls. Both were killed by sick predators. But whereas endless speculation about the Ramsey case, to the exclusion of important real news stories, is thought incumbent in cabalnewsland, Abeer al-Janabi's death is not treated obsessively in the same way. In the hyperlinked story above, CNN even calls the little girl a "woman" at first mention, because the US military indictment did so. Only later in the article is it revealed that she was a little girl. The very pedophiliac nature of the crime is more or less overed up in the case of al-Janabi, even as looped video of Ramsay as too grown up is endlessly inflicted on us.

The message US cable news is sending by this privileging of some such stories over others of a similar nature is that some lives are worth more than others, and some people are "us" whereas other people are "Other" and therefore lesser. Indeed, it is precisely this subtle message sent by American media that authorized so much taking of innocent Iraqi life in the first place. British officers have repeatedly complained that too many of those serving in the US military in Iraq view Iraqis as subhuman (one used the term Untermeschen). Where did they get that idea?

Lisbon on Sunday

Vallejo Nocturno 2006 - Sunday democracy

On the day we arrive at 7:30am, we are told by our taxi driver that the party in power will be voted out. They have done nothing during the last 4 years. He believes that Spain is quickly encroaching on Portugal and controlling its economy.

Peter Watkins

Peter Watkins' latest statement on the media, from Media Statement:

Stated simply, the thesis offered by many popular culture scholars is that TV is a positive and democratic source of communication due to the shared language and experience that ‘ordinary' people can enjoy through such widely viewed ‘populist' programmes as soap-operas, game shows, police series, as well as via identification with the characters and issues involved.  

But the premise that popular culture is a truly “democratic” force in society is very suspect, even if only because its PROCESS and FORM are in themselves the complete antithesis of a truly democratic experience. 

The very process of receiving popular culture messages from the MAVM is experienced and known to most people only as coming from within, and entirely framed by, the present hierarchical relationship of the media towards the public - by which I refer not only to the kind of images that appear on the screen but also to the entire social and political interface between the media and its audience. Much of this hierarchical relationship is an invisible social process which constantly surrounds us. 

The invisible framing of this process - and what we subconsciously feel about it - is like a supplementary hidden code, deeply colouring the way we receive all messages from the MAVM. (Part of the invisible hierarchy is the strict editorial control placed by the media on the issues they are prepared to raise with the public, and the members of the community they are prepared to address.) 

Furthermore, the seemingly up-front messages of the media are coded by yet another hidden, background frame - the rigid, hierarchical structure of the Monoform. This special language-form has not only had devastating social consequences, but its compulsory presence throughout nearly all audiovisual broadcasting and cinema production has prevented the emergence of alternative forms of media experience, process, or relationship for the public. 

As I describe here, the dominant forms of media education - the teaching of popular culture, and vocational media training - have largely succeeded in convincing several generations of students that the questions of media process and form and their relationship to ideology are not problems, indeed they are not even issues. One can enter most media classrooms today and find that these concepts are not even vaguely understood. Teachers do not mention them (which raises the question - do they know them in the first place?), and/or they ensure that media students are not exposed to alternative ideas and critical concepts. 

Part of the contemporary tragedy is that the audiovisual popular culture is taught, especially at the tertiary level, as a model to be achieved. Many academics appear obsessed with what they call the “aesthetic pleasures” of the media, and are (or have been) particularly fascinated with TV soap-operas, which have represented a considerable proportion of academic study and writing since the 1970s. 

Media academia devotes a great deal of time to explaining that soap-operas - popular culture in general - are positive, sharing experiences for the audience. Little attention has been given to the down-sides of popular culture, and there has been almost no attempt to critically evaluate its impact on society. 

One of the many devastating aspects of the mass audiovisual popular culture has been its effect of prioritizing the trivial for many people. It focuses on creating massive public interest and attention on the lives of fictional people (in soap-operas), and certain public figures and celebrities.

Twilight Zone

from Design Observer blog

From Design Observer:

Most of us cannot help but be fascinated by the notion of a human redesign, by that magical makeover cocktail — part cosmetic artistry, part surgical intervention — that results in the perfect re-do. Reality TV shows like Extreme Makeover and The Swan and the quasi-outrageous Nip/Tuck target precisely this amped-up fantasy world, feeding that part of the cultural imagination that says you can’t be too rich or too thin. Buried in this notion lies an implicit assumption that — like a cash windfall brought on by a winning lottery ticket — such improvements can’t help but be mirrored by an equally improved lifestyle. While we understand, in the absolute, that beauty can’t promise happiness, the utopian dream of having it all persists nonetheless.

Beauty is, of course, big business in the developed world, and physical improvements — by way of cosmetic surgery, for example — are expensive yet eminently achievable. Breasts can be lifted, eyebrows lowered, teeth whitened, hair darkened, noses straightened, tummies tucked, skin peeled, plucked, bleached, waxed, polished, shaved or bronzed.

For the truly fearless, of course, there’s always Botox.

But such interventions are negligible when weighed against a complete facial transplant — something which, up until recently, resided squarely in the Twilight Zone. While CNN reported on its technical feasability (and moral ambiguity) more than three years ago, it wasn't until recent reports of a controversial face transplant in France that serious questions have emerged: questions of psychological adjustment, emotional forbearance, medical ethics and more. It's spooky and it's scary, yet many critics speculate that, if successful, hard-core beauty seekers will want access to such procedures, in spite of the potential dangers — which include, among other things, tissue rejection and an elevated cancer risk.

Clarity of Thought

From Virtual Occoquan:

While Aristotle's work on logic, metaphysics, ethics, politics, and poetics had a profound influence on Western thought, many of his speculations about the natural world border on the absurd. Not only did Aristotle believe that the sun  orbits the earth and that objects fall at speeds in accordance with their      weights; he also suggested that women have fewer teeth than men and that a baby's sex is determined by the wind's direction at the time of its birth.

Nightmare Powers

In the UK, on the BBC, a revealing 3-part program that deals with some of the more frightening aspects of the war vs. Iraq is being replayed on that network. I was able to see parts of it last year on the Internet and it deals with some of those aspects of the war that no one here in the states is interested in understanding. The BBC has tried to air the program here in the states but, surprise...surprise, no interest. Here's what the BBC has to say about the series:

If one looks at the history of the Islamist movement and its ideas it is clear that its high point came in the late 80s when it seemed on the verge of success across the Muslim world.

But then in the 1990s Islamism failed dramatically in its attempts to create revolutions because the ideas failed to inspire the masses. They did not appeal to the majority of people.

The attacks on 11 September were not the expression of a confident and growing movement, they were acts of desperation by a small group frustrated by their failure which they blamed on the power of America. It is also important to realise that many within the Islamist movement were against this strategy. . .

The films were far less biased than the overwhelming majority of media reporting of the al Qaeda threat over the past three years.

Almost all of this reporting was based solely on unsubstantiated briefings from government and security sources.

As with politicians, the media also stumbled on a way of reasserting their authority because they could portray themselves as powerful figures who knew about the terrifying hidden world of "al-Qaeda".

In this way a fantasy became the received wisdom. Just because one is challenging the received wisdom on the basis of historical facts and journalistic investigation does not make one biased. . .

The use of fear in contemporary politics is not the result of a conspiracy, the politicians have stumbled on it. In a populist, consumerist age where they found their authority and legitimacy declining dramatically they have simply discovered in the "war on terror" a way of restoring their authority by promising to protect us from something that only they can see.