The Holograms are Symbolic

The other night I went to see Jem and the Holograms (starring a very talented former student—which created its own strange yet cool form of cognitive dissonance). There is something rather postmodern in the premise of the film itself, as it’s a revisionist remake of an eighties cartoon produced by several companies, one of them Hasbro, a toy company. Rushkoff discusses the revisionist impulse in his section on narrative collapse—in particular he identifies Pulp Fiction as a film which compresses imagery from various decades into a retro pastiche, and forces the audience to “give up its attachment to linear history and accept instead a vision of American culture as a compression of a multitude of eras, and those eras themselves being reducible to iconography as simple as a leather jacket or a dance step” (Rushkoff 33). Of course Pulp Fiction also subverts the traditional linear narrative by presenting events out of order. In this way, Pulp Fiction is a post-narrative story on several levels.

Jem, in contrast, is presented in a linear fashion: the only departures are the framing device that bookends the film, and flashbacks presented as home movies. However, like Pulp Fiction, Jem conflates two eras: the late eighties and right now. Like all reboots, Jem is charged with preserving some of the source material—enough so that the original fan base will recognize the story they remember. In this case the filmmakers borrowed from the Tarantino playbook and used eighties signifiers in the form of clothes—now costumes for the band members.


Some critics took issue with how little of the original was preserved, which is a common issue with revision stories. Like so many modern revisions—this is not just a remake it’s a reboot—a notion that in and of itself is quite modern. The word itself is bound up with the digital age, of course, but more than that, the concept of a reboot means that characters and situations from the past are brought into the now. What was once then is now part of the present: Star Trek is now, Batman is now—we have a new origin story of an old hero, one that often wipes out many elements of the original or previous incarnation. In the case of Star Trek, director J.J. Abrams quite literally overwrote more than forty years of franchise history with a time travel device. He kept what worked for him, now, and jettisoned the rest.



     In the case of Jem, the now aspect of the reboot phenomenon is particularly interesting as the film is essentially about the presentist generation’s mania for documenting their lives online. The aforementioned flashbacks are presented as found footage from a video camera. The framing device is the main character filming an online confession that is later (spoiler alert) overwritten by a choice to delete the footage and pursue a different course of action—one that presumably, in the world of this film, will be documented by someone’s phone camera. 

Complicating the narrative further, the film is also intercut with YouTube videos. For example, as main character Jerrica engages in an online contract negotiation with her future producer, a clip of two dueling drummers is shown. As a refugee from the days before narrative collapse, I found myself attempting to make connections between the situations and people in the video and the situations and people in the story I was watching. I tried to make the drummers into characters, but on some level I realized that they were not, they were signifiers, like the icons mashed up by Tarantino in Pulp Fiction. The young Youtubers who showed up throughout the film were in a way the avatars for the audience. In this version, Jerrica is discovered via viral home video. The writers even make this claim concrete near the end of the film when Jerrica tells a crowd of fans that everyone is Jem, when they have something to say and they use a disguise and a camera to say it. Of course, recorded reality is not real life; the camera itself is a distancing device, and we can be anyone at all online. The issue of online identity versus “real life” is not a simple one. 




Overall, the film is in many ways a postmodern, prenstist narrative. As Rushkoff states, in our modern stories, “Characters must learn how their universes work. Narrativity is replaced by something more like putting together a puzzle…” (37). Like many modern films and shows in the post narrative-collapse era, the hero’s world is complicated—in the case of reboots by the layering of previous incarnations and versions, built-in audience expectations. In the case of all postmodern fiction, by the writer’s penchant to experiment with form (in Jem’s case, the interstitial interruptions by online videos). Underneath all of these layers, this film, and many others, still follows a very familiar narrative arc, the main character leaving home and figuring out her identity.  Just as the question of “is the online me the real me?” is a complex one, so is the question of traditional narrative vs. post narrative. This will all likely be complicated further when our devices become a literal part of us (à la The Matrix…or Feed!)

Rushkoff, Douglass. Present Shock: When Everything Happens Now. New York: Penguin, 2013. Nook.

Narrative Collapse and Present Shock

For linear, traditional storytelling to work, according to Rushkoff, the audience must be a captive one (25). Today our entertainment is interactive. “Perhaps more than any postmodern idea or media educator, the remote control changed the way we related to television” (Rushkoff 26) and “Deconstructed in this fashion, television loses its ability to tell stories over time. It's as if the linear narrative structure had been so misused and abused by television’s incompetent or manipulative storytellers that it simply stopped working, particularly on younger people who were raised in the more interactive media environment and equipped with defensive technologies. And so the content of television, and the greater popular culture it leads, adapted to the new situation” (Rushkoff 25).

Rushkoff’s observations will continue to resonate in this course in our second semester as we examine the move from modernism to postmodernism, and read and evaluate works of experimental fiction. Postmodern stories in many ways represent a departure from traditional linear storytelling. Rushkoff cites examples such as The Simpsons and Mystery Science Theater 3000. Identify an example of a show, movie, web series, etc. which has abandoned the traditional narrative structure. Discuss the ways in which this work echoes both Rushkoff’s ideas and reflect our presentist cultural ethos.

Specs: 650 word minimum. Use at least two quotes from Present Shock and cite. Due Wednesday 10/28 11:00 am. 

Respond to at least one class member by 10/29 11:00 am. 

Moveable Word Feast

For your reaction paper/post to Hemingway's A Moveable Feast, consider Hemingway's use of language to share his stories. How would you characterize his writing style--and what specific elements of the work most stand out to you?

Consider as well Hemingway's treatment of time. Is the work an example of form following content?

Finally, why did we read this work as a part our study of AP Language? Does the text present any narrative problems to solve? What is the genre and why?

Word count: 300 words minimum

Be sure to include at least one (but feel free to use more) quote from the book and cite. 

The End of Education?

"Public education does not serve a public. It creates a public. And in creating the right kind of public, the schools contribute toward strengthening the spiritual basis of the American Creed. That is how Jefferson understood it, how Horace Mann understood it, how John Dewey understood it, and in fact, there is no other way to understand it. The question is not, Does or doesn't public schooling create a public? The question is, What kind of public does it create? A conglomerate of self-indulgent consumers? Angry, soulless, directionless masses? Indifferent, confused citizens? Or a public imbued with confidence, a sense of purpose, a respect for learning, and tolerance? The answer to this question has nothing whatever to do with computers, with testing, with teacher accountability, with class size, and with the other details of managing schools. The right answer depends on two things, and two things alone: the existence of shared narratives and the capacity of such narratives to provide an inspired reason for schooling" (Postman, The End of Education).

What kind of public do schools in the twenty-first century create? Keeping in mind that you are private school students (though some of you have attended public school), make your own observation about the type of citizenry our modern schools aim to create...and actually do create. 

You might think about issues such as current events and social activism, as well as the ways school may have changed since 1995 when Postman wrote this book. 

Minimum word count: 300 words and include text support from Postman (you may include text evidence from other sources in addition if you wish). 
Post at least one reply to a class member (by Thursday 10/1). 

*Update: this did not post during my lunch period when I tried to post it, so the first post is not due until Wednesday, 9/30.

British Empiricism and Jane Austen!

(Scroll down for the prompt-post, but I thought a sample response might be helpful too!) 

        Pride and Prejudice is one of my favorite books (and I know for a fact the majority of this class has read it…or at least watched the BBC miniseries), so I’ll select that book. I’ll approach the work and Austen’s work in general with an empirical mindset, and focus on David Hume.

         Hume, as you now know from your study of Sophie’s World, was a British empiricist who lived in the early eighteenth century, making him both a compatriot of Jane Austen, and a thinker whose writing would have been available in her time, as Austen lived in the late eighteenth century.

         Gaarder points out that Hume wanted to “clean up all the wooly thought concepts and thought constructions” and focus on daily experiences  and everyday life” (Gaarder 268).  Austen’s critics often note that her work is too focused on the minutia of daily life. None of her six novels take us far from the small corner of England in which she lived. None, Pride and Prejudice included, deal with abstract ideals or the types of lofty questions that philosophers often ask. The only time the outside world even intrudes on the hermetic, day-to-day life of her landed gentry characters it’s for brief mentions of the conflict with Napoleon—and even then these notes are only to explain why characters connected to the military are or are not present.

        

         Hume’s ideas about the unalterable ego remind me of the protagonist of P&P, Elizabeth Bennet. Her most defining characteristic is her refusal to fall in line with her society’s rules. If she had done so, she would have married Mr. Collins. Instead, Elizabeth turns down not only Collins but also the incredibly rich Mr. Darcy, all because she wants to marry for love.

         This lack of attention to the practical may seem on the surface to be in contravention to Hume’s ideals. But if one considers Hume’s ideas about the importance of experience and preconceived opinions, it’s clear that Elizabeth would have approved of Hume’s worldview. Gaarder states that Hume’s ideas lead us to one of the most distinguishing virtues of the philosopher: “The child perceives the world as it is, without putting more into things than he experiences” (276) Elizabeth, like an uncorrupted child, bases her firm and repeated refusal of the oily Mr. Collins on her own experience. She does not think highly of him in any regard. She does not consider the societal expectations or pressures which would have compelled her to say yes and marry him.

         It is this quiet rebellion which makes the work so beloved to (some) modern readers. Had Elizabeth not acted in accord with her own understanding of a Hume-ian “natural law,” she would be repugnant to today’s readers. On a larger scale these little domestic stories of Austen’s, did they not contain such iconoclastic characters and their small revolutions, would lack universality or at least staying power.

         In contrast to Elizabeth in the novel stands her foil, Charlotte Lucas, who makes the opposite choice, and acts (in securing Mr. Collins’s sweaty hand in marriage) in complete accordance with her ingrained, adult, view of the world. She has been corrupted and she makes a fully mercenary choice. Charlotte does not obey her own “natural law” which must surely include some degree of revulsion at the thought of marrying this man. Like Hume stated, because we act based on what we see and experience (and what people tell us to do) we “can easily come to the wrong conclusions” (Gaarder 277).

Work Cited

Gaarder, Jostein. Sophie's World. New York: Berkely Books, 1994. Print. 

The wrong conclusion

Cogito ergo sum

“The most subversive people are those who ask questions.”

-Jostein Gaarder, Sophie's World


  

For our reaction paper (post!) on Sophie’s World, we’ll be operating at the very top of the pyramid of learning—synthesis. We’ll be making connections between this book and the ideas therein and some of the other texts we’ve been studying.

First, select a philosopher. Or, select a text you wish to write about and then select a philosopher whose ideas you believe would be interesting as applied to a critical examination of that work (the latter selection method is likely easier and faster!)

Once you’ve selected your philosopher and your work, I would suggest you frame at least three questions that your philosopher might ask regarding the work. Wrestle with these questions in your reaction paper, keeping in mind as always that we want to follow a claim with support in the form of text evidence. If generating questions is not working for you, simply read the chapter on your chosen philosopher and look for connections to your chosen novel!

You are welcome to write about any book you have been assigned to read at LMP (should you find the few books we’ve read so far in Lang too constrictive a list).

Tech specs: Minimum of 250 words and at least one quote from a text. As always, include in-text citation and a reference list at the end.

No need to bring in a hard copy this time (please disregard that part of the notice on the week’s lesson plans).

Happy philosophizing!