Monday, 11 July 2022

Post-mechanical (1)

 Going back to M5, Conway's quote on the factual that becomes unreal and the doom (of modernity) is pertinent. The 'factual' displaces desires into a distorted reality of number and illusion (the compulsive ego.)

This neglect of desire and fecundity has the effect of creating a neutral zone, the equivalent of the neutral zone of sex (Godard, Weekend, Goodbye to Language.)

Quite a good sign of the modern illusion is the use of words. Women are over-sensitised. Sheryl Crowe launched a fairly typical complaint into her career that she was seen as a "bitch" rather than ambitious. 

The casual attitude to speech that one finds in Blaxploitation films of the 70s (prev) has evaporated. Terms of abuse in these films are used routinely in that it is a street vibe of relationships. Bitch could easily denote a woman who is sexy and ambitious, so could be taken as a type of stereotype (of sexy women, natch.)

CC Beck (prev) made the point in TCJ that, 'The liberals want more stereotypes, not less. They want everyone to be the same.' Taking that a bit further, the neutralising of sex and race (through censorship of words) also neutralises desire (body, sweat, obscenity.)

To abuse someone verbally can also be a subtle turn-on. Frank Zappa has a song called Jewish Princess delineating all the attractions of a hairy Yemenite hole. Hair, the 1968 musical (not the fukwit film) has a song called Colored Spade that lists outmoded slang terms like jungle bunny, little black sambo. The most extreme is R Crumb, who is heavily attracted to fleshy protruberances of southern black women. 

Censorship of words is an easy way to censor thoughts and to make things similar which may in fact be different. Differences have the affinity of psychic power (gospel.)

Psychic power can be censored and verbal abuse tidied up in the name of sameness. But I think one should be aware that words are just words, and a casual attitude to their use is people power versus the power of the state to indoctrinate.

This comes out very strongly in the aforementioned Blaxploitation films. The Pam Grier films are pretty damn sexy. In Foxy Brown, the initial scenes are of a police informer undergoing plastic surgery, a friend of Foxy's. She doesn't recognise him but, as he notes, his vital attributes are unchanged. "I noticed!" she ejaculates.

Jokes aside, censorship of words dilutes desires and personal reaction, while expressive slangy street vibe does the opposite. The story revolves round the black brothers in a community who form an anti-pusher committee and take the law into their own hands. The black dude they poleaxe is the "bad nigger" who won't be back in their neighbourhood, "dig it?" "Right on, brother", agrees the police informer.

Expressive words are thoughts, and censorship denies the desire for power in social control. Body sweat, obscenity, physical force, stereotypical abuse. If one can't abuse a bad scene, how does one deal with it? (There's an old Pamela Stevenson gag where she's playing a psychotherapist who's responding to a bigoted oaf saying the only way to deal with hooligans is to cut off their goolies. She goes into a spiel, then decides "cut off their goolies" is the best option. Oddly, that's the end to this film.)

Today's world is under censorship in words that censor thought and the desire for social control. All that is delegated to the state and the dogma of sameness (psychic weakness), more or less exemplified by social media. 

Blood, sweat, physical abuse (fighting). We are ruled by heads, not physical reality. Even on the sexual front, is there any sweat in Fleabag or the Shades movies? On the social front, blood is sometimes called for, and the words of the state are poison to the people. (The Hong Kong protesters, to be honest, had to shut up Carrie Leung's toxic verbosity any which way, and the situation now is clearly highly verbal and not atall physical.)

The neutralising of words is the neutralising of meaning. Meaningless acts seem to be on the rise, whether it's Japan or USA. It's not just a case of the democratic state, but the rude boys of the populace and the desires that imply force and fighting in the streets.