The problem lays a floral wreath at the grave of the problem

[imomus]

This morning I put up a poem-scream about the Virginia Tech shootings -- then deleted it. It was a concrete poem-scream which morphed from "bang" to "ban g" to "ban gu" to "ban gun" to "ban guns". I disabled comments because I didn't want to have a blogospheric debate about ethics, law, the Second Amendment. I certainly didn't want to hear anyone trying to justify the widespread carrying of weapons, nor did I want to be congratulated on my stance against them.

"Ban guns" is, of course, way too simplistic a message. But do you really want subtlety from a scream? It's my scream. And it's as much a scream-at as a scream-with. You're supposed to stand behind a nation when it suffers a misfortune of this magnitude, but here the "misfortune" is so hard-wired into the American system, the American way of life, that you'd be standing behind the problem, taking off your hat in honour of the problem, remaining, for two minutes, silent about the problem while the problem lays a floral wreath at the fresh grave of the problem.

More than ever, today, America feels like an Other. One cannot recommend policy to an Other. One must simply look on in silence, appalled, watching internal contradictions tearing the Other apart, yet knowing that the same dynamic built the Other, and that this dynamic will not be abandoned without the whole identity of the Other being abandoned. The shooter must shoot himself, and only then does the whole nightmare begin to end.

And yet the guns don't die as readily as the people they kill. Metal is tougher than flesh. The guns won't die without political will -- which one doesn't see in the US for the same reasons that one doesn't see Tony Blair condemning bombing, even while he condemns suicide bombing -- and certainly not when guns are a constitutional right.

The deleted entry used the same graphic I'm using here, a graphic which shows to what degree the American nation (and perhaps, by extension, a little less obviously, any nation) is founded on systematic violence. There, visually represented, is the same horror we heard on the cell phone video footage students recorded. The grim exterior of the building, and that seemingly endless banging. Horror beyond all the platitudes. Horror intimately tied to the braying donkey of the Absurd, the pragmatic, the routine, the logistical -- what Hannah Arendt called the banality of evil. A horror that calmly reloads, and that thinks the way you think, with the same words, the same basic concept of what a human is. A horror whose essential similarity to you makes you consider yourself, temporarily, as the Other today.

Bulletin boards and blogs were quick to link to the LiveJournal of Wayne Chiang, a student at Virginia Tech, a gun enthusiast who'd recently split up with his girlfriend and seemed like too perfect a match not to be the killer. That he turned out, in fact, to be just another gun-loving student is cold comfort; his journal makes very clear how much guns have become an aesthetic in the US, a vision of beauty and social power, the way food is in Japan. It's because it's systematic -- a way of seeing, a habitus -- that this lightning will indeed strike twice. And then twice again.

Although it may not seem connected at first glance, this links up, for me, with another story in the press at the moment, Bryan Ferry's comments in the Welt am Sonntag newspaper about his admiration for Nazi iconography. "My God, the Nazis knew how to put themselves in the limelight and present themselves," Ferry enthused, after admitting to the reporter that he calls his recording studio the Fuhrerbunker. "I'm talking about Leni Riefenstahl's movies and Albert Speer's buildings and the mass parades and the flags - just amazing. Really beautiful."

Ferry later apologized profusely.

I feel very contradictory things about this. It's become a commonplace to praise Leni Riefenstahl's "Triumph of the Will" or the cut of Nazi uniforms, while qualifying that -- naturally -- with condemnations of Hitler and the Holocaust. I personally don't like Nazi iconography at all, but I've certainly crossed swords with Marxy over the appearance of swastikas in fashion outfits in Harajuku. And I think I disagree with Steve Heller's conclusion that the swastika is a symbol beyond redemption.

The reason I disagree is that I'm so steeped in Saussure, and his idea about the relationship between signifier and signified being arbitrary. If that's true -- and it obviously is, because we make language ourselves -- it means that no signifier should be vilified or anathematized, especially not one that's changed hands and been recontextualized as many times as the swastika. Why must this polysemous shape now forever remain a Nazi symbol? Why has something so slippery become a final destination? Does evil need a logo? Surely keeping the swastika forever Nazi gives Nazism more power that it deserves -- makes it, in fact, a sort of timeless principle.

This is a problem for me. On the one hand -- under Japanese influence -- I very much want ethics and aesthetics to be seamless. I think there is a politics of texture. Yesterday's entry about a pudding factory in Hokkaido was political, for instance. I very much liked the Quaker-like aesthetics of the wooden house the pudding couple had built for themselves, the simple, modest and sustainable style of their lives. Perhaps I should say "seemingly sustainable" -- they appear to fly back to Tokyo every other week.

My feeling that aesthetics and ethics (or texture and politics, if you prefer) are all of a piece is what made me lash out at some of the bands who played the Whitney Peace Tower show last year. Not only was Japanther's music aggressive, with a puppet show of gigantic demonic clashing animals accompanying it, but when a veteran 1960s peace campaigner complained about how this was "the kind of music they listen to in the tanks in Iraq" she got shouted down angrily by drummer Ian Vanek.

The fact that I sense some kind of fascism in rock music (especially live rock music) is absolutely central to my lifelong avoidance of the form. And rock stars don't seem to disagree with me, just disagree that it's bad, or matters. In 1975 a coked- and occulted-up David Bowie called Hitler "the first rock star -- he staged a whole country". Keith Moon liked to dress up as a Nazi, and Bobby Gillespie is fond of throwing Hitler salutes, probably more in tribute to Iggy than Adolf. What Ferry is saying now is a tame, drawing room version of the same thing.

The problem with condemning such antics is that linking aesthetics and ethics is a kind of rockism. It's anti-Saussure in the sense that it asserts permanent links between form and content, symbols and their meanings, smoke and fire. And that's anti-theatre and anti-art in the end. As well as calling Hitler "the first rock star", Bowie talked in 1970s interviews about how art is "fabulously violent" in a purely cathartic, theatrical way -- how in art you can crash the plane and walk away. Art is virtual. And that's why we don't censor stuff, even if it shows people breaking the law. We assume that the audience knows the difference between dreaming and waking, playing a video game and going to school, art and life.

And yet smoke usually does connect to fire. American children have watched 16,000 murders on TV by the time they're 18. Wayne Chiang poses with guns -- so did Kurt Cobain. It's theatre (art, and aribitrary) right up until the moment it breaks through into life -- and death. We're all very surprised -- and not surprised at all.

Even gentle Stephin Merritt -- "just a great composer and not a violent man" -- lost his composure and shot Ferdinand de Saussure. Okay, in a song. In real life Merritt had his very own Bryan-Ferry-Is-A-Nazi moment when Sasha Frere-Jones called him a cracker for not liking hip hop because of all the murder in it. If he'd let Saussure live, Merritt might have found a way to love rap for, oh, you know, the samples or something, and turned a deaf ear to the sickening sound of gunfire banging away in the middle of it, just like Bryan Ferry managed to do with Nazism.

Comments

Biff

[(Anonymous)]

Talking about Bowie and Nazidom, what *has* happened to Biff Rose?
http://pub48.bravenet.com/forum/4113811082/

Ferry: my anti-nazi

[electricwitch.livejournal.com]

What a beautiful post, my dear.
Dear Ferry, he is very embarrassing, but the man has a great aesthetic sensibility, I wish I could tune out violence at will.

Soooo... who´s up for modifying my Bowie is a Nazi! icon to one with Ferry in it???!!

[(Anonymous)]

That graphic is misleading. You would think that Indians populated every single shaded square inch of the country, when in fact it was quite sparsely populated. And it fails to mention how Indian tribes would often wipe each other out. Of course, that's harder to see since they're all the same skin color.

Japan has stricter gun control laws than the US, and of course it has less crime. But in my view, to point this out misses the deeper cultural issues America has. Of course, a ban on guns would be a change in the culture, but it doesn't mean children will feel any less alienated from school or their peers.

In Japanese schools, kids work together constantly in groups from a young age, they're responsible for cleaning up their classrooms, and they are assigned authority roles like class monitor. The children get a sense of perspective and responsibility that American kids don't have. I think the lack of these things is the primary cultural problem with the US.

[eustaceplimsoll.livejournal.com]

It's not just America: seven young men shot dead in South London in the past months.

[cerulicante.livejournal.com]

Guns kick ass. Shooting innocent people with them doesn't.

But there's no defense against crazy. If more students or at least the faculty members had concealed weapons permits, the shooter might have been stopped earlier...it couldn't have turned out any worse.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_grimtales_/]

Which is still bugger all compared to certain other countries. Lamentable though it is. Ironically it is imported (yardies) or down to worship of American gang culture (youth gangs).

[(Anonymous)]

I think Ferry's talking crap.

The Nazi look is really really ugly, and The Triumph of The Will is a really boring and aesthetically hideous film

[ex-newironsh15.livejournal.com]

It did drag on and on.... but maybe for the time it was thrilling.

[eustaceplimsoll.livejournal.com]

No, it's not bugger all at all, and it's getting worse.

And Momus, regarding the swastika: isn't the proper attitude that we should wait for time to erase its current connotations before we take it upon ourselves to rehabilitate it? As I'm sure you know, many Jews who had been in the concentration camps afterwards couldn't bear to hear or use the system of arbitrary symbols they use to communicate in Germany. If I met such a Jew then I wouldn't speak German and nor would you.

Something as easily avoidable as the swastika can be left alone while survivors live can't it? Isn't respect for them more important than making an obvious point about the arbitrary nature of symbols?

[http://users.livejournal.com/_grimtales_/]

Compared, comparatively, as opposed to the profligacy of incidents in American cities - for example.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

But if you accept my argument that re-purposing the swastika (for instance, making it revert to its Japanese meaning as "this building is a temple") actually undermines the transcendental power of Nazism as an idea in the world, you would expect people who'd experienced -- and survived -- Nazism to have a vested interest in that undermining, wouldn't you? It would be their ultimate revenge.

[fishwithissues.livejournal.com]

I also wrote a livejournal yesterday about Virginia Tech and then deleted it. It was sort of about how this "Tech" shooting is being used as an opportunity for CNN to hype its fancy 2.0 artillery.

"I knew it was something way more serious than that, so I started taking the video," he said, adding that he often visited CNN.com and knew he could send his video to I-Report.

But I just thought it was kinda flip to be thinking so formalistically in a moment of horrible violence, so I deleted it (I also should admit that I acted selfishly and deleted it in part because it was an aesthetically ugly entry. Didn't use a violent-meaning, but texturally-appealling old chart. It was just a shitty screenshot of CNN.com).

But it does feel key to me to not ignore the rapacious internet feeding frenzy going on--i'd rather relate this to the self-made surveillance culture than the culture of regeneration through violence, which is the title of a book by Richard Slotkin, who I was fortunate to have as a professor. Related to his teachings, I think a big problem with everything, everybody, is in a moment of crisis we feel compelled to reach for the real, but that real ends up being the biggest and most invisible myth we keep at arm's length: our gut reflex. In this case (as it often is) I see the myth of America as the dark, mysterious, violent and attractive frontier. The wild west full of sexy cowboys ready to prove something. It's not all salloons and duels, but a lot of folks think like that. People like Wayne Chiang, companies like Boeing (whose slogan is unconscionably, "forever new frontiers"), and you right now.

If it seems I'm confusing history with myth (maybe I am) then we can talk about historicity.

[eustaceplimsoll.livejournal.com]

Agreed, but it's up to them isn't it?

[dzima.livejournal.com]

I don't know why on Earth Momus still bothers to try and "fix" Western countries...

[dddario.livejournal.com]

Great post, Nick, maybe the best in a long time.

I agree specially with your contradictory feeling. Allowing a symbol like the Swastika to remain untouchable is like allowing Nazism to remain untouchable, to let it keep a place in our society it doesn't deserve. But at the same time i can fully understand why a former concentration camp prisoner doesn't want to see a Swastika, resignified or not, and how violent and awful would be to force him to deal with that.

About the Merritt/hip hop/Frere-Jones affair, that was one of the most ridiculous moments in pop music since a long ago. Frere-Jones and Jessica Hopper proved to be two of the most narrow-minded, inept and biased critics around, posing as the complete opposite. Amazing stupidity

[(Anonymous)]

It should be at least noted that the shooter was not an American; he was a 'resident alien' from South Korea, apparently. Take what meaning you will from that.

[kumakouji.livejournal.com]

The svastika was a Buddhist and Hindu symbol long before it was a symbol of the Nazis, and it's been used in numerous cultures worldwide for hundreds of years. The Nazis & Jews don't own it.

Moreover, I don't see the self-censorship of such a symbol to be "respectful" as much as bowing to the collective sensitivities of a minority, which I don't agree with because we're a free society. When they showed Jerry Springer the Opera here in the UK, the christians were up in arms over it's depicitions of the Christ, but rightly so, the BBC broadcast it.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I found myself thinking of that high-res college webcam you linked to recently, and wondering whether, one day soon, we'll all watch this stuff unfolding in real time on webstreaming CCTV. "The black CNN" will seem quaint then.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Oh no! So it could relate to No sex please, we're South Korean (http://imomus.livejournal.com/278027.html)! April really is the cruellest month for those who can't get it on.

I'm waiting for it to be declared National Tragedy Week myself

[(Anonymous)]

Yeah, that's what I'm thinking. Or maybe a bad interaction of sex-starved + gun lust?

It's very strange for me personally, because the gun-obsessed Asian male that I knew shot himself in the face 6 weeks ago. On the beach! The first time he had ever seen the ocean in his life! He was just a cursory acquaintance, but this shooting made me think of him instantly.

[j03.livejournal.com]

Blame Guns
Blame TV
Blame Video Games
Blame Rock Music
Blame Culture
Blame Wayne Chiang
Blame Kurt Cobain

Blame America

It wasn't the killers fault.

PS. The murderer was a 23-year-old South Korean. Not an American as you had assumed.

Blame South Korea
Blame Broadband
Blame Kim Chi
Blame Pornography
Blame ...

bang ban g ban gu ban gun ban guns

[zzberlin.livejournal.com]

<< It was a concrete poem-scream >>

I'd like to have seen this

As for the U.S. gun issue, I can argue both sides. But the older I get, the more libertarian I become. It's my feeling that we should let people have guns, but try to fix the people that want to use them to kill others. More and more I feel like we have to let people do everything, but try to help them not want to do the wrong things

For the Ferry issue, I saw the Remembered Light (http://www.interfaith-presidio.org/mcdonald/story.htm) show in San Francisco recently, in which artists have taken scraps of stained glass from bombed chapels during WWII and created beautiful pieces from them. The chaplain who had collected the pieces, Frederick McDonald, spoke openly about how compelling the Nazi party was at first, their organization, their presence in the streets, and their iconography. After a year or so, he began to realize the awfulness of the Nazis and drew away

[(Anonymous)]

You should leave Saussure out of your little theory. He had nothing to say about whether it's a good idea or not to ban the signs of the evil of the past.

der.

[uke.livejournal.com]

The relationship between signifier and signified is arbitrary, but it is impoossible to remove any of those three things from their cultural context--so they're not effectively arbitrary any more.

[bostonista.livejournal.com]

""Ban guns" is, of course, way too simplistic a message. But do you really want subtlety from a scream? It's my scream. And it's as much a scream-at as a scream-with. You're supposed to stand behind a nation when it suffers a misfortune of this magnitude, but here the "misfortune" is so hard-wired into the American system, the American way of life, that you'd be standing behind the problem, taking off your hat in honour of the problem, remaining, for two minutes, silent about the problem while the problem lays a floral wreath at the fresh grave of the problem."

This is very trite. It's the equivalent of a hippie pointing at a TV screen and saying, "It's society, man!" It's not society. It's one screwed-up guy with a gun, and it happens.

Nice attempt to stitch it all together into a coherent anti-American screed, but it does not work.