My Birthday!!

I’m turning 30 today.  Am I reaching a milestone?  I found a few paragraphs from Derrida on Nietzsche turning 45 that might illuminate.  Derrida discusses a dated page from Nietzsche’s Ecce Homo:

This page is in a certain way dated because it says “today” and today “my birthday,” the anniversary of my birth.  The anniversary is the moment when the year turns back on itself, forms a ring or annulus with itself, annuls itself and begins anew.  It is here: my forty-fifth year, the day of the year when I am forty-five years old, something like the midday of life.  The noon of life, even midlife crisis, is commonly situated at about this age, at the shadowless midpoint of a great day.

[...]It is a shadowless moment consonant with all the “mid-days” of Zarathustra.  It comes as a moment of affirmation, returning like the anniversary from which one can look forward and backward at one and the same time.  The shadow of all negativity has disappeared: “I looked back, I looked forward, and never saw so many and such good things at once.”

Yet this midday tolls the hour of a burial.  Playing on everyday language, he (Nietzsche), buries his past forty-four years.  But what he actually buries is death, and in burying death he has saved life–and immortality. “It was not for nothing that I buried [begrub] my forty-forth year today; I had the right to bury it; whatever was life in it has been saved, is immortal.  The first book of the Revaluation of all Values, the Songs of Zarathustra, the Twilight of the Idols, my attempt to philosophize with a hammer–all presents [Geshenke] of this year, indeed of its last quarter.  How could I fail to be grateful to my whole life?–and so I tell my life to myself.” (Ear of the Other 11)

So, with Nietzsche and Derrida, I tell my life to myself and receive my life as a gift to myself.  Some of the past may be buried but, I tell myself, I have so much to be.

Philosophy Dumped

(Cross-posted at Long Sunday)

Our administration at the University of Florida has decided that, to offset mounting budget cuts, they should eliminate the doctoral program in Philosophy. I see this as a dark day for my University and for the state of Philosophy in American Higher Education. Our president, Bernie Machen, remains one of the highest paid officials in public education.

Read the story here:
http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2008/05/budget-cuts-res.html

Sign a petition protesting this measure here:
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/145/petition-to-president-machen-to-keep-philosophys-phd-program

Iron Man (2008)

I read Iron Man comics as a child. He wasn’t my favorite superhero (obviously). He wasn’t even my favorite Marvel superhero. But I always thought that it was cool he kept a suit of power armor in his briefcase. Some thoughts:

1. The movie has a strange “America is the savior of the world” feel to it. Some of the film is set in Afghanistan, and Iron Man the American hero is shown saving the lives of Afghan refugees and killing terrorists. The themes of the American weapons manufacturer coming to save the Afghans from terrorists is pretty indulgent and kinda imperialistic. Considering that the comic book was set in Vietnam, and Tony Stark basically did the same thing there, I don’t see how the filmmakers could have gotten over this aspect of the story. But it did leave me feeling uncomfortable, especially the scene where Tony starts torching an entire group of these terrorists before destroying their munitions.

2. I LOVED Gweneth Paltrow in the film. I usually can’t stand her, but she had a certain charm that was difficult to resist. Robert Downey Jr. was amazing, but I would have been shocked had he not been. Terrence Howard was a bit of a let down as Rhodey. I expected there to be a big blowup between him and Tony in the film. It happens all of the time in the comics, but it didn’t happen. Howard seemed to be Tony’s buddy who was mainly in the background.

3. The villain, the Iron Monger, sucked. His character in the comics was always an overblown dark reflection of Iron Man–but I couldn’t really see Jeff Bridges as all that devious.

4. Loved the suit. Loved the tech. My girlfriend whined about going to the film but was dancing to the soundtrack after we left, and decided that she loved it. te he…  Inasmuch as I am a sucker for cool armor suits, Robert Downey Jr., and ummm cool armor suits, I loved it as well.

Update

Wow, almost a month since I last posted a blog! Can you tell I’m in the middle of a dissertation? I don’t have much time, so I decided to update you with bullet points. BAM!

• I finished my chapter on William Blake and Alan Moore and am moving to a chapter on Shelley Jackson’s Patchwork Girl. This chapter argues that Jackson’s text figures hypertext (and New Media more generally) as disciplines of literary and institutional melancholy. Jackson’s text uses Mary Shelley as a character to show a lineage from literature to hypertext. Yet, it also can’t decide whether it is alive or dead. The whole text takes place in a graveyard where the reader has to “put” the Patchwork Girl together. On the other hand, the Patchwork Girl is also arguing that she is faster than the reader, that the reader can’t pin her down, that she can (in some respects) escape the reader. And Jackson, curiously enough, uses metaphors of life to describe this escape.
• I saw Smart People (2007), Oh Lucky Man! (1971), and Le Corbeau (1943). The first continues the great indie-film tradition of treating intellectuals as oedipal figures to be ridiculed. I liked most of the performances, but hated the script and can’t help but wonder why films today want to “school” the intellectual. The second is a pretty good follow-up to If…, but I didn’t enjoy it because I’ve grown tired of postmodern “everyman” tales. It did have a pretty good piece of graffiti about mid-way through the film, which read “revolution is the opiate of the intellectual.” The final one was a great bit of noir, with complicated characters. All of the characters were more than their noir cliches: the lead was a morally compromised physician who doesn’t catch the killer, the two femme fatales were too clingy and didn’t follow the classic mold, and the city itself seemed to grow less interested in catching the killer.
• I’m SICK of the primary season and of one candidate in particular, whom I won’t mention. The funny thing is that I’m having less political arguments with my conservative father than my Hillary-supporting mother. But Maureen Dowd has a great little bit on her in today’s New York Times. Here’s a little snippet. After relating Hillary to the “50 foot woman,” Dowd turns to Obama, who has been subjected to one pancake dinner after another.

But this is clearly a man who can’t wait to get back to his organic scrambled egg whites. That was made plain with his cri de coeur at the Glider Diner in Scranton when a reporter asked him about Jimmy Carter and Hamas.“Why” he pleaded, sounding a bit, dare we say, bitter, “can’t I just eat my waffle?”His subtext was obvious: Why can’t I just be president? Why do I have to keep eating these gooey waffles and answering these gotcha questions and debating this gonzo woman?

uhh…

After supporters of the Hillary campaign used an embarrassing translation of the Jackson 5’s ABC to showcase her commitment to multiculturalism, I thought it couldn’t get worse.

Boy was I wrong. I got this from Daily Kos. They suggested that it was planted by Democrats who wanted to show how “unhip” Republicans were.  But, given the ‘quality’ of campaign songs this year, I wouldn’t be surprised if it turned out to be real.

Literary Repudiation in The Hughes Brothers’ From Hell (2000)

I recently rewatched the Hughes Brothers’ production of Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell’s From Hell. I have a greater understanding of why Alan Moore doesn’t trust movie directors. The movie completely eviscerates the central obsessions of the comic: Gull’s psychogeographic lecture about the hidden histories of London, the encounters with William Blake, the game the comic plays with literary and political history, the intricate way it enters into the occult world of the Freemasons. Each of these elements are either completely deleted in the movie, or so degraded that they mock the care Moore takes in placing them in his graphic novel. The literary elements are almost erased entirely, and replaced with halfhearted references to Shakespeare. When Aberdine (played not by a frumpy old 40 year old as he was portrayed in the comics but by sexy Johnny Depp) overdoses on laudanum and absinthe at the end of the film (!!), his partner plays says sweetly “Good night, sweet prince. And flights of angels see thee to thy rest.”

Happy Birthday Superman

Well, not his REAL birthday.  But DC editors stated that Superman’s birthday be on leap-year, in order to explain how he aged so slowly.  Happy Birthday, big guy.

Actuality

Before watching the entirely dissapointing Be Kind, Rewind last night, I saw an ad for truTV.com where they broadcast “Not Reality. Actuality.”

Leeann and I laughed for about ten minutes.  Actuality?!

I guess Reality TV has officially taken reality from us.  Now we have to live in the world of actuality.  I don’t even want to guess what implications this has for metaphysics.

Leeann wanted to imagine the first dissertation on actuality.  I really (or wait, make that actually) don’t.

Clinton on Clinton

From the CNN website:

Bill Clinton added his voice Thursday to a growing chorus of those who say Hillary Clinton must win both the Texas and Ohio primaries on March 4 to keep her presidential chances alive.

Campaigning in Beaumont, Texas, the former president bluntly told a crowd it’s up to them whether his wife’s candidacy continues.

“If she wins in Texas and Ohio I think she will be the nominee,” he said. “If you don’t deliver for her then I don’t think she can. It’s all on you.”

Really, Bill?  You see, it’s this type of paternalism that failed to get me excited about this campaign at all.  I’m one of those people who look back (for the most part) on the Clinton years as years of prosperity, despite all of the scandals and the partisanship that continue to eat away at the core of our democracy.  But the way you and your wife have campaigned has left a bad taste in my mouth.  I’m sick of your wife’s sense of entitlement.  I’m even more sick of yours.

Isn’t it true that if she doesn’t win Texas and Ohio, then it’s all on her? and you?  If neither of you can inspire Americans and galvanize your party, then you have no one to blame but yourself.  It isn’t the fault of the many people who sacrifice their time (and their pay) to help you.  It isn’t the fault of voters.  It isn’t the fault of the media, or Barack Obama.  If you can’t win the democratic primary, it’s your fault.

Cinematic Betrayal in Joe Wright’s Atonement (2007)

(Cross-posted at Long Sunday) 

Atonement is too pretty.  I liked most of the film, but couldn’t take my eyes off of Keira Knightly.  She was too elegant.  Her language was too perfect.  I didn’t pay much attention to Briony, and focused instead on the budding picture perfect romance between Cecilia and Robbie.  Joe Wright’s new film has all of the visual elements of a Jane Austen novel, something that made his Pride and Prejudice so compelling (or so I am told) and his adaptation of Ian McEwan’s novel a little too polished.  The movie included a scene depicting 1940 evacuation of Dunkirk that Roger Ebert called “one of the great takes in film history.”  I agree, and this is precisely the problem.  Wright’s adaptation of McEwan’s novel is too enamored with its own beauty and sacrifices the complexities of the novel for an obsession with its celebrity proponents.

Wright’s choice to direct a McEwan novel after his adaptation of Austen is somewhat appropriate, as Atonement begins with a quote from Austen’s Northanger Abby. McEwan’s novel is concerned with the themes Austen employs in her novels, including the negative side of unbounded imagination and the need for maturity and rational thinking instead of Romantic enthusiasm.  While the book focuses on Briony’s journey towards adulthood and understanding, the film focuses much of its attention on the twin stories of separated lovers.  Briony as an adult is portrayed in the film by the frumpified Romola Garai.  Garai fades into the background, demurely accepting the harsh criticism of Cecilia and Robby’s failed love.  This aspect of Atonement could almost be read as an allegory of celebrity culture.  Briony looks like a World War II version of Tina Yothers compared to the beauty of Cecilia and the neatly rough-hewed masculinity of Robbie.