Cannibal Manifesto; Critiquing Stephen King; More History; Things I Do Not Understand- Dating; Bonnie Blue

Some things brought to my attention while home recuperating and catching up with things I found while I was getting flattened by poor health this past week.

Critiquing Stephen King's On Writing:

Yes, there are good points made about King writing for established writers, not beginners, but I am not sure if they are dispositive. Again, I think the best thing for beginners is seeing King revising a story. This was a concept I did not understand at 21 - I thought the first draft was the correct draft, it had the immediacy of creation. Oops.

About the limits of literary fame:

I track these things not to discourage me - or you - but to distinguish between writing and publishing. If you are writing for the sake of writing, then publication is a secondary thing. KH keeps worrying I am getting knocked around by my rejections. I am seeing the rejections as reasons for me to rethink how I have written something, not that there is an inherent flaw in anything other than my thinking and expression. Sometimes, I have been too caught up in execution to ask if this is the best way I can say what I am trying to say.

Cannibal Modernity: Oswald de Andrade’s *Manifesto Antropófago* (1928) (The Public Domain Review) has some things I like, besides the shock value of its title. See what you think of this:

But, so far as creating art went, this inclusiveness was the point. Inspiration was to be found not only among Indigenous sources, which would be entirely new to the outside world, but also taken from the European, the African, and indeed anyone at all. This was the cannibalism Oswald de Andrade had in mind. Here, he was informed by what he had learnt about Indigenous practices of anthropophagy, where the consumption of human flesh was not indiscriminate or driven by mere hunger, but strictly ritualized and subject to rules of selectivity. Thus, only certain people were eaten — “Absorption of the sacred enemy”, as Andrade put it — and only certain parts of their bodies were consumed, in order to complete the identity of the victorious consumer. Andrade’s translation of these practices into the world of artistic creation was both an attempt to lift the moral opprobrium applied to Indigenous people by the colonizer and to construct a full identity for Brazilian culture.

As for art, especially right now, this trip down memory lane may be helpful: Cabaret Condemns and Shows Fascism’s Sinister Allure (JSTOR Daily).

The most overt example of how the film treats fascist aesthetics takes place at a beer garden outside of Berlin. The main characters, Sally Bowles and Brian Roberts—a bisexual British doctoral student, a stand-in for author Christopher Isherwood—travel through the German countryside with the wealthy baron Max von Heune. A hungover Sally is asleep in the car, so Brian and Max have a drink in the crowded, bucolic beer garden of the guesthouse. Initially, instrumental music is playing, but once the band dies down, a fair-haired youth starts singing, countertenor-like.

“At first, the shot is tight on his face, and the singing is crosscut from the crowd reacting with interest,” writes Belletto. The song begins quite innocently as a pastoral idyll. As it progresses, though, a sense of dissonance mounts, and the camera moves from the youth’s face to his clothing, revealing a neckerchief, then a uniform, and then the Nazi armband.

“It turns out that, whatever beauty it may possess, the song’s real function is to consolidate the crowd and marshal them into one uniform voice,” explains Belletto. The song seamlessly shifts from a pastoral ode sung by a soloist to a chilling nationalist plea—Oh Fatherland, Fatherland, show us the sign—uttered by the entire crowd at the beer garden.

“This scene demonstrates a signal feature of fascist aesthetics identified by contemporary theorists,” writes Belletto, “that fascist art, such as it is, absorbs difference by encouraging the fantasy that the individual can achieve complete identification with the collective.”

***

“Sally’s argument for sex and liquor is born not of an oppositional stance to the real world of war and politics, but of an indifference to it,” writes Belletto, who also extends this interpretation to the actual locale of the Kit Kat Klub. “In its disregard for anything but beauty and fun, the argument goes, the Kit Kat Klub reproduces the decadent logic of fascism.”

I got a reminder that history is driven by data from Meet the Man Who Helped Make America Racist

It also reinforced the idea I have always had a way of sticking my nose where my curiosity leads me, even if it sometimes gets bitten. Not even nibbled this time. Also, a very explanation of textbooks, and their limitations.

If you understand the dangers of hiding the facts of history, then this headline ought to give you chills: Smithsonian removes Trump from impeachment exhibit in American History Museum (The Washington Post).

The following takes in the failure of Russian governments now and then. I would think that Russian incompetence was seized upon by the Japanese rather than inherent Japanese superiority is a good takeaway, too, 

More Trump-world craziness:

My group counselor said I should get out more, the group thought I should date; I think I have had quite enough of a social life and my friends agree. Even more, I feel out of the swing of things (I did a long time ago, but that was due to the sheer craziness of the women I met) when I read something like The problem of Ghislaine Maxwell by lartyz (Men Yell at Me Substack).

Many online complaints about women by men involve women expecting “the princess treatment,” or having a sense of entitlement in dating. And I don’t think this is made up. I hear a lot of my cis-het friends talk about how men should open doors, or always pay, or offer to get the Uber. This expectation derives from a gendered grievance: “If I have to date men in this era, I expect to be taken care of.

Yes, I open doors - that is politeness; making it mandatory is not politeness.

No, I do not think women should not ever pay - I suggest the place, then I pay. That seems fair. Going Dutch does not bother me. 

I do not Uber.

I obsessively read the r/NiceGirls subreddit, where men mostly complain about the women they meet on dating apps. The majority of posts are a specific kind of complaint about women’s behavior that arises on apps or during a date, when women demand the men take them to fancy restaurants, or buy them flowers and presents. If I were a man, I would not be happy that someone approached dating me with such economic expectations. And yet, you cannot promote a view of men as protectors and providers, and expect a woman to perceive you and respect you as such, then turn around and complain when women act like widdle babies who want to be coddled.

Last thing first, the women I knew, even in college, were not wanting to be coddled. The first fiancé, TJ, did complain about me never getting her flowers; being a funeral director's kid, flowers were not romantic. No one expected expensive dinners; the most expense dinner I have ever had was paid for by the woman, T2. She was a crack shot with her .357, and needed no protection. The did have a thing for decent treatment, and orgasms.

As for Ms. Maxwell, let her rot.

Speaking of things I did not know about and really do not understand: Bonnie Blue: 1,000 men and the worrying normalisation of porn (London Times). You might think, since what I did, this would be just fine with me. Sorry, I was not into the subject-matter, just using it for my own purposes of self-destruction. Often in my group "therapy" sessions, I get the feeling that the counselor is pushing us towards a certain morality that smacks of the Victorian era. I do not think the jinn can be put back in the bottle. In this case, capitalism trumps morality. Common sense and good health have also probably gone by the wayside. We have elevated the mechanical (the sexual act) into a spectacle because we have repressed normal impulses of passion into a forbidden topic of discussion.

Bonnie is where the influencer economy meets the porn industry: horny teen boys get free sex with a famous girl in exchange for filming content that she monetises to earn millions. Her queue of men has been compared to strangers recruited online to rape a drugged Gisèle Pelicot, but I’m reminded too of lines you see outside any Instagram-famous shop or café: screwing Bonnie is about sex, but also participating in a craze.

Is Bonnie, as she insists, an “empowered” woman, the ultimate expression of female bodily autonomy? Andrew Tate has described her as “the perfect end result of feminism”, and certainly “sex-positive” feminism has long valorised sex work, which must make Bonnie, coolly getting rich on gangbangs, a modern Emmeline Pankhurst or Germaine Greer. In any case, the results of our global experiment in exposing children to pornography before their first kiss is now here in human form.

I have to report myself to the county sheriff for almost another 20 years, and the federal government will supervise my existence until I die for a crime that had no victims. Neither makes the children of America safe with these (and the other restrictions) placed on me. Taking away internet access to children under the age of 18 will make them safe.

Meanwhile, Trump has not released the Epstein files.

Nor do I understand the misogyny outlined in A Bureaucratic and Feminine Mind (The Drift), but I do see the sense in this:

If anti-Semitism is the proverbial socialism of fools, then rage against the twentysomething groundlings who work at an Australian skincare company is the socialism of morons. And the socialism of morons does not become the socialism of intelligent people — that is, socialism proper — if it accepts the premises of its enemies. Until we address the real cause of widespread dissatisfaction, our solutions remain palliative. The vitriol directed at women with an attitude and a mini is a matter of misplaced hatred for bullshit jobs in general, for the glut of unfulfilling work that both women and men must undertake to pay their bills, for a cultural configuration that feels devoid of purpose and compassion and that accords us almost no agency over the conditions of our lives. 

The problem is not the entirety of modernity, or that women aspire to meaningful employment, or that not enough of them aspire to motherhood. The problem is that almost no one has the imagination to answer the question “Tariffs or this?” correctly. 

The right answer is: neither. The right answer is: something else altogether.

We need a new War on Poverty. A War on the Poverty of the American Imagination. 

More history: the Austrian paper-hanger was not a genius. He was a psycho who ramrodded his way to suicide.

I am filing this under "it is bad for you to do this, but okay for us": Maddow Blog | As GOP's radical Texas map is unveiled, Vance picks odd time to whine about gerrymandering.

 Since I am not going to be up after midnight, I will let you get it on.

And that is where I ended my Thursday.

sch 7/31