Korine’s penchant for the mischievous and bizarre has infuriated many who have been all too happy to dismiss his indulgent cinematic gestures, which flirt with inanity but in my opinion pursue, and at times achieve, transcendence. This Times review of Trash Humpers, touches on both ends of that spectrum:

Much of this is just so much juvenile posturing, but every so often the screen freezes into something approximating beauty: a blurry, spaced-out, yellow-green landscape, as alien as an ancient photograph.

But his work is about more than just good shots. Memorable characters are just as important, and range from an impoverished, undereducated boy perpetually wearing bunny ears in Gummo, to a Michael Jackson impersonator in Mr. Lonely, to, in the case of Trash Humpers, elderly, homicidal, peeping tom vandals (played by Korine, his wife and one other person in ‘old people’ masks), who literally hump trash. The phrase ’sweet trash pussy’ is unmistakably uttered.

His sense of humor is always on full display, which somehow manages to be overlooked despite absurdity running rampant throughout his oeuvre, but profundity bubbles under the surface. His aesthetic, as one reviewer put it, “mimics that of a scratchy old VHS tape. There’s a name for the genre he’s now working in — it’s called glorified public-access TV”. Indeed, Korine filmed it on VHS to get that low-budget, lo-fi quality. The choice to use this format is especially apropos for this film, which is set against the depressed landscape of semi-urban Tennessee, but it also feels like a natural progression for him. His fixation on forgotten, back-woods America almost demands that the format used to capture it be as much a product of the wasteland as his characters. In this, Trash Humpers succeeds brilliantly. We often feel as though we’ve discovered the film at the bottom of a dumpster and shouldn’t be watching it. Which is part of the irony. It suggests that we are as degenerate and voyeuristic as the grotesque characters before us.

To hear Korine speak about his inspiration for the film (video interview here) isn’t all that revealing, as it quickly becomes clear that the particulars are secondary to the broader mess. A curious thing about his strongest critics is that they seem to want to compare his output against traditional standards of filmmaking, when in fact his movies are closer to abstract artworks than ‘films’ as most of us know them. Now, whether we want to sift through the spilled-out contents of his perverse mind in hopes of finding something enlightening is another matter. My stance is that it is worth the effort, if for no other reason than because it is completely unlike anything you’ve ever seen.

Image via Wikipedia

Sex is not openly discussed in Saudi Arabia, but this is much more than mere cultural code. It is written into law, and transgressions usually lead to harsh punishments.

Such was the fate of one young man who appeared on the MTV program ‘True Life – Resist the Power, Saudi Arabia’:

Mazen Abdul-Jawad was sentenced last year to five years in jail, 1,000 lashes and a five-year travel ban after he bragged about his sexual exploits on a TV show aired by Lebanese Broadcasting Corporation (LBC).

To the Western world, these measures appear brutal and incommensurate with the crime. Which I and any other proponent of human rights would agree with. But our vast cultural differences must be taken into account for a proper assessment.  The West’s view of the Middle East is a colonial holdover, a continued attempt to define the region by  Western ethical and cultural standards. This phenomenon, dubbed ‘Orientalism’, is firmly rooted in imperialist doctrine and has only widened the divide. Palestinian theorist Edward Said’s aptly-named book Orientalism is a landmark critique of these misguided conceptions and should be required reading for everyone. Said summarizes:

…because of Orientalism the Orient was not (and is not) a free subject of thought or action…. European culture gained in strength and identity by setting itself off against the Orient as a sort of surrogate and even underground self.

Indeed, if our only references to understand the Middle East come from our own politicians and news agencies, then our impression is inherently biased and incomplete.

The case of  Mazen Abdul-Jawad is considered beyond barbaric when we compare it to our own legal system, which purports to treat people fairly and humanely. Even though this has been disproved countless times. The West fancies itself the global arbiter, the good guys whose intolerance of cultural differences is justified by the belief that it knows best. Islamic law is often extreme, but despite popular perceptions it is not always fanatical and structureless. Corporal punishment is exacted methodically and with regard to the person’s ultimate safety. 1,000 lashes will not be given out all at once, rather they will be spread out over a period of time to minimize injury and scarification. This methodical approach is both relieving and scary. Imagining lawmakers using logic to implement such torture, when the entire concept defies logic (at least secularly), sends a chill up the spine, and for me recalls the cruel efficiency of Nazi Germany. So I am in no way trying to diminish the severity of these punishments, but it must be noted that just as the West has ‘Orientalism’, the Middle East has its ‘Occidentalism‘. Our actions must appear equally as immoral and inhumane as theirs do to us, and it is impossible to say who is more right or virtuous than the other. I make no justification for either one, but it does seem important to add as many pieces of the puzzle as possible.

Trecartin’s work is unlike anything else you’ve seen, and at once unsettlingly familiar. The trappings and personages of daily life are strewn throughout, yet so many things are off. Darkness lurks behind the bright colors. Trecartin is often the gender-bent protagonist, made unrecognizable by wigs, costumes and face paint, and he enlists a cast of friends to play the other parts. The characters are abstracted contemporary archetypes, reduced to frantic, nerve-shattered, self-involved beings who shout and babble over each other, smear paint on themselves, dance to electronic music, expose themselves and laugh insanely.

Much of it reads as an indictment of contemporary ‘girl’ culture perpetuated by the media––the notion that to be sassy, bitchy, and assertive should be every woman’s disposition. This is accentuated by the overblown valley girl accent adopted by the characters in his films, making even the most straightforward statements seem inherently vapid and punctuated with question marks. Most pronounced are Trecartin’s own incarnations of what I can only presume are his many ids: a dejected teenager/clown with blacked out teeth who locks himself into a closet and cuts himself, a beyond-ditzy, maniacal party girl who talks incessantly on her cellphone. The verbal delivery is intentionally stilted and abstract, with bizarrely intoned, unnatural word choices. While the characters are interacting and speaking to each other, their milieu evokes the biblical passage of the Tower of Babel when God punished the people by making them speak different languages, hindering their ability to communicate with each other. The world Trecartin creates is so manic and engrossing––the way a car wreck captivates, that it’s easy to forget the sharp social commentary. His craft as a filmmaker is also fully on display, as he deftly employs the use of amateur digital tricks and animation to professional artistic effect. It all adds up to something brilliant and wholly original that must, ultimately, be experienced firsthand. I urge/dare you to watch.

Of course I have come to realize that with as much attention as the Rolling Stones albums have continued to receive, there are rarely undiscovered gems. And it turns out that Exile On Main Street is considered one of their best–-some say their very best. But it rarely gets mentioned in the same breath as Let It Bleed or Sticky Fingers, which harbor several signature tracks each. So why all the renewed interest? As Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly says,

Over the years, so much has been written and jabbered about Exile…that it’s been turned into almost too much of a monument.

I couldn’t agree more. Of course this ‘jabber’ has mostly been endemic to the pages of magazines catering to niche audiences. Ask a casual Stones fan about Exile and you might get a blank stare. Despite its place in the pantheon of ‘best records of the 70s’, it’s such a shambolic affair that it always seemed too inaccessible for the masses. Upon its release, the critics disagreed on its merits. Robert Christgau exclaimed:

Incontrovertibly the year’s best, this fagged-out masterpiece is the summum of Rock ’72. Even now, I can always get pleasure out of any of its four sides, but it took me perhaps twenty-five listenings before I began to understand what the Stones were up to, and I still haven’t finished the job. Just say they’re Advancing Artistically, in the manner of self-conscious public creators careering down the corridors of destiny. Exile explores new depths of record-studio murk, burying Mick’s voice under layers of cynicism, angst, and ennui: You’ve got a curtthroat crew / I’m gonna sink under you / I got the bell bottom blues / It’s gonna be the death of me.” A +.

Lenny Kaye, guitarist for the Patti Smith Group and rock critic writing for Rolling Stone magazine felt differently: “[t]here are songs that are better, there are songs that are worse,…and others you’ll probably lift the needle for when the time is due.” But history has been kind to this album, and despite any suspicions that this deluxe reissue by Virgin records is more an attempt to make money than actually reappraise and re-introduce, the new attention is something to rejoice. Never mind that there are gratuitous, newly-recorded tracks we needn’t bother with.

As Michael Klausman, a buyer for Other Music in New York uttered in a 2006 Times article, ”we’re living in the age of the reissue”. Indeed, many albums that hardly saw the light of day when they were first released have been given new life through reissue labels like Light in the Attic, 4 Men With Beards, and Sundazed. Of course the major labels have been reissuing for a long time. When new releases aren’t bringing in the sales like they used to, the back catalog must be plumbed.

While there is some consternation about this reissue, there is a significant undiscovered gem  in the form of video footage (included on the accompanying DVD) from the recording sessions that took place in the dank basement of Keith Richards’ chateau in the French countryside. This was a common locale for British rock stars to escape their country’s exorbitant taxes. Hence the Stones’ feeling that they were living in exile. Of course all they suffered through were endless parties. Nevertheless, they were away from their homes, and this displacement led to an incredible, landmark recording. I write this having seen only portions of this unearthed footage of the Stones at their youthful peak, so I cannot speak to its overall quality, but by most accounts it is a revelation. The nerds have waited a long time for this.

I’ll begin with Pittsburgh/Northampton-based art collective Paper Rad. Formed in 2001, they are one of the underground’s more visible purveyors of cultural currency. The collective’s catalogue is comprised of several art forms including film, animation and music, but their hallmark is their aesthetic: garish colors, tacky children’s toys, bad commercials,  bad computer graphics, and anything that might fall under the rubric of disposable pop culture. This post-postmodern obsession with kitsch has translated into shows at major art galleries, videos for famous musicians (under the moniker Wyld File), and a claim to having begun a very specific stylistic phenomenon. Of course they are not the first to appropriate pop iconography and elevate it to art status. We all know who did that. But Paper Rad are more than just torchbearers––they have developed something new and singular that is as analogous to our place in history as Warhol’s assembly-line art was to his.

The use of rudimentary computer animation, video collage, vintage video games, found home movies and many other forms of cultural detritus (with an emphasis on the 60s, 70s and 80s), is central to their ersatz ethos. Paper Rad are conceptually free of the constraints that having anything so mundane as an actual ethos might place on the creative process, but they do hold to a loosely based value system they dub “Dogman 99″, which commands “no Wacom tablet, no scanning, pure RGB colors only, only fake tweening, as many alpha tricks as possible”. They are DIY and punk in spirit, but their broader vision is farther-reaching than either would suggest. And unlike punk, where the message is of utmost importance, Paper Rad’s content, though humorous and at times even poignant, usually takes a backseat to how things look. Their videos are lysergic excursions, at times abstract, at other times with more traditional narrative structures, which flash and throb in a vivid palette of the kind found in Atari 2600 video games and TV color bars. These primary colors are then contrasted against fluorescent ones to jarring, seizure-inducing effect.

This quote from UbuWeb’s entry on Paper Rad sums things up quite nicely

Think of this group showing up to the 80’s dance party with tazers and ketamine, and you waking up at the bottom of the ball tank at CHUCK E. CHEESE.

Animated characters’ speech and movements are stilted as a result of self-imposed technological barriers––the purposefully lo-fi techniques are the perfect foil for the surreality of the content. One of Paper Rad’s series, The Problem Solvers, centers around a motley group of pals including a talking dog, a witch, a giant duck, a futuristic valley girl and a bearded guy in aerobics gear. Making sense of any of this is entirely beside the point.

But as I mentioned above, there are moments of poignancy. Take The Mario Movie, a hack of the Super Mario Bros. Nintendo game that places Mario at the center of a narrative in which he undergoes an existential crisis.

Paper Rad’s nose for cultural currency could almost be said to have sniffed out an entire quotidian phenomenon––a niche subculture that favors fluorescent garb, electronic dance music, and irony.  Shades of this can be seen in any number of music videos that Wyld File has made for noise bands like Lightning Bolt and rock stars like Beck.

Trying to find specific meaning in Paper Rad’s hallucinogenic realm would be difficult. It’s not the particulars that matter as much as the general tone, which accentuates the inanity of consumerism while bathing in it. This love/hate relationship with pop culture is something many of us can relate to, which is one reason why Paper Rad is such a true marker of our times.

I was unique in that I was a kind of black that white people could accept.

Lena Horne cut a special figure in the pantheon of African American entertainers. As she explains, she could “pass” for white, which allowed whites in a thoroughly pre-Civil Rights era to acknowledge Horne as a proper entertainer, rather than comic relief as was the norm with black actors in Hollywood. Horne famously refused to take roles in movies that would portray her as a maid or any other person of service. Like Jackie Robinson did from within the confines of major league baseball, Horne used her stature in Hollywood to subtly but powerfully change the American perception of blacks. When your little white children proclaim they want to grow up to play baseball like Jackie Robinson or sing and act like Lena Horne, it becomes much more difficult to perpetuate stereotypes about blacks’ inferiority.

Horne was blacklisted during the Red Scare for suspected ties to various so-called seditionist and communist groups, but was undeterred. She marched on Washington, worked with politicians on pro-integration measures, and as a USO entertainer during WWII, even refused to perform before segregated troops.

For those of us too young to have enjoyed her live show at the Waldorf-Astoria in 1957, Horne might be better remembered as the lady who taught Grover how to get over his shyness on Sesame Street.

Horne was as classy and cultured as entertainers come and was the last of her kind. We’re unlikely to see another performer quite like her again.

I say this is an avid abuser of such videos, having observed this cumulative behavior firsthand in my own social circle. Of course the reward is often great––who can’t use a good belly laugh after dinner, among friends? Maybe pats on the back ensue if the gag really kills––physical human contact courtesy of YouTube: alienating and bringing people together since 2005!

This should not be news, as most of you have doubtless sought refuge in these brainless larks for years now, but as I have witnessed a surge in this type of activity in the sphere around me, it feels appropriate to share some of the greatest hits, and to ponder why this should be in the first place. The answer is elusive. Have we run out of things to say to each other without a topical video to serve as the catalyst? Hopefully this is just a phase and the cycle will be broken before long, as I do miss the old days when the computer didn’t invade all our gatherings. It’s not that I don’t enjoy these escapades, I just can’t help but feel that as we constantly reach for these as social lubricant, our intelligence dissipates ever-so-slightly. But forget this over-intellectualized assessment of our idle time for a moment and indulge in some cheap laughs.

The Bravo network has helped define reality television over the last several years and, topically speaking, they continue to reinvent it (the format is usually recycled). Despite justified skepticism and critical ridicule, competition reality shows have managed to insert marketable stars into the national consciousness. Even some losers make their mark: Jennifer Hudson was an American Idol runner-up and she went on to win an Oscar. But can the world of fine arts emerge from the reality television machine unscathed? Apart from, say, Project Runway or Top Chef, which involve displays of actual skill, Work of Art: The Next Great Artist will be a somewhat more cerebral group than we are accustomed to seeing on reality shows. Or at least that might be the assumption.

From the previews available (it debuts June 9), it is clear that heated emotions and drama can run as rampant in the supposedly enlightened world of visual art, as they can in a gaggle of teenage girls vying to be supermodels. Which is such a relief. As a social experiment, reality television does what it seems to have been promising all along: it turns people into maniacs who thrive on cheaply-begotten exposure and the promise of, what else, fame and fortune. Which is of course why we’re all so enthralled. With quotes like these how could we not be?

“I don’t want to work with your poisonous attitude.”

(Through tears) “I want my work to show in museums.”

“I’m not responsible for your experience of my work.”

“You give performance art a bad name.”

This is as good a soap opera as anything Tyra Banks or Heidi Klum could have dreamed up! The judges involved are critics (Jerry Saltz), gallerists (Jeanne Greenberg Rohatyn, Bill Powers), auctioneers (Simon dePury), and general aficionados (China Chow serves as host), whose sharp wits will surely be a big part of the fun.

As the competition’s first challenge—the artists were paired off and asked to make portraits of each other—rattled toward its conclusion (the usual dramatic “voting-off” shenanigans), I found myself paying less and less attention to the (overwhelmingly dire) work and more to compiling a list of sententious quotes: “Wall power, that’s what you want” (de Pury); “To you, it’s a portrait, but to no one else will it ever be a portrait” (Saltz); “I’m getting falling leaves, is what I’m getting off this” (Powers), and the definitive “There’s no excuse for a bad painting” (Saltz again).   -ArtForum

It’s one thing to take joy in others’ suffering when being delivered from one social class to a higher one is at stake, but when we have a group of well-educated, ostensibly intellectual people throwing fits and breaking down on cable TV, it gets too good not to watch. Will this show find the next great artist? Highly doubtful. But as far as viewers are concerned, the personal success of reality show contestants is rarely the point.

An ever-increasing phenomenon on the streets of the civilized world is text-walking. That is, people sending text messages while walking around in public, often in crowded areas and intersections, without regard for their surroundings. This is a bad thing of which I am a culprit and a victim. My ire at people bumping into me because they were lost in the urgency of personal satellite communication is nearly equal to the ire I direct at myself for being a perpetrator of the same. As texting has become more essential to people’s daily lives, this type of behavior may be unavoidable. We just have to acknowledge that we might get run over by a bus if we don’t exercise more caution. But this is  inconsequential compared to the next wave of portable devices that will bring with it a reign of terror: 3D glasses that project video on the inside of the lenses, thereby omitting the outside world from view.

Apple has begun designing a special headset called iSpecs that will do just this.

The application explained the form would allow the user to ‘relax while viewing image based content on the head-mounted device because he does not have to hold onto the portable electronic device.’

The gizmo would also be fitted with a camera to stream video from the outside world. Infrared sensors embedded in the frames would detect if anyone approached the wearer, and the real-time video would pop up on a screen inside the glasses.

This would help users feel more at ease wearing the glasses in public. – Daily Mail UK, April 12, 2010

Just what we need: plugged-in zombies wandering around in public blindfolded––or, as the case would be, glued to the newest high-octane installment of the Transformers franchise.

All criticisms and potential misuses aside, this device is of course incredible. A childhood dream come true. But the implications are far greater than we realize. We can already watch videos and access the internet on portable computers and phones, all of which have effectively ruined the old notion of “idle time” (you’re not exactly idle if you’re simultaneously blogging, tweeting and shopping while you wait for the bus). The simple pleasures of staring into space, whistling a tune, or just imagining something that isn’t being broadcast directly in front of your retina, are fleeting. Appreciating this loss is not the domain of luddites alone.

Oh Pat. You’re so brave to write an editorial rebutting Frank Rich’s denunciation of Obamacare naysayers, whom Rich points out are predominantly white male bigots (not in so few words).

Pat Sajak has long been a poster boy for wholesome, conservative America, so in one sense it’s pleasing to see him get fired up about something consequential. And in another sense it’s good to see he can write and spell so well. Glad he’s earning that big salary.

But whatever Sajak’s intentions may be, his opinions are nearly absent from his editorial. He pokes fun at Rich’s views yet offers little more than this as an alternative:

Welcome to post-racial America, where those who oppose a piece of legislation must defend themselves against the scurrilous charges of a man who seems much better suited to reviewing “Cats”.  (He liked it, by the way.) This was a particularly shameful column, and the millions of Americans who oppose this legislation are owed an apology. Are they right? Are they wrong? Let’s discuss it. Let’s debate it. Let’s yell and scream if we want to. But would it be too much to ask that we approach the matter based on its merits and leave the psychobabble to Dr. Phil?       - Human Events.com, March 29, 2010

Poor Pat. He’s so put-upon by “post-racial America”.

Rich’s characterization of the situation is considerably more substantial:

To find a prototype for the overheated reaction to the health care bill, you have to look a year before Medicare, to the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Both laws passed by similar majorities in Congress; the Civil Rights Act received even more votes in the Senate (73) than Medicare (70). But it was only the civil rights bill that made some Americans run off the rails. That’s because it was the one that signaled an inexorable and immutable change in the very identity of America, not just its governance. - New York Times, March 27, 2010

It seems that what ires Sajak most is Rich’s analytical skills: yes, they are his opinions, but they are also historically-informed and well-researched. Sajak’s simplistic appeal for an apology simply underscores a fundamental problem with the layman’s comprehension of politics and policy––that there should be a personal aspect to any of it. Indeed, policy makers must possess a heavy dose of objectivity to carry out their duties properly, yet their egos occupy so much space that matters of great public concern end up becoming personal screaming matches between camps. This, Pat Sajak, is how you’ve gotten it all wrong.