Complete non-sequitor headlines aside, we here at The Enfranchised were, like many others, saddened by the news of the passing of one of the great American writers.
Dan is joking, of course, when he suggests that Miller is to be admired most for wooing Norma Jean away from The Yankee Clipper. Though, it is perhaps sad in its own right that maybe the last man ever to have loved Monroe is gone from the earth. And sad, too, that we'll probably never see an American couple like that again---something tells me that Britney Spears and Thomas Pynchon won't marry, and that it wouldn't be quite the same even if they did.
David Mamet wrote what I think is one of the ballsier obits. In praising Miller's drama as appealing "not to the fashion of the moment, but to the problems both universal and eternal, as they are insoluble," Mamet also manages a bit of a fuck-you to the going fetishization of the "fetishization of the other" that garners MacArthur Genius Grants these days (do any of your readers doubt that when Mamet disses the "enthusiastic" "bad drama" of today he has Suzan Lori-Parks and Tony Kushner in mind?)
Truth is, I'd like to believe that Miller will be remembered as the last American playwright with any sense of subtlety. The Crucible is an ideological exorcism of America that is as scathing as it is discrete; Death of a Salesman annihilates our most deeply held illusions with such quietude that it almost feels nice.
When Simon and Garfunkel sang, famously, in The Graduate: "Where have you gone Joe DiMaggio?/ A Nation turns its lonely eyes to you..." Jumpin Joe's somewhat bewildered response was reported to be: "What do they mean? I just did a Mr. Coffee commercial."
If we can say anything for Marilyn's second husband, its that he won't be going anywhere, for a long, long time.
Saturday, February 12, 2005
Friday, February 11, 2005
Post-mortem of an Obituary
Arthur Miller was as unto God to us of the Enfranchised. He made being white and male and comfortably middle-class but still ambitious something worth talking about and, more important, worth listening to. He combined rage and comedy, emotion and story. But the feat he achieved that makes him most worthy of our admiration is this: he won a girl (*the* girl, Marilyn Monroe) from a jock (*the* jock, Joe DiMaggio).
He died this morning. It will never be an event like JFK's assassination or 9/11. Instead, it's something we learn over coffee and/or donuts and then forget or remember. Well, for all of us except Arthur himself.
But how do we learn? How does news spread of this medium-sized-event? I took notes beginning with my discovery:
7:30: The NYTimes.com website has a news alert saying Arthur Miller is dead.
7:32: The Times proves itself to be twice the newspaper most others are by posting another, nearly-identical news alert. 2 minutes later, the first is gone.
7:35: ABCnews.com breaks a banner. Foxnews.com is still leading with the headline "Inside the Twisted Teacher-Student Sex Trend" (kids nowadays have no idea how good they ahve it) and the sidebar that sounds like a verse of that-song-where-you-repeat-it-each-time-using-only-one-vowel "Abbas vs. Hamas" (bonus points if you piece together how it would eventually tell of a conflict between musical-theater instruments and musical-theater lovers)
7:39: Foxnews.com updates it homepage. The banner at the top is a terse statement to the effect that Arthur Miller is dead. The image below is a burning police car in Iraq. My interpretation: if we stop "exposing the flaws in the fabric of the American Dream", the Terrorists Have Already Won(TM).
7:40: Cnn.com has the now-standard banner. A minute later, news.yahoo.com becomes the first news source I checked that acknowledged the issue, but only as the 5th article linked to, in small text. Apparently the computer that aggregates the feeds disliked The Crucible in 9th Grade Honors English.
7:42: The NYTimes.com replaces the banner with a prominently placed picture and a link to a canned obituary with date/cause of death scratched in.
7:45: CNN has paid its due fully. The banner is removed, and the demise of Arthur Miller is now the first link under "More News", playing second fiddle to an attack on a Bakery half-way around the world in an already war-torn region.
7:46: If you search on Google News, you finally get a link to an article from the Kansas City Star (ed. note: as near as I am aware, Arthur Miller never pronouned "Kansas City", let alone being a cultural institution on its Great White Way). In this article, Miller's caretaker declined to give a cause of death, compared to the New York Times, which had already reported it as "congestive heart failure" 4 minutes ago. How you gonna get a Pulitzer like that, huh, Kansas City Star?
7:49: CBSnews.com skips the banner, and links to its obituary with the heading "Death of a Playwright." I hope that if I ever die, you have the decency to honor me with a death of puns in the announcement of my demise. Thank you.
This story, I am sure, will continue to develop. But I am glad to have followed its workings thus far. I expect other news sites to give him the due he has earned in their estimation. IMDB will have a link on the right side, Amazon.com will offer you a good price on a 3-pack of his scripts (unless you're logging in on his account, in which case you're "The Page You Made" will be a great price on a coffin.
Join us next week when the New Yorker heaps praise upon Arthur Miller for precisely two paragraphs, reminiscing on his contributions to the magazine and its namesake, before explaining why he would have hated some facet of the current political administration.
I'm sorry if my analysis seems cynical, but it seems like every news source is predictable in their handling of his death: thoroughly opportunistic.
Present company included.
-Dan Bentley
He died this morning. It will never be an event like JFK's assassination or 9/11. Instead, it's something we learn over coffee and/or donuts and then forget or remember. Well, for all of us except Arthur himself.
But how do we learn? How does news spread of this medium-sized-event? I took notes beginning with my discovery:
7:30: The NYTimes.com website has a news alert saying Arthur Miller is dead.
7:32: The Times proves itself to be twice the newspaper most others are by posting another, nearly-identical news alert. 2 minutes later, the first is gone.
7:35: ABCnews.com breaks a banner. Foxnews.com is still leading with the headline "Inside the Twisted Teacher-Student Sex Trend" (kids nowadays have no idea how good they ahve it) and the sidebar that sounds like a verse of that-song-where-you-repeat-it-each-time-using-only-one-vowel "Abbas vs. Hamas" (bonus points if you piece together how it would eventually tell of a conflict between musical-theater instruments and musical-theater lovers)
7:39: Foxnews.com updates it homepage. The banner at the top is a terse statement to the effect that Arthur Miller is dead. The image below is a burning police car in Iraq. My interpretation: if we stop "exposing the flaws in the fabric of the American Dream", the Terrorists Have Already Won(TM).
7:40: Cnn.com has the now-standard banner. A minute later, news.yahoo.com becomes the first news source I checked that acknowledged the issue, but only as the 5th article linked to, in small text. Apparently the computer that aggregates the feeds disliked The Crucible in 9th Grade Honors English.
7:42: The NYTimes.com replaces the banner with a prominently placed picture and a link to a canned obituary with date/cause of death scratched in.
7:45: CNN has paid its due fully. The banner is removed, and the demise of Arthur Miller is now the first link under "More News", playing second fiddle to an attack on a Bakery half-way around the world in an already war-torn region.
7:46: If you search on Google News, you finally get a link to an article from the Kansas City Star (ed. note: as near as I am aware, Arthur Miller never pronouned "Kansas City", let alone being a cultural institution on its Great White Way). In this article, Miller's caretaker declined to give a cause of death, compared to the New York Times, which had already reported it as "congestive heart failure" 4 minutes ago. How you gonna get a Pulitzer like that, huh, Kansas City Star?
7:49: CBSnews.com skips the banner, and links to its obituary with the heading "Death of a Playwright." I hope that if I ever die, you have the decency to honor me with a death of puns in the announcement of my demise. Thank you.
This story, I am sure, will continue to develop. But I am glad to have followed its workings thus far. I expect other news sites to give him the due he has earned in their estimation. IMDB will have a link on the right side, Amazon.com will offer you a good price on a 3-pack of his scripts (unless you're logging in on his account, in which case you're "The Page You Made" will be a great price on a coffin.
Join us next week when the New Yorker heaps praise upon Arthur Miller for precisely two paragraphs, reminiscing on his contributions to the magazine and its namesake, before explaining why he would have hated some facet of the current political administration.
I'm sorry if my analysis seems cynical, but it seems like every news source is predictable in their handling of his death: thoroughly opportunistic.
Present company included.
-Dan Bentley
Thursday, February 10, 2005
The Enfranchised's first step
Foster makes many points and several good ones in his analysis of the album as an art form. But he misses the larger picture: the singles of yesteryear are different entirely in purpose and spirit than the singles we have thrust upon us today. So if Foster's was a scientific post, allow mine to be a whimsical historical journey. As with all looks backwards, there may be some anachronisms and mistakes, the erroneousness of which are now lost to the sands of time.
In the 50's, socks hopped, drives threw, and boobs were so pointy that second base required goggles. An album was released on a vinyl record disc. As I understand it, these were manufactured by artisan dinosaurs and this is why we no longer listen to them. Instead of bittorrenting an mp3 or iTunes Music Storing a single, less-catchily-abbreviated AAC, you committed to the entire concept. Let's say you started listening to this 12-inch monstrosity of information: in those days you'd be stuck listening to the entire thing. This means that if something came up in the middle (traditionally, this involved peasant rebellions, discovering a northwest passage, or something people used to do.), you couldn't just fast forward to the next track. So, to offer an alternative to support the Tower of Babble of such artists as Elvis and the Chimpanzys without fully buying in, the single was created. Take this token of musicality, it has pictures of the dreamboats, which is, we both know, the only reason you want to buy it, you horribly non-art-oriented "fan". And, while we're at it, on the B-side, we have to put *something*, so... here's some junk.
Nowadays, however, we can pick and choose. Pluck an apple of an AM/DC song or a cherry of a Green Dan tune. Album art has gone the way of Ascii art (that is to say, best taken in small, infrequent doses). The single, as it was originally conceived, is now the center. Why do they still bother, record companies? Fans have already bought the album, passers-by the tracks that were the hook.
The answer is that fans are stupid. They have no shame, wallets infinitely deep, and a thirst unquenchable. As an example, allow me to say, I like the Postal Service. I like the Postal Service the way that most people like Oxygen. If a woman, in an attempt to seduce me, were to play any track of theirs, I don't know how my pants could stay buttoned. (this is unfortunate because, to be honest, it wouldn’t have to be a woman doing the seduction, and, well, I'll continue to say that's the way the pig got into my bedroom until the day I die).
12:21 AM Tuesday, I check out iTMS's front page to find, lo and behold, a new album by them. But wait, it's a single I already own multiple times over ("We Will Become Silhouettes", a sickly-sweet rendition of our own mortality as reminded by, y'know, nukes). But wait, it has b-sides. One of these is "Be Still My Heart", a catchy jingle in its own right that's, in their vein, a sickly-sweet telling of some love story (this is one of their tracks that falls into the "with hope" category). The other two tracks are remixes that derive most of their goodness from the original.
And as I was downloading the tracks and my credit card was being charged, I realize, I would buy anything they put their name on, so long as I could get immediate gratification. No Postal Service lunchboxes until we perfect the lunchbox modem. But, sure, I'd join their fanclub to see more photos. Or, yeah, why not pay extra to hear the songs that people more versed in music than I decided were crap. I would expend capital on a (More Cowbell) remix.
And that's when I realized: I have a problem.
My name is Dan Bentley, I'm a Postal Service-holic, and B-sides are enablers.
In the 50's, socks hopped, drives threw, and boobs were so pointy that second base required goggles. An album was released on a vinyl record disc. As I understand it, these were manufactured by artisan dinosaurs and this is why we no longer listen to them. Instead of bittorrenting an mp3 or iTunes Music Storing a single, less-catchily-abbreviated AAC, you committed to the entire concept. Let's say you started listening to this 12-inch monstrosity of information: in those days you'd be stuck listening to the entire thing. This means that if something came up in the middle (traditionally, this involved peasant rebellions, discovering a northwest passage, or something people used to do.), you couldn't just fast forward to the next track. So, to offer an alternative to support the Tower of Babble of such artists as Elvis and the Chimpanzys without fully buying in, the single was created. Take this token of musicality, it has pictures of the dreamboats, which is, we both know, the only reason you want to buy it, you horribly non-art-oriented "fan". And, while we're at it, on the B-side, we have to put *something*, so... here's some junk.
Nowadays, however, we can pick and choose. Pluck an apple of an AM/DC song or a cherry of a Green Dan tune. Album art has gone the way of Ascii art (that is to say, best taken in small, infrequent doses). The single, as it was originally conceived, is now the center. Why do they still bother, record companies? Fans have already bought the album, passers-by the tracks that were the hook.
The answer is that fans are stupid. They have no shame, wallets infinitely deep, and a thirst unquenchable. As an example, allow me to say, I like the Postal Service. I like the Postal Service the way that most people like Oxygen. If a woman, in an attempt to seduce me, were to play any track of theirs, I don't know how my pants could stay buttoned. (this is unfortunate because, to be honest, it wouldn’t have to be a woman doing the seduction, and, well, I'll continue to say that's the way the pig got into my bedroom until the day I die).
12:21 AM Tuesday, I check out iTMS's front page to find, lo and behold, a new album by them. But wait, it's a single I already own multiple times over ("We Will Become Silhouettes", a sickly-sweet rendition of our own mortality as reminded by, y'know, nukes). But wait, it has b-sides. One of these is "Be Still My Heart", a catchy jingle in its own right that's, in their vein, a sickly-sweet telling of some love story (this is one of their tracks that falls into the "with hope" category). The other two tracks are remixes that derive most of their goodness from the original.
And as I was downloading the tracks and my credit card was being charged, I realize, I would buy anything they put their name on, so long as I could get immediate gratification. No Postal Service lunchboxes until we perfect the lunchbox modem. But, sure, I'd join their fanclub to see more photos. Or, yeah, why not pay extra to hear the songs that people more versed in music than I decided were crap. I would expend capital on a (More Cowbell) remix.
And that's when I realized: I have a problem.
My name is Dan Bentley, I'm a Postal Service-holic, and B-sides are enablers.
Tuesday, February 08, 2005
The Discovery of Sub-Albumic Particles
Time was when the masters of Musicology practiced an archane and dark art. They wore flowing garments and charms, slept in subterranean quarters and ascended into the world of men only to bring blessings and tunes to house-parties and car tape-decks. They were melody-making medicine-men, Judas Priests if you will...Alright, they were the no-account longhair with the lazy eye at the Zeppelin concert; the roadie who could tune your Stratocaster pitch-perfect, but who couldn't play a lick himself; the guy in the garage with the headphones and the spliff; the Star Wars kid at the record store who could name all the David Bowie b-sides from the Ziggy Stardust to the foppish-fascist eras. They were the connoisseurs. They were the aficianados. They were the Tambourine Men---and they dealt exclusively in records.
Forgive me, I've just introduced a rather technical term of art without explicitly defining it. By record (record-album) will be meant, variously:
(a) A set of musical recordings stored together in jackets under one binding.
(b) The holder for such recordings.
(c) One or more 12-inch long-playing records in a slipcase.
(d) A phonograph record.
(e) A recording of different musical pieces.
There. Now, I'm sure even the most thorougly modern millie among you has come across one of these artifacts at one time or another. I remember my first find: It was at a waste disposal site about a hundred meters from from my basecamp. I stumbled upon 40 to 50 largely or fully intact specimens dating from the Late Acid-Lithic to the early Funktaceous. Most of the glyphics were too faded to be analyzed, but I conjectured from what was left of the markings on one sample that it was recorded by an artist formerly known (among contemporaries) as "Prince".
Needless to say my amateur musicological discoveries spurred me into investigating the archaeology of albums further. Imagine my surprise when I stumbled upon a sort of faux-record shop in a local mall called "Tower Records". As it happens, "Tower Records" sells digitized plastic reproductions of record-albums, complete with replica dust jackets and liner notes! Who knew you could get mp3s for money??!?!
Since my awakening, I've become a bit of a reactionary vis-a-vis musicological theory. As those of you versed in the modern orthodoxies know, the at-the-time inconsequential discovery of sub-albumic particles ("singles"), as pioneered by the work of Casey Casem and Dick Clark in the 1950s and 1960s in particular, has led to the formulation of the radical "quantum" musicological mechanics, which explains musicological phenomena in terms of their "wave functions" (i.e. in terms of how often in a given time interval t they are broadcast over a given television or radio wave). The fundamental unit of analysis in quantum musicology (as opposed to the record-album of classical mechanics) is the "hook". The hook is not only sub-albumic, but sub-singular in nature (that is, it is smaller than a record single). Proponents of the hook mechanics claim that practical musicological systems (such as clubs, request shows, and even concerts) which at one time necessitated the time-consuming and tedious employment of singles or even entire albums, can now be recreated using only sub-albumic hooks (see the Usher World tour 2003-2004). These sympathizers further point to the tremendous explanatory power of the theory and its ability to accomodate the facts about teeny-boppers and metrosexual club-kids everywhere. Recent theoretical strides made by the collaborations of Aguilera and Daly (1998), Spears and Daly (1999), Nelly and Daly (2001) and Quddus and Kelis (2004) have only solidified Quantum Musicology's place as the dominant research paradigm of our generation.
As for me, I only wish that I didn't have to resort to such painfully overextended metaphors and third-rate wordplay to convince you troglodytes that you probably ought to listen to Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, or Blonde on Blonde, or Ring of Fire, or Pet Sounds, or London Calling or Born in the motherfucking U.S.A. at least once before you die from lack of novelty.
-The Man in Black
Forgive me, I've just introduced a rather technical term of art without explicitly defining it. By record (record-album) will be meant, variously:
(a) A set of musical recordings stored together in jackets under one binding.
(b) The holder for such recordings.
(c) One or more 12-inch long-playing records in a slipcase.
(d) A phonograph record.
(e) A recording of different musical pieces.
There. Now, I'm sure even the most thorougly modern millie among you has come across one of these artifacts at one time or another. I remember my first find: It was at a waste disposal site about a hundred meters from from my basecamp. I stumbled upon 40 to 50 largely or fully intact specimens dating from the Late Acid-Lithic to the early Funktaceous. Most of the glyphics were too faded to be analyzed, but I conjectured from what was left of the markings on one sample that it was recorded by an artist formerly known (among contemporaries) as "Prince".
Needless to say my amateur musicological discoveries spurred me into investigating the archaeology of albums further. Imagine my surprise when I stumbled upon a sort of faux-record shop in a local mall called "Tower Records". As it happens, "Tower Records" sells digitized plastic reproductions of record-albums, complete with replica dust jackets and liner notes! Who knew you could get mp3s for money??!?!
Since my awakening, I've become a bit of a reactionary vis-a-vis musicological theory. As those of you versed in the modern orthodoxies know, the at-the-time inconsequential discovery of sub-albumic particles ("singles"), as pioneered by the work of Casey Casem and Dick Clark in the 1950s and 1960s in particular, has led to the formulation of the radical "quantum" musicological mechanics, which explains musicological phenomena in terms of their "wave functions" (i.e. in terms of how often in a given time interval t they are broadcast over a given television or radio wave). The fundamental unit of analysis in quantum musicology (as opposed to the record-album of classical mechanics) is the "hook". The hook is not only sub-albumic, but sub-singular in nature (that is, it is smaller than a record single). Proponents of the hook mechanics claim that practical musicological systems (such as clubs, request shows, and even concerts) which at one time necessitated the time-consuming and tedious employment of singles or even entire albums, can now be recreated using only sub-albumic hooks (see the Usher World tour 2003-2004). These sympathizers further point to the tremendous explanatory power of the theory and its ability to accomodate the facts about teeny-boppers and metrosexual club-kids everywhere. Recent theoretical strides made by the collaborations of Aguilera and Daly (1998), Spears and Daly (1999), Nelly and Daly (2001) and Quddus and Kelis (2004) have only solidified Quantum Musicology's place as the dominant research paradigm of our generation.
As for me, I only wish that I didn't have to resort to such painfully overextended metaphors and third-rate wordplay to convince you troglodytes that you probably ought to listen to Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, or Blonde on Blonde, or Ring of Fire, or Pet Sounds, or London Calling or Born in the motherfucking U.S.A. at least once before you die from lack of novelty.
-The Man in Black
Monday, February 07, 2005
My Generation's Rodent-Catcher
Ah, one Super Bowl down. Salty snacks consumed, victors declared, predictions disproven. A fun day, and what a perfect ending it is to sit down to my favorite daily dose of pseudo-intellectualism to read that we're restarting development of nuclear warheads. Ah, a tranquil slumber I shall have tonig--
Wait. What?!
Faded legends are a sorry sight. And it would seem that we've become the elementary school bully in his first year at high school. The other bully has transferred to another school/broken up into a loosely-affiliated commonwealth of independent states (here my metaphor breaks down, just like the USSR did), and he's no longer feared/respected. Instead, he tries to show to anyone who will listen (fewer and fewer each day) that he still has it: he can still punch harder and taunt higher. But instead of doing the sensible thing and try to play along with everyone else in the schoolyard, he decides to get into a race with himself.
That's right, we're making sure we're able to respond to the threats of the 21st century with the weapons of the 20th. No longer will recent foes like "insurgents" or "Sudanese instigators of acts of horrific genocide" or "Large masses of water moving at high speed towards unsuspecting shores" attempt to threaten us in the realm of nuclear superiority.
The really amazing thing about the NYTimes article, though, is the opposition it presents. After explaining that the thrust of this program was to step back from designing sleek, sexy bombs capable of ending millions of lives to constructing stoic, sturdy instruments of mass tragedy, the Times quotes as a critic Dr. P. Leonardo Mascheroni, whose complaint is that the program... costs too much. Instead, he thinks that we should make "lighter, robust [harbingers of death and destruction]."
Now, you might think that I, as a member of The Enfranchised, should be happy about support for nuclear weapons, which are essentially a jobs program for physicists, bureaucrats, and other traditionally-white-and-male eggheads. Shouldn't I want people of my background to strike pay dirt? But I'm not just white and male, I'm ambitious. Companies already exist that want to fight over this meager pie.
Men of my sort have always had a Klondike. In the 19th Century, it was Gold or the Railroad. In the 50's, it was Nuclear Weapons (hence the staked claim). In the 60's: plastics. In the 80's: we made money selling money. That's right. You give us money, we'll invest it, and eventually give you more. S&L scandal: the genius that only an oppressive majority could create. In the early 90's we made our fortunes as expats, selling democracy. And since then, computers. Cyber this and eThat. But mark my words: computers are a dying fad, and I want to know, what next? Will we start cowering at "Big Solar" or fearing legislation written by the Pastry Lobby?
Somebody once said, "Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door." The meaning of my recounting this quote should be obvious: maybe, just maybe, the lucrative trend of this decade will be aphorisms, false advice, and greeting cards.
Wait. What?!
Faded legends are a sorry sight. And it would seem that we've become the elementary school bully in his first year at high school. The other bully has transferred to another school/broken up into a loosely-affiliated commonwealth of independent states (here my metaphor breaks down, just like the USSR did), and he's no longer feared/respected. Instead, he tries to show to anyone who will listen (fewer and fewer each day) that he still has it: he can still punch harder and taunt higher. But instead of doing the sensible thing and try to play along with everyone else in the schoolyard, he decides to get into a race with himself.
That's right, we're making sure we're able to respond to the threats of the 21st century with the weapons of the 20th. No longer will recent foes like "insurgents" or "Sudanese instigators of acts of horrific genocide" or "Large masses of water moving at high speed towards unsuspecting shores" attempt to threaten us in the realm of nuclear superiority.
The really amazing thing about the NYTimes article, though, is the opposition it presents. After explaining that the thrust of this program was to step back from designing sleek, sexy bombs capable of ending millions of lives to constructing stoic, sturdy instruments of mass tragedy, the Times quotes as a critic Dr. P. Leonardo Mascheroni, whose complaint is that the program... costs too much. Instead, he thinks that we should make "lighter, robust [harbingers of death and destruction]."
Now, you might think that I, as a member of The Enfranchised, should be happy about support for nuclear weapons, which are essentially a jobs program for physicists, bureaucrats, and other traditionally-white-and-male eggheads. Shouldn't I want people of my background to strike pay dirt? But I'm not just white and male, I'm ambitious. Companies already exist that want to fight over this meager pie.
Men of my sort have always had a Klondike. In the 19th Century, it was Gold or the Railroad. In the 50's, it was Nuclear Weapons (hence the staked claim). In the 60's: plastics. In the 80's: we made money selling money. That's right. You give us money, we'll invest it, and eventually give you more. S&L scandal: the genius that only an oppressive majority could create. In the early 90's we made our fortunes as expats, selling democracy. And since then, computers. Cyber this and eThat. But mark my words: computers are a dying fad, and I want to know, what next? Will we start cowering at "Big Solar" or fearing legislation written by the Pastry Lobby?
Somebody once said, "Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door." The meaning of my recounting this quote should be obvious: maybe, just maybe, the lucrative trend of this decade will be aphorisms, false advice, and greeting cards.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
