The Language of the Blogosphere

People often assume that those of us who pursue advanced degrees in English are sticklers on language - fanatics who are just waiting for their friends to make a grammar error so they can write a big check mark on their faces in red marker. In fact, I do dream of such powers, but the closest I may ever come would be if I pitched a superhero film to Hollywood, something along the lines of "The GrammarPersons" or "Team English" or "The Grammaricans," who would display on their "English standard" a proud and dashing semicolon. They'd consist of such marvelous persons as:

the dashing and debonair Dr Dirk Diction

his wife and partner grammarian Ella Quince, who is always in style

Syntaxator, a gentle giant famous for his impersonations

The Splicer, an ambiguous fellow capable of destroying the very things he aims to mend

the ever witty and a propos "Bartlett" (always in quotes)

their sexy, dominant leader The Grammatrix, who is harsh only to be kind, for her discipline makes us better people

and the loose cannon of the group, the Grammatrix's twin sister, Lingua (the Tongue), who keeps going wrong though she tries to be good, and who has a tendency for slipping

Alright, that's enough fun on the tangent. I was actually trying to say that the more you get into language the more you appreciate that its power includes its flexibility and adaptability, but that, as with any superhero, its power can also be the site of its weakness - lazy and haphazard language can void it of its meaning and threaten the breakdown of community itself.

Which gets me to the moment of this post: Brian McLaren's recent post at the God's Politics blog. McLaren uses that pastorly ploy of sharing an anecdote in which he himself features as the learner so that he can, in his assumed position of knower, meet us, as the learner's at his feet (or fingers, as it were), where we're at (Where you at?). Style aside, there's wisdom in the notion that an attitude or spirit underlies the way we use language, and that spirit infects the context into which we speak. Just like selfishness on the road creates a traffic jam of everyone fighting for position, anger or vitriol in our speech, whether in our homes or online, creates an atmosphere of competition, anger, shame, anxiety, etc.

Christians like to cite the Scripture, "speak the truth in love," both to justify the wishy-washy, smarmy, coddling of others and to temper such a spineless attitude. I often find the latter camp as annoying as the former, since they will say what they believe, then try to qualify and soften it for an audience they imagine might be offended by a viewpoint different than their own. This often has the form of, "I don't mean to say..." or "I'm not trying to discount/diminish/deny..."

That kind of rhetoric certainly isn't violent or hateful (as McLaren speaks of), but it also isn't that different than a coddling, enabling version of love. In fact, it works in part to protect the speaker/writer from accusations of harshness or from any real critique at all - "Oh, but I didn't actually say anything definite, I just indicated a direction, then said what people already do or say is okay, thereby removing any real challenge to make more than superficial changes in their lives or attitudes. Don't blame me."

Ella Quince has no patience for such quibbling. A challenging word must stand as a true challenge, or else why speak it? Qualifications and coddlings indicate a distrust of one's audience, and audiences, I like to think, tend on the whole to pick up on such things and to not like them. To let love lie under our language is a worthy goal, but it requires us to really examine what we mean by "love."

Occasionally we can make what looks like progress

This recent post on the God's Politics blog has the virtue of demonstrating what can come of people actually talking to one another. The abortion "debate" is among the stickiest facing our country today, but it has long struck me that the incorrigible stickiness (which, I think, is real) appears more extensive than it really is because the two sides are arguing at cross purposes, or not arguing about the same subject, anyhow. So the so-called debate turns into a shouting match, with arguments even about what words to use.

There's that joke: "Democrats don't care what happens to a baby before it's born; Republicans don't care what happens to it afterward." As a joke, or quip, or whatever, it is intentionally hyperbolic and unfair, but it does work by taking note of the disparity I'm talking about. Pro-choicers don't hate babies or parenthood (not most of them, anyhow) - they just hate the injustice and indignity suffered by victims of rape, by mothers abandoned by their child's father, by children born into homes that can't keep ends together to properly care for them. Pro-lifers don't hate women or poor people (not most of them, anyhow) - they just hate the thought that a burgeoning human life might be extinguished.

These are simplifications, of course, but I think they more or less fairly represent the kinds of places we might find common ground on the topic of abortion. That's what I appreciate about Sojourner's/Call to Renewal: in making it their goal to decrease the number of abortions, they are bridging the yes/no gap - so tainted as it is with propaganda - and necessarily having to turn their sights to the way society deals with all its marginalized and suffering peoples. I'm not sure what a "seamless garment of life" really means, as the post author uses it, but it obviously represents an attempt to think the whole of injustice rather than to barely think at all.

Taking Irony Seriously

Whilst putzing about on YouTube a while ago I found a series of videos relating in various ways to one particular video, under the screenname Paperlilies, which calls for a ban of sarcasm on the site (see it here). I'd actually not recommend you bother with watching it; it consists of a girl "complaining" of sarcastic videos on YouTube and suggesting that no one should make them anymore because she's tired of feeling stupid when she watches them. Her other suggestion is to tag sarcastic videos as such.

The point of the video is to be itself "sarcastic." There was a surprising outlash against this video, particularly by people who didn't understand the joke. Paperlilies posted another video, both amusing and disturbing, in which she reads from the "hater" comments she received (caution, adult content revealing the ignorance and latent aggression of the American YouTube user). Among the interesting responses to this comes from a sympathetic little girl who seems concerned that Paperlilies might take some of the comments to heart. Then there is this "instructional video" on what sarcasm means, which has a kind of low-budget production value to it that almost makes it amusing.

I can't really watch all these videos without flinching each time someone says "sarcasm" or "sarcastic," when what they really mean is ironic. Irony is a difficult concept to pin down, but almost always involves a statement that, taken at "face value," appears to mean what it says, but taken in context or by intonation, actually means something contradictory. Sarcasm is a form of irony, and so the confusion is quite understandable. But in sarcasm there is usually a clear tone and some form of hyperbole in the statement. As a form of irony, it is not always true that all irony is sarcastic, though all sarcasm is probably ironic.

John Stewart and Stephen Colbert are masters of both irony and sarcasm. When Stewart responds to a news story with that exaggerated innocent look on his face, he's usually being sarcastic. When Colbert pretends to be an earnest reporter and asks absurd questions of congresspeople, he's usually being ironic. Another good example of irony is Andy Kaufman, as played by Jim Carey in Man on the Moon. No one could tell when the guy was playing a character and if he was ever being genuine.

To complicate, or maybe simplify things, there's the irony Reinhold Niebuhr discerns in American history, as discussed in this post at God's Politics. Here, irony exists where our misled goals and hopes produce contradictory results that do not in themselves delegitimate the goals. This is a more esoteric form, perhaps, but I think it helps get at the broad nature of the term.

Language changes, of course, but it should change because new situations or ideas require words to be used in new ways, not because we don't know what we're talking about. In the first case language grows; in the second, it becomes meaningless.

Art and the Public Sphere

Last week it seemed suddenly everyone was talking about art. I first noticed it with respect to the Jesus Obama controversy. This struck me as an interesting example of people being too literal, for the basic objection, as far as I can tell, is to the fact that Obama is not in fact Christ returned to save us. Presumably, when Christ does return, he will also want a statue of himself with a neon halo, but we shouldn't be doling out that kind of honor on just anyone. Why didn't anyone object to it being a rather poor likeness of Obama? Or to it being rather obvious and simple? After all, the whole thing rested on what the artist saw as a religious obsession with Obama - which most of us can also see quite clearly without this artist's help. If Christians didn't get all in a huff about it, no one would probably have paid it any attention, and I don't really think it deserves much. The dean of the School of the Art Institute said, "When you see it, when you spend time with it, you understand that it's not a provocative work at all." He meant it isn't intended as controversial, but I don't know that it is provocative in the good sense, either.

There's a link in the Jesus Obama article to a chocolate Jesus story. People can't seem to decide if they should be upset that the medium is chocolate or that Jesus had genitals. Inasmuch as nudity is not always sexual, and considering nudity is an important part of the Genesis story, I should think the medium more questionable. In either case, and in the Obama case, too, the objection, I suppose, has more to do with a sense that the artists are being too liberal with their religious references, not showing adequate respect for a faith tradition. Now, on this point I might be able to agree with the Jesus Obama critics, since the expression of the statue is rather dopey and the whole thing looks rather like a self-satisfied wise-crack. On the other hand, while I can't decide if a confection contributes the right kind of meaning to a crucifix, the chocolate Jesus does look as though it was done respectfully.

There's a whole other set of issues with artist Kara Walker's racism silhouettes, as heard on NPR. I don't know that there's space to really explore all the sides of what she does, but one of the interesting things to me is how the concept sounds ineffective, but the execution is actually rather challenging and compelling. Using a "gentile" art form to represent people in stereotyped ways seems likely to tempt her into dredging up tired debates for the sake of drawing attention to herself. In fact, she uses the intrinsic interest of the form - the starkness of the black and white contrast, the "puzzle" element of discerning the shape - to draw the viewer into a surprising and disturbing world. The antique "quaintness" of the form seems to disarm its power a priori, but that's just what creates the tension when she uses it to represent the present.

Living in "liberal" neighborhoods for many years now, I often have reason for forgetting how much racism still exists in various forms. Walker's work, it seems to me, brings a fresh vitality to the issue. She says she wishes to implicate the viewer, and I think there is a significant difference between finding oneself implicated in something one didn't create and finding oneself accused of creating it. The latter draws a line in the sand and divides us up into sides ; the former describes an experience common to anyone living as a human being in history.

Friends, Philosophically

My philosophy professor challenged us all with the question, "Can you ever love a friend for nothing good in themselves?" Some 'splaining. First, "love" translates the Greek philia, which is the philo- in philosophy, "love of wisdom," but different from the eros in erotic, i.e. the kind of thing we think of as following upon romance (from the Latin for "Roman"). Philia in Aristotle's usage is the kind of affection you can have toward a dear friend, a classmate, a coworker, or just a fellow citizen. A friend, then, could be anyone who recognizes some common bond with you.

Aristotle says there are basically three kinds of friendship. The most basic are those of utility, where each person finds the other useful. This is like the relationship I have with a librarian or barrista or waiter. Then there is the friendship of pleasure, where each one enjoys spending time with the other. Many of my classmates, for instance, fall into this category. These are friends you like to have around but that, if you're honest, you probably won't keep up with once you part company. Then there's the best kind of friendship, that of virtue. This is where each friend is of such stuff that each likes the other for the goodness within them, not just for what they get from them. These friendships will probably be the most intimate, since that's how you would get to know the good in the other and learn to love it, as with a best friend or spouse.

But, says my famous philosophy professor, is not this best kind of friendship still qualified? That is, aren't you loving the friend for something he has now (goodness), but may not always have, or is not the same as himself? You love his goodness, not him.

Hmm...

Is there, then, another kind? Does he mean charity? Charity would seem to apply to cases where you do something for the other's sake, but not expecting reciprocation - and reciprocity is an important element in Aristotle's friendship. What does it mean, then, to love another for his own sake?

I can't think of a way in which having a real friendship doesn't involve loving something about the other person. Even when we say we take people with their faults and everything, we don't really think those faults should be left alone. To accept that no one is perfect need not entail rejecting perfection as an ideal, and in fact, when you really care about someone, you want them to be good people, to be the best they can be. And that's really the key. For Aristotle, "goodness" and "virtue" are terms for the flourishing of a person given the nature of persons - i.e. as thinking, feeling, physical beings. Hence the goodness of a person just is, in a sense, who that person is. If you are living up to your human potential, then you are a person with a personality and a set of skills and virtues ; if you are not, then you aren't much of a person, but acting more like a beast, simply following your impulses, or a plant, just sitting there growing - and we do not befriend plants in a philia way. So I always love what's good in a person because her goodness is what makes her who she is, is what best displays her special humanness to me and the world - and this is also why I desire her to become better, because she will become more herself.

This raises issue 2: is there one human nature, or are we fundamentally unique?

Hmm...

Empty Irony on the Liberal Left

Everyone's always telling me I should watch the Daily Show and the Colbert Report. So, one day when I was "drafting" in the wake of someone else's wireless signal, I YouTubed a few episodes of each and generally enjoyed myself. Then, recently, I received this e-mail from the God's Politics blog set up by Jim Wallis and Sojourners/Call to Renewal. It contains an embedded video of Bill O'Reilly appearing on Colbert's show, and a link to a vid of Colbert appearing on O'Reilly's show. I watched both, and laughed some, since Colbert is often a funny guy, and even O'Reilly gets lucky once or twice. But in general I found the combined 13 minutes rather pointless and generally exhibiting the worst aspects of the liberal attitude, what I'm calling "empty irony." (Click the title to see for yourself.)

The main idea is that, instead of actually talking about something, as even Stewart tried to do on Crossfire (or whatever show that was), Colbert turned on the irony from the get-go and never turned it off. O'Reilly, recognizing this, tried to absorb some of it, dish some of it back, and occasionally to actually explain his point of view - to which Colbert responded with more irony. What's the point of this kind of behavior? On the one hand, he's parodying O'Reilly's rather inane and obnoxious interview style in which he doesn't actually listen but just pounds his guest with his opinions. On the other hand, his irony fails to attain any substance beyond "I'm more ironic than you," which is silently premised upon "Because my position is superior to yours."

The comments were disappointing as well, running to the tune of "Yay for Colbert," "Yeah, Colbert is funny," and "O'Reilly is dumb, hah hah hah." O'Reilly's stubborness and narrow-mindedness is certainly frustrating, but must one's response to him be in kind?

Just What is a Simulacrum?

This is sort of an explanatory follow up to my 11/04/06 post.

The simulacrum is a postmodern appropriation of a Latin term that just meant "image" or "likeness" (as in "similar") and has come to mean a few different things (you can find a wiki on it) ; the sense in which I'm using it here is sort of the sci-fi/fantasy sense of a copy indistinguishable yet distinct from its model. The other sense is that of the copy being modeled on an image or copy, and becoming the truth of the retreating historical origin ; it is like in Walk the Line, as one might argue, how the life of Cash is mapped onto a standard biopic narrative of struggle > sudden success > drugs, sex, marital problems > final reconciliation and balance. The conventional story itself seems so common or true that we'd almost be upset if the film didn't "end right."

The tribute band is a kind of simulacrum - an attempt at making a convincing copy of an historical model. It's a strange phenomenon, really. Why would one want to spend so much time in imitation of someone else? As a "tribute," they say, an homage to an important person or group in one's life. But, in most theories of creativity, be they rhetorical or poetic, it strikes me that most people consider it a tribute to imitate the virtues of one's model but to strive always to improve upon them. Quintillian, for example (you were hoping I'd mention Quintillian), says that "everything that is the resemblance of something else, must necessarily be inferior to that of which it is a copy, as the shadow to the substance..." Plato (how could I mention Quintillian and not Plato) even qualifies the power of the arts altogether on the grounds that they are copies of copies (a painting of a horse is a copy of a real horse, which is a kind of copy of the ideal Horse). What is it to copy a copy of a copy?

I don't think I'm actually so concerned about actual historical fact (what "really" happened, what it was "really like") as I'm concerned for our present taste. Not believing in any truth beyond what you can "create" can lead to sloppy or lazy art, or to empty art. The first kind is where you're just subjected to the old cliches, usually wrapped in self-conscious irony, in hopes of both making you feel a prefab reaction and of making sure you and they know it's prefab. The empty kind demonstrates more effort, but has nothing ultimately to offer, except perhaps a "twist" that's supposed to make you go, "Oh, I didn't see that coming."

Take Pan's Labyrinth (yes I'm going to talk about the end!), for example. The whole film is rather dark and desperate, and there's even a part where the little girl, Ofelia, tells her unborn baby brother that "things aren't so nice out here." The film proceeds through a series of tortures and dangers - some "real," others ambiguous - to its violent conclusion. The girl's redemption is supposed to be in the fact that she succeeds in her fairy tale quest, but you're never sure if it was real or not ; in fact, you have reason to believe it rather wasn't. So, we're supposed to be satisfied that the girl dies happy? Even the film cannot only offer this conclusion, but places Ofelia's story next to a real story about rebel holdouts against the fascists, which story follows a more standard kill-the-bad guy plot as a way of satisfying your vengeance.

What is the message here? What can we conclude? We make our own realities? Well, sure, and then we nearly kill our little brothers and are killed by our stepfathers. That's not how I would make my own reality, personally. You're left with a feeling that the world sucks so it's nice when you can imagine something better, but really the way to make it better is violently (kill the bad guy).