post-whatever

Throughout "The Aesthetics of Post-Realism and the Obscenification of Everyday Life", Madalena Gonzalez outlines the alterations and duplications that contemporary society and literature must make in order to sustain it's originality. I quote, "we undoubtedly live an age which either prides itself on, or has scared itself into, being "post-everything."(pg. 112) As this is for television, film, and literature, it is for (what gonzalez opted not to mention, but I believe is important) music.

Sometimes walking down streets like St. Marks Place and Bedford Avenue, I feel as if artistic progression has frozen in time. Almost every clothing style, every band that plays through the stereo at an overpriced thrift store, every shitty painting that hangs inside a gallery, seems to be recycled material. It is as if people hand pick their favorite decades (that they most likely were not even alive to witness), and amalgamate them into one conglomerate piece of garbage. Pop-music is at a standstill, where artists reach into deceased trends and fish out dollar-bill-bluefish. Somewhat pathetically, they manage to make money, and hold their ground as some of the only recording artists out there who happen to so. However, this applies to more than just pop-music.

In (what I believe to be an important genre and scene of music) Heavy Metal music (Black Metal, specifically), bands are starting to catch on to the same gimmick. Black Metal was created to portray manifestations of true hatred, odium, depression, hostility, and any other dark emotions or outlooks you could possibly think of. In its early days, musicians were conveying an incredibly powerful message to the public. Recorded with the worst equipment attainable, nastiest instruments, and gloomiest essences, the music was meaningful. Today, people are hand-picking genres and combining them with black metal. Self named subgenres like "post-hardcore black metal" and "post-nationalist-socialist black metal" have been popping up all across the globe.

Last month, I watched a band called Deafheaven play a show. Deafheaven is one of the most notorious pretty-boy, "hipster-black metal" bands around, combining elements of screamo, doom metal, indie rock, and only bits and pieces of black metal. I've been to hundreds of shows featuring different forms of black metal, but these guys were definitely the laziest, most unimaginative effort that I've witnessed. Black Metal is supposed to be played by warlords; fucked up people, who look even more fucked up. This band features guys with hair quiffs, thick rimmed glasses, plaid shirts, and pointy shoes. The lead vocalist dances with his microphone as if he was some lily-livered reincarnation of Ian Curtis, as the band members play simple, screamo riffs, in standard timing, with little to no innovation or creativity present.

                                      (for whatever reason, they call themselves black metal. ha.)

The formation of acts such as this Deafheaven leaves me pessimistic about the progression of music in the near future. However, as it exists in modern literature (writers like Martin Amis and John Self), there are musicians who still bring creativity and passion to the table. Inquisition, a band originating in Colombia in the early 90's, then recently relocating to Seattle , offers a refreshing, revitalizing approach to black metal. Keeping many of its original traditions (raw essence, corpse paint, small-size), their sound is both resourceful and absorbing. Although they've been around for quite some time, their sound is continuously evolving, along with the members of the band. Demonic gutteral vocals uttered out of the mouth of "Dagon", paired with brilliantly rhythmic percussion and repulsive-yet-catchy riffs create an essence that many bands fail to conquer.

As for Cock and Bull, I will respond on Wednesday. But for now, enjoy the linked videos of the bands mentioned.

sad drugs

They had successfully reached the five day mark. Five days, no heroin. I would never have imagined that I'd see Cynthia's pupils at an average size. Today also marks the fifteen year anniversary of both my friendship with her, and Ben. Out of the fifteen, they suffered five painful years of harrowing addiction. Five cycles of adversity. In their eyes, Earth looked like a massive Syringe. A syringe revolving around a colossal spoon, passing by a vial, and then rotating 180 degrees to face a brick wall. A brick wall that indented patterns on their foreheads when their score was dry. This is how I can remember Ben and Cynthia. Today, for the first time in years, I saw Cynthia's beautiful face restored back to default. She told me about her painful week.

We had Spork install 6 locks on the door. He took our phones, our computers, shut off our power and threw us some books. Lovecraft, Crowley, and Barth. I read them multiple times, but can't remember any of it. The five days felt like five years. After pacing around constantly for the first half of the day, I laid in my bed. Ben was cutting up lines of valium. I told him I wanted to do it the natural way, old fashioned, cold-turkey. He cut the lines on a broken mirror, which when angled correctly, allowed me to see his pretty face. His face wasn't so pretty anymore. There were sores around his lip, gashes on his cheeks, and acne across his forehead. Suddenly, I felt the urge to vomit. So I lifted my hands towards my face and let go. It slid through my hand and the webbings of my fingers caught what they could. Soon enough, vomit would cover half of the entire room, including the bed, where Ben and I resided. Where Ben's Valium sat, perfectly cut up, perfectly drenched in my stomach lining and acid. It's weird when you puke up something you know is probably not the best thing to be coming out of your body. A Nectarine-ish layer covered Ben's hair, draping over his eyelashes, dropping from his upper lip, and ultimately the mirror harboring his drugs. Ben hit me. He hit me hard. It's okay though, I forgave him. I deserved it.

Book Review

Will Self's Cock refused to leave my hands upon opening it, probably for the worst. The story is jam-packed with dark satire, witty metaphors, and a thousand ways to feel bad about being a male, although I do not think this was the intention of Self. Teeming with postmodern ideals, Self socially satirizes acronyms asking to be, such as Alcoholics Anonymous or NHS. The story takes its reader on a path of fluctuating emotions: joy, disgust, arousal, and its antonym. As we witness the path of manhood that dawns upon Carol, we notice more than just a physical change. She develops a sexual drive strong enough to rape her husband, masturbate until she bleeds, and ultimately, manipulate people in order to satisfy her cravings.

Self's writing style is different than that of most Transgressive writers. The voice of each character is individual, as is the narrator. The tone, not yet colloquial, but not too formal either. Self uses this to his advantage for his satire, which is not to be forgotten. Self is poking fun at gender, at manhood, at womanhood. It's no surprise that Carol's transformation manifests itself into something far more than just physical. Her Metamorphosis enables her to escape her life as a submissive wife, and reverse the roles as she "climbs on top" of her husband (who at this point, may very well be her [his] wife) and sodomizes him.

Self does what any important satirical writer does, he attacks our weak-points (masturbation, sex, alcoholism, fantasies, etc.). He does so in a manner that not only heightens the awareness of his reader, but allows him or her to laugh at themselves, hate themselves, and finally, put down the book with scrambled emotions and ideas.

Will Self describes his childhood as if it were a typical monotonous, suburban upbringing. With two intellectual parents, he spent his early life reading science fiction and "The Canon", which bored him. It seems as if almost everything bored him. The only thing that enticed him were the novels of J.G Ballard and Philip K. Dick.  Following his parents separation, Self turned to self-harm and drug use to cope with his depression. After being addicted to heroin, he is now living sober as an Oxford graduate.

I believe that this "bored of everything" mentality shines through his writing style in Cock and Bull. Sequentially, the main character, Carol, is bored of her relationship with her husband, and their sex life. She resorts to compulsive masturbation to deal with these issues. It's almost as if Self reacts only to extremes (pleasure, euphoria, pain). Either by cutting himself or using harsh drugs, his personal life and actions mirror the actions of Carol in the sense that they are both constantly seeking the most intense emotions and sensations attainable.

The manner in which Transgressive British Fiction writers attempt to convey their messages varies greatly from that of the American Transgressive. Much like the colloquial, biased critiques of everyday brits, British Transgressive authors such as Martin Amis, Angela Carter, and JG Ballard speak with a refined, wordy, well-educated voice. Inversely, alike to the Birtish critique of "stupid americans", American Transgressive authors such as Chuck Palahniuk generally speak with a more informal, day-to-day voice.

This is not to say that one is more affective than the other, however. The brits carefully craft and engineer their novels to have deep, under-the-surface meaning while the Americans unpack their messages right in front of your face.

Simply take the pace of Martin Amis' Money in comparison to that of Palahniuk's Fight Club. Fight Club is a fast paced, boom-boom-boom story while Money is dreadfully slow. Fight Club enables its reader (for the most part) to engage in its text quite easily (either by word choice, or by speed). Money does not only drag us through a bleak, hopeless story, but it travels with such monotony to the point where it hurts to read. Either way, we hurt. We cringe when we hear Palahniuk speak of biting through his intestines to save his life. We groan when John Self spends yet another day wasting away his life through foolish, taboo acts. Although these styles may be significantly different, they typically accomplish the same goal: we feel an array of negative emotions that we would rather not have had to feel, but are happy and willing feeling. (Christ that was wordy.)

Throughout Nights At The Circus, Angela Carter establishes an ironic tone in her voice. The work is said to encompass feminist ideas, which I agree with, while some call it "post-feminism". Her allusions to feminism are said in a snide, swift manner, which could potentially enable somebody to view her work as "post-feminist". I simply believe that this is her attempt at embracing feminist writing in a different style, which should not necessarily deem it "post".

On page 67, I quote, "We girls began to dream of putting up our hair and letting down our skirts and all the delicious mysteries of growing up." By italicizing "growing up", Carter refers to the conventional adolescent girl. At a certain age, she will "grow up", let down her skirt, put her hair up, and live life like an ordinary girl. Had "growing up" not been italicized, the sentence would be read completely differently. The girls would dream of literally growing up (aging) opposed to growing up as a commodified woman. A "slave to her husband" who will let out her skirt and fix her hair so she can seem pretty while she scrubs the scum and chest hair from the bathtub.

Of course, if Carter would to put it as bluntly as I did, the post-feminism label would not be relevant; but since she puts relevant intellectual effort and creativity into her writing she is deemed post? I'm not buying it. Carter's Nights at the Circus is a piece of feminist satire, bold enough to break feminist boundaries, but light enough not to destroy them.

selfspeare

When reading Money, I like to imagine the character of John Self as a distorted stand-in who embodies the worst qualities of Amis himself. Although Amis establishes a self-titled character in his story in what I believe is an attempt to stray these ideas away, some similarities between the personal lives of Self and of the real Martin Amis leave it hard for me to believe that there is no connection. In an interview with Amis online, he reveals that he spent a year living in the United States. This might have lead Amis to believe he was partly American. The same can be said about Self, who is half american and immediately feels comfortable with the country, in contrast to traditional british protagonists who go to the US and are horrified by its excesses. The fact that Amis speaks to his audience through the lens of a fictional (but strikingly familiar) character applies to Shakespeare's belief that “All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players.”.

Shakespeare's protagonists are always fully-drawn characters, while his minor characters are often one-dimensional representations of gossip, sinfulness, long-windedness, etc. In the same way, Amis's protagonist directly engages the audience and "breaks the fourth wall," whereas his minor characters, whose names usually consist of puns, are representations of vices or characteristics. Shakespearean acting also implies that certain characters will develop a relationship with the audience through asides, while other characters will ignore the audience. In terms of Money, the puns and vices used by Martin act as a way of developing characters by ignoring the audience: their names say enough alone.

Self's character is extremely actor-obessesed. He often notes certain actions and they take and movements they make with their bodies such as Spunk's "actor-stare". What is ironic about this is that within the movie he is making, each character is casted in a role that he finds embarrassing or uncharacteristic compared with his usual work. I am unsure of the significance of this, but would like to ask the class and Robin what you guys think.