Feisty and Heisty
A commercial for some SUV or another, currently broadcast on the one channel we receive with some clarity, has prompted certain thoughts about the Flitcraft episode Sam Spade relates to Brigid O’Shaughnessy in The Maltese Falcon, and its deployment as parable in the sometimes contiguous work of Slavoj Zizek and Paul Auster.
If you’ve not read The Maltese Falcon, Flitcraft is a fellow who, on his lunch break one day, narrowly dodges a beam which drops from a construction site, and which surely would have killed him. The narrow escape awakens something in him: Flitcraft realizes that life is governed by randomness, and he becomes ashamed that he had settled into so routine a life, bereft of spontaneity. He decides to flee town and family in order to start a new life governed by his new awareness of the possibility that, at any moment, a falling beam could strike him dead. On commission, Sam Spade finds Flitcraft a number of years later and is flummoxed to learn that Flitcraft has settled into a life very nearly identical to his previous one. Recounting this story, Spade observes that without the falling of subsequent beams, Flitcraft—who had previously adapted himself to just such a possibility—had become again adapted to the tranquility of a life without such a risk.
The SUV advertisement in question features a pair of cheery yuppies about town in their Sport Utility, debating the merits of the “I before e” mnemonic which guides we users of the English language. Dude lays down the law, and his lady confronts him with a number of exceptions: weird, caffeine, feisty, and so on. They pull to a stop and our man gets out, slings open the hatchback, and a handsome pooch leaps aboard: bingo, nice! A Rottweiler no less! The three cruise off, but the camera lingers and we learn their previous station was atop a patch of otherwise pristine road torn-up for the sake of construction. Clearly, these folk have chosen wisely: voice-over now advises us that we must prepare for the exceptions to life’s rules: suburbs-locked, a less powerful or ostentatiously sturdy vehicle makes perfect sense, but…
For Zizek, the Flitcraft affair perfectly stages the function of the objet petit a, the unattainable object of desire of Lacanian psychoanalytic theory. Flitcraft isn’t seeking a new life of spontaneous play, the satisfaction of his desire, but the opportunity to start fresh, with his drive toward such a life unhampered by the falling beam as mark of the world’s inconsistency. Drive does not aim to satisfy desire, but only to reproduce itself and desire as such. The falling of beams then is for Flitcraft a source of anxiety, which results not when the object of desire is lacking, but when we get too close to that object (for Flitcraft a life characterized by its spontaneity), when fantasy can no longer stage our experience of desire qua desire.
For Auster, the Flitcraft affair functions something like the structuring principle of his entire oeuvre. Chance or the randomness of life reign supreme: something like the medium through which the subject is alternately derailed or rerouted in his (and always his) encircling of the object of his desire. In Leviathan, a writer abandons his life for terrorism after a near-fatal fall; in Moon Palace a chance connection brings fellowship for the protagonist but effectively ends his romantic relationship; and in Oracle Night, the writer-protagonist’s explicit rewriting of the Flitcraft episode functions something like self-analysis, desublimating various unconscious impediments which block his relationship with his wife. In each case, it is ultimately as nostalgic writer-protagonists looking back on past events, reproducing scenes in which desire can stage itself as such, that Auster’s characters’ ability or inability to fold the randomness of life in on itself frames and motivates narration.
In the SUV commercial, exceptions to the “I before e” mnemonic and the rough terrain of the otherwise stable terrain of the pristine suburb function to advise us that we must prepare ourselves for exceptions to the rule, the randomness of life. Naturally, such exceptions do not motivate a true break from convention for our two yuppies, an analysis of their obeisance to the zeitgeist, for instance, but an occasion—like the falling beam for Flitcraft—for drive to repeat itself as such: and here, drive is the consumerist impulse to have that which will prepare one for the randomness of life, the phantasmatic exceptions to life’s rules. The couple thus acts to nullify the randomness of life in their very preparation for its randomness; and we may regard their (our) fantasy here as the constant staging and restaging of the desiring subject in relation to the sustained possibility of various exceptions to life’s rules, which nonetheless surface as commonplace precisely because we subjects have prepared ourselves for ‘em.
Now, we can easily imagine that our pair of yuppies’ SUV is outfitted with elaborate security devices, and for that reason I’m gonna post up the Three 6 Mafia joint, “Let’s Plan a Robbery.” This song is cute ‘cause we here find our boys merely playing make-believe (trick-or-treating deployed as a metaphor for the robbery of a drug op). More, in this play it shows us that it is precisely our fantastic relationship to the moot threat duly prepared for which engenders further phantasmatic threat upon threat (the robbery planned in the first verse becomes the plan acted upon in the second verse). The track brilliantly subverts the logic of defense and preparation proffered in the SUV commercial because we cannot logically presume a causal relationship between the planning of a robbery and the robbery itself. It is rather a culture in which the possible threat of robbery is ceaselessly prepared for by those who can—against the work of neutralizing certain unequal social conditions—which produces the very conditions necessary for an act such as robbery.
In Auster’s Oracle Night, for instance, a drug-addled young acquaintance robs the writer-protagonist and his wife’s apartment in order to pay-off some fierce creditors. In the narrative, the protagonist and the young thief bond briefly over a shared knowledge of the fictional punk band, The Bean Spasms, and for this reason I’m also gonna post the Jim Carroll song, “Day and Night,” from Catholic Boy. Bean Spasms (1967), is a collective work of poetry attributed to Ted Berrigan, Ron Padgett, and Joe Brainard—all contemporaries of Jim Carroll, who published his first collection in ’67, in the second wave of the New York School of poets. To my ears, the riff is pretty much lifted from “Downtown Train” by Tom Waits, but what do I know? I like the idea of promises, like shadows, shattering in the light of day; the dance between day and night revealing something of the beauty and failure of each antipode. Perhaps there is something of the spontaneity or placelessness which Flitcraft displaces to be glimpsed in this dance.
Let's Plan a Robbery - Three 6 Mafia
Day and Night - Jim Carroll Band
Graeme
If you’ve not read The Maltese Falcon, Flitcraft is a fellow who, on his lunch break one day, narrowly dodges a beam which drops from a construction site, and which surely would have killed him. The narrow escape awakens something in him: Flitcraft realizes that life is governed by randomness, and he becomes ashamed that he had settled into so routine a life, bereft of spontaneity. He decides to flee town and family in order to start a new life governed by his new awareness of the possibility that, at any moment, a falling beam could strike him dead. On commission, Sam Spade finds Flitcraft a number of years later and is flummoxed to learn that Flitcraft has settled into a life very nearly identical to his previous one. Recounting this story, Spade observes that without the falling of subsequent beams, Flitcraft—who had previously adapted himself to just such a possibility—had become again adapted to the tranquility of a life without such a risk.
The SUV advertisement in question features a pair of cheery yuppies about town in their Sport Utility, debating the merits of the “I before e” mnemonic which guides we users of the English language. Dude lays down the law, and his lady confronts him with a number of exceptions: weird, caffeine, feisty, and so on. They pull to a stop and our man gets out, slings open the hatchback, and a handsome pooch leaps aboard: bingo, nice! A Rottweiler no less! The three cruise off, but the camera lingers and we learn their previous station was atop a patch of otherwise pristine road torn-up for the sake of construction. Clearly, these folk have chosen wisely: voice-over now advises us that we must prepare for the exceptions to life’s rules: suburbs-locked, a less powerful or ostentatiously sturdy vehicle makes perfect sense, but…
For Zizek, the Flitcraft affair perfectly stages the function of the objet petit a, the unattainable object of desire of Lacanian psychoanalytic theory. Flitcraft isn’t seeking a new life of spontaneous play, the satisfaction of his desire, but the opportunity to start fresh, with his drive toward such a life unhampered by the falling beam as mark of the world’s inconsistency. Drive does not aim to satisfy desire, but only to reproduce itself and desire as such. The falling of beams then is for Flitcraft a source of anxiety, which results not when the object of desire is lacking, but when we get too close to that object (for Flitcraft a life characterized by its spontaneity), when fantasy can no longer stage our experience of desire qua desire.
For Auster, the Flitcraft affair functions something like the structuring principle of his entire oeuvre. Chance or the randomness of life reign supreme: something like the medium through which the subject is alternately derailed or rerouted in his (and always his) encircling of the object of his desire. In Leviathan, a writer abandons his life for terrorism after a near-fatal fall; in Moon Palace a chance connection brings fellowship for the protagonist but effectively ends his romantic relationship; and in Oracle Night, the writer-protagonist’s explicit rewriting of the Flitcraft episode functions something like self-analysis, desublimating various unconscious impediments which block his relationship with his wife. In each case, it is ultimately as nostalgic writer-protagonists looking back on past events, reproducing scenes in which desire can stage itself as such, that Auster’s characters’ ability or inability to fold the randomness of life in on itself frames and motivates narration.
In the SUV commercial, exceptions to the “I before e” mnemonic and the rough terrain of the otherwise stable terrain of the pristine suburb function to advise us that we must prepare ourselves for exceptions to the rule, the randomness of life. Naturally, such exceptions do not motivate a true break from convention for our two yuppies, an analysis of their obeisance to the zeitgeist, for instance, but an occasion—like the falling beam for Flitcraft—for drive to repeat itself as such: and here, drive is the consumerist impulse to have that which will prepare one for the randomness of life, the phantasmatic exceptions to life’s rules. The couple thus acts to nullify the randomness of life in their very preparation for its randomness; and we may regard their (our) fantasy here as the constant staging and restaging of the desiring subject in relation to the sustained possibility of various exceptions to life’s rules, which nonetheless surface as commonplace precisely because we subjects have prepared ourselves for ‘em.
Now, we can easily imagine that our pair of yuppies’ SUV is outfitted with elaborate security devices, and for that reason I’m gonna post up the Three 6 Mafia joint, “Let’s Plan a Robbery.” This song is cute ‘cause we here find our boys merely playing make-believe (trick-or-treating deployed as a metaphor for the robbery of a drug op). More, in this play it shows us that it is precisely our fantastic relationship to the moot threat duly prepared for which engenders further phantasmatic threat upon threat (the robbery planned in the first verse becomes the plan acted upon in the second verse). The track brilliantly subverts the logic of defense and preparation proffered in the SUV commercial because we cannot logically presume a causal relationship between the planning of a robbery and the robbery itself. It is rather a culture in which the possible threat of robbery is ceaselessly prepared for by those who can—against the work of neutralizing certain unequal social conditions—which produces the very conditions necessary for an act such as robbery.
In Auster’s Oracle Night, for instance, a drug-addled young acquaintance robs the writer-protagonist and his wife’s apartment in order to pay-off some fierce creditors. In the narrative, the protagonist and the young thief bond briefly over a shared knowledge of the fictional punk band, The Bean Spasms, and for this reason I’m also gonna post the Jim Carroll song, “Day and Night,” from Catholic Boy. Bean Spasms (1967), is a collective work of poetry attributed to Ted Berrigan, Ron Padgett, and Joe Brainard—all contemporaries of Jim Carroll, who published his first collection in ’67, in the second wave of the New York School of poets. To my ears, the riff is pretty much lifted from “Downtown Train” by Tom Waits, but what do I know? I like the idea of promises, like shadows, shattering in the light of day; the dance between day and night revealing something of the beauty and failure of each antipode. Perhaps there is something of the spontaneity or placelessness which Flitcraft displaces to be glimpsed in this dance.
Let's Plan a Robbery - Three 6 Mafia
Day and Night - Jim Carroll Band
Graeme
posted by MTD at 12:36 PM
3 Comments:
I'm hoping for a weekly installment of you.
"The truth may set you free, but you might not be as carefree and happy. It will eat away at you — what hurts you does not necessarily make you stronger.
I would maintain that a healthy (i.e. substantial) amount of denial is therefore genetically heritable, that it allows us to blithely go on (despite reading Beckett) and to ignore the basic sadness and desperation of life. We can live in an illusion — in fact we are genetically predisposed to do so. These illusions can be small — I am just as good at catching game as Bob, my rival, for example — or they can be very large — that death is not the end and that I will be rewarded for my faith and Bob, the apostate, will rot in Hell.
Either way, they allow me to go on, to persevere in the face of unlikely odds or limited chance of success. We have evolved to be less rational that one might think, and to be slightly more delusional and even stupid."
David Byrne, via boingboing
-paul h
Well, Mr. Byrne, how terribly Nietzschean of you. Funny, I originally thought of Life During Wartime to go with the Three 6 track.
Lately, I've been trying to flesh out an ethics of posi-modernism. So far:
1) Look beyond the frame of a cultural product for whatsoever you enjoy therein. If you fail to find what you're looking for, go out and make it.
2a) self-impose wholly arbitrary and ridiculous prescriptions on the faintist of whims and as a manner of principle (refuse to go see a celebrated movie, for instance). Celebrate them publically. Encourage others to do the same.
2b) get really drunk (or not) and break the silly rule you've set. Celebrate your experience publically. Encourage others to do the same.
3) must love dogs.
ghl
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