A really absorbing lecture. And I want to make the following comments. Feel free to disagree:
I was fascinated by your remarks on how primitive people created the first dramas by simply telling tales of the day’s events in the evening. I have a disabled son and also work with the disabled and I am therefore used to interacting with people who have a mental state that is arrested usually at various stages of childhood. And I have noticed how my son and the others have a habit of constantly having to reiterate an incident that happened to them just recently. And it strikes me that it is through the telling of the incident that it comes alive and almost as if it doesn’t even have a valid reality at all until it is told.
This is obviously a social phenomenon. It is only through interaction with others that your own experiences acquire validation. I have heard about abused children kept in social deprivation who never develop the basic language skills we expect.
If kitsch is a parody of catharsis the implication is that kitsch is the negation of catharsis. Catharsis implies an extreme transformation, the undergoing of some tremendous release of tension. Kitsch fails to do this but supplies a glamour to what is a stationary state. Kitsch does nothing more than take up your time. But this leads to a curious development which I have noted with respect to what I feel tempted to call “the Rock genre”. I don’t just mean the music but the whole of that “on the edge” projection that seems to permeate so much of pop culture. And the concept of catharsis became, so to speak, “trendy”. And we then had the oxymoron of “repeatable catharsis”. But then I recall – and I think it was Hullot Kentor’s book on Adorno – where there is an observation that a recording of even the most radical seeming piece of music loses all its effect the moment you hit the repeat button.
To be fair to Seinfeld and Steve Martin, their assumption of gravitas is intended as comedic and therefore laced with irony – though that irony is also a self-regarding matter.
By an odd coincidence, Andrew Scott made what was perhaps his breakthrough role for a large number of people (myself for example) playing Moriarty in “Sherlock” – where Benedict Cumberbatch was the lead. A true confrontation of opposites. Though, to be sure, Scott, like everyone else involved there, was hampered by Steve Moffatt’s posturing adolescent conception.
“Eric” was an odd experience in that, of all the films I have watched, this had a curious “non-effect” on me. It was impossible to feel any empathy for any of the characters. The one memorable thing – and it wasn’t a good thing! – is that there was an unexpected “feel good” ending that recalled Spielberg and even Disney. And you mention how kitsch always explains itself – as if it is scared of giving an impression other than the one intended. “Eric” is full of obvious indicators as to what it expects the audience to feel – which may be why I felt nothing.
Incidentally – and forgive my rambling now! – this seems to feed into a memory of a dreadful holiday I had in Turkey in the late 90s. I met a lady who claimed to be a Garth Brooks fan. Yes – remember him? Apparently he was a business graduate who decided to craft himself the role of “Great Country and Western Singer”. I asked this lady what she liked about Brooks and she spoke about this video she saw where “all those people were smiling and laughing and having such a great time!” It was depressing. She saw people enacting the effect intended and she mimicked it. I then asked her to name a single Brooks song. She initially couldn’t but eventually came up with something called “The Dance”. I reckon these memories were sparked off by Taylor Swift who strikes me the same way as Brooks i.e. a creature without content.
excellent notes, george. I have a lot more to respond to vis a vis repetition but just for now, the seinfeld and martin were not in their roles as humorists. Seinfeld interviewed about gaza and the IDF, and martin about his execrable production of Waiting for Godot.
I thought you meant this speech Seinfeld gave which I saw recently though it may have been delivered a while ago. He appeared to be in graduation garb and was delivering one of those suave lectures that seemed self mocking but oozed a complacent self congratulation.
So Martin is now doing Beckett. They all have grand ambitions but should stick to the professional vaudeville that made them famous.
On the topic of film depicting an audience reaction, thereby encouraging imitation of it, I can think of no better (and more worrying) indication of it than the most recent batch of talent shows. These were always a staple of TV probably because they’re cheap. But I recall the talent shows of the 70s as being straightforward – giving you minimal info on the contestants and then permitting them a full 2 minutes or so to put their act across.
Nowadays the background info is a show in itself and the performance is shorter and constantly being interrupted by close ups of the audience gaping in delight and cheering.
The impression I get is that the performances are irrelevant. These shows are a celebration of the audience. The public reaction is already “built in”. This is an indication of an increasing reluctance to take any risk at all with a new product and also an increasing anxiety at permitting a real audience reaction.
thanks for this first lecture! and not a moment too soon...
I received an email about some chorale collective putting on a show about Rimbaud. and it included the following in the blurb: "The work will delve into how Rimbaud's strange life unfolded as a working-out of his unique vision of himself and his place in the world. And just as Rimbaud's restlessly wandering imagery used in a new age of symbolist poetry, the concert will feature its own original and restlessly wandering images generated in the modern way: by artificial intelligence, in real time using the subtitles".
so AI now creates "restless and wandering images" to rival the symbolists. Rimbaud has already been domesticated and brand-ified over and over by the likes of Patti Smith, et. al, but there are symbolists like Lorca who have escaped that fate--because you just can't, I think, make him small. There's really nothing to say about this, it's not even particularly pernicious, it just seems stupid and it makes me weep.
So, reading and thinking deeply about art, especially performance, is crucial right now. Thanks again.
First off, that presumably machine manufactured songs only goes to show how formulaic pop music (and, to be fair, most other genres) have become.
But whether this music is genuinely written by machine, the idea that it was so written only goes to “justify” the very baleful effects that are being described. So ... is this Del Bigtree a genuine critic or is he just presenting what has been planned in a way that sounds critical but which is, through this “criticism”, only being validated?
The scare over AI is redundant in the sense that, as Adorno noted decades ago, we already have a mechanised culture. Thus whether the claim that AI can write songs etc. is true, the very fact that such a claim can now credibly be made only underlines the automated formulaic nature of our “culture” anyway.
These highly forceful jeremiads against the new threatening developments may be subtle surreptitious enforcers of these very developments. I probably mentioned this already but there is a comic, Tom Walker, who invented an alter-ego, Jonathan Pie, presented as a TV on-the-spot reporter who “goes off air” to present his true opinions. When the covid operation started up, Pie went into a deliciously profanity-strewn rant that sounded ever so subversive until you realised that he was only serving up the covid propaganda in a “trendier” way by attacking the government for “being incompetent”. The effect of this was to “sell” the covid story by permitting a theatre for supposed opposition. I reckon this Bigtree may be doing the same.
A really absorbing lecture. And I want to make the following comments. Feel free to disagree:
I was fascinated by your remarks on how primitive people created the first dramas by simply telling tales of the day’s events in the evening. I have a disabled son and also work with the disabled and I am therefore used to interacting with people who have a mental state that is arrested usually at various stages of childhood. And I have noticed how my son and the others have a habit of constantly having to reiterate an incident that happened to them just recently. And it strikes me that it is through the telling of the incident that it comes alive and almost as if it doesn’t even have a valid reality at all until it is told.
This is obviously a social phenomenon. It is only through interaction with others that your own experiences acquire validation. I have heard about abused children kept in social deprivation who never develop the basic language skills we expect.
If kitsch is a parody of catharsis the implication is that kitsch is the negation of catharsis. Catharsis implies an extreme transformation, the undergoing of some tremendous release of tension. Kitsch fails to do this but supplies a glamour to what is a stationary state. Kitsch does nothing more than take up your time. But this leads to a curious development which I have noted with respect to what I feel tempted to call “the Rock genre”. I don’t just mean the music but the whole of that “on the edge” projection that seems to permeate so much of pop culture. And the concept of catharsis became, so to speak, “trendy”. And we then had the oxymoron of “repeatable catharsis”. But then I recall – and I think it was Hullot Kentor’s book on Adorno – where there is an observation that a recording of even the most radical seeming piece of music loses all its effect the moment you hit the repeat button.
To be fair to Seinfeld and Steve Martin, their assumption of gravitas is intended as comedic and therefore laced with irony – though that irony is also a self-regarding matter.
By an odd coincidence, Andrew Scott made what was perhaps his breakthrough role for a large number of people (myself for example) playing Moriarty in “Sherlock” – where Benedict Cumberbatch was the lead. A true confrontation of opposites. Though, to be sure, Scott, like everyone else involved there, was hampered by Steve Moffatt’s posturing adolescent conception.
“Eric” was an odd experience in that, of all the films I have watched, this had a curious “non-effect” on me. It was impossible to feel any empathy for any of the characters. The one memorable thing – and it wasn’t a good thing! – is that there was an unexpected “feel good” ending that recalled Spielberg and even Disney. And you mention how kitsch always explains itself – as if it is scared of giving an impression other than the one intended. “Eric” is full of obvious indicators as to what it expects the audience to feel – which may be why I felt nothing.
Incidentally – and forgive my rambling now! – this seems to feed into a memory of a dreadful holiday I had in Turkey in the late 90s. I met a lady who claimed to be a Garth Brooks fan. Yes – remember him? Apparently he was a business graduate who decided to craft himself the role of “Great Country and Western Singer”. I asked this lady what she liked about Brooks and she spoke about this video she saw where “all those people were smiling and laughing and having such a great time!” It was depressing. She saw people enacting the effect intended and she mimicked it. I then asked her to name a single Brooks song. She initially couldn’t but eventually came up with something called “The Dance”. I reckon these memories were sparked off by Taylor Swift who strikes me the same way as Brooks i.e. a creature without content.
excellent notes, george. I have a lot more to respond to vis a vis repetition but just for now, the seinfeld and martin were not in their roles as humorists. Seinfeld interviewed about gaza and the IDF, and martin about his execrable production of Waiting for Godot.
I thought you meant this speech Seinfeld gave which I saw recently though it may have been delivered a while ago. He appeared to be in graduation garb and was delivering one of those suave lectures that seemed self mocking but oozed a complacent self congratulation.
So Martin is now doing Beckett. They all have grand ambitions but should stick to the professional vaudeville that made them famous.
On the topic of film depicting an audience reaction, thereby encouraging imitation of it, I can think of no better (and more worrying) indication of it than the most recent batch of talent shows. These were always a staple of TV probably because they’re cheap. But I recall the talent shows of the 70s as being straightforward – giving you minimal info on the contestants and then permitting them a full 2 minutes or so to put their act across.
Nowadays the background info is a show in itself and the performance is shorter and constantly being interrupted by close ups of the audience gaping in delight and cheering.
The impression I get is that the performances are irrelevant. These shows are a celebration of the audience. The public reaction is already “built in”. This is an indication of an increasing reluctance to take any risk at all with a new product and also an increasing anxiety at permitting a real audience reaction.
thanks for this first lecture! and not a moment too soon...
I received an email about some chorale collective putting on a show about Rimbaud. and it included the following in the blurb: "The work will delve into how Rimbaud's strange life unfolded as a working-out of his unique vision of himself and his place in the world. And just as Rimbaud's restlessly wandering imagery used in a new age of symbolist poetry, the concert will feature its own original and restlessly wandering images generated in the modern way: by artificial intelligence, in real time using the subtitles".
so AI now creates "restless and wandering images" to rival the symbolists. Rimbaud has already been domesticated and brand-ified over and over by the likes of Patti Smith, et. al, but there are symbolists like Lorca who have escaped that fate--because you just can't, I think, make him small. There's really nothing to say about this, it's not even particularly pernicious, it just seems stupid and it makes me weep.
So, reading and thinking deeply about art, especially performance, is crucial right now. Thanks again.
Adorno’s notion of a totally machine driven culture factory would appear to be here:
https://thehighwire.com/ark-videos/will-ai-put-billions-out-of-work/
First off, that presumably machine manufactured songs only goes to show how formulaic pop music (and, to be fair, most other genres) have become.
But whether this music is genuinely written by machine, the idea that it was so written only goes to “justify” the very baleful effects that are being described. So ... is this Del Bigtree a genuine critic or is he just presenting what has been planned in a way that sounds critical but which is, through this “criticism”, only being validated?
To expand,
The scare over AI is redundant in the sense that, as Adorno noted decades ago, we already have a mechanised culture. Thus whether the claim that AI can write songs etc. is true, the very fact that such a claim can now credibly be made only underlines the automated formulaic nature of our “culture” anyway.
These highly forceful jeremiads against the new threatening developments may be subtle surreptitious enforcers of these very developments. I probably mentioned this already but there is a comic, Tom Walker, who invented an alter-ego, Jonathan Pie, presented as a TV on-the-spot reporter who “goes off air” to present his true opinions. When the covid operation started up, Pie went into a deliciously profanity-strewn rant that sounded ever so subversive until you realised that he was only serving up the covid propaganda in a “trendier” way by attacking the government for “being incompetent”. The effect of this was to “sell” the covid story by permitting a theatre for supposed opposition. I reckon this Bigtree may be doing the same.
The article by Luciana Bohne that I referred to is here: https://www.democraticunderground.com/articles/03/03/08_learning.html