In 2003, a group of college dropouts were about to make the best decision of their lives. These friends had been making articles and videos about video games on the internet for a couple of years, but when an old video of theirs was going to be featured in Computer Gaming World, a popular PC gaming magazine, they decided on a whim to use the publicity to launch a new video series (Rigney). That series would go on to be the longest running web series on the internet, winning many awards.

Still running today with 258 episodes and 14 seasons, Red vs Blue spawned one of the most successful internet entertainment companies of the past decade, Rooster Teeth. Around this company is a large fandom with fans that aren’t just passively consuming the content. The unique internet culture fostered by companies such as Rooster Teeth offer many opportunities for their fans to be creative in their own right.

Rooster Teeth’s setup to make an episode of RVB from 2004. Each controller is a different camera/actor.

Red vs Blue is a machinima, a film that uses video games as a medium for its production. All the sets, characters, and action are filmed inside of a video game (Lowood). When the founders of Rooster Teeth made Red vs Blue, they had no idea there was even a term for what they were doing. Though the art form predates Red vs Blue by a few years, it is by far the most popular machinima to date. It was the first machinima that many people ever saw, including the current CEO of Machinima.com, a popular machinima hosting website (Rigney).

Rooster Teeth’s current setup to make an episode of RvB.

The creation of machinima itself is a great example of how fans can be creative with the media they love. Rooster Teeth has gone on to produce live action shorts, web comics, game shows, news shows, animated series, documentaries, podcasts, and most importantly let’s plays

Let’s plays are recorded videos of a game being played as the player provides commentary on their actions (Fjællingsdal). This phenomena has grown in popularity in the past decade thanks to video streaming sites such as YouTube. Rooster Teeth entered this market with their Achievement Hunter division. By this point, Rooster Teeth had grown to such an extent that it was comprised of many different divisions, one such division was Achievement Hunter. This was a group that produced videos that showed how to attain certain achievements, challenges that can be completed in a game for a point value, for new and upcoming games. They then ventured into entertainment let’s plays with their aptly named Let’s Play label. This started with just Achievement Hunter, but has since grown to include many subsidiaries of Rooster Teeth including Funhaus, Screw Attack, Kinda Funny, and the Creatures. Rooster Teeth continues to be popular, with videos hosted on their own site as well as YouTube. As of 2016, the Rooster Teeth YouTube channel has 8.5 million subscribers, and the Let’s Play Channel has 3.5 million subscribers.

Though they became a viral phenomenon in their first year as a company, they did not see monetary success for some time. In fact, hosting a website where people could download that week’s latest episode was costing them more than they ever anticipated. This prompted them to offer sponsor packages. For a small yearly fee, fans could become a sponsor which allowed them to view videos early (Rigney). This eventually grew into their community website. Similar to Facebook, fans could have a profile where they could post pictures, have blog posts, and form groups with other members. Rooster Teeth staff all had profiles and would often join in discussion with fans.

The Rooster Teeth website predates YouTube by a couple years, but they started using YouTube early on as a second location to host videos. YouTube has fostered a participatory culture where members can contribute in a number of ways. Members can view videos, which adds to its view count. This seems like just a number, but it determines how much ad revenue a channel receives, making it very important. Members can also post videos of their own and comment to have discussions about the video in question. This creates a community between the members. Through the medium of YouTube, “members build a connection with the community and the media content creator when providing feedback through comments and video responses” (Chau).  Through these connections, media consumption becomes more of a discussion than just a one way relationship. Viewers are able to share their ideas with the content creators and it’s not uncommon that they are actually listened to.

Rooster Teeth takes these discussions to another level with their live podcasts. In these podcasts, a rotating cast of Rooster Teeth staff have candid conversations with each other about their jobs and their everyday lives.

Set of Rooster Teeth’s main podcast

Because they are streamed live, fans are able to use Twitter to send messages that will be seen by the podcast members. Many of these messages are replied to during the live broadcast, creating a direct discussion between the fans and the creators. Fans often produce images based off of stories or jokes that are said on the podcast. They are then able to tweet these images to Rooster Teeth, where they can be featured on that very same podcast. In this way, creative fans can affect the media they are consuming as they consume it.

In addition, fans are constantly sending original artwork to Rooster Teeth. This might include paintings, sculptures, knitted apparel, written works, and even swords. Any notable submissions may be featured on a video or a podcast. The relationship Rooster Teeth has with its fans is much more intimate than those of TV shows or movies. They have candid conversations with their fans through blog posts on the community sites, comment threads on YouTube, and their live podcasts. This gives fans direct access to the people behind Rooster Teeth, making them feel as if they know the Rooster Teeth staff and are friends with them. This is why many fans send in gifts, because they genuinely like the people they are giving gifts to. It helps that any artwork sent in has a chance of being featured by the staff themselves; this encourages creativity in order for your work to be shown on the media you love.

Let’s plays are creative works. Few successful let’s play channels are silent and only show off the game, viewers are drawn to amusing commentary or activities done by the players in the game.

Achievement Hunter’s Michael (left) and Gavin (right) during the making of a lets play

Successful let’s play channels add their own personality and creativity into their videos (Fjællingsdal). Furthermore, in order to make a let’s play, you need to enjoy video games. That seems very obvious but it’s important. The audience of a let’s play and the creator tend to share a love for video games. This is why, “Let’s Plays meet the definition for interest-oriented communities; they consist of groups of people sharing the same passion or interest for games…” (Fjællingsdal). Because of this, the audience members are able to see themselves in the content creators they are watching.

When fans see Rooster Teeth, they see geeky fans who love playing with video games. They feel as if they’re not much different from the people they idolize. This entices them to make their own videos and become creators themselves. But they don’t need to go that far to flex their creative muscles; they can assist in the creation of the let’s plays by suggesting games or activities that can be the subject of a new let’s play. Like I said earlier, let’s plays are creative work but that doesn’t mean all the creativity has come from the creator. If fans have an idea that they think would make for a good let’s play, they can pitch the idea in the form of a comment on a video or a tweet. On top of that, in certain games where players can make their own maps, or levels, fans can even make the set on which a let’s play can be filmed. Rooster Teeth will often take these suggestions and will credit fans who come up with good ideas at the start of those videos. This connection with the community allows for the fans to be a part of the creative process, and so allows the fans to be creative themselves.

Due to their success, Rooster Teeth has been able to work on ambitious projects, such as their own video game and their own feature length movie. These are both things that require a lot of resources, but the core of Rooster Teeth, the let’s plays and machinima, only require a video game and creativity. Fans can set out to mimic the products they love by making their own let’s plays and their own machinima. The unique nature of the content Rooster Teeth produces allows anyone to try and copy the content they love with the same quality that they enjoy. Rooster Teeth actually offers a platform on which community members can post their own videos. Fans can create achievement guides and let’s plays for the rest of the community to watch. Each week, Achievement Hunter has a weekly update video. Towards the end of each week’s video, they highlight a community video of the week, congratulating and giving publicity to the creator of that video.

The online entertainment industry is full of successful young people who became sensations overnight.  Rooster Teeth itself was conceived by a few guys in their twenties. In fact, “seven of the ten most subscribed [YouTube] partners are teens and young adults ranging between ages fifteen and twenty-four…” (Chau). This tells fans that they themselves could be successful in this industry. It doesn’t require a lot of experience or connections, all it takes is a fan with a video game and creativity.

Rooster Teeth is well aware of the creativity of its fans. In an interview with the online website Indewire in 2014, Burnie Burns, a founder of Rooster Teeth, estimated that a third of their staff had their start in the fan community (Konow). They frequently ask the fans for artwork, suggestions, and names for their products. In the Rooster Teeth store, you can find countless designs that started as a fan submission. The current creative director of the company, Gavin Free, started as a fan over 13 years ago. As a young teen in Great Britain, Gavin loved their content and was an active member of the community for years. Now he lives in Austin, Texas, where Rooster Teeth’s offices are located, and plays a big role in many of the company’s productions.

The fans of Rooster Teeth receive many opportunities to be creative and contribute to the media they love. This is only possible due to the staggering amount of communication between the fans and the creators. There doesn’t seem to be as big of divide between the two as there are between Hollywood stars and their fans. This unique relationship owes itself to the internet and the culture it has created. I predict we’ll see more media take this form in the coming years, with more collaboration between content producers and consumers.

Sources:

1. Fjællingsdal, Kristoffer. Let’s Graduate: A Thematic Analysis of the Let’s Play Phenomenon. Thesis. Norwegian University of Science and Technology, 2014. DiVA. Web. 18 Apr. 2016.
2. Chau, C. (2010), YouTube as a participatory culture. New Directions for Youth Development, 2010: 65–74. doi: 10.1002/yd.376
3. Rigney, Ryan. “How Rooster Teeth Won the Internet With Red vs. Blue.” com. Conde Nast Digital, 25 May 2012. Web. 21 Apr. 2016.
4. Konow, David. “Rooster Teeth’s Burnie Burns On Why Massive Crowdfunding Success Shouldn’t Hurt Its Brand.” Indiewire. 27 June 2014. Web. 21 Apr. 2016.
5. Lowood, Henry. “Found Technology: Players as Innovators in the Making of Machinima.” Digital Youth, Innovation, and the Unexpected. Edited by Tara McPherson. The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Series on Digital Media and Learning. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2008. 165–196. doi: 10.1162/dmal.9780262633598.165

What do you want to be when you grown up?

“I don’t know… I want to go on adventures I think; not get stuck in one place” -Suzy Bishop

Summer camp is a fake environment in which kids are freed from their responsibilities, (namely parental rules and school work) and supplied with a cornucopia of activities to ensure they are constantly entertained. These children live a fantasy world for a couple months only to return to their everyday lives come mid-August. Summer camps purposefully hire young, energetic, single adults to entertain said children for 24 hours a day. If a child is not constantly entertained they may choose not to return next summer– and thus the camp fails. Summer camp is an entertainment industry not unlike Paramount Pictures. Both provide an escape from ones’ everyday life through the form of selling entertainment (i.e. a film or a camp activity). According to the Oxford Dictionary the very etymology of the word ‘entertain’ comes from the French words entretenir, which means ‘nourish/keep in repair’, and tenere, which means ‘to hold’. The point of a summer camp is to temporarily amuse children so that for a little while they are temporarily relieved of the discontentment in their lives. Yes, it is ironic that children, the only members of our society that are taken care of and do not have to work, need to be relieved from their everyday lives. Using this contradiction, director and writer Wes Anderson sets the plot for Moonrise Kingdom and attempts to teach his viewers how to be happy and live lives worth living.

 In Moonrise Kingdom, two children, Sam and Suzy, are both classified by their peers as being ‘emotionally disturbed’, and ‘troubled’–so they are each other’s only friends. Because they live on opposite sides of the island, they only interact through letters. Since Suzy does not have any other friends besides Sam, she is often very bored. So, at her young age Suzy feels discontent with her life and begins to seek alternatives. At first, Suzy seeks out superficial pleasures and thrills (laughter). She is constantly reading books and listening to music to escape from her reality. She also steals books from the free library for the thrill of doing so—to have a secret to keep.

According to Adorno, “laughter is a means of cheating happiness; it is the consolation prize you get for not having a life worth living”. Watching a movie, taking drugs, or attending a summer camp are all like laughing: they temporarily provide a false sense of happiness and escape from ones life. “People are deluded into believing their desires are [being] gratified while in reality they are [being] cheated of happiness.” (Ghose). “As Adorno famously argues, ‘Fun is a medicinal bath which the entertainment industry never ceases to prescribe.” (Ghose). It is through the false sense of enjoyment; a person is being cheated from happiness.

In Moonrise Kingdom, Sam realizes this Adornian concept; that at camp he is only being temporarily relieved from his sad life (that he must soon return to). Sam decides he wants to be happy and live a life worthy of living; so he starts a new life for himself by running away to the woods. Like Sam, Suzy is also looking for more in life beyond her temporary enjoyment of stealing books, and runs away with him.

By using troubled children as the carrier for Adorno’s concept, Anderson points out the various way that the adults in the film are unhappy in their everyday lives. People in real life face the discontentment the adult characters face. By using real life examples, the audience is forced to ask themselves if they are genuinely happy with their own life. To ask, do I actually have a life worth living or do I just seek out laughter. For example, Suzy’s mother is quickly characterized as being unhappy. She does not sleep in the same bed as her husband, and unhappily prepares family dinners. To escape from her life, She has an affair with the local “sad, dumb” police officer. This affair is a form of entertainment she subscribes to in order to temporarily forget about her sad life. The only adult in the movie to act “happy” is the camp councilor Scout Master Ward. But even he admits he typically teaches math, but prefers to escape from his reality every summer at camp.

Since Sam and Suzy had no friends, they both felt an emptiness inside of themselves that couldn’t be filled. In order to fill their voids, they ran away to be together. In life, you can choose to do something that makes you feel happy and complete, or you can just do what is expected of you. Sam and Suzy often found themselves in trouble during their attempts to be happy, but to them it was worth it. In order to be happy, a person must make a genuine attempt at doing so. A person cannot be a bystander in their lives, and allow the world to create entertainment for them. Although Suzy had a plethora of books and records, she was still not happy. Although Sam was at summer camp, he still felt an emptiness inside of him. It was only when they did what they wanted to do and took control of their lives did they feel genuinely happy.

Sam and Suzy realize that they will probably grow up to be like their parents—and do not want this reality for themselves. They are sick of feeling empty and sad in their everyday lives. The small island in which they live on cannot provide them with the stimulation and adventure they crave. Suzy wishes that she was an orphan so that her life would be more special, and spends her days looking out her window with binoculars. Suzy is looking out into nature and dreaming about a different life for herself. Suzy believes that a better life can be found in nature.

A study by Zelenski and Nisbet found a direct connection between a person’s happiness and their connectedness to nature. The more connected a to nature a person felt, the happier they were. It is not until Sam and Suzy enter the forest, do they become happy. They go from having sad lives, to being genuinely happy. Through their story of finding happiness in nature, (rather than ‘entertainment’) Wes Anderson is literally telling his viewers how to be happy: disconnect from ‘entertainment’ and connect with nature. In order to be happy one must also disconnect from ‘laughter’, which only provides a false sense of happiness.

Throughout the film, Wes Anderson is teaching his viewer how to be happy through the story of Suzy and Sam found happiness. When a person is able to be content with themselves and their life, then they will be happy. In order to have a life worth living, a person must do something that genuinely makes them happy. They cannot just rely on the entertainment industry to make them laugh, but rather they have to seek out happiness. In fact, they have must disconnect themselves from the things that provide entertainment and temporary happiness (laughter). Furthermore, it is not just a disconnection from ‘entertainment’ that is necessary, but also a disconnection from a sick false sense of happiness that ‘entertainment’ provides. If a person is genuinely happy in their life, they should not feel empty inside. In order to live a life worth living, first you must form a connection with nature.

In the eighth grade I was introduced to the most horrifying film I have ever seen. I am no expert critic of horror or drama film. As a person who considers herself a fan of both genres, however, and as someone who has seen innumerable films of both types, I can say with confidence that no film left me more disturbed than Kurdish Bahman Ghobadi’s 2004 movie “Turtles Can Fly.” Its plot could be best described as every parent’s nightmare, with hundreds of orphaned children living in an impoverished war territory. Picture the tragedy of a movie like “The Boy in Striped Pajamas”, but multiplied and compounded by dozens instances of children in distress. I am talking about a movie that’s effects on the viewer are hundred times more heartbreaking, and infinitely more traumatic. So traumatic, in fact, that 8th-grade-me, along with many of the friends I watched with, had to watch multiple episodes of Modern Family right after finishing “Turtles Can Fly” to prevent sudden teary outbreaks at any point later that day. Yet, in a movie that appears to be so dystopian, expressing the horrors experienced by the Kurdish children living in Iraq near the Turkish border, Ghobadi decided to include certain events that express themes inconsistent with the mood of the rest of the film. That is, throughout the film, it appears that there are glimpses of what might be considered by some, a utopia.
Symbols representing traditionally considered virtues or of positive utopian notions contrast with the scenes they lay in. “The red fish”, for example, representing a beacon of hope, is a spot of color in a world of grey and reminds us of the beauty still left in the world. In the film it seems a bit out of place as it appears after a scene about how three children drowned looking for said fish, and is followed by an unhappy young girl running off home from the river to deliver water to what is left of her family. Or for example, a scene where a boy’s leg being blown off by a land mine contrasts with the symbolism of an arm broken off a Saddam Hussein statue, representing the breaking away from the oppression of Hussein and the beginning of a revolution that potentially could lead to peace.

( Watch: 1:21:30- 1:23:05)

Making the argument that this film has an utopian aspect based off these few symbols is a bold position. The waves of positivity from these symbols, however, is reinforced by various random yet significant acts of kindness and perseverance scattered throughout the film. In the town where the movie was filmed, everyone is equally poor and living in the same fear that any day the town can be attacked and and life would end, yet everyone keeps relatively calm and works together to make the most of the situation. Surprisingly enough, even the children become equal to adults as they take on many adult jobs like mine defusing, bartering for satellites and guns in a nearby town’s marketplace, gas mask distribution, or for one of our protagonist, managing large bodies of people to complete such tasks.
In addition to this unity of young and old coming together to create a better environment, there is an overall embrace of the disabled members of the community, another surprising silver lining to the horrors displayed in the film. There are scenes where one’s disability is used as an insult, but for the most part these disabled people work and are treated as everyone else. In fact, the managing protagonist even goes out of his way to make amends with another protagonist, an armless protagonist, that he has had previous quarrels with. While the manager may not be a fan of the armless boy, he puts his personal issues aside and tries to keep his composure to maintain peace. The crippled protagonist also offer’s some examples of kindness, as he goes out of his way to make sure that his own sister does not do anything to harm of her child (that, I should mention, was a result of a rape by a member of band of guerrilla fighters that came to their town.) In addition, in between scenes of our managing protagonist screaming at children working, and quarrels (sometimes ending in a bloody nose) between the two male protagonists, the crippled boy offers help to the managing kid, just to benefit the greater good and safety of all people.
These two aspects, along with some reoccurring positive references to America, combine to point to a central beacon of utopian hope: American Intervention. Following a scene where our single female protagonist, the sister of our crippled protagonist, has a flashback to the night she was sexually assaulted, there is a scene of hundreds of people gathering on a hill to have American helicopters fly overhead and drop flyers with phrases like “It’s the end of injustice, misfortune, and hardship.” and “We will make this country a paradise.” This scene of America-provided inspiration to carry on fighting through the town’s harsh life is followed by the image of a group of kids going to a marketplace to try and buy machine guns with land mines (AMERICAN lands mines to be precise).

(Watch: 1:00:25-1:00:50)
These faint moments of lighthearted kindness, subtle compassion, and lingering hope can most obviously be justified as being placed to relieve the audience from the heavy stress of the movie. Yet, this idea backfires against itself. The “optimistic” moments in the movie juxtapose with how heavy and distressful the rest of the movie is. It can be argued, in fact, that these moments accomplish the exact opposite of what initial role one may think they have. In these scenes it appears that just as we, the audience, begin to become desensitized to the tragedy expressed, we are provided with a moment of hopeful light , just to be then thrusted back into the tragedy, once again needing to readjust to the heavy material.
Why would Ghobadi, or any director like Mark Herman of “The Boy In Striped Pajamas”, try to bring about this ridiculous emotional-rollercoaster inducing glimpses of optimism into a movie about such a somber subject? What we get is a heightened desire for a perfect world through these things, also known as a desire for “utopia.” Utopia is a term that has been defined differently by philosophers and writers alike. There are different ideas as to what a utopia should or does encompass, and as this movie’s protagonists and plot revolve around children, it is apparent the utopia here, whether to appeal to adults with kids, or to kids themselves, puts focus towards providing children with stability, peace, and the ability to enjoy childhood, without having to deal with mature problems.
Utopia does not end there, at least not for this movie. It would not seem right to say that a movie like “Turtles Can Fly” is flat out utopian. The idea of utopia is ingrained deeper into the movie than that. With its plot rooted in Kurdish,Turkish, and Iranian history, intwined with glimpses of relationships between The United States and various Middle Eastern groups, and as hopeless as the end seems, this films intentions are not any different from some more popular and more openly utopian films such as “Hotel Rwanda” or “Peter Pan”. What is special about Ghobadi’s work is that it is approaches utopia in a non-conventional way. “Turtles Can Fly”’s goal is not to provide us with a potential utopia, but to make the viewer realize how badly you want the sort of utopia it hints at. The juxtaposition between a perfect world, and the cruel realistic setting depicted in the movie provides a heightened desire for a utopia, especially for children. After accepting this notion that the movie serves to introduce utopia via juxtaposition, the context of the scenes mentioned above become more clear. In scenes like that of where the managing protagonist shows some compassion to the crippled protagonist, wedged between shots of abandonment of young children and attempts at suicide, it is apparent that the positioning of compassion between young children between scenes depicting neglect is a conscious and carefully executed decision to strengthen the effect of appeal of utopian themes.
Naturally, in any movie with a few optimistic scenes sprinkled across heavily saddening content to emphasize utopianism, the question of why the film is not just called dystopian will arise. That of course is a logical conclusion to come to. Thomas Halper and Douglas Muzzio provide a description for dystopian based media that seems to encompass what “Turtles Can Fly” is. They write, “Like utopias, dystopias critique contemporary society; but unlike utopias, dystopias offer not a hopeful vision of what ought to be but an angry or despairing picture of where we are said to be headed—or perhaps (though we may not know it) where we already are.”(Halper and Muzzio 381) It is easy to interpret the film as dystopian, especially based on Halper’s and Muzzio’s description. But to suggest that dystopia and utopia are mutually exclusive in every aspect does not float well with a film such as the one at hand. Yes, the film is not utopian in the way that it has a happy ending, or provides a glimpse in to an alternate reality better than what we have now, but it is utopian in the emotion it elicits from the viewer. In some ways, I may even suggest that the movie is so dystopian that it reinforces the lack of the desired aspects of utopianism. Seeing the dystopia of “Turtles Can Fly” gears toward extracting our desire to achieve utopia and bring it to the characters in the film. Films provide a means of escape from daily life. What better way to encourage escapism than to create a completely anti-utopian movie and show the potential or current horrors of our world. It makes the audience thirsty for social justice.
Why does it matter than the film has utopian motivations or not, or what even is the reason for adding utopia into a film at all? That can all be attributed what has become of pop-culture that is, to fulfill the natural tendency of pop-culture to push us towards an ideology. In the case of “Turtles Can Fly” the ideology is hinted through various symbols, like, as listed earlier, the red fish and the Saddam Hussein statue’s arm. Both these things, framed with highly anti-utopian scenes, suggest the theme of a hope for an improved future and the fall of oppression and instability. In fact with further analysis, these symbols, especially the arm of the Saddam Hussein’s statue, paired with the scenes of The United States as a savior during some of the darkest portions of the film, appear to suggest that an improved future and the fall of oppression may have something to do with America’s help. Not to suggest this is the only ideology implied in the film, as its plot and history is more complicated than can be addressed in a short time, but the film appears to be propaganda advocating pro-American ideologies. To accomplish such advocation effectively, a sense of utopia must be tied in with the ideology. Ideology virtually runs on utopia, as utopia is what can make an ideology attractive to people. As put by Fredric Jameson, “…the hypothesis is that the works of mass culture cannot be ideological without at one and the same time being implicitly or explicitly Utopian as well: they cannot manipulate unless they offer some genuine shred of content as a fantasy bribe to the public about to be so manipulated.”(Jameson 144)
Do you enjoy seeing children collect mines, practice shooting guns, have to wear gas masks in fear of being attacked? The movie is not even set in the United States, yet I, as a “viewer” of the film can attest to having my emotions personal affected by the events observed in the film. Why is there still a pain felt while watching the movie? It is because the movie is geared toward bringing out the little voice (some call it the conscious) in every rational and moral person’s head. Naturally people crave a perfect society, a utopia. What better way to express an ideology, be it an actually message or theme or even the just the desire for people to consume more film, than to bribe people with insights to utopia. The film is incredibly complicated, and to try to weed out every aspect of each ideology it suggests, and every glimmer of utopian themes it may include, would take hundreds of pages of analysis. But superficially, even a basic analysis such as the one above can reveal the power of utopian themes to support and strengthen the desire to adopt the ideologies intended on spreading throughout the movie.

(Watch: 1:13:45-1:16:45)

Sources:
1. Halper, Thomas and Douglas Muzzio. “Hobbes in the City: Urban Dystopias in American Movies.” The Journal of American Culture 30 (2007): 379-390. PDF
2. Jameson, Fredric. “Reification and Utopia in Mass Culture”. Social Text 1 (1979): 130–148. Web.

What makes a work of art “great” or “classic”? Can there be modern classics? And how is that decided? While looking for a response to these questions, I searched for “modern classic movies” in Google. The third result was an article on the Business Insider website which listed the 2008 Disney/Pixar film, WALL-E, as a “modern classic” because it “explores so many different issues that you can watch it a dozen times and enjoy focusing on each one.” (Guerrasio) According to this article a classic is re-watchable and able to be returned to with a new focus. The word, “classic,” often implies antiquity, especially because of its use with reference to Greek and Roman culture, but the other aspects of its definition and connotation do not require that a classic be from a distant past. In the claim: “It is important to study great works of art, and especially great works of literature, because they give you a head start on the path of human perfection. They help make you fit for a humane existence, help you plan out a life worth living,” a “great” work of art is valued as being able to effectively present ideology of living a “good” life or a “life worth living.” Using this criteria, WALL-E still fits. It first presents the potential negative consequences of not resolving social issues before arriving at an imagined solution which promotes ideals. WALL-E is a great work of cultural art because of its positive message in response to multiple social issues.

WALL-E brings to light the issues of climate change, obesity, and attachment to technology. It also critiques big business and ignorance before arriving at a semi-happy ending when the people work to resolve the issues. The issue of climate change is the most obvious. The film takes place in a post-apocalyptic future where humans have lived on a giant, highly technological spaceship, the Axiom, for over 700 years because the waste and pollution on Earth made it unable to sustain life. Once any sign of plant life is found on Earth, the humans are supposed to return to restore and re-inhabit the planet. The name, WALL-E is an acronym that stands for “Waste Allocation Load Lifter – Earth-Class.” WALL-E appears to be the only functional robot of his kind left on Earth. He lives all alone with his cockroach friend in the run-down, complete landfill that is now Earth. He collects the trash, forms it into cubes, and builds towers out of it. Sometimes he finds objects that interest him and he takes it home where he organizes them. One day, he finds a little plant and saves it. Then another robot, named EVE (another acronym, which stands for Extraterrestrial Vegetation Evaluator), arrives to search for plant life. After meeting WALL-E and finding the plant, she returns to the Axiom in hibernation mode with WALL-E following her. On the Axiom, we meet the humans, who are constantly lounging in hover chairs with video screens in front of their faces to chat with each other and watch advertisements about food and drink on the ship. Robots run the ship while the humans relax like they are always on vacation. They are all obese because they barely even have to move. They are also so focused on their screens that they do not notice anything else around them. The Axiom is operated by Buy N Large, the corporation whose logo is the only one that appears – both on Earth and on the spaceship. When the former leader, who sent the humans to space, is shown, we see that he was not the President, but the CEO of Buy N Large. The movie seems to blame all big businesses for ruining the Earth and causing all of the other issues. The movie suggests that this (a waste-filled, barren Earth with humans living in outer space as little more than blobs) is what could happen if we do not resolve these issues now.

After critiquing and presenting the issues, the movie then provides solutions for them and arrives at a semi-happy ending. Shortly after the Axiom left, it was thought that Earth would forever be uninhabitable so the CEO sent a message to the Axiom that they should never return to Earth. However, this movie shows that there is still hope to reverse the pollution on Earth, even after it has been completely overcome by garbage. Therefore it is also possible to change now so that Earth does not get to that point. In addition, WALL-E and EVE take care of the one little plant and treat it as precious and valuable as they protect it from the auto-pilot robots who want to destroy it and force the humans to stay in space instead of returning home to Earth to recolonize. This shows how we should treat plants, even now, because they are necessary for our survival on Earth. At the end of the movie (after the captain changes the “Auto” robot to manual), the humans return to Earth and begin to farm to begin to reverse the damage done by all the pollution and waste. This ending is only semi-happy because there is still much work to be done; it is only the beginning of more struggles as they try to rebuild the Earth and start over. Because the captain turns off the autopilot of the head robot, he shuts down the former big business leader and gains control. The movie presents the ideology that in order to restore the planet, big business leaders have to realize that there is still hope for the planet and treat plants the way WALL-E and EVE do by taking care of them instead of destroying them.

An interesting part of the movie is that WALL-E and EVE act like humans more than the humans do. WALL-E watches black and white movies on a TV in his home and wants to fall in love and hold hands with someone. He acts like he has a crush on EVE when he meets her and eventually they seem to fall in love. They are the only robots who make decisions on their own and show human emotions. In fact, they also teach the humans how to take charge, stand up (both metaphorically and literally) for the planet, and care for one another. The fact that humans learn from robots also presents hope because technology will not necessarily ruin the planet.

The movie also suggests that we should be aware of our surroundings and appreciate nature instead of being so attached to technology. WALL-E accidentally knocks a man off of his chair and introduces himself as he helps the man back up. With the video screen no longer in front of him, the man finally looks around and says “I didn’t know we had a swimming pool.” Later, WALL-E interrupts a woman’s video chat because he wants to move closer to EVE and she was in the way. Again, without the screen in front of her, she notices that they have a swimming pool. The man and the woman meet and later they observe in awe as WALL-E and EVE fly around outside the spaceship. They appreciate the beautiful stars and scenery that they only notice now that they are not constantly watching a screen. They also leave their chairs voluntarily and exercise a little bit as they have fun swimming in the swimming pool and they disregard a robot that tells them it is time to leave. The movie encourages physical activity and agency both in this scene and when the captain finally has to stand up and walk to turn off Auto. The captain takes charge of the technology and tells Auto “I don’t want to survive, I want to live.” Even though humans are surviving on the Axiom, they are not living because they are not being active or taking agency. The ideology presented in this movie makes this movie a great work of art because it is positive and teaches how to live a life worth living.

Several cultural critics would disagree that WALL-E could be considered “great.” Matthew Arnold, whose argument is paraphrased in the claim quoted above, implies in his writing that his definition of a great work of art would almost exclusively include art created before the Industrial Revolution. F. R. Leavis, who would also agree with the above quoted claim, draws a distinction between popular media intended for mass consumption and great works of literature and art that makes the two mutually exclusive. Theodor W. Adorno and Max Horkheimer introduced the term, “the culture industry,” to criticize the mass production and standardization of cultural media and the arts because it turned art into a product to be marketed and sold and it caused all the works to be very similar to each other. Louis Althusser, who also critiques the capitalization of the arts, argues that popular media is used by the ruling class to indoctrinate the proletariat with ideology that maintains them as subservient workers. All these men agree, although for different reasons, that cultural works which are the products of the entertainment business are damaging to society because they are not produced freely. They would all likely contest the above assertion that WALL-E, a children’s movie created by one of the largest and most influential media companies, could be likened to a classic work of art because of its positive messages. But it fits Arnold’s and Leavis’ criteria for a great work of art even though it is a product of the culture industry and it was made for both entertainment and ideology.

I disagree with Althusser’s cynical view and I believe the ideology in this movie is intended to teach values and ideals to children because the producers actually believe in their ability to change the world for the better – not because they want to prepare future workers. Leavis’ point that we should be able to tell the difference between a work of art which can teach ideals and one that represents what we should not follow is applicable even to products of the culture industry. WALL-E’s ideology is what makes it valuable and worth watching despite its production. Even some mass-produced works of art can be great in the way that Arnold and Leavis argue.

Works Cited

Adorno, Theodor W., and Max Horkheimer. “The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception.” Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments. Ed. Gunzelin Schmid Noerr. Trans. Edmund Jephcott. Stanford, California: Stanford UP, 2002. 94-136. Print.

Althusser, Louis. “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses.” Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays. Trans. Ben Brewster. Monthly Review, 1971. 1-65. Print.

Arnold, Matthew. Culture and Anarchy. Ed. Jane Garnett. New York: Oxford UP, 2006. Print.

Guerrasio, Jason. “20 Modern Classic Movies Everyone Needs to Watch in Their Lifetime.” Business Insider. Business Insider, Inc, 01 Jan. 2016. Web. 16 Mar. 2016.

Leavis, F. R. “Three Editorials.” The Importance of Scrutiny. Ed. Eric Bentley. New York: George W. Stewart,. 1-11. Print.

WALL-E. Dir. Andrew Stanton. By Andrew Stanton, Jim Reardon, Ben Burtt, Elissa Knight, and Jeff Garlin. Prod. Jim Morris. Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures and Pixar Animation Studios, 2008.

For those of you who, as children, wanted to grow up to be a “superhero,” like Batman, I presume “fascist” was not part of the job description. The Dark Knight, a 2008, Christopher Nolan blockbuster, shows us that justice is not absolute. Our beloved childhood superhero, Batman, isn’t so ideal. Though a superficial, with the grain reading of The Dark Knight would go along with the consistent depiction of the Batman in various other films and comics, Nolan attempts to show us that justice has shadings, and they are not as clear-cut as they might seem. The mere fact that the film was named The Dark Knight licenses some curiosity in even the least skeptical of critics. For the sake of making my argument even clearer, Batman is not the knight in shining armor we might see him as, on the contrary, he is a knight that works in the shadows, a vigilante. Because he attempts to solve the problems of crime plaguing Gotham, we see him as a hero, however, audiences overlook the fact that his actions fit the mold of a blatant fascist. Batman steps outside the legal realm to engage in violence and, more often than not, infringes upon the privacies of the people of Gotham. He reserves the enforcement of justice for elite like himself. Complementing this, his nemesis, the Joker, is an anarchist, priding himself on the destruction of societal norms. The film is actually more of a dichotomous relationship between fascism and anarchism, where the true colors of Batman shine through. Even the seemingly most pure symbols of justice are flawed.

Though this goes without saying, the Joker is not in the slightest sense a materialist. Yes, we see several scenes associating the Joker with money, but it becomes quite evident that the Joker is not your average “money is power”-type criminal. He torches Gotham’s mob’s extorted funds without batting an eye. The Joker professes, “It’s not about money, it’s about sending a message”. Withholding money from those who want it most is his way of gaining attention in the capitalist economy. Alfred makes the piercing observation that, “Some men…they can’t be bought, bullied, reasoned, or negotiated with.” This is precisely why the Joker is untouchable. The Joker has no material desire. Nothing can lure him out of his cage. The fact that he has nothing to lose, only a drive for means (and not ends), makes him close to perfect. When threatened by Batman during his interrogation, the Joker remarks, “You have nothing to hurt me with.” Pain is fleeting. The Joker has no Achilles heel. His nihilism makes him a devout anarchist.

Whereas it is evident that forces of good, like Batman and the law, attempt to contain situations, what makes the Joker’s character so powerful is lack of control. The Joker gets off on the fear that causes mayhem and disorder in society. He explicitly says to Harvey Dent in Gotham General, “I try to show schemers how pathetic their attempts to control things really are.” Control means you have and end. It means you are vulnerable and expendable. Essentially every attempt by the “good guys” to contain situations is their undoing. The Joker goes on to explain, “Do I really look like a guy with a plan?…I’m a dog chasing cars.” A lack thereof a plan means that there are no expectations. The Joker is just a grown up version of that delinquent child who would always exceed expectations (and I don’t mean this in a good sense). Rules were there to be broken. The Joker is a blatant anarchist because his sole purpose is to tear at the roots of society, taunting those with a plan. The Joker even says, “I just did what I do best. I took your little plan and I turned it on itself.”

When it comes to Batman the great, Batman the fascist, we are blinded by our naiveté. Batman is supposed to be the hero, enforcing justice where the law cannot. We so very much want him to be perfect. So what if he has a little bit of a power complex? The Dark Knight’s authoritarian tendencies are evident very early in the movie. The opening scene of the film depicts ruthless mob members, who cringe at the sighting of the menacing bat-crest that lights up the sky. When the Dark Knight is done beating up the mob-members, one of the bandwagon, copycat batmen asks, “What’s the difference between you and me?” The response given is one implicit of power and wealth. Looking past the fact that Bruce Wayne is a smart, billionaire, playboy, trust-fund child, Batman uses his wealth and resources to act in ways the law does not. Whereas Gotham Police can’t afford high-tech, carbon-fiber armor, cutting-edge, military grade vehicles, and gadgets that seem to be handy in the worst of situations, Bruce Wayne can. The film’s audience is blinded by the fact that everyone wants to be a smart, capricious, billionaire playboy. We overlook the fact that his money gives him power, which he uses to act in ways he sees fit. Much like the Joker uses fear to stir society, Batman uses fear (in conjunction with brute power) to control crime. In a sense, Batman’s power goes beyond controlling law offenders as he also holds sway over law enforcement. The police won’t arrest him—Commissioner Gordon is essentially his puppet. Gordon gives Batman priority over raids, investigations, etc. Clearly this is a blatant transgression of what law is supposed to be. Batman is the muscle who acts in ways the police can’t and won’t physically and legally act. In a sense, Batman has monopolized every aspect of society. His power lets him enforce justice the way he sees fit, and, in turn, he walks unscathed. The Dark Knight is premised on totalitarian control of the justice system. Gotham is a corrupt city, even under the guard of the Batman.

Batman takes the Patriot Act to a whole new level. The Dark Knight goes beyond visible power tactics by formulating a highly-illegal, complex cellphone surveillance system to monitor society for threats. Batman infringes upon the privacies of each and every citizen of Gotham. Lucius Fox, the head of Wayne Enterprises, recognizes that the machine is “too much power for one person,” but, of course, concedes to the rhetoric of the Dark Knight and provides his services. Mass surveillance is a blaring signal of Batman’s fascist tendencies. Not only does he use money and power to influence and control people, but he also monitors the most intimate, undisclosed facets of people’s lives by turning their cellphones into pulse-generating, live microphones. As no one is beyond the reach and influence of the Dark Knight, we must ask, what are the limits of good intentions? Batman wants to keep society safe, but, in doing so, is he justified in infringing upon other basic liberties?

Anarchism and fascism are at odds with one another throughout the film. As these two forces duke it out, Nolan attempts to show the audience that a normative view of justice is nonexistent. Justice has shadings, and for every person there is a tipping point. The Joker mocks Batman, “You are truly incorruptible, aren’t you?…I think you and I are destined to do this forever.” Evidently the weakness of the Dark Knight is his compulsive sense of justice. The Joker and Batman are at odds with one another just as disorder and an obsessive urge for control oppose one another. The system is in constant swing.

Knowing that Batman’s weakness is his ardent sense of justice, the Joker pushes the Dark Knight to challenge his own beliefs. The Dark Knight seems like an “immovable object,” but seeing that he was willing to risk the lives of the partygoers at the Wayne fundraiser to save Rachel, it becomes clear to the Joker that Batman cares about something other than justice. In an attempt to corrupt the Dark Knight, the Joker gives Batman a choice between the two things he holds most dearly: Rachel, a symbol of lust, and Harvey Dent, a symbol of justice for the people. While being interrogated, the Joker says to the Dark Knight, “Then that’s the rule you’ll have to break to know the truth. The only sensible way to live in this world is without rules, and tonight you’re going to break your one rule.” Ironically, the Joker is in a cage: he has no control, but nor does Batman. For once in his crime-stopping career, Batman loses his grip on the world. This explains why he goes to the extent he does to infringe upon the law. The Joker’s job is made easier by the fact that he can tear people apart internally, even in the position of a prisoner. The Joker lies about the locations of each hostage, in turn internally tearing the Dark Knight to pieces. Batman intends to go after Rachel, but finds Harvey in the warehouse at which he arrives. Batman’s intentions show viewers that even the most consistent sense of justice is corruptible. Not only did the Joker pervert the authoritarian justice that Batman stood for, but, like a double-edged sword, he also corrupted “Gotham’s White Knight.”

When we think that all has come to a close and justice has been served, the Joker reminds us, viewers, of the loose cannon that he has set upon society, Two-Face Harvey. Dent is the one man Batman can’t control. If society were to learn that the man serving as Gotham’s district attorney had been stepping outside the law, to serve justice as he saw fit, order would crumble. Paradoxically, Batman seems to already fit this role, enforcing justice the way he sees fit. Just as Batman breaks laws to bring society under his control, Two-Face Harvey kills in order to bring the world to its knees. Until the end, it seems as if the only thing separating Batman and Dent is the fact that Batman won’t kill. Ultimately we are proven wrong when the Dark Knight assumes his role, hurling Dent off the edge of a building. The Dark Knight takes Harvey Dent’s life to reaffirm the sense of justice that the Joker took from him. In Gotham there can only be one fascist that decides how to interpret justice. Corrupted by the Joker, Harvey Dent threatened that establishment.

Nolan’s film depicts a struggle between fascism and anarchism, a battle of polar opposites, where justice is not absolute. Even the things we take for granted are corruptible. The title, The Dark Knight, is implicit of a struggle more than just that of good versus evil, as most viewers see it. A society, heavily monitored and maintained by one individual, is challenged by a nihilist, who attempts to break away the most fundamental facets of what makes the public human. The Dark Knight is in no sense clear-cut. Justice has shadings, and those shadings are determined by those individuals who hold the most influence over society. The conflict of the film is Batman’s attempt to hold onto his twisted sense of justice, even in the face of a villain who tries to show that justice is obsolete.

Mankind fancies themselves beings of superior intellect compared to their bestial counterparts. They pride themselves on their individuality, knowledge, and reason. Little do they realize that the strength with which they pride themselves are not even theirs to claim. The agency and free will that man believes himself to possess is an illusion. His ideas, his personality, his entire being is produced by the society with which he lives. From the moment a child is born they are forced through a lifetime of institutionalization, through which they are taught to believe that the lessons they adopt are organically formulated in their own minds. This is achieved most successfully through the arts, manifestations of culture. Ideologies present themselves in all forms of art masked by an innovative representation. The same stories are told and retold, but each generation discovers or develops a means to regurgitate the ideologies that society has instilled in them in a fashion that appears to be new. The reason it succeeds is simply that one cannot refute what one does not consciously know is being argued. Instead man mindlessly absorbs what he believes to be frivolous or harmless entertainment, while unknowingly accepting and adopting a set of ideals he most likely has already been exposed to and will continue to be exposed to in order to ensure his allegiance and conformity. A society cannot function unless each individual understands and respects the role they must play. Whether it be an aristocrat or a peasant, compliance is vital. In the 2013 action film, Man of Steel, directed by, Zach Snyder, a seemingly innocent story of the beloved comic book hero, Superman, is riddled with underlying ideologies of Christian theology and American patriotism. For over 75 years, the world has blindly worshiped him as a secular, fictional character, while unknowingly praising Christian and American propaganda.

Though not perfectly, Superman’s story, and specifically his story depicted in the 2013 rendition, Man of Steel, mirrors that of the story of Christ. Born on the planet Krypton, Superman, originally named Cal-El, is sent by his father, Jor-El, to the planet Earth in order to save its people. Jor-El, even goes as far to claim that his son “will be a God to them”, in reference to humanity. Similarly, Jesus Christ is sent by his father, God, to enlighten the people of earth and save them by way of dying for their sins. Both men are aliens delivered from the skies to humanity with the sole purpose of “saving” mankind. Once on earth both men are raised by an adoptive human couple, whom bear resembling names. For Superman, he is raised by Martha and Jonathan Kent, two farmers, whom discovered him after his spaceship is crashed in a field. They give him his “earth name”, Clark. Jesus, lacking a spaceship, entered the world through natural birth by way of his human mother Mary. However, Mary, wife of Joseph, was allegedly a virgin, whom had been chosen by the Lord to birth and raise his only son. In addition to similar names, the human father’s both manual labor occupations: a farmer and a carpenter. It is key that Superman and Christ are both raised in humble surroundings. From a young age, both men demonstrate godlike or supernatural qualities. Jesus, though not performing any of his more substantial miracles until adulthood, presents a superior wisdom that can only be explained by the grace of God. Superman as a child is depicted as performing several miracles. One of which involved the sinking of bus, where superman, under the alias of Clark Kent, pushed the bus out of the water and saves the life of a drowning bully. Superman attempts to complete this act of selflessness as covertly as possible as his human father, Jonathan insists on him keeping it a secret until the time is right. He believes that Superman has a greater purpose on this earth, but is cautious that humans will reject Superman out of fear. He repeatedly states “People are afraid of what they don’t understand.” This idea of rejection based on fear is one of if not the core theme of the story of Christ. Jesus is condemned and ultimately killed because those fear him and what he is capable of. Man of Steel attempts to stress this theme so extensively that they even depict Jonathan dying instead of allowing his son, Superman, to showcase his powers before the time was right. Both men do not openly demonstrate their powers until their thirties. Jesus begins his ministry, the period in which he performs all his miracles and spreads the word of God, with his baptism in Jordan. Superman enters the public sphere following his own discovery of his “mission”: after a Kryptonian spaceship is located in the Arctic, Superman enters the ship and inserts the necklace he was sent with, which turns out to be a universal key. Once inserted into the ship, Jor-El’s consciousness or spirit is uploaded to the ship. Jor-El’s ability to be present even after death as a guiding and all powerful source proves him to be God or at least a god like figure. Through his father, Superman finally learns who he is, where he came from, and most importantly what his purpose on earth is. Informing Superman of his mission, Jor-El states, “you will give the people of Earth an ideal to strive towards. They will race behind you, they will stumble, they will fall. But in time, they will join you in the sun, Kal. In time, you will help them accomplish wonders.” Additionally, Jor-El explains that Superman’s strength and abilities are fueled by earth’s sun; Superman is powered by light. Light, in the bible is a representation for good, knowledge, morality, and most importantly divinity. Throughout the film Superman’s relationship with light is emphasized to insinuate his holiness, in the same fashion that Christ is usually depicted with light.

From the ship Superman acquires a Kyrptonian battle suit, in the colors of the American flag, with what appears as an ‘S’ on the chest but is in actually a symbol for hope. This is an overt attempt to label superman as a beacon of hope, just as Christ was. General Zod, mirroring Lucifer, eventually enters the story. Lucifer, often referred to as the Devil or Satan, is a fallen angel. Jealous of God’s power and glory, Lucifer attempts to overthrow the Kingdom of God, sparking the only war to take place in heaven, and upon his failure is cast down from Heaven. In a similar fashion, General Zod attempts to overthrow the Kryptonian government and miserably fails. As punishment for his treason, he, and those he led astray, are shot into a black hole, representing hell. Both men experience this before the birth of Christ, ie. Superman. Once faced with the savior, Lucifer and Zod both attempt to corrupt their foe and lead them astray from their sole mission: Lucifer attempts to convince Christ that humanity is not worth saving, and Zod attempts a very similar plan, arguing that they are both Kryptonians, and should thus build a new Kypton through the mass genocide of humankind. Following Zod’s introduction into the film is the most iconic scene of the movie. Overlooking earth from space, Superman speaks to his father, God, for the last time. Jor-El says to his son “You can save all of them.” Superman, understanding what must be done, levitates out of the ship in the shape of cross with the sun illuminating him, then bolts down to planet earth.

Man of Steel, a movie so heavily doused in patriotism, demonstrates not only what Americans value, but more importantly what it is to be an American. A brown haired, blue-eyed, white man from a working class family in the Midwest is depicted as the Messiah. It is not a coincidence that these qualities align with a country built on a white heteronormative patriarchy. Nor is it by chance that Superman’s story, while mirroring the story of Christ also embodies the American Dream. Clark goes from being a small town, farm boy to the nation’s greatest hero. For America, the only solution to its problems is through the power of a greater being. For America, Christ is the only option.

When the FX TV show Archer broadcast its 5^th season, fans of the show knew they were in for something different. Gone were the serial episodes split between the ISIS (the International Secret Intelligence Service and not the middle-eastern terrorist group ISIL) headquarters and exotic international locations. Instead, our heroes were on the run – fleeing US supervision and attempting to cash out a literal ton of cocaine. These changes brought a far more critical view of the spy-action drama Archer had parodied in prior seasons.

One possible method to understanding season 5’s message comes from Marxist philosopher Louis Althusser. In “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses,” Althusser claims that within the political sphere are multiple fighting groups. Each group promotes a different ideology that it believes everybody else should adopt. The key aspect of Althrusser’s theory is that this battle is cultural. As such, this struggle is reflected in our cultural creations. In the same way that groups fight to spread their ideology, movies and TV shows do too (Althusser, 146). If Althusser’s theory is correct, entertainment must be engaged in an ideological conflict.

Archer: Vice offers a particularly interesting window into this struggle because it is such a departure from the previous seasons’ format. If Althusser is correct, then the show critiques and battles the ideology preached by James Bond, Mission Impossible, and other similar movies in the spy-action genre. But the question still remains of what Archer subtly implies to its viewers, and how that is different from the ideology supplied by other shows.

The most prominent franchise of the spy-action genre is James Bond. Archer, and many other spy movies and TV shows, takes most of its tropes from this series. Specifically, the relationship between Sterling and Mallory is reminiscent of Bond and M’s. Archer’s surface aesthetic is much the same as Bond’s: they wear suits, are serial womanizers, and love a good drink. Both work for government agencies that send them all over the world for a multitude of reasons, the most prominent of which is assassination.

The defining trait of Bond and Archer is their nationalities. While American spies are common across all media, the “Bond-type” is a distinct trope with many characteristics of an stereotypical English gentleman. Archer, the show, takes the time to make sure that Sterling Archer emulates Bond but removes all traces of being British. Sterling lacks Bond’s sly demeanor, replacing it with a loud conspicuousness. Wry wit is replaced with overt sexual references and slapstick humor.   Bond’s powers of seduction come from a careful mental game combined with physical prowess. Archer gets with women by boasting about his job and all his achievements. Bond has a “martini, shaken not stirred.” Archer has whatever he can get his hands on. Even the two character’s theme songs reflect on their nationalities. Bond’s theme is an orchestral arrangement that plays as he walks triumphantly away from another vanquished enemy. Archer’s theme, “Danger Zone” by Kenny Loggins, literally describes him: Archer is a danger. The slick and posh versus the crude and common cleanly divides Bond from Archer in the came clichéd way that “American” and “British” are commonly differentiated.

Archer, top, is chaotic and uses brute force while Bond, bottom, is calmer and more refined.

The attention to nationality changes the message of each Bond movie and the Archer TV show. In the modern Bond movie Skyfall, the climactic battle takes place on Bond’s hometown estate of Skyfall in Scotland. Bond, along with the groundskeeper Kincade and head of MI6 M, are on the run from a former MI6 agent named Raoul Silva. After retreating to Skyfall, the heroes set up a series of traps and devices in order to defend Skyfall against well-armed attackers. After a long battle, Bond is triumphant in killing Silva. Unfortunately, M is killed in the battle. She leaves a Union Jack emblazoned porcelain bulldog to Bond to remember her by( Skyfall).

The Althussarian interpretation of these events points back to nationality. Because Bond is so clearly identified with Britain, it follows that when Bond is defending his homestead he is also defending his homeland. The battle at Skyfall invokes a possible attack on England by terrorists. Furthering this interpretation is the knowledge that Silva was at one point an MI6 agent, implying that these attacks can come from the inside by people who aren’t loyal to Britain. But the way that Bond survived was by retreating to Skyfall, and using the resources it provided. The ideological interpretation here is that in order to be safe, individuals should be loyal to their nations. Skyfall, and Bond in general, promotes staunch nationalism.

Although Bond is British, and the movie does directly promote British nationalism, I believe the correct interpretation of the movie’s ideology is that it promotes nationalism in general. Most audiences viewing this movie do not identify with Britain, but they do identify with Bond. As a viewer, watching Bond defend his country will not inspire you to defend Britain as well. Instead, the ideology will rub off on you to defend whichever country you support. The distinction between Bond’s British identity and Archer’s American identity is only important in the contexts of the character’s stories. In terms of ideology, the concepts are generalized.

Archer argues against the type of nationalism promoted by Bond in Archer: Vice. The season begins with an attack by the FBI on ISIS, which results in the death of minor character Brett and the arrest of the main cast (“White Elephant”). This initial scene sets up the rest of the season: the disgraced ISIS agents attempting to sell cocaine in order to make some money before parting ways. I want to draw attention to two particular episodes in this season. First is “On the Carpet.” In this episode, we are introduced to Slater, the shady arms dealer. Slater gives Archer, Cyril, and Ray weapons in return for the cocaine they were attempting to smuggle, and tells them to fly south. Slater’s identity is revealed in “Arrival/Departure,” the final episode of the season. Slater is actually a CIA agent who was selling arms to a South American dictator to increase the CIA’s budget. The dictator could only pay for the weapons with cocaine, so the CIA needed people to sell the cocaine for them. The ISIS agents had actually been selling the CIA’s cocaine the whole time. Slater attempts to bring the ISIS agents to a CIA black site, but is disarmed. The episode ends with Mallory pulling a gun on the CIA agents and forcing them to reinstate ISIS.

As Archer’s defining trait, like Bond, is his nationality, we should look at these events through the national lens again. The initial crisis in the series is not an attack by a foreign group. The initial crisis is an attack by the US on an American – Archer. The breach of trust between country and individual doesn’t end there. The final reveal, that the CIA had used ISIS to fulfill their own goals, also demonstrates this point. Ideologically, Archer is implying that we should not trust our government. The government will only use you and abuse you, as they did to the ISIS agents. Furthermore, as indicated by Mallory, the only way to save yourself is to force the government to help you. That fact is reinforced by the attempted murder of the ISIS agents by the CIA once the ISIS agents had lost their utility. Archer counters the Bond style nationalism with a grim account of government secrecy and betrayal. Archer implores the viewer to not become a pawn in a much larger war.

Archer’s anti-nationalist agenda is unique and not a result of Archer’s satirical nature Austin Powers, another parody franchise that draws main elements from the James Bond, also advocates nationalism. Like both Bond and Sterling Archer, Austin Powers is known for his suits, nationality, and serial womanizing. But the ideology offered by Powers is in accordance with Bond, rather than Archer.

Take Austin Powers in Goldmember as a specific example. The major conflict is that Dr. Evil and Goldmember have commissioned a tractor beam (called “Preperation H”) that they will use to destroy the world. In the final confrontation of the movie, Austin pleads with Dr. Evil not to launch this rocket towards Earth. At the penultimate moment, Austin’s father reveals that Dr. Evil is actually Austin’s brother, which causes Dr. Evil to switch sides and fight off Goldmember to save the day.

There are a few key details that should be included to clarify Austin Powers’ ideology. First, the rocket is very clearly made by the Japanese – a whole scene in the movie is dedicated to infiltrating the factory where it was constructed. Second, Goldmember is Dutch, and a Belgian couple raised Dr. Evil. The enemy in this movie is foreigners, foreigners who want to destroy the world with foreign technology. And the way to stop this from happening is by uniting under a British identity. Austin Powers, while plainly parodying James Bond, agrees with Bond that nationalism and national identity is a solution to problems. Furthermore, it even identifies the specific way you should serve your country: accept the brotherhood of your nation and you will be protected from outsiders who mean you harm. Despite it’s nature as a parody, Austin Powers is on the same side as Bond in the cultural battle.

Austin Powers next to his car, “The Shagmobile”

For Althusser’s theory to be demonstrated, there must be an ideological war between movies within the same genre and of the same type. The traditional spy-action superpower, James Bond, has long argued that we should submit to our country and accept our place as a member of that particular society. Even spin off media, like Austin Powers, which parodies some of the central concepts and constructs in Bond, advocates the same position. But Archer, a firm fixture in the spy-action scene disagrees. It tells us to distrust our government and find our own path to safety. In doing so, it declares a cultural war on the other spy TV shows and movies.

References

Austin Powers in Goldmember. Jay Roach. Perf. Mike Myers, Beyonce Knowles, Seth Green.  New Line Cinema, 2002, Online.

Althusser, Louis. “Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays.” La Pensée (1970): 127-186. Web.17 Mar. 2016.

Skyfall. Sam Mendes. Perf. Danial Craig, Javier Bardem, Naiome Harris. Metro Golden Meyer, 2012. Online.

“White Elephant,” “The Rules of Extraction,” and “Arrival/Departure.” Archer: Vice. Writ. Adam Reed. FX, 2013. Online.

Each of us wants to find happiness in one form or another. We hope to obtain material objects or attain non-material moral and societal standards because we trust that these things will bring us happiness. British literary critic Matthew Arnold believed in adopting disciplined strategies that minimize the role of chance in order to ensure happiness. He asserted that true happiness comes only through reading the standard-bearers of literary achievement, the “classics.” Arnold insisted that only by reading the classics can a person attain culture: a set of common meanings and values that can then be applied to the real world and guide an individual on how to live a life worth living (5). To stray from this well-ordered path, he warned, is to fail to reach the final goal of perfection. Arnold, writing in the mid-19^th century, rejected the notion that culture can be obtained from any other source, and dismissed contemporary film and literature as superficial, without substance, and to be avoided at all costs.

Fellow academic Raymond Williams agreed with Arnold on this topic; he too denigrated modern media as low-brow babble aimed at an expanding audience presumed to be stupid. Williams recognized the value of classic education, yet also believed that “ordinary,” working-class people, and not the elites, have a culture that can teach us valuable lessons on how to live a happy life (4). Each man overlooked the potential insights to be found in the newest generation of literature and film.

The 1994 film Forrest Gump presents a theory of happiness born of both education and ordinary experience, enhanced by the role of free will and chance. The protagonist is a simple, small-town man who by conventional standards is lacking in both culture and intelligence, yet exemplifies both in the unorthodox, almost accidental fashion in which he lives out his life. Forrest is not well-read, but heeds his mother’s sage advice. He is optimistic, avoids judging others, and is kind and respectful to everyone he meets. He is a shining example of the honorable culture of the poor that Williams touts. The film celebrates the simple truths of blue-collar values, which can be just as illuminating as classic literature. It also demonstrates that happiness can be found in a life led without a plan.

Forrest takes life as he finds it and without any clear path, but succeeds and finds joy in every situation he faces because he responds to each in the same cultured manner: with kindness, respect, integrity, and optimism. The feather that floats through the air at both the beginning and end of the movie is a perfect metaphor: Forrest never knows where his life will take him next, but he goes with the flow and he finds happiness at all stops along the way because that is what his mother taught him to do. From a young age, Forrest listened to his mother’s advice. One quote, in particular, always comforts and reassures him: “Life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re gonna get.” Surprises are to be expected, and some are more pleasant than others. He lives his life by this motto, and and it guides him through a most astonishing series of random events.  He finds himself in the middle of some of the most important moments of his generation: dancing to the music of a young Elvis Presley in his home; meeting presidents Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon in the White House; and fighting in Vietnam. Through it all, he maintains his same demeanor. He even wins a Purple Heart simply because he keeps two promises: he promised Jenny he will run away from the conflict when things got bad, and he promised his good friend Bubba that he had his back, just as Bubba had his. Bound by his culture to keep these promises, he carries countless wounded men out of the field of battle, including Bubba (who does, however, die). This keeping of promises as a means of survival is exactly what Raymond Williams is talking about when he discusses the culture of the ordinary people.

In his essay entitled “Culture is Ordinary,” Williams describes the selfless deeds his neighbors perform in assistance of his family while his father was on his deathbed: “one man came in and dug his [father’s] garden; another loaded and delivered a lorry of sleepers for firewood; another came and chopped the sleepers into blocks; another – I don’t know who, it was never said – left a sack of potatoes at the back door; a woman came in and took away a basket of washing” (11). His neighbors perform these acts of kindness without even saying they did them and with the expectation that, were they in the same situation, Williams and his family would do the same for them. Forrest does the same, even when he is mistreated. He generously gives Bubba’s share of profits from the business they hoped to start together to Bubba’s mother, even though she called him stupid for even starting the company on his own. He also donates large sums of money to institutions that have helped him in the past, thereby returning the favor. Forrest’s life is grounded by his values, and he is a happy man.

The life of Forrest’s one true love, a hometown girl named Jenny, illustrates a life defined by chance and whim and unanchored by culture. Jenny did not have good parenting, and her childhood was filled with brutality and betrayal. Her adult life is defined by a series of poor choices. She is dismissed from college because of a series of lewd photographs, performs topless at a club in Memphis, continues a harmful relationship with an abusive jerk and Black Panther Party member, and samples various psychedelic drugs with hippies. She achieves nothing of permanence in her life, and as a result is so unhappy that she considers suicide on several occasions. This unhappiness is consistent with Arnold’s theory that happiness is created by doing things that cannot be taken away.

But when Jenny needs help, and even when she really doesn’t, Forrest comes to her aid. He punches out a myriad of men who he believes to be a threat to Jenny over the course of the movie. His constancy is a perfect counterbalance to her many missteps, because, although his life is far from well-ordered, he is steady, anchored by his values, and finds happiness in simple things. He tries to help Jenny do the same.

With all of the poor choices Jenny made throughout her life, she acts as a foil to Forrest. The fact that they grew up together in the small town of Greenbow, Alabama, did not result in them internalizing the same culture. The fact that it was a small town should not be romanticized, because that town included much meanness and treachery. Forrest and Jenny are products of the best and the worst in rural values.

Greenbow contradicts Raymond Williams’ notion that culture of a town is particularly good just because it is small and ordinary. The people of Greenbow call Forrest abusive names. The school principal extorts sex from Forrest’s mother as a condition of accepting Forrest into the school. Mrs. Gump does what she has to do to make sure that Forrest gets the education he needs so he can fit in more with the other kids his age. In this light, Mrs. Gump’s conduct aligns with the ideas of Arnold in that she believes Forrest will be better off if he learns “the best which has been thought and said in the world, and through this knowledge, turning a stream of fresh and free thought upon [his] stock notions and habits” (Arnold 5). She believes that the knowledge Forrest will gain in the regular elementary school will improve the quality of life. She realized what Raymond Williams did not: that a child like Forrest needs education to complete his “culturization” and ability to more intimately relate with the world around him.

Arnold and Williams are both products of their time and place. It is understandable that, as a highly educated British theorist, Arnold would assume that only people of comparable intellectual potency could be considered cultured. So, too, is it understandable for Williams, a small-town boy who, although he attended a prestigious university, grew up in a working-class town, to believe that his own origin is a superior place of culture and intelligence. Both Arnold and Williams refuse to acknowledge that a culture other than their own is indeed legitimate. In the final analysis, neither of these men took into account that a work such as Forrest Gump could reveal so much about culture. Neither Arnold nor Williams imagined a person quite like Forrest Gump – a feather blowing in the breeze.

Bibliography:

Arnold, Matthew. Culture and Anarchy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006).

Williams, Raymond. “Defining a Democratic Culture.” Resources of Hope: Culture, Democracy, Socialism (London: Verso, 1989).

By Ross Hoch

                                  ‘I feel like I’m too busy writing history to read it.’

You’ve heard it before: Modern music is all the same, some formulaic progression of chords, manufactured in the hit factory by calculating writers and producers to hook listeners, before being neatly packaged by some attractive entertainers.  Some would say that people who think like this are only reactionaries; old curmudgeons opposed to change, who not only say that music and culture was more diverse in their day, but that they walked uphill both ways to and from the concert hall where they listened to it. However, scientific studies have proved that pop music has a narrower dynamic and timbral range, borrows more heavily from older music, and is less and less unique than ever before. While advocates of the internet age might disagree, for the most part the significant capital needed to professionally produce and distribute music and other forms of entertainment to the mass market encourages an industrialization and streamlining of the process.   Cultural theorists like Adorno have gone so far as to suggest that with the advent of the industrial age and mass markets, all of culture has been infected with mind-numbing sameness, devoid of original thought.  Adorno even argues that the supposed counterculture movement merely offers the illusion of choice which functions within and perpetuates the existing system of sameness.  However, there have been certain artists who seem to have provided strong counterexamples to Adorno’s claims.  One of the most notable is Kanye West, who gained fame with his groundbreaking single “Jesus Walks.”  While, this work admits that in a world of mass-production the danger of all art being the same exists, Jesus Walks rejects cultural and genre norms, genuinely supporting the idea that the exceptional creativity and individuality of human spirit can overcome industrial society’s pressure for sameness.

Kanye West’s second (and most popular and critically acclaimed) “Jesus Walks” music video.  Not the contrast between the flames of the devil that are trying to engulf West at one moment and the halo that surrounds him at the next.  Also note the blatant undisguised allusions to racism in America.

Though it was conceived of well after Adorno’s publication of his cultural theories on an inevitable sameness (in 1944) hip hop was in many ways born out of a reaction to the culture industry and “establishment” domination of culture and entertainment.  Working class African Americans in the South Bronx, disenchanted with the almost – systematic oppression and a lack of opportunity in spite of recent civil rights movements, and not given a voice in popular “industrialized” artistic forms like rock and roll, created a new unique cultural movement to express themselves.  As the Paley Center writes, “From the beginning, hip-hop was aggressive and oppositional, a break from the musical traditions it followed.”[1] In rejecting the primacy of the melody (something previously thought to be a musical necessity) and instrumentals, in favor of the layering of beats with rhythm, rhymes, bass, and samples, hip-hop established itself musically as a unique, and innovative art form, outside of Adorno’s monotonous “culture industry.”  Furthermore, by giving a voice to oppressed inner-city blacks and speaking freely about the harsh realities of inner city life it gave expression and agency to those who Adorno would have asserted to be voiceless, brainwashed subjects of the culture industry.

The Sugarhill Gang who had the very first hit rap single “Rapper’s Delight” in 1979.

Yet, few would recognize the 21st century hip-hop culture (that Kanye West wrote in) as the wholly innovative, unique form of expression of a typically marginalized segment of society. As hip-hop spread to the wider world in the 1980s, corporate interests took what had been a subversive and revolutionary form of music made for the oppressed and commoditized it for profit and mass consumption[2].  Under the pressure of corporate-driven profit, rappers have been driven towards defined media stereotypes: such as the “pimp”, “gangsta”, and “playa”, in corporate America’s attempt to profit from narrow, but dramatically appealing definitions of inner-city black life for profit.  This evolution in hip hop has led some like music critic Dart Adams to say that hip hop (like one of Adorno’s “countercultures”) merely presents the illusion of choice, existing “almost solely to maintain the status quo and promote moneyed interests.”[3]

Within this context of hip-hop as the product of an industrial process, the unorthodox messages in “Jesus Walks” provide a testament to the fact that despite the conformist pressures of cultural mass production individuals have the capacity to produce art of substance and individual meaning.  For instance, Jesus Walks very premise, that of the walk with Christ that everyone must embrace, “Jesus Walks” rejects adopting for himself the conventional “bad-ass” gangster, rapper, and pimp personas and instead chooses to adopt that of a Christian capable of humility.  West notes that this is specifically a rejection of the terms and corporate pressures of the producers, in rapping, “So here go my single dog, radio needs this/ They say you can rap about anything except for Jesus./  That means guns, sex, lies, videotape./  But if I talk about God my record won’t get played, huh?”  While one might be led to think that the risks of stepping outside convention would be consumer rejection, West explicitly states that he is rebelling against the corporate controlled radio industry (and record industry).  Thus he does not believe his innovative artwork to be outside the bounds of consumer tastes, but rather outside of the narrow, negative and monotony-inducing “guns, sex lies, videotape” confines imposed by the radio and record industry.  In interviews about the song West often cited that those in the record industry, while admitting the song’s undeniable musical and lyrical excellence, stated that the centrality of the Christian theme meant that it would not get playtime on the radio[4].  Yet, in explicitly challenging the producers and describing the issues with the corporate elements of hip hop, West not only forces the hip hop industry to widen its scope in playing this convention-defying song, but also in observing its success, confront the fact that their limited scope was neither productive in forming good art, nor in catering to true consumer desires.

Furthermore, unlike the hit singles of many of West’s contemporaries,  “Jesus Walks” is the rare piece of art that by using old material creates a piece of music that is genuinely innovative.   Hip hop production has always been an amalgamation of various musical motifs, beats, samples or songs, with the payoff of the best songs being far more than the sum of their parts.  However, in recent years this potentially rich combination has often become more and more formulaic.  Rap has evolved in the direction of a more pop-like formula with a base synthesized beat and musical riff overlaid with alternating rap verses and more and more poppy, melodic hooks typically infused with a couple ear-pleasing samples.  In contrast to this general trend, “Jesus Walks” utilizes several musical elements rarely used in mainstream hip hop to create a rich, and frankly surprising texture of sound.  As Pitchfork (a magazine particularly vicious in its critiques of unoriginality) remarks, “Militaristic drums, choral melisma, snake-charmer keyboards, and swatches of orchestration made “Jesus Walks” an odd thing to spill out car windows in summer 2004.”[5]

In addition to these elements atypical of contemporary hip-hop, “Jesus Walks” makes heavy use of gospel choir, incorporating an element of the African American tradition of music seldom paired with the heavy beat and rhetorical power of mainstream rap to construct a truly moving refrain.   Indeed, the song made gospel so central to its musical themes and has motifs so characteristic of gospel that it was even briefly nominated for several gospel awards categories despite the fact that the song was not traditionally considered within the confines of gospel music. (Don’t worry cultural conservatives quickly convinced the awards organization of the need to remove a song so “secular” and “profane” from the nominees).

     An early Jesus Walks music video.     Listen for the way in which milatiristic drum beats, impassioned gospel solos, the backing children’s choir, and orchestral transitions combine to create a “towering inferno of sound” particularly during the refrain from 1:50-1:20.

Jesus Walks” gradually layers all of the above-mentioned voices from all corners of culture on top of each other to build what the Observer describes as “[a] towering inferno of martial beats, fathoms-deep chain gang backing chants, a defiant children’s choir, gospel wails, and sizzling orchestral breaks.”[6]  It is a creation that simultaneously hearkens back and stays true to musical traditions, particularly African American hip hop and gospel, and yet is so removed from the stereotypical formulaic conception of commoditized hip hop or any form of mainstream music, that upon listening one cannot help but question Adorno’s theory of universal cultural sameness.  

While we have established that West thoroughly rejects the notions of conventional hip hop in terms of both subject matter and musical composition, “Jesus Walks” could have been a song that while rejecting mainstream elements of the hip hop industry merely embraced other establishment cultural values previously not expressed through hip hop.  “Jesus Walks” could have just been some catchy musically brilliant work that presented Christ as a panacea to all the problems facing America, but instead it explores the struggles, false promises and internal conflicts in the American dream for marginalized members of society.

There is no one version of the American dream.  It’s a buzzword or buzz phrase, if you will, and to some extent it has a different meaning for everyone.  However, there is a sort of establishment portion of the American dream that a Marxist like Adorno would say the ruling classes foist upon you.  This is that success is possible through hard-work within the confines and conventions of what’s accepted by society.  In other words if you adopt the Protestant work ethic as a guideline in your personal and work life some sort of success will come, regardless of your background.   Of course this implies the drug-dealers and criminals are that way because they are less worthy.  They had a chance to better themselves and wasted it.  They are criminals chiefly because they are morally depraved and corrupted.  

West disagrees with this empirically flawed premise and presents them drug dealers and criminals as equals, morally complex victims of unjust circumstances and stereotypes, to be valued as much as anyone else, through the use of various speakers on either side of the conflict.  In the first portion of the first verse he raps, “You know what the Midwest is?/  Young and restless/ Where restless (niggas) might snatch you necklace/ And next these (niggas) might jack your Lexus.”  Here he reveals the racial stereotypes of thievery, depravity, and the inferior quality denoted by the usage of the n-word, that are projected onto poor blacks by American society.  West uses and identifies with (using “we”) further examples of the systemic environment into which blacks are thrust such as arrested by police and tried in court solely as a result of skin color so that his audience may sympathize with those “who walk the valley where the shadow of the Chi where death is” like they would with the shepherd of the 23rd psalm. He builds on the sympathy he has established in the listener for the difficulties of the marginalized by segueing into a first-person narration, spoken by a drug dealer raised in this environment.  Finally, after hearing of the repeated oppression and denial of the American dream in America we can understand why the speaker no longer believes in Jesus’ ability to save us.”  Through presenting the victims such as the drug dealer and the “victims of welfare” as torn between the devil and God,  Kanye outlines the duality of man and the members of an unequal American society constantly torn, “at war” with “terrorism” “racism,” and “ourselves.”  

A product of the culture industry would likely have accepted and propagated the inequality-enforcing (interpellative) message of the elites American Dream.  In contrast, West outlines the inherent flaws and inequality caused by racism and stereotypes ingrained within American society, and in doing so creates a genuinely individual, complex, and original message, devoted to a cause greater than profit or maintenance of the establishment.  Through presenting victims such as the drug dealer and the “victims of welfare” as torn between the devil and God,  Kanye outlines the duality of man and the members of an American society constantly torn, “at war” with “racism,” “terrorism” and “ourselves”.  

In its refusal to conform to norms of popular music genres, and its complex voicing of the struggles of marginalized African-Americans in society “Jesus Walks” revives the dissident, nonconformist, nature which made hip hop so powerful and attractive at its inception.  Moreover, “Jesus Walks” is nothing if not a musical masterpiece created through a rarely seen combination of gospel, rap, orchestral arrangements, and carefully chosen samples.  In “Jesus Walks” West created a mass-produced cultural work of rebellion and originality that is a joy to listen to in its own right.  Thus, many pieces of entertainment lead their audiences to absorb the conformist ruling-class ideologies packaged within them “Jesus Walks” demonstrates the potential for certain mass-produced entertainment to elevate its audience’s mindfulness.  

“Jesus Walks” openly acknowledges and attacks the perceived culture industry (in this case specifically the record industry) and its tendency to churn out art that is topically and musically monotonous and disconnected from the realities of social conditions within American society just as Adorno does.  However, by attacking and rebelling against the same cultural problems Adorno diagnoses, it disproves Adorno’s claim that all art is the same, for in order for a mass-produced piece of art to genuinely attack the culture industry for its “Adornian” monotony and false messages, it must be different from those messages which it critiques.  The beauty of “Jesus Walks” as an artifact of cultural individualism and authentic originality is that it works within Adorno’s own framework for culture but provides a counterexample to its central claim, that in a culture of mass production all culture is essentially the same.  

References

[1] Calhoun, Claudia. “The Emergence of Hip Hop.” Paley Center. N.p., n.d. Web. 16 Mar. 2016.  <https://www.paleycenter.org/the-emergence-of-hip-hop>.

[2] Romero, James. “Influence of Hip Hop Resonates Worldwide.” LA Times 14 Mar. 1997, Column  One: n.pag. LA Times. Web. 16 Mar. 2016.

[3] Adams, Dart. “Hip Hop Turns 40.” NPR. NPR News Organization, 11 Aug. 2013. Web. 16 Mar.  2016.

[4] Leung, Rebecca. “Rocking for Christ: Christian Music Becoming Big Hits on Mainstream Radio Stations.” CBS News. CBS Interactive, 1 Dec. 2004. Web. 17 Mar. 2016.

[5] Leung, Rebecca. “Rocking for Christ: Christian Music Becoming Big Hits on Mainstream Radio Stations.” CBS News. CBS Interactive, 1 Dec. 2004. Web. 17 Mar. 2016.

[6] The Guardian Observer. Web. 18 Mar. 2016.  Mulholland, Gary. “Song of the Month: Jesus Walks by Kanye West.” The Observer 15 Aug.  2004: n. Pag.

Key Works

Adorno, Theodor, and Max Horkheimer. Dialectic of Enlightenment. N.p.: n.p., 1944. Print.

“Jesus Walks.” Comp. Kanye West and Che Smith. College Dropout. Perf. and prod. Kanye West. Roc a Fella, Def Jam, 2004. CD.

We like to understand what we see on the screen in terms of archetypes, whether it’s tragic heroes, infuriating villains, or anything alike. We like characters that make sense; characters that get what they deserve. Our stories should provide us with lessons, or teach us something profound about the world. We crave understanding from what we engage with on the television. We desire entertainment, yes, but also the conviction that there are in fact ways in which to live, perspectives and methods of thinking that will lead to some outcome preordained by that very approach. Show Me A Hero is a television series that not only questions this, but tells us to feel resigned to disruptions in our ways of living that inevitably change our outcomes. It gives us our tragic heroes, our faithful sidekicks, and our unrelenting narcissists, who are willing to burn down everything around them if the smoke lifts them higher. But the show leaves the viewer unsure and troubled by how little control each of us has on the future of our lives. It suggests regardless of our choices there will be outside forces that we can’t overcome.

The show makes us question our agency. Show Me A Hero, a six part mini-series created by David Simon, chronicles the political debate around desegregation of public housing in the city of Yonkers, starting in 1987 and moving forward into 1994. Nick Wasicsko is a young council member running for mayor with almost no shot against six-term incumbent Angelo Martinelli. Everything changes, however, when a Federal judge rules against Yonkers requiring the desegregation of public housing, which Martinelli doesn’t appeal. The rest of the series pits the mostly white, affluent east side of the city and their council representatives against the order. The show isn’t kind to these people. Throughout the series they are defined as a one-dimensional white mob that are convinced that they aren’t racist, but rather are just protecting their property values and communities. The only one who is really explored is Mary Dorman, a long-time resident and community activist. One of the ‘heroes’ of the show, her journey from ardent opponent of the housing to the new residents’ biggest white advocate is heartwarming, if not a bit cliché. Her path to sympathizer once she gets to know the residents of the new public housing is praiseworthy but also reveals that, while she was a valuable resource in making the housing project a success, it didn’t matter. As she is told many times, and eventually repeats herself, “The housing is coming whether you like it or not” (Episode 6).

Perhaps more illustrative of the futility she feels is what comes earlier when she’s still opposed to the housing. Shoveling the walk to her front door, she remarks to her husband “We keep shoveling the same walk. It never ends.” She’s talking about the run of politicians who have promised to fight the court order on housing, but then turned when the reality of governing faces them in office. More broadly, it’s the same theme. The world moves, and try as we might, we have little real influence.

One of those politicians who turned on his word also happens to be the main character of the show. Nick Wasicsko beats the odds to become the youngest mayor in America, riding the support on his promise to appeal the housing decision. The scene in episode one where Wasicsko screams “I’m the fucking mayor” (Episode 1) surrounded by his friends and family on election night is his peak. He spends the rest of the show fighting for appreciation and self-worth as the world chews him up again and again. His term as mayor soon descends into chaos as he reverses course on the housing decision, and desperately pushes to get a plan through the city government to avoid fines that would bankrupt the city. Against him are the masses of east Yonkers who come out in mob form to every council session, and their representatives who have to choose between passing the housing or re-election. .

Wasicsko never had a chance at re-election after turning to support the public housing, but would never lose the addictive taste of his big election win. As his life spirals lower and lower – losing the re-election, ceding his candidacy the next cycle to be a councilman again, and eventually losing that seat too after one more term – he desperately tries to hold onto something, anything to validate his self-worth and turn his life around. Unfortunately, all he can see are politics and soon he starts to play with the lives of his friends and family. His wife Nay urges him to stop, saying “You can’t mistake votes for love” (Episode 6). Soon his political gambling costs Nay her job, and at his lowest ebb he challenges his best friend for her council seat. This is Nick’s tragic flaw. Votes and the affirmation of personal love that they bring is all that he values, and at his absolute nadir, with his political career finished and his closest relations being torn apart by his desperate political maneuvers, he takes his own life. He is a flawed hero, who stood for what was right and paid for it, and never could quite figure out that there was more to life than votes. The title of the series comes from a telling quote by F. Scott Fitzgerald: “Show me a hero, and I’ll write you a tragedy.”

What makes Wasicsko particularly compelling are his contradictions. He is a cynic yet never a realist. His optimistic spirit seems born out of an unending confidence in his ability to make things work. It’s not that he’s especially charismatic. His confidence seems more driven by his relentless desire for affirmation of worth. He both continually asks his wife if she’ll love him no matter what and espouses confidence she’ll never leave him. He makes repeated visits to his father’s grave, where his conversations scream of a relationship that lacked the desired affection. Perhaps this is the point, that his show of confidence is derived from a need to prove to himself that he can be loved, that he is worth the love that his father never gave him. But speculating on father-son dynamics is not the point. Nick is a man born for politics; he lives and feeds off of it. He has the self-belief and cunning edge required, but he doesn’t have the capacity to accept defeat. Instead of accepting the powerful political and social forces around him, he plows on directly into the storm. Only when he finds himself alone in the churning waves with a broken boat does he realize the damage he’s done. When he realizes how truly alone he is and can’t see a way out he breaks down in a particularly poignant scene. He has tried so hard, gambled everything he had to win back his political position and admiration, yet nothing, not even a Kennedy Profile in Courage Award nomination, could change his political fortunes. He was too scarred, having taken all the consequences of the housing case that would forever taint his name. This is the point the show is trying to make. Wasicsko was powerless against the political forces around him and unable to change that no matter what he tried.

More importantly Nick Wasicsko was not a martyr as the title might suggest. What took him down was his connection to the public housing project, yet when the first units are up and he visits a block of residents, only one even knows his name. Nor is his anonymity the cost of such social progress. Regardless of his decisions, the city was going to be forced to integrate. If it took making Yonkers bankrupt, the Federal judge was going to do it. So what can we learn from Wasicsko as a character? He’s not a martyr for progress, and his political career was destined to be limited by the negative influence of his affordable housing projects association. The reason he gambled his wife’s job was because his own party was already freezing him out when he was a councilman for the second time. His actions only hastened his demise and speak to his desperation to turn things around as political forces much larger than himself pulled him down. It is easy to characterize Wasicsko’s eventual suicide as the product of his flawed character. But hidden beneath that was that every mistake he made on the way down was an attempt to stop and reverse his slow decline already taking place.

The relative insignificance of an individual’s choices that the show implies doesn’t mean that people don’t have any choice in their lives. At any moment Nick Wasicsko could have picked up and given up on politics. One of the residents of the new public housing units, Carmen Febles, could have stayed with her family in the Dominican Republic. Doreen Henderson, another resident, could have continued to deal drugs. The unspoken message of Show Me A Hero is that regardless of personal choices, there will be larger forces along each path that will impact you. Febles tried to improve her family’s life but the power of poverty follows them to the Dominican Republic and back. Despite her endless hard work and conviction that “we are too good for this place”(Episode 5) (the projects), her family remains subject to a lottery to get a new home in east Yonkers. Billie Rowan, a resident of the new housing project who is doing her best to start a new life for her kids, is evicted because her boyfriend (and father of her children) commits murder back on the west side of Yonkers. Everyone remains victims of forces out of their own control.

It’s therefore not exactly a lack of agency or ability to shape our own lives that the series is trying to transmit. Show Me a Hero is instead convincing its viewers that regardless of their personality or what they do; whether they’re hard-working, endlessly optimistic, or practical, there is no guaranteed outcome. There no secrets to approaching life or character definitions that can assure you a certain experience. Instead every path is subject to forces one can’t control, be it political, economic, or social. Our individual destinies will not define, but rather be defined by the large forces they encounter. Some things are inevitable, others are variable. Nothing, however, will be controllable, and accepting that and “making the best of it as we can” (Episode 6) as Mary Dorman says is all that is left. This is what the series leaves with viewers, the idea that there are no ideologies that one can possess that will shape exactly how one sees or experiences the world. Instead there is only the ideology that we are always subject to the whims of forces greater than ourselves. It’s not a message to convince people they have no real world agency. It’s instead to convince the viewer that they’re ability to determine their future based on actions and character will always be insignificant relative to the complex and shifting political and social forces surrounding us.

Sources

1. Show Me A Hero. Episodes 1-6. HBO. 16 August 2015. Television.