Monday, July 31, 2017

Putting the Living Back into Living Labor, Part One: Dejours and the Psychodynamics of Work



In the introduction to Travail Vivant et Théorie Critique: Affects, Pouvoir, et Critique du Travail Alexis Cukier argues that the critique of the domination of "dead labor" over "living labor" cannot remain at the level of social relations, as a critique of the wage form and employment, but must descend into the "black box" of labor, and produce a theory of "living labor."

Monday, July 17, 2017

The Role of Revolution in the Transition from Man to Ape (and back again): On War For The Planet of the Apes


Perhaps the new ape films should be considered as one long remake of Conquest of the Planet of the Apes. Initially, this seemed to be limited to the first film, but the subsequent sequels have extended the revolutionary moment. Ape versus humans is no longer a chapter in the story, but the entire story. The first film, which seem like a risky one off when it was first released, had a few "easter eggs"alluding to a missing mission to Mars that set up the original films. With the film's success there was the need to continue the story, converting easter eggs to plot points, to provide the full story of the transformation of our world into a world of apes. This makes the recent ape films unique in the world of apocalypses and dystopias; the film does not present a new world already made, but the conditions of its making. That the final in what is now being called a trilogy comes out in 2017 on July 14th, hitting two revolutionary anniversaries, Bastille Day and the Russian Revolution of 1917, would only seem to underscore the point of revolution.They attempt to show how the planet of the apes came into being, revealing the causes and the contingency of what the original presented as necessity.

Tuesday, July 11, 2017

A Universal History of Villainy: A Brief Remark on Spider-Man: Homecoming



In Jameson's essay on The Wire there is an interesting digression (and in Jameson it is mainly the digressions which are interesting) on the problem of evil in popular culture. Jameson takes up the question of evil, of villains, more broadly, reflecting on both their decline and centrality to popular culture. To quote a long passage, or at least the important parts:


Tuesday, July 04, 2017

The Golden Pig: Okja and the limits of Satire



Critics of Okja have been quick to point out its jarring tonalities, one part satire of the world of corporations and branding events and one part touching story of a girl and her (giant mutant) pig. This seems to be off for at least two reasons. Tonal shifts seem to be something Bong Joon-Ho revels in. The Host also melded horror, a family drama, and a scathing account of the US involvement in South Korea, and Snowpiercer reveled in shifting tones, as every new railcar opened to a new scene and a new mood, from its own satire of the ideological state apparatus to the horrorific scene of black hooded executioners of the repressive state apparatus. A kind of jarring tonal shift is not new to this movie.