Capitalist Dogs II: Or, What Habit Makes in Smith and Marx

 I remember a friend in graduate school saying that our task, at least when it came to writing dissertations, was to write something that a database could not produce. He was a bit ahead of the curve, this was sometime around the late nineties early two thousands. Databases could not write books then, but they are getting closer to it. Or, more to the point, a particular kind of academic monographic, the sort the traces the development of a concept in a single author oeuvre or a comparison of two thinkers, seems to be increasingly the kind of thing that a machine could write. That is the bad news. The good news, is that such monographs seemed useful to write, but never that fun to read in the first place. What if we could leave such books to the machines that generate them and consume them. What kind of writing should we do in the age of (seemingly) intelligent machines?

Just a Dog: Immediacy and Mediation at the Movies

Watching Superman at the drive-in with Bento (below)

I took my dog to the drive-in, something he loves, and this got me thinking about the status of dogs in contemporary films. James Gunn's Superman is, among many things, the first live action film to depict Superman's dog Krypto. The dog features prominently in the film, in its advertisements, and in its afterlife in memes and. jokes online. 

2 Apes 2 Planets: On Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes

 

The recent Planet of the Apes films can be defined by two questions: one internal to the films themselves, to their own universe, albeit with allegorical dimensions, and the other external, to their status as commodities in the culture industry. The first question is what is the nature of the conflict between humans and apes? Is it a natural conflict, a conflict between two species for domination, or is it a political conflict, a conflict between different ways of living. The second question is will audiences watch and identify with apes, with CGI characters, rather than humans played by human actors.

Master and Commander: Or, Must Love Dogs II

 

Commander 

In undergrad I got really into theory, all of it, reading Baudrillard, Deleuze, Debord, Foucault, etc., most definitely etc, all the time. My theory fascination was a byproduct of reading zines and little semiotextes, the more polemical, the more outlandish its claims, the more I loved it. One little book I particularly loved was First and Last Emperors: The Absolute State and the Body of the Despot by Kenneth Dean and Brian Massumi. It is an odd little book, a reading of the Reagan/Bush years framed as much by the legalist philosopher Shang Yang's The Book of Lord Shang as it is by the expected references to Deleuze and Guattari. (Brian Massumi of course translated A Thousand Plateaus). That odd idiosyncratic nature is precisely what I loved about it. I dreamt of writing something similar, not on Reagan and legalism but something which brought together a variety of disparate references to think through a specific problem. I guess my book which talks about Spinoza and Marx along with Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul, might be an attempt to realize that wish. 

Between Legacy and History: On Peele's Nope

Seeing Nope at the Bridgton Twin Drive In 

Movie critics, even amateur ones, love puns, love working the title into their reviews in some sort of play on words. So it takes a certain amount of confidence to call a film "Nope". It just invites too many titles for negative reviews, say "Nope to nope" and so on. In the case of Peele that confidence is earned. It is the third movie by a director who is developing his own vision in an era where such things as vision or style, even directors as auteurs, are increasingly obsolete. The title of Nope recalls the title of Peele's first film, Get Out  which was an homage to Eddie Murphy's bit about how a haunted house movie would never work with a black family, they would Get Out at the first warning.  

Two Versions of an Extinction: Prehistoric Planet and Jurassic Park

A similar image of dinosaurs in the snow circulated at about the same time from two very different sources. The first, above, was from Prehistoric Planet as series on Apple TV, and the second was from the trailer of the latest Jurassic World film. These images reflect the changing scientific theories of the dinosaur which have shifted from slow scaly reptiles to what are now considered smart, fast, feathered, warm blooded animals. This is especially true of the former which uses CGI and paleontology to produce a kind of Planet Earth for the prehistoric world (complete with David Attenborough providing narration). The latter is less fettered by science, but has used some recent discoveries, smart velociraptors hunting in packs, T-Rex's that walk with its spine parallel to the ground like land sharks, and so on when they have served the story. 

Any Bird Whatsoever: on Fujita's Le Ciné-Capital: D'Hitchcock à Ozu

In his conversations with François Truffaut Alfred Hitchcock insisted that the birds in the film of the same name had to be ordinary birds, seagulls, ravens, sparrows, and not the more spectacular, and arguably more frightening hawks and eagles. This particular anecdote is relayed in Fujita's Le Ciné-Capital and in some sense it functions as the lynchpin that connects Deleuze's understanding of film, Marx's understanding of Capital, and revolutionary politics.

Must Love Dogs: Animals and Racism in the Age of Trump

Trump is not a dog person, or, for that matter, a cat person. He is supposedly the first president in a century to not have a pet. Past presidents have had dogs, cats, horses, even alligators. While many animal lovers breathe a sigh of relief at such news it has recently taken a strange turn. After a long history of resorting to dog as his favorite phrase of contempt, he tweeted praise of a Belgian Malinois named Conan used in the raid on Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Even going so far as to retweet a doctored picture of him giving the medal of honor to the animal, adding that the real dog will be visiting the White House soon. 

Memories of a Ratman: Becoming Animal in Film, Literature, and Philosophy

Film has a strange status in Deleuze and Guattari's Capitalism and Schizophrenia. There is nothing like a theory of film in the two volumes; as much as the politics and economics of representation through regimes of signs, synthesis of recording, and assemblages of expression are theorized film is barely mentioned. The two volumes have more to say about television as medium than cinema, which will of course later be part of a two volume study by Deleuze. This is not to say that it is entirely absent, and when film does appear it is not as specific medium to be considered on its own but as an illustration of concepts and problems. Which is not to say that film is marginal these illustrations engage the central conceptual problems in each book. In Anti-Oedipus Nicholas Ray's Bigger than Life illustrates the socio-historical nature of desire beyond  family confines, and in A Thousand Plateaus the film Willard illustrates the concept of becoming animal.

Year of the Wolf, Part Two : On The Howling

Years ago I wrote what I jokingly consider my contribution to "Wolfen Studies."The other contributions to the field being Evan Calder Williams Combined and Uneven Apocalypse and Alberto Toscano and Jeff Kinkle's Cartographies of the Absolute.  In the comments to that post it was pointed out to me that Wolfen was one of three werewolf movies to be released in 1981; the other two films were The Howling and An American Werewolf in London. I initially thought of writing a post on all three, but dropped the idea. Now, years later, I returned to the notion. This October I have been watching a lot of old horror favorites from Hammer films to some classics from the eighties. I decided to rewatch The Howling. 

The Primitive Accumulation of Prehistory: On the Jurassic Park films

As a kid I was obsessed with dinosaurs. I know that there is nothing unique about this and that is precisely why I relate it. My obsession took place at a time before there was an adequate pop culture outlet for that expression. It was before the Jurassic Park films before even The Land Before Time films. So I sought out every dinosaur film I could whenever they played on the afternoon or late night movie, The Land that Time Forgot, The Last Dinosaur, Dinosaurus, etc., These films were hard to come by, and many of them are not very good at all. There is a story told in my family, a legend of sorts, of the night we all ended up in a motel while taking the yearly pilgrimage to visit the grandparents, flipped through channels only to stumble upon a showing of the  Valley of the Gwangi.  Not a great dinosaur film but one that nonetheless benefitted from the work of Ray Harryhausen. It was a different time, one defined by the scarcity of cultural products rather than their proliferation. Dinosaur films were hard to come by, and good ones less so, so a dinosaur obsessed kid took what they could.

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.

War Has Already Begun: On Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

There is by now a predictable seasonable distribution of Hollywood films. Not only are special effects blockbusters released in the summer, and awards bait prestige films released in the fall, but those seasonal divisions are further gradated to the point where every summer begins with a few contenders in May, peaks in July with the biggest explosion of effects and stars, and tapers off into a series of remakes and more dubious summer properties in August. Whereas past generations had their divisions of A and B pictures, we have May films and August films. Rise of the Planet of the Apes was one such August film, a remake/reboot of a lesser known entry of a mostly forgotten series, it managed to surprise many in actually being more interesting than one would have expected and more entertaining than one hoped.  The release of its sequel, Dawn of the Planet of the apes in July then signifies something of increased brand visibility if not increased quality.

Horrors Old and New: Remaking Reality

"Horror consists in its always remaining the same—the persistence of 'pre-history'—but is realized as constantly different, unforeseen, exceeding all expectation, the faithful shadow of developing productive forces."—Theodor Adorno

I read somewhere, I do not remember where, that Richard Connell's The Most Dangerous Game is the most frequently filmed, and remade, story. The story, which was first made as a film in 1932, is so simple that it is more of a template for remakes than a story. A man, a hunter, is shipwrecked on an isolated island, where he encounters a even greater hunter, an aristocrat in self imposed exile. The aristocrat shows his new guest his estate, including his trophy room, and eventually proclaims his boredom with hunting. He has hunted all of the world's game, and has come to the conclusion that man is the most dangerous game, the only one that provides sport. The hunt then begins, the aristocrat, the great hunter pursuing the lesser hunter. The tables are eventually turned and the hunter becomes the prey (again). Like I said, it has been remade dozens of times, and has been used by countless tv shows. (of course in some variations the hunter is an alien, but the basic idea holds.)

"Live Every Week Like it is Shark Week": Remarks on the Ecology of the Mediasphere

Friday morning, as the local and national media went on a feeding frenzy of sorts over Hurricane Irene,  complete with radar maps and rain-coated correspondents bracing themselves against the wind and rain, the following image, taken of a TV set in Miami made it onto youtube and into my facebook news feed.

Ape Like Imitation: Repetition and Difference in the Planet of the Apes

The Hollywood tendency towards repetition, towards reproduction of the same, which reaches its culmination in recent reboots and remakes must, despite itself, confront history. History not in the sense of fashions, dates, and technology, but the historicity that defines a moment, its structure of feeling--history at the level of subtext rather than text. 

The True Meaning of Thanksgiving

Every year, at least since sometime in the middle of the last century, the President of the United States pardons a turkey. The ceremony, which could be described as a kind of sovereignty kitsch, is covered by the media, becoming part of the general holiday pablum along with the stories of the new floats at the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade and "what to do with holiday leftovers."

There is something so obviously absurd about this ritual that it is almost pointless to point it out. There is of course the question of guilt, of what crime the turkeys are being pardoned for, other than their rather unfortunate luck of coming into this world as a domesticated turkey. While the turkeys have been spared since Kennedy the use of the term pardon has a much more recent pedigree; Reagan first use the term to deflect questions about Iran-Contra, jokingly pardoning the bird to avoid answering the press. Despite this recent history for term there is, however, a symmetry between the pardon of the turkey and the holiday in general. The turkey is spared just before millions are cooked in a massive consumption of a single species: it is an idyllic symbol of peace between man and beast just before the true slaughter. Thanksgiving is supposedly the celebration of a peaceful cooperation between colonists and Native Americans: as we all know, this peaceful celebration, if it existed, comes before genocide. Each ritual is a staging of a just world that we know to be a lie.

One question remained, however, what happens to these turkeys after they are spared. I found the following statement in The Thanksgiving Turkey Pardon, The Death of Teddy's Bear, and the Sovereign Exception of Guantánomo by Magnus Fiskejö:

"The birds are then, in proverbial fashion, said to live happily ever after. In reality, however, they are usually killed within a year and stand-in turkeys are supplied. This goes on year after year. The chosen birds are killed because they have been engineered and packed with hormones to the point that they are unfit for any other purpose than their own slaughter and consumption. They are fast-forward turkeys. Presidential turkey caretakers have explained that most succumb rather quickly to joint disease—their frail joints simply cannot bear the weight of their artificially enhanced bodies. The sturdiest survivors may live a little more than a year. But the birds are always finally put out of their growing misery. Then they are buried nearby in a presidential turkey cemetery—the ritualistic significance of which remains to be explored. (May the archaeologists of the future excavate it!)"

The reason that these turkeys are so ill suited for their lives of freedom is that they are supplied by the National Turkey Federation. They are products of industrial farms, bred to grow fat quick rather than live long. Much could be said about the fact that corporate lobby's interests trumps even the symbolism of the ceremony, making even the pardon itself a lie within a lie. The whole thing is so overdetermined, a "turducken" of empty symbolism, sovereign authority, and corporate power. However, my mind remains fixated on that cemetery of (what I imagine to be) unmarked graves where the birds go, unable to bear the weight of their supposed freedoms. They are creatures designed for the cage, and no decree can change that. Yep, the holiday really symbolizes the nation.

Inhuman commitments

As I have mentioned earlier, I used to work in an animal shelter and continue to volunteer at one. It is because of this, and a long and vexed history of being associated with, or at least around, people with commitments to “animal liberation,” that I was curious to see The Year of the Dog. Well not so curious that I saw it in theaters over the summer, but curious enough to rent it.

I think that the film does a good job of capturing the unyielding moralism that defines animal liberation activists: a moralism that is grounded on the superiority of speaking for an absolute victim, a purely innocent creature. In the film, Peggy, the protagonist, cannot understand or tolerate any one who does not fully commit themselves to the cause of saving animals. There are only innocent animals and the guilty people who do not care. I have come to think that there are certain structural similarities between animal liberation activists and anti-abortion activists; both of whom believe themselves to be speaking for a purely innocent creature, a creature that cannot speak or act on its own accord. Although, in this case, the film does have Valentine, a German shepherd who serves a reminder to the fact that animals remain absolutely indifferent to our moral categories.

(Valentine has what those in the business would call “food aggression,” the tendency to violently guard food bowls, snacks, etc.: fairly common problem amongst “shelter dogs,” and one that is exasperated by the failure of human beings to understand it. As Donna Haraway points out, dogs and people often suffer from a human, all too human tendency of the latter to understand dogs as a little furry children, to think that they can understand the intent behind such gestures as cleaning around the dog bowl or a good night kiss.)

It is thus easy to see the film as a critique of animal liberation, at least initially. Peggy becomes increasingly shrill, intolerant, and self-destructive in her actions, stealing money, traumatizing children, and destroying her home, in an attempt to care for as many animals as possible. However, what saves the film from making a fairly simple critique at a fairly easy target (animal liberationists care more about animals than people), is that it paints the other characters in the film in an even less flattering light: Peggy’s boss is obsessed with money; her friend with marriage; her neighbor with hunting and knives; and her family with their children’s health. These four things, money, marriage, hobbies, and children, which make up the majority of not only people’s lives, but what gets to matter in contemporary society, are portrayed as essentially self-centered activities, defined by a myopic attention to the everyday and survival. (On the this idea of what gets to matter, I recommend Lawrence Grossberg’s overlooked We Gotta Get Outa this Place). Throughout the film, characters talk about their particular interests, whether it be their child’s allergies or their engagement, oblivious as whether or not anyone is listening.

As much as the film deals with a politics that is profoundly apolitical, if not anti-political, since it is ground on a moralizing fantasy of absolute innocence and wrong, the film also offers something of a picture of political passion, of political love, or fidelity. More specifically, it deals with how out of sync such passions are with the obsessive narcissism of contemporary society. It is possible to argue that the film accurately presents “animal liberation” as what remains of politics in a culture in which moralism, the fantasy of innocence, and the individual reign supreme.

Capitalist Dogs

The New York times did a piece on "Designer Dogs,"the labradoodles, puggles, and other crossbreeds that are popping up everywhere, in the Sunday Magazine. What struck me about this piece is the way it grafts onto a history of the species that Donna Haraway alludes to in The Companion Species Manifesto. We can only speculate about the origin of the dog, and as Haraway argues such speculations (man creating dog, dogs choosing man, symbiotic relations) determine, or are determined by, how we think about culture and nature. They are modern stories of the garden before the fall, Master and Slave dialectics, or at least of Davy and Goliath. The recent history of the breed is caught somewhere between an idyll of peasant existence and Victorian economy of distinction and prestige. To quote Haraway: "Complete with the romantic idealization of peasant-shepherds and their animals characteristic of capitalist modernization and class formations that make such life ways nearly impossible discourses of pure blood and nobility haunt modern breeds like the undead."

Dogs are the last remaining aristocrats, still caught up in a "symbolics of blood," the purity of the blood line. Anyone who has seen AKC papers for a pure bred dog can't help but think this, the lineages include names like "Lady Gertrude," and I do not think that they are being ironic. In the dog's transition from feudalism to capitalism both the peasant definition of breed according to work and the aristocratic economy of distinctions gave way to the Oedipalized demand for "the family dog." To quote the times: "The new middle class spoke explicitly of “civilizing” the dog so it might better reflect its master. Cities were tidying themselves up, pushing unsavory things like abattoirs and coal-burning plants farther out of sight. Why not reform the dog as well?" Dogs became "privatized," removed from the world of work and the economies of surplus and expenditure, they were called upon to complete the home, to provide love and company.

It is at this point in the story that the "designer dog" comes in. The article in the times details some of the sociological reasons for the "designer dog," babyboomers retiring to smaller condos, urban living, and restrictions placed on condos. "It also suggests a kind of new status symbol, one not burdened by a bloodline, but one based on the "must-have" lifestyle accessories seen on television. The "designer dog" is as much a part of our current mode of production as custom ring tones and other signifiers of a unique lifestyle. To quote Haraway one last time, "Co-constitutive companion species and co-evolution are the rule, not the exception."

Shelter Me: Or, A Day in the Life of Civil Society

I have spending some time at the local animal shelter, my volunteer work/occasional summer job. When I am not playing with dogs, helping people find lost cats, or figuring out how to put staples in the copier, I find myself thinking about the shelter as a place where the relationship between humans and animals, culture and nature is negotiated. It occurs to me that much of the work that the shelter does, taking in strays, unwanted litters, etc, has to do with overcoming the contradiction between the attitudes people have towards their pets, as commodities, and the existence of animals as living, breathing, loving, and occasionally annoying creatures.

For example it is not uncommon for someone to call looking for someplace that will take their elderly possibly blind or deaf cat that no longer uses the litter box (These calls are usually about cats and not dogs). Some of these people have actually deluded themselves into thinking that there are tons of people out there just dying to have one of these cats. ("No, I am not really interested in one of the dozens of adorable kittens that you have. Do you have anything that reaks of urine?") After I explain to the person the procedure, what will happen, the likelyhood of their cat getting adopted, the fact that there are so many cats that the shelter has a waiting list for people who want to surrender their cats, and so on, they usually then ask if the shelter has any kittens for adoption. Sometimes they will ask this after explaining at length that they do not have the money to care for their current pet. Of course this is may be true, but given that some of these people are willing to shell out $100 (the cost of adopting a kitten) for a new pet, I think that it is more accurate to say that it is just not worth it for them to spend the money. Going to the Vet is like going to one of those run down old places that offer "TV/VCR Repair," it just does not make economic sense. If something wears out, gets too old, why not just buy a new one?

In the Shelter there is a poster stating that the animal shelter should be considered a community service, not unlike the hospital, the fire department or the police, a part of the "safety net," what Hegel called "The Police" in the expanded sense of the term. To borrow a phrase from Polyani, the police exist wherever the commodification of labor, land, and money produces disastorous results: that is, wherever the "market" of labor or land would result in death and destruction. I would add animals, or at least pets, to this list of what he calls "fictious commodities." I do not find his (Polyani's) term to be so helpful, they are not really fictious, but rather things that either antagonistically resist commodification, or do so passively, as in the case of the environment, through unintended consequences. So in this day and age of "free markets" we are left with the remnants of the "safety net," underfunded cramped buildings with overworked people dealing with whatever sector of society is no longer profitable: the sick, the ederly, the abandoned.

It is interesting to note that historically society's for the prevention of cruelty to animals are linked to the violent shock of the emergence of industrial capitalism, even making a small cameo in Marx's writing. As Marx writes in Capital, assuming the in the voice of the worker in a complaint against the capitalist: “You may be a model citizen, perhaps a member of the R.S.P.C.A. [Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals], and you may be in the odor of sanctity as well; but the thing you represent when you come face to face with me has no heart in its breast.”

Pets protect us from the alienating effects of capitalism, the isolation and loneliness, and in turn the shelter attempts to protect them from a culture based on the exchange of commodities.

I realize that this is not the most thought out post, but hey it will at least please all of those people who are looking for articles on Karl Polyani's economic theories and cats litter box use.