Two-Minute Love Songs

Going into it, I thought Michael Cera is getting typecast, Mark Mothersbaugh soundtracks have run their course, and I questioned what could come of the oft-used plot where uber-hip youths embark on a journey throughout NYC while set to glamorous music and shots of cultural landmarks. Happily, and while these things might indeed be true, the movie is alright. In some respects, it relies upon and is about reinventing the tried and true narratives. Rather than looking for the next big thing, the characters, like Thom, are focused on classics like The Beatles' "I Wanna Hold Your Hand" because they celebrate the little things. It's not about sex and orgasm, but spending time with someone, holding their hand. The movie echoes this same ethos in its concern with the neighborhood places of NYC as opposed to Times Square or Rockefeller Center's ice rink. It's -- and Mothersbaugh's -- love for the mix tape (or CD) reinscribes this ethos. It's not about the next big CD, but the untold little ones, the shifts between bands and songs and the way they get interwoven with our lives.

Sounds a little McCartney-esque, I know, but the movie pulls it off. Where McCartney's ouve suggests it is all about the silly love songs, this movie starts to get at the tension between the big and little. The characters are self-consciously hip, they *do* want (and have) sex, they seek fame to what degree they can. But the self-conscisous attempts at labeling, crafting an image, selling a defined product, or wanting what others want all come to naught. Fame, it would seem, come out of some other activity, some other creative process that eludes the regulated and regulating switchboards of control and mastery. Even more, when the big things rule our lives, we are ruined in the process.

So, the trick is to live within the tension between Desire (big-D) and our desires (little-d). Accept jouissance when it comes (pun intended), but don't ruin it by making it a foundation for action. This seems timely to me, if only because our social jouissance has led us to some grim times. Not long ago there was talk of an endless rise in the market, a swift victory in the middle-east, and an endless Republican majority in government. Yet, for all the values and ethics of Karl Rove, George W., and Dick Cheney, no one ever told them it wasn't about national orgasm. Politics, at its best, is about holding hands.

Subdivision/ Line of Flight/ In-be-tween

Dissonance at the water park -- I am becoming-tween, repeating naive sexuality and desire balong the waves of music coming over the loudspeakers

Be cool or be cast out
Any escape might help to smooth
The unattractive truth
But the suburbs have no charms to soothe
The restless dreams of youth


An adult transported here, only even that was not it, but a repetition, different from 1982. Both it and me have traveled along different lines even though we are conjoined twins within Rush's music.

Subdivisions, conformity, escape; segmentations, molar bodies, lines of flight. There is desire and delirium at the water park. Seeing and desiring flesh like at a carnival, which is always also seeing and desiring a different flesh for the self. A desiring drawn from a delusion of one's own self-image, that seizure necessary from which we draw our name.

Drawn like moths we drift into the city
The timeless old attraction
Cruising for the action
Lit up like a firefly
Just to feel the living night

Nothing is quite so tween to me than Rush. Not the standard pop/ country of my youth, nor the alternative music of my teens, but the "intelligent," vaguely escapist rock of Neil Peart. A cumming-to-social-consciousness be-tween two segments in life. But this in-be-tween hasn't passed. The spirit hasn't marched on or how would the song evoke that affect, virtually replicate the feelings from over twenty years ago? It is this in-be-tween-ness that has defined this moment and already foretold of its coming. How else do you explain my family, my career, my location in a small town in Iowa where everyone prides themselves on keeping this town "safe"?

Somewhere out of a memory
Of lighted streets on quiet nights...

Online Reading

I liked this article. 'Nuff said.

Younger than McCain

Pretty funny song, but I think the images make it funnier. It's a good use of multimodal literacies.

14 Kids in a Fight

Not to be outdone by Scot's post, I found one by the same folks which is well worth taking for the entertainment value alone:

14

RIP Gary Gygax

I am of the generation that grew up playing D&D -- first as a preteen, and even on into college and after when other games like Vampire: The Masquerade, Call of Cthulhu, and Cyberpunk offered more range and stimulation. They were a far cry from even AD&D and early incarnations of RPGSs like Metamorphosis Alpha. So this news certainly bears attention. Thanks, Gary, for all the fun.

Ill Risks

I have a fever and so, instead of teaching today as I normally would, I am staying home. This isn't so bad as it allows me time to finish Thomas Rickert's book and start on Jane Smiley's Moo. I'm a little embarrassed I haven't read the latter, but glad to recommend the former. Rickert's work on cultural studies in composition is sorely needed. The cool part is how he so admiringly points out the flaws of icons in the field -- Berlin and Faigley in particular.

I am also interested in what he calls "pedagogies of risk," or the idea that as teachers we need to allow for the unexpected. It seems a very playful move to confront the limits of control and see how the classroom and curricular games we play depend on some form of risk -- the risk of disclosing one's own neuroses, biases, and (as Rickert is wont to say) modus vivendi. But I have to wonder how this meshes with the notions of risk proclaimed by Ulrich Beck. In my reading of Beck, this risk is everywhere and that underwrites our social functions, thus we are a "risk society." However, at the risk of oversimplifying the case here, Beck says this is what drives current progress. At length, he claims

the battle to distribute away the “poisoned cake” turns capital against capital – and,
consequently, occupational group against occupational group. Some industries and regions
profit by this, others lose. But a key question in the struggle for economic survival has
become how to win and exercise power, in order to foist on others the consequences of social
definitions of risk (1995, p. 10).

So, like the neo-Lacanian theory of Rickert, at the heart of contemporary society is the fissured un-whole that spawns only fantasies of societies yet to come -- societies where there is no racism, sexism, classism, or -- to point to Beck's field of influence -- no environmental destruction. But these are just that -- fantasies -- and the hope is that they are powerful enough to assuage any lasting damage we might do to ourselves and those around us. In any even, the tenuous relationships here urge us to work through these fantasies, always inventing fresh approaches to old problems that are continually dressed in new guises.

It is at once lamentable and heartening. I think Rickert is certainly right in saying that we will never be rid of threats to our social and biological beings. However, Beck urges a new Enlightenment and a renewed commitment to the dispersion of power to identify and mange environmental risk so that it can be dealt with through a democratic socious. Rickert is not so Habermasian here. Rather, Rickert still holds out hope for the power of the savvy individual or group -- the continual emergence of Dadaists, Situationists, hackers, and the like. Those may be risks I can take.

Sublime Americans?

I went to the Farm Toy Show in Verona today. It's a collection of collectors packed with their merchandise into a high school gymnasium and not limited to farm toys. It's really pretty expansive and includes Hot Wheels, baseball cards, beanie babies, Elvis, and sundry Americana. While it was exciting that my son came in second place for his age bracket in the pedal-tractor pull, I guess I never really critically noticed events like this.

First, it's interesting as a form of play and that has its own merits. However, it occurred to me as I stood there that there was something both alarming and wonderful about the spectacle. I head Snyder's words, "America -- your stupidity. I could almost love you again." Everyone had their own collection of things: big metal 1940s trucks, tiny plastic tractors, tables covered with astro turf and sets of mini-houses and dairy barns. It was as communal as it was individual. Folks cared about their neighbors and talked to us not to make one more sale, but to hear our story or connect with us as people instead of customers. Even the hipsters in Madison -- who have perfected the art of converting chit chat into greenbacks -- have the air of superficial interest. In the gym, though, were those seventy year olds who knew the pleasure of getting to know another human being, sharing together a brief moment of a long life.

Second, the resources: we're on the verge of war with Iran, already at war in both Iraq and Afghanistan, and involved in military strategy, skirmishes, support, or occupation in countless other places. Most of this is under the stated goal of "spreading democracy," and it's certainly part of the unstated goal of making the world safe for business. Yet, the plastic, the money, the time people spend looking at *things.* I can imagine their homes: a room or rooms formerly occupied by sons and daughters, the basement loaded with boxes and the table top scenes, living rooms adorned with china hutches and porcelain dolls. This is what people do to occupy their time, to stave off boredom, to connect.

So, the desire here -- the desire to connect, the desire to fight loneliness, the desire to not die alone. The gregarious American -- sublime? pathetic? a menace? Is this even just "American"?
Have we moved away from the frontier American who longed for the open plains, the miles between him and his neighbor, the lover of space? Has the frontiersman taken over the living room and in the name of conquest and commensurability tried to halt the space between him and his family?

Playful Writing

Could the way we play affect society? Could the rules-free version of US play lead to aggressive, a-social hyper-individuals fueling a “me-first” social Darwinism?

In relation to writing, though, I think play is important not only because it can invite engagement within the zone of proximal development, but because of its affordances (Gibson 1989). In this sense, I make a differentiation between “consequential” and “inconsequential” types of play (following Barab & Roth 2006, Barab, Sadler, Heiselt, Hickey, Zuiker 2006). For play to always afford engagement within a ZPD, the players must take their play as having real effects; their actions within the bounds of play must produce results that they perceive as having meaning. An outsider may see the play as all completely irrelevant, but that does not matter. What matters is the “-emic” perspective.

Take, for example, academics. Many students see the academic system and their daily classrooms as inconsequential. The school is a place different from “the real world,” grounded in abstract theory and idealism, not concrete problems and pragmatism. They thus do not fully engage with the problems and challenges presented to them, worrying more about how to “beat the system” of this artifice than actually accomplishing the tasks it has laid out for them. To this extent, we can say that learning does, indeed, occur. It may be very high level learning, indeed, but because it tries to step outside the realm of play, it is doomed to failure by the very system it seeks to figure out.

However, in consequential play, the player has a stake in the outcome of the game. She sees her actions as meaningful and may even see the rules as necessary, if not “natural.” This approximation of play and nature is important, since it is by this route that we often 1) devalue play in relation to academic or other forms of “work” and 2) fail to notice the ways play is socially organized. I will get to how consequential play affords engagement in a bit, First, though, let me elucidate this point about play and nature.

First, conventional play theory usually defines play as "not serious," opposed to "work," or a quality rather than a discrete activity. However, play theory and education have a long history. Playing is seen as a mode of learning, perhaps the mode by which we humans learn. However, there are some points to make here. First, defined as antithetical to work or other activities or qualities, play becomes a cultural construct. What is play in one culture or society is work in another. Even across individuals, this definition of play yields to relativism. Second, it is assumed that "play" is somehow a basic component of human development. This second point is potentially radical in its implications and I don't mean to disparage them. However, with this all too brief a sketch, we can see the naturalistic tendencies of the way "play" has been used in Western educational theory. Moreover, we can also see the problems this poses if we take play as a cultural construct.

So, do we need to revise play theory? Is play a strong basis for human development or just a weak one? Intuitively, I would say that play is, indeed, a fundamental attribute of learning and development in both humans and non-human animals. However, "play" might be redeemed as an activity is we put it in relation not to an objective set of criteria, but in relation to a surplus of meaning in an organism's environment. Thus, we arrive at Gibson's affordances: an environment always contains affordances for play, but those affordances are differential according to the organism's ability. A pen might contain affordances for grasping and marking surfaces, but if the organism has no appendage with which to grasp, the affordance is moot. Similarly, an optical illusion might contain affordances for tricking one's perception until one has seen the image enough to know the trick.
Once we are conscious of being played with, the game becomes inconsequential. What matters is the surplus of meaning -- the excess of meaning that we struggle to make sense of, yet must fail in our attempts. This is the real meaning of play and its real importance. With out such surplus, we react to a finite set rather than an infinite one. And a finite set can be manipulated and rigged.