In mid April we had a very interesting discussion about Neoliberalism. It was interesting how people mentioned that the business class has become one of the dominating, and therefore oppressive classes in the U.S. I also liked how it was mentioned that Neoliberalism is really just a theoretical representation of idealism and how its more important to shift into an idea of production from actual production, while bigger corporations swallow the smaller ones. This intangible idea of money seems more seductive than the products that generate it.
At first when I thought about this, it seemed like we were being a little cynical as a class by judging big business, but after writing the final, I realized that the paradox that Harvey mentions in his book does seem to be emerging. He said, "If we lay aside the claim that neoliberalization is merely an example of erroneous theory gone wild or a case of senseless pursuit of a false utopia, then we are left with a tension between sustaining capitalism, on the one hand, and the restoration/reconstitution of ruling class power on the other" (152).
This passage is so on the money when it comes to our economic crisis at hand and I think its awesome that Harvey wrote his book long before the crisis, but practically predicted it.
I think it's funny that the big businesses who are begging for federal bailout money, are the same conservative Christian Capitalists who are calling President Obama a Socialist. The more these businesses screw up and fall into dependence on the government, the more the government will control their profits, in turn creating bigger government and higher taxes. But I suppose hypocrisy is a bit rampant in the U.S these days.
Saturday, May 16, 2009
Friday, May 15, 2009
What Does it Take to be a Hero Today?
The James Bond character by way of 12 novels and 23 film adaptations to date have established his character as smooth, witty, quick acting and an enforcer of true justice. His antics have dazzled his audience and inspired new forms of characterization within film and literature. Each successive actor playing Bond pushed the envelope more and more until James Bond just about represented the true archetype for human excellence, heroism and perfection. Yet, as times change and terrorism and corruption become more rampant, one begins to wonder what it takes to be a truly unbiased enforcer of justice. In the earlier films, as smooth and composed as Bond generally carries himself, his most obvious weakness is women. In the first novel and one of the latest films, Casino Royale, Bond falls completely head over heels over Vesper only to have his heart torn out when he realizes that she betrayed his trust. But of course the sequel, Quantum of Solace reveals that he is resilient concerning his betrayal. Referring back to uncertain times, former President George Bush always held a firm belief that he would always stand against justice and punish “Evil Doers”, yet by the end of his presidency, his approval rating was abysmal. So this begs the question: Considering the combination of political and social relevance in Quantum of Solace along with Bond’s weakness, are audiences still looking for a Bond-like hero to uphold unorthodox vigilante justice for the greater good?
First, consider action heroes that have sprouted up in films over the last few decades, vigilantes such as Charles Bronson’s “Death Wish” character, Paul Kersey. In the first movie, his wife and daughter are raped and beaten by street thugs. His wife eventually dies in the hospital, while his daughter becomes mentally ill as a result of the attack. Paul Kersey then decides that he will stand up to the rampant crime occurring throughout his city as a result of the trauma he suffered. He essentially becomes a hero in the eyes of his fellow citizens as well as the fans of the Charles Bronson series. The Charles Bronson violent form of vigilante justice was very popular in the seventies. People liked the idea of an everyday working man standing up for what he thought is right and taking action for the greater good. However, the popularity of this type of vigilante began to fade because Charles Bronson’s character simply boiled circumstances down to whether their victims deserved to live or die based on personal beliefs about their villainy. Issues over morality begin to become hot topics such as abortion’s right-to-life position and stem-cell research opposition and people start to wonder whether personal justice is even appropriate or feasible.
So what you get in response to audience awareness of these issues are comic book superheroes such as Batman and Spiderman. Batman was inspired to become a crime fighter because of a traumatic experience of witnessing his parents being murdered. Spiderman also experienced a personal loss which inspired him to fight crime as well. Both of these superheroes share a common limitation to their power in that they simply assist in capturing criminals only to leave them for local law enforcement to scoop them up and allow them to tried through the legal court system. These types of superheroes have been fiercely popular for decades and have earned special appreciation lately as a result of phenomenally made movies. All three Spiderman movies were box office blockbusters as were the two latest Batman movies. However, in a global sense, these two crime fighters were really only restricted to fighting crime in the city that they lived. Even though in some of the comics and in the Dark Knight you have incidents where the hero has to go to China to catch his target, the general consensus of the movie adaptations of these superheroes is that they are confined within the limits of their own city.
On the other hand, Iron Man seems to reach a much more global scale in his capability to fight global terrorism. The circumstances of his rise to superhero status are very different from Batman and Spiderman in that he didn’t quite experience a loss of a loved one. His situation was more along the lines of his company betrayed him by dealing under the table to terrorists, and his right hand man tried to have him killed in order to take over the controlling stake of his corporation. Yet, Iron Man was critically acclaimed not only for the superb acting talent of Robert Downey Jr. or the flawless directing of Jon Favreau, but rather on its relevance to modern social events. In Iron Man, you have the same grounded reality check of keeping up appearances with your alter ego. Iron Man and Batman both have to stay under the radar and maintain their high profile public images. Spiderman also has to keep up appearances by having to deal with the stressful life of trying to be a good nephew taking care of his Aunt May, while trying to do well in school despite his strenuous evening activity of fighting crime.
As far as global, but feasible anti-terrorism, George Bush made an attempt at being some form of a modern day real-life superhero. Bush had only been in office for eight months when the terrorist attacks on 9-11 occurred. Considering Bush had barely won the 2001 election against Al Gore, his options for a response to the attacks would have had a direct impact on his support from Americans. Had he taken his time to come to a diplomatic solution, done a proper investigation of the culprits, and carefully planned an overseas strategy, the war in the Middle-East might have had a positive outcome. However, he felt the need to launch a counter-offensive against a country which he thought was a greater threat based off the whim and anger of Americans and used the 9-11 attacks as the precursor for his invasion of Iraq. In Bush’s words, he was trying to “rid the world of evil doers”. On one hand, Bush is satisfying the needs of people who wanted swift violent action in the name of justice as well as protection from future threats. His sloppy counter-attack won him a lot of support from Americans and got him re-elected four years later by the same people who expected him to wrap up what he had started. Bush was thinking black and white in terms of good and evil, just like the superheroes mentioned. In the comic books and movies, there is always an established villain who is countered by an emerging hero. Unfortunately, reality does not just allow the hero to simply be victorious as a direct result of their effort.
The root of the Bush’s problematic presidency was the misguided intentions of the conservative Christian capitalists that supported him and worked under him in his administration. The general view of conservative Republicans is simply: limited government, a strong national defense, and low taxes. However, after the 9-11 attacks, people needed a completely renewed faith in our national defense, so Bush had to make an example out of the entire Middle East after the attack. Unfortunately, the war required more governmental control of power via overriding Congress during a “time of war” and nearly limitless spending for the war effort. What people got as a result was higher taxes and more government. Yet, networks in the media, namely Fox News, had a fiercely right wing agenda that dwelled on the aftermath of the war, reiterating the number of lives lost as well as keeping people in a state of fear by constantly showing hypothetical scenarios of potential terrorist threats. Thus, people felt like they had an obligation to support the war effort because they felt that their lives were constantly in jeopardy.
To everyone’s dismay, a Neoliberalist agenda was at work during the Bush administration. Past presidential speeches such as FDR’s infamous quote, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself,” as well as President Kennedy’s, “Ask not what your country can do for you, as what you can do for your country,” caused people have become blind patriots paranoid with delusions of being constantly threatened. As a result, the media worked successfully in favor of the Bush administration to essentially wrap the will of the public around the finger of Presidential policies which themselves were an act of terrorism. Pushing an agenda for global democracy and globalization while people are in a state of panic, was what that administration did. According to David Harvey, “the process of neoliberalization has entailed much creative destruction, not only of prior institutional frameworks and powers (even challenging traditional forms of state sovereignty) but also of divisions of labor, social relations, welfare provisions, technological mixes, ways of life and thought, reproductive activities, attachments to the land and habits of the heart” (3). It’s no wonder people became disinclined toward the war as the years went by, because it became obvious that there was an underlying agenda at work. People didn’t have unfounded suspicions that corporate intentions to control oil in the Middle East were at work, especially since the president had worked in the oil industry and the vice president was a big oil conglomerate himself. Harvey further states, “We can, therefore, interpret neoliberalization either as a utopian project to realize a theoretical design for the reorganization of international capitalism or as a political project to reestablish the conditions for capital accumulation and to restore the power of the economic elite” (p.19).
In addition to having had a war fought under false pretenses with improper intentions, you also have an underlying ideology of Orientalism. The best way to turn fear against your enemies is to prove your superiority to them. Thus, in order to create a notion of superiority, you must also create a notion of inferiority as well, which is how Orientalism came to be. The notion of Orientalism came from a European idea that since Europeans considered themselves normal, any culture that deviated from this established norm was considered strange, and therefore inferior. As Edward Said puts it, “Now one of the most important developments in nineteenth-century Orientalism was the distillation of essential ideas about the Orient – its sensuality, its tendency to despotism, its aberrant mentality, its habits of inaccuracy, its backwardness – into a separate and unchallenged coherence” (205). Essentially, there is very limited unbiased information known to the West about the Orient, particularly the Middle East, because much social unrest occurs over there. Therefore, when the media only portrays violent demonstrations in the Middle East and only informs the public of atrocities committed without regard to the journalistic integrity involved in full unbiased media coverage, you limit what people can understand about what’s going on. In other words, if all you see is terrorism, then all you inadvertently see are terrorists. What you end up with is a majority of people that have been manipulated into ignorance in order to accept a clear black and white scenario of good versus evil. So considering George Bush’s failed attempt at securing vigilante justice with continued support from the American people, it looks as if people are only looking for a hero that operates within a fictional scenario in which the line between good and evil is very clear.
Thus, it becomes clear that since movies in mainstream popular culture such as Quantum of Solace maintain much social relevance, people are looking for heightened sense of social consciousness. Apparently people have felt betrayed for the last eight years because they allowed their gullibility and ignorance get the best of them, that now they want to be on their toes about current events. Steven Zeitchik of Risky Biz Blog says, “For years the conventional wisdom was that it if you were going to give people something to fight over, best to make it drugs or obscene amounts of money, in part because villains don't generally pay much attention to NPR and in part because it's assumed viewers don't get that same thrill from watching characters' outmaneuver each other over life's necessities than over its vices…either movies have become more sober - or filmgoers in tough times are starting to view the pursuit of life's necessities as a little more exciting.” In addition, social consciousness has moral implications in that socially conscious people tend to be more considerate without regards to any pre-established biases. According to Christoph Lindner, “The staggering success of Fleming’s 007 novels and their later film adaptations is linked to the status of Bond himself as a ‘mobile signifier’, a floating cultural icon who is continually reconfigured and repositioned in the face of change” (3).
What can be concluded from all this is that up until recently, the American public has been generally hot-headed and ignorant, and those in the position of authority as well as the most influential channels of the media over the last couple of decades have operated under an ideology that revolved around Orientalism and Neoliberalism. It was only after the Bush administration’s gross misleading of the American people came into the public eye that people began to become more socially conscious. It was by this new socially conscious awareness of audiences that the James Bond character had to adapt in order to be relevant enough for the new audience. The black and white scenario of good and evil for the popular comic book characters is only relevant in fiction. George Bush’s attempt at simplifying the Iraq war into this type of situation just proves how ignorant he is as well. What America needs is a leader that can handle situations intellectually so that all potential consequences can be measured appropriately. Then we can use action heroes such as James Bond to be our outlet for a political thriller.
Annotated Bibliography
Said, Edward. Orientalism. Vintage Books. New York. 1979.
I used a passage from this book because it conveyed a true meaning of what it means to marginalize a culture based on your own ignorance. The author makes a good note that the oversimplification of things merely furthers the problem of discrimination.
Harvey, David. Neoliberalism. Oxford University Press. New York. 2005.
I used a passage from this book that I thought described the era of republicanism in this country over the last few decades very well. It stated that as a country, we tend to think that everything we do is the best that that particular thing could possibly be done and we try to force it upon the rest of the world.
Zeitchik, Steven. A Quantum of … Social Relevance? http://www.riskybusinessblog.com/2008/10/a-quantum-ofsoc.html
This article is about how the intelligence and social awareness of action movie goers has increased over the last few decades and how the new Bond movies have had to adapt to the new audience. The quote I chose, reiterates how mixing in a little reality is more important than just watching things blow up.
Lindner, Christopher. The James Bond Phenomenon. Manchester University Press. 2003.
This book is essentially an in-depth analysis of the social, historical, and political relevance of the James Bond series of books and movies. The quote I chose has to do with Bond’s ever-changing persona based on the evolution of modern culture.
First, consider action heroes that have sprouted up in films over the last few decades, vigilantes such as Charles Bronson’s “Death Wish” character, Paul Kersey. In the first movie, his wife and daughter are raped and beaten by street thugs. His wife eventually dies in the hospital, while his daughter becomes mentally ill as a result of the attack. Paul Kersey then decides that he will stand up to the rampant crime occurring throughout his city as a result of the trauma he suffered. He essentially becomes a hero in the eyes of his fellow citizens as well as the fans of the Charles Bronson series. The Charles Bronson violent form of vigilante justice was very popular in the seventies. People liked the idea of an everyday working man standing up for what he thought is right and taking action for the greater good. However, the popularity of this type of vigilante began to fade because Charles Bronson’s character simply boiled circumstances down to whether their victims deserved to live or die based on personal beliefs about their villainy. Issues over morality begin to become hot topics such as abortion’s right-to-life position and stem-cell research opposition and people start to wonder whether personal justice is even appropriate or feasible.
So what you get in response to audience awareness of these issues are comic book superheroes such as Batman and Spiderman. Batman was inspired to become a crime fighter because of a traumatic experience of witnessing his parents being murdered. Spiderman also experienced a personal loss which inspired him to fight crime as well. Both of these superheroes share a common limitation to their power in that they simply assist in capturing criminals only to leave them for local law enforcement to scoop them up and allow them to tried through the legal court system. These types of superheroes have been fiercely popular for decades and have earned special appreciation lately as a result of phenomenally made movies. All three Spiderman movies were box office blockbusters as were the two latest Batman movies. However, in a global sense, these two crime fighters were really only restricted to fighting crime in the city that they lived. Even though in some of the comics and in the Dark Knight you have incidents where the hero has to go to China to catch his target, the general consensus of the movie adaptations of these superheroes is that they are confined within the limits of their own city.
On the other hand, Iron Man seems to reach a much more global scale in his capability to fight global terrorism. The circumstances of his rise to superhero status are very different from Batman and Spiderman in that he didn’t quite experience a loss of a loved one. His situation was more along the lines of his company betrayed him by dealing under the table to terrorists, and his right hand man tried to have him killed in order to take over the controlling stake of his corporation. Yet, Iron Man was critically acclaimed not only for the superb acting talent of Robert Downey Jr. or the flawless directing of Jon Favreau, but rather on its relevance to modern social events. In Iron Man, you have the same grounded reality check of keeping up appearances with your alter ego. Iron Man and Batman both have to stay under the radar and maintain their high profile public images. Spiderman also has to keep up appearances by having to deal with the stressful life of trying to be a good nephew taking care of his Aunt May, while trying to do well in school despite his strenuous evening activity of fighting crime.
As far as global, but feasible anti-terrorism, George Bush made an attempt at being some form of a modern day real-life superhero. Bush had only been in office for eight months when the terrorist attacks on 9-11 occurred. Considering Bush had barely won the 2001 election against Al Gore, his options for a response to the attacks would have had a direct impact on his support from Americans. Had he taken his time to come to a diplomatic solution, done a proper investigation of the culprits, and carefully planned an overseas strategy, the war in the Middle-East might have had a positive outcome. However, he felt the need to launch a counter-offensive against a country which he thought was a greater threat based off the whim and anger of Americans and used the 9-11 attacks as the precursor for his invasion of Iraq. In Bush’s words, he was trying to “rid the world of evil doers”. On one hand, Bush is satisfying the needs of people who wanted swift violent action in the name of justice as well as protection from future threats. His sloppy counter-attack won him a lot of support from Americans and got him re-elected four years later by the same people who expected him to wrap up what he had started. Bush was thinking black and white in terms of good and evil, just like the superheroes mentioned. In the comic books and movies, there is always an established villain who is countered by an emerging hero. Unfortunately, reality does not just allow the hero to simply be victorious as a direct result of their effort.
The root of the Bush’s problematic presidency was the misguided intentions of the conservative Christian capitalists that supported him and worked under him in his administration. The general view of conservative Republicans is simply: limited government, a strong national defense, and low taxes. However, after the 9-11 attacks, people needed a completely renewed faith in our national defense, so Bush had to make an example out of the entire Middle East after the attack. Unfortunately, the war required more governmental control of power via overriding Congress during a “time of war” and nearly limitless spending for the war effort. What people got as a result was higher taxes and more government. Yet, networks in the media, namely Fox News, had a fiercely right wing agenda that dwelled on the aftermath of the war, reiterating the number of lives lost as well as keeping people in a state of fear by constantly showing hypothetical scenarios of potential terrorist threats. Thus, people felt like they had an obligation to support the war effort because they felt that their lives were constantly in jeopardy.
To everyone’s dismay, a Neoliberalist agenda was at work during the Bush administration. Past presidential speeches such as FDR’s infamous quote, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself,” as well as President Kennedy’s, “Ask not what your country can do for you, as what you can do for your country,” caused people have become blind patriots paranoid with delusions of being constantly threatened. As a result, the media worked successfully in favor of the Bush administration to essentially wrap the will of the public around the finger of Presidential policies which themselves were an act of terrorism. Pushing an agenda for global democracy and globalization while people are in a state of panic, was what that administration did. According to David Harvey, “the process of neoliberalization has entailed much creative destruction, not only of prior institutional frameworks and powers (even challenging traditional forms of state sovereignty) but also of divisions of labor, social relations, welfare provisions, technological mixes, ways of life and thought, reproductive activities, attachments to the land and habits of the heart” (3). It’s no wonder people became disinclined toward the war as the years went by, because it became obvious that there was an underlying agenda at work. People didn’t have unfounded suspicions that corporate intentions to control oil in the Middle East were at work, especially since the president had worked in the oil industry and the vice president was a big oil conglomerate himself. Harvey further states, “We can, therefore, interpret neoliberalization either as a utopian project to realize a theoretical design for the reorganization of international capitalism or as a political project to reestablish the conditions for capital accumulation and to restore the power of the economic elite” (p.19).
In addition to having had a war fought under false pretenses with improper intentions, you also have an underlying ideology of Orientalism. The best way to turn fear against your enemies is to prove your superiority to them. Thus, in order to create a notion of superiority, you must also create a notion of inferiority as well, which is how Orientalism came to be. The notion of Orientalism came from a European idea that since Europeans considered themselves normal, any culture that deviated from this established norm was considered strange, and therefore inferior. As Edward Said puts it, “Now one of the most important developments in nineteenth-century Orientalism was the distillation of essential ideas about the Orient – its sensuality, its tendency to despotism, its aberrant mentality, its habits of inaccuracy, its backwardness – into a separate and unchallenged coherence” (205). Essentially, there is very limited unbiased information known to the West about the Orient, particularly the Middle East, because much social unrest occurs over there. Therefore, when the media only portrays violent demonstrations in the Middle East and only informs the public of atrocities committed without regard to the journalistic integrity involved in full unbiased media coverage, you limit what people can understand about what’s going on. In other words, if all you see is terrorism, then all you inadvertently see are terrorists. What you end up with is a majority of people that have been manipulated into ignorance in order to accept a clear black and white scenario of good versus evil. So considering George Bush’s failed attempt at securing vigilante justice with continued support from the American people, it looks as if people are only looking for a hero that operates within a fictional scenario in which the line between good and evil is very clear.
Thus, it becomes clear that since movies in mainstream popular culture such as Quantum of Solace maintain much social relevance, people are looking for heightened sense of social consciousness. Apparently people have felt betrayed for the last eight years because they allowed their gullibility and ignorance get the best of them, that now they want to be on their toes about current events. Steven Zeitchik of Risky Biz Blog says, “For years the conventional wisdom was that it if you were going to give people something to fight over, best to make it drugs or obscene amounts of money, in part because villains don't generally pay much attention to NPR and in part because it's assumed viewers don't get that same thrill from watching characters' outmaneuver each other over life's necessities than over its vices…either movies have become more sober - or filmgoers in tough times are starting to view the pursuit of life's necessities as a little more exciting.” In addition, social consciousness has moral implications in that socially conscious people tend to be more considerate without regards to any pre-established biases. According to Christoph Lindner, “The staggering success of Fleming’s 007 novels and their later film adaptations is linked to the status of Bond himself as a ‘mobile signifier’, a floating cultural icon who is continually reconfigured and repositioned in the face of change” (3).
What can be concluded from all this is that up until recently, the American public has been generally hot-headed and ignorant, and those in the position of authority as well as the most influential channels of the media over the last couple of decades have operated under an ideology that revolved around Orientalism and Neoliberalism. It was only after the Bush administration’s gross misleading of the American people came into the public eye that people began to become more socially conscious. It was by this new socially conscious awareness of audiences that the James Bond character had to adapt in order to be relevant enough for the new audience. The black and white scenario of good and evil for the popular comic book characters is only relevant in fiction. George Bush’s attempt at simplifying the Iraq war into this type of situation just proves how ignorant he is as well. What America needs is a leader that can handle situations intellectually so that all potential consequences can be measured appropriately. Then we can use action heroes such as James Bond to be our outlet for a political thriller.
Annotated Bibliography
Said, Edward. Orientalism. Vintage Books. New York. 1979.
I used a passage from this book because it conveyed a true meaning of what it means to marginalize a culture based on your own ignorance. The author makes a good note that the oversimplification of things merely furthers the problem of discrimination.
Harvey, David. Neoliberalism. Oxford University Press. New York. 2005.
I used a passage from this book that I thought described the era of republicanism in this country over the last few decades very well. It stated that as a country, we tend to think that everything we do is the best that that particular thing could possibly be done and we try to force it upon the rest of the world.
Zeitchik, Steven. A Quantum of … Social Relevance? http://www.riskybusinessblog.com/2008/10/a-quantum-ofsoc.html
This article is about how the intelligence and social awareness of action movie goers has increased over the last few decades and how the new Bond movies have had to adapt to the new audience. The quote I chose, reiterates how mixing in a little reality is more important than just watching things blow up.
Lindner, Christopher. The James Bond Phenomenon. Manchester University Press. 2003.
This book is essentially an in-depth analysis of the social, historical, and political relevance of the James Bond series of books and movies. The quote I chose has to do with Bond’s ever-changing persona based on the evolution of modern culture.
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