MagicThought

Note all the references to symbolic systems (college, campus, punctuation, etc. ) at the outset of this review.

January 28, 2008
Critics’ Choice
New CDs

By JON PARELES
VAMPIRE WEEKEND

“Vampire Weekend” (XL)

Outside of marching bands and glee clubs, hardly a group anywhere is as proudly collegiate as Vampire Weekend, the Brooklyn band of four Columbia graduates that releases its self-titled debut album this week. Vampire Weekend has songs about heartbreak at school (“Campus”) and about punctuation (“Oxford Comma”), and in its brisk, neatly constructed tunes it flaunts musical erudition, from Afropop guitars to mock-Baroque strings.

Vampire Weekend’s model, musical and otherwise, is Talking Heads, who picked up rhythms from all sorts of places and never pretended to be lower-class or unintelligent. Ezra Koenig, on guitar, sings in an unabashedly slender voice about the studious, the well traveled, the privileged and the preppy. “Walcott” urges, “Don’t you want to get out of Cape Cod?,” and it’s only one of the album’s two Cape Cod songs; the other, “Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa” (named after a Congolese dance style), is about trying to seduce a sophomore girl on her Benetton linens.

The music keeps a light pop touch, setting up neat grooves that dip into bubble gum, new wave and Afro-Caribbean rhythms. Guitars riffle precise chords and lilt through arpeggios, keyboards go boop, and every flick of a drumbeat is in place. There are nimble touches everywhere: the hooting vocal harmonies in “One (Blake’s Got a New Face),” the bright six-beat syncopations in “Bryn,” the buildup to a full gallop — without speeding up — in “Mansard Roof.” The music is so perky that the band can breeze right through its more cryptic lyrics: “Eyes like a seagull/No Kansas-born beetle could ever come close to that free.” And the sheer cleverness of every track is endearing. But it’s also brittle; these songs could use just a little more heart. JON PARELES

YouTube/Utube = is for the eye (movies)

yet

iTunes/EyeTunes = is for the ear (songs)

hmmm…..

~ Jenny

Over the break, I got the chance to catch up on all of the horrible t.v. that I had been missing during school, which was made even more horrible by the fact that there were no new shows! (Hmm, writers are refusing to write? Interesting…) I wish I had remembered to write down what I saw because there were so many things that made the connection between parenting and print. Here are the few that I actually remember:

This is a Sprint commercial that came on pretty frequently. It reminded me very much of the idea of the homunculus, although in the commercial the little “mini-me’s” are supposed to represent the modern day “multi-tasker.”  

Sprint commercial:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o7c_KEVBHnM

This is a music video with Chris Brown called “Wall to Wall” where he transforms into a vampire. Interestingly, the lyrics make no mention of vampires at all, so the music video could have been completely different. However, if you actually read through what he says, I think it makes perfect sense. For example…

(Pull up, pull up) can’t believe the girls, club packed
(What up, what up?) shawty wanna lead me to the back (to the back)
Ain’t been in here 15 minutes, got a pocket full of DIGITS

And she just won’t take no
(Hold up, hold up) now little mama wanna get mad
Yeah smash on the radio, bet I penned it
Yeah smash on the radio, bet I penned it
Yeah smash on the radio, bet I penned it
Yeah smash on the radio, bet I penned it

Chris Brown:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Hcd4ryjS-U

 There is also a commercial currently running for Capital One that shows two guys who appear to be creating a Frankenstein monster, but produce a new credit card instead. I can’t find the video, but it comes on pretty frequently.

And finally, I just glanced at the New York Times and here are a few of today’s headlines:

Scientists Take New Step Toward Man-Made Life

Clinton Spells Out Her Economic Stimulus Plan

Tattooed for a Day, Wild for a Night

Gail Collins: Editing Hillary’s Story

Kristin Krenz

I’m taking a class called Global Media this semester which, obviously, only solidifies everything we’ve ever talked about in class.  One of our text books, called Empire and Communications, traces every monumental change in human history and accredits the latest writing technology as the agent.  I mean, its really crazy how similar it is.  Just listen to the section titles:  1. Egypt 2. Babylona 3. The ORAL tradition and Greek Civilization 4.The WRITTEN tradition and the Roman Empire 5. Parchment and Paper 6. Paper and the Printing Press.

The author, Harold Innis, talks about the authority of the written word, the law, and man and ties them altogether!  Its awesome…. Dr. B, I will come by your office and let you borrow it!

Jenna Ward

Steve Jobs is the CEO of Pixar Animation and CEO of Apple Inc. It is no coincidence that he has the highest authority in both of these multi million dollar corporations—Steve Jobs understands the Law of the Father. We’ve already discussed why Apple is currently popular and why the icon is universally recognizable. In 1986 Steve Jobs bought a division of The George Lucas Empire and catapulted computer generated films, creating Pixar. While Pixar was still in the development stages, they created their first animated film. Luxo Jr. is an animation of two desk lamps interacting as a parent and child. The debate that caught public attention was not the technology; it was which parent lamp was the mother or the father. Jobs successfully tapped into the Law of the Father and intrigued viewers with a question on fatherhood and its ambiguity.

Sam

The latest Time magazine had an article about the entertainment industry going apocalyptic, which we’ve mentioned plenty, particularly in relation to Iraq being both the birthplace and deathplace of civilization. Here’s the link, then some thoughts:

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1704694,00.html

Writer Lev Grossman opens with a discussion of Mary Shelley’s The Last Man, and an exploration of that idea in pop culture (which we’ve already discussed on this blog) with Y–the Last Man and I Am Legend.

Cloverfield, the film producer JJ Abrams (Abram…father) wanted to become an American Godzilla, is the impetus for the article, which strongly cites the camerawork for providing the film with its power. The handheld camera style of The Blair Witch Project is called “the vernacular of the apocalypse,” meaning we’ve already given the apocalypse it’s own language. From my own viewing this year (well, technically last year), it’s interesting that the handheld camera scenes are the most gripping parts of In the Valley of Elah and Redacted, two of the prominent Iraq War movies (again, Iraq = apocalypse).

And now veering even further from the article, I just wanted to point out that the latest Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, and the recent Oscar trend toward violent movies with high body-counts (The Departed last year (or my favorite, Children of Men) and 2007’s No Country for Old Men or There will be Blood, among others) suggest not only a preoccupation with the apocalypse by the creators but an acceptance by their audience. Even the Nobel Prize, which went to Al Gore for his work on global warming, betrays an apocalypse fetish.

Almost exactly a year ago, the Doomsday clock moved two minutes closer to midnight, the closest to Armageddon it’s been moved since 1984. There’s that infamous year again.

–Brandon

P.S. 1984, for all its other parenthood/print-related events, is also the year of the first successful sexual harassment suit, dramatized in North Country, the landmark representation in America of women achieving de jure equality with men.

i read the most wonderful book over the break that is the perfect blend of the paternity issues and writing technologies that we discussed in class! its called the Thirteenth Tale by Diane Sutterfield published by Washington Square Press. ere’s a little overview: a young writer named margaret lea is asked by a famous author to do a biography about her because she is about to die. the author, vida winter, has never told the truth about her past to anyone… her “about the author” sections of her books are all completely different and complete lies. she finally wants to tell the truth. so… the entire book is focused on vida winter telling margaret her life story. i don’t want to say much more because i don’t want to spoil it, but its very much a gothic tale… it reminded me a lot of jane eyre but without the love story. its a huge web of incest, questions of both paternity AND maternity, pencils (which are strangely fetishized), and mystery, all of which combine to further what we talked about all semester. apart from all those things, its still a really great book that you won’t be able to put down. best book i’ve read in a long time…and that says a lot! so go read it!

jenna ward

I’d like to recommend Franz Kafka’s The Judgement (a short read)– he also wrote The Metamorphosis

http://www.mala.bc.ca/~Johnstoi/kafka/judgment.htm

Picked it up for a quick read and enjoyed the parenting and printing parallels. The son writes letters to an imaginary friend. The dialog is between a father and son, with references to a deceased mother. Questions of authorship over the friend, the mother, and writing are the major conflicts which escalate to the finale.

Sam

The Cultural Unconscious knows what it needs and wants: MOMMY.

January 15, 2008
Terminator Tops Globes

By BENJAMIN TOFF
NBC’s bare-bones version of the “65th Annual Golden Globes” attracted just 5.8 million viewers on Sunday night, a small fraction of the 20 million who tuned in to the awards show a year ago, according to Nielsen’s estimates. The big hit on Sunday was Fox’s premiere of “Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles,” which attracted 18.3 million viewers at 8 p.m. and the highest ratings by far of any new series this season. Although “Terminator” benefited from following a football game on Fox that attracted more than 35 million viewers during the 7 p.m. hour, no other scripted series debut on any broadcast network has done better in the 18-to-49 set in three years. The last scripted series debut on a broadcast network to earn higher ratings among adults 18 to 49 was CBS’s “Numb3rs” on Jan. 23, 2005. Fox easily led the night’s ratings, followed by CBS and ABC. NBC ranked fourth. Part one of CBS’s “Comanche Moon” drew 15.8 million viewers.

I finished a book by Margaret Atwood recently, called Oryx and Crake, and I ran across a passage that I thought was really interesting in the context of what the class was about, which made me start thinking about the whole book in those terms.

Basically, the book is centered around a post-apocalyptic world and its sole survivor, Snowman. In flash backs to the society that fell, we see that genetics had become the new language, genes like words and the genetically-modified people like masterpieces (if you think about it, the entire genetic code of a human is composed of symbols– ATGC on random repeat). Crake is the grand creator of a group of grand new creatures, lovingly called Crakers, and Oryx is their teacher, the nurturing force that instructs them on the ways of their oh-so-limited world. And while I don’t want to ruin anything, figuring out how Oryx and Crake disappeared turns out to be an awesome parallel to the ancient goddess, the Christian God and humanity, if you think about it.

I also found it interesting that the book uses a lot of magical thinking when it comes to names. HelthWyzer is the company that distributes treatments to promote physical and mental well-being. OrganInc Farms manufacture artificially-engineered organs. And (this is where it hit me like a ton of bricks) the main character says at the end of the novel, “It’s Snowman.” It’s no man.

Anyway, here’s the passage that I particularly picked out:

“Watch out for art, Crake used to say. As soon as they start doing art, we’re in trouble. Symbolic thinking of any kind would signal downfall, in Crake’s view. Next they’d be inventing idols, and funerals, and grave goods, and the afterlife, and sin, and Linear B, and kings, and then slavery and war. Snowman longs to question them– who first had the idea of making a reasonable facsimile of him, of Snowman, out of a jar lid and a mop? But that will have to wait.”

Also, one more quick, interesting tidbit. Not only did this book have an ‘About the Author’ section at the back, but it had an ‘About the Type’ section. It informs the reader, “The book was set in a digital version of Monotype Walbaum,” among other things.

Leahanne