The question of why anyone would want to express themselves is one easily dismissed. It's such a fundamental part of our character there seems to be no point in speculating from whence it originates, we may as well ask Why gravity? or Why sight? Indeed, as long as you don't really create anything, there's really no point in asking the question, and if you're in the process of creating something, the answer seems to be I'm making something because I can't do anything else. It's only after we've completed something that we're compelled—perhaps by the same impulse that bids us look in used tissues and toilet bowls—to look back on what we've done and wonder why. This often comes into play when we're confronted with the work of someone else, but the question then often isn't Why'd you create? so much as Why did you create this? Why did you spend millions of dollars and employ hundreds of people to show me a middle aged black man pretending to be an elderly black woman? Why are you writing a story about a debunked conspiracy regarding a specious religion? Why did you shit on that canvas and paint that toilet? I'm naturally predisposed to distinguish art from commerce, but I don't really have any basis for doing so. Cons are art after all, and as any con artist or David Mamet will tell you, the straight life is the greatest con of them all. We're wired so that everything we do is an expression of ourselves, and while museums and theaters may be concentrated hubs of expression, there isn't a moment in our lives where we aren't making some attempt to manifest our inner lives. We even do it while we're sleeping, as dreams prod our idle brains into fantastic and horrible escapades. So why art? Why don't we just tell people what we think and see and feel, besides the fact that they wouldn't care? An evolutionary biologist might say that art is a means of establishing a male's place within a society and hierarchy, thus obtaining respect from their peer group and increasing their chances of mating with a genetically superior female. There are certain frogs I can't be bothered to look up the name of that chose their mates on the basis of the volume of the male's croak. In this particular group of frogs, some males have learned to take advantage of the amplifying effect of nearby drainpipes to artificially enhance the volume of their croak, and thus attract more mates. One could say that this is all art is, a deliberate enhancement of the male croak. The theoretical biologist espousing this scenario would characterize female artists as mentally and genderologically confused, and while I don't necessarily agree with this hypothesis, I've yet to meet a female art student that disputes it. Speaking of atrocious portrayals of women by men, the impetus for this penistastic film by Lars von Trier entitled Antichrist, which I had the quasi-pleasure of recently viewing.

I'm not overly familiar with von Trier, having only seen Europa, Dancing in the Dark, and the scene at the end of Dogville where Nicole Kidman and William Hurt shoot everybody, but I've seen enough to know he's a competent filmmaker. On this basis I can judge that Antichrist is the truly bizarre combination of masterful, gorgeous, atmospheric filmmaking used to express pathetic, asinine ideas that no grown man should admit to having. There are lots of reasons to hate Antichrist: nonsensical plotting, questionable pacing, meaninglessly provocative sex and violence with an eye to the disgusting, and a characterization so misogynistic you find yourself feeling sorry for actress, then awed by her decision to voluntarily participate in this project, then pity that finally segues into deep nausea. There are also lots of reasons to like Antichrist, foremost of which is the atmosphere it masterfully evokes. Many movies show a human in pain, but very few have even made a sincere attempt to transmit what a severe, debilitating mental illness really feels like. Lars von Trier himself was subjected to depressive fugues so severe during the development and filming of Antichrist that it often like the film simply wouldn't get made, and while that might've been good news for people who aren't fans of seeing blood and semen come out of the same organ, the authenticity of the pain in Antichrist is irrefutable when von Trier isn't undermining it with his histrionics or penchant for Satan talking through cute widdle foxes. The characters occupy a nightmare world that consists only of entwining forms that threaten to assimilate the characters into parasitic oblivion, or jagged forms that threaten to cut them to pieces with the slightest movement. I can't imagine a film where the director's vision is more perfectly realized, and that's why I find it so disturbing when he uses this vision to say Fuck Everything. Life is nasty, brutish, and short. Your loved ones betray you. To exist is to feel pain. Trying to overcome it is hubris, embracing it is evil. I'm hardly averse to a dark plot, but works like this make me question the point of art itself. I hesitate to call a film like Antichrist nihilistic, despite its avowed message. To me, true nihilism is Beverly Hills Chihuahua. Lars von Trier clearly expelled a Herculean amount of time and energy in making Antichrist, and no one can say it is not a coherent personal vision. But the existential black hole he's labored to create has no real reason to exist. If life is just suffering incarnate, why does von Trier have any interest in telling us about it, and why does he bother to create? No matter how nihilistic the end product my be, the very act of creating something is an affirmation of life. The very fact that von Trier thinks he can add definition and articulation to his suffering and thereby render it tolerable via artistic expression undermines the very message of that selfsame expression. A quote from William Gaddis, another talented man whose work eventually devolved into intellectual lamentations that amounted to LIFESUCKSLIFESUCKSLIFESUCKS: “Thus much of our fiction, going back well over a century, has been increasingly fueled by outrage or, at the least, by indignation. Curiously enough, this is often coupled with and even springs from the writer's perennially naïve notion that through calling attention to inequities and abuses, hypocrisies and patent frauds, self-deceiving attitudes and self-defeating policies, these will be promptly corrected by a grateful public; but the state is the public's fiction, and gratitude is not its mot prominent attribute.” So why do artists, miserable people that they so often are, pour their misery out into the world if there's no hope of changing it? I think expression is a coping mechanism reminiscent of Freudian psychoanalysis, where internal processes are externalized and rendered semi-manageable. Whether that process is fit for other people's consumption however, is another matter entirely.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that the remix, the collage, the pastiche, the cover, the reinterpretation, has always been the highest form of human art, in terms of what we value as an enduring human culture. I'll even invoke the word that's become so verboten of late in intellectual circles and call it The Western Cannon. (flourish, applause) As a species, there's nothing we love more than something we've seen before. That's why our super duper special cultural touchstones: our great paintings and frescoes, our great music and architecture, our great theatrical and literary pieces, are all reruns. “Renaissance” literally means “rebirth” and it's masterpieces, it's Davids and Sistine Chapels and Last Suppers and Caravaggios and Botticellis all depict events that are biblical or grecco/roman. As a species there's nothing we hate more than a new idea, we either have to have it pounded into our heads via violence and/or repetition, or have it assimilated into a preexisting set of ideas.

This makes ideological sense. Purity isn't where it's at, nature always favors adaptability. Alloys will always be infinitely superior to just one type of metal, just as ideological alloys will always be infinitely superior to single ideas. Take physics. If we just pick one individual out of the pantheon of scientists that unraveled the universe's structure, we won't get very far. But if we combine Copernicus' heliocentric system, Kepler's model of elliptical orbit, Galileo's mathematical proofs, Newton's laws of motion, Einstein's spacetime model, and top them off with Planck and Bohr and Heisenberg's quantum mechanics, then we start to have something approaching an elementary understanding of the reality we inhabit. Newton himself said that if he had seen farther it was by standing on the shoulders of giants, words whose wisdom we should heed despite the fact that he was just mocking a short man he disliked when the said them.

The same has always held true for art, but the modern age has created a kind of quantum singularity of references unlike anything society has yet seen.

I've lately been reading the new biography of Donald Barthelme by Tracy Daugherty, and I'm struck by the sheer transformative force Barthelme's style had on written expression via fiction. Daugherty quotes this Harper's review of Unspeakable Practices/Unnatural Acts: “Donald Barthelme has accomplished the work that the New Journalists are not competent to do. In a a single story he is able to include more of the taste of the times than there is in the collected works of Wolfe, Breslin, Talese & Co. The difference lies in Barthelme's ability to compress, almost to transistorize the world, and then to make his miniatures real again by virtue of his talent for language.” Earl Shorris' words do a damn good job of illustrating both why we like references in our art and why Don was so motherfucking awesome. (Yes, Céline, Beckett, and Joyce beat him to the punch. But I'm not reading their biographies.) We depend on our art to speak to us. Since we're all creatures of the world that's pretty much a given, even performance art consisting of a man shoving plastic army men up his ass and pouring a milkshake over his head hardly counts as otherworldly, but good art allows us to reinterpret the world in a different way. Shakespeare knew that the average Yeoman was illiterate and worked twelve to sixteen hours a day, seven days a week. Consequently he knew that if he was going to pack the house and make enough money to rebuild the globe theater when inevitably burned down for the umpteenth time he had to give the people something they could connect with. As a result virtually every one of his plays dramatizes a familiar story or historical event.

Flash forward to now, when our dear, beloved art of referencing and reinterpretation has become a series of boxes to be checked. It's referencing by rote, there's no reinterpretation, no reconfiguration, the movement's manifesto is: Hey! Look at that guy! You know who that guy is and where he's from! But he's not there is he? Dude, he's over here! Doesn't that blow your fucking mind? Isn't it hilarious?”

But let me pull myself back from the brink of a full fledged tirade and admit that there is indeed a fresh faced, doe eyed crop of promising new students in the School of Reinterpretation/Reference. The Simpsons is beloved by everyone, even cynical members of Generation X, or at least it was until it became too painful to watch. The new Battlestar Galactica is extremely good, or it was until a finale so awful as to retroactively ruin huge parts of the series. Star Wars... well, EpIII was pretty good. Think Tarantino. Think MST3K. Think Pride and Prejudice and Zombies

Mixed results notwithstanding, humanity has always built on it's past to great effect and will continue to do so until the A-Team remake comes out, thereby opening a black hole of stupidity that will swallow us all. The bigger problem lies in creating new content, so future generations will have something to use derivatively.

Since our leisure time has multiplied (I know it doesn't seem that way, but people in tweed jackets say it's so.) and electronic media has allowed everyone all over the world to share their love/hate of sparkling vampires, we have truly become the global village Marshall McLuhan prophesied, and it has democratized culture. This has it's good points. People can play Rock Band instead of starting real, awful rock bands. But as references to 80's cartoons become society's lingua franca, how will we spot the next Donald Barthelme? How do we spot the one (wo)man who is truly reimagining and reinvigorating 5000 years human expression out of the seven billion who are drunkenly repeating something they read on a message board?

And is there a difference?

The two defining intellectual movements of the twentieth century (not counting social movements like Capitalism, Democracy, Communism, National Socialism, et al.) are existentialism and postmodernism. The difference between them is as follows: In existentialism you stare into the abyss until the abyss stares into you. In postmodernism you stare into the abyss for a little while, say “Is that all it does?” then leave in search of other entertainments. In existentialism existence precedes essence. In postmodernism existence is irrelevant, essence is heresy, and everything is preceded by market research. Most people who aren't in college hate postmodernism because it doesn't really mean anything, and most people in college like it for the same reason. If it seems I'm not explaining it very well then you're starting to grasp the point. Postmodernism is, in essence, capital a Art embracing its own meaninglessness in neoliberal globalized society, a living thesis that the only thing still worth doing is insulting and demeaning your audience. It believes the dadaists failed because they had too much fun, and consequently postmodernism takes its frivolous, ironic absurdity very, very seriously. Therefore while it is postmodernism's stated goal to deconstruct society, postmodernism itself cannot be deconstructed due to its purposely vague definition, which is itself supposedly a reflection of society's mutability. As a result postmodern cannot be identified as a cause, but only an effect. What Justice Stewart said concerning hardcore pornography goes double for postmodernism: [It's hard to define, but] I know it when I see it.” Much has been made of what the postmodernists call pluralism: the integration of various viewpoints into a kind of big tent philosophy that comes from the disintegration of cultural and philosophical borders. In any given movement it's always the most hateful and egregious members who attract the most attention, and consequently postmodernism has become synonymous with the end of shared ideas and truths, at which point people like to make an ontological leap and say 'Does that mean postmodernists think child molesters and holocaust deniers have legitimate viewpoints?' like there's even any point in phrasing something like that as a question, as if legitimate discourse is really possible after saying it. Douchebaggy professor types are fun to shit on. (they deserve it for having the temerity to be smarter than us, after all) So fun in fact that we don't even notice we're cherry picking a single vague assertion from a very complex and diverse cognitive system, taking it out of context, reinterpreting it the way we want, and throwing it back at people who are under no obligation to explain themselves to a hostile, unreceptive audience. The truth (such as it is) is that the death of objective truth DOES NOT IMPLY MORAL RELATIVISM. If anything it is the throwing down of the moral gauntlet, challenging humanity to behave responsibly in a world of screaming, conflicting information, a challenge we have for the first decade of the twenty first century spectacularly failed at even sincerely attempting. The fact that we are capable of taking a complex idea and turning it into something simple that justifies our preconceived notions validates the very idea we find so abhorrent. “I'll prove that objective truth exists by taking their idea and reinterpreting it to suit my worldview! That'll show 'em!” And I thought I was finished with the damn posts about hypocrisy. People inherit skewed viewpoints about art in general and postmodernism in particular when they hear popular figures like Damien Hirst compare the 9/11 attacks to a work of art, but it's important to understand that Damien Hirst is neither an artist or a postmodernist, he is a hole for rich people to throw their money into. It is a small but critical distinction. His career is the product of economics, not intellectual or artistic thought. You see, when you are rich and white, people are very nice to you no matter how you behave. The only way for the top .001% to fulfill their intrinsic human need for humiliation and degradation is to pay millions of dollars for rotting animal corpses. Only then do they experience the same dehumanization and abuse the rest of us take for granted. No, treasured reader, the postmodernist sin is not social relativism but social withdrawal, for by accepting the irrelevance of popular language, popular art, popular scholarship, popular society, and even pop culture without deconstructing it all into purposefully obtuse gobbledygook (Some may contend that I'm doing the very same thing right now. To that I say: Meh.) they have engineered their own obsolescence. The postmodern movement has some good ideas that can sincerely help people deal with the candy coated, media saturated, ideologically molested clusterfuck that is our present Corporatocracy, but it has no intention of sharing. The postmodern mind is content to gibber to itself in its own language, and has no interest in engaging in the world it so obsessively critiques, though one could legitimately question why it would want to; it's not like bright ideas can be branded and manufactured by children in Malaysian sweatshops to be sold to middle class tweens at a fifty thousand percent mark up.