essay from last year

Foreward: I wrote this last year after seeing 2017's "It". I'm still a politically searching person and my ideas have shifted if not completely changed since writing this essay. Nonetheless I think it deserves to see the light of day especially if I don't need to edit it or be held strictly accountable for these ideas.  

 a potentially copyrighted image.

The reason we can condemn "It" is because Beverly's depiction isn't good revolutionary material-- despite having agency, she's still
>written by a cis white male
>sexualized as a child
>sexually abused and the sexual attention of all her male friends
>reaches apotheosis through weird, plausibly unhealthy sewer "orgy"

But actually it's probably arch and stupid to pretend that specific books meet some revolutionary standard over others when the practical actions of even just making life better for oppressed people hardly depend on the contents of "It", exactly, except by moving the standard of what children and women should be doing and with what sensitivities they are depicted in mass media, which arguably this standard has purchase on the way people in general behave ?

Like the argument is, if it's just a piece of fiction, not an instructional text that is going to be followed, how does it make life for anyone worse? By influencing people who will be influenced by the {bad way that Bev is written, + the actions she undertakes}?

The movie I can condemn because the way it sexualizes Bev is standard hollywood National Lampoon fare like slow mo shots, maybe appropriate for calling up a standard teenage reaction to: a girl, but unfair for not putting Bev in a box about what she should do with her teenage body??

The movie I can condemn for showing unconsensual kissing as a good thing?? Although, situationally, within the fiction, it worked out? Should movies follow a standard logic that fits within our shared values of what should happen and also what probably would happen, esp. considering the legacy of thousands of years of patriarchy?

Maybe it's that the movie seemed clueless to the issues it raised, while also depicting Bev's individual struggle with school and her father, on that basis I can condemn it:; if you're gonna depict a girl sexually oppressed at her home and by her classmates but if you don't touch on how the sexual attention of her male friends can also be a huge problem then it probably does seem naive, and a disservice to the struggle of women, if and only if the service/disservice to the struggle of women thing is actually in question.

I feel like I'm operating under the assumption that I can know what is, at a reasonable expectation, something that meets the standards of ?a generalized feminist? albeit not everyone at all I can consider a feminist (and I try to get away from that term(

well why do that?
Porpentine talked about how everyone doesn't have to put themselves under the same label, it's a marketing scam, and also how she didn't want to adopt the label of the people who severely abused her and Ill add, caused her nothing less brain damage
Also I've seen tweets that are like, it should be some larger decolonial project, not just "feminism"
Which is like enough. Maybe the struggle to have everyone agree that they are a feminist is sort of past, or passe, considering that even such huge global terms are also subject to what I call in seriousness and in huge abstraction "fashion"
>Suffice to say, if you're not a feminist, it's become the norm that you are the one who has some specific front to describe yourself, i.e. the alternative now is the Alt-Right dude, like everyone I know north and south of the train tracks is a communist by default
>That being said the actual baseses of power are conservative cocklords as much as ever.

...Which is the point I bounced off of, maybe a universal means of address politically is not what's needed, from me at least, Fuck Theory also claiming that the center is a misnomer as most people occupy a place of unknowing, not a specific political band between left and right. And not knowing, a taoist position (what isn't?), is or isn't encouraged by a break from the dichotomy of feminist/not feminist which is already built to be one-sided in Peter Webb's mysterious but sure political response?

Mass line work seems an applicable and more ideal, less "manager of poverty"-style means of activism, like as much as something can "pop off" there is the Serve The People programs, one of which even recommends as a salve to Gentrification they physically exclude and discourage hipsters/ and hipster spaces (with violence). Quaker tenets, "violence is not the answer" absolutely occupies a place of total dogmatic authority which is contraindicated by the need to not tell oppressed people what to believe in. "Violence is not the answer" as: non-proselytizing personal piece of information.

Although-- prostelytizing to march against war? Not exactly "telling oppressed people what to believe in". I believe in never committing violence, demanding nonviolence from those in authority, and never offering oppressed people unsolicited advice. To that end Quakers should organize an a large-scale alternative to the police force, tax revolt, single-issuing themselves out of sociery, or doing the most they can in such a society, attempting to change it from within? Knowledge that this will work/ won't work?

Where does the movie "It" come in? The purpose is, to point out, that the movie reinforced some old tropes that I know at least influenced my youth, like, this picture of abused people, how "love can save" etc., that despite not having a universal take on the lives of abused people, are still pretty bad advice. If you can consider the movie advice, which I sort of see a lot of these tales as in some ways being?

Like, in the original book, there's some ingrown logic of defeating the monster by standing up to your fear (which the movie largely but not totally abandons), and bc the monster exacerbates real social issues like Bev's abusive father, the book kinda functions as a fictional casebook for how people get out of these situations. So there's an implicit instructional aspect to the book, because it depicts a series of cases of real social issues wherein the protagonists follow a common logic (don't be afraid!) to solve, or at least avoid. Also the universiality of that message...

Maybe the book isn't instructional but is rather relying on the apparent and probably universally accepted practicality of the message Don't Be Afraid! to make the protagonists's victories also universally acceptable and even practical, supernatural that they may be. The trick is not to see the books as instructional but to see the common logic of our lives as making the action in a book, if so logical, meaningful. Then you could say, there's also some things that happen in the book which follow shitty logics like at least in the movie the unconsensual kiss, but they aren't instructional, they'r more evidence that the creators of the film were willing to employ shitty logic and maybe use that logic themselves.

Like kissing the unconcious girl to magically and happily wake her up follows a logic which is shitty because the logic fails to take into account that kissing unconcious people is unconsensual, and moreover, fails to take into account the worldwide history-spanning history of women's consent being trampled. Ben was, although we can assume because the moment is obviously a trope (can we assume?) actually forgoeing Bev's consent, taking a risk that he was hurting Bev, violating her boundaries (yes, even when magically unconcious).

fourth post

The Age of Unreason;  Hope in Pittsburgh-ocalypse (The Apocalyptheosis of Pittsburgh)

"Better to live on beggar's bread
With those we love alive,
Than taste their blood in rich feasts spread,
And guiltily survive!"

The world is somehow terrifying; it really is, in a way beyond reactionary politics. The rational reaction has never been more useless.

What we're working with will just be an intensification of inequality, a magnified status quo. In this way boils in a cynicism which is powerful and absurd, actually obscene.

I see the red culture of Pittsburgh basically endemic to the Polish and the Poor and Yinzers and etc. and as always, white male, and somehow the more progressive elements always seem either too hip or too un-hip. This is my cynicism, which I think is a white cynicism not too far from basic Pittsburgh racism. This white Pittsburgh cynicism which is somehow ultimate arbiter and also obscene; a cynicism which is virtual, shared by everyone, present everywhere, and un-real. Against which the actual diversity of Pittsburgh exists.

I call it the Age of Unreason but, in in the words of Samuel L. Jackson, "this is just another Tuesday." Or like, my friend Sarah pointed out the basic hypocrisy in the outrage against "locker room talk": the lived reality of women is that sexual assault is everywhere. The no-nonsense candidate became no-nonsense because he emerged from the imagination of our lived reality, and there can be no further validation of that present reality. I mean to say that Trump is a really Pittsburgh candidate.

I would say this white cynicism is only a cynicism from an outside perspective. In converse, it is the ulimate un-cynicism, the proud suffering blue collar take of Bruce Springsteen, et al.. That Bruce himself, like all artists, is hopeless to reverse any tide made by Republican candidate is not new; that #MAGA is essentially Springsteenian shows our stand-off. We have to remember this is normal.

The actual normality of what has gone down has revealed a failure in the bottom of our liberal imagination. You can maybe say we were only capable of processing presidents as Obamas or Reagans. What we are dealing with is both old and new, and at the juncture of these two lies our blind spot: open exploitation, kleptocracy, whatever. It's a hiding-in-plain-sight kinda thing.

In the face of a genuine belief in self-interest to the point of hiring someone who can only be self-interested, our own cynicism about politics, that real change can never happen, seems oafish.  We have this insane hopeful validation of third-party politics and of revolution itself in the face of kleptocracy. Socialistic anti-cynicism which seems impossible but is possible in the The Age of Unreason. Given that social unrest is building there is at least the possibility of change.

This possibility is not gleeful in Pittsburgh; the Pittsburgh Left seems relegated to a few blocks in Bloomfield; and while not hopeless, is truly Not Me. I have said there is only work involved; my friend Eric has said that true change will only occur when the poor are angry; in between these two statements lies The Party. I keep trying to break in but they don't let me!!! I gotta be a member of the Big Idea Book Club first??

Arbiter or not, here I come, daily, exactly as dumb and stupid, with the need to socially left pull; that artist as myself, I see the age has been flipped on its back. Everyone stands here precious flesh exposed but no one digs in; I think it's the sense everyone who went out to gather fish was supposed to have in the face of Tsunami. So I flip out a fork and pull out some meat and everyone stands around pointing their toes; there's a growing shadow.

Reactionary or not, attempt with me to deflate this cynicism. The pull can be, at least, this; the Pittsburgh I live in can be a little honest. The city has zero tolerance and is only marginally blue. It's comfortable. That we can change this; that the gunk in my ears can be face-paint; gross, but at least tolerable, an Imaginative Left can exist, the spring to opulent radicalism post-election. I can only think we must supersede the fashionable tactics.

The Radical Left from Godard's "Weekend"

**Nota Bene is of course the Radical Left of "Weekend" (see above) which ate tourists and killed people. A dream of revolutionaries who were young and corresponded to that much larger flywheel which has all the death and pain at the bottom. The desire for fashion may supersede all the boring, valuable gems like Law and Order but at least, with me, observe the coral-reef environment of the present now, and dream a competing dream.

THE COMPETING DREAM: GREENWAY SPACES

I have to credit the real utopic post-apocalyptic shit to Teleportaterz, attributable maybe to Yinz Like Plays and the artist I only know as Hunter and a few of the cotiere who I keep seeing at events, kind of true Pittsburgh left, artists seeking a critic. I don't really have the guts to reach out to these people. Suffice to say that in their art the apocalypse seems natural and has already arrived not-even-dreaming, just extant in a way I could tease out if I put in the work. Suffice to say that all the tools of our redemption already exist, that the above cyncism has been undone in the work of a few locals, I don't even find it hopeful, I just find it already taoistically fact.

Suffice to say the dreaming outside the present Zone has already made a way around the liberal imagination and this way is garden-path-like valuable. Private, beautiful, greenway-work which has found in Pittsburgh refuge. We all know of this greenway, which is the unclaimed space in a city hemorraging claims; that reverse intensification of property value, the city wilds which are still magnificent dumping-grounds. I know of the release that can be found here and it is likely the only teneable release; the opposing forces too bland to compete, the apocalypse in wilderness a pocket-park almost; my friend Hank who lived in a parklet in Polish Hill; it manages to not even be Twee.

You could maybe call it trash culture? Hope in apocalypse. - peterwebb

first post

peterwebb webb

trying to make a webb of connections
ha ha
trying to make criticism.
I was really struck by comparing these two images.

The first one was on the front of nyt.com.
The second one I found when I thought the first one kind of looked like Freddy Mercury.
They're both holding the gun or microphone in sort of the same position.
Their jackets are billowing up.
Also they're kind of color inverses of each other, black suit/ white exterior, white clothes/ black exterior. The notable difference is the body and the paintings.

Also, the expressions: obviously the as-yet-unnamed gunman in the first is facing his imminent death, making a political statement about Russia and Syria. It's an assassination, an act of terrorism.
He's also doing this in front of a bunch of cameras; thus the high-quality photo, a photo shoot photo.

The first image is striking and composed in a way that sends a direct message. Even without context it sends a narrative.

I'm sure already there are /pol posts about this gunman. In the process of image making, some popular images gain life as reaction images, get text added to them, are used to express. This image has the unmistakable verve that belongs to these category of images, such as the one of Freddy Mercury making the above pose, which has been redrawn and captioned on reddit and other places on the internet, to express victory.

I think the first image as well is an expression of victory, a terrible one. By the very clarity of the image, the composition of it, and the focus, the image represents the terrible victory of the gunman who sought to create an impression.

~

Devotional violence; using violence as an image-making, impression-sharing tool, as a way for people or institutions to threaten. Dexter Filkins talks jokingly that terrorists get off on their devotional pre-suicide bombing images. Gandhi uses nonviolence and the British press to win independence from India; I think there's a lazenby quote about flipping the bugs on their backs or whatever.

Lunch counter protests where black folks sit down at the counters and don't move and generate images of white people abusing them at the counters. The use of images, at least, to gain notoriety, and the subjects of the images themselves are affected. That Russian Ambassador is dead; the gunman is dead; people are traumatized. & this all in response to genocide.

So you take the opportunity to have sympathy for one side or none or rightfully evince repulsion, but the strength of the image remains; that's what incredible about it, is that, abject as it is, it remains composed, it remains undeniably strong. This is my analysis of that image, it's powerful, this the collaboration between gunman and photographer.

It feels like a pathway into fascism. Sure, the attraction of that power. The strong iconography, glorification of violence. Recognizability.
I think we're able to compete on the same scale, generate our own images for anti-fa. Take out the central figure, take out the violence. Still make it essential. Sure, Freddy Mercury.