The dialectical logic of historical trans-functionalization The words of the song (and the staging of the video) obviously poke fun at the meaninglessness and vacuity of Gangnam style, some claim even in a subtly subversive way – but we are nonetheless entranced, caught in the stupid marching rhythm, participating in it in pure mimesis; flash mobs pop up all around the world imitating moments of the song, etc. Gangnam style is not ideology in spite of ironic distance, it is ideology because of it. Irony plays the same role as the documentary style in von Trier’s Breaking the Waves, in which the subdued pseudo-documentary form makes palpable the excessive content – in a strictly homologous way, the self-mocking irony of ‘Gangnam Style’ makes palpable the stupid jouissance of rave music. Many viewers find the song disgustingly attractive, i.e., they ‘love to hate it’, or, rather, they enjoy finding it disgusting, so they repeatedly play it to prolong their disgust – this compulsive nature of the obscene jouissance in all its stupidity is what true art should release us from. Should we not take a step further here and draw a parallel between the performance of ‘Gangnam Style’ in a large Seoul stadium and the performances staged not far away across the border, in Pyong Yang, to celebrate the glory of the North Korean beloved leaders? Do we not get in both cases a similar neo-sacred ritual of obscene jouissance? It may seem that in Korea, as well as elsewhere, numerous forms of traditional wisdom survive to serve as a protecting cushion against the shock of modernization. However, it is easy to discern how these remnants of traditional ideology are already trans-functionalized, transformed into ideological tools destined to facilitate rapid modernization – like the so-called Oriental spirituality (Buddhism) with its more ‘gentle’, balanced, holistic, ecological approach (all the stories about how, say, when digging up earth for the foundations of a house, Tibetan Buddhists are careful not to kill any worms). It is not only that Western Buddhism, this pop-cultural phenomenon preaching inner distance and indifference in the face of the frantic pace of market competition, is arguably the most efficient way, for us, to fully participate in capitalist dynamics while retaining the appearance of mental sanity – in short, the paradigmatic ideology of late capitalism; one should add that it is no longer possible to oppose this Western Buddhism to its ‘authentic’ Oriental version, and here, the case of Japan delivers conclusive evidence. Not only does there exist today, among top Japanese managers, the widespread ‘corporate Zen’ phenomenon, but over the last 150 years Japan’s rapid industrialization and militarization, with its ethics of discipline and sacrifice, were sustained by the large majority of Zen thinkers. What we encounter here is the dialectical logic of historical trans-functionalization: in a changed historical constellation, a remnant of the pre-modern past can start to function as the symbol of what is traumatically unbearable in extreme modernity. The same goes for the role of vampires in our ideological imaginary. Stacey Abbott has demonstrated how the medium of film has completely reinvented the vampire archetype: rather than representing the primitive and folkloric, the vampire has come to embody the very experience of modernity. No longer in a cape and coffin, today’s vampire resides in major cities, listens to punk music, embraces technology and adapts to any situation. This, of course, in no way implies that Buddhism can be reduced to a capitalist ideology. To clarify this point, let us take a surprising example. In 1991, Richard Taruskin published a book review in which he scathingly dismissed all of Sergei Prokofiev’s music, save the juvenilia, as bad. The stuff Prokofiev wrote in the West is ‘bruised or rotten, justifiably discarded and unrevivable’ in its superficial modernity; it was meant to compete with Stravinsky but it failed to do so. Realizing this, Prokofiev slunk back to Russia and Stalin, where his works were ruined by ‘careerism’ and a ‘perhaps culpable indifference… camouflaged by his apolitical façade’. In the Soviet Union, Prokofiev was first a shill for Stalin and then his victim, but, underneath, there was always the ‘perfect emptiness’ of an ‘absolute’ musician ‘who just wrote music, or rather, who wrote “just music” ’. Unfair as they are, these statements do point towards a kind of quasi-psychotic attitude on Prokofiev’s part: in contrast to other Soviet composers dragged into the turmoil of Stalinist accusations (Shostakovich, Khachaturian, and others), there are in Prokofiev no inner doubts, hysteria, anxiety: he weathered the anti-formalist campaign of 1948 with an almost psychotic serenity, as if it didn’t really concern him. (The very madness of his return to the USSR in 1936, the year of the harshest Stalinist purges, is a tell-tale sign of his state of mind.) The fate of his works under Stalinism is not without irony: most of his party-line-following works were criticized and rejected as insincere and weak (which they were), while he got Stalin prizes for his ‘dissident’ intimate chamber works (piano sonatas 7 and 8, first violin sonata, cello sonata). Of special interest is Prokofiev’s (obviously sincere) ideological justification of his full compliance with the Stalinist demands: Stalinism was embraced in continuity with his adherence to Christian Science. In the Gnostic universe of Christian Science, material reality is just an appearance: one should rise above it and enter spiritual bliss through hard work and renunciation. Prokofiev transposed this same stance onto Stalinism, reading the key demands of the Stalinist aesthetics – simplicity, harmony, joy – through these Gnostic lenses. Using the term proposed by Jean-Claude Milner, one could say that, although Prokofiev’s universe was not homogeneous with Stalinism, it was definitely homogénéisable (‘homogenizable’) – Prokofiev didn’t simply accommodate himself opportunistically to the Stalinist reality. And this same question is to be raised today: although it would be stupid to claim that Buddhist spirituality is homogeneous with global capitalism, it is definitely homogenizable with it. Back to Korea, this analysis seems confirmed by Propaganda, a documentary from 2012 (easily available online) about capitalism, imperialism and the mass manipulation of Western culture for the purpose of commodification, and how they permeate every aspect of the lives of the blissfully ignorant, borderline-zombie masses. It is a ‘mockumentary’ that pretends to be North Korean, although it was made by a group from New Zealand – but, as they say in Italy, Se non è vero, è ben trovato. The use of fear and religion to manipulate the masses, as well as the role of the media that provide colourful distractions to keep us from thinking about the bigger problems, are all touched upon. One of the best parts of the film is its annihilation of celebrity-worship culture: talking about Madonna and Brad and Angelina’s ‘shopping for children in third-world countries’; western obsession with the glamorous lives of celebrities and self-absorption while ignoring the plight of the homeless and the suffering; celebrities being tools of commodification to the point that they often don’t even realize it, often driving them to the point of insanity – all this is so spot on it’s scary. It is the world around us. All of it, particularly the part about Michael Jackson – a look at ‘what America did to this man’ – rings so true it’s kind of hard to swallow. If, in Propaganda, one were to delete a brief passage here and there which mentions the wisdom of their great beloved leader etc., one would get a standard – not even traditional Marxist, but more specifically Western Marxist Frankfurt-School-style – critique of consumerism, commodification and Kulturindustrie. But what we should be attentive to is a warning at the film’s beginning: the narrator’s voice tells the viewers that, although the filth and perversity of what they will see will embarrass and shock them, the great beloved Leader has decided to trust them that they are mature enough to see horrible truth about the outside world – words that a benevolent protective maternal authority uses when it decides to inform children of an unpleasant fact. To grasp the special ideological status of North Korea, one should not shirk from mentioning the mythical Shangri-la from James Hilton’s The Lost Horizon, an isolated valley in Tibet where people live happy modest lives totally isolated from the corrupted global civilization and under the benevolent rule of an educated elite. North Korea is the closest we get today to Shangri-la – in what sense? The idea, proposed by Pierre Legendre and some other Lacanians, is that the problem today is the decline of the Name-of-the-Father, of the paternal symbolic authority: in its absence, pathological Narcissism explodes, evoking the spectre of the primordial Real Father. Although this idea is to be rejected, it is fully justified in pointing out how the decline of the Master in no way automatically guarantees emancipation, but can well engender much more oppressive figures of domination. In North Korea, patriarchy is effectively undermined, but in an unexpected way. Is North Korea really the last bastion of Stalinism, mixing totalitarian control with Confucian authoritarianism? Here are the words of North Korea’s most popular political song: Ah, Korean Workers’ Party, at whose breast only My life begins and ends Be I buried in the ground or strewn to the wind I remain your son, and again return to your breast! Entrusting my body to your affectionate gaze, Your loving outstretched hand, I cry out forever in the voice of a child, Mother! I can’t live without Mother!’ This is what the excessive mourning after Kim Il Sung’s death signalled: ‘I can’t live without Mother!’ Slavoj Žižek. TROUBLE IN PARADISE: From the End of History to the End of Capitalism, Penguin, 2014, ebook, Introduction.
Posted on: Sun, 25 Jan 2015 19:29:17 +0000
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