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Sunday, June 18, 2006
Saturday Night Linkage: Give The People What They Want; or, Fun With Log Oddities
Yesterday I found a search for “f**k act theory“ in my logs. I sat back, imagined how disappointed the poor soul who scoured the known Internet for some ABC “F**k Act Theory” must’ve felt after his search proved fruitless, and decided to save others from a similar fate. I composed the first and second installment of a planned nine-part series I call “Towards a History of F**k Act Theory.” Because blogging, even academic blogging, is all about keeping the customer satisfied. That said, I’d be interested in other, similar projects inspired by log oddities. We ought to keep a running tab on the subjects Google demands we address.
Earlier today I stumbled across another livejournal community devoted to theory. Goes by the name “theoryishotcrew." For the life of me, I can’t parse that title. Are they the “Theory Is Hot Crew”? The “Theory? I Shot [Fred] Crew[s]” folks? Who knows. Needless to say, the conversations there remind me of conversations I’ve had elsewhere, online and otherwise, for the better part of six years. I’m not sure how I feel about livejournal, since the majority of the sites it hosts aren’t for public consumption the way ours are, but it may be of interest. (I say that as a matter of fact, not in some pejorative sense. I know many bloggers who have a public site with Blogger or TypePad and a private, invite-only one with livejournal.) I mean, none of us have adopted Derrida or Foucault as avatars, but lord knows, we should. (I call dibs on, um, Norbert Wiener!)
Finally, like Ramona in the basement with a box of apples, I too try to defy the law of diminishing returns by linking to this excellent post on Deadwood and Whedonesque dialogue. Everyone should also read “Mad Lit Professor Puts Finishing Touches On Bloomsday Device.” (CR, for reasons both literally and figuratively “inside baseball,” should read “Mackey Sasser: ‘Hey Everybody, Look At Me, I Took Steroids—I’m Mackey Sasser And I Took Steroids’.")
Comments
I read Mr. Banks’s article there, and I’d like to throw this out to the readership: who among you, having seen Deadwood and Buffy (or Firefly), would favorably compare the latter to the former or consider Whedon’s work of the same general level of quality as Milch’s? I don’t think they are natural things to compare, given especially that one is on HBO (and I never much cared for NYPD Blue once Sipowicz stopped drinking); but I don’t think Buffy, as much as I enjoyed it, can bear this weight. (And Mamet as well?)
I think what W.B. discusses works structurally, in that both Whedon and Milch are interested in enlivening available argots and cliches; the difference, then, is that Milch has more to work with, a richer, more unfamiliar language. In the bonus materials from Season 1, there’s a bit on “The Language of Deadwood,” in which he talks about the period research he and his staff had done. They took all the grittiness they could from the papers and articles about the degredation of English in the West and what-not, then grafted it to a grammar which has more in common with Shakespeare and Milton than 19<sup>th</sup> Century America. I took that to mean, basically, that they did a lot of research, then tried their damnedest to forget it so that they could write characters who inhabit it. Is that a greater accomplishment than Whedon’s in Buffy? Certainly, but that’s largely because the generative wit is Whedon’s, not historical and/or explicitly literary. In other words, I think they both excel at what they are, and that Buffy would’ve suffered with a style similar to Deadwood‘s. Firefly, on the other hand, I see as a parallel accomplishment; I wonder what Whedon could’ve accomplished had he the budget Milch had for each episode of Deadwood, as well as the cast.
Mamet’s a whole other story, though. Compare the terse density of Spartan to Deadwood and you can’t help but shrug your shoulders, since the two attempt entirely different violences to conventional language.
I’m almost surprised that Fuck Act Theory hasn’t been done already. Maybe the unknown Google searcher is writing it up for next years’ MLA, and was looking for prior work.
(Returning to parody...) It may be worth distinguishing Fuck Act Theory from “Fuck” Act Theory. The latter arises from an attempt to extend Austen’s theory of speech acts to include the diverse uses of the word “fuck” in the English language. The key text is an exchange of letters between Searle and Derrida, in which Searle tells Derrida to “Fuck off!” and Derrida responds at length.
With the least little bit of tinting of the photo at “theoryishotcrew”, Foucault would look totally black (or perhaps Afro-French). I never noticed that before.
You are welcome to my unused title “American Fiction as Fuck Narrative, from Norman Mailer to the Present”.
Could it be the searcher is trying to formulate a theory of acting in pornographic videos. With an emphasis on hard-core. An exploration of why the scripting, acting, production, and direction are usually so damn bad. Other than the focus on porking that is.
Can an aesthetically good hard-core porno be produced? Or are fuck flicks doomed to the bad movie ghetto?
I bring it to your attention that Bloomingdale’s, Saks Fifth Avenue and Neiman Marcus/Bergdorf Goodman have all reduced their “Petite” departments and are now pushing Theory. (Wool, mostly.)
Deadwoodand Whedon’s stuff are aiming for very different things, of course. After his April talk at MIT I ended up asking Milch if he valued ‘traditional narrative satisfactions’ at all. (I was incredulous. What can I say? It seemed like a sensible question.) And he shook his head and gave a definitive no. This is to say: Deadwood episodes tend to peak and end beautifully, powerfully, much of the time; but just as often they end on an offbeat, without paying off. Libidinally you might say.
Whedon writes as if he was raised talking in four-act structures; it’s fair to compare NYPD Blue and Joss’s stuff, given the similarity of the constraints; I’d say Whedon’s work is absolutely worthy of the comparison. Of course I’d offer ‘The Body’ or ‘Hush’ (respectively a music-free meditation on death and a silent horror mini-film) as examples, not to mention Whedon’s extraordinary musical episode. Whedon knows how to end a story and is constantly building toward that ending; Milch just doesn’t seem really to care. And in terms of melodramatic amplification, it’s fair to compare Whedon to pre-Season Six Sopranos (S6 thus far is almost wholly without climax or even apparent direction - incredible but trying).
Glad people are reading the article. :)
ps. My confirmation word on this post was ‘alone26’ - thank God I turned 27 recently, or the symbolic weight would’ve crushed me.
"Fruitless” would read better as “bootless.”
re: Scott’s comment about what Whedon would do with Milch’s budget...I don’t wanna know.
It may be time to blog about something else for a damn change, the pleasure of actually being read notwithstanding.