The Hypermodern

I Hate Vanity Fair

While renewing my New Yorker subscription a couple of months ago, magazine publishing giant Condé Nast offered me a deal that seemed too good to pass up: 12 issues of culture/fashion/politics magazine Vanity Fair for 12 dollars. That’s right — for the price of a taco a month I would have some of the world’s finest photography and writing delivered right to my doorstep. A Vanity Fair article, “The Man Who Knew Too Much”, served as the basis for the amazing Michael Mann film The Insider. So I thought “Why not?”

Uighurs and Guantanamo

Four Uighur detainees from Guantanamo Bay who were cleared for release will not be moving to America. Although a large Uighur community in Northern Virginia has offered to accept the former detainees, elected officials from Virginia refused to allow the Uighurs to resettle in Northern Virginia.

The Premier in Bermuda, a British protectorate, agreed to accept the Uighurs without consulting the Foreign Ministry in the U.K. This unilateral move led to large protests across the island calling for his resignation that coincided with the arrival of the Uighurs. 13 other Uighurs have been moved to Palau. None of the detainees held at Guantanamo Bay who have been cleared of the charges against them has been released into the United States.

I Know You Aren’t, But What Am I?

On June 3, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton issued a message to the Chinese government, asking them to remember and recant on the 20th anniversary of the events at Tiananmen Square, saying: “A China that has made enormous progress economically, and that is emerging to take its rightful place in global leadership, should examine openly the darker events of its past and provide a public accounting of those killed, detained or missing, both to learn and to heal.” Toward the end of the memorandum she dangerously advised: “This anniversary provides an opportunity for Chinese authorities to release from prison all those still serving sentences in connection with the events surrounding June 4, 1989. We urge China to cease the harassment of participants in the demonstrations and begin dialogue with the family members of victims, including the Tiananmen Mothers.”

Tehran to Twitter

And to YouTube, and to Facebook. The crisis in Iran is still unfolding, and everyone is already proclaiming it to be the first revolution brought to you by the Internet. The Nation writes that “the outpouring of texts, tweets and video from Tehran has sparked a worldwide solidarity movement,” while Marc Ambinder of The Atlantic boldly pronounces that “Twitter will doubtless be cast as a protagonal technology that enabled the powerless to survive a brutal crackdown and information blackout by the ruling authorities.” Andrew Sullivan updates his blog constantly with new tweets, even changing his colors to green in solidarity; Meanwhile Jon Stewart makes light of the fact that the CNN newsroom has basically turned into a bunch of people logging into MySpace.

A Hypermodernist Critique of Gossip Girl, Part 5

But in the end, I have to give this series more credit than I did eighteen episodes ago; if for nothing else, it’s (in the words of another television character) tricking kids into thinking they’re not learning so they do. It’s Theory of the Leisure Class for teens who are allergic to books; it’s a bildungsroman for people who don’t even know what language that word is from. If The O.C. was A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Gossip Girl is Ulysses.

Approximating the Truth

We might never know the truth about the events of early June twenty years ago. The story might forever remain an unfocused tapestry of anecdotes, interviews, and the occasional memoir. But twenty years later, we gain new understanding in the form of a photograph of a familiar scene, taken from an unfamiliar angle, which reminds us that what is know is only a collection of points-of-view that approximates truth, but the more points-of-view we collect, even if they contradict each other, the closer we come to understanding. This week, some questioned the apathy of students, while others proved that they had not forgotten, and still others wondered: had we gotten this all wrong?

In addition to these points-of-view, I offer two anecdotes about the twentieth anniversary of June 4, 1989.

A Hypermodernist Critique of Gossip Girl, Part 4

In the past twelve episodes, Gossip Girl has explicitly or inadvertently touched on the following topics: the relationship between art and capital, the rise of the creative class, the persistence of neofeudalism and wealth condensation, the corrupting nature of consumerism, patriarchy and its effect on female self-image, the image-conception theory of identity, the pervasive nature of Western imperialism (Chuck Bass is basically Kermit Roosevelt), the fluid nature of the modern family unit, technological voyeurism and the permanence of information, the Prisoner’s Dilemma and the Nash Equilibrium, the double standard inherent in the concept of honor, the fetishization of commodities, and the commoditization of sexuality. (In my style of analysis, I am greatly indebted to Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky’s commentary on Lord of the Rings. Seriously, if you want to read a real critique, that one will knock you on your ass.)

A Hypermodernist Critique of Gossip Girl, Part 3

Throughout this series I have referred to the work of Josh Schwartz when discussing the creative impetus of Gossip Girl. It’s a sort of shorthand, a synecdoche if you will, and I by no means want to appear as if I’m neglecting the fine work of the other writers, including co-creator Stephanie Savage and staff writers Felicia D. Henderson, Joshua Safran, Lenn K. Rosenfeld, Jessica Queller, and K.J. Steinberg. Television is an inherently collaborative medium, and when analyzing an ongoing series it’s especially intriguing to detect changes in voice and tone as the story progresses.

How these voices and tones are realized in the show depends on the dynamics of the room and the showrunner. Is a show so forcefully and uniquely bound to a showrunner that the series is defined by him or her, such as in any show run by Aaron Sorkin (The West Wing, Studio 60)? Is the room looking for leadership in a way that a shakeup at the top drastically changes the show’s nature, as what happened to NBC’s Heroes? Or is the template and story larger than the writers themselves — no soloists, all chorus — like a House or a Law and Order?

Writer’s Block

There is a Chinese idiom about a man who buried a sum of silver underground and, worried that passersby would find it, placed a sign next to the plot that read “ci di wu yin san bai liang,” or “There is not 300 liang of silver here.” Needless to say, the next day his silver was gone.

I wonder if the censorship bureau understands this parable because one thing everyone in China should know by now is that if you ever come across a website that terminates your Internet connection, start digging.