Don DeLillo (1936 - ) White Noise (1985) Underworld (1997)
Slide 4
Don DeLillo (1936 - ) White Noise (1985) Underworld (1997)
Cosmopolis (2003)
Slide 5
New York Times, April 13, 2003 Though Don DeLillo gives his
characters names, he might as well just assign them serial numbers.
The barely corporeal cerebral entities that populate the pages of
''Cosmopolis,'' a novel about the alleged insanity of Nasdaq-era
hypercapitalism, aren't so much people as walking topic
headings.
Slide 6
New York Times, April 13, 2003 Though Don DeLillo gives his
characters names, he might as well just assign them serial numbers.
The barely corporeal cerebral entities that populate the pages of
''Cosmopolis,'' a novel about the alleged insanity of Nasdaq-era
hypercapitalism, aren't so much people as walking topic
headings.
Slide 7
New York Times, April 13, 2003 Though Don DeLillo gives his
characters names, he might as well just assign them serial numbers.
The barely corporeal cerebral entities that populate the pages of
''Cosmopolis,'' a novel about the alleged insanity of Nasdaq-era
hypercapitalism, aren't so much people as walking topic headings.
Beware the novel of ideas, particularly when the ideas come first
and all the novel stuff (like the story) comes second. Walter
Kim
Slide 8
New York Times, April 13, 2003 Though Don DeLillo gives his
characters names, he might as well just assign them serial numbers.
The barely corporeal cerebral entities that populate the pages of
''Cosmopolis,'' a novel about the alleged insanity of Nasdaq-era
hypercapitalism, aren't so much people as walking topic headings.
Beware the novel of ideas, particularly when the ideas come first
and all the novel stuff (like the story) comes second. Walter
Kim
Slide 9
The Guardian, June 14, 2012 DeLillo's highly charged language,
when parcelled up into film dialogue, is cumbersome and
self-conscious without the original speck of deadpan drollery. It
is possible to read Cosmopolis as a premonition of the economic
crash we now know all about, but really it looks like an exercise
in zeitgeist-connoisseurship that appears obtuse, self-indulgent
and fatally shallow. Peter Bradshaw
Slide 10
The Guardian, June 14, 2012 DeLillo's highly charged language,
when parcelled up into film dialogue, is cumbersome and
self-conscious without the original speck of deadpan drollery. It
is possible to read Cosmopolis as a premonition of the economic
crash we now know all about, but really it looks like an exercise
in zeitgeist-connoisseurship that appears obtuse, self-indulgent
and fatally shallow. Peter Bradshaw
Slide 11
Los Angeles Review of Books The democratic idealism of a left
movement dedicated to raising the consciousness of the masses to
their own real interests and persuading people that capitalism can
be sort of, you know, excessive and unkind is exposed as foolishly
ineffectual. All opposition to the techno-capitalist nexus in
Cosmopolis is reduced to loud but merely cathartic protest,
symbolic gesture, and at its outer reaches, literal martyrdom,
assassination and terror. Its all impotence and despair. Historys
done. Techno-capitalism won. --Cornel Bonca
Slide 12
Los Angeles Review of Books The democratic idealism of a left
movement dedicated to raising the consciousness of the masses to
their own real interests and persuading people that capitalism can
be sort of, you know, excessive and unkind is exposed as foolishly
ineffectual. All opposition to the techno-capitalist nexus in
Cosmopolis is reduced to loud but merely cathartic protest,
symbolic gesture, and at its outer reaches, literal martyrdom,
assassination and terror. Its all impotence and despair. Historys
done. Techno-capitalism won. --Cornel Bonca
Slide 13
New Yorker, August 27, 2012 We can feel DeLillos loathing for
the dematerialized world of financial manipulation; he makes Eric a
kind of science-fiction metaphor of a human being, and Cronenberg
cast the right man for a living cyborg. David Denby
Slide 14
New Yorker, August 27, 2012 We can feel DeLillos loathing for
the dematerialized world of financial manipulation; he makes Eric a
kind of science-fiction metaphor of a human being, and Cronenberg
cast the right man for a living cyborg. David Denby
Slide 15
New Yorker Cronenberg has retained much of DeLillos dialogue,
which is, by turns, clipped and expansive and idea-studdeda kind of
postmodernist exposition of how money functions in cyberspace. And
he has come up with an equivalent to DeLillos curt and cool
equipoisea style of filmmaking that is classically measured and
calm, without an extra shot or cut.
Slide 16
New Yorker Cronenberg has retained much of DeLillos dialogue,
which is, by turns, clipped and expansive and idea-studdeda kind of
postmodernist exposition of how money functions in cyberspace. And
he has come up with an equivalent to DeLillos curt and cool
equipoisea style of filmmaking that is classically measured and
calm, without an extra shot or cut.
Slide 17
Cosmopolis Problems: -Novel of ideas
Slide 18
Cosmopolis Problems: -Novel of ideas -Relation to capitalism
before and after dot.com bubble
Slide 19
Cosmopolis Problems: -Novel of ideas -Relation to capitalism
before and after dot.com bubble -Anticipating financial crisis
Slide 20
The machine age is over: He took out his hand organizer and
poked a note to himself about the anachronistic quality of the word
skyscraper. No recent structure ought to bear this word. It
belonged to the olden soul of awe, to the arrowed towers that were
a narrative long before he was born (9).
Slide 21
The machine age is over: He took out his hand organizer and
poked a note to himself about the anachronistic quality of the word
skyscraper. No recent structure ought to bear this word. It
belonged to the olden soul of awe, to the arrowed towers that were
a narrative long before he was born (9). Why do we still have
airports? (22)
Slide 22
They [the bank towers] looked empty from here. He liked that
idea. They were made to be the last tall things, made empty,
designed to hasten the future. They were the end of the outside
world. They werent here, exactly. They were in the future, a time
beyond geography and touchable money and the people who stack and
count it. (36)
Slide 23
rats Epigraph: A rat became the unit of currency Zbigniew
Herbert (Polish poet and essayist)
Slide 24
Parker and Chin Theres a poem I read in which a rat becomes the
unit of currency. Yes. That would be interesting, Chin said. Yes.
That would impact the world economy. The name alone. Better than
the dong or the kwacha. The name says everything. Yes. The rat,
Chin said. Yes. The rat closed lower today against the euro.
(23)
Slide 25
Electronic display: A RAT BECAME THE UNIT OF CURRENCY (96)
Following: A SPECTRE IS HAUNTING THE WORLDTHE SPECTER OF
CAPITALISM
Slide 26
Protest Even with the beatings and gassings, the jolt of
explosives, even in the assault on the investment bank, he thought
there was something theatrical about the protest, ingratiating,
even, in the parachutes and skateboards, the styrofoam rat, in the
tactical coup of reprogramming the stock tickers with poetry and
Karl Marx (99).
Slide 27
Protest Even with the beatings and gassings, the jolt of
explosives, even in the assault on the investment bank, he thought
there was something theatrical about the protest, ingratiating,
even, in the parachutes and skateboards, the styrofoam rat, in the
tactical coup of reprogramming the stock tickers with poetry and
Karl Marx (99).
Digital sublime He studied the figural diagrams that brought
organic patterns into play, birdwing and chambered shell. It was
shallow thinking to maintain that numbers and charts were the cold
compression of unruly human energies, every sort of yearning and
midnight sweat reduced to lucid units in the financial markets. In
fact data itself was soulful and glowing, a dynamic aspect of the
life process. This was the eloquence of alphabets and numeric
systems, now fully realized in electronic form, in the zero-oneness
of the world, the digital imperative that defined every breath of
the planets living billions. (24)
Slide 32
Digital sublime He studied the figural diagrams that brought
organic patterns into play, birdwing and chambered shell. It was
shallow thinking to maintain that numbers and charts were the cold
compression of unruly human energies, every sort of yearning and
midnight sweat reduced to lucid units in the financial markets. In
fact data itself was soulful and glowing, a dynamic aspect of the
life process. This was the eloquence of alphabets and numeric
systems, now fully realized in electronic form, in the zero-oneness
of the world, the digital imperative that defined every breath of
the planets living billions. (24)
Slide 33
Adam Smith (1723 1790)
Slide 34
Professor of Logic, moral philosophy Theory of Moral Sentiments
(1859) Sympathy Self-interest Market (competition) Division of
labor Invisible hand
Slide 35
Adam Smith (1723 1790) System of perfect liberty, hampered by
Monopolies Guilds Import dues and taxes
Slide 36
Adam Smith (1723 1790) Role of the government Defense Justice
Infrastructure Education
Slide 37
Benjamin Franklin (1706 1790)
Slide 38
Benjamin Franklin (06 1790) The Art of Virtue
Slide 39
Benjamin Franklin (1706 1790) The Art of Virtue Frugality: Make
no expense but to do good to others or yourself; i.e. waste
nothing. Industry: Lose no time; be always employed in something
useful; cut off all unnecessary actions (83)
Slide 40
Benjamin Franklin (1706 1790) Life writing (autobiography):
creation of self Mode of life, including values and habits
(culture) These values are geared towards increase in wealth They
are realized by calculation, a form of book keeping (his
method).
Slide 41
Max Weber (1862 1920) Capitalism exists everywhere
Slide 42
Max Weber (1862 1920) Capitalism exists everywhere Greed
Max Weber (1862 1920) Capitalism exists everywhere Greed
(self-interest) Capitalist adventurers (irrational speculation) War
expenditures
Slide 45
Max Weber (1862 1920) Capitalism exists everywhere BUT
Slide 46
Max Weber (1862 1920) Capitalism exists everywhere BUT It
becomes a dominant system in Christian countries
Slide 47
Max Weber (1862 1920) Capitalism exists everywhere BUT It
becomes a dominant system in Christian countries AND It thrives in
Protestant countries as well as Protestant areas of
multi-confessional countries more than in Catholic ones
Slide 48
What is worldly asceticism? Benjamin Franklin: frugality and
industry This mean: Limits on consumption. Cradle of modern
economic man. Work as ascetic practice, not means to an end. Work
as calling (vocation). Fixed calling (Luther) justification for
division of labor.
Slide 49
Herman Melville (1819 1891)
Slide 50
Pilvi Takala, The Trainee (2008) Deloitte: audit, consulting,
financial advisory, risk management firm Takala was just Just
sitting there, without a computer Spending all day in elevator
Slide 51
Ibsens World Doctors, lawyers, real estate developers, bankers
World of bourgeois capitalism (Weber) Not set at the office or
workplace Home
Weapon manufacturing Salvation Army Act II+III: conflict
between these two institutions and their interrelation
Slide 57
Karl Marx (1818 1883)
Slide 58
Communist Manifesto as world literature Revolutionary character
of the bourgeoisie, creating a globalized world Sublime force of
bourgeois capitalism But the bourgeoisie creates its successor: the
proletariat (dialectics)
Slide 59
Historical materialism Materialism as inversion of idealism:
Marx turns Hegel around: economic conditions determine ideas, not
the other way around. Marx turns Hegel back on his feet. (Economic)
base (political and cultural) superstructure
Slide 60
Cultural explanation: Question of origin: a mode of life
originating elsewhere (Puritanism) gets selected because it happens
to suit capitalism (agency lies with capitalism) Question of
(ultimate) cause: sometimes ideas transform economic relations
Economic explanation Industrialization created a class that
will overthrow bourgeoisie: the workers (Robots) Reforms (Helen),
seeking recognition of workers as human, are useless Only
nationalism can avert united front of workers Historical reference
point: WWI and Russian Revolution
Slide 64
Ending? Robots become human: emotions superfluous words admire
beauty uselessness (Helen and Helen Robot) they will procreate like
animals/humans (Alquist: If you want to live youll have to breed,
like animals!) Robots are re-naturalized: evolution continues
Slide 65
Eugene ONeill (1888 -1953)
Slide 66
Hairy Ape (1922) First Machine Age: Steam engine Rail road
Steel Heavy industry
Slide 67
Slide 68
Slide 69
Muybridge, Horse in motion
Slide 70
Chronophotograph (1882)
Slide 71
Marcel Duchamp, Nude Descending A Staircase (1912)
Slide 72
Frederick Winslow Taylor Against rule-of-thumb method;
experiment in order to economize all movements Break down motions
into parts; eliminate unnecessary motions Conserving energy Paths
way for Henry Fords assembly line
Slide 73
Vsevolod Meyerhold (1874 1940) Theater of the first machine age
New acting and movement: biomechanics Taylorism for the stage
Slide 74
Fritz Lang (1890 1976)
Slide 75
Future (futurism): Metropolis (2026) Model for 20 th century
science fiction, such as Blade Runner Vertical organization
Elimination of nature
Slide 76
Slide 77
Tower of Babel, Peter Bruegel the Elder (1563)
Slide 78
Slide 79
Charlie Chaplin (1889 1977)
Slide 80
Slide 81
Chaplin and the machine: Keeping up with machine Repetitive
movements Concentration (absorption) Becoming one with the machine
Interruptions Work and leisure
Slide 82
Sophie Treadwell (1885 1970)
Slide 83
Ruth Snyer
Slide 84
Slide 85
Office machine Home machine Honeymoon machine Maternal machine
Law machine Electric chair
Slide 86
Bertolt Brecht (1898 1956)
Slide 87
Paul Samson-Krner
Slide 88
Brechts emerging theory of theater Going to the theater like
watching sports Not about motives, but moves in a game Do not
empathize, but observe impartially Brechts admiration for the
objective fighting style of Boxer Paul Samson-Krner, to whom he
devotes a (unfinished) play called The Human Fighting Machine
Slide 89
Shen Te and Shui Ta played by same actor Visible costume
change: audience knows something the other characters dont Expert
audience Estranged acting
Slide 90
Brecht on Chinese acting No fourth wall Use of symbols visible
scene changes the actors openly choose those positions which will
best show them off to the audience, just as if they were
acrobats
Slide 91
Joseph Schumpeter, Harvard Yard
Slide 92
Source of creative destruction is entrepreneur Entrepreneur
emerges from the culture (or spirit) of capitalism
Slide 93
Ayn Rand (1905 1982)
Slide 94
Alan Greenspan, Chairman of the Federal Reserve 1987 -
2006
Slide 95
Rand portrays not the rational, calculating economic actor but
exemplifies in her characters and the world she constructs around
them the philosophical base of capitalism, a world that is meant to
reveal the values of capitalism
Slide 96
Rand and Brecht Views on charity? Manifesto-like speeches?
Construction of character? Techniques of political art?
Slide 97
Wright, Falling Water
Slide 98
Slide 99
Slide 100
David Mamet (1947 - )
Slide 101
How language works: Threats Fantasies Insinuations Robbery
plot: just listening means being implicated [third bookmark:
0:45]