Captain Tomorrow and his Star Rangers vs. the Political Event Horizon

Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange: Appropriate for College Viewing?

In Ethics this term I am showing Stanley Kubrick's film A Clockwork Orange (1971). After viewing the first half of the film Tuesday, I received the following email from a student (quoted with permission):

Dr. Kaplan,

I am in disbelief that you made a choice to show that movie. Although it may not be offensive to some it may be to others. Some may not want to waste their time watching such garbage. You should consider how different each individual is. Some may be older and not accustomed to what society feels acceptable today. Others may be Christians and my be blown away by such immorality. Some may even be very young and even in high school considering that our college accepts high school students. Some may have never had a sexual experience and do not need to learn from this. I personally do not understand the purpose of this movie. I also believe that any content you felt was relevant to ethics could have been taught by the choice of another film. I sacrifice precious time with my children daily for my education. I do not think this was educational to me. I would never give up a moment with my children to watch such garbage. I had gained such respect for you because you had been so understanding but now my feelings have changed. I do not expect to be counted absent for leaving early nor do I expect to be counted absent on Thursday because I will not watch any more of that film. If you would like I will attend class once the movie is over. Please let me know.

Sincerely,

Student

I answered:

Dear Student:

I fully understand your concerns. As I said before we viewed the film, students could leave if they wished. If you examine the notes for this week and otherwise compare the content of the film and the course material, I think you should agree that the film brings together the central topics of the discussion we've been having since March. Also please keep in mind the college trains people to work in nursing, mental health, corrections, law enforcement, and social work. The film certainly addresses issues that are core to these fields. Don't let the nature of the film as a work of art distract you from a clinical consideration of the film. And as for that matter, the film is, if you examine it carefully, directly addressing the concerns you are vocalizing. That is, the problem of decadence in modern society and the effects of that decadence upon culture. Also, please consider that the director/producer of this film is one of the greatest filmmakers of all time, and A Clockwork Orange is often considered to be his best film. When the film first came out it was considered science fiction. Now it seems the film is rather about our current times. A student in the Monday evening class pointed out that many of the problems in the film are not only happening in America, but are in the Ohio Valley as well.

I should remark, too, that the material on broadcast television these days is as challenging as that presented in the film. Moreover, the film seeks to expose and criticize such decadence, while television instead seeks to exploit it. And I think that's a point we should do well to consider.

But as I said, you are of course excused if you do not wish to view it. We will finish with the film around 1:45 Thursday if you wish to join us for discussion. I do hope you will finish the film, however, as I would like you to consider it and contribute your views to the class during discussion having viewed the film in its entirety. Otherwise, please see the notes on the course Web site.

Best,

Carter

This afternoon we finished the film and in the remaining class time discussed the various themes that have bearing upon the course. Some of my class notes can be viewed by clicking here.

Here are some of the discussion points. We will continue to address these next week:

Dystopian Literature and Film
A Clockwork Orange: Dystopia or Satire?
A Clockwork Orange: 1971 and 2011
The Power of the State
Human Nature: Hobbes vs. Locke
The "Human Condition"
The Genealogy of the Totalitarian State/Police State: Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany
Hooliganism: Chavs and Neds
Elite, Underclass, Working Class, Middle Class
Recruiting police from the "hooligan" class
Police Powers, the 4th Amendment
Romanticism and Revolution: Napoleon
Beethoven and Rossini
The 60s and 70s--what happened to the Summer of Love, the Flower Children and "Let it all hang out, baby?"
The dark emergence: Led Zeppelin, Alice Cooper, and Charles Manson.
Good vs. Evil
Choice
Torture
Social Control
Conditioning
DSM-IV: The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders and the power of big pharma
The role of education in cultivating and preserving a free and open society

The student visited me after class and recapitulated some of the arguments from the email. Our conversation was amicable and productive. I asked the student to raise some of these questions in class next Tuesday as we continue our analysis of the film.

The Art of Dario Rivarossa

The forthcoming Emanations anthology will feature illustrations by Tally-Ho, Cornelius! cover artist Kai Robb, as well as illustrations by a new member of International Authors, Dario Rivarossa.

Dario has started a new blog featuring his art, and I would like to invite Highbrow readers to visit and examine his work. Combining elements of surrealism, comic book art and pulp illustration, Dario is a master of creating visionary images combining heroic subjects with subtle and ingenious interpretation. Please click here to visit his blog.

Emanations is in the pre-press production stage, and I am cautiously optimistic that we could see the anthology out by June of this year. Stay tuned for updates.

Vitasta Raina's Writer's Block is Now Available

On behalf of International Authors, I am happy to announce the publication of Vitasta Raina's novella Writer's Block.

Welcome to Chalet, the city of manicured luxury and western complexity, where India's rise to the promised land of elegant living and boundless consumerism is unchecked, except by the force of the millions living in the slums beyond the barrier walls. Their official fate is oblivion, and yet there is for them an existence of sorts--within the dreams and visions of those who dwell inside the Writer's Block.

Click her to visit the Amazon sales page.

Vitasta Raina is an architect and urban planner in Mumbai, India.

Stay Tuned

Stay tuned for an announcement concerning a new International Authors publication, a novella by Vitasta Raina.

Diogenes is now available

International Authors has published my Aristophanic comedy Diogenes.

Many thanks to my friends at International Authors, especially E. L. Riches for her Introduction, L. Sterns Newburg for his keen and acerbic reading ("Yes, it's wonderful, but what is it?"), Dana Sebree for her razor-sharp editing skills, and Vitasta Raina and Kai Robb for their work on the cover.

Click here to view the Amazon description.

Note: Satan and Prometheus

Milton's Satan is a multi-dimensional and transformative figure, and in order to understand the significance of this Satan we must "connect" with Milton's anthropological concerns, and Milton's related analysis and exercise of mythopoetic language. But before we do that (rather my on-going project), let's have a look at what Shelley has to say about Satan as a "political" model.

The Romantics were interested in Milton's Satan because he resembled a liberal and a rebel, but he remained for them a diabolical figure. In his Preface to Prometheus Unbound Shelley neatly characterizes Milton's Satan, and argues that Prometheus is a more fit exponent for the treatment of the liberal political vision Shelley is seeking to express. I believe Milton would agree. Miton's Satan is an unsuccessful rebel, and Milton shows us why. And of course Milton's hero is the more morally intelligent and more politically capable Son.

From his preface to Prometheus Unbound, Shelley on Satan:

The only imaginary being, resembling in any degree Prometheus, is Satan; and Prometheus is, in my judgment, a more poetical character than Satan, because, in addition to courage, and majesty, and firm and patient opposition to omnipotent force, he is susceptible of being described as exempt from the taints of ambition, envy, revenge, and a desire for personal aggrandizement, which, in the hero of Paradise Lost, interfere with the interest. The character of Satan engenders in the mind a pernicious casuistry which leads us to weigh his faults with his wrongs, and to excuse the former because the latter exceed all measure. In the minds of those who consider that magnificent fiction with a religious feeling it engenders something worse. But Prometheus is, as it were, the type of the highest perfection of moral and intellectual nature impelled by the purest and the truest motives to the best and noblest ends.

A little lower, Shelley has this to say on Milton:

We owe the great writers of the golden age of our literature to that fervid awakening of the public mind which shook to dust the oldest and most oppressive form of the Christian religion. We owe Milton to the progress and development of the same spirit: the sacred Milton was, let it ever be remembered, a republican and a bold inquirer into morals and religion. The great writers of our own age are, we have reason to suppose, the companions and forerunners of some unimagined change in our social condition or the opinions which cement it. The cloud of mind is discharging its collected lightning, and the equilibrium between institutions and opinions is now restoring or is about to be restored.

Source

Call for Submissions: Emanations

Emanations

The editors of Emanations seek fiction, poetry, essays, manifestos and reviews. The emphasis is on alternative narrative structures, new epistemologies, peculiar settings, esoteric themes, sharp breaks from reality, ecstatic revelations, and vivid and abundant hallucinations.

The editors are interested in recognizable genres—science fiction, fantasy, horror, mystery, local color, romance, realism, surrealism, postmodernism--but the idea is to make something new, and along these lines the illusion of something new can be just as important. If a story or poem makes someone say, "Yes, but what is it?" then it's right for Emanations. Essays should be exuberant, daring, and free of pedantry. Length is a consideration in making publication decisions, but in keeping with the spirit of the project contributors should consider length to be “open.”

Our editorial vision is evolving. Contributors should see themselves as actively shaping the "vision" of Emanations.

Send files with brief cover note to Carter Kaplan:

IAsubmissions@hotmail.com

Board of Editorial Advisors

Ruud Antonius

Horace Jeffery Hodges

Dario Rivarossa

Norman Spinrad, blog

Vitasta Raina

Michael Beard

Elkie Riches

Mike Chivers

Carter Kaplan

Kai Robb, 2

Tessa Dick

Michael Moorcock

Joel K. Soiseth

Mack Hassler

Darren R. Partridge

Emanations is a not-for-profit literary project and contributors cannot be compensated at this time. All proceeds from the sale of Emanations will support the efforts of International Authors to publish new voices from around the world.

Published By International Authors

Please post questions, suggestions and ideas. The project is a collaborative effort, and as we share ideas the "vision" transforms, evolves, and grows. When we write stories and poems we hope to bring to bear the entire battery of modern and postmodern literary devices. More simply: we like good, strong writing. Our essays are incisive, precise, keen, challenging, and driven by the writer's desire to advance an intelligent audience's understanding of important subjects.

Intelligent people find themselves set between two fine-tuned extremes: the narcissistic communities made possible by the internet, and the micro-managed "fields" that are driven by an academic culture that forces people into narrowing corridors of specialization. Emanations is an artistic "way out" for intelligent people to create an exuberant, challenging and meaningful culture. We are pursuing a freedom of sorts, bringing liberty to intelligence. Whether this intelligence is human or perhaps something larger remains to be seen, but by looking into our emanations we might find an answer.

Additional Gloss on Book X and Milton's Project

Apropos to my claims concerning Book X, suffice it to say PL is really good existentialist science fiction, and Milton knows this. The Biblical and the hermetic material in the poem are the carriage but not the tenor. This presupposes that a truly accurate reading--anyway an "Independent" late-Calvinist reading--of the Bible will yield the worldview Milton seeks to exercise and represent. Thus modernism is in essence a Christian philosophical project, sort of an analytic anthropology of shamanism, poetry, religious myth--altogether forming a somewhat acerbic-though-accurate survey of the human condition. As to the Independent English Calvinist foundation: little wonder then at the wrath of the tin pot gods of "postmodernism" and other forms of German mental disease. If we look backwards at Milton trough the lenses of Wittgenstein, Hawthorne, Jefferson and Locke, it seems clear enough. Anyway, that's a potted but essential statement of my critical position.

Book X and the Nature of Paradise Lost

A recent reading of the tenth book of Paradise Lost has embellished my understanding of the nature of the poem.

Book X as an expression of a distinct mytho-analytic problem: Milton is dilating on lines 842-844:

O Conscience, into what Abyss of fears
And horrors hast thou driv'n me; out of which
I find no way, from deep to deeper plung'd!

His analysis of this theme is necessarily forced through the context of the plot and the terms of the characters and language he has to work with, but the entire book seems to be a response to 842-844.

A "reader" can pursue other avenues, but to do so is to mistake the particular character of the poem, and to go astray--and so generate various het readings, if I may deploy a little Hebrew here.

That is, PL is not an exercise in Biblical exegesis or a celebration of the coarse associations produced by commonplace poetical mechanics, but is rather a sophisticated modern poem bringing to bear the remarkably protean tool of "mythical-epic" language to express a manifold of analytic procedures. It represents modern analyses of modern problems. The Biblical stuff, the story, the characters, the music, the emotional content--all are points of departure, and to some extent the vehicles, but not the destination.

Another way to figure this: The appropriate cover for PL should not be a sharply-drawn realistic illustration by Dore or Durer, but more properly a well-theorized abstraction by Kandinsky or Tanguy printed on thin translucent paper, and which turns over to reveal a closely-controlled dreamscape by Dali--and vice-versa, if you will.

the hand that whirls the water in the pool

Everglades Photo Journal by Margaret Evans

Photographer's statement:

The Everglades: Unique, Magical, Mystical. Photographs taken by Margaret Evans October/November 2009. It may take a lifetime to fully appreciate all that the Everglades National Park in southern Florida has to offer. The territory covers 1.4 million acres of water-covered land and is home to more than 300 species of birds in addition to numerous reptiles, invertebrates, mammals and innumerable species of trees and plants. The Park has been designated a World Heritage Site, an International Biosphere Reserve, and a Wetland of International Importance. This mosaic of mangroves, cypress swamps, hardwood hammock, and sawgrass wetlands is the only subtropical preserve in North America.

Professor Margaret Evans is a faculty member in the Communication/Journalism Department at Shippensburg University. The photographs in this exhibit were taken during a fall 2009 sabbatical leave project in the Florida Everglades.

Click here for gallery.

Milton's Project

Milton's project is to take the Independent Calvinist worldview and from it render a secular anthropological and political understanding. This worldview is "modern" in the sense that religion and the power of the church are mitigated (first) by knowledge and scientific skepticism and (second) by constitutional policy that denies magisterial power to churches. Magisterial power is reserved exclusively to the state--this is the substance of Locke's Letter on Toleration and Jefferson's Virginia Act of Religious Freedom. In this particular and others, Milton laid the groundwork for Locke and Jefferson, who carried Milton's project forward, refining the modern worldview by defining and designing institutions--education, balance of powers, property and labor rights, natural rights, the obligations of governments and the duties of citizens, a free press, the fair and equitable distribution of wealth, and so on--that would establish and maintain the processes of an open, free and liberal society.

Jefferson on the Presumption of Uninspired Men

"The impious presumption of legislators and rulers, civil as well as ecclesiastical, who being themselves but fallible and uninspired men, have assumed dominion over the faith of others, setting up their own opinions and modes of thinking as the only true and infallible, and as such endeavouring to impose them on others, hath established and maintained false religions over the greatest part of the world, and through all time."

—Thomas Jefferson, The Virginia Act of Religious Freedom

Political Science: 1933 & 34

Hitler addresses the folk, 1933:

Hitler addresses the party, 1934:

It is important to note the following distinction:

1) The 1933 speech was for public consumption and rolls out the talking points and especial "codes" that lead the party to power.

2) The 1934 speech addresses NAZI Party concerns, which rather comes off as a mix of corporate religion and politics.

While the former speech is of interest to history, the latter is of interest to political science.

It's clear to see in the 1934 speech (and I have seen this described elsewhere) that Hitler set party members against each other to enhance the "strength" and "integrity" of the power structure, as well as to enhance his position at the top.

In regard to Hitler's language, figures of speech and logic in the 1934 party speech: The subtitles either represent a poor translation, or this is indeed the face of ruptured sense and meaningless language, the very mark of totalitarian madness.

Deep Space Triple-Star System Gravity Hole Drama

Click here for story.

Check 9 o'clock for Fuji!

From Mod to Chav in Three Generations: Historical Footnote on the Death of the British Working Class

The traditional British Working Class came to be regarded by their masters as "redundant" for various economic and political reasons: the former role of imperial soldier was taken over by assets of the American Global Police Force, manufacturing was transferred off-shore, and the political obstacle to efficient social and economic management represented by the working class was widely recognized as an interrelated and compound problem. For these reasons (some would also emphasize "aesthetic considerations") an effort was mounted to mitigate and, eventually, remove this sector of the British population. Globalism afforded an opportunity to achieve these ends. A sector of the British working class, the hard-working lower-middle-class clerks (especially the highly-motivated class of self-styled “progressives”) would, as usual, play its functionary role; and popular media, itself enhanced by progress made early in the process by methods of cultural exploitation pioneered by the working class themselves, provided an useable instrument of control. Through Globalism, the means of production was moved to zones of enhanced profitability, and through the apparatus of the welfare system the workers were made dependent upon the state for their support and sustenance. Meanwhile, the entertainment industry provided workers with role models that valorized self-destructive behaviors. The project was successful, and within three generations the mass of the British working classes was weakened to a point where their political clout was thoroughly mitigated. Meanwhile, traditional Liberal forces--middle class traders and professionals—finding themselves discouraged by the behavior and the appearance of the working class, were alienated from it, and the traditional political, cultural and ideological ties which had previously strengthened both classes were cut. Systems of social support were now removed, and the working class, or rather the spectral shadow of the storied British Working Class, was purged.

The Future of the Library

Interesting report here on a meeting held last week exploring the future of the library:

The Future of Libraries, Books, and Reading: A Twinsburg Library Centennial Presentation

Participants included Prof. Mack Hassler of Kent State University; Liz Murphy, proprietor of The Learned Owl Book Shop in Hudson, Ohio; and Ed Rossman, Adult Services Librarian at Shaker Heights Pubic Library. Mr. Rossman is also the author of Castles Against Ignorance: How to Make Libraries Great Educational Environments. Carrie Baker Dubiel, reference librarian at Twinsburg Library, moderated the event.

Michael Brennan

New Work