Friday, October 13, 2006

torture guardin'



I recommend listening to the following while reading this article:
MP3: Meira Asher + Guy Harries, "Torture -- Bodyparts"

Ah, torture in the fall.

With all the recent talk about the United States Senate legally authorizing the use of torture for the continued execution of the War of Terror (oops, that’s a typo; there should be a colon after “War”) as well as the renewed public interest in the Maher Arar case, my thoughts have moved to a new place: are we at the end of history as we have known it so far? I do not mean to suggest that the human experience of life will stop or that the world will be uninhabitable or anything quite as apocalyptic as all of that. While all of the proceeding is true, if not likely, I am presently talking about a change in the zeitgeist and not the material conditions of human civilization. Instead, the course charting, over many centuries, the emergence of the modern individual from the bondage of despotism is itself altering in a rather dramatic fashion.

It appears as though a certain regression is emerging as the dominant philosophy of the modern subject. Insular, self-reflexive, and superstitious to the point of being totemismistic. Solutions to problems have become things that you buy, and so far the War on Terror has cost America around $400 billion, and some people are going so far as to suggest that the war in Iraq alone will cost the US economy over $2 trillion). On the point of totemism, I’ll leave the last word to the American government, which has again proven a certain arrogant disregard for the international community. On helping to pass the Detainee Interrogation Bill, which allows the White House to suspend what most people call human rights at its discretion, Sen. Christopher Bond, R-Mo, said: "Some want to tie the hands of our terror fighters. They want to take away the tools we use to fight terror, to handcuff us, to hamper us in our fight to protect our families." Sometimes I too think that my family will only be safe when enough people have been waterboaded into making up yet another Arabic-sounding name.


waterboarding in Antwerrp, 1556

The public sphere has been relatively clean and gore-free since the end of the Second World War. Only occasionally and in isolation have events of significant violence occurred. In the decades that followed the 1940s, however, there was not a sense that violence pervaded the dominant culture in an open manner. McCarthyism, Vietnam, the October Crisis, and other forms of localized and violent division can be seen to be more akin to the residue rather than a reanimation of prior horrors. Many of the institutions that have kept the world relatively peaceful despite occasional lapses of barbarism, such as the United Nations and the concept of human rights, came about as a direct response to the horrors that much of the world experienced in the 1930s and 40s.

However, it seems as though this generation, which has not seen the full extent of human misery except though media reconstruction, is seeking a more intimate association with violence. This trend is occurring on two levels. The first is among those who understand that the true power of the modern subject is to realize existence as they imagine and then by means of technological access drastically alter their environment. Witness not only the rise in school shootings and other acts of urban guerilla violence, but also the tactics employed in terrorist deployment including the planes that were flown into the World Trade Center (9/11 is the remix album for the aviation industry). In each case, small groups of people using readily-available consumer technology and services caused a significant amount of political and social disruption.

The second level of the modern desire for violence is an issue of representation. Torture-as-entertainment is certainly not new, however the entertainment industry moved from gladiatorial fights to horror movies at about the same pace that society moved from despotism to democracy. However when you begin to analyze the manner in which violence is being represented in contemporary media, it becomes clear that the public’s bloodlust is rising. Computerized depictions of violence, usually in microscopic biological detail, in video games, films, and television are increasingly common. More screen-time is being given to close-ups of wounds, and many acts of violence are depicted in slow-motion so that the viewer can more casually receive all of the visual information.

Torture has become a common thematic device in cinema and television these days. Many horror movies are realistically depicting the violence of torture rather than the fantastic and supernatural gore that was previously quite popular. Torture has even entered into mainstream tastes through shows like Lost and 24. The war in Iraq has itself become a remix project, as YouTube documents many attempts to turn war footage into music videos and reality-style television.

Let’s get back to the American government for a second. First and foremost is the White House’s often-noted disregard for the international community, and with the United Nations in particular. Arguably, when America usurped the UN’s authority it demonstrated to every other nation that strength can legitimize any ideological position. We are still waiting for answers as to why Israel bombed the UN observation post in Lebanon.

In relation to the DI Bill, President Bush said: "The American people need to know we're working together to win the war on terror." With all due respect given to discretion, that’s the fucking scariest statement by a human that I have ever read. The American government is allowing violence to escalate because, deep within the conditioning of many of their officials, they truly believe that America is strongest when it is applying strength to others. The American people, consciously or not, want torture to become an authorized ritual meant to release insecurities about their national/personal security.



How do I know this? Rather than examine in detail the extent to which the DI Bill undermines the foundations for civil governance that most of the world’s nations have utilized since last hacking themselves to pieces, the media has taken upon itself to focus on the case of a Republican Congressman who sent dirty messages to pages. You are supposed to feel safe now that an aggressive, manipulative predator is out of power: Fox News is both ecstatic and confused (Foley is a Republican) now that he can no longer touch the body politic with his filthy pedophile hands. Thanks to the implications of the DI Bill however, the government will indeed be touching us all, and in ways that can at best be described as Guantanimaginable.


America is, apparently, a Christian nation

And it is here where history for the modern subject ends. As of September 27, 2006, the American government can officially attach electrodes to your genitals. Mark Foley did leave his mark on government after all. A new history will emerge as necessary – in this capacity, Gabriel Range’s “fictional documentary” Death of a President, which screened at this year’s TIFF, is a significant development – but that is beside the point. Historically speaking, it is during these interregnum periods that violence has proliferated and become accepted by an increasing percentage of the population as the principle means to ensure survival. Hopefully, the upcoming elections in America will allow a more rational government to reorder its international associations in a positive direction. Only with the major countries united under international law will chaos be avoided. Truly, it is not a precipitous drop from officially-sanctioned torture to even more absolute and widespread horrors.

Tuesday, October 03, 2006

steal this movie



A report recently issued by the Institute for Policy Innovation (IPI) concluded this week that movie pirates cost the American economy over $20 billion in lost taxes, jobs, and revenues. It should be noted that the IPI limited its research to data supplied by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA). With this one gesture, the highly contentious issues of intellectual property copyright and consumer protections were thoroughly ignored. Instead, the public has been handed yet another industry manifesto in the guise of legitimate and productive discourse.

As a side-note, to take get a decent view of the biased nature of the IPI, here's a great video feed of a Capitol Hill briefing from September 19 concerning health care.

Watch the archived video of IPI's Sept. 19 Capitol Hill Briefing The Dangers of Undermining Patient Choice: Lessons from Europe and Canada. (depending on your system, in order to see the video you might need to copy the URL from the website that opens into Windows Media Player, Winamp, etc)

The issue of media piracy can be viewed as one of the defining examples of the problematic transition from a culture of physical media (books, records, film stock, etc) to one of digital ephemerality. No longer do I need the information contained in a film to be delivered to me using film stock, magnetic tape, or metal sandwiched between plastic. Instead, films can be delivered in a less tangible way. Many people already experience digital delivery of films and television through their cable boxes, which is a service that the MPAA and similar organizations endorse. Others happily avoid both pay-per-view and the movie theatre by downloading movie files from the internet. This last fact is where the discussion over fair use of intellectual property is most required. For the moment, I will ignore the tragicomedy surrounding the MPAA’s numerous legal suits pending against consumers who wanted to see MPAA films. Instead I want to focus more on the media distribution system itself.

Currently, there is no technological limitation to the immediate digital delivery of films, television, and music. Those among us who know where to locate such things on the net can tell you that downloaded films are often of comparable quality to a DVD. In some cases, downloads are of superior technical quality than the official release – think of high definition, which was not available until a few months ago.In the case of a few select films, marketing decisions might render a particular DVD issue less-than-optimal. North American issues are frequently censored or otherwise altered in order not to offend the more “puritanical” mores believed to exist in this continent.



Stanley Kubrick’s unfinished 1999 film Eyes Wide Shut, for example, has a highly problematic North American release. The film was digitally altered so that it would receive an R rating, and as such the narrative continuity between audience and protagonist is demolished (ie: the film’s meaning changes). Now I myself am an adult with the emotional maturity to handle looking at an erect penis or a simulated act of fellatio. Apparently, so are Europeans, who were treated to a non-altered DVD issue. Thanks to the brilliant marketing decision to incorporate region-coded limitations into the DVD format, I cannot even play a legitimately purchased European DVD on my North American player. I have to point out that it is highly likely that Stanley Kubrick wanted me to see the version of the film that he actually made, and not one that is region-specific. In this spirit I feel fully confident in my rights as a consumer to download a European DVD-rip, burn it to a disc, and then show this version to students or friends. Since I feel that I am more enlightened about this issue than the marketing department at Warner Brothers, I will supercede their authority over which version I am allowed to watch. When contacted, the MPAA mentioned that each region gets the “optimal” version of the film, and that region coding is intended to curb piracy. It seems that China is at the heart of the issue, and here we come back to the IPI report.

For a film to be considered “legitimate”, it has to go through regular distribution channels, involving lawyers, middlemen, retail expenses, and mark-ups galore. Since so many people get a slice of the revenue, that pie needs to be big enough that everyone is satisfied. The IPI (by extension the MPAA) argued that piracy has cost all of these people their livelihoods (more specifically: $5.5 billion in “lost” earnings; 141,000 new jobs not(!) created; film studios losing 10% of their potential revenue). At this stage it should be noted that all these “loses” remain in the jurisdiction of potentiality. To be fair, there is a case for the loss of potential revenue, however misguidedly optimistic such a concept might initially seem. At the same time however, we cannot let considerations of possibilities consume the argument, which should be focussed on both consumer rights and intellectual property rights. I have a right as a consumer of a cultural product to a direct relation with the art involved; I will not have that right taken away from me by non-artists who believe that marketing concerns trump aesthetic or philosophical ones. Out of this comes a dictum of sorts: it is more important to experience art than to pay for that experience. In this guise, call me a communist if you must.



In China, the consumers are winning. The reason for this is simple: the Chinese market has rejected the idea that films should cost as much as they do in the rest of the world. When the cost of producing a DVD is around 50 cents (not a burn, which can be significantly cheaper than 50 cents, but an officially-printed disc), it should not be sold at retail for more than ten times that price. Consequently, when Hollywood attempted its North American standard pricing of $24.99 - $34.99 it was almost laughed out of the country. No thanks, the Chinese consumer seemed to say, we’ll just make our own copies and sell them at more reasonable prices. Hollywood responded by trying to strongarm Chinese consumers into paying the “regular” price, but after almost ten years the fight has concluded. Warner Brothers recently announced that it would release the Chinese version of Superman Returns on DVD for around $2, thus pricing an official release competitively with its bootleg counterpart. Similarly, when I was in Korea I purchased an official 6-DVD boxset of Kieslowski’s Decalogue for $30, while the cheapest North American release I found was a 3-disc set for $95. I ripped the Korean DVDs to my computer thus bypassing the regional coding, then burned them to DVDs that my player would read. MPAA, please send your lawsuit to: my ass, c/o bite it.

This issue is about balancing consumer rights with those of the producers of intellectual property. I thoroughly believe that the arts deserve financial support, which can involve a significant investment on the part of the consumer. With Hollywood however, we are for the most part not really talking about art but rather product, and consumers will respond in rather mechanical ways to its consumption. Personally, I think that for North America, $5 is a good digital download price, while $10 would be a great retail price (barring limited/special issues). More DVDs would be sold, and while initially the studios would not see higher profits due to the lowered price, any dime-store business student can describe volume as more important than margins in the long-term health of a company.

Groups like the MPAA whine that the high cost of films reflects ever-increasing production costs. No offense MPAA, but that’s your fucking problem (YFP). Not too many industries complain about production expenses while continually raising them. Furthermore, in and of itself production costs do not explain the public’s dwindling interest in Hollywood properties. To paraphrase a conversation that I had with a local video rental retailer, the 2005 Pink Panther remake tanked at retail, rental, and the box-office not because of piracy or lack of marketing initiatives. That movie and many like it lost money because they fucking sucked donkeys. At the end of the day, it boils down to a simple query: why has the cost of making Hollywood films escalated to two or three hundred million dollars? Coupled with the aesthetic and narrative bankruptcy of most Hollywood releases, this trend signals to me that the writing is on the wall for this little self-important group who consider themselves to be at the forefront of world culture. I can just picture the cynics lined up on Hollywood Boulevard: there’s rampant poverty in this country, real wages are declining rapidly, jobs are being outsourced, only half the country has medical care, Asian and Indian cinema are progressing exponentially, an energy crisis is looming, etc, etc, and you are spending how much money to make a Superman movie???