By Tyler Coburn
Dr. Timothy Schweitzer collects tics like his son, Randall, collects baseball cards. Sunlight makes his skin itch. Light bulbs cause him to shudder. And proximity to other people engenders vomiting fits. Which is perhaps why, on this brisk afternoon in November, I interview Dr. Schweitzer from afar—I, third booth on the left in Dottie’s Pancake House; he, fifteen feet and two glass walls away, nestled in the stomach of his Volvo. Cell phone reception is fairly good and the waitresses remain unobtrusive.
Tyler: Dr. Schweitzer, you have been a gargantuan presence in academia ever since the publication of your 1993 paper, “Double Dog Dare: The Resuscitation of the Real”. This seminal text posited reality television as the one hope for the real world in the face of the mass network of technological “simulacra sites”. Can you briefly outline the origins of this work?
Dr. Schweitzer: Well, it all arose from two scenarios, which I will title ‘Primary Genesis’ and ‘Secondary Genesis’. By ‘Primary Genesis’ I reference that moment, 65 million years ago, when there were large reptiles (dinosaurs, naturally) and cars and televisions and satellite dishes. Now, I draw almost all evidence from the chanteuse Bjork’s lyricism for she, as is apparent to all of Iceland and pockets of the greater world, is the world’s only cogent historian and prophet. An excerpt from “The Modern Things” will suffice: “All the modern things/Like cars and such/Have always existed/They’ve just been waiting in a mountain/For the right moment/Listening to the irritating noises/Of dinosaurs and people… they’ve just been waiting/To come out/And multiply/And take over/It’s their turn now.”
T: Let me get this straight. According to your theory (and, by reference, Bjork’s) machines lived in mountains during the dinosaur age?
DS: A mountain, specifically. And there were spaceships and satellites, though these of course were not yet space-bound because, quite simply, there were no humans around to control them. No, these objects were in no way active in the human sense but performed functions intrinsic to their beings. What functions did these objects perform? I cannot entirely say, nor can any human, for we are incapable of perceiving beyond our ‘perspective of functionality.’ You see—and this is my point—cars and other machines don’t give much. Between Pasiphaë and Catherine the Great, we humans have had much better luck with the animal kingdom.
T: Your implication is evident. Um, so back to the mountains?
DS: Mountain! But Pasiphaë is relevant here. Every morning, at the first burst of sunlight, the mountain would spread its rocks to yawn. It was during this brief period—never exceeding a minute—that the enclosed machines would see the “real world.” And what a terrible world it was to them, with fleshy creatures of all sorts spawning fleshy familiars. Picture the Sistine Chapel as conceived by Heironymus Bosch. Perhaps this begins to approximate the machine perception of the external world.
T: It certainly sounds frightening.
DS: Oh yes, but you see, this being-consuming terror was necessary for the machines’ path to dominance and not, I might add, dissimilar from that of the slaves’ in Genealogy of Morals. As Nietzsche has written (and I apologize if I misquote): “The beginning of the slaves’ revolt in morality occurs when ressentiment itself turns creative and gives birth to values: the ressentiment of those beings who, being denied the proper response of action, compensate for it only with imaginary revenge.”
T: Amazing! I happen to have a copy of Genealogy of Morals here on the counter, and you’ve quoted it perfectly. Nietzsche goes on to say—
DS: “Slave morality says ‘no’ on principle to everything that is ‘outside’, ‘other’, ‘non-self.’”
T: Precisely! I can see that you’ve memorized the Diethe translation. Do you fare as well with the Kaufmann?
DS: Look, we’re diverging here. I can feel Nietzsche sliding further down into the pits with every additional irrelevance. This is the point: this “no” to the outside is the essential imperative of technology. That which is extrinsic is negated and replaced with a fantasy intrinsic to technology. It is a fantasy that has been germinating since that moment, 65 million years ago. It is a fantasy in which technological dominance both occurs and is performed, in which technology arts (like television) continuously perform the overthrow of technology.
T: So all television programming is an allegory for technological overthrow?
DS: Well, in layman’s terms, I suppose that flies. So, if we are playing at being laymen for a moment, let me provide an example: look at your TV stars—they’re all automatons!
T: And we can find all of this in Nietzsche? Amazing! He never stops giving…
DS: No, no. Sadly, the N man failed to perceive the wave of technological ressentiment. Though the slave class enjoyed a period of rule over their former masters, it was for but a short duration. Eventually they were remolded as slaves to a new master: technology. This process largely began in the Enlightenment, during which a small but well-built army of robots hypnotized the public at large with philosophies of “subjective rationality.” What followed was an era of egocentrism (and, more importantly, egocentrism linked to scientific creation) in which technology, much to its delight, was perceived as the human object, when it was in truth the ruling subject. Descartes himself was the alpha-automaton. What was it he once famously said? “Kick a dog, or vivisect a dog, and it yelped not out of pain but like the spring in a clock being struck.” He actually did that, you know! Actually tried to kick those poor mutts! And all to draw suspicion away from his automated self…
T: How does all of this relate to reality television?
DS: Well, let’s go back to the mountain for a moment. I haven’t finished my story. Each morning the mountain gapes and the machines shudder in fear at the images it discloses. Fear, resentiment, the desire to overthrow and rule—Bjork and Nietzsche, tried-and-true. Now, the ‘Primary Challenge’ is also the ‘Primary Genesis’. As follows: one morning, the television approached the mountain before it had opened itself to yawn. It audaciously claimed that, one glorious day, machines would overthrow first the mountain, then the living world. It propounded total organic subservience, the suppression and ultimate elision of the real world through technological and televisual simulacra. “In the end,” proclaimed the television, “I will be the record of the world, but no world known to the average being. It will be a world coded in fantasy—of immense edifices of pearlescent marble and indolent and ravishing women with loose morals and plentiful bank accounts. This world, in short, will be the equivalent of a sexy numerical two-piece.”
T: What was the television referring to?
DS: ‘90210’, obviously. All of the television’s prophecies were of specific episodic programming that would “come into being.” He used the ‘90210’ one so much because the numbers in its title gave his argument that extra oomph.
T: What happened next?
DS: Well the mountain collected the television in its crags, spread its jaws and hurled the little box out onto a grassy field. The television remained in exile from the mountain for 27 days, and during this period it was forced to copulate with a fleshy being. The exact type of being remains unknown, as the television suffered continual fits of psychogenic shock during those days. The little Minotaur child spawned in the lovemaking, however, has finally been made known to the world—it’s reality television!
T: So reality television was a hybrid born to counter the eventual domination of the technological?
DS: Precisely, and it does so by infiltrating televisual fantasy with mimesis (or, I should qualify, the semblance of mimesis). Shots of ‘Real World’ cast members are more mimetic than any shot in episodic programming. I don’t care what you say about the array of artificial structures underpinning the show—the unbelievable house, the manipulative and dramatic editing, the impeccable physiques of the characters. An opportunistic egoist is still an opportunistic egoist! Nowhere else do I get this type of buzz on television. My body courses with energy! For a moment, I feel I can turn on the lights and throw a party! Self-transcending, that’s what the experience is. And why? Because it’s television with referents. Because it’s television-transcending. I know you’re probably scoffing behind that cup of coffee, as well I would expect of any jaded crit-brat. “Transcendence was buried in 19th Century, temporarily exhumed in Modernism and now firmly laid to rest for a reason.” So you must think. Well, I’m not “New Earnestness” and I’m not reactionary either. I am, simply put, a mountain, and I gape every morning to pour light into my cavern!
T: Dr. Schweitzer, I would never for a minute accuse you of being…reactionary.
DS: Let’s forget it. The moment has passed.
T: So…what about the Second Genesis?
DS: Hmm? Oh yes. I was sitting at home watching The Christmas Story. Ever seen it? Damn fine movie. I love that scene where the kids “Dog Dare” and “Double Dog Dare” one another. And that’s precisely what reality television is. The “Double Dog Dare”.
No comments:
Post a Comment