Frozen Toothpaste

In her 1964 essay — if one can call an enumerated list an essay — ”Notes on ‘Camp,’” Susan Sontag delineated what she called the Camp style. Though nearly every example she gives is obscure to me, the essential traits of camp are clear: it’s exaggerated, it’s methods overwhelm its message, and it thereby becomes a parody of itself.

“Raining McCain” (playable at right), is the most delightfully bad music video I’ve seen recently. And is the quintessences of camp.

Taking off on the idea of the the Obama Girl, who herself played with elements of camp, “the McCain Girls” have created a video so campy as to be perceived as parody or satire. I’m rather confident that it was neither, and in that lies it’s brilliance.

The video laden with elements that seem too comical to be true. The effects, especially call out for attention. Of the three McCain girls, the left-most is notable primarily for her outfit. Making the mistake of wearing colors too similar to the green screen on which the after-effects were laid, she regularly and unintentionally fades into and out of the background.

Other special effects are so silly as to require attention. At one point, the disembodied head of Senator McCain bounces around the screen behind the singing girls. At another point, while full-bodied McCains are falling from the sky, the lead singer takes the opportunity to douse her face in her favorite presidential candidate.

The singing too, of a rewritten version of “It’s Raining Men,” is problematic. Not only are the girls not given the benefit of the technology used by professional singers to improve harmonizing, but there are also notable times when they seem to forget the words. The effect is damning in a video that already feels campy.

All of these reasonable mistakes combine to create a video more funny that serious. Whose message is largely lost in the over-wrought and flawed execution of the concept. And which has gotten ever-increasing attention for its flawed execution and not it’s political messages. Unsurprisingly, the commenter seem rather confused as to rather the videos serious or satire. That, then, is perhaps the state of camp today.

As Ms. Sontag said,

One must distinguish between naïve and deliberate Camp. Pure Camp is always naive. Camp which knows itself to be Camp (“camping”) is usually less satisfying.

The commenter’s mistake is made because in the last few decades fake camp has proliferated. One need only remember the recent Snakes on a Plane or the older True Lies to understand the proliferation of intentional camp.

But these are, indeed, less satisfying. Something that sets out to be “campy” is automatically cursed by its self-awareness. It comes across in the reception, which even for the relatively well-executed True Lies was mixed.

This is what makes “Raining McCain” so interesting. In an era where we’ve forgotten what it’s like to be genuine, serious, and deeply flawed, here come three woman to show us the glory of truly naïve camp. I, for one, am very grateful for them.

A slightly different poem than usual. “The Aliens” is from the famously tortured Charles Bukowski, and it wears that fact on it’s sleeve. I suppose that even though I don’t really empathize with the poem, it seemed an apt follow-on to the dissatisfied commentary I presented yesterday.

you may not believe it
but there are people
who go through life with
very little
friction or
distress.
they dress well, eat
well, sleep well.
they are contented with
their family
life.
they have moments of
grief
but all in all
they are undisturbed
and often feel
very good.
and when they die
it is an easy
death, usually in their
sleep.

you may not believe
it
but such people do
exist.

but I am not one of
them.
oh no, I am not one
of them,
I am not even near
to being
one of
them

but they are
there

and I am
here.

If you’re interested in a different style of presentation, try out this rather good animation of the poem.

I’ve become a parody of myself. I think it started — the day I was born is too easy an answer — on August 16, 2007. That was the fateful day when I made a posting schedule for this site.

Then I made the mistake of following said schedule. Looking back on what I wrote that day, I find it terribly ironic that I fiercely fought against an anonymous boogie man who would hold me to that schedule. It turned out he didn’t need to hold me to it, I do that myself.

So on Mondays I dutifully write reviews. Bad ones. About movies I’ve seen that are old enough to be easy to get my hands on and obscure enough that their age isn’t easy for the public at large to remember. If I haven’t seen any movies that fit that bill recently, I usually scramble together a review of something random that needs no reviewing. I don’t review books because, well, I don’t know how to read.

And then on Tuesday’s I usually write something about the weather. Though the day’s ostensibly reserved for “everyday” topics there are only two things I can manage to fit onto that idea: self-help tripe that I think myself better than, or harmless (and thus meaningless) blather about how the weather’s been. For someone who disdains to talk about the weather in person, the irony of this is inescapable.

By Wednesdays, I’ve usually found a moderately consequential topic of national or international significance on which I can offer vague platitudes that befit my modest level of understanding. I have a strict prohibition against saying anything that will betray my ignorance, and thus tend to say nothing at all. When I come close to saying something, I always make sure to preface it with 100 self-deprecating statements about how “this is just how it looks to me.”

On Thursdays, I desperately hope that I’ve come up with an idea strange enough to write a relatively easy installment of Dispatches. Failing that, I tend to bluff my way to “long enough” by writing something about writing, especially writing on this site. In case you’d forgotten, this was written for a Thursday.

Fridays are meant as a day where I have to do nothing. In order to fulfill that goal, I almost always steal poems from The Writer’s Almanac or passages from books I used to read when I still knew how.

When the weekend comes, I’m ready and waiting to start the cycle of unintentional self-parody all over again.

soldiersmediacenter

There’s been a lot of talk recently — especially among America’s chattering left — about how dire it is that Americans have forgotten about Iraq. Today being the five year anniversary of the invasion, what better day is there tackle the issue? I, one who listens quite often to the chattering left, have forgotten about Iraq. I’m wondering how anyone can not have forgotten Iraq.

To be clear, I’ve not forgotten about the country. I’ve not forgotten about what an debacle the after-invasion rebuilding effort was. I’ve not forgotten how incorrect the majority of commentators were about the necessity of going to war there. But I have stopped thinking about it.

The news of another bombing and of more American casualities no longer strikes as a tragedy or even unusual. It sounds like the same old news. And whether 4 or 40 or 400 died today if will surely fail to register with any of the needed depth.

I have come to accept the death of four of five Americans a week — and at least ten times as many Iraqis — as par for the course. This is not to say that I think the president was right or is right; he’s foolish if he really thinks that serving in Iraq is exhilarating more than it is terrifying.

But as galling as that recent statement was, as galling as a death of any single person is, there’s only so much worry or anger I can contain. Josef Stalin’s often credited with the phrase “One death is a tragedy, one million is a statistic.” Similarly, during the Great Depression Harry Hopkins noted that “You can pity six men, but you can’t keep stirred up over six million.”

It’s a sad but true fact that my suffering causes me great pain and heartache. And at times where the suffering of others is made most plain to me, I can sometimes feel the same about their suffering. But the suffering those soldiers and civilians, injured, dead, or mourning, is not something I spend a great deal of time worrying about. Nor do I manage to worry enough about the mental welfare of troop constantly redeployed at heretofore unheard of frequency. The constant and apparently mild scale of tragedy is more than the average citizen can (or wants to) regularly worry about.

I have no doubt that hundreds if not thousands of people suffer anew every week that the simmering conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan continue. I have no doubt that many of those suffering are Americans like me. It’s a tragedy that they have to suffer for the war there.

And though Iraqis and Afghans clearly suffered under the tyrannical regimes in their recent past, that doesn’t do much to diminish the suffering they’re now experiencing during the turbulent struggle for their countries. It’s a tragedy that this conflict, however terrible it’s predecessor, hasn’t been resolved by now.

But it’s not the kind of tragedy that has made me — until I sat down to write this — pay attention. It’s that miss-able kind that I don’t see and don’t hear and don’t remember. And so I, like much of the population, forget and ignore the terrible cost to this country and its citizens of this war. I, like much of the population, don’t worry nearly enough about the cost to civilians on the ground of this war. Of any war.

It’s an ugly truth that within days of publishing this with a heavy heart about the suffering I’ve so frequently ignored, I will again have pushed the suffering in Iraq, and engendered by the events in Iraq, out of my mind. I’ve certainly done it before. Though I agree that it’s a tragedy, I simply don’t have the power or will to constantly remember and despair at the ugly cost of war. That’s ugly, but it’s true.

Ctd 2005

If you get the chance, be sure to watch the snow falling on a mid-March evening. It may be unexpected, and it may be delaying the spring you’ve been anticipating. You should still make sure that you look out the window as the sun you haven’t seen all day sets. Be sure to notice how you can make out the pink even when you can’t make out the sun.

Be sure to look out at the still-falling snow on a mid-March night. As the street lamp and the everywhere-white of the weather makes it far lighter than it should be. Don’t be bitter about the street light, without it you couldn’t see the sight nearly so well.

Be sure to sleep late the next morning and imagine that the snow’s a foot thick. You don’t know what it will be like when you look out the window, so be sure to savor the possibility that nature has impressed you as you huddle under the covers and enjoy the accumulated warmth. Be sure, too, to appreciate that warmth. There’s no telling how hot or cold the floor of the kitchen will be when your still-bare feet hit it in a few minutes.

Be sure to avoid going outside as long as you can. And make sure that while you do so you imagine it being inhospitably cold, like the South Pole. This illusion will make the extremely temperate 34°F feel nearly balmy when you do finally have to go out.

And do be sure to go out. It’s a highly under-rated thing, trudging through a small accumulation of snow and enjoying the winter wonderland that materialized outside your window overnight.

Be sure to take some time to watch melting snow fall off a chain-link fence. It may sound about as exciting as paint drying, but it’s abstract art at it’s finest. Without purpose or reason or known creator. Watch the odd patterns that seem to drive the random size and position of the chunks as they fall. Puzzle if there’s a reason for that, or anything else.

Be sure to notice how unremarkable it is to be back inside. Notice how that unremarkableness differentiates a March snowstorm from a January snowstorm.

And finally, be sure to watch through the afternoon as the winter wonderland melts away. How quickly it goes in the March weather. How thorough the illusion was that morning, how absent it was by the evening. Consider what, if anything, this means to your and your life.