I’ve been following with interest, yet not closely, the campaigns for the US presidential elections. Even though I would prefer Obama to win (along with the rest of the world, I guess…the only ones who are not sure are the Americans), I am not the right person to say what I think about the two candidates (being a Greek and all…).

I would like to talk about an observation I made about the image and how it is formed and shaped, a process which is most apparent in the land of the spectacle, the US.

None of us has any doubts as to whether everything that reaches the media is perfectly designed and controlled, in order to present the candidate in the best possible way (of course, I am talking about the official campaigns). My thought is, however, that, if everyone is so aware that what they see is nothing but a carefully constructed image, why haven’t we got past that? Well, I think we have gone past that. What we are judging now is not how good we are made to think the candidate is, but how well he conforms to the needs of image and television. In other words, a successful campaign is not one who makes the candidate look trustworthy (we all know that it is his job to be presented trustworthy), but the one who is most successful at making him look more trustworthy. Basically, we are judging the image makers and not the candidates.

OK, maybe this is not making much sense. Maybe it’s just me and not everyone thinks like that. But knowing that a candidate will make himself look as good as possible, the difference is in how this is done. This is why small things that should be unimportant become significant. A slip of the tongue (and this can happen to anybody) is given meaning and destroys the image. We know where the candidate stands and a slip of the tongue can’t change that. And if we believe he is lying, then we will not wait for a lapsus linguae to be convinced. It all comes down to the fact that he made a mistake in front of the TV and that made him look bad. That’s where the negative publicity is based. No one actually believes those commercials, but the image is hurt, nonetheless.

In the end, the candidate is judged by if he looks handsome on TV. This has not changed in centuries, only in the old days, it was public speakers who won the attention of the crowd. Being a good public speaker does not mean you know what’s good for the public; in the same way, looking good on TV doesn’t make you a leader. And yet it is one of the prerequisites for election. And even if we are able to look past that trait of a candidate, it has become one of the things we are looking for.

One can say: “This guy is smart, knows a lot about economy and foreign affairs, unfortunately he doesn’t look good on TV”. Not being TV-friendly has a value on its own; it’s not bad because people may think that the candidate is stupid. It’s bad, because it’s bad.

I’ve said too much and this has confused even me. I hope that what I want to say shows somewhere in there.

How come I end up where I started
How come I end up where I went wrong
Won’t take my eyes off the ball again
You reel me out and you cut the string.

How come I end up where I started
How come I end up where I went wrong
Won’t take my eyes off the ball again
First you reel me out and then you cut the string

You used to be all right
What happened?
Did the cat get your tongue?
Did your string come undone?
One by one
One by one
It comes to us all
It’s as soft as your pillow

You used to be all right
What happened?
Etcetera Etcetera
Thanks for whatever
Fifteen steps
Then a sheer drop

How come i end up where i started?
How come I end up where I went wrong
Won’t take my eyes off the ball again
You reel me out and you cut the string.

These are the lyrics of a very good Radiohead song called 15 Step, track #1 of their latest album InRainbows. While it is not my favorite Radiohead song, I like listening to it, because it has some interesting melodies in there (if you can call them that) and some more interesting orchestration (as always with Radiohead songs). It’s fast, it is fun (for a Radiohead song) and you can listen to it lots of times, trying to take in every little detail.

But have you looked at the lyrics? I copy-pasted the lyrics from a website, even though I believe I could write most of them on my own. As a non native English speaker, it took me a while to realize what was going on. But these lyrics are cliche after cliche after cliche. It’s like Yorke opened an Oxford Handbook of Cliches or a How to Write a Romantic Comedy book and started copying them in a semi-logical fashion.

While I am sure I can make some sense or see a pattern if I try a bit harder, does it matter. Should I make any sense? Sometimes, music is just music and you have to enjoy it for what it is and not necessarily for the depth of its lyrics. This can happen, no doubt about it, but I see nothing wrong when the lyrics, the words, the singer’s voice, all of these things are there as another instrument, as part of the orchestration. It can actually show more musical talent and music, at its best, needs no words anyway.

I am not sure if that’s the case here, but, once more, I thought I’d share my opinion.

I only watched the beginning of the opening ceremony of the olympics. I was waiting to be impressed and indeed I was. It is simply amazing what technology can achieve these days and how man can manipulate it in ways innovative and fresh. But, as always, this is not what I want to say.

I do want to talk about the countdown with the drummers who were turning on and off the lights in order to form the numbers. The upper half had the chinese numbers (presumably) and the lower half had the western (or Arabic) numerals. But the lower numbers were formed as if they were written on a calculator, they were completely square and unimaginative. One of the things that did not have to do with any amazing new technology, but had to do with coordination, practice, effort and so on, this one thing was designed to imitate digital technology of the past century. This is an interesting contrast to the parchment that unfolded in that same ceremony, which was accomplished by advanced technologies, but it imitated (or depicted) technologies that are around for thousands of years.

It seems that the more advanced technology we get the more we try to make it look natural (see 3D graphics, for example), but at the same time the more we come to think it as natural and we try to imitate it, even without using it. Borrowing from the French mentality, I would say that something like that is at the same time a convergence and a divergence of nature and technology. I can easily see a new art movement, where the painter, for example, would only draw in horizontal lines, giving form to the image gradually, no matter if he wants to paint a portrait or a tree, so that he can imitate the way an inkjet printer works. Well, if this ever happens, you heard it here first. I even want to find a name for this technique…I’ll call it printism. We needed a new -ism anyway. We can’t have enough of them…

I’ve noticed that the past few years our “society of the spectacle” is becoming more and more self-referent, i.e. people in the entertainment industry are talking more and more about themselves and other people of the entertainment industry. There are TV shows which deal exclusively with what happens on TV and what how the celebrities of TV spend their time. And they are popular, so I am guessing there is a great appeal in them. People seem to like to find out what happens in their favorite medium “in depth”.

This is not the only occurrence, however. More and more movies made are referring openly to older movies and that happens rather through the characters than through certain techniques, images or allusions. A characteristic example is perhaps the movie “The Holiday” (a fun, yet forgettable movie, just how they’re supposed to be) with Kate Winslet and Cameron Diaz. In this movie, there is no real need in the script for inclusion of the entertainment industry and yet there is a whole subplot which vindicates and glorifies the movie business. It seems to be self indulgent, at least, but I might be wrong. In the books I read I like them having allusions to other books I’ve read and loved, although they are hardly out in the open like that.

Anyway, the point I want to make is this: It seems to me that the entertainment industry has become a closed system and we are locked within it. When it was interesting to address everyday issues or even bigger issues of our lives, now it seems that the producers think that it is more interesting to talk about themselves. The most important social issue has become the entertainment industry. Take a look at the magazines in any British news stand. They are all talking about Big Brother and other similar endeavors. OK, not all, but most. People are more interested in the way things are presented on TV and in the movies and not about the actual things. It’s all a big trap and we’re all already in it.

Maybe things are not so bad, maybe I am judging them too harshly, who knows.

I’ve been reading a rather interesting book called Postmodern Media Culture written by someone called Jonathan Bignell. He obviously knows what he is talking about, he often cites and comments on the works of famous theorists and actually tries to raise a few issues like feminism and post-colonialism, which haven’t been studied thoroughly in relation to media studies. It does not matter if I agree with him or not (mostly I do), but he has obviously done a lot of research on the subject and I will probably use him a lot for my PhD.

Probably…

My problem is that he can’t spell the word “Nietzsche”. I’ve seen it in the book in lots of variations such as Neitzsche, Neitzche and Nietzsche (the last is the correct one, but he used it only once). Even in the index he mentions him as Neitzche. I am sure it is no big deal and that is a difficult word to spell (it always takes me a few seconds to remember the exact sequence of the consonants), but he writes a theoretical book, with which he wants to add his own suggestions and expand the spectrum of the particular field. And if he didn’t know how to spell Nietzsche, why didn’t he look it up? In the bibliography the name is nowhere, so this probably means that he relied on citations from others to write about him (all in all, Nietzsche is only mentioned in 3-4 pages).

What I want to say is this: While a spelling error is understandable (I am sure there are some in this post), when a book that you consider important is published, you should better triple check things like that. Any word processor software could have pinpointed the mistake. Any editor should be able to see not that it is misspelled, but that there are 3 different spellings within four lines. What does this say to us about the quality of the book and the credibility of the writer? Could it have been written in haste? Did he want to make the deadlines? Was the research done in the same way? What did he omit? How many of the books in the bibliography has he actually read? Perhaps the answer to all of that is to his defense, but since we don’t know and we can’t know, the credibility of the author is, at least, fragile.

Anyway, maybe I am just complaining for the sake of complaining. According to the index, Nietzsche will not be mentioned again in the book.

In the recent football (or soccer for some people) game between Germany and Turkey, the TV signal was down for about 5 minutes and this was hailed as a disaster by…well…everyone. It turned out that it was the bad weather’s fault that millions of people around the world could not watch the game for 5 whole minutes, so you can’t actually blame someone for it. But the disaster was still there to be talked about, analyzed, lamented and whatnot.

But what was the real problem? Was it that all these people could not watch and enjoy this game for 5 minutes? Of course not. If you exclude the Germans and Turks of the audience, then everyone else was only mildly interested (even if they do claim otherwise) and quickly forgot about the 5 missing minutes. The real problem was that people were losing money. No TV viewers means less ads, less ads means less money. I will accept the organizers’ worry as legitimate. They don’t want to lose money. Then why are we so frustrated? Why are we looking for someone to blame? These 5 minutes probably saved us some money, which we would have paid to buy things that aren’t really useful. Unfortunately, we feel sympathy for the poor people who lost money. I find this frustrating.

Another conclusion I drew from this so-called disaster is that football now is nothing more than a spectacle. Well, nobody actually needed this even to realize that, but it did make it more prominent. If what happened was truly a disaster then the first Euros and the first World Cups were a complete failure, since there was no TV coverage and people could not travel across the world to watch the games, so only locals were watching them (and they don’t bring new money in a country).

Lots of consequences come into my mind. But there is no point in elaborating. The situation is already sad as it is…

I was in London recently and I found really useful to use the underground, otherwise known as the Tube (I love the fact that by using the word “tube” one can also mean the TV). What really caught my eye is the way the advertisments are made in order to fit into the “tube experience”. I was told, while I was in the university, that the text does not matter all that much (even though, it still has to be as good as possible), since it is the image that catches the eye and all that is needed to be shown in the brand name, so it can imprint itself in the consumer’s brain (this is not exactly advertising in a nutshell and I am sure I am saying lots of things wrong, but you get the meaning).

However, there is a whole other advertising tactic in the tube. The advertisers know that those who look at the posters will be looking at them for quite some time, either while waiting for the train either inside the train itseld. That is why they have made the posters rich in text, still keeping the focus on key words, but obliging in a way the commuter/consumer to keep his or her eyes on the poster for as long as possible.

In the end, the text still doesn’t matter. What does matter is for your eyes to stay on the poster and close to the brand name as long as possible. This is an amazing advertising tactic and if it was not so bluntly manipulative, I would congratulate those who started the trend.

Anyway, the goals of advertising are known and they do not differ a lot to propaganda. This is just another tactic; not the problem.

In the next posts, I hope to write more about my London and Munich experience from my recent trip, always staying within the boundaries of media, books and (occasionally) art.

I was watching the news today on the most popular channel in Greece and one of the stories was how they had the best ratings, how they kept people informed better than their rivals, how their work had quality, how they cared about us, bringing us all the news as it should be.

I don’t believe that this is possible, but I can accept that they have the good will or the naivety to do all this stuff. However, the next story was about the wife of the owner of that channel and how important her philanthropic work is. I have no reason to doubt that her work is important, but I am sure that there are others out there with more important things to show for.

Hypocrisy, right in our face. It made me angry. I thought I should share.

I just finished reading Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Firstly, I would like to address a common misconception. Frankenstein is not how the monster is named, in fact it is never given a name. Frankenstein is the name of the young talented scientist who gives it life. Oh, and in this book, at least, there is no bride of Frankenstein (although the monster asks for one to be made), nor does the scientist screams “It’s alive, it’s alive”, when it wakes up. He doesn’t even know that it is alive, until he sees it standing over his bed. This image is actually the inspiration of the novel, according to Mary Shelley’s introduction.

In any case, I really enjoyed this book, even if most people find it boring nowadays. It starts slow, but the second half of the book is a quite compelling description of the pain and agony of playing God, when you can’t handle it (and you never can) and of evil that is born by injustice.

I would like to make two comments on this book. The first one has to do with the first paragraph of this text. It is very interesting, at least to me, how the myth of Frankenstein is completely separated by its origins. So many things that we take for granted, simply do not exist in the book. I will not say if this is good or bad. Myths have a tendency of acquiring a life of their own; According to Borges, Aladdin’s tale is not in the book of a Thousand and One Nights (also known as Arabian Nights), but it was added by an early translator. On the other hand, this particular myth seems to have been taken over by Hollywood and that has nothing to do with having a life of its own. I have addressed this issue in some of my other posts, especially the one about Fairy Tales.

The second comment is an observation about the language of the novel. The monster speaks as if he has a university degree in English or as if he is an accomplished author and yet he admits at times his ignorance on the meaning of certain words. Thank to the wonderful concept of “suspension of disbelief”, I have no issues with that choice of Mary Shelley. In fact, I quite enjoyed it, because it shows that in this novel and most probably in the majority of the novels of the era, beautiful language is of prime importance and it will not be abandoned for the sake of realism. I don’t know who was the first one, but I do know that Dickens is the most important author of that era who made his characters speak in accordance with their background. But Dickens is a whole other story and the words of his crooks and factory workers are brilliant in their own mistakes.

I wouldn’t recommend Frankenstein to those who are looking for the typical Hollywood myth. But it is a good read nonetheless.

Most major bookstores in Athens (and here I talk about exclusively -kind of- bookstores) have a really small sections where they sell a couple dozens of music CDs. If one were to examine this small stock of music, he or she would see that it is made up of only two genres: Classical and Jazz.

I could pretend to wonder why is that, only to reach, in the end, to the conclusion that since these bookstores are visited by educated people and intelligent people, if they are to sell music, then this music must be what they prefer.

The thing is, though, that I have a big problem with that choice. What does it mean that they sell music only for the educated people? And what does it mean that they automatically assume that the educated people would only listen to classical and jazz? Furthermore, how come this elitism is selective and doesn’t spread to the actual commodity that this store is providing: books? Why do they sell all those Cosmopolitan types of books or books about true crimes or books which promote racism and xenophobia. These books sell a lot and since I want to believe myself an enthusiast of free speech (while, on the other hand, political correctness is not quite my thing), they should exist in the bookstores as long as their author wants them there. But why do these stores welcome Barbies and skinheads as their costumers, but automatically assume that if someone is to be buying music from them, it is going to be the ones who read the classics and the postmodernists and I don’t know what else. And why on earth should these people limit themselves to listening to these two types of music? I listen to classical but I have barely touched jazz. And I am sure I can find songs that I like and that a Barbie and a skinhead can also enjoy (by the way, there is no comparison or analogy between a Barbie and a skinhead; I just happened to pick these two categories as examples).

If I ask one of the managers in a bookstore like that, the answer I will get is probably that this choice is market driven. Which means that it is more possible that a so-called educated person to buy music from there, since this kind of person does not visit the record stores often; while other people will indeed go to the nearby record store to buy the latest pop or thrash metal CD. What the answer will not include is the reason behind this categorization of people and the categorization of tastes; and as we all should learn (I know I am still learning), giving labels to people can lead to dangerous conclusions.

My first reaction to seeing the kind of music being sold in the bookstores was absolutely positive. “Great! They only sell good music and not the crap that is being listened to right now”. And then I thought they sell books that are the crap that is being read right now. But of course, apart from some very basic elements, good music and good books are entirely subjective. And what I feel is stupid, might be brilliant for someone else.

The sad thing is that I kind of believe that educated people are indeed closer to listening to classical and jazz than other genres. But that should not make a difference…