To Be Old Is to Be Loved: New Order - "True Faith"

Okay, so I'm a tad late to the game on this one, having discovered New Order's "True Faith" (from the Substance 1987 compilation) only in the last year. So I'm young, okay?

But good god, it's absolutely unbelievable magic. Wikipedia claims that the original lyrics included the lines "Now that we've grown up together/They're taking drugs with me," but in fact it's the finalized version (allegedly changed out of fear of being ostracized by radio), "Now that we've grown up together/They're afraid of what they see" that I find the most affecting.

Quickly rocketing up to the same rarefied Tree of Hearts echelon that currently houses Björk's "Hyperballad", Pet Shop Boys' "What Have I Done To Deserve This?", and Kate Bush's "Hounds of Love", would it be gushing to say I love this song? 

Below is the unforgettable video. Seriously, why don't they make all videos like this anymore? 



...And an amazing remix by the legend that is Shep Pettibone:


True Faith (Shep Pettibone Remix) by djrightonbeat

Enter Japan

Gaspar Noé's visually terrifying, frequently exasperating new film Enter the Void is many things. It is a trying, baldly shocking film that is the closest approximation to a nightmare I have ever seen in a movie theater. It is also a harrowing depiction of the cost of chemically-induced euphoria, of the ruin of ceding the body to goalless indirection. Looking past the LSD, the "Tibetan Book of the Dead," the menacing flirtations with incest and trauma, however, is also a tale of the experience of being a foreigner in Japan.

With its numerous lingering shots of an endless neon Tokyo, it seems hard to believe that the setting of this movie could ever be overlooked. Yet the light and noise of the Tokyo of Enter the Void is so overwhelming, so ubiquitous, that at some point in the roughly two-and-a-half hour extravaganza one indeed begins to lose sight of it. Perhaps this is due to the hypnotic, numbing effect of the camera's cyclical swinging shots, the narrative repetition, or the near-total lack of major Japanese characters.

Perhaps, as a viewer who is fond of Japan, the setting fades as a sort of defensive mechanism against the noxious, self-destructive behavior of the movie's Western protagonists, content as they are to let their Japanese friends read their pregnancy tests and have sex with them but never, you know, actually have meaningful conversation with them.

All throughout this film full of artful, balletic self-destruction, all I could think was: Who is the victim here? Who is to blame? Are these clueless white people viewing Japan as nothing more than their own hedonistic, neon-washed playground? Or are they being swallowed whole by a culture that is relentlessly homogeneous? (Japan is 98.5% Japanese). Where notions of ingroup and outgroup are embedded within the very language? Where the youth population is growing smaller, killing themselves in greater numbers, and increasingly retreating into online worlds?

Or is their self-destruction really no different than self-destruction anywhere else in the world?

Some have called this film "pure cinema," a "mash-up of the sacred, the profane, and the brain-dead." Indeed, its visual ingenuity and frequently disturbing aura lingers long after the film's ludicrous ending.

But all I could think about as I watched it was of being a foreigner in Japan.

A Frantic Search: Finding Meaning After Tragedy

The recent shooting outside Tuscon, Arizona has unleashed a flood of impassioned rhetoric, unsurprising given the extent of the violence and the status of the gunman's target (congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords). The question at the center of the debate has been whether or not the rhetoric that preceded the shooting, often violent in its tone, contributed to this tragedy.

Prominent psychologist Drew Westen at Emory University cited a "culture of hate" permitted in Arizona and in other parts of the country as at least partial explanation for the event. His point is that we (and the violently mentally ill among us), do not live in a vacuum. Regardless of whether shooter Jared L. Loughner was ideologically a member of the Tea Party or not, addicted to marijuana or videogames, regardless of the endless explanations we will search for in the effort to make sense of this tragedy, he did not live in a vacuum.  He, and others like him, live in a culture. A culture where apocalyptic, frequently violent rhetoric permeates freely.

Paul Krugman was not surprised by the effects of what he called this "climate of hate," writing that "something about the current state of America has been causing far more disturbed people than before to act out their illness by threatening, or actually engaging in, political violence." Indeed, there seems to be an intuitive link between individuals with serious mental illness, such as schizophrenia, and violent rhetoric in the culture at large. (The media has been quick to regard Loughner as schizophrenic without evidence of an official diagnosis, although he has been labeled by a psychiatrist as a "textbook case"). This intuition is likely bolstered by the pervasive attitude that the majority of schizophrenics, specifically paranoid schizophrenics, are violent. This attitude, however, is misinformed. In but one study, from 2002, Jeffrey W. Swanson and colleagues found a 1-year prevalence rate of violence in just 13% of their more than 800 patients diagnosed with serious mental illness ("The social-environmental context of violent behavior in persons treated for severe mental illness"). This figure, they noted, is higher than that of the general population, but nevertheless reveals that the vast majority of individuals with serious mental illness, such as schizophrenia, are not violent. Nevertheless, a real or suspected diagnosis of schizophrenia is a common theme of the media coverage of many of these tragedies (see the 2007 Virginia Tech shooting for merely one recent example).

Previous debates surrounding the effect of violent videogames is evidence of this frantic search for meaning after tragedy, such as those that followed the 1999 Columbine shooting, which frequently focused on the role of games such as id Software's seminal Doom on the mentally unstable minds of the shooters. The quest to identify that important cultural piece that explains a killer's motivation, that dispels the frightening specter of meaningless loss, whether it be Doom in the Columbine shooting, the Columbine-inspired Gus Vant Sant movie Elephant in the 2005 Red Lake High School shooting, or the South Korean movie Oldboy in the Virginia Tech shooting, is unending, particularly when the perpetrators are young.

Yet finding that meaning often involves disentangling an individual's mental illness from the vast web of cultural influences that an individual is constantly immersed in, which can be nearly impossible. Furthermore, a number of cognitive biases are at work when we make such dubious connections. The hindsight bias leads us to retrospectively interpret events as predictable, and in this case leads us to link events that are, in fact, unconnected (itself an example of an illusory correlation). This is especially true when the event of interest is emotionally charged, as the recent shooting in Tuscon could certainly be qualified. That is not to say that marijuana, videogames, or political ideology had no effect on the mind of this mentally unstable individual. But it does raise questions about our--and by "our" I also mean the media's--ability to dispassionately assess the situation.

Regardless of where our blame eventually falls, we must be cognizant of not only why we're searching for an explanation, but who we might damage in the process. Ending Sarah Palin's presidential ambitions or dismantling the Tea Party may be a favorable outcome; increasing the stigma of the thousands of individuals living with serious mental illness is not. David Brooks recently called the coverage of the event the result of a news media that is "psychological ill informed but politically inflamed." His point rightly brings the role of the media into play, but ultimately the media merely reacts to our own desires. In our frantic, emotionally-charged quest for meaning in loss, we only magnify the tragedy by engulfing dubiously related targets in the maelstrom, clouding the truth in the process.

Do You Need Someone To Talk To?

Gossip's Beth Ditto has recorded an EP with Simian Mobile Disco, available to purchase here. It's like Yazoo for 2011. It's very, very good.

Preview:

Beth Ditto EP preview by Deconstruction Records

You Feel Like Paradise

Yes, the new Britney Spears single is amazing. Ludicrous dubstep middle eights will own 2011.

Listen:

Britney Spears - Hold It Against Me by djraize

Today I Feel the Mood

Stunning video to Clare Maguire's  first official single, "The Last Dance," due for release in the UK on February 20th.

The Sound of Hype: What Does It Mean To Be #1?

The BBC has once again solicited the opinions of the UK music industry to create a list of individuals considered most "promising" for the coming year. This year, Essex native Jessie J was crowned #1. In the words of the BBC, Jessie J is ready to ascend to the "next level of quality and recognition" in 2011.

However, perusing previous winners since the list's inception nine years ago reveals fascinating disparities that challenge that proclamation, as well as raise questions about the value of topping this list. For one point of comparison, let's look at the Metacritic scores of the debut albums of each year's #1 pick with that year's #5 pick. (Note: For the 2007 list, #3 pick Klaxons was used because neither the #4 nor the #5 pick had their debuts listed on Metacritic). Averaging the scores of each of the eight years' #1 picks and the #5 picks reveal that the average score for the #5 picks' debut was eleven points higher (77/100) than the #1 picks' (66/100) (a statistically significant difference, by the way, with p=.002).  

In every single year the #5 pick received a higher Metacritic score on their debut album than the #1 pick. Fascinatingly, when the same comparison is made between each year's #2 pick with that year's #1 pick, the #2 picks had debut albums with a Metacritic score on average eight points higher (74/100). (Note: In what is perhaps a telling mark of a particularly unpromising year, 2007's #3 pick Klaxon's debut was again used for this comparison because the #2 pick, The Twang, did not have their debut listed on Metacritic. On a side note, 2007 also had the lowest Metacritic-scored debut of a #1 pick (55/100 by Mika) in the list's history).

So why the surprising inverse relationship? If those polled are indeed picking their "favourite" new artists, why are the acts everyone seems the most excited about, the ones that get the top spot, ultimately viewed less favorably than the other picks?

Perhaps a look at another variable--chart position--can illuminate why coming first in the BBC poll does not put an artist at a critical advantage. Even though they are instructed not to base their decisions on "hype or size of record deal," but rather on "quality," choosing the "best, most exciting" upcoming acts, it is possible that the individuals polled tend to gravitate toward acts they deem the most likely to succeed in terms of sales, and not in critical acclaim. Indeed, when one compares the average peak UK Album Chart position of the debut album of each year's #1 pick with each year's #5 pick, one sees an average seven chart placement difference between the top picks' debuts (#2) and the #5 picks' debuts (#9). 

Perhaps it is worth looking at who is doing the picking, instead. Although it is worth noting that music critics alone do not comprise the selectors for each year's list (with presenters, producers, editors and bloggers also included), one might assume that their opinions would not deviate dramatically from those of the others, seeing as how they are all included under the "tastemaker" umbrella by the BBC. However, "quality" and "promising" are vague--an act likely to succeed in the mind of a critic might naturally involve receiving higher review scores, whereas sales might be the marker of success for a producer or editor. If less critics than insiders are polled, acts more likely to succeed commercially, but not necessarily critically, would chart higher (however there are wrinkles: Consider Lady Gaga's #6 placing in 2009). Indeed, in this year's poll, only 25 out of the 161 solicited (about 15%) were labeled "Writers and Critics."

Of course, one must also consider the role of the poll results themselves on the buying public. The poll is as much about prediction as it is influence. Even still, artists like Little Boots and The Bravery are proof that coming in first in the poll does not equal huge chart success, as both their debut albums peaked at number five in the charts (compared to the mass of #1 debuts by the other top picks).

So what can be learned from all of this? Despite occasional exceptions, based on averages in the poll's (albeit brief) history, bet on Jessie J getting the sales while Clare Maguire gets the accolades. Yes, getting #1 in the poll does mean something, but maybe not quite what it claims to mean.

The Beauty of Madness: Pop Psychology in Black Swan

In her New York Times review of Darren Aronofsky's latest film, Black Swan, Manohla Dargis warns against "pop-psychological interpretations" that "flatten" this unabashedly manipulative, maddening extravaganza of high and low impulses. Indeed, such an interpretation risks giving the director more credit than he perhaps deserves, more interested in beautifully destroying his female subject than he is psychoanalyzing her. But ignoring all psychological interpretations of any artwork drains the very life from it, rendering the piece impotent and ultimately drawing a dangerous line, especially for a movie one could credibly classify as a "psychological thriller."

In its continued effort throughout the 20th century to foster credibility and reduce damaging misconceptions, the oft-lamented, frequently indestructible field of "pop psychology" has been something of an anathema to the rest of the field of psychology. Modern psychologists strive for both precision and complexity, demystifying the once impenetrable recesses of the mind, often with rigorous scientific methodology and the latest in technology. Pop psychology continually threatens to destroy all of that effort with over-simplified generalizations and outright misinformation. In the new self-help world, everyone is an expert. Or should I say "expert"? There within the sarcastically negating quotation marks lies the rub. Is there value to the work of the indefatigable pop psychologist? That is, can an individual not formally trained in psychology espouse any psychological truth? If the answer is no, then what implications does such a belief have on how we interpret artwork? Should a piece of art ever be psychologically interpreted? Does it matter if the piece seems to invite such an interpretation, or resist it? In short, when does such an interpretation "flatten," say, a movie?

To return to Manohla Dargis' original quote, I suspect that what she means is that, like most criticism leveled at pop psychology, a pop psychological interpretation simplifies the artistic credibility of the piece by seeming to have all the answers. Good art, in Dargis's view, resists the kind of easy interpretations that pop psychology invites, unsettling the viewer's preconceptions and demanding novel thoughts.

To argue for value in such an interpretation one must turn to the related, less derided cousin field of "folk psychology," often conceptualized as "mindreading" in social psychology or "theory of mind" in developmental psychology. Folk psychology, as originally conceived, concerns itself with the psychological insights that people make on an everyday basis. How do lay people think about the mind? This is a question with significant implications, because we are all folk psychologists. Every one of us, as human beings, must think about the minds of others in order to navigate our social world, and judgments and decisions are made every single day based on this supremely unscientific form of knowledge.

With the wealth of knowledge available to us now from decades of work on the ways in which individuals think about others' minds, it would seem that pop psychology, which is essentially folk psychological interpretations magnified and disseminated (to often misinforming ends), must have some value, despite its frequent dissociation from science. And ultimately that is what that the battle is all about: Science versus willful ignorance of science. Pop psychology purports truth without (or with dubious) evidence, training, and knowledge. Yet it is also a product of the mind, and is thus worth studying and taking seriously, as long as one understands it for what it truly is.

What, in fact, is the purpose of flirting with mental illness (delusions, paranoia, compulsions) in any piece of work while resisting psychological interpretations? Is it to upend our conceptions of what can be interpreted in art? Does a psychological interpretation somehow render the piece mundane, neutralizing the mysterious fog of madness with DSM-approved diagnoses?

A resistance to pop-psychological interpretations of art would seem to ironically perpetuate the kind of misinformation and willful ignorance that gives the field its bad name. In other words, resisting psychological interpretations maintains the kind of vaguely romanticized haze of indefinable madness, bereft of knowledge and hopelessly antiquated, that pop psychology frequently and unwittingly dabbles in.

To return to the issue of art criticism, claiming that a pop psychological interpretation "flattens" a piece effectively denies the role of the psychological in the piece outright. It drains the piece of meaningful interpretation and misses the point of criticism of any artwork entirely.