Abstract

Defining the Cinematic: An Understanding of Joyce's "Wandering Rocks" as a Cinematic Text


Media, in all its incarnations throughout the past century, has led many scholars to questions concerning the modes and methods of media production.  However, within this period of study scholars have sought to understand how and when adaptation from one medium to another is not only produced but the intricacies that allow that production to function.  While this is an interesting and relevant line of study for many fields in cultural and humanitarian scholarship, this paper will deal with the function of a written text as film-like.  Many scholars of the Frankfurt school, including Benjamin, Horkheimer and Adorno, and the mid 20^th century French philosophical movement, Deluze and Guattari, have previously explored the manufacture and fundamental problems of the creation of a media text in this century.  However, they have not delved into how a written text, such as a novel, portrays film-like features and how those features either succeed or fail as a text.  This paper will focus on James Joyce’s the “Wandering Rocks,” a chapter within Ulysses, and will enunciate how and when Joyce adapts cinematic features, such as script, movement, dialogue, and camera focus, to his texts.  Can a text be a remediation  of film and if it is a reader reading into it or not?  This explication will focus on understanding how to correctly read a written text as cinematic and whether a writer can in fact properly manufacture the same features evident in a film within their written texts.  

USU As A Network

                First off two things: one, Spinuzzi has a wicked sense of humor that is hard to ignore at certain junctures in this book; secondly, (putting on my Seinfeld voice) what is the deal with all his references to Christian theology?  He seems to want to canonize the idea of network, or net work, as savior.  Interestingly, he does create an interesting dialogue between the two warring factions; something that religion has striven to do, or not do depending on your perspective, for centuries. 

                As I was reading chapter two a few things got me thinking hard about networks as Spinuzzi describes them at our University.  First, “Texts such as e-mails, technologies such as switches, humans such as technicians, and money in all its form put each other into motion, and mediate each other, and transform each other” (Spinuzzi, 2008, p. 40).  This is such an evocative phrasing and vision of what a network is I would like to propose it as the genesis of our network at USU.  Texts obviously play a huge part but what are they doing currently for us?  Well, first off we are constantly bombarded with texts within any university setting, and if you are not then you are doing something wrong.  Whether it is an email to a Dean or to a student, a new text in our field from outside the University, or a new bylaw in the code of conduct text influence us constantly and they change our perceptions of how things create or destroy rhizomes. Secondly, the technologies that pervade the educational world are constantly in flux and challenge the perceptions of our desires within the network.  A new technology such as a PDF book scanner challenges our perceptions of how we desire information and if those desires go against the status quo.  It begs the question: if the technology is there, is it wrong to copy an entire book?  Thirdly, USU would not be a university without people at varying stages of completion of their degrees.  Even though we are constantly hoping for better retention of students, the massive amount of students that come into USU every year and wash out are boons to the monetary value of the school, because even though they do not achieve their goals their money still comes into our coffers.  Therefore the text of the school as a hope-filled and everyman enterprise is favored over the school being written as an exclusive and dominant school.  Finally, as we have seen money is huge player in any network and universities are not immune to this.  So what does this all mean in a networked situation?

                Spinuzzi does a good job examining these factors within his examination of a telecommunication company.  However, how do the same answers affect us in the USU network?  For instance, how does splicing versus weaving affect our network?  How does the difference in purpose between actor-network theory and activity theory portray itself in our network (Remember that Spinuzzi clarifies the difference as “actor-network theory is preoccupied with how power works, activity theory is preoccupied with how people work…” (2008, p.42)?  How does genre play a part in every conversation that we have at the academic level?  How are gaps being bridged between different networks in the university and, more importantly, are they effective?  These are some of the questions that I see in USU as a research site and the connections it has with Spinuzzi’s network but I think that the most important question to us here and now is: How does the network respond to and challenge monetary changes?  Are those responses and challenges appropriate?   

Gaming - An Irritating Fad That I Never Got Good At

I have struggled with this post... but here it goes.

My earliest memories of gaming were getting virtually beat up by my friend Mike.  Mike loved WWF games and every time that I tried to get closer to beating him, he sped ahead of me.  He was a computer gaming virtuoso.  He could beat me at almost every game and it left me feeling like I didn't have a forte in the realm.  Every kid in my neighborhood was obsessed with gaming and I had the wind knocked out of me, so I turned away and started reading books... and now I am an English grad student.  Interesting how that works.

It does not mean that I gave up on games altogether but in the last ten years I have become less reliant on them as a means of social engagement.  I play occasionally to relieve tension or boredom, but for the most part I don't play.  However, I grew up with the culture and I wanted to relay some feelings about that culture.

First off, I loved the chapter at the end that explained how to throw a good gaming party and the benefits relayed therein.  However, one thing that I would like to add is that gaming parties are only as good as the skill level of the group.  If everyone is on the same level of gameplay or the game allows for a level playing field then the experience is a much more enjoyable one.  However, if you are playing a game with players of differing levels or one that does not allow for a level playing field then the experience degrades significantly.  For instance, take my friend Mike.  He had all day and night to work on matches and hand-eye coordination on his own Nintendo then Playstation then Xbox.  I did not.  I always got my consoles later and the games even later; so I was always behind the curve and did not do well against other players of high skill level.  However, on a game like Tony Hawk 2 I was able to produce more wins because of the simplicity of the controls and ideas in the game.  It leveled the playing field for me.

I believe that this leveling effect is best seen in the Wii.  Its basic controls and ideas facilitate new gamers, particularly those that have never played computer games before.  Simplistic but fun, re-playable games like Wii Sports have allowed for new gamers to feel comfortable in in-game situations that are easily relatable (being in a bowling alley) and are realistic to the real world situations.  Beyond that, hyper-realistic games like Modern Warfare, though infinitely more complex than Wii Sports, allows players a real world situation to play through.  The popularity of these two games shows this principle.  One, a more realistic and simplistic game will attract new players to consoles.  Two, a complex game with hyper-realistic features will allow for greater popularity and profit.

It has been interesting to think about the role of computer games in my life.  They are not a huge part of life now, but looking back they had a role that taught me a lot about my life.

Music and Remediation

Remediation is an interesting concept for any person that consumes media on a regular basis.  The authors begin down an interesting road about music as they introduce the concept of hypermediacy and at one point state that music is the site where most hypermediacy is happening on a regular basis. However, the authors make no mention of remediation in music?  They do not include a chapter on this subject?  I thought that this was an interesting change of direction from the authors and I would like to spend a few minutes exploring the idea of remediation within music and music culture.

The authors focus on just a few base artists where hypermediacy is happening at an alarming rate.  However, I would like to argue that the entire discourse community of music is a large network of remediated actions.  One artist does something that is an elaboration or a continuation on a theme from a prior artist, then jazz and folk come along to work with these norms, but they are working on breaking them and remediating them to their own needs.  In recent years, since 1980, Hip Hop culture has been based on creating new ways of understanding music and ideas through repurposing other types of music.  For example, I watched a rapper named Theophilus London this last week use "Puttin' on the Ritz" to create a new song that creates similar themes just in a hip hop context.  I was surprised to see that David Byrne was one of the biggest examples the authors gave.  In the eighties he used Japanese play formats to create new and modern centerpieces of music.  However, Byrne as a focal point is not the best.  Groups like NWA and Public Enemy, and artists like Sage Francis and POS in hip hop and Fatboy Slim, Tiesto, and Burial used existing sounds to create new auditory collisions that both paid tribute to the prior works but also sent the genre in a new direction.  In an example that is closer to my music home, the first time that I heard Brand New sample gospel songs and then lace them to a song that has ties to Fugazi, Nirvana, and the Jesus Lizard it was like a light went on in my head.  Remediation can really show us ways to view the world in different and new ways, but also allow us to see the possibilities in the normal everyday things around us.

Here are some examples of my favorite musical remediations:

Broken Social Scene "Meet Me In The Basement" -

http://youtu.be/NiRjwpCrCMc

Brand New "Vices" (Video is unrelated, just listen to the song) -

http://youtu.be/UbONRHjtKb8

Fatboy Slim "Weapon of Choice" -

http://youtu.be/XQ7z57qrZU8

My Comments

Dr. Moeller,

Thanks for the good comments. Here are some thoughts about them.

From my reading I understood that it was a quote about the Information Revolutionists, not the cyber-marxists. DW is not positive about the material at all and the fact that he states that this is the dogma of the information revolutionists. Sorry if I did not make it clear that I understood the difference.

A cybermarx society is something that I am trying to nail down in my head and as I have more time to digest the material I will have a better idea of what I mean by that. However, I do have a feeling that it is a good explanation of the society we are in right now.

I certainly agree with DW, but I also think that we need to be wary of using Marxism in this society as we are open to the same problems that occured in the early 20th Century in Russia. Greed, over equality, always seems to win, and I am seeing that more and more in our society. Thanks,

Matt

CyberMarx and MediaMax

Cybermarx is an interesting jump within this class and it was probably good that we took a break to let our minds cool.  The jump is that we were talking about Fascism, one of the most influential dogmas of the 20^th century, and now we going to talk about one of the other influential dogmas: Marxism.  First off, it is interesting to note that as we leave the Frankfurt school and their anti-fascist lives, we are presented with a somewhat less philosophical book.  Cybermarx is certainly easier to read than D&G and Foucault, but it is no less pertinent to our society.  This true for a few reasons: its immediacy, the prose is less complicated, and the subject matter is written about now, or at least the not too distant past.  This allowed me instant attachment to the book and a much easier time adapting the text to my life.

            Although I am still formulating my thoughts on this text, there are a few ideas that really stand out.  On pg. 24, Dyer-Witheford lies out on the table, what I think, is one of the most important pieces of the information age doctrine; “These techno-economic changes are accompanied by far-reaching and fundamentally positive social transformations.”  Basically, any change in technology is essential and positive and cannot be seen in any other light.  Dyer-Witheford lays his thoughts on this somewhat emotionlessly, basically stating that according to groups that possess this new information or technology they have to be eternal optimists.  Never possessing a single doubt as to the worth of this product and how it will change our society for the good.  DW also states that the negatives are often downplayed and sometimes not even considered.  I think that most of DW’s thoughts are in the manufacturing and cybernetics departments but what about other technological advances?

            In 2005 the music industry was at the end of its rope when it came to illegal downloading.  How do they combat the millions of disgruntled customers that were sick of paying ridiculous prices for their favorite band’s new record?  How did they protect that music (information) under a single unified system?  Well, the jury is still out on that one, but Sony thought that they had it figured out.  They started pressing their records with a program called Mediamax configured into their system.  Mediamax made CDs unavailable to copy onto a hard drive and therefore un-sharable via online networks or through CD burns.  The reason why Mediamax did not survive to the present day is that, according to BBC news, “anyone putting a music CD bearing the MediaMax software in their PC introduced a vulnerability that malicious hackers could hijack to win control of a machine.”  Or basically, the music industry by saving their information (the music) they left your information (documents, credit card numbers, social security numbers, etc.) open to the world. 

            This brief anecdote displays the struggle that I have with the modern “Cybermarx” society.  DW does a good job making his case for Marxism in the technological age, however, the picture is incomplete; much like Animal Farm, we all start out equal in the technological era, once we are acclimatized to technology, but as we get further down the rabbit hole, that same equality falls to ash.  The music industry will always look for ways to screw with their customers and, honestly, that is why it is a failing industry.  If one person, high up in the music industry, would just come out and say that they messed up and they are trying to do better than they have, I would be a much less jaded individual.  As it stands, I will have to continue to be jaded for a very long time.  The base, though it has some say on what the superstructure looks like, will always draw the short end of the stick.  To the society that we live takes some of the scariest elements of both Marxism and Capitalism and creates a new monster that is, to some extent, eating our society alive. 

BBC. (2005, December 05). Anti-piracy CD problems vex Sony. Retrieved from http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4511042.stm

Questions

           Many of the chapters after the initial two are basically looking at a similar question when it comes to rhizomes.  That question being: Are lines defined by the rhizome, are the rhizomes defined by the lines, or are they so intertwined that we cannot tell which came first?  Deleuze and Guattari are able to answer this by stating that lines intertwine so well that a change in one is a change in many, so would that be the same in the rhizome? In the first chapter we learn that rhizomes can be changed and destroyed but they always crop up on old or new lines of thought.  When they change do they include original lines of flight, segmentation, and molecular lines?  If not, are they changed to be a different and more reterritorialized rhizome or do the lines fall in the same contexts?  When we combine suicidal tendencies, singularity of mind, and a war machine in every segment of the molar community do we always get fascism?  Or if the fascism’s lines of flight or segmentation are clouded by something like a pocket of self-preservation, or a people’s desire to have freedom does that change the creation of the rhizomematic being?  Does the creation of the same type of rhizome depend on the same intersecting lines or can they be adjusted to the differing conditions of human existence?  Are there really changing conditions in human existence?

                I don’t feel up answering some or all of these questions at this point.  However, the fluidity of Deleuze and Guattari’s writing leads me to think that some, or all, of these questions were meant to be open ended.  Greatly these questions depend, like the creation of a rhizome, upon the individual circumstances of the situation that they are being applied to.  Although I do believe that there are new circumstances within our society, I do believe that once distilled down to the inherent components those new circumstances will reveal age old situations.  However, it is the combination of these situations that yield the new individual circumstance or moment in time.  For instance, many of the things that Deleuze and Guattari are writing about are not new, they have only been re-appropriated and manipulated to address the world that they were brought together in and the world that they see will be coming (the constantly shaping now).  They used methods and ideas from throughout the ages to address the fascistic horrors that they witnessed first and second hand within this century and addressed the concerns of our now.  They do address the issues well, and I understand their usefulness in our society but my question that has been growing throughout the text is: How do we re-appropriate these terms and ideas to our lives today?  How do we propose these terms will change in twenty years?  Fifty?  A hundred?

                Last week in class someone stated that Foucault said that A Thousand Plateaus is the handbook against fascism.  I would whole heartedly agree with this.  However, what is our handbook for now?  Are we really fighting pure and simple fascism?  Or are there a thousand new strains of fascism throughout the world due to the rise and takeover of technology?  What of the international conglomerates that seek to eradicate freedom of expression?  What of the constant war within third world countries?  I do not see these situations as all explained by this book, but their fluid ideas portray solutions to the new circumstances that we have in our society.  They do give us the tools to understand and fight the new fascistic tendencies in our societies.  It is our responsibility as tuned in individuals to make decisions that are along the same rhizomatic and arboreal thought patterns as this work. 

                One last parting question: What is the most important factor in this society that leads to the changing of rhizomatic structures?  I would propose the intense demand on time and our constant lack of attention to one single process or idea.  We are constantly confronted with a schizophrenic view of our lives and how we want to live our lives; a constant battle between binaries.  This battle forces time to become the most important variable.  To truly understand and work in anti-fascist way we have to commit time, more than anything, to becoming free of fascist tendencies.