Mimicry, parody, and protest
Nov. 20th, 2011 05:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethSo in class at the moment we're studying the Victorian period, and specifically the shift from colonialism to imperialism, from business going out there to get stuff for Britain to Britain going out there and saying it's all ours. Last lesson was about legitimation and the stories the white guys told themselves that made them think it was the right thing to do. Mostly, they reckoned they were the only civilized and rational beings on the planet, so it was their responsibility to go out and educate the rest of the world. In ways probably involving shooting them until they do as they're told. That part I don't think I'll ever understand. But the Victorian men had been told, and probably believed, that they were the height of progress and civilisation and that their society was the very definition of society, the one true way, and their education covered everything that mattered, and their stories were the true stories.
(There was also a bit about ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny, which baffled most everyone. I wanted to tell them to watch Ghost Light and it would all make sense, but I'm not that mean.)
So part of the imperial project was to go out there and teach everyone to be Just Like Us. But part of the justification for imperial conquest was that all these people can't be Just Like Us, they're biologically incapable of it. So there was ambivalent meaning in mimicry. On the one hand, the boss people wanted everyone to try and copy them, because it supported their self story that only their way was worth doing. On the other hand, if anyone was actually successful, then there was a basic error in their logic about how the world worked. So the boss people wanted all people to try, and almost all to fail. The attempt made it clear our way was the only desirable one, and the failure proved the only ones who could be Just Like Us were Us.
That meant for colonised people mimicry was a two edged sword. To try and copy the boss meant to act as if the boss culture was more important than the home grown. But to succeed in copying the boss meant that the boss had no inherent right to be the boss, whatever they went around telling.
So from the not-the-boss point of view you could just keep doing what you were doing, keep trying to ignore boss culture as worthless, get punished and get held up as an example of why people need to be stomped on for their own good; or you could try and copy and know that the boss people would never, ever, ever admit the mimicry was successful, because then the boss justification goes boom.
From the boss point of view, of course everyone is trying to copy the boss, it's the only worthwhile way. They just need instructing on how they're doing it wrong.
Reading about the Occupy protests lately, I've read a lot of people saying they should get organised, get a message, get a leader. Basically saying they should play the game the way everyone already in charge is playing it. Mimic. And I kept thinking of that in class. Because it seems to me a lot of what Occupy is doing is just demonstrating, by living it in public, that there are other games and they don't need the dominant one. Which would be more of a shake up than any specific demand. If the message is not a soundbite because the message is that you don't need soundbites, the game gets changed. If libraries and lectures and educating the many are effective in ways that choosing a single leader can never touch, the game gets changed. And if the basic message is the game is rigged, then, well, change it, please.
Last semester we did some stuff about textual transformation, re-vision, parody. To be really effective you keep many of the features of the source, so you're in the same territory with the same audience, then you change the bits you think need changing, and so change the message. Change too much and you don't reach the same people as the original, so instead of having a debate you're preaching to a different choir. Change too little and you only support the original argument. But any text worth messing with is a text people already have strong opinions on, so you're going to get reaction ranging... well, the full fan storm range, which I guess we're all familiar with. Myriad versions on the theme You're Doing It Wrong, subtitled, And That Makes You Horrible People. So you can retreat to your own little corner and write something 'original' and build a market of people who already agree with you, and then there's likely less shouting. But to go out there and change people's minds? You have to get in to the same text they're reading, the same game they're playing, the same space, idea and otherwise, that they're occupying. And live with the reactions.
So with any new message, what's the same, and what's different? Same connects them to pre-existing text, idea space, ideologies. Intertextual references, like particular images, quotes, actions, connect. Same brings the weight of prior argument and some of the audience. Then different is where the message lives.
So what's different about Occupy? Polyphonic, multivocal, heteroglossic communication, in one space, under one banner. Not having a single message or a particular leader. Being the 99%. Being the people who aren't being listened to, who can't choose a leader to speak for them because none of those in power are saying what they would, much less doing it come vote time. And sticking around to have a conversation, a lot of conversations. A march gets out in public but its message has to fit on a banner and be read as you move past. An occupation just sits there talking and talking and talking. Because the banners aren't complex enough.
I don't have actual knowing though, I'm figuring this from home. There's an Occupy Norwich but I walked past it on the way to the pub. Protest and passing my degree don't seem to me to be mixy. It takes me all week to do the reading as is. Or protest and my people phobic disability, which leads me to weigh up how important food really is if I have to go outside to get it. So I pretty much just blog and link and complain about the world from here. And I can see how that isn't very worky.
Still, doing all this reading, cultural studies and ideology stuff, you start watching the world like it's The Matrix, all code all everywhere. And the dominant meanings are there keeping the dominant power structure in place. So what can you do? Go off and build your own? There's a shortage of empty to try it in. But trying it in very public could have bonus weight. And instead of just unplugging the few you maybe shift the reality of the many.
Probably got more chance of working than my attempts to plan a space colony. Needs government size money to get into space thus far, is unlikely to be the tool of alt community. Tents though? Doable.
I've read a few cultural studies types trying to read Occupy, or just read the Guy Fawkes masks, with insufficient context. It's all ink blots. You learn a lot about the writer, maybe nothing about Occupy or Anonymous. I think there's a problem with a discipline that bangs on about the death of the author and how the reader makes the meaning, that makes it irrelevant what the author was trying to do. Sure, applied to books by dead dudes, you can get at some possible reasons why people are still reading them, what people get out of them. But applied to a bunch of people doing politics? Problem. They're busy trying to write themselves, not be read. Can maybe say something about the media writing about the protesters, but is on much shakier ground talking about what the protesters are communicating, let alone what they mean.
... and now I'm one step away from trying to do cultural studies stuff on the cultural studies dudes, and then we have a tail eating competition...
What I mean is though, I don't know what Occupy is doing, I know only that this is the stuff I thought up having read some newspapers, some critics, some blogs, and some postcolonial theorists in lit lessons on Friday. So I write it down and go play computer games.
(There was also a bit about ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny, which baffled most everyone. I wanted to tell them to watch Ghost Light and it would all make sense, but I'm not that mean.)
So part of the imperial project was to go out there and teach everyone to be Just Like Us. But part of the justification for imperial conquest was that all these people can't be Just Like Us, they're biologically incapable of it. So there was ambivalent meaning in mimicry. On the one hand, the boss people wanted everyone to try and copy them, because it supported their self story that only their way was worth doing. On the other hand, if anyone was actually successful, then there was a basic error in their logic about how the world worked. So the boss people wanted all people to try, and almost all to fail. The attempt made it clear our way was the only desirable one, and the failure proved the only ones who could be Just Like Us were Us.
That meant for colonised people mimicry was a two edged sword. To try and copy the boss meant to act as if the boss culture was more important than the home grown. But to succeed in copying the boss meant that the boss had no inherent right to be the boss, whatever they went around telling.
So from the not-the-boss point of view you could just keep doing what you were doing, keep trying to ignore boss culture as worthless, get punished and get held up as an example of why people need to be stomped on for their own good; or you could try and copy and know that the boss people would never, ever, ever admit the mimicry was successful, because then the boss justification goes boom.
From the boss point of view, of course everyone is trying to copy the boss, it's the only worthwhile way. They just need instructing on how they're doing it wrong.
Reading about the Occupy protests lately, I've read a lot of people saying they should get organised, get a message, get a leader. Basically saying they should play the game the way everyone already in charge is playing it. Mimic. And I kept thinking of that in class. Because it seems to me a lot of what Occupy is doing is just demonstrating, by living it in public, that there are other games and they don't need the dominant one. Which would be more of a shake up than any specific demand. If the message is not a soundbite because the message is that you don't need soundbites, the game gets changed. If libraries and lectures and educating the many are effective in ways that choosing a single leader can never touch, the game gets changed. And if the basic message is the game is rigged, then, well, change it, please.
Last semester we did some stuff about textual transformation, re-vision, parody. To be really effective you keep many of the features of the source, so you're in the same territory with the same audience, then you change the bits you think need changing, and so change the message. Change too much and you don't reach the same people as the original, so instead of having a debate you're preaching to a different choir. Change too little and you only support the original argument. But any text worth messing with is a text people already have strong opinions on, so you're going to get reaction ranging... well, the full fan storm range, which I guess we're all familiar with. Myriad versions on the theme You're Doing It Wrong, subtitled, And That Makes You Horrible People. So you can retreat to your own little corner and write something 'original' and build a market of people who already agree with you, and then there's likely less shouting. But to go out there and change people's minds? You have to get in to the same text they're reading, the same game they're playing, the same space, idea and otherwise, that they're occupying. And live with the reactions.
So with any new message, what's the same, and what's different? Same connects them to pre-existing text, idea space, ideologies. Intertextual references, like particular images, quotes, actions, connect. Same brings the weight of prior argument and some of the audience. Then different is where the message lives.
So what's different about Occupy? Polyphonic, multivocal, heteroglossic communication, in one space, under one banner. Not having a single message or a particular leader. Being the 99%. Being the people who aren't being listened to, who can't choose a leader to speak for them because none of those in power are saying what they would, much less doing it come vote time. And sticking around to have a conversation, a lot of conversations. A march gets out in public but its message has to fit on a banner and be read as you move past. An occupation just sits there talking and talking and talking. Because the banners aren't complex enough.
I don't have actual knowing though, I'm figuring this from home. There's an Occupy Norwich but I walked past it on the way to the pub. Protest and passing my degree don't seem to me to be mixy. It takes me all week to do the reading as is. Or protest and my people phobic disability, which leads me to weigh up how important food really is if I have to go outside to get it. So I pretty much just blog and link and complain about the world from here. And I can see how that isn't very worky.
Still, doing all this reading, cultural studies and ideology stuff, you start watching the world like it's The Matrix, all code all everywhere. And the dominant meanings are there keeping the dominant power structure in place. So what can you do? Go off and build your own? There's a shortage of empty to try it in. But trying it in very public could have bonus weight. And instead of just unplugging the few you maybe shift the reality of the many.
Probably got more chance of working than my attempts to plan a space colony. Needs government size money to get into space thus far, is unlikely to be the tool of alt community. Tents though? Doable.
I've read a few cultural studies types trying to read Occupy, or just read the Guy Fawkes masks, with insufficient context. It's all ink blots. You learn a lot about the writer, maybe nothing about Occupy or Anonymous. I think there's a problem with a discipline that bangs on about the death of the author and how the reader makes the meaning, that makes it irrelevant what the author was trying to do. Sure, applied to books by dead dudes, you can get at some possible reasons why people are still reading them, what people get out of them. But applied to a bunch of people doing politics? Problem. They're busy trying to write themselves, not be read. Can maybe say something about the media writing about the protesters, but is on much shakier ground talking about what the protesters are communicating, let alone what they mean.
... and now I'm one step away from trying to do cultural studies stuff on the cultural studies dudes, and then we have a tail eating competition...
What I mean is though, I don't know what Occupy is doing, I know only that this is the stuff I thought up having read some newspapers, some critics, some blogs, and some postcolonial theorists in lit lessons on Friday. So I write it down and go play computer games.