Welcome to the NHK

If you have this series on dvd Derridata, could you pl spin it my way at our next meeting? At this rate I'll have to sign up to Twitter! (lol!) Looks like just what I need when trying to also track down Richard Calder's Dead Girls i.e. obvious parallel themes of male protagonists falling victim to their technologically mediated consumption habits which are facilitated by a kind of "pornocracy" (c.f Videodrome).



And yes, of course, there is plenty of scope for feminist critique of Calder, as well as by queer theorists, who fault him for only considering the consequences for heterosexual characters (check the listed reference on Wikipedia). Notwithstanding such critical remarks, the process of being swallowed by this desire for consumption is interesting in terms of how Calder consciously draws parallels with vampirism (Rob Latham comments on this in his study of vampirism and the consumption of youth culture).

Returning to Welcome to NHK for the moment though, this next scene is an outrageous, surreal mixture of horror and humor, which might possibly be used to illustrate Kellner and Best's point that, "Paradoxically, today we find the atrophy of the senses in their hypertrophic extension throughout the sensorium of the spectacle and its images and commodity empires":



This "paradoxical effect" also seems comparable to the theme of vampirism Calder explores, as described by Latham.

In any case, Derridata, if you can find a way to incorporate this into one of your Japanese popular culture seminars, without violating copyright or offending community standards too much, please do so: it is guaranteed to generate a strong reaction from your students! Let me know if it eventuates, although I realise it's probably just wishful thinking on my part.

Placing the Future in South Korea?

Just doing some rapid postings here of some stuff I will further investigate (in my own time, even if I don't post it here, because my interactions with Korean faculty and students of late obliges me to do so). So I don't have time to really shape this as an essay.


Anyway,  Gord Sellar is curious why sci fi hasn't put down roots in South Korea. To him, the question is perplexing, insofar as the country appears to be influenced by foreign sci fi:


In recent years, the government has advanced proposals for such insane things as robotic nannies who could teach English to children — and even a goal to put one in every home by 2015, no less (here’s where The Economistmentions it)… which should alarm those worried about government surveillance and privacy, since the bots will doubtless be running on wireless networks and a virus-susceptible Windows BotX edition. They also are hoping to get robotic patrol-botsset up to guard the DMZ. Autonomous bots! As Michael humorously points out, we’d better hope they’re multilingual, or there will be a lot of dead hakwon teachers and immigrant factory workers. Actually, they don’t seem to be coming along too quickly anyway.


Notwithstanding these parallels, Sellar wants to argue that one should be careful about mapping civilizational developmental narratives in Western terms, asking:


"Would a Korean postmodernity even look familiar to a Westerner? Need a Korean imagine the future the way an American does? Granted, Korea is likely to import whatever generalized postmodernity actually succeeds here, as it has modernity, and as academics in some fields at least have been doing for some time, but would it necessarily have to do so?" 


The essay remains inconclusive, supposedly on account of the absence of a strong South Korean sci fi tradition.  Please note though, the piece is part of a series, so I would recommend following the listed links to see where else he takes the argument. What is significant for present purposes though, is the reference to William Gibson's well-known piece, "Modern Boys and Mobile Girls", from which can (according to Sellar) be inferred that the telling difference has to do with how "Japan and China, interestingly, both share something specifically with the Anglophone West that Korea does not, which is an awkward colonialist history". Unfortunately, this aspect of the essay remains undeveloped. What I think is more telling then is how the reference to Gibson is reinforced by his most recent piece, which appeared in the New York Times. Gibson has not given up on the idea of finding the future in a place. The reality of globalization leads me to question the viability of this position. So I would instead conclude, along with Samuel Gerald Collins, that a more fruitful line of inquiry could be conducted in terms of "cultural arbitrage":


  "...the gap that opens up between global modernity and the kind of hopes and expectations people have for their lives. Looking somewhere else doesn't mean that our life will become more like their life. But it does open up the possibility for reflecting on similar conditions in the US. That is, the "gap" opens up onto our contradictory experiences and expectations and forces us to question the course of our own futures."


Hence, the said approach treats Seoul not "as as a window onto the future, but as a means for thinking about our mutual futures".


I'm very keen to see where this goes.

Techno-mysticism & death in space

Not sure if the "space archaeology" blog has kept abreast of the development of Promession (be surprised if it hadn't). I would expect though that the archaeological remit of that blog would not be particularly receptive to an analysis that could string together religion, mysticism, and technology. I'm not going to couch my discussion in terms of naturalist transmigration theory either. My sympathies are more with the theme of "haunted media" explored by various works of science fiction, which can be found by anyone who cares to perform even a cursory search on Japanese anime (or "J-Horror" for that matter) and "ghosts" (and then trace through the influence on the obvious example from Hollywood i.e. The Matrix).

But I'm not just talking about science fiction and/or Japan: I was happy to interview Steve Fuller about his latest book because it reminds us that [for many people] biology is intrinsically part of the Great Chain of Being- Fuller's characterisation of religiously inclined scientists is echoed by Toshiya Ueno's description of certain philosophers:

That is to say, God, for Feuerbach and other philosophers, was a

center or a nodal point of human relationships (or of a network). 

This is no exaggeration. Historically speaking, religions and mysticism 

have always functioned as informational networks and, indeed, have been media, 

itself. This is clear in the etymological argument that the word "medium" 

originally meant shaman. Of course, as you know, the shaman is always a mediator

 between God (or a transcendent being) and human (or an objectal being). The issues

 of religion, mysticism, fetishism, and so on necessarily bring us face to face 

with the problematics of the spectacle, the spectre, and the mediator. 

Sol Yurick, who is a novelist and critic, argues and analyses these problematics 

in his influential book _Metatron_. (I'm the translator of the Japanese edition of

 this book.) He writes: "Modern capitalism is a great factory for the production of

 angels....The Catholic Church is a communicating organism with an apparatus of

 switches and relays and a communicating language for the input of prayers through

 a churchly switchboard up to Heaven and outputs returned to the supplicant."

Permit me to briefly illustrate these problematiques with a few more sci-fi references. I was thinking of 2001: A Space Odyssey in terms of this more expansive technological sense of a medium, when I happened across Gary Westfahl's Islands in the Sky: The Space Station Theme in Science Fiction. Chapter Five considers "Space Stations as Haunted Houses", which could be construed as a warning about the mysticism and fetishism associated with "the problematics of the spectacle" Ueno refers to. I can think of another example: Alien 3, at least in the unfilmed Vincent Ward version, offered another reminder in its portrayal of a religious community living on a space station, who are in turn decimated by the xenomorph's arrival. In that case, the irony had to do with how the ascetism of the monks prevented them from understanding the true nature of the peril they faced (in spite of how they are in effect living a highly technologically mediated existence-- a space station-- based on an illusion of simplicity; kind of like Brian Aldiss' Non-Stop). So, they too could have benefited from Ueno's paper, which advocates a "bio-morphism", to acknowledge how:

the situation in media (sub)culture, or in any social

terrain, always has been (or will be) "under construction". It is urgent

 that we find the symptoms of "under construction" for our situation, because

 for us,both techno-mysticism and media tribes can become medicine and poison

 at the same time (as pharmakon). It is a"gift" to  us that they will be able 

to become the basis for conservative ideology or critical thought. 

I imagine that more of these conversations will take place over time. Of course, it is too early yet to guess the full ramifications for new technologies such as Promession. We don't know whether it will ever become an ongoing concern. But if we are obliged to face up to it as part of what it means to be ecologically responsible, I'm hopeful this "gift" will remain permanently "under construction" in the manner Ueno recommends. Promession could clearly be used on an everyday basis here on Earth, so we shouldn't get too distracted about what it could mean for social relationships in the comparatively rarefied environment of space stations. Irrespective of the setting, any focus on the logistics of simple "waste" disposal can never hide "the inconvenient truth" of haunted media. One need only consider how spiritualism was a utopian response to the electronic powers presented by telegraphy and how radio, in the twentieth century, came to be regarded as a way of connecting to a more atomized vision of the afterlife. Jeffrey Sconce has discussed how the rise of postmodern media criticism is yet another occult fiction of electronic presence, a mythology that continues to dominate contemporary debates over television, cyberspace, virtual reality, and the Internet. It seems possible then that biotechnology will be added to this list in the 21st Century, with "life management" techniques such as Promession becoming central to debates about transcendence through transmission: a metaphysical preoccupation with the boundaries of space and time as the meaning of life and death continues to change. This picture will become more complicated should the technologies to facilitate transhumanism ever become more readily available. So these are some of the issues that will continue to haunt our technologically mediated life cycle long into the future.....

Hyper-real religions?

It's taken me a long time to post this link. I can agree with some of what Mark Dery says here, perhaps unsurprisingly, given how much I had enjoyed his take on the pop culture presence of Nazism (previously posted on this blog). Kraken Rising: How the Cephalopod Became Our Zeitgeist Mascot adopts a typical [postmodern] media studies approach to popular culture, which certainly yields some valuable insights. It demonstrates how the [unfortunate] predominance of McLuhan as media theorist in the academy is parallelled in cyberculture. According to Dery, computer geeks who believe the "medium is the message" are only too happy to identify with their slimy, tentacled counterparts:

"...the octopus was the poster animal for the...techno-transcendentalist strain in digital culture. Embodying the profoundly anti-modernist (and inescapably religious) dream of healing the rupture between language and meaning, signifier and signified, the octopus “does not transmit its linguistic intent, it becomes its linguistic intent.” This, said McKenna, is “the essence of a more perfect Logos, a Logos not heard but beheld.” Forgetting that visual imagery is no less culturally contingent and historically contextual than words, he envisioned the use of VR to “change vocal utterance into visually beheld colored output,” which he believed would “telepathically” communicate linguistic intent through “the unambiguous topology of meanings beheld,” as if visual representation and subjective meaning were a seamless whole, and not subject to the same semiotic slippage that bedevils language. Anyway, we can dream, can’t we? “In the not-too-distant future, men and women may shed the monkey body to become virtual octopi swimming in a silicon sea.”

Of course, I'm equally intrigued by the slippages between ethology and cultural anthropology, just as much as I was in the adoption of the generic "alien" as the mascot of rave culture. Both creatures are tool users afterall, making it easier to compare and contrast their respective cultural significance (the "alien" was previously highlighted on this blog). Dery also references the spread of Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos in this context, arguing that it runs parallel to, but is not congruent with, the cephalopod "meme" (the use of this term is itself a clear indicator of neo-Darwinism's pervasive cultural influence). According to him, its adherents are more ironic in their attitude to moral truth and literal fact.

What does the sociology of religion have to say about all this? I am thinking here particularly of Adam Possamai's "Yoda Goes to the Vatican", which briefly touches on Cthulhu cultists. He too sees the Internet as playing a formative role (hence the Baudrillardian resonance of "hyper-real" religions) in the growth of such alternative religions, particularly among young people who are equally savvy with technology and pop culture.

To my eyes though, it is unfortunate that he and Dery- the latter ironically refers in passing to "memes"- make no real allowance for the "science as culture" thesis, commonly associated with STS (Science & Technology Studies), which could have shed some light on the central conceit of the Cthulhu Mythos. Afterall, nowadays various science advocates, not least Richard "memes" Dawkins and Paul Davies, give greater credence to the idea that life originated from outer space (with Dawkins crediting a sophisticated alien civilization) rather than from God:

Here is another science fiction representation of directed panspermia:

Dery is therefore a little off target when he claims that all Cthulhu cultists are necessarily postmodern ironists: why settle for irony when the idea of panspermia means one can now selectively draw on scientific authority to legitimate their own brand of "cosmic horror", irrespective of how willfully perverse and implausible this appears to the rest of us? And dare I mention Cthulhu cultist Darrick Dishaw, who dreams of the day when he can perform human sacrifices in his rituals, along with other unsavory practices? I can't see any irony at work here.

Moving along, this is not really that surprising, given how science has in some cases clearly mutated from occulture. Consider, for example, alchemy's relationship to the development of modern chemistry, and how figures such as Aleister Crowley were feted by the literati of their day; comprised of theosophists and amateur scientists. Indeed, the occult periodical press came into being to publicize occult ideas, to support emerging occult institutions and settle disputes within a counter-public sphere of occultism, and to legitimate occult knowledge in the dominant public sphere in quasi-scientific terms of validation.

In a similar vein, Darwin's legacy has tended to reinforce Lovecraft's influence on another religion cited by Possamai- namely, the Church of Satan. Like Crowley before him then, Anton LaVey drew on literary and (pseudo) scientific influences.The Church's doctrines are accordingly not theistic, but rooted instead in mechanistic materialism. This emphasis eventually led to a split in the Church, which resulted in the formation of the Temple of Set. The latter attempted to highlight intelligence as a distinctive attribute of human beings, but I can only guess that this stance made them seem a little out of step with the neo-Darwinian sentiments of most Satanists (or perhaps they were simply less opportunistic). This may have been their undoing (in contrast-- tellingly-- LaVey may have died, but the Church of Satan remains an ongoing concern).
I do agree with Possamai though that these religions cannot be dismissed as mere escapism. My point is not that the burden of proof shifts to theism alone, or that relativism is the only option (as implied by the characterization of "hyper real" religions). When assessing the relative merits of any of the belief systems I've discussed here, the important distinction is between:

"...philosophical rationalism of which the hallmark is deduction, and the inductive empirical workaday of normal science. This blurring leads one to easily dismiss theism on scientific grounds. Fern Elsdon-Baker rightly, in my view, points out that while some versions of theism can be empirically refuted (e.g., literalism which supports Young Earth Creationism), others can only be philosophically denied (e.g., philosophical Deism). The empirical inductive tools of science are of limited scope, and to assert that something is a scientific question does not make it amenable to scientific methods. Words are not magic".

There is something else that the overuse of "postmodern" tends to lose sight of. As Mark S. Morrisson has argued, the dialectic is between esotericism and the exoteric. The former involves ideas of secret knowledge that are directly experienced, leading to union with the divine. The latter refers to the public dimensions of religion, including church institutions and publicly propagated knowledge. This is a process that has been going on in counter public spheres since the late nineteenth century. The advent of the Internet has of course aided the dissemination of these ideas, but I believe the novelty of the situation should not be exaggerated through an over-reliance on McLuhan-esque cultural critique. Testing the concept of "self-religion", as developed by Paul Heelas, with reference to Morrisson's dialectic, seems like a more worthwhile exercise. Self-religion initially appears incompatible with the kind of "real externality" characteristic of "cosmic horror", but I can't really comment until I read Contemporary Religious Satanism: A Critical Anthology, edited by Jesper Aagaard Petersen.

In any case, Possamai's focus is more on how religion started to openly mesh with popular culture in the 1960s. With him and Dery specifically mentioning Lovecraft, it's also interesting to note (in addition to the i09 article on Lovecraft in Japan) the following:

Tatsumi's book [Full Metal Apache] is useful not only as a guide to works we might otherwise have overlooked but also to works we thought we knew well. He makes us aware, for example, of Yasuo Nagayama's "postcolonialist rereading" of "Godzilla," particularly Nagayama's insight that the monster may have had his genesis not in a nuclear mishap but rather in "a pseudoreligious and pseudoscientific theory championed by 19th-century Shintoist Masumi Ohishigori" -- new information for most readers.

"Deeply influenced by the rise of Darwinism and paleontology, Ohishigori," we learn, "came to invent an amazing theory that located the origin of man in dinosaurs born of Japanese gods." Some of these divine dinosaurs, Ohishigori's followers believed, survive deep in the ocean, and when one recalls that Godzilla seems to have emerged from the sea, one feels certain that the monster's creators had Ohishigori's theory somewhere in the backs of their minds.

Whether this amounts to cosmic horror in the truly Lovecraftian sense remains to be determined. If I ever get round to looking at this a bit more closely, I'd be interested in investigating the extent to which the passage of such pseudo religious and pseudoscientific ideas into the Japanese public sphere mirrored the process described by Morrisson, and whether they too could be construed in the terms of Possamai and Dery.

From Japan: "ANPO"

ANPO Kamishibai (SD, English) from Scott Burgess on Vimeo.

Details here

The New Naturalism

What you post here about the video installations got me reflecting back on some of the Taiwanese scholars/artists I've worked with (writing promos for their exhibitions, rewriting academic journal articles, dissertations etc). Mostly what I've found though is an attentiveness to "invented traditions", such as, for example, digitising a famous old painting such as City of Cathay with a view to acquainting a younger generation with its significance through a medium they are more interested and familiar with (which entails giving them avatars so they can walk around in the painting, as it were).

Perhaps your posts are closer in some respects then to Thailand's "Pink Man", which has appeared on this blog. It got me thinking more about the characterisation of a "new naturalism" allegedly permeating contemporary pop culture. I don't mean this in the sense that the Taiwanese works are exemplary of that, but rather how to go about setting a more appropriate context for reading them. I think it's tricky because the Jumpcut article in question is lumping together a number of American programs to buttress its case, but we know that if they are read as a commodity form then this implies a certain serial process of translating difference into equivalency. Those bloggers who talk about "capitalist realism" and the Jumpcut author's thesis of "the new naturalism" would probably converge on this basic point. But how much explanatory power does it have when you consider something like the globalisation of anime culture? Is it simply the embodiment of a Manichean world view or is it irreducible to the tropes of disenchantment presupposed by such an assessment? So I know you have published on anime of course already, but how about that (i.e. the applicability of "the new naturalism" to anime) as the topic of a collaboration? Afterall, there is another tradition which acknowledges how a "turn to the East" [sic] has often served as a tonic of re-enchantment for an exhausted, "nihilistic", Occidental rationality.

The other reason I raise this with you is as a pretext for justifying my guilty pleasures of late, which have been keeping me, along with other stuff I've been doing, away from blogging. I've been watching a bunch of Adult Swim American animation on DVD, and I am stunned by not only the animation techniques themselves, but the quick fire darkly satirical style, which might possibly be described as the "New Naturalism".

For example, I am amazed to watch something such as Metalocalypse, which depicts a black metal band who are so commercially successful that they generate profits larger than the economies of some small Scandinavian countries. There is a surreal juxtaposition in the program between their public image as demi-gods, intermediaries in the Great Chain of Being, and their everyday banality. In one episode, for example, the band stage a concert promotion for a brand of coffee on an epic scale; inviting hardcore fans to a remote location, some of whom carry injuries as a result of the previous concerts they have attended. As night falls, the tribe gather on the plain on a mountain top: the band's military style helicopter drops an enormous cube, which misses its intended target- crushing to death some fans and mutilating others. The sides of the cube fall away to reveal a stage- the band had descended from the heavens like gods from a machine- and so the concert begins, to rapturous applause. Apparently the worship of the commodity form disguises itself as a form of re-enchantment, substituting "rock stars" as its followers subsist in increasingly feudal conditions (as opposed to the representation of spirits in contemporary anime?). Or rather, to quote Matt Stahl:

"The contemporary popular musical performer - as author - embodies a robust form of the labor theory of property as it is codified in copyright law and fixed in the popular imagination. This represents not so much a special creative achievement of authors, or a qualitative difference in the form their labor takes from those of others, but rather their ability to preserve themselves, through fortuitous alignments and alliances with capital and the state, from conditions of appropriation endured by the vast majority of working people in capitalism, conditions that Jason Read has identified as the ongoing process of what Marx's translators call the 'primitive accumulation' of capital".

Yes, I'm interested in how "primitive accumulation" works in conjunction with "the new naturalism", but am just wondering how we might qualify its global representations? Similar questions prompt some other reading I've been doing to follow up on my earlier "Heathen Harvests" post, which can be made more vivid by inclusion of video clips, but alas this post is already taking longer than I had planned, so I have to turn my attention to more pressing matters. Here then is the definition of "the new naturalism" I'm interrogating:

"In this manner, shows like BSG, Enterprise, The Sopranos, Deadwood, and 24, among others, can be called a new genre, the New Naturalism, one marked by a kind of violent ambivalence. In the New Naturalism, no guiding moral tone is taken about dubious characters whose actions grow increasingly suspect. Without a guiding moral tone — which represents, in addition to a potential naiveté or sentimentalism, a courageous decision to put one’s values out there — the series can maintain a detached, neo-Naturalistic outlook on its characters. But as the New Naturalism shows evince, this detachment can be duplicitous and serve as a cover for a highly cynical desire to offer an unremittingly pessimistic social view. Much more troublingly, it can be a deeply hypocritical stance, one that purports to be objective but actually is much more idiosyncratically and commercially driven. These days, despair sells. Watching any number of reality series or fictional ones in the New Naturalism vein, we see people and scripted characters writhe in torment and humiliation. We see human nature at its most “raw,” its most “willful,” in its most “natural” state. This is no less a construction and a fantasy than Star Trek’s prevailing utopian future of peaceful, cooperative humanity. It’s just the cynical and no less adamantly maintained alternative to utopian optimism".

For now I can leave it to Killface to serve as the spokesperson for the New Naturalism...

Zombie Boot Camp

This clip I've posted here is from Pink Tentacle. It's very easy just to laugh and dismiss it as trivial, but I'm more inclined to the view that there may be an undercurrent of telling satire in this publicity stunt. So what kind of a logical extreme in biocultural planning could be relevant according to current theorists? Moreover, what about actual policies the Japanese government has considered implementing? Even if there is an element of hyperbole to such a reading strategy, sometimes I think that is ok, in the same way that science fiction can serve as a form of social theory, a yardstick to measure prospects for dystopia, or the progressive spirit of utopia.

It follows that the idea of the "bootcamp" is actually not far removed from recent plans devised to deal with Japan's growing population of "shut ins" (which I've blogged about previously) and NEETS (Not in Employment Education or Training). Apparently the asocial/non productive must be subject to the utilitarian calculus; the decommodified must be recommodified, given that they mark the failure of the liberal subject to pull itself up by its own bootstraps.

Perhaps this might be considered as further ratification of Nick Turse's thesis in The Complex that military culture is threatening to increasingly colonise everyday life (here though in response to the global recession, as Turse's book preceded this event)? To begin thinking of camps also logically leads to consideration of Agamben's dystopic thesis of "the state of exception" and its connections to the biosocial management of a population. To be deprived of your autonomy, a hallmark of what it means to be a living human being, is on a continuum with the zombie laborers familiar from films such as I Walked With a Zombie. But we should be attentive to a historical shift to more accurately capture the biopolitical dimension I've introduced here. William Bogard in his Empire of the Living dead (published in: Mortality, Volume 13, Issue 2 May 2008 , pages 187 - 200) describes it thus:

"The corpse is no longer a dominant organizing figure of power and knowledge in postmodern network society. Limited by its own corporeality and tied to modern notions of the individual, its utility in controlling life has been superseded by technologies that control birth. This essay draws a line from Foucault's analysis of the dead body as an object of biopower to Baudrillard's and Deleuze's vision of control societies, in which the body disappears and biopower becomes a function of information and genetic modification. It uses the popular film image of the “living dead” to trace this evolution of biopower from the dissection of bodies at the end of life to the pre-programming and simulation of life at its inception: an evolution from the corpse to the clone, from the individuated dead body to the hybrid, dividualized body".

So before getting to zombie boot camp specifically, the broader social context in Japan should be taken into account. Were the dystopia to ever be more fully realised then, these "disciplinary techniques" would, if we take on board Bogard's perspective, mark only the beginning of a more efficient form of "pre-programming":

"The ruling LDP is contemplating a plan which would see hikikomori, NEETs, the unemployed and other undesirables bundled off to army boot camps to learn such useful trades as tree felling and ditch digging.

The issue of the supposedly endemic hikikomori (socially isolated people typically not in conventional employment) and NEET problems has vexed politicians desperate to shore up tax revenues for some time; a recent law ensured they would get help whether liked it or not, but this new proposal goes a step further.

The plan will see unemployed from throughout the nation gathered up and collected in military camps, where they will live for six month periods.

The state will there feed and house them, and they will be drilled in the sort of pork barrel schemes which have been so successful in lifting Japan out of its economic malaise; they will work tending forests and abandoned farmland, as well as gain qualifications useful in the construction industry, such as in the operation of heavy machinery.

The politicians proposing the measure all happen to be leading figures involved with the military, agriculture, or construction. It will be tacked on to an upcoming economic stimulus bill.

The scheme is modeled directly on the organisations formed by President Roosevelt to attempt to combat the impact of the Depression.

There is at this stage apparently no talk of making the scheme compulsory, although just how they will get notoriously recalcitrant hikikomori into the camps is not clear. Miruku may not be enough…"

Via Asahi.

Suffice to say, I will continue to test the theoretical application of biopower to social policy by referring to concrete examples if, (as seems likely), and when, they arise. With a gentle smile, I can now turn to the zombie boot camp in question:

"The Saikyō Senritsu Meikyū (”Ultimate Horror Maze”) — a 900-meter-long zombie-infested labyrinth at Japan’s Fuji-Q Highland amusement park — is billed as the world’s longest and scariest house of horror.

However, at a “press conference” staged last month, organizers announced they had temporarily shut down the facility because the zombie staff had lost their edge and were not frightening people enough. While the haunted house was closed, the undead employees were put through a rigorous training program designed to upgrade their zombie skills.

Here’s some video showing the treatment they had to endure...."

The horror house has since reopened and the camp-hardened zombies are reportedly as scary as ever.

[More zombie training camp videos]

Toshiya Ueno

Just by way of a quick follow up on my earlier posting on Roger Griffin, palingenesis and electronic music, I've kept pushing, trying to find alternatives to the theory of collective efforvescence broached in that post, as I always try to get some sense of how multifaceted an issue is before I make up my mind of how to conceptualise it. In this interview, Toshiya Ueno criticises the reliance by other scholars on communitas, Victor Turner and so forth. I'd only come at the work of this Japanese techno critic previously through a more indirect route, as he contributes a chapter to Aliens R Us called 'Japanimation:Techno-Orientalism, Media Tribes and Rave Culture', so the comments in this interview were revelations to me.

While the provocative claims in that interview perhaps remain open to debate, I have to admit to a factual error in the palingenesis post. It wasn't actually Tangerine Dream who contributed the "stunning" track to the opening of The Keep. It was a demo by Brian Eno. If you listen to "Mea Culpa" on My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, it's possible to hear traces of The Keep. Unsurprisingly then, Tangerine Dream have never covered or performed live the track in question, and this also explains why it hasn't appeared on the official soundtrack. It has apparently surfaced though on a bootleg called Ghosts, which thus far I've not managed to track down.

Some other thoughts unexpectedly came to me reading Dennis Cooper's tribute to Whitehouse. I was less interested in Cooper's personal identification with their libertarian aesthetic, or the mentioning of Bennett's claim that Rip It Up & Start Again mistakenly reports a joke by Steve Stapleton as if it were a factual statement about the band's interest in certain extreme pornographic publications, than in how he reminded me that Paul Hegarty had not only edited a book on Dennis Cooper, but has written a couple of books about noise/music as well.

It also just so happens that I've been listening to Merzbow's 1930 a lot recently, so I'm wondering derridata if you might be able to bring these reflections full circle by answering a question? Have you encountered any commonalities, in theoretical terms and artefacts used as examples, in the respective writings of Toshiya Ueno, Hegarty on Merzbow, and the cultural studies of anime you've been undertaking? Don't worry, I'm not asking you to chase down these authors, but simply wondering if their names have cropped up during the course of your research? If you have any thoughts on the matter, please feel free to hold them till we hook up at the Brian Eno gig. I figure they might have to do with topics such as "techno subjectivity" and, by extension, "post subcultural" spaces or "scenes" in which such identities are enacted/performed/consumed. I'm wondering also whether the existence of any such commonalities could serve to undercut those in the music blogosphere who are focused on divorcing "genre" from "scene"?

One more thing relating to animation, I like how this clip critically comments on not only human motion in general, but more specifically the treatment of "older" women by consumer culture:

Japan: Defying Gravity

"...the military code served Japan's rulers well. Without bushido's terrible sanction of dishonour, in 1944-45 a host of Japanese would otherwise have given themselves up, rather than perish to prolong futile resistance...Overlaid upon this, however, was a rational calculation by Tokyo. The superiority of American resources was manifest. If Japan pursued the war within the limits of conventional military behaviour, its defeat was inevitable. Its leader's chosen course was to impose such a ghastly blood price for each American gain that this 'nation of shopkeepers' would find it preferable to negotiate, rather than accept the human cost of invading Japan's main islands...If this assessment was fanciful, and founded upon ignorance of the possibility that a weapon might be deployed which rendered void all conventional military calculations, it offered a germ of hope to desperate men..."

Max Hastings, Nemesis: The Battle For Japan, 1944-45