So, when I get frustrated with these sorts of endeavours, I lament that life isn't simpler. That people would just listen to common sense. And that we all might just get on with it and do the right thing already!#$%&. You know? You know. It's hard sometimes to wait around for various tipping points of public opinion to occur.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but sometimes humour and directness make the things we struggle so hard to convey by other, more complicated, means laughably obvious. If I think about my work with climate change and when I'm in one of those frustrated moods, part of me wants to do something as seemingly tactless and extreme as this video. You know,
Which is why I like the spirit of the following video. It dispenses with the tactful and gets down to the business of teaching the essentials. (Or it's all satire, you decide.)
Um, if you haven't seen it already, and even if you have, I need to say a few words first.
This video contains coarse language, sexual imagery, images of violence, and racist language and stereotypes. Viewer discretion is advised. It might not be exactly appropriate for a research blog that's syndicated on Planet DCS@UofT, but then again you don't need to watch the video.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but sometimes humour and directness make the things we struggle so hard to convey by other, more complicated, means laughably obvious. If I think about my work with climate change and when I'm in one of those frustrated moods, part of me wants to do something as seemingly tactless and extreme as this video. You know,
join a party,join a party,join a #$%^% political party....
meh, too many syllables. Forget that idea. Point is, a little humour and lampooning can go a long way. Especially if it get's the message out.
So, if there's anyone out there not doing the sort of serious research I am doing but is looking for a fun project to help save humanity then my suggestion is to follow this video's lead. And write to me and I'll send you the uncensored version of the lyrics I came up with whilst on the train yesterday...
1 comment:
Hey, first of all, the Planet is neither some sanitized non-place, nor a scientific journal! :-)
And secondly, I really cannot resist the temptation to quote my favorite philosopher:
AMY GOODMAN: Last words to leave our audience with here in the United States and, well, all over in Latin America, in Europe, Africa, Eastern Europe?
SLAVOJ ZIZEK: From me?
AMY GOODMAN: Yes.
SLAVOJ ZIZEK: It will be simply—OK, maybe, the point that I always like to repeat: don’t beat—don’t get caught into a fake discourse of humanitarian emergency. Remember that when somebody is telling you, “You’re doing your theory. You are dreaming. But people are starving out there and so on. Let’s do something,” this is the threat. This is the threat.
Today’s hegemonic ideology is this kind of state of emergency ideology. What we need is to withdraw—don’t be afraid to withdraw and think. You know, Marx thesis eleven: philosophers have only interpreted the world; the time is, we have now to change it. Maybe, as good Marxists, we should turn it around. Maybe we are trying to change it too much. It’s time to redraw and to interpret it again, because do we really know what is going on today?
What is going on today? There are old fashion theories, either Marxist or liberals who claim the same capitalism is going on. Then there is a whole set of fashionable terms like post-industrial society, post-whatever, information society, which I think don’t do the job. We even don’t have what my friend Fred Jameson likes to call “cognitive mapping,” you know, that you get an idea what’s going on. We need theory more than ever. Don’t be—don’t feel guilty for withdrawing from immediate engagement and for trying to understand what’s going on.
Post a Comment