Tribute to Michael Black

Remembering Michael Black

By: Langdon Winner

On my way to a conference in San Francisco last month I learned that Michael Black, a dear friend of many years, had been killed by a hit and run driver while walking along a country road in northern California.  I was devastated by the news.  Michael and I had talked by phone about getting together sometime over the weekend to catch up on recent developments in our lives.  But was not to be.  As the Dalai Lama once observed, "No one knows what comes first -- tomorrow or eternity."

Michael Black was truly a free spirit -- scholar, raconteur, singer, environmental activist, spiritual healer, ebullient visionary -- a person overflowing with joyful wisdom.  Long before the term became fashionable, he was a pioneer in studies of “sustainability.”  His PhD dissertation explored the collapse of ancient empires caused by ecological mismanagement, a fate that he believed was likely in store for our own civilization unless drastic measures were taken. His continuing efforts to find ways to heal the planet and its people carried him into wide ranging inquiries in political theory, American politics, social movements, natural history, forestry, the life cycle of West Coast salmon, and eastern philosophy.

I first met Michael, characteristically,  one afternoon in 1973.  As I banged away on my typewriter in an old Berkeley house, there was an unexpected knock at the door.   On the front porch stood a stranger smiling at me. "Hello!  I'm Michael Black.  I've heard about you and your work on the politics of technology.  We've got to talk."  We spent the rest of the afternoon drinking coffee and sharing thoughts about ecology and politics, the beginning of more than four decades of conversations.

 In variety of temporary and part time positions, Michael taught at several colleges and universities over the years.  Much beloved by his students and colleagues, his way of pursuing questions combined the intensity of Socratic method with an Aristotelian preference for philosophizing while walking around the campus.  Although he wrote continually and published steadily, academic administrators frowned at the relatively low rate of publication in the approved scholarly venues and, thus, he never received tenure.  I recall using the phrase "refereed journals" in a conversation with him one day, at which point he laughingly made the “tweet-tweeet” sound of whistles blown by referees at a football game.  That was his comment on the ways in an over-emphasis upon thinking by “peer review” had enforced a dull conformity in American higher education to the exclusion of other, more lively ways of knowing.  Nonetheless, as the years rolled on, Michael persisted, piecing together one class here, another class there twenty miles down the freeway, a vocation that he liked to call “Roads Scholar.” 

A colorful talker with an inborn love of word play, he used language in ways that delighted his friends and horrified university bureaucrats.  Within the grimly “serious” discussions about “curriculum reform” and “strategic planning” and similar matters (that waste far too much of the time of the nation’s best minds), Michael would often launch in to free association riffs that revealed the underlying absurdity of the conversation while angering the stuffed shirts who’d convened the meeting.  His everyday observations about the world were sprinkled with a range of signature phrases, delivered with a distinctive chuckle, ones that his friends will long cherish:

“Oh, oh.  I think reality’s breaking out today!” 

“Yes, it looks like we’re having too much fun!” 

My favorite story about Michael’s antics comes from the birth of my twin boys.   Following a 1:00 a.m delivery by Cesarian section, Gail was neatly stitched up by her doctors.  Around noon that day it was finally possible for family and friends to visit her and newborn Brooks and Casey in the hospital room.  The first person other than close family to arrive was Michael, who happened to be in town.    When he appeared at the door Gail raised her hand firmly as if to block his entrance,  “Michael, whatever you do, don’t get me laughing!” she exclaimed.  He came in accompanied by a group friends and within 30 seconds was telling jokes and had the whole room literally in stitches.  Of course, Gail eventually forgave him.

What Michael enjoyed most were days spent walking in nature.  On several occasions he took me high up on the west-facing slope of Mount Tamalpais just north of San Francisco Bay where we’d begin a long hike down to the sea.  As we strolled along the trail Michael would point out how gracefully the micro-eco-systems changed from place to place: from oak grove, to redwood glen, to grassy field, to sage brush chaparral, and eventually to the shores of a Pacific Ocean beach.  He enjoyed pointing out the details, sharing his sense of the world’s divine interconnections.  As Walker Black, his teenage son, commented at Michael’s memorial service, it was on those mountain strolls that "he felt most happy, most at completely at home."

Open on his desk at the end was a manuscript for first of three books Michael was writing about the spiritual explorations that occupied much of his life during the past decade.  In truth, he left behind a great deal more -- ideas, pieces of wisdom, joyful moments inscribed directly on the hearts and souls of his friends.  For those who knew and loved him, his presence in memory will continue to be: “Too much fun!”

Amazing new invention -- The Minimum Wage Machine

This wonderful new machine, shown in prototype here, comes from the web page of Cesarea Treehugger of Duluth, Minnesota.  It provides an answer to the question that many young people, including ones with excellent credentials and experience, are asking these days: "Where can I find a decent, well-paying job?"  Here's the product description from April 10, 2013.

 "This machine allows anyone to work for minimum wage for as long as they like. Turning the crank on the side releases one penny every 4.97 seconds, for a total of $7.25 per hour. This corresponds to minimum wage for a person in New York. This piece is brilliant on multiple levels, particularly as social commentary. Without a doubt, most people who started operating the machine for fun would quickly grow disheartened and stop when realizing just how little they’re earning by turning this mindless crank. A person would then conceivably realize that this is what nearly two million people in the United States do every day…at much harder [...jobs] than turning a crank. This turns the piece into a simple, yet effective argument for raising the minimum wage."

The likely demand for this much needed device is indicated by a story in today's New York Times:

City Report Shows a Growing Number Are Near Poverty

" The rise in New York City’s poverty rate as a result of the recession has apparently eased, but not before pushing nearly half of the city’s population into the ranks of the poor or near-poor in 2011, according to an analysis by the ...[mayor's] administration."

Many of my colleagues tell me that the cure for joblessness and poverty is a talisman called "technological innovation."  The minimum wage machine seems to be yet another example of the kinds of "breakthroughs" that have done so much to boost the fortunes of American working people since the late 1970s. 

The Masked Marauders on Rock Center

                                   Brian Williams, Greil Marcus and Langdon Winner (at the piano)
                                                  Rock Center interview, New York 3/4/14


The Masked Marauders joke/hoax was hatched in the fall of 1969 while I was doubling as a political science grad student and writer for Rolling Stone Magazine.  It began as a fake review written by Greil Marcus (under the pseudonym "T.M. Christian") as a send up of the trashy "super session" rock albums that were flooding the market at the time.  According to the review, the "The Masked Marauders" included the Beatles, Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan and some other well known musicians playing together for the first time at a secret location in Hudson Bay, Canada.  While the idea was obviously absurd on its face, the piece was written in a manner that made the project sound almost plausible.  Soon the possibility that a "Masked Marauders" album might actually exist somewhere became the talk of the music industry.

At the time I had a radio program on "underground" radio station KMPX.  For a hour each Friday afternoon my friend and music writer John Morthland would gather around the microphone, play records, and talk about them.  Just after the "Masked Marauders" review was published, it occurred to me and to Greil: Why not play some cuts from the fictitious album on the show?  We knew a group of Berkeley folk/rock musicians, The Cleanliness and Godliness Skiffle Band, headed by our old friend Phil Marsh, and were also familiar with a fellow who had build recording facilities in the garage of his house.  Hence, on a warm September evening with a lot of beer and maybe some other controlled substances we gathered the group of musicians and pranksters and cut three songs: "I Can't Get No Nookie," (sung by fake Mick Jagger, Brian Vorhees), "Cow Pie," (an instrumental in the fashion of Dylan's "Nashville Skyline" album), and "Duke of Earl" (sung by fake Bob Dylan, again the multi-talented Brian Vorhees).  The first two songs were written on the spot with the musicians locating some threadbare riffs to play and Greil out in the driveway sketching the flagrantly obscene lyrics for the two originals.

The following Friday, John and I went on the air as usual.  At the end of the program I said, "As you probably know, everyone's been talking about The Masked Marauders album reviewed in Rolling Stone.  Many have said that it doesn't exist at all, that the review was just a fraud.  Well, I'm here to tell you that the album does exist and that we've been lucky enough to obtain three cuts from it.  This is the first time these songs have ever been played anywhere.  So, yes, The Masked Marauders are real.  I'm sure you'll agree that they've never sounded better!"  

After we played the songs, the DJ, Tom Swift, opened the phone lines for listener comments.  Several people called in saying, "Long live the Masked Marauders!" "What hoot!" and the like.  Obviously, they'd gotten the joke.

It's a long story from there.  Soon after the radio program the Berkeley musicians along with some friends and with me on piano, finished an LP that was released by Reprise Records under the special "Deity" label.  It sold at a pretty good clip for a while and then dropped like a stone.  Among those taken in by the joke were none other Brian Williams (then ten years old) and his older brother.  For a while the boys apparently believed the record was a genuine recording of the stars mentioned in the original review.  

Recently, Brian Williams, anchor of the NBC Nightly News and host of the TV magazine show Rock Center, produced a segment on the history of The Masked Marauders, thoroughly checking various news stories and background documents from the historical period, interviewing Greil Marcus and me in (appropriately) a New York City recording studio where Mick Jagger himself had once done an album.  Williams presents himself, tongue-in-cheek, as an aggrieved victim of the hoax.  The show aired last Friday and is now archived at this link:

Were You a Believer in The Masked Marauders?http://rockcenter.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/04/05/17622557-were-you-a-believer-in-the-masked-marauders


For the historical/hysterical record, here are the liner notes I wrote for the album, using the T.M. Christian moniker. 

"Only once in a lifetime does an album like this appear.  Only once in a millennium does it become possible at all.  But like the return of Hegel's Comet every 738 years or the coming of the fresh leaves in the icy breath of spring, it was inevitable.  It had to happen.  In a world shrouded in the pitch darkness of war and political strife, The Masked Marauders stand as a luminescent flashbulb of truth exploding before our eyes.

Super sessions come and super sessions go  Ever since Socrates jammed with Alcibiades and Anthony played with Cleopatra, they have been a mainstay of Western Civilization.  All of them are memorable.  All of them produce music beyond precedent.  For when the gods meet and pool their talents, even if only for a few brief hours, the result is certain to be  a monument to creativity itself.

Sly critics, of course, will continue to scoff.  From their flimsy tin thrones of journalistic cynicism they will continue to exclaim "It's all a shuck" and "What can you expect from prima donnas who've never even rehearsed together?" But truly devout rock listeners will not be swayed by such bitterness.  They know a super session when they hear one.

When I was asked to attend The Masked Marauders' recording session date several months ago, I couldn't believe it was true.  A humble man like myself listening to the spontaneous creations of ... of all those great performers!  It was only as I mushed my dog sled that last two miles from the Hudson Bay Air Terminal to the basement studio of Igloo Productions that I was able to convince myself that a fantastic dream would become a reality.  A meeting of the gods at last!

The sessions went quickly.  After brief troubles with the magnificent 80 track tape machine and some minor adjustments to the microphones, we were off an rolling.  Inspired by the peaceful glow of the aurora borealis overhead, the musicians seem to merge into a single body.  Seldom was more than one take needed to finish a given cut.  Often it required less than that. 

There is an unforgettable story behind each song on this epoch-making album.  "I Can't Get No Nookie," for example, was recorded at 4:00 in the morning after an all night party on the tundra with the local Eskimos.  "Boy, those Eskimo women sure are something," the lead guitarist said to me as he shook the snow from his parka.  He was right.  The title of the song actually refers to one of them -- "Nookie," the lovely girl friend of Nanook of the North who attended the sessions.  Rumors that the title and lyrics contain an obscene reference are nothing more than a vile ethnic slur cooked up by some demented mind.

Looking back on it now, I am certain that the magical element which held it altogether was the incredibly solid rhythm section.  We have all heard the great Memphis sidemen and their compelling beat.  In recent months the Nashville rhythm sections have achieved a long-deserved acclaim.  But compared to the distinctive groove of the Hudson Bay group, all of these seem weak and uninteresting.  These men produce a rhythm which literally jolts the listener with the spirit of that simple, joyous early rock and roll.  It is, unmistakably, the sound of the future -- the Hudson Bay Sound.

Unfortunately, the musicians on this record must remain anonymous.  The web of entangling legal commitments in which they have become enmeshed over the last few years prevent them from revealing their true identities.  But here they are, nonetheless.  The haunting thump-thump-thump of the drums.  The rippling chords of the piano.  The moaning of the harp and dobro.  The familiar voices which shook the foundations of two continents.  Yes, they are all here.

None of them is dead.

Leading experts now estimate that the music business is currently 90% hype and 10% bullshit.  The Masked Marauders, bless their hearts, have gone far beyond that.  Their music needs no hype.  It transcends the very essence of the bullshit for which the public pays millions each year.  Do not be fooled by gossip and idle rumors.  In a world of sham, The Masked Marauders are truly the genuine article.

-- T.M. Christian
 



 

Great U.S. Military Victories of the Past Half Century

I'm proposing a series of historical lectures to be delivered at West Point on the theme: Great U.S. Military Victories of the Past Half Century.  Below is the complete list.

1.  "The Strategy and Conflict in Granada: Defeating Communism in the Caribbean," by retired General V.A. Ganar  






   

In Defense of Heckling

In Defense of Heckling

by:  Langdon Winner 

The noisy appearance of several activists from CODEPINK at last week's Senate hearings on the confirmation of John Brennan as Director of the C.I.A. was welcome for calling attention to the immoral, extra-judicial use of pilot-less drones by the U.S. Government to murder people -- citizens and foreign nationals, adults and children -- that "high government officials" suspect of being associated with al-Qaeda.  But as the protesters were being physically ejected from the room, it occurred to me that they'd also called mind a crucial but widely scorned feature of democratic freedom -- skillfully targeted heckling.

Those who disrupt public hearings, lectures, and other gatherings with shouts and posters critical of dignitaries at the front of room are often derided as enemies of free speech, ones who seek to destroy open discussion of crucial political issues.  Objections of this kind arose during incidents of heckling directed at Mitt Romney and Barack Obama during the 2012 presidential election campaign.  

Thus, at a political rally in Richmond Virginia shortly after the devastation of Hurricane Sandy, Romney encouraged the crowd to help by donating to the Red Cross.  But, as one news story reported:  "Amid the applause, ...[a] heckler shouted, “What about climate? What about climate? That’s what caused this monster storm. Climate change.” The man, who was holding sign that read “END CLIMATE SILENCE” was immediately booed and drowned out by “USA” chants. He was escorted out of the event." 

Press coverage of incident lamented the breakdown of respectful civility the speech, but seemed little concerned that, as the heckler pointed out, Mr. Romney had nothing to say about what is probably the greatest crisis facing humanity at present. 

In a similar incident, Barack Obama was heckled during a speech in March 2012 at Ohio State, first by a man shouting and waving a book and later by protesters chanting "block the pipeline,” referring to the Keystone XL project.  Obama's cool, calm response was typical of well coached responses by those who are targets of heckling, namely to stress the crucial need for decorum as well respect for the speaker and listeners in the audience.  "Sir, I'm here to speak to these folks." Obama said. "You can hold your own rally. You're being rude. ... I'm trying to talk to these people."

At one level such criticisms of heckling seem perfectly reasonable.  Indeed, it's clear that open debate and reasoned discourse would suffer if incessant verbal interruptions permanently interrupted or frequently shut down public gatherings.  Yes, there are numerous cases in modern history in which political thugs have busted up the meetings of their opponents through shouting, physical intimidation and worse.  By no means would I endorse malicious behavior of that kind.  But outrages of that sort are not what happens in most instances of heckling in public meetings and speeches.  What commonly occurs is that persons in the crowd speak  out, loudly but briefly, offering relevant, sometimes irreverent, contributions to the discussion, ones at odds with themes the speaker or event organizers hoped to publicize.

But, you may ask, isn’t this unwelcome and destructive?  Doesn't the presence of hecklers in the room threaten the right of free speech?  Isn't that a right we need to defend from any and all kinds of interference? 

My answer is that the right of free speech also includes the rights of listeners to respond vocally to statements and positions they find morally or politically offensive and to do that right on the spot.  Is there an obligation to sit quietly at attention as a speaker offers flagrant misrepresentations of the truth or advocates contemptible positions?  Is there something sacred about the location or vocation of the speaker that imposes respectful, appreciative silence?  Where in the Bill of Rights is a compliant attitude of that sort specified?  Indeed, the first amendment seems to authorize free speech on any and all occasions citizens may choose, perhaps (oh, horror!) on occasions in which others are speaking as well.  Perhaps we should regard appropriate, limited injections of heckling not as a threat or unwelcome annoyance, but as colorful invitations to democratic dialogue.

Three roughly associated events from many years ago helped focus my understanding of these matters.

One was a visit to the Free Speech Corner in London's Hyde Park during on a summer backpack tour of England while I was in college.  As someone in love with politics and political philosophy, I eagerly sought out the fabled place on a cloudy July afternoon and was astonished by what I saw and heard.  There in the plaza were several amateur orators, standing some distance apart, often on flimsy wooden boxes, declaring their views on a variety of social, political, moral, and cultural topics – ban the bomb, animal rights, the best path socialism, post-colonial African movements, and other topics.  As a well-domesticated middle class American, I was shocked to see that the speakers at the front were not the only ones   shouting.   Some of the people in the crowd were vigorously and loudly yelling back.  "Nonsense!" "Not true!" "Aw, you're full of it!"  It was all part of a customary, evidently well choreographed ritual in which the hierarchy that separates speaker and audience simply dissolves.  It's worth noting  that during the afternoon everyone said whatever they wanted.  Everyone was heard, nobody was silenced, for what it was worth.  True, little in the content of the exchanges was particularly profound.  But I came away thinking, "Yes, this is part of what free speech involves."

The second event -- a rather lengthy and complicated one -- was the Free Speech Movement (FSM) at U.C. Berkeley during the fall semester of 1964 an upheaval that happened shortly after my visit to Hyde Park.  The short version of the story is that, responding to complaints about political advocacy on campus, the foppish university administration decided to ban all political speech and was met by stiff student and faculty resistance.  After weeks of demonstrations, protests and the arrest of some 800 students at a sit-in in the administration building, free speech on campus was finally restored.  As I’ve written elsewhere, those events brought profound, lasting effects to my own life and worldview and to thousands of other students as well. 

The third event took place during the next year or so following the victory of the FSM and the rise of increasingly intense, widespread student concerns about the U.S. war in Vietnam.  One evening in the university's Wheeler Hall auditorium, a speaker from a federal government agency, William G. Bundy (brother of McGeorge Bundy, key advisor to President Lyndon B. Johnson at the time), came to explain the Johnson administration's views on the threat posed by what he described as North Vietnamese Communist infiltrators to the government of South Vietnam.  Some months earlier, a State Department document, "Aggresion from the North, a State Department White Paper on Vietnam,” had been released and became the focus of a heated nationwide debate.  That evening, Mr. Bundy defended the report’s findings and offered justifications for an increasing U.S. presence in the war.  For most of the time, the audience in the packed house listened quietly, even pensively to his remarks.  But on several occasions, there were spontaneous shouts from the crowd: "That's a lie!" "Bullsh*t" and the like.  Bundy, a career D.C. insider, one obviously used to polite beltway policy briefings, seemed shaken by these outbursts.

As the heckling continued off and on during Bundy's presentation, his host for the evening, Robert Scalapino, Chair of the Department of Political Science, stepped to the podium and angrily addressed crowd.  Drawing attention to the victory of the FSM, he excoriated those who'd raised their voices, dismissing them as contrary to the renewal of free speech at the university.  The audience seem chastened by his warning and jibes from the audience gradually died down.

Thinking back on its now, it seems to me that what was wrong that night, what was truly unforgivable during the build-up to the War in Vietnam, was not too much heckling, but far too little.  We were too easy on the stuffy, self-assured Mr. Bundy and those like him in Washington as the calamities in Southeast Asia became known.  Students and other citizens should have been tirelessly “in your face” as these policies and military campaigns took shape.  Reading recent histories of the war, Nick Turse's Kill Anything That Moves most notably, has further convinced me that it was a blunder to heed the advice of those who urged us to be "polite and respectful" in our opposition.  

Much the same can be said about political controversies in our own time.  Was a polite, respectful approach at public gatherings the best way to respond to the Tea Party candidates of 2011-2012 or their eventual standard bearer, Willard “Mitt” Romney?  Obviously not.  Think of the treasure trove of unwitting self-revelations in Mr. Romney’s quest for the presidency that were prompted by hecklers in the audience.  

For example, at the Iowa State Fair in August 2011, Romney tried to explain that, hypothetically, one way to protect “entitlement” programs like Social Security and Medicare would be to “raise taxes on people,” an idea he was trying to refute.  But before he got any further, several voices in the crowd yelled, “Corporations!”  

 “Corporations are people, my friends,” Romney replied, at which point there was raucous laughter, jeering and a loud retort, “No they’re not!” 

“Of course they are,” an obviously flustered Romney replied.  “Everything corporations earn ultimately goes to people. Where do you think it goes?”  (More uproarious laughter from the crowd.)

An interesting question arises here.  Was the American electorate better informed about its real choices in the 2012 election by (1) the hundreds of millions of dollars spent on the candidates’ beautifully tailored television advertisements, or (2) the memorable images and statements generated in response to well targeted heckling?  In my view, the answer is perfectly clear.  It's likely that history will record that several of Romney's "off message" comments were the ones ultimately decisive in his defeat, including his baffled retorts to ordinary citizen hecklers, phrases that came to symbolize his irrepressible contempt for the "47%" and more of the nation's populace.

While arguments against the practice of lively, limited, thoughtful heckling are usually offered as a sober, reasoned defense of democracy, upon closer inspection they are often thinly veiled justifications for authoritarianism.  The underlying, unspoken advice by very serious people is this:  Be quiet.  Be compliant.  Don’t speak out.  Don’t question authority.  Put your little minds at ease.  Just follow your designated leaders.  Let them do the talking.  If you must make noise, just applaud or cheer at the designated moment.

My mind swims as I remember the astonishing array of fools, miscreants, looters, and, yes, war criminals for whom my generation has been asked to accord deference and esteem.  Perhaps it was always thus.  On the lecture circuit for has-been dignitaries these days, a reliable rule of thumb is: the greater the crimes, the higher the honoraria, the more piteous the vapors of apology if anyone embarrasses the institution by daring to speak out.

So, I say, thank God for CODEPINK and for all those over the years who’ve relentlessly tried to heckle us back to our senses.  While it's a mode of political expression sometimes prone to excess, abuse and sheer irrationality, on balance the practice of heckling stuffed shirt power holders can be counted among strongest, most colorful, most effective traditions of direct democracy.  We need more of it, not less.

  * * * * * * * * * * * * * 

[In a second segment of these musings, I’ll explore some possible objections to my position, some unfortunate aspects of heckling (especially episodes of backlash), and even some suggestions  for “An Ethic for Hecklers.”  I have no idea when that part will be ready to post.]

Conservatism on the march ... again

It was amusing to find Rand Paul shamelessly promoting himself as President during the Senate hearings with Hillary Clinton this week.  This is another sign that Republican extreme "conservatives" are now in a crisis about their basic beliefs and, more than that, their "brand" as a whole.  

How about Rand brand?  Like it?  Eh?  Eh? 

The photo montage says it all.

Why so few utopias in science fiction cinema?

  

Why are there so few genuine utopias in science fiction cinema?
     

By: Langdon Winner

(This is a talk I gave at a panel on science fiction at the conference of the Society for Social Studies of Science, Copenhagen, October 19, 2012.)

Ray Bradbury, one of the celebrated founders of modern science fiction writing, once observed, “People ask me to predict the future, when all I want to do is prevent it.”  
  
What are we to make of this sage, but gloomy comment?
    

A couple of years ago I began teaching an undergraduate course at my university, Science Fiction Cinema and Social Criticism.  Several undergraduates had spoken to me about the idea, suggesting a seminar where they could draw upon science fiction movies as an opportunity to speculate about humanity’s prospects.  It turns out that for many college students, men and women, science fiction serves as a window into philosophical reflection.  This happens at a time in which opportunities of that kind are quickly vanishing.  On my campus, for example, the philosophy department has morphed into a Department of Cognitive Science, a field that has about as much philosophical imagination as a washing machine manual.  
  

The class I eventually offered asks students to read books that shed light upon issues in both classic and contemporary sci-fi movies.  We start with Fritz Lang’s “Metropolis,” reading Marx and Engels The Communist Manifesto,” along with several short pieces of 1920s German philosophical writing on the decadence of industrial society.  From there we move to “The Day the Earth Stood Still,” punctuated by readings from post-World War II nuclear scientists.  Eventually we arrive at an encounter between “The Truman Show” and Chris Hedges’ Empire of Illusion as a way to feature the unsettling tensions between fantasy and reality in today’s America.  Without going through the whole list of topics, it should be clear what the course tries to do.  As you’ve noticed, I construe the category “science fiction” very broadly, trying to match it with texts I hope the students will find challenging.  Old-fashioned scholar that I am, during the term I quietly celebrate as student papers show increasing attention to ideas and arguments in the books and gradually de-emphasize the plots, characters and images in the movies. 
              

After the first experimental version of the course, I looked back over the syllabus and noticed a disturbing fact.  All of the films in the course from “Dr. Strangelove” to “1984” “Blade Runner” and others were in a key signature of dystopia or post-apocalyptic landscape.  Since I don’t want to burden my students with any more gloom and foreboding than they already have, I decided to look for some optimistic, hopeful, forward looking, pieces of  science fiction, if nothing more than as a of a change of pace.  It’s not that I don’t like the dreary tales of dystopian sci-fi; I enjoy spectacles of villainy, conflict, collapse, and technology run amok is much as the next guy.   But I thought it would be useful to offer a little contrast and to expand the horizons of debate. 
         

It should be clear that science fiction is not a field of professional expertise for me.  I’m not really an avid fan of the genre, not a scholar who studies its written or cinematic history in detail.  Hoping to find some guidance, I asked a number of friends, including Michael Bennett (law professor, sci-fi enthusiast and organizer of this panel), people more heavily involved in this area of inquiry, to suggest films or videos I could show that are utopian in the sense that they project a better world, one in which people live long and prosper.   I was surprised to find that my friends and colleagues had few if any suggestions.   A common response was that are several episodes from the Star Trek television series, both first and second generations, that depict space explorers in encounters with arguably superior civilizations out in the far galaxies. 
       

But as I previewed some of the programs suggested, all seemed pretty thin.  None offered a strongly utopian vision with enough substance to inspire a good discussion about possibilities for creating a better world.  I also began to read scholarly books and articles that seemed to offer some guidance, Peter Paik’s formidable From Utopia to Apocalypse: Science Fiction and the Politics of Catastrophe, for example.  But unless utopia means an imagined alternative society minus the expectation that the place will be ideal or at least improved over ones know previously, scholarly studies of this kind, including Paik’s, actually explore grim dystopias, not hopeful utopian works of writing and cinema. 
         

So I began to wonder:  Why is this so?   What is the reason for the dark, dreary tone of so much of science fiction, especially in the movies?
     

The question presupposes an obvious fact, namely that the story of progress in modern history and its associated narratives – growth, development, innovation, and the like have all been triumphalist in tone and content.  Better science = better technology = improved human wellbeing.  Lift your glass!  Early modern utopias, from Francis Bacon’s New Atlantis well into the nineteenth century, often described imaginary, vastly improved societies, Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backwards, for example.  Works in this tradition suggested that science fiction writing would play a formative role to help readers envision a substantially improved world and to take the steps toward realizing it.  Bellamy’s book actually inspired a small social movement that set out to build the new model of industrial society his novel outlines.
     

In twentieth century sci-fi, however, especially in the movies the dominant themes are almost never visionary in a positive sense.  The themes that rise to prominence are one of dread, monstrosity and calamity, all of which can be quite entertaining.  A typical story shows the origins and consequences of a deliberate or inadvertent misapplication of the power of scientific technology.  That often serves as the fundamental backdrop through which individual characters in the drama find ways to triumph, finding love, honor, dignity – often as a saving remnant that foreshadows a new beginning.  
        

The dystopia depicted in “Gattaca,” for example, finds the genetically inferior Vincent Freeman (hint, hint) struggling to slip through the cracks of an inegalitarian political regime based upon biotechnology.  After a series of close calls heroic maneuvers, he finally succeeds in his dream, boards a rocket ship and blasts off to the moons of Saturn.  In one variant or another, this has become the standard format of sci-fi movies over the decades: individual solace is achieved on a background of monstrosity, futuristic warfare, dystopian social organization, and apocalypse.   
     

There are obviously good reasons why filmmakers prefer to draw upon this familiar conceit.  The ominous problems described by science fiction offer dramatic tensions and conflicts that can be explored and resolved in 90 minutes of film.  If handled with any imagination at all, climaxes in such settings can be vivid, exiting and even uplifting.  The all-too-predictable sentiment is (especially in American science fiction movies) that there will always be good people among us even as society goes systematically nuts and the world falls apart.  If nothing else, such scripts are reliably good box office.
        

One reason I generally avoid new sci-fi films is that this tried and true, sometimes engaging format is supported by cinematic spectacles  -- shootouts, chase scenes, massive explosions, and eye-popping special effects -- as directors throw in the towel and abandon any interesting ideas they may have had earlier, preferring to fill the screen with bombs and fire.  It’s probably a good thing that Philip K. Dick did not live to see the usually tawdry cinematic adaptations of his wonderful stories.   As they dissolve into a barrage of dazzling visuals and loud noise, the challenging ideas from Dick’s fertile imagination are simply overwhelmed.  
      

Why are science fiction movies fashioned in such dark hues rather than other colors on the theatrical pallet?   It cannot be solely because directors and producers need to sustain dramatic tension.  Shakespeare wrote dramas not only in the mode of tragedy that explored the dark recesses of the human hearts and minds, but also in the mode of comedy in which key conflicts are generated by well-meaning characters tripped up by mistaken identities, magical spells, and absurd machinations all of which are eventually resolved to the benefit and delight of all (or most) of those involved.   I’m not arguing that science fiction writers need to draw upon genius at Shakespeare’s level, only that there are good alternatives in comedy, romance and fictionalized history that have served well in genres other than science fiction.
       

Why, I wonder, are there almost no amiable sci-fi comedies?   Yes, there are some marvelous films of dark humor.  “Dr. Strangelove,” for example, is a send-up the bizarre rationality of Cold War militarists and intellectuals in the Pentagon and Rand Corporation.  One could also mention Woody Allen’s “Sleeper,” a gracefully amusing tale of a gadget filled dystopian future, an absurd mirror of 1960s America.  One can also mention also the tender mercies and comic predicaments in Robin Williams robot romance “Bicentennial Man.”  But none of these are utopias in the sense of projecting a better world for human living structured around new scientific knowledge and superior technology.  The best we ever get is dystopia with a broad, menacing smile.
        

Of course, it may be that my question here simply defines a void.  The simple fact may be that for whatever reason, the writers have not written the stories and the filmmakers have not made the movies that imagine a world superior in its practical moral qualities than the one in which we live today.  Science fiction, especially the lineage of science fiction cinema, seems lodged permanently in the heart of darkness.  I find that puzzling and rather sad. 
       

There are, however, some very good possibilities for stories ahead.  Not since the Mad Max series of three decades ago have we seen any ingenious science fiction movies about a fairly certain prospect just around the corner, that modernity’s great global technosphere, one largely based upon a one time bubble of cheap petroleum, will crumble as that puddle dries up.  
          

By the same token, Hollywood has not yet fully acknowledged a scenario strongly projected in piles of scientific reports on climate crash, namely that worst case projections are becoming most probable outcomes, pointing to a world in which temperatures spiral out of control, rendering large portions of the Earth uninhabitable.  Perhaps movie makers are, like those in Washington D.C., still reassured by the vaguely comforting term “climate change” and the belief that, hey, there’s still plenty of time to do something.  
      

Similarly, film makers have not come terms with a situation revealed by recurring social upheavals in recent years, including the May 15 movement in Spain and the Occupy Movement in the US, a situation in which visions of modern democracy premised on a science and technology based prosperity for everybody everywhere, has (by all statistical measures) been replaced by staggering levels of inequality, accompanied by blatant forms of oligarchy – government of, by and for the 1%.
         

Perhaps the good news is that, whether as tragedy or dark comedy, there are still many good scripts to be written.  But imaginings of a true utopia?  That now seems completely beyond our reach.

  * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * 
  

Note:  A full syllabus for the most recent version of my Science Fiction Cinema and Social Criticism course appeared in a posting here last fall.

Back blogging again -- railroad to nowhere

                            A track, an invitation to travel

 * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

This cartoon appears on the new blog, of my friend Paco Guzman, "Lagrimas en la lluvia."   The Spanish caption reads, "Un rastro, una invitacion a viajar."  For me, the drawing says a great deal about the kinds of hope and frustrations that often attach to people's experience of technologies of various kinds.  

I've been away from blogging for a while, but Paco's example will get me writing again.  All those "more important" projects and demands held me back for a while. Now it's time to get back on that railroad train to nowhere.


 

 

Here are all my Tweets

                                    


Does this count as a "peer reviewed publication"?  (Probably not, but here they are.)

All My Tweets

The site does offer a mirror of what's been on my mind day-to-day (for better or worse) and yours too, if you use Twitter.  

I will be using Weibo -- Chinese Twitter -- accidentally

您好我在中国的朋友。我将使用微博偶然。

As a way to further my understanding of people and events in China, I've gotten an account on Sina Weibo, the Chinese equivalent of Twitter.   Weibo means "micro blog."  My friend Tang Xiaofeng, also called Denver,  a graduate student in Science and Technology Studies at Rensselaer,  is helping me get started.  

My first Weibo message (above) announced, "Hello to my friends in China.  I will be micro-blogging occasionally." 

Denver saw it and sent me this message:  "Congratulations on your first Weibo entry.  However, the Google translation means, "I will use Weibo accidentally." 

I love it!  In my previous attempts to translate to Chinese into English using Google Translate the results read rather like 1950s beatnik poetry -- lots of wild and weird images thrown together in ways that make some, but not too much, sense.  This has a wonderful echo because one source of liberation for me as a teenager in small town California was -- along with rock and roll, jazz and my discovery of "the great books"-- was beatnik poetry, Ferlinghetti's "Coney Island of the Mind," for example.

So I'll be perfectly happy if the mistranslations of my Weibo tweets have that quality -- writing accidentally!  

Spanish Hacktivists to speak about their digital tools

Here's the poster for a scholarly colloquium I've organized for next Wednesday at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.  All are welcome.  If we find a way to stream the event on the Net, I'll post the notice here as well.

             

Science Fiction Cinema and Social Criticism: My course for this fall term

Science Fiction Cinema and Social Criticism

Prof. Langdon Winner

STSS-2962 and STSH-2962

Mon. & Thurs., 4 – 5:50  in Sage 3705

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Fall 2012

         Dept. of Science and Technology Studies        

Office hours: Wed. 10-11:00 & Thurs. 3-3:50 in Sage 5709 and by appointment: winner@rpi.edu

This class studies relationships between science fiction films and serious works of modern social criticism.  Through a careful reading of texts, analytical viewing of films and comparison of the two experiences we will explore some of the most significant issues in modern society.  As in all your classes, the real subject is: How to think!

Meetings.  We will meet twice a week.  Roughly half of our time will be spent viewing the films, the other half discussing them in relationship to the readings you be doing.  Everyone should come to class fully prepared to discuss the readings, films and their own ideas about them.  Regular, active participation is required and is an important part of your grade.  Attendance will usually be taken. You are responsible for putting initials next to your name in the day’s attendance sheet.  Please arrive promptly and be seated so we can view the lengthy films and discuss them.  [Note:  Because we will focus upon the material and each other – rather than the vast world of outside distractions -- this class will strictly maintain a “no laptop, no tablet, no smart phone” policy.]  

Readings:  Some of the books for the class are available in the Rensselaer Bookstore.  Others are online or on reserve in digital format (indicated by * on this syllabus) at Folsom Library listed under the course name and “Winner”. http://library.rpi.edu/setup.do

Readings will usually be discussed on the day they are listed.  Readings listed as “optional” readings often can be found by online search, in Folsom or through inter-library loan.  They are not required and have not been placed on reserve, however.

Weekly short papers:  For many (but not all) weeks of the term there will be short papers to help clarify and express your ideas, one page, single spaced (no longer!).   Usually these will be due at the Thursday session. These writings should be thoughtful, neat and printed.   The goal is to make sure you keep up with readings and ideas, making sure that when asked about the readings and films, you will have interesting things to say to the group.  [Note:  Weeks in which there are no papers due will be announced in class, in advance.]   Grades on these papers will be on a 5 to 1 scoring scale (5 = very good, 4 = good, 3 = average, 2 = poor, 1 = very poor, 0 = did not submit. 

Three essays:   I ask you to write three short essays, five pages double spaced (no longer!).  These essays will discuss the connection between the readings and films you have been studying.  Sample topics will be distributed, but you may propose topics and approaches to writing of your own.  Grades will be given on and A though F scale with “+” and “–“  as appropriate.  Excellent: A; Good: B; Average: C; Very poor: D; Failing: F.  Due dates: Sept. 27; Oct. 25; and Nov. 15.  No short essays are due on any of these due dates.  However, you must have done the readings for the day and be fully ready to discuss them.

Final exam: On December 6 there will be an in class final exam consisting of several short answer questions and one short essay.

Writing standards: To help you understand and anticipate the standards I will use to evaluate your writing, three items will be useful to you.  First is the “Key to the Marginal Notes” which provides an arcane code for understanding my notes on style, organization, and other features of your writing.  Thus, the code “UC” means “This passage is unclear.”  Second, you will receive a list of key features I’m looking for in your written work, each one arrayed on a sliding scale from Very Good to Needs to Improve.  Third, is the wonderful essay, “Politics and the English Language” by a writer, George Orwell, whose novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four, we’ll read during the term. URL for the essay: http://orwell.ru/library/essays/politics/english/

Grades.  Your grade for the semester will be determined by:

(1) attendance in class and active participation in discussions 20%;  

(2) weekly short papers with your comments on course materials, 20%

(3) three short essays: 45%

(3) in class final exam: 15%

Absences:  You may miss any two daily sessions without excuse and skip any one week’s short paper without penalty.  If you miss more than that, your grade will suffer.  Excused absences will be recognized for illness, family emergency, required varsity sports travel, and other crucial matters with written notification.  Usually, a simple email will suffice.

Late papers:  ALL PAPERS MUST BE SUBMITTED IN CLASS and on time.  There will be NO EMAIL OF PAPERS at any time during the term.  (Don’t ask. If you miss turning in a paper for any reason, just bring it to class the following session.  The grade will be necessarily lower, but often better than zero.)  Your weekly short papers are due on Thursday unless notified otherwise.

Other materials on the Web:  As the course moves along some additional course writings and illustrations from the web may be assigned.

Academic integrity:  All work submitted must be your own.  If you borrow ideas or information of any kind (which is always essential to learning and creativity), please just give a clear reference to the original source, a footnote or endnote, for example.  This is easily done, expresses gratitude and is a good habit to cultivate.  Evidence of plagiarism, borrowing materials or ideas without credit as well as other forms of cheating, will be dealt with severely – a grade of “F” for the course.

Learning Outcomes:

 

With any luck, students in this class will improve their ability to:

(1)  understand and interpret important works of social criticism and corresponding themes in modern movies;

(2)  read books and watch films in an active, engaged (rather than passive) manner;

(3)  recognize contrasting ideas and arguments crucial in debates about politics, policy and ethics

that involve scientific technologies;

(4)  grasp the ways that film makers express ideas and concerns about humanity’s present

 and future prospects;

(5) improve their ability to think and write clearly;

(6)  ponder ways in which their own lives and careers might include reflective artistry in

      professional work or other pursuits:

(7) fathom and anticipate ways in which bureaucratic strictures such as Orwellian Newspeak “learning outcomes” statements tend to infringe upon academic freedom in ways that commodify, degrade and infantilize the process of becoming a thoughtful, well-educated person.

Schedule

Week 1: Introduction

            August 27:      Discussion of the aims and requirements of the course.  Introductory comments

                                    about Fritz Lang’s “Metropolis.”

                       

            Readings:

                        Roger Ebert, “How to Read a Movie,” http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2008/08/how_to_read_a_movie.html

                        “MacGuffin,” [a plot device in films]:   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacGuffin

            August 30:   “Metropolis” -- vision of a technological future 

           

                        Readings:

Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, “The Communist Manifesto”

                                    Available in several formats: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/61

                        “Metropolis (film),” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropolis_%28film%29

Week 2:  Interpreting Fritz Lang’s “Metropolis”

            September 3: Labor Day holiday (no class)

                        Readings: (to be discussed on Thursday, Sept. 6)

                       

                        *Edgar Jung, “The Organic German Nation” in Roger Griffin ed., Fascism 

                        *Ernst Junger, “The Emergence of a New Type of Human Being,” in Griffin

                        *Martin Heidegger, “National Socialism as the Custodian of European Being”

                        Joseph Stiglitz, “The Price of Inequality,” interview with Amy Goodman

http://www.nationofchange.org/joseph-stiglitz-price-inequality-how-today-s-divided-society-endangers-our-future-1339343984                      

            September 6:  Workers, robots, class struggle, and the search for redemption

                        Readings:

                        Adam Call Roberts, “Metropolis: A Proto-Fascist Anti-Utopia”

                        http://themetropolistimes.com/2010/09/10/metropolis-a-proto-fascist-anti-utopia/

                        Optional reading (for the truly inspired):  Siegfried Krackauer, From Caligari to Hitler

Week 3:   The Bomb, Scientists and Paranoia

            September 10:  Alien invasions – a message for planet Earth

                        Film:  “The Day the Earth Stood Still”

                       

Readings:

*Cyndy Hendershot, “The Atomic Scientist, Science Fiction Films, and Paranoia:

            The Day the Earth Stood Still, This Island Earth, and Killers from Space”   

            https://netfiles.uiuc.edu/rfouche/www/readings/hendershot.pdf

                        *Albert Einstein, “Survival is at Stake”

                        *Lewis Mumford, “Gentlemen You are Mad”

            September 13:   Science fiction films as expressions of social unrest

                        Readings: 

Cyndy Hendershot, “Monsters at the Soda Shop: Teenagers and

Fifties Horror Films”

                                    www.imagesjournal.com/issue10/features/monster/text5.htm

                        Seth D. Baum, et al, “Would Contact with Extraterrestrials Benefit or Harm

                                                Humanity? A Scenario Analysis”

                                                http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1104/1104.4462.pdf

            Ian Sample, ““Aliens may destroy humanity to protect other civilisations, say scientists”

            http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2011/aug/18/aliens-destroy-humanity-protect-civilisations

            Optional reading (for sci-fi pulp magazine fans): Henry Bates, “Farewell to the Master”

            [the 1940s short story that inspired “The Day the Earth Stood Still”] 

            http://www.scribd.com/doc/8972410/Farewell-to-the-Master-the-Day-the-Earth-Stood-Still

Week 4:  The Total State and Technologies of Control

            September 17:  George Orwell’s vision of humanity crushed

                        Film:  “Nineteen Eighty-Four” (Michael Radford’s adaptation)

                        Reading: 

                                    George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four

                                     http://orwell.ru/library/novels/1984/english/

            September 20:  How many of Orwell’s fears are being realized today?

                        Reading:  Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four  (to the conclusion)

                                       Glenn Greenwald, “Extremism Normalized”

                                       http://www.salon.com/2012/07/31/extremism_normalized/

                                       Newt Gingrich, “Language: A Key Mechanism of Control”

                                       http://www.wfu.edu/~zulick/454/gopac.html

                                   

Week 5:   Supreme Rationality and/ or Utter Madness

            September 24:  America’s technocratic era

            Film:  “Dr. Strangelove”

            Readings: 

                        Ida Hoos, *Systems Analysis and Public Policy, (selections on reserve)

                        “Robert MacNamara,”  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_McNamara

                       

                        September 27   [First essay is due in class.]

            Films:  “Dr. Strangelove” (conclusion) and a BBC documentary:  “Pandora’s Box”

                        by Adam Curtis

            Readings:

                        Louis Menand, “Fat Man: Herman Kahn and the Nuclear Age”

            http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2005/06/27/050627crbo_books?currentPage=all

            Optional reading (for the curious):  “Herman Kahn,” in wikipedia

Week 6:  Humans and Androids in a Dystopian World

            October 1:  The imagination of Philip K. Dick

            Reading: 

                        Philip K.Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? 

                        http://www.mediafire.com/?zamnzjn1vko

                        or:   http://www.kejvmen.sk/dadoes.pdf

                        [Note today we will discuss Dick’s novel fully and look only at the very

                          beginning of the film.]

            October 4:  Artificiality and the “other”

                        Film:  “Blade Runner” (the final cut, 117 min.)

            Optional reading: (for the philosophically minded)

                        Stanislaw Lem, “Philip K. Dick: A Visionary Among the Charlatans”

                        http://www.depauw.edu/sfs/backissues/5/lem5art.htm

Week 7:   How to Read a Movie

            Tuesday, October 9 – [Note: Monday becomes a Tuesday session this week]

            Film:  A scene-by-scene analysis of “Blade Runner” in “cinema interruptus” mode

            Reading:

                        Roger Ebert, “How to Read a Movie,”

            http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2008/08/how_to_read_a_movie.html

                        [Read the some of the comments that follow Ebert’s essay as well.]

            October 11 – Cinema Interuptus: “democracy in the dark” continues

Week 8:   Philosophy of Technology in Cinema

            October 15

            Reading: Jacques Ellul, The Technological Society, pp. xxv-xxxvi and pp. 3-107

            October 18

           

            Film, “Koyaanisqatsi (Life Out of Balance)”

Week 9:    Mass Media, Reality and Illusion

            October 22:  Is everybody happy?  Oh, yeah!

            Film:  “The Truman Show”

            Reading:

                        Chris Hedges: Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle,

                        chapters I and IV

            October 25:  An illusion called “America”

            [Second essays are due in class.]   

            Reading: 

                        Empire of Illusion, chapter V

Week 10:   Reinventing Discrimination (and Blasting It into Space!)

October 29:  The origins and dynamics of inequality

            Film:  “Gattaca”

            Readings:

            *Derrick Bell, “After We’re Gone: Prudent Speculations on America

                                    in a Post-Racial Epoch”

            *Sun Ra, This Planet is Doomed: The Science Fiction Poetry of Sun Ra, selected poems

with Introductions by Amiri Baraka and Bhob Steward

Film:  “Sun Ra Arkestra live at Montreux 1976” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G7j-Hm2NgFM

November 1:  Genetic engineering and social policy

            Readings:

                        “Racial Segregation in the United States,” Wikipedia

                                    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racial_segregation_in_the_United_States

                        “Eugenics in the United States,” Wikipedia 

                                    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics_in_the_United_States

Week 11:   Is High Tech Civilization Inherently Violent?

            November 5:  Earthlings as the alien invaders

            Film:  “Avatar”

            Reading: 

                        *Derrick Jensen, Endgame, Vol. I, selections to be announced

            November 8  Beings in harmony with nature

            Reading:

                        Endgame, selections to be announced

Week 12:   Post-Apocalyptic Visions I

            November 12:  concluding discussion of “Avatar” and Jensen readings

                       

            Reading,

                        Endgame, selections to be announced           

            November 15:  Environment and society collapse

                                    [Your third essay is due in class.]

                       

            Film: “The Road”  [Note the film will be show in its entirety today.]

           

            Reading:

                        Begin reading Cormac McCarthy’s The Road

Week 13:   Post-Apocalyptic Visions II

            November 21

            No film today.  Continue your reading of The Road, now and over the Thanksgiving holiday.

            November 24 – No class, Thanksgiving feasting!

Week 14:  Post-Apocalyptic Visions II (continued)

            November 26

            Discussion of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road in comparison with the movie, “The Road,” based upon the novel

Weeks 14 and 15:  Technology and Narcissism (a pungent combination)

            November 29

            Reading:  Chris Hedges, Empire of Illusion, chapter II, “The Illusion of Love”

            Film, “15 Million Merits” (from the Black Mirror series)

            December 3

            Readings:  James Rivington, “Project Glass: what you need to know”

            http://www.techradar.com/news/video/project-glass-what-you-need-to-know-1078114

            Sherry Turkle, “The Flight from Conversation”

            http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/22/opinion/sunday/the-flight-from-conversation.html?pagewanted=all

            Film:  “The Entire History of You,” (from the Black Mirror series)

            December 6:  Final exam in class