(no subject)

I made an attempt to watch Lost recently (mostly to watch Michael Emerson, who wikipedia tells me doesn't show up to season 2--if someone wants to give me a list of key episodes to watch so I can skip ahead till then, please do), and didn't get very far. It really goes back to my intense dislike of post-apocalyptic narratives, of which Lost is one. Not an the end of the whole world, but the end of these people's connection to it.

So I was thinking about what exactly post-apocalyptic narratives do that I don't like: they strip away the societal, technological, and infrastructural layers we use to insulate ourselves, revealing the harsh, animal nature of our mortality. And I realized--this is not a new question, though the popularity of post-apocalyptic fiction is relatively new.

The question of what happens if we strip away the veneer of society is the main question that works like The Heart of Darkness attempt to address. But Heart of Darkness does it through the deeply, deeply, deeply racist mechanism of examining the Other: look at Those People and how bestial they are--maybe their common humanity proves that I am bestial as well.

Whereas post-apocalyptic fiction attempts to address the question of the veneer of society through examining ourselves. What happens if we lose society? What do we become? For this purpose, the actual race of the main character(s) is not central--we are meant to identify with the protagonists as analogs to ourselves.

So the post-apocalyptic genre has taken a question that used to be addressed by looking at the Other and addresses it by looking at the Self.

Thoughts? Agree/disagree?

(no subject)

I am listening to a radio documentary on John Cage's "Four minutes thirty-three seconds." Does it ever get performed any more? I've never seen it programed. I mean, it is fundamentally changed if the audience knows what it is, and it's so famous now that most classical audiences would know it. So can it even be performed anymore?

I think it's one of the most important modern classical music compositions, but I've never heard it in concert, and a recording would be pointless. And maybe a performance would be pointless now, too. Maybe it's just important that it happened.