I. Mid-Century Modern revived
This latter-day vogue for Mid-Century Modern may in some quarters be as insincere as the handlebar-moustache pendant on a teeny-bopper's necklace, and it may even be inspired by a basic-cable TV show, namely Mad Men, but in any event the revival of that rarefied art or "design" movement of the American 1950s and '60s antedating the annus horribilis of 1968 has by now attained something of a critical mass.
The principal term there is "Modern", and the irony is of course that from our vantage Mid-Century Modern comes across as rather traditional and quaint -- nothing could be more dated than Modern -- not to mention all-American and confident, and most especially ante-1968. As of 1968, Western Civilization was "deconstructed", and some us are picking up and patching together the pieces still, with uneven result.
Andy Warhol makes a serviceable illustration for art post-'68: Warhol had a very fine eye, indisputably, but a fashion stylist may have an excellent eye and yet no-one would confuse her with the fashion designer, and in that same way, Andy Warhol was not so much an artist as a cutter-and-paster of art, and his art amounts too much to isolating fragments from the creations of others for presentation as ironies.
That sort of thing is all well and good for purposes of satire and so on, but it can't possibly answer a creative, constructive, cohesive movement like Mid-Century Modern. Art since the Fall of Western Civilization has been too often a sifting of the rubble, or a caricature or grotesquery of what came before, where the movements before that time had been constructions of gleaming new edifices. Art Nouveau, Art Deco, Mid-Century Modern, etc.: all brave new worlds in their times, and none of them "deconstructions". The Victorian and Baroque movements may have been derivative, the one of the Gothic Middle Ages and the other of Antiquity, but they took the past for a foundation and built on it, vigorously.
So we look on a movement like Mid-Century Modern with admiration or even envy, and look around at the desolation and destitution that the Hippies and their witless younger apers have made of our civilization, and we can do no better than to invoke the Last Good Age, the last time there was confidence and creation and civilization in our civilization.
II. Three points on Game of Thrones
The sort of schtick of George R. R. Martin, author of the Song of Ice and Fire novels from which Game of Thrones is adapted, is that he makes things awfully, appallingly hard for his characters. Martin writes from Thomas Hobbes' formulation of "the life of man" in a dark-age "Naturall Condition of Mankind" as "solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short". He places his characters in bad situations, then makes things worse for them, and then worse still.
Martin is expert at invoking actual Medieval history and mythology, like Tolkien with whom he shares two middle initials. Beowulf comes readily to mind as a Martin blueprint, in its combining of real and fantastical, in its horrific, limb-severing gore, and in the implication found in Beowulf by its interpreters of the old pagan pantheon of gods giving way to the monotheist Christian Trinity. Martin is worthy of the obvious comparison to Tolkien, who was a devotee of the Dark Ages Anglo-Saxon universe that produced Beowulf.
People do make a fuss about Martin's early-going execution of Ned Stark, who is one of the few fairly unalloyed white hats of the story, inasmuch as killing off a hero to the readership or audience is supposed to be unconventional and a sacrifice for an author. But it strikes me that Martin milks that execution like a fat cow, to the point where I reckon it was no sacrifice at all: Lord Stark of the North is elevated in death to a saint, and his life and execution are invoked to where yes-siree-good-ol'-Ned-Stark becomes a sort-of shorthand for all that was good and might have been, and all that's been lost and might be again. Stark serves the story in death more than he could've done as a going concern.
III. Not quite three points on The Spoils of Babylon
IFC's spoof epic miniseries. Highest commendation possible for style, but the show is sparse for jokes, and what jokes there are, are weak, like as not. Will Ferrell accounts for the better part of the jokes, in his prologue and epilogue commentaries as author and director Eric Jonrosh, and Michael Sheen takes his small role to the nth degree and delivers the funniest line of the show outside of Ferrell's parts ("Louisa May is my guide and my compass"), but otherwise the laughs are too hard to come by. And the show's a cliche of leftism and grinds its axes indulgently.
What Spoils of Babylon gets altogether right is style. It's art, in its way, and manages to make jokes of its art; it elevates style to an end in itself, and a comic end. I'd almost credit it as a novel genre of comedy which might for want of a better appellation be termed here Aesthetics Comedy.
But it may be that the inside-out-turning comedy of this early 21st Century will come from conservatives or libertarians or anyway non-leftists, because those sorts haven't been captured by the conventions of the age.
This latter-day vogue for Mid-Century Modern may in some quarters be as insincere as the handlebar-moustache pendant on a teeny-bopper's necklace, and it may even be inspired by a basic-cable TV show, namely Mad Men, but in any event the revival of that rarefied art or "design" movement of the American 1950s and '60s antedating the annus horribilis of 1968 has by now attained something of a critical mass.
The principal term there is "Modern", and the irony is of course that from our vantage Mid-Century Modern comes across as rather traditional and quaint -- nothing could be more dated than Modern -- not to mention all-American and confident, and most especially ante-1968. As of 1968, Western Civilization was "deconstructed", and some us are picking up and patching together the pieces still, with uneven result.
Andy Warhol makes a serviceable illustration for art post-'68: Warhol had a very fine eye, indisputably, but a fashion stylist may have an excellent eye and yet no-one would confuse her with the fashion designer, and in that same way, Andy Warhol was not so much an artist as a cutter-and-paster of art, and his art amounts too much to isolating fragments from the creations of others for presentation as ironies.
That sort of thing is all well and good for purposes of satire and so on, but it can't possibly answer a creative, constructive, cohesive movement like Mid-Century Modern. Art since the Fall of Western Civilization has been too often a sifting of the rubble, or a caricature or grotesquery of what came before, where the movements before that time had been constructions of gleaming new edifices. Art Nouveau, Art Deco, Mid-Century Modern, etc.: all brave new worlds in their times, and none of them "deconstructions". The Victorian and Baroque movements may have been derivative, the one of the Gothic Middle Ages and the other of Antiquity, but they took the past for a foundation and built on it, vigorously.
So we look on a movement like Mid-Century Modern with admiration or even envy, and look around at the desolation and destitution that the Hippies and their witless younger apers have made of our civilization, and we can do no better than to invoke the Last Good Age, the last time there was confidence and creation and civilization in our civilization.
II. Three points on Game of Thrones
The sort of schtick of George R. R. Martin, author of the Song of Ice and Fire novels from which Game of Thrones is adapted, is that he makes things awfully, appallingly hard for his characters. Martin writes from Thomas Hobbes' formulation of "the life of man" in a dark-age "Naturall Condition of Mankind" as "solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short". He places his characters in bad situations, then makes things worse for them, and then worse still.
Martin is expert at invoking actual Medieval history and mythology, like Tolkien with whom he shares two middle initials. Beowulf comes readily to mind as a Martin blueprint, in its combining of real and fantastical, in its horrific, limb-severing gore, and in the implication found in Beowulf by its interpreters of the old pagan pantheon of gods giving way to the monotheist Christian Trinity. Martin is worthy of the obvious comparison to Tolkien, who was a devotee of the Dark Ages Anglo-Saxon universe that produced Beowulf.
People do make a fuss about Martin's early-going execution of Ned Stark, who is one of the few fairly unalloyed white hats of the story, inasmuch as killing off a hero to the readership or audience is supposed to be unconventional and a sacrifice for an author. But it strikes me that Martin milks that execution like a fat cow, to the point where I reckon it was no sacrifice at all: Lord Stark of the North is elevated in death to a saint, and his life and execution are invoked to where yes-siree-good-ol'-Ned-Stark becomes a sort-of shorthand for all that was good and might have been, and all that's been lost and might be again. Stark serves the story in death more than he could've done as a going concern.
III. Not quite three points on The Spoils of Babylon
IFC's spoof epic miniseries. Highest commendation possible for style, but the show is sparse for jokes, and what jokes there are, are weak, like as not. Will Ferrell accounts for the better part of the jokes, in his prologue and epilogue commentaries as author and director Eric Jonrosh, and Michael Sheen takes his small role to the nth degree and delivers the funniest line of the show outside of Ferrell's parts ("Louisa May is my guide and my compass"), but otherwise the laughs are too hard to come by. And the show's a cliche of leftism and grinds its axes indulgently.
What Spoils of Babylon gets altogether right is style. It's art, in its way, and manages to make jokes of its art; it elevates style to an end in itself, and a comic end. I'd almost credit it as a novel genre of comedy which might for want of a better appellation be termed here Aesthetics Comedy.
But it may be that the inside-out-turning comedy of this early 21st Century will come from conservatives or libertarians or anyway non-leftists, because those sorts haven't been captured by the conventions of the age.
