Where art thou dionysian ubermensch, hero of human culture?

Something I wrote, and thought I would share----sorry its a bit long:

In the early 1960’s a group of young people gathered to hang out with a group of beatniks in the Haight-Ashbury District of San Francisco. They were hip, but they were too young to be beatniks, so the beats started calling them ‘Hippies.’ A surprising collection of talent was found in this growing yet small group of young people, and from very humble and grassroots beginnings they started, from that little corner in San Francisco, a counterculture movement that quickly shaped a global generation, and changed history. In a world heavily bent on objectivism and rationality, they gave birth to a new focus on the individual, subjectivism, and irrationality. They were a culture of, “spontaneous individuality,” as the author, Theodore Roszak, referred to them. But they were also of the earth, and had rediscovered nature. And just like the ecstatic and intoxicated followers of Bacchus and Dionysus of ancient times, the hippies exploded forth to shock and awaken a mankind that was rapidly falling prey to both decadence, and an alienation from that which makes us human. In short, the Hippies were, the Ubermensch—overman, or superman, that was predicted by Friedrich Nietzsche almost a century earlier.

But while they came to awaken mankind in the 60’s, today we once again find ourselves falling into the same trap of decadence, rationalistic objectivism, and alienation. The problem is, where is that Ubermensch to awaken the man and woman of Western culture, or what today has become global culture? Who will save us now?

It is always controversial in philosophical circles to suggest that any specific group or subculture represents Nietzsche’s Ubermensch. After all, the Nazi’s twisted Nietzsche’s philosophy to justify their actions, all the while claiming to be Nietzsche’s Ubermensch. There are anarchists who believe that they are the Ubermensch, and they are certainly more justified than the Nazis. There have even been some to state that the Ubermensch is a designed evolution using natural selection to create a superior person, which again suggests the Nazi concept of the Master Race, and their embracing of Eugenics. But there is good reason, as we shall see, to label the Hippies as Ubermensch.

First and foremost is the fact that the Hippies so strongly represented the return of the Dionysian force in Western culture. The Dionysian is one of two social dynamics that Nietzsche identified, the other being Apollinian. The Dionysian force is, like the God Dionysus, a force of nature, explosively generative, full of unbridled passion, ecstatic, orgasmic, intoxicating and intoxicated. Dionysus (and his Roman counterpart, Bacchus) was the God of Wine, but also the God of Madness, ecstasy, and excess. He represented mankind as a being of nature, filled with an inherent power of growth, but it was a growth that risked going too far, even taking one into the darkness of schizophrenic madness. The Apollinian force on the other hand, like the God Apollo, was repressive, dualistic, and controlled, emerging as man attempted to master nature, including his own. Apollo was the Sun God, the god of truth, light, healing, and the protector of flocks and herds. But where Dionysus was subjective, irrational, and generative, Apollo was objective, rational, and repressive, even oppressive. Dionysus was the bearded man, and the satyr, while Apollo was the athletic beardless youth, who slayed the python.

Nature is an irrational force, most strongly represented in mankind, by his subconscious. Civilized Man rationalizes the forces of nature, creating the illusion that he can control it. He does this by focusing on conscious physical reality and then objectifying the world around him—transforming it into tools for his manipulation. But this process eventually leads to alienation from his (and her) own subconscious and his (and her) natural self, and from other humans who also become nothing more than tools for manipulation.

The Hippies rejected just such an Apollinian world, as they made their appearance shocking the conformist status quo still living in the illusion of a ‘Father Know’s Best’ world. Compare, for example, the music the Hippies embraced to that of the Dionysian music as described by Nietzsche in his first book, The Birth of Tragedy:

“…and the Dionysian music in particular excited awe and terror. If music, as it would seem, had been previously known as an Apollinian art, it was so, strictly speaking, only as the wave beat of rhythm… The music of Apollo was Doric architectonics in tones, but in tones that were merely suggestive, such as those of the cithara. The very element which forms the essence of Dionysian music (and hence of music in general) is carefully excluded as un-Apollinian—namely the emotional power of the tone, the uniform flow of the melody, and the utterly incomparable world of harmony.”

If he had been writing a hundred years later, he could have easily been describing the emergence of Rock music, as it stood out against all the music that came before it, older music, that in comparison to rock, seemed like the hushed tones of the κιθάρα (cithara)—the ancient Greek lyre.

Consider for a moment, the song Gene Kelley re-popularized, “Singing in the Rain,” in a movie of the same title:”

“Doo-dloo-doo-doo-doo
Doo-dloo-doo-doo-doo-doo
Doo-dloo-doo-doo-doo-doo
Doo-dloo-doo-doo-doo-doo...

I'm singing in the rain
Just singing in the rain
What a glorious feelin'
I'm happy again
I'm laughing at clouds
So dark up above
The sun's in my heart
And I'm ready for love…”

Now consider a culture for which this song is iconic to, that in retrospect seems very innocent and naïve. Notice the Apollinian sun shining in Gene Kelley’s heart reflecting the very Apollinian culture built upon good Christian morals and a strong sense of rationality to keep things in check. But as this 1952 movie showed us, one could be so moved by the irrational emotions of love, that a person might do something really wild and bold, like fold up their umbrella and sing and tap dance in the rain. But it was ok, and rationally justified, because the good was within him—the Apollinian sun was shining through in his heart. “I’m singing in the rain…”

Enter the Dionysian music, which, as Nietzsche described, “…excited awe and terror.” Listen to the explosion of intense emotion as Janis Joplin, and Big Brother and the Holding Company alter the foundations of existential reality, as only Acid Rock could, in their hit, Ball and Chain:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELpi0PIw0ww"]Big Brother and the Holding Company - Ball and Chain - YouTube

This song is raw blues—a tale of emotional pain inflicted upon a lover, who now feels her relationship as a ball and chain. But it is an affirmation of life, a true life, as it is genuinely experienced at the deepest of subjective levels, from the hushed quiet tones as we fall back into sorrow, quiet and sadly contemplative, as emotions build until they burst forth, in their full irrational fury. But then, we again fall back, this time into the hushed silence of exhaustion, until the emotions once again build up to where they can no longer be contained. The wail of the guitar, provides just as much emotional statement as the vocals, which overflow with emotion as only Janis could do it. Harmony itself is taken to irrational limits, as if derived not from the conscious mind, but beyond, somewhere in the depths of the subconscious. Compared to this song, as experience in emotion, Gene Kelley’s singing in the rain seems restrained and plastic—nothing more than abstract entertainment on a two-dimensional screen. Ball and Chain is true life, as Dionysus came to remind man—a life filled with ecstatic joy, but also soul-wrenching sadness. But above all a life to be experienced.

And it is experienced from the very beginning—starting with the initial pause in the powerful electric lead guitar intro that builds anticipation, as you keep anticipating that follow through into the next sound from that initial taste of a chord.

Big Brother and the Holding Company emerged, like so many of the other original Hippies, from Haight Ashbury. They came into a world that, like the Gene Kelley movie, consisted of an innocent and naïve Apollinian culture built upon good Christian morals and a strong sense of rationality to keep things in check. But it was a culture that blindly moved through a world that rationalist objectivism had turned largely decadent. The rational forces of the Atomic Age, for example, were pushing mankind towards the irrational suicide of self-imposed extinction. The Nation’s youth, our sons, were being murdered in faraway jungles, supposedly to prevent a domino-like spread of Anti-American ideology, but really just to protect American corporate interests. Meanwhile here at home, our parents had already been programmed by the spectacle of the machine—to conform by consuming goods, and working 9 to 5, followed by cocktail or pinochle parties, and church on Sundays.

The Hippies however, rejected this 9 to 5 plastic life of plastic values and religion. After all, the Ubermensch is tied directly to the death of God, and the creation of new values. But the death of God as Nietzsche most strongly understood it, is the death of the otherworldly, rationally objectivistic Sky Father, who stands high in the sky, Lord over all—in other words, the Christian God. But the obvious connection to Apollo, the bright Sun God, whose bright rays shine upon all creation creating the stark difference between light (good) and dark (bad), is very obvious, both in Nietzsche’s philosophy, and the literal Greek influence upon Hebraic thought in the evolution into Christianity.

But both the Hippies and the Ubermensch are of nature, of the earth, and of humanity. Therefore, the creation of new values, as we have seen, did not mean the death of the god qua God, i.e. the absolute (as Hegel, for example, would have envisioned it). The Hippies, rather than officiating the funeral of the divine, paved the way for a return of the gods of the earth and nature, bringing the divine back to earth; but not just the spirits and gods, for, underlying all of nature and reality, they rediscovered a profound mystery, the Great Spirit, or the Tao. The New Age, though naïve, and a product of the rationalistic Modern Age (and therefore rife with fallacy), is a testament to this establishment of New spiritual values and a newfound home of the divine. (And while many fell victim to the New Age which was a Post-Modern hodge podge of traditions stripped of much of their cultural context and meaning, many more actually rediscovered those ancient traditions for what they were, exploring them within their native and natural context, and thereby keeping the tradition genuine and filled with meaning.)

In this way, the Hippies as Ubermensch, broke through the Apollinian experience of life as the unattached objectivistic observer. And just like the ancient followers of Dionysus, found new value and experience through their διθύραμβος (dithyrambs—the wildly ecstatic and enthusiastic hymns sung and danced in honor of Dionysus). The Hippies created the modern day dithyramb through their rock.

Nietzsche continued his description in, The Birth of Tragedy,

“In the Dionysian dithyramb man is incited to the greatest of all his symbolic faculties; something never before experienced struggles for utterance—the annihilation of the veil of maya, oneness as the soul of the race and of nature itself. The essence of nature is now to be expressed symbolically; we need a new world of symbols; and the entire symbolism of the body is called into play…”

I could argue that this essence of nature is expressed in Big Brother and the Holding Company’s Ball and Chain with the intense emotion expressed by Ms. Joplin, but perhaps in a more modern day Hippie dithyrambic format, consider, “Walking In Space,” from the Tribal Rock Musical, Hair:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7jO99LxBSy8"]Hair - Walking In Space (1979) - YouTube

Rather than use the song from the original play, notice that I used the video from the 1979 movie version of the play. I did this because it juxtaposes the intense subjective and therefore very Dionysian nature of the song, against the intense Apollinian and objectivistic, nature of boot camp. As clearly demonstrated in the video, boot camps served the military purpose of breaking down the individual ego, in order to make the individual into just another cog in the military war machine.

“…My body. (My body) My bodyyy. My body is walking in space…” This is the subjective experience of my body that is truly Dionysian, unlike the disembodied body of Cartesian objectivism, where ‘I think therefore I am,’ but everything else, including my body, is an object outside of me-as-observer. In this song the body and mind are a holistic whole—intricately interconnected as a cloud of being, like Heidegger’s Dassein. The indidiviual finally stands out against the ground of being, as body and soul. “…My mind is as clear as country air. I feel my flesh, all colors mesh…”

The hippies needed new symbols as they brought, in true Ubermensch fashion, new values to Western culture. And of course you can’t hide the fact that, like the Roman Bacchanal, the Greek Maenads, and other followers of Dionysus, these new values and symbols were discovered through intoxication. But this too was part of the Dionysian subjective nature, and the reason why the Hippies, the Bacchanal, and the Maenads were so dangerous to the existing social structure and its institutions.

Just look at some of the new values of this Ubermensch as expressed in the song:

“All the clouds are cumuloft
Walking in space
Oh my God your skin is soft
I love your face

How dare they try to end this beauty?
How dare they try to end this beauty?

To keep us under foot
They bury us in soot
Pretending it's a chore
To ship us off to war

In this dive
We rediscover sensation
In this dive
We rediscover sensation

Walking in space
We find the purpose of peace
The beauty of life
You can no longer hide

Our eyes are open
Our eyes are open
Our eyes are open
Our eyes are open
Wide wide wide!”

The Apollinian forces become the strongest at the most decadent point of a culture: before its downfall. And it is then when everyone’s eyes are the most closed. In fact, it should be obvious that it is this Apollinian force, which is a struggle to try to preserve what was by implementing further control and manipulation, is also what contributes to that downfall. Its stark objectivistic rationalism only serves to turn individuals into abstract numbers, and lifeless objects, further alienating them from their own humanity. We need only to look at how Ancient Greece, or Ancient Rome, or even the Bourgeoisie European culture of a century ago, all embraced the apex of rationalism as they headed into collapse.

The Atomic Age, Vietnam, McCarthyism, all serve as examples of the Apollinian objectivism that was leading us to our doom. It took an Ubermensch, the Hippies, to save us. The Hippies and the others they inspired brought forth all kinds of radical ideas, from art, and politics, to life and relationships.

Half a century later, as the Apollinian forces have regained control, there is no longer any advocate or agent to this expression of the Dionysian. Granted, music by nature is Dionysian expression. But the most extreme music today, Death Metal and its brothers and sisters, with all their darkness and focus on death, is a reflection of our current age of nihilism, rather than an affirmation of life. But can we expect any different? After all, Death Metal descended down to us from Heavy Metal.

Heavy Metal emerged in the 1970’s, though it really came of age in the 1980’s. Its appearance marked the take over, once again, of the machine. Many of the Hippies had retreated to the hidden corners of the nation, to live their own lives as free and underground as they could. Others had taken the advice of Jerry Rubin who came to the realization that true freedom had to include economic freedom, and thereby reattached themselves to the establishment—the machine—as the willing Yuppies. The rebellion of the counterculture had lost both its direction and momentum, and as Mick Jagger prophetically sang, “I’m a street-fighting man…” the tradition of the Dionysian, hung over from too much narcotic excess and alienated from its own ideologies, fell into the decadence of the streets—as punks in the punk rock scene.

But it wasn’t just Heavy Metal. All of music and the arts were in change. With the commercialization of Rock in the 70’s, many people had been searching for the New Wave. So, as corporations took over the rock scene, a New Wave did appear, and they embraced it, not stopping to think that it was a New Age of the abstract world of automation: the Information Age. And thus the jerky automaton-like movements of Devo, matched the research of digitalization taking place in the technology centers around the world, moving us from the natural-based sound of analog, to the computer-based sound of digital. But Heavy Metal was the mechanistic side of this New Wave. It took the raw-emotion filled electronic guitar of acid rock (subjectivity at its limit) and pushed it into the realm of the machine. Tonal and chord patterns became mechanistic as notes sped by at the speed of the machine. It is no coincidence that Heavy Metal came of age about the time that theatre audiences were thrilled to the nightmarish chase of the Terminator, as this human-like machine chased down a boy who was to become the last human hero. This boy’s future was to face almost sure death as the machine takes over the world once and for all.

But what happens to the subjective individual—the human—when computers and machines take over? Automation and industrialization force the alienation from human-ness upon the individual. The enslaved factory workers of the 40’s and 50’s became the enslaved call center employees of today. As Herbert Marcuse in his book, One Dimensional Man, wrote, slavery is not about obedience, or the difficulty of one’s labor, rather it is, “to exist as an instrument, a thing.”

And so the call center employees toil, not as humans, but as tools programmed to follow scripted conversations, monitored through call stats and recordings, through which, with cold and mechanical surveys, are used to objectively determine if their effectiveness as a tool, is up to standard, or whether they should be discarded. But even those who do not see themselves as slave tools tied to a computer are nonetheless thoroughly programmed by the computers and machines around them. In this way the subjective wants, needs, and desires of individuals, even the individual’s outlook of the world around him or her (through the abstract reality provided by the internet) are all determined by objectivistic algorithms. Objectivism rules the world and masks over genuine truth and value with a thick gooey paste of consumerism. In fact, the genuine values and truths, are buried so deep, that only nihilism is left, whether recognized or not.

So where is the human (especially that which still retains any semblance of the Dionysian) in such an objectivistic and digitally automated universe? Metaphorically the human has died hence the rise of Death Metal and the Gothic subculture. Death Metal calls out to us from the hard metallic machine, but it is the demons that are actually screaming out from Hell (as the vocals), through the gnashing teeth of the Earth Maul. Therefore the vocals are as unique to Death Metal as the metal itself, which it inherited from Heavy Metal.

On the other hand, in the Goth culture, there are still signs of the subjective—the individual calling out, as it is, from the morbid darkness beyond the grave. The Gothic culture recognizes the pain, struggle, and even the futility of human experience, but limited by modern day nihilism, as a cultural phenomena and art form, it is wanting in the ecstatic joy that also bursts forth with the Dionysian in all of its glory. Alas, it remains to be seen, if the Goth stands out as a post-death lament of the Modern Day individual, or the surviving glimmer of life in the underworld, before it again springs forth in rebirth.

But there can be no rebirth, if there is no appearance of the living Dionysus as manifested by a new Ubermensch. What were radical ideas to the Father Knows Best culture at the previous peak in the Apollinian dynamic has been absorbed and made a part of the machine that is Modern culture. Media screams out to us that if we want to rebel, or simply stand out as a unique individual, then we simply have to buy this product, or eat that food, or drink this whiskey… The hipster is nothing more than one of a multiple of modes of consumerist activities feeding the machine. But what does it matter anyway, for we can be as bad, as free, as unique, and even as powerful as our wildest dreams may want us to be, in the virtual realities we can create within the modern day gaming world. But such a virtual reality is not any different from the dreaming—the only way that Apollinian man, in all his objectivity, sees the irrational side of life according to Nietzsche.

In the end, it simply keeps our minds occupied, as we blindly head towards cultural oblivion. Only this time, everyone’s mind is occupied. Anyone with a radical tendency, with an impulse to break free from the masses, is kept in check; is kept pacified. This is perhaps the ultimate Post-Modern crisis: that any movement of human nature, buried in mankind’s collective subconscious, that would be so inclined to generate an uprising into radical non-conformity—and lead the way as the next Ubermensch—has already been pacified into non-existence.

Who will step up to break through the Apollinian forces and rescue Western culture—Global culture—from its self-imposed doom? Where art thou, Dionysian Ubermensch, hero of human culture?

 

Here are the links for the songs again----I guess the post was too long to get the thumbnails in too:



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELpi0PIw0ww"]Big Brother and the Holding Company - Ball and Chain - YouTube


P.S: I think this particular version of Ball and Chain has one of the best guitar intro's ever!


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7jO99LxBSy8"]Hair - Walking In Space (1979) - YouTube




And in case you kids are too young to know that Singing in the Rain:



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1ZYhVpdXbQ"]Singing In The Rain - Singing In The Rain (Gene Kelly) [HD Widescreen] - YouTube

 

we are old family , we are new family

 

Sorry 'wolf, as much as I enjoy Janis's performance, that drugged out, drunk or whatever guitarists lead work just flat stunk up that record.. yeah he took harmony to irrational limits, to the point it's out of tune! Dionysian my ass, he just sucked.

Anyway, I'm with you otherwise...:2thumbsup:

Carry on

 

LOL! Yeah I laughed reading your post----he actually wasn't the best guitarist around---and his intro and other riffs never sounded the same. There are several versions of this song wherein I don't care much for his guitar---but I personally love this one---it was acid rock after all. Some people just can't dig some of that---like Blue Cheer that purposely tuned their guitars just a tweak off to get the sound they wanted. I guess we will never know if his drugged out off-tune guitar was on purpose, or if he was simply trying to cover up his inability to play well...

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I4YiGu9IxcU"]Dillinja - You Don't Know (The Remix) - YouTube

:-D

 

By the same token, Do you doubt that you will be paid?

 

and all that jazz but is resolved sublimely which accounts for the witness of popularity.

 

The age to be concerned for is young age.

 

I can imagine it with Jeff Beck or someone that actually knows how to play the blues without wankin' out of tune. I listened to that record, that song in particular, over and over again while ditching class in the library of my jr highschool, 1972.
It was to end up part of my tutelage of the blues, but what I was getting from that record was almost all from Janis. To be fair, at least the rhythm section knew what they were doing, and the dude wasn't a bad rhythm player, he sucked as a lead player though...
Blues demands a special quality to those bent notes, ya know.
The cat was just sloppy, an insult next to Janis's pure intonation. She knew where the blues lived. RIP Janis

Not a fair comparison, death metal doesn't count, it's not really music,:cheers2: it's just violence perpetrated with musical instruments. Whatever virtuosity there is, is the virtuosity of a machine gun... just about anyone can practice up and get good at playing fast, playing emotively takes an entirely different set of skills and attitude.

Sorry about the hi-jackin' 'wolf I'm done now

 

Yeps seems you are in the wrong thread indeed. This (and Janis & Big brother and the Holding Company) is not about technique or virtuosity at all, it is about feelings and how they make it sound and I fully understand and am even glad with the OP because I experience this song (and others from the same album) exactly the same and definitely also for a large part because of the guitarplaying! :cheers2:

 

All that comes to mind is production quality

I kinda think the group functioned, obviously making a record.

In personal failure?. Rest is for the living

Happiness is a warm gun bang bang..

I can just imagine wolfman jack now. Don't worry, you know I'm gonna mess with mountain valley wolf anyway.

 

thedope:

Not my concern. The dance remembers me.

lol

 

Then again you are into death metal, so go figure... ahh, I got it... y'all have tin ears!

 

thedope:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMUDVMiITOU"]DJ Snake & Lil Jon - Turn Down for What - YouTube

Keep hearing this on the motherfucking radio. Saw the clip just now LOL Kids. :-D

 

I see the problem---In fact I exacerbated it by referring to the song as raw blues---though I was referring more to the emotion than the actual music. But Janis is blues---and it is hard to separate her from that. You can see a Victoria Spivey legacy that she takes to a new level.

But Ball and Chain---and the lead guitar in particular, is Acid Rock, which is why I included it here, and why I label that version of the song as one of the best acid rock lead intro's ever. (Asmodean gets it.) He was a bit more sloppy in other recordings of this song----but I have always loved this one----after your first post I listened to it again in terms of seeing how out of tune it was-----but I couldn't see it based on the genre. If I was trying to listen to blues---then yes I could see that. It's the same with Blue Cheer---I love their guitar work even though it is based on an off-tuning. It is not something I would sit down and relax to today----but I love it nonetheless and know I would probably have a very difficult time trying to recreate the sound. Blue Cheer as well is tightly connected to the blues---but it is straight out of the Acid- Koolaid-Test Acid Rock.

And that is exactly why it is so Dionysian in nature---it was not meant to be set towards rules and established chord patterns and tuning. This is why one version did not have to be like the next. Clearly he never wrote it down, and if he did he never followed that. And how it came out was clearly based on how far out of a sober state of mind he was in. You cannot get more Dionysian than that.

I’m sure you know already that rock took the same cues from non-western music, regarding a more irrational sound based on improvisation and notes that are between those of Western music, that the blues and jazz also took. But by the 60’s that sound for blues, for example, had already become established so to speak. You said it yourself---“blues demands a special quality to those bent notes.” And I love that special quality.

But these were kids that were seeing colors they had never seen before, and that they were positive could not even physically exist. They were able to go in and experience a reality that was completely insane to the social mores and realities of the Father-Knows- Best America of the 1950’s. They weren’t out to blast out a music that followed any conventional structure. Janis was moved by the emotions, feelings, and intensity of blues, but the music itself was an explosion of color and sound that was as new as the hallucinogens to the American youth.

The wail of this lead guitar, is the same ecstatic wails, moans, and songs that pierced the dark forests of the Bacchanalia.

I will add to this in my next post----but I simply look at it as-----well, it’s not my generation… If I listen to it, it is like an anthropologist trying to make sense out of something that is not pleasing to him but he is trying to find the value behind it. Granted, I don’t really listen to it---but my son has played it for me here and there…

No! you did not hijack it-----thank you for your comments. Like I said---I had to laugh when I read your first post. I can understand people feeling that way.

Oddly enough---as I sat here writing this---I had Bach’s Fugue in D-Minor playing----you know---the Phantom of the Opera song. My wife made me turn it off. She likes classical music---but that song just spooks her…

 

You are exactly right Meagain! I forgot that Steppenwolf, Iron Butterfly, Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin, and so on was part of the Heavy Metal genre----but I think we should separate that side of it as it was still heavily influenced by psychedelia, and was very much Dionysian, even as they were beginning to fall victim to commercialization and the control of the corporate studio environment. It was a different kind of heavy metal----the fast guitar work was not yet the embodiment of the machine that happened later.

Also I did want to add that I am not knocking anyone's music. I was not trying to place a value on it. Granted I am not into death metal, and while there were bands in the 80's that I loved, there were others that had a sound to me that seemed monotonous and overly contrived without much creativity. I described it as if music had reached a point where everything had already been done. But I still knew that I hailed to a different generation.

In this piece, I am not saying that acid rock was better than the Heavy Metal of the 80's exactly, but that people in the 80's were responding to a cultural phenomena that was essentially the machine taking over again. (...But---being an ubermensch how can you get any cooler than that? ;-) what can I say...)

Seriously though, the same with death metal----my son can appreciate it in a way that I cannot, but I didn't live through the angst of his generation---I am simply an older observer.

In another thing I wrote (about Guy Debord's concept of the Spectacle)---and I've shared it several times in this forum----I did suggest that the drop of dubstep-----which I really do dig----might possibly be that spark of humanity struggling to rise up once again.

 

My son has shown this one to me.

There is an excellent thing written that applies directly to this video, and how it fits into what I wrote---but it was written in the early 1990's by the French Post-Modernist philosopher, Jean Baudrillard. It is a chapter called Transsexuality in his book, The Transparency of Evil, Essays on extreme phenomena.

The chapter begins: "The sexual body has now been assigned a kind of artificial fate. This fate is transsexuality -- 'transsexual' not in any anatomical sense, but rather in the more general sense of transvestitism, of playing with the commutability of the signs of sex -- and of playing, in contrast to the former manner of sexual difference, on sexual indifference: on lack of differentiation between the sexual poles, and on indifference to sex qua pleasure."

He says that the cybernetic revolution has placed us before the crucial question: "Am I a man or a machine?"

The myth of sexual liberation at the imaginary level is, "...transsexual kitsch in all it's glory. A postmodern pornography, if you will, where sexuality is lost in the theatrical excess of ambiguity."

He points out how it is not only sex, but the political arena (using La Cicciolina's rise into Italian politics as an example) where this has happened as well---transsexual and transpolitical have come together. Art, and culture too, have fallen into this realm---and here he uses Andy Warhol's comments as an example----"art is everywhere, therefore it no longer exists..."

We conjure, "...away desire, through the overkill of its staging..." And since, he says, that we are no longer able to lay claim to our own existence, that instead we all seek to find a 'look' which is nothing more than an appearance. "So it is not: I exist, I am here!, but rather: I am visible, I am an image - look! Look!"

It is all based on indifference. "Being oneself has become a transient performance with no sequel, a disabused mannerism in a world without manners."

This video is so clearly a representation of this----I just had to dig the book out. After the orgy, as Baudrillard often says, that the Sexual Revolution supposedly gave us----we are just left with an indifferent theatrical overkill that is in the end, empty of subjective pleasure. For all the implied erotic visuals in this video----there is no actual nudity, and in the end, no real actual sex, and----no climax.