Assault
John Carpenter is quite possibly the most interesting American director of the 1970s-80s in terms of political philosophy - take Zizek on They Live!, the attempt to use phenomenology to avert apocalyptic technics in Dark Star - and in that fine tradition, here's Socialism and/or Barbarism on Escape from New York, read through Trotsky-via-Mike Davis. Someone needs to do similarly sterling work for the electronic urbanism of Assault on Precinct 13 (see above) or the combination of chameleonic terror and the horror of remoteness in The Thing. The S and/or B post also includes conjunctural coinage of the year so far: 'combined and uneven apocalypse'.
posted by owen hatherley at 11:32 pm
7 Comments:
Cool post, I like it. Keep up the good work.
Prabath
Developer "Top 100 Celebrities"
(Vote your favorite celebrity)
http://apps.facebook.com/top_celebrities/
http://prabath321.blogspot.com/
And if being asked to vote for your favourite celebrity isn't apocalypticism in action, I don't know what is.
Thank you for linking to that socialism/barbarism series a couple of weeks ago, it has been a great read.
Yikes. I hope I'm not on blogger's blogs of note again or something, I got a tidal wave of comments like that when I was...
No but seriously, Owen - who is your favourite celebrity? I think we should be told.
("mucom". That's a particularly good one.)
Elizabeth Taylor.
There's a point in 'Can't Stop Wont Stop' by Jeff Chang where he mentions Afrika Bambaataa's* reaction to Assault on Precinct 13 as an open space whereby one can come to their own conclusions as to where their sympathy lies. I've not seen the film but this would seem to correlate with the criticisms of The Dark Knight as an Event wherein multivalent interpretations are actively encouraged as a virtue of the film as product, as generative of 'buzz' and therefore box office success.
*Mind you, Bambaataa's interpretations seem to constitute a, let's say, creative process on his part e.g. 'Zulu,' unashamed colonial nostalgia, was such an inspiration for him that he named his Zulu Nation as a tribute to the scenes depicting African brotherhood. Which is fine, I'm all for dragging the good out of the bad and creative interpretation but it wasn't the impression I got watching Zulu...
Re-watched 'The Thing' recently - and was haunted by how pertinent it was on neoliberalism's assault on labour relations (the alien as a new multitasker adjusting to 'flexible' company policy -pitting all against all). Note how his heroes are always working class (as with Romero and his hero Howard Hawks), unlike the rather good but inferior 'Alien'. They hate their jobs, but do their best...
On the 'body horror' tip (how 'now' they seem recently!), also noticed how the 70s 'Bodysnatchers' heralded the (ab)uses of the therapy culture currently forcing us into conformity... the spookiest bit is how they all still GO TO WORK...
Was it Iain Sinclair who saw the inherent prophecy in the best 'pulp'? That might be in jeoprady now, with the videoshop/videogame nitwits who don't even seem to understand what they're adapting or ripping off - Tarantino? Zak Snyder???
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