Nacht und Nebel

I just had myself a nice little nightcap, a viewing of the 32-minute, mandatory-viewing-for-children-in-France Nuit et Brouillard (Night and Fog). With all the concentration camps in movies, it's amazing that this archival footage seldom makes the rounds. Equally amazing is how close filmic representations can come to the real thing without ever having the asme power. There is something about real images of death and suffering that cannot be duplicated and is unmistakeable.

It sounds like an abstract, elitist, Ivy League classic film (as Stephen Colbert might put it), but really the concept is simple: juxtapose archival footage with the empty modern remains of camps, implying that "the monster" is not buried under the decrepit buildings but asleep among us and a part of humanity.

Certainly the Germans were only executing with genocidal zeal what others have done before and since. Obviously the means of attaining such numbers (and documenting the events) are the new phenomena, not the will to achieve it.

In any case, while I ruminated that indeed these events only happened sixty years ago, a seemingly arbitrary aspect of the film drove the point home. The narrator sarcastically notes that the prisoners were stripped naked under the pretense of "hygiene." Seeing them lined up naked and in line to enter the camp struck me as no different than the way prisons always process newcomers--and with the same pretenses of hygiene! At the top of the concentration camp hierarchy, in fact, were "common criminals." So, essentially, the concentration camps were enlarged prisons bloated with every conceivably offensive element of society. The political opponents, gypsies, other criminals, and other minorities finally out of the way and working for the bourgeoisie. The gradual extermination of these prisoners is simply the logical conclusion to any argument one can make in favor of the death penalty.

Monotony Monopoly

Since I was fired yesterday for an apparent inability to alphabetize fast enough, I thought it appropriate to post my thoughts on why exactly Dave Matthews Band is so bad.

My excessive experience with temping jobs has taught me very little, except for this: the portrayal of the modern work world as technological drudgery that dulls the soul through monotony and tedium is not so much of an exaggeration as we liked to believe as kids. I have had various data entry jobs that consisted of nothing more than clicking a mouse many times and sometimes typing information into fields before pressing "Submit." This last job was mostly alphabetizing names on packets, but also scanning papers in and printing them out. When I read job descriptions like this in novels as a child they were science-fiction, or maybe historical accounts of the industrial era. What could be more industrial than looking at page after page in a telephone book scanning for errors? If the essence of man is the mastery of his surroundings, how does man deal with his enslavement to machines in such a way?

This is why I find it surprising when people brush off the great modern archetype of "man versus machine," especially when dealt with seriously like in the Matrix films. For the same reasons, it is equally silly to declare distorted guitar in rock as passé, or irrelevant. Rock incorporates many things that will always be relevant, and guitar distortion is one of them. In fact, it may be the defining character of rock as it is thought of since the Beatles first started "Day Tripper" with some melodic feedback. In manipulating the chaotic, and unpredictable electronics between a guitarist's hands and the speaker's output, previously unknown sounds and melody are not the only results. Ultimately the effect is one of man's mastery over the most arbitrary and unpredictable technological demons.

The same can be said of the more creative hip-hop and electronic music, but never with the same direct link between human hands and technology. Jimi Hendrix used this powerful idea most iconically and overtly, literally tearing the metal with his teeth. Every manipulated strain on My Bloody Valentine's Loveless is equally evocative of this idea, even if the power comes from a careful precision rather than calculated showmanship. Watch footage of Cobain perform and you see nihilism as a weapon against the technology. I mentioned the other forms of music that I think can approach this, but as symbol the electric guitar and its amp cannot be matched.

Dave Matthews Band is on the other side of all this. These factors never come into play for the band, even if they use electronic instruments all the time. I tend to subscribe to the populist mantra that if something is popular, there's a reason. Hence, even if I know beyond the shadow of a doubt that I don't get much out of pop groups and 'boy bands,' people are responding to some worthwhile element in the group. They have catchy songs. Dave Matthews Band, however, is another phenomenon entirely. Matthews is one of the biggest concert draws in the world, almost at the level of the Rolling Stones. The songs would be difficult to describe as catchy, although the average person finds them pleasant when they come on the loudspeaker at the local chain restaurant. It is pleasant because there is none of the unpleasantness of technology wreaking havoc and fighting with man's work. What distortion there is so low and predictable that one barely notices it, and anyway his signature instrument is the acoustic guitar. In Dave Matthews' world technology is not an issue and life is still as it was hundreds of years ago--the group even tries to make the violin a relevant instrument!

There are other elements of the group's songs that speak to why they are so easily dismissed by many, but I think this is partly why they remain loved by most. Many of the guitar parts and hooks are fun, but delivered plainly as if the wires connecting the amplifiers and microphones did not exist at all. I would love to live in a world where man's technology did not constantly interfere with life's natural diversity and beauty, but it would be insane to pretend I did and vital that I do not. If I can't turn around and master this modern life for my own purposes it will eventually crush me.