I encourage Piracy... Especially on this subject... I find that College Professors write articles to be published in "Journals" to be read and cited by other College Professors... It's a racket to show management that not only are you Teaching but also writing important works... "Publish or Perish"...
This is my mockery of "Academic Writing" with words of wisdom from both Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha and Frank Zappa... have fun reading this. gregvan
TITLE: Parody and Pastiche
Nirvana knew that they had really made the big time when “Weird Al” Yankovic did a parody of their song “Smells Like Teen Spirit”. In Al’s song “Smells like Nirvana” the lyrics state:
What is this song all about?
Can't figure any lyrics out
How do the words to it go?
I wish you'd tell me, I don't know
Don't know, don't know, don't know, oh no
Don't know, don't know, don't know...
Now I'm mumblin' and I'm screamin'
And I don't know what I'm singin'
Crank the volume, ears are bleedin'
I still don't know what I'm singin'
We're so loud and incoherent
Boy, this oughta bug your parents
Yeah!
*belch*
poing! (1)
I downloaded a MIDI file of The song and played it thru my computer speakers. MIDI files are instrumental versions of music. All the vocals are replaced with synthesizers playing the melody. Since the actual lyrics to this song are vague, MIDI would be an excellent way to enjoy Nirvana’s music. I especially liked the part of the song where the music was similar to a European police car siren or air raid siren. The notes automatically trigger a feeling of danger. Reading his words give me the chills also. It is difficult to pinpoint exactly what causes the feeling of impending doom but I’m certain that it is really there… I also see overwhelming sadness in his eyes…
With the lights out it’s less dangerous
Here we are now, Entertain us…
I feel stupid and contagious
Here we are now, Entertain us…
A mulatto, An albino
A mosquito, My libido
Yea…
Hello Hello Hello Hello Hello Hello Hello Hello Hello Hello Hello Hello Hello Hello Hello Hello…(2)
“Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha, described Buddhism as a raft which, after floating across a river, will enable the passenger to reach nirvana. The ultimate goal is realization of nirvana. The End of Suffering... In this lifetime and all future lifetimes.” (3) The singer Kurt Cobain selected to end suffering by shooting heroin and then shooting himself. “Enlightenment is sometimes described as complete and perfect sanity, or awareness of the true nature of the universe. After attainment, it is believed one is freed from the cycle of Samsara; birth, suffering, death and rebirth.” (4) In my humble opinion, the choice of the bands name is a parody of the sixties hippy infatuation with Eastern Religion. Kurt was an example of the opposite of seeking enlightenment. Heroin reveals perfect insanity and a totally false nature of the universe. One of the main concepts of Buddhism is “right livelihood”. The idea is that you should select a way of earning a living that makes you happy. One of the stated reasons Cobain committed suicide is that he was unhappy with having achieved success in the music business. His whining about stardom reveals his choice of “wrong livelihood”. A copy of the suicide note is available online and it is addressed “TO BODDAH”… Is this just a misspelling or a mockery of religion? At the end of the suicide note he writes that “it is better to burn out than to fade away“. This is a quote from Neil Young, the grandfather of Grunge Music. The sound of Cobain’s guitar is very similar to Young’s as well as the style of clothes they both wear. Nirvana’s music is a PASTICHE (imitation) of the music of Neil Young. There was a sixties English art/rock band called Nirvana that recorded concept albums. A lawsuit was filed by Patrick Campbell-Lyons (the leader of the psychedelic band) about Cobain’s band using their name. GenX artists face the challenge of creating works that are new and different. Since they follow a period of artistic genius which mined every possible style, all they can do is repeat previous works. Of course, this is just my humble opinion of GenX culture. If I use the phenomenological technique of bracketing off my personal cultural bias and view the artistic works from a GenX perspective, Nirvana looks good. They become tragic figures that cared so much for the purity of their art that they would rather die than compromise their integrity. These are idealistic values worthy of Socrates. He died for his beliefs and so did Cobain.
There are many websites that explore conspiracy theories about Courtney Love murdering her husband. The basic idea is that she faked a suicide note and killed him so that she would inherit his money. They were about to get divorced, the band was about to split up and she calculated that she would get more money if he was dead than alive. “Love & Death“, a book by Max Wallace and Ian Halperin question authorship of the suicide note. A suspicious sample of lettering practice was found in Courtney Love’s backpack at the time of the murder/suicide. They feel that she was rehearsing how to write a convincing note that the police would believe was genuine. Cobain also states in the note that his wife is a Goddess… It could be that she wrote the note and was calling herself a Goddess. All these people that are promoting the conspiracy theory ideas are paying tribute to all the great conspiracy theories that have gone before. They have written their works using the literary technique of pastiche. It may be subconscious but they are paying homage to the JFK Assassination, The Illuminati, MKULTRA and The Masons. (All great conspiracy theories.)
“Pastiche as imitation: In much current usage, the term denotes a literary technique employing a generally light-hearted tongue-in-cheek imitation of another's style; although jocular, it is usually respectful (as opposed to parody, which is not). “ (5)
Postmodernism as defined by Fredric Jameson:
“The last few years have been marked by an inverted millenarianism in which premonitions of the future, catastrophic or redemptive, have been replaced by senses of the end of this or that (the end of ideology, art, or social class; the "crisis" of Leninism, social democracy, or the welfare state, etc., etc.); taken together, all of these perhaps constitute what is increasingly called postmodernism.” (6)
There was a movement in American society called Modernism that believed we could keep on improving the quality of life forever by inventing new machines. The classic example of this philosophy is the “Carousel of Progress” sponsored by General Electric at EPCOT Disney World. In this show, they trace a typical American family from the 1800s to the present and how GE inventions have lead to happiness. Starting with the Beatniks, people have been questioning if this is true. There might be ways to find happiness other than the consumption of the latest gizmo from GE. Then the 1960s happened and one of the many revolutions was postmodernism. Consumerism was viewed by many as brainwashing sponsored by corporations that needed sales of plastic junk to thrive. Frank Zappa wrote songs about the Plastic People of the Universe. In any study of Parody, Zappa is a shining star. In the mighty tome “Frank Zappa. The Negative Dialectics of Poodle Play” by Ben Watson, we see not only a detailed biography of every facet of Zappa’s life but a parody of scholarly writing. While reading pretentious drivel for our Anthropology class, I remembered how much fun it is to mock the writing style of academia. The authors we read seem to be members of a social circle that all attend the same conferences, read each others scholastic journal writings and promote each other by including their names in new articles. One writing we read had ten names of obscure writers on one page! Five of them were listed as “thinkers”… As if that were a career… The direct quote of Neil Nehring is: “A number of thinkers, such as Natalie Davis, Teresa Ebert, Nancy Fraser, Mary Russo and Robert Stam find his (Mikhail Bakhtin’s) concept of carnival promising for feminism, along with the general materialism (or dialogism) of his argument (like Griffiths and Hanna) that a social contest is always occurring in the emotional inflection of language.” (7) I find it interesting that throughout all the writings we read, it was rare that I had heard of ANY of these people. Could it be that we should substitute the phrase “pals that need a little promotion” for the term “thinker“? Who ARE these people anyway? I googled their names and they are generally college teachers… I was especially impressed with Nancy Fraser’s ability to get grants from foundations for studies into politically correct subjects… YOU GO GRRRRRLL ! The style of writing that endlessly cites obscure authors seems pretentious and pompous.
I find that there is a real person named Jean Baudrillard and he is an “eminent French social theorist”. James Brusseau did not just make up a phony name to make his work sound profound. The author James B. is a big fan of Jean B. He proposes the scenario of taking a real gun to Disney World and committing murder during one of the “Wild West Shootouts”. He states that the average tourist would be fooled and just think that the murder was part of the show. (8) It seems to me that this man is COMPLETELY WRONG and that this is a ridiculous example stated by someone that has no real experience at all with firearms or death. However, he feels confident in expressing opinions about subjects he known nothing about… Just wrap the idiotic concepts in dense academic prose and VOILA! You have a sellable article for a textbook. Especially if you slip into the French language without providing translation. That proves that you are cool and worthy of getting a paycheck for your scribbling. One amusing example of creative language is the creation of the term “Baudrillardian Repetition“. A dog pile internet search of that term lead me to a webpage dedicated to “fighting fashionable nonsense”. http://www.butterfliesandwheels.com/ realizes that a lot of pure bull is presented in academic journals and is swallowed by gullible college students and professors. They offer instruction in “Woolly-Thinking Rhetoric: How to argue like a sheep. Vanquish your enemies with the help of our guide.” This would be useful for people that want to publish profound sounding articles without having to go to the trouble of thinking. I wonder if a perfect example of Baudrillard’s philosophy is Kurt Cobain’s repetition of the word Hello sixteen times per verse or if it is just the mumbling drool of a junky? I vote for the heroin talking. “Repetition: If your ideas are weak, if you have neither logic nor evidence to back them up, simply keep asserting them over and over and over again. This will convince everyone that they must be true. If they were not true, surely we wouldn't keep hearing about them all the time?” (9) The record for repetition is held by Bill Withers in the song “Ain’t no sunshine when she’s gone” where he says the words “I KNOW” an astounding twenty six times in a row… I truly believe Bill. I totally GROK that he knows that there ain’t no sunshine when she‘s gone…
In conclusion: I’m certainly glad that I’m not a member of GenX. They seem to be not having a lot of fun on this planet. It seems that everything of value has already been grabbed by the “Baby Boomers” and “The Greatest Generation” and we are not going to share. The GenXers certainly are getting Mcjobs, poverty, AIDS, wars for oil, inflation, global warming, a ballooning National Debt, bankruptcy of Social Security and no hope for the future. I agree that we are starting the decline into chaos and everything in the future will keep on getting worse and worse until the good old USA is a “third world” country… Fortunately, I won’t be alive to watch the collapse of Western Civilization. With this outlook it is no surprise that they Love Kurt Cobain… Shoot heroin to avoid looking at reality and when reality refuses to be ignored, shoot yourself. However, If you bracket out the doom and gloom viewpoint of the Generation X and view the world thru the rose colored glasses of a Baby Boomer… Gee, things are pretty good here in Eureka!
Notes:
(1) Al Yankovic. “Smells Like Nirvana” (1992)
(2) Kurt Cobain “Smells Like Teen Spirit (1991)
(3) Wikipedia: definition of Nirvana.
(4) Ibid…
(5) Wikipedia: definition of Pastiche
(6) Frederic Jameson: Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism Verso, 1991.
(7) Neil Nehring : Jigsaw Youth vs. Post-toasty-MOO-dernism… reprinted in GENXEGESIS. 2003
(8) James Brusseau: Violence and Baudrillardian Repetition in American Psycho.2000
(9) http://www.butterfliesandwheels.com/rhetoric.php
I wrote this for Dr. Thomas Gates, Anthropology 306 at Humboldt State University...greg vanderlaan...
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