Rob, Rambling - A lot of things interest me...

I finished reading Cocaine Nights by JG Ballard the other day, and whilst it was a good read, I couldn’t help but feel that it was very, very similar to a few of his other books that I’ve read over the years.

Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed it, as I have done all of Ballard’s books. With the exception of Empire of the Sun, which was essentially an autobiography of his childhood in Shanghai, Ballard explores some very interesting themes, usually concerning the potential for society to eat itself. He is very good at finding a dark underbelly to a seemingly innocuous situation, and showing how easily passions can be inflamed to destroy or alter what exists before.

In Cocaine Nights, for example, a journalist travels to the Spanish coast because his brother has been arrested for murdering five people in a house fire in their gated community. As he stays there, trying to prove his brother’s innocence, he gets drawn into a world which is very different from that which he sees at first glance. Essentially, the book boils down to forcing people out of the monotony of their lives and into something more interesting or rewarding. The catalyst for this is crime and violence, naturally.

As I said, this is all good material, and it’s nicely plotted too. Ballard is a very good writer, although his writing of sex is a touch iffy. It’s odd, because he can write eroticism particularly well, but the sex itself comes across as very mechanical. He’s more than capable of granting a character a huge charge of eroticism, or inserting a huge amount of it into a scene, but it then goes a bit dry (so to speak) as soon as they’re actually getting down to it. Odd.

Anyway, what I realised is that the character interactions are somewhat formulaic across a number of his books. In all four that I have read which tackle dystopian themes (Cocaine Nights, Crash, Millennium People, and Kingdom Come), the main character or narrator is taken from his comfort zone into the seedy underbelly of society by a charismatic newcomer to his life. He is cajoled and prodded into exploring the new experiences by someone else, rather than on his own accord.

And it always seems to be male to male as well. The central characters are male (if memory serves), as are the newcomers. I detect a certain air of weakness on the part of the central character every time, and he is always looking for someone to provide him with excitement, rather than seeking it out for himself. The newcomer is always welcoming, and swiftly takes the main character under his wing, making him a protege and imparting his wisdom.

Yes, the methods differ slightly, but essentially it’s the same character journey each time. I hadn’t really noticed it before, but in Cocaine Nights the newcomer’s “charisma” is mentioned so often that it’s just drilled into you. It reminded me massively of the TV spokesmodel in Kingdom Come who is the face of the shopping mall, and also of the driver in Crash who introduces the narrator to the sexual violence of car crashes.

What it also vaguely reminded me of was a theory I came across at university: Max Weber’s charismatic leader. OK, so I remembered the theory if not the philosopher, but it was up there in my head somewhere. University was evidently good for something!

Weber says that charismatic authority is one of the three possible bases for legitimising power in a society (the others being traditional authority, which is patriarchy, monarchy and so on, and rational-legal authority, which is more of a rules-based system), and that it comes about when a leader arises who can command obedience through nothing more than his own personal appearance.

He does not have legitimacy through being elected, nor from being an heir to the throne. His power derives from commanding others and having those orders obeyed because the populace believes him to be better than them, and so are loyal to him. A very simple explanation, and no doubt glossing over some subtleties, but that’s the basics.

In Ballard’s books, these charismatic newcomers fit that mould exactly: Cocaine Nights’ is a tennis coach, for example. It is only through relentless application of their charisma and forcing the other characters to believe in them that they gain their power, and their legitimacy.

For me, the characters which are attracted to these charismatic leaders are all the same: weak, searching for something a little different, and then surprised at just how far down the rabbit hole goes. Too often, they eventually want out, and try to rebel against their new leaders, sometimes too late to avoid the inevitable deaths and destruction.

I really do enjoy reading Ballard’s books, but if I find the next one to be following the same kind of structure, with the same basic characters, I think I’ll have to look elsewhere.

Does anyone have any recommendations for that kind of modern-day sociological dystopian novel?

Greek yoghurt and honey is an ideal way to start the day.

Following on from my last post, I’m a big fan of both the word and the concept of “anomie”.

It’s fun to say, as are similar words like anemone, phenomenon and so forth. It rolls of the tongue easily. Hegemony is another word which I guess fits the theme of anomie and sociology as a whole.

I studied a bit in this area whilst I was at university, with a big lean towards legal issues courtesy of it being taught in the law faculty. The course was called ‘law and social theory’ and we covered everything from feminism to communism, from anomie to Nazism. I thoroughly enjoyed it, both as a break from studying standard law, and for the opportunity to read some modern-day philosophers.

As I mentioned in the previous post, anomie is the term given to the rejection or erosion of social norms, producing a somewhat apathetic nature in the individual. I’m not so sure about the requirement for the individual to become apathetic, depressed or develop a sense of purposelessness.

Anomie isn’t necessarily a trend towards lawlessness, depravity and the collapse of society. It’s about the rejection of norms, of labels and of hegemony. Revolution through apathy, maybe.

It’s perfectly understandable for the breakdown of social norms to be viewed in negative terms, because we don’t know any different. But look how many advances have come from the breakdown of old norms: civil rights, the renaissance, the end of the feudal system, of dictatorships. These are all positives.

For me, the wikipedia article on anomie, especially the Literature/Art section, confuses it with nihilism and existentialism. Anomie isn’t that bad. It’s the rejection of societal norms, not the rejection of everything.

And the same goes for men/male identity, too. How do you operate in post-post-modernity?

jgh

Read Jessica’s post for her (and Dacia’s) opinions on the issues facing feminism as a whole nowadays.

My personal take on it is that feminism as an identifying label is obsolete and archaic. But so are so many other labels: feminist; misogynist; leftist; rightist; centrist; and so on and so forth.

I think we’re in an age nowadays where the individual is the label, not the group or belief to which you identify yourself. People are complex, in so many different ways, and to use a label of any kind is to fail to realise this.

I’m not saying that we’re more complex nowadays than we were in the past. Not as individuals, no. But society is more complex. It’s less rigid, less stratified, less divided by the labels which used to define us.

Take race as an example. That simple facet of an individual caused so many problems in society, including dividing it and treating people of different colour in different ways, both good and bad. But look at the issue of race today: it’s not perfect by any means, but people are a lot more accepting of race, and are even ignore it in many walks of life.

Race has become much less of a defining feature of a person, and nowadays is merely one part of an individual’s make-up. Individuals choose whether to let it define them, or how important they make it in their lives. And society as a whole regards race as much less important.

We can’t ignore what these labels have done for society, be it building walls or knocking them down. But in modern western societies, they are no longer relevant. People don’t identify with “society” any more, and the sense of community has also been lost.

Some bemoan this, usually those who liked the status quo that labels gave to society. Others thrive in this newfound, wider anomie that allows us to be individuals without these norms and labels to govern what we can and can’t do.

We don’t need a “male identity” to love or loathe; to live by or refute. We just live. That’s it.

I don’t want to be identified as “just another guy”, as a misogynist or a feminist. I’d rather be listened to as an individual, as me, as Rob.

Because that’s who I am, and that’s who everyone else is too.

I swear my microwave works on a different timeframe to reality. I put some of yesterday’s curry in there for 2 minutes to re-heat, and by the time I walked to the sofa and sat down, it dinged.

To top it off, the food wasn’t even particularly hot. So I whacked it back in for another minute, which seemed to take twice as long as the first two, and it was positively scalding when I took it out.

I have no idea how microwaves work, but I think they open a portal to another dimension. Possibly hell, which explains why the food in there gets hot.