DJ Freddy J Spins the Phat Trax

Brad DeLong delong at econ.Berkeley.EDU
Tue Jul 3 09:32:41 PDT 2001



>I felt that Brad's point was that all of this has been going on for
>thousands of years. It is pointless to call it "post-modern" or "modern". It
>is old. Actually, that wasn't a point he was pressing so much as raising as
>a question. Why does Jameson think any of this stuff is new? Can he point to
>any society in the past where people didn't "so much produce our culture in
>living our lives, where and when we are, but consciously make it up with an
>eye to flogging it to someone." Virgil made stuff up with an eye to flogging
>it to someone else.

Although, as dd pointed out, principally with an idea toward flogging it toward one particular guy: Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus Divi Filius Imperator Princeps.

When you are trying to flog it to a mass audience of billions you get... different weirdnesses than hagiographic emperor-worship: you get... the attempt to take the Christianity out of Narnia... you get... the semi-indigeneity-ecoworship of "Pocahontas"... you get... Tomb Raider, starring Angelina Jolie (a magnificent actress who did a fantastic job in "Girl, Interrupted") with digitally-enhanced breasts...

Then again, there is *nothing* about blood and gore that Shakespeare could have learned from "Reservoir Dogs": consider the last scene of Hamlet. And the seduction and abandonment--the mental rape--of Queen Dido in the "Aeneid" has always seemed to me to be... profoundly unhealthy... glorification of brutality toward the (relatively) powerless...

Brad DeLong



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