Bakker LVI: the Rectum of Creation

[.H.]

1 hour ago, nah said:

The point that it took George Miller 150 million dollars, and Bakker 6 books to make, Zahler does in a three week shoot with less than 2% the budget of Fury Road.

To reimagine Blood Meridian?  I'm not sure what "the point" you are describing actually is.  What are Zahler, Bakker and Miller "trying to do" in this sense?  I mean, I've never seen either of those movies, so I am certainly missing what the connection should be.

[.H.]

19 minutes ago, nah said:

Oh, theres something at the end of the movie that really reminded me of the Whale Mothers in TGO. The point I think Bone Tomahawk and Fury Road make, and one of many that Bakker makes, is that if deprived of feminine influences in our lives/societies, we're nothing more than violent, impulsive, hyper-sexed animals driven only by our biological needs and a child-like reverence for and obedience to masculine authority.

You just gotta watch it man. Fury Road too. That wasn't a dig at Miller or Bakket earlier, what I said about Zahler's budget and time constraints. Fury Road is another what I'd call a must view for Bakker fans. Spectacular film.

I wasn't aiming at taking offence, I just have found there are more ideas about what Bakker's "point" is, seemingly, than there are numbers of Bakker readers.  So, more honesty curiosity what "it" was in this context.  I'll try giving both movies a shot when I have some time.

[Kalbear]

That really isn't the point of fury road in the least. Or bakker for that matter. 

[Darth Richard II]

I thought Bakker's point is that there was no point and we were dumb for looking for a point.

[Kalbear]

That critique would make a lot more sense if there weren't actual women around in the movie. 

[sologdin]

It's actually a pretty good movie. The point that it took George Miller 150 million dollars, and Bakker 6 books to make, Zahler does in a three week shoot with less than 2% the budget of Fury Road. And the dialogue can stand up with some of Tarantino's best stuff.

understood.  i think that the summary description is enough; these are not images that i am wanting to see.  

[Callan S.]

It's kind of chilling to have a movie where women are either slaves or basically put up a mask of masculinity and for someone to say 'But there are women in it!'. It's technically true. It's not the best kind of correct.

[Darth Richard II]

1 hour ago, Callan S. said:

It's kind of chilling to have a movie where women are either slaves or basically put up a mask of masculinity and for someone to say 'But there are women in it!'. It's technically true. It's not the best kind of correct.

That is such a fundamental misreading of what kal actually said that I almost don't have words.

[.H.]

16 hours ago, nah said:

It's that society, by this point, seems to have so turned its back on what you could call "feminine" virtues that it's ready to ride a flaming train full of George Carlin's Deadly Male Subsculture straight into a oblivion.

Well, what I was trying to discuss last page is related to this, but one, I am not smart.  Two, I am bad a communicating.  Three, I don't think anyone really is interested in engaging the idea.

Basically, if we imagine that a "patriarchy" exists, and we can definite that in any way we really want, it sort of necessarily has to be the elevation of "maleness," "masculinity," "male identified traits/behaviors" in some way, even if we still only want to think about it in terms of "Power."  So, if "Feminism" (again, define it however you want) is at least in some way set on removing, disestablishing, subverting, whatever, this "Patriarchy" is, then it seems reasonable to me to question the movement of women into "male roles" and calling that "action against Patriarchy."  Because, in a sense, that isn't removing the Patriarchy, it's just putting (elevating, if you will) women in the role of the patriarch.  And this is what I was trying to discuss a potential way to look at what Bakker was doing.

This is why I framed it within the idea of Marcuse's idea of the "one-dimensional man" in the sense that if we ascribe value to a particular way of being, then we necessarily limit what we view as viable ways to just be a human.  So, I think Marcuse was mostly thinking about it in term of economics, how if you don't follow the ideal of what a "good capitalist worker" would be, then you are somehow sort of defective and that needs to be rectified, in some sense.

So, would seem plausible to me to frame gender relations in that sense as well, at least to some degree.  I'll likely be accused to "rigidly defining femininity" again, or something, but that it not what I am trying to do at all.  No, really I am trying to "place no limit" on what women could/should/would be at all.  Or on what men could/should/would be.  The point is to be the human best fit for you to be.  Humans (perhaps through culture as well) categorize things necessarily, because it makes the overtly, overwhelmingly complex world easier to assimilate into our mental frameworks, but categories necessarily fail at the level of any individual.  So it is no surprise to me that ways of being get "gendered" as a matter of course.  And some of those ways get "valued" to greater or lesser extents.

But, to "flip the script" and say, well, lets take category X and flip it's value with Y does not solve the "problem" with their being unequal valuation between X and Y.  Rather, it only places the shoe onto the other foot.  So, in a blunt way, to me, to say that women should just be put in "traditional male roles" is a bit of an insult to women and what being a woman could be.  In fact, it would seem to be pure violence, because it still places the value of someone contingent upon how well they align with "masculine virtue."

So, I guess I am taking a long-winded way to say that I think I agree mostly with what you are saying.  I mean, as far as I think I can, still having not seen the movie in question.  But maybe I am just delusional and don't understand a damn thing really.

[sologdin]

i think you do need a definition of patriarchy for that post to be operative.  

perhaps the feminism that assimilates to patriarchal norms would not identify those masculinist norms as patriarchal or even as norms.  it's the distinction between radicals and liberals, maybe.  i doubt either liberals or radicals would care for the language of 'male roles' or 'masculine roles,' seeking to abolish the gendering of most practices.

[Darth Richard II]

So is this where I confess I've never seen a Mad Max film?

[Darth Richard II]

Heh I bought the collection to watch on Blu, haven't gotten to it yet.

[sologdin]

they're a good example of how easy it is to graft a neo-hobbesian dystopia atop an apocalyptic setting.  

[Hello World]

Spoiler for Game of Thrones.

I wonder how those people would react to the ending of TSA (if it ended with TUC).

[Cpl. Tunny]

On 5/22/2019 at 12:18 AM, Hello World said:

Spoiler for Game of Thrones.

I wonder how those people would react to the ending of TSA (if it ended with TUC).

Well, the ending of GOT the show, was worse than the ending to TSA, IMHO.

[Hello World]

Spoiler

I just find it funny that a lot of the criticism about the GoT ending seems to apply to TUC a lot more than it applies to GoT. I see people calling GoT "nihilist" or "postmodernist" or whatever. I don't have a firm grasp on those terms but GoT seems fairly traditional compared to a lot of the fantasy I've read. Also, "and then they all die" isn't how I'd describe the GoT finale at all, but it's almost literally the ending of TUC.

 

[lokisnow]

On 5/28/2019 at 6:37 PM, Hello World said:

  Reveal hidden contents

I just find it funny that a lot of the criticism about the GoT ending seems to apply to TUC a lot more than it applies to GoT. I see people calling GoT "nihilist" or "postmodernist" or whatever. I don't have a firm grasp on those terms but GoT seems fairly traditional compared to a lot of the fantasy I've read. Also, "and then they all die" isn't how I'd describe the GoT finale at all, but it's almost literally the ending of TUC.

 

Hah true, Just last week, i actually used the series as a point of reference for why the GOt ending was relatively not bad on another board.

[sologdin]

the GOt ending was relatively not bad on another board.

Spoiler

both are fairly traditional, well within the scope of post-tolkienian secondary creation, surely.  i think tolkien did more or less kill the entire cast in the silmarillion, except for the guy on the sky-boat? postmodern would be tristram shandy with less widow wadman and more rape aliens.

[kuenjato]

I just checked Bakker's blog... nothing in over half a year. Hopefully some progress has been made in the meantime, on whatever's to come next.

[Kalbear]

Delving into that cesspit again, I found this hilarious quote from Seth Dickinson (author of the Traitor Baru Cormorant):

Quote

The incomprehensible stuff is just 101 level undergrad psych with a gloss of moral panic, a generous dash of anti-Continental philosophy, and a gallon of sexual violence. "We don't understand our own brains, therefore rape" is all his fiction in a nutshell.