High Art vs. Low Art

I’ve been thinking about the distinction between “high art” and “low art” lately, and it strikes me as being somewhat contrived.

Obviously, this isn’t really a radical position on my part, since artists have been challenging this distinction throughout the 20th century (Roy Lichtenstein comes to mind). But I personally haven’t given it much thought until recently, when I finished watching Neon Genesis Evangelion for the third time.*

On the surface Evangelion is just another post-apocalyptic mecha story (albeit a classic one), but it also delves deeply into the psyches of its characters and poses deeply existential questions. It also makes allusions to various themes and figures from mythology, philosophy, and Judeo-Christian mysticism. Watching it can be something of a head trip, and each time I’ve seen it I wind up spotting layers of meaning that I missed the previous times.

In spite of all this,  Evangelion would probably be considered “low art”. In general mass-production seems to be one of the major dividing lines between “high” and “low” art. The former tends to involve limited edition or original work, which is shown off in galleries and museums while the latter can be purchased in shopping malls and retail outlets. High art is the province of the cultural elite and the artists which cater to them; low art is for the masses, the philistines, the petit-bourgeois who consume it with the same relish, and in the same quantities, that they consume cheap alcohol. Or so goes the traditional view.

There are several problems with this perspective. Aside from the outright snobbery, this distinction focuses more on the medium rather than the message of any given work. It’s not a question of whether the art is any good, but rather how that art was produced and to whom it is presented.

To be entirely fair, I don’t believe you can separate form and content—any given content lends itself to a certain form, and form can place limitations on what sort of content emerges. A proponent of the traditional view might also point out that when it comes to low art, the primary aim is usually not to express the human condition, but to make a profit. Given such a motive, the likelihood of any pop-cultural product rising to the lofty heights of high art is low.

Nevertheless, I might rejoin that if one of the purposes of art is to express the human condition, one has to be in touch with people. And in general the people are the primary consumers of “high art” are vastly outnumbered by people who do not. One could argue then that the creators and appraisers of high culture are reflecting only a very narrow and privileged band of human experience. Perhaps then a more authentic indication of “the human condition” can be found amongst the purveyors and consumers of pop culture. The zeitgeist is always organic, and therefore bubbles up from “below” rather than being imposed from “on high”.

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* Not to imply I watched the series three times in a row. I’m not that much of a geek.

Losing Faith: Gaza

The recent massacre in Gaza has destroyed the last vestiges of my faith. Not faith in God, but rather in the State.*

From December until well into January I became transfixed by the carnage: Infrastructure leveled, homes destroyed, hospitals bombed, schools bombed, UN facilities bombed. White phosphorous shells (made in Alabama), DIME, and conventional weapons all systematically deployed against the most densely populated place on earth. Deployed against people: women, children, husbands, wives, fathers, and mothers.  Thousands upon thousands of civilians slaughtered, maimed, paralyzed, by the Israeli onslaught. Whole families wiped out. Tens of thousands more left homeless, hundreds of thousands without access to electricity, food, or medicine. Well over a million traumatized.

The response of people across the globe was heartening. Millions of us organized and took to the streets, tried to send aid, petitioned our governments, and stood as witnesses to the ongoing violence and injustice. Supporters for divestment and boycott rallied (and are still rallying) far across the word, from Bangladesh to Bolivia.

The response of governments and state institutions, however, was not. The world quite literally sat by and watched.

The UN went through the obligatory finger shaking and hand-wringing, but accomplished precisely nothing. It couldn’t prevent its own facilities and workers from being attacked, yet even this wasn’t enough to call Israel to task. And none of its member states seem interested in taking action.

The Arab states all  issued statements, condemnations, and promises; they called for unity, set up meetings, vowed to address the issue, and did—nothing. Many of them even cracked down on pro-Palestinian demonstrators amongst their own people.

The Turkish President stormed out of the Davos conference in a huff, earning him a surge of popular support—but did nothing substantial to dismantle the economic and strategic ties between Turkey and Israel that allow things like Gaza to occur.

The Israeli government delivered the usual well-prepared and well rehearsed excuses, condolences, justifications and threats. The Israeli Peace Movement continued to be ignored and sidelined.  Fashionably liberal Israeli groups sent workers to care for the animals of Gaza, leaving the human inhabitants to die.  Tomorrow they will hold elections and, irregardless of the outcome, the systematic displacement and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians will continue.

The Palestinian Authority made various angry noises, pointed the finger at Hamas, and continued to collaborate with the Israeli government in signing away Palestinian dignity, sovereignty, and land. Hamas leaders threatened Israel from the safety of exile, promised cash to the families of victims, and made vague and unpopular comments about dissolving the PLO.

The US House and Senate both passed statements (with near universal approval) backing the Israeli genocide and parroting the Israeli government’s talking points. Bush and Obama remained silent on the issue until the latter’s inauguration. Obama mentioned Gaza in passing, as if some terrible and unforeseen natural disaster had occurred, before reaffirming Israel’s right to “self-defense”. His response was entirely consistent with his campaign rhetoric, including the ass-kissing speeches he delivered at AIPAC and at the Knesset.

The states of Venezuela, Bolivia, Qatar, Mauritania, and Cuba all either expelled Israeli diplomats or called other countries to task for not expelling them. These were all marvelous symbolic gestures, all of which accomplished—nothing.

I can no longer accept the Dogma of Modernity that the State is a sign of advanced civilization, or that it serves as a vehicle of human progress. I do not see how states protect people or in any way deserve our allegience. In the face of the brutal mass-killings in Gaza, such beliefs are outrageous. The only thing the State seems proficient at is organizing and deploying violence on a mass scale.

My allegience is not to any state, but to humanity.

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* Although actually the two aren’t unrelated. The State often plays the role of God for secular nationalists (including many Zionists). Proudhon put it quite well when he wrote that  “What capital does to labor, and the State to liberty, the Church does to the spirit.” To reject any leg of the authoritarian tripod requires that we reject the other two as well.

Racial Identity and Liminality

In my first post I said that

Some people are born in liminal spaces and may lead their whole lives there, never falling into the neat categories laid our for them, but always suspended in between, always in limbo…

This might seem to be mere poetic exaggeration. And perhaps to some extent it is. But you can also take it quite literally.

Take multiracial people, for example.

Race, as many academics are often wont to say, is a social construction. Racial groupings are based on perception and  identification by individuals and societies. Thus, there is no such thing as a racial “essence” or a purely existing racial quality, outside of the classification systems we create. These classifications themselves vary from society to society as well as individual to individual.

Nobody knows this better than a person of mixed race. Speaking as a hapa, any given person on the street is likely to perceive my “race” differently. Some people see me as an Asian. Other people think I’m white. Sometimes I get mistaken for being Native American or Hispanic or even “Middle Eastern”. And sometimes there are people who can tell I’m biracial. The way other people classify me depends on nothing more than how I appear to them. And because I’m phenotypically ambiguous, there are any number of possible ways to classify me; all of which could be different (and probably are) from how I personally see myself.

On top of that, my own perception of my “race” is likely to change with time and circumstances. In some social situations I may feel more “white”, in others, more “Asian”, in others, specifically “Korean”, and elsewhere,  “American” or even “Asian-American”. Growing up I had to deal with white kids seeing me as Asian (and having to endure the usual “chink-eye” insults) and Asian kids seeing me as white—all the while never feeling as if I fit in to either group. While this is a common experience for multiracial people, that doesn’t make any less alienating. The boundaries have been drawn, long before your birth, and you don’t quite fit into them. You find yourself living from within (you guessed it) a liminal space. And while you may become entirely comfortable with yourself, there will always be a lingering sense in which you do occupy a liminal space in the eyes of others.

I should add that you don’t need to have a racially mixed background in order to experience this kind of displacement. Anyone with a less then totally homogenous identity (in other words: all of us) is likely to fall into such a space at one time or another. The late Edward Said titled his memoirs Out of Place, alluding to his own liminality at both the personal level and the political level as a Palestinian exile. The most extreme example of those who live their whole lives in liminality are refugees and exiles, and the Palestinians are an example of this. But that’s easily a whole post in itself.

Proletarian Dilemma

You know things are bad when the only jobs available to you pay less than your unemployment check.

This raises the question: What’s more important, the extra cash or your dignity? Pride is a form of compensation as well. At the end of the week you get your paycheck and also receive the privilege of not feeling like shit for being out of work. Or, continue to sit on your ass and receive more money, but at the cost of self-esteem.

Yes, at this stage even self-worth is a commodity. And being a child of the most marketed-to generation in US history, I’m certainly not immune to the lure of yet another commodity. But self-worth doesn’t pay the bills, so I think I’m going to hold off.

Waithood

My first post on liminality probably seems more than a little abstract, so let me try and make it more concrete.

There, the emphasis was on liminal space, but there is also such a thing as liminal time. Human life is commonly divided into childhood, adulthood, and old age, with adolescence acting as liminal years.

In many industrialized countries however, the exact cut off point between adolescence and adulthood has become less clear in light of certain social and economic factors. From day one my generation was spoon-fed the myth that working hard and getting good grades guaranteed you a future. You finish your education, find employment, and you start your life—career, family, and everything else. By your early to mid twenties, you have made the transition to adulthood.

But in the current economic climate, this account is a cruel fiction. The (liminal) gap between graduation and employment was supposed to be short. Prospective employers are eager to snap you up, right out of school, we were told. But the truth of the matter is that there simply is no employment. With the onset of recession, the interval between education and finding a job widens. We’re left in limbo, unable to advance, unable to retreat. We have been swallowed up by the liminal space and have no way of knowing when or if it intends to spit us back out.

There’s a word for this liminal outgrowth: waithood. This term was coined in the Middle East and North Africa, where it was meant to apply to the shabab (young people) living there. For in this situation, there is nothing to do but wait—wait for things to get better, wait to go back to school, wait for your life to start.

Navtej Dhillon of the Brookings Institute describes waithood as the “bewildering time in which large proportions of Middle Eastern youth spend their best years waiting. It is a phase in which the difficulties youth face in each of these interrelated spheres of life result in a debilitating state of helplessness and dependency. Waithood can be best understood by examining outcomes and linkages across five different sectors: education, employment, housing, credit, and marriage.” (source)

In the context of a global economic crisis, it becomes abundantly clear that this isn’t just a problem effecting Middle Eastern/North African youth. It’s something that effects all young people, across the globe. I have the impression it’s only going to get worse, and speaking for myself, I have faith neither in the messianic properties of politicians nor in the magical qualities of markets. Systematic change is needed…

Liminality

It is human nature to divide, categorize, and otherwise divvy up the seamless flux of experience into discrete, separate compartments. We see this all the time in the divisions we make between private life and public life, night and day, dreaming and waking, sacred and profane, subject and object, appearance and reality, birth and death. The distinctions between the four seasons, the innumerable disciplines of human study, the stages of a human life, the borders between nations, even the designation of different cultures and “races”—all of these are obvious examples of boundaries that lie between things.

The prevailing tendency for most people is to take these divisions at face value, and to structure their lives accordingly. We assume these boundaries are enduring, closed and concrete, and seek to move from one stage to the next, one category to another, along the paths marked out by ourselves and our society. These transitions are sharp, clear, and swift—in theory.

But all transition entails thresholds; waystations, bridges, crossroads, borderlands— in between spaces which are neither here nor there. This “in between-ness”—and the consciousness of being “in between”—is called liminality. Places of transition are liminal spaces, and transition itself is liminality in motion.

Liminal spaces exist to be traversed, to be passed through quickly and forgotten. Yet it is also possible to become lost here. Liminal spaces defy our categorization, and in so doing act as cracks in the surface of our everyday reality; cracks which we can fall into. Liminality swallows us up and suspends the possibility of our arrival—perhaps temporarily, perhaps permanently. Some people are born in liminal spaces and may lead their whole lives there, never falling into the neat categories laid our for them, but always suspended in between, always in limbo…

The most extreme liminal spaces are utterly groundless, and it is in this groundless void that absolute terror dwells. They belie the notion that our categories are anything substantial; “things” are not as real as that which connects them, and with this realization “all that is solid melts into air“. Viewed through the lens of abstraction, this is chaos itself (and hence death or madness); but to the one who has learned to swims through this space, there is only perfect freedom.