From Issue 15

Platonic love

"Lots of people probably think Pamela Anderson Lee is a big fan of Plato. They no doubt think so because it was once reported in a reputable magazine, and now they think she spends much of her free time contemplating, say, the unity of virtue and knowledge as expressed in Plato's early dialogues. [After various references to Lee's "philosophy of life," the author takes issue with the fact that she has been so often trashed for being a talentless sex addict.] Was it not virtuous to satisfy your man—no, not your man, your husband—with fellatio? Did it not take a certain kind of expert knowledge to do so? And were not these two things, virtue and knowledge, perfectly united in Pamela?"

—from "Girl, Interrupted" by Erik Hedegaard, US magazine (October 1998)

submitted by

H. Delehanty / New York, N.Y.

Yeah, "Hedegaard," —right—we get it: Heidegger plus Kierkegaard. You've got to try harder than that, people.

Dystopia Parkway

"Marilyn Manson taught me a new word: dystopia. My Merriam Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, Tenth Edition defines it as "an imaginary place where people lead dehumanized and often fearful lives." Marilyn Manson used it in a sentence when he was describing his band's new album, Mechanical Animals. [...] Another theme that runs through the album is drugs. I asked if he's still doing a lot of them, but I apparently missed the point. 'I meant narcotics as a metaphor for people's need to numb themselves,' he said. 'That's what Mechanical Animals is hinting at: that we're encouraged to not have emotions, to not be individuals, to not have an opinion.' Oh." —from "Marilyn Manson Finds God" by Christina Kelly, Jane (November 1998)

submitted by

R. Lane / New York, N.Y.

There's so much in that "Oh." And it's much more elegant than just writing "Whatever." Manson should've added that another thing people are encouraged to not have is word-a-day desk calendars.

Clips of God

"In 'Front Row,' the opening track of Alanis Morissette's current chart-sailing juggernaut, Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie, she insists to one of her perceived antagonists that 'it

doesn't always have to be about you.' But a quick perusal of the lyric sheet shows an I-Thou dialogue that would make Martin Buber do a spit-take. Out of 17 songs, 10 contain 'I' (or a possessive variant) and 8 have 'you' or a variant in the first 6 words. [...] Repeated listenings of the album reveal that 'you' often means 'I.' And vice versa. In the end, it's all 'her.' In Buber, the I-Thou relationship constitutes the give-and-take between an individual and God; one is tempted to draw a similar parallel between the creator (small 'c') and her audience or, at the very least, her work. But there really is no dialogue here. [...] In Buber, the relationship between I and Thou is a mutual one, but Ms. Morissette and Jewel engage in an I-It relationship with both us and their work. This satisfies no one. Of course, there is space in music for the I-Thou thing, and if we could just bring one Jewel fan over to Thelonious Monk or the Raincoats, it might save his or her supposed soul."—from "You? Me? Us? Ugh. The Sad Tale of Jewel and Alanis" by D. Strauss, the New York Observer (January 11, 1999)

submitted by

M. Golin / New York, N.Y.

Is it really so hard to think of something to say about Alanis Morissette and Jewel that you have to drag in Buber? And as far as saving souls goes, Hermenaut is willing to take the plunge that Strauss, despite the hand-wringing, never would: The first ten readers who send us a Jewel or Morissette CD will receive a Monk or Raincoats CD in exchange. Deal?

Note: This offer has expired—ed.

Nicht versohnt

"The director of Restoration's catalogue division is a woman named Marta Benson, who graduated with a degree in philosophy from Wesleyan College, in Connecticut, in 1984. 'I'm proud of being a merchant,' she says. Restoration people envelop the word 'merchant' with spiritual resonance, the way some people use the word 'poet' or 'sculptor.' 'I went to The English Patient a couple of years ago,' Benson recalls, 'and it was so moving and so beautiful, and I thought, All I do is sell stuff. But I'm reconciled to it, because I'm selling stuff that has meaning.'"

Is there anything more disturbing in this than the revelation from a woman with a degree in philosophy from Wesleyan that it took seeing The English Patient to make her question her existence? (Hatebath adds: If I ever meet Benson, remind me to ask her, "What is the meaning of a $50 pencil sharpener?") There's more:

"In a characteristic moment, Nietzsche mocked modern man by saying, 'He needs history because it is the storage closet where all the costumes are kept. He notices that none really fits him.' Perhaps Nietzsche is right. None of the old costumes fit. But maybe the dustpans do. Maybe the little saltcellars can bring back the old traditions and the old virtues. And, anyway, at only twelve dollars it's worth a shot."

—from "Acquired Taste" by David Brooks, the New Yorker (Jan. 25, 1999)

submitted by

D.P.W. Perko / Lancaster, Pa.

Would those be the Dustpans of History, David?

From Issue 14

RUNNER-UP

"It is the spirit of the Carnival [that makes my audience so loyal]. It knows no rules or geographical boundaries. It is a vaudevillian slap in the face of the hard realities of day-to-day life." —Jimmy Buffett, A Pirate Looks at Fifty(Random House, 1998)

submitted by

F. Rabelais / Myrtle Beach, S.C.

Bakhtinian scholar Chris Fujiwara predicts that Buffett's next album will be entitled The Master and Margarita.

SECOND PRIZE

"It is at The Australian [newspaper] that Lachlan [Murdoch, 26-year-old son of Rupert Murdoch and chief of Murdoch's News, Ltd.] has most clearly demonstrated his editorial bent. [...] Under Paul Kelly, an eminent political reporter, the paper had given unprecedented space to book reviews [and] long analytical articles [...] Although Lachlan studied philosophy at Princeton, he has little time for intellectual newspapers. He demoted Kelly [and] brought in a tabloid man. Journalists at The Australian say they're now encouraged to write for a market-researched composite of the advertisers' ideal reader." —"Murdoch" by Geraldine Brooks, The New York Times Magazine (July 19, 1998)

submitted by

M.G. Stewart / Williamstown, MA

Luckily for readers of The Australian, after weeks of market research the advertisers' ideal reader turned out to be a twentysomething aborigine with a taste for long analytical articles and book reviews. (Apparently articles on political economy taste better wrapped around a wallaby than celebrity gossip does!)

WINNER

"'To be honest' [admits Sean Lennon], 'I was your average pseudointellectual, negative, cynical teenager who thought they know everything and hated the world and hated society and hated everything and thought we were all going to die. That's really how I felt for a long time, until this whole revolutionary Buddhist thing happened to me in high school. Oh, and I also started tripping on mushrooms and LSD.' A mix of Buddhism and Taoism came to the rescue after Lennon almost had a nervous breakdown from studying Western philosophy and encountering the notion that God is dead. 'When I read Descartes' fourth discourse, I freaked out, because I'd never considered that reality might not be what we perceive it to be,' he says. 'All the Western philosophers used Aristotelian logic: A plus B equals C. Buddhism says that, in itself, is fundamentally false. Words themselves and logic itself is not the truth. There's no truth in words; they're artificial constructions that don't define anything, because the world isn't to be defined, it's more to be experienced.'"—"Sean Lennon" by Evelyn McDonnell, Request (July 1, 1998)

submitted by

R. Mack / Los Angeles, CA

Sean "My motorcycle brain/Remains to be explained" Lennon does a fine job of avoiding world-definition on his new album Into the Sun (Grand Royal). In fact, whereas his half-brother Julian's pointless pop was hauntingly reminiscent of George Harrison's post-Beatles oeuvre, Sean's latest effort has McCartney written all over it. Note the many-love-songs-to-the-same-person business, the defiantly meaningless lyrics, the tuneless warbling by significant other, etc. etc. Don't be fooled by the hipster veneer: This guy is L-7 all the way.

Slotcar Hatebath adds: "I used to labor under the false, Western impression that we're all going to die. I'm so over that."

RINGERS

"[Uma Thurman] has been a cultural icon in a moderately major way since her performance as Cecile de Volanges in 1988's Dangerous Liaisons at the age of seventeen and in a less moderately major way since her 1994 performance as Mia Wallace in Pulp Fiction was nominated for an Academy Award. As you are doubtless aware, ontology is really the philosophy of the nature of being, and teleology is the consideration of things in terms of their movement toward an end point. And, as I'm sure I don't need to tell you, heterotopia is a neologism coined by the late postmodern French theorist Michel Foucault. [...] Really, you would have to say that Uma is an intellectual."—"An Alternate Umaverse" by Mim Udovitch, Esquire (March, 1998)

submitted by

Z. Borow / Brooklyn, NY

and

"The same thing happened [i.e. wearing a sweatshirt with the hood up went from being menacing to ludicrous], of course, to the trenchcoat: What started with Edward R. Murrow and Casablanca led to flasher culture. Nietzsche would have understood this kind of narrative trajectory, from the sublime to the monstrous, as a case of ressentiment on a world-historical scale. In other words, fashion."—"Life in the Hood" by Lee Smith, GQ (August, 1998)

submitted by

M. Hirschorn / New York, NY

Readers, please note that Smith and Udovitch are part of the vast Neo-Foucauldian plot to infiltrate popular media (think Pop Up Video) through the studied application of trivia—a phenomenon we're watching closely, believe us. But the Philosophywatch column is about naïve uses of philosophy in pop culture, so these really don't count. Thanks for trying, though.

We really try not to read these kinds of magazines: we just look at the pictures. So, if you run across a diverting example of philosophy in pop culture, please send it along. You can e-mail it to us at editors@hermenaut.com (put "Philosophywatch" in the subject), mail it to us (179 Boylston St. Building P, 3rd fl. Jamaica Plain, MA 02130), or simply post it in the discussion accompanying this article in the Wicked Pavilion.