Corporate Cannibal

This week's post is on the Steven Shaviro's "Post-Cinematic Affect". In it, Shaviro writes on Grace Jones, and her music video for "Corporate Cannibal". Having seen the video, immediately it has a sort of 90's pop music feel to it, which is surprising since it was made in 2008.

In a twitter conversation, a number of questions arose regarding the video visual elements and its content. For example, what is it about the pause after the word "man" in the lyric "I am a man _____ eating machine"? Is it that man is eating machine (perhaps corporate machine)? or a machine who was created to consume man. I wondered about this considering the notion of "creating" persons through the phenomenon of celebrity.

Could it also be that the manipulation of Grace Jones throughout the video was a sort of experimentation with identity? Was Grace Jones creating herself? As Shaviro explains, she is consistently recognizable especially due to her confrontational presence. The thought here is that the aggressive visual fluctuation in the video demanded a sort of acknowledgement. Despite its shifting, the fact that she occasionally returns to a recognizable version of herself implies a sort of command over form.

Killjoy Feminism OR The Anti-Hero Of Feminism

I'll keep this week's posting short. What interested me most about Ahmed's text is the passively confrontational relationship between the Killjoy and everyone else. It seems like the reason why a Killjoy ruins the mood in feminist discourse is that they embody a dissonance between reality and expectation. The Killjoy makes it apparent that there is "a gap between the ideal feeling and the ideal feeling and the actual feeling".

The reason why this is important is because the Killjoy makes it apparent that despite prior models, you are not guaranteed happiness even if you achieve successes. The Killjoy does so by not being satisfied in success. This is an unsettling reality. We are winning, right? We should rejoice! But the Killjoy is a constant reminder that happiness is a simple pleasure, and that feminism has matured beyond that point (think Simone De Beauvoir's levels of maturity).

Just a side thought here, but could it be that the Killjoy feminist is a catalyst for progressive thought? The sort of anti-hero that reminds us that experiences are both unique and identifying, that solidarity is the opiate of progressive, so wipe that goofy smile off of your face.