Something I wrote today

Any readers of Hegel out there? Or London?

"It is not that Buck is really human, or that humans are really animals; I am not interested in drawing easy equivalences. What I am positing is that if Buck can be inserted into humanist equations, like Hegel’s, and remain a dog (or, in other words, if Buck can survive being made a metaphor for the merely human), the possibility for a literary understanding of human/animal relations becomes possible and promising; for if our goal is a different future, posthuman or not, and if that future depends upon reconceptualizing the human, without, on the one hand, falling back on nihilism (in which humans have no value, as such), or on the other, fulfilling the equally terrifying dream of an all-too-human future (in which humans are over-valued, as such), then we must begin to imagine, in our stories, and read into the ones that have already been written, the possibility that becoming human, or becoming animal, might at least avoid the inevitability of one “becoming” only at the expense of the other."

Fighting the future with mustaches

I've been waiting for mustaches to make a comeback, and I think this recent Rolling Stone cover just might help its long awaited return.



I've always been amazed at Brad Pitt's chameleonesque hair. He can go all Legends-of-the-Fall in weeks, shave it for his next film, then appear days later with George Clooney's very fashionable 1950s look.



I wonder if there's some magical Hollywood secret gel that allows celebrities to grow their hair out more quickly than the rest of the plebeian masses.

Anyway. Mustaches: why did they wander in the cultural desert for so long, collecting all kinds of sleazy connotations, like some creep in a windowless van (Michele associates mustaches with child molesters, which pretty much disqualifies me from ever growing one, even though I really really want to)?

I'm also waiting for body hair, in general, to make a comeback. Americans are obsessed with shaving everything, but I just can't keep up; what is it about body hair that so reviles us in one era, while being completely acceptable in others? I mean, Burt Reynolds used to be considered, like, a Greek God or something.



And then a mere 10 to 20 years later, this would completely repel 99% of women.

I think there must be an aesthetics of smoothness that's very active in the human brain--that makes us believe that rounded, consistent shapes are some kind of surface-manifestation of inner purity. I don't think that it's just sexual either. There's evolutionary reasons for why men are attracted to curves--they are supposedly the outer reflection of healthy reproductive capability (or so I read).

Yet, why is it that so much future-oriented design is almost inevitably sleek? For example, take the two robots from Disney's recent movie, Wall-E.



The old design is baroque, gothic, broke-down. The new design is exceedingly simple and egg-like. If you'll recall Terminator 2, the old design, occupied by Arnold Schwarzeneggar's smoothly shaved skin, is nevertheless a collection of intricate humanoid parts on the inside, while the new design is liquid metal.

In addition, if you compare the spaceships in the first three Star Wars films, they are much more complex and labyrinthine than the ships in the latest three.





My question is, why does new always equal smooth? Because in each case I actually prefer the old design, and yet I've always somewhat fetishized the new as well (hence my taste for Modernist literature). With the exception of home design, painting, and literature, in which I certainly prefer modernist straight lines and minimalist flourishes, the clunkier, more gothic-church like design of the "older" models registers more "soul", even if the object rendered is a machine.

So I think there's also something in us that rejects the aesthetic of smoothness at times, and lets us enjoy the sloppy effectiveness of the Millenium Falcon, the simple tasks completed by the squeaky but soulful Wall-E, and the human-in-waiting of the Cyberdyne Systems Model 101.

My next step must be to convince Michele that my desire to grow a mustache simply stems from my yearning to reject the onset of a featureless future that we humans can only seem to envision as a plain free of the scars, blemishes, and accretions that pock reality and erupt through the curvature of our utopias.

Think she'll buy it?