The Schizophrenic Subjective Individual,

Transcription

1 O Neill Media Center Stacks PN1997.A The Schizophrenic Subjective Individual, Week 13 Lecture 2 24 April Subjective Individualism v. STATE I. Reactionary Modernism : Essential role of cinema in Totalitarianism BOTH end up being absorption of the subjective individual into the STATE Unity = inter-national (class) Unity = national (state) Nazi Mass rallies: rely completely on technology Quasi-mystical: absorbing the individual into the community Freud: the oceanic feeling of the womb absorbs individual into the group 1

2 Individual absorbed into community: ask them to sacrifice self to the cause hand over all responsibility to the leaders <Sartre s Existentialism: bad faith is handing your responsibility over to someone / something else> Eisenstein, October The Heroic genius (Lenin) leads the masses Nazi oath: I swear before God to obey Adolph Hitler without reserve, Leader of the Reich and of the German people, supreme commander of the Army, and I pledge myself as a courageous soldier, to hold always to this oath, even though it may lead me to death. Ultra-modernism of Totalitarianism Material Precondition of 20 th -c. Totalitarianism = ELECTRICITY!!! Lighting /searchlights Public address systems Radio CINEMA!!!!!!! Leni Riefenstahl, Triumph des Willens [Triumph of the Will] (1934) Nazi Party Rally at NUREMBURG, medieval capital of the Holy Roman Empire O Neill Media: DD T oceanic feeling quasi-mystical Roman Imperial Eagle [note how modernist/geometrical!] 2

3 Giant flames/architecture: evoke ancient Roman Empire GIGANTISM [cf. Speer s Germania]: From temple steps to giant banners: individual merged into collective II. From Postwar to World War to Cold War The modern world: Democracy vs. Communism Three primary geopolitical shifts after : 1) Elimination of post-1918 Fascism (Germany; Italy; Japan though not Spain) 2) End to old world (post-1870) of colonial empires (United Kingdom; France; Belgium; Netherlands; Germany; Italy; United States; Japan) 3) Bi-polar globe: USA v. USSR (liberalism v. communism) 3

4 Compare to USA 1840s-50s: slave v. free states All differences subsumed under two (extraneous) categories Post-1989: the post-modern world Modern : bipolar Postmodern = multi-polar 1989 present III. THREE BROAD TOPICS: 1) Civilian bombings: How to reconcile this principle of liberalism --- the subjective individual as the source of all meaning and value --- with the gradual erasure of boundaries between combatants and non-combatants? 2) Schizophrenic liberalism : postwar intellectual/culture 3) De-colonization : you can t go home again. Donald Rumsfeld and Saddam Hussein, 1983 Osama bin Laden 4

5 20 th Century: percent of direct casualties that were civilians : World War I 05 % A. Civilian bombings: Increasing barbarism of the 20 th century? : World War II 50% : Vietnam 80% 1990s: Balkans/Persian Gulf 85-95% Working for Reconciliation: A Caritas Handbook (Vatican City: Caritas Internationalis, 1999) First fighter plane [1913] Pilot + machine gunman There is nothing else the submarine can do except sink her capture it is freely acknowledged to be an altogether barbarous method of warfare [but] the essence of war is violence, and moderation in war is imbecility. Admiral Lord Fisher, June : Spanish Civil War Republicans [Communists] vs. Nationalists (Fascists) [Franco/Army/Church] Dress Rehearsal for WWII: Hitler / Mussolini support Franco Stalin supports Republicans 5

6 Picasso, Guernica [1937] Innovation: Saturation bombing Barcelona montage, April 1937: German saturation bombing of Guernica (Spain) 6

7 Wannsee Conference: January 20, 1942 The Final Solution 1937: a preview / pre-vision of the end of civilized boundaries Urban areas become military targets No civilians will ever be safe again. Trains unloading at Auschwitz Trains unloading:jews awaiting Selektion 7

8 Trains: Frankenstein s creature Auschwitz gas chambers: able to process 2,000 at a time Auschwitz ovens: 20,000 deaths / day in 1944 Controversy: does telling the truth about Allied bombing lessen Germany s / Hitler s guilt? Does it make you unpatriotic? A traitor to the nation? Hamburg, July

9 Royal Air Force firebombing of Dresden 1944 Vonnegut: Oh well, he wasn t going to write Beethoven s Fifth anyway. Dresden, 1944: city center after firebombing Dresden 1944 Dresden 9

10 Hannover Paderborn Paderborn Pforzheim Tokyo

11 The politics of memory but more than that: the self-identity of memory 11

12 1962 October Cuban Missile Crisis End result: promise not to invade Cuba [--> Elian!] WWIII narrowly averted Sidney Lumet (1964) 12

13 1967 LBJ fear of provoking China a guerilla war --- i.e., North Vietnamese located in and passing as South Vietnamese; also: civilian suicide bombers Hardware : LBJ destroys the country he s trying to save Mentality shift: savagery / futility [cf. The Great War: what s the sacrifice for???] 1967: B52s bomb near Saigon Vietnam th Century: percent of direct casualties that were civilians : World War I 05 % : World War II 50% : Vietnam 80% 1990s: Balkans/Persian Gulf 85-95% Working for Reconciliation: A Caritas Handbook (Vatican City: Caritas Internationalis, 1999) 13