McLuhan ANG - Blätterfolge 19

ANG\EXEG_07.WP * 24.9.1993

Mit Paul J. KORSHIN, Typologies in England 1650-1820. Buchstabe: Metatypologie bei McL etc: s o w i e patristische Typologie den jüdischen Buchstaben ausschied, so wirft Medientypologie die p u r i t a n i s c h e Schrift aus (UM: das tote Holz am Strand) in kosmischer Ausweitung und kosmischen T U N I N G (s. überall assimilation, attune to, adaption) - - - woran aber? Spekulativ: M O S A I C, DEW-Line, Automation, Techno-Prophetismus, der Mann aus der Fremde, das Dark Horse als Unternehmensberater (ES..., in letztem Phokoschub Fernleihe) Verlagerung auf den Zuhörer/-schauer, aber nicht Innerlich, sondern ent-scheidend, die GAPs selbst füllend, also Ende von Typologie überhaupt als perspektivisches-Detachment (point of view) über Schrift, tägliche Neukonfiguration des Musters aus leuchtenden TV-Punkten und Füllung durch Zuschauer, so wie bei Zeitung über Date-Line, Techno-Theo-Kratie als autopoietische, global immer neu zu erfüllen, unser tägliches globales Dorf HEUTE, postliterat, Ende von Geschichte.....("history is bunk", McL - H.Ford), tägliche Suspendierung von Erfüllung-Utopie-Hoffnung in ihrem Kollaps vor dem Bildschirm.: Kaufentscheidung, System, Kommunikation statt Produktion ---- schweift ab ins Unermeßliche.

KORSHIN: "Yet we are now witnessing the third rise of typology [2. rise: Protestantism/ Puritanism] The growth of twentieth-century historical and archeological inquiry into Christian origins and the history of religious coupled with the HEIGHTENED ECUMENICAL FERVOR of the LAST THIRTY YEARS brought typological thinking into NEW focus again. From this NEW trend my study takes its direction." (26)

McL's "holy tetrachys" (?) - heilige Tetrade, vorsokratisch, pythagoreisch, vorliteral etc selbst: gegen Hegel (ML ?, Marchand?), Vernichtung, ganz brutal-blöd von Dialektik, kein Hindurchgang durch Negativität zu Synthese sondern VERSCHROTTEN, tägliches, zu jeder Epoche, so sagt er, aber es ist immer nur das eine, was verschrottet wird: Literacy: an Ihm selbst in jedem Ausbruch von Erfüllungsphrophetie exerziert: "My personal values and attitues, which are entirely related to the printed word, I have found it necessary to exclude from media study, so far as possible. Value judgment abaout the psychic and social consequences of railways and aeroplanes soone become a smog that clouds perception and judgement." (ES_70_04, Listener Oct. 1970, p 475) Leser/Zuschauer selbst die FÜLLUNG , fulfillment: FARCIE, Spickbraten.

So auch Perspektive: kippt für McL um: der 'vanishing point' ist der Betracher selbst, wenn er durch den fernen (geometrischen) hindurchgegangen ist: Alice - through the Looking Glass - Through the Vanishing Point. Das ist einmal 'retrieval' älterer Ikonischer Formen, Hieroglyphen, kosmischer Einstimmung (assoz: kosmische Harfe, IL-... etc, dann irgendein Titel mit TUNE...). ABER: Es fällt zugleich mit Perspektive vom Beschauer aus (he becomes what he beholds, BLAKE) die Figuration-Erfüllung aus der historisch-heilsgeschichtlichen 'Distanz' (Säkularisierung, Fortschritt etc) beim 'retrieval' auf den Beschauer zurück: Point Zero, altitude zéro (Virilio), Null-Figura, NULL in UM?, (Zahlenkapitel)

Nochmal: Tausenjähriges Reich. S. BOLZ in Symptome, die kosmische Verschmelzung von Faschismus versus PURITANISMUS - aber eben millenaristisch - Meta-Eschatologisch, das Ende des Endens in kosmischer IMPLOSION (UM), tägliche Zusammenbruch aller GAPS (und ihre täglich Erneuerung, Erneuerung von (literatem) Selbst, um den Sprung wieder zu erzwingen, die tägliche Absonderung von Schrift-Schreiben als Schrott-Litter-Letter --- PAULUS: vor dem Gesetz kannte ich die Sünde nicht, das Gesetz aber häufte sie vor aller AUGEN bis zum Sprung in die Gnade (s. Luther, Einleitung Bibelübersetzung)

KORSHIN: "The most uninvolved study of the Old and New Testaments, at any time in modern history, must emphasize the prefigurative relationship between the Old and the New; indeed, EVEN TO NAME THE TWO PARTS OF THE BIBLE 'OLD' AND 'NEW' INVOLVES AN EXERCISE IN TYPLOGICAL IMAGINATION"

Also nochmal: Die Übertragung Geist----Buchstabe auf Medien -- Schrift:Puritanismus-Kapitalismus (McL kennt natürlich WEBER und TAWNEY)

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29.9.1993 James B. TWITCHELL, Carnival Culture. The Trashing [Verramschen] of Taste in America. Schon in 'Trashing' liegt Inverse Figuration? Also sieh mal S. 44 ff Andy WARHOL -- consumer - conspicious consummation:

"Warhol's consumer art mimicked the process, as well as the look, of consumer culture ... He enthusiastically removed the space between high art and low advertisement. Warhol knew that modern museums resembled department stores for a reason. And increasing number of Americans, indoctrinated by the scralization of art, decided they needed to CONSUME THE HOLY WAFER. As the result of his Catholic Eastern European upbringing with its ICONIC tracition, and from his early experience as a window dresser, Warhol knew the power of repeated images in mass media... Which twin has the Toni? Which is the simulacrum... Iff mass culture CANNIBALIZED high culture, why should trunabout not be fair play? What characterizes pop is mainly its use of what is despised by the Charles Eliot Nortons. Like Saint Remi adressing the Frankish king, Warhol's GOD OF POP says, 'Burn what you have worshiped, worship what you have burned.' This is a TWO-PARTY LINE. After all, art is show business.

Warhol simulated the act of painting, EXTENDING DUCHAMP [Christus-Johannes der Täufer], creating rows of readymades, dissolving high art into MASS media. His ADULATION [Verherrlichung] of the once-vulgar, his studied SELF-EFFACEMENT, his DESIRE TO BECOME MACHINE...shifting sexuality, his concentration at the margin... mad him a PIVOTAL character in the transformation of modern culture. Warhol's achievment was to LEGITIMIZE his love ofthe secular, to ATTACH RELIGIOUS VALUE TO PROFANE SUBJECT, to make TRASH respectable."(45)

Dick durchsetzt also von christologisch-figuraler Metaphorik & 'grünen Strichen': "devoid of criticism or anger" (44) "critics"/"CONTENT"/"story"/"plot"/"matters": "The story is always secondary" (207) -- s weiter S. 38

"Mass-produced and mass-consumed American popular culture is rapidly encircling the globe because there is something in it that is TRANSCULTURAL, something even TRANSCENDENTAL. [s. BOLZ: Erlösung von der Zumutung der Philosophie: Freiheit]. In many respects popular culture resembles a SECULAR RELIGION promising RELEASE, not in the next world, but IN THIS ONE. Wishes are folfilled, not later, but NOW. Gratification ist instant." (38)

Und dann weiter mit Tom WOLFE's "intuitive realization that indeed somethin PROFOUND was HAPPENING to the dominant taste culutre..." Zit Wolfe:

"The OLD establishment still holds forth, it still has its clubs, cotillions and coming-out balls, it is still basically PROTESTANT and it still rules two enormously powerful areas of NEW YORK, FINANCE and CORPORATE LAW. But ALONGSIDE it, all the while, there has existed a large and ever more dazzling society, Cafe Society...twenties and thirties...people whose STATUS rests not on PROPERTY and ANCESTRY [McL: lineaL] but on various brilliant EPHEMERA, show business, advertising, public relations, the arts, journalism or simpley NEW noney of various sorts...great deal of ambition who have CONGREGATED in New York to satisfy it and who look for STYLES to SYMBOLIZE it."(38)

What if he's right? - fragte T.Wolfe zu McL, und: er war im Recht, wie dieses Zitat von 1963 [!!!] zeigt mit messianischen "low places", "marginal", "netherworld [Unterwelt] ", "marginal outcast", "camp and Artistic Alienation", "'you mucky [dreckig] Pseuds'" (zit Jonas Mekas; "after all, they DO create styles. And now the Other Society goes to them for styles, like the decadenti of another age goint down to the wharves [wharf:Kai] in Rio to find those RAW-VITAL DEVILS, damn their potent hides, those proles, doint the tango. Yes! Oh my God, those RAW-VITAL proles". (1963: 211-12) (zit 39/40)

Und nun kommts "It [Las Vegas] is permissive, commercial, and irredeemably vulgar. The singifying image in Las Vegas is the SINGIFIER itself, the SIGN qua SIGN - more specifically, the big sign...they form a MEDIUM through which we pass, a plasma, a TEXT if you will, that can be read only at sixty miles per hour. The SPEEDway is central....glitz, kitsch, pulp... hold it. let it go, and then recapture it." (40)

"Yet, when you think of it, claims VENTURI [saeculi], this 'messy [schmutzig, unordentlich] vitality of forms' is rather like the aggomeration of chapels in a Roman church, /42/ or the sequential parts of a GOTHIC CATHEDRAL. After all [wonach? McL?] the Roman church and especially the Gothic cathedral can be seen as totally sign-covered too -billboards [Reklametafel] advertising for customers, steeples [Kirchturm] pointed skyward with the promise of SALVATION for patrons: SHOWTIME. As brilliant and glitzy as these Las Vegas signs are, the building interiors are low and dark and quet. Like the church facades with gargyoles and reliefs ,these signs are also often in mixed media - words, pictures, and sculpture. The Pioneer Club on Freemont even talks: a cowboy sixty feet tall says 'Howdy [Tag!] Partner' every thirty seconds. Perhaps the casino also eveolved to satisfy desire, and even the NEED for SALVATION, however inappropriate it may seem.

To consider popular culture as a variety of religion is more SACRILEGIOUS than most of us want to be."(41/42)

s Scholem/Benjamin: Erlösung durch Sünde.

TWITCHELL S. 194, TV: "Call it what you will - 'idiot box', 'American dada', 'Charles Dickens on LSD,''the GREATEST PARODY of European culture SINCE THE  D U N C I A D" ... 'plug-in drug'...'vast wasteland' [wilderness]..." (194)