Just Do It
On Stiegler and LaBeouf in the neganthropocene
One way of understanding Shia LaBeouf’s “Just Do It” motivational video is as a translation of Bernard Stiegler’s recent work about “escaping the anthropocene.” And vice versa. Reading Stiegler’s essays and watching LaBeouf’s video are essentially the same experience: one feels exhilarated, thrilled, excited (as if one might really do the impossible) and then a little disappointed.
Stiegler’s latest essays, many translated into English by Daniel Ross, sharpen the thought of a new type of urgency and are in some ways quite simple. This thought of urgency — figured as an “alternative” — is expressed succinctly at …
Hooray for Schlock: the Coen Brothers’ “Hail Caesar!”
(Caution: mild spoiler alert)
The films of Joel and Ethan Coen are very attentive to mood – plot, characterization, setting, all seem to be geared toward establishing a strong mood that commands and demands our attention more than anything else. Fargo and No Country for Old Men …
Anachronism with a Kafkaesque Touch
Last Thursday, I received a message via Facebook messenger. The message’s author was (so it read) the Chief Censor of Israel’s Military Censor, one Colonel Ariella Ben-Avraham, and in it she demanded that I submit to the Censor’s warrant. Entering Ben-Abraham’s Facebook page showed a page that was almost empty — her name and picture only. In fact, it seems that the Censor was so embarrassed by all the publicity in recent days that she erased it. When I tried to enter the page today in order to write the post, it …
