Playing The Waves

And now for a bit of self-promotion: here is my latest book and it is about the director who is staring you in the face.

The approach taken in this book is a game theoretical and game studies perspective. In the book I argue that Dogme95 is first and for all a game, and that the Dogme95 Manifesto should be read as an attempt to redefine the practice of filmmaking as a playful, game in which the filmmaker sets himself a number or largely arbitrary rules.

Von Trier has done so in all of his productions. Moreover, the narrational patterns and the remarkably consistent, if not repetitious structures of his stories can be very well explained by an (in)famous case from game theory.

Moreover, the book draws attention to the particular use of a much overlooked device in Von Trier's films: the editing. Through a particular kind of discontinous editing, Von Trier breaks away from classical and modern notions of 'representations' and brings cinema into the realm of simulation and the virtual. His style might be more aptly called 'virtual realism'.

Order at Amsterdam University Press or at Amazon

The PR Princess

Immediately after her death Tony Blair called Diana 'the people's princess'. As tremendously sholcked the Brittish people seemed to be by her unexpected, but spectacular lethal accident, allegedly caused by paparazi trying to hunt her down, just as soon the memory of Diana seemed to have waned. Already in the first summer after her death the expected droves of visitors - needed to pay for the construction and maintenance of the tomb massively stayed away. The Diana industry never really took off.
Luckily Diana's children have a genetically inherited sense of publicity as well. Well aware that today almost any cause is a good excuse for a globally broadcasted pop concert, they organized an huge concert in Wembley Stadium, for the benefit of charity, of course, but doubtedlessly also aimed at rekindling the love and memory of Diana and the reanimation of the almost defunct Diana industry. So, on your way to one of the many festivals, don't forget to visit Diana's grave, and please buy some mugs, t-shirts, posters, photographs and other parafernalia.

Old Media are Dead: Long Live the Old Media!

Intrigued by the Time Magazine election of 'You!' as the personality of the year, I took a little holidays excursion to YouTube hoping that I would catch a glimpse of this so highly praized personality . On my admittedly rather small explorative journey into YouTube I came across video postings of a fellow country man, who calls himself 'JP'. He had only recently started his vlogs, and I caught his second one. Well, if this young man is only remotely representative of the 2006 personality, this personality had rather be called 'non personality'.
Though visually very present in close up, he remains a completely blank person. The most revealing information he discloses about himself is that he lives in the Netherlands - of which he shows a map - and that he is willing to answer questions about his country. He then plays three fragments of Christmas songs (by Bing Crosby, Wham!, and Elvis respectively) and then confesses that he's not sure whether to decorate his house for Christmas and asks his viewer for suggestions. He ends his video with a little tour through his scarsely furnitured appartment and then says goodbye.
Since JP is representative for what is called blogging, vblogging and socializing on the Internet nowadays, I will not reveal his name or URL (you can probably find his vlogs pretty easily yourself or you will recognize the sort of video I'm talking about). For me JP is the paradigm example of what the so called digital revolution has brought about. The main result of that revolution is a desire to manifest oneself on the Internet, to be seen and heard, and to get in touch with other likeminded 'internauts'. However, equiped with a 'real camera' (JP makes a point of not having recorded his film with a webcam), a YouTube account, a computer and an Internet connection, JP finds out that he really has got nothing to say. The musical instruments he proudly shows - a guitar and an electronic keyboard - are probably just like his computer objects that symbolize his desire as much as his uncapacity of personal expression. The central piece of his room is a couch, in which JP, as he says, usually watches television.

That's the whole point of this story, I'm affraid. In spite of all the promisses that new media would release the hidden or repressed creative potential of ordinary people, this 'democratization' only taught those common people and us, new media gurus, that they really had not that much to say. Many videos on YouTube are either straightforward forms of viral advertising, spoofs or pastiches, emulations of mainstream media, or re-enactments of longstanding quarrels such as the one between the Mac and PC fanbases, or digital editions of long time honored home movies such as the little girl singing Christmas carols. Just as JP tries to move around his couch and tv set, sites as YouTube, MySpace, or Hyves (in the Netherlands) cannot really get around the fact that these sites are alle a big cry for professionally made entertainment to fill the daily empty lives of the common people who are at loss in the vast ocean of high tech interactive communication systems where they really don't know what to say, what to show, and what to communicate. Sites as YouTube do not pose a real threat to the old broadcast media, but are rather a reason for relief because they beg for more tv.

You!

Time Magazine has elected the Internet user as the 'personality of the year 2006'. There's a bit of irony here, because 'the Internet user' doesn't exist as a personality, and the websites that are heralded as examples of the 'Internet democracy' should rather be defined as 'distributed personalities', shared and created by a multitude of users who do not necessarily share psychological traits, ideological convictions, political goals, personal ambitions or what have you. In that sense, however, this election is not without importance, since it points towards a major paradigmatic shift in our notion of personality and individuality. The 'I' was the individual subject of the liberal and neo-liberal eara, but 'You', always already defined relative to someone else, will be the 'dividual' subject of a truely 'postmodern' epoch of the 'network society'. Even mainstream media can no longer deny this.

The other irony is, of course, that Time detects the democratic potential of Web 2.0, 'social software', p2p networks, etc, at the very moment that these have also been discovered by corporations like Google and other media giants. As is well known Google furthers democratization of information and knowledge only as far as it furthers its own commercial interests. This company wants to make all information accessible except its own codes and algorithms, and is prepared to keep loads of 'free information' stored away behind a 'Chinese Wall' for millions, if not billions of people. Youtube is expected to face law suits on copyright issues, and is, given the huge amount of money Google was prepared to invest in it, bound to be commercialized in no time. In that sense history seems to repeat itself: after the 'activist' optimism about the future of cyberspace, virtual communities, democratization and freedom of information in the eighties and nineties, the dot.com crash soon elucidated the bounaries of these utopian prospects. It is more than ironic that these old illusions are now being re-animated by the 'old media'.

Googled back again..

We're finally back again. But to my great surprise I was forced to take a Google account before I could access my own blog again. Is the blogosphere being digested by Google? After having bought YouTube, now they appear to own Blogger as well. A remarkable dialectic between the democratization of the possibilities of publishing your thoughts, ideas and hunches on the one hand, and the centralization of ownership of those very means at the same time on the other.

What about copyrights? Who will at the end of the day own my musings? We'll see....

How low can you go?

Had to spend so much time to get logged in that I almost forgot the topic I wanted to post a blog about. I remember.... Since a couple of weeks there is a tv commercial featuring Jules Deelder, the self proclaimed 'Night mayor' of the city of Rotterdam. Deelder is well known as a popular poet, a very regular in the Rotterdam club scene, always dressed in black and always sporting a pair of black sun glasses, and probably dying his hair black and wearing it in a fiftieslike fashion. He's also a fanatic supporter of the Rotterdam soccer club Sparta, playing in the bottom part of the Dutch premier league. Deelder himself used to be in the same league as the late rock musician and painter Herman Brood, though he didn't really share his preferences for drugs abuse and booze. The only article Brood ever used to promote was himself, and - in his last spectacular act - the Amsterdam Hilton hotel, from which he made his suicidal jump.
In this tv commercial Jules Deelder, formerly known for his anti-bourgeois and anti-capitalist attitudes, now promotes a detergent called 'Robijn', which has a little toy bear as its brand image. One can imagine how the 'creative designers' of this commercial conceived of the reputedly rough and rough Deelder as the antithesis of the sweet and dearing toy pet. But what about Deelder himself? Is he in such a desparate need for money? Has he taken a sniff of coke too many? How low can you go? Jules Robijn Deelder, the national pet poet, the darling of all house wives, the substitute hugging pet. It is like seeing Johny Rotten advertising health food, or Alice Cooper promoting cat food. Jules Deelder, figure head of a lost generation, indeed.

jan's blog

Retorica

De moeder – of misschien wel de grootmoeder – aller politieke dooddoeners is wel de frase: ‘We moeten eerst met zijn allen beslissen wat we aan willen met ......’, waarna het onderwerp of thema van keuze kan worden ingevuld. Deze frase heeft een eerdere dooddoener vervangen die elk kritisch geluid smoorde met de wijsheid 'Dat hebben we nu eenmaal met zijn allen met elkaar zo afgesproken'. Alsof parlementaire democratie een vorm van democratisch centralisme is, en alsof parlementaire besluitvorming op basis van 'volksraadpleging' plaatsvindt. Van ophokplicht voor hobbykippen tot de invoering van een nieuw zorgverzekeringsstelsel is mij nooit om mijn mening gevraagd, laat staan dat ik hierover iets heb afgesproken. Wet- en regelgeving vindt namens mij en voor mij, maar ook zonder mij plaats. De discussies over de invoering van een referendum laten ten overvloede zien dat volksraadpleging juist het laatste is was de gevestigde politieke orde wil. Het motto werd vooral gebruikt om de burger te verplichten zich aan afspraken te houden die hij of zij nu juist zelf NIET had gemaakt.
De nieuwe dooddoener wordt door politici in drie gevallen gebruikt. Als zij bepaalde ontwikkelingen willen vertragen zoals bijvoorbeeld Tony Blair: ‘Eerst moeten we in Europa consensus zien te bereiken over wat we met de EU aan willen’. In de tweede plaats wanneer politici zelf niet weten wat ze met een onderwerp aan moeten, en dan gaan oproepen tot een Brede Maatschappelijke Discussie, zoals de Nederlandse regering deed onmiddellijk na de verwerping van de Europese Grondwet door een overtuigende meerderheid van de kiezers. Tenslotte halen politici de dooddoener van stal als ze niet willen toegeven dat beleid op een mislukking is uitgelopen. De grenzen tussen deze categoriën zijn natuurlijk uiterst dun: de Nederlandse regering probeert met de overigens alweer afgeblazen BMD over Europa niet alleen de eigen radeloosheid, maar ook het démasqué van haar eigen Europabeleid toe te dekken. Blair beseft maar al te goed dat de door hem bepleite modernisering van Europa binnenlands op de tradtionele Britse Euroscepsis en in Europees verband op de onwil of het onvermogen tot modernisering van met name Frankrijk en Duitsland zal stranden.
Het PvdA-kamerlid Brugman gaf een staaltje van het gebruik van de dooddoener ten beste in het programma Buitenhof van zondag 23 oktober. Zij beantwoordde de forse kritiek op het studiehuis waarover een vernietigend rapport was verschenen, met de oproep om het eerst maar eens met elkaar eens te worden over wat in de hedendaagse kennismaatschappij van onderwijs verwacht mag worden.
Men mag toch rederlijkerwijs verwachten dat een dergelijke discussie vóór de invoering van het studiehuis gevoerd zou zijn. Dat werd immers een jaar of zeven geleden geïntroduceerd toen Manuel Castells driedelige verhandeling over economie, politiek en cultuur in 'the information age' hoog op de internationale bestsellerslijsten scoorde en in Nederland Paul Frissen's boek De Virtuele Staat het bureau van menig (onderwijs) bestuurder opsierde. Afgaande op de oproep van Brugman is één en ander indertijd volledig aan de politiek in het algemeen en de voor onderwijs verantwoordelijke bewindspersonen in het bijzonder voorbij gegaan. Maar afgezien van de vraag hoe de klok stilgezet of zelfs teruggedraaid zou kunnen worden om deze discussie alsnog te voeren, staat één uitkomst daarvan wel vast. Tot welke eisen aan het onderwijs in de 'kenniseconomie' dit debat ook zou leiden, het studiehuis zal daaraan niet voldoen. Zou dat wel het geval zijn was de hele discussie immers overbodig.
Impliciet gaf het Kamerlid dus het failliet van het studiehuis toe. Wellicht durfde ze dat niet hardop te zeggen uit piëteit voor haar twee dagen eerder overleden collega-Tweede-Kamerlid en partijgenote Adelmund die als staatssecretaris verantwoordelijk was voor de invoering van het studiehuis. De naam van de aanstichtster van al dit onheil viel niet één maal, zoals ook zeker niet werd gememoreerd dat haar grootste verdienste als staatssecretaris van OC&W bestond uit de uitbreiding van het politieke jargon met de term 'zwabberen'.
Met het aanhalen van de grootmoeder aller dooddoeners maskeerde Brugman ook haar eigen gebrek aan visie op wat van onderwijs in de 'kenniseconomie' verwacht mag worden. Door te doen alsof de kennseconomie een fenomeen van vandaag of gisteren is, demonstreerde ze het schrijnend gebrek aan kennis en intellect dat sinds het afleggen van de ideologische veren door Kok in de PvdA en sinds de revolutie van 'Professor Pim' in de Nederlandse politiek in het algemeen de norm is geworden. Onderzoek en onderwijs zijn aan dit kamerlid in elk geval niet besteed geweest. Eén ding is wel duidelijk: onderwijs is te belangrijk om aan politici over te laten. Daar kunnen we het met zijn allen wel over eens zijn.

They took a leak...

The Netherlands have confirmed their autonomy: 62% out of 62% of the electorat who showed up at the poll stations last wednesday said 'neen' to the European Constitution (which is actually a treaty and not what is normally understood by 'constitution'). The Dutch are not alone in this: the French also refuted the constitutional treaty by 55%, and chances are that the Danish and maybe the British - if they get a chance - will also reject the proposal of a new European administrative order.

Personally I think that renewal of the European administration is an inevitabel necessity, if Europe is to compete with China and other Asian sleeping giants in the not too far away future. It is also quite naive to expect the US to protect Europe militarily and economically: that country has a huge deficit, its military power is waning - it can't even control Irak, and soon will be facing many problems inside its own boundaries. Moreover, remaining militarily dependent on the US almost unavoidably means getting involuntarily involved in its imperial adventurisme. In order to cope with these rapidly changing conditions, Europe shouuld invigorate itself and brace itself with an efficient and powerful administration.

Having said that, it is obvious that not only Europe needs to be refashioned, but that the Dutch political system needs to be thoroughly renovated as well. If 62% of the votership resoundingly rejects a proposal that has been supported by 80% of the members of parliament, including the major oppositional parties of Labour and the Green, and that has been actively campaigned for by government ministers and party leaders from allmost all established factions, then there is a problem. The problem is only aggravated by the insistent and persistent denial of the problem by those very same politicians: 'the vote was about Europe, and not about us' was about the most heard sound byte. Political leaders who had passionately campaigned for the Constitutional Treaty suddenly decried the speed, the scope, the costs and the notorious intransparency of 'Europe'. The prime minister, who had signed the Treaty and sent it to Parliament for ratification, promissed 'the day after the night before' that he would firmly represent the 'people's view' on Europe in Brussels. Nobody felt the urge to ask the prime minister to step down after this rather humiliating defeat. The parlementarian debate about the referendum can best be summarized by a popular Dutch phrase: 'ze deden een plas, en alles bleef zoals het was' ('they took a leak, and all remained the same..').

Major questions remain unanswered, and major problems remain unsolved. First of all, nobody seems to take any responsibility for Dutch European policy. All politicians agree that the vote was not 'about them'. But who else but them championed the European integration? One of the few issues on which there is a broad consensus among Dutch political parties of (almost) all denominations, 'Europe', was confronted with an even broader opposite consensus among the Dutch population. Instead of adopting the 'voice of the people', as practically all politicians who defended the European Constitution only two days ago, they should now go back to their voters and say: 'We've done our best, and we thought we did what was best for the future of the country, but you think otherwise. Let us know what it is that you want, and choose a new parliament'. That is, the most logical conclusion of thie unprecedented defeat would be new elections.

The most collateral damage of this referendum has been done to the credibility and legitimacy of the established political parties and their leaders, including Labour and GroenLinks. They, as well as the parties in power, should go back to the voters and ask for a new mandate. In new elections they could also advance their views on the future of Europe, so the voters would not only have the choice of either accepting a proposed constitution of rejecting it wholesalesly. On the basis of the outcome of new elections, parliament could even reconsider the ratification of the Treaty.
It is foreseeable that the political establishement, having choosen not to act upon the voters' massacre, will have to face doubts and questions from the far-right as well as from the far-left opposition about who they represent and with what authority they speak. It comes as no surprise that neither left or right wing oppositional party demanded new elections (apart from Wilders), because they know very well that in the coming two years the authority and legitimacy of the established parties will simply erode. In the near and foreseeable future, some major issue will occur in which the Titanic of the political establishement will meet its iceberg. The tide of populisme can only be contained if political leaders now have the courage to confront their voters.

Apart from the future of Europe, the future of the Dutch political system should also be an issue in upcoming elections. The referendum has made it clear once more, that the so-called 'representative democracy' no longer functions. The majority of the population no longer feels represented by the political parties, and the dismay and discontent of the voters is easily exploited by the negative rhetorics of radical parties at either side of the political spectrum. The leaders of the political establishment know nothing better to do than to embrace the newly discovered tool of the referendum: for every controversial of sensitive issue you call a plesbisciterian vote, and by respecting its outcome nobody will be able to accuse you of elitisme, arrogance, and paternalisme. If the outcome goes against your policy, you're even better off: you can show that you take the vox populi seriously! Responsability, leadership and long term policies are thus all thrown overboard into the vast but unpredictable sea of popular sentiments, grunges and fears, and in the end nobody will be accountable for the wreckage when the Titanic eventually hits its iceberg.

And how is our prime minister together with his minister of foreign affairs supposed to represent the Netherlands in European platforms in a remotely credible way? How can he be taken seriously by other heads of state and government if he proves to so flexible as to first defend the treaty (not eschewing references to WWII and Auschwitz) only to return at the conference tables to reject it as vehemently in the name of his people? Other leaders will certainly ask themselves on behalf of whom PJB is talking, and whether he will still say the same things tomorrow or next week? And how is he going to represent which part of the Dutch nation: can he still rely on a discredited majority in parliament, or should he consult with the winners of the referendum, the Socialist Party, the fundamentalist Christians, and - even worse - the self proclaimed populist hero Geert Wilders? Just to save our PM these embarrassing questions the leaders of the political establishment should have the decency to call for new elections.

canons or firecrackers?

A not so interesting debate is raging in the Netherlands. It evolves around the question 'who are we?', 'what is our position in the world?', and it seems to be inspired by the fear that most citizens of this small country don't really care about where they came from, who they are, what language they speak, and what customs, traditions, and history keeps them together. Plea's are made to reintroduce canons of (national, dutch) literature and national history into the curricula of primary and high schools, to oblige students of universities and polytechnics to take courses in history, art, literature and culture at large in order to create a sense of communality, a common source, a common frame of reference, etc.

Most often educational reformers from the sixties and seventies are blamed for the loss of historical, cultural, linguistic and national consciousness that the champions of canons observe and mourne. Question is, however, whether this entirely true.

Most remarkable feature of these debates is that big words like 'tradition', 'culture', 'national identity', 'national values' and their likes cast their shadows over the debates like the threatening clouds on a stormy day in fall, but that the shapes and substance of these clouds are never ever defined. One of the culture critics - who tend to be culture pessimists in the tradition of Spengler and Ortegy y Gasset - ridiculed some representatives of the contemporary cultural elite who were not capable of answering the challenge to come up with features that define dutch national identity with other things than some trivialities like tulips, cheese and herring. The critic who had challenged these public figures, Michael Zeeman, countered their ignorance - or worse, indifference - with an example of how an Itialian waiter in Rome responded to a similar challenge: when Zeeman deliberately misquoted Dante's Inferno when he ordered his meal, he stood corrected by this waiter. Who is here to ridicule? The 'culture critic' who goes about like a quizz master to 'test' the 'national consciousness' of his victims, the waiter whose knowledge of his country's literary national treasures had not brought him a better position in life than being the waiter of this quizzmaster-on-a-mission? Or maybe it shows how ineffective and inefficient the Italian educational system is, where pupils get imbued the 'great texts' of the itialian canon, but receive no training in skills that make them fit for life in the postindustrial society?

Remarkably absent from the contributions of the culture pessimists are the 'new' dutch citizens, whose knowledge of the heroic deeds of our ancestors, the great literary works of the dutch past is less than familiar: the so called 'allochthones'.It is of course the rapid increase of the number of citizens who do not necessarily share knowledge and awareness of Holland's history, culture and traditions that makes these critics aware that a national cultural and historical consciousness can no longer be taken for granted (if it ever could). But instead of honestly admitting this and revealing the cause of their fears, they indulge in lamentations about the educational system, the indifference of the government and politicians in general, and, of course, the 'media'.

Another remarkable thing is that 'culture' or 'values' of 'national identity' always are defined in a sort of 19th century-like way. The critics are not looking forward, and not even looking around them, but they are looking backwards and try to reconstruct a sort of national identity out of a canon, and this process shows the whole circular way of reasoning: we need to go back to the canon in order to rediscover our 'national identity' and common cultural values, but on the other hand the canon can only be reconstructed if we know what national identity and which cultural values it expresses. Unfortunately, the cultural critics refuse to share their knowledge of these values, although they claim to know them.

Remarkably enough they never refer to contemporary culture, modern 'new media', the effects of globalisation, the demise of the nation state, the internationalization of (mass) culture, etc. It is quite revealing that Scheffer in his article in today's NRC only mentions new media once in a negative fashion; they 'divide' and 'individualize', and therefore they can not very well function as vehicles of a common culture. The same goes for other critics like Zeeman and Maarten Doorman (who shares his family name with one of the last dutch maritim heros, Karel Doorman).

However, as Bas Heijne pointed out in today's NRC (02-12-05), this is the kind of nostalgia that can only produce some kind of surrogate version of a past. The 'national awareness' of a 'dutch identity' can only be a surrogate because the 'real thing' never existed in the first place. Canons or firecrackers?

Aftermath or post mortem

Dust seems to settle. Time for reflexion, looking back, commenting upon and analyzing the flood of images that almost drowned us over the last six weeks. Unfortunately, reflexion reaches no further than commmon sense talk on tv. A special edition of the once slightly notorious tv program 'The Blue Light', hosted by Anil Randas, was broadcasted in which Randas looked back on a selection of images of the assassination of Theo van Gogh and its political and social impact.

However, a critical analysis of the images themselves and the discourses in which they functioned was a bit too much asked to the small assembly of intellectuals who sat around a table with each having a tv monitor in front of him or her (yes, there was one woman, a maroccan-dutch journalist of the Volkskrant). The analyses were mostly mere descriptions of what everybody could see with their own eyes, and the commments prolonged the discussions these images had provoked earlier instead of taking some distance and trying to reflect upon their cultural and political significance as images.

The by now notorious image of an elderly imam refusing to shake hands with minister of Integration Verdonk, because his religion forbade him to shake hands with a women, made the members of the panel align with positions others had taken earlier ('did she act right?'). The only critical question was whether this scene had been staged, since the minister must have been aware of the attention the media would pay to her visit to this conference, but any doubt about the integrity of the minister was shiftly dismissed. But 'intentionality' is no longer an issue in a world of 'real virtualilty' (Castells) in which images create rather than reflect a reality and tend to live a life of their own which is no longer governed by any intention of whoever.

The same goes for the discussion of the way talk show host Andries Knevel goaded a dutch young man who was converted into a muslim into admitting that he wouldn't mind if MP Wilders would die of cancer. The 'historian' Boekhorst, who tended to reduce every event to the realm of his personal experiences ('when I was a student I used to live above a Maroccan family and the wife was a prisoner of her husband...'), and so certainly succeeded in keeping the discussion at the level of 'you're perfectly right, neighbour', called this scene 'news' because it conveyed something to him he didn't yet know. First of all, it is quite incredible that an academic historian, who doesn't miss an opportunity to have himself exposed as an 'expert' on islam, Irak, and the threat Islam poses to the west, would never have heard of muslims who don't feel much sympathy for politicians, writers and artists who want to curb what they perceive as the 'islamization' of the West. Second, and more importantly, as a historian he should first of all critically question the documents and evidence he is being confronted with. Who is this young convert, and why is he in this program? What makes him so 'news worthy'? Who does he represent? Has he anything whatsoever to do with the murder of Theo van Gogh, is he connected to the 'Hofstadter group', etc. The mere fact that a document or a tv program tells you something you didn't know doesn't turn that information into a 'news worthy' fact: in fact, it doesn't necessarily turn that fact into a fact at all, as any serious historian knows and Boekhorst should know too.

Well, it turned out that this self appointed imam had been interviewed by a regional newspaper, that was interested in the reasons why a young dutch man, who was brought up as a catholic, would convert to islam. The journalist, however, soon intuited that this young man was psychologically disturbed, and reported that in his article. Knevel should have known this: this act of journalism was remarkably similar to practices of the American CBS channel, which were revealed in a documentary broadcasted by VPRO tv only a couple of months ago. Iconically, this young muslim was also choosen because of his resemblance to the description of Mohammed B, the killer of Van Gogh: short shaven skull, bearded, and dressed in a muslimm skirt. Van Ven, as the young man is called, exactly fitted the description eye wittnesses had given of Mohammed B. Although actually and factually Van Ven had nothing whatsoever to do with the murder of Van Gogh, the connection was made entirely through visual and verbal analogies. This is what a historian who takes his profession seriously should have noticed, instead of acting like the naive, surprised citizen who is surprised to learn that some right wing politicians are not very popular among the people they prefer to attack. Boekhorst disqualified himmself in this program in more than one way. Unfortunately the other members of the panel were no better.

The problem probably is, that people who (would like to) work for television are not the best qualified to reflect critically on tv. Vanity, vanity... and a missed chance.

It has been a while

'Cause nothing much seems to have happened over here. His Royal Highness Bernhard, Prince of the Netherlands, passed away last Thursday. The anouncement of his death was made in the middle of a soccer broadcast. Luckily the country was not shut down until the funeral will be over, like it was at the times of death of Juliana and Claus.

It is a sign of the speed of our times, though, that journalists and news papers didn't wait for the funeral to publish major and minor incriminating information about the Prince. Two days after he died, it was reported on television that the weekly newspaper De Groene Amsterdammer would publish an interview their former chief editor, the late Martin van Amerongen, had had with the Prince, in which the latter admitted to have received a million dollars (or guilders?) worth of bribes from Lockheed. The current editor-in-chief of the Magazine endorsed this premature revelation by making an appearance himself in a tv news show in which he summarized and assessed the meaning of the Prince's statements. This has become a familiar ritual by now: tv programmes tell you what you will be able to read in print press publications, so you don't have to bother to read those publications themselves anymore. Apparently the sales of De Groene are so low that the editor thinks that this pre-publication on tv might boost the sales of this edition of De Groene beyond their normal level. However, by the time De Groene will appear in the bookstands everybody will have forgotten about the Prince's bribes or consider it 'old news'. And old news is for wrapping herrings, as they say in the Netherlands.

The other thing that keeps people busy here - besides the ongoing debates about our muslim fellow country men and women - are the boops of Georgina Verbaan. Flesh or chips, carbon or silicon, that's the question. In order to provide evidence that her tits are what they look they are Georgie had X-ray pictures of her boobies - which she tenderly calls 'Harries' - published on the front page of the biggest national news paper, De Telegraaf.
There is obviously quite a lot of irony in this gesture. To prove she has 'natural' breasts, Georgina produces highly technologically mediated images of the inside of her Harries: to show that her breasts are 'real' and not supported by prosthetic aides, she deploys advances technological extensions of the human eye that allow us to look under her skin. But whereas the pictures of her skin on the cover and inside of Playboy could be apprehended in the blink of an eye by anyone, the X-ray pictures displayed on the front page of the Telegraph could only be grasped by a few trained professionals who have the skills required to 'read' X-ray photographs. I for sure could not tell the difference between an X-ray picture of juicy fleshy breasts and a picture of dry silicon cones.

In a way, this titties-test shows what has become of the infamous Turing test in our days and age. People have become anxious to scrutinze the appearances of other human beings in order to try to establish whether they are 'real' or some technological contraption. Georgina is either very naive or (unbelievably) clever to bounce the scrutinizing gaze back to the beholder with scientific evidence that really proves nothing. It actually re-enacts the only really important question the Turing test raised: what difference does a difference make?

The jury is still out on that one, but the question only seems to become more imporant in the culture of the information society in which bodies are being increasingly seen as expressions of information patterns. If one succeeds in finding the key that unlocks the 'source codes' of our bodily being, such as the genome, one may start thinking of generating and engineering bodies or body parts one self, as has been prefigured in films like the Star Trek series ('beam me up, Scotty'), Terminator2 (Terminator Arnie),The Matrix (agent Smith), Lord of the Rings (Gollum), or Steven Spielberg's AI (little David), and is already being practiced in the cloning of animals (Dolly, and in the Netherland the bull Herman). Who can tell the difference between a 'natural' sheep and her clone Dolly? And again: what difference would that make? In Georgina's titty-Turing-test the human body is played out as a 'site' of naturalness, which only shows that it has already become a site of nostalgia in our contemporary posthuman culture.

jan's blog

'Wish you were dead....'

Media not only represent the world, but they increasingly shape it. Much of the panic and hysteria that has haunted the Netherlands for the last couple of weeks is due to hyperbolic reporting, scoop hunting, and the fear of missing out on something 'really important' on the part of the media. Of course, the assassination of Theo van Gogh was a major event, and the killer (probably) was part of a group of muslim extremists who had planned other murders on prominent dutch politicians as well. On the other hand one might doubt the professionality of these youngsters, who apparently killed Van Gogh as a substitute of their real target, who was out of their reach. Real professional terrorists would not have settled for a substitute and thus warned their real targets for what they were up, would they? The arsening of a musim school in a small provincial town was done by two 14 and 15 year old kids, and not, as media and government suggested, by right wing extremist groups.

Extremism is partly a creation of the media themselves. A good example of how it is created was given by Andries Knevel, talkshow host of the in its own right extremist religious broadcasting company Evangelische Omroep. For reasons that are still unfathomable to me he had invited a young former Christian who had converted to the islam. As most converts, he was more of a muslim than ordinary musims, but he was also a religious man who believes in sincerity. Knevel really goaded him into saying that he wouldn't mind the death of a right wing dutch member of parliament, but that he'd rather see him die from cancer than being murdered by a muslim. Here we wittnessed the live creation of a devil by an overzealous christian tv personality.

Of course other journalists started to dig out death wishes by Theo van Gogh and other champions of free speech, who have wished horrible deaths to many a politician or public figure with whom he had a quarrel (and almost every public figure in the Netherlands was on his hitlist).

Luckily the European soccer competitions have startd again, so the media can spend their attention and time to less harmful matters. Though racism is climbing the agenda of the sports programs rather quickly.

Shake hands!

Be sure never to refuse to shake hands with a Dutch cabinet minister. You might cause a national row. Now an extremely conservative imam did this, and this was, of course, a very inappropriate behaviour. After all, western women who go to arab countries are supposed to veal themselves, and to wear decent clothes. Men should also comply to certain forms of behaviour, so why shouldn't we demand a similar form of respect in return? And though in our democracies cabinet ministers are considered 'primes inter pares' rather than highly placed authorities, a minimum of politeness and decorum is required with regard to 'those who are placed above us', as Theo van Gogh used to call these persons. So it is indeed a very rude, inpolite and disrespectfull behaviour of this imam to refuse to shake hands of the minister, however much we may dislike her policies.

Still, these are confusing times. To hear a rap band singing 'We are against senseless violence' and thus up the very 'dissing' which made rap so popular is strange, if not quite incredible, indeed. But that's maybe only me, old grumpy man who expects representatives of cultural movements or subcultures to stick to some of their principles instead of paying lip service to common wisdom.

Catastrophe

Just reading a conversation between Paul Virillio and Derrick de Kerckhove, 'Conflilcts: the threat of the first global civil war'. It is striking how much of it relates to the current situation in the Netherlands. DdK remarks how Bush jr did after 9/11 exactly the opposite of what Clinton did after the first attack on one of the Twin Towers in 1993: Cllinton let the thing go, because he knew that, as McLuhan had said, 'if you don't want a catastrophe, pull the plug', i.e., don't let the media dwell on the event too much.

That's exactly what prime-minister Balkenende did in the first instance: he stayed in Bruxelles where he presided over a meeting of some European Union council and only showed himself one week after the murder of Theo van Gogh. Unfortunately, it has become impossible nowadays to pull the plug: the media cannot be stopped anymore, and since the prime minister had left leadership and initiative to other members of his cabinet, the government almost fell apart, and the media were gradually building up an image of a country on the verge of a civil war. In this, they were certainly helped by the Justice Department that sent what looked like an army into a neighborhood in The Hague to arrest a couple of presumed terrorists. These images helped to underscore the ongoing confusion between 'war on terrorism' and 'civil war', and one may fear that media and politicians are together exactly creating the catastrophe they pretend to prevent. Here we have moved beyond Baudrillardian simulacra: the hyperreal strikes back with a vengeance.

Hi world

Here I am, entering the blogosphere and fulfilling my cybercivilian duties by contributing to the emerging global e-(d)emocracy. Have to admit, though, that I'm not quite sure how and if this will work out.

Anyhow, this world seems in dire need of some dose of sober thinking and clear arguing. Mendacious and belligerent presidents get re-elected, and in my own country a right wing maverick who was assassinated two years ago has been bestowed with the title of 'Greatest dutch person ever' (sorry Rembrandt, Hugo Grotius, William of Orange, Antony Leeuwenhoeck, Spinoza, Van Gogh, Mondrian, Jan Tinbergen, Sicco Mansholt, and other artists, scientists, philosophers and politicians). Old media like broadcast & push television, desperately trying to keep attracting the waning attention of popular audiences must have a lot to do with this. The blue light of the tv screen has definitely obscured the last shinings of what was left of the Enlightment in the Netherlands, where once Descartes sought refuge from the French catholic king. He would surely be pretty surprised to learn that in the year 2004 ministers and members of parliament know nothing better to do than to discuss a obsolete piece of law which forbids to ridicule God. This two weeks after the brute assassination of an outspoken anti-muslim and xenophobic filmmaker Theo van Gogh (yes, relative of ...) who was killed by a muslim extremist who needed an organic stamp for a letter addressed to member of parliament Ayaan Hirsi Ali. We seem to be heading for another period of crusading.

Well, the blogosphere might offer some relieve from all this real world madness, although colleagues of mine have already pointed out that Van Gogh's assassinaton had been amply discussed on extremist websites....