Dowton Abbey

               Dowton Abbey is a dramatic series, which in making a cultural comparison to Marxism shows how intertwined the relationships of people who are employed on the estate and the family who possibly may lose title to the Abbey.  The British drama’s first episode takes place after the sinking of the RMS Titanic and the death of the heir apparent.  

               The Marxist idea of Base or the productive forces in the relationships of all involved clearly defines how the lives of the staff are dedicated to the care of the Abbey and the Crawley family.  The Base also found in the Earl’s family relationship to the Abbey whose care and love of the Estate has brought it from financial ruin. Marx’s claims that it is the Base and the Superstructure that creates the consciousness and is defined by the work produced.  In a particular scene, the Butler and Housekeeper talk of a life without the Abbey, possibly working in a factory and having a family.  Too old to change paths their lives have been defined by the Abbey and the care of its residents.

               Marxist Superstructure or the ideology of a particular culture, with the loss of the heir apparent, the law of early 20^th Century England has confined the rights to the estate to a male heir.  The pending loss of the estate and Lady Crawley’s fortune shows the moral conflict between the laws and the apparent caretakers of Dowton Abbey.  The cultural impact is apparent between the staff whose employment depends on the Abbey residents and the stability of those residents to maintain their social titles.

               With Marx, the worker defines the environment; ideally, the work should define the worker.  In a capitalist structure as seen in Downton Abbey, the staff are defined by the care of the estate as well as the Crawley Family who’s titles, social and economic benefits are defined from the Abbey.

Jimi Hendrix’s "My Friend" is a satirical yet stark look at himself and his only friend, who is actually really himself.  Initially not well received when Hendrix became a solo act in New York, he achieved recognition when he moved to England and broke out with The Jimi Hendrix Experience.  Returning to New York brought a mix bag; his now famous persona also brought the hangers on and the personalities that come with it.  The song recorded in New York during the Electric Lady Land sessions is hyperbole for his feeling the stress of personal and professional commitments; he starts the blues riff with a party in the background then describes his feelings of Harlem.

Well I'm looking through Harlem,
My stomach squeals just a little more
A stagecoach full of feathers and footprints
Pulls up to my soap-box door

               Jimi uses the antithesis of his shanty ‘box’ he is living in and an ornate stagecoach that pulls up to his door.  The imagery of the ‘lady’ he uses is all business, like the pearl-handles of gun she wears as necktie.  She asks a rhetorical question have we met before, the analogy here is probably Hell’s Kitchen a part of Manhattan in New York City.

Now a lady with a pearl-handled necktie
Tied to the driver's fence
Breathes in my face
Bourbon and coke possessed words
Haven't I seen you somewhere in hell
Or was it just an accident?

                    He tries to ask her which side of hell, but is rolled over by her bandwagon.  Here Jimi uses rhyme and simile to relate the physical as well as his mental pain of her off handed rejection.

Before I could ask was it the east or west side?
My feet they howled in pain
The wheels of a bandwagon cut very deep
But not as deep in my mind as the rain

               He continues; using personification on the invitation, she leaves him with as it ‘stagger and fall’ he picks them up, brushes them off to see what they say. 

And as they pulled away I could see her words

Stagger and fallin' on my muddy tent

Well I picked them up brushed them off

To see what they say And you wouldn't believe

                     To his surprise, the invitation comes with conditions for Jimi bring the party and the money, having not found a reference for ‘tooth in the middle’ but one allusion is a bed in the middle of a room maybe the ‘lady’ is a prostitute.  

'come around to my room with the tooth in the middle

And bring along the bottle and a president'

               The chorus gives Jimi’s ironic point of view as his only friend he discovers his himself.

And-eh sometimes it's not so easy, baby
Especially when your only friend
Talks sees looks and feels like you
And you do just the same as him

               The second verse puts Jimi in Los Angeles; he uses a poetic twist on the standard “Bicycle built for two,” with the symbolism of him riding as the fool.  He meets a friend that says he does not look his usual self, indicating the stress of touring and other demands.

Well I'm riding through L A ha
On a bicycle built for fools
And I seen one of my old buddies
And he say 'you don't look the way you use to do’

               His characterization of looking like a ‘coin-box’ or made of money, but the reply reveals he looks not only broke but also broken; he shies off the comment with another personification picking up his pride and ‘combed’ the comment out of his hair.

I say ' well some people look like a coin-box'
He say 'look like you ain't got no coins to spare'
And I laid back and I thought to myself, and I said this
I just picked up my pride from underneath the pay phone
And combed his breath right out of my hair

               The chorus repeats, sadly finding that his only friend that he has is the one who talks, looks, feels like him.

And sometimes it's not so easy

Especially when your only friend

Talks sees looks and feels like you

And you do just the same as him

              

Well I just got out of a Scandinavian jail

And I'm on my way straight home to you

But I feel so dizzy I take a quick look in the mirror

To make sure my friend's here with me too

The final verse is more on a personal note: Jimi having been released from jail, apparently goes home to his girl but looks in the mirror to see if his friend is still there.  Then goes into the bridge with metaphor of what it feels like when he does get home: ‘cup full of sand.’  Realizing that his shadow, who ‘comes in line before you,’ is the only one who is his only friend.

And you know good well I don't drink coffee

So you fill my cup full of sand

And the frozen tea leaves on the bottom

Sharing lipstick around the broken edge

And my coat that you let your dog lay by the fire on

And your cat he attacks me from his pill-box ledge

And I thought you were my friend too

Man, my shadow comes in line before you

I'm finding out that it's eh not so easy

Specially when your only friend

Talks, looks, sees, and feels like you

And you do the same just like him

               The twist and turns of "My Friend" may look familiar, also on the album "Electric Lady Land" is Bob Dylan’s "All Along The Watch Tower." The slight Dylanesque word play that Jimi Hendrix uses in his music  is also indicative of the music both have made. 

The early cultural authors did not grasp the full cause and effect of culture.  Without looking into the observed experience of the “others” and failing to look at culture as a complete human form, that is unique to the individuals thoughts and emotions the process is flawed.  This rejection of the human factor, seeking a grander      existence resides deeper in Platonic philosophy.  That there is a higher existence of self that cannot be found on temporal terms.  The approach from a high culture point of view negates the human value of culture.  Mach’s Principle is based on the experience of sensation is the only true foundation for observable truth.

Ernest Mach an Austrian physicist who expounded that nothing exists without being directly observed.  In the modern since this is impractical but taken as a tool for what is perceived by closer examination and removing, the illusion of what is not real we find a better glimpse of our reality in things that are contingent from observations may also exist.

John G. Hatch draws the influence of Mach’s Principle to Frantisek Kupka's evolution of abstract paintings, “The relationship between our subjective perceptions and objective reality and the role of sensations in this relationship.  Both of these are corner stones of Mach's scientific philosophy” (Hatch).  Hatch documents Mach’s influence on Kupka’s as a pursuit of the coexistence of art with nature.  Through our synthesis of observation, the mental evolution of instinct to abstract cognition creates a sensation from object to subject.  In Kupka’s book, La Creation dans les Arts Plastiques he relates the artistic interpretation cannot be removed in that nature it is not static.  The artist is a part of the nature that he is interpreting and Kupka used Mach’s principle as a basis to show that relationship of artist, nature and those sensations used to interpret both.

Examples of Kupka’s abstract approach after completing  La Creation dans les Arts Plastiques are his Colour Planes, 1910-11 and Cosmic Ray (1913-1914).  Colour Planes “embodies Kupka's attempt to identify and define in painterly terms a fundamental component of natural reality; in this case, the manifestation of natural energy in terms of waves.” (Hatch) As Kupka’s own perception evolved, three years later in Cosmic Ray, an intrinsic sphere with intertwining network of colors compare to what we see now in the captions of our universe.  An almost surrealistic examination of nature and we are its observers. 

 

Hatch, John G., "Machian Epistemology and its Part in František Kupka's Painterly Cognition of Reality" (2000).  Visual Arts Publications.  Paper 9.  http://ir.lib.uwo.ca/visartspub/9

Feminism and the Keyhole:

After viewing a Madonna video, a question was posed as to the aspects of how a certain feministic philosophy would comment on the video.  Using the Dual-System of Marxist (consumerism) and Radical feminism, this approach appears as articulation and negotiation that occurs between voyeur and voyee.  This is what Mulvey’s mentions as the “gaze.”  Jean-Paul Sartre a French philosopher of existentialism discussed the humanizing effect of being seen looking through a keyhole.  Briefly, he says we are not aware of our own objectivity for example while I am peeping through the keyhole in a door.  However, upon hearing the floor creaking and being observed by someone else the objectification occurs. In the video, we watched as we the viewer of the video watching someone else looking through the keyhole.  To use Stacey’s approach of consumerism, she portrays the cinema as the site of negotiation from subjection to exploitation and resistance to appropriation.  In a visual sense, all of this occurs; regardless of what Madonna may be singing about the visual effect has different glimpses of the voyeur.  Madonna being the object transforms from a brunet to a blond, then in the end a symbol of desire to a tomboy.  These transitions show a form of negotiation that is articulated between the viewer and Madonna.

Music that moves

I thought long and maybe too hard on this, but as I'm watching Madonna during halftime I need to get this done. So here it goes...
Looking at the related blogs from class I had to go back to the day when it was radio, vinyl or live. That was the only way, I got my chops listening to John Lee Hooker. His voice and of course the "hook" is unmistakeable. Enjoy..How, how, how YEEEEAA

John Lee Hooker and Canned Heat: Whiskey and Wimmen

 Genre, the "what" that identifies a style of music. Well the "what" here is the blues, but this is a unique style of the blues. John Lee Hooker has a distinctive rhythm that is sometimes emphasized by his foot taping with the beat and changing the syncopation of the song as the mood shifts .  He's voice is so distinct that anybody who has a least seen the "Blues Brothers" makes him recognizable. To define John Lee Hooker as 'Chicago' or 'Memphis' blues is difficult because his sound does not put him in either of these niche. The song itself is all about the blues, with a little help from Canned Heat.

Did Mass Culture Kill the Hip-Hop Star

The perspective that J-Zone is conveying on what has happened to Hip-Hip music is a reminder of my experience with old school Hip-Hop. I’m driving around in Norway from point A to B then back to A again. While doing this I surf the local radio channels and catch what I still think was a college radio station. As I pick people up, they comment on the music as old school, Grand Master Flash, Kurtis Blow, etc. I‘m not in the least a connoisseur of Hip-Hop, but it had a resonance to it. That is what J-Zone is trying to say, much of the Hip-Hop music produced now does not have the same quality as opposed to the quantity he speaks of, the music that reflects an emotional attachment. (J-Zone)
The idea of nostalgic may be a way of looking at what J-Zone is saying; In Cultural Theory and Pop Culture, Storey highlights Richards Hoggart’s The Uses of Literacy  as a nostalgic look back into his past growing up in the 1930s to an academic examination of the effects of mass culture in the 1950s (Storey). There may be an implied concept of J-Zone nostalgic approach to Hip-Hop, the music during the time of his youth, but from an artist point of view, there is more to it than what was the best of at that time.
J-Zone presents five viable reasons why the evolution of Hip-Hop has moved away from that resonance. The first thing he mentions is the watered down effect of mass collaboration. The results are not a cohesive music album, which carries to his second topic of too much music. Without any anticipation of what to expect dilutes the experience. With the influx of “Crews” and “Cliques” provides the “other” credibility, which is not based on the quality of music alone. He clarifies this by saying “the collection of songs” are not about the “identity of one artist” but a collaboration of many, “we’ve lost album cohesiveness and the focus on just music.” With multiple producers, the influx of mass produced mixes and the internet has perpetuated this void in Hip-Hip.
The ability to supply the public “in stacks” definitely causes a watering down effect. To include the aspect of taking the whole endeavor too seriously “without balance.” He also touches on having fun, not taking yourself or the music so seriously that all that is left is the faux credibility that is more dependent on amount of media exposure than the artist themselves. Of course, the profits for royalties and music companies’ are made from record sales. That too has changed.
The last two items are almost the same, technology has advanced so that the royalties for artist and the revenue for the music companies have declined. What was once free “samplings” have become legal issues. The struggle of legal boundaries for an industry that is losing profits in the digital era brings a final point that may be seen as a credibility of the artists and the people who commodify their products.
What was an unspoken truth of the music industry, Payola is not as explicit a problem today but a valid point was made during the Congressional hearing of September 25, 2007, on hip hop music: From Imus to Industry: The Business of Stereotypes and Degrading Images. Lisa Fager argued that misogynistic and racist stereotypes permeate hip-hop music because record labels, radio stations, and music video channels profit from allowing such material to air while censoring other material (Wiki). In that context, Fager stated:
Payola is no longer the local DJ receiving a couple dollars for airplay;it is now an organized corporate crime that supports the lack of balanced content and demeaning imagery with no consequences (Fager)

Jimi Fallon and Justin Timberlake covers of the "Old School"

J-Zone. "5 Things That Killed Hip-Hop." Petracca, Michael and Madeleine Sorapure. Reading Popular Culture. New York, NY: Penguin Academics, 2011. 66-74.

Storey, John. Cutlural Theory and Popular Culture: An Introduction, 5th edition. Harlow: Pearson Education, 2009.

Wikipedia.org/wiki/Payola

Fager, Lisa. http://www.c3.ucla.edu/newsstand/media/ from-imus-to-industry-the-business-of-degradation-in-rap-music/. 3 10 2007. 30 01 2012.