Category Archives: simulacra

On a postmodern Sherlock

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What is the secret behind the BBC’s current production of Sherlock? The character is over a hundred years old and yet people, fans, readers, have been waiting in great anticipation for the third season of a post-modern adaption of Conan Doyle’s famous Victorian consulting detective. Doyle never really loved his larger than life character, but he did understand that he had created something much larger than himself, rather to his own surprise, actually. Conan Doyle, the writer, thoroughly underestimated his own ability to tap into the imagination of the reading public and their desire to seek order and justice in a world completely devoid of either one. Sherlock, with Watson at his side, was always able to see through the fog, eliminate the red-herrings, make his deduction and apprehend the criminal. This kind of feel-good fantasy restores ones faith in a world plagued by dishonesty, disorder, and chaos in which the evil proliferate and the good die young. There is nothing realistic about Doyle’s stories, but then again, that’s not the point. The fact that this dysfunctional brainiac can solve a seemingly opaque problem by simply using his wits is balm for a tired soul. Readers are people too, and Conan Doyle’s character is a hero who isn’t afraid to mix it up with criminals of many different stripes. Readers admire and love him because he makes their real world better by offering up a bit of hope in a dark, dark world. Watson is our real-time stand-in who accompanies Holmes on his forays into the country, acting as sounding board and backup, our vicarious substitute that lets us experience the case as it develops, riding trains, tracking suspects, examining bodies, questioning witnesses, going to the opera. The current BBC production of Sherlock understands all of that as it updates the Sherlock Holmes experience for new generations of readers and viewers. This Sherlock texts, and Watson writes a blog. The production values are five-star, the scripts are brilliant, the actors are genius, and this business of making us all wait for the next set of shows is over-the-top genius marketing. This current incarnation proceeds naturally from the original material, pays homage to it, and slyly winks at those of us who know the original texts. One might cynically say that nothing matches the original, but one also has to admit that this new adaption is a lot of fun.

On a postmodern Sherlock

Posted on by

What is the secret behind the BBC’s current production of Sherlock? The character is over a hundred years old and yet people, fans, readers, have been waiting in great anticipation for the third season of a post-modern adaption of Conan Doyle’s famous Victorian consulting detective. Doyle never really loved his larger than life character, but he did understand that he had created something much larger than himself, rather to his own surprise, actually. Conan Doyle, the writer, thoroughly underestimated his own ability to tap into the imagination of the reading public and their desire to seek order and justice in a world completely devoid of either one. Sherlock, with Watson at his side, was always able to see through the fog, eliminate the red-herrings, make his deduction and apprehend the criminal. This kind of feel-good fantasy restores ones faith in a world plagued by dishonesty, disorder, and chaos in which the evil proliferate and the good die young. There is nothing realistic about Doyle’s stories, but then again, that’s not the point. The fact that this dysfunctional brainiac can solve a seemingly opaque problem by simply using his wits is balm for a tired soul. Readers are people too, and Conan Doyle’s character is a hero who isn’t afraid to mix it up with criminals of many different stripes. Readers admire and love him because he makes their real world better by offering up a bit of hope in a dark, dark world. Watson is our real-time stand-in who accompanies Holmes on his forays into the country, acting as sounding board and backup, our vicarious substitute that lets us experience the case as it develops, riding trains, tracking suspects, examining bodies, questioning witnesses, going to the opera. The current BBC production of Sherlock understands all of that as it updates the Sherlock Holmes experience for new generations of readers and viewers. This Sherlock texts, and Watson writes a blog. The production values are five-star, the scripts are brilliant, the actors are genius, and this business of making us all wait for the next set of shows is over-the-top genius marketing. This current incarnation proceeds naturally from the original material, pays homage to it, and slyly winks at those of us who know the original texts. One might cynically say that nothing matches the original, but one also has to admit that this new adaption is a lot of fun.

On the last night of the year

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Certainly, all calendars and all counting systems are arbitrary and inevitably meaningless, but today is December 31st and tonight is New Year’s Eve. One might wax nostalgic or maudlin or sad or happy or whatever, but most of that is meaningless as well. In fact, there is almost no meaning whatsoever in the fact that 2013 comes to a close this evening. I used to dread New Year’s Eve because I couldn’t find the merriment and fun that apparently everyone else felt so strongly. The end of the year also felt a little melancholy to me. I mean, looking at a frozen January from the bottom up seemed no treat–short days and cold nights punctuated with a bunch of snow didn’t seem like anything to look forward to. I never understood the reason to party on New Year’s Eve. Was it happy or sad? Or just what was going on. Were people trying to put something behind them? Or was this some irrational hope that the next year would be a sight better? Most years seem eerily similar, with highs and lows to be expected, so why do people expect anything any different. In the end, poetically, tragically, the changing calendar is a symbol of human hope, the ability to forget the past and to hope for a different future. Perhaps this is our greatest quality as a race–to bounce back from adversity and build a new future in spite of everything that we still drag along in our unopened baggage. Maybe the new year is a time when we dump the baggage, once and for all, and move on.

On the last night of the year

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Certainly, all calendars and all counting systems are arbitrary and inevitably meaningless, but today is December 31st and tonight is New Year’s Eve. One might wax nostalgic or maudlin or sad or happy or whatever, but most of that is meaningless as well. In fact, there is almost no meaning whatsoever in the fact that 2013 comes to a close this evening. I used to dread New Year’s Eve because I couldn’t find the merriment and fun that apparently everyone else felt so strongly. The end of the year also felt a little melancholy to me. I mean, looking at a frozen January from the bottom up seemed no treat–short days and cold nights punctuated with a bunch of snow didn’t seem like anything to look forward to. I never understood the reason to party on New Year’s Eve. Was it happy or sad? Or just what was going on. Were people trying to put something behind them? Or was this some irrational hope that the next year would be a sight better? Most years seem eerily similar, with highs and lows to be expected, so why do people expect anything any different. In the end, poetically, tragically, the changing calendar is a symbol of human hope, the ability to forget the past and to hope for a different future. Perhaps this is our greatest quality as a race–to bounce back from adversity and build a new future in spite of everything that we still drag along in our unopened baggage. Maybe the new year is a time when we dump the baggage, once and for all, and move on.

On fake ice (skating)

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The city of Waco, Texas, in an attempt to create the simulacra of winter has installed a fake ice rink in the downtown area in order to make people think that it is winter. Today, it was a sunny 72F in central Texas–no winter here, not even a fake one. Apparently, you can skate on this “fake” or plastic ice, but it can’t be the same as skating on frozen water where the pressure of the skate blade creates a thin film of water upon which the blade slides, and as the skate passes, the water freezes again on the surface. The science of ice-skating is actually rather complex. There is also an element of violence in skating that damages the ice surface, so I can’t figure out how a plastic surface can duplicate that particular phenomenon. Plastic ice only functions with a synthetic silicone lubricant that allows the skater to move across the surface. Skates wear out more quickly, and the surface has to be cleaned more frequently. Ice is ice, and nothing can really take its place, no matter how closely the plastic surface simulates real skating. There is nothing like the real thing: ice-skating under the stars, frosty wind on your cheeks, ice glinting under the lights, skates gliding effortlessly over the frozen surface of the rink. Perhaps you are skating with a close friend, talking about nothing, frozen air filling your lungs, maybe a few errant flakes of snow dusting the surface and falling on your face. Plastic ice on a hot day in December doesn’t even come close to simulating those feelings.

On fake ice (skating)

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The city of Waco, Texas, in an attempt to create the simulacra of winter has installed a fake ice rink in the downtown area in order to make people think that it is winter. Today, it was a sunny 72F in central Texas–no winter here, not even a fake one. Apparently, you can skate on this “fake” or plastic ice, but it can’t be the same as skating on frozen water where the pressure of the skate blade creates a thin film of water upon which the blade slides, and as the skate passes, the water freezes again on the surface. The science of ice-skating is actually rather complex. There is also an element of violence in skating that damages the ice surface, so I can’t figure out how a plastic surface can duplicate that particular phenomenon. Plastic ice only functions with a synthetic silicone lubricant that allows the skater to move across the surface. Skates wear out more quickly, and the surface has to be cleaned more frequently. Ice is ice, and nothing can really take its place, no matter how closely the plastic surface simulates real skating. There is nothing like the real thing: ice-skating under the stars, frosty wind on your cheeks, ice glinting under the lights, skates gliding effortlessly over the frozen surface of the rink. Perhaps you are skating with a close friend, talking about nothing, frozen air filling your lungs, maybe a few errant flakes of snow dusting the surface and falling on your face. Plastic ice on a hot day in December doesn’t even come close to simulating those feelings.

On Deckard, the Blade Runner

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Deckard is one of my favorite characters in one of my favorite movies–Blade Runner. Deckard, a paid police assassin kills replicants when they are out of control or anywhere where they aren’t supposed to be. The movie is an existential examination of what it means to be human–to have self-awareness, to be unique, to have memories, to have purpose, to live your own life. Replicants are artificial human beings, or at least that is the starting hypothesis of the movie. They are used for distasteful, repetitious, or dangerous jobs that human beings do not want to do. Apparently, ethical considerations of treatment are off the boards because replicants are not really people, don’t have parents, are the result of complex DNA experiments. When replicants go wild, however, Deckard is called in by the police to identify and eliminate rogue replicants. So Deckard “retires” replicants who are no longer doing their jobs and are more an annoyance than a solution. By using a euphemism to describe the murder of a replicant, human authorities sidestep the issue of just how human the replicants are or if replicants are really just a name for slaves. The fact is, though, that replicants are such perfect reproductions of human beings that the humans need complex tests in order to identify the replicants. So if replicants are such perfect copies of human beings, why aren’t they human beings? Ridley Scott wanted to cloud the issue further by suggesting that Deckard was, ironically, a replicant as well in his movie version of the book, “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” by Phillip K. Dick (in which Deckard is not a replicant). Though Scott’s idea is intriguing, I believe it eliminates part of the ethical question concerning the retirement of replicants, but Deckard’s job certainly fits the bill for a replicant job–distasteful and dangerous. If Roy Batty, the dangerous battle replicant that Deckard must retire, has so much super-human strength, why is Deckard so fallible and weak? Of course, if Deckard were a replicant designed to retire replicants, he would have to be programmed to believe that he was human in order to do his job. He would have to have an unlimited, or undetermined life span, he would have to believe that replicants were a threat to both himself, particularly, and humanity, generally, and he could not suspect for a moment that he himself is a replicant. Ergo he would have normal human strength, suggesting that Deckard is both human and replicant at once, blurring the line between human and replicant to the point where there is no difference between the two. The question of what constitutes a human being is in play as is the right of the government to determine life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness in the case of the replicants, or do the replicants have rights? All of these questions double back on the society which has created artificial humans, but obviously considers them to be less than human in spite of the fact that hardly anyone can tell the difference. Deckard can “pass” as human, though a suspect one. Deckard as a human understands that the matched euphemisms of “retiring replicants” does not mask the problem of killing humans, and he struggles mightily with doing his job precisely because his profession puts into question the slavery of the replicants, which pushes the existential question to the forefront–what are we all doing working for big government, big business, or big bureaucracy? In the end, I think the story works a little better if Deckard is human, but making him a replicant with an indeterminate termination date certainly is suggestive.

On Deckard, the Blade Runner

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Deckard is one of my favorite characters in one of my favorite movies–Blade Runner. Deckard, a paid police assassin kills replicants when they are out of control or anywhere where they aren’t supposed to be. The movie is an existential examination of what it means to be human–to have self-awareness, to be unique, to have memories, to have purpose, to live your own life. Replicants are artificial human beings, or at least that is the starting hypothesis of the movie. They are used for distasteful, repetitious, or dangerous jobs that human beings do not want to do. Apparently, ethical considerations of treatment are off the boards because replicants are not really people, don’t have parents, are the result of complex DNA experiments. When replicants go wild, however, Deckard is called in by the police to identify and eliminate rogue replicants. So Deckard “retires” replicants who are no longer doing their jobs and are more an annoyance than a solution. By using a euphemism to describe the murder of a replicant, human authorities sidestep the issue of just how human the replicants are or if replicants are really just a name for slaves. The fact is, though, that replicants are such perfect reproductions of human beings that the humans need complex tests in order to identify the replicants. So if replicants are such perfect copies of human beings, why aren’t they human beings? Ridley Scott wanted to cloud the issue further by suggesting that Deckard was, ironically, a replicant as well in his movie version of the book, “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” by Phillip K. Dick (in which Deckard is not a replicant). Though Scott’s idea is intriguing, I believe it eliminates part of the ethical question concerning the retirement of replicants, but Deckard’s job certainly fits the bill for a replicant job–distasteful and dangerous. If Roy Batty, the dangerous battle replicant that Deckard must retire, has so much super-human strength, why is Deckard so fallible and weak? Of course, if Deckard were a replicant designed to retire replicants, he would have to be programmed to believe that he was human in order to do his job. He would have to have an unlimited, or undetermined life span, he would have to believe that replicants were a threat to both himself, particularly, and humanity, generally, and he could not suspect for a moment that he himself is a replicant. Ergo he would have normal human strength, suggesting that Deckard is both human and replicant at once, blurring the line between human and replicant to the point where there is no difference between the two. The question of what constitutes a human being is in play as is the right of the government to determine life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness in the case of the replicants, or do the replicants have rights? All of these questions double back on the society which has created artificial humans, but obviously considers them to be less than human in spite of the fact that hardly anyone can tell the difference. Deckard can “pass” as human, though a suspect one. Deckard as a human understands that the matched euphemisms of “retiring replicants” does not mask the problem of killing humans, and he struggles mightily with doing his job precisely because his profession puts into question the slavery of the replicants, which pushes the existential question to the forefront–what are we all doing working for big government, big business, or big bureaucracy? In the end, I think the story works a little better if Deckard is human, but making him a replicant with an indeterminate termination date certainly is suggestive.

On peaches

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Peaches are not my favorite fruit, but a fresh peach in August with a little milk and sugar is a delight not to be missed. I mean, I like strawberries and cherries more, but a nice ripe peach is a very special experience. I say this because the peaches sold in the grocery store during the rest of the year are horrific–wooden, tasteless, dry, bitter. They look perfect, but they are only a simulacrum of a real piece of fruit. I won’t have them in the house. As a child we would often have a lug of peaches or pears in the kitchen during the month of August, so we ate fruit morning, noon, and night. They were so juicy that I had to go outside to eat the fruit as the juice would run down my arm and drip off of my elbow. The fruit was sweet and juicy and wonderful. My question is this: why can’t the local grocery stores do that today? With a few exceptions, most all the fruit is harvested green, so that by the time it reaches the stores it looks good, but it doesn’t taste good. Peaches and pears are particularly vulnerable, but when was the last time you ate a tomato or a strawberry that was actually sweet? The strawberries look big and beautiful and red, but they are dry and bitter with only the ghost of a ripe strawberry lurking off in the distance as if it were a stranger in a strange country. And I get it: stores do not want to throw away overly ripe fruit everyday. They need as much shelf life as they can get or their profits go out in the trash. They won’t take a risk and let the fruit stay on the tree as long as possible because if they all do the same thing, the consumer has no choice but to either leave the “green” fruit in the stores or eat crappy tasting fruit. I find this corporate policy to be excellent business, but a poor policy. I leave the fruit in the store because it’s not worth taking home at any price, but I get the feeling that many people do take it home and try to eat it, and then they don’t complain, which puzzles me. I guess that many, many people just accept the nonsense that corporate America wants to sell them. If grocery stores could sell sweet peaches during August back in the sixties, why can’t they do it now? If it were only a question of effort, I would think that better trucking conditions would make transporting ripe fruit over long distances that much easier, but I don’t think it is a question of effort. I think it is a question of the bottom line. I suspect that lugs of peaches were a hook which stores used to get customers in the door. I doubt they made much money on the fresh peaches, but as people came in to get the peaches, they would also buy a lot of other things as well. So the peaches were a loser to get people in the door and spending money. In the meantime, we are offered bad fruit, hard peaches, and no alternatives. The peach is such a simple fruit–fuzz, flesh, juice, sugar–a hedonistic delight when served ripe.

On peaches

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Peaches are not my favorite fruit, but a fresh peach in August with a little milk and sugar is a delight not to be missed. I mean, I like strawberries and cherries more, but a nice ripe peach is a very special experience. I say this because the peaches sold in the grocery store during the rest of the year are horrific–wooden, tasteless, dry, bitter. They look perfect, but they are only a simulacrum of a real piece of fruit. I won’t have them in the house. As a child we would often have a lug of peaches or pears in the kitchen during the month of August, so we ate fruit morning, noon, and night. They were so juicy that I had to go outside to eat the fruit as the juice would run down my arm and drip off of my elbow. The fruit was sweet and juicy and wonderful. My question is this: why can’t the local grocery stores do that today? With a few exceptions, most all the fruit is harvested green, so that by the time it reaches the stores it looks good, but it doesn’t taste good. Peaches and pears are particularly vulnerable, but when was the last time you ate a tomato or a strawberry that was actually sweet? The strawberries look big and beautiful and red, but they are dry and bitter with only the ghost of a ripe strawberry lurking off in the distance as if it were a stranger in a strange country. And I get it: stores do not want to throw away overly ripe fruit everyday. They need as much shelf life as they can get or their profits go out in the trash. They won’t take a risk and let the fruit stay on the tree as long as possible because if they all do the same thing, the consumer has no choice but to either leave the “green” fruit in the stores or eat crappy tasting fruit. I find this corporate policy to be excellent business, but a poor policy. I leave the fruit in the store because it’s not worth taking home at any price, but I get the feeling that many people do take it home and try to eat it, and then they don’t complain, which puzzles me. I guess that many, many people just accept the nonsense that corporate America wants to sell them. If grocery stores could sell sweet peaches during August back in the sixties, why can’t they do it now? If it were only a question of effort, I would think that better trucking conditions would make transporting ripe fruit over long distances that much easier, but I don’t think it is a question of effort. I think it is a question of the bottom line. I suspect that lugs of peaches were a hook which stores used to get customers in the door. I doubt they made much money on the fresh peaches, but as people came in to get the peaches, they would also buy a lot of other things as well. So the peaches were a loser to get people in the door and spending money. In the meantime, we are offered bad fruit, hard peaches, and no alternatives. The peach is such a simple fruit–fuzz, flesh, juice, sugar–a hedonistic delight when served ripe.