Journal: 11/4/12

Got the reviewers’ comments back on the proposal, and generally quite happy and inspired by what one in particular had to say. More focus certainly is necessary, but I knew that even as I finished writing the proposal; I just wasn’t sure what would most interest people. Now it seems I can cut the 1971 chapter, which is a huge relief, because I wasn’t much enjoying researching it or planning it. Some of the books and articles the reviewer recommended are also useful, though the emphasis on Camera Politica made me think that book would be more closely aligned with my goals than it turns out it is (the library had a copy, and I picked it up yesterday). It is useful, and I’m definitely glad to know about it, but it’s weakened by doctrinaire marxism and generally predictable, often heavy-handed readings of the films. This is actually one of the things that inspires me to want to do this work — the majority of what I’ve read about 1980s popular movies is okay, sometimes insightful, but generally too easy. A lot of that work, especially from the late-80s and early-90s, does the necessary groundwork, but at this point we should be able to take a more nuanced and complex view of the 1980s.

I was also excited that the reviewer seemed really interested in the application to ‘80s films of Damasio’s ideas and Deleuze’s approach. These were both late additions for me, things I discovered as I was trying to figure out what I wanted to write about, so not as well developed in the proposal as they should have been, but that also happened because though they are things that excite me, they are also things I have very little background in, so am quite afraid I will misinterpret and make a fool of myself with. But one of the basic mantras I need going forward is, clearly: “More Damasio! More Deleuze!”

To help focus, I want, then, two main strands of the book—

1. Conjunction of films and paramilitary, far-right ideology
2. Emotional aesthetics in the politics and films

With those two goals in mind, I think I can fashion a new outline.

Journal: 7/3/12

Is “the Reagan Imaginary” a thing in and of itself?

In a Lacanian sense, could we posit the Reagan Imaginary as a path toward a Reagan Ego via a mirror stage? We would then need to identify a Real and a Symbolic order. 

Alternately, the Sartrean concept of The Imaginary could be useful: “I will call the different immediate modes of apprehension of the real as a world ‘situations’. We can then say that the essential condition for a consciousness to imagine is that it be ‘situated in the world’ or more briefly that it ‘be-in-the-world’. It is the situation-in-the-world, grasped as a concrete and individual reality of consciousness, that is the motivation for the constitution of any irreal object whatever and the nature of that irreal object is circumscribed by this motivation. Thus the situation of consciousness must appear not as a pure and abstract condition of possibility for all of the imaginary, but as the concrete and precise motivation for the appearance of a certain particular imaginary.”

Journal: 6/28/12

Thinking about the form it should all take. The trouble is the material that already exists — Nica and Old Man Action Figures — because I can’t let them determine the overall book. They were not written for a book or as a book. I need to be able to show a thesis, need to be able to work toward an argument, need each chapter to be iterations. Reading Steve Shaviro’s Connected tonight, it struck me that a similar sort of fragmentary form could be useful — or rather fragmented, but not fragmentary. Each paragraph leads to an idea in the next paragraph, but the paragraphs are also mini-essays of their own, each with a title. I don’t want to go that far — I want the freedom to have multiple paragraphs in each unit, but I also want the freedom to have a single-paragraph unit when necessary. I think the Nica chapter lends itself to this, but not sure about Old Man Action Figures. (Or maybe it’s okay to have the end be a more traditionally fluid piece.)

Journal: 6/27/12

For 1971 chapter: John Wayne was the first choice to play Dirty Harry. Too busy to do it, later saw the film and regretted his decision. This encapsulates a lot of what I want to say about 1971 as a pivotal year — John Wayne —> Clint Eastwood, etc. See John Wayne American ch. 22

Journal: 6/16/12

Still struggling to revise the Nica chapter, particularly the discussion of Walker. It needs a more complex discussion of the film, but I don’t know quite what approach to take with that. What’s there now is about the film as a political intervention, which it failed at because it couldn’t get much distribution and when people did have the chance to see it they didn’t know what to make of it. It’s a failure as propaganda, but quite excellent as art. Perhaps what I should do is compare it to Latino, which is such a terrible movie, so propagandistic and hilariously awkward and amateur. That’s probably the key — both films used locals, both had a clearly anti-Reagan perspective, etc., but Latino is nearly unwatchable and Walker gets better with each viewing. I hate to fall into such an evaluative mode, but perhaps the differences between the two movies will be illustrative of something interesting. I watched 15 minutes of Latino last night before switching to something else; I’m going to have to bite the bullet and watch the whole thing again, since I last saw it 7 years ago.

Journal: 6/12/12

Add Herzog’s Nicaragua doc to Nica chapter? And Pictures from a Revolution? (Prologue & Epilogue?)