Since the film is told mostly through narrated flashback, I will also begin at the end by describing the courtroom scene in which this tightly wrought personal black and white narrative is integrated into the justice system. As the judge hears the defendant’s lawyer plea for mercy on the grounds of “love” (being in this case a synonym for the complex interplay of self evaluative epiphanies and the vague desires of one or more superfluous parties to be ‘needed’ once the alienating mechanics of capitalistic self sufficiency have become routinized in their daily being), Ida Lupino cuts between close ups of the bigamist in question, Harry or Harrison Graham, and his two wives- the barren career woman with a tender heart Eve and the lonely, rationalistic Phyllis. The characters’ knit their brows desperately, as though their skin is a stubborn veil between the two types of understanding between which the film oscillates to achieve its dramatic tension: the piteous self love that hides itself while simultaneously screaming to be revealed (Harry Graham is most pathetic when he is begging to “tell you something” only to not do it) i.e. the understanding of the individual, the truth of the character; and the understanding of the world- morality, the courtroom, the office where Harry flees to avoid his drama, the salesman job which provides the possibility of his romantic dalliances. The courtroom is filled with women spectators who remain silent while the judge issues his decision (only Harry cannot bear the flattening of his difficultly achieved status as a subject on the dispassionate lips of the judge and cries out irrelevantly “Oh stop it I’m guilty!” – to which no one, appropriately, responds): “You’re basically a decent man, Mr Graham, and that’s the whole point”. Oh and isn’t it. The Bigamist is revelatory in its investigation into the deceit involved in the most basic act of a male constituting himself as a subject who loves.
The judge goes on: “When a man, even with the best intentions, breaks the moral laws we live by, we really don’t need manmade laws to punish him. He’ll find out that the punishment of the court is always the smallest punishment.” And it’s true, this whole court scene seems like an unnecessary addendum to a story that has already resolved itself. But it’s effective- lest there be any doubt as to the status of the law in regard to alienation which struggles to resolve itself deep in the imaginary, this scene is a formal abdication, a nod toward the footlights and the exit sign. Mr. Graham’s emotional masochism has been laid disturbingly bare, and the judge knows better than to reward his slavering ego with even more, completely formal, discipline. Even, at the last shot, has the filmmaker Lupino discarded this erstwhile protagonist, in the name of ethics she instead lingers on Eve, the character whose lack of emotionalism (Eve throughout the film is Graham’s wife who is focused on their shared refrigerator business and is responsible for its success (and the subsequent leisure time during which Harry plunges excitedly into his narcissistic loneliness) and has no time or physical capacity (she is barren, they are seeking adoption) for children) and sense of self sufficiency has presaged the bigamy which has rendered Harry again irrelevant. That the last shot remains on her while Harry is led out of the courtroom restores this sufficiency, which was lost amidst the swirling drama of ‘a man loving a woman’, to her, and the film retains its careful analytics.
I try to avoid the straightforward plot synopsis for what I hope is the same reason the film does: Harry Graham is pleading for your sympathy, and he wants to tell you his story. But he is an abject narcissist, plodding through a landscape which has no need for him. This is a film noir, where is the crime? The film is constructed in a way, via Graham’s confessional flashbacks to the stalwart and moral Mr. Jordan, investigator for the adoption agency, to give the sense that there is some deeper crime that will soon reveal itself. But the crime never amounts to more than just Harry Graham needing: needing to be loved, needing to be Harry Graham to somebody else besides himself. The skill of the film lies in its ability to demonstrate that the sense of criminality itself comes from the striving of the subject to exist as such within a corrupt system.
Harry is incredibly superfluous. It takes a moment to realize this maybe, but then we realize he’s peddling refrigerators offscreen and the people who work at his office are more concerned with slugging back cocktails at four in the afternoon than anything else. Even Phyllis can’t remember what he does moments before he proposes to her (“you sell water heaters or something”). I don’t know if he’s more superfluous than anyone else who has a meaningless job, but that’s everyone in this movie world. Being sensitive but not smart, he feels this but can’t trace it back to anything. He begins to feel lonely because Eve cares more about the business than him (meaning that she has invested herself in the real world he has chosen to live in more than he has, achieving instantly more integrity, though he never realizes this), and on one of his business trips to LA, this loneliness drives him to board a bus touring the movie stars houses, where he meets Phyllis. He awkwardly hits on her as the bus driver drones movie star names while she remains respectably indifferent (Harry: “I’d like to know where my favorite mule Francis lives” Phyllis: “What’s that?” Harry: “Oh. Excuse me” Phyllis: “That’s alright.”). This initial meeting lays the differences between the characters bare. Harry asks “Don’t you have any interest in how the other half lives?”, pretending as though he himself did, as though he hadn’t just stumbled onto the bus in confused self absorption, which we just saw him do. She answers “No I just like the bus. It gives me a chance to get off of my feet.” She is a materialist. After Harry blandly relates an anecdote about a pianist playing Gershwin (“It was great”), she asks “What is this, the story of your life?” Phyllis, comfortable in her loneliness because she is capable of acknowledging it as part of her life (all we ever really find out about her background during the course of the film is that she is lonely and she works in a Chinese restaurant, which is really all we need to know), never has any need for Harry’s biography, and this is the basis of his desire for her. Knowing the outlines of his character in terms of the society that he lives in (he is married, he has a job, he wants a child- pretty regular) but absolutely nothing else, Harry is overwhelmingly compelled by a person for whom those outlines mean nothing. There is more truth in her indifference to his identity than there is in that identity itself, so Harry (or Harrison, as he goes by in LA) has no choice but to follow her around, despite all the hand wringing about his love for Eve.
And what about this love for Eve? Does he love her? If so why does he neither divorce her nor stop his romance with Phyllis? The question is a red herring. Of course he loves them both. But love in this sense is meaningless. What does he do? He marries them both and promises them children while simultaneously pretending as though he has done neither. He pursues the annihilation of his social character with perverse rabidity, moaning over his own impossibility in sublimated sexual ecstasy the whole time. Explaining the basis of his desire for Phyllis to Mr. Jordan he says “For the first time, I felt as though someone needed me”. It is funny that this is how he defines his relationship with Phyllis- she goes to great lengths to disavow this needing, even when pregnant with his child she is ashamed that her pregnancy could possibly compel him to propose to her. Harry sees the swollen womb and sees “need” (for financial assistance, most of all), while Phyllis sees the fetus instead as her decision that she is proud of with or without the oppressive sense of necessity that Harry excitedly (suppressedly) takes upon himself. Phyllis does not need him, despite the fact that she is poor and he is rich, she merely prefers company and finds Harry’s romantic fussing slightly charming. Eve certainly doesn’t need Harry either, though when her father dies and she becomes aware of mortality she takes advantage of Harry’s capability of providing for a child that will not be his. It is only Harry that needs, in his stalwart role as provider, to be seen as such. These women are self sufficient, and the consternated Harry seems guilty for not being able to provide much. So he sexualizes this feeling. His voice creates swirling tapestries of narcissistic guilt in the narration: “I felt bad for leaving her”. “How could I do that to a woman I’ve been married to for 8 years” etc. At times it becomes disgusting- when Phyllis, sick and bed bound because of her pregnancy, tries to convince Harry not to marry her because he’s probably doing it out of a sense of duty, he goes to great lengths to convince her that he wants her, which is true but only because of the fact that she would be fine if he didn’t want her. It’s pathetic and violent, this insemination of his own desire into the body of another person.
And what is this desire? What’s behind the ‘want to be wanted’? Nothing but the will for desire itself. I hate to return to the flaccid penis analogy, but such is life, especially for an aging corporate man like Harry, frittering away his time on tabloid bus rides and bedroom talk about accounting. Dying to attain the illusion of his virility, Harry constructs a secret for himself. The secret, to him a convoluted mess of social affirmation, yearning and private acknowledgments, to us appears as pretty boring: Harry has two wives who don’t know about each other. But it’s the biggest thing in his life. It’s his story, and he coddles it, whispers in its ear, makes sweaty phone calls about it and juggles his schedule around it. When Harry earnestly insists “I love you” and we believe him, it’s because the sincerity with which he enunciates his “I” and confusion which surrounds his “love”. His “you” is merely grammatical. Phyllis is sensitive to this game: to his “I want you” with a silent asterisk she responds “I do love you Harry”, but knowing that Harry can’t be turned so easily, adds “And I’m so glad I do”. It’s the subjective evaluation and ownership of her love which makes Harry really want to bend in and nuzzle her as a person who really, finally understands him.
But back to the court scene, which turns out not be so unnecessary an addendum. Turns out there is no case. Just Harry, a pathetic man with a secret that is now blandly revealed in all it’s simpleness. The “decent man” brought to justice is Harry absconding out of the back of the courtroom into irrelevancy, no more belabored sexual transmogrification to hide and sweat over. The judge has it right when he predicts that Harry’s future (and that of the “basically decent man” in general) “When he’s once more a free man it won’t be a question of which woman he’ll go back to, but which woman will take him back.” The free man will realize, someday, that his activity and his decisions are irrelevant- the power lies instead in the hands of the woman who actively accepts, on her terms. That both women seem capable of doing this while also seeming unlikely to do so in Harry’s case gives them infinitely more power than the man who absconds guiltily into the curtains before the final shot.

“He will have burdened living reality with a parasitic growth: his interpretation.”

BEFORE THE SHOW

Before the show I have to figure out who I am and what exactly it is I’m trying to communicate. This is much too difficult, with the nauseating pace of change occurring all around me and the instant decrepitude of any definitive statement regarding being. I take my individuality for granted- “I am a person who has had experiences that have shaped me and I desire to share these experiences with others so that they may feel me to be alive and I might see that I am alive from their reaction”. I’m in a band, I have to communicate something- there will be a speaker and a stage, and people will be looking forward at me. But already we’ve got a contradiction. My individuality is a myth. I scour myself for experiences which will have some degree of relevancy, which will distinguish “my band” from ten thousand other “my bands”- the bait ball swimming in the sea of mediocrity, being leisurely consumed by the powers that structure our reality (wanting/money). But my experience as an individual tells me only that there exists something which is not me. Barely aware of what I know, the only solid ground within my consciousness is the boundary at the limits of my experience. As I exist as an individual, I am incomplete- reaching for that which transcends my individuality and mixes it with other people in a consciousness of living that is beyond the mundane variations on the capitalist theme that has created everyone’s precious life story. Plumbing the depths for that which sets me (“my band” “my art” etc) apart from others I find only a similarity- the void at the limits of my understanding of myself is not mine alone. Very good, that’s what I’ll communicate in my rock songs- “yeah yeah i’m not me you are not you lets be beyond us together in the forthcoming ritual of our wednesday night baby”. I reach confidently for my trusty guitar. But my hand slackens as I grip the neck. The orgiastic celebration of collectivity which I wish to induce is prefigured by the need to play songs. Instead of initiating a spontaneous redemption of our alienated lives, I will simply be rehearsing my group persona in public. Is my band an effigy or a jukebox? It’s both, representing an ideal which it can never hope to attain. The idea that a show enables the freeing of the burden of your personality in a wild group mosh is at best a breath held, at worst a feeble lie. The curtain draws back, and the transcendent experience appears to be an awkward gyration before the idol’s altar. There is a dirty and broken mirror tooling around the stage, refracting glimpses of themselves into the eyes of the disinterested onlookers who briefly struggle to decide if they like this experience, that of seeing themselves here for a second. I’ve got anxiety about this. How can I escape myself with you while I’m in the midst of performing myself? Are you blinking or winking?

THE SHOW

Waiting. Drinking beer during a pause to increase the feeling of immediacy which is perpetually slipping away. Grasping desperately at the escaping moment. Look at Mark’s pants! The eager riff. The possibly feigned enthusiasm. The harrowing exchanges regarding the inconspicuous nuances of some fetishized object- guitars, records, amps etc. The awkward presence of inaudible lyrics. The briefly noted head nods. The inevitable gesture toward the merch table, with all its stifling familiarity- who’d like to participate in this world in a manner identical to the way in which they participate in the world which wants to destroy them? Money, the organizing abstraction. Dancing, the ignominious affirmation. The T shirt. The record. The object which, unable to represent the real depth of the experience, acts as its ludicrous substitute. The interim. The DIY culture clinging to the fringes of a workday finished without it. Fun, but not a joke, that’s the goal. A real fun non joke of an experience. Success.

AFTER THE SHOW

“The memory of gratification is at the origin of all thinking, and the impulse to recapture past gratification is the hidden driving power behind all thought”. It’s strange how much this subculture exists in retrospect. As banal as many shows can be (i.e. every show at a bar), they can occasionally sparkle in their retelling and whole scenes periodically re emerge (disfigured. Inauthentic?) from hazy myth into the present moment. It seems as though every band that has ever existed has reunited to perform their dimly recalled time-essence (“hi, we’re Pavement, we’re from the 90′s”) in order to get a slice of the crumbly cake. Nostalgia permeates the bedroom. It is much easier to see the meaning in music when it is set against the backdrop of a simpler (i.e. flattened by memory) time. Living bands that do not immediately draw upon a recognizable vibe or sound flail pathetically against the contexts until their wild flailing is gradually perceived as deliberate.  ‘Authentic’ appreciation is conditional- a person has to know the band personally, or to to be able to situate them within a musical lineage, or to identify their politics in order to recognize them as relevant. In Olympia we know this, which is why we avoid the humiliation of self promotion and instead rely on an obscure kind of cross referencing to convey the secret knowledge of who we are to each person on their own terms as a result of their own labor. So many bands in the world. Authenticity has become the most valuable trait in the new music landscape. Unfortunately, it is meaningless. The authentic understanding of our current time involves the acknowledgment that microcosmic self awareness (a condition created by the expansion of the market into the mental realm- breaking us down into ever smaller units, to individuals with ever more specific needs to satisfy) has rendered the kind of naive performance of an unadulterated self onstage nearly impossible (those with some sort of brain damage- Roky Erikson, Daniel Johnston etc. fondly excepted). Bands in Olympia pretend to ignore this and are accurately perceived by outside sources as deliberately retro- not so much in the sound but in the notion that there is a progressive continuity with the musical scenes of the past. It’s a savage time.  I try to abscond to the velvet suite with self affirming positivity tucked gently in my arms, but though I knead and poke it lustfully, it refuses to touch me back and I’m left feeling cold. Alienation creeps in under the door. I turn to my partner and goad it into protecting me “we are creative people, creating, in a safe space outside the purview of the terrible processes which abstract me infinitely from myself and others, right?” but its neck appears slack, and the nodding a result of my own tremulous hand upon it. There is no protection, least of all from a generalized yay which celebrates creativity in and for itself- on the margins, during the fifteen minute break, for the time being. How long can you sustain it? Because it will never sustain you. Someday you will have turn some form of your  labor into an abstraction. And people do make money off of music after all. But the transition between art and art for profit is tenuous at best. The money you receive will never correspond to the emotion and experience you put into the creation- there will always be an overabundance of one and a lack of the other. The cup is too small. The social forms which the ‘successful’ rock musician participates in are closed. The money earning gig is no different from the cubicle- the range of possible human action is limited, and everyone knows the rules. Ego affirmation, stupors of all sorts, hints of the mystic or bizarre, qualified consumerism- all of these are encouraged. The inevitable return to work hangs overhead, and it is from this authority that the temporary license is issued. And so here I am after the show trying to figure out what happened. I thought I was being a real dreamer, following my dreams into the pit, grabbing a few wispy strands of freedom’s hair here and there. Oh but here I was in reality all along, immersed in the same symbolic existence as everyone else until suddenly I turned around and Dad was in my room! And I was like “get out of here Dad this is MY ROOM!” but he wasn’t going anywhere and just him being there reminded me of all the fucking shit I had to deal with that I was putting off.

Quotes are from Marx, Lefebvre, Marcuse, Malkmus in that order.

The Accord spun slowly through the rows of bland one story houses (ramblers), very safe looking, as though a concerned superintendent had a personal hand in rounding the edges and softening the impact. Children, faces contorted into a taut grimace, lips quivering, eyes darting around in search of some custodial face toward which their welling wail may be directed, can be saved and appeased if their trauma might be forgotten, if some force (“look, there`s an indian!”, or a saliva stiff Elmo, shaken to boogie by an infirm parental hand) may be employed to cause the source of their tears to fade indistinct into that haze which overwhelms them at other times, such as when they dully blink into a fat stranger mom`s puffed and grinning face, all grubby and blank and full on french toast triangles, a torpid half squirm in a corduroy and plastic car seat. Into such a haze the houses I was presently passing thrust me, suddenly the tot, and it was with a slipping comprehension that I blinked forward, doubtful, scanning the blur for the address that would pull one cul de sac forth from the background.  They blurred by, the anticipation I had been nurturing toward this evening of Indian classical music began to seize and contract; my observations of the cul de sacs, witnessing the improbability of my satisfaction all around, was like salt on the embryo- my expectations withered and died, my heart beat at the same pace as my left hand turn blinker as I slowly parallel parked the Accord. Very well, it is said that ashes enrich the soil, let my expectations catch fire and burn, a roaring flame as I unwad a tendo note and thrust it into the palm of a distracted middle aged woman at a card table in the back of her garage, the scorched and fallow interior reflected in the eyes of the clean hippies who cluster cross legged in folding chairs and blankets on the yard grass in front of me, munching stoned wheat thins with artichoke dip, disdaining small tacos, sober, with slow heartbeats, quietly chuckling at nonjokes, forgetting what bored is, making space and brushing aside pinecone fragments; from this soil may the most nutritious corn rise, the most succulent elderberries grow, the stoutest potato dug. Expect nothing, that you might receive something, and, forgetting, call it much. 

I had memories of dew dampness creeping through my pants as I sat down on the patterned blanket (the polite older set had called cowardice etiquette, and, plopping their khaki shorts around the perimeter of the stage, ringed us with squints as the we took the center seat, becoming the trashy old gourd, fake leaf and hornaplenty centerpiece to the anticipated cultural feast), I thought I might feel something akin to cold urine sticking to the contours of my pasty thighs. But it was summertime- the blanket remained dry, my equilibrium remained off and I looked blearily toward the staling treats on the card table. I had begun to adjust my hopes for the performance in accordance with what I perceived. A crude psychological trick; since I had felt no creeping dampness, since I had instead experienced the most mundane ultrarationality and called it “relief”, I was ready now for whatever normal thing this makeshift stage might squeeze out. Presently, nothing but two ornate sitars. The flyer advertising the event had mentioned a PANDIT performing, and thinking of Pran Nath (the only Pandit with whom I`m familiar) spiritualizing the sine tone, I picture a withered old man clutching the mic, moaning me to another realm. Scanning the faces of the human cheese snacks around me (you are what you eat), I detect a similarly exotic portrait dancing through their hopes as well. It is possible, it seems, to look both lazy and braced- the contradiction is resolved by stiffening the arms and thrusting out the crotch. Slack and stiff- they are the show, a rerun, with commentary. Eventually a bald man wearing a long flowing muted cornflower robe of neofleece, takes the stage and begins nervously introducing us to our environment. 

“This is my home” And although he looks the most uncomfortable of anyone, though I feel awkward because the mic is not screeching with feedback as it seems it should be when he draws his lips near to it, I`m not surprised that this is his home. The soft robe flows down to his feet. Inside, nude muscles, slackened by frequent massage, quiver in anticipation beneath the garment. Clearly, he`s right. This is his home and the forthcoming show must happen within it. In this cul de sac: a deformed gay mulatto preemie clawing through white grandma`s womb. Onlookers, hearts filled with affection and pity stare disgusted at the writhing shape on the sidewalk. “I didn`t like it” “It was weird” everyone says afterwards. 

After the community minded property owner graciously absconds into a ball of tension atop a stool in the back of the stage, another neofleece robe, this one beneath a floating bald mustachioed head, ascends the stage. Toward the tablas this decontextualized cop head sternly bobs. From a black fibrous polymer case he takes a golden mallet of a specific size and begins tapping lightly on the taut heads of his exotic instrument. When a person gets older, they tend to get self conscious tugging away at their ever limpening dick and turn instead toward a more sturdy tool to bang upon; the bald mustache had chosen the tabla as his source for therapeutic release, and he concentrated on the soft taps of the gilded hammer with all the vigor he had wasted on the memory of hard nipples in his past. His robe hangs lax in the limpid summer air. A tear wells in the corner of the audience`s eye. The bald head. The mustache. Boiling testosterone coursing through the pulmonary artery on its way from the balls to the head. The whiteness of his pate becomes heart wrenchingly symbolic; humiliation seems immanent. Performance of any kind is more than a touch disgraceful. It is as though you have encouraged your infirm father to “try, just try” to get out of his wheelchair. His knuckles whiten and his arm quivers as he attempts to lift himself out. Immediately you regret urging him. Regardless of the outcome, it is the effort he has expended which saddens you. So too does bald mustache refute the apparent essence of his being by concentrating so hard. His mouth closed, eyes looking down, the audience can`t help but see the emotions flitting across his face. Fine for any normal human being, but for bald mustache untenable- he is being devoured by eyes which thirst for temporary transcendence (and after thirty five minutes of sitting in backyard cul de sac land, have started to Need it) and his white face and cop look have elicited the kinds of associations that do not fare well when they are forced to struggle for their dignity. And while the expensive golden hammer comes gently down on the tabla head and the ear turns to hear indecipherable but presumable very important nuances in tone, the hammer of judgment falls heavily upon his cocked head and people to look politely away. 

Soon though, reprieve arrives in the form of the brown musicians. Thick and coarse eyebrow hair. They mount the stage and grab the shiny sitars from their plastiform stands. A younger man and an older man – one presumes a relationship between the two. Will a bizarre familial dynamic complement the unfamiliar scales and slippery rhythms of their country`s exotic music? The cold senior glowers calmly at his drawn and pliant backyard audience. The son begins stretching tones with his wooden pear. Bald mustache tinks away, attempting to retreat into his nutsack, but the Pandit catches him and begins making directing his confused tuning. Because the Pandit`s english is presumably weak, no discreet words can be uttered, instead come a series of exaggerated gestures at which bald mustache looks in confused horror. Up! Down! Trembling in his neofleece, the deaf ear submits to the confused eyes and the trembling hand. Meanwhile, the younger of the two Indians is letting long, dry notes writhe around in the Washington air. Soon, harmonized moaning accompanies them, and the gawkers begin to feel a sense of contentment- this is sufficiently musical, we can all relax (some people get too relaxed, their lax eyelids drooping over their eye balls reminds me of genital skin, and soft meditative moans don`t help), bask in the foreign sun. Ahhh, shimmering scales. Then it stops and they explain that that was just a warm up. Anticipation builds. 

It begins to get weird when the concert begins in earnest. The songs are very long and consist almost entirely of wild orgiastic soloing. They begin with synchronized sitar, the bald mustache tapping cautiously on his apparently poorly tuned tablas (between every number the father looks toward the white infant and makes frustrated gestures which serve more to degrade the poor man in front of his lazed out peers than to make any discernible difference in the sound) for quite a few minutes, during which the audience alternately stares in throbbing expectation and looks dumbly at the grey siding on the back of the house or at a pill bug struggling over a few blades of grass. The effect is like Acid Therapy class in high school, Mr. Harviston putting on some Bach and dimming the lights, encouraging you to feel the cork, you not being able to take it and just looking at the asbestos bumps in the ceiling, getting restless for a second before really hearing the fugue for a second and thinking about Ginsburg, getting it and then pulling out a piece of paper and drawing a crude spiral that turns into an eye. The bizarre context throws people off. When the solos begin about halfway through the numbers, the look of the performers changes abruptly. The long gray hair of the father begins flying around and his face contorts into a purposeful grimace. His eyes open very wide, and he stares at the audience with an intensity that`s difficult to take. He`s unbearably hammin, and the solos look really easy. The concept “Indian classical music” dissolves into the more familiar and potent image of desperately busking bum. The father, wildly enthusiastic, smiles and tensely nods, craning his neck around to meet every sprawled out member of the audience full in the increasingly embarrassed face. The music during these solos no longer seems mythically complex, but very crude and improvisational. It`s too much. I have to turn away, much as I would mumble and trot from the hoarse aggressive pleading of tin can man in pioneer square. No one really wants to engage the contorted face, not simply because it transparently reveals the clenched kegels deep beneath it, but because there`s more than a little hint of angry sarcasm. The blankets become the focus of attention instead. Looking over into the neighbors yard, two children play obliviously with soft foam whips, hitting each other in the shrunken balls. This is not the transcendence that was expected. It`s a totally different kind. Instead of escape it`s imprisonment. The environment becomes painfully visceral, people struggle not to look towards the stage the same way they would avoid looking at a video of themselves masturbating. The confused intentions are very unpleasant. Children in the neighbors yard squawk and it`s painfully inappropriate to laugh, unless it`s in the form of a stifled chuckle into a sweaty palm, disguised as a very quiet cough. The son takes it all in stride, inscrutably competent, less aggressively forthright than his non english speaking dad. This goes on for a very long time. “Here I am, here I am” is all anyone is thinking. Finally it stops, and once more the father and son go into the harmonized singing that, being much more resplendent of their ruined expectations, eases the gawkers back into the fantasy world in which this excursion seemed appropriate and in which they normally dwell. The applause is hearty, far from rote. People hastily get up and attempt to dust the dampness from their jeans, unsuccessfully. The unpleasant residue will have to remain.

It was only after several fits of petty desperation that, fortified with a morbid depression, arrived in the waiting room at Charles River clinic. Considering it beneath me, at this stage in my life, to work for near minimum wage at the Westside Olympia Target or any equivalent job, I followed instead my predilection for depravity and decided to sell my body to corporate medicine. The drug being tested, for diabetes, had never before been used on humans, and preliminary to admit it required a set of unique restrictions- no cruciferous vegetables (kale, broccoli, cabbage and the like- a restriction I violated by rabidly gorging on D. Harris’ carnitas tacos the night before), no alcohol or drugs of any sort and an eight hour fast- conditions which predisposed all the incoming itinerants to a weary blandness. Punctuating this blandness, in the waiting room that afternoon and all through my stay here, would be loudly exclaimed inanities; the cackling voices of medical mendicants failing to suppress the reality of the existence we shared.  

Medical testing demands routine. All experience must be controlled. In service of this effort long questionnaires about medical history must be repeatedly filled out, food intake must be closely monitored by bored nurses (“First bite is at 9:25, last bite at 9:45″), exercise forbidden and doors to the restroom kept closed. It’s strange how the nurses enforce this dictate. No forks must be raised to glistening lips until the second they are permitted to, as though the variations in metabolism in human bodies responded to clock time.  As a result of this obsessive attention to procedure everything feels a little… unscientific. It feels more that the workers here are enacting a very dull ritual than collecting valuable results. Human existence, boiled down to this type of pulpy routine, acquires a false, commercial shine.  The protocols become law once, just to say that it happened, and then the subjects squirm off to their disarrayed lives in which the reality of the pill will perhaps someday manifest, to be forgotten, swallowed hastily with a Red Bull or taken two at a time in a sudden guilty recollection. But I suppose that’s the idea of the control group- to test an experimental medicine on a “normal person” so as not to have to deal with the unpredictability of disease. That the space in which the control group comes into contact with the pill is completely artificial, a stark medical theater in which mannequin people shuffle into their recliners in strict abeyance to some poorly understood formalist theater, isn’t relevant. This is medicine, not philosophy. 

Which brings me to the incessant, inane declamations of the patients. I happen to be assigned to the “funny guy” corner. Directly to my left sits RLS (we are all called by our initials here- another formalist gesture towards medical privacy, but one that is quickly foregone when people- and this is common- fail to recognize their new names and must be shrilly summoned to snack by their first names instead), a heavyset forty something year old black man who shaves in the piddly, motion activated stream in the faux marbled plastic wash basin every morning the morning. To my right is ARJ, a grizzled middle aged white man with whom I consistently avoid eye contact. Each has their preferred type of weird antisocial outburst. RLS, who “is used to a higher calorie diet, don’t ask me to move no furniture”, loves to reminisce about chain restaurant bargains- the Applebee’s Tuesday All You Can Eat Ribs for $10.00, the Changs Mongolian Grill in Kent near the Big 5 and Target; he could “get down with some Carl Junior” and “loves me some Family Size Pizza”. These affirmations, spoken to no one in particular, come when he’s in a good mood. At meal time, when the unappetizing repast brings these lofty dreams to earth, the vibe changes. Suddenly it’s all restrictions: “I don’t eat eggs, except boiled”. He also doesn’t eat peppers, cheese (except on pizza) or greens. ARJ’s themes run more to the morbid side- he’s repeated his lame joke about losing a kidney as a way to weight loss three times over the course of 12 hours. “They’re going to take your body and hang it on a meat hook” etc. Macabre themes such as these I’ve been known to enjoy if delivered in an understated way, but ARJ punctuates every statement with a high pitched, self affirming cackle that reminds me of a neurotic thirteen year old on nitrous oxide. These aphoristic statements, if people are feeling sociable, collect into grotesque swirling conversations that morph from belief in God to necrophilia to nurses on Harleys to clit piercings- a nauseating cocktail garnished with manic cackles where periods should be. Sometimes, when excitedly discussing which of the nurses are the hottest, both RLS and ARJ get up from their recliners and stand for one purposeless moment before sitting down again. I’m convinced that none of these statements serve any purpose than to simulate the feeling that they allude to. RLS talks about food because he wants to summon the appetite that made him feel alive. Sex talk about horse faced nurses alludes to a virility that can only be completely dead. Popping up from the chair? Human boner marionettes dancing to the beat of a struggling will. 

The facility itself is a sterile taupe monstrosity, windowless to avoid the fluctuations of natural light. A giant commons area, called ambiguously “Conduct”, is divided into four distinct quarters. Towards the back a 52″ TV towers darkly over rows of leather chairs populated by zoned out “participants” covered in thin beige blankets. Old issues of People, Woman’s Day and Popular Mechanics (“I hope GM doesn’t go out of business” a chubby older participant says sadly to himself) litter the chairs and floor.  The TV churns on and on, shifting seamlessly from “2012″ to “24″ to the 10:00 news- no one seems to take control of the remote. The sound of TV makes it impossible to think; especially maddening is a Burger King commercial featuring an adult baby in a sandbox failing to comprehend the world that seems way to cynical to sell anything besides self hatred, which everyone seems to have plenty of already. Behind the theater are a few tables with incomplete puzzles, board games missing pieces, and the eternally occupied internet kiosks. Glancing furtively over the shoulders of the surfers while waiting for a turn, I find that they are a)indiscriminately downloading pictures of volcanoes and pyramids onto their shared desktops b)browsing Safeway’s website for coupons c) reading the online sports page. At the darkened card tables in the back I’ve seen two different people idly reading the yellow pages.  The procedure area extends outward from the leisure quarter, carpet turns into off white linoleum set off by mottled olive squares. Three rows of ten recliners each face forward toward a blank wall. These chairs are where all the research gets done. Phlebotomists scoot rolling blood extraction, vitals and ECG stations along in office chairs, taking blood in staggered five minute intervals from restless patients. Some lie fully reclined, laptops on their chests, punching the keys of some Flash game. Others phlegmatically discuss God or women with the underpaid nurses, who cast anxious glances at one of the 10 synchronized digital clocks that scatter the upper part of Conduct’s ceilings. A row of airplane like bathrooms line the right wall. Along the left wall is a mess hall, set apart by a clear acetate screen, affording a slight respite from TV chatter. Meal times are so anticipated by the participants that this dinner area has an exclusive vibe. Only a chosen few sit in here at any given time, and conversations around the table seem somewhat more animated. 

Participants quarters are accessed through a horseshoe shaped hall running all around Conduct. My quarters consist of four single beds arranged economically in a cross stitch pattern. The room offers no relief from the incessant TV info flow. My roommate, who’s initials I haven’t bothered to learn, loves to have comedy central on while he pecks infrequently at his inexpensive laptop.  Thought is cancelled out. Periodically, a voice on the intercom reminds study 076 to come drink their water. A single window looks out into the morgue next door (ARJ wildly asserts that he witnessed an autopsy through the window last study to couple of skeptical phlebotomists). Most bizarre, however, is the slow, futuristic flange sound that constantly hums through the walls 24 hours a day. No one comments on this dystopian sci fi sound effect, and the restless brain, lying untired in the stiff bed at 11 pm, imagines a large machine swirling urine and blood into a complex spiral, sifting Fajita waste from valuable data. For all the attempts at control, for all the studied blandness, the environment leaves an imprint. Beyond the slimy residue and the strange, lithops- like pattern left by ECG leads on forearm skins and the wrinkled imprint that tight gauze strips leave around the elbow are the mental imprints left by repetitious actions in a confined space. The funky keyboard outro that every daytime show uses to segue into commercials. The ungrammatical instructional sign for clean catch urine collection in the bathroom that I stare at every time I urinate reading “Hold Labia Apart With One Hand Until Finished Urinating Container”. The inarticulate anxiety, manifesting as lower back pain, that comes as a result of not being able to move the body in any manner besides slowly shuffling from one chair to another. My unnamed roommate tilts his head upwards at a visibly uncomfortable angle, to pore over a commercial for 5 hour energy featuring a man riding a mountain bike. We conform slowly to the environment, emphasizing again the absurdity of representing a “normal human”, that which they are constantly testing to see if we are, in this setting. The skin receives the needle, over and over again. 

There’s a lesson to be learned somewhere here. Although the evidence of economic hardship is everywhere, it seems more like people come to medical studies like these because the idea of being able to veg out and watch movies is more appealing than work. Charles River clinic simulates a prison in the sense that it forbids people to leave and exercise, but the manner in which people spend their time, beyond that, is up to them. The fact that so many people choose to float in a TV haze, room to room, is weird. Either it’s a haven for leisure addicts or it’s Stockholm syndrome on a huge, culture wide, scale. You tell me?

All well and good, were the effects of steroid use at all euphoric for the user. Perhaps if they were the hapless gawker could vicariously tap into some of the death trip nihilism within much other drug use and experience in some (useless) sense the doom incipient in the system. Instead, steroid use implies positive outcome, and there is a sheen of success and very real achievements that come with masked abuse (and use can be masked in many ways, from institutional non compliance (the International Federation of Body Builiding, who run the Mr. Universe and Mr. Olympia competitions and are directly responsible Schwarzeneggar`s ascendence to power, has not once tested a contest winner for the presence of anabolic steroids, and WWE owner Vince McMahon is openly against drug testing of any kind, knowing full well such policies are antipathetic to his business model), to cowering behind issues of legality (Mark McGuire broke Maris` single season homerun record while under the influence of “andro”, a substance which became illegal two years after his success, and strength trainers have no problem with compounds and supplements chemically similar to anabolic steroids as long they are not the banned substances themselves), to the willful obfuscation of the mythmakers (Lance Armstrong, after winning the Tour de France seven times, is in no danger of having his titles stripped as others who went to the same doctor but lack the lucrative sheen of his triumphant battle with quicker death; Barry Bonds` natural ability to crush a ball is enough to relegate his steroid use to a sidebar)). But death hastens onward, the heart pounds harder, and this false positivism is the rigor smile on the corpse`s head. Athletic success always comes at the cost of the body; in most cases, the tradeoff is equitable. But steroid`s arena is more that of the image than of the body itself, a doublefold alienation, which unsurprisingly infers suicide. Success, as always in reality, refuses to correspond directly to human action in the same way in which it refuses to correspond to happiness. Steroids and “performance enhancing drugs” embody the rhetoric of achievement, growth and expansion. In doing so they physicalize the schizophrenic logic of capitalism, claiming these concepts as self evident when in fact they are only the manifestation of their opposites (failure and decay). Another needle plunges into the ass of human understanding.

<><> So i surprise that cops are buying into the action. What anticipates fraud better than a police uniform? Possibly this is just a latent desire for coherence (oh I do sympathize) on the part of individual officers. The flexing arm representing domination, success and authority has finally detached itself from the last thread of viscera that connected to the weak and meager frame and become an end in itself. This is a process that has been at work for a long time now. Men who grew up in the eighties did so swallowing Hulk Hogan chewable vitamins, not knowing about the knot of scar tissue the size of a baseball on the Hulkster`s hip. People have gradually acceded to Schwarzeneggar`s will to power without acknowledging the fraud of the IFBB (founder Joe Wieder admits to awarding Arnold the 1970 body building trophy because “if I put Arnold on the cover (of Muscle and Fitness) I sell 3x copies”) or of his own (disavowed) drug use. The current debate around steroid use in sports is disingenuous- the drug has been here and will continue to be here. If this article hasn`t convinced how depressing this all is yet, I encourage you to read aloud the following list of sacrificial lambs of the entertainment industry, the professional wrestlers who have died as humiliated as they lived as result of the industry`s implicitly encouraged drug use: (Name, age, date of death, cause)<>

Jay Youngblood, 30, 9/1/85. Pancreas failure following a match.

Rick McGraw, 30. 11/1/1985. Heart Attack

Andrew “Bubba” Douglas, 42. 2/13/86. Heart Attack

Gino Hernandez, 29. 1/30/86. Cocaine Overdose.
<><><>El Solitario, 39. 4/6/86. Heart Attack
Mike Von Erich, 23. 4/12/87. Suicide.
Scott “Hog” Irwin, 35. 9/5/87. Brain Aneurysm
“Bad Bad” Leroy Brown, 38. Heart Attack
Ed “The Bull” Gantner, 31. 12/31/90. Gun Suicide. Both of his kidneys had failed due to steroid abuse.
Chief Thunder Mountain, 33. 8/91. Heart Attack.
Chris Von Erich, 21. 9/12/91. Gun Suicide.
Lance Idol, 32. 9/26/91. Heart disease
“Mad Dog” Buzz Sawyer, 32. 2/7/92. Cocaine Overdose.
Kerry Von Erich, 33. 2/18/93. Gun Suicide
Oro, 21. 10/26/93. Brain aneurysm during match.
Larry Cameron, 41. 12/13/1993. Heart Attack during a match.
Ray Candy, 43. 5/23/94. Heart Attack
Tiny Anderson, 42. 94. Kidney Failure.
Love Machine (AKA Beetlejuice, AKA Art Barr), 28. 11/23/94. Heart failure brought on by alcohol and painkillers.
Jerry “Crusher” Blackwell, 45. 1/22/95. Pneumonia.
“Hot Stuff” Eddie Gilbert, 33. 2/13/95. Heart Attack
Big John Studd, 47. 3/20/95. Liver Cancer.
“Mr. America” Don Ross (AKA Ripper Savage), 48. 6/2/95. Heart Attack
Black Venus, 47. 9/29/95. Heart Attack
Dick Murdoch, 49. 6/15/95. Heart Attack
Neil Superior, 33. 8/23/96. Died in a long, wild altercation with police. The pathologist ruled the nature of the death as “undetermined” and the cause as “multiple drug use and arteriosclerotic cardiovascular disease”.
Big City Mike, 38. 1/3/97. Heart Failure.
Plum Mariko, 29. 8/16/97. Brain aneurysm from a blow to the head during match.
Jeep Swenson, 40. 8/19/97. Heart Attack.
Brian Pillman, 35. 10/5/97. Heart Attack.
Big E Sleaze, 22. 10/26/1997. Gun Suicide
Louie Spiccoli, 27. 2/15/97. Choked on own vomit after mixing alcohol and soma.
Shane Shamrock, 22. 8/18/98. Shot by police during domestic disturbance.
Dan Curtis, 12/29/98. Heart Attack
“Ravishing” Rick Rude, 41. 4/20/99. Heart attack. A bottle of prescription painkillers was found by his body.
The Renegade, 33. 2/23/99. Gun Suicide.
Yuel Lovett, 28. 7/31/99. Heart Attack
Brian Hildebrand, 37. 9/8/99. Stomach Cancer.
Tony Rumble, 43. 12/19/99. Heart Attack.
Gary Albright, 36. 1/7/00. Heart Attack during match.
Mr. Ebony, 46. 12/19/99. Heart Attack
Bobby Duncum Jr., 34. 1/24/00. Overdose on painkillers and alcohol.
Jumbo Tsuruta, 49. 5/13/00. Complications from liver surgery.
Harlem Warlord, 32. 6/28/00. In surgery.
Chris Duffy, 36, 8/25/00. Seizure.
Canadian Destroyer, 41. 9/10/00. Heart Attack.
Yokozuna, 34. 10/23/00. Heart Attack
Rick Bolton, 49. 12/5/00. Heart Attack.
Sombra Negra, 30, 6/1/01 Heart Attack
Terry “Bam Bam Bigelow” Gordy, 40. 7/16/01. Heart Attack
Monster Ripper, 40, 7/27/01. Suicide
Russ Haas, 27. 12/15/01. Heart Attack.
Mike Davis, 46. 12/25/01. Heart Failure
Jeff “Rattlesnake” Raitz, 38. 2/9/02. Heart Attack.
Big Dick Dudley, 37. 5/16/02. Kidney Failure brought on by painkillers.
The British Bulldog, 39. 5/18/02. Heart Attack.
Billy Joe Travis, 11/22/02. Heart Attack
Curt Hennig (AKA Mr. Perfect), 44. 2/9/03. Acute cocaine intoxication.
“Bullwhip” Danny Johnson, 49, 7/20/03. Kidney and Liver Failure.
Joe Powers, 41. 9/3/03. Liver Disease
Anthony “Pitbull 2″ Durante, 36. 9/24/03. Oxycontin overdose.
Road Warrior Hawk, 45. 10/19/03. Heart Attack.
Crash Holly, 34. 11/6/03. Choked on a pool of his own vomit and blood after taking more than 90 soma pills.
Jerry Tuite (AKA The Wall AKA Malice AKA Gigantes), 36. 12/5/03. Heart Attack.
Mike Lozanski, 35. 12/18/03. Heart Condition.
Danny Fargo, 44. 12/26/03. Heart Attack.
Hercules, 47. 3/6/04. Heart Attack.
Victor the Bodyguard, 38. 6/20/04. Heart Attack.
Big Bossman, 42. 9/23/04. Heart Attack.
El Texano, 47, 1/15/05. Lung and respiratory failure.
Chris Candido, 33. 4/28/05. Blood clots (common steroid side effect)
Eddie Guerrero, 38. 11/13/05. Heart failure brought on by high levels of steroids and narcotics.
Lord Humongous, 36. 1/29/06. Kidney Failure.
Johnny Grunge, 39. 2/26/06. Complications from sleep apnea.
Earthquake, 42. 6/7/07. Bladder Cancer.
Tiger Khan, 33. 6/26/06. Heart Attack.
Jimmy “Hustler” Alicea, 33. 11/21/06. Heart Attack.
The Lovely Elizabeth, 42. 5/1/03. Choked to death on own vomit after mixing alcohol and painkillers.
Chris Benoit, 40. 6/24/07. Double murder/suicide.

<>
While the “Shakespeare is not Shakespeare” controversy springs primarily from a mixture of crude empirical skepticism on the part of the stupid (“no one that poor could be that smart”) and a more sympathetic desire to disperse the concept of artistic genius to the wind, the “Stonespeare” debate is instead comprised mostly of desperate inductive reasoning. The sublimated desire to rob the concept “Shakespeare” of its daunting significance for those of us who, in a sweaty reek after slamming coffee after coffee, can barely summon the coherent thought from which the single sentence will be agonizingly wrought is something I am certainly sympathetic to. But the debate over whether the theoretically baked Bard was inspired by chemicals or not seems wrongheaded, and not only in the sense that none of the clay pipes analyzed are even assumed to be Shakespeare`s (although one pipe stem found in the garden of John Harvard`s (for whom Harvard is named) mother was verified to contain cocaine residue). Regardless of the chemicals he ingested, it was his experience while under the influence of these chemicals which undoubtedly formed the basis of his inspiration.
In any case, cannabis traces cannot even be verified by Thackeray, who clearly wants them to be there. But his noted 17th century pipe analysis (which is not limited to those found in Stratford, but also those found in colonial South Africa and Holland) does confirm traces of a few other chemicals, many of which are far more inspiring and ridiculous in their effects than marijuana (which may or may not have caused Shakespeare to become irrationally hungry for bisket bread, and may or may not have caused him to jam on the cittern for an unreasonably long period of time). Most of the chemicals, found in residual form in several Stratford Upon-Avon pipes are to create an aromatic billow; they include borneol, camphor (smoked presumably to mask the scent of tobacco or other things), vanillin and cinnamaldehyde (bark of the cinnamon tree). Other residues give rise to funnier imaginings. For instance, from the traces of cocaine we can infer Shakespeare in a situation similar to the following:

“I puffed a VERY SMALL amount, along with some vanillin, and sat back to see what it would do. It comes on relatively quickly, and no trepidation. Things just start to become more vivid and interesting, and brighter, and you do too…
at first I was very relaxed and layed down, realizing how high I was. VERY. After about 15 minutes. Body high – not visual, but sensual and stimulating. Then a beautiful french girl that everyone was intimidated by came over to check on me and I told her ‘Je besoin de beaucoup de practice avec mon fracais – mon vocabulaire ce’st merde, y les numeros me confuse completment’ – which is damn good french for me – and it was on.

She made me dance with her and I have never felt so wonderful in my life. Well, maybe – but it was truly transformational. I love to dance and do it to engage in physical release and have reached spiritual levels with it – but this was unprecedented.

Not only was I bonded to this girl emotionally – the fact that we were using our bodies to communicate to music was absolutely transcendent. Everyone watching us – no self-concsciousness – only bliss. joy. My body naturally engaging in spontaneous art, performace, and communication. The boys said we looked completely hot – they were riveted. They asked me what it felt like and I announced proudly that I felt like ‘A Porn Star with Magic Powers’ – and I was.

And I guess I am.

Completely comfortable with my sexual power in a healthy and positive way.
Some drugs that make you feel sexy will make people do things that they regret later – engaging in intimacy with people that at the time seems meaningful – later a let down. risky behavior. When this same stunning girl came onto me later (I swear to god – she showed me a dildo in her backpack and said ‘I want sex – come downstairs with me’ I did not go.) I was looking forward to a real friendship with her but was not tempted to rush things just because I felt so sexy. “

Or in using Nutmeg (traces of which were definitively found in the Stratford pipes), perhaps as the “eleventh muse”:

“7am – 20g of whole nutmeg ground into my clay pipe and smoked with cinnamaldehyde

8am – feeling nausious, and decided to go back to sleep.

4pm – woke up feeling sick and a little dizzy

4:30 – a lot more dizzy, alot more sick and threw up

The fear overtook me though my first/worst bad trip. This was the only time that I ever was thrown into the hurling chaos of a ‘bummer’ I was able to hold it off for a few minutes through guided meditation and speaking through my minds eye with my dog. Quickly overtaken for the next few hours of existence by visions of death and failure, being sent off to jail losing all hope of everything.

6pm – pass out on bed

11:30 next morning – woke up, still feeling quite dizzy but not sick

1pm – effects wearing off

3pm – back to baseline”

<> In any case, regardless of the exact chemicals Shakespeare experimented with, it undoubtedly the unique experiences he had while under the influence of those chemicals that form the basis for his remarkable oeuvre.

<>First, a plane lands into a shimmering pool of melting sun- someone has arrived somewhere. The next shot after this is through a window, two men, the environment reflecting glassily on their faces, talk about “making fists with your toes”. From this point on DIE HARD takes transparent panes as its primary visual metaphor, and the things that a buff man can do to these surfaces as its basic depiction of action. Throughout the film, John McClane and his adversaries stare blankly through it, furiously smash it, frantically struggle to smash it, quietly yell through it, listen to it break and fly through it at the times when the music pumping the loudest. Why? In a movie that is culturally relevant enough to make 83 million dollars in 1988 (not as culturally relevant as Crocodile Dundee 2, which made about twenty million more dollars, perhaps, but contemporary enough in its themes to spawn four similar sequels, each of which made more money than the previous, with Live Free or Die Hard making over twice as much money as the first installment), there is some type of echo resonating from the panes that is different from the explosions so often cited as the franchise`s chief attraction. Visual spectacle is John McTiernan`s bed and bathwater; he`s immersed in it, and taking the film`s bloated working class presumptions to heart, glass is the ubiquitous, mundane surface upon which he can bring the fantasy down to play.
Die Hard may be coarse, but it`s articulate, and the play of light and shadows on the panes are loud. The surface is used in several manners, as a familiar metaphor of the “invisible walls” which separate human beings from each other (since this is the eighties and the reconciliation of an as yet unfathomed global capitalism to human terms works out in the manner of conflict between aspiration and greed, or as revelations of gaps- between worth and status, use and value etc.- these invisible walls are almost singularly the brackets around income figures; the glass walls which form the cubicles at Nakatomi Corp being one of many examples), as a pretty screen on which light carelessly plays (why show LA city lights when you can show LA city lights reflected on the face of face of a dazed, open mouth McClane? That`s visual economy, especially when you consider that for McClane “California” is a synonym for “fag” and he`s allowed his distance even in a closeup), as a luxury material itself (glass is perhaps the ideal material to embody the aesthetic of the eighties- the smoothness of the suave fast talking businessman, the flatness of a Nagel print, the transparency of idealistic talk, plus it looks like diamonds when it shatters). Frequently glass is employed as a subtle reflexive tool as well, as there is hardly a car that drives by that does not create a stunning flare in the lens of the camera shooting it. These aspects are always working together all at once, and while Die Hard, as an action movie, brings the material`s quality as a barrier to a nearly hackneyed attention, it is always rescued by the simplicity of the visual effect of light on glass. It`s like shooting at dusk; the sun`s overbearing metaphoric presence is allayed by the saturation and diffusion of its light. In fact, Die Hard is the only movie I can remember that is able to wallow in glimmering visuals while taking place in such a bland setting- at night in an office building, the realm of the listless vacuum.

John McClane, a populist, working class NYPD guy who mugs more people with his face than do his adversaries with their blackjacks, has a hard time communicating with words. He prefers to use his body- that`s why he`s recommended to make fists with his feet, and his face looks like a fist wearing a meaty glove. From the first time he gets in a limo (ever, in his life, the real man), where he prefers to sit up front with the jive talkin driver Argyle rather than be secluded by the glass barrier in the back, McClane has an uneasy relationship with the surface. His work ethic and “enough bullshit” attitude has put a strain on his relationship with his wife, but he plans to make amends by surprising her at a work party with an enormous stuffed bear. But the moment he steps into the Nakatomi corporation he is again frustrated by glass. Tapping on the touch screen “that helps you find your dick if you need to take a leak” only reveals that his wife has repudiated their marriage- she has taken her maiden name Gennaro back for the purposes of her career, leaving McClane to shoulder the burden of his name and his traditional values alone. Tap tap frown. “I guess you don`t miss my name” he snidely tells his wife later while wiping his armpit with towel, bemoaning the sacrifice of American patriarchal values to global financial practicality. Though the reflection knows he`s wrong (“very mature” he quips into the mirror after she leaves), he Feels he`s right, and it`s this burning feeling within his stout frame that forms the basis of his struggle with insensate glass and all that separates his being from where it makes a difference.
It`s no surprise that the terrorists first appear onscreen with huge glasses, which are pushed up the nose confidently after the first killing of the security guard. The “buff nerd” European wears glasses as he cuts alarm wiring; his brother wears a reflective facemask as he chainsaws cables. When the computer hacker “bets his ass he wishes to proceed”, he puts a pair of goggles over his regular glasses. These glasses are not merely to indicate that the terrorists are intellectuals, as it goes without saying that all those who don`t think in terms of practical justice are misdirected and enemies of the burning flame, it`s more to show they have incorporated artifice and division into their very being. McClane comes closer to victory in proportion to the amount of clothes he sheds. Hans Gruber, the chief terrorist, on the other hand, finds it difficult to kill Nakatomi only because in doing so he would be ruining a nice suit. And when McClane first taunts the terrorists by sending them the desecrated corpse of the buff nerd, the glasses are removed and a humiliating santa hat replaces them.

As things begin to heat up and McClane first becomes aware of his singularity (both as an individual and as a force of justice) in his struggle to save human lives from the destructive force of money and corporate collectivity, he is at first befuddled by the glass which surrounds him. He watches Nakatomi`s blood spray all over a window through which he stares weakly aghast. He flees, gun drawn, into an unfinished room (the skyscraper, paradigmatically, is “under construction”) wherein sheets of glass appear to be aligned without structure and panics. It`s all boiling confusion for naked man in this glass funhouse, and it`s only exacerbated when, seeing a police car turn blindly from the scene of terror in the distance, he bangs weakly on the glass, yelling “You stupid motherfuckers! No!”. Still caught up in society`s modes of repression, McClane still views the surface as an impenetrable wall, and his tough cursing at this point is more impotent than wry. This changes the next instant when, in response to the buff nerd`s assertion that “there are rules for policemen… you won`t kill me”, McClane murders him with a sweaty grapple. McClane, as an individual struggling for survival, is now as free to break the glass as he is the rules. “Shit where am I?” he asks before he knocks a window down into a deep chasm (no shattering is heard, no breaking yet).

Glass, in it`s ability to be passed through in various ways, marks a threshold. The film is conscious of this, and in its conception of action as an ever escalating series of plateaus, uses this quality of glass in a sophisticated manner. Thus as “Al/Pal”, McClane`s fat black radio buddy who can`t shoot people due to the equivocality of justice in an ambiguous world, agrees to investigate the minor disturbance at Nakatomi, he pauses, then pushes open the glass door of a convenience store. Al is a man who cares too much about others to make such big deal of his individuality, it is his lot to open doors meaningfully rather than bust through them aggressively. In this function he`s more McClane`s wife than Holly Gennaro; they humanize each other while the man and woman weep with nostalgia and struggle to communicate.

<>
The next threshold becomes obvious in this light. McClane, trapped and hidden in the upper floors of the Nakatomi building, must alert the world of the situation. Al, as a lil old beat cop oblivious to what`s going on up in the towers, can`t see the problem unless it has a human face. McClane`s human face can`t be seen tapping on the glass from miles away. As Al circles the empty lot in front of the building obliviously looking for a clue, McClane tries to break the glass with a chair. It only succeeds in making a gaping vaginal crack in the glass (“Mother of…” John whispers at the crack). Only a dead human body, tossed through the window onto Al`s car has the visual and metaphorical force to break through this first pane. Glass is heard shattering for the first time, and for the first time a human connection is made. Al, freaking out, backs his car up too fast and breaks a window. As random machine gun fire and breaking glass is heard, McClane stands by his formerly vaginal window and quips “Welcome to the party asshole”.

<>A change of awareness is quickly visible onscreen. McClane, groping a corpse, finds European cigarettes and decides to `smoke em`. Cigarettes at this time were just beginning to acquire the encumbrance of controversy that would remove them from the standard repertoire of the male freebody and place them into the realm of permanent intent and perpetual commentary. McClane, enthusiastically lighting the stog as though his dick were freshly limp or his stomach newly full, suddenly indicates that he has become aware of his position as a movie icon. He calls himself Roy Rogers in a conversation over CB with Hans Gruber, and immediately following this alludes to the perceived invulnerability of Arnold Schwarzeneggar. By no means does he reference DIE HARD as a concept itself, but his limited insight into the world of pop culture reveals an awareness that wasn`t directly apparent before. The cigarette will take on increased significance from this point out, demarcating where breaths should be taken and with what degree of severity one should judge the increasing frivolity of the action from this point on. Smokes happen immediately before and immediately after action scenes, and with McClane taking these breathers as opportunities to either jibe with Pal on the CB (who, as tough anonymity gradually fades into bland familiarity with the slow influx of emotionally charged reminiscences from either side, becomes Al Powell, struggle buddy) or to display his gruff New York hospitality to the lamely disguised Gruber (an hospitality that quickly turns out to be coldly neutered when the two dickwrestle for the cleverly unloaded gun), the cigarette offers always a way in which ironic distance can be incorporated into the structure of the film, and within the body of John McClane.
With the police force, rather than the police Man, involved, the satirical impulses of the movie become more robust, and social commentary becomes more explicit and takes on greater proportions. From the moment the deputy, lt. deputy, cameramen and beat cops arrive on the scene the audience is prodded to smirk on the plodding imbecility of Justice by decree in contrast to the situational justice doled out by legal vigilante. The force, a bloated mass guided by the tactic book rather than the more intimate type of experience (remember, he`s nearly naked) which informs the lone man`s mute and powerful reasoning, rushes immediately into doom and humiliation in the hands of the terrorists. Gruber, steepling his fingers in anticipation, knows that the bureaucracy of “the force” ensures that its actions will always be half compromise and half sluggishness. He proves this by waiting for them to come to him, greeting them with a hail of machine gunfire that kills the swat team and breaks the glass around the lights that attempt to provide vision for them. The shattering glass in this instance is a foregone conclusion- it reveals to Dwayne T Robinson what he should have already known: the terrorists are beyond the ken of ordinary experience, and leadership in extraordinary circumstances is connected more a matter of physicality than of knowledge or hierarchy. McClane, watching the slaughter of the policemen, is more attuned to the uniqueness of the present situation. He immediately breaks the forbidding glass around a fire axe and grips it purposefully. But McClane has grown weary with such petty symbolism; with cops corpses lying everywhere and the world`s attention turned toward the situation at Nakatomi, a more significant metaphor is necessary. “Fuck it” he whispers, handily tying a grip of plastic explosives to a swivel chair. The explosives destroy an entire floor of the glass building.
The significance of the act does not go unheeded. “I don`t know who you think you are but we got a hundred people down here and they are covered in glass!” shouts the acting chief.
“Glass? Who gives a shit about glass? Who the fuck is this?”. Though McClane is dismissive of the metaphor, the fact remains that those on the force are now physically inundated with his reality.
“This is deputy chief of police Dwayne T Robinson and I am in control of the situation!”
“From up here it doesn`t look like you`re in charge of Jack Shit.” McClane cannot resist the meaty slap to Dwayne`s dignity. It`s redundant, because the deputy chief`s stated position (deputy) is emasculating enough. But it`s also necessary, because the breaking glass can no longer be treated ignored or treated as a natural part of the DIE HARD world. Just as before, when McClane dimly realized his role as a movie hero, here he vaguely articulates an awareness of the threshold which has just been crossed. The humdrum world of submission to judicial bureaucracy and capitulation in the face of the hierarchy which finds its basis in texts and precedence rather than in utilitarian practicality and bodily strength employed in the service of the moment`s arbitrator has been violated; a new awareness is called for, one in which Jack Shit will be suplexed and the issue of who controls what will never come into play.
With John McClane now making such a big deal of his presence, there is nothing left for the other meaningful characters in the film to do than to attempt to know him. He and Al share an inane moment, trading cliches before Al recites the ingredients of a Twinkie from memory. With so many of the elements that separate DIE HARD`s fictional reality from the place from which we suspend our disbelief shattered, this incredibly mundane list becomes meaningful dialog, perhaps the only kind possible. In contrast, Gruber`s disguise (“Bill Clay”, California fag), which he adopts in an effort to dispose of McClane personally, is thin and transparent, and not only to the audience. “You think I`m fuckin stupid Hans?” McClane asks him.
At this point in the film the action has been escalated to a point where every gunshot is followed by the sound or image of glass shattering. As McClane flees, Hans` impotence is diminished by his ability to shatter glass into beautiful shards. In fact, with the two adversaries as yet unable to harm each other, destroying panes becomes an even more explicit intent. McClane shoots a thug`s knee and the thug falls headfirst into a window, cracking it into huge grisly shards quite different from the small fragments which have become like tinsel on the edifice. Hans retaliates by shooting computer screens, causing glass dust to billow up. McClane shoots a window pane, and a close up of the gem like shards follows. This is the first time glass in its broken form (the normal form at this point) is treated to a close up, and it is meaningful. “Schieten Fenster!” Hans commands in German to his dull witted accomplice. When no action follows, he screams again, in English: “Shoot the Glass!”. How explicit can you get. The characters are done fucking around with the artifice of the narrative- it is now time to address the visual metaphor directly, and release again the danger latent in the paradigm shift. With this renewal of intent (Hans may as well be shooting at the camera lens), the enemy gains the upper hand. Glass breaks everywhere, showers of shimmers fill the screen. Hans has realized that McClane`s power lies not in his ability to avoid gunshots and make swivel chair bombs, but in making war on the structure of understanding itself. Destroy the mise en scene itself; escape from the confines of the narrative. The tactic works. McClane is left cowering under a desk, and he is forced to mutilate his feet walking on the broken glass in order to escape to a bathroom where he winces in mightily in front his quadruply reflected self.

There is hardly anywhere to go from here. McClane cowers in the bathroom, coming apart. Blood covers his body, he rips up his dirty tank top to make a puny tourniquet. The smoke which had formerly been contained within his frame fills the bathroom. He is nearly naked, exuding himself. As before, his body is the only asset with which he can combat the terrorists and the exploding narrative. He gropes his way to the top of the building, where the hostages await their doom. Bellowing the hostages out of the danger zone, he avoids bullets a hail of bullets from the misaligned FBI, runs up against a bomb clock and must rappel down the side of Nakatomi building with a jerry rigged hose. As McClane dangles from the side of the building on a crude tool of his own construction, he repeats the formula of the film one last time. He shoots a huge window to weaken it, then pushes through the glass with his whole body in slow motion. The threat of the terrorists has been for the most part eliminated, the hostages have been for the most part saved. With these plot elements dealt with, McTiernan can revel whole heartedly in the spectacle of the glass breaking, framing the shot as a celebration, a recapitulation and an exclamation. If one shot were to define the film and to stick out in the audience`s memory, it would be this.
Following the visual drama, the top floor of the building explodes, and for the next five minutes, glass shards are literally raining from the sky. Having nowhere else to go, the broken glass is removed from the artificial environment of the corporate tower and is incorporated into the natural environment. Like the clouds and the night, glass shower has become a fact of life, and no one seems to pay any attention to it. Upon McClane`s success, the act of breaking is also dispersed. Argyle, the lazy limo driver who has been inactive all movie, suddenly propels into action and smashes his limo into the terrorists getaway car, shattering the windshield. It`s now anyone`s game.
When McClane finally murders Hans and reunites perfunctorily with Holly Gennaro, the glass rain switches to paper. Documents hail from the sky as they exit the building. Each of the characters slides hypocritically into a role of diminished awareness, reflecting the paradox of the narrative in a film which has shattered it. Al, empowered to kill again, shoots a criminal. Holly gives her name as McClane to a reporter, before punching a different one. And John slips casually into the back seat of a limo and cruises away, artificially acknowledging the image of wealth which he had spent so much time trying to destroy.

First of all, the title is misleading. Dee, the Chinese syllable in question, is more psychotic than psychedelic, in that the latter term refers explicitly to drug use and throughout the movie the cop is clean as a licked badge when he’s not drunk. That three identities dwell unknown to each other within him makes him both, however. Simultaneity, the symbolic fluidity of identity: these are concepts experienced most fully as revelations while under the influence of drugs, I’d argue. I’d perhaps struggle hopelessly to back up my argument with something other than a desperately warm smile and a vague anecdote, but nonetheless I’d try to do it, and the truth forced me into another humiliating situation involving the flailing of the ego, I’d grimace and accept it. On the other hand, there’s nothing about a clumsy time lapse and a CGI miscarriage that are inherently psychedelic. The cop’s goofy lil’ buddy forces you out of a drug revery pretty swiftly. A sad situation; realizing you are choosing not to laugh. A forced laugh is still a laugh. Let us hear them ring.
The three identities which are locked in a sweaty grapple within Dee’s agonized and emotionless physical frame are that of a cop, a gangster, and a violent ninja in a rain slicker thirsting for human blood (the ignominious “Killer in Mask”). The cop has the upper hand outwardly, in that Dee looks like a cop- the skin is so tightly wrapped around his head that one can’t help but envision the pulsing half cock with jesus beard pubes his whole being keeps so far buried in his stiff body that his tight lips can say it never existed. Dee’s face glimmers with perspiration under the blue neon lights of DRINK BAR where he spends most of his time, pretending to be a Triad member. How can anyone take him seriously? The lil buddy, White Board, sees right through this sad sack right off the bat. “I want to see serious change in the Triad. I’m voting Dee for Triad leadership!” So Dee is a representative again, of White Board’s childish wishes, “toughness” “justice” things like that. Dee can only grimace and pretend like he’s pretending not to care, because who is Dee anyway? A ripped body and a face, taut or slack.
White Board idolizes Dee, he wants to be in the Triad so he can say I’m in the Triad. Dee denigrates this ambition, but only because he is a reactionary, not because he has sussed out the truth or he is aware of any danger arising from the situation. Why does Dee want to be in the Triad? Because he is a cop. Why do I want what I want? Because I am not I. Dee has a hard time ahead of him. Both these buddies sacrifice their identities at the alter of an idea. The resulting acting is manic on the part of White Board and wooden of Dee. From the abscessed seed sprout two roots.
At a massage parlor, Dee catches sight of a pretty woman. His blank look causes the woman, BB, to shout “Haven’t you ever seen a pretty woman before?” He sulks off, but they meet later at the drink bar, where Dee proves his lack of humanity by stopping a broken bottle thrust with his hand. BB is attracted to this act of spastic reflex, and is drawn to the powerful vacancy within, like a nug through the vacuum. A scene of her lovingly applying a puffy white thing to his slashed wrist follows. This act of tenderness sickens Dee. The violence within him is deep, so must the cuts and the fucking be. He only becomes aroused after BB physically assaults him for being such a dick and shooting wine at her when she caught on fire. After a particularly awkward sex scene in which Dee keeps his shoulders very stiff (the imagined crotch thrust in this context becomes garishly vivid) and his neck craned toward the pillow, the couple mellows out a little bit. Dee makes a tall toy ninja hold his cigarette. BB looks through a hole in the newspaper at Dee. Both chortle. These activities are placeholders for real interaction, of which Dee, at least, is incapable.
Dee’s experiences as a cop are defined by his comprehensibly strained interactions with his lieutenant. The two meet at a brightly graffitied corporate drainhole where they fish for shrimp (“Fishing for shrimp is boring!” the lieutenant repeatedly complains) in the chlorinated water. Each has different motives for their presence at this erstwhile hiding spot. Dee wants to be told that he is a cop, he also wants to know what this means. The lieutenant wants to thoroughly assert his power over his underling. “You’re a cop, you don’t have a choice”, he lectures. His smug grin, his complaints and his directives all allude to the fact the Lieutenant is a real cop and Dee the pretender casting aspersions toward badge. Dee the Triad member becomes the subject of the real cop’s interrogation, and Dee the cop disappears at the moment when the context suggests he should be present the most. His tough, expressionless face is concerning more than it is concerned.
Meanwhile, at the clandestine spots where the Triad meets to tape suspected snitches heads up before the violent pipe smashing, Dee lurks in the shadows, cowering from his perceived identity. He succeeds remarkably well amidst all the bowing and scraping before the fat Triad boss, who takes the burden of personality upon his irate shoulders for the sake of the entire organization. The bland shells (who are unceremoniously butchered by their own flaccid penises grown into one, hard in the mirror, the faceless, slow moving reflection – Killer in Mask) pay their tribute for this selfless shouldering of a social unit’s shameful burden by mentioning the Boss’s name in nearly every sentence. “Oh Boss says who’s the cop?” “Boss wants you to play fair” “Boss needs a nine iron” etc. The boss, fat, dissatisfied, looks responsibly on. Dee, used to this type of total capitulation before the voice that can make a sound, has no trouble resembling the weak pawns in his company. Towards what end is not clear. Dee is silent and muddled in the arms of the Boss, waiting for time to elapse.
Dee’s third identity, the hollow gestalt Killer in Mask, erupts compulsively from a hole in Dee’s eye burned in by the swirling blue light of an ambulance. When Dee was a child, a vague traumatic event involving the death of his peanut throwing father sealed the Killer in Mask within him, only to be released when the exact visual conditions of the trauma are replicated. The Killer in Mask is a lump of poison molded by arthritic hands into a symbol for action in a static world. The news is all over him, his awkward name is on everybody’s lips. “Who is this person who is nobody and why is he?” is all they can think. Because the cops can do nothing other than be cops and the Triad can do nothing other than defer to the Boss’s diminishingly meaningful wishes, attention swarms around the Killer in Mask, whose uncertain identity allows for just the possibility of change. But the unconscious butcher is careless with this possibility; his fidelity is to the poorly repressed violence that represents the possibility of his own existence. The flashing ambulance light that sends Dee into the trance that is itself an invocation of indiscriminate death does so only by means of the manner in which it recurs. The reproduced moment asserts the fixity that is only suggested by the police force and the Triad. Change becomes impossible; people who are not characters die.
At first the Killer in Mask spares White Board and BB, this is only because they, still being uncertain as to who the Killer is, maintain the possibility of shift within him (and consequently within Dee, without whom the relationships which pin PSYCHEDELIC COP together would not exist). But in his mercy he betrays himself- choice never existed, only death. White Board and BB both find the ninja mask that Dee has left unhidden in his trunk. It`s a death wish which impels them to beg him to put it on, to extort him to re-enact the sequence in which they were left alive by the Killer in Mask. BB is unabashedly turned on by the idea of the Killer, to the extent that the narration suggests that she is in love with two men. The moment she realizes that both these men are the same is the moment all the characters in the movie are obliterated.
When White Board demands that Dee put on the mask and point a knife at his forehead nothing happens. The sequences in which the Killer in Mask emerges are marked by a drastic change in the visual style and temporal aesthetics of the movie. The set is cast into a deep TV screen blue glow and double exposures, slow cross dissolves and strange bellows from offscreen demarcate a realm of grim slaughter quite apart from the sallow caresses and terse chortling that reverberates elsewhere. White Board and BB both need to recreate this poisonous atmosphere very specifically in order to feel alive. Thus it’s just Dee goofin with a ninja mask until he gives the precise bugged out look with his eyes and transforms into a living memory of a real experience.

That’s what White Board is looking for, not just the identity of the Killer but death experienced twice over, as a threat and, in repetition, as a fact. BB too wants this – when she demands that Dee brush into her shoulder repeatedly, just as the Killer in Mask did, she gets frustrated because there is too much both of Dee’s familiarity and of the orange kitchen light in the action, and not enough doom.
It soon becomes obvious both to the Police force and the Triad that the Killer in Mask must be Dee. With the ambiguity of identity gone, the last threshold of possibility is breached and there is nothing left for the characters to do but die whimpering in the street. In the climax, the Killer in Mask emerges without his mask. The massacre is pitiful, the three identities merged into one berserk Dee (“going nut” as one newspaper reporter puts it). In his mechanistic rage he stabs White Board through the heart without a flinch of remorse. BB is shot by the pigs, and Dee for a moment snaps out of his rage. He carries her to the top floor of an apartment building. BB begs him to commit suicide. The cops try to talk him down, knowing that in submission and control there remains a possibility for existence, if only for the imagined form at the top of the pyramid. But for Dee this possibility is precluded by the fact that, in the unification of his identities, he is no longer clearly a cop. Instead of listening he looks down into BB’s eyes and experiences every scene they shared together in nostalgic total recall. Once again, repetition and certainty are synonymous with death; Dee, crying, clutching BB’s bleeding corpse answers her plea. “Don’t part from me for a day” she gags. “I’ve never had a choice” he answers, and jumps to the pavement. He’s right; the moment he`’ able to say “I” honestly he no longer has a choice.
In the denouement a reporter, White Board’s duplicitous girlfriend, takes credit for the story. Bringing a copy of the movie’s script to Dee’s grave she burns it and sheds a tear. “It’s sad” she explains. The final shot is of the script burning, a reflexive sequence that turns a frown toward the audience and a grimace toward the process of representation itself. Oh the sad sad days of trying!

Given that the New York Times has long found itself consumed by a compulsive need to scrutinize upper middle-class leisure to a point of complete and total exhaustion (see House and Home, Thursday Styles, Sunday Styles, the rest of the paper), it can come as little surprise that its comparatively recent penetration of the “blogosphere” would drag this dark obsession into the full light of…broadband, or whatever. Their dilemma is understandable — how could hundreds and hundreds of 10-point pages per week suffice to track the vicissitudes of yoga, Blackberry accessories, and daring vacation-home refinancing? And who better to blog the rigors of unbounded disposable income than renowned academic Stanley Fish? This week’s senescent outburst, “Getting Coffee is Hard to Do” runs through a dizzying litany of irritations and overstimulations that confront the cane-wielding sophist at Starbucks. Fish gazes awestruck at the “staggering array” of creams and sugars, boggles at drinks containing “more parts than an internal combustion engine,” and furrows a scholarly brow at unreasonable prices: “it costs a lot, $3 and up.” The man longs for the coffee shops of yore, places where

when you wanted a cup of coffee you went into a nondescript place fitted out largely in linoleum, Formica and neon, sat down at a counter, and, in response to a brisk ‘What’ll you have, dear?’ said, ‘Coffee and a cheese Danish.’ Twenty seconds later, tops, they arrived, just as you were settling into the sports page.

Alas, this post-Edward Hopper utopia has given way to the concentration-camp conditions of the mass-market luxury coffee shop:

[W]orst of all, what you’re paying for is the privilege of doing the work that should be done by those who take your money. The coffee shop experience is just one instance of the growing practice of shifting the burden of labor to the consumer — gas stations, grocery and drug stores, bagel shops (why should I put on my own cream cheese?), airline check-ins, parking lots. It’s insert this, swipe that, choose credit or debit, enter your PIN, push the red button, error, start again.

Yeah, why the fuck should he put on his own cream cheese? I think we all know what Professor Fish is talking about here. When I waltz down to the Starbucks around the corner from campus I am ALWAYS getting blindfolded, gagged, forced into a plane and flown to the coffee fields of Ecuador, where I toil–bombarded by the heartless rays of the equatorial sun–until my hands gleam scarlet with sunburn, blood and the mocking pigment of the mature coffee berry. Somebody get this man another honorary Ph.D! The American consumer of luxury products has hitherto struggled unsung under the crippling burden of exploitative labor conditions. Fuck the man! Shoppers of the Whole Foods UNITE! I mean, where does big business get off not providing liveried servants to carry me from the leathern throne of my BMW M5 to the order counter. And how about a congressionally-sanctioned army of enslaved telepathic baristas? Why should I be forced to utter a verbal command? I have rights!