Dread, Walking.

I have to read your pieces every day, because they're so 'edible.' I never know what is going to happen to me as a result, because I can finally say the undistinguished thing (which I will usually try to avoid at all costs): Most of it I obviously don't have the training for (I don't mind that), and the other part, or rather the parts I enjoy 'eating' most, I might not have the training for either, but just vaguely imagine I do (I do mind that, but probably can't do much about it .')

I don't have the training either, so that's ok. Except in this case, where the training consists solely of watching TV.

Okay, because I really like these things about London, which are parallel in many ways to 'Voice' things in NYC neighborhoods. Also, cannot resist the hypnosis induced by the mere fact of the existence of the horror of Philippe Vasset--and yet I am sure he is not existence-inducing. But without him, I may have to renounce the world of cool.

what are
>'Voice' things in NYC neighborhoods ?

you mean like the Village Voice?

Oh, yes, they still actually talk about neighborhoods here so that you can tell what's happening on the ground, especially Brooklyn and Queens.

Missed it on Friday but just watched the repeat: massively disappointing. I've genuinely never had the misfortune of meeting any such people (rarely been to London -- do they exist anywhere else?), so the cringe-inducing-accuracy element you speak of if not something I can comment on and the parody was somewhat lost on me. I can well believe they do exist, but even so, I can hardly imagine that they're worthy of Morris's considerable satirical talents. Very sorry sight to see Morris resort to plagiarizing Ricky Gervais though (some of those scenes and much of the acting was clearly pinched from 'The Office'). I thought the predictable shock-tactics of the scene in which there was a wide shot showing a poster saying 'Nazi Experiments in Colour' was particularly lame. I guess it might get better, but not holding out any hopes on this one.

don't want to get into full-scale cultstuds dissection but a couple of points

1)`The "You had to be there" element - True, the target is the media, so the target is a small insular clique of people, inevitably metropolitan, who wield an influence disproportionate to their talents, capabilities, and intelligence - but isn't this what all Morris' stuff is about? Surely the tentacular reach of The Face and Dazed and Confused reaches beyond the capital, even if it is only in Hoxton Sq. that people take the fashion tips seriously? Precisely because of its secondary diffusion through the David Brents of this world who want to give their product a bit of 'edge'. Which brings us to...

2)Yes, there were a few moments when Barley literally metamorphosed into Brent. But : (a) is it possible, or even desirable, to create a sitcom _not_ influenced by The Office, given that it singlehandedly reinvigorated the genre and used it to treat a pressing contemporary problem, the banal nihilism of the capitalist office drone, and pomo-irony's place in perpetuating it? (b)think of it as a deliberate reference; after all, Barley thinks he's a true revolutionary, but all he's really doing is setting up another third-rate inefficient sub-corporate entity that runs on bullshit and exploitation. He thinks he's a new breed, but really he's just his dad (David Brent).

3)If the 'Nazi Experiments' was meant as a shock tactic, Morris really has lost touch. I think it was just a mild ambient quip about TV 'product'.

>they still actually talk about neighborhoods

I think all cities retain (or invent) neighborhoods, otherwise people wouldn't know who to feel superior to...

Hmmm, ok. Consider myself corrected. Haven't really given it that much thought. That comment was just belched out straight after I saw it (and while South Park was on -- which, incidentally, I thought in many ways far superior, not least because it was actually *funny*; don't recall laughing once at the Morris thing). If something in the world forces me to think, it's never what appears on t'idiot box. It's true that you don't always have to have "been there" in order to appreciate good satire, of course (I love 'The Office', for example, and have never worked in one); I was just saying that, since I've never met such people, the accuracy/cringe-factor was a little lost on me (whereas we've all met David Brent [our dad if not our boss], I don't think we've all met this Nathan character or this new breed of techno-media idiot).

Is it possible for sitcoms *not* to be influenced by 'The Office'? -- yes (at least, I hope so). *Influence* is fine, but some of those scenes were lifted straight out of David Brent scenes. May help my viewing if I regard them as deliberate, but I don't really buy it. I also don't recall every comedy immeditaely rushing to rip-off 'Faulty Towers' after it came out (though may've been too young to notice), however genre-defining it was.

Lastly, I did get the reference to 'The Third Reich in Colour' (Channel 5) with that poster, just thought the joke wasn't worth devoting an entire scene to (we clearly weren't supposed to listen to the dialogue there, just look at the poster). And I still think that there was an element of predictable shock-tactics in it -- and you can hardly deny that Morris has had recourse to such in the past.)

Of course, it's not as if the Ccru hasn't got its own self-facilitating media node: http://kode9.blogspot.com/

Urban Section Infection...Rise of the sinofuturists, yeah?

It will be interesting to see if it has the same effect amongst its parody-targets as The Day Today had. I once read an interview with an ITN producer who admitted that he, and his colleagues, found its format and graphics so groundbreaking that they actually copied them, in a fashion, in real news programmes.

Will Nathan Barley become a cult amongst the idiots? I can imagine them watching intently, getting excited as they spot each gadget.

Morris is the master of cruelty.

>>> Will Nathan Barley become a cult amongst the idiots? I can imagine them watching intently, getting excited as they spot each gadget.

Yes -- while, as I said, I've never met such people, I'm sure you're right. Sadly, I don't doubt that they'll absolutely love it, video it, buy the DVD, constantly quote lines from it (thereby parodying Morris's parody of their self-parody), and generally regard it as a tribute and vindication: they've finally "made it"; they're "the shit"; everyone is paying attention to them, at last. Of course, Morris&Brooker are more than well aware of this (the Dan Ashcroft piece immediately being taken by the Idiots as a glowing tribute), but then one wonders: what's the point? Since anything one might do to draw attention to them -- even if designed to viciously rip the piss out of them -- will doubtless only encourage them, wouldn't it be preferable to simply ignore these morons? Why make them famous? Isn’t that exactly what they want? When Morris's stuff becomes digestible even (in fact, in this instance, especially) by those who are being lampooned, what happens to its much-vaunted “edge”?

Are the idiots like the Verdurins after they made it big and had to stop talking about 'bores' like Oriane, who was by then at their party?

yes, of course - satirising sheer brazen idiocy can only lead to an infinite regress (since they are unshamable even about the fact that they're unshamable even...etc). In this sense, the idiots do represent a kind of admirable pure positivity which no 'political intervention' can hope to make a dent in. And there in a nutshell is the problem of 'critiquing capitalism'...And as we know 'ignore it and it'll go away' certainly doesn't work with the K-monster...a genuine - and not uninteresting - paradox, I think.

sorry, patrick, our comments crossed-over. You're getting far too highbrow for me, anyway ;)

I suppose we mustn't quite know then. I certainly like a lot of things that would be shunned by 'The Poetics,' but don't know anything about Badiou's numbers. A tout a l'heure...

>>> there in a nutshell is the problem of 'critiquing capitalism'... And as we know 'ignore it and it'll go away' certainly doesn't work with the K-monster...a genuine - and not uninteresting - paradox, I think.

Agreed: obviously, ‘critique’, qua philosophical (and thus reflexively self-positing/auto-positional) can only ever perpetuate the uncircumscribable ubiquity of philosophy’s auto-encompassing specularity: Philosophy = World = Capitalism; but that's another way of saying that it's only a 'paradox' so long as one is thinking *philosophically* (and thus *decisionally*). What is required is a rigorously *non*-philosophical gnostic scepticism which, while admittedly an exceedingly poor substitute for militant political intervention which targets the effectiveness of global capital at the empirical/intra-Decisional level, would provide the latter with that indispensible transcendental complement which it requires in order to postpone its inevitable reintegration within the seamless, all-encompassing informational circuit of World-Capitalism. The putatively 'subversive' left's continuing inability to recognize the extent to which World-Capitalism directly regulates the basic parameters of all phenomenological 'experience', along with the epistemic codification of all physical information by means of biotechnological intervention at the level of the human organism and socioeconomic intervention at the level of consumer consensus, is not only an instance of empirical myopia; it is ultimately a constitutively political failure.

yeah, obviously, that's what I meant.

would be extremely interesting to pit Badiou-logic against W=C=P - logic (M.Laruelle I presume). Then we'd see who was romantic...

obviously can't comment on the latest brit TV (used to think Morris hilarious) but really enjoyed W=C=P comment - kind of reminds me of Mark Downham on a really harsh speed come-down

a couple of points:
>‘critique’, qua philosophical can only ever
>perpetuate the uncircumscribable ubiquity of
>philosophy’s auto-encompassing specularity

regardless of whether or not I agree, surely we need more of an argument for this than simply being told it's so by a philosopher (or non-philosopher)...

secondly, I am reminded, rightly I think, by Eleutheria, that my enumeration of the characters failed to include either of the female roles (the receptionist at SugarApe and Ashcroft's filmmaker sister); neither of whom are caught up in the cycle of idiocy/thinking-idiocy-is-important/perpetuating idiocy. Ashcroft's sister is perhaps the most interesting character (although the character isn't really fully developed in part 1), since she takes advantage of the idiots and puts up with them without feeling the need either to join in their imbecile style-world or batter her head against it in frustration, trying to decode it. I realise M. Laruelle won't take kindly to any supposition of gender-essentialism ;) but there is certainly an interesting point here re. Capitalism's harnessing of frenzied testosteronic positivity. Seem to remember that this - at least at one time - formed part of 'CR's critique of K, but as always there's an ambivalence here - rather than decrying it one could equally applaud K for 'finding' a way to channel this organic aggression into labyrinthine spirallings of semiovirus (although given the choice of being clubbed savagely over the head or having to talk 'new media' with Nathan....)

*think I can correctly link to the organisations in question. They are, in order of mention:
- http://www.deepend.com/ (sorry to hear of closure of london branch: http://www.reservocation.com/02_02/int_deepend_pg02_02_02.html)
- http://www.urban75.com/
- and the "hapless" person ("I'm not Milo the techie") works at this dot com: http://www.ihavemoved.com/

"The reason of the unreason with which my reason is afflicted so weakens my reason that with reason I murmur at your beauty."

Don Quixote