I am listening to a fuckin’ RERUN and collapsing in laughter despite the absence of anyone else in room.
It’s just like a Lenny Bruce record used to do me.
I conclude, therefore, that Jon Stewart has been possessed by the spirit of Lenny Bruce (or the thoughtform, or whatever transtime/space model floats your boat.
I am seriousabout this, by the way…)
For debate:
Does the empirical data (such as it is) available in re:the expression in popular culture of archtypal projections from the colllective unconscious support a theory of cultural transmission a component of which would be the replication out of time and space of a “crystallized attitude” (sufficient to justify, as it were ), my rather extravagent attribution to Stewart of Brucian reincarnation?
OK, folks. Please note the preceding. alaric, hopped up on Jung and Jaegermeister or Nyquil* or something is looking for a discussion of cultural transmission outside the normal modes of art. He is not looking for reminiscences about or deconstructions of humorists of the 60s or the Oughts.
If you want to keep this out of Cafe Society, stick to the topic. (If you want to take it to Cafe Society, open your own thread over there.)
(I have long believed that they are actully brewed in the same vats and not even rinsed out between batches, but I am willing to concede that others do not share my views.)
theories are not empirical, but they arise in response to some observed phenemona or the other, don’t they?
I won’t minimize the difficulty of formulating a rigorous protocol for making some kind of useful body of data out of the artifacts of cultural transmission–indeed, it may not be possible.
Withal, Jung gives us a sort of jumping off point, (albeit more like a cliff than a launching pad)
Translation for those who are politically opposed to giving themselves a huge headache:
Is there any evidence for the idea that, when it comes to pop culture’s display of archetypes from the collective unconscious (settle down, there’s only so many headaches I can save you from), some of these are being transmitted with–
aw, fuck it, alaric, I can’t even figure out how to translate this idea into something sensible. Of COURSE there’s no evidence for this: it depends on ideas fundamentally hostile to the concept of evidence. The replication out of time and space of a crystallized attitude? What in sweet Jesus would be evidence of such a thing? A broken clock, a broken ruler, and a sugardaddy?
I guess I’m groping for a combination of voluntary possession (cf. Voudon) suffused (ed note: huh??) with an overlay of individuation arising out of some participation by what Jung appreciated to be the phenomenon he described as the collective unconscious (whew!)
(Praise Jesus, for sending down the clarity I figured out what I was saying!!)
In possession rituals, the shaman uses props to facilitate the invocation of whateverthefuck they are invoking. The voudon priest/priestess, for instance, will dress in a particular way (the top hat of BaronSamedi, eg.)
Now, as to partner Stewart.
I was watching the other night, and he made a face where he pulled in his cheeksand looked down and to the left at maybe four o’clock…
That was Lenny Bruce, and if you look at pictures of Bruce and pix of Stewart (lately) you will see that he is (here’s where I have to pause and pass around the Nyquil…otherwise you might think me strange…)getting to look MORE like lenny then he used to.
Likewise, he is wearing the black suit, skinny tie. The momzer is channeling lenny on purpose, god bless him.
