Considerations on K-Punk

Analysis on articles in the collected book of Mark Fishers’ K-Punk blog. One of many. This instance here uses two articles to channel their concepts.

Mark Fisher– batman’s political turn right

“Anti-capitalism is nothing new in Hollywood. From Wall-E to Avatar corporations are routinely depicted as evil. The contradiction of corporate-funded films denouncing corporations is an irony capitalism cannot just absorb, but thrive on. Yet this capitalism is only allowed within limits… but any direct action against the rich, or revolutionary moves toward the redistribution of property, will lead to a dystopian nightmare.”

Mark Fisher– star wars was a sell-out from the start

“All that Star Wars added to the formula was a certain spectacle– the spectacle of technology, via then state-of-the-art special effects and of course the spectacle of its own success, which became part of the experience of the film.”

Reminiscent of what Jordan Peterson divulged in his thirteenth 2015 personality lecture on existentialism and its relation to totalitarian regimes of the 20th century; articulating the literal magic embodied and venerated from an item, or idealized object such as Elvis Presley’s guitar: 

You think: what exactly is that it makes a guitar Elvis’ guitar? It is not exactly the guitar, because it is just sitting there, like any object does, and maybe you could be able to think about it. You could take that guitar out and put a guitar just like it, and it would still be Elvis’ guitar because they wouldn’t know. So you might think that this is not really Elvis’ guitar. That is a funny thing because you would only think that if you thought that Elvis’ guitar was the thing that was made out of material that was sitting right in front of you. And that isn’t what it is. That is only one tiny little bit of it. That bloody thing is a part of an incredibly layered reality. I mean, the people who want to go look at that, they are looking at it in some sense because of the magic that is emanating from it, but the magic is actually real. The magic is the effect of that guitar, let’s say, on the entire culture. And those effects are the damn guitar too. And it is weird, because when you go look at Elvis’ guitar, you are not looking at the guitar, you are looking at the magic.

Be it as grandiose as Elvis’ guitar or the mechanical sounds of Darth Vader inhaling and exhaling before igniting his red lightsaber in the smokey corridor of rebel scum trying to save the Death Star plans at the climax to Rogue One, setting the stage for A New Hope. Movies have always had a magical element to them with their power to enthrall a person, even if the movie itself isn’t ‘good’, as does anything with such a mythical status which manages to hold itself in the eyes of loving customers, even if more than half of them criticize Disney’s handling of franchises or Machiavellian theatrics deployed by the USA in Venezuela in recent months, or Iran in the last few weeks. Fishers’ point adds up: The Empire may be a visible parable to systems seen in place by the day to day, but it would be similar to the 2025 film One Battle After Another. A fetish for change and cinema to explore it on the big screen and feel everything in safety, either way feeding the criticized apparatus. Rinse, repeat and a big-budget box office release. Tomorrow is different but it is still the same.

Film and customizable apparel, whether in line of the corporate oversight or perceived personal preference lends to a commodified presentation nonetheless and regardless of individual stance. What such pathos pulling pieces seem to do is a sort of simulation– it titillates a person’s senses enough that they’re energized, fired up. Then it dissipates as nothing truly changes quickly enough in one’s own lifetime, yet completely shifts all throughout. Maybe the window dressings change so as to peer out and allow glimpses in; creating an aesthetic, apathetic loop– rerun after remake; some memetic comedy is almost a necessary relief.

Due to popularity largely originating from the 2018 Doomer Wojak meme caricature, the Doomer concept can be likened to a more recent (than 8 years ago) meme. While dubious in nature of origin and unlikely to be correct in historical account, most speculation pointing to upon realizing his loss at Waterloo, Napoleon Bonaparte is purported to have solemnly admonished, “There’s nothing we can do”; which was lifted and taken through a spin online around the same time Ridley Scott released a ‘biopic’ on the mythical man. Pair the phrase then paste it onto a melancholic image of the French Emperor with the overlaying of a song called Armor Plastique by Adelle Castillon, usually slowed down with a hint of reverb on for added and implied effect…