Re: Marxism Today and "The Blair Witch Project"

["Devine, James" <jdevine@xxxxxxx>]

Title: RE: [PEN-L] Marxism Today and "The Blair Witch Project"

I think it was Tariq Ali who referred to the "Blair Kitsch Project" (in MONTHLY REVIEW).

This seems appropriate. As an opinion-piece in the GUARDIAN explained awhile back, kitch is not the same as "camp." The latter (e.g., the film "Plan 9 from Outer Space") is so bad it's good. Kitch is so good it's bad, e.g., cuuute little angel or puppy figurines. Similarly, Toady Blair's New Labour is so sanitized, so un-Labour, that it's horrible.

------------------------
Jim Devine jdevine@xxxxxxx &  http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Kenneth Campbell [mailto:kkc@xxxxxxxxxxxx]
> Sent: Tuesday, June 24, 2003 7:23 AM
> To: PEN-L@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: [PEN-L] Marxism Today and "The Blair Witch Project"
>
>
> SIDE COMMENT:
>
> I find it curious that Jacques, in the interview from Tribune in the
> previous post ("Marxism Today"), refers to the last special
> issue of MT
> as dealing with Blair's performance to date (the interview is
> posted as
> 9th October 1998):
>
>     But now the "Blair project", as Marxism Today will call
>     it, "is more rhetoric than substance. I feel a sense of
>     disappointment. New Labour had a great historic
>     opportunity in 1997 to offer a really radical
>     alternative because the Tories had imploded, and Labour
>     had won a landslide victory.
>
> I never saw this issue. (Never saw most of the issues.)
>
> But what an interesting choice of words for their final issue
> on Blair:
> "The Blair Project."
>
> Of course, that sounds rather like "The Blair Witch Project." (A
> surprise hit indie movie horror flick.)
>
> I thought this was a deliberate allusion, but I checked a
> movie site and
> found
>
>     The Blair Witch Project
>
>     Release Date: July 16th, 1999 (27 theaters in 16
>     markets...); July 30th, 1999 (expanding into 1000
>     theaters); August 6th, 1999 (adding 1000 more theaters)
>
> Spooky! Jacques was prescient...
>
> And, really, after all, don't both "Blair Projects" end rather
> similarly?
>
> The makers of the "story" are dramatically and horrifically
> destroyed by
> invisible but elemental forces... right before our very eyes!
>
> Spooky.
>
> Ken.
>
> --
> It is enough nowadays to declare yourself an artist and
> then to declare some artifact in the vast world of found
> objects to be _your_ work of art.
>           -- Thomas M. Disch
>