A Tale of Two Caped Figures

 

In the absence of bats, a caped Kirk Field 

feeds the pigeons in Trafalgar Square (1981)

 

Meanwhile, a caped Larry David (alongside Jerry Stiller) 

features in an episode of Seinfeld (1994)

 

 

I.

 

One of the things best loved about the season six episode of Seinfeld titled 'The Chinese Woman' [1] is the uncredited guest appearance by series co-creator Larry David as Frank Costanza's eccentric divorce lawyer - a man with a penchant for wearing a cape ...

 

II.

 

The history of the sleevless cape in men's fashion is a journey from an essential piece of outerwear worn by the everyman in the ancient world for protection from the elements to an elite status symbol and indicator of class, before being largely relegated to ceremonial dress and an item favoured only by vampires and superheroes. 

 

Although the Ancient Romans loved their capes, it wasn't until the early-modern period that the cape reached its fashionable apex, frequently integrated into outfits along with doublets and breeches. Whilst the majority of men made do with short, heavy wool capes, the wealthy and privileged would wear capes of various length and style made of velvet and other fine materials, secured at the shoulder with jewelled brooches.   

 

There was nothing a nobleman loved doing more than sweeping aside his cape to reveal a sword or pistol at his side [2].

 

However, fashions change and as Roland Barthes would tell you, in the 18th and 19th centuries there came a cultural turning point known as the Great Renunciation when men increasingly abandoned ostentatious, colourful and theatrical clothing in favour of sober, functional, and uniform attire [3] - say goodbye to the swish cloak and cape [4] and say hello to the heavy overcoat.

 

By the early 20th century, the triumph of modern tailored overcoats meant that the cape was no longer seen as romantic and dashing but archaic and cumbersome. The cultural perception of the man's cape was further altered by Bela Lugosi's 1931 portrayal of Dracula and the 1938 debut of Superman, forever linking the garment to gothic horror, theatrical villains, and comic book characters.

 

With the cape firmly relegated to the margins of modern society, we can now return to the streets of Manhattan ...

  

III. 

 

When out picking up some groceries one day, Jerry and Elaine spot George's dad, Frank, with a mysterious figure wearing a cape. 

 

Elaine asks: 'Why is Mr Costanza with a man in a cape?' 

 

To which Jerry replies (in typical Jerry manner): 'Well it is good cape weather - cool, breezy ...'

 

Elaine is still troubled, however: 'Why a cape? Who wears a cape? Where d'you even get a cape?' 

 

Eventually, Jerry is forced to concede: 'You're right - it is strange', and he suggests they cross to the other side of the street to avoid a potentially embarrassing situation.  

 

Later, at Jerry's apartment, they tell George that they saw his father and Elaine mentions he was with a man in a cape. 

 

George asks: 'Why was he wearing a cape? Was my father wearing a cape?

 

Jerry replies: 'No, jacket and tie - no cape.' 

 

George is perplexed: 'Hmm. What was a man with a cape doing with my father? What was my father doing with a man in a cape? Why a cape?'

Later, when confronted on it, Frank reveals to his son that the man in a cape was his lawyer, casually explaining that he's 'very independent: he doesn't follow the trends'. 

 

IV. 

 

What motivated my friend and fellow punk Kirk Field to start wearing a cape back in the early 1980s, I don't know. Perhaps he too might be described as independent-minded and as someone who doesn't follow trends ... 

 

Only, of course, by 1981 the punk movement had already splintered into so-called post-punk and whereas some punks transformed into colourfully dressed new romantics, others sought out the darker, moodier look and sound of what became known as gothic rock (or goth for short). 

 

Thanks to Bauhaus, Bela Lugosi had risen from the dead [5] ... and would-be vampires like nineteen-year-old Mr Field were putting on their eye-liner and wearing their capes, before venues like the Batcave had even opened their doors [6]. 

  

 

Notes

 

[1] Seinfeld, 'The Chinese Woman' [S6/E4], dir. Andy Ackerman, written by Peter Mehlman (Oct 1994). Frank Costanza was played by Jerry Stiller. Click on the link to watch the relevant scenes discussed in this post. 

 

[2] Perhaps the last echo of this is to be seen in a Fistful of Dollars (dir. Sergio Leone, 1964) when the Clint Eastwood character flips back the right side of his poncho over his left shoulder exposing the holster on his hip and thus providing a clear visual cue that he is about to draw his pistol. This gesture serves as a signature dramatic signal immediately before a gunfight - as in the early scene from the movie linked to.  

 

[3] See Roland Barthes, 'Language and Clothing' and ' Dandyism and Fashion', in The Language of Fashion, trans. Andy Stafford, ed. Andy Stafford and Michael carter (Berg, 2006).

 

[4] Is there a clear distinction between a cloak and a cape? Well, in fashion, the word cape usually refers to a shorter garment and cloak to a longer (and technically different) type of garment, though the two terms are often used synonymously for full-length coverings.

 

[5] Recorded live in the studio in one take in January 1979 and released in August of that year, Bauhaus's astonishing debut single 'Bela Lugosi's Dead' (Small Wonder Records) laid the blueprint for goth with its slow, sepulchral bassline, dub-inflected drums, and vampire-themed theatricality. 

 

[6] The Batcave was a weekly club-night launched in Soho in 1982. It is considered to be the birthplace of the goth subculture in London and the south east of England. As Kirk and I were Leeds based in 1981-84, this was not our regular haunt - we danced the nights away at Le Phonographique. 

 

   

Reflections on The Burnout Society by Byung-Chul Han (Part 1: From Neuronal Power to Vita Activa)

Stanford University Press (2015)

 

 

I. 

 

Many years ago, I wrote a short novel that dealt with existential themes of boredom, fatigue, world-weariness, etc. It was called Exhaustion and the first line read:  'Ours is essentially a fagged-out age, so ... Oh fuck it, who cares? I can't be bothered to write any more.' 

 

As a matter of fact, that was also the last line.    

 

Anyway, this is only coincidently relevant to Byung-Chul Han's essay The Burnout Society [a] and it's his work which I would like to discuss here ... 

II.

 

Neuronal Power

 

"Every age has its signature afflictions." [1] 

 

That's a great opening line, I think. Unfortunately, what follows now seems amusingly naive and dated: 

 

"Despite fear of an influenza epidemic, we are not living in a viral age. Thanks to immunological technology, we have already left it behind. From a pathological standpoint, the incipient twenty-first century is determined neither by bacteria nor by viruses, but by neurons." [1]

 

I suppose, writing in 2010, Han wasn't to know what 2019 would bring; although some might say that as a theorist and commentator who draws on literature, philosophy, and both the social and natural sciences, it's his job to anticipate possibilities in the foreseeable future and not just rehash ideas from the past.

 

That seems a bit harsh, however, so let's just overlook the above and concede that neurological conditions - including depression, personality disorder, and burnout syndrome - also play a significant role in life today. 

 

These are not viral infections, but infarctions, says Han, that result from "an excess of positivity" [1]. He continues: "The violence of positivity does not deprive, it saturates; it does not exclude, it exhausts."

 

We have, if you like, been sent mad with fatigue by our own 24/7 lifestyles (lived increasingly online), in which all Otherness is exorcised. And because Otherness is disappearing, "we live in a time that is poor in negativity" [4] - even if rich in difference (the form by which the Same likes to disguise itself).    

Beyond Disciplinary Society

Like Baudrillard, Han wants us to forget Foucault - or, at any rate, agree that today's society is no longer the one that Foucault described fifty-years ago. The prisons, asylums, and workhouses, of old have been replaced by fitness studios, fast-food outlets, and shopping malls:

 

"Twenty-first century society is no longer a disciplinary society, but rather an achievement society [Leistungsgesellschaft]. Also its inhabitants are no longer 'obedience-subjects' but 'achievement-subjects'. They are entrepreneurs of themselves." [8]    

Foucault's theory of power simply cannot account for how things are now, says Han. 

 

However, whilst I agree that the world has changed, it's simply mistaken to say that Foucault's cratology is tied to a negative (or repressive) model of power; the power to prohibit and say No. Foucault explicitly rejects this model and challenges traditional representations in which power is characterised in an exclusively restrictive manner; "poor in resources, sparing of its methods, monotonous in the tactics it utilizes, incapable of invention, and seemingly doomed always to repeat itself" [b]. 

 

Contrary to the above, Foucault offers us a gay, energy-based model of power outside of accepted values and beyond the "negative and emaciated form of prohibition" [c]. This model allows power to produce things - including forms of knowledge - as well as induce pleasures. And so, it explains very well why - as Han later notes - despite there being a paradigm shift from disciplinary society to achievement society, there has been a level of continuity and no real break exists between the modal verbs Should and Can. 

 

In other words, achievement society still has the same network of power running through it as disciplinary society. It's just that whereas the latter required our obedience to authority, the former requires us to show some initiative and be self-motivated and self-expressive - and, above all, achieve - to the point of exhaustion and depression [d].   

 

The contemporary subject is voluntarily self-exploitative; the perfect worker, determined to have a nice day and always wear that happy face (until the crack-up and break down comes due to excessive positivity and compulsive freedom).  

 

 

Profound Boredom

 

"Excessive positivity also expresses iself as an excess of stimuli, information, and impulses. It radically changes the structure and economy of attention. Perception becomes fragmented and scattered." [12]

 

Perhaps this is why Han chooses to publish his work in essay form and to favour short sentences; he's making a somewhat patronising assumption about his reader's ability to concentrate and follow complex arguments at length. 

 

Of course, he might have a point: I know that my own ability to think has flattened over recent years, even as it has broadened and, indeed, accelerated. For Han, this shows regression to animality. For wild animals, he says, are "incapable of contemplative immersion" [12]; they are always alert to what's going on around them and easily distracted [e].               

  

For Han, human regression of this nature is a bad thing. Why? Because we owe the cultural achievements of humanity "to deep, contemplative attention" [13]. Scatty individuals may by good at multitasking and playing video games (not things Han approves of), but they'll never produce great works of art or philosophy. Having a low boredom threshold, makes one incapable of "the profound idleness that benefits the creative process" [13].

Unfortunately, this simply sounds like bourgeois snobbery (even when you call upon Walter Benjamin and Nietzsche for support).

And so, whilst I can certainly see the attractions of the vita contemplativa, I'm not going to knock those for whom such a life would be intolerable, nor denigrate the cognitive abilities (and dancing skills) of animals.      

 

 

Vita Activa

 

One philosopher who wasn't prepared to simply dismiss the via activa as mere restless stupidity, was Hannah Arendt [f]. Particularly if action results in the birth of something new. 

 

Unfortunately, Arendt thinks that modern society - as a society of perfected slavery - "nullifies any possibility for action when it degrades the human being into an animal laborans, a beast of burden" [17], subsumed within the herd. 

 

Byung-Chul Han doesn't buy into this argument, however, and doesn't think Arendt has much to tell us about today's world:

"Arendt's descriptions of the modern animal laborans do not correspond to what we can observe in today's achievement society. The late-modern animal laborans does not give up its individuality or ego in order to merge, through the work it performs, with the anonymous life of the species. Rather, contemporary labour society [...] fosters individuality ... The late-modern animal laborans is equipped with an ego just short of bursting. And it is anything but passive [...] It is hyperactive and hyperneurotic." [17-18]  

 

I suppose that's why Frank Costanza's cry of Serenity now! continues to resonate so powerfully; we all desire a little peace and quiet in our lives [g]. And that perhaps requires learning how to live a little more slowly; Han argues that everything seems sped up and transient today:   

 

"The general denarrativization of the world [following the death of God] is reinforcing the feeling of fleetingness. It makes life bare." [18]

 

Indeed, it makes life so bare, that it's even barer "than the life of homo sacer" [18] [h] - which is really bare! Almost unbearable in its bareness: and yet we seek to preserve ourselves and keep going as long as possible. Han says we are like the Muselmänner, "albeit well fed and probably obese" [19]. 

 

An unpleasant remark on which to close the first part of this post, but Byung-Chul said it, not me ...

Notes

 

[a] I'm reading the English translation by Erik Butler, published by Stanford University Press in 2015, and all page numbers given in the text refer to this edition. 

      The original German work, entitled Müdigkeitsgesellschaft, was published in Berlin by Matthes & Seitz Verlag, in 2010. Readers will note that the title literally translates as 'Fatigue Society', but I suppose the term burnout - coined in 1970 by the German-born American psychologist Herbert Freudenberger - has greater contemporary resonance. Freudenberger defined burnout as a state of mental and physical exhaustion caused by overwork amongst professionals. See his book Burn Out: The High Cost of High Achievement (1980). 

 

[b] Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality 1: The Will to Knowledge, trans. Robert Hurley, (Penguin Books, 1998), p. 85.

 

[c] Ibid., p. 86.

 

[d] It should be noted that unlike French sociologist Alain Ehrenberg, Han doesn't think that depression is simply the pathological expression of an individual's failure to become themselves. He also thinks that it also arises from a lack of attachment [Bindungsarmut] to others within an increasingly fragmented and atomised society: 

      "Ehrenberg lends no attention to this aspect of depression. He also overlooks the systemic violence inhabiting achievement society, which provokes psychic infarctions. It is not the imperative only to belong to oneself, but the pressure to achieve that causes exhaustive depression. Seen in this light, burnout syndrome does not express the exhausted self so much as the exhausted, burnt-out soul. According to Ehrenberg, depression spreads when the commandments and prohibitions of disciplinary society yield to self-responsibility and initiative. In reality, it is not the excess of responsibility and initiative that makes one sick, but the imperative to achieve: the new commandment of late-modern labour society." [10]

      To be fair, I've not read Ehrenberg's work, so can't say if Han's criticism is justified. Readers who wish to make up their own minds should see The Weariness of the Self: Diagnosing the History of Depression in the Contemporary Age, trans. Enrico Caouette et al, (McGill-Queen's University Press, 2010).   

[e] I'm not sure about this. It's true, perhaps, that monkey's don't meditate, but I've watched my cat sit for hours staring at the same spot having heard a sound that suggests to her the presence of a small rodent and it seems to me that this might legitimately be described as a form of contemplative immersion. One suspects that Han is guilty of anthropocentric conceit to suggest otherwise and it's worth noting that later in this chapter he writes: "Only human beings can dance" [14], which seems palpably untrue. However, it's also worth noting that - somewhat paradoxically - in the chapter Vita Activa Han refers to the serenity [Gelassenheit] of animals [18], which, he argues, man has lost. 

[f] See The Human Condition (University of Chicago Press, 1998). This work was first published in 1958, so the fact that parts of its sociological analysis are dated is hardly surprising. 

 

[g] I have written on this desire for serenity in an earlier post on Torpedo the Ark: click here. 

[h] Homo sacer, for those who are unfamiliar with the term, refers to an accursed figure, excluded from society because of some trespass, whom any citizen may kill without incurring punishment. The Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben developed the term within his work, using it to stand for an absolutely expendable life (such as the life of a Jewish inmate in a Nazi concentration camp, for example). See Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, trans. Daniel Heller-Roazen, (Stanford University Press, 1998). 

 

 

To read part two of this post on The Burnout Society, click here.