when you see him, stop and think
What happens when a couple of people with advanced degrees in English lit watch 1970s PSAs on YouTube for want of anything better to do? Well, this does.
Watch this first. It will make the following make more sense, insofar as it makes any sense at all.
angevin2: i am sort of glad i am too young to have seen that on tv ;)
jucundushomo: YES.
jucundushomo: WOW. Animated sequence.
angevin2: i am old enough to remember the singing pills though ;)
angevin2: "we're not candy!" /chipmunk voice
jucundushomo: I could defs have done without that bizarre, trippy intro.
jucundushomo: Sick! Sick! Sick!
jucundushomo: Sick! Sick! Sick!
angevin2: it's like a bargain basement, excessively helpful pink floyd ;)
jucundushomo: There has got to be some theorist we can apply to this text.
angevin2: YES
jucundushomo: I think Freud is all over this.
angevin2: freud is definitely all over it ;)
jucundushomo: And BF Skinner, in a kind of sick aversion-therapy kind of way.
angevin2: i am trying to work out a zizek-based reading
jucundushomo: Well, Freud--->Lacan--->Zizek
angevin2: true that
jucundushomo: I'm trying to figure out if I can map Althusser onto it
angevin2: the symbol, after all, represents an authority that the target audience doesn't understand but is encouraged to accept
jucundushomo: I am trying to figure if there is some kind of hailing going on
jucundushomo: I think we are into the realm of Foucault's "madness" as well
angevin2: also, the whole genesis of mr. yuk is an illustration of the instability of the sign
jucundushomo: modern society has excluded Mr Yuck (madness) from the realm of thought, and has erected the failsafe of "one may do mad things, but thought remains sovereign untouched"
angevin2: because he was initially devised on the grounds that the traditional skull-and-crossbones signifier had become hollowed out by its association with pirates
jucundushomo: Nietzsche would agree
angevin2: and therefore, the signifier needed to be re-established
angevin2: (the fact that the intended audience is presumed to be either pre- or non-verbal also merits examination)
jucundushomo: Nietzsche wrote in "On Truth and Lies in an Extra-Moral Sense"
angevin2: we have a pre- or non-verbal desiring subject (the object of desire of course being the shiny things under the sink)
jucundushomo: "What, then, is truth? A mobile army of metaphors, metonyms, and anthropomorphisms-in short, a sum of human relations which have been enhanced, transposed, and embellished poetically and rhetorically, and which after long use seem firm, canonical, and obligatory to a people: truths are illusions about which one has forgotten that this is what they are; metaphors which are worn out and without sensuous power; coins which have lost their pictures and now matter only as metal, no longer as coins."
jucundushomo: The originators and proponents of Mr Yuk live in fear of this quotation getting out to sabotage their authority and campaign to extend the same
angevin2: *laughs*
angevin2: *is wondering if mr. yuk can in fact be construed as an object petit a*
jucundushomo: I think it is rather ingenious, after all
jucundushomo: in a strange way, a kind of Repressive State Apparatus
angevin2: yes!
jucundushomo: the same people that push us away from the literal "poisons" that Mr Yuk warns against
jucundushomo: purvey and distribute the products of a post-industrial world that are far more insidious
angevin2: YES
angevin2: "The Sublime Object of Ideology hence cites with approval Kafka’s comment that it is not required that subjects think the law is just, only that it is necessary. Yet no regime, despite Kafka, can directly avow its own basis in such naked selfassertion without risking the loss all legitimacy, Zizek agrees with Plato. This is why it must ground itself in ideological fantasies (3a) which at once sustain subjects’ sense of individual freedom (2c), and the sense that the regime itself is grounded extrapolitically in the Real, and some transcendent, higher Good. (2e)"
jucundushomo: It is a vast distraction from the ongoing evisceration of the proletariat
angevin2: indeed!
angevin2: and thus, too, it conveys a kind of semiotic dislocation in which the definition of "poison" is, if not inverted, limited
jucundushomo: if you confuse the terms, you control the terms
angevin2: (actually there's a lot of foucauldian significance in the whole "purveyors of post-industrial products" thing, since mr. yuk was developed at the pittsburgh children's hospital; certainly there is birth-of-the-clinic stuff to be done with that ;))
jucundushomo: I was unaware of that detail!
jucundushomo: And yet, it fits.
angevin2: it does!
angevin2: separating the body from the person
jucundushomo: "Children, listen! You are our future biopower! It is therefore in our interest to keep you viable! Listen!"
angevin2: yes!
jucundushomo: I would also say that the animated sequence of conflagrations and flying knives represent and are internalized as a kind of trauma.
angevin2: yes! and the whole "there are many things in your house that can kill you" subtext
angevin2: well. text!
angevin2: "home is full of bad things that can hurt you very much!"
jucundushomo: However, this trauma dislocates the greater trauma that is worked upon society unceasingly.
jucundushomo: I also believe
jucundushomo: that the sequence where Mr Yuk multiplies to fill the entire screen with his image
jucundushomo: represents a world where everything is rendered toxic and so the only recourse is to turn to those who have been "kind" enough to reveal this "truth" to you
angevin2: it also, i think, represents the appropriation of the tropes of the counterculture for the purposes of the ideological state apparatus as embodied by the modern medical profession
angevin2: yes!
angevin2: as the text of the song indicates:
angevin2: "get to know his face / in every single place"
jucundushomo: Quite so.
angevin2: it privileges the Ideological State Apparatus over the apparent inner sanctum of the home
jucundushomo: You anticipate me. :)
angevin2: which, as has already been noted, is constructed as quite literally toxic
jucundushomo: Mr Yuk is also a kind of primitive and yet fabulously effective image/mask to hide a more terrible reality, a kind of Greek tragedy kerygma that declaims a moral
jucundushomo: he is at once creating and representing the sort of society he wishes to see
angevin2: indeed!
angevin2: in fact
angevin2: apparently he has fallen out of use in some quarters as his bright green face may actually attract children
jucundushomo: THAT'S an interesting situation.
angevin2: the full version of his theme song
jucundushomo: Apparently, Lea
angevin2: (and, of course, the greenness, which is his most attractive quality, is also lauded in said theme song)
jucundushomo: upon perusal of the Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh website
jucundushomo: the campaign to continually re-invest Mr Yuk as a symbol
jucundushomo: has reached the level of offering free Mr Yuk wristbands to all children who write in
jucundushomo: now they may place upon their very bodies the sign of the trauma
angevin2: yes!
angevin2: also the theme song contains this text:
angevin2: When you see him stop and think.
Do not smell. Do not drink.
Do not touch. Do not eat.
Or you will be sick.
jucundushomo: The neurosis in embryo -- getting back to Freud
angevin2: mr. yuk as paralytic force!
jucundushomo: neuroses which will later be treated by the pharmacopia of industrialized medicine
jucundushomo: or, rather, palliated
angevin2: palliated, yes
angevin2: (omg we are such dorks ;))
jucundushomo: WE ARE
jucundushomo: but this is FUN
jucundushomo: my god I'm sad
jucundushomo: haha
angevin2: the worst part? THIS is MUCH more terrifying
(LJ-ify your IMs before pasting!)
Watch this first. It will make the following make more sense, insofar as it makes any sense at all.
angevin2: i am sort of glad i am too young to have seen that on tv ;)
jucundushomo: YES.
jucundushomo: WOW. Animated sequence.
angevin2: i am old enough to remember the singing pills though ;)
angevin2: "we're not candy!" /chipmunk voice
jucundushomo: I could defs have done without that bizarre, trippy intro.
jucundushomo: Sick! Sick! Sick!
jucundushomo: Sick! Sick! Sick!
angevin2: it's like a bargain basement, excessively helpful pink floyd ;)
jucundushomo: There has got to be some theorist we can apply to this text.
angevin2: YES
jucundushomo: I think Freud is all over this.
angevin2: freud is definitely all over it ;)
jucundushomo: And BF Skinner, in a kind of sick aversion-therapy kind of way.
angevin2: i am trying to work out a zizek-based reading
jucundushomo: Well, Freud--->Lacan--->Zizek
angevin2: true that
jucundushomo: I'm trying to figure out if I can map Althusser onto it
angevin2: the symbol, after all, represents an authority that the target audience doesn't understand but is encouraged to accept
jucundushomo: I am trying to figure if there is some kind of hailing going on
jucundushomo: I think we are into the realm of Foucault's "madness" as well
angevin2: also, the whole genesis of mr. yuk is an illustration of the instability of the sign
jucundushomo: modern society has excluded Mr Yuck (madness) from the realm of thought, and has erected the failsafe of "one may do mad things, but thought remains sovereign untouched"
angevin2: because he was initially devised on the grounds that the traditional skull-and-crossbones signifier had become hollowed out by its association with pirates
jucundushomo: Nietzsche would agree
angevin2: and therefore, the signifier needed to be re-established
angevin2: (the fact that the intended audience is presumed to be either pre- or non-verbal also merits examination)
jucundushomo: Nietzsche wrote in "On Truth and Lies in an Extra-Moral Sense"
angevin2: we have a pre- or non-verbal desiring subject (the object of desire of course being the shiny things under the sink)
jucundushomo: "What, then, is truth? A mobile army of metaphors, metonyms, and anthropomorphisms-in short, a sum of human relations which have been enhanced, transposed, and embellished poetically and rhetorically, and which after long use seem firm, canonical, and obligatory to a people: truths are illusions about which one has forgotten that this is what they are; metaphors which are worn out and without sensuous power; coins which have lost their pictures and now matter only as metal, no longer as coins."
jucundushomo: The originators and proponents of Mr Yuk live in fear of this quotation getting out to sabotage their authority and campaign to extend the same
angevin2: *laughs*
angevin2: *is wondering if mr. yuk can in fact be construed as an object petit a*
jucundushomo: I think it is rather ingenious, after all
jucundushomo: in a strange way, a kind of Repressive State Apparatus
angevin2: yes!
jucundushomo: the same people that push us away from the literal "poisons" that Mr Yuk warns against
jucundushomo: purvey and distribute the products of a post-industrial world that are far more insidious
angevin2: YES
angevin2: "The Sublime Object of Ideology hence cites with approval Kafka’s comment that it is not required that subjects think the law is just, only that it is necessary. Yet no regime, despite Kafka, can directly avow its own basis in such naked selfassertion without risking the loss all legitimacy, Zizek agrees with Plato. This is why it must ground itself in ideological fantasies (3a) which at once sustain subjects’ sense of individual freedom (2c), and the sense that the regime itself is grounded extrapolitically in the Real, and some transcendent, higher Good. (2e)"
jucundushomo: It is a vast distraction from the ongoing evisceration of the proletariat
angevin2: indeed!
angevin2: and thus, too, it conveys a kind of semiotic dislocation in which the definition of "poison" is, if not inverted, limited
jucundushomo: if you confuse the terms, you control the terms
angevin2: (actually there's a lot of foucauldian significance in the whole "purveyors of post-industrial products" thing, since mr. yuk was developed at the pittsburgh children's hospital; certainly there is birth-of-the-clinic stuff to be done with that ;))
jucundushomo: I was unaware of that detail!
jucundushomo: And yet, it fits.
angevin2: it does!
angevin2: separating the body from the person
jucundushomo: "Children, listen! You are our future biopower! It is therefore in our interest to keep you viable! Listen!"
angevin2: yes!
jucundushomo: I would also say that the animated sequence of conflagrations and flying knives represent and are internalized as a kind of trauma.
angevin2: yes! and the whole "there are many things in your house that can kill you" subtext
angevin2: well. text!
angevin2: "home is full of bad things that can hurt you very much!"
jucundushomo: However, this trauma dislocates the greater trauma that is worked upon society unceasingly.
jucundushomo: I also believe
jucundushomo: that the sequence where Mr Yuk multiplies to fill the entire screen with his image
jucundushomo: represents a world where everything is rendered toxic and so the only recourse is to turn to those who have been "kind" enough to reveal this "truth" to you
angevin2: it also, i think, represents the appropriation of the tropes of the counterculture for the purposes of the ideological state apparatus as embodied by the modern medical profession
angevin2: yes!
angevin2: as the text of the song indicates:
angevin2: "get to know his face / in every single place"
jucundushomo: Quite so.
angevin2: it privileges the Ideological State Apparatus over the apparent inner sanctum of the home
jucundushomo: You anticipate me. :)
angevin2: which, as has already been noted, is constructed as quite literally toxic
jucundushomo: Mr Yuk is also a kind of primitive and yet fabulously effective image/mask to hide a more terrible reality, a kind of Greek tragedy kerygma that declaims a moral
jucundushomo: he is at once creating and representing the sort of society he wishes to see
angevin2: indeed!
angevin2: in fact
angevin2: apparently he has fallen out of use in some quarters as his bright green face may actually attract children
jucundushomo: THAT'S an interesting situation.
angevin2: the full version of his theme song
jucundushomo: Apparently, Lea
angevin2: (and, of course, the greenness, which is his most attractive quality, is also lauded in said theme song)
jucundushomo: upon perusal of the Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh website
jucundushomo: the campaign to continually re-invest Mr Yuk as a symbol
jucundushomo: has reached the level of offering free Mr Yuk wristbands to all children who write in
jucundushomo: now they may place upon their very bodies the sign of the trauma
angevin2: yes!
angevin2: also the theme song contains this text:
angevin2: When you see him stop and think.
Do not smell. Do not drink.
Do not touch. Do not eat.
Or you will be sick.
jucundushomo: The neurosis in embryo -- getting back to Freud
angevin2: mr. yuk as paralytic force!
jucundushomo: neuroses which will later be treated by the pharmacopia of industrialized medicine
jucundushomo: or, rather, palliated
angevin2: palliated, yes
angevin2: (omg we are such dorks ;))
jucundushomo: WE ARE
jucundushomo: but this is FUN
jucundushomo: my god I'm sad
jucundushomo: haha
angevin2: the worst part? THIS is MUCH more terrifying
(LJ-ify your IMs before pasting!)