The Limits of Control

People need to stop hating on this film. I think it's great.

First, elision. Jarmusch is a master at omitting action and dialogue; it gets under our skin because we've been handicapped by verisimilitude. I found this film's slow pace refreshing; and its unexplained eccentricities are charming.

Second, allusion. Melville's classic film Le Samourai is among the silent partners here. So is Antonioni's extraordinary The Passenger. There's also explicit mention of Hitchcock and Welles. I don't find these references pretentious, however, mostly because Jarmusch departs so significantly from the genre that the citations establish contrast, not inclusion. His earlier film Ghost Dog did this too.

What I liked most about the protagonist was how he seemed to be in search of purpose, even though he's officially working under contract during nearly all of the film. There's a subtle argument here about subjectivity and selfhood in the market system, brought to the fore in Bill Murray's shaky monologue at the end. The film asks, rather politely and calmly, what sense does it make to identify with a generic task?

Duplicity

There are two slightly-obscured agendas in this film, despite its appearance of being merely a spy film with some ingredients of slack romantic comedy. The first doesn't really interest me at all: some vague moralistic suggestion that trust must be constantly renewed in love relationships. When the dew-eyed spies confide in each other that "they aren't like other people" aren't they actually universalizing their suspicions? In other words, doesn't their game feel at some level like the normal process of guaranteeing sincerity on which all intimacy is based? Aren't they then just like other people except that they talk about this process instead of living it? The argument would then be that we all ought to realize how unreliable a testimony of love is. But what do we do? Subject this testimony to more scrutiny?

The second agenda is much more interesting but unfortunately its vehicle is the hoakiest part of the film: the provocation that shareholder-beholden corporations have inherently perverse incentives. Here the film is awesome. Misinformation and counterintelligence doesn't bother us so much in the context of warfare, ultimately the sides are drawn tidily. But in the context of corporate espionage the game seems crass, even pathetic. Intelligently, the film suggests that profit-driven corporate spies can only be played by the system they think they can outsmart. Without spoiling the plot, I think Duplicity is on to something interesting: try to leave the system by fooling it, and you get marooned.

A really good film that I thought about during Duplicity is Le Cercle Rouge - Criterion Collection

on Snobbery

What is the nature of snobbery? Is the oft-mocked reverse snobbery more deplorable? Does taste necessarily beget snobbery? What is the difference between taste and preference, its value-neutral cousin?

Human autonomy, from infancy to senility, constantly results in preference. Whether presented with competing alternatives or given the freedom to make selections at will, people are driven to express themselves through decisions. In every economic context and in all of the various sociopolitical and culture systems, human experience evidently requires the maintenance of personal standards.

At first blush, the assignation of snobbery is merely a response to the pervasive disequilibria in human possession. Resources are scarce (or so we're told) and thus not everyone acquires the same things. This puts everyone in a position to accuse another of being a snob, for material self-similarity seldom occurs in reality.

But matters are significantly more complex than objectively measured amounts or quality of property. Snobbery is also an attitude toward property--it is a manner of acquiring and possessing goods. The snob's defining characteristic is lending superiority to consumption. But does the snob cultivate the superiority associated with his consumption? Or is such superiority imputed by the more sparsely endowed onlooker?

It is an undeniable fact of reality that there exist different kinds of film, wine, cheese, clothing, coffee, bread, cities, art, restaurants, literature, residences, and music. The snob conflates his opinion with fact. When his personally reserved taste slides into public pronouncement, the snob offends us because he lays claim to the arbitration of taste. Nobody has time for obvious elitism.

Having just dismissed of self-declared aesthetic objectivity as snobbery, we can finally turn to reverse snobbery. In a certain sense, reverse snobbery travels along the same vector as its predecessor but with far greater magnitude. Reverse snobs are obesssed with anti-taste; for snobs, taste is far more incidental. Reverse snobs occupy the reactionary space that used to contain counter-culture.

The allegation of reverse snobbery, however, leads to a distinct paralysis. Imperiled by the potential snobbishness of every cultural moment, people spurn their checking accounts and attempt to distance themselves from what they have deemed reproachable. In so doing they further refine notions of taste and unwittingly rarefy the air they permit themselves and their conspirators to breath. This pun on the etymology of conspiracy suits reverse snobbery quite well, for such types seem even more exclusive than their grandparents.

How then can anyone avoid the snobbishness of everyday life? In capitalism, they probably can't.

With mechanical efficiency, Capitalism has probably precluded the possibility of authenticity. Political life, culture, esteem of others are all contaminated by toxic droplets of currency and the exchange it facilitates.

So that's it then. Considerations of snobbery are an invitation to paradox. The inescapable variables of material necessity, combined with the free market constant of disparity, leads to an empty universal applicability of the label (or the non-label). And like all emptied signifiers, this one is probably worth getting rid of.