The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
b-side
Thursday, February 7, 2019 — 3B
If you look at a white grid
over a black background, you
will see grey splotches at the
intersections of the grid. You’ll
find, however, that the second
you
try
to
examine
closer
and focus your gaze upon a
particular dot, it vanishes.
Those shapes never really
existed, but you saw them, didn’t
you? The binary concept of real
vs. unreal fails to explain these
dots; they can’t be simply one
or the other. Binary concepts
such as reality vs. unreality,
truth vs. fiction and good vs.
bad have long been the target
of
postmodern
philosophers
such as Jacques Derrida, who
seek to demonstrate how these
oppositions are nothing more
than illusions.
Hauntology: What is it?
Hauntology is a concept that
has its origins in postmodern
deconstruction
theory.
Specifically, it began with the
work of Derrida, who used the
word “hauntology” to describe
the alternate future promised by
modernism that never came to
be, the disjunction between the
reality we live in and the cultural
memory
of
the
anticipated
reality we thought we would be
living in.
It is a term that offers freedom
for creative interpretation, and
while typically used to reference
temporal disturbances and the
ever-increasing
interaction
between the present and the
past, I will use it to refer to
a
broader
but
intertwined
dichotomy:
Real
experience
vs. unreal experience. While
perhaps abstract-sounding at
first, it is not hard to think of
examples of experiences you’ve
had where the power of the
moment comes from what didn’t
happen as opposed to what
did. Picture yourself passing
through a crowded nightclub.
You lock eyes with someone who
passes by with a slight smile,
but neither of you turn back,
the flash of potential fading as
soon as it begins to burn. Stories
you’ve heard that you only know
through imagination; dreams
that slip away as you wake but
leave
emotional
traces
that
you can’t shake throughout the
day; missed opportunities and
regrets that hound you even
when their sources are long
gone — these unrealities are
just as impactful on our internal
experience as the realities we
experience, and hauntology is an
attempt to capture the ineffable
emotion that comes at the border
of the two.
Burial
In the realm of music, the
concept of “hauntology” has
been applied almost exclusively
to British electronic acts in
the late ’90s and ’00s such as
Boards of Canada and Ghost
Box. The artist most closely
associated with hauntology is
the enigmatic UK electronic act
Burial. Critical to hauntology
is a feeling of broken time, a
dreamlike non-linearity. In the
music of Burial, this feeling is
created through a few key means:
The first, and most salient, is
the use of ghostly R&B samples
from decades past that echo
coldly with distorted emotional
resonance.
Also
contributing
is his drum and bass patterns,
skittish and inverted: Instead
of keeping time they further
warp it. His sampling technique
captures and emphasizes all
the mechanical noise, vinyl
crackle and static of the original
recordings, helping to create this
sense of temporal disjunction,
almost as though each element
of the track has been lifted not
just from a different place but a
different time, a different reality
that never came to be. Even
the title of his most important
album, Untrue, reaffirms this
theme of the unreal. The cover
art, too, depicts a unreal reality
— it is clear that, while we see
an angular, grey, dystopian café,
the true experience depicted
does not actually exist; rather, it
is happening inside his head.
Vaporwave
Vaporwave,
a
subgenre
of
electronic
music
which
emerged about half a decade
ago, is a little more overt in its
relationship with time through
its supposedly-ironic embrace
of
the
hyper-consumerism
of the ’80s and ’90s. I say
“supposedly
ironic”
because
even though popular consensus
is that the vaporwave aesthetic
is a critique of consumerist
society, I disagree: Vaporwave
is hauntological through its
nostalgia for the early days
of the internet, an artifact of
cultural memory from when
the future seemed much more
exciting and reality seemed
much more simple. The genre
focuses on the subsequent loss
of this innocence (see: “Teen
Pregnancy” by Blank Banshee).
If you look for vaporwave videos
on Youtube, the predominant
style involves heavy use of
temporal disjunctions (i.e. Greek
statues in a grid-like cyberspace)
that channel the feeling of a
future that never came.
Hauntology in other art
forms
This broader definition of
hauntology allows for it to be
applied more liberally to other
forms of artistic expression,
particularly visual media.
The
recent
cross-platform
surge of a neon aesthetic (see:
“Drive”, Kavinsky, /r/outrun)
could also be viewed through
a critical lens of hauntology,
where
the
“retro”
styling
belies a deeper yearning for
this futuristic reality that was
anticipated in the ’80s, that
might have been but ultimately
wasn’t. The constant inability
of society to break free of self-
reference (i.e. the past) is another
component of hauntology that
is certainly at play here. The
re-emergence of neon aesthetics
in the middle of the ’10s is
almost the visual equivalent of a
musical sample, where a cultural
artifact from the past is altered
to carry a different intonation
or meaning, becoming ghostlike
and haunting in the process.
Even the popular television
series
Twin
Peaks:
The
Return can be interpreted as
hauntological: Without spoiling
anything for those who haven’t
seen it, a major plot point
revolves around how the past
interacts with the present and
how dead futures are still, in
some sense, alive. The loss
of innocence explored in the
original
series
and
spin-off
movie Twin Peaks: Fire Walk
With Me leads the town of Twin
Peaks to a dissonant future,
where
something,
somehow,
feels missing even though it
never ended up existing. The
shots of Sarah Palmer alone in
her empty home watching old
TV programs are the visual
equivalent of Burial’s tunes, a
certain inescapable loneliness
brought by the unreal.
Hauntology
and
the
supernatural
An interesting theory that
has surfaced in developmental
psychology is the idea that
“monsters,” as children conceive
of them, are a mechanism
through which their fear that
the adults in their life, who
are to kids inscrutable and
all-powerful, will turn on or
abandon them is confronted.
Similarly, ghosts can be viewed
as a physical projection of
a deeper sense of temporal
disjunction, or a fear that our past
mistakes and traumas loom over
our heads, making themselves
known only long enough that we
remember that they have been
there all along. The specters and
wraiths of our past hover just
beyond our reach, equal parts
teasing and threatening, only
visible in those supernatural
moments where time seems to
fold before our eyes: A strange
light, an alienated walk home,
or the moment between waking
life and sleep. Much like the dots
in the optical illusion, if you try
to home in on these lost futures,
they vanish.
The magic of hauntology
and its manifestations
WARP
JONAH MENDELSON
Daily Arts Writer
“Death and the Miser” is a
1561 painting from Hieronymus
Bosch that depicts a classical
deathbed scene, with the figure of
death creeping into a room from
a side-door to take the life of the
individual sitting on a bed to the
right of the painting.
Death takes the form of a
skeleton, clad in drab clothing
and holding a spear of sorts. It
appears unfriendly, cold, but great
in stature. A grey piece of cloth
twists around Death’s head and
carries down to the feet, like an
oversized toga, as if the skeleton
didn’t deserve the garb it found
itself in. Interestingly, Death seems
to be moving slowly; it does not
seem like it had planned to burst
into the room and follow with a
quick escape. Instead, it is almost
as if death had knocked prior to
entering the room.
There
are
three
human-
appearing individuals in the room:
One in a brown robe, fiddling
with something at the foot of
the deathbed; another without
clothing, tucked underneath the
sheets of the deathbed (supposedly
the one for whom Death has
appeared); and another clad in
white touching the shoulder of
the
soon-to-be
deceased
and
looking directly at Death with
an outstretched hand — not
welcoming it, but acknowledging
it.
It is the relationship between
death and this individual clad in
white that is of most interest to me.
My mother was an internist at
a small hospital outside of Detroit
for some years before we moved
to the fringes of Ann Arbor. As a
specialist in internal medicine,
she worked with patients who had
been admitted to the hospital and
placed under her care.
Working at a smaller, more rural
hospital, her case load inevitably
involved fewer instances of fast-
paced trauma and more instances
of elderly patients for whom age
was simply taking its medical toll.
This, however, never exempted
her from a healthy dose of
interesting medical stories and life
experiences: I grew up in earshot
of an innumerable amount of
complex medical discussions and
consultations that my developing
mind couldn’t comprehend.
Over the years of being filtered
into the pre-med pool of academia
(against the advice of my mother), I
heard more and more tales from her
residency and practice to attempt
to sway me from the grueling
track that will be medical school
and residency. She recounted
experiences
of
rude
patients,
changing electronic systems, the
threat of depositions. She told
me about her long on-call shifts,
nightmares about her patients and
the pitting feeling of guilt when
something didn’t go your way.
One story that has failed to
banish itself from my mind and
my mother’s involves an on-call
shift in 1996. My mother, as an
attending internist, was tasked
with rounding the entire admitting
floor, patients who had been judged
as needing more extensive and
prolonged medical treatment than
the emergency department could
provide.
“I had just finished a code
when I was called to the floor
below me to see a patient,” said my
mother upon my request for her to
recount the story. A “code” refers
to a “code blue,” which denotes a
patient who has gone into cardiac
arrest, resulting in immediate
resuscitative efforts. In this case,
my mother’s patient was unable
to be successfully resuscitated,
and my mother had to call out the
patient’s death.
“This patient had called me to
tell me that she had seen death
walk by, and was walking around
the halls. She was afraid that it
was coming for her and I told her
no, it was for someone else.” she
continued. “She went right back to
sleep.”
“Death and the Miser” is
considered to be a memento mori,
or “reminder of death.” In depicting
the
physical
manifestation
of
death, Bosch introduces the notion
that death is mobile; it can show up
in unfortunate places. The story
presented by my mother and her
patient illustrate a similar idea.
You might see Death roaming the
halls. You might see Death asking
to enter a room. Yet, Death might
not be there for you; it might be on
its way to a code, to an outstretched
hand, clad in white.
PAPER MAGAZINE
Death’s depictions in art
and medeival medicine
ZACHARY M.S. WAARALA
Daily Arts Writer
Upon googling “gothic rock
and the supernatural” I was
utterly shocked — disgusted even
— to find very little on the topic
save a “The 20 Best Goth Songs
of the Last 20 Years” listicle. I’m
sorry, but you’ll have to excuse me
while I rant about the intrinsic
reliance with which goth has laid
its roots in the fertile soil of the
supernatural.
It’s 1979, and the founding
fathers of goth rock, better known
as Bauhaus, have just released
their first single, a 10-minute
crawler titled “Bela Lugosi’s
Dead.” Ten minutes, only 11 lines
of verse and a chorus repeating
“Bela
Lugosi’s
dead
/
Bela
Lugosi’s dead / Undead undead
undead.” I’m assuming at this
point you’re either a film major or
you’re wondering “Who the hell
is Bela Lugosi?” Bela Lugosi is the
Hungarian-American actor who
portrayed Dracula in the 1931 film
by the same name. So here we
have what is widely considered
the first goth rock song inspired
by one of the first films to be based
on one of the most widely beloved
gothic horror novels. This is
literally an art movement that has
spanned hundreds of years and
crossed mediums, maintaining
its momentum, and not a single
article
has
mentioned
the
importance of the supernatural
in all things gothic. Bauhaus
sparked a movement, one that
brought bleak melodies into a
union with the spooky, romantic
imagery of gothic horror: “The
virginal brides file past his tomb
/ Strewn with time’s dead flowers
/ Bereft in deathly bloom / Alone
in a darkened room / The count.”
Goth is the marriage of the
supernatural and the romantic,
and
Bauhaus
found
a
way
to reflect that sonically. The
supernatural is critical to the
development of gothic art and
essential to its use as a descriptor.
The Cure is too catchy to be
goth you say? Oh, I’m sorry,
apparently you haven’t listened
to “The Figurehead” off the
underappreciated Pornography:
“A scream tears my clothes as the
figurines tighten / With spiders
inside them / And dust on the lips
of a vision of hell / I laughed in the
mirror for the first time in a year.”
Oddly sensual for such harrowing
images … kind of like goth.
The fact that rock began to
borrow these emotions from
literature isn’t all that surprising.
Most lyricists with any semblance
of fame can list off a host of
writers who have influenced their
own work, and fans have clung to
the words from the likes of Ian
Curtis, Robert Smith and Siouxsie
Sioux for decades. But these
artists are decades old and mostly
defunct (albeit, we do have a new
The Cure record to look forward
to!). So what happens when one of
pop’s biggest breakouts decides to
drop a goth EP? TURN OFF THE
LIGHT, VOL. 1 by Kim Petras sent
everyone head-over-heels for its
combination of pop’s glamour
and goth’s supernatural horror.
“Goth pop” is a phrase that
is far too often tossed around.
Alice Glass/Crystal Castles is not
goth — aesthetically, perhaps, but
thematically, no. But with the
release of her newest EP, Kim’s
soaring, catchy vocals mix with
moody trance beats, all layered
with some incredibly goth lyrics.
The first lyrical track on the
record, “Close Your Eyes,” doesn’t
waste time in proving the work’s
goth nature: “Sometimes the best
things kinda hurt / ’Cause this is
real, it’s unrehearsed / My fatal
touch, you’ll feel cursed.” This
is followed by the instrumental
dance banger “TRANSylvania,”
whose pulsing bass parallels the
downtrodden rhythms of some of
goth rock’s greatest hits.
What I am getting at here is
that goth is a genre of many forms,
unconfined to any one medium or
sound, but it is firmly, indelibly
rooted in the supernatural, the
horror of the unknown. Could
Petras’s
small
collection
be
an indication of goth’s revival
in the pop sphere for the 21st
century? Only time will tell, but
historically speaking, gothic art
has been around for about 300
years to date, and I’ll be shocked
if it doesn’t continue to innovate
the way we look at horror and
romance for years to come. Goth
is an artistic microcosm born
from human fascination with
the supernatural, and it should
be revered as the pioneering,
essential movement that it is.
DOMINIC POLSINELLI
Daily Arts Writer
B-SIDE: NEW MEDIA
B-SIDE: MUSIC
On the infinite possibilities
of goth in music and sound
B-SIDE: FINE ART
It is a term that
offers freedom
for creative
interpretation,
and while
typically used to
reference temporal
disturbances and
the ever-increasing
interaction
between the
present and the
past.
It is firmly,
indelibly, rooted in
the supernatural,
the horror of the
unknown.