Is giving a foot massage like oral sex?

Body / foot organic link (according to Vince)

Hand / intention of the person

Inside / outside: fundamental trait of American culture. Americans would like the interior and the exterior to be equals idea articulated by WASP (White Anglo Saxon Protestant) males. Woman is seen as false to the male, from the male perspective.

Dishonesty / Erotic appeal

Calvin's Protestantism  Just do it

1530 1997

Emphasis on "just do". No matter what you do pure activity / action / act. Being is not important, doing is fundamental. "I do, therefore I am" NOT "I think, therefore I am".

Doing Anti-intellectual side of American culture. America is against the privilege of pure thought.

"God helps those that help themselves": expression linked to the notion of pure activity ( "to do something for its own sake"). The cultural equivalent "Aiutati che Dio ti aiuta" expresses a consequential relationship: if. then. You don't do something simply for its own sake.

The God / Man relationship according to the Roman Catholic Church is physically represented in the structure of a church, where you go from the Material to the Spiritual, from the Body to the Soul.

According to Calvin:

Before you're born you can be saved or damned PREDESTINATION.

You can't do nothing in this life to change your fate.

You can't even never know what your fate is.

The relationship to God has already happened before your born, and it's an ARBITRARY relationship. The consequence is: Why be good? Why have a Church? VERY RADICAL IDEA.

The Church raised because people thought they could change their fate. With Calvinism there's no theological reason for being good, there's only a civic or political reason law and order.

Interior    Exterior

Between these terms there is an arbitrary relationship

Signified  Signifier.

Saussure's view is in debt t 959j95j o his Calvinistic heritage

The relationship good/saved, bad/damned is broken. According to Calvinism we have a calling or a vocation in this world importance of WORK. If you do something in this world, you glorify God, it's not by contemplation that you glorify him.

"I mean what I say and I say what I mean"

"The Lord's prayer": language which comes from King James' translation of the Bible 80% of the words are Anglo-Saxon, monosyllables.

The Bible had (and still has) an incredible influence on American culture, it was the only book you needed to read.

Latin English

Complexity Simplicity

The translation of the Bible into English was a move of simplicity "plain style". You remove any unnecessary layers to the signifier, so you come closer to the meaning.

language

Plain style

Clothing "the vestment scandal"

England: Anglicans (1534 - King Henry VIII) were very similar to the Roman Catholics. Then there were the Puritans and the Pilgrims. The Pilgrims left England and went to Holland, and eventually moved to America. They were a very radical group SEPARATIST. They didn't accept any formal institution of any kind, because they're not justified in the Bible. No desire of reform.

Non-separatists Winthrop's group.

According to Winthrop between man and God there is a contract, a covenant:

God

JUSTIFICATION FOR THE

contract EXISTENCE OF THE CHURCH

Man Man

contract

In this way you commercialize God and you spiritualize business. See also: Max Weber "The spirit of capitalism and the ethics of Protestantism".

If you don't work you're not lazy, you're immoral SLOTH (one of the seven capital sins). If you buy an object, you buy something which is somehow "spiritualized".

America: sense of abundance / people who want to work you can't fail, you're destined to succeed. It's easy to say God was on your side. See also: Potter "The people of plenty".

Metaphors allows us to live with contradictions.

E.g.: "Slavery is a blot on the blueprint of America". Thomas Jefferson (who had about 150 slaves!).

Blot = ink stain; blueprint = design, project.

According to this metaphor slavery is something unplanned, an accident in the history of America. And that's the way Jefferson could sleep well at night.

Hand ----------- Tool    Signified ------------- Signifier

Marriage Fit

Fit

In American culture knowledge comes from doing something, especially with you hands INSTRUMENTALITY of American culture.

Roman Catholic mystics saw themselves as "vessels" which needed to be filled by God passive condition. Protestants see themselves as "tools" in the hands of God. God is moving them.

Expressions linked to the word "hand": can you handle that?

Hands on.

Language as a tool:

England language is the means by which you can identify one's social class. It is also a weapon, because people who can't speak Standard English are automatically cut off hierarchy. Enriched lexicon.

USA it's not used as a social weapon. You only use it for a specific purpose. Silence at the dinner table: mouth is for eating, not for talking! Perception of English as more efficient.

Interior Exterior

Edwards  Franklin often accused of being superficial (stereotype about the Americans)

The interior gaze wants to turn the interior out.

Edwards Calvinism   Franklin Enlightenment

Franklin is the first American philosopher.

Vaccination: should you put evil in a pure body? Great theological debate.

1748: Great Awakening religious Revival, which periodically affects American society. The puritan sermon was a highly developed form in American culture. Edwards wrote a famous sermon called "Sinners in the hands of an angry God", which works on the power of God of having you in his hands. It's new in Calvinistic tradition (usually based on a rational, reasonable argument), because the body becomes the sight of your argument you don't have to be a cultivated person to show God is near you. "The shakers": people who shake to show God's presence.

The Swamp (also marsh or quagmire): idea articulated by Bunyan in "Pilgrim's progress". The swamp of iniquity the symbol of sin. Your inside is the swamp.

"The booth" accentuates the process of going inside, it symbolizes the gesture of entering.

According to Franklin, by building a wharf you walk upon the swamp. But he builds the wharf only because he wants to go fishing! Franklin doesn't recognize the swamp as a symbol.

According to Franklin, the public is more useful and more important than the private. He doesn't care about the reason of an act, the important thing is the consequence of it, what it does.

PRAGMATISM: Philosophical school. Truth is what works.

Franklin is the discoverer of electricity. He proved electricity is not a mystical thing, but only a scientific phenomenon.

DEISM (today "Unitarian Church"): it distinguishes well-educated, reasonable people. God is a watchmaker (the watch is the symbol of the perfect machine and of the possibility of the perpetual motion machine. A clock is a very reasonable instrument). God makes the world work, and then he leaves. The world itself is reasonable.

According to Calvinism, the man/God relationship is arbitrary.

According to Deism, it is absolutely zero.

If the watch is perfect, why can't we be perfect?

Franklin was obsessed with how to eliminate waste. He learned money by writing an almanac. He never patented anything he invented because he thought that his inventions were based on someone else's discoveries (N.B.: in America plagiarize is a very serious crime, because the idea is a part of me: if you steal it to me, it's as if you steal a part of me). Franklin ridicules this concept, because his idea comes from the exterior, not from his interior. For him the idea of originality doesn't exist.

The way to wealth

People ------------ taxes ------------ Government source of the problem according to the people)

Source of the problem according to Father Abraham = idleness.

The source of the problem is inside the individual, as well as the solution.

money

To spend     TIME IS MONEY

Time

Time is measurable, quantifiable.

SLOTH    LABOUR

IDLENESS VS. DOING

LAZINESS  DILIGENCE

SLUGGARDNESS

In American culture if you're lazy you're morally sick, diseased.

Inside/outside, soul/body the nature of this relationship is Trinitarian, like Father, Son and Holy Ghost. They are also fundamental categories in philosophy and theology.

Inside/outside VS. One

If you think the One, you get rid of the possibility of deception mask, trap.

Franklin has a problem with being proud or vain instead of being humble. He accepts vanity in other people because it can be useful. He says: "I can appear humble, but I can still be proud or vain". Language is a means by which you can appear humble: "It seems to me."

Franklin doesn't condemn the incongruity between inside/outside IRONY: appearing one way and saying something else. SMUG: pride in appearing to be proud. Franklin recognizes the contradictions in human emotions: being humble paradoxically leads not to be humble. In this way he runs against the Puritan desire for Oneness.

Reason is perfect, so why can't we be perfect? It's not reasonable to be reasonable, it's convenient, useful. Convenience dominates reason.

BENEFICIAL NOT BENEFICIAL

Language is a tool

ESSENTIAL   TRIFLING

Every time you do something you should ask yourself: "Is this necessary? Is this useful? Helpful?" If you can't think the world as parted between useful/unuseful* etc. then you can't also think it as parted between black and white.

*These elements are mutually exclusive, and therefore they're pure.

Clean/Unclean physical cleanliness is also spiritual cleanliness, because the body is the metaphor of your soul.

Ploughman/Gentleman -- Servant/Master -- American/European

D.H. Lawrence judges Franklin from a Romantic perspective. He doesn't see any humor in him.

Crèvecoeur. Not clearly on the side of the Americans DUPLICITY. Privileged character: farmer, cultivator of the earth. Cultivating the earth is what cultivates you. Man is like a plant.

1826: Cooper writes "The last of the Mohicans". The hero is Naddy Bamppo, who is the absolute opposite of the cultivator, because he's a hunter. Uneducated but virtuous, because he's closer to nature, and so to God.

Cultivated man both Jefferson

Uncultivated man and Crèvecoeur

They prefer:

uncultivated rather than wild because they see themselves as cultivators.

Cultivate the uncultivated

CULTIVATORS

Civilize and conquer the wild land

INDIAN: two ways of seeing it

Wild

Uncultivated

If the land is uncultivated, the cultivator has more rights to take that land and cultivate it than the wild Indian.

Decency in Crèvecoeur. Ward for the middle class. Not being above or below anybody else everything is on a horizontal sameness. UNIFORMITY. No master or servant but decency.

Regenerate (rebirth) is in between America and Europe.

America rebirth  (= voyage across the sea) Europe

Adoption: you must be an orphan = no parents.

America = new parents you give birth to yourself, you are the origin of yourself you are an ORIGINAL.

Received not conceived. An American is received.

HUNTER CULTIVATOR

White - Dark    contract man/woman the man is castrated

Both males the male is free   woman = civilizing element

Eternal child  children blood relationship

America Europe

Having children = attempt to live forever once you have fallen from the Garden of Eden children are also a sign of death.

In American culture you want to eliminate the blood relationship. You can see this when the child leaves the parents' home at an early age he/she wants to deny this blood relationship and underline the fact that he/she has no parents.

FRONTIER MIDDLE SPACE EAST COAST OCEAN EUROPE

Savage

Red man  civilization

Unknown

Wild    if you go this way you degenerate

The closer you come to America you degenerate.

Frontier: important notion in American culture ( see Kennedy's "New Frontier"). The axe becomes one of the most important symbols in American culture, because it is the symbol of European civilized men. You can't move west without the axe.

Later on the Americans admit to be savage, and they're proud of it. The price of civilization is too high. In the conflict farmer/hunter no one represents the law. The hunter is a way of taking distance from the civilized Europe. The main difference is that if you work the earth, you're a good person, because earth = God.

Farming: time and space are organized reasonably.

Hunting: no fences no articulated space. Time is organized on the basis of your appetite.

Jefferson Smug pride in not being involved with the French Court, which is decadent. The tears are the important sign, because they're closer to your interior.

Jefferson is one of the first people to propose the graduated income tax. He also ends primogenitor (the right of the first son of inheriting everything), because inheritance also means tradition. Wealth must be distributed in a more equal way. Natural right: how can you inherit something from nature? Natural laws are superior to men made laws. In America it becomes a dangerous logic, because the Indians were only occupying the land, so they had no right to it. What gives you the natural right is to do something with the land. But why isn't there a natural right of doing nothing with it?

Cultivator vs. non-cultivator

Doing vs. idleness

The idle person no longer has a natural right.

"Shane", by George Stevens, 1953

Ryker Joe

Rancher   Farmer

No fences    Fences

All men Men/Women

Arrived first Arrived second

Frontier   Middle space

The rancher raises cattle for meal, while the farmer wants to be self-sufficient.

Ryker feels almost like he's an Indian.

Shane occupies the space between the two, he can go either ways.

The director wants to articulate the myth of the western. The movie is about how a civil society is founded. But what do we do about violence? Death? Valley = Edenic space. Very white movie. In order to establish a civil society, we need violence. The person who commits the violence "kills" himself, so violence doesn't touch the community. Shane is a threat to life, in fact he's wearing Indian clothes.

1954 - Brown vs. Board of Education: abolition of "separate but equal".

Shane

Joe   Joey Marianne

Shane takes off his pistol and picks up the axe. When he does so, he becomes asexual. The American culture is not erotic, it's pornographic.

"As American as apple pie"

Big Apple

An apple a day keeps the doctor ( = SIN) away

Johnny Appleseed

NEW EDEN OLD EDEN

America the (apple) tree of the  

knowledge of good and evil FALL

In the Bible the apple represents sin; in American culture it's the symbol of health!

Apple = sign of temptation, seduction (usually!).

In order to be innocent you need to be child-like.

Rite of passage

Boy man

Tool

Phallus Pistol

Past (as a killer)

SHANE'S PISTOL  He has both repressed them

Sex

N.R.A. (National Rifle Association): lobby. It has prevented any bill on arms control.

America = child England = parents

Blood relationship which becomes cancelled. The traditional notion of the family is being radically rethought. Shane talks about the value of family in 1953, not in the 1870's.

The anniversary is the celebration of a contract. It is the celebration of an union on the day of the breaking of an union.

Joe is uncomfortable with speaking he's honest.

contract

JOE MARIANNE

blood

relationship

JOEY  SHANE

adoption ( = Cutting of blood relationship)

Family ------ Individual

The individual means the destruction of the family. "Pull yourself up by your own bootstraps": you must be absolutely independent.

True love is supposed to explain the relationship between Joe and Marianne. Cult of true romance. In America since there is no family, then there must be true love (or pure sex!).

Force No talking

Talking No force

Cultivator City

Self-sufficient   Dependent on trade

Billie Holiday "Strange fruit".

"Self-reliance". Emerson was very appreciated by Nietzche. He studied Kant and Hegel. Linked to Transcendentalism. Radical idea of the individual.

If you need help, we won't help you, because this prevents you from being self-sufficient, it will hurt you. Everything you need is in you. You should be ashamed if you ask for help. VERY STRONG IDEA.

This idea can work because of abundance, opportunity, and it explains the poorness of:

Pension plans

Trade unions

Health insurance

Social security system

The Government doesn't have to help you.

Affirmative Action: special privileges for minorities. Very strongly attacked.

Envy works on the principle that "your gain is my loss" ( zero-sum logic). Perceived lack. Envy is ignorance of abundance (=infinite).

American culture is infantile. Nonchalance is possible because of abundance.

History is nothing but a dead body, so what's the point in it? Remembering is what gives you personality. Who cares if you contradict yourself? Aristotle's principle of non-contradiction:

"A cannot be A and non-A at the same time". This can happen in an ideal time, not in a REAL one.

According to Emerson it's not even possible to contradict yourself. If you want me to be consistent you're RELYING on me, and not on yourself. He tries to be just one step ahead of history.

Mookie: do not think do the right thing. Your instinct is good.

Thinking is not natural, it's artificial.

MOOKIE wants to appear black to the blacks and white to the whites. He's playing a double game.

SHANE plays the part of the farmer and that of the killer.

"Do the right thing". Everybody in the black community calls themselves "brother" and "sister" community = family.

Sal (cash relationship)

Black community --------- Mookie

Tina blood relationship: how is it possible to break it?

Blood    VS Money

This is what makes racism possible

Real brother and sister VS Metaphorical brother and sister

Importance of the lips: Spike Lee is saying the blacks are not ashamed of them.

Mookie wears Jordan's T-shirt.

He wears Robinson's T-shirt (1^st Afro-American to play professional sport).

INTERIOR EXTERIOR

Jackie Robinson BLACK

Mookie

Sal's pizzeria WHITE

Pino always wears white T-shirts because he hates blacks, while Vito always wears black T-shirts because he likes blacks.

INTERIOR EXTERIOR

if you touch my radio, you touch me

Radio Rahim Radio

What is the relationship between Mookie and Radio Rahim? Problematic question.

Mookie perhaps has an interest in eliminating Radio Rahim because he represents the blood relationship within the black community.

INTERIOR EXTERIOR he has the same relationship that R.R. has with his radio

Sal Pizzeria

Mookie says "Don't let the blood relationship interfere with my cash relationship", while Buggin Out says the opposite "Stay black"

Sal says "I just killed your radio" R.R. wants to kill Sal. Then, a white policeman kills R.R., so the blacks want to kill Sal it doesn't happen, but Mookie and the blacks "kill" Sal's pizzeria.

Radio Rahim is worth the pizzeria.

People who were separate at the beginning now have come together. CIRCULAR STRUCTURE.