KISS and Tell

Among my guilty pleasures are the lower echelons of several modes of popular culture, including comics (particularly vintage copies from the 40's through the 60's) and music. KISS had a lot in common with comics actually, as the quartet came up with the magnificent 70's shtick of costumed secret identities: the rock band as perverse homage to the Justice League of America. I read today that KISS is coming out with a new record, amusingly titled "Sonic Boom," due out on October 6, a date and a year than which nothing could be more fitting in my case. It's almost enough to make me go out and buy a turntable in case it's released on vinyl. Supposedly the record is being advertised as the band's best effort since their 70's heyday; if that's damning with faint praise, so be it.

I wish I could recall when I first stumbled upon KISS, but it wasn't long before I discovered theirs was a subversive aesthetic deliciously at odds with the adult world around me. I came upon them when they were still in their prime, riding high on records like Destroyer and Alive I and II. They were my first concert, which I suppose would have been in 1979 as it was the Dynasty tour. It was probably one of my father's greatest indignities as a parent that he endured that show; his tastes running as they do to Lawrence Welk, I suppose he inserted his earplugs and stared, bewildered, into the smoky darkness. I would have been ten.

Comics books, which are for kids what opera is for some adults, are over-the-top in their aesthetic and mobilize simple but powerful themes. KISS ingeniously, in a move uniting Joseph Campbell with heavy metal, utilized several potent archetypes appealing even to kids and teenagers: the demonic (Gene Simmons), the spiritual or otherworldy (Ace Frehley), the animal (Peter Criss), and of course the sexual (Paul Stanley). Their shows, employing fire-breathing, blood-spitting and various other antics, generally outshone their studio records in both musical intensity and overall effect. It was a formula that probably shouldn't have worked, but for a few years it did. It was like a popular parody of Wagner's gesamtkunstwerk.

The actual music of KISS is a farrago of slick guitar chords and saccharine pseudo-strings. And if 80% of popular music is about one wild thing, in KISS's case it may have been more like 90%, and with less subtlety. For a pre-teen this was just fine; I was receiving disguised messages from an adult world barely guessed-at. It all segued well with a fascination for Conan the Cimmerian (in the form of the decadent Robert E. Howard books, not the Schwarzenegger movies--I still have to remind myself this actor is governor of California). Sure, stuff like "Calling Dr. Love," "God of Thunder," and "Rock and Roll all Nite" was schlock, but it was schlock a ten-year-old could well appreciate. I just loved the iconography; although like boxed wine it may have been tawdry, it pushed physiological buttons and added meaning to the world. The over-the-top excess (check out the shoes!), so foreign to my usual identity, appealed. Even the band's old label--Casablanca--evoked vistas of virtually unattainable mystery. By my early teens I had moved on; but do we ever fully "move on?"

I suppose I loved Simmons the best. While my full defection from conventional religion wouldn't come for a few more years (courtesy of Dostoyevsky and Nietzsche), Simmons delivered a message every young boy needs to hear: you have impulses that aren't very nice, but that's natural and okay, so long as you express them this way, in a song and not in the world. Did KISS do any harm I wonder? There have been infamous casualties at Who and Rolling Stones concerts, but KISS?

The real problem with pop phenomena like KISS is that they outlive their glory by about thirty years, recylcing material into their dotage. Around 1980 they should have disbanded and, like Prospero, should have broken their staves and "deeper than did ever plummet sound" have plunged their books, rather than having lived on as a caricature of 70's culture. If they produce anything remotely worthwhile on October 6 they will command a new archetype: Lazarus.

In Treatment

So I finally wrapped up the current season of HBO's In Treatment. I will try to be brief.

It is easy to take potshots at the show's ludicrous inaccuracies: the melodrama, the boundary violations, the additional boundary violations. In this show, therapy is aerobic exercise--patients and therapists jump up and pace, hurl objects, and/or run out of the office. Is this how they do things in New York? Where I come from, passive aggression works just fine--why work yourself into a tizzy when you can just lapse into sullen silence or fail to show up for your next appointment? But that sort of thing takes precious time on screen, and doesn't get the blood pumping.

Perhaps the most unrealistic aspect of the show is the fact that Dr. Weston ("Paul" of course to his patients) is a remarkably astute therapist, except for his Texas-sized blind spot as regards therapeutic boundaries. His formulations and his interpretations seem suspiciously on-target, considering how at sea he seems to be in his own therapy with Gina. And yet all his patients vociferously challenge his therapeutic authority--again, this comes across as somewhat contrived.

Considering that this is television, I suppose one can fault the cases for seeming too pat and tidy. I haven't seen the first season of the show, but in this second season the unifying theme seemed to be reversals of family responsibility, that is, children having to compensate for parents incapacitated by mental illness, grief, or a sheer inability to cope. This happens, to be sure, but does it happen this often?

For me, the single most piercing exchange of the series occurred in Paul's tumultuous penultimate meeting with Gina, in which he questions his entire mission as a therapist, and (jokingly?) expresses his intention to become a "life coach." He notes, as every occasionally despairing therapist must, that his patients seem to want love and/or pills more than they want what he offers, which is understanding. Gina's crucial comment is that even if he could, as their therapist, provide love to his patients, they would be unable to receive it, for that is why they are in therapy. If the offering of advice or "therapeutic love" amounts to feeding people fish, then true therapy is teaching people how to fish, as the saying goes.

A Fry Cook Comes of Age

"The Child is father of the Man."

Wordsworth


I indulge in a good deal of fluff here on the blog, but every now and then I tackle weightier subjects, such as this month's tenth anniversary of the indomitable, indefatigable, and inimitable SpongeBob Squarepants. James Parker profiles the cadmium yellow phenomenon in this month's Atlantic Monthly.

As Parker argues, no cartoon character has been more characteristically American than Spongebob--both buoyant and irrepressible, his greatest passion is serving up the Krabby Patty, a variant of that most quintessential American product. Spongebob is either stupidly naive or uncorruptibly optimistic, depending on how one views him; inherently blind to limits, he somehow winds up being pardonable owing to his basic good will. Like our preferred conception of children, he is deeply but innocently egotistical and a boundless generator of entropy, yet he is ultimately incapable of vindictiveness.

If Spongebob embodies the can-do, entrepreneurial spirit, the absurdly acquisitive Mr. Krabs correspondingly reflects the reckless greed than which he, unlike his fry cook, ought to know better. Yet Krabs is fallible, not vicious, and as such serves as a father figure for his young charge. He forgives Spongebob his frequent trespasses, and is forgiven in turn. Their nemesis, the menacing but miniscule and maladroit Plankton, is more bad uncle than real villain--as his chief aim is not destruction but theft of the Krabby Patty's secret formula, the greatest danger he poses is perversion of the business ethos.

The ludicrously stupid starfish Patrick, Spongebob's faithful companion, is a useful foil to the latter's misadventures; while Spongebob makes many mistakes in a large and complicated world, Patrick reminds the young viewer that he has, at least, come a long way from primal idiocy. The curmudgeonly Squidward embodies that most scary and puzzling quantity to the child, that adult world that is immune to his charms (and he is a figure to which the viewing parent may well relate). Yet even he, of course, is more long-suffering than threatening.

As Parker notes, the series borrows some of the hallucinatory dynamism of the 1990's Ren and Stimpy Show, but domesticated for a mainstream audience. Absurdity and breakneck speed constitute the pulse, but the show avoids decadence inasmuch as hard work, ingenuity, and allegiance to friends and colleagues will finally prevail. Over the top, dripping with excess, yet unapologetic and deeply moral, Spongebob Squarepants is a snapshot of contemporary American culture. And I don't think I can stand another episode.

Wide Open Spaces

"I have traveled much in Concord."

Thoreau

Something a little lighter for post #150. I happened to see the 2009 Forbes list of the "10 most miserable cities" in the U.S. based on composite scores reflecting climate, taxes, unemployment, crime, etc. Here's the rundown:

1. Stockton, CA

2. Memphis, TN

3. Chicago, IL

4. Cleveland, OH

5. Modesto, CA

6. Flint, MI

7. Detroit, MI

8. Buffalo, NY

9. Miami, FL

10. St. Louis, MO

I noted this not because any of these is particularly surprising (well, Chicago maybe a little), but because I've always been interested in people's sense of place and the kinds of locales they seek out or seem surprisingly content with. For some people blood is thick enough to deter wandering, whereas others manage to escape from economically, sociologically, and psychologically depressed areas, such as the town I commute a half hour to for work.

Geography also probably played some role in my becoming a physician. As one would hope, my main motivation for psychiatry was a fascination for subjectivity and mental experience. The income, comfortable but not stratospheric, was less of a factor than was job flexibility. If medicine and/or psychology had been unavailable for some reason, my next choice probably would have been liberal arts academia in some capacity.

But a major issue with university-level, tenure-track academia is the fact that, unless you are a rare superstar professor able to sell one's talents to the highest bidder, you pretty much have to settle where you can find a viable job, and once there you might stay there a long time. I liked the idea that, as a physician, I could go pretty much anywhere I wanted and at least make a decent living. Of course, far fewer physicians have their own practices than used to be the case, but when a physician does have a boss, he is at more liberty to leave and find a different boss than some other professionals are.

Ironically, I haven't (yet) used this freedom to work all over the place; while I have done my fair share of traveling, I have lived only in or near medium-sized cities in the Midwest and Southeast. But I know that if I suddenly did want to roam, my profession would not prevent me. I enjoy places like Chicago or Manhattan for a few days, but I have never felt a serious urge to live there. Psychiatrists are infamous for preferring the big city and its sophisticated cultural goodies, leaving wide swaths of rural population unserved. But people need to be where they'll feel at home. Culturally I would probably be most at home in the Pacific Northwest, but I don't think I could deal with the weather. If I made a dramatic geographic move it would probably be to the desert Southwest (I have a cousin in Tucson who, I'm sure, keeps a room waiting for me).

A few months ago a large survey-based study made news by suggesting distinct trends in psychological profiles of U.S. regions and states. The methodology was questionable, of course, and obviously one finds all sorts of folks in all sorts of places, but it does seem to corroborate a sense one has that, despite the homogenizing effects of popular culture, different parts of the country have differing broad "personalities." Supposedly North Carolina tends to be highly agreeable and dutiful. Hmmm.

Also a few months ago Stanley Fish bravely wrote a New York Times piece (with the aptly Thoreauvian title "Travel Narrows") confessing his firm distaste for travel, including the logistical discomforts and the gawking at famous, and of course "touristy," sights. It seems to me that travel is one of those things, like dining out or going to the movies perhaps, that is widely held to be a great good that nobody in his right mind could object to. I wouldn't go as far as Fish, but I can relate to his protests. As we slide toward economic apocalypse, perhaps the thrifty homebody will get come into his own...

President Parker

(Courtesy Marvel Comics--hope they don't mind)

Highbrow, lowbrow, highbrow, lowbrow...I guess it averages out in the end. It's a good thing the Internet is bottomless--in all the Obamamania I had managed to overlook our new President's appearance in, of all things, a Spider-Man comic book. Supposedly Obama is a Spidey collector--he is both more meticulous and better-funded than I am, so I'm guessing he has my modest stash beaten easily.

So many parallels between Obama and Peter Parker. Just as Spidey (who burst on the scene in 1962 in the issue pictured above) was an introspective and complicated hero compared to the unflappable but stiff heroes of the 1940's, so Obama aspires to a new direction after World War II and baby boomer presidents. Does that make John McCain The Vulture? Mitch McConnell the Sandman? Sarah Palin resembles the Scarlet Witch a bit, but she was a good guy. Oh that's right, we're postpartisan, it's all good now...