“The joy of repetition really is in you”: Lee Edelman and Hot Chip’s “Over and Over”

I’m going to argue that Hot Chip’s “Over and Over” (mainly the song, but also somewhat the video) evinces/endorses what Lee Edelman calls “sinthmosexuality.”

Queer theorist Lee Edelman argues that, in the West, “queerness” has come to represent the “death drive” at the heart of all our humanist ideals. Freud posits “Thanatos” as the flip side of every “Eros” (i.e., aggression as the complement to affection), and it is this aggressive, literally inhuman(ist) negativity that heteronormativity attributes to teh queers. As Edelman explains, “queerness…figures, outside and beyond its political symptoms, the place of the social order’s death drive…queerness attains its ethical value precisely insofar as it accedes to that place” (3). Rather than trying to prove their “humanity,” Edelman argues that queers should embrace and positively value this inhuman negativity (4). Edelman names this queer embrace of the death drive “sinthmosexuality” [now nicely homophonous with “synth”-mosexuality…] in order to emphasize the role of death/the death drive in jouissance (or, as Edelman says, “a fatal, and even murderous, jouissance” (39)). Sinthmosexuality privileges pleasure over “deep meaning” by “insisting on access to jouissance in place of access to sense” (37). Moreover, it is “as stupid enjoyment” that sinthmosexuality takes on the character of “senseless compulsion” (38). Because of its “repetitive insistence” or “repetitive investment in the Same,” sinthmosexuality finds pleasure in “machine[s] for producing sameness” (59). Sinthmosexuality is, for Edelman, the joy of machinic repetition.

The quote in the title is a line from Hot Chip’s song “Over and Over,” which, as you can see by the title, is a song whose musical and lyrical content is about repetition. Here’s the video, with lyrics:



“Over and Over” is a “sinthmosexual” text in the following ways: (1) At the level of musical form, it refuses to “secret” repetition behind some notion of development or progression (the form could be roughly schematized as follows: Intro-A-A1-A1-B-B-A1-B-B-C-A2-A2-B-B-A); (2) It rejects the humanist preference for musical authenticity, be it in “warmth” of sound, the use of “real people” playing “real instruments,” and humanism’s general tendency to equate electronic sounds with alienation (indeed, the “live video” takes place in a digital editing environment, as the close of the video makes explicitly clear); and (3) It posits and positively values “joy in repetition,” and compares the abstract second-person addressee to a machine for producing sameness (“like a monkey with the miniature cymbals”). The pleasure here is the pleasure of synthmosexuality (and, of the synthesizer), joy in cold, meaningless repetition. Indeed, as the break tells us, “k-i-s-s-i-n-g” and “s-e-x-i-n-g” are equated to keyboarding (i.e., a “casio poke” – fingering, so to speak, either a piano or a computer keyboard). The song doesn’t attempt to make some sort of profound statement, but purports instead to “give [us] ‘laid back’”. This isn’t supposed to be “serious” or “deep” music—it’s just fun, senseless fun, and that’s a good thing. The song uses electronic instruments and feedback and thus distances itself from the “warmth” of live instruments, i.e. of “real people”. Also, (4) The dancers are all in motion capture suits. A very embodied activity is presented as something whose telos is not corporeality, but digitization—in this instance, dancing doesn’t bring us closer to our bodies, it is the medium in which kinaesthetics is abstracted into data.

All quotes that are not from the Hot Chip song are from Lee Edelman's 2004 book No Future.

further evidence of the KLF's awesomeness

...remember I mentioned Simon Reynolds saying that Cabaret Voltaire sounded like Daleks?



Gary Glitter + Dr. Who + The Justified Ancients of MuMu = win

Telephone, Video Phone, Stronger: Our Work Is Never Over

So, I've been working on a reading of Gaga's Telephone video, but that's become more of a project than I originally anticipated. So, while I'm still working on that, some initial thoughts regarding the video's interpretive context.

Here's Gaga's video:


This video needs to be interpreted in dialogue with two other videos: Beyonce's Video Phone, which features Gaga, and Kanye West's Stronger. The connection between the Video Phone and Telephone is obvious; between Stronger and Telephone, not so much. First, Beyonce:



It shares w/Telephone:

1. The literal content of the song, i.e., the feminism: Both are about women using technology against patriarchy. In Telephone, GG and B refuse to answer the telephone, i.e., ideology's "hail" -- they abandon traditional feminine care work (waitresses, cooks) and act autonomously. In Video Phone, B and GG direct the camera's gaze (see my earlier post about VP for more on this). In both videos, women take hetero-patriarchy and turn it against itself. These are not stereotypically feminine women; GG's intentional ugliness is evidence enough of this.
2. The Tarantino references: The first scene of VP is very Reservoir Dogs-esque; the Pussy Wagon from T comes directly from Kill Bill.
3. Beyonce's styling is consistent between videos (Betty Page-inspired hair, makeup, and clothes). The "Wonder Woman" style is present in VP, and could be seen as inspiring the stars-and-stripes getup in T.
4. The sci-fi references: In VP, B totes ray-guns and dresses up in what could be seen as cosplay-inspired duds (e.g., the vaguely Japan-meets-Nazi lyotard and hat combo). In T, all the chemicals that GG uses to poison the people in the diner come from various sci-fi worlds (e.g., the first chemical is from the extended Star Wars universe).
5. Killing: B tortures one camera-headded dude, and shoots another one full of arrows in VP. In T, they kill a diner full of people (and a dog).
6. There's probably more -- I welcome your suggestions!


OK, on to West's Stronger:



1. "That that don't kill me, can only make me stronger" (or, the lyrical content of the song): As in VP and T, this video portrays a subaltern subject turning hegemony against itself...or, more literally, it portrays someone busting out of captivity. The military-industrial complex tries to re-engineer West, but he turns into a crazy superhero who busts himself out of some sort of imprisonment.
2. Killing/plot arch: West blows away his captors in some superhero puff of smoke.
3. Technology, specifically, the reappropriation of technology: West takes Daft Punk and remixes it, and in the video West's character repurposes his cyborg body.
4. Posthuman bodies: West, Daft Punk, on the one hand, and the female bodybuilders, trans-people, and other queers on the other.
5. Sci-Fi: I already explained the sci-fi in T; its role in S is pretty overt...
6. "I'll do anything for a blonde dyke" -- self-explanatory
7. Cut-up vocals: The eh-eh-eh-s in T; the way West cuts out and lets the DP "Never" come through (around 2:56 in the video)
8. "Our work is never over": Either B and GG are saying they reject the gendered imperative for care work, or their work of revenge is never over...
9. Again, I'm sure there are more, and I welcome suggestions (I also realize one thing these videos DON'T share is feminism...)

So, I'm arguing that it is productive to think about Telephone in the context of these other videos...More on how that plays out soon...

Synth Britania - a BBC Doc about [white dudes in] 70s/80s British Electronica

Synth Britania is available in full on YouTube, and it's an interesting and informative enough documentary filled with a lot of good music. Some of the info is going to be redundant for a lot of serious fans of this genre, but there *is* a fair amount of live footage of original performances, so that makes up for the redundancy problem.

The best part, however, is when Simon Reynolds says that Cabaret Voltare sounds like Daleks (Which they don't: CV's vocals sound *far* more processed than Dalek lines):



My main impression of Synth Britania, however, is the near complete absence of women, and the total absence of people of color. There have to have been more women involved in this than Gillian Gilbert (of New Order, who gets a passing mention as "the drummer's girlfriend"), Alison Moyet (of Yaz, who actually gets interviewed, but not without several remarks about her weight), and Joanne Catherall and Susan Ann Sulley (of Human League, who are also interviewed, but treated as sort of ornaments to the 'real' group). Genesis P. Orrigde is mentioned, but only as a male -- same with Wendy Carlos. Giorgio Moroder gets some serious love, but why not Donna Summer? And seriously, there were plenty of people of color in late 20th-c Britain. So, where were they in British synth/electro? And if there really weren't more women, or if there really were zero people of color in the scene, why?...Why didn't they interview Kodwo Eshun, a prominent black British music critic who is an authority on electronica and Afrofuturism?

I guess as an American who was introduced to Kraftwerk by Afrika Bambaataa learned about electronic music from Laurie Anderson and Derek May/Juan Atkins/Kevin Saunderson, the total whiteness and maleness of the scene presented in Synth Britania seems, well, really weird. (And, for all the Dr. Who allusions in the doc, why no mention of Delia Derbyshire?)