Narcos is a new Netflix original series that premiered all its 10 episodes just before start of the network TV fall season. It centers around a U.S. DEA officer in the 1980s who is sent to Colombia to follow the constantly expanding, multi million dollar cocaine trade to its sources. He soon encounters infamous Colombian drug dealer Pablo Escobar and the show follows the police and DEA agents’ attempts to capture and kill Escobar. There are three things that struck me in the first ten minutes and that are all indicative of the type of show Narcos is:

(1) the layered framing: We start with a voiceover comparing present day NSA surveillance with the much more primitive methods used in the ’80s only to then move back yet again to the early ’70s and a strongly abbreviated history of Pinochet’s military coup. The voiceover narrative evokes films like Goodfellas and Casino, gangster narratives told after the fact. In the end, however, the voiceover keeps the viewer at a distance and often carries the burden of exposition of the highly complex historical and political realities that create the backdrop to the moments we see on screen. In fact, at times it feels like the complexities of reality are at odds with the need for characterization, if not sympathetic protagonists, within this fiction.

(2) the original footage: In the brief historical summaries, the text uses historical footage suggesting the historical veracity of the narrative. In fact, the entire pacing combined with the voiceover often resembles a documentary more than a television drama. Unlike historical fiction that focuses on fictional or composite characters to elucidate the truth of an era or a phenomenon, Narcos places Pablo Escobar front and center, telling his story as fact. And yet the entirety of reality is undermined by prefacing the first episode with defining magic realism as “a realistic setting…invaded by something too strange to believe.” The layering and the verisimilitude suggest that the show is an epistemological inquiry to get to the truths of Pablo Escobar, and the show endeavors to unravel those truths slowly and carefully. The leisurely pacing and often gorgeous backdrop scenery with its clearly marked ’80s fashion all add to a level of care that supports this endeavor—all the while foregrounding and enforcing its fictionality.

(3) the language: As a native German speaker, few things throw me out of a show more quickly than Germans in Germany speaking accented English to one another (like in the recent Sense8). If I suspend my disbelief, they should speak fluent English just like any Star Trek alien does. Or they should be German speaking German and just be subtitled. Narcos yet again tries to invoke a sense of authenticity and documentary evidence by presenting the large majority of the show in Spanish with subtitles. However, I use the term “tries” purposefully, because while I was initially very excited about the choice to present a show primarily in subtitles, it turns out verisimilitude only goes so far: Wagner Moura, who plays Pablo Escobar, is Brazilian (apparently he and director José Padilha are BFFs). My Spanish native speaker friends tell me that the show is surprisingly good in its linguistic authenticity, but that cannot make up for the fact that the central character speaks Colombian Spanish with a clearly noticeable Brazilian accent. Apparently, US monolinguals or, at least, non-Spanish speakers are the primary, if not only, audience.

Last not least: I’m glad I’m not the only one who immediately thought back to Entourage’s Vincent Chase playing Pablo Escobar.

Post by D. Elizabeth Cohen, Gyeongju University

This post is part of a partnership with the International Journal of Cultural Studies, where authors of newly published articles extend their arguments here on Antenna. 

In the five years that I have been living in South Korea, I have noticed an amazing amount of variety in attitudes and practices regarding the inclusion of the “foreigners” – of which I am one – increasingly sharing the country. One thing is for sure: Korea’s is not a monolithic society. In my article that appeared in the September 2014 issue of the International Journal of Cultural Studies, I wrote about the gap that occurred between the originally envisioned Digital Media City (DMC) and what actually resulted. DMC is a creative industries ICT (information and communication technology) cluster, originally planned as a creative cluster to foster the creative economy in Korea through an open environment and free exchange between locals and internationals. In my article I noted that while DMC is successful by many standards, this free exchange has not occurred and pointed to the lack of English signage at DMC as an indicator.

As a second generation American growing up in a home with two languages – one used by the adults to keep secrets from “the kids” – I am sensitive to the power of language both to exclude and to include. What I noticed at DMC – among other proper and prestigious Korean institutions – most with international aspirations and world-class pretensions – is a lack of bilingualism and the inclusion that would result. I simultaneously observed in down-to-earth organizational settings more representative of Korea’s usual homey kind heartedness, an attempt to accommodate “the other” through the use of English. Two examples: a yoga class I attended that was my life line while in Seoul, and a cultural symposium dedicated to the topic of Korea’s “comfort women.” Some forward-thinking sectors of Korean society “get” the importance of bilingualism for inclusion, and other more traditional thinkers really don’t – even, surprisingly, in the reverse (that is, the need to provide translation to make English environments more inclusive of Koreans).

I concluded in my article that because DMC’s planning occurred at an unusual time in Korea’s history – influenced by IMF mandates in the late 1990s – this accounts at least partially for the implementation disconnect. Something else I might have pointed out is that creating internationalization through an engineered creative cluster is far from a paint-by-the-numbers affair. The plan might have been half-baked from the outset, less the fault of the South Korean planners than the MIT consultants on whom they relied.

But while DMC has only fulfilled its envisioned internationalization role in a limited way, I like to think that internationalization in South Korea is slowly evolving in smaller, more humble settings – like my classroom – using popular culture artifacts! What never could have been predicted at the time of DMC’s planning would be the emergence of YouTube and its tremendous power for globalization and internationalization*. I now make extensive use of YouTube’s resources in my Literacy and Internationalization university classes in the heritage city, at which I now teach after leaving the Communication department at my former well regarded Seoul university.

Digital media from YouTube is a form of globalization that young Koreans wholeheartedly embrace. There is a huge gap in Korea between young and old – a subject for another blog piece – and young Koreans are in general more welcoming of internationals. But overall, young people reject the English learning imposed upon them by their elders, perhaps reflecting a mistrust of the instrumental motives of improving the Korean economy through the ability to provide a cadre of faceless but impeccable English speakers.

In contrast, watching quality 20^th century Western media on YouTube adds value to the individual lives of Korean young people – not just for their artistry and entertainment value but also for the communication of ethics and democratic values. This media offer students a personal reason to want to learn English. A true fan, I get a big kick out of watching my students’ reactions as I share gems such as Judy Garland’s “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” from the Wizard of Oz, Earth Wind and Fire tunes and performances, and archive-grade A-Train music videos. It is a privilege to equip aspiring design, musical and dramatic artists with stellar resources from which they can draw inspiration and improve their craft. It’s a do-it-yourself museum, and I’m the curator! Students get excited by these materials, and it motivates them to communicate. Where once they were shy, they now want to share their opinions – and they’ll do it in English if necessary.

Sharing these videos provides me with personal gratifications as well. As a child of the 1960s who once dismissed Dusty Springfield in favor of bigger ticket performers like The Beatles and Rolling Stones, my students’ admiration for her rendition of “Look of Love” caused me to give her and her body of work a second look that was enriching. And in watching and discussing gems from YouTube with my students, I get to be a Mom for the second time having the pleasure of witnessing the world once again through the eyes of my one-semester-only offspring.

While viewing YouTube videos in a classroom is mostly a one-way cultural exchange, and doesn’t fulfill the two-way free exchange aspirations of the architects of DMC, it is a step in the right direction of the evolving process of internationalization that does not seem to happen easily anywhere in the world. Why should it be different in South Korea?

The popular culture resources now available on YouTube are Western ambassadors that can bring great value to others around the world. Such media can be used for many educational and cultural purposes – not only to promote English literacy abroad – but within American shores as well. They are an inestimable treasure that shouldn’t be taken for granted.

* There is a connection between DMC and YouTube; some commercial content creators for YouTube are in residence at DMC where they develop and distribute digital content

[For the full article, see D. Elizabeth Cohen, “Seoul’s Digital Media City: A History and 2012 Status Report on a South Korean Digital Arts and Entertainment ICT Cluster,” forthcoming in International Journal of Cultural Studies. Currently available as an OnlineFirst publication: http://ics.sagepub.com/content/17/6/557.abstract]

Correspondence: DrDElizabethcohen@cognition-ignition.com

Vemödalen is defined by Koenig as “the frustration of photographing something amazing when thousands of identical photos already exist … which can turn a unique subject into something hollow and pulpy and cheap.” The video opens with the comforting statement that all of us are unique. Set to the beat of melancholic piano music, 465 photographic frames of similar subject matter, shot from similar angles, by 465 different individuals unfold over 2 minutes. As I witnessed the photographic pulsation of airplane wings, beach POV leg shots, coffee art, sunsets, snow angels, and iris close-ups, I was overcome by a silent and intense embarrassment. I too had taken such photographs to express myself, to preserve memories, and to show off. Perhaps I was embarrassed because these photos overlapped so much with The 25 Pictures Girls Need to Stop Posting in Social Media. Mostly, I was embarrassed that I had the audacity to imagine – in this ranked, tagged, and filtered insta-age of social everything – that I was capable of photographic novelty.

Like most emotions kindled by late night clickbait, this embarrassment quickly abated – mollified by the video’s denouement that artists of Instagram be comforted by the knowledge that we’re not so different, that our perspectives so neatly align. Quoting Walt Whitman, Koenig elegantly concludes that expressive novelty lies between repetition and revolution – in recursion. “The powerful play goes on,” the narrator rhythmically restates, ending with the invitation (or consolation) that we “may contribute a verse.” Framing a tireless gif of various coffee art, Buzzfeed’s video recap paraphrases that “perhaps it’s just a collective unconscious thing.” The structure of feeling denoted by Vemödalen is therefore a paralysis of self-expression that is suspended between art and craft, as well as between innovation and continuity. Koenig himself describes Vemödalen as the photographic equivalent of assembling Ikea furniture – a “kind of prefabricated piece of art that you happened to have assembled yourself.” Cradled in the rounded authority of Koenig’s white male narration, I am reassured that Art is dead – long live the worldly craftspeople of Instagram!

Vemödalen is also a paralysis of self-expression suspended between Romantic Individualism and pop culture collectivism. Today’s insta-subjectivity is trapped in this reflexive hall of mirrors – between Tyler Durden’s Ikea-fied apartment and Werner Herzog’s Cave of Forgotten Dreams. Like Tyler Durden, we know that we are not beautiful or unique snowflakes, yet we long to be loved for who we really are. Like Werner Herzog, we know that everything that has been done before will be done again, yet we are desperate to experience everything like it is the first time. And who can blame us? At the end of Vemödalen, my humiliation does not dissipate into a transcendent affective communion with humanity, which is part of the filmmaker’s personal definition of the obscure sorrow that thematizes his dictionary. Instead, I remain unsettled by the comforting symmetry of the video’s beginning and ending – of humankind’s existential and expressive uniqueness. Like the prefabricated Ikea assemblages that Koenig deems hollow and pulpy, the tumbling power of his artfully edited slideshow is somehow cheapened by this narrative enclosure.

In the end, however, Vemödalen does live up to its creator’s intentions as an entry in his Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows. A dictionary’s purpose is after all to pin down meanings that flit in and out of conversations and consciousnesses. Keonig’s Dictionary uses the linguistic power of naming to successfully transform affect into emotion. In the end, however, too many of us remain trapped in social media’s hall of mirrors, seeking ambivalently to differentiate ourselves amid the undifferentiated recursion of uncountable airplane wings, sunsets, snow angels, and irises. If Anthony Gidden’s postmodern self is still engaged in its reflexive project, what kinds of stories can it tell from within this hall of mirrors? Are these stories about the self clouded by the corresponding characters, settings, and events of others? Or are the outlines of self emboldened by the stories traced by corresponding others? As for my personal collection of sunsets, snowflakes, plane wings, and cryptic closeups – they remain offline, locked in a cave in the recesses of my mind (and hard drive) waiting to be discovered. Time will tell if the linguistic exercise of naming Vemödalen will entrench it in, or exorcise it from our collectively mediated unconscious.

Kyle Conway began this series by wishing to explore that part of “our experience of a media object [that] exists prior to and outside of language.” In my contribution, I would like to take up the question of language from another angle.

Film and media critics tend to privilege the conceptual work of the moving image-maker when the visual image can be grounded in a linguistic or verbalized idea—an idea, so the reasoning goes, which the media artist used representational forms to express. This inferential process (fig. 1) in effect relies on a extended commutation test, whereby one imagines the images of a film or TV show (1) as philosophical words on a page—a representation of a system of ideas, an argument or a ponderous statement (2)—in order to ascertain the distinguishing features of moving image-maker’s motivating intentions (3).

Fig. 1. The verbal model of moving image intelligence.

The maker of moving images is taken as a writer. The caméra really does materialize as a stylo. But is this all there is to the image-maker’s intelligence?

What if media critics were to acknowledge that some of the intellectualizing that filmmakers and showrunners and video artists do results in pictorial concepts? Can moving images not be intelligent—abstract, puzzling, profound, astute, quick-witted—without acting as surrogates for a discursive intervention?

This would require us to revise our thinking about moving image intelligence—to reimagine the relationship between pictures and ideas. We might acknowledge that some media artists speak in images alone, directly in representational forms. In short, some moving image-makers may not make intellectual or conceptual contributions to the viewing experience by committing themselves to preformed verbal systems of thought prior to producing an image and then using the image to communicate it to the viewer. It might rather involve theorizing a prior verbalized puzzle or deep conundrum by making images, using light and shade, color and tone, varieties of movement and stasis, compositional line and depth.

This involves making some concessions. Principle among these is that we might want to consider how we program ourselves for verbalized notation when we call media objects “texts.” In Tiepolo and the Pictorial Intelligence (1994), the art historians Svetlana Alpers and Michael Baxandall write of the Venetian painter: “…there is a sense in which painting like Tiepolo’s, in sharp contrast with what a text is able to do, lets us re-experience the process by which we first come to make sense of the world” (p.15). The authors skewer a dominant textual bias in Western aesthetics: “It has been a feature of European aesthetics…that painting does something roughly similar to what literature does.” Citing Lessing and others, they note that “the criteria of the comparison between painting and text have been textual ones” (p.2). The limits of the Lessing position are flaunted in Tiepolo, for he provides an example “of pictorial creativity from premises that are not literary” (p.3). “Instead of trying to tell,” they note, “Tiepolo shows” (p.40). One contribution to thought is the painter’s grand Treppenhaus ceiling, which makes a specifically pictorial “argument” about the “relation of the two-dimensional to the three-dimensional” (p.130) (fig. 2).

Fig. 2. Treppenhaus ceiling (Tiepolo, 1752-3).

We need not look to the fine arts for examples of the pictorial intelligence, of the penetrating image. It’s on display in the French blockbuster. The digitally composited two-minute long take that opens District 13 (Morel, 2004) might be read “textually” as a statement relaying the social problems that afflict the French banlieue (in 2004, or in 2010, when the film is set), the same problems the film’s protagonist, Lëito (David Belle), a master of parkour (fig. 3 and 4), wishes to combat.

Fig. 3 and 4. District 13 (Morel, 2004).

On some level, the roving camera of the opening shot analogizes the ghettoized space with the notion of an imploding prison system, where the exterior walls still manage to contain the inhabitants but the barriers within have crumbled, the legal and social order has collapsed into vagrancy, intoxication and gang violence (Fig. 5, 6 and 7).

Fig. 5, 6 and 7. District 13 (Morel, 2004).

From this standpoint, the film opens with a blunt statement, little more than a string of clichés.

But the image, by Pierre Morel, warns that this is merely a verbalized projection. There is pictorial intelligence here working on its own terms. Morel, trained as a cinematographer, doesn’t offer a list-like collage of cut-together, typical views. Conceived as a fluid movement along an axial trajectory, the shot mounts a pictorial argument, contrasting the sluggish, feckless, repetitive forms of ambulation, posture and rest with graceful and nimble mobility that remains possible even through the various frames and apertures—abandoned cars, bullet-riddled windows—of this decaying space (fig. 8 and 9). Through the moving image, parkour, itself a non-verbal, bodily form, is expanded as a directly pictorial concept of creative and improvisatorial motion.

Fig. 8 and 9. District 13 (Morel, 2004).

An image like this accommodates projections of verbal paraphrase even as its specifically visual concept recommends that we taken some distance from them.