$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '[')url=http://realitystudio.org/criticism/naked_lunch_as_historical_doc_02]Naked Lunch[/url] contains a very powerful critique of consumer society in postwar America. Postwar capitalist society is presented by Burroughs as being essentially anti-humanistic and degrading to human life, with unethical characteristics which are inseparable from the whole. Naked Lunch portrays a "control society", an idea elaborated by Gilles Deleuze, and the mechanisms which accompany this, primarily a manipulative mass media. Burroughs depicts a society where man uses material goods and technology to escape from his inner self, where man is reduced to a state of undignified savagery and where man's environment serves to numb and suffocate him. Burroughs portrays a Spenglerian divide between city and country, and in the countryside we see manifest the racism and injustice inherent within society. Those who profit from this society do so through continuous misrepresentation, dishonesty and exploitation, and any distinction between "crime" and "business" becomes almost illusory.
...skip... Naked Lunch functions as an acutely aimed attack on consumer society in postwar America. The sinister mechanisms of the mass media, manifest in television, distort people's perception of reality. Man is reduced to a state of servitude, and becomes detached from his true self, whilst the environment stifles human potential and imposes control mechanisms. Burroughs, like various historians and social-political theorists, sees that inherent within this system is racism and injustice, and those who benefit materially from it do so through constant misrepresentation and deceit. There are increasingly blurred lines between government, the legitimate businessman and the criminal. Gilles Delueze considered that Burroughs was one of the first people to recognise changes in the organisation of capital in the postwar period, writing, "We"re moving towards control societies that no longer operate by confining people but through continuous control and instant communication. Burroughs was the first person to address this." There is certainly a compelling body of evidence which suggests that when Burroughs is discussing media and consumer goods in Naked Lunch,he is reflecting the reality of 1950s America, and the critique which he articulates in Naked Lunch certainly captures elements of an era.
PeakOil is You
"Naked Lunch" review
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"Naked Lunch" review
by BabyPeanut » Fri 21 Oct 2005, 17:51:55
$this->bbcode_second_pass_code('', 'The exact objectives of Islam Inc. are obscure. Need-
less to say everyone involved has a different angle, and
they all intend to cross each other up somewhere along
the line.
A. J. is agitating for the destruction of Israel: "With all this feeling against the West a chap has a spot of bother scoring for the young Arab amenities.... The situation is little short of intolerable.... Israel constitutes a downright inconvenience." Typical A. J. cover story.
Clem and Jody give out they are interested in the destruction of Near East oil fields to boost the value of their Venezuelan holdings. Clem writes a number to the tune of "Crawdad" (Big Bill Broonzy).
What you gonna do when the oil goes dry?
Gonna sit right there and watch those Arabs die. ')
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', ' ') "Isn't there some place where he can be treated?"
"I think there is some sort of sanitarium," he drags out the word with ambiguous obscenity, "up at the District Capital. I will write for you the address."
"Chemical therapy?"
His voice falls flat and heavy in the damp air.
"Who can say. They are all stupid peasants, and the worst of all peasants are the so-called educated. These people should not only be prevented from learning to read, but from learning to talk as well. No need to prevent them from thinking; nature has done that."
"Here is the address," the doctor whispered without moving his lips.
He dropped a pill of paper into Carl's hand. His dirty fingers, shiny over the dirt, rested on Carl's sleeve.
"There is the matter of my fee."
Carl slipped him a wadded banknote... and the doctor faded into the grey twilight, seedy and furtive as an old junky.
"Two thirds of one percent. I won't budge from that figure; not even for my bumpkins."
"But where are the bills of lading, lover?"
"Not where you're looking, pet. That's too obvious."
"A bale of levies with built-in falsie baskets. Made in Hollywood."
"Hollywood, Siam."
"Well American style."
"What's the commission?... The commission.... The Commission."
"Yes, nugget, a shipload of K.Y. made of genuine whale dreck in the South Atlantic at present quaran- tined by the Board of Health in Tierra del Fuego, The commission, my dear! If we can pull this off we'll be in clover." (Whale dreck is reject material that accumu- lates in the process of cutting up a whale and cooking it down. A horrible, fishy mess you can smell for miles. No one has found any use for it. )
Interzone Imports Unlimited, which consists of Marvie and Leif The Unlucky, had latched onto the K.Y. deal? In fact they specialize in pharmaceuticals and run a 24-hour Pro station, six ways coverage fore and aft, as a side line. ( Six separate venereal diseases have been identified to date. )
They plunge into the deal. They form unmentionable services for a spastic Greek shipping agent, and one entire shift of Customs inspectors. The two partners fall out and finally denounce each other in the Embassy where they are referred to the We Don't Want To Hear About It Department, and eased out a back door into a shit-strewn vacant lot, where vultures fight over fish heads. They Hail at each other hysterically.
'You're trying to fuck me out of my commission!"
"Your commission! Who smelled out this good thing in the first place?"
"But I have the bill of lading."
"Monster! But the check will be made out in my name."
"Bawstard! You'll never see the bill of lading until my cut is deposited in escrow."
"Well, might as well kiss and make up. There's nothing mean or petty about me."
They shake hands without enthusiasm and peck each other on the cheek. The deal drags on for months. They engage the services of an Expeditor. Finally Marvie emerges with a check for 42 Turkestan kurds drawn on an anonymous bank in South America, to clear through Amsterdam, a procedure that will take eleven months more or less.
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'M')EETING OF INTERNATIONAL CONFRENCE OF TECHNOLOGICAL PSYCHIATRY
Doctor "Fingers" Schafer, the Lobotomy Kid, rises and turns on the Conferents the cold blue blast of his gaze:
"Gentlemen, the human nervous system can be reduced to a compact and abbreviated spinal column. The brain, front, middle and rear must follow the adenoid, the wisdom tooth, the appendix - I give you my Master Work: The Complete All American Deanxietized Man."
Blast of trumpets: The man is carried in naked by two Negro Bearers who drop him on the platform with bestial, sneering brutality - The Man wriggles - His flesh turns to viscid, transparent jelly that drifts away in green mist, unveiling a monster black centipede. Waves of unknown stench fill the room, searing the lungs, grabbing the stomach.
Schafer wrings his hands sobbing: "Clarence!! How can you do this to me?? Ingrates!! Every one of them ingrates!!"
The Conferents start back muttering in dismay: "I'm afraid Schafer has gone a bit too far."
"I sounded a word of warning."
"Brilliant chap Schafer - but."
"Man will do anything for publicity."
"Gentlemen, this unspeakable and in every sense illegitimate child of Doctor Schafer's perverted brain must not see the light - Out duty to the human race is clear."
"Man he done seen the light," said one of the Negro Bearers.
"We must stomp out the Un-American critter," says a fat, frog-faced Souther doctor who has been drinking corn out of a mason jar. He advances drunkenly, then halts, appaled by the formidable size and menacing aspect of the centipede.
"Fetch gasoline!" he bellows. "We gotta burn the son of a bitch like an uppity Nigra!"
"I'm not sticking my neck out, me," says a cool hip young doctor high on LSD25 - "Why a smart D.A. could."
Fadeout. "Order in The Court!"
D.A.: "Gentlemen of the jury, these 'learned gentlemen' claim that the innocent human creature they have so wantonly slain suddenly turned himself into a huge black centipede and it was 'their duty to the human race' to destroy this monster before it could, by any means at its disposal, perpetrate its kind.
"Are we to gulp down this tissue of horse shit? Are we to take these glib lies like a greased and nameless asshole? Where is this wondrous centipede?
"'We have destroyed it,' they say smugly - And I would like to remind you, Gentelemen and Hermaphrodites of the Jury, that this Great Beast" - he points to Docto Schafer - "has, on several previous occasions, appeared in this court charged with the unspeakable crime of brain rape - in plain English" - he pounds the rail of the jury box, his voice rises to a scream - "in plain English, Gentlemen, forcible lobotomy."
The Jury gasps - One dies of a heart attack - Three fall to the floor writhing in orgasms of prurience.
The D.A. points dramatically: "He it is - He and no other who has reduced whole providences of our fair land to a state bordering on the far side of idiocy - He it is who has filled great warehouses with row on row, tier on tier of helpless creatures who must have their every want attended - 'The Drones' he calls them with a cynical leer of pure educated evil - Gentlemen, I say to you that the wanton murder of Clarence Cowie must not go unavanged! This foul crime shrieks like a wounded faggot for justice at least!"
The centipede is rushing about in agitation.
"Man, that mother fucker's hungry," screams one of the Bearers.
"I'm getting out of here, me."
A wave of electric horror sweeps through the Conferents - They storm the exits screaming and clawing.
Senators leap up and bray for the Death Penalty with inflexible authority of virus yen - Death for dope fiends, death for sex queens (I mean fiends), death for the psychopath who offends the cowed and graceless flesh with broken animal innocence of lithe movement.
The black wind sock of death undulates over the land, feeling, smelling for the crime of separate life, movers of the fear-frozen flesh shivering under a vast probability curve.
Population blocks disappear in a checker game of genocide - Any number can play.
The Liberal Press and The Press Not So Liberal and The Press Reactionary scream approval: "Above all, the myth of other-level experience must be eradicated - " And speak darkly of certain harsh realities - cows with the aftosa - prophylaxis. Power groups of the world frantically cut lines of connection.
The Planet drifts to random insect doom. Thermodynamics has won at a crawl - Orgone balked at the post - Christ bled - Time ran out.
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'I')n Naked Lunch, we see how around the construct of normality, a whole system of morality is established. In the modern age, what is right is what is normal, and serves to preserve and perpetuate the status quo. Burroughs writes, "The black wind sock of death undulates over the land, feeling, smelling for the crime of separate life, movers of the fear-frozen flesh shivering under a vast probability curve..." conjuring up an image of coercive forces seeking out those who do not conform to social norms
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