Tag : jean-claude-van-damme
Bombing the Statue Of Liberty :
He salutes a wall of televisions :
…A (obviously not) scorpion tattooed on one buttock (hopefully not, too 
) :
The perimeter :
“it’s OK to lose” :
by Johannes
Referring to: http://comment.lettretage.de/ross-sutherland-jean-claude-van-damme/
von Johannes PG
Refering to the poem Jean-Claude Van Damme:
Years after having watched
this way too cheesy movie
for the very first time,
I ask myself
is it really OK to lose?
To get your victory stolen
away only a second
before achieving it?
In fact, my dad back then
just taught me
to wait for the sequel
when the black screen
fades into the colorful,
brutal world, where he
once had lost his fight.
Because, in case you lose:
Normal boring guys may
never get their own story,
but J-CVD can’t always
spawn straight out of nowhere
and wipe out every
little effort with a split.
Speaking of spawning,
my kill/death ratio has
noticeably suffered.
Better get back
focusing on my console
and yell at my new ”dad”.
Call of Duty.
by Johannes
Hello this is Ross Sutherland, the author of Jean Claude Van Damme. I’m here to talk a little more about it.
It’s quite satisfying writing these notes! I’m enjoying it a lot. Usually, if I was performing these poems onstage, I would give an introduction that would cover quite a lot of this information.
Agh, but maybe that means that the poems themselves are incomplete! If you need notes to enjoy it, then that looks like a failure of the poem itself! The poem should have found a way to *include* the notes!
This is extremely difficult. Because writing poems is only part of the craft. The poems are the bricks, the performance is the mortar. Whenever I am thinking about poems, I’m thinking about them as part of a live performance, which comes with notes, asides, anecdotes, etc. Poetry comes alive for me in those situations. To see my poems dead on the page… they look a little lost.
I wrote JCVD when I was a teenager. Maybe 16 or 17 years old. That was just a first draft, and I have reworked this poem many many times over! But the end has always been exactly the same. I knew what I wanted to say. I wanted to write a poem that helped me apologise to my dad.
I used to demonise my dad. Things happened in our family and I held him responsible. I made him the villain. When I discovered that my dad was taking drugs, I wanted to lay every blame at his feet. It took time to forgive him, to realise that every parent is human. We all make mistakes.
I wanted to write about this in poetry, but didn’t feel comfortable telling such a personal story onstage. In fact, I’ve never been comfortable talking about myself in my art. My new theatre show, Standby For Tape-Back-Up, is the first time I’ve really ever talked about myself honestly and personally onstage. And even then, I’m STILL using a cypher of pop culture. It’s a security blanket, I guess. It’s also a way to lower people’s guard- to discover a mutual safe territory, before attempting to poke beneath the surface.
I remember when Raul Julia died. His last acting role was as the villain M Bison in Street Fighter the Movie (it’s a terrible film). I found myself wondering what it was like to be Raul Julia’s child. I imagined a shelf, containing all of his father’s films, including Street Fighter The Movie at the end. In Julia’s last onscreen minute, he gets kicked into a wall of televisions by Jean Claude Van Damme (who chirps, “you’re off the air- permanently”). How could Raul Julia’s child bear to watch such a moment?
Over time, these two stories merged: Raul Julia as M Bison as my father. This was my inroad into discussing my own life. How father/son relationships can become a pantomime. How we learn to forgive those that seem unforgiveable. How real life and fiction are intertwined, and how we can use this to find solace.
Re: the poem’s title. Why call it Jean Claude Van Damme? What does Van Damme symbolise in this extended metaphor? It’s not me fighting my dad, that’s for sure. I’m just watching the action on TV. Van Damme is the unstoppable force that’s coming for all of us. He’s the reason we have to make our amends before it’s too late.
I rewrote this poem over and over again, until finally publishing it in 2009 in my first collection. It’s probably the oldest poem in the book, and again, it’s another key to understanding all the writing I’ve done since. I use pop culture as a mechanism to deal with the most upsetting parts of my life. But pop culture is nothing more than a set of rules that we all know- a structure upon which to pitch our own ideas. Take away our shared language of culture and these notes would get way way longer.
Stefan Mesch had made some comments about my writing being kitsch, and I don’t have any problems with that term really. I really can’t respond any further because the article is in german and I’m reading it through Google Translate! Happy to talk about this more if it arises.
Sometimes this use of pop culture can make my poems feel childish. But then again, poetry is a very childish thing for me – it’s a place to experiment, to break rules and make others, to play games, to act without fear of judgement. When I forget that childishness, writing becomes impossibly hard.
Any thoughts you have on the poem, please add them below and I’ll try to respond. When it comes to poetry, I’m not much of an academic, but I’ll try my best! Art is a conversation, above all. Even if you didn’t like it, tell me why you didn’t like it, and I’ll try to respond.
Einen Textausschnitt von Ross Sutherlands Gedicht Jean Claude Van Damme dichtete Johannes – ein Schüler des ersten teilnehmenden Kurses – wie folgt weiter:
Resulting into violence,
stumbling through silence.
Shattered dreams are
slowly creeping up my
back
Into my head.
Cool guys don’t look at the Explosion!
What a great movie!
Originaltext
Ross Sutherland: Jean-Claude Van Damme
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„Ich halte das Video an“ – Etwas, dass sich als „ich“ bezeichnet, hält das „Video“, als das „ich sehe“ an. Es ist natürlich auch eine ganzer Zeitabschnitt, die Epoche der Video Home System, das letzte Viertel des 20. Jahrhunderts aufgerufen. Der Abschnitt, der mit dem Gang in die Postmoderne, ins postheroische Zeitalter, seinen Abschluss finden sollte.
.
Mit einem Tag im September des Jahres 2001 war es mit dieser Illusion vorbei. Alle Szenarien der Traumfabriken vor 9/11, allen voran diejenigen Hollywoods, wirken bemüht, fantasie- und arglos. Die Trauer- und Traumabewältigung hat eine riesige Manichäismus-Maschine in Gang gesetzt. Diese Katastrophe ist in die Erwähnung eines angedrohten terroritischen Anschlags auf die Freiheitsstatue aus einem Actionfilm mit Jean Claude Van Damme eingeschrieben.
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Behaviouiristisch ist das Konzept aber nicht: Von wegen, hie war 9/11, jetzt kommt die Medienkritik alles dessen, was Hollywood aufgefahren hat, um die moralische Überlegenheit der westlichen Hemisphäre über die Achse des Bösen zu bekräftigen. Wenn mich nicht alles täuscht wird im Gedicht Univeral Soldier mit Jean Claude Van Damme, als popkulturelle Referenz hergenommen, dies nachgerade des Settings wegen: Eine umgekommener Kriegsheld wird reaktiviert und als Killermaschine eingesetzt, die sich allerdings gegen das Killerprogramm stellt. Auf diesen Film scheint mir der „Perimeter“, ein markantes Accessoire der Cyborgs in Roland Emmerichs Film hinzuweisen.
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Aktuelle Drohnenhorrorszenarien kann darin erblicken, wer will. Universal Soldier kam Anfang der 1990er in die Kinos und gehört wahrscheinlich zur Fernsehsozialisation eines Teenagers (Ross Sutherland ist 1979 geboren) dazu, ebenso wie zur literarischen Kunst nicht nur die Intertextualität (nicht selten als Distanzwaffe eingesetzt), sondern selbstverständlich auch Intermedialität, wo Kompetenz jenseits von metrischem Knowing-how, literarturtheoretischen und –geschichtlichen Kenntnissen. Natürlich ist es eine schmerzhafte Bewusstmachung von Ideologie – ganz im Sinne von Žižeks The Pervert Guide to Ideology. Die „Wand aus Fernsehschirmen“ ist ein, beinah altmodisches Sinnbild, für die konsumistischen Zähmungen und Zurichtungen. Das Niederknien vorm Fernseher verweist, über den konkreten Anlass hinaus, auf die Verheerungen durch massenmediale Herrschaftspraktiken (s. stattgehabte Brasilien-WM), genauso wie die autoritär-martialische Vater-Sohn-Beziehung; es bleibt auch sehr ungewiss, ob sie nachher umgekehrt wird. Man hofft es, und befürchtet Defätismus für den Fall, dass nicht …
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Man macht es sich oft zu leicht, indem man didaktischen Gedichten, Sutherlands Gedicht ist so eins, ihre belehrende Absicht vorhält; hier: Dass es in Ordnung sei zu unterliegen, zumindest manchmal. Über diese hemdsärmelig vorgetragene Moral hinaus, werden wir in Kenntnis gesetzt, wie wir außerdem kommunizieren sollten, und über welche Gegenstände wir Kommunikation steuern sollten: Nicht als cleverer PR-Manager in eigener Sache, der auf Biegen und Brechen versucht, ein Alleinstellungsmerkmal herauszuarbeiten und ein Image zu pflegen, sondern als ein Kommunikator, der über einen kulturelle Fundus und erworbene Praktiken und Fertigkeiten (z.B. Medien- und Kommunikationskompetenz) verfügt, die es ihm erlauben, ein möglichst breites Publikum für eine Kommunikation zu begeistern, die angeblich ein Angebots-Nachfrage-Problem hat: Poesie. Poesie ist Kommunikation, also potenziell auch Massenkommunikation. Am anderen Ende ist sie ein bloßes Medium zur Schaffung sozialer Distanz. Kirschkernweitspucken böte sich dafür genauso gut an wie Helme stapeln, Orden sammeln oder zivilgesellschaftliche Debattierwettbewerbe oder etwelche Längenvergleiche (Vgl. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bybm2nh02X4).
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Wenn ich nicht vollständig irre, und Ross Sutherland mit popkulturellen Implikaten (Actionfilme, Fantasyfilme, Science Fiction) bloß kokettieren sollte, dann strebt er eine medienwissenschaftlich beratene Poesie an. Poesie von vergleichbar intermedialer Affinität befördern in der BRD heute u.a. Richard Duraj (http://karawa.net/autoren/richard-duraj), Crauss., Simone Kornappel und Georg Leß, die drei Letztgenannten erteilen in der Metonymie-Anthologie (Verlagshaus J. Frank, 2014) ausführlich und aufschlussreich über ihre einschlägigen Poetiken Auskünfte. Kornappel zum Raum und Visualität des Gedichts, Leß zur Verbindung von Poesie und Horrorfilm., Crauss. zu fotografischem und elegischem Sehen in seinen Gedichten, dies im Gefolge von W.G. Sebalds Roman Austerlitz und seinen eigenen Überlegungen zur Entwicklung von Popkultur in Motoradheld (Ritter Verlag, 2009). Da kommt was zusammen. Hoch die intermediale Internationale!
Write a privat letter as Dad -from his cell- the night before the court hearing.
Private letter- Jean-Claude Van Damme
My dear son,
I am now in prison and tomorrow I will have to face the court hearing for having attempted to murder the General. No light, just subsistent amounts of food and water. Even though I should feel guilty I do not regret what I have done, I only regret not having been successful.
From the moment you were born you have spent your days in an armchair, connected to TV and computer screens, watched and monitored by secret agents and the whole system. It seems to me that our human race is punished for every act of violence it has ever committed. Now monsters have taken over and have become our repressors.
You have never been allowed to develop any feelings, any individual desire or any dream.You even do not know what these words mean. All you have been taught was pure manipulation. Day in, day out we have been humiliated without any possibility to escape the brainwashing.
But I have experienced what real life means. It seems centuries away but believe me, my dearest son, I would do everything to let you feel and smell what life is about. Life us much bigger than TV screens. You are not a human being yet and that is why you are so easy to control and to oppress because you do not ask what is behind these screens.
The human race is meant to be free. During all times of human mankind we were the dominant race on the planet, now we are dominated by screens. We are not objects but subjects with a free will.
You need somebody to realize that you can get the strenght to rebel, that you can learn to be a human being. Someone like me is a threat for the system we live in and I can not expect any mercy for the crime I committed.
They know that I would rather die than stop fighting for our race helping them to return to real life. I was ingenous and amazingly naive to consider that life that takes place on screens could be a progress.
But now it is time to stop this insanity. It is our obligation to resist to a sytsem we invented ourselves. We are so many and if we all stand together we can fight the General and the system and we will be victorious.
So my dearest son there is only one thing I implore you to do: if I have to face death penalty continue my struggle for life and the human race!
I love you even though I was never allowed to show you. Your Dad
von Constantin von Wietersheim