Ought Or Not: Round 1

The new game show that's taking the internet by storm: Ought Or Not

The Rules:

In this game, expert judges (me and my phd) carefully consider whether something is ethical (ought) or unethical (not) based on ethical criteria (e.g., The Good, virtue, reason, ability to emancipate the proletariat, recognition of human freedom as transcending any and all reductivisms, etc.).

Up For Consideration:

Could there have been a more fitting first subject for Ought or Not?

The Case:

According to HotOrNot.com's About page:

"The concept of Hot or Not is simple, we show you who likes you nearby. At home, in the office, on the street, you can get to know new people!"

In other words, the website sells itself as a way to "meet new people" by uploading pictures of yourself and praying that other users of the site click the "heart" icon rather than the "X" icon.

iPhone App Screenshot

It is quite possible that one could find true love by discovering that someone hearts your face as much as you do, and that you heart their face in return, but it is also quite likely that were someone to meet you two at a party, the following exchange might happen:

Annie Hall (imdb.com)

Alvy Singer: Here, you look like a very happy couple, um, are you?
Female street stranger: Yeah.
Alvy Singer: Yeah? So, so, how do you account for it?
Female street stranger: Uh, I'm very shallow and empty and I have no ideas and nothing interesting to say.
Male street stranger: And I'm exactly the same way.
Alvy Singer: I see. Wow. That's very interesting. So you've managed to work out something?

Beyond the question of whether this website and its accompanying apps are designed to get you married, get you laid, or get you plastic surgery, there is the larger question of what could be described as the "Hot or Not" phenomenon.

According to Wikipedia, an argument between two Silicon Valley engineers over the perceived hot-or-not-ness of a woman they came across soon became an internet site getting 2 millions hits a day within 1 WEEK of its launch.  More than that, the very concept of "Hot or Not" can be found all over the internet, TV, and movies, from Paris Hilton's The Hottie & The Nottie to The Huffington Post's (among many other sites and magazines) Who Wore It Better?

"But you also love me
for my looks, right?"

"Students, please, no more peppers
on ratemyprofessor.com..."

The desire to know how others see us is of course nothing new, and certainly not something created by the internet.  But "how others see us" has clearly become more and more solely a question of physical attractiveness rather than of intelligence, personality, wit, or character.  It was only 60 years ago that Jean-Paul Sartre was seen as a sex symbol and yet today it's hard to imagine that Bernard-Henri Lévy dresses as he does to get you to yearn to see the size of his angst.

Furthermore, it is becoming easier and easier nowadays to exploit our narcissistic impulses through these online rating systems and the culture that surrounds them.  That HotOrNot.com states on its Privacy page that it does not allow anyone under the age of 13 to use its services suggests both that those 13 and under desire to use its services and that, considering the degree to which websites check such things ("Enter your date of birth and PROMISE you're not lying") people 13 and under are currently using its services.  Getting 13 year-olds to want to know how others see them is not hard, but letting them be judged by pictures they post for strangers on the internet rather than by the notes that are passed around classrooms helps to kill any hope 13 year-olds have that people will judge them differently when they get older while at the same time creating the self-fulfilling prophecy that "this is how the world works."

Attempting to get classmates to like me was hard enough.  Trying to get the internet to find me "hot" wouldn't have only been hard, but soul-crushingly impossible.  And somehow I doubt I would have responded by trying to find more open-minded individuals to share my time with rather than by going to the gym.  Or, more realistically, going to GNC, getting Creatine-d up, then heading to the gym.  In other words, the dream of a better world beyond my high school was the only thing that got me through high school, but the "Hot or Not" culture turns such dreams into the nightmare of a world where Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian reign supreme, where you shouldn't win Wimbledon if you're not pretty enough, where you dare not try to get a woman on a bank note, and where you cannot be a grad student in philosophy if you can't take a joke or two hundred.

Admittedly, when I was in high school I recall that my friends and I would often go to the mall after school and play games not unlike "Hot or Not."  Yet while we had the necessary misogyny to objectify any and all girls we came across, we nevertheless had the sufficient guilt to wish we didn't have to relate to girls in this manner and the sufficient shame to not want to publicize this behavior.  But the world of "Hot or Not" knows only misogyny and objectification and has never heard of guilt or shame.

Final judgment:

• Is "Hot or Not" likely to be found outside the Cave ?
• Does "Hot or Not" promote virtue ?
• Can the maxim of "Hot or Not" be willed as a universal law ?
• Will "Hot or Not" emancipate the Proletariat ?
• Does "Hot or Not" reveal to us that Existence precedes Essence ?

  

Love and Death: Blue Jasmine, Jean Améry, and Stella

I have long been a fan of Woody Allen films, and it is because of my fandom that I was able to be with my cat Stella when she died yesterday.

I probably learned more about what it means to be Jewish from watching Woody Allen than I did from years of Hebrew School (in fact, South Park's Jewbilee episode would probably rank higher than Hebrew School as well).  What I also learned from watching Woody Allen though was the importance of the relationship between love and death (and not only because of his great movie Love and Death).

Woody Allen's latest film, Blue Jasmine, centers around the disintegration of Cate Blanchett's Jasmine following the downfall of her husband, Alec Baldwin as the Bernie Madoff-esque Hal.  It has not gone unnoticed that this film closely resembles Tennessee Williams's A Streetcar Named Desire, so much so that I have since been referring to it as Midnight in Tennessee Williams.

In many ways Jasmine "depends on the kindness of strangers," and yet, more a Jean-Jacques Rousseau than a Blanche DuBois, Jasmine turns against these strangers at every turn.  This is most likely because to her, these strangers do not exist.  Throughout the film Jasmine relives moments of her time with Hal, a reliving that is so visceral that she re-enacts those moments to anyone who may or may not be present.

Comedically, this makes for many entertaining situations of confusion where those around her, unaware of her condition, are conscripted into a sort of bemused Greek chorus to her Penelope-esque lamentations.  Philosophically, this represents the world as it is experienced by those caught up in personal grief and tragedy.  As Jean Améry attempted to convey in his At the Mind's Limits: Contemplations by a Survivor on Auschwitz and its Realities, to be tortured is to lose one's "trust in the world," to no longer "feel at home in the world," or, in other words, to become exiled.  This exile however is experienced not only in the wounds of the torture, but, vitally, in the experience of those around you telling you to essentially "forgive and forget," to "move on," both of which are simply nicer ways of saying "get over it already!"

Similarly, Jasmine is repeatedly told by her sister and by her sister's fiancé and his friends that she needs to "move on."  Though she is willing to go along with this for a time—whether in the form of daring to work for a living or, more realistically but just as absurdly impossible, finding a new Hal—Jasmine no longer lives in the world of work or of romance and is thus incapable of moving on.  Rather, like Améry, she has become fused with her suffering and is unable and unwilling to allow time to heal her wounds.  As Améry writes,

“In two decades of contemplating what happened to me, I believe to have recognized that a forgiving and forgetting induced by social pressure is immoral. Whoever lazily and cheaply forgives, subjugates himself to the social and biological time-sense, which is also called the 'natural' one. Natural consciousness of time actually is rooted in the physiological process of wound-healing and became part of the social conception of reality. But precisely for this reason it is not only extramoral, but also antimoral in character. Man has the right and privilege to declare himself to be in disagreement with every natural occurrence, including the biological healing that time brings about. What happened, happened. This sentence is just as true as it is hostile to morals and intellect.”

There is thus an air of dread pervading Blue Jasmine, as the audience knows consciously what Jasmine knows unconsciously: time is not on Jasmine's side.  But we do not and should not mourn for Jasmine lest we become like those strangers she talks at throughout the film.  Rather we must appreciate this dark side of the world and stop telling those Jasmine, like Améry, or now, like myself, to look on the "bright side" instead.

Having lost Stella, named of course after Streetcar, I now similarly feel riveted to the moment of her death.  I am both here, now, writing this, and not here, not now, hearing Stella meowing for food while her claws click as she circles our fake wood floors.  When we came home from the vet yesterday I immediately went into "bright side" mode, started focusing on her no longer suffering from her stomach cancer, and began removing from sight the various remembrances of her death and of her life.  But this mode was soon overtaken by what Améry called "resentment."  I sobbed uncontrollably like a scared child as Stella was dying and I do not want to forget that pain or let that wound heal.

We were here for Stella's death because Woody Allen's film opened the Traverse City Film Festival, which meant we went up to Traverse City earlier than we had originally planned.  I am grateful that I was here to share that horrible moment with Stella.  A part of me died yesterday, a part of me named Stella, a part of me that will die anew each day.  Améry knew this pain, Jasmine knew this pain, and now I know this pain: What happened, happened.