Other Points of View
by the Editor
This month, EAP’s interested in stepping outside of that space where we all agree what’s reasonable and what’s not. We want to have a look at what else is out there — kind of like the fish taking a step out of the water. You might gasp for breath but it’s worth the trip. There’s no one who can spend more time out of that water without flopping back in from sheer terror than the filmmaker Peter Watkins . Peter has devoted an immense amount of his time and energy to analyzing the media forms that enclose us, and he’s put together a philosophically complex website in order to share his thinking. He focuses on the concept of the Monoform , which is pretty much the only format we get, one that we don’t question, one, in fact, that we never think to question, and how dangerous is that? EAP reprints Peter’s introduction to his argument, with his kind permission, complete with links to the rest of his analysis. Of particular interest to us here at EAP is how the Monoform is hierarchical in its approach to the audience. What you’re watching is the subject and you are the object. You get colonized by the content. But it goes further than that, just the way a good colonialist should, presenting itself as our savior rather than our exploiter — it hides that hierarchy and implies that you — me –, the passive viewer, are the subject and everything you — I — survey is the object. Watkins isn’t kidding when he points out that this is a reactionary position. If we all agreed we were part of a web, where each part was equal and connected to the other, what kind of media would we have then?
And if you’re not familiar with Watkins’ work, fellow filmmaker Alex Cox has also kindly loaned us an article describing it. He thinks we need Watkins back to work now more than ever. EAP thinks he’s right.
In Other Points of View — Deborah Gordon , a medical doctor, talks about how she became a homeopath based on the answer to the simple question: What is Health? When she looked at the question, she realized that health is not a question of being symptom free, it’s the state of freedom itself. She explains in On Homeopathy . Harvey Harrison finds a letter from Harvard law school asking why he refused the place they offered him there, and after all these years he tells them why he thinks legal training in this country is lacking in human values: Answering Harvard. I review Jean Bricmont’s book, HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTION, where the author sets out all the reasons why we confuse our own humanitarian impulses with a belief that some preemptive wars are just…and why we are wrong about that. A very important piece of work. We’ve put links at the end of the review to where you can buy the book itself. (And there's a funny story in there about Human Rights Watch, too.)
Finally, the poet David Budbill , without at all meaning to, sums up what we think we’re doing here at EAP in The Subway Philanthropist . (I personally think of myself as the woman with the saw.)