GRNSFALL MELLAN

HUSHLLNING och UNDERHLLNING

Thomas Bay och Per Bckius

Fretagsekonomiska institutionen

Stockholms universitet

1992

My life? Its not very exciting. The excitement is the work.

I live through my films. They are my life.

John Cassavetes

Det fanns en tid, har det sagts oss, d underhllning var det samma som frstrelse och tidsfrdriv,
ngot man kunde kpa biljett till, knppa p och stnga av. En tid d ekonomi fortfarande handlade
om bruksvrden, om att frvrva sdant man behver fr att leva ett, i Aristotelisk mening, gott liv,
om att hushlla med begrnsade resurser. En tid, kort sagt, d grnsen mellan underhllande
fiktion och ekonomisk verklighet, nnu frefll meningsfull. Av denna ordning har vi fga
erfarenhet, ty i den vrld dr vi lever, frsker frsrja oss och srja fr vra liv, r en sdan
grnsdragning nrmast omjlig att gra. I vr vrlddr sllskapsspelet sedan lnge ftt st modell
fr vra ekonomiska handlingsmjligheter; dr tioringar skickas till aktieskola p sommarlovet,
fr att finna att det r bde roligare och mer spnnande att spela p brsen n Svartepetter och Fia
med knuff; dr Experience Economy och Entertainment Economy r begrepp som bttre n ngra
andra sgs fnga tidens ekonomiska anda; dr aktiesparande och aktiehandel blivit vrt strsta
folknje; dr musikindustrin r vr tredje strsta exportsektor; dr spelbolag hmtar sina bsta och
mest framgngsrika ider frn finansmarknaden; dr fretag frnjer kunder och medarbetare
med spektakulra events och happenings; dr handel med optioner och terminer blivit s
effektiv att den blivit sitt eget ml och mening: ett rent ekonomiskt spel; dr det inom kort finns ett

1
casino i varje strre svensk stadhar underhllning blivit den kontext i och genom vilken vi skapar
mening i vr vardag och formar vra livskvaliteter, det vrde som tycks motivera snart sagt alla vra
mtt och steg. Frgan r vad detta innebr fr vrt stt att leva vra liv, vra livsmjligheter?

Underhllning (frn latinets inter-, mellan och tenere, hlla) r, som vi valt att frst och anvnda
begreppet i freliggande ess, en grns som, frmst via tv- och datorskrmar, radio och press, inte
blott roar och frnjer oss, utan av-kopplar oss, drar oss bort (ab-straherar oss) frn oss sjlva
genom att sammanvxa (kon-kretiseras) med vr person och vra vrderingar. Underhllning
griper och hller oss kvar i grnslandet mellan fiktion och verklighet, abstrakt och konkret
ekonomi, medierar vra liv, transformerar oss till rena medier i vilka vra livsroller regisseras, och
frntar oss drmed varje mjlighet till perspektiv p oss sjlva, en punkt utanfr oss sjlva frn
vilken vi kan avgra vad som r det ena och vad som r det andra. I denna grnstrakt r kopplingen
mellan hushllning och underhllning meningsfull endast i och genom sin egen fundamentala
syfteslshet. I lustiga reklamsnuttar finner vi vra vrderingar, i dokuspor gr vi vra erfarenheter.
Marknadsfring har blivit vr nya filosofi. Hushllning har blivit underhllning. Vi tycks ha frlorat
tron p denna vrld, som den r, lter oss underhllas, distraheras, ha kul, istllet fr att
underhlla oss, srja fr vra egna liv. leva efter eget huvud. Vi finner det drfr angelget att ska
annorlunda stt att hushlla med vra underhllningsvrden, nya vis att underhlla vra
bruksvrden.

Foucault sade en gng att om man vill frst ett fenomen, s skall man ska sig till dess grnser. Att
st vid en grns r att stllas infr sin frstelse av sig sjlv och vrlden. Att st p en grns r att
riskera sin frstelse. Att uppehlla sig i en grns r att mta vrlden i sig sjlv, sig sjlv i vrlden, att
experimentera med eller prva sin existens: ett radikalt kristillstnd dr man riskerar att helt frlora
sitt sjlv, sin identitet, och drmed att, mhnda, bli ngon annan n den man r. Att leva med en
grns r att vara i stndig rrelse, frska frhlla sig, finna en hllning, dana sin karaktr, att riskera
att oupphrligen bli den man r: att, som Deleuze skriver, befinna sig p en flyktlinje. En grns delar
och delas. Avgrnsarbegrnsar OCH av-grnsarmnniskan. Denna dubbelhet delar vi med alla
mnniskor, en immanent grns i vilken mnniska inte skiljer sig frn ngon eller ngot, utan endast
frn sig sjlv: som mngfald. I denna ess vill vi frska uppehlla oss i den grns dr hushllning
och underhllning vergr i, och drmed blir omjliga att skilja ifrn, varandra. Syftet med detta
experiment r att frska frst hur denna grns fungerar, hur den producerar nya
underhllningsekonomier, gra dess kon-ventioner till vra egna in-ventioner, och drigenom

2
frska finna en vg ut, ett stt att omvandla denna grnslinje till en flyktlinje p vilken vi kan
upptcka nya livsmjligheter. Ty det r i mitten, i grnslinjerna allt nytt tar sin brjan.

Antonin Artaud once said of himself: I am a man who has lost his life and is searching by all means
possible to make it regain its place. How does one regain the lost place of ones life? Perhaps, as
Antonin Artauds own life might suggest, by incessantly searching for it, again and again: re-
searching ones capacities. Maybe this is precisely what living is all about, continuously searching
for places offering new ways of living, re-searching spaces where new modes of life become possible?
And perhaps (playing with the potential meanings of the quote above) one even has to loose oneself
first, ones bearings, ones life, in order to find for it a new dwelling where new ways of existing may
be invented? This poses a twofold problem which we consider to be the problem of experience, of
creativity, of producing new opportunities of life: loosing AND finding ones selfexperimenting
with ones own capacitiesin this world, as it is. Loosing ones self in this sense is, of course,
extremely risky, since there is no guarantee of ever finding ones way home again. This is why, we
guess, so many people find it easier to perform this ascetic practice with an eye on worlds beyond
this world, hence leaving this world behind; that is to say, to escape into worlds of abstraction, for
example religion or ideology. Today the promised land, the land of hope and glory, seems to be
entertainment. It is sometimes called the Entertainment economy, at other times it goes under the
name of Experience economy.

This is the problem we wish to pose in this essay: we no longer believe in this world. We do not even
believe in the events which happen to us, love, death, as if they only half concerned us.... The link
between man and the world is broken. Henceforth, this link must become an object of belief: it is
the impossible which can only be restored within a faith.... we need reasons to believe in this world.
It is a whole transformation of belief.... to replace the model of knowledge with belief. But belief
replaces knowledge only when it becomes belief in this world, as it is.... What is certain is that
believing is no longer believing in another world, or in a transformed world. It is only, it is simply
believing in the body1, what the body is capable of experiencing, its capacity for affecting and being
affected2. But why this necessity of belief (in this world, in the body) before knowledge, that is to
say, the Socratic ideal of knowledge? Because in a sense one could say that our consciousness is too

1
Gilles Deleuze, Cinema 2: The Time-Image, pp. 171-172 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press,
1989/1985).
2
Gilles Deleuze, Spinoza: Practical Philosophy, p. 123 (San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1988/1970).

3
powerful for our bodies, that we too easily flee our ideas for ideo-logies, our techniques for techno-
logies; that we too readily turn thinkingthe unthought within thought itself, that which always
remains to be thoughtinto logic, a certain form of thinking; turn experience and
experimentationthe intolerable or monstrous in this world, that which always remains to be
livedinto codified rules of knowledge. In short, because, at least since Plato, the mind has
suppressed the capacities of our bodies, consciousness has dominated our passions. This, however,
is not an attempt to establish a superiority of the body over the mind, but rather a way of saying that
there is no primacy of the one over the other. It is a matter of showing that the body surpasses the
knowledge that we have of it, and that thought likewise surpasses the consciousness that we have
of it. There are no fewer things in the mind that exceed our consciousness than there are things in
the body that exceed our knowledge. So it is by one and the same movement that we shall manage,
if possible, to capture the power of the body beyond the given conditions of our knowledge, and to
capture the power of the mind beyond the given conditions of our consciousness.3

Hence, what interests us in this essay is the encounter between man, man the artist, the artistic
experimenter, and the entertainment/experience economy; man trying to find a way out of this
completely distracting or rather dis-tracted creation, man struggling to reconnect his experience to
this world, as it is. What is at stake here is the possible modes of existence, ways of being, styles of
life involved in this encounter; that is to say, the different ways in which an economy may be thought
and lived. Hence our overall concern is to re-search the possibilities to regain economic life, the lost
life of dis-tracted man, its place, to create belief in this world as it is; and, as an effect, investigate the
possibilities of life involved in the composition evolving from the above encounter. But how does
one create this belief? One thing is needful.To give style to ones charactera great and rare art!
It is practised by those who survey all the strengths and weaknesses of their nature and then fit them
into an artistic plan until every one of them appears as art and reason and even weaknesses delight
the eye. Here a large mass of second nature has been added; there a piece of original nature has been
removedboth times through long practice and daily work at it.4 In short, we have to create

3
Gilles Deleuze, Spinoza: Practical Philosophy, p. 18 (San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1988/1970).
4
Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, paragraph 290 (New York: Vintage Books, 1974/1887).

4
ourselves as a work of art5, as a work in continuous progress, a work of art that never quite reaches
its completion.

But isnt there an ethics too? Yes, establishing ways of existing or styles of life isnt just an aesthetic
matter; its what Foucault called ethics. A set of optional rules that assess what we do, what we say,
in relation to the ways of existing involved. We say this, do that: what way of existing does it involve?
.... Its the styles of life involved in everything that make us this or that. . Style.... is always a style of
life too, not anything at all personal, but inventing a possibility of life, a way of existing.6

To conclude this far too fragmentary, simplifying and slovenly abstract; we would like to re-search
a place for entertaining life in the entertainment/experience economy; investigate the possibilities
of restoring faith in this world, the vitality of this life, through aesthetics and ethics. We will attempt
to do this through the films of John Cassavetes, follow him, on the screen, creating these films. If
this turns out to be possible, why? Because, first of all Cassavetes never seemed to live more
sensitively and passionately than when he was making his movies, and secondly, seeing one of his
films is like actively participating in the same process of exploring, learning, wondering, and
changing [ones] mind that the filmmaker did in making them.... The films themselves are the
closest thing to life lived at its most intense; they allow us the experience of fresh, growing, changing
experiences.... They bring us back to life.7 Cassavetes thus seemed to affirm the immanence of his
own creations, to live in and through his own films, thus making the distance between himself as a
creator and the things he created as narrow as possible. In todays economy, however, completely
conquered by entertainment, where life itself, according to some cultural critics8, has become a film,
directed by someone else, the distance between the creative subject and its objects are farther than
ever before. This is why, perhaps, we should ask ourselves if there is any truth in Friedrich
Nietzsches suggestion that we want to be the poets of our lifefirst of all in the smallest, most

5
Michel Foucault, On the Genealogy of Ethics: An Overview of Work in Progress, p. 350 (in Paul Rabinow,
Foucault Reader, New York: Random House, 1984).
6
Gilles Deleuze, Negotiations, p. 100 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995/1990).
7
Ray Carney, The Films of John Cassavetes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), p. 281.
8
See e.g. Neal Gabler, Life the Movie: How entertainment Conquered Reality (New York: Vintage Books,
1998).

5
everyday matters.9 If this is so, thenliving in a world where fiction ruleswe have a lot to learn
about entertaining ourselves, about creating ourselves as a work of art/fiction affirming its own
artificialtiy/fictionalitya a means of finding a passage back into this world as it is. This, however,
is what we intend to do by not only following closely the works of John Cassavetes, but by virtually
becoming-John Cassavetes.

If you find our ambition weird, listen to what Foucault has to say on the subject: What strikes me is
the fact that, in our society, art has become something that is related only to objects and not to
individuals or to life. That art is something which is specialized or done by experts who are artists.
But couldnt everyones life become a work of art? Why should the lamp or the house be an art object
but not our life?10

To be continued and rewritten....

Bibliography

Carney, Ray (1994) The Films of John Cassavetes, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Deleuze, Gilles (1988/1970) Spinoza: Practical Philosophy, San Francisco: City Lights Books.

Deleuze, Gilles (1989/1985) Cinema 2: The Time-Image, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota

Press.

Deleuze, Gilles (1995/1990) Negotiations, New York: Columbia University Press.

Foucault, Michel (1997/1983) On the Genealogy of Ethics, in Ethics: Subjectivity and Truth, New
York: The New Press.

Foucault, Michel (1984) On the Genealogy of Ethics: An Overview of Work in Progress, in Paul
Rabinow, Foucault Reader, New York: Random House.

9
Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, paragraph 299 (New York: Vintage Books, 1974/1887).
10
Michel Foucault, On the Genealogy of Ethics, in Ethics: Subjectivity and Truth, p. 261 (New York: The
New Press, 1997/1983).

6
Gabler, Neal (1998) Life the Movie: How entertainment Conquered Reality, New York: Vintage
Books.

Nietzsche, Friedrich (1974/1887) The Gay Science, New York: Vintage Books.