Reflections on Pop Culture: Part II

Steven Seagal’s adherence to the most fundamental aspects of human liberty: dialogue.

I’ll never forget the first time that I knew in my heart that I was unashamed to say that I was a Steven Seagal fan. I was sitting in my former professor Enrique Rodríquez Cepeda´s apartment flat in the most affluent neighborhoods of Madrid, Barrio Salamanca. My good friend Brian, whose real name when he is not involved in tactical CIA operations, I am not free to disclose for the time being. I can, however, talk about the small pleasures in life that year as we would get together and watch the dubbed Hollywood movies that would be cast in primetime hours of each evening.

All of the makings for the California taco shop burritos that we were accustomed to eating growing up in San Diego were virtually impossible to come by in Madrid. But that year, I came up with several recipes of actually refrying dry red and brown beans, together with beef stock and a generous amount of spices, that made the trouble seem oh so worth-while. In the meantime, we joked around about the interior decorating of the Professor´s Madrid Flat.

Among other eccentricities, he had a huge amateur painting of himself done by God knows who (perhaps one of the street hustlers “mendigos at or around Puerta de Sol.” Among the most unforgettable stylistic features of this painting, which he insisted on displaying in the most visible area of the family room, was the insist on the artists to use diagonal strokes of a simple green crayon from the top right hand corner and a 45 degree angle to the bottom left corner—except for the space his face occupied. The look said everything. His eyes appeared to drift even though it was a still shot, they seemed to question on their own the sketch artists decision to use the unchanging right to left green crayon strokes.

Outside of that, there were no other paintings or photographs on any of the walls. Only book shelves from the floor to the ceiling, even in the bedroom. There was one desk that was stacked with mounds of papers that never moved during the nine months I lived in that apartment. And then there were two arabesque styled, monstrous ceramic vases that he had acquired in Granada. There was a big iron bell mounted to the side of the sliding door that opened up to a small balcony and what is considered in Spain, “El patio interior.” That is to say the open space left in between multi-storied residential buildings that wrapped around each perfect square block.

We never grew tired of joking around about this arrangement. The idea also, that Barrio Salamanca is the most notorious old-wealth area of Madrid. This doesn’t compare to the significance of old rich vs new rich in a metropolitan area like New York, but with that analogy, it is easy to imagine what type of people would be occupying the apartment flats below, above and beside me.

So it was that on these nights Brian and I would fix ourselves some monster burritos and sit down in front of the 12-15 inch tv that received a signal only by antenna in the living room. At that time in Spain, and I wouldn’t throw out the possibility that things have changed since, virtually all of the movies that they showed on the public broadcast stations were cheap stock Hollywood movies. You would see things like Ghost with Patrick Swayze, Whoopi Goldberg and Demi Moore. I can recall seeing an action movie with Sylvester Stallone or Jean Claude Van Damme one time. But the funny part was that they were all dubbed, which created a totally different feel for someone who has such a characteristic voice as say, Steven Seagal.

Think for a minute about what first comes to mind when you think about Steven Seagal. Number one has to be the fact that he’s good at impossible one on twenty riffraff bar fights. Secondly, he had a characteristic pony tail. Third, he was the last one to speak, and when he did it was in a gruff whisper. Finally, it was that crane of the neck and the squint. All of these things about Steven Seagal are irreplaceable parts of his presence.

In my previous blog I brought in the analogy of the Cobra and the Mongoose. We can think about the irony of the interaction between these two animals as the sometimes inexplicable bait-and-switch between what at first we deem to be the underdog do to his apparent lethargy, but at some point switches to become the undisputable winner. That is the first level; the literal level. The irony.

Well Brian and I sat down to eat our burritos, have a San Miguel or two, talk about how much it sucked for me to teach English to a little spoiled 5 year-old kid named Javier which scratched me on the face on one occasion, because we were “role-playing” different animals and their names and body parts in English. Brian had a whole other list of things to worry about, many of them he couldn’t do to the nature of his work with the CIA.

But to see the disparity between Steven Seagal’s body language (one that I consider now to be way more philosophically suggestive than I did at that point in my life) and the Spanish lisp and idioms was an absolute riot. First of all, the movie we watched was Seagal’s second production, “Hard to Kill,” from 88-89. From the opening credits we knew we were in for a blast. All of those idiosyncratic ways of talking about Chinese acupuncture, shamans he had visited in Navajo reservations, Buddhist karma, care for the environment, and liberty and justice for all. This is impressive subtext.

Now, as I look back I see that within each of Seagal’s productions there are at least two running messages. The first one is I’m going to act like a naïve mongoose, bobble back and forth in my gait, and make it clear that I have more confidence in my Tibetan beads than in any weapon I am packing. Additionally, I´m going to draw you in by putting on this performative episode that makes me seem like a clown, but before you the audience are aware of it, (bait and switch), I´ve gotten you to think about greenhouse gases, oil spills, human rights issues for coal-miners. And above all, no one is “above the law,” as the title of his breakthrough movie proves.

This naïve mongoose presence, became two-fold from the moment the narrator announced the title as being “Difícil de matar.” I will admit that there are some crossing of signals, when the lips of Seagal express the seriousness of ecological issues, but what comes out is a Spanish vulgarism. (so perhaps the Madrid public would never be able to appreciate Steven Seagal the way that I am outlining now.

In contrast, it added a third level of complexity to the viewing of a movie that I had thought about a child as being purely roundhouse kicks and bloody noses. And to prove this with one more piece of anecdotal evidence, I would like to visit a recurring epistemic question opened up by Seagal in his action sequences. My suspicion is that I will need a part III on my reflections on Steven Seagal and his legacy to pop culture, but here goes.

It is the image of the gun and the badge. He refers to it specifically in at least one fight scene in all of the movies where he plays a detective. The question is posed, on a symbolic level, are the gun and the badge empty signifiers? Is it merely a façade or an attempt to annihilate any free exchange of reason between individuals at odds with one another?

When the character played by Steven Seagal is accused by his opposition of being part of a violent oppressor (or agent of hegemonic power structure), he invites the people who do not belong to that order to evaluate what they are doing for a minute before pushing the situation to a combative level. He is opening himself up to dialogue. In artistic representation, this is called opening up space for the other to express his concerns in his own subjective language. Without the symbols that translate to oppression to the other individuals in the environment, Seagal´s character is expressing a genuine desire to hear out their perspective.

The gesture of throwing “the badge and the gun” aside is not to show that he is a man plus one, or some kind of juggernaut who is incapable of listening to the discontent of the throng of people around him. Neither is it an attempt that he is holier than thou—too good to be part of the ranks of the status quo law enforcer.
The most pervasive criticism against thinkers who incorporate structurist content into artistic representations is that they are muting out the voice of the oppressed or the un-spoken for. Steven Seagal does not allow himself to get caught up in these pitfalls.

On the contrary, we see especially when Steven Seagal´s English speech is removed entirely, as Brian and I witnessed watching “Difícil de matar” in Madrid when we were forced to rely strictly on body language and symbolic exchange of property(forfeiting the badge and the gun)

In my last response to Steven Seagal’s legacy in the Motion Picture Industry, I presented his career as a metaphor of individuality. Despite the overwhelming odds against him, Seagal found not just one, but several fictional places to institute his idiosyncrasy against a larger backdrop of a finicky world. In the ebb and flow of Seagal’s artistic production, we see a constant interplay between agency to capital and aperture in the market. With perfect timing, Seagal swept down from the sky at the very instant the two converged. The end result was cultural capital that stands on its own and regenerates time and again into the horizon. When the critics decided for Seagal that his brand of martial arts cinema, one often characterized by ecological and ethical subtexts, had passed its prime, Seagal did not lie down. Instead, he immediately began brainstorming how to work around this debilitating structure.

If I said that we have arrived at a point in modern human interactions where everybody is in it only for him or herself, I’m sure many people would agree. In fact, I am scratching my head right now to think of one grouping of historical events whose most prominent characteristic is selflessness. Don’t look now, but I’m going to use the old Darwinist cliché: are human relations anything other than survival of the fittest?