Columbo’s deliberately irritating questioning technique – ‘just one more thing’ – is designed to produce discomfort rather than to elicit information. Mark Fisher Read Quote
Postmodernism is, of course, the dead end from which hauntology starts – but one of its role is to denaturalise what postmodernism has taken for granted, to conceive of postmodernism as a condition in the sense of a sickness. Mark Fisher Read Quote
In the classic 70s episodes, Columbo is rarely seen on his own. We typically do not see Columbo ‘for himself,’ only for the criminal, leaving the possibility that the entire Columbo persona – his shambling manner, his absent mindedness, even his references to his wife – may all be a performance designed to disarm the murderer. Mark Fisher Read Quote
Some IMDB viewers complain that ‘Beloved’ should have been reclassifed as Horror… well, so should American history. Mark Fisher Read Quote
We’re invited to believe that the worst effects of Stalinism arose from its ‘dogmatic’ intransigence; but it is precisely because so much was left open to interpretation that its Terror was so pervasive. Mark Fisher Read Quote
Anti-capitalism is nothing new in Hollywood. From ‘Wall-E’ to ‘Avatar,’ corporations are routinely depicted as evil. The contradiction of corporate-funded films denouncing corporations is an irony capitalism cannot just absorb, but thrive on. Yet this anti-capitalism is only allowed within limits. Mark Fisher Read Quote
Although it was published in 1977, “A Scanner Darkly’s” mood is already postpunk. Mark Fisher Read Quote
Capitalism can never pursue deterritorialization to the absolute. What deterritorialization there is within capitalism is always balanced by a compensatory lockdown onto nation, culture, and race. Hence the ‘Steampunk’ quality of capitalism, where the most ancient traditions can co-exist with the ultramodern. Mark Fisher Read Quote
