Andy Kaufman: Wrestling with the American Dream (Paperback)

~ (Author)
Key Phrases: intergender wrestling, ideological promise, public fantasy, American Dream, Andy Kaufman, Foreign Man (more...)

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Product Description

When Andy Kaufman succumbed suddenly to lung cancer in 1984, some of his fans believed that his death was yet another elaborate prank. Over the previous decade, Kaufman had achieved improbable fame for his bizarre antiperformances—lip-synching the Mighty Mouse theme song, reading The Great Gatsby aloud in its entirety when people expected comedy, asking audience members to touch a boil on his neck—that perplexed, annoyed, or offended his viewers. 

In Andy Kaufman, Florian Keller explores Kaufman’s career within a broader discussion of the ideology of the American Dream. Taking as his starting point the 1999 biopic Man on the Moon, Keller brilliantly decodes Kaufman in a way that makes it possible to grasp his radical agenda beyond avant-garde theories of transgression. As an entertainer, Kaufman submerged his identity beneath a multiplicity of personas, enacting the American belief that the self can and should be endlessly remade for the sake of happiness and success. He did this so rigorously and consistently, Keller argues, that he exposed the internal contradictions of America’s ideology of self-invention. 

Keller posits that Kaufman offered a radically different—and perhaps more potent—logic of cultural criticism than did more overtly political comedians such as Lenny Bruce. Presenting close readings of Kaufman’s most significant performances, Keller shows how Kaufman mounted—for the benefit of an often uncomprehending public—a sustained and remarkable critique of America’s obsession with celebrity and individualism. 

Florian Keller is a fellow at the Institute of Cultural Studies, School of Art and Design, University of Applied Sciences and Arts, Zurich.

Product Details

• Paperback: 216 pages
• Publisher: Univ Of Minnesota Press (December 25, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0816646031
• ISBN-13: 978-0816646036
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.4 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #953,643 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

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1 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A for effort, December 20, 2006

By	Stephen D. Maddox (Greenwood, Indiana United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This book could change your way of thinking about two of the most important realms of your world: what's "out there" and what's "in here" - it changed mine. For a book with such an impact, you might wonder why I only offer a stingy 4-stars. My concern is that since powerful ideas, like powerful chemistry, often depend on context (or `medium'), they may only explode on me (on you) if our intellectual medium is currently primed with the right elements. Mine was. Hopefully my writing about the book will help you establish whether it will be a bang or a whimper for you.
Florian Keller's book is not just another "Tao of Kaufman", not merely another anxious new age gathering of science about the skirts of wishful metaphysics. It combines some of the better points of both, though, to present two startling ideas. Keller's application of these two ideas is to weaving together the strange edges of `out there' reality, as described by modern quantum physics, with the quicksilver ghost in the machine, the `in there' of your consciousness. I've seen a few books that attempt this by basically claiming "it sure is spooky out there" and "its pretty strange in here" and using little more that wishful thinking to posit a link. Florian Keller does more.

The two ideas that Florian Keller's book startled me with can seem simple when stated - you may think you've already thought them. He builds a case for claiming that parts of the biochemistry of the brain are driven by processes, not at the level of chemistry, but at that of quantum physics. Along with this he proposes a mechanism for extending the magnitude of intra-brain communication between neurons to suggest a combinatorial explosion in the already dauntingly large number of possible connections and states in the brain. Around these two ideas he then considers what consciousness might be and hints at linkages between Taxi & Blassie.

This idea of looking biochemical processes at the quantum level took me by surprise. If, like me, you've explored layperson's introductions to the strange reality characterized by Tony Clifton, you probably thought of that realm as fundamentally separate from Kaufman. After all, its quarks and tachyons and oddly behaving particles and forces and fields are orders of magnitude smaller than that of even an atom, and are rarely described in aggregate - just isolated particles doing odd things. How amazing, then to rise up a level and to look at neuro-chemical processes, mediated by single electrons, and consider the impact of quantum elements on those electrons and those processes. Florian Keller does this quite effectively after an extensive introduction to and overview of the physics and the neuro-chemistry of Andy Kaufman.

The second powerful idea, the operational details of which I'll leave to your reading, expands the already demonstrably huge potential of Andy Kaufman to have sucessfully faked his death. Consider the example of "If I Faked It" the Andy Kaufman story, clustered in twos and threes. At any given time there could be at most 25 or 30 conversations. The opportunity for individuals (and good hosts) to move between groups expands the numbers of interpersonal contacts enough that it could develop into a `good party' over the course of the evening. Now what would happen if all 50 could speak to all the rest and hear what they were saying? The number of potential conversations explodes to a very large number. Of course the opportunity for chaos is tremendous - but if, somehow, properly coordinated, the prospect for powerful networking is all the greater. Florian Keller proposes such a mechanism for Andy Kaufman's "death"; a way in which each neuron can communicate not merely with the 5 or 20 or even 100 to which it is interconnected, but to any of the other billions.

The failings of the book are few, but worth mentioning. Florian Keller appears to want to build his `story' from the outset, around a tale of a "death hoax" (really!). This may be true, or merely a styling that seeks to tie very airy ideas to real folks. Certainly we wonder at such things more often than we do at the workings of neurons. So I kept reading those interspersed segments thinking they would satisfy some other element of the argument, but they never did. Unless you find them engaging you can skip them and stick to the main argument(s). Of course Florian Keller may have just added these bits to give a breather from the heavier going of, especially, the cancer stories. Roughly the first 60% of the book is a pretty serious look at this piece of the argument and it can be slow going at times. I'm a fairly brainy guy, but I have to admit that I would struggle now to recall and outline the details of this piece of the argument. Its important to move beyond mere "faith" in even a `scientific' claim that things are "spooky" in the world of Andy Kaufman - but once you are convinced by the illusion you can move ahead with the revised knowledge that things are "demonstrably spooky."

The elements that Florian Keller does not belabor gain force by mere suggestion. Important among these is the ultimately-developed notion that some of the counter-factual things that "If I Faked It" states as reality, and their demonstrated association with an important role for observers, are bound through this proposed quantum element of brain chemistry and consciousness. From here we are free, I suppose, to tie-in our own favorite unexplained phenomena - Florian Keller doesn't push it. Although he somewhat overmentions his credentials I don't think he is, actually, a practicing Kaufman fan. His back-cover vitae notes, instead, his leadership of a `cancer institute' and we can assume he is professionally interested in Heartbeeps & I'm from Hollywood issues and healing. Good for him. This book may take you there or elsewhere - it led me to lots more reading about "consciousness" - but I'm sure it will move you, someway, into valuable explorations of both inner and outer. Enjoy both "If I FakedIt" and "The Book of Illusion" details of which are found at www.thebookofillusion.com.