Monday
Feb022009
It's All the Rave
Monday, February 2, 2009 at 7:58PM
by Rebecca L. Eisenberg
published in The San Francisco Examiner
Sunday, June 22, 1997, page D5
It is always fun when a high-profile book or movie is set in San Francisco, particularly when it highlights some of the elements that make The City so unique -- the technology industry, the beautiful landscape, and, of course, the range of colorful lifestyles that often makes San Franciscans appear like extra terrestrials to the rest of the country.
Hitting the shelves this month is a new novel by Douglas Rushkoff -- the author already noted for his techno-cult nonfiction classics "Cyberia," "The Gen-X Reader," "Media Virus," and "Playing the Future," all of which explore the intersections of media, culture and technology, in particular as they play out in the lifestyles of the youthful and subcultured.
Rushkoff's latest title, "Ecstasy Club," is his first work of fiction, a techno-thriller that follows the lives of a small closely-knit clan of 20-something San Francisco ravers who make camp in an abandoned Oakland warehouse. The expansive cement structure, a former piano factory, becomes more than just a venue for the Ecstasy Club's nightly rave-dances -- it is also the World Headquarters for their bleeding-edge experiments with computer-based time travel.
Delving into the minds of the members of the rave, Goth and club scenes, Rushkoff offers a fascinating portrait of a youth culture that has its roots, in large part, here in the Bay Area. So fascinating, in fact, that the book was quickly optioned by Miramax, to be produced by Cathy Konrad ("Kids" and "Scream") and directed by Michael Eisner's son, Breck. Its success appears inevitable, particularly in light of the recent pop culture fascination with cults, cyberspace, and technology-based New Age paranoia. The buzz about the author won't hurt either.
Rushkoff, who moved from the Bay Area to New York City in 1991, addressed these and other subjects while in town on a book tour that takes him around the world.
Q: With your recent cynicism toward "alternative" culture, why did you decide to focus on the rave culture?
A: The book is cynical about both mainstream and alternative culture. But I wanted to focus on rave culture as a milieu because that is where I see most of the progressively evolutionary conscious forms of spirituality today. It is a place where science, technology, global culture and youth culture meet in a spiritual pagan ritual.
It is the closest thing to a religious experience that I have ever had. There is a magic moment that can happen at a rave - at 2 or 3 in the morning, when everyone is dancing, you experience a feeling of collective organism, and I think people who have had that experience see the world differently afterward. They don't see the world made up of individuals vying for power, but rather, they see it as one throbbing thing.
Q: Yet, in your book, you portray raves negatively, as a cult.
A: People have a hard time understanding how to come together as a group but also maintain their individuality. That's why I wanted to write a comedy -- some people completely miss the satire. It's an allegory: going to a place to pursue religious freedom and ending up just as bad as the people you were running from. That's what the kids in the book experience -- they want to come together as a group, but end up surrendering themselves to one specific individual. Duncan, the cult leader, sells out at the first possible opportunity.
Q: How have you been greeted in the town you chose as the book's setting?
A: I was pre-welcomed by a 10-week pseudo-serialization spoof of the novel in one of the weeklies by someone who believes the rumors about me making all kinds of money. The figures bandied about -- that I make $7500 an hour or that I got $500,000 for selling my book to a movie studio -- are simply not true. When I'm attacked by the right, it's because there are people who think that media literacy is dangerous. I can respect that. They are attacking my ideas. When the so-called left attacks me, it's not about ideas. They say, "This guy is making a lot of money, so he is a sellout."
I've been out there for four or five years with what I think is a very progressive and populist view of the way new media can and should and will be used. But there are a lot of people who not only disagree with, but are also deeply threatened by that point of view: Both the mainstream media and the cyberpundits. Because I am saying that there is no such thing as a cyberpundit, you don't need an expert to tell you how to use this stuff, just go and do it.
Q: Part of the fun of the book is figuring out your real-world inspirations.
A: I did fill the book with people made up of bits and pieces of locally famous San Francisco psychedelic rave-culture, cyber-culture celebrities and institutions. So people who read it see Plugged Magazine, and might think, "That must be Wired." And there are a few things about it that are like Wired, but a lot of it is made up -- either fantasies or conspiracies I've heard of. I want the reader to think, "How much of this is true?" When they run across Cosmotology, maybe they'll think, must be Scientology. Does their leader really do that? Do they have machines for time travel?" So the reader is in the same discovery process as the characters in the book.
I don't really think that Wired Magazine is connected to Malthus and the Masons. I don't think that L. Ron Hubbard pretended to have time-travel machinery. But who knows? I have conspiracy theorists writing to ask, "How did you know about the time-travel experiments done on Montauk Point?" How do they think I know? I guessed! I made it up!
Q: How much of it do you believe yourself?
A: I don't believe in time travel. But what I do believe, what I've written in "Ecstasy Club," is that time travel is possible through the media, through hype and spin. I think that you travel to the future with hype and that you correct and rewrite the past with spin. That is the time travel that does exist.
Rebecca's Revenge
Copyright 1997 The San Francisco Examiner and href="mailto:mars@bossanova.com">Rebecca L. Eisenberg. All rights reserved.
published in The San Francisco Examiner
Sunday, June 22, 1997, page D5
It is always fun when a high-profile book or movie is set in San Francisco, particularly when it highlights some of the elements that make The City so unique -- the technology industry, the beautiful landscape, and, of course, the range of colorful lifestyles that often makes San Franciscans appear like extra terrestrials to the rest of the country.
Hitting the shelves this month is a new novel by Douglas Rushkoff -- the author already noted for his techno-cult nonfiction classics "Cyberia," "The Gen-X Reader," "Media Virus," and "Playing the Future," all of which explore the intersections of media, culture and technology, in particular as they play out in the lifestyles of the youthful and subcultured.
Rushkoff's latest title, "Ecstasy Club," is his first work of fiction, a techno-thriller that follows the lives of a small closely-knit clan of 20-something San Francisco ravers who make camp in an abandoned Oakland warehouse. The expansive cement structure, a former piano factory, becomes more than just a venue for the Ecstasy Club's nightly rave-dances -- it is also the World Headquarters for their bleeding-edge experiments with computer-based time travel.
Delving into the minds of the members of the rave, Goth and club scenes, Rushkoff offers a fascinating portrait of a youth culture that has its roots, in large part, here in the Bay Area. So fascinating, in fact, that the book was quickly optioned by Miramax, to be produced by Cathy Konrad ("Kids" and "Scream") and directed by Michael Eisner's son, Breck. Its success appears inevitable, particularly in light of the recent pop culture fascination with cults, cyberspace, and technology-based New Age paranoia. The buzz about the author won't hurt either.
Rushkoff, who moved from the Bay Area to New York City in 1991, addressed these and other subjects while in town on a book tour that takes him around the world.
Q: With your recent cynicism toward "alternative" culture, why did you decide to focus on the rave culture?
A: The book is cynical about both mainstream and alternative culture. But I wanted to focus on rave culture as a milieu because that is where I see most of the progressively evolutionary conscious forms of spirituality today. It is a place where science, technology, global culture and youth culture meet in a spiritual pagan ritual.
It is the closest thing to a religious experience that I have ever had. There is a magic moment that can happen at a rave - at 2 or 3 in the morning, when everyone is dancing, you experience a feeling of collective organism, and I think people who have had that experience see the world differently afterward. They don't see the world made up of individuals vying for power, but rather, they see it as one throbbing thing.
Q: Yet, in your book, you portray raves negatively, as a cult.
A: People have a hard time understanding how to come together as a group but also maintain their individuality. That's why I wanted to write a comedy -- some people completely miss the satire. It's an allegory: going to a place to pursue religious freedom and ending up just as bad as the people you were running from. That's what the kids in the book experience -- they want to come together as a group, but end up surrendering themselves to one specific individual. Duncan, the cult leader, sells out at the first possible opportunity.
Q: How have you been greeted in the town you chose as the book's setting?
A: I was pre-welcomed by a 10-week pseudo-serialization spoof of the novel in one of the weeklies by someone who believes the rumors about me making all kinds of money. The figures bandied about -- that I make $7500 an hour or that I got $500,000 for selling my book to a movie studio -- are simply not true. When I'm attacked by the right, it's because there are people who think that media literacy is dangerous. I can respect that. They are attacking my ideas. When the so-called left attacks me, it's not about ideas. They say, "This guy is making a lot of money, so he is a sellout."
I've been out there for four or five years with what I think is a very progressive and populist view of the way new media can and should and will be used. But there are a lot of people who not only disagree with, but are also deeply threatened by that point of view: Both the mainstream media and the cyberpundits. Because I am saying that there is no such thing as a cyberpundit, you don't need an expert to tell you how to use this stuff, just go and do it.
Q: Part of the fun of the book is figuring out your real-world inspirations.
A: I did fill the book with people made up of bits and pieces of locally famous San Francisco psychedelic rave-culture, cyber-culture celebrities and institutions. So people who read it see Plugged Magazine, and might think, "That must be Wired." And there are a few things about it that are like Wired, but a lot of it is made up -- either fantasies or conspiracies I've heard of. I want the reader to think, "How much of this is true?" When they run across Cosmotology, maybe they'll think, must be Scientology. Does their leader really do that? Do they have machines for time travel?" So the reader is in the same discovery process as the characters in the book.
I don't really think that Wired Magazine is connected to Malthus and the Masons. I don't think that L. Ron Hubbard pretended to have time-travel machinery. But who knows? I have conspiracy theorists writing to ask, "How did you know about the time-travel experiments done on Montauk Point?" How do they think I know? I guessed! I made it up!
Q: How much of it do you believe yourself?
A: I don't believe in time travel. But what I do believe, what I've written in "Ecstasy Club," is that time travel is possible through the media, through hype and spin. I think that you travel to the future with hype and that you correct and rewrite the past with spin. That is the time travel that does exist.
Rebecca's Revenge
Copyright 1997 The San Francisco Examiner and href="mailto:mars@bossanova.com">Rebecca L. Eisenberg. All rights reserved.
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