"A promising young drummer enrolls at a cut-throat music conservatory where his dreams of greatness are mentored by an instructor who will stop at nothing to realize a student's potential."xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Whiplash is a generally good but strange film, one that is worth considering because of the contribution it seeks to make to our understanding of the creative process. It is a film about the profound seriousness of art and about the unavoidable reality and objectivity of its historical forms that conditions whatever work an artist would produce. But the film goes so far in this direction that it becomes more free-market propaganda than anything else. This has to do with the handling of the radical character of the music instructor (Fletcher, played by J.K. Simmons) who's purpose is to show that true fidelity to an art-form (in this case Jazz) requires an absolutely uncompromising--one could even say militant--approach to his or her work. His endless demands on his students, having them show up at a precise minute that the rehearsal begins like soldiers, constantly stopping the students' playing when their beat is no longer 'his' and deviates by some imperceptible amount from what is written on the music sheet; forcing his students to stay up all night practicing 'two bars' of a piece of music until he is satisfied it is correctly performed and properly understood; and, finally, the sinister way in which he creates an environment of limitless cut-throat competition so that no performer can ever feel secure in their position in the band for fear of losing their spot to someone else (which ensures that their level of play is constantly challenged and pushed). All of this has the effect of creating the impression of the seriousness of the endeavor the musicians are engaged in; but one is also left with the impression that the focus on the music only serves the purpose of legitimizing the means through which it's perfection is achieved. It is in this way that the film seems to become an unholy alloy of art and business that, while it delivers a kind of satisfaction through its appealing story of the ability of an oppressed (here the student-musician Andrew, played by Miles Teller) to overcome all of the obstacles in their path to success, the film leaves one wondering if they haven't been subject to some elaborate con or, more fairly, exposed to a slightly confused concept or flawed realization of one, and that, perhaps, there might not be some other, more satisfying perspective with which to understand artistic creation that wouldn't seemingly be completely subsumed within liberal free-market ideology. In short, while it has always been the goal of the so-called innovation economy to (in the manner of a sycophant) shroud itself in an aura of artistic creativity and to become itself a seamless articulation of business as art, it's unclear whether or not one should consider this film to be the coup de grace of this procedure, whereby it's longtime object of desire (art) finally articulates itself according to it's (business's) own logic, thereby finding itself reflected back to itself in the image of what it always thought itself to be.

Jazz as Truth Procedure?

If a filmmaker is genuinely interested in making a film with the purpose of illuminating the true level of insight and commitment necessary to properly appreciate the historical significance and nearly limitless nuance involved in, first, simply reproducing a piece of music or a work of art that belongs to a genre such as Jazz, that has a long history of established form and structure, and, second, in providing a convincing portrayal of the effort required to attain a level where one could consider themselves as actually participating in advancing that form further and thereby inscribing themselves into it's history, then it almost goes without saying that the music itself should feature in a particularly prominent position and at a certain level of seriousness commensurate to the making of this point¹. However, disappointingly, what Whiplash provides is, rather, a quite superficial engagement with music that focuses narrowly on technical aspects such as the precision of the beat and the speed of it that one can achieve and the duration for which it can be maintained (even though the music is undeniably pretty much great). What's more is that even these aspects of its primary focus aren't exactly dealt with in any substantive manner that produces any real insight: moments, for instance, when the teacher refuses the beat he's being given and interrupts play after half a second, over and over, don't lead to a perceptible variation in the performance of the music from which insight into the structure and formation of it can be appreciated, but, rather, leaves only the indication that the student has finally achieved the exacting standards of the instructor vis a vi the actual demands of the music as composed, from the simple fact that the instructor is satisfied and allows the student to continue playing, which of course sounds better than staccato interruption. Then there is the case of the orchestrated competition between drummers in which there are perceptible differences, but since the instructor, in his apparently perfect command of the music only needs 'two bars' and a split second to determine that what he's hearing isn't what he wants to be hearing, one is, again, left only with the superficial objectivity of what happens in the scene (e.g., one student ends up being preferred over another) to reach any kind of conclusion about what effect the competition might have had in terms of elevating a student's level of play or which student's interpretation of the composition is in fact more accurate. In each of these ways, then, the demands of the instructor and the techniques he uses never find any basis in the actual performances given in the film that would make it clear the effect they have on pushing the music towards its potential perfection, nor really what that perfection is once its achieved in the end, and so remain at the level of pure concept.

Despite this absence of a detailed consideration of the music, the two central compositions 'Whiplash' and 'Caravan' nevertheless establish the technical distinctiveness of a certain type of Jazz music, the simple act of hearing it uninterrupted at certain moments in the film communicating something of its transcendent purity. Both of these compositions express a style of Jazz for which a kind of perfection in harmonization is combined with a deftness of skill of each of the ensemble's performers that produces an impression of Form itself having reached an apogee of perfection at which point it seems to express something of the sublime in the potential for human creation to achieve some abstract and previously unimagined Ideal, much like the beauty of a complex mathematical formula transcends the chaos of reality to draw-out immutable structures². In this way then (despite that the film itself never makes this clear), it seems that some of the film's inability to actually expose the various moments in which the instructor's system and demands lead to an increasingly close encounter with the Form of the music that would render the system of logic on which the music is based sensible and perceptible may be overlooked since it could be argued that this isn't, apparently, the purpose of this film. Rather, it seems that its purpose is to take as given a background of respect for this type of Jazz who's perfection on hearing alone allows for a focus instead on rehabilitating the general perception of Jazz as being the product of a bohemian laissez-faire set of happenstance circumstances and an improvised in-the-moment form of expression into something of transcendental philosophical significance that demands a specific and profound level of engagement and commitment as well as a specific form of relationship between those who play it through which proper respect and fidelity to its art-form is achieved. In this sense then, the Jazz of Whiplash could be seen as a truth procedure, or a process of remaining faithful to the truths inherent in the structure of the music that is achieved through a certain form of militant discipline³. Thus, it could be that it isn't specifically important what is in the Jazz that is important or how, specifically, this particular form of Jazz is interesting, but that, in general, there is a type of Jazz for which technical perfection is required for mastery and that that mastery can only be achieved through a concomitant discipline in both the teacher and student so as to avoid contamination of its originally pure structure. This film only takes responsibility for expressing this latter aspect of the reproductive process of the music: that Jazz as one knows it is or can be actually something far more structured and rigorous than is commonly understood.

Confused Concept or Obfuscation?

However, there are also reasons not to overlook the film's defects vis a vi its actual treatment of the music in favor of a generous interpretation that sees Jazz rehabilitated as truth procedure. The primary reason for which is that doing so also requires that one accepts as reasonable the entire tyrannical system of training adopted by the instructor as actually conducive to such an end; secondly, that the recurring theme of monetary and popular success that runs throughout the film (e.g., there will be scouts in the audience and they do not forget a first impression) seems to be offered as replacement for a careful portrayal of the music itself and its significance as a motivating factor. The issue here is whether or not it is still the music that remains the ultimate horizon of concern for the film once one overlooks the film's most basic deficiencies in properly representing the music or whether or not these deficiencies indicate a broader failure of the film to make any substantive point concerning art specifically and if they are not, in fact, being exploited for the advancement of some other agenda.

It is clear throughout the film that while it is true that the student is attempting to take the music he plays deadly seriously, it is also true that the film engenders sympathy for his struggles not on account of his inability to properly play or understand the music he performs (this is all treated very cursorily and only exists to the extent that his struggle is one with pain and the stamina of a boxer to persevere through what appear to be primarily physical struggles rather than intellectual ones). It is his struggle and relationship with his instructor and his desire to prove himself to him and measure up to his concept of success in the form of First Chair in the Symphony Jazz Band that forms the emotional core of the film. So, on the one hand, while there does appear to be a struggle around the purity of the musical form, in the film this struggle is entirely displaced into a struggle with his instructor and a pursuit of recognition. And then, on the other hand, once the puritanism of the instructor crosses the threshold of sufficiency to make its point about the necessity for fidelity to established Form, one begins to ask themselves if this vision of the creative process might not be just a little bit extreme, particularly as its holy sanctity appears to be tainted with what is generally considered as anathema to the purity and authenticity of the creative process: namely, a concern on behalf of his students with their 'success' (not in musical terms) and recognition from 'scouts' in the audience⁴.

The third issue with a generous interpretation of the film results from its constantly shifting position on the instructor. One moment he's a figure of respect(as he is, he is first encountered as head of the School's most elite band), the next he is an unconscionable asshole (as he seemingly needlessly undermines students confidence through a vicious form of competition), then with a heart of gold (as he cries for a dead former student that exposes his profound bond to his students through music), then a mediocre indicted has-been (after being fired from his teaching position), to vindictive criminal (as he intentionally sets-up his former student who filed a complaint against him that got him fired for an epic public embarrassment and 'career' ending moment), and finally, seconds later, as once again legitimate and worthy of sympathy (as his student refuses to concede defeat and finally displays his indisputable talent that his instructor has to respect). And while it might be possible to argue that this lack of stability is intended to reflect the moral ambiguity surrounding such a man of unsurpassed principles in a world that has seemingly abandoned them in favor of a 'whatever is easier' to succeed mentality, it seems rather indicative of a fundamental confusion in the basic premise of the film: in the very final instant, rendered decisive through an incommensurate, desperate and somehow sad act of generosity towards the instructor in the total about-face that is scripted for him and through which he finds redemption. What appears like a film heading for an ending in which the student, through his force of will alone, will reveal the talent latent within him that thereby exposes the fundamental flaw of his instructor's approach, turns basically into a complete vindication of his instructor's methods as being the necessary evil that pushes him to exceed even his own limits. There really is no good reason to involve this insane instructor back into this film at this point. For all intents and purposes the instructor has been revealed as a craven sadist who extracts a feeling of authority he could never achieve on his own from young students who seem to not know any better (strangely, in this film students wilt like flowers, stuttering and stammering whenever they are spoken to). To render him once again as somehow prophetic for his radical approach to mentoring in the final moments of the film (as supportive helper lifting a weird hand to increase the beat of the student he just moments before totally disavowed) requires that one should link-together all the encounters between student and teacher throughout the film and recast them as the teacher's visionary obstructions that have become the student's serendipitous opportunity through which his final capability is unleashed. This requires that, after being fired from his job, the teacher somehow lay in waiting in an underground jazz club for his former betraying student to walk in so he can invite him to perform in an incredibly public performance where he can then submit him to his final challenge: play in front of thousands of people and his loving but undemanding father and do it without the music given to everyone else that's been portrayed all along as so vitally important as true fidelity to the Form of Jazz, and conduct an improvisation contrary to the entire philosophy of the teacher, that can only fail. This makes no sense because it can't have been the intention any longer of the instructor to 'realize his students' potential', but only to exact a personal vendetta. But, if it doesn't make sense then that means there is no real role for the teacher in the end: he has been shown-up plain and simple; he can't be a sympathetic character at this point as his student's success has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with him except only incidentally, as he is the flaming tyrant who's final pathetic evil act must be overcome. That the instructor is, despite this irreconcilable contradiction, still rendered sympathetic involves a distortion and fundamental perversion of the concept of the teacher as productive provocateur that says, basically, that no matter how it is achieved, the end result always justifies the means; which is to say, that it is no longer important what the teacher intends to achieve but only the result that counts through whatever random (malevolent) act was necessary.

It is in precisely this way that the film appears to be a strange mixture of liberal-capitalist ideology and free market competitive economics that is grafted onto artistic production as its natural condition for proper production. To the extent that art is to be properly crafted, to be faithful to its history and historical form, and in order for one to be able to produce a significant artwork, the artist must submit himself to the vagaries of the free-market through which the product can be properly purified. Cut-throat competition is the only way in which an artwork can be stripped bare of any superfluousness that imprison it to its conditions of production rather than those exclusively having to do with the essential demands of the art itself (for instance, by eliminating a delusional sense of accomplishment that it doesn't deserve or any kind of naivete). Cut-throat competition and liberal market discipline in the creative process ensures that no one individual gets more than he himself is willing to take, of his own force of will and talent, so long as those around him have the capacity to concede defeat in the name of a shared objective⁵.

Certainly, there is something fundamentally valid about this perspective on the creative process as being based in a single individual and their own capabilities that melds with the motivations of others in the context of a radically open world of free association and competition that, when taken together, have the effect of co-producing something Other in an objective Form. However, there is as well something unsatisfying about the particular expression of this concept of the creative process in this film in particular that has to do with the legitimizing of anything whatsoever to achieve 'greatness' and inscribe oneself into an historical collective Form when this 'greatness' appears to have more to do with bare success and pure appearances rather than any detailed inspiration or basic concern with the reason for being of the art-form with which one works. And this 'anything whatsoever' literally means anything, related or unrelated to the struggle for self-expression. That success becomes the benchmark for the legitimacy of the system itself in the end transforms the liberalism of the struggle from plain context for the emergence of individualized works to a prescription for its production and proper purification. In this way it seems as if the film is doubling down on 'success' as a legitimate inspiration: not only is it not an issue for an individual artist and his work traditionally conceived as compromising to its integrity, but it is also not an issue for the entire system and context and philosophy for his production either, as both teacher and student join together on stage finally, after so much antagonism to share in the spectacle of an empty success of their common-but-opposed objective that, miraculously, survived literally every attempt they made to sabotage it.

In this sense, while film seems to have all of the right ingredients and appreciation for what's needed to make a successful work of art, it is undermined by this investment of the entire process with an aspiration for success. This evacuates the entire struggle depicted of any real authentic emotional or logical core and renders the apparent competition of ideas as little more than a petty power struggle organized around the attainment of recognition through simple refusal to back-down in the face of just whatever in the hell one is faced with. And what's more, the reduction of the instructor's regime from knowledgeable provocateur who's insight creates the necessary obstacles to produce insight in his students to a regime dependent only on the emotional whims and (unjustified) politics of a flawed individual likewise has the effect of rendering its logic as unrelated in any specific sense with the logic or demands of an art-form. In this sense, the film appears hollowed-out with all the appearances of value and gloss, with a very appealing aesthetic and (in particular) soundtrack, with a progressive philosophy of a creative process through which the objectivity of human social endeavors arises, but one that lacks any real value for what it is missing for having become an anything-goes instrument for advancement.

Just Cultural Specificity?

A counterpoint to this film worth considering would be the Coen Brother's Inside Llweyn Davis. This is a film that seems to have all of the same intentions to document the formation of the moment of the emergence of an art-form into the objectivity of popular consciousness and historical consensus that this film does, but whose cultural context and focus is Folk music in the 1960's, rather than a form of Jazz derived from Charlie Parker sometime in the 2000's. That film also has detailed moments of focus on musical performances whose purpose is to develop the film itself into a dialogue with music, to create some kind of logic that binds the performances within the film to the narrative that takes place over the course of the film. In the case of Llewyn Davis, these performances serve to punctuate an otherwise vacant reality and highlight the contours of the struggle for both self and collective expression from out of which the music emerges. The failure of relationships, an abortion, moving ceaselessly from one couch and floor-space to another, going from one audition to the next trying to get paying work, defending one's work from sterilization into the superficiality of entertainment or something solely for the purpose of profit, or defending it from others' competing visions of purity of art (John Goodman in the backseat, for instance, saying that he plays a proper instrument, not some amateur with 'six strings on a ukulele'). The struggle in the film becomes the broader context from out of which the stage is set for the greatest voice of that generation to emerge (Dylan) and that recasts all of those who struggled who today have no name not as failures because they have been forgotten by those that followed and were more successful, but as 'successful' because they persevered in the name of their art and, in so doing, set the stage for others to come so that they could advance the art to its proper form and place in history. And it is precisely because of the seriousness with which the music in that film was handled that such a point could be made, for it depends entirely on it: without it, the film is just some period film about some failing musicians and then Bob Dylan takes the stage to cement their position as nobody's. The focus on the music and allowing the music to speak for itself and to resonate with the whole history of the genre of Folk music that is still played even today is what allows the performances to carve out a space on its own terms rather than those of the filmmakers and to look out onto the film's narrative of the past in a new way: as being the ground and context from out of which that music emerged. Fidelity to the music, in this sense, is both a fidelity that the performances within the film need to have to Folk music itself to be more than just musical sounds, but also fidelity in the sense that it is up to the filmmakers themselves to pay proper respect to what that music means and to organize the rest of the film such that that respect is preserved in the structure and emotional logic of the film⁶.

In this sense, Llewyn Davis can be viewed as a case study in what Whiplash is missing. If folk music in Llewyn Davis springs from failure and loss of a previous time, a search for meaning and an attempt to put all those thoughts and feelings into a musical form that hearkens back to another time, then it makes sense that its portrayal of those who make it is a juxtaposition of overly-structured and alienated life (of the 50's housewife and hard-worker for instance that the 60's generation rebelled against) with one of loss and confusion and aimless wandering in a search for new meaning in an effort to reassemble culture and society according to new terms. In the same way, then, it could also be that the Jazz of Whiplash is an attempt to express a mathematical form of purified and structurally perfect music, a music who's value comes from the disciplined endeavor to create pure objectivity of Form through music in contrast to a popular conception of Jazz that sees it as simple improvisation, random luck and not subject to rules or Form of any kind and thus 'easy' or not challenging to make or worthy of serious attention. In fact, Jazz is commonly associated with a type of sub-culture of people who use it to create a certain form of creative-seeming identity, who use Jazz as a marker for their sense of style and class, that they are able to not take things too seriously but have room in their lives for improvisation and rhythm. In the same way that Folk music of the 1960's could be seen to have inauthentic roots in a counter-cultural appropriation of an historical form who's intentions were to advance a traditional market-based attempt to produce fame and fortune based on the predominant sense of collective angst at the time of which Dylan just happened to be the most successful at commercializing⁷, Jazz culture could also be seen as deriving from a predominantly middle-class white culture that saw in Jazz a way to express their defiance of segregation and other civil rights injustices as part of another of that culture's efforts to create a progressive story for itself that Charlie Parker's music just happened to be the easiest, most obvious and pervasively recognized signifier of Jazz music's potential as a structurally pure art-form for advancing such a story. In the case of Folk music, the originary context has for the most part been covered over and it thinks of itself today broadly even more so in terms of the counter-cultural story it expressed at that time except that today, rather than being the partly-performative genre it was in its time, it is a taken-for-granted fact as referring itself to a lost folksy past of campfire togetherness and Dust Bowl struggle; in the case of Jazz culture, however, its origins could be seen to depend on a form of pretension of life-construction at its inception that has been transmitted all the way to the present. In the former, a culture of necessary self-delusion based on a genuine wish (for something else, something more meaningful) and, in the latter, a pretension towards pure concept of lifestyle based in liberalism and freedom of choice.

In this way, Jazz culture seems like precisely the type of culture that could make a film like Whiplash. For a culture entirely obsessed with a competition of appearances, where Jazz fits-in as just one signifier over another in an attempt to define the pure Form of (bourgeois? middle-class? upper-class? creative-artistic? progressive?) life it seems natural that it would seek to portray the art of making Jazz as itself subject to the same type of rational consideration and be itself a product of a rigorous logic through which the whole of life comes to participate. Such a portrayal of the music itself has the effect of elevating those who listen to it or perform, but which is, at bottom, hollow for the fact that that distinction is achieved through the expression of culturally significant themes in an absolutely objectified manner. This is how one might also understand such things as HBO's Jazz-infused Homeland, which is a tangled mess of incommensurate logic that attempts to rehabilitate the entire illegal and invasive spy apparatus in the United States by rendering those who constitute these deep-state functions as eminently human, subject to the same basic sympathetic flaws as all the rest of us, and, at heart, deeply concerned with the welfare of their country rather than any ulterior sinister motives, motives that Jazz itself i used to diminish through the cool hipness it confers on the spies who listen to it. This is the distinction Whiplash best exemplifies: an attempt at artistry that reflects itself in an empty and soulless logic whose concerns at every level have to do with appearances and is based on a fundamental dishonesty or, more generously perhaps, basic psycho-emotional dissociation of which Whiplash is the logical extreme that goes to the limits of simulation⁸.

Finally, what Whiplash also seems to share with Homeland and Billions is that, as products of conservative/liberal culture⁹, they follow the same formula: shroud something in artistic semblance, Jazz, paintings on the wall, coolness and any other signifier of the good life, and then use those alluring elements to create an emotional basis for the propagandistic revisionist logic that is its more basic function to convey. In the case of Billions it is that the financial tycoons on Wallstreet really aren't any more to blame than those whose job it is to regulate them and that, in fact, the one thing the bankers have going for them is that they are at least not hypocrites; in the case of Whiplash, the point is basically to render explicit the fact that liberalism itself is a culture and that that culture itself produces not only money, buildings and global trade networks, but is also a foundation for art. Real art that is without contrivance or pretension, but that emerges as a result of its submission and acceptance of the harsh realities it faces that it works with and whose hot fires forge them into the gleaming, pure gems that they are. In this sense then, it is not true, as Michael Moore says, that the Right doesn't make art: it does, but it is of this, wholly other, simulated kind¹⁰.