i believe technology gets less durable as it gets more complicated. there is a tension between humanity and technology and this tension is why your ipods break and why your cell phones break and why your grandfather's television was made of wood and worked for twenty years with some maintenance here and there but your television is made of plastic and cost 3\4 the original price to fix if anything goes wrong which, chances are, will happen.
robert browning wrote that "man's reach should exceed his grasp". well our reach exceeds our grasp mr. browning and that's why nobody listens to poets anymore. yeah we're still writing on the walls but the advertising leviathan keeps putting advertisements over it. so now what? we write under existing advertisements for like-minded revolutionaries to discover? no, we write, but it's for hipsters and tourists of the mental landscape, always observing and never participating. cataloging it with blogs and tumblrs. we find writings and pictures that LOOK like they might be there to provide some insight or make something meaningless relevant but that's it. they only LOOK like they're able.
but ultimately that's all it takes. they just need to LOOK the part because we'll fill in the blanks. we can put meaning into things that were essentially meaningless.
take this eddie murphy skit where he sings "kill all the white people"
this is funny. this is a funny skit.
http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/a7fde48976/kill-the-white-people-from-nino
but yknow what? i don't think it's just a funny skit and i've got a boatload of meaning i wanna put into it.
i watch this clip and the little hippie inside me starts acting up. he goes "this is awesome. this is an artists representation of what counter-culture would look like doing it's thing inside the very establishment it is railing against. but why the fuck is this funny?" and why is it funny? here are the lyrics:
I live in a shanty in the shantytown.
We have no money so we had to sleep on the ground.
I played the music. My father he dig a ditch.
My mother she do laundry life sure was a bitch.
But soon we killed the white people. Ooh we gun make them hurt.
Kill the white people yea. But buy my record first.
Ooh yea. Why don’t you buy my record?
We sing of freedom and ooh equality.
But we really don’t care we just want money money money.
We want to drive in a big black limo.
Get so high off ganja we cant even see.
Soon we kill the white people. Ooh we gunna make them hurt.
Kill the white people. Yea. Ooh but buy my record first ooh.
When u go in the record store. We gunna wait outside.
We gunna hit them in the bat and make them cry.
Soon we kill the white people.
Yea but buy my record first.
ok, now watch me try to walk the line between saying something that means anything and being an asshole with an degree in literature fingering himself publicly on blogspot, the chatroulette of intellectual masturbation.
starts off with a mockery of the plight of jamaicans. it's halfway authentic. the difference obviously being that the dudes that wrote the songs eddie murphy is mocking were serious. it's jamaican poverty. http://www.nationsencyclopedia.com/economies/Americas/Jamaica-POVERTY-AND-WEALTH.html apparently eddie murphy thinks this is ok to mock. and it is, because it's a black guy doing it. he can say the n-word all he wants and he can mock whatever it is about his own culture he wants and we can laugh about it too. the difference being that smart dudes laugh at how ridiculous it is and racist dudes laugh about how true it is. (ask me why i think dave chappelle doesn't do comedy anymore.) ok, we all know it without seeing it. i'm ready to move on.
then we get to the hook. kill the white people, but buy my record first. ok, the jury is still out on whether or not this is snl being counter-culture or mocking counter-culture. because if reggaedude is singing this because he wants to take the ruling class's money before exterminating it, that's pretty cool, right? that's a pretty big fuck you actually. the hippie in me is happy.
but wait, joe piscopo must have written the remaining verses. the second verse speaks for itself. just kidding "mon", no revolution. just the slave in the house (american network television star) mocking the slave in the field (revolutionary jamaicans). or not. maybe they're just mocking the FAKE revolutionary rastafarians. well, the good news is nobody cares because it can easily be played off as "just a skit on SNL" just as easily as it can be hyped up to be "revolutionary" or "racist". because obviously what's being mocked here is this cartoonish SNL caricature of rastafarian culture committing cultural seppoku by admitting to be motivated by greed and drug use.
then we get to the final verse, where it's clear these rasta dudes are all about money, and are willing to get money BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY. is this what happened to the struggle for racial equality? this is what i'd like to call the Great Racial Compromise. black culture could coexist with white culture. that is, if actors and major label musicians belonging to a clearly and publicly defined racial group could be described as ambassadors to the culture they're intended to represent, and somehow i think it'd be hard to find one who'd publicly claim they do not. (or did not for that matter)
so what are the major tenets of the GRC?
well first off, let's say that this isn't totally about black and white. this is about ruling class versus laboring class. this is about more than black and white. this is about the thing versus the other. (that's a thing, right? hegel?) not sure if this is how it works, but i'm mixing hegel's other stuff with marx's dialectic materialism, which might not be allowed, and this is where we get into the limits of my very superficial philosophic knowledge, but bear with me. (or get out your red pen and write "NEEDS SOURCES" right here) so let's take the R out of the GRC because this isn't about race. this is about class and the power associated with it.
well anyway, the major tenets of the GC (as written by the ruling class) state you can laugh at us, you can say how much you hate us, you just have to keep the noise to an acceptable level. HOWEVER, when you want to share our freedom and dignity, you have to play by our rules.
we can make fun of paris hilton all we want, because the harder you laugh at her the more you envy her. the more undeserving she seems of the wealth she has been born into the more you realize that wealth in many cases isn't earned, some people just get to live like that for no reason other than the toil of their fathers. and yeah, it's a tightrope walk because all fathers die eventually, and just like that the winds can change and before you know it the economy is shit and all our dotcoms go bust. but that's the chance they take, and that's the game.
oh, some leftwing nutjob on the writing staff of SNL wants to sing a song called KILL ALL THE WHITE PEOPLE? hmm... ok, let's set the terms and run with it:
1- the lyrics, while initially somewhat revolutionary, must eventually self-destruct. they must show the hypocrisy of revolutionaries hating the system because they envy the people it works for, not because it must be dismantled.
2- they must be sung in an environment provided by the system, both fictionally and realistically
3- they must be broadcast by the system
4- the system must never be dismantled.
after years of upper class racial disharmony the ruling class has finally accepted some select minorities to stand among their own. white isn't white anymore like it was maybe in the 80s or the 60s. again, this isn't about race, this is about power. anyways, the government used to be all white, and it didn't matter how free minorities were how many votes they got, that's just how it was. (statistic\citation needed) well all your protest songs and your civil rights marches were a fine song and dance, and no one can say it wasn't without a few skirmishes here and there. (see: birmingham fire hoses\german shepherds) but ultimately it took the aristocracy to say "hey guys, maybe these kids are right. i mean, we all know some pretty smart minorities right? why, just the other night my wife was reading a book by a black author and she was loving it! these savages can wear suits and ties just like us because y'know what, maybe they AREN'T that different after all! i mean, sociologically maybe [read: definitely] but ultimately some of them want the same things we want: power, prestige, seats at fancy restaurants without having to rub elbows with the rabble." and for whatever reason the paradigm shifted, and the aristocracy began to accept minorities to walk among them, but never lead them. (until maybe obama, but he's just a halvsie, and pardon me for saying so, but the closest thing he's done to represent urban underclass culture was get that dirt off his shoulder. but i haven't really been watching him do anything except not pass universal health care with a public option)
so i don't really know where i am anymore, but what i'm saying is what Audre Lorde said. (i know, i grew up white, but bear with me) The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House
you can't be revolutionary on tv. ever. ever ever ever. not keith olbermann, not glenn beck, not dave chappelle, and not eddie murphy. if you think you are, you're being duped. you don't even have the dignity of fooling yourself. the thing about that eddie murphy skit that got me on this topic was how for a split second, i thought it was more than comedy. welp, back to the duping...
it's like when that dude from the matrix sold out all his friends. he knew the only way to live comfortably was inside the matrix, not outside it. it's the outside where we get to experience reality, but it's the inside where we get to experience a world better than reality. we can eat food genetically engineered to perfection, and maybe we get cancer, but that's the game. you get to spend your whole life eating shit and one day you get bitten by the cancer bug and you die. or you spend your whole life selling drugs and one day you get shot on the corner for whatever's in your pockets. it's the difference between pickup soccer at eisenhower park in hempstead and the north london derby. one is organic and fun and pretty much enjoyed by anyone with two feet and a ball, and one gets infused with the drive for capital until the only people who can enjoy it are the spectacles produced by modern footballing masterminds and rich devourers of young talent.
another part of the Great Compromise is that you get to poke around intellectually as long as you promise not to really change anything faster than the establishment can catch up (barring any disaster type scenarios)
this is to say, people are making a great stink over the environment. well how does the establishment meet this great stink? they make a movie from one of their own called An Inconvenient Truth, and what does this teach us? it teaches us that the hippies were right. (a good hippie is always right, but a good hippie is hard to find) anyways, the hippies were right. mother earth is officially suffering. the ice caps are shrinking, the atmosphere is warming, and it's all our fault. but what ELSE does a movie like this teach us? it teaches us that if you can generate a big enough stink it'll catch the nose of the people in the ivory tower and maybe THEY can get a former vice president to do something about it. (wow, a FORMER VICE president. why don't we just let last year's oscar loser deliver concession speeches at the this year's academy awards) anyways, this movie also teaches us that we can trust our government to make things right. it teaches us that the system works. it also takes the responsibility out of the hands of the government (perfectly embodied by Al Gore, toothless and robotic. is that D- next to his name for democrat or demagogue) and places is it in the hands of the public. This makes sense, right? How basically that movie said "it's up to us" instead of "it's up to the government" which ultimately just goes to show you the government exists separately and independently of the public it should represent.
talk about a world without origin or reality, how about a government directly and indirectly preserving the status quo supported financially by a population without leaders? the difference i see between democrats and republicans is this: democrats bullshit the laboring class, republicans bullshit the ruling class. if anything i respect a successful republican more than a successful democrat because at least the republicans are bullshitting themselves a little bit less. because you can probably get one drunk and admit they're happy they don't have black neighbors versus some quasi-bleeding-heart liberal former first wife who puts an office in harlem just to see how the other half lives even though manhattan has already pretty much turned into a theme park for the ruling class where they have(brag of once having had) subways and cab rides through ghettos instead of the drive-thru safari.
look how clean the city is now! and all it took was for a republican mayor to outlaw poverty and outsource it to the other boroughs. now we can finally have our city back. we can make Time Square safe for tourism and industry. that strip club is a Price Club, that crack house is now a Pottery Barn, etc. and that's cool, i mean, nobody wants to be robbed on their way to CBGB's. but in order to not get robbed on our way to CBGB's we had to make the environment around CBGB's so safe and sanitized and expensive CBGB's couldn't survive in it. That punk club is now a clothing boutique and it would take all the writers in the world to fabricate a transition so fitting. Not only is it a clothing boutique, but it's a clothing boutique that uses some of the organic holistically generated punk culture intrinsic to CBGB's to sell totally aseptic conventionally-grown assembled-or-scoured-using-postmodern-FIT-refined techniques to purvey punk looking clothes no punk would be caught dead in to people still dressing up for the party all the old punks already left and no real punk nowadays would ever go to. All at prices no punk would ever afford.
Thrifting
You wanna talk about thrifting? Well thrifting is cool. It's good for the environment. Thrifting is a positive.
Yknow what's not as positive? intellectual thrifting. this is one of the reasons i didn't really like six feet under. every time they made some relevant cultural reference i thought it was intellectually thrifted. which is to say those characters weren't around for that, they never experienced it, the writers just heard about it and had one of their characters say it to make their character seem more authentic, which in turn makes the story more authentic.
well fiction has always done what it does best: invents a world more sane and orderly than has ever existed and could ever exist. not that that's really their fault, i mean it's only fiction. what else should it do but entertain?
Intellectual thrifting is a technique employed by the ruling class, and it has been happening forever, and here's how it works:
we are the characters in a story called Capitalism: The Musical, and if we are good actors we never forget that we are acting our parts in the world that is but a stage. if we are bad actors, we namedrop things we never participated in to make our characters more believable.
for instance, all my favorite artistic movements have come from the lower class. ok, maybe not the lower class, but not the ruling class. the poor starving artists who make art without regard to what the system wants or requires for mass consumption\replication.
anyways, a couple people start making whatever art for whatever reason. let's use punk rock, because it's one i'm most familiar with and it's one that's been totally co-opted, but you think about how this also happened to hip-hop\urban culture and folk music and any other form of art you love like i do.
some punks made punk because they felt like making punk. they weren't trying to key in to the urban white demographic, at least not financially. they were either trying to appeal to the urban lower class demographic on a philosophical\artistic level, or they did it accidentally. however it happened, they did it. and thus punk was born. and what do we know of punk today? well the ramones started it, it kind of fractured into other forms of music like hardcore and metal and ska and whatever other genre you wanna throw at the wall, it'll probably stick (although thus far unnamed, there's another offshoot of that poguesish dropkick murphy drinking irish brand of punk that i can't really stand, but that's another post). well if Punk is\was counterculture and revolutionary, punk is dead. now we have Punk(tm).
if you've been paying attention to punk you know what Punk(tm) is. it's punk that operates alongside the system it once fought against, and it's no different than the activist turned politician who realizes he can only throw a wrench inside the system only if he promises to fix what he breaks and thus becomes a custodian for the status quo. Punk(tm) is the greatest of intellectual thrifters and it provides the ultimate form of tourism. let's watch another clip
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yfn_IuQ3zRU
you know what that is? that's Punk(tm). Punk has always been cool. But like all celebrities, it got even cooler when it died. Punk(tm) is all about who knew who back when, who has the best vinyl collection via ebay, etc. it dies from lack of relevance if it doesn't namedrop shit it was never a part of. anyways, i see this clip and i see something as raw as Black Flag (which has become the touchstone of punk analysis not for being the most punk, but for being the most well documented of punk bands) getting sanitized and repackaged for mass consumption. I mean once upon a time, black flag was really fucking punk. they might not have been that political, but punk never has been that political. yknow why? because real revolutionaries don't waste their fucking time singing about it because they're out living it. but that's why punk is a little bit magical to me, and i know for the most part i'm drinking the kool-aid on this one, but punk lives it BY singing about it. punk for the most part is about standing up for yourself and being whoever the fuck you wanna be. that central punk ideal gets used for the purpose of what i think is good by people like jello biafra of the highly publicized participants in the age so nostalgically creamed over DEAD KENNEDYS, but it also gets used for evil by people like ian stuart and the nazi punk brigade. two groups who represent a pretty substantial binary opposition to one another existing under the umbrella of punk's "FUCK YOU WE ARE WHO WE ARE" mentality. you can't make anything good without it getting into the wrong hands. and now it's in the hands of kids who say "FUCK YOU I AM WHO I AM LET ME BUY MY WAY BACKWARDS IN TIME SO I CAN VICARIOUSLY MOSH WITH THE CRO MAGS AND DRINK OUTSIDE CB'S WITH REAGAN YOUTH." not that these kids aren't involved with punk\hardcore as it is today, i mean for god's sake, look at their record collections. http://www.howsyouredge.com/swap/ (that was sarcastic by the way) anyways... i respect people who earn records more than people who pay for records the same way i respect people who earn sex more than those who pay for it.
so, let's make my final point.
if you create something beautiful, honest, meaningful or relevant in this world, someday and somewhere an aspiring young capitalist will steal it and use it to make money. he will kill you and steal your spirit. he will use your spirit as a model to create merchandise, intellectual property, VH1 nostalgia shows, fictional documentaries cooler than real life like "Lords of Dogtown", etc. Your spirit is now a ghost that will be mistaken for you that nobody wants to believe is dead.
and that's how punk turns into Punk(tm)
how environmentalism turns into An Inconvenient Truth
and how revolution turns into maintenance of the status quo.
