We cannot be children anymore. Even though we may want to we now understand the signifiers far too well. We do not just identify we know the drama that comes along with the bullshit. Being nostalgic is no different than falsifying evidence. I spent my teenage years trying to fight the man and most of my twenties hating the media. Only now do I realize the truth. That you, he, and I are the man. And I don’t mean that we’ve become the man, but that we always have been. Especially when we were snot nosed kids crawling on all fours. That is when we were at our worst. We are the machine that pumps out shitty hit song after shitty popular movie. You are the man that controls the media. In youth we make whatever the future classics will be of music, we eat the fast food, we put the theatrical actors in office (the ones we want to have a beer with). We ask for the truth in the news, but you don’t watch that. Nobody does. Turn on CSPAN for five minutes and see if your finger doesn’t try to poke yourself in your soggy uninterested eye. We don’t want to see Detroit rise up we want to see the abandoned buildings and say that’s a shame. We drive the ratings. We want the Rush Limbaugh’s and the Bill Maher’s to love, hate, or at least shake our head in disdain or approval. Entertain us or watch the cameraman fall asleep at the wheel as he cuts off some local governor’s head. We can’t hate any audience without looking inward first.
This resonates familiarity along the thought train of ‘SLC: Punk’. So if you are saying that we rage against the machine, yet are always part of the cycle of operations, from snot nosed adolescent to age old withering wrinkles, does free will really exist in your eyes? I suppose when I think about it, we never really are quite awake. Hell, I’m not sure I’ve ever even met anyone fully awake. How could I look him in the eyes?
ReplyDeleteI promise, eventually they'll stop making the Fast and the Furious sequels. Only the superlative remains, right?
ReplyDeleteThe crap machine that is the base of American cinema is not likely to stop putting out what they can sell to twelve-year-olds because that is their biggest market. They spend their parent’s money and their parents prop them up with whatever works, but I do hope you are right. There are different levels of being awake. In many ways most do not wish to step outside of the crowd, though this is not always a conscience decision. I think people get tired and don’t have the energy to always have an opinion. Of course this is not always, but it is inherent to not step out and look different, because then one would stand-alone and that could look and seem very weak even though it is very valiant. Of course if my argument is that an instinct of survival is carried over to social decisions, which it is, at the same time I am not condoning the action, but rather stating a fact. Good name drop.
ReplyDelete