NON-REPAIRABLE

I barely wrote in any sensical way in 2023, distracted by a brutal workload and ebb-and-flow of interest in serious or sustained analysis of movies or books or culture. That sounds like clinical depression, but as I’ve gotten older, the firmaments of a creative, progressive life have felt more and more disposable and naive. Rather than finding meaning in art, everything goes in one ear and out the other, and the massive financial institutions and corporations that control publishing, marketing and entertainment writ large appear committed to mediocrity. Hyper-aggressive greed and competition dominate society at every level and bohemianism is quantified and traceable, a disappointing solipsism. I harp on these same points all the time, but the artists and craftsmen that make good work and improve our inner and outer lives are less reliable and vital within the current climate of acquisitive complexity and empty political posturing. Nonetheless, life is beautiful, or whatever.

The most repugnant trend that continued this year appears to be the business-bro Elon Musk fanboy. I’ve been off Instagram for years and use Facebook only for work, but the Joe Rogan-esque bodybuilder-investors and motivational hustler content has become grating on the senses. Employing a dramatic speech pattern about grit, struggle and “gains”, along with impossible workout and lifestyle routines, there’s a flood of snake oil salesmen gathering clicks and attention for content, fed into a slanted algorithm that thrives on desperation. TikTok videos are engineered to induce disgust, content as the cynical mantra  “any press is good press”. Combining laissez-faire “grindsets” with our current iteration of techno-hypercapitalism is another indicator of the dying of the internet, the former vibrancy and alternative caverns one could find giving way to the ugly desire for profit.

It was also a further stranglehold on critique in general- with so much going to shit, the discourse favors one upmanship, linked to an elitism and selfishness that has people more concerned with appearing clever or quick, rather than correct in any way. Trends in publishing are grim. Novelists appear to have little to no traction in the culture at large, and every new person I talk to lists Harry Potter as their favorite series- the small number of people still invested in consuming novels has been spoiled by obdurate politics.  A novel that I read that was evocative of these terms was Yellowface by R.F. Kuang. It’s a story about a Chinese-American Ivy League novelist, a clear stand-in for Kuang, herself a Yale graduate. When the Asian novelist chokes to death in the presence of her white friend while they’re drinking wine and catching up in the novelist’s beautiful apartment, her white friend steals the unpublished manuscript before calling 911, and goes on to publish the novel as her own. Kuang invents a bogeywoman of white greed and selfishness, establishing herself as the victimized genius threatened by thieving, privileged white folk. The novel is bland in its prose and juvenile in its treatment of racism, a topic now considered fair game for even the most commercial entertainment. Yellowface received widespread acclaim, the norm for these types of novels that the Big Five have been churning out, though I’d endeavor that like most fiction, the book didn’t sell, as even major publishing events gross significantly less than the local Ford dealership during their annual President’s Day Sales Event. With the collapse of any kind of democratic monoculture, the void we’ve been left in literary fiction is dire. 

On the other end of that spectrum, Celine Song’s film Past Lives was a pleasant surprise amidst a spate of on-the-nose releases. The script still includes clumsy racist tropes, i.e. a Korean woman reconnecting with a male friend from Seoul while presenting her white American husband as a useless nebbish writing “white guy novels” and playing Xbox, but it’s deft examination of the passage of time and of meeting people at particular, fleeting moments in life. It’s odd to me that during our particular moment in history, institutional art products have to denigrate white people (for example) while propping up the marginalized or immigrant identity du jour- it is a disservice to all involved, plucked from fashionable online rhetoric: when cool, smart people get together and converse, it tends to fall into hyperbole and faux-radicalism, and thus not necessarily indicative of broader societal trends. Despite some of the unnecessary and obtuse caricature, the structure of the film, unfolding over Zoom calls between the two friends progressing through different points in their lives and achievements, encapsulates the mid-2010’s flow of jobs, self-development and renewed interest in cultural authenticity across the global market.

I’d like to keep this avenue of writing going, so far as it is helpful to dash some ideas across a page that hopefully no one reads. There are of course releases all the time that are enjoyable, and that either play to my preferences or are objectively well-crafted. In many ways I agree with eschewing the middle-aged white man protagonist perspective, because it is a bit tired and because there are so many more interesting voices and perspectives. Still, another important rewatch that I undertook, and completed in a suspiciously quick amount of time, was The Sopranos, the greatest long-form television show in history and notably centered on a white male  (though he is Italian-American). Whether the show could have hit quite the same psychological depth with a different protagonist is unclear, and I’d argue that the show rests on James Gandolfini’s considerable shoulders. Yet shows like The Sopranos, and even newer hits like Succession, still use the almost blank quality of whiteness to stand-in for universal concerns of family, ethics, greed, and the contemporary humiliations of being alive. It is the artistry of The Sopranos to make the personal into the universal, and it is a purpose of art that I see less often in today’s entertainment industry. We are at once more politicized, more radical and demanding of our art to further political aims, and moving further away from finding significance from our visual entertainments beyond echoing self-serving demographic concerns. I hope moving forward we’ll see more water-cooler worthy entertainment again, as the segmentation isn’t serving anyone any good.

A$AP SHORT-SIGHTED

Rap is occupying an odd industry position- Kodak Black, Future and Drake topped 2022 year-end charts, and several prominent rappers were killed. The entertainment industry echoes the Twitterati class, advocating against police brutality and institutional racism, so music that promotes gun violence, misogyny and conspicuous consumption would appear incompatible. Rap gets a pass, because the music is exciting and young people are attracted to contradictory impulses. One rapper of note in the contemporary rap canon is A$AP Rocky, whose discography is an exercise in muddled sludge, a viral start proven incommensurate with his lyrical ability. New York Times-friendly in his promotion of haute couture, Rocky is the consumer preference for complete façade, hit-or-miss hip-hop production swept into a blur of advertising imagery without presence.

Rap has a set of language and visual cues that timestamp releases- pagers went to “cellies”, which went to smartphones, “phat” went to “swag” and “trill”, “heaters” went to “blickies”. Brands, regional affiliations, and syntax all serve as easy signifiers, telegraphed for even the most stoned-out, literal-minded consumers. A$AP Rocky is from the era of “blog rap” when music would break through on indie music blogs and Youtube, utilizing nomenclature and irony of the online brain, white guys getting serotonin bursts knowledge-gathering on HighSnobiety and Hypebeast. With his debut video “Peso” in 2012, A$AP Rocky struck a blend of gangsta bravado and streetwear chic, wearing Supreme and Hood By Air and Raf Simons, emerging from a Harlem bodega as if from the very fabric of the city. Part of the cloud/hipster rap scene, the first mixtape Live. Love. A$AP featured Clams Casino’s ethereal beats and homages to Bone Thugs-N-Harmony and Three Six Mafia, an arrogant throw down of the gauntlet that suggested the genre could address more bourgeois subjects and audiences. Positioned alongside Drake, Kendrick Lamar and Tyler, the Creator as a major rising star, A$AP and his management team went in questionable artistic directions with his first major label album, LONG.LIVE.A$AP (2012): an appeal to festival drug culture, doing away with the tautness of his debut mired by sloppy production and features, including Skrillex and Florence Welch. He’s famous as hell, has a child with Rihanna, and is considered news-worthy, but his musical career is disposable, fast-fashion that echoes the business of hip-hop in its most forgettable iteration, designed as a temporary distraction.

Audience knowledge of rap history, including fashion and regional scenes is reflected in contemporary “hipster rap”, but so are the contradictions and embarrassing parts of the genre. Thug subject matter doesn’t reflect the Pitchfork audience’s lived experience, lending the whole endeavor an air of performativity, appealing to young suburban white kids who get their parents to buy them Nike and Supreme, or worse, young professionals with disposable income who hope that by purchasing brands they’ll attain self-fulfillment, the “streets” become a stand-in for the regular difficulties of life, the rapper a stand-in for the listener’s narcissism. A$AP Rocky materialized after Kanye released My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy (2010)- the late 2000’s brought about an even more super-sized version of decadence, crossing from performance into a reified first-person narration of the pleasure-laden lifestyle, rappers insisting that their particular mode of success was the very real pinnacle of contemporary existence. Most critical analysis on rap targets “toxic masculinity”, a vague tool of academic language. Much like “femininity”, “blackness” or “whiteness”, “masculinity” doesn’t capture the nuance of human life. According to Crystal Belle, writing in the Journal of Black Studies, “with regard to black masculinity, it is difficult to decipher what is real and what is merely a performance instigated by a white gaze” (2014). “White gaze” takes autonomy away from the rapper/performer, more disempowering than the “white patriarchy” bogeyman. Chopping things up via identity allows the entertainment industry, and by proxy the weakened pustule of academia to ignore that most commercial rapping is about guns, drugs and sexual exploitation, all devastating scourges.

Rap is big business, with tens of billions of dollars moving through the accounting departments of agencies, labels, streaming services and concert promoters. A$AP Rocky opted for the safest lane when fame reared its head, a Tumblr-friendly photoshoot, an empty vessel, the brief moment of musical authenticity in his first record giving way to a generic drug-fueled Coachella blur. With the rap industry so lucrative, endorsement deals and coverage by GQ, Complex and other promotional rags is easier than releasing quality music. Unlike Drake, who tapped into a musical goldmine with producer Noah “40” Shebib, Rocky’s music sounds bad, confusing and abrupt in its transitions and weighed down by forgettable lyrics. Take these bars from “Angels”: “Shouts out to my cuz niggas, finna let it fly for my blood niggas/Middle finger up to you fuck niggas, if you a trill nigga, then fuck with us”. Resisting the boxes of any particular genre or rap style, he ends up drowning in a murky middle, an almost post-verbal wallpaper. The fact that he’s often a co-producer and directs his own videos doesn’t do him any favors.

Rocky’s career is emblematic of maximalist rap fame in the aughts, a glinting journey to prosperity, reinforcing symbols of success- smoke blunts and wear cool clothes and jewelry and you’ll be “dope” and your “dreams” will come true; that, or you’ll look like an asshole. His lyrics are an afterthought: “Uh, glitz and the glamors, we pose for the cameras/Ghetto niggas with me, they pose with the hammers/Ghetto girls with me, pink toes in the sandals”. The issue isn’t misogyny or masculinity- it is the obvious posturing, his rap pastiche showcasing that the rapper identity is a house of cards hatched in a boardroom. Rap takes place in “reality”, but the exaggerated egotism is untenable. Jay-Z rapped on “Heart of the City”, “I’m not looking at you dudes, I’m looking past y’all/ I thought I told you characters I’m not a rapper”. Odd, as Jay-Z is a rapper, replete with an embellished drug-dealing past. A$AP Rocky suffers from those mandates of rap realism- he can’t pretend to be in the trenches, especially when . While I’m sure A$AP Rocky has lived an exciting, fulfilling life, his music, consumed by a young audience of impressionable teens, are just getting more Astroworld pathos, adrenaline fueled by media conglomerates thirsty for engagement.

Clowning on A$AP Rocky is easy, as he’s a public figure and rap is strange and fabricated. It is also comforting, with its chains and grills and sneakers and jackets- obvious symbols and an easy-to-follow narrative, like professional wrestling. The advent of internet rap, and millennials aging into adulthood in a tech-centric economy, brings out the performativity not just of A$AP Rocky but the whole apparatus holding him up. Far removed from the origins of hip-hop, its origination based on sampling, we’ve reached a deceptive, illusory stage in the genre, one which is starting to threaten to break out in even further destructive ways.

TOO MUCH, NOT ENOUGH

I haven’t been writing much, mostly because I work full-time and try to sustain some freedom or relaxation outside of business hours, plus writing deserves attention, which I’ve been unable to sustain. Trends and figureheads appear and disappear like tidal shifts without making an impact, so half of the topics that I begin to write about are irrelevant just as quickly. Top-down media control has come to dictate much of what we see and experience, including “crowdsourced” platforms like Twitter and Reddit, so to react to the controversies and astro-turfed culture wars is to fall for a red herring. The algorithm is winning, and credentialed professionals across generations have turned to conformity and hierarchy worship because reality is insufficiently ordered. The marketplace of ideas dominates every aspect of our lives- a flood of film, book and music references like a salmon slipping by a grizzly’s jaw. When we think about this era, or the previous decade, it will be an IMAX theater of the mind, a self-established projection of our narcissism, an impotent dud of a grenade allowing us to be mauled by the machines that had grown in unfathomable power. 

I’d started writing this particular piece in reaction to Alex Perez’s interview in the Hobart Pulp webzine, in which he tackles the weak-willed and self-serving literature of our contemporary environment. Wokeness, anti-wokeness and even the assimilation of “woke” into our common vocabulary appear as an endless cycle of over- and under-reaction to debates that occur online or in institutional spaces that have no bearing on lived reality. Writers and media figures calculate the most profitable opinions based on controversy and chaos. The most important beat seems to be the high school hallway, and no journalist displays this more than Taylor Lorenz, whose career is a case study in vapid zeitgeist failure- she covers trivial trending topics on Twitter and TikTok while accusing wide swaths of humanity, especially the working class, of aberrant behavior because they don’t conform to her microcosmic views. Overdevelopment, untenable waste and mediocre education still ravage the country and present unfathomable quagmires, but Lorenz and the fake youth culture that she keeps promoting have no answers, just rhetoric echoed throughout the internet. It’s an attempt to grasp sand, and the winner is mediocrity, an overemphasis on the social and identity, “fulfillment” a performance to an imagined audience which is often “you”, the sucker. 

The politically correct/woke grain of inquiry, as well as its reverse, is a house of traps- regardless of one’s convictions, events will reinforce the opposite, creating a disturbing game of whack-a-mole. Social media allows us to apply a false equivalency to political affiliation: if you’re not a diehard leftist, you must be a dreaded “conservative”. The hijacking of our attention by the internet, proliferating through algorithms and exaggerated metrics, is still a Debordian spectacle, a self-contained representation of the world- a “world [that] kept accumulating riches of the same steroidal kind, pumping up past the point where a qualitative change might have transformed it and set it on a different path”. The neo-Luddite fears are bearing out- social media is inducing depression, anxiety, lower quality family and friend ties, stupid fashion and trendchasing, and noticeably poorer journalism. Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter is indicative of how far things have fallen- as Debord has said,  “the spectacle is a social relationship between people mediated by images”, and we’ve become dependent on them, with Musk as a self-elected Spectacle Master. We exchange memes, disdain for the other team, hope for the future or lack thereof, all through isolated chambers of nothingness. When despair sets in, people hug their social proof tight, point to their sex appeal or friend group or credentials for validation, or they mock with overwrought irony, but all those defense mechanisms have become fully absorbed in the spectacle. 

“Ever finer fragments of the time of everyday life become moments into which the spectacle insinuates its logic, demanding the incessant production and consumption of images and stories that, even though they take place in the sweaty pores of the everyday, are powerless to effect it.”

Spectacle is a convenient catchall, but for my purposes, it suits the point. The creative industries are rife with ego, but there’s a dullness and darkness that Hollywood filmmaking and big publishing are afraid to grapple with, an end to alternative, independent art-making, a collective dream that we’ll all some day be rich and famous artists slowly revealing itself to be false- again, the “spectacle” rears its head, and we also come to feel that our limited free time is overburdened. Similar to disingenuous figures like Taylor Lorenz, stand-up comedians and podcasters have emerged as new proselytizers, setting up behavioral and psychological parameters for the young artist class, very few of whom have created art that has any longevity. The spectacle has established a hyper-distorted market for content, and emerging in that major absence of meaning is the Culture War, both “woke” and “based” sides of the coin. Identity is an excuse for the lack of collective meaning caused by a wide variety of factors that are too tough to tackle in commercial art.

The message from the culture industry is a continuation of the market logic that elected “YOU” the Person of the Year in TIME Magazine in 2006- nearly seventeen years ago, the age of a teenager. The idea that “you” would be the center of the world is the message we’re sent every day- no matter who you are, the world revolves around you. Leftists, free market Republicans, even the basic relationship between our bodies, brains and screens reinforces the relationship between you and the rest of the world, including the mental plane of the internet. It’s proving untenable- “…everyday life has been so colonized by the spectacle… It takes its desire for the commodity as if it were a need”. All identity types can live self-centered, commodified lives with easy, fake jobs. The market has embraced self-centeredness with open arms, injecting even more lard into bloated salaries for bullshit jobs, kickbacks and pay-for-play schemes, all hidden behind and within complex hierarchies of financing and fraud. One can’t help but celebrate such absurdity, in the form of comedy and tragedy- Top 40 rap a great example: a Marquis de Sade carnival of debauchery and also the most popular genre in America, drug-fueled hyper-capitalism that reflects the infinite, captured nature of our impossible nation. At this point, they want you to fall for the bait in either direction- instead of getting filleted, best to float by the dangling hook in search of real nourishment.

MALAISE IN THE HEART

Presidential speeches are often dull, playing to a predictable base and never producing promised progress. Jimmy Carter’s “Crisis in Confidence” speech, delivered during a grim period in 1979 marked by long lines at the pump and a decadent and vacuous post-60’s fallout, is a stark exception. He addressed an emptiness at the heart of the American project, noting that greed and consumption had produced a numbing effect on the people and ruptured the psychological tenor of the country, resulting in a crisis in the meaning of our lives to be filled by wider and wider bell bottoms, medallions and cocaine. Washington politics post-Watergate had given rise to a cynicism that had lowered the vibrancy and texture of cultural life- a clinical depression. The downfall of the American project, according to Carter, would be from cynicism and selfishness, not reliance on foreign oil or inflation. Media interests since 1979 have silenced sharpened negative social critique, encouraging the polarity between conservatives and liberals rather than allowing for a more comprehensive inventory of our nation’s direction. We talk about mental health issues while worshiping at the altar of attention and money, hypocrisy and inertia blocking political progress. Carter’s “Crisis of Confidence” speech was, in his own words, a warning- in order to progress as a nation, we would need to confront the issues head-on.

Carter was scheduled to address the energy crisis and inflation with the same old dry policy proposals, but he decided a week before to address what he perceived were “deeper” issues in the nation. He held counsel with real American citizens, collecting the honest voices and reactions to a maddening world, tamped down by the breakneck pace of social systems and negative news. One interviewee told Carter, “Some of us have suffered from recession all our lives”; another, “The big-shots are not the only ones who are important. Remember, you can’t sell anything on Wall Street unless someone digs it up somewhere else first.” The masses live lives of quiet desperation, but also manifold hopes and dreams. The culture industry alienates us from each other, putting a primacy on our differences and appearances, selling arbitrary fashion that signifies “current fashion” and nothing else. An overeducated coterie has popularized political opinions too complex for most to wield appropriately. Regular people of all races and creeds feel left out, forced to keep up with a market of consumptive conformity that is leading nowhere. Carter’s social critique in such a national address was rare, an example of intellectual leadership that took a bold stance on a broader moral issue, and we may be in a similar period of malaise, as we reevaluate technology and the direction of our own lives.

Carter utilized the gravitas of the Oval Office, but appealed to an audience that had changed dramatically since the 1960’s, and a media environment that was in the early stages of what we now suffer through- a bit more jaded, a bit more drugged out. He implored the American people to pull themselves together, to think beyond the private accumulation of goods, which were increasingly manufactured overseas. The speech also addressed the emerging feelings of postmodernism: “[the problem is] a crisis that strikes at the very heart and soul and spirit of our national will. We can see this crisis in the growing doubt about the meaning of our own lives and in the loss of a unity of purpose for our nation.” That lack of meaning is the target of conservatives who blame the dissolution of the nuclear family and multiculturalism, but the lack of signification is important to postmodern theorists such as Frederic Jameson and Jean Baudrillard as well, who point at the dissolution of meaning-making structures as a result of technology-driven abstraction and “late capitalism”. It is a vague “problem” which cannot be fully articulated, and once articulated, loses some of its power. It is a monstrous unknown. We fill that void with the usual suspects: entertainment, empty validation, drug use. Carter states the obvious, but the often ignored:

“In a nation that was proud of hard work, strong families, close-knit communities, and our faith in God, too many of us now tend to worship self-indulgence and consumption. Human identity is no longer defined by what one does, but by what one owns. But we’ve discovered that owning things and consuming things does not satisfy our longing for meaning. We’ve learned that piling up material goods cannot fill the emptiness of lives which have no confidence or purpose.”

Online leftists justify their impotent cynicism by dismissing hard work and strong families as “white supermacist” values, or an outdated idyll of the American past, but common purpose is a prerequisite for the comfortable lives that most of us are beneficiaries of. He noted that we continue to “close the door on our history”, which has only become more pronounced- we’ve taken it even further, and begun to rewrite history from a biased modern lens. Now, 43 years after Carter’s speech, we have a nonsensical outrage cycle that refuses to look within and ask where these arbitrary disagreements stem from, and who benefits from such a disorienting media landscape. We’ve reacted to our doubts about the meaning of our lives by becoming even more opinionated, contentious, and selfish, staring into our phone cameras and convincing ourselves that whatever little world we’ve woven for ourselves must be defended, and has to be the correct way to live. Self-interest is an existential fact, but many no longer agree to basic empirical truths and base worldview on ignorance. Our great commonality now, regardless of political affiliation, is desirousness- wealthy coastal elites with obscure nutrition regimens and expensive Teslas, suburban middle America, with manicured lawns, huge pick-up trucks and palatial tract homes, and meth heads with their daily score, enough to rev the engine till next time.

Carter confronted these despondent “vibes” as a Christian, but also as if holding an intervention: “Our people are losing that faith, not only in government itself but in the ability as citizens to serve as the ultimate rulers and shapers of our democracy.” Without belief In our ability to contribute to the nation as a whole, we’ve become self-absorbed leeches, buying nice chairs and new kitchen appliances and video games and clothing and concert seats to distinguish ourselves from nothing. Carter’s critiques still hold. We’ve lost interest in building better communities, let alone towns, let alone states, let alone a country, especially young people, who would rather be absorbed in a stew of commercial imagery . We are consumed by image- fashion and an obsession with the face have escalated narcissism into a parodic extreme. Within this environment, it is absurd to expect the government to save us, as they too are absorbed in the toxicity. Carter understood that Americans saw politics as a load of bullshit: “Looking for a way out of this crisis, our people have turned to the Federal Government and found it isolated from the mainstream of our nation’s life….

…Washington, D.C., has become an island. The gap between our citizens and our government has never been so wide. The people are looking for honest answers, not easy answers; clear leadership, not false claims and evasiveness and politics as usual.”

It’s worth noting that during the energy crisis, people believed that oil companies were raising prices for profit. The late 70’s were awash in conspiracy theories, much like our current Trump-stained moment. Carter might as well be addressing the country today, and his solemnity stands in stark contrast to the last few U.S. presidents. It would be hard to imagine Joe Biden addressing the tenor in the nation, as he sticks to prescribed media-friendly proposals and cultural conflicts, prefabricated to be intractable- racism, for example, is a perfectly circular issue, in that it will never be “resolved”, and can be mined for profit by conglomerates across the spectrum, or the COVID-19 pandemic, a never-ending crisis, or the Capital Riot on January 6th, which appears to be a red herring but has served as a distraction and excuse for Democrat inaction. Carter pointed to the fact that for the first time in modern polling, Americans believed the next five years would be worse than the last. Reagan and the economic boom of the 80’s staved off that fatalist prediction, but similar polls are given now, and if you’d bet five years ago that we’d be worse off, you would’ve been right. Most trends point to a worsening condition. We lack a leadership figure that is bipartisan enough to build the nation’s confidence back, and it seems the system is set up to prevent real heroes- much easier to have us arguing at each other’s throats about CGI-laden superhero movies, a failed equivalency.

There’s no lesson to learn. Jimmy Carter, who is considered a failed president, was the opposite. He was the canary in the coal mine, issuing a dire call for a real attitude adjustment. It was too little too late. The academy took over social criticism, making it an esoteric language style, a prfessionalizstion of people discussing how crappy the world is while securing jobs within a flimsy institutional structure, and a very luxurious careerism with shallow output. Want he pointed to, which was nothing less than a loss of belief in the meaning of our lives. He implored us to fight against an impulse towards disillusionment- we must continue this (post)-modern project, an ill-fated but worthwhile endeavor.