Posted by Smalls at adsl-63-196-58-39.dsl.lsan03.pacbell.net on March 09, 2004 at 11:09:34:
In Reply to: There is no God. posted by Diff on March 09, 2004 at 10:44:06:
What was once the parlance of the fringes, camp and kitsch and irony, has been co-opted by both ends of the mainstream spectrum... by the kids who think they're deep and witty and individual buying their mass produced She-Ra shirts at Hot Topic, by the Friends watchers, by the middle-aged ladies in Kansas watching "Queer Eye for the Stereotype Reinforcement".
The battle of who-can-care-less was won by the lazy people, who think that the merest act of showing someone untalented or showing how lame something was from the past was... with a wink... is entertainment already. Subversion's been subverted, good-bad was stolen from the hands of the artists and the freaks and dropped into the syphilitic laps of Madison Avenue... and if you missed the news announcement to that effect, don't worry, "I Love Last Tuesday" will review it for you, with snarky commentary from Dee Snider and the cast of ED.
What was cool about things that were so bad they were good was... that it was crap and no one knew it was crap, they all thought they were doing art or... at least... low-cost seriousminded middle-brow entertainment for the masses.
Ed Wood was interesting because he didn't know he was all passion and no talent.
If Ed Wood was alive today, they'd have him on the Real World and two episodes in the producers would explain to him why he's so entertainingly bad... and they'd ruin him, by making him TRY to be bad... and the joke would be killed, leaving only cynical twenty-somethings at junior colleges in the Midwest laughing automatically, laughing because it's what they think the cool kids are doing, laughing to be part of "the wink-wink trend".
William Hung will get his album, it won't sell at all... until two years later, assholes will start making "Whatever happened to William Hung?" shirt and then the fucking piece of shit will go triple-platnum.
Our culture has caught back up on itself, our nostalgia is for things mere months ago. Time to get back to sincerity for a while.
Mike